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 |  My first ever Writing.com journal. |
| i'm unclear on whether we're hanging out tonight, so i'm kind of halfway dressed. still have my contacts in but have traded jeans for pajama pants, et cetera. if we are hanging out, it's one of those nights where it would be inappropriate for me to look like i spent time on my appearance, so maybe it's fine, just like this. we met in pajamas once, one of those three-in-the-morning times. that was a mistake. there's something freeing about pajamas; light cotton doesn't abrade the way denim does. i might be getting mixed up, but i think that was the same night when he introduced the fleecy red gap sweatshirt, and when touch became okay. it was a really cool sweatshirt. the material on the outside felt like the soft stuff you usually find inside a sweatshirt, and there was a big black logo on the front, and for the whole three hours we sat out there, i stayed rooted in the belief that it was the sweatshirt my fingers liked; the texture, rather than the contours underneath. and i decided the material was softer around his tummy, which, incidentally, would later become my very favorite of his secondary parts. then this one time the red sweatshirt made me cry, or, rather, spotting it in the distance did, and the dam burst, i figured out i loved him, blah blah blah. he took it home for christmas break and never brought it back. on purpose, because while he managed to block out the important details, like the evolution of my feelings up to that point, he did manage to comprehend that some visual property of the sweatshirt had made me cry. one of his nicer gestures, just misguided. i digress. the point is: it's now going on twelve-forty, and maybe we're not hanging out tonight. he's doing too much. i'm constantly afraid he's going to keel over in the middle of a class/panel discussion/executive board meeting/shower, and the fact that he's wheezy and slow-voiced on the phone is not helping at all. i am caught between selfishly wanting to insist that he make time for us, when i know he barely has time to take an effective breath, and bitchily drowning in my own martyrdom, because i know that what he needs right now is consistency and understanding. and affection, he said last night, because i forgot that part; until he gets the kisses back, he needs to hear how i love him, why i love him, what i'm going to do to prove i love him when the time comes. i'm a good sport, and when it comes time to gush, i can go for miles. last year he got an email a day for seven weeks, many of them tailored to his specific requests ("inspiration" one day, "music" another, and then once or twice he wanted dirty, and got it). i could do that again. i'd rather it just be tomorrow. i'd rather be sitting next to him on a park bench, eating ice cream and talking about "corpse bride," which supposedly we're going to see this weekend. but as long as we're getting our druthers, i'd really rather be impaled on him with my eyes closed. same bench, that works. i had my site birthday yesterday. woot! as they say. but it feels weird, because it's been three years, but i was almost sure i showed up before senior year of high school. like, i have memories of sharing a computer chair with tina, both of us giggling into our respective hands, trying not to get caught with our writer's cramp stories onscreen during class. evidently i'm remembering wrong. that happens a lot. two heads are better than one, eh? part one of tonight's phone call just came to a rather abrupt end. reception issues and whatnot. that boy, that man, is going to be the unequivocal death of me. you'll all come to the funeral, listen to his ultrapoetic eulogy, sock him once for me, then tell i him loved him right up to the end. to the island. ********** "Razors," she tells him, beaming widely; her face can barely contain her smile. "Toothpaste, bar soap, combs and stuff. Some extra clothes, too. Not a Gap storeroom or anything. But enough stuff that you don't have to keep washing that thing every day." He has grown rather attached to his trusty white T-shirt; she verbalizes her hatred for it daily. She's tired of the blue dress, too. She goes swimming as often as she can, to give her skin a break from the cloying, tattered fabric. She found the supply trunk on one of her walks around the island's perimeter, and has been living sunshine ever since. He is, he finds, genuinely happy for her. For them. He thinks it must be a good omen, her chancing upon what will now sustain their stay here. She runs off after her announcement, to reappear three hours later noticeably cleaner, sarong-clad, and smelling of lavender. "Honey, I'm home," she giggles, and he runs for her with fists full of wet sand, drawing a string of musical shrieks. Hereinafter they refer to the trunk as Walmart. "Going to Walmart," he'll announce when he feels the stubble prickling along his jawline. "Back in ten." He paws desperately for cigarettes when she's not watching, invariably but less intensely disappointed every time. Otherwise, he is as thankful for the chest as she is. It punctuates their routine, provides an excuse for time apart, allows them to be beautiful for one another when they reunite. * Fermented coconuts do not make good rum, he writes, sitting cross-legged on what they've determined to be the eastern end of the island. He is making a list. She's off taking a bath, her third favorite thing to do, and he is making a list, writing quickly to beat the sun's rapid descent. He adds another item to the list. We need to figure out how to make a fire. The heading reads, simply, "Things." Notes to self, one-line reminders of everything there is to remember. Too many things. Things that seem more manageable in list form. The list constitutes two pages of the red notepad he claimed last week, a blessed gift from the chest. He flips back to the first page. DO NOT tickle her knees. Poison ivy/sumac/oak around tree with Y-shaped trunk. Coconut rum: Good idea? She likes to make love right after sunset. * After the first time, they didn't speak for two days, because he'd hurt her, and even though they'd both known that was going to happen, neither was prepared for the talk that should have come afterward. * Instead, that talk happened a week later, and lasted hours. Or so he remembers. Well worth it, though, because now, this sunset he's seen a million times, it's beautiful again. Now there are things to do in between endless conversations, short-term goals to achieve, pleasanter noises to listen for than the muted slaps of falling water. Still skimming, his eyes land on an item further down the list, one that inexplicably excites him, especially when he hears the sand-shifting footfalls approaching from behind him. Walmart seems to be out of condoms. |
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