Metron Ariston Part I: Psychotrypsis
"That Zazou, he don't care Dark glasses, long hair Takes his time, sneers at men Some ugly people want revenge..."
-Pet Shop Boys, "In The Night"
I call it Metron Ariston.
That's ancient Greek. I got it from a Madeleine L'Engle novel; it means the golden mean, the happy medium. It's a place in my mind or my soul where it's quiet, where things make sense, where my little inner world is in balance. I can understand Metron Ariston, so I go there when I can't understand my life. When I need to be alone.
I spend a lot of time there. I go there when I'm in despair, confusion, pain... which is most of the time. I sit by myself and let my mind drift off, finding a still, quiet centre within myself. I look for the equilibrium i can't find in my real life. A balance. Or at least some kind of silence.
Silence, quiet. Better than the meaningless drone of my daily existence.
I guess you want me to introduce myself. My name is Denis de L'Angelier; I go to high school in Montreal. I hate it. I cannot wait to be rid of it. By the way, I'm a queer goth witch. Which pretty much sums up why I spend so much time in Metron Ariston.
Out at school? Do I look crazy? This may be the dawn of the new millenium, but not at Ecole Secondaire Maurice Duplessis, which has to be the most homophobic school this side of Topeka, Kansas. I get enough shit about being a goth and a "satanist", by which they mean any religion they haven't heard of. The only bright spot is that I live alone. My parents didn't want me and I didn't want them, so I was legally emancipated, which means that I get a (small) stipend from the government and I can manage my own affairs.
Anyway, on this particular day that I wanted to tell you about... It was Monday. I hate Mondays. I'd gone down to Club Unity the previous night, partly because it's $2 on Sundays, partly to shake up the muscle queens who think tight white t-shirts are the ultimate expression of civilization. Hey, someone has to keep their brains sparking at least a little bit. Partly as a fuck you to the world, cause I knew I'd be exhausted the next day, but I don't fucking give. In its deeper states, Metron Ariston is easily mistaken for a nap.
So I rolled my carcass out of bed, blinked, and looked experimentally into the mirror. My shortish dyed-black hair tumbled limply down my forehead. I grabbed a comb, dragged it through my hair, and eventually got it neatened down to how I usually wear it. I popped on my earrings and chose my clothes. Standard for me, really. Black on black. Simple and easy to care for. I slipped them on over my skinny, wimp frame. Blech.
Of course, I was about to miss my bus. I blasted out of the house, pausing only to grab my walkman and backpack and whip my coat on. I loved that coat. Long and black; I could unbutton it on windy nights and let it stream out behind me as I walked along, deep in Metron Ariston. It also had the bonus side effect of making the teachers and administration watch me with a sort of cautious deference, as though one false move would make me shoot someone. Whatever. Couple of assholes in the States shoot a bunch of people while dressed in black and suddenly I'm a mass murderer. I'd never actually shoot anyone. Not that I've never been tempted, but I just don't feel like it. Of course, even if I wanted to, you can't get guns here.
I ran down the street, blaring Tori Amos' "Crucify" into my ears. Beautiful stuff. I love her. I love Mylene Farmer too... they speak to something in me. The part that hates everyone around me. I don't hate life; I hate the idiots I'm forced to spend it with.
They are the source of the pain.
As if to drive home the point, as soon as I got to school (late) I noticed that guys started avoiding me even more so than usual. Girls, who ordinarily avoided me (which is just fine with me) giggled and pointed. I assumed that there was something on my coat, but I continued to walk.
A large shape hove in sight. I looked up. And up. An almost comically large person stood directly in my path. I turned and attempted to go around him. The attempt was unsuccesful, due to another comically large person beside him. A small cluster of such individuals were in my way.
"Hey, fag," the first refrigerator's voice syruped.
I said nothing and continued to try to get around them. "Hey, faggot," he repeated. I continued to ignore him.
"We're going to kick your ass."
"Your kind has been saying that for four years, and you haven't done it." I said wearily. "What's new?"
"Now we know you're a fag. Someone saw you leaving a fag bar."
"And your point is? Excuse me, I'm running late as it is--"
A ham fist encountered my solar plexus and I gasped. Sizing up the situation, I decided it probably would be a better idea to leave. Right now. I turned; not quite fast enough. Somebody knocked me to the ground, and they kicked me a couple of times before they walked off laughing.
I gathered myself off the ground, picked up my stuff, and held my nose to stem the blood. Then I went to the nurse.
This grew.
The next time it was in the parking lot. The main damage was a cut above my eye, which gave an impressive-looking stream of blood down my face. Once again, I was left to my own devices to go to the nurse.
The next day, I decided to tell the principal, Mr Travis. I cannot believe the bastard. He looked me right in the eye and said I was provoking things. Boys would be boys, he said, with the implication that whatever I was being, it wasn't a boy. If I weren't so flamboyant things like this wouldn't happen to me.
"No justice from you, then?" I murmured.
"I have work to do," he said brusquely. I slammed the door leaving his office and made a mental note to key his car.
On my way out of the school, it happened again. This time in addition to the blood streaming down my face from the reopened cut, I felt something twist in my leg. I couldn't move after they left me. I tried to crawl, but couldn't. Of all tender mercies, I faded into Metron Ariston again.
I came out of it with someone hustling me up to my feet. A pad was clamped over my face wound. I tried to put weight on my left foot; I couldn't and nearly keeled over. Strong arms caught me and helped me to walk. I was still hazy. Whoever it was helped me to the nurse's office. I was sure one of those nurses was going to say something, but as it turns out none of them ever did. Fucking public schools.
Anyway, I got to the nurse's office, still hazy, and my "crutch" left before I could properly see who it was.
"Will I get in your way or open your eyes? Who will give whom the bigger surprise?.... Young offender, how you resent The lovers you need - it hurts when they bleed..."
-Pet Shop Boys, "Young Offender"
I could have made a federal case about it - gone to the media or the school board or something - but that would have required anger. My main emotion at this point was fatigue.
I was tired of school. I was tired of everything.
I didn't actually get out of bed for an entire day. The next day I got up at noon and roamed around the house in my bathrobe all day, playing Tori and Mylone and the Pet Shop Boys on continuous loop on my stereo.
In the late afternoon I had slumped down in front of the computer and was downloading gay porno off the net just to kill time when the doorbell rang. Well, this was unexpected. I don't think I'd had a single visitor other than the mailman and the landlady since I'd lived here. I got up, shut off the monitor, paused the CD, and opened the door.
I did a double take. One of my assailants was standing there, a burly medium-sized guy whom I recognized from when I got beat up.
I was prepared to run into the kitchen and grab a knife until I got a better look at him. For one thing he was soaked to the skin (it was raining a torrent outside). For another he was nervous and shaky.
"What?" I snapped.
"Um, can I, um, come in please?" he stammered.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Randy. I'm Randy. Please, can I come in? It's pouring rain." He looked at me ... almost piteously, as the rain slicked his dark brown hair down his face.
"Whatever. But my next-door neighbour will be over here in a second with her rottweiler if I start screaming. What are you doing here? You're one of those psychos who beat me up."
He looked pained, haunted. "I didn't want to do any of that! They made me. I'm also the guy who brought you to the nurse. Don't you remember?"
"No," I had to admit. "I didn't recognize you at that point. So what are you doing here anyway?"
He looked down at his shoes. "I wanted to apologize."
I laughed. He looked stricken. "Apologize! Since when do fagbashers apologize to fags anyway?"
"When they are fags!" he yelled, more loudly than he wanted to. A chilly silence fell over the room. "I mean..." he began, and trailed lamely off.
I looked at him with steel in my eyes; my voice was soft and chill as cold water. "You beat up your own kind to protect yourself? What a fucking coward. Get out of here."
I could see his heart break. His shoulders rose and he buried his face in his hands. Oh, shit. I had a big dumb jock bawling in my living room. Will wonders never cease.
"I'm sorry!" he wailed. "I tried to stop it and I didn't know what else to do! I didn't even touch you! Oh, god, I don't know what I'm going to do..." His big frame was shaken with great heaving sobs.
I rolled my eyes as I felt that irritating compassion leak into me. "Oh, for... Ok, I'm sorry. Here, have a seat." I propelled him to my futon sofa. He crashed down into it and kept crying. I got up to get him some tissues, brought them back, and was rewarded with an almost cartoonish honk as he blew his nose and started to sniffle. I took his wet coat off and threw it over a chair so it wouldn't drip on my futon. He wasn't tearing anymore, but he was still quivering and his face was screwed up tight.
I startled myself by sitting down next to him and putting my arms around him and bringing his head to my shoulder. I resisted the urge to pat his head and say "There, there."
He looked up at me with red eyes. "Thanks," he whispered, then gave an awkward little laugh. "Jeez, this is really fuckin' embarrassing." I'd have to agree, seeing it from his point of view.
He got serious again. "I don't understand any of this shit," he told me pleadingly. "It's just real confusing... I mean, I'm supposed to like girls, and I mean, I do like girls and everything, but sometimes I see a guy and it's like, something goes off inside, like it's really real or something. You know what I mean?"
Mrs. Finsterwald, our English teacher, would have gone into spasm, but I simply nodded. "We've all been there."
"An', I mean, I don't know anything about being a fa - I mean, being... gay... or anything." He tripped over the word. "I just don't know anything other than what the guys are always saying about fags and all. And I guess that's all bullshit." I nodded again.
"So like, what does it all mean? Like how do you know if you are or not?"
I shrugged helplessly. "Well, you just kind of know. You just figure it out. Like you, you might be straight anyway. It's normal for straight guys to look at other guys sometimes. Or you might be bi, or gay, there's nobody but you who can really tell you. And however you turn out, it's not because of something that happened to you," I said, anticipating his next question. "It's the way you're born, whether you're straight or queer."
"And what about... well, the guys said that gay people get AIDS from, uh, fuckin' around. Is that true?" I wasn't surprised by the question. We get about two hours of safe-sex class a year.
"Yeah, gay people get AIDS from unsafe sex, just like straight people. It's not automatic. It has to do with whether the person you're fucking has HIV, not whether they're a guy or a girl. Whoever you fuck, you always have to use a condom," I sing-songed. "That's the party line."
"Ok, that's kinda what I figured, but I just didn't know," he said. "Anyway, uh...." He blushed furiously. "How do two guys, uh..." He trailed off.
"Do it?" I said cheerfully. He looked relieved that I had said it rather than him. "Yeah."
"Well, it's pretty much how a guy and a girl would, except for no pussy," I said. "Guys can jack off together, jack each other off, blow jobs, ass fucking, whatever."
He latched on to the last one. "Doesn't that hurt?" shot out of his mouth almost reflexively.
I smiled with the serene superiority of experience. "Not if you do it right." He looked at me kind of funny, then the light dawned. "Oh! Um, yeah, OK."
We fell silent. He suddenly realized he was looking straight into my eyes. He looked down to his hand resting on his knee. He looked up at me again. I looked at him intensely. He unconsciously moved his hand across and rested it on my knee.
"Curious, eh?" I whispered.
He didn't say anything, just looked at me with this incredible pleading expression in his eyes. Rain and sweat were trickling down his face from his short dark hair, flowing around his intense cobalt-blue eyes. I realized I was marvelling at how someone could have eyes that colour.
Slowly and carefully, trying not to spook him, I crept my arm across the sofa and rested my fingers delicately on his shoulders. I let my other arm reach across and come to rest on his knee, opposite my own. Unconsciously, he moved in closer to me. His eyes flicked back and forth nervously between looking at our hands on each others' knees and staring into my eyes. His chest was heaving as he breathed heavily. I just looked into his eyes calmly, radiating ease and assurance.
"You don't have to do anything you don't want," I whispered. "And if you're not gay, it won't make you." He swallowed.
Our faces got closer and closer until his mouth was a millimetre away from mine and I could feel his breath on my lips. I could see him pause, teetering on the brink.
He moved in the extra distance. Our lips met and pressed together. The warmth of my lips was drained through the kiss into his, clammy from having been in the cold.
The kiss didn't break; we just moved apart. He looked at me, tremulously. But it had been fairly standard as first kisses go. And right on schedule came the second one. I pulled lightly on his shoulder, prompting his face to approach mine again, and we kissed a second time. Longer and fuller this time; a proper kiss. I let my lips part slightly and ran my tongue over his closed mouth. And then I felt his hand on my shoulder, pulling me against him, and we were embracing and kissing.
He was unskilled but passionate, squeezing me against his firm chest and exploring my mouth with his tongue. I broke the kiss off and we gasped.
My gasp was from lack of breath. His was not. My eyes shot up and I saw him staring at me, aghast.
I barely had time to say "What is it?" when he shoved me away and jumped for the door. He looked like he had seen a ghost.
Part II coming soon.