We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  Jo

  Tuesday, December 8, 12:30 a.m.

  Dear Little Jo,

  Well I guess I was lucky you were the only one home. When I got to your house just after dark I was positive Lyle or at the very least your sister would be there, and I didn’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to act normal around them. Having to make small talk. I mean I didn’t think I could pull it off. But I couldn’t delay it another second either.

  You know when you’re on a diving board and you can’t decide whether to go in? You’re at the very edge of the board looking down at the water and you still haven’t made up your mind for sure. But the board is starting to bounce a bit with your weight. At a certain point you’re leaning forward and you’re up on your toes and your weight is gathering forward in your body. You know that if you don’t jump you’ll fall, and that falling will be worse than jumping. So you jump.

  That’s what this was like. You answered the door, Jo, and looked up at me. Oh, hi, Kurl, you said. You have a way of saying this—Oh, hi, Kurl—that sounds all casual, but meanwhile your eyes go really wide and your body gives a little twitch. The complete opposite of casual. I’ve seen you do this before when I show up somewhere you don’t expect. Every time I see it I get a little flare of happiness.

  I was also relieved that you didn’t seem particularly angry or upset. I knew from reading your last letter that you were pretty pissed at me. And I mean I deserved it for sure. But when I saw you face-to-face I suddenly remembered how you looked the last time I saw you. Pale and quiet while Ms. McGuire ordered me to the office. To be honest, over the last couple days I had already sort of forgotten that whole scene in the library. I was fully absorbed in my own mental crisis.

  You stepped back and opened the door wider to let me into your house. I didn’t move, couldn’t.

  What my mental crisis had looked like was this: I had been walking around since 7 a.m. staring at every boy I passed and asking myself, Do I want him?

  Actually it was worse. As in more specific, and more relentless. All day, all over downtown, from one end of the park to the other, on the train, at the mall. I am walking around looking at every single male member of the human race over the age of sixteen, and I am asking myself these desperate, urgent questions: Do I want to have sex with that guy? How about him, do I want him? Do I want him to want me? Would I actually suck that guy’s cock? Or that one. What about him? What about sex? What about kissing? Is it only kissing I want?

  Once in a while some guy would stare back at me. I mean it was less like a stare and more like a series of quick looks, where each glance would get a little more curious. A little more interested.

  And then it hit me that this is how it happens. This is how gay men hook up with each other.

  And it wasn’t only the ones who looked like they might be gay either. There was this security guard in the food court at the mall. I was pretty sure he was a vet. I mean he had the same shaved head and tattoos I remember from a lot of Mark’s military friends. This guy looked me up and down and sort of nodded at me in this way that made me think he knew exactly what I was thinking about. I was positive I could have hung around the food court a few minutes longer, and he would have come over and talked to me.

  Of course I didn’t hang around. I was doing just fine freaking out all on my own. Thanks anyway.

  What was the answer to all these questions I was asking myself? I don’t know. I mean I honestly couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t answer the questions at all. I just kept getting more confused and wanting not to ask the questions anymore but not being able to stop myself. I was like some kind of relentless Nazi interrogator with myself.

  Finally I was so worn out from all of this questioning that I just thought, Go see him. Go see him right now, and see what the answer is when it’s Jo you’re looking at.

  Now that I’m writing this after the fact I guess I knew what the answer was going to be. I mean I knew exactly. But I guess I needed to go through the whole exhausting experiment to prove it to myself or something.

  And you answered the door: Oh, hi, Kurl.

  Who’s home? I asked you. It was maybe not the most polite greeting but I could barely speak at all. My heart was already beating so fast, walking up your porch steps, I thought I might pass out. And then seeing your face. Those wide brown eyes flying open even wider. That quick, uncertain half smile, with your one tooth on the top left turned slightly crooked and the rest perfect.

  The second I saw your face after all those hours of mental torture, I fell. I mean I was off the diving board and falling.

  You blinked up at me. Nobody’s home, you said. It’s just me.

  I more or less shoved you back into your own house. I closed your front door behind us and locked it. I turned around, kissed you. And kissed you again, harder.

  And within about five seconds we are stumbling up the stairs fumbling and tripping over each other’s feet. I’m kissing you and pulling your shirt off over your head and you’re undoing my belt.

  And somehow you’re also managing to talk the whole time. You’re saying, Are you sure? I mean are you really sure? If this happens, Kurl, you have to promise not to hate me.

  And I keep interrupting you with my tongue and murmuring Yes, okay, I’m sure, yes, against your lips and your ear and your throat.

  We are winding our arms around each other and dragging each other against the wall and pressing each other into the railing, until by the time we’ve finally made it up to your room we’re both breathless and laughing and completely confused about whose hands are where and whose skin belongs to whom.

  We didn’t do much, did we? I mean technically speaking. There was no time. We made it into your old army tent and lay down. We shoved our clothes out of the way and I pulled you on top of me, stomach to stomach. There was no time and no rhythm even. I pressed my spine into the mattress trying to kiss you and arch against you at the same time. You lifted away from me and gasped, said my name, said something about how you couldn’t wait, couldn’t stand it. You pushed down against me.

  Those sharp hip bones of yours. That smooth hollow of skin inside your hip where I held you. And that noise you made, that high little moan of yours. I mean that’s all it took.

  All those hours built up, and all those times I’ve said no to you. No. No. No. Since that first drunken time in my car when I touched you, weeks ago. I could feel all those hours of waiting like some kind of tornado lifting my whole body at once. All those stockpiled nos flipping over like dominoes into yes.

  Yes. That was it. Just yes.

  And directly afterward I started shaking so badly that you lifted your head from my shoulder and said, Whoa. You slid off me and wiped us both clean with the bedsheet. Are you cold? you asked. You tugged the blankets up to cover us.

  My whole body was doing this violent trembling. For a minute or two I couldn’t get a deep enough breath.

  Are you panicking? you asked.

  I tried to say no, it wasn’t panic. But I don’t know what happened. Suddenly I was bawling. Nothing like Jo Hopkirk style, a silent couple of tears here and there. More like painful dry sobs tearing my whole chest in half.

  Oh, Kurl, you said. Oh, sweet one. You’re so beautiful. You laid your hand at the base of my throat, right where the pain was worst.

  Stop. Don’t, I said, through the heaving and gasping. I couldn’t stand it. Sweet one—nobody’s ever called me something like that. Nobody’s ever called me beautiful. I mean I couldn’t stand it.

  So you removed your hand and sat up and squinted down at me in the dim light of the tent. Well, you know, Kurl, you said, you were probably pretty backlogged.

  For some reason this hit me as the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard. You sounded like a car mechanic or something saying that. Backlogged. So there I am, flat on my back in your army tent, suddenly laughing. Crying and laughing at the same time until I feel like my guts are going to implode from the pain.


  And you’re making it worse, because now you’ve grabbed your mandolin from somewhere, and you’re strumming merrily away and singing the Ballad of Adam Kurlansky or whatever you called it.

  You’re still in there, Jo. In your tent. I’m sitting at your desk writing this letter while you sleep, which I am aware is a weird thing to be doing considering I could talk to you when you wake up instead. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to doing this, writing things out as a way of sorting them out.

  And this thing in particular seems important. I mean what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not about to turn around and pretend nothing happened. Not this time. I promise. What happened tonight between us was important, Jo.

  Anyway, you were playing your mandolin. Obviously giving me time to collect my wits. And eventually I did manage to get my breath under control, to get back to some sort of normal emotional state.

  Don’t leave, you said. You sang me a few bluegrass songs. I could hear how you were keeping your voice soft and low on purpose, trying to soothe me or trying not to remind me of your other, wilder voice. After a while it made me sort of ashamed of myself, so I finally reached out and put my hand over the strings of your mandolin.

  Don’t, you said. No, please. Don’t leave.

  I’m not leaving, I said. I sat up and kissed you.

  So we started over. Slower, this time. It was too dark to see, now, so we got by with only our hands and our voices. Whispering. Laughing. Breathing onto each other’s skin.

  We played this sort of spontaneous game where we pretended to be researchers, explorers new to the human body. What do you call this? you said, circling my wrist bone.

  There must be a name for this, I said, digging my finger behind your bent knee.

  How does this work? you said, dragging your tongue along the rim of my ear.

  Laughing, gasping.

  What’s this? I said, stroking the soft hair in your armpit.

  You gave a shocked little grunt when I did that and shivered all over. Goose bumps roughened the skin of your arm and spread all down your side. That’s… that’s private, you whispered. Serious, suddenly.

  I put my nose where my fingertips had been. I breathed in your scent—I could smell your haste and excitement from before, from when I arrived, sort of an acid tang, and under it a warmer, softer smell that was just you, just Jo. There you were, right under my nose. I mean I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I said this to you: I’m so lucky.

  I kissed you there under your arm, kissed the scent of you, that private spot of you, so that you squirmed and moaned and your voice broke on the moan and wildness entered into it.

  Lie still, I said. It really was research I was doing. I was set on discovering what your body wanted. Finding out where I could touch you to make you sigh, where you would shiver and gasp, where your voice would start to climb and crack and your words would fall apart. Hands versus mouth. Tongue versus teeth. The point after which it made no difference anymore, and you refused to lie still anymore and came back at me with your own hands and tongue and teeth and belly and hips. The point after which I stopped noticing any particular touch or taste, and it all tumbled together into that one word, that one thought, that yes.

  Somewhere in the middle of all the research, though, I remembered these lines Walt wrote. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but the book was sitting right here on your shelf, so I looked it up just now. After what just happened in your tent, I think I get what Walt means. It’s this part:

  There was never any more inception than there is now,

  Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

  And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

  Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

  So I think this is the thing, Jo. This is why I can’t agree with your life-begins-after-high-school-so-just-wait-it-out philosophy. I could never put it into words before tonight. It’s not because things will always stay the same, or that time isn’t going to keep passing year after year until you graduate. It’s that now—right now, right this second—is the only actual time we’re alive. I mean our minds can live in the past or worry about the future but our bodies are only alive and feeling things right here, right now. This is always true, but tonight I felt how true it is. You must have felt it too.

  Walt says simple things but the meaning isn’t simple. You have to understand them not with your mind but with your body.

  It’s getting sort of chilly out here in your bedroom. This has ended up a really long letter, probably my longest one ever judging by how cramped my hand is and how ice-cold my legs are. When I crawled out of the tent you were sleeping on my pants, and I didn’t want to wake you up by pulling them out from under you. But now I’m freezing, so I’m coming back into the tent.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  PS: Did you know you talk in your sleep? Just now you said, It’s only lightning. Loud and clear. It made me feel weird. Actually to be honest it made me a bit jealous. I mean I am actually a bit jealous of the person you’re talking to in your dream.

  Tuesday, December 8, 2 a.m.

  Dear Kurl,

  Good old Walt. He was writing about sex all along, wasn’t he? You’re absolutely right that you have to understand his poetry with your body, not your mind. I can’t wait to reread “Song of Myself,” after tonight.

  I couldn’t believe it when I read the lines from Walt in your letter just now. When we finally made it up the stairs and into my tent, the one clear thought I managed to form was Walt’s line,

  Urge and urge and urge. Always the procreant urge of the earth.

  The word procreant doesn’t make perfect sense here, I realize. Yet I did have the feeling tonight that we were creating something together, something frightening and precious and new. Maybe co-creant is a better word for it? The co-creant urge of the earth?

  Anyhow. This happens to be the line that comes directly after the lines you said you were remembering. It’s almost as though Walt was cheering us along from the sidelines, the voyeuristic old bugger.

  I sat down to write this letter as an apology for not lingering longer when you crawled back into my tent and woke me up, for hurrying you out the door at one in the morning instead of asking you to stay. I was imagining my family arriving home any minute, and Lyle coming in to check on me (not that he’d ever do more than call hello and good night from the doorway), and then breakfast in the morning (not that either Lyle or Shayna eat breakfast), and me suddenly being faced with trying to introduce you to them in this new context (not that we’ve decided there is a new context; despite your avowal that what happened between us was important, I’m not assuming there needs to be a new context of any kind, Kurl; we can talk about context later, or even not talk about it at all; the last thing I want to do is overanalyze this and start badgering you with demands to talk about it like before!).

  As it turns out, it’s now 2 a.m. and Shayna only just got home. I can hear from the way she is stumbling around in her room and singing, hoarse and slurring, that she is drunk. “Where were you?” I called, just now, and she called back, “Noneofyourfuckingbusiness.”

  Even for Shayna Hopkirk, this is unusually belligerent behavior. I’ll have to ask Bron where they went tonight, or try again with my sister tomorrow when she’s sober or the next day when her hangover has dissipated.

  I sat down to write you an apology, and I found your letter lying on my desk. It truly is co-creation, Kurl, that’s exactly what this is—what we did in my tent and what we’re doing writing about it to each other, afterward. We are making something entirely new. In this case I’m grateful you took the time to write that long, eloquent account while I slept, because in case it’s not obvious from this letter, I am never very lucid upon waking.

  Anyhow. I am really sorry I didn’t ask you to stay over. I’m sorry I didn’t at least take the time to explain my anxieties to you, instead of merely tossing your shoes in your general direction and m
umbling, “You have to go now.”

  I hope you had bus money. I hope you didn’t feel used and discarded. I hope you know that it was just as raw and intense and glorious for me as it was for you. I hope you know that right now my tent is soaked in moonlight, and that I wish more than anything that you were here to see it, because it looks like this whole earth was just reborn into an entirely new universe full of possibility.

  Yours truly,

  Jo

  Tuesday, December 8 +

  Wednesday, December 9

  Dear Little Jo,

  I looked up from my desk in English just now and saw you at the window and caught your smile. You were gone before I had time to smile back or to feel the heat in my face.

  I’d already spotted you when the bell rang, over by the flagpole locking up Nelly with one of your gloves hanging from your teeth. Later I saw you again in the hall, digging through your backpack and pulling out a pencil, which fell to the floor while you were doing up the zipper. I saw you in the computer lab talking to Mr. Carlsen. I saw you through the gym doorway, leaning against the wall, staring into space. Oh, and I came by Khang’s room right after lunch and read your letter.

  That’s the sum total of all my moments with you today so far, and I have to get the car back to my mom right after school for her visit to Aunt Agata, so that might be it. And I guess you only knew about one of the moments—the English classroom window—not counting the letter you posted.

  I took this letter home instead of sticking it in the box. Khang kept me after class to tell me I have to take the SAT. There’s no minimum score, but I do have to take the test and submit my score for the Bridge to Education people even to consider my application.

  This is pretty bad news for me. I mean I haven’t been studying like Bron and everyone else. I guess I never read the application forms that closely after Khang gave them to me. I thought it was only the forms to fill out and her recommendation letter and this other thing called the ACE, the Autobiographical Creative Essay, that I’m supposed to write. In other words things that wouldn’t be comparing me to everyone else.