Right now, looking back at the last week or so, I just want to be alone, Greta Garbo-style, with a cigarette in my hand and an arch to my eyebrow, reading Nabokov on a train heading east.

I would forget that you had believed a stranger's lies about me or that you reminded me of myself as indelibly and painfully western when you clucked, they probably don't know they're oppressed, or that you wrote you seem to be in touch with being Khmer, but . . .

I could be a better friend because everything would be simpler. I would write letters to you that I'd send off at the next town, in envelopes stuffed with leaves and poems and collages and mix tapes. I could invite you over to my coast and when you arrived, I'd take you to the neat-o places I found. I wouldn't say I'm tired when you call at night. I'd actually listen, hungry for every intimate detail of you.

How are you? Any new adventures? Tell me a story.

Tell me a story, stories of cities, lovers, ghosts, the woman you saw walking down the street the other day, in her red dress and her red heels, the one with the mysterious smile.

If we told each other stories, maybe we wouldn't get into conversations that end with denunciations, a keen mourning, the predictable announcement, You're too serious. Lighten up.

Maybe if I left, I could fool myself into thinking that being alone makes everything /friendship, love, myself, you/ less questionable. It would be simple, finally.

//

she's a joyful girl. //

Are people really this stupid?




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