>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: not quite here.
>>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000

It's 8:40 in the morning and I'm still buzzed from last night. I haven't been that trashed in my entire life. Usually, when everything starts swimming, I stop to let it all be absorbed. Last night, I just kept hitting the bottle, and everything just looked gray. I'm surprised I made it up the stairs. If I get pulled over this morning, I'll probably get a DUI. That would be just one more wonderful thing to throw on the pile of shit in my life.

Thank you for being there last night. The last thing I wanted to do was cry by myself. I know you say it doesn't matter, but I am sorry I woke you up. I fought with myself about it and I had to hear you. I hope you recovered and slept at least decently for the rest of the night/morning. I just checked your diary page and I'm sitting here with this calm grin. There's this bubble of calmness washing over me. I'm almost always relaxed by your entries because your prose is electric and it touches those dusty parts of my brain that no one has ever come close to uncovering, then I feel your voice reverberating in my head, and I'm overcome by how much I love your voice, your words, your thoughts.... That sounds kind of sappy, but it's the only way I can express it.

I don't know I'm going to make it through class. I keep drifting into space and feeling like I'm going to fall down, but I haven't felt this relaxed in months. I almost don't want to go to school to let everybody ruin it, but people can ruin your day no matter how far away from them you get.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: not quite here.
>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

Please don't worry about waking me up. My sleep has been coming more easily these past few days, so I'm rather well-rested and I fell right back to sleep when I got off the phone. Not only that, but I'm also surprisingly calm and...I don't know...wistful or something. After I hung up the phone, I went outside to smoke on the front steps of my building and think for awhile. I sat there in the freezing cold and looked up at the sky, and there was a bright, beautiful moon lighting everything up, and not far away from it were about two or three stars. Stars always surprise me, as they're so hard to come by in Boston because of all the city lights, but last night I saw several and I just looked up at the moon and breathed in the night air and noticed that I felt like the world was entirely yours and mine. It was the strangest thing. I felt so calm after I got off the phone, like I had been uneasy until I spoke with you and then suddenly everything was soft and peaceful again. The whole time I was outside smoking, I didn't see or hear a single other human being, but I didn't feel at all lonely because I could still hear your voice. I'm not really one to believe in any sort of force of nature or anything, but I swear to you I could hear the world saying to me that you and I are the only ones who understand it, and I felt like it was THANKING me for that. In some odd way, I felt like the world wants and needs to be understood, and it's grateful for those of us who have to withstand the pain of knowing the truth.

That probably sounds completely wacko, but I don't fucking care. I've had enough of hiding my feelings for one lifetime.

I love you.
Perdita