Somewhere outside of…

X saw this white-haired man walking along the rail line that ran along the highway. He’d tucked his hands into the pockets of a khaki jacket. “Maybe we could munch on him.”

I was shocked, but Danny guffawed. “You’d go down on any wrinkled sausage!”

“Breakfast sausage!”

“Hard salami,” said Danny and guffawed again.

There’s a mark on my neck, a love bite.

Here I sit, fresh-plucked and well-groomed: my lipstick fresh and mascara done. I wonder who I am.

Everyone wants to be beautiful. She grabbed my hair, yanked and bit on my neck twice.

I call it the position of lovers, no.73.

The man and woman reside near each other. The woman grabs the man’s hair closest to the scalp (this position works best with men with long hair), pulls the man’s head back exposing the neck and then places her mouth on his neck. Gentle kisses are the position of lovers, no. 57, but this is no. 73, so the woman bites down with her teeth.

Done properly, the man will feel the energies from the lower chakras rise up as she drinks them in through her mouth.

This is the position of lovers, no.73.

She approached me earlier as she always had: “You look hot…”

In that shirt, with your hair down, in those pants, dancing, etc.

But I do not feel hot. And I do not wonder why she does not pursue me further, but I wonder why she does not.

Everyone wants to feel beautiful. I’ve had the luxury of being beautiful for my fellow beings, but late at night, fresh-plucked and well-groomed, I worry I am not beautiful for everyone.

So, following, the bite of the mark on my neck just fading, I enter the position of lovers, no.84.

The man, slightly wanting, calls the woman late at night. Inebriation is irrelevant, for is not love the greatest of drunks? No matter how low?

The woman answers, and then answers the door. The man, much later kneels behind the sleeping woman and places his lips three times, once nearest the lips — but not touching them — once against the cheek, and against the temple, before leaving the bed to write, or question himself.

This is the position of lovers, no.84.

The greatest agony of love is our fear it does not exist.

She told stories while dressing, and she described the previous night while pulling an unending array of slip dresses over her head. (Check each dress from each side and with at least two pairs of shoes.)

“This girl came up to me, last night, and said, ‘my boy wants to holler at you.’

“And I’m thinking I already have a boy who hollers at me. I’m like, ‘no, that’s okay.’

“I was upstairs for a while and when I came back down she came back over and said, ‘my boy wants to holler at you.’

“So I said ‘no, thank you. I’m not interested.’”

On summer nights in Texas, it’s still 80 degrees by 5:00 am as the night slides towards its last desperate hour of darkness. The humidity in places like Houston can be likened to hovering a foot over a roiling jacuzzi. And, then, during the day, you have the overbearing sun.

Late evenings, in cities across the South, you can lay on the ample cement and feel the flesh on the backs of your arms melt slowly into the concrete, pleasantly, the way butter softens on warm toast.

In some cities across the South, you can actually see the stars.

In Austin, the skies at night are red, reminding me of someone’s eyes, their blushing eyeshadow, warm, salmon colored, a rosy hue to see the world through.

In some cities across the south when you can’t see the stars, you can close your eyes and see a thousand sparkling lights, the stars of the lid.

But on this night, laying on warm cement, hands chastely folded on my chest, I could see the stars. She lay next to me. This was not a position of lovers. Lovers can never lay and fathom the sky without touching, as if, adrift amongst infinite galactic seas, you’d best cling to the one light that, at this very moment, orients the entire universe for you.

We were not lovers, neither previously, nor after, but ‘lovers’ implies conscious acts, complicit with one’s heart. She loved me, and in doing so wanted nothing from me, but at once also wanted everything.

This may be the essence of love: the frightenening oscillation between needing everything but wanting nothing and needing nothing and wanting everything. How else to describe every tentative kiss, lingering fingers, the full heart on the precipice of an empty gulf?

It is possible I loved her. At that time, I did not believe in love. And at that time, my heart refused complicity in an act guaranteed to end in some ruin. Is that not how all youthful romances end?

So I lay on the warm cement, my muscles softening like comfortable butter, hands chastely folded on my chest. I’d left the party for a moment of peace, and she had followed me out, wanting nothing, but needing more.

She lay on the cement next to me, small-talked. The world was full of Art and beauty for her, and every inconsequence filled with divine leanings. She loved Janis Joplin. She studied art history.

She rolled over on her side and cast her arm across my chest and whispered: “I don’t want anything from you.”

“But I need everything,” I could hear her heart say.

This is the position of lovers, no.23: one on their side, with an arm over the other on their back, and whispered soliloquies. Love needs no answers. They threaten revelations of non-complicit hearts.

Many years later, I called her. We on occasion would speak. I stay in contact with all those I have ever not loved. I called to tell her I was getting married, or had been married, and then the phone call needed to end abruptly. I would never talk to her again. Messages went unanswered. Emails unreturned.

Such is the cruelty of love’s conspiracies, the secret plots of hearts and minds, the greedy physical machinations. To love is to betray yourselves, your friendships, but to not love is to betray eachother. It is everything and nothing, and a frantic oscillation betwixt the two. It takes your soul and divides by zero.

And once you have heard the infinite of a lovers heart, that chord stays with you forever. How much more our betrayals?

Hate will only ever be fueled by love, but many things are fueled by hate.