Nothing Here - A Love Story

I've biked far on flat road, only the hill left. A monstrous thing, I've never gone up it before. Long and steep and curved like an S. One winter long ago, the bus couldn't make it, but slid backwards down again. We had to get out and walk the rest of the way.

I have a mental method for dealing with unpleasant things. A friend. I call him my angel, but it's only in the sense that you call something vaguely round a 'circle' because you don't know what it is. I'm fully aware that he's just in my head, but it helps, and when I work out, he cheers me on. "When we get to that tree," I tell him, "you go on ahead." In steep hills, I send him up to the top to wait for me. I don't want him next to me, it's stressful, I need to focus. "He's waiting up there, he'll wait for as long as it takes, but you have to make it up," I tell myself. "No feet on the ground." My legs are already telling me to quit. They're done with this shit. I'm a quarter way up. This is going to hurt.

At the top of the hill I have few coherent thoughts beyond how much pain my legs are in. But I made it. I'm here. I've gone to a place I used to be every day, but hasn't been since I left it for the last time, is it fifteen years ago? I've wanted to see it again. I don't know why, but I need to see it again.

It's still there, it looks the same, but at the same time, nothing like it. It looks like nothing. Some houses. The playground is different, all the things are new and in new places. I continue on, to the other playground further away, the one we weren't supposed to be at but spent most of our time at anyway. To get away. The path has been ruined by forest machines but I recognize it.

As I walk it, I start crying. Just a little, a flood of emotions I don't know what they are. Walking this path this direction, with the buildings and the people behind me, used to be the best moment. I used to have a friend here, a flesh and blood friend, although he didn't talk much more than my angel. He used to smile in a way that made everything better, and I think, I think I thought of him as mine. My own shy, wild animal to befriend and watch. I reach the playground and it's mostly gone, only a few bare bones remaining.

There's nothing here.

Not only are the items gone, whatever I was looking for, it isn't here. There aren't even memories; the memories are already in me, I carried them with me. There's absolutely nothing here. It's a little sad. I try to conjure up some feeling for the place, but it's gone. And something small that's been grating on me my whole life, like a rock in your shoe, settles in and finds its place. The past is gone. Nothing remains. All that is, is here, and now. Nothing they did can touch you again, nothing we had can be as it was. There's nothing here.

I walk around some more. I want to see beyond the hill; I remember it all from dreams. I've dreamed of this place quite frequently, it seems I spent so much time here, whenever my mind needs a setting for some dramatic dream plot or other, it uses this. But I am surprised to find that my dreams have stayed quite true to reality, even the things I were sure were dream-additions.

The rolling hills are cut off here and there by solid walls of smaller, thinner trees, growing so tight you can't see beyond the first row. Impassable barriers, where if you push yourself between the soft bendy branches, you can disappear and get lost forever.

There are small trees growing in tight groups, tiny to me, but for a seven-year-old, tall enough to hide in. And as for the large, spread out trees, they're so tall I have to lean my head all the way back to see the top, for a child, they had to be endless.

There are no trees, only pillars of eternity, a hundred feet tall, holding up the heavens. Like little mice setting up their grand comedies and tragedies with dollhouse furniture around the legs of the dining room table, lives began and ended here, selves were made and unmade with the seasons.

I wonder what's beyond the next hill, but it doesn't matter now. Whatever I came looking for, my heart is sated knowing it's not here. I walk back to the bike, thinking of my friend, of his smiles, and of how I never told him what an important friend he was. Even as a small child, I was afraid to show my hand. Afraid to admit I relied on another person, even just liked another person. I joked about it once or twice, but I would never have said it seriously. Said what, exactly?

The other shoe finally drops, having hung on forever. Beneath my childhood ideas of romance and the dramatic plots of TV and books, beneath momentary crushes and greedy wishes, it was always this. My first love. So complicated, and so unimaginably simple. All my life I wondered what love really was, what I was looking for. And standing here in the place that no longer is, it all fits inside a tiny, shy, mysterious smile. Mine. Always and forever, in those moments, mine. Among the memories, it is that little boy that shines like a beacon, and I never realized. That I came here looking for him. That I will keep looking for him all my life.

I get on the bike, my angel resumes his position just behind me on the left. We speed down the hill, wind in my hair, his right wing stretched out over my head. In a few seconds, we've undone all that hard work, all the willpower and pain. We leave it behind, and it's all gone.

There's nothing here.

Here and there and now and then

If time and space are all relative, only existing when compared to the things around them, then here isn't so very different from there, on the scale of planets and stars, and now isn't that different from then. Something that is relative, could just as well be zero as it could be one, depending on what it's relative to.

So those you've loved and lost, in a sense, you're with them (or they're with you, it doesn't really matter).

The world telling us what religion has tried to make us believe for as long as we've existed. For as long as we need to believe it, we will, with or without a cross and a book of outdated rules.

Nothing makes me more religious than feeling like a part of the world.

And for someone like me who can't quite seem to adapt to arbitrary rules, like when to sleep or how to love, it's sometimes a great comfort, that relatively, it really, really doesn't matter.

First Slashfiction Ever

I've read my share of slashfiction; I think it's hard to completely avoid. Add then the brainless suckiness that is conventional porn, and the fact that hentai/yaoi/any japanese stuff quickly becomes... well, boring, in their strict enforcement of (sometimes very very tiresome) cardinal character types. There is good stuff in all above categories, but it's very very rare. So to slashfiction I went, looking for something better, and sometimes found it.

I have never however felt any inclination to write it; it felt weird to occupy a character or real life person. Then one day I watched some Kpop game show and inspiration struck. Like, I mean literally, punched me in the face. So, what can you do when your muse takes to violence? I wrote.

It's fantastic practice for me. I have to work hard to stick to already defined characters, I have to get creative to fit the parts together, I have to write actual sex scenes which before made me roll around on the floor in frustration.

So, I am going to share some of my first work. This is not the very first one, that one is still under construction, and of dubious quality, but this is the second one. I haven't gone over it properly, so consider it somewhat of a prototype, but I am kind of happy with it. (Read: ridiculously happy with it and too proud to hold a coherent conversation about it.) It will help if you know the characters, but it's not necessary. Also this is probably the first time I've written about male genitalia in a public piece of writing, but that doesn't make me nervous. Not a bit. Not at all. Nope.

WARNING: THIS IS GAY KPOP SLASHFICTION for f***k's sake don't read it if you don't want to read stuff like this, why would you. And if you do it anyway, don't come whining to me. If you however have constructive comments, go ahead and contact me. Or just want to squee, squeeing together is the pinnacle of social interaction.

I think I also take requests, to some degree. Yes, I do. It will be interesting.

Here it is: Where You Lead, I Will Follow - MBLAQ Seungho / VIXX Leo

P.S. I'm sorry, Leo-sshi! I hope this doesn't upset you! It's just that you're awesome! Seungho would probably just laugh so I won't apologize to him.