The Gist of It

She wanted her body to react in a way that she wanted it to, but no dice. There were too many things others diagnosed as “abnormal”, while she resigned herself to simply be “abnormal” herself, not just a product of these various specifics.

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That summer when she pulled up her dress and showed me a spot that look an awful lot like a trampoline that had been mostly severed from its foundation, I’ll always remember her explanation:

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“There are so many things about me that are burnt rubber.”

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I held her face and said something about caring or not caring or how her face was pretty and what else mattered when looking someone in the eyes? I don’t remember.

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We didn’t fuck that night, and she had a dream where she screamed out about tonsils or toenails but calmed down after I put my hand on her left breast and squeezed gently.

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In the morning, she woke up long before me and I found her sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her hands in a yellow summer dress.

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“I am a person who cannot hold anything, who has to be held, who has so many fingers, none of which I know what to do with. I can point at things. I can point at things and say ‘look, there, at that thing’ and people know what I’m talking about. But if I try to pick it up, to feel it, I cramp up and things just drop.”

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I made her a cup of tea that smelled like jasmine, but tasted like ginger, and she sat there not noticing it for a long time.

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By the time I had finished mine, I noticed her pawing at the cup, as if wishing it would do something by itself. Finally, she picked it up awkwardly and poured it, pointedly, into her lap. Her summer dress bled out like she was over-abundant in lubrication, or had just had a blank period of some sort.

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“It’s okay, I understand,” I said. “It just tastes like you. I wanted you to know what that was.”

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I found a roll of paper towels under the sink, handing them to her, hugging her quietly while she wept or whistled or something to that effect.

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ANGEREGRETS - PART I

1.

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Anger, like all things humans feel, is basically an act of love. If I say, “I’m angry at you”, it’s because I care enough to mention it. If I felt no love, there would be no need to open my mouth, to utter the phrase “I’m angry”, to even be bothered with you.

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This is what I mean when I say “I’m angry”: I love you. And I hope that you get better.

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2.

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There are cold nights that manage to make you upset, or angry, and there are the hot nights that disappoint and long the low way of being well. A touch of loss, all things being boring on all fronts from a long storm of no importance.

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What I wouldn’t give to shake a fist, to make a fist, wrapped around the hard cock of a ridiculous fury that never made much of a noise to begin with.

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An angry face like a lust in the mirror that moves.

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3.

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I’ve been angry before. I’ve acted out like a child who doesn’t know any better, even when I was old enough to know better. I’ve fronted it like a regret of all things embarrassing.

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I hold these moments for those that I love the most. There is no regret in that love, only a traipse in the fields that grow anger like flowers, only to bloom into something better.

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4.

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Like lambs at the slaughter, we find our anger as a surprising onslaught, totally unaware of where this thing even came from, though we feel it - we feel it like our flesh, only taken less for granted.

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5.

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Please don’t tell me you’re angry with me. I want to be as nice to you as possible.

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If you feel the need, though, just say “toad”. That would make your point better elicited, and far more amusing.

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6.

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What is past is past and anything one might feel angry about can only be forgotten, or not, but given up all the same.

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7.

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I’ve had lovers that I managed to be angry at, those that would be angry at me.

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And I’ve never regretted those moments of love, and hope they all feel the same.

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8.

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If I say “fuck you” and don’t mean that I want to fuck you, don’t take it personally.

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It basically means I do want to fuck you but don’t know how else to say it.

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9.

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What I remember: a hot night in the cold light of a San Francisco midnight. Your big dick in my mouth in an alley like what I always imagined San Francisco to be like. We went back to my place where the stupid simple Christmas tree that was there seemed to saddened you. It was a thing that had nothing to do with you, and nothing to do with us, and everything to do with what was already on it’s way out the door.

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I told you to leave at a time where there were no trains running. You left a sock, by way of leaving something of yourself behind, when I wanted nothing more to do with you.

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There were many reasons for anger to be found instead of a sock. And I regret them, but only partially.

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10.

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Anger is like a ghost in your L.A., an instance of road-rage that always has a cause that can’t ever be known. The need to be angry at something, for some reason, makes us create fantasies of anger like fire out of light. There are too many things one can choose to be angry at. Or we can choose not to be.

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Personality beats us down like the beasts we are. It sits in the car with us, constantly skipping the part of the song that’s playing that we most enjoy.

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11.

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That is to say: I don’t care if you’re angry. I am not.

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12.

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Many of the people I know that most held anger as part of their being are no longer so, whether through medical intervention, or complex acts of avoidance. Neither of which make the response completely impossible. It will come out in pointed stabs at something, like groping for a memory long forgotten.

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13.

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What is there ever to be angry about? Or to regret? That the world does not conform to our expectations of it? That we do not conform to our expectations of ourselves?

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These are impossible limitations of perfection, making the instances of grace that we’re greeted with seem somehow hollow; almost a joke about three somethings that walk into a bar.

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14.

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Horace: Anger is a short madness.

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15.

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It has often been said that one should never go to bed angry. But why?

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There are times when a life’s problems solutions are only found when not living, but dreaming, where the confines of what is real are of no use or even relevance; we need a break from the real to find the other real that’s deeper, perhaps less direct, but infinitely more useful, depending on our ability to respond to it.

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A dream about a car ride with a hijacked teddy-bear that talked has been more useful to me than hours of submissive screaming, tears and regretful lashing out and a sleepy-next day appearance at work ever could.

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16.

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I cannot ever recall, even recently, those that I have been angry at. Only the instances where I find regret where those ashes now lay.

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17.

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Benjamin Franklin: Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

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18.

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I’ll admit that I have been angry. Even recently, directed, yet totally submerged by the point of reference itself. This angry was waged in a way that was a hot point of annoyance, hot enough that I could call it “anger” yet not pointed enough to actually do anything about.

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I feel like this is the type of anger I am most fearful of. The kind of slow burn that will eventually flame out, even as I hope for the general genial air to choke it down to nothing but smoke & back to just being the air itself.

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19.

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Hate and anger are two separate things to me: I can hate, which while still a product of love (it is something that seems so final to me), people who are unable to know what they wish to order until they arrive at a smiling cashier, even while standing absent-mindedly in line for 7 or so minutes. I hate them because I love my coffee so much in the morning. I have an exact point of reference for my hate, with reasons that can be quantified, and yet, still, never truly overcome.

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I seem to save my anger for those whom I wish to continue a relationship with. My desire to make them perfect to me, to make them more loveable, elicits something in me that, while utterly futile, still manages a response that is not final.

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20.

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Likewise, I can say that you made me angry and I just can’t put my finger on as to why.

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