Hteo Bi Te Zaboraviti
When I dare to dream I think we have already met. I imagine we are two men in linen suits sometime in the 1950s. Somewhere tropical, some place we’re not really supposed to be. And time is sticky, days blend into one another and there’s not so much to do except drink and desire one another unevenly in seedy bars. We would have roamed the streets looking for one another over and over. We would have found hidden hotel rooms to occupy before we could trust one another. “ - Then we go up the stairs and we’re greeted by a nonplussed man holding a large set of keys,” I narrate to you, as is often your request. “He doesn’t say a thing, just shows us to our door. We enter. The room is destitute and dirty but the HOTEL neon sign is right outside the window so the color shines in and washes everything. — What happens next?” you ask me. “We fuck,” I answer. And you laugh. What a relief. The air is still and our eyes hang heavy. In that hotel room we forget that there are days and minutes and hours. We discover being known. Spend nights high and drenched in sweat. Then the days sat across a bar table, while I look at the white in your eyes, the corner where I fell in love. You keep smoking, you read and listen to my questions.
I imagine us there often. In my dream we sleep on our stomachs, I have a cane and you wear white. The walls are dark terracotta and pale blue, your cheek is always dirty and your eyes are just the same. We try to change our briefs but mostly we forget to brush our teeth, pass out on the large leather couch, a book in your hand, a glass in mine. One day you got up naked to change channels on the radio and almost smashed your head on the coffee table.
I dare to imagine we are not far, on the contrary we’re much too close, on the brink of putrefaction. The fat is hardening, the muscles atrophying, both of us almost comatose. And it comforts me, I would have still loved you from the moment I met you, inexplicably. We would have collided and freedom would have still caught up to us. I woke up with the certainty that it would all be the same if I could hold you for as long as I wanted. I imagine myself as I was before, pathetic and lame, terrified of letting you go. And you, evasive, elusive, not answering my questions. Which never stop coming, retching out of me as I curse myself. I smell the shame and the pity and the incessant cigarette smoke. I imagine you plugging every crevice in my ego, the opiate for the ailment. And you growing tired of my sedentary ways. Of the apartment I bought and my habit of calling you before three. This thought comes about the same time I get sick. My stomach is turned and I want to throw up.
It’s easy to think that I’ve been pushing my luck. I tip my imaginary short brimmed hat and tug at my waistband, the loose one that needs suspenders. I’ve lost you in the Main Street so I take shelter in an alley. I grunt and drag my leg, I spit on the pavement and relish the darkness. I speak to the man who has nothing to lose and we agree, nodding in silence. I have forgotten that nothing ever goes as planned.