*

It's really hard to know what I'm doing about anything these days. Everything's too complicated and I mean everything. There's no real reason for Nate to come over anymore. There's not even a reason for him to bring his guitar. It's like force of habit. The first time I was a little surprised, confused, but obviously not unhappy about it. Things with Shann have still been fine, especially if we're working on something together. Then again, I guess that's what it's like for a lot of things with me. My issues and her issues are still hanging in the air over our heads, heavier and heavier, and neither of us have budged. In any case, any break from that pressure is welcome. She might even need it for her own reasons.

Did admit to Nate that Mom's sick, but not that it's terminal. That's still too much. And pity still doesn't feel good-- another reason I don't like talking about certain things, I guess. And the line between sympathy and pity can be a little too thin at times for my liking. Ugh, I know people are trying to be nice. I always have to remind myself that it's sincere and nobody is good at talking about this stuff. I still didn't want to stay on the topic for long, though, so that time, I was relieved he brought his guitar along with him. I could dive into something else, even if it wasn't a really structured something-else.

The third time, I almost asked. Knew as soon as I had the thought that it would bring up too much other things I wouldn't want to talk about, so thought the better of it. Still couldn't say no to hearing him play. At some point he went into the song we'd been working on, bobbed his head to it, curls flying around, confident and physical and free, and I remembered watching him in that warehouse, wanting to feel what he felt, but still feeling comfortable in its shadow. So much about him is foreign to me, but that musical space we share together is a home of its own. It was a similar thing here. And the sun was in his hair again, and for a moment I could bask in that, too, until I started feeling it too low[36].

I mean, it's just my brain getting stuck on old memories. Seeing shadows and ghosts where they aren't. But I still hated myself for it. I couldn't just leave things be. My body couldn't let me just enjoy things as they were, it had to try and ruin things, had to try and make me stupid and selfish and-- ugh, I haven't felt like this since college, when I was terrified of ever really looking at any guy, thinking if I looked that would just be it forever, I'd break myself and be stuck that way. Remember telling that to Cryssie later, her laughing sadly, shaking her head, telling me she hoped I knew it didn't work that way now. I didn't give myself permission to "know" until she granted it to me. But now I'm not so sure again. I see him too much all of a sudden and I don't know how to go back to not seeing him. Ugh. Even writing about it feels like getting things stuck a certain way. Nothing about it makes sense. Then again, so little of HIM makes sense. Why the hell is he still coming over here. What's the fucking reason. Maybe I should just ask.

So much of everything right now is a series of questions so heavy that carrying them is less and less bearable, yet the idea of dropping even one of them feels like dropping a nuke. Something has to give, but nothing is, yet. I'm almost annoyed with both Shann and Nate on their parts for keeping it going themselves. They could say something at any time. They just let it linger, too. Maybe the gardening and guitar playing really do fill that space enough for them. Maybe it's just me. Again.

PS: Called Sam on a payphone. Couldn't even tell him about everything. What the hell could he do about it? He doesn't think I'm bisexual or anything like that, I did tell him it wasn't that kind of relationship (serious, deep, honest). He just said things have been getting crazier and crazier since Reagan's set foot in office and he couldn't blame me for doing what I had to do. He's getting married himself soon, and all the guys including myself are invited to that. It's real for him. Lucky him.

*

G-d, I really am feeling like I did in college now. Just waking up and asking the ceiling why the fuck I couldn't just be normal or act at it well enough that it wouldn't drive me crazy. And it's awful, it's so awful; I couldn't blame anyone if they thought I was ashamed of myself at this point because that's what it looks like and even what it feels like, even if the shame is from a different place than they'd all think. But still, this is what I've been reduced to. It feels like being a bird stuck in a cage with clipped wings remembering how it felt like to fly but having to pretend as though I never touched the sky. Which means it feels far too close to... ugh. A lot of old things.

There're times, lately, where Nate's recklessness and freedom feel insulting because of all that. He can just... DO things. And he always seems baffled that I can't just do things. I couldn't help but ask him, during his most recent visit, if Walt had ever made him do anything... uncomfortable. "I mean, he gets on my ass about things all the time, but I give him a hard time, so it's not like I'm helpin' him much! ...Why?" And of course I didn't really tell him why. I did mention Greg having to do those humiliating Budweiser ads during concerts that one year, and how nervous he looked when I suggested he just not do them one time to see what would happen. Like, Greg's a big guy. He could be intimidating if he wanted to be. And Walt's nearly as short as Nate and myself, and a lot chubbier[37]. But he got Greg shaking in his shoes? "...He's been real pissed at you lately, y'know. Walt." I said I wasn't surprised at that. And I'm not fucking shaking in my shoes. "He's not used to that. He doesn't get it. I don't, either, honestly. Still feels like you're just tryin' to piss him off." So I'm just trying to help make this a good and fair workplace for as many people as possible... to piss Walt off?

So we got a little snippy at each other for a bit. He doesn't get what I'd have to push back against Walter for, I don't get why he's THAT attached to him. I know they've known each other since Nate was a teenager, I know that there's a sort of weird father-son thing going on there, but is it really THAT blinding? It was interesting, though, the longer the snippiness went on, noticing when things Nate said were just Walt's words coming out of his mouth. Like, Nathan wouldn't come up with calling me "Mother Teresa" all on his own (and I can see Walt now, pacing back and forth on his stupid little boat, ranting at poor Nate about how I must think I'm some real do-gooder Mother Teresa, huh, and what is HE, just shit on someone's shoe??). That made things easier to deal with on one hand-- it wasn't really Nate I was arguing with-- but by the same token made things depressing, in another way. How do you argue with someone just loyally parroting someone elses' words at you? How to get through to him? Can I?

No real resolution this time, of course. I'm getting used to things being unresolved. We both just gave up and things dissolved into their usual unstructured musical improvisation and conversation. Eventually it was just Nate, and I was just listening, eyes closed, head leaned back on the couch. It reminded me a little of that day with Greg and the tub, but not so bad or quite so charged. Either way... ugh.

Shann asked me tonight, before we went to bed, how the hell I got along with Nate so well. I told her she barely sees him, how does she dislike him so much? She shrugged, said that girls just have a good feeling, sometimes.

*

I don't know whether I hate myself or Nathan more right now. He's SO-- ugh. I don't even want to write about it. Writing about it'll probably just make it worse. I can't afford for things to be worse than they already are. Fuck.

*

Fine. UGH.

I finally asked the question that I've been wanting to ask for a month, now. And I asked it because he answered my fucking door looking like he could read my mind, had done so, and wanted to torture me. It was 80-something degrees out and he drove his motorcycle down; I opened the door and leather and outdoors-sweat and cologne[38] and cigarette smoke and his stupid hair gel all mixed and hit me at once, G-d it went down to my dick before I could even think and I wanted to fucking kill him. And he was wearing a leather jacket and a v-neck undershirt with his jeans and boots and all that sweat was dampening the tips of his curls, clinging to his chest-hair. So that's why I had to ask, he forced the fucking question.

Well, I guess the wine helped get the question out of me, too. But I couldn't fucking stand it, or him, or myself, and I didn't have pot around, and I wanted something that'd hit a lot quicker than that anyhow. And ugh, of course he had to play dumb at first (then again, with Nate, it's sometimes hard to tell between playing dumb and actually-dumb...). And I told him he had no reason to be here anymore, that we'd finished up all the non-studio work on that one song ages ago and we haven't even started real work on another; all he's been doing ever since is unstructured noodling and eating all the leftovers from my fridge. "I mean, your girl ain't eating 'em, is she?" UGH. He can be so dumb but so perceptive at the same time and it's the most obnoxious combination (and he'd grabbed my bottle of wine at that point too and was just chugging straight from it... UGH he owes me a twenty). And of course he was dodging the REAL question. "I can't just hang with you?" You never wanted to before! And last year it was like even being around me was downright embarrassing. "I told you I was a dick then, okay?? And you were the one that left me with nothin' to do for a whole year! I can't live like that, man!" So you were just... bored? "Fuck man you ALWAYS take shit the worst way possible--"

We were more than just snippy with each other this time, and I know the wine didn't help there, either. The longer fights draw out with Nate, the more likely he is to get stupid and puffed up and pushy, too (but he's never ACTUALLY intimidating...), so he was shoving me around my kitchen, and then I was shoving him back, and every fucking shove sent a wave of sweat and Kouros and smoke between us, and at some point I was grabbing more than shoving, the alcohol and sweat and cologne clouding my mind, making me forget where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, and the roughness started to mean something else, 'til he shoved me against the fridge and I pulled him to me, my knee between his legs and he ground up against my thigh like I'd confused him just as much, and he smelled disgustingly, devastatingly divine, and I missed how men smelled so fucking much anyway, and it all went to my dick again, so fast, and I felt his throb next to mine and I couldn't fully think what I thought when I felt that, I can't even write it, and it doesn't matter anyway, because we shoved off of each other in a panic.

I told him that he should just go home. We had a stupid amount to drink. And he nodded wordlessly. Both of us were in a daze as he gathered his things together. "We're... cool...? Right? Didn't mean nothin? Just stupid." He asked me on his way out the door. I told him it'd probably be okay, yeah. And yes, it didn't mean anything. And it was stupid.

Of fucking course he makes things even more difficult. My life wasn't complicated enough! Nope! Now I have to worry about some stupid gorgeous idiot that doesn't know what the hell he's doing or why he's doing it spilling all his stupid feelings across my mind like he'd spilled red wine on white carpet. And, again, the apparently-now-eternal question: what the fuck am I going to do.

[fun author's note: i did look up if ysl kouros was released by '82 and it came out in '81. YESSS I can give my boy an obnoxious over-horny macho animalic/musky 80s cologne-nuke]

*

[36]And it was obviously very uncomfortable, but I just got up to piss and that cooled things off enough for that moment. Not completely though. And that's the problem.

[37]In retrospect, maybe that's also why I let my guard down far too easily around him in the beginning: he didn't LOOK intimidating. Lorenzo didn't either, though. But he was the opposite kind of unintimidating-looking (scrawny). And Lorenzo and Granddad would both get this awful darkness to their eyes when they were angry... Walt doesn't get that, but he might as well.

[38]And I hate that I knew it was Kouros from the first whiff, UGH