Ode to a conversation stuck in your throat

and other long awaited truths

Jun 02, 2023

Dear friends,

if you're new here, welcome to beat & beatnik. for the familiar faces, long time no see. i’m sorry it’s taken me a while to come back here. the truth is, i had been avoiding you. i’ve had so much to say but i had no idea where to begin. so i’ve decided to start here.

my hair is growing long, signaling the passing of time. it’s the longest it has been since i can remember, in an almost unrecognizable way. it wasn’t intentional, but the longer it grew the more it started to feel like this new version of myself. i’ve been in new york for 8 months now. time moves differently here. i think new york rotates on its own axis. if i close my eyes, i can feel it spinning and spinning away from the rest of the entire universe like the zero gravity ride at the county fair. it’s so fast that the blur becomes reality. sometimes i let the blur consume me and it feels really fucking good. sometimes, like the zero gravity ride, it’s vomit inducing.

i ran into Tina last week at cotton bean and it made me nostalgic about how far i’ve come. while we caught up, Tina said “you met me at a really weird time in my life when all these really hard adult things started happening.” even though it wasn’t apologetic and it was more matter of fact, it felt resigned because even though we live on the same block it had been months since we last saw each other. she was the first friend i made the very first week i had moved into my neighborhood in Brooklyn and to me, she represents community and how quickly new york gave it to me. one of the very first few days after i had moved, Tina's poetry collective hosted a stoop show that i had randomly come across on my bike ride home and ended up sticking around for hours and we instantly became friends. it felt cosmic. Tina followed up and made plans to grab drinks at a nearby bar. she made me feel hopeful about the chapter i was beginning. like i was going to be safe in this neighborhood and that if i could find a poetry collective a few doors down from me by some coincidence, i was going to be okay. and as the seasons have changed from late fall to winter to spring and now the early tinglings of summer, i see Tina’s fiancé Winfield often times on a stroll around the neighborhood and know with the next season will come their wedding, marking a full year since i have been here. and that in the face of one freckled person just down the block marks the community that has fed you, how fast the seasons change, and all the ways you have evolved with distance and time. the way freckles hold memories. the way they fade with time.

thank you for the gentle reminder Tina.

Intimacy exists in friendship. It is unspoken. It is curious. It is gay. It evokes a kind of exploratory romance that makes me feel defeated and high at the same time. It is inexplicable in so many undeserving ways. I find myself in a loop. Parting ways on the train platform going downtown while you go uptown. I wait for your text the morning after we fight knowing the fragility of it all. Hoping you will succumb to the tension between us rather than run away from it. And there is noise. There is so much noise. Noise buried within shame. At first, it is muted. The way denial is amorphous at first. The way you blush when I hand you coffee, and ignore me the rest of the day. The subtleties speak a language of their own. I love this feeling we have created. The one we don’t talk about. It is static and sticky. It is bigger than us and all the narrow incidents I have toyed with in my head. I know this isn’t sustainable. That desire destroys everything. There is a twisted tenderness that has grown between us and the expiration date that lies waiting, for the way this kind of friendship ends and I don’t think I am in a place to mourn that. For now, you are the perfect placeholder for something I am not ready for. The monsters under my bed I am hiding from. I think about you everyday. A distraction and a return to self-destruction. It feels special. We share secrets. We build, we build, and then we tell ourselves to forget. It’s like a summer camp friendship that only exists in those few, short, sweet months we see each other. And all I have to go off of is a feeling. An elusive, silly, feeling that I know you (probably) feel too. A feeling that is impossible to name because it is not real. It’s palpable when we are in the same room. A fine line between vulnerability and loneliness.

For almost 10 years, my queerness has existed in these fragile spaces in friendship. Friendships that have had no outcomes or destinations. Friendships that never survived the hard feelings. They were and always have been confusing and felt bigger than the spaces that they were allowed to exist in. And still the familiarity in the ambiguity makes my heart race. The collision of the complications and questioning is perpendicular to the whole. The way blurred edges converge to form comfort makes me chase after them. This time, I wonder what will outlast the inevitable.