Page 40 of After His Eulogy
“Don’t stop. Go slow. But don’t stop.”
“Okay.”
I keep going. Slow. Inch by inch. I stop twice. He tells me twice not to. He’s breathing through his teeth, eyes closed. The tears are still happening — quiet, no sound, his face just letting them. I’m inside him and I’m moving slow and I’m watching him and I’m not stopping. When I am all the way in I stop. I have to. I stop because I cannot do anything else for a second. He opens his eyes. He is looking at me. He is looking at me and his face is wet and he is letting me see it. He has not moved his hand from my hip. He has not let go.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You’re in.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Reed. Okay.”
“You’re…“
“I’m okay. I just — I’m not sad. I want you to know.”
He’s telling me before he knows. Telling me what he isn’t before he knows what he is. Leaving me a note in the dark in case the next sentence is the wrong one. I receive the note.
“Okay,” I say.
“I do not know what I am.”
“Okay.”
“It is just happening. The…“ he gestures vaguely at his face. “I am letting it. Don’t make it a thing.”
“Okay.”
“Move.”
I move. I move slow. I move so slow I am almost not moving. He’s making a sound — a very small one, in the back of his throat, the one he used to make a long time ago, when something was almost too much and he was letting it be almost too much.I’d told myself for two years that I’d remembered the sound. I had remembered the sound.
He says, “Yeah.”
He says it the way he used to say it. He said it to me last week and he’s saying it now — with his face wet and my cock in him and his hand on my hip and his eyes on mine. I move slower.
He says, “Yeah,” again.
I keep going. I move my hand up to his face. I wipe the side of his face with my thumb. The thumb comes away wet. He does not flinch. He looks at me. I look at him. I keep moving. He is breathing slow now, not fast, slow, slow the way I am moving, slow the way the whole thing has slowed.
“Talk to me,” I say.
“What.”
“Anything. Talk to me.”
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“I am not sad. I am not. You’re inside me. You’re inside me and I’m letting you. I haven’t let you because you haven’t been here. And you are. You’re in me and you’re here.”
