If we reached out we’d almost touch. ‘Almost’ because it was dark, and measurements of distance could only
amount to approximations. That’s how far away from each other we were. We’d
been much closer many times, farther many more, for we’d spent more of our
lives apart than together. But history had been built―stories, blood, and time―and
it floated with gentle vigor in the air between us and around us.
Sometimes when we walked into
restaurants together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not, the other people
there would turn to look at us, from barstools, booths, from their seats around
candle-lit tables. They looked at us in such a way that it was like that air
whispered stories about our life together to the strangers around us and they
turned to look with surprise, with respect, with motherly endearment, and with
a more indescribable feeling of comfort, as if upon looking at us they
experienced the comfort we felt with each other, the reconciliatory (air) that never
failed to flow over us after everything two people together go through –
screaming through the rain at each others’ faces, stopping our car in the
middle of the road and yelling at the other to get the fuck out, things that
were to be apologized for the next day, or, if we were lucky enough, just a
couple hours later.
It was dark but it was still so
warm and one thing we’d never lost was our sense of adventure. We’d hopped the
fence with a six pack and smokes, to the closed pool to swim alone at night. Adults
playing children playing adults. We’d had enough of the water and now we sat.
We sat in our bathing suits dripping onto the poolside pavement in the dark. The
air was warm and sweet, hotel rooms in July. And my skin was soaked with sun
from earlier in the day. It soaked into my bones and I breathed deep breaths
all the way to that warmth within. It mixed with another kind of warmth that
came from knowing he held this same place of refuge in his own body. A car
drove by every once in a while and white lights moved across us, revealing a
strip of visible world, the light rounded at its edges. I could make out the
outline of his shoulders, and his head tilted sideways, cheek resting on knees
curled into his chest, limbs I knew were there but lost in the dark.
He spoke and his voice pulled
itself like threads one at a time at first, out of the almost-silence: “Could
you hum that chant you sing sometimes, the ‘Gopala’ one? No words, just hum?”
In a lull I reply “…Mhm…” as I pull
one of my own knees into my chest, reach out to find my beer and take a sip, the
grainy aftertaste thick and smooth I lay in it like a hammock that swings by
itself. The thickness rests welcome in the curve of my tongue. I set the beer down
then start to hum the chant. I watch him as he sinks into himself, swaying side
to side gently to the sound my throat and closed mouth make. He lays in me like
a hammock that swings by itself.
The light from a passing car shines
on his face as he lifts it and I see the glint of tears. I don’t ask him. We
don’t ask each other about crying anymore. If it’s not offered, it’s not to be
asked for. People cry sometimes for reasons they don’t know, sometimes for no
reason. People seem to understand this when they’re by themselves, don’t need
ask why they cry when they cry alone, but all of a sudden when they’re not
alone, someone always wants to know “What’s wrong?” “Why are you crying?” We don’t ask questions like that anymore.
Together, we understand the things people only understand when they’re alone.
I feel him move in the darkness as
he lifts his head and turn it up to the night sky, impeded upon from all sides
by a horizon of buildings, and scattered with a handful of stars. We’ve had
that conversation already, about how we city-dwellers trade the spectacular
artifice of city lights below for the vast expanse of stars of a country-side
night sky above.
I look at him he’s looking out and
I see, amidst the lachrymal sheen, something in the outer corner of his right
eye.
“There’s something in your eye.” I
warn as I lean in to look, breathe in the utterly indescribable, almost impossible
warmth and familiarity of the smell of him, mixed with lingering smoke, and
with a grace that only comes with a wisdom not of the mind, but of a body that
knows another body so well as to anticipate every curve and dip and muscle
fragment and the way each one moves or could move, as parts of a language
that’s now a part of how we think, I wrap my fingers round the back of his neck
and touch a fingertip to his eye, and something sticks to my finger. I pull my
finger away, and out comes a tiny, thin strip of letters. I hold it up close to
my face in the dark.
“What is it?” He asks, halfway
present.
“ ‘Where are you going?’ ”
“What?” He lifts his head this time, and looks
at me in the dark.
I don’t look up from my finger, upon which rests a tiny
fragment that I can just barely, but undeniably recognize as a tiny string of letters
that read “Where are you going?”
I have his attention.
“It says ‘Where are you going?’”
__________________________________________________________________________
I have written pages, poems, bits of fiction here and there. But never I have I revisited, after years and years, any one like I do this one.
I wrote it when I was with someone. This was not us, but I wanted it to be. It was a fantasy, not for how
we could be, but for how
someone and I could be.
I try many things, search in many places, dabble in much. I study Philosophy, I teach Philosophy, I paint, I work with inmates at San Quentin State Prison. At the bottom of everything, my soul is that of a writer. And I have never in my life been so far away from that, despite many amazing things happening, things we are working toward, goals, excitements...life...
As a matter of fact, this piece of writing has been, I believe, the single most important that I have carried through. And despite the fact that love, marriage, commitment was not in my plans, what I captured in that piece of writing above, is happening. Not without a price to be sure, but it is...happening...
.
