22:02 - May 14, 2002
swimming pool
I don't know how it's possible for anyone to forget their first kiss. (pause as I try to remember mine). Isn't it built up during years of giggly middle school sleepovers? The 'Bases'. We define our sex lives on the American Pastime; wonderful. My first kiss was unmemorable. Funny still, as my friends will no doubt remind you at very opportunity... first kiss, not used to foreign objects in my mouth.. when foreign object (rudely) enters my mouth, I bite, instinctively. His blood flows. I cover my mouth, snicker behind my hand. Someone tells me I should have told his brother, when he came down to ask why there was blood on the couch, that it was 'an unfortunate accident involving potato chips.' (How could someone like that not exist, be a talking machine?) Anyway, I got a single in that one night. Down one whole finger in ten fingers. Because of that bloody bite which everyone will always remember. Thrilling. (Why can't I have at least been normal in that milestone, at least?) The frat dorm did not happen, all. I made it up. Invented it. Fabricated it. If you want the real story, ask me. And if you want less friction, don't ask me why I lied, all right? I'll muck myself up trying to explain when really, I don't know. I never know why I make things up, although I've stopped for the moment. It lost its zing, its appeal. The Paxil rounds the edges. Low is higher, high is lower. Everything meets at a middle ground. I'm functional, so I can't complain, right?... (for someone who thrives on drama, this should be a tortured existence. but since EVERYTHING is dulled, the tortured existence is there, just far enough away that I can't dwell on it, because the edges of the dwelling are shaved off as well.) It's very clever, this capsule. (I hate it.)

Everyone knows about what happened with Xanax, right? The evil on-a-needed-basis (i.e. every five minutes) capsule that was the first med I ever tried, back in '99? Debilitatingly anxious, hopelessy hooked on this pill, I went to New York, where my uncle, a psychiatrist, expressed his disdain for Xanax in the form of tossing it in a city dumpster as our cab rolled by. Then he took me to a theatre, playing Shakespeare, where he proceeded to make me sit still in the centre of a crowded row for four hours. The unthinkable. I thought I was going to die. I yanked on his pockets. 'We have to go,' I said, unable to breathe, 'we HAVE to.' He looked straight ahead, reached out to hold my hand, continued watching the play. His hand held my hand in place; I didn't go anywhere. I sat. Rigid. Lost conscious thought a few times.

After that, we went to a fancy restaurant; crowded, expensive, clean. I told my uncle I couldn't eat in public, 'remember?' He smiled and ordered me a plate of lobster with a side of fettucine, and chocolate mousse for dessert. When it came, he ate his own dinner, and tried to hold polite dinner conversation over my own untouched plate. When he was done, he scraped at his plate until I, knowing that I wouldn't get out of there unless I ate, ate. Every last bite.

When I got back to the hotel, I was absolutely limp, and crying, and beat, and ecstatic. I grinned so broadly my teeth were cold coming from the cab to my room. Nothing, I felt, was ever going to be as much of a milestone. I could get drafted and I would feel fine. Go to college, no problem. Anything. The hotel could catch fire.

I dreamed about swimming pools that night.

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