And I’m going slow because I don’t want to rush it. And his hands go numb because he’s losing his virginity and in a way so am I but neither of us know that in the moment. And I’m in love with who he is, but that person was just an idea he was open to at the time but will inevitably abandon. But I don’t know that yet. So I’m in love with him and we’re in college and we’re creating rifts in the friend group but we’re 18 and now I’ve had gay sex for the first time. Kind of. This way.

The first time I had gay sex I thought I was having straight sex. Together we’re the surprising but progressive picture of the well-liked if not a bit annoying black girl and handsome bearded sensitive writer white boy. But to ourselves, she is Zendaya in the pink dress walking a very specific runway. And I am something experimental and conceptual but beautiful nonetheless. Undecided. And we’re 17 and no one would get it, and it doesn’t make sense, and it’s not really real but it is and we’re doing it. Together. And so the first time we had sex we’re performing this little routine we’d seen in porn in her parent’s basement. Well she had. Me–sheltered, naive, but eager was performing off of pure instinct. But my role notably required a lot less effort. And it didn’t quite work at all but we lavished in the completion of our pseudo act as teenagers do when they have sex. Eventually she confessed the obvious. She wanted me to be above. In sex, she wished to be viewed the way she hoped the world one day would be and the vessel through which that would be enacted was my body. And we’re 17 and we begin the journey to perfecting conceptually lesbian heterosexual sex.

By Christmas we’d figured it out. Sex, but more notably our identities. She told her parents that she was Zendaya in the pink dress on the red carpet and she wanted to get on hormone replacement therapy and I told her that I was a lesbian. And she’s a lesbian too but neither of us knew that at the time even though we both absolutely did. And we’re 18 and we break up but we’re still best friends and we’re still having sex but more assuredly this time and we’re going to the same college which most likely should’ve been the clearest indication we were lesbians but regardless I meet him and everything’s reversed now.

He is masculine in a white boyish preppy way. Ambiguously twinky in a way that feels intentional. Deeply unsure of himself in a way that manifests as deep arrogance that would be incredibly offputting if not for his disarming intonation and jovial chuckles and fluffy blonde hair that surrounded the chip on his shoulder. But I am in love with him and I’ve never met anyone like him and I’ve decided he must be mine.

She liked him at first. Maybe pretended to. But he was one of our earliest college friends and one of the first people she’d met who was like her. Just in reverse. Her, beginning to wear skirts. Him, building his catalogue of esoteric boxy t-shirts. They compared notes. And me, still experimental, conceptual, but beautiful nonetheless. I am there and we are friends.

And she’s secretly in love with me and I’m secretly in love with him and he’s secretly in love with himself, but I don’t know that yet so I believe him when he says he reciprocates my feelings. And I’m still above, but it’s him below this time, and I have no idea what I’m doing because I’ve never entered anyone’s other than my own and his hands go numb and I’m really sorry.

By Christmas we’d figured it out. Sex, but more notably our identities. We’re 19 and I am comfortably and successfully above. I proudly wear the appendage and I am even more experimental and conceptual than I’ve ever been. And just slightly more decided. But I’m also deeply grappling with the idea of having what someone told me lesbian sex was but had yet to actually manifest as in my personal life.

And so we break up but we’re still best friends and we’re still having sex but less assuredly this time and he begrudgingly craves my validation and I am having traditional lesbian sex with a rolodex of white bisexual women and he resents me for doing what he wishes he could but irregardless I am still above. I am always above.

Exactly a year since him and I had been on speaking terms, I’m 21 and I’m back in the basement. A different basement, operating off instincts for the first time since 16. I am below for the first time, in earnest. My first lover to share my skin is masculine and is offering me this unique opportunity to be something I’ve never been. And I’m much less conceptual or experimental but I’m still beautiful nonetheless and I’m having fun. Suddenly, I’m below.

And I’ve long since parsed through his ruptured ego and disjointed sense of self, and returned her projections and insecurities back to her and I’m alone with a new rolodex of beautifully masculine lovers who share my skin and love me below. The unravelling begins. A similar pattern but in reverse and forward. I am allowed the opportunity to be below. Down there, I find beauty. Down there I discover safety in simplicity. Down there I find my feminine, I shape it, nurture it, perfect it. I am the girl.

And I live in the basement. A collection of metaphorical basements but also the literal basement apartment I live in and I’m 22 and I’m below below below with many lovers who share my skin and the door is locked. And someone has locked it and it very well may have been me, but I crave the feeling of sun. Sun that is conceptual and experimental that I have long forgotten the feeling of.

I’m silent in this pursuit. I’ve long forgotten him and her and I am anew. In my new life below, I am consumable and pure but beautiful nonetheless and I’m having fun but I’m trapped there.

And then I meet you and you are beautiful and masculine and share my skin and remind me of everything I’ve ever known. And even though we are strangers, I’ve met you before. You are above. You have always been above. And when I met you I had long since repressed the burning desire for that conceptual sun. I’d adorned the basement beautifully. Alas, naturally my mirror, something conceptual, reversed, experimental emerges between us. I see you in me but backwards. And suddenly there’s a window and you are a kaleidoscope and we unlock the basement doors and exchange tales of our roles until the middle is born.

I can hear the past version of myself screaming inside of me. I can hear her. This isn’t right. This isn’t love. This person does not care about you. I can speak from her voice even. But she isn’t me. She hasn’t met you. She doesn’t know what it’s like to taste you. To hear the harmony of our laughter in unison. To sing our way across the Williamsburg Bridge. She doesn’t know how it feels when your eyes shine on me, even just for that second before you select your next object of the night.

Even then, in that sentence, it sounds like it matters right? Like I have some semblance of self awareness or self preservation. Like I should care that we can walk into a space hand in hand, and you can tell me you love me with that soft side smile. And I can go home early after maybe a small argument, maybe a huge one, or maybe just a propensity for sleep. And yet there’s no doubt in my mind that you will not hesitate to choose someone else to kiss and laugh and shine on as soon as I’m beyond eyesight. I know this. And you always prove me right. Every single time, without fail.

The goalpost is our art form and my lover and I contort it at will. Right, wrong, love, harm. We don’t use those rules here. There is simply us. That is all there is. My lover, my monster. But, mine.

I don’t know how I’ve become so pathetic. And I don’t say that in a shameful way. Maybe one day I will. Maybe one day I’ll feel bad about myself for letting you treat me this way. Maybe one day I’ll be mad at you for treating me this way. But mostly I’m just curious. I mine my own mind to configure some understanding of this pervasive, disgusting, all-consuming cognitive dissonance. The greatest I’ve ever known. You hurt me. You can’t stop or you won’t. But I stay. Not even because I believe you’ll change. I let that go a long time ago. And not because I feel I deserve it. I don’t. Not because I believe I can’t find someone who treats me well. I can. I don’t want to. I know all these things to be true, cognitively. I understand them. Yet, they change nothing. And that in and of itself is the puzzle. I don’t understand why.

Two versions of myself sit across from each other bickering in perpetuity. We can not come to consensus. It’s not that I don’t want to be saved. I want these things to matter again. I want to want to be treated well. With consideration and kindness. But I want her more. I want her so much everything else dissipates. Why is that? Are you special or am I crazy? What is this intoxication? Why am I trapped here? Love? Is this love?

Before my lover there was my girlfriend. We did a similar dance once. After our break-up. But eventually, quickly, she got to a point. A point where she could walk away, and stay away. And she did. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. I know she feels similarly. But she did it. I respect it a lot now.

I think that’s love. Knowing that despite the care. The comfort. The memories. Sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is leave. But my lover begged me to stay. And I love to be begged. Love me, want me, hurt me, want me. My dream, my fantasy. “Finally” I said to my subconscious. She loved to tell me it could work. We could save it. She could change. And I didn’t really believe her but maybe I could’ve. I never got the chance. I broke the rules of our game. I was hurt. And I acted as hurt people typically do. And that hurt her. And now she’s hurt. She doesn’t want to play anymore. I didn’t read the contract carefully enough. The contract had conditions. I’d broken my part of the deal. No longer a perfect victim but a mirror. I’d become her. And she can’t love herself.

The abandonment stings more than the betrayals but not enough. I don’t believe it’s over yet. I don’t believe her. She doesn’t believe me either. We have no evidence we can leave each other alone. I wonder. I’m grateful in a way. To be left. I think that’s the only thing that really works for me. I don’t want you anymore. A breath of fresh air. Like being released from handcuffs. I begged once, a long time ago, for a long time. To someone who really did not want me. That I won’t do again. I hope. I wonder.

But I think with my lover it was more about knowing we would both stay. That was the contract, the only condition. The break-ups looked real. Like we were two real people having a real conversation. But in hindsight we were puppets putting on a show; our own hands respectively up the backs of our puppet selves smugly looking at each other and grinning. Knowing. I’ll see you soon. And I always did. Because I couldn’t leave her knowing she still wanted me. She felt similarly. Until she didn’t.

Maybe that’s it. These parallel wounds. Abandonment. A person who will never leave. No matter what. That’s what we meant to each other. Maybe. It doesn’t hurt enough though. Because I don’t believe her.

I still miss her. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how I got here. I know she feels similarly.

Your boy hand on my face and my girl hand around your neck and finally we reach the climax of a night of cheeky comments and meaningful stares. And then it’s to your bedroom. Messy but warm. Something happens that I can’t comprehend but enjoy. And we’d do a will they won’t they for a while. Your boy friends will say I’m clearly the one, and my girl friends will say you’re being an ass but I won’t listen. And we’ll play torturous emotional tag for a couple months until I eventually say I’ve had enough. Finally prompting you to realize it was me all along. Because that’s what happens. That’s how it goes.

And then it’s probably sweet. Fridge light dancing and what not. Painting your nails while wearing your big t-shirt. You grimace at the femininity of it all but you enjoy the careful bristles on your nail beds. Because it’s me. Because you like me. Because you love me actually and you say it in this moment. And yeah, it’s probably sweet.

And then it’s Thanksgiving. And you’re quiet but polite. American in a room full of immigrants. Different but well suited. Cut from the same cloth as me. Black kids from PWI’s who move to the big city and find themselves in each other. She doesn’t quite understand you but she doesn’t quite understand me either. So you make sense to her. We make sense to her. I finally make sense to her. Because you’re polite. You’re nice. You compliment her decor. You have hobbies and talents and you’re nice to her daughter so it’s you. I guess it’s us now.

And it’s that and she’s happy. And she smiles in her sleep. You make sense to her, for me. And finally, she’s happy with the love I’ve brought home.

Then there is a ring, naturally. And it’s the seventh or so Thanksgiving. Maybe you come to Christmas now. But right when there’s a baby the ring disappears. And her dream is a nightmare but also a true story. Her story though, not mine. But she’s terrified for me. And I am crying and I am distraught but also I’m not real and none of this is real and she’s torturing herself.

And then you’re gone because that’s what happens to the women in my family. And the baby is a girl. And the next Thanksgiving is just the girls again because that’s how it always is. Because that’s what happens. That’s how it goes.

And then she wakes up. She calls me. She retells the narrative slyly as if it’s an oddity of her mind when really it’s a suggestion; a plea really. Something I should consider. And I have considered it. Not because I’ve ever genuinely really wanted it. Not because I even wish I did. But because she does. Because I would love to make her horrible dream come true for some reason. I would love to give her you.

And sure, you are just some guy that I met a few times in college that she saw on Instagram. And I haven’t spoken to you in years, and you tend to date paler women, and I am a lesbian. But I don’t mention that stuff when she calls. When she calls we just mourn you together. Because you are a pillar. You are a string that keeps us tied. You and I taste each other’s air, and you say you love me, and you break my heart in my mother’s dreams over and over again. And I’ll always be a little in love with you for that.

They don’t even really seem to be enjoying my flavor. Just the act of eating me. With their practiced grace, candor, class. Several forks, several knives, and those fancy cloths made of cotton to dab at their faces after they take a hearty bite. Silk table cloth; deeply impractical which of course is the point. Dressed to the nines, diamond chandelier, and me. Sprawled awkwardly, naked, on the table.

We tell stories. We’re telling a story. We’re retelling a story. That’s what we do. That’s the job. We’re storytellers. It’s a story that haunts. A story that permeates your soul and leaves nothing but heated, hot, vitriolic anger. We’re telling a story. A story that permeates your skin and leaves it buzzing with the wretchedness of injustice. Well my skin. Not they’re skin. Not in the same way. But we’re telling that story. Well, they’re telling that story. I am on the table. I am sprawled out on the table, silent. Smiling even. Asking if they’d like me to pass the salt.

And they’re fine-tuning the narrative and they’re crafting the act structures and they’re spinning webs around each other’s pale brilliance over Chardonnay on the company card.

The dinner in and of itself is a reenactment. It’s a sequel to the story they’re pursuing. And they are the children of the stories antagonists and I am the child of the victim they seek to vindicate in their retelling. To stroke their ego with. To amend any residual guilt they may have inherited. They are brave enough to oppose their ancestors for material gain. The face of nobility.

Sprawled out on my back, on the table, on their plates, I begin to applaud their graciousness and valor. One of them grabs me by the hand and snaps my wrist over the table’s edge and devours. “Shhhh” she coos at me, my flesh between her teeth. Sorry, I almost forgot. My forefather is dead. This is a story about his death. So I don’t speak in the reenactment. I don’t have lines.

Me silent, because I have not yet earned a voice. I have not yet earned humanity. I pass salt. I pass salt and stay silent. That is my job. And you sell stories over my body, over your dinner.

I was wrong again. He did not take my truth in his hands and kiss it. He did not gracefully tour me around my old neighborhood. We did not make amends. He did. As he always does. And I get the remnants of his self-discovery. As I always do. That’s the thing about having been in love with someone who hates themself. You’re constantly contorting to be seen. To be heard. To be enough. When you never can because you’re not a person. You’re a mirror. And to him I was always a mirror of what he hated most about himself. I don’t know what it is and of course I do. I know everything about you. I know he’d resent my saying that. So I’ll reiterate. All the things, the layers, the nuances, the fallacies, the intricacies of your mind–are obvious. Boring. Tried. You are not special. If anything, you are an amalgamation of the most basic insecurities of those who share your pale likeness and that is what affords you individuality. The fact that all of those general qualities could find themselves inside one body is your only significance. And yet, you were my life’s puzzle. So I guess we're both psychotic.

Maybe I’m insulted that you saw something of yourself in me. Something you clearly hated. Something that made you treat me that way. Over and over forever. Because I know it wasn’t me. It was you. It’s always, always about you. But whatever it was, was something I don’t align with nonetheless. Something that couldn't have been more projected. Something that couldn’t be more intricately transparent. Your shallow shell. Jesus, your shallow shell you color with crayon and call a masterpiece. I am not like you. What we share–an affinity to be seen, an affinity to be respected. Respect you’ve never felt you had, but you did. Worth I’ve always had, but respect I had to earn. You have always had it and you dilute yourself to think otherwise. I taught myself how to be perceived as worthy. Worth was your birthright and yet you still clung to my coattails to further your acclaim. Your proximity to me another one of your self validating mind games. Brilliant, but nonetheless basic. Familiar. You follow the tact of those before you.

Despite my words, I am not angry with you. I don’t hate you. I am frustrated with myself really for not noticing how empty this all was. How simple it was. That you just represent ellipses from my own mind. You are my teachers who never found me stimulating, my doctors who never found my pain compelling, my playground friends who yanked at my braids and laughed at me for existing. Me, constantly craving. Constantly craving revenge. Constantly craving validity. Constantly craving evidence that I am good. I always knew. But living in a world that constantly denied me, starved me, of any evidence outside of my mind drove me mad clearly–and straight into the arms and traps and spectacle of someone like you.

And here I am, dehumanized. The irony. The irony. Your distant British blood. The Mayflower. Emily Dickinson’s distant relative. You are not a bigot. But you are a parody of yourself. And beneath it all is a new innovative bigotry that’s learned to blame itself; so it’s never externally projected hatred, just a sick cyclical cycle of hating yourself with the exact same results: my skin, aching. To reference my lover before you–who left me scars I can’t yet put to paper–I feel I’ve gone from fetish to specimen. I was circus then. And you made me subject. Not lover, but subject. The quote that defines us, ”Love is mutual study”. I was studying your personhood, and you were studying the validity of mine; how I was possible. How you could adopt it and transform it for yourself.

In the contours of your love, I was study. A disposable subject, with valuable takeaways. And you’ll continue your research. You’ll go far. Congratulations.

And I gave him my pitch. My spiel. To creak open the door I’d slammed in his face. To speak to me. To help. To help both of us. To talk about it. To dispel the evil I’d convinced myself he was to cope with the fact he was the greatest love I’d ever known at one point. At a point where he no longer reciprocated that feeling. 

And we talked. And he held my heart in his hands and he kissed it. With a gentleness and care that I’d craved for so long. His apologies, his awareness. Too late but not irredeemably late. Maybe right on time. And after our reckoning we hugged. Like friends do. Or former family. Or two former lovers who were once trapped at sea; one pushing the other off of the life raft to save themself–convinced it was the right decision for them both as their partner was continually trying to jump. 

And he told me about his lovers. His family, that I’d once shared bread with. His inner world that I used to decorate. And it felt so good. It felt so freeing. To, from a distance or through a lens, get to peek back inside my old neighborhood. And when I walked away, it didn’t feel like an old door reopening. But a creaky, crusty, decrepit door finally closing. In a peaceful way. In a beautiful way. Filled with all the torment we’d given each other. All the mirroring we’d done to learn ourselves through each other. Speaking beautiful eulogies at our late wake. 

My last words to him were thank you. Because while I deserved his apologies, his reflections, his truth; he did not owe it to me. But he gifted me that, and for that I will always hold appreciation. And I hope I can do the same for you one day. 

I hope one day–when I don’t know your address, or your job title, and maybe have forgotten the name of your second cousin–I can mirror you at a coffee shop in Brooklyn and we can spin webs around our mutual destruction. We can hold a wake for our love story. 

The issue laying in the fact I can do that now, and I have tried. I will reflect more, I will learn more, I will navigate the waves of guilt more and eventually land on new beaches of discovery. I will have more to say one day. But what you deserve to hear, I have already told you. I see the error of my ways and I am dedicated to change. To not hurting you or anyone that way again. But you cannot give me that now. I spoke eulogies to you and you shot me. The ghost you made me beckoning to be forgiven, to make amends while you decimated my corpse by laying with hers. 

I understand why. I understand it all. But I do not respect it. I do not forgive you. And if we hold a wake, I will come in black and white. Revitalized and anew but forever mourning the former me that you discarded to save yourself. It was the right thing to do for you and I will accept that. And I understand it, please do not tell me I do not understand. But I will never respect it. I will never respect the swords you punctured through your body, careless to the fact I was standing behind you, receiving the tip. 

You are entitled to this. One day I will be happy you have it. That you have her. That you had her, because lord knows she will not be yours long. You know that. You told me that. And that was a cruelty you were delusional enough to think was a gift. But I will not be bitter. If we must have a wake I will be there. And I will give you the gift of this decrepit door closing. But I hope at that time, you are able to reconcile with the evil you are. The evil you can be. The evil you became four days after our door was just beginning to rot. Whilst I still held your tears and understood your fears and you still told me you loved me and you needed me. And you sure as hell knew I did. 

I hope at that time, you own this–regardless of intention, regardless of fairness, regardless of the evil I sprung at you–your own evil. Your own capacity for harm. The evil you are currently in our old bed with. Cuddled up, entering.