in my room, you can go, you can stay.

It's the end of another lazy Tuesday here in Franceland, Lesbia, and I still have no idea what to do with myself.

My mind is far away, thinking of the fall. I started this little corner of a blog in the fall, a fall that's now a year and a half ago, on the same day that I perched myself on the steps of the Rotunda (University Avenue side) and wrote a poem that 3.7 later published.

I miss the Classics girl who was part of my life in that time, at whom I bubbled once in a café about my new best friend. I remember her raising her hands together, palms inches apart. Face to face, she said. Stay away from this distance, it's dangerous.

I saw her in the architecture school one day last fall, a year after that conversation and that friendship happened. She asked me how I was, and she looked to sad to hear the truth, so I said exactly what I was saying to everyone last semester: "School's good!" She raised one eyebrow, and I raised my hands, inkstained, thin, cracked and calloused, turning my palms inward, face to face. And then I walked away.

Anyway, it was a good poem, and I remember us commiserating about how much we adored Sappho, how dirty Catullus really was, how incredibly gay this all made me.

I haven't been able to pass in the world as a straight girl since my junior year of high school, and then only briefly. I realize now that one of the things I miss the most is our mutual, fierce pride at living on the outside, at weathering the insults, the catcalls, and the compliments alike.

I suspect that, when I go home, I will be struck by how different the world feels now.

Reaching further back, I realize I miss queer culture, feeling like a part of something with a group and a definition and a name. I miss the overwhelming, glossy, flamboyant boys, the only ones whom I would ever allow to pressure me into a party, a dance floor, a drink in my hand. Something about their energy always pulled me out of my reticent, serious self and encouraged me to laugh more, to smile more, to enjoy the beat and the alcohol and the pretty, pretty girls.

I never go out anymore. There are all the reasons I typically give, and then there are others, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

In all truth, this post stretched from a night into a morning, and now I've somewhat lost the original train of it all.

I don't envy her engagement in the slightest. My needs can all be summed up in one phrase: please, please, you've got to get on the same continent as me. After that, everything else can just worry about itself.

More to the point, I've got to get home. At this point I am just willing the days to go by, devouring books I never thought I was interested in (but I'm so glad I gave Tolkien another chance), napping the afternoons by, ticking each successive day off on the calendar on the wall. Once June is finally upon us, I will be preparing to get on a jet plane. I already promised you that I would never go so far without you again.

listening to: the beatles
reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien