I had a horrible dream about you! In it, you told me you were moving to Paris. That wasn't the horrible part though. The horrible part was that you were moving there exclusively to do heroin! Yes, that's right. You weren't going there to travel or look at art or teach or write or study, or even to just sit around eating delicious things made with large quantities of butter. You weren't interested in any of those things at all. And worse, it sounded like you'd just lost any kind of connection to a meaningful life- interior or exterior. It was like the you-ness of you had just disappeared. I was absolutely furious at you. I shouted, "Heroin? Paris? What? " I could not believe it. "Oh, you! How could you?" I paced around and waved my arms in a jazz of shock and dismay. I wept bitterly. I pounded the floor with my fists. "Why? Why?" I cried.
And you said, "Oh come on, don't you think you are being a bit dramatic?" You stood and opened a drawer on your nightstand and pulled out a guide to doing heroin in Paris book. You'd underlined many passages and had made multiple notes in the margins. On the inside front cover there was even a convenient pocket for needles that you proudly pointed out to me. You insisted that I had no idea what I was talking about. You said I was misinformed completely. You'd done research and I hadn't. "You know nothing about heroin in Paris," you said. "Nothing at all."
Then, I was somewhere else, maybe in Wisconsin,in someone's backyard, reading a postcard. It was from you, from Paris. Printed on one side was a drawing of a fountain. I turned the postcard over and you'd written something illegible about children, only you'd spelled children, "chilled wren," which made no kind of sense at all. I called my friend M. about it and straight away, she said, "Classic addict behavior."
"But, it was a dream," I said.
"Still, she said.
So anyway, you're not going to Paris in real life are you? And if you are, it's not for you to go do heroin right? Because if you did do that, I would think about you and worry about you so much and I would curse that dumb heroin book and the dumbshit moron who wrote it and I'd curse the empty demon that built a nest in your brain to live in and ruin you. And if you never came back, eventually I'd have to let go of you and I don't want to- I don't want to because you are so delicious and these sentences between us form a shape that I just never want to stop making.
And you said, "Oh come on, don't you think you are being a bit dramatic?" You stood and opened a drawer on your nightstand and pulled out a guide to doing heroin in Paris book. You'd underlined many passages and had made multiple notes in the margins. On the inside front cover there was even a convenient pocket for needles that you proudly pointed out to me. You insisted that I had no idea what I was talking about. You said I was misinformed completely. You'd done research and I hadn't. "You know nothing about heroin in Paris," you said. "Nothing at all."
Then, I was somewhere else, maybe in Wisconsin,in someone's backyard, reading a postcard. It was from you, from Paris. Printed on one side was a drawing of a fountain. I turned the postcard over and you'd written something illegible about children, only you'd spelled children, "chilled wren," which made no kind of sense at all. I called my friend M. about it and straight away, she said, "Classic addict behavior."
"But, it was a dream," I said.
"Still, she said.
So anyway, you're not going to Paris in real life are you? And if you are, it's not for you to go do heroin right? Because if you did do that, I would think about you and worry about you so much and I would curse that dumb heroin book and the dumbshit moron who wrote it and I'd curse the empty demon that built a nest in your brain to live in and ruin you. And if you never came back, eventually I'd have to let go of you and I don't want to- I don't want to because you are so delicious and these sentences between us form a shape that I just never want to stop making.
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