darien.maugrimson
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STANDING STILL
by Darien Maugrimson
When I think of him, there is in me something not quite clean as joy but not quite dark as lust. I remember his eyes those first months. Searching and eager and oddly wounded. I remember the narrow hips, the muscled thighs, the girls coming, singly, in pairs, in trios, to catch sight of him. I remember his scent, all cinnamon and cigarettes and musk, or after basketball, peppery and rank with sweat, the way his hair rose and tumbled on his head in the mornings, sleep carved and urgent, his voice muzzy and low and unintelligible until coffee. I remember our first touch, shaking hands, introducing ourselves at the dormroom door, me watching his mouth the whole time helpless while my stomach plummeted. I remember introducing him to ping-pong, to the clean intimate melancholy of Angela Bofill and Phyllis Hyman, Jean-Luc Ponty and Pat Metheny, to midnight conversations whispered across the dark of a room, and midnight jaunts to a park just off campus to share a bottle of inexpensive wine and sit atop a wooden bench, in silence and comfort, side by side or back to back, watching the sky change until morning. I remember the wedding, my heart breaking even as I toasted him, his wife, and later, after they had gone, leaving the reception hall, finding a bar, getting stupid blisteringly drunk, all the while recognizing my cowardice but unwilling, unable, to move beyond it, to risk the friendship; so sure rejection would destroy me, unaware longing in silence would leave me damaged and immobile and alone for a decade. It's amazing what one can get used to.
It isn't exactly the same now, but still I feel dazed thinking of him, existing still in that moment of fear turned regret, even at thirty-two years old, even at thirty-thousand feet, hurtling westward, towards a city built and ruled by artifice, to meet him. I am prepared for disappointment. But perhaps I will keep my dignity.
My plane lands thirty minutes early. And he is already waiting. I spot him as I disembark, immediately, his profile as clear to me in the crowd as if etched in neon. He does not see me, though, not yet, and I step to the side, out of the flow, to study him. The other passengers spill past, warm and chattering, a current of flesh and rumpled fabric. He smokes a cigarette, heedless of the signs posted against it. I smile a bit remembering other similar little rebellions. He is slim still, though the chest is broader, the arms thicker. The skin is a precise shade of mahogany and I wonder if that fragrance of spice - slight and heady - will be the same as well. My hands tremble a little.
Do you need assistance, sir? A gate attendant asks. Can I help you? The look of concern on his face makes me wonder at the expression on my own. Or perhaps it's simply because I have not moved. I tell him no, that I am just woolgathering. And I step forward. Within me a place of tenderness and silence shifts and ripples; a stone dropping into a pond. And I step forward.
That face turns towards me, finally. I recognize the smile; and it is like something massive punching through my chest. Part of me screams this was a mistake, you can not survive this. But he is already moving towards me. And I can no more end this progression than tides resist the pull of the moon. The realization calms me. As if I bear no responsibility. He nears, and his expression changes, goes puzzled and wary. You've been crying, he says. And I realize I have been. The gate attendant's concern makes sense suddenly.
And so I act. And the world changes.
I pull my mouth from his and a single silver strand of saliva stretches like a future - or our proper past - between us. His eyes are unreadable and for a moment I wonder what will happen. What comes next.
Then he smiles a small complicated smile, tender and hurt and joyful. You're such a goddamn idiot, he says. He studies my face an eternal moment, then lifts my chin, leans in. Our bodies press together, and he tastes of the fragrances I remember, all cinnamon and cigarettes and musk.
It is enough. For now.
by Darien Maugrimson
When I think of him, there is in me something not quite clean as joy but not quite dark as lust. I remember his eyes those first months. Searching and eager and oddly wounded. I remember the narrow hips, the muscled thighs, the girls coming, singly, in pairs, in trios, to catch sight of him. I remember his scent, all cinnamon and cigarettes and musk, or after basketball, peppery and rank with sweat, the way his hair rose and tumbled on his head in the mornings, sleep carved and urgent, his voice muzzy and low and unintelligible until coffee. I remember our first touch, shaking hands, introducing ourselves at the dormroom door, me watching his mouth the whole time helpless while my stomach plummeted. I remember introducing him to ping-pong, to the clean intimate melancholy of Angela Bofill and Phyllis Hyman, Jean-Luc Ponty and Pat Metheny, to midnight conversations whispered across the dark of a room, and midnight jaunts to a park just off campus to share a bottle of inexpensive wine and sit atop a wooden bench, in silence and comfort, side by side or back to back, watching the sky change until morning. I remember the wedding, my heart breaking even as I toasted him, his wife, and later, after they had gone, leaving the reception hall, finding a bar, getting stupid blisteringly drunk, all the while recognizing my cowardice but unwilling, unable, to move beyond it, to risk the friendship; so sure rejection would destroy me, unaware longing in silence would leave me damaged and immobile and alone for a decade. It's amazing what one can get used to.
It isn't exactly the same now, but still I feel dazed thinking of him, existing still in that moment of fear turned regret, even at thirty-two years old, even at thirty-thousand feet, hurtling westward, towards a city built and ruled by artifice, to meet him. I am prepared for disappointment. But perhaps I will keep my dignity.
My plane lands thirty minutes early. And he is already waiting. I spot him as I disembark, immediately, his profile as clear to me in the crowd as if etched in neon. He does not see me, though, not yet, and I step to the side, out of the flow, to study him. The other passengers spill past, warm and chattering, a current of flesh and rumpled fabric. He smokes a cigarette, heedless of the signs posted against it. I smile a bit remembering other similar little rebellions. He is slim still, though the chest is broader, the arms thicker. The skin is a precise shade of mahogany and I wonder if that fragrance of spice - slight and heady - will be the same as well. My hands tremble a little.
Do you need assistance, sir? A gate attendant asks. Can I help you? The look of concern on his face makes me wonder at the expression on my own. Or perhaps it's simply because I have not moved. I tell him no, that I am just woolgathering. And I step forward. Within me a place of tenderness and silence shifts and ripples; a stone dropping into a pond. And I step forward.
That face turns towards me, finally. I recognize the smile; and it is like something massive punching through my chest. Part of me screams this was a mistake, you can not survive this. But he is already moving towards me. And I can no more end this progression than tides resist the pull of the moon. The realization calms me. As if I bear no responsibility. He nears, and his expression changes, goes puzzled and wary. You've been crying, he says. And I realize I have been. The gate attendant's concern makes sense suddenly.
And so I act. And the world changes.
I pull my mouth from his and a single silver strand of saliva stretches like a future - or our proper past - between us. His eyes are unreadable and for a moment I wonder what will happen. What comes next.
Then he smiles a small complicated smile, tender and hurt and joyful. You're such a goddamn idiot, he says. He studies my face an eternal moment, then lifts my chin, leans in. Our bodies press together, and he tastes of the fragrances I remember, all cinnamon and cigarettes and musk.
It is enough. For now.