Click.

I was 15. Or 16. I was drunk on wine the whole summer, at night time people hovered like moths around fires spread along a patch of beach. Waves splashed fluorescent. All those kids so foreign, scared shitless of saying the wrong things. I remember meeting you but faintly, thought nothing of it the first few days.

Somehow, we managed to talk for about 4 or 5 hours everyday over the next years. You were in Georgetown, little rich boy, and I knew those hallways like the palm of my hand from all your stories. My voice on speakerphone, everysingleday flooding your bunk bed in a military boarding school in Washington. I grew madly in love with you, with our chemistry right from the start.

Desperation. I saw you only when you came back home, when they'd let you, and even then I had to drive 3 hours to see you, to your town. Frustration when you left me at the bus station after the weekend, week if we were lucky. And still we acted like we were just friends. Cutting around the tension, never letting on to the teenage sweat we were both thinking about. We knew. We were just waiting to see who gave in first. It was easier when you were away. When we saw each other, eyes betrayed words. Everyone knew except my overprotective cousin, everyone knew we belonged to each other but nobody spoke about it. Not even us, the good golden boy and the outsider girl. Fuck off, assholes.

I dont remember all the details in our story. It panned out for so long and I just know you were always there in the back, more so, right down at the core, in the basics. You were basic, fundamental, necessary. Even as I fell in love with someone else, you were still my starting point, the point of comparison to everything else. For years I thought you were the one I'd end up marrying. We talked about it jokingly. I don't know what happened. I idealized you so much and kept seeing myslef move down a more fucked up path and when we met, after 4 or 5 years, I was too dazzled by my fantasy to see you as you were. You wouldve hated me anyway. Up close, I was everything you didnt know you didn't want, and you, you were too good for me. Also, too narrow. Everyone thought you were a fucking catch. And even then, from that position, unscathed by  your small town society you called me up and asked my permission to go out with someone else. We were too far away, at 16 it seems impossible to embark with someone you can't see. Even now it seems unfeasible. I remember hanging on to that question like a medal, like if I'd said no you wouldnt have done it. Maybe you wouldn't have. Guess well never know. But I like to think you would've listened to me, because two years later we ran away from our friends at our graduation trip and laid on the golf course watching the sun go up, not touching, your girlfriend drunk and passed out at some hotel.


You went off abroad after graduation. We talked, I photoshopped a stupid Adam Sandler poster and sent it to you and I know you got it. You'd slowly grown mad at me over the years though, because I didn't give in first. You didn't either, your eyes would light up eveytime you saw me and I could see them wishing for escape but you were always tied to distance, to family, to fear or to your ex. Me too. It was so weird, so hard, after a while I could only talk to you in an accusatory tone. You were my best friend. The basics, the core. The first person in the whole world who saw me.

I remember that day when we broke the bubble. It had been anticipated for so fucking long I was already thinking it wouldnt work from the beginning. I get scared. I tend to run. I showed you my first tattoo and you exagerated your disgust. But you still kissed me. And as always, when someone thinks I'm worth something I lose respect for them. I am nothing, I am shit, Im a fake, how can they believe me? The first kiss sealed the end for me. So damn stupid. I was already too far along my path. Why'd it take you so long?

I ignored it, I acted weird. I ran away.

After that you were really pissed off at me. We stopped talking for a while. And then in the end, everything was subtle accusations. Who fucked up on nothing? Who messed up our non existent relationship? Which one of us fucked up our perfect future? Castles in the snow. Guess we'll never know. I think it was me. I think it was my fault that we stopped talking, that I was so distracted getting smashed into a pulp by all the wrong people. It was completely my fault.

That's why I can't believe it when my dad calls me up and tells me you're dead. I haven't talked to you in two years, I've grown accostumed to translating our absemce into moving on. Weve moved on, youve grown up, the tie is finally severed. If you are not here with me, you are obviously off somewhere living your life to the fullest. That's why I don't fully understand it yet, a month later. That's why I still dont think you're dead. That's why Im still in shock, even after walking your wake and looking at all those people from my past crowded up in there flashing their goodbyes around. I never met your parents. I dont want to meet them now. I see them standing strong from a distance. What am I going to say to them? They will never know how much you truly meant to me, and it doesn't count if I can't make them understand. I don't see the point.

I feel bad talking about you with other people. You're not there to make sure people are telling the truth. You can't make sure anymore. I'd rather everyone shut the fuck up, and respect the fact that you can't talk back anymore. That's why I just say a hurried hello to the girls who used to be my friends back in the day, go sit in a corner. That's why I feel bad appropiating myself of our memories. Why is it that when someone dies, everyone is in a hurry trying to remember the things they went through with the dead? It's so disrespectful, it's trying to answer where you were not called. But nobody can prove that anymore, can they? Its like not being invited to the party but still showing up and swiping a piece of cake. Its so morbid. Still the same small fucking town you loved so much.

I still feel like talking about you is like building something on the air your lungs arent using up anymore. Youre gone. Anything we could say about you is a joke compared to what you really were. These memories trying to construct or depict someone you werent, it seems low. Words will never be enough. They will never measure up. So why try? Its pathetic and unfair. You are dead and I want to leave you alone. Its the least you deserve.

That's why when your roommate from Georgetown tells me he's so glad I'm there I don't understand. People look at me like I deserve to be there, and I don't. People look at me, give me their sentiments like they understand why I'm there when even I don't understand. Didn't I let you go a long time ago? I don't know if I can't feel anything or if I'm numb from all the feeling. This is the first thing I can't undo. I never told you how much you meant to me, regardless of how much time passed. You saw me. You discovered me. Because you saw me, I realized I was a real person. Thank you. I'm so sorry.

That's why I walk out of your funeral. I can't believe all these people, all these fucking people, even families from my town that came out here just to show face. I don't want to show face. I want to be buried in my pain, alone, how can I be public with something so private? I feel stupid crying in public, just like all these people who are trying to prove that they knew you closely. I don't need to prove myslef to anyone. I dont let myself cry because that would mean Id be on their level. My solitude in this is the only real thing. The cacophonic gasps for air, the balls of fists, the silent tears and the face twitches that are trying to keep the dam of hopelessness from bursting out. Me, alone, in any room, you gone. That is the only real way to remember you. By myself. You and I knew. If I believed in an afterlife, Im sure youd know what I was doing. That's why I walk out and avoid everyone I know, thats why I go out and smoke a fucking joint with my real friends.

I sent a message to your ex that hated me the day after you died. It said I hoped she was okay, and that I sent her all my love. She wrote back: I remembered you all day yesterday. I wish the same for you.

You and I were private. We were between you and me.
I cant say we ever figured out what it was but it was.
That's why I trust you. I can't betray our intimacy.
I wish we'd kept in touch. I wished it while you were still alive.
Im so sorry J. Im so fucking sorry.

And to this day I keep thinking that you're too tall for that box they supposedly put you in. That thing was too small for your body and you probably weren't even in there. I haven't seen you in two years and I can keep on pretending its just cause were not close anymore. It was your birthday yesterday Johnny. Happy birthday, wherever you are. Click forever.

tv on the radio

We took our first pill when the music was shit.

 I said fuck dancing all night, but then that's just what we did, 
it felt like floating.

Dragonfly starting to pop in the small of my back. I can barely feel it, commencing to pull on the strings of my muscles. My legs are resting on top of the steering wheel, if you look at me from the side I think I would look like a capital V. V for vascular, like the arsenal of rivers inside me. Hold on is playing, and Sade's voice is melting into my skull, and my skull is melting into the headrest, and the headrest is melting into-

"Let's get out of here!" He knocks on the window frantically.

P and I turn to look at him slowly, and slowly open the locks. He scrambles behind the car and jumps in the backseat, with the family of drums.

"This place is fucked up I fucking hate it, let's get the fuck out of here!"

He's sitting all spread out, his mouth pissed off and straight.

"What the fuck, chill out. Whats wrong with you?"

I can't bring myself to talk. I just look ahead. Nothing can take this groove from me.

"All these fucking people are fucking stupid, T's been fucking talking to his sister for a fucking hour, fucking mob, all the little drunk brats, I was talking to this girl, and shes fucking hot, but that's it! I dont give a fuck I want to get out of here! I knew you guys would be chilling so I came to look for you. Let's go!"

We try to mellow him out, after all, he's just an interruption in a perfect personal concert. But he insists on finding the hotel room. I wonder if P can drive. I vaguely mention the fact that I can, Im not as fucked up yet, but he insists. K an I squish in the copilot seat, the family of drums overtaking the back. My ass hovers somewhere between his left leg and the hand brake. P turns the car on, adventure begun.

These streets are all vascular, too. They stretch on like horizontal zig zags, v, v, v. Huge hills, one after the other, face to face, side by side. The dragonfly tickles and I feel calm. P is driving smooth down a slope, Ks arm hugging my waist. We start rolling (rolling) faster. I feel a tug warm breath and a kiss on my neck. I smile cause it doesn't matter.

The street looks like a wall from this angle. We hit the end of the slope hard, drums and drumsticks leap and crash and I hear what I think a thousand miniature bell chorus would sound like. I look back and see the back window is now a huge spiderweb, hissing with new form. Hissing ringing cracking. Its a work of art. I

smile cause it doesn't matter.

We end up in a decent hotel room, after desperately failing to land a cheap motel room with a jacuzzi. Dragonflies buzzing. Were in the lobby waiting for P to check on the car, all twisting all turning joints.

"Hey, we're sleeping in the same bed."

His eyes are laughing. He's a little boy and I'm a little girl.

"We don't have to do anything." He smiles.

I looooook at him hard, smile smile smile. Nothing matters and that makes me happy.

We get up to the shelter and K pounces to the shower. P lies on one of the beds and tries to keep the tide from flooding him. I lie on the other bed and bask in the chemicals. The waterfall stops. He comes out in briefs. Hes glowing. P jumps up and locks himself in the bathroom.

Were spread out on our bed, bellys down and he lights a joint. The tip crackles  orange and he pulls on the smoke hard. I can almost hear it swimming down his throat. He looks at me and gets really close, his open mouth barely touching mine. He breathes out and I drink it in.

P springs out of the bathroom, waving around.

"Fuck, this shit is really intense man, what the fuuuuuuck, I need some fucking coke."

He's looking in his pockets and pulls out his little funbag. He crumples on a chair by a little table and starts inhaling. I slowly get up, paying careful mind to each knob and its twist. I am a complex machine, and right now I can almost feel every layer of me. I float into the shower.

I cant believe how smoothly the water pounds into me. It feels like warm porcelain dripping on my grateful skin. I stand under the crash and do eights with my hips. Infinite pelvic movements. Left loop right loop left loop right. I start to feel a circle of heat snowballing in my stomach.

The Big Bang exploding between my legs.

I cannot believe how happy my body is. What should I do with it? I think of the possibilities. I gasp, gasp gasp and realize I could stay in here the whole night and not know it. I step out and snuggle in a towel, pick out underwear, shorts and a loose t shirt. I come back into the bathroom and I cant really tell if im wet or dry so I slip into the clothes anyway. They cling to me, humid and begging.

When I come out, P is still trying to keep it down. I have no idea what for. An Iphone is humming a song somewhere. I walk in a straight line, back and forth a few times and shoot out into the balcony. The sky looms over the city, a huge pink blanket. The streetlights look like flowers in a junkyard meadow.The sea is gray and fuzzy. For a while I wonder why anything should be so pretty. I stretch on the balcony like a drunken ballerina.

He grinds into me from behind. Ive decided anything can and will happen.

He stretches with me, flexing and convexing with me, rubber boy.

We come back in and climb on the bed. P is still sitting, with his eyes closed, busy rushing into the rush. Little burnt out dragonfly. Im thrown on the cheap bed, and hes sitting, host to one of my legs. The other one is bent, tiptoeing on his back. I lower it and hug him  with both limbs. He t-t-touches the hamstrings, my legs separating him from the rest like a parenthesis. I sit up and look at his tattoos. I lean in on the sun on his back, lean lean lean in close and kiss it.

"What does it mean?"

"Did you see i filled in the center? Where the cross used to be."

I nod, I don't remember. It's the first time I actually really see them.

"What then?"

He smiles.

"You know, Ive never talked to anyone about the meanings"

"But youre gonna tell me."

"Yeah"

I melt back on the bedcover. This rush feels wonderful and guilt free, light on my shoulders, heavy on my hips. It feels real. P flops on the bed, and we look like an H from above.

______________________________________________________________________


"Scratch my head." P is dying.
I scratch his head but I can't concentrate on it. I'm on my side and I look behind me and down. K is hiding under me, hidden behind my legs. The top of his head peeks beside my hips. He looks at me, his eyes are fucking smiling. His mouth is smiling too. He lifts my short and delivers one kiss on my ass. I giggle.

P transports himself heavily to the other bed. Hes just a sequence of movements around the room. I think he realizes K and I are in a bubble, and hes trying hard not to pop it. He wouldn't want someone to pop his, if he had one, right? He's so unprotected. I feel a little bit bad.

But on my right perimeter there's a little wildcat, and he's licking his way to survival. I look at him and everything fits. Everything fits through the needle in this moment. I'm pretty amazed and I don't want to rob myself of it. Our mouths melt like hot butter against each other. Were laughing softly in the kissless moments. We know where we are. I don't want anyone on the face of the earth to talk, ever again. It's so easy when you just really look at things. He motions to the bed.

"Under the covers" he mouths.
I feel slightly annoyed by words. They're so loud.
But I get under the covers. And there we are, in a little cave. We kiss endlessly. He's touching me but softly, stroking me like a pet. I'm not really thinking. This has never happened to me.

P is sitting on the table again.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, this shit man this fucking shit what the fuck what the fuck."
Dragonfly riding riding riding the white horse.

J gleams at me from above, half of his body on top of mine out of the cave.
"I was looking forward to this" He pauses.
"With you."  His eyes are a dancing jungle, his teeth happy.
I just smiiiiiiiiiiile like a shiny piece of quartz. I couldn't be more open than I am right now. I am a 360 angle, I am the primal smile, the oldest one, the one that's been passed on by each generation like an ancient secret. I don't feel any different from anything else.
"Pretty fucking nice." We laugh laugh laugh like we always knew. It's pretty funny that we didn't.

Back to the cave, just my t-shirt and us. There's that circle of fire again, everything's so wet. Are we underwater?

"Condom."
He nods.
"This is fucking perfect."
I nod.

He turns around, props and out comes a triangle from between his arm and the bed. P is inside the triangle, busy busy busy trying. Again, I feel bad. Again, I forget.

But K turns around and everything happens so fast and then it's just him and me. Is there a him and me anymore? Us? What? This doesn't hurt. It always hurts. No hurt. Eyes, eyes, lashes, kiss, eyes, kiss, lashes, kiss. He stops and closes his eyes for a few seconds. Looks at me.

"I almost came."
"So come." Isn't that the point?
"Not yet, no."

Kiss. Wet. Hug. On top.
Vertical cave. We must look like a monster from the outside. Poor P.

I pull him closer, and we're both sitting. I'm so full of him. Circles circles, beautiful rotation. Perfectly synchronized dance. His tongue sucking on my nipple. Impossible to and fro. There are no opposites, everything is one, like us right now.

He thrusts me slowly back down. He follows the rythm hard, I set it. I can't come but this feels like the origin. His eyes close and they roll back. I can see a little slit of white. That looks wonderful.
He opens his eyes smiling. Hes still inside me and lies on top of me for a second. He pulls out and I throw the condom out. It's weird, but it feels like we're still doing it.

He lies down to my right, and sparks a cigarette.

"This is the only thing right? Just this. There's nothing else."
I shine at him. He gets it, someone's in the moment like me.
"Yes." I say. "It makes the world go round."
He chuckles.
"Yeah. Pretty fucking nice."

I don't know if P exists anymore. We lie there, in the only place, and it is pretty fucking nice. I smile smile smile cause it doesn't doesn't matter.

castles in the snow

We leave that overused little bar at about 5:00 am. He's the last guy I make out with there, one week before it suddenly gets shut down. I sit on top of the bar and he fingers the outside of my damp leggings obsessively while sitting between my legs in a little stool, murmuring things I didnt ask for. The little multicolor lights keep spinning and changing paths on his face and the empty dancefloor (it really is a slow night), and I pull back on his hair and suck a kiss out. I am, of course, drunk out of my mind and I know I shouldn't be doing this, and there are split seconds when I look at him from above, from my angle, his chin resting on my belly, looking up at me with sad eyes, and I can tell he's almost gone, but I brush it off. Call me masochistic, but isn't what I'm already doing where I was supposed to end up in the first place? Destiny is present. I refuse to fight the one moment I have. He keeps violently biting my neck and I keep letting him, I know he needs something to destroy. Our tongues fighting a war, him giving me dark and me giving him a little token of spit for it. Little antonyms cancelling each other out on a Thursday night.

We walk lightly like little drunken elves, waltzing down the streets to the car hand in hand.

"If Im with you I definitely won't kill myself, that I know."

I just smile, because I lack the strength to tell him that I know it won't happen and because I'm a coward. His lies are pretty, anyway. He also seems to think he's telling the truth, or something like that.

"That's it, I am completely commited to you, forever. I am. Do you believe me?"

I just smile and wonder how much I wish it were true and how much I am relieved its not. I look at the paint splattered boots Im wearing, at the nuisance of white little light bulbs leading the way to the end of the night. They're so bright and cheap, just like my city.

He tries to lift me up a few blocks, my legs wrapped around his hips as always, and I pretend I'm not embarrassed about how heavy our history is. We crash into steel boxes on the street, the ones dubbed hazardous and some more innocent ones and on every one of them I sit with legs open and we forget we're on the street and grope some more. After a while, we manage to get to the parking lot and go up a few stories, get into my car. He looks in his pockets and pulls out some dollars and change, throws them in the cup holders beween us. I ignore it and pay the ticket, we pull out. We drive up two streets and then a few blocks to the left, rest right behind his car. 

"Have sex with me."
Little wolf eyes.

"..No. Youre gonna go meet her tomorrow, talk, and then we'll see what happens after that."

"Have sex with me"
His pupils wild with hope. Maybe I am the knife that will cut him loose.

"No..." I say, unsurely. He looks at me, and repeats his declaration.
"Have sex with me."

"...Okay." I go.

His eyes go wide(r).

"Really?"

"Yes" I say, smiling a knowing smile. 

I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

"Okay" he says excitedly, and then, as always, looks into me and says

"Follow me." Always with the emphasis on the end.

The sky is glowing with that annoying shade that teases you when its about to get light but not really. As I drive behind him I can see his red sticker telling me to "eat my own spaceship." Isn't that what I'm doing? I wonder what exactly I am doing, why I'm so excited and try not to think about the next day. I know I'm getting left, in the weirdest of ways. Im the sheep walking straight into the lions den. Why am I so curious to see how it happens?

We get to his house just before dawn breaks. I park behind him and I don't remember anything about getting out of the car, except for smooshed kisses and the mirror inside the elevator on the way up. I tip toe behind him, trying not to wake his sleeping parents. We walk into his room and Im lying down on his shining bed on the 10th floor of a white tower, with all the curtains up and the face of our soon-to-be dictator pitifully looking  down at us. The sky is purple like a bruise as he starts to take off my leggings and underwear. For a second I worry I havent shaved 1) because I really wasnt expecting this and 2) because I try to keep myself from having impulsive sex by making sure Im not that presentable for such occasions. So much for that. 

He kneels beween my legs and pulls at the fabric, looks down at me, and opens my lips. With two fingers he stars to rub my clit in circles. Hes about to stick his whole finger inside me (sticky), but I insist on accelerating the humilliation. 

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Put a condom on." I say hurriedly.

He obeys, reaches for his drawer, breaks the pack with his teeth and pulls it over his erect dick.

He looks at me again for a second, lying beneath him, and he crouches, like a baby tiger, without losing eye contact. His mouth opens, his tongue rolls out and the tip of it melts against my navel and up, while I watch him in awe. He licks between my breasts and pushes into me as he falls into my mouth. We are looking at each other in the eyes as always, and I know I should feel intense pleasure and a sense of I dont know what but something, and yet I feel nothing. I love him and that makes me inadvertently, completely and irrevocably separate from him. I can't say I'm moving.

"I love you" he says

"I love you, too." I shoot right back, a desperate attempt at crystallizing the moment.

We thrust and stare some more, me, completely alienated and observant, and Im not so sure about him, but maybe both of us are looking down on our bodies awkwardly joining, tsking from the ceiling. I feel disappointed that I can't let go with him, even though I already knew it was too late. I realize that he is fucking his memory of me, 7 years ago, fucking me on my teenage pedestal.

He moves some more on top of me while I watch the movie, and suddenly pulls out, pulling me out of limbo and looking worriedly down at his cock.

"It broke"

"What?" I say

"It broke" hes kneeling, looking at it and me with a confused expression

"Thats never happened to me before. Ever."

We look at each other and he lies down next to me, under the covers. With him out of me, I recover some of my speech skills and try to say this in the most nonchalant way:

"I know what youre thinking, stop"

 (Even though I don't want him to stop, I want him to read into the signs the way I know he is, like the broken condom means we are going to have incredibly crazy and cool and troubled babies.)

He looks at me and nods.

I know he hates this next part, and even though we both know, he still puts his arms around me, his mouth on my forehead and we fall asleep.