Love Letters from the Gutter

The Pink Collection #3 - Rue Lafontaine

My Dear Lost Button,

I'm becoming impatient. I've been here loitering up and down Rue Lafontaine since before first light. I woke at just gone 3am with the terrifying thought of you leaving a reply and the street cleaners hosing it down the drain before I ever had chance of seeing it. That's how fragile this world is that I cling to. I've crawlen so near to the edge that the slightest thing may finally serve to put my balance on the wrong side. It's frightening. It reminds me of the time I stood watching a father and his two children having a picnic on the steps leading down to the river. The river was at full tide and slapped up to the step one below them. The youngest child, just a baby, was looking at the water when a polystyrene cup floated by. It stretched out to grab the cup and just rolled over, headfirst like babies do, into the deep murky water. The father saw it at the same moment I did, but could do nothing. There wasn't even anything for him to reach out and try to grab a hold of – his baby was gone, sucked down and rushed away by dark, dangerous currents which never give much back. Can you imagine that? Well, I'm that baby reaching out!

God, now I'm just writing any old crap, probably trying to impress you in some way with my sensibilities towards the suffering of others... tell you in one letter what I couldn't show you in two months. Though the real truth is more likely that I only care about others suffering now that it's happening to me. Finally I can understand and cry the same selfish tears as my close evolutionary cousin 'homo-fucked-up-sapien'! Shit, maybe I shouldn't have written that??? Maybe I shouldn't have written any of this!

Oh well. Damage done. No quick select and cut when you're writing by hand. No spellcheck either. It's either balling up paper all day long, scratching out words and scribbling away until your handwriting looks like a drunk's stagger or you have to hand yourself in: faults an' all. I've gone for the truth... or as near as I can get to the truth without it looking too bad.

Anyway, back to the street cleaners. They didn't hose your letter away. Firstly because there was no letter to hose away, and secondly because each street is only cleaned twice weekly and today wasn't Rue Lafontaine's turn. Still, I reckon I'd be doing well to find out more about this rota, just to ensure I set my broken heart down around their disinfectant spray and not in it.

Oh Button, Button, Button, Button, Button... won't you give me a sign? Even if it's just to tell me to “fuck off!” I could handle that. I could somehow lay it at the feet of the french and go home never to return to these cursed shores again. It's the not knowing which is the killer. Not knowing if you are fleeing me or seriously having some alone time to figure if US is what you want. Of course I know it's not the latter, I know. Not one thing points to that. By the time you had even considered booking a ticket to this place I was already a dead duck, the bullet just hadn't hit yet. Was I really such an impossible lover that you couldn't tell me? Were my tears really so intimidating? I know they were torrential and came out as a bit of a flash flood, but there were 28 years worth, and they had to be cried at sometime... to someone. If I'd have known they'd have flushed you out to sea I would have held back and cried them through the night.

Well...

I've just gotten through reading back what there is of this letter and it's a sorry-ass-piece of self-centered trash! No wonder you wanted water between us. Jesus, there's so many things I want to ask you, simple things, like: “how are you?” “Will you return to study at the end of summer?” “Did you think any more about your plans to travel Europe?”(stupid fucking question that is seeing's how you're already here!) So it's not I don't have things to ask, I do... lots, it's just that anything I ask even a mite above general chit chat you'll interpret as being too pressing or asked with ulterior motives in mind. So I don't ask questions. I just leave letters around - stupid, fucking, hopeless letters...

Button, the day is up proper and so I guess it's time to leave. But it's so hard. I feel I could write away to you all day, tell you magical things of skies and breezes and insects and skin and lazing around with nothing but love to waste our time on. I could tell you how sometimes I get caught up in thoughts of you and forget to blink and then I'm crying. I could tell you how if I close my eyes I can see orange and feel you besides me and how at such times I could just fall backwards and float away to another heaven. I could remind you of the first week we spent together and how you told me not to trust you, that you was a bad one, and when I said I didn't care and that I do trust you and we'd be like no others, how you broke down and the night fell with us in a frenzy of tears and ecstasy and wide saucer eyes full of orgasm and madness. I could tell you how when you left so hastily the city lost her stomach and beautiful memories then hurt my head and I saw ghosts of us running for buses, holding hands and jumping over garbage bags... your red summer dress in a twirl and london dirty upon bare feet. Oh, and how desperately I needed to contact you!!! But how??? How I staggered around with my palms upturned, showing the world the thin skin on my wrists which protected vital arteries, and how I wanted just one person to see my pain and somehow help. I could tell you all these things and more, but they'd surely only push you further away. It was that smothering which made you crave room in the first place. My uncontrollable need to be around you, to constantly need proof of your feelings... to give you proof of mine. God, no wonder you left! And now I'm saying I'm a changed man, then realize I'm writing you this letter sitting in the street, in a foreign country, ready to drop it in the gutter and insanely think you may somehow find it and reply! Hahaha... even I can see the craziness in that.

It won't stop me though... logic can go fuck itself. This is love and there's nothing logical about that. And so with everything from The Laws of Possibility to the City's street cleaners against me, I drop this letter and make a wish: Rue de l'Espoir... I wish to meet you there.... X