>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: through school
>>Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000

I'm still among the walking dead, but nothing rash was done. I quivered through one class, not hearing a word the professor said because I kept having anxiety attacks every couple of minutes and I didn't want to completely freak out in front of the class. I tried to go to my second class, but I have an hour of dead time before it, and I couldn't make it. I know why I'm having a bad day today. I suddenly remembered a dream sequence I had last night where I was screaming at my parents and they were still ignoring me and brushing me aside, no matter how loudly I screamed. It made me frustrated, which makes me mad, which makes me feel like total shit. But that doesn't explain the anxiety attacks. The only thing I can chalk that up to is total emotional instability. I'm an emotional wreck. Yeah, standard fare for depression, but my emotions are completely wild. My heart is always leaping out and dragging behind someone else's heels. I get into things with a disturbing passion. Yet, for all that, I would rather swallow someone else's vomit than have sex right now. Half the time, it's recreation: purely physical. The rest of the time, it's this exalted action that involves the highest amount of trust and love: to surrender yourself to someone else. It becomes an act I don't know if I'm capable of, and when I hear about others doing it, I fall into this enormous depression. I feel like a legless watchdog: useless, unwanted, and desperate for some sort of attention. When I notice someone attractive, sex is the last thing I think about. I want to immortalize their form somehow, coat them in bronze and line my halls with them. And I KNOW that's wrong. I know it when I feel it, and it still spirals me down. I usually recover from that as soon as I hear the person talk and realize what a jackass they are, but it still leaves a hole in me. I've never been able to make sense of it. I felt the same before and after my first sexual encounter. Sometimes it just leaves me feeling tarnished. Even the topic of sex makes me feel bad. That ugly looking, ugly sounding three-letter word and all of its euphemisms make me hurt. And there's no sense to it, because I realize it's just as much a natural act as eating, sleeping, pissing, and shitting, but somewhere in my skull, there's this association swimming around with that word that makes it seem so distasteful.

I haven't done anything today except think about dying and how I couldn't do it alone, thinking about how long it would take to drive a thousand miles up the coast to see you, thinking how it would feel to slip back into the infinite nothingness that we were before we were born. People can't conceive of nothingness because they've never wanted total peace in their lives. That complete stillness and lack of consciousness more and more seems the ONLY option. I can feel death's bony finger scraping up my spine, and he’s about to look into my eyes and bring me out of this. If I had time, I'd thank death, but this is as close to a promise as I can make. When it gets irresistable and I can't live another moment, I'll call you and ask if you're ready, and we'll go. I know I can't stay here if you leave. It sounds crazy to be that attached to someone over a few e-mails and a phone call, but I'm not exaggerating. And if you didn’t want to go and didn’t want me to either, I wouldn't. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Maybe I've already said it.

Thank you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: through school
>Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

When I read your e-mails, any one of three things happens: I feel like I want to cry for happiness that someone finally understands, I feel an irrepressible mothering instinct that makes me just want to hold you and hold you until you've cried all your tears, or I feel so unsettled and frightened by the insanely parallel courses our lives lead that I feel like I'm gonna puke. This time, it's the third.

You know, a large percentage of the residents in this city don't own a car and have to take public transportation everywhere they go. Luckily, we have one of the most extensive and most useful subway systems in the world, and I take it all the time. So, yesterday, I was commuting into work on the subway like every other day, and we got stuck in one of the tunnels for about ten minutes. It was completely dark in the tunnel and, of course, the conductor wouldn't tell us what the fuck was going on, so I started feeling claustrophobic and I couldn't breathe. Then, I realized I had to somehow occupy my mind so I'd at least make it the hundred feet or so further to my stop.

Well, I stood there about two inches away from people on every side, and I started studying them all. Even though it was dark in the tunnel, I was still wearing my beloved sunglasses, so no one could really tell I was staring at them. Eventually, I decided that the guy directly in front of me was probably the most attractive person I've seen in a long time. It's really strange with me. I'll notice attractive people, but I'm never actually attracted TO them. I just sort of notice them and give them dirty looks if they so much as look in my direction. I felt oddly attracted to the guy yesterday, and it shocked the hell out of me because I never notice that. All I could think about, though, was that I just wanted to pick him up and set him down somewhere where I could just stare at him forever.

Sex is a lost art for me. I like kissing, but that's about it. My first sexual encounter made me laugh out loud because it struck me as being so hysterically ridiculous that I couldn't even fathom it. I don't understand it. I am entirely incapable of surrendering myself to someone entirely. I think it must have something to do with the fact that sex is such a physical thing, and you and I seem to be unable to let go of something mental or intellectual or whatever you want to call it. We interpret life. You can't really interpret sex. I don't know about you, but my mind has a tendency to wander to very strange places if I'm involved sexually. My mind just goes elsewhere, and I don't even really realize what's going on. I'm generally so caught up in what's going on in my head that it's entirely against everything that's ME to ignore that. I don't think I can ignore my thoughts, and I wouldn't want to, anyway. I think about sex so rarely that sometimes I forget it exists.

Anyway, I really hope you WOULD call me if and when you decide you've had enough. Please please please don't do it without me. I'm sure I'd feel as though you'd taken my only chance away from me. The more seriously I consider it myself, the more I realize I can't do it alone. There are few things I can't forgive, and I think that would have to be one of them.

I love you, even if it sounds silly. Write soon.
Perdita