SSS 2012: For smartstar501 (Part 2/2)

[replaymods]

“A few weeks later, our band had a gig at a bar. We didn’t get to do that often, so we were all really excited, especially me, because I’d decided that I would finally kiss him, or something. That was basically what was on my mind, ‘kiss, or something’. I was more focused on the happily ever after and our pretty house and the dog we were going to have.” He laughed. It sounded a little bitter.

“The gig was at a bar, not a big one, but it was kind of popular. Aside from us, two other bands were playing, one before us, one after us. Before we went onto the stage, he came up to me and whispered into my ear, ‘You’re going to make all those fucking people fall in love with your fucking pretty face, you hear me?’ And then he left and his fingers trailed over my waist. Wow, I remember that so damn well.

“We played then, and it was awesome. Afterwards, we were all so pumped with adrenaline, and I felt damn validated that when we were backstage, I simply grabbed the guy’s hand and dragged him into a corner. The stage was pretty much simply divided by a black curtain to separate the stage and backstage areas. The next band was already on stage and the others were off somewhere. I really wanted to fucking pounce on him, and I-aw shit.” The cigarette had burned off almost completely, and Kibum stubbed it out. He lit a new one, taking a long drag.

“Well, I did basically that, I didn’t know shit about being seductive or anything. So I just said, ‘You’re so fucking hot,’ and then I grabbed his shirt and kissed him. I was so excited, his lips were really soft and big, and he smelled super good, like musk and man. But what did he do? He shoved me so hard that I stumbled backwards through the curtain and landed next to the drummer on the stage. I didn’t even have time to collect myself, because he shouted immediately, in front of everyone, mind you, ‘Fuck off, faggot! That’s disgusting! What the hell were you thinking? I’m not a cocksucker!’

“The whole bar roared in laughter, I heard them whistling and insulting me, and I curled up in a ball and started crying. I couldn’t understand why he would do such a thing, at the very least we had been friends. So I sat there sobbing, humiliated, and I think they had to drag me off of the stage, I don’t even remember.”

By then, I had completely frozen over. Of course I knew the story, and the way he had told it so cunningly was like being slammed head first into a wall. Kibum took another drag from his cigarette, and with the most sarcastic sneer on his face he delivered the punchline.

“I was thinking, though, isn’t it a strange coincidence that I remembered that just now? Right when your dick was up to the hilt inside my ass…”

I had fallen on my back and was unable to breathe-that’s what it felt like. My voice was stuck. Kibum seemed to wait patiently while occupying himself with smoking.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally. He really deserved the apology; in all the years after I had humiliated him at that gig, I had never gotten around to saying it. I truly was sorry.

“Yeah,” he sighed. I took his expression for disbelief, so I spluttered,

“I really am sorry. I don’t know what else to say. You know what everyone was like. And I was… back then, I was stu-“

“You were pretty great.”

He turned his head toward me, looking completely earnest. It was like another wall in the face. Then, after inhaling some more smoke, he added,

“But there’s something I’d much rather like to hear. You know what that is…”

I knew what it was. And as I was thinking it over, I discovered that it seemed less like a realization but more like a conclusion. It was like a book inside my head that I had been writing for years. The pages were filled with agitated, bee-like letters worrying about all those times I had checked out a man in the subway, had kissed a girl and pictured her brother. And as we slept together I had scrawled down the last sentence with a quaking hand. Now I could close the book-and all of my distress was hidden beneath a monochrome cover. I could stop the exhausting process of lying to myself.

That is how simply it was. And for that reason I didn’t want to make it into a big confession-Kibum knew already, anyway.

“Yeah, I know what it is,” I said, “Thanks to you. Is this your real revenge now-making me admit that you were right and I was wrong all those years?”

The corner of his eye cut his iris into a sharp, staring triangle.

“It’s not. You should just spit it out. If you think confessing in front of me is hard, try talking to your friends and family about it. Believe me, it’s worse, but you’ll get there.”

When he told me this, it suddenly came back to me that I still needed to ask him something. That was because I knew that he’d meant to sound menacing when he said that but he was, despite himself, comforting me.

I thought that my book was already closed and that only my pride kept me from saying it out loud-since in my head, I had by now repeated it countless times. It was an easy thing, really, something that simply needed to be tugged into the flaps of my brain. I like men. I’m homosexual. I’m queer. I’m gay. Not that difficult, so I got it over with.

“I’m gay. There you have it.” There I had it.

“Me too.”

That was all he said, but it seemed to untie all the nooses that had assembled around my neck over time. And for that small moment, I forgot that I was still boiling with contempt for him, when I saw him smile like that again. Even though he was looking at the ceiling, his eyes were crinkling affectionately.

“Kibum.”

“Hm?” he made, sounding lazy. In the following silence, he lit another cigarette. He was smoking so much that evening, his lungs must have been black.

“Are you…” I began, feeling ten years old and in pre-school. “Are you still in love with me?”

It seemed that he hadn’t heard me, or that sucking on his cigarette was far more important than answering my question-either way, he didn’t reply.

“Kibum,” I tried again. He ignored me.

I rolled over, my chest poised over his, my fingers pressing down onto his clavicles.

“Are you still in love with me?”

The smoke he had just inhaled was caught in his lungs while he was avoiding me, but then he looked right at me and it burst into a plume and hit my face.

“Yeah.”

I released his shoulders and lay back down. Neither of us spoke for a while.

“But isn’t it nice,” Kibum said, as if his voice was picking up somewhere in the middle of his thoughts, “Now we’re both here, asking each other questions we already know the answer of. Isn’t that a wonderful way to spend your time...”

“It’s what we do,” I answered vaguely, “But it’s not true. I didn’t know that you have feelings for me. If I had, I would have never let you blackmail me.”

“Well, then I would have published the pictures.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He looked beat. I said,

“I should leave. This has gone on long enough; it’s time for it to stop. You will delete the pictures, right?”

The covers bunched over my still-naked legs, I sat up on the mattress. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to remain being my student, so… I hope you can find a course to substitute mine next semester. I'd rather not you come back there. Is there anything else?” I felt the sudden need to apologize again. “Once more, I’m sorry. I’m sure we both hate each other and in some way I’m glad about that, but still, you know, forgive me.”

“What the fuck,” Kibum spat. “That’s it, yes? That’s how you thank me? I blow you several times and then I let you fuck me only for you to find out that you’re gay-which I could have told you years ago! And now you just… go.”

“Well, what else should I be doing?” I was completely dressed by then, still standing close enough to the mattress that he could kick me if he wanted to.

“Not being a dick.”

“And how do I do that?”

He was quiet and I had neither the patience nor the courage to stay any longer. So I left. No strings attached, right? What a nice idiom that was, I thought. Because definitely, yes-it was only that we together had discovered a huge, central part of me-how could that leave anything attached, anything at all?

I kept thinking about those strings more in form of a rope, actually. But no matter, I could live with that thing, of course I could.

Nonetheless, I was too scared to conduct my next lecture, too scared Kibum would sit there, so I blew it off with the excuse of being sick. But of course that solved none of my problems.

The next week, I went into the room as late as possible, standing there worrying until I was half an hour into the lecture and it was safe to assume that he would not show up late. I breathed a heavy sigh, so heavy that the students in the first rows looked strangely at me.

And after that, I heard nothing of him. He never came to my lectures, never called, never texted. I never crossed paths with him on the staircase. Who I did come across though, was Lee Taemin-he smiled at me from inside the recreation room. Other than that, it seemed all passed.

That is, until I went down to the mailbox one morning, still tired, my head swamped with thoughts about the bills I was expecting. There were several envelopes inside, the usual, but when I picked through them over my morning coffee, I also found one that wasn’t an invoice.

I did not even need to identify him by his handwriting, Kibum had been nice enough to scrawl the sender’s address on the back.

So then I had it lying next to a bowl of soggy muesli on the kitchen table. I ate another spoonful, and finally decided to stop being a coward and open it.

It was a copy of some sort. It took me a moment, but then I realized that it was the de-registration form of our university. He’d circled his name in red and underlined the signature of the head of the faculty. As if that was going to make it any more real than it already was.

Black letters were visible through the paper, so I turned it over. There was a letter on the back. The writing was a little messy, like done in passing, but the letters were still round and big.

It read as follows:

Hi Jonghyun,

As you can see, I left the university. I’ll apply for the one in the West, the professors are a lot more competent there, you know?

Well, I know that there are probably three things that you want to hear from me:

1. You’re the best lecturer I’ve ever had.

2. I’m sorry about everything.

3. Please, let’s see each other again.

But I’m going to write neither of these things. Clever, right?

Anyways, I’ve been thinking about the Rite of Spring. I’m somewhat glad that I didn’t get to hear the rest of the lecture. Stravinsky kind of annoys me, you know? Saying that the idea of the Rite came to him in a dream. No one has good ideas in their dreams. To prove that, I’m going to tell you what I dreamt about last night: I dreamt of giving you my new phone number.

01784928300

See, bad idea. Apart from that, Stravinsky’s rhythms remind me of the way the door of my fridge rattles when I close it. It drives me nuts.

The moral of all of this? I’m not your student anymore.

-        Kibum

Absolutely everything he wrote in this letter was correct, except for one thing-Stravinsky’s rhythms are wonderfully complex and cannot at all be compared to the sound of a fridge door closing. What an idiot.

Still, I absolutely agreed with the part on bad ideas. I could have thought of several myself right then. One would have certainly been punching that number into my phone. But then, knowing him, he might have actually written down a number that wasn’t his. For example, the classic, the number of the pizza takeaway. I could see him do that, writing the letter snickering to himself about a false cellphone number.

A hypothesis had formed inside my head. And as Kibum had explained to me so accurately at our first meeting, a hypothesis was to be entertained and then tested. It was my duty as an academic.

I fetched my phone from the kitchen counter.

- If this is the pizza delivery, I’d like a large Hawaii pizza with extra cheese.

With scientific excitement I waited for the reply. It came after only a few seconds.

- It’s not. I have frozen pizza, though.

My hypothesis was shattered. I didn’t know whether to find that sad or not. But regardless, I glanced at my phone it and was a quarter past twelve. My cornflakes, forgotten over the letter and my scientific deliberations, were so soggy they had become one with the milk. But I was still hungry.

- You don’t deliver? Bad service.

- Take it or leave it.

Take it?

- Take it. Turn on the oven.