June - The Liars 20 страница

I waded and splashed around Jasmine and Gwen for the most part. Daniel was swimming by himself at the edge of the lake, sometimes going in and out to get a drink of water. He was naked, but was careful with his movements and only exposing certain elements of his body to some. Most people were too involved with their own antics to notice, but he kept my attention. I was on the opposite side of the lake than him and could see how he was standing with his back to us for the most part. He wasn't being rude, I knew, he was hiding his scars. He noticed me at one point when he put back one of the bottles, and nodded. He motioned for me to come over and see him and my heart leapt in my throat. I got out and grabbed my towel to wrap it around my waist. I saw that he had slid his shorts on, so I did the same before I headed over.

"Come with me," he said without any preliminary introductions, and then began walking. I turned around to see the party splashing away. Even Tonya and Paul were consumed by the water fights - kicking with their feet from the edge. No one, not even Jasmine, was going to notice that we were gone.

Daniel led me along the dirt road some more, about fifty feet away, before diverging into a small opening of the forest, to some man-made beaten pathway. It kept getting narrower and narrower until we reached this strange clearing. There was a log, dried out and moss free, and a blanket on the ground.

"I have a place," he said slowly. He took my hand and we went down to the blanket, and he showed me the stuff that he had hidden away here, in the hollow of the log. "This place reminds me of the houses that I used to squat in," he said, offering some type of explanation. "When I first came here, there were too many people. I had been so solitary my entire life that I didn't know how to handle it. I don't come out here too often now, but I know it's there. That's what is important to me."

"Aren't you worried about people finding it? About animals ruining it?" He had begun to take out books from around the log. They were in plastic bags to protect it from the rain and there were small Tupperware containers for other things I couldn't decipher. He shook his head.

"There's no food. Maybe the some other products or scents would attract them, but most animals just want food. They rarely waste time for anything else. I come out here often enough to know when it's been tampered with, and I watch the weather a lot of the time so I know when it's going to rain. Washing the blanket is no big deal."

He explained this all matter of fact, and I nodded along. He told me more about the houses that he used to go into, stay and read all night, and then leave in the morning before the punks showed up with their dumpster dived bagels. "Some punks were vicious about territory. Even this place, although I call it mine, I know how temporary that 'mine' can be." He was a little sad when he said this, but he didn't dwell. He turned to me, and it was clear he wanted an opinion.

"Thank you for showing me," I stated honestly. I felt like I understood Daniel better then. He had his private room, all locked away, but that had been so bare that it almost didn't feel like he really lived there. I figured he was going for the minimalist perspective and that was why it had felt so cold some nights, but now I saw things differently. That was a temporary house. This place, with his log, his books, and other items, this was his safe house.

We sat on the blanket, looking at one another for the longest time. I swallowed hard, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I knew what was going to happen. I dreaded it, and I embraced it all inside of me, all at once, without actually doing anything or making a noise. I knew we had already had sex before and I had worked so hard to get rid of prior connotations to sex in my head - but this log, this forest, this blanket under the shade - this was exciting. This was different. Even if we only went down on one another here, we were really, really safe. I would know Daniel differently, no matter what action we did, and I would always be aware of this secret part of himself, this hiding place in the woods. It mattered more to me than anything.

He kissed me first, this time. He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine, and then breathed raggedly through his teeth with his hand on the back of my neck. I kissed back, opening my mouth more to let him get inside me. The space between our torsos disappeared and I pulled myself closer to him. His hand went towards my hip, over my crotch and stayed there, heavily gyrating with his palm. We were only wearing our shorts, so it was quite easy to be naked in a matter of minutes. We were still dripping wet at the tips of our hair, which had grown longer for both of us, but we took the towels and shook one another down. He got on top of me first after we discarded clothing and we both grabbed one another's cock. I thought that this was just going to be it and I almost let myself go in his hand.

"Wait," he said biting my earlobe. He moved back, reached behind the log, and pulled out a small container. "Do you want to?" he asked. He didn't open the box before I said yes.

I had gone to turn over, but he insisted that I stay face up. He needed eye contact, he said, and I agreed. He crouched down and I wrapped my legs around his back. He teased the skin in between and under my balls a bit before going in with lubricated fingers. I had done this part to him a few times, but he hadn't done this with me yet. His fingers were long and bony, but he curled them inside of me just the right way. When enough time had passed and he had gotten enough fingers in for me to feel prepared, he put on a condom. It was awkward, trying to get our bodies positioned so that we could see one another's face and keep eye contact, but Daniel was persistent. This was the only way he was going to have sex, and I was willing to make it happen. When we finally got the position, he took another breath and placed his hand on my hip before entering me. I felt the heat outside me and I bit my lip before the resistance was even felt. It hurt. It hurt a lot, actually. I wasn't even sure what to do with the pain; it was so sudden and acute. I gripped his back and bit my lip more, but I realized that wasn't going to work. Daniel saw my movements with a furrowed brow, and I told him to slow down.

"You went in too deep at first, just give me some time," I told him, and he nodded. He went out a bit, touched my cock with his free hand as he waited before he went in again. He put his hand on the back of my neck and breathed deeply into me as we kissed. It became a lot easier after that first initial burst of pain. We both got used to the rhythm and he picked up his pace. His hips lolled into me and I began to pull him closer to me, deeper inside. He was moaning and making incredible noises I had not heard yet and I lost myself in the sounds he made. I closed my eyes and pushed my head back, exposing my neck for him to kiss. The ground was rough and I felt rocks underneath me, even though we had put towels on the blankets as well. He was going faster and faster now, and I was using my hand to get me over to the edge and act as a distraction.

It was happening, I realized, just as I came. I wasn't sure what I had meant, but my emotions overwhelmed me, and I held Daniel close to my chest.

"Are you okay?" he asked me, his voice smaller than I had heard it in a while. I held his face in my hands, and I nodded. He did not seem satisfied, so I kissed him again, and then said it out loud for him. "I am, of course I am."

"Okay."

We walked back to the lake arm in arm. We had stayed undressed for a while afterwards, with the towels around ourselves and appreciated the sun. It was too hot to do any moving right away, and we lazily day dreamed. Daniel kept asking me questions, as if my first answer had not been enough to quell any sense of fear inside of him. He asked if I was okay, if that was what I had wanted, if he had hurt me, and I just told him I was fine. Everything was okay. Everything was safe again, and I held his hand in mine and I told him he was safe now, and always had been. He nodded, and grew quiet, but I knew he appreciated the remark. Like I knew Gerard had always worried about being a fake, I knew Daniel worried about the safety of his own and others. It was a part of his story that I had not been able to comprehend yet, but the significance weighed on me after our act. Something inside of me was hurting, however, but I didn't want to think about it now. It was an emotional pain, but not a physical one, and definitely not one that Daniel had caused. I knew there would be plenty of time to deal with that, and at that moment, I just wanted the sun to dry my skin.

When we got up, I put my arm around Daniel's waist and he seemed to feel a lot better about what we had done. I realized how much trust it had taken for him to do that, and I wanted him to know that it did not go unappreciated. He smiled at me as we slipped our shorts on, but I must have been staring at him for longer than appreciated, because he began to roll his eyes.

"Come on now, we have people to see that depend on us," he stated, his voice taking on the high austere quality I was used to it having. I still smiled at him, even when he looked away and began to fold our towels. I wanted to love him so much; I wanted it to spill forth from me, but we both held back on admissions. We just walked, with our fingers gently touching the other's bare back.

Jasmine smiled at me from the water when I returned, but she seemed to be the only one who had noticed we were gone. We stayed in our shorts by the edge, hands touching now. I watched all the bodies splash through the water, some naked and some clothed. I saw their faces smiling and their voices laughing in high pitched shrieks. I felt the sun on my back, and the weight of the heat and having no work today lifted. I looked back at Daniel, then back at the lake.

This was the closest we could come to childhood again, I realized. With everything that every single one of us knew about the world, about ourselves, and about what the future held, this was the only time where those reins had been lifted and the burden dissipated. I was in my beard, and Daniel with scruffiness and Jasmine with her stomach and everyone with their own problems there, splashing in the water. We could not go back in time and go through our lives as infants or children again, but we could escape for a short time. We could work all day and pay our own bills, love one another in our own ways. It was the youngest I had felt in a long time, not since I was seventeen, and I squeezed Daniel's hand and told him, "Thank you."

He smiled at me, and I thought he was going to haphazardly brush the affection aside, but he said thank you back to me. Our eyes locked for a moment, wide with sudden realization.

I loved him then, by the water. We both did. But it was only for a moment, and then it was gone.

Chapter Five

The heat wave lasted for days. Work was still on hold until a storm came or we all stopped sweating as we sat down, but Daniel and a few others tried to do some tending to plants and other small tasks in the early morning or late night. This work was only on a volunteer basis, but most people adjusted their sleep schedule in order to be up at those times and napped all afternoon. Our evening feast became our large lunchtime meal before everyone went their own separate ways when the sun was at its highest point. Jasmine and I had completely eradicated our old morning schedule, too, and now instead of getting up with the sun and powering on with our own tasks, we had our siesta with everyone else, finally drawing the curtains to darken the room. It was eerie seeing a community so rich and full of life like The Bear, fold itself away for a few hours in the middle of the day. Where we had all been digging, carrying, pruning, and lifting, we were all now at rest as the heat moved its thick waves through our houses.

Jasmine and I usually got up when the stars were out instead and the heat was now a gentle wind. We would get our personal tasks done in the middle of the night (she was still writing "nonsense" and I had taken up reading again instead), and after we began to go on walks together around the grounds. Our time at the community had been a strange and unreal experience for both of us, and now we were beginning to process it. We talked about small things, at first. Our first talk consisted of the meals that I liked and that I wanted to try making again. Nothing was done by recipe here; Kristen seemed to have everything memorized with the right proportions to be able to feed ten or more people. If we were helping her in the kitchen, she would sometimes write out what we needed, but after the meal, the small card was usually gone. If anyone else wanted to contribute a meal idea, it was usually memorized, too. Jasmine had been trying to write them all down again as soon as we got back, but it was difficult. We talked about veganism a lot, this huge deluge of information and emotion coming out of Jasmine that she had never expressed to me before. I found out her favorite foods, why they were her favorites, and more often than not it was a memory associated with them, involving Gerard or myself. She wanted that peach tea she had had with him the first night they had met and really talked to one another. It made her conjure up this image of him that was so contradictory to what he had been in her mind before.

"What had he been?" I asked her, curious.

"The cigarettes and coffee guy, smoking and being pretentious, but still somehow managing to maintain a relationship with you. He was cold before, but after meeting him, he had heart. He looked around that small tea shop like it was the most important and beautiful place in the world." She sighed, the memory hurting a bit. "He didn't want pretension. He thought he did a lot of the time, but he mostly wanted beauty. He followed beauty. Sometimes it crossed with pretentious people, but he would try to redeem them. He tried to redeem everything..."

She trailed off, growing sadder. She clutched her stomach and we didn't talk about Gerard anymore, at least, not like that. It was pulling at the things we had come here to forget about. We tried to recall what we wanted to remember about this place. She told me about Gwen, and how she was so quirky ("though that sounds like I'm being condescending, which I'm not") and would say the strangest things, like why the sky changed colors when the sun set.

"We had just been sitting there one night, just outside the silo talking about where we had gone to school, and then she looked up at noticed the sunset. She turned to me and was like, 'you know the sky is a huge prism? It's changing color because the light is being reflected at a different side of the spectrum.' At least, I think that's what she said. I was just so surprised, and she was so elated she had found the answer for why something was beautiful. It made me realize that I didn't necessarily need to have that, before."

I nodded, taking Jasmine's hand in my own. She told me more of her experiences with people at The Bear, and I was surprised she had come to know so many of them. She knew all the fifteen names that were scattered around and had conversed with all of them at least once. I knew a mere handful, and I wondered if I had spent too little time here.

"It's just easier for me. I have a conversation starter right on me," she said, referring to her stomach. "Besides, I think knowing someone more in depth is better than everyone a little bit. So. Tell me," she said with a smile and nudged my shoulder.

Blushing a bit, I told her about Daniel, and how I felt about myself now. I still couldn't articulate it, but my attraction to men had reached its peak point. Since I had produced so much excess desire through prohibition, now that I had finally let it happen, the apex of this ravenous nature inside of me had been reached. I knew it was there now. I was okay with it being there. Daniel and I had had penetrative sex a few more times, but I admitted that I liked it when we watched one another instead and used our hands. I liked looked at him, feeing his face against mine, and hearing his moans in my ears. Jasmine nodded. She said that she and Hilda would scissor if their stomach didn't getting the way, and that had been what was thrilling to her. It was the power of thrusting, almost like penetration and being able to penetrate. She grew sad again, and I asked her if she missed Hilda.

"No, it's just other stuff." She paused. "I don't want to go back, but I don't think there's anything else we can do here."

I nodded. I had been feeling the same way recently, especially when our workload was cancelled. I had had my time to reflect, and do the things that I wanted to do. This wasn't even my final project, my final trip. This had been all Jasmine, and when she said she was satisfied I knew that we would go. I didn't anticipate liking it as much as I had and I told her. I thanked her for bringing me, and then, in the back of my mind, I wanted to convince her to stay. I joked around and told her we could have the baby here; Kristen knew enough biology and first aid training to oversee it and Lydia would find a way to get here. Her midwife's name felt strange on my tongue, as if that was such a long time ago and I was unfamiliar with its syllables. I kept proposing all of these strange scenarios where somehow I would grow this really wicked beard that would reach Walt Whitman lengths and we would both live to be one hundred and have seven children together, here, at The Bear.

"Seven kids, huh?" she said looking at me. "Let's get through the one, then I'll see if I can handle more."

I had been teasing, or reaching a point of desperation from before, so I was surprised when my heart skipped at her mention of more. We didn't even have one daughter yet and though I was excited for her to come, I had not let my mind go too far ahead in the future. I had not wanted to see Gerard's eventual deterioration and death. That had been what the future represented to me, and I had wanted to hide from that reality as long as possible. But more kids? Could that really be an option? We were only twenty-six and still very young. We still had a lot of our lives left, and a lot of things to do. But it was appealing to me, I could not deny that. I didn't know if my impression would change when Paloma and children stopped being ideas and became realities or how Jasmine would feel and change.

"Do you remember what you asked me before we came here?" she asked, deliberately being vague. I shook my head and gave her hand a small squeeze to encourage her. "You asked if it was okay to call you Dad to Paloma. I think so. When I'm alone with her, I've been saying it. I think it'll be okay."

My breath caught in my throat, and this time Jasmine squeezed my hand. We made eye contact with one another as we walked. I nodded, thanking her, because it was all I could really do. These were still ideas we were talking about, not concrete terms yet. I worried that I would change my mind when Paloma was really here, and dad would suddenly become too powerful, but at that moment I knew I had the strength to bear that. I asked her what she wanted to be called. "Is mother too much?"

She nodded. "I'm still thinking, okay? Not just about this, but about a lot of things. I will get back to you, Frank, I always do."

We were quiet for a while. We walked at a slower pace because of Jasmine, and eventually we stopped as we reached a clearing. We walked into the center of it, and looked up at the stars. A lot more were visible here than in Jersey. There was so little light pollution and they all seemed to inflame before us. Jasmine had had her birthday while we were here, and I absent-mindedly looked up at the stars to see if I could find her sign. She rolled her eyes when I told her what I was doing, but she began to look as well.

"Hey, over there," she said, pointing to a patch of sky that just looked scattered to me.

"You found the crab?" I asked and she shook her head.

"No, but I found Orion. He's the hunter in mythology, and there are three famous stars strung along his belt." She pointed to where these were, tried to remember the names, but eventually we both just looked at him. "Ironic, I know, being vegan and all, but I always liked him more. I used to want him to be my astrological sign."

"Is he one?"

She shook her head. "I talked about it to Alexa one time, and she said that he came in between a lot of sets of astrological signs. He was there for people that were born on the cusp, and he's always visible in the sky."

I nodded, my mind wandering over to Alexa and all the books she had given me, the death card that she had painted, and Mikey and his kids. The life that we were coming back to and all the implications for the future rushed back at me and I had to stop and close my eyes for a second.

"Are you okay, Frank?" Jasmine asked.

"Yes, well, no," I said. I looked down at my hands and balled them into fists. I asked her if she was happy with the way that things had turned out here. She nodded, and said it was one of the best experiences of her life. Then she waited for me to go on. She put her hand behind my back, and I looked down at the ground.

"I feel like a failure" I said. I knew what Daniel had told me about failing, about how it wasn't always my fault, and I understood that. The system worked in many different ways, and all of that social construction babble that I had never really liked before because it made me feel powerless. Even if things weren't my fault, that didn't stop me from feeling it. I had discovered that I was okay with my sexuality. It took a lot of work, but it was no longer keeping me up at nights. But there was always more beyond sexuality than just fucking and pleasure and society's denial. For me, it was my own art, my own creation, and passion. How was I supposed to go back and return to photography? It didn't feel real anymore, it didn't feel like a part of me. I tried to express this to Jasmine, and felt as if I failed there, too.

"You can do something else or you can just try it again. Who knows - you've just been gone from it awhile and you've been busy. You'll get back to it."

I shook my head. I knew all those things. They didn't matter. I felt feeble with my next statement, but I let it come out of my mouth, "I just... I just want to be Frank."

I thought of Alex and his struggle up against Alexander the Great. When did trying to achieve greatness wear you out completely? When did you stop and say that was enough? When did you say that you had all of these things, and though they may not be the world, what was there was enough? I realized that Alex had never been whole and even he knew that. But he was enough, he was pointedly enough, and when experiencing being so broken for that long in his life, having enough really did feel like fullness. But when did that point come? That was what I didn't know and that was killing me.

I didn't think Jasmine would get it. She had spent so much of her life working to get her MA, to get jobs, and to get her foot through the door. She was now planning on taking over the magazine with another woman and they were going to change it completely. Now she had this huge life changing experience at The Bear and was going to be a mother. She was so accomplished and for such a young age that I didn't think she would understand this urge to be nothing and stop trying.

"It's not being nothing," she told me. "It's wanting to be yourself. You said it yourself - I just want to be Frank. So be Frank. Whatever Frank entails."

"I don't know what that is yet," I said, but something inside of me peaked. Something inside of me moved. It knew. It wanted to speak, but it did not have words yet.

"Me either," she confided. I was so surprised by her admission that my attention focused on her, and I encouraged her to go on. She did not express her sentiments the same way as me (I just want to be Jasmine), but she talked about her life and her own struggle to just be something different, something new, something innovative, but also something solid.

"So much of the time, before all of this, I felt like I was there but I really wasn't. People were talking to me, but they didn't see who I was. I thought I had to try harder, and I did, and then, well... this happened." She placed a hand on her stomach. "I hated this at first, but then I was relieved. It felt like I could stop. It appalled me at first, the idea of stopping. It was the idea of giving up, and that's what I thought I was doing even when I came here. I thought I needed one final thing I could call my own before this happened and I was no longer in control. But coming here made me realize that I'm not giving up. I'm doing so many things now, but I'm no longer talking to people who don't give a damn, who don't see me. I wanted this baby. I wanted it from the instant I realized what had happened, though it was not planned. But I had so many negative messages confuse me, telling me to be certain things that I never wanted to be. I just want..." she took a breath, trying to form her thoughts, though they were jumbled and it was clear this was the first time she had said all of this out loud. "A simpler life, I guess. What we've had here is good and I want to take as much of that with me when we leave. I want to just cook and be okay with cooking. I like writing nonsense in the morning and not worrying about crafting it into an essay or assignment, but still knowing that I can do those things. I like the idea of having a baby." She smiled and rubbed her stomach, and I put my hand there as well. I was enjoying how open she was with affection now. I could see the change in her, for sure. It wasn't that who I had been seeing before wasn't Jasmine, but that now she wasn't fighting all the time with other people. I hated that feeling, too, and I knew that I was wresting with my own guilt and fear of failure still.

"What about feminism? I thought that made you feel better about things," I suggested to her. "The fourth wave is coming soon, right?"

She smiled, then scrunched up her face and sighed. "I can't wait around for another revolution to fix what's broken. It will happen, I know the fourth wave is going to start soon. I could feel it when we were at Food Not Bombs and I can feel it in places like these. But I can't just wait for that to tell me to feel good again. I need to figure it out for myself."

I nodded, completely understanding her frustration. "I hate feeling worried, like I can't exist without creating something to prove myself. It makes me feel like I can't breathe a lot of the time."

"Exactly!" Jasmine said, grabbing my arm. "It felt like I couldn't breathe a lot of the time at work or at school. Here, I can breathe. I want to be able to breathe again."

Her words made me think of Daniel, and how he had told me that being safe and able to breathe was the whole reason this place existed. Sure, it was a political statement, too. He had wanted to get away from origin stories, but you always needed to construct a starting point. The personal was political; this was something that Jasmine had told me through the many books that we had gone through together. You had to be motivated from a force within yourself, and you had to make that force worthwhile. It was the only way to be honest in the world, while still existing in the world. You needed to remember yourself, why you started, and why you were still here. For some people, they couldn't breathe. They had no place to breathe and it made them feel like they couldn't be here. I thought of all the times, since Gerard had left and before I had met him, where I wanted to kill myself. I had not let myself really think of them before. I did not want to think about them. But they were a fact of my existence. A lot of the time I felt useless, and when that came on, I wanted to make it go away. I wanted to drink it to death or just be death. Gerard had given me so much hope for myself, told me that I was capable of so many things, and that had helped me so much. But it had also tormented me much of the same way. I felt like I needed to produce, all the time, to create and get everything out of me - or else I was a failure. Or else I would drink. And then, feeling that failure and that lack of creating, I would self-defeat and perpetuate the cycle. I was tired with that, and I couldn't breathe from it.

I had learned a lot here, though. I knew I had. Because of this experience, I knew there was something that had formed itself inside of me, something that was still barely moving, and was slowly finding words. "I... want to make it so people can breathe again. I want people to know that this is possible. This better life, where we can live with what makes us happy and like we're not liars with two faces."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14