lady_t raze she has the most beautiful straight brown hair i've ever seen. green is her favourite colour. when she's imitating someone who's angry or elderly (or both), she slips into a scratchy high-pitched voice that's as difficult to describe as it is to listen to while keeping a straight face. she has no idea how pretty she really is. she's been reading the same book for two months now — not because she's a slow reader, but because she doesn't find the last book she picked up the least bit compelling and yet doesn't want to feel like she hasn't given it a fair shake. we talk about relationships, and death, and dreams, and evil flying squirrels, and webcam-enhanced cowboy-themed phone sex. i place my bowl of soup on an extra chair when there isn't room for it at our table, and we both wave to it like it's a person. she says in the spring we should go for a walk and drink tea out of thermal cups. i'm glad she's my friend. 130221 ... pallor what color are her eyes? 130222 ... raze soft green. she has kind eyes. 130222 ... sardines the windows of the soul 130223 ... raze she was in one of my dreams last night. i found her in a park, sitting on a blanket. it seemed like we were about to go for a walk, but she told me to look at the sky, and the approaching darkness told me rain was on the way. a shame, because it was a really nice day, like something out of the indian_summer_blues. warm, but not unpleasantly so. just right. we got into a car and she had trouble getting one of the back doors to close. then we were at my stepfather's mother's house (again with that recurring setting). she sat in the living room in a reclining chair, reading, her hair down, looking elegant and relaxed. i was able to get a small white fan to send some air her way from the other room while it was pointing away from her to the left, and she told me it felt nice, soothing her sore left knee. i fussed with the fan a little, and the more it seemed to be directed at her, the less air she got. i should have just left it alone. what that means, if anything, is anyone's guess. 130325 ... raze as soon as she walked into the room and sat down tonight, i felt a fight starting with my mouth to keep it from smiling long enough so i could speak. i'm not sure how many people can put me in a good mood like that, instantly, just by being around. it can't be a very long list. 130424 ... raze we decided if we were going to have pet names for each other, she would be "spicy" and i would be "potent". i wonder if that'll stick. spicy and potent. 130525 ... raze i miss her face, and her spicy ways. 130918 ... raze we talked about the strangeness of the word "wiener", relationships, plans for the future, going to friends' weddings, and zooey deschanel. her hair is different now. she let the bangs grow out and cut it a little shorter. she can rock a short-sleeved orange sweater better than anyone. she thought her skin looked greasy. her skin looked beautiful. we decided we're going to write autobiographies. mine will be called "i was promised wolf sex". hers will be called "i learned to understand kale". maybe we'll go for a walk on sunday, if the weather's right. 131008 ... raze we didn't go for that walk. not because of the weather, but because of the whole "i have plans and i'm not sure what time they're for and instead of finding out and then compartmentalizing hangout time with you accordingly when we already had plans to hang out i'm just going to flake out on you at the last minute" thing she did. i'm still a little miffed about that, truth be told. no misshapen christmas cookies for her, then. 131107 ... raze she kind of redeemed herself. so maybe there will be misshapen christmas cookies after all. the invisible kind. 131205 ... raze the last time i saw her she was drunk. it was my first time seeing her in that state. she's funny when she's drunk. she speaks in this big old lady voice that doesn't fit her body. she was with a friend who was a stranger to me, who said they'd heard a lot about me, which surprised me. "all bad things," i said, and she nodded yes while the friend shook their head no. 140216 ... raze she says things, and sometimes she does the things she says, and sometimes she doesn't. i guess that's what friendship is most of the time. part fun, part frustration, part connection, part rejection, all thrown in a blender and whipped around until it looks like something that came out of a swamp and smells like a holiday meal gone wrong. 140314 ... raze i think i will die without ever having hugged her. some people only want to get so close. 140327 ... raze we're walking on tuesday, if the weather allows. maybe i'll trim my face down for the occasion, just to see what the voyeuristic squirrels and birds have to say about it. 140427 ... raze we didn't walk. there was supposed to be a storm, so we did tea and food instead, but the weather was gorgeous, and it's only really starting to rain now that the sun's long gone. we sat on the patio at our usual meeting place. she has a new wallet that looks like a giant waffle when it's closed. it's the greatest thing. i brought "45 mercy street" with me for whatever alone time there was, because i got halfway through the book and then got distracted and haven't finished it yet. when she got up to leave she said, "enjoy your..." and then she covered most of anne sexton's name with her hands until the remaining red letters spelled "sex". she's funny. she read my palms and told me based on the physical evidence my life hasn't gone the way it was supposed to. i wonder where i was supposed to go and how far away from there i've wandered. my lifeline and heartline intersect somewhere, but i'm not sure what it means. 140429 ... raze again we were supposed to walk. again there was a severe thunderstorm warning. this time we chose to disregard it. it didn't even rain a little bit. those weather forecasters keep trying to interfere with our plans. we're not gonna put up with that shit anymore. we walked down by the river. i didn't realize how much shorter she was than me until today. we drank smoothies, and talked about dogs and souls and drunken adventures, and overheard amusing out-of-context snippets of the conversations of others in passing. it was windy and muggy and not much like spring, but it was good to walk and talk. she said we should make it a more regular thing. i'm down if she's down. 140521 ... raze i had a dream i led the san antonio spurs to victory over the miami heat, snatching victory from the jaws of an open court air ball, and when the game was over it was my birthday. she showed up with her ex-boyfriend and a few other people. she kissed me without letting me know she was going to do it. it was nice once the shock wore off. it was nice, but i didn't know what to think about it. this is someone i've never hugged, and here she was introducing me to her lips. later i found her in an otherwise empty classroom at my grade school. it was a room i spent a lot of time in between grades six and eight. she was upset about something. i got the feeling a pet or a family member had passed away. "if you won't sit here and drink with me instead of hanging out in the gym and dancing with your friends," she said, "you don't really love me." i sat down to face her and saw two glasses of some strange red alcoholic substance. one was hers, mostly empty. the other was almost full. that was the glass that fed hers. there was an empty glass in front of me. i poured some of the red strangeness from the fullest glass into mine, took a sip, and said, "i guess i really love you." i grabbed her hand and gave her an intense stare. she gave me one back, but i could sense it was just a copycat gesture. so i gave her a smile. she gave me one back and it was the same thing again. monkey see, monkey imitate, monkey knows how to procrastinate. she let go of my hand, grabbed onto the pinky finger of my opposite hand, relaxed her face, said she was more comfortable with that than holding_hands. and then we were in a bookstore. i was slicing through plastic with my fingernails, checking the spines to make sure they were perfect before i bought anything. there were three books in my haul. one was a soulful graphic novel with a red hardcover. it was part two in a series. i felt like i had the first part at home, and i felt like i'd never read it before and knew nothing about it, and a blind woman called out to a girl she'd helped to raise as a child but the girl didn't know her or pretended not to know her. it was as if she'd grown up blind with seeing eyes, had never seen the woman's face, and didn't recognize her voice, while the woman knew who the girl was simply by sharing space with her, without any clues for her ears to latch onto. it would come back to the girl on her deathbed, a split second of failed connection explained to herself by the floodlights of her panicked brain as a final moment of fluorescent horror lit up after decades of dark nothing, and everyone in her room when she passed would assume the expression on her face was the look a dying person made and nothing more. only she would know what it really meant, and she would be too close to dying by then to explain. and then we were walking in the rain. 140612 ... raze we almost walked in the rain for real. for the third time in a row the forecast called for severe thunderstorms on a day i was supposed to see her. for the third time in a row the forecast was wrong. but this time there was rain. when it looked like we were going to walk, the rain came in fits and starts, like some sky-dwelling creature with a cloud for a mouth kept taking swigs from a river and spitting down at us before reloading and doing it again. the moment we decided to go somewhere air conditioned and dry, the rain stopped and didn't start again. for some reason the sky does weird things when we're together. so we went where there was food. she had strawberry crème brûlée, and i had something sinful made of ice cream, and coffee followed wine. i'm not sure i know anyone else with whom a conversation can segue from a serious discussion about spirituality and metaphysical business into acting out a radio documentary about the life and times of a talking penis. tonight we learned what a fine line there is between botany and botulism when you eat a salad from the food court at the mall. and we learned that maybe we would write a book called "noncommittal dance moves" if we thought there was a market for it, but would we really want to pander to people who never dance like they mean it? 140617 ... raze she sent me the funniest picture of a cat i've seen in a while for my birthday on saturday and said we were due to hang out again. friday she has to work at some massive outdoor festival thing, but she said all she has to do is walk around aimlessly. she asked if i wanted to join her. she put her exclamation point before the question mark, and i don't know why that made me smile, but it did. i could see that being a fun time. walking with her while people play miniature golf and lawn checkers. i think i'll go. 140819 ... raze spontaneous synchronized hand dancing in the car, shaved ice and momentary brain freeze for her, an ice cream cone for me, watching people on carnival rides, upturned hands for a housewarming gift, a pretty chinese girl taking our picture in front of a giant smiling anthropomorphic stalk of corn, and "a whole new world" on the radio after we'd been talking about robin williams in "aladdin". i should have reminded her to buy a lottery ticket. she said she was scared (scared she might win?) and wanted me to go in with her, and then there was a fire or a car accident or something they had the road blocked off for, keeping us from the corner store, and we forgot about finding another one a few minutes later, lost in demos for "off the wall" and distillery whisky smell. still, a good night. 140822 ... raze she's got a new place now. she said she wants to have me over for tea once she's settled. i should get her some kind of apartment-warming gift. i'll think of something, or my name isn't what it is. 140922 ... raze it wasn't until she asked to borrow a white sheet for halloween that i realized there's not one white sheet in this house. not even a white pillowcase. it's all about the blue and beige. she wanted to be a ghost, but i wasn't equipped to assist. 141101 ... raze it's her birthday today. she's joined the club i'm a year past joining now. it was pretty alright, as clubs go. i hope it treats her well. 141108 ... raze she didn't know what she wanted to eat, so i pointed her in the direction of this salad with arugula and walnuts and goat cheese and magical fruit compote. i wasn't sure if she'd like it, but she did, and the day was won. if making her laugh had been the only thing i managed to do today, it still would have been a pretty good day. 141209 ... raze i forgot all about the picture taken of us in front of the giant smiling corn. i haven't seen it yet, but i'm told it came out looking blurry and hilarious. there wasn't any other way, was there? 141226 ... raze she was in a dream last night, for the first time in a while. i walked in on her in bed with her boyfriend and pretended to be sleepwalking to undercut the awkwardness of the moment. the thing is, she was sleeping in my house. 150109 ... raze and only she would send me a picture of an overawed little dog in the middle of the week. 150128 ... raze i figured if i left it in her hands it would be a long time before i heard anything, but there's an email saying she misses my face, so there you go. i miss her face too. 150325 ... raze i got to hear her alien voice for the first time. i guess a lot of people don't like it. i don't see why. it sounds like a cute gremlin. 150415 ... raze we walked through the park a paving company is planning on perverting. we followed the trail, lost the trail, found the trail again. a mosquito bit her. the little shits left me alone. they don't want my blood anymore. after she took a picture of the pretty colours the setting sun was making with her phone, she jumped with surprise that looked like fear and touched my arm. i looked to see what she saw. a deer came out of the darkening trees. then another. then a fawn. a family. they fed on leaves, and the father or mother noticed us after a while but didn't run, maybe because we didn't try to get any closer than we were. we watched for a while, then waved to them and left. 151022 ... raze we're calling these things dates now, though they aren't dates in the way you might think (she's getting married this summer). we joked about less-than-wholesome unicorn horns and soft pretzels. she always wears the best sweaters and scarves, but it's only because she's cold. the stylishness is a built-in thing. 160127 ... raze so, next date: pizza and beer at the place i half-broke my fucking foot going down the stairs the summer of the unexpected fling. the date after that: soft pretzels, just because. 160128 ... raze she didn't even invite me to her wedding. i guess that tells me what kind of friends we really are. good to know. 160620 what's it to you? 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