Snippets

“Cathy, i’m lost, i said, even though i know she was sleeping. i’m emtpy and aching, and i don’t know why. Counting the car on the New Jersey turnpike, they’ve all gone to look for America.”

He Keeps saying i am never happy. That’s not quite true. i was just born this way. i have said it before – – that Melancholy was my pillowmate as a baby. i am just haunted. What is it that Chuck said? “All of us are haunted and haunting.” Who am i haunting. Do i haunt city streets? i know who and what haunts me.

And, i just cannot explain it to Him right that sometimes Snippets of things still sneak up on me in my dreams. In waking life.

And it’s not that His being there isn’t helping, it’s just that sometimes i NEED to spend time with my Childhood friend. With Sadness and Mellow. And sometimes i need to work things out. Poor him for having to put up with me.

i am still sad now.

And i write.

SNIPPETS:

I.

i wasn’t supposed to be here. i was supposed to be writing and teaching. i was supposed to be in New York City drinking Kirs with Don DeLillo and discussing the existential nature of Vodka Tonics. i was supposed to be loved and treasured and not longing for affection. i

wassupposed to be there in that future i planned before birth, but somewhere I strayed from myself. But here i am now, and although i had You by my side, You’ve always been untouchable. And although i’ve almost reached all I supposed i would, “almost” is merely an abstract of reality. And “almost” does not matter because i’m here, and all those flippant, elusive hopes are but storyboards for a fiction i could never write. And i’m like the ghost in all those Gothic stories who never had the chance to feel alive.

II.

“It’s hot, I have a thirty mile commute, and I hate everyone,” he said

when i asked how he was. It was refreshing. Not only the open unhappiness. Not only the fact that he knew i would want to hear it, to drink it. It was also his voice. The way it matches the echoes of him in my mind.

And i found myself lost again.

There were nights when he and i would walk around in our black pea

coats, buttoned up. He would wear his grey scarf, and i would wear my

sunglasses, and we would walk around and talk aloud about Camus. Planned Pretension. And he was glorious then.

It was glorious.

i felt glorious then.

But he was ephemeral. The feeling was ephemeral. It was narcotic in

nature; it came and went in giant waves- always leaving me starved for more. A need i could not quench. Narcotic because as it washed out of me it left me writhing in pain and bathing in pleasure. He was the cold sweat i could not shake.

He dug a void deep into my darkness, and he was the only one who could fill it; of all the Sadism i begged him for, his leaving was the one i never wanted.

Ari’s leaving for a small vacation tomorrow, and i am a bit nervous about it all. So what if i’m unhappy sometimes. i come home and Jenny is home. And Brad and CHester. And Ari.

And unhappiness can take sabbaticals too.