There\’s two different queries made, from two different sides: \”why me\” and \”why you\”. Neither answer is satisfying. If we have to ask (are they rhetorical questions or are we really looking for answers?) then maybe we shouldn\’t be asking.
All these years it\’s been the same sad game: \”who\’s that girl, and where is she going?\” She\’s going nowhere, but it\’s such an interesting journey to watch. She\’s always the most interesting person in the room. So striking. So stunning. So gorgeous. So pretty. So beautiful. So unexpected.
Why do you have to like her so much? She\’s in the exact same place as she was a few years ago; maybe her face is a little older, a little worse for the wear and tear, but so are you. Nothing\’s changing for her. She\’s not making it happen. So what is it about her?
Oh, you can look into her eyes and see yourself? You can recruit her erratic passion for your exploitative Washington lobbying work? You can see that she\’s the perfect compliment to you; she fits the missing piece in your life? She\’s a young woman with just so much potential that\’s just this close to being ripe for the picking; she just needs somebody to be there to harness that potential and calm the filly down before she squanders it all away, and you\’re just the person to do it?
Oh yeah?
Fuck all that.
Not a mistress, not a whore, and not your fucking muse, either. And certainly not your damsel in distress, waiting to be tamed. Except, of course, when I am. Except, of course, when you know me too well — know me better than I want to be known, know me better than I\’m willing to admit, know me better than I sometimes am willing to admit to myself.
It\’s such a fine line that we walk, when we continue to fracture our self images to the point where we no longer even recognize ourselves because we have spent so much time alone in analysis, coming up with second guesses and hypotheses. But we keep walking it, and continue to come up with new splinters of truth, different visions of self worth. (\”I know you are, but what am I?\”)
Idle time…I think idle time has been the greatest destroyer of the minds of my generation. Somewhere along the line, most of us have grown into characters in a goddammn Woody Allen flick. But would living like Ginsberg, et al. be any better, frying our minds, wringing our hands, freezing in the winters? Masturbating over run-on sentences. I long for proper grammar. I want to live something better than \”Howl.\”
