tangerinedreaming

[tangerinedreaming]

All of a sudden, that night, it was like something switched on in your brain. You noticed me - interested, unexpected, and voluntarily. You chose to speak to me.

A younger, forgotton me stirred within my present self, inflamed by the attention you paid me, however platonically I had interpreted it that night. Each word was enthusiastic, it seemed you finally noticed me. You remembered things I had told you the year before in passing. You complimented me. You held me.

We spoke a couple times, mostly in heated smiling argument. In the car, you tried to pull me out of the crack back up to you. I’d be lying if I said I wanted to move; I was perfectly content on the floor, but I wasn’t about to stop the feeling of your arms tensing and hands closing around my shoulders in a pathetic attempt to haul me up. I kept laughing in your face. I think it’s instinctive. I can’t really help laughing around you. You laughed too, the lines of your face brightening. You tipped your head back, and your palms pressed deep into my thighs above my knees as you held yourself in place. I can’t remember the way you held me then, and the haze never stopped blurring even as the moments became suddenly vital to memorise.

What was it that happened? I don’t know how to fill these gaps beyond blissful speculation, but I remember your arms closing around the backs of my thighs, the sudden shift in my weight off the ground to my body being pressed against you, chest thrown over your shoulder as you carried me away.

What did you want to do there?

I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t have done. No one has ever paid attention to me, least of all like this. I’ll do anything for that feeling of notice, of enjoyment, of someone genuinely wanting me around them.

Pressed against the water tank, spilling my secrets. Hard plastic curved behind my back, cool against my exposed skin. It was either shrink back against solid wall or concede to those inches between us.

You thought I was experienced in any way, completely oblivious to the fact that it was the closest I had ever been to anyone. You questioned my smilingly mumbled insistence that no, guys just didn’t find me attractive.

You think you’re not attractive to guys?

Your voice was low. I could feel your breath against my neck. My back was curved into the plastic of the tank, my front was pushed against your warm, welcome weight. You were laughing at me. I was nervous, tangled within. My arms were awkward and I didn’t know how to act. I think my hands found a place looped around your neck.

What were you doing?

I have to know.

Was it just your breath and voice and words and ambiguous torturous intent against the cool exposure of my collar, or was it something more real. Something solid and meaningful and cemented. I thought about your lips again afterwards, yet all I recall from that moment was a blissful, confused anticipation that trickled into my being and somehow terrified me.

What was happening?

What did you feel?

It was too much. I laughed and pushed you off.

In hindsight, it's best that I did. I don't need you anymore. I don't want to want you anymore. We've had each other once and the carelessness with which you forgot spoke volumes enough.

Bye.

[tangerinedreaming]

No kisses. No embraces. No warm tangles on cold nights. No sudden burns sweeping across skin and awakening unknown, untethered, unbecoming things.

Gentle conversation slurring into quiet laughter, filtering through moonlit nights like water through fingertips. Tentative hands brushing in the darkness, twisting slowly into lips slipping across soft skin. Words and minds and finally bodies laying bare in the night as the last restraints are softly unshackled.

A blurring flood of memories like watercolour; all the edges softened and the colours darkened.

To take that face and inject it into blood, to burn every word and breath and touch into skin even if everyone could see it. To take shame and turn it into something transcendant.

Just a day, just an hour, just a heartbeat longer.

Excuses for moments like these. Forbidden ones filled with heavy misting breaths and tangled skin.

Guilt that cuts deep and pulls like waves on consciences, never quite drawing back into the sea. Minds drifting helplessly away into that hidden span of time. Kept buried deep and dark, making sure it doesn't stay too long.

-

[tangerinedreaming]

Why did I think it would fix the way I felt about myself?

The whole time, I thought I wanted you.

I wanted to feel your embrace again, your skin against mine, the warm weight of you pressing on my body, the ambiguity of words in silence, the unspoken weave of our bodies without glances at faces. I missed the way I could melt into you and you’d wait patiently with a conscious trace of fingertips over exposed skin. I wanted to feel wanted again.

I didn’t know how it would feel. Heated, maybe? Wanting, certainly. I needed some desire to fuel me, and some evidence to deny my delusion.

You provided that.

Comfort.

Experience.

Excitement.

You weren’t gentle or restrained. You explicated and enacted what you wanted, and I was glad I didn’t have to define what exactly I wanted. I still don’t know what that was. You held me with a wild fervour, one completely illogical, strange and dangerous for me.

I wanted affection, attention, without vague intention.

If I had acted differently after the fact, would it still be the same outcome? Would you still have said I was naïve and innocent, imply I was corruptible and acquiescent to your corruption, write your attraction to me off as respect for my motivation and achievement? Were you just upset by my standoffishness? Did you truly assume I’d get attached to you? Had you mistaken my inexperience for an absolute emotional reliance on others? Has your experience led you to believe you're the sort I, too, would irrevocably and irreparably fall for?

The questions that plagued me, the what-ifs that trademark me as a person, have slowly faded into vague wonderings. They're speculations rather than missing keys of paramount evidence, and I find myself growing less and less worried.

I've settled myself in what happened. I've accepted the inevitability of that choice, and there's nothing I can do about the regret, so I think I'm finally ready to let you go.

While I doubt you'd like that - me letting you go - you are mistaken. My perhaps naivety does not equate to natural unhealthy attachment, and I fear I might be the one to break your cycle.

You mistook my shyness for affection, and my affection for desire. I can't mistake you, because I listened when you talked about yourself, and I understood you. I even like to think I know you.

We can go back to being friends, but I hope you'll never know I can't stop remembering the softness of your hair in the cradle of my neck, and I can't look at you without knowing what you've seen of me without ever knowing what you saw in me. I don't think I'll be able to look at you again.

We're different people to each other now. I wish I could tell you how much it meant to me, how deeply I regret it, how much rage you caused me, how many tears I shed, how many smiles I hid, how many times I've placed my hands where you have been and allow myself to be haunted by your touch.

This can't possibly be the pleasure others tell me about. What have you reaped from me? Was it worth what you took, or was taking from me your reward?

Maybe you are right. Maybe I am ignorant, and naive, and innocent, and I assume the best in others, and trusted too deeply the goodness of man and the ability to resist temptation. Maybe I overestimated you, if you weren't beyond tightening your lips enough to save me any dignity. Maybe I overcompensated in platonic action, and you never understood what it was I actually felt for you and I never knew it fully either, and we both were two sides of the same coin.

There's no point in wondering what could have been. This is what it is, and we've lost what we had and there's no way of discerning what is ahead. I know you're already slackened grip, but I don't know if I can. I hate you deeply, and my wrist has loosened, but my fingers still cling tight despite the lifting pressure. You prematurely exposed visceral, untouched parts of me, and I don't think I can forgive you for that. I didn't have the strength to stop you, or the self-control to pull away, so I don't think I can complain.

It's really not your fault. You're just a man, it's just what you do. You really didn't do anything wrong, I don't think, but I can't draw the lines between my feelings and instinct in the moment and the me that sobbed violently an hour later and the me the next morning in a state of confused euphoria or that afternoon in a silent depression or a week later claiming I was over it and you and me now, still thinking feverishly of your touch and sickened by my reaction to your attention.

Truly, what have you done to me? What did you awaken? Not some wild beast of strange desires, but you rather unlocked some craving for affection I never had, insecurities that are completely unwarranted, debased thoughts that I don't even consider truths.

Whatever. I'm sorry. You're right.

I am an overthinker. I am hostile to men because of my awkwardness, and my insecurity manifests as an off-putting, standoffish exterior. I am naive, and we are better friends than this.

I'll concede to you again.

[tangerinedreaming]

[tangerinedreaming]

Last night I sat on the sand, and I noticed for the first time the way it carves to fit us. It caves to our weight and hugs our shape. No matter what size we are, it will move itself to fit us in.

You did too, to an extent. You stretched out that arm and pulled me into you. You didn't mind my hair curling over your forearm, and you let me rest my head on your chest. I curved into you, into that space you left against your chest.

It's a shame that while my hands ran through your hair, yours slid down my thighs. I wish you could have held me and let my heart beat, instead of waiting for my breath to quicken. I wanted to leave with further wanting in our smiles, yearning for the unknown, not with the knowledge of how you taste and how easily I can fold under you.

And you wonder why I acted strangely, when I had shown you what sort of person I was. Could you not see me, or hear me? Did you think my truth was a facade to attract you, and you were waiting for me to change once we parted from that moment? You really never listened?What was it that you paid attention to me for, then?

I caved into you.

When you needed a seat, I shuffled over to leave room for you. When you watched me, I forced myself to sit still for you and pretend I couldn't notice, even when I longed to escape your gaze and hide from you. When your hands moved over me, my blood would rush and surge, thrumming against my skin to reach you. When your lips slid across my cheek, my throat, my chest, my body stretched and carved to give you space.

You could have landed your touch anywhere and I would have accepted it. Neither of us would ever have known if I wanted to or not.

Wherever you wanted yourself, I wanted to fit. I rolled over like a dog, dragged over your flesh, arched to fit the gaps left between us.

Like the sand, I would accommodate you as you were.

[tangerinedreaming]

This summer, I will fix you.

I will heal that little girl walking barefoot in the grass under the sun.

I will forget the child who hated herself.

I will forgive the teenager who scarred her body.

I will become the girl who can once again feel the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair and the breath in her lungs.

[tangerinedreaming]

I wanted to want you. I wanted to envision something great, to live every second distracted by memory and speculation. I wanted to feel something other than guilt and shame and transgression. I wanted you to make me feel wanted if you were wanting me. Why did it not feel like that?

They all said you did. They said you said it, actually.

I hated that, that you could say these things about me to others with no embarrassment. Am I not embarrassing to want? Are you not embarrassed to want me?

It happened suddenly, and I feel distanced from it all. I’m not present in this wanting. I’m unable to sense it. It has been declared, but is it even present? I can’t process it. There is no evidence, no hard facts to study and analyse and psychoanalyse; nothing to explain these odd declarations people proclaim to me, smiling expectantly and waiting for me to succumb to elation. It must surely be baseless conjecture, or maybe some joke. You cannot possibly mean it.

But then what was it?

What was that, lost within the convolution and disorientation of memory. A moment of ultimate morosis. A slip of judgement. A momentary lapse in reason. I should have known better. You should not have, at all.

It had been quiet. They were all asleep, elsewhere, out of sight. My consciousness retreated and reality blurred into the white noise of the movie. You were still, lying perpendicular on the longer stretch of leather. My body had curved, several inches away, around your head. I was still too, in drunken thought, legs absently sliding up the leather to fold at the far corner of your pillow.

What prompted you to do it, after those long breaths of silent solitude? My eyes were closed, my mind quiet, yet I knew it was going to happen. My skin breathed and tensed and breathed again moments before. My hair fell in soft embrace against my neck, the dull tawny curling itself into my throat. My breath was steady, still and silent. I breathed in anticipation.

Your hand crept slowly up. It took time for it to sneak from your shoulder to the waiting flesh of my thigh. Fingertips dragged gently over my skin, so light I questioned whether you even breached contact. You settled above my knee, strangely patient to open your palm and rest it. Seconds later, I felt the tension flood from your hand, fingers curling naturally into skin, palm pressing a gentle weight into me.

And I was, fuck, surprisingly okay with it.

In the moment, that is. With alcohol pumping through my veins. With the room and my mind alike spiralling out of certainty. With the warm, solid pressure of your touch. It was completely silent. I felt my breath sweeping and undulating in my chest, but I stayed silent.

It was instinctive, on my part. I had no idea what was happening, what you were feeling, how you thought of me or how you could ever even possibly think of me at all. All I knew was that there was something going on that wasn’t actually there.

It existed only in that moment, in that touch. It was born the moment skin met, and I knew it would die the moment I pulled away. It frightened me a little. You weren’t considering everything, like reality, sobriety, professionalism. I was really fucking drunk.

Maybe I did move into it. Maybe my hips shifted closer, or my other leg slid the blanket closer to me. Maybe my breath hitched or deepened. Or maybe, I stayed in silence.

I think I would have stayed there forever.

Does that make me a bad person, that I needed to feel wanted I would have accepted any affection despite knowing I wouldn’t be able to return it? It didn’t make me feel satisfied or pleased or desired. I felt confused, but maybe comforted.

This ambiguous intention allowed me to imagine.

It permitted me to forget other things, to dream wildly and recklessly of things I would never do, of ludicrous possibilities that would never come to pass. I could have this moment where it was really only just the two of us awake in that house, pretending to be slipping into unconsciousness in easy silence, neither acknowledging the touch or heartbeat or breath and simply laying together.

We couldn’t see each other, only wonder wildly what the other may be thinking. I assumed it was a mistake. You extrapolated your own interest in me. We saw in each other what we wanted for ourselves.

I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for you. I wish I could have been. Especially now. I wish I knew in the moment. I might have been.

I guess we'll never know. I really am sorry I'm this way.

[tangerinedreaming]

And that was where they sat.

The sand soft and cool on the lonely underside of their thighs, carving beneath their weight to hug the skin that had pushed it away.

Shoulders never touching, hands never brushing. His hair is blown gently in the wind, her curls whip in tendrils aching towards him, yet the wispy ends never meet his own back. The air bites at her cheeks, licking over the blush blazing beneath her skin. His fingers curl and relax around the jagged pieces of shell to his far side.

There is no room for silence, and he swallows the words he wishes to blurt, despite them forming sporadically and thoughtlessly in his mind.

She’s lost to her own thoughts, aware but unconscious to his presence at her side. She thinks of the sunset-lacquered horizon, and the familiar numb crawling through her veins. She wonders of him and the things she is too scared to ask, of the intimacies and secrecies he encloses within his ribcage. She worries of her own truths sewn into her skin, and their opacity.

Could he see them beneath her skin?

Could he feel the thrum of the ocean and the wind drip slowly into her own being?

Could he know this moment would soon become her other present, her new means to escapism?

He watches the beach. She watches him.

[tangerinedreaming]

The summer's wild and I've been waiting for you all this time I adore you, can't you see you're meant for me?

The summer's hot but I've been cold without you. I was so wrong not to doubt your Medellin, tangerine dreams

— this blog —

i made this blog to just share whatever i could and get a few things off my chest in a hopefully well-written way. i hope some of you can relate or at least enjoy, and i'm always here for anyone if you ever need a chat or any support

— me —

a shameless teenage writer of radical feelings, ambiguous desires, and intense sensitivity. loves gothic-romantic subversion after a grossly in-depth unit in grade 11 literature, lana del rey, series of unfortunate events, potato scallops, harry potter, scented candles, rain, thrifting and autumn. a pisces.