Wednesday, Feb. 04, 2004 | 2:28 PM

This is a short story I wrote for the fun of it.

I think it�s time we talked about him don�t you? Because he happens over and over again. In dreams and in this waking life, such as it is. Do you know what time it is? It doesn�t much matter, I guess. He�s in class anyway.

I haven�t slept in days. Yesterday a poster of Oscar Wilde stepped off the stucco wall and started talking to me. I shit you not. It said, Vampire. Vampire. Do you see any significance in that? Why should it have said to me, Vampire rather than for instance, Kitchen Sink. Or Pony. Or better yet, Go to class. Or maybe it could tell me, you know how he feels about me. I think I have a right to know, after all.

But let�s not talk about hallucinations. Let�s talk about what is real. Let�s get it over with since you�re so fucking curious. Let�s talk about him.

When he walks, his center of gravity is pitched slightly forward, as though at any moment he could fall face first to the ground. He always looks ready to topple like a building on a poor foundation. His eyes are hurricanes shot through green lenses and his voice�his voice is honey and gravel. It slides with soothing deliberation in one ear and out the other, paving over everything in its path until there is no me. No mind. No first person narrative. I was once a verb I-n-g-ing along my merry way. Now I am an adjective. I am inert yet paradoxically malleable. I exist to describe him. That�s why I haven�t been sleeping, I guess. I want to be awake in case he needs me�you know, to be his scenery, I suppose. To tell him where he is in case he gets lost.

He is sunlight and I am film. I fade slowly in his wake. I am as white and silent as a mushroom cloud. I spread thin and scatter. I am ash. I wash off.

I wonder what it�s like to be him. To mean so much to someone else. I followed him yesterday. At a respectable distance, of course. I watched him buy spearmint gum and rifle through the New York Times at the corner stand. I watched in the Garden as lilac petals shook off white trees and blew around him in a lazy ballet. And something in me shook as well. I was my own snow globe, a billion specs with no hope of converging into a solid layer.

I just learned his last name a week ago. Are you proud of me? And I know he likes chunky peanut butter much better than smooth. I know he pronounces the word orange like it�s spelled are-enge. I know that when he was thirteen he had something printed in Reader�s Digest�some kind of long form joke type thingy, and he got fifty dollars for it�I heard him say that to some guy in the cafeteria. I know he has two pairs of glasses�one horn rimmed and one blue wire framed. I write all this stuff down so I won�t forget it. I mean, I don�t think that I would. But I want to make sure. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Do you know what it�s like to love someone so much? No of course you don�t. You have no fucking idea. Do you know what I did for him last night? I held a lit cigarette against my thigh for a full thirty seconds. And the day before that I sliced my ankle with a safety pin. Dr. Greensboro, that dumb fucker�he says I�m doing it to prove to myself I can still feel. Where did he read that? The inlay of a Nine Inch Nails CD? For Christ sakes, I already know I can feel. In fact, I wish I wasn�t so aware of feeling this way all the time. It�s not me that needs to know I can feel. It�s him.

This morning I put the blood stained paper towel from when I sliced my ankle into an envelope and I left it in his mailbox. He needs to know what he�s doing to me because if he knows then he�ll stop it. Well, no I didn�t put my name on it. Of course he�ll know it�s from me. How can he not know about everything I do for him and everything he does to me how he won�t let me go to sleep anymore? He has to stop because I don�t think I can take this anymore. I�m so tired and I just want to sleep.

You know, I�d love to sleep next to him. Can you see us together? Two sleeping beauties in a gilt lined glass box. His big emerald doll eyes closed tight as steel shutters behind those inky lashes. His arms folded against his chest like an iron cross. To be with him forever and know he won�t leave, and to be set free and not have to do these things that he makes me do. And to sleep. To simply sleep. I think it�s best for everyone, don�t you?

But I think I�ll wait. Yes. I will. I�ll wait until after prom. Because you know, I already bought the dress, and maybe by then he�ll come around. It could happen. You never can tell with love. It�s known, so I�ve heard, to work miracles.