Sitting at a dive bar — a sometimes filthy place where roaches dance on the bar and old men stare at the floor beneath themselves. It’s nice.
I don’t knonw if I ever explained it, or if it is documented anywhere except the inside of my head, but it was at this bar that I sat and wrote long, long letters to L. Hand-written letters of garish torridness, pages and pages long, much of it in the style of a litany because I did not know if she would write back, nor did I expect her to. She did write back, and (I hate to say it like this, but…) as things always did with her it just got to be too much to keep up with, too much for me to absorb or respond to. I think I ultimately left her in the lurch a little bit, even if it happened in such a way that it feels like it’s the other way around.
I also wrote a long, long letter to Keri’s sister. Our correspondence started with an e-mail she sent me, but I wanted to communicate with her through the earthy medium of the pen. I know she never read most of that letter. I knew as I was writing it that she would never read beyond the first paragraphs, and then pick at a paragraph here or there.
I did not even think twice about it until we met at Bryant Park recently and she asked questions that were abundantly and repeatedly answered in that letter. I knew it would be like that so I was neither surprised nor offended. I have come to assume that paragraphs longer than a sentence, and sentences containing two separate thoughts together — these text objects will skid and slide across the page or around the screen, slithering through the mind like snakes through tall, tall grass.
This is the place where those letters were written. L. actually lit me up when it became clear that she read *every word* and wanted more. I was excited by this at first, but I came to see that every word hung on a page or a screen is not necessarily feed for analysis. How many people remember a fraction of what they write, and how many would be ready to discuss the vagaries of a sentence mashed between a forgotten sentence and an offhand aside that took on assumed importance for the quantity of words needed to express it?
I am referrring to something specific but think it’s a suitably open-ended question.
I’m full of shit.
