So we're sitting on the edge of your bed talking about appearances. We're asking what they appear to be and what they are and what they aren't. We don't know who we're asking, but we appear to be indifferent to them. Yet, by appearing, we take on appearances.1
You say, “Show me how to dissapear. I don't want to be vain. I want to be empty and static. I want people to see me and not see me all at the same time.”
I'm thinking it can't be that simple. I'm wondering why someone like you could want, so badly, to be invisible.
You're going on and on about that what's-on-the-inside bullshit, and I'm pretending to listen. I pet your head like I would pet a cactus and grit my teeth into the crooked facial expression you call a smile.
“I wish you would smile more.”
There's that word again.
“You're so handsome when you “smile”.”
I tell you you're silly, and that you're more handsome than I will ever be. Your hand swats at my side the way a viper whips its head at a quivering mouse, and my face is even more crooked. This leads to talks about handsome women and that song called “She's a Handsome Woman2” which leads to talks about gender and social stereotypes about the word “handsome”3.
Now we're laying on your bed, under your sheets. Your neck is nestled in the crook of my elbow, and I want to tell you how perfect your neck is. So I do. Your skin is as soft and pale as the glow of a full moon4, but I would never tell you that. I'm no poet, and so I say it's perfect. You tell me I'm wrong, and I let my silence speak for itself.
In the dark, your delicate hand searches for mine and finds it laying limp against the bed's edge where we once sat. Where we appeared and disappeared. Your hand is smaller than most hands. Well, maybe not smaller than most hands, but smaller than mine. Our fingers laced, I become aware of my moist palms. A pulse of adrenaline swims from my heart to my fingertips, and I curl them into a fist even though the room is black. These fingers laden with cuts and healing flesh and bleeding fingernail corners. Anxious hands5. Bigger-than-your's hands. You grab at my fist as if you've dropped a porn magazine on a bustling city sidewalk. You snatch it up before the wind carries it into the crowd.
I know these habits hurt important parts of you, so I murmur an apology. “Sorry” for letting go. “Sorry” for my butcher's hands.
You don't mention my bitten nails or sweaty palms. Your knuckles glow white in the dark as you hold me tightly and tell me to never let go. And your neck is still perfect. Like moonlight basking in moonlight.
I'm staring at the trees' shadows battling the twilight against your stark, white wall past the back of your perfect neck. As sleep washes over me, a tidal wave amidst my sea of emotions, I can imagine the branches throwing punches at the superheroes on your Marvel comics poster6.
You ask if I'm still awake, and I wonder if we ever truly sleep whenever we breathe the same air. I say no. I say I'm asleep, and I feel your playful glare as the war of Superman versus Supertree plays in a dream reel across the theater of your bedroom wall.
The sudden realization of your chest upon mine brings me back to reality. Your lung movements run adjacent to mine. Like clockwork gears my heavy chest rises and falls upon your perfect breasts, and our windpipes hiss in a sweet, steady rhythm. Nose to nose and hip to hip, I breathe you in7. You sigh. I shiver. Your lips part. My eyes shake. Like TV static, the light reflected in your pupils blips and blurs.
Blink.
Even under these sheets, it's too cold to shiver. You say “Hold me.” What that really means is, “Be the big spoon8 until I break free from your clutches and wither into a ball of fetal solitude.”
More or less.
The space between us seems as vast as space itself even though your back is against my sternum. My heart is beating along your spine, but the soft undulating of your blood pumping beneath your deltoids collides with mine. Even though our lungs don't rise and fall like clockwork, like the tides, I tell you you're perfect.
You say, “I know.”
I let my silence speak for itself.
Our legs lay in a puddle of melting snow, your feet against mine.^ The slow slither of the blood in your veins leaves your toes as cold as a corpse9.
You fit my hand into yours like a ball in a baseball mit, the callus of your thumb stroking my wrist. My hands are not sweating. My heart doesn't skip a beat10; In fact, it slows down to a funeral march tempo. I'm waiting for the part where you tell me I'm not perfect. The air thickens, your lungs pumping out toxic gas that I breathe in the form of anxiety. Any minute now, you'll say something that makes me feel obsolete.
Then, maybe, your feet will get warmer.
“I thought you said you were going to quit.”
You're saying this as your thumb runs along the tops of my stumps. Fingers. You're talking about my nail-biting thing not to be confused with my smoking or drug or alcohol or sex thing.
“Your hands look so ugly when you do that.”
My silence tells you to fuck off even though I know you're right.
I feel that when you call my hands ugly, you're calling me ugly. I feel this somewhere no one can feel. And even though ugly is just an appearance, I no longer feel indifferent to it. I am ugly. I have appeared. I appear to be an ugly person with ugly hands.
The hinges of my digits creak as I turn them into my palms into that same familiar fist.
And you lay in my silence, and I lay in your criticism. And all that remains are our lung movements.
1. http://www.whatisgender.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=166&t=3897 “Gender Dysphoria and Dissociative Identity Disorder"
2. http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858709044/ “She's a Handsome Woman” by Panic at the Disco
3. http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=600513 “A Handsome Woman?” - A forum
4. http://moonphases.info/full_moon_calendar_dates.html Full Moon Calender
5. http://www.brainphysics.com/nail-biting.php “Onychophagia: Compulsive Nail Biting”
6. http://www.hollywoodmegastore.com/Images/6652_Marvel_Comics_Poster.jpg Visual
7. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000987 “Carbon Dioxide Inhalation Induces Dose-Dependent and Age-Related Negative Affectivity”
8. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=big%20spoon 'Big Spoon” -Urban Dictionary
9. http://ask.metafilter.com/76200/What-can-I-do-about-my-freezing-cold-feet Remedies For Cold Feet
10. http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/heartdisease/basics/286.html “Arrhythmia: A Problem With Your Heartbeat”
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