The Immense Difficulty of Intimacy (or Confess)
by Ishy Parchment
short fiction | 25/04/2020
1
Dear…
“I had this terrible need to confess; and I still do it. It’s a bid to be loved, in some way. And to be really loved; the immense difficulty of intimacy.” – Hilton Als
2
Triangles are my favorite shape
Three points where two lines meet
Toe to toe, back to back, let's go
My love, it's very late
'Til morning comes
Let's tessellate
- Tessellate, Alt-J
Yesterday I asked S out to the record shop on Gower Street. I know S would say yes because I know S is still in love with me, even now, many months on. We’ve been speaking a lot recently, S and I – part of me knows why, part of me doesn’t. Maybe I’m just not convinced.
Once we realised the shop was closed, we walked around King’s Cross for a bit. The silences between the small talk were vast, interrupted by the sounds of cars and the passing traffic. We had nothing to say to each other, really, other than what we couldn’t say. The rain was light and annoying, and the day was as miserable as my comedown felt. I’d taken a pill the night before. He suggested buying some beers and I didn’t say no. I kinda liked just going along with him: listening to him speak like how I listen to all the other white boys I’d convinced myself that I was in love with. Not him, anymore, I don’t think. That didn’t stop me from subtly trying to walk closely beside him with the hope that our hands would clumsily touch. S suggested that we go back to his, which I knew I didn’t want to do. I said yes anyway. He’d cycled to meet me, so we couldn’t catch the bus back. The walk is only twenty minutes, he said. It was forty.
My hormone imbalance is only half to blame for my ending up there. We sat around absently talking about Irish literature and his vinyl collection. I studied his books. Oh yeah, I’m doing an essay on The Dubliners, he said. I knew where it was leading, it was only a matter of when. We smoked out the window and listened to music in silence. When it was his turn to queue a song, his mum called and said his family would be out until 19:30. Okay, he said. I went from the window sill to sit on the bed, there was nowhere else to sit comfortably; his room was a mess (as it always had been for as long as I’d known him). The sexual tension felt oppressive in the moments leading up to when he put his hand in mine. I felt my throat closing up, drying out. I wanted to ask for water or to go to the toilet, or if truth be told, to leave. I gripped his hand back, nervously, half-assuredly, half in disdain. I was a complete idiot. Was I still playing with the idea, (this idea?), just the idea and nothing else, nothing more? I wanted to get out of that room and away from him, away from myself. I wanted my phone to flash up with an urgent message, or for it to be a message from L. Too bad, I’d laid my bed.
S’s body is slim but full – full of everything I usually think of when I think of holding a man. I liked that, for a few moments: the weight of S’s torso. I enjoyed it. I clung to it, clung to the thought that it’s been a while. His tongue tasted just like homesickness, flooded me with feelings familiar and nostalgic. It was this moment I wanted to disappear. Leave him, passionate on top of me, on top of air. What the fuck was I thinking? I wanted to float out of the window like the smoke of a cigarette. I wanted to disperse and be reclaimed by something
Someone
else.
In the succession of seconds and minutes and tens of minutes after that, I gave myself over to guilt and lust. Even as I wondered how far L had gotten with that boy on Tinder, wondering if he’d actually gone all the way. I wondered if I could. Again. The more we kissed the more I knew, and the less I thought. I imagined L in his place and hated myself for this. All while I felt his apology pressed into my thigh, his fingertips scissoring across my back, his lips mapping out past thoughts on my neck. I felt the apology and I mourned. What is love but guilt, or an admission thereof?
*
prelude to an ending
IT WAS PROBABLY ALWAYS THERE, HIDDEN AWAY SOMEWHERE. BUT WHEN TIME COMES IT SILENTLY ERUPTS, FOLDING INSIDE, EVERY ACHE IN YOUR BODY REACHING. YOU DROWN IN THAT CRUEL FLOOD, GULPING DOWN GOD’S LOVE.
ALL SIGNPOSTS THAT ONCE STOOD ON THE GROUND ARE NOW GONE, INUNDATED AND CARRIED AWAY BY EXCESS.
THAT’S IT. THAT’S MY HEART.
*
S had to feed the dog, and that was that. Left alone for two minutes on that bed with my body and my guilt and my comedown. I had fallen asleep and woke up again, found myself on the train and then, eventually, in my own bed again. I felt the comedown then, dizzying and seductive, like an apparition there to congratulate me.
Dec, 2018
3
Do you love and do you feel
All your working inspiration
Systematic exploration
Words so great, words so real
Words so desperate and concealed
All your words are so poetic
Generational synthetic
- Generational Synthetic, Beach Fossils
I met L from Tinder at Southbank around 9:30 pm. It was so typical of me that I had arrived only 40 minutes late. He was very cute about it, and told me that his friend had been hanging around with him so it was okay. We found a spot on the bank to sit and, with an effortless easiness, conversation began to flow. We clicked instantly, and we must have looked picturesque on the bench in front of the Thames. And he had wine, thank God.
At some point we got up to find somewhere to pee (and to get more drink) and ended up back on the grass at Southbank where we chatted some more. This is going to sound like some fake shit but I promise its true. We were the only ones out on the green, and Southbank was weirdly quiet for a summer evening. The sprinklers came on suddenly but neither of us moved. In the moment that we should have jumped up, he climbed on top of me, pinning my arms down. We were so drunk. We kissed on the grass, him, grinding on top of me, getting wet and it was honestly the hottest thing that could have possibly happened with this stranger. When the fireworks ended I walked him back to Embankment station. We stopped to kiss on the bridge and I melted. What a night, what a night, what a night…
A vivid dream
YOU FALL IN LOVE.
July, 2017
4
Dissolve yourself
Into my arms
The river will carry us
Together
Meet me at the rivers bend
I wanna feel what you feel
I wanna lose when you lose
I wanna cry with you
I wanna smile when you smile
I wanna feel what you feel
- River’s Bend, The Doorbells
Do you remember the first time I met S?! All the things I said about that blurry night! He was just part of that silly game… until he wasn’t. I’m still afraid to re-read over our old messages, afraid what soft words might provoke feelings in me still. Long ago as all that seems, it’s only been a few months. I didn’t write down what happened because it didn’t matter. Or, it doesn’t now. The last time I saw S was the day on the common where he brought hash for us to smoke after school. The day H told me that it hadn’t hit him until then that he was quite besotted with me, that I didn’t have to say anything back right then… but just so I knew.
I thought H was PENG since his party. I remember him, doe-eyed and grossly drunk, with a face peppered with glitter. I also remember being one of the last ones left, four of us incredibly high, belting out the lyrics to a Wombats song I don’t like anymore. I remember that night underneath the fairy lights of his gazebo in the garden. Almost every night last summer looked just the same. The day after his party, I asked H if he wanted to go for coffee. I’d left my fanny-pack at his, (which, ironically, I remember taking out specifically so I’d keep all my things in one place and so that I wouldn’t lose anything). In my own mind, I thought it was fairly obvious that, though it took me only a day, I was falling. I don’t think he saw me like that. Over summer, we became friends, close friends, best friends.
Everything was so complicated, but H fell into my lap (quite literally) as S had left. It was fun and thrilling because, without ever drawing up any agreement aloud, we kept it a secret. The fact of our being in a really tight-knit group kinda agreed on that for us. But it’s been so perfect. Every Thursday night we’ve been taking turns to watch The Apprentice at one of our houses. I think the rest know whats up, the way we reserve a seat next to each other, how we’re always giggling and cuddling. More than just friends. Last week, H rang me up to say some others were at his and that I should come over. It was around 23:00 and I was already in bed feeling lazy. The novelty of our “arrangement” is at last lost.
I went because he said he’d pay for the Uber there. Even though we aren’t as open about things, I can’t deny how turned on the “arrangement “makes me, in spaces that we find ourselves together and yet cannot be together. After smoking in the garden, we all went upstairs to set up the beds and watch a film. H’s room is at the top of the house; he kinda has his own floor. We fooled around kissing downstairs before we joined everyone again. And once we’d got in the sofa-bed we’d set up, the others on a blow-up mattress or H’s bed, he slipped his hands into my underwear without any warning. As he slowly tugged at me, the rush of excitement, of the secrecy, of the outrageous fact that we were in a room with others, became more and more. Yeah, that night he gave me a hand job under the duvet, edging me to coming, maybe even closer to saying “I think I love you”.
But like everything else, all at once, that didn’t quite feel right.
Nov, 2016
*
This morning I had sex with H. And it was like my first time all over again, with all the caution and juvenile vulnerability. I stayed over last night, just him and I, watching movies and drinking wine. Doing other stuff too… And in the morning, his parents had taken his sisters out for brunch. We got up soon after and he made me eggs on toast. It was warm enough that we could actually feel the sun so we had a cigarette and sat in the garden. I caught him looking at me, with that cheeky smile of his.
What is it haha?
Nothing. Nothing.
I went back in to shower and he cleaned up downstairs. When he came upstairs, I had nothing on except underwear. He shut the door behind him and came on to me, making me stumble back onto the bed. Soon…
Dec, 2016
A re-imagining
YOU LEFT.
YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
5
Kiss me, go
Kiss me, go
- blisters, serpentwithfeet
D and I decided to meet for a walk. I dressed up warm with hat, scarf and gloves. We needed to talk. After what must have been an hour of wandering, he said he was too cold to reply so we went back to mine. Got in bed and got talking until we started making out. He only did that to avoid the question, but I didn’t mind anyway.
What are we?
We were going to fuck but I didn’t have any lube. I also didn’t have any condoms, so we kissed for hours before we eventually laughed about it. I saw only me in his eyes, and that was all I needed. In the morning before he left, he said that he did like me. He said he liked me a lot but that he thinks (because he thinks he knows better than I do) that I deserve more than him.
Maybe I do.
He tells me he has a lot of problems and he doesn’t want to “drag me down”. What does that even mean? He said it means we should continue as we are…
What are we?
Then he said, as if to state the obvious: you know, we’re more than friends. He was certain we were, and so I was certain. That was that, he kissed me goodbye and left.
a re-imagining
1.
OUR EYES SPEAK UNTIL HIS CLOSE. I NESTLE MY HEAD ON HIS SHOULDERS. AS HE BREATHES DEEPLY, I FEEL HIS TORSO MOVE UP AND DOWN LIKE THE SWELLING OF WAVES.
ON HIS CHEST, ABANDONED: A SAILOR BETWEEN SEA AND SKY RESISTING THE TEMPTATION TO DROWN.
ITS 2AM OR 4… I’M SQUINTING HARD IN THE DARK AND SEE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEA AND SKY, BETWEEN SAILOR AND SEA. BETWEEN REALITY AND THE WORKINGS OF THE HEART.
2.
IN THE MORNING HE WAKES ME UP WITH A KISS.
TODAY, I’M NOT SURPRISED WHEN I SEE THE SKY AND THINK OF YOU.
Feb, 2017
6
Is there a space in time when I'll be everything you need?
- I’ll Gladly Place Myself Below You, Matty
My Dearest L,
Song: I’ll Gladly Place Myself Below You by Matty
I hope my words can give purpose to your day. I love you very much and sharing life with you each day makes me a happy bean.
Today has been such a good day – so full, so full. I woke up early this morning and chose not to snooze as I usually do. I realise that my body does not need much sleep at all. Going to bed at 1 was enough for it to decide that 8am was okay. I know you were feeling anxious earlier; I hope the uneasiness has faded over the day. Being this far apart is certainly beginning to takes it toll. I live in your blue pyjama bottoms because they remind me so much of our evenings together, snuggled up in front of a film or silly show. I miss your smell, and the strong feelings that being near you arouses in me. Each day feels longer… I wish the government could ease lockdown, even if just for a few days.
Finally finished Celestial Bodies today and I have to say that the writing is so incredibly beautiful. I am certain much of that finesse was lost in the translation, but even so, what remained was still so lyrical and refreshing. In a way, the book has opened my eyes to the powerful forces deep down that drives each and every one of us. It also reminded me that the forces that love within each of us are quite uneasy to analyse or understand. And frustratingly so, as I am sure you are aware. Some force told you, told the both of us on our first date that, instead of getting up and making a run for it, that we should embrace each other under those sprinklers. That you should climb on top of me and kiss me the way you did. Some force pushed you to ask me out on August 3, 2017. And it felt so right. Some force! Some force has kept us together, side by side, through thick and thin, through the wonderful and anarchic, in love, in love, in love. Such forces!
The evening I heard the news about my uncle, I decided to take a walk. It was already late and very dark – not a cloud in sight. Only the moon. For some reason I felt so angry. Angry at the world. Angry at the impossibility of choice in a world like ours. It’s really scary once you realise how much of what is and what will be necessarily has to be so. And then I looked up at the moon. Alone in the sky. Out of nowhere, I started to cry. My uncle, you, me, I thought… We all cry under the same moon. But I was alone in Clapham Old Town, like the moon was alone in the sky…
I might be a bit high still from that zoot earlier but this email has moved me this evening. It’s made me smile. It’s filled me up for another day: sustenance in your absence. This night, I hang onto the thought of your hands rubbing my belly, and your warm steady breath on my neck as we cuddle and fall asleep.
With all my heart,
Ishy
Apr, 2020
prelude to an ending
IT WAS PROBABLY ALWAYS THERE, HIDDEN AWAY SOMEWHERE. BUT WHEN TIME COMES IT SILENTLY ERUPTS, FOLDING INSIDE, EVERY ACHE IN YOUR BODY REACHING. YOU DROWN IN THAT CRUEL FLOOD, GULPING DOWN GOD’S LOVE.
ALL SIGNPOSTS THAT ONCE STOOD ON THE GROUND ARE NOW GONE, INUNDATED AND CARRIED AWAY BY EXCESS.
THAT’S IT. THAT’S MY HEART.
about Ishy (he/him/his)
London-based. Student. Podcaster. Creative. Writer (sometimes). Anti-Racist Campaigner. Spreader of Black Boy Joy x. He spends most of his time making sad boy playlists on Spotify and writing diary entries.
podcast: Awoke! (apple podcasts, soundcloud)
instagram: @ishystfu._