making out with a stranger
Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well. It’s finally spring. I’m leaving Canada for a while for some reason.
Last night, I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep. I think maybe those are just categories we impose on states of being which really aren’t all that different from one another. Being a person makes a hell of a lot more sense when we make the night dead and the day alive. I need to stop thinking I know anything about this stuff.
Last night, someone visited me. I felt her lips on mine. Plush. Distinctly moisturized, slightly sweet with some vanilla or cherry residue from her chapstick. It felt like I had to pry her lips open, but once I did, her tongue erupted into my mouth and soon we became one chemical. I could feel her body on my body. She was warm and her jeans were tight around her hips. I smelled lotion, coconut maybe, something equally subtly sweet. She felt clean and warm, perfectly prepared. I must have been awake because I could feel my crotch throbbing. I pulled her in closer and felt nothing, my hand passing through air and pulling dust toward my eyes. I coughed, blinked out the dust, and felt myself sticking to my sheets. The duvet was thrown to the side of the bed, alongside my pillows and topsheet. My face was hot and wet with tears and I realized only then that this girl was gone and I was alone. My window was open to the quiet street near my university and the wind coming in was cold but I was hot and soaked in sweat and my crotch had calmed down and the girl, she hadn’t been around in years.
I went back to sleep and dreamt of a town in Italy with winding streets that go on forever. I could taste wine when I woke up. My first thought in the morning was that I need to study for an exam and my second thought was that I had been visited by an angel.
My professor said that if the Church disappears, it was a lie. It wasn’t what it promised to be: the one path towards eternal salvation. That can’t be how it works because love is real and it never sticks around . But I guess maybe love never promised to last. God, it's so trite. It’s impossible to write about love and not write about God. Maybe that’s the worst part of writing about love. You can’t even do it. I feel that I am on the precipice of something. I’m either standing at the edge of a cliff or staring up at a mountain. I have no idea how to figure out which one. I know that I’m not working towards anything, so that means I must be running away from something. I could say “my past”, but that’s a cop-out. My childhood was too simple to run away from. I was fat and well taken care of. I never had to worry about money or divorce or really even sickness. A lot of people died, but that’s just life. It’s kind of sad, in a book I wrote in 2020-2021, I wrote a whole introduction apologizing for everything. I apologized for complaining about a life people have fought and died for me to live. All of my perceived incompatibility with the world around me is nothing more than my mind making up reasons to consider itself special.
Spring cripples me. The sunlight makes me appreciative of heartbeats and water, but it puts pressure on me to do something with my days. I need to be productive, but in a very specific kind of way. I haven’t wanted to die in years. I love my life. It’s completely absurd. I’ve started a literary magazine here in Montréal. We’ve turned it into a little scene. People come and read their prose and stuff and we clap instead of snapping because this isn’t poetry, this isn’t snobbery, it's just kids taking swings at the end of the world. (Sorry about that.) I think it is funny how I am still a child. I’m 21 now and will be 22 in August. I burn everything I cook, eat out way too often, am addicted to everything, and think of my future the way a toddler does. “I want to be a writer” or “I want to be a professor” may as well be “I want to be an astronaut” out of the mouth of a guy like me, someone completely unable to commit himself to anything or anyone but his own created sense of authenticity. I’m playing this game of Jenga where my ideas, friends, lovers, family are the blocks and I’m pushing the whole thing over and calling it a work of art. Some of my work will be in some galleries in Buenos Aires this summer. I honestly have no idea why. There is truly nothing remarkable about my art. I’m glad people seem to find something in it. I am unable to make anything meaningful.
I’ll be in Spain soon. I, as always, impulsively applied to some program to take some classes. I don’t know yet where I’ll be living, but somewhere, surely.
I invited a past lover to an event I threw for my magazine. He sent a text a few days later telling me not to contact him. I laughed and told him not to stare at the eclipse. It’s bad for your eyes, I said. I saw him a few days later on his bike. He has this hair that he holds back somehow and this little mustache. He’s taller than I am, but that’s no surprise. I wish I had taken one more look. I’ve forgotten his torso and his legs. Were his hairs coarse? We showered together. I wish I’d made a map of his body. I don’t love him. I never got the chance to. The metro car stops. No one moves. No one leaves. No one enters. We all just stare. The door closes and the train rolls on.
I tried to write a song for Kitty Genovese. She’s the one who died for the sake of psychology textbooks. I hate psychology. It’s probably the worst subject, besides gender studies. She was apparently brutally murdered by someone in Brooklyn. She screamed a lot and the neighborhood was busy, filled with people to come to her rescue. According to the story, no one moved. They just let her bleed out.
It’s false. Like most of psychology, the “Bystander Effect” (the supposed cause of her neighbors’ complacency) is a generalization taken from a story someone told for the sake of telling a story. I couldn’t write the song because I can’t write songs anymore. The only lyric I could come up with was, “Kitty baby / why’d they stay home?” It’s funny because I know the answer. They didn’t. Apparently some guy tried to stop the bleeding. Someone else called the cops. She died because she was murdered, not because her neighbors each expected someone else to rescue her. I’m not saying humans are good. Humans aren’t anything. Stop being such a realist, it’s driving me insane. I’m surrounded by lovers.
Ok, I’ll cut to the chase. I’m so numb. How many people can you let down in an evening? After every social interaction, I apologize to my shadow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” x12. I go on until my contacts are off my eyes and I’m in bed with my dust lover and my crotch throbs something crazy and I think about doing something about it, but really I’m too awake, too tired, my neck hurts, crotch is dead now, and I’ve never been much of a dreamer.
A beautiful couple walk into the cafe. There’s all sorts of light coming into the ten foot windows. The place is white and brown in a millennial sort of way. The man is leaving. His tweed jacket is fake, but his oxfords are real. His girlfriend, wife and mother of his children someday, reminds me of the women I fall in love with: floral printed, pale skin, dark hair, somewhat curled, light leather somewhere, perfect earrings, everything in its place. She takes a seat by a stranger. Her tote bag is stuffed full of sweaters, books, notebooks, pens, lunch, likely. She pulls out a massive black textbook. “NEUROSCIENCE”. I understand. She’s discovering the secrets of the mind. Her boyfriend is nowhere to be found. I know her father misses her. He’ll never retire. He lives to work. Her mother is a mess, surely. She drinks red wine and collects something, maybe postcards. We exchange eye contact. Her eyes are bright blue. Maybe too bright and too blue. I have green eyes, I think. They’re brown in the wrong light. This is the right light. I’m wearing a black button down with thin white stripes. It’s old so the black is more like a dark gray. It works well with my brown pants and brown oxfords. I get dressed up like this so my life feels like it’s moving in a direction. My grandfather, on his deathbed, insisted I’d be a doctor. “You’ll come around to medicine.” People are protesting. Somewhere in this city, a woman is shopping for lingerie. She knows her husband likes it, but it makes her feel more doll and less woman. Deep breaths. I think about how nice it would be to sleep in the forest. I wish I could give up my life and donate it to someone who wants to do something good. The best thing I will ever do is donate my organs. No one will get my eyes, they’re practically useless at this point. My brother did a stand-up comedy set recently. It was over half an hour long. I imagine myself in the audience. I wish he would call me. I’m looking down on my future. I’m taking notes. I write fast so no one can read it, not even me. Kitty Genovese was a lesbian and I’ve fallen in love so many times in the last year that my heart is numb. It beats, thank God, but I don’t know what for. I need something to orient myself towards. If I was a monk, I’d be a terrible monk. My professor told me to go to grad school. I’m surrounded by lovers, truly. They’re everywhere. It’s my fault for moving somewhere where you can actually walk around. Man and woman in cafe next to me. She puts his hair behind his ear. It’s cute. There’s something here. I miss all the people who don’t think of me.
My father says he’s proud of me. I hang up the phone while he says, “I wish we could talk longer.” I should call more. I said it already but it’s spring now. It rains too much. I know it’s good for the planet, but it’s not my job to care. They pay me to sweep the stables. I think I’ll kiss the rain.
Beautiful, Charlie. Spring is a goon.