cupid and psyche

once upon a time, not too long ago, i had a crush on someone that developed into an obsession of sorts and then into love. i thought about him all the time: on the subway, at work, grocery shopping. he felt likewise, i think. eventually i said i love you, though when i said it i had to take a really big breath first because i was so unaccustomed to the whole thing and nervous. another time i had to whisper it because the words felt sacred.

for me, saying i love you has never been easy. it's not that i don't feel it, just articulation has its challenges. (a moment of digression: at the end of college i actually wrote my folks a letter telling them i love them since they'd say so to me regularly on the phone and i would reply, uh huh, but not out of insolence or disaffection. it was out of some kind of paralysis. so i wrote them to tell them of feelings i could not orally voice).

it might have been a kind of love i felt for this guy. i might have been in love too with the romance of it all. like when you're high and hungry, the hunger seems like a desert you'll never escape. but in a good way. when we kissed, it made me thirsty and the only way to quench it, was to kiss even more. and i'd dream about him. and then, after we 'broke up' such as it was, since this was a somewhat clandestine and messy state of things, i'd dream about him still. and i would go to bed hoping for a dream that was like a surprise prize, because there he'd be, in my dream, saying hello, saying my name. over time, the dreams changed. they were lovely in the beginning. then they were less so. he'd be on a bus, for instance, and not see me. or with someone else, and not see me.

i haven't dreamt about him in some time. until this morning. there he was, in my dream, and we embraced and even kissed. but the kiss, just a peck, was perfunctory and full of resistance and then he told me i smelled bad. and then he went around a corner and vanished. and my sister was in the dream and she asked where he went, and i did not know. maybe he vanished, i said.

then i woke up. and it was so cool this morning that i had a blanket on. and the air is clear and pure now and it's what i call september 11 weather, which sounds cynical or crude, maybe, or disrespectful or morbid, but it's not. this kind of clear, sharp, beautiful weather that's in new york city today has such associations for me now. they're matter of fact.

later, after work, i came out of a shop where i bought a moist, ample ginger snap cause i was starving, and heard a group of about five young men and women singing, and they were singing some kind of jesus song. even before i listened for lyrics i knew they were a jesus group; nobody else sings en masse in the street. then one of them, a european, said to me as she passed by, 'jesus loves you, ma'am,' and i said, 'but i'm jewish' and she said, 'that's okay.'

to be loved is grand. i'd like it again please by someone less messianic.

but what got under my skin was the ma'am. whenever did i become one of those?