This Man, These Men.

Art by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.

He is dancing. This man. He dances in the darkness of his room, the remnants of dusk streaking in and forming a faint silhouette of him seen from the outside. He bends and rises, winds and writhes, he thrusts too, his pelvis, and other times his rear, he thrusts and the part juts out.

There is a mirror before him where he watches his own movement. The mirror watches him too, feeding him the results of his actions. But outside, another man is the David of this show. The man watches from his balcony, watches with the appendage of his loins rising and twitching, watches as if he is doing nothing, only dragging smoke from a joint held almost at a pinch, inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly, sometimes playfully between open lips and through the nose, all smoke, all smoke.

There’s a song in his head and longing in his heart. He names his desire a need, shuts his eyes, and opens them again to savour the tastiness of this thing he is seeing. He doesn’t want it to end. He doesn’t. But when it finally ends, he waits for it to start again. It doesn’t, but he continues waiting, coming repeatedly like a child of the spirits, he opens his window to see, visits the balcony again and again with another joint lodged between the fore and middle fingers. But instead of the other man’s silhouette, he sees figures passing in the house, sees more, then sees none. But he stays. Stays thinking of possibilities and capabilities. Stays imagining and planning out a way.

At night, he dreams that the dancing man is in his room, or they are in a room that looks like his but not exactly his, and they are laughing, and he doesn’t know how this other man agreed to come with him, to him. But they are talking, feeling their bodies, desire shapeshifting into need. He kisses and is kissed. The sun sets again, casting a warm glow on the windows as the looking or dreaming man becomes a silhouette with the dancing man. These men, they thrust towards each other, sometimes it’s the pelvis and other times it’s the rear that juts out. Until the looking man hears raps on the window and his heart slips at the death of desire.

His breath leaves, and his heart sinks. He prays for safety. He prays because even in the safety of a house, death could be a punishment for this desire. He looks at the window, and it’s a cardinal rapping instead of a law calling him a criminal for craving another man’s touch. He tries to continue, but desire’s flame becomes too difficult to kindle. And then he wakes up, his pants muddied with his own secretion, his mind wishing this dream were real. Yet fear, tucked into a side of his heart, draws a deep breath and slowly exhales at what could be from what could have been, the consequence of a longing.