|
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.) | |||
|
The Twin Demons Of Warmth and Indifference
Aisho's Question: Two hundred dollar sushi evening that ended this way: Mayflower drunk, being dropped off (as per her request) at home by Max and x on the way from the restaurant to my house where they were meeting Aisho and me. Aisho and I stopping to buy Guinness, Red Stripe, limes for the tequila, grapefruit juice and cranberry juice as mixers for the gin. And then we were at my house. Max had a Guinness, x had a gin and cranberry and a couple of shots of my beloved Jalisco tequila, pronounced it "sipping tequila," and went back to examining my expense report form from DrugCo and muching baby carrots from a three pound bag of baby carrots from CostCo. And me? I was already a bit tipsy on the drinks (lots and lots of sake and Kirin) I had at dinner but I still sat and drank Red Stripe and traded off shots of my beloved Jalisco tequila with someone whose back I'd be patting a couple of hours later as he threw up a mixture of Asahi, sake, Red Stripe, carrots and the said shots (a measly four total) of my beloved Jalisco tequila into my toilet. "I'm sorry, Sublingua," he said after he had thrown up twice, after I had flushed the toilet, as he swayed over the bowl trying to balance on his knees and hands. "It's okay, Aisho," I said, patting his back. I got him some water to rinse out his mouth, asked him if he wanted some more tequila, laughed. "I just need to lie down." He half crawled, half stumbled to my futon and lay face down. I got the bathroom wastebasket and put it by his head. I pulled off his shoes, asked him if he was okay. "I snore, Sublingua," he said. I assured him it was okay. I lay down and patted his back. "It's okay," I said. "You're going to be fine," I said. He groaned. "I think it was the carrots," he told me. I laughed. He went on: "That damn x kept looking at me like he knew the secrets of the carrots. And I just kept eating the carrots because they were crunchy and good, and x kept looking at me like, oh, yeah, you may know something about sushi, but you don't know anything about carrots." I was laughing pretty hard. He kept talking about x and the secret knowledge of the carrots for a bit and I kept laughing. When he settled down, I got up, cleaned up a bit, changed into some sweats to sleep in and came back to bed. I had to crawl over him to get into bed, and he groaned and apologized again. "I'm sorry, Sublingua. Tell x and Max that I'm sorry," he said. I assured him that it wouldn't be necessary, patted his back, rolled over and went to sleep. Aisho's Question: "What are smart women looking for?" I got up around five-thirty. He was snoring away on his back. I climbed over him to get out of bed, checked the time, turned off my alarm which had been set to go off at six, had some water and peed, climbed back over him to get into bed, lay there listening to him snore for a bit. I thought about the decade-ago days when the evening would have ended with my getting drunk and waking up in the morning, hung over, naked and tangled in the sheets with someone who I didn't know as well as I should have known them if I were going to be waking up beside them. It sounds pathetic, doesn't it? But as pathetic as it may sound, I have to say that I am grateful for some of those mornings. I am grateful for some of those mornings because they are embedded in my psyche as some of the saddest and best memories of that time. I used to wake up on some of those seemingly pathetic mornings, in that seemingly pathetic state, and I'd just lay there for a while next to a warm body. It didn't even matter that it was some guy who hadn't been nearly as drunk as I had been, some guy who wasn't interested in knowing anything about me except that I was willing, some guy who wasn't going to call afterwards anyway. For a few early morning moments, I was comforted by the weight, the presence of this person in bed next to me. That was when I was getting what I needed and wanted out of those encounters. And I was so desperate for any kind of comfort and warmth that it didn't even matter that the person providing it was unaware that he was doing it. And I was so desperate for any kind of comfort and warmth that I would have and did trade just about anything for it: my dignity, my body, my sense of self-worth, my reputation, my safety. Anything. Because those early morning minutes next to a warm body were tiny spots of comfort in a life that was, to my great dismay and miserable delight, spinning increasingly out of control, was becoming increasingly more difficult to live. (Be grateful, Sublingua, for what you can be grateful for from those decade-ago days. And I am. I was/am grateful for these things.) So I lay next to the sleeping Aisho and probed a bit at the part of my psyche that used to feel comforted by the warm and indifferent bodies of strangers. And I didn't feel that way with the Aisho. I can guess at the reasons why. Perhaps it's that the extreme highs and lows aren't there anymore--the lows having been so devastatingly low that those moments in bed were, by comparison, high. Perhaps it's that I don't need that kind of comfort anymore. I don't need to have someone else there to justify my existence or to comfort me in this way. I've lived through periods of intense loneliness, and unlike the decade-ago Sublingua, know that I will survive them. And more than just survive them, I know that I can actually move through the loneliness and the accompanying feelings of worthlessness and can explore them, learn from them, be grateful for them. Like MFK Fisher, I have taken the measure of my powers and have made a friend of loneliness. I fell asleep thinking about these things.
I woke up when he got out of bed. He was moving around the apartment, gathering his things. "I have to let you out of the gate," I said, pushing the covers off. "Just a minute, Sublingua," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. I pulled the covers back over me. He searched for his cell phone, found it, checked the time. "I have to meet my dad in forty-five minutes," he said. I mumbled, "What time is it?" He didn't hear me. "What time is it?" I repeated. He answered, "Seven-fifteen." I thought he had to meet his father somewhere for breakfast, so I offered him one of my clean shirts and the opportunity to take a shower. He explained that they were meeting at his--Aisho's--house to hook up the swamp cooler. "I'm going to have to call him and say, 'Dad, I got really, really drunk last night and--'" He trailed off, perhaps thinking about how this was going to sound to his father. He said, moving into an imitation of his stern-voiced father, "He's going to be, like, 'Max, I told you I was going to be here at eight o'clock on Saturday morning and now you call me--'" He trailed off again. He said, holding his head in his hands, "My head hurts." I got out of bed, got him some generic tylenol, a bottle of water and some drops for his eyes as he had slept with his contacts in. I teased him by lamenting that I had wasted twenty pesos worth of my beloved Jalisco tequila on a half-breed. He took minor offense at the half-breed term. I begged off on a drunken promise I had made the night before. I got my spare set of keys from my desk drawer, let him out of the gate. He paused to say goodbye at the gate. I gave him a hug, said, "Nice try, Aisho," referring to his noble attempt to outdrink the Mexican girl tequila-wise. He said, "Oh, about Fu--" And I interrupted, saying, "Fu. Sunday. Ten o'clock." He said, "Yeah." We said goodbye and I locked the gate, went back inside my apartment, called my walking partner and begged off our walk, contemplated coffee but had a glass of water instead, went back to an empty but still warm bed which was filled with the unfamiliar scent of the Aisho, and I slept. "I try to end each entry with a list of things I'm grateful for, Aisho."--Me, explaining some aspect of the online diary. I am grateful for Max, x, Mayflower, Aisho, Fu, Ukare (as x spelled it on the sake menu) the waitress with the beautiful scrunchy-faced smile. I am grateful for excess, of which it has been said that nothing exceeds like. I am grateful for time and distance, for the perspective that it has helped to provide. I am grateful for the earlier, decade-ago life that I led, the decade-ago Sublingua I was. I am grateful for the remaining half-bottle of Jalisco, monument to my tequila drinking abilities. I am grateful for all indifferent and warm bodies, to the indifferent and warm body I slept next to last night, for the ability to recognize both indifference and warmth and to ascribe the proper worth to each. I am grateful for the Aisho's scent, almost like a too clean child, which lingered in the bedclothes for a while after he was gone. I am grateful. I am grateful and this is the only way I know how to show humility. I am grateful and this is the only way I know how to express obedience.
More lies:
|
|||||