Curate, connect, and discover
i don't like this, nor am i really sure of what it is, and it is certainly not i wanted it to be, but it exists as it does, and maybe that's alright for now.
As a child, Art spent a lot of time in the nurse’s office, complaining of the typical childhood ailments that Ms. So-and-So, name and face turned beige and fuzzy in the backlogs of his memory, was so weary of seeing. Headaches from staring too long at small font and big numbers, scraped knees from trying just a little harder than everyone else in gym, and stomachaches. Mostly stomachaches. Whenever she asked him to describe the feeling, voice tinged with the sticky-sweet honey of thinly veiled aggravation, he found himself struggling to. It wasn’t pain, per se, or at least not in the traditional sense. No feeling a pulse where there was no heart beneath skin, nothing to dig at with bitten down nails. All that was there was the awareness that something wasn’t normal, or if other kids his age felt that way, they’d never made it known. He chose the word nauseous, usually, and took the time to lay on the old leather bench in the corner of her office, covered in a thin sheet of paper which crinkled each time he moved. The stomachache would never really leave before he went back to class.
When he thought about it, it wasn’t just a feeling beneath the skin that he wasn’t normal, because they clearly felt it, too. Not that he couldn’t hold conversations, tell the right jokes to pull a laugh from a light, youth-filled chest, he could. In fact, he did so quite well. Nana’s little comedian. But he never had friends to come home with after school, crammed in backseats next to the booster of a younger sibling. No one to giggle with over carrot sticks and crustless peanut butter sandwiches at lunch, over girls, sports, maybe just nothing at all. No one who’d send him smiles sans front teeth without having one sent their way first.
His Nana always said he was perfect, his mother always said it was a maturity thing. The other kids would catch up someday, as if he existed on some superior form of youth more akin to adulthood. An incoming peak in college. But he didn’t know that that was true. He was born a middle-aged man, ready to sleep his days away and eat more than his fill to distract himself from that ache emanating from his very core. And if he was already that old, by the time his peers reached that age, he’d be dead in a living body. He hoped, though, that his mother was right, more for Nana’s sake than his own. He doesn’t think she could bare the weight of a second unlovable child, even if he’s not truly hers.
Tennis had given him something, though. An outlet, in all the ways that didn’t matter. A means of venting his frustrations with himself, his family, his ‘friends’. In the ways it did matter, however, it was medicinal. A balm to alleviate that inherent wrongness within him. The discomfort from being thirty at the age of seven. The overwhelming anger he never showed to anyone, because a boy his age should have no reason to be as upset with the world as he was. It worked magic, though, making strength from thin arms, chiseling stronger features into the stone of a hard-set jaw, pulling new muscle from old bone. It was the youngest he’d ever been, when he was on the court. He hurt afterwards, yes, from soreness, but it felt righteous. Like his suffering, in some form, was meant to be there, even if he hadn’t learned what it was all for yet.
It gave him Patrick, too. The first person who met his eyes and seemed to see through him, not just see what he presented. Patrick was smart, even if he pretended not to be. Art couldn’t understand that for the life of him, why Patrick so often pretended to be stupid. He was naturally more open, confident, out-spoken than Art, yes, but in the quiet of their dorm he found Patrick could be quiet, too. Soft-spoken, gentle if need be. And no one would believe him if he said the boisterous Patrick Zweig had it in him to be soft, much less sweet. But he learned, eventually, as Patrick must have done at a younger age. When Patrick spoke, loud enough to swallow up a room and fill it with himself, and just dumb enough to give people something to poke at, he got attention, validation that he was worth looking towards. Art learned to understand. Art learned to be dumb, too. He learned to become what he wasn’t, or more accurately, who he wasn’t. He felt sick most times for it, the restless, hungry pit in his stomach not necessarily satiated by it, but it quelled it some days.
When Patrick slung his arm around his shoulders one day, likely only in an effort to show off the corded muscle to the giggling blonde across them, he spoke for Art like he knew what he wanted.
“We’re going to pro together, y’know, after this is up. Don’t you wanna be able to brag about fucking a tennis player?”
The language made Art wrinkle his nose a bit, but he laughed anyway, entranced by the way Patrick followed up his words with a swig of whatever it was in his cup. Maybe to wash away the gluey, cloying feeling of significance. Maybe just to wash down the guilt. They’d never discussed the matter together, come to think of it, because Art didn’t know what he wanted. He loved tennis, yes, loved Patrick just the same, but he didn’t quite know what it was he wanted to do with himself. It felt like he’d figure himself out if he just waited a bit, after all, that incoming college peak was nearer and nearer to rounding the corner and actually being his life. They still didn’t discuss it when Patrick came home later that night, tugging a shirt back into place where it clearly hadn’t been seconds ago, and he dropped onto the pillow with a heavy sigh, nuzzling his face into it. That asshole couldn’t even be bothered to stay the night. And still, he knew that if asked, he’d do it. After all, who was he without stitching himself to Patrick’s side? He wasn’t sure he knew. It made the offer he’d accepted from Stanford feel that much worse.
After Patrick came Tashi, bright, beautiful, lovely Tashi. And after that Tashi came the hardened one, legs always crossed at the knee like anyone could forget what was hiding. And Tashi saw him reborn into his own greatness, shaky on his knees like a foal. Each time she looked his way, he felt some jagged piece within him, one he’d never known to be out of place, click into position. Maybe it was that she’d kissed him like he thought he’d wanted when he was eighteen, bright-eyed as he could be, but never quite as bright as the other hopeful suitors surrounding her. Maybe it was that he got the attention which she gave out so sparingly. Maybe it was the surgical precision which she stared at him, like she was peeling back each layer of skin to find the brown, softened beginnings of rot. She was like a scalpel in that sense, always opening, opening, opening, and never quite cracking in return. Not even a chip. Each remark, about him, about his game, the occasional reference to a boy they once knew who would never truly be a man, nameless like it’d kill them to say aloud, was a knife. Sometimes, if he thinks hard enough, she can practically feel a stab wound forming where their tongues brush in a kiss, the rising copper from it. He thinks she’d still look beautiful with crimson-soaked teeth. She’d be beautiful if she hurt him.
He called Nana about Tashi quite a bit, her voice always shakier than the last time. It always took more and more effort for her to speak, and less and less words would come out. But he took each one gratefully, like a small gift which he’d never done anything to deserve receiving. Just like Patrick’s stolen personality, or Tashi’s stolen career. After all, where he was was just an amalgamation of his only loves’ stolen dreams. He sometimes wonders where he’d be if he didn’t naturally suck the life from all he touched. Nana seemed to like Tashi. The usual questions always came: marriage, children, the future proposal plans. He always laughed about it, huffed and shook his head like he was already an exasperated father, saying ‘someday’ to placate her. Maybe he would make that true, and maybe he wouldn’t. Because when he looked to Tashi, Tashi brushing her hair, Tashi tying the laces of her shoes, Tashi humming just a bit too loud at six in the morning as she brews her coffee, he thinks he’s never deserved anything less. Then again, maybe it’s not about deserving things. Maybe love can genuinely be unconditional, even if it’s for him. He shudders to think. He feels warm. His stomach hurts.