Some people want to know you but don't really want to know you, you know?

Some people want to know you but don’t really want to know you, you know? Like a fuzzy bath towel or a quant coffee shop in a small town, you are interesting in a comforting way, provide a kind of nurturing refreshment, a bit of color lacking in the wardrobe. That empty wall really needs something, and then you show up, and provide a soothing aesthetic composition until the depths of your soul pour onto their dining room table, startling as a frog dissection in junior high. There is an unpleasantness, a complexity, a requirement to pay attention that disturbs, detours, and opens a portal to a world best left alone, best left unanswered. You, the telemarketer on the phone. You, the one calling on the emotional bandwidth of a centipede. A centipede playing Royal Kingdom. A centipede clutching the rim of a crisp glass of chablis. Have you been to the new restaurant called murderrhappsshhhvennnacles? I heard the celery root puree is to die for. A centipede you just told you are missing your middle toe because you had a sudden urge for them to look you in the eye. A centipede you want nothing more but to love the inside of you.

Some people want to know you, but don’t really want to know that you have a keen eye for fashion because, when you were 3, you were left alone in a room with colorful vintage wallpaper. That you were touched inappropriately on a fabulous shag rug. That you are a Libra rising, and that means something like rising from a mythos of indecision that isn’t really true but a rumor you identified with, so you say: Sure, let’s go eat at murderrhappsshhhvennnacles, if that’s what you want. And at the table you bring up the toe again. But the centipede digresses to a time when they got a bad pedicure on the day their ex started dating that model that walked for Balenciaga four years ago but put their modeling career on pause due to a bad case of lymes, of which they started a substack (The Quiet Freedom of Lymes) now with six thousand subscribers.

Some people want to know you but don’t really want to know that your loneliness wakes you in the night, a tyrannical gasp cocooned in a sticky hot sweat. That ancestral ghosts scream misanthropic poetry in your ear while you type feverishly on a crumb-covered laptop. That downloads of esoteric messages pop into periphery like angelic shadow puppets. Don’t feed the centipede, you silly goose! You come from a lineage of excommunicated childlike wonders!

Some people want to know you, but don’t really want to know that there might be no other reason for us to be here than to discover ourselves through each other. To join hands as we excavate our internal abyss. To touch toes underneath cathartic cold water. Have you ever noticed it’s warmer if you get your hair wet? Have you ever noticed that the time it takes for your fingers to become wrinkled ranges from 1 minute to sometimes not happening at all? Have you ever noticed there is an endless amount to notice, laugh at, and cry about? Have you ever noticed life is devastatingly beautiful?

Some people want to know you but don’t really want to know you, and that is okay. Because some people really, really, really do.

And we are everywhere.

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