the habit of being

In a beautiful loft with infinitely tall windows overlooking the mountains, books and art overflowing every corner, I confronted the life I would like more than my own. At every turn, every glance, my eyes beamed, then filled with tears. I said these pretty, articulate things, then my voice turned to nothing and I looked at the floor, thinking what a contradiction, what a farce.

I am looking to science for art, looking to love for art, looking to skin and computers and subway cars for art, but I am afraid now to look for the art that is simply art, the art which was created to be nothing else.

There is always a struggle between wanting the creative life and wanting the one which brings success and achievement. The idea that one can have both is too much to handle. I could not ever aim so high, and yet.

I fear poverty, and still I seek it out. I see the options I have which would give me money, knowing with money comes freedom, and I know that I am capable, and yet I stop myself before trying. It is too great a sacrifice ever to give away one tiny moment in the present in hopes of some vague and beautiful security to come in the future. The problem is that though I won’t sell my precious moments, my beloved now, I squander them fruitlessly anyway.

* * *

An her exhibition, I met The Artist and now it is as if she belongs to me. At least, I have her copy of Madame Bovary.

Upon her arrival, her face, no longer a mystery, seemed suddenly as if it never were, as if I had always known every detail about the blueness of her eyes, the tens of yellows of her hair, the way her cheekbones are sharp but soft. The way her photographs echo the timid, tiny, intensity of her voice.

We slept in the gallery owner’s bed. That first night after her long trip over the ocean, she was exhausted and fell asleep, or said nothing, as I slipped out of the shower and under the covers. I could not stop thinking how surreal it is, the way things will come surprisingly together after years of not quite, not yet. She flung her arm across me unconsciously, used to her husband being there. I flung my own, knowingly, and when she rolled over in the morning, the light coming in from the mountains revealed the tattoo on the small of her back.

It had been so long since I felt like such a man, even with my eyes leaking tears of chardonnay like clockwork. Maybe this is what a pretty blonde will do? I felt driven by senseless urges - to protect, to shelter.

We spoke of the past with our eyes welling up, again, and again.

I mimicked her voice without meaning to, and felt it increased my sex appeal dramatically, for suddenly I was surrounded with boys and did not know what to do with them all. I wanted nothing to do with them all. (I could give them only my ruined self, only the possibility of my reformation.) They were nothing but a blur and she was my only focus. It was like being fourteen all over again and I was, perhaps, ridiculous.

The talk of Botox frightened me a lot. The talk of art frightened me a little. The giggling made my heart race away; I felt lost. I was so struck by my mutability. I hid with her, we whispered our tragedies, we hugged and assured one another - you are so beautiful, you are so talented.

I squeezed her thumb under a mound of unspread sheet and comforter, or we floated alone on the giant floor, in the midst of an oriental rug. We offered no explanations for why these things we discussed had happened.

“Everyone says they understand, but they don’t really.”

“I do.”

“I know.”

One story lead to another and they were all different but just alike. It became one in the morning, two in the morning. We told each other these things about ourselves that we already partway knew.

(I don’t know how long it had been since I told any of this stuff to another girl. It is so different when it is a girl, and not some man who will try to heal what ails you with his penis.)

It was dark, but her hair was still, as ever, luminous. The whispering was because the whole rest of the world is sleeping and we didn’t want to wake them up. The whispering was because we were still ashamed. We told not only our feelings but the feelings we had because of our feelings - the subfeelings were usually guilt. Some things are always secrets.

It was all so frighteningly real, so perfect, so something: The way she loves now. The way she loved then. The way she has been so many of the places I have been.