The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

Jason would sing hilariously dirty takes on classic Disney songs in the shower. Alex loved that Jason was flexible. They became inseparable, cryptophasiac in their language, known around WeHo for their antics. They were jointly invited to parties, they became fixtures of the gay scene, but were fiercely jealous and defensive. Although they never had The Talk to define any boundaries, neither of them ever transgressed, they were an item and came as a fungible unit and this was known. A year passed, the best year of Alex’s life. Then the acceptance letter from the Tisch School of Arts in New York City came for Jason in the mail. They wanted him for their esteemed dance program and this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and at first Alex was jubilant; they celebrated back at The Abbey, but there was a darkness to it, because Alex still had three years to go before completing his PhD. And so it was that this knowledge began to infect everything. Every party became a wake. And as Jason’s flight approached it all exploded into screaming fits and slaps and shoves. They hit and pinned each other. They woke with bruises in the morning on their wrists and arms and legs from the fights and the crying and the accusations and the recriminations, both their faces becoming grotesques, gargoyles of their former selves, their movements erratic, compulsive in their need to hurt and to be close at the same time, a dissonant dance that neither had ever experienced before, completely shocked by themselves, completely shocked by their newfound capability to be so spiteful and so uncontrollable. But the inevitability of parting settled like the clearing of sediment from muddied water, and the fights and the bruises ceased, and when the subject came up they would just sit together, together but apart, filling a room with their silence, their inability to find a solution to this problem in which they both did not lose. In such a sorrowful state they hung on for the next month before the flight, clung to each other, to their joint life. They had some nice nights out, they celebrated as they could. Eventually they hung on for just a day, then, an hour. The ending bore down upon them in Terminal 4 of LAX. Hang on for just a few more minutes. Hold me a few seconds longer. The universe is fourteen billion years old and we can hold on to each other for five more seconds before you go through security and get on that plane and we never see each other again.

The first thing Alex missed after Jason’s departure was the argot a long relationship develops—the animal noises in response to questions, the soft hums of sleep, the inside jokes and rituals and faux debates. When a relationship dies a whole language dies with it, just as private and unique as any endangered tongue spoken in the deep rain forest. To avoid the pain Alex had rearranged the apartment back as best he could to the pre-Jason state. The only thing that really stayed, a little case study of mimetic transmission, was the pot smoking. Smoking at least partially dulled the green prick of jealousy, because what began to eat at Alex was the thought that there would be other people fucking Jason, other men’s dicks involved, that Jason would say encouraging things—Oh, fuck me hard, Oh, you’re the biggest! It drove Alex insane when he thought about it. He’d thrown pillows and kicked couches. He’d gone on revenge fuck escapades but their friend group thought that it was unhealthy and strange for Alex to be so suddenly single, no longer sessile, waving about like some obscene anemone in the current from one pair of arms to another.

Alex could not honestly say how much of his decision to apply to the Crick program had been influenced by that whispering and nudging small cacodemon inside him, a thing giddy and dark, hopeful and monstrous, saying that he would then be in the same city as Jason again and one day he would be walking down the street in fashionable clothing with a group of attractive friends, and who should he run into but Jason—“Oh my God is that you, Jason . . . I didn’t know you were still living here what a great surprise . . .”—“Well, that does sound like an interesting show, maybe I’ll be there. I mean, I have a lot on my plate professionally and I already have plans for Friday night, but if I can make it . . .”—“Yeah, it was great to run into you too, bye, yes, bye . . .”

Later that night in his apartment Kierk does pull-ups on a door-frame, sit-ups, and push-ups, repping each till exhaustion three times, then shadowboxes until he is panting. He throws one last haymaker punch and stops. Breathing hard he shuts off the lights and lies on his back staring at the dark ceiling of his room. In the room around him even more cardboard boxes have arrived, silent and squat, so many it made it difficult to navigate the apartment. On the black screen of the ceiling Kierk thinks about Moretti, a meeting from four years ago. Like so many of his memories it is from the third person, his own viewpoint a disembodied eye looking down on the scene . . .

Antonio Moretti was sitting behind his desk wearing a bolo tie and a boyish smile, nearly twirling in his office chair. Around him were shelves of psychiatry books, whiteboards filled by equations and diagrams, loose-leaf paper, and discarded pens everywhere. Kierk was twenty-three and in ripped jeans and a disheveled, unwashed T-shirt, circles under his eyes from reading all night. From tiny cups they drank espresso made from Moretti’s new state-of-the-art espresso machine that had the sleekness of a high-end automobile.

Antonio Moretti was speaking . . . “The most amazing thing is that using my theory you