What is my life?
Besides the longest thing I’ll do, that question is partly why I’ve begun writing this today. I’ll admit I thought of the better part of this while I was in the shower, which is where I think most ideas originate.
I’m writing this for me, and just in case I ever want to write a memoir someday—you know, if I ever amount to anything. Either way, I don’t want to forget important details that might be hilarious or poignant later on. For example, there’s a Lisa Frank towel in the shared bathroom of the West Hollywood sublet I currently live in. My landlord requests that we use it to step on after we get out of the shower.
God forbid one of us forgets to put it down and we end up slipping and killing ourselves.
I just moved here and I’m learning things about this city. The importance of the brightly colored Lisa Frank towel with the whale on it is but one aspect of them. I imagine there will be more as time goes on, and as they strike my fancy I will write about them.
You. You. You. You.
Look at you. You are something. You are so full of life you might explode. You could power a freight train with your presence. You are mighty. You are full of possibility.
You must feel this strength. It radiates. Permeates. Penetrates. It is a force unseen but certainly not undetected. It is raw and awe-inspiring. Gross and unrestricted. Beautiful and extraordinary.
And my God it won’t let me forget you.
The sun fell behind you and never stood up.
She lay on her stomach in the dark, her breasts pushing into his mattress, staring sideways at him. He sat, legs crossed with his back straight against the wall. Looking at the dimples in the white popcorn ceiling, he taps on the side of his water glass steadily. Anything is better than total silence.
She looks away. He slouches and takes his eyes off the ceiling to regard her. This is not the first time she had come here. It was a ritual—slipping away from her own world after too much wine. No one knew she was here and she preferred it this way.
“You can stay here any time you want, you know.”
She turns her head toward him, her hair skirting across her shoulderblades, and he allows this eye contact.
“I know,” she says and looks away again, feeling that he can see the embarrasment on her face. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? For burying your head into a wall for an hour?”
“No. For keeping you up.”
He raises an eyebrow and makes a face.
“Well I wasn’t going to just leave you out there.”
She closes her eyes and looks at the ceiling, as if the answers are all inscribed in the cheap plaster blisters. He sighs. He already knew they were not.
Briefly, she remembers holding his hand, but the thought seems out of context. She knows next to nothing about him, and now he knows everything about her. Exposed and damaged, she hangs her head. The last thing she wants is for him to pity her, and she fears he will.
Not wanting to dig herself even deeper into her little shame hole, she says nothing.
“Just, if there is anything I can do to help, I’ll try.”
She looks up at him and tries a slight smile. More than anything, she wishes he could.
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what’s happened to me.
