#author allthebros
All those things he’s kept in, pushed aside for years—the inconvenient thoughts and desires and those stupid, ugly needs he repressed again and again—they want out. And he’s exhausted.
The one rising up his windpipe at this moment is harder to push out than it was to get on his knees and suck a dick in the Denny’s bathroom. But it wants out. It wants out now. It’s wrenched away from where it lay quiet all these years, and shoved into his throat. He could swallow it back down, could reach inside himself and press it back where it belongs. But he doesn’t. He stares at the ugly ceiling of this small motel room, and listens to the soft, familiar sound of Patrick in the next bed. Patrick, who had remembered exactly what they had done together that last night.
It’s too big. Too big to be crammed into the tight space of his windpipe. So tight, it can’t possibly pass through, can’t possibly fit, a square-peg-round-hole situation. It’s going to get stuck there at the back of his mouth, big and black and bitter like the shameful secret it is.
But Jonny blinks and spreads his hands on the comforter. He runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth like somehow he could catch the end of it and help it along. It knocks against his teeth on the way out and falls heavy, breaks the silence—the fifteen years-long silence between them:
“I wanted it,” he says, surprisingly even. “Back then. Us. Fucking. I wanted it all the time.”
–Tell the Stars I’m Coming Home, by allthebros
“On my own.” He moves his jaw from side to side and presses his lips together, but then adds, louder, “Who the fuck knows how long it’ll take me, too. Roads jammed, gas stations closed, crazy fucking restaurants on benders. What do I do once I’m finally there? Drive through the whole state trying to find some fucking plane? Someone to take me?”
“Pat.”
“What happens, Jonny? What happens when the world ends and I’m stuck there alone?” The last word cracks, resonates ugly and pained.
–Tell the Stars I’m Coming Home, by allthebros
If you learn stillness. If you learn silence, and patience. If there’s anger and vengeance and pain and loss in your heart, you can learn the language of the corn. Spend months inside those fields. Nights and days, summer and winter, lie on the ground with your ear against the packed earth, and listen, listen. Listen to the slow hum of sleeping roots; the underground yawn of awakening, of seeds breaking open; to the cries and exclamations and songs of joy, of growing, of breaking out of the soil, of reaching for light and sky and wind; to the words hidden in the rub between two leaves, in the leaning against a strong gale; to the secret and love of plants and dirt; to the sound of rain, the guzzling of water, right there in the mud. Listen.
–We’ve Waited for the Calling, by allthebros
“You know what’s fucked up? They fucking called it Matilda. That’s a children’s book. Jess loved it when she was little and she wouldn’t stop watching the movie. It’s… sweet. Pretty. It always makes me think of her…” His voice trails off, and he swallows hard, bends forward, hands on his knees and a “shit” between his teeth. He spits on the road.
The thing with Patrick is that while he’s never been shy about his emotions on most occasions, as his friend you have to know when he’ll listen to what you have to say and when you’re more likely to get told to fuck off.
Not knowing which it is now bothers Jonny, so he looks away and takes a cigarette out, holds it between two fingers. “Should have called it something more impressive,” he says to the trees. “Conan the Destroyer.”
“He was a barbarian,” Patrick replies to the ground.
“Whatever.”
–Tell the Stars I’m Coming Home, by allthebros
