Journal entry from Paris, 4/18/25
I began to wonder what he remembers about me. Of course there’s all the things I remember about him, and long have — the bouncy curl of his hair, the sudden, almost violent protrusion of his hipbone extending sidelong out of his pelvis while he lay — but what does he remember of me?
I remember him saying something about my eyes - maybe once, maybe several times. “Your eyes,” I can recall him saying. I once looked at some Reddit page that was all selfies of people with the same Myers-Briggs type as me, or Human Design type, I forget. I was struck by the intensity of all of our gazes - our eyes - and the frequency with which green eyes appeared, otherwise the rarest (statistically speaking) color eyes to have.
I’ve run the bath too hot again and am boiling. My sweat begins to merge with the water until inner and outer worlds of moisture form one. I run some cold water.
I would guess that he remembers the way I’d lose myself in music, eyes closed, body swaying, slight smile on my face. This, this sight that moved him to tears while driving the frozen snowfields from Dubuque to Earlville with Jamie xx on the stereo. He cried while we were in Dubuque, too, though I didn’t understand why at the time. I’m not sure I understand now either, but guess it had something to do with the falling evening light and the falling evening snow and his perhaps preternatural understanding that all of this, somehow, would soon be over, or couldn’t last. Whether that was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, or fatalism, or a kind of clear-sighted apprehension of reality I also do not know. But on some level he knew he could not hold this - or that at the least, it was all very moving.
And me? Does he remember the gentle bob of my hair? The way I’d flat-iron the ever-loving daylights out of it, so it became void of any wave or curve and smooth as a kind of silken blanket? Does he remember the two moles over my top lip, or the larger one just offset past the tip of my left nostril? The scar on my back, as he made love to me from behind?
Does he recall my laugh? The deep belly one, when I’m really tickled or amused? The way in Austria I’d order every cappuccino “mit Hafermilch” — with oat milk? The gentle white crust of ketamine that so often adorned one nostril or the other? The way I’d notice something I really liked and say, “That’s tight.”
When someone thinks of me, what do they think of?
I doubt they think of how many likes a post of mine got, or how many followers I have, or which designer I was wearing (unless, perhaps, it was a really fabulous outfit - one that I exuded a kind of beauty and ease within, and which was therefore a kind of extension or amplification of my own essence). No, I’d guess people think of how I held their gaze when they told me their awful secret, how I didn’t look away. Maybe they recall how I served them fresh strawberries off one of my Jewish grandmother’s hand-painted plates, whether their words or their energy had implied that they were perhaps feeling a bit peckish, or how delicately I put down my cats after every time I pick one of them up.
Erik Satie’s music comes wafting in now from the other room, unexpectedly. I recall lying in a different bathtub in Paris - just as I am now - in October 2021, just one or two weeks before I met him. I was lovesick then over someone else with the same name and unawarely beginning to grieve the loss of a mentor and guide, and I listened to all of the Gymnopédies while soaking with candles lit around me. That was in the evening. Now it is a cold April morning, now I have a cup of coffee in my hand, now the day awaits me and I saw already with my own eyes that this one promises a clear blue sky. I sometimes forget you are allowed to take a bath even in morning.