everyone wants to gather round the table, eat and drink, lick their fingers, grab an olive, then another, a cracker might be offered to you if you’re sitting far from the cheeseboard, this has always been my gripe with long tables, i couldn’t tell you who was sitting on the other end, this has always been my gripe with large groups of people, i couldn’t tell you who was happy, sad, frustrated, lonely, but a few of us get drunk and stay, the rest notice they’re not and leave, closing curtains, brushing teeth, relieved they won’t feel as awful waking up as we will, but curiosity goes to bed with them, and they will wake up wondering what ever needs to be said after 2 am.
what is said after 2am is most often candid, a little twisted, and very earnest. we’re all exhausted by that point, but frivolous too, waiting for someone to prod us gently with a look, an elbow, a squeeze of the knee to say that is you! you do that! you think everything is always ending when it’s only just beginning! and it is true, i cannot deny it, but it doesn’t feel nearly as devastating because the wonderful thing about everyone who stays past this hour is that they feel the need to confess to at least two things they think are rotten inside them. and so it goes that we all must laugh in recognition, squeezing each other's limbs, knees touching, making the space between us smaller, because we’re all putrid in parts too, doomed for certain. but if we’re all doomed, i say, then it’s all okay! we cheers with another glass of wine.
that’s what comes when most everyone leaves the table. extreme, drunken okayness. an okayness i suspect only satisfies five friends who can no longer distinguish between very sad and very funny. everything is both. this is why we will be okay.
for about two months i started asking whoever happened to be near me what love was to them. i mean romantic love i would add almost immediately. when they couldn’t quite put it into words, i asked, well, then, when was the last time you first said you were in love? none of the answers given to me sufficed so i didn’t bother writing any of them in my journal. they all had the same drab energy as – they said it first, so then i said it which is simply too depressing to transcribe. i also find it hard to believe that i surround myself only with people who receive declarations of love and not with people who ever make them. this seems putrid in of itself, never mind terribly boring. in any case, i went asking because i couldn’t remember if i was ever the first to get on my knees, thinned out by vulnerability, elbowing someone not gently but aggressively, frightfully, with immense amounts of hope that they’d say yes, this is me too, i am exploding with love!!!!
can one ever forget being on the floor like this? '