8-14-08

And I mean, such a strange day.

I woke up with SJ, my back hurting, but grateful to be there with her on her floor, hoping to hold her a little longer. She'd turn her back to me and I'd curl behind her, or I'd lay on my back and she'd rest her head on my chest. Finally she said, after several false starts and faux awakenings, "I think I'm up."

"What?"

"I think I'm awake."

We laid there a little bit longer, feeling the skin of the other against our own. I smelled her hair, I touched my fingers to the spot above her hip -- to the place below her breast -- both where her curves were about to begin, or end, depending on which direction you were going. But then we did, we got up, I went for breakfast and helped her put things away once I came back. "You've been really supportive of me, these last days," is one of the last things she said to me, her face to mine.

I ended the night with my friends of the past two years. Adam and Kate Lynn, Ryan and Ben. Folks I haven't hardly seen this summer -- all of us scattered and looking for our own ways ahead. We told stories. Kate Lynn's been in Chicago, then Baltimore and Washington with Adam, Ryan in Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Ben drawing comics in San Jose, or seeing Amy at Zine Fest and ComicCon. It was good to have them together again. I loved having them together again. Adam says I should move to Baltimore, we'll start a Rock Band rock band, he'll introduce me to nice, single, Jewish girls. "They put out," he says.

"That's all I ask," I tell him.

I hugged him at least three times tonight, not sure when I'll see him again. It's downright cute how affectionate we are of each other. I hope he can tell. Kate Lynn wants to come to dinner tomorrow, which I like, and she offered to help me move. I like that too. I felt awfully fond of her tonight too, and she's got biceps I wouldn't turn down when there are things to lift. Or any other situation.

I couldn't stop talking about the Olympian softball players -- no sleeves, muscles as they pitched 113km/hr balls, nails painted red.

"That's what does it for your," Kate Lynn says, "that mix of strength and femininity."

"That's definitely what does it for me."

"That's a good writerly detail," she says.

I think about SJ's orange fingernails, newly painted, greasy and wet from a chicken we've torn apart on a lunchtime date at the farmer's market on the Bay. It is a good writerly detail.

"You're right," I say. And I resist the temptation to show off our photobooth pictures again. I want to keep them private a little bit longer.