This Place of Red Bricks and Aging Mortar

     
This piece is inspired by two things. First, I am working with OutLook Theater Project on exploring the intersection of faith and the queer community with a (hopeful) partner in San Jose. This is project is inspiring me to explore the edges of darkness: a space where light finds itself trapped. To me, it is in these spaces in particular where one witnesses the true power of faith. 

The second thing that inspired this was the passing of my friend Ted. Now, it is kind of misnomer to say Ted was a friend. Rather, he was an acquaintance. But upon his passing, something changed. I'm not quite sure what, but his death and the fuzzy details surrounding his murder in Juarez, Mexico, made me think of him differently and dearly. Ted was a writer, conflicted, in agony, and loved. It is clear he was loved so very, very much. I'm not quite sure he new exactly how much. He was funny that way. He always loved the exaggeration, desperation, and creation of stories. That was his life. And many times it was not the life that others saw of him. There was a beautiful and tragic disconnect between his world and ours. 

So...this story is to faith, queers, and Ted. Long live the exaggeration, desperation, and creation of stories. 

****
It came to me like a dream comes to you in the daylight: hazy, askew, and intangible. The longing that I felt for what had been lost so long ago drained as quickly as pasta water through a colander. I was left only with that longing clinging desperately to self. The majority wasn't there any more, and what remained was integral to perfectly cooked farfalle. It was that explosion of salt and liquid as you bit into it that I loved. I never wanted it to go away fearful that when it did nothing would be left but the residue of my memory.

I happened upon this place -- this building with its red brick from centuries ago held together by crumbling mortar lazily applied -- as I wandered the streets at three in the morning. The stained glass broken cut my hand as I crawled through St. James the Less high on hopeful hallucinations of more saints and sinners. I don't know what compelled me to relieve myself at the abandoned shrine to Madonna the Blue. It felt good to just let go. I did so again in a corner with St. Peter staring emotionlessly at me from above with his slightly condemning expression only a repressed artist could conjure.

This place -- this place of religion and history and collected memories and whispers -- spoke not in a language understood. I knew it spoke only by the tickle in my lungs as I inhaled from the bottle of poppers I keep in my breast pocket whenever I need a rush. The brain cells died, and I was closer to this god, a god I never wanted to be close to. I knew this god well. It visited me as a specter of childhood and phobia constantly preying on my need for trust. I trust only that which I ingest or inhale. Communion was always metaphysical.

There I laid splayed like a sacrifice on the marble alar to gods renamed. There I was staring at the crucifix suspended by rusted chains ready to break from time and neglect. There I was readying and steadying myself for it. The breath held in place by hand on chest and belt choking neck, I came: a spasm; then paroxysm; then nothing. There was no wetness or relief or joy or guilt. There was only that longing. Then that residue. Finally, always finally, nothing.

He watched from the shadows fearful that his desperate eyes would be recognized as desperation. He was like the neighborhood feral cat: always fed and loved, always ravishingly hungry and distrustful, always conflicted. I saw him only by reflected light off of bared teeth. They were all silver. Or steel. Or maybe lead. He was one of those creatures left in alleys after society has used them. He can only be seen out of corners of eyes; can only be heard though manic whispers. Yet he is there -- will always be there -- even when his body transcends this world. He is captured by our fear.

I know him intimately even though we've yet to speak or acknowledge each other's existence here in this place that once was refuge for the faithful and now is home to the wandering. I know him because we are one. He is who I have become. I am who I was. I crawled through St. James the Less over a week ago. I've laid on this marble altar ever since fasting as a saint fasts: fed by devotion and inflated ego. I've counted the creaks and the sirens and the rattling of doors by others who are too chicken shit to give themselves to St. James the Less. These sporadic rhythms and bursts of melody lull my racing mind. It's as if as times creeps forward and the less I move acceleration occurs. The distance between crescendos physically increases and mentally decreases. It is then he appeared as a flicker of a candle extinguished over twenty years ago when this place of unanswered prayers closed its doors. I want him.

He's an animal, a monster, something others divert eyes from. The scabs on his hands from gashes deep and uncleaned bubble and ooze its semi-liquid puss. His hair is oily and unkept tangled like tumbleweed. He is more than these fearful appearances and pungent smells but mostly others only recognize in him the things they hate about their selves. He amplifies their insecurities. He manifests their fears. It is the lump on his shoulder that terrifies me.

Saints and sinners be damned. All of them be damned. I am lost here, and I hate their stares and constant need for forgiveness. I've never received mine. I never will. I am here because I am lost, trapped, isolated by choice and fate and god's will. I want that crucifix to finally become unhinged. I want time to do its duty and age. I want that hunched man in the shadows to stop staring mindlessly at as he fiddles with the remnants of some dead thing stuck on a decades old trap. I want to be free, something not yet experienced. I want the release of self that comes from passage. I want union with the unknown. Mostly, I just want him to leave and he won't.

The siren blared again this time louder as if it was at the front door. It must have been. I felt the flicker of warmth first as if the summer sun cut through fog and gently dried the earth. He laughed. He just laughed and rocked. He was mesmerizing, and I too laugh and rock. I now was him or more likely he is me. Time and flames collide. I feel my shoulder and there it grows. It is to be the only thing that will survive this desperate destruction. I know it immediately. I claw and scrape as only someone can do right before death. Then blackness, an electric pulse through my chest, the smell of carbon, and an impression of solitude.

I was no longer. He is gone. This place of red bricks and aging mortar only a shell. Gods and saints and sinners die.

 I am here still. I know I am. You can find me as a vanishing thought or a tickle in the lungs as you inhale your poppers. You can visit me often and frequently. I beg you too. I ask only that you not divert your eyes. Look at me. For you are only looking at your self. You won't like what you see. No one does. But that is the point:

we all are hunchbacks lurking in shadows waiting to be seen.

Share |