SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: AN EXCERPT FROM MY PERSONAL FILES: 7 july 2004

"okay.... i have to go do something else now because.... i don't know. what more can i really say about this? probably tons, but i think it's best left at this. i have already achieved the one thing i really hoped NOT to -- i have formulated an expectation, or at least a very, very strong hope, that he will call me sometime within the next day or two, just to say that he had a good time hanging out and that he's glad we talked and everything. fine. i can't pretend i don't want that, but i can at least be realistic and agree to not let myself get too upset if it doesn't happen and be pleasantly surprised if it does.

he always laughs at my jokes. he also always listens to me -- like he's actually interested, not just in a polite, detached way -- when i talk, no matter how much i have to say. that right there is huge, not to mention, more than i can say for a good deal of people. and he never makes me feel stupid or like i don't know what i'm talking about .. even when i really don't. he is always so respectful of me when we are interacting directly.. but the way he just neglects to call me sometimes makes me feel like he doesn't really take me all that seriously.. but.. ENOUGH ENOUGHENGOUENGOUGHHHH!!!!!!

someday
we will get married
and i will collect everything i've written about him over the years
and call it "the xxxxxxx diaries"
and publish it.

because i refuse to believe that two people who just had as incredible a time as we had -- though i don't know with any absolute certainty that he had as great a time as i did, but i think he did, and the fact that he stayed til 6 AM is a pretty clear indication -- are not destined for more than this.

it was different tonight. there were drugs, yes, but there have been plenty of other nights that we did just as much and only exchanged a tenth of the words. tonight i felt like we were equals. for the first time i wasn't worried about what he was thinking or how he felt, i wasn't trying to impress him, i didn't have a chance to build it all up in my head for hours before he showed up.. he was just here, and we were just hanging out, and in some respects it was like nothing had changed, but in others it was like everything had. i think that tonight, after so many years of trying to be what- or whoever i thought he would like the most, i was finally able to just be myself with xxxx... and that, now that i think about it, is a huge fucking deal."

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i wrote that after he left after the first time we hung out again after barely speaking for a year, post-london. it's just a few paragraphs of the 20-something pages i wrote that night [morning, actually] [what's up, creepy and obsessive], but everything anyone [including he and i] ever needed to know about us, i think, or at least about my perspective on things, is right there.


for what it's worth.