August 25; Joe's Birthday

August 25; Joe’s Birthday

On Joe’s birthday, we are siblings. Prior to this birthday, and with each preceding eve, we’ve dug in composite spirals like frackers, clearing a sliver of space for the other but, for the most part, widening one’s own path with ample leeway. Not like siblings. We even hit a pothole early on, with the tongue fucking and asshole jamming, with the long elevator rides and U-Haul returns, with the crystal cakes and tomato toast and porta-potty head. We banged it out of our system early enough, and on that second birthday [we weren’t speaking on the first] we crossed our legs toward opposite ends of the couch and may’ve even folded our arms. We didn’t fight. We sat in good silence and watched Pink Panther, the original one, the cartoon. In a dangerous lull, he asked Are we no good, then? and I pressed the soles of my feet together below the blanket so as not to rush my mouth; well, we weren’t much then, so what’s worse now?

I guess there’s not much to say about him now. I have the vaguest idea of what his days look like, from watching the radar and cross-checking time stamps, by reading into nightmare alleyways where he’s waving from not too far off, got his hands full of netted groceries and plastic-cased wine. He’s waving as he did in memory, from a different block on a different continent, outside a pink-carpeted apartment lobby and a neighbor with her dogs all taxidermies. I have memories of her waving, too.

Years later, on his 25th birthday, I called him from the airport bathroom. I held my bladder so long on the flight, it started to feel good so I pissed in a gush and masturbated hovering over the paper-lined toilet seat. I called him after the climax, because sometimes saying Happy Birthday can strip Holy guilt after coming publicly at Newark International. The line was busy, and it wasn’t even his birthday anymore; I left a voice message. It lasted three minutes, which showed up on my phone bill as thirty dollars a few weeks later. I told him, I’m sorry I didn’t call this last year. Or, I suppose, the year before, too. I told him, I guess I’m just sorry.

I wrote a piece on the difference between masturbating in a Walmart dressing room and EWR’s 3rd terminal washroom, how Walmart sort of begs for use with their service bars and shelves suited for optimal camera angle placement; a clean off-white paint job, a thin and elusive mirror. Terminal 3, on the other hand, poo-poos accessibility in favor of purity; three dollar cardboard-applicator tampons, blue toilet paper, and a direct view of the communal chapel out the swinging doors. The AeroGasm experience is laden with both romantic and biological iconography — bloat and relief, disband and despedida, blowing out candles whose wax has entirely cased and preserved the cake already.

As it so happened, I never received a call of receipt from Joe. I’d tossed and turned a handful of nights wishing I’d have taken the opportunity to listen back on the fulfilled voice message, glaze my eyes over and act as though I’m listening for the first time. I’d listen for dips in volume, for graze words, for long breaths. I hated the idea of that message sitting in his inbox, opened or not, I hated it. I’d spurted the last of the tank and now the signal light was again blinking, blinking, on a renewed constant I wanted more of him.

Sobered upon my return to New York that summer, I relaxed into our worn separation. His sun was mine tomorrow, and his shower’d meet my mouth in another revolution. There hadn’t been such a consistent row of roadblocks, not in those five or six years. Somehow we were still just as far from main roads. ‘Round a year past, he sent a letter with updates on his continental move, his engagement, the Jetta he finally sold, his newfound unemployment. I receive it on Earth Day. I cancel my flight West and drive instead, because I still have a car, and also a job. Ha-ha.

I strap the dog to my waist and we crunch sand, dirt, concrete, particles. I’m exhausted, past the point of efforted admirability, I am awake with a sleeping body. And then I get naked and clean my feet, between my toes, I trim the hair under my arms and have a standing orgasm in the shower. I push my nose backwards out of the water and it fixes in wrinkles. I feel young and notice the aging, suddenly, altogether, consequentially, I want not to burrow on instinct but take up voice inbox space again, all of the space — all to say, I lose the tether and eye the back, I eye Joe and I wuther in a way I’ve been brought to believe will always fade, but its a natural piece I’ve gone so long without, or, so long without pinpointing [which doesn’t make it all too real, does it, if memory can’t hold] I’m holding on for dear life. I keep waiting for something new to happen. I clear my inbox for the fiftieth time this month.

art;

Richard Tuttle, Noon from trio set Dawn, Noon, Dusk: Paper (1), Paper (2), Paper (3)

2001-03, watermarked sheets of handmade paper with pigment additions, mounted on colored paper in handpainted wooden frames

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/87779?classifications=any&date_begin=Pre-1850&date_end=2022&q=paper&utf8=✓&with_images=1