Well, I’d been living in a world in which almost every lover I imagined was blond, and, indeed, that seemed to be what I wanted, but Anna’s resurgence—her dark hair and eyes, provided some contrast, and got me to thinking that, after spending x amount of time with x amount of blonds, i might find that darker hair and or a darker complexion were, as it had seemed when I was focused, mostly, on Anna, actually on the table. So i backed off a little bit from this assumption that, although, in general, i seemed to favor blonds, i might necessarily be meant for a blond—when, in fact, i just haven’t met someone that would prove me wrong. I think the point, ultimately, wasn’t whether or not you were blond with blue eyes—indeed, i believed that, in heaven, we, from time to time, could change some things about the way we looked, possibly even permanently, although, once in heaven, I’m not sure i understand why we’d want to—but the point, i think, was that we could understand each other. That for me, might’ve meant that my lover was not entirely straight and or monogamous, but it didn’t necessarily mean that. It could just mean that she understood that about me—and or I understood that, or not that, about her.
But i’d gotten a little out of practice, as i mentioned earlier, when it came to projecting Ursula’s voice, which, if you’ve forgotten, was Anna’s voice, although, again, Ursula very likely wasn’t Anna—that was just the voice I assigned. It was a little difficult now to stay tuned—i kept slipping into the voice of my internal narrator; i was having to make much more of a conscious effort to project her voice. And what did you want to talk about? So, she was still with me, that was reassuring. But I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted was to have sex again—even though i knew I wasn’t capable of that, at least not right now. But that was what I wanted. I didn’t necessarily want to talk. But maybe I’m just saying that because I’m frustrated, because my faith, for whatever reasons, might’ve temporarily waned a little. Of course I wanted to talk to Ursula. But that wasn’t necessarily the main thing I wanted, at least right now. Perhaps this was one reason it was so difficult to project her voice—and perhaps, i don’t know, but perhaps she felt the same way. We don’t necessarily have to be talking to be with each other—we can also be in each other’s company simply by sharing a compatible frequency. She can still be with me even if I am not projecting her voice—but I wanted to project her voice. I protest—I wanted that level of intimacy, at least to a degree.
It was refreshing to read what i’d written in the novel preceding this one—in the Ursula series I’ve decided to pursue—as I revised it, and discover that, in fact, it didn’t seem like nonsense. It seemed like something that someone like me would want to read. But that was the crux of the biscuit, wasn’t it? There weren’t a lot of people like me, not really—and yet, maybe that was ok. Maybe there were people out there that would be like me, if, that is, they had some guidance, or the right nourishment. I wanted to reach people like that. But reading my work, and getting something out of it, required a leap of faith of sorts—you kind of had to believe in me and what i was trying to do. If you didn’t, then you might find yourself reading something that you could only deem had been written by the average, lonely person with a mental illness that just happened to have a hobby. That just happened to write in a journal—no matter how imaginative that journal might be. It could remain, for the nonbeliever, a mere journal—something of no interest to anyone after it was written.
But it wasn’t nonsense, like i said. It, for what it was, a psychologically complex work of imaginative fiction, written, in large part, like a memoir, wasn’t that bad. I could imagine that, if people did give me the benefit of the doubt, then they might like it. I could imagine that it would live on after I was dead—if only briefly, before doubt, and the odds, reshaped this notion of reality into something more sobering, something that hung in the balance. Something that, nonetheless, wasn’t all bad, because it kept me from getting comfortable, or being out of touch; it kept me writing things that have to do with an imperfect existence, one that, as with most people, doesn’t necessarily end happily, or, if it does, it does so in a way that we didn’t imagine, a way that has nothing to do with people necessarily looking up to you, or knowing who you are, beyond the day to day experience of the life you live, in the end, at the end.
You want me, or you don’t. There, i clearly heard Ursula’s voice, then—and, as i imagined, there seemed to be some tension there. On the other hand, instead of expressing frustration, she might’ve simply been trying to simplify the things that were going through my mind, about, for example, whether she was blond, or a little bisexual, or whether, she, if she wasn’t, could truly understand me. Or whether I, on the other hand, could truly understand her. That seemed to be what she was actually driving at—that you don’t necessarily think about whether or not you can understand each other—you simply find yourself attracted to another person based on love—something that can’t be pinned down, isolated, of completely defined. You didn’t imagine that you had a type, and choose to love that type, for example. Instead you love what you love—and the notion that you have a type is irrelevant, something that merely serves, in the end, to be disproved by the singular choice you make when you pick one and only one person.