Beyond Lines: This Is How I Keep A Friend
Literature)
Hands are the thieves of innocence. Breath is but a forewarning, like the hiss of a snake, or the poise of a scorpion. This kind of pain, loss- not of another, but of yourself, is unlike any I've known. The following piece from Florilegium recounts the moment that I first felt weak. The violation of my body with no room to breathe, let alone fight. In the moment his prurience weighed on me like a secret, I thought to myself, This is how I keep a friend.
This Is How I Keep A Friend:
Being lonely made me desperate
and you used it to your advantage.
My discomfort made you uncomfortable,
I felt bad for being used.
I apologized, said it was my fault
because maybe it was.
I didn't know pain until I met you.
I won't cry over you,
I couldn't even if I wanted to.
I'll keep those tears for when it gets better.
But you marked my skin with an invisible tattoo
of a stranger's handprint and made it permanent.
I didn't know pain until I met you.
Your hands, your breath, my innocence.
I said no, you heard me. But you didn't listen.
You told me I'd like it, but I didn't.
My silence is not my consent.
This is how I keep a friend,
feel hurt until I feel nothing.
That's what I told myself when
you left my trust in pieces.
This is how I keep a friend.
Feel anything)
Loneliness is complex. Isolation is unrelated to mental health and there is no medication for it. Loneliness is a parasocial phenomenon influenced by many factors including lifestyle and environment. Consequent to the COVID-19 global shutdown, loneliness is now considered an epidemic. Studies show that "LGBTQ+ youth exhibit higher rates of loneliness, social isolation, and depressive symptoms than their heterosexual peers" (pic.ncbi.nlm.gov) For me, I felt so isolated for so long, so misunderstood by everybody in my life, that I just wanted to feel something- feel anything.
With anyone)
When I turned 18, the first thing I did was sign up for those apps everybody warns you about. Only in my case, nobody had warned me at all. I met somebody, was used, and then got ghosted. That is the closest I've come to culture shock- the norm within gay culture to drive 25 minutes, spend 15 with a complete stranger that looks better in pictures than in real life, give him your body, and go home trying to remember if he was 22 or 28. Forget knowing his name, it's not like you even asked for it. I couldn't fathom being so inconsiderate and cursory. So I, regrettably, remember it all; his name, his face, the slight crookedness of his front tooth, the Cancer sign tattooed on his forearm. I remember his political affiliation that contradicted his sexuality, just like his star sign contradicts my own. I remember the pressure, the pinch of his fingers, that retaliated against my resistance, the breathing that drowned out my unwillingness.
Then nothing)
What is it that compels gay youth to give themselves freely to whomever will have them? To embark on passion in the backseat of some guy's car, as if you've known him for years? To cast, choreograph and direct a cinematic scene between two strangers posing as lovers? Is it that we might experience what we have historically been forced to conceal? To make up for the fact that I couldn't take a boyfriend to a school dance in middle school? That my brother said he would "beat the fuck" out of us if we were gay? That my church, my peers, would, and did, condemn me should I ever love a man? Is it to atone for the girl I swore to love then penalized for not being a man?
Finality)
Now I wonder, why should we settle for what is accessible just to prove we can have it? Why give ourselves away when we fought so hard to be proud of who we are? I understand for some queer people, "looking for now" is all you ever hoped for. To which I say, who hurt you? For me, I refuse to settle for less than what I dream about. Hands are the thief of innocence when they're cold and stained. But when they're gentle and kind and true to respect... well, I wouldn't know.