Lessons.
The first time
I stood before him naked,
I was soft gooseflesh
and pale pink nipples
and self-conscious desire.
I was just a girl,
learning how to be a woman.
The last time
I stood before him naked,
I was fully clothed
and hands shaking
and unwavering resolve.
I am just a woman,
learning how not to be a girl.
Lessons.
The first time
I stood before him naked,
I was soft gooseflesh
and pale pink nipples
and self-conscious desire.
I was just a girl,
learning how to be a woman.
The last time
I stood before him naked,
I was fully clothed
and hands shaking
and unwavering resolve.
I am just a woman,
learning how not to be a girl.
The Real Katie West: How I Choose My Lovers
I find them on subways reading books I have on my list of Books To Read. I find them at bars dancing more enthusiastically than anyone else; even if they can’t really dance. I find them in line at the grocery store on a Friday night buying cookie dough, milk and that’s it. I find them in the Canadian poetry section of bookstores. I find them at work, having great ideas and wearing seasonal socks. I find them on the internet, creating things that make me wish I had thought of it first.
When I sit beside them, they smile. They’re easy to talk to. Their intelligence surpasses my own. Their vocabulary makes me swoon. Their brilliance with words makes me start to imagine them naked. They make me smile at a frequency I feel is too much for any respectable person, so I bite my lip in an effort to stop. After half an hour in their presence, my lips are sore, and yet I still wouldn’t refuse their kiss.
The way they see the world is very different from the way I see it, and we can share our views and always our eyes get wider. They listen to me. (So very few people actually listen to me.) They make me laugh; I make them laugh. We are at a party and they say something so beyond everyone else’s scope with an ease that makes me lean into them hard. But they do it softly, and gently, so no one feels inferior, instead we all feel better for having heard it. They argue with a grace that moves me. Between their legs. They are collaborative. They are receptive to constructive criticism. They think honesty is the best policy.
They touch me gently in all the right places at all the right times in ways that only make me imagine them touching me roughly in all the right places at all the right times. I mean, they place their hand on the small of my back as I walk through doors in front of them, which makes me think of their hand on the small of my back as I’m on all fours in front of them. They lean in and whisper things in my ear that are completely inappropriate at the absolute worst moments because they know it makes me crazy. They hold my hand like they mean it.
These are the sorts of people I choose as my lovers. You see how so much of what you fret about is non-existent in my process? Believe it’s true for others. And love you how I love you, okay?
The only thing better than looking at Katie West is reading her. Especially when she slices your head open and says it all for you.
A Survival Guide for the Hopeless Romantic.
Don’t fall in love with eyes and lips and hands. They have little more to do with the person thy belong to than good genetics.
Don’t imagine that you have some sort of symbiotic connection with him when you don’t. The poetic notion that he is “breathing your air” is ludicrous, particularly when he is ten states away.
Don’t romanticize a future of rainbows and lollipops with a man until he’s thrown up in your car, farted in your presence, picked his nose when he thought you weren’t looking, or just been an all around dick, which at some point, he will.
Don’t think he loves you because he sends you flowers. Doing so takes about as much effort as googling the winning Powerball number.
If you met him on a social networking site, don’t delude yourself into thinking that you are the only one he is typing to feverishly with one hand while reaching for his hard on with the other. Chances are you aren’t.
Don’t put any credence in words like ‘forever’ or ‘always’ or in phrases like ‘the rest of my life’. At best, they are unrealistic catchwords that inaccurately attempt to measure immeasurable units of time, and at worst they are flat out lies.
Meeting men is one long, drawn out first impression. Give it time. The likelihood that he is anywhere near as wonderful as you imagine him to be is slim to none.
When the novelty of you wears off, don’t expect him to stay, because everybody leaves.
Dust.
I don’t save the things I write.
Words are disposable.
A degradable manifestation of the things
that I couldn’t rid myself of
if I tried.
Love.
Pain.
Passion.
Always there, tattooed on my psyche
whether written or not.
Emotions are indelible.
So, take my words, you can have them
if you want.
Or if not, watch them float away
like dust particles into the atmosphere.
They’re just words.
Update. Because you want to know.
Doing a lot more reading than writing lately and engaging in a lot more self love than actual sex while training for my second half marathon, working my fucking ass off and wading through the endless minutiae of acquiring a business.
Lovesick as always and dealing with uncharacteristic bouts of related depression while desperately missing the ocean and having no prospects for a summer rental less than a week before MDW, thanks to Sandy.
I also have the worst cold of my life and really wish someone would bring me tea, rub my back and brush my hair.
So yeah, there you have it.
"Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was."
Cheryl Strayed, Wild
"When you have someone’s hair to bury your face in, the world doesn’t seem like such a terrible place."
A friend.
HELP ME GET MY BOOK PUBLISHED!
My submission for the Write Bloody Publishing Contest. Please like, share, reblog, comment, pirate, and exploit. I need as much help as I can get!
“Likes” on Youtube are the best way to cast a vote. So if you really dig it and want to help me out, then please give it a like!
Just marry me Alex Sparks.
Still.
I still wear mascara and lip gloss every day on the off chance that I might run into you.
I still check your Facebook weekly in the hopes that you’ve stopped seeing a girl who is the embodiment of everything that is wrong for you.
I still search your old Blogspot url once in a while just in case you’ve reactivated.
I still wonder if you write about me, even passive aggressively.
I still look for you when I run along the river, though you’ve moved four states away.
I still long to talk to you about the things that no one else would care about, or understand.
I still lay in bed on rainy mornings trying to channel your tongue with my fingers.
I still bite your name into my lip when I cum.
I still haven’t gotten over us, even though I’ll tell myself that I have.
Eighteen months later I can admit that I still love you.
I still love you.
I still do.
My philosophy on writing (or anything) in one sentence:
It’s okay to suck as long as you’re trying hard not to.
Tonight, it was instantaneous.
Sometimes, when it’s really quiet and really late, I’ll let myself go there.
I’ll write a little one act play in my head in which you and I are the only players. I will be beautiful and desirable and float about in something diaphanous and my hair will move when I walk as if picked up by soft breeze. You will be achingly handsome and adorably eager and profess that you want me more than life itself. There will be a muted backdrop only hinting at a location, maybe Paris, maybe New York, but always it will be a place where people fall in love. Sometimes I will resist your advances initially, and other times I will fall instantly and irrationally in love with you. But every time, when the curtain comes down and the stage goes dark, we will be in each others arms, making plans for forever.
It’s really quiet and really late and I’ve let myself go there again.
The difference.
A boy walks away.
A man stays.
Dream Fragment.
I found your number, which I had disguised by listing under only your initials. I cleared my throat and spoke your name softly, a rehearsal of sorts, because you had never heard my voice.
Five rings, and then a connection.
I love you, you know, I blurted out, not softly as intended, but awkwardly. Urgently.
There was no response. The call had gone to voice mail.
Red velvet cupcakes and Sigur Ros.
