13.Nov.2003
i've got things to do
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i know you have, too
I used to traverse the brain-tide of an emaciated, Asian Adonis named Eric when I lived on the Northern side of Oklahoma City in mid-July. He was a shadow-dweller and my favorite five-in-the-morning companion when the other roommates were stranded amongst their self-indulgent, hydrocodone-influenced distractions, and the only thing I desired was mental coherency.
Distant yet amicable, he was a pillar of ancient devotions. I sought refuge in his independence, thereby diminishing my own minuscule quantity; I had been recently simplified and appeasing me was effortless, or perhaps it had always been.
I had a crush on his duality and intelligence. I fancied his history and his benevolence. His was the only room in the apartment that didn't emanate the scent of drama, unlike my own, and I was drawn to the lambent placidity, laying my newly-hushed head against comfortable stillness.
One intoxicated evening, I wrote lyrics from tunes we both enjoyed down the length of his spine. It was a period of insipid vulnerability for me that wasn't challenged by insecurity, a change embraced by quondam defeat, shifted into imperfect gain.
I never seriously subscribed to Taoism nor could I ever try, but he had black, Taoist eyes that were contrasting and full, and there were adages strewn along his bedroom wall he silk-screened and hung asymmetrically for daybreak reflection that begged to be refuted. However, it always seemed the milieu of his room alone dampened my innate controversy, and, coupled with somnolent weakness, I was left respecting his quasi-spiritual territory. Words like "religion" and "opinion" are inseparable to me, anyhow.
I told him constantly of previous involvements and visceral escapades, of which I am full, grand dramatic glutton that I am. He told me of traveling Europe alone when he was in the Air Force, from the Louvre to the Black Forest, onward to Asia and her great dynasties and my constantly-piqued curiosities on the clockwork of antediluvian deceits. I wanted to know the exact color of Shonan Beach, as my grandmother herself found homage there, and I never thought to ask her before she died the September before last.
He was, for all intents and purposes, unique and accessible, another of my indispensable, nocturnal brothers, human in every positive description, a platonic security blanket of thought and sanity, a bona fide martyr of virginity, and the exact opposite of everything I am.
I broke away from the group where he emerged in mid-August to move back into my parents' house immediately following my mother's hospitalization, where I've been living alone for the past three months. He was busy with nonsense as I was busy with nonsense. He scared the hell out of me last night when, looming from virtually nowhere, he crept up nine inches from my face as I was busy playfully chastening a mutual friend of ours in someone else's bedroom.
My words rarely match my thoughts, so I stammered off hurried sentences consisting of manic lingo and played catch-up with his nose. We talked for a while on the patio while he smoked, and I begged him for a cigarette. He refused to supply out of respect for my recent decision. I thanked him twenty-four hours later subconsciously, though we're both feeble to nicotine withdrawal.
We exchanged cell numbers and split ways at one in the morning, and I returned home exhausted to Jubal's purple text, where I of course relayed the entire night's experience to him in my most daunting of hackneyed idioms, a common theme in our textual exchanges.
The following day, I had lunch with Nicole at the Olive Garden (to spite my intestinal harmony, of course), nearly leased a seven-and-a-half foot Yamaha concert grand piano (I don't want a car; I want an expensive musical instrument), bought a vibrating device from Christy's Toy Box, bounced around the banks of a private lake on the West side of Oklahoma City, and returned home to a dark house.
And really, I just want to sleep in the company of all of my metaphorical brothers.
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time & machine