Photo by Autumn McDonald.
This piece was written for the June Theme: The Digital Age.
We never started. We never started. W h y does it feel like it’s over before it began? The stars of Shinjuku - neon signs reflected on skyscrapers - glistened above us as we stumbled from one British pub to the next. I wanted so badly to reach out and grab your hand, rub the callouses on your fingers between mine and know you.
But I don't.
[andiprobablywonthahaits-allrelaxedhere]
He exists as a wall of pixels shaped like a manchild. The last time I saw him thelasttimethelasttimethelasttime he evaporated from the club like a hologram out of battery - he was there, dancing, looking, existing and then he wasn’t. I stumbled home, delirious and desperate, alone to my bed to watch the sun rise over Gakudeigakku.
You probably won’t get to do that again
Fall in love with the burnt amber and smoky mustard that takes over the sky
Giving you permission, permission,
permission,
He is simple. Or so it seems when I get a message in late November, fingers scalded from touching the radiator, he messages just to ask “what’s up?”
[Nothing much Cody-kun, nothing much at all - avoiding the ex-lover, the one who wrote about watching my lascivious blood spilling all over his bed, trying to find a reason not to see him on his visit to New York.]
Reason: found.
Begin simple, tender, d e l i c a t e - talk about what you love, why & how you love it. Fall deeper and deeper into his wonky eyes that stare back at you from his Facebook profile - it’s not real but it feels like it.
You don’t open you are a closed door,
Because it is far easier to be shut tight than it is to be flung wide open,
gaping, ajar, infected
Watch your fingers turn to thousands of tiny particles of light glimmering like
the blue of too-many-messages-sent
Read: 6:37 AM
Then I am flying home, oceans away from him in a land of tropical skyscrapers that catch geckos instead of snow on windowsills. I get wifi in Narita Airport Tokyo and there are 6 messages from him. I count them -
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6.
Everything is going so well, so well, he wants to know you - replies when he is online (there is a 13 hour time difference) asks you questions about yourself, wants to know you, so here you are: blood and gore with pus erupting.
Two sunrises and sunsets of staring at screens and wondering - the what if, what if? what if? This lands in your inbox like a flaming pile of dog shit on your doorstep. Something you send to someone you want to feel rage.
Help.
He bore his deepest secrets to you; the boy that broke his heart by playing games (ironic?) with no end in sight, the mother that tortured him, the home he ran away from, the body he sold for money. All that hurt and for what? For fucking what? * [When you are hurt so badly the wounds never fully heal - they leak and leak and leak, - inflicting themselves on others, bystanders that wanted to fix you.]
I can’t fix you.
But I can fix me:
Time out.
The messages left for hours unread unravelling your self esteem -
you are too UGLY/too OBESE/too BORING/too GAY you
need to be a man that is strong,
and alluring so that you can be loved and wanted
and loved and wanted
Because no one wants a faggot that keeps his head down,
piles the highlight on hides beneath coats and sweatshirts doesn’t know how to
stand up for himself.
Keep your door closed, from now on, locked and shut with no spare keys and swallow the one
you have and never
Never let it out of your grasp.
Your hurting heart was OPEN and RAW and DAMAGED and then a thin layer crusted over,
fragile, d e l i c a t e begging
begging, not to be sliced and served like sashimi on a platter
No, no, no, no, no, no. He is not the sun you do not orbit around him, he is not the only source of light in your life, find the rays you lost and bring them back. Light a candle - one that smells like gardenias and kinder days, let it burn and watch the wick erupt by magic. Your flame is real you can touch it and get burnt, you can blow it out, you can relight it.
So fuck him if you’re not enough of a man. He is a child, a little boy made of pixels that writes pretentious garbage about space. Why did you ever pretend to be interested in his story about a man fucking his robot creation? Don’t ever dumb yourself down like that again.
You are better, you are stronger. Rise.
How long did you stand at the NARS counter trying to
work up the courage to buy your first concealer?
Didn’t you fall over when you wore your platforms for the first time
and a homeless man called you a faggot?
Didn't you get back up again?
What about the time when Richard pushed you down the stairs because
you sang too loudly in music class, like a girl?
Didn’t you get back up again?
His words pinch you like the fire ants that bit your ankles when you fell over during sports day and everyone laughed at you. They make you feel alone, how you felt when you wore your Avril Lavigne shirt to school and flocks of kids in the hallway parted like the red sea to mock you. His wishy-washy, paper boy self reminds you of when you were made of glass in November, two years ago.
But won’t you get back up again?
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