Why I read the printed word.

(ed note:. this post might make you want to barf. i read it over after posting and it made me want to barf. you've been warned.)

I just picked up a book to re-read, and some sand fell out of its pages.

It sprinkled across my thighs; white dot pinpricks on black cotton. As I brushed the sand away I remembered the three days it took me to read those 400 pages, on a soft, endless Waikiki beach in 2007.

Craig was by my side, sick as a dog with the flu. He slept every afternoon, for hours, waking occasionally to drag himself along with me to try surfing, to go to dinner and eat food for which he had no appetite, to walk the beach at night, shoes in one hand, each other's hand in the other yearning for bedtime. I remember the delicious feeling of being so far away from home with him, just the two of us where we couldn't be reached. He slept and I read, devouring that book because I loved it so, stopping every now and then to slap some SPF on my entire person and his sleeping face, the only time he wouldn't put up a fuss about my constant badgering to reapply. I got drunk next to the pool alone, realizing that this was, strangely, the perfect kind of trip. I didn't have to entertain or be entertaining. I could sit in the shade and read over lunch and look out at the ocean and feel the weight of someone I loved leaning on me.

This was Back Then, when we were long-distance lovers, unsure of what would come of it. The things we didn't know back then make me breathless: we didn't know I would leave my home just for him, we didn't know he would become a dog person just for me, we didn't know that we would say "forever, just for you." But I did know, suddenly and for the first real time, that just being around that particular person, not doing much of anything but watching him be sick and boring but yet there, could make me happy - happy enough for (fingerscrossed) a lifetime.

Today we've been quasi-fighting via email at our respective workplaces, which is always a great idea, right? I'm annoyed at Craig and I can say he probably feels the same about me.

But that damn sand kind of made me want to just shut up about it, already.