Work Text:
And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.
Long after he’s finished the Symposium, Phaedrus’s argument sticks with Nueng, echoing in his head when he can tell Palm’s about to do something stupid to shield him from the world. Nueng always stops him. What good is a lover who can’t take care of himself? That’s why he learns to do everything he can - wash the clothes, make the bed, serve the customers, ride a motorcycle, stand up against the local mobster. He won’t let Palm do everything himself, especially not when it comes to danger; he won't let Palm get killed, not after everything they've promised each other. What good is a lover if they’re not around to take care of their beloved? But then again - Love will make men dare to die for their beloved, Phaedrus continued in the same argument. Nueng can’t bring himself to believe that part. It’s too one-sided. For Nueng, the romantic in him, mutuality is the pinnacle of love. Fight together, suffer together, grieve together, die together.
But it’s hard, so hard, to reconcile that belief with the tragedy that follows Nueng like a plague. When he’s frozen in place on the stairs watching Palm shake his mother’s cold body, when he hears Palm’s guttural screams on the cliffside, when they’re dancing to a silent, haunted melody and Palm’s eyes are lost in a galaxy of grief - Nueng is cold, and both of them are so, so alone.
If they were soulmates, the two halves of the ancient beings who were split apart and by some miracle found each other again, they would be in full harmony, from their bodies to their mourning spirits. But Nueng’s grief is shattered glass in his chest while Palm has tears frozen behind his eyes, and the way they slot together brokenly on the bed proves that their jagged edges just aren’t meant to fit together.
So he makes the most painful choice of his life for the second time, and leaves his loved one behind. But unlike with his mother, at least he gets to say goodbye. He muses with Palm on what his future will look like now that Nueng won’t endanger him anymore. He listens to Palm’s steady heartbeat - tries his hardest to commit it to memory, for the nights he knows he won’t be able to sleep when he’s back in Bangkok - and carefully, reverently, unfastens the bracelet Palm gave him and lays it on his note, hoping that it finds its way to the child of the sun who actually belongs with Palm. And he leaves the room without a backward glance because he knows that if he looks back at Palm, he’ll never let him go.
And on the bus, when the echoes of Palm’s rough voice have faded from his mind, Nueng opens the copy of the Symposium he took from the hostel - the one tangible memory he let himself keep - and rereads an argument from Pausanias: This is that love which is the love of the heavenly goddess and is heavenly, and of great price to individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the work of their own improvement.
He told Palm not to choose Nueng as the goal of his life. He meant it when he said that he wanted to see Palm follow his dream. And isn’t that a far cry from the boy he’d once been, so absorbed in his own loneliness and grief that he didn’t care whether Palm even wanted to stay with him, to be his friend, or his lover - and now he’s given Palm his life back to pursue whatever or whoever he really wants. The great price to Nueng’s heart is a small one to pay if it means Palm will be free: free from servitude, from indebtedness, from a future chained to Nueng. And that’s improvement, isn’t it?
Maybe that’s just what he has to tell himself to justify leaving.
There’s a part of Nueng - that he can’t silence no matter how hard he tries - that wails against the idea of Palm being separated from him. It’s the part that believes he and Palm are soulmates, children of the sun who were cut in two and swept away from each other. That part of him can’t accept that he’s found Palm only to abandon him again, because he knows Aristophanes is right: so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.
And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.
He felt that - the desire to melt into Palm, to lock their pieces in place so that they’re always together, so they’re united in every moment and they feel everything the same, from the splash of the sea and the dusty breeze to the stiff sheets and humming air of their shared room, hearts beating in tempo between their bodies as they fall asleep, synchronized smiles and shared warmth when they wake up. He felt that desire, and he called it love.
And Palm, beautiful, loyal, golden Palm, called it love too. Their days were bright and long, filled with laughter and piano notes dancing in the air around them. It’s the happiest Nueng can ever remember being: a child of the sun, joy shining from his smile as he gazes at his radiant lover, both of them ethereal, immortal in the summer light.
He whom Love touches walks not in darkness, Agathon says, and it’s true - would still be true even now, except Nueng forgot that his love is followed by a curse, and now he’s killed Palm’s mother and left Palm to wake up alone, and he’s never been surrounded by this much darkness. Impenetrable, soul-crushing darkness that sucks all the light out of him.
But he can bear it, can absorb the darkness into himself if it means Palm will get to stay on that golden beach. He’d rather take that trade than drag Palm into darkness with him. Palm deserves the sun. Palm is warmth and goodness personified. Not even his mother’s death could shift his priority from Nueng, and Nueng loves him for it even as he hates that it forces him to be the one to leave instead. What a valiant failure he is. What a fool in love, like Socrates says. You hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good.
For there is nothing which men love but the good.
He told Palm that love wasn’t that complicated, and when it comes down to this, it isn’t. Love is the cause of all the best things in the world. Love is the good and the beautiful. Love is the connection between heaven and earth; the spirit that unites two souls.
Love is Palm.
And Nueng -
Nueng is the evil lover who takes wing and flies away, now that their bloom of youth is over. Nueng is the hasty attachment that can’t stand the test of time. Nueng is the thunderbolt that separates the humans; he is the storm that washes them away.
If any gods do exist, then they surely aren’t listening to him.
But still Nueng closes his eyes and prays.
That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover.
If Phaedrus is right, then his lover’s courage will take Bangkok by storm. Small consolation, but he chose this path; and he will hold his head high and lock away his grief as he strides forward into darkness: emergent, avenging, and alone.
For now Nueng sleeps, and dreams of a lover who would overcome the world with him.