MANKIND IN DREAMS
AMELIA SPENCER
The gentle song of a distant guitarist soothed my envy as I watched a young man skate circles around a statue of a steel woman. It was a stray warm day in the middle of a bitter, windy autumn. The sun was out, bringing with it a collection of musicians, artists, and readers returning to the light for one last triumph before winter retirement. The lawn was full, swarming with life. I was among them, aimless and alone.
His board scraped against the bench she rested upon; the wheels clacked and crashed back to the concrete below; the cycle repeated. He was tall and lanky– Lankier next to the large metal woman, but no shorter for her height. Underneath baggy t-shirt sleeves, fitting in just the right ways in just the right places, lean muscles shifted mesmerisingly under tanned skin. The steel woman remained immobile, trapped within herself.
My focus on the facets of his body would soon follow me home. The sight of my own hand on the doorknob was somewhat disquieting. That hand was not mine, nor the hair on my arm. Sometimes it seemed to all belong to somebody else entirely, somebody separate from myself. Yet, I knew that wasn’t right; it was just easier to understand that way. Those parts were all mine. They looked like me and felt like me; a few things had just been switched around, when I was very young and still laden with the merciful naivety of childhood, in an act of divine betrayal. I’d frequently run myself in circles asking why and how, never to any avail. Only that quiet, startling dissonance endured.
Nights later, and it was, again, too cold for human life on the lawn. Regardless, without movement and company, we would all be driven out of our minds. So, we moved, guided by a swell of bodies, flashing lights, a pounding drum, and an omnipresent bassline. At some point, I realized I’d been separated from the company I’d come with. The movement and the music continued nevertheless. The drummer hid just out of sight, but the bassist loomed large before me.
His position as the quiet commander of the band and, at least for tonight, the entire room was immediately made clear. He masterfully set the pace for the rest of us, happy to follow. His long, loose curls bounced as he swayed side to side to his own low rhythm. Long, bony fingers dove down deep into the neck of his blessed instrument, deftly worked the strings with mesmerizing intensity. He was illuminated only by flashes of reds, blues, and purples, highlighting the razor sharpness of his jawline, collarbones, and sultry bare shoulderblades.
My desire was indecisive, divided between wanting to be close to him and wanting to become him. I briefly wondered if I could somehow manage both, if I could somehow push physically near enough to slip right up underneath his skin.
In the sudden quieter space between songs, for the most fleeting of moments, his dark eyes met mine. I swiftly turned my gaze to the floor, trance broken by my own seemingly sourceless guilt. I turned for the bar. I needed to find my friends.
The band crashed into their next song and the bass was swallowed up by distorted guitar and banging drums. I turned back once more, for one final glimpse of the bassist absorbed in his holy work. I was not ready to let him go. I longed to put some sort of physicality to this magnificent visual. I wanted to make it mine, in an act of selfish possession. Still, I turned my back on him and pushed away through the pulsing crowd, leaving behind his world of creation and control.
Another month, and it was too cold to be outside at all for any longer than a few short minutes. Instead, I sat cross-legged in a circle of bodies on someone’s apartment floor. Wooden floorboards creaked beneath the weight of my restless palms. A breeze from an open window sent a shiver down my spine.
I watched the boy opposite me take a freshly rolled joint, passed ritualistically around the circle. Black-tipped fingers accepted the offering and raised it to already parted lips; baby-fat-padded cheeks hollowed out; his pimpled jaw tensed. I was acutely and somewhat shamefully aware of the fresh synthetic testosterone making home in his body.
He exhaled in dreamy white clouds, aimed haphazardly in the approximate direction of the window, then the joint was passed along. He leaned back on his elbows, legs outstretched ahead of him. His chest was wide and flat, blanketed by grey sweatshirt. I was certain he’d be warm to the touch. The overt security he displayed in this God-given body awed me.
My mind wandered. I found myself wondering whether it could really be so bad to stop continuously and fruitlessly pushing these feelings down; whether acceptance would really complicate things as much as I was convinced they would; whether this unnamed thing was not the illness I oft considered it, but something natural, real, and innocent. Something as full of potential for me as it had been for the man across from me.
I could not have that, not now. It was not mine to possess. I would stay lonely.
His glittering eyes met mine and I was suddenly made aware I’d been staring. Despite the firmness of my resolution, I smiled. His brows raised. Then, slowly, he smiled in return, lazy and comfortably lopsided. I felt a wordless secret shared inexplicably between us. I got the impression he knew something about me, or us, or this strange spiritual tether between us that I remained blind to.
Later, in my dreams, I would see a vision of myself in some unfamiliar universe, some time far from this one. I saw myself, not as myself, or perhaps more so than I was while awake. It was hard to tell– I was disoriented by my own latent impulses, pushed out of sight and mind until my consciousness was no longer present to hold them down. Then, and only then, I would see a man.
He lived in the city somewhere on the other side of the world, where it was always warm and the lawns were always full. There was always a gentle guitarist somewhere in the distance, though he had no envy to be soothed. He was free; his curls were wild; he was tall, his chest was flat, his jaw was sharp. His t-shirts fit in just the right ways in just the right places. He went out at night and the other boys saw him as he was, how he saw himself, for they were one and the same. They loved him and he loved them, for he was one of them.