It gets old. To them, that stuff is still brand new. Still touching the edge of an ocean with a sponge and then running home with that sponge and squeezing it out into a jar. When you're friends come over you can point to it on your window sill and say "yes, that was the time". When you're friends are gone you can open up the jar and pour a little more on your dried up soul and feel rejuvenated. Alive again, like nobodies business. Eventually he'll grow up and realize there is no reason to not unzip your skin and throw your whole body into that ocean. Kids these days. "I was there too, once." Letting go of his arm is harder to do than I expected. It falls limp across my eyes and brow and I let it stay there to block out the fading, bluing, two foot square, window above my eyes. "Then I realized things could get so much better."
"Are these burns?" Sunlight between the hours of 6 and 7 P.M. is gaudy. Gaudy in the way glass on top of a finished and polished coffee table is gaudy. Time yellowing plastic on embroidered furniture. It sticks to things the way over done dresses cling to women in the low years of their lives between their knowing they're going to die and their knowing they're already dead.
"From cigarettes?" Porsh wasn't much for leading questions. He always ran ahead. You get used to it, talking to him enough. He never gets that he's wrong half the time, but then, half of the time I'm not sure which question he's answering. The one in the air, or the one sticking out of the side of his head.
"No." talking to him, I lose track of who is supposed to be saying what. Part of the garbage that builds up in my atmosphere and makes the sunlight in the flat foil chrome hours break into their third dimension, if you wait a little while. "Are these burns? Without the second part." I want to call them curtains of light, but the windows in Porsh's apartment are no bigger than the gaps between eyelashes on the face of a thing more home than four walled outgrowths of necessity and demand's supply. The mud orange rectangular traps painted across the wall and floor hook around his forearm like solid brass sleeves. My thumb plays in the shadow between. Touching veins.
"Yeah," tell me something, why only the left? Are you right handed? Turning his arm over until it reaches its physical limit and ligaments start to pull in the opposite direction, I feel a little cheated. I wanted them to be something more complicated than spare time and bad habits held over from later days of high school and angst. I could be wrong. I was wrong about how he got his name: it was a very long guessing game, but he finally caved (out of pity, I think) and told me. I was wrong about what he did for money too. I waited, turning his wrist and forearm the other way until it couldn't turn any further. I pressed, watched the veins rise and listened to his breath sharpen. His arms were thin. We ate the same.
"From cigarettes?"
"Yeah."
It gets old. To them, that stuff is still brand new. Still touching the edge of an ocean with a sponge and then running home with that sponge and squeezing it out into a jar. When you're friends come over you can point to it on your window sill and say "yes, that was the time". When you're friends are gone you can open up the jar and pour a little more on your dried up soul and feel rejuvenated. Alive again, like nobodies business. Eventually he'll grow up and realize there is no reason to not unzip your skin and throw your whole body into that ocean. Kids these days. "I was there too, once." Letting go of his arm is harder to do than I expected. It falls limp across my eyes and brow and I let it stay there to block out the fading, bluing, two foot square, window above my eyes. "Then I realized things could get so much better."
"With sex," letting him run out the leash is a practice of patience, but sometimes I like to watch him dive through the tall grass, trying to nail down the conversation's position. A hobby in its own right. "That things could get better?" A loaded question with five empty chambers. I'm awake enough to be game.
"In a way. After a fashion," I can feel his heart beat through his ribs where they touch mine. The problem with winter is that it is too easy to overheat against the suck of the cold on the other side of the window panes. The blankets are around our ankles and the drumming of his insides are playing a wet tune where our heat combines and draws enough sweat to beg taking a shower, but not enough to make either of us want to move. "It's hard to say exactly what it is that makes the difference."
"Between then and now?" Few people can fish for compliments. I fish for cigarettes underneath the pillow without its dollar store pillowcase and come up empty. I spin the chamber.
"Between then and anywhere. People change for all kinds of reasons." Sometimes it's hard to tell how high he is. I'm not one to judge and I am still feeling something more bliss filled and wide lensed than I have reason to. You have to hide it. It is a game within a game with him and part of why my own work day ends at his place most days of the week. AM radio tells us that traffic on 95 is at a standstill. Porsh used to have a car. It was a pretty sweet ride. Danny stole it. Put a brick right through the driver side window last year, took it to a shop a couple hours out of town and sold it to them for a good piece of change. He had it coming, though. If you keep running up your tab, eventually someone is going to call it. I'm just glad I never had to be the one to pull that trigger. We're on an exchange program. "I was there too, once. All I'm saying."
"So what changed you, Ben?" The press of teeth on my ear makes my mind flicker like a television with bad reception. He's pushing buttons. Spinning the chamber again. The understanding was that nothing serious had to happen. What I know is that sort of understanding calls up another. The second part, the shadow behind it, is that something serious can happen. There's a closeness that develops when the soles of someone's feet touch your toes and fire little signals all the way up your legs to your gut. I don't smile while he fidgets, but I know the flinch of my mouth against his cheek was about as subtle as a gunshot.
"I don't know," sometimes you lie because you have to. Sometimes you lie because you want to. "I think I got old." Sometimes you lie because you've been told from day one that telling half the truth is the same as telling none. I don't know that I will ever tell him Danny pulled his card. "But part of getting old is getting to know yourself in ways that get harder to express and make more sense all at once." You're either born a hugger or you aren't. Arms around your body will either begin to throw you into an off keyed panic or nudge you toward some kind of calm. I still do not know which side of it I am on, but his fingers lace together at the small of my back and I don't flinch.
"I am as old as you'll ever be." I listen to his listening to my breathing and let my eyes blink. I should know his real name by now, but it keeps slipping.
"I don't want to go out tonight."
"I know."
"Thursdays never work for me."
"I know." Bang.
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