Swimming in the Dark

by Tomasz Jedrowski

“I’m not abnormal!” I screamed, collapsing on the bed and clenching my fists around my mother’s duvet. Shame throbbed behind those words, a snake brushing past, underneath a blanket of leaves. Late some nights, when the growing unwanted desire stopped me from sleeping, I would yield to its current. I would let the hidden fantasies sweep me away, listen to their murmur, of the boys and their bodies, the hard forms of their whiteness, the smell of sweat and musk and skin. Moments from PE would flicker: thighs in shorts and armpits in sleeveless tops; Henryk, the strongest boy in the class, on the leather-wrapped gymnastic rings, hanging above us all in the gymnasium, his biceps flexing, the dark hair of his armpits contrasting with his skin, precocious veins running all along his arms, the bulge in his short white shorts . . . images from the changing rooms, the showers we took afterward—water trickling down backs, along the cross of chests and into belly buttons, down to the strongholds of their cocks, which I would only dare glimpse at for a moment and imprint onto my mind despite myself.

A place of pleasure and peace, indifferent to governments, faithful to whoever happens to be in power. You said something about how impressive it was, this house, and I remained silent, thinking how undeserving you all were of it.

We kissed. You were mine. I realized then that this was the only thing that counted. Nothing else had ever existed. Just our lips and hips and sighs. I fell into different galaxies through you, your mouth a porthole to a better universe,