deja voodoo

It's been a while. I don't even know if I still have a readership anymore, so this may very well be a party of one. A diary entry. Egads.

Will my voice be the same?
Will I sound harsher than before?
Can I blame it on the heat?

I am obsessed with fresh starts. I have devised my very own witness protection program, where I move houses and talk big about leaving this elephant of a three-year job that has plagued me with its insignificance and the importance placed upon it by people frightened to death of their own insignificance. I can't seem to leave behind who I am, though. Shy, awkward, a little bit hidden. That seems to follow me around.

But I have moved into a beautiful house with my sister, and we are currently experiencing the re-tiling of the bathroom floor, and our toilet sits pathetically misplaced in our hallway, and we try in vain to not drink too much water in this stifling heat wave so we don't have to run to the library down the street to pee(where toilet paper is scarce)too, too often. And on my way to the library toilet, I notice my bike has fallen, sadly, lonesome-like, on its side, away from the pole I manacled it to, and it looks at me bleakly and meekly, begging for my sympathy, and I walk past it and look down on it and pretend I don't know it. I feel my own cruelty coursing through me. I blame it on the stored-up pee and the heat. Poor, innocent bicycle.

I'm at my parents' house now, in North York, enjoying a brand of hospitality only parents can dole out. My father has just offered me a banana split, and I have, prior to this blog, been sauntering around the house with a large gin and tonic, feeling like a saucy alcoholic, like Sue Ellen from Dallas, perhaps the best television alcoholic ever to clink two icecubes together. I've been finishing a book that I fear I am copying in style and content mentally-have I mentioned I'm mentally writing a book now? It's going to be fantastic, all magic and tragic.

I'm revisiting the territory of risk. A few tumbleweeds have blown by, it's arid and desolate here, but I'm back, because my heart and my head demand some gratification of sorts, and I, too weary to fight them, must grant a reprieve from the misery guts I have become of late. I like a boy. A guy. A man. He is probably a bit of all of these. And I've liked him for a while now, and have liked liking him because it's been entertaining and unreal, but today, I made it a bit more real, and thus, a bit scary.

Let me speak frankly. I have been on my own for a long time now. And the truth of the matter is, I am astonishingly capable at it. I am fantastic on my own. There has been no ache of an empty bed. My hands have not needed to be held. There've been no fights due to moodiness, because I get it, I am moody, and I accept that about myself. There have been many times where I've chuckled at my own jokes, shaken my head at my own stupidities, even rubbed my own sore back. I've cut out the unnecessary people, the ones who talk good intentions, but are really just big phonies.(thanks Holden, for putting such depth in that word)I sound really well-adjusted on paper, don't I?

But the fact is, I've also become a little too adept at making excuses for my well-insulated self.

So today, after a lovely evening the night before with one of my dearest friends,I, in a shirt speckled with both strawberry and soy sauce stains, with sweat glueing my hair to my forehead, with that general glaze of heatsmoghumiditygrossness, ran into him on the street.

He looked good.

Really good.

we stopped on a street corner and chatted. And I had that odd out-of-body thing where my head is doing a running commentary of what is coming out of my mouth; "utter nonsense!where did that come from?" "Ohh, that was a good one though, good work kiddo", that sort of thing. And at the end of it, I needed to punctuate our chat with an invitation, and so I said:
"If you ever want to hang out, you should call me."

Oh, I felt so brave. Full of self-heroics. Because as we were talking, and I could feel the invitation bubbling up inside me, I was remembering the last time I was so honest, and while it had been refreshing and bold, like a Gauloise Blonde, it was also flat-out turned down. And I lived to tell the tale without bitterness or alteration of the general sort of sweetness I try to inhabit, but it's made me scared. Because I told him he could call me and the ball is in his court, and all I want to do it leave this thing alone, let it grow or die on its own and not make a big production out of it, just keep it lovely and fresh and full of maybe's, not act like he's suddenly the only fellow left in the world who could possibly hold my hand or inhabit my funny world with some sense of understanding, or like a no from him would smash my hope like a pumpkin.

So I'm trying not to over-think it.(by writing about it?!?) The thing of it is, I really need something good and gentle to happen, because it's been a tough go of it lately. Is it wrong to hope for a person? Is it too much to put on someone, not to be your saving grace, but to be something to look forward to? I don't know.

I hope I will find out...