#effleuree

I normally hold the idea of sex in my sacral, heart and crown chakras here it is now in my solar plexus and making me feel like I have to throw up. It would be best for me to not [have sex] now. to return to interests. on the metro the thought makes my eyes well. It’s the wrong place for it, I think, it feels both tight and too much air. sex in the solar plexus. It was just a dream that Y had said “maybe when you are here [in Paris] you should go to the opera, maybe it would be good for you to spend some time alone here”

I’m sure I’d dreamt it because of the caption I’d read under a photo he’d posted

I think of his girlfriend

Don’t play with her, don’t be dishonest Still not understanding this logic

I saw it and felt like it was inadvertently about us. the her in his caption is his girlfriend. then i thought, he always puts dramatic captions under his photographs and you’re flattering yourself thinking it has something to do with you. I was still uneasy about it when I went to sleep though.

This morning, still not remembering the dream but feeling generally off about him, sex, relationships, he says that he’s made it a resolution to not call anymore. I’ve got a hand of spades and hearts: maybe it’s to be considerate– to let me sleep he’d always call before seven but I chose instead to read it in the context of feeling off (it was a choice. you’d have to have an air moon to understand) and later, after remembering the dream, I read it as a continuation of what he’d said maybe it would be good for you to spend some time alone here It was just a dream, I think, but my eyes well anyway. And anyway I don’t want to be touched. Anyway it would be good for me to return to other interests. M is in Toronto because of a psychotic break (her words) And F is in Toronto recovering from one, or at least still in its aftermath. I feel the threads connecting us, I feel how inside our dynamic is a bermuda triangle. I am supporting them. I feel myself present and strong for them and I think that whatever has gotten to them cannot get to me. And I wonder if it could. And if it did what it would look like. Yesterday my roommates announced they were moving out. This morning M called to see if we could live together.

In spite of all those shadows it feels right, so right. I remember M saying we might live together again. I think she’d even said Montreal. I said, yes, maybe. But I didn’t believe it.

September 7th 2017 Montreal It was just a dream and yet I hadn’t heard from Y in two days. I put my name in the books for voluntary extension at work and after yoga yesterday saw that crew scheduling had called. I didn’t call back because I felt it was for Paris. I felt that if I took it, Y really would say what he did in the dream, that it might be best if I spent that layover alone, went to the opera. he would make it sound like it was best for me, he might even make it sound like it was as much my idea as his. So I don’t call back. I ride the yoga high. If I don’t go to Paris, he can’t tell me that, I think. This morning though in my telling him my whirlwind– roommates, m, f, he listens, he’s kind and helpful but also slips in: I don’t know, I’m trying to take some distance from you recently and talking to you about this makes me realize how close we became in such a short time.

I don’t respond to that, the conversation continues as if that wasn’t said. he continues being really kind and helpful, meanwhile emotions come at me– the emotions of past things too that never had the chance to be fully expressed riding the coattails of this new rejection I leave the cafe with urgency and make it inside my apartment I was trying to beat the onset of this breakdown this unstoppable breakdown I open the door and a man I don’t know is there taking off his shoes my roommate’s friend i turn to pl and look at him and my eyes well he says hi he’s about to introduce me to his friend then he notices and his noticing is what breaks the barrier i cry into his tender hug o my god, he keeps saying o my god, savannah, what’s wrong then: were you attacked? no no, I say. his worry forces me to answer.

it’s nothing, I’m being dramatic

and let go of his holding me, I go to the bathroom the lights are at half-lit and in the mirror I see myself my nausea my sad eyes all your body wants is to throw up, I think, it will feel so much better after you do

I let myself, it’s a special circumstance, I think it’s about getting the sex out of my solar plexus, relieving the pressure in the top of my stomach and chest, letting things surface, feelings purging purifying at the same time not at the same time making myself empty making myself the emptiness I feel I want to call M or F about this but they’re not there I don’t want to be dramatic about this, I don’t do it “all the way” as I would have explained it to a psychologist. There was more to throw up, I mean. I’m not sure that going all the way would have rid me of this nausea anyway

this fucking nausea

I thought it was motion sickness but I’ve been three days on the ground

it makes it hard to eat hard to digest

what are you having trouble digesting, savannah? there’s always a metaphysical cause

all these endings, all these feelings around endings

y says maybe it has to do with the solar eclipse of course it does, I say he says, It’s a period of time, everything will go back to its right place. And I believe this new era will be very interesting

clinking champagne flutes

It’s a hand of hearts and spades, I know he means well; it seems an innocent enough comment– I don’t think that he knows that he’s writing himself out of my life. freeing himself, how easily you can slip out of somebody’s life when they’re the ones entering a new era. No Damage Done.

I send him clinking champagne flutes, too. Nothing more is said. the lines from Sharon Old’s Stag’s Leap come to mind:

When anyone escapes, my heart leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from, I am half on the side of the leaver.

at l'arc de triomphe

I had asked to meet a half hour later than we’d originally agreed on because my hair was wet still and so

I was surprised that I should arrive before him

He kissed me immediately as if all of this were very sure the way all parisians meet their lovers and apologized for being late, the shoot ran longer than expected

and with his arm around my waist we snake through the paris metro, I confess once we’re above ground (I had in fact waited until we were above ground) that I had forgotten my credit card and had only 5 euros on me

5 euros ! he exclaims, makes as if it were a large sum. I was only going to bring you to one or two places but if you have 5 euros then we will have to try 5 drinks at 5 different bars. I smiled. It’s so nice when men do this: respond to your words, not looking at the worry or feeling that spoke them. t'inquiète, he says. he had been planning on treating me anyway.

we spend the evening in south pigale. the first place is one inspired by new orleans voodoo, the drink list an accordion of tarot-inspired cocktails. i ask him by the picture to choose a drink for me, and without thinking too much he points to the one that can only be the High Priestess.

after that, glassy. back corner table we could have any one, we’re the only ones there. even the bartender leaves us the space, the neon lights. he’s on a high chair, and i choose to stand between his legs. My drink is potent, more absinthe, it’s a purple glow in there, it’s a movie scene that begs to be made still alone and before leaving he asks me to show him some basic kizomba, I show him the posture, his hand on my lower back I rock his fist, this how you make her move, I said, you strum her like an instrument

and then we go to the dirty dick, to the fumoir in the dirty dick, back room with couches and the smoke hangs low as the lights he says, and if you were sitting alone here at the bar would you let me talk to you? that depends on what you said, how you said it.

he’s sure he could pick me up. he would say something light to break the ice, we’d talk, he’d look me in the eyes, he’d bring the conversation to a climax, he says, he’d have me laughing and then he would excuse himself to go to the toilet. i would be waiting but when he would come back he would strike up the conversation with another woman close by, he’d talk to her just long enough for me to think what the fuck and then he would come back to me, put his hand on my waist and say to me only and as if i became again the only one who existed for him, will you join me for a cigarette? and lead me to le fumoir

he’s so sure. i don’t know, i say, i can play too.

he asks about my layover fucks he calls them that it makes me both very aware that i am with him actuellement, on a layover, and yet, distinguishes this night from all the rest.

since when do you drink white? the server said and looked at me since you’re trying to impress a pretty woman, she answered herself

it was very easy to talk to him, him doing most of the talking

but he did ask if I was seeing anybody

I said that I was thinking of returning to Mexico City to a lover there

I put it out there and it changed nothing we still spent the whole week together before he left for Russia

on our last morning together he tucks pesos into my back pocket

for the next time that you’re in mexico he says and pats my ass

what the hell was that gesture?! i asked my roommate some kind of cuckolding, he says, definitely. 

I kept the money, it wasn’t very much anyway.

so tell me about the second guy, y says. we’re on a boat party on the seine in paris.  I give the shorthand version, the disinterested version. it’s been 7 years since y & i have seen one another;  we had met living in the south of france. we were reminiscing, I said: and after the bar you came back to my apartment-- and then realized how that sounded, so casually tried to patch it-- I mean, lilita, and alexandra and adil, you all came back to my apartment He interrupted, yes, I know, I would remember if...  but he doesn’t finish his sentence wine, whiskey, proseco, whiskey, proseco, whiskey we’re watching the sun set on the seine and the pastel clouds are changing hues but not really shapes: it’s as if paris is meant to be painted, I say. Like everything stays still just long enough to be painted.  I am absolutely well here. Love, you could say. so when is your birthday? I say It was last week. O? I say. Happy birthday he leans in and kisses me thank you, he says

we stay until the bar closes and he orders an uber for us back to my hotel

mais je ne monte pas he says before the car arrives Why are you saying that? I kiss him. I didn’t invite you up anyway, I say. je sais, he says

we try to find a bar open near my hotel but none are  so why aren’t you coming up? I say he does and after he asks for the third time tonight to take my photograph. No, please no, I say. naked décoiffée but. I don’t understand. you were the one who asked me to photograph you, he says.

it’s true I had asked him months ago to photograph me and again a couple of weeks ago when I knew I would spend some of summer in Paris

After 3 am he says he has to go. He has an early meeting. When will you be back in Paris? In two weeks, I remind him But that guy is coming from Russia, he says. he remembers. yes, I say So I won’t see you, he says I shake my head no. probably not, I say He kisses my forehead and wishes me an awful time my next trip to Paris.  I laugh, it’s all very tender and he leaves.

Every man a gatekeeper y who knows about r & j  and r who knows about j and

yet I wouldn’t dare disturb the order--  I wouldn’t be open about it in every direction

this afternoon during my panic attack it was R that I contacted and he called from Armenia and we talked for a while by the end I was laughing  by the end i felt much better and then so curiously he messages me after we hang up you’re a dangerously intelligent creature , I don’t think that we could ever be compatible. I will go to bed now

i hear voices outside of my hotel room, one woman’s I take to belong to the housekeeper, the other one a man’s voice I recognize but can’t place it wakes me  I have the animal body of a person still entering waking life, walk heavy to open the hotel room door. I can place the voice a moment before. It’s J a colleague,  so beautiful. I had been immediately attracted to him but not in any regular way. i’m silent before his beauty: is this how a man might feel before a woman? I wanted him to know so I told him before our flight you look like a painter I wanted him to know that I saw that he knew a thing about beauty

that it was an understanding that operated by recognition

he says he’s just started painting

on the plane I say, you’re qualified in Portuguese. are you born there? he’s caucasian but  something about his soul doesn’t feel entirely European.  some part of it, definitely, but another part is something else, and not Canadian I’m expecting him to say Brazilian. he’s from Angola, have I heard of it? he asks yes, i say. I blurt out that I dance kizomba. and then i am immediately embarrassed, dropped the bomb and  o

but it doesn’t detonate, he’s never heard of it. it’s a dance, it comes from angola, never mind, I say relieved

he had to leave when he was young, he said during the civil war they were killing all the white people, 

he says my name like he’s asking this woman where i might be which room like he’s calling out in the hopes that i will hear but not so loud as to create a scene not so loud that it is obvious that this is what he’s doing I open the door,  we see one another I am leaning against it and he approaches, he says quite close to me and audible only to me you want me to come in it’s not a question I don’t answer,  I don’t move to cover the entrance with my body so he enters and I roll off the door into the room, letting it shut behind me,

he takes me over to the bed cradles my head as we fall horizontal I don’t think about his wife he kisses me I don’t want to hurt his daughter though she’s around your age, he’d said on the plane it’s a current of rightness and necessity, like I can’t help this kiss like I’m not supposed to it comes from another place where soft and strong are the same,  it comes from his age, maybe

the point of my tongue curls back into my mouth away from his but it’s so much a part of the kiss

wisdom feels like allowing everything to have a beginning a climax and a dénouement: the wonder of life an egg is felt when it has these three parts

he moves away from my face and I think that he is going to go down on me but instead he is murmuring something under his breath a ritual is being performed on my body, his face still close to me I can feel that something is happening in my root chakra I can feel something awful being drained from my feet

and then I wake in my hotel bed the same bed I had just been in it’s not that I am surprised that he is not actually beside me:

on the contrary this was not just a dream

these dreams within dreams they’re like a double negation  one dream is symbolic but  a dream within it takes the symbolic and re-enters the world

[it’s not true to call it a dream within a dream. but waking in a dream and dreaming in a dream share something,]

my body felt like it had when i’d gotten up to see who was calling my name my body felt exactly the same

it was still very early and I didn’t know what to do with that intensity I went back to sleep

again it happened that I awoke in my dream and I met up with a friend for lunch I’d told her about this dream how it was like a real experience I’d even had the familiar feeling as I do in waking life  when I’m under the same spell when I am experiencing something intense— to feel the reality of it to think without words: this is not a dream

to be surprised by the true theatricality of life

she laughed at me. she said so how do you know you’re not dreaming now?

don’t fuck with me, I said. we laughed I panicked a little that she could be right

a dreaming person isn’t conscious of waking life as a state they experience only as if they are awake, i tried to reassure myself

and then I awoke 

I was excited to see J. I had the hope that he would look at me like he’d dreamt something similar that something had really happened

mm I had a man over last night. we were outside smoking a cigarette standing under the apartment staircase to keep  out of the rain. he kissed me and I wasn’t sure about it

but I felt dizzy. and like I was going to faint. I was willing myself not to collapse. In a nbd way I told him that I wanted to go back inside, sit.

It took me extra second to fit the key into the door waiting for the black my vision had become to dissipate

I had the thought, i am dizzy for the wrong man. but also, at the same time, I knew who I was actually dizzy for. last week when I was with a different lover  he pushed me an arm’s reach away as we were kissing. He kept his hand on my chest and closed his eyes  and said, wait wait I’m dizzy

I questioned the validity of that until last night when it happened to me

*

I woke up to a lovely message from her. It didn’t feel like she was trying to advance anything between us; more like she was showing me something she’d written about me for herself. my softness

then she says she needs to stay away from me for a while, but she wishes me well,

she hopes I choose somebody deserving

*

the message that I open from j in mexico is that he’s not sure that he can. I’d asked him (maybe for the first time since knowing him) to do something for me. very uncomplicated and fast and would make me so happy, would have made me happier if I didn’t have to ask, but my asking becomes something that I do for the sake of us so it all feels like part of the relationship. as much as his