In the Middle of Tomorrow

Jimmy stopped in the middle of tomorrow. He was in his 18th summer. He had never been here before and like all strangers in a strange land, he stopped to get his breath back. Maybe tomorrow was kinder than today. It seemed the same, though. Magnets like food and air and breath and the need to see his bones knitted together in the same way, as yesterday had something to do with it.

Maybe something he knew was at hand. Something he sensed rather than saw. He knew one thing clearly. Dave was leaving town. For that was all that Dave did in the interim that was his life, the leaving place, the bidding farewell to this school and this town, to repeat the same thing the next year and the year after that. Until there was nothing left for anyone to do, but to leave Dave.

Jimmy thought, ok, the sex had been great. The knives didn't cut as deeply anymore. Maybe this was where Dave would stay, only this time Jimmy had gotten here ahead of him. Maybe Jimmy would turn round now in the hot summer rain and the cottony gray sky, and there the lanky, nervous, rabbity Dave would be. Dave, having run away from Jimmy and from himself.

And Jimmy there naked with naked also Dave. And saying to him, sorry, chum, this time I'm not allowing it. This time I'm not allowing you to run away from me because that would mean you are running equally as fast and far away from yourself. He would watch him there in that in-between place with no one round, save the both of them.

Jimmy would put his hand to Dave's cock, and would say, see, this is how my hand felt on you; this is the excitement I brought you; this is the love that came from me to you; and he would show Dave that it never happened, the goings away; that the guts took in staying. The guts took in remembering yesterday.

He would put Dave's hand on his own Jimmy cock rising and hardening, as Dave's was, even with Jimmy's hand removed from it. He would look at his dark hued friend in the gusty hot rain. He would say nothing but go to him and his eyes are the mirrors that reflected Dave's dark eyes back at himself.

I got you locked up in me, he would tell Dave, and he would hold him and hold him tightly, as the rain poured down round them. And he would whisper in Dave's ears the words, the ones that his friend ran from, like mercury cross a plate of glass, to this town and that, this city and that, frenzied, falling across a glass globe that tilted this way and then another. He would whisper the words to Dave as Dave held his friend and they felt their bodies wet and hot together, their hair matted and sleek.

I will not listen, Jimmy thought. I will not listen for the rain, because now it does not make a sound. Now it is a thing of something close to magic, with no aroma of rain to it, no trees near by, nor ground to stand on, cause it's Dave and me, and gravity is an incremental, for I am not on the lip of a dream, or the edge of desperation, though Jimmy knew that was exactly what it was.

I am not hearing the going away sounds; I am not hearing my heart beat more and more sluggishly. I am in his arms again. He is not cold or tough or distant. He does not use me or invite me with nothing, for he is naked with me in that first wild night when the stars grasped the sky of dark and held it further back, for the two of us—man, we were giants then; we were more than; we knew how to do it. There was no awkwardness. There was no stairs to go up to and see if anyone was listening to the skin of the night that we were half renting and tearing apart.

Dave is not here. Dave and I are then. Back in the middle of yesterday. And he's me and I'm him as we touch-as we harden and our tits are berries as our lean bellies hold quite and warm and right making. He is not alone. He does not have the world backing him into a corner. He does not have to be defensive, always with the fear and the anger and the growl half in his throat, like a leopard in mourning.

It was his house. It was mine. And we fucked. We fucked and it hurt and I bled and he held me as the world bled him, as he took my whole body and comforted me into a small and smaller ball that he put in his shirt pocket for safe keeping. I never had to try to find him or wonder where he went. I was in his shirt pocket. I was everything to him. He said it once. Grudgingly. But he said it. And he said I'm leaving and I said I'm not going anywhere. No, he cupped my balls with one hand, my chin with the other. No, he said, I me Dave I'm going.

He didn't mean it. I caressed his arms and I kissed his mouth. I whispered we're together, man. We are forever, man. He pushed me aside and said, no, get that out of your mind, Jimmy, forever and a day. He was running to something, which was why I was in the middle of tomorrow to show him what he might have thrown away. To show him what he was leaving behind in tatters. To show someone could be trusted.

That bus train plane all those horrible torture devices—that was all they were—that was the wrong of everything—everybody was going to tomorrow and tomorrow was just a half-assed version of today. Tomorrow had only memories of yesterday and the day after that was another yesterday to run from. It's a loser's game. A sucker's game. Recourse and a field of remorse and a world of rue, Davey, so believe me, so true.

I will haunt you, I said. I will be here naked and forever young, I will find other beautiful boys to suck and to fuck and to come in and be come in by them, and you, Dave, you, you stupe, you'll just get older and older and more forlorn. You'll have your goddam tomorrow. You know what it will be worth? You know? And Dave heard me crying. He pulled at me out of the rain. I screamed don't pull me out of the rain, it's your tomorrow and the one after that and the tomorrow to come and it will just be you, fading away.

Even I'm better than that, me the scrawny, me the timid, me the scared—even I am better than your just following the herd and going up there and fading the fuck away, what are you, nuts?, man are you really that idiotic? Like some movie you love that's aging and fading and getting tears in it and blotches and scratches. No, Davey, you want my dick in your mouth. You want to find me there with you in the morning. You want the almost being caught and then the being caught and you turned it on its head and we laughed our asses off.

And Dave said, get dressed. And Dave said, the bus leaves in an hour. And Dave started putting on his clothes over his rococo skin that was burnished with fever and sex and being that was so powerful, I felt literally soaked in him. I was awash in Dave. I understood him totally, cell for cell. I understood and the understanding took root under my top right rib and tore the rib in half and burst through my chest like a huge magnificent bloody thorn with a million stobs on it and I screamed, cause I knew how he was, I knew Dave, I was Dave. My heart was stopping. It would take forever to stop for good. I could not breathe.

Dave held me. My body was with like the ague. He asked if I was okay. He had that gentle look in his lips he got sometimes, and his obsidian eyes went deep, only this time my puny green ones went deeper. Dave, I breathed hard, to get the words out, to make sure this time I didn't do it, as maybe I had in the past—I said, get out of here, Dave, get away from this haunted boy, get out now, I'll smother you, I won't go to tomorrow anymore; it's yours; it's yours.

Dave was saying he would call 911. I stopped him and the cell dropped to the floor of his bedroom, the summer sun hot and yellow and heavy as gold chains coming in and dropping hard on us—get the fuck out of here, come on. I'm okay. Go, dammit. He had a bus to catch. I lay on his bed limply. I scared him. I could have at that moment have said stay and he would for as long as I wanted. But I saw what would happen. I saw what love so strong, so out of control could conjure. I tried to dress. Dave, very carefully, very slowly, dressed me. I said as he knelt by me, if you don't get out---

And my words were not pleading, but cold, his kind of coldness when his back was against the walls and he didn't want to use his jackknife, so he understood and kept asking, are you sure? Are you sure? I said, get the damn suitcase and go fuckit go.

And when it was over, when the bus left, when Dave left me for tomorrow, I finally turned and walked into yesterday, where the ghost of Dave lived, where he would stay young forever, where I would grow older and older, and he more and more vague, until he was a tentative pencil sketch, falling apart at the seams, then drifting off to clouds of snow and cold and forever remorse. He would not kill me back there, as my love for him would have killed him, had he stayed.

But oh god I wish he would. Oh god I wish he would.

And this is to Dave, running through all his tomorrows up there, from his friend, Jimmy, in all our memories back here, saying I love you. And saying, as in prayer, come home, Dave, please come home. It's not right in the ghost stories—the ghost is not a dead person's spirit. The ghost is as he has always been. A rememberer. And a very willing, this time, savior of a once-friend.

Come over for coffee some morning. I'll tell you about it. That is, if you don't already know the cost of being in the middle of all your tomorrows. The terrible, terrible costs.