Title: The Boys Lost In Books And Crackling Vinyl
Author: June
Genre: thoughts, drama, romance
Rating: S
Disclaimer: All that cannot be recognised to be someone else's belongs to me. The title, which I had incredibly hard time to come up with, is from Passenger's song Life's for the Living
Summary: I never thought of those nights.
Author's note: The first completely written and publishable (hopefully) text in years. This was entirely inspired by being alone and looking at the evening sky while playing Debussy (somehow both of these sneaked into the text), and eventually started to kind of write itself. I really don't know if this is any good (most likely not), but I still am inclined to publish, and would love all kind of commentary, also in Finnish.
The light would fade and the sun would go down in a few moments, in a little time - but the sky would remain lit for anothet hour, start to turn into deeper blue after all the water colour shades were rinsed.
It was the beginning of a Friday night, Friday that had once again tinged the tone of low-voice speech and subordinate clauses, causing all about dates and parties to leak into the ears of by-passers and half familiar faces from the back row of the class room, just as it always did. Although not too many were interested to listen, not with their own plans to mind or loneliness of not-a-single-invitation-received to bear.
I was one of the latter, with nothing to do, just like it was every weekend. I could wake up early the next morning, sit in the armchair with a sweater on and a coffee mug at hand, buy as many news papers as a liked, and croissants - perhaps pick up a book and only put it down when it got dark.
And the night I could spend in the balcony, listening to the faint sound of people and cars, and piano tunes from old vinyls, with my eyes only sometimes focusing on the distant rooftops and window frames of the neighbouring houses. I could have place a certain feeling of melancholy to all this, make it an image of sad nostalgia, dwell in the thoughts of solitude and detachedness. I knew, however, that I wouldn't bother; the pleasure of it was greater, pleasure of letting my mind wander wherever it wanted to go, of not having to think, of becoming part of the city's skeleton like I didn't even exist as a separate being.
The time was a floating and flexible concept, the seconds like ornaments when they couldn't be heard but only seen from the darkenkning of the streets and the fading glare on reflecting surfaces (the last ones to go out were the window glasses). I didn't think of anything, calmness of that nearly overwhelming.
Inside, on a small side table in the living room, the phone started ro ring, soundig very insisting, even more than usually. I got up and walked in to pick up the receiver. The voice on the othet end was almost painfully familiar.
'You aren't up to anything tonight, are you?' it asked, and a mix of excitement and frightened despair rose at the back of my head.
'No, I'm not,' I answered
'No way I could crash at your place?' No way at all, I felt like saying, but didn't.
'Of course you can.'
'That would be wonderful. I won't be until late, though, so I don't think you should stay up waiting.'
'I'll leave the door opened, you can lock it when you come.'
'Thank you, really. We had bit of clash, you know. Again. So I really need a place to stay.'
'Sure.'
It wasn't the first time and not the same girl, it was the hundredth time and the hundredth girl, and it wasn't a bit of a clash but a break-up, a kick-out. I knew it would never be worth it, but still I always let him come
'Is that Debussy playing?' he asked.
'Yes,' I replied. 'It is.'
'It's quite marvellous,' he remarked, and I agreed.
'But it always gets stuck into my head for days,' I added. For a moment we both were quiet.
'The first arabesque?' he then asked.
'That indeed.' I said, and felt something ache. He was just like that. Actually it wasn't any wonder I always let him in, to sleep next to me as many nights it took to find another apartment and move in. He was perfect in a subtle way, and hearing such a simple statement regarding such an ordinary thing was a knife-sharp reminder of just how perfect he was. I didn't mind if it took a little more time than expected, to find a place of his own: never once would I try to hurry him up, in fact it was the opposite. I think he did know it, had known for a while. Yet he every time he found some new place, a little later some new girl, and left me on my own again. Then they broke up and he came back, but only for a week or two. He knew I would have rather had him stay, but he never would.
He promised to be at my place before three, and then hung up. I went back to the balcony, leaned over the edge, looking at the nearly invisible black streets below. I suddenly thought about reading E.E Cummings, who was one of his favourites, but then gave up the idea. I knew that was what he would read to all of his girls, at some impossibly early hour, lying on a crumpled bed. He had once read some to me, too, and acted like he failed ro recollect a thing about it the morning after.
**
I had gone to bed sometime after midnight, when the complete, all-absorbing darkness had fallen. I half woke when the front door opened and closed, though not entirely, and the next thing I realised was him, slipping under the cover and against me.
He was like that, slept very close to me, arms around me or face pressed in my neck. I propably should have found it disturbing, distracting even in my sleep, but loved it insted, loved to have him so near. I abandoned my concience and let myself dwell in the thought of how much I had missed him, and how good it was to have him there.
I opened my eyes and saw the lines of his features in the dimness. His eyes were bright, fixed on me, and when he noticed me looking a little smile played upon his lips. I didn't know whether he was drunk or not, and I didn't care if he'd remember anything the next morning, so I stroked his hair back and pulled him a bit closer. He gently kissed me on the lips, and put his chin on my shoulder, falling asleep quickly, whereas I lay half awake for what felt like hours, too aware of his light breathing and slender, warm body so touchably next to me.
**
He took his time now, too. It almost had me hoping he wouldn't go, but of course he eventually did, smiling and thanking me for letting him stay. I told him to forget it, that it was my pleasure to have him around - which was perfectly true, although he fluently dismissed any second meaning that statement obviosly contained.
It had been my pleasure having him, it really had been. We had known each other for so long, after all, and he seemed to be in every way the kind of person I could have been perfectly happy with - it was just that he would never be perfectly happy with me, not in the long run.
I never thought of those nights when I had been enough, when he had been drunk or lonely or angry or high, because thinking was of no good. It was best to try and forget those few times when I had been sufficient, since there always was some factor that undermined the emotion that should have been attached.
I never thought of his lips or his skin, even less the feeling of them against mine at night in my bed, on one of those rare occasions. Never the sighs or whimpers, the restless, restless fingertips on my back and down my spine. Never the way he kissed me afterwards, like it was the only thing he had wanted to do, like all he had wanted was to kiss me in the most loving and intimate of ways.
Instead I went to the balcony, to the cool beginning of a day, to listen to the humming city waking from its sleep with a whole new glory waiting to be shattered by the hours ticking by. It was a lonesome kingdom, but beautiful, and it was home. When I went outside in the afternoon, that was what I kept thinking, and no other thoughts crossed my mind, I didn't allow them to. I concentrated solely on the world around me, the people passing me by and the cold wind with a hint of winter blowing to my face and into my hair.
I sat in coffee shops, looked out from the big front windows and flirted with the girls behind the counter. It was all the same, returning to normal. I didn't go anywhere on Friday nights, at school I talked to the same people I always did, about the same things concerning unfinished essays and studies or groupworks with deadlines too close.
Evenings were still bright with elaborate colours gradually fading into pastel shades. I met him every now and then, more often heard about him from some common friends who knew more. I wondered when would be the time I'd get another call, when he would next come for some nights and I could imagine him as a lover so clearly. I wondered if it would end some day, if he would actually find a girl and love her for the rest of his life. I wondered what I would do if I one day heard he was engaged, getting married, or having children.
It all seemed very distant, an alternative universe, that would never touch me or anyone I knew, or thought to know. The idea of it still kept coming back on the nights of weekend while feeble-mindedly staring at the sky; future had become something to ponder endlessly and never come up with any proper conclusions, nothing to hold on to as the solid truth.
That wasn't, as it turned out, the last time I had him sleeping next to me. It happened again after some months, and then again after a few more had passed. It didn't change, nothing did.
There were times, some too early hours or too late nights, when I thought about calling him myself, telling him something I had began to understand I should really have told him ages ago. I should have told him everything about how I felt, everything that he was and meant. I should have let him know, should have written a letter or whispeared it to him when he was half asleep. Sometimes I was terribly afraid something would happen, something dramatic and life-changing that would leave me forever regretting not telling him.
But after a while my head seemed to clear, and thoughts like that became senseless, stupid and exaggarated in the strenght of the emotion. When everything was normal and I was sitting in a bakery shop's cafe with a few of my fellow sudents, I didn't think of him for a split second. There were days when he hardly once crossed my mind, when I barely remembered his existance. It was so very easy to be almost convinced that, as people's feelings faded so fast, mine had, too.
Still, the security of indifference disappeared as soon as he happened to pay me a visit and as soon as I was feeling particularly lonely; as soon as he called me and we talked about something rather irrelevant and as soon as I came home to find he'd left a book I might want to read on my doorsteps, with a little note attached, in small untidy handwriring. It came then, the absolute certainty, the compelling need to dial his number, always subdued by the lack of courage.
A month or so later, and I often thought about that, sitting in the balcony with a blanket on my shoulders to fight the cold, stars visible more and more brightly every nigh. The thoughts of him started to creep from the edges of my mind, expanding until they took the entire space, invading every percent of my brain's capacity. I had stopped resisting and let them all come, but I didn't do anything. I didn't get up and walk inside, I was always too afraid of what he would say, what he would think and what would then happen.
This was the way it had been for several years, in fact; me being more or less in love, he making me more or less hopeful. Me trying to forget or hold on, he completely unaware or at least pretending to be. Me happy and then miserable again, he always either intensely exctatic or desperate. And we two together, total strangers despite the many years and things shared, both having no actual idea about the other; it really came to me after even more years had passed and I hadn't seen or heard of him in ages, how ridiculously little we had talked, how ridiculously little we had known and how ridiculously much we both had loved.
