by Trisky
I might not be stupid, but I'm not a terribly observant person by nature. I notice enough to get me by. I just don't have the time to look for all the little details. There are always new pieces to write, old ones to learn, music to be made. I could fill up all the hours of my day dissecting the B flat from high C over A, notes that mean nothing to the untrained ear and never notice that dawn is breaking on a new day, right outside my window, and I've just missed the last day altogether. My mother calls it "the rapture" and she's convinced the rest of the world will get lost in it with me one day. Today is obviously not that day, and Justin is obviously not ready. Even I would notice that from one look.
It's so strange how much his skin glows with that same spooky red color, I've long since tried to forget, the longer he speaks. I think my mother thought it was another in a long line of Jacob's cries for attention. He seemed to always be able to distress himself enough to cause some ailment that he wouldn't have had otherwise. He'd cry until his throat was hoarse, or eat two times more spaghetti than he should and complain of stomach pains. It was an incredibly difficult strain on her resources to have one gifted child and one whose gift seemed to be finding ways to try and distract her from it. I require a lot of attention and I don't apologize for that. You don't craft genius by giving it a half-assed attempt, and my mother understands that. She just can't support me in the same way she used to, with such concentrated devotion, and I understand why. So I have to look around for it, for someone else who will jump head first, no questions, into the rapture with me. I think I'd managed to convince myself that that was Justin. After all, who better to understand art when he sees or hears it, than him?
But my inability to notice things until they're staring me in the face has always gotten me into trouble.
"Ethan?" I hadn't noticed he'd stopped speaking. I didn't really hear much after the first "I'm sorry". The specific words don't really matter in the end, do they? They all say the same thing and leave us at the same point.
"Just tell me that you haven't been lying this whole time. That the two of you haven't..." I don't know why it's important to me to know this. It's just the thought that I've been made a fool of, and I didn't even know it, that runs a chill up my spine. I can picture him sitting there and mocking me and Justin laughing with him.
His cheeks are stained with permanent blotches and I realize that I was right, the trip over here wasn't worth the effort it took to make it. I try to count the number of missing nights I can't account for, or the amount of times he'd look anywhere but at me, when he was telling me about his day. They all blend into one long lie and I realize it's not that I don't notice things, it's that I don't want to.
I never really noticed much about Jacob, other than the fact that we were related and stuck with one another. You couldn't have designed two more opposite personalities if you tried. The fact that we're so close in age only added to the strain, gave him more reason to try and stand out. I couldn't even give him a few years on his own with my parents, I had to rush out eleven months later and steal all his thunder. I never really felt like the younger brother though, and no one ever treated me like I was. Actually I think most people seemed to forget. He was always just so immature about things, and a little sickly on top of all the medical mysteries he managed to give himself. That always made him seem weaker somehow, in body and mind. His throat was always sore, or he was always slightly feverish. It was like his body was just a vacuum for germs. So why would anyone pay attention to a little scarlet rash and a little fever? There were competitions to be had and music to be made. It was when he started to lose his hearing that I finally noticed. He would always complain that I played too loud and too often and I'd brush him off, because what could Jacob possibly know about anything. I don't know how long it took me to notice that he would be sitting in a room while I'd be playing full throttle, and he wouldn't even turn his back. I sometimes wonder if it was mind over matter, his one guarantee for attention. After all, if he could no longer hear the music I made, maybe we'd finally start to hear him.
I get the same sense from Justin the longer he stands there, mouth agape. If he can just find a way to fit all the pieces together, then his mind will conquer his heart and he can convince himself that this is just something he needed to do without having to feel any guilt or shame. It's like he's searching for just the right way to escape the need to have this conversation, escape the possibility that he's doing the wrong thing. Justin is totally caught up in the rapture, only it's not mine, and he wants me to give him the okay to just let go. Well if that's what he wants... Never let it be said that I'm not attentive to people's needs.
"You have to understand something, Ethan." No. I really don't. "The whole thing with Brian is just... complicated. It doesn't seem to end, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere either. We just keep going in circles."
"So you did lie and you have been fucking him?" That *is* what he's saying without having to come right out and say it, isn't it? If he won't admit it, then I'll be the noble one and admit it for him. I'll give him every reason in the world to let go. I can't even believe the kind of drama my life has come to. I don't have time for this kind of nonsense. He can have all the half unspoken conversations he wants with Brian. They can just communicate like two chimpanzees using sign language for the rest of their lives. I can even teach them the basics. I never did learn all the intricacies. It's a pity that neither of them really know what fools they are, what kind of gift they have in simply being able to speak and listen.
"Why do I get the feeling that you think that's all it's ever been about with Brian?"
I must admit, his ability to totally avoid a subject and turn it around on me is nothing short of brilliant. "Because that's pretty much all it comes down to. There's not a thing you've said or done, in all the time I've known you that's made me think otherwise. He's great in bed, you just can't get it together outside of that, isn't that what you told me? Well guess what," the scarlet drains from his face, leaving it a pale, pasty white "not a single fucking thing has changed. He's still an asshole and you're still wandering in circles trying to figure out how your tongue keeps getting stuck there."
The rapture is the most natural state of being. It's this ecstatic high that you can't put into words or rationalize. It's just these moments that transport you to some other level. You're no longer thinking, or even feeling. You're on some level so far and above the simple human ability to feel things that it's almost transcendent. Every one of your senses just whirls together in some frenzy that makes total sense, even amongst the chaos. Sometimes the sweat just trickles down your spine because you've worked yourself into such a feverish pitch. The only thing that exists in the rapture are those moments, nothing before you, nothing beyond you, just that very minute. I've been sucked into the vortex so many times, playing until my fingers were raw. I'd play note after note, hoping Jacob would do nothing more than blink in response. Somewhere along the way I'd get lost though, and I wouldn't even notice if he had. Because the rapture just sweeps you away, it's a force you don't control, it controls you. I wonder sometimes if Jacob propelled himself into some kind of rapture, worked himself into such a frenzy that he opened up his body for some kind of intrusion. Maybe there was a way it all could have been prevented.
I know now that Justin never really closed himself off from his rapture, he just learned how to tame it for longer periods of time. Something I have never figured out how to do, something it's too late for Jacob to figure out.
But in the long run Justin's just as powerless to control it as I am.
Despite his insistence and all his rationalization, that's all it really comes down to. How two people, who can't explain it otherwise, make sense of basic human nature. The talking and explaining comes afterwards.
Compulsion drives the rapture. It's the capitulation that keeps it running.
"You know, I wasn't really sure I wanted to have this conversation with you. Now I'm really glad I did. Thanks for thinking so little of me." He doesn't even have the decency to pretend like this is something he shouldn't have done. There will be no need for scarlet A's to sew on his chest, in shame. He just regards it as the most natural course of action and expects me to understand.
Only I do. I don't want to, but I do.
"I should have just followed my instinct the first time you came crawling back to me. That'll teach me to stop picking the trash up off the street. I have a bad habit of doing that, you know? You just never know what you're gonna wind up with." He's into bastards isn't he? If that's what he wants, if that's what gets him off... if that's what lets him let go, then so be it.
This aggravates me. I don't capitulate for anyone. If I'm going to take the time to notice you, it's because you were damned well worthy of that time. I don't like feeling like I've made the biggest mistake I could make, wasting my time on frivolous people. Yet I do it, over and over. I'm aggravated because I'm fucking jealous. Not of Brian, not of Justin, but of Brian and Justin, that thing you become when you get so caught up in one person that you can't separate out who you are from who he is, and you realize that's really not such a bad thing in the long run.
I've never had that with anyone. I feel like, if I did, I could stop worrying about all of this other trivial bullshit and just focus on what I do best. I could give all my concentration to the thing that needs it most, my music. I just keep putting myself on the line for all these people who don't reciprocate. There's always something that holds them back. It's only when they're gone, that I realize they were never as caught up in the moment as I was.
Jacob could never get as caught up in things as mom and I could, even when he could hear the music float around the house. He'd tuned me out long before he could no longer hear. He tried so hard to get everyone caught up in him, in his disease of the week, cried wolf at the top of his lungs. So hard that we didn't see the real, true wolf circle and attack, when he finally showed up on our doorstep, drenched in a scarlet rash. He got what he wanted, he never had to hear me again. There are nights that I play for hours and hours at a time, trying so hard to capture him, even if he's hundreds of miles away, hoping my notes can carry that far. I would never play another note again, if it meant giving him back what I took away.
I hate that Justin has had the notes in him all along and he hasn't got a clue what to do with them. I fucking hate Brian for constantly changing the tempo and forcing him to keep up. I really, really hate them together because I haven't written a single piece that has as much rhythm as they do even when they're tripping over themselves. I hate that I can hold a single note for five minutes on my violin, but I can't hold a relationship together for ten. Something always has to give... someone, usually me.
"I don't have to justify a fucking thing to you." No. You really don't. "I know what we have." He's gone from impassive to a slow burning anger. "It just took me some time to figure it out."
"And I was just the right distraction while you wasted your time 'figuring it out'. At least the sex was good, if nothing else." I can't help it. I'm trying to do the right thing and make this easy, but part of me still hopes he feels as stupid and used as I do.
He looks defiant and I can see the wave of rapture pulling him under. "Yeah it was. We almost warped the floor with our sweat this afternoon. Oh, I'm sorry, you meant the two of us." Gone are the brief moments of sincere apology. Just like I thought, instinct will always win out over reason. Brian should be on his knees thanking me for that.
I could have written him a thousand symphonies and the only thing he would have heard were faraway sounds of waves crashing in his ear.
"The two of you are so fucked up beyond reason, I hope you realize that one day. I should be the one thanking you, because I'm *so* glad I won't have to be in the middle of this shit anymore."
"You're not the only one who's glad." I have officially been rationed right out of his head.
I take that as my cue, thankful that there's at least a trace of regret on his face for things winding up this way.
We all say and do things that we regret in hindsight. We wish there were ways to change the course of events, take back things we didn't mean to say or feelings we didn't mean to have. We work feverishly in the present to make up for the past, never realizing that nothing we could say or do will ever replace those moments. We only create new ones, hoping it somehow lessens the memory of the old ones. We ride the rapture until it crests and falls. It's just a matter of being able to continually get back up and do it all over again.
This is a good thing for both of us and he's finally ready to admit it.
After all, there are lives to be led, love to be had and there's always... *always* music to be made.