Notes: A piece I wrote, this is concerning
a certain roleplaying session I have going with a few people. The short work
follows the path of a young man by the name of Phoenix and his crush on his
roommate, Jeremy. Later on, he ties up with an abusive boyfriend by the name of
Tizra, but that is only hinted at here.
Details: Angst, Homosexual themes
Dedicated
to: PC and
Sha
December
17th, 2002
I can’t tell you what I am thinking today, really.
Well, I probably can, as it has been the same thing that has been running through
my head for four months, twenty-six days, and fifteen hours now, from the first
day I had moved in, the day I had gone through with the request of the add
inside the crumpled newspaper that I now kept in a box as a keepsake. I do
things like that, you know, holding things close that have significant value.
This just seems to have the most important weight of them all at the moment,
and I can verify that on a hundred nights built on sapphire lagoons that
shimmer like a virgin eve.
Why him? I don’t think I can even answer that, born
from different stars, different constellations and different lives. Our breaths
are separate, our hearts slam into solid prisons at individual times, and yet I
cannot help feel bound in his dreams, a helpless sacrifice to the altar of his
entirety.
But we have played the game long enough, danced and
parried in our little movements, and I’m growing tired. He needs to know, needs
to know why my arties pump my blood, why I hide beneath blankets while watching
horror movies, needs to know why I lock myself in my room when I hear his heavy
footsteps making a path from a friend’s car onto our porch at three in the
morning.
I have to tell him, voice the demons that sit inside
me, stroke my ventricles with sharpened talons. He needs to know, to
understand, that…
I mean it. The flirting, the promises, the flush
that works like lashes across my body. It’s all for him, all of it, all that
could ever be created out of this small body, all that these hands shall ever
create, they build and all they decimate, is all for a simple glance from his
eyes.
He has beautiful eyes, not because of the color or
the shape.
I see his soul waving at me from the depths, smiling
with its palm wavering through layers of blood and water, mouth working silently,
a secret for me to peel away. He is the most attractive of puzzles, a million
pieces that shift and change shape upon command, a hundred different ideas
wrapped in the fragile cage of flesh. I want to love each piece, each thought
and piece of identity, want to love him with all that a person has the capacity
to do so with.
He taught me how to feel, how to accept my fate, my
passion and my desire, decreed “incorrect” by a dispassionate society of
granite eyes. He taught me more of myself than anyone has ever dreamed to
caress before.
I owe him every inch of me.
Beyond that, I want to give myself to him, bared and
naked, no boundaries of ribs and muscles, no egos or fragility.
Tonight, I will finally tell him.
Tonight, Jeremy will finally know that I…love him.
Small smile covering his lips, Phoenix closed his
worn journal and held it to his chest. It was melodramatic drivel, as he well
knew, but it was melodramatic drivel from the soul, which apparently justified
it on some level. The light that stole through curtained windows had long since
been coaxed into hiding, and all he had to go on was the small touch-activated
lamp on his nightstand. Lying here now, strewn across his bed and staring at a
ceiling that held all the excitement of white paint, he could hear his heart
thudding, screaming to get free of its restrictive haven, to soar across the
room and into the hands of a roommate who he was waiting up for.
Green numbers changed, whispering of minutes that
faded into hours if left to their own devices, and he ignored them. There was
no need for time, to worry of such mundane things when he could do nothing to
quicken their steady march. Closing his eyes (beautiful hazel orbs that glistened
the most alluring of golden suns), he let his fingers drift over his journal,
swirling in the groves of Celtic designs along the worn leather cover.
This book was his private church, an inner sanctum
that no feet had embarked on before. Every dream, hope, aspiration was scripted
in black ink upon yellowed pages, the edges all different lengths to give it a
“classic” feeling. It fit comfortably against his chest, held there perfectly
by twin arms, and lingered beneath his bed on the days when he could not carry
it beside him.
Nothing more than the lead actor in his own romantic
comedy, he had scripted out his declaration of love, had peered at it through
every angel, every different possible answer to his statements. The amount of
days he had been planning this had been lost weeks ago; it was all a matter of
gathering the courage to pry apart lips that often stumbled over simply words
like “Hello” when in the company of someone he did not know. And though he had
hundreds of chances to respond to the flirting his roommate did like an average
person, none of them had seemed perfected, etched and captured in the faucets
of a cut jewel.
But this night spoke his name on the wind, and he
knew, knew, no other time would suit his purposes, would call to him as
perfectly as today did.
He must have dozed, for when Phoenix pried apart
long auburn lashes, he noticed it had sped forward a couple of hours. He
briefly wondered what woke him up, until he heard the keys in the front door,
jingling like Christmas bells, merry, happy little things. Bones popped as he
stretched, swinging legs wrapped in over-sized pants from the bed, bare feet
meeting the glossy wooden floor, chilling gently at the touch. Dashing to the
front door, through the living room to do so, he took a deep breath, hand
curling around the frigid frost of the door handle.
All or nothing. There is no other way around this
and you know it. Just three little words, Phoenix, three little words that hold
the weight of your world locked inside isolated syllables.
Throwing open the door, smile etched upon his lips,
Phoenix shifted from foot to foot nervously. “Welcome home, Jer—”
Words died like mayflies on his lips.
The world suddenly grew colorless, tasteless,
soundless as Phoenix met with the image of his roommate, blonde and blue, the
scent of smoke and club and sweat and sex thick in the air like an aura. And he
looked so beautiful, beneath the delicate darkness laid across the city,
illuminated by the 70 watt porch light, looked so damn beautiful as his lips
were pressed against those of another man.
Phoenix felt his stomach lurch forward, felt the
impossible cement fashion itself through his marrow, and he could do nothing
but stare, watching them move in each other’s arms, the sound of the kiss like
screaming war declared mercilessly against his ears. He could do nothing, the
weight of his eyes keeping him rooted to the spot, the script suddenly replaced
with an internal monologue of a wretched tragedy. Tears collected in the corner
of his eyes, but he bit their burning caress back until he could be alone.
They broke apart, and clear sapphires were leveled
onto him warmly. Phoenix wondered if the anguish showed on his face, registered
in the dying amber of his hazel eyes.
“Hey, Phoenix,” his roommate, Jeremy, purred,
walking inside with his guest. “You’re up a little late.”
“I…I heard the keys…” The voice that spilled from
his lips was uncertain, shaking along the edges, unsure of what to say and what
was appropriate. He itched to get back to his room, to his journal, to sob into
his pillow as the shattered edges of his heavy heart ground into bleeding
lungs, choking him. He caught the couple’s locked hands, fingers laced, taking
steps towards his roommate’s bedroom, and no words could describe the dread
that caressed the blood in his veins.
“H-have fun,” he had managed to get out, before
retreating into the sanctity of his room, tear tracks like scars against the
smoothness of his cheeks.
July 10th, 2003
I catch Jeremy looking at me when he thinks I’m not
paying attention, and it carries a weight with it that I don’t know how to
describe. Sometimes, I compare it with the look I had months ago, but I know
that can’t be it. He’s just a flirt, a best friend, but he doesn’t care for me
in that sense, as I know and remember.
I think he worries because our time has sizably
decreased as of late. Doesn’t he realize that he can never be replaced? I have
never had better confidant, other than this journal here. A journal won’t walk
me to my room after watching scary movies, though
Tizra surprised me today by coming over, an event
that never fails to make me happy. However, I upset him by wanting to go out
with my friends; I was such a fool not to ask him if it was all right first. I
can be so selfish at times, and it’s a wonder how I am so lucky to have someone
like Tizra in my life, so patient with me even after all the times I have
bothered him or made mistakes.
No one has ever loved me in the way he has before.
He is the only one that can watch out for me, that
can take care of me, that can show me all I need to know.
After all, that is what he told me last night.
And I believe him completely.
The End