what i will remember
the happiest day i remember is without him.
his presence floats around me, a fine layer of mist, i don't take the time to shower and maybe i'm trying to keep him around. the way he smells like chinese five-spice, a realization that, the night before, dissolves me into giggles right after he makes me come.
it's a saturday morning, earlier than i usually ever wake and i've just biked home from his apartment. my friends and i are going to the river and getting an early start. i'm listening to janet jackson, who sings, friends say i'm crazy 'cos easily i fall in love, and i write the line down in my diary and sing it again and again.
he's long gone to work. before i leave his place, i read roberto bolano's the romantic dogs in his bed -- a book he purchased because of me and my declared adoration for the chilean author -- and am so giddy that i can't keep the moment to myself. i text my best friends. i send them "ernesto cardenal and i."
what was it that made me so happy that morning?
the license to stay?
while he gets ready for the brunch shift, i pass in and out of sleep, dreaming that he's told me i can stay, sleep awhile, relax. when i wake up, i realize i had been dreaming and jump out of the bed, fussing to make it, put my clothes back on, mumble something about my dream. but he says no, stay, relax. i kiss him goodbye and he tells me he will count the number of omelets he makes.
that morning i find a letter i wrote to him nestled in his bookshelf. i take it out of the small white envelope, unfold the lined notebook paper and read it again. it's not snooping if you wrote it, i tell myself. reading my words again, i fall in love with myself a little, a magic spell i had hoped would work on him. on his desk, i find the biography of proust he once quoted to me in a letter, the bolano books he bought and tried and failed to read, i find all these references to a world we created and set aside for another: the one we have in philadelphia together.
and it's strange, this feeling i get when we first start carrying on our correspondence and even stronger when he arrives back in the city: that he's not anyone special. that my image of him, as an executive chef, as a food critic favorite, as an icon, a celebrity, that it's so blatantly wrong. that he has a sad, little life too. that there's nothing glamorous about the life he's chosen, about him cooking at these fancy restaurants in australia, that he gets sad, lonely, frustrated. that he's just a human. when he writes to me about all the things that have gone wrong -- the time his ex forgot his birthday, the flu that ravaged him, the kitchen, too crowded for him to do any good -- it unsettles me but still, i want to love him.
that morning i wander around his apartment, the one he shares with his ex-girlfriend, surrounded by all the trappings of his sad, little life, and i feel the thrill of being part of it.
his presence floats around me, a fine layer of mist, i don't take the time to shower and maybe i'm trying to keep him around. the way he smells like chinese five-spice, a realization that, the night before, dissolves me into giggles right after he makes me come.
it's a saturday morning, earlier than i usually ever wake and i've just biked home from his apartment. my friends and i are going to the river and getting an early start. i'm listening to janet jackson, who sings, friends say i'm crazy 'cos easily i fall in love, and i write the line down in my diary and sing it again and again.
he's long gone to work. before i leave his place, i read roberto bolano's the romantic dogs in his bed -- a book he purchased because of me and my declared adoration for the chilean author -- and am so giddy that i can't keep the moment to myself. i text my best friends. i send them "ernesto cardenal and i."
what was it that made me so happy that morning?
the license to stay?
while he gets ready for the brunch shift, i pass in and out of sleep, dreaming that he's told me i can stay, sleep awhile, relax. when i wake up, i realize i had been dreaming and jump out of the bed, fussing to make it, put my clothes back on, mumble something about my dream. but he says no, stay, relax. i kiss him goodbye and he tells me he will count the number of omelets he makes.
that morning i find a letter i wrote to him nestled in his bookshelf. i take it out of the small white envelope, unfold the lined notebook paper and read it again. it's not snooping if you wrote it, i tell myself. reading my words again, i fall in love with myself a little, a magic spell i had hoped would work on him. on his desk, i find the biography of proust he once quoted to me in a letter, the bolano books he bought and tried and failed to read, i find all these references to a world we created and set aside for another: the one we have in philadelphia together.
and it's strange, this feeling i get when we first start carrying on our correspondence and even stronger when he arrives back in the city: that he's not anyone special. that my image of him, as an executive chef, as a food critic favorite, as an icon, a celebrity, that it's so blatantly wrong. that he has a sad, little life too. that there's nothing glamorous about the life he's chosen, about him cooking at these fancy restaurants in australia, that he gets sad, lonely, frustrated. that he's just a human. when he writes to me about all the things that have gone wrong -- the time his ex forgot his birthday, the flu that ravaged him, the kitchen, too crowded for him to do any good -- it unsettles me but still, i want to love him.
that morning i wander around his apartment, the one he shares with his ex-girlfriend, surrounded by all the trappings of his sad, little life, and i feel the thrill of being part of it.