Tumble this

Guess I’m going use to Tumblr for the stuff I think about in the shower and the car. Story ideas, maybe. Anyway.

Posted by: Zosia | 02-19-2008 | 06:02 PM
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Love at six years

We’re at an antique store. Chris pulls me to a jewelry case and points out a heart-shaped prism on a silver chain, tucked in the back. He loves the colors and thick weight of old jewelry, the way it seems dug-up and haunted. I don’t wear jewelry, so I never think to look for it. The necklace is similar to an Austrian crystal pendant my father gave me as a kid, and I smile. We leave the case, walk through the rest of the store. On the way out, I tell him I’m going to buy the necklace. There’s something about it, and I want it, even if it’ll just sit in a jar on my desk. Chris says, no, no, no, let me buy it for you, and he leaves to find the owner to unlock the case. This is unusual - we rarely give gifts, and he’s never given me jewelry because what would I do with it?

Suddenly, I know I’ll wear this necklace. I won’t stop wearing it. It’ll hang under my shirts, just below the hollow of my neck and my heart will pulse it gently against my sternum, and when I touch it, it’ll be hot and grooved like salt. I won’t even take it off to shower. I leave. I hide behind a rack of clothes. I can’t watch him point to the box. He’ll chatter nervously, because he does, and there’s something too tender about this very casual act of buying a necklace for his wife.

On the sidewalk, I open the case and put it on. It glows, like I thought it would. We hold hands as we walk to the car. I’m not a hand-holder; it makes me feel tethered, but today I’m willing to be taken. He is a lover, an affectionate ingenue who wanted to put the necklace on for me, but knew better.

Our love is over, as we know it. Every day, it’s over as we know it.

Posted by: Zosia | 02-16-2008 | 09:02 PM
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Rewrite: Betsy’s Video

I’m taking old entries and re-writing them as I remember them now. What do you think? Good plan? I’m starting with this one, written March 1998.

I was 17 years old, and dating my first love, Nick. He was thin and big-lipped, bi-sexual and flamboyant, loud and vicious and inexplicably popular in my Southern hometown. Geoffrey was our best friend, an ambiguous blonde biology genius, unpredictable and nearly sociopathic in his lack of emotion. He lived in an old haunted house on a set of train tracks, with his Scottish father and short, crass mother. We loved his family and his house and stayed there whenever we could.

Betsy was Geoffrey’s on/off girlfriend. I didn’t like her, and she didn’t like me, though we’ve long since resolved any weirdness between us. She was one of us - dramatic and dark and out of phase. Ryan was my friend, new to the neighborhood - a poet, tortured, prone to sadness and misunderstandings. In fact, I could’ve used the same adjectives to describe all of us, though Nick stood out, of course. We walked in his shadow, stepped carefully because we knew he didn’t need us. We needed him, especially me. I loved him so much I spent nights in anxious sweats, dreaming of him leaving me or dying in a car crash. Mostly him leaving me. I kept a tight grip. I didn’t know any better.

That day, Betsy was shooting a film for her theatre class. We were camped out in Geoffrey’s dusty living room and had costumes from somewhere (stolen from the drama closet at school?). We got dressed in front of each other. Ryan didn’t participate, and sat in a corner, flipping through coffee table books, pouting. Nick and I danced together in front of a sunny picture window, spinning and spinning, my pink skirt flying over my head. We filmed for hours, until the light was gone and Ryan had sequestered himself in a bedroom to undoubtedly write poetry about how much he hated us. Geoffrey was slinking up against Betsy in that way he had, unashamed and dismissive of reaction.

We rushed upstairs to a TV, and put in the tape. Nick and I sat closest. We were vain; we loved pictures of ourselves. We wanted to be Scott and Zelda, but we weren’t bold enough, though Nick was held back by circumstance, not potential. Nick went on to live in Brooklyn and dive unapologetically into a buzzy, hedonistic, druggy lifestyle. I, of course, moved to Duluth, Minnesota.

Betsy’s tape was blank. We rewound it, blew on it, cleaned the VCR and scolded, but the tape stayed erased. Stunned, Betsy cried and then ran out of the door. The whole afternoon, wasted! We found Ryan on the porch, staring at a passing train, notebook in hand. We shrugged, hugged Geoffrey, grabbed Ryan and piled into my old car. It was spring, and I didn’t have allergies yet. I drove home in my pink tutu, with no shoes, the windows open and breezy, the tape already forgotten. We went back to Geoffrey’s later, for dinner and to sit in the rain by the crepe myrtle.

Finally home, my mom didn’t ask what I was wearing or why I was soaked. I didn’t drink and I didn’t sneak out, but I did come in weird clothes, smelling of mud and the massage oils from Geoffrey’s mother’s parlor. This was expected. That night, as was usual, Nick and I talked on the phone until bedtime. I slept hard with my windows open, my tutu crumpled on the floor.

Posted by: Zosia | 02-11-2008 | 08:02 PM
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Full circle

I’m over it, but I’ve been thinking about Duluth again. It used to be all I thought about, but then I lost my mind for a while, and had bigger fish to ponder. (More on that later.) But I had this dream last night, one I used to have every few months and nearly every week right after I left the lake.

My ex and I meet - coffee shop, his club, my house, once - inexplicably - The Sharper Image - and we talk. Well - I talk. I catch him up on my life, and the best part is how he listens - he’s focused and smiling and kind and engaged. Really kind. Sometimes he touches my arm when I get to an emotional part, and at the end, we always hug and I leave lighter, that cloying ache I carry around temporarily dulled. Nothing else happens - no sex, no making out, no flirting even. I just talk and he listens and I can tell he’s interested and genuinely likes me.

This isn’t the case in real life with the ex. We haven’t spoken in depth in five years and in public, there’s an awkwardness that borders on arctic. I flap at him like a terrible beauty pageant contestant - stiff, fast, jittery, rehearsed. He talks to me like he’s still pissed. Which he is, I think.

But either way - the point is - what I’m saying here, is that when I think of the ex, I think of Duluth, and I begin to need it. That late June sunshine, streaming through the his recording studio, hitting the white flowered teacup I kept on the far window. Touching the back of his red neck and dark hair. The 4:00 sunshine, I called it and I watched for it.

One time, when the ex was out of town (we were almost over, but I missed him, anyway), I woke at 5 AM covered in a blood red sunrise. It reflected off the wall, onto my belly, slashed across my feet. I’d never seen the sunrise, not really and I was shocked into something big.

Later that evening, the ex came home and I hugged his big, reliable frame and we - what? What did we do? And how reliable was he, anyway?

Duluth is white and breezy in my memory, and the dark parts are covered in laughter and liquor and my long red hair (bobbed right before I left). Unreliable, I know. You know how old places work, especially the ones that broke your heart, but Duluth is the extra set of bones I carry around. New skin like algae grew around them but you don’t forget your bones.

And though he doesn’t like it - and who would - and though it’s inconvenient for both of us, the ex - Erik - giant, blue-eyed Erik, former swimmer - holds Duluth for me. You can’t talk to a lake and have it understand, so I talk to him, in dreams. I wake up wanting to see him, thinking we’re friends. I think about calling him. Instead, I call a hotel by the water in Duluth and make a reservation.

Posted by: Zosia | 02-10-2008 | 11:02 PM
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