last nite, i woke up to the sound of my own voice. it sounded like it was coming from faraway; it took me a panicked second or two to understand that it was being filtered thru my answering machine. i jumped up and plugged in my phone, interrupting the message. “hi,” said ben. “are you sleeping?”
i consulted the clock: 1:15 a.m. on a usual nite, i’d be awake, probably tripping around the net somewhere. but i was trying to stock up on good, bedded sleep since i’ll be sleeping bagging it for a while. “yes.” i said. “i was just watching old films,” he said. “go back to sleep. i’ll talk to you tomorrow.” i hung up and crawled back under the blankets.
this morning when i woke up (to someone else’s voice thru the radio, the way god intended) i pushed play on my machine to hear the message from the beginning. it was the recording he had made of senior year coffeehouse, our skool talent-show of sorts. the camera, the phone, and my machine mangled my voice to a wince-inducing state but i remained comprehensible: i was reciting “confessional”. well do i remember that evening. i decided that, regardless of the fact that he was there in the audience, and filming no less, i was going to read the poems i wanted to read. and i did. i couldn’t tell at the time whether he got it. he hugged me tightly afterwards, grinning, but that’s just his way.
no room for interpretation now. “you called me yr ‘green-eyed muse’,” he says (on the message). “that’s so sweet. you have a great voice –”
at that point, the message cuts off b/c i managed to pick up the phone.
i hope he appreciates that poem. sweet, hell: that’s one of the sweetest things i’ve ever written.
ilana’s coming to pick me up in a matter of minutes. i’m all packed. also talked to the other ben for a while last nite (johnny: “why do you call him #32?”) after i got home from class. ahh benz.