Sadjams Ch. 02: Cucumber Melancholy

Sadjams: Making Do in the Rustbelt

Ch.2

Cucumber Melancholy

Ian and Elaine [The Ideals and Incidents of Platonic Sensuality]

Elaine. We'd be almost best friends if either of us were into that kind of thing. Too much commitment. Too much hierarchy.

Elaine lives the life of a nice girl, or appears to by the standards of folks around here. In actuality, she lives the life of a focused and self-directed woman. She is making steady progress on her undergrad, focusing on school. Focusing on that above everything (on escape), though somehow still emotionally available and supportive to her group of friends. She volunteers occasionally after work, where she always shows up on time.

Elaine is plain in a photo, but for the glint in the eyes. In contrast, she moves with an elegance that is truly eye catching - Almost slow movements, weighted like she swims through a lagoon to achieve her honors awards. Her hair is long, brown, pin straight, always brushed and often in a passing-as-high-functioning ponytail: She's perfected a look as traditional as some of her personally held and vest-close-played beliefs are unorthodox. Little secrets for her weird friends.

She comes over when we're both exhausted.. We lay like spent petals. Or angels dropped, overused, on the 7th day of creation , pondering the inevitable consequences of all the matter our 'god' has 'crafted'. We are nature's detritus discarded on the couch.

Always with curtains drawn, lights out, nothing on but maybe the radio, a podcast, some foreign or dystopian film you should really watch before you die.

We cuddle, hiding with an arm thrown over the other, from the mean world, while meditations on inevitable entropy and death unclench and unfold like weed flowers on our oversight brain pans.

Sometimes we talk a little, before it drags into the most companionable of grave-like silences. Maybe a listless nap.

We became friends over books. Sometimes we still read together, sharing nothing but the soft scrape of the page turn. Maybe because our lives don't change very quickly right now, or maybe because we can howdoyoudo and fib the niceties with anybody, while this intimately accepting silence is orchid-rare.

Like vibrating on the same low-wave channel.

Sometimes, every now and then, especially when our elegant Elaine is sad, or sad and angry at the same time, we make out like we're nobodies. Warm gray smears in a charcoal room. We press against our own skin at each other. She always smells good. Mostly like herself, a little like fruity cheap shampoo from yesterday, with a touch of anxiety-sweat or languid despair.

We've had the meta-conversation a couple times, just to check in, and enough to establish that this doesn't have to be anything besides what it is. There's no relationship escalator here, not even any real romantic attraction, beyond maybe the way you see the Romance of the historical period in a rich and bracing landscape painting. If we have a romance, it's the soft-focus still life of dying lilies and a bowl of small animal bones.

Non Abrasive. That's what we are, in a rough world. Like soft jeggings and worn out t-shirts. That's why sometimes it's so easy to run fingers over cheek and neck. I know I said Elaine looks plain, but that's a lie, she is statuesque and as vibrant as pre-dawn.

She strokes my hair, I caress her back. We massage each other's sore soles and simply sigh. Sometimes we embrace gently, passive and lunar like lapping waves. Sometimes we cling tight and kiss hard with closed lips like two fools shouting muted reassurances at each other across the lonely black void that gapes forever between and beyond the blazing singularity that is self-hood.

We touch each other all over like we are taking notes for posterity, neck and chest, stroking light or firm, squeezing but only softly, just enough to test for consistency, for feeling.

Just sometimes, when she's truly hungry and alone, I pet her thighs, or even her mons and puff of vulva, through the tights, until her secrets sweat and weep.

I've declined similar treatment. Our sensual clothed entanglements entice my biology to half firm, but while the long slow strokes are mechanically pleasant, the special attention from her feels... maybe unwarranted to our relationship?

I get in some goddess worship, but my receiving boundaries are different, evidently. My anatomy firm, but as relevant as firm tofu. This is understood, part of the equation.

So we grind and that is good. On rare occasions, she'll come. It's always quiet, low, deep, like an earth tremor - the kind that spreads through the rock and soil for miles, yet shows up on the keenest of sensors. It is remote, and her own, and only has to do with me because I am here and revere the earth.

I'm a sensor. In a dim room, we pull the curtains and just be forms, feelings, instead of whatever strictures are Expected of 'people' these days. We take off our human suits here, to bathe in more divine pools.

(This series is an exploration of relationships in the slim pickings of the small cities and towns of the rustbelt. It follows the perspective of a gay goth-flavored musician who has yet to escape the cornfields after high school. It will involve some bummer feels, references to bigotry, nose-thumbing at the establishment, and blurring of the lines between Dekoship, Phadship, Seropship, and Mudship. There may be implications of mental and physical unwellness, as it is want to occur in The Rustbelt. And the greatest disclaimer: of course it is not feasible to live alone on one income in this economy. That's purely creative license.)