September 14th 2010

email from me

I’m writing.  I know.

I know I know I know.

Just…

Please. 

I keep thinking about what you were saying, about feeling the blame for my health and creativity. 

um.

From the very beginning.  From the first long drive home to Ocean Grove and the conversations in the dark of my bedroom…  I wanted to give you at least one person who’d be safe.  One person to joyfully hang out with on Halloween or Christmas or whenever, to be un-inebriated with amongst the crowd of screaming retards.  and.  One person to possibly almost sort of trust yourself with.  Have “faith” in.  To be safe with in different ways.

And that’s why I fell apart sobbing in my driveway, collapsing into your arms.  Because…  regardless of whatever logic and justifiable reasoning and hurt that might have preceeded it, my actions when we were apart were something that … butchered in you exactly what I’d wanted to preserve and grow and give you. 

And after the show, when you told me what had upset you, I held it together driving back from Brooklyn, but I was tear-welling the whole time until I ended up home, and I was trying really really hard not to accidentally cry in front of <your friend>, and I thought he caught me once or twice.  Because there, too, I’d wanted to be at least ONE person in your life with whom you could be not just the solitary sober person.  One person to have a fun and beautiful time that could be unmarred by dirt and grime.  A person worth trusting in the world that keeps disappionting you.  To prove that I could be something good.  And i’d failed.

I’ll feel awful for that forever.  For both.  I’ll always hate part of myself and be disappointed in the person that I was.  Because.  I failed.  At everything I wanted to be for you.  And because it was what I wanted to be for you, it was the most important goal I had, really.

But I didn’t do those things knowing the affect they’d have.  In that respect, I didn’t do anything wrong.  But that doesn’t change the effect, and it doesn’t change the shame and hurt I feel for causing it. 

Same as you.  Same as my health and my art. 

We aren’t in each other’s brains.  We simply can’t get everything right.  Maybe we had high expectations because of how amazingly well we fit and supported each other, and thought we would continue to do so in every way, in every situation.

That’s why I brought up the driving to the show example.  Not as a hated character flaw, but as something that I can’t always SEE through…..    and it will lead me (and others) down paths that will unintentionaly hurt you (and others), and which will only lead you to pull even further away from anyone –  miscommunication that will lead you to be a “disappointment to” and/or “disappointed of” those around you.  I brought it up in the hopes that you might be able to spare yourself some vicious cycles of hurt and lonliness.  I brought it up because I don’t want to end up hurting you again.

You didn’t do the things you did to to make me stress-sick and grey-brained.  You’ve done what you’ve done to try and find yourself in your own head, not thinking you’d have such an effect.  So did I.  So please don’t say things on purpose just to hurt.

You’ve still been more actively accepting and understanding of my health than anyone, and more actively supportive of my art than anyone.  Nobody else is still willing to be near me AND be patient.  Yeah, there’s other people who haven’t caused me the same sort of hurt and harm, but they’ve always been at a distance.  It’s better to be close to someone and occasionally get an elbow in the ribs, than to never touch at all. 

The thing is, things like my health and my art…  they are a holistic part of me.  The best way for me to feel inspired and active and trying at art, and the best way for me to take my sickness in stride and not be all consumed by it is…  to have the wonderful and fabulousness that I saw in us together.  To feel I belong with someone, and that I’m understood.  To have one person that I’d give everything for.  And to feel that person feel all that back at me. 

And what kills art, what makes everything seem ashen and grey, what magnifies every panic and pain, is to be broken hearted and feel so much of I thought I had in you be whisked away, and be left in an mist without the merest definition.

I wish it didn’t hurt to be close with you, and the have the longing and the gasping for air that comes with having no ground under my feet.  But it does, and it just makes the hurt grow.

So, I guess this is a state of…  emotional chemotherapy.

Hoping that with enough time and examination, the hurt will shrivel up and die away, and what’s left is strong enough to survive and flourish.  As a different life.

Or maybe we’ll end up succumbing to the poison in this slow weakening treatment of diminishment.  And be dead to one another. 

Right now hairless and gasping for air.  On the brink.

I just can’t help but think what a terrible shame it is that we should have been supporting each other through this time of stress, could have been helping each other.  Could have been enjoying the possibility of discarding the lives that haven’t treated us well, and the people who don’t fit, and embracing new futures. 

New futures that were built with each other in mind. 

If things were different, I’d have enjoyed setting up the archetecture of my new life around meshing with yours.  Being fabulous together.  Stronger than the sum of our parts.

I’m not sure I understand why you never thought to offer me even just a temporary refuge at your home when I got kicked out, after you’d spent a third of your time with me at mine for years.  Or why not maybe welcomed me into just visiting your house more while I’ve been so clearly trapped and isolated and not doing well in New Providence.  It’s really effected me.  I’m not sure I understand how it was possible to keep me apart for so long, and not worth defending and defying the way you did for <The Brother>’s girlfriend, not worth welcoming into your house like you were willing to accept in the joblessness and alchoholism of <Roommate’s Girlfriend>. 

Unless you wanted to keep me apart.     

It’s been a big deal.  It’s  become one of the glaring differences between us being “just friends” or “more than friends”.  It’s been one of those things that isn’t what I thought we were.  When I got kicked out, everyone I knew asked me, at some point, why I’d not just stay with you, when you’d stayed with me so often. 

And then I watched your house gain women.  Watched from a distance while your roomates had constant company of their “more than friends”. 

(and then…  the thoughts:  why you’d invite others over your house, and tell me no [yes, I am still confused about your stripper party and don’t understand your explanation, and would really appreciate it if you could put that to rest so it’d stop eating my brain, how someone could take a train to your house for your party, needing a ride to your house and a place to crash, all arranged without you knowing]; why you’d keep the painting I made you hidden in a closet; why you’d sleep with me when you knew my emotions were romantic….  and I can’t not think that it’s ….  me.  That I’m not….  not….  )

It’s…  been really difficult….  to not feel awful.  

I don’t understand why…  when I’d explained to you how it’d made me feel, why it all continued. 

Don’t feel bad about my health.  Or my artistic output.  You didn’t know.  You didn’t see it.

But….  if you could explain to me…  why you did the things you DID know had negative effects on me…  The things that others were offered…

That would help.  It would help speed up this chemo process, in one direction or the other.

…..

You’ve said a number of times that it’s the fact that I was the one to hand you a drink.  That you’d not expect it from ME of all people.  But you beleive that I didn’t do it on purpose to hurt you, right?

That’s the same way I feel about finding out we’d not been exclusive; that you’d rather me find someone else to “really like”. 

(I look back at all those intimate moments.  Every single kiss having meaning.  Moments of trembling and being breathless just from the overwhelming emotions I’d have from kissing you.  Feeling for so long that…  you were my heart.  My absolutely everything.  My romantic ideal.  And finding out that …  you’d not been there with me. )

Neither were said to hurt.  Neither were done to hurt.  But they hurt.

Because ….  we both thought…  we were understood.  That’s where the real hurt comes from.  That we thought we knew.  We thought…  we had finally found someone who really and truly understands the important parts.  And we got hurt in really vulnerable places where neither of us really trust anyone enough to let in.  And now we look back and wonder about all those moments of close, and wonder if it was real at all, when there’s something so important we got wrong for each other.

Both looking at each other, and thinking “but you were supposed to KNOW.”

But see…. 

That’s the kind of thing that can be fixed.  That can be mended by learning.

Hurting by accident is always forgivable.

---

September 16th 2010

email from me

Here’s my train of thought at the moment:

I’d tried….  to bring us on events.  Like….  dates sorta.  To find new things for us.  New memories.  That was one of the other tactics I’d tried.  The museum day….  the Faith no More Show…  were failures.

My not being allowed to stay over your house…  That isn’t a reaonable request from a roommate.  I mean, seriously.  Not leaving the windows open overnight, not playing movies too late when people are sleeping, ok, that’s a “well, you live with people, you gotta compromize” sort of thing.  But to have an issue with a fellow housemate having female company because of bathroom use is….  insane.  You are adult men.  having an overnight guest even once week is totally normal.

This has never been an issue of me trying to pry in to your life.  It’s….  It’s really hurt that you’d cater to uch an obviously out-there request….  when that’d mean we couldn’t ever share a bed together.  There were so many small issues of home politics that you’d told me you’d move out over without blinking an eye.  And me coming over was never on that list.

I….  I got shit from my family about you staying over so often.  It caused some stress.  I don’t know if that’ played into <StepMom>’s wierd and cryptic complaint of me being “disrespectful”  But….  to imply I couldn’t have overnight guests when I wanted was unreasonable, and that time together with you was too important to me.  I didn’t tell you for probably the same reason you didn’t tell me.  But I fought for it.  I’m glad I did.  It was always worth it. 

And it isn’t the issue in itself.  It’s…  it just makes me then wonder how important that time was to you, if complaints about hair in the shower drain would keep me away.  Like I wonder what our intimacy meant to you, when it became a romantic sharing to me by that first winter, and I wa so consumed by you even then that nobody would ever catch my attention while you were a part of my l ife.

And like everything else, the ituations go in pairs.  If we go forward, then…  I don’t have to think about what happened before.  If you have issue of the past and who we were with, than I’m stuck there too. 

So,
If you come over to my house 4 days in a row, it only glaringly points out how unwelcome I am in your home, and all that brings.  That we are sitting here, on my couch, quietly, franticly checking the clock to make ure you leave on time….  instead of bonding in pajamas watching movies.  My favorite moment with you are the pajama times.

so…  I tried dates.

New memories. 

New patterns.

Now…  crazy as I am….

I saw that Eraserhead is playing at midnight at the IFC this weekend.  And I thought maybe….  we could have a day.  A glorious autumnal day in the city.

But

I remembered that I’m on my way to <Vermont Friend>’s wedding, if my head behaves.  I’ll end up catching a ride with the middle brother, I think.  I’d wanted to bring you.  I’d liked to have seen you in a suit.  I;d liked the idea of you actually being my “date” to something.  I’d be proud.  In your stead, I was going to bring this fellow Bart – He’s a college/Drew friend who happened to be <Vermont Friend>’s second cousin.  He cancelled last week.

And today I thought…  maybe that’s fortunate.  Maybe…  you’d…. 

Maybe this could be the NewEngland weekend you thought I meant.

Maybe you’d go with me, even if my hair is silly.

There’s gonna be a petting zoo.

Maybe…  the past could really not matter so much.

Maybe that’s too much to expect at the moment.

Maybe I should just go by myself and accept the fact that we shouldn’t be together, and let this be a first step in really truly separating myself from you.

I hope your headache feel better.

---

email from Stefan

I’ve read and heard a lot in the last few days. I’ve explained again and again that our situations aren’t comparable, have different legal bindings, and there is a difference between a house with no people…and a house with….other people. I have explained (to your dissatisfaction of course) what it’s like to be me in this house and how I am not <The Brother>, or anyone else who lives here. I am Stefan. There is no comparing. You’ll only hurt yourself and come to poorly thought out conclusions with lots of room for self deprecation to fill in the blanks of an already badly thought out scale of comparison.

I hate being compared to people….but you do it constantly. And even after last night. Again…letting you tell me what you want, and question me (again), I gave you whatever answers I could, and you seemed a tad pleased. Now, today…you write to me making sure I know that once again, everything I said, went right through you and all the same comparisons continue. But not only that….but you have a new thing to blame me for.  Getting kicked out of your house. Thanks. I didn’t even finish my coffee yet and you tell me I’m (once again) the reason for a terrible thing that happened to you. Then you throw a barrage of underhanded comments of how you sacrifice for me where I wouldn’t and didn’t for you. I could give a thousand examples of things I’ve done for you that haven’t been reciprocated but that’s because I understand that people do what they can, and I don’t compare my feats to yours. You do.  Still do.   Always will.

As soon as I read ,” it just makes me then wonder how important that time was to you”…I just about had it. I didn’t erase it. I just scrolled down to reply.  I’m tired of waking up to insults and blame. This is why I told you I’m done with you.

If you have something rude to write in response, or you don’t like my opinions, just erase this and leave me alone.  I’m constantly assessed, insulted, and compared by you.  I think I’ve tolerated quite a bit in the last two weeks, and despite you telling me I was yelling, I still listened, and let you ask me questions. And, tried to answer them.


This i a bit much to read right now considering I didn’t even drink coffee yet, and I had a dream I was on a slow roller coaster made of pulsing entrails and woke up frantic. If you can’t understand or respect my feelings…please leave me alone. Much like you wonder how much our time meant to me, I wonder (all the time) how much my feelings mean to you.

This is what’s on my mind.

I’ll read the rest of this later. I hope it doesn’t get worse.

---

email from me

I wasn’t comparing you to <The Brother>.

I was comparing you to you. There was a whole host of times and thing that you’d said to me were issues for which you’d move out without hesitation, but something as honestly bizarre as not being allowed to have an overnight guest any more frequently than once every two months, something far and beyond reasonable expectation, wasn’t one of them. I was asking why. I was asking how you felt about that.

I never ever EVER blamed you for getting me kicked out of my house. I chose to have you over. I chose to keep to myself any sort of stresses that caused. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, and felt they’d no right to dictate what I did. I did it, not you.

There were no insults whatsoever in my email.

Look…. I’m not trying to say that I’m more willing to sacrifice across the board. I’m wondering where the focus is. I’m wondering if our physically intimate times were as important and integral a part of our interaction as they were to me, or if…. even then, and even on that level, I was more engaged in the sexual/romantic aspect of us, and if you have always seen that as something less important, as delicious but perhaps unnecessary icing on the cake of us, and are perfectly satiated to just sit on a couch and only touch when we hug goodbye. To me, that’s a situation that leaves me wanting and sad. To you, maybe it’s enough.

(( There are parts of me that I’ve never shared with anyone ever but you, many vulnerable places I never show, and most of those manifest in the physical. I’m not very good at expressing… at saying… um… y’know… the mooshy stuff. But…. I can scream my love for you like a banshee through the way I touch you, and give myself entirely over. It’s… only you. Only you. ))

Regardless, I feel it’s important to figure that out. It might explain some of the tangles.

Being that we’ve not had any definitions, any real talk about what things mean for a very long time and were coming to our own concluions, there ARE going to be comparions between us. The whole deal of things wierd between us is a difference in how I feel for you, how you feel for me, and what we feel are the boundaries we each personally hold that to.

When I tell you that something hurts me, I’m not calling you a monster. When I tell you that something upset me, I’m not insulting you. I’m telling you how I feel, and how things effect me.

If you could separate that, if you could maybe keep that in mind, it might keep from you feeling like I’m attacking you, blaming you, and insulting you. I cannot help the way I feel, and I’m trying to communicate with you, not accuse you, or win points. Perhaps if you kept that perspective in mind while reading back anything I’d written to you, you might see my words in a different light. You might see less finger pointing, and more “these are where my scars are. where are yours? why do we have them?”

I do desperately care about your feelings. I’m trying to understand them. I’m begging for understanding. But then, when I ask, you often feel I’m accusing and interrogating. Honestly, I’ve wondered for a very long time how you felt about me, about us being together, how important our relationship was, how intimate our sexual relationhip was, if you were still interested in being sexual with someone else. This isn’t accusation. This is me trying to understand your feelings on things.

Maybe if I did, i’d not be so hurt about certain things. Maybe if I weren’t so hurt, you’d not feel like a monster.

I hope you read the rest of my other email.

July 14th 2010

email from Stefan

I almost lost my mind last night. The last two nights actually. I think I’m okay for the moment now.

I wish things were sorted out and handled between us. I wish there weren’t these big lingering issues that we’ve not properly hashed out. I’m still left with so much doubt and anger over things. But, there are new troubles that are taking up my time and making it hard for me to stop and think. And, of course, when we’re hanging out, it’s just nice to relax and enjoy company. Something I don’t get much of. But, I’m a ball of fire when I start thinking.

Anyway…that’s not what I wanted to say, or talk about right now. I can’t handle that topic today.

What I meant to say is…thanks for the Vincent Price toy and the wheel. I wish you wouldn’t spend your money on me. I’m working hard to get myself out of my monetary hole. You know I like to take care of myself. But, thank you. I appreciate it. And I wish you’d let me give you the money for it.

Umm, so…I guess I lost my watch at the sushi house like you suggested. I went to Target and bought another blackish copper watch to throw on, and I got you a watch too. It had the Batman Beyond art on the box, but I saw the face had Batman from the animated Series. And sure enough, so did the band. So…it looks like it could be one of those random items made in a Target sweatshop, so…I got it. It’s also for kids so, it couldn’t fit on my wrist at all. But you should be able to put it on with ease. So, I don’t know about the channel, but it’ll always be the Battime for you now.

Anyway, I have to go to my house to check on my Dad and then do a consult. Maybe even have this guy in to look at the drum kit. Sigh, I fuckin’ overwhelmed right now. My mom better not be crying. I’ll tell her to stop. Anyway, sorry. Bye.

oh, and…

Look at my blog. I pretty much posted that picture of the Kitten for you to look at. Look at his little draped paws.

---

email from me

Funny. I just finally got the pictures off of my camera and started messing with the kitten pictures just last night. I was gonna upload them today to show you.

But yours is better, I think.

Also, I meant to mention…  seeing on your blog that you’d made a new pastel put a big huge happy grin on my face.  I smiled and said “… good”  outloud.

If you are losing your mind, you DO KNOW that you can call or come by at any time, right?  I mean, I can’t make you trust me, that’s something that has to be earned, but if you do at all trust me, you can always call me.  There’s no imposition.  It’s….

I know you like to take care of things yourself.  But…  see, the best way I can put it is this.  This is silly and cheesy, but…  bear with me.

Babylon 5.  (i think you might like it, actually.  It’s a bit overdramatic, but it’s sci-fi that’s based on intricate plot instead of special effects.)  Earth’s government is being taken over by outside influence, Babylon 5 is on the verge of separating from Earth, while battling an evil empire. 

That’s…  that’s the scene that’s been going through my head.  A lot.  It…  it explains things the way I wish I could.  The way I have things in my head. 

Um.

---

July 15th 2010

email from me

I think we should figure out how to go to Berlin for a few years. 

I think….  I need to find something to shoot for.  I think going to Berlin (with you) might be something to strive for.  I think it might be one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.  If I get SSI, I can use Kin’s address as my mailing address, and have direct deposit, and use my first settlement to go overseas and live off SSDI while I try to figure out if I could survive there.  I know you’d survive anywhere, and I imagine you might thrive in a place like Berlin.

And maybe you don’t want to go there.  And maybe I will end up going without you.

I guess that’s part of what I don’t understand about things between us.  Because I accept that the future is always totally unknown…  that methane could fill the earth and humanity could be doomed.  That either of us could die tomorrow.  That I could go mad.  That my body could break down.  That you might decide to hightail it to LA.  THat you might meet someone who is everything you wish I was, and better.  That we might both need lives where the other can’t follow.  That’s why…  I don’t understand why we wouldn’t give ourselves to each other while we can.  While we are part of each other.  While we are both HERE.  Because our lives could shift it bizarre and changing ways at any moment.  Because our lives are always going to be messy and stressful and chaotic.

People still make long term plans, knowing that they could get hit by a bus tomorrow.  There’s always that chance.  Things might always go terribly terribly wrong.

But…  they might not.  We might be ok.  And we might end up being permanent fixtures in each other’s existence.  And as of my reality as my life is now, as it has been for a few years, and as I can imagine it in the future…  You are the one for me.  I’d rather plan out my future assuming you might be my partner in this painful/wierd/joyous/struggling adventure of life.

Or at least be able to look back and have the fabulous experience of having shared each other compltely and entirely for a time.

That’s kinda my stance on things.

You probably won’t read this til tomorrow. 

---

email from Stefan

I just read this. I’m not ignoring it. I just don’t know how to respond right now. Things are a bit messy. I took a shot of 100 proof Irish whiskey that night I left your house in a rush. Once I got home from my folks…I was angry, and anxious…I just looked at the bottle on the counter…..and…poured myself a shot and threw it back. I….don’t really understand what happened or what made me do it but I have no time or interest in assessing that situation right now. My mother just went to Atlanta on business for a week so I’m even more worried bout my Dad. I have to stop there all through the week now. And…I’m about to lose a client unless I get this drawing done and email it asap.

Yep…I’m fuckin’ ruined right now. But…I have to try to stay on top of things and trust solely on myself as I’ve done in past times of overwhelming stew being ladled over my head.

Sorry I have nothing nice to say right now. I just…have to deal with my issues alone.

P.S. I watched that clip. It was a good scene. I may even watch the episode. Anyway…I have to get to work and hope I momentarily forget that I have a full deck of problems to sort out. Maybe I’ll watch that episode while I draw.

---

July 16th 2010

email from me

Babylon 5 is too continuity based to just watch one episode.  I think…  maybe it’d be nice and comforting, though, if we watched B5 together.  Like we used to watch Star Trek?  We can watch episodes together, while apart and in bed.

Penn & Teller are fans, and even made an appearance in the extra season.  The season finale was SUPPOSED to happen at the end of the fourth season.  Or whatever the second to last season was.

Um.

Yes.

So….  wait. 

“Sorry I have nothing nice to say right now.  I just…have to deal with my issues alone.”

but also:

“I watched that clip. It was a good scene.”

Um. 

um…….. 

See, but you DON’T need to say anything nice.  That’s kinda the whole point.  No, I can’t solve your big problems.  But I can help with the small things.  Or, I can just be there to keep you company so that you aren’t trudging through things alone.  And I’d like the opportunity to keep from making things worse.  I mean, what if I went on a tirade in front of <roommate’s girlfriend> about Mother’s Day, if I’d no idea she’d just had a death?  I’d like to not end up doing such emotionally equivalently shitty things to you. 

Let me know when you think you might get some breathing room.  I decided I’m going to ask Aunt Mary if you and I could have the beach house for a week or so.  I thought we could both use it.  Fox Fest is coming, and… 

y’know, I had planned on asking you to go with me this year.  To Fox Fest.  I never brought anyone to Fox Fest before.  But…

I feel terribly uncomfortable around my family.  Because aside from you, I’m pretty much embarrassed of just about everything else in my current life.  It makes for really awkward small talk and “whatcha been up to?” from aunts and uncles.  I’ve decided that this year, I’m going to go to Fox Fest and pretend you are with me.  I’ll keep a small Stefan in my head, and hopefully it’ll keep me from feeling small.  Hopefully I’ll have great confidence.  Which I do, when I know you’ve got my back.  Maybe next year?

Y’know….  I’ve offered before, but if you want company….  I don’t mind hanging out with you, and busying myself while you take care of clients.  That’s only a few hours.  There’s still drawing-time, and watching-things-time, and just making the banality of every day a little bit better.  Maybe we could help keep each other afloat in the midst of life sucking everything dry.

I don’t feel right when…  days pass and I don’t connect with you in some small way.

you just appeared.  so I’m sending this.

---

stefan: ?
me: hah.
me: hang on.
stefan: I missed a joke?
me: nope.
me: I was just finishing emailing you.
me: sent.
stefan: oh.
stefan: well….just because I think it’s a good scene and a good message doesn’t mean I think it’s particularly the way for me to deal. Ya know….I agree with it objectively.
stefan: anyway…I don’t want to get into philosophical stuff on gchat.
stefan: I think you know what I mean though.
me: I do.
me: y’know… just maybe think about it.
me: I think I should lend you the laser.
stefan: and…ya know, with problems I have with us right now..it makes things a bit more difficult.
me: It’s terribly painful, but productive.
stefan: I don’t want that thing.
me: It’s really really really painful.
me: I’ve found it theraputic.
me: ha ha
stefan: Unless you think I have unbecoming body hair?
me: christ, no.
me: I think you are lovely as is.
me: quite.
stefan: my eyebrows?
me: me: christ, no.
I thought you’d wanted some sort of laser, if it were free? That you had your own self consious things of some sort?
stefan did not receive your chat.
me: there, I reposted.
stefan: ah
me: your EYEBROWS?
me: No, you’ve got fabulous eyebrows.
stefan: :/
me: No no no.
stefan: hold on one sec.
me: }:/
me: that’s how you should emoticon youself.
stefan: is that Aku?
stefan: }8D
stefan: }8{
stefan: I don’t knwo.
me: yes, but he needs a tongue.
me: }8{~
me: }B[~
me: does Aku have a nose?
stefan: ]-O-[ TIE FIGHTER
me: ummmm…
stefan: ]-o-[
stefan: ?
stefan: aku has a shih tzu nose
me: (|=)B
me: Your nuisiance.

And we continue to IM online daily and talk on the phone at dawn.

May 14th 2010

email from me

I hope your day went fabulously.  

I can’t sleep.  I mean, I did sleep, but I woke up after 2 hours, and I’ve not been able to get back to sleep.

errrrgggggggg….  um…..  

This email is not angry or annoyed or accusatory at all.  I might bring up topics of frustration, but please, I’m really very happy to have you in my life.  I love the presence of you.

I don’t want to do this.  I don’t want to….  but my head won’t shut up, you see.  

ok.  This really truly isn’t what I was trying to get at last night.  I really didn’t think that I would ever want or need to know…

But.

I think I might have to ask you who it was that you were with while we were involved with each other, and if it was a regular thing.  It’s not that I ….  It’s not that I really want to know.  But I’d imagine that I might end up in situations where I interact with more of your friends at some point….  and I think….  I think the idea that there’s a chance I might meet someone(s?) who was with you while I was in your life….  and who knows that fact….  while I don’t….  and that I could be ignorantly and blindly interacting with that person(s?) at some point….  well, I think that possibility is more than I can handle.

I just keep picturing myself meeting some random friend of yours, saying hello and shaking hands and being my usual over friendly self, and all the while not knowing that you’d been with this person while I was sitting in Ocean Grove wistfully hoping my best friend might stop by.  And she’d know, and you’d know, while I didn’t.  I’d be the fool.

It’s actually that exact sort of scenario that made me feel I had to tell you about my hooking up.  I’d waffled as to whether it was right to tell you; if it had just been a case of me wanting to purge my guilt in a selfish way or not.  I knew I wanted you to know more about me than anyone, but I considered that maybe it was my cross of guilt to bear, if confessing would do nothing but hurt you.  But in the end…  the notion that, remote as it might be, that you and he might end up meeting again somewhere, and the idea that he’d know something that you didn’t, something that occurred while I’d known you…  well, that seemed fundamentally wrong.  

It’s not…  I mean, I’m friends with people I’ve been with, seriously or casually.  You know that.  I have no issue with being friends with people with whom there was sexual interaction.  And again, we’d no contract or conversation, so no, there was no “cheating”, so it’s not like I’m going to get bitchy at her or something.  I just think it’s different to remain in the dark like that, which is really difficult for me.

I don’t want to be…  kept purposely apart from whomever this might be.  That’s not the point, y’know?  I don’t want to not meet your friends.  That won’t change it.  I’d have no problem interacting with someone you’d been with.  If I just end up perpetually not meeting your friends, it will just make me paranoid, and wondering, and sad.  It won’t save me the discomfort.  And…  wouldn’t it be easier on you?  Less stress about it being accidentally revealed?

I’m sure you understand the fact that my head doesn’t stop asking and doing things that i’d rather it not do.  I really hope you understand how much I don’t want to be asking such things.  I hope you know I’d like to not be doing this. 

Gosh, I don’t want to be upsetting you.  I don’t.  I really don’t.

God, I don’t.

Pleeeeaaaase don’t see this as interrogation.  You can understand my perspective in this, can’t you?

Every day….  every single day when I go to bed…  every day that things are still not quite right (or very much not right), every morning I go to bed and I just dream of Ocean Grove days.  I wish I didn’t have to know that those times weren’t….  weren’t exactly what I thought. 

I know, and I understand what you mean about things seeming to regress and get worse.  But…  Y’know, we’d started talking, left a lot of things unresolved, and meanwhile, started hanging out.  It’s a weird sort of tag team of things going on.  So we hang out, enjoy each other, and then the unresolved parts we haven’t gotten to seep out when we least expect it in ways we weren’t predicting.  And once I confessed to you about my fooling around, that became a lot of the focus of our discussions, while what got us weird in the first place has sort of fallen to the side.  I guess that’s why it seems so out of left field with me asking you questions last night, and I’m sorry if I came on far too strong. I just feel like if we bury things before properly killing them we will have living dead zombie issues that creep up and eat our brains when we aren’t expecting.  Which I think is what’s been happening with us lately, actually.

But I really really really don’t think things are getting worse.  I think they are getting better.  But sometimes, it hurts more before things actually heal.  I feel like we are still cutting away at the gangrene bits.  It’s mostly all carved out and discarded…  but there’s still some rotten bits that cling, and those last few bits are small, but deep deep deep in the flesh.  It hurts more to get at it.  But it’s….  better.  And we’ll end up with super sexy legs.

Until this summer, we never ever had issues.  Never.  We spent days and days together and hours of conversation almost daily without a problem for years.  I WILL NOT believe that there’s now parts of our personality and outlook that are suddenly revealed to show us incompatible and incapable of being fucking AWESOME together.  That doesn’t make sense.  I think it’s just the other stuff seeping out where it doesn’t belong.

Once I moved to New Providence, the wierdness of my only visiting your house once every two months started to wear….  and for the first time the notion of our physical relationship, which no longer had a place to flourish, became an issue.  I started to really miss you, the physical comfort of you, even though you came by so wonderfully often.  The physical was the expression of the romantic, and so without that….  it all started to hurt and feel lonely.  

When we are free, we are fine.  When we have a place to be what we are, we work fabulously.  We are learning how to be the awesome we were under far different circumstances than we were.  It’s rocky.  But it’s happening.

(and, by the way, I never meant to imply that you couldn’t come over to my Aunt’s house at all.  I just thought that things should be more 50/50; that I want to escape from my house as much as you do from yours.  You were really amazing with bringing me by your house last weekend, and I can’t tell you enough how beautiful a time I had.)

And….  I’ve been brainstorming and hunting for money ideas.  Just because…  I keep thinking that I want to make enough money so that …..  maybe I could bring us somewhere.

Maybe you could just not feel the constant pressure for a little while.  Maybe you could get to spend just a week of time without thinking of bills and hustling if I could be swimming in money.  Just enough to let you breathe and be without constantly thinking about the crunch.  My incentive for being financially stable and successful is….  you.

Which is ridiculous really, since I know how you are the supporter of most around you.  Including me.  But I want you to feel free.

I loved talking to you this morning.  I really did.  I really can’t express how much I enjoy you.  I just don’t see there being a possibility that you and I aren’t going to be fabulous together.  Things are weird right now, and we both have issues.  But….  I don’t know…  we have been too good together to not be together?  I sorta don’t see an alternative.  I have never been this close, this devoted, this head-over-heels, this comfortable, this seemlessly fitting with, this sexually struck by, this attracted to, this entirely possessed by anyone even a FRACTION as much as I am by you.  

If you’ll have me, if you want me, I’ll keep trying forever and ever in bigger and grander ways.  I know I cannot erase the past, but I can certainly drown it and dwarf it with the massive force of giant fabulous sticky events of joy.  

I know this is long and rambly, and I’m really crazed from lack of sleep these past few days, and I know last night was rough.

So.  When we see each other, or when we speak next….  Whenever you feel you’ve the oomph to discuss this sort of stuff, let me know.  I’ve drained your time too much lately.

IT THUNDERS!!!!  WHEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEE!!!

---

email from Stefan

I’m sure that responding to this email will result in long winded misinterpretation, as you rightly pointed out can often happen. So, because I agree with that we’ll talk about this on phone or in person. I will say though, you’ve no need to say sorry, or preface with telling me your inquiry isn’t accusatory. But, you do realize when I said to you ,”Here we go with the questions you were inevitably leading up to”…I wasn’t kidding. Now, after you shout, “look, I’m not asking for names, times, or places…”, now…you are. I was right.  You want answers. What will you say next that I have the right to keep to myself, then tell me if I do…you’re gone. You again, have conditions I have to lay down to in order to have you in my life or I lose you.  Even though your heart is true, and you’re not feeling powerful or happy about such topics. You really do call the shots. I only say that because I’ve never requested a single thing out of you, nor demanded an answer to anything you haven’t willingly brought up to me. This communication has done nothing but make me feel like I have to answer to you, (which…we both know perfectly well is a function I don’t believe in), has made me frustrated and trapped, and worst of all…has nearly crippled my artistic productivity. I’ve pretty much not been able to sit down and draw a whole picture because of this.This is having a profound affect on my psyche. I haven’t left my house since I drove back home from yours. Not once. You must understand, no matter how you look at this…you’ve been the one to create this opposition and quite simply are saying to me, “Look Stefan…we’re gonna do this my way, or I walk. But, don’t worry…it’ll be fabulous.”   Sometimes I feel like you just don’t accept me for who/what I am. I’ve come down on your character and told you I’m upset and against things you’ve done and speak out about…but I’ve never said once, “Do,tell, and act this way with me or I’m gone”.  That’s…in my opinion, the proof of how I’ve not judged you. Disagreeing with someone’s choices in even the most polarized ways, doesn’t mean you’re judging them. Sometimes it just means you have a brain of your own.Nothing you’ve ever said to me stopped me from giving all I could to you, being there all I could for you, and being affectionate with you.  But, you again…have new conditions, new questions that I told you you’d ask, that you swore you wouldn’t.  And, here we are.

Now,that’s as much as I’ll let myself write, I think that should give you a good idea into what I’m thinking before we talk. Maybe we can cut to the meat of it all. I’ll tell you things, even though there isn’t much to tell. But, I can’t promise you it won’t make me angry that I’m answering to you…it’s a default reaction that again, you know I don’t believe in or take to very well from my conditioning and lifestyle. There are things to talk about.

Now, having said that, I know you feel how you feel and so do I. We think differently and I’m sure care for each other in nearly mirrored ways. I don’t blame you for wanting to know anything and everything but it doesn’t make it easier one way or the other.  Of course I want to talk to you and glad we had a cigarette from a distance together this morning.  I don’t see your email as interrogation, I just see it as proof that neither of us know what you’ll propose to me next. It’s tough, and fills me with anxiety. 

Okay, I have to work now…and again tomorrow.  I hope you meet <The Brother> in the city to see Metropolis tomorrow. It will be awesome no doubt. 

Talk to you (with voices) later.

---

May 15th 2010

email from me

Ok.

We shall talk about this with words.  Because words are good.

I must say that I’m…  a bit surprised at your take on my controlling the situation…  I mean…  honestly, as far as I have seen it, you’d called all the shots.  

Yes, granted, I’d said things that cast our partnering in a cavalier and non-committal way when we first began.  But you’d said just as many things about how you wanted no committment, not to be tied to anyone, not to be romantically involved, that you were single single single and would stay that way.  I watched as people who asked too many questions, who tried to be too close, or couldn’t handle your distant ways were cut out from your life.  If people couldn’t accept the way that you needed to do things, you’d be rid of them.  That makes sense.

After the first year or so of us being together, I no longer said such cavalier things or referred to myself as single.  I told you things with words when we were in bed that were romanticy.  I wrote you emails that shone quite a light on the nature of my twiterpated feelings for you.  While you have forgotten the conversation we’d had in which I’d totally told you that I wouldn’t be sleeping with anyone else (because I was with you, and I don’t sleep with more than one person)….  well, it was still clear that I didn’t have anyone else in my life.  I’d told you lots that while I did sometimes wish I’d more of a social life, I really just wanted to hang out with you.  You knew that when you weren’t around, I didn’t hang with anyone else (aside from the very occasional visit to Kelley down the road).  

Um.  But you continued to make comments about how single you were.  How unattached.  How not into that sort of thing you were.  How unwilling.  How it’s something that had to be accepted.

From my view, you were in control of that situation.

You were with others, and have said that we’d never had a conversation about it or decided that we were exclusive.

But…  you’d made it very very clear that you didn’t believe in contracts and agreements; that you felt that meant nothing.

I agreed, and thought that two people should be only with each other because of pure desire to do so.  So, how was I supposed to ask you that?  And why would I, being that you’d told me that I was the most important person to you, that I was your best friend, that I knew as much as you could let any person know about your life?  How could I possibly think that THAT person, the best friend I was sleeping with, who told me I was his favorite person, to whom I’d said such heart-revealing things to, would have a desire to be sleeping with someone else?  And if he was, why would he hide that from me of all people?  

Those few times I did bring up what we were to each other, you’d avoided, and told me that we were meaningful the way we were.  You’d chastised me as being the one who always brings up relationship things, not you.

From my view, you controlled all of that stuff, too.

I was only with you, and thought you were with me.  And I thought that made it so much better, so much more pure.  Because we were with each other and nobody else out of pure desire.  Because we truly were each other’s favorite person.  Because everyone else had those contracts with each other, but you and I, two people who never sought out to be close to anyone, found ourselves thoroughly engulfed in each other. (i hope maybe this better explains why it hurt me so, why this has been such a big deal to me, and why you telling me that we’d never had a talk about being exclusive seems such an odd thing to say)

You kept our status defined as friends.  Every online photograph of us together was captioned with “friend”.  

Any time I mentioned what we were to each other, it was according to your definition.  I’d visited your home a handful of times since you’d lived there.  

That all seemed to me to be you in complete control of things, and I’d very little direction in how our relationship manifested.

When I asked you if you would be with anyone else, you told me to assume that you were.  When I asked if you’d be willing to be with just me, you told me no.  When I’d asked if…  if you did decide you were able to be with just one person, why that person wouldn’t be me, you didn’t answer and told me you had to think about it….  and never answered.   

I have very little control, actually, I feel.  

Maybe I’m using what little control I feel I have over things….  and the only thing I do have control over is me.  So, yes.  I might withdraw myself, because I’m all I have any say over.  It’s not meant to be a punishment, or bargaining chip.  There are things that I simply cannot handle being a part of because they hurt too much.

I really haven’t been meaning to imply that I want to dictate how you act or feel.  Certainly not.  I apologise if that seemed the case.  I’m sorry this has been affecting your life so much.  Beleive me, it’s had a similar effect on mine.

But, if we are going to rehash, and ask, and go over things, then we’ll do it on both sides.  That’s fair, right?

I am asking these questions of you, now….  because of what we’ve gone through from your asking me things. You have asked me about how, where, why.  You’ve wanted to know how I could, why I did, etc etc.  These are all the kinds of questions that I have tried to avoid asking.  I have tried to bury them.  

Do you understand that…  asking me how I could have possibly cared for you like I claimed if I found it so easy to be with someone else, makes me wonder the same thing about you?  Telling me how you feel disrespected makes me, in turn, wonder how I should not?  Telling me how my actions make you doubt and wonder how I see you, makes me wonder, in turn, the same thing?  Telling me how much it eats you that you met him without knowing that he and I had a past makes me picture that same scenario in my head, only worse, because your union was while I was living in blissful adoration of you, thinking I knew you?  Worse, because I’ve been kept apart from every social engagement you’ve attended since I’ve known you?

Regardless of what I thought was unspoken, regardless of what you thought was understood, regardless of what I feel I should have known given my place in your life….

I’d found out you’d been with other women.  I asked if you’d be with just me, and I was told no, that I should assume you were with other women.  I tried to live under that assumption, found I couldn’t.  I asked again if you’d be with just me, and was told that you didn’t want me the way I wanted you, that you may be with others, and was rejected.  After months of this back and forth and harsh words, we’d gotten nowhere.  I, in turn, fooled around with someone.  Someone who wasn’t terribly attractive, mentally or physically, but someone from my past who was comfortable, someone who I’d been sexually compatible with long ago, someone who knew that I was still heartbroken over you and understood how little my desire to be intimate had to do with him at all.  That is why.  Once it started, I felt empty, I knew I couldn’t go through with sex, and told him so.  He understood why.  Maybe it makes a bit more sense now.

Yes, perhaps I should have told you.  And by not telling you, I’ve tainted the first kisses of lovliness we’d recently shared, because you didn’t know.  And I understand how you can feel that way.  And I hate myself for it.

But every time that factor comes into play…  I think of how my memories of you and I in Ocean Grove, that period of time that had been cherished as the unexpected happiest time period OF MY LIFE, has now been equally tainted.  Because I can’t think of one moment we had, and not wonder if it was THAT week or THAT day that you were with someone else.  Because it changed everything I thought that was going on between us.

That’s why I’m asking the questions I didn’t think I’d need to ask.

I want just you.  I would be proud for anyone to know that you are the person i’m entirely devoted to and that nobody could possibly compare.  I’d already said it to a number of people, actually.  I haven’t thought of one plan of my future that doesn’t factor you in it, and I like that fact.

This “seeing how things go” is pointless.  Either you want me, want to be with me, and there’s a reason we are going through all this, or there’s not.  

I want to really BE WITH EACH OTHER.

I really need to know if you do.

I’m still not sure if I can afford going into the city tomorrow.  I suppose if I do, you won’t be wanting to meet up tomorrow evening afterwards?

---

Me meet in person. He won’t tell me who. We fight.

---

May 16th 2010

email from me

as a post script, 

I’m not sure why you started hanging out with me again.  I’d made it really clear a very long time ago that I wasn’t capable of being with you in a non-romantic fashion.  That’s the whole reason this started.  It’s not a matter of me trying to press the way I want things above yours, it’s a matter of what wrecks me emotionally.  I know you think that I’ve been ignoring your point of view and feelings on the whole matter, but I really can’t help but feel the same.  I’d been in a lot of pain for a long time, and i’d really thought that those first few conversations we’d had, and our hanging out again was because you…  wanted that too.  You still can’t even tell me that you’d like to be with me romantically IF we could work things out between us, and that, to me, is really discarding everything I’ve tried to explain to you what I’m capable of emotionally handling.  I wish it weren’t the case.

I really do wish that I’d at least gotten to know who you’d been with, at least had that to walk away with, instead of having my head forever fill with maddening scenes and be stuck with a forever wonder.

At least know that I’ve been left with that.  A gnawing eternal faceless question that i can be paranoid about and suspect of every female you’ve ever almost mentioned, to wonder “is it her?”

I guess I’ll just assume it’s <Your Friend’s Cousin>?

She’d sought me out and said she’d no idea what we were….  and I’d answered that you were my everything person, that I was head over heels for you, and that we did not have a platonic relationship…  and yet, she continued to leave those gushing comments on your facebook pictures and pursue you.  

So….  geez, talk about being disrespected.

I almost suspect that you’d prefer that we end like this, so that you needn’t be asked questions you don’t want to answer.

Maybe one day, you’ll let me know if I am right, instead of just suspecting, and feeling really terrible about it being her.

I mean, she was the person you were talking to online all the time while you were spending time with me.  That hurts on it’s own, y’know.  That you’d come to visit me, and talk to her.

She’s the person who, even though you hardly mentioned her and now keep telling me how unimportant she is to you, referred to you as someone very important to her and that she cared very much about.  That hurts all on it’s own, too.  It kicks me in the brain a whole lot.  I’ve tried to be as honest with you as possible, as bare as I could, so that YOU could be the one to know me… and … that’s a one way street, I guess.

Can you really wonder why being what we were was damaging to me, once I was to assume that you ‘d be with others?  And somehow convince myself that it’s just a coincidence that you’ve never invited me along to anything that your friends attend?  I can’t be that with you.  I’d probably have drawn back from you a long time ago had I understood that you’d be with other women.  I can’t be as seamlessly close with someone as I have been with you if I’m to think that you’d be interested in being intimate with someone else.  That’s just not a relationship I can invest myself in.  I can’t bear it.  

Maybe this might influence you to be more honest and upfront with people you are with in the future and save them the confusion and hurt that has happened between us. 

I probably shouldn’t even bother sending this.  I don’t expect to ever hear from you again, since I don’t expect that you’ll ever want to answer my maddened mind, nor that you’ll ever want to be with me.  Of course, I don’t imagine I’ll ever have much left to say to you, aside from what I’ve written here.

I wish you luck in finding someone that you can be close to who won’t be as demanding for answers as I.  

Someone who won’t fall in love with you, and dare to ask if you’d love her back and be with her.

Goodbye. 

---

email from Stefan

Wow, what a surprise. An email.  Didn’t see that coming.  Shocker.  Email to you, is like spinach to Popeye.

Yes, I slept with <My Friend’s Cousin>.  No, not the night you think and love to bring up.  No, I didn’t drill into you how unimportant she was. I said we went months without talking before, and I never call her. She is, a pain in the ass…and I made mention of that, and it often causes her to not be in a fixed friend position. But, she is a friend. And, when I came down on her for getting in touch with you, she went teary because she was trying to connect her brother( a doctor or something) so he could maybe help you. So, you’re detective work is half right. I talked to her a lot, because she was my friend.  That’s why. The same reason(though not as much these days) as I do now.  The same reason you talk to about five or six people you slept with, because your friends, right?   Now, let’s move away from her and talk about me.

You never told me you said to her that me and you are not platonic. That’s…yet again, a new piece of information. I don’t think you realize how wrong it is for you to tell someone that before you hear it from the person you’re talking about. So, again…”what else?”, I wonder.

You never…ever, told me you said that. I wonder, how you ever expect me to believe what you say when you hide so much and reveal things, peeling layer at a time. You didn’t think it was relevant to tell me you told another woman we weren’t platonic?  Hmm? 

So…Maybe this might influence you to be more honest and upfront with people you are with in the future and save them the confusion and hurt that has happened between us. (I just copied and pasted that from yours. I hope you don’t mind)

I never claimed to want to tell you what I did with my personal time, and never asked you in return. I was more than thrilled of the things we gave to each other so clearly. There’s no lesson to be learned here other than when you tell me so vehemently that you tell me everything, it really means…”I’m not telling you everything, I still am not, and I also have spoken for you without you knowing”. 

I’m not sure why I did start hanging out with you again. You bring up new things you never told me every we talk or you write. Now, we’ve moved into a territory where you’re telling me you spoke on my behalf about something that I’ve never said to you.  I don’t think you’ll every get how angry that makes me.

So….  geez, talk about being disrespected.(borrowed that too)

You’re just as conniving as everyone else in order to make your version work, and being honest….is not part of your recipe, whether your feelings are true or not. So, I’ll just assume there is a multitude more you’ve not told me and said on my behalf. You should be careful when you claim “honesty” as your main weapon when you know very little on the subject.

The worst part is, you claim to want to be with me, but, my feelings are nothing but a roadblock for you. What I think, truly makes NO difference in anything.  Of course, if we could square our differences I’d like to be with you. I told you I wanted to take us out of the country for a while, planning on becoming something…somewhere else. Then, letting “nature” take it’s course.  But, let’s just pretend you never knew that, it won’t help your point.  But, you want nothing but shouting and declarations.

So now…I too, am left with the mysteries of, “what don’t I know”. Wait…no. You’re not.  Only I am.

( Why did I know when I saw that I had an email from you it’d contain a piece of information you never told me? ) 

But don’t worry, take solace in the fact that I’ll be working, and again…doing nothing for myself and being pissed.  (insert Rachael’s ,”No offense but I also…[continue for five pages until Stefan’s points fade away into nothingness] )

You’re  quite twisted, and couldn’t be anything close to in love with me if you “suspect” I wanted to stop talking to you to…avoid a question. I guess I’ll just “suspect” that you’d like to hear that I ended up dead in some ally way with a needle sticking out of my arm. Oops, sorry…I forgot I’m not allowed to make mere mention of a single thing that plagues my thoughts and life, and directly contributes to why I have such a hard time with certain things. Sorry again…I know you’ve no time to try and understand such trivial things. It’s, “yes or no!” with you. Life shouldn’t be any more complicated. just like those silly storied you mention about headaches or whatever those frivolous conditions I’ve wasted my time thinking so much about, that you suffer from.   What’s it like to be so obsessed with your own points you can’t even see what others MAY be thinking?

Now, if you don’t call me…I could return to my life where no one judges me, I don’t ask anyone questions, and I don’t have to be reminded of what shit I am daily.

I won’t read any response. Check, and erase.  That’s all that will happen. I don’t hate you. It’s quite the opposite. But, if you can’t understand that I have houghts of my own, my own way of thinking, a whole list (like you) of specific issues and problems that impede on my life,  and that my feelings for you are real, and worth respecting, don’t bother.  I’m sorry for ever hurting you, but I don’t need a phone call just to hear more about how I’m secretive and your honest. Or something of a similar juxtaposition.

If you call me and just start talking about her or yelling at me about anything, I’ll hang up. I’m not letting you talk to me like the way you have been anymore. You’ve flexed all of your muscles through emails and I’m beyond done with it.  Respect me, or go away and respect yourself out of my sight.

---

I had indeed told him. I forward him THE EMAIL IN WHICH I TOLD YOU EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD <YOUR FRIEND’S COUSIN>

---

email from Stefan

“One starts to wonder why not…. feel like a secret hidden in plain view stuffed into a platonic disguise.”

It was nice you confided in her all of your fears, conspiracies, suspicions, and the rest of the reasons that tell me you didn’t think anything was clear or assumed. That sentence is in no way, you telling anyone that me and you are not platonic. And, it’s not you telling her your insecurities, but more you expressing what a dick I am.

Thank god I figured how to word search in a email, because if I had to read that back and forth( that I still think is none of my business), I’d loose it.

Well, I’m just…stunned. All you did was misquote yourself and direct me to a sentence that shows just how unsure you were of everything you swore we were mutually sure of. Or, rather(and much more obvious)…you were trying to get answers out of her.

You would really impress me if you could admit how unstable your thoughts were, and that you never confronted me in the way you should have, when…you should have. Also, if you could admit that you didn’t think anything was evident between us, but more so…you wanted it to be. This isn’t about who cares about who at this point. I’m pretty confident in how I care about you. I just want you to admit what you should.

You got me to email again, even after how clear I made it that it kills me. I KNOW, you were just emailing me to show me something, but still…it doesn’t say what you said it did. And, it shows how in control you are of our communication. So, you get answers, you get me to email, you make me read whatever you want. I wonder what you think being in control is. Probably nothing short of sticking your hands into a slit on my back and making my head flap wildly to say whatever you want to hear me say.

I just canceled my client. I’m too rattled to work.  I’m sure that has no affect on you. But now, not only am I not working on my personal art, which is just about the only thing close to a drug I have to calm myself, but now…I’m loosing money. I’m not blaming you, I’m just telling you that I have NOTHING, to deal with my stress. Again, I won’t bother you with my own hell.   I’m gonna leave my house now for a while.

We have very different specs on in seeing all of this. I wish we saw things the same a bit more. I’m sorry.

Days later we are back to emailing each other art and links and calling each other at dawn.

April 16th 2010

email from me

It’s really really difficult for me to not email you.

I email you so often, so much, because of the frequency with which you pop in my head, and the severity of how much I miss you.

Even with the angry emails, that was why.

---

email from Stefan

I wanted to text you to ask how you were recovering about ten times today. I haven’t been online today until when I emailed you. In fact…I’m not even really online. I just have youtube playing some god awful paranormal “evidence” video while trying to draw to distract myself. This headache though, christ. It’s ,tea time. Aside form my measly financial plight which I’ll rectify rather quickly, so much is on my mind. My head still races to make sense of things.

I hope you’re feeling better today.

You should have tea too. I’ll be here, so if you see anything neat online, send me at least one link. I could use distraction at the moment.

---

email from me

I was thinking… that the way both of us have been… both, from the onset, saying “no no no, no romance, no boy/girl friends, no attachments, no no no no etc etc.”, and both reacting to the other, turning into thier wierd snowball of headshaking denial….

well, yeah. we totally confused each other and hurt each others feelings and messed each other up. but. i doubt that either of us would be capable of letting someone be as close and as important to us, without that assumption and acceptance of the “no no no no”

Maybe.

Anyway….

You want links? I give you links.

And we are back to my emailing him links and his emailing me he latest art and chatting daily.

April 7th 2010

email from me

Ok.  So, I’m not trying to stir the pot of email terribleness, here.  But I keep thinking things.  I wanted to ask you about this when you came by again, but I figured since…  I keep saying things, and you keep saying you need to think before you can speak on it…  well, if I mention beforehand something I was hoping to clear up between us, then I won’t catch you off guard when next we speak, and we can be…  on the same page. 

So.

Ummmm.  one of things I meant to mention was….  that…  in addition to the stuff we talked about..  um.  another part of what made me feel unsure and confused etc. was the rarity with which I got to hang out at your house; something that still befuddles me – especially being that <The Brother>’s girlfriend is always there, and now <Rooommate>’s lady moving in with him.  It seemed, to me, like you were keeping me away.  Especially when you’d come by me successive nights in a row, I couldn’t understand why you didn’t just take me back with you for a night.  It’d be the same amount of driving for you. and we used to spend days and days together at my house….  I started to feel really rejected.

So, yeah.  Hopefully when next we hang out, maybe we could talk about that.

Also…

These past few months…  and seeing you again…  I’ve come to realise a number of things.  Shifted my consciousness.  Changed my personal perspective.  Learned, I think, how to better appreciate you.

I’ve come to realize how much I don’t care for the world.  How crucial and important you are to me.  How terrible and unappealing the rest of the world is.  How wasteful I’ve been with myself.  I lost my mind for a bit in there.  I’m very very sorry.  I screamed like a crazy person on the internet.  I was just wounded and hemmoraging and bleeding everywhere like an idiot.  I never hurt so badly before, and…  like I said…  it was rather in reaction to all these issues making me feel like a big secret, and that I’d been totally wrong about what we meant to each other.

I don’t care about the rest, anymore.  This brief refresher course of time without you…  it has made me realise just how stale and cold every thing is – especially when compared to your vibrance.

I don’t want myself to belong to the world anymore.  I don’t want to keep what was before anymore.  What was before can die and blow away in dust.  I’ve become a better me, now, because of you.  I want what is me to be yours.  I don’t need anyone else to know me if you do. 

That, too…  I will say with in-person words when I see you next.

I’d like to mention that…  I’ve been happier these past few days than I’ve been in a really really long time.

I’m excited for when I’ll get to see you again.

Are we are starting over?  Fresh, new, with romantic and affectionate intentions? 

….  think on it.  Let me know when you see me?

Is it ridiculous for me to be thinking of changing my name?  I’d really love to start over somewhere.  Somewhere that’s always overcast and brisk.  Somewhere with you.

Please, do let me know what’s been going on in your head about things when we see each other next.  What you think of me, and what we are and can be to each other.

I’m still rather terrified.

(yet elated)

March 28th 2010

email from Stefan

I’m trying to figure out the right words. I’m obviously distraught while writing it so I have to keep rephrasing. Maybe I’ll attempt to send it later.

---

March 29th 2010

email from me

Guess what I found yesterday.

The DVD with the last five episodes of Samurai Jack.

---

email from Stefan

Great…I’ll be right over to watch them.

Anything else you’d like to torture me with this evening?

---

April 1st

email from Stefan

So, you gonna let me watch cartoons with you?

---

email from me

I thought there was a reply you were figuring a few days ago.

It wasn’t an invitiation. It was… just baffling timing is all.

Nevermind.

---

email from Stefan

Baffling timing is all?   Come on Rachael. It always slamming the door, then stopping it with your foot.

Listen, you’ve said to me a few times you’d not write me anymore, then…you write again.

You’ve said you’d not send me links anymore….then, sent me links a day later leading to pictures of you on flickr, and links to something you’ve written with me in mind on your blog before that because of odd timing. Then, you again, after saying you’ll not send me anything, you send me a link to your tumblr we’re I could follow your posts and not stumble upon the personal posts(which would be a test of self control).
You say it’s all on me and I’ve not answered you. You tell me many things. Then go against those things a day later often in email. Why do you think I don’t know t times if you hate me. Should I know you don’t…just because you wrote that you don’t? No. You write a lot of tings, then instantly, sometimes an hour later…send me exactly what you said you won’t send me.

You constantly change your own mind in emails. You send me all kinds of things, then…when I sent you a drawing of you, where I specified that it is only to provide moments of pleasure, you still mind-numbingly write, “thank you for the picture, but…”.  Ugh…I didn’t say it would change or fix anything. How is you sending me a message telling me you found the Samarai Jack DVD any different?

 Do you know how distraught that made me? It let me know that you could write me many things, about what’s on your mind or just other randoms of the day, but even if I specify to a certainty what I’m sending you is suppose to be, you’ll still take the first opportunity to say, “listen baby, I know ya mean well…but this ain’t gonna cut it” Do you wonder why I think my words don’t get fairly evaluated?  That “sorry to break it to you kid”, kind of stuff. That, lets me know…you don’t thoroughly try to understand even some of the simplest things I’ve written when you’re upset. So…there are many things I’ve tried to convey to you that haven’t been understood. Complex and simple alike. Email , in my opinion, just isn’t the best way for us to talk.  I know I haven’t addressed a lot of what you said. I know what we haven’t talked about in detail….but, you keep flip flopping how you communicate with me. It does things to me. I don’t know what you think know matter how clear it always may be to you.  No matter how clear you think you’ve been in one regard, you’re really tearing at me in others. I’m sorry though…I don’t know. I do, want to talk.  I do want to hang out with you very badly. I want to sit together and try to speak. Christ.

“It’s been five months”…doesn’t mean anything. You’ve told me you’re done with me many times in these five months. It’s been five months of me thinking about you. Five months of me losing what was most important to me too Rachael. Eventually, maybe it’ll take another five months for you to realize I lost you too, and don’t understand many things as well. This has been nothing but depressing weight on me, and I’m too realistic to think it’ll just, go away.

The real difference is,  you’ve refused to understand or believe 99% of what I’ve said, and you constantly demand that I answer your roster of questions because…well, to you…your side is the only true one that will ever exist or something like that. Even though I’m dealing with this loss day to day as well. Even though five months of agony have dragged me along through my own issues with this. Even though you’ve told me time & time again that you won’t send me emails, links, pictures, or other things.  You’ve sent them all. You love changing my mind constantly and showing me how invalid your day to day words mean.  You’ve closed the door then opened it a million times, and every time I say so much as hello…you look at me like I’m crazy.  As if I’m not allowed to inch my way up to you so I could talk to you. You just want your robotic answers,…but only you’re allowed to have human thoughts and send me pictures and say pointless things about what you found. I’m not allowed to be human and inch my way towards you to talk.    Can you please admit that’s wrong.

“Never mind is right”, until Rachael decides it’s wrong.  You really have stood the test of time and proven how self centered you are when you’re in a bad mood.

“It wasn’t an invitation?”  So…you haven’t told me your door is open to me? All I have to do is show up and tell you I want to be with you? You didn’t say this?  Amazing you don’t get why I tell you your personality changes like the time. Amazing you don’t get why I’m hesitant to believe that.  Do you really think you convey anything clearly?

“Never mind”.        The words of someone who truly thinks they decide what words are, and are not to be considered valid.

“I can’t write to you anymore…I’m ending this right here.  Oh, but I’m sending you a gift.”(which must be lost in Zimbabwe or something). You didn’t say this either right?  If you could admit that you don’t stick by a goddamn thing you’ve said recently, and that I have fine reasons to be apprehensive to think you’ll listen to anything I say, I’d like to actually talk to you.

P.S.  I hope you’re doing better than I am Rachael.  I really mean that. The feeling of missing you & caring about you doesn’t go away. At least be honest and admit that I’m right to expect the unexpected from you when you write. That’s why I want to see you. So I can look at you while you listen to me.

---

email from me

The door is not open. There is more involved than showing up and telling me you want to be with me.

You wrote to me that you were replying (i don’t understand the point of that). You said it was painful. So I mentioned the Samurai Jack just as another instance of us being, frustratingly, in sync.

---

email from Stefan

Really, is there more involved?  Teach me the complex art of communication oh wise one. You really don’t read anything.  I just sent you an email talking about how much there is involved and you respond by telling me…how much there is involved. Amazing. Truly.  Yet, you zero it in on one quote…that was yours…by the way.  Why don’t you disagree with something other than your own words. It’s really beating a dead horse.

“The door is not open”.    :::goes back and reads about 10 quotes that go directly against that::::      You’re just a liar then(hence…you’re right. That’s the, “more involved part you must have been talking about), and now I’m fairly convinced that you just said you still care about me. I’m sure it would take me about two minutes to find the reason for the sudden change if I felt like looking.  Which, I think I’m shrewd enough to just fill in that blank myself.

“Kiss me and make me yours”.    So, I guess I have the go ahead to laugh at this statement now?   That was just a stupid joke right?

“There is more involved than showing up and telling me you want to be with me.”

Do me a favor. Try reading one email I’ve written. Just one. The groups of letters are called words. When you read the words in a steady succession, they’ll form sentences. These will convey my thoughts in textual form.    It’s remarkable how much thought you don’t, put into me.

I’ll be waiting for that gift. You know, the one you lied about sending twice now? Or, are you just gonna keep saying that you’re gonna send it…meaning…before one of us dies…


…and for the love of fuckin’ god. If you can’t see how stupid it is to think you can justify the point of talking about finding a DVD( and it wasn’t to respond to my pain…please), but not the point of me sending you something of equal pointlessness, then…whether its opened or closed…you don’t even know where your door is.   So…stop lying.  About everything.  Or tell me the giant part that I’m missing so I could get up to speed with the intellect,  but don’t say a word..about unanswered questions. That doesn’t work now. I covered that in the email. Ya’ know…the one you apparently didn’t read. 

Are you…”in sync”, with that?       Don’t cushion my pain with cartoons.      It all painful to write. This is my response. Like the last email was a response.  Do you understand? You don’t get to enter my ears and make me say, think, and do whatever you want.  You also have no interest in actually talking.  Clearly.   You think I really want to come over and play jacks?    The last words of my email were quite clear.  Or…do you want to explain more to me about how complex talking could be?

Sit up, shake your head, and focus on the lines…”That’s why I want to see you. So I can look at you while you listen to me.”   Only you could read that…then write what you did.  

---

email from me

I’ve been up since 6 am. I’ve been cleaning the house. Aunt Mary is gone.

Come by and tell me things, then.

---

April 2nd 2010

email from me

So…  Perhaps, after tattoing, you could come by again? 

It’s…  well….  it’s always the day after enjoying your company when (again and again) I hit a wall of thought which makes me say things like “i can’t ever see you again.” 

maybe…  maybe we could talk through that part instead.

In response to en email sent out to a select few about my mother booting me from her insurance plan while my health declines.

March 8th 2010

email from Stefan

I’m kind of frozen on this. I’m really gonna try and reply to this statement. Hopefully in a way that would sound like as if I’m sitting next to you. I’m really tired and twitchy right now, so I won’t write too much. I don’t want my problems on my mind when I talk to you about yours. That’d be selfish and we both know how annoying that is. (e.g. You’re relatives consistent comparisons of theirs issues to yours…I on your side completely with that stuff,and always have been) I will say this though, it hurts me to know your in pain. That’s one of those things that’s never gonna change. Whether I’m angered at you, or care for you…I’m just always gonna hurt, when I think about you in pain. Sometimes I think of what you go through, and my finger nails dig into the linoleum counter top and I let out a hot tempered sigh of frustration. I do this…quite a bit, and without looking at anything of you online. I don’t think I could handle that stuff. I think about us, enough as it is. I’m also gonna say that I’m in no state of mind to write a real response. I know you didn’t ask for one. Yet, you know…I don’t have it in me to just…stay quiet.

Anyway, I have to drink some coffee ,draw a bit, and do some thinking of my own. When I have my head cleared enough to give a response(or just, an email rather) the respect it deserves, I’ll write again.

It’s really amazing how cantankerous I am these days. I can see it in people’s eyes. They’re afraid to talk to me. I hate to say it, but, I kind of like it. You know what I’m like. You know it was never against you. You let me be that way and counteracted it with smiles and laughter. Aside form the few times I was mean towards you. Okay…this is going on too long. I can’t have all this on my head right now. See, you write twelve words and…I go on a tangent. Fuck.

Anyway…I think of you…blah.

---

email from me

I…  wasn’t trying to poke at you or anything, but I do know and believe that you worry about my health stuff, and it seemed fair to keep you updated with regards to how that’s going, so I included you with the few people I sent that to.  

It’s kinda funny.  The only person who recognizes how very close to oblivion’s edge I am is the photographer I’ve worked for, and I’ve only met him three times.  Regardless of how chipper I try to be, I just ooze pathetic doom to those few who care to recognize it.  And he and his girlfriend seem the only ones who do these days.

Sad, really.  It’s all just very sad.  my needy life.  

i hope you find someone to make you smile.  I’d like you to be happy whenever possible.  

I know you’d like to help me.  And that you worry.  But…  there’s not much anyone can do to help me, really (unless they have a big pile of money to get doctors to fix me and take me away from my family forever).  

Especially not the person I wish ….  i wish too much for in ways he doesn’t want.

If you’d prefer that i not keep you updated about my health stuff, just let me know.  I won’t take offense.  It’s difficult to care about someone like me.  especially in the position I’m in.

I would still appreciate some answers to those questions of mine that remain, though.

bye.

September 6th 2009

email from me

Regarding my comment about coming over there…I was just making a point.  

There’s always a reason it doesn’t work, the timing is always somehow wrong, or it’s just not even a consideration that i could come by you…. just for a night.

I shouldn’t have.  It was stupid.  I just get frustrated.  

And stupid.

You were already saying you were feeling guilty of things, and that was shitty of me.

I don’t want to have to invite myself over to your place.  I don’t want anything that isn’t given freely.  After the embarrassing scene of demeaning myself and trying to possibly come by on my way back from Brooklyn, promising I’d not shower…  I realised that I probably shouldn’t come over to your house.

I don’t think I can come by you for a few days.  Or stay at your place.  (Honestly, I’ve got that job in Montclair on Wednesday, the SSI interview on Thursday, so I don’t know if it’d work out)

When last I was there it was awkward, with the not allowed to stay and with the showering downstairs and whatnot.  Whenever I’m there, more and more, it’s a nervewracking experience.

It all seems like a rather unreasonable roommate situation to me.  but….. you seem to accept these as reasonable gripes, and go out of your way to accomodate them.  It’s, I suppose, some sort of pre-arranged deal, or something that (while I’ve never ever ever heard of or experienced ANY sort of difficulty like this in having overnight guests as this- seriously, adults are generally understood to have bed-guests and shower-users on a regular basis- but again, I don’t live there) you’ve determined between the two of you;  as the upstairs being your own private attic and don’t like other humans invading.  Ok.  That’s your deal with him.  You’ve deemed his opinions on the matter as an understandable stance.  Who am I to rock the boat of agreeable contract between rent-paying roommates?

But I don’t feel welcome there.  The longer it goes between allowable visits, the more of an ordeal it becomes, the more the notion of staying there has become increasingly uncomfortable.

You’ve said that everyone there likes me, and that I’m welcome, but night after night, you come to me…. where i live with my things in boxes…  with my Aunt who’s passed out on the couch watching the Catholic Channel….  to a town where nothing is going on…   and we sit uncomfortably in my sunporch with shitty terrible internet….  without anywhere to draw comfortably…. and you steal away at dawn….  and then we talk on the phone til we can sleep….  often times saying things like “i wish we were hanging out watching TV” or even just today “i wish i could sleep there”.  

Please, don’t misunderstand me, your visits are macigal and lovely and make my night fun and awesome….    the fact that you are willing to suffer my bland familial existence is a testament of how awesome a human you are, and how kind for still sharing my company under such circumstances.  And I certainly wish you could sleep here.

but.

You’ve got a whole HOUSE…  where things are open, and music can be played and there’s a bedroom, and a bed that is meant to fit two people…  where it isn’t immoral or unallowed for us to sleep together….  where we can hide in the dark together when the sun rises…

So why are there so many far away wishes at dawn?  

It hurts.

And it just furthers my impression of things not being so very cool with my being at your place.

Yes, I know, you have said that “I don’t need to understand the reasons”. But gosh, certain situations are really hard to weather.  It’s really difficult.  I’m trying to wait things out.  I’m trying to be more paitent.

I’m not trying to pigeon hole you into answering something you don’t feel like sharing or justifying to me.  I’m just….  sad.

I’m sad.  i’m tired of missing you.  I’m tired of watching you leave every night, and me wondering why I’m never going with you.  just for the night.  and then come back the next day.  Not trudging a bag of clothes for days, or bringing my laptop.  just a night here and there.   so we can hang out in PJs and watch Farscape or a Lynch movie for one hidden morning.  

We aren’t affectionate or snuggly people.  That simple time of just half-asleep-entwined with you is….  missed.   

thank you….  thank you for inviting me…  I know you do so with kind intentions.

but you hardly ever seem comfortable with my coming there.  

and as terrible as it makes me feel that i can’t come by you like you could come by me…  

it’d make me feel worse to be invited only because I nagged about it.  because I made you feel guilty.

I don’t want you to end up pressured to have me by.

We’ll just both be in uncomfortable situations.

Things just aren’t ideal right now.  It sucks.  But…

that’s just how it is.

I’ll wait til things are better.

it’s alright.

it’s better to have lots of wanting…  an underlying and constant wanting….  

than to have too much and take things for granted. 

i want.

---

email from Stefan

It’s not awkward…….it HAS been at times……<Prime Roommate> is just temperamental baby ,at times.   It’s in his bitter blood.     Please don’t send long mails to me making me constantly think about this. It, really just boils my blood to a unhealthy slurry.  

I know you don’t understand it…..I don’t know if you’ve ever had a roommate that spends over a grand a month plus, hundreds on house needs for everyone.So, he does, have clout.   He’s a generous son of a bitch, and he gets moody…..but, lately, he knows i don’t care and he’s been much more, whatever,with me.   We’ve been getting along better more and more.   He will always complain about things…..that’s just him.  I really don’t care that much, and I will have you over. Please don’t feel upset….or  reiterate what seems out of my control……it’s not fair for me to have to read this stuff.   Will will hang out more…..I miss your company always, and always will….no matter when we hang out or not……when you go…..or I go…..i miss our friendship. 

I AM in control of the way I live here, yet also, I just like to get out and drive to see you as well…..you don’t have to believe me.  I’m couped in my house as you are yours. I like to escape it. Don’t feel awkward.   You are my friend, and justin’s friend….and believe it or not…as much of <Prime Roommate>’s friend as most people he knows.  You are allowed at this house.   Yes, life is a little slow and wrenchy for both of us right now. …..and you have things to do this week so it isn’t practical for you to come here at this very moment. 

Please……just, be happy we’re friends……and that I will make sure we spend time together, no matter where we both are.   As you seemed to acknowledge.  So…good. 

Just…..no more of these,”I know I don’t understand but I’ve never heard of these sort of conditions”, mails.    I know you don’t get it.

You not a aging temperamental single man renting a house,spending nearly 1500 a month.  Nor am I.  ….and really…I, am the one who has to live with him….so..let me do the complaining, when I feel.   If you have to say, I’m a sucker…..or, I lay down to him, just not hear him bitch…which was just the case once or twice really, then, just don’t write it…..just, think it.   Though, I’m swearing that….that’s not the case.    I have my enough problems on my brain all day as it is. 

We will spend wonderful time together in the future,…… traveling, doing fun things, exploring, and being happy and productive……I promise that.  I will make it happen.  I have many plans that I am always working on.  I….will always deal with my problems as they come….and not let them get in the way of us seeing eachother a lot…which I demonstrate , pretty clearly.

I really, truly ,have no big excuses…..recently, i’ve felt pent up in here…having trouble sleeping here…..and just going through a overall house issue for myslef or something.   Has nothing to do with <Prime Roommate>……or……anything else.

Okay….please, no more bringing his name up about this stuff……it’s not that.  I’m not weak.   You are are my best friend.   Sorry we don’t spend more nights together.   We will though. ….i beg you to just believe me and don’t make me have to think about this issue for more than what it is.   please?    If you think, i’m not in control of my life……I might as well….not be. I want you to believe me.   I can handle my issues ,and do.

Lastly,and again…. it has nothing to do with YOUR effect, on the house.Sigh…..geez, i’m gonna have a heart attack….sigh….you know I haven’t slept….and you texting me,and now emailing me….is….too much for me right now.    My computer is…..connecting and disconnecting over and over….(it’s kicked me off my messenger actually)……so…..I may call.  

You are my best friend.    That’s, all you need to know as of now. No conspiracies, no roommate hatred personally on you, just….me, dealing with a moody dude, and my recent abstract house gripes.   I can’t think about it anymore right now.  I may call you to talk.

phew….that just took a lot out of me.  I’m really floppy.

August 1st 2009

email from me

I have not slept.  I am sitting here, freshly showered, naked and waiting for the baby oil to sink in, with a half an hour before I have to leave for the doctor’s.

I am slightly crazed.

So I am going to take this opportunity to ramble some stuff at you that I feel is hovering under the surface.  Maybe I’m totally wrong, and there’s nothing there, but if that’s the case, then at least I’m getting my wierd manifestations out into the open where they can be properly disposed of. 

See…  I felt there was wierdness.  Like a big wierdness was narrowly averted or something.  And that’s a good thing.

But maybe to further the good thing I can (in a rational and non-adversarial sort of way) explain some parts of my thinking… of my interpretation…  of my perspective….

And apologise for not being entirely…  up front.  About whatever strangeness I might have been giving off.

First, let me mention that…  You sometimes become uncharacteristically vauge and tight-lipped about things….  compared to the way you generally discuss things with me.  It’s sudden, and tends to stand out a bit.  This is almost always when invovling the company of a woman.  I noticed it most specifically when you were first begining to deal with some of the social frustrations of your friendship with <Random Chick> and her roommate.  Because you’d normally refer to the client casually by name, or with some personal verbal mark of reference….  but with <Random Chick>’s roommate, suddenly you’d play the pronoun game and only refer to her as “client” in this certain and obscure way.  Similar ways of speaking pop up when you end up spending an evening with a female friend.  Or even a mixed event…  if there’s a female present who isn’t immediately identifiable as the significant other of another, you tend to not mention her presence unless completely neccessary.

I don’t know why you do this, and you probably don’t realise you are doing it most of the time.  It’s the sort of thing that….  makes one feel like, even if they weren’t, they SHOULD be suspicious of something….  but I’ve learned that you just…  seem to speak that way.  Maybe you’ve just learned to be more protective of your interactions with women from hanging out with dudes that think you are always getting laid.  Maybe you got used to wierdly jealous women or something.  Maybe you are trying to be polite to me.

Anyway….  my point is.  you get vague.  

And…  while I’ve come to learn that it’s just how you are about certain things….  (mostly female things)

right at that moment…  it’s still a bit off putting and takes a moment to calibrate.  If that makes sence.

It’s…  well….  it’s just wierd to be telling a close friend (me) that you went down to AC “with a friend” and refer to her only as “she” and only in the most vauge ways possible.

Conversationally, it’s common to mention someone by name, even if that person is unknown.  I can’t figure out if yo do this because you think I might get somehow jealous, but if it IS….  it’s probably exactly the wrong tactic to take.

Like I said…  I’m not wierdly jealous of women, and it’s rather against my nature to ever assume that just because a male and female are enjoying one another’s company that there’s anything beyond just that; enjoying one another’s company.    

– – – –  OK, so now it’s much later, I’ve gone to the doctor, slept, and now just woke up with mostly sorta working eyes again, and I think I’ll finish this email now – – – – 

But being told in the most obscure and vauge means possible that you went down to AC “with a friend” was an odd and jarring thing.  Like I said, I’d figured it was some sort of “Rock bonding” thing, annd I just wasn’t expecting that…  The way you explained your trip was done in a FAR more secretive way than I’m used to you being with me….  

And that stopped my brain in it’s tracks.

“….. oh.”

And then there’s….  the rest.

Keep in mind, just a few days ago I’d shown you the free hotel thing, and you’d been saying how we should go to a hotel just for fun.  Keep in mind that for over a year you’d been telling me that we should go to AC, that you’d bring me down there….  and I’d suggeted it a few times, even…  And I’ve never BEEN to AC, and you’d assurred me we’d go, said that you didn’t LIKE AC and it was a waste of time, but that you’d go with me and would have fun there togehter not gambling  

So does it bother me that you went off to AC with a lady friend who isn’t me?  

Of course!  Really, how would I not?!?

Does that mean you shouldn’t have gone?

Christ, no.  If you want to go, then you should.

Does it eat away at me that I can’t provide you with the escape from your house for a few days that i used to – that for you to get away you need to look to others because I just can’t offer you anything anymore?  Oh, yes yes yes.

But…   you still want to escape.

Christ, you deserve someone else footing the fucking bill for a change; all the paying and covering and taking me out all the time that you do….  you’ve fucking earned a night of someone else taking care of the cost and the car…  But of course it further bothers me that I can’t be that person.  That it’s someone else.

Was I sitting awake, and sleepless, worried and freaked, wishing you online, or willing to talk on the phone Thursday morning?  Desperately so.  Was I a bit surprised I didn’t hear from you until the wee hours of Friday, (since i’d had that doctor appointment planned and had mentioned it to you a few times)?   Yeah, I was a bit.  But I’m not your responsibility.  I’m not something to be looked after and coddled.  You aren’t expected to be available for every bump in the road or scrape on the knee.

Had I been wishing, the moment I found out I was a finalist for this competition, that I had you, first and foremost, to tell?  Gosh, yes.  But you were already off in AC, a place I thought we’d be going to, and were there without me.  This, to me, said it was “non-Rachael time” and i figured it’d be best to wait.  To give you your escape time.

But, so…

Yeah, I might have been a bit wierd.  

I don’t think my feelings of oddness are outside the realm of being understandable emotional reactions given the situation….  

But logically, there’s nothing to be done.  It’s not like there’s any offense.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  I’m not angry in any way.  Or offended.  Sometimes the way the world goes isn’t the way I wished.  Nothing I ws feeling had anything to do with questioning your “loyalty to our friendship” or anything.

I’m not going to ask you the particulars of your AC trip….  but it does make me feel strange and quarantined to be suddenly ….  explained things in so minimal and tightlipped a manner.  You just don’t usually do that with me, and i just didn’t think we operated like that, and it’s offputting and a bit sad.  We kinda just tell each other stuff.  But that’s your every right to be as private or secretive about anything you want.  What the fuck am I going to do, MAKE you want to share?  

Soooo….  I’m sorry.  I probably was a bit wierd, but really, had I said anything, it owuld have come off as accusatory…  like you weren’t SUPPOSED to go to AC, which isn’t the case…  or that you SHOULD HAVE done this or SHOULDN’T HAVE done that, etc etc etc…  which isn’t the case at all.  

Nor am I jealous (aside from the fact that I’m jealous that i’m not the person I wish I were so I could be the person to depend on for things sometimes).

Nor am I angry.

It does, from time to time, slightly wound me when you become suddenly and obviously withholding about certain lifebits suddenly.  I’m not trying to crawl inside your head and get your deepest desires or make a map of your brain…  but sometimes there’s a sudden distance in places that don’t seem private, neccessarily, just “off limits” for reasons I can’t comprehend.  But that’s not anything I have right to comment on, really.  like you said “you don’t have to understand, that’s the beauty of it”.  But…  i feel like I should understand.  That I’m lacking.  

Maybe I tell you too much.  Maybe I’m supposed to do the same?

Or…  y’know…  I just care too much.

I care too much and simple small things get under my skin in ways that just aren’t normal.  Because….  you matter to me in so many stupid small ways.

I know that there’s always lead locked box of ‘no one shall enter” in the center of you (i have one too, but it’s smaller)….  but I kinda thought that box was buried deep inside and you and I got to peel off our skin and wrestle about with each other all bloody and naked like that…..  

Y’know…  and I miss you.  There’s that.  There’s a lot of that.  I miss being able to hole up all dark and comfy somehwere and just be comfortable and not have people to carter to or worry about nearby.  I miss long hours of summer dark and bed.  I miss hiding under covers and watching things.  I wanted to be that hotel room person.  So I could leap on you in my pajamas and share morning snacks.

I think this living here and not OG where you could come is still slowly destroying my innards, like my heart is on a barbeque slow cook skewer.

blah.

Anyway…  this is really long and I’m getting sidetracked and saccharine.

You are, as ever, my very favoritest human that ever I’ve known.

June 15th 2009

email from Stefan

What is wrong with you.

i was being sarcastic……and not to insult you…..i was just being sarcastic because you have no reason to be offended or to think about any of it.

….and when you first acknowledged my “delete this” statement you said, “you want me to delete that, aw”    as if,you barely cared.

You know i have lots of little idiosyncrasies, and whatnot.  ….and i do always have little things and problems…..but when and if i want to explain something, i will.    ……but when i want a picture deleted, you delete it.    In fact, you never post pictures of me without asking….and, i didn;t mind that pic up…..and then, i wanted it down.    You want a reason, an explanation……here it is.   ….i want it deleted. 

If you’re my friend, you don’t have to understand…..you just have to erase it.      

You asked me a bunch of questions after i just asked you a tiny question……and you don’t get to ask me anything,and point a flashlight in my face and judge me by trying to filter out the reason with odd questions…….respect my request.    the end. 

you said   ,”But I’m rather hurt and offended that you would make such a ridiculous request”

so….. should i explain how selfish and contradictory this statement is or should i just expect you to know.    You think you have the right to call my requests “ridiculous”, KNOWING, I didn’t explain to you the reason……you don’t get to start insulting what I don’t feel like explaining.    You, with all your mental , physical , and other oddities ,I’ve taken to respect….all things I understand, and don’t. As you have mine.  

You really should not judge me one request you don’t understand or have an answer to……just chill out.     I put you before everyone in my life.   Don’t get worked up over something so small.         I just posted your book link up and i’ll continue to.    Now just blow off whatever steam you have to and get back to being my friend.    I have weird little requests sometimes.   That’s all……not a big deal.     Call me when you want to have wacky banter….or just talk.

---

email from me

It’s the only picture I have of the two of us in my facebook. I DID care.

It was that you didn’t want it in the same SET as the other pictures I’d uploaded. To move it was fine. Which I did right away. That’s what seemed all rather ridiculous.

But now it’s deleted.

And no, I don’t generally question you about things. But when it comes to issues that are about ME, that I somehow caused, like taking down a picture of you because of what I just uploaded…

well,

oh well.

ok.

goodnight.

---

email from Stefan

i slept for two hours…..in which i had a dream about being so fed up with things I went to newark to buy dope.  Then, I woke up and got a call from my mom.  I said….”hello?”….and her opening line was…”you didn’t leave me any money.”    ….meaning, I forgot to leave 15 dollars for her to get an oil change when she used it.    I….flipped on her.     ….and now I have to set up and hope I don’t pass out while I tattoo this girl’s foot.    My heart is about to leap out.      good grief.    When it rains,it pours.

---

email from me

I’m trying to feel better, but my soul is still broken.

I still don’t understand what happened. And ‘i’m not trying to drag it out, but I can’t figure out what went wrong, and I don’t think my brain can really move on until I can understand something.

I was never angry. Nothing in my words was angry. I’m still not sure why… you were so angry on the phone. I’d been removing myself from a conversation you clearly didn’t want to have. I was trying to AVOID pressing a matter that was important and frustrating to me and made clear to be off limits to you.

I was hurt and offended. But I was never angry…. And I really want to understand what ignited you so. The word “ridiculous”? You’ve told me I was being ridiculous countless times. It that really it? Is that really a word that offends so greatly? I meant no offense. You are right, I didn’t know your motive, and can’t comment on that. But I was referring to the action alone, without the reasoning behind it. Your email to me yesterday was somewhat unkind in parts, and I tried to respond as simply and explanatory as possible. I somehow failed.

My suggestion as to motive wasn’t me trying to squeeze information out of you, rather, it seemed to me to be the most logical conclusion at the time (be it wrong or right) and I found it…. disrespectful… that you’d not think I deserved some honesty about your feelings regarding me and my actions… or past associations… or whatever it is.

I trust you implicitly, And will do whatever is requested, with or without explanation. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt sometimes. That it doesn’t still sting to feel i’m not being met with honesty.

You are the most important person in my entire universe.

This wounds me as much as it does you.

I just want to understand.

I’m sorry for writing, but I think you are tattooing and i’m sick and my voice is shot.

I can’t believe that you really comprehend how much you mean to me, or how important you are, or… the terrifying emotional immensity/intensity you strike in me.

When you tell me that we are flawed… that you are reminded of the many faults and imperfections…. that I have done this… if you say there are scars and wounds and things have been tainted in some way… I will indeed feel a physical sensation of a crushing blow to the center of my being, a sharp, terrible, aching pain…. I am filled with a sorrow and terror of the sky caving in… and I cannot stop from sobbing.

To be told such notions… that I have contributed to the destruction of something so resplendent, so significant…. it makes me feel like every webby thread of fascia has been torn from my body and I curl inward like a dying insect.

Perhaps it’s unfair of me to be so emotionally intense regarding my feelings for you.

I’m sorry if that puts you in an unfair postition.

My point here… was trying to possibly convey to you that I do NOT fuck with you, do NOT try to pull your strings, do NOT try to scam information out of you, do NOT want anything of you that you won’t give freely. You mean far too much to me for me to be capable of that.

I do not want to anger you. or offend you.

Or least of all… hurt you.

this isn’t probably very…. cohesive as an email… I fall back and forth asleep…. I’m pretty sick. Even taking cold medicine.

I’m sorry everything isn’t perfect. because this, you and me, if anything in the universe could be, THIS should be perfect

(but i usually think it is as close to perfect that perfect can be)

The way… um. my feelings… so much… um… you….

…… so much it hurts.