<p>It would be incorrect to say that the hike I took yesterday in some way “solved” the anxiety that I felt after the concert. There were, as I constantly tell myself, explain and explain and explain, no words from God. How would there be? How would it be the case that He would step in and say, “No, Dee, don’t worry”?</p>
<p>I am trying not to get down on myself enough to lose all hope. I want to say, “This is so unimportant that I really need to just give up on the prospect.” I want to recognize the futility in striving for a relationship. I want to buy into the egodystonia. I want to find some way to turn off that part of my mind that craves Kay, that dreams about the feeling of her cheek against mine and perseverates about holding her hand. How childish! How immature! How utterly beneath me that I struggle so hard with this!</p>
<p>But whatever.</p>
<p>I can’t just turn all of those things off, but I <em>can</em> go ahead and admit that this isn’t going anywhere. I can recognize that she wouldn’t be a good romantic partner for me and I wouldn’t be for her, and, even if the feelings don’t go away, drop any hope of pursuing them. We Catholics are so good at repression, are we not?</p>
<p>There’s nothing to be had but friendship, and I can aim for that, at least.</p>
<p>Today, Kay took me to a used bookstore near campus, and we spent a good hour and a half there, digging through the shelves. She sold me almost instantly on the place with the explanation that this was the type of place that would eagerly buy up all of the weird and obscure books that students pick up in their studies. Not just textbooks, though they certain took some of those when the university bookstore would not buy them back, but supplementary materials and personal hyperfixation-induced deep-dive book purchases.</p>
<p>Kay spent most of that time prowling through the music section, and me digging among shelves of exegeses and commentaries<supid="fnref:andbibles"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:andbibles">3</a></sup>. Occasionally, we would head back to the other to show them something of particular interest that we had found. At one point, she brought me a book on harmony written by some composer and laughingly read aloud a short section from the beginning, a scathing indictment of music critics, and we agreed that he must have, at some point, had a concert ripped to shreds in the papers. I brought her a whole stack of apologetics by C. S. Lewis and we reminisced over reading <em>The Chronicles of Narnia</em> as kits.</p>
<p>I do not think I could come up with a more ideal bookstore, I have to say. It was almost the platonic ideal of a used bookstore. Friends always talk about the scent of books being intoxicating, and while I’ve always been somewhat mixed on it<supid="fnref:scent"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:scent">1</a></sup>, the scent of bookstores themselves are something that I am immensely fond of. It’s not just the smell of the books that does it for me, but the shelves, the people, the lingering scent of those who might have handled the books before me. This book makes my whiskers bristle at the lingering scent of anxiety, that one was clearly loved and brought comfort. Whiskers bristle and I lose myself in the past of the place. There is something meta about the whole experience: books and also readers of those books.</p>
<p>I left after spending a surprisingly small amount of money on a surprisingly large number of books. The problem of fitting them all into my luggage for the trip home is a problem for future Dee.</p>
<p>Following the bookstore, we walked a block to an Ethiopian restaurant. I had never tried such cuisine before and while it was not unpleasant, I am still trying to puzzle out the tastes.</p>
<p>The rest of the day was spent lounging at Kay’s place, reading. She parked herself in her computer chair so that she could listen to her scores and insisted that I just use her bed — there being no other place to sit — so I propped myself up against the wall with her pillows and poked through my haul.<supid="fnref:haul"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:haul">2</a></sup> It wasn’t the most comfortable of seats, and I had to dedicate a small portion of my mind at all times to ignoring the scent of Kay clinging to the sheets and pillowcases, but it was enjoyable arranging and rearranging the stack in what order might be best to read them in.</p>
<p>Kay, for her part was doing much the same, and whenever I would look over, she would be chewing on her cheek or a claw. She kept tapping out rhythms on the page of whatever page of a score she was looking at, humming arpeggios, and at least once I caught her nodding and tapping her tail about behind her, and when she looked up and saw me, she smiled bashfully and mumbled an apology.</p>
<p>It was a pleasant afternoon, all told, and we followed it up with a simple dinner of chicken that she cooked on her ancient stove and more shared videos, as has long been our habit.</p>
<p>Now I am back in the room that I’m staying in, surrounded by the non-scent of scent-block hiding whoever had stayed there before me, layered over with a thin darkness of my own scent.</p>
<p>I am embarrassed to admit that the change of scentscape has left me a little jarred today, in particular due to the fact that it had clearly been a few days since she had washed her sheets, and there was an unmistakable undertone of what I take to be sexuality clinging to those sheets. I do not doubt that she gets as aroused as any other healthy coyote of her age might, and I imagine that she is no stranger to masturbation. This is in no way surprising and yet I was in a continual state of tense wariness and low-level arousal of my own that I desperately hoped she could not smell in turn.</p>
<p>That, above all things is what I found myself needing to tune out. I buried my nose in book after book, and while that meant more than a mere whiff of mildew, it was less distracting by far.</p>
<p>I am trying to square my feelings about this. I am not immune to attraction, but the levels to which this complicates my feelings is uncomfortable. Here I am trying to convince myself to drop my attraction to her and my limbic system works against me.</p>
<p>I am not ashamed to admit that physiological response, but I am ashamed that I was unable to keep myself from acting on it — it seemed necessary if I was to sleep in any level of comfort. I shall have a confession in my future, but then, I knew that already.</p>
<p>It can get rather close to the scent of mildew, which makes me quite uncomfortable. Scent is complicated. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:scent"title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
<p>I picked up a few commentaries, a few that were more along the lines of pop-theology and a few that were quite dense and reminded me strongly of my time at St. John’s to the point where I could almost smell the study room I spent so many hours in, the scratched desk and rickety chair. I also acquired books on psychology that I’d heard about from colleagues and had been meaning to read. Of note were two books on shame and vulnerability. How appropriate. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:haul"title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<liid="fn:andbibles">
<p>And bibles. Countless bibles. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:andbibles"title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
