Wounded Rhymes – Hometown Glory (Part 1)
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Is there anybody going to listen to my story, all about the boy who came to stay…
Alex lay sprawled across the length of his bed at midnight; the only light penetrating the room was coming from the full moon that shone outside. It cast a ghastly shadow across the whitewashed wall facing him, originally formed by the heaps of books that seemed to balance themselves as if by magic upon the few wooden shelves he had installed a year back. He stared at the ceiling, the Beatles blasting from the iPod that lay peacefully on the flat planes of his stomach, his firm chest heaving with every deep breath and sigh he gave and took. Every thought that swam around in the murkiness of his mind seemed to cause a reaction in his body; a twitch of the eye, a cringe of his palm, a spasm of the muscular back. He reflected back at his childhood and thought that never in a million years had he thought he would end up to be where he was today. In this room of his, his universe, his personal cave, he psycho-analyzed himself. Thoughts came too fast that he could not stop them from dripping into his consciousness like a tap of water into a sink.
He extended his arm to the side table next to him, opened the first drawer and felt around for his red Moleskine notebook. Finally after a fierce fight between him and the useless knick-knacks that stood in his way he felt the binding of his journal. He snatched it quickly, reached for a pencil and furiously searched for an empty page between the doodles and scribbles that occupied the yellowing pages of the notebook. He then found one, and struck the graphite to the paper, and immediately the words spew out of the tip of the pencil, coming from his head, making their way down his arm, into his finger, and finally resting on the lines of the journal.
Love is all, love is you.
But why me, why would such a magnificent creature of a man choose me, what’s so special? I have no taste for athletics, I have bad habits and bad thoughts, I possess a thought process that is not understandable to anyone else but me, and I am not that interesting. Why then would you come talk to me first, make the first move? More importantly, why can’t I get you out of my head? Your solemn face, your drooping dark brown eyes, your thick black eyebrows and those full lips of yours play out in my mind like a slideshow of images, flickering and fading, until they all turn into the one big blur that is you, the one great mystery I cannot fathom.
i want to be next to you, i want you to hold my hand and mesh your fingers in between mine and look at me and smile that crooked smile that just lights your eyes up like the sun and the moon. i want you to take a finger and caress my cheek and my chin. i want you to look at me, i want you to look into me, into my soul. i want to feel your eyes boring into mine. i want you to hold me, i want to be able to rest my head on your chest and feel warm. i want you to feel like home. you are where i belong. i don’t want anyone else. i want you to take my lips against yours and knot your fist in my hair and kiss me with all you’ve got, with every fiber in your being. kiss me with love, kiss me out of adoration and passion, and not out of consolation. i want to feel love, i want to make you feel my love. i want to wrap my arms around you and feel warm light, feel energy, feel effortless. i want to travel the world with you. i want to make love to you. i want to make you feel like you’re worth more than you think you are.
i want to do all these to you, if only i could see you first.
And that concluded the rant. The rant of a gay Lebanese teenager trapped in an old armoire he could not come out of, religion, societal norms, and conservatism being the factors that were pushing against the armoire door, keeping it shut.
Contributed by Ralph
Read the next issue of Bekhsoos for part 2 of “Wounded Rhymes – Hometown Glory”
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