the habit of being

( Where is my corset, I have decided for the moment to live as a wasp in an adult-rated movie, with long frizzy red hair and yellow teeth and a whip. )

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As I was looking through my bookshelf yesterday, for something to read (I’ve stopped reading altogether, so help me), I found a paper journal I’d started years ago, maybe seven pages of text at most, I don’t continue with things. I take this passage, modified somewhat, from that journal, a burgundy book with a ribbon bookmark and gold-lined pages, because I never wrote this anywhere else, not really, so I will write it here, because I no longer fear my sixteen year old self or her perceptions.

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I fear I should have written the entire episode down before, before it began to fade, but in all fairness to myself, one does not think of writing at such times. One thinks only of living and of great change, of movement in a forwardly way, onwardness. I like to think, honestly, that kissing her has altered me somehow, and that I am no longer simply Katharine, but Katharine Who Has Kissed a Beautiful Girl, even Katharine Who Is Loved, or maybe even Katharine the Seductress. And yes, it is that ridiculous, as ridiculous as beauty can be, and how this one act seems to weigh heavily on all others, and how I do not even understand. Three nights, consecutive, straining toward dawn, and then it all stopped flatly, and I can’t say I understand that either. Still, just clinging to her seemed quite enough after we left the blue room that was once my mother’s for the room that is hers and the room that is mine.

How was it, exactly, that I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off her, from the first night onward. Somehow, it didn’t seem entirely surreal that first night, as I found myself in the dark of her huge closet, my feet on the wall, my back to the floor, my hand on her thigh, drawing a roundabout path with my fingernails. How funny, like a naughty child afraid of getting caught, I saw this shadow of my entirety personified in that single hand (synecdoche?) cautiously retreating to the more open areas, her knee, her leg, ankle, foot, ever so often, so as to avoid being too obvious in my greed. But soon enough this feeling was overcome, and with triumph I felt I had claimed the thigh as my own, and no longer did I sketch lightly on it with my nail, but erased all that had been carelessly drawn with my palm. As I tried to delete so much of what had been done before, I listened steadily for changes in her breathing, and every slight alteration seemed to make me gasp as well, full of curiosity.

She did touch me as well, but I was so intent on what I was doing that barely made an impression. As my legs were stretched out with my feet on the wall close by her head, she could never reach farther than my knee. Her own legs were bent at the knee, however, giving me free reign of their entire length, which was significant. Quite significant was that night to me, the first night, I repeated in my head as we fell asleep side by side.

It was on the fourth night that I first kissed her. This moment came as the climax of a very slow crescendo, there were so many endless minutes leading up to it, as we lay there in the dark of that blue room, our hands on each other, somewhere, somewhere. So slow were our movements, to mask their obvious awkwardness, as more and more figure-eights were drawn across more and more skin, and we were covered by a tension thick as rain. How long did this calligraphic struggle to find ourselves in the correct position last? Minutes, hours, months, until the crescendo was matched by her breathing patterns, and my fingers found her lips, and her own fingers pulled me closer, to the very first taste, and I never wanted to let go.

I am allowed to sound like the author of terrible romance novels, I have that right, to play it out without the proper metaphors and without the due creativity, for isn’t such a moment needless of originality, isn’t it without era, without time?

There were drinks of water afterwards, and sleep eventually, thought by that time it must have been nearing five AM. The most odd thing was that the next day, when it was no longer dark and we were no longer huddled together, it was almost as if it had never happened. Except that it happened again. And again, the night after that, very much the same way. The fifth night, I recall, was the loveliest in the trilogy, for it was the longest and most intense. I discovered then her neck and her shoulders, arms, and legs all over again. How we sat face to face in the dark. How we giggled at ourselves. How perfect it all seemed, to me, though I have no idea of her own perception, and I fear it is quite the opposite of my own.

- - -

From the next day’s entry:

“I am tired of being such a bald-faced liar, but I do not have the means to tell the truth. In my freewriting I use only images which have no meaning. This, I hope, will cause the reader enough confusion that he will never notice how unbelievably fake I am. I think I grasp the concept of a “real phony,” but, still, I am inferior to that typecast. I am too in love with Franny to waste my time aspiring to be anything less than Vienna. I am too in love with Vienna to aspire to be anything less than Franny.”

Sixteen. I had recently turned sixteen.

Even now, sometimes, despite being an intelligent person, I still believe my life would be substantially better if my hair curled just perfectly, in a way that made me look like a girl who deserves to wear pearls everyday, and if my body were so thin and graceful that people wondered how I could even be alive, if my eyes were like Anais Nin’s, if my voice would only produce poetic sounds. Sometimes, despite being a vain person, I can smile sincerely.

Today, I went out and about with my mother, wearing a cheap home-made red dress from Goodwill, Birkenstocks, and no bra. Half my hair was in a ponytail, and the other half was just there. My face was still broken out and grimacing from cramps. Mom called me a “menstrual disaster,” and what can I say, things just aren’t as pretty any more, not all the time.

But things are always dramatic. And I do hope you forgive me this, in its shallow incompleteness.