I have to run.  Laundry.  Bank.  Train to Boston.  And it is snowing. 

The forecast says the temperature will continue a gradual decline until it reaches eighteen degrees on Saturday.  Eight-fuckin'-teen!  Winter will be plunging its long icicle-fangs deep into our shivering hearts, even as we welcome spring on March 20.  Excuse me while I pour some hot coffee over my head.  (It's like wetting your pants; it feels nice and warm for a moment, but then there's problems.). 

I am generally a miserable cuss right now because I am leaving my house.  It is my day off, and I am leaving my house.  I don't do that on my day off.  And I cannot come back to my familiar bed, my own clutter, and my precious coffee pot until Tuesday night.  Tuesday fuckin' night! 

I used to gear-up for a trip to Boston, I used to get all psyched and optimistic on the bus ride there, and then I would focus on staying all happy and smile-faced for the potential life-love (read, fabulous regular sex without emotional conflicts) who, breathless, would stumble upon me, cheerful and charming, in one of the ancient gay bars in Boston.  Optimism is not my thing.  Not anymore.  I did optimism once; I met Daniel in one of those ancient gay bars and I made him fall in love with me.  He gave me some fabulous sex, not so regular, and some goose-bumping emotions which I never expected.  I wish I stayed there, I wish Daniel had been perfect, I wish I was not HIV positive.  I half-lived in Worcester then, and half-lived in Boston with Daniel.  Now I fully-live nowhere.

Nowhere, as best I can rekon from where I stand, is better than somewhere over the rainbow.  Things used to be different.  I used to be different. 

Every day.  I have been here every day.  Silent.  Mute.  Every day, with my muse playing soulful notes like a muted coronet—wailing, moaning, pleading, groaning.  And every day I hide from the screeching subway-noise of your eyes consuming my lines, scraping along all the steel-track-length of my thoughts, into my mind, reading my heart.  I have been here hiding from you whatever words would have come, denying, god-like, the incarnation those words so sweetly sought.  You give purpose to the whole goddamn network of neurons and thoughts and tunnels and minds and trains—you give it all a purpose, and a reason for being.  You are the destination of everything I write; it comes from somewhere else, and it uses me as mere passage, bound for you.  It uses me.  It uses me.  I stopped it. 

I am letting go.  Surrendering.  Giving in to its will.  I will, once again, actively participate in giving this thing what it wants, and with hands against headboard I will push back against its invading, penetrating force.  I will cooperate with its appropriation of me for its own purposes; I will make its will my own.  I had my own way for a week, I stopped it and refused it passage through my openings, and I found out again, like a dozen times before, what that would cost.  It costs too much.

I don't want this.  (Or do I?).  If I decide that I do want this, then it is no longer rape, is it?  Then I can happily participate in the crime, and even have a good time!  The words demand to have their way with me—but they require me to fight.  They demand me to scream into the pillow, to squirm beneath their weight, to fight their naked force and break my fists against the wall they thrust, they thrust, they thrust me up against.  The words demand a struggle, otherwise they will not come.  They demand me to be me, contemptuous of their intrusive visitation, raging under their dictatorial commands.  The words demand that I preserve within myself one true thing for them to chase.  I would surrender without a fight because I fear the pain that resistance brings; the words will not allow it.  They demand I feel everything. 

Therefore, make not pain the pleasure, nor subvert the tears to joy; give nothing you rightly own away—give not love, nor agonies, nor joys, nor sultry summer evenings of fading sun away to anyone.  Own them.  Stand up and own them, and cry for your pain, and sing for your joy.  And write for your life.