desire and boredom: Dec. 31, 2007 (2:27 pm)

in two thousand and four, five and six i would bike almost an hour to spend maybe two hours with you in the grocery store where you worked and we would walk around the aisles together while you faced the boxes and cans and i (this is what you remember and i don't) stood with my hands in the pockets of my, depending on the weather, jeans or sweatshirt or winter coat and then go out back to take cigarette breaks that lasted for much longer than a cigarette. and then there was that year and a half of silences broken by sometimes rare and sometimes frequent cross country emails after you moved to la and i stayed in cambridge finding new men to smoke with and even finding men to date in that same loveless way i listened to you talk about dating girls back when we lived in the same city. and then you spent a total of twelve hours driving back and forth from new hampshire to my bedroom for four evenings in the span of two weeks: first for my party when we came up to my room so i could give you a book of rilke i didn't need and when we kissed before you went back outside to drive your sister and your best friend back to new hampshire and second when you came alone and we kissed in my bed and third when you came alone again and we kissed immediately and watched true stories in the living room and kissed and had sex in a way which reminded you of the first time you had sex and fourth when you came alone with a bottle of bad red wine and a copy of neutral milk hotel's in the aeroplane over the sea and a copy of brian eno's and david byrnes' my life in the bush of ghosts and we knew we would kiss again and we knew we would have sex again and we did and then we had a cigarette on the porch and you left for new hampshire to leave for la neither of us knowing that we'll kiss again or have sex again but mostly not even remembering those facts but instead the words (about actual love and about visiting more often but not expecting me to wait around and about maybe in five years we'll have more than two weeks) and the softer touches (you laying down on my bed and me sitting on your thighs drinking red wine out of the same old mugs and listening the joan of arc's live in chicago, 1999 and you laying down in my lap and touching my hand touching your chest) that are hard to place into the narrative of my memory of our two weeks.

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