I wrote this in the wee hours of the morning in August of 2010, the same long night/morning that I stayed out for what seemed like forever exploring every unlocked door in the Portland Hilton, two old friends in tow - one of whom I'd a fairly serious former crush for. I was stone-drunk and silly, and flitting about like some sort of lovesick wino, swimming in her beauty and the afterglow of a kiss stolen in the fluttering light of a dark hallway at 6 am. I sent this to her, but I don't know if she cares much for writing. Or writers. Who knows. I'm posting it because reading it every once in a while reminds me of how excited I can allow myself to be when I just drop my guard a little bit.
I stayed up all night. All fucking night. For two days straight. Wrestling with old, dull demons inside my heart, them clawing the membranes, the veins, the ventricles of the stuff inside my chest. I drank way too much, didn’t eat, didn’t think with anything but my heart, the same organ being torn by the little claws of spontaneity. Not with my brain, or whatever else I’m supposed to think with. My guts, maybe? My guts had shit for brains. None of that mattered. I lunged with the bile-heavy verve of whatever was left in the tank. I made decisions in nano-seconds, took forbidden fire exits to 18th floor fire escapes (17th floor?), peering unto the twinkling twilight of the west hills of Portland, Oregon, (O, funky red Montgomery Park sign! O, neon blue Volvo beacon!) with my life residing on the opposite side, my cat nestling in the shady dawn of the firs of Tabor, my bed resting flea-ridden in a sweltering southeast cubby hole, like the brimming twitches of my reason in the fervency of a Hilton haunted labyrinth.
I navigated the crags, the avenues, restrooms, fancy convention speaking rooms with the PA left on for everything to resonate, the unlocked pool, the unlocked useless exercise room, the elevators with the fancy buttons, evading the African security guard, so far away from the archaic, creaky staircases of my home. But barely far enough, actually. Not too far to remember why I was here. Why I longed for this moment for the last eight years. Why I knew that no matter what consequences I’d meet by virtue of this hastiness, I was prepared. I was prepared. She was here for me. I was here for her.
And Lindsay looks at me like she did in 2002, like she did when I was but a stranger, still a stranger, in fact, in most ways, but hardly at all in these labyrinthine corridors - excavated behind the safety of the secret kitchens, where meals for broken kings have been think-tanked and prepared, to fuel bad decisions, awful fuel for awful men. She undresses in the mystery caverns of this homage to consumerism, happy for a swim, to be seen by me in her negligee, to splash in the know-nothing revelry of a west coast vacation, where we’ve finally seen each other again! Rejoice! It was not supposed to happen! We were a footnote in the aged annals of romance; a blueprint for the ways in which young lovers begin their bon voyages toward the promise of what was once promised all young lovers, but which has since been trampled.
But not anymore, you see.
We are making it right, in some way true, by usurping its banality; by proving, in some way unknown, to even us, that to ignore a rift in the alleyways of the blips in time and in a kind of love, or lust, or severe attraction, is the ultimate tragedy. That to forget the fact that time can sometimes stand still is the source of everything awful in the world. That to insist on the impulse of the heart is a triumph in the face of this electric world.
And we grin in the shadows at each other with electric smiles, needing each other to know what we already know. What we knew eight years prior. That the forgotten folds of the heart yield not the detriments, strictly, of unknown, sulking demons, like those old, dull specters residing in stasis inside my chest. That the want of the core of us is the life of the earth, and that regardless of anything ever thought of in the history of the world, any barriers erected, any philosophies accepted and passed on, the religions of the weak, the fickle jealousies espoused from the maws of the cores of the wicked requires but a simple sidestep to ensure that which makes everything really work. That like, or love, or tender respect, or forever-admire, is something to strive toward, forever, and with serious gravity. And we will strive toward it, our hearts in our hands, in our smiles, in our eyes, until all are one for even one moment again. There is nothing more important.
