The Christmas That Everyone Forgot But Me

I had a dream about you. You came to my door wearing a giant bunny costume. No one spoke to one another. You sat on my couch and we both stared forward. You told me the story of your childhood crush on a boy and how you thought about him still. You told me you kissed him in the closet and it made you scared and happy all at the same time like crushes do. I didn't care. Everything was supposed to come as this giant shock to me, only nothing in dreams ever are. You spoke as if the secret was weighing on you, but I just left you there and made us hot chocolate. We were silent while we drank the cocoa. Me holding your giant bunny paw. We sat there in the godlessness of a state where you cannot let the person you love into you and I played us a playlist that another boy had given me---someone I blew off because I didn't feel like being owned---and we fell asleep, you on one side and me on the other, just like in life. In the morning you had taken off your bunny head. I told you, you are perfect. Love is love. I don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from me and that's the only reason you are here. I made crumpets covered in maple syrup and powdered sugar and one of us was crying. I can't remember who.

While eating our crumpets you told me you didn’t know if liking boys the way you do meant something bad. I tried to tell you human sexuality isn’t bad, it’s just bad if you do something you don’t want to do to make a person like you. You told me that many lifetimes ago, when you were a little boy in school, people made you nervous, but sometimes it was a girl and sometimes it was a boy. I’ve had many people tell me I make them nervous over a lifetime. I’ve had gay boyfriends. I’ve been conflicted about my attraction for gay women whom I always feel safe with. I never understood why regular girls didn’t like me. Gays are more real. They don’t lie. I’d rather be running up a mountain and climbing a tree than having my barbies play dress up and cook. Who wants to cook? Not me. All my boyfriends cook. I just ate a fig or a handful of nuts rather than have to cook. I’d rather be writing things that might change the world.

You looked stricken. You told me that you judged yourself for being pretty. But, boys are supposed to be pretty, I tell you. Boys are supposed to be prettier than the girl. Look at the animal kingdom. Plumes of feathers attract the female for example. But, no one tells you what to do when you are human. When two boys are pretty, it’s just normal. Sometimes a girl with lots of testosterone and no reason to identify herself as a heterosexual or a homosexual or even a bisexual gets thrown into the mix and then everyone wears costumes cause they just can’t handle that kind of thing. How can you handle someone who doesn’t claim to be anything? How can you exist if someone refuses to identify themself in a way so that the rest of the world can then categorize them? Maybe that’s why I make people nervous.

You started to cry. I see you cry all the time. You wipe your tears away and when I ask you how you are you say fine. But I can see it. You aren’t fine. You will never be fine. I know the type. I am that type. 

I hope you're always a mess. That's the best compliment anyone ever said. Your messes makes other people's success look so ordinary. I don't know if you'll survive it. The way you feel stuff. 

The crumpets bored us--I mean they were there but we didn't care about them the way we should have. We wanted to pretend we could draw each other close and not push each other away, but we knew that would never happen. It made our souls sick. I told you I’d wear a blindfold and you could stay as the bunny and we could kiss. I could be a boy or a girl with your eyes closed. And we could see if we liked it. I told you I was a pretty good writer of love letters that made no sense but STAYED with a person. I told you I’d write to your childhood crush, the boy you loved. I told you that we’d find him on Facebook first to see if he was still good looking and if he still had bee-stung lips like you remember and an interest in Poe.

You hugged me then. You didn't let go. It was the only time you've ever done it and I doubt it will happen again. The way you can love a thing but you know it will die someday. That sentence hung in the air like a fog killing anything real and replacing it with fear.

How can you trust someone won't hurt you, when that's all anyone ever did? You know and I know we won't be able to help it. 

But, we looked up your crush and it couldn’t have been him, because this person didn’t look the same. They were old now and fat with the weight of the world on their face. Not like us, we keep the weight of the world in our hearts, that's why no one can ever tell. You never got old. You were still very handsome and very pretty. I told you I’d help you find another guy in this city and you could try it out. I don’t care if you’re gay. Everyone is gay at some point. People always try to argue me on this point, but that’s cause they lack the thing inside themselves that allows them to be ridiculously honest even if it embarrasses everyone.

In dreams you don’t have to lie, I tell you. We can be naked or with our clothes on. We can go deep emotionally and one of us will wake up and be in denial it ever happened. There is nothing to fear in the great big world. You can love someone openly who will never love you back because you are the wrong gender. You can date a gay man like I did because you were in love with their mind. You'll want to communicate it physically at some point. You should just do that. You can push away your feelings but once you let them out, you will simply stop crying so much. I will hold your hand. I won’t leave. We will be what they talk about in books. Soul mates who are real friends.

I tell you in dreams is the only time you don’t avoid me. I don’t know the reason cause you say you don’t know. No one is honest in dreams. I tell you that I lie to people to not hurt their feelings cause I think they like me more than I will ever like them and I don’t know how to say that thing.

We build a fort with my couch pillows and we light a candle in there. We say a prayer to a god who most likely can’t hear us and even if he could would find our prayers too routine too ordinary to answer. We don’t want to bore god, so we build an effigy to the boy you want. We make him beautiful, but not too beautiful to not be sexy. We make him smart. We put a tiny tie and tiny shoes on him that we stole from the Barbie set your sister had. We name him Norman after a photographer I know who is so cute and messy. We write a love letter detailing your love to him. A person who doesn’t exist.

I ask you, “Are you incapable of feelings?” You don’t seem to like the question so I pet your head and let you cry in my lap. There’s a record player and I put on my record from my last boyfriend that was kinda smart and kinda break your heart emo radical. We listen and are amazed at how such a skinny kid can make such smart music. He is our hero for at least 30 minutes. I remind myself that his courage to scream out the rage in his heart was just in music, not in life. And that part made us both sad. The effigy burns and you don’t see what I see. That you are trapped. Beyond where I am. You keep yourself away from me because to let someone in only means disappointment. We don’t even talk. I crawl out and get a pad and pencil. I want to draw something I’ve never seen  before. A magical creature that can keep our secrets. Someone we both can talk to.

I ask you to be my friend but not in that fake everyone lies to each other way--that kind of thing kills me over time. The most important thing to me is just to see whatever it is that makes you hate yourself so badly, I remember in life when we are awake, no matter what I ask you say no. You have built a wall to keep me out. I don’t know why it’s there and you say you don’t know either. But, I think it’s there cause I can see you. It’s like I can read your mind. And I don’t care. I will keep your secrets. YOu can lie to my face, but I still know. You should stay away from me. The fire inside of me is intense and I will never back down or let you be mediocre. You know this to be true.

When I wake up the couch is there and there is a bunny costume, but you are gone. I realize no matter how long I wait, the thing I want, which is to just know you, will be withheld and the sadness of it makes me want ice cream. In the middle of winter. Ice cream seems dumb. So, I heat it up on the stove and I sit in my jammies on the couch and I don’t turn on the TV and I don’t look at a book and the computer is closed. It’s just me and my heart. Alone. On Christmas.