Diane ~

Went to Olympia today with Bronwyn to check out the Evergreen State College. I've already applied there; I knew several months ago that I was in love with western Washington, and this was THE school in western Washington that met all my criteria. Even disregarding its location, it appealed to me above and beyond most of the other schools I looked at. The college itself is, as depicted in its brochures, beautiful: nestled in trees, as the name suggests; quiet and calm and... pulling... Every mass exerts a force of attraction on every other mass; so far as I recall, that's called gravity. At Evergreen, I could almost FEEL particles sticking to me, could almost feel them trying to join together, to form some object dense enough to bring me closer to them, to hold me... An unusual feeling, having particles communicate with oneself. Not, all things considered, an unpleasant feeling, but frustrating in a way... The way long-distance love is frustrating. I belong with you, but I just can't do it yet... Not yet... A few months left... Count the days with me...

Talked with an admissions counselor named Corey about my transcripts and what I've got to do to get myself into the school. Shouldn't be too hard; I've got a lot of planning to do, but I'm getting used to this kind of bureaucratic crap, solving problems that I've previously been too unmotivated to bother with.

More importantly than the college thing, I made peace with my friend.

Bronwyn and I are eerily alike in many ways. I'm not sure if she really sees that. I'm not sure how to tell her what I see in her, how I feel about her. As I wrote to you a couple of years ago, Bronwyn is above and beyond THE most beautiful girl-woman I've ever laid eyes upon, physically speaking. She has beautiful eyes, a little reminiscent of Jason's. She's thin and unflashy, but ultra-feminine, about my height and weight, and -- pardon me for this, but the one and only person I cannot help but imagine posing for black and white nude photographs. The sort of figure I'd probably go out of my way to peek at in a locker room. Bronwyn's is a vaguely tragic aura, but she's got guts, an extraordinarily rare combination. She's a princess who can't find the crown on her head, but who knows damn well it's around here someplace. I can see -- literally, with my eyes -- her capacity to love, and I can feel twisting knots of yearning in her, yearnings for all sorts of improvements to her world. She's got small, sweet hands, delicately shaped but probably well-used. I would like to hold one of those hands and say to her, "I think you're beautiful."

Naturally, of course, I cannot do that. I confess; even in the ultra-liberal setting of Seattle, I'm not comfortable enough with my own sexuality to discuss, face to face, an affection for a girl, no matter how platonic it may or may not be. Besides, there is a painfully closed door between Bronwyn and me. The guts that once afforded her the luxury of bolding telling her boyfriend, "look, I'm a bitch, I'm using you, and it's over between us"; the guts that once afforded ME the luxury of assuming a sexy, bitchy, Nicole Kidman-esque pose in order to throw my housemates out, are the same guts that compromise the externalizing of many things sentimental, emotional, uninhibited and honest. I think I'm maybe a little more closed-off than she is, a little more paranoid of letting myself be known... But certainly, I recognize the reluctant aloofness in her. Maybe I should have brought a bottle of Bully Hill Goat wine; THAT always seems to bring out the tidal waves of little dramatics.

But back to Olympia. We sat side by side, she eating a plate of vegetarian vomitus, I eating a plate of rolled-up carnivorous vomitus. I stared at the girl behind the counter, obliviously sweeping. She stared at the decor on the walls. This was the awkwardness of a friendship emerging from beneath the untended-for-two-years rubble of New Mexican igneous rocks. A Radioheadish tension. This was also the tension of two people trying to pretend they don't know what they have in common.

I broke the tension. Sort of. I said, "Can I ask you sort of a serious question?" I said it liltingly, the voice Ian is so irked by: "you make it seem like things don't really bother you..." But what other choice did I have? To Bronwyn's credit, she didn't cringe outwardly. I'm telling you, the girl has guts.

"Is this a really bad time for me to be here?" I asked. "I mean..." (When you end a thought with, "I mean..." there is less seriousness to the query, less harshness; the other person isn't put on the spot quite so obviously.) Bronwyn drew in a slow breath, and I knew I had to continue or risk the all-powerful demon of silence taking over the conversation. "I mean, I know you and Ian are sort of... together... or not-together... Or something... I'm not even sure what's going on, but I know there's a lot of... of tension... And I guess I just wanted to make sure I'm not making things worse?"

Her expression was almost genuine. Mine, I'm sure, was not. We didn't look at each other. She assured me that the tension was no fault of mine, that my presence in Seattle was not to blame for her and Ian's problems. And she said, "Ian told me--" (And those three words froze me; I underwent a bout of terror similar to that which I'd felt when my mom found my journal and began to confess she'd read a few pages... The WHAT DO YOU KNOW syndrome. The sickened weakness of an adrenaline overload.) "Ian told me that... stuff happened... in Binghamton..."

Walls came down. Not all of them, of course, but I could easily imagine the ceramic cow-skull on the wall of La Taqueria crumbling to the floor and smashing as a result of the seismic vibrations of relief and fear... I had nightmares about this, for gahd's sake. I'd dreamed of Bronwyn, clad in a long white gown, shooting herself in the head in a dark alley and screaming, "you killed me." I'd coated myself in invisible plaster; I'd made a point of not making eye contact with Ian when Bronwyn was in the room. I guess I hadn't really understood exactly WHY I'd allowed so much guilt to pool up on Bronwyn's behalf. It wasn't, after all, the first time I'd played the role of The Other Woman. I never cared this much about it. I NEVER felt any sympathy for the Significant Other, and the compulsion to hide had never really occurred to me, except with Bronwyn. WHY did I have this phobia of hurting her?

...Bronwyn at the Evergreen State College in Olympia...

In the midst of the confessional earthquake, the answer struck me like a brick dropping off Starbucks' corporate headquarters. Bronwyn, with her pretty green eyes and her tragic "fuck-you" style of confronting the world, is NOT the clingy, whiny, unstable bimbo that I might have secretly wished she was. She is nothing of the kind. And there we were, both dignified and a little sad, with the ghost of a tall, brown-eyed boy seated squarely between us; but neither of us loved him more than the other. There was an undeniable mutual jealousy, but no more than a drop or two of resentment. She loved him every bit as much as I, genuinely. She was not stupid, she was not ugly, she was not pitiful in any way. She was, in fact, a lot like me. In that moment, I felt I knew Bronwyn very, very well. I could so easily recall how I'd caught her, a few years back, staring at Ian with a look of longing in her eyes. I knew. I always knew. I don't know if she'd ever caught me in that silly state; I recall kind of wishing that she would, and I'd even gone so far as to ask her, "if I was to tell Ian I like him a lot, do you think he'd end up breaking my heart?" She'd said, "no, he isn't that sort of person." I'd asked, "and would it bother you? I know you're pretty close..." She'd said, "No, it wouldn't bother me. We're just good friends. I think you should go for it." I should have known better. I DID know better. And I DIDN'T go for it. I was too chickenshit. She went for it. She was the one with the guts. But once, we'd been in the same boat. We'd fallen for the same person at the same time; we'd probably both lost a good amount of brain cells and overloaded a lot of nerve endings over him. We had every reason in the world to feel competitive, but I felt a strong sense of sisterhood with Bronwyn, and there was no reason for hatred. There was room only for sympathy.

She said, "I guess... I feel a little like I've had to be in competition with you, but..."

"But I don't want that." I said, steadily, genuinely; for the first time ever, being completely open with my friend.

A brief, but infinite pause. Then I said, "I've felt the same way about you. A lot. But I don't want to compete. And I don't want you to feel that way about me. There's no reason for that." We smiled at each other. We smiled to ourselves. The conversation was over, and we could return to our taco-things and small talk. I can't speak for her thoughts, but I know that as I sipped my soda and picked at some beans, I was thinking of Ian, was reliving the intensity of our nervous first kiss. I was trying to recall his expression as I drunkenly told him, at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers, that I loved him. I was hearing my This Mortal Coil CD playing as I'd fallen asleep with my arms around him. I was trying to psychically give all of this to Bronwyn, some form of explanation, a sort of proof that I'd never wanted to hurt her, that I'd simply been overwhelmed by the intensity of the sweet boy who'd been marinating in my thoughts for so long...

I don't want you to feel that way about me... I didn't, I honestly didn't. That wasn't bull. I didn't want Bronwyn to feel threatened. I didn't want to feel threatened. I wanted to start over, just the two of us, no boys involved, and see if we couldn't make some sort of nice little friendship. But then again... there was a tiny little twinge of glee: you were jealous of ME? Bronwyn: the pretty one, the educated one, the sociable one, the one with the guts... She thought she needed to compete with ME? It was touching. Baffling, but touching.

We drove back to Seattle in relative silence, except for Björk on the CD-player. I first discovered Björk around the time I met Ian and Bronwyn. We both sang aloud, she a little louder than me. I wish I want to stay here. I wish this be enough. I wish I only loved you. I wish simplicity. Used to play that song on repeat at college. I was absolutely convinced that Björk was my guardian angel or something. Unaware that everybody ELSE thought the same thing, of course... Did Bronwyn ever pass my room while I had Björk on, while Björk and I were sharing an intimate moment of drums and lust and wishing we had guts?

I wish I'd only look, and didn't have to touch... I wish I'd only smell this, and didn't have to taste... How can I ignore? This is sex without touching. I'm going to explore. I'm only into this to enjoy... Oh, Bronwyn, if only I could possibly tell you everything that's been on my mind for the past three years... Not just the thoughts, but the emotions... If only I could explain everything to you, if only I could stop using the word "drama" and actually SHOW it to you... One more horrendous habit I picked up from Jason: never show the effect of the drama, never really explain it, just announce that it's there, and everything will be fine. While Björk is wishing for simplicity, I'm wishing I could tell you that I consider you one of the best girl-friends I've ever had in my whole life. Simplicity, indeed.

Wine without guilt.

Am writing this outside, by moonlight, accompanied by a Jones Green Apple Soda. Am very tired. More later.