A Sharp Endless Need

by Marisa Crane

We won loose balls, and if we didn’t win them, we caused tie-up after tie-up, wet bodies coalescing on the wood floor: rip, rip, roar. When the game was on the line, and when it wasn’t on the line, we sacrificed our bodies. Not because we were told to, but because there was no higher honor. We sacrificed our bodies for something not quite holy, not quite mortal. Where does the body end and immortality begin? We wanted to find out.

To us, basketball was a historical record of all the ways a body can move with and for another. What could be better than the strange and perverse pleasure of being known? If we couldn’t live forever, we at least wanted pleasure, in big dripping buckets. More so, we wanted the knowledge that we were still capable of enjoying our pleasure, that pleasure itself hadn’t become yet another goal to work toward.

We were going to be late. In the car next to us two men, boys really, were making out in the back seat, hands gripping the meat of each other’s necks. The two boys in the front were a silent film of laughter, heads thrown back, mouths open wide as if to swallow all the light in the city. I tried not to look at the ones kissing, though I liked it, liked what they were doing with each other. Dad didn’t notice them, he was too busy driving with his knees while he turned a map every which way, trying to find a detour, although I doubt he would have made some rude comment. I take that back—he might have said something rude like Nobody wants to see that, but it wouldn’t have been because they were gay, it would have been because they were young and happy, and he was old and unhappy.

Unfortunately for him and my mother, he was a nostalgic guy—I suspected he only knew how to love something once it was already gone. It seemed like a wretched way to live, but what did I know?

Liv cracked open a can of beer. It had been shaken by the car ride, so it sprayed all over her. Like satisfaction made manifest.

miserable, even the people holding hands, even the people kissing. I knew this wasn’t unique to our town, I knew there were miserable people everywhere. It wasn’t that I thought the rest of the world was happy, I just thought the rest of the world might grant me opportunities for new types of misery. Things like going through my first real breakup with a girl, one who would kiss me in public and call me her girlfriend—I would have welcomed that novel pain.

I thought about what it meant to look at someone and assume they were gay. We have all these signals available to us that indicate someone’s sexuality—hair, clothes, hands, gestures, walk, talk, sit—and we always think we know what they mean, maybe better than they do. Some people think it’s fucked-up to tell someone “You may not know it yet, but you’re gay,” but I don’t. Sometimes we actually do know better. After all, it’s hard to be the authority on yourself when the whole world is leading you astray. And sometimes you need someone to remind you who you are and who you want. I thought