Dear Cute Bartender,
Thank you it's been ages, it's been months and eons since I felt that.
P and I had gone perambulating in the panhandle and my hair was in disarray thanks to the soupy fog, I was in non-fetching sweats and sans war paint, not even a stitch of lip gloss and I sat down at the bar and you looked at me, you looked at us and my neutered heart skipped a beat, my intuition mesmerized, and I even flirted a little, I even blushed a little.
I was watching you as you were watching me, and what it is and what is might not be, but all of that is armchair speculation, what it is, what it really is, is the thrill of mutual admiration, a raucous kick to the gut, me admiring your hands as you pour my wine, me undressing you behind the bar. And it might be all in my head, save the egging on from P.
And here is why I launch into why I don't date, I don't date because I trust my gut implicitly, and my gut responds with some kind of visceral signal, maybe I am totally wrong and it's just gas, and maybe my gut has poor taste in men, because I wind up wiser but bereft, maybe all that love was a preamble to the future, but my gut has been unmoved for moons until tonight. And it lurched and half gurgled an untranslatable poem, and I stammered when I ordered the spaetzle and twirled my hair and found myself verging on parody, I thought it might pass, oh but I wanted him. P just looked at me askance and volunteered to leave. I hardly knew what to do with that blushing girl, so clearly mooning on the other side of the bar, so I collected my dignity, asked his name and fled.
It felt good, more real and more tantalizing than all those kisses I have been dreaming about, christ it felt good. The thing about my gut, is that is falls in love, fast and fatally, but my gut is never, ever wrong about the passion, my gut might ultimately be a shitty judge of character, but my gut can spot a sporting fuck immediately. My gut thinks I ought to stalk the lovely boy with the lovely hands at his workplace, but little miss practical, who is still scarred, and bruised and in pain, is all phase II and moving away and real estate and packing and money, and money and resumes and six to eight weeks of healing and sutures, stick to plan, stay the course, whilst little miss love and her super precocious gut are all deviate for a moment, he looked at you and you saw him looking - well maybe he was wondering what kind of tip he would get out of the ladies (a good one)
On a different, but similar note, sometimes, most times patience bears out, sometimes it takes months, maybe even years to hear what you needed to hear from the of the person that you needed to hear it from. My father often gets weepy when he speaks of his father, because whatever chance they had at reconciliation and even more powerfully recognition died on the day that he did, tonight my old friend parsed the words I had been wanting to hear, that when I thought I had detonated a friendship in an attempt to salvage old friends from the detritus of implosion, that I had helped... that is all I ever needed to know. We are fundamentally and magnanamously fucked up, each with his or her own very specific pseudo monstrosities, that get magnified in enclosed communities, we are doing the best we fucking can, saddled with this modern world's stinking expecatations - it's not a judgment and it's not a cop out, it's just a whispered plea for a bit of empathy on all sides and a pass for the inadvertant girl in the middle. For many years I was content to be a third wheel and a willing sidekick, I got the most adult friendship I have ever had, and I happily settled into the embrace of routine....
and then something happened at the laundrymat. except that is not entirely honest. something happened at the laundrymat after I realized I wasn't going to go anywhere fast wreathed in my fetching cocoon of the people that I loved who were going to make me crazy because I was too deeply entrenched, plus I decided right then and fucking there that I was far too old to be washing my delicates at the crack laundrymat with the lachrymose keeper who always closes too early, that and I would like a dishwasher and a fucking puppy.
Doesn't mean I don't still love them, those who would conspire to drive me batty, just tonight I had the pleasure (and I do mean pleasure) to inform my former husband that happy birthday I am holding a warrant for your arrest in my hands! just means, just means I will have to love you enough to let you all go, and I do. Right along with headlands and the distemperate bay, right along with the little pink stuccoed houses, right along with every salty white cap breaking against our bird beshat coast, right straight into the stony blue immovable, impervious deeps.
There, late at night, when I am dreaming, you will find me beneath the sea cataloguing memories and past lives, with the jellyfish and the whales and pinocchio and a nameless teddy bear and an unlimited supply of water proof batteries, captain ahab is conducting tonight and jules verne is first trombone, seek out the air pockets in the forlorn wrecks on the reefs in the near shallows and remember to breath deeply in the wake of delicious bartenders, just parrot fish in plumage, just a rumble of your fallible gut, just no one's beginning and no one's end.
Thank you it's been ages, it's been months and eons since I felt that.
P and I had gone perambulating in the panhandle and my hair was in disarray thanks to the soupy fog, I was in non-fetching sweats and sans war paint, not even a stitch of lip gloss and I sat down at the bar and you looked at me, you looked at us and my neutered heart skipped a beat, my intuition mesmerized, and I even flirted a little, I even blushed a little.
I was watching you as you were watching me, and what it is and what is might not be, but all of that is armchair speculation, what it is, what it really is, is the thrill of mutual admiration, a raucous kick to the gut, me admiring your hands as you pour my wine, me undressing you behind the bar. And it might be all in my head, save the egging on from P.
And here is why I launch into why I don't date, I don't date because I trust my gut implicitly, and my gut responds with some kind of visceral signal, maybe I am totally wrong and it's just gas, and maybe my gut has poor taste in men, because I wind up wiser but bereft, maybe all that love was a preamble to the future, but my gut has been unmoved for moons until tonight. And it lurched and half gurgled an untranslatable poem, and I stammered when I ordered the spaetzle and twirled my hair and found myself verging on parody, I thought it might pass, oh but I wanted him. P just looked at me askance and volunteered to leave. I hardly knew what to do with that blushing girl, so clearly mooning on the other side of the bar, so I collected my dignity, asked his name and fled.
It felt good, more real and more tantalizing than all those kisses I have been dreaming about, christ it felt good. The thing about my gut, is that is falls in love, fast and fatally, but my gut is never, ever wrong about the passion, my gut might ultimately be a shitty judge of character, but my gut can spot a sporting fuck immediately. My gut thinks I ought to stalk the lovely boy with the lovely hands at his workplace, but little miss practical, who is still scarred, and bruised and in pain, is all phase II and moving away and real estate and packing and money, and money and resumes and six to eight weeks of healing and sutures, stick to plan, stay the course, whilst little miss love and her super precocious gut are all deviate for a moment, he looked at you and you saw him looking - well maybe he was wondering what kind of tip he would get out of the ladies (a good one)
On a different, but similar note, sometimes, most times patience bears out, sometimes it takes months, maybe even years to hear what you needed to hear from the of the person that you needed to hear it from. My father often gets weepy when he speaks of his father, because whatever chance they had at reconciliation and even more powerfully recognition died on the day that he did, tonight my old friend parsed the words I had been wanting to hear, that when I thought I had detonated a friendship in an attempt to salvage old friends from the detritus of implosion, that I had helped... that is all I ever needed to know. We are fundamentally and magnanamously fucked up, each with his or her own very specific pseudo monstrosities, that get magnified in enclosed communities, we are doing the best we fucking can, saddled with this modern world's stinking expecatations - it's not a judgment and it's not a cop out, it's just a whispered plea for a bit of empathy on all sides and a pass for the inadvertant girl in the middle. For many years I was content to be a third wheel and a willing sidekick, I got the most adult friendship I have ever had, and I happily settled into the embrace of routine....
and then something happened at the laundrymat. except that is not entirely honest. something happened at the laundrymat after I realized I wasn't going to go anywhere fast wreathed in my fetching cocoon of the people that I loved who were going to make me crazy because I was too deeply entrenched, plus I decided right then and fucking there that I was far too old to be washing my delicates at the crack laundrymat with the lachrymose keeper who always closes too early, that and I would like a dishwasher and a fucking puppy.
Doesn't mean I don't still love them, those who would conspire to drive me batty, just tonight I had the pleasure (and I do mean pleasure) to inform my former husband that happy birthday I am holding a warrant for your arrest in my hands! just means, just means I will have to love you enough to let you all go, and I do. Right along with headlands and the distemperate bay, right along with the little pink stuccoed houses, right along with every salty white cap breaking against our bird beshat coast, right straight into the stony blue immovable, impervious deeps.
There, late at night, when I am dreaming, you will find me beneath the sea cataloguing memories and past lives, with the jellyfish and the whales and pinocchio and a nameless teddy bear and an unlimited supply of water proof batteries, captain ahab is conducting tonight and jules verne is first trombone, seek out the air pockets in the forlorn wrecks on the reefs in the near shallows and remember to breath deeply in the wake of delicious bartenders, just parrot fish in plumage, just a rumble of your fallible gut, just no one's beginning and no one's end.
posted by emma at
9:44 PM
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