republik of fuck

I dreamed of Paul early this morning, just as I was waking.  I have never known someone I found so immeasurably compelling and simultaneously repellant as Paul.  The smell of stale alcohol was trapped in my throat, his chest hair caressed me like a sea anenome.  I felt ill.  And followed him as he stumbled out of my house into the darkness, too drunk to walk normally, too drunk to make sense.  I followed the sound of his stumbling footsteps, wanting to apologize for something, wanting to offer some kind of comfort.  Because it was my fault he was hurting, wasn't it?  I wanted him and he made me feel nauseous.  Or perhaps it's not that I didn't love him.  I wanted to strangle him.  I wanted to pin him to the ground.  I wanted to fuck him.

I dated Paul again once, once when I was about twenty-five.  He wasn't any different from when we were eighteen.  He still lived with his parents.  He took me to the same pub we used to go to when we were eighteen, and introduced me to his friends.  Friends who said, Ohhh you're Lisa?!  as though I was famous.  I wondered what he had told them about me.  I was still appalled by him, and still horrifyingly attracted to him.  Gross.  I hated myself.  Attraction is a very complicated thing, and I am an explicably hedonistic individual.



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