The Steam In The Mirror, The Fog From The Sea (part2) free porn video

Monday Maybe what keeps us on our course is fearing how the shock of change will shake the people whom we know. Let your hair grow long, too long, then cut it short, and watch the flicker of reaction in others' eyes, whether or not they say anything -- though we all know most will say something. It's not really the way a friend might react, nor parents, brothers, sisters -- the ones who know us best, who may even love us -- they aren't really those we fear to shock. Other fears there, with them. The flicker in the eyes that puts us most on guard are those we see in the near-strangers who we may know from the next cubicle, that push-cart or the drive-in where we always buy our lunch, the couple in the apartment across the hall. A face lost in a crowd, as anyone of us is, demands easy recognition to enjoy the safety of casual dismissal, the anonymity that protects from the way that passion rends you to your core. I have been happy enough -- before you came -- to be one of the tens of thousands of almost-familiar faces staring grimly through a windshield, inching along an Interstate bound for work. Happy enough to be the bland and mild face you may have thought you saw right in the middle of the phalanx waiting at curbside for the light, the light that in a moment will let us march lockstep across the avenue. To be the person, third aisle down, fourth doorway on the right who gets accounting's weekly printout in my inbox. A world that barely sees us needs us to be constant. But I am changed. I sip my morning coffee and tell myself that I am changed. We are a conversation with the world -- sometimes, a one-way conversation, sometimes not. When we were just kids, we'd bounce a basketball in a driveway to our own running radio-announcer-styled commentary of our invisible triumphs; what were the inner guiding voices that the little girls down the street would hear? Sometimes, as now, a different monologue, one of all our unanswered questions: Why me? What am I now to do? Or, again: This is what I did once, but can't do now. There are a hundred little things, a thousand, that we will always do just so, and signal to ourselves and to whoever watches that we are who we have been all along. This man. This woman. The touch of a hem above a knee, the way legs cross, the fact of clothing that hides this, shows that: a new vocabulary for my internal commentary, for that web of words defining me, tying me to the world. Shall I sit now? I shall, I think. Step here, close enough? Closer? Not quite. Ankles together? Now knees? Swing rear? Like this? Try again. And once I rise -- oops, was that a lurch? Do I galoomp too much, walking across the room to fetch my cup of ... better tea than coffee, I think. Each tiny task, like the smaller steps I deliberately try to take, demands such concentration, tugs like a new scab might on stretching skin as you reach for something that you need. There is a hint in any twinge like that, a hint that just as you reach, you risk. Minor discomfort, reopened wound, which will it be -- and not knowing for sure, do you stop reaching? Do you find some other way, take another step so you don't have to reach quite so far? Decide that what you reached for isn't worth it just for now? Such tiny gestures: my hand holding the steaming cup of tea like this, not that way, the little grimace of my lips that I try now when I decide the first sip is just a shade too hot still. I am preoccupied with stereotype, with the expected, the conventions of behavior I do not really know. And yet the fact of me, here, defies what I expect. What we expect. I am, of course, merely delaying the moment when my conversation with myself will need to expand into dialogue. Delaying, I stay in my apartment. Stay in the old terrycloth bathrobe that I'd had for years, so that I need not start the conversation by having to chose between the new clothes that now fit or the old ones that still fill my closet. Delaying, I call in sick to the tape-recorded message line at work. Let's say I have a cubicle somewhere, within the maze of a floor of a one-block-square building like a hundred that you've seen before. When I lift my head and peer across the rows and rows and rows of Grey-cloth- covered fences pretending to be walls, I see the bent heads of people whose names I almost know: He who I rode up with in the elevator, she who nearly bumped into me by the copier. The windows in the distance, far across this sea of cubicles open out only to a view of rows and rows of office towers, maybe. Maybe just a black and rainwashed plain of parking lots, the roaring superhighway just beyond. Whether I work there, that building that perhaps you know, or down the highway off the next exit, or in this town, or that, barely matters. Nor does it matter whether perhaps my job is something else: Maybe to clean when the offices have emptied for the evening, maybe to travel a route selling, let's say, cigarettes and snacks to convenience stores. Perhaps I teach math to teenagers who hate it so much that they cannot see me, no matter how dramatically I paint myself in order to break through to them. Maybe I pitch insurance to people who worry too much, or answer phone calls from people panicked by a bill, a black screen of their computer. Work is so often a place where our lives touch so lightly upon others that we are barely there; where I don't know the names of the faces in the photos on a neighbor's wall, where she has yet to recall my name quite right. The place, though, where more people see more of me than anywhere else. I am worried about what happens when I have to go to work. The ringing of my doorbell makes me jump. I hesitate, afraid to open, but she calls my name and I know I cannot hide. The way she starts, but quickly tries to stifle her surprise, the way her eyes fly open, tells me. She mouths a silent O, quickly bites it closed into her usual bland smile, the one I see most mornings when I sling my bag on my desk and say hello. "Ah," she says, "Is ... Are you...?" I know she thinks at first that I am perhaps my sister, I know that in a minute she will look into my eyes and somehow know that's not the explanation. In a second, she will wonder if she's found an awkward secret about me, an embarrassing fascination with what's familiar to her, forbidden to me. Thinking she's found the reason why I hadn't asked her out to have a drink, to catch a movie. She says my name. She's asking, really. And with my nod, she knows. I think she knows. Or knows something, whether true or not. She stands there in my doorway, staring. Looking into my eyes, and me into hers, as I have never done before. When I do, seeing the girl -- really, she's barely more than a girl -- who wished only to be sweet to someone she feared had had not that much sweetness in his life. An assumption that's maybe right or maybe not but that says so much of her, whatever it might say of me. An assumption that, when she heard that I'd called in sick, thought: Poor thing, I'll bring some nice hot soup around, wish all the best and hope to see you soon back at work. Like me, she is from somewhere else, and doesn't know how to behave. So she came. Sweet as she is, wanting to say (despite all of the gray dimness of our daily working lives) let us connect -- sweet as I would, myself, like to be. Let us be human in the way that we know that we are meant to be, but aren't. Let us defy the Grey, defy the routine of our days. Kind-hearted girl, knows someone all alone and laid low by a bug. knows what she is supposed to do, knows that there is a good and proper way to be. Now, instead of he who she expects, there is me. She stares. Then lifts her arms. A tilt of head, a smile, and I know it will be alright to fall into her hug. "There, there," she says, and pats. And that's enough. I will, of course, explain. Or try to explain what I can't explain to myself. What I don't understand. It will sound crazy, except for the fact of me. The fact of me, the fact of change that I do not know what I shall do about. The fact that she marvels at -- whatever fact she thinks she sees. Fact of a change, fact of disguise, of travesty, impersonation. And as she marvels, at whatever it is she marvels, she reminds me that I too can marvel, reminds us both that maybe there is glinting of magic, like a violet shadow on a concrete wall, in the Grey days of our too familiar world. She won't touch what for a day I've been afraid to touch: the breasts that I will want to show her, opening my robe so she can see. But won't. Nor will she see what I've not really seen, see what I can't quite see no matter how I crane my neck, see what I've not quite sure I am ready to see. She will not need to see, or so she says. What I say, that's enough for her. Whether she believes me almost doesn't matter. She'll hold my hand in hers, and tells me how if a touch of nail file there and there would be just right. She'll grimace over my old brush, and stroke it through my hair, murmuring how to cut it here, and there, to give a little shape, to comb this into bangs, would be quite nice, don't I agree? A sea of secret whisperings to slip into, of subtle suggestion: This is what we do, and this. We think that this ought to be done this way, see? Isn't that better? It takes only a word, a touch sometimes, and though I feel there is a lifetime of knowing still be absorb, of tiny lessons learned, unconscious wisdom, her never-spoken offer to be a guide feels like a weight lifted from me. Feels as if I now can lift my head, shake free from that inward curve of chest I had, unthinking, slumped into. Yes: those are breasts there, I don't care whether you see or not. A toss of hair out of my eyes: yes, that's right, that's the way we do. So there. Is it a woman's wisdom to know we have to cope, that railing against fate or beating fists upon the stones won't fix what's wrong, that what we have to do is repair what we can and find the stratagem to bring us closest to our desires? To know when it is time to purse lips as and stroke your lipstick slowly along those bow-like curves, careful not to muss, careful so that his greedy eyes follow and think of maybe just another kiss. Is it a woman's wisdom, knowing when it is time to yield and when it is time to tuck everything he mussed up back into place? Or not. In a friend's words, in a friend's touch, a deeper wisdom that what I have become is not a generality, not someone's stereotype. What I have become is me. Still me. What I have been, what I will be. In the warm waters of the words she washes over me, a way forward emerges. Beyond the comfort of knowing I can find a way, she hints that all the things I need to know are knowable. That I can in fact know them all. With a murmured word or two and there with that gesture she shows me how to make, we weave another patch of what might seem to be disguise or what it seems will be part of the surface me the world will see. We see -- perhaps she told me, or it was something I knew -- that if I simply try to step into the space the world reserved for me, it will not work. Not if after I pull my car into my space, it is now smooth and stockinged legs that swing out from the open door, not if it should be the clatter of high heels that at the usual times makes an office neighbor lift his head to mutter good morning. I could, of course, simply fill up a suitcase, run off to another place -- I have done that before. But what might happen if I tried to slip into the particular world that I know, if the change to me is unveiled more slowly? If it grows? Could I gradually appear to be what I appear to have become, so that there is no shock of change but only the fact -- the fact that looks as if it were always true. Hair grows an inch a month. I start with hair that likely was an inch or two too long for who I was; before too many more weeks pass, my hair will hide the back of my neck, ears will be covered. In two months, three, when I bend my neck to the side, ends of my hair will tickle my shoulders. A loose white shirt or a baggy cardigan will (particularly if I remember to slump) hide any new curves of breasts, of waist. And if in weeks to come, I sometimes need to arch my back and fabric presses curve, and if the new shirt that I wear a week or two from now is not as loose, or if perhaps it buttons down a different side, would anyone remark? If baggy sweaters go from brown to beige to primrose as the weeks go by, would anyone remark that their colleague in the third cubicle over looks a little more sprightly these days. Perhaps it is that spring is coming soon? If we agree to sneak a change of pronoun in, how might that work? She might, say, go back to the office tomorrow and mention to our oh-so-busy supervisor that she swung by to my house the other day. And then, oh so casually, she could well say of me: Oh, she is under the weather, but she should be fine in a day or maybe two. Would there be more than a curt nod in response? What if, the next day or the day after when someone in another cubicle asks: Where is what's'name? the answer is: Oh, she is ill? If chatting by the copier, the vending machine, my friend should let my name float out with an extra "a" or "ie" at the end sometimes, who would really care that much? Would it take a month, two, before a certain unformed memory of me would fade? Imagine that it could be just a game of clothes and pronouns that sets the rules with which we engage the world, and it does us. As we huddle, whispering like two teenage girls, with plots and plans and tactics for the campaign ahead, a notion that seemed impossible at first seems less so. We could do this, we might just. I grin, she grins. Relief for me. For her, I think, delight at playing with conventions, with constraints that seek to limit, that all too often say: Oh, he can do that but she, well, she's just a girl. For her, maybe our conspiracy is a chance to laugh at all those "just-a-girls," to reject any "merely" that a man might say, to insist there's no such thing as "but-she-can't." Or maybe it's just another way to know that when he thinks he can make her dance his tune, he's really dancing hers instead, another chance to savor how he plows on oblivious, dancing your dance, not you his. Or maybe it is when he is dancing to your tune and you to his that you can see where the deepest joys lie. **** Mondays for change. Fridays for abandon. The other weekdays are for getting on, for somehow seeming to make it for another slice of time. Saturdays and Sundays are for me. Alone. Each incremental step that we plot, I unveil on a Monday. The torso's twist that for an instant reveals, a sweater in a pastel shade, a flourish for finishing a gesture, a pursing of lips: a moue. Mondays are for the whispers that the girls breath into each other's ears as they nibble on the sweet rolls that they brought to work. Mondays are when they unwrap themselves for another week, jackets falling open, coats slipped off and feelings that had been held deep, deep within delicately unveiled and lifted up to the light, the blue fluorescent light of the coffee break room, in order to be shared. And I am there sometimes. On Mondays, for the tales of the Fridays past, the stories from the hours after we step into the lavender shadow of approaching night. Listening, for what have I to tell but how it feels to cling here on the edge, the way that when I was oh so much younger I might have felt as fingers slipped along the wet planks of the pier, hanging there in the chill dark water, unwilling to let go and be immersed, not wanting -- not at all -- to try to paddle to the other end where all the other brand-new swimmers wait. Not sure that a frantic lunge and splashing panic can bring me safely to where the white sand of the lake bottom gleams dimly through the water. And what should I say of Fridays, the first Fridays after that one Friday, except that I stroll through the evening for a bit, sometimes with her, until her own hunt led her around a corner, through a door I dare not enter. On some Friday night, I knew, she knew, she'd pause just as the stoplight flashed; cock her head, arch an eyebrow with the unvoiced question -- and I would follow her, not waiting this time for the light to flash its green and tell me I could go straight across the avenue. A month of Mondays, though, would leave me still halfway: an ambiguous half-noticed presence, a mist drifting past cubicles at work and later, as the day winds to a close, and we drift from our cubicles, a night creature not yet too clearly read as I step out and pause for a time in the foggy shadows of the parking lot, gazing into the purple of the evening sky. Mondays. Tuesdays, I regroup. Tuesdays, at least at first, I barely venture out. I miss the talk at coffee breaks about how nice that outfit looks; those shoes. How well that skirt fits her, how the highlights the stylist streaked in her hair are just perfect. It will take several Mondays of that heart-thumping first step into the sea of cubicles before I'll explore Tuesdays. Wednesdays, I skip the staff meeting and let her play the game of pronouns that we plotted. We share a moment with a mirror, trying lipstick, studying a magazine. Thursdays, I take a tour around the edges of the outer row of cubicles. Eventually, I'll likely breathe a greeting, a voice more flute-like than I think it used to be, a gesture tried first on a Monday, tried again. Fridays, for now, I wait. We decided that I'd wait. That there would come a Friday afternoon when someone might pace through the maze, drape himself oh-so-casually on the halfwall of my cubicle and suggest perhaps I might care for a drink. Just might. Then I will know our planning worked. "How does it go?" she asks. It goes. It goes. But never arrives. She thinks, she tells me, that I -- my former me -- am gradually dissolving before everyone else's eyes, that I -- the me I am to be -- am gradually resolving into focus. Saturdays, meanwhile, are for waking in my bed, alone. Alone. Alone. Saturdays are for wondering about the Friday that has yet to happen. And Sundays -- oh, this time of year, Sundays are meant for fog seeping its drizzling rain, days to wonder if the dim chill of isolation will ever come to an end. To soak in a hot tub, until steam fills the room and I can't see myself in my mirror. Wondering when incompletedness will be resolved, when that part of me that now seems to be dying off will drop away and I will at last clearly emerge. I as I was maybe. Or I as I am to be. On Sunday, I remember (as I was taught so long ago) that it is the truth that we shall know sometime, whatever truth might be. That we will know it when we trample on garments of shame, that it is when the two are one, when the outside is like inside and the male with the female neither male nor female -- that it is then that truth at last is seen. Is there a more essential me, more essential you, him, her? Someone deeper than our name suggests, someone who is there despite the way we look. Sundays, now, Grey like the fog, before the round of days uncoil again, before I take my tiny steps into that new web of chat and glances exchanged that increasingly connects me -- seems to connect me -- in a different way to a different world. Tiny steps, like a minuet, a gavotte. Violins flicking precise crystalline notes, to match the precise turns and stops and steps of this most elaborate of dances. In this quadrille, we approach, step apart and twirl away. The ebbs and flows over the weeks; come close, retreat; smile and flee. Except my flight is not a flight, just a swirling around to the far end of the ballroom where I will spin again and the long gown will float behind so he will catch his glimpse of tiny ankle, curve of a calf. And with a tiny gasp, inhale. "Ah," I hear you say from somewhere behind me, somewhere I cannot see. "Ah yes, the dance." You're back? "Shh," And do I really hear you now? "Shh, don't turn now. I am back. For the moment." To see what you have done, could that be it? To come to me, on this Grey dismal Sunday just tear me apart once again, leave shreds of me scattered on the ground, bits for the wind to seize and tumble down the gutters of the empty streets. Are you back now that I'm almost reknit the pieces of me, now that I barely manage to drift fog-like, out of focus in the world's eyes, not that I think I might be just able to negotiate my way through all my Mondays, through the waiting of my Fridays I expect will never end, through Sundays, Sundays, Sundays, all alone. "You are doing quite well." I am only hiding in a careful confusion of clothing and gesture, pronoun and presence slowly revealed, floating quite unremarked past others eyes until, some Friday down the road, some will see, or hear, or know somehow to ask. "Unremarked?" Unremarked, yes. That's the plan. To gradually change, unnoticed, right before their eyes, until maybe someday they might could see what you have made me -- or much more likely only somehow sense the halfway being that I am, that presence in the corner of an eye that must be blinked away. "Are you quite sure that you are, as you say, unremarked?" That's what I need. That's what I need. Need to be unremarked, because of you. Because of what you have made me ... "What I have made?" What you have made me ... "Ah," And if I could turn to see, I know that you would nod; but do you smile or frown, is that sympathy that makes your eyes glow or a call to revelation making you crease your brow. "Ah," you say. "How can I have made you? How can anyone do that?" You did, you did. You came, like a ghost in the night, an incubus and with your touch, with your insistent touch, you did. With your words, words like battering rams, you broke through me, shattered my doorway, entered and made me. Made me. "That sounds quite mad." >From deep within, a red wave rises. From behind my tight-shut eyes, for now I do not want to see what I am sure is your mocking grin. Impotent anger: Oh, I want to clench fists and drum them on your chest. Oh yes, I am quite mad, that you -- yes you -- have done this to me, that you, because you wanted to, because you can, because you have the power, because you can do what you will, what you desire. That you, because you are so large, because you are so certain, because you come and go so freely, as freely as I would like to come and go myself, can do this. Oh yes, I'm mad. Oh yes, as I flit through my days, just beyond the focus of the eyes around me, oh yes, as I bend my head in my study of the tiny things that my change now demands that I must master, oh yes, I am quite mad, quite mad at you. "I meant," (and now I am quite sure that you are grinning) "I meant mad in quite the other sense." The other sense? "I meant: How can it be that some unnamed, unknown visitor in the night can do what has been done to you? An incubus? My touch, my strange and potent seed in you: That can remake you? In a single night, my touch on your shoulder, my fingers on your skin, my erect cock inside your mouth, that can remake you?" Yes. Yes, that can. Yes, you have. "How can it be that we have made a myth," you say. "The two of us, here in this gray little place, where that billboard for the Chevvy dealer looms, under this overcast sky, by that litter-strewn beach where the cold gray sea batters so mindlessly at the shore. A myth, we two?" Call it what you will "Or just another small, gray story from the shadows, from the shadows where people, good people never go. Two of us doing what the good and upright should never do?" And yet I am remade. I am. I feel it, when on a weekend evening, pacing in my dark apartment, the hem of the skirt I dare not yet wear at work touches my knee; feel it when his eyes dart my way across the parking lot at the end of day and linger, just a second longer than they might have once. I feel it in the way the heaviness between my hipbones roots me to the ground in a way I've never felt before, the way the slight new weight upon my chest shifts as I turn. I feel in the way my hand now wants to float, the way more delicate fingers need to flutter sometimes. "You feel you are. Perhaps, though, what the world sees is something else." You mean? I don't know what you mean. I won't know. Won't, because I do know, but I do not want to say. "Perhaps all that the world sees is someone playing at something that's quite impossible." I do not want this, no. I did not. You did this, not me. "It is impossible, after all," you say. "Isn't it?" It can't be. I need it not to be. "Perhaps the world sees what it always saw, though you denied it." I will not look at you. I will not. I will not look and see how you are grinning, leering at me now. "Perhaps what the world sees now is just a shadow who is breaking down. Who sheds his self control, who sheds himself, as he breaks down. Who thinks, who really thinks, a creature in the night has wrought a kind of magic. Who thinks, who honestly believes, he's been transformed. Who thinks, who dares to think, he can fool us. Perhaps as you sashay down the aisles between the cubicles, they look and snicker at the crazy little ... well, you know the word." You do mean to shatter me, you do. That was the meaning of your hand on my shoulder in the bar. When I stepped in, and one man's glance asked me a question, proffered an invitation I refused, that is when you stepped out from the shadows, from the cold, summoning me with the weight of your touch on my shoulder: You are my punishment, you are now as you were then the one who is to tear me asunder, rip me in two and leave me gasping my last breaths, huddled there on the ground. You are an enemy, surely. "Madness," you whisper now. "You sound quite mad." A pause that lasts a moment, feels an hour. "But," (And do I really hear your voice.) "But ..." Now, at last, I feel your touch again. And now, I dare to turn, for I have no other choice; I steel myself for your cruel smile but see only the wet gleam of your eyes. Am I then mad? Am I lost in hallucination? Is that what all this is, all this that I feel in my bones has happened to me, this change that has re- framed, refocused the world. This change I swear, I swear I did not want. "Did not?" Did not, did not, did not. "Then why," you say, your voice so calm and reasonable, "Why have you never screamed your protest? Why have you not fought back?" I can? I could? "You haven't tried." I haven't, no. I have, from the moment that you first touched me, followed along; I was seduced. Your touch, the desire in your eyes, swept me along. That's why, surely that's why. "Not from the first touch, though. Remember?" Yes, I remember. I remember the shock of that touch, as if it were electric, as if a spark leapt from a doorknob. The mere fact of touch, the weight of your hand on me, not much weight, but still there. I remember following you out into the foggy night, a pace or two way, not touching, not then as we walked on, silently, step for step into the dark. I remember. "Yes." Remember walking on, down streets I'd never seen before, sometimes past windows glowing, golden, in the dark, sometimes just long, long blocks of empty building looming blackly against the not-quite-as-black sky, washed in silver by the moon. We walked and walked, like soldiers marching in step, imagining there was a goal we sought instead of merely spinning on our heels at the parade ground's edge in order to march back. "We walked a long way, a very long way that night." We did. "A long way; but then, there was something very big hovering over us, needing to happen. That maybe we weren't sure we were quite ready to have happen." I remember. It was when we reached the water's edge, when we could walk no farther, where the black breakers and the silver spume crashed onto the silver beach. We stopped, in step, just as we'd marched. We could, I guess, have done our neat about-face and gone back. "But." But you stepped to me, and put your arms around me. I said ... "You said no." I said no, but you didn't stop. "You said no, but you meant yes." I meant yes. Yes. At long last yes. Yes: I see you nod. I remember your arms around the small of my back, drawing me close, until my belly was pressed tight to you; remember how my back arched, as my face tilted to reach yours. Remember the shock of feeling your arousal. "Tell me," you whisper. "Did it matter, at the moment, that you could feel your own, firm and swelling between us?" I did feel. "Did it matter, if what you felt was you, engorged with desire, your own self yearning outwards to my body, erect. Or would it matter if what you felt instead was that unfolding of desire within, warm waves begin to roll up from deep within your core, a damp that comes as magically as the dew comes in the morning?" It didn't matter, not when your lips brushed mine, then pressed. Not when, the moment that my own lips parted and your tongue pushed in, the very second that your arms pulled me the final, closest inch to you. "Later." Later, later in bed. Yes. Yes, it mattered. "Yes. Almost, the first time, almost we reached to the place where nothing else mattered." We didn't though. I woke, sure that you'd left, sure that it was a dream. "No dream." No dream, no. Really, a kind of nightmare. What I'd always feared: the whispering, the hiss of words, hidden behind a hand as one's lips bend to the other's ear. The whisperings from deep inside myself. "That who you wanted that night was a man." That who I wanted was a man, yes. That who I wanted was someone whose body looked like mine did that morning, when I finally wiped the steam away and looked into my mirror. Like mine, though sometimes, the quietest whispers knew, someone who was more. Whose heavy arms might bulge with all the power he would need to hold me close, more power than I had in my own arms. Whose thighs, columns infused with the strength he needed to drive into me, more strength than I had. What I wanted was someone strong because I wanted to be strong, wanted strength in a lover's reach for me because his need for me demanded all he had, because to hold me, even for a moment as I fly through the world, is worth that. "And did you want to hold this man?" I did. I did. "Want to hold him, as you poured yourself into him?" No, not that. Not that. Wanted instead to hold and draw him closer, feel him moving, work himself closer, closer. Wanted my strength to be the way that I could fly, and his to be the way that he could draw me to the ground, just for a moment, before together, we could fly beyond where any wings that I might have could carry me. "And when I took you in my arms, it didn't matter, did it, that it was a man, looked like a man, taking a man, looked like a man?" It didn't matter. "And when I turned to you in the bed, that first time, and you opened your thighs so I could settle there, it didn't matter that I looked like a man, taking a woman?" That did. That did matter to me. "And when we almost made the leap, and didn't and yet still dared another time, and you surrendered -- did it matter if one lover delighting another looked like man, looked like a woman? If one lover being delighted, looked like a man?" Perhaps it really doesn't matter, no matter what I really feel? "Perhaps." Friday "That's crazy talk," he says. The singsong lilt of his voice makes his words float across the small round table as lightly as a joke. His dark brown eyes gazing at me say he wants to reach to lay his hand on mine, but will not. Just as, how long ago was it at this same bar, his brown eyes glanced at me, reaching to me, me wanting -- I see now, wanting -- to reach to him, too afraid to make the leap. The bar is more crowded this time, a buzz of conversation, fug of desire that leaves the two of us all the more alone with each other, in that small space made by turned shoulders of other couples, would-be couples. "Crazy talk," he says again. It does seem mad to walk a daily round, get up from sleep, let coffee drip as always, pad into the bathroom, let the hot water of the shower like the first hot sip of coffee wash over me, make me feel whole, feel more solid. To wipe the steam from the mirror, trying to see clearly as I stroke my brush through longer hair than I have ever had. It does seem mad to see a woman there, in the steam of the mirror, to see, too, that woman swing legs through the open door of my car, to feel the necessary sway of hips as I pass between the cubicles like mist, like fog. Mad to see indifferent neighbors lift heads and grunt; mad to wonder if who they see is the woman I see, the man I was, or anyone at all. And what does he see now, gazing at me, across the table, in this small dark space between the buzz of courtships, behind the wall of men's backs turned to us? My hair, in fact, is long. My shirt, in fact, is pale and thin so you can see the shadow of my arms beneath. My pants, in fact, are white. They briefly hug my hips, fall loosely: a cut of cloth let's say is -- well, maybe let's not say. Not now, as I let the rise and fall of his voice, a melody almost, ensnare me with his words. The flourish of gesture, the theatrics of phrase and tone that let him sweep me from the street into the safety of the store: They are so distant now they might never have been. I look into his face and wonder if, just as a campy curve of arm gathered me from another's eyes that evening, I might someday see the mild lines of his dark face harden, see his body swell and grow and firm to fend another off and so take me for himself. Crazy, I know he thinks, to imagine that a glance, a touch can transform the way I say. Crazy to let desires remain unvoiced, to dream that they can flower and remake us. Crazy, I want to agree, then lean to him and run my finger down his chest, to let the slightest bite of a nail I have let grow a little longer put the unasked question: But are you sure? Crazy, is it really crazy to think a touch transforms, as my touch might, oh let's say, unleash a desire of a man and let it fill him, remake him; that my touch there along his thigh, his cheek, might not lead him rise towards me. I will not touch him, though. His singsong is a foreigner's. He's talking about the far place from which he's come, about being a stranger here. We sit, knee nearly touching knee and in the rise and fall of every word, in the way his dark eyes seek mine out, the way I know his hand yearns to reach for mine, I know he wants to say we are the same. That we could share our sameness. The warmth of eyes in his round face, the soft curve of his jaws, like the song of words that he chants, that he is chanting still, all promise tenderness, I can see. All promise: We are the same. That I can give and you can take. That if in fact my finger were to stroke its line down his chest, or were my lips to brush smooth skin, that his would, too; that should I reach to see if he will rise to me -- and so he would -- that he in turn would touch so I would rise. That should my lips encircle him, so would he hold me in his mouth and drink me in; that should he take me as you would, that I too could shout my joy as I pumped myself into him. He is not at all like you. Alas. Behind us, hands reaching, find hands to hold. An arm wraps round a waist, two bodies sway; then another two, another two. A head rests on another's shoulders. Soft whispers and quiet laughter near; from farther comes the harsher hiss of voices, where as the sailors in their civvies lined up by the wall negotiate a price with the older men in neat dark suits. And still, as his web of words swirls, he sees somehow that when he asks, I will not dance, that when he reaches, my hand will drop from the tabletop. He knows. "Why do you run?" he asks. "Why are you fleeing?" He thinks I am ashamed. He tells me that understands, for he is just like me; he has a story just like mine, he's sure; all of the not fitting in, all of the yearning so long misunderstood, so long denied. We could, he tells me, lay back afterwards, shoulder to shoulder on plumped up pillows, lean heads together so the corners of our foreheads touch, and tell each other all the secrets that we already know, already share. We could lay there, afterwards, in the golden light, poured into each other's arms once passion's spent, let fingers toy with glowing skin, smooth rumpled hair and maybe after a while again rekindle fire lower down. Yet I still sit. Legs crossed, right knee locked tightly over left, hand at my throat. As his words push, and push, as he leans, more urgent now, across the tiny table, I know that I will not. He knows this too. Knows what I see: Desire that wants to take, to hold; desire that's enflamed when first denied, that sees the game of show and chase and burns to chase, so that blood pounds and vision reddens, so that the quickened pulse engorges. Not my desire. Not mine. But his. Desire wanting and denied sharpens the edges of his words. "You're not," he says. "You aren't really. The story that you tell, it's just impossible. It's just a dream." It's not, I know it's not. "It is, it is," he says. "What are you? Why do you lie about what you are?" There is no need to lie, not here, he says. No need for those like us, he says, to hide and hang our heads and be ashamed -- not anymore. And anyway, not here. Who do we kid? Behind us, pairs of men dance, muscles bulge as heavy bodies pull heavy bodies close, hard bellies press, swelling desires brush and press and throb. Not wanting to meet his gaze as he pushes, as he demands what he demands of me, I look away and see a man probe his tongue deep into another's mouth, I see a hand work past the top of so tight jeans to grasp the flesh beneath. His gaze follows mine, flitting around the fevered crowd. Asking me: Why not? Saying: See, there are others. Saying: See, it can be a kind of normal. I know that the sharp edges that he is now filing on his words are meant to start to cut. Perhaps to hurt, or perhaps because he is a surgeon and thinks he must now excise something he's sure he sees. Perhaps he cuts because a mathematician in him needs to cancel an irrelevant term he sees in the equation: That constant by the variable that says what I want is only to be normal. I know, from his words, from the way the edges start to cut that he thinks maybe it is just as simple as that. Why let the censure of the past define us now, why not be proud, exult? Why not crow with triumph and with delight when it is a man who you desire, a man whom you pump your seed into, and not the woman you are supposed to love but don't. Why play the role, pretend to be what you're not, indulge the others' -- the normals' -- need to mock? Why let your wrist fall that way, let your voice be a flute, let your hair flow and fall and catch the breeze? But: Oh I know, I know I am not normal. I know how I've been touched, know what I see in my mirror and what he has not, what no one has seen but you. And where are you? Where are you, now that I drift formless as fog here, in the night. Angry now, he pushes himself from the table, pushes it so that it totters, almost falls, thrusts himself to his feet. The mild lines of his mouth harden, his eyes narrow. "You're just a fake," he snaps. "A pretend thing." I swear I see his pulse hammering in his neck, I swear I think the swelling muscles of his arms want only to grab me, shake me. His feet apart for balance, thighs bulging because the rocking table won't let him stand easily, I see his mouth forming words, more words, more hurtful words that I cannot, that I refuse to hear. And spinning on his heels, he leaves me there. I've always feared to make a scene, feared being made a scene over, imagining a line of heads swiveling as eyes hone in on me, imagining the lifted arms and pointing fingers, the whispered "did-you-sees," "can-you- imagines." The narrow path I've walked on all my life is gouged deep into a meadow's soft green by that fear, among others. A path so narrow, so meandering that sometimes I almost trip as one foot catches the other calf as I gaze, yearning, at the mountains on either side, at peaks soaring to the sky and washed with rose and violet light. So many fears, so narrow a path. Leading away from where I know I want to be. He's gone -- out to the street, into the dimness of the back of the bar, to find who he is looking for tonight -- gone far to quickly for me to thank him. A scene, at last. A scene survived. As I'll survive. *** "And sooo," archly, she draws the vowel out, "And sooo, how was your Friday?" We sit together, sipping coffee, Monday before the girls can gather. It is so many weeks, how many weeks, so many Fridays waiting, and still in vain. She asks, and I have nothing to report. Except the liberation of my scene. I want to ask, want so badly to ask, if she believes. If I am just a game she plays, as I suspect I am for you. I want to ask if she thinks that underneath the smooth black cloth of today's pants, the shallow concave of my lap is what I say it is, or just that I know the drag queen's secret of how to tuck myself away. I want to ask if the way my wrist is bent is how I should be, if a faint dust of rose along a cheekbone is quite right. I want to ask if I'm a scene, if I am a scene that I am making, if our plot for my dissolution, re-resolution is a scene that she is making, a play she's writing for a purpose I don't see. I want to ask: Were I some Friday evening not to walk on straight across the road but if instead I were to turn and follow her to a bar, and if we shared a drink or two, would she then still let a man approach, sweep her away? Or if in this game that she maybe plays she instead of that would want to lean close to me, sweet warm breath in my face, and let fingertips trail along the curve, the smooth and concave curve where my legs meet. I want to ask if she'd let her lips touch mine, like a moth might touch. I want to ask what would she think, as her tongue traces the soft line where my lips touch, if as she tastes the waxy sweetness of my lipstick, if her finger finds another line where lips meet. There, where her fingers had trailed along that curve, there between my legs. I want to ask if she would let her finger lay there, help there between those lips, feeling desire weeping. Or if, wanting to curve fingers around what she might want inside of her, she'd simply let her hand fall by her side, and smile at me before she turns to the man grinning beside her at the bar. A different scene to make, I guess. "Well," now she smiles, "Well, there's always this Friday." Friday, again. Our work, any economist would say, is the major part of who we are. The shape of my days is dominated by my work. Numbers in charts, words battered out of a keyboard, spit out from a whirring printer: Let's say it is work like that I do, work meant for Grey-walled cubicles under flickering fluorescent lights. Waiting by the printer for my work, the result of my work, to come, gazing out at the deepening steely Grey of evening, I realize that one again, I have reached Friday. Yet another Friday. Am I impatient? -- tapping the inch-thick stack of paper from the printer on the table, all the edges of this week, this month, this whatevers- worth of work needing to be neatened, lined up, ready to turn in (and just in time) to the fellow waiting for it, waiting for me, down by the corner. He smiles -- as much as any of us ever smile here at work -- as he glances up from his desk. A tired S of dark hair slips down his forehead, brushing his brow, wanting someone's two fingers to pat it back to place, combing from his part a time or two just to be sure. A half day's growth of beard shadows his jaw, the hours we have spent here makes his face seem just a little wan, makes me lean against the frame of his office door, the two of us sharing our week's-ending weariness, waiting in case one of us needs to, wants to, tell the other something. Anything. I lean, as if the weight of hours had made me tired, as if the strain of preparing what I have prepared for him, what waits before his eyes for him, has somehow unwound something that had restrained me, something that stiffened me inside. Perhaps, not really leaning, I drape myself on the doorframe's metal edge. Waiting. A word or two, perhaps more. Work words, they can be paragraphs but really boil down to a word or two. Problems? No? Yes? All good? Yes? No? Need something? Not that he's brusque. He's smiling, just a little. It is the end of the week, a Friday evening, we are allowed, we can allow ourselves to unwind a little from this pretend-great task of work that we've embarked, it is a time when we may stretch out the kink in our lower backs from hours lost in concentration on our work. We can look into a colleague's eyes and see. "Friday," he smiles "Yes, Friday," I reply. And wait. Wondering if he is the one who will ask. Wondering what he sees, what he is thinking as his eyes dart, as his glance flits. On me, the clock. The spot on his desk where there are no photos of wife and children carefully arrayed next to the in-tray. A few seconds, a minute. Waiting. Will he? An unvoiced sigh, push of my elbow against the doorframe. Upright: will that be the signal that he needs to see to say, no, stay a bit. "Stick around for a bit?" he halfway asks. Stick around? Yes, oh yes. Oh yes I'll stick around "I'd like to take a fast look," he smiles again. "I'm sure it's just exactly what I want." And so, of course, I stick around. Outside, the steel sky deepens into velvet blue, a star, a planet, sparkles like a tiny jewel. The clock above the water cooler ticks, voices mutter their see-ya's, have-a-good- weekends. I hear her giggle at a low muttering from somewhere down the corridor, hear her heels tap-tap-tapping -- she always wears heels and a short skirt on a Friday -- as she heads towards the door. She stops for a moment by my cubicle: "Coming?" she tilts her head towards the elevators. "No, he's asked me to wait for him." She arches an eyebrow, breathes a teasing: oooo. "No, no," I blush. "Just work. He just wants to check ..." "Oh yeah. Of course." I blush again, she winks. For a moment, we are in high school, chattering by the lockers, oblivious to the crowds jostling by on the way to class. That look, he asked me to wait; what do you think? could he? will he? what will you do? For a moment we are giggling, wondering if we're poised on the edge of a leap. I am so young, so new at this, just as she was (and not so many years ago) laughing with a friend down by her locker, wondering what he will want -- whoever he had been, whoever the inevitable he had been. Knowing but not really knowing. Wondering what I should do, awkward as a knock-kneed girl clutching her heavy textbooks, blushing and uncertain. And yet, if I had been there, in whatever high school's whichever hallway full of lockers, pressing my books to my breasts, young and unknowing as she, I'd still have known more than I know now; unsettling me now, as I wait in my little cubicle. A lifetime more of whisperings by the lockers, giggled stories walking home together, magazines sandwiching answers with the photographs of how to wear your hair and who the hottest boy in Hollywood was dating now. If I had been there, by the lockers, trembling on the edge, instead of the one watching from across the way, I'd know so much more now. Instead of watching, wanting but knowing that he -- whoever he had been -- had already set his snare, had with his glance, the husky rasp of an almost question, had been the one to catch her interest, make the two of them giggle there, down by the lockers. parTell me, tell me, I want to ask. Tell me, what should I do? What if he walks on back here? Stops there, right by my cubicle -- do I smile? This way, like that. What is too much? If he leans there, against the half-wall, do we lock eyes? Do I glance and then look away? If he asks, do I try a yes, or simply nod, afraid the word would catch and shatter in my throat? And if he sits? Or if he leans and brushes a hand? a knee? What do I do? What do I want? She grins again, silently mouths the words: Good luck. And so I wait. Waiting, wondering. Thinking: We might very well have a drink, we would be sitting where, at the bar? There'd be a buzz of conversation all around, perhaps not quite drowning the line of melody of an hit song from when we both were kids, the pounding of a bass guitar. I'd perch, I'd have to, on the edge of the wooden stool, legs crossed primly, stiffbacked with nerves. He would have draped his jacket over the back when he gave up his own stool to the girl who'd just arrived, I think. He'd speak his half-heard words to me; I'll nod and speak words he would likely never hear. Nervous, I'd drink too fast. And he'd order another. Standing, because he'd have given up his stool, he'd be much closer. Perhaps the warmth from all the people filling the bar, more and more as Friday freed them from their week, might make him yank his tie a little loose, might lead him to unbutton his collar; perhaps that, or just the fact he'd be standing closer might make me think I felt his heat. Perhaps it'd be when he leaned towards me to slide my drink over. I'd see his eyes glance down my front, see how he shifts his weight from foot to foot. I'd see him look, unable to not look, as the buzz of others' words, the music from so long ago, the clink of glass the shock of laughter cutting through, the sounds all rising, swelling until we two were isolated in a tiny space of unheard words and unsaid thoughts. A wall of sound around the still and silent eddy that enfolds us. His eyes rising slowly from the valley of my front, caressing that smooth V of skin, that curve of throat, the red plush of my lips, my dark framed glowing eyes. Eyes gazing into eyes, green eyes into my Grey, imagining that through the dark opening of iris we could see a soul, that a gaze might so softly touch the intangible other, make him uncurl so you can gape at the wonder of his size, the colors he is to share with you. My eyes, pretending not to see him gazing down my front, fixed on his hands resting, so large they cover mine, the heavy skin stretched over the knobs of knuckles barely containing the strength that pulses through the thick veins that feed his half-clenched fingers. I see: His forearms, tendons and muscle exposed by a turn or two of his cuff; see biceps I'm not sure my hand could encompass pressing the thin cloth of his shirt: see blunt chin, straight nose and eyes, green eyes, gazing into mine. Around us, would the buzz of other people, beat of the music retreat, would unheard thoughts converge, unsaid words invite our movement onward? Rising from the table, my hand in his, would he lead me through a crowd that parted for us, lead me through the swirling glitter of colored light and laughing couples, following a step or two behind. His arm reaching behind, my stretching before me, following. Somehow, we'd have to know how many steps from the doorway of the bar into the evening dark, how far from the red glow of neon, before that tiny tug spins me close enough for his arm to sweep me up, curve round the small of back and then fold me into his chest. One step or two or three. Somehow, lips an inch or two apart, we'd know that in a heartbeat, two heartbeats, uncountable heartbeats, he will gaze into me my eyes and bend to me. Somehow, I'll know when it's not just desire, not just the hope of his approach, but the sheer fact of him that means it is with shaking breath that I must close my eyes, that is with the next breath that I will feel his lips brush mine. Will it be just one kiss, there in the shadows, or maybe two? Will he let my lips fall an inch or two from his so we can catch our breaths and then kiss me again, or shall I stroke my hand up from his neck and pull him down to me? Will I lift myself to the tips of my toes, bend one knee, raise my foot so that, tiptoed I must lean into him so he pulls me closer, closer, still? Waiting for him now in my cubicle, looking out at the evening sky, its violet washed with the glow of city lights diffusing in the mist, wondering if it is warm enough that he will break our kiss and once again, hand in hand, he'll lead me on into the dark, perhaps the lawn beyond a small grove of carefully-planted pine, a mound of juniper to block the view of passers-by. Or maybe that is where he left his car, and would he, after opening the door for me, lean down and take another kiss, or simply smile and step round to the other side to drive us off. What do I think in those seconds after I slide into the seat and wait? Shall I turn to him, smiling, as he fumbles with his key until the engine roars alive? What might he say, craning his neck to see behind, as he pulls out? Silent, demure, I'd wait, I suppose. Or perhaps I am supposed to say something to him. Perhaps I need to whisper No when his hand brushes my knee, perhaps I need to giggle softly. Which is it? Will he talk much as we drive on, I wonder, as I sit here in my cubicle and wait. And when we arrive, wherever it is we are bound, I'll wait, I guess, for him to open the door, gather my arm as I swing my legs clear, ankles pressed tight, so he can lift me free. Perhaps he'll tug and swing me again into his chest, or tug a different way so that I follow him, a step or two behind, as he leads me on. We'll walk along a winding gravel path, I think, past beds of flowers, colors dimmed by moonlight into muted purple, blue and black; petals turned inwards, folded together for the night, as we are meant fold ourselves together in the night. We'll walk through deeper shadows of that the trees cast and emerge back into the silver light washing the lawn. Walking, walking. Or maybe the path will stretch just a few yards from his car to a wood- framed doorway, where he will fumble with his keys again, before he lets us in. There in the darkness of his living room, he'll cup my face with his hands as he kisses me again. He'll step another step towards me, let his hands brush though my hair, fall to my shoulders, trace the outline of my arms as he bends lower, where his glance had fallen, touching with his lips the spot just where the valley between my breasts narrows. I'd barely feel the first button slipping free, as his chin, as his kissing lips, his cheeks are cradled there; I'd barely feel his awkward grope as he tries, once, twice and at last to unsnap the hook and eye on my bra, I'd barely feel it slip down as his lips encircle a nipple: first, my right, I think, and then, once I had swollen, maybe moaned a time or two, and risen to the touch of his tongue, his lips would take my left nipple and inhale. My hand would have to touch him, have to stroke, have to pull him closer; and pulling closer, he'd lift his lips again to fit, fold me into his arms kiss me deeply, tongue pushing into me, an urgent need to taste, to probe. I'd feel him, hard and throbbing against my belly, feel a wall of muscle under my palm, tugging his shirt free, stroking circles, circles, circles on his stomach as he kissed. One arm across my back would press me to him, hold me as my knees melted for a moment, hold me as I tumbled backwards, carrying him with me to the sofa. A little half twist so we both would fit, my back pressed to the soft back of the sofa, my hand sliding down to the bulge of trousers where he is straining toward me. Rubbing, feeling an arc of solid need, his need, bulging beneath the slight roughness of cloth, sliding layers of cloth. Beneath the pressing of my palm, his wool trousers slipping over the cotton next to the tender skin, I feel him throb and know it's time to tug, to slowly tug the zipper. He stirs a little, springing free. I hold him in my hand, feeling him stir, feeling the pulse of blood beneath the rose-red skin, feeling the engorged flesh, his head edged purple, as tender to my touch as a bruised fruit, for his whole body shudders when I brush the side of my index finger's first knuckle there. My thumb barely pressing at the spot where his head meets the bottom of his arcing, aching shaft. I feel his aching, know his aching. Fingers enfold, wrapping him like the petals of the flowers outside enfold each other and the flowers' cores when evening falls, With a slow stroke down, he groans. Watching my hand stroke, watching myself, thinking -- what do you think at such a moment, I ask myself, sitting there in my little Grey-walled cubicle, waiting. Watching, watching. With a slight arch of neck, I look up to his face, in time to hear him moan, looking for a sign and seeing eyes closed, dark curl of hair flopping down. Wanting to brush it back into place, except my hand is busy now, stroking, stroking. He's trembling beneath my touch, the velvet skin of his shaft slides over the iron beneath, warmth rising as his quivers, the pale wet seeping from his head brushes onto my inner wrist, a strange perfume of must and of desire. He groans again, and now I feel his hand on me, his hand traveling up my inner thigh, his hand cupping me for a moment, pressing hard through the cloth before, abrupt and urgent, he is yanking at my own zipper, pushing his fingers in, cupping again, through the thin and satiny final shield of cloth. Blunt fingers, urgent fingers, slip beneath the edge of fabric as I stroke him. His fingers find the smooth curve that he'd cupped through cloth is now a flower opening for him, damp as if bedewed by a rising sun, the sun whose warmth and light relaxed the enfolded petals of the night before. His finger finds the line between my lips and traces it once, twice before he lays it there between my lips, just lying there, a presence I cannot ignore, a weight heavier than a single finger could ever be, the weight of contained power, resting, waiting, his finger lying there, barely pressing lips apart. Now I moan. Did I moan? Could anyone in this emptied maze of cubicle have heard? Where is, when will he come? First, though, he bends the knuckle, first knuckle of his finger lying there so that his blunt fingertip strokes, presses a little deeper, not even an inch, into me, a small wave, tiny cycle: Stroke and press. And, yes, reach again. Stroke and press. A finger, barely moving, a strong hand cupping me and I feel a warm, liquid electricity begin to swell from there, from there between my legs, to wash, diffuse as mist, along my inner thighs, slowly spreading as his touch reaches just a little deeper, moves just a little faster, so that the warmth flows like a tiny silver rivulet and the mist encircles legs. I feel a bloom of warmth across the small of my back, as if a pale and golden fragrant oil was seeping down into that bowl and spreading, spreading. His finger stroking, two fingers stroking and now the glow rises along the curve of my belly towards my navel, spreading, slowly thinking: like a haze become a mist become a cloud touched by the rising sun, infused with light, turning from violet to rose to gold until the moment when the day has finally come. He'd shift himself again, I think, and I'll slip down a bit so that my back no longer's cradled by the soft fat back of the sofa, but instead presses flat to the seat-cushions, bobbing as he lifts himself to his knees, straddling me, trying to find his balance as he tugs my pants, my panties down, as he yanks his trousers out of his way. And now, again I'm moving, as he strokes a hand along my rear, the back of my thigh, my knee, lifting my leg so he can thrust ... The creaking of a spring, faint as it sounds, is louder than the moan I feel so deep inside my throat. Hauling myself upright in my swivel chair, feeling the wobble of its plastic arms, the roughness of the burlap textured back pressing through my thin shirt as I snap back. Steps coming, slowly, past the empty cubicles. Coming to me, I hear, muffled though each step is by the dark gray carpet that he's walking over, slowly, oh so slowly, coming to me. What is he going to say, once he has turned that final corner? Will he hang a large hand along the top of my cubicle wall, cock hips as his eyes dance over my body, peer down a shirt I'd unbuttoned just one button too far. Will he stand square, legs spread wide, in the very center of the opening; inevitable presence, the way he'll want to be, the way he expects to be, the way his size almost demands he be, the way strength contained within his skin, that almost vibrates with energy eager for release, compels. And there, he stands. Now he is standing in the aisle by my cubicle, now he is turning, facing me. He fills the opening, he is that big. The curl of dark hair flops again, as if tired by the week, by the stale air of the office we are surely about to escape. The sheaf of papers that is the week of work I want now to forget, to leave behind, is in his hand, hand fallen easily, tiredly by his hip. A half smile. A glance into my eyes. "Very nice," he says. "Yes?" "Very nice, yes." He neither leans nor stands, but steps into my space and lays the papers on my desk. He is just inches from my chair, looming over me, almost touching -- or did he brush my arm there for a second. Waiting, now. Waiting. Waiting for the word, what he will say. I try a half smile. Nothing, Tilt head, look up into his face. Nothing. Only my breathing, his. Each breath of mine shorter than the one before. Heart hammering, surely he hears, surely he knows. Nothing. A deep inward gasp and then: "Friday," I say, as lightly as I can manage. "How about a drink?" A sharp glance down, a step away. Flash in his eyes as he takes yet another step, another, retreating through the opening, outside my cubicle. A moment that feels like an hour, like two as I wait, shaking, sick shivering in my belly, for what the dark scowl now twisting his face promises, has to promise, what I should have known, but didn't, too late to tell him: look again, look more closely, feel: "You fucking faggot," he snaps. "No way." *** Whiskey burns, too. Gulped too quickly, a spikey fire in your gullet, a weakness behind the knees. Burns like an insult does. I gulp this wound, too. Burning its path down, this wound, too, promising an oblivion of a kind. Not, to be sure, the oblivion of release, the floating downwards after your last pumping thrust explodes in me. You might, I suppose, someday wound me that way, as I thought you might the first time that we met, that night when we almost danced away, before the moment collapsed. Groping my way, feeling I am caught halfway between two worlds, I wonder still if that wound is what I want. And even when I think it is, I just don't know if that is possible. So, the burn of whiskey in my throat, a different, less joyful oblivion - - or if not that, at least a vision narrowed enough to block out the fact that none of the faces that surround me here are yours, that none of the eyes that see me see who I see when I dare the mirror's reflection. Tonight, I drink for the blinders that keep me staring straight ahead, staring for now, at the mirror beyond rows of dim bottles, colors of spirits never drunk gleaming beneath the Grey like chemicals from the lab your high school teacher warns you not to touch. And so I shall not touch. Just gulp another mouthful. Burn. When I turn to my right, there is the bartender, his head bent to whisper to the fellow drinking at the end. Turn to my left, a glowing neon sign, past ruby light burning, to the empty street. But not you. A fantasy of painless passage shattered now. Now, the question: why would you think it could be painl