Revolution Versus Revelation
John makes revolutions but still hasn’t figured out shit.
He knows his whole life has been revolutions, slow circles of memories. Never had he a day that moved in a more linear fashion than just plain circular. He doesn’t complain about this because it’s not bad, it’s just the truth. John doesn’t learn, can’t figure out any morals, so he’s always caught in little loops.
He knows he’s fallen in love exactly twice, maybe three times if he counts the same person twice. It’s unfair, though, because now he’s not in love with anybody, doesn’t see that certain glow, and the horrible part is it’s just because he’s always going in these little loops. He knows this and wonders if he should do something about it.
**
He spends maybe two weeks with Jesse where he’s just honest about everything. They’ll be walking, and John is sixteen, just had his growth spurt - a little late - and he’s just this mass of skin and bones. He doesn’t know then that he’ll be like that forever. “It’s kind of fascinating,” he says about his sudden average height but absurdly thin frame.
Jesse must know this, but doesn’t say anything. He’s gotten handsome over the summer, but John wouldn’t have known this if everybody else hadn’t pointed it out. Suddenly his face just made sense with everything else, and whenever John looks at him now, he wonders if he hadn’t noticed that Jesse was handsome earlier just because Jesse’s descent into good looks had been gradual to him.
Jesse is facing ahead, always in the habit of needing something to fixate on besides the polite and obvious one. “I guess. You make me look fat.”
“I make everyone look fat,” John says. “That’s not the point. Isn’t it just… awesome, though?” Jesse stops walking, and John does too. John thinks Jesse looks handsome. “I mean, maybe not awesome. But certainly fascinating.”
Jesse’s big sapphire eyes are rolling, and John cringes. “You sound like a textbook, John.”
“But it’s true.” He insists. The conversation is so inane that he doesn’t know why he’s trying to keep up the topic.
Jesse shrugs. “I guess,” he says again, but there’s something else to his voice.
“Seriously,” John says, and lifts up his t-shirt. This isn’t weird because he’s known Jesse since he was nine years old; it never had been a weird thing. Underneath John’s t-shirt is ridiculously pale skin - sheet white, like a snowman - and every rib shows up, not even bothering to hide behind anything. Jesse just blinks.
“That’s crazy,” he remarks after a moment, and John just frowns and lets it drop.
When they walk home from that park that day, Jesse looks at John out of the corner of his eye, like he sees something interesting. John wants him to say something, and when Jesse says something, it goes like this: “Are we still best friends?”
**
John knows when Adam knows he’d made up with Jesse.
He doesn’t tell Adam right away that he’d never really been mad at Jesse. Not the way Jesse was mad at him. He never tells Adam, who wasn’t part of the whole John-Jesse story anyways, not then, that he’d made up with Jesse.
But Adam knows. John could discern this.
He knows it because Adam looks at him, startled one day. John is telling him a story, and suddenly he finds himself smirking in a way he hadn’t in years. It is the same exact upturn of the lips Jesse always seemed to make, a habit he’d picked up. Adam says, “Go on,” because John had been telling a story, shouldn’t have to have the story stop on account of him suddenly getting tense.
“So, I called Shaun, it was great.” John gets that far and he is too knocked out of his flow, couldn’t remember the point of his story. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Adam says, more polite than people would give him credit for.
**
The day that Jesse hears the song John writes for him, he starts crying. John knows he isn’t crying because of the song, he’s crying because he’s trying to prove to himself that he’s in love.
**
Jesse is the dramatic one, but John is the one who hits him.
It’s shameful and strange, because John doesn’t know why he does it. He knows he’s the one who is wrong, but he can’t help but notice the way Jesse seems fulfilled, the way his eye is tearing up - not pain, but irritation.
Jesse doesn’t make any expression. He just stands in front of John. When he lunges, it’s fast and John finds himself jumping into a bush, like a coward. The sound it makes is an unimpressive crackle, the rustling of leaves, and he immediately wishes he let himself get hit.
Everybody knows this, but Jesse is the better man in the whole situation. “John,” he says, carefully. “I don’t think I’ll forgive you for this.”
**
Adam loves him more than he loves Adam, which John thinks is a shame. John loves him, but not really. Adam loves him in the gut-wrenching, cinematic way, one worthy of newspaper articles and novellas written about it. Adam doesn’t ever not talk about him, not when they’re together, can’t seem to look anywhere else.
To John, it’s just embarrassing. He can’t help it. His stomach twists every time Adam looks at him, full of love. He starts feeling withdrawn around everybody, because all he can see is those big brown eyes and how they love him.
Though, John thinks. He loves Adam at one point. He can’t pinpoint exactly when, but he knows that he loves him, at least in a short spurt.
He knows his love for Adam isn’t about Adam; it’s about Jesse. He knows this but he doesn’t learn anything. Not the way he’s supposed to.
**
They’re actually just sitting on Kevin’s sofa, not really doing anything. They’d already talked about everything they wanted to, and the silence between them isn’t comfortable. John keeps on looking at Jesse and Jesse suddenly can’t bear to look at him.
Jesse does look at him, though, when he says, “I bet I can finish more of my birthday cake than you can.”
“No,” John says. “I’m pretty certain I can. You’ve already eaten all the oatmeal-chocolate cookies that Michelle made. I didn’t even get any. I’m probably hungrier.”
“You aren’t.”
John’s twenty-eight but still rises to the challenge. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jesse says, and in a moment, he’s kissing John, mocking him.
**
John drives past Kevin and Jesse’s apartment, slow. He can see Jesse in the window, talking to Kevin, smiling, eyes bright blue and he looks handsome. Kevin looks happy, too, and they’re wearing a wardrobe entirely similar to each other.
John suddenly can see in a linear fashion, even though it’s the sixth time he’s circled the block.
Kevin looks to Jesse, and says something. John can’t tell what it is, not exactly, but he has a strong feeling that it’s ‘I love you’. John thinks he falls in love three times, and right then is when he realizes that Jesse doesn’t love him.