It is a privilege to know what I know, to dwell where I dwell, to see what I have seen.
There is a website that a friend told me about. She said that since she found it, she’s felt more confident, more alive. She was never really the lively type. I’ve known Katrina for a while now and before, she was quiet, reserved, almost afraid to offend anyone. But since this site, she’s been different.
I’ll admit that I find her new, confident self much more attractive. She styles her hair and pays attention to the coordination of her clothes; before, she was kind of a mess but I liked her for her personality. We took a class together one summer at the community college, that is how we met. She was living with her father for the season and decided to pick up some credits because she found the town where her father lived to be very boring. That town, Rivers, NC, is also my hometown and I understand, it’s filled to the brim with cul de sacs and few places to shop or see recent movies. But the community college is pretty popular in the area, people come from a lot of places to go there. I was trying to get back into the right mind state for college then; I went to a state university right out of high school but took some time off because they said it was too much for me. I had a nervous breakdown, I’m ashamed to admit that. I don’t really know what happened, I just got overwhelmed. I was too afraid to fail, it meant alot to everyone who knew me to see me succeed at college but I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I wasn’t stupid, just not as exceptional as I had been in high school. Maybe I was never exceptional. I’m old enough to know that my parents and teachers lied to me all the time about what I could be and how special I was. I believed them, I really thought that I was unique and destined to be in a history book. But I’ve met plenty of people like me, so afraid to fail that just the thought of it causes their eyes to twitch. Because if they fail, then they are just like all the other losers out there, not doing anything important, anything lasting. Sure, I live in a technological age that allows me to broadcast my every waking moment to any interested websurfer, but I was led to believe that my story was special enough to be more than the empty ephemera that crowds social media. No matter how dependent I become on technology, I will always have respect for the knowledge worthy of real, hard copy books. My real life isn’t even worthy of a blog, I’m just another twenty something black man living in the south, working at a restaurant, trying to get an education that will get me a better job. When I was first getting to know Katrina, I could tell that she understood.
I never thought of Katrina as a girlfriend. She’s always just been someone I spend time with. I can’t face the people I knew; not considering where I am now. I should be a doctor or an astronaut or something, I was so smart and I could have been anything. They all knew that, the people of Rivers, so when I’m there I feel ashamed that I couldn’t handle the pressure. But Katrina didn’t know me before and we spent a lot of time together just watching TV and movies, driving around to stores and stuff. There’s no judgments. Lately, though, she’s just so different and I’m seeing her in a new light. Maybe we can fall in love with each other now. Not that she wants to, but I can’t stop thinking about it. She knows how I feel about her, how excited she makes me and there are times when we are alone in her room and she teases me because she knows that she can. Honestly, she doesn’t seem all that interested in sex, she just enjoys my lust and the control of denying me anything I beg of her. She was never like that before; I used to spend the night with her all the time and her dad didn’t even mind because it was clear that Katrina and I had no sexual attraction whatsoever. We would play video games all night or find stupid things to laugh at online, like friends do. But lately, I think about her naked and I have dreams about her, though they are not as erotic as I want them to be. My dreams about Katrina these days feel as loaded as fever dreams, hallucinations. The colors are rich like oil paintings and I am usually on a boat at night, seeking her out, sometimes calling her name, sometimes using a map. When I finally find her she is on a very small island in a spot of light next to a wiry tree with white bark and orange leaves; she is naked and beautiful with her arms outstretched and reaching for me. It gets creepy when slick, purple and gray tentacles slide from the water around her and slowly entangle her, then drag her into the water. It happens every time, I finally come to her and she smiles while the tentacles grab her and take her away from me. I only recently noticed that in the dream Katrina has a circular pattern on her left breast. It is almost like a brand or a badge. It isn’t a circle exactly, its a circular coil, but it seems to be comprised of many lines, or tentacles. It is strange and very specific and I wondered why I even noticed it, why it stood out and was burnt onto my psyche. It turned out to be a tattoo that she had gotten recently, on the inside of her wrist. It was very much unlike her to get a tattoo.
“How long have you had it?” I asked her when I noticed it.
“Not long.”
“Was it a secret?”
“It is the secret,” she said cryptically.
PRL Serials 