{ until you stop appreciating it }

I held open the cab door for her as she slid across the seat and she said, "Wow, how long does this kind of treatment last?" And I said, "Until you stop appreciating it." That's how it is with everything. She smiled. I could see up her skirt as I gave her my hand. I kissed her when she stood up and wrote a note about the exchange in my phone. I also wrote: Being nice to most women is a waste of time. Maybe I should have said "people," but I am never nice to men so I have no idea if that is a waste of time or not. It probably is.

She has great elbows. I told her that. Soft, smooth, not too big/small/sharp/dull. Nice. She touched mine and she said, "Wow, you have great elbows, too." I checked. I said, "Damn, you are right. My elbows are even better than yours! I'm great!" She laughed, probably because it is true. I grabbed my phone to write that down because it was so awesome and she said, sarcastically, "Write everything down, Otto!" And I do.

She kissed me goodbye a lot and I tried to squeeze her into my chest and I let her go and watched her strut away. Those legs. Mmmm. At home, I wrote an email about my weekend with her to a dear lonely wonderful friend, whom I have never met: "I guess I technically have a girlfriend now. She whipped out the old 'I need you to tell me you don't want me to fuck other people' move. She said it is not that she would fuck other people, but we have been fucking long enough and it is too ambiguous for her. I did not react well. It was our first fight. It took a month for that to happen. That is pretty awesome in my book. We are that couple in the bar that is disgustingly kissing all the time and pisses off every unhappy person in the place. Things settled down after her exclusivity request and we stayed up all night fucking and only got a couple hours sleep because I cannot stop kissing her when she is in my arms (or in bars) and even when the sun was way up in the sky, we fucked again and again and more. Her ribs are beautiful-pluckable. Pretty much stayed naked and sweaty in bed all day and I ate a fried egg off her skin, scraped the yolk all over her chest and stomach with a fork and grinded salt and pepper on her and licked it all off and told her I didn't want her to fuck anyone else. So there it is. Oh, and she let the 'I love you, Otto' slip out the night before in bed. And um uh oh man I uh well I did not respond well to that either and she said, 'I'm sorry. I know I am not ready for the responsibility of what that means,' and the fact that she acknowledged that there is responsibility involved with that word made me want to say it back and I didn't. The next day she said sorry again and could we forget that happened? I said 'Forget what happened?' Even though I wanted her to say it again. This is how all great tragedies begin." My dear lonely wonderful friend, whom I have never met, wrote back: "You are living inside of a poem."

Whatever love is, it is always a tragedy and a poem. I hate poems that rhyme. What rhymes with glitter? Because glitter shoots out of my cock when I come on her. She asks me to leave bruises on her with my teeth so she can have painful reminders of me when I am not around. When tender feelings well up, she blows them out like smoke, a cigarette-sigh. If there are too many feelings, she asks me to slap her until they subside. I like slapping her. I like that she likes me slapping her.

I wrote this between push-ups and beer. The Black Keys nonstop. I did not edit much because I want it frayed and flawed and hard to read aloud and I want to hurt later when I read it and I want to ache to change every word and sentence and paragraph the same way I look back at my entire existence and wish I had done some/everything differently at each heart-stop along the way even though my life is fucking great.


~O~