In a few moments my soul will depart from my body. I’ll finish pill after countless pill until I slip into that long, unending sleep. I guess I could save some time and put a barrel to my lips and give it a long kiss goodbye, you know, make some brain and bone-chip graffiti all over the wall, but I figure this way will be more polite. Make less of a mess.
It makes me wonder about those rumours you hear about your bowels releasing when you’re all done. Makes me wonder if it’s true. So much for not making a mess. I’m not just crying out for help. I’m actually going to go through with this.
In a few moments, I will be an empty sack of bones, muscles, and failures. Like any story, this one needs a beginning, and two weeks ago is when I think this all began. In a few moments I’ll be cold. Dead. And probably, in a few moments I’ll be waist deep in my own shit.
I’ve been a homo for as long as I can remember. Wait. That’s a lie. I’ve been a homo since I was fifteen, when I got my first glimpse at one of my Dad’s German gay S&M porn magazines. He always kept a juicy pile underneath his bed, laying erect. Pages stuck together. The only difference between me and my father is that he never decided to come out of the closet. He still pays his weekly visits to the local bath house, but that’s not something we talk about. It kind of made sense to me all at once though. That’s why curves and breasts and thighs kind of never affected me. I had more of a calling to whiskers and biceps and dick.
About three years ago I met Miles. And for three years Miles and I have been together. Just your friendly neighbourhood faggots. We did that whole straight couple thing. Moved into a spacious apartment, filled it with a bunch of stuff, got into monthly fights, and had some monthly makeup sex. Everything seemed pretty normal.
The first time I met him was in an elevator ride. I had a job interview at a very reputable architectural company called Designer & Innovator. This is the building where Miles works. I was as flaming as the sun, and could not keep my eyes off of him when he stepped into that little cube with me. He looked at me with his distant, pale blue eyes, limp blonde hair stirring with the turn of his head. His sculpted jaw and dimpled chin. His faint facial hair and powerful stance. His perfect little lips. He says:
“Miles Benson, nice to meet you!” and flashes that breathtaking smile. His soft skin. He goes to shake my hand and continues,
“And you are?” I just smile and wonder to myself how a queer always knows if another is present. I know it’s sad, but I didn’t get the job.
It’s amazing how little you think about the next major purchase you plan to make to liven up your apartment, or how terrible greenhouse gases are for our environment, or the poor endangered burrowing owls that are being wiped from the face of the planet when you’ve got a guy like Miles Benson mounted on you thrusting at your ass. He did that a lot. Cleared my mind of meaningless jabber about our society I mean, not mounting me and thrusting at my ass. Although that happened quite frequently too. From that first time we grabbed lunch together I knew there was something about him.
Miles is the kind of guy who could give you a night of great sex and still be willing to get on his knees for round two if you wanted. I guess generous is really the word I’m looking for.
It wasn’t just the sex either, we always had something to talk about. We had a very mutual, instinctual understanding of one another. It really was no surprise when he decided to move in with me and we splurged for that spacious apartment with the great view of downtown. The high ceilings. The infinitely quiet doorman, you know, all of that crap. For awhile our lives revolved around dinner parties and new furniture. For awhile we were perfect consumers. All of that stopped about two weeks ago.
This seems like an opportune time to crack open that first bottle of Benadryl and take a break from writing this death poem.
Hold on for a second.
Okay, here we go. Two weeks ago was just another one of our monthly fights. As if Miles could have a period without having ovaries. During which I get on the topic of the unnecessary purchasing of shit we don’t need. For example, a Middle Eastern style area rug. For example, a leather reclining sofa. For example, the third edition of Tantric Sex. It seems as if we spend less money on ourselves and more money on our things that actually don’t have any apparent purpose.
So I go for a walk. Everywhere you look is a Honda Accord. A Volkswagen Beetle. A Ford F150. An unnecessary, unnatural machine. I end up walking for about an hour. I walk past the McDonald’s on twenty-third. Past the Wendy’s on twentieth. Past the Burger King on eighteenth. Past the homeless preacher who shouted something about the end of the world at me, and asked for change (if the world is ending, isn‘t it too late for change?). Past a second McDonald’s on sixteenth. And, as I slip into deep thought, right into an unsuspecting stranger.
Valerie is the kind of girl who will give you a night of great sex, get on her knees for round two, and then wait patiently until you’re ready for a third go. Lively, carefree, those words could best describe her, too. Valerie is the kind of girl who’s beauty goes unchallenged, unmatched, and sometimes, unnoticed. Think of any girl you’ve ever loved. This can be your mother holding and singing to you when you were just a small child, this can be the young woman who allowed you to lose your virginity to her, this can be your brand new baby girl. Being around Valerie made me feel just like that. Valerie is the kind of girl who could turn a gay guy straight, and make it so he doesn’t even consider anal as an option. I am a straight man trapped in a gay man’s body surrounded by fine home furnishings.
From the minute I slammed into her, head-on, her enormous essence of complete and unfaltering beauty would not escape the vault in my brain which I locked her image in. I took it all in, slowly, perfectly. Analyzing every last detail subconsciously so that I could never, ever forget. Her jet black hair that hung straight down until it flipped just slightly at her shoulders. Her thin, high-arched eyebrows that bordered the line of too thin and too high-arched. Her straight nose jutting out only too perfectly to accommodate her full red lips. And those eyes. No one deserves to be that beautiful, to have a stare like hers. Except maybe Valerie. Those big green eyes. Long eyelashes. Always, always in deep thought. Contemplating her next totally unexpected move in the game we call life. Or, in my case, death. So skinny I could break her with a wisp of wind from my little finger, but no one would want to. So delicate. God couldn’t be this proud.
Her body, standing there, angular, awkwardly towering over me. A boy of a man. A mistake of a child. Dressed in a crimson wool coat she asks me what the hell my problem is. For starters, I think, it’s that I can’t think of any way to express what I feel. Standing there, ignorant to the pain in my forehead from the collision. I still can’t. No words in the English language can. No words in French. None in German. Fuck all in Chinese. So I stood there, mouth gaping.
It’s a peculiar feeling, being gay for half of your life and then forced to confront heterosexuality face to face. I took a deep breath and tried not to tremble. But still, she stands there looking at my apologetic face, her gaze burns into my little homo eyes, and I almost tear up. I’ve never been so confused yet so certain in my life. Confused about my life, certain about the necessity of hers in relation to mine. Then, praise God, praise Allah, praise Buddha, praise Diet Pepsi with its catchy slogans and low calories, she asks me my name.
I’ve never had an affair before, so typically, I was a very antsy boy. But that’s when it started; two weeks ago. I’m not going to sit here and pour my heart out, writing in vivid detail how bad I felt for Miles, attempting to justify my actions. I knew what I was doing. I knew eventually someone would get hurt. But I didn’t care.
Every time I stared into Valerie’s eyes I found God. Every time I looked away I lost Him. Every time I looked back I found God again. She’s the type of girl that makes you feel like you could puke yourself inside out in anticipation to see her for that brief moment when the world didn’t make sense, but you couldn’t give a damn. I couldn’t find the balls to tell her I was a fag who was in a serious relationship with another fag. Plenty of experience with fellatio.
I came to loathe Miles. His desire for products to liven up the house, his growing concern about greenhouse gases in our environment and the decreasing number of endangered burrowing owls. His job as an architect. His job of getting an income. His job of being a number. All that mattered in this world was Valerie. I came to loathe him because he reminded me of who I am. Who I was.
So last night I told Miles to leave. I told Miles to leave because I couldn’t deal with his ocean of self-pity that had been washing over me for days. I was drowning. I told Miles to leave because I needed an excuse to watch the tide go out with Valerie.
I can understand why some people pay top dollar for vaginal intercourse. I experienced it for the first time tonight, and will never experience it again. I like to think I went out with a bang.
Sometimes, when you cheat, you forget to be sneaky, and explicit is more of a suitable word to describe yourself. I know the chances were very likely that I’d be caught if I brought Valerie to a bar, got her liquored up, and brought her back to my place for some blissful, drunken sex. But that was only half of the fun. There are only a few things that give you a thrill like cheating, but I’m not a thief, murderer, rapist, or mad scientist, so I stuck with my current situation.
We sat together, amidst a crowd of loud, stinking behemoths who were just trying to forget what it felt like to be sober. She flowed into me and whispered sweet anarchies into my ear. My body shivered all over. It shivered all over because I had never heard anything so true in all my life.
She questions: “If there is only relevance in truth, is it alright to kill?”
She ponders: “If money is only a paper credential of worth, is it worthy to spend?”
She begs: “If our government composes itself of money and truth, but spreads lies and sinks further into debt, does it really exist?”
Regret and remorse sank in when Miles walked into the bedroom, a bouquet of poster paper falling limp in his silky-smooth hand. He comes in after a long day of overtime, working for somebody else. He comes in when Valerie is in the middle of letting out a sharp little gasp, descending fast on the down-stroke, her breasts bouncing upwards.
The door slams as fast as it had opened, and we lay there, awkwardly spread out, suddenly still. I have this thing for finishing at the worst possible times.
It’s not the guilt I feel for breaking Miles’ heart that led me to right now. Not the fact that I’ll never see him again. Not the fact that there are going to be endless legal issues to deal with regarding our property. Not the fact that after she pieced it together, Valerie crowned me King of the Asshole-Lying-Cheating-Small-Dicked-Fags. And it’s surprisingly not the fact that I will definitely never see her again. I’m sitting here, in my dimly lit living room, reclining on my leather sofa, with my Middle Eastern style area rug laid in front of me, finishing off pill after pill and writing the longest suicide note anyone has ever mistakenly stumbled upon because I know for a fact that I will never, ever, in this life, or any that follow, feel as strongly about anything as I did for Valerie.
I can feel it coming now. I can smell it, see it, taste it, hear it. In a few seconds my soul will depart from my body. I guess I could have put a barrel to my lips and given it a deep kiss goodbye, you know, made some brain and bone-chip graffiti all over my wall, but there‘s no reason for me to ruin all of Miles‘ stuff, too. In a few seconds I’ll be an empty sack. Completely empty. Like any story, this one needs an ending. This one concludes with me lying cold in a pile of my own shit, rotten.
I no longer have the ability to reach for more pills, so I know at any second you will reach the end; you will stop that little narrator in your head from talking, and maybe you’ll reflect back on your own life. There is but one last thought ringing loudly, boldly, always through my mind:
Valerie, I love you.
I‘m actually going through with this.
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