Fish

Fish
Aqualus Gordon

He was one-quarter Japanese. I think that was responsible for his beautifully exotic appearance. He had creamy smooth bronze skin and perfectly kept dark brown hair. His full lips sheathed a gorgeous smile that always managed to get him out of trouble. His eyes were bright aqua-blue, which I often caught myself staring into—but he let me.

My memories of Michael extend into the vagueness of childhood. I recall standing next to him in preschool reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. In kindergarten, we learned how to add and subtract in the same classroom. In elementary school, we played against each other in kickball. We weren’t friends back then. I was the boy always off playing with the girls and occasionally—when “they” made me—I was the kid left standing to hear, “I guess we’ll take him,” from the self proclaimed captain when eeny-meeny-miney-moe hadn’t gone in his favor. Michael was always picked first. He ran the fastest, kicked the farthest, dodged the quickest, and threw the hardest. He was the kid every other kid wanted to be. And if they couldn’t be him, they wanted to be around him. I did too; but we were from opposite ends of the playground.
I don’t know when or how we became friends. I suppose after having known him for so long we were destined to interact eventually. By the time we were in sixth grade, we were best friends. Every Friday I carried an extra bag to school with me in preparation for a weekend at his house, or he would bring his and come home with me. We were together every weekend. He quickly became like another member of my family and I became another member of his. He didn’t know his dad, so he often spent time talking to my dad about girls or asking him for advice. In turn, I enjoyed spending time with his mom.

During cool Alabama winters, we would run out to his backyard and launch ourselves onto his trampoline. He would do somersaults and twists, while I just jovially bounced in place—amazed by him, as always. After we got tired of jumping, we would slide around in our socks chasing each other with fingers outstretched, testing again and again the theory of static electricity. We would eventually end up wrestling measuring each other’s strength—never winning or losing, but forfeiting, mutually, in exhaustion. Lying on our backs, staring up through a hole in the canopy at the stars talking about whatever it is that’s important to thirteen year old boys. I’ve forgotten, it’s been so long ago.

He taught me how to swear, and drive a boat, bait a hook, and spit. I taught him how to wash his clothes, and study, iron his clothes, and dance.
During the summer, we were inseparable. One summer in particular, just out of the seventh grade, we spent everyday together at either my house or his. Occasionally his mom would drive us to The Gulf. We spent our days fishing, body-boarding, or trying to swim to the sandbar—we hardly ever made it. We would turn back after getting too tired or when swarms of jellies impeded our path. Every now and then, we endured the swim when the jellyfish found somewhere else to spend their time. Once there, we stuffed our nets with sand dollars, hermit crabs, starfish, sea slugs, conchs, and seashells, which we either offered to his mother or kept as weeklong pets.

That same summer we bought two friendship anklets that we vowed to never lose, it was an enduring mark of our friendship—mine is stretched snuggly around my ankle even as I type this.

***

Four years later, I was seventeen. My dad woke me up one summer morning—we didn’t see each other as much that summer. He handed me the cordless phone, which I put to my ear and groggily muttered, “Hello?” On the other end was an audibly upset friend. Between gasps, she whispered:

“Michael’s Dead.”

Everything was in slow motion. I looked up to my dad, whom she must have already told because he looked at me with a sort of helpless sadness. Michael was headed back from The Gulf and had flipped his SUV on the highway. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and was thrown through the windshield onto the pavement. Approximately 6 hours later, he died in the hospital.

I didn’t cry. I still haven’t cried. It’s not that I was “bottling up emotions” or “trying to be strong,” I just couldn’t cry.

His wake is the only one I have ever been to. His family decided to have an open casket. I was terrified to look, but I wanted to know... His skin looked fake, like some sort mannequin and his hair was looked like plaster; it was not how he would have combed it. His lips were pressed tightly together and painted false red. I shifted my eyes from his face to his hands, resting softly on his stomach, across a dark pinstriped suit. In his breast pocket, I noticed two locks of hair, one brown (his mother’s) and one blonde (his sisters,) tied together with that anklet, that enduring mark of our friendship

STOP fake jogging around my block just to bump into me

THIS might be the funniest shit I've read in a long time.
A Craigslist post in the Washington DC missed connections board.

To the fat, sweaty man with the curl in his hair and the impossible dream
in his probably hypertrophied heart: You are obviously the type who would pour
all of his hope and loneliness into a missed connection ad, so I figured I would
beat you to the punch and save you some time, some anxious waiting, and many
miles of pretend jogging. For several days in a row now you have taken great
pains (I can hear you wheezing old boy, you should look into an inhaler) to
orchestrate a series of "coincidences" between you and me. I open the door, I
unlock the security gate, and there you are without fail right next to my
stairs, smiling up at me, suddenly stopping to mop your glistening brow and
bending over for a breather, exhaling triumphantly as if you've just broken that
untouchable record you set for Georgetown track and field so many years ago.
Yes, I know you bleed Hoya blue. So I have a few questions for you, running man.
First off, who do you think you're fooling? Do you expect me to believe that the
Fates want so badly for us to unite our energies that our lives are running on
synchronized, parallel courses that allow you to be "jogging" up to my steps at
the exact moment I happen to be leaving for work everyday? Bitch, please. I
mean, I'm a young lady of considerable imaginative capabilities, but this is
more far fetched than the plot of "Encino Man". I know you are a fake jogger and
a real creep because sometimes I leave at 9 am, and sometimes I leave well after
10. You clearly don't run for 2 hours every morning, as your heaving beer belly
is the first sweet inch of your physique I see when you approach. I have good
reason to believe you wait in that car that is always at the corner for the
sound of my door opening, and I know that you look at my ass everytime I pass
you. My last question to you is, what kind of game do you think you're going to
run on me? You clearly don't have a job if you have all this free time to take
to the streets, you are pasty and dull, and you look way too old for that iPod.
I am a precocious, nubile, 18-year-old scientist with more achievements to her
credit than you could shake your jowls at. So, old boy, I advise you to find a
new route for your fake jogging, or just something else to do with your time.
Lifetime is now showing the follow up series to Golden Girls -- The Golden
Palace. It's pretty funny, and Don Cheadle is on it. Yeah, I know, I don't get
it either, but you should watch it, because here's what: it wouldn't take more
than a pack of cigarettes to coerce that junkie with the push cart full of Tidy
Cat and trash bags to punch you in your fat neck if you don't watch it. Fondly,
Girl in the White Brick House

None of the Faggotty-Bullshit

A response to an email discussion about my photography: The persons original comments are below --

Interestesting comments.. and YET I think many of the reasons you
mentioned NOT liking some of the images, are precisely why I photographed
them. The part of the BOYCODE that inspired that series of photographs is that
ABOVE ALL ELSE men/guys/boys are not to do anything that is remotely feminine or
that could be confused with a display of homosexuality. That fact that
several of those images made you feel uncomfortable is evidence that this
socially constructed code is operating within you.
What is a boy/guy/man to
do when he finds himself attacted to another man .. even if he isn't
homosexual, perhaps the attraction is just a passing fascination. Yet, he is informed
through society that there is something devestatingly wrong with him or that at the very
least, he is less that a REAL man.
Why is it that in friendships
between women, there tends to be a certain amount of intimacy and affection that
is completely acceptable as platonic and nonsexual. Further, even explicit sexuality
between women in our Playboy/Elimidate current social setting is acceptable and
even applauded. It is HOT when women touch; but totally unacceptable when
men do. An immense double standard based soley on gender. That's odd and sexist
to me. When questioned about this, men and women typically only can reply
.. "because men aren't suppose to do that." That seems to be an
insufficient answer to me. WHO SAYS what men are and are not supposed
to do. Where is it written and Who wrote it?
Similary, the touch images
address ((with a bit of humor in my mind)) the fact that men are afraid to touch
each other casually or even incidentally.Think to a time when you
were sitting next to another guy and your hands, or knees, or ... whatever
happened to touch and you [most likely] quickly jerked your hand away AND either
apologized or ignored the incident as if it did not happen. I see it
happen all the time, and even realizing its absurdity, I still react in same the
way. SINCE WHEN was it such a horrible thing to be touching a person and
WHY ON EARTH do we apologize as though it were painful. OUCH!! We've
touched!! IT BURNS. Oh, Im so sorry. Hahaa. So I put two
guys on a couch together and made them have a little body contact, and like most
men would do, you called it "TOO HOMOSEXUAL FOR MY TASTE." Perfect, you
got it. For some reason in our day and age the slightest bit of bonding,
frienship, affection, and intimacy between men is TOO GAY. And GAY is, after all, the
absolute worst thing a man can be.

> I dont like dress2 in Boycode 1, Its
either missing something, or has too much, I cant be sure. In short I dont know
why I dont like it. I def dont like july 16 03 in boycode 1, because the concept
your trying to push is simple and practical, this picture doesnt make sense if
you view it like that, If im seeing it correctly its a man standing naked
outside in front of a house, I dont know about you but I hardly ever see that
unless its a drunk hobo on 6th street(but then again, it just might be my
subconcious bias against naked men). I dont like july 16 015 because its a
little too.....homosexual FOR ME(And I dont mean that in an offensive way just
stating thoughts). Not into j1 on boycode 2. I find the transparent human being
thing a little corny. same for the other js Touch 0 boycode 3 is a little too
homosexual for me but it all depends on who your trying to appeal to. same for
touch 1, however I do like touch 2. On sink 3 I think the positioning is a
little too akward