The Meetings Of The Lines
You made love to your brother once, when you were 16 and still golden and he already hated you but it was still covered in love. Fumbling and sweating hands, wet tongues and cum on your sheets, and it felt so right for just a second. A moment later it was all wrong: and Michael stumbled out of your room while you ripped the sheet off your bed and threw it in a corner. You told yourself that tomorrow you would remember this as a very weird dream born out of alcohol or as a story. A story you would later jot down to claim your reputation as a daring writer breaking through taboos and changing the literary scene.
You never really intended to write that story, and you never talked to Michael about that night. A denied memory, discarded and pushed away; but sometimes you dreamed about his hands clenching the sheets, and the hair on his neck.
You had sex with your brother two days after you married Amanda, and Michael laughed into your mouth and you giggled into his skin and it was crazy and it was need. You married a girl too beautiful to be true and she told you that she loved you, and it was all a bit much to see her dressed all in white. A bit much, and your brother was hot against you and so alive. So unlike Amanda - and you breathed it in and when you came you thought of your wife until Michael came with a muffled groan.
You were both too high to be sorry and the next day you shrugged it off with the strength of a new dawn inside of you and a career ahead of you. Michael shook your hand before he left and he kissed Amanda's cheek, and his cab vanished while you were looking at Amanda's smile. Your golden lady, your love: and her hand was soft but strong when she took yours.
You fucked your brother after your mother died, sobbing into his neck, and he looked so dead under you. No, not dead. Just not alive. And you fled the grief of the room, of the house; two days later to return to your big city and to dance your sorrows into the ground with Amanda.
And then Amanda left.
Amanda left and your world was not worth the highs you got when you tried hard enough, or the way you laughed when Tad was at his best. Amanda left and her memory walking through your apartment with a smile and wild hair chased away every other memory that was inside of you. Michael. Your other brothers. Your father. Only your mother's smile stayed.
Your mother died and Amanda left and you got high in the bright lights of New York City and danced with girls too young or too drunk or quite possibly both. Your mother died and Amanda left and you lost your job and Michael stood in front of your door. Angry, frustrated and bitter, a patina of love around it: and when he hit you a part of you knew you deserved it. You needed it to wake up for just a moment, to utter the truth to your brother and to hope for a second. To hope for just this one second: and then you went out dancing while your brother snored on your couch.
Michael left with your promise to come home soon, to say goodbye to the ashes that once made up your mother's Saturday morning smile, her strong hands and her fast strides through a room. You promised and you went, and your family was quiet around you while the wind carried away soft dust and you told yourself you wouldn't cry.
You didn't, and you entered your childhood's house behind Michael who gave you a rare smile and clenched your shoulder too hard. You kissed your brother that night, for such a very long time, and he tasted like salt and past and grief. Your father was watching TV in the next room and you fell asleep in a chair next to Michael's bed to the muffled sounds coming through the wall.
You went back to New York City and you took a look at the city during the day, a long look without storming to your job or getting lost in all the things you didn't need. You tried writing again, and it worked for some pages until Vickie called you and you listened to her for hours while your typewriter went cold. You went out dancing and you met Tad but you left early and you walked through the nightlife with a careful smile.
Something was changing inside of you, something woke up, and you finished the first chapter of your novel when you came home. Dawn was breaking when you went to bed and the sun put a picture of yellow light right above your head. You thought of sunflowers and Rembrandt and dreamed of golden fields.
You woke up to hear your phone ringing and you talked to Vickie for a hour, and when the call ended you knew she would come by in the next week. You were happy about it for a while, a confused happiness as if it didn't know what it should be like. Or what it was doing there with you of all people.
You bought fresh bread from a baker that wasn't Amanda's and yours, and you read the newspaper in search of a new job. You needed one but the idea scared you and you put the paper away again. Briefly you wondered about the girl that went missing weeks ago but you didn't go back to the paper to search for her name.
The days came and went in a haze, not drug-induced this time, and you wrote another chapter and you made your stumbling start into the new job Tad got for you. Editing again, and you hadn't stopped hating it while you were out of work but the money was good and you felt a bit normal with it.
Another party night and you came home drunk and you collected Vickie from the airport in the morning with dark circles under your eyes. You shrugged it off when she asked, and you went through the city with a girl at your side that made you forget how Amanda had felt there.
You slept with her on the first night of her visit and the second night and the third. You thought maybe you two were moving too fast and she asked you if you were but you still found yourself buried inside of her. Making love to Vickie reminded you of that first night with Michael and you blinked against the memory and you leaned down to Vickie's breast to keep yourself grounded. You came after her and you felt like you hadn't done this for a long time.
When Vickie curled against you during the third night you remembered that it had probably been longer than it felt. And you wrapped your arms around her and thought about Michael and Amanda and you realized that you had been fucked up before Amanda left you. That you had been fucked up since that very first night with your brother: and so you slipped out of the bed and called Michael in the middle of the night.
His voice was tired and worried and so far away and when you asked about the sex between the two of you he slipped away a bit further. He rambled on about it for a while, lies and denial, truth and something else, and he told you that he loved you before he ended the call. You told him the same, but the repeating sounds of the empty line were the only listeners.
You went back to Vickie's warm embrace and you slept until the sun crawled over both of you. Vickie smiled at you, full of grace, and you smiled back at her. Her hand was warm on your shoulder and her lips hot on your mouth and you showered with her pressed to your body in the too small cubicle.
You drove her to the airport and kissed her goodbye and you watched her leaving. She wasn't Michael, you thought, and she wasn't Amanda. But she was Vickie and you thought you could love her smile and you could love her as well. Just not yet, just not now, and you knew that she would understand.
You went home and called Megan and asked her out for the long promised dinner, and you two laughed about your old job over wine and good food. You thought about calling Michael again after you walked her home but you didn't. You looked through old family pictures instead and you smiled at pictures of you and your brother. You cried when you saw your mother laughing at you in black and white and so much younger. Alive.
You remembered the novel you wanted to write after that first night, which had only been a poor excuse you had whispered to yourself in the morning.
Daring: breaking taboos.
You put away the chapters of your other novel, and you knew that it would be the other novel forever now. You looked at the paper, scarily white and empty, and you took a deep breath that almost choked you.
You started to write.