Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

But him…well, he was my inevitability. He was when it started. When everything else ended. Everything I was before. He was the moon and the stars and everything in-between and all I wanted to do was worship at his feet. The band, my girlfriend, my dad, everything that I thought was important to me, just ceased to exist the moment I first saw him. I’m not proud of that. But it’s what it was. 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. So that they didn’t fit back the way they were supposed to. Like I no longer fit inside myself. That’s how I’d come to describe it. That was the power of that shift. The power of him. I was like a stranger to my own fucking soul.

“Are you trying to say that you want to fuck me, Raphael?” He says it in that same soft voice and this time my stomach does drop out of my ass.

“I do not want to be your friend, Raphael. I do not want to watch sunrises and think of you. I do not want to close my eyes to go to sleep and see the image of your mouth when you smile. I do not want to spend a five-hour flight daydreaming about your eyes or the sound of your voice or the way you say my name. I do not want it. And yet… all of these things I have done just today.”

“I want you. I don’t know what this is but I haven’t been able to think in a straight line since I saw you and it’s driving me insane. I want…to touch you, breathe you in, kiss you, taste you, and I don’t know what any of it means. It’s…it’s like I’m fucking obsessed. I feel obsessed. Have you ever been obsessed with anything? Ever wanted something so much it makes every breath you have to take without it, pointless?”

“I told you, I’m here because I want you. Because if I don’t get to have you at least once I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” Maybe I could have gone with something more poetic, something like I’m here because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for two and a half years. Because I’ve never wanted to touch and be touched by another person as much as I want to touch and be touched by you. Because just looking at you feels like I’m drowning, and I like that feeling more than I should.

I saw Michelangelo’s David once and I think Lee Jaehyun is more beautiful than that slab of perfectly-shaped marble.

Why am I fully prepared to move to another continent and learn a language that may as well be spoken with a different body part. It’s ridiculous. We hadn’t even fucked. A blowjob and a hand job and I’m ready to change citizenship.

“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.

“Dangsin-eun na-ege neomu keun sangcheoleul jul geos-ibnida. an geulae?”

There’s nothing similar in them. Nothing at all. But I think they’re possibly the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen in real life. Exceptionally attractive but in completely different ways. I try not to think about what it might feel like to be fucked by both of them at the same time, but of course it’s impossible.

I haven’t written anything in weeks. Not because I’m dry, but because I’m afraid of what will come out. Now, I don’t feel that same fear. Now I scribble down words of self-realization and fate, of regret and guilt, of lust and need. The raw taste of twilight. It sounds like a love song. But not about New York. About something New York possesses tonight. One single perfect thing that no other city on earth has. And he’s asleep in the next room. I realize it’s the first love song I’ve ever written.

This likely isn’t the first time some purportedly straight guy has fallen head over heels for him. Maybe he collects them. Like necklaces or earrings.

Raphael looks happy too, by her side. But I suppose he wasn’t. People who aren’t happy are very good at pretending that they are. I know this.

“Did you have pets as a child?” “A goldfish once,” he says turning back around. “And how are they as pets?” “Real quiet.”

“I might have sort of wrote you a song.” His eyes light up brighter than the Christmas tree as he settles himself back on the sofa and sips his own wine. “Oh, this will be very good. Please tell me you will sing about my asshole.”

I told you I would have taken whatever you wanted to give me. Whatever that looked like. I love you. “I love you too,” I whisper to no one. “In another life I would have chosen you.”