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...Do you remember how we met, Hyacinthus?
On that first night, I had succumbed to some grimy bar for some nymph-or-other; ditties were sung, men and women wove like winds through plane trees, wines alike singing a siren song of intoxication. I kissed some woman, she asked if we could meet again. (I have that effect on most people.)
Empty spaces in the early hours of the morning have curious effects on one’s nature. I felt like an amphora of olive oil drained of its contents, yet the grease of the fruit still stuck to me. Two cigarettes and a whiskey passed. But when you came on that stage…
For starters, you, with your eyes radiant- bluest blue, near a tyrian ancient merchants would fall over themselves to sell- you looked a Grecian prince in persuasion, yet there was a fiercer spear-sharpness to your bronzed face, an undercurrent extending to your gracefulness. Your eyes shifted nervously across and landed headfirst on me. In that moment, I felt as if my existence had shifted to be the loyal knight who would kiss your princely hand and swear my dying breath to you (that was me with my rumpled blond hair and mouth parted open to drink in your song. I wanted to die but I couldn’t). The few patrons in the bar had simply died away, because when you parted your lips and broke the notes free, all I could hear made you and I the solitary beings in our own world, locked away in some ancient meadow of rushing anemone and wind grasses, listening to the clearness of a river rolling over rocks.
You sang that song (of love, I know now) for a private listener, pleading for him to grasp your hand in a blasphemous act of devotion.
I was enamoured, consumed and near terrified by the sheer beauty of your multitude. I felt arrows and javelins prick the back of my spine as you coolly switched from sweet serenade to indifferent broken heart, to naive crush. I needed to have you. I knew it was a call for utter subservience, for a believer who would venerate and bleed for you.
I never did apologize for chasing you down like a crazed maenad after you left the bar. (To your credit, you merely laughed in amazement that somebody liked you good enough to listen and run after you so enthusiastically.)
I wonder now why you didn’t turn my invitation to let the night continue. Perhaps you were as intoxicated on me as I was you (if so, I can’t blame you).
…
Headline singer, me? You’re too much, really- hey, what’s with that sappy look on your face?
(In that moment, I had everything to say: I love you most today. I love when people can love you as I do. I love when they come up to me afterwards and tell me of how they revere you as I do.)
…
Maybe you’ve forgotten, Hyacinthus, the morning after your first big show. (I’d been there, of course, lightheaded on the glorious cheers of the audience.) You have no reason to not; it was a morning like any other to you. Perhaps it’s because I was the early riser out of the two of us, remember? Or maybe because all I could see in the fading blue shadows of dawn was your dreaming face, cherry-brown mane tossed and lush on the pillows, stage-smile melted into the ecstasy of a resting youth. You were both the still photograph and etching on the artifact. If this had been any other morning, I’d have nestled myself back in our nest of two to gaze at you until you rose as well and we’d shared a secret smile.
It shouldn’t have been all it was; a trick of the light, a momentary incandescent flash - but in that moment I saw a beast of my own hand, a creature dressed in ripped gossip rags and baring its raw marrow-bones through skin stretched across ribs hungry for fame.
(It wore your face- why was it wearing your face? Why did it look like you?)
Looking back now, I saw immediately your true nature. Oh gods, oh gods, I wish I hadn’t. You sickened me. I felt at once the gravity of my mistake, of making you my star, my muse, my billboard baby. I saw now why your show smiles looked so practiced and tense, why you cheapened your act for the screams of patrons. Everything wonderful you had ever crafted seemed tainted by a harsh patina of a dark and tasteless ambition.
In my shock frigid, I simply sunk back into the bed and tried staring at your face. It was lovely, sure, and I still loved you, but I saw now that you were the multitude of all the sins I had so feared in the past, yet could not run from now.
When you awoke, even the freckles on your nose seemed to be haunted, aberrating between that broken image of you and the solid flesh-and-blood boy in front of me.
…
How was I tonight? Well, you don’t need to answer, anyway- the night is young and ready.
(Are we lovers, really? Or are you just another charming face for me to hold for a week in the night, divorced every time you come on with the band?)
…
It wasn’t jealousy, my dear. It was boredom. I wasn’t bored of you, but I was bored of how the headlines came, and by gods did they come gloriously. Hyacinthus at the Palace! Hyacinthus- could he be a lavender fellow? Hyacinthus, one night only! The people came too, in droves to the Carnegie, to the Rockefeller, Broadway and Radio City. The cheers of adoration went with them, thousandfold multiplied by the journalists and the flashing of cameras for the paper tomorrow. The gossips said they saw you with a new pretty young thing every night. Maybe this was true, if the pretty young things were men with crow’s feet and firm handshakes that came to our apartment. Botherment and envy would wrap themselves around my heart as we all sat and discussed something new at the dining table- a new romantic drama, a comedy of errors, meet-me-on-Sunday-to-discuss-your-contract?
Of course, I saw you in every film. I was sitting in the top box at every opera. I was your “closest friend” at the awards show. But every time you appeared, grinning that vacant grin, hair casting a false halo around your bronzed skin in the spotlight, you didn’t feel like mine. (In those moments where you kiss Hepburn on the silver screen, when you pledge your love to Dido, you are not mine. The next part goes unsaid.)
I’m sorry it had to be like this. I still loved you. But now I’m not sure if that was really true.
…
I don’t think I can come back here anymore. If you need me, I’ll be with a friend.
(How did you guess what I was going to say?)
…
There’s a legend about a god who loved you too much. Did you know? We must have been predestined from a time before us to swim in that cycle of longing and loathing forever.
I kept hearing things at brunches, at meetings, in the nights I spent with other people. Hyacinthus, the darling star with a serious addiction to blonds. Didn’t he pass out on stage from an overdose? I hear he’s better now, but a cousin who knows his doorman says there’s a cloud of men’s cologne that isn’t his surrounding him constantly. I didn’t read the paper, or listen to the radio for months. When I did, I heard immediately of you announcing that you were in love again. (We hadn’t seen each other for ages, but I could recognize your lovesickness from any distance away.)
So what if you had gotten into some relationship with somebody-or-other? I didn’t care, I didn’t care. The host on the broadcast asked for a name, you smiled (a real smile), said they were great, you’re done struggling now. Applause. Commendations for your resilience and strength, concerning your messy split from your best friend a year ago. (I didn’t care. I threw the radio out that day.)
I saw you once from the street across, walking in tandem with your paramour. He seemed nice. I hoped you were rotting behind that beaming expression, just as I was.
…
It was late evening, and I really wanted a smoke. Then came the call. The voice on the line was the trained one of the hospital. Immediately my gut sank. All the words slurred together like a drunken piano melody. Car crash. Fatal. Scars and lacerations. He’s got one last word left in him and he wants to give it to you. What? Said I. Surely- There isn’t much time. Hurry, we’re holding the receiver to his face. He asked for you.
…
(Apollo. Do you remember how we first met? I meant to tell you. It wasn’t just your miracle. It was mine, too. I wish I could sing for you again. I wish I could laugh and drink with you again. I wish I could be in love with you again.)
…
If anyone’s reading this, I suppose they should know everything about you- the best and worst. I think you’d agree with me. Now they will remember you as the boy made of flowers and a heady voice and tipsy bronze skin, who sang and loved and starred in every film, and most importantly, you as my lover, and I yours.
-(Apollo) to (Hyacinthus), found on an unmarked grave in New York City