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he You know exactly where to find him. You always do, when you're in these parts. He is drawn to this bluff, to this broken church that looks down on a town that has been forsaken by God. The car makes a lot of noise as it comes up the gravel driveway. You step out into the evening air and just stand for a moment, looking at the splintering wood and the bright shards of glass that were once a stained glass window. He is silhouetted against a russet sea, a little figure on the lip of a bell tower that has lost its voice. The car pings gently behind you and you wonder if, maybe, it wouldn't be wiser to stay with your feet firmly planted on the ground instead of venturing up into the shaking sky. But, no, he's heard the car and he knows the routine as well as you. So you venture up those creaking steps, conscious only of the long fall and the fact that these steps don't seem as strong as the used to be. A year has done much to their structural integrity. You can feel the bell tower shake in the wind, shiver from your passage. You think you're very stupid for doing this. He isn't looking at you when you get to the top. He never does and you've stopped caring about that a long time ago. Instead he sits on the railing, slim body perched comfortably on a sliver of rotting wood, back against a corner. One leg swings idly over eternity, the other lies stretched out before him. He holds a long-necked beer bottle loosely in one hand, and you can't tell if it's his first or his fifth. You steel your nerves and walk to him, barely breathing, wondering if later tonight you'll be cursing his name, cursing everything about him, or crying because you are so blessed to be with him. You never really know where you stand with him. He smiles when you touch his shoulder--a real smile, with the eyes and everything. He looks young in the dying light, relaxed and calm and loose. Only he could be relaxed sitting on the edge of a cliff. You stay as far away from the edge as you can. You don't know why standing here should bother you so much--this bell tower is the only place where you experience vertigo, and you've been up here before. Hell, you've been up here once a year for as long as you've known him. A lifetime has been spent gazing out at the sea, and the vertigo should have passed long ago. But you still feel it, and you'll figure out the reasons why, later. Preferably when your feet are firmly planted on the ground. "It's beautiful," he says and takes another delicate sip of his beer. "Don't you think so?" "Sure," you say. Anything to get him out of here faster. You're already thinking about who you can con into coming back up here with you to fetch his bike. "It's like." He stops, takes another sip, turning his wrist so that his hand cradles the bottle. "It's. It's one of those things where you just." He stops again, sighs, looks off into the world with distant eyes. "Words aren't enough." "Mmm," you say. There's a big hole in the floor and you can see down into the nave and the old, pitted, marble altar. The drop is dizzying. Or maybe your head is spinning because you remember the last time you were up here and how he stopped you on the way down, took you to that altar, slid you out of your clothes and fucked you until you thought you'd pass out. The memory makes you blush and feel guilty. It's not like you're particularly religious--you stopped going to mass after your parents stopped forcing you to sit still and pretend to listen--but there has been enough dogmatic canon pounded into your skull that you feel like you've committed a mortal sin. You wonder, briefly, if there isn't a law against having sex on an altar. He's finished with the bottle, now, and he pitches it over the side, leaning far out into the empty air. Were you not paralyzed with fear, you'd be over there, grabbing him and pulling him back to safety and trying to sling him over your shoulder so you can carry him down to the waiting car. You always did want to play the barbarian rescuer, but he is anything but a fainting princess. The helpless maid role is lost on him, which is a pity because you think he'd look quite fetching in a dress. And anyway, he probably wouldn't see the humor. "Do you ever wish you could fly?" he suddenly asks. "Like, really fly?" "What?" You're suddenly more afraid of him than you are of the drop or the structural integrity of the church. "What do you mean?" "Like. Just. Jumping out there" he gestures, suddenly, almost violently, "and just soaring away. Forever." You shake your head, muted by fear. He smiles, this time only with his mouth--his eyes are too sad to laugh. "Some days," he says softly, words almost lost in the wind, "gravity is just. Too heavy. My body weights so much, too much. I want to fly, fly away, fly forever and ever..." "Don't," you say. "Please. Don't fly away yet." He looks at you with sad, deep, big eyes and for a moment your breath catches and you don't know if it's from fear or because of the painful beauty of this man--no, this boy he's just a boy, a kid even though the lines on his face make him look older--and this dead church and the endless ocean and the bleeding horizon. If he jumped now, you wouldn't be able to stop him. You might even follow him, just to see what he sees, feel the beauty that slides through your fingers like sand and his hair. Maybe if you were staring into a blood-colored sea you'd be able to find him at last, be able to know what he knows. Know why he needs this. Why he needs to hate himself. But he doesn't jump, doesn't lean back, back, back into space and weightless air. He leans in instead, and climbs down off the sill and walks towards you. His hand is small in yours, and cold from his beer, and when he pulls you follow. Follow him down the stairs and to the car and away from the old church. You always follow. You need him. And, sometimes, you like to think that he needs you too. |