I think I'm drunk enough to drive you home
go me theway to showhome
Most of my evening has been spent in upbeat conversation with Alexander - who messaged me through Friendster - and mistakemade, and my only true love carrythe0.
Goddam I love internet love.
The night was up beat with Pete Yorn and The Shins... but then I fell away as the fifth day of living here passed me by.
You see: every night I stay up until I pass out. Well, I generally do that anyway, but I seem to be more aware of it now. I fear lying in bed awake.
As though I am more vulnerable while reclined in the dark, and that villains are waiting for such.
So I was writing about Justin Neal earlier, right? Good man, that Justin.
I went into my room and retrieved a shoebox labeled, "letters from boys (mostly Justin)".
I lifted the lid in tune with Jeff Mangum singing now we must pack up every piece of the life we used to love just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on and there on top was a letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. David Dodson.
How strange that hit me... I even shared the entire moment with Nick. The letter was from Snyder: the friend of David's who I found myself daydreaming about when David was at his most distant. The closest thing I know to infidelity (in myself) are my feelings I had for him. I remember once thinking I would never be able to leave David, and that it would be nice if he would just die. And then I could eventually be with Snyder.
I don't know if I've ever written or spoken that before.
He looked like Gregory Peck.
The last time I saw him was at his wedding.
The next letter in the box was a poem my aunt wrote to me when I was eleven. She's not a boy, true, but she's the sister of my biological father, and the poem was written days after I first met him.
So the letter is the box with his correspondences.
The poem was inteded to be given to me when I was eleven, to welcome me into the family. But as circumstances would have it, I never knew about her, or the poem, and it wasn't given to me until ten years later.
Ten years had passed, and in those ten years I think I might have liked a poem from an aunt.
Oh well.
Beyond the poem was a stack of letters from Bill over the years. Pages of awkwardness.
A card from my current brother-in-law (before he married Muriah) to thank me for my graciousness in accepting him as my sister's fiance. I was enraged when he proposed, but I acquiesed.
As testament shows in my eleventh-grade journals, "dick-head-Dave" was his nick-name. Currently I find little fault with him, becuase he's devoted to Muriah.
I'd forgotten about that letter. The PS was "you say tomato, I say taco," and I never forgot that; I just couldn't remember where I'd heard it.
Next was a letter from Matthew King. He was in love with me. I adored him. But he was young. I moved away to college and he still had a couple years to go. He returned to me the collectors set of Cal Ripken Jr. baseball cards that I gave to him because he said he never wanted to look me in the eye ever again, nor did he want any reminders of me.
The letter was written before I broke his heart.
I called him three years later and he told me to never call him again.
There was one letter from a cute black boy who worked as a counselor at my youth camp in the eleventh grade. Oran Challenger was his name, from Dominica, in the West Indies. I liked playing soccer with him.
He's a pilot now.
Two letters from Thad Wilhoit, the Marine I was penpals with my freshman year of college. Joy met him at a New Year's party and didn't have time to write, but felt bad because he seemed so lonely, so she gave him my info. He called weekly, and wrote, too.
He was extremely bland.
Baptist.
I stood him up for our intended first meeting to instead go out with David (who I later feared I would never be able to leave) and never heard from Thad again.
A strange letter from a fellow named Todd Marks: he was so tall I had to have him sit down for conversations. He was completely out of the ordinary.
A handful of notes and whatnot...
Then finally my stack of letters from Justin. Each one typed because he has atrocious handwriting. The postscript of each, though, was a note in Hobbit-runes.
I cannot cipher a single word.
It feels strange not to understand, because I used to write and read it as instantly as English.
(of course, we didn't use foreign symbols to form foreign words which then needed to be translated, so it wasn't that hard: each symbol represented a letter of the alphabet in forming English words)
Even so, none of it is retained.
I don't know why my past is reopened to me. Part of it is simply because I'm unpacking ancient boxes full of my own relics.
But I don't know why I found Justin.
I've spent a hell of a lot of time loving people in my past, and it's the one thing that seems to have paid off.
And I'm not talking about the in-love loving.
I just mean the pure kind.
The in-love loving has been hurtful to me - from my parents' procreation and divorce to my own heart-break - and though I still hold out for another shot at it, I am more fully engaged in the pursuit of friendly love.
I love you, my friends.
