a holiday

I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about the types of stories I want to write and why I want to write them. When I was younger and in college I wanted to write about profound things first and structured plots second. I think I was obsessed with the notion that my ideas must be taken seriously and that I was a serious person with serious things to say.

But I’m older now and writing a lot more for all sorts of reasons. I think I would like to get my writing published, but I don’t feel the same pressure. Maybe I’m just defeated.

Anyway, I had this thought about writing a holiday love story. I wanted to follow the love of two people who had loved each other before or are just in the midst of their love now. I’ve been wanting to be more direct about the type of story I’m writing. It’s not a metaphor for something bigger or a complex musing on the shape of the world. It’s not satire or allegorical, just a bite-sized part of a tender life or a quick look into the way people love each other.

Mainly I want to write gay love stories. Queer love stories where people express their interiority in pleasing ways or where couples go on adventures together and leave changed or broken or something else. For this bit, I thought a lot about The Frog King by Garth Greenwell which is a story I’ve talked a lot about because it shook me in a really profound way.1

The Frog King is tender and romantic. It follows two lovers in the throes of their love and there’s just a way that Greenwell writes sex and romance that I wish I could emulate. There’s a quietness to his descriptions and a sort of feeling where these two characters or lovers are the only two people in the world. I think we’ve probably all felt like that around someone. I know I have. I think Greenwell also does this thing that writers do that I really love. He’s direct but descriptive, using ordinary language to describe the indescribable.

Anyway here’s one of my favorite bits from The Frog King:

And here’s a short snippet of something unfinished, inspired by that type of story.

a holiday (the big one)

In winter we laid in bed and I told you about the big one: a giant rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone that will shatter the west coast. When it finally happens it’ll create waves of monumental force and height, driving people from their homes, collapsing property, and killing thousands. “Not a question of if,” I said. “But when.” Inevitable, like most things.

It wasn’t the first time we kissed or stayed the night, but the first time we had spent so long, uninterrupted, with each other. Together, we found ourselves lost in the trance of the week, hypnotized by each other’s allure and spending hours wrapped close to each other, afraid of letting go. During that week you told me about your own big one: a man who loved you when you were younger, fresh out of college, who left you for a mutual friend. In the aftermath of that relationship, you surrounded yourself in grief, hoping that it could grow large enough to drown you.

“At the time,” you told me. “I was convinced there was a way forward. Some path we could nurture together to rekindle what we had lost.” But, as is often the case, you spoke less and less as time went on. You would exchange birthday messages or brief nods hello after colliding in the grocery store or out at some bar.

“Once,” you said. “He brought up the notion of reconnecting—catching up.””Did you go through with it?””No, I said I was interested and he never responded.”

I cradled you after you told me, kissing you softly in areas that had not been touched for years. I did my best to keep you stable; and give you the space you needed to unleash a memory so monumental. Still, each kiss was followed by a brief involuntary flinch. “Love,” you told me. “Or the legacy of it can feel like an earthquake too.” There, written in your body language I could see how the tremors of your former love destabilized you, knocked things loose. How in the moments after the quake you had to reassess the damage: cracks in the foundation or fissures in the Earth. During our week together the aftershocks would hit you: quiet quakes felt across your skin that would rise and fall in you—never strong enough to cause you to leave, but still apparent. “Those are the worst,” you told me. “Because you are never sure if it’s an entirely new quake or simply a vestige of the past.”

One night near the end of our week together, we went out to the bars and the clubs. We shared stiff drinks and huddled tightly under space heaters. You were a dancer and I was not, but drunk on love and cheap vodka, we embraced each other on the floor, lightly rocking to music too loud for us to comprehend. You walked me back to your place, our temporary home, and dizzy and tired from our night of drinking we tried to have sex before passing out naked. It was the coldest day of the winter, unseasonable for Texas and your heater ran overtime. Still, we tucked ourselves underneath various blankets, entangled in each other to keep the cold at bay. In the morning we woke up drenched in sweat and showered together. You did the crosswords while I sipped cold coffee from a plastic cup. We spent another day together, driving from spot to spot shopping for Christmas presents to take with us when we returned to our families for the holidays. As you drove we spoke very little, preferring to sit in comfortable silence together letting the low hum of pop Christmas hits fill the empty air.

I kept thinking about the story you told me; how I had never loved or been loved by someone in that way. The men I loved were soft-spoken or matter-of-fact. They loved me directly or quietly, never loudly or profoundly. There were no last efforts at romantic reconnection, no desperate phone calls in the middle of the night. They came into my life and then they left. To them, I sometimes suspected, I was a convenient person to love. I gave parts of myself away willingly, protesting very little when someone took more of me than I could give. I never tried to win someone back. I never thought to try. Once they were gone, I let them leave. It only seemed natural.

But now, sitting quietly next to you I felt nauseous and slightly anxious. My face felt flushed; my skin hot and sticky. You looked determined, so certain of where you were going and how you had been harmed, and I must admit, I was envious. I wanted to know how it felt to feel for someone deeply, to have your heart shattered in a profound, not incidental, way. That feeling embarrassed me. Or rather, the lack of that feeling made me feel foolish. Hadn’t I been in love before? I had loved someone, deeply. We spent years together, texted each other daily, and met each other’s parents. Still, something was missing. Some revelation stirred inside of me that I was not yet strong enough to accept.

That evening, after you left, I found a neatly wrapped package underneath the tree you helped me assemble. I examined it carefully, holding it up to my face and marveling at its pristine edges and delicate bow. To: ▇▇, From: ▇▇, with all my love.2 A simple statement, yet at that moment I imagined you as a great tidal wave of water towering above me, looming large and sinister, threatening to crash down and sweep me away. My big one would come due, I knew it then. Not if, but when. I did not know if I would survive it. Years later, after you had left, I would look back and recognize the immense power you held in that moment. How, when faced with terrifying strength, you chose to wash me in your tenderness, not drown me in your wake. It was a thoughtful gift. The most sincere Christmas present I had ever received. Though, I acknowledge how cliché it seemed.