I know. I am a hard ass
as they say, after they are done with me,
and the time runs a littler more freely:
I like my men with a little more sass, and a little less
undeniable ferocity
in unpacking my future, and who I was made to be.
Why can’t you just santah kaladu—sit emptily—
and behave? Why can’t you just, you know,
be straight?
You know, like, just for a change.
Just so that when we go out in public, nobody tries to think about what it would be like
to bathe
next to the Dreamtiger. Next to a gay
best brother, next to a man brave enough to be the only Singaporean to wear a fucking flower
and nothing else, when he starts to take off all his
failures, and radiates
just so much fucking, hyper-magnetic
confidence. And what’s worse is
I know they checked you hundreds of times and cleared you 120% from the possibility of ever being a narcissist.
That’s what makes it so hard.
Knowing that what I get, and what I see
is as real, and as living, and as sexy, as everything that OnlyFans promised
only realer, and so much more inviting. So much closer to my body, my mind, my heart and my
soul, torn as it is
in two
between living a lie
and living with the chance to look inside.
I still remember when Fuad wasn’t back,
when you used to take off your shirt, and walk around my house, as if that kind of attack
was an invitation for me to strip away my boundaries, too. As if I lacked
the kind of charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent that would mean I was attracted
to that kind of behaviour. As if I had
to ever hold myself back.
Whereas you, on the other hand—
I have to ask you what your other hand is doing. Why you lie so slack
and unmoving over there. What you are watching:
is it the Dreamtiger’s meteoric rise to hope and change
or is it embers and glimmers of your own life,
waiting for you to do the same?