the basketball bride... part 1

I feel like I’m being shaken. The plywood panels reverberate behind my head and shoulders with every footstep, every bounce. Assaulted with a cacophony of squeaks and shouts, terms unintelligible to my naive ears.

They run, confident in their game; the sweat begins to flow. The whistle blows, they quickly wipe their shoes in the pause – to slip, even for a moment, is to risk mockery. Besides, he tells me later, it looks cool. I smile. It’s his game to play, not mine, after all. There it goes again, a flow of musculature, ball careening down the court, hand to hand. The wall shudders. A leap, contested by unmoving bodies; a curse.

A pause, he crouches, bounces, lines up the shot. He grins over at me as it falls, confident in the knowledge that it’s in; then his consciousness snaps back to the game.

Interesting to watch, men playing boys playing a game. They all have their idiosyncrasies. As number 14 sips his blue Gatorade, number eight drapes his towel across his legs, looking for all the world like a sage old man in sneakers. As number 13 stretches, 9 is focussed on all the wisdom the coach can hope to impart in a one minute time out; whilst the coach picks his jocks out of his ass for the hundredth time. Its comical to watch; a running tally of his discomfiture. It irritates me, a court width away, I feel like going to Target to buy him some trunks – perhaps lilac, to match his shirt.

He stands, flexing his muscles, the immovable wall, then fluidly stretches up, up to claim the rebound. He passes, too soon, to selfless to run the ball himself.

The siren screams, he grins. As the coach picks his wedgie for the thousandth time, they wander away – intent on other games they have to play. We sit here, like pigeons in a row on our bench as they wander over to claim their well-deserved spoils. What a game, they say, man-hugging each other as they disband. He meanders over, salty with other men’s sweat – he kisses me and I taste them; the spoils of the battle. And all I want to say is, yellow is not your colour.

Abraxas...

I’m sitting in the chair, writhing in agony. A demon, a minor demon, is pinning me there, fucking with my head. Abraxas, he says, I’m Abraxas, the demon of lies and deceit.

‘So, what do you want to know about lies, my dear?’

I’m not a liar. I try again to get up – this time I’m flayed, splayed; I feel myself screaming.

‘I’ll tell you about lies. There are white lies, and black lies, and many shades of grey lies. And some lies are justified. Lies told out of kindness, lies that preserve dignity… Lies that spare pain…Everybody’s a lie, dear. Look at that one – she’s about to tell her lover something patently untrue. Look at their gestures. See how they touch each other too intimately. How they avert their eyes, cover their mouths, they lick their teeth, and hold their chins. They embellish their stories with far too much detail…’

i'm abraxas. i didn't write this, i won't pretend i did. but it seems to me that jenny is right. episode four, season one... i do lie to people. i lie to myself. i'm lying to myself even now; i've lied my entire life. but the truth is even harder to root out than the lies in which we shroud it.

i'm running scared. i justify to myself my behaviour; i label it, i analyse it, and in every case it seems that i am wrong. to define love. how does a being define the indefinite. indefinite, infinite, definitive and brief. i feel in ways i've not felt before. i told myself i was justified by loving somebody. he won't tell me. i say it to myself, in the shadows, i love you... and yet, futility is all i find there to keep my company. he lists my attributes - amazing, special, intelligent, beautiful, unique.

unloved.

poor abraxas, i share your fate.

we lie, we disillusion, we deceive. and in the end, we deceive ourselves. feelings; like, lust, love, truth, lies. in our perserverence, do we also develop our capacity to feel pain?

the truth is futile.