Our ten-month anniversary is in five days and that’s really amazing to me because I met you almost a year ago. I never would have guessed that a year after meeting you in a tinychatroom, you’d be here with me. You’d watch my graduation and meet my family, and we would be a couple. I didn’t know that when I watched your face through a webcam and a shaky internet connection. I didn’t know that all of this would happen; I didn’t guess any of it would.
But now, when we talk, you make it all sound so sweet. Not everything with you is perfect, but it’s always worth it. You’re more than I ever could have asked for or wanted, and you try so goddamn hard. You’re so sincere and funny, sexy and smart and absolutely right for me. You make things feel permanent. That’s nice. People are always walking out on me, and yet here you are, reminding me that we have years. Years and years.
And I know it’s really hard sometimes, and I know I can be a pain.
But I love you so much more than I ever thought I could.
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You put everything in black and white, and I guess I’m trying to show you that I can do that too.
Because you told him that I got fat, and maybe you told him I got skinny. And maybe it doesn’t matter either way, because we’re not on terms to argue about it anyways; that’d require talking to each other. It would require your acknowledgement that I’m not dead.
Regardless, you put that in black and white. Maybe it wasn’t true and maybe it was, and maybe it’s all a matter of opinion. Now I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to reply with, trying to figure out what gray scale fits me.
The only thing I can think of is that even if I fucked you over, and even if you were mad if there was someone horrible and mean behind these childlike eyes that apparently had you fooled, he fucked you over too. The difference is that he’s going to keep fucking; I’m done with it. You and I both know these things. It’s part of who he is, and you aren’t going to change that. And I only made a mistake in event, not in habit. Which is the difference that makes the difference, despite the choice that you made after mine.
So that’s my black and white of the day.
You write all of these things without capitals or periods, and god forbid that you recognize the existence of a comma. Then you throw us for another loop by throwing in this stupid habit of yours where you use big words that no one really understands. I guess you could say that I’m just too dumb to understand, but that point would be moot by the end of the paragraph. Because it doesn’t matter how big the words get, or how much you deviate from your initial or final point; this isn’t how you speak and this isn’t how you think. And the honest version of you is better than this over-intelligent bullshit.
People like your words, sure. They might just nod and look enthusiastic because they’re trying not to let on that they can’t comprehend a single fucking thing that you wrote; but then again, I genuinely believe that there are plenty who love what you’re saying. I’d like to consider myself a part of that mass. Your ideas are good and your conviction is drenched in gold. But I’m trying not to lie either, and honestly I hate what you write. It isn’t you, and you’re trying to convince us all that it is. Where are you going with this?
A simple sentence: the dog pissed on my shoe.
That’s all you need. Yet there’s no fucking way that I can tell you to calm down your literature, that it’s bursting at the seams of your body. It’s leaking into your socks to join the dog piss, and mixing into this vile concoction of opinion and anger (and maybe a little bit of drugged blood.)
I can’t tell you this because I do not exist.
God forbid that either you or I admit how much we miss each other in the short moments of clarity between doses of what each of us has chosen to take.
And I guess that I’ve missed the point too; because all I’ve been wanting to say this whole time is that I’m really fucking sorry for what I did to you.
You whispered to me in the dark last night over an almost-silent line. I could hear your breath as it entered your body, and the closed consonants that your tongue made against the roof of your mouth. You asked me about my day in that hiss of a murmur.
I told you what I’d done and who I’d seen and that it was good and bad and everything every day should be. Except for the fact that you weren’t there; but then again, you rarely do exist in the three dimensions of the real world I’m forced into. You’re two-Ds, flat against the screen where I press my fingers to the pixelated image as it moves and pretend that I can feel your skin under my fingertips.
Last night we didn’t say so much. Just enough to fill two minutes and forty-four seconds. I told you to be safe and to have sweet dreams, and you returned the sentiment. I pictured the words sliding from your lips, the way those lips might be if I pressed mine to them for the first goodnight kiss I’ve had in months.
We said “I love you” five, six times. In fervor, trying to hold onto things that neither of us can really grasp. But yes, trying nonetheless.
That’s sort of what we’re holding on to.
submitted by upsidebarcodes
You’re lying in the bed when I walk in. You’ve curled up around yourself a little bit, your body probably wondering where the heat of mine has gone.
I tread over and pull your sweatshirt off of my shoulders. I throw it into my pile of clothes, wondering if you might let me keep it. The bitter air of the room licks its way up my back quickly, biting at the skin uncovered by my orange tank top. Quickly, I yank off my socks and jeans, stripping down into underwear. The bra goes too.
There’s nothing sexual about me stripping; at least there isn’t at this moment. You’re asleep and I only want to press more of my skin against yours without dragging the chilled fabrics of my clothes beneath the sheets.
I tiptoe over to where you are lying and slide myself beneath the duvet. My feet automatically find yours, rubbing against them and trying to steal some of their warmth. Still asleep, you automatically adjust your body to accomodate mine. Your arms wrap around me and I push my face into the crevace between your neck and shoulders that I fit into so well. I feel your legs scratching against my smooth ones, and I try to slow my breathing until it’s silent.
You sleepily murmur something into my hair and I kiss the skin that’s stretched over your collar bones. You’re so beautiful in this moment; and I know you wouldn’t know what to make of it if I told you you’re beautiful. You’d think I meant your body or your face.
I mean the way that the light falls on your cheek through the gap in the window. The way that the air sounds as it moves in and out of your lungs, elliciting small noises from your throat. The way that your hands are wrapping around mine and clutching at skin. The way that you’re so vulnerable, and so open right now at this moment.
I’ve told you that I love you too many times. I’m starting to worry that it will lose meaning. But I don’t know how else to get this swelling out of my body.
You’re mine, and it’s all I can do to say I love you.
I hope that’s enough.
When Kurt was here, we spent a few nights out at my mom’s bar. We were there for karaoke one night, and after making a milk run at 7-11 to slow down a drunk for my mom, she asked if I’d participate because not many people were. I didn’t really want to. Don’t care much for karaoke.
But whatever. After a few other bartenders asked, I went and signed up. And then came back to Kurt at our table, ate some of his Reese’s Pieces, and informed him that he was up next to sing.
Obviously, he flipped out and threatened to leave the bar. ehehehehe. It was totally worth it.
Anyways, my turn came around and I got up on stage and sang some shitty, shaky version of a song from the 2000s. It wasn’t particularly good. Not like everybody-in-the-bar-gets-quiet-to-hear-me-sing sort of thing.
Yet Kurt kept looking up at me like he was proud or something. And I wondered that whole night what it would be like to look out and see him in the crowd during one of my real performances. If he’d be impressed by my arias at contest or my piano at concerts.
I wish he was here for all of that.
When I was seven, they told me that I could be anyone I wanted to be.
When I was fourteen, I found out that simply wasn’t true. I wasn’t particularly pretty; count prom queen out. I wasn’t particularly charming; count president of any organization out. I wasn’t particularly funny; count class clown out. I wasn’t particularly sporty. Or sporty at all, actually. I wasn’t particularly sociable; you can reasonably count me out for everything, in fact. But I thought that maybe I could be the smartest.
I guess that’s when I started acting dumb.
See, there’s always a winner. I, unfortunately, am not a winner. When I decided to be the smartest, it was okay because people would pretend to like me for the sake of my brain. They’d let me help them with their French and algebra homework. Then my breasts dropped in and my hair grew out, and suddenly my face wasn’t so bad. So I was suddenly in the wrong mold altogether, so they stuck me with a jock and put me on Homecoming Court, and that was supposed to fix it.
Until it didn’t.
Because I still wasn’t particularly sociable or funny or charming. I was just me. And that wasn’t enough to hold the position that my face and body warranted; not to say that I was absolutely outstanding in either respect. Just above average for my school.
I went back to my studies, and eventually found someone who could deal with my moods and thoughts and problems. He could calm down my temper, force me to let go of stress, and even make me feel happy. I didn’t feel so awful about my scars anymore— inside or out.
I forgot for a little while that the odds weren’t stacked against me, because for once he made me feel like they weren’t. Yet, behind everything sweet that he can tell me, I am still not a winner. I’m not going to be the smartest or the most hard-working; I’m not the nicest by a long shot. I don’t know if he’ll stay with me long enough to keep me even a little sane; and I guess I’ll probably lose the desire to win after I lose my sanity. Where will I be then?
I’m not anything, really.
And that just doesn’t feel so good.
You’ve spoiled me.
Cherry Coke and popped cherries, and that Christmas was all about the way your face looked when you woke up in the morning and how your lips felt when you kissed me to sleep at night.
submitted by upsidebarcodes
My brother was sixteen when the city took him.
He’d been a pretty easy-going kid beforehand; we lived in the country where the pastures were about ten million miles long and no one could yell at you for walking on the grass. He was lonely; I guess he was like me. We didn’t really fit in.
See, all of these kids were fifth generation farmers, raised by the same men who’d worked the land and the cattle for a hundred years. They had the same backgrounds and the same connections. From the day they were born, their parents knew whose birthday parties they’d go to and what sort of grades they needed to get in school. They knew who would be good at sports and who would be bad in the sack.
And all of that was okay, because the country never really changes. People accept what they expect.
But then we got thrown into the mix and we were two kids of six, of twenty-two if you count the married-in children. We had this history of violence and poverty, and these people who wanted to hurt us.
So every other mild-mannered child sent their birthday invitations to the right kids; we weren’t those kids.
My brother was lonely a lot, like me. When he finally escaped the endless fields of hay and horses, he was ready to attack the world. He wanted something new. He wanted someone who would like him. Because no one ever really did.
The city gave him all of these dreams, twisted her fingers around his neck in a tickle of passion. She tied his hands together with ten different promise rings, and dangled damsels in front of his face.
He was starstruck, and then she struck. And she drained away every green grass stalk stuck in his heart, and took away the open mountain air. She took his love of adventure and freedom, and stuck him behind a desk that he only sat behind when he remembered to wake up for class. She shackled him into social restraints he couldn’t understand, and she gave him two-thousand kids to get lost in.
He did get lost. He got rude, and he got lost. The city took everything.
She took my baby brother.
They all sort of gasped when they heard about him. About how he’d been fed up with life, about how he tried to end it. They all seemed pretty surprised, you know?
Not to say that I wasn’t. He seemed like a happy-enough kid.
Let’s talk about this birth control issue.
I’ve noticed a lot of posts going around regarding the government debates on birth control, and whether nor not insurers should be required to cover its costs. You can read up on it here if you aren’t totally aware of the situation.
A lot of people (cough, Republicans, cough) are against the new mandates involving female contraceptives. They’re whining that their taxes shouldn’t go towards helping “slutty” women have sex. They’re whining that it isn’t a necessary health cost, and even that sex isn’t a Constitutional right. A lot of religious folks are insisting that birth control goes against their religion, and so religious employers and insurers should not be required to cover such costs. Apparently, birth control coverage is an “attack on religious freedom.”
And let’s not even mention the “slut” attack Rush Limbaugh made on Sandra Fluke after her testimony before Congress. Fluke is a respectable thirty-year old law student, but apparently her support of female contraceptives makes her a “prostitute.”
Well. Forgive me, Limbaugh, for I am a dirty slut too.
Personally, I’ve been on birth control for about four months now. Before then, I experienced incredible pain every time my period rolled around. As in, ball up and cry and oh-god-why-is-this-happening-to-me pain. Just a family trait, I guess.
So initially, I got it because of the pain. And because, well, I WANTED TO HAVE SEX. And I wanted to be responsible enough to have it. I acknowledge the fact that it isn’t 100% effective, and even with all of my protection, I could still have a kid. But hey, I’m trying to reduce those chances. Also, I’m not going around fucking everything that moves, as the Republicans seem to believe. I just want to enjoy the luxury of sex as any male might be able to.
I couldn’t have gotten on the pill without the help of my insurance. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the bills, but they can end up anywhere between $20 and $200. Not exactly cheap for a monthly or tri-monthly payment.
The point is that now the government doesn’t have to pay to put me on WICA or deal with the kid I might give up for adoption. And guess what, religious nuts? You don’t have to worry about me getting an abortion, either!
I get that a lot of you believe that it would be better if the government was helping people with diabetes or heart disease pay for med. But that is a very select group of citizens in the United States; it would not benefit as many people as this will. Almost all women can benefit from birth control, and it’s a huge step for women’s rights.
Of course, a large percentage of the opposition is men. But you can’t get preggers if you have a penis, so why would you ever want to put money towards keeping women baby-free? You don’t have to deal with the fact that it might happen to you, that it might derail your entire life because you made one little mistake.
Oh wait. You aren’t paying for it.
The point that everyone is forgetting is that these aren’t taxpayers’ dollars. This is the money of employers who chose to hire, and are therefore responsible for their employees to an extent. These are the dollars of the women who actually paid their insurance companies to cover them, and are still being denied their basic meds.
I’m just going to end this little tirade out with a comparison; glasses aren’t a necessary health cost or a Constitutional right either. But you’d be mad as shit if you weren’t given any help in paying for them. Same thing with Viagra or braces or cancer-screenings, or all of these “unnecessary” things that make our lives so much easier.
Also: stop thinking that a woman who decides to have sex without the intention of having a baby is a slut. Grow up. You like sex too.
What does that word even mean?
Rude isn’t just interrupting my sentence or my dinner. It isn’t a nasty phone call in the middle of the night, and it isn’t laughing at me when my books are scattered on the floor with a hundred notes sticking out of them.
Rude is when you assume that you know something about me. When you assume that because of my gender or my voice or my stance or my body that I must fall into this or that category, always categorized into non-stop columns of bullshit. Rude is when you think that you are above me, and that I could never compare because my pretty little green eyes are too sweet to have a brain behind them.
You assume that my breasts make me easy. You assume that my age makes me stupid. You assume that my words aren’t worthwhile and you assume that my thoughts are generic. You seem to believe that these are self-evident truths, and you fuck up the words to the Constitution in your defense.
Well you, how about you? You stand how tall, exactly? And how short is that height in wisdom? And what’s your skin color, and how old are you? And what exactly makes you a goddamned expert, anyways?
And what if we did measure someone’s wit on their weight, or their worth on their lack thereof; where did the chance to build from the ground up go?
You are rude and you are wrong, and I can only hope that I’ll be the one to prove both counts.
submitted by upsidebarcodes
You and I are always base ten; or at least I’m always base ten in regards to you. I’ll show you.
It took me ten seconds in a group to single you out and to decide that I must impress you, and ten minutes to start thinking about how to get you alone. It took me ten days to lure you into my grasp, and another ten seconds to forget what I’d wanted to talk about.
It took me ten hours that first night to show you myself, and it took you ten seconds to catch up to what I’d done. It took you ten minutes to finish me off.
It took me ten days to think I could love you, and ten more to know I must have you, and it took another ten until we were together. Before then, we spent ten hours in twelve together, probing and questioning and wondering what was behind the pretty face of the other. We spent ten minutes a night in a routine that had me begging for more. It had me begging for more of the same and more of you, and I needed you to give me everything and not just the little pieces I stole.
It took us ten times half of ten days to say “I love you”. And it took me ten times ten reassurances in my brain to remind myself you were real and you felt the same.
It took me ten seconds to screw it all up.
And then, it took ten days of tears to wipe even some of the betrayal off the floor, and you cleaned his spit off my face and said we’d work through it. When I called you that night, you were walking on the beach; you were sort of drunk and I was sort of drunk off the tiny tenth of time you allotted me. But oh god did I miss you; and we spent ten times six minutes on the phone that night while you walked on the beach, and I thought maybe I could get you back.
It took me ten minutes the next day to fix everything in my brain and theirs, and then another ten weeks to show you I was sorry.
And ten times eight days later, it took you ten minutes to peel away every petal from my body that belonged to you.
I guess I’m doomed to another ten times ten years of wanting nobody but you; at least that many years of not knowing what to do with that love or how to keep myself lying low.
But I’ll always love you. Even if only in tenths.
