a list of demands
In retrospect, our desires are always this,
but we allow a deceitful idea of love to destroy them.
Years later, if you could step back and ask for them, what might you ask for?
Would you remember how you were born to love?
Closing your eyes and imagining the dream that lies dormant, you would say:
I want someone real and true who sees the reality of truth in me.
I want someone who sees me from the inside out without damaging either.
I want someone who sees me not only with their eyes, but with conscious thought, skin, movement, and rhythm.
I want magnetism, strength, beauty, depth, and compassion.
I want a light, a darkness, and a prism of experience in between.
I want the story in your scars and the choreography of your heart.
I want to make music in those moments of silence that scream at the chaos.
I want someone to sit by me, stand by me, and run with me.
I want someone who knows when to speak and when to shut the fuck up.
I want someone who understands the value of a seed before it destroys the garden.
I want your chemistry, your miracles, your spirituality, your meditation, your depth of purpose.
I want someone who is happy to create everything with nothing.
I want the spark that ignites when you know your true self.
I want an empire architect and a dream that doesn’t sleep.
I want someone who understands this boundless intensity of love, loyalty, and dedication.
And, when we’re old:
I want to show you that infinity exists every time I look at you and fall deeper in love with you.
Every night I lie awake for hours, you are on my mind
and I used to think that I wrote this bullshit for
nobody in particular.
But I know you.
You are him.
When you move through your life feeling invisible, there’s one thing you’re desperately seeking. (No, not Susan.) What I’m talking about is soul-deep, terror-inducing, fire-breathing love.
Not to say that I’m special or anything, but I figure not everyone feels love on this level. I say that because I know not everyone feels and thinks about things as intensely as I do. I guess it’s the poet in me. (See above.) That’s just how I’ve always thought about myself, the world, and the people in it.
Does it make me crazy? You can determine that for yourself, I suppose.
This is not to be a treatise of all the people I loved; perhaps it’s more of one on the ones I didn’t. Not really.
Maybe it’s all of them and none of them at the same time. But, I think, to understand what it all means, I have to talk about Arizona.
As bad decisions go, this one was one of the worst. But, sometimes when I get an idea in my head, I simply can’t let it go. And Arizona was that fucking idea.
I left behind everything to pursue a career in film that never happened. Though I had some of the most amazing experiences and adventures, I destroyed a little piece of myself because of what I had to sacrifice to pursue it. (We’ll get into that story another time.)
The first scene takes us to a little apartment on the edge of Phoenix. There were to be four of us living there, dorm-style. Two of us shared a room (me and my roommate, Amber), and the other two had their own rooms.
Well, somebody felt a little slighted that the room Amber and I were supposed to share was bigger than hers. (Boo hoo, right?) You know how rich girls are. She was that through and through. It became a constant battle between us all that eventually led her daddy to buying her a big apartment she could have all on her own.
But, once she was gone, everything went swimmingly for a while. That was when I met Morgan (may he rest in peace) and AJ in graphic design class. I had a silly little crush on Morgan, but instead, we ended up being really good friends who shared our love for horror movies. (Plot twist: he was gay, anyway. But pay attention. This will happen again.)
AJ was crazy in all the best ways. We had tons of parties with our classmates, drank a lot, and did a lot of really stupid stuff. One of the most memorable moments I have is of him and Carlene.
(For those who don’t know, Carlene is a mannequin head.)
AJ took her everywhere. One time, we were going through the Carl’s Jr drive through late at night, and she was there. When he pulled up to the window, he put Carlene’s face up to it. I guess you had to be there.
Then, one night, after a particularly rough party, AJ had left the door unlocked when he went home in the middle of the night. He came back early the next morning to wake me up for some morbid reason. He crouched down next to my bed, put Carlene’s face up to mine, and woke me the fuck up. I had fallen asleep in a tank top, and thank god my boobs were hanging the fuck out when the happened. (Sarcasm.)
Amber and I eventually moved on from the apartment in Phoenix to a different one in Tempe that was much closer to school. Then, months later, I decided to break out completely on my own and moved into a studio apartment in Mesa.
That was when I met Andrew Norris. Well, met isn’t exactly the perfect word. We talked. And talked. And talked. I thought I had fallen in love with him, and maybe I did, but for him, I think I was just a distraction.
We never actually met in person because he secretly had a wife and a child that he never told me about. But, man, I let myself fall deeply for the image he sent out in the world to me.
I was so devastated when all that fell apart because he introduced such a wild, intense, and heartbreaking version of love to me. The feelings that ran through me then had never existed for me before. And it completely crushed me when I found out it wasn’t real.
Maybe I should thank him for opening up a whole new part of myself, or maybe he was just a dirtbag who got bored one day. It doesn’t matter. He was simply a blip on my timeline.
I don’t think about him anymore, so it’s not like that. Actually, until I wrote about him here, I hadn’t thought about him in years. Funny how those things pop up in your mind.
The next little bad decision was a dude who called himself 13. Yep. How douchey, huh? He was this goth dude who was getting kicked out of his home in Tennessee and needed a place to go. (Thank Vampire Freaks for that one.)
I invited him to stay with me for a while, and it was the beginning of the end, pretty much. Despite his dirt-baggy-ness, I convinced myself I wanted to be with him. I didn’t think I was in love, mind you, so at least I wasn’t completely fucking stupid there.
But you know me. I always try to see the best in people. He used me for a place to stay, and he eventually invited some friends into our apartment who stole a bunch of shit from me to buy drugs.
And, not long before that, I had met Alex in one of my film classes. (This all mixes together, so I promise this isn’t a loss-of-focus thing.)
Alex. Man, there was never anybody (or ever will be) like Alex. He was the best friend I had there in Arizona, and like all stupid girls do, I fell in love with him. (Remember that plot twist? Yeah, he was gay too.)
We literally spent all our waking moments together. We wrote poetry. We wrote movies. We rode around singing Björk at the top of our lungs. We went to Sedona and had the most magical yet platonic time together.
I mean, I’ll never forget sitting on top of that hill by the Sedona Airport and lying around while Fenix played the harp. Just one of those moments.
Alex and I had something very interesting in common: our friendship was built on the ways we needed to escape from our horrendous roommates. Mine being 13, and his being this crazy dude who talked about doing the dishes with a pimple-covered dick and walked around the porn shop asking where the paraplegic porn was.
Our friendship was short, sweet, and heartbreaking. When everything fell apart because of 13, I had to come to the realization that maybe my time there was done. On top of that, I didn’t have any fight left in me to stay because my unrequited love for Alex broke my heart.
There was to be one last hurrah before I went back to Oklahoma. And the only way I can describe it is with a picture:
For context: the hole in the wall was the size of 13’s boot. And the solution, thanks to Justin, was the literal writing on the wall.
And that wasn’t it either.
Morgan returned to Arizona to make a horror short with me. We’d plastered fake, sticky blood all over my apartment walls, wrote out 666, etc. Boy, was that ever a fun clean-up. I think I had kept all that on the walls for several days before I had to move back home.
Arizona has become part of my deep, sentimental lore that put so many different shades of love, obsession, and lust in my heart. It showed me too many things I wanted and nothing at all that I needed. It became a stepping stone to grand gestures and a movie-size philosophy that I still hope will work out to this day.
I did and felt a lot of things I shouldn’t have, but it shaped me in ways I don’t want to forget. It built a version of love inside me that I know exists out there somewhere. I know that because I’ve experienced it on a real level, and I still do.
My heart is vast, deep, fierce, and powerful, and I hope you get to experience that feeling for yourself.
Also:
I named my youngest Alexz, and that holds a super-deep meaning for me.
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