night on the town #2
We press him against the brick wall. It takes him by such surprise, our strength, our fortitude, that he lets out the slightest
cry. Just a hint of air, such a frantic gasp escaping his lips. The steam from his breath spills out and we’re suddenly saddened
at the fact that we can’t breathe it into our own lungs. Inhale what he expends, as if the very oxygen warmed by his lungs
had a flavor. Something to savor. Waste not, want not, these people say. Words of wisdom from those who refuse to observe their own adages.
What is it with this one? We can’t get a sense of him. Taste him. He perplexes us.
Confuses us.
“Hey, now,” he says, and resists our advances at first, startled by our attack, but there is nothing he can do now. He is
powerless against us. The body is weak, always weak.
He eventually relents. We kiss him, deeper now. He’s letting go. Opening up. We sense the slackening of sinew, his muscles
loosening, letting go and letting us take control.
Look at that smile. The blade of his lips. We could cut ourselves on that grin. Our mouth is against his and we swim through his lips, wrestle against his tongue.
He is ours, all ours.
The world is ours.
Tonight, just for tonight. Nothing is out of the realm of flesh. We’ve missed this so much. So many years trapped inside that
hollow husk of a human being. So long. Too long.
Now we’re back. Free once again. We want to touch, to taste, to lick and nibble.
Perhaps bite. Perhaps.
We want to bleed.
“Take me,” we say. To hell and back. Our hand travels down his chest. Grazing the navel. We find the hem of his flimsy shirt and tug upward, exposing the belly
below. The pale skin. Even here, in the dark, the shadows of the alley, his flesh burns so bright. For us.
He seizes our wrist. Resists. “Here?”
We press against him, our body pinning him against the brick. We hear the brittle grit of it, the mortar crumbling under the
pressure of our bodies. That sandpaper rasp.
Our mouth finds his again. This time we bite.
Just a nip.
He doesn’t resist, not this time. Never again. Not for us. He’ll never forget us.
We’ll make sure of it. A night to remember.
The music continues from within the concert hall. It is so loud, even now, outside, that we can feel the very vibrations within
the brick. The songs reverberate through the walls, the foundation of this building, all the way into our bodies. The bones
that hold us up resonate with the sound. It’s dizzying, the sheer volume. The dissonance. Even now, we feel the music distort
our heartbeats.
His hands find our shoulders, tightening their grip.
His fingers burrow under our shirt, touching the skin along our arms. He lifts us—look how we levitate—our feet taking off from the cobblestone.
We wrap our legs around his waist. The weight of us presses him against the wall while his hands now hold onto our thighs, elevating our frame, pinning him.
I want to leave this body and enter his. Simply drift. Just for a breath. The gulf between us, made of skin and sinew, held
sturdy by a scaffolding of bone, is too much for us. I want to cross that threshold of flesh. I want to make my way inside.
But I don’t. I choose not to. Restrain myself. See? Look how controlled we are. We want to experience him this way. Feel him from the outside. Simply the skin. For now.
So we keep ourselves contained. Confined. It takes all our strength. Our willpower, if such a thing even exists. To savor him, we say to ourselves. A fine wine.
Red, of course. Always red.
“My place is close by,” he says in our ear. His breath is a livid coal pressed against our skin, burning the lobe. Everything
aches inside. The chill of our skin, all goosefleshed and numb, while the inside burns. Moistens. So we say yes, yes, take me, take me away.
We follow.
He leads us along, but we are in control. He must know this, sense it on some level, but he is at peace. He wants this. He
will acquiesce. Give us what we demand.
And what we want more than anything is to taste his skin. Go deeper. Slip inside.
No, not yet. Slow down.
Savor.
What will we find within this man? What will the vast chasm of his heart offer?
The possessor always seeks the possessed. Water always finds its vessel. Wine finds its decanter.
He takes our hand and guides us through the night. The streets offer lights. Bodies behind panes of glass. Look at them all.
These people. Their quiet lives. Their fragile skin.
There is no talking anymore between the two of us. No conversation is necessary. There is only the night.
Our night.
All ours.
His living space is insignificant. The walls bare. He has very little to show for himself. Who is he? His existence is limited
to the barest essentials. We like this. His simplicity, stripped down to the bones of his existence. He is not weighed down
by belongings. He is unencumbered.
He is free.
This world has given him so little and yet, see how he shines. Such a lost soul, burning bright with the darkest light. He
must still feel torn between this life and what’s beyond.
There are milk crates containing records—more music—but that’s all he has.
Wait. There is one belonging. One totem to his life. What is it?
Parts and pieces of dented equipment suspend themselves from the wall. Metal. Chains. Wheels. Is it a torture device? Is there
a shade of darkness, a current of perversion, to this one that we didn’t pick up on? Didn’t sense? Wouldn’t that be such a
lovely surprise . . .
What would he do to us?
No, it’s not that. Not like that at all. There is something wounded to this artwork on the wall. There’s loss seeped into
steel. A mournful sculpture. A totem, like a wounded god.
A bicycle frame. It hangs from a pair of hooks, battered and bent.
This is his. His life. All he has to show for himself, his only possession in this world.
A bike, all broken. Mangled and misshapen.
He’ll never ride it again.
How heartbreaking. We find it sad, somehow, seeing it suspended from the wall. A dented metal skeleton. Crucified. Nothing
left but the bones, still dangling from their nails.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Yes, he will do.
There is little resistance between us once we reach his bed.
We take his hand. Hold it in our own.
He is trying to be polite. Cordial. All we want is to take him. Open him. Taste him.
So we push.
His body offers no struggle. No resistance whatsoever. Only his stare. His gray eyes keep their hold on our own. He is searching,
desperate to understand us. Who we are.
Does he see us? Through these eyes?
See me?
There is a saltiness to his skin. All that sweat, a desert of life now dried across his skin. It tastes delicious, this wasteland.
The tundra of his body is ours to cross.
We lick his neck. All these reservoirs of sweat. The abandoned brine of his life.
He takes hold of our chin and kisses us.
We bite his bottom lip once more, harder this time. He pulls back, but we don’t let go. Not until we have drawn blood. Just
the faintest break in his skin.
His lower lip has gone red.
The blood. His blood. A blissful ripple, seeping out. Slickening his lips.
We dive in. Kiss him. Taste it.
These hands find his chest and we begin to divest him of his clothes. First, we pull at his shirt, clinging to his skin with
his own sweat like a layer of flesh, until he takes it off for us.
Now his body is laid bare for us to see. We cannot help but gasp.
Look at it. His skin. What marvelous scars. All the fissures where his flesh was torn open, stitched back together. Stapled
and healed in an uneven tapestry of tissue.
What happened to this man?
His body is a topographical map of agony. We chart our course across his skin, taking a journey through every injury, every contusion, until we have visited the entirety of his pain. This is the exact map that we need to abandon our world. To guide us from one world to the next.
To hell and back, he said. We believe him. We see where he has been.
Home.
I want to explore more. Need to see more of Jordan. Go deeper. Further into him. I want to plunge all the way to the bottom.
Down, down, down . . . The very core of his being.
He crossed over. He must have. There’s no question of it now. He lost a shard of himself beyond and gained something else
altogether. Something . . . fresh.
He brought back death.