3 january start the new year catching up,
hello, my name is justin, i'm an old friend of yours.
once, i borrowed money from you to play some video games
do you still want it back? i fooled around with your woman once, but you were out of town.
i gave you a hug when your dad died.
it's been so long since we've seen each other, should we bother with the fill in, or keep the conversation contextual?
i'm working on dominic sagolla's 20th anniversary macintosh. it's an extremely elegant computer with great stereo potential, which i'm using for jungle music. it's powered in part by solar panels, in part by a gasoline generator outside. i'm in the santa cruz mountains, 40 mintues from silicon valley. here they logged many decades ago, trees have since grown back enough to make this feel like an old place.
dom is arranging magnetic poetry on a whiteboard of some sort, sitting on the floor behind me.
i'm at his house, he lives here with nadine; "casa de bear"
amy is downstairs reading the new haruki murakami book, something about a clockwork bird. it's wonderful to be here with her, it's like we're on vacation. she was going to make a souffle today, but we have no souffle pan. we haven't imbibed any intoxicants in 24 hours - yesterday we had a pitcher of margaritas with lunch here in boulder creek. but last night when our friends here, some swarthmore goths and local geeks, were smoking up, we opted out. feeling a little stupid still, we are, from the last week,
when wilson came to visit.in the midst of 9th and irving/sunset restaurant district asked wilson what he wanted to eat:wilson was pretty much antagonistic towards virtual amy at swarthmore. he resented me sitting on the phone ("honey honey honey" he imitated in a whiny nasal) and writing to her all the time. his abrasive style didn't quite connect with her blunt questioning when i thrust the two of them into communication together.
i was surprised and happy and apprehensive when he (agreed? suggested?) coming to new years in san francisco. thing about wilson, while he promised to entertain himself, and he did wake up on east coast time two to three hours before amy and i, he left us to our mornin' lovin' - he demands consistant attention while offering relatively little patience.
but it went great he was witty and amy was wise -the two of them got along as anyone could hope
we hung out wilson amy and i, with another lotus house guest, yuri, an odd little girl with a off-site stare and non-sequitor questions,
and daniel, a german visitor with taste in wine and polyester disco clothes like only europeans can dress that prefectly hip
he actively and invidividually endeavored to have the lotus cats paint. he also played with jerome the kitty's penis. amy sez her german stepfather does that too - plays with the pet's balls, and sez "dingy dings!" is that a german thing?wilson talked to duncan, told him to come. that expanded the houseguest size and the agressive energy in amy-wilson-justin-now duncan grouping. wilson and duncan would walk ahead or sit together and every once in a while make some conversation with amy and i sitting together which made me a little restless or stressed out (though i was partying - coffee, alcohol, cannaboids, and that makes me anxious too). having duncan-sidekick there expanded wilson's propensity to sarcastically observe our surroundings and compete for things. or so i saw it being with amy, who was bleeding between her legs and so maybe a little bit more bitchy than usual
there were good memorable times together, like the four of us having left rheingold's white-themed new years party (where wilson declared "the room is thick with age" and spookmark declared wilson and duncan-gonuts highcomedic pleasures)
we four passed new years on (bart) public transportation laughing at our regret. each time on public transit wilson would suspend himself from the bars overhead or to the side and perform some isometric exercise
"a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a 40." but the lowest point was probably all fucked up four of us sitting in the lotus kitchen late new years having elected to drink together instead of party-searching on foot and wilson says now what about the swarthmore joke about duncan fooling around with amy
what god damn joke was he talking about?
my dumb macho shit bong toting beer swilling neighbor friends talking shit about the woman i love and the pervert we know duncan
who experts here agreed seems like the type of young man likely to show little girls the killing of cats
that far away pervert look in his eyes
so the last thing i want is him looking my egg over like a piece of meat and some wilson challenge of our relationship
i took it about as well as i could - "what fucking joke are you talking about?"
wilson gets that cocksure grin on his face
hey man i did it for ben, he would be pissed if i didn't bring it up
amy took it her way, sure give me fifty bucks and we'll go in the back
and nobody took her up on it
the conversation had been land mined,
duncan left the room and came back and stood behind amy made a lewd face and gesture and wilson laughed and amy was in the midst of speaking and didn't get the crowds reaction and what am i supposed to do there? insane layered social combat. sociopathicpsychotic.
which is why having wilson and duncan tired me. maybe if i/we had been not eating bacon and eggs and drinking bloody marys at wakeup and bonghits all the day. that blues stuff is good for music but i don't have the bite to be a bluesman. to play that game they started means punching someone or getting down home and kicking their ass, out of my house - taking ownership of the situation and my woman. but that isn't my life. i can't keep up, it's too soul/spirit tiring - that's why i stopped hanging with jerry as well - he was a grizzled master to wilson's freshfaced apprenticeship.
being high and talking did (perhaps cause to be) reveal that wilson didn't really know what i'm studying at swarthmore - because each time i bring it up ben cuts me off/down.
i wanted them to spar with the assembled ellen and kiersti and yuri and daniel, but by that late at night wilson was ready to sleep and occupying increasingly large portions of the couch. because the interspersed moments of gleaming wilson make the whole trip a pleasant memory.
constant social competition. that's been my life at swarthmore last semester - amidst four or five witty white guys. or at least that's the way it looks from here today. few female friends who aren't being fucked.
other times amy learned to laugh with duncan's inconstant nature, wilson's sparkishness and they were funny. and lively. and i was never insecure of losing her - our two or three times daily sex since i arrived has been fantastic. it is never boring. that's amazing. each time is distinct or just sheer fun. so i don't worry about her leaving me or getting caught up with another man. but i did get high and brood on my mom's advice that i search out other chicks.
but amy consistently and unconsciously refutes each and every reason i develop to constrain our relationship to a phase.
these last two/few days up here in the mountains she has been making nonstop fun of me. each statement of mine comes with an amy rejoinder poking my puffounery. then she thoroughly listens to me continue to concoct my thesis.
what a gal!
amy writes:
it's true I hated wilson and duncan too and loved them two misogynists through and through so being born a woman what to do offer my services drugs and brew to the famed fanatical swarthmore crew"it's hard having a girlfriend, I know," wilson would say, citing endless self-satisfied episodes of estrogenic horror.
yeah, I never give up friends or time to cater to my never-needy time-taxed lover.
but it is never hard, this saint/slut/mother cybormold. never hard to be introduced at parties with no name. never hard to be diluted into some ghostly potion of poetic cliche, mused up, rolled flat by the blink-screen press and baked in word cake.
eat me.
noone here is anyone's bitch, justin, wilson, duncan or me. I said I fall for lesbian men without assigning the boy a subservient role, cause "female" doesnt key in as "bitch" in my word search, get it?
next | january '98 | prev
justin hall | <justin at bud dot com>