Evenings and Weekends

by Oisín McKenna

She doesn’t want to be separated even by a mere few hours. She tells him how she wants to kiss him right now, and he tells her how the shape of her body in his arms makes him feel entirely whole. He tells her that it feels as if his body were a custom-made, bespoke container, specifically designed for holding this one rare, very precious substance, which is her. That’s how it feels. Like this is what he was made for.

It was hell this, hell that, sodomy this, sodomy that, and I thought, aged eight, that if I was still gay by the age of twelve, I’d be left with no choice but to kill myself.

That’s when she knew that she loved him: when she started thinking of his death. She knew she’d found something good when she knew she couldn’t stand to lose it.

She’s been in this pit for decades. This pit is where she lives. Sometimes she tries to claw her way out of it. Sometimes she bashes her body off its walls in fury at her inability to climb them. Sometimes she simply accepts the pit and tries to decorate it as best she can. Sometimes, she has stood at the base of the pit and shouted for help. Sometimes, she has stood at the base of the pit and whispered for help, too, and felt hurt and abandoned when no one responded because her whispers were too soft to be audible to anyone but herself. On the times when people have offered to help, she has been envious of the fact that they weren’t in the pit with her and responded bitterly. Then, sensing she didn’t want their help and feeling their own egos bruised, they have left her, and she has missed them, and she has wished that she could have climbed up to be near them, and to say she was sorry.