5/27/00



hemlock's come to visit me this weekend. my whole room smells achingly of him. old spice and woods and beautiful things. we got lost and found a little children's train in bright colors. we took a ride. it chugged and shook and derailed in a puff of dust. i remember riding one every halloween at the pumpkin patch when i was little, surrounded by goats and bunnies and acres of pumpkins.

we went to the beach and battled weeds and bushes on the dunes, he with his practice kendo sword that thwacks and swishes when it hits things and i with my black cane-umbrella that forms a pretty temple shape when open. we won.

he wears rainbow toe-socks.

we were walking and i saw a moth lying on the ground and i picked it up and carried it to a tree and hemlock didn't laugh at me.

he makes sweet noises in his sleep. sometimes he says things that are too much for me to understand in my half-conscious stupor.

we mostly talk about damiana. she's writing a book about the three of us. it makes me nervous, like i'm being watched. i hate to admit it, but sometimes i miss her. she smelled good and she could make everything beautiful when she wanted to. i don't know what happened. it was all so fast.

he makes me sad. he's everything I want and i'm not everything he wants. he says when he finds someone who's everything he wants, he'll marry them.
(Sordid)

We got lost on the way to see Ephedra and her new boy, who turned out to be the most banal person I'd met in a very long time. Hemlock knew everything about him within the first few minutes of meeting him and proceeded to ask him these little questions which the boy answered until he realized that Hemlock was teasing him viciously. Ephedra's new boy is a cowboy. He rides mountain bikes. Downhill. Ephedra hit her head on his bike while they were having sex and that makes me wonder if he really wants her or if he just wants to fuck his bike. There are so many nice boys who like her. I can't understand why she likes this chain-smoking loser who can only converse on the subject of pot and whores. It was excruciating. I'm sure it's an MLT (momentary lapse of taste) on her part. Just rebound. At least he makes her eat. She needs to eat.

Foxglove likes Hemlock's shoes. Foxglove is a shoe girl. I'm a hand and hair and eye girl. Foxglove just likes shoes, I think. I've been rather self-destructive these past few weeks. I think it was a form of self-punishment. I feel so guilty all of the time, for everything. For Alsike who loves me (he really loves me) unrequitedly and for Stacy who died and for my pretty bird-like friend who left in an ambulance this morning and who last week was convulsing from mixing too many mushrooms with alcohol, two prescription anti-depressants and an anti-psychotic. I feel guilty about Ephedra's taste in men. I feel guilty about not being able to control my own feelings about anything. I want to. Mostly I feel guilty about not liking everyone. Especially nice people. But Kore said it best when she said, "There are lots of nice people; it doesn't mean you have to like them!" She makes me feel better.

I've been spending time with Foxglove lately. I miss her. When I see her I remember how much I hate everyone, how much they are nowhere as good to talk to as she is. That's how Hemlock is too. Foxglove has a list of people who are worth talking to and it's only three people long. (I'm on it.) A couple of weeks ago (when I became self-destructive) I was hit by a sudden urge to talk to everyone, to listen to their stories and glean the good things from their conversation and it made me feel like a good person until suddenly I spoke to Foxglove and Hemlock and now I'm as elitist as ever. I just forgot how good it was to have people around who understood everything I decided to talk about and who spoke of interesting things themselves. Gleaning good things from the general population is like licking grains of sugar strewn about the dirt. It makes me feel so lonely.

I don't feel guilty about Alsike anymore because he smells wrong and Hemlock smells right. Like Foxglove and Damiana and Nightshade all smell good, but only Hemlock smells right. So I know that I'm not meant to be with Alsike, no matter how much he loves me. It wasn't fated. It's not my fault. And I'm going to stop being self-destructive, because it doesn't feel right anymore. School is out in two weeks and I'm so glad because I can go home and rest. Get away from this desolation.


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