Jingles of Love: Colour-Coded (& Separated by Spam Haiku)

"im a selfish little ball of haikus" -e

I had a professor who told me to avoid sentimentalism at all costs. That sentimentalism was the opposite of truth. "Well fuck you," I informed her "what if the truth is that I am feeling sentimental" and then I stormed out of there. She didn't know anything about truth! Truth was subjective. So she gave me the failing grade that I deserved (true enough) and I moved to California and laid in fresh cut grass in a park in San Francisco and went to movies alone and drank vodka because I loathed myself and taunted the ocean in the dark and then I met you, online, and believed that our souls were brimming over or burning out to meet each others bodies, (or at least I hoped as much) so I bought a ticket to Richmond and we saw a movie where lots of men got shot and I thought it was very good and you commented that it moved me more than it did you and I was reminded of my professor's comments about sentimentalism and so I got out your iPad (from the plastic see-thru sock drawer where you keep it) and read you my blogs and you put your head on my shoulder while I read them aloud to you (the best way to read them is out loud) and I felt a real flush of kinship with my younger self for saying "fuck you" to that professor and standing up for sentimentalism. Some say write what you know, but I say fuck that: write what you're desperately unable to understand, (Somebody else said that first, I can't remember who it was.)

Using ContCom West

Vietnam never looked so

compulsory alt.

I met this super cute girl down the hall from me in my new apartment and I fell for her because she was super cute with thick curly dark hair and thick-rimmed librarian half-glasses that she'd sometimes wear and I'd always say "Hi" when she'd go down to check her mail and she would smile and say "hey" back but I think she had no idea who I was or that we lived in the same building. For a while I camped out in the vacant room by the stairs where someone had set a musty armchair waiting for her to come up in the afternoon after her classes but that felt ridiculous and stalkery so I stopped. Plus I discovered she had posted all of this stuff online where she talked about her favorite video games and movies and books and plays and paintings and painters and her pet theories about life etc and so I fell for her hard and I thought it was karma that she was in my building and I went out of my way to always run into her, telling all my friends to call me whenever they saw her and then memorizing those places and times and writing out a schedule so I would run into her at all these (to her) various times on campus and she was always so sweet to me and never blew me off but I never tried to say more than "Hi" to her and I'm pretty sure she still didn't know who I was and just thought I was this incredibly shy randomly occurring campus person who should say more to her than "Hi" but never did

To say I was in love would be an understatement. She was super cute and it was a safe way of investing in a person without any of the unpleasantries of actually getting intimately attached. To see her glistening skin after her 9 AM sessions at West Gym was the sole reason I would get out of bed, some days. And during second semester she straitened her hair which at first really bothered me but I really started to like it after a couple of weeks when, one night, I was just lounging alone in the student commons across the street from our building (where I had discerned that on Tuesday's and Thursdays she sometimes passed through on her way back from Chem lab) drawing little spritey comics to avoid doing my Geo homework but totally not expecting her at all when I heard her voice behind me. I spun around and there she was, my heart racing, she was talking with her best friend Kristine and the two of them sat down at the table directly behind me! She was showing Kristine (who was blond and friendly, but distant) some pictures that I decided just had to see! I got up, walked past them casually to the back of the commons, like I was going to get a drink, and then, unable to think of what to do next, I got a drink. Then I came back and as I passed I saw two pictures as she flipped through them: Two pictures that looked like self-pics, dark and blurry, her face bright, arm extended to the camera, wearing a blazing red dress, and pressing her head against two different very scruffy looking guys. I sat back down and gathered up my stuff to go home. They both headed out at the same time. I held the door open for them. "Hi," I said.

Look atsle items

abercrombie & fitch caps

dissimilar Mmm.

Later when you had gone to work at the radio station and I slept in on your bed I looked through all your drawers. I don't know why. Something about the thrill of being alone in someone else's room, one wants to see if others hide their secrets in the same places youdo. Too-small sweaters, ink-stained pants, squeaky tennis shoes, lip balm and dollar store perfume. I found the CDs I'd made you and one you were planning to give to me, and a journal where a 16-year-old you confided your consternations regarding the single-minded drive of the male sex. I put the journal away without reading more entries and played through the CDs until you returned.

so much November

hyperbole has talked a

lot?consternation?

My best friend (who is a girl but not my girlfriend...) told me about this dating mixer (although we do go out together all the time) she'd heard about downtown where all you do is sit around a table and meet new people for like 3 minutes and then switch partners and for some odd reason she wanted to do this and wanted me to come along too (it's called speed dating) so I agreed to go but when it came to the particular day of the mixer I was feeling absolutely shitty because of work and didn't feel up to it at all.

"Let's stay in and watch TV I don't want to do it" I protested but she refused to hear it.

So we went.

My gripes were ripe and plentiful. You don't get to choose who you want to talk to (I didn't want to talk to anyone) and I hadn't been told that the Girls get to stay put all night (err, it feels like all night, actually the whole thing only lasts an hour) while it's the Guys job to move around every 3 minutes and tell their stupid story. The whole endeavor is nothing but a bad middle school dance for grown ups where the rules are you have to dance with everyone, and all the while you harbor a progressively battened down & diminishing hope that as you work your heartbroken butt around the room someone somewhere among the melee is perfect, someone hoping likewise to run into you.

It wasn't meant to be. We entered the massive room and parted ways and I found myself over the next hour talking to strangers who were keenly interested in freely sharing with me whatever is on their minds. I keep waiting to hear an epic story, but I seem to be condemned to the gloomy gamut, stories spanning from deceased animals to business complications to debilitating stomach conditions. Don't get me wrong. These stories were well rehearsed, extremely exciting tales, and without fail, after listening to them for a while I can't help but feel like my own life is boringly pale in comparison; so to spice things up I started embellishing the narrative as I circled back around the room. The first woman I decided to do this with I convinced that I was French, and I spoke the entire exchange in a french accent. The second woman heard the french accent so I couldn't very well change it when it came time to speak to her, so I continued, telling her I was a French rapper named Pierre.

"Oh I'd love to hear one of your raps."

"Non, madame, ve call eet ze flow. Not a-- zees zees-- rrrap"

She apologized and told me she would love to hear one of my flows. I checked the clock. A minute and a half left. Shit. I panicked, started reciting the lyrics to the first song I could think of that she wouldn't know, Communist Daughter by Neutral Milk Hotel. In French.

She bought it. I got her number.

Later: my best friend was pissed.

"What?" I asked, "It's no big deal!" She scowled at me as we drove home. I continued to defend myself, "It was actually pretty good considering my french is terrible and I couldn't exactly remember all the words!"

She laughed reluctantly "did you just make it up?

"Yeah of course. Stuff that sounds french."

"That's like the most unlikely song you could have picked in the world to be a french rap song. Good thing she doesn't speak french."

"Oh I'm pretty sure she does. I think she just gave me her number because she

took pity on me."

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So my girlfriend used to work at this really posh law firm until her ex-boyfriend broke up with her. Not only did she work with him but she lived with him so when they broke up she moved out right away and got the first new place she could find on short notice, which was actually a room in a house with three other girls, one of whom, Rachel, worked with her at the law firm. She got a new job at my office and that's how we met and started going out soon afterward but I try not to bring up anything related to the law firm (or coincidentally enough Burger King, which was one of their big clients) because her emotions about the whole thing are still right there tight under the surface and even slight provocations tend to blow her up. I only bring it up because I went over there the other day and I hate going over there because the girls she lives with are all geniuses and their conversations just soar over me.

Seriously, they live in this great big brownstone on this privileged hilly street and I'll go over and feel under-dressed and unkempt even before I go in and then I'll be there not two minutes before someone will bring up something like Melville or The Silmarillion or make what sounds like an important point in Russian (two of the girls are Russians) and they manage to hit cruising altitude high above my feeble head.

Anyway I went over the other day and Andrew was there, who is Rachel's boyfriend. Andrew still works at the law firm where Rachel does and my girlfriend used to, which means he knows her ex so I've tried not to ever say too much to the guy. He's stayed there overnight several times, just like I have (and may have even hooked up with one of the Russian girls once or twice while drunk since I found him on the couch a couple times when Rachel was away) and my first impression of him was early one morning coming into the kitchen and seeing him step out of Rachel's room in only a towel. He quickly introduced himself, said that he was on his way to the shower, and vanished down the hall, so not the best first impression, but as we waited for our girlfriends to get ready the other day we sat together in the living room and semi-paid attention to the College basketball games and I realized he's actually a pretty down-to-earth guy. He initiated the conversation which pleasantly surprised me and I found him pretty easy to talk to, which was nice because the normal extent of my conversation when I am over there is just to say, "Um, how interesting" a lot when I'm there because, well, I don't recognize the historical and possibly obscure people that they frequently make mundane reference to, zooming as they do, in flight up above me.

We shared our stories about being abroad in Asia and Ireland and what our majors were (are, in my case) and what classes we're currently taking, (he's in a graduate program now. (That means he's more educated than me, FTW), FYI) and what I may want to do with my degree in the future by the time the girls were ready (and they did take their time, Rachel has a lot of bags and likes to always have the right one). I had no idea I'd have anything in common with this guy and thought I wouldn't like him but I got to know him pretty well in such a short period of time and told my girlfriend about it as we drove out to the pier.

She didn't say anything back though and we drove for a while before she made some comment about how he isn't really Rachel's type. I said I wasn't so sure. "They always seem to get along pretty well, at least when I've seen them together, both matching each others' crazy eccentricities on a fairly-even and understated keel."

She said nothing and I let it drop. My girlfriend can be judgmental, I learned.

We made it to the pier and parked in silence. Across the parking lot was a Burger King I had forgotten about when I picked the pier to come out to that day and I glanced over and caught the recognition of it in the corner fragment of her eye. Neither of us said anything about it, but I knew then that she would never stop missing him.

We walked out into the pier, the water choppy, gulls swooping down out of the clouds.

simple confession,

strong feeling, social habits,

never recovered

Making dinner at the counter you kissed me with wet lips and I took two steps back, overcome with a memory of my father, how he loved time in the kitchen when I was a kid, I'd sit outside on the rockstep and listen to him cooking up his latest "gourmet" dinner, or he'd prance back and forth between the barbeque grill outside by the garage and the stove inside where the corn cobs would be boiling, a sweat-splotch seeping through under his arms, or shirtless and he'd sing along out loud with the radio blaring loudly - usually Garrison Keillor -- and slam the cupboards, bang the countertops, clap his hands, stamp his feet to the beat and laugh, chasing me with a roar out of his way, I'd hear bottles smashing, cutlery clinking and smell steak cooking in sauce and smoke and onions, and beer– he'd pour a little beer in everything saying it "brings out the flavor," and then dinner would nearly be ready and we'd scramble to the sink to wash the black dirt from our hands knowing that it was going to be a good meal and it was. It always was.

You asked if I was alright and I realized how much I love you. The lines on your face when you scrunch it up, reminding me of that fact, I love you, and reminding me of when I used to work at the restaurant at that fancy resort hotel by the lake, a server in the dining room, which meant that I was de facto fill-in for any kitchen related job that needed doing any given night and there were always about 100 things that needed doing. Even though there were 8 or 9 of us per night in the dining room, (plus two Buffet attendants & 3 cocktail waitresses) the boys in the kitchen always asked for me to do their odd jobs because whenever they had a spare second they were snuck out behind the dumpsters smoking pot and they knew that I wouldn't snitch on 'em to the boss (or the owner). I was always there when they needed me but sometimes something would happen out on the floor and I'd come back into the kitchen crying that I needed this or that and the boys wouldn't be anywhere in sight, then they'd stumble back in, ten, sometimes 15 minutes later, and I'd feel like I was high just by standing near them, talking to them, trying to figure out whatever it was they were saying which was invariably, "calm down. Calm down man."

So now we are here, in our house in the city, and it is warm and I am making you dinner. Today was not a bad day but I'm glad I am here. I feel more relaxed. Its funny what 20 miles will do to us. I think that maybe, after we eat I will ask if you want to go for a ride. Together alone. The fact is we need to talk. I need to know why it is we hate each other.

He is face to face

second one, as soon as he

cash Hugo Chavez

O) Oubillete billet-doux

Days in the hospital blur together for me now. I remember the lighting: blue like the entire facility was under the bio-dome of an enormous urinal cake. Like being underwater, but a little bit brighter than it needed to be at night, and a little bit darker than necessary during the day. My sleep schedule thrown way off, I was constantly drowsy and felt guilty sleeping at night when there was so much to see in the half-light, even with my limited vantage point- the door to the corridor at 45°- and lack of nocturnal activity.

I was 15 years old and resilient. I had three broken bones and bandages wrapped around my neck and the top of my head that muffled all sounds. Everything sounded subdued, which was proof that there was good in even bad things that happen.

I remember the view out the window to long green fields and tall cloudy skies. The green was extra bright, the clouds ungodly sharp, and it hurt to move so of course I wanted little else but to be out of there and running through those fields to those skies.

The morning nurse was a middle-aged woman named Maureen who was shaped like a soft pear, and never had anything to say except comments about baseball. I hated sports, but I had stolen my brother's Red Sox hat-- had been wearing it before (and therefore during) the accident. Covered in blood and they had thrown it away, but Mr. Ambulance Driver had, apparently, felt pity on the poor kid and bought him a new one. I didn't wear it. I figured it rightfully belonged to my brother. How was I going to tell him? If only they'd let me keep the old one, to show him how fouled up it'd been.

Maureen had a disproportionately small head. A short straight bob of dyed brown hair, a tight thin-lipped mouth wedged between symmetrical bony cheeks and somewhere between two to four beady little eyes, depending on whether or not she had raised the glasses up from where they dangled from a metal strap atop her billowous breasts to read something. She appraised the hat where it sat on the stand beside my bed.

“Quite the season they're having,” she said in her mousey distant way, “home game tonight I think.”

“Cool.” I said, grinding my teeth. I pretended to be asleep until she had done what she needed to do and slipped quietly into the hall.

The night nurse was a different story altogether. A love story. Could've been a whole novel if I'd been a few years older and it had been wartime or something dramatic like that. Bridgette her name was, and she was the embodiment of wonderful. At last that's what I thought.

I was 15 so this story took place before I fucked around all the time. I didn't drink, I didn't smoke and I wasn't messed up like I am today. I still had a relatively firm grasp on reality, and my impression of myself was still pretty accurate. I thought myself a shy, talented young guy who would one day work hard using his talent to become a really popular talented man. I fantasized about it constantly, and invented aliases for my selves who had already made the leap, characters who were already sociable and successful, with names like Adolphus Gainsworthy or Duke Clemenceau. (We were foreign dignitaries, apparently.)

And although I wasn't so naive as to know nothing about women, my grasp on their role in the grand scheme of things was not thoroughly commanding. I knew about relationships, and I knew about sex, but I didn't know how the two fit together. Somewhere between episodes of Full House and late-nite skin was a behavioral bridge I had not yet observed. Soft-core Porn was deceptive, in that people in it somehow spoke very very little and ended up very very quickly engaged in the kinds of moving positions I found very very interesting. It all seemed so straightforward: man looks at woman, woman looks at man, sex happens. But I was afraid to look at women, especially beautiful women, and when I did summon up the courage or, more often, forget myself staring, women rarely looked back, and if they did, it never amounted to anything.

Bridgette smiled. Her wide eyes were freckled blue and her dimpled cheeks were freckled pink. She had brought me dinner, she said. I had never heard anything so lovely as her voice. She set down the tray and I appreciated the contour of her fingers, the softness of her hands, the way the V-Neck scrubs she wore gave way to the freckled skin plunging down the front of her neck...

“Is there anything else you need that I can get you?”

“Yes.” I answered straightaway, my voice cracking. But what? What was it that I needed. Oh yeah! “Yes. I wondered if there was any paper lying around. I've been thinking about some stories and I'd like to write them down, before I forget them.”

“Oh! Some stories? What kind of stories?” Her eyes were alight and her smile was angelic.

“Fairy tales, I guess you'd call 'em. I dunno.”

“Wow! Well I'll see what I can do. Will you show them to me, when you finish writing?”

“Yeah. Sure, of course!” That 'of course' came off a little to strong, but otherwise I felt alright. Flushed and sweating and dry-mouthed and heart-racing and shaky, sure, but otherwise of the finest kind.

I was already asleep when she brought the paper. I awoke and wrote my way through three pens before I was done. I wrote about princesses and knights, dragons and castles and magic and destiny and love. It was three in the morning or thereabouts. I slept a few hours until the morning rounds started, and slept a few more hours until the sun was high in the windowed sky. I read the best story to Bridgette that night, and I remember the hint of a tear in her eye at the hero's happily ever after with the beautiful woman. Secretly of course, the cavalier was a prince, but even more secretly the prince was me.

“Can I borrow that, to show some of my friends? That was wonderful!” she commended.

“Keep it,” I said. She thanked me profusely, looking very very happy and proud. Happy that I had made her happy, I slept again.

That's about all I remember from the hospital. Its like a strange dream to me now. I must have left soon after but I do not recall seeing her again. I don't know what happened to those stories, that Red Sox hat. I don't know who came to pick me up, or how hot the remainder of the summer days, or if I had completely healed. I don't know how soon after school began.

What I do remember is that Bridgette got married that fall. I saw it in the paper and was sad. She looked so happy in the black and white photograph with her baby-faced fiance. So happy that my sadness was mixed with a strange kind of what I think was hope. I'd shared with her my stories, my dreams, my love I suppose. And even though she was never mine to lose, her smile was like a contract sealing up all the tiny affections I had invested. If she had been sad in the photograph it would have all been a lost. But her smile wrapped up everything I had given her, everything lost in a way, a way that ensured I was gaining something new, something I had never felt before.