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2003-04-21 || 11:27 p.m. || nesting || In an art gallery show next month there will be a photograph of me and an ex-boyfriend in a human-sized nest made of sycamore switches on a hill in san Francisco. In the photograph it is sunny and rather windy and the grass surrounding us is brown and matted like the back of a mangy dog. In the photograph he is not an ex-boyfriend but my boyfriend and I love him and later that day we will go back to his apartment and lie around in the sunny patch of carpet in his living room. Or wait. In the photograph he is an ex-boyfriend but not consciously so, and I love him and later that day we will go back to his apartment and lie around in the sunny patch of carpet in his living room in that clandestine thrilling way, in that it�s not quite working but we love each other and if I just hold him tightly enough and not think about it so much it feels right type way. In the photograph I am curled up in a fancy dotted swiss dress and lucky red sweater under my childhood blanket, an afghan my grandma crocheted in 1979, reading my favorite book with a black and white picture of the author on the cover. I love this author like I love my friend sam, who is tall and willowy and gentle and speaks with a voice unbefitting his stature, and I have spent a lot of time before this scene in the photograph trying unsuccessfully to make my not quite boyfriend love him the way I do. So I am reading the book alone, folded up in a nest the best way a tall girl can, trying not to let the wind pull at the hem of my dress. To my left is the boy, blond and freckled and anxious looking, perched at the very edge of the nest wearing headphones with a portable record player at his feet. I want him to kiss me but his body is turned away and he is squinting at some trees. The reason why I am not going to see this photograph is the hilarious/heartbreaking irony of our positioning. That the way things stand between us at this moment were crystallized in chemical form months ago, and I don�t want to be sipping cheap wine from a plastic cup while standing in front of it. Us. The way things were a long time before I could see things properly. I�ve never not been friends with an ex-boyfriend before. I�ve always been very snotty in bragging about how I am able to make the switch from girlfriend to ex-girlfriend to friend, how it�s so silly to lose someone so important over breaking up. But I�m more hurt than I�ll ever let on, and my heart would pound and pound and pound while standing in front of that picture and I think I would have to walk out and get in the car and drive away as fast as I could. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |