(no subject)
So I kind of ogled this man on the train today. I looked at him cause he was cute. Then he seemed to look at me a bit. We looked at each other and then
*****
The above fragment was saved from a draft, a post I never posted, from who knows how long ago. Honestly, without any time markers, this could be a thought from almost any day in the last 6 years. How did Live Journal save it for so long?
Today I'm feeling very nostalgic. I'm jet lagged. I returned two nights ago from a trip to Prague. I woke up at 5 am today and have been doing... kind of nothing all day. Different forms of nothing. I cleaned my room, put away my clothes, organized a few things and did some scheduling. But mostly I doodled in a sketchbook. Then I thought I should try writing some lyrics. Or some poetry. So I looked for Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook for guidance (because I'm a terrible writer), and came up empty handed. I don't know where, when, or how it's been lost, but I must've looked through all my belongings 3-4 times over. Frustration... However, my search led me down another path. I unearthed many old sketchbooks and a few old journals. I skimmed through them all. I read things I don't even remember happening. And some things I have, over time, remembered incorrectly or imcompletely.
When I do this (which I've done a few times over the years), I always come back to one point in my early adult-ish life that I seem to have no record of, save for a few drawings of this boy. I have no photos, no facebook or myspace posts, and no journal entries. No journal I have goes back far enough - excpet Live Journal. And here I only have the post before it happened, and a post about a month after which was kinda in the middle of it, I guess. But I spoke in riddles back then, trying to be so artistic and show off my vocabulary. So I don't say anything directly. I guess I was also very concerned with keeping up appearances. More for him than for myself, although I did appreciate a certain level of privacy in all personal matters (and still do). But he was straight, as far as anyone else knew. And probably still is. Mostly. So it seemed best to keep everything as secret as possible. And man it was the best secret I ever kept. No one knew. He even would do things in public. Things that could be considered harrasment nowadays. But they were so exciting to me then. And felt like the beginnings of something real.
It started on his birthday party. I was 19, and he'd just turned 19. I was wearing a black t-shirt that had my name printed across it in a yellow frathouse-y font. I found it at a thrift store and it was size XXL. My first oversized article of clothing. I forget what he was wearing. He might also've been wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. We were drinking like monsters. He kept handing me beers and someone jokingly asked if he was trying to get me drunk. He casually replied that yes, in fact, he was, and he was going to take advantage of me later that night. I didn't think anything of it. It was absurd. I only remember laughing it off and drinking whatever he gave me. People say crazy things when they're young and drunk.
Soon enough, without meaning to - or maybe he insisted - I was the last person left. His roommate went to bed, and he brought me into his room. We kissed. He initiated it. His breath was thick with beer and cigarette smoke. I didn't mind it. We were in the dark, and trying to be quiet because of his roommate. He undressed me. He went down on me. I went down on him. To be honest, a lot of the details are fuzzy cause I was really drunk. I remember there was a lot of commotion - turning, flipping, maneuvering, slobbering... He tried to do it in my butt, but I think neither of us had done that before and it didn't work out, so we kept it to the things we could do. I think we came all over his sheets. It wasn't particularly romantic, I guess. I remember being nervous throughout all of this. And self conscious. It was all very new to me.
Afterward, we went out on the porch for a smoke. He smoked, I think I didn't. We barely spoke. I remember I tried to make some kind of small talk because I was nervous, but I don't remember what it was. Probably just something about whether or not anyone would notice or suspect anything. He probably said "Who cares?" I could sense that post-sex talk wasn't his vibe so I stopped talking. I sat on the porch floor, staring at my shoes, the floorboards, trying to breathe, and sometimes looking up to see the smoke flow from his mouth. He looked out, sitting above me in a chair. We seemed held in the still early morning, but my chest was hot and my mind buzzing.
He finished his cigarette and invited me inside to sleep. Said I should sleep on the couch to keep from raising suspicion. Or maybe this was the one time we slept in bed together. I can't remember. Either way, I didn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the dim lights from the street, waiting for the sun to rise, and for an aproppriate time to leave. I think I just left around 7am. No goodbyes or anything. He and his roommate were still asleep. I must've smiled the whole walk home. Aaaaaand cut to the journal entry on November 15, 2006.
The lamest thing is to think I.. just.. made all of this up for myself; that I just wanted it really bad... but I have a feeling that's the truth.