may twenty-fifth, baltimore
laurie mittelmann
we talk about the people and artists she meets; the horror she notices in the people that come into her bakery (which she only works to remind herself how gross people can be). we examine how the weather makes us feel, her experiences with men and girls. and we talk about my frustrations, my ideas, my isolating vegan, drug free and abstinent life. we talk about how close i am to stalking people and wonder why i even bother with popular teenage girls. whether or not i am accepted into the social atmosphere in frederick. shows, music, jenny lewis. we make suggestions for each other's futures and whether or not we will physically be together in them. my lack of spirituality leaving me incapable of feeling a long distance connection with her.
it's nice that our relationship encourages interaction and separate lives with others without any time together for us. we don't keep each other company except maybe the four hours we spend before going to sleep, falling asleep, together. now i'm begging to release this tension of fantasy and my sexual interaction with this girl i love: how i bare the discomfort and loneliness of being without her, my best friend, my laurie. my disgust for her childish face and further features. her absence in my arms. i don't think this dream made up for it. it does so much more:
she and i, together. call it maryland. call it best friendship. i am looking for a make believe bathroom for us to bathe together. intimacy plausible due to geographic proximity. i can touch her -- carry her hand. and my efforts fail but i'm glad to not rape her. eventually together we lay under blankets in the bed of a truck. she is wearing underwear; wet, grey panties. i nuzzle into her lower back clenching her thigh, her inner thigh, moving my hand towards her crotch. i might have consequently brushed her genitalia but retreated. i felt embarrassed by my breath steaming against her back. i felt the moisture was disgusting or unsanitary. still, i love her and i can feel her. this passion is about the warmth, not to breathe in her face but to hold her through the night or day. her body forever i've been without. like the first ever time in her parents' car,i didn't want to be the boy that drove three hundred miles for pussy so i shook her off my leg like the dry humping pet dogs of suburban homes and clinic waiting rooms. no... for once we were to ourselves, to each other, and to the doomed world where the beauty of two entwined teenaged lovers can infect the lust of some other kind. we are the only. we are the most admirable and the least admired. the heroes of animal rights, straight edge, abstinent and courteous. we were the hardcore that surrendered privacy to falsify culture, because elitism wasn't going to save any lives but our own.
and i awoke so so certain that i'm in love. with. her. and now i can't distinguish between loving and being in love. it changes every moment. i can imagine being totally captivated, captured in my love for her. it feels gravely unconditional. i taste her skin. i squeeze her bones. her body. i have desire of her, to kiss, to love forever, to be totally accessible. that's how gross i think love is -- that love fails superiority; it's dangerous, it's brainless and selfish, cutting the sky, pieces, shatters, skate on pavement and crack your smile on some chick's ass; bite the curb. i awoke to beauty and good feelings but i don't know if that was positivity i felt. i tasted rape. i tasted a passionate longing to hold. and i grabbed. i felt her discomfort as i grazed her labia... but now, now i want to imagine that she liked it. i run recreations in my mind of how it felt to her to be felt up. it was so secret, so warm. it was hot, it was unclean, but it was with the person she trusts the most to share herself. it seemed like sharing, but it became something else, something selfish: a toy. her body was too closely related to my own and every spark that spun out of her nerves was too bland and cheap. this could have been everything, but touching her wasn't more than touching myself.
now new ideas rise from the aversion. now her body is our body. what she puts herself through i feel too. so far my only sensible cry for monogamy. here is the new plane. protect my own virginity twice over. afraid she could lose it for both of us if she had sex with anyone. id hear all about it. penetrating boy landfilling my best friend. is she hurt? i'm hurt. maybe she can find anger or comfort in that. ...this doesn't quite seem real yet, but my fear of losing virginity is strictly abstract, and maybe just as unreal.
think now of the girl that fell from the ocean to cry tears up to the sky to be glimmering stars casting light along the pathless darkness in our minds, stumbling over the earth, pumping the blood of one to another such that our bodies breathe and live on by the graces of those we find. i come to this understanding that love is a breathing plague. it's our will to infect. achieve some common ground, love for universal understanding. some desire not to be afraid nor lonely nor careful. i think love does more like make us careless than set us free. an opportunity to do all the things you and i ever wanted to our own bodies to someone else's. someone to flatter us. it's not so mysterious why i have been so furious about love. it's naive to think love is only beautiful. it makes us stronger to do more wrong. question it. kill it. crush it. crush her.