Forever January

I love these hours in between, when one isn’t sure whether to say good morning or good night. The world is sleeping and the soft, lulling silence cradles around the darkness. Stars shine with more clarity against the swarthy sky and crickets chirp in the still blades of grass.

This is our time — you and me — when we come together and forge new paths like a pale Aurora Borealis streaked across the heavens. While the rest of the world is abeyant, we feel each other out in the dark, grasping for fingers in the night.

And I would trade nothing — nothing — for these precious moments, these small water drops of memory in my mind’s garden. It’s how my Life grows.

“What language do you dream in?”

I paused and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Well,” I breathe out, “usually it’s just English — or no language at all. But sometimes I dream in French. And once — long ago — I had a dream in English, French and Finnish. It was the strangest thing ever — and it has only happened once.”

But yet, just the other night, a new language crept its way into my dreaming state. And I never understood the words that left your nonexistent lips, but voilà. There it was. And there was recognition of the gilded vowels and consonants lifted and danced in the moonlight before dissipating into the foggy, dreamy air.

I search for meaning in the rocks, in the air, in the breeze that shakes me as I walk with my head tilted towards the sun. And I feel so certain it’s there — I’m simply not looking in the right places. Raison d’être waits just around the corner, I’m sure — perhaps waiting to be unlocked in some new language I’ve yet to learn.

Watching you was the most beautiful thing I have seen in such a long, long time. It was so marvelous — like something sweet yet intangible from a dream. A moment I dearly want to love, cherish and remember forever. And you don’t know — you have no idea. No words could I say upon your ears would lead you to believe the things I feel, the twisting, turning sensations you infuse into my stomach.

It’s so easy to dream of you, to wonder about you as I look up into the night sky.

I hope these memories always remain so sweet.

Interstellar and galactic, it was never enough for me to settle on terrestrial love. And so I link up satellites in the sky and send out messages that bounce their way into your atmosphere.

How could we ever think of distance when we’re sharing the same sky?

The sun that kisses you goodnight is the same sun that wakes me in the morning. You and I, we’d be interstellar — our love could live between the stars.

I imagine walking with you under the stars and standing so close to you that my hair would brush against your shoulders. And our hands would entwine under the night sky before you would pull me against your chest.

And after a spell, we’d retire to the warmth of the indoors. It would all be so dangerously, deliciously beautiful. And I love the way we would make each other blush, smile and giggle as we gaze through our eyelashes at one another.

Could you imagine it? I could.

And so I do.

“I’ve come to the realisation that I will never be happy.”

I look across the table at The Yankee and twist my lips in a half-smile of irony. “I think I’m in the same boat,” I reply. “And what’s worse, when I go back in my mind to try and remember a time I was TRULY happy — when nothing was wrong in my world and there was no dissatisfaction — I can’t recall anything. Nothing. I don’t have any memories of true happiness.”

“None? Whatsoever?”

“None. It seems I’ve been miserable in one form or another my entire life. Life is sad. It’s suffering. And I suffer it well, it seems.”

And such confessions I’ve made to no one else. The words were always there under the belly of my tongue, slinking in the dark — hiding. But now they’ve come to the light, exposed their dirtiness in the brightness of day.

Life is a continuum of misery. And I suffer it well.

An interesting thought that has come to my mind as of late is on women who carry condoms in their purse.

After some brief polling of friends, it seems the reaction to this is mixed. Some felt the woman who carried a condom or two in her purse would be viewed as trashy while others felt it was a good reflection on her that she cares about safe sex.

I would have to say that for me, I’m in the latter category. While I do not currently carry condoms in my sac-à-main, the thought has crossed my mind. I have never been that shy when it comes to talking about sex, and even less shy when it comes to talking about SAFE sex. To me, there is no better way to say, “I care about my body and yours” than to practise safe sex. It’s nothing to be ashamed about, either. I don’t feel sex should be some taboo topic that is only whispered about behind closed doors. If we’re open about what’s out there and freely discuss it, I feel more people would be inclined to practise safer sex. Knowledge is power!

But I digress. There have been times when I have sorely wished I had a condom with me. I have band-aids, chapstick, NSAIDs and tylenol. There have been times I’ve been viewed as a walking pharmacy and first-aid kit. So why not a condom? Why are women shy about carrying such things on their person? My guess is that they feel pressured by society to maintain their “good girl” image, which includes giving off the illusion that sex is dirty, nasty and bad and “good girls” don’t have sex.

What bollocks. That image needs to be changed. Good girls have SAFE sex. And really, I feel it’s important that we are advocates of practising safe sex.

So ladies, don’t be ashamed of slipping a condom in your make-up bag for those “just in case” moments. You carry aspirin and band-aids for the same thing. You never know when you’ll need them, but ya got them just in case.

While curled up together in the middle of Mr Brightside’s bed, he said, “You know, I once dated a girl who’s uncle had a heart attack from Viagra.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. Strange old man — I met him only once.”

Laughter and then a short string of silence.

I turn, look him dead in the eye with an impish grin on my face and say, “It makes you wonder how things were when rigor mortis set in.”

“Ooooohh! Why’d you have to say that? I KNEW you were going to say that! Gaaaah! You have such a dirty mind! And you just can’t turn it off or keep it to yourself, can you?”

“Nope. Can’t turn it off for one second. But really now, what do you think…”