If you’d fancy a long and thoughtful look as you fumble through the ramshackle places of my heart, you might come upon a room with the belongings of a young teen scattered about, dusty and worn. The room would be my old bedroom, the floor littered with guitar magazines and peppered with clothes and assorted trash that would clearly indicate that this particular teen spent nearly all of his hours in here. The room’s owner was obviously a shut in. The bed would certainly always be unmade and look as if someone spent nights wrestling with his dreams. There’s a bright yellow, attention-whoring guitar in the corner and it is plugged into a Fender Vibroverb amp that is always on. You can hear the steady hiss of the effects and the underlying hum of the power transformers. There is a single orange light in the corner of it, and it blinks steadily. The guitar is well-played and the owner likely has finger tips so calloused that he could handle plutonium safely. You’d find a stack of love letters buried in an old dresser, and although you’ve never met the young man that occupies this pitiable space, the letters are all addressed to you.
He has written a battery of them and beneath all of the words is the anxiety of fighting with the language and its vastly inadequate selection of words to communicate his emotions. He is a deeply troubled young man that is concerned that he will never be able to deliver those letters to their rightful intended owner. This same sorry sack will later buy an insanely expensive gaudy and flashy ring for someone he has never met in the simple hope that he will be prepared when she first walks by his field of vision, yet even he realizes in his most bizarre fantasies that play out in the stage of his mind, always in the witching hour or better, that he’s the type who wouldn’t dare approach her for fear of being rejected.
If your lungs grabbed handfuls of this dusky, mildewy air, you may pull the trigger on emotions or experience the thoughts verbatim of the heartbreakingly sad collection of fantasies that lie dormant in here. They blossom only in the still of the night while he lies in bed, semen drying on an old shirt tossed in the corner, having served its purpose, tears drying on his face having fled his sad eyes shortly after. His mind races, his extravagant and unrestrained imagination storms about how he is the greatest guitarist in the world or other embarrassingly absurd scenarios where he saves her from the clutches of huge and lumbering men with dark intentions and he is winning her heart as he stops theirs. If only she’d take a chance and see what’s beneath the shyness and physical imperfections, she’d surely see his worth. If only she’d show herself.
The man you met is just a tired, haggard version of this teen, studying the landscape of his face in the mirror occasionally and observing the blue eyes and the nearly beaten soul of the man that the little boy became. The teen wrote love letters in a journal that he almost certainly knew would never find the woman they were destined for. The man groups desperately in the darkness even still, for only the hope of the soft, delicate hand of the faceless girl that haunted his childhood. It’s been dark so long, and empty.
Then there was you.
It’s as if I have just finished serving a terribly long sentence and am stepping out into the sunshine for the first time since I was child. I am a free man. In the distance and through a wavy mirage, there is the shape of a beautiful woman leaning against a car. Her arms are folded and I think she is smiling, though it’s difficult to tell at this distance. Her actions upon seeing me are clear, she is excited and her smile is unmistakably giddy and overwhelming. Is it possible that this woman is here to take me away? Me?! As she begins to move toward me, I understand that this mirage will be unlike all the others. The woman through this vapor is real and she is coming fast. She is rapidly approaching yet gliding and graceful and I almost don’t have time to make out any of her features before I have to brace myself. She is so close now, and she hasn’t slowed at all. She is going to hit me full on. Doesn’t she care much that we might end up on the ground from the collision?
She squeezes so Goddamn hard! She smells so clean and feels so wonderful. Her nose is cold pressed against my neck. She’s telling me she loves me so fucking much. Have I stepped into the shoes of a better, more deserving man? Is she just confused about who she intended to pickup from this prison? Clearly there is a mistake. I don’t deserve her. She’ll realize her mistake soon enough and then there will be the apologies and embarrassment that occurs when you mistake someone for someone else. She’ll realize her error, and laugh about it to her Friends later over drinks and a warm meal, while I clutch myself in the dark again and console myself with the logic that at least I held her for a few moments. At least she was mine for a little bit.
I still wait for her to realize her mistake, but I no longer am content with just waiting for it. Baby, you asked me once when was the last time that I cried, and I tell you now without reserve that I am so very close at this moment. I found her! I plan to drink as much of her in as possible, so that when she finally does pull free of me, or if this is indeed some horribly long dream that ends in a waking nightmare, I’ll have every memory of her painted vividly on the back wall of my brain, every curve, every word. Then, perhaps, the room that I must return to won’t be nearly so dark and lonely. I’ll lay here next to her until that dreaded moment and listen to her sleep, and I’ll say it over and over again like a whisper of silk, beckoning and subtle…
I love you…
I love you Jaade. I love you Jaade. I love you Jaade. I love you so much. God, please I don’t ever have to lose her.
[/love goddess]
