Friday 21 September 2012

Three Days With Nits Remembered


January 3, 2011


Something Catholic in me—I refuse to stain it by calling it some species of “taint”—compels me to say that sex is sordid, lurid, unwholesome, corrupting, unnatural…


It’s that last one that’s a stickler and effaces the superlatives preceding them, those self-defining, isolated adjectives like “lurid;” the only thing lurid is the word itself.


Having done nothing sordid recently or ever, I can safely itemize the following details of my day, given in serviceable, digestible chunks:  awoke, watched, ate, shat, snoozed, walked, showered, brushed my teeth, talked with five people (Paul, his girl, mine, clerks) and fucked my girl several times.


The last item I introduce disingenuously, as if it were not the sole activity summoning the tepid, leprous muse as you, whomever you are, read. Three times (four?), we performed the mechanics of sex, culminating in my greed, successful orgasm each time and hers, once for certain; twice possibly. The certain pop for her happened shortly before I picked up this pen. The maddening curiosity about these frequent, compulsive, and at times farcical prance generally but often doubtfully labelled “sex” is that here exists a mutuality, the quintessential exemplar of human unity, whose paradoxically definitive quality involves—nay, demands---selfishness. She came because I felt tender towards her and tickled her clit gently, just so, following with concentrated, selfless precision the shifting hips to ensure that my middle finger kept unbroken, massaging contact with that frustratingly small nub which to my amazement causes her body to shiver into paroxysm of paralytic pleasure.  My tenders towards her, Nits, the whole of her, coupled with an awareness of the one eternal tragedy (i.e, of the infinite worlds simultaneously existent though we can only occupy one. Universes bloom and die, untold suffering unfolds with our every fetid/glorious/interminable exhalation), to produce an ineffable though stoic gentility towards her, Nits. She, Nits, consequently held my unwavering attention to her needs; in point of fact, horniness had abandoned me at the moment hers, Nits’, was most and suddenly there.


(A note: justice occurs at this juncture. And the only possible positive slant on the point I here proffer: she gives when I need; I give when she needs; love, in a word)


Earlier when we had sex, I experienced less affection than unfettered, (dis)reputable want, rendering me a brutish, singularly orgasmic lover.


Query: Is her, Nits’, pleasure dependant on my mood, hers (Nits’), ours, or is pleasure situation and arbitrarily so?


She lies now in bed observing me while I light a cigarette, the flame nearly singeing my increasingly spiked eyebrows. She sighs; she shifts; she observes me (I don’t see but I know); she tells me I look handsome as the shuddering pleasure and my semen in almost mutually hostile relationship co-exist in her, Nits; she, Nits, dreams her dreams; I write that she does so. The basement where we are is windowless and lit by a miner’s lamp whose feebleness breeds shadows from every object here, a nicely apt metaphor for the intrinsic though unintentional and even benevolent doubts and power struggles qualifying anything worthy of birthing the curious expression, “romantic relationship.”


…an hour or so has eventfully transpired since the last sentence was written. She (Nits) dropped to the floor (where else?) a coffee carafe.  After I raced upstairs and we cleaned up, we retired to the basement and she slept. I heard a noise upstairs and went to investigate, calling her name thrice in vain to awaken her, only to hear her groggy, mildly startled voice call after me just as the heel of my foot hit the last stair at the top…


A descriptive bland paragraph about our immediate physical environment: grey-green, short-haired carpet, mottled by pop stains and dog paws covers the entirety of a room perhaps 30 feet long and 12 feet wide, which is book-ended by a functional and ugly brick fireplace and the bottom of a staircase adjacent to it. I write now from one of those millions of cheaply-manufactured, low-slung, obscurely-patterned armchairs standing sentinel (almost sentient) in an equally number of other windowless, stifling, 9 foot ceilinged basement rooms whose walls are faux-pas strip wood (brown, naturally) striving for cosiness and achieving instead a kind of metaphysical and slow decay of all organisms dwelling amongst it, save harmless arachnids and many-legged crawlies. To my immediate right lies two double-sized mattresses (ancient, sagged to paper thinness) upon which presently reclines her (Nits, love of my life, if life-loves there be). In front o me, several feet and slightly to my left stands upon an old, brown, wooden television stand the object for which the furniture was fashioned; an assortment of broken VHS tapes occupy the stand’s hollowed torso. In indescribably haphazard manner lies boxes of VSH tapes, a broken tv, scattered clothes, odd scraps of crumpled ad pamphlets, all girded by snaking and insensately menacing power cords. To my immediate left, a chair, nondescript, mellows. Between the fireplace mantelpiece and the Styrofoam-planked ceiling are two plastic, rectangular, garish orange-green, dimpled panes designed to further horrify even the amateur aesthetes’ sensibilities. Plate on the floor. Her (Nits’) belongings lies on the floor to the right side of the bed, whose head is at the base of the wall. That’s all for now.


January 4, 20011

And what comes of it all? In relation to Nits, stronger, ever-growing feelings of need for her, affection towards her, curiosity about her, and an unmitigated, steady desire to be in her. In short, she is prepositionally perfect. In long, she is adjectively inexhaustible: her myriad attributes, subtleties, disarm one. She catches me off guard, demotes me peremptorily to the rank of a dim child by quipping fast and wise after stretches of undecipherable silence.

Her glory earns her double-spacing in


this notebook. But economy and tender consideration for trees has me resumed single spacing.

Nits and snow: the latter fascinates her; she’d never seen it in abundance. She tries to catch snowflakes; she observes them joyfully on her coat; she takes pictures; she makes snow-angels. Her childlike enthusiasm for snow charms me completely. I find her so very tender and endearing.


We went to Niagara Falls yesterday. Nits and I are trying to have a baby. The incongruity of the two phenomenon seem to demands separate paragraphs; yet I know they are related, both somehow and in an infinite number of ways. But of the latter:

I here ask myself why I want to have a baby with her. My simple answer is that I love her. And not once, in all cases, and extraordinarily, did it occur to me to use contraceptives. I love blindly (sometimes), passionately (always) and with an unrestricted fealty towards the oft-bitter host of material existence called “Nature” by most. I’m not reasoning about having a child with her. For me, the matter delves into the very constituents of love, so that I can refer categorically to biological love, instinctive love, romantic love, and mystical love; and all streams will drain into the same baby-wanting basin. A veritable watershed of a radius as large as my life, as the love I feel while my life funnels all impulses towards a happily pro-creative glance at my lover. I’ve seen those talk shows where quarrelling couples desire—usually the hubby—paternity tests. They astound me; for I cannot understand how a person would not want his progeny repeatedly adamant, generationally-speaking.


What I told Nanda on her answering machine moments ago in response to her not letting me see Galeno during Christmas: people can change; I believe that you believe that, so please exhibit towards me the same magnanimity you extend to others, and let me see my child…

Cake; birthday; Nits’; bought at Glencoe’s Foodland; vanilla with pink icing; the last hunk of it stoically, stubbornly, sits encased by the plastic, transparent container in which it came…


Nits wept openly and with intense sorrow a few days ago, citing as cause her belief that I will never love her as much as she loves me. How to quantify, then compare, mutual affections? Perhaps I cannot love her as much as she does me; but I feel it not; and even were it so, I could say with unpardonable honesty that I love that woman as much as I could love any other ever; and I’ve never loved anyone as much. Towards her, I feel love as I understand the word. Any suspicion that she finds me a bore wounds me; every stretch of silence becomes miles of waterless marching through an emotional Gobi. Intelligibility eludes me as often as not when near her. I consider with uncharacteristic selflessness her best interests. And to see her hurt crushes me. Her laughter hoists me up into the air as if I were an infant, gurgling with thoughtless, sensual joy. These bedbugs of doubt, well camouflaged by this verdant relationship, stalks me; and their names are Jealousy A and Jealousy B. Ad infinitum.


January 5, 2011

Preceding evening events recounted nervously under the eye of the Beloved One: explosion. After writing in this journal and growing duly pensive about all in all and well for all, I met an awakening Nits sombrely, though not unkindly, at least not in intent. Our seeming inability to mine fertile conversational round has been and sometimes still does gnaw at my confidence about our relationship. She’s reticent, but it seems to me not naturally derived…rather, she seems melancholy. Yes, she’s sad. I cannot pinpoint why, but it silences her. She fears hell. Something else…perhaps she fears me, my commitment to her. I asked her why she wanted a baby; what her favourite book was; how she felt about religion (I already knew); and more specifically how she was relating to her religion. The issue runs deep and painfully for Nits. She became in turn solemn and nearly reticent. Reticence, incidentally, well descrbes her general response to topics I introduce. Strange how on the phone, I would go on at length and she would seem to be fascinated. Perhaps the problem is mine; perhaps I am hesitant to talk and then blame her for my own dithering.  Or perhaps she is not well-familiar with the topics I introduce or feels insecure about her ability to keep up, which speak about her and most people’s desire to remain in control and not appear foolish, which itself is a scathing critique about the way society stigmatizes and penalizes even the most rudimentary forms of honesty.


Note: advantage to this aspect of our relationship with Nits: it obliges me to release my need for extended communication through journally which may yet bear fruit.

(Clattering of necklace I made from a red string, a strong pen light, and a compass, all gifts from Nits, to help guide me to her. The most symbolically romantic gestures I’ve ever experienced. She expresses herself in the most poetic fashion through symbols, signs, gifts, attributable in part by her organizational, spatial mind. Through these symbols, I see touchingly clever she is. It’s in her eyes, too. Sharp)

To resume: we have trouble finding an easy conversational flow. After she gave several non-commital responses to my search for a lingual running stream, she abruptly asked if I’d like to return to our basement. We did. We screwed. She didn’t cum after laborious attempts by both my wiggling, probing fingers (alternating from index to middle) and her own, working in tandem.  Must work harder to engage her verbally, find what interests her and get interested in it. Adjust my mind, mould it to fit hers seamlessly.


Sorrow pervades. She, Nits, the optimist, thoughtfully but with near-good cheer said that she’s going to fly out on Saturday instead of Monday. I say she leaves me earlier and with good cheer, but only comparatively; because I was afraid that when I told her that I’d miss her…she doesn’t seem to want to be here, it seems to me sometimes. Her happiness at returning earlier than we’d anticipated doesn’t seem to strike her as a statement about how she feels there, with me. I know I disappointed her, not paying her for the flight, appearing at the airport drunk, that bullshit with Meagan—all these things are bound to disturb, but then I wish she would loudly proclaim what troubles. She suppresses her feelings, conceals her deepest grief, and I want to talk to her about it but cannot find the right words. It’s a defense mechanism with her to remain cheerful, or try, in the face of any vicissitude. Which is why her sudden outbursts of crying take me by surprise. I should view them as well as testament to her love for me; for she cannot contain those feelings of hurt as much as she tries. She’s really extraordinary. I wish I hadn’t made her feel as she does. I wish we could get past this once and for all.

…but to with heavier heart resume: she didn’t go “boom” last night after much twiddling and twaddling, and I fell into a sulk, the kind of petulance awarded after eons of patriarchal preoccupation with…no, that’s not so: we usually haven’t much cared if a woman has an orgasm by our deft maneuvering or not; that is something relatively new, an equation between masculinity and the ability to gratify a femme physically. In any case, I have succumbed to it, probably more ardently than some since I am what is called Being In Touch With My Feminine Side. This has drawback, because one fears going too far and consequently becomes a reactionary. An argument ensued, replete with confused ideas and bewildered subjectivities vying for one comfortable foot in tis subectivity; another in some objective field, neither quarry willing to either relinquish all sense of self nor lose all sense of the other. I suppose boundaries were established, which is somehow worse thn when there weren’t any, when we were boundless in each other, when there were amorphous, nebulous erotic waters whose waters could not be navigated, where we lost ourselves in each other. Now, we’re two countries, each slightly wary of the other, convergent only by mutual necessity.

Moment in time: I hand her (Nits’, the Nits) a bit of food and while transferring the greasy morsel, we spontaneously lock lips. Silkysoftwarmmoistened lips.


Resuming: feelings bludgeon me. I realize this when considering that in a scant few days she will be gone and my life will then immediately hollow. It’s not that it will go back to usual, but will instead be actively worse; now longing with replace mere and habitual state of being nonplussed. The perplexity of the situation resides less in what to do than how to cope (ssssssh, the bottle is always listening, and glistens with anticipatory, ironic thirst; one speaks of coping tentatively for this reason if no other, though many others exist). Distinctly am I conscious of the impending crisis. Though painful enough by virtue of its nature, our relationship has proven for me profound; or it imitates profundity with the dexterity of a Chinese or Russian acrobat. Lapels, had I any, would emerge from their somnolent unanimated existence and flare at the outrage to my already friable pride for that which is to come. Let it.


I’m using the book-light she (Nits) gave me. Late evening, with Eat, Pray, Love playing in the background at the behest of Nits. The movie irritates, mostly because I hate Julia Roberts, but perhaps for reasons. A male parallel might be found in my favourite movie. The Razor’s Edge was almost as good as the book, which rare. No acclaim, though. Go figure. She (Nits) lies beside me; rather, behind me, since I sit and she lies on the bed, soon asleep. She sleeps often or at least very early if I’m to assume she sleeps poorly at night. She been consuming no caffeine, takes folic acid daily, consumes lots of milk. These are for our child, that she might already be carrying in her.


Late evening, same day: Nits sleeps. She’s leaving on Saturday. My heart hurts. When I express my sorrow over the fact, she laughs. I realize—or hope—that it is a laugh of relief; for she has with some reason mistrusted my love for her; and my distress subsequently is interpreted as indicative of the sincerity of my affection for her. I think of going with her (Nits) back. Seriously. But I’ve no cash.

When I write here alone, when she sleeps, I get a taste of what it will be like without her; and it’s a stoppage of time, the unyielding preclusion of happiness; since no series of events can occur or induce it in her absence; it is limbo; it is purgatory. The last time she was here was different. I did not sense the oncoming horror of her departure. Bluntly, I loved her less then than now. I’m at a loss. She’s leaving and I can’t stop it, but I mustn’t waste precious time here now. I want to hold my Nits, smell her beautiful, feel that long, warm fleshy, puresex body close to mine, feel her breathing. I even love it when she kicks my shins while she sleeps. It’s cute. How many people know that about her? 

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