THBBM - Bokonijien

Bokonijien
Dil Le Gayee Kudi Gujurat Di...
8-7

The afternoon sunlight had quietly faded behind the shape of the freeway, leaving behind this sort of blue yellow haze that didn't really illuminate the sky so much as it sort of offered back lighting.
: Brian and I were there.
Just sort of hanging on. Like bats.
: Sounds of rushing cars passed over our heads, like gusts of wind passing at uneven intervals. I could feel the crags of the concrete against the back of my head and the pull of the earth below grabbing on with both hands to my feet. It might be easy to say that the only thing really keeping me here were the soles on my shoes, but somehow I knew it had to be more than that.
"Hey."
: The word came more as the soundtrack to the motion of his hands. Pulling myself up so that my elbows supported me, I reached (with some effort) over and let the neck of the Stolichnaya bottle fall into his grasp.
: At once the bottle was suspended between his dark hands, one set of fingers poised to twist the cap. But he sort of just sat there, head cocked - listening to who knows what, staring off into the nothing.
: It had been a while since either of us had taken a sip at all. But now that the familiar shape of the glass was absent from my fingers, I found that I was extremely thirsty all over again.
: A truck snuck up on us, suddenly filling the air with a rumbling mechanical thunder that neither of us was really expecting at all.
: Brian paused to look up the remainder of the rise we were perched upon, towards the overpass above. The aging red-brown chain link fence still shaking a bit with the turbulence. I watched him quietly as he looked above, then finally giving in to the pull, looked up as well.
: Above the fencing, teardrop lights hung from metal arms over the road. We must have been sitting there for a while, because I hadn't noticed that they were on, but now it seemed all I could hear was their continual buzzing.
: The bulb directly above us flickered, and then went dark.
: "Lover's light." He said.

I managed a nod, as I reached for the bottle. He surrendered it, then softly laid back down.

"That's what she used to call it when that happened... lover's light."
: The vodka slid into my mouth almost invisibly, only announcing it's presence through it's aroma and the slow heat that I began to feel as it worked it's way down my throat towards my stomach.
"Used to drive me crazy, really. I mean, the first time it was sorta weird, because I'd never really heard of it before, and maybe even the second time was cute. But it was every time. Every time a streetlight gave out she'd kick in with that stuff, you know? I guess that's what sort of did it in the end... it was like we were telling each other the same five jokes that we'd always tell, always going to the same places to eat, or to shop. And the weird thing was that we both could sort of see where it was taking us, but we never tried to do anything about it."
: I passed him the bottle, holding on to the cap. He tilted the bottle sharply, letting the spirits fall into him. A moment later he was passing the bottle back. As I took it from him he was sucking a long, slow breath into his nose, and shaking his head just a bit.
"Did you tell her that those things bothered you?"
: He ran a slow, deliberate hand through his hair while he considered this.
" I don't know..." He said, almost more as a question than a statement. "Maybe I tried to. I mean, I wanted to tell her, but there never seemed to be a right moment to try to work it out; find the words. At the end there, it was really all this sort of edginess in the air... you know, like sparks jumping from your fingers when you walked across carpet. It was just kind of awkward, because we really hadn't been together all that long."
: I wasn't sure what he really meant by that, and I told him as much. He was sitting upright now, jutting out from the overpass support like some mussy headed gargoyle. He scratched his nose a bit as he spoke.
"It's like - it's like taking a hot shower in one of those tubs that has both hot and cold faucets. You know, you sort of automatically turn the hot water all the way up, even though you know that it's going to be too much for you to handle, and then you sort of ease tiny bits of cold into the stream so that you don't burn yourself. But you don't really look at it that way when it's happening. It's like all the half turns and quarter turns of the cold water knob in your mind is this process to find the perfect temperature, the level of heat and cold that's just right for you. But in reality, it's sort of like your conscience finding faults in what look like sure things, because there's no way you can stand the water to be that hot - even if it feels really, really good."
: I turned this over in my mind a moment.
"Let me try to put it another way," he offered.
: I was sitting now, facing towards him. He began to gesture while he spoke, as if he were reaching for something in the air. It was like he was trying to wave me towards his point, steer the understanding down, as if it were a scrap of paper caught in the wind or something.
"Have you ever gotten into a relationship just for the sex?" He asked. I shrugged a yes. "Whenever I got into something like that, it always sort of inevitably came crashing down because one of us always started to feel like the other person didn't have anything to offer other than, you know... sex. Someone would always get to this point where they were telling their friends in private, 'I really wish we talked more.' Even though you knew that would sort of break the spell. But then I'd be in these great intellectual relationships with women I knew, women that I didn't even really date per se. And we'd talk about all sorts of things - politics, philosophy, religion - you know, whatever. But it wouldn't be like two people just spewing out rhetorical bullshit. You know, we'd be able to discuss things, see both sides… really get into the heart of things."
: He was moving his hands and sort of shaking his head more now, as if he'd sort of found a stride in his thinking.
"But whenever I'd get into something like that, where there was this bond built out of respect for what the other person had to offer, it would be like I'd always at some point misconstrue it - see the connection as some sort of doorway to romance or whatever."
: I was nodding with him now, seeing a bit of where he was heading.
"Somewhere along the line I'd always end up wanting to talk to the girls who just wanted to fuck; or I'd want to fuck the girls who just wanted to talk."
: I found myself nodding with him again. "Adding cold to the hot water."
"Exactly." He said. "Cold water to the hot. You got it."
: "So is that what happened with her?" I asked, almost hesitantly.
"Well, not so plainly. Like I said, it hadn't been that long. Things were still new and all; we were riding that wave and not thinking about much else. I mean, I didn't really give much thought to what was happening so much as I just sort of let it happen. She was always so easygoing about things, it was like - simple to find a way around disagreements. I suppose a lot of new couples have it like that. But even after the first few months, it was like I never really took that step back to look at what I was involved with, you know? Where you sort of take stock of the situation one day, see how you're doing? I don't know why I always do that in relationships, but... I do. I almost always at some point find myself evaluating the thing. Looking it over, seeing if it's worth keeping a hold of, or something."
: I found myself wondering aloud at that thought. "If that's what causes problems, why do you do it?"
"Well you know, you're dating. If it's an easy relationship and you're not freaking out, it can get to be five, six months into it before trouble starts to surface. And even if it doesn't, the longer a thing goes, the harder it seems it is to get clear of it, you know? I mean, it's one thing to be with someone two, three months and say, 'you're a nice person, but I'm looking for something different'; but if it gets to be around ten, twelve months and you start to feel like that... I think part of me knew it was time to take a look at where we were, see how I felt about the whole thing."
: In surprise, I caught myself almost shouting. "You were going to end it?"
"Maybe. I don't know. It was one of those things where, it was like I couldn't get a read on her. It was like, I could talk to her, but we knew when not to talk. Which normally I would look upon as a good thing. But the more I thought about the fact that I couldn't find anything wrong, the more worried I got about it."
: "Sounds like you sort of psyched yourself into something."
"It was just a nagging, you know - a little voice in my head that kept trying to find faults. But I'd get distracted from it. She'd find ways to make me forget that I was looking for chinks in the armor."
: "What do you mean?" I asked.
"It sounds kind of corny, I guess. But she had this way of laughing at me, sort of poking fun at things I did."
: The sky was almost completely dark now, our shadows cast above and behind by street lamps and passing headlights. Brian seemed eager to go into the memories now, bringing each one out with more and more detail. His voice seemed to roll now, sometimes stopping to analyze significance, sometimes spinning off into something else unrelated.
: I'm ashamed to say that despite my feelings for him, it was starting to feel like I wasn't really needed in this conversation anymore. Like I had helped to push the boat into the water, but now that the sail had tacked, it was pulling away from me. I started to fidget.
"I really miss that laugh." He sighed.
: The words trailed from him like smoke exhaled. I wanted to be his friend. I wanted to be there for Brian. But it seemed obvious that Brian wasn't there yet. Brian was still somewhere else under a flickering street light, not quite ready to be tired of the joke yet.
: I stood up slowly, making sure not to lose my balance against the incline. "Whatever happened to her?"
: He looked up at me slowly. Even in the darkening air, I could see him looking up past me. The lines around his eyes seeming to appear longer than I had remembered them at any point during the conversation. He pursed his lips, as if he were chewing on a phrase, or a memory.
: Slowly he rose beside me, and began to step down towards the road.
"I don't know man," he said.
" I don't know."