Some Glue

Moving, building breaking.  Where have I been.  About time to start (continue) keeping track.

Landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few days ago.  Before that, Ranong, Thailand mainland for a week.  Before that, Koh Payam island, Ranong, Thailand, a two hour boat ride off the coast.  The mainland stay was my favourite place so far.

I found a room with a double bed, toilet cum shower, large wall-mounted fan, wardrobe, clothes rack, table and chair, for 300 bat (about 6.70 euro) per day (including a fresh bottle of water in the morning.  The place only offered nightly rates, not weekly, and most other lodgers only stayed one night before moving on (often connecting to ferries or buses that would take them island hopping or over to Myanmar for a visa run to extend their stay).  With so many transients surrounding, I finally felt I could sit still for a while.  The food on the streets was delicious and cheap.  The town was quiet enough, but busy enough during the day with shop keeping, and the locals were soft-featured and generally friendly, though very little english was every spoken.  I set still, I watched films on the one english channel late in the night -- Air Force One, all three Damon Bourne films, Ocean's 11.  I also watched Jet Li's Fearless.  It was much more blatant and blunt than my beloved Unleashed and Hero, but managed the same effect of the latter two: I looked up Jet Li again and tried to find a way to contact him.  Apparently he lives in Singapore now, having gained citizen ship there for the sake of his daughters' education.  I considered just catching a bus or plane down to Singapore and having a look around, maybe even lean on a large chunk of faith that I might be able to run into him on the street.  I want to do something with my inspiration that he gives me.  I want to ask questions of these people who inspire me.  Taking John Green's advice to "find someone who is doing what you want to do, better than you can do it, and listen to them."  I want to write a letter to Jet Li, asking for an hour or so of his time, just to walk and talk.  To listen to him.  Similar for Chris Smither.  I've asked myself what the connection is between the two, and I believe the answer is Grace.  These people to me are a paragon of grace in action.  The message in Jet Li's three epics, that of true power being the mastery, indeed the artistry, of your own potential, rather than excercising force and domination over others to prove one's might.  It's the message I found in that oddly great animation about the dinosaurs We're Back, and again in my beloved Iron Giant.  These beasts who have the potential to be quite powerful, given this potential without control, learning to contain it through the lessons they receive in grace.  It's there again in my well-thumbed and well-mulled story and film A River Runs Through It.  "My father was very sure about certain matters of the universe.  To him, all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation -- come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

In that same town in Ranong mainland, walking every day, I stumbled upon an open-air boxing gym.  I gestured and pointed and half-talked with some local children on their way home from school in the evening to learn that I could come back the following evening at 5pm to meet a teacher, or trainer, or somebody associated with the place.  I went at 5 the next day, and waited around until 6, stabbing my bare feet into the sand and walking slowly across little patches of sharp rocks, trying to toughen up the soles of my sensitive feet.  Eventually some men came by with puppies on short leashes.  Soon after some women, daughters or wives or friends, came to take the puppies off their hands and the men started stretching and half paying attention to me doing the same.  The sun set and we were boxing in the dark under the fluorescent lights with moths overhead.  A very young and stout child took charge of me.  He had not one single word of english, but I eventually figured out that his name was Fuat.  He was very serious with me, and I respected him immediately.  Attempting to take his gestured instructions on how to execute the cutting kick, he stopped me mid-stance and motioned for one of the other boys, who was just watching, to come over and help him.  The boy steadied the bag against my shin and Fuat worked me from ankle up to my spine and shoulders, shaping me like he was about to make a painting of a model.  Then he stepped back, looked me in the eye, and nodded, satisfied.  I kicked again and again, trying to replicate the pose he'd moulded in my bones.

The next day I arrived at 5 again, and this time an actual trainer was there.  He was Thai, though he'd been away somewhere, worked as a doctor in the local hospital, and spoke with a soft German accent.    He took the whole class, about six of us, through stretches and then exercises on the ring mat, entirely in english, for my benefit.  He worked out cores, our legs, our hips, our necks, our arms.  We were pouring sweat in the evening heat before the form lessons even began.  He started with the stance.  Then the jab, paying attention to the shoulders, explaining how the chin must stay down, shoulders up, to protect the head.  If the chin is stuck out and gets knocked, your brain has a much better chance of getting mucked around in your skull.  Shoulders up and chin down, it's harder to get the brain to rattle.  So every jab, the shoulder covers the ear and the chin tucks in.  Then he taught us one-two, with the more powerful punch being the second blow, gaining energy and momentum from the hips up.  He got us twisting our hips and feet, while keeping the steady triangle stance.  Then the uppercut and the hook as a third in the combo.  He built us up, piece by piece, and we practiced each set in tens while moving across the ring.  After that, we got out of the ring and over to the bags.  We practised the combos on the bags.  Then he moved on to kicks.  He explained in essence and physics what Fuat was trying to teach me with gestures the evening before.  He taught me how to pull the energy up from my hips, and whip the leg out like a rope, and aim through the bag, not just to the surface, like the punching I'd learned long ago in some quick karate class as a kid.  You don't aim for the surface of your target, you aim behind it; if a face is your mark, you aim the blow for the back of the head.  I kicked the bag with my shin, hard, until the the surface obtained a pale lustre like unchewed bubblegum.

After class, we watched the other older trainer with one of the older students taking his kicks in the ring with arm pads on.  Then one of the younger students got in the ring and they practised some holds.  "This, I need to think about more," said my doctor teacher. "See how he's holding his head like that?  In Muay Thai, if you control the head, you control the whole body.  Like this."  Suddenly he had me in a head-to-head lock, with his fists around the back of my neck like thick rope, pulling down, like the two figures in the ring.  He explained that he studied Judo, where they deal much more with grappling, and you have your hands free, so a shirt or extremity is a legal hold, but in Muay Thai, no shirt, and you have the gloves on.  "I want you to move left, I move you, or right.  I control the head.  So what do you do?" he challenged.

"Okay.  Well, the instinct is to duck down, to get out."

"Yes.  But you do that you meet my knee on the way up."  He brought his knee up to what would be a very awful blow directly to the face.

"Okay, so the next instinct is to pull back, retreat."

"Yes.  But then you're giving me momentum, and I still have my knees, here."  He shot a knee each up to my rib cage like engine pistons.  "So you're all target.  So what do you do?"

"You close the distance."

"Yes."  And he demonstrated by suddenly pressing himself right up against me.  "No more target, both equal, see?"

He let go of the hold and smiled back up at the teacher in the ring showing something similar to the young student.  "It's like life, isn't it?" he mused.  "You try to duck out of your problems, they hit you harder, you try to run away from them and they come back at you with momentum.  The only way is to stand up and face them, walk right to them."  He demonstrated with a quick few sturdy marching steps forward.  "Yes, I have to think more about this."

It was all so clear to me.  The combination of elements that something deep in my soul or self or skin has been looking for.  The discipline, without the brutality and regime of the military.  The concentration on self-improvement for its own sake, as a way of moving through the world and among them.  Learning not only how to anticipate and defend, but also to participate and dance along with what is happening around you.  This, without hanging your hat or your shirt or mind out to dry on some rack of prescribed religion.  Relating to nature the way it already is, and taking all these magical human insanities on board as part of the same natural soup, and learning how to move with it.  Jet Li says he has never had to use any of his mastery of martial arts in a an actual fight, and he hopes he never has to.  See, it's not about turning one's self into an unstoppable weapon, it's about balance and wisdom and reserve.

I moved on from Ranong, just to keep seeing a bit more of the world, but I miss my little room on the hill already.  The faces that were already becoming familiar to me in that little town.  The natural way I began to fall into a routine that my body actually enjoyed.  Stretching and exercising in the morning before my shower, the same exercises the teacher showed us on the mat at the boxing gym ring.  Then down to the little lady in the kid's clothes shop who also had a juice & shakes kiosk just outside for a huge cup of watermelon and ice shake.  Then over to the hard-working family down the road for a bowl of noodles and veg or soup with a bit of meat in it.  Then picking any old direction on the map that I hadn't explored yet and simply walking, walking, walking, for hours.  Meanwhile working on my orientation, keeping my bearings, a sense of where north is.  Then my date with the sunset, often enjoying a cigarette while I watch that old friend sink below whatever counts as the horizon line by then (sometimes a mountain range, sometimes a building in the way).  That's when the starlings come out.  Watching them scatter and dance, silhouetted against all that burnt gold, thinking about the speed of their beating hearts, and wondering why the dusk, why the dusk, and then clearing my thoughts of everything, any of the clutter that might be left even after the long walk, and quite simply watching the birds and the light while thinking nothing at all.

In the hostel in Kuala Lumpur I've tried talking with a few people. The words come out like they're covered in marshmallows or mushrooms, warbled and muffled and frumpy.  Sentences like bad hair days.  But at least I feel a bit more relaxed about it.  Since starting this routine with my stretches and exercise in the morning after waking up and before doing anything else, I've felt much more energy and even a tiny bit more flexibility.  I'd love to magically get all my flexibility back, but I know it will take time to re-do what has over several years been slowly being undone.  So stiff and covered in such heavy layers in that sunless Irish land.  I now look forward to my morning stretches.  Even on the sleeper train, when I woke up at 8am and still had four hours to go before our destination, I found a place between the cars that served well enough for everything except my jumping jacks.  Even the two sturdy steel hand rails on either side of the two steps were perfect for some lifts for my arms and core, especially with the train rocking and throwing off my balance, so I had to use my stomach muscles to keep in place.  See, I've been experimenting with an idea that I had on one of my walks, where I keep remembering to look for opportunity.  This requires a general direction or desire, in order to fill in the blanks.  But it's interesting when something doesn't go the way I expected it to (a missed or full bus so I have to wait in an unknown town overnight, for example).  I wouldn't necessarily get steamed or annoyed, depending on the expectation.  But I also wouldn't quite know how to dance along with the re-direction, and often would end up walking myself into a spiral where I could plant a little frustrated seed of Having Been Hard Done By.  Instead, I've been experimenting with the idea of filling in the blank to "Well, this is an excellent opportunity to ________," and seeing where that takes me.  I know myself well enough to know that it isn't a false optimism patch trying to patch over some actual anger that I'd like to pretend I'm not feeling.  It's like my other memory projects; it just gives me a little direction and something useful to do.  I've been filling in the blanks with a lot of stretching, and exercising my arms and legs, and my stressed out scatterbrain that was fearing it had lost all abilities of memory when I arrived here has been slowly coming back into sharper focus.  I've been able to keep better track of myself, and my thoughts, instead of filling in idle time with blankness and a general sense of feeling lost while wondering how I got somewhere and where I should be instead.

Cast Away

The goal of finding a place less populated with people -- or at least with familiar habits and familiar sounds -- is enjoying only moderate success.  From Bangkok I travelled down to an island called Ko Pha Ngan (or Phangan; it seems to be spelled both ways, in roman letters).  From a rough eyeballing on the map, it seemed to be a small enough island.  I'd researched for days several small island options -- ones where there are no cars or motorbikes, and electricity is available for a only a few hours per evening via generators -- but I didn't make any notes as to which island offered what.  So I pointed more or less at random, using Airbnb again to locate some secluded-looking bungalows in the hills in the middle of this island.  Before disembarking on the speedboat that brought us over here, I knew I'd chosen poorly.  Young, perfectly tanned, waxed or dreadlocked, chesty and yoga types, by the bucket full.  Everyone already smoking and drinking on the boat, getting pre-shit-faced before we touched land.

Approaching the island, I could see it was in fact enormous.  Jurrasic Park was all I could think of.  Several communication masts blinked their patient red lights from the hill tops.  The first night, walking the roads full of speeding motorbikes and cars and trucks which evidently forgot how to use their brakes, I ended up on the north side of the island, surrounded by belly-thumping bass beats and raucous party sounds.  I scoped out the long stretch of beach with bungalows featuring porches full of low-lit couples or families drinking or playing games.  The noise from the nearby rave was everywhere, all-consuming.  The farthest distance I could manage to walk along the beach wasn't far enough to escape the sound.

The next day I decided, seeing as how I'd booked the bungalow for three nights, and on a whim of the can't-beat-'em-join-'em variety, to rent a motorbike of my own.  A Honda Click 125i.  I knew I was adding more noise to the already boisterous scene, but what a pleasure to charge through the air so effortlessly, inventing wind, climbing horrifically steep hills at fantastic speeds, death or serious injury just a blink away, waiting on either side of my bare legs and feet.  To bring life back into such crisp focus and detail; what a thrill!

I ducked and zoomed and plummeted every road and back road I could find on the island.  One evening I even found my treasure: a completely deserted beach, with a large abandoned campfire left as glowing coals, the burble of fish surfacing briefly in the soft starlit water, and a crude but robust swing, strung high high up to a looming palm tree.  It took 30 minutes of determined scoping and re-reading the map, but eventually the search paid off.  I swam briefly, naked under the sky, quiet and alone and happy, and air-dried by swinging standing up on the smooth plank of wood under the palm tree.  Exiting the rock-rough water edge in the dark, I managed to puncture a nice hole in the bridge of my left foot.  It felt insignificant at the time, but examining it in the head torch light back by the campfire, I found a notable wheel of blood surrounding a dark spoke.  A proper puncture, like a tire.

It was sore, and still is, but one of my sub-goals is to toughen up my feet -- there is a connection, I believe, as Sami once pointed out, between the sense of belonging, home, self, and the feet.  Stepping even on smooth sand in bare feet sends an aggravating sensation up my spine: an admixture of electrocution, sexual stimulation, tickling, and a plainly annoying sub-tremor that is perhaps best described as a sonic gouging.  I never did figure out what that business was with my feet, back in the crazy days of Savannah, when they seemed to have a mind and sexual interest all their own.  And so I likewise understood nothing when the "issue" suddenly went away.  The auto-sentience has never returned, but the extreme sensitivity remains.  Every awkward barefoot step I take, these outdoor island days, I remember that moment in the orchard, at Evelina's castle.  Before visiting the llamas and dogs and sheep among the ripe apple trees, she asked if I didn't want to take my boots off.  I panicked, wanting to say Yes, but knowing the electricity that would be riddling my head and spine if I took one shoeless step, even on that soft grass and dirt path.  I declined, but I made a mental note that, one day, I would meet her again, and I would be able to go barefoot with her, on a walk to anywhere.  As of now, the sensitivity remains, and echoes feebly throughout my character, has even infected my eyes, I'm sure, but one day I will find I've developed leather soles, and my core being will be more even, more secure, more steady, and I will walk sockless without hesitation, and lust without terror or remorse, and be a thing that could and should be loved.  It will take time, and I don't know the path to walk to get there, but for now I'll keep listening to my body and treading intentionally and trying to be thankful, in general.

At the dentist in Budapest, the moment of truth, when he was about to administer the injection to begin the grand three-part process, the first of which is to remove ten rotten teeth, I folded.  My breath lost touch with my mind's commands, I couldn't control my breathing, the hyperventilating made my lips go numb.  He lifted the chair and kept asking "What?  What?  Come on!"  One of the assistants gave me a wad of tissues; evidently I was leaking snot and tears like a sinking ship, though I mostly remember just the loss of breath control.  I stood up and tried to walk, but the ground kept moving closer and further from my vision, so I sat down.  I thought I had my breathing back after not too long, but then the attempt to speak again brought the whole wave crashing down again.  The dentist said he couldn't work on me in this condition, so we would take a break for two days and try again.

I've been there before, this hyperventilating.  The first time it happened was after an incident at the pool hall in San Rafael.  I played with and learned moves from a trick-shot nice fellow named Jeremy.  He was usually there with his girlfriend, and they were both kind people.  A friend of one of them, Alicia, played a few racks with us.  She was sweet, and gentle, and a fine pool player in her own right, as far as I could tell.  We had a good time playing doubles and drinking bottles of Heineken and playing classic rock tunes on the jukebox.  I had turned 21, and I was trying to learn to enjoy whiskey, and to pick up my small-time smoking habit by opting for Camel Lights (via Alyssa) as "my brand."  I was attempting to elect to grow up, and so far it was a good summer.  I was staying either in the treehouse behind or one of the rooms in the basement of the Whittakers' house.  Rooni was there, KT and Bridgette too, I think.  I remember at least Rooni being there the night Alicia was late to the game.  She was running behind, for some vague reason, and before she got there I was given a very gentle going-over by Jeremy and his girlfriend.  They were sizing me up, asking what I thought of Alicia, the works.  One of them, I think it was Jeremy, said the words, "You know, Alicia likes you."  The phrase stuck and clattered and echoed and rang out with all the pleasure of a rail tie nail driver slamming into ancient stone on the floor of a silent cathedral.  Something inside my chest, what I thought at the time might be a heart murmur or a strange bi-product of severe gas -- something physical anyway -- popped.  It was subtle, but unmistakable.  I remember a blur of nodding and smiling and returning my cue to the table or wall rack and probably making up some excuse or other, then outside and choking on the air around me while walking home.

Rooni was there, on a mattress on a floor, and she saw in my face when I arrived that something wasn't right.  At some point moments later I was on the mat in her room, hyperventilating, unable to stop or to understand why I wasn't allowed control of my own lungs.  I knew and still feel I know how to use them when swimming.  My breathing during my freestyle and breaststroke is timed rigorously, mechanically, and I could always win any contest for who could hold their breath the longest.  Even my self-imposed smoking habit had its own pattern: my lungs knew to inhale half-way before every drag of the cigarette, thereby keeping the normal capacity relatively clean, and only spoiling the "reserve" area, which I only ever used after a heavy sprint after long-distance runs.  Every since 4th or 5th grade, my breathing strategy while running has always been perfectly programmed, has always been entirely under my control.

So the inability to clench shut whatever panic had been opened up within me while heaving rapidly on that mattress was made doubly difficult by the compounded panic derived from the wickedly foreign feeling of not being able to control my own breath.  I felt possessed, and helpless, and angry to be so helpless.

Last night I ventured over to Tesco -- yes there's somehow a Tesco even on this island -- to buy a larger supply of salted peanuts and a 2 litre of water for cheap.  I picked up a pack of gummy sweets as well, opting for the one that seemed softest and closest to the kind I like.  Also I was trying to find a packet that didn't seem to have too much extra plastic.

There is so so so much plastic waste in Thailand.  Maybe it's all over Asia, I don't know yet.  But I can't fathom how much extra plastic packaging is provided, needlessly, on a constant basis, nor where it all ends up.  In the states you're provided with large plastic bags at most supermarket checkouts, and you might double-bag a heavy load.  In Ireland, as with some other European countries, you're charged a small fee, about 22 cents, to purchase a plastic bag, incentivising everyone to either carry their purchases or bring their own reusable bag.  Having gotten used to this, I was blown away here in Thailand when the purchase of three small donuts required four separate plastic bags, plus scotch tape.  If you buy a bottle of water, that goes in a plastic bag, with a straw, which is also plastic wrapped.  If you buy a bottle of water and a bottle of juice and a takeaway meal and a packet of cookies, the bottle of water gets its own bag, with the plastic-wrapped straw, then the juice gets another bag, with another plastic-wrapped straw, then the takeaway gets its own bag, usually doubled, with a fork and a spoon, each individually wrapped, and of course the lone pack of cookies goes in its own plastic bag.  Of course, you can't seem to be expected to carry all these items in their plastic bags, even though they each have the standard grab handles, so all this goes into yet another bag (though the takeaway is probably too big to fit, so it might get its own larger plastic bag.  It took a day or two to scrape my jaw up off the floor after witnessing this practise.

So the gummy sweets, I felt the bag, could sense the squish of the jelly treats inside, couldn't detect any other crinkling feeling or sound.  So I got them.  And outside in the parking lot I opened them.  Unbelievable: each of the two-dozen-or-so jellies was individually wrapped.  Not small handful portions each in their own sachet, but each and every last one of the single pieces was housed in its own full plastic mini envelope.

I was just finishing the small struggle of opening and eating three of the treats and stuffing all the excess plastic back into the plastic shopping bag and finding a place for this in the motorbike hold space, when a young blonde woman approached her own bike, adjacent to mine, and shot me a warm, very friendly, uninvited smile.  I continued to load up my bike and get the gear in order, when she spoke up and asked, holding a brand new Nokia brick in the space between us, "You don't happen to have a phone like this, do you?"

"Er, no, but, uh, maybe I can answer a question for you."

"Well, I just got this, but in my pocket somehow the little light came on -- see? -- and I can't figure out how to turn it off."

"Okay, may I?"

She handed me the phone and I went into the phone settings with her watching just beside my head, and we found the menu for the light and turned it off.  I showed her after how holding down the directional pad like so can be a shortcut, though I'm not sure why the light stayed on like that.  She thanked me and I nodded and hoped that that could be that.  Already dangerous, suffocating thoughts mounting in my chest and back of my head, heat and pressure, so much heat and pressure.  All the usual storm:

Anger at having been snapped so abruptly into conversation; paranoia that this wasn't an accident, that she turned the light on as a kind of ice breaker, to start up a conversation with a stranger.  Why me.  Why can't you pick on someone else.  And her softness, and the dizzying allure of her brown eyes.  The way she punched down her long skirt against the bike seat with her knuckles when she sat down.  The purity of her shoulders and the cleanliness of her unassuming smile.  Intoxicating.  But also aggravating; enraging, even.  Sharp words of rebuke forming in my head in the mud and slick cobra coil of confusion.  The softest version I can find.  "Look, I don't want to be rude, but I'm not looking to make any friends here, but you're a beautiful woman who seems very friendly, so I know you'll have no trouble meeting other people, just, please let me bid you good night and be on my way."  I want to untie my coil in an instant of predatory lust and rip off her head in my jaws.  I want to kiss her shoulders and the corner of her mouth.  So much information when I glance at her left eye that I can't remember who is talking and who is listening so I look away, but I don't want to, I want to keep staring.  I want to take her to my bungalow stay in the jungle and lead her up the steps with her hand firmly in mine and lay her back on the all white bed under the mosquito net and left up her long flower skirt and slide down her legs whatever bikini or pants are warmly waiting there and kiss up in to her moist and breathing groove and fuck her gently in the trees.  But I also want to tear her apart -- I want her to suffer for speaking to me, for making chit-chat, for noticing me back into life for that moment or two.

I get ready to go, and wave politely, but instead I hear myself suddenly ask her if that's a holiday phone, a temporary, just while she's on vacation.  She turns around and perks up and smiles that simply killer smile again, and says yes, it is, and holds out her right hand, offering "I'm Holly, by the way."

I take her hand, electric shocks, I swallow hard, and grumble to the ground, "Chris, hi," avoiding her eyes, hoping to reclaim my original reluctance and make a timely escape.  But we start talking about the island and the bugs and the roads and where we've been and where we're going, and swapping stories about cheap accommodation.  Apart from images of lust and rage, my only other conscious thought is to be careful to not give any names, only descriptions.  She does the same.  There are more than three full pauses where I'm clearly meant to ask her for her temporary holiday number, at the very least, and exchange details, but I fill them with nodding and pursed lips.  Eventually I offer to shake her hand, aiming at a gentile if slightly cold finality, and say "Nice to meet you, Holly, be safe and enjoy your time over here."

"You too, enjoy the island."  She's clearly let down.  But it's her own fault for starting the conversation.  Anyone else, Holly, anyone but me, you'll do just fine.

I point the motorbike home and dial a less-than-safe speed into my wrist and let it out when the road ahead is clear of other motorists.  I only very rarely allow my self-control to translate emotions into motorised engines, as it's far too easy to lose perspective and the instinct of physics in that realm, but I bit hard and decided this was one of those times I didn't care.  The road was clear ahead of me and I plunged forward, hissing and spitting and barking at the air.  Spewing repeatedly every exact phrase that was passed between me and Holly in the parking lot.  Exploding internally with each syllable.  Why couldn't she just leave me alone.

Back in the bungalow, I get an email from Serena.  A ninety-three-year-old man writing for the New Yorker about the effects and experience of old age on his memory and his desires and his communication.  It's a perfectly told essay; I'm jealous of the style.  But I'm keenly attentive of the subject matter.  I don't know if I've mentioned to Serena how I'm wrestling on a minute-by-minute basis with death and mortality and the tick-tocking of the clock in my blood and the poisonous haunting of how little living I've done with my life, and how little desire I have to spend more, let alone libido to spend on the physical desire toward other people.  Maybe she just read it and wanted to pass it along.  But suffice to say it was timely enough, indeed.  The magnets that must have been there in my youth, they've not been there for years.  Coincidentally, and a little heartbreakingly, the last (and first?) time I remember feeling the wonderful mixture of friendship and physical companionship was actually with Serena, those days in her college land.  Everything felt natural, possible, and safe, and I knew her curiosity and her care and her kinship like I'd never known it with anyone prior.

So I read this article, where, near the end, the man talks about this taboo of older people having sex, being naked as couples, wanting physical companionship "even at that age."  He says he's sure that everyone wants that bare shoulder in the middle of the night to reach to, the patterns we create between our twin selves in relationships, we yearn for them, at every age.  He quoted Lawrence Olivier, somewhere in an interview, saying, "Inside, we're all seventeen, with red lips."  I thought of Holly again, her warm smile in the parking lot light, the shape of her dress as she leaned on her bike, how bitterly pleased I was to disappoint her.  I felt ashamed, and keenly lost.  I read these words, knowing the thoughts of lust, but not the natural desire, not the perfectly sensible animal kingdom desire to be close to and touch another person, or be touched.  I read this wonderfully vibrant ancient man's wisdom about how we all want that connection, all the time.  And it stung to think: I'm sorry Holly, to be so glad to let you down.  And it stung to think: we all want that connection, yes, but not me; I can't find it in me in a way that makes sense.  I only want that physical connection to a horrible, murderous degree.  And even that doesn't surface but a couple times per year.  Mostly there's just this hard shell, which doesn't even feel comfortable to exist within, but feels much worse to be outside of, there in conversation, there on the line with another person's eyes and their beautiful bare skin in the soft warm light.  A residence in an underwater city, occasionally alarmed by escaping oxygen and water leaks.