i ain't waiting but i'm still holding on...

it's funny. i usually name these posts after some line of a song flitting past but tonight would have been particularly difficult. then, when i'm ready to begin, devendra wails in the most beautiful timbre, "mama, i ain't waiting. no, i ain't waiting but i'm still holding on..." and it was perhaps the most wonderful combination of words ever sung to me. and perfect. perfect too.

i spent tonight at whitney and ali's apartment with sean. they'd picked out a james franco movie, good time max, which i enjoyed but none of the others did. they thought it was too slow, i suppose. or weren't entertained enough. i won't get into it. like most arts, it's a touchy subject with me. i lay there on the bed watching, ali right there at my side. i looked over at sean and whitney once but wish i hadn't. he was laying with his head on her chest and she was scratching his head. i hated them for a second but realized hey... i wouldn't particularly wish myself part of that particular duo... just the thought of them, i suppose. i could more see myself with the creature to my right. much more easily, in fact. but, close as she was to me, she's dating a marine doing fuel work in iraq. it's hard to picture, really. i didn't want to get too close to her but i relaxed my arm down by my side once and it lay against hers. every now and then i'd feel her muscles twitch. lay there and notice things. after the movie was over, there was a push for a game of yahtzee, which i hadn't played in eight years or so. sean got up to turn on a floor lamp. i hid from the light under ali's blanket, or, part of it she wasn't under. and, as she got up off the bed, i lay there with it over my face thinking of how i could smell her in it.

before she left, in the final minutes of dark, she'd lay her head on my shoulder and i'd shift around to do the same. the little creature. the infinite tease.

nothing is unbearable but everything manages to puncture my defenses somehow. nothing washes past or is missed.

every now and then, walking back or wandering around the apartment, i'd entertain the unpleasant idea of danielle. it only gets worse the more effort i invest in discovering which certain truths are the most true and sufferable. i had intended to spend yesterday afternoon with her, enjoying emotional masochism at its finest, learning of christmas vacation and boston and rob and his grandmother. it never happened, though, because she was on a plane. interviewing at tufts (which i can only assume was today). tufts is in boston. this means that danielle is in boston tonight. rob is in boston. it doesn't take much imagination to picture the two of them together this weekend. she's not a late-night girl either. therefore, as we've discovered must be true, at this very instant she's sharing a bed with rob some 750 miles to the northeast of me. that's what wandering leads me to. nearly every time.

danielle, i'm not waiting for you but i'm still holding on...

awful as that is