Sword Crossed Lovers

Just yesterday, a band of us from camp accompanied my new found lover on an errand to the local gas station to maintain his cringey habit. During the car ride, I wondered what Freud would have had to say about vapes, and his need for an oral fixation, one of which, I alone, could not suffice.

In fear of being seen amongst an eclectic group, of drawing attention, out here in these neck of the woods, he entered alone. Upon return, I saw him approach us, his handsome face was missing the goofy smile I came to love.

As we sat there in the car in disbelief, we asked him a dozen times over whether the root of his, and now our, new found anguish, was simply a joke that never landed, or sadly true.

When I saw the trio emerge from the store front, I wrapped my fingers around the door handle so as to ready myself, to burst forth, charge across the parking lot to run a dagger across his neck, the ugliest of the trio, the one with the audacity to call my boo a faggot.

Would it have pleased my lover to witness, within his colorblind trinity of brown, green, and red, the latter, run glory and spew forth from the necks of this three headed hydra? If so, I would gladly have fashioned myself Jeanne d’Arc, the patron saint to his kind, and taken on the role of a knight in shining armor…but with what little sword I had left, what good would my feeble fists have done?

Neither brown or green, nor a prophet, the role of a martyr such as al-Khidr was hard to muster, for in that moment I desperately wanted to be Saint George, or rather, Georgiana. Had I rather been a gay man, then I would have settled for a well oiled Heracles, swinging about a giant golden sword, because regardless of my appearances, was it not in my queer nature, but to slay?

On command, I loosened my grip on the door handle, gritted my teeth and sat in the backseat of the car on the drive home, my arms wrapped around the passenger seat before me to hug him from behind, and kissed his bony knuckles a thousand times over as we hopelessly hummed to Mitski singing of “a bug like an angel…” and it reminded me of how a couple of stickbugs, such as us, were equally deserving of salvation.

That evening, within the sanctity of camp, we took turns holding one another in a quantum state, that of alternating spoon sizes. Here, under forest-green bed covers, he told me of a time when he had punched someone in the face, and an all too familiar feeling of nausea followed suit. His soft disposition, that perpetually leaned towards peace, formed a moral arc within me, a partially monochromatic rainbow, fit for Christmas.

In defense of pacifism, we laid down our swords, unsheathed, between us, at the center of a quadrant of thighs. We brought the tips together to kiss, and intertwine in the manner of two snakes, and in the throes of sparring, I felt the edges of his tempered steel, white hot, melding with the likes of mine. Here, in my bed, instead of your typical monster, la bête à deux dos, there was but a two headed dragon, gay and merry. We had slain the beast, exorcised it from our hearts by severing its head with rounds of head.

In the darkness, I wept, with joy, through tearful eyes, accompanied by soft battle cries, and in that moment, I wondered: where else could I find victory, if not here, between sword crossed lovers?