Stephen Elliott writes about missing someone, a girl he used to love, so intensely it feels like a hand around his throat. I know what he means but I haven’t felt like that in a long time.
I’ve been thinking about feelings and how my approach to them recently borders on caution. I’m careful with my feelings. I like to intellectualize them and keep myself at a remove from them. ‘There they are,’ I think. Or, ‘If I were in a different place or time I might mourn that.’
Partly this is because my feelings lead to destructive behavior. When I pine and obsess I also destroy, and my new thing is building, moving along. Moving forward. But what does that mean? I worry it’s a life less lived.
There are men I used to love but loving them ended in silence. We disappeared from each other. Should I think about Ed with his stutter and big hands? I actually just shrugged. I’m not sure.
Ed was from southern Virginia, a small town outside Roanoke, and his voice had a sweet twang. He works in the dirt and loves astronomy.
Andrew wanted to be mod and had an affected way of holding a cigarette. He wore wire-framed glasses and drove a hatchback Hyundai. Once when we were in his parents’ kitchen I told him I liked his smell, so he ran upstairs and doused himself with more cologne. It was way too much, a noxious fog, but we kissed passionately. I was 17.
Andrew was easy to write about; Ed was not.
