In which As finds New Understanding
I will explain to you my honest confusion. I am a chaste young woman but I'm becoming impatient to leave that identity behind me. I want to lose it.
I recall being rather drunk on Thursday. I went, with Posner and the Knave, with Alice (the Knave's belle du jour) and our filmmaker friend, and we danced in circles and circles and circles again. There were spaces around me - and as I recall spaces, I know I cannot have cast my circles on anyone's toes, thank heavens.
So the dialogue runs thus:
I stumble over to Posner, and he girdles his arm around my shoulder. I recall saying, "let's go home". He asked me, "what do you mean by that?".
Of course, to ask such a thing to a drunken writer is to ask her to reduce a poem. I meant exactly the very words I used, and it could not be expanded or reduced or translated to explained - on account of both the aptness of phrase and my own verbal sloth.
I might tell you that any use of the word 'home' was absurd. I usually lodge with the boys in dormitories and I have done all year. But 'home', for me, had ought to mean the Hôte, where I live with Mama and Dada and Pigdog and her mice. Only I have been slipping up, knowing that thirty-eight weeks a year, I have been coming home to a new family. This new family is without parents, yet unorphaned. We're young, mature, and child-like and motherly to one another. Dormitories are tender and incestuous. So 'home' means dorms.
What I mean was, 'let's go back to dorms'.
But why say 'home', and not 'dorms', then?
Because dorms look, from inside and out, with eyes and all senses, like a mental asylum.
So why say 'home', and not 'dorms', then?
Because, as every good Catholic knows, a church is not made of bricks but believers. Likewise, 'home' is not an asylum-like structure on the greenbelt of Avalon City. 'Home' is Posner's bedroom.
Perhaps it would suit my audience to be grounded in the context of our dialogue?
The issue of my virginity has been long weighing at the forefront of my mind. For a madamoiselle who does a lot of thinking anyway, this means that I am in a cerebral mire. I long to throw off the dilemma. I got into conversation with the Knave - and it would've been helpful if he'd volunteered to rid me of the thing - but, in essence, he convinced me that virginity is a barrier. Once it's gone, I can be as sexually satisfied as anyone. This sounds marvellous, I think to myself! The Knave embraces me, and pat me on the head. I feel a new platonic understanding between himself and me. Bolstered by this new confidence, I approach my longtime flirtatious companion, Posner.
Losing my virginity has always been a certainty of mythical proportions. For years, I dreamed obediently of that white satin weddingbed, and posed with every Catholic troubadour I met in an array of attitudes. But now comes my apology to any sister who lost hers in a ditch in Dorset. I have over-approached the moment. Consequently, I am unbearably curious, terrified and awestruck by sex in general. I feel like an idiot for doing it but the damage is done. Sex, to me, meant marriage and family. It meant husbands and wives, and a resting place, and a perfect solution for loneliness. Heaven. Love. Home.
Take me home, I think to myself, unable to marry the notions of sex and love.
And now I recall that vital line that had slipped between the cushions of my consciousness:
I stumble over to Posner, and he girdles his arm around my shoulder. I recall him saying, "I love you", and I reply with the funny thing which I had realised the day before. "I love you too". Surely, "let's go home" is the only response that follows?
I recall being rather drunk on Thursday. I went, with Posner and the Knave, with Alice (the Knave's belle du jour) and our filmmaker friend, and we danced in circles and circles and circles again. There were spaces around me - and as I recall spaces, I know I cannot have cast my circles on anyone's toes, thank heavens.
So the dialogue runs thus:
I stumble over to Posner, and he girdles his arm around my shoulder. I recall saying, "let's go home". He asked me, "what do you mean by that?".
Of course, to ask such a thing to a drunken writer is to ask her to reduce a poem. I meant exactly the very words I used, and it could not be expanded or reduced or translated to explained - on account of both the aptness of phrase and my own verbal sloth.
I might tell you that any use of the word 'home' was absurd. I usually lodge with the boys in dormitories and I have done all year. But 'home', for me, had ought to mean the Hôte, where I live with Mama and Dada and Pigdog and her mice. Only I have been slipping up, knowing that thirty-eight weeks a year, I have been coming home to a new family. This new family is without parents, yet unorphaned. We're young, mature, and child-like and motherly to one another. Dormitories are tender and incestuous. So 'home' means dorms.
What I mean was, 'let's go back to dorms'.
But why say 'home', and not 'dorms', then?
Because dorms look, from inside and out, with eyes and all senses, like a mental asylum.
So why say 'home', and not 'dorms', then?
Because, as every good Catholic knows, a church is not made of bricks but believers. Likewise, 'home' is not an asylum-like structure on the greenbelt of Avalon City. 'Home' is Posner's bedroom.
Perhaps it would suit my audience to be grounded in the context of our dialogue?
The issue of my virginity has been long weighing at the forefront of my mind. For a madamoiselle who does a lot of thinking anyway, this means that I am in a cerebral mire. I long to throw off the dilemma. I got into conversation with the Knave - and it would've been helpful if he'd volunteered to rid me of the thing - but, in essence, he convinced me that virginity is a barrier. Once it's gone, I can be as sexually satisfied as anyone. This sounds marvellous, I think to myself! The Knave embraces me, and pat me on the head. I feel a new platonic understanding between himself and me. Bolstered by this new confidence, I approach my longtime flirtatious companion, Posner.
Losing my virginity has always been a certainty of mythical proportions. For years, I dreamed obediently of that white satin weddingbed, and posed with every Catholic troubadour I met in an array of attitudes. But now comes my apology to any sister who lost hers in a ditch in Dorset. I have over-approached the moment. Consequently, I am unbearably curious, terrified and awestruck by sex in general. I feel like an idiot for doing it but the damage is done. Sex, to me, meant marriage and family. It meant husbands and wives, and a resting place, and a perfect solution for loneliness. Heaven. Love. Home.
Take me home, I think to myself, unable to marry the notions of sex and love.
And now I recall that vital line that had slipped between the cushions of my consciousness:
I stumble over to Posner, and he girdles his arm around my shoulder. I recall him saying, "I love you", and I reply with the funny thing which I had realised the day before. "I love you too". Surely, "let's go home" is the only response that follows?