To those who find comfort in coolness.
To those who find action in stillness.
To those who find detail in darkness.
To those who see skies that are starless.
To those who are tired and sleepless.
To those who are lonesome and ageless.
To those who let ants crawl over their pages.
To those who let sand get stuck in their laces.
To those who feel small and crippled by shyness.
To those who are still while others are boisterous.
To those who let moonlight fill in their creases.
To those who walk quickly between races.
To those who hear sounds from faraway places.
To those who are trapped inside of their cages.
To those with brains that function in sadness.
To those blown apart by slow-building madness.
To those left alone as though they were nameless.
To those who wear hats to cover their faces.
To those who are soft with hard features.
To those who live without other creatures.
To those who travel without wages.
To those who exist between pages.
To those who are wise and silent.
To those who think love must be violent.
To those with love broken by distance.
To those with hearts swollen by sickness.
This goes out to the friends of the Moon—
We who seek light where others find gloom.
My love burns within my heart,
Making my life feel like art.
I fall in love three times a day:
The strangers laugh, the children play…
My love is sunlight from within,
Burning fast unfreckled skin.
My love is packaged, pay for postage:
“Return to sender—it’s explosive.”
I’ll give my love to someone else,
But rarely save some for myself.
I’m learning how to love for me,
And not for those I think I see.
My heart is blind, my mind is deaf--
I’m running fast to catch my breath.
Kisses quiet in the night,
Feeling safe, it's all alright.
Feel his beauty, see it too...
I wonder what to say or do.
I know the heart that beats within,
Is full of warmth that fuels his grin.
Within his mind I come to find,
Pools of wisdom, well-defined.
Beneath his touch I come to feel
Joyous knowing that he's real,
(And not a dream of some ideal).
Down this river we are flowing,
Moving slow and easygoing.
If there's one thing I can admit:
Life's more vibrant with him in it.
I know my heart speaks loud and clear,
And is also plagued by fear--
I fear my words can sometimes smother,
New flames burning with another.
Still I write this with a smile,
And know my efforts are worthwhile.
Feelings processed and expressed,
Relieve weight from off my chest.
Let’s talk about homophobia!
Actually—let’s not just talk about it; let’s deconstruct it to reveal it as a highly problematic term.
Ready? Let’s do this.
First things first:
What is a phobia?
The word “phobia” comes from the Greek word Phobos, meaning “fear”.
That said: Wikipedia defines a “phobia” as “a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational,” (Wikipedia, 2014).
That’s a long definition. What are the most important parts of it?
It’s first worthwhile to note that phobias are a subset of anxiety disorders. To have an anxiety disorder is to be plagued by a sense of dread (anxiety) or fear.
For example, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is characterized by a continuous sense of dread that results in someone probably feeling like something bad is going to happen to them at any moment—whether or not something bad actually occurs.
Not all anxiety disorders are general, however. Often times there are certain things that can exacerbate feelings of anxiety. These things might be called triggers. For instance, some people’s anxiety might be triggered by traffic. Others may be triggered by bananas and cucumbers because of how sinfully and deliciously phalli--never mind.
It is in this sense that a phobia can be considered a type of anxiety disorder: to have a phobia is to fear something so much that it causes a person to completely avoid it, even if doing so might seem unnecessary or strange.
There are many different kinds of phobias. In fact, here’s a website that lists many of them:
http://phobialist.com/
Someone typically cannot be blamed for having a phobia. If someone has a fear of spiders (arachnophobia) and decides to stay away from spiders, then this would seem both reasonable and understandable because of their fear. This fear is understandable because arachnids are sometimes poisonous and often creepy-crawly. We typically don’t believe that spiders are human beings who deserve to be treated respectfully because of this. These are some of the things that make arachnophobia both reasonable and understandable.
I know how daunting paragraphs of words can be, so let me highlight the two main things I want you to know about phobias before we move on:
A phobia is an extreme fear of something specific.
Someone who has a phobia typically goes to great lengths to avoid the thing that makes them phobic.
What about homophobia?
The word “homophobia” is the word used to describe the phenomenon of mistreatment toward non-heterosexual people simply in virtue of the fact that these people are not heterosexual. It is a phenomenon that cuts across many levels of society:
Homophobia might manifest on a cognitive level when a person consciously harbors a belief like “I will not hire a gay person at my restaurant because I am disgusted by how much the thought of a man being fucked turns me on I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle.”
Homophobia might manifest on an interpersonal level when someone spits on a homosexual couple for holding hands in public.
Homophobia might manifest on an institutional level when legislation is passed to deny homosexual couples the right to marry, perhaps in order to protect the “religious freedom” of straight people with repressed erections.
In general, then, to be “homophobic” is to assign negative value to non-heterosexual people because of their sexuality, resulting in prejudice toward and discrimination against these people.
Let’s stop for a second and talk about labels!
A label is good if it accurately describes the thing to which it pertains.
For example, it would be inaccurate to say that an apple is an orange because it’s a completely different kind of fruit, yo!
Ok, that was just a quick thing. Now, given all we've said about phobias and "homophobia", it's time to ask:
Is it accurate to consider the things associated with homophobia to be a type of phobia?
In other words: Is “homophobia” an instance of an extreme fear of something specific?
Something specific? Yes—non-heterosexual people.
Extreme fear? No—absolutely not.
Why?
Hold on--let's play devil's advocate first:
Some might argue that “homophobia” is an accurate term to describe prejudice toward and discrimination against non-heterosexual people because the people who act in “homophobic” ways are indeed afraid of non-heterosexual people. They perhaps feel threatened by the existence of a non-heterosexual person, for their mere existence challenges and creates fear for the integrity of our beloved heteropatriarchy.
Some evidence for this might consist in the stereotype about gay men that they are predatory and will attempt to have sex with any male that comes across their path. That would definitely be some scary shit if it were true. Luckily it's not--most rapists appear to be straight males, sorry Ladies.
It is in this sense that some might claim that some people do demonstrate “homophobia” because they are indeed afraid of non-heterosexuals.
If this is the case then isn’t it accurate to label these behaviors as a type of phobia?
No, it’s not.
Why isn't homophobia a phobia?
Because someone who has a phobia typically goes to great lengths to avoid the thing that makes them phobic because they are afraid of it. Humans typically choose to avoid things that send them into a fearful wailing panic because fearful wailing panics are very unpleasant.
Those who are “homophobic” seem to go out of their way to actively discriminate against non-heterosexual people. To say that the people who murdered Matthew Shepard are homophobic is to say that they were so scared of him that they decided to offer him a ride home and later became so terrified that they had to torture him before leaving him to die tied to a post in the middle of a field.
These people are not homophobic because homophobia is not a fucking phobia. It has nothing to do with fear because if it did then the "homophobic" person would avoid non-heterosexual people like the arachnophobic person avoids spiders. "Homophobia" instead refers to a pervasive system of prejudice toward and discrimination against non-heterosexual people that has been obscured by being labeled a phobia.
Hang on! Let’s make some parallels:
Prejudice toward and discrimination against women is called sexism—not "sexophobia".
Prejudice toward and discrimination against non-white people is called racism—not "raciphobia".
Prejudice toward and discrimination against non-heterosexual people is called "homophobia"—what the fuck?
The only quality of a phobia that seems accurate with respect to “homophobia” is that it is irrational. Everything else about “homophobia” has nothing to do with a phobia.
What happens when we call something a phobia when it isn’t?
To categorize something as a type of phobia is to excuse those afflicted by it from having to engage with the thing(s) that make them phobic.
Someone who is arachnophobic is not blamed for choosing to avoid spiders because their fear is understandable (despite perhaps being somewhat irrational—especially if tiny, harmless spiders are triggers for phobic responses).
Someone who is homophobic, however, is fully blamable for their actions because they are probably a prejudiced douche bag. It is not OK for someone to spit on a non-heterosexual couple for holding hands in public; it is not OK for someone to deny a non-heterosexual person a job because the hiring body doesn’t agree with their lifestyle; it’s not OK for a state law to deny non-heterosexual couples the right to marry or raise children.
“Homophobia” is not a fear of non-heterosexual people—it is distaste for those who are different simply because they are different. By classifying discriminatory acts borne of prejudice as a phobia one is implicitly excusing those who do these things from the full responsibility they deserve. The word homophobia legitimizes the discrimination faced by non-heterosexual people by classifying it on a basic semantic level as something that is reasonable and understandable when in reality discriminating against non-heterosexual people is not acceptable or excusable under any circumstance.
So why do we call it a phobia?
I have no fucking idea! This is something I’d like to research. I want to know when this term started being used to see if there are any parallels with its usage and the visibility of homosexuality in dominant culture.
My guess: homosexuality used to be classified as a type of mental illness in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) up until 1973, at which point it was removed. Perhaps it being classified as a legitimate mental disorder for a while allowed for a subsequent phobia to be developed in reference to it. But then again, homophobia was never in the DSM (at least to my knowledge)… I don’t know, I have research to do.
So what term should we use to describe prejudice toward and discrimination against non-heterosexual people?
I also have no fucking idea! Here are some that come close:
Heterosexism
Gaycism
Sexualism
These are all still problematic or inaccurate for different reasons. I really can’t think of a term that would work because of how pervasive the use of the word “homophobia” is. I thus don’t know what would be a good substitute. Despite this, though, I do know that the term developed should end in –ism, for –isms expose systems of domination and oppression for the ugly things that they are.
Anyway, here’s the TL;DR for those who are intimidated by paragraphs of text:
Homophobia is not a fucking phobia.
Hey wait! Don’t look away—
We both know we’ve been looking at each other:
Sideways glances, brief eye contact, swift aversion.
Your cheekbones are high like one of mine are.
Your eyes are dark.
Your hair is short.
Your table is occupied by just you and a cup of tea.
You have no phone to distract you from yourself.
You’re just yourself—a pair of dark eyes sitting inside of an expressionless face.
I feel your gaze distract me from the pages of my book.
I look up to see you across from me.
Your eyes are pointed toward mine for just a second—then you look away.
I return to my book.
If I’m not distracted by you then I’m distracted by the prospect of the Grindr hookup I want to want but always turn down.
I watch the people passing by and stop my eyes when they get to you.
You’re looking away at the moment but shift ever so slightly in energetic recognition of my gaze having landed upon you.
I keep looking until you turn your eyes onto me again—
And then I look away, distracted by the quiet surge of smothering reservation that bursts within me during the microsecond when we lock eyes.
I look around the space that surrounds me.
I tilt my head away from you slightly to point my jugular in your direction.
I eventually return my gaze to you—and you look away, just like I do.
I turn my gaze back to the pages of the big book I hold with timid hands between my open legs.
I’m sucked into the story for a few pages until I’m reminded that you’re across from me—
Except now you’re not.
Your chair is empty; your cup of tea is gone.
I turn back to my book, pretending I’m not disappointed about living within a prison of reservation.
I’ve been going to concerts regularly since I was in high school. I’ve seen a lot: from huge arena shows (Daft Punk, Madonna, Depeche Mode, U2, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), to music festivals (Coachella, EDC, HARD, FYF, etc.), to small intimate performances by musicians standing mere feet away from my attentive ears (the Echoplex in Los Angeles is one of my favorite places for this kind of experience). There are only a few things left on my concert bucket list (here’s looking toward you, David Bowie).
I often go to concerts alone, partially in order to absorb everything around me and mostly because few of my peers are motivated to spend as much money on going to concerts as I do. I usually enjoy going alone and feel it is often the best way to fully experience something. I also don’t necessarily feel alone because I realize that the people around me have lives just as rich and meaningful as my own. I’ve grown into a practice of considering the lives connected to the arms I rub against as I wade through seas of bodies.
Some concertgoers seem to be there by proxy, perhaps convinced to attend by a loved one with an extra ticket. I’m reminded of the time I was surrounded by a sea of straight couples with female faces nuzzled into the chests of their male counterparts as Amon Tobin’s brilliant ISAM tour played out in its technical majesty behind their backs.
Other people attend with large groups of friends. I’m reminded of the group of friends who danced in unison within the friend-filled confines of an elevated viewing platform along the wall of the Henry Fonda Theater as Holy Ghost! churned out disco. These groups sometimes form cancerous conga lines that snake through dense concentrations of bodies as the group tries to get as close to the stage as possible, inciting the ire of those who have vested interest in maintaining their spot.
Some people attend to experience the music itself independently of external motivations. These people tend to make wonderful single-serving friends and dance partners. These people engage fully with the music being performed and are present in the experience of it, not distracted by what their group wants to do or what their partner has to say. Sharing in musical appreciation with folks like these is something that contributes heavily to my love for concertgoing.
One begins to notice familiar faces after doing the same thing for a long time. One such familiar face belongs to a man who I have seen at a significant number of concerts. I’ve seen him at Coachella and FYF. I’ve seen him at raves and mosh pits. I’ve seen him at clubs and in arenas. His attendance to the same concerts I’ve attended has become so prevalent that a few years ago I started making an asterisk on my list of concerts I’ve attended whenever I’d see him.
He is not an average concertgoer. One of the things that distinguish him from the crowd is the spirited quality of his dancing: he twirls, he flails, he shakes, he grooves, he moves. He is usually drenched in sweat by the end of the concert. I’ve determined that his signature move is a 360-degree spin that is performed quickly with a lightly closed fist above his head. This move was indeed captured on video in the movie made about LCD Soundsystem’s final performance. “There he is!” I exclaimed to the friend next to me when I saw the movie at a theater. She had no idea what I was talking about.
Another thing that distinguishes him from the crowd is his age, for he is almost always the only grey-haired concertgoer in attendance. He appears to be perhaps in his early 60s. His curly grey hair matches his scruffy grey beard. He is tall and skinny and wears comfortable shoes and jeans. His short-sleeved single-colored shirt is often tucked in with a belt. His glasses sit in front of calm and warm blue eyes. His positive energy is infectious, for there is often more dance-like movement around him in the crowd that surrounds him.
I, being annoyingly shy and regretfully timid, planned to say hello to him a number of times before I actually did. His regular presence and positive energy made him feel like a friend I hadn’t met yet.
I approached him before seeing the Cure’s Reflections tour in 2011. “I see you at almost every concert I go to,” I told him, extending my hand.
“I do go to a lot…” he said, extending his hand in return.
“Portishead, Morrissey, Hercules and Love Affair, Coachella, FYF…”, I listed while he nodded with a smile in response to each one. “I’m Danny,” I said.
“I’m Howard,” he said with a smile. I sensed something deeper than just a smile in his eyes. It felt like a type of mutual, respectful recognition of each other’s humanity. The baleful self-prescribed fear of and resignation to powerful positive connections that so structured my interactions at this point in my life broke our eye contact. We spoke for a little while longer. He worked at a hospital and dealt with blood. He goes to concerts at least a few times a week, with a record of going fourteen days in a row. His devotion to the craft of concergoing was inspiring.
We parted ways. We knew we’d probably see each other again. We certainly have.
I say hello to Howard each time I see him. “Hi Howard, how are you?” He’s always great. We’re always happy to see each other.
Howard reminds me of how it is possible to do what you love for as long as you live. He has more youthful energy than people more than a few generations younger than he. He is a symbol of how I hope to carry myself throughout my life: with focus upon the things I love and not letting anything else get in the way of this.
Let me find love in life's darkest places.
Let me live life without second guesses.
Let me know when I should be assertive.
Let me shake off the sweat when I'm nervous.
Let me know love not colored by blindness.
Grant me a rack to hang up my shyness.
Grant me the sight to see I'm enough.
Let me refrain from Grindr and Scruff.
Let me unsheathe myself from regret.
Grant me the courage to smile back.
Grant me the strength to know I'm not perfect.
Let me learn how to live in this moment.
Grant me the words to voice my frustrations.
Grant me the eyes to soak up admiration.
Grant me the gut to sometimes say no.
Let me allow myself to be vulnerable.
Let me meet others wherever they are.
Let me find growth within every scar.
Grant me the joys of being a human.
Let me rejoice amidst this confusion.
The saddest eyes I've ever met,
Are in a man filled with regret.
He sees the light that shines from others,
And trembles as he feels all that he smothers.
We cross in passing, exchange a gaze.
I watch him yearn in many ways.
His eyes are blue and full of pain:
He feels in ways he can't explain.
He sleeps alone in dusty sheets,
And dreams of men who make him weep.
He longs to feel real arms around him--
To feel a warmth that's not imagined.
When our eyes lock he's filled with hope
that's mixed with fear--we hardly spoke.
My shirt asserts that It Gets Better:
He knows that we're in this together.
I tear away and know he doesn't--
He's feeling things he wish he wasn't.
We cross again inside the hall
He holds the door--this building's tall.
I tell him that I take the stairs.
He then blinks hard--tries not to stare.
I feel his eyes as the door closes,
They prick me like discarded roses.
He's lifted up while feeling down,
And weeps inside to ride this frown.
I wrote a short story again for the first time in quite a few years. I had a lot of fun doing it.
The idea for it was born during a conversation about terrifying things that might happen to a person. I wrote it in bursts in order to keep myself from becoming lost in the shadows of my own mind.
It's short in comparison to things longer than twenty pages, long in comparison to things shorter than twenty pages. It is also hopefully enjoyable to read in comparison to most math or history textbooks.
If you do read it then I would love to hear your thoughts on it. If you don't read it then I'd love to come over and read it to you in my deepest voice.
I called it Turpentine. Here it is. Please read more.
Love,
Danny
Turpentine by D. Shultz
1
I can’t wait to get home, he thought as the ebb-and-flow of traffic finally began to make him feel nauseous. Today was a day of work, as were most other days. He spent a significant portion of each of his weekdays behind a desk trying to be productive. Despite his efforts he ultimately ended up feeling like a crumbling boulder shackled by moss. This was a feeling that had not only plagued him while he was at work but had also unfortunately started to plague him when he wasn’t at work. In fact, he had begun to realize that these feelings of stagnation were often most powerful while he was in traffic. So this is how you make a living, he thought as he looked around him to see other wage-laborers crawling alone down the stretch of smoggy freeway in their motorized steel coffins.
Traffic used to infuriate him. He would remain vigilant by weaving in and out of what he deemed to be the fastest lanes of traffic. This habit ended years ago when he realized that his efforts saved him little time and cost him buckets of energy. Instead of infuriating him like it used to, traffic now covered him with a suffocating blanket of static melancholy. Yes, this is me making a living, he concluded to himself as the sour voice on the radio reminded him that today was a very warm day indeed and that the stock market had taken a slight downturn.
His commute ended up lasting its usual hour-and-fifteen minutes. He sometimes had to aggressively search for a parking spot in his neighborhood like an exhausted honeybee buzzing frantically in search of one of the last remaining unpollenated flowers in a crumbling garden. Today was no such day: he was able to find a parking spot only one half-block away from his apartment. This might be the highlight of my day, he thought sardonically.
He grabbed his bag of slightly charged electronics and greasy lunch containers and stepped out into what was left of this warm day. The warmness of the day interacted with the starchiness of his fitted dress shirt in a way that made him realize that he would probably have a difficult time sleeping tonight. It’s interesting how I’m able to tuck myself in each morning with the aid of a belt but am nevertheless unable to sufficiently tuck myself in at night, he realized. He had had difficulty sleeping for as long as he could remember. A palpable sense of foreboding often plagued him in the darkness of his room. This feeling was exacerbated on warm nights. This sense of foreboding often translated into dreams characterized by frantic fleeing from unknown adversaries through foreign environments. The content of his dreams used to leave him feeling deeply unsettled and minimally rested each morning. He had grown to accept that he suffered from chronic bad dreams and that there was likely little use trying to psychoanalyze himself.
His apartment sat in-between the others on the second floor of an apartment complex that was built well before he was born. The building and all of its contents had an art-deco aesthetic that was most apparent in how the dimensions of every room were slightly smaller than the dimensions that would normally be found in contemporary household architecture. He was a tall man who regularly felt the puff of his sleepy hair graze the arches of each doorway as he puttered around getting ready for work in the early mornings.
Another salient feature of his apartment complex that stemmed from its art-deco aesthetic was each apartment’s poor ventilation and lack of centralized air conditioning. Some tenants purchased portable air-conditioning units that sat on the sills of bedroom windows in order to combat the sweltering heat that would arrive each summer. He was no such tenant, for his windows were just small enough to prohibit such an installment. He as a result spent most summer nights spread-eagled and naked on his bed as numerous fans blew around the thick heat that enveloped his entire apartment.
He climbed the narrow staircase that led to the second floor of his apartment complex. The heat of the day hit him full force while he climbed these stairs, for it was here that the slightly antiquated nature of his complex became most apparent. The staircase was narrow, wooden, and dimly-lit. Its entrance was at the end of a reception area that was usually populated by tenants who wanted to escape the heat of their apartments, for the entrance to both the apartment complex and the reception area were wide double-doors that allowed for the faint touches of a breeze to mix in with the thickness of the heat. The touches of the breeze did not reach the staircase, however, for its location at the far end of the room prohibited anything but sticky tenants to climb its steps.
He had had significant difficulty getting the larger contents of his apartment up these stairs when he first moved in. The staircase was not only narrow but was also organized so that each flight was adjacent to one another. Reaching the second floor required one to traverse two flights of darkened, creaking steps that were punctuated by a hairpin turn. This made it nearly impossible to twist long, rectangular objects up these steps without the help of at least two others and the patience of a surgeon. The creakiness of the steps also made it impossible to traverse them without it being known to nearby tenants that someone was coming. He often felt badly whenever he came home late, for he knew that the sounds of his footsteps could be heard by the mildly sleeping and profusely sweating tenants who lived near the staircase.
He fumbled his collection of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the entrance to his apartment. An oppressive heat leaked out of the doorway and onto his body as he entered his living room. His apartment was modestly sized: the living room had a two-seated couch that faced a sixteen-inch television mounted on the wall across from it. On each side of the couch were wooden end tables that each held a lamp. He liked the ambiance these lights provided when it was dark outside and they were the only light sources enabled. It helped him feel comfortable in his home, for it reminded him of the cavernous quality of his grandparents’ house. Many of his fondest childhood memories took place at his grandparents’ home. In Kindergarten he had made a paper kite upon which he scratched brittle words that read, “If I were a kite I would fly to grandma’s house because it is a fun place.” He missed his grandparents dearly. They had both died a few years ago, shortly after one another. After their deaths their home was demolished as it had been in his dreams so many times. Two new houses now stood on the patch of earth that had soaked up so much of his childhood.
He spent many nights reading on the couch by the light of these lamps that reminded him of his grandparents’ home. Reading was one of his most cherished pastimes, for it allowed him to escape the confines of his stagnant life by entering the rich lives of those others had imagined. He was a solitary man who had grown accustomed to feeling out of place in social situations. He held a deeply internalized belief consisting in the explicit acknowledgment that he could not relate well with others. The few friends he had he saw sparingly and only for brief periods of time, for the act of interacting with other humans quickly made his insecurities start bubbling deep within him. He took refuge in getting to know the characters of his books, for they were people who he could get to know without fear of having to reciprocate socially.
A small kitchen sat adjacent to the living room. What separated it from the living room was a counter below that housed his kitchen sink and cupboards above that housed dusty measuring bowls and stale snacks. A small, square table sat across from the kitchen at the end of the living room. It had placemats for four people, even though he lived alone. He had not used more than one placemat at a time since the person he loved had moved away almost two years ago. Tears would sometimes sting his eyes as he looked at the empty placemats next to him during a meal, for they served as reminders of the sustenance he once shared with and provided to his lover. He never sat in the place once occupied by his lover, for some part of him realized that by doing so he would be reminded of how cold the seat had become in the absence of love. He would sometimes talk aloud to the placemat of his severed lover, imagining its responses and engaging it in conversation. He would do this until the lump in his throat would burst into tears with the realization that his soul was having difficulty digesting the love it once tasted.
A hallway led from the living room to his bedroom and bathroom. His bedroom contained a full-sized bed whose headboard sat against a wall decorated by posters of his favorite musicians and artists. A small window sat on the wall adjacent to the bed and served as his only means of ventilation when he tried to sleep.
He would close all the windows of his apartment before he left for work in the mornings in order to keep the heat from seeping in. Doing this, he found, would make his apartment slightly less sweltering when he got home from work in the evenings. With the sun down he would open each window fully in order to let the evening’s breeze enter as best it could.
He tossed his bag onto the couch and entered the kitchen in order to wash his hands. He made a habit of washing his hands as soon as he got home from the outside world. One aspect of his motivation for doing this consisted in a concern for cleanliness. A larger, more significant aspect of his motivation for doing this consisted in a type of emotional catharsis he got from washing the day off his hands and arms. He didn’t feel like he had truly gotten home until he had washed his hands. He scrubbed his hands and arms vigorously with hot water, breathing deeply and allowing for the soap to gather the dirt of the day and send it down the slippery drain. His mind usually wandered as he washed his hands, letting it flit between whatever entered his consciousness. This meditative process grounded him and allowed him to settle in for the evening.
He maintained an acute awareness of the quality of his apartment on both an aesthetic and energetic level. He had grown so used to his apartment that it felt very much like a part of himself. It was while he was washing his hands that he first noticed that something had changed in his apartment. He had difficulty pinpointing exactly what the change consisted in, for the change was at this moment just slightly noticeable on an aesthetic level. The change disrupted the usually meditative quality of his hand washing by entering his nostrils. His nose wrinkled ever so slightly as his brow furrowed and his breaths changed from deep inhalations to staccato sniffs. He first thought he was simply rediscovering the scent of his soap. He soon realized that this was not the case, for the soap he used had a fresh, floral scent; the olfactory change he just noticed had an acrid quality that reminded him of a hardware store. “Weird,” he said aloud to his apartment.While the change was certainly noticeable and unexpected, he nevertheless remained fairly unconcerned about it. Maybe one of my neighbors are re-painting their walls, he thought, turning off the sink’s faucet. “Whatever,” he said.
He toweled off his dripping, slightly scalded hands, and began the next step in his process of coming home: opening his windows. He turned to his kitchen window and forced it open. The air outside was significantly cooler and less acrid than the air in his apartment. He stood by the open window enjoying how refreshing the breeze felt on his sticky, sweat-shined face. The next window he usually opened was the one by the table in his living room. It was while he was walking over to this window that he noticed another change that had taken place in his apartment—it was an energetic one. It filtered through to his consciousness like a tendril of pungent smoke and cause him to freeze in place. He looked around his apartment with mounting discomfort, hoping to find something that would explain what had caused this energetic shift. He could find nothing in his living room that assuaged his uneasiness. “Something isn’t right,” he said. “I’m not sure what, but something isn’t right.” Saying these words aloud made a gush of oozing adrenaline seep out of the upper part of his abdomen. “Fuck,” he exhaled.
He continued his small journey to the living room window and opened it. He hardly noticed how dramatically this altered the temperature of the living room as a whole, for his apprehension had transformed his mind into a swarm of bees. You need to calm your ass down, he told himself. What exactly are you so unsettled by? A new odor? Really? Is that all it takes to get you in a frenzy? He was very apt to criticize himself, especially in times of anxiety. He had yet to realize that his intuition spoke in feeling and got louder upon criticism from his mind. He also had yet to realize that his intuition rarely failed him, and when it did it was because his mind had led him away from it.
He had two more windows to go: the one in his bathroom and the one in his bedroom. After opening his windows he would usually lie on his couch and watch television for an hour or so before he made dinner. You’ll feel better once you start watching TV—you always do. Besides, it’s really hot in here. You just need to relax. He would have believed the advice of his critical mind if his gut had not started pouring adrenaline into his system once he entered the hallway. His entire body shook with the pounding of his heart. His mouth had gone dry. The back of his neck had started to burn. He had grown to realize that something bad was always about to happen when the back of his neck started to burn. It had burned when the ambulance arrived to pick up his sister. It had burned when he picked up the phone and heard that his grandmother had died. It had burned when his lover told him he was moving. It was burning now: it was as though flames were dancing up and down the back of his neck, from his hairline to his shoulders.
He was breathing heavily and walking slowly down the hallway. The bathroom door was on his right. The bedroom door was just beyond the bathroom door on the opposite side of the hallway. He approached the bathroom door with panic on his breath, expecting to open the door and find the source of his gut’s alarm. He extended a trembling hand and cautiously pushed the door open. What he saw was the bathroom he had left this morning. It was exactly how he had left it. He breathed a minor sigh of relief and walked unsteadily to the window, opening it triumphantly.
He exhaled a shaky sigh and took an opportunity to check in with himself. He turned toward the bathroom mirror and was startled by who he saw. He saw a man with terror in his eyes and sweat on his shirt. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top of his dress shirt. He felt a breeze of relief filter down his neck and across his chest. He turned on the faucet of the sink below him and relished in the calming effect the sound of the water had on his nerves. He cupped the cool water into his hands and splashed it on his tense face. The water soothed him enough for him to crack a smile in the mirror. See: I told you that you need to calm your ass down, he told himself. He chuckled quietly and looked at himself again. This time he saw the person he usually sees: a middle-aged man, four days unshaven, with dark eyes, a sharp nose, full, crescent-shaped eyebrows and trimmed brown hair that was starting to go grey at the temples. He had a few acne scars on his cheeks, but they didn’t change the fact that this reflection was of a handsome man with quiet depth that manifested in the tranquil intensity of his eyes.
While still not fully calm, he had nevertheless been soothed dramatically and looked forward to watching television. All he had to do was open his bedroom window. He turned to exit the bathroom and reached the doorway. He turned toward his bedroom, seeing its closed door. It was then that he noticed the acrid smell again. It was now much stronger than it was when he was washing his hands in the kitchen. It was now strong enough to be a salient distraction. This unsettled him deeply. “What the fuck is that smell?” he asked aloud, some part of him hoping he’d get an answer in return. He approached his closed bedroom door. The smell was now overpowering. The adrenaline began to flow out of his abdomen again. His pulse quickened along with his breathing. He stood there at his door encumbered with a sense of foreboding that was almost palpable. Noticing the sound of his tremulous breathing reinforced his fear. He extended his hand to the doorknob and held it. It was cold in his sweaty palm. He felt weak as he turned it and pushed the door open.
The change he noticed in his bedroom made the blood flow out of his face as his vision deteriorated into a swirl of electric terror and incomprehensible disbelief. A new aesthetic addition had been mounted on the wall above his bed and on top of his posters. It was approximately three feet wide and four feet long. It was fixed to the wall at its four corners with silver screws that glinted in the light that poured in from the window. Its frame was made of carved mahogany that was sculpted to appear like interwoven vines travelling along the perimeter of the new fixture.
The fact that this new fixture had been mounted on the wall while he was at work was disturbing enough on its own. This fact, however, was but a minor contributor to the horror he was currently experiencing. The primary contributor to his horror resulted from the content of what was contained within the wooden frame: it was a painting of him—a portrait that had been rendered in excruciating detail. Every one of his features was represented with photorealistic clarity, from the top of his bare chest to the top of his head. The intricate pattern of freckles on his chest had even been captured in the painting. His expression was neutral, as though he was staring intently into the eyes of the viewer. His hair was combed and parted in the way he usually styled it before attending a formal event. He was clean-shaven like he was every few weeks. The lighting shown in the portrait was soft and direct; there were no shadows on his face. He appeared in the portrait slightly larger than life-size and was featured against a neutral dark blue background. Painted in red with bold letters at the lower right-hand corner of the portrait were the initials “AK”.
He stood looking at the painting in horrified disbelief. He lost the ability to hold his weight with his legs and fell backward against the doorway. The painting leaked an acerbic malevolence into his room and the rest of his apartment that flowed through his being with the force of a tsunami. The source of the acrid smell was now apparent—the painting had been done in oil and was still drying. The initials at the lower right of the painting, in fact, were still wet and glistening. He began to feel nauseous upon realizing this. The core of his being had been ravaged by terror and its only defense was to initiate vomiting in an attempt to purge it of the psychological toxin it had just ingested. He stumbled out of his bedroom and into the bathroom in order to vomit. He lay wheezing on the cool tile of the bathroom floor once his stomach had been emptied.
2
He regained coherence later that evening after the night had fully formed. The bathroom had become fully dark during his period of incoherence. He woke with pain in his back and the sour smell of dried vomit in his nose. The lower half of his long body was hanging out of the shower while his upper half was leaned against the rear wall of his small shower. The solid, partially digested contents of his stomach had clogged the drain of the shower, which meant that he had spent his period of incoherence marinating the seated portion of his body in the acidic fluids that were contained in his stomach before he found the horror in his apartment.
A feeling of unreality began to suffocate him almost immediately as his coherence returned. His critical mind had for just a few moments allowed him to believe that he had dreamed about the painting in his bedroom. The acrid smell of the turpentine emanating from his bedroom was mixed in with the smell of vomit surrounding him and served as indubitable proof that the painting was a new aspect of his reality that he had to face.
His head felt like it had been pressurized and tightened by a vice. It throbbed with every heartbeat and shook his vision, giving his perceptual lens a tremulous quality that grew more intense as he faded back into reality. The putrid stench of the vomit that soaked his work pants began to make him feel nauseous again. Gaining awareness of the power of this stench served as motivation for him to carry himself out of the shower in order to turn on the bathroom light.
He pulled himself out of the shower with his arms and used them to brace himself for the blinding head rush that overwhelmed him once he tried to stand. The feeling of blood rushing to his swarming head intensified the pressure within his skull. He groaned loudly and instinctively put his hand to his temples in a futile attempt to ease the pain inside his head. “Holy fuck,” he moaned and staggered over toward the light switch.
He flipped the light switch on. The bathroom filled with white light with an intensity that ravaged his retinas with blinding force. He slammed his eyes shut and tumbled over the sink. He turned on the faucet in order to rinse the acid from his mouth and wipe the digestive crust from his face. The feeling of water on his lips reinvigorated him slightly. He drank deeply from the faucet and relished in the comfort it provided him like it had earlier that evening before he saw the painting.
Unreality set in again when he looked at himself in the mirror. His brain could not decipher the image of the person he was seeing. It was as though he was looking at an inbred stranger. He was perceptually aware of his appearance as he had always been—he saw his face as a collection of distinct features. These features when viewed as isolated components of his face filtered through his perception of himself similar to how individual photographs of a scene might perceptually convey movement. He nevertheless currently felt incapable of appreciating the culmination of these features into his human face, in the same way the individual photos of movement make it hard for a person to perceptually appreciate the movement. Looking at his face in the mirror was like looking at an optical illusion: the figure before him maintained no perceptual constancy but instead alternated wildly between different orientations. It was as though his mind had been presented with an image of something it had no capacity to fully comprehend. It just so happened that this image was of a person he once identified as himself.
“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” hissed the thing in the mirror. “Don’t you know who I am?” He watched the lips of this entity speak these words as the terror of what it was saying reached his consciousness. The image he saw in the mirror was of an entity of unspoken power and deep malevolence. It possessed the visual qualities he once associated with himself. This was the only aspect of its reality that maintained congruence with the way he perceived himself. All other aspects of it were wholly foreign and otherworldly.
He forced himself to turn away from the mirror. Looking into it made him feel as though the stitches that held together his psyche were slowly being ripped apart. The gelatinous contents of his inner world were leaking through these broken stitches and coursing through his veins of life. He stood there looking blankly at the floor below him, mouth agape, as these realizations manifested. His eyes were slowly becoming disconnected from the quiet depth they once conveyed and were now working as portals into the darkness of his ruptured psyche.
He shuffled out of the bathroom and stood hunched over in the darkness of his hallway. His apartment was completely dark, for he had been lying incoherent in the shower while the sun made its descent below the horizon. The expression on his face was one of startled incoherence. He slowly turned his heavy head left and right like the porcelain skull of a novice ventriloquist’s puppet. He turned toward his bedroom and dragged himself to the doorway.
He flicked on the light. The painting was still there: hanging above his bed as though it had always been there. He cocked his head while gazing at it, tightening his eyelids as though he was trying to understand what he was seeing. He maintained this gaze and walked slowly to the painting. He was drawn to it in the way a mosquito is sometimes drawn to a fluorescent light bulb that emanates enchantingly treacherous heat. His gaze was so transfixed onto the painting that he took no notice of his approaching bed and stumbled onto it as a result. He picked himself up, climbed on top of it, crawled slowly toward the painting, and sat down on his knees before it like someone kneeling for forgiveness. He took no notice of how his vomit-soaked-and-crusted pants were staining his bed sheets; the painting consumed all of his awareness and sucked him into its malevolence.
He sat there staring into the painting unaware of both time and space. He blinked rarely as he pored over its every detail. He could see the texture of the brushes used and how delicately each color had been mixed for accuracy. The painting must have taken at least up to a few months to complete, for its size and level of detail required astounding amounts of effort and concentration. The horror first inspired by the painting shifted into awe as he sat before it and admired its beauty. He began gazing at the painting with a neutral expression that morphed slowly over the course of his viewing into an unhinged grin that demonstrated without question how every stitch that once held together his psyche had been ripped apart by the power of the painting. His eyes reflected the free-flowing gelatinous contents of his inner world as they now swirled independently throughout the reaches of his consciousness.
3
He teetered backward and almost lost his balance once the poor circulation caused by his prolonged kneeling disrupted his sense of equilibrium. This broke him from his fixation with the painting. His mind became active again: Origin, it whispered. Origin. Find me. These words cycled through his consciousness like a persistent draft. “AK”, the initials painted in red at the bottom corner of the painting, were all that he knew of its origins. He realized he needed to begin figuring out where the painting came from.
He crawled off of his bed and began walking mechanically toward the hallway as if driven by a force beyond himself. His expression was one of fixed determination that was offset by the disconnected quality his eyes now possessed. The extent of his inner disconnection was reinforced by how his own vomit had dried into a putrid crust that covered most of his dress shirt and work pants. He took no notice of this—what mattered most to him now was that he find out who had made the painting.
The rational part of his mind had not disappeared but had instead become slave to a new master. Its current aim was to facilitate his finding the origin of the painting. He knew that the person who installed the painting had to have come up the stairs of his apartment. He also knew that this would be no easy task because of how small, creaky, and antiquated the staircase was. The person who installed it probably had to enlist help in order to get it up these stairs. He also realized that the people living in the apartment near the stairs would have probably heard this happening. He therefore decided that he would begin asking these tenants if they had seen the person who installed the beautiful painting in his apartment.
The fact that it was nearly 4am did not deter him from walking up to the apartment nearest to the staircase and begin knocking. The new master of his rational mind cared nothing about reality as it exists for most others; the only thing that mattered to this new master was that its wishes were fulfilled. Its current wish was that it discover the origin of the painting—and that is what it had him do.
He knocked steadily on the door of the apartment. The sound of his knocking was as regular and eerie as the sound of a nervously beating heart. It penetrated through the heavy stillness of the quiet apartment complex. His expression remained fixed on the closed door in front of him as he waited for it to open. He heard rustling inside. A light from inside was switched on. Footsteps approached the door cautiously. An angry hand pulled the door open as far as its security chain would allow. “What the fuck do you…” began the furious man inside until he saw what stood outside his door.
He recognized the man knocking at the door as one of his neighbors. He believed this man’s name was David. He saw him once in a while but had only spoken to him on a few occasions because this man seemed adamant about keeping to himself. The first thing the furious man noticed was the biting smell of vomit that hit him once he opened the door. His brain was primed to infer from the smell of vomit that this man had been drinking alcohol. He became less sure of the truth of this inference when he looked at the man’s face, for it was then that this furious man started becoming a frightened man.
“Did you see it?” asked David with a voice that was in-between a whisper and a hiss. His face emanated a fierce determination that made the man inside the apartment shudder. Looking at this man’s eyes is what fully melted away his anger and replaced it with fear, for they appeared to be the cold, calculated eyes of a demented reptile. They darted wildly around as he waited for an answer. “Tell me: did you see it? Did you?”
“Is everything alright?” asked a concerned female voice from within the apartment.
“Yes, go back to bed,” hushed the frightened man. “What are you talking about?” he asked David.
“The painting. Did you see it?” David clarified.
The frightened man now became unsettled, for he sensed within David that he was disconnected within himself. “What are you talking about? What painting?” asked the frightened man with a furrowed brow.
David took this as a sign that the man did not know about the painting and decided that he needed to begin asking someone else. “Goodnight, and thank you,” said David politely with a bow as he began walking to the apartment next door.
The frightened man inside the apartment closed and locked it quickly. He walked to where he had left his phone and called the police. He told the operator that someone psychotic was disturbing residents at his apartment complex and that this man needed to be arrested. The operator replied by saying that a unit would be dispatched to his location momentarily.
The police arrived after David had disturbed two other tenants. He remained peaceful as the officers handcuffed him read him his rights. The officers agreed that this man was in need of psychiatric treatment. David himself was indifferent, for he had the memory of the beautiful painting crystallized onto the eyes of his ruptured mind. He could close his eyes and see it vividly. Imagining it would inspire a crooked smile to bubble onto his face. It was this crooked smile that the officer who arrested David saw in the rear-view mirror of his car at a red light. It was also this smile that sent a tremulous shiver up the officer’s spine and made his blood feel slightly colder. This smile was magnetic enough to draw the officer’s attention away from the color of the traffic light that shone before him. “Go,” his partner in the passenger seat reminded him. He sped away and made a point to not look directly at the man in the backseat again.
4
David’s reverie persisted throughout the internment process. The conjured image of the painting reassured and comforted him. It also painted the crooked smile onto his face that made those who interacted with him feel deeply unsettled. He was sent into a psychiatric ward for evaluations after being processed at the police station. He arrived there the following evening.
He was led in handcuffs and a hospital gown into an office. A doctor in a white coat sat behind a desk. He was a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and a well-trimmed beard. He smiled at David as he sat down in a chair near the desk. “Hello, David,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Hello, Doctor,” David replied with his crooked smile and disconnected eyes.
“My name is Arthur King. I know a lot about you,” grinned the doctor.
Arthur and David’s eyes locked. The crooked smile on David’s face grew in intensity with the satisfied grin on Arthur’s face. A tremble of laughter escaped Arthur’s lips. David cocked his head in return. “So nice to finally meet you,” Arthur said.
Arthur could no longer contain the hearty laughter that now escaped his lips. It echoed through the doctor’s office and shook the canvasses of the paintings of shirtless men that decorated its walls. David closed his eyes and conjured the image of the painting in his apartment. His crooked smile grew in intensity under the doctor’s laughter. “I think you’ll enjoy it here,” Arthur sneered as the biting smell of turpentine began to leak into David’s nostrils once again.
Dear Old Friend,
I’m going to be blunt with you: the love you claim to have for me does not feel like love.
The way I feel about the love you claim to have for me is likely similar to the way a black man would feel if one of his friends claimed that they didn’t accept blackness but nevertheless loved him despite this.
Homosexuality is just as much a part of me as my skin or hair color. It is an important part of my identity that I have struggled with for most of my life and have just recently grown to love and accept about myself.
Sincere love does not have conditions or qualifications; love that comes with qualifications or conditions is prejudice in a pretty dress. Someone who claims to love but not accept is someone who seems to be confused about what it means to love.
The fact that you seem to be drawing a parallel between my sexuality and your brother’salcoholism upsets and offends me. This is because alcoholism is objectively harmful: it
Devastates families,
Takes lives,
Ruins careers,
Ravages childhoods, and
Destroys lives.
Homosexuality is subjectively harmful only through the eyes of the prejudiced:
It devastates families when same-sex couples aren’t able to visit one another in the hospital despite decades of faithful commitment, for they are strangers to one another through the eyes of the government;
It takes lives when young adults kill themselves as a result of believing there’s something wrong with them because they hear messages from parents, priests, and role models telling them that they’re going to hell for being gay;
It ruins careers when teachers are fired and marked as sex offenders because concerned parents with prejudice assume that gay teachers will somehow teach their children to be gay;
It ravages childhoods when a tormented child spends every one of his birthday wishes on not being gay instead of spending them on the earnest things heterosexual children wish for;
It destroys lives when someone spends sixty years of his life in guilt-ridden solitude hoping that he’ll be able to pray himself into heterosexual attractions but nevertheless ultimately succumbs to the torments of isolation with the tightening of a noose and the kicking of a bucket.
It seems like you are grouping homosexual people with alcoholics and the adulterous. I also remember a comment you once made to my mom about how telling someone homosexuality is wrong is similar to how you would tell someone that robbing a bank is wrong. It thus seems like you’re also grouping homosexual people with criminals.
You seem to be saying that you love me despite my “homosexual lifestyle” in the same way you love your brother despite his alcoholism. You “whole heartedly disagree with” the lifestyle your brother is living, for he cheated on his wife and now lives with his girlfriend, a person with whom he shares many drinks. You are “totally against” this but realize that “it is his choice to make those decisions.”
It seems like you believe this is an apt parallel to make with respect to my “choice” to live a homosexual lifestyle. You probably wholeheartedly disagree with how I “choose” to be in relationships with men and likely “hope and pray” that I would not fornicate with a man. You would probably love for me to stop having relations with men but still “love [me] regardless of what [I] choose to do.”
I find this parallel to be incredibly offensive and misinformed. Choosing to cheat on one’s wife and follow down a path of alcoholism is not the same as choosing to be in a relationship with someone of the same sex.
I’ve talked to some other religious people about their views on homosexuality and I’ve received many responses that go something like this: “There’s nothing wrong with having the desire to be romantically involved with a member of the same sex—what’s wrong is acting upon these desires.”
I, quite frankly, find this view to be bullshit of the purest stench. It neglects the fact that I and everyone else who identifies as homosexual only have sexual desires for members of the same sex; I’m not confused, I wasn’t abused as a child, and it isn’t the case that I’m choosing to feel attracted to men.
If I’m not supposed to act upon my homosexual desires then that leaves me with nothing; I’m not sexually attracted to women and I never have been. I spent every one of my birthday wishes on trying to change this. I prayed hard every night trying to change this. I tried by force of will to change this, telling myself that I had crushes on women in order to convince myself that I wasn’t gay. None of these things worked and ultimately resulted in my becoming suicidal.
Humans do not have control over what they like.
Example: I hate cantaloupe. You could feed me cantaloupe every day for a year and I doubt that I would grow to like it. I don’t know why I don’t like it—I just don’t. I never have and probably never will. The taste just does not appeal to me in any way.
I similarly am not attracted to women. You could present me with the most beautiful woman in the world and I doubt I would feel sexually attracted to her. I don’t know why I’m not attracted to women—I’m just not. I never have been and probably never will be. The physical appearance of a woman just does not appeal to me in any way.
Imagine what a silly world it would be if some people believed that not liking cantaloupe was a cause to disagree with a person’s lifestyle, resulting in these people “hoping and praying” that they will realize what they’re missing and sincerely believing that these non-cantaloupe-eaters were living a lifestyle just as wrong as the “lifestyle” of an alcoholic or a criminal. This, old friend, is how I feel about people who claim to disagree with a “homosexual lifestyle”.
If the fact that I am sexually attracted to men and choose to act upon these desires is justification for you to group me and every other homosexual person into the same category as criminals and alcoholics, then I’m afraid you are not someone whose “love” I’m open to receiving, for it is a love that I believe comes from a place of twisted morality.
You’d like for me to tell you about some of the people I talk to. I’d love to:
I talked with a young boy. He lived in the South. He was Christian. The first words he said to me, with fear and despair in his voice, were: “Is it a sin to be gay?” I responded by asking him if he thought it was and if he did, why? He said that he did because his family and priest tell him that gay people are going to hell. He was talking to me because he feels like he might be gay and doesn’t want to go to hell. He told me that he couldn’t help feeling the way he did but was terrified because he wasn’t able to pray his feelings away. He had also been sent to “reparative therapy” by his family in order to “change” his sexual orientation. It didn’t work. The boy was thinking of hanging himself in his closet because he couldn’t bear the pain of being gay and believing that he was going to hell.
I didn’t tell him that he needed to pray harder or that he hadn’t fully accepted Jesus into his heart. I didn’t tell him that his parents should love him even though they might disagree with his lifestyle. I told him that he was exactly perfect the way he was and that no one should ever be ashamed about the way they feel, for people cannot help the way they feel. I also told him that I didn’t think being gay was a sin and that I knew of many other Christian people who also didn’t think being gay was a sin. I referred him to a website listing LGBT-friendly churches in his community. He didn’t end up hanging himself.
I talk to a lot of people like this.
Beliefs about homosexuality like the ones you hold instill a sense of self-hatred and insecurity in many members of the LGBT community. I hope that there someday will not be a need for work in LGBTQ suicide prevention, for the pain LGBT people feel is the byproduct of prejudice--both in its ugly natural state and in the pretty dresses it may wear.
Until our society grows to realize that homosexuality harms nothing but the sensibilities of the dogmatically religious,I will stop at nothing to continue doing the work I do and will take every opportunity to express my views to those who need to hear them the most.
Wading through the bog of doubt--
Howls extracted from my mouth.
Sinking in the sticky mud--
Fearful of the blackened flood.
The dark returns without your light,
For in these shadows I must fight:
I fight the pecks of crows unleashed,
I cinch the cuts of fangs unsheathed.
I run distracted from the swarm,
Of bees that buzz to make the storm.
A storm that breaks the bonds of hope,
And loosens fast the coiled rope.
With clothing soaked and makeup smeared,
I turn to face all that I've feared.
I tremble as the ghoul draws nearer,
And scream when I see it's a mirror.
The counselor talks to those in need,
But stays unhinged inside, you see.
For through the act of helping others,
He turns away from what he smothers:
The swarm of bees inside his blanket--
The Queen of which he cannot face yet.
The Bones of the Spineless
The Brains of the Mindless
The Minds of the Ignorant
The Joys of the Racist
The Love of the Hated
The Skin of the Painted
The Tears of the Optimist
The Hopes of the Pessimist
The Thrills of the Jaded
The Twists of the Fated
The Eyes of the Sightless
The Sleep of the Dreamless
The Shouts of the Silent
The Words of the Reticent
The Rust of the Timeless
The Fears of the Faultless
The Doubts of the Patriot
The Loss of the Vigilant
The Sex of the Virgin
The Age of the Dated
The Crotch of the Sexist
The Clothes of the Naked
The Screams of the Beaten
The Tears of the Seamless
The Smell of the Sickness
The Death of the Living
The Food of the Starving
The Fat of the Glutton
The Wealth of the Shameless
The Sweat of the Stainless
The Lies of the Business
The Blood of the Heartless
The Guilt of the Blameless
The Brooms of the Famous
My life is a whirlwind the blows through the tundra,
Rattling windows inside the penumbra.
Fracturing lenses that guide all perception,
Warping the light that forms my reflection.
What is the Spark and how does it Burn?
How long shall it Fizzle from having been Spurned?
Is it a Warmth that leaks from the Hearth?
Or is it a Flame that leaps from the Earth?
What is the Spark and where does it Lie?
Can it be Found inside the Mind's Eye?
Will it Ignite the Crumbling Kindling?
Or churn out grey Smoke to mask something Dwindling?
What is the Spark and how does it Feel?
Is it hot enough to Burn through Cold Steel?
When it is Found can it not be Doubted?
Or must it reach Tinder once feelings have Sprouted?
Rolling boulder -> cold shoulder:
Old flames shall smolder.
Microwave a tasty meal,
Or wait until your crops have grown;
Careful with the way I feel,
And conscious of the things I've shown.
Make a meal that's ours to taste:
Not a dish best served with haste.
Our crops will grow under the sun--
The soil's rich in nutrients.
Plane's not coming--no need to run;
Let's gather our ingredients.
