Uncouth Sentiments

 Right off the corner of 6th avenue and Granada Heights Blvd is a little joint that will draw you in and accept you, but only if you’re lookin’ to die.
You’ll hear her low melodies from the small basement windows and stop to wonder if her throat is as beautiful as the notes that escape them.
If you’re not a jackass, a drunk, a saint, or madman, then you’ll keep on walking. But if you’re lookin’ for more than simple answers-
if your head is tilted fifty degrees on either side of sanity, then you probably won’t even notice that you’ve trembled your way down a flight of concrete steps to the front door. The neon sign in the window will not flicker, blink or buzz, it’s just gonna stare silently at you without judgment as you push
the wooden door and enter into the Shangri-La of Scoundrels.
Above the din of the conversations and dirty deals and the melody of the woman which brought you to this dump you’ll hear “Welcome to Messina, friend!”.

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I want to read broken battle hymns off your bones.

Pull prayers from the bends in your ribs and remember what it means to be human.

Run my fingers under your skin and find salvation in sinew.

Breathe me something beautiful and goddamn, let it be the truth.

I need the honesty from the cracks in your voice .

I am only skin and simpleminded notions.

I will write you on my back in hieroglyphics and incantations- a vertebrae manifesto.

I am a body of work to be read before bedtime.

Take me in.

I am writing this to prove that I can be brave. In my search to bring about change and improvement in my life, I have found that I quit nearly every project I begin. I always thought that I was just lazy, but I was wrong.  It’s fear. I’ve never considered myself to be afraid of failure, but I have always been painfully afraid of ridicule. The interesting notion about ridicule is that it doesn’t require that you fail, it only requires that you try.  I’ve been sitting here trying to write a few pieces for maybe a half an hour and there has been an incessant voice in the back of my mind telling me to stop.

I used to think that this voice was just boredom.  I thought I just didn’t want to work on whatever project was in front of me, even if it was one I was excited about.  Recently I cam to understand that this voice was fear trying to stop me before I got the chance to make a fool of myself.  Honestly, I’ve never really cared (or cared as much) about people making fun of things like the way I acted, what I wore or the things that I enjoy. People are going to be dicks about something no matter what and I would rather be happy than pretend to be what I’m not. However, when it comes to areas of life that require effort, I’m terrified of  ridicule.  The idea that I could pour my heart into something and do my very best and have it not be good enough kills me.  I’d rather not try at all. Who wants to make fun of you if it looks like you don’t care about it, anyways?

This is me saying “no”. I want to write because I am passionate about it. If I wrote for other people, then it wouldn’t be real to me.  I am not even close to being the writer, cosplayer, employee or human being that I aspire to be. It’s been easier and far less frightening to  get by on minimal effort,  but that also means that I can only enjoy minimal success.  I am far more disgusted by mediocrity than I am frightened by ridicule. I need to push forward. I want more.

Moments of courage are not always linked to  great feats and moral dilemmas. They just mean saying “no” to the doubt in the back of your mind.

I was riding your cock and searching for something to say to fill the silence when it happened. I tried not to look into your eyes and eventually said “I like this”, which was both true and incredibly banal. Although we had broken up, we still retained a mostly clandestine friendship that had turned into  late night booty calls after I had (purposefully) bent over in front of you too many times while wearing that skirt.  I may have even preferred our friends-with benefits scenario as it allowed me to continue having sex and witty conversations with you, while not having to worry about tending to our relationship because it had already failed.

Weeks prior to this, you blurted out that you didn’t want kids, which I still think was just a ploy to get me to break up with you. I did. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a future without kids. Now, of course, that doesn’t really matter. I try not to commit myself to uncertain things.

But that was then and this was fucking. Or at least it was, until my dumbass blurted out “I like this” and you responded by telling me you loved me. I’m not sure if it was by reflex or whether it was even true or not, but you fucked up. You had been so worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep the sex between us casual, but  I did. I’ve found that I’m rather cavalier about what I put between my legs. No, it was you, Mr.Machismo, who caved under the pressure of the familiar way that our bodies moved together.

I fell for it. you had opened up room for reconciliation, so I dedicated myself to fixing the holes in a relationship that should have ended five years beforehand.  I think you were unwilling to admit your mistake, because all you did was allow me to tell you that I loved you while sidestepping my attempts to talk through our issues. 

Two months later, you told me that we needed to stop pretending to be happy, that you didn’t want to be in a relationship and you just wanted to climb mountains. You spent the following weekend with the girl that you would quickly begin a relationship and move in with. Mountains don’t suck your cock and tell you how cool you are.

Another two months passed,during which I put myself through a near comical depression. We began to talk again via text message and I ended up at your house one night so we could catch up and share a pack of cigarettes.  I teared up and told you that I still had feelings for you. You apologized and told me all of your problems. You had quite a list: your alcoholic mother was in jail, your father faced losing the house, and the stress of it all had caused the two of you  to nearly come to blows.  However, the problem you kept coming back to was how you had nearly been in an accident two days prior and now you couldn’t pop a boner.  It was not something I cared about. As your friend, which I was trying desperately to be, I cared much more about your emotional well-being than your impotency.

However, you continued to bring up the issue, sigh loudly and poke at your limp penis through your basketball shorts. It was not one of your most subtle manipulations, but I bit anyways. I talked to you about it and told you to see a doctor.  I asked you if it looked any different, at which point you turned your back on verbal responses and just whipped it out.  We danced around the indecency of it all before I inevitably began a handjob that ended in a blowjob. Only after you learned that you could still achieve an erection and ejaculate did you seem to even remember that you had a girlfriend.  You told me that you cared for her and tried to soften the rejection by telling me I was still the Blowjob Goddess. In hindsight, it was really her who ended up with the consolation prize.  The next hour was spent with the both of us trying to out do the other with dramatic antics. I sat on the floor crying and you put the barrel of your pistol in your mouth until I talked you out of pulling the trigger.

You decided against telling your girlfriend and I decided you were a coward. We tried to continue talking until it made your girlfriend uncomfortable and we realized we had nothing to gain from it, anyways. I saw you  last month, still walking with the slumped gait of a man who hates himself. 

We stayed together far too long and we’re both to blame for that. I won’t cheapen those years by saying I didn’t love you in a horribly magnificent way- I did, but dear god, I am so much happier now that you’re gone.

I feel like I’m on the cusp of writing something really well. Everything’s been coming out pretty half-assed lately. I’m missing something. I want to write something that makes me cry. That pushes me. 

Loving him was a lot like projectile vomiting in that it was furious, got all over everything, and everyone wanted me to stop, but I couldn’t. Leaving him was a lot like taking a shit in that I dropped twenty pounds and got rid of all the useless waste in my life.

Love is gross. Ugly truths and bodily fluids abound and, at some point,  you end up naked and crying because something was either terrible or beautiful or terribly beautiful. 

If you want to  love, then you need to be willing to bleed from wounds much larger than paper cuts and cry until your knees buckle and you are forced to take huge, gasping breaths just to survive. Love is beautiful wreckage. It tears you down and then rebuilds you into something completely new with parts you didn’t know you had.

Sometimes love doesn’t last. It courses through your body like some gut-wrenching virus. It keeps you up late at night.It leaves you with pox marks that may never fade. No one is immune, though we may try so hard to protect ourselves by injecting cynicism, fear and doubt into our veins. I tend to tie off more than I should.

Let it in, anyways. Let it crawl under your skin and graft to your spine. Let it pulse through you. Get infected.

I had a great time with my mom filming a couple of wonderful clients.  We went to lunch with one of them and she asked me how I got to be so mature, because I was the most mature twenty something that she had ever seen.  My mom answered the question by detailing most of my life and what I’ve gone through. What made it incredible is that she didn’t tell it like I was a victim. The tone wasn’t she’s been through so much,  it was this is what she’s done.  It served as a great reminder that life isn’t about what happens to  you, it’s about how you act and react. I can tell that my mom respects me and I couldn’t explain to you how important that is to me. 

Freedom breathes into body and tingles lungs like ice and first kisses

Whereas when I am chained to you everything thaws into unintelligible mush 

And leaves me with a hollow Luke-warm core 

And all I want is to climb into myself 

to hold onto what I thought I had. 

Being who you want is difficult when you forsake your decisive rights 

To someone with no understanding of your dreams. 

I tell you time and time again 

I tell you time and time again 

But

I don’t really tell you

At all 

Because I am too scared of 

Those eyes and those lips and those words that fall from them and arms that may 

Or may not want to hold me, but always want to keep me.  

The book of my heart is leather bound as I have been bound to you, 

Do not discount it as childish and grasping— If I am beautiful, it is beautiful for it is me. 

Words are stronger than tendons and more fluid and nourishing than blood 

And they fill the chambers of my heart in longing to spill onto you, 

Warm with secrets and children’s wishes. 

I am not your choices. 

I cannot be your choices 

Or my words will dry like blood and stain me Lady Macbeth

I need breath and choice and icy freedoms 

I need white cotton and the kiss of the sun

Love is a choice.

I have always said this.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go because the action in itself becomes innate and there’s that part of you that doesn’t want to let go, but it is a choice. I don’t believe in soulmates or true love or “meant to be”. The only thing I believe in is the raw dedication of the human heart. Because you have to choose to love someone, even when you feel like punching them in the goddamn mouth. Love is hard and intoxicating. It is unnecessary. We don’t need love, but I know you know what I mean when I talk about the unsettled emptiness that sits in your stomach without it. Life without love is an artist without a muse- we feel useless and wilted. Love is raw and beautiful and it must be organic. Don’t plot for love with weird ass machinations about how you will make so and so fall in love with you. By all means, woo and flatter and love even when it is not returned, but never ever manipulate love. Never steal it. We all desire love, but when it turns from that bittersweet longing to desperate, selfish gnashing, then it’s not worth it. I have an artist’s heart. I am not so petty. Recently I have been accused of being so, but nothing could be further from the truth. I want love. I will fight for love. I will wait for love. But when it comes to me, it will be real, not some byproduct of a scheme that I’ve spun.

Love is also a terrifying force. It’s rapture and wreckage all in one package. I’ve gone from being the most emotionally driven madwoman to a deeply critical thinker and neither attitude has helped me understand one thing about love other than that it scares the shit out of me. People are reckless and selfish and ugly in the most eloquent way. Putting two people together and making it work seems impossible. Occasionally love is something that you want to give up on entirely, but then you begin to count the soft empty moments that were meant to be filled with laughter or a lover’s fingers or a smile that is only for you. What currently scares me the most about love is that you are no longer responsible for only yourself. Suddenly you are holding the heart of another human being and they are holding yours and you have to get used to the weight of it and nurture it all while hoping that they aren’t just going to feed yours to a pack of wolves or drop it when they find one that beats a little bolder or more in rhythm with their own. That’s why it’s important for me to understand that love is a choice. It’s not just something you fall in and out of. The entire situation is terrifying. Love is being bold.

There’s something about love and the way it makes you want to give every part of yourself to another person that makes it counter-intuitive and undeniably incredible. I’ve been the one to rush and jump into a lover’s arms. I’ve  made scrapbooks, plush toys and cookies and none of it felt like work.

Love is infuriating , because it is inexplicable. Love goes beyond the things you thought you wanted. Love only works when you’re willing to let it because love is a choice  to keep going when you are afraid. There’s a magic behind the way a heart is pieced back together.

I hate love because it beckons me to do stupid things and I don’t need any help looking ridiculous. I’m scared of love because I am reckless, but at the same time my reckless nature helps me to forget I am afraid.

It’s ok to panic. Love is worht the risk, even when it doesn’t last. It comes back if you’ll let it. Love bodly. 

I know someday I’ll barrel into love again and I’m ok with that. I have a hard time accepting things I don’t believe I’ve earned, but love is not a reward for a job well done.