Permenant and Pertinent Resi(st)dance

this is a secret.

I really like J. I like the fact that we fucked on our first one-on-one meeting in Brussels after he moved back. I like the fact that we fucked other times when we met in Brugge, Ghent, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Berlin, leaving sperm-stenched sheets all around the cities we are trailing along. We are not too close, not too far, sweet friends who spend long hours talking about our past, families, impossibilities and occasions when we had considered ending our lives. We hadn’t spoken for almost a year, since around my last birthday. Now J came for this years’ 5-days-long marathon celebration. We kissed in the club, in front of our friend group, I guess the secret’s out. He stayed in my bed and the rest in another room. J found a piece of rock in the toilet, unknown substances. He sniffed it, and got a hefty boost. We then downed some Molly, his heart went racing. Last time we partied in Berlin I was chasing N down the rabbit hole. J had too much k that time. In hoppetosse he saw everyone’s face turned alien, I had to prick my finger to show him that I’m a real human. He called me in the morning when I sneaked out to drink early coffee with N while forcing my sleep-deprived body, hungry for “love”. I tried my best to calm him. Now in Kater I held his hands and told him “but you are very ok J. trust me.” The next afternoon we woke up, snuggling over a quickie, J started confessing the unease he has been feeling when conversing with strangers. J is studying Psychology now, in a very strict, harsh university in Belgium, after graduating and working as a graphic designer for many years. I can hardly remember when was the last time that I had to push myself to study so hard for any exam. N recently graduated, I just found out. N isn’t talking to me. N had similar difficulties following his master. The hardship to work for something because you don’t believe, your mechanism isn’t wired as such, that you deserve to be “good”. I’m still running. J said he is struggling between finding comfort and pushing himself out of his comfort zone. I always think I cut myself too much slack. And I’m not good at anything. I will never be. I don’t even know how to try.

In the club P said that I am wonderful. I wonder how much image that she sees are “real” and bears enough resemblances to how the accumulative quality of my life is. Objectively speaking, after two years, nothing has changed, except I am playing-living in a different city, without source of income, almost always feel not at ease, brewing somewhere a sense of “having to be” or “having to become” while tied by lack, material, spirit, mostly love. I can’t love. I can’t allow myself to feel for J. who is sweet caring and for some miraculous reason we are walking this line of what N wanted from me, from us very finely, no drama, no sadness, no fights, no long emotional talks that always ends up in both chest being stabbed by unknown forces. J is still here, oh well, there. and for some reason, desire, feeling, longing, if all of that also exist, hasn’t crushed us into fine dust. But I start to sense a little danger swaying in my heart, around my serotonin-depleted aftermath, I know, if I start wanting, the level will tilt and all the fine walking dancing caressing holding body merging will crumble. I can’t want. but I need someone to hold me. Not in this city. not here. Life is elsewhere. Life is lived in the wanting, and not calculating how long can I survive, did I come here to die, if so, when do I start saying goodbye, to whom, if it’ll be too much of a burden or it’s better for the aftermath to be a shock, a quickie and not a majestic night worth remembering for a long while.

After the exhibition I stood by the counter to flip through the visitor’s book. Someone went full erotic on the sculptures, claiming it is such a shame that she doesn’t own any of them, coz, she’d so want to stroke her fingers and palms across their shiny smooth surface. We, J, T and me made enough jokes about that and the exhibition in the park over shrooms. It had somewhat settled in a dynamic that we three giggle over silly jokes for some years whenever we get to meet. T, K, P, J are the ones who taught me about “lasting” and “returning”. I am not one who is known for staying or keeping. If I could, perhaps I’d become something different already. I wonder if the desire to write now is “real” or yet another attempt at running away from what I’m ashamed of. I am a tourist in others’ lives. Briefly visiting, gets a bit of the whiff of what life lived can be like, and back to my own corner that lack details, because nothing extends nowhere here. I don’t even dare to fully succumb to depression. Nor to become a hikkiomori, well, no one will feed me and I have to pay rent. I don’t want this life. what is it good for. can someone give it to someone, something else that actually wants it and can make some good use of it? the absurdity of it all is not the issue. Camus is right. loveless is the real death. I’m a yellowed stuffed animal on the counter, picked up casually few too many times, every time I put on my brightest and gave my full radiance, every time I’m tossed with a rejection sent back to maker note, but my makers are not concerned about tweaking me to fit the customers, only about how to make me obey them, I ran away, homeless, wherever I’ve been.

Where is the line that beyond which starts the “environment”? It has been a while since I feel everything has turned into either a product, a sale’s pitch, an advertisement or a dying inertia. Last Thursday, just before J and the rest arrive, I went to the wagenburg Kanal with M for a punk concert, it is the wagenburg that M stayed in when she first moved to the city some 15 years ago. The punks are still punks, with pointy extensions at all possible locations. U started introducing me to the muddy grounds where stacks of Wagens have plunged into the mud for years that wheels are no longer identifiable. We ended up in a wagen that used to belong to an old friend of M and U, a space carved together by uniting three wagens for minimal separation of spaces. I never really enjoy K, unlike J and N. I took the plate from someone whose eyes seemingly looking right past me landing somewhere behind on the bench. It was a rather thick line. The lady tattoo artist who has been engaging in a conversation with us about belief and religion, science, economy was trying to get me to take off my clothe to show her the tattoo on my shoulder. She was looking at me with the kind of eyes that quietly asks for a kiss. I felt an impulse but the K has locked my feet in position. She hugged me so very tightly. I wanted to turn into someone. But I can’t. U said while I was struggling to walk out of the wagenburg, at some point, you’d want plumbing and shower, don’t you? It’s hard to say. How and when would you know what to want and what is permitted to be wanted, and when/how/where to have? If my wiggly thoughts are also part of the environment, where have “I” retrieved into? Or then there is no need for hiding no more?

Sex with J has always been rather formulated, a set of regular transitions ending in spooning, it is comfortingly ritualized, it is so familiar and un-drama-like just as our intimate friendship only filled with gentleness, and occasional disconnection, but never resentment, let alone demand, accusation or argument. In a way, my relationship with J is like a equalized version as my past relationship with N, where everything is more intensified, always teetering off equilibrium, where words, conversations stabs hard, and perhaps push each other just a bit more than enough. Even though I’d already taken many windy cliffy journeys with acid, shroom, molly, k, c.. with J and none with N, except N’s body temp is hotter than mine, our sheets always end up wetter than with J. I have difficulties appreciating people properly if they’d done me right. J is maybe the first that I’m doing it a bit better to. I want to visit him and give him sweet gifts and snuggles around his long thin body. Sometimes my fidgety body makes me feel ashamed. I don’t dare to try skating. It is not the pain of falling that I’m afraid of. It takes a bit of an effort to catch up with J whenever we take Zoro for a walk. I think I stopped visiting him when T and K also started to do it regularly. I have a weird obsession with exclusivity. Me, just me, only me, please. If not, then no, nothing at all. It is a considerable level of pain-aversion. Mom, why am I not worth your love, no matter what I do?

Supposedly the most important thing is about going on, can I cut and leave pieces of me with whoever I have left behind while going on? I want J to have a piece of me. So I don’t have to feel bad about not able to continue our exchange. At some point, he will start dating again, make sweet gifts for them. K made a very elaborate gift for T. I haven’t spent any effort in gifting since a long while. What happens to all the drying crumbling hearts in a state of love-lost-less? I like that J is like me, who makes elaborate gifts for our love interests, who is tightly enmeshed in our need for exclusivity. I need someone who cares about things unanswerable, who dares to keep probing the quest from the ground up. A sad philosopher with a poisoned pencil poet heart. I should put that on my sign-off. or better still, a little chewed up page scribbled with things only birds will poke at, dancing edging closer and closer, a tilted head. it is such a pity that i am wanting now.