LETTER ONE: objective critique from a stranger

I just read all I could of Commonplace (I guess since about last March). I don't know if you are still looking for feedback, but here are a couple of thoughts. I don't think you need to apologize for the site, nor should you deprecate yourself. Anybody reading the apology clearly *is* interested, so the apology just gets in the way of the narrative.

That being said, what I like about the site is the way you are honest about being confused, wounded, nervous, injured (but also excited, interested, thoughtful, and thought-filled). I know people claim that you are being self-indulgent, but I think there are a huge number of people in the world who feel damaged, who can identify with your voice. What kept my attention as I spent the past couple of hours reading (I found out about you from openletters), was learning about the different ways you were dealing with those problems. I loved Vice-Boyfriends -- all the ambiguity and bittersweet excitement of your drawing. One common theme that really resonates is the way that art, especially writing, can be a healing act. I would suggest that you give more balance to the different kinds of relationships that you have. I can identify with romantic obsession, but I think one of the most interesting people you talk about is Karolina. I want to hear more about your housemates, your bosses, your band. How you feel about them. Why did your boss at the paper chew you out? How did you react? Obviously, you have to make your own decisions about your own and other people's privacy. But as a general rule, I think your writing is strongest when you are being extremely specific about how you feel about a particular person. It takes a certain kind of bravery to provide random people with that kind of map. Thank you.

LETTER TWO: to trap you in my defense

I realize that that's how I write. But it's not what's in my heart. I think you know that. When I stop to think about you I miss you like a motherfucker where it hurts so fucking bad. If there is some superficial edge to my thinking in regards to love it's because I met you and everything else seems a lot like bullshit. Or theatre. It comes into my head real. It swims around in there real. And I spit it back out into the keyboard like a cartoon. All that other shit is just stuff that's interesting. Not necessarily meaningful. You were my one real thing. Believe it or not.

LETTER THREE: real love from farther away

I miss you so much too. Often I try to think of ways to make it happen that we are in the same place. For example telling you to come down here and getting a job in my place of work, living in my hostel. I think I will explore Argentina, Chile, and definitely get lost in Brazil maybe for new years eve because they have this all night ceremony worshipping the water goddess and everyone goes out on boats and lights candles and the entire bay is covered with candlelight and magical music and dance. I will come back and work till July, or that is the plan. Itīs all crazy and irresolute, I have no real plans or directions, I am embracing the Sufi way.

I left him, broke it off. Strangely, I didn't feel anything at all, not even pain as he cried. I think I suffered so much that I got to the bottom of the well and found out that my heart ran dry. Itīs the most bizarre thing. I feel friendship and appreciation and that's it.

I slept with someone else, another cat like myself, and he makes me laugh. I really like him and heīs an American, can't believe it. I think this is the first guy you would like and get along with.

get this.

This weekend we went to a polo match, it was fantastic, we got drunk as shit in the hot sun , I walked around with my big black hat and sunglasses like some rich cunt and played with the horses, got robbed in the bathroom, and we tried to run away after charging up a $50 bill with alcohol, they caught us, because I was too drunk to even try to escape, but had no money because I got robbed, and all I could really do was laugh my ass off nonstop, I can't even remember everything, I was feeding the cab driver chips, then I was at some other bar, stole a bunch of flowers, hung out with a homeless man and his retarded son and did magic tricks on the street, tried to steal their pet bunny then tried to steal this cool black cat and argued that the cat wanted to steal me, in my broken Spanish. And the fun continued, Darrinīs ex-girlfriend (Darrin is the guy I like) bit Darrin on the shoulder so hard that he started bleeding, I was too smashed to be aware. But things are ok now, cooler and calmer, the term for that is tranquilo.

i miss you a lot.
i never told you, i donīt think..
but you were a great kisser, really-i enjoyed it.
youīre a soft person.
for now,

LETTER FOUR: subjective critique

There was a lot I didn't say in my sensible RIDLIN daze the other evening. One being: it was great to hear your voice. Sometimes I miss it terribly._

The rest isn't as positive. I want to frame the situation so you know who you're talking to when we talk.

You left the country after all our traumatic romance. Flew away. While you were away, I told you I needed to avoid talking with you so I could flush things out of of my blood-pumping organ; you know the one. God it was so fucking long and hard. When you returned to America I was better. _

But then I wasn't being who you wanted me to be: too distant. And I told you that I used to be crazy and wild with you because I was head over heels and I told you I couldn't be that way anymore. And here's where I quote you again. Your answer, despite my explanation that I needed distance: "I want you to act how you used to act." Which, to me meant: "Be head over heels for me again, it's OK'. Then you dramatically unleashed the fact that you'd parted with your lover as if to sway me even though you knew how hard it had been for me to stop feeling so bad without you. What did you put me at risk again for? Do you know what could have happened to me? What was more important than my hard won peace? Attention while you was waiting to get back with him? Whatever it was, you valued it more than my piece of mind and I can't help but doubt you now._

Maybe you've been through so much hardship, and I know you have been through a lot, where you're callous. But you are callous, and truth be told, you are superficial: not much effects you in your world below the surface, things don't seem real, just dramatic. And drama is not passion. _

I don't think you've ever been in love. Because I don't think that you'd put me at risk if you'd ever felt that kind of indelible bond and knew how serious some people take it. And whether you never speak to me again for saying it: you have wronged me and your lover.

You say I 'hold onto things'. Another quote. But it's more like you say something and I just remember you saying it. Like if you say: 'meet me outside the store at 3pm' and I'm there at 3pm and you're not and later you're like, 'What? I can't believe you remember that.' I do remember what you say and I believe you. This is your problem, not mine. You told me, a long time ago, 'I love you' and I wasn't suppose to believe it? Not everyone says and does things they don't mean. It's not standard procedure. It's you. _ In your dealing with those who take you seriously, you will either always have to lie to them. Or hurt them. And if you meet someone as dispassionate as yourself, they'll say something they don't mean when you were counting on them to mean what they say. But maybe it won't hurt. Maybe it'll be easy for you to move on._

LETTER FIVE

I took RIDLIN the other night. And I probably won't take it again but it was weird because while I was on it, everything I don't like about myself went away: bitchiness, longing, melodrama. But fuck that. I'd rather just let insanity kill me than rely on a government sanctioned drugs. But the effect of the RIDLIN, the lesson, has lingered. I feel sensible and have gads of self-restraint since then. So I'm not gonna bitch at you. It feels like the RIDLIN helped me train my mind to do what's right (it was so strong, I can't believe they give that shit to little kids).

But I'm let down, I expect so much of you in terms of your reverence toward me. No matter how far we drift apart, I expect your commitment to me as I always give to you at a moment's notice regardless of circumstance. I expect and give the same to the other members of America no matter how pissy things get. And this experience with you has made me think that maybe I should let that go and that makes me really sad. I really wish that something were real and long-term. This may be melodramatic as well; but I try to always give you the truth no matter how stupid it makes me sound..

Sorry miss Jackson, ---Ed.

LETTER SIX: lactating

Dear Marcus,

I had a crazy Marcus-like adventure last night while Jennifer and I were broken up. We got back together the next day again and I feel a little guilt. But today I am revived about my relationship with Jennifer as if what happened last night cured something. Even on the car ride home from the other woman's house I had the radio up and I was excited about Jennifer and I wanted to drive to her house and sleep in her bed and wake up and talk and not fight The funny, or possibly demented thing is: along with the elation and hope on the ride home; foremost in my mind, even before the new guilt, was: I can't wait to tell Marcus! Maybe that's sick. But your stories are so great and I never have any to tell you. And now I have one. Here goes: There's been this woman I've seen every time I've been to OUR BAR in the past five months. She has the blackest hair and most perfect olive skin like Iranian or Indian or Spanish: the inverse of my ghost-white. She works across the street, I think, because she's at OUR BAR every night wearing a dress shirt like she just came from playing best-man or waiting tables. And tight black pants. Jesus. If I ever own a restaurant I'm gonna have my servers wear the same uniform. Anyway, we've communicated only in intense glances across OUR BAR but we haven't talked. One night, we even ended up smoking pot together in a circle of people, two feet apart, in the shadowed alley way behind OUR BAR. Even after the other smokers introduced me and Cezanne (jesus that name), we just leaned and cast shadows down the wall together in silence. The voices of the other smokers were in the background like her and I had our own space. We weren't using the space for anything but it was ours. It was so dark in the alley behind OUR BAR that when she'd turn from me to accept the bowl, her head would disappeared in the blackness of her hair and her black pants were gone too and there was just this wedding shirt floating in the air and I felt alone and I'd think of Jennifer. But after Cezanne passed the pipe along she'd turn back to me and bring her dark lips into a smile like, "Now, where were we?" And we continued leaning against the wall, not saying anything, in our space. Even after that night, we didn't talk for weeks. Just glances. I don't know why. But last night, after another big fight with Jennifer that ended in us breaking up again, I talked to Cezanne and at the end of a paragraph's worth of words she said, "Do you wanna go to my house?" I changed the subject but she started walking away because she could: because she knew I wanted to go and I followed thinking. 'I don't have to do anything that would make me feel guilty. Or make me literally guilty. Am I guilty?' Anyway, I followed her to her house and I wished we had driven in the same car because alone in my truck, with no stereo (the worst thing in the world) I thought about Jennifer. Cezanne lived in an amazing, run-down stucco and stone mansion on the Hillsborough River, with high high ceilings and a vast living room with no carpet, just stone floors. It was 50 degrees (which, as you know, is freezing for Florida - everyone here is freaking out about the cold) and it made her huge old house seem deader but it was still quite a gorgeous place like a decomposing photo of Florida when color photography was first invented. The house looked built for industrial use like some Florida fisherman might track the banks of the Hillsborough River through the living room and later just hose the tennis shoe prints of dried mud out the house's dozens of sliding-glass doors. She had no couch so we laid on the cold-ass stone like cave people drinking liquor and the Florida-style popcorn ceiling so far up looked like Antarctica out the window of a plane. She didn't change from her waitress gear. Just wrapped a blanket around her. I don't remember if she offered me one but if she did I said no. I wonder why? Scattered in the space of the big living room were three or four or five freestanding, framed, full length mirrors: the kinds that spin from top to bottom. On the other side of the room was a giant gold vanity area (though she doesn't wear make-up) reflecting the opposite wall like it would have in the dressing room of some 40's starlet. In the middle of her living room was a bed like an island. She said she had no roommates and I assumed her house was cold because she couldn't afford the heat bill. "I don't run it when it's just me here." She told me she'd been living with a guy. And that they she had given birth to their son several months ago. Then he moved out. She takes care of the child full-time, but he, the baby, was with his father tonight. "But I always run it when (the baby - can you believe I don't remember his name? But I do remember it was a he) is with me". Between the mirrors and the vanity and the reflective, nighttime sliding glass doors, we could see every angle of ourselves laying on the floor and it felt like we weren't alone. And when she started talking about her kid, I could tell she'd set the mirrors up for just that effect. She went on and on about amazing her child was and what it was like to be a mother and I thought 'good, nothing weird is going to happen when her kid's on her mind?' Her going on about her child made me uncomfortable as well but I felt better knowing it would keep us from doing something I might feel guilty for. But I also lost interest at that point as well. So, even though I was in bad shape to drive (I was so drunk that I was almost warm); I told her I was going and she walked me around through the maze of mirrors and rooms to the front door (I never would have found my way out alone). We hugged and she emitted a satisfied hum. I looked over her shoulder at the reflection of my arms wrapped around her waitress shirt and then through our reflections in the sliding glass doors, out onto the river, and then down at her neck and her white collar against her brown skin and I put my face there. She hummed louder and pressed her ribcage into my body hard and said, "My breasts are still really sensitive." I hugged her harder and she hummed so hard that I felt it through my chest. We moved to the bed and were kissing and she unzipped my pants and pulled them down a bit and then stood up on her knees on the bed and unzipped her pants but when I tried to take them off of her she said, 'no' and grabbed my hands and put them to her breasts hard with a purpose and I wished I had something I wanted that badly. She kept mentioning how sensitive she still was from giving birth and breast-feeding. She said it turned her on but every time she mentioned it I wanted to leave but didn't. After 15 minutes, somehow, I really don't know how, I ended up over her, masturbating, and she hadn't even touched me 'there'. We'd groped manicly everywhere else and she'd accommodated my penis joining us out in the open and taken off her bra and unbuttoned her best-man shirt to three buttons above her navel, but I have no idea how I ended up over her, aiming. So, I freaked out for a second and stopped and went back to something more traditional. We were kissing again and she kept pushing my shoulders down. I went down quickly past toward her black pants but she held the zipper together and pulled me by the hair, up to her breasts. When I moved there she said, "Look," and squeezed her brown nipple until white trickled out like the milk inside a dandelion stem when you break off the yellow flower. I didn't know what to do. Sex left me as I thought about how I don't know if I was breast or bottle fed and then wondered if this might actually be the first time I'd come close to a lactating breast. It felt like it was. Staring at the drop of milk was as jarring as the 50-degree cold of her house. I had to do something because she seemed to be expecting something, so I put my shaking finger in the white drop and dragged it up her long brown neck and clumsily moved back to her mouth, glad to be past that moment. Near the end, I was doing it myself again and she pulled me above her chest and lifted her shirt telling me to finish. As soon as I did, even though it had been what she wanted, I felt foolish, of course, and she immediately said "goodbye." Looking at the white sperm against her perfect olive skin I felt how truly drunk I really was; as if I'd forgotten. I said, 'no, no, no it's not like that, I'll stay.' She just smiled and I crawled behind her and held her, careful not to lay my arm in the mess. As we lay there in silence I started wondering: did she mean 'goodbye,' like, 'please leave now'? I couldn't ask her so I just got up. As I straightened my clothes and zipped up she stood and took off her white waitress shirt and cleaned herself with it then put on a long sleeve shirt the color of her skin and in between the two shirts was the only time I saw her full smooth torso. She was so dark and beautiful: so different looking from me that she seemed like a strange animal. She led me past the vanity through the mirrors and back to the door for the second time and I felt so sad and guilty. But the whole drive home I was thinking, "That's all I needed: to realize how weird and creepily my fantasies can unravel. I should just go back to the woman who loves me and make it work." Reading this letter back, I guess it doesn't sound as much like a Marcus adventure-story as I'd thought. Yours, Michael