I turned out to be a
really bad person.
I had an uncle who, despite a rigid adherence to the rest of the dicta of his faith,
read my palm once just for fun. It doesn't hurt to hear an uncle tell you, no matter what you think of him, no matter what you think of yourself, you're gonna
break a lot of hearts one day. And at the age of ten, those breaks in the wrinkles in your hand really do mean
possibility, possible
lovers, possible dreams, and you are
wise, wise, wise, possibly terribly evil, hopping from bed to bed, giggling, and flipping your hair, and
moaning .
This, then, wasn't how it was supposed to be. Maybe the breaks in my lifeline mean more: that
I am addicted to other people's problems, that my life (terribly staid and somewhat hygienic) would mean much less to me than the prospect of hope.
The thing is I can't forget the
glitter in his eyes, though it, like my present state, can only be attributed to
hormones.
Nor can I forget the
fighting couples on Monroe Street (they were strangers), or the way I kept watching
happy couples disintegrate (those I knew). I was taking it for awhile as a
sign to soak up the solitude, the empty beds, the phone that never rang, the pager that no longer sang to me.
I cannot be touched by any of this madness, I was thinking, my feet all wet and swollen in my buckle-up saddle shoes, my bra and boobs chafing underneath the wrong size halter top.
(
Shoes are the
weirdest part of naked me he said
do you want to get naked with me?)
I wanted a life like a horrible
movie, full of tits and moaning. That I got. No moaning in anybody's arms, though, only my own sad story, my belly possibly
too full, or
not enough, and the
moaning interrupted with tears.