Matter Mattering

Last night I went out with Andre, my roommate and best friend, and a few other friends including Logan, a guy Andre dated on and off for about a year and a half and who he’s been friends with since. Logan is moving across the country within the next few weeks to be closer to his ex who’s pregnant with their daughter. Andre has been having a few difficult months and has been dreading Logan moving. Things are complicated between them and Andre considers Logan one of his best friends.

I’ve only met Logan a few times and last night he was flirting with me, something I didn’t think much of because of their relationship until we left and he started talking openly to me and Andre about taking me home. I told him I wouldn’t and the three of us ended up in a diner together. Logan kept flirting and suggesting I go home with him and Andre would step out every few minutes to cry in the bathroom.

I asked Andre to explain to me what was going on and whether he wanted me to leave and he would only say “I don’t care.” I took Andre home at the end of the night. I haven’t been there for him as much as I should have been lately. He’s been depressed. Last night was a disaster. 

I met him last night. He’s easy to talk to, laughs easily, is easy to like. He’s a good person, I get along with him well and I like him, so far everything about him. I like the way he looks lying in bed, wearing glasses, reading a book. He always holds me when I sleep and it’s comforting. He speaks openly about everything, always has a soft voice. I like standing with him, feeling his body against mine, intertwined in the shower with him.

I’m less anxious than I was, but am still. I’ve done so many of these exciting beginnings and abrupt, confusing ends. This seems so good but I’m certain it’ll end and I don’t want to endure that. I don’t want to take the steps to fall for something uncertain, to be alone in that again. 

I need to remember to breathe, the maintain perspective. My life is a large thing and I can survive so much more than this. I can’t bring myself to have faith in him yet, but so many of these have been positive in hindsight. The time I spend with someone, if I’m honest and open with myself, is generally positive - until it’s painful. I wonder whether these really are positive experiences.

I sat on his couch and he brought out a fork and knife for each of us, placed the fork in my left hand and the knife in my right, took the same position himself and began to teach me to keep a basic drum beat.

Today was my last day at work - I work in HR. After I left I met a friend of mine for coffee. She used to work with me but my boss fired her and she helped me get this new job. I hadn’t seen her since she was fired a few months ago. Later I met two coworkers for drinks and had too much. We exchanged phones and I texted someone on one of my coworkers’ phones something inappropriate. My coworker was aware of this and okayed it but I used the poorest judgement and overstepped a line. I feel like a jerk. He said it was alright, as he was bound to, but I hugely regret it. I’m afraid - and almost certain - that I made his life more difficult by doing what I did. He’s also someone who I respect and who I would like to respect me.

I don’t want to be this person, to represent myself this way, to be seen this way, to cause this sort of damage or to leave this job having done this.

This is my last week at work. I should sleep but I don’t want to and I wont - there are no stakes. I want to stay up and write this out, all of this. I want to write all of the men. I have written all the others. 

He’s tall and dark, has unexpectedly light eyes and freckles. Has mass without added weight - is imposing. He’s younger than I am, though not by much, but I think of his youth first when I think of him. He’s smart in a broad and complete way, unbrittle. He’s beautiful, would be severe if he weren’t so warm, has romanesque features like the David but more masculine, more striking, more beautiful, darker. He smiles easily but his mouth becomes smaller when he does. He loses some of that beauty then and becomes human, briefly. He looks better naked than clothed. He has thin hands. He dresses well and wears it comfortably but doesn’t wear its imposition. 

When I touch him delicately his body shudders and he loses control. I sat behind him with one hand gently on his throat, the other across his skin, as he falls apart, his eyes forced shut. He calls me by name, something I don’t expect him to remember as lost as that. He knows his strength and tempers it and holds me desperately but gently, something offset by the brutal pain of the size of him. He held me as he slept, though I couldn’t, overcome by the panic of him and of the loss of it, of the threat of it overcoming me. His mouth is small, like mine, and his kisses are gentle even when they’re desperate, he rarely pulls me in, shows his desire with his teeth. 

He has a distinctive, clean, bittersweet smell I can’t place. He holds himself above me effortlessly, frustratingly away. He sat against me, his head in the crook of my shoulder with my fingers at his temple, his arm through my legs. The only things he had in his room that smelled feminine were another woman’s deodorant and lubricant for toys. He texted me “everyone should shower with me always” and “I look dapper. Undress me.” at 3am.

He’s becoming more difficult to engage. He’s young and he doesn’t want this. There will be others. There are so few I can feel. 

He’s almost nothing, he’s still just the faintest ideas I have of his size, his skin, how much he responds to being touched so lightly, how he clutches my hand to his heart when he sleeps, like he’s drowning and my hand is his only lead, and my desire for him. It’s temporary and I’m lost in the mourning of it before it’s gone, and I’ve been drowning.

I heard this song today and it reminded me of the teeth I kept in a balsam box when I was young, I remember the blood still dried on the roots. And I remembered Alex and the roots he wrote about, the ones that were bleached bones that she opened with a shovel, and graves he described and what each of them meant.

This reminded me of how much more complex I am than this place and how much more has happened. I forget about each of them, all of the moments and all of the men, all of the people I used to be and all of the futures I had hoped for them. This man is an idea, this place is an idea, the changes in my life are ideas, but I’m real, and I can leave. I’ll still be here when this, when he, when everything is gone.

We spent the night together for the first time. Throughout the night I was reminded of this dance and the way the couple throws themselves into each others’ arms. Our actions were nothing like this but the hunger, what we were clinging to, was the same.