31 I 2003 - 22:43 - trivialis55

There's another entry behind this one.

(Um, duh -- no, what I mean is that there's another entry for today behind this one.)

Recently I've developed an odd relationship with my body. There was this detachment I'd cultivated which allowed me to watch little blemishes appear and march across my arm. And yet, there are moments where I surprise myself -- I catch sight of my back in the mirror and am reminded of the mole, dark as ink, I'd almost forgotten was there, or I am surprised in the middle of a Latin class (as we speak of Horace and his injunction to live while you can, with Death inevitably coming) by the motion of my muscles, that lazy sweep that happens before I've had a chance to think about it.

Revise: the sweep is rarely lazy. I'm young and tense, and the movement is often quick, falling just short of fluid, possessed of an urgency I might call silly if I weren't so caught up in it. I'm on edge, but what for? Good question. It's the middle of winter, not that you'd really be able to tell it here except for the grey overcast (which happens just as often in the summer), and the air smells not even remotely of possibility.

I find myself curiously drawn to studying the motions of others. Again I feel the same curiosity, that other boys shouldn't seem to feel the same awkwardness as I do. Over the last year I've learned to sit still, more or less, and I say that as if I had ever not known, or perhaps had forgotten it. No: It's just that I didn't appreciate it before. Some people appear to be in motion even when they're sitting, and actually, I couldn't swear to you that I was one way or the other. I don't fidget much, especially when I'm not at a desk, but perhaps in other ways... I was compared once to a tightly coiled spring, and I've neither forgotten that description nor stopped trying to figure out whether it's good or bad.

I'll settle for 'just... different,' with the slight hitch in the voice. I'm used enough to it.

The arms of my classmates fascinate me sometimes. That wind should play through the hair so seems the most fascinating thing in the middle of a math course -- at least, it seems so to me, for although I have arm hair, it's thin, short, and lies close to my arm. I might as well not have any. There is a fascination for me then in the variation of bodies from my own, for undiscovered sights. Perhaps this is that healthy desire for the Other, perhaps it is the basis of all desire...

(which does not explain the swarms of men -- I swear, they've been cast from the same mold -- one can find if only he takes the MUNI Metro just three stops down, Castro, bingo. the mold is fine for me, because they're not like me, sure. Did you know the Irishmen and others who used to live there before it became the epicenter of gay called the place Eureka Valley? You'll still see it on streetcar maps -- Eureka Valley, although you won't likely hear it called that, unless you speak to an old-timer, and only just last year the streetcar map printed the neighborhood name with a description added: Eureka Valley-Castro. I am in love with my city and therefore ramble on about it and its lovely hills, despite its occasional faults.)

Yeah, so maybe I'm a little polyattracted. Who hasn't been? (Those sentences were, of course, meant to carry the meaning from the paragraph above this one. You wouldn't have known that. I apologize.)

Carrying from the odd relationship with the body: I'm eating less these days, appetite has diminished -- I sit and stare at my food and will myself to want to eat it. I can't figure out what's going on, and I went to talk to n. today about it. 'Maybe it's just winter,' she said. 'Listen to your body -- don't fight it.' I wonder if I'm actually hungry and just not feeling it. I dismiss this as doubtful, bring up also the complete drought of words in me (although you wouldn't know it from these entries, would you? but I used to write for myself, and that's been going slowly), and she attributes it to the same cause.

She mentions she won't be around to see my senior year because she's moving to be with her partner. Up the coast and yet quite far. I haven't asked her about her studies yet -- I should.

But first, I want to figure out just what is going on with me. I hope writing about it -- even if it is meaningless to anyone else -- will allow me to see something. If not, then I'd best hope that time alone will take care of it...