“It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” – Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.
connection
“I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know.”
(Made out in bed to this song recently with Ace. And, ugh, yes. It’s just one of those songs that always does it for me. It’s evocative – I tried to explain to her, though I didn’t really have the words – of this weird sort of present nostalgia. Like, this feeling that these are these particular moments, these particular days that I’ll remember with that sort of warmth. And the music just feels like bedsheets and soft light. It feels like drowning in another person. But also that feeling of looking around a room and realizing this is your life, these are your people, this is all your suffering and your energy and your joy. Of being young and broke and stupid. It feels like thrill and cockiness and bravery and the weird way things can feel casual and intense all at once when they’re new or when they’re ending, like they’re nothing and everything.)
On Friday night, I was at a birthday party on the other end of the city where the drink of the night was very little more than gin mixed with champagne. Pup was out on a date with a new partner he seems to like a lot, and it was half past midnight when he texted me to see if I was still out. “I can be there by 1:30,” he wrote back when I confirmed I was. “I’ll pick you up.”
A little emboldened by the cocktail that was supposed to be served in a champagne flute and that we’d all been gulping back from tumblers, by the time Pup arrived I was flirting with a guy friend of mine. And I can’t begin to explain the strange comfort of watching him come through the door, of feeling his hand on my shoulder, of knowing we were going to go sleep and wake up together.
And, yeah, I kept hitting on the guy, because you know me.
He woke me the next morning by pulling me into him and speaking gently into my ear. I’d briefly forgotten in my sleep that he had come over, and to hear his voice and feel him there was such a strange relief. I feel at peace in his presence, it’s a great thing.
And for all the getting tied up and the awesome sex and the threesomes, that’s my favorite thing that’s happened in my bed. Waking up groggy and a little hungover and remembering he was there, too.
“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”
– Richard Siken, “Scheherazade.”
Umm yes okay. This. This is fine.
The day before I went back home in January, Sir and I had a nice brunch and went to go get my nipples pierced. It’s something I had been considering for quite a while but had never thought I was crazy enough to follow through. It was my 24th birthday present to myself.
The whole thing almost didn’t happen. The piercer I made the appointment with called in sick that morning, but we were directed to a colleague of hers that worked a few blocks away.
Sir held my hand while it happened. The whole thing was deeply romantic. I squeezed his fingers when the needle went through, and he reassured me that it was all looking good. And then he helped me back into my clothes and brought me, dizzy with adrenaline, down into the subway to head back to his place.
These are the important memories. The ice cream we bought in the dead of winter when the high wore off and the pain set in, playing videogames to keep me distracted from the sting (which didn’t work but was nice in theory), Sir sleeping with an arm over me so I wouldn’t roll over in the night and hurt myself.
Things got hard and weird and ended up not working. But at our best we were brave and wild and tender with each other.
Hey, love, we’ll get away with it.
This feeling, though.
I’m going to do such dirty things to you.
Pictures like this make me freaking melt.