Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2017 20:20:28 GMT -5
make of it what you will. this is just an exercise--pointless, really.
hope you get something out of this. (hope I did, too.)
again, for what--the fourteenth time? fifteenth, perhaps?--she sits by the phone plugged into the wall. doing some idle task, maybe distractedly trudging through a selection of Kafka's short stories or haphazardly balancing a chemical equation, with one eye following lines on the paper, the other carefully watching that screen that still, despite how much she may will it to glow to life once more, remains dark. phantom notifications grace the cracked glass in her mind in the mere moments she is able to tear her eyes away from it, causing her dark eyes to lift and memory to forget those last couple strings of sentences of quantum physics.
that first night was like being thrown into a centrifuge; reason ripped from thought, inhibitions stripped from that seemingly unbreachable Christian schooling background, clothes with them. it was fast--even to this day, she marvels to her closest friends and perfect strangers across the hall alike at how amazingly fast it all happened--but it was fine. regret wasn't even on her mind. and how considerate he'd been! how hard he worked for her, with no reciprocation, nothing else expected other than a companion to share that twin bed for the night.
the rest was bliss. she was from the desert, so nothing was more welcome with that post action winding down than the sound of rainfall outside his window. she didn't think of the bleak, and, quite strange reality of the situation, how she, a catch, as her mother and her father and her closest friends had always called her, was feigning sleep in the arms of a complete stranger--nevermind that he had opened their discourse online in the week leading up to orientation. nevermind. they'd known each other for mere hours, yet--oh, but it felt so intimate! how he kissed her! how they held each other~
he told her things. unspeakable things, things she had dared to imagine happening to only friends of friends, battered girls on Dateline, girls far removed from her comfortable bubble of existence. it was another thing he popped. but why had he? she couldn't help but wonder. why divulge such sensitive information to a near stranger? (yet, conversely, why had she offered up the one thing her religion placed so much value on to him? what was the value of one's virginity?) what does this mean? what's going on behind those eyes that take in so much yet give so little? why, why?
oh, how she now lives to please. even in her blindness, she's aware of and disgusted by it. she's never been this meticulous with her shaving, never so self-aware of the few stretch marks she does have. how quickly she answers him when he can go unheard of for hours on end, and how ready she is when he asks. yet, he's apprehensive to hold her hand outside each other's locked dorm rooms. how he sweats at the idea of them going to the cinema together--and how she so secretly dreams of that day.
here we go. the spiral, the cycle of self-doubt and crippling anxiety and all kinds of nasty, truly unironic self-deprecating thoughts. what could she have done wrong? she was once so calm, one virginity ago, three thousand miles ago, but now anxiety is a kind of permanent somatic resident, sitting in her gut, coiled like a snake. it's horrible. she knows it but yet--he's worth it. or is he? should she really take the advice of all her friends and just cut him off, and move on? but how can she--after everything they did, after everything they said?
she starts making excuses for him. he's busy. that much is verifiably true, at least. and it's not like he's with anyone else, since he'd resigned a bit of his uptightness to agree to be exclusive with her a while ago--but is he? she really doesn't know him well. they've been hooking up for what, five weeks? barely a month. how much time and energy and thoughts has he occupied that could have been put to other things?
a heavy sigh of relief. all is forgotten for the moment. a rushed change of clothes, a gulp of water, and with a soft jingle of dorm keys, she's off like a rocket.
hope you get something out of this. (hope I did, too.)
again, for what--the fourteenth time? fifteenth, perhaps?--she sits by the phone plugged into the wall. doing some idle task, maybe distractedly trudging through a selection of Kafka's short stories or haphazardly balancing a chemical equation, with one eye following lines on the paper, the other carefully watching that screen that still, despite how much she may will it to glow to life once more, remains dark. phantom notifications grace the cracked glass in her mind in the mere moments she is able to tear her eyes away from it, causing her dark eyes to lift and memory to forget those last couple strings of sentences of quantum physics.
sent: thirty minutes ago. unopened.
that first night was like being thrown into a centrifuge; reason ripped from thought, inhibitions stripped from that seemingly unbreachable Christian schooling background, clothes with them. it was fast--even to this day, she marvels to her closest friends and perfect strangers across the hall alike at how amazingly fast it all happened--but it was fine. regret wasn't even on her mind. and how considerate he'd been! how hard he worked for her, with no reciprocation, nothing else expected other than a companion to share that twin bed for the night.
the rest was bliss. she was from the desert, so nothing was more welcome with that post action winding down than the sound of rainfall outside his window. she didn't think of the bleak, and, quite strange reality of the situation, how she, a catch, as her mother and her father and her closest friends had always called her, was feigning sleep in the arms of a complete stranger--nevermind that he had opened their discourse online in the week leading up to orientation. nevermind. they'd known each other for mere hours, yet--oh, but it felt so intimate! how he kissed her! how they held each other~
sent: one hour ago. still unopened.
he told her things. unspeakable things, things she had dared to imagine happening to only friends of friends, battered girls on Dateline, girls far removed from her comfortable bubble of existence. it was another thing he popped. but why had he? she couldn't help but wonder. why divulge such sensitive information to a near stranger? (yet, conversely, why had she offered up the one thing her religion placed so much value on to him? what was the value of one's virginity?) what does this mean? what's going on behind those eyes that take in so much yet give so little? why, why?
oh, how she now lives to please. even in her blindness, she's aware of and disgusted by it. she's never been this meticulous with her shaving, never so self-aware of the few stretch marks she does have. how quickly she answers him when he can go unheard of for hours on end, and how ready she is when he asks. yet, he's apprehensive to hold her hand outside each other's locked dorm rooms. how he sweats at the idea of them going to the cinema together--and how she so secretly dreams of that day.
opened one minute ago.
here we go. the spiral, the cycle of self-doubt and crippling anxiety and all kinds of nasty, truly unironic self-deprecating thoughts. what could she have done wrong? she was once so calm, one virginity ago, three thousand miles ago, but now anxiety is a kind of permanent somatic resident, sitting in her gut, coiled like a snake. it's horrible. she knows it but yet--he's worth it. or is he? should she really take the advice of all her friends and just cut him off, and move on? but how can she--after everything they did, after everything they said?
she starts making excuses for him. he's busy. that much is verifiably true, at least. and it's not like he's with anyone else, since he'd resigned a bit of his uptightness to agree to be exclusive with her a while ago--but is he? she really doesn't know him well. they've been hooking up for what, five weeks? barely a month. how much time and energy and thoughts has he occupied that could have been put to other things?
it's a smiling selfie. 'come on over,' it reads. his eyes beckon warmly.
a heavy sigh of relief. all is forgotten for the moment. a rushed change of clothes, a gulp of water, and with a soft jingle of dorm keys, she's off like a rocket.
