Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

There was before him and after him, two sides, and I am two completely separate people on each.

He’d given me a look. A look that shifted something inside me in a way that all those separate parts that made up the whole changed imperceptibly.

I wasn’t fit to kneel at his fucking feet and lick his Louis Vuitton boots. In lots of ways, I’m still not. I still see him like I saw him then: like some ethereal being, untainted by the likes of us, me, far above us mortal men.

a few choice words—words I’ve heard and read before—from a stupid American rock band aren’t enough to break me. Not even close. It’s rooted in some fruitless pursuit of masculinity. And that kind of masculinity is the destruction of everything else. Kindness, empathy, femininity, romance. Men like them will never really understand the hypocrisy behind it.

I feel like something’s unravelling inside me and I’ve not a fucking chance of wrapping it back up.

when the fuck did I become that person? The person who wants to mark their lovers up. Is the thought more palatable to me now because he’s a guy? A muscular, fit guy who could probably fight me off if he wanted to? Have I ever or would I ever be turned on at the thought of leaving a mark on a woman’s skin? The answer is instantaneous: hell fucking, no.

Had I seriously been thinking that I could get him out of my system by fucking him once? I’m a bigger clown than I thought possible. I need air. I need to walk and think and then maybe speak to a priest or an exorcist or something because this guy is simmering in my veins like demonic possession.

“You have never seen a Korean sunset; you have never been to Korea” “Baby, I’m pretty sure I was in Korea about ten minutes ago.” I raise my eyebrow and he bursts into laughter.

there’s a buzzing under my skin whenever he’s close to me. Like he’s on some frequency not of this universe.

I’d felt something I cannot ever remember feeling before except on stage. I had felt enough. More than enough.

I try to decide how best to say that. How would he take it? Would it be an insult? If I said it to a girl, it would be sleazy as fuck, so surely it’s the same here? But he’s not a fucking girl. He’s a guy. It’s completely different. Fuck, I really have no idea what I’m doing.

I want his name somewhere on me. He deserves that. Even if this flickers out and dies, as all things that burn as brightly as this do, he deserves that. He matters more than that first album ever did. And if I don’t get to keep him, if he doesn’t want this—anything serious—with me, then I need to know that this fucking happened. That I didn’t dream it. Because every moment I get to spend with him feels exactly like that.

Perhaps Raphael could love me hard enough that it will not matter about all the ways in which I am broken, faulty, imperfect.

“That is the funny thing,” he says with a sad smile. “I always wanted this. I dreamed of it.” It hurts, watching the lost, sad look in his face. He holds it a second, then shakes it out with a gentle toss of his head. “And now you don’t want it? Your dream?” He laughs, softly. “Dreams are safer when they are unachievable.

It is three times now he has asked the question. What do I want. What I want has never felt possible so it has never been something I’ve thought much about. It was why I found it so hard to answer Raphael when he asked.

“You are not your father, Raphael.” My head lifts at that as I frown at her detour. “What?” “It is why you are here, no? Because you are so afraid of being him? You are willing to risk your own happiness to show that you are nothing like him.

I don’t have to think about it long. Any reservations I have aren’t about him or about us, it’s about what the world might do to this perfect thing we have. This thing that’s existed between just us for so long. But then I think about how it became stronger when I told my mom, how I became more sure of it when I told Cam, how badly I wanted it back when the stranger with the camera showed me what I’d lost. “Yeah, baby, I’m sure.”