Fag-hag 4 eva!
‘Mutilation is the most sincere form of flattery.’
Marilyn Manson, “Eat me, drink me”
*
Every time I go out into nightclubs I always accompany one or two gay friends of mine. It’s become a sort of habit: I’m fed up with stupid straight guys.
Tonight I’m driving Joshua’s car: he’s so drunk that he’s fallen asleep on the backseat, his head on Steve’s lap, dreaming about the guy who hooked him up in the club bathroom – or maybe about something else? Who knows?… Steve is also sleeping – I guess he smoked too many joints: usually he’d never let anybody get so close to his basket without his consent – even while he’s sleeping!
I wonder what I want to do – it’s 4:25 AM and I’m not driving towards Joshua’s flat – nor Steve’s – nor mine. I just took the highway and I’m waiting for the right moment.
For nearly three years I’ve been in love with these two boys sleeping in my back. I never told them – and I will never. They’d certainly laugh as they usually do when girls glance at them in the subway. It happens quite often since they are very cute – like most of gays. Strangely enough, I’ve always found gays very attractive – Joshua’s explanation to this “fascination” (as he calls it) is the fact that everyone is attracted by what one cannot have. And this conception of desire works for him since he always falls in love with heterosexual men. Once he even tried to fuck a priest: one of his favourite phantasms, he says. And guess what? he succeeded! Steve, on the other hand, says that desire is just like women – too complicated for him to speak on it.
Both of them consider me as their best friend – their own personal fag-hag. I used to be their “cover” for family dinners and parties, before they finally did their coming-out. They didn’t get rid of me because they found me funny and intelligent – so far unlike their boyfriends. I understand them completely, they say. I don’t know if I really understand them that much, but I try.
Tonight I decided to put an end to this situation. Not because I’m fed with them…not because I hate them…but because I can’t stand it anymore. I could just tell them that I don’t wanna see them anymore. I could break up, yeah – in a sort of way. But to tell you the truth it’s really too hard.
**
When Joshua woke up, he was lying on the road, looking up at my ‘Fruity here’ T-shirt. I had dragged him there and tied up his wrists and ankles. After realizing it, he laughed and said:
‘C’mon! Let go of me…’
He turned around and saw that Steve was tied with the same rope.
‘Hey! Cleo? That’s not funny anymore.’
‘Please!… I’m tired…’ complained Steve.
‘Let go of us, right now!’
I shook my head and whispered:
‘That’s too late, Josh…’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘… It’s just too late.’
I took a gas can out of the trunk and poured gasoline on the screaming men. The greasy liquid tried to penetrate their porous skins, their sparkling eyes – all that I wanted to destroy. I needed to destroy them – to destroy their attractiveness, to put an end to this catch-22 situation. I couldn’t stand being “just a pal” anymore. I could not live as a fag-hag only. I could not be a fag-hag for ever.
I took out a cigarette and lit it. Joshua looked up at me with his horrified eyes. It was the first time in my whole life that I had held a cigarette with the intention of smoking it. Steve began to cry, spitting gasoline on the road. I waited for one or two minutes, slowly dragging on my cigarette and watching the two guys who used to make me laugh, who used to make me dream. The smoke was blinding me progressively. Joshua was shouting hysterically when I threw the butt to the ground, right into the flammable product. Yes, I set my good-looking guys on fire without compassion for them both.
My eyes were not brimming with tears or remorse when I drove away from the inferno. Their desperate screams were not haunting me. Their painful contortions were flying up out of my head like smoky thoughts that vanish when you’re drunk. They were no more than crying ghosts, evaporating from my liquefying brain – no more than small vampires who were burnt to ashes by the pitiless sun. They were just disappearing from my mind – from my memory.
I drove miles and miles before I stopped again in the middle of the road. I opened the trunk and took out the second and last gas can.
Sitting on the front seat, I lit another cigarette. Joshua’s car immediately exploded.
***
Are you expecting the moral of this story now? Well, you’ll have to wait for a very, very long time then – because I’m dead! There’s really nothing to add.
Some people might think that I must be burning in hell now. As a matter of fact, I didn’t burn for quite a long time – I very soon fainted: the pain was too strong. Next there was nothing. Just a void. The same type of void you experiment when you are an embryo – when your brain is not working yet. No light that shines or shimmers or gleams or glows at the end of an imaginary tunnel. No judgement, no conviction. Your only sentence is to disappear without remembering what you were before dying.
Not even anything to remind me what I wanted to flee…my own self.
No shame and no remorse… Nobody and nothing… Not even any feeling of love for Joshua and Steve, who vanished just as I did – shrieking, squealing their pain as if the devil was cursing them with his best spell. I needed to do it: it was beyond my will, beyond my control. When you can’t bear something anymore, you must eliminate it – you must shatter it into millions and millions of tiny pieces that will cling to you like leeches. Millions and millions of leeches – sordid insects that stick to you as if you were their saviour – squeaky little toys that come from your worst nightmares…
It was just too late – it is always too late when you realize the truth: you have the choice between destroying yourself and destroying others. But when you put off making your choice, you end up with no other alternative: you have to destroy both.
The problem is, sometimes it’s hard to destroy something that you created yourself.
‘Mutilation is the most sincere form of flattery.’
Marilyn Manson, “Eat me, drink me”
*
Every time I go out into nightclubs I always accompany one or two gay friends of mine. It’s become a sort of habit: I’m fed up with stupid straight guys.
Tonight I’m driving Joshua’s car: he’s so drunk that he’s fallen asleep on the backseat, his head on Steve’s lap, dreaming about the guy who hooked him up in the club bathroom – or maybe about something else? Who knows?… Steve is also sleeping – I guess he smoked too many joints: usually he’d never let anybody get so close to his basket without his consent – even while he’s sleeping!
I wonder what I want to do – it’s 4:25 AM and I’m not driving towards Joshua’s flat – nor Steve’s – nor mine. I just took the highway and I’m waiting for the right moment.
For nearly three years I’ve been in love with these two boys sleeping in my back. I never told them – and I will never. They’d certainly laugh as they usually do when girls glance at them in the subway. It happens quite often since they are very cute – like most of gays. Strangely enough, I’ve always found gays very attractive – Joshua’s explanation to this “fascination” (as he calls it) is the fact that everyone is attracted by what one cannot have. And this conception of desire works for him since he always falls in love with heterosexual men. Once he even tried to fuck a priest: one of his favourite phantasms, he says. And guess what? he succeeded! Steve, on the other hand, says that desire is just like women – too complicated for him to speak on it.
Both of them consider me as their best friend – their own personal fag-hag. I used to be their “cover” for family dinners and parties, before they finally did their coming-out. They didn’t get rid of me because they found me funny and intelligent – so far unlike their boyfriends. I understand them completely, they say. I don’t know if I really understand them that much, but I try.
Tonight I decided to put an end to this situation. Not because I’m fed with them…not because I hate them…but because I can’t stand it anymore. I could just tell them that I don’t wanna see them anymore. I could break up, yeah – in a sort of way. But to tell you the truth it’s really too hard.
**
When Joshua woke up, he was lying on the road, looking up at my ‘Fruity here’ T-shirt. I had dragged him there and tied up his wrists and ankles. After realizing it, he laughed and said:
‘C’mon! Let go of me…’
He turned around and saw that Steve was tied with the same rope.
‘Hey! Cleo? That’s not funny anymore.’
‘Please!… I’m tired…’ complained Steve.
‘Let go of us, right now!’
I shook my head and whispered:
‘That’s too late, Josh…’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘… It’s just too late.’
I took a gas can out of the trunk and poured gasoline on the screaming men. The greasy liquid tried to penetrate their porous skins, their sparkling eyes – all that I wanted to destroy. I needed to destroy them – to destroy their attractiveness, to put an end to this catch-22 situation. I couldn’t stand being “just a pal” anymore. I could not live as a fag-hag only. I could not be a fag-hag for ever.
I took out a cigarette and lit it. Joshua looked up at me with his horrified eyes. It was the first time in my whole life that I had held a cigarette with the intention of smoking it. Steve began to cry, spitting gasoline on the road. I waited for one or two minutes, slowly dragging on my cigarette and watching the two guys who used to make me laugh, who used to make me dream. The smoke was blinding me progressively. Joshua was shouting hysterically when I threw the butt to the ground, right into the flammable product. Yes, I set my good-looking guys on fire without compassion for them both.
My eyes were not brimming with tears or remorse when I drove away from the inferno. Their desperate screams were not haunting me. Their painful contortions were flying up out of my head like smoky thoughts that vanish when you’re drunk. They were no more than crying ghosts, evaporating from my liquefying brain – no more than small vampires who were burnt to ashes by the pitiless sun. They were just disappearing from my mind – from my memory.
I drove miles and miles before I stopped again in the middle of the road. I opened the trunk and took out the second and last gas can.
Sitting on the front seat, I lit another cigarette. Joshua’s car immediately exploded.
***
Are you expecting the moral of this story now? Well, you’ll have to wait for a very, very long time then – because I’m dead! There’s really nothing to add.
Some people might think that I must be burning in hell now. As a matter of fact, I didn’t burn for quite a long time – I very soon fainted: the pain was too strong. Next there was nothing. Just a void. The same type of void you experiment when you are an embryo – when your brain is not working yet. No light that shines or shimmers or gleams or glows at the end of an imaginary tunnel. No judgement, no conviction. Your only sentence is to disappear without remembering what you were before dying.
Not even anything to remind me what I wanted to flee…my own self.
No shame and no remorse… Nobody and nothing… Not even any feeling of love for Joshua and Steve, who vanished just as I did – shrieking, squealing their pain as if the devil was cursing them with his best spell. I needed to do it: it was beyond my will, beyond my control. When you can’t bear something anymore, you must eliminate it – you must shatter it into millions and millions of tiny pieces that will cling to you like leeches. Millions and millions of leeches – sordid insects that stick to you as if you were their saviour – squeaky little toys that come from your worst nightmares…
It was just too late – it is always too late when you realize the truth: you have the choice between destroying yourself and destroying others. But when you put off making your choice, you end up with no other alternative: you have to destroy both.
The problem is, sometimes it’s hard to destroy something that you created yourself.
