Density and pureness. Or the lack thereofTo Amber. You don’t know me, you only discovered enough to stay away from me (and that was wrong). That’s all there is to it. I, in turn, sensed it and didn’t fight.
It happened to be the same with Cecily. I come back to that whenever I start weeping over the past, too self-conscious, mentally shocked and secretly convinced that it couldn’t have been otherwise. I retreated after I’d seduced those two girls. I stepped forth as a fabricated character, I stepped back as an other person, the weak version of the first one, or again something different.
However with Cecily I had the impression that the first character was sincere, very close to my true self, my darker self, the power I’m afraid of, deeply. But I can’t live up to that image, I feel ashamed and guilty whenever I let those forces break loose.
But I’m mistaken. I guess I was in control, very much so, just pursuing the right vein in the mine, not resisting the urge to be and say what was expected to be said at that particular time, showing Cecily something she wanted above all, something she could learn or live or share with me. But I wasn’t aware of it, I could only feel the mood. I can’t remember if I was argumentative or rather quiet, but something authoritative flowed through my voice and my calmness. Cecily’s friend, whose name I can’t remember, had resented my intrusion. I didn’t pay attention and moreover I didn’t care at all.
Like Sondra, who always thought she could learn how to calm down, be cool and happy with me. But this time I knew it and I’ll never have given it to her, but this is something we’d tried to live with together. The irony lied in the fact she didn’t manage to see I was as much neurotic as her, though she must’ve sensed it somehow.
What had interested Cecily I can only guess. I remember specifically only one line of discussion that we pursued, and again that was maybe only the beginning of it. I contended that there was no such thing as a friend, that we were all making things up as in a play, an absurd script laden with conventions. Perhaps the desperate touch of it got to her, it matched her inner doubts and dark places of her own.
I must have detained something precious because she subsequently looked for me throughout the campus. But I only thought of it superficially and it only added up to the already strong false self-confidence that had been building up over the years. Instead of analyzing it and trying to put me in her shoes, with empathy, I played it cool, but I was already cold.
I’d gone lost in the seven circles of hell. If you ask me, the entrance to it, as much as I can recall from Dante’s Inferno in the Divine Comedy, must be on the slope of a hill in the middle of the selva oscura, which may well be the Venusberg. Tannhauser has maybe something to do with Virgil. Nell’mezzo del camino de nostra vita, light is gradually shed on this path, after the end of the journey has become clear.
But at that time, I was not mature enough. My love for her was very limited and had to do with me only. I remember feeling awkward in her presence, numbed by her beauty and her fragility, and with a sense that I was her inferior in class, not only socially but as a matter of behavior as well. We didn’t really have common interests, mainly because I was constantly hiding mine. I was never really honest to her.
When she finally decided to dump me, she kissed me on the cheek. I felt relieved although she had eventually been the only thing that had prevented me to fall into deep depression. I tried to smile to myself, pretending to keep composure with a grin flashing to the void. Late winter sun seemed desolate and its pale fire couldn’t get under my skin to heat my frozen emotions. This light added to the bareness of the trees a faint sharpness, answering the impression of shattered glass and shards in my heart.
