430-92-1905

I’m so glad she left it here. We had a bit of a fight, and I know she gets immature and starts giving people the silent treatment as if they were heretics challenging her divine wisdom. The number makes me chuckle, as I compare how the government which accounts for hundreds of millions simplifies her existence within its own system. I’m told those numbers signify something. I googled it and, sure enough, her story checks out: she was born and raised in Louisiana as she claimed. Not that I ever doubted it. Every now and then her humorously out of place Southern vocabulary would creep into conversation. She wasn’t the kind of Southerner about which we elitist liberal arts haughty fuckers joke. She was not some caricature of a hillbilly, with a lack of teeth denying a full smile our world has grown to expect, or with an interesting albeit frustrating capitulation of the English language, or any knowledge that differences among peoples don’t necessarily imply a one-way trip to Hell for the majority, the wicked. But I think everyone who knows her knows she’s different. As far as I’m concerned, there’s little she lacks.

She says that she’s been told by numerous people she’s like a cartoon character. I was mad hearing this bragging. Not because of the self-flattery implicit in such a statement. I just think that comparison does no justice to her.

I couldn’t put my finger on it when I met her. I would say “that type” of woman is always enigmatic. Magnetic to a fault, to the point where you think of yourself as a starving insignificant vulture waiting for a scrap of someone else’s trophy while you hope she’ll call you or text you or even acknowledge your presence in her life on Facebook. I’m sorry; I digress. It’s no excuse, but she makes me ramble as if I’m on Aderrall and the thoughts are emerging too quickly to be expressed.

My problem with “types” and cartoon characters when talking about her is that it seems like, in casting her as such, I’m pushing her through some of sieve of other people’s creations and categories, trying to her conform to expected patterns in understanding her. She’s not the archetypal femme fatale of classic movies, providing the sex appeal for audiences to flock into the theaters. She’s not there to incite desire. In fact, I’ve never seen her not stifle some cocky guy’s desire when he has some sort of romantic implication in his exchange with her. It always reminds me of weary toes being immediately retracted from the deceptively warm sea as it produces one of those terrifying gray fins suddenly in the cold air, implying the existence of such teeth and ferocity which cannot be tamed by mere mortals.

That’s not to say I’m trying to deify her. I’m really not. She’s definitely human. Cartoon characters stylize and simply what the artists consider important about a given person- nose, eyes, hands, body. They hyperbolize what is prominent and important. I bet if she were to be drawn, the artist would render her eyes disproportionately large. But I love her eyes just the way they are. And her eyes are certainly nothing like the sun. Her license says they’re brown. I’ve never been that fond of brown eyes, but for her, that statistic on her license makes me roll my eyes. That’s when I think I first realized it- my feelings bubbling up in my subconscious and spilling over into what I thought was reserved purely for reasonable thought. She has brown eyes. I can say that objectively, unequivocally. But goddamn it, they are not brown. Maybe it’s with my own biases that I’m cloaking nature – maybe, as a light-eyed person, I look at the dominance of brown eyes as a factor which represents a shift toward a more monotonous, plain people. I don’t actually have anything against brown-eyed people, I just don’t want to see us lose the diversity that makes meeting people so potentially life altering.

But her eyes, they are not the eyes of billions of other people. Whenever I see her, her eyes are usually not open to their normal size. Rather, they are like the oscillating tides of the ocean inexplicably stopping short of their potential. But I think I prefer them that way. We both have nearly closed eyes when we’re together. Marijuana will do that to you. I think it makes her eyes more striking, more interesting, like sprinkles on an already decorated cake. Her eyes are brown. But I think they’re red. I think red is the more appropriate color to describe them. Red reflects the orange-red-gold of her hair, a color without a name because, I’d imagine, she’s the only one with it. I know that’s probably not true. But when you think about one person, it’s hard to imagine that there are billions of others about whom countless others think of in a similar, individualizing way. No. To me, you are the only one with such a striking interplay of features.

Why do you have to wear lace? I know you don’t think about me when you wear it; I’ve never even said anything to you about it, or about any facet of your physical appearance for that matter. It’s the fucking twenty first century, but somehow you realized that you look stunning in lace. The only cartoon characters I can associate you with are Disney princesses. Maybe Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. But that’s not you; you’re not ethereal, two-dimensional, rendered only to be lovely. You’re so fucking real it scares me. 430-92-1905. I will always remember those numbers.

You’re like a Renaissance painting- you know that? That’s what you remind me of most. When I tacitly take in your face, I think of the Alps. Sharp contours on the peaks of your cheekbones, taut plateaus until your lips. And your lips- it’s like a shock wave comes from the ground through my toes when I see your lips, sunset pink lips curling around the filter of a cigarette. But I know it’s just me because my feet are suspended above the air as we’re sitting on my bed savoring a the seven minutes of a smoke. Do you know, when you’re not looking, I always follow the wisps of smoke intermingle and dissipate into your hair? Nothing, let alone pale gray blue smoke, stands a chance against your veritable curly mane.

You’re like a fucking Renaissance painting. When I first met you, I felt so comforted by your physical appearance. The face and hair and eyes and nose you didn’t choose represent to me an aesthetic ideal which is at once from an epoch long past, and yet timeless. You’re so exquisite that I can’t believe it when I see everyone else interact with you as if you were just any other person, as if it wasn’t like they had somehow entered Heaven or the Twilight Zone or both and were somehow lucky enough to interact with Botticelli’s Venus.

But you should know it’s not your physical appearance that makes you extraordinary. Hell, you already know that. You and I, we’re too independent for our own good. Like a monk in his cell you lock yourself away to write and write and think and you love it. You fucking relish filling your unique, solitary niche. You quite simply don’t really need the real world because you create so many of your own; the line between edifice and concrete becomes too obscured for you to really take anything too seriously. Goddamn it, I don’t know how you’re so fucking extraordinary. But I think you know that already. It’s in your self-contented stretched out smile, resting tautly at its apex on your milky pink face. We’ve talked so many times about how it’s best to just not take anything too seriously. Everything changes, and nothing plays by a set of rules which can be understood and predicted. You could never take me seriously. I can live with that. I can live with not getting exactly what I want, as I realize that I have far more now than most people think any young person deserves by being one of a handful out of billions who can enjoy your loveliness.

I know everyone cries but I can’t think of why you’d ever cry. I can’t really imagine it. Maybe I can- your eyes would become bloodshot like when we get high and the little, barely perceptible pink lines in your eyes appear in a sea of pink, like streams of magma spurted from a volatile volcano. I’m not sure if you’re actually capable of crying due to some external stimulus. Maybe you cry for the fate of one of your characters in one of your stories- I’m sure Pushkin cried for Onegin. But he was actually as passionate as his works imply. Did you know that he died in a duel over his wife and their honor? He fucking stood a dozen or so paces away from another armed man and was shot, and he took this chance volitionally.

Not that I’d ever ask you to take a bullet for me. I don’t think you would for anyone, and you might not ever be willing to. I probably wouldn’t do the same for you. But I want you to know that you make thoughts explode from my head like gods from Zeus’s. You are too smart, too stunning, too enigmatic for your own good, you know that? I don’t think it’s fair for someone so magnificent to never really be able to give herself to someone, but c’est la vie. You’re a walking, talking, thinking, breathing, self-evident tautology that eludes all of my reason.

I’ve been ignoring my constant headache for the past week due nicotine withdrawal. But fuck it, I need a cigarette now. I need something sweet, immensely satisfying, filling. May the ash get mixed with this persistent rain and form cement, so that something real and somewhat permanent can come from how I think feel about you, a stylized cartoon, a Botticelli, 430- 92-1905. May this ode, prayer, effigy, eulogy settle the tempest you have incited within me, within what I thought could be strong and static and optimistic. Your voice is the honey in my tea, and I am counting down the fucking hours until it can pacify me. I guess this is my way of saying thank you for creating that point of intersection of my conscious mind and my subconscious, my personal goals and my undeniable humanity.