i was walking home from a party
i was walking home and a man with a gun came at me
he had a gun
and i said, before i knew he had a gun, i said, i'm sorry: i don't speak swedish.
and he said, oh. (i was crying, because of the reason for which i usually cry when i am drunk, which is, no one will ever love me the way i want to be loved)
and he pointed at the corner of his eye, and he said, i'm sorry.
and he said, i lied to my family.
and then i said, i'm sorry i don't understand.
then i pressed the code on the door. and i said, i'm sorry?
and then i opened the door. and he put his hand on the door. and then i was afraid. i said, no.
he had his fingers on my side of the door. he had his fingers in a place which meant i would not be able to close the door.
i said, no.
then i looked. i had adrenaline in my blood. i looked, and while i was thinking, this is not happening, this is not real, i recognized the gun. the gun was in his other hand. no, no, no, no. i peeled his fngers from the door, i said: no. i saw the gun. i have never seen a real and true gun before. i have never seen a gun that was not in a movie. i said, NO. and while i was saying that, i was peeling his fingers away from the door, and i pulled the door into myself, so that it was closed. i closed it as hard and as fast as i could, because i had seen a gun.
then i ran. as i was screaming NO, i was running, and i pulled all three doors open and then as closed as I could.
and when i was in the apartment I closed the door silently and locked it silently.
i waited a minute.
i listened.
then i took off my jacket.
then i let tears fall on my face.
then i tip toed to my room.
i pulled the blinds closed.

well, it was hard for me to formulate a real answer when you asked me why this has been stressful. but here is the answer that comes closest to an approximation of the truth.

-it's complicated, but a lot of it has to do with the relationship i have with my sister. that simplifies things a lot, but for me, that is truly at the heart of it. and a lot of things stem in this complex web of confusion and upset from the fact that she and i do not get along like so well- or, more honestly, that i am still so angry with her.
i have been able to live with all of this in the back of my mind for a long time, and coming together like this, as a family, makes it impossible to ignore it. or, being in such close proximity with everyone makes me feel even more guilty about living without thinking so much about the way she and i treat each other. or, about the way i treat her; about the way i have been treated by her.

and i'm so tired of all of this shit.
and i want to be selfish.

and i'm so over the way my mother handles a lot of this; the way she acts. she becomes a child, and i want to treat her the way i would treat a child who behaves with me the way she does. but i can't, because she is my mother.

this entry sucks a fat dick. this blog is not about this real bullshit and i apologize for posting this; i'll take it down, probably, but, you know, sometimes i want to say these things but i almost never do. allow me this one infraction.

the way of all flesh

I saw him as I came down the escalator and noticed that he had become older.

"Abraham," I said and stepped across the arrivals hall. I smiled at him and as I got close to him I exhaled so that I could breathe in his scent. I had been missing that smell for all the time we had been apart, and I was ready for it.

As he put his arms around me, I buried my face in his neck and pulled in his smell. As soon as it hit my nostrils tears sprang to my eyes and that was when I knew that it had been too long. He smelled older. I should not have been surprised. I hadn't seen him in over a decade. We'd been 15 when I had left. He smelled like someone who knew that they were doing, whereas before he had radiated the scent of his adolescent self.

I let my fingers slip into the notches of his spine, which were coated in a new, heftier layer of muscle. He drew breath with the same ferocity that I remembered, and that comforted me.

"Abraham," I said again, pulling away from his body to examine his face. He looked happy. He looked like someone who knew what they were doing. I envied that. He smiled at me and said, "I know what you are thinking." He probably did.


We drove home in silence, the space between us filled with the years behind us.

Finally, when we pulled into his driveway, and he killed the engine of his car, and we sat in silence as the ticktick of the engine cooling resonated around us, I turned to him and opened my mouth to speak. I said, "You need to tell me why you left her."

That was a lie. I knew why he had left her.

He nodded and got out of the car.

___


We lay naked in the bed on our backs. We were careful not to touch one another, as afraid as we had been the first time, half my life ago. I slowly turned my head to look at him, and in the dark his face looked exactly as I remembered it. I inched my hand over to his side of the bed. I placed it on his hip bone. I was sure I'd be able to feel his freckles, but of course I couldn't. In my mind his body was smaller, his skin thin and taught and untouched. Under my hand, though, it was thirty years old; adult. When I realized this, I was washed in chagrin. I was embarrassed to notice that in my mind he was still 15. I was embarrassed to to picture the 15 year-old body he must be expecting from me.

He leaned over me, and kissed me, and looked into my face for the first time since I'd gotten off the plane. He sighed a long sigh and his hands considered carefully the age of my body. He placed his palms everywhere, comparing the feel of my anatomy now with the impression of it stored in his muscle memory. He was thinking exactly what I was; that we had gone, and would continue to go, the way of all flesh.

A good friend of mine walked across the united states, from San Francisco to New York. Before setting out, he swam in the Pacific, saying, "It'll be awhile, salt water". His name was David, and he looked like a painting of himself, always, but especially when he swam. He bought me a German dictionary once, after my brother committed suicide. David said, "You're going to need to know how to say 'bridge' in many languages". He believed that it was impossible to truly express grief in just one language. He believed that I'd go everywhere some day and that I'd tell everyone I met about Jonathan and how he jumped. He believed that because he still had hope, then. 

It was a grey day, the day he set out. I drove him to the beach, and he got out of the car, wearing only his shorts, and walked straight into the water. I thought he'd never come out. I sat in the bed of my pick-up and smoked cigarettes and watched him splash around. After a few hours, he came up and stood next to the truck. I handed him his backpack and touched his forehead. I said, "Call me, David. Send me pictures." He nodded and then he walked towards the Atlantic.

He did call. He called me from a pay phone in Illinois. He said, "It's me," and I burst into tears. I put my hand over the receiver so he wouldn't hear me. He said, "It's been awhile, huh? How's that salt water doing?" I stopped crying after a few minutes, and I said, "David, it's time to come home." I could hear him nodding. He just nodded and nodded, and then finally he said, "I'm in a little trouble."

When he said that, I knew why he'd called. "In a little trouble" was code for, "I got into a fight and my face is all fucked up, and I had to call, because I did this so that I could call you about it. So picture it, Elizabeth, picture how fucked up my face is. I haven't even washed the blood off yet." I have known David a long time. I said, "David."

He said, "I know."

He said, "You never saw his body, though. You never saw what'd happened to it."

He said, "Listen, Elizabeth, you needed this."

I hung up. A few weeks later, maybe a month, month and a half, I got an envelope in the mail and it was filled with pictures. He'd been right, I had needed that violence. I put those photographs between the pages of the German dictionary and put that under my bed. The picture on the page, Bean to Bright, was of David in the Great Salt Lake. 

ok, see that, there, below this text?

that's the past two months, and it sucks, but i need it to be here.
because i need you to know even though i don't want to tell you.

ps. those which are very sloppy/ in french/ make no sense were written drunk, and are more heavy-handed than they should be.
also, i can't figure out why they're not in the right order, just, whatever. y'know?

it's been a while since i've been here

Hi.
This is about last night.
-- I have not been well. The past two months have shattered me, and I am recently feeling like it's okay to start putting myself back together. A lot of things have gone wrong; but also, a lot of things have been going right in the past two weeks. And none of this belongs to you, none of this has anything to do with what you have done. But when I get drunk and I spread it, honey over a coffee table, molasses into you hair, it becomes about you. And I'm sorry, because it's melodramatic and unnecessary. And I'm ashamed, because I talk a lot about how to be direct and honest and good- and, when it comes down to it, I am not that way, myself. But know this: I am trying. I am trying so hard you can't see it.
I need you to know that last night was a mistake. I need you to know that it means that I trust you, finally. But it also means that what I have been saving from you between the black leather walls of my journal is beginning to leak out, from my lips and from my tear ducts. It has been leaking for a long time now- and I have decided to put it up. Finally.
Why now? Because before this, I didn't feel okay with you knowing how much I had begun to hate myself. Because before this, I was worried about losing you before I even had you. But I know now, I have realized by now, that if I let this go on in the squirreled, curled up and secretive way that it has, I will loose you, too. And I'm sorry but I feel more loved by you than by anything I have ever had before- and I need that. Which is selfish, and you have no obligation to any of this- but maybe you have a right to know.
Come back here in a little while, and it'll be up.
Thanks.
Liz