the_pizza_guy kerry he laughed and looked away when i told him i’d liked him the moment i saw him. that was also the first time he spoke to me, though i don’t remember what he said, just where i was standing and where he was standing, and a slight sense of apprehension. he wore a red ballcap turned backwards and had a tattoo of andy kaufman on his bicep. there was a tiny dent where a lip ring had once been, though i didn’t notice that until later. he always made intense eye contact, looked like he was examining, evaluating. his eyes were a kind of amber brown, his eyelashes as long as mine. maybe my honesty embarrassed him, maybe he didn’t believe me. but you can’t say that twice without feeling like a fool. we became friends. he was funny, articulate, skeptical. i was with someone else but often felt that i was with the wrong person. there was a sense of incompletion, like a missed turn. i tried to ignore it–some things you put away in the dark closet of your heart where there are dust bunnies and forgotten ill-fitting clothes and shoes missing their mates, but they come back like shadows at night that frighten you as a child and you pull the blanket over your head, certain sleep will never come, and when you open your eyes somehow it’s morning and it all starts over. someone told me he'd started dating a tall woman who played minor league soccer. they were been spotted at the video store by my house and he had his hand in her back pocket. i wanted to throw up when i heard that. then she moved to australia, he disappeared, and we were all scared he was gone for good. one afternoon little mike came by the apartment asking for him–little mike was an asshole i saw out at shows and bars. he had orange hair and a permanent scowl, sold coke, thought he was really tough. i didn’t open the door, just told him through the screen to leave me the hell alone, i can’t help you. turned out he sold all his things except a guitar and had nowhere to go so he slept on an old mattress in a squatters house in west atlanta, then stayed in an unfurnished apartment where people went to shoot up and lie around staring at the ceiling, but he didn’t really belong there and i always knew that. he tapped my shoulder one night when i was at the earl with jack, sitting at the bar getting free drinks from monty. i wanted to hug him. it was just an impulse and i didn’t act on it. he took me out for pasta and paid even though he had barely any money and no one else wanted to be around him. nothing seemed to work out for him. i always thought it was unfair, life had never been easy, not like it was for me. eventually we did get together, but my only complaint is that he never wrote me a love letter. it’s not the kind of thing you can ask for. 220211 what's it to you? who go blather from