BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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SUNDAY
27.10.1990
ISAIAH

               Dorian gazes at me from the bed as I tie my sky blue durag around my head. He follows my fingers with simmering excitement and beams when I do it exactly as he remembers, like a mathematician who becomes engrossed amid a page-long solution to an equation he already knows the answer to.

He let me stay in his dorm over the weekend so I could rest until my flare calmed. I spent all of Saturday sleeping and eating only fruit or a piece of bread here and there, knowing I wouldn't be able to keep anything else down; though I'm sure all of House Perses know I stay here, running to the floor's shared toilets to throw up every hour might breach their hospitality enough for at least one to report me to staff. When Dorian came back this morning, he brought four plastic containers of leftovers from Sabbath prepared by his family cook, Jabób, who ironically lives only a few blocks away from me in Lower Halsett where the Polish sector borders the Caribbean one.

Now, well-fed and thoroughly showered, I feel perfectly healthy — well, as healthy as I ever do. Fatigue, that constant chaperone, a mock father figure, is always present in the periphery.

With my braids tucked away, I slip onto the bed. Dorian still studies me in a slightly dissociated way as if he doesn't think I can see him, but returns to his own body with a blink and lifts the blanket for me to get under it.

He's naked save for his boxers and Star of David. He runs so warm he sleeps in only underwear and even then, kicks the duvet off his body once he's groggy enough to not miss its weight. The antithesis of me, sentenced to an incessant chill by iron and B12 anaemia. Dressed in his warmest pyjama trousers and striped cashmere jumper, I'm still quick to cocoon in his duvet.

Dorian always sleeps in only underwear but now his skin is everywhere. Even when I keep my movements short in my search for a comfortable position, I brush or nudge some part of him every time.

I lie flat on my back just as he does. It's different, as though our shoulders suddenly don't fit beside each other.

The reality is our shoulders have never fit on this bed. We've slept in every possible position curled together and on top of each other. But this is the first time we're sharing a bed since we've started to kiss, disregarding the past week which doesn't count because I was crying the first night and drugged delirious the other two.

Until tonight, his skin was something I could accidentally touch. I could reach for it in the pretence of shifting position. I could ask him to cuddle me and the affection was never burdened by explicit knowledge of my yearning.

Desire can't be crammed back into its straightjacket. The ceiling becomes a projector screen for memories and neither of us can find the plug. His lips on mine, mine on his, mine between his teeth, his hand at the back of my neck, my grip on his uniform tie, his fingers twisted in my braids, my name on his tongue.

If the tension won't go away, what choice is there but to welcome it?

'How many minutes d'you reckon till one of us gets hard? I bet ten.'

I glance at him with a stifled grin. He stares back with unfiltered horror.

'You don't wanna bet? Nice! That means I automatically win.'

Dorian mouths replies he never finds the voice to speak. I hear them nonetheless: Why would you say that? Don't say that! You can't win when I never participated. We haven't bet on anything, what are you winning?

In psychic unison, we turn onto our sides to face each other over the infinitesimal distance. A tremor palpitates in my chest. Is it my heart?

With no warning, fear swallows me and I'm terrified to death. At least, pretend death, the way animals throw themselves on their backs at the sight of danger. This is the most fatal danger I've ever suffered. I need you. I need you to still love me. I need you to have found something else in my mouth than shame or sugar.