Sleepover

(February 2005)
Josh MacLeod

I often wish I was an alien. I doubt I am alone in this. Most people I meet wish to be special, be unique. I offer it to them, sometimes. They all refuse me, my offer, I. None of them would pay that price, they say, not seeing that I see no price at all. I am a voyeur, wanting to experiment. I am waiting to be let into the zoo, put crudely.

I think more of the time that everyone else is an alien. This is not the same delusion. It's roots run deeper, harder. Further. Even those words bring to mind taught images, but nothing else. Nothing real. I am not real.

In the other room, Frank and Emma are Making Love. I am huddled against the far side of the couch, trying not to cry. Trying to be silent. Trying, too hard, to understand.

When people ask me who I am, I can only say: "Not you." Not like you. Not. I am empty of what drives you. I am empty of your wants, your needs, desires, all, everything. I am hollow, and sheer, and water dashes at the cliff. The rocks are unmoved, unharmed. The bed moves, jerking in a private earthquake. I wish I knew what they feel, in there, together.

It is a myth, their love. A thing of romance novels and movies. Stories make it more than - than lust, than carnal desire, than - words! All I have, and not enough. I don't understand them. I don't know what they mean, what they are, what gives them their - the power, their strength, their nature.

It is stories that makes things beautiful. It is lies that make them eternal. Words, again, but I have nothing else. I watch, sometimes, but there is nothing to it, nothing under it, nothing. No thing. None. I hug myself, skin pressed into the couch, wishing they wee done, wondering why they hate me, wondering if they even care.

But I do not understand them. How dare I presume they understand me? SOMEONE HAS TO! It's too hard, too hard, too hard. And men would make jokes about that word, but I have no jokes. I have - I am - I. I. I want to die. Sometimes. For lack of reality. For lack of - closeness. I just want to be cherished.

That's all. And the only ones who see me as - as a body, see me as a child. And their voices get furtive as they ask about the hole, and what I feel (nothing) and why I allow them to (nothing), and why don't I stop them (nothing) and they blame me (something) for what they feel. But I do not cause it. I can't cause anything, in their world.

I am nothing. It rules their lives, and they never notice. It is too deep, past the obvious, burrowed into generations and genes and memories and traits and natures. Sex. They can't escape it. They can't not - not be. And. I am not. I do not be. I am nothing.

There is a joke. I don't tell them, often, because few things are free from their Sex. I make an exception, once. Everyone should, at least once. There is a woman, and she doesn't want sex with her husband, so she opens her legs for Britain. I see myself in that story. "Sexless doll, open your legs for Britain." And then there is silence.

Always and ever, silence. And he - or she - or hir - would stare. And nothing would be said that could be said, and there would only be laughter because some things are beyond tears, beyond knowing.

The silence is where I walk, alone. I do not understand them. They do not understand me. I try and explain things, and am told to stop feeling bitter for what I'm missing.

But I'm not missing anything! Why can't they understand! Why won't they understand that?!

Frank and Emma come out later, grinning. Asking if I had a good sleep. I say no. They do not ask why. They do their rituals, their dances, binding and loosing as they eat, playing and toying and pretending, and they all think I can't understand it.

I want to tell them I am not a child. I am twenty two. But they only see what is missing. And for them there is nothing else beyond it.