Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms

Essay from novel

Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

 “To find ourselves in love is to find ourselves not free, but captivated.”-- Alphonso Lingis

“I just want to be friends.” I resisted him--an unwordable, wholehearted completion of pure reaction. The tunneled groundhog (my past) saw its shadow, and complied with my initial, intuitive suggestion of staying away from such sway--not Spring yet, not in my fucked-up brain anyway--the animal saw its dark side and hid.

“I know,” he said.

In a humbled, okay-with-being-empty silence, we were a vision in a hot state (Florida) with built-up sweat-skinned walls. Seated as statued companions, our benched bodies contrasted the bustling avenue; we, still in motion, hallowed the poignant view: couples dined on the steamy strip of restaurants, classy epicures (finest wine, please!) held hands under streetlights, woven fingers served as brighter bulbs, illumed synergy was pleasing to the eye.

Then there was us: huddled under an awning, alighted on cement, skateboard-beloved stairs, we stared as well--not at each other--at them, yet like steps each stare let to the next, to the higher next. Fine with the cold creases of graffiti-paint under our rears, the rich didn’t notice such things as us, our darkness. It was the perfect show: we all played roles we tried out for.

To our backs, palm forests were embellished with whittled-out paths, leading to the beach. To our fronts, the fitful rich ate, and ordered more bottles; they will f**k later on sandy shores, a common episode locals (like Kyle) tuned in to see--a different kind of f*****g from behind. Kyle and I couldn’t go either way... spent on all accounts, we sat.

On an up-note, we enjoyed salutary gifts, not lofty, holdable indulgences, but coconut-palm scented fresh air… and us. If stripped of a toothbrush, a survivor still has brushed teeth. Tooled objects are made for a job that will be done anyway (you’ll eat without a fork, travel without a car, and love without anything at all) and we didn’t need wine. A well-rounded satire of truth, we were pricey, but free, and not some propaganda I try to sell in exchange for tears, this was true. It is true. We smiled, and that’s how I knew: our teeth gleamed without tools. We traveled without suitcases.

Perched on an eye-level throne (the first cement step of many): a former drug addict without the privilege of wine, and a conflicted girl without the privilege of him (such realness was mutual, burdening, a bad-timed drug there was no use to use).

We were young, me much younger, but had deep-seated problems, boogied issues you check under your bed for each night, ones too troubled to sleep with in the how do you sleep with yourself? kind of manner.

We only met that day, on a drawbridge in the middle of town, we passed each other. Now, as benched players, we knew: a connection could never be so relatable again. The atrophy of age wouldn’t allow it, and the trophy from played games wouldn’t either.

Six years later, if I could speak to me then, I’d say, “He’s the only person you will be able to sit with quietly, and have it be hours of therapy, so stay put.”

Two wounded souls, we held crippled hands in limp placement, an accidental assemble from a natural, seated position, but we touched. Our nubs of lost spirit-fingers still braided together for an unforced fit. The too great-to-grasp possibility of reciprocated healing was maculated with possibility through our formed, unorthodox friendship--a palpable, delicious intertwining of more than one taste. Eating it up, my stomach ached of worry.

We found each other in the standard, sought-out act of doing so, a stroll-by where I caught his eye (I looked good that day) and he shouted, “Hey!”

In a street-called flattery, normally, I’d flout the approach, but I didn’t. “Hey,” I said.

Accompanied together on their plod, him and his scraggily companion slummed the beach scene; probably squawking to every fly-by girl, like seagulls picking at sandwich crusts. I didn’t say our romance fitted well on paper, but back then, I didn’t need to feel special: with staged sea-gull s**t masculinity, callow men tried to make me feel so all the time. The crust of my thrown attention (a simple hey) warranted Kyle’s friend to nod: go get it bro.

“So,” Kyle’s plumage of feathers ruffled as he sought me out, “are you in recovery?”

Unsure and alone, I didn’t know “recovery” meant drug rehabilitation: a program almost every Floridian my age attended, I was there to take care of my sick grandmother, yet to make a friend, I answered, “No?”

Pleased by my response, he nodded with a newfound porn-star smile of oh yeah let’s do this, and then requested my number. Before being turned off by his character, I knew better than to socially interpret him from first glance. When you know, you know--leave the clouds to their sky, and the grounds to their feet--certain things don’t need defining when you see them, lucidly. I knew him to be good, I just knew, he elucidated the meaning of good, he dusted off the version of what I knew it to be... just good.

I met a former heroin addict on the streets, a pursuer of boardwalk-s***s (me being one of those “s***s”), and nothing so pure (even more than his clung-to drug) ever happened to me again. Each new day, the power of being human amazes you, if you let it.

So, we ended up on cement stairs.

“Just friends,” he agreed, and formed his unique, infamous smirk; I wish words could birth such a sneaky sliver of lips; the picture that is forever snap-captured in my mind. I hated his coveted grin, I knew it better than him. It wasn’t ugly, no such thing existed with him, he was beauty’s home, the exterior of where she lived, but I hated his devious smile, a pinpointed meaning was estivated behind such velvet-soft curtains--his lips--saying to me: I know something you don’t. He always knew something I didn’t, an omniscient being, an ultimate talisman of held-onto-secrets, whom I couldn’t help but mentally bow down to. He dealt out pocketed secrets, little by little as our friendship grew, leaf-by-leaf, defoliating for a new season, each one better than the next: a stripped-down act of nature becoming a budding, new cycle for growth.

I could kiss his empty pockets, full of his owned-nothing worth. His legs were real, not ones of pending criminal gain or shrewd drug addict sprint-away’s, but raw and human (sushi if fishiness wasn’t cooked). I knew he impacted me. Forever. Think of feeling that… if ever.

Kyle, the one man I resisted/ embraced enough to deem as all-knowing: a universe getter. I succumbed to his power-hungry realm like an undomesticated puppy, shied away from false hitting/ actual petting.

“Do you want to go on the beach?” I asked, but why? A small, robotically explored, no choice involved wonder fledged (the enemy) plotting and planning from my actions.

Re-plated, on the beach, we were two sandcastles in unique nooks made out of malleable Earth. Bewildered with eye-movement, we set focus on ended, coupled evenings staging romantic scenes, but such plays differed from ours--less constructed--we were a grimacing if heard aloud tale, but it was our story, no one else’s (the audience, the characters…ours).

I feared elevating our friendship: a much more telling and epic saga than a rom-com. We acted Oscar-worthy, dense and difficult to sit through, but finely performed.

Crumbling, execrable reality ambushed me--not what it could be or what he or I wanted it to be--but reality, for what reality is. Less frolicsome in detail… a cringed aesthetic nature was what we had: a perfect function, like how seeds need sun, but also need rain. Petrichor floundered the noses in our meeting; I needed him for his rain.

He looked at my lips and makeshifted his own, wanting to kiss me. Typical, similar to me, he was a wanter of forbidden fruits, but not allowed due to lost self-control: an addict. 

Our disarray was sprawled out, not last-minute cleaned for guests, special and candid, left out for company, thrive-worthy, an admiration, a reflection greater than my own. Seeing someone inspirational disintered the inspiration within me… and I never looked better.

Fingertips broached the subject of our positioned bodies. We understood the situation, but the silence allowed interpretation: maybe this wasn’t quite what we thought, and it wasn't a time to think.

For the first time (only weeks later) we said I love you through an exchanged look, a shared expression we both deduced to the words: “I know.” He had his smirk, but this time I knew what it meant, and I loved it.

He then, out of sheer discomfort, showed me Family Guy videos on his phone. I laughed and smiled, really smiling about him, but I looked at the videos when I did so. When you know, you know.

Weeks passed, and I finally said, “So about when we said ‘I know’ that night outside your house--”

“Yes. I love you Sam.”

Back to our time on the beach, I peered across the horizon at a projected oceanic image: the epitome of rest. Eyes drew shore-bound, and I saw vast, infinitesimal amounts of glow-in-the-dark fish, sporting vigorous coats, shouting back to the sky’s disco-ball light let’s party. Electric volts stung inflammable waves, any intruder would be electrocuted by intense shock. Currents zinged a lively show of visual stimulations in nuanced frequencies.

“Stop worrying,” Kyle said, corrected professor hat and glasses on, he spring-cleaned our dulcet romance, making it profound: but a dream come true is a fear come true as well.

“I’m not worried,” I responded, but I was.

“You’re worried about something,” he said, “and you need to stop. Please.” He placed his spiny, sand-covered hand on my back. My muscles clenched, so he pulled away. Not his fault: the body speaks much louder than words, but not any truer. I innately convulse to the feeling of touch, just like that puppy I told you about.

“There has to be undiscovered land,” I said, suggesting common, fallow ground for us to sow, to be us… together, in some new form of forever.

Too bad Earth is discovered, defunct of unchartered culture. The only allowance of a perfect worship would be in a new world, a seen rather than blind power: no man-the-sky theory scattered sparingly within our already existing one. The only unchartered territory on this planet macerates itself under the suffocating ocean.

A red moon publicized the sun's reflection off the lunar corpuscle, blood-orange embers seethed in craters. I read later that a red moon is the cosmic seed of awareness. Working with the energy of a red moon awakens your state of mind.

I awed at the sanguine, invading hue: another sign, along with electric waters that a higher power puppeteered a chaotic environment for our brief tryst; maybe it was the undiscovered land we longed for. It was an escape, one I felt entitled to, a God-permissioned high, frenzied and charged, everything envisaged me to be the same. My walls disintegrated.

I took my clothes off, at first, he was afraid to look, but of course he did.

“What are you doing?” He asked. You would think he’d be over the red moon about such actions, but my sudden spontaneity proved me to be worthier, and now he was worried too.

Running toward the electric shoreline, my chin grazed my bare shoulder as I looked back and directed my face towards his.  He sat and watched as I reached the shore where the radiating currents frightened me, for a moment I wondered how safe it would be to enter. This caustic, paranormal glow simply didn’t seem real, ironically, because for once, I was real. I had no thoughts. I just felt. As I pummeled the beasts of my fears, I dove into the water, I dove into a whole new condition. I absorbed light, and it set fire to my adrenalin. Finally, I was chasing a rush that wasn’t going to cause anyone harm... or was it?

I surfaced and breathed in salty air, the bitter taste peppered my lungs. I looked for him. Shielding my eyes from blinding glows, I tried to make out his figure in the distance.

“So this is it?” I shouted over to him as I felt him wade over to me. “Is this being thoughtless, and letting life happen?” I was mocking his beliefs, but in fact, it was the first time I practiced them.

“If that’s what you’re doing.” He laughed in amusement, and continued to come closer, “Is that what you’re doing?”

“I think so. I’m trying not to worry.” I then paused and ruminated, “Should I be worried?” The magic slightly collapsed with my return-to-reality attempt.

“You are impossible, now you’re worried about being worried. Worry is a waste of a feeling. I hate to say it, but life is going to happen whether you worry about it or not.” As soon as he finished his sentence, I felt his nose tip-touch mine--welded together with only a drop of water. My lips clenched in defense, our faces mirrored each other, and our mouths shared breaths, salty shriveling breaths, growing heavier the longer nothing happened, getting fuller without action. Our palpitating hearts caused water to ripple around us. I expected the kiss to come, but it didn’t. Our heads, two puzzle pieces, were unclear if meant to be fitted together yet.

The moment was perfect, you know how nothing is perfect, your mom tells you when you find your first blemish, but I'm here telling you Santa is real. This moment was perfect, it was one where I was allowed to accept that nothing was wrong. The rest of the high world rendered me sober, but I was elated all the same, high above Earth.

In science, they say the same physical laws that operate on Earth also operate in the heavens. Science was what I had faith in, gravity kept me from floating into the sky, yet pulled me down from resisting him.

“Well I’m trying to let life just happen, but nothing is.” I said, too obvious with intention, but no lips touched mine. Out of final frustration, I turned away in a splash.

He grabbed my arm, a cold grasp squishing my muscle, a clench I'd never forget, and I didn’t tense-up to shy away. He pulled me in, and we kissed.

We weren’t good on paper, but we were sickly significant in mouths. Love can only be so strong when powered by two, and you don’t know who powers who. A tongue-touch of ballet-glided form.

On this planet, strong forces occur relentlessly: the sun rises and sets, the leaves change color, the wind blows, and waves crash. He kissed me. Another force causing life.