THE SETUP
Cian is sharing with his friend Gabby a memory of a time he and Byron shared the same bed, platonically. Cian remembers waking up next to Byron and watching him sleeping.
“Listening to him breathe against the sounds of the morning.”
CIAN
I could have stayed there indefinitely. Just looking at him. Lying there. Shifting occasionally. Making a face or a grunt. Listening to him breathe against the sounds of the morning. And I knew I didn’t need anything else. If I could just wake up next to him — every morning for the rest of my life, that would be enough.
I’m there in the bed next to Byron —
I’m watching him sleeping — when suddenly I feel something rub up against my foot.
He was playing footsy with me.
I figure, “It’s completely unconscious on his part.” But it felt nice. I felt a little closer to him, so I figure, “What’s the harm?”
So I rub up against his foot.
Very tentatively. I don’t want to wake him.
Not when his unconscious mind is being so accommodating.
And this goes on for a while. Just another idyllic moment.
Then Byron wakes up. Like he had some internal alarm clock.
He doesn’t really register me, which is fine that first moment or two, since I’m feeling a little too predatory. But then he just operates on instinct, the half-awake morning routine. He just gets up and walks out, doesn’t even look back. At me. In the bed.
I ran a hand over the groove in the mattress, that spot that he’d slept in, and just left. It was still warm. And I felt so — sad. And stupid. ‘Cause I knew, I knew it wasn’t going to happen — that things like that don’t happen. To me.
(photo: 1996 production by The Early Stage (Minneapolis, MN); William Franke as Cian, Jim Lichtscheidl as Byron)
Leave a Reply