13.Jan.2003

is there a signal there

--

did we conduct a search for this

I have distractions railed against nothing. This means nothing to you. In the past week I've severed almost all physical contact in the hopes I can defragment myself. Instead images whirl.

New Years morning I watched Memento through drunken eyes and stilled on the scene where Guy Pierce awakens in Carrie Anne Moss' bedroom. In my brother's living room, shaking the alcohol from my spine, I couldn't surmount it and broke reluctantly before taking myself to his divan.

When we awoke the clouds were magenta, and pubescent, and billowing, and Monet-like and irritating, but something came with the imminent rousing. It felt different.

When he drove me home the sky-scrapers rose and fell goldenly and I didn't want to return. We called it the splice.

--

I want to spend the rest of my life steering someone else's car, this gargantuan Lincoln, in and out of traffic toward different cities, sprawled and open and pure, but we never move forward. I don't call this life. I call this subsisting.

Jay used to drive me around in his old Topaz where my music would lift and unfurl at three in the morning from his speakers. I slunk back and clutched the dashboard, antsy for release.

There has only been one car where I could learn its dilapidated interior with my skin pressed to it, peaceful with the tenebrous cells of the driver, divide and conquer. The acoustic rendition of the Deftones' "Be Quiet and Drive" washed listlessly through my thought-ears and I turned to face him.

"I want to buy a stereo system for this car," he said, touching the stillness with his voice.
"Be quiet and drive," I responded, flashing a loving grin.

Did we conduct a search for this?

From the other side:

On an emotional level, this was a disaster. Physically, through drug-remnants, I traced his DNA structure into his bare-back with my fingernails, and he nearly fell asleep. We were sitting on Nikki's bedroom floor in the dark where he feared obligation and expectation. He would tilt his head forward as I kneaded the muscles in his neck and pressed and worked through the days of flesh-fucked stress. He pressed against my shirt.

"I have a shirt just like that," he blurted.
"Shh," I said.

When he drove me home I avowed defiantly my impliable affinity in a state of firm intoxication.

It is called the emotional kamikaze.

I went upstairs bruised, unbeknownst to him, but I could always sublimate well. Simple rejection. Non-jeopardized rapports. Something I am used to receiving, but there's a signal here, where words dissolve and he nods accordingly, and he holds a gaze, divining thoughts.

And I want to spend the rest of my life steering this car, this gargantuan Lincoln, in and out of traffic toward different cities, sprawled and open and pure.

--

time & machine