Tell me what irks me. Tell me what’s really manifesting deep down inside to make me react so violently. Tell me why I’m so cross at myself for behaving the way I did. Tell me why he reduced me to tears.
No amount of painting could stroke last Saturday afternoon from my mind, with every sweep of the brush I felt the burden of my actions weight down a little more upon my shoulders. He was engaged and that was nothing to me, he could have said he was a male prostitute in between recording and that would not have rocked the foundation I was starting to understand was our “friendship”. What really hurt were his insinuations, that one moment he could understand Saturday night and shrug his shoulders and pass it off and be fine with it in him and then the next he’s shaking like his in the midst of an anxiety attack over what others may think of Saturday night. He’d confused me and that’s the only real reason I can find 4 days later, that can explain why I ran away from him, why I shot him down in a fire of words and arguments. He’d confused me in the sense that one Saturday not too long ago he said he wanted to be seen differently for a change, understood for something more than his musical ability and his brotherly love, then this Saturday the world is supposed to be his moderator and he has to put restrictions on what he can allow himself to become in his second, creative world. I though the idea was to be free, to be different and everything that that entails. Obviously I was wrong.
Unfortunately, in my haste to get away from him and his muddled teenage stipulations of what he was allowed and not allowed to do with his creativity, I’d forgotten to hand over to him his only step into the imaginative realm with me trying to guide him to his free world. The pictures of me at the chine he’d so professionally took, so adultly focused and so ably contained himself over were still in the portfolio and now as I sit in my room, I realize that I have no place in holding onto them. He has to have something, a little memento to say he did at least try, and be one whole for a change.
Dear Taylor,
I’m sorry that I cannot be of more help to you, but I think that perhaps you realize straining for a friendship with me would be a lost cause. I know that I certainly cannot understand you, you confuse me and I don't deserve to be confused. If you can’t understand why then I shall explain.
When you said to me you wanted to know how I could live the way I do ,I was a little intrigued to know why. Your openness about how you wish you could do the same scared me. I’m not used to openness being thrown at me so freely and whilst I admired it, I also feared it. I also knew that you weren’t going to give up.
When I made the decision to stand in the chine naked and let you, photograph me I didn’t think twice. I was helping you achieve the best of yourself and I saw it as no more than that. When I sketched you in bed you were helping me achieve the best of myself, trying to capture a slice of time. When I gave you head I was helping you calm, only un-doing what I created. I knew you knew that, you even said it again last Saturday, just as with my kiss to you under the waterfall, I had no sense of knowing what I was really doing and you shrugged it off. I thought you would understand something of the kind again. Yet you didn’t . That is why dearest Taylor, a friendship is not destined on the cards for you and i. You can deny all you want, but I feel that no matter how hard you try you will always be wary of other people's perception of you. No matter how creative or imaginative or insightful you are in that field, what others think of you will still be a big concern.
I just feel that when you said you were engaged, you were telling me that my thanks was wrong and I don’t feel it was. You know the truth yet still, your bride to be would have not understood and maybe I could see why, but would you have stood there and argued your corner, stood up for your own personal belief that there was nothing behind it?
It seems so complicated. If someone really wanted to release him or herself so much and immerse themselves into an unknown world they would leave everything of the world they inhabit at the gate before entering a fresh. If you had grasped that fully from the get-go, you would have understood how I do things. How I say hello and how I say thank you, how I give and do not need to receive acts of friendship. I’m a complicated person Taylor, and I didn’t expect for one moment you’d succeed in understanding me. I commend your effort for trying though at least.
Maybe one day you will be able to free yourself from the restraints of the world and enter my free living world and meet me, be able to kiss my lips, be able to hold me in times of happiness, to sleep by my side in times of sadness and to help in whatever means possible when help is needed. Nothing is taboo if you’re free. Creativity is a world and you need it to live, I know you do so I hope you find the understanding. Look me up when you do.
Finishing my letter I flipped through the folder one last time, inspecting the perfected pictures in the splendour they deserved. Upon reaching the back I found the charcoal sketch I had done of Taylor along with the black and white glossy I had snapped of him lying in the messy bed sheets to finish the film. I stared at them long and hard, looking from the glossy to my interpretation and I felt myself feeling sad, disappointed in him for not trying harder to seek out his creative independence. Slipping them out of the plastic covers I set them down against my easel deciding that maybe I wasn’t ready to let go of my muse all in one go, not just yet for I knew that there would have been many more opportunities for musing if he only understood.
I slipped the note in the front pocket of the portfolio and sealed the envelope, writing in my scrawly script the address I hoped I had remembered correctly as I retraced my route home from his house that Sunday morning. I didn’t think I could explain myself the way I wanted to, I never really have to and very rarely want to so you could say I’m very rusty. I just hope he sees my points. If his fear provoked him to telling me he was engaged because he was worried that if I thanked him again, with a kiss or a touch I would grow more attached to him emotionally or physically, I hoped my letter set the record straight that that wasn’t the case.
Even if it did hurt to know that my curiosity of his life would never be quenched, and that I would never see sides of him that may ignite my life, enrich it and help it build up. We could have had a special friendship but it never would shine. I’d never even be given a chance to see if I could grow attached, even though deep down, I knew the likelihood would be that I wouldn’t.
But I wouldn’t stake my life on it.