Alpha

I: Ambiguity

I’d decided that he was my human roughly two point one days after we met — this Jeremy of mine, though I didn’t realize it back then. It was a slow burning, all-consuming friendship, what Jeremy and I had; the kind I couldn’t really describe to anyone else … until Yumi Sakugawa did it for me.

As I read the words over and over in my head, the pieces fell into place miraculously! It explained the sinusoidal tumble my emotions had taken in the few short months I’d known him: without fully realizing what I was signing up for, I’d fallen in friend-love with Jeremy over fireball shots and conversations about Neruda; over brunches and coffee chats so random that we refused to label them ‘ambiguidates’ (what a devastatingly beautiful word, this one); and late-night, sometimes cross-time-zone texts for when conversation was sparse, and the loneliness, oh so terrible!

Because, I was a drizzle while he was a hurricane.

So, I did what any person would: I told Jeremy that he was more than just a friend! Right! But why, you ask? Because, he was my confidence and my claustrophobia, my curiosity and my craziness, all gift-wrapped and handed to me as a human, as though to fill a void I didn’t even realize I carried with me. He brought with him an internal conflict that drew me in, making me want to peel back the sparsely displayed but ever-present emotions, one layer at a time. A bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of every damn thing. All of everything and nothing, all at once.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

In response, my Jeremy showed me why a person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them — they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship. In his case: the human who had slowly wormed his way into my life to the extent that life seemed meaningless without the constant contemplation of our many realities together. He’d become, what my business school friends would label, “a boyfriend without benefits” —the personification of everything that us millennials wanted to put a label on but never could.

Because, by this point in time, my Jeremy meant more to me than any label could describe: not a boyfriend, with or without benefits; definitely not a love interest. He was my human, and society-imposed boundaries be damned.

And [he] loved me like I was and had always been the answer and the question did not and would never matter.

Several months after we first met, Jeremy and I would confess under the mellow light of a sushi restaurant that neither thought we’d ever be anything more than casual acquaintances. We would then laugh, secretly relieved, and raise a sake toast to how wrong we turned out to be.

Weeks later, we would sit besides each other and talk about our friendship — shrouded still in the mist of ambiguity I’d heralded by throwing the first spoon of alphabets on his face; by claiming him as my human. Except, this time, the dim glow of a forgotten television screen reflected in our eyes, we would be at peace, and send a silent prayer for how wonderful those words turned out.

Days later yet, hiding half my face in a rare display of embarrassment, I would meekly admit to Jeremy that I’d given him my affection freely, without rhyme or reason, never to be demanded in return. Because, as it turns out, among a sea of misinterpreted gestures, platonic intimacy and vulnerability might very well become the birthplace of confusion, but at the end of each night, that very ambiguity, while tumultuous and terrifying, was rather beautiful too …

II: Affinity

Two nights ago, when I last slept, I dreamed of Grand Central and King’s Cross. Strange fascination with large train stations aside, I stood in between platforms, and saw a series of psychedelic clocks, with pendulums swinging across the terminals. So, inspired by a strange cocktail of homesickness, in a strangely lucid, post-meditative dream-state, I did the only thing I could: stood in between the gargantuan commuter abodes, and stared frantically, one to the other, as more alphabets materialized.

“Date a boy who reads”, it said, “the one with glasses as thick as yours. He’s the one with a book in his backpack, poetry on his tongue, and a sardonic look in his eyes when someone misinterprets Shakespeare. Hunt each other. Build sexual tension. Make your friends frustrated by how perfect you are for each other. Bicker, be rivals — you deserve a playmate in a lover. Make your consummation dramatic, the confession of love, the kiss must send waves through your bloodstream. Let him seduce you with Neruda’s skin, be his Scherazade and bind him all night.

Leave him. Because what follows an exploding star is sucked into a black hole. Move with the wind and overload his wonder, then soothe him with fairy tales. Find your balance in a companion that complements you, but is not you. Marry a man so foreign that you will never stop exploring the labyrinth of his love. Date a boy who reads, marry a man who knows other things”

As though in a virtual reality, I saw myself, first, with a bespectacled boy who understood the nuances of expression, even if he didn’t always communicate. A boy who frustrated me every minute of every day, and made me want to claw my hair out in agony. A boy I’d come to love despite everything — when the specks of time, though finite, seem to stretch into eternity, bringing with it both the familiarity and unknown comprehension of motives and values.

On the other side, I saw myself age, instantaneously, and walk over to where he stood again: this time, a man worn by the harshness of time, but not without his crinkly smile. A quick turn to adjust his glasses, and it was like being injected with syringe of memories: wine tasting in Umbria, a gondola in Venice, the wilderness of the outback in Australia, and the ruggedness of the Andes in Peru, sipping caipirinhas and passion fruit cocktails on the beaches of Brazil — memories yet to be made, but oh so familiar. Memories of a singular smile, anchored in the present but spread across the world, as a man I had grown with, and grown to love more and more each day.

As I found myself caught in between these two weirdly dystopian realities, all I could do was stare. The figures soon turned into wisps of dust, only to be blown away by the wind. I woke up drenched in a cold sweat, my head pressed against a window sill, with every memory firmly imprinted in my head — as though I had aged all thirty years in the two hours that elapsed since I last sunk into my bed, utterly exhausted.
 
Perhaps, the fatigue of the hour had set in, and it was time to rise, along with the sun.
 
Perhaps, my mind was simply playing tricks on me. 
 
But perhaps, really, I hoped that it intended to tell me that one day, a boy who reads could turn into a man who knew other things.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close

III: Andante

I first touched a piano when I was four years old. Almost instantaneously, I decided in a whim of childish rebellion, that the piano would be my solace; my sanctuary. For fifteen years, as fingers skimmed and eyelids fluttered, I mediated in front of the piano. And for fifteen years, I resolutely kept up my promise to never play in front of anyone.

Until that cold autumn night three years ago. For the first time, I felt so deeply for someone that I set my fears aside and played a symphony. For him, with him, besides him. And surrounded by the quiet cacophony of the whispering wind, and the trembling trees, we played the piano together, our fingers on fire, and our hearts thrumming.

Six months later, in a catatonic state, I sat on a piano stool — the last time as it were, for the next two years, and played the piano again. Except this time, I was surrounded by glass walls, and I played the same symphony. Once, twice, maybe a hundred times; for seven hours and for all of a heartbeat. And then I stopped.

Tonight, almost exactly two years since I last touched the piano, and three years after I asked my mother to share her worldly wisdom about love for a wedding toast, I sat down to redefine my life with not just the magic of music, but also the written word that I hold as near to my heart as my dear old mother.

First, an old-school piece of wide-ruled paper; then, a fountain pen that squirts ink on my hand. One profound moment of silence. The scratching of a nib against slightly-yellowing parchment. A subtle twitch in my thumb. Click.

Click. Oh so simply, it clicked! In the confines of a dimly lit room with mellow music in the background; in the aftermath of confessions whispered in the darkness; with the hopes of finally mastering the movements of Tchaikovsky, and the use of the semi-colon, I finally weathered a storm that had been raging in my head for a second and all of an eternity.

Because, in that moment of vulnerability, I moved past the tears that threatened to spill every time endearments were uttered. And because, tonight, I opened my windows as I played the piano for the world to hear for the first time.