06.12.21

i try not to reference morrissey often even though i have an actual scar-continent on my upper arm where my dreadful laptop burned me after i watched one too many smiths videos while balancing it on my chest at magdalen college long ago, but: now my heart is full. now my heart is full! and i just can't explain, so i won't even try to—*

i turned in late for a zoom with my friends dave and phil, a hoary three-o'clock-at-saturday pandemic institution that's reminded me how the friends i have adored for decades scratch their noses and cut their own hair and alleges that i used to be more than a way for an old pair of shoes to get to the east village and back every day. i then wore a judas priest baseball shirt to our local wine shop and met a man whose first concert was queen in caracas with his big brother in 1982 where he caught one of roger taylor's sticks after the show, the sonofabitch. mine was lollapalooza '94, i said, because i had no cool older siblings and no car.

we saw our friends sarah and judd for drinks and dinner for the first time since i have no idea, i have spent the last year and change waiting for them to escape from their sociopathic expat community in the dominican republic. they looked like different people! we probably looked like different people! we intentionally hugged for way too long and who cries in the bathroom!

my next-to-best-calibrated state fizzes with anxiety about whether i've caused harm or offense; my best, probably the one i can't control at all, emerges at a small hour like this one when i am confident that the people i love know that i love them.

*my vibe is the polar opposite of what moz meant, really, which is maybe how one deploys him now?