09 August 2011

around the way again, katie katie katie (it beats and then it doesn't)



recently i was biking from bk to nyc over the pink bridge. i don't believe i was wearing anything too tight or too loose or too cumbersome and i don't believe it was too early, either. ahead of me slightly, upon entering the bridge, was a painfully thin young lady, clearly suffering in her own way. (how did yours manifest?) you can tell when someone is controlling what they eat too much to the point of one-of-those-words-like-anorexia because it is not an attractive thin. it's like a bony hand, or elbows larger than shoulders, long sinewy tendons beneath calves underneath cute, black booties...out of righteousness, i guess, and the belief that strength can outpace weakness or system fatigue, i felt the need to bike past her, take the lead, life-over-starvation, etc. usually, if it's not a huge man on a track bike or an athlete on a 10-speed i can! if not for just a second or two, or i follow behind, or i surge ahead, and then sink behind, again, at my own pace. whatever. the point is this bridge has three parts on either side to get to the top. the coming home side is much easier than the going to work side (riddle me that). through the third part of the bridge i couldn't fucking catch up to this wounded gazelle...i could not. it was like she did this shit after hours, in some gym somewhere, siting on a stationary bike watching her iPhone for texts. i became frustrated and angry, and began to curse her eating disorder for its perfect design and in the end it was about that she was thinner than me - not that she was struggling, too, when not on a bike...the disorder does that: it misconstrues one anger for another. it presents your anger in the form of "this" when in fact the issue is over here, under that, further over or under here...do you understand? i was not able to believe that a sack of virtual bones in a flowy, dark brown outfit with a fucking rickety front basket was going to beat me up the incline. i thought "well surely i'm stronger...surely i have more muscle...surely..." but i guess i wasn't, or something. in the end, as i watched her progress further away from me i thought that if anything, i could probably outlive her...drop us in the ocean, see who swims!!!!! let me use this flesh to outlast hers; she is depleted!!! but we don't. we don't outlast her, is the thing. these sacks of bone - whether weighed down or spritely, in love our out, ambitious, peresozo, damaged, dismissive, hateful, self-hating, vain...besos y huesos, na' mas. i use them as symbols if they have hurt my pride.

here is beautiful, corpulent katie. her father will not let her travel too far alone. would you, he said? i think he tells her she is beautiful all the time. that is what i pick up, when i notice how differently we stand. i can see it in the way she held for me, in a tight black shirt, with her long black hair, like mine used to be...she, too, far from normal. thank you, i said to that. you could stay stay stay right here forever, i countered.

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