crow's feet

I look tired to myself tonight. Eight hours of sweat and cigarette smoke and the paint and powder seems to exagerate the lines on my face more than it disguises them. I made good money tonight, the lion's share from a breeder of show-horses with whom I had the same two-minute conversation -- "You're beautiful." Thank you. "I could make you happy." I bet you could. "I love you." Oh, silly you. -- over and over for three hours. Then he tried to gyp me out of money, but in the end I won.

People throw the word love around in a strip club like it's nothing. They trip you with it like a wire, slap you with it like an open palm, wheedle you with it, like it's candy. If it were my world, you would have to pay a dollar every time you said it. Then maybe people would fucking think.

I just get tired of it is all. I get tired of being on the receiving end of so much emotion, of being blamed for feelings that no one can fix. But it's my job and it's what I signed up for, and so be it. I just get tired of it is all.

I come home through the rain and my love has cleaned the kitchen. He waits for me asleep in the big bed in the room with the bay window. He is my heart. I think he will still find me beautiful when my face is full of lines and my bones are melting away. I think so.

Pam pointed out to me that I dropped the f-word a few entries back without warning or explanation. So yes, C. and I are affianced as of a week or so ago. Or, as I prefer to say, afinanced. It's not a hard decision. I wake up in the morning and see his face on the pillow next to mine and feel giddy. I can't imagine anyone I'd rather have coffee with every morning for the next sixty years. He's such good company. We're still impressed by each other, amused by each other, in awe of each other, even. It's nice.

Still. I spend four nights a week talking to lonely men, the vast majority of whom are at least once divorced. It could make you cynical. Or, at the very least, wary. But the canary in my heart beats its wings. C. and I are different. We will always be different. We will always be in love. I will always want to fuck him. He will always hold me after.

We will. I will. He will. Right?

Sometimes I'm afraid all the love will just get up and walk out one day and there'll be nothing either of us can do about it. I had a dream once that I was standing on a dock and C. was in a dingy and didn't seem to notice that he was slowly drifting away. It was one of those dreams where you need to scream, but can't. How is that people let love go?

I remind myself often how much I love him, how lucky I am. I try to do it every day, like brushing my teeth. I am not good at remembering things, but I hope I will remember. As far as I know, that's the best I can do.