COMING QUICK: March 31st, April 1st, 2nd at Danspace Project

the first days of spring, as seasons, sea change to open, an offering to accept.

Hey you,

It's me again. (That closeup of my face is a bit much, no?) I have this show coming up next week and it would be lovely to see you there. It is kind of funny when I read the promotional material over again and see the words "Asian male identity" because I am not sure there really is one. One that is solidified in some amalgamation of accepted consciousness. There is a power in that: the nature of the unknown as one can create and conversely, that same inability to locate something can leave one drifting in a primordial state.

I've been thinking about the hyphen: a fine line between the one label and another, the add on, the specification, and its just this fine line to differentiate between one or the other or one and the other or one with the other or one with this but not to be confused with. In Mandarin, the character for above, 上, and for below, 下, can be combined to form , 卡, which is a character that means, above all, to be stuck. The two share this fine line, a hyphen basically. However, is it a static space, to be stuck in the middle, to be locked between two spaces? Is this fine line inhabitable, even if it proves to be an uncomfortable space?

To continue this thread, I have tapped into a Taoist notion: what is above form is Tao, what is below form is a tool- tool in Mandarin also being synonymous with "container" or "vessel." (Fun fact: my middle initial just so happens to be the character for Taoism. That said, I am not an expert or a scholar or a even a dabbler in Taoism.)

So how much should I reveal? Always a question. How much agency does a vessel have? In 1, this useless tool, this folded flower, I was thinking a lot about desire and objectification, un/desired whiteness, and this companion piece upcoming shares in that notion.

I could continue, however, I have no true answers so it will last a lifetime. However, I would love to share this space with you, in the coming week, in search of this fine line.

If you are interested in reading or seeing more, here are a few links.

Promotional Video (http://enricowey.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=ae9044813dd829d3a0dd32bb0&id=c1d7f0b427&e=19c72c5b3f) shot with Manuel Moncayo

Interview with Jaime Shearn Coan (BK Rail) (http://enricowey.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae9044813dd829d3a0dd32bb0&id=efa5184c41&e=19c72c5b3f)

Conversation with Lu Yim (Critical Correspondence) (http://enricowey.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=ae9044813dd829d3a0dd32bb0&id=243e62c45d&e=19c72c5b3f)

1, this useless tool, this folded flower (Libretto) (http://enricowey.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=ae9044813dd829d3a0dd32bb0&id=ad8c0f11d6&e=19c72c5b3f)

Thank you for taking the time if you got this far. I am grateful and impressed.

Turtle power, Enrico

Libretto [this useless tool, this folded flower]

Please repeat these phrases.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

You have beautiful hair.

You have beautiful hair.

Uh, thanks?

Uh, thanks?

I have been to Vietnam.

I have been to Vietnam.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Can I stroke it?

Can I stroke it?

Can I stroke it?

Can I stroke it?

Please repeat these phrases

Hello

Hello

Hi

Hi

You have beautiful hair.

You have beautiful hair.

Uh, thanks?

Uh, thanks?

I have been to Vietnam.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Can I stroke it?

Can I stroke it?

Please repeat these phrases

Hello

Hello

Hi

Hi

He was a man, engulfed by flights of fancy, wrapped in a spectrum of colors and shades, provided for by the world around him and the worlds within him. He did love himself, not an easy feat by any means, familiar with what it did to affect those around him. Glided through, searching and hunting for that rare sense of accomplishment that only comes by a certain confidence, a belief that it could be found. Thrown off center more often than not by his capabilities than his inabilities. His greatest nemesis sprawled out in that comfortable nest.

this flower pales in comparison.

SOMETHING IS MISSING HERE I THINK

You have beautiful hair.

Uh, thanks?

this folded flower,

white,

doubled over, and over.

I have been to Vietnam.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Hello

Hi.

You have beautiful hair.

Uh, thanks?

I have been to Vietnam.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Hi.

Hello.

a repetitive clause that serves not much of a purpose

holds a through line

or guiding light

or something of that nature.

an excessively far reach

far fetches, several attempts in a particular direction

funnelling into a particular point

Hi.

You have beautiful hair.

Uh, thanks?

I have been to Vietnam.

Oh, uhm, I haven’t yet been.

Can I stroke it?

blossoms…

unfurled and opened,

exposing the true nature that the true origin is simply a larger expanse,

a blank sheet in creases.

so start over.

Please repeat these phrases.

(choking on a hard cock)

so start over.

Please repeat these phrases.

sometimes i position myself during sex so that i can see the face that is attached to the body. and that they can see the face attached to the body, so that I don’t feel like an object, as i am prone to do.

sometimes i want to be prone, an object on hands and knees.

sometimes it is easier to take it to grin and bear it.

sometimes i would appreciate it if there was something else on the table.

sometimes, though, that is all you really want.

sometimes all i really want is fried chicken.

sometimes i want the taste of a Twinkie.

sometimes i look over my shoulder just to make sure.

sometimes i rip out the few hairs that surround my asshole, rosebud, whatever, so that it doesn’t appear so… brooding.

this flower pales in comparison

this folded flower,

white,

doubled over and over,

a game of fetch and receive

giving way to a particular amount

attached to nothing more

or simply too much more.

a series of streams splintering out in disparate proportions

(this is a particular stream of thought, a water theme,

rather overplayed)

wading into lakes into rivers into,

channeling into

a stable, staple field

then

flushed out onto the docks, aye

where some thing lies, aye

crouched in wait,

weight like a paper tiger,

under a sun, white underbelly under

tributaries of veins under,

circulating back,

a point of origin, the sun, the heart,

one of many

folded over and over.

Hi

Hi

Hello

where some thing lies, aye

wait,

wait like a paper tiger.

set me on fire and i could burn as bright

attached to nothing more

or simply too much more

he prowled.

a happy kitty,

laid out in a bed of questions

hunting for something contained within these woods, part and parcel, something that he could remove from these woods, a well earned? conquest. run towards the sun towards the run his fingers through its pelt run his mouth through his thoughts to consolidate what he really thought he could say and then stop running.

Hi

Hi.

Can I…

he stopped. looking down, looking within himself, within that head that mind that could not stop running with thoughts, with himself thinking, damn, hey, will you look at that, you there. hi. i think something is missing here. Could you, maybe, just look at me, damn. that hair, i want to run my...through that space between, your legs are sore from running so stop, and spread your lips and your legs are sore from running. this is a comfortable nest. rest. your lips within mine. part them. unwrap them this parcel this gift, this poison, this. i want to run my... through that space between you and i caught within the fine hairs that ran down the back of his neck

and

he stared, reached his arm forward, lips parting,

a happy kitty,

laid out in a bed of questions and

wait for it…wait for it…

sometimes i think, geishahouseboybarefootjoblesscateringsubservientsocialclimbingcuntfaggotbitchasswherethefuckismycockenterthedragonormaybeitistimetogrowapairormaybecomeasyouareorcallitsomethingelseorwhothefuckamitosaymorethanialreadyhaveorhaveievensaidenough?

i know i have said too much sometimes

i think, sometimes, it’s all been heard and done before

i think, sometimes, this is no different.

sometimes times the sum of.

sometimes its nice to hear the same sad song on repeat some times.

Hi

Hello

I want to be inside you.

sometimes sometimes is more often than not.

I haven’t yet been.

It depends on many things, it depends on how you look at it. the time the place. there were these moments between moments, mundane moments, speaking to someone about the virtues of chocolate milk or Twinkies or the Thundercats and fighting over who gets to play which superhero. so many to choose from.

what variety, what powers, what sex.

what costumes and colors. always a clear divide between good and bad, drawn not in the sand of a playground but with a thick indelible marker. irrefutable truths?

so roles are parceled out to each wanting wanted party, playing the part that you were originally intended to play. its just a game: an african goddess, a cat with claws, a creature that disappears in a cloud of smoke…

and there this guy: he’s 10,000 feet tall, leader of the pack, a colossus of steel and shine. In this band of heroes and villains in a headlock, caught in the eternal dispute of winners and losers, he straddles this divide, regardless of good or of bad. And you look at him from below, the top of his head in the clouds. the sun casting gold through gold locks.

A gold rush. You swarm at him like an ant to molten candy, crushed underfoot as he turns away.

and as said before, its just a game.

Unmasked, on your way home, legs sore from running, you forge ahead with parted lips parted from one explosive onomatopoeia after the other, flickering under your breath: pow, schnikt, boom, blam, bampf, kablooey. like fireworks, they cascade down into a small pool below. And you stop. you caught yourself dead in your tracks. You’ve been spotted.

So you try to blend in: You smile at yourself, the same way his reached faint freckles. You raise your brow, the same way his carved a deep crevasse, arching up and above a deep blue. You tilt your neck, the same way his gave way to light curls unfurling, tumbling down into the collar of a dusty tshirt. You open your eyes wide, the same way his expanded in manic fervor when slaughtering an enemy, one foot on his prey.

And while you are caught under his colossal image, you say: I look just like you.

I want to be inside you.

Your head is up in the clouds and he is still 10,000 feet away.

SECTION I NOW CALL: RAMPANT ASSHOLE

you spend your time in a middle ground, not particularly great at anything, not a great son, not a great brother, not a great swimmer, athlete, activist, not a great friend, not a great fighter, not always a great listener, not a great american, not a great maker, not a great dancer, not a great body, not a great white shark, not so great to yourself. but decent. a decent person. a decent human being

and you think this is the way it should be, where things are comfortable, where things go unseen, where the grey area feels expansive like a wool blanket and wraps you up and shrouds you from being more than. 

(opera build up)

this is you wondering if you are living life, if you are, like every other decent and indecent human being, straddling this carnival funhouse gameshow rollercoaster called life and taking it for a ride. but you aren’t so great at heights and plunging into the depths are a bit too much for that not so great constitution. so you let it ride you. and you let it ride you cause sometimes it feels so good and sometimes it feels numb and sometimes it feels like a sunburn cause it rides you so hard that it feels like blisters bursting. and you feel this relief, with each papapapa, a haze of what just happened. and it collapses on you wheezing and gasping for air.

oh, so that’s what it feels like to be on top.

and in that high-pitched silence between caught breaths, you feel fucking great. 

COMPOSED SILENCE

Echo, in some fateful moment, became that figure who lacked a voice, who stood within the shade of the surrounding woods, buried within the woods, stripped of any substantive way of

hey, listen,

watching from afar, the slumped figures that came to pass, those that make loud proclamations and

echo echo echo gripped those trees gripped those branches and trees, gripped those words and gripped that chance to make herself heard. Destined to repeat things already heard. One of a herd. Doomed to repeat things already heard.

But,

we forget the power, of statements starkly claimed, of truths that surge and pour. That some words are worth repeating,

stripped of chatter, they necessitate repeating, lest we forget that power,

and that power of repeating.  

Left unheard, they drift into depths of pools and ponds, absorbed by oceans, crystallized in salt, folded back into a never ending cycle of evaporation, up to the clouds and back again and again to the source, these seas we see but cannot hear.  

There are those words that still travel far as long as we hear.

faint

I think there was a time when things were clearer, where the rain or snow kept the windows from fogging over fully.

I believe there was that moment when the clarity of things was just that, not less complicated, just more straightforward in the approach.

I could imagine that the kettle, raising steam in the kitchen, produced a faintly audible hiss that suggested life, a slow boil. An ineffectual whistle lisping in the other room.

I recall copies of these things, sitting here, with no photographic proof, I rely on a memory that has drowned itself in a series of superimposed fallacies. The town was a place of warmth. In fact, it might not have even been that warm. There were definitely distinct seasons in these latitudes and longitudes. And it was warm but not hot, definitely not blisteringly so. More importantly, it simply felt warm, it exuded a sense of warmth, which could be an attribute for any season. 

Perhaps it wasn't raining or snowing then. Perhaps the heat of the kettle warmed the room enough so as to leave a different imprint. Or perhaps the sealed windows in the front room, where you frequently stood, looking out, betrayed a sense of warmth, leaving a slight chill. The back of your shoulders leaned quietly into the walls, drained of color. 

My tea is getting cold?

I believe that was the moment - while the kettle whispered quietly - that I realized something was lost. More finite: the ceramic reaching the bottom lip, the sugar reaching a yearning tastebud. I believe.

I believe that was us... I believe that was it. 

It might be a lie.

---

I got your note, you left it behind, on this table, right where you used to sit, across from me, as if to say I hope you get this one. It's right in front of you. You knew I was never good at finding things except for the practical things that tend to land in the exact same place every time, when, displaced.

The keys on the hook by the front door (the bowl on the dresser) 

The screwdriver, Phillips, in the top dresser drawer (in the nightstand, by the tricky door hinge)

The screwdriver, flathead, in the top dresser drawer (under the kitchen sink, on the leftover paint cans.) 

The scissors in the kitchen (on the bookshelf, 2nd shelf, above the desk)

The letters and the mail by the front door ( on the desk, opened with kitchen scissors) 

Still, I think it took me most of the evening to see it clearly, and a handful of days to take in what was said. I'm still not for certain. Something played in the background, a mouse, a song, probably both. It was on the table. Not by the front door, not on the desk. Right across from where I usually sat, where you usually sat, right in front of me. I think this was on the table. 

 ---

Can I write down a few thoughts in silence? I'll do it in pencil. In case I get it wrong.

12. an easy description, that one day.

We arrived, shrugged our things, our clothes, our travel-induced weariness off, hightailing it to the wooden door, the one washed white with the cracks along the surface. Or, really, what little surface emerged from those deeply etched tributaries. Paint over paint, a royal blue. You rubbed your eyes, looked at yourself by the basin, breathed into your hand, sniffed, grimaced, and waited patiently for me as my toes curled, standing in front of the porcelain. A strong stream. That last cup of redeye coffee was perhaps unnecessary but the florescent allure of midnight rest stops... 

The floor was checked in white and black on a ratio of 4 to 1, rather than the usual one on one. It was morning. Still seemingly dark inside, we kept the lights off regardless. The single window across the ceramic tub was steadfast, wouldn't allow for the sun or a small dog passage. Age old saints candles, canaries trapped in glass caves. They dusted over the sill, forgotten, carried over from a former life, but remained standing, not unlike those happy martyrs. It was enough.

You gathered the shower curtain, a faded shade of. some color. Hooked it over the rod. Spigot drawn, you hummed Peggy Lee over the din of pouring water shambling into the below, spattering onto the sides where the enamel had worn away from years of usage, where grey met it’s lesser than. 

We sat bare: One sprawled out in this painted-over cauldron, cooking, fibers loosening. The other perched atop the gilded throne, watching, smoking. 

…4 minutes passed. Or maybe 7. This was the American spirit? 

Drawing the last, you climbed in, awkwardly angled around to face the door, legs straddled atop mine, half submerged, half kissing the cold morning air. Hey, just trying to get comfortable. It was a hilly terrain, an island chain easing into salted water, grapefruit and ginger(?) 

There we laid with washcloths adorning our eyes, the cheap kind that comes in a bundle, but somehow a cut above the rest - something about cleansing with something that costs a quarter leaves me feeling cleaner. 

You nudged me gentle from a threatening sleep that furiously raced around your even breath. You scrubbed my back wordlessly, without request, in vertical swipes from left to right.

--

I had gotten used to this: stewing instead of showering. It had been, at first, a retaliation against the sad state of your shower head. Then, a familiar comfort.

Now, wrestled into pleasant submission, the head flows, the pressure runs right, maybe violently so.  I lie here with this washcloth, the one I packed preciously into my suitcase. This cheap memory, this non-event in the past is as innocuous and mundane as this water surrounding. Placid pools. 

I have been here for a solid 47 minutes. I clamber out, spilling over, and hang the cloth over the rod so it will be ready tomorrow. It feels clear.

11. at pause.

-To be honest I don't really know how this works.

-How do you mean? 

-Feels upside down.

-Everything's been fine.

-Yeah, but everything is what? Two months? A couple phone calls, some emails back and forth?  We've shared the same space for about 7 hours tops. 

-Who gives a fuck? 

-I guess. Me? Mol, hand me those Skittles. 

-Who the hell eats Skittles these days? He and I grew up together, he doesn't care. 

-Shh... They're good. Fruity good.

-Corn syrup good.  Camping? You nerd. Give me one of each.

10. in these

You came back with the firewood, exactly as requested. It was a varied affair: twisting extensions with gnarled tendrils and eyes, stunted segments broken off long before due, thick, thin, dry, wet, the straight and narrow.

-I can’t use all of these but good job. Well done.

You recoiled into that same whimper that Marley does so well. She was just a puppy but she excelled at that. A natural. Scowl.  You retreated into the wood with your bottom lip protruding and a raised brow. The light gait of your walk betrayed your feigned feelings of hurt.

-Hurry home, boyo!

Without pause, you flicked your hand and wrist at me with a flash as if to say, “nag.” Guilty. I’m the first to admit.  Watching your back recede in the distance, a bellowing laugh erupted into the clouds with a violent shake. Some fair weather feathers above responded in fear, or in kind. It’s hard to say. Chirping is chirping.

The fire relies on a specific structure, or at least, that’s what I remembered from scouting, possibly the only thing I remembered from scouting. The newspaper sat within a carefully knitted pyramid of kindling then to sticks to branches to logs. It was, or aspired to be, a perfected gradient in size and weight. It fell more than a few times. I’m not that good at it apparently. As long as it held, I was happy, it was just going to burn down as the sun set.

I pretended not to notice as you returned with a bounty.  In retaliation, you dropped your fresh collection directly on my task at hand.  Before I could take in the pile in tatters at my feet, you grinned, leaned in, kissed my right temple and scampered away before I could swat at your ankles. Calve socks pulled high, city shoes, shorts. An unexpected quirk that you can’t help but find endearing regardless of how disastrous it appears. You really weren’t an outdoor kid.

You went on to fumble with the tent as I attempted to rebuild this combustible affair. Beads simultaneously formed on our furrowed brows. This plot of forest was your friend’s backyard – expansive, but needless to say, “roughing it” was a generous term.  We could leave this world at anytime, reverting to our need for running water and electric light, if need be, not fifteen minutes away in one direction.  Instead, we held our ground with an unspoken determination, a shared knowledge that there was magic embedded in this moment.

--

I could imagine running barefoot through the moss gathered under the shade, hand in hand.

I could imagine stepping gingerly into the waters, pressing our weight into the stones beneath us. The stones would be smooth, slick with growth clinging on as the force of the snowmelt pummeled into them year after year.

I could imagine us lying down in these waters, face up, fully clothed, a result of childlike tussles, breathing deep, relishing in the wet seeping into our fibers, the chill soothing our bones.

--

I surrendered my sphere to join yours. It was still light out. The fire could stand to wait.  You looked at me, hands splayed, asking for an inspection. Each pole was staked into the ground with conviction, burrowed deep into the earth. The stretched skin bowed over them, lying in wait to take on the world outside. You did well, but you knew that.

I returned to the pile of branches in anticipation.  You stood by the tent, hands on hips, triumphant, proud of that feat of construction.

--

When night falls, we will huddle by this fire, arduously achieved, naked save for this shared shroud wrapped around our shivering bodies.  Our shirts, my pants, your shorts, our socks, your boxers, my briefs will be draped across a makeshift rack. We will stare at this smoke and flame rising up and up.

When this fire dies, we will retire into this dome you built. Dry. It will hold, it will hold us; we will look up through this skin into the skies above and understand that we’ve done something right. In the morning, we will carry on.

folds

turned my corners down to a paper tiger

set me on fire and I will burn as bright.

a brief history of water, or, regarding the consequential nature of this

The room was characterized by its inhabitants, unburdened by the history of the previous, created solely for the present.  There was very little to the space itself. It was just so: personal effects, impersonal effects, inconsequential notes haphazardly scrawled on inconsequential pieces. The carpet, those fibers of burnt orange - sole survivors left behind, clinging to their ghosts, waiting for a triumphant return, almost certain a lost cause.

A warm tone perched above, above the incandescents casting dim hues, above the burnt orange crushed by years of footfall, above us on either end, hanging, leaving only a shared peal of laughter to bridge the spaces in between. 

Sitting back, catching her breath, she glanced in the mirror: a vaguely perceptible smile softly curled into the corner of her lips, a loose hairpin furled up in loose locks whined for attention.  

She exhumed a bottle from the drawer, agape, and cast a dime sized drop into her palm. A pause. A tilt of the chin. Slender fingers coasted along cheekbones and docked at the edge of her eyes. They glistened, her eyes, not out of sadness or out of any emotional wrenching - purely wet with desires, adrift with thoughts, anchored in joy.

Extracting the pin from its futile trappings, she repositioned and slipped it back in with an efficient grace. A sharp yet relaxed exhale eased the hair away from her brow. It drifted and settled across exposed collar bones, exposing a small sense of victory.

-Ha! 

She smiled. It fell just so. It felt just so.

Her reflection revealed this brief moment, fleeting, the short term soon to be replaced by another. False facts will spill over and fill the channels carved away by the years, over years.  An arrangement of composed motions cast into a reservoir to emerge later a mere afterthought. 

There might have been the scent of vanilla...tobacco...musk...sandalwood...?  

As this quiet apparition peels away from memory, when we exit this chamber to join the past, we will remove those ineffectual trappings that made it just so: those personal effects, those impersonal effects, those scrawls on haphazard pieces. We will leave behind those fibers and incandescents as the vapors join the ghosts below and the tones above. This, the unacknowledged scene, will dissipate, will erode. 

But the wisps coiled into the faint lines around her eyes, the lines that betrayed the confidences of a heart that moved with a rapturous pulse... Her wild mane, like tendrils taking root, are indelible, frozen in...falling just... 

Falling. 

She gilded her lips in rose.

- Too much? 

Never. She is just so. Perfectly just so.

9. before the turnoff

I continue to have a penchant for falling asleep for the first thirty minutes of any car ride. The residue of childhood visits to Maw-ma, winding through mountain roads to get to the other side. In the backseat, I shut down before the urge to vomit took hold. Years later, they plowed a tunnel, carving away those age-old stones to forge a direct path.  She had since moved away from home to be closer to home – to her children. Things have a tendency to come forth just as personal necessity passes, so we take heart in the fact that our pasts have paved the way for the future, begrudgingly at times.

The foliage was an unending stream. If I blurred the edges of my mind just so, it was as if we stopped moving. We were contained in this metal box on wheels, speeding up until we reached stasis, suspended within a placid body. We couldn't accelerate any faster. The law forbade it. Freefall. Something neither of us enjoyed at amusement parks but would submit ourselves to for the other. Now we know.

I conjured a lake to juxtapose the stream that flew by outside the window. Immersed in the calm of this lake was, oddly, the one moment I could sleep without a second thought  despite the tangled positions wrestled into that passenger seat. When I shook the sleep off, my face shielded from the sun, the reds and greens continued rolling, just as I had left it behind in my consciousness not long ago. Your right hand rested on my thigh, fingers softly squeezing periodically, as if looking for a pulse. 

The highway was a filter of men and women journeying north to south, south to north. Some with trunks filled with treasures held dear, some left with nothing at all, heading to the next to the next to the next. You always drove. You always held this particular focus behind the wheel, a glimmer of expectation in your sights, unfazed, impenetrable at times. Straight on till morning. Under the hum of the motor, that clear intent, that was your lake. 

With that half hour long behind us, the air whipping through, that familiar hollow sound, I surfaced from comfort every two minutes to change the radio station, lifting my feet off the dashboard each time. The search for something better always bested the ease in being still. 

A song about love. An ad for a tribute concert at Jones Beach. A song about taking it deep.  Another crap song about love. I crashed back down, the weight of this burden resting squarely on my soul. A fistful of tortilla chips quelled my unrest.  You gestured at the glove compartment knowingly. Your bare right hand returned to my thigh. No one wears driving gloves anymore, mind you.

We turned onto the off-ramp singing off-key with the mix tape you made the night before. 

8. four phrases interchangeable

we come

together

for these reasons

alone

7. a morning preceded by

I turned over as the sun eased in through the windows. It didn’t matter. I had been awake for hours. It was the nature of things.  Perhaps it was a problem, constantly ripped away from sleep, but I never mustered up the energy to do something about it. If you don’t care to act on it, can it still be an issue?  Looking down, through the shadows cast by the whatever tree limping outside, Marley had found a nice crawl space against my crotch to call home. It was warm enough as it is, in that lofted bed, my face two feet from the water-damaged ceiling. I reached up and touched it, reminded of the numerous times you cracked your skull on its rough edges:  rolling up to get some water in the middle of the night, half rooted in your subconscious, propping up on elbows to push Marley away from our legs as we struggled to stake our own territory, coming up to exhale, looking at me as you released my cock from your lips.  A chuckle always accompanied the dull thud.

There we were, on this flotilla, curled into a cotton canvas of 300-count indigo. A trio huddled in tight corners; we all had the same idea. Stay put.

The night before was less of a blur than I expected. The bartender tended bar, grazing fingers as he passed you a drink with a knowing smile. We all shared a laugh, a harmless imposition that stopped before it even began.  You shrugged and mouthed “sorry” in silence, underneath the jukebox trills of the fourteenth top song of the nation. I shrugged and smirked in response. You brushed my hand as we walked back to our group of revelers, sipping Negronis through stirrers. Libations for a balmy evening. I glanced back at bartender there, back to his usual bag of tricks, a banter that disarmed the most cautious of patrons.

You danced, I watched. I considered joining you but something about seeing your shoulders under this cast red light, swaying – was best enjoyed from a distance, a compositional thrill. Molly slumped down next to me, a dull thud on the bench that was suspiciously reminiscent of the pews I squirmed on in a distant moment. What was the fourteenth top song then? I chuckled in my thoughts.

-Going well?

-Yeah, it’s been good. I’m trying not to care cause we’re both headed off to do other things for a bit.

- That doesn’t really matter. If it works out, it works out.

-I don’t function like that.

-I know. That’s why I’m telling you.

-I know.

-Just let it happen. It it works out, it works out.

-Yeah, okay. 

-You like him.

-Yeah. Yeah, I do.

- Then get up. Dance.

These hooligans, they started to salsa, rocking their hips, spinning in circles under garish magenta, teeth bared. It was a dogfight, contained, cyclical, each adversary anticipating the one to break the chain. Molly loved to clap, on beat, double time, half time, off beat. It was an action about action, not about sound or purpose, or purposefully defeating the purpose – or it was just clapping, evidence of exhilaration.  The dogfight continued as I sat watching, squirming, a little intimidated perhaps. You and your contender accelerated, still locked in battle, dervishes, until magically, in tandem, you both swung into an out of breath heap on a floor glued together by ancient spills. A bellowing cackle ricocheted across the room. Everyone won tonight. You gazed into the lights as you gasped for air. The magenta made them brown, but bright, like polished stone. I took the remaining swig of a neglected, watered down Negroni. The melted ice left a sheet of condensation on my glass and indirectly, my hand. I wiped my left brow and cheek as you rose and sidled up against me.  

-Eric?

A sharp intake of breath, roused, you glanced over your shoulder. 

-Morning.

Eyes half wide, blurred, then shut, a slight smirk,

-Don’t yell at me.  

I chuckled and hit the sheets with a dull thud.  They swirled gently back into us. 

6. shortly thereafter, revised twice.

Hey,

It was really nice meeting you the other day, although Molly got a little rowdy and cut our chat short at the end there.  I’m still amazed by how much she ate. I know you’re heading back to Pittsburgh relatively soon but if you have some free time before then, would love to continue the conversation if you’re game. Grab a drink? The one thing I remember about Pittsburgh are all the steel bridges that span over the rivers that run through it. They were pretty incredible, to be honest. My parents lived there before I came around. Its hard to imagine your parents anywhere before you come along, no? 

Take care

on improvisation (2013)

'or and animal' is, however, not of an animal.

our collective understandings of such beasts rely heavily on words, on images. 

true interaction with these creatures is rare. 

if and when we are approached, we pulse with a familiarity based solely on an idea, a notion.

each moment is the animal.

if i approach with caution, i falter in hesitation,

swallowed whole.  

if i enter the fray,

full heart, 

i ask to be torn to shreds, 

a wild shower of fragments as they splatter to the floor. 

those pieces are ours to share,

for us to take in, 

then mop up without a trace, 

filed away in a new notion 

to be revisited or forgotten. 

5. five years ago, december twenty-sixth

I’m almost sure the snow was falling. I could have sworn at one point but that time has passed. I remember standing next to you, looking up, looking at the sky, lowering my head and looking there: deserted, silent, snow falling, maybe. Does it really matter?

I can’t guarantee how we got there. I recall saying something about late at night being the right moment to be anywhere near there. We slid on shoes, glanced at each other while doing so, and walked out into the open.

When we returned, we fell into bed and the abandoned wreath hung on your door.

4. initial

• You think it’s worth it? I mean, he lives in Pittsburgh.

• He’s considering moving here. After the summer. After school. He's probably going to move here. You know, he doesn’t always talk about people like this. He spent ten minutes describing the BLT you were eating. Like the lettuce and the tomato and how you nudged the pickle into the corner.

• I keep wet things away from my fries.

• I don’t think anyone does that. Ever.

• What? Fries?

• Talk about a BLT in detail. It’s worth something.

• ...alright.

• And how you were sitting in the sand like a baby fawn. See, it’s weird, what people notice.

• That’s the color of the walls in my apartment.

• Sand?

• No, Baby Fawn.

• That’s redundant. A fawn is a baby.

• It’s paint.

• It’s inappropriate.

• So.

• It’s worth it. Just send him a message.

3. afterthought

Five years ago, I was left behind or I left it behind on my own volition. I don't think I ever recovered. I set up a self-imposed trap for myself, personally, to walk into, by myself. I stare at it blankly and poke at it with my forefinger like a curious child, without a clue as to why it is here, how i got here and whether anything would feel different without it - a phantom perched, waiting patiently for me to make the first move. The appeal of it doesn't lie in wait at the heart, but in the trappings surrounding. My eyes rest on it now, fixed.

2. five years ago, a start.

There was the thrill of summer – on the beach, splayed across a blanket, sausages smoking on a bucket grill, the faint smell of coconut, cheese sliced on driftwood. An average summer day.

You sat diagonally across, shaded eyes fixed on the distance, gently taking in the water as I gently took you in – hair in a tight knot, wisps flying back, a gold (pink?) hair tie soldiering in the wind. The slope of a shoulder, freckled in pigment and sand, trickling down to a single nail coated in pink (gold?).

A short exchange of words morphed into a quiet walk away from a knowing crowd, directionless but always right on the edge of the waves. We carved a path along the right.

We passed a man: “the darkest, most beautiful I’ve ever seen – almost blue."

I watched the faint curl in your upper lip as you spoke, the hint of a smile that broke out into a full bodied laugh and had to disagree. A tiny heart and key rested on your throat, and perhaps within mine. There was the thrill of summer.

1. these are the things that I know.

I am increasingly lactose intolerant but I continue to eat ice cream. My bowels and I, hand in hand, all go down screaming. 

I was told at a young age that we are all unique, individual like snow flakes but I have never seen snow, 

I was given a name at age two. My given name at birth is something I still cannot pronounce. I think it just means “boy.”

Instead of stating the obvious likes and dislikes, I feel the need to qualify what I say with considered intellect. I don’t think I’m qualified, but I’m expected to be the authority on matters about myself.

I am a boy.

I’ve been around for roughly twenty-eight years, most of which were spent blindly pawing for something tangible. In the whole scheme of things, there’s nothing unique about this.  My experience will expand and extend to the extent at which corresponds to another series of finite experiences had by another. I warm to this because I am not alone. I am universal. Not a snowflake.

I have lost the ability to be blind. That is not to say that I see everything, but I do make a valiant effort to. 

I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in highschool. 

I believe that we all originate from somewhere. However, an origin varies on a particular set of circumstances that can be pinpointed to a locale, a time, an event, relying heavily on a fallible human system called memory.

I remember having at least forty-five cents in my pocket to mail you a letter. I have two quarters. I am right. I don’t think this will reach you.