Ori Disappeared

03-11-11
This morning I almost threw up. I woke up and didn't know where I was. I couldn't tell. Was I still in Ventura too afraid to face the school day? But then I remembered about Hal.(Jimmy?) LIAM
(Ricardo. I thought I saw him on the street in the neighborhood this morning as I walked to the train. He lived in Moon Park and he was one of the literacy teachers who came often to my workshops and whose program I visited every week. This was the first time I'd seen him in the neighborhood since he offered to bring home for me in his van the couch Solly was getting rid of and gave to me. We came inside to clear the stairs and he moved in to kiss me. I stopped him. He ran down stairs right into Ori who read it all wrong. Thought the worst. That I was back to my old ways. True Ricardo looked
(when is this? Which job is she at? Ori left before the burocrazy job but after the partido newspaper job, so this would have to be someone from Centro Libre, maybe Jimmy? Like that idea...that could work Maybe Soli wanted to get them out because of the conditions...
like my old lover Jimmy, the kind of guy I went for, a Hal type, but far worse, so therefore better, taller, edgier, more lumpenized. “The way you were looking at me, staring at me at workshop, I know you want me.” Had I been staring? This was the thing I found sexually irresistible, a man who took over, sponsored and gave permission to my desire. Used to find sexually irresistible! Something had changed. I feel elation about that. I would have fucked the guy in the old days, but I didn't. But Ori thought the worst. He slammed the door to the house, the door to his study. I followed him in there and stood beside him at the window. We watched Adolfo (David) careen a car in reverse at high speed into the space by our hydrant, a car he'd of course stolen. Machi (and Adolfo) were (was) in the car with him. Ori raced downstairs, screaming at the top of his lungs, got Machi out of the car and shooed David and Adolfo off the block. He watched him pull out, drive down the hill. He shoved Machi into the hallway of the house. And then he kept walking. From the window to his study I saw him head uphill toward the avenue. I figured he'd walk off the rage. That was what Ori did. I didn't think about him one more minute. Getting Machi to help me with the couch took up all my attention. Ori always talked himself to reason after awhile. It never occurred to me I could lose his trust, permanently, forever. Ori was me, a piece of myself. I might disappoint myself but deep down I loved me, I trusted me, knew me. That was what was true. And that was what was true of me and Ori.
By three in the morning there was still no Ori. Machi was freaked. He came out of his room, reeking of weed, with David and Adolfo hovering behind him. They had come back around one, without the car.
“Where the fuck is Pa? We better start calling people.”
And that had been the last any of us heard or saw of Ori. Where is he? Did he leave me? Is he dead? If he were detained I would know by now.
I hide. I hide from these questions.
There's always been a force field between my home and the outside world. Some days I can't cross it. I only cross because I have to. As a girl there was no way my Mother let me stay home even if I was burning with fever, choking in phlegm, or oozing pus. I always let Machi stay home if he has to. Before I could cross the force field I had to throw up. I always want to go home. But when I'm home I'm afraid. Home is my own mind the way it was before I fell o sleep, before sleep brought nightmares and morning brought terror. So much has happened. It's been weeks since I've gotten myself to the park, to write at lunchtime, to my mind home. Already the place, the job, is sucking me in. Stockholm syndrome. Abducted by burocrazy, wage slavery. Pseudo reality is the biggest cult.