12-16-06

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My parents do this curious thing where they’ve moved themselves out to the United States of America, got themselves English-speaking jobs, moved into a whitewashed suburb, and then proceed to to to to to totot.

Can’t do this.
Don’t know why it’s so hard.
Sometimes, I want to write something, but no matter how it sounded in my head, or how I thought of writing it down while watching a man board the BART at 10 at night, and there is a particular smell that hyacinths take on in the evenings, and I know that smell because I walk past it every night on my way home. I have a dream, usually it’s a daydream that I have at night, that a boy I love will pick me fresh hyacinths and try to put them in my hair, although maybe that is the wrong kind of romance because I’m really allergic, and my hair is too baby fine to hold in a curl, or a flower.

I have dreams about summer in the winter because the winter is too long. My next door neighbors wears shorts in the winter. She has silver hair, no dogs, maybe a cat, but I’ve never seen it and wears Men in Black type Raybans. I read somewhere, in a supermarket that Raybans are making a comeback. It reminded me of going to the grocery store and meeting the woman with the beautiful curls and she has a nice smile, nice gold jewelry that I think she must be, at least, somewhat proud of. Next week, I’ll be playing poker, and the week after that, kneeling down besides my mother’s bed and watching the way her thumb flicks back and forth when she’s completely asleep.


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My mother is so beautiful that last week in the parking lot, a man came up to her and said, “You’re beautiful. I do photographs for women who are beautiful in and in their forties and fifties. Please accept my card and consider the opportunity. I think you would catch the light of the camera beautifully.” But all she could think of was how he had been able to tell she was middle-aged. The adjectives that men had used to modify her were now being modified themselves. She was beautiful for a woman her age. She was as beautiful as a woman half her age. These sentences depressed her and so, in turn, they depressed me. I wanted her to be happy and so I would come home and tell her made up things.
“Eric Martin said you were the hottest woman he’s ever seen in his life. He made this digusting roofing sound. Like a dog. Yeah, he’s a dog. He’s got out it for you.”
“My friend Tim thought he was gay until he met you. It sounds wild doesn’t it? But he really was about to go gay until you came and picked me up from his house.”
These were not things so far-fetched from the truth. My friends did think my mother was beautiful. Tim would probably deny the fact that he’s flaming gay until age 25 at the earliest. For now, he’ll just keep getting blowjobs with his eyes sealed shut, maybe some nice pictures of buff dudes glued to the insides of his eyelids. My mother, for her part, bought it entirely. She did this thing where her eyes lit up and her eyeballs started doing mad laps around and around. It was like she was taking in every piece of wall and ceiling and floor in our house. Then she’d smell and say, “Hehehehehe!” The sound was really just that. “Hehehehehe!” was the sound that came out of her mouth and then composure. Her eyeballs returned to their original place in the center, she started talking about mundane things, charming, small things, and the only change was that her words would be newly infused with a ridiculously beautiful, golden happiness.