~~~

2nd

and goal to go from the 1 yard line

30 seconds left on the clock

marcy’s jumping up and down

nathaniel’s jumping up and down

they’re both yelling:

PUNCH IT IN! PUNCH IT IN!

personally, i think they have the game won and i’m on to the next thing

~~~

wilson throws an interception.

~~~

sigh

~~~

deflationgate part two

deflation of the spirit

an absolutely soul crushing defeat

~~~

you could just see the entire city of seattle, no, the entire pacific northwest

implode

~~~

you don’t have to tell me 

there are more serious things to worry about

~~~

but 

~~~

man oh man oh man oh man 

~~~

Seminar tonight. As expected, professor Eliot has turned us loose. “Write,” was all he said. It’s what we have been waiting for, it was the reason why the four of us got together and petitioned for a seminar. All the reading, all the writing in styles of others, all the different poetic forms led up to this: “write.”

I know Antoinette breathed a sigh of relief, and I suspect Colin is happy to cut loose. I know Marcy enjoyed the structure, but I also know she has plenty to say, and the ability to say it well, in her own way. As for little ole me . . . less sure. I have come to love the form, the frame. It’s more than tidy, it’s liberating. If the line has ten syllables, then there are no decisions to be made, other than find the words. 

I know my words won’t 

spill

down 

the 

page,

or

spill

down

the 

page

like 

so 

many 

raindrops

~~~

No, it may be:

Spill down the page like so many raindrops.

Followed by another line of ten syllables, and another, until the proscribed length is reached.

~~~

Marcy and the others help clean up, and Nathaniel’s wearing the Seattle jersey we got him, and they say their goodnights.

I actually feel sad that Seattle loss, and I don’t care. But they had it, it was a done deal. It isn’t only that I’m a west-coaster and New England seems like another world to me . . . 

oh, it doesn’t matter. But I do, I do feel bad.

~~~

It isn’t late. We get the apartment back its normal state of okayness. We both have work to do, but I say, “babycakes, can we lie down for a while?” 

It would never occur to Terri to withhold affection. Why anyone would I can’t imagine, but some do. 

We’re cuddling and kissing and talking about what we have to get done for the week. 

I’m thinking about, well, I’m thinking about sex, but I’m also thinking about feeling sad, the act of feeling sad. Not the Seattle loss kind of sad, but something else.

I’m remembering a time when I felt a my world is changing and there’s nothing I can do about it kind of sad. When Julie and I were saying our last goodbyes before I left for college, and she was still a high school senior, how we spent the end of summer preparing ourselves for the separation. 

We were ready. Both of us wanted to date others, despite the passion and depth of our love. It felt eternal, and perhaps first loves are eternal. But we were not ready to commit, not old enough, nor did we want to. I was off to college and wanted to be free, and she felt the same way. She wanted to date, and she knew whom she wanted to date. We were on the same page, but that didn’t lessen the sadness we felt, or I felt and she professed to feel, at the end of a three year relationship. 

~~~

It wasn’t a great summer. We had lost all vestiges of innocence, and with the reality of real sex, or our version of it, came, god, I hate to say it, disappointment. There had been so much joy in being thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and tip-toeing up to it, discovering, because neither of us knew anything before that. It might seem self-explanatory to others, but we came to it slowly. We weren’t sophisticated. We were two shy girls having a realization of something very dear and touching and fundamental. Then sex. But it wasn’t dear and it wasn’t touching, and it seemed like we had lost something. 

~~~

The impending separation felt timely. 

~~~

But, we loved each other, and we knew no one else this way, carnally or otherwise. We seemed to have grown up together over the last three years. 

Even now when I think of her, and here I am in Terri’s arms, I think of her as she was at thirteen, not as the woman she is now, or almost-woman. 

I’m thinking, in particular, about the last few nights of summer. 

~~~

I had packed for college, I had made the mental preparations. We had worked things out.

The reality of those few evenings together was hard and sad. We talked a lot, we made love less than we could have. 

The last evening we were at her house, her parent’s house. We were sitting on her back porch, her side porch if I want to be literal, along their driveway. It was dark and we sat under the porch light. It was too hot. It was too still. The night seemed to hang on us.

~~~

I sound like Philip Marlowe. 

~~~

We spent hours talking, and I remember thinking we should be making love. I know we had said it all. I see now we were waiting, killing time, which was so inevitably leading to our, what, our futures? We were impatient for it to come, and the final days and hours dragged on too long. 

~~~

It was sad, and that’s what I’m thinking about. 

~~~

All because they didn’t PUNCH IT IN!

~~~

When Terri looks at you, me, one, she looks directly. Have I written of this? She looks directly into your eyes. No darting, no shifting, no excessive blinking. She has beautiful brown eyes, and to be under her gaze . . . it was her gaze from across the room, the first night we saw each other, that undid me. 

She was talking, smoking, and hadn’t seemed to notice me. People were coming and going, the music was too loud. She was across the room. I couldn’t stop stealing glances. She never looked my way. Then she did. She was holding a cigarette the way she does. She turned and looked at me, into my eyes, and smiled. She knew. I knew.

I looked away, and when I looked back, she was gone.

~~~

I’ve written of this. 

And I’ve lost my train of thought.

~~~

I don’t want to be salacious, and I’m not going to give color commentary to our sex life, but I want to mention that Terri is lovely, and her body is lovely, and it always feels like a gift when she gives herself to me. I don’t know why, it seems important to say. She treats me as if I were precious. That nothing is taken for granted. That every kiss is to be treasured. 

She is without guile, there are no ulterior motives with Terri. If she kisses, she kisses because she wants to, because it feels good, because that is what people do when they feel this way. They give themselves, unconditionally, with love. 

Julie was wonderful, but everything came incrementally, step by step. No. Yes. No. Yes. It wasn’t without passion, but there was no . . . momentum. It was all fits and starts, and there were limits and rules and . . . conditions. I knew nothing else, but I also knew it wasn’t the way it could be.

~~~

It wouldn’t occur to Terri to act in such a way. 

~~~

I cannot direct my thoughts, I don’t know where I’m going with this.

~~~

I’m not without inhibition. It has been a process for me, learning how to let go. Terri has patiently taken me to, well, to bliss.

But that isn’t what I meant to say. She’s taken me away from tentativeness.

I’ve come to see there are two schools of thought, at least two, on relationships: “don’t look, don’t touch,” which was, at least in part, Julie’s default position; and there’s, “touch and be touched.” I’m transitioning from the former to the latter, and the latter is better, and I’m a quick study. But, it could be that my tentativeness, when I’m not in the moment, bothers Terri. Sometimes I sense it does. She’s taken my breath away, but I seem to want reassurance . . . is this ok? When what she is saying is:

EVERYTHING is ok, baby doll. 

There are no rules, and the word “no” doesn’t belong in our world. 

~~~

That is what I’m trying to say, express, convey in words.

~~~

We’re in our tidied up apartment, on the bed, fooling around. We both have work to do, and, being practical women, we control our passion, which is different than saying “no.”

Terri is a good student, and her method is based on steady progress. She does the reading, does the work, she keeps at it, she never puts it off, and the result is going to be, in three or four years, magna cum laude. I know it. 

I am less disciplined. Obviously. I follow my, easily derailed, train of thought. 

The assignment, “write,” has caused me to write, over the last week, a lot of bad stuff. I’ve gotten to know the delete key very well. It has a nice polish, a sheen.

Before taking this seminar I was all about expressing myself, and I wrote reams, filled journals.

~~~

When I don’t know where or how to begin, I let a word fall onto the page, and so began the 

down

the 

page

poetry. Which, I like. Which is what comes naturally, but it isn’t what professor Eliot expects. I mean, if it IS me, then I should go with it. And I do. But, if I could combine it with discipline, then I will have achieved what he has been teaching us: control is liberating. 

I think Terri would agree. In the sense that . . . or . . . this comes to mind: in the throes of  passion anything goes, that’s a given. But when two people come together in a loving way, before the point of “throes” is reached, there can be a depth of passion of a different sort. This is what Terri has taught me. A profound depth of giving and acceptance. Of sensation.

To take that knowledge, to put it into words, is really hard, and I haven’t come close to being able to do it. But I can see it out there. I can see that is where I want to go, and it takes time. I have to put in the hours, but college seems to be about doing a lot of work in a short period of time. It never lets up, and there’s never enough time to think, just think. Pure thought. To do things well. 

I make a cup of tea and write this, not without some effort:

The last few evenings we spent together

Were surreal. We talked more than we made love.

We spent countless consoling words trying to 

Reassure ourselves that we'd be okay.

It was the last of summer, the air was

Still heavy, and we sat on the back steps,

Lit by the porch light, talking and kissing

Until the early hours of the morning.

Nine months apart looming, no wonder we

Couldn’t settle into the night, couldn’t

Resign ourselves to loneliness, not yet.

Wouldn’t go willingly to empty beds.

Those last evenings slipped away, the sun

Arose, and loneliness is what it brought.

~~~

Which is a fun exercise, and true enough, but it has no joy or spontaneity. 

~~~

I want writing to be like sex with Terri, like . . . 

two dolphins

joyfully leaping

sunlight glinting

sparkling drops flying 

from our glistening skin

i want make and hear

the sounds of joy, laughter

i want squeals of delight

i want to capture passion and love and ache

i want to pull her to me

to breech with her

to slam myself into her

two bodies coming together 

exploring the depths 

finding

below the sea’s surface 

a salty unexplored world 

i want to assuage the ache

fill the void 

freely and happily and naturally. 

~~~

If I can’t be aroused by words, I can’t see the point in writing.

~~~

And I don’t know how to get there.