June - The Liars 17 страница

Nothing would ever compare to the first time, I knew. I kept flashing back to the dove's claws in my hands and how she made those cooing noises in her throat just before I let her go. I thought back to those moments on the balcony, when I just stood there in the dawn sunlight and I knew my life had been changed. It had been changed when Gerard left and I did that symbolic action, but it had also stopped. I always went back to that moment and it had become so crystallized in my memory that it was like my name and phone number. But it had been taken out of context. I never went back to the moment after the balcony when I went back inside and then sobbed hysterically again because he was gone. Or the moment when I finally tried to eat but threw up. Or the next day when I wanted to die, and seriously considered killing myself because fuck it, he was gone. He was going to be famous and I still couldn't go home and face my father seeing me as gay. I didn't think about those moments because I could not comprehend them. It would make me interpret his presence in my life another way, and so I had shut the world out. I had frozen everything in my life, perpetually, and because of that I could not grow. I didn't see what else had happened around me or want anything beyond his name or the people that I had known then.

Except then, on Daniel's bed as we poured over new theory, exciting and practical theory, and he told me about how "this shit" was the only thing that kept him going in foster care. He would find abandon houses, read these books, and write Mikhail Bakunin quotations all over the walls. He pointed distinctly to one right beside where his head would be on his mattress, in line with his vision if he was laying down. This one had the most meaning to him. It was the thing he repeated to himself when he was in those abandoned houses and he thought he was free from all the suffering he had been put through in foster care that he never specified beyond "shitty things," only to realize that it was never the last step, it was only the first. It read: "I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom is, on the contrary, it's necessary premise and confirmation."

"It's still so true. Ever since the first moment I saw it, I realized that none of us could be free alone. We always need to depend on others for it. Even here, right now with you, I know I'm freer for telling you all this, and maybe you are for listening to it." He touched my arm again, but it wasn't in the same buddy-buddy way as before. It was caring, alluring almost, because he was right. I felt the weight of his hand on me, and I felt the weight of my own life that had been frozen move again.

And I felt it. That moment again. I was free. Because of it, the feelings from before, the anguish, the depression, the misery, the fucking boredom, came back in a flood and I was overwhelmed. I blinked my eyes and took a sharp inhalation of breath, eventually excusing myself for a second. I stool out in his hall for a while, trying to gain my composure again before I stepped back in. I was ready, and I wanted to know more. I had felt this elation again, something I had not felt in years, and I wanted it again. I wanted to know how I could do it myself.

When I sat down on his bed again, he began to tell me more about his life. We had been using theory as a way to talk about depth through surface, but now we actually dove down. For a while we sat and looked at one another as we talked, but when Daniel wanted to tell me the heavier issues, he asked for us to lie down. It was easier, he said, if he fixed a point on the ceiling to stare at. I offered to leave, thinking this would be too much, but he insisted. He wanted me to know him, and I knew he didn't give this version of himself to everyone. What I knew from afar and what he disclosed in public was minimal. I knew what I knew from Paul, and their associations with anarchist and Michael Ruppert newsletters, and protests in front of banks, and a brief stint with Kristen in the Animal Liberation Front. This was surface, not depth. He touched my shoulder again and gently pushed me down into the bed with him. I was on the inside corner of his bed, Bakunin next to my vision, and he lay with one leg off the mattress, propped up as he stared at a small hole. With our shoulders touching, and he told me about the abuse in the foster house, and how this caused him to move around a lot. Each house was different versions of the same abuse: they separated him from other children, called him names, and often stole from him. He did have a good foster house, eventually, but it wasn't the greatest.

"You feel different because of the past, and when that happens, you feel unsafe. Even when I wasn't being robbed, I always expected to get robbed. The expectation led to another type of reality. The expectation ends up becoming reality, and like with some of the people here, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I never felt safe in any place I had ever been until I came here," he confided in me. "Even those abandon houses. They seemed to hold fear and I went there because I held fear, too. It was only a quiet place to read. I was never really there. "

"You still feel safe here, even with the small slip ups from others?" I said, not wanting to mention myself or Nicole directly. He told me I needed to let that go already, but then he treated the issue more seriously. "No, sometimes it's not the best. There are petty arguments between people, but it's different. You do that stuff because you're not informed. I trust you to learn, though. I trust these people to learn like I have had to learn. We're here because we want to be. That choice and that access to knowledge is what makes me feel safe."

I nodded. I was safe, I knew here, from the immediacy of danger. The thunderstorm had taken a lot out of my emotional energy because I was not used to this type of desperation. I was not used to the woods at first, and I thought I would be hurt by bears. But there were only deer and foxes that I had seen, other than the cows and one horse on the farm. I was safe, I knew now, in terms of resources. This was an external safety, something imperative to survival and it was leftover from years of evolution. This was something that everyone was susceptible to. Daniel and Jasmine had spoken of internal safety, I was noticing. They held memories of prior abuse deep within themselves, memories that could turn into reality with the slightest pain or ephemeral trauma. They were also targets, unsafe in their bodies because of a culture of assumption. It was something I wasn't sure I had yet, though I was safe in a lot of other things, in terms of the color of my skin. I was safe there - but from my own sexuality, my own self? Well, I was working on it.

We didn't talk too much after that, but Daniel said it was okay to stay the night with him. It was getting to be late, already past one in the morning, and we were both exhausted. His mattress was bigger than a twin but not quite a double, and there was definitely no floor space, so we were sharing. He told me he didn't mind sleeping with me, and that was exactly how he said it. "I don't mind sleeping with you." It was meant to be taken as literal sleeping, but it still made me stop. He went on, shortly after about how the sign that you trusted someone was that you were able to fall asleep with them next to you.

"You are right about us being animals in the sense that when we're unsure of our safety, our minds won't let us rest. I don't have that problem tonight, thankfully," he said, and it became his form of goodnight before he shut off the light.

I lay there next to him, staring at the ceiling for hours, before I finally drifted off.

My run the next morning was long and arduous. I had come to depend on my sleep in order to get up and get going in the morning to do these adventures, but my night had been disrupted several times. It was the first night at The Bear where I had slept poorly, but it was not Daniel's fault. He had woken me up in the morning when he had gotten up to use the bathroom, but I had been relieved then. It meant that I had a good escape, in order to go for my morning walk without missing saying goodbye to him. When I told him I was off to the woods, he nodded, totally getting it, and then said he'd see me later.
"Another night, maybe not right away, but soon, yes?" he asked, and I assured him. It had been a bit too much for me to take and I definitely needed time to calm down, but I could tell from the way my heart tugged at me as I descended the stairs that I would be back.

As I jogged, I tried to replay the events. There were puddles everywhere and I spent more time trying not to splash mud everywhere than just running. Eventually, I wasn't thinking of anything but the former rain so I just stopped and decided to walk. I went past my log, and knowing I wouldn't get to the cows in time to turn back, I slowed my pace. My body ached and my mind was a mess. In spite of what Daniel had told me, and the affection and camaraderie he had extended to me, I still felt badly for what I had assumed. All of it haunted me and I began to wonder if I had ever made Jasmine feel badly. I wondered if I had assumed too much for other people like Hilda, Cassandra, Mikey, or even the person who bagged groceries? Did I say things to Lydia that were presumptuous? What about The Professor's wife? Their kid together? What about Max at the drug store? I hadn't even had that many interactions with Tonya since I got here, but now I was questioning myself when I was with her, too. I began to notice more things about her, and it was becoming clear from small comments around me, the way she spoke and phrased things, and from the size of her hands, that she was a transgender woman. As soon as I realized that, so many things that people told me before made sense, but I also felt bad reaping this strange type of victory for having figured "the mystery" out. There was no mystery, there were only people, and I kept wondering if I had hurt some along the way. I had been so concerned with communicating with fucking cows, but I had managed to offend the one person who had made me feel something close to freedom, other than Gerard, in years. I was being an idiot again and I felt bad, but it wasn't the same type of bad that the other theory made me feel. I couldn't ever doubt the theory that I had read last night because of that quotation. My freedom was apparent and hinged upon the freedom of others. I could have these moments of wholeness, of elation with the world, but I would despair the other half of the time if I did not work towards something good. I needed to start working towards the freedom of others, including myself, if I ever wanted to get anywhere beyond those fleeting, elating moments.

I turned around from where I was walking, and wanted to head into the other direction, but I felt powerless. All of this was too much. I wanted to apologize to the world for all the people that I had harmed without realizing it. But I couldn't. I couldn't apologize to the world because the world just existed. One little apology from me was egotistical. I walked into the middle of the woods, off the path for a second, just to get away. I let the forest surround me, and I tried to forget the shit that I had put on my own back.

When I gathered myself and looked past my own frigid hands, I saw beyond myself. A fox had run in front of me - just a few feet - and then stopped in its tracks as it took me into its line of vision. We locked eyes, long and hard. He wasn't sure what to do, and neither was I. I begged him to come forward, like I had begged the cows, but as soon as I flinched to meet the distance between us, he ran off.

The moment stayed with me all day. I had wanted to befriend the fox, to say that we were the same and therefore could get along. We were similar, yes, but he was afraid of me. I had human hands and a thousand years of history. I had power, and he knew it, so he ran. We were not the same, distinctly so. We both deserved the right to life, the right to this forest, but there could be no denying the fear in his eyes. To him, it didn't matter if I promised not to crush him, all that mattered was that I could. A million people had done it before me, and a million people would do it again. I could do nothing to convince him, because my very existence exuded the power that he did not have. He needed to run. But where did that leave me?

For Daniel, it had been a moment of suffering that crystallized his knowledge and that made him vegan. For me, it was a moment of fear in someone else's eyes and that quaking realization of power. With that power, I accepted my responsibility, for everything that I could. I started with food that day, and already, I felt myself becoming more whole.

Chapter Three

I didn't think it would happen, Daniel and I, but it did. We kept meeting at the showers after my morning runs, and each time as he would disrobe he would ask when the next time I was coming over would be, or if I had gotten through the books he'd given me, or just how I was feeling that particular morning.

"You look good," he would sometimes anticipate my answers, just before stepping into the stall. "Are you good, Frank? I certainly hope so."

I never knew what to say at first, other than try to hide my blush and smirk. I wanted to tell him in that same playful manner that he looked good, too, but I was still unsure how to convey it without sounding too deadpan serious. I knew that I had won his approval, but our friendship was still building. In the mornings, when it was still too early for most people to brave the cold conditions of the shower, he and I were alone, and we began to get to know one another, away from surface features. Clothing was something that I once thought had no dividing lines between professional and practical in The Bear, now became the sole division itself. As Daniel disrobed, so did I. We were separated from one another through the stall doors, but our intimacy breeched over that. We were talking to one another naked, and telling one another stories about ourselves, before we finally decided take our clothing off and face one another.

It wasn't as grand of a spectacle as Gerard had been, though I was still so nervous. I knew what a man's body felt like, but Daniel was different. He had alluded to being gay and having relationships with some men through anarchist circles, but he kept himself closely guarded in that area. He did not like calling himself gay and he thought it was a ridiculous moniker. He just liked men. He liked people. And well, he told me one night, he really liked me. I wasn't too sure how to read that statement, and though I refused to meet his eyes and focused on the zine we were looking at, I could feel him staring. His eyes on me had always made my body hot and tense, as if he was demanding me to be ready for something. He did not like to fuck around or waste time, even in The Bear, where the concept of time had become divided from clocks itself. Daniel was never late, and each action that he did seemed to entail a greater purpose. He said nothing more to me than, "I like you, you know," and just left it to hang in the air like smoke. I couldn't respond right away. I had to leave for a moment, again, to collect myself in the hallway before I could return and we went back to our task for that evening.

The second night I had come over and we decided in advance to spend the night together. I should have known that we were actually planning this conversation instead of an information exchange on veganism. He had been the first person I told about that new part of my identity, and he wanted to embrace it. He was good to his word, too. He had gotten me onto the cooking shifts for the community and would often cook with me in the mornings after our showers. He showed me how to make vegan pancakes without butter or eggs, and then the two of us made soy milk from scratch. We baked a lot of the time, too, and since the berries were just coming in on the vines by the kitchen, small fruit would often be added by whim. The raspberries were so small and tart, nothing like I had ever experienced before. When he first walked in with a handful of the tiny red fruit, he insisted that I try it, "right now, right away, Frank, it's diminishing in its freshness" and dropped it into my mouth. Had we been alone in the kitchen, I wondered if things between us would have happened sooner. Jasmine or Gwen were there most mornings, and would often be making their own food side by side. No one commented on Daniel's affection and I was left to think that this was how he was with everyone, not just with me. In spite of that observation, I still felt special every single time he grazed me as we flipped the batter in the pan, or touched me briefly as he went to soak beans.

Daniel was informing me more about the side issues and the little debates that cropped up within veganism, as well as the pragmatics of cooking. Some of what he taught me I was already aware of from Jasmine, but other stuff blew me away. He often moved onto the politics of food when Jasmine was around, so that a more fruitful and multi-layered debate could get going, and she seemed to enjoy a nice refresher in the one-oh-one basics she had combed through by herself while I was away. I was learning so much from the two of them, like how B12 was the only vitamin that could not be reached from plant-based resources, that it took upwards of three times as many resources to produce meat than grain, and that big companies like Monsanto we're trying to take over seed supplies. I thanked them each time something new astounded me, and then for teaching me simple things like how nutritional yeast could make a fine Kraft Dinner cheese substitute. We all made this one night at The Bear and ate it while watching another rain storm outside wane on and off. It was never going to be the same as what Vivian made and I knew that, but I liked the alternatives a lot.

When I would go out on my run and visit the cows again, I began to let my mind wander to the two of them instead. I would think about staring Daniel in the eyes, especially over that shower stall, and plead my requests silently to him. I could not form them into words just yet, and even the most playful of gestures would make me quake inside. Prohibition produced desire, I thought to myself, and only shook my head as I ran. As I stared at the cows, I would acknowledge the power that I had over them, and how this was now translating into my life and deliberate actions, and I felt good about the decisions I was making. But hiding in the background was still this extreme sense of weakness. I felt it pressing up against me each night after Jasmine and I had made love to one another, and then in the mornings, on those runs, when I knew I would be heading back and making breakfast with Daniel. This need formed and festered inside of me, this want to not just experience Gerard, but to experience Daniel, too. To experience other men, even beyond those two. Once had I dislodged Gerard as different from myself and I had worked to see our story from another angle, I began to grieve him as a human, and I was free. Not only free in my actions to choose, but free in my sexual feelings as well. In spite of talking with Daniel at dinner, over the showers, and in between work activities, I despaired at ever having to go over to his place again. Even as we planned it, though we didn't talk about it itself, we knew it would occur. He had been staring at me with his eyes for too long to put it off anymore.

I got there, I took off my hoodie, and we opened a book on his bed. He said his comment about liking me, and I ignored it. I went to the bathroom, then came back, determined to make this night work. We were both leaning up against the wall, and he began explaining a point on why honey was problematic. I asked him to elaborate more because I already knew the answer, and as he leaned down to reference something in the book we had between us, I put my arm around his back. I put my face close to his, so close I could feel his stubble and our unshaved faces began to tangle with one another. I looked at him from the side, but he still stared forward at the book. Even with all my hints - even with the hints that he had given me - he did not move. He only smirked as he read the fact.

"Honey is problematic because bees give about as much as a tablespoon their entire life. It can take as much as..." He turned his face towards mine, but kept telling me facts through parted lips. We were so close, practically breathing one another's air. Even when he stopped talking, he didn't move in for the kiss. He didn't push me away.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked him, and I felt his lips turn into a smile yet again.

"What are you?"

And so, I kissed him. We kissed with open mouths, our tongues exploring one another immediately. I touched his body in a frantic race at first, as if he would slip away from me if I went too slowly. I placed my hands under his shirt and touched his skin. I felt his bone structure underneath, his soft chest hair, and the scruffiness of his face. My face was scruffy too, more than it had been in my entire life. The razors here were shit so I had stopped and I began to like myself with this new beard forming. Daniel had abandoned razors long ago, and we rubbed our rough faces against one another as if we would spark. I wanted all of him then, within a blink, and I remembered it completely overwhelming me.

After I made the first leap and pressed our mouths and bodies together, he took over and pushed me down onto the bed so he could get on top of me. We kept our clothing on for the longest time and just kissed and ground our hips and lower bodies together. It felt so good, so ravenous, so completely animalistic; it was the best analogy that I could have used. We were nothing but animals then, fierce and frantic, and desperately wanting to survive with one another. Prohibition produced desire, I thought to myself again, but then shoved that notion out of my mind. Daniel must have thought I never got any action like this before, that I had been completely repressed before with any form of homosexuality (likewise, I had been keeping that part of myself guarded), but that wasn't right. I was not new to this form of sex and I was not unfamiliar with men. I had sex with Gerard all the time and we were good together. He and I were so good, in fact, that when Daniel cupped my growing erection through fabric, I let out a moan that was in pleasure, but also in remorse. I wanted to cry when I was with Daniel simply because he wasn't Gerard. Having Gerard be the only man I had slept with made him special. It never tarnished his image. If he was always my exception, then all other relationships, though they had happened after the fact, would still fit into this narrative that I had made for my life where he was located at the center, at the heart of things.

Daniel was fucking things up, but worst of all, I wanted him to. I wanted his hands all over me and when we took our clothing off, I wanted him inside me as well. I practically turned over and got on all fours as soon as we got our pants off and kicked them across his floor. My movements were so startling at that point that Daniel actually said, "Whoa, calm down, I'm not ready for that yet," before I realized how ridiculous I had been acting. I turned over and faced Daniel again, vaguely wondering if this meant we had to stop fucking around. He looked down at me and smiled, putting his hand by my chin and tilting my face up before he began kissing me. We carried on awhile longer, myself naked and him in his boxers, just kissing before he went to my erection again, and I slipped his boxers off his hips. Our hands began the same exploring that Jasmine and I had been doing with one another, and it was apparent to me with how I was acting with him that I needed to explore a lot more about myself.

His hands, which felt rough from years of working and living on The Bear, were rough as he held my cock in his fist and pumped in fluid movements. Though I was touching him too, I could barely focus and he took the dominant role. He did most of the movements and shifting of bodies himself, but I was still there - present and nearly ferocious. I wanted to be with him, but a lot of the time I pressed my forehead against his shoulders, kissed and bit him, while he eventually took both of us together in his hands and did most of the work. I kept touching his inner thigh, his public hair, and the head of his penis. He was not circumcised and that had been another shock for me. There was this difference in men's bodies that I had never been exposed to before on this level. I relished in the variety that bodies came in; the shapes they could take, how they felt, and how age marked them. Daniel was older than me, but only by three years. He was long and languid when he stretched out in bed and his hair was curly if he let it grow too long. I had not seen too much of his skin as we touched one another, but I noticed the long scars on his legs and around his knees from a bad car crash he told me about in foster care. I saw cigarette burns on his forearms and even on his thighs. They were there, staring at me as we kissed and touched one another before, making a legacy that marked him. Areas of his scar tissue looked like bark and I wanted to touch it, but I knew it was not my place. Not yet.

We stayed naked and close to one another after we had finished. I came first, and after my grunts turned into moans and he could feel me in his hands, Daniel let himself go. He was quiet when he came; I wouldn't have been able to tell except for the visual evidence and our movements ceased. We used one of our shirts to clean up, and then resumed our positions from the night before, only this time we touched shoulders skin to skin. Daniel was staring up at the ceiling, but he was still around for talking. He would sometimes 'check out' and not want to be disturbed, but I knew he was almost waiting for me to speak up about what had just happened. I was still formulating how badly I did want him to fuck me and how I wanted to fuck him, and what that would do to Gerard in my mind, as well as my own conception of myself. If there were no more exceptions, what the fuck was I? Who the fuck was I?

"You're not gay, you know," he told me. "Unless you want to identify that way. I know you love Jasmine."

I nodded, my breath becoming ragged for another reason. I wanted to tell him that I had been with another man before. I wanted to tell him so desperately, so that maybe he would understand too. I had this secret part about myself that I had held together for so long. I used to think it was the secret of the apparent pedophilia or whatever people wanted to call it that held me back from speaking, but I knew, especially after my scorn from The Professor, that there was something stronger keeping me silent. I didn't want to forget Gerard for as long as I had tried to keep him simply because I didn't want to see myself as gay. I dreaded that result and all that it meant within the world. But I could explain being with him as an exception to the rule. I was straight, after all. Hell, look at how straight I was: I had knocked up Jasmine! But even both of us hated that way of framing it too. Framing was all it really was. It didn't diminish the real picture that was inside; it was merely a way of containing it. It added another layer of explanation and another one of context. I was so sick of explaining myself to people, but what I was really afraid of was explaining myself to myself.

There were still things that I could not deny about my sexuality and past experiences, though. I loved Jasmine and I had had relationships with other women in the past. It had always good, but those other relationships outside of her had always lacked something. It was almost too easy. I liked going down on women, which surprised me the first time I did it. I like penetrating women, too, but I also liked being penetrated. Jasmine had done that to me a few times, and that had changed the dynamic of our own sex life significantly. She began to get more vocal and dominant in her own sexuality after she did that, and I began to realize, as I sorted through my own sexual history, that I had really stopped pursuing other relationships after that point. I had sex with people, but not regularly, and certainly not within the confines of a relationship. I always went back to Jasmine because she had understood this part of myself. I wanted to be vulnerable at the same time that I was masculine and dominant. I wanted to fall in the in-between space where I could penetrate and be penetrated, and feel that thrill of transgressing between each. It wasn't just the relationship with Gerard that Jasmine understood, but the desire that fueled that. I wanted to fuck men, I really did, even if I had not been able to form those thoughts into words yet. I didn't want all of them and I didn't want this all the time. I was sure that I preferred women and part of me wondered if this desire to be penetrated and to be with men came from my experiences with Gerard and wanting to enact that again. It wasn't a real desire, I was convinced, only a mimicking of certain situations.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14