Thursday, July 14, 2005
there are no words...
to describe my day with Kylie, but as usual I will try in some small way to do it justice with my highly inadequate and incredibly verbose descriptions.
I will try my best not to get sentimental, but it will be difficult. And if you are uncomfortable about the idea of two girls whose relations are not at all platonic, please stop reading now.
First of all, Kylie is beautiful. Beautiful. Just totally fucking gorgeous. She has amazingly long straight reddish hair and lovely hazel eyes and little freckles across her nose. She laughs a lot, and I love the sound of it. She is totally brilliant, and amazes me with her made-up expressions and her deep thoughts on the world. She is compassionate, and genuinely kind. And this I know from spending only part of a single day with her.
She didn't arrive at my apartment until almost 3:00 in the afternoon, but she was worth waiting for. She gave me a present - a little ankle bracelet with starfish on it (my kind of thing), and because she's a funny kid she also gave me some of those little multicoloured capsules that turn into animal-shaped sponges when you put them in water. She was convinced -- with such adorable child-like abandon -- that they were going to turn into huge monstrous creatures in the water (like in that episode of The Simpsons where Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for $5 and buys those dinosaur capsules with the proceeds just to scare Lisa). But she didn't seem too disappointed when all we got in the end was a little blue kangaroo sponge floating in a bowl of tap water.
We walked around the neigbourhood for a while. It was a beautiful July day, and if I believed in divine intervention I would have conceeded that Kylie was God, for it has been rainy and gray here almost every single day since mid-May. I introduced her to Cait, who was working at the community center daycamp, and then we went and got some crepes and ate them outside in the sunshine. There was a guy playing French music and it was all very idyllic. She speaks French fluently too, and she too thinks that music is the fibre that holds the world together.
The whole day was a long series of expressions like "me too!" and "no way!" and "what a coincidence!" and "I LOVE that too!" We had so much in common that at one point I said we must have been separated at birth. Kylie recoiled a bit and said "EW! But that would make us sisters!" Then I said "EW!" then I laughed, then she laughed, and so on.
We went into a toy store and played with gadgets for a while, for she too is incredibly young at heart. We had funny conversations, sad conversations, and profound conversations, but we never ran out of things to talk about.
We went out for dinner at an awesome vegetarian restaurant that Cait recommended (you go, Caity!) -- it had chill hip-hop music and great food and George Orwell quotes written on the wall. I usually need meat to live, but damn that food was good.
The attraction between Kylie and I was electric, and yet neither of us had the faintest clue of what to do about it. I was pretty glad that she gave me a hug when I met her, because otherwise I might have done something really embarrassingly formal like shake her hand. Her hair kept brushing against me, and I thought I might just pass out from the anticipation. At one point during dinner she reached across and rubbed my back, and that was just about the nicest feeling I've had in ages. I braided her hair in two French braids and she pretty much looked like Anne of Green Gables.
Once we got back to my place, it took forever for us to stop talking and actually kiss each other. When we finally did, it was magical. It was fireworks. It was every stupid cliche all wrapped up together in a pink and glittery Hallmark card that read: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
What on earth have I been doing all these years (?)(upspeak!) I thought to myself. And how could I have just met this girl a few hours ago? And how can I have only known she existed for a week? And how have we only ever spoken to each other over the past four days?
The inside of my brain feels like my desktop's recycling bin after it's been emptied. All that's left is Kylie....Kylie....Kylie.
Before y'all get all freaked out and start calling your lawyers, please know that I am a sensible girl. I know that one ought not to fall hard for someone right away, and I promise to be smart about it, and to remember that things don't always work out with people I really like. I also promise to remember that there are closed-minded people in the world who will not be okay with this, and I will watch out for those people. In fact, I will not associate with those people at all unless they are related to me by blood.
This is not about sex. This is not about politics. This is something I have never felt and can't quite explain.
All I can say is, it feels right.
And it was the best fucking first date ever.
Thanks for listening.
-N
