Work Text:
I pay homage and wonder if he sees what I’ve done while his hand reaches for the sky, long palmed with long fingers, his restless and unanchored weight dancing between limbs until his heels touch the ground. Only out of the corner of my eye do I see this ritual, the shroud of him standing half obscured beneath flashing lights. On this stage with five meters of separation, I feel most keenly the thrill of him. My long shadow in the peripheral, dancing.
There are times when the sounds become a river. Stones and pebbles swept up in the aftermath of a storm, the flood of water upon the banks. Erosion of the mind, erosion of integrity. The world sound falls to pieces around me until the point of static, the arrhythmia of harmony. I lose myself and my voice in the current of electric discharge.
And behind me the drum a heart beat. I will never lose the rhythm even when pitch has been lost to me.
I stand in the wing in bare feet before a performance. Millimeters of black rubbery paint coat broad wood planks and the sensation is cool and comforting despite its stickiness.
He takes his time with each of the five strings. Tuning, plucking, slapping, distorting. His fingers spider over the frets, he’s wearing his rings but he’ll take them off before the show, they’ll clink one by one into the glass bowl he brings with him for the purpose. He laughs on stage, joking with the roadies and sound engineer, and the laughter feels both irreverent and seductive. He plucks through Bottom of the death valley and stops just as I begin mouthing the words.
I like it when he comes to my home to practice and compose in my studio. I didn’t build it for him, but I hoped he would come and he does.
Die does too, bashfully. Our sweet lazy guitarist sits in the soundproofed booth and waves me in like he’s inviting me to his home when he comes. He asks me to vocalize over his projects, the songs for the next album, pet projects. And sometimes he brings his acoustic guitar. He looks at the frets until his fingers become eyes and then he looks at me. I will never tell Toshiya that Die has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. I will never tell anyone that Die has the most beautiful smile, when he really smiles and it reaches his eyes, and I will especially not tell Die.
I sing softly, wordlessly, unsmiling as he strums smiling, the same acoustic guitar since the beginning. I want to smile more often. The words are different in those moments and I find myself saying things that make us both laugh. The desire for joy grows in my heart and yet.
I stand in the wings listening as Toshiya tunes his instrument, bare feet on cold unpainted floor. I cannot hear the pitches but I feel the vibration through the soles of my feet and I can imagine which notes they are.
The intervals create grooves in my memory and I know that if I sing the tonic the rest will fall into place, but I cannot always hear the tonic. The root evades the worm writhing in the earth and I run from him endlessly because all I can give myself is a glimpse from the corner of my eye.
Do you think of losing your voice?
We all laughed together the first time Kaoru taped his fingers around a pick. He had conquered the physical deterioration for a victory in the name of music. And then we realized he still could not hold a pen.
When I cannot hear, will every sound from my mouth become an endless scream?
I begin at the tonic and pay homage to the root of all sound, the rumble beneath my feet which transmits to my belly. The bottom note from which I leap twice into my register and breath words, and those words are the notes you gave me with your fingers, with your thumb striking taut steel. The distortion fills my mouth with static.
When I sleep I do not dream of anyone or anything. There is a future ahead in which I do not feel or dream except for the transformation into earth. Is it all right for me to touch while I am alive, something as brilliant as the sun?
Haven’t I already gained enough? Is it all right to grasp for what I want with my dying breath, or will I become a wailing spirit?
In bed I lay my hands on either side, feeling the sheets beneath my palms. The world I am in is solid and the thoughts are transient as clouds across the sky, just as music dies to silence. I hate to dream of joys past because they cannot come to life again as they once were.
And in this dream, in this thought, I am forced to admit that I run from joy before it has the chance to flee. I do it again and again throughout my life, from the very beginning. It is fear of rejection. It is letting go of attachment. It is samsara in this life and I must go to the Mountain and prostrate ten thousand times for the sins that stain my soul.
I come when you call and we stand in your living room. It is past midnight, past the hour of trains. The cab that brought me here smelled like stale smoke and I brought it with me. The scent revived another memory of standing with you in an alley thirty years ago. Back then I was less than a child, you even less than that.
Even now I am infantile, unknowing and clumsy in courtship, unable to bridge the gap between us except by looking away.
Your hands flex at your sides, accompaniment to my anxiety.
When at last you speak, I cannot hear the words over the scream rising in my ears, the blood rushing to my head. You step closer when I do, you lean in when I turn my head, the rushing is in both ears where it used to be only one, but your body is what speaks. Your hand weightless on my shoulder, your eyes on my mouth, but I don’t face you.
Is it a sin to touch this flesh knowing the transience of pleasure and desire?
You turn from me, your silhouette downcast. Because you look away I turn to you. I follow the curve of your forehead to your furrowed, elegant brow. Your eyes are still smudged with kohl from earlier and they look heavy now. It’s late for you and I feel a pang of guilt except for the pleasure I derive from looking at you, at the curve of your mouth that I have never felt with my own mouth even though I know the taste of your skin beneath your clothes, your belly, thighs, the sweet and soft parts you display. I cannot help that I am hopeless and owned by this terrible thing which is desire.
I can tell that you are frustrated with me because I am not answering you. I am sorry I cannot say, I cannot hear you. I cannot stop the rush that comes, the sound of your name from my mouth. I write songs about eyes like yours looking at me in the dark in the moment you look at me. When I sing about love, it is an echo of the sound your heart makes when it breaks. Your heart, the one in the corner of my eye I wish to avoid because it might disappear.
I say your name again and you take me by the shoulders and walk me back into the hall that leads to your bedroom, pinning me to the wall. When I say it a third time, I turn away and your mouth descends on my neck, your hand desperately grabbing at my shirt and pulling it aside to reach my shoulder. I cannot hear the sounds I make except for the pressure in my throat when the sound arises, pushed out by your teeth on my skin.
I keep hoping the world will be as I saw it as a child and every day that dream recedes, leaving lines on the sand. I hoped you understood what I meant, but I know you didn’t because of where we are.
I don’t know how to live without hurting those I love the most. Like breathing I open my arms around you and let you in. Your face in the hollow of my neck makes me gasp and I throw my head back without thinking and the impact of head on wall is loud. Before you can fuss over me I hold your head in place there, just above my heart, your hard, shaking breaths against my throat. The ocean of static recedes and I can hear my own shaking breath in the stillness.
“Toshiya,” I say, your name in the dark hallway that I know you painted in a shade called misty veil. It echoes on the silver green walls and I hear it. You relax against me, resting on my shoulder.
You relax because I relaxed, I let my hand drift down to your neck, your shoulder. Your bicep is bigger than my hand as I stretch it around, skin soft and unmarked. A vein protrudes near the inside of your elbow and I trace it with my thumb. I can feel my heartbeat which had been pounding slow from panicked racing.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Will you come to bed with me?” he asks in the quietest version of his voice. The one he uses when he’s afraid to have spoken, the one I can pretend not to have heard. I have done it in the past, but I will not this time.
The gentleness with which he takes my hand and leads me makes me feel like a monster. I don’t know why I can’t say the things that would be most important to say, or do the things I know he desires with every part of his undefiled heart. This is a ridiculous thought of course, he’s had partners and so have I, neither of us are undefiled. Maybe I mean, undefiled by my own self.
His bedroom is western style. He sits on the bed and pulls me to him. The mattress is firm beneath my knees. I cannot bring myself to settle onto his thighs. His hands release mine and rest on my hips. I feel anchored. He looks at me with adoration, he kisses my jaw, my neck. My thighs tremble as he traces circles on my hips with his thumbs.
His hands move under my shirt and across my belly. They’re warm, almost hot, on my chest and over my nipples which harden. He doesn’t linger anywhere, just touching, tracing along my collar bones and down my sides, his touch sets me ablaze. I like him like this, panting against my body, desperately rucking my shirt up. I tear a gasp from him by rolling my hips, I can feel the hard press of him against my thigh.
“Please,” he murmurs, pulling my shirt off the rest of the way and lowering his face to my neck. His nose nudges under my ear, “Please.”
I know what he wants and that thing I will not give him, not yet. Not tonight. Tonight is about something else I am giving you.
I stand up and turn my back to him to undress. It’s always so awkward, removing clothing. I fold my sweats and discarded t-shirt onto the long bench at the foot of his bed and pause at my underwear.
In that second he is behind me, his hands close over my waist, thumbs hooking under my shorts and pulling them down slowly. His breath rattles against my back, chest as hot as his hands and sticky with sweat. It’s summer after all and Tokyo is unbearably humid. It makes this whole thing more erotic, like we’re starting from the sweaty panting end and moving backwards, maybe to the shower.
When my shorts get past the swell of my ass and the thickest part of my thighs, they fall the rest of the way to the floor.
“I don’t recognize all of that,” he says, referring to the swirls of ink on my hips and outer thighs and the tender parts where hip meets leg.
“Do you want to see it closer?” I ask.
This is preferred, you between my legs, paying obeisance to my thighs and knees, also stained with ink. Your mouth is wicked everywhere it goes, but most wicked at the root where your tongue swirls dervish like in places not spoken of.
My back arches, a ragged sound falling from my mouth I don’t recognize, not one I could replicate without a partner.
“Enough,”
I say and you move up my body with your mouth, so tender, my sweet Toshiya, you touch my body as if you’ve never touched anyone before. Like I’m a virgin, or sacred, like you’re running your hands over the strings of your bass.
When your mouth reaches my neck, I look to the nightstand.
“Condoms?”
“Yeah,” you breathe the word, your eyes glazed, still looking at my mouth.
I’m not sorry, you knew from the beginning, didn’t you? Haven’t you heard my screams long enough to know there are no happy endings?
You roll on the condom and reach for lube, but I’m already wet from your mouth. My foot finds your calf and pins it there, the opposite thigh hitching up on your hip, held by your hand, your long fingers dig hard into the flesh there.
I can feel you shaking, even before you’re inside, just holding me.
You’re disappointed when, even fully inside my body, I do not allow my mouth to be kissed. I bury my hand in your hair and hold your head against my neck, letting you bite your frustrations against my collarbone. No one will see the marks, there is too much ink.
What starts as a romanse turns into desperation, you pin my wrist on pillow by my head and with your other hand you turn my head, your calloused fingers on my chin and cheek, your thumb brushes over my lower lip. But you don’t try to kiss me, you only look into my eyes with your dark, shining gaze.
You yearn and I watch, wanting now to accept your kiss but I won’t say it. I roll my body into yours and reach my free hand between our bodies. I climax almost immediately, my mouth opens in a shout and your thumb is there, pressing hard on my tongue, and then on the inside of my cheek.
When you climax, which is soon after, I pull you down by your hair again, holding our foreheads together and I force you to look at me as your body shakes, your mouth opening and soft sounds coming out.
Afterwords, we stand in the shower. He pins his hair up so it doesn’t get wet, mine is so short that it doesn’t matter. I wash the sticky matter off my chest, clean my body. He takes a washcloth and pours something that smells like sentiment on it and washes my neck, my shoulders, my arms. He catalogs the art on my skin all the way down to my shins and ankles, asking when and where I got them.
I answer his questions until he doesn’t have anymore, and then we lay on top of his bed until we fall asleep.
My phone rings as it does every morning at 6.15 am. It is very quiet, I am a light sleeper and I’ve trained myself to wake up to this specific sound.
Toshiya sleeps beside me, he curled into me while he slept. He’s too willing to trust me, knowing who I am, for as long as he has.
I push him onto his back and hold his jaw in my palm, whispering, “Toshiya,” until he wakes up, his eyes opening, confused until he isn’t, and then he smiles slowly. The smile starts in his eyes and moves down to his mouth.
Toshiya has the most beautiful eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. I will never tell him this, but it means I cannot stop myself. I lower my head towards his and brush my mouth against his briefly.
“I’ve got an early appointment,” I lie, “I’ve got to go.”
The disappointment is evident so I lean in and do it again, for longer.
When I’m on the train back to my house, I force myself to stand, shifting my weight to feel on my hips where he used me. I shouldn’t get used to it or let it get familiar. Kaoru would destroy me if he found out, fucking within the band is one of his only core sacred tenets, specifically not to ever fuck a bandmate, his words.
I shouldn’t, but I might. I shouldn’t think about it anymore.
The end.