the scratching post.

You scratch my head until your hand cramps. But you're a trooper; you just switch hands. My head couldn't even tell the difference other than from the pause in scratching while you changed positions so as to give your left hand better access to its task. But there was no decline in the scratching quality. Maybe you are ambidextrous.

I don't think about dexterity. I don't think about much of anything. Any thought processes that start are immediately cut off by my fatigue and the gentle rhythmic scratching that somehow knocks thoughts straight out of my head. Like a natural sedative, your hand works its way across my head and answers every would-be thought with the answer to the age old question of ignorance versus apathy: I don't know and I don't care.

We're watching a movie. Well, you're watching a movie. I'm really just looking at it and only because I'm faced in that direction. No matter. It's a new age film, mostly music and pictures that probably have a deeper meaning, some sort of commentary on society. I definitely don't get the deeper meaning now, and I probably wouldn't get it anyway. So I look at it, and someday I'll try to impress someone by saying I've watched it to appear cultured and well-rounded.

The only active thing I am doing is not falling asleep, if you can actively not do something. I suppose I'm actively not doing a lot of things, like horseback riding and ice skating. Falling asleep is only one of the many things I am not doing. But it's the only one I'm thinking about, because right now, not falling asleep takes a lot more concentration than not ice skating. Never have I been in bed reading or watching TV and suddenly found myself wearing ice skates performing triple axles.

To look at me, you might think I'm engaging in some sort of competition to see how slowly a person can blink. My eyelids worked fine all day, but now it's as if they go down and forget to come back up. Silly eyelids. Then again, I suppose they worked pretty hard today.

I feel dirty, like I'm doing something bad. Little girls play with the hair of their mothers all the time, but it's different because you're a man and I'm a little girl with the misfortune of having grown up. It's dirty because it feels good, it's innocent and sensual, casual and intense, all at the same time. And if it feels good, it must be bad, right?

I think that I love you. Maybe you planned it this way; lured me back to your apartment to watch this new age movie with your promises of appearing cultured and well-rounded, and while I was watching out for drinks and for roofies and maybe even cheesy poems, you made your move on my very head, where my heart had no choice but to follow. I would elope with you right now, if only you could find some way to get through the ceremony and the subsequent trip to Mexico with all my savings while still scratching my head.

Tonight, when you get ready for bed, you'll wash your hands when you realize that you've brought home a million tiny pieces of me under your fingernails. Or maybe you'll try and save some of those pieces of me and make some clones so there will always be heads to scratch, an idea which is creepy and oddly flattering all at the same time.

But for now, you've stopped scratching; whether because you've realized what's under the fingernails on both your hands or because your left hand is now cramping too, I don't know. I would think about it, and maybe even come to some real conclusions, except that now you run your fingers through my hair in a single repetitive motion that is different from the scratching but makes me almost certain that I do love you.

I've heard that there are people who don't like for others to mess with their hair or touch their heads. I've heard it, but I'm not entirely sure I believe it. Maybe I actually am one of those people, and I would protest except that I fall in a trance before I ever get any words out. The world may never know. I know that I don't know, and I don't care.