Delirium

I still reach for the phone in the night, wind-milling in the muddled moments between slumber and waking. The impulse should have been severed months ago but old habits die hard and I've always had an addictive personality. My fingers pause each time on the smooth plastic surface of my impending salvation, recalling in due course the answer I will have if I dare to dial the number. You live inside my speed-dial still and I haven't the heart to purge your presence. When I am alone and wake from my dreams of falling, always falling and knowing acutely that I have lost all I cherish, I will dial your cell and listen to the ring. You never pick up and I drop the phone in horror, struck by the realization of what I have done. When I am in company he stirs next to me and murmurs a soft something that I can never decipher, gently taking the hand that darts toward my cell and pressing it instead to his cheek with a soothing 'I'm here'. And I uncoil when he stops me in my dash for disappointment; I seek to liquefy and run inside him. Into someplace I am always secure and safe from the memory of your laughter. I tell myself each instance that tomorrow, when I am no longer drowsy and emotional with the recent nightmare, I will delete the numbers from the keypad and release the last physical reminder of what I have been robbed of. In the morning I will not do it but I always convince myself differently.

I dropped my soda when you said that. The first time, certainly, but not the last. Such callous words stung and that horrible forgetfulness reared. I could only gape in uncomprehending horror that you would say such a thing about me. But fuck, I had once more slid into the past and not taken into account this new state of reality. Once you would never have spoken ill (so harsh!) of me but that was before. Before your bitter sadness had festered and become this cancerous hate. It left me to wonder what it was I had done wrong. In this pendulum state of enmity you have no qualms about spitting on my name. 'Don't you talk about fuckface!' you shouted at your father as if I were not present, one tiny finger jabbing toward him like a cattle-prod. Was I not here, in this very room? I swallowed hard and thought perhaps I might have wept if my shock were less, aware of Quinn's compassionate eyes on me and the half-risen set of his body. Your cornflower eyes held no longing, no ghost of affection when you branded me your enemy even in the publicity ofthe bookstore we shared work in. Such anger, poignant and as honest as every other facet of your personality. You meant your words undoubtedly. I bit down on my lip and went to find a towel to clean up the sticky spilled Coke.

We've been together, he and I, for so long and still the clothes are stationary. I know that it frustrates him; there it twists in his beautiful features before being willed away. Quinn is a sexual creature more so than I have ever been, not any less than you but much more subtle and not easily satisfied. There is no such thing as a quick-fuck for him just as there is no concept of 'casual sex' for me. It is not that I am repulsed by the concept of intercourse, not at all. I want to lay myself in front of him uninhibited but never can bring myself to that place of skin and desire and something vaguely holy. You've left me a half-finished puzzle still being constructed; disconnected and full of quirks that had never been there before. I may be celibate for some time yet and I cannot understand why it is. Why I spook like a rabbit when things are too intimate and see transparent images of your face played across the surface of my eyes like fragments of another reality. I hate that I am unable to give Quinn the fundamentals of a relationship. Much more so because my inadequacy is a stain my ex-boyfriend has left behind, the rusty signature of blood from a split lip you gave me, a lost-love wound. It's ridiculous, melodramatic nonsense. I love Quinn no less than I ever loved you and the ache should not be palpable. I think often that perhaps I love him more than I did anyone else. Hush, he says when I cry. 'Sex should never be the centerfold of any relationship' he repeats again and again like the secret romantic he is. Oh how I wish to believe it, forgive myself just one of my many sins. Quinn is patient, I will have you know, so don't you take sadistic pleasure in his pain.

I think I transcend this world at times. Slip inside my own wonderland, the lifelong plain of the dead that I retreat inside to hide. There I am not myself (and simultaneously more myself than ever before) and all is just as I should like it. Anything I want I can have and no one is ever lost. The inevitable separation of two people (be it friend from friend, lover from lover, grandson from grandmother, or brother from brother) is a taboo subject of nightmare and does not exist any more than Tinkerbell. Inside that world my lover has no face, no name, just a presence and a devotion and perhaps he is something of both Quinn and you. A doll patched together by my tender hand part Quinn and Spencer with little stolen swatches of my older brother Leslie, my dearest friend Hayden, my cousin Ryan, and every man and woman I have ever divided my heart for. You all live inside me as good friends should and within the gates of an Autumn cemetery I can lie with my perfect mate as long as I like. Waking never hurt so much as in the moment of transition between fantasy and true reality. Knowing never martyred as it does in the collision of understanding and disappointment, a two-second space of overwhelming sorrow that is stifled to death before it can damage my psyche. Haven't you ever wondered why my eyes ache so much for that minute flicker of time as my gaze refocuses on my surroundings?

---

“A what?”

“A promise ring.” Quinn repeated, the metal twinkling in the bright florescent lighting.

My throat constricted as it began to form the same question (already repeated five times before) again. But I paused, heart a weak pulsation, and stared at the little band of platinum that hugged his slim perfect finger. My left hand, wearing what was once the companion of that ring, fisted and pressed over my heart as if I feared he would rip the ring from my digits.

“You... gave her a... a promise ring.”

The tone was hushed and I was angry with myself for sounding so small, perhaps fragile.

“Yeah.”

How do you justify sounding so flat and unbothered, Quinn? Nausea began to claw at my esophagus like a desperate animal at the bottom of a pit. I shut my eyes momentarily, willing this nightmare away with numbers that never passed twenty.

“But... your ring... it matches mine. You bought that when you gave me a promise ring. You promised yourself to ME.”

“That was a long time ago.” He murmured, one hand rising to ruffle the long arches of blond hair over his face.

“It was fucking FOUR MONTHS AGO.” I shrilled, mucus wrapping thickly around my words.

“My Mom wanted to know why I had a ring but Alice didn't, Ami. I had to appease her.” He insisted as if this were a satisfactory explanation.

“Ah. So once again we return to the original problem. The one that caused us to stay apart so long. The one that led me to Spencer and then back to you. Your mother.”

“Ami, you know that I love you. You know that. But Mom... she won't understand. I don't want to hurt my family. Or Alice. We've gone on too long to pull out now.”

“Of course. Because hurting me has never been difficult for you. Or anyone else. Do I have 'Kick me!' stamped on my forehead?” I responded scathingly, muscles trembling on the verge of perhaps surrendering to the weight of depression.

His expression was stricken for a moment before progressing to righteous anger.

“No. But you do have 'Pity me' written up there in sharpie.”

You can't have it all, Quinn. You can't use a girl to keep your homophobic family in an alternate reality and be actively in love with another man. You can't date someone for two years, take on a woman as your public partner, lose and regain your first lover, and propose marriage to both of them. Polygamy is a mutually consensual lifestyle.

“I have a right to be upset. I've dealt with you dating someone you don't even love for three years though our romance predates it by two. I have witnessed you dedicatingartexhibitsto her, calling her pet names, proclaiming that she is your 'one true love', even getting her name tattooed on your wrist. And you know what? I am sick of being your Jack Twist.” His mouth opened but I plunged on. “If you love me then show me, Quinn. The only thing I get out of this relationship is sex. She gets all the rest with bells and whistles.”

“She doesn't get in my bed. She doesn't get my heart. ”

“She doesn't get your shame, either.”

The tears erupted. From his eyes and mine as the true nature of this long-dormant torment sat on us like an elephant. And as he turned and raced off to find someplace to cry in privacy one thought rolled and repeated over and over in my mind like a damaged compact disc. One horrible, fearful concept that I had long ignored. You, Spencer, were never ashamed of me. Not ever.

---

My feet kicked lightly as they rocked forward and back above the sand. The scant sunlight of early winter bled onto the ground in a dim mockery of my shape, black against yellow in February monotone. The playground was empty and echoed faintly with the memory of laughter long deserted for the warm fires of homes. It was just me and my playground accompanied by the grating melody of a song I'd hoped to never hear again. I think they call the tune 'loneliness'. I had a furious love/hate relationship with this playground. It held beginnings but no ends and I hadn't the heart to inform it of its failed miracles. The slide had been a place of refuge when I was young and bitter; lying on my back with Hayden while we watched the embers of stars and played connect-the-dots for hours on end. On that little merry-go-round platform I had fallen in love for the first time; spinning dizzy and drunk until Quinn and I fell from the motion and rolled about giggling on the metal. He had kissed me on the cool orange surface when the both of us were naïve and giddy, he eighteen and I twenty. And you had pushed me on this swingset two years later, crowing David Bowie lyrics at the top of your lungs while I laughed like the helplessly infatuated underling I was. I swing alone now, slow and weak and still whispering songs that will never sound half as beautiful as you made them. Quinn is napping back in New York, blissfully unaware that his 'roommate' has driven all the way to New Jersey solely to sit in the graveyard of past godsends and mourn that he ever existed. I can return to New York later and no doubt be knocked back against the door by my hyperactive boyfriend demanding to know where I have been. But it is no comfort, not honestly, because I am swinging with the knowledge that I am alone in this damp sandy patch of earth. You are getting married to a woman, yourself. Quinn will never, ever be capable of screaming from the rooftops that he belongs to me. And me? I will never feel loved quite enough.