It’s the Beginning of the World
and
the stars are fire
the sky is fire
the night is fire
We touch it with our feet
and turn to clay
we say
we are no longer beautiful
for we are full of words and water
we cry the fire into dust
(and it becomes the earth)
and then we live
and then we lust
we lust for too many years to count on our two clay hands
we lust until… nothing is still
until
it’s the end of the world
and the stars and sky and night are fire again
but it's too beautiful to fear
so we go near
Sit in rainbows at its feet
and eat the dust

Labels: By Ana

What is it like to be completely helpless? To be like an insect, pressed up against glass? I only ask because I think that maybe I am helpless. (Sometimes. Or most of the time.) I think that I am up against something big that’s keeping me from what I want.
I want complicated things, or really, simple things that this world feels the need to complicate. I want world peace, and an end to hunger, and beautiful girls to make love to me endlessly. And I want to be kissed.
I want someone to stick their tongue in my mouth in the library. Or the supermarket. I want someone, somewhere to want me desperately, to want me as much as I want the idea of them. So what if I don’t want them, specifically? The beautiful things in this world are bigger than specific. They are world peace, God, giant panes of glass. They are the beauty of beautiful people. My friend, Elanor has beauty so big, she reminds me of universal truths. Sometimes I want to say to her, “Your lips seem to contain human suffering,” or “your eyes hold the meaning of life.”
I want to say this right before I want to kiss her. I want Elanor specifically, for Elanor is beautiful. Elanor lacks the instinct to be cruel. Elanor is the only one who knows I have never been kissed. She keeps my secret because I keep her’s. Her’s aren’t so bad by themselves, but altogether, they have the power to dehumanize her. And they always come all together. They flood my mind with the severity of a monsoon, through the telephone, which has a remarkable capacity for Elanor’s secrets. Her secrets plague her whole being, all at once. They are memories and criticisms and beliefs that make Elanor feel so tiny, she thinks she isn’t worth the space her tiny body takes up, while she’s lying in bed, crying to me; I wish she could understand that her beauty is so big it barely fits inside my mind, and it’s much too much for the telephone to handle. And it can handle a lot. It can handle more than I can, because it can stand to hear her cry.
Elanor, if you’re reading this, I love you.
Elanor would never read this. She would never violate my notebook because she loves me too much. She’s told me so. But she doesn’t mean it the right way.
She cuddles with me sometimes. In my bed. In her bed. In her car. Elanor’s a flirt, and I tell her so, but she doesn’t take it the right way. Once she got drunk, and bit my neck and giggled. I giggled too. Right after that, she fell asleep, and I wanted, more than anything, to kiss her forehead. It was pale and pretty, and I was pale and scared. I was scared my knowledge of her beauty would be transmitted through my kiss, and she’d reject it in disbelief, and she wouldn’t understand. I was scared she’d be scared. So I stared at her. And she woke up and looked at me and smiled.
Elanor and I had a nice conversation the other day. We have nice conversations a lot. And this one was sad. It was about how I’ve never been kissed. It was about why. She didn’t think there was a why to it, but I did. Because I think there is always a why. Like, why doesn’t Elanor know how beautiful she is? Because one day, I’ll whisper it to her, and , she’ll believe it, and it’ll be wonderful. And why isn’t there world peace? Because, one day I’ll be masturbating on it, and I’ll suddenly understand why. And I’ll tell Kofi Anan. And he’ll fix it. And it will unite the Israelis and the Palestinians. And the Muslims and the Hindus, and the Muslims and the Christians, and the Muslims and the Jews, (because it seems the Muslims are problematic.) Or so I hope.
See, I like to masturbate on big important wishes, bigger and more important than random girls, with their big tits, and their small beauty. I like to masturbate on world peace and an end to world hunger, and why I’ve never been kissed. I like to think that when I come, my wish comes to pass.
When I was talking to Elanor about why I’ve never been kissed, she didn’t know why. And I didn’t know why. And then I got upset, and mad at God. And then I felt bad because it’s a stupid thing to get mad at God about. Except that I remember this one time when I was praying to for world peace, and an end to hunger, and a kiss for a poor 18-year-old guy named Joe, that something happened. I felt loved. I felt more loved than I ever felt. And I didn’t think I was crazy or pathetic or stupid anymore. I thought I was okay. And everything was okay. And I thought I’d be kissed. But I tend to forget about being okay, and I just remember the kiss. And it hasn’t happened yet. Which worries me that God was full of it, or that I made the whole thing up, that it never really happened. But I really think it happened. So I must be missing something. Because people tend to do that.
Elanor is missing the most obvious things. The other day, we were having another good conversation. This one was sad, too. Elanor was talking about a boy who made her come, who treated her like shit. And I thought, “I’d do the former, and not the latter.” And it seems like Elanor is missing me. And she’s missing why I love her. And how can that be okay? And in that same conversation, I was talking about how I haven’t lived yet. Because I’m 18 and I’ve only come alone, and I’ve never been kissed, or drunk, or high. I've never smoked pot, and I’ve never been homeless, and I want desperately to be homeless. Punk-rock homeless. Hard-core homeless. Ripping-off-the-evil-capitalist-system homeless. My year off was supposed to be homeless, dammit. But instead I’m lying in my family’s big blue pool, and sinking down in their little green Jacuzzi, and thinking about my hypocrisy, and my innocence, like right now. Right now, I think about Elanor, and how I can’t have Elanor.
Want to know the truth? Yesterday, I told Elanor the truth. That I loved her. That I loved her a lot. That I’d loved her a lot for a while. And I told her to please not panic. And my heart hurt because I knew she’d panic, and I knew I’d lose her. And I knew that in retrospect I’d know that it wasn’t worth it. And as I said it, I knew all of that, but I didn’t know what else to do. Because I already felt bad for wanting to kiss her. And do a little more than kiss her. Because she thinks everyone is only friends with her so they can kiss her and do a little more. Or a lot more. And I never even told her that, even though I tell her everything. We always exchange secrets and I was one short.
And it was strange because after I said it, I stopped panicking and she never panicked at all. Elanor giggled, told me that she was flattered, that maybe she’d think about kissing me. And we sat on my porch and laughed about logistics at 2 am and it didn’t even matter if we kissed because we loved each other but it was nice to know that maybe we would.
So I’m sitting in the Jacuzzi and the phone’s ringing, and it’s Elanor, and this was just 10 minutes ago. And she’s speaking softly and I’m writing hard, and it’s not nice. And I’m crying and I can’t help that I’m crying. “So Elanor,” I say, “you never wanted to kiss me?” “That’s right,” she says, “I’m sorry.” But I’m sorry. But she’s sorry. But I’m sorrier, dammit. We exchange heartfelt apologies for 20 minutes straight and they cancel each other out like Algebra class until there is nothing but the tired murmurs of two exhausted people who love eachother desperately and sigh, desperately afraid, into two callous telephones that are dying. I am dying, I think. I can’t take this, I think. I sink into green chlorine and want to dye my eyes out. But they’re still there.
Elanor’s still there. Somewhere. With a dead phone. I think of her, her eyes that are so beautiful they have witnessed eternity, and I start yanking on my cock because I’m so goddamned pathetic. So motherfucking pathetic I can’t even get kissed by the only person I know who loves me. And I wish, more than anything, to know why. And I don’t even want to jerk off anymore but I want an answer to the fucking wish because it plagues me like all of Elanor’s little tiny worries. Her little tiny worries that mean so goddamn much to her. And Jesus Christ, I’m worse than Elanor because I’m not even beautiful. And I’m coming and I feel like shit for coming. And I can barely hold the pen.
So I came. Got a little bit of white in my parents’ green Jacuzzi. And Elanor just now showed up at my door. Just to see if I was alright, I guess. And I can’t hate her. Even though I can’t kiss her. I think it’s because I love her too much. Yeah, maybe that’s it. And she hugs me even though I’m wet, even though I’m clutching my notebook behind her back so I can write while she’s speaking, which she hates. She hugs me for a long time, and it feels good, and I think she’s crying.
And I’m scratching down everything she says because it seems meaningful. She says I won’t kiss you because you’ll want to do more, and I’ll want to do more, and things’ll get bad. I say things are pretty bad, right now. She says sex makes then worse. I say I’m not like the boys who make her come and treat her like shit. I say I’ll do the former and not the latter and it’s really a pretty good deal. She says our friendship will change. I say it already has. I say life is change, dammit. She says I say dammit too much and spell it all wrong. I shrug. And then I start crying bullshit self-pity crying and then I can’t stop and then I’m whimpering about stupid shit about how pathetic I am, about how I want to be homeless instead of sitting in this Jacuzzi with her who's still got her clothes on, and about how I want to get kissed, and about how I’m too innocent for anybody’s good. And she tells me I’m not cut out to be homeless, but I’m good at sitting in jacuzzis and crying. She tells me innocent is better than orgasms with assholes. And you know what she tells me that makes a lot of sense?
She tells me the reason that I can’t get kissed- the big reason, the pane of glass reason- is because I’m missing the fact that innocence is beautiful, because I’m not willing to accept my own innocence. She tells me I am beautiful, beautiful that’s big like the meaning of life and all the shit that’s wrapped up inside it. She tells me to live innocently because I haven’t got a choice, and the whole reason i haven’t got a choice is so I can learn to dig being innocent. And I think that’s impossible, but I'll try do it anyway just as a nice gesture to God because he actually gave me an answer when I came, and that’s pretty Goddamn cool in itself.
And now we’re just sitting here, in silence, Elanor and me, and now everything seems okay.

Labels: By Ana