There was a stillness in the space that late afternoon.
I had just gotten home from work. I carried an energy with me that felt masculine - disciplined, rigid, and stifled - as if I had to hold onto something firm in this world in order to survive. Usually when I'm in this state, I would take it out on the boys: withholding my play energy, sullen, just about ready for a move one of them would make that would irritate me to the brink of ripping a neck out. This always felt shitty to be in and tough to get out.
This particular afternoon was rough and tumble for my internal being. My car battery died during the day, and the freak summer heat pervading the city drove me bat-crazy. I was coming home to a lover who didn't embrace our lovership. It's strange and familiar when "home" held so much edge. I felt exposed, hurt. I have been chasing after a man who couldn't give me what I wanted, and I didn't know how to let it go. And I was living with him. In reaction, I acted out in hardly contained anger on the universe that is our home.
The boys were all in shorts, panting in the heat of the studio. For some reason, this further infuriated me, and I imagine that I resented them for being able to feel through the heat while doing what they wanted; I was the only person living here who is confined to a regular nine-to-five job. After some floor stomping, door slamming, items dropping with force, I cooled myself down in the shower, which of course provided no hot water, because someone forgot to reheat the tank. I stepped out, kind of diffused, but not really, and listened to my lover make his way outside to play basketball at the park across the street. I relaxed when I heard the door close. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and gazed at the parts of my face that I love, squinted at the parts that I hated. I really hated loving him.
As I was about to run my brush through my hair, I heard Matty pick up his phone and repeated, "Fire? On our block?," and a moment later screaming, "You guys! There's a fire in the building! Get out, get out!" In under a minute, I listened to his footsteps run down the hallway, the door being opened, then slammed.
A few seconds passed. I flew out of the bathroom and into the back studio space where Mojica was throwing jackets and my laptop into his backpack. I stared. "Did Matty say, 'fire?'" "Yeah," he murmured. "Let's go."
My heart pounded as reality set in, and I thought quickly as to what it is that I absolutely needed to grab, and remembered that Basgall has no sense of smell. I broke into his room. His headphones were on, his eyes closed. "Fire!" He jerked up. "What?" He calmly got up and led me out. Seconds later, we watched a building down the block get licked with flames. Firefighters were scaling ladders, men ran around with axes in their hands. Our entire street were covered with our neighbors looking on. Not a single drop of water had been released.
"You fuckers! You fucking assholes!" A man in front of the hardware store screamed. "Fucking spray it down! I'm going to sue you! It's been forty-five minutes and you haven't done shit!" Several men held him down, and he gripped onto his bike handles, face red. "Everything I own is in that fucking building!"
I don't know how long we stood there. We watched, and took pictures. At one point, Andrew, who walked right into the commotion on his way to playing basketball and called Matty, gave up, jumped the fence into the courts, and began playing. He didn't say a word. I watched, as he ignored the scene of the burning fire, the chaos and physical maneuvering of the firefighters, the traffic, the street onlookers... He just disappeared into himself and stepped into a realm that was away from all of that. He was able to choose it. As he dribbled and danced around the court, the sun fell behind me and his body shone, and his universe was far from mine.
All I could do was watch. All I could do was love him.
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