all you need to know is that there is a scar on my face, i’m starting a new life, and i have a friend who is helping me.

on sunday, i wake up to warm sunlight bathing resplendent through that sliding glass balcony door. there is a morning breeze, the blissful herald of a much-needed september cold front. i am sprawled across this euro lounger that reclines flat into our weekend bed, tangled in two blankets. you are awake already, sitting beside me with that laptop balanced against your knees, shirtless and perfect in the morning light. and i think to myself, i will always remember this. i will always know that this was mine.

this is my life now- this is our life now. this perpetual pot of coffee, our mugs a mirrored match with texas pecan roast and heavy cream. clothes mingling in various states of undress across the bedroom and closet floors, and the smell of clean laundry still lingering on our skin. i perch across your lap and pull you in tight against me, breathing in the scent of your shampoo and cologne, vital as oxygen to my lungs. we watch netflix with my head against your legs, and you don't even mind my wide-eyed gushing through every formulaic episode of a glittering korean drama. you cook scrambled eggs in the morning while i get dress for work, or i start dinner while waiting for you to come home.

- and i caught myself once while preheating the oven, wearing your button-up shirt over lace underwear. and i realized if someone told me a year ago that i would be swishing around a kitchen in camdez's clothes, baking pizza for him, i could only have laughed. this unexpected, unpredictable turn of fate. that night with the glossy vera wang heels, and i kept tripping into your arms, my fingers clutched between yours, the dim lights and noise of bars, those ten minutes against your body on that futon while you tore the breath from my lungs-

you are so good to me, you know. incredibly, inexplicably kind and loving. it's in the way that you wake up early to brew coffee for my morning commute, closing the bedroom door to keep from disturbing me while you grind the beans. it's in the way your voice softens when you speak to me, and how your eyes are always magnetized to mine while we talk. it's in the way that you have held me through a dozen symptoms and pulled my hair back while i vomited gracelessly in a stranger's sink. you put my happiness first, and i have never known that in a partner until we crossed paths again this year.

so this is my new life. and it is beautiful. it is the sight of your slightly freckled, bare shoulders first thing upon waking, the feeling of your skin against mine, the sound of your voice when you say good morning, honey. and it puts every other wake-up from a previous past life to shame.

all lights are out and all bets are off. we stand in the driveway of my childhood home, your lean lines a sprawling angular darkness against my car, my awkward hands anchored in pockets. i stare up at a face i've known for five years, loved for four, and resented for god-knows-how-many. here we are finally strangers because my tongue has swollen to a clumsy, unfamiliar mass and i am tripping over words that are an alien language. the semantics of relationship.

autumn winds are rising and this coldness is no longer restrained to the dead space between our bodies as i fumble for your fingers and they latch together like bad puzzle pieces.

remnants of childhood corkboard that has been pressed, pushed, and creased in the corners.

kim: America isn't Christland and the Bible shouldn't matter, in my opinion that's like using Lord of the Rings to decide peoples rights. Church vs. State. You can drive-thru and get married, 50% of Americans get divorced, its no longer sparkly and magical.

mimi: anyway according to tolkien we'd have a whole new system of getting married.

mimi: O SHIT U GAVE ME A RING.

mimi: O SHIT.

mimi: GODDAMMIT.

kim: NOW I HAVE TO TAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO MORDOR AND DESTROY IT.

kim: I DON'T EVEN OWN A PRIUS. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH GAS IS RIGHT NOW?

mimi: IT'S GODDAMN ORC SEASON AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY CROSSBOWS.

mimi: YOU'RE A SHITTY BOYFRIEND.

mimi: HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU THAT ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY MARRY IN MORDOR.

kim: ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY TAKE THEIR FIRST DANCE IN MORDOR.

mimi: YOU BETTER MAKE IT UP TO ME BY TAKING ME SHOPPING AT THE GAP OF ROHAN

and for some reason, there are stacks of old cosmos in the bathroom that must have been a relic from my early teenage years when i decided i needed to read up on ~naughty sex tips~ despite my raging virginity. i decided to re-investigate these.

and now i'm nearly 100% able to visualize cubicles of women in the cosmo office sitting at their computers, coming up with lists of euphemisms for sexy shit. and there would probably be a monthly award for the unfortunate who compiles the most diverse list of sassy synonyms for perfectly acceptable terms like "penis," "vagina," "sex," and "anal."

no, it's too clinical! you've got to use wink-tastic terms like "his manly member" and "trouser buddy" while diverting all references to the vagina as "down there," a weird and nebulous phrase that makes female genitalia sound like the ninth circle of hell.

i literally read an article with the helpful slug of "direct your dude down there." how the goddamn do i do that, you might be asking. and i know as a sexually active adult who's all about getting some clitoris-loving, you are extremely uncomfortable with any word that might be associated with a textbook or a polysyllabic vocabulary. so who don't you "paw yourself" around your "female landscape" so he can "hit your money spots" while he is "working skills on your bod" during your "sack session."

seriously, what the goddamn. i know these women at cosmo are totally high-fiving themselves over adapting the magazine to a trendy, urban, girlfriend-speak language that totally appeals to the modern woman. but i don't know a single female that wouldn't stare at me like i was half a retard if i told them i wanted to share sizzling booty tricks to add to their randy lineup.

ps - if i ever get around to writing personal memoirs, i'm going to title that shit sizzling booty tricks.

my parents and i went out to lunch for my mother's birthday today.

in the waiting area of the restaurant, a slack-jawed girl in the vile clutches of pubescence who is staring at us with unabashed enthusiasm finally turns to my mother and smiles at us.

"konnichiwa!"

her parents bestow us with benign grins as if their daughter has broken down the racial glass ceiling with one knowledgeable greeting. a veritable u.s. diplomat in a pink tinkerbell t-shirt. how kind and worldly of her to greet the little japanese family in their native tongue!

at the same time i respond incredulously, "are you kidding me?" my parents are beaming back at her family politely and nodding like subservient cretins. i'm surprised they didn't offer to make her some eggrolls or do her taxes. way to take a step back for your race, mom and dad.

our 4-year anniversary is this weekend. oh boy.

7/3/08

things i finally understand:
airport gates are waiting rooms for the terminally bored.
everyone here is a traveler. a story in the making.
they while away the hours, checking and double-checking boarding passes, muttering quietly.
the austere korean man with sharp cheekbones and pitted eyes glued to his laptop hates children. every night he returns home, his wife cries into her arms and clutches at fistfuls of hair.
she consults doctors and psychics to explain why she's barren.
she never understands the explanations.
beneath the surface the austere man crows in triumph every month.
then he shines his shoes, slips on a silver watch, boards his business flight, and thanks god for his youth.
the woman in the sheer polka dot blouse and rigidly curled hair has not has sex in years.
she turns fifty-one this month.
and feels her pallid yellow jowls sagging slowly under the weight of her concealer. the eyes framed by red gucci knock-off frames are weakening around the corners and it terrifies her.
keeps her up every night.
she sits primly now, knees drawn together, surveying the old, tired men around her.
she remembers a time when so many boys loved her.
she remembers being nineteen and beautiful, with large wicked eyes and long, willowy legs that unleashed secrets and sighs with careless abandon.

i sit in the middle.
a stranger in my skin.

bella novik bruised easily and violently. not a day would pass when she would leave her apartment unadorned with blue-black imprints interrupting her pale skin like medals. she never bothered to hide them with powder, concealer, or long-sleeved shirts. she wore them like sunglasses, dark and obvious against her body and yet hiding a telltale story. the people in her building were nosy, she knew. she could feel their eyes creeping around her while she indifferently pulled junk ads from her mailbox. they were all making up little anecdotes in their minds about how clumsy she must be, what an abusive boyfriend she must have.

bella was unmarried, and her neighbors all knew that. she had no friends, and they all guessed that as well. she was approaching 30 fast, a steadfastly single, cold woman. she was an artist and a writer, and in the shadows of her apartment she warmed to dead authors and tubes of oil paint. sometimes she unlocked her door for lovers, but they faded out of her life quicker than her bruises. she taped over her windows pages from outdated encyclopedias pasted together to form large sheets, facts colliding with facts. she used to leave them open to enjoy the city air when she first moved in, but over years she began to feel as if the city was starting to prey on her.

her paranoia was hereditary. bella’s mother was a sharp, neurotic woman. most of bella’s childhood was spent in and out of hospitals, her mother flitting around her like an anxious insect, haranguing doctors who had grown tired of her hypochondria.

“there’s nothing wrong with her,” they’d explain exasperatedly. “she’s the healthiest ten year old alive. she just bruises easily, that’s all. tender skin.”

“it could be a symptom of hemophilia!” her mother would counter, eyes widening. “she could be hemorrhaging, you need to find out! whenever she gets a nosebleed, it’ll last for half a day and the sink would be overflowing with blood!” she looked positively delighted in her exaggerations, head motioning rapidly at bella to agree.

but bella was fine, and her mother neglected her own health in favor of the weirdly transferred hypochondria. she succumbed to a brain aneurysm when bella was in her second year of art school, to the surprise of no one. bella did not cry at the funeral. she did not console her stepfather. she was a statue, as she had always been. when she looked down into the open casket, the only thought running through her head was, finally, no more goddamn hospital trips. if she was ashamed or appalled by her own feelings, no one could tell.

"i am the sword in the darkness. i am the watcher on the walls. i am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. i am the shield that guards the realms of men."

i just want to quit school and become a sworn brother of the night's watch.