(no subject)
ONE
The beginning of this story is sad, but it is not as sad as the end. Neither is it more beautiful. I have the end also, here in my hands. Here is the beginning for you, as Dennis Tam gave it to me, from the warm hollows of his deep and freckled palms.
My name is Paul, a name like the word palm, the tree palm, the apostle. I don't need to tell you why the beginning of this story is sad. It's everything you still cannot force to bear the burden of your forgiveness, which is the heaviest weight. I will tell you how I met Dennis Tam.
It is 2005. Mercy hasn't been invented yet. I'm standing in a doctor's office waiting room, about to cross the carpeting and press the button that will make the light turn on that will show the specialist that I am ready to talk to him. I am fourteen. So is Dennis Tam, whose name I do not currently know, with his lips the color of the rest of his skin and the one freckle that overlaps his lip and the rest of his face. He is sitting across the room, in the chair next to the lights, one of which I must turn on to see a specialist.
Already I know that Dennis Tam is a specialist and that he is the one I need to see. I can tell by the curve of his slowly diminishing back, by the tilt of his fingers on the bright magazine in his lap, by the way his eyes slide over me and try to match me nonchalance for nonchalance.
I can tell by the way he flattens his nose with his right thumb before he says hello to me.
"Hello," I say back.
When he sees the red canvas covered book I have stuffed into my sweatshirt pocket, his whole being swerves into mine. All he needs to do to cause this is turn his chin. "Want me to press the light for you?" he asks.
"Yes please," I say back, before I notice that the light Dennis Tam has already pressed is the same light I need pressed, is the specialist's light. It is not the light that seeing Dennis Tam presses in me. That light is a flashlight under the covers after lights out, the one that falters and goes out when parents pass over the door.
It breaks my spine already that Dennis Tam, clearly a specialist himself, is pressing the same light I am, to go to the same specialist I am going to, when I only want to sit at his feet and ask him all about me, on which I am sure he is an authority.
He reaches out his hand and clicks the red button twice, so that it flickers a dainty morse. "They'll know there are two of us now," Dennis Tam says.
I begin to creep over the carpet towards Dennis Tam and the buttons. "I don't think we're supposed to know each other's names," I say. "Because of the office. Confidentiality and stuff. You want to see my book?"
I hold it out and he unclenches from the gaudy magazine to taste my book with his hands. I bound it, a small Christmas gift to myself, in red canvas with the title stamped in green on the cover.
Dennis Tam wrinkles his nose. The red reflects off of his soft and angry face. Dennis Tam's face does not accept my contractual shyness. "Sure," he says. "You are not Paul."
It's a sentence I have heard before, but my spine trills. He knows me. He could lecture on me before a crowd. He can read the name tag in the book, the one I made with such pride the moment I had a name that I could use to own things.
I laugh, and Dennis Tam's hands unslant from the People magazine, but before they unslant enough for me to become a specialist in him, the specialist on both of us comes in from the door behind the lights.
"Oh hell," he says. "I doublebooked."
"It's fine," says Dennis Tam to me though the webs of his bitten fingertips. His teeth have made them fine.
"I'll go downstairs to the coffeeshop and hang out," I volunteer. The idea immediately makes my lungs eager for smoke.
"Or I could," offers Dennis Tam.
"Or you could," says the specialist, very slowly.
All I want is to light up in the coffeeshop downstairs and breathe my smoke out into the mouth of Dennis Tam.
"I'll have you come in first for the hour," the specialist decides to Dennis Tam. I have not met the specialist yet, and I can feel how he is trying to avoid having me introduce myself in front of Dennis Tam. He's trying not to break confidentiality, even though it is clear that Dennis Tam and I already know each other in dangerous ways.
"I'll see you later," the specialist smiles crookedly to me. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for the confusion. I won't bill your parents."
I nod pleasantly. Dennis Tam holds my eyes in the hard damp grip of his own and lets his laughs out into the air in primary colored cubes.
As he leaves to follow the specialist into his office, the office Dennis Tam himself ought to be occupying, he slips something into my palm.
It is a torn strip from the magazine. I don't know this yet. Before this moment when I open my hand, finger by finger, slowly as all important openings are done, I do not know his name. Then it is written there in block ballpoint.
"prominent actress refuses to discu
DENNIS TAM 13108995555
ontract forbits alternate TV series p"
That's what the scrap says, torn off endings and all. I hide it in my jacket and go.
That is how the beginning is sad. It's sad the way hiding knowing someone's name is sad, the way that an open palm means "forgive me," which I have had to say so many times, sad the way that waiting for a specialist with the lights on is sad but made a little less so by means of a dainty morse. It's sad like a warm wire in your heart, sad the way this story is a strip of magazine, full of prominent actresses and Dennis Tam scrawled in capital letters, limited contracts and unfinished words.
The beginning of this story is sad, but it is not as sad as the end. Neither is it more beautiful. I have the end also, here in my hands. Here is the beginning for you, as Dennis Tam gave it to me, from the warm hollows of his deep and freckled palms.
My name is Paul, a name like the word palm, the tree palm, the apostle. I don't need to tell you why the beginning of this story is sad. It's everything you still cannot force to bear the burden of your forgiveness, which is the heaviest weight. I will tell you how I met Dennis Tam.
It is 2005. Mercy hasn't been invented yet. I'm standing in a doctor's office waiting room, about to cross the carpeting and press the button that will make the light turn on that will show the specialist that I am ready to talk to him. I am fourteen. So is Dennis Tam, whose name I do not currently know, with his lips the color of the rest of his skin and the one freckle that overlaps his lip and the rest of his face. He is sitting across the room, in the chair next to the lights, one of which I must turn on to see a specialist.
Already I know that Dennis Tam is a specialist and that he is the one I need to see. I can tell by the curve of his slowly diminishing back, by the tilt of his fingers on the bright magazine in his lap, by the way his eyes slide over me and try to match me nonchalance for nonchalance.
I can tell by the way he flattens his nose with his right thumb before he says hello to me.
"Hello," I say back.
When he sees the red canvas covered book I have stuffed into my sweatshirt pocket, his whole being swerves into mine. All he needs to do to cause this is turn his chin. "Want me to press the light for you?" he asks.
"Yes please," I say back, before I notice that the light Dennis Tam has already pressed is the same light I need pressed, is the specialist's light. It is not the light that seeing Dennis Tam presses in me. That light is a flashlight under the covers after lights out, the one that falters and goes out when parents pass over the door.
It breaks my spine already that Dennis Tam, clearly a specialist himself, is pressing the same light I am, to go to the same specialist I am going to, when I only want to sit at his feet and ask him all about me, on which I am sure he is an authority.
He reaches out his hand and clicks the red button twice, so that it flickers a dainty morse. "They'll know there are two of us now," Dennis Tam says.
I begin to creep over the carpet towards Dennis Tam and the buttons. "I don't think we're supposed to know each other's names," I say. "Because of the office. Confidentiality and stuff. You want to see my book?"
I hold it out and he unclenches from the gaudy magazine to taste my book with his hands. I bound it, a small Christmas gift to myself, in red canvas with the title stamped in green on the cover.
Dennis Tam wrinkles his nose. The red reflects off of his soft and angry face. Dennis Tam's face does not accept my contractual shyness. "Sure," he says. "You are not Paul."
It's a sentence I have heard before, but my spine trills. He knows me. He could lecture on me before a crowd. He can read the name tag in the book, the one I made with such pride the moment I had a name that I could use to own things.
I laugh, and Dennis Tam's hands unslant from the People magazine, but before they unslant enough for me to become a specialist in him, the specialist on both of us comes in from the door behind the lights.
"Oh hell," he says. "I doublebooked."
"It's fine," says Dennis Tam to me though the webs of his bitten fingertips. His teeth have made them fine.
"I'll go downstairs to the coffeeshop and hang out," I volunteer. The idea immediately makes my lungs eager for smoke.
"Or I could," offers Dennis Tam.
"Or you could," says the specialist, very slowly.
All I want is to light up in the coffeeshop downstairs and breathe my smoke out into the mouth of Dennis Tam.
"I'll have you come in first for the hour," the specialist decides to Dennis Tam. I have not met the specialist yet, and I can feel how he is trying to avoid having me introduce myself in front of Dennis Tam. He's trying not to break confidentiality, even though it is clear that Dennis Tam and I already know each other in dangerous ways.
"I'll see you later," the specialist smiles crookedly to me. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for the confusion. I won't bill your parents."
I nod pleasantly. Dennis Tam holds my eyes in the hard damp grip of his own and lets his laughs out into the air in primary colored cubes.
As he leaves to follow the specialist into his office, the office Dennis Tam himself ought to be occupying, he slips something into my palm.
It is a torn strip from the magazine. I don't know this yet. Before this moment when I open my hand, finger by finger, slowly as all important openings are done, I do not know his name. Then it is written there in block ballpoint.
"prominent actress refuses to discu
DENNIS TAM 13108995555
ontract forbits alternate TV series p"
That's what the scrap says, torn off endings and all. I hide it in my jacket and go.
That is how the beginning is sad. It's sad the way hiding knowing someone's name is sad, the way that an open palm means "forgive me," which I have had to say so many times, sad the way that waiting for a specialist with the lights on is sad but made a little less so by means of a dainty morse. It's sad like a warm wire in your heart, sad the way this story is a strip of magazine, full of prominent actresses and Dennis Tam scrawled in capital letters, limited contracts and unfinished words.