Straight No Chaser

Tangelo

i don't have hormones to blame this on. not a seasonally compromised immune system, just, sick. stuffy head, running nose, rocks for tonsils.

to add to which, i don't feel quite right about anything today. there's been this flood of attention all day, which normally i'd embrace, but none of it is coming from the right place and i feel like a bitch but i just can't, do not have the energy to be gracious toward anyone right now.

my cousin in new york has been text messaging all day, to tell me he ran into this family friend with whom he's since been reminiscing about something i did when i was three. something cute and toddlerish, something i sort of remember, something i don't need to hear retold again and again, textly or otherwise. ordinarily i have a lot more patience for him, one of very few males who does care about me and my well-being and who can be counted on; today i'm just grouchy about it. i sent one reply: "hah." which, he doesn't know this, but hah is what i say when i'm not laughing. it's not a full-bodied haha, which i use to be more or less sincere, but it's close enough that it looks like a typo, except to those who know.

and sean, sean, sean, in an unprecedented display of hypothetical curiosity, has made about a million contact efforts throughout the day, electronically and otherwise; it's like he could sense how i was feeling last night, how confused and incomplete; like he read what i wrote about him, how i described him as a fallen angel or whatever the fuck i said. which, if he did, and because he already knows, in some sense, it is entirely unfair for him to use that as leverage, to take advantage of the fact that i cannot push him away. he calls and he messages, i ignore and ignore and ignore and then i respond, and i want to castrate and castigate him but apparently not as much as i want just to keep the peace. he suggested tangelo. it was my way of distracting him from the invasive question he kept asking, over and over, because i did not intend to answer it. two years ago i would have felt flutters over this, felt some virginal version of lust or actualization. today i just feel dirty, displaced anger.

it's not marcus's fault i had a bad weekend, or that i'm sick. well. it's probably his fault i'm sick, but not that i had a shitty weekend. but i'm angry at him anyway, because he can't fix the sean thing, won't guarantee me that he's not going to flake out tonight, and because of all the million correspondences i received today, none of the important ones were from him. without getting into detail, i will say that i'm about to ruin everything (i already know this) by calling him back, momentarily, to tell him how important it is that he not flake on me tonight. he will feel affronted and mistrusted, and it will not decrease the likelihood that he'll flake, so i don't know why i'm going to do it. but i am.

i'm not disloyal or unfaithful or any of those other ugly adjectives, [reader]. nor do i actually have as much space in my heart as what i've been purporting, recently. it's just that i'm developing my own mythology, more or less; everyone's got his or her role, none of which overlap, each of which is important. sean is an angel, uncommonly beautiful with his curly hair and his perfect skin and that unbelievably crystalline philosophy roiling in his every action. but he is not home; i don't feel at home in his smell or his nearness, and i never will. never. hence, he is fallen.

aaron's pedestal is lifting ever higher, and at the risk of saying something incredibly stupid, i...i won't say it. i'll save it for him.

i've been back and forth twenty times, since that earlier paragraph, on whether i'm actually going to call marcus, now. and, just to bring the ridiculousness of this day full circle, i'm going to flip a god damn coin. whatever comes up, it'll be the right decision. in which case, yes, i really could just choose. but i don't trust myself that much.