SquidgeWorld Archive

Ruminations In Burgundy
by Sarah Saint Ives
ssaintives@yahoo.com


Christmas eve. And I have gone crazy.

So what! I have enough of this red stuff for weeks! Label says Burgundy, expensive stuff. Something Jim's dad gave us for a present. I think I prefer Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill.

Enough for weeks! Okay, days, considering. (My aptitude for time measurement has vanished. Time doesn't exactly stand still, but it means absolutely nothing any more.)

So, what's wrong with a dry run? What's wrong with being caught in a time warp? What's wrong with getting a little shit-faced while Jim is out doing his own thing and I am waiting at home by myself with all this wine?

In a word, I'm a chicken. Well, that's more than one word, and I have a very good reason for my chickendom. Fear can create great gaps in the annals of man. Annals. It'll happen, Blair, one of these days, if you keep the faith. I have to keep reminding myself about this because nobody else will.

Only I don't drink. Except for beer and that doesn't count, not when I only drink one and then eat half a pizza. What counts is how depressed I am right now and how I'm going to make it through this night with Jim gone. Tomorrow, I'll have a hangover and Jim will be pissed at me for getting drunk. But he'll come put a cold cloth on my head and take the time to lecture me on the evils of drinking.

There's a weird show on TV about gaybashers. Yes, it's annoying when those assholes won't see reason.

I shouldn't equivocate, just admit to being hopelessly in love and get on with it.

Thanks for being disappointed, the gay dude said.

(His friend doesn't approve of his lifestyle!)

Disappointed? I'm crushed! I wonder what Jim would say if I just blurted it out like that? If I just said, Guess what! I'm gay and you really turn me on! Hold me, thrill me, never let me go. Do you think he'd be disappointed? I'm not sure. So I'm a chicken. I love him too much to tell him I love him. That's true love, man. True love.

Right. That does it. It's about time we had a meeting of the Pathetic People who live their whole lives in their dreams. To be fair, we should all meet at a mutually convenient half-way point, let's say the lounge of The Slaughtered Lamb just left of Purgatory (we should really meet in the vault, but they don't allow women in there and I really need a few kind words that women are so good about dishing out). Whoever gets there first, mine's an unrequited crush, thank you very much. I'm in love with my partner, my best friend. Jim. His name is Jim. And he's this total stand-up guy who never had a gay thought pop in his head and wouldn't say the word 'fuck' even if he got his thumb pinched off by a snapping turtle. He's such a prude. Maybe that's why I love him so much. Maybe that's why I want him so much. Maybe that's why I yank off in every bathroom I visit looking at his picture that he doesn't know I've got in my wallet.

I can't stop thinking about him, even when I'm awake.

Even when I'm eating, shaving, even when I'm on the toilet. What kind of mental condition do I have, anyway? There are a lot of kinds of insanity. Maybe I have more than one. Maybe I have them all.

Crazy people should wear official outfits so everyone knows who they are and aren't fooled by their pseudo-intelligence. Granny should wear a little black off-the-shoulder number because she's just such a sexy old lady. Cindy should wear a fixed grin and keep a tight grip on her wallet because crazy people, you know, man...they're thieves.

I should wear a muzzle. And some handcuffs. And...something leather with studs. No, actually, maybe Jim should wear that.

He'd look hot in leather and studs. (Although I'd rather have him buck naked.)

DAMN! I ran out!

What is this shit I'm drinking again? Blood red and tasting better with every sip. Mexicans call stuff this color Sangria, which means blood in Spanish. Sangria. Kinda rolls off the tongue, dudn't it? hehehe. hehehe.

Damn! Am I crazy? What am I saying? Of course I'm crazy. Why not? The whole world's crazy. Might as well join the party, right?

Commercial. Guy in a supermarket. My worst problem in supermarkets is running into everyone I know. Especially since I'm usually in my dreamworld, eyes bagging because I've been with Jim all night on a stakeout and I've usually forgotten to take off my little picture badge they gave me so I could follow him around on the job. I'm always buzzing with anxiety because I've got this spastic nature in the first place, and I swear I never took drugs. It's all natural. Except for once, and that wasn't my fault. Somebody put golden in a pizza, man, and I went nuts. Moreso than usual.

So I'm sporadic, buying this item and that item, not following any particular direction or path. No order to my grocery shopping. Just haphazard, zipping down one aisle, then remembering I forgot something on that same aisle and going back again. Zigging and zagging amongst stationary old ladies, frantic kids, lost men and tired women wearing their houseshoes.

Actually, I suppose that makes *me* other people's worst supermarket problem. If they know me, they try to pretend like they didn't see me and hurry on to the next aisle. Then we meet again somewhere in the feminine napkins aisle and try to have a conversation without blushing.

So, if your girlfriend (or whatever) sent YOU a pig's heart impaled with a huge nail for Valentine's Day wreathed in roses and tucked into a box wrapped up in red cellulose, would you be repulsed, amused, hungry, or simply thunderstruck?

Would it make you horny?

Just wondering. Cosmo has questionnaires, why not us?

(Crazy People Weekly idea.)

Didn't this happen on an episode of The Real World?

Far across the Emollient Ocean, across the Crusty Plains, beyond the Forest of Flakes, up the River Lesion, where the Cells of Skin multiply, unnecessarily and forever. I hate skin cream commercials.

Are we still talking about the pig's heart or have we moved on to gestures of gratitude?

Cosmo. A skanky Women's Magazine which on first glance looks a bit like a Playboy and is notorious for publishing the sorts of questionnaires which, when you're done, supposedly diagnose your personality, sun sign, psycho-sexual hang-ups and shoe size.

Can't you tell interesting stuff about men by the size of their feet? Jim's feet are pretty big. Of course, you know, I've seen him naked. Feet are small compared to other parts of his anatomy. hehehe. hehehe.

The hidden agenda in all this, of course, is to clamp down on the spawning potential of the proletariat and populate the country with pseudo-intellectuals like me with Volvos, who will pursue detectives with pick-up trucks and ensure working-class dicks never remain flaccid.

Come the revolution, if there is to be one, I hereby pledge that we shall rise up, overthrow the shackles of capitalist tumescence and spill their seed of righteousness into whatever's handy again and again and again.

We shall overcome.

I said come. hehehe. hehehe.

Damn, if I don't get some soon, I'm gonna explode. Wouldn't that be fun for Jim to come home to? To come in and find a big mess all over his nice, clean furniture where I'd exploded. He'd just stand there a minute, wondering...'what the hell?'

And if I wasn't already dead, he'd kill me.

Well, no, not Jim. Jim wouldn't kill me. He loves me. I know he loves me. Just not the way I love him.

Granny has a rat in a cage in the back room of her cafe. His cage occupies a large portion the room and there are turds in it. She should clean it out soon, because they're piling up and stinking bad enough that a customer noticed the smell a few days ago. Okay, it was Jim and he could have smelled it even if there was just *one* turd because of his enhanced olfactory senses.

But she doesn't clean the cage for days because she can't smell. Smoking kills your sense of smell, you know. I think, for her, it would be easier just to bludgeon the rodent into a state of silent shitlessness with one of her spatulas.

I think I have a phobia because I do *not* want to touch that thing, man. Mice...mice are cute and little. Rats, ewww. I mean, I'm not a killer or anything. But it wouldn't hurt my feelings one little bit if that rat keeled over and croaked.

Granny's always saying stuff like 'Come and kiss my rat on the head.' *Ewww!* I'd rather kiss *her* on the *lips*, and that's pretty messy business considering she smokes *and* dips snuff.

Granny and Cindy are two of the easy ones. The other ones are the ones I can't deal with. The ones who are so opposed to homosexuality like these gaybashers on this show, the ones who close their minds and think they already know everything. The ones who judge. Who has a right to judge? I may be insane, but I don't judge.

And I'm only crazy for a while. I'll get over it as soon as I sober up and get a big smooch from my favorite sentinel. If he ever comes home so I can jump his bones.

Who am I kidding? He'd probably zone if I tried anything like that. Of course, I could always claim insanity and have him give me a ride to the mental clinic. Maybe he'd even hold my hand while we walked in. Maybe he'd even pet my head. Or pat me on the butt. hehehe. Maybe even give it a little squeeze.

That could set us up for a major disapproval scene, couldn't it? I get a little defensive sometimes, but that would completely unravel me. I'd probably take up smoking or something just as disgusting, standing there, in all my gay glory, saying something like, 'Jim, darling, could you pass me the titty lighter, please, honey?' And Jim would roll his eyes because we don't have a titty lighter.

There are people I undoubtedly despise. They lack morals, character, and honesty. They compromise the things that define us, including integrity, justice, love and sharing. These vapid morons don't have a clue. They've probably never had love, and if they did, it wasn't the kind of love that could get them off their drugs.

Their excuses remain opaque to many observers who dismiss them on the basis of their scornful crudeness and general lunacy.

As opposed to *slash lunacy*, which I and many of my good friends prefer. They try to force people to act in ways far removed from the natural patterns of their individual behavior. Their objective is clear: to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious fantasies for the coming days.

(There is it again. I said coming. hehehe. hehehe.)

An escape hatch for the hetero-enthusiasts is that indispensable clich pertaining to strange flesh running counter to human nature and, as such, they be doomed to hell along with murderers, thieves, warmongers and rapists. But because under different circumstances, we might have ended up as crass losers drifting the streets, obstinately pressing tracts crammed with conspiracies into the palms of startled passersby, I am not ready to retract my conviction or to recant error.


We will overcome! (I hope)

However, what our numbers need is more respect for each other, not less. All of the anxious sighing, longing, and hoping I have done has been directed at one man. I'm not conventionally gay. I'm not flamboyant. I'm not marching. I never wanted to jump any other guy's bones. Just Jim's.

I said bone. hehehe. hehehe.

Do you think I have a great mind? Wouldn't it be nice to discover that you have one of the greatest minds of this century? What would I do with it? I discovered Jim, a sentinel, but I can't use that knowledge because I fell in love with him and I wouldn't expose him for the world. That scene nearly cost me his friendship once already.

I could go into another field. I'm still young enough to do that.

What possible vocation is there left for me now that anthropology has failed? Now that I've declared myself a fraud and admitted to myself that I don't have the intestinal fortitude for conflict with the academics?

What about politics? What about Wonder Burger?

I'm educating myself to new possibilities. I'm trying to drive off and disperse the malicious misfits who forced me into my present train of thought. When they look at me with their iconoclastic disapproval, I instantly think of the word "anthropomorphologically".

There. That'll fix 'em. They'll never come up with a witty comeback for that. They won't even know what it means.

Burgundy wine on the carpet! Oh, man! I can't believe I did that, spilled my drink everywhere! Jim will throw a conniption fit!

Uh-oh. Key in the door, door opens, I stare like an idiot.

I'm melting! He doesn't have a clue how good looking he is. Wearing red and green, a sprig of mistletoe stuck in his hat.

Thud! (Was that my jaw or my heart that just hit the floor?)

Looking around the apartment, he frowns, then, without a word, hangs up his coat and closes the door. He comes over to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Merry Christmas, Chief." he says softly. "Everything okay?"

I'm melting! I melt into his arms and kiss him. Fully expecting to be pitched back onto the couch, into the wall, or even worse, out the door. It doesn't happen.

He kisses me back.


~the end~
ssaintives@yahoo.com