REUNIFICATION
Their eyes meet across a crowded Italian restaurant.
Brian isn’t supposed to be there, but then neither is Justin. Its fate’s way of
giving them both the finger, and Brian suddenly remembers why he hates
California. The tricks have too many piercings, the air is for shit, and now
this.
A ghost of fucks past.
Three years isn’t long enough to fill the void.
Or forget.
So, Brian flattens Justin up against the cold, slick, metal of the bathroom
stall and Justin gives in to the relentless pounding of a grudge fuck, while
Brian pants gruffly into Justin's ear
Neither speak, but their hands murmur the sweet ache of reunification: entangle,
and entwine, and grasp, and push and pull.
Brian clasps his fingers around Justin's wrists, searching for the thump-thump.
Proof that Justin is here, alive, flesh, and not some fucked up dream.
He comes in silent reverie.
Neither look up.
Justin will remember the distinct splash the condom makes as Brian drops it into
the toilet, the clink of Brian's belt buckle as he deftly refastens it, and the
zip of Brian’s pants.
Brian will only remember thud of the door hitting the stall as Justin leaves.
Again.
Three weeks later Brian is able to pretend it never happened. Justin is a myth,
now. A trick of the eye. A figment of light and shadow.
But sometimes on cold nights, when Brian lies in bed alone, smoking pot, blowing
smoke rings at the ceiling, he thinks he feels a brush of blond hair that
tickles like a feather. The remnants of a giggle, echoing like a lullaby in the
cavern of the empty loft.
Brian is Icarus falling, spiraling into a hazy memory, but he has better things
to do then wade in a waxy pool of the past.
Fuck him for leaving
Justin is a seraphim’s batting eyelashes, the hollows of pinkened cheeks and the
lushness of rosy lips. He is a golden illumination of knees ground deep into
hallowed ground, hands pressed together in a silent prayer.
“Ask me to stay.”
Brian doesn’t ask.
Brian tells.
“Stay or go.”
Brian demands
“Get dressed. Babylon is calling”
Justin is compliant and pliable, giving in to Brian’s denial that everything
will just work out, because it always has in the past.
Only Justin has his own voice now, in the back of his head that taunts him with
ideas of leaving, getting away from the claustrophobia of Pittsburgh. Of the
Diner. Of Babylon. Of Liberty Ave. Of his mother. Of Chris Hobbs.
Of Brian.
Brian is no longer solace. Somewhere he became the problem. A conglomerate of
things he'd rather forget.
Of things he can't have.
Flowers, birthday gifts, I love you's.
Open fucking honesty.
And goodbyes.
So, Justin buys a bus ticket to California with last week's tips.
Telling Brian is easier then he thought, but then Brian is in one those moods
where nothing is good enough, because he has a headache.
Justin's proclamation hits the floor like goose down pillow.
Brian shrugs it off, and dresses, and dances, and fucks like nothing has
changed, while Justin packs a duffel back and tries to forget how hard it to let
go of the sex.
Leaving is like silent screaming or swallowing blood.
These days Brian takes walks down Liberty Avenue, hands digging deep into his
leather jacket. Sometimes he smokes. Sometimes he just tries to remember to put
one foot in front of the other. Sometimes he ends up in Babylon. Sometimes he
dances in the middle of the floor, swaying to the cacophonous thumping of the
bass.
And only sometimes, he remembers that night when it rained so hard that no one
noticed the tears slowly slipping from the corners of his eyes, like beads of
penance.
"Don't go," the words stifled in his throat as Justin climbed the steps of the
Greyhound bus not daring to look back.
copyright 2003