In
The Night
by Kip-chan
~(~
The moon looks down on a completely different world than the sun. Under the
harsh light of day, every little thing is exposed to
the point where nothing
is beautiful anymore. That's not so with the moon. The
moon's light is
gentle and silvery, giving everything a shimmer of its
own. With the sun,
the world is dressed in leopard-spotted velvet; with
the moon, the world
changes into gauze and silk. It's a beautiful
transformation.
The night belongs to love. The sun dips behind the clouds and illuminates
the moon, giving everything a romantic aura. An
ordinary garden turns into a
fairy ring; a house, a castle; a pebble, a diamond in
the rough. And I? I
turn from an ordinary man into someone's lover,
someone's prince. I don't
pretend that I could be wanted during the day, but in
the night it's
possible to forget.
The moon is watching me. Like me, she waits for a lover. Who will love the
moon? Who else but the velvet sky? Who else would wrap
her in his warm
embrace, make her feel wanted? I'm waiting for the sky
to engulf me. I
wonder where he is, my slice of blue heaven?
There he is. He's sneaking through the trees. He probably doesn't want to
get caught by his wife, and I fully understand. I know
he doesn't want to
ruin what he has with her. If it were me, I'd use the
same tactics. "But
soft, what light through yonder window breaks?"
he jokes upon seeing me
seated at the window.
"Ha ha, Ryan," I say to him. "Be down
in a second." I leave my window and
run downstairs to the back door. Unlocking it, I
venture outside. "Is she
asleep?" I ask.
"Yeah," says Ryan. "I made sure of that. I don't think she's
happy with me."
"I don't blame her," I say. "If I were married to someone I
didn't love,
with no chance of being with someone I did..."
"You'd go mad," finishes Ryan. "You know, I'm surprised you've
held up this
well."
"It takes a lot out of me sometimes," I admit. "But I
manage." I extend my
hand to him. "Come in, Ry,
it's so cold out here. I brought in some wood for
a fire on the hearth; one well-placed match should
have those logs crackling
in no time."
He takes my hand, and we can begin to forget the day at last.
Once we're inside, I get the fire going so that it's nice and hot. It warms
the room nicely; so nicely, in fact, that Ryan has to
take his sweater off.
"Too hot?" I ask angelically. It's too bad
for him that my halo's held up by
my horns... or is it bad? At his nod, I smile.
"Me too," I say, taking off
my own robe and placing it on the ground. I'm wearing
a T-shirt and the
bottoms to a pair of pajamas. It's nothing
spectacular, but it's
unbelievably comfortable.
"Bit toasty," he says. I lay my head on his chest; I can feel his
warmth
through the thin cotton of his shirt. "Have I
told you lately how much I
love you?"
"Of course you have," I tell him. "Sure, it was in the middle of
sex, but
that's okay."
"I love you, Colin," he says to me. "Even when we're not fucking
like
rabbits."
That's my Ryan - always so blunt. Maybe he's not the sky so much as the sun
itself. That would be so contradictory, though; he
doesn't take the beauty
out of the world, he adds to it. He's got this awkward
grace about him that
makes you want to just sit there and watch him move. I
don't know how anyone
could be comfortable in such a tall body, but he is.
He is the sun and the
sky around it, and best of all, he is my lover. If I
had any more than that,
I think I'd be convinced I was living a dream.
He doesn't care what people think of him. I wish I could say I was that
self-assured, but I can't. I wonder how he got to be
so free? How was he
able to stop caring? Will I ever stop? Onstage, that's
one thing, one place
where I can forget myself, but when the cameras stop
rolling I'm only left
with myself. I can play a thousand roles, yet I can't
get the role of Colin
Andrew Mochrie quite right.
That's okay. I don't need to stop acting until the night falls, and the moon
can cradle me in her beams. After that, I can't
pretend to save my life.
When the moon comes up, Ryan walks over here from his house nearby, once
more the sky with its thousand brilliant stars.
He loves me, damn it all, and I love him. That's the only thing I care about
right now. He shows me he loves me in a million
different ways, both in the
public eye and out of it. It's in the way he likes to
touch me. He's so
physical, but it doesn't mean anything unless you mean
something to him. We
dance together sometimes, and he's got me in his arms,
protected against
everything that's out to get me. I trust him with my
life. No - I trust him
with my heart. That's the most important thing of all.
His hand strokes lazily up and down my back. If I were a cat, I'd be happy
to stop there, but I'm not a cat. I need more than
that tonight, because
this is a Friday and he always goes away on weekends
with his wife. "Kiss
me," I order him. "I won't see you until
Monday after tonight."
"Sunday night," he corrects me. "I'll be back by then, you know
I will."
It amazes me that he's been coming to see me nearly every night for the past
year and a half, yet his wife hasn't caught on yet.
Her loss, my gain, I
suppose. I don't mean to be so cold, but he was mine first.
He kisses me, and I'm sure now - he's the day, and I am the night. Is this
the sunrise or the sunset? I feel the rest of the
world slip out from under
me. The night belongs to love and lovers alike. Don't
we belong to the night
as well? We are blending, melting together as easily
as if we were chocolate
and cream. It's funny - I'm going to be real thirsty
for chocolate milk in
the morning.
I'm so tired. I can't fall asleep now, not now that he's here. I can't waste
the last few hours I have with him for another two
days... but I don't have
a choice. My eyelids are drooping and my breath is
slowing after that kiss.
I can hear him speaking to me; I can feel it, the low rumbling of his voice.
He presses his lips to the top of my head, and I sink slowly into sleep.
I don't even know he's gone until early in the morning, when I awaken alone
in my room. I knew he wouldn't stay. He never does.
Still, I can't help but
wish that someday he'll be able to do just that.
The gentle moonglow is gone, and my garden is just a
patch of weeds once
more. The pebbles in my driveway don't shine at all.
This house is made of
wood, not carven stone. Still, if I close my eyes, I
can recapture a little
of the magic of the night.
In the night, I am free...
~
end