Monday, Jun. 23, 2003 | 9:51 PM

When I start to really love people, a strange thing happens.

I strip off all their skin and suck out their blood and build fortresses with their bones. I refashion their structures until they are all congruent angles and tightly laid out grids.

I turn human beings into ideas. I make them my philosophies, my metaphysical puzzles that I can manipulate and figure out, the same way I do with a character I�m going to play. And then I breathe myself into the ideas, formerly paramours, so that I will never lose them. I keep them close to my brain and far from my heart. They are all limbs and nerve endings, synapses, and tangled motivations. I lose their souls.

I am determined not to do this to Ivy.

Being conscious of your own capability for monstrosity is a strange and lovely thing.

(She wrote me a letter. I read it twice. She loved the mix I sent her. Beautiful beautiful girl.)