Dissecting the scientist; of the Oregon chronicles & meeting Nigel

"This is too soon for me, Nigel...." I tell him and feel myself shrinking before him.

"Is it really so deep?" His tone disarms me. Again. I try to pull back.

But his touch.... is like both father and mother.... to me. 

It is a strange notion and not one I understand at all but like the curious cat one has to know; maybe because I’ve never known it and....

There is such a strangeness

the odd way he looks at me, and how he calls me his ‘mon fē’ from his childhood realm;

Only some moments I find I feel I am like —what is it, exactly? like I am his lab animal that he studies....looking under some microscope?

and something else that is sort of twisted that, at present, I am too shy to write about ....and I start to fear that —
I don't know, this thought occurs to me—this apprehension.... that we are —like ....only sinking further kind of into each other's madness

or is this what all civilizations begin like?

He seems to see me—

unlike Chris—

who would look right at me and not notice me there. So how is it that Nigel knew I was an artist from just one glimpse at my hands.... that day at the Ashland library....?

That day he looked so.... proper Englishman in his neat oxford collar and wearing a fedora.... like some scientist from the 1940’s.... and did I write this already? He isn’t just a professor and a doctor of psychiatry, he’s also an archeologist—he was some kid prodigy and finished his first set of degrees by the time he was twenty..... but should I be flattered then that the way he looks at me actually makes me feel like ....some kind of artifact found in a bog—

isn’t that a strange thing to feel? He has the oddest stare....

To illustrate between the lines
.....my hat fetishes (which for me goes back to when I first started being aware of style and old Greta Garbo movies) After Garbo the Daisy hat from the Great Gatsby that Mia Farrow wore, and I would love that bowler from Unbearable Lightness of Being but, truth told, I am most partial to the newsboy

so about Nigel.... he likes to shop for clothes with me and go into the dressing rooms
—is that weird?


Our fetishes.... I think that is behind the kinky edge of our sexual attraction

I have glossed over this about him. About us. It confuses me. You see. Switching roles; role reversals and I suppose I am not ready to write about this

but he can make the simplest motion erotic in a strange coquettish way that ..... disturbs me

It is like a shattered mirror

meeting Nigel

today I return a book to the Ashland library-- it was such hot today, the heat made me dizzy

I met someone; his name is Nigel, he is working on some project; he researches.... what is it he said he does? he vaguely said something about anthropology .... then he stared at me.

So strangely, and it made me think: like the lighthouse, his eyes.

 as I turned to go

I don't know if it is because I could feel his eyes first, it is when I look up from the floor that I see him sitting at the desk and somehow I drop my phone and my glasses fall off at the same time, both landing in his lap! I notice his book is on druids but his bookmark has the image of Loki

and this is how we meet; losing my sight and all communication, I suppose this would have been the only way ....how else do two shy people meet

 after all?
He says to me,

"Hi, I'm Nigel,” it began


Then he says
“I would like to see you again.... would you mind-- may I call you?"

So....

he says he wants to meet again

I am always in hesitation over new acquaintances


But there was something about how he kept staring at me that made me curious

So..... we do, we meet in town for coffee. He has has such mystery about him and it seems he stares at me when we talk. He stares at me; what does that mean? watches me.... everything I do..... and when he calls me later....and says something so strange,

"I want to know everything that has happened to you.... I want to understand your mind."

I tell him I have to go and later I think about it and wonder.... what does he want?

he stays on my mind all day and later I go slip out to think; it is so stifling there at night where I'm staying in Talent, a very small --not even really much of a town with one grocery store and its own little library, a couple of shops that you never see anyone go inside and everything is closed by five

and by now the sun has already begun to set ....

it is by the clock by where are benches with vines that wrap around the entrance way to a kind of secret enclosure and there I go to think and be alone, escaped from the opprssion of the family whose house I rent a room from as there are no apartments anywhere around

it is when I am there awhile, I notice someone across the street ..... and see him there!....  as if he knew I'd be there

he crosses the street and walks over to me but stops a few feet away and looks at me and waits, then finally says,

"Say something," he seems to watch me like.... a kind of subject....I think

 I will write more ....on this..... I have to think ....I need to be alone