he tells all the ways he almost dies & I fiction his sainthood.
A bird atop decrepit cathedral.
In my elementary school years, I would spend hours choreographing numbers & directing music videos in the full-length mirrors around my home. My favorites were always love-songs, featuring elaborate pas de deux & tandem gestures. Recently, I revisited “I Wanna be Where You Are” by an adolescent Michael Jackson, the only era I can remote enjoy at this point. Then, I still imagined myself fitting into roles of boyhood. Now as a grown woman, I trace how long I’ve romanticized proximity.
My next collection of poems are on Romance, with an integral thread being the relativity of which I calculate meaning. Literally, I’m predisposed to be affectionate out of convenience & causality. Philosophically, I measure the offerings of grace I dispel in proximity to my investment, in a person, organization, or scene. While I might pride myself on presenting bombastic chaos in communication & countenance when it costs those close to me, I’ve gotten better at recalibrating my content. My community etiquette fluctuates with digital * IRL circumstances but my metrics for familiarity are similar.
Beyond the attempt at reflective objectivity, my fascination with proximity has presently calcified into troubling my previously unchecked fantasy of being the “Girl Next Door”. This identity, a locus of impossible wholeness, subconscious desire, can be a dehumanizing mythological trope I now see myself retroactively hungry for. Despite my flirtatious nature & erotic representation, I can count on one hand the number of people to ever actually admit attraction to my face. Dysphoria exacerbated by narcissism made a kaleidoscope of my sense of self. Looking back, however, I map the symbolic & literal ways I found scenarios with men near me to fulfill the blocking of that character. While there are varieties & feminist readings of these characters, my Girl Next Door gives (gave?) the men in my life equal space to use me, praise me, ignore me, etc. It’s not always been men but the narrative sticks.
I’ll have to admit I’ve used proximity to my advantage. (characterized by sleeping with or almost sleeping with housemates/neighbors without serious implications on my end, known by my friends as fucking the locals). More often I peak as a good-time girl to some semi-stunted but not demonstratively bad man. I moved in with the boy next door (a tattooed bachelor 12 years older than me) the week we went into quarantine, We’d gotten so close in my first year in Portland. I got him coffee every day before work & one day I’ll stop bringing it up. Living with him somehow tore us further apart. He gave me a ring & became estranged. I stayed because we hugged every morning before work & every night before bed. A reliability that surrounded his inconsiderate chaos. I moved into a new place & one of my new neighbors is a sheepish man with a nice haircut who smiles when he sees me but the pandemic means only distant waves & sweet glances. For long-time fans, yes I’m already in love with him & I only found out his name 5 months since living here.
The first person, my age, I was attracted to in a way I could understand, sat in the assigned seat next to me in my third-grade class. In a poem, I recall innocently touching his thigh to be nice & him punching me in the arm. For fans of my works, this was my first logic of love, an unevolved measure of affection.
I’m not intrigued or aroused by pursuing others. I’ll adore anyone who feeds me kindly, but I can’t maintain desire through the chase. I’ll take a dull pain over sharp shocks. I fuck on the first date because I don’t understand wasting time. If this body is a temple I want you praying in it. This makes stone’s throw suitors so appealing. I’ve spent hours waiting to sit around men just to laze about, preferably underdressed, ready to listen to all their woes. A role is reminiscent of my frat star mommy/slut mascot phase. This is the longest I’ve gone without living with a bunch of men (read: white/straight). I’m saddened by how much I miss small things like contact or performative chivalry. The way they stand near me when telling a story or look me in the eyes to tell me I’m beautiful. I miss attending to a needy thing outside of myself.
I’m now surrounded with more meaningful love so these reflections always teeter on u grateful. That also means I’m surrounded by fewer white people, fewer men, fewer straights. It’s joyous to laugh & carry on & love. My proximity to reciprocity is healing. All this forces me to face my lingering longing for the close & unattainable. To mosaic new ways to see, want, for myself & my loves. I worry I am manufacturing unnecessary hurt or personally commodifying this loneliness again.