#thank you school dining hall for fucking me over. do NOT eat the pork at [school]

[felidthing]

i have food poisoning💪💪✌️💯

[unspoken-realities]

Snowy nights

January 12, 2020: feeling closer to home than ever before, with only precipitation and midnight meetings with surprisingly friendly classmates.

It’s snowing outside my window. And on my window. Heavy on the slanted square pane of glass, now obscured by heavy thick white clouds. It’s cold. I can’t help but be reminded of growing up with all the snow of Calgary. The nights of snow drifting through the glow of street lights; warm illuminating cold. Soft and bright and harsh and dark but, so light, when it’s snowing at night. The snow piling up mercilessly on our roads and sidewalks and busses and school and power being interrupted. Nature, the weather, we cannot control.

The snow here, though, is different; nine hundred kilometres to the west and the stuff is a miracle (for some) and a disaster (for most) when it falls. On the mountain it has fallen almost for the past four days straight. Heavy, wet, thick, slushy, fat, soft flakes, soaking through Ugg boots and sneakers immediately. Piles into puddles and slopping onto the crest of your head from tree branches.

It interrupts the same, regardless of the location. I’m crossing my fingers that classes will be cancelled tomorrow; the same way we did when we walked in the downfall the first night it came.

The same night he taught me chess. He won. He continued (continues?) to win. He played for three or four hours, while I was holed up in my room, inadvertently reading until midnight. He messaged the group chat and I felt the spark in my chest and the anticipation and the opportunity. It conspired eventually; I found myself hastily pulling on sweatpants, sweater over pyjamas, scarf, toque, twice. The first time to announce my presence outside and to frolic alone. The second time after I concluded he would not join me and undressed in my room, only to receive a picture of the front of McCow in the snow. I met him outside. I grinned, (impish smile, thanks Dad), and my chest again was fluttery and adrenalinated, anticipatory. The night was old but the morning was young; it must’ve been already half past midnight. We walked. We started in the field and I showed him snow angels and the quiet peace of a snowfall on a mild night. Neither of us were cold, just wet after two hours of strolling. I wanted to get lost in the forest. He was afraid of bears, perhaps just for show, just for something to talk about. So I got to show off my knowledge of wildlife and hibernation, how I would protect him; we would fight if a black bear came along, but much more fiercely if it was a grizzly.

We talked. I feel like I barely knew him and yet I had touched his head and his hands and his face and neck and he had touched mine, with a razor and dull school scissors close to my neck and ears. That was the most intimate thing I’ve ever done.

I feel like I have ruined it now. Or at least, if not me, it has just been ruined. Somehow.

We barely knew each other, but sure, I had crushed on him briefly in first semester. Making him laugh was splendid and being thrust into such an ethereal situation in early hours we gelled. I learned about his civil engineer dad and his architect mom and how he wanted to have new experiences at university. He’s Persian; I tried to learn it today, that if we ever said goodnight I could impress him (make him feel more comfortable? More attracted to me?) with my translation.

Is saying goodnight to him now an if?

He’s Muslim, by birth, he said (at Scrabble at 1 am after movie night with Eli, Emma, Alex, Brooklyn). He claims not to be religious. He doesn’t eat pork and barely drinks (save for whiskey at Pasta Amore), he’s never had a girlfriend. The latter perhaps not by choice. He needed to google the definition of prudent, in the context of my description of the Catholic church’s relationship rules. He says there are similar things in the Muslim faith. I searched it up and I know, I get it, I understand. (But the Tindr girl, the hope of new experiences — one-night stands, he said — the wanting to do it, everything everything hormones and masturbating and virginity and does or did he think of me like that, when I walk past his room heading down to McCow and I grin up at the sky? Doesn’t he touch himself, he must be familiar, I don’t know how one could possibly navigate our world and not run into porn, especially as a guy…)

But yet there is something stopping him, he says. It’s not me. Let’s put a pin in it.

He avoided my texts for (PLATONIC! I PROMISE!) chemistry help; he said later that he was busy.

I’m sorry for bothering you

Not at all… he says.

He still doesn’t answer.

Victor says I should give him space; let him initiate; it will pass, soon this might not matter.

After Pasta Amore (wonderful gnocchi) and a night of awkward distance and/or a cold shoulder and his whispers to Eli, Emma says I shouldn’t worry. Yep, he and Eli are probably talking about me. God bless her honesty, sweet girl. But don’t worry.

I guess Emma was wrong.

At supper tonight (after a long and emotional and vulnerable discussion with Victor regarding our respective vices), I ended up with Eli and Emma and Ashley.

Ashely who yesterday called me Jen.

Hmm. Accident?

Just as Victor was getting up to leave from the table, Emma gestures outside and I turn and I see him and my heart leaps into my throat and I want to cry and scream and run away and I give Victor The Look, and I say, “should I leave?”

I stayed

But

After ten minutes

I poked my head up to see where he was in the dining hall

And he was sitting at an island

By himself

I didn’t talk to him

I was seethingly angry

At

Myself

I

Guess

It is

It MUST

Be

My fault, right?

He picked up signals during movie with Eli and Emma and Alex and Brooklyn that I was interested in him.

But didn’t I feel his left shoulder lean against mine too, see in my peripheral his hand flinch as if about to grab mine?

And didn’t I also see him lean away from me later in the movie?

And did he see me close my eyes when they kissed?

And my commentary of “gross”

I’m damaged goods

But maybe so is he

But I was obviously,

In my mind,

Too

Much

For

Him

He would be a good place to start off fresh

New

Beginning

I don’t know if I’m in it for a relationship necessarily, as perhaps he wants

I feel like I’ve already missed so much from him

Already sabotaged so much potential for chemistry (educational and romantic alike)

I want to absorb his knowledge and his vulnerability and his goofy smile and run my hands through his hair and feel his soft lips and hold his bony hands (note: his dieting..) and just tell him that everything will be ok, I promise.

I kept trying to run into him.

The dining hall, at normal meal times.

The gym, in the middle of the day. Stretching out my stretches and departure to possibly run into him in the hallway, looking over my shoulder on the treadmill and worrying about my sweat; every time someone his height walked into the gym my heart seized stronger.

I have lost him… have I lost him?

Perhaps I don’t want a snow day. I want a day of calc and breakfast at the same time as him (inadvertently) and chem together and stats and his possibility of showing up for a jazz practice and just a higher chance of him being out of Shell and in the world where I can meet his eyes and just smile.

I just want to connect with his eyes again.

After he hugged me last night.

It was a long hug.

He was struggling to accept my acceptance of his rejection (or, is deferral a better word?). He was sitting on the edge of the bed (nice sheets, he said). I was leaning against the wall behind him. He asked if it was okay and turned over his right shoulder to look at me and I looked up and I grinned big and wide and said “yeah.” Maybe too goofily.

“Oh my god, Jill”

He only needs to say those words once and I’m sold I’m done I’m there and back and he is

Just

Retrospectively I have a trillion responses to his words.

Exactly,

Oh my god, Pooria

That’s what you’re supposed to say later, in a different circumstance

My name on his lips surprised me and rolled through me and the hug at the end of the night was long. His right arm always hovers over my left shoulder when we come out of it and we kept it up for so long and his face was close and I was thinking, do it. Just do it. I’ll do it.

But no, I can’t

I cant because I’m shy and nervous and scared and he’s a boy and what am I? And on and on and on.

Mostly, I can’t because I respect him. I hate his boundaries and his wanting to wait and his making me wait and I just want to crawl on top of him and straddle him and kiss him gently and deeply, but I can’t because he wants to put a pin in it and wait. So I looked down at the ground and he pulled away, and put on his shoes, and I could hear him hovering outside the door separating us and when I crossed the hallway to clean my teeth he was stuck by the calendar on the wall. And I smiled at him and shook my head.

When I left the bathroom he was gone and all I could think of was figure there, picturing it, willing it into existence. Putting down my toothbrush on the ground (fuck it honestly). Walking over to him really close and with minty teeth and smiling up (impish grin, dad, always in my head now) and kissing him.

That night I did think of it, I ran it through my brain and through my body and I touched my lips and remembered every passionate kiss with exes and longed for it replicated.

Am I horny or lonely or into him? Does it matter? In the future will it matter? Will it affect my life? Right now it feels very much in the way. Maybe that’s what he wants to avoid right now. Well, I’ve caught feelings so, fuck. It.

When I came thinking of his lips and hands and body I moaned out loud. Unlike me. But isn’t all of this?