You spotted me across the street waiting for the same pedestrian light to change. I watched your teeth gleam bright in the distant, sinking sun as your cheeks raised, pulled up into a wide grin. I would be able to recognize a hundred variations of you in a thousand different places; beloved features and a gentle magnetic pull that always seemed to tug just beneath my navel. I don’t remember it being any other way, but then again, I don’t remember our beginning.
The night had worn thin and threadbare, and we were both ready for it to be over. The trains were no longer running, and yours was closer, so there we went. Momentarily, I realized this had happened before. Innumerable variations of the same story. Maybe we were just stuck on repeat. The bourbon had turned my blood into a heat pipe, efficiently transferring our compatibility into the air between us. Refractions of skin blurred in front of me as the room gently spun through my altered vision.
I asked for a long shirt to sleep in, and you brought me pajama pants and a long shirt. I didn’t argue. If you thought two pieces of fabric were going to make me less desirable to you, then I would acquiesce and wear them. This was hard enough; attempting disinterest. There was no need to voice displeasure at being confined when those very layers would move against my skin as if they were your fingertips, light and questioning.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been able to detect another’s lust. Whether or not it is directed at me or someone else, I still feel it. I know; even if I do not know for whom it is intended. Something in my specific link in the chains of evolution; something learned from exposure; or, perhaps something cursed within my blood. Even quite young, my blood would run a little faster when I recognized it; an unbearably quick beat would have my heart rattling against the cage my chest formed around it. That’s not to say that every lusting individual would find that same hunger reflected within me for them, but that I too felt and was pained by a very similar affliction. My vessel thrums with the prospect of it, like the initial hum drawn from the strings of a violin as the bow is pulled across them. This body of mine knows the sound the player wishes to hear, even if I am not the instrument of their choosing.
The beginning and recognition of desire, well, anyone can form. Truly, even the least skilled musicians can pull the initial hum from an instrument, and maybe, I mused, I was simply that: an instrument rather than a musician; awaiting life, only to be given from another. How pitiful. What a sad, tired song.
Alcohol muddles my thoughts and ability to discern many of those thoughts. So, I was uncertain what you wanted from me. I scrubbed away makeup that had trickled down my face as it followed rivulets of perspiration. My skin was left pink and freckles appeared where foundation had once concealed them. You were moving about in the other room, and the sounds of your search crawled beneath the space where door and floor didn’t quite meet.
The amount of dirt and dust that had accumulated, in corners with nothing blocking a broom’s reach, told more of your apathy than the overly cluttered shelves. The dining room table was broad and long, presumably many could dine here; by the layers of scattered papers and the odd assortment of objects taking up residence, it was obvious no one had for a long while. There were tissues and microwavable meal wrappers overflowing nearly every trash receptacle, and all of them were visible. You, with your once small and tidy handwriting, all i’s and t’s dotted and crossed no longer attempted to conceal the messes your life created. Your parents were the only ones left you sought to deceive.
Where did the tale begin? Where did your being start to dissolve? Did it happen when I was there to see it? Could I have altered your course? Did I push it further along? Do your parents know that pleasing them and living a lie are one and the same? The youthful friend, full of kindness and humor, has been replaced with an old man filled with the despair of the dying; you had no visible fight left.
The open window above the bed let in just enough of the outside world; without the slow, yet steady stream of fresh air, I may have panicked. Everything here felt like a husk of the living; your home -- if you could call it such -- felt like an abattoir after the carnage. Necessary as the outside air was, the lake carried a chill through the screen sending ripples of goose flesh up my bare arms.
“Will you let me know if I’m invading your space?” I asked before daring to move from my place in your bed. I felt the shiver in your response; your hesitation filled me with a sense of doubt. Chilled to the bone by your lack of commitment to living, I curled into myself, tucking knees to chest. I felt your pause before you reached for me. Familiar arms wrapped cautiously around my waist. Laying like twins in the womb, we fell asleep. Exhaustion has a funny way of eliminating all other needs; and so for a few hours, we had peace.
I awoke to a shift in the way you held me, your breath was forced to even and slow, but it felt as comfortable in your throat as sandpaper against your larynx. When I turned my head, ever so slightly, you asked in the softest of voices, “You’ll tell me if I’m invading your space?” “Mhm.”
Your hands responded with a guilty hunger. So full of self-loathing and desire; a combination painful enough to bring even those with the steeliest of demeanors to their knees. You, a once sharp blade, dulled from misuse and lack of proper care would bring me pain. I had an irresistible urge to clamp my hand around that dull blade, regardless of the pain I knew it would bring. I’m hardly a masochist, but in that moment caught between knowing I could alleviate your pain, and the toll such an act would take on my being, I acknowledged I’d rather take your pain. I would rather mold it to my twisted heart than have you drown in it. It was sucking you under. You could no longer distinguish up from down; your sense of wrong and right was now reliant on pre-fabricated ideologies spoon fed you by the parents who taught you misery was a part of the human condition. You were fed dark consequences with every dessert, and there was never a pleasure you could take without a touch of pain.
I despised them then, and relaxed into your touch. There is healing to be had in another’s arms. There is redemption offered, piece by piece, to those who offer themselves up as salve for the wounded. We left your tomb of a home, and we headed towards the sunshine in the park.
The details are not really relevant to our story as a whole. Suffice it to say, giving and taking are hardly different sides of the coin. Giving is the honored person, while taking is the inscription around their portrait. You had said, “I love you, friend.” We understood each other. And it was true; I don’t know if it is still true.
You would kiss me goodbye, and in it I felt your desire for something different, something new just around the corner. I recognized it as something I myself felt.
And so, yet again, we parted ways. Both with separate thoughts, both with burdens different, yet lighter than before. It seems it has ended this way since we’ve gone our separate ways. One day, we’ll agree to meet, and it’ll end differently. One day, we’ll see each other, and know without saying that our story is over. That day is somewhere on the ever visible horizon, and yet, I think, it’ll break my heart more than this leave taking ever has.
