woooooah, dude, tonight the night of thinking about a bunch of things.

to start: i was still really pissed after the texting about the borrowed books with Ms. Whoosh. and after lots of supportive conversations with folks, i still had this sense about things. that they were not right. that i was not right. that i was tired, way too tired for my age. and that while i understood part, i didn't understand enough.

as forward, truth told, i have had too many interactions over my lifetime that were similar with the one with Ms. Whoosh, and it's enough to get one thinking about things. As in... if it happens more than once, then it can't be just about them. It has to do with me, too. about how i interact with people, especially people i like in certain ways. maybe it's a pattern regarding whom i'm attracted to, maybe it's a pattern regarding how talented I am about fucking things up, or maybe it's something else.

but really, over the past four years, I've had enough interactions, or dates, or whatever, with women who throw themselves all into me, and then take off like bottle rockets under extreme and undefinable thrust. usually, these women are at first very overwhelming in their adoration of me, like I'm some kind of abstract salvation and if they talk at me enough, maybe the world will surround them. like they can actually watch me in the midst of destroying myself just for them, and this is the definition of redemption, of loss, of their self-image, of their future, or something highly intangible.

(a side-note about being queer: if a man dates a women and she treats him like shit, said man usually doesn't retreat to dating men. he doesn't go to a certain gay fellow and talk about how shitty women are, and how you (a particular man) are better, understand them so well, know how women are shit, nothing more than shit, and would you flirt with me to make everything better? Or at least, I don't think so. I mean, surely men support each other in the shittiness of women just as women are there to support the opposite, but do men flirt/fuck with other men in coincidence of this support? why is it that women look towards lesbians in support of their temporary hatred towards the male race?

I hereby state for the record: in my adult life, men have treated way better and with far more honesty and integrity than most women I've known. So, fuck you, women who want my particular lesbian woo-ing only in the face of their own difficulties with men. Women are just as horrible and beautiful as men, so blah on any strict knowledge of life. I, as opposed to you, am attracted to women not because men have done me wrong, but because I am cursed [in life] [to be attracted to women].)

Back to the discussion: I was feeling it wasn't all right. I was still angry. And confused. And just shitty in general.

So, I decided that I had swallowed enough. That I have taken. That I rant and rave on my blog and to my friends (god does bless their souls) too much, while talking too little. And so I thus rationalized texting Ms. Woosh and asking her simply: Why? Well, I phrased it differently than that, like such (and normally I avoid posting personal things to this specificity as being Not Ethical and Far Too Public, but whatever):

a Q, [Ms. Whoosh], that continues to bother me: why, if you liked me as much as you said and acted in June, did I warrant such a harsh blowoff as soon as you had a bf? this is a nonrhetorical Q, btw.

And it was a nonrhetorical question. i mean, shouldn't i know how i continue to find myself in the position of being treated like crap so very consecutively to being treated like lotto ticket to the Bermudas? i rationalized the whole thing in the name of "research," and research i was entitled to knowing. that i needed to know in order to continue forward.

and the response i received after an agonizing four hours during which i pretended i wasn't looking at my phone (pretending for nobody, as nobody was watching me pretend but myself):

There was no bf involved at all. We went out to dinner to hang out and then all of a sudden it was a daily relationship. Too much, too fast. I'm so sorry. :(

I mean, ouch. Seriously.

But now we get to the genre of text message. Of life tho [sic] too. Because this message could let me know that I'm a freak. It could tell me I'm a wacko (well, actually it does). But it omits most of the information. It neglects the fact that Ms. Whoosh was texting me messages about my lacy bra's and how sexy they were. It neglects the fact that she asked me out on 2/3 of the dates we went on. It erases the fact that she told me she thought I was beautiful and "in a spotlight" in her life while we were on a trip out of town at her own urging. It forgets most of what happened in such a short time. It ghosts the shadows of what was.

And yet, speaks to a truth. The whole "too much, too fast." Now, that is a truth. I've heard it more than once. I know it is true. Honest.

But I don't understand it. Why do things with me happen too much, too fast?

So, you could say, I learned something from Ms. Whoosh, from having ventured into texting her, into the genre of the ShortNQuick, into the arena of Omission That Speaks, and asking her: Why? But that's not it, because I texted her again and said:

Yes, it was 2 fast, 4 me too. but confusing/mixed. twas your tm that hurt tho. we mightve been friends i think. ohwell. peace,

And I think I was totally honest in this message. It was too fast for me too, too fast to be questioned about children, about shared bank accounts, to be taken into the dells and sunk into the darkness of the rocks around, with fireflies, silence, history right up front and between. To be told so many things About. But it was confused and mixed because it felt so good, and it felt so unreal, so much like hope incarnate. And then it felt horrible when she coldshouldered me after a couple of weeks acting like she recognized something about who I am. And then, it was the text-message that hurt, not just the text-message though; that was a fifth-truth. It was what hurt the most (being texted after fishing, after leaving and giving space, only an innocent two postcards in the interim of two months, during the thought:

[that's the thing about fishing that folks don't really seem to get. It is a period Away. for thinking, and I go so many circular/circulating miles thinking and thinking and I decided somewhere within this summer to actually listen to all of the words I've heard this year, all the lines I'd noted and filed away, all the ideas I tucked away to follow.]

What do I want?

If Ms. Whoosh does not like me "that particular way," do i want to be friends with her? {this was the question that startled me the most. i mean, i actually asked it. usually the question of whether i want friendship ends up in an "of course" without the question actually being asked. i found, when i asked this question, about Whoosh, as well as others, that I was startled. It was not "of course". It was yes, no, or maybe (as in the case of Whoosh). It had to do with circumstance and otherness. It had to do with sinking into [The word "investment" carries more accuracy than "sinking into," but it's too capitalistic for friendship, which is not about putting X into Y in hopes of X gaining currency through Y. Friendship seems more about putting X into Y because you Love. and Trust. and Trust past Gain. Perhaps friendship is not about Gain, but about Balance. So, as an act, it's about what you hope will happen as a whole, as an affirmation against the brutality of, as a proof in the struggle against solitary and selfish and absence of meaning. And thus, when you are thinking about whether to "invest," you are thinking about whether someone is likely to look you eye to eye in the gift of simply existing. And if they look away, you lose everything.

Everything.]

And so, I thought this summer, when I really asked the question, that, beyond guilt, beyond sense of obligation... I Don't Know.}

What would fulfill me?

What leaves happiness in its wake?

How will I survive after art school?

What do I want to make to leave?

How will I reconcile Art, Survival, Selfishness, and Life, in the order that they roam?

In other words, it expanded, the field I needed to think about and it was a slap to receive a text message blowoff after all of that [...it was clearly a blowoff, by the way; i was calling her and she texted me back saying she couldn't pick up the phone because she "was out on the town with her (what-was-ex) boyfriend who moved from new york to chicago to be with her," and could she call me tomorrow? :)...].)

And so, Ms. Whoosh was just who she was in this arena. She was her words, and her actions, and the things she provoked in me, and the subtle languages she spawned. By accident, I think.

Because I've always wanted to meet someone who I could love. And would love me back. Sometimes it seems a neglected entitlement in life - and that the old spinsters of this world were the ones who slacked off and lost out. That the spurned, the mutilated, the unknown, the abandoned, the debilitated, the lost...

...were lost.

[It pops into head, I don't know why, defense maybe. But this summer, I saved a life really. It feels that way, even though it wasn't that drastic. It never was. But it was a special thought. Something to make me love myself, because when I look in the mirror, much of the time I see a failure.

This summer, I worked commercially fishing with a woman who was 350 pounds. It was a freak of accidence and I saw it coming, knew it on sight when I heard that X hired her friend over the internet. Because some people live so much in the cyberworld, they can't acknowledge the realities that corporeality presents. So, all summer, it was about physical ballast. Shifting 350lbs from one side to the other. Reassuring myself the boat wasn't going to flip over; even if it were during the right storm, it might have. Tucking my hands under when the weight moved from one side to the other.

[And I have to say, right here, right now, that the conversation that has most informed and reaffirmed my love of my sister... was about this person, who risked so much to come out there. And whose every effort on the boat, whether slapstick or operatic or hyperdramatic was, nonetheless, extreme, and amazing, and more than. She was braver in a day than you've been in a year, guaranteed, and so fuck the smile you have on your face about her 350 lbs ballast, because I don't mean it that way. And my sister was the only person I've told about this experience who saw it the way it really was.]

And one day, she fell overboard, all 350lbs of her. Right in the middle of the hook of the net, which meant that there were no near solutions in moving the boat to pick her up. There she was, right at the edge of our 30' skiff, floating. Her first response was to note how cold the water was, and everything after that was panic about her ability to get onboard, and guilt about how difficult it was to get her onboard. That was the thing I noted: how many times she apologized. how upset she was about the difficult, about the inconvenience of her survival. she kept apologizing... in a tone varying between hypercontrite to hyperpanicked.

maybe we could have abandoned her.
maybe we could have blamed her.
maybe we could have ignored her.

all these things were there. right there as she floated in the water and moved from the side of the boat to the back.

And here's the thing: I was really good. I mean, I was really good. Not just in action, which would have made me happy enough. But I also knew what she was freaking out about, which really helps when you are trying to calm someone else. I told her not to worry; I was firm. I was firm and told her not to concern herself with insecurity, that we were there right with her. I told her like a schoolteacher, like a policeman, like an artist, to... goddamn it, calm down.

i was firm.

she calmed down real fast after i talked to her. i mean, i told her that despite the cold water (it's really cold, like supercold... all i can manage each year is three dunks), that she needed to relax. that it would be okay. (i knew it would be).

she really only responded to firmness.

and then I told her where to move to. and i rigged up some ropes and the other folks on the boat wrapped them around her feet, so she could step on them like ladders, but her hips were too wide to fit around the motor, and she kept apologizing (for her weight) in between trying to get herself aboard, and she was so very young. so very. she kept being sorry, and finally i tapped her forehead with my gloves and said, that's enough of that; let's get you onboard, my dear. and i smiled at her to let her know she was here.

and simultaneously i was thinking about the options, about trying to tow her to shore, and whether we'd have to tie her to the side of the skiff, like a whale, and whether she could get there, or would be too tired, and what would i do then, but i was intent on just making it work, it wasn't really that big a deal getting her on board 350lbs aside, and everyone was scared, but listening to what came through me.

And when she made that last heave to get her hips up over the motor (which I was stepping on, trying not to step on the clutch, trying not to mash the engine, just trying to maneuver around the motor), on the third try, and as she lifted, I was really in her muscles. and i yelled, 'puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullllllllll. oh yes, i yelled. and then we all laughed and whooped together when she got her hips up over the motor.

later i felt strange somehow when she made it into a privilege and a joke and an adventure as she talked about it to the rest of the crew. was that what happened?

But, i will say: it was one of my moments... maybe in life. reflected in how the other two onboard sat at the edge of the skiff afterwards, and looked at me. not like i was crazy or wrong or too intense or too fast or fucked up: they sat together. they sat together looking at me. they thought about it. one person had known me my whole life and never looked at me that way. and i don't know what they thought about. but then one said wow, you were amazing.

and maybe i was.

and maybe sometimes we are amazing. maybe there are moments like that. moments when we really matter in this world, and we see.]

And then Ms. Whoosh texted me again:

What does tm mean? I'm not as good as you on these text message words. :)

And perhaps, these tee emmm words are harder than anyone ever meant them to be. so I said, and meant, simple enough:

ha. tm=text message.

And not to be a horrible person, really because I'm not, but I found irony in it all. And it made me feel better: to not have continued the conversation in my head, to find it funny, to care and hold myself to the realization that I'm too much, too intense, and to realize that sometimes the most simple seems too complex and vice-versa, to accept that i'm too honest sometimes for others to love me, to find myself consistently ethical like a religious nut, to have done so, to have done...

well, the simple and estranged-from-thickness genre tm told me something not about complacency, but about my relationship with concision. and i will not stay the same out of smugness, no, that's not what i meant at all. what i mean is, although green is still my favorite color, omg it's gonna b just ok. and all the subtext therein.