some writing i did without stopping

hello,

writing is my chance to show off. i make incredible shapes. don’t we want to show off? don’t we want to make incredible shapes? i want my love to be as free as sheer fabric on a clothesline, i want it to blow around like that, i want that to be how it feels to receive my love. the truth is just now i stopped masturbating to write and my pants are down around my thighs. the laptop’s sitting on my womb. here’s what my mind’s been lately: love, weird sex, future, writing, more weird sex. i saw a post the other day that said: ‘take off your genitals, you won’t need them for the kind of sex we’ll be having,’ and i thought, yeah, that’s it. when i was nine a teacher i was in love with teased me in a way that leveraged power over me, and it made me manic with pleasure, and that feels like the first time i had sex. i think a lot of things are sex that we don’t recognize as sex. i think a very good conversation can be sex; i think maybe two strangers can walk past one another, both hyperaware of the other but pretending not to be, and this can also be a kind of sex. sometimes i walk past a plant and a leaf brushes my soft inner arm and that feels like sex. there is some sex that happens not between people or things but between the self and the moment. the moment always wants to have sex with you—in the way every animal deep down wants to be pet; over-eagerness frightens away. if you open a hand and steadily wait—well, anything can happen then, forget about sex, forget about moments. you can have whatever you want, provided you can bear to let whatever you want want you first.

my pants are still around my thighs—sorry. as soon as i fall in love with someone i start thinking of christmas. i love when men wear sweaters. when i see a man in a sweater i think, good for you; i think, should we spend christmas together? when i fall in love with someone a cavity opens in the airspace around them, it appears most obviously when they’re laying down, there’s a cavity where my body ought to go, i get obsessed with the cavity. he sent me a picture of himself the other day and the not-laying is the unbearable thing. i want to be weight.

sometimes i have the most incredible frisson, and it’s so incredible it makes me a little worried because i don’t know if everyone is experiencing this. i feel if everyone was experiencing this kind of frisson there would be loads of art and songs and stories about it. i suppose the problem is in the describing. when it happens i will sometimes suddenly remember diagrams of nervous systems, those delicate leafy veins, and i think, yes, i’m a leaf, i’m a leaf shuddering. based on this i think it must feel very good to be a tree and have the wind roll through you. i was once a child and looking out into the backyard on a windy summer day and a big oak tree got lit up with wind, and the leaves shimmered with wind, and i listened and thought: ‘it sounds like applause.’ i don’t know why i remember this but i do. every time i see a tree dazzled by wind i think of applause. everyone is cheering for the mystery.

sometimes i think, i want to write so well that everyone in the world falls in love with me. sometimes i think, even if nothing happened to me for the rest of my life, enough has already happened to me that i would never run out of things to write about. sometimes i worry i’m not writing enough. sometimes i worry i’m not taking good enough care of my cat. her stomach gets upset and i worry it’s because i’m filling the flat with bad vibes, or i’m not playing with her enough. sometimes i think it would be easier if she could talk to me but, of course, she already is.

i’m going to put my pants back on now.

i want to share everything i write. i feel, all the time, like a child: ‘look at this! look at this! look at this!’ this is how i interact with people on the internet and also people off of it. a friend once told me that i have a shorthand: ‘lookit.’ i don’t know! i don’t know. i just want you to see; i don’t want you to miss it. when we’re all barrelling down the highway there’s only one precarious second where the deer is in eyeshot, and then it’s behind you forever.