A Second Self

What my mind does at night.

As I am going to sleep an unpredictable, some could say unbelievable, thing happens. After I have gone to bed and shut off the computer, stopped working, finished reading, and have turned off the music; as I am lying there my brain begins to melt inside my head. First the frontal lobe turns to jelly and my face goes blank, then the whole thing collapses into grey liquid. The fluid runs down my ear canal and out onto the bed, a solid grey opaque river that follows the folds and wrinkles in the sheets. It seeps through the mattress and drips onto the floor. It sits there a moment before the puddle begins to coagulate and then suddenly my brain knits itself back together. Lying in perfect reflection of where it should be, only a foot or two lower, the brain sort of quivers and then ears grow, then a nose and then eyes. Hair sprouts, and my face fills in. All of this very slowly, so slow that if one were to watch they would not notice any significant change from moment to moment, but would kind of realize all of a sudden that a naked brain is perfectly sealed behind skin, tissue and bone. Then a neck sprouts from the head and now faster and faster the body is forming. Down the back, down the chest, but only the important parts. No lungs or liver, kidneys or heart, no balls or guts. Just a husk. And after the legs finish reaching their full length, the body shakes as it comes to life and it crawls out from under the bed. Sort of unsteady on its feet, a hand reaches for support, and the face nears mine. If I could see my specter I would notice the cheeks of this figure are sunken slightly, and the eyes are empty, but no less full of meaning than the eyes of anything else on this earth. It inspects me a moment then moves for the door.

            Down the stairs out the front door, but the threshold doesn't lead to what is naturally beyond this portal, but beyond. To far places, where my legs can’t reach, and my eyes can’t see. I can only speculate about what it is this man of mine does in the night. I think he goes and sees the things and the people that I cannot, and gives them what I would, if I could. Tokens. Gifts. Rewards and awards. Love and passion. Hate and disgrace. I cannot speak of these places, for I have no knowledge of them save for the things I see in my dreams. But the people he sees, they I probably know well. But yet I cannot speak of them, I know no words in this circumstance. No prose or poetry fit as descriptions. My mere ability to describe the nature of my inability of description is handicapped.

            People say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but I have heard that is bull s**t, and my second self probably would agree. Perhaps that is why he leaks out of me late at night, and travels about the earth seeing those not near me. Yet he doesn’t just see people I know but people I would like to know. He slips into bed with them till dawn, and they never know of it as the sun comes up, because just as he came, he goes. Down stairs, out doors, into places that those doors don’t lead to.

            Maybe he wanders the earth looking for answers to the questions I have asked. I used to ask myself, constantly, “who am I?” and I wasn't so disturbed by the fact that I had no answer as much that I was asking the question at all. I would answer the certain answers, the things that are a matter of fact and simple truth. Like I am a son, I am a brother, I am a man, I am a homosexual, but even in those things there are questions. Am I really a son, am I really a brother, am I really a man? I was not asking if those things were true, but if I really fit the role that they describe, and perhaps whether I was worthy of claiming them as my own. Other times when I asked myself that question, I answered with the stuff that are a result of consequence or state of being. Things like I am in love, I am a alone, I am full of hate, I am wanting, but nothing satisfied the question. Not a goddamn thing I found to be an answer was truthful or honest. Yet it was not that I was trying to lie to myself, that can only be a futile response when self asked questions refuse to be answered. So maybe that is why he drips onto the floor and walks out of the room. Perhaps the answer is not as abstract as the question. Perhaps the answer is out there in the world, and I don’t have the time while awake to go out and find it. But how can a question such as “who am I?” be anything beyond myself, contained within anything but my own head or heart or guts or balls.

            My second self returns to me just before the sun rises, but when he comes into my room he realizes the futility of the past night. He cannot look upon people with eyes of love and passion, though he can gives these to people, but even in doing those things he cannot fully understand their significance and meaning; walking about the earth only half a man. He can show others how he loves but yet cannot himself feel anything, having no heart and no balls. And he never finds any answers to the questions I ask of myself. So standing next to my bed he evaporates as the light hits him. First the legs, very slowly, then upwards to the torso. Now faster and faster, up the chest and back, towards my neck. Then the flesh from my face and head begins to shred, then my skull withers away, and my brain is left hanging in air a moment before it falls to the grounds and melts instantly on the ground. Then the puddle turns to air as the sun shines on it and he forms a cloud about me, and I breathe him in, and then I am whole, with the knowledge of dreams but nothing else.