Heads and Tails

Terror can be a slow slide, a gentle collapsing of pebblework, an unseady footstep, and then in a rush of unremambered something, that last teetering wobble on the edge of the abyss, knowing that back when the first pebble shifted there was a way out.

I couldn't tell you how, precisely, I wound up pinned to the couch, trapped down by a mass of naked boy three years older, not in the sense of a linear recounting of the day's events. All of that is lost to the fractured mass of memory: golden summer sunlight filtered through Bethesda trees and the large glass patio door, tainting all of the memories with an unreal gold that echoed in the woodwork of the trim, so bright, so unreal, painted not in the sepia of memory but with the animator's undertones of exaggeration and emphasis. Tall, erect nakedness like a pillar, gashed in memory with a vividness that returned again and again for years, lit in gold, outlined in the shrinking back into the couch, the haze of black markerwork that outlines the gold with emotion. His shed clothing without me looking, as if it might be that if I never looked, never acknowledged, he would back away, ask, see if I wanted what he wanted, ask for once, not that ever in that entire relationship there was ever an asking, just the constant slide of pebbles down the hill, a slow scree of missed opportunities to object once I had time to realise that no, I hadn't wanted that, or had wanted it but not with him, or ...

It was the heaviest weight I've ever borne, the pressure of him, the driving presence of that mass, that horrible weight that meant there was no escape, no way of coming out, the way I folded inward, crushed beneath him into a white dwarf, the last choked ember of a strangled star, blowing off all of my memory, my continuity, my sense of self in an expanding haze of supernova that he never saw, never noticed. I was folded into one thought: "I don't even have my periods yet", over and over again, as if the physical immaturity was a last talisman to preserve the frail shell of identity, a last way of holding out against the crushing mass of reality. I fought for control of the button of my jeans, pulled in tighter and tighter into myself, my arms protecting what I could and crushed beneath that horrible, horrible weight. There was the last chink, the last teetering balance of repulsion and gravity before the last collapse and becoming lost to neutronium, and somewhere the weight let me go, and I fled into the bathroom.

When I emerged, he was clothed. He walked me to the subway. I went home, feeling like an expanding nebula around a shell of a star, a seething mass of charge no longer capable of burning, not quite crushed into oblivion.

The Twins dance in eternal battle -- exactly the same, perfectly opposite.

The weight of his body pins me down, forearms resting on my collarbones or hands pinning my wrists to my chest or shoulders. I wriggle a little to test it and a nuzzling kiss turns into a bite, claiming, reminding. I snuggle into the touch, the reassurance of the warmth and weight on me, wrestling for the fun of it sometimes, or maybe this time wide open, pulled open by strength and safety and the gentle support of that touch. He tilts my chin to look at me better, studying me a moment, knowing that I cannot speak when held that way and looking for answers in my eyes. To be sure I'm okay, consenting, secure.

I asked, knowing what I was asking for. I asked, he asked, and every moment is full of awareness, reading the electric energy of the feedback, the way the weight peels open my crushed-together shells and brings things together to ignite, fusion again, burning away, radiant light in the gathered memory of burning stars. I asked, he asked, we answer each other in every moment, and the weight is so very light.

I know and I choose; knowing the crushing weight that comes with consent unasked, not knowing, not being able to speak, I choose a joyous voicelessness, and I remember that stars shine.


Heads or tails?