I’m cruel that way: I once replaced love with club soda. I remember your swimsuit calendar, all your summer fallouts and the pile of junk in the backyard that wasn’t yours. Being drilled by someone named after a character in a fantasy novel. Being drilled below the photo of some Elle wearing some black mesh swimsuit posed in some depiction of July with an orange glow, the charm of this scene pinned to the wooden panels of the surrounding walls. I judge all of my men on their sexual ability and you were definitely on the bottom of the wrung; so I guess it was my heat exhaustion, my sitting at the white plastic table tilted from the unsteady ground while breathing in the dust layered on the umbrella above that prevented me from climbing to a higher wrung. I remember the Swimsuit Edition date planner that you never made any plans on. It would have been easier to tear the pictures out and tack them in a row around your bed before any of the months had a chance to turn. I spend no time thinking about any of this. The only thing that comes to mind is my father, holding me up to a calendar when I was two. He couldn’t guide my eyes to the photos he was trying to show me, as I kept them on the little words penned in the little squares, leveled my head below the photo-line and pointed to the plan curled inside this date, that one. I told you that story and it should have been a sign. That I hate fantasy novels for no reason other than taste should have been another sign. If sex with you was anything it was deplaning from no assigned seat on a one-way, slinging your baggage on your shoulder and disembarking from the craft. It was flipping through the calendar afterward to see what one could wear with soaked skin, everything but the balls of your feet underwater, in any given month.
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In other news:
1) my current sex-life couldn't be better!
2) I'm flying back to Calgary on December 21st.
3) Will be happy to see you all then!
----even though my sex-life will be put on hold for a week. Which I don't like.
4) Graeme's coming down to Calgary for New Years!
5) Next university term will be my last term. And it looks like my transcript will be good enough for grad school if things keep going the way they're going. So who knows.
"I once replaced love with club soda."
Well, sweetheart, I can't say I'm exactly surprised! People born in Turkey often do heartless things ...
Posted by: joy at December 21, 2006 5:39 AMbarbaric, really.
Posted by: caroline at December 21, 2006 10:30 AMYou raise an interesting question about how one judges the success of one's relationships - I think I measure mine by the number of little cruelties we inflict upon one another. The more, the merrier. But then, I need therapy. *shrug*
Posted by: Edmorus at December 21, 2006 1:15 PMOh god. Need to phone you so bad. But you are now in Calgary. The uncomfortable standing aisle position of bad sex. Flight attendants moving you over into ugly people's personal space. Your crotch sunddenly, involuntarily flooding their line of sight. The wrong person. "It's not as though I want to be here. She just pushed me and I fell into it, ok?"
Posted by: Xavier at December 21, 2006 7:33 PMhey, if you're writing anything that has to do with the artist struggling, you need to keep the "struggle" out of it. I dreamed about this last night, and Derk Wynand agreed. As well as the other two old coots. I dunno. Maybe go with it. Look where the advice is coming from.
Posted by: m at December 30, 2006 8:49 PMderk wynand is a good guy. but that's one strange dream. two stones!
i don't really follow this all the way, though. i don't think i've ever written about "artistic struggle," at least not directly. and not to my knowledge. follow the advice all the way down the rabbbbbiiiitt hole.
Posted by: caroline at January 3, 2007 5:13 PMHope you are having a wonderful new years, so far, dear friend. Much love.
Toyin