The Ones Who Sing At Night

2008-07-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

By: Dennis James

Look.

Listen.

Love him

Never give up.

This will leave me haunted.

“This will leave you haunted in your mirror…”

Now, all that I hold dear shatters with the light of coming dawn.

Suddenly, love is nothing but distortion and prostitution of my desire— the consequences of which confront me under unforgiving fluorescent lights.

It was St. Augustine who wrote that human unhappiness is divine evidence of our immortality— for we are all wild and restless hearts, and intuition tells us that Earth is not our true home.

We devoured all that we knew was rightfully ours and still wanted more— the city was a playground on permanent strobe effect, a wonderland of Technicolor delights. We danced like blue white fire despite the fact that our lives were dictated solely by the mistakes of our parents and disguised as ones of extraordinary privilege.

Before long, we ourselves were untouchable incandescent gold dust gods, foolish enough to believe that we could live forever with and within our bathhouse Garden of Eden, a white hot crack pipe fantasy world where Dionysius put crystal on his giant cock and fucked us for what seemed like an eternity of sleepless nights, where we burned with anticipation like a gasoline fire in a paper lantern Shangri-La. God’s sweat fell from his forehead to our lips as we savored the lemony sweet taste of freedom in our mouths.

I begin diving deep into my existence in some vain attempt to uncover why I’m so afraid to feel—don’t say “I love you” first, don’t ask too many questions too soon—I try hard to tell myself that learned responses distance us from our own most powerful impulses and emotions. I know that true love doesn’t conquer all; Love cannot rise above denial, dishonesty, people-pleasing, and fear. It all hits me somewhere between sleeping and dreaming, like snowflakes in a daylight sky—how foolish I was to dance with the prospect of rescue when I knew there was no chance I could be saved. I crawl out of bed, stumble to the window, drunk, angry that he’s listening to Stevie on the radio. Her voice crackles with uncertainty—“never break the chain,” she sings—and I have no choice but to believe it.

We are shirtless and wet and pulling off each other’s jeans when something clicks inside of me—an electric buzz in my brain, a euphoric rush that spreads throughout my body the second I exhale. I scoop his come off my chest, roll it around between my thumb and forefinger, touch it to my lips—anything to savor the sticky, spiderweb sweetness of his orgasm, of that one moment when his desire for me isn’t diluted by guilt, shame, and fear—by unspoken desire that flickers and then fades.

Yesterday, I woke up and saw a ghost of him in the glass, sitting upright in our bed with a blanket draped around his shoulders, smoking and staring out the window. One moment I was holding him and it was like touching wild Heaven—and then the next, he was a stranger, just a man.

For him, it burns— the outwardly cavalier demeanor of a wounded self, a sad, secret realization, defiance, excuses, and finally—after the smoke clears—uncompromising acceptance of the elaborate, unnecessary disguises of our everyday.

Now what I need is protection from what I’ve worked so hard to salvage from the wreckage of my secret self.

“Darker than the image on the wall is the fear of it all...”

Redemption sparks my will to go on living.

Actions become oblivious to reactions.

Open your eyes.

Turn around.

Anything?

Nothing.

ProcessingUnit: Author Dennis James

The Ones Who Sing At Night