101: Boys on Their Knees
I walk into a sauna at two in the morning. I lay my aching muscles on the hot wood. He walks in, starts pacing. Starts breathing. Beads of sweat are sliding down his dark brown skin. I watch them. I watch them drip off the edge of his pelvic bone. I hear them hit the top of his shorts the floor the wall’s on fire. ‘Kinda feels like crying in here, doesn’t it? Can you hear the flames on these walls? I can. Do you listen to yourself cry? Do you let yourself moan like a baby? Do you let yourself put down your defenses for your own attempts to console the babyboy inside?’ I’ve broken a social silence. It was comfortable. Now he’s conscious of his breath. He tries to control it. He tries to think. He tries to speak, realizes he has nothing to say. ‘You don’t have to say anything. This isn’t an interrogation kid, I’m just observing. It’s all I do.’ He stops pacing. Leans against the flames, doesn’t look away. He hasn’t stopped looking deep into my eyes since I opened my mouth. He lifts his spine, still ablaze, and sits at the end of one of my feet. I have the other leg bent up and leaning. ‘Tell me’ he says ‘Do you intend to steal words? When your inquisitions leave people without them, is this all a part of your master plan? When you lay your body before them and beg them to take everything, do you ever intend on letting them know you don’t exist?’
‘I try to reminisce. I try to remember their desire. Memory feeds me their present moments. I am always remembering. I am always present with every single one I’ve been given to. But I must always be only with me, yes. I have no plan. I follow rivers only. I follow the girl inside of my own flesh and bones, P. I’m not a master at anything. I know nothing but her. I know nothing. I only obey.’ I show him my leather cuffs. ‘That’s what these are for.’
‘Remembering.’
‘Yes. I was never given the option. I remember everything.’
He puts his hand on my ankle and lets it splash through the moisture building up my shinbone, down my thick thigh. ‘You bike, don’t you?’
‘Everywhere. One fixed gear. Sometime I cry just trying to make it home. When it rains, nobody can tell. Everyone is looking for their own home. The ones without are looking for a way out. But there is no way out of banishment from your own kind. What animals we are, eh?’
He tries to agree calmly, rationally. But he can’t stop weeping. He moves to the seat below me. His neck is at my belly, glistening melting: lighting up the pale reflection of my wet skin. He’s apologizing for being so close. I sit up and straddle his shoulders with my legs. I wrap my arms around his neck and put both my palm against his left breastbone. ‘Babyboy, don’t be afraid. I remember you. Fuck all your apologies. Fuck all that you will take from me and never give back. Fuck your guilt and shame as you wander around the earth with them. They were mine to give. And I choose to move by you. I choose to let them see you in and out of life and death, every time I find you again its worth all the time spent without. Your body is by my side now. So the rest has already happened. Let it be. Dance with me my love. Find me again. Reach. Turn around. There’s nobody in this room but you and I. Cry loudly. Scream like a brat. Moan like an infant feeling pain for the first time. I will hold you. I wont let go. I will wait. When you leave I will go. Then we can do it all over again.’
He looks at the red ink on my right forearm. ‘What’s the P stand for?’
‘P’s the one I’m crying for when I’m biking home in pain, sometimes those fucking hills are just too much for one gear. Too much for thighs that are beat for hours, then drained in heat, then comforted by your hands, then let go of and abandoned. My legs want a fucking explanation! How dare you own me and take nothing at the same time! How dare you say nothing in leaving! How did you teach me how to rip the shame of banishment out of my own body? I am still enamored at what loving you gave to me. And that was only the beginning. Can you imagine a home with me? Can you imagine what it is to fear nothing? I can. P is the last light I reach for when I need nothing. I cant stop peddling on this fucking thing, so when it comes to her, all I have left to do is cry.’
‘I am afraid of you. Does that count?’
‘No. You cant fear what you don’t know.’
‘How can you love me if I don’t know you?’