By E. Annie Proulx
Copyright (c) 1999 by Dead Line, Ltd.
"I ain't no queer" "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours."
The fourth summer since Brokeback Mountain.....Friend, this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get it. Heard you was in Riverton. I'm coming thru on the 24th, thought I'd stop and buy you a beer. Drop me a line if you can, say if you're there. You bet!
"Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain't over."
The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered.
At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt.
He lifted it off the nail. Jack's old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis's nose hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn't held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.
He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
Postcard "Scene a Brokeback Mountain." -- thirty cents -- he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.
Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron.
And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets. There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.
"Jack, I swear -- "
It was all those things you said to me, it was all those lies I believed in. I guess now that you stand higher than anyone else in this world, so fragile that it's hard to touch you, so pure and so beautiful, it was all so hard to see (or I was too blind to be).
Killing me in your heart; love is gone, the deepest touch and all is done.My speeding heart is overloaded. I got to know what's going on.(My baby cheated on me. The whole world turned its back on me. He left me here in this misery. In my deepest fears,I lost my love.)
I thought that we had fallen in love. But somehow I felt the thousand nails in my heart; so deep that I couldn't scream, so deep that I couldn't even breathe. It was all those things you said to me. Every lie that you made me believe... It was all so beautiful, so bright and true.
My eyes staring at you, watching it all go wrong.
He is in my shadow everywhere I go. I'm walking on a thin line, when I turn around there's no one there.It's a real bad sign; a fool in love with a fool that never cared...
Now that I'm all alone and scared to stay, I'm slowly going out of my mind. How could I be so blind to those pretty lies and alibis?
"Are you the keeper to the gates of wisdom?"
-Yes. I am.-
"Please let me in, I just can't go through another heartache again."
Everywhere I look the sun is shining, but it's always raining here inside. He was my strongest weakness (to whom I surrendered my heart and soul). Until I regain control, it's gonna be a long, long time to heal. I'm afraid he'll always be.
I'm a prisoner, held captive by his memory...
I gave my faithful heart to someone. I could never understand how he held my little world in the palm of his hand. So if this pain will ever end, will I be afraid to risk it all to ever fall in love again? Now he's gone and life goes on.
And so it goes .... another lesson gets learned
And in the big book of experience, another page gets turned Sayang kamu, rindu kamu, mau kamu! is nothing but a sweet lie.
If ...You gotta get into it before you get out of itAnd you gotta get out of it before you get into it....Now what? You have to get into something before you reject it. You don't know what something is like or what someone is all about until you experience it or talk to them yourself. And you have to step away from something that's bad for you until it's too late. When you know it's wrong and you want to get your life back to normal, you gotta get out before it takes hold of you.What's happening to me...?
I bumped into you and your friends that night as I was driving home, I knew.I am sorry that I did not stop for a hello, nor did I look into your eyes and perhaps wink at you.I didn't just think I can. Call me coward, I don't care.But I knew you knew.I'm hurt. Still.
Like a child again,I'm at a loss for words.
How does one define a crush combined with longing?
I've seen a lot of good times in my life, times when everything went so right. Seen a lot of things go wrong and I just don’t know why. Now that I’ve seen a lot of good times in my life, I had a bit of sadness in my life.
A friend of mine went down the other night, tried to sort it out. But now I just don’t know why I’ve had a bit of sadness in my life.
You see, I am a lonely, lonely, man. And what I got, I got together with my own two hands.
I wonder what am I gonna do to put things right. I’ve taken lots of chances in my life. Now one of them has changed me overnight, I’ve seen a glimpse of the other side. The lights are much too bright.
I got to do something with my life, got to make a change and put up a fight, stand on my own two feet and do it right.
Loneliness amidst people, happy when I am alone. Still, very popular among people.What's the reason?
Loneliness amidst people - Even when I am among my closest friends, I am still faced by the solemn fact that no one will ever completely know or understand me.
We all want to be understood, right? But no one will ever understand us... Sometimes, we don't even understand ourselves! When we can't be understood, when we start realizing that fact, when even our closest friends don't and can't understand... This leads to a despairing loneliness amidst people.
Happy when I'm alone - Solitude can take us away from life's bustle, away from the people that can't understand, away from the daily distractions. When we get away from those, our mind can calm down and think clearly. When we are calm and our mind is clear, it is more peaceful, and this peace, though temporary, can bring happiness to some extent.
I feel lonely most of the time - hence I talk and sing to myself, a lot. I guess it's because I put up strong defenses against people, which isolates me, but keeps me protected from being hurt. And I'm afraid that people won't like me.
What a bummer....!
Jackson Square Jazz is a gay-theme fiction that I read recently, written by Greg Herren. It's a tale about one slut Scotty, a former go-go boy in New Orleans who cracked a long unsolved crime through a scintilla of clairvoyance and some dog-eared tarot cards.
Reading the book, I am quite moved and inspired by Scotty's FBI boyfriend, Frank, who was living in DC and still believed in monogamous relationship between two men. Frank, after Scotty's one-week visit to his place in DC, was trying so hard to get in touch with him through never-picked-up phone calls and unreplied e-mails. Moved, when I read his e-mail to Scotty, I did not give myself a second thought to republish it here in my previous post (Friday, June 30, 2006).....!
"My sweet love:
I'm starting to get a little concerned. I've called a couple of times and only get your voicemail, and this is the third letter I've sent since you left the other day, and you have yet to answer any of them. What's going on?
I realize I may be overreacting - I don't have a lot of experience with this relationship business - but I had such a great time with you here last week. It broke my heart to take you to the airport Friday - I wanted you to stay badly. I love you, Baby, and having you here with me only convinced me how right we are for each other.
That's why I am so nervous about not hearing from you...did I do or say something wrong? Did I piss you off in some way? Please know that if I did, it was certainly not my intent, and please accept my apology. I love you so very much - I can't imagine life without you now, Baby. Please let me know everything is okay.
Please.
With all my love,
Your Baby"
This e-mail wrote by Frank to Scotty can be found in Chapter 10, page 105-106 of the book.
Now, perhaps next time a simple question like, "Hey, I happened to know something about you and now I'm confused and I demand an explanation. Do you want to tell me about it?"might help instead of SMS:"I hate you! I was so stupid to let go the one who loves me damn much to be with you, you fucking liar!" That, out of a sudden and blurry.
Phew! Lega sudah....
Manager MISC, ok tak?
At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt.
