MESSAGES

I hear the secrets that you keep

When you’re talking in your sleep

-Talking In Your Sleep, The Romantics

i have sexual thoughts and ideas that i would never dare do anything about. it’s not totally blank up there, for your information. i’m not totally nothing. whatever, it wouldn’t matter either way, even though i guess i am still telling you this right now. but i don’t want to know yours, buddy, so you shouldn’t want to know mine. don’t ask. maybe i do want to know yours. i want to want to know yours, though i don’t think i could handle it if i actually did. carrying the burden of that truth might crush me flat into the ground and straight through the core of the earth. instead of being honest, instead of opening our fucking mouths, we should send psychic messages to each other on public forums and we should try to breathe at the same pace from miles and miles away… i wanna blink in sync with you. when i buck my hips into my hand, are you doing the same? i know you’re not, but if you are, don’t tell me. please please please don’t tell me. i can’t bear to know. it would make me sicker, sicker than i already am, sick with worry, all sweaty and pallid and knotted up inside. you don’t want to do that to me. you shouldn’t even know that i can feel that way. you shouldn’t know that i have the capacity for anything like this; you shouldn’t care. it’s not your business if i’m sick or sweaty or pallid or knotted up inside or if i’m touching myself and thinking of you doing the same. in my head you are alone in a room with white walls and a bed covered in crumpled white sheets on a box frame and you’re standing up between the bed and the wall and looking at me (not Me, because i can’t see myself here, but they’re my eyes seeing you, Me as the Camera, you’re looking into the Camera) and you’re hunched over and naked and pulling yourself in and out and in and out and in and out, the power starting from the shoulders into the elbow into the wrist into the hand into the fingers and into the thing i wont name, and you’re not making any noise but i can see in your eyes that it is serious. and you never get that far, the rainbow handkerchiefs never fully unfurl from the clown’s mouth, because it only takes about twenty seconds of me thinking about you and about you doing that for it all to be over with. i reach the peak, pressure mounts, and then the pulsing happens, and it’s just okay, i’m sure it’s better for other people, real people, but i take what i can get and appreciate that it even worked that time because sometimes it really doesn’t. then i open my eyes again and your room is replaced by my room and i can go about my day until it gets dark outside and the thoughts and ideas inevitably creep back in. i don’t exist this way to you and honestly that hurts my feelings when i think about it for too long. i know you don’t share my visions because my ears aren’t hot and my palms aren’t itchy and i can’t hear you at all, even when i focus really really hard. i try to turn the dial the right way with my mind because my hands are a little busy elsewhere. don’t think about that. you’re not allowed to. i am sad you don’t have the visions but like i said it is okay because i’m better for it, i’m standing upright and i’m speaking cogently and i don’t have to look over my shoulder when i walk alone in the dark. this is how i keep myself safe. i want to exchange signals with you one day, maybe, but i don’t know how. if i think it up all the way and start to really plan, it’ll be spoiled, won’t it? and real life never unfolds the way a dream does. the way these things really happen for real people is completely impossible for someone like me to handle. real people have clean spirits and good faces and they can match up with each other with little struggle. real people are comfortable with symbiosis, the possibility of it does not overwhelm them to the point of nausea, and they are okay knowing that the messages must come through loud and clear, loud and clear in both directions, for it all to work… they’re so okay with it, in fact, that they’ll sit face to face and tell each other the secret messages aloud just to verify that they both really, really get it. once announcements have been made and they are reciprocally agreed upon, action is taken. action is so tricky. action is physical. action is when the two of them go into a room together with their clothes off and they speak the messages aloud to each other yet again (even though the messages must sound so tired and redundant at that point) and then they actually perform them, like when you build a shelf and have to follow along with the instruction manual. it’s not like i’ve never performed the messages before, i have. six times actually. twice with one boy, once with the rest. but i was obfuscating… i was performing a performance of the messages, if that makes sense. i received the other party’s signal as clear as a bell, as sharp as the din seemed to possibly go, but i held on to mine. when all of my messages were supposed to pass through the channel to Him (not god, but Him as a synecdoche, Him as in each of the five), i held some back and clutched them tight to my chest. that’s why i wasn’t moving or thrusting like the real people do when they perform the messages, you see. thats why i wasnt making any noise, either. my hands were full and my eyes were closed. i was busy trying to keep my private messages from spilling out of my arms and my mouth and my head. nowadays i don’t even bother. i have sexual thoughts and ideas that i would never dare do anything about.