the brae years volume 1-10

i remember when you had no one. you were there sitting patient or not in an armchair playing hip games and leaning under faucets. i loved the arch of your eyebrow.

then it was easier to look (you were never hard to look at at) and so i saw saw things low and granted bright and shimmery crinkled paper shoved under your bed and we laughed nad watched and saw and rode and drove and talked non sense and it was all okay.

then i was on a plane and traveling homeward home was wherever you were, then. i found the bags (barf bags) and scribbled secrets to you on the road away on the way home. i'd told you how amazing you were before i left. (i remember leaning over the seat in the theatre and whispering in your ear.) i think you'de never had anyone be so honest about such things. it was a double feature we saw and between the breaks you moved further further down the aisle. i saw you sitting four seats away.

it never mattered so much when i saw you for what you were for what you could be. it was all so dazzling for me, restless motions on a plane coasting low away from you away from things i'd known then seen then (god it was like forgetting your own name) and i was there, scribbling on a puke bag telling you how i didn't want to go how i wanted to stay how i wanted to let you know i'd been thinking about new things and telling new stories and living in new color.

i felt so transparent. i could see through me to the other side of things.

so i told you so ( i always tell people the truth) and licked a stamp and shipped it off four states between us.

you read it to your father and they all they all thought i was crazy. (it is easier to think someone is crazy than it is to think they are honest.) he never trusted me with you after that. not fully anyway.

then it was months later and you were coming through the door. you had "i don't know what to say" scrawled on your forehead. you thought i thought you thought i thought.

then we were sitting outside int he dark (there was a party in the house) the three of us and you left for the restroom. when you came back you made some arch-crack about locking the doors so i wouldn't walk in and i told you it wasn't too hard to tell if someone was in there. you said you wouldn't have minded if i'd walked in. (i never could crack the codes of you)

then we were in the room you were sleeping in and i was leaning in the archway. you told me to come in "come on in," you said.

we sat for hours talking and you told me you wanted two boys (you said girls have too much attitude) and i told you didn't know if i could have children. i told you i wasn't sure if i'd be able to handle the job, that a good example wasn't set and i had no confidence in my abilities so i didn't want to take the chance and fuck up some innocent. (i was so sily then)

and you'd never been in love.

we played cards and talked and you begged me to read what i wrote. i let you read a few things and you seemed to like them, so i let you read a few more.

we were listening to the doors and you said you wanted to hear otis redding so i put it on. you were reading on the bed.

your father came in and heard the music and looked odd at me, sitting opposite you in the room. i think he thought i was trying to seduce you with soul music. who can ever tell these days?

then you were sitting in black shorts wet hair and we were playing games and talking (my sister was there) and we told you you moved your eyes too much. do you still move your eyes too much?

then you were leaving and we were on level ground.

then you called me once a week or i called you or we called each other. i was in college then it seems and i was calling you from payphones outside the bible study so my roomate didn't ask me to recite the whole conversation later on. (he used to jerk off right after turning out the light squishing sounds from lotion and i woke always to piles of tissues on the floor where i had to jump down among them.)

you told me secrets and we talked about things i loved and things you loved and what we did that day and the day before.

then you were with steven. your time was sparing, you felt guilty for being my friend you used to tell me. i remember tearing finished notebooks to shreds after the call. they were the first i hadn't sent you just after filling them in years.

you came to see me and your parents told you to be careful of me. i wonder what you thought then.

you never would say.

then you were gone again in a week or less and i remember it was later and steven broke up with you and suddenly suddenly we were back to normal. we were back to normal and i had all the right reasons to love you with.

then times got hard for me and i got arrested and you cried and cried and cried and you came to see me for my birthday. they wanted you to save my soul.

i took you to see my cousin and you fell in love with something about it all. beavis spent the week with us and we all loved each other and you were gone again.

coastergirl fell into my life right around then and we all got so close so far. she never liked you. the women in my life never like each other. i know now you don't think much of her.

then we didn't talk for a month or two and when i called you were distant.

you'd found someone new and now now you couldn't be my fried, didn't want to know me anymore.

you told me you couldn't be involved in a spiritual war on the side of the devil and that was where i was, you said.

you hung up not caring one way or the other and i called coastergirl. we talked till four or five am and she told me you didn't know me didn't understand me that you hadn't a clue. everyone told me that.

truth be told i still saw you then. i couldn't bring myself to agree but it was fun to pretend i could. so i waned on int he flood of life and years went by we talked once or twice, you were so indifferent and i never called back.

so i'm watching a movie and thoe phone rings and i don't recognize the voice anymore. you tell me it's you and i don't know what you say.

you tell me you have a bunch of things of mine to send me and you want my address so i give it to you.

then we talked for hours.

i sent you every book i ever wrote then.

you made every promise and broke them and oh how it was my fault it was my fault it was all my fault, but i don't care about that really.

it's good to hear you over the tin cans again.

2002-12-28 | 6:47 p.m.
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