apocalypsis II

In response to end of days.

Continued from apocalypsis I.

So I sat beside him.

Having no impulsion to assert my presence, I made do with just the act of being near him, with him. When mere millimeters of space defined our gap, it felt like he was in a place so distant, and removed from this, from here, from now. I wanted to be in that place, in his mind. To reside in the expanse of his ideas that seemed to consume his eyes. But here I was, a stuttering fool, without even the decency to ask for the permission of sitting beside him.

His mug lay empty nearby. A necessary detail that remained unnoticed. Well, nothing to lose. So I took the mug. In any case, I’m getting my own cup anyway. And seeing how he’s so engrossed in his book, it would be sacrilegious to ask or even point it out. With our mugs in tow, I went down to find the line at the counter deserted. Looks like sizygy does happen in real life. I hurried back upstairs to that outdoor balcony to find him holding my book at the page where I left it, and him continually reading his own tome. Like a choreographed dance, I reached out my hand to retrieve my book from him, while offering the freshly filled mug with the other. He looked up, reached out for his caffeine, and smiled.

Such a sweet, sweet smile.

No words were exchanged. He took the mug, I took the book. I sat down, recovering the space beside him.

“Thank you.”

It was faint, but it was there. All I could muster was a mediocre reply. 

“You’re welcome.” I said, as I reclaimed the adjacent cushion.

Then our arms brushed for the first time. It was brief, and subtle, but I could feel the warmth of his beside mine. It was so distinct I could have counted the number of hair strands on his that brushed my skin. I held my breath, trying to preserve this moment, fearing that if I exhale, the dream would falter and his arm would move away.

But I did exhale, and he didn’t move away.

For the succeeding weeks, we made that dreamy, solitary balcony, our own world. Hermetic and sufficient. The double-glass doors, our rabbit hole into the reality of our own defining. The couch, our thicket and grassy knoll by which our tired and weary bodies could find comfort in the solitude of companionship. The glass-clad balustrade was the sea, expansive and foreign, lulling us into its immensity. The canopy of steel, our umbrella of leaves across a forest deep and nurturing. For that period, we remained strangers to each others’ names.

Though no details were shared, we left no stone unturned. Every topic, and arena, interest and leaning we traversed, unfurled, divulged and expounded. Every idea tested, belief questioned. Every passion discovered, and memory retrieved. Every image explored, the landscape of our minds in the cusp of explosion, the throbbing of our thirst straining to implode. But still, no names, no personal trespasses. It felt that delineating with labels created expectation, and possibly disappointment. It was enough that what we had was pristine, unencumbered by intrusions into the personal, unfettered by the boundaries of anonymity. It felt right, what we had, and was perfect for what it is.

It was good, this unknown and intangible expectation. The anticipation of seeing each other on the succeeding weekend, same place, same couch, same urban landscape as our silent backdrop. Like solitary suitors to serendipity, we kept religiously this charade of anonymity, making do with the presence of the other, but never as a requisite. Like an undeserved gift, we hope, every weekend.

Sometimes I would miss him, sometimes him, me. And when time and fate allows it again, we progress with the narrative and dialectic as if no time was lost, no distance occupied. There was comfort in contemplating each others' place. And greater comfort in the belief of an eventual reunion.

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I referred to him as Ganymede, the beautiful hero Zeus abducted to become his eromenos and cup-bearer. Because his pulchritude, I felt, goes beyond what the physical realm could experience, and my senses could define. He called me Pollux, one the twins of Gemini; for my bipolar tendencies, that which he tempers so easily with a smile, and the confidence of his didacty. These names, aliases, sufficed for the purposes of our conversations, our travails. And we would relate personal stories in the metaphor of mythology, as Homer have done before. In this framework of Pantheon, our lives felt perfect, elegant and meaningful, it allowed us to become intimate, without needing to be personal.

“How was the agora? Where you able to convince the elders during the dialectic?” I asked about his work and a recent client presentation. 

“It was benevolent. The elders were in quorum about the alignments of our plans.” He answered. 

“And how is Hera? Is she relieved from the malady?” He said, querying about my mother’s condition. 

“Better. The visit to the oracle proved most auspicious.”

The arcane language we inhabited gave us the distance we craved, allowing us to mask the most personal introspections and intimacies in a morphology that few would find palatable. It gave, this language, our language, an ownership of our world. The fleeting effervescence of this sequence we choreograph. The music only audible to our ears, the plot privy only to our hearts.

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Then one Thursday, after a listless day of silence, both of us lost in the pages of our own cradled books, I found myself contemplating a question so assertive, boolean, absolute, that its possible reply could be too extreme, equally conclusive and precise, for me to accept. But somehow his presence felt different that day. A tranquility that needed no words, conversations held in the heaves of his breath, with answers forwarded by my brushing skin. I needed him, but now more than his mind, more than the perceptible and transitory. I wanted him.

“Will you keep me company tonight?”

I trembled as the words escaped my lips. Exacting gutteral sounds that held meaning, one I could not take back, or further ignore. I held my breath for millenia as his misty gaze met mine. He smiled as his spectacles slid down the arch of his nose.

He closed his book.

And nodded.

Image from here.