Call Me Naive: A Love Letter

I awoke this morning in a frigid hotel; my washed hair still wet and bed-headed at 7AM to find my limbs intangled in some sort of boyfriend. Trying my best to release the sleep from my eyes after only five hours of the stuff, Doug moaned a few times, and stretched. His hair stood abruptly at end. He told me he loved sleeping next to me. While he was saying this I remembered we had no toothpaste in our hotel room--my breath was rank--while realizing that, oh, things were going to change.

Graduation.

It becomes a whole new world unto itself- a relationship- when you've been in it, and deep in it, for a just a little longer than, "Oh shit I think I love you", and just to the right of, "If you left, I'd have to kill you". Or maybe just to the left of: lock myself in my room, and drink wine until Billy Idol looks attractive again. I realized this realtionship buisness was a doozy today when I found myself checking to make sure he knew where his pants were; if he put enough patches on his hat. Bagpipers played at the ceremony. I squinted heavily in my new jersey-cotton dress trying to find his squinty eyes in the audience. He smiled and gave a thumbs up.

Sometimes, in regards to these "emotion" things, I don't know who I am any more because I can't remember there ever being someone who I gave more of a shit about. His family has even grown on me, in their own ways. But I needed home after two days of someone else's loving and adoring family. Family portraits everywhere. The home cooking. The porcelian plates. The yard in a nice suburban house. The nice family who nicely gets along with the other nice extended family members who nicely remembered to bring the bundt cake. All wonderful, loving people. Just, very; nice. Nice gets tiring, when your used to your own weird family. Tired and expectant of Zoe's (which wound up being postponed to next week), I trudged onto the Hamilton train, and sped for the blinking lights.

I ripped off my dress and dove into boxer shorts and my sporty Dave Matthews Band Winter Concert Tour my boyfriend of Junior year of High School bought me for Christmas of '05 as soon as heard my red door slam. I never saw the Winter Tour. Only the Summer tour, where my at-one-time-boyfriend (drunk, and clinging to my ankle sliding down the mud of the Meadows, with a beer in his hand) was the only person who would even be able to make the case that I did in fact see Dave Matthews Band live once, and loved it. Well...

Buddhas and glass framed bugs stare at me from all sides, as cat hair automatically reaches into my lungs, and yanks out the air. Bones plays on the TV and my guinea pigs run racetrack circles around their pen. I put dibs on Jamal; Little Timmy took first place.

My Mom saw I looked disgruntled, and offered me chocolate cake and tea. I voted cake. Luckily because of Zoe's e-mail, there was a re-count, and after all of Florida's votes were in: cake and tea. She hmphed- as tea fixes everything- and calmly proclaimed she was now going to sleep in a rainforest. I asked whether it was raining in her rainforest, and Keith said, depending, but tonight yes. I watched the bedroom light click out, then grabbed my bunny slippers, shrunk back to the age of five, grabbed a blanky, and slowly opened the door.

Mom in her grey, hip nightgown and Keith clasping a pillow to his chest, the two lay staring up into the ceiling, watching the sounds of raindrops trickle down the walls, small tropical birds flap across the windowsill, and whistling monkies chase the tabby cat out. The two made the monumentous mistake of cracking a joke at my prescense, a mistake which was instantly quieted when I launched myself onto the bed between them like Marmaduke who forgot his size on his Master's lap. Keith fell off the bed. The rainforest hooted on my behalf.

"I also have Tibetan Monestary. Or Aquatic Songs. Or Boat On A Bay."

I heard a click and the sounds of water lapping the sides of our bed boat rocked the three of us into silence. I was on a river in a canoe, the sun shining down on me, and the tall reeds attempting to hitchhike back to Batsto. I heard another click, and whales sang their eerie cello solos through the glittering taxi lights and I remembered why every one should feel small.

Glacier Bay and Bayou were my two favorite CD's besides Shell Silverstein's readings of There's A Light On In the Attic when I was living in my Grandparent's basement growing up. I would watch stare at the light in the hall as it flickered on, revealing a poster of assorted whales, dolphins, fish, eels, and other sea creatures. The whirring of the disc would sound until Glacier Bay rolled over the electronics. Whales would sing their language as violions, bass', cellos, flutes and other animal noise making instruments helped the piece along. I would fall asleep, dreaming of the ocean. Goodnight, peachpit. Goodnight, Momma.

Any car that passed by Keith's apartment in Hackensack would shake every inch of his infentescimal speck of a living space to the bones it didn't have room to hold. Baby birds decided to take up residency in his wall-built bathroom fan, and his downstairs neighbors took a year-round liking to Christmas music. We would stay up watching every James Bond movie, in alphabetical order, until he would fall asleep on the blow up mattress, and I in the over stuffed couch. I would fall asleep, getting swallowed by those couch cushions, the roll and shake of the cars rocking me to sleep. Goodnight, Ree-ann. Goodnight, buttface.


I opened my eyes to the bedroom ceiling as my cat licked my awkward toe that doesn't move when I try to splay out my toes on my left foot.
"I love my family".
Keith and my Mom laughed.
"We think you're weird as hell, too".