Bow Out With Grace

I always maintain my independence like a flag made of iron fibers. Many things I may be, but I am not a leech nor prone to submission. My first steps were taken without aid, if not a bit late, because I would rather be handicapped than helped to achieve a victory that was rightfully mine. If I am threatened with a situation that involves trusting others I prefer to do the task myself. Perhaps it is more a fault with my trust than a desperate need to perform autonomously. So I promise myself that I will not depend on anything for everything. Life is a process I will forage and weather alone. I can stand on my own, for I am very tall. My body may appear frail because of its emaciated stature but believe me… I brawl with the best of them.

I stomped on fingers and rotated my hips into the first act. I knew all the right phrases and had the honest eyes that bled signatures from record labels. I established myself as determined when I made a friend of my greatest foe and ran with my vocal cords three miles ahead of me. My heart was in this thing I had forged and I knew it would not stray to less worthy and more grounding spaces. People cast nets at me and I evaded every one. But then you materialized out of childhood fantasies and castoff heartbreak like some goddamn archangel. I stared you down and said I would not be your pretty princess. Eyes as black as my own widened and your teeth gleamed with something I could not define. Malice and want, devotion and stealth. I wriggled in your arms like a worm sensing doom yet you caught me and breathed your toxic passion down into the recesses of my lungs. The love took effect faster than a sedative. I was on laughing gas and ready to be operated on. You kissed me again; I stopped fighting and swooned in your arms.

My mother thinks I’m mad. She’s expressed this on many formal occasions and uncomfortable visitations at home. She thinks we are too different. Yet not so much, really. I could date a pretty blond girl if I so chose, as I knew plenty of them. But I was not interested in prom queens and scene girls. I only wanted the funky hip hop kid with the punk style and the workings of a gangster. Mom complained again. Your skin is too dark and your tattoos too many, she says; I happen to love the startling contrast between my ivory and your cocoa. And oh, your music is that horrible hip hop that she so dislikes. We trade glasses at the dinner table though I am near-sighted and you are far-sighted because we’re just bizarre like that. Squinting my almond eyes I struggle to see your world through the black plastic frames; it is blurry and defined by bright colors and shadows of movement. We turn to one another and laugh because now we can scarcely define a human form.

“Hey angel, your head looks like a muddy mop.” You tell me, reaching to touch the auburn curls that settle like coiled silk on my shoulders.

I kiss your cheek and the black boar-bristles of your beard rake my tender lips. I do not care.

“You look like one of those dust bunnies in ‘My Neighbor Totoro’.” I inform you in turn.

My scolds our exploratory behavior and excuses us from her table.

I am excellent at hard-to-get, king of abstinence and the worst tease since Madonna. Push comes to shove so often during bedtime petitions because you are a man with carnal needs and I refuse to submit. My bony arms deflect your embrace and my cheek turns to your mouth like a slamming door. You are so new to homosexuality, darling, you’ve never wanted a man. I won’t be your experiment to be cast away in the conciliatory shadows or victimized burn of daylight. You do not plead (perhaps I would have allowed the sex if you had) and your skin scalds as your grip tightens on my fragile frame. I know that you love me, my gangster boy. If you had any doubt that I loved you I would be solitary and alone rather than fighting with you. Fire meets fire in our perpetual game of Rock Paper Scissors and we burn and build like bonfires.

And one day just like a castle of cards, I slip from my terrace and dive for the tabletop. I’ve given in and am paying the price on my belly. Inside a volley of curses pepper the chambers of my heart. I’m scared in a way that makes me feel like an insect, miniscule and blind, even as you are telling me to relax and massaging my hips. I stare at the wall and the shadows we cast on it, a smudge against the orange wallpaper that looks like a monster. You kiss the sharply defined ridges of my spine with a tenderness that causes me to sob.

You defeated me.