Note: my writing’s a bit weird . . . thought DEG deserved weirdness . . . you know . . . anyway.
Relumed – rekindled. Chrysolite is topaz. Used song words and stuff from P J Harvey.
(*) this is an indirect quote from a scientific magazine article on gender. I’m making this whole thing way too complicated (but I’m so sick of simplicity).
Spires. Silvery, gleaming, chilled and still in the rhythmic
gusts of warm-warm air. Night; faded light; the beginning and the end of some
day. The City. The physical; with time and space, and all those others. But
it’s not your city. You live in a different city from that one.
+
Kyo watched the way Toshiya walked behind his tuff of blond hair.
He wanted to know what happened, to have both of them disappear for a day. He
rubbed his lips and fished out a cigarette, noting the little aches and pains
that Toshiya had walking. The little pauses, the little slight creases of the
eyes crinkling for a fraction of a second in pain and the unsteady rhythm. He
yawned; the feeling of sleepiness when one wasn’t and couldn’t be in bed was
the meanest feeling in the world.
+
Not silvery or gleaming, but chilled and deathly in it’s
shroud of silence and darkness. There are no gusts of warm-warm air. No, there
is rain, coldness, chill, dampness, mist and frost. And it’s always the end;
fading light; night. It is forever and remains still, like a pinprick in time
perpetuating onwards into unending horizon.
That is your city. Where you exist; you walk, talk, stare,
and breath in out in. Everything is exactly as it should be, but is almost an
apparition, like it doesn’t exist at all. The untouchable. You’ve never felt
more comfortable than there, in the darkness. But as soon as you stop moving
and stop interacting with others, you are no longer yourself; you cease;
nothing.
You’re forever fixed in a single action, at a point, a
perfect moment in time. It’s like the real will be real, and the still forever
still. It’s like watching porcelain figures; fixed, unwavering, a constant in
time – dolls made in the human image. It’s the delicate, intricate second –
snatches of strange moments.
But you don’t have to stay there. You can come with me . . . I promise you, that being on earth isn’t bad.
‘You have the dream, the drug given to special prisoners.’
+
Where were you?
Out.
Where exactly were you out?
No place special, just Shinya’s place.
Did you see him walking? Did he come around here, sir? Black-blue hair and brown eyes. Toshiya saying ‘I have no-one’. Always so needy and yet leaving. Did he come around here, sir? I swear you would remember him. Black hair and brown eyes. It never leaves my mind, the last words that do not leave my mind.
The last words he said, ‘If I don’t find it this time, then I’m better off dead.’
‘I want freedom . . .’ His blue razor blade, to cut the bonds that are between anyone and his body.
Pick up the phone: dial for Shinya.
Shinya, was Toshiya there?
No, he was meant to go to Kyo’s place and pick up something.
The facts don’t match up anymore. The facts and the words from his mouth didn’t correspond. He lied about little things like where he was. Little things like what he did, who he’d seen. Lying was as easy as breathing. Dolls are false human beings, so maybe this blue doll is as false as . . . as false as . . . but the greenery in one’s heart will still grow, except the stems are covered in prickly thorns.
A pain in the purple river.
+
It’s been weeks.
“I think I like you . . .”
He dropped his cup and it smashed into a million brilliant white pieces, “Oh fuck!”
He bent down in hasty movements with a towel and stared to clean the mess. He ignored me and my question. He doesn’t want to answer me; he hasn’t said no and he hasn’t say yes. I paused his hands and pulled him up from his crouch. He ripped his fingers away and bent down to his work, muttering about the dangers of broken glass.
“I think I’m in love with you . . .”
“SHIT!” He sliced his finger.
The wicked piece of glass gleamed red and clear in the yellow light of the kitchen. I touched his bleeding hand and brought it to my lips. I kissed and suck the wound. Drawing blood. He was afraid that I would be drawing blood as soon as he let me into the put-apart spaces of his mind. He wanted freedom, nothing else.
“I’m in love with you.”
“What? No ‘think’ this time?”
“. . .” I touched his lips and his hair and his eyelids and his cheek, “No thinking.”
“I haven’t said anything yet!”
“Yes, but you haven’t said no . . .”
“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . will you at least . . . wait a second?”
“A second for you means eternity . . .”
+
He placed the cup down on the table in a decisive clink and
glared at Toshiya across the table, “What’s going to happen now?”
Toshiya signed and dipped his fingers into his noodles, “You
mean, how does it end?”
“Yes. I want to know how it ends Toshiya. What’s going to
happen to Kaoru? Do you even remotely like him?”
“I like him! I do!” he paused, unsure.
“You’d better,” Kyo muttered under his breath, “Cos’ he
bloody well likes you, and would even if I hit him over the head with a lead
pan. Weirdo . . . suicidal.”
“But . . . it’s not going to work, Kyo. I’m going to kill
the guy with my habits!”
“Oh, fuck you too, Toshiya. You and your inability to just
go with people who happen to like you! It’s like you WANT to pick doomed
relationships in your life or something! Do you?!”
“. . . I do not.”
“Oh, yes you do! The last one was amazingly simple to figure
out, let me tell you.”
“ . . . I . . . she was like a mother to me . . . don’t talk about her like that!”
“Why? Scared she’ll come back from the grave and haunt you?”
“. . .”
“Devil . . .” He signed, and slumped on the table, “Oh,
devil come this way, towards the clapping hands.”
“Is Kaoru the devil?”
“No, you are. Kaoru is clapping for you, but you’re so
incredibly blind you can’t see anything, not even the fucking cloth over your
own eyes.” He ended with a disgusted twist in his voice.
Toshiya pursed his lips and kept quiet.
“Are you going to do what you usually do?”
“. . . no . . . don’t ask me . . . I'm so sick of answering
questions . . .”
Silence. His fingers flicked his lighter on and off. The
little click-click-clicks were soothing, filling up the blankness, the boredom
and the awkward stretch of rubber, flouncing around but really not going
anywhere real quick. Two edged sword of silence. The last conversation was
officially not going anywhere, so he changed the topic.
He looked down at the table and smiled, “He told me about
you.”
“He did?”
“Yes, he told me about seeing you in the park, and watching
you walk. He told me about meeting you at the rice fields and sitting with you
on a bench day after day in sunshine and rain, talking to you about nothing.
How you were covered, and he didn’t know who you were, and how he collected the
lolly wrappers.” Kyo smiled through cracking white lips, “It sounded . . .
nice.”
“Nice is only a description for food. Sounds shit to me.”
“Kaoru’s feelings for Toshiya is a must at any restaurant
then.”
“Sorry, still sounds disgusting to me.” Toshiya
twisted his lips. “I’m not against emotions or anything – hell, I’m a bit
intense sometimes myself – but little cuteness things do not work for me. This
does not work for me.”
Kyo cackled, “It would be narcissistic and incestuous for
you. Fuck strange, eh?”
Toshiya grinned, and stared up at the ceiling. “But it’s not
cradle robbery.”
Shinya sat down at the table and stared at the pile of ash
in the middle. “You know, that will not only kill you, but give you bad breath,
yucky teeth, nails and stunt your growth.”
Toshiya flicked on his lighter. “So? I started when I was
13. I’m not dead yet. You don’t live longer, Shinya, it just seems that way
because it passes oh-so-slowly.”
Kyo switched on his Discman, “And I say for us to go to bed.
Whatever you guys are all staying up for isn’t worth it.”
The conversation ended. Kaoru came back and sat down next to
Toshiya to brainstorm. Kyo went to sleep at the table with his Discman. Die
plugged himself into his portable MP3. Toshiya ate his lunch with Shinya. It
tasted like paper, but he ate it anyway. It tasted like Kaoru and he forced
himself to vomit in the sink. He didn’t want it to seep into his blood, but it
was too late. A drop of malignant illness in his masochistic vein’s tears.
+
He wrapped his arms around the slim waist and leaned closer,
sinking to his knees and closing his eyes. He liked the petite and the tiny
waist was comforting to him. Small hips are nice, he thought, and Toshiya’s jeans
smelled like lavender. Toshiya closed his eyes and ran his fingers through
purple-tinged hair. The arms around his midsection tightened. Their nightly
conversation said in mildness, containing the pits of hate and the heights of
un-hate unbound.
“I had a dream last night.”
“Um, did you?”
“Yes. I was inside a blue cage. I had my . . . obi tied over
my stomach, so I guess I must have been some sort of . . . anyway, I sat there
in that blue cage watching people walk past and sometimes looking at me. I felt
like a bird.”
“. . . why were you there?”
“I don’t know. You were in it.”
“What did I do?”
“You felt sorry for me. Actually, you liked me a lot. You
felt sorry for me, and you let me out of the cage . . . except you put me into
another one.”
“Why would I do that to you?”
“Because you paid for me, of course. Money is everything.”
He paused, “You put me in a cage, one I couldn’t see or touch. I think I liked
you, because I stayed with you in the dream . . .”
“Toshiya, it’s not a cage . . .”
“It is a cage, Kaoru, you don’t understand. Think about it;
you can’t eat it, Kaoru, and it won’t cure you from illness. It can’t keep you
warm when it’s raining, stop you from being thirsty, save you from drowning.
It’s useless. It’s shit. It’s nothing.”
“I’m not giving up.”
“But people sell the memory of a night for food, Kaoru.
People turn their backs on it for greater priorities, peace or something. Why
would you want this?”
“I might do all of that, but the thing is I won’t.”
He sat down on the floor next to Kaoru’s kneeling figure and
wrapped his arms around his legs. He tapped his feet to Kaoru’s. “. . . so, how
about you?”
Kaoru smiled, “I had a dream. I dreamt about being in a
magic school, and I was a new apprentice just arriving. Everyday at the school,
all of the students would run out into the yellow grass outside and catch the
snakes. All the snakes were purple and we would see one and just grab it. It
was fun.”
“Wouldn’t it bite you?”
“Well, I guess that’s why we held them really tight and away
from our body. I was new to the school, but I saw a blue snake one day and I
just had to catch it, because no one at the school had ever seen a blue one
before.”
“Blue snake?”
“Yes, and I tried to hold on by it was so slippery that I
dropped it again. But this teacher came over because she had seen me. She told
me I will be able to catch that snake later, but now I had to concentrate on
training.”
“Did you catch the snake later?”
“I don’t know. I chased it and had it corner, but I woke up
at the moment I grabbed it.”
“I was born in the year of the Snake, you know.” He grinned.
“Did you know that purple means sexual frustration?”
He leaned closer and pretended to be inspecting Kaoru, all
the while smiling sweetly, “You’re not sexually frustrated, are you?”
+
The mountains tall and mossy faded blue in the distance. The snow ridden tops, like vanilla or white chocolate topping on blueberry/mulberry ice cream. The swirling and thick white mist; they disappeared as soon as you approached. He ran towards the earthbound clouds. His fingers seek the white mist. He chased, tree to tree. He walked through the lush forest; earthbound spirit.
“I like your smallness . . .” I said.
He pinned me with his gaze, “Kaoru, I’m taller than you.”
“No, your smallness . . . the way you feel . . . your smallness . . .” I hugged his waist.
“Squeeze me any harder will you. The only reason I have a small waist is because you’re choking me. You’re worse than that corset I wear for my costume.”
“Maybe I should be your corset?”
“Good luck to getting dragged around. If you ignite from friction, don’t blame me.”
Kamakura is a small town just a few hours drive away from Tokyo. We had gotten off the train one stop before, at Kita-Kamakura, and taken a relatively easy hiking path that led to the Great Buddha there. The area, enclosed by three hills. I watched him sitting higher grounds, my hood up against the morning fog.
He grinned, “That tree there . . . it’s so lovely, look at how the orange light touches the leaves. The tree is a bit blue in tone and so the sunlight that’s orange has to merge with the blue and suddenly, we have this blue and orange tree . . .”
He found beauty in the cold and strange, in the twisted and twirling twigs of a gnarled tree. What magical things the world must hold for him, what fascination he has towards the way the clouds rest in the sky, I can only imagine and listen to his non-sensible and sometimes non-syllabic expression. Non-syllabic because we’re down on the floor and our throats are dry, skin wet with bodily fluids. The pull-apart, open spaces of his mind.
Sometimes, those little places inside him eludes even me, even I who have pressed him against a wall and pried him open by the thigh. It’s just that he changes, all chameleon-like. The metamorphosis that fascinates me. He knows so many, pausing to say hello anywhere to people who are his acquaintances somehow. I just ignore mine and pretend I didn’t see them.
When we’re alone, he will sit with me, head in my lap and stare at the sky as if it held all the secrets of existence. Blue diamonds for eyes, transmuted by the heavenly spheres. He deserved to be a bird, so he could fly and soar through the wide expanse that he felt so close to. I seek to take his hand but he pulled away. Hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. The line curve of his hips down to his legs. Nice legs, I thought, they kicked me really hard in the morning.
“It’s freedom I want. Not money, not washy emotions, just freedom. I don’t want to have responsibility to anything, I want to be able to pick up my bags and just disappear on you right now.”
“But you can’t . . . the band . . .”
“Will be fine till further notice. When we tour or compile a new album, of course I’ll be back. Other than that, you don’t really need me. The band would be fine.”
“But what about practice . . .?”
“We have 52 weeks in a year . . . an album takes what? Three months? A full tour takes what? One month, maybe two? What happens to the other 7 months or so? Surely we can’t practice in all that time?”
“. . .”
“What’s wrong now? Um? What? Just spit it out?”
“. . . and me?”
+
Toshiya sat down at the dinning table and stared intently at
the opposite end, “Good evening, how was your day? I went to practice again
today, and Kaoru here made me wake up really early. I was pissed so I hit him
twice on the head. Did I do the right thing?”
“Stop talking to yourself.”
“Don’t be so rude. I’m talking to someone, ‘she’ is my
friend. She said you’re very rude.”
“Your friend? It is not your friend, it can’t even hear
you.”
“Oh, shut up. She is so my friend. Yes? See, Kaoru, she
screamed.” Toshiya licked his cheek and grinned.
“Would you just quit that? It’s very disturbing.”
“Stop being so disgruntled. Fine, what do you suggest I do
with ‘her’?
“Eat it. It’s food.”
“But Kaoru! I want her to have a nice natural life! SHE’S MY
FRIEND. Can’t you understand?”
“What’s there to understand? You eat it. It’s spinach,
Toshiya.”
Toshiya hugged the little potted plant, “Yes, but she’s MY
spinach, and she’s called Mariko.”
He laughed, charmed by the preposterous of the situation.
“You’re crazy.”
“So are you, Kaoru! I can’t believe you collected the
wrappings of the sweets I ate! And train tickets? Receipts for CDs and stuff
you buy? Photos of me half dressed, brushing my teeth and pissed in the
morning? And -” He mocked a shocked expression, “Holy Shit! You categorised it
all alphabetically and by colour!”
“Yeah, okay, I’m anal but at least they’re not a vegetable,
besides, I like those photos.”
He held up the plant to the ceiling lights and started to
dance with it, “I’m sure you do, and I like my spinach. I’m giving her a
natural, drug-free life – ”
The argument ended. The best way to shut him up is to kiss
him. Not very subtle, but it worked. He dropped the pot and it fragmented into
tiny pieces. He was in a good mood when it finished, asking very softly what it
was for. He noticed the pot.
He hit Kaoru with a chopstick, “See what you made me do!
Ungrateful! I take you in, and feed you by sticking my hands into the freezer
until they’re bleeding and this is how you repay me!”
“I have my own place.”
“Yeah, so why aren’t you there?” He disappeared for a dust
pan and thrust both brush and pan into Kaoru’s hands. “You can clean it up now.
Put Mariko on the table when you’re finished. Do you like spinach? I want
support plant-euthanasia; no executions in this house.”
Kaoru cleaned up and hit Toshiya with the spinach. Toshiya
rubbed his head and grumbled about big-headed guitarists with nothing better to
do than bully the bassists with their own spinach. Kaoru sat down and they
watched a film. He played with Toshiya’s coat buttons and the tips of his fingers.
“I have tickets for a show tomorrow at that up-scale foreign
theatre, will you come?”
“Um, love to. Can we play a trick?”
Hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. Hot.
+
We talked in the afternoons after practice had ended. Mouths flying. Mouths flying. We could never stop speaking because we just couldn’t end the conversation. The conversation did not end, but sometimes we paused to breath between saliva and salt. Salt to rub on my wounds and make me scream. The sea dragged my sinking body away.
+
“Have you ever
suffered from a serious illness or something similar?” The interviewee looked
at us expectantly, as if expecting the pack of strangers to announce their
secrets.
They all took their
turn at answering the question. He listened to their answers, and wondered what
he should say. Toshiya smiled as the interviewee nodded her head slightly at
him, giving him a cue to speak.
“No, not really . .
.” he said; like he was going to tell a stranger.
‘Mrs. Hara, I really
think there is something wrong with your son. He really needs to be conditioned
psychologically, I believe. A gender crisis at such a young age is not
advisable.’
‘There is nothing
wrong with him.’
‘But really, Mrs.
Hara, and I mean no disrespect, but a boy that does not want to play with boys
is quite unusual, and how do you explain his leaning towards having female
friends?’
His mother tightened
her hold around his neck, ‘He has the right to choose his friends.’
‘Yes but . . .’ the
other lady signed in exasperation, ‘I won’t say anymore, Mrs. Hara, good day.’
‘Goodbye.’ His mother
closed the door and stared at it, ‘Good riddance.’
Toshimasa looked at
himself in the mirror that night. What did he look like? Who was he? By the
outside, his skin, by the shining surface, by the colour of his eyes and mouth
and hair, by the slight bent in his teeth? Why did they have to see this
fleshly Toshimasa? His teeth were shiny.
His mother smiled, ‘I
wish you could grow your hair out a bit . . . but school makes it impossible,
and your father would have something to say about that.’
He did kendo, and
went fishing. He did cartwheels and played baseball. He wrote letters to
Makiko, fluently, but never talked to her once. When he saw her in the street,
he swam against the current. He daydreamed, sitting at his window sill staring
at the watery sky. The sky was blue. He was a boy and not a little toddler; he
couldn’t speak to girls.
Hiromi smirked, ‘You
look great in a skirt. Come on, wear it for me. Please????’
Toshimasa grew his
hair. Mother smiled. Father signed, smiled and went back to his cup of tea;
young people in a world of their own, a new world filled with signs and neon
lights and western words mixed among the hiragana, katakana and kanji.
Toshimasa was no more; Toshiya filled the cup holding water and red powder.
“I hate visual rock.”
He said to see their shocked faces.
All you can see is this form I have no
control over, fated to me. They say that the masochist survives the pain
because they want it; they are somehow left with a degree of control. If the
masochist no control, they die . . . they die . . . they die . . . I want
control . . .
He looked; colour.
There was freedom, he realised; perhaps it wasn’t as he thought. The freedom in
the lines of his face, the colour of his lips, the pattern around his eyes. The
clothing he could wear now; would they dare say anything? Entertainment is
entertainment; almost anything can be done in the name of a good show. Toshiya
picked at the zipper on the skirt.
It can be frightening when we realise
just how much our gender is affected by social manipulation; it’s not even
noticeable, and occurs mainly in subtext. Mothers who desire girls are
disappointed when they have a son. Strangely enough, the son will pick up this
subtext unconsciously and will dress and act like girls to somehow please his
mother.(*)
Toshiya closed the book and made a few
scribbly notes on the border of his notebook. He looked out the window and
clicked his pen against his cheek. He did a few cartwheels till his head was
heady from the blood rushing; he felt thrilled, but it passed. He painted his
toenails; much better, a lot like drawing.
+
“Why do we even call it practice anymore?” Toshiya asked, twirling his straw around his fingers, chin in hand staring off into the distance. “It’s not like we do any practicing, we just sorta turn up, twiddle our thumbs and play with each other till Kaoru gets so pissed that he chases us around the coffee table with a fucking knife.”
Kyo: “. . .”
“Kyo, wake up. K~yo? Oh, K~yo? Kyo?! KYO YOU LITTLE BASTARD! IF YOU DON’T WAKE UP, KAORU WILL HAVE YOU FOR LUNCH!” Toshiya raked his nails along the table. “Not literally, of course . . .”
Kyo fell off his chair at the awful screeching noise and Toshiya grinned. Kyo got up and went to the sofa instead.
“Bitch with overextended nails.” Kyo spat.
“Like I was saying,” Toshiya inspected his nails, “It isn’t really practice, is it? I mean, Kyo just falls asleep, I just piss someone off, Die and his side commentary, Shinya and his constant drumming, not to mention at times stingy attitude. I don’t even know why we bother to be in a band. Hell, I just don’t get why we have to turn up to practice everyday just like as if it were a regular job.”
Die hoisted his acoustic guitar up and started playing some tune, “Well, I think Kaoru would tell you it’s so that we don’t screw up our internal clocks.”
“Too bad my internal clock is already screwed then eh?”
Kaoru tapped Toshiya’s head with his wade of notes, “You should buy yourself a watch.”
Toshiya grinned, “Why don’t you buy me a watch? Better yet, be my alarm clock.”
“What do I get?”
“Are you still on that? What do you want anyway?”
“. . . sure you can handle it?”
“If I don’t have to flash anyone, kill myself, eat something gross, watch a romantic movie, or take illegal substances, I’m up for it. Name your price, Kaoru-kun.”
+
During the interval, I realised how often other people
looked at him. It was a trick, he called it, just a trick of the outside. He
painted the skin well, his face in shades of white and red, blood upon snow,
and black-lined eyes of poison. The hard rim under his eyes curved and
softened. I love androgynous people; there’s this little wicked thing about
them, that says confusion and complication and ‘I’m not what you think I am;
think about it first then talk to me.’
We were battered by every sort of extravagance; the
exorbitant amount of gold, emeralds, rubies and diamonds wore like cheap
medals. Chokers, broaches, rings, tiaras, watches and bracelets, anklets,
seeded pearls, earrings and too much gold for one’s health. Tacky. Androgynous
things are almost formless and strangely entrancing. I like it, and I don’t
need a reason.
He had more poise than any of them, pretty in his strange
and calmly mocking way, waiting for me to speak, watching me from under his
fringe. He didn’t smile a lot, I realised; I guess he didn’t like his teeth.
Yet, he was so happy when you stole him away for yourself, positive yet sombre
as he stared at the sky. I loved androgynous people.
A simple A-line dress, his idea of a trick, of deep blue
silk, a pair of silver earrings instead of the usual 5 or so silver loops, a
thin silver bracelet with a tiny bell, and a wedding ring. He was teasing me.
It was a real ring; do people have any sense of the sacred today? I never took
my eyes from the ring, because it was molten hot and burning me through and
through. Androgynous . . .
“What are you looking at?” he whispered into my ear.
“This trick of yours . . .”
“What’s wrong with it?” He kept his eyes on the stage.
“Are you having fun?”
He grinned, “Immensely. I stood at the restroom doors for a
good 5 minutes deciding which one was for me.” He giggled behind his hand in
the silent theatre, “In the end, I just go tired of deciding and went into the
men’s one. Good thing no one was there; that would have been hard to explain.”
He started laughing and I clamped my hands over his mouth
when people started looking. I grinned insanely, but I wanted to laugh. I
stared at him for the rest of the night until the show was finished. What cogs
must be turning in his mind . . .
We walked down the street together with people who glanced
our way and then just kept on going, just as we were, except we didn’t see
anyone except ourselves. Alone in the street, but not to each other. Frosted
glass balls, like on a Christmas tree. The crowded streets, crisscrossing in
the street squares and the nasty signs of corporations hanging over us like pestilence.
He hugged himself against the chill, “I think it’s funny,
don’t you? I have my sex, and then there’s my gender, and I can change my
gender anytime I want, as simple as the clothing I wear. It’s fun, when you do
that, you never quite know who you’ll end up as. Of course, you’ve gotta be
able to pull it off, eh?”
“I think it’s very realistic. There’s something so perfect
about it.”
“Realistic? Perfect? You mean the idea of male and female in
us, don’t you?”
“Well, being unafraid with experimentation, you know, like
if you look good then you should go with it. It looks good on you so I don’t
think you should stop . . . there really should be more than two genders, don't
you think?”
“Thanks, and yeah, there should be; a human being is far too
complex to be just divided into two clear categories. You really do like
androgynous people, don’t you?” He stopped and stared me in the eye,
challenging me. “You can kiss me, you know, no one will say anything at all.
Watch . . . I’m casting a spell . . .”
His hands glided across the surface of my face, delicately
curved palms so near that I could feel the magnetic attraction between our
flesh, and yet so far as he never touched my skin once. I blew hot moist air
into the creases and he smiled. The commercialism of the cityscape dimmed in
the background, blurred away into swirls. He knows of my taste for the
undefined; he is undefined.
I kissed him in the street; his lips bled and no one said
anything. He smiled and licked the blood away, a hand out for mine. The soft
fleshy parts of his palm teased and tickled my fingertips as I brushed them
against the pads. We walked along the street and went home. The fake silence
was nice. There’s no solitude in the world like that of the big city.
+
“A little to the left. No! My left!”
“Why didn’t you say so, you dope. Don’t get pissed at me when you give mangled directions.”
“Toshiya, I’m the photographer. Don’t mince words.”
He sighed, “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up and look all nice for the fucking shutter.”
SNAP.
“Good, now do a few poses.”
“Like what?!”
“I don’t know, express yourself.”
“There. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. I can’t believe you REQUESTED this.”
“Crossing your arms and legs and pouting like you’ve just been told off is expressing yourself? Honestly, what do you take me for?”
“I’m pissed at you; I’m expressing my pissed state, what more do you want? And the answer is a dirty old man, that’s what I take you for. Has that ring, doesn’t it?”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
“Do I care?”
SNAP. SNAP. SNAP. SNAP-SNAP.
“No, you’re an egotistical little twit.”
“No, you have it all wrong. An egotistic but very ‘talented’ and tall twit.”
“Okay, okay, you win. Um . . . try something more . . . suggestive maybe?”
“Like this?”
“Perfect. Stay still.”
SNAP. SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-SNAP.
“I thought I should give you a warning: if you dare show these to Die or anyone, I will murder you. Nothing will save you, understand? Nothing. Are we clear?”
“Yes, crystal. Shut up and change.”
“Is it just me or is there this trend of my clothes covering less and less?”
“There’s no one here, what are you embarrassed about?”
SNAP.
“Hello? Are you real or just a figment of my imagination?”
“Just be quiet. Left hand open, hold onto the railing with the right and lean on it. Leg on the lower railing. Grab the flowers.”
SNAP. SNAP . . . SNAP-SNAP.
“Do I have to do this?”
“Yes, you can’t break the promise.”
SNAP-SNAP.
“Fuck. That’s it, I’ve never even seen your thighs in any of your costumes!”
“That’s because I don’t wanna show.”
“I’m gonna make you if it kills me.”
SNAP. SNAP-SNAP.
“You can certainly try. Can I take a photo of you naked?”
“I don’t think so!”
“Oh, come on.”
“Piss off.”
“Please???”
“. . . I know I’m going to regret this. What do I get?”
“What do you want?”
“Let’s see; you wear something suggestive next time I’ll be happy. Not necessarily flesh oriented, but very suggestive. Agree?’
“Sure, sure. Now take it all off.”
“Fuck you. Uh . . . uh . . . there!”
“Now this is what I call fun.”
“Oh, the joy.”
SNAP.
“. . . uh . . . what are you doing?”
“Crawling. What does it look like?”
“But why . . . so close . . . uh . . . really . . . that’s close enough.”
“You’ve gotten your wish, now I can get mine . . .”
“What do you want?”
“Lick me and find out.”
+
Father came into the room. Toshiya got up and smiled. Father stabbed him in the stomach 4 times and pushed him back on the bed. Mother came in and smiled, leaving a cup of tea on the table. The wicked blade gleamed a pale red. Toshiya started to cry as his white bed sheets turned pink and red and copper and black.
“I’m . . . a psychologist told me I’m afraid of the father-figure in my life . . . but I love my father, really, so I don’t really get it.”
Die opened the coke cup top and picked out a block of ice, “You, Toshiya, have an inner fear of authority figures somehow, especially one’s that are like a father-figure you look up to and admire and stuff, that’s what the shrink means. It’s kinda amazing you get along with Kaoru.”
Kyo mouthed to Shinya’s shocked countenance: he doesn’t know.
Shinya chucked a few bits of grass he’d unearthed, “Shut up Die, what do you know?”
“Shinya, what are you doing?”
“Um? Oh, my mother wants me to start making paper cranes so my grandmother can get 10 000 of them for her birthday.”
They say 10 000 cranes cures any ailment. Toshiya picked a piece of white paper and started to fold. Just in case, he thought to himself, just in case Kaoru was like the last one. He prayed for good health. He prayed for forgiveness. He was walking through the garden. He was thinking of his sins. He would give the mountains if you would just stay awhile.
+
“Let’s take the train.”
The red-brick building of Tokyo station.
Silence is my friend – I meet it every midnight and just before dawn. It came to ebb, ebb, flow and flowing to my ears, the shell, in the times of noon and calmly cool calm afternoons. Like now, in the underground beneath this great city. Cold, but in between white sheets and black, he became the unbridled sensuality; the raw redness, the touch of lips blue.
Does that mean you like what you have, what you hold and
what you see? The question is written in unintelligible scrawl and hidden in
the freezer just in case. You get so angry when it is asked so lessons have
been taught to not ask that question that distressed you so. Drawing blood from
the skin, unfolding before the eyes a daily beauty.
A train drifted by. Rushed, flooding mercury waters. It’s
shiny, gleaming, and murky-murky surface – silver, black and blue, the dotted
wavering lines of red and yellow. Heads bopping up and down, up and to the side
in catchy rhythms. People. Noise. Train. Light. Action. The gleam of chrysolite
relumed.
The train stoped, crying out, lurched. The doors slid open.
We went in. The door closed. We were finally on the train together, in there
and out here. The flickering faint luminescence of fireflies lured us into a
world of illusion by their pale dancing light. But that’s not real, is it? It’s
autumn, not summer even with his balmy breaths.
Fireflies only come out in the summer.
Arna.