I have random flashbacks to S., the bartender I knew a little too well. To say I was infatuated was an understatement. I had that body memorized from the way she drawled on pronouncing my name to the freckle on the back of her foot. I knew every part of her, inside out.
I think ahead, just a few years later, how the spell broke. I mostly ignored her emails or messages. She knew, too. That would be, it seems, the very definition of infatuation, which looks funny spelled out in dictionary form:
[inˈfaCHəˌwādəd]
Thinking of things in short sentences, incomplete scrawls.
Coffee cools but water continues to flow.
Peofessional-sounding voices organizing a proper romance, according to rules laid out in a series of comic strips.
I saw an ex-gf a few days ago. I feel nothing for her now, but she represents the last attempt I made at entering into a so-called “traditional” relationship, with the underlying assumption that marriage or long-term commitment involving living together is the goal. At present I have not the slightest aspiration toward that goal, and I’m happy and comfortable with the occasional dalliance.
Her apartment was a curiou mix of messay and spartan. The air conditioner, in the middle of the winter, lay splat in the middle of the living room floor. Nothing else surrounded it. The wall behind the couch contained a single certificate of appreciation from a volunteer animal care league. The table next to the couch was completely bare. She put win in the refrigerator, which seemed odd to me but I’ve since learned it is not uncommon to drink wine chilled. I don’t know wine from anything, and find much of the language and discussion about it to be manufactured. The real enjoyment of wine comes from how much it costs.
Her place was not unlike the Japanese Waif’s in terms of spartan messiness. It was like thoughts piled up in corners, waiting for resolution but wadded up until such time as resolution feels appropriate. The Waif (I’ll call her Vivia, because that is what she called herself, though I seriously doubt that was her name) had an illegal basement apartment that felt like something from a Valdosta trailer park. It had a musty smell about it. There was probably mold developing. Through the windows you’d see and hear the feet of people traipsing past. Flushing is always crowded, and you felt that constant presence of the world moving without you in Viva’s apartment. Her bed was a single mattress, thin but not uncomfortable, not for our purposes at least. She was a wildcat, seemingly insatiable, and to be honest she was, at first, far too much for me to keep up with. She could tell, though, and was sweet about it, not wanting to push me into heart attack territory. I was twice her age, or so she claimed. Certain elements of her timeline made no sense, and once in a while she’d make an anachronistic-for-her-age cultural reference that made me think she lied about being 26. I never called her out on it because what difference would it make? We were fuckbuddies.
She is the one who just up and disappeared on me. It may have been an elaborate ghosting scheme but I believe what I was told: She got deported back to Japan for being a chronic shoplifter. ICE had given her multiple second chances to get her shit together but she could not control her impulses. I never went looking for them but her pictures were said to be posted on walls at numerous Flushing-area supermarkets and bodegas. THese pictures, though, were of her in disguise. She would dress up like a bearded man with a tophat and a trenchcoat, and during Covid she made ample use of facemasks and full headcoverings to shield her appearance. I never went looking for those photos. Are they still there? I don’t care. She never stole anything from me, as far as I’ve been able to determine.
What is this morning rambling of matters written about multiple times already? Why? At the moment I have no serious romantic prospects, no dalliances to light up my life for a brief indulgance. Why do I even think about it?
I read an interesting piece about dreaming. No one fully understands it. One interesting bit, according to a survey of 16,000 sleep volunteers, is that virtually nobody dreams about smartphones. Only 4% recalled dreams involving smartphones, and most of those dreams involved some kind of grief. The theory is that smartphones are too new for the primal space that dreams occupy. Dreaming goes to elemental levels of consciousness, shutting out stuff that the ancients didn’t know or have need for.
I would think a cell phone store clerk or cell phone product development manager would have visions of cell phones in their dreams. I’ve certainly had visions of payphones in my dreams, and there is nothing primal about them. But it’s interesting how such an ubiquitous object in most peoples’ lives does not appear in the dream space.
That’s a realm where mind reading would be revelatory. I want to see the chaos and primal plunder of what goes on in my nocturnal head.
I saw her on the subway today. She actually sat next to me in a way that seemed strange. Later we sat across from each other. I tried not to look. I even took off my glasses to make her nothing but a fuzzy blob. We pretend not to recognize but we ride the same subway most days of the week. There is nothing inherently creepy about recognizing someone on the train but I think she has thoughts about me and the ways I glance her way. Some day she will take off that fucking mask. On that count I do have to be honest and ask if this person is the same one I see online.
