A bonus story
Oct. 13th, 2005 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taratemimaI wrote this to warm myself up to write the other pieces.
I spend days plotting how I won't sleep. I am taking only one class this summer, which leaves me with too much time. I've got cold coffee and cans of soda to keep me up, and a list of parties, gatherings, and outings involving breaking into universities to keep me up.
People wouldn't recognize me now. I was a bookish dreamer in high school, writing poetry to people who didn't see me. Now I'm the girl in a ring tee and cats-eye glasses in these late night diversions. The dancing is more robot than pandemonium, and I stand in the back.
I spend nights looking at the couples. Staring at overly affectionate couples, and beating down a wish to be between them. I don't care if the woman had spots and the man was balding. I notice her strong arms and rosy cheeks, or his kind brown eyes and large hands. When I was a teenage virgin just as eager to give it away as I was to keep it. Not for morality, but to horde the burning cherry-red ache. I wanted to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend. I wanted to live in an apartment and come home to two people who I loved and who loved me.
Then I met girls who kissed girls but didn't love them. I got two people two times, but also got elbows, awkward silences over breakfast, and no phone calls. Maybe she was mad that I could follow his favorite obscure poets that she never could. Maybe he got mad that she melted faster with me.
I learned some people think of me as a third person in a one night stand. If I followed my desires, I would be everybody's favorite fetish object, but nobody's lover.
So, the summer of my sophomore year, I'm trying not to sleep, because it reminds me of sleeping alone. I think of my imaginary lovers. I imagine they were both warm, he smelling faintly of bread, and she smelling faintly of salt.
With things like war and couples not being able to marry, it’s a stupid thing to want. It’s not something to destroy your life over.
This is the first I've written since the end of classes. Now, my body hurts too much to go out. I wrap blankets around me for comfort. I imagine the three of us going over our day in the minutes before sleep. I burned with all the 'somedays' when I was sixteen. I will be nineteen, and I shouldn't be so resigned. Then I think of my mom still going after one man or another who never made her really happy. My dad hoping that today he will stop drinking, until that first glass of wine. With such hope junkies as these, I may as well avoid the rush.
I wrap the blankets tighter. I can smell my own shampoo and someone's cigarettes. Tomorrow I will register for fall classes. I have the rest of my life to lead. Maybe I'll find them, or maybe I'll accept sleeping in an empty bed.
I spend days plotting how I won't sleep. I am taking only one class this summer, which leaves me with too much time. I've got cold coffee and cans of soda to keep me up, and a list of parties, gatherings, and outings involving breaking into universities to keep me up.
People wouldn't recognize me now. I was a bookish dreamer in high school, writing poetry to people who didn't see me. Now I'm the girl in a ring tee and cats-eye glasses in these late night diversions. The dancing is more robot than pandemonium, and I stand in the back.
I spend nights looking at the couples. Staring at overly affectionate couples, and beating down a wish to be between them. I don't care if the woman had spots and the man was balding. I notice her strong arms and rosy cheeks, or his kind brown eyes and large hands. When I was a teenage virgin just as eager to give it away as I was to keep it. Not for morality, but to horde the burning cherry-red ache. I wanted to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend. I wanted to live in an apartment and come home to two people who I loved and who loved me.
Then I met girls who kissed girls but didn't love them. I got two people two times, but also got elbows, awkward silences over breakfast, and no phone calls. Maybe she was mad that I could follow his favorite obscure poets that she never could. Maybe he got mad that she melted faster with me.
I learned some people think of me as a third person in a one night stand. If I followed my desires, I would be everybody's favorite fetish object, but nobody's lover.
So, the summer of my sophomore year, I'm trying not to sleep, because it reminds me of sleeping alone. I think of my imaginary lovers. I imagine they were both warm, he smelling faintly of bread, and she smelling faintly of salt.
With things like war and couples not being able to marry, it’s a stupid thing to want. It’s not something to destroy your life over.
This is the first I've written since the end of classes. Now, my body hurts too much to go out. I wrap blankets around me for comfort. I imagine the three of us going over our day in the minutes before sleep. I burned with all the 'somedays' when I was sixteen. I will be nineteen, and I shouldn't be so resigned. Then I think of my mom still going after one man or another who never made her really happy. My dad hoping that today he will stop drinking, until that first glass of wine. With such hope junkies as these, I may as well avoid the rush.
I wrap the blankets tighter. I can smell my own shampoo and someone's cigarettes. Tomorrow I will register for fall classes. I have the rest of my life to lead. Maybe I'll find them, or maybe I'll accept sleeping in an empty bed.
