I love him when he's standing. I notice how tall he is and it makes me feel small in a good way. I want to kiss him, but I am held back. Instead, I throw my arms up like a child and he bends down and pulls me close. He says something in to my hair and I feel comforted. I am calm because he is here with me. This is how it always begins. This is how he enters my world. And I let him in as far as almost anyone ever gets. I bring him in to a place called familiarity, where we live out our routine. Where we are comfortable, as if we had always been here in this place together.

He takes off his shoes in the hallway. He's in his uniform and I am in mine. He wears black. I wear my dress. He removes his jacket and his hat and lies down on the bed. I crawl in next to him and again he pulls me in close, and again I want to kiss him, but I am held back. I wonder if he sees it in my eyes, this longing. So I don't look. I nuzzle my face in to his neck and chest. My fingers replace the words I'd like to say as they caress him. His hair, his face, his chest, his arms. My pinky cautiously brushes his hand. I want my little hands wrapped up inside of his, just as much as his arms are around me.

It feels like a cliche, but I want him to want me. More than this. Beyond the boundaries we set so long ago. But if I tell him, he might get up and go. He might leave my world and never come back, because I will have broken what it is and what it was always supposed to be. Like a crack in a snow globe, all of the water will leak out and the tiny fragments of white plastic snow, which once danced like dreams, will fall to the bottom and lose their magic. So I hide my feelings behind smiles and giggles and playfulness. And when I can no longer hold back, I kiss his body. Anywhere and everywhere but the one place I really want to kiss him: his lips. 

I want and I want and I want to rip up the checklist of procedures of how we live out our relationship, systematically as if we were laying bricks. Bricks which will one day be all that there ever was and what will come between us. The bricks of flesh and fears that protect our hearts. And I worry I will destroy it all. But until then, I conform to the plan....because I want. I want him.

We lie together. At times we fall asleep. But when the night is over I watch as he puts his uniform back on. He goes to the hallway and puts on his shoes. We walk to the door. Again he pulls me close, says something in to my hair, and again I want to kiss him. Kiss him goodnight. But again, I am held back. I watch him leave and I realize, I love him when he's standing.

 

I'm up at 5am discussing the best places to raise children with the BFF in London, as he is apparently planning on having some in the future. We were debating on which place offers the best education. I am all for anywhere in Scandinavia as the greatest place to raise and educate children. But as we got  into best place for Uni, I had to ask if he didn't think it was a bit premature to be planning out his children's future when they didn't even exist yet.

 

Him:  can you be premature when thinking about your kids?

 

Me: what if you can't have any?

 

Him: i get girls pregnant just by looking at them. that's not a problem. these days even a low sperm count is not a big deal right? you just get some and shove it into her womb. or wherever it is you make a baby.

 

Me: lol! wherever it is you make a baby! i am in tears. that has me laughing so hard. babies are mixed together in cups like tea. it's so much more practical now.

 

Him:  hey look... i know how you make a baby right. you get some spunk ok. then you get a womb. and you put the spunk in the womb and orgasm over it a while while the baby gesticulates. then 9 months later it can be arsed to come out of the womb. it's like "what's with all this fluid and blood and shit oh wait look there's a way out!" and then it cries when it sees how fucked the real world is. and that's when you know it's alive. and that's how babies are made.

 

 

 

*Background story to this:

Back in 2006, I was still part of the online journal community Journalspace. At the time, we were holding a writing contest, which I did not join because I was too busy being silly. One of the judges happened to be a good friend of mine and he got stuck with the non-fiction entries. He was known to be cruel and uncouth in his ways. So it was probably a shock when he announced his winner for that section, but basically stated that he thought all entries for the entire writing contest were shit and that he felt I should win the whole damn thing, regardless of entry or not for my monkey love story. So for him, my dear friend Jason, I had to find this again and post it.

Earlier I read an article on Huffington Post about the reunion of The Breakfast Club for the 25th anniversary. Molly Ringwald had said something about how there's been nothing to replace it. As far as movies go, I really don't think there has been anything quite like...well, most of John Hughes teen films, but especially not like The Breakfast Club, in which a group of diverse characters come together for one Saturday of detention, butt heads over differences and come to find common ground once they show who they really are beneath the surface of their labels. Since 1992, MTV has been airing reality shows such as the Real World, where the jock and the princess, the stoner and the nerd, the loner, and pretty much any other stereotypical role have been casted and thrown together to see what happens when people take the time to look beyond first impressions and labels and try to get to know each other. But the Real World is typically made up of young adults all embarking on their careers and united by the common desire to party and start living. It could be something of a slightly older Breakfast Club.

Everyone keeps talking about the movie Inception. Apparently it's the If-You-Don't-Get-This-Movie-You-Are-Dumb Summer Blockbuster. So when my friend, @JordanWLee, recently posted about it, I couldn't resist replying to him. Here is the conversation for your amusement.

Hopefully Jordan won't mind, but he's super cute and talented so you should all check him out and maybe follow him just for putting up with me. He is awesome.

 

He knew I was joking, but Inception causes people to go on a mission to convert others, much like religions do.

the link he is talking about leads to this amazing infographic:

Of course, after seeing this it all became clear.

Ok, ok, ok...I'll watch the darn movie.

So last night, I was trolling Craigslist looking for odd things to amuse me, and as anyone who has ever looked through Craigslist knows, odd posts are easy to come by, perhaps especially in the casual encounters section, where people feel free to search out the partner willing to fulfill their fantasy. Most of them are fairly normal: women looking to cuddle, men looking for bj's, couples looking for playmates, etc. But it's these rare gems, such as this post that truly stick out and make me want to reply to ask what the hell is this all about? 

In this place it’s dark, darker than the night locked out just beyond those doors. Here we let the darkness wrap itself around us like a blanket of comfort, disrupted only by the occasional flashing of lights. Like being caught momentarily in the headlights of a car, our hearts race. They beat to the movement of our bodies close together. So close, but each distant, lost in their own world, where they become the music and a piece of this moment we share and call now. Our breaths fill the room, push the walls, and find their way back to our bodies, stinging our lungs and clinging to our already sweat soaked clothes. Wet, we dance, moving like water. Sometimes we ebb, sometimes we flow, and sometimes we crash against the shore reaching for as much sand as we can hold on to. This is how we spend our Friday night, Saturday night, any night we can, till daylight threatens to breakdown the doors and we wander home, our bodies still moving involuntarily, till our heads hit the pillows or floor, which ever comes first.

Tonight I’m here to lose myself, let myself be carried away amongst this sea of bodies pressed together. I want to feel the music, become the music, till I’m certain that it’s my heart beating, and not just the drum and bass.

I drink a beer, and then another, and then another. Inhibitions fade, melt into another reality, one I’ve just left behind. I find myself on the dance floor, aware of the smile across my face and the movement of my feet. It’s in this moment, I open my eyes. She is standing there.

It’s as if lights have faded the room. I only see her.

Everything is silent. Blood rushing to my head. The music now replaced with her.

She stands there. She is not moving, not dancing, just relaxing against the wall with a bored expression on her face. Her eyes scan the crowd and then drop down to observe what’s left of the ice in her glass. I want to be the glass. Her fingers gently holding on to me, as if I’m the only one in the room who understands her.

I begin to move towards her, held back only by this fear gripping me. But the beer fights off the fear with each step, till I’m standing before her.

She’s looking down. I fidget and begin examining some change in my pocket, so it’ll look as if I’m on my way to the bar to get a drink, and not just standing here praying for her to look up and notice me.

A coin falls from my hand, hits the floor, and slow motion is paid for. Just as I am reaching down to pick up the coin, I notice another hand snatch it up. I look and see it is her. Her hair has fallen in her face, but I can just make out her chestnut eyes beneath the strands. She stands up, eyes on me, pushes her hair back from her face and smiles. At me!

She stands there with her hand out, offering me the fallen coin. I mumble thanks and reach out to grab it, my fingers stroking the inside of her palm as I pick up the coin. And time resumes its fast pace.

I ask her if she’d like a drink. She nods and glances at the bar. I order two beers and walk, practically glide, back to her holding the
beer out. For a split second our fingers meet on the cold bottle as hers brush mine.

She takes a sip, smiles, and relaxes next to me. Our bodies just inches apart. We stand like this in silence for minutes, hours, years – I imagine waking up next to her and bringing her tea in the morning…forever.

I think I am still dreaming as I feel her tiny fingers curl up into mine and feel her move closer to me, now separated only by the clothes on our bodies. She leans in and rests her head on my shoulders. I can feel her sigh. I put my arms around her and pull her against me. My heart is beating fast. I’m the drum and bass, but she is a gentle melody. And this song will play all night long, but I can’t help but wonder about tomorrow.

 

“Something's pulling at my heart,” she said as she sank lower into the booth. She pushed over the salt shaker till she had a small hill in front of her. Then she began drawing patterns in the salt on the table with the tips of her fingers.

“I feel..,”she paused and examined the kernels of salt now stuck beneath her nails, then pulled herself back up a bit, “Sad...Happy...I don't know...Something in between.”

She stared at me with glossy eyes yearning to be saved from having to speak the words hidden just beneath the surface. “Is there someone else?” I asked, though wishing I could pull those words back in as quickly as I had let them out. Her head dropped and just before her face was hidden beneath a curtain of hair, I could see the edges of her mouth form a smile, betraying her will not to show me her happiness. When she looked up, tears welled in her eyes. They were filled with an odd mixture of fear and sympathy. She began to reach across the mess of salt between us to touch my hand, but I pulled mine back and ran it through my hair. This was like a slap in her face. Her hands began to fidget, looking for something, anything to hold on to.

“I still love you. I'll always love you. It's just..,” she said between sobs. Her chest rising and falling again beneath the heaviness of her own emotions.

“Yeah..,” I felt my voice crack slightly and tried to pull myself together. She was now looking at me with hopeful eyes, flowing over like water fountains. Her face red and wet, I couldn't help but think of her naked body against mine. Wishing I could push myself into her. I closed my eyes and sighed. When I looked back up, I realized it was me now who was the one looking at her with eyes of sympathy. I longed to touch her hair, run my fingers in it as I held her close to me, but there was a table of salt now between us and I knew there always would be.

 

I promised to start sharing some of my fiction. I came across one of my journals today. It's filled with scraps of paper full of tiny thoughts, poetry, messages of love scribbled on hotel stationery, and even a few of my short stories, like this one. Salt was first published on my old blog in 2007. It remains one of my favorites. So much said with so few words. And yes, I wrote it from a man's perspective.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended the Blog World and New Media Expo this year in Las Vegas. Since they added a social media track, I thought it might also be interesting to see how exhibitors were using new media, not only to attract attendees, but to get their message out there as well. Of all the conferences I have attended, this is the first time where checking out the exhibitor booths was so much fun that it kept people coming back. Here are my top five favorites, each doing it a little different: story tellers, old schoolers, do-gooders, the internet celebrity, and the celebrity gone internet.