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ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #530
`888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8
888 888 888 888 888 "Dreambath of Hallucinogens"
888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8
888 888 888 888 888 " by Tasha
888 888 `88b d88' 888 o 3/21/99
o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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March eleventh, 10:46 PM.
I've lost that my brief ecstacy of nicotine and smoke from small
white stick, and I'm stuck listening to my heart pound. Pound faster than
it ever did while running. Running endlessly, not even running. It's not
pounding in my chest. It's not pounding in my stomach. It's pounding
somewhere in my jaw bone, so that my whole face trembles, silently,
everytime it sends blood rushing through my arteries to the rest of my
body, and I think these are tears. Maybe my contacts are just being
naughty again, but either way, my heart pounds and my face is damp.
Whatever, you know, fine, okay. Saline.
I've been sitting by the phone for eight hours and twenty minutes
waiting for this call. No, that's wrong. I've been waiting for this call
since shortly after 9:00 PM on December 26th. That's when he left. I was
standing there, barefoot and grinning, telling him not to forget to write,
not to forget to call...not to forget...me. He promised he wouldn't, he's
one of the two people who never broke a promise, I really admire that, I
really love that. I do. I don't love much. I love coffee on ninety
degree, humid, summer days.
I first knew for sure that he loves me one month after he left. He
never even said it. Sure, he signed "Love..." at the end of all his
letters, all his notes, all his everything, but I never knew it. I just
knew that word. Those letters, whatever. It was 2:00 AM, my time,
shortly after 1:00 AM, his time. His new time. He left, you know. He
should still be in my time, that's the way things were supposed to stay.
"It's not anything big, you know, it's the small things. I'll hear
a song, like the first song I ever heard you sing along to, or I'll see a
movie at a movie rental place...and you rented that movie...and we watched
it...and that's when I think of you. Or maybe when I'm driving alone, and
I look over into the passenger seat, half expecting you to be there,
sucking on one of your cancer sticks and complaining about something you
don't really care about, but it's there and bad enough to complain about."
Yes, he does love me.
"I know. I'll be running up the stairs, on my way to my locker
before third hour, and I'll look up, instinctively, and I'll expect to see
you...smiling...with a little wave and wink of acknowledgement, but it
won't be there. It's not just the missing action, but the missing you, as
that vital, routine part of the day. Like before lunch, you smiling...
with a little wave and wink of acknowledgement as you headed out of the
cafeteria that I was heading into."
Yes, I do love him.
I never really said it to him either, but I sign "Love..." at the
end of all my letters, all my notes, all my everything. He knows it. He
always has. I think back, and someone put it so perfectly...about
comfortable silences. Comfortable silences are one of the greatest things
on earth, one of the hardest to achieve, too. I think back, and he's one
of the few people I've had comfortable silences with. Him writing a
report at my desk, me laying on my stomach staring at the ceiling, neither
of us talking. Both of us completely comfortable. Me hearing his breath,
and him hearing mine, and that being the only noise, but that being such...
perfect....music...at...the...moment. Me not worrying if my shirt is
laying in the most flattering position over my stomach, or if my hand is
alligned perfectly to cover that tiny red spot on my face, him not caring
that his hair is sticking up in the back, and adorably reminding everyone
of a little rascal character. Completely comfortable.
I had this moment tonight, realizing that this is the first time
I've consciously realized what love is, what it means, what it feels like.
Good, you know? Not something you have to constantly declare, but more or
less something that never has to be declared because it's mutually known,
without even declaring that mutual knowledge. I have these moments
sometimes, when something I've just wondered falls so perfectly in place.
They're good moments.
This girl, in my math class, her father died, and she came to
school, and was fine, for like 3 days. I couldn't possibly comprehend
that. How the hell is this girl surviving? Then he left, and I was fine.
Fine. For like...3...weeks. Then it hit me. And I was sent into this
period of silent mourning, because he was the only person who ever
understood my mourning, and he wasn't there for it to become notsilent
anymore. There I was, crying my ass off in the dead of night into a
Mickey Mouse pillow with nothing in my mind except a bad day. Nothing.
Bad day. One Bad Day. He took me to watch airplanes land. Him laying
back in the driver's seat, wondering aloud about his future as a pilot,
and me chuckling the response that I'd be glad to lay back in my own
driver's seat, comfortable in knowing that he was the one landing the
plane I was staring at. Completely comfortable, and not really silent.
"When you get here, I'll make my special hot chocolate!!!"
Get here. Get here. Get here. I've been waiting for Christ's
sake. I've never been this sad in my life. Sad. Ugh, how fucking vague.
I am overwhelmingly filled with unhappiness. This is my body, somewhere
in here is me, it's buried and I can't fucking find the damn thing.
Complete emptiness surrounding the slug in this shell which is my, me,
her. Emptiness in every way possible, including the air around my leg in
these pants that are too big in that utterly "hip" way. Laid back and
cool in my baggy jeans.
Laid back and cool with my nicotine ecstacy, my drug-filled entity,
my hate-filled deity, and my love-filled idol.
I've been thrown against walls and had random things busted over
my head, but nothing ever hurt. I can come away laughing, because that is
me. That is my strength, my superficial strength, which I hide behind.
That is the angst-filled teen which shelters me. That is the tortured
artist which makes me survive within my little, suburban world. A little
brick house here, a little brick house there, and we're all having
children, and buying the new shoes on sale in the mall, and we're all
eating pretzels at the state fair, and getting sick on the teacup ride at
Disneyland, and we're all touching our foreheads and torsos and arms and
whatever and praying to everyone who is our father and our son and our holy
ghost or holy spirit or something. Something. I guess that's anything,
but anything is anything and everything is anything and someone is anything
and somehow is anything and something..is...something. Nothing is
Nothing, it's the reflexive property of life, which is oddly like algebra.
There's a little girl, in twenty years she'll be a big girl, what
is x? I don't know. I got a fucking D minus in algebra. I shouldn't have
though. I should be an A student! I am talented and gifted and special
and I have a thirst for knowledge and I learn quickly and I'm an
outstanding student and humanitarian and everything else that could be
outstanding about me, except that I don't really give a shit. Oh, well,
their loss, one more scholarship to give away to someone other than me who
can quickly become gifted and talented and special and have a thirst for
knowledge and learn quickly and be an outstanding student or humanitarian
or anything else. Whatever. I don't care. I don't.
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[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #530 - WRITTEN BY: TASHA - 3/21/99 ]