***
Second Intermission

I'm always trying to get there,
Never really get there,
To the quiet place,
Where I accept myself.

Instead I'm deep inside some high school,
Locker room, no clothing.
Popping the zits of my self-loathing,
Under flurscent lights.

And the bells sounds,
And the lights flash,
And there's all these questions milling around,
And I'm too ashamed to ask.

~Ani D.

***

10 a.m.
I woke up and went to church half dead. My mind was stuck in a dream-like stupor throughout the entire cab ride, and when the usher asked me if I had a seat inside the auditorium, I told him my husband had reserved it for me.

He looked at me and I looked back.

11:45 a.m.
The pastor preaching today was the one that always struck me as someone absolutely incapable of organizing a sermon. Taking the idea of ‘going with the flow’ one step too far, perhaps. Not by choice, I left 5 minutes into the sermon. I know it’s rude, but the need for a quadruple shot of espresso was really getting to me.
I took a long time nursing my coffee and watching myself people watch. I noticed the people I looked at, how I behaved when they walked past me; who I smiled at, who I ignored, who made my breathing hard and my mind wander.
There was an unattractive Asian woman with a distinguished looking white guy on the bench facing me. I couldn’t help looking at them. He was gorgeous. He noticed me looking his way and gave me the smallest glimmer of a smile. I returned the favor. She knew. The woman knew, I could feel it. She knew I found her guy gorgeous, it wasn’t hard to know. He was very striking in a George Cloony sort of way. And she flipped her hair and gave a sort of look that I hope I’ll never exude just because I see another woman finding my man attractive. It was arrogance.
But perhaps I’m imagining things. I wasn’t very sane the whole day anyway.

I walked over an overhead bridge packed with kids making three-fifty an hour giving out flyers for cheap haircuts. They were annoying and I felt like sticking my middle finger out at them when they shoved the little pieces of papers into my face. Then someone approached me. She didn’t just approach me, she sort of stood in my way. I thought she was a particularly annoying flyer-person and said, with a good amount of exasperation, ‘Oh God. Leave me alone.’ But she was only asking for directions.

My mother sms-ed me, asking where I am. I told her I wasn’t gaining anything from the sermon and felt like reading in the bookstore. She replied, telling me not to worry. That she’d pray for me. She’d ask God to help me be a better person.
After all, what kind of daughter am I to leave her alone and half-asleep from boredom on a Sunday morning.

Lunchtime.
I know I’m on a roller-coaster.
At this time, my mood got a little off the libido ritcher scale.
Mr. Big sms-ed to thank me for the painting I got him from China, and the lunch I treated him to (for being such a bitch the night before) yesterday. I asked him if he’d like a little tete a tete right fucking now. But he was busy.
I thought what I had really needed was sex.
Sex, and lots of it.
I felt like whipped cream and strawberries and cheesecake smeared all over me. I felt dirty and I really liked it.
So I thought, well, what the heck. I need it now, not later. Not in the evening when You’re free. I don’t care about you. Me, me. Me, ME.

After Lunch
I called up Mr. Grant. I had told myself I wouldn’t. He didn’t want me the last time, and I hadn’t gotten over the insult. But I didn’t care. Anyway, he had told me straight off he wasn’t going to do the whole art of seduction bullshit ages ago. You know, where two stupid people don’t call each other for weeks on end because they live with the notion that the less accessible they are the more desirable they get. (Which is true, but I don’t feel like deconstructing that now).

Apparently he had a flight to catch in about a little over 2 hours from the time I had called.

“Shit. Ah Shit. I guess I’d better go home before I do something stupid.”
“Like what? Pick up a guy off the street?”
“I don’t know dude.”
“Oh.
Oh you know what Isabelle, come over. Just come all right. I’m nearly finished packing anyway.”

I took a cab and got stuck in a jam and counted sheep to calm myself down. There were over two-hundred carcasses coming out from the slaughterhouse when my mood started changing.

Shit I’m stupid. I’m behaving like a desperate, stupid little whore. I can’t believe I’m doing this to get laid. Only guys did things like that.

Three-hundred sheep and I’ve reached his apartment.

So embarrassed.

3:25 p.m.
He’s so very nice.

We hugged and kissed, and I made my way into his bedroom, still feeling very weird.
I just told a guy I needed a fuck and he acceded (Well thank god. I was embarrassed enough as it was.)

Like I said, my mood had changed. I still felt like it, but there was this overwhelming sense of awkwardness. I lay on his bed trying to explain myself, trying to redeem some creditability, perhaps. But you know what? He just made the need for that go away. I don’t know how, but he did.

I asked him if he thought I was crazy, and he assured me that I most certainly was. Incredibly, and delightfully so. He tells me I’m amazing, and beautiful and queer and other things I like to hear that need not necessarily be things that are positive to everyone, but are to me.

“Do you think about me? Do you miss me?”
“Well yeah. Of course I do. Are you thinking about last week.
You were so mad, I knew you were. You were oozing with oh I’m so pissed. My mate had said I was so going to get it.”
He laughed and I don’t think he apologized for it. I don’t really remember, but I don’t think so. And I’m glad he didn’t. I wouldn’t have believed him.

Did he come?
Shit. I’m so bad at knowing these things sometimes.
Oh wait. I don’t think so.

I climbed on top of him and placed my head on his chest. That always make me feel really secure. I don’t know why really. Maybe it’s because I’m on top and in control and he’s got to listen to me if I want him to. Maybe it’s because it gives me this strange sense of being worshipped. Maybe it’s the sense that he can’t go anywhere else, like I’ve finally got what I wanted, like it’s in my hands (or in me. Whatever.) and there’s no way I’m going to loose it if I can help it.

He asked me something I really Love to be asked in bed. It’s so fucking simple it’s amazing why guys don’t do it more often (with reference to their women) Or with some, at all.

“What Are you thinking about.”

I said some really whimsical things at first. Things like cherry blossoms and roasted chestnuts and sunny winters.

And I actually told him how I always feel so lost and so inconsequential more then is healthy. That maybe in my subconscious, I’m always feeling like the broken M&M that people toss out with the packet after every other chocolate piece is finished.

“You’re just misplaced. You shouldn’t be here. I think you’re terribly misplaced.”

I don’t know. Maybe.

4:30 p.m.
Everything felt better for awhile after that. It was like, oh, I couldn’t find fault with anything. For awhile. And I guess that’s what we all live for anyway. These fleeting, transient moments of satisfaction. That little short, precious time where you connect with someone. Where you really, really connect. It’s not a feeling. I don’t think it is. It’s not like, or love, or anything like that. It’s a sort of mechanical process that’s not governed by thought or gut.
It’s not self-initiated.
Then again, I might be just convincing myself over things that don’t really exist. Perhaps he was just trying to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid.
Oh well. I was happy for a good while. Happier then I’d been in a long time.
My girlfriend’s got this fabulous line.
Good sex always makes everything better.
It’s not very original, I know ;)

***
I started feeling fucked up again when I got home from my girlfriend’s place. But it’s good, because uh… it really inspired me to make some wonderful, trashy pop art.

I like trashy.
Someone told me my blog’s trashy.
Well, I have a trashy life and I’m a trashy girl. There. But you know what? I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed either (that’s kinda obvious huh.)

You know what, we’re all junk inside. We’re all about being lost, and finding respite in sex and never being pleased with ourselves and being just plain self-destructive. And there’s an art to it. There’s a raw quality in all of that, and I love it. I love art that brings all that shit out, you know. Art that really eats into you when you look at it, because you feel guilty when you see it, or because you look at it and think; oh my god, what is my life doing in a public gallery. Or whatever.

I’m tired. It’s been a long day.

*snuggle*