don’t bears eat a lot before they hibernate?

They stock up on nutrients, right, before they close their eyes to the world? They leave the fishes and the honeybees and the sunshine and everything they love and hide away in a cave and sleep. I’m sure they love to sleep too.  The point was that they store things in their bodies for months, that I am attempting a similar process.

We are storing each other in our bodies, in scratch marks and teeth marks and bruises. We have a few more weeks and if you graph “time left” against “amount of touching” you get a backwards graph of, essentially, y=x. If you graph “level of exhibitionism” it matches. I wonder what percentage of the population of north roland park thinks we are crazy horny dykes. (I wonder if I have been studying too much for my math exam).

Of course it is not only storing these things. It is the fucked-up-ed-ness of tuberculosis boy and the culmination of cherry’s sex-free year and the realization that our friendship is such that we can act on our romantic tendencies and physical needesires and nothing bad will happen. except maybe to tb/the relationship. but that really is his issue, or theirs, and honestly I am trying to give up feeling responsible for that because it is between them and I am outside of it.

I am inside of this lovely sloppy messy knotted pile of wants and needs and not-wanting-to-say-goodbye. Frankly I think it is a nice place to be. Except for the part where certain hands go dangerously close to what I assume are tb-dictated No Zones and the part where certain parents wonder why I have a big purple bruise. But there is sunshine and love and warm skin and these are the important things, not the studying, which I neglect; or the questions, which I deflect; or the sort of wistful look in her eyes, which I reflect. No, what matters is that I screamed a little bit today and made strangers look at us (independent events) and had a damned good time.

I like to make the world melt into these golden afternoons. Almost-summer is soft and time is smooth, like the ice cream inside a drumstick. Warmth radiates from everything, and people can laugh. All my memories feel colorful, and like the colors and edges of things are unreal, the way they are in a polaroid photograph.

I am a little bit worried that my brain is turning into summer slush before the appropriate time.

Let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see…

We lay in the shade, only my toes in the sun. We were the beautiful things. We shocked children, adults, and small animals. We ate raspberries. We quit worrying.

The sun’s been down a while now, and for cherry’s benefit I would like to record the current state of my belly. Kind of faint but definitely visible, and kind of bumpy.
By the way, this one is summer-style, and won’t bruise. I think it depends entirely on where one places one’s teeth. My arms are soft and the skin is thin and bruisable, but my stomach is made out of a more resilient kind of flesh…perhaps. Or maybe I’m making this up. I don’t know.

Also, unflattering drunken pictures have been found upon installing new camera batteries. Love you! and thus will not post those.

little bits of burning paper.

I want to write him a simple, analytical essay that will fix their relationship. I can cite sources and write an annotated bibliography and lay it out in a sensible manner and prove an a+ thesis, will that make it okay? Will that make this clear to his 2400 brain? I just want to scream and shout, really, but I could do it in writing. With logic and poetry. If I tried. If I thought he would listen to me.

I would show him this.

taking care of each other, of your community, of having lots of kinds of lovers and friends. That every relationship is a relationship, even if it is not what a lot of people would call a relationship. That you should honor your friends and your lovers equally, that your friends can be more important than your lovers, or can be your lovers, or not be your lovers, and that all of that is okay. That you can have snuggle friends and romantic friends and hold each other’s faces and it is not a fake relationship, it is not something to mourn or fret over — it is something to celebrate…

And this.

They are, formally, monogamish. Monogamish enough to make room for your hijinx; monogamish enough that there’s a point where you have to stop and pull away, adjust your shirt, her skirt, your pants, refasten bras, and remember that you only get to go so far. Monogamish enough that even though this is hot and you trust her affection you have to remember: they are not just primary partners in the practical way, the checkbook brushing teeth together way. They are actually in love, incredibly in love, stunningly in love, right down to the bottoms of their soles. You are secondary only because everyone is secondary — secondary not as a judgement. Just as a statement of fact.

(thanks, Ariel)

I would explain to him that teenage girls are horny and lustful and that theirs is an anomaly of a relationship, “backwards,” gender-role wise. I would tell him that she has wants and needs she won’t tell him about because he’s scared of touching her, plain and simple, let alone hurting her or being hurt. Sometimes thoughts like

I want to be taken, to be thrown around and kicked down and tied up and fucked and spanked and twisted and slapped and bitten and pinched and pulled and made to endure. But I don’t want you to worry about what I want. I want you to know what you want, and I want you to take it. Without asking. I’m along for the ride, I can let myself go, I can be yours to play with. Trust me, I want you to.

go through her head, and sometimes thoughts like “I bite her shoulder. I want to leave marks on her, my marks, teeth marks and red blisters. I want her to feel this for days.”
(thanks muse, sinclair)

But it isn’t just about sex, about him not giving and her seeking. It’s about fear, and fears that don’t line up, and it’s about love, and him putting so much less into this, it seems, than her. It’s about the fact that he’s driving her insane, that he’s an unconscious tease and that it doesn’t just affect him when he says no. It affects her. And through that it affects all of her friends because she’s crazy and whiny and lost and loving and confused and frustrated.

What I am not saying is “just fuck her for the common good kthxbai.” I am simply saying, notice her. He is supposed to be caring about her but it doesn’t seem like he is. He is guarded and he doesn’t see that she isn’t threatening him, she’s asking and she’s offering.

“The thing is, you only get as much out of a relationship as you put into it…. If you put in too little, and the other person puts in too much, it’ll be good for a while, but the other person will be all ‘grarr fuck this’ and leave the relationship.” She’s not going to let go, though, no matter how much she wants to scream “grarr fuck this” (although she might be a bit more articulate). She’s in love and she’s loved him and it matters to her. This relationship matters to her and it should matter to him, common happiness should matter.
(thanks, charlottesville)

I wish I could explain this to him. Because suddenly it matters to me, too.

remember that time I only ate boxes of tangerines?

I think this summer is a first. I might not be able to forget about home. I might feel crappy and homesick and miss the people that I love here. I think this is a good thing – have I ever loved any Baltimore people that much? Or then again I may be imagining things. It may be just as easy to slip into summer-land oblivion as always, the place where nothing matters except the people and moments inside that bizarre bubble. Yet I still have this sneaking suspicion that this summer will be different. It already feels different. Every morning I wake up and feel different.

It’s quite strange. I am enamored of the world, purely and ridiculously. I like this.

we don’t know, so we wait for tomorrow

I want…to stretch and lie and stand, all pale and soft and curved, in front of someone who wants me. I want to be wanted and loved, both. I want to be touched and made to writhe and gasp the way I do by someone who thinks they might be in love with me, by someone I think I might be in love with. I want all the sensation I can get, emotional and physical. I want to be sought, I want to be loved, I want to be explored, I want to be held, I want to be kissed, I want to be taught, I want to feel this volatile combination of things all at once and not explode. I want to feel softly brushing fingers and scratching nails, kissing lips and biting teeth, all making me feel beautiful. I want words of storybook romance and actions confined to romance novels. I want this imaginary person to kiss me in the sunlight and in the dark, to slip hands around my waist under my shirt, to tell me I am beautiful, to mention me when I’m not there with that look.

Daydreams are more vivid at night, you see. That’s all these are, daydreams. Unfortunately.

an attempt at explanation [old]

Dear you,

I want and I want and I want but I am scared. You know this. You are the same way but different. I want what you want but my fears are different and overwhelming. I am not afraid to ruin our friendship because in my experience that doesn’t happen. Friendships do not disappear. They evolve and devolve and slip in and out of all kinds of awkward. I am not afraid of this.

I am afraid of other things.

I am afraid of the unknown, and the current situation is full of unknowns. I am really just a little girl trapped in a young woman’s body. In so many ways. I am afraid to be laughed at. I am afraid to take responsibility. I have just gotten new toys and only after making a mess discovered that they are dangerous. Like a child, I think I know what I am doing – with my legs, my clothes, my hips, my eyes, my mouth, my voice – and fail to realize the full effects of my actions. And all of a sudden there is this great convoluted knot of sex and friendship. And my reaction is to run and hide. Can you tell I was the girl who would spill paint all over the couch and then hide in the bathtub for three hours, waiting to be found? I am still naive enough to firmly believe that this is an effective strategy. Obviously, it isn’t. Nowadays there are people to pin me down and make me confess, make me explain.

I can’t explain.

I have nothing to give as an explanation but a childish curiosity and an equally childish embarrassment. These explode when combined with teenage desire. But that doesn’t solve anything.

Nothing is concluded. I am inconclusive. My apologies.

I think I cannot act because I do not know how. I think I am not averse to finding out, or I wouldn’t be if I weren’t so scared of everything in the whole world. I’m amazed I’ve ever done anything at all. Everything scary or new I’ve ever done I’ve either been forced into or it’s happened too fast for me to think. Ex 1. ropes courses. Ex 2. wine bottle. Either way I am past these points but– I don’t know what.

How does this get fixed? I keep making these messes that I can’t clean up, and just waiting for them to go away… I don’t want to wait for this to go away. I don’t want you to think that I am cruel even though I do cruel things. I don’t know. All I know is that I want but I fear.

I leave it to you to get what you want, or not.

Editor’s note (the editor is also the writer): This is sort of old, and certain lines and/or paragraphs are now null and void. Especially the last bits.