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- Nov 22, 2025
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They asked me if that happens to me a lot, coincidences like that. I said yes, it did, they said me too. I made sure not to talk about all the semen and testicle damage. They made no mention of it either.
But, they did say that Set had been demonized and worshipped at different times, there was a cult of Set even, even nowadays, an artist by the name of Zeena or something, they said, and there's even a revival recently of Egyptian pagan ideas into a new type of postmodern synthesis or whatever, some of them are even monotheistic. When Set said monotheistic, I wondered if they were polyamorous or monogamous, I also wondered if I was only thinking that because they're queer and queer people are often poly.
Then they asked if we could smoke inside.
I asked cigarettes?
But they replied no, weed.
Yes, we can. Then we lit one up. I hadn't smoked weed in a very long time, so I got extremely high. They started talking about that author they ranted about the other day... K., they just continued to analyze the first trilogy even though (and they mentioned this over and over) K. had written so, so much more. It was practically endless, it being K.'s body of work, it was almost as endless as the time felt as they were monologuing about K. I was so nervous and I asked them if they wanted to kiss me (partially to shut them up and because I had lost track of what they were pontificating about long ago) and they said yes and then they kissed me and I was so overwhelmed and their lips are so soft and their tongue is so warm and oh my god I want to kiss them again.
After we made out we joked about epistemology. We listened to The Magnetic Fields on my record player. They had never heard them, I played 69 Love Songs. Then at about 2am we went out to smoke their cigarettes. They talked to me about Brian Eno. I hadn't heard his music but I knew the name, vaguely. Apparently he made ambient music, and apparently he made-made ambient music, as in pioneered the genre. I thought about what it was to pioneer a genre. After that they left.
I was so over excited that I knew I wouldn't sleep for a while. I wrote in my diary, and I wrote a poem. It interspliced some of the first things I remember us talking about with some of the stuff we talked about today, as well as interludes to nature, I compared their eyes to the moon, and their soul to the stars. The poem ended with a rhyming couplet. I smoked the cigarette that they had left me out my window and wrote two haikus about the smoke leaving, wisping away but I was really talking about them. I masturbated and then fell asleep without brushing my teeth.
~*~
When I woke up I felt shame. Like the first time I had sex. I know it's wrong to feel, or at least that I don't have to feel shame. I understand it's something programmed in me. But, I still feel shame.
I'm also worried they don't like me. That it was some kind of trick, or prank. And furthermore, I don't want to end up in one of their novels. I don't want to become some cliche character.
Maybe I should just cut communications. I'm not really ready to love someone right now. What is love anyway, because I'm beginning to think it's some concept made up to sell more novels! Or perhaps love sells more poems, I'm not sure on the analytics. I think Bolaño says something like that, something like: Oh, that's just crazy talk, you've gone insane from all those science fiction novels you read. But, for me, it's all the romance stories I read online, some even quite erotic. I think Unamuno says something about reading romance novels, but I could be wrong, I could be wrong about anything I've said thus far. And more presciently, I could be wrong about Set, or how they make me feel, or how I feel about them, or about the existence of the world in general. There are many things I'm unsure of, so it seems the best course of action would be to cut communication.
I don't want to get too attached either. Because surely Set is going to run off sometime, probably soon. Because all poets do, although I guess they're a novelist, or they seem to be working on a novel right now, but they do seem to read an awful lot of poetry. A poet in spirit at least. Bolaño ran off, maybe that's why I recommended him to Set, I think Rimbaud did too. I learned that from Bolaño. I think I love him so much because he started my education in literature. While reading one of his novels, he also mentions a full reading list of books. It was like finding the syllabus, a convenient direction of books to read. I recently picked up Lautréamont's Maldoror (a combined edition with Poems as well) because of Bolaño. He's also the reason I learned of Archilochus, who I now love and defend with a passion that I've yet to acquire for any of the French poets, who Bolaño references often.
I also woke up with the desire for a cigarette, or the desire for nicotine. But, I settled for coffee and a bean and cheese burrito.
I don't know what to do, I want to be brave. But, Bolaño says poetry is braver than anyone, but I say that poetry is prayer for anyone. So I'll read, I have the day off after all. Maybe, I'll even write something.
~*~
I had the most novelesque day today. It started out normal. I had breakfast, read on the bus, got to work. Work was boring, Set didn't come, so I wouldn't have to explain to them that I no longer wanted to continue a romantic relationship.
But, a woman came in, heels and a dress that looked more suited to a club than a bookstore. But, utterly gorgeous, I practically stared at her the whole time she was in the store. She definitely noticed. She came over to me and asked for recommendations of female authors, especially LGBTQ+ stories, I thought she might've been hitting on me. I blushed. I directed her towards the LGBTQ+ section, which was extremely small. I was embarrassed because, honestly, I didn't know that many lesbian authors, especially novelists. I recommended Audre Lorde and Gertrude Stein because they were my favorites. She bought both (Collective Poems and Selected Writings respectively), as well as three novels by authors I had never read.
When I rang her up she paid with a hundred dollar bill, and she chatted with me for a while longer. She complimented my hair, and then asked how long I had been working here, and then asked me when I got off.
I told her and she asked if I wanted to get drinks or dinner or do something after and my heart simply beat out of my chest and I must have blushed harder than anyone has ever blushed before and I of course said yes, of course and told her I get off at 4pm.
She looked pleased, said that she would meet me here, prompt, and then left. I can't believe it's only 1pm and I can't believe that I have a date with a beautiful woman tonight. The time obviously felt like it was going slower. Slower than some animal that moves really slow, maybe a snail or a sloth or something.
When it was 3:45pm she showed up, no one was in the store, so we chatted. I forgot to mention, her name is Lydia, which is funny, I knew a Lydia and almost dated her a long time ago. I think she was into Gertrude Stein, she might have even been the one to introduce her to me. I dared not mention that though, before the first date even started. She mentioned she had read a couple poems in the Audre Lorde book, and I asked if she read in order or skipped around, and she said in order.
I told her I usually skipped around.
She mentioned she liked a specific poem quite a lot and even memorized a line to recite for me. The poem was "Bridge through My Windows." Which is a poem towards the beginning of the collection, I remembered it too, it struck me (perhaps like the lightning of Zeus). I was once told by a poet that if you like the same poem as someone else it's a sign of connection, which I guess is true, but it also seems overblown at the same time. But, anyway she quoted a line (the one she found most beautiful): "we search each other's shore for some crossing home."
It was the last line of the poem, if I recall correctly. I told her it was beautiful and that I loved that poem too. And then, it was 4 and we left in a hurry.
We went to a bar she selected. One of her favorites, she said as we walked to it, and apparently both close and cheap.
She said furthermore, the drinks are alright too. But, most importantly, it will be almost empty, and if we're lucky, completely empty.
When we got there it wasn't quite empty, but there were only two people there. Two guys, one was quite a bit larger than the other, muscular and height wise, the other looked short and very skinny. The latter looked like a tourist, the other guy looked a bit rougher. Odd pairing, but I'm sure Lydia and I looked strange as well. I wear very oversized clothes, today I'm in a matching sweatsuit (navy blue, the hoodie is a 5XL and the pants are a 2XL, even though I'm normally a size 2 or 4, although every brand is increasingly different each year) and bright yellow New Balance sneakers with a very chunky sole. And Lydia wears perhaps the opposite, a tight fitting dress that shows off her curves that are so beautiful I wish I could describe them in true poetic language, and a pair of heels higher than I've ever worn (but only about 3 inches). I ordered the cheapest beer (apparently from a local brewery), she ordered a tequila, and asked if I wanted one too, on her, I said no, I don't normally drink hard liquor and that I prefered beer, as well as wine.
She said she was a tequila girl, through and through.
She took the shot and then ordered a tequila sunrise with a double shot. My beer tasted crisp, with a brisk hoppiness. I wasn't in love with it, but it wasn't bad. However, now that I know she's paying, I was going to order the sour beer I spotted earlier on the menu.
I was so nervous, I resorted to an old method I used to use when my social anxiety was particularly bad, I found it online somewhere. It's called FORD, which stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Dreams, and those are the topics I would then ask her about and try to remember to include things about myself too. I felt like a robot, or a marionette. First I asked if she had any siblings, and she did but she didn't talk to him anymore. I asked why, but prefaced the question by telling her she didn't have to delve into it if she didn't want to.
She said she's very open and I could ask anything I wanted, and then answered the question by saying that her brother's a misogynistic puritan that only has criticism and cynicism to spit.
She also said that she hadn't talked to him since their parents died, which was 9, almost 10 years ago. I wanted to ask how old she was, but I didn't because I worried that wasn't appropriate to ask a woman, which is silly, but hey, I was very anxious. I said something that must have sounded like a Hallmark card and even said the ever-classic: "I'm sorry for your loss."
But, I didn't know what to say, and what can you even say about that.
She said it was fine, they weren't the greatest, and it had been a long time.
She said she still thought of her mother occasionally, but she barely knew her father, he was very traditional. He came home, drank his beers, brought home the money, and ignored his family.
She said her mother had been a big reader, I asked her what she read, but she didn't remember any titles, just that she usually read two books at a time, one romance novel and then a nonfiction book either on history or travel experience.
She said that they traveled a lot in her youth, until she was around 5 or 6 and her father lost most of their money to his eventual gambling addiction. I was entranced by her story, and tried to convey this to her, she seemed complimented by it, but I was worried it came off strange, coming from someone who hadn't experienced any such tragedies or I guess hardships is a better word.
I asked what she did for work next, she said she is a part-time sugar baby right now. But that she's fairly well off from a widowed husband. I was very intrigued, because in some sense it's somewhat of a trendy thought to have, with the way capitalism is at this point everyone seems to be getting into sex work. But, I wanted to hear about her experience, but she either didn't think it was interesting or didn't want to talk about it that much. I wanted to hear crazy stories, which I realize now is perhaps exoticizing or fetishizing and perhaps she didn't like that.
She said it's not very glamorous, she doesn't have sex with most of the men, unless they're extremely wealthy and pay a lot, as is the case with her current part-time client.
She said nothing more about him.
She said she actually used to get paid a lot just to send messages, emails, letters, voicemails to old and lonely men. She still did it from time to time.
She said when she was younger she worked in bars and clubs.
She then asked me what I wanted to do. I said that ideally I would want to be a writer, but no one had ever accepted one of my works for publication, and that I felt it was purely a hobby that could never lead to any sort of livelihood.
First, she made a comment about how it seemed everyone was forced to make money off their hobbies nowadays.
Then, she had words of encouragement to share with me and asked if she could read something, I told her I was too shy to share and that no one besides publishers had ever read my work.
She told me she wanted to start writing, and that she was going to self-publish.
By this point I was two sour beers in, so three total, and I was getting less and less nervous. She made a joke about sour beers tasting like pussy and I laughed so loud the whole bar (two people) stared at us. But, I didn't care, I mean who were these two guys to me anyway? And the bartender seemed like she could be a secret lesbian, and barely minded us at all. Although, I caught her staring at us a couple times before this moment. But then, as if to up the difficulty of a game, something terrible happened. Set came into the bar. But, they didn't come up to me or look at me much after the initial eye contact. They were on the opposite side of the bar, but in full view. They were reading.
Almost as if Lydia could read minds she asked if I was hungry and wanted to leave.
I said yes.
She paid the bill and tipped extremely big, which I thought was extremely sexy.
So much relief. Like raging waves on a windy day, smashing into the rocks on the shore, waves of relief. But, as we walked, and she reached for my hand, all my anxieties about Set disappeared. Her hands were so warm, so soft. I wanted to hold her hand for the rest of my life. I thought of the Beatles song.
She asked if I wanted to come back to her hotel room, we could order room service and clean out the minibar.
I accepted, which felt so natural in the moment, but retrospectively I realize is very much out of the ordinary for me. But, I felt like we were walking on air, like we were bubbles floating in the air, like we were two bubbles who had collided by chance and were now stuck together, slowly merging into one. I thought that life was a movie, a perfect movie, a storybook or fairy tale written for us and she made me feel like the main character. I had no time to ask about recreation, or dreams, but I figured it soon would all blend together. We practically skipped to her hotel (just like I skip around in poetry books), and in what felt like a lifetime and an instant; a lifelong, loving marriage and a lustful, divine one-night-stand rolled into one (like ice cream at the movie theater, vanilla and chocolate swirl). And just like that, we were there.
It was the most expensive hotel in the city, or at least I thought it was. We went in the elevator, she clicked the top floor. We walked into the penthouse suite. I was mentally dropping my jaw over and over, but she acted as if she had been born in the penthouse suite and fed with a gold or platinum spoon. She just fit. To me, she was grace, she was elegance, she was a woman in the realm of the ideal. It was hard to even describe how good I felt around her, in such a short amount of time. She made me feel accepted, valid, real, seen, powerful, worthy of love, and many more words that I can't think of right now. The room was pure decadence. It felt like I walked into a room designed by Marie Antoinette and painted by the Rococo artists.
She immediately went to the minibar, and pulled out the little bottles of hard liquor for herself. Then, she asked me if I'd like a white, a red, a rosé, or a beer (two options, a Heineken or a Sapporo).
I chose Sapporo.
She drank the tequila, of which there was only one left and then mixed the vodka with a Red Bull. We looked at the menu together.
She said she wanted to order a lot, and I must have looked thrilled. Suddenly, I had an insatiable hunger, it almost felt like lust, an infinite lust (or perhaps, a lust for the infinite). We ordered a steak, an omelette, chicken tenders, a couple orders of vegetables (asparagus, broccoli with cheese, and artichoke), a wagyu burger with curly fries, onion rings, mozzarella sticks, jalapeño poppers, all four varieties of cheesecake they offered (strawberry, oreo, chocolate, and a mixed berry) and an oreo milkshake to share.
She asked if I wanted to watch a movie or put on some music or what.
I said music would be nice, and then she flipped it to the music channels, and selected classical. Debussy played first, and then I think I recognized Mozart and Tchaikovsky later on. We talked about movies, she had seen a lot, and said that she would sometimes watch 6 movies a day, and she was not discriminating at all, she would watch anything and everything, but tried never to see the same movie twice.
She said that they all blended into one movie in her mind, with a recurring cast of characters being the most popular actors.
She said it was her dream to write a book like that one day. A book where all the characters interweave together like ingredients for a witch's potion in a big black cauldron, like a stream-of-consciousness memory. The story of a whole life, in all its idiosyncrasies. But, her real dream was to eventually have enough money to own a bar and restaurant that would hold different art-type events and would be a space for women like us, maybe even have a family whether it be by herself or with another woman, she said she'd never raise a family with a man.
I told her all of that sounded so lovely and that she could definitely have it all. I was drunk, but I think I genuinely believed it. I told her I wanted to travel my whole life. I wanted to go to every continent, and as many countries as I could.
She said she wasn't much of a traveler, she traveled through art.
I asked if she wanted to kiss me, she answered by pushing me onto my back with the force of her kiss. It eventually progressed to heavy making out and heavier petting. We were interrupted by the ring at the doorbell, luckily clothes weren't off yet. She went to the door, said something to the hotel staff, then brought back the cart with a copious amount of silver coverings over the food we would soon devour. We ate on the bed, we kissed in-between bites, sat on top of each other and grabbed any opportunity to touch the other's thighs. She had pulled my pants off for just this reason, and perhaps another. After we ate to our heart's content, she ate me out and my heart was more than content. I came harder than I ever have, and more times than I can remember. Her body was the divine incarnate, I thought she was literally Aphrodite. I felt spoiled. Afterwards we laid together, intertwined, I waxed poetic about her beauty while drinking a tiny bottle of red. I'm blushing as I think back on it, blushing too much to even continue describing it.
