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After a dishearteningly rainy May, we were all excited about the heatwave. Three consecutive days of temperatures over 32°C – Saturday, Sunday, and bank holiday Monday no less: the universe was commanding us to have fun. So, like a faithful sheep in the herd of London, we made giddy plans to go out, until we stepped out into the 10 pm daylight and a sea of people in the streets and started sweating immediately. Dave shared news of a girl fainting in his bus ride home. Damon acquired a vindicated sort of look about him, because out of all of us he was the only one who dreaded the upcoming temperatures, though the only difference that made was that he had been grumpy for longer than we were.
I don’t know which club it was because I was already pissed by the time we reached. I only remember it was larger than what I am normally comfortable with; large venues or houses or rooms make me feel self-conscious, non-verbal, and in search of a corner. Not that I particularly thrive socially in smaller spaces. I also could not forget if I wanted to the music, which was rubbish, though I found most music to be rubbish after obtaining my critical ear.
For a creature that is conceived in fluid, humans interestingly do not bode well with being wet. My sweat has a quality about it that dirties everything new, pure, and joyful: I had actually showered and sprayed borrowed cologne, my favourite Fred Perry shirt on, my wire-framed glasses, that made me look mature and not of this era. In other words it was my personal Groundhog Day, which came once or twice a year, where I feel the confidence to make an effort in my appearance, and that same night that confidence would be crushed with a reminder.
The reminder was usually Damon.
It would be unfair to say Damon did not make an effort in his appearance - look at the row of toiletries running down the lip of his bathtub - but at times the attention he garnered was sort of irritating. A girl approached us, almost as tall as me, with curly hair contrasting her black top. She leaned in close to us, wishing to speak. She got everyone’s names wrong except Alex’s (Grian, Timmon, she exhausted her interest by the time she reached Dave). I don’t remember hers. Her English was broken, she was from France but “live in Swiss”.
We danced a bit together, and then, ‘You, and you, and you, and you,’ she yelled over the music, ‘You are beautiful!’
All the compliments I had ever received were borne of my association with Damon, for sitting next to him and evoking people’s sympathy. But for some reason, foolishly, this time I dared to take it, and even returned it. I felt pleased with myself, and continued drinking. It hadn’t even crossed my mind tonight was one of those nights until she said, to Damon, ‘My sister loves you.’
There it was.
Damon laughed or rolled his eyes or something – I’m not sure how he receives compliments, it depends on several variables - briefly escaped to the bathroom and when he returned it was with a hunger for a smoke.
This was not one of these places where you could not smoke inside, and Damon was not one of these people who generally followed that rule (we had been kicked out of various establishments when his charms didn’t work), but tonight he was hit with a stroke of consideration. He chose me to accompany him outside, which was no surprise, and we slipped past the girl as she danced with our back to us, probably with her sister. If not for Damon’s grip on my wrist I would not have found which way was out, or up or down really. I only walked because Damon walked me, and if he led me to a ditch or the back rooms to kill me I would have gladly followed him and it would have been too bad.
Fortunately it was not the case tonight, but now that the thought entered me it was oddly stubborn to linger. I knew it was my internalised worries of poor self-control and excessive drinking, I just tend to use Damon as a vessel, because they’re easier to conceptualise in this way. It divides the burden.
I was quite drunk, really, in the way you only notice if you’re surrounded by peace. There was no one else outside, only the bouncers, who were chatting quietly in a surreal contrast to what was happening inside. The daylight had completely yielded way to darkness now, though the air was yet to be any cooler.
The occasional partygoer’s cry drowned the frustrated click of Damon’s lighter. It took him about a minute to light up because he was sweaty to his fingertips, but I enjoyed watching him grow redder and redder with- what? Heat? Anger? Embarrassment? And then he took one drag, grimaced, and handed the fag back to me.
‘Too feckin’ hot to smoke,’ he complained, so I worked through the cigarette by myself despite my almost desperation to share. I was more of a smoker between the two of us in the first place, though it was Damon who had introduced me to it, with a Camel Blue. Intense first choice, in hindsight, and I’m surprised it stuck.
The nicotine did not agree with my drunkenness and their argument made the world begin to spin. I wanted to behave in the bouncers’ vicinity, so I supported myself fully against the rough wall, feeling some of my hair catch into it painfully as I made an attempt to speak for the first time in a while.
‘You don’t wanna go with that girl?’
His eyes were sharp when he stared at me. ‘And do what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I drawled. It was most likely the language barrier, but still what an endearing way of putting it, “loves you”. Who would say no to that? Certainly I wouldn’t. ‘What you do with girls.’
‘I want to go home. I didn’t want to go out in the first place, it’s a thousand degrees, the music’s wank and I don’t know any songs.’
‘And the others?’
‘Alex can have that girl, did you see how he was looking at her?’
It was generally difficult to discern whether Damon was drunk, given his natural behaviour (he also liked faking drunkenness to the point where he was denied help when it was needed). And though Damon had no problems speaking his mind, when he drank he really spoke his mind. He abandoned the dry humour that usually appeased the sting, either for lack of caring or diminishment of cognitive abilities.
This was one of those situations. He all but stomped away into the yellow-lit street, swimming in my vision or actually stumbling. I felt weirdly disconnected then, the more distance Damon put between us the farther distance I watched myself from, or watched myself on film, from a camera a bit behind and higher than my head. The faint roar of traffic and human commotion fell almost completely silent when Damon looked over his shoulder at me, a funny expression on his face.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Will you murder me?’ I called.
His voice was not loud but it reverberated in the square. ‘Violently if you don’t come over here.’
I pondered that in my tired brain. It was the correct answer; I couldn’t imagine Damon killing in any other way. It would have to be a crime of passion, something in the moment, one word that tipped years’ worth of resentment over or something akin to that, something neither party would anticipate - which also implied that the victim be a close associate of Damon’s, and that it could happen any time. There would be lots of blood. I could imagine it splattering the walls, spraying Damon’s face, dripping down his arms, the kind of murder where he would need to dispose of his clothes. So nothing like a projectile weapon, it had to be close quarters, though a knife or any tool for that matter did not sound right either. Yes, when it comes to it Damon would tear me apart with his own hands.
I startled when he grabbed my arm, because I had not registered him coming back for me, but anyway that’s how we fled the scene together.
In the tube ride back home (whose?), I could see Damon clearly for the first time in several hours. He did not look well; he was sweating his weight in water, which caused him to grow pale and shrivelled. He looked like he did when coming out of the shower if the shower made him grouchy and wilted, his hair saturated and his white shirt clinging onto his thin shoulders gracelessly.
We simultaneously decided to rest our temples on the pole that came between us, exhaustion and silence settling in fast now that we existed in the void of time that is transit. We were close enough that our knees were touching and I could smell the spicy scent of his sweat. With his mouth hanging slightly open there was an animal he reminded me of- a dog? It was the nose, maybe, and the eyes. I watched his eyelashes dart idly across his cheekbones completely magnetised until we reached our stop.
In the house, Damon took off all his clothes, one by one, shirt first, then trousers, socks, underwear, everything, his window was wide open and he didn’t turn the lights on. One time he said his neighbours had definitely seen him naked repeatedly and he didn’t care, and maybe it spoke to his sexual preferences.
Our rooms were the same because we felt the same: same small size, same clothes, trinkets, posters, number of pillows on bed, type of rubbish, etc., only Damon had books where I had canvases. Piles of them, too many perhaps, because he read for the both of us. One of them that always stood out to me was a faded, ancient-looking book called Steppenwolf, the wolf of the steppes. I had never seen pages look so brown before. Damon had told me about it, said it had to do with a man who had a wolf inside him, along with a thousand other versions of himself, all battling inside the same body. By the end of the novel it was difficult not to suspect that every character who appeared was not just another fraction of the Steppenwolf himself, taunting him and showing him other aspects of his life that could’ve been, pulling him in different directions and leading him to demise. It was short, 170 pages or something like that, read it, you’ll like it.
Along with Zola’s Therese Raquin, it was the only other book I had attempted to read. I left it about a third in, it was too lyrical for me - besides, I knew all about the Steppenwolf. I was one myself.
Damon slumped on his bed with a big sigh, on top of all of the other things he had left on there including a lightly greasy plate, starfish-like with all limbs apart, but he didn’t seem to feel relief. He moaned loudly and rolled his head to the side, regarding me like a tragic Prometheus whilst eaten by the vulture.
The situation was unprecedented; I didn’t know the custom, so I settled for something in between and stripped, but retained my underwear. I tossed the clothes in the heap with the rest of them, noticing many of mine were in there anyway, some that Damon had borrowed and never returned - or were they Damon’s and I had returned them? The only clothes I knew for certain were mine were the striped shirts, because Damon thinks horizontal stripes make him look fat and so he has never bought them for himself (has worn them in emergencies though).
A spell of anemia. It feels very much like a lycanthropic transformation in my view, loud chest pain, heart palpitations, my vision blurs then sharpens, and I walk completely independently of my mind. Wonderful how humans grow considerate towards others only after experiencing hardship themselves. Only then did I consider getting Damon a glass of water.
I moan and groan the whole way to the kitchen, because I am a childish and inflexible person. I found a great big mug that looked pink in the darkness (I smile because you’re my sister, I laugh because there’s nothing you can do about it, it said), and I filled it all the way to the brim while pondering the difference between water and tears, and then tears and sweat.
It was not difficult for me to squeeze a tear into the cup, and then they came flowing: of my anemia, of the heatwave, of shell of a person I had become working fast food shops in university and after which I never was quite the same again, of the dissonance between person and society, and the dread of getting older fast. Pain, that is my worst fear, chronic pain, especially of the back. I am not known to be a crybaby, but it comes to me very amply and frequently, whenever I allow myself to think. I am a Pisces for crying out loud.
In hindsight think I had a panic attack or came close to having one; I had never had one before so I wouldn’t know. I vaguely remember making myself a cup of tea and having it with ice.
‘Had a fuckin’ panic attack you took so long,’ Damon said in an unrecognisable voice when I re-entered the room.
It did look like something substantial had happened to him, it was true. I could only find it romantic that we were in fact, mirrors of each other, complete with the reverse effect and everything: reverse effect we had on people, on ourselves, our appearances, our tastes. Panic attack in the kitchen, panic attack in the bedroom.
I cradled his head and fed him the tears. He did not seem to think anything was off, probably preoccupied with the fact that he was, in fact, breathing. His eyes were foggy, blue zircons sprayed with perfume. Yes, dog-like, or maybe a wolf, definitely some sort of canine anyway; a Steppenwolf himself.
When he drained the cup, I sat on floor, rested my cheek on lukewarm sheets, very close to his bare hip. I could hear some sort of music playing, some sort of neighbour’s piano practice.
‘How’re you feeling?’
I could hear that his cheeks were puffed when he sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. His voice sounded deeper than usual, scratchy, sexy. ‘Bad,’ he decided. ‘Bad.’
‘What was your panic attack about?’
‘About dying,’ he replied after a hesitation.
‘What did it feel like?’
‘Like I was gonna die.’
I thought my panic attack was more interesting, but I decided it was untimely to share that now – perhaps for later. Our relationship was built on many unpleasant things, but competition was not exactly a component, not in the conventional sense of the word anyway.
Instead I murmured, ‘We feel equally bad right now.’
‘You don’t know that. You will never know what someone else feels like other than yourself for your entire life.’
‘We are different though. We can actually become one.’
‘That’s a very roundabout way of asking me to…’ he didn’t finish his sentence, because for the first time in a while he moved by himself, and it was to look at me. He then made a face that was actually very offensive to be regarded with. ‘Freaks me out when you sit down there…’
He carded a hand through my hair, which I felt spring through his fingers, and my eyes fluttered in sudden pleasure. His gaze slid slowly from my claves, up my thighs, to my groin, my stomach, and settled somewhere beyond my collarbone, somewhere behind me, which pissed me off.
We fit in the same clothes though we were quite different physically, with the main distinction being that Damon looked less prone to being knocked over by a gust of wind. There was more substance to his body, like there was more depth, or more blood, or more fluid or something, many curves to grab onto and slide a hand over. And then the hair; that had fascinated me since secondary school. I’m surprised I’ve never painted him before.
That would make it easy for me to fit into in depth, but harder in length.
‘You look like a different person with these glasses,’ he murmured, and played with them a little, up, down, up, down, up, down – which made me almost sick by the way – before taking them entirely off.
‘I have a different pair for every aspect of my being.’
‘And which aspect is this?’
I was unclear as to whether he meant the wire-framed glasses or the lack thereof. I was not prepared to answer the latter question, and did not want to answer the former out of embarrassment, so we fell quiet again, listening to the classical piano.
I crawled up next to him, eager for more touch. He groaned and rolled over, making the plate clatter, wishing less than anything to be doused in another’s body heat. Unbothered I slapped a hand over his forehead to feel him burn, he burned hotter than any other fever I had checked him for. Perhaps he was not well at all, perhaps he was hospital-worthy.
But I could heal him. Perhaps they would offer IV drip, but no doctor would be able to merge us like we are meant to, or at least would never agree to, even when explained to that two negatives make a positive. I wanted to assimilate with him because we are one soul in separate bodies, that’s why I’m so miserable, and why he beneath all his lustre is too. He would get my chest pain and pica, and I would catch whatever fever he was running or dehydration or anything it was.
It is a historically documented practice as well, as shown by Ovid’s Hermaphroditus. I was Hermes and he was Aphrodite, or he Hermes and me Aphrodite, it doesn’t matter which, as we would end up in the same body anyway. And all our ills would be cured.
He doesn’t know this, but his mother told me so herself, and I trust his mother, because she went on a pilgrimage in Varanasi and was trained spiritually by a renowned yogi whose name currently escapes me. My point is she can see souls. He thinks the necklace she gave me when she visited me in the hospital with my first manifestations of anemia (and where was my mother?) are matching accidentally, because that’s just her style of making jewellery, but no, they are matching on purpose. That day she thanked me, because she said “I complete[d] him”. Thank you for taking care of my son. I will never forget that day.
And then another thing that doesn’t quite make sense until you admit the fact that we are the two facets of the Steppenwolf: in school he was bullied rather badly, so badly he actually denies the severity in present day. They should have really been bullying me instead. I am unsure as to why I was left alone. I mean they picked on him for just about everything including his name, even though with Coxon – the joke was right there. I played the saxophone, which at age 11 is one of the more embarrassing instruments to be able to command. I wore glasses since I really remember myself. I have a stupid voice, mousy like my face. On certain days I prefer never to speak, and never to be seen. I am embarrassed of my existence when I walk outside.
I think I was telling him all this, looking for his consent or something, telling him in my stupid quiet voice but I didn’t mind if he was the one to hear it because he was me and we had been friends for so long I couldn’t quite remember my existence without and he never thought I was stupid though he did try to tease me when we first met – I remember that. And I also remember the day years ago he told me he thought I was more confident than he was like it was a fact and that made me soar and fly more than anything beautiful that had ever happened to me.
My mouth felt full of dust I was chatting so much. It was silent between us for a long time until I realised he had fallen asleep at some point, his flat chest oscillating shallowly as though something massively heavy was crushing it.
Contrary to Alex and Dave’s belief, we actually had not shagged ever. I hadn’t wanted to, though I really did – who wouldn’t, certainly the girl tonight did, or her sister, or he could probably have them both together if he asked nicely. It was not like I had not masturbated to the thought of him before, from ages 12 to today, he handed material out dutifully with the stupid grimaces he made that perhaps due to the beautiful nature of his face almost always turned out erotic. Or whenever he was wearing black, that black shirt he wore, or when he felt his music, or when he kissed someone at the bar or the club, or when he was high and his eyes glazed over and expressions passed slowly by his face, gentle and open and accepting and he would probably do anything you asked of him when you got him like that.
At these thoughts I felt my penis stir beneath my boxers, and I rolled my head to look at his sleeping figure next to me. I wondered if when attraction is so strong towards a person wouldn’t it mean they are supposed to become one? Is that what we are attempting at with sex? I thought so, so I skipped it.
I thought of the murder, the violent murder he would commit on me, and how he said he would use his bare hands to tear me apart. He was giving me a hint there, and an opening here: he was not the kind of person who could just fall asleep anywhere, let alone his bed. But how does one tear another with their bare hands? And then the height issue still tormented me, for all the thinking I do I sure as hell don’t come up with anything productive.
I came up with something, though it wasn’t ideal. Surely they would see his angelic face though and let us get away with it, as it so often happened anyway. It was an extreme physical effort to stand up, and when I did I topped several things over, including myself and the pink sister cup. He made a little sound and turned sides, but did not open his eyes. I thought he was awake, though.
The whole world spinning, migraine stab and all the little blood I had left rushing straight to my head. My cock felt sensitive between my legs when I stumbled to the kitchen again, and I almost reached down there to rub one out ultra quickly and get on with it, but I restrained myself. Soon physicality would have no meaning.
I knew where everything in his kitchen was, including the knives. I was convinced he was awake – he simply never makes a sound like the one he just did in sleep – so he would catch on quick. He was the mathiest out of all of us.
Outside was the colour of whiskey, a world drowned in it, or encased in amber and I was an ant. Same thing, in my view. Same suffocation, same need to go out… same aversion to the out that is available. I chose a bread knife as I suspected it would be easier to saw through, it needed to be a large opening if I wanted him to fit in there. I didn’t want him to do more than what was absolutely necessary; he was kind of scared of death metal, let alone horror films.
I thought of a song to make the situation easier, a Beatles song perhaps. When I plunge the knife in my throat the hole opens itself, bloodless completely, which made sense considering the void that I am. My whole – hole? – torso opens like a costume, smells rather vile, smells too much like iron which is a jab to an anemic. My head splits, it feels like it does, an unbearable pain that makes me scream and the kitchen light turns on, or maybe it’s the heavens his mum talks about at times. I feel an incredible warmth inside me and I relax like I did that time I drew a hot bath, where I relaxed so much I actually urinated inside. Perhaps I did now too.
And then I felt it- oh the fever, it was incredible. The burn felt hotter than fire, it made Ticket to Ride ring in my ears distorted like it came from a thousand different directions. But no, John, I was not going to be sad. Today was just the hottest day of my life.