Dear Valerie,
This is so stupid. You're in the room right next to me and I'm writing you an email. There's a wall between us, one wall, and so theoretically I could sit next to it and lean my head against it and murmur whatever it is I want to tell you, and you would hear me, even if it would be just a low irritating buzz swallowed up by earplugs. But there's a wall between us, and I dare not come close to it to talk to you.
Just now I went outside to the back yard and smoked and tried to read. The wind howled and the rain poured out of the dark sky with almost malicious satisfaction. I wished you were with me, just so I could tell someone, tell you, some silly childhood story about how much storms scared me, and then you could tell me something, and I then respond, and you would swiftly dissect my response and shake out all the elaborated and invented bits, and and and. I wished we were talking. When we do, we're often such sparklingly elegant conversationalists.
Oh, this depresses me. I'm attempting levity and wit because I dread telling you how I feel. I'd far rather pretend I don't feel anything. I'm afraid you don't feel anything, and my admitting the existence of actual emotions would somehow give you advantage over me, which would be embarrassing and humiliating. But we were very affectionate with one another for an actual unbroken sequence of days, so in respect to whatever that was I will admit this to you: I miss being close to you.
Um. I should say: I liked us, being together. As friends, as lovers perhaps. I enjoyed your company, and I didn't loathe myself as much as I usually do, daily. Mainly because I was enrapt in the simplicity of you, us. Touching you. Um, this is uncharacteristically awkward of me. I'm not accustomed to writing about how I feel. I usually write and concentrate on being brilliantly witty, to camouflage the lack of heart in my writing's heart. Oh, this is probably coming out entirely all confused and nonsensical; please indulge this, Valerie, because I'm entirely confused and lacking of sense.
I'm getting rapidly more depressed. The rain's metronome, the constancy of its tempo, reminds me that the music that usually sustains me, that you shared with me briefly, the music I usually and endlessly hear has gone all out of tune. Oh I hate resorting to metaphors, I wish I could just tell you. Show you. But I think it quite probable that this is very irritating to you and I shouldn't tax your patience any more than I already have.
While I smoked and tried to read instead of think of you in the wind and rain, I thought of saying to you: Tell me that you don't want me in the same room with you. Tell me that I'm loud and vulgar, and that I should stopper up all this immature exuberance and learn to suffocate like a responsible man. Tell me not to touch you, not to look at you, not to acknowledge you, not to imagine you when I'm in my bed. Tell me to resign myself to day and day and lonely ordinary day until I die. Tell me that I wasn't meaningless, and that you recall me fondly. I thought of saying to you, Just tell me.
But that's presumptuous, I know. So I won't prevail on your imaginary fondness. I suppose I should finally relent and acknowledge the existence of the real world, and look to movies and trashy novels for my arrested teenage desires. Or maybe I won't relent, and persist in being childish and childlike and stupid. I don't know.
I hope that tomorrow the sun will come back and we can
I don't know what to hope for.
I shouldn't write. I shouldn't send this. Oh god. But I hate feeling this distance, you know? Did I just imagine we were close? I don't know right now. I hate sitting in the same room with you and thinking that you are actually trying to approach me. When we're walking and at an intersection, and you touch my arm, I hate how my bloodstream responds and how my throat opens with wild hope of kissing you, I hate wondering you're trying to tell me something. Because the Valerie I know, that I think I know, is quite comfortable with telling me with exacting detail, and wouldn't need to fumble like me with awkward gestures and miserable failures. So.... well, I guess that means that when we don't speak, it's because there's nothing at all that you want to tell me.
Is it okay that I tell you, in this email, that this makes me incredibly sad right now?
I wonder if my typing is bothering you. Learn to be a quiet typist, Jonathan. Learn to stop making noise. Learn to shut up.
sigh
goodnight
Jonathan
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