BeforeNewYork.

Polarity 1. The Summer Kid.

Who’s to say that we’ve known each other too well?

We exchanged hushed letters and kissed through hurried nights of fast beers and stolen breakfasts. We called hands clasped under café tables, and eyes welling with fleeting smiles ‘love’, and left these fragments above our heads to dissipate. You sang and danced for me, I opened the floodgates of your grappling innocence. I understood the years you needed to find your self, immersed yourself in theater seasons. I was there waving, walking towards you, less than a stranger, when you came back. You listened to the stories of my quiet redemption. I hugged you with reverence, as if a parent’s prodigal.

Please don’t ask me now where paths lead to. I never knew. We dream, we look forward to something better. We try to stick around. We carry millstones, and breathe by the surface. Even this new theater season you’re cocooned in, I could bear. You fear treading a promenade of scars. I could only promise that I will be there to cover you, on this proximity you set for me. I am here.

 My skin knows the imprint of your hand- not even the profundity of rain could wash away. For now, I could only admit to this longing.

 “..My brutish hands snatch your ribcage; your hand cups my jaw. I see your lower lip tremble as you pull me towards your face. I grin with your calculated kisses. I find you in tears, and you look through me to say don’t ask why. I press your frame on me, tense inside you as I’ve never roughly done, wishing you would never forget this dark mind. I own your wrists. You made me want them.”

The Summer Kid. Francesco Drafts. BeforeNewYork.

“These summer letters. Were we this reckless? Or was this utter recklessness…?”

April-May 2009:

Alberto— I feel burdened. It’s as if i’m encased in a glass frame watching you and witnessing your life pass by. How I wish I could be so much more than a picture, a daze, a familiar feeling. My life with you would never be to simple. The beaches, travelling, Us.

This is how things should. How I wish it could be. I am not one to give up so easily but these feelings for you weigh heavier than anything I’ve ever felt, sometimes I can’t bear the sheer emotion. It makes me smile and tear up. I makes me angry and then calm. You should see me. I’m gone crazy.

Every time I see you my hands jitter. I get goosebumps. I blush. Then I notice myself and I try to remain calm. To no effect really, and here I am- enflamed, kindred with you.

No this doesn’t happen often. Maybe you’d like to think so. Maybe it’s hard to believe. My words are dull due to judgement but what more do I have to lose. It’s just myself really, and the people I really care about. I will not lose you or Ben. I haven’t given up on Kiko though he shares nothing with me anymore. I don’t know.

I want to just run-away, go to the beach, start anew. 
I don’t know what I got myself into but I still choose to be in it.

Raphael— I still wanna call you baby.

My life, with him in it, may have given you an epiphany on how and why life could be, how love could weave the hours I burn; but the things you see do not have to get you to re-arrange your life, angel.

What I wanna say is that it can be too simple, slow, ordinary.

Me. Beside you, quiet and comforting.

I wish I could tell you everything.

Alberto— Could I stand to be away from you any longer. I feel this echoing chasm with my stomach. I want to scream to the world how much I’m so in love with you and yet when I do I am mute. Without sound and word I only wish my breath to reach you through. I am hollow without you. 

You, touching my hand, whispering my name to my ear, filling me with so much hope for life that all I can do is cry. And you still make me cry because damn it, I’ve never felt love like this before. Where it hurts to the pit of your stomach. Where you speak love and drink love, where you simply fall to dreams of living with that person, all day, all night.

I obsess. I clamor. I fuss. I become envious I become paranoid. Because i love you. Is that really love? Maybe I’m fooling myself, but i’d fool myself ten times over just to fall in love with you again.

Raphael— i’m back on the job. it seemed as if the 48-hour rest day did not do me any good, or not a tad benefiting. i hate to rant this way, but i guess i wanna sort out the last three days to jumpstart this week on a more positive note. bear with me for making you my catch-all. 

(but then again you are not stone’s throw away from this building, no one to share coffee with..see, i’m still ranting - working-class guilt..)

i’m looking forward to hitting the beach this month, and maybe a weekend in baguio city. i refuse to hurry, beacuse as i look forward to these days, thoughts wear me down here at work. i do not wake up feeling lazy to go to work, not yet anyhow. 

(but i wanna be with you, all curled up on a hammock, by the beach, by a mossy hill and pine. kiss you hours and hours on end..)

let’s not be reckless. i keep on telling myself that we should not re-arrange our lives. i keep on calling things which they really aren’t. i don’t care. i want you. i want to wait. we need to wait.

let’s call this love.

Alberto— I miss you. I’m learning to live with it.

I’ll call this love. I want you, only you. If not now. Maybe not now.

I love you anyhow.

Raphael— I don’t want us to be apart. I want you. I love you. I’m planning to go to Baguio City, Thursday.

Alberto— I’m afraid that in the end this will all just fade away. So i’d rather just not fight, this is how I want things to be. I will always be here, maybe not with you, but always by you.

I’m happy for you Rai. I know you love him. He loves you too. He may not show it in the most common of ways but I know he does.

I’m such a small part of you that I can only wish for so much. 

The beach trips, and the drive to Baguio City never happened. Francesco fenced me in, as he sensed onto his territory, and I allowed him.

I stared at our letters for weeks. Cried, smashed things, worked longer hours to have a reason to look into the letters. I used to want to be left alone in the office, stare at the glass windows until the sun was up, strained my eyes, my chest heavy to want something so bad. I break to remember how my arms wrapped his waist, when alone I feel his fingers dab on my face. I trembled in sobs when I thought about how we cried after we come, because we do not know if we could ever Be again. 

I hated that I knew Neruda and Rilke. I resented that I was too weak to move closer to Alberto. I started to brood in silence. I became lanky.

Alberto mirrored the guy I was, at 22. Stubborn, brilliant, multi- talented, creative, and bored. He kindled, melted skin for a second one- a deed that I have forgotten. That two people can hug, kiss, and look into each others’ eyes hours and hours on end. That two people can live with the web of their words, no matter how easy it could ruin them.

He showed me Fire Trees, and reminded me that they can indeed burn again all Summer. 

“I’m just glad you’re back. Ibiza, Bali, Venice- so let’s dream. And Love. Love is easy. I care for you enough to say that I love you. You’re a fixture in my life, and space. That’s not for you decide anymore.”