The Hanging Garden (Interludes)

Interlude I: Reptile Rain

Lust transfigures. It floods the world with light's opposite, where darkness is only its absence. From where I sit seconds pass like the drip of cooling glaze on ceramic, the network of cracks an artful lizard's skin of longing. Izumi potters in the kitchen, boiling water and gathering the necessities for tea. Outside the rain falls steadily. I am not normally such a fool. Look but don't touch is something I comprehend intellectually but the ouroboros coiled in my belly does not. One red eye opens to the not-light illumination of desire: Izumi the saint, holy icon of lust. I am glad for the counter between us.

He comes too close when bringing the mug, innocent of the concept of temptation. I take care not to brush his hands and so the momentary danger is averted. Everyday travails of madness: we sip hot flavored water and talk of idle things, laughing on occasion at the grey afternoon that precludes the idea of outdoor sports. Precious time spent together. And all the while the sound of rain is the rasping of blade-edged scales.

Interlude II: Fauvism

Only at still moments am I aware of his gaze. Once on the field the world shifts into simplicity, they and I as sharply divided as the black-white of the ball, and the watchful feeling is lost. Green grass, blue sky, a goal - here choice is heat lightning and even the colors are fierce with delight.

There is no we when I play.

No thought either, save what burns at the limit of me. Power rides the pounding of air in my lungs, feeds the breakaway strike uncoiling. I push the others to their uttermost so I might strain for that near-flight, battling and pursuing under the burning sun. I do not need more than this. Perhaps I never did; not even before a knife bled me of my childish answers. But once motion slows I sense the lock of his gaze, and wonder. Briefly. It is not easy to remember air, or sunlight, or the pattern of shadow cast by the leaves above him. Such he seems, silent and waiting, almost hidden. I am used to him. The field is infinite green: savannah and veldt and quickening continents. I turn to run, and forget I am tangled in the Moëbic forever of his eyes.

He will watch me until sundown.

Interlude III: Subcutaneous

Izumi will never be anything but slender. His incandescent body consumes itself continuously for energy and grace. On the field he is breathtaking. Surely no one of such meteoric beauty could live for long, and so I pin him under me to taste him, in order to curtail that motion. He is salt and honey on my tongue, metal and gunpowder both.

He cries out when my fingers reach that place. Core molten beneath the surface of him, between his open legs, flushed skin against skin... So slender he is. Almost like a woman but harder, less resilient under my attentions. He was tempered in innocence like ice water: it has made him brittle. I trap him in pleasure and he pleads. I want to rip him apart. There isn't enough of him to love, you see. Could I but turn him inside out, kiss the red coral of his entrails and the jewel-like translucence of his lungs, blindly soothe the pounding of his heart with my lips... But I am the one who is cut instead. As a glowing blade cauterizes, the wound is painless, and invisible until it tears under the onslaught of my mad pulse. I crave, and bleed.

He sobs as he comes over my hands. Would that physical possession were enough.

Interlude IV: Qui Tollit Peccata Mundi

Kouji sings of violated Eden bound by walls of angelic flesh, watching me with darkened eyes through the TV screen. Live broadcast: night wraps around me the Gehenna of solitude, familiar enough to be comforting. So I don't understand love. Doesn't matter. It's possible to sell your soul to the Devil without reading the contract. He used to want your signature in blood, but that was for the world's benefit. Nowadays a smudge of DNA will do.

Consent is still required.

A car passes outside, headlights chasing shadows around the space of Kouji's voice. Steady beat caressing my mind. Perhaps this mad trust is Heaven – I wouldn't know. It's not about love. Were I dying of passion, there would still remain a moment before the scarlet drop dampens the paper: acceptance or refusal. But we are born parts of a broken whole, given no more choice in our need for others than we are in death, only whether or not to run. For six years I thought I was free, yet neither he nor I could lift ourselves from the mire in the end. I close my eyes against his siren music. Grace is always freely offered.

— Montreal, November 1999