the habit of being

August / September

24
My Indrakshi does not tell me why she is sad, only that she is indeed miserable. I secretly wish her loneliness were for me, for our ever-broken entanglements, if it must be at all. But it is another thing entirely that she misses, and I feel I play no part in her glumness. I doubt it would be worse to have her hatred. Instead I have a hurriedly scrawled letter asking me to please forgive her in advance for the next time she decides I am not important or immoral. For that moment she had love for me, and of course all is relative to the moment at hand. How I am grateful for that instant.

26
My Indrakshi and I cannot dance well. Even on a dark night in the woods all alone we are strangely awkward. We are sticky with sweat and bug spray. Georgia heat is as heavy as Georgia rain; and even late, so late, I am burning up. The porch is lit with flash lights and citronela candles. The cabin has no lights, only lanterns, and few. It is an amber light like my stinking darkroom at work, only so much more diffuse, so slight. We have the music turned up as loud as it will go and there is no one else around to complain. To Sharon’s “piano by candle light” we step all over one another attempting a waltz, and it is perfect that way. We make up our own dances, as simple as possible, add twirls and jazz hands for a “routine” which we never once got all the way through once without screwing up or bursting out laughing.

There is a hole in the floor I keep tripping into. We take off our shoes and do our very own Swan Lake on that dusty floor. For a finale she jumps on my back and I attempt to spin around before dropping her. Somewhere we switch from the commercial romance music to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and we sing along, scream, we know all the words. Somewhere someone is telling me this is the most beautiful night of my life. Somewhere someone tells me she would not be angry if I kissed her. I do not kiss her. I am a coward.

Our stingy hair falling in our faces, we laugh and sing and dance until we are worn out. I collapse onto the couch and she into a chair, in the room with the fireplace, antlers on the wall, and the lantern hanging from above the table. (She wanted to take my picture lying on that table but she never did. It was dirty.)

I remind her that she promised to hypnotize me. It’s one of her little known talents. She could hypnotize her friends at sleepovers when she was younger. She tells me to relax my toes and my ankles and my calves. She talks of steps for me to visualize myself walking down. She gives up, saying she doesn’t remember how she did it. I wonder how she would know if I were hypotized or not. It seems to me I’ve never been in her presence in a state that could not be characterized as hypnotic.

28
I am a potato eater and my cat does not like me. My father is visiting and I am hiding in my room because I don’t want to see him, to talk to him. I am heartless?

30
I shun my Mozart these days for old dirty tapes out of my closet and so many closets before. Rickie Lee Jones and Patsy Cline and Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris and Janis Joplin all sing to me while I peer over some text for hours. And there is that Madonna tape, with one messed up track. I bought her before giving blood with Jennifer in Savannah last month. Today I got some letters from the American Red Cross that say I’m a hero and a card that says my blood type is O positive. These days I am always studying, always. I’m making near-perfect grades in the hardest classes I’ve ever had. I feel guilty for all those 93’s and 94’s of years past. I have problems talking to anyone because all I ever say is about school. No one cares that my Ethan Frome paper was the best or that I love my biology class. No one wants to hear how much time I spent doing such and such, or what I’m reading, or how proteins have four structural levels. I can’t be idle anymore, I can’t do things for fun, because I feel guilty. I am commiting countless crimes sitting here like this, all for vanity of such a different sort than wanting another perfect score.

You have an angel, a prostitute’s daughter, on a bus. What is this? Why am I out? Still lost in want-to-be-Catholic land, only I have other 1200 page books to attend to. But I want you here with your magic or whatever it is. I want your love and french toast too.

2
I dreamt of a seafood restaurant full of scary rednecks who were after me. My friend wouldn’t take me home and they chased me across a pond and raped me in the brush on the other side. Then there were so many people there, everyone from the restaurant, all looking at me. And my friend was in the very back, crying.

3
I was near to sleeping, pre-dream hallucinating, leaning on him in a corner. Waiting on a coaster to blink or vibrate or do both, though I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. I wasn’t. I’d stumbled around the mall, looking for a bikini, so tired. Rested my head on a table outside the food court while you sat there doing nothing, watching me I suppose. Now you watch me again, as I struggle to cut my chicken and keep my head up. Not hungry. I wonder if I could just curl up in my booth and sleep until you’re finished eating. First date? Second date? And I can barely keep my eyes open? I wonder at it’s being so acceptable. I won’t wake up until it’s black outside and we’re almost home, just in time to rent a movie. Watching it was rather like an out of body experience, though I can’t say I kept up with the plot.

4
I think my Indrakshi is a little like Emily Dickinson, with poems written on napkins or hidden on her computer under odd file names. Her poetry is sharp and can be read to the rhythm of Sylvia Plath, but I can’t say I know what it means. I worry that I do not understand her mind any more than her birdlike shoulders, her tiny waist, fragile wrists. I fall asleep wrapped around her but she doesn’t seem to reach out. I wonder if she locks herself in her room like Emily, if she drowns like Sylvia, if she lusts like me. I know she is all these things, but I want to know them in her way, with no point of reference. See out her eyes. I want to see ME through her eyes, I am just so vain.

When I am with her “Indrakshi, I love you” becomes my Jesus prayer. There is nothing to think but oh how beautiful she is, how lovely, how fine. For that she will hate me, because it is nowhere near enough just to love her. I must make reasons. Constantly make reasons, pretty conversation, moments to write about later, letters and words and words and words. Love, all love.

I lick my teeth and they are sticky. I realize I haven’t brushed them in two days. Not since the week, not since the routine. All I am without schedule is a gross pile of fever and snot