Read between the lips

and so it goes

2005-04-11T11:51:00.000-04:00

i didn't really expect it to happen and this i say knowing all too well that it probably would. hooked up with someone saturday night. knew him vaguely from Concordia - probably crossed paths wih him at parties. then this year, came across him more often due to a mutual friend of ours.

anyways, he got in touch with me which peaked my curiosity because last time we hooked up, i spent a metro ride listening to him talk about being pursued by club girls and about his ongoing relationship with some yoga girl. it was evident that he did like her alot which pretty much eradicated whatever lingering thoughts i had of flirting with him.

but he emailed me on friday with suggestions to go for brunch/drinks. men are basic, primary, elementary. there is no such thing as a man wanting to invite a girl out for drinks for platonic reasons only unless he was fishing for information.

but i played it innocent for i could be wrong although i knew i probably wasn't.

we met at a bar that i am not too crazy about - it's one of those bars where the customers are Look at Me and my Cool Shoes. we walked over to a local dive, which was more my taste although a viking bartender there is not too crazy about me, she has a crush on my ex-boyfriend. she gave him free drinks and me the bill. (bitch). five whiskeys for ten bucks, specials on vodka and oranges. easy on the wallet, so i drank away, in between replacing bandages on my blisters that my new Cool Shoes were giving me. Serves me right. However, the drinks and the company of J made the pain ever so much less noticeable despite the fact that blisters were growing larger and bloodier and uglier.

We went over to a club downtown, thankfully by cab, i would have been happy to walk there if it weren't for the protesting blisters. shortly after we got there, the alcohol I had consumed reduced my inhibitions and all of my shyness so it wasn't long after that I decided to see if i was right about why J wanted to ask me out for drinks. after he brought me a bottle of water from the bar, he sat down next to me in the booth and i promptly kissed him.

he kissed back and very well too. within minutes i had to tell him to get me out of there because my mind and body was filling up with salacious thoughts that threatened to reveal themselves in ways that would be ever so entirely unfit for public consumption.

and so he did. thankfully he did.

single

2004-07-26T11:14:00.000-04:00

Now that I've, sadly, ended the relationship with a certain blond gentleman, I find myself single again.

Being single is better than being in a doomed relationship but being single means once again going on the arduous journey of finding ways to satisfy certain, uh, needs.

Inane objects are starting to take on certain resemblances, as though they are mirages for my unquelled hormones. Just handling the zucchinis at the neighbourhood grocery store is making me self-conscious and then this awareness of self-consciousness would make me blush thereby leading to the zucchinis being quickly dropped back into their bin.

And all the while, I laugh ruefully.

Welcome back to singlehood.

War of the Neighbours - Part 4

2004-05-18T13:15:00.000-04:00

Well, as much as I appreciate your trying to do me a favour, I would still like to be asked before having signs posted on my property. Twice now you have posted signs and attached a basket without asking me first. I don’t see how that is treating me with respect. My property is not for you to do with as you wish. That includes stepping onto my front garden and cleaning up garbage. That is called trespassing, incidentally.

Secondly, the first minute we met, you told me that I should be appalled and ashamed of myself for the crap in front of my property and on my property, just one week after I moved in. You did this without introducing yourself first. It was not exactly neighbourly of you to talk to me that way.
Had you take the time to ask, you would have learned that I spent an entire week scouring out the insides of my apartment from dog hair, cob webs, dirt and grime that was embedded into my floors, walls, ceilings, windows, kitchen cupboards and bathroom. On top of that I was working 70 hours that week and taking care of my child. So that was why I didn’t immediately clean up the property the second I moved in. Also, renovation was going to be done anyways, and more dirt would have fallen on my property. I would have rather waited until that was done before taking the time to clean it all up. It would have been futile to clean up when more bricks and dirt was going to fall anyways.

I was not told the brown garbage bin was mine. It is certainly not mine at all.

And lastly, it was kind of you to say that my neighbours are educated and I am not. You have no idea of my educational background nor of my life or where I come from nor where I have lived and how. But I can assure you that I was certainly brought up well enough to demonstrate better manners and more courtesy and respect than you have shown to me. My fence does not belong to you, if you would have like to post signs, all you had to do was talk to me first and see how I would feel about it. I would have much preferred discussing ways to resolve those issues with you than walking out my front door and seeing a stranger affixing signs and baskets to my property without my prior consent.

If you had issues about garbage around my property, you could have spoken to me about it in a civilized manner instead of telling me that I should be ashamed of myself as you did when we first met.

All it would have taken for us to be good neighbours is for you to introduce yourself and express your concerns about having a clean neighbourhood. I would have been glad to collaborate with you in your efforts.

But because you deem it “educated” and a “good attitude” to trespass on my property, post signs on my property without my permission and furthermore introducing yourself by telling me right off the bat that I was a bad neighbour and should be ashamed, I don’t necessarily feel encouraged to establish some semblance of a friendship with you. Especially not now, after having received your last note, the tone in that note was anger and rudeness without apparent justification.

I will take care of my property when I can during my free time and I would appreciate not receiving any more remonstrative communications from you,

4888 J_______, Montreal

War of the Neighbours - Part 3

2004-05-17T13:31:00.000-04:00

My neighbour struck again, I am posting her note exactly as she wrote it, typos and all:

"As I said , the intention was to do YOU a favor in trying to control the garbage that has ALWAYS been a problem in your property, because of its location in the service alley. Pleople have ALWAYS been throwing garbage along your walls, in front, in the corner, all along the wall and the back corner.
we don't have that problem in front of ours. It is yours that has the problem, because of the location in the corner of the service alley. For the first time in years we had arrived to control it, cleaning ourselves , hiring people to come clean even the neighbors back yards.

If t here are no plastic sacs the poeple will just leave the shit in our door as it was when you got in and that I CLEANED from your doorstep. The plastic bags did help to keep the sidewalk free of sh..... FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS.

If they have their own plastic sacs but not a place to put them they will throw the plastic bags into your small front garden, which I have cleaned several times. It is us that try to keep the place as clean as possible and try to make people conscious of not throwing garbage onthe sidwalk. But you don't seem to appreciate our efforts so we wont HELP you in any way to control it , IT IS ALL YOURS NOW TO ENJOY.

You don't seem to have the attitude of a good neighbor , most of us always try to help each other, have very good communication among us and try our best to keep the place enjoyable, we thought we could include you also, the relationship wit the other tentants in your building is very good, but they are educated people. If you change your attitude and want our help , do not hesitate to contact us.

WRONG, it is NOT our BIN. IT IS YOUR BIN. I was presenting that people use YOUR BIN as a communal BIN. this doesn't seem a question of "workability' but a question of "problem of authority"

I tried to help you.

ENJOY!

4882 J________, Montreal

War of the Neighbours - Part 2

2004-05-17T13:27:00.000-04:00

This is my reply to my neighbour:

Yes, I had taken down the signs and the basket from my property and return them to yours. I was carefully to affix them as tightly as possible to your fence as you had done to mine.

While I understand your desires to maintain a clean neighbourhood, perhaps instead of attempting to do so by placing signs and baskets on your neighbours' property, you can place them on your own fence.

You are the one who wants to offer free doggie bags and encourage people to place their garbage in the garbage bin, so why not do that from your fence, not mine? I have found that since you've posted those signs to my property, that more garbage than usual have piled up on the front of my property.

4888 J________, Montreal

War of the Neighbours - Part 1

2004-05-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

My neighbour and I are having a feud. Yesterday, I took down some signs and a basket that she had affixed to the fence that surrounded the front of my property. The following is her response:

Hello,

if you took down the basquet for the plastic bags, I would appreciate if you return it to me.

I thought you would appreciate that people do not leave garbage in our front by making them conscious.

Anyway please return my basquet if you happen to have it.

4882 J_______, Montreal

bureaucratic hamster wheel

2004-04-26T09:20:00.000-04:00

It took me 3.5 hours to get a resident parking permit! first I went to update my registration and driver's license then went across the street to another building to get my parking permit. Got a number from the secretary, waited a bit, then after being at the wicket for all of two seconds, was told I need to bring a utility bill to prove my residency, apparently, having my driver's license and registration wasn't enough.
Went home and got it. Came back, got another number and then was told that I have to bring an updated version of my insurance papers.
Went home and got it. Came back, got yet another number and then was told that my insurance papers has to show my current address. Went to wawanesa insurance, bargained my insurance all the way down from $1450 to $455 so that I could afford the initial payment, came back
and got my fourth number and then I FINALLY got my parking permit. The secretary there was vastly amused.
I was not.

heart of lightness - 9/19/00

2004-04-19T19:47:00.000-04:00

they keep coming in, those words from shantytown, south africa, i wonder if they come from the same place that i see on television when they talk about the politics in johannesburg. does she also live in mud huts like they or is it somewhere more modern? i dont know, she talks about dry sex being enforced on wives, about child prostitution, about the taxicab culture, about the hospitality of those who have nothing, about the frustration of teaching about aids to a society that defines sexuality as a taboo subject, she asked me to call her, to come and see her there, see where i am, see what i see, tell me only the most ordinary things from home, to counterbalance all that i am telling you.

i worry about her, she who wallows in the ghettos of skid row, l.a., in the gutters of montreal and in the sewers of south africa, she who rather sleep in the hallway than in the hotel room, she who camped outside my door at 2 a.m. when she could not accept comfort when others could not, she who used to impersonate elvis in high school, the early elvis, she who has been divorced from her family and claimed me as a replacement.

twice weekly, when she is able to access a computer and the internet from wherever she is, in woli nani, she sends me excerpts, each more fascinating and mor shocking and more humane than the last. she describes a performance piece where a white man thought it would be politically significant to be circumcised by a black africa woman, the chaos that arose and the boycott, the gasps, the murmurs, the ridicule that surrounded the event.

she describes the reluctance of black people to look at white people in the eye and vice versa, she describes white afrikaaners who barricaded themselves into their pristine white apartment building, bitching over their loss of mobility while they water the plants on the balcony, and the black people on the streets, anger radiating from them just as the heat melts the pavement and glares off the tin roofs

she asked me to go see her in january.

i dont know if i can. i've seen the devastation saddam spread over his people, i've seen child labour in north africa, i've shared coffee with the homeless in montreal but i dont know if i have the emotional experience for south africa, the situations there so horrifying it is not even published in the media.

so i wrangle and agonize over this request. is it my duty to pay acknowledgement in person to the destruction mankind has done to mankind? more than gaining an insight, will i learn a lesson, will anyone benefit from what i might witness? what is to be gained? and what will i lose in the process?

what will i lose?

blurring of roles - 9/18/00

2004-04-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

got out of dodge city this weekend, went to see my lover, awkward to associate that word with me, but yep, went to see him at a party held at the residence along with the others who have gone mad on drugs and are now sober and asking for money for the organization and for cigarettes on the side. they sidle up to you and warm you up with flattering chitchat, being the professional con men they are, that they had to be to survive on nothing but kraft dinner, spare me a dime. discordant ramblings mixed in with singing along to missing verses coming out the roland and it is all grand, she is in the basement showing them how to contact dance, how weird they say, and laugh and laugh and you can see that really they need to be touched and yet you cant they've gotten sober and their hormones have been given rebirth so you stand at a distance and touch with your words and your smiles and sidelong comments, and praise the corn that overflows the table, bob, bob BOB, what are you doing, man? come back, i didnt mean what i said, come here and give me a hug man, it's all right, and the people sit in a small room clapping for charity trying not to look so righteously sympathetic, i am here and you are there, yet it could so easily be the other way around, it is all a toss of a dime, head or tails?

sylvia - 9/26/00

2004-04-15T19:50:00.000-04:00

going to check in on sylvia tonight, the lover of my pavlina. last time i did, i paid dearly. it was martini night at sky, only meant to check in on her and was dragged into supper then a long night dancing the mamba. bleached blonde males seduced me away from the bar, let's dance, they say with their bodies and i let myself go, watching the drag queens spin around me or was i doing the spinning? liquid cocaine coated my throat, the disco ball is glittering so bright, sylvia grabs me by the hand and pulls me to another floor where there is a green eyed black lashed man singing the opera, the divas are reposing at his feet, a roman scene, the countrymen are in the ladies' room and i wish he were here, if only so i can see his bemused smile and sylvia wishes pav were here and so we dance togethor laughing away our loneliness until the sky reaches that shade of blue black that announces last call.

a besotted mona cow-eyes me from the backseat. will i see you again, she breathes and sylvia smirks at my hedging. the taxicabs cruise down the street, time to make money.

it's closing time.

the alley door

2004-04-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

When the night renders itself silent
That is when I will come through the door
In the alley
For it leads to the staircases, upon
Which I will tread, step by sagging step
Till I find you
Guided by the smell of the gaulois red
By the wood panels tenement varnished
Lining the cracked walls that have met your hands
And my back, pressed

When the falling of snow has settled down
Like a babe put to sleep
That is when I will come through the door
In the alley
For it leads to the hallways diagonal
Pointing the way upwards, lone bulb lit
To the door with two peepholes, one for nana and
One for dada
Who don't live there anymore
But you do.

inflamed - 9/21/00

2004-04-02T19:48:00.000-05:00

mr rogers is back in the neighbourhood and i resent his presence. he comes in the colour of red that begins to swell within the pelvic region waiting to be release and meanwhile stirring up mischief in my hormones, mock laughter emerging as i grow horns, talons, hooves and a tail which for the most important remain unsurfaced until my nerves have been grated upon. white flags are waving about around me, begging for mercy from my narrowed eyes and inflamed temper, offers of st john's worts swirl about my desk, an innocent little bottle with its little pills and that blasted annoying cotton batting that for no reason at all irritate me to no end.

i should get one of those tshirts with a slogan. something like dont get on my nerves, or warning, pms ahead.

but i hate those kinds of t-shirts, not unless it's got a glittery decal of shaun cassidy or john travolta salvaged from the good old seventies, the formative years.

remember what nikes looked like back then, white rubber-tipped shoes, scuffed and dirty and stinky. now, they are blindingly white and kept that way with polish. shoe polish for sneakers. i think it exists and it is silly.

i dont know.

ten million dollar clients with no taste for good design are eroding our company, destroying our portfolio with their insistent colour-blind demands filled with typos. the new generation of copywriters that dont know the difference between its and it's , between your and you're and i want to growl at them, go back to grammar school and pay attention this time. how can people go through four years of university and still not get this. i was discreetly ushered out of a professor's office for pointing out that while he had no problem shredding my papers to pieces, his comments were riddled with flaming grammatical errors. how dare you question my degrees, my years of tenure, he asked me and then showed me the door.

my mother was an english teacher, i learned language through black and white print, not with my ears. i was the sole student in all the schools i had attended who did not have to take grammar classes.

although my flaw lies in transcending between the past, present and future when i write and people ask me, are you writing about then, now or later?

sometimes i dont know the answer to that.

letter to M

2004-03-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Relations between J and I are getting pretty intense. We have been having quite a time realizing that we are very complementary in terms of how we perceive the world around us and of how we react to it. That he is terribly romantic and poetic of course only adds to his allure. Each time we've met, we would not have gone to sleep before five a.m. We would snuggle on the couch, take a midnight run to the bagel factory which is no more than a little shop with a giant brick oven, we would take walks or linger in the surreal front hallway of his building, with its cracked walls, stripped staircases, a caged lightbulb and those plastic jewish thingies that glow in the dark attached to each apartment door. He lives in the Mile End, about two blocks away from where I will be living soon. It's on the other side of Parc Avenue, the more concentrated hasidic jewish section. Men in black clothes and hats would hurry to and fro on the sidewalks making me wonder why they always walk so quickly as if they believe themselves to be moving targets.
I would watch them from the front steps of J's building - drinking home made cafe au lait and smoking a red Gaulois, the smoke and fog escaping from my lips towards the blue-grey sky. Across the street at the Shakespeare building on the third floor, a brown-haired woman wearing a housedress would push asides a heavy lace curtain, to take a peek at the world of urban snow outside her window and at the building next to me, an empty metal swing would swing to the sound of rusty squeaks and cars warming up, waiting to take their owners to work.

profiles

2004-03-04T00:21:00.000-05:00

It seems as though I've barely spent any time with you at all this weekend. Apparently there are not enough hours in the day nor night to satisfy us, and here the hunger pangs rumble out these words I write to you.

I stared at you for a minute or so when we watched queer eye, admiring the contours of your faces, dearly tempted to follow the outline of your profile with a finger, down the forehead, over the slight overhang of your brow to along the proud arch of your nose to its finely beveled tip then down over those beautiful lips to over the chin and then down again down your neck to the base where the little dip resides that I so oft want to trace and then fill up with my tongue.

Then you turned around, tilting your head back and cocked that eyebrow, what? You were wondering, and now you know.

babblethoughts

2004-02-24T00:50:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, got groceries, recipe called for 4 lbs of bottom round, hmm, I don't think so, I don't think so, I don't think so, ch-ch-ch-choo-choo. Pea soup calls for chopped carrots, stew calls for baby carrots, to hell with it, everybody gets baby carrots, moving along,
A cup of red wine, a sip for me, let's get the show on the road, oops, only one 6 quart pot, all right, fair enough, divide the stew into two, one for 4 quart pot and one for the ovenware. Wicked, ham hocks, never cooked those before, ick. Boil water, toss in ham hocks, oh shit, tossed a little tooo hard, will mop up that up later, blanch, throw out water, hocks into 6 quart pot with chopped and hacked vegetables and dried out peas. Rock on, beef stew, dip raw meat into flour, fry, onions, red wine, another sip, aw damnit, what possessed me to leave the plastick ware on the stove element? Damnit, janet, oh brad and janet, they went to a forbidden planet, let's do the time warp dance, watch out for the hocky water, mom what are you doing? What does it look like I am doing, I am cooking, luv. That's cooking? swearing and dancing and hacking at things - yes, that's cooking, mais oui, I scoffed, he scoffed.
Opened can of tomato paste a little too hard, ooh lovely, sprayed by tomato paste, fucking hel., mom! what? You're swearing again, no I am not, I am merely cursing, an entirely different thing all together and incidentally, what I said was "keep on truckin'", and jerked my thumb like a hitchhiker and trucked on back into the kitchen and cleaned up all of the chaos, yelling out to seb it's time to eat lunch. But I don't wanna, yes, you wanna, no I don't wanna, marijuanajuanajuananana.

Supper will be served at 7. Second helpings at 7.15. Leftovers at 7.30.

blissed out

2004-01-31T23:04:00.000-05:00

i'm so blissed out that i'm getting dizzy.

here is the part where i would start getting scared and want to get off. the higher one is elevated in happiness, the lower one falls into depression. i'm afraid of heights or should i say depths?
from the time we first wrote, thanks to being introduced to each other through a mutual friend, we've been having such a trip to see how similar our perspectives are on literature, design, books. who else would know and love mrs eaves like we do?
and yes, he's a good kisser, fabulous, intoxicatingly good kisser whose lips hold me hostage for hours. the features of his face are classically private school british, his stance is quiet and shy and his words are expressed in a gentle tone overlaid with passion and a sharp tang of humour that makes me lose sense of time.
i'm so happy i'm feeling a sense of dread. "the higher up, the further down, don't forget that," my thoughts whisper to me. "be quiet," i say to them,"just let me be happy for once."
and so, i close my eyes and fall into where invisible walls don't exist and hope to fuck i won't break.

sweet addiction

2004-01-30T00:04:00.000-05:00

take a walk along my collarbone, leave those fingerprints on my skin,
toy with my hair while you talk to me, write those words and send them to me.
but those eyes, shades of jade, and those lips, shades of plum, i turn away and pretend it's just another day
words and smoke and coppered pipes
books and tea and wooden beams
but those eyes, shades of jade and those lips, shades of plum, i turn away and pretend it's just another day

viva

2004-01-26T12:07:00.000-05:00

he said, the doctor, he said
he said, mother's sick.

viva italia, viva la mamma
six months to a year more.

pack up, she said, pack up
pack up, we are leaving.

viva italia, viva la mamma
up from the bed she rose.

fly fly, in the plane fly fly
fly fly far we away.

viva italia, viva la mamma
water filling her lungs.

window, look through the window
window, italy

viva italia, viva la mamma
tears in her eyes

we walked, sundays we walked,
we walked cobblestoned.

viva italia, viva la mamma
red spots on her cheeks

look see, she said, look see
look see at daVinci

viva italia, viva mamma
opera, the old man sang.

she drank all day, she drank
she drank vino santos

viva italia, viva la mamma
riding on the vespa

bella, they said bella
bella was my mother

viva italia, viva la mamma
pillow stained with blood

knock knock, i banged, knock knock
knock knock on her door.

viva italia, viva mamma
no more doctors, she said.

don't cry, she said, don't cry
don't cry, for me please.

viva italia, viva la mamma
drowning in her lungs.

ding dong, the bells ding dong
ding dong in italy

viva italia, viva la mamma
six months to a year less

letters, she wrote letters
letters, tear-stained papers.

viva italia, viva la mamma
packing my suitcase.

hurry, she said, hurry
hurry, time to go

viva italia, viva la mamma
sending me home to father.

run run, she said, run run
run run, the train's leaving

viva italia, viva la mamma
standing on the platform

bye bye, she waved, bye bye
bye bye, she waved bye

viva italia, viva la mamma
la mamma viva no more.

consumed

2004-01-25T23:41:00.002-05:00

Thinking of someone I knew barely, who shuffled silently through my sister's house, an apparition. He carried his skeletal frame, consumed by paints and canvasses, from his home big enough for a mattress and a chair, to follow the crumbs of his hunger-filled stomach to my sister's fridge. Chronically shy and hepatitis b ridden , he sidled along the walls, feebly holding up a hand in greeting ambling on by. He wore an overcoat in which he lived and slept, he left a trail of footprints, shedding dust and ash. He caught me off guard first time I saw him, he neither knocked nor rang, his blurry figure floated along the corner of my eye.
My sis looked at my cocked eyebrow and with a faint smile, shrugged. He just remembered that he didn't eat this week, her lips would say, no sound coming out to give away his shame.
My eyes followed him down the hallway. His wasting silhouette cast a shrinking shadow on his own art hanging on the kitchen wall.

3 a.m.

2004-01-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

Through the snow-laden streets I go, through the desertion of night I drive.

3 a.m. the numbers glowed green.

Our words spilled over the wine, the cats yawned and coiled.

typography, orwell, organized religion.
letters to a contrarian.

The traffic light, it turned green.

And further I drove leaving myself behind on his couch.

dating...

2004-01-23T18:24:00.000-05:00

tonight, i will be leaving to meet someone with whom I had been corresponding via hotmail for the last week. he espied me on friendster, and asked a mutual friend of ours to introduce us.
he's a good writer, obviously brilliant and talented. i'm not sure about the depth of his humour because i don't see much of it in his writings. i sense an anxious, somewhat repressed middle class anglophile in him. it is based on the beauty of how he expresses himself in words that interests me in meeting him in person, for i like conversing with a mind like his. it makes for provocative conversations and all night debates over totally ridiculous conspiracy theories. people can be so different in real life than how they seem on emails alone so that's another reason why i've accepted his invite for a coffee. i want to know if he is who he writes to be. and also to see if he actually does have a sense of humour. god, i hope so for i tend to have a very dry wit. let's see if he responds well to that. if not, i will be looking around for the nearest exit.

i've never dated so much in so short a time at any given point in my life. no, wait, that's not true, let's not forget about grade nine in italy. those italian military men provided endless entertainment, all eighteen and raging with hormones. sigh, those were good times indeed. nothing like leaving in my wake, a crowd of young hazel-eyed men singing out "bellissima!"

what surprises me, i suppose, is that contrary to common opinion that for a woman over 30, the dating pool dries up, i've been approached almost on a daily basis. what exactly has changed about me, that would compel men to ask me if i would like to go for a coffee/hot chocolate/drink sometime?

the only changes in myself that i'm aware of is that i'm more aware of my sexuality, i'm more aware of the stimulation of my senses in everything I do, touch, taste, see and hear. Well, maybe not so much more aware as much as appreciating it more. for example, what used to be just a regular run for a cafe au lait at the neighbourhood cafe has now become a ritual to which i fully exploit to the maximum. i like standing in line at the bar, being greeted by the owner who not only knows me by name but also what is my drink of choice and how many sugars. by the time i am next in line, my coffee would be waiting for me. i would give the owner an appreciative smile, find an empty chair and proceed to relish each sip of the freshly seeped espresso laced with hot milk. i don't rush anymore, i now slow down to a near halt to enjoy such small pleasures. enjoy the simplicity of them, enjoy the rituals of the simplicity of such small pleasures all from a wooden chair in a small cafe on a cold wintery day.

maybe that's the allure. a woman who puts time on pause.

manipulation

2004-01-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've been in dire straits since my monitor started having fits. An acquaintance of mine dropped by last night to figure out what the problem was and subjected me to amorous neck massages of which I had to fend off. It was a situation where he apparently thought I was obligated to be receptive to his passes because he "came all the way" from the plateau to where I live, a mere ten minutes' drive but nevertheless one would think I live in another country by the way he would go on about it.

And because I batted his roving hands away, his glittering promise of letting me have one of the many monitors he has in his office has been yanked away. Rude, n'est ce pas?

I held myself rigid when he pulled my feet onto his lap and pulled off my socks to rub the cold away unaware it was coming from within. He rubbed my neck with his strangely small hands that didn't match his height nor berth. He tried to humour me by regaling me with tales of his past in violent american cities, while pulling me closer to him on the couch.
But he was met with bemused resistance. The wall was erected when he suggested in exchange for coming over to diagnose the symptoms of my narcoleptic monitor that I'd be obligated to reward him. That this was said in the face of a self-effacing manner did nothing to win him my good graces.
When he conditionally dangled his offer to help me out, I retreated from his thin-veiled manipulation by winding down my otherwise friendly demeanour.
When he saw that I was pulling away, he changed his tactics abruptly in midstream like a salmon flailing against the currents while my monitor flickered its narcoleptic fits against the contours of our faces.
While we waited for electronic seizures to stabilize long enough for him to get into my system folder, he tried to gain access to me.
I asked him why he was so interested in someone like me for really, we were merely acquaintances. We met at a coffee shop and up until now, had exchanged pleasant platitudes and contact info. For the past two months, he had tried to establish a date with me but I evaded with excuses. Could it be the slightly nasal twang in his quebecois voice that kept me aloof? Could it be when I look at his frame and imagined him nude that I knew I would not enjoy having his gelatanious body on top of mine? Forgive me for being shallow, I cannot help myself from feelng repulsed when pounds and pounds of fat on top of my body pushes all the air out and lets none in. You could switch on of my erogenous zones with your hands and mind and words and voice but none of that would ever be rewarded in kind if I can't bring myself to touch your body.
So while he sat there, attempting to ply me into being more malleable while explaining his interest in my character, I sat fascinated by his persistence and by his admission that like me, he cannot bring himself to be attracted to overweight bodies. I looked at his aging teeth yellow and grey, his stomach oozing over his belt that was barely buckled, his second chin overlapping the top of his turtleneck sweater which was black like his pants. He wore black to minimize his waistline but why? I would have found out should he succeed in seducing me into the sheets with him. I perversely examined his denial from head to toe and thought, "fool."

I batted away his hands, I sidestepped around him as he tried to lean in close to me and finally had to rely on the clock to be my chaperone as I pointed at it and said it was getting late.

His promise that he made earlier to give me one of his many monitors he had in his office was threatened by my rebuffs. Did he really think I cared? Did he really think that I would submit to his bloated amorous hands for sake of a monitor? I could not be bothered to be insulted for his assumptions were too ludicrous. And pathetic.

He took the clue and with deliberate slowness, packed up his bag and put on his rubber overshoes as if to give me enough time to change my mind but i didn't.

From there to here

2004-01-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

Been thinking this weekend - how did I get from there to here? At what point did I step over my self-enforced boundaries, exit my closet, broke through my fetish virginity?
Was it with the aid of cocktails that allowed me to use it as an excuse to exercise more of my fantasies? Was it when I posted an ad on a fetish site to announce my inner desires to the world? Or was it when I approached a photographer last summer and asked him to take pictures of me that would show more of my sensual side?
Perhaps there was no actual line of solidity, perhaps it was just a yellow light all along and I chose to speed up and cross it before it turned red instead of slowing down to a halt.
For the longest time, fetish and kink, for me, was a naive and ignorant concept that connotated a deranged world of chains and rope and whippings where one is finally initiated when one's skin was painfully marked with the signs of rope burns and lashings of the whip.
Now that I've entered into this arena of sexual gladiators, I know better. It's not about the weapon of choice, it's not about blood and pain. It's about experimenting with the senses. It's about transcending beyond the simple act of fucking into something far more complex and multi-layered. It's about the psychology of letting yourself free-fall into a vast open space that can only be achieved through utter trust and faith that someone will catch you safely. There is an exhilirating freedom that comes with knowing that stepping off the cliff will send you into a wide open space of an adrenaline rush and that when you do land, you will land in the warmth of someone's embrace. That they will be there to catch you when you finally reached the ground. That they had been there with you on the cliff when you took that step off the edge, that they had been there holding your hand while you took a leap of faith and let go of all your restraints to guide you through an emotional galaxy that you've submerged into by pushing your psychological boundaries. It takes courage to submit to the shocking pain of that first lashing and it takes faith that once you've faced the wave of pain, it will carry you over to the top where pleasure awaits to carry you along its crest. But you have to know that it's there, you have to have faith that it's there the whole time on the other side. That it's been there the whole time waiting for you.

All it takes is the guidance of someone who had been there before you and knows how to navigate the vessel that is your body and mind even through uncharted waters.

Body Language

2004-01-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

When the lights are off, there is no talking in the bed. If one were to speak to me, they would be met with either no response or a puzzled expression, the latter of which would be worse for it disrupts the mood.
Instead, when we have sex, I would be able to tell what he was feeling by the vibrations that would transfer from his body to mine. My hand on his throat would tell me the depth of his groans, the more deeper the vibrations, the more he was enjoying himself. My legs around his would let me know if he is excited, be it the tension of his muscles, the speed of his movements or even the range of space between his legs. If he was relaxed, his legs would soften, if he was very aroused, his legs would reflect the hardness of his shaft.
His breath on my face would also give me clues - much like his legs - relaxed, soft, excited - hard.
But there would be no other communication. No pillow talk, no cursing, no suggestions, no asking if I might like this or if I may please do that for him.
I'm accustomed to this style of lovemaking - when I don't have much choice otherwise, it becomes the norm. But it can be novel for new lovers - sometimes unsettling, other times frustrating but like me, they adapt. They learn to speak more with their bodies. To show me what they wanted by molding mine as if I were a store mannequin, place my hands here, turn my head there, turn my hips more to the left, pose my legs just so. Keep me still if they were too excited by grasping me by the core and stop me in mid-movement. Make me move faster by wrapping their hands around my ass and controlling the tempo of my movements.
For me, this is how I expected lovemaking to be. All about my body being manipulated.

Until I met my math tutor. He was an impoverished student from Iran who was close to completing his doctorate in mathematics. I hired him to help me navigate through the incomprehensible world of fractional gebra. Although I was majoring in history, I would it would be wise to take math to exercise my grasp of logic. If this, then that. Outline the steps to led to the conclusions, exercise the argument for my premise in a deductive fashion.
One night, when he came over for a tutoring session, he decided to make a traditional Iranian dish with rice, spices and chicken that needed to be simmered for hours. While the pot sat on the stove, we sat at the kitchen table, sparring over my homework assignments. He would explain a concept to me, I would argue his methods, we would throw up our hands in disgust, smoke cigarettes fervently and then try again to find a meeting point of mutual agreement. The aroma of the chicken, spiced with cinnamon and cumin would waft over our heads, weaving itself into the expanding cloud of cigarette smoke.
At some point, just an hour away from the chicken being perfectly cooked, he surprised me by saying that it is easier for me to grasp mathematics, that it comes more naturally for me because unlike him, I did not need to write out the argument that led to the correct answer. We were opposites that way. I could do it in my head but did not know how to write it out on paper. He needed to outline the steps first with pen and paper before he could reach the answers. This revelation dispelled my mounting frustration that was about to explode into a screaming match. I was so stunned that this man, who was just weeks away from completing his doctorate, who had been making a meager living as a professor's assistant, would say he envied my natural grasp of math for I had been limping along in algebra 101.
So stunned in fact that I could only stare at him disbelievingly. He laughed at the expression on my face and gave me a playful slap across my face as if to chastise me for being such a difficult bratty child. Instinctively, I raised my hand to slap him back but he grabbed my wrist in mid-air and gave me a teasing grin as if to say "what are you going to do now?"
At first, I tried to wrench my hand from his grip then brought up my other hand but he grabbed that too so that I was helpless. I paused to think of what to do next and then stepped on his foot. He laughed and wrapped his legs around mine so that I would be completely rendered immobile.
I scowled at him, half seriously while he laughed, waiting to see what I would do next. Pretending to surrender, I relaxed my arms and legs waiting for him to let me go. He loosened his grip slightly, not quite trusting that I had truly given up at which point I tried to once again fight back but he was quick and held me down even more tightly than before. What must have my neighbours downstairs thought, hearing the chairs above them scraping across the floor? Did they think that perhaps I was in danger? And wait a minute, if they did, I must remember to thank them for showing some concern.
On those chairs, he and I sat, wrestling madly, as a way to let out all the anger that had been building up during the tutoring. It was not personal anger, it would be more accurately, pure frustration over our discordant communication. His methods were confusing me, they were so different from what I was being taught to do, I was pissing him off because I dared to question this man who made his living in math.
We wrestled until we were running out of breath, we wrestled until we began to laugh hysterically, draping our arms around each other trying to catch our breath only to collapse into another fit of giggles. Eventually, those fits would dissipate into panting as we tried to catch our breath. It did us a world of good to wrestle like this, far better then launching into an exchange of violent angry words that we wouldn't be able to take back, even in regret.
Then he remembered about the chicken and quickly jumped up to check up on it. Nope, not yet, he said, while turning down the temperature so the dish wouldn't burn and I groaned. The dizzying smell of the chicken that escaped when he lifted the lid made me realize just how hungry I really was. He and I were both very poor students, we had virtually empty apartments, a few sticks of furniture, the bare minimum of dishware. it was the month of February, we were studying in the kitchen because the stove was keeping us from shivering. Food was what kept us from falling into that dangerous place that entrapped many university students during the coldest month of the year. it filled our tummies, gave our brains energy and gave us comfort where we had none.
He turned out at the sound of my complaints and with a wooden spoon, scolded me for being so impatient. I rolled my eyes in response to which he let out a gasp and ran at me. I laughed and this time, it was me who grabbed his wrists. He leaned in until his nose pressed up against mine. Perhaps it was in the heat of the moment, perhaps all the physicality of our interactions had me aroused but I couldnt help but kiss him. It was obvious he was having the same sort of feelings for he did not act surprised but instead kissed me back without delay. While his lips were still on mine, he sat back down on his chair and pulled me in until I was sitting on his lap. In this position, we kissed as if we were desert survivors who just found water for the first time in days. We kissed as if we were trying to get into each other's skin. We kissed as if this was going to be the last time we would ever kiss each other again.
It was a cold month, the time of year when we would shiver day in and day out, warmth being something that we would find only in the classrooms and in the student pub. It was a need that we had to constantly keep fulfilled to survive. Perhaps that explained the intensity of our embraces, we were each other's source of fire, we were keeping each other alive.
I would have quite gladly made love to him right there on the kitchen floor if it weren't nearly as cold as ice. The floors in my apartment were so cold that I always wore shoes to keep my feet warm when I was not in bed or on the couch buried under layers of salvation army blankets.
I broke away from him long enough to grab his hand and pull him along quickly to my bedroom to the safety of my duveted bed. We jumped in, and undressed each other underneath the duvet, laughing at our cowardice of the cold air. In between stripping off each layer of clothing, we would kiss fervently and hug each other tightly, grateful we were for the valuable warmth our bodies lent each other. I would gasp as his hand, icy cold, reached underneath the ridiculous flap that buttoned to the seat of my red old fashioned long johns and wrapped around my naked ass. He would flinch as my hand, equally cold, reached inside his jeans to find the haven of warmth in his crotch. We were acting out two primal needs, sex and warmth. Once all the clothes were tossed out of the bed, we tightly wrapped ourselves around each other, letting our skin warm each other, and we stayed this way for a while, reveling in the relief from the the daily onslaught of ice, snow and wind we faced from the time we woke up till the time we went to sleep.
It was pitch black in that bedroom, and he knew I would not be able to lipread him. But being the brilliant man he was, he decided to write on my skin. He would trace the outlines of his words, letter by letter, telling me what he wanted to do to me, what he wanted me to do to him. It was slow going at first. He would write out a letter on my breast, wait for me to repeat it out loud, then move onto the next letter and the next until all the words were spelled out. I quickly learned though, so quickly that he did not need to finish the word before moving onto the next one.
No one had ever done this before,talking to me by writing on my skin. It created a kind of intimacy I never had experienced before. It created a kind of naturalness between us, in such a way that although we were making love for the first time, it was as if we had been lovers for a long time. In between each love bite, he would write on my skin and if I guessed correctly, my hand on his cheek would feel him nodding in confirmation. When he was on top of me and inside of me, his hand would write on my cheek, on the side of my hip all the things that he wanted to tell me. How good it felt to have his cock inside me, how he loved the sounds I was making, the way my hair felt against his skin.
For the first time in my life, I was able to talk with my lover in the dark.
It was the first and last time that ever happened.
He was found frozen to death just outside his apartment door a few nights later. He came home late, rather drunk, and passed out just when he inserted hs key into his door. That night had been declared the coldest night of the year according to the six o'clock news. It was nowhere near as cold as the shock I first found out. For the rest of that long winter, there was no stove hot enough, no blankets thick enough, and no sweaters woolly to get me warm again.

sidewalks

2003-12-30T12:15:00.000-05:00

most people who i bump into, were walking down the sidewalk, and i sitting outside drinking my coffee on the main. the sun beats down, filtered through the lofty buildings, the traffic is relentless and the squeegee punks attempt to squeeze some more change from the drivers.

when I am still in the center of motion, time stops, the scenery blurs and i drift away into transcience, as if the very physics of motion carries me above it. the people i see on the street, they loom into clarity as if cut out and drop-shadowed against the backdrop that remains a constant in frenetic energy.

i stop and stare and smile and slowly i come back down into the whirlpool of human traffic so i may say the same old same old and they say the same old the same old and it is all the same whether it is now or way back then, whether it is here or somewhere over there, whether it is in this language or that.

promises are made to stay in touch, yeah, yeah, we should, uh huh, okay, good to see you again, kiss kiss, bye.

Then it starts all over again, another day, another sidewalk.

calligraphic eyes

2003-12-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

the lines of your eyes.
it's as if someone with a calligraphic brush
drew in a single stroke,
a wing in flight.
then folded the paper and pressed
so there may exist another, in
mirrored reflection

Sandwiches by Grand Detroit Pubahs

2003-12-29T17:41:00.000-05:00

You know you want to do it
You know I wanna do it too
Out here on the dance floor
We can make sandwiches
You can be the bun
I can be the burger, girl
So come on, make like butter
Soft and easy to spread

Can't get this song out of my head.

A Christmas Story

2003-12-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

This is based on a true story involving an ex-lover of mine:

Way back when, he used to live as a heroin junkie on the lower east side of New York City along with a blind writer and a dominatrix, his girlfriend. It was a rainy X-Mas day and he was trudging home dejectedly from another day of tedium working as an zoned-out waiter in a run-down diner. As he was approaching his building, a friend of his, upon seeing him, leaned out the apartment window of the walk-up he lived in and yelled out "Get up here, quick!"

Say wha?

He ran up the dilapidated stairs to the second floor and opened the door. There was a naked man in his forties, scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush, a collar around his neck with a leash leading back to the dominatrix who was laying on the couch.

With ennui, she looked over to him and announced "We got a slave for Christmas."

lyrics

2003-12-29T11:03:00.000-05:00

wax me two tone and spit shine

down me a pig foot, depanneur wine

look what you've done, look at me gone

play that music, bang it out.

Sweet honey

2003-12-28T11:48:00.000-05:00

right now i am having fantasies of bathing in warm honey. i imagine first placing my foot into it, feeling the warmth oozing in between each toe and then stepping in and slowly immersing bit by bit the rest of my body until only my face is uncovered. i lean back and let my hair also become saturated with honey.

honey. filled with antibiotics that not only soothe your sore throat but also smooth over your skin. honey, yellow and clear, melted gold.

i really wanted to scream today. just scream. but instead, i kept swallowing it down and tried to focus on the matter at hand. dealing with things one at a time. trying not to snap at the co-workers as they place their demands. trying to find a way to explain matters to them without sounding impatient. all the while, the fat wet snowflakes are falling, which i would have enjoyed thoroughly on a long walk, but not when i am competing with time.

the one thing above all that hangs over me is my failing ability to cope with accumulating stress. and what it does to me, how it affects the way i speak to people, the way it breaks through my concentration and smashes it against the wall.

so i dream of honey. i tell myself that soon much of what is bothering me will go away, just be patient, it is only several more weeks. breathe, it is going to be okay. wait and abide and the pressure will ease.

Excerpt from a love letter

2003-12-28T11:44:00.000-05:00

"Subject: Sweet Vertigo

Beautiful Woman,

I admit it. I'm smitten.You've Shanghaied me.Call it a form of sweet
vertigo.

Which is something I think we could both freely admit, if the implications
weren't so great. Because I believe they are. More is at work here than we
even we would want to readily admit.
We have become beholden to each-other somehow. Is that the right word?

I scribbled that to myself last night. That I am somehow implicated in the
whole of you:
"For each recess and cranny and the silent undisclosed spaces they entail,
and there is a solemn acknowledgement of this everytime I close my mouth on
hers."

With all of this comes fear. You took off suddenly and it worries me. It
worries me that you might become bored with my country bumpkin life out here
with the misfits. It worries me that you might become bored with me. That
we'll grow listless and irritated. That you'll discover the hairline cracks
in my sorry little self. That you can't love me all the time.

Which would be a generalisation anyways. But I do love you a lot of the
time. I love that you send me Auden. I love the windswept and hazy look that
comes over you when we fall into each-other. That unbelievably streamlined
length that makes you ethereal, as if you were floating rather than lying
there. Your involved and combative intellectual arguments. I even love the
way you get aggravated.

Shit hellfire and damnation.

I'm in trouble now."

Way back when

2003-12-27T17:37:00.000-05:00

I remember, oh yes I do.

I remember the cool touch of the green speckled linoleum of the gymnasium floor. How it felt when I first sat down on it on a humid spring afternoon. The refreshing shock of it that only made the heavy humidity ever so much more apparent.
I remember watching the school secretary sitting down on the piano bench, how her behind, that seemed to double each passing year spread over it much like the crust of the pie would rise up and tumble over the pie plate in the oven.

How her polyester shirt, a riot of beige paisley would cling to the multitude of folds that made up her torso, how her black pumps would barely hold in her swollen feet. I remember the faint sound of yellow paper folders opening and how it barely echoed. How the pianist would hold up her hand, to command our attention, her other hand poised over the yellowing keys, waiting to pounce once our childish voices simmered down and our eyes would somewhat focus on the lyrics inside the yellow folders.

I remember, oh yes I do.

Once the pianist's fingers touched the keys, an abrupt shock of pain entered my spine. I whipped my head around, feeling the long brown hair wetly flail against my face to catch sight of a black-haired boy behind me. Seeing the safety pin in his fingers, grubby from the playground. Seeing the smirk on his face. Realizing the source of the pain was him.

Frustrated, I wished I could have hit him. Couldn't, not while I was under the intimidating gaze of my third grade teacher. Secretly pleased that I was the focus of his attention. I turned my head around and went back to reading the mimeographed lyrics on the sheets, watching the purple ink bleed underneath my damp fingers.

I remember, oh yes I do.

That while I pretended to sing along with all the other warbly voices, I thought about the boy behind me. I thought about how his hair would hang low over his eyes. I thought about how I liked his uniform of a white tshirt, old baggy jeans and well worn sneakers. The very boyishness of it, how it clearly defined his gender.
I thought about how I, ever so much, would like for him to pull me into a bathroom stall and push me against the wall. So that I may take advantage of this physical aggression to justify touching him back. To place my face closer to his to show that I was not afraid. To challenge him and force him to respond with greater force.

To see him first become angrier that a girl would dare stand up to him. To see his chest rise and fall with quickening tempo, to see his bewilderment as he gathers his senses and thinks about what to do to me while he presses up against me. To feel the pressure of his chest against mine.

I remember, oh yes I do.