To my Playground Love -

You know who you are.

I've never been one to lie about a sweet tooth - in fact, is it possible that a toothache can transfer itself to that sacred space between your ribcage and your heart? It's all pulsey in there, sour, sweet, painful - the whole shebang. Maybe it's my love affair with classic songs, but when Cher says, "It's in his kiss," yours is the only pair of lips I make an exception for.

And I can't tell you this.

So I'll tell everyone else - tell them how try as I may, I can't contain my strange desire to feminize myself in your presence. God, we've known each other for ten years -- TEN YEARS, and you've seen me at every stage of my existence. From stringy black hair and stupid plum lipstick to preppy knock-out. You've seen me with makeup, without - crazy, relatively stable - you've been party to the tearful 9am phonecalls during the inevitable college walk-of-shame.


I've been your heroin, your jealousy-inducing goddess friend, offering you my arm and a cup of coffee as I float back into town- inciting the evil eye from every one of your always gorgeous, always painfully conquered lovers. You've been my "phone a friend" - my settlement to many arguments with the boys I've shared beds with. "Oh, I'll just call Stephen" always seemed to translate to, "Someone out there loves me unconditionally, and we both know you can't compete."

I never once thought to tell you - but while I was sick, while I was deeply sick - praying for my body to crumble into skeleton dust, when you loved me THE MOST (I remember your pleading phone calls, your dinner date offers, the way you gazed at me from across the table) I feared you. I loved you, and I feared you. In fact, I dare say that sometimes, when I begin to imagine what a real, adult dynamic between the two of us might look like, I sometimes imagine David Bowie at the denoument of the Labyrinth.

"Just love me, fear me, do as I say... and I will be your slave."

And although your crystal ball has always been enticing, I have never given myself over to the idea of bowing to you.

But we've played house together, and then flipped the game on it's head and played lovers in the sweating darkness of your one bedroom greenhouse. You've been the pining, lonely gentleman at 22 and I've been the headstrong, willful catalyst exploiting your affections. When I wasn't looking, the game switched course and you had the upper hand, and because our physical affections existed only in the moonlight, and we disagreed so often (You with your fucking rules, your strange, oppressive rules about what you think life should be, and me---with my idealism and my tardiness and my bleeding heart complex and my disdain for all things authoritarian...) we resented each other back into a very comfortable friendship.

It's been three years since we spent a summer sleeping in each other's arms, and because we're at another bogus life-crossroads wherein we find ourselves single and aimless, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could spin my own crystal ball fantasy - recreate our balmy midnight romance with a little less emotion and a lot more eroticism, resulting in intense, if mostly meaningless satisfaction.

Of course, I was wrong.

In kissing you again, after however many years, this is what I discovered.

I think when we are less conscious of ourselves, twined and charmed by the affections of another, a deeper piece of our humanity takes over. Call it primitive, but in the right arms, a warm and impenetrable concern for our mate overrides the ego's desire to maintain control of the situation. With the right person, the correct embrace, momentary release from the ego becomes possible, a beautiful, temporal sort of transcendence which is otherwise very difficult to achieve. Seperate our seeking lips and make us fully conscious of ourselves, and the magic is lost. But in those fleeting moments there arises a sense of oneness - not so much a merging of identities as a feeling of Belonging to this Earth. A knowing that, "This is how it is done." Acceptance of each other exactly as we are intended to be. A silence but for the sound of breath and beating hearts - music enough to keep the Earth in perpetual revolution.

I can't recreate this with you in real time - you and I are both well equipped with a million walls and all kinds of internal terror, and our unspoken union is something I wouldn't sacrifice for all the fucking meaningful makeout sessions in this lifetime.

But I learned something from being in that space with you.
And I'm really glad, you know.
Because it was real. And something I hadn't had since before my great Texas fiasco.

So I know it still exists for me.

And so, I leave you with this ;

You're the piece of gold
that flashes on my soul.
You're my playground love.


-Lis

--by SleepUnwisely, Mars. Or wisconsin. Whichever., 09/28/2009