ecappaccino's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 329 - unwashable dirt I am feeling staccato. Disjointed. I feel like I'm typing up notes for myself in little bullets. Bang. They penetrate the page. I'm reliving moments again. It's bad to relive. The prefix 're' incriminates bad words. Remember, relive, repeat... Do something once - don't do it again. Who said that? It doesn't matter. The weekend's been tiring, a little whirlwind of change and activity. Humid weather, temperate skies. I like the heat and the shy sunlight. The world was made in weather like this, I'm sure. I wish it were, in any case. It shows God must have been indecisive. Blasphemous, but humanity and divinity mixed is beautiful. I like pretty things. The new year's come and gone - little things scattered around my house remind me. There's a Christmas bowl (entirely inappropriate) of roasted watermelon seeds, snacks that leak caramelized peanut into the room and dozens of beers in the fridge. Just now I found a container of snack peas. Saturday, found me late - by three minutes only - rushing up the escalator at the Rialto near noon trying to chase Yvonne Mak's receding back. A T-shirt and jeans, a schoolbag. I had to laugh - she was so unchanged. I felt changed, however. A stillness had grown in me on the inside. We walked to where the others were sitting - Yvonne Lu and their childhood friend. She reminded me of Laura, a girl in fourth form I had tried to save, who survived. It had been a long time ago, and we had all been so worried. On the way to the movie, we acquired another body - Fiona, jeans, shirt, schoolbag and all. Memoirs Of A Geisha wasn't thrilling, but the little girl was pretty until she grew up and turned into Zhang Ziyi. And stayed that way for most of the movie. That evening I came home to four boys, their families, and a karaoke machine plugged into our television. The adults sang songs from their youth while the boys fought each other over computer games. I began melting in the heat on the other computer, temporarily sickened by the scent of perspiration in the room. I could feel it too - the disgust. I hate...Ihate..IhateIhateIhate. "I hate guys," I said to in fragments to you and Nancy that other night. And also something along the lines of, "Especially if they appear to be interested in me. I don't know why. I feel really disgusted, and then I become a bitch. It makes me feel gross, but I can't help it." I felt really sorry for things beyond me. Feeling unwashed and listening to stories of the best day ever, I left out of distress at every silence. -- Curled up in my room, unlit, and closed my eyes. And got up. And fingered the stack of letters tied with deep red ribbon. "Scary," she said, driving up next to where I sat curled in the shadow of the fence, my back to the street. I had been reading by the street lights and night air, waiting. We swapped - air and DVDs. I realized my mascara from the morning might have run and wiped my face. She drove off. Our family guests left immediately afterwards. I walked back to say goodbye to the guests on the side of the driveway that remained unlit. I cried through the whoring hour, and waited for the vacuum hour. I slept at four. Sunday. I threw myself out of bed by pushing myself onto the floor. I'd slept four hours, and resented the meeting slightly but thought that after four hours, I'd resent most acquaintances anyway. And after the recent allergy to boys, to meet a boy I must act close to. I hadn't talked to this one in a year, and the last time we met was at Genesis - I guess that counts for a lot. There's a strange group bond that I can't violate. I saw him after an hour waiting at the bus stop and half an hour in transit. He was an Oporto fan - I had no idea what Oporto was. I later discovered it was on the side of Queen Street that I hardly ever used - namely the stretch opposite the Borders-Civic side. I pushed for breakfast, even though he'd just stuffed himself full of chicken while waiting, and let him decided on a movie that was scheduled almost two hours later. Daniel, obsessed by public transport and trains, threw me onto the 11:55 New Lynn train at Britomart and checked how late/early the train was at every stop from Downtown to New Lynn. We didn't get off, just didn't move and let the train take us back. The conductor recognized us and didn't charge us twice. It turns out he was just obsessed with time in general - he told me how long a yellow light lasted for to the second, and his entire bus schedule. At the cinema a security guard accused me of running down the escalators the wrong way. I hadn't even used the escalators, and so we stood there politely arguing. "So if we view the security tape we wouldn't see you running down the escalators the wrong way?" he said in the fifth round of our volley. "No! Of course not" "Are you sure? You wouldn't be lying?" "I wasn't on the escalator at all." "Okay, let's go. Come with me to the security room, please." Daniel mouthed, Bring it on! to me behind the guard's back. We took seven steps before the security guard turned aruond and said, "I'm sorry m'am for any inconvenience. I realize I had made a mistake," before spinning around and darting at the Asian woman who had just walked past us. "There's the problem," Daniel said. "Look!" I looked back: the Asian woman was dressed almost identically to me, and almost identical in stature - except she didn't wear glasses, and her hair had been tied back. The hairstyle didn't count for much of a difference - I had a hair tie around my wrist. More incriminating evidence. We shook our heads and maneuvered our way up the escalator (the right way) to see Munich. It takes a foreigner to notice the things in Auckland that I took for granted, like the carpeted groves of the walls at Queen Street Cinema. "Nowhere else in the world," Daniel had said, as if he had been everywhere. Still. Even while I was admiring the wall with him, I caught myself adding it to the list of reasons to stay. Ridiculous. I took it off. I wonder whether I too would be public transport obsessed, and egotistic if I were to live in Australia, and come back in a decade. That night, the silence grew. I wounded myself on someone else's behalf, then tried to take it back. Something about need. Something about not needing. I got a creepy feeling that someone was disappointed in me, or angry. And then I talked to you. You made a promise to write if I move overseas. We made little plans and suppositions. I thought of the word debris, and didn't know why. You said you'd give me an hour's warning if you ever come. You made me smile. Thank you. Monday. Today. I wake up at noon. Blue sky, white clouds. A text from Daniel that wants me to have coffee with Nicole and himself tomorrow - and a demand to be shown Mission Bay. I am dressed in a black and white, melting in the heat. I need somewhere to go, someone to be with. I search and find nothing, so I slowly type: I don't love you anymore. Goodbye And erase it letter by letter. Over and over again. To nobody in particular. It seems both true and untrue, and I detest the lack of body, like the prelude to a rash decision. Again. Something about need. The strangest person had said this weekend, I feel so used to me, in regards to somebody in their life. I consoled them and then felt myself being squeezed into that sentence - a cagey summary of four words. "Mum told me that if you love someone, you can't help but be nice to them and devote yourself to them. I asked her if there is such a thing as loving someone who will love you back just as much. She nodded. But I'm doubtful" you wrote to me once, distracting yourself while you were in Chemistry and making up for a letter that had become lost in the post. I realized today why I dislike repaid for kindness. I end up, inevitably, feeling like a whore. 5:55 pm - 01-30-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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