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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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part IX: what fresh hell is this?
dearest-- i hardly know where to begin. however, this is not a new dilemma. i've never known where to begin and i certainly have no idea where to end. so let's just start here and agree to end when things make sense, if ever. i guess a x is just as good a place to start as anywhere (want so badly to put "anywheres" in there just because people who say "anywheres" make me want to form my own vigilante grammar squad and commit crimes against their persons. and, yes, you can call anything from the opening to the closing of this parenthetical distraction a great avoidance technique. the greatest perhaps known to man--or to me anyway. anyways.) but let's get down to it, yeah? i've had the feeling, since the earliest "sophistica, this is x. x, sophistica" days that things might lead down this path. (max and i used to discuss it from time to time, and, as he is a more patient person in general, he was closer than i to the mark as to when things were going to reach this point.) it wasn't so much that the x has this ordered-from-the-back-of-a-comic-book super power to make us all do his eccentric and not quite so evil bidding either, you know. x is supersmart, quirky, good-looking, independent, ambitious--you name it--so what's not to appeal? (i'd go for him myself if i weren't already wrecking my life in other, more destructive ways, and if i hadn't already cast myself, in my head, as the older sister he never had.) he is an appealing boy on so many levels that it seems that the only problem (at this point anyway. anyways.) is the x's buddhist calling, yeah? only, i can't help but think that if we hadn't cornered him about his habits (tied him to the chair, shined the light in his eyes, threatened him with rubber hoses and played "good sublingua, bad sophistica" or vice versa), or if he hadn't been as willing to be truthful as he was (and who can really fault truth-telling as a virtue? and without a trace of bragging or sense of conquest that one might expect from so many boys), you'd know little to nothing about the practice of buddhism, which leads me to suspect that he might, given the right opportunity, willingly abandon it. i mean, he may be many things (to many women--sorry, couldn't resist), but he doesn't cheat. and, even if he doesn't engage in do-overs, there is the fact that he is still friends with the xmeg as evidence that he doesn't let his religious practices interfere with his frienships once the conversion process ends, yeah? i don't know. also, here's something else i don't know, the not-in-a-nutshell version: the subject of x's feeling unloved has never, never, never come up in any conversation that i have had with him. never. this is probably a bad thing for me to say. because. because i think it means that he's confiding in you regarding some pretty deep stuff for him. and. why? is this bad? (please excuse the creative punctuating. or puncture-ating. or something.) because. because what are you going to do with this knowledge? and Not: i think you are going to use this knowledge to some evil purpose. but: is this the kind of knowledge that might cause one to start up some kind of loop that does nothing but cause some kind of selfed misery? (how's that for a question? well, i don't have to answer them, so i guess i'll just stick to (im)posing them.) i mean, you mean something to him, my dear. he is looking, i think, for some understanding. and the rest of us haven't cut it enough for him to try this stuff out on. nope. but what does that mean? i mean, if it were me (and it isn't, except in some sort of it's not being me kind of way), i'd have to say, at this juncture: yeah? follow your heart. (translation: a) do it. and not because i am looking for a partner in crime, but because it would be a good and perhaps necessary thing to explore. and, b.) are you up to it?) but what are we forgetting? bry. oh, yeah. bry. okay, so, i don't know bry. no, really. i don't know him. but my interactions with him lead me to believe that he's a nice guy. really. really. painfully. nice. but there is a distinct lack of. . .thoughfulness about certain things on his part, yeah? um. that's me, attempting to be diplomatic. and failing. i think that bryan is probably enough. but is enough enough? (i'm going to let this one go for the moment. there probably should be more, but i'm not sure i even have enough information to have an opinion about this. and, you probably know that "insufficient input" has never before been reason for me to have no opinion about something.) later: so here's a little story i like to call: one heart, furnished in early foolishness. where to begin? last night? drunkenbowlingkaraoke with melissa, the rockabilly punkster, her sidekick x, me, neo and max. and, of course, before there is bowlingkaraoke, there must be drinking. so neo and i began drinking. max, responsible, drank a guinness and then water. but neo and i? we drank. drink, drank, drinking, drinking. we were drinking kamikazis with guinness chasers. we drank many of them. many, many of them. we drank so many of them that my bowling game seemed positively unembarrassing. and the karaoke? bearable. and neo and i kept drinking, toasting to ernest hemingway and then to t.s. eliot and then to rilke and then to mel's grandma betty (whose penchant for burning bridges runs admirably to the unallegorical) and then to redheads and then to living in sin. and then to. and then to. and then. too. and then we were not sober neo and sober sublingua anymore. somehow, we were drunken neo and drunken sublingua. and we kept drinking. drinking. drinking. and then by the end of the night, max was pretending not to notice my hand on neo's thigh. and max was pretending not to notice neo and i sharing cigarettes by my putting them to neo's lips and then to mine. and max was pretending not to notice the close discussion of the perfume i was wearing. and then. and then. and then. and then i came home. and then i passed out. and then i got up this morning to a breakfast of tears and recriminations. most of which were derived and delivered by me. because i am the world's biggest bitch. and i have no shame. sober sublingua? she has shame. drunken sublingua? not so much. hangover sublingua? she's the worst. but the gist of this? the gist of this is that sober sublingua is about a month away from a divorce. and her own apartment. and the freedom to chase neo. and i am being very serious at this moment. all these things have been discussed. and all of them are in the about to be put into motion stage. and all of them will come to pass. and my question to you is: what the fuck am i doing? but, no, wait. that's a trick question. what i'm doing is perhaps throwing away my life for what is only a Chance to be with someone. i mean, there hasn't been anything said about anything being settled between anyone involved in this. (and why am i shying away from mentioning names at this moment? i guess because it's become de rigeur for this to be the case between me and neo, and it causes me no end of uncertainty about what i'm about to do to my life, but which is based in his incredibly ingrained sense of...whatever, whatever it is that is related to his religion and his sense of right and wrong, which is so fucked up that only the kind of drinking that would fell lesser beings can reach past them. i mean, if i get out of this sad but settled little life of mine only to face an "um. i was just kidding" from neo--? it would serve me right, certainly. i want to run away. i want to pack my bags and get the hell out of dodge and leave this mess behind. but what i'm going to do is this: i'm going to go ahead and send this to you now. and you should tell me i'm fucking crazy and that i should stop chasing neo and that i'm making a fool out of myself and need to grow the fuck up and be a man. or something. semething. or not. yeah? dearest? sublingua
More lies:
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