Then I remembered my Charlemagne . . .

Very revealing

Ricky,
Reading your last post, I suddenly had this vision of you in high school watching the Red Shoe Diaries in some kid's basement. It wasn't pretty.

posted by Old Librarian @ 8:28 PM Comments: 2

The Red Cleat Diaries

This blog is many things. A repository of humorous internet detritus. A series of reflections upon man, love, and valentine's day. A mirror for shameless displays of pride in one's own cover band. And now it is one more thing: an anonymous confessional for former lovers of one of the world's great ultimate players. Let's call it: the Red Cleat Diaries.

Name: Ana (changed to protect identity)

My name is Ana. And I have a confession to make. I once loved, and was loved by, one of the world's great ultimate players. I can't bear to say his name, because the very sound sunders apart the fragile unity of my heart, which I have spent so many years piecing back together. And yet he who cannot be named or defended by just one defender is on my mind, always. Could I forget that hair, flaring madly backwards after his speed, chasing after that disc...just as he once chased after me? When a woman feels herself to be the object of such intense focus, such masculine, animal desire, she can never forget it. And so I must confess it all if I wish to live with any hope of peace.

Peace. That is what he loved. He loved simplicity because he loved peace. LIVE LOVE LAUGH; that was his motto. And he lived by it. He was so spontaneous, always in the moment. Once, in the spring, we walked down the street, under trees just beginning to bloom. He was pensive, and I thought distracted, which wasn't like him, until suddenly, with feline grace, he lept 43 inches vertically and took a blossom off one of the highest tree branches. "Here," he said, "i want you to have this; it reminded me of you." So typical. He was a romantic soul. And he never capitalized his first person pronouns, even when speaking. So humble...

One game he liked to play involved standing off a bit and throwing the disc, like in a normal warm-up. But after each toss he'd move closer, and closer, and closer. Till at last he'd be right next to me, and he'd say, "when a disc dreams it dreams it is kissing you" and then he'd lean in and kiss me, slowly, and deeply, like a youth drinking his first frisbee full of Rolling Rock. And he wouldn't take his lips off until he was good and done.

I thought what we had would always grow, into an endless future, a forever spring. Life was so full then: tournaments, practices, team dinners, and watching all three Star Wars movies-he'd say there are only three- back to back to back. During his weekly shower he'd sing all his favorite songs by Jethro Tull, and pretend that the shampoo bottle was his flute. God, I loved him. And yet I always knew when I held him that I was really keeping him back; there was a voice inside me that said, "you can't hold the handler." In our most intimate moments I felt a nervous anxiety like he was going to call me for a foul, like I would have to give up the disc and that would be the game. Love I had; security in that love was never mine.

Time passed and in time what we had did too. He stopped coming to my room at odd hours, and then stopped coming around at all. 'i have worlds coming up' he said. 'i've got to train.' But I knew that was a lie. Men must train; gods do not. I'd see him with other women, playing with some the very same game of toss and kiss he'd once played with me. Words never said what I knew was true: our love had passed from his heart, even as it still burned alive in mine. I grew jealous of the other women, jealous of them, jealous too of the discs that he hunted down with such passion and fire: they all had now what once I did and what I hungered for still. His coolness made me hotter, until at last I was consumed with desire for the one I could never catch; could I give up this chase? Could I lay out and risk losing my very self?

After years, I made a decision. I was getting older, and he seemed never to age. He'd loved dozens of beautiful women even as I remained faithful to his image. I could not not love him, and so I resolved, even without hope, that I would still love him, and forever, in the depths of my heart. Other men I would see and associate with on the outside, but inside, down inside, there I would be. Like a frisbee field without a game, I would wait in silence. And from there I write to you, Red Cleat Diaries. I am haunted by the discs of my past.

Labels: bela fleck and the flecktones, elegy, sausages

posted by The Marx Brothers @ 12:50 AM Comments: 0