Two Natures

by Jendi Reiter

I didn’t have a good answer for that. The most important things come to me as pictures, not words, more like a burst of sunlight than a little train of logic chugging from station to station. A guy I knew in high school could skim a whole novel in three hours; he said he somehow flashed on an overall impression of the page and didn’t have to read every line. Falling for Phil was kind of like that, only I wasn’t so sure the words were there to follow if I had to retrace my steps.

Permanent wounds are for other people, you think; you don’t believe you could be the one whose story goes He never… Never walked again, saw the ocean, left the neighborhood, blew out 25 candles on his birthday cake. Even when you live with death, as queers do, he’s the DJ, not your lover — up there on stage, sweetening the music of your swiftly passing night. He’s a name you drop, like JFK or Judy Garland, someone you’re all supposed to know, but not too well. Where were you when you heard…? The question means, tell me about the time you remembered you were still alive.

I was responsible for him, I suddenly realized, in that quiet where we were the only two breathing. The weight of him, his body and his hours.

Later and later till morning, and work, and tears, but no, it’s not that late, not yet. There’s still time for dust motes in the late sunlight, and two heartbeats.

My longing for him, just then, was so sharp and terribly new, a shock that never eased, the echo of his infinite not-there-ness. He’d only taken up twenty-four years, six months and twenty-three days of this world, while everything that was not him went on and on.

One thing no one tells you about grief is how boring it is. Running from your feelings is at least an activity.

Peter in thirty seconds: Boy fucks boy, boy loves boy, boy fucks boy over.