He escaped me in his sleep. That deep, slim sleep of his. Right beside me. We had had sex two hours ago. I had entered him and knew the locks were tightly shut. He slept with gentleness and a kind of dignity. A blowing wind of snow hit the windows of our bedroom. I ached to him. I was inches away and he was almost seven inches and you would never know it, judging by his tiny boned small body. He slept. That simply. And that starkly.
We had touched often and had touched never. He pretended and I was out of bed now, his pretended partner. I absolutely hated the word partner. I think of Roy Rogers and Froggy Millhouse when I think of partners, or Gene Autry and Gabby Hayes, when I think of partners. I slip from bed, though he will never miss me. He is Joel and that is wintertime. He is Joel and that is the quiet of the night.
He knows and in knowing I am a fact, this fact that is me is going to the kitchen for a snack, for facts eat, for facts get hungry, and facts get thirsty, so this fact that is me gets a small bottle of Coke from the fridge. And opens it, putting it beside the cheese sandwich I am to make in a moment, facts sometimes getting the order of their facts out of order.
I am 24. Joel is on the cusp of 17. We have been together ever since his parents divorced themselves from him because of his sexual orientation, which he munches into laughter when he says those words "sexual orientation." He knows he is not a dream, but I can't love him unless he is a dream, therefore he has become a factual dream for me. And that is me, the other fact in the house, sitting in his black boxers, in the warm kitchen, at the round table, eating my cardboardy sandwich and drinking my ice cold Coke.
I will die without Joel. And then Joel will be a dream. And I can love him because he is a dream. I am fucked up, you may have noticed. I wish he would come in here, knock me off my yellow wooden chair, with his fist, and as I fall akimbo to the flooring of linoleum and not very clean linoleum too I might add, fact wise, he would stand over me, starkly naked and thin and slim and say, Dammit, Barry, I am not a dream, I am a fact, and if two facts cannot love each other, in spite of the factness of the thing, then I wonder and worry what this world is coming to.
But he won't. He is not a dream and therefore he is truly not my love because in order for me to love anyone love must have dust on its glass over the picture of failed conquests, but he was never a failed conquest, for I had never tried to conquest before; in other words, he conquested me. Which took a bit of doing, for I am one of those shadow people in the corner and when he with his Jesus Christ gold long hair and his limpet body and his pale alabaster face, pale and alabaster being the same, so let me through in wan, as well, stood looking at me and he held a glass of wine to me and said Hi I'm Joel.
As I turned from him and thought they let kids into bars these days. I stood out in the early spring night air, as he came to me and stood behind my shoulder. I knew he was there. He didn't rustle or speak or squeak or get close enough for me to feel his aura if you believe in auras and I don't. Then there was that naked arm holding out that glass of wine.
Joel said, "So. I take it you are lost in your dreams."
God, his voice was beautiful. Like piano keys soft in velvet in an early morning of darkness when you think you will smother from the heat and suddenly from way off you hear a piano played and it's a nice tune from way back when they used to say things like way back when, and you feel comfortable again. You feel as though you might cry and that it would be something you would like to do, rather than feel embarrassed at doing, even when no one else is round you.
