April 2001
If we were children, if we were ever children, then someone forgot to tell us. Someone neglected to stand us before a mirror, and point out that our faces still held traces of baby-fat, that our gangly, awkward arms and legs made us look like half-grown colts instead of the men we fancied ourselves to be. And so, if we did not know of our youth, how could we be expected to limit ourselves to it?
Each day we lost some of our innocence, some of ourselves, which each life we were forced to take. They say that the Bloody Countess, Elizabeth Bathory, kept herself young by bathing each day in the blood of the innocent. But... it aged us, jaded us. It would have destroyed us if we had let it.
It began as a game, our salvation. Huddled close around what heat we could find, voices hushed in the semi-darkness. And someone would say "I dare you" to do this or that. And I would think of outrageous tasks for them to accomplish. Because they expected me to. They expected me to try and shock them.
"I dare you." I said one night, the darkness so thick I could barely make out the image of the person I spoke to. "I dare you... to kiss one of us. Fully. On the lips." Then I laughed. The others were laughing too, but he was not. His eyes glittered in the moonlight.
It was painful, that first kiss. I hadn't expected him to take the dare at all, let alone choose me. But then, his mouth was against mine, crushing mine. He had never kissed anyone before. He only knew what he had read, and maybe seen from the corner of his eye. He knew that mouths came together; more than that was beyond him.
So I taught him. I slowed him down, and I showed him the extent of my limited knowledge. It wasn't much more than his; based on a few stolen minutes behind a grocery store with a girl I would never see again. I'd been...twelve. Yes, twelve. She tasted like cherry ice cream and candy; and in those days that was as close as I would come to savoring either of those treats.
But even she had not tasted as innocent as that first kiss with him. I showed him how to keep teeth from grinding together, how to move your tongue in just the right way. It was lack of air that finally broke us apart, panting, staring at each other in wonder. The others were watching us too; amused, shocked expressions.
And when did it go beyond that? When was it that I was brought out of the fog of sleep to be touched and tasted? When I lay there in a stolen bed, with a stolen name, knowing that in a few moments nothing would ever be the same again. I surrendered completely, gladly, to that desperate touch. But I did not lose my innocence that night, I regained some of it. Because there was nothing tainted about what we did, nothing stained. It was as pure as new snow. It was as if that in the midst of hacking chunks of coal from the bowels of the earth, we'd discovered diamonds.
Yes, there were nights we used each other. Lost ourselves in sweat and flesh for the purpose of forgetting what we'd seen and done. But then there were other nights where it was a celebration, a glorious reminder that we had survived and that we would keep on surviving. We never spoke of love or promises; we had none to give. We had no way of knowing if the moments we were sharing would be our last. We simply lived them.
And when the days finally came that we could have separated, gone our own ways, built our own lives, we could not. We clung to each other tighter, suddenly more afraid than we had ever been when our lives were in physical danger. We spoke for the first time of love, of the future, and how bleak the future would be alone. And there were those who whispered it might not be healthy, our need for each other. He was my addiction, I was his. We were ours.
And we watched out bodies change as the years when by. We grew taller, we lost the look of the children we had never been, we physically became the men we were born. Bodies fit together in new ways, different ways, better ways, and we laughed about it, teased each other, made comparisons.
And time continued to pass, years flowing by too quickly to count. And we had other things to joke about; scattered white hairs, bones that had begun protesting rain. How good it felt when he still looked into my eyes and told me I was beautiful.
He's sleeping now. He wakes now and then and looks for me, and smiles to see that I am still here. His hand, lined, spotted, still strong, clasped around mind. We do not hear the beep of the machines around us, I try not to think that soon he will be beyond hearing them at all.
We ask each other, do you remember? Do you remember when you dared me to kiss someone? And I tell him I remember that first kiss, so long ago. And then I lean forward and kiss him again. Different than that first kiss, but still just as sweet and innocent.
He tells me again that I'm beautiful, that he loves me, and I tell him the same. He leans back on the pillows and rubs my hand. Then he tells me he's going now, and not to make him wait too long. Those eyes, eyes that time and age have never touched, still clear and beautiful and brilliant, they close.
I stay until they take him away, and as I go outside I see a comet. What was that line from Julius Caesar? I can never recall it correctly. I believe it goes "When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
He knew I would do this. Anyone else would have argued with me about it, told me not to, listed reasons, cited examples. But I have lived and breathed him for almost eighty years, and even now his absence crushes me, brief as it will be.
I lay down in our bed, a glass of water in one hand, a bottle in the next. His scent is still on the sheets around me. I am on his side of the bed. I feel no fear as I swallow the pills, only anticipation. Soon, my love, I'm on my way.
I sink back on the bed, feeling sleep overtake me, letting images flow into me one last time, and I see him standing before me in a field of flowers, laughing. He calls out "I dare you to catch me. I'll let you kiss me if you do." Then he begins to run.
I chase him and tackle him, and we roll together in that field.
Innocent.
The End
(:./lasha/innocent)
