I was knotted up inside. I couldn’t tell her. I thought of her as a friend, but I thought of her as something else. She never indicated she was interested in me, but she never suggested she wasn’t. I waited for her. I couldn’t wait. She loved someone else, though she wasn’t in love with him. He neither loved nor hated her. They lived together. They didn’t sleep together. Yet they were a couple, though they split up from time to time. They neither fought nor made up.
She drank too much. We all drank too much. I drove myself home each night, though I shouldn’t have. The distance was too far to walk, but there were nights that I did. The alcohol electrified us. We remained static. He stayed, I couldn’t leave. I never ate, but seemed immune to hunger. I was sustained by the sight of her. She invoked a thirst in me. I couldn’t drink without a filter, couldn’t speak without a filter. The alcohol wetted my lips and thickened my need for hers. I didn’t react when she leaned close. I died and died and smiled.
I sat on the couch and pined. If strangers were to walk into the room, they wouldn’t know the two were lovers. I was friends with him, though I didn’t know him very well. I neither sought nor avoided his company. I sought hers. She didn’t mind. I was frustrated, though I didn’t mind. In my mind, she was neither a divine creature nor merely human. She was a separate kind of entity. I couldn’t classify her. She was ideal in her flaws. I couldn’t sit silently and watch her, though I couldn’t act on my desire. So we talked. I didn’t say what I was thinking. I communicated without words. She neither indicated she noticed, nor moved away when I sat close. I appreciated her friendship. It tore me into tiny pieces. I both longed to see her and dreaded it. “A process in the winter of the heart.”
He was leaving her. He didn’t know when. He was ready to move on, but he wouldn’t go. She wasn’t happy with him, but she didn’t insist he make up his mind. She tolerated him. I couldn’t take it after a while. I was helplessly drawn to her, but the situation repelled me. I neither hid my attraction nor made it apparent. It went on like this. It couldn’t. Something had to give, but it didn’t. I couldn’t give her advice or refuse. So I told her the truth I saw. Not the deeper truth. Not the truth about me; the truth about him, about them. Neither wanted the other; neither wanted to say goodbye. “That’s where I spend most of my time these days, back in the middle of nowhere.”
An old friend arrived. She didn’t recognize the situation. She slept on the couch, and strands of light came in through the blinds. There was no distinction between one day and the next. She neither improved the situation nor degraded it. Or she improved things by not degrading them. In this frozen house, stability contented us.
“It is disastrous to be a wounded deer,” Corso says. I wasn’t wounded. I was caught in the headlights, and couldn’t close my eyes. I neither dodged my oncoming destruction nor welcomed it. The traffic dodged me. The spotlight stayed put. I couldn’t blink. Once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop. “Why regret an everlasting sun, since we’re hell-bent on discovering divine light?” I said so. She didn’t notice.
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