Comparisons

Two things come to mind tonight. I mean. Here at least. Lots of other things come to mind but when I get here I know it's time to distill my shit down to something I can regurgitate. I need capsules here, or else I'd type forever.

I need a therapist that does three hour sessions. That sort of thing. I could always go on and on and on.

But tonight I just have two stories. I watched Sid and Nancy tonight, until it started to get really sad. Until there was Nancy in some plush bed naked yelling "what about the farewell drugs?" as Sid slammed a door on her. And then she just sobbed. Click. Done with that.

I dated a cokehead a long long long long time ago. Our relationship consisted of him being really up and really down. There were no calm moments. I sort of liked it at the time. I thought it was exciting.

I'd make plans with him way in advance. To go to some show or party or something else wild enough to keep him entertained and flirty. Something I could wear a stunning outfit for. Anything to get him out of his shell.

In his shell. Well. When he was done doing blow he'd do whippets one after the other until the clink clinking of the nitrous canisters would bring his semi-square roommate to his room looking bewildered with her bright red hair all flying in every direction and looking at him. Looking at us, really. But looking at him like, "what the fuck, dude?"

Then he'd guilt out and pass out. Sleep for ages. I'd wake up and live my life. I'd come back at the end of his hibernations and shake him out of bed. I'd play rowdy music. I'd strip down to what I was wearing underneath the miniskirt and tank top and jump on his bed. Straddle him. Kiss his forehead. Lay flat down on top of him. Bring him coffee. Dance.

Sometimes it was a thing he liked. Most times it was. But toward the end I remember this one time when I was standing on a chair by his bed in striped thigh highs and a wifebeater dancing to southern rap and singing along with it in hopes of getting him to go to some punk show with me and he rolled over and told me he just wasn't in the mood. In the mood for what? I asked something like that.

He pulled the covers around him closer to his neck and said

"Your black girl sass."

Like I said. Beginning of the end. I didn't get yet what it meant to be such an east coast asshole. I didn't get that he was sort of. I dunno. Slumming with me. Even though in reality I was slumming with him. I had a perfectly fantastic job and a handle on my dumb habits. I managed to not spend entire weekends doing whippets and pissing off my roommates. I managed human interaction. Like I *needed* to be with some pitiful wannabe writer on the edge of getting fired and having to talk himself out of self-hatred every day just to get a coffee from the corner store?

At the time I wasn't savvy enough to hop down off of the chair and tell him that I wasn't in the mood for his white boy self-pity and fake-assed nihilism. Instead I stepped down to the floor calmly, turned off Birdman and then went to the show anyway with his roommates. He showed up later with a hangdog expression. The rest is history. I wish our story had ended just before that.

Not sure why watching Sid and Nancy brought him to mind, but it did. Maybe it was the constant pull and push and pull again that they portrayed. The co-dependence. Somehow I needed to be a cheerleader for a drugged out semi-paranoid broken boy, at the time. Maybe that gave me reason for the thigh highs and chair dancing. I dunno.

The other story I was gonna tell you was about Gavin and his hatred of my electric blue wig. But somehow after the first story it seems just a little stupid. Nothing that added up to who I am today. No lessons learned from that one.

I always shine a little bit more than my counterpart. I kinda think that's how it should be. But I'm not sure that's a recipe for lasting very long at all. It's like Zora Neale Hurston said.

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

Amen sister. I've been on both sides of that.

Annnnnd. Good night.