textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0530.txt

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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #530
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888             "Dreambath of Hallucinogens"
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8
    888     888 888      888 888    "                  by Tasha
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               3/21/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        March eleventh, 10:46 PM.

        I've lost that my brief ecstacy of nicotine and smoke from small
 white stick, and I'm stuck listening to my heart pound.  Pound faster than
 it ever did while running.  Running endlessly, not even running.  It's not
 pounding in my chest.  It's not pounding in my stomach.  It's pounding
 somewhere in my jaw bone, so that my whole face trembles, silently,
 everytime it sends blood rushing through my arteries to the rest of my
 body, and I think these are tears.  Maybe my contacts are just being
 naughty again, but either way, my heart pounds and my face is damp.
 Whatever, you know, fine, okay.  Saline.

        I've been sitting by the phone for eight hours and twenty minutes
 waiting for this call.  No, that's wrong.  I've been waiting for this call
 since shortly after 9:00 PM on December 26th.  That's when he left.  I was
 standing there, barefoot and grinning, telling him not to forget to write,
 not to forget to call...not to forget...me.  He promised he wouldn't, he's
 one of the two people who never broke a promise, I really admire that, I
 really love that.  I do.  I don't love much.  I love coffee on ninety
 degree, humid, summer days.

        I first knew for sure that he loves me one month after he left.  He
 never even said it.  Sure, he signed "Love..." at the end of all his
 letters, all his notes, all his everything, but I never knew it.  I just
 knew that word.  Those letters, whatever.  It was 2:00 AM, my time,
 shortly after 1:00 AM, his time.  His new time.  He left, you know.  He
 should still be in my time, that's the way things were supposed to stay.

        "It's not anything big, you know, it's the small things.  I'll hear
 a song, like the first song I ever heard you sing along to, or I'll see a
 movie at a movie rental place...and you rented that movie...and we watched
 it...and that's when I think of you.  Or maybe when I'm driving alone, and
 I look over into the passenger seat, half expecting you to be there,
 sucking on one of your cancer sticks and complaining about something you
 don't really care about, but it's there and bad enough to complain about."

        Yes, he does love me.

        "I know.  I'll be running up the stairs, on my way to my locker
 before third hour, and I'll look up, instinctively, and I'll expect to see
 you...smiling...with a little wave and wink of acknowledgement, but it
 won't be there.  It's not just the missing action, but the missing you, as
 that vital, routine part of the day.  Like before lunch, you smiling...
 with a little wave and wink of acknowledgement as you headed out of the
 cafeteria that I was heading into."

        Yes, I do love him.

        I never really said it to him either, but I sign "Love..." at the
 end of all my letters, all my notes, all my everything.  He knows it.  He
 always has.  I think back, and someone put it so perfectly...about
 comfortable silences.  Comfortable silences are one of the greatest things
 on earth, one of the hardest to achieve, too.  I think back, and he's one
 of the few people I've had comfortable silences with.  Him writing a
 report at my desk, me laying on my stomach staring at the ceiling, neither
 of us talking.  Both of us completely comfortable.  Me hearing his breath,
 and him hearing mine, and that being the only noise, but that being such...
 perfect....music...at...the...moment.  Me not worrying if my shirt is
 laying in the most flattering position over my stomach, or if my hand is
 alligned perfectly to cover that tiny red spot on my face, him not caring
 that his hair is sticking up in the back, and adorably reminding everyone
 of a little rascal character.  Completely comfortable.

        I had this moment tonight, realizing that this is the first time
 I've consciously realized what love is, what it means, what it feels like.
 Good, you know?  Not something you have to constantly declare, but more or
 less something that never has to be declared because it's mutually known,
 without even declaring that mutual knowledge.  I have these moments
 sometimes, when something I've just wondered falls so perfectly in place.
 They're good moments.

        This girl, in my math class, her father died, and she came to
 school, and was fine, for like 3 days.  I couldn't possibly comprehend
 that.  How the hell is this girl surviving?  Then he left, and I was fine.
 Fine.  For like...3...weeks.  Then it hit me.  And I was sent into this
 period of silent mourning, because he was the only person who ever
 understood my mourning, and he wasn't there for it to become notsilent
 anymore.  There I was, crying my ass off in the dead of night into a
 Mickey Mouse pillow with nothing in my mind except a bad day.  Nothing.
 Bad day.  One Bad Day.  He took me to watch airplanes land.  Him laying
 back in the driver's seat, wondering aloud about his future as a pilot,
 and me chuckling the response that I'd be glad to lay back in my own
 driver's seat, comfortable in knowing that he was the one landing the
 plane I was staring at.  Completely comfortable, and not really silent.

        "When you get here, I'll make my special hot chocolate!!!"

        Get here.  Get here.  Get here.  I've been waiting for Christ's
 sake.  I've never been this sad in my life.  Sad.  Ugh, how fucking vague.
 I am overwhelmingly filled with unhappiness.  This is my body, somewhere
 in here is me, it's buried and I can't fucking find the damn thing.
 Complete emptiness surrounding the slug in this shell which is my, me,
 her.  Emptiness in every way possible, including the air around my leg in
 these pants that are too big in that utterly "hip" way.  Laid back and
 cool in my baggy jeans.

        Laid back and cool with my nicotine ecstacy, my drug-filled entity,
 my hate-filled deity, and my love-filled idol.

        I've been thrown against walls and had random things busted over
 my head, but nothing ever hurt.  I can come away laughing, because that is
 me.  That is my strength, my superficial strength, which I hide behind.
 That is the angst-filled teen which shelters me.  That is the tortured
 artist which makes me survive within my little, suburban world.  A little
 brick house here, a little brick house there, and we're all having
 children, and buying the new shoes on sale in the mall, and we're all
 eating pretzels at the state fair, and getting sick on the teacup ride at
 Disneyland, and we're all touching our foreheads and torsos and arms and
 whatever and praying to everyone who is our father and our son and our holy
 ghost or holy spirit or something.  Something.  I guess that's anything,
 but anything is anything and everything is anything and someone is anything
 and somehow is anything and something..is...something.  Nothing is
 Nothing, it's the reflexive property of life, which is oddly like algebra.

        There's a little girl, in twenty years she'll be a big girl, what
 is x?  I don't know.  I got a fucking D minus in algebra.  I shouldn't have
 though.  I should be an A student!  I am talented and gifted and special
 and I have a thirst for knowledge and I learn quickly and I'm an
 outstanding student and humanitarian and everything else that could be
 outstanding about me, except that I don't really give a shit.  Oh, well,
 their loss, one more scholarship to give away to someone other than me who
 can quickly become gifted and talented and special and have a thirst for
 knowledge and learn quickly and be an outstanding student or humanitarian
 or anything else.  Whatever.  I don't care.  I don't.

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!     HOE #530 - WRITTEN BY: TASHA - 3/21/99 ]