I do not let him go back to the house, but I struggle to avoid it for too long.
I take little stays here and there in whatever spare room feels like mine, although none are mine. Sometimes I feel compelled and other times I feel excited. Sometimes I feel like I am destroying myself when I visit Tabi and his house and the men he keeps with him. Self-destruction has been on the mind a lot lately. In the abstract. I'm not suicidal right now and oddly haven't felt the urge in a long time. I just wonder what the hell I'm doing that I'm still intact and still so insistent on ruining things. Maybe there is no answer to that.
Euclid found a fourth home for himself, this time in North Dakota, he was always insistent he'd like the snow and the cold, and the space, and what's not to like about it. He works a remote job now, an exhausting one, not as nice as he deserves but nothing we haven't dealt with, all the same bullshit, all the same problems, as if we've learned. I check in with him every day. When things get particularly bad I think about holding him again, hugs and fluff and safety, and the sensation of having somebody else there for you. It has replaced my worst urges at least partially.
He has a car again. But he doesn't drive much. But it's still nice that he has that. Don't go stealing cars, I tell him. Aw, screw you. That's a you thing. It's a 2012 Honda Civic he drives, uses it to get groceries and attend little classes at a local community center. He is no longer Deaf, not physically, and he laments this, he misses it. Where did that part of me go? But he has to carry on without it, because he is still somebody worth being.
His life isn't mine but it makes me happy to see it.
I think of him more often than Tabi ever did.
Breathe. Just breathe, I sign. I am giddy. Just breathe, you're so hard you're stabbing me.
I am below a man I fell in love with a year ago and he's holding me down by the chest and feeling his fingers through my fur, and he is exhaling so damn heavy, his touch is a prison, his auburn eyes seem like there is somebody behind them, and it is a good enough sensation to wipe all of that away. He is Deaf too. I found someone I like quite well and I'd like to spend my life with him but I don't want to jinx it by talking about him too much. You know how these things go. He is erect against my skirt, grinding, he is excited just from the sensation of fur against his palm, and from warmth, because warmth is always nice. And I manage to tell him, I sign, would you pretend you're doing the thing? Sure. I love you. Love you too. And he takes a breath, lays on my waist for a moment, squeezes my member beneath his weight, and while we're both excited and tired from this, he tells me, okay, I'm going to kill you soon.
It isn't real when he says it, but I can fool myself well enough.
I never figured out what to do with this body, this goat on two legs I inhabit, but I've started to walk around in spots of woods upstate, the parks and the parts between roads, you know, the bare minimum, where the deer and mooses and wolves feel a little comfortable hiding away from the world, and it feels right. Of course I don't think there are many wild goats in Michigan but it's my fantasy, let me enjoy it.
I had a moment the other day hiking that sticks with me. I met a red squirrel face to face up close. It crawled down from atop a great big maple tree and rested on the flat of the trunk, and then paused, and saw me sitting across from it against an adjoining pine, and it paused, and it didn't run. Hello. I was just trying to eat and it came up to see me. Hello! But I didn't have anything profound to say to this squirrel. We just hung out for a while and then it was over.
This is the easier way to be treated and I wouldn't mind it if it became the norm for me. Some people want to be housepets and be loved unconditionally but I could survive being seen from afar, between the trees, exhausted, happy, eyes glinting in a glare, but I don't see you, I only see through you.
How long are the nights here?
For years I felt as if multiple nights passed while I slept. I don't know if that was real or imagined, but of course Tabi was dragging me up into the Room above the house probably long after I thought he stopped, or at least I never felt the sensation of it end, I never felt safe, I still feel no safety in the house, nothing but physical warmth, arms around me, a grounding rhythm too uneven to nod along with. But then again the question bubbles up in my mind now and then. It is something unanswered that keeps coming up. A persistent, chronic ache, flaring up in my bones at the worst moments. I wouldn't have let it go, even if it ruined the thing between me and Tabi, if it were a more conventional relationship, but one little thing couldn't have done much against those tides.
Still.
It is next June when I visit again. I am happy to see Gaiman and I am even happier to see Almond and Cav gone. There are a couple men I don't recognize. There are rooms I don't remember. There are halls that go forever. Gaiman leads me around, I slip my shoes off, I pull my old sun hat off a shelf, I feel the carpet like wool against my feet, and I bask in it, this warmth of someplace horrible and familiar. There is a persistent excitement in the air. This house cannot rot and cannot exhaust. There are corpses of fresh luggage in the foyer again and the television is on and I say a big hello to Barry and Kim, and they wave back, toothy grins from a cat and a hyena cut out of a picture book, and I stand there and admire how tall the shelves have gotten in the past month. Surely he doesn't read all these, does he? Does he read all these lost books? If he doesn't, does anyone?
Gaiman and I chatter for a little while about life, time, time spent, like how are you doing and I'm doing fine and so on. He's been working on a project but keeps dodging what it's about. He'll show me when it's done. Do you get out of here much? Yeah, on weekends to visit my mom in Seattle. Like tomorrow morning! I'm gonna take off tomorrow morning! Good. Who are the new guys? One from Warsaw, one from Helsinki. Now whose fault was it this time. Take a wild guess.
But Gaiman has something else to attend to and looks at me long off and I hope you're doing okay in there.
And so on.
And in a few minutes the owner of this house, Tabi, my sheep, comes to the foyer and greets me; he is looking spindly and tired, he is still wearing that silly eyeliner that makes him look fierce, but he is warm of expression upon seeing me, and he smells like lavender, he smells like last year; he holds my hands in his hands and he kisses me on the cheek and it all feels natural. He is floating above me, but not far above me, and threatens at every moment to scoop me up in a hug. But I don't want a hug right now, if that's okay.
"How was your travel?"
He cares too much. "Oh, it was easy. I've got a GPS."
And Tabi falls into that expression always on his face, that smile that does not give away anything. "Right, I know, I just want to make sure."
"Well, thank you."
"Of course, darling."
He wants me to sit with him in the kitchen and I oblige. I'm settling in fast, now. It comes so easy. I missed Gaiman, Barry, Kim. I missed Tabi. I did. I missed the heat in the air. It helps not to acknowledge my addiction. And Tabi is fumbling through drawers now, looking for utensils, looking for anything interesting to show me.
He asks, "do you want to eat now or later?"
"Who's doing dinner tonight?"
"My treat, if you'll allow me. I actually unearthed some good champagne from the Room below the house, actual wine directly from the region. You know the difference, right?"
I shrug. "Yeah, but they taste the same."
"I'm sorry, I didn't even ask. Do you want champagne at all?"
"Sure."
"I didn't even ask if you're still drinking. Is this okay?"
And I don't particularly want to dwell on that question. "It's all good! Make whatever you'd like."
He makes a casserole from some recipe or another.
The champagne sits mostly untouched.
There are fairy tales told to children and a lot of those still swim around in my mind, all as things to fear or things to covet, but there are also fairy tales told to adults and many of us tell them to ourselves, and they have precisely the same purpose—they are no more and no less. A story about Tabi would have some lessons to be gained but it would also be aspirational. A story about Tabi would be as inundated with painted depictions of his wool as it would be laden with descriptions of his eyes in the dark, his form floating towards me, his hands taking the life out of me, both in the short term and in the long term, but it would immediately return to those sensory tides, those experiences which have kept me in some part trapped here, his smile, his warmth, his heartbeat.
The only person holding me at night when the fantasy evaporates is Euclid. He is many miles away. And he should keep to his own life, his own people, he has better things to do than worry about me, but I am still present with him when Tabi is gone; I think we are sharing something, maybe space, maybe something else. Sometimes I dream that I am with him in the Room above the house struggling to breathe through a tube. Maybe that is where I get the feeling that my sleep drags on forever.
Morning is always stuck hiding in a cabinet.
It's gotten dark now, night in Michigan, night enough for me to feel it, and I am lying on my back, sinking into a bed that is not mine in a room that is not mine. I'm only going to stay a few days, maybe a week. I'm just tired of my cards getting declined, tired of my body aching, tired of working. I am so, so tired.
Please, just let me take some time away from the world. A touch of his wool.
Now and then.
I am little against the waves.