My Heart Is Like A Wheel

BY LJ

This story is a secret, so I have to dance around the crux of it. Writing about it's like eating a cremeless creme egg, and more than anything I'm living for the day it's not a secret anymore. I can't believe I actually respect a person enough not to relentlessly blab his shit all over the Internet, to the detriment of no less than my own narrative voice- I don't even know what I'm waiting for! The day when I stop loving him? I guess I can say that, at least, that it's a love secret. That's my deal. I love someone. 

And I can tell you all about the part of it I'm telling you about. It happened yesterday and took place on my bedroom floor. None of it's a secret except for why I started crying; I'd never keep anything me alone in my bedroom-related a secret from the alphabet. Or the Internet. And I guess it's not out of line to say the barest bones of it:

I am in love with someone who, for a very strange and interesting reason (which is a secret), I can never be with, unless something even stranger happens, which it won't- but it might. Probably not, though. 





I loved him for x amount of months before I found out I could never be with him and when I found it out my heart didn't break and I never cried. I love him so much that it barely mattered. The act of loving him is so rich- the creme of a creme egg!- it never stopped feeling like enough. Being with him is as good as not being with him, so long as there still is him. And this might be pushing it too far but my ego is forcing me to tell you that it is reciprocated, in whichever tiny quiet ways it's allowed to be- it would be impossible to love him if this much if I couldn't tell he loved me back. Sometimes I see it so hard in his eyes I want to throw up. It's tragic and at worst I'll get kinda cranky wondering why do I have to get stuck with something tragically beautiful instead of just regular beautiful, but then I tell myself that it's more beautiful for being tragic, that if it were just regular beautiful I'd probably be bored and ignore it, and that it'll be a novel one day, and that soothes me. So for x amount of months I never cried. 

Yesterday, alone in my bedroom: I was bumming around my apartment in the afternoon with wet hair and listening to Band on the Run when I decided to do some stomach crunches. I lay on my back on my paisley rug and "Let Me Roll It" came on. 

I've always liked "Let Me Roll It" a-ok because duh but not as much as other people seem to. "Let Me Roll It" and "Temporary Secretary" are the two solo Paul songs that people who don't give that much of a shit about Paul McCartney tend to gush about when they figure out I'm insane and have Paul McCartney's name tattooed on my arm.

But something happened to me yesterday. It sounded better than usual right off the bat. Normally when Paul goes off on a fifties prom tip I feel like I'm drowning in a silo full of white sugar but it just fit so gorgeously into the pattern of my rug and that day and my head, I tuned right into the Dear Prudencey bassline and loved Paul so much for being able to play bass in that cool Paul way of his, and of course I was free-form dreaming of the man I'm in love with, as I always am. There he is- right now, even/definitely right now- floating around the top of my headspace all hot and cool reminding me about all the hot and cool things he does. He mixes well with Paul McCartney- when I first met him I was listening to Paul's "Get On The Right Thing" a lot and he became "the right thing"- if it wasn't for the strange, interesting and decidedly WRONG thing that's keeping us apart (I wish I was saying what it is followed by an exclamation point inside this bracket instead of crappy this), I think he'd be the number one dude I've ever met that Paul McCartney would highly recommend I go for. I mean that as a compliment to him and Paul both.  

When the lyric got to I can't tell you how I feel/ My heart is like a wheel I started to cry. It happened before I'd noticed it did- I don't remember registering the words and reflecting upon how they related to my life- they were just, all of a sudden... not "in me," but me. They were as me as if I'd thought them up myself. And then I was crying before I even felt the top of my nose burn, straight sobbing; I do remember remembering "You can make noises when you cry!" and then making louder crying noises to drive the point home. When the song ended I climbed up onto the trunk I use as a bedside table and played it again, again, again- sniffling and wondering why it hadn't ever occurred to me before, how much like a wheel my heart is. 

I stopped crying when I stopped crying and felt cleansed. I texted and emailed my best friends to tell them I'd been cleansed. I watched a Heidi braids tutorial on Youtube and did a really good job of articulating Heidi braids on my own head and walked to the subway. A cute man smiled at me and I smiled back. At work my co-workers were sweetly enthusiastic about my Heidi braids and a woman ordered a Coke. As I passed her her Coke I said, "Here's your Coca-Cola, Darling," and it was one of the sweetest sentences I ever heard myself say. Now every time I serve someone a Coca-Cola I'll say that sentence and savor it. I get that eventually the novelty will wear off but I'll keep saying it either way; a beautiful sentence is a beautiful sentence whether you're feelin' it or not and I'm sure it'll still sound alive to strangers. Today I've listened to "Let Me Roll It" more times than I've ever listened to one song in one day and I'm going to keep on going until it starts to make me sick. I want to hear it so much I can't stand it and then I never want to hear it again. I want it to belong only to these days.