warning: sappy bullshit may be closer than it appears

alternating between chasing my tail and diligently sniffing around parlous territory begging for trouble, it seems to go without saying that I'm one mixed up bitch.

insomnia plagues some nights and others seem fine, and sharing a bed with someone now seems foreign... I am starved for affection but the price doesn't seem worth the trouble. my earliest single lifestyle was conducted differently from a perspective of inexperience, keeping loneliness at bay by never staying someplace too long, never kissing the same person twice, spending the night with someone just for the sake of not sleeping alone. as it turns out, sharing one bed with one person was even more dangerous than I'd ever imagined. what I began to like so much about it was the genuine comfort, rather than a false, fleeting sense of togetherness with a marionette that has no strings attached. now with my newfound freedom, I find myself nitpicking about the potential minor calamities... what if I snore, what if they're lousy at spooning, what if they have bad morning breath, what if I fart in my sleep? what if someone develops feelings? worse still, what if no one does?

I spoke to jon yesterday for the first time since my last uhaul box was picked up two weeks ago through an hour long string of of ping-ponged texts that he started up. he'd messaged, "I see you." when I was standing in a crowded dive bar in potrero at l.t.'s show, and my heart dropped like it had just crested on a rollercoaster while I started looking around frantically for tall, skinny redheads, cognizant of my failure to play it cool. right when I was about to make a break for the door, I got another text that said, "just kidding." my response was that it would've been way cooler/creepier if I'd received that message in the bathtub or on the pot.

the rest of the night we SMS warred and I eventually got sick of the impersonal medium and called, and we talked for a few minutes. we both had quiet admissions of the voids in our lives that used to be filled with each other. when I asked how his girlfriend was doing, he said he was not comfortable talking about it, and I added that it would probably be better to at least get that part out of the way over the phone. we had agreed to soon meet up in a nonthreatening public environment for coffee or a burrito, and I couldn't help but find the proposal ironic and disheartening. we can't guarantee that a private meeting won't start with fighting and end with fucking (or vice versa), so we conjured up a coffee shop date like strangers who met in an s&m chat room that need solid verification that the other party is not completely psycho. we lived together for almost a year. he knows I am not a 46 year old obese child molester with a closet full of severed heads who lives in his parent's basement in toledo. but, one thing I'll say of jon and I. we're really into emotional s&m. getting off the phone with him I'd told him I was going to watch a movie with my roommates, and I received 5 or 6 texts bearing hints of flirtation from him after that until two am, just like he'd used to do. we'd feud, we'd go to our separate corners/bedrooms, and the texts would start up until I gave in and went upstairs. only, this time, the only people who live upstairs from me are members of a burning man commune who hold bavarian dance troupe performances every sunday that make it sound as if there's a herd of mastodons doing potato sack races on my roof. and also this time, I didn't write back.

I stared at my pink walls for most of the night, tossing and turning. in the morning I said to him that the only thing that had changed between him and I was geography, and when he asked how so, I replied that he'll only miss me until I get there. he leapt to his own defense, saying that I had the choice whether I spoke to him or not, that it was impossible to miss someone who was there all the time. my point had been lost... he wants me when he can't have me, and I am still balking after pulling from all of my strength to get gone. and of course, I miss some things. those things that allow for me to detrimentally recall what attracted me in the first place, and kept me for a while, before his name became synonymous with infidelity and betrayal. there's just too must history, too many raw nerve endings exposed to get too close...

our To Catch a Predator coffee date has been postponed, at his suggestion. my foot is still an easier target than a fish a barrel.