you were leaning against the windows of the fudge store
looking bored, way too cool
pawing the silver chain around your neck
i walked by, flip flops catching between wooden boards
i swear
i didn't trip on purpose
but you laughed just the same
in the ocean the next day
what a happy accident, really
you'd been treading water not far away
i pretended to get pinched by a crab
the silver glistened against that too tan skin
the glint disappeared under the water as you made your way toward me
"are you okay?"
"yeah there's just something in the--"
i jumped again, feigning pain
there was nothing there, of course
the waves rolled over our shoulders
we moved with them so easily
the next day we had greasy clam strips
cold tartar sauce
salt and wind in our hair
sitting on a carefully laid out towel
"can you tell me about your family in jersey, again?"
no, that's silly
i wasn't even listening the first time
just watching the way your neck looked
every time you swallowed
i used to think the ocean was scary
its dark, endless, rolling currents
dragging us all to the horizon
frightening creatures in the depths
sunlight disappearing over our heads
is this where we're all born?
but that's where i first talked to you
a lie bubbling from the deep
rushing to get some air
up here on the shore it's much brighter
we can go inside the fudge shop now
ride the ferris wheel
buy books from the little shop off oak avenue
i still have the bookmark we got
pressed between the sandy pages
of the swarm from schatzing
it's travelled with me on all my moves
cemented to that bookshelf
i know i'll never read it because
i'm not into the english translation
and i don't think that shrines should be disturbed
Tag: gay
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i’m not patriotic, and not because i hate the states or anything.
i mean, okay lets be so for real — i do not like the direction and path this country has fallen into but patriotism seems like such a silly thing when the world is so big.
being brought here as a baby and always being aware of the fact that i could have just as easily grown up on the other side of the world, i’ve never felt any sense of attachment to like… anywhere i’ve been? i don’t really know how to describe it. always loved moving. shaking things up. collecting stories.
i think the closest i’ve felt to loss when it comes to a “place” is when my parents sold the house i spent the majority of my youth growing up in. it was our third home at that point, but it’s where we had stayed the longest. it was always a constant in my life. i could always count on going home for the holidays and being inside, all cozy in front of the fire.
it seems silly to me to feel patriotism for … what? land? a place? arbitrary human-made borders on the land masses that managed to break through the ocean?
i associate patriotism with over zealous xenophobic people. proud people. unflinchingly accepting ideals proposed by the government. maybe that’s what the states have done to my brain. or maybe i did it to myself.
i would really enjoy if my feelings toward the word changed, but i fear it might be a while until that happens. i’d like to feel proud. i’d like to know that we’ve done the right thing; protected people. shown love to immigrants. but i don’t know if that is possible. time and action will tell.
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i need to preface this with a statement.
i do not actually enjoy cooking.
i find the entire act of it terribly boring.
the grocery shopping. the unpacking. the prep. the act of cooking. boring.
but, i do love the eating part of it.
in a feeble attempt to reconnect with a culture i should have grown up in, i found a recipe online for classic romanian dishes. the criteria i was looking for when it came to recipes was that it needed to be easy to make, and was hopefully delicious. added bonus if it was salty.
romanian cabbage rolls pop into the picture after some online searching and there’s a special note about rinsing the pickled cabbage leaves off because they are too salty makes. it makes me grimace. i will never rinse these leaves off. you can’t make me.
i source all the ingredients from jungle jim’s and then i get to work.
mixing the pork with fresh dill and onions is extremely satisfying. i had no idea i would enjoy mushing meat together as much as i did, even though my mother made me mix up meatballs when i was younger. but this time is different because i am choosing to partake in the cooking of my own accord.
i forget what other seasonings were in there (i have to pull the recipe up every time i make this) but i remember definitely putting in rice as well. a binding agent? i don’t know how these things work. don’t ask me.
anyway, you unroll the cabbage leaves and roll out a strip of your meat mixture on the leaf. then roll it up nice and tight so no meat falls out. put it in a crockpot with tomato sauce and smoked sausage (or any other type of smoked meat) and let it cook for eight hours.
sometime before it finishes i make some buttery mashed potatoes and put a couple cabbage rolls on top of it when they’re ready. it is oh so wonderful.
it takes a significant amount of time and effort to accomplish making this dish, but it’s well worth it and then feeds us for a few days. i’ll have to find the recipe and then document how i do it sometime, although you could definitely just google “romanian cabbage rolls” and find the recipe just as easily, i suppose!
that’s my favorite thing to cook and that’s all, folks!
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okay, so a long time ago when i was a freshman in college i had this friend who was dating a hockey player. watching hockey was about the only exciting thing i could that first year — besides meet boys who kept holding my hand but then told me they weren’t actually attracted to men? it was all maddeningly frustrating.
anyway, that first hockey game i went to? yeah, i was SAT. it’s so fast and quick and it seems like the players are flying! i’d always found air hockey thrilling, especially as a child when we’d go to bars as a family and my sister and i needed to be distracted while we waited for the food to arrive.
i kept going to the games. it was fun. always hated sports. except hockey was just such fun to watch. it was fast! you had to pay attention. there were fights! loved it.
i signed up for an ice skating class my college offered later that year. i was under no illusion that i would ever be able to play hockey. i couldn’t even stand up straight on ice skates, and big beautiful thighs were so far away from any realm of possibility for me that i had resigned myself to one simple fact — i just needed to get the basics. i needed to get on the ice and try it out.
it was tremendously fun. i learned how to do crossovers, skate backward, skate very quickly, jump, and catch people as we skated backward. it was fantastic. i loved it. there is just something so incredibly freeing about flying around on the ice. oh, and added bonus — our final exam for this class was a group choreographed dance using all of the moves and techniques we’d acquired during the semester. we chose to do “bad romance” from lady gaga since i think that had just come out and there’s a video of us performing this somewhere, but i hope i never see it again.
the rest of time goes by as it always does. i went to some hockey games in the town i was living in, after college, and i found them enjoyable, but the team wasn’t terribly good. there was one star wars game i remember going to and it was so cool to see darth vader gliding around on the ice brandishing red lightsabers.
i fell out of going to hockey when i moved to the city i live in now and my long latent enjoyment of the sport revived itself with these game changer books. heated rivalry really did me in.
and by did me in, i mean i felt like these books gave me permission to write the things i want to write and get back in touch with myself. i know it’s corny, but i’d been self-censoring myself with my own writing. i write a lot of words that don’t ever see the light of day, and i spent and even larger amount of time sanitizing those words to be palatable — to who? i have no idea.
but, reading about hockey, reading about these characters whose experiences were similar to mine (and vastly different in others) was exhilarating. and of course it reignited my interest in hockey.
so i went to a hockey game a couple weeks ago, and i’m going to another one tomorrow. it’s great fun and i’m enjoying being back outside, without the numbing effects of alcohol to propel me through, and it’s nice to be part of a crowd all trying to manifest one thing. a delicious win.
i’ll never be able to play hockey, but i sure as hell enjoy watching it.
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i think it started in my nonny's basement
on a sunday afternoon
before the family dinner was ready
the hiding, i mean
we all sat stuffed on the couches around the room
like the spiced meatballs cooking in sauce
in the big pot on the stove
my cd player was wearing the fuck out of track number 6
what u see (is what u get)
britney spears
ever since oops... i did it again came out
i knew i needed to listen to this album
i'd told my parents i thought she was hot
whatever that means
they bought me the cd anyway
"what are you listening to?" my uncle asks me
i pull my headphones down, irritated to stop the music,
even though i'd heard this song one million times
"what?"
"what are you listening to on there?" he points to my silver cd player
my pride and joy
i panicked
and i knew i needed to lie
i could tell from his smirk that he would not believe me
i could try to fumble out the sentence, "britney spears is hot"
like i'd done with my parents
but i wasn't good at lying, yet
quickly
what's the most masculine thing i know?
"ja rule" i hear myself say
"ah, who's that?"
he doesn't believe me
"rapper," i say, "has a cool song with ashanti"
is he believing me?
he taps his fingers to his ears
miming
as if he's wearing headphones himself
"yeah, that sounds like ja rule" he says, sneering
i have not been able to look him in the eyes since
because there's something about the first lie you tell
you always remember it
and so does the person you burdened -
i got down on the subway floor
face so close to whatever that fluid was
“is that fucking—oh my god, you’re crazy, dude!”
the way you laughed, the disbelief
made me feel proud
cause i was the type of guy who’d stick his face in piss to try and impress you
we sat in seats next to each other
should i hold your hand?
we got up for the little old lady with too many bags
hanging onto metal poles
trying to keep our balance
i swear you fell into me when the train was on the straightaway
did you do that on purpose?
i always wondered
our friends were there
i'd confided in them once
they watched me try to be someone i wasn’t in front of you
a thrilling game i never wanted to end
we could have a house in the country, made of branches and sparkles
we’d go outside in thunderstorms and really kiss this time
you wouldn’t have to stop and say,
“we can’t.”
big solid logs crackling in the fireplace
windows overlooking the frozen lake and eternally snow covered trees
white eclipsing green, cold smothering life
something spicy in the oven, talk radio in a different room
traced my fingers over your chest
your hand on my thigh
bliss, right here on this starchy couch
unburdened, somewhere in the mountains i should have run to
your hand absentmindedly reaches for—
at the station now
stepping into this underground world
do you want to stay down here too?
the little rattling reverie
closes with the doors of the train behind us
locked inside -
listen, we don’t do it anymore. and i miss it terribly. i’m also going to write about this one specific thing even though there are many family traditions that exist in our family.
we would always go to my aunt’s house, who was really my mom’s cousin, but like — you’re not going to call someone “mom’s cousin” so “aunt” it was — and we’d gather around the piano in a warm cozy house all decorated for christmas every year. there was a gorgeous twinkling tree with a beautiful train track set up around the base. i loved train sets as a kid and i always wished i could shrink myself down in size so i could ride them.
there’d be drinks and food and quality time with cousins and other family members you hadn’t seen in a while. one time a family member told me, “hey, i just want you to know it’s okay to be gay.” i was a 25 year old man at the time who had come out in 9th grade but i looked at him and said, “oh wow, thank you.”
the packet of christmas carols that was distributed was the same every year, but sometimes there would be new carols added! the songs we sang were always in the same order, pages worn with use and time, but lovingly so. staples sometimes barely keeping the pages together.
my aunt would sit at the piano bench as we all squished into the sofas, armchairs, or if you were young like me, the best spot on the floor. we’d go through the songs like a ritual, ushering in the holiday spirit as best our little voices would allow.
there was always one song where my mother would ad-lib a line in that was not in the caroling booklet. the song in question was called “nuttin for christmas” which as i type that seems absolutely insane — but my mother would always add in the line, “boy was she mad!” in an emphatically dramatic manner. it always caused my cousin and i to make direct eye contact and cringe.
every year my mother continued to do this. over. and over. my cousin and i looking forward to it more and more each year, until it became so deeply entwined in my own feelings about christmas spirit that i was no longer able to differentiate between the two.
we don’t have these caroling parties anymore and i miss the joy and magic the adults in our lives worked so hard to give us.
it’s almost like santa’s jovial “ho ho ho” to me now but if i close my eyes, travel back in time and remember how everything used to be, i can still hear my her voice singing out, “boy was she mad!” into a room so full of love and happiness.
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your life, your very existence
is more than the ego's attempts at self aggrandizement
i can never see myself
in ways you thought you could
there's an aching emptiness of where we used to be
lisped, drunken voice notes
"i love you"s
maybe he heard
agonizing over change and parents who leave
grief is funny because
our youth only ever dies at once or not at all
"i feel like i always make you mad"
you said that to me once
like you weren't my reason
for everything
maybe he heard that too
i hope your everything is safe and that you can take these little words out of my head and turn them into nothing, which is where we are now
floating out there, gasping for air?
god, i hope not. -
i buried my eyes a long time ago
so that i could watch the world above me
through a layer
where i could be safe
two blurred shadows, overlapping
and laughing
it's hard to see in the mire
followed you down the streets
on roofs of tall skyscrapers
the flashing lights of times square, dazzling
cozy cottages in the mountains, fire crackling
getting fuzzy now
but if i blink enough
i can still follow your trail
watched you get married
didn't even crytime passes
i survey less clearly now
i’m getting used to this
you see, things rot in the soil
but i heard sometimes they grow too -
there's an evil calm that snakes its way through this house
a quiet light that's almost too faint to see
and as i lie here on my back
i look up at the twinkling stars
the reds
the greens
the occasional flashes of stucco walls
i feel myself rising up to meet them
even though i think i'm light years away
i can hear the upstairs neighbors yelling
because sometimes
sometimes
love
isn't the answer
and gravity is too hard to bear -
i don’t know why
why there are two of me
the side that bites his wrists
and nurses wounds
that can’t finish a book
and is reading too much
guzzling top shelf liquor
while telling everyone i'm sober
the guy who’s going to text you
the most vile things
i would never do
and i’ll sit in this cold motel room
all year long if i have to
with its scratchy sheets
and mothball smells
you're clinging to me
but i'm cold as ice
now i'm frozen to the porcelain in the bathroom tub
a little doll
please break me
the world outside is moving
and my insides are churning
i’ll wait
toss and turn
until i’m someone else
in the morning
the curtains are still closed
and you tell me
“we can’t keep out the light”
and i know you’re right
but i'm going to tell you that
i'd prefer if it was dark -
i have a hard enough time thinking of 3 things that make me happy.
30?
here are some thoughts that came to me in no particular order.
- therapy
- my father
- my mother
- my sister
- my boyfriend
- my friends
- my job
- the internet (i know)
- youtube
- kingdom hearts
- a really juicy book. the kind that sits with you for weeks after you’ve set it down
- kool-aid in the summer (the blue kind)
- riding a bicycle
- singing in the car
- the enchiladas my boyfriend makes me (we can seriously get two dinners out of those suckers)
- music (especially the kind i like enough to buy on vinyl)
- falling in love
- traveling
- the moment i found my birth family in a rural little town across the sea
- dead by daylight (ok any sane person would never say this game makes them happy, but i love hanging out with my friends while we play)
- the mona lisa (i have no idea why seeing this in person was so joyful, it subverted every idea i had of it and i loved that)
- wandering around countries that are not your own
- that scene in stranger things where sadie sink rises into the air. you know the one. *chef’s kiss* superb moment in tv.
- when you showed me attention for the first time
- when you told me to never speak to you again
- my apartment (i seriously love the vibe we’re starting to build here)
- our cats, tucchi and wheezy (they are precious baby angels even if wheezy peed on my shoes)
- the moment when you realize the trauma is now just a part of you, and not your entire existence
- when we finally found the hotel in new jersey after walking from new york (why were none of the streetlights working that night)
- the fact that things like this give me a chance to reflect and be grateful about what i have in my life. that makes me happy.
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i can see you up there in the mountains climbing your way up to a life i've left behind it’s so weird to see your friends my friends once but i was just visiting wasn’t i? do you remember crying on the floor? not wanting it to be the end scratching my fingernails into the wood i'd hoped it'd hurt, but it had felt right you know it would have been a nightmare don't you? an awful twisting dark sleep paralysis on a never-ending loop dark forests in new england horse drawn wagon pulling us in warm breath swirling around us hot mead waiting inside and the snow was falling so softly a blanket i wanted to dive into but then i realized i didn’t love you for the first time and no amount of adventure or honeyed wine could change me i’m so relieved you’re happy and i watch on wondering what would have happened if i hadn’t been who i am
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i was just discussing this with a friend today, actually.
she’s about to head to new zealand and that’s the place i’d love to travel to the most. but alas, i am a poor human and travel to other places is something i cannot afford.
i fell in love with a boy there once — just through email, nothing crazy — but i always had this fantasy that i’d just go there and find him walking down the street one day.
i’d say, “sam?” and he’d say, “joe?” and even though we only last saw each other when we were 16 it would be like no time had passed and that every irreconcilable difference we had was resolved.
we’d enjoy the mountains together, taste cheeses, drink wine, and wonder why we’d left so much time lost to nothing.
his country would smell like mine and i’d think that absolutely everything i’d ever wanted from life stemmed from his approval.
unbeknownst to me, years later i’d actually fall in love, shatter my world into jagged fractures and hope that i’d meet another boy there. i’d try to get internships, look at apartments, figure out how to emigrate, all in the hopes that one day i’d stumble across a boy i was never supposed to be with.
i’m sorry if you’re still reading this. and i’m sorry that life can be so terribly sad.
i hope that one day i can visit this country that has connected me with humans who have taught me so many things and shaped me into who i am.
tales from the cove 