in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

Seven,

Despite the fact that you're the utmost gentleman, you left a mess. I haven't bothered to clean up the scraps of blue paper on my living room floor. They're a nice decorative mess. I have a mysterious picture of you tucked in my vanity. Send me your black tie with the next letter. I want to wear it as a belt, or a headband.

I'm not sorry I bit you, like Sylvia Plath did. Maybe your comparison was right. Maybe I'll wind up teaching at some college somewhere in New England, where it feels like it's always fall. You'll teach too, we'll fight, we'll battle over whose work is and should be more successful, and one day I'll leave bread and milk by the beds of my children, stick a rag under the kitchen door, and crawl into my oven for a nap. Then, years later, they will make a terrible movie about me starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Have you seen it? Don't. It's awful.

I was kidding about all of that, you know. I'd never crawl into my oven. Or teach in small town New England.

I'm better. I'm well. I'm breathing. I spend my days eating and finishing the last few pieces for the fall show. I hope you'll come out for it. You don't have to, though. You have a class to teach.

I threw up this morning. It was disgusting. I thought I was doing so well.

What about you. How are you? How do you spend your days?

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

Thank you for the tie. It's being worn as a belt until it's not big enough, and then it will act as a headband. Versatile. Wasn't that one of the themes we discussed? It adapts. Like me. Like you?

Instead of a skirt, or a small t-shirt, or a pair of scandalous underwear, I sent you one of my hair pins. It's one of my favorite, all kitschy and rhinestoned. Don't wear it, please. If you want to carry it around, put it in your pocket, or use it as a tie-clip. Keep it far away from your hair. I only say this, because I have the strangest image of you walking around with my hair clip in your hair, looking like a buffoon. I'm just making sure that doesn't happen.

The show isn't until mid-September. I'll let you know as it gets closer.

I hope that, even though your students don't get to pick their own stone, or what they want to work with, that everything comes out well. I'm sure it will. Being around you is like being around some magnet that grabs all the creativity from the inside of you and pulls it, hard, to fingertips, and mouth, and then finally out onto paper, or fabric, or paint. Tell me something interesting about sculpture.

Take care of what?

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

It wasn't so much as effeminate as it was something I didn't understand, or see. I watched you nearly dive into a painting projected on the wall, and then the closer I got, the less and less it seemed you wanted to be near me. You were afraid I'd burn you. And maybe I did. Or maybe it was just my ego talking. Any man who didn't want to jump immediately into bed with me, must automatically be gay. Obviously. I don't wonder so much anymore. It's inconsequential. Do you sleep with men too?

Your marital status and talent/ability had nothing to do with it. Have you ever been married? Don't do it unless the whole of you says yes (even the toes.)

We learned about La Pieta in high school history class, and I remember someone criticizing it because the proportions are so off. Mary's lap is far too big for the rest of her body, she's twice Jesus' size, and on and on. But I still think it was beautiful. We should go there next, wherever it is, Italy, probably, and see it. Or somewhere with temples and shrines and beautiful scenery. Any suggestions?

... or questions?

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

I laughed like an idiot by myself at your letter. The idea of some boy on your lap and your bewildered expression was too funny for me to stay quiet about, so I just had at it and laughed for a good while. I got a little worried when I read that you remembered 'several encounters with men', but then the rest of the sentence made me breathe a little easier. I'm sorry that that boy in Berlin attacked you. Maybe you're just a hot commodity.

Sorry to hear about your engagement or what have you. Then again, not so sorry. If you had married her, you probably never would have met me. So. Cheers to that? And, be ruined all you want. We're all ruined.

Let's put Italy on the list, then. With Morocco and Peru and England, but not London. I want to see other parts of England. Bath, Hampshire, Bedford.. all those green, rocky places over the sea. I am already amused at the thought of you climbing in and out of tiny cars. How many Seven Thatchers can you fit into one Volkswagen Beetle?

Sometimes, usually late, when I'm exhausted and reading and trying to fall asleep, I worry that my lap is only big enough for me.

Hope you're enjoying Greece. Thinking of you.

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

Ha! Been there, done that, slaughtered a marriage for it. I don't much mind Liv's wandering hands. I suppose I've gotten used to them like Michael must have gotten used to mine when he stopped complaining that I was always grabbing at him. It's a friendly thing, really. I like watching him get that uncomfortable look on his face.

No one wants to be ruined or broken. I can imagine that for an automatist such as yourself, it's more of a pain to feel like there's a part of you that's malfunctioning. But I don't see you as a tortured artist. Or a starving one at that, judging from your attention to my peanut butter. You're just who you are, whether or not there's a spring missing, or a cog that won't turn as efficiently. We all prefer comfort, or the lack of surprise when something is going to go wrong. I hope you're comfortable now, whatever.. state you're in, or frame of mind, or place. I hope things are good for you.

Let's go to those places in Spring, like you said. We'll go places you haven't been, like Brazil and Peru. We'll watch everything be reborn, and it'll make me want to start sketching, or painting or something. I've never really been that good at either. All my sketches make people look disproportionate and cartoonish, and I have no knack for detail with a paintbrush. Everything is like a four year old drew it, all solid colors, no shades, no highlights.

I draw you all the time, skinny and mechanical, undone. I always smudge in the shape of a bruise that's probably faded by now.

Inside is some fabric I tore to shreds. I thought you might want it. How's your hammock?

Lucy

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ August 11, 2005 11:12 AM: Message edited by: midnight radio ]</font>

[star studded]

Seven,

I've found that rather than trying to save someone, or make them into a better person, or what you want them to be, it's just easier to take them as is. It's too much work to try and reshape a person. It's best left to the professionals with PhDs and big fancy offices and a new deck that their patients' checks furnish for them. I do think that being lost is more fun. Sometimes not fitting in a place perfectly is a good thing, because it pushes you up and forces you to go out and find new places, or do new things, or .. whatever. Flit off to Tokyo for an inexplicable vacation.

I can only say two things in Portuguese, neither of which are nice or appropriate. But I can't spell them to save my life. So, phonetically, if you want to call someone a shithead, or dumb, or something, you call them a bazing. And if you want to tell someone to shut up, you say something like 'shpeta.' It'll sound more convincing once you hear me say it, my accent is great. I didn't know you spoke Italian, or Spanish. How did you learn? Did you live there, or take classes or something?

I'd love to have you give me a hand with my sketches. Lately, they leave something to be desired. They're either all still-lifes, or you.

I suppose the fact that you draw me more idealistically isn't so far off. By the time we see each other again, I'll probably be bigger at the rate I eat. I used to eat like a bird. I was really picky, and so averse to big helpings of food that my doctors worried I was anemic. I just didn't eat enough iron and protein and all of that, but now I can't get enough. I hate fast food, and I've made Michael bring some to me twice in the past few days. So whenever you miss my mouth, just imagine me eating something. Like a total pig.

Scratch that. Don't do that. Think of snarling and biting and teeth like pearls. Picture me pretty.

Tell me about the pen and ink drawings. The smudges of your fingerpads (a real word, now) give your letter a lived in feel. It makes it very clear that despite all of your mechanics, you're still just a guy in Greece with a pen in his hand.

And then, so much more --

I miss your hair. Is it still a mess?

Lucy

[star studded]

<center>

I said Venice
You heard Vegas
Now I say, "Either way, baby, let's go,"
I get so shaky
And I just can't shake it
I bliss like this
I'm one of those

But I don't wanna wear you
Wear you like a band-aid
Wave you like a ticket
Out of my good grief
I just wanna know you
Know you like I know my garden
What you smell like when you're blooming
What lives underneath
Deep down underneath
Way down underneath

We do a whole lotta laughing
At the shyness that surrounds us
I do a whole lotta looking
Somewhere else
I don't need to look
No, I can just feel you
Besides, every time I see you
It just forces me to look at myself

Because I get so shaky
And I just can't shake it
I bliss like this
I'm one of those
And I said Venice
And you heard Vegas
But now I say, "Either way, let's go.
C'mon, baby, let's go."
</center>

[star studded]

Seven,

You're the master of suspense, aren't you. Mister Antici (say it!) pation. Apology accepted, of course. I hope whatever you were working on came out exactly as you imagined. To tell the truth, I didn't notice you hadn't written back until about a day or two ago. I've been pretty busy myself, shuffling between the store, visits to friends to assure them I'm alive and kicking, doctor's appointments, and then back here to finish up the last of my pieces. One more to go. I just got off of the phone with the person whose space I'm renting for the show, and they were quite rude. I called them all the things I know to call people in other languages in plain English, and hung up loudly. One day I'll show at Fashion Week in Paris and they'll pay me to use space.

I'd have no idea how to teach. I say, shove the blocks of stone in their direction, or.. them in the direction of the stone, whichever's easiest and say "Have at it." Then go sit down and read a book. They'll ask questions, won't they? And apparently, they could ask a question in six languages and you'd be able to field it quite well. I'm impressed. I knew you were worldly, but I had never imagined. The most I know is what I learned in my high school French and Spanish classes, which wasn't much considering I spent most of my high school career smoking in the bathroom and torturing girls in the locker room. I was a bitch.

This letter is longer than I thought it would be. Go a few extra days without word and suddenly I can't shut up.

You're a wonderful mess. Don't clean that up.

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

Don't cross your fingers. Sundays will never change. They keep on coming. You'll be a freak, and I'll keep you company. (For the Damaged, Blonde Redhead)

Tag. You're it.

Lucy

[star studded]

Seven,

If the space that we mail letters into could echo, I wonder if this one would. I hope that work is keeping you busy, and I'm not being a pest, chasing you down with correspondence. I hope you haven't gotten bored with the girl in the states, hunched over her drafting table and cursing the fact that she was never all that good at hand-detailing when it involved very small blue beads.

I'm thinking about selling my car. I have one, you know. We never used it. I never use it now. It's taking up space. Like a lot of things. Like me.

I'm exhausted. I've been up all night sewing, and squinting at little beads and my eyes are burning. I'm going to close them and mail this in the morning. I hope you're sleeping well, if you're sleeping at all.

Lucy