That last post was number 666. Interesting.

Number 667 will be a survey in which you can only post one word in answer to questions, taken from Emily's myspace blog. I kinda like the way it turned out, and since I've been lacking appropriate, non-incriminating subject matter for this fine site, I thought I'd use it here. Because, really, how much trouble can I possibly get myself in one word at a time?

One-word answer: Lots.

--
1. Where is your cell phone? Somewhere.
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Husband.
3. Your hair? Poof.
4. Your grandpa? Dead.
5. Your father? Guitarist.
6. Your favorite item? Vibrator.
7. Your dream last night?
8. Your favorite drink? Tequila.
9. Your dream car? Scion.
10. The room you are in? Bedroom.
11. Your ex? Missed.
12. Your fear? Abandonment.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Better.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Scott.
15. What you're not? Satisfied.
16. Muffin? Blueberry.
17: One of your wish list items? MacBook.
19. The last thing you did? Tae Bo.
20. What are you wearing? Sneakers.
22. Your favorite book? Jurassic.
23. The last thing you ate? Food.
24. Your life? Sexless.
25. Your mood? Eh.
26. Your friends? Distant.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Fourteen.
28. Your car? Focus.
29. What are you doing at the moment? This.
30. Last summer? Sam.
31. Your relationship status? Sexless.
32. What is on your tv? Oblongs.
33. When is the last time you laughed? Moons.
34. Reason you last cried? Sexless.
35. Last song you danced to? Jeff.

--

I guess it'd be cheating if I qualified any of those answers, however, I do have to credit Emily with her #26.


I'm listening, right now, to Lisa Loeb's Sandalwood, as featured on a CD burned for number 30 himself. The last time I saw him, we realized that the CD no longer worked, which was a bit heartbreaking. That CD, our CD, was burned as a tribute to everything we were, weren't, could and couldn't have been. I told him he must not have valued it very much to let it get scratched up like that.

He said it got ruined because he played it over and over again. He always did know the right thing to say.

"Your hand, so hot, burns a hole in my hand.
I wanted to show you."

I told him I'd burn him another one. That I didn't have a copy, per se, but that I did have a playlist of it. I'm listening to it now. Robbie Williams' If it's Hurting You.

Great song. Jenn went to England one year, one of those years where she left me all alone for Christmas break, and came back obsessed with Robbie Williams. She identified this song as being one of those that is perfect for driving down a dark road at night, and she was right, perfectly right. Now I can't hear it without picturing the exact road we were driving down when she said that; or, some road I was driving down alone when I remembered her saying that. Who knows anymore?

That summer, the song was on a playlist I had loaded onto my old MP3 player called "Infidelity", created so I, the eternal Emo, could purify and intensify the conflicted feelings I was having over cheating on Jeff with Chad. The week I was in Gloucester with Jeff and Jenn for the Saint Peter's fiesta-- and the last week of my life in which I was still immune to and unaware of the fear of having your heartbroken-- I would lay awake at night and listen the playlist, and sometimes that song over and over again.

The next one that is cued up-- randomly, not in the order the CD was actually in-- is Matchbox Twenty's Disease, which I sang last night at Karaoke. I try to skip past and, for some reason, the goddamn randomizer on WinAmp fails to work-- number 17, baby, I'll take a computer that works over this "compatibility" bullshit anyday-- so I close my eyes and click. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

This song is special to me-- there is something in the arrangement, the resonance that speaks to a part of me that other songs I love don't; the only other one that does that I can think of is Push, by Matchbox Twenty. Maybe it comes from the memories I've associated with it, listening to it over and over again in the middle of the night as Elorza and I stayed up way past our bed times for each other-- back before I knew his name was Elorza, and that was part of the reason it was special to me. "Push" was my favorite song, originally, because I associated it so completely with my favorite person, Jeremey, and as I moved away from him, the song moved with me, and became about myself. Still, if I had to pick one other person that "Push" is about for me, it's him, and if I had to pick one other person that "Name" is about, it's Elorza.

Jeremey and Elorza have proven to be the only two men in my life who have that kind of tenure, that unconditional feeling. And "Name" and "Push" are the only songs that I feel in the back of my neck when I breathe; I feel them in the notes, perhaps. I listen, misty-eyed, to our history, which is not made up of reruns as the song says.

"A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,
And I won't no one your name.
And I won't tell them your name."



I can't write an entry about, or partially about, our CD without mentioning our song, that sacred hymn that we-- Sam and I-- listen to in silence, listen to with a reverent wordlessness meant to express everything in the world that we are when alone and lonely, everything we can't be when we are together, and together. The room, the space, the cab of his truck are silent, the holy dark was moving, too, and every breath we drew...

"It's not a cry you can hear at night,
It's not somebody whose seen the light.
It's a cold, and it's a broken hallelujah."



One of these days, I'm going to have to stop and count the alternate realities I spend the better part of my day in. One of these days, I'm going to have to commit some more time to this one, that anchors me.


On with it.