This is not a story about my old copy of Jason and the Argonauts. We watched it so many times with my mom that the VHS player started growling like a trapped bear cub and it took longer to spit out the tape every time. The stop motion skeletons were my favourite. Aren’t they everyone’s favourite? Ray Harryhausen at his best. The Children of the Hydra’s Teeth standing in formation with their swords and shields, slowly advancing like they’re readying for a waltz. We called them Karl Skellingtons. I don’t remember who started it. It made us laugh, which is the main thing. The Karl Skellingtons scream without lungs, lunging towards our foolhardy hero like a malicious wave of maracas. He dives off a cliff in desperation and they follow him to a watery grave. That scene involved seven plastic skeletons thrown after a stuntman, which had to be captured in one take. No second chances to kill your movie monsters. All those fake bones, lost at sea. I loved that movie. I can never rewatch it.
This is not a story about the lunar eclipse the night before we graduated. The shadows formed pools of raven hollows and the moon was rotting orange. Its face was the face of a capricious child, ready to smile a world-rending smile. We headed into the graveyard that night, fuelled by a steady supply of spirits, flashlights at hand. Everyone was there: Seth, Erica, Tammy, and Alexander. Sulking “don’t you dare call me Alex” Alexander, bitter beyond his years, wiry like poison ivy. He stole glances at me with a mixture of stubbornness, naked longing, suppressed hope and hurt. He tried to kiss me again that night. He hadn’t tried in almost a year. I thought the last gentle let-down would stick. I thought he was over it, that we could be better, that I could save the boy next door. We had clicked as lonely kids, brought together by trivially common bullying. Alexander and Ophelia, waving from a sepia-toned postcard. We wrote notes to each other, pretended the schoolyard was a stage, hid during gym class, weathered in unison our hormonal humiliations. We laughed at hipsters while copying their clothing and pretending to know all the bands too. We showed each other bits of messed up slashers and compilations of accidents. WINTER OF FAIL, the captions would say. I always wonder if I’m unwittingly watching a snuff film of someone’s last day on Earth in some of those clips. Your surfboard slipped. You fell down the stairs. A giggling stranger has captured your twisting, pain-wracked demise. Everybody laugh now. Alexander and Ophelia, friends for life. Everybody laugh.
This is not a story about the friend zone. I’d like to find whoever invented the concept of the friend zone. Find him and punch him in the gonads. The friend zone, turning connection into a challenge, kindness into an investment and friendship into failure. Our relationship should be a transaction governed by simple rules, he thinks. I give, you give. I listen, you give. I want, you give. You are pretty: you are mine. Sex is intimacy. Penetration is victory. After I’m done with Mr Friend Zone, I’m coming for Indiana Jones, and Han Solo, and James Bond, and all the self-satisfied action bros who taught him that no means yes, that it’s not rape if one person wants it enough, that it’s not abuse if it’s playful. I’d love to round them all up and lock them in a room, dooming them to one another’s company where no cameras can reach. The first time he put his lips on mine, I was surprised. I was in the middle of sharing a recent heartbreak and I needed him to understand how fundamentally unfair life was. He took that as an invitation. I explained that I loved him as a friend. He was stunned, uncomprehending. The word was an insult and a condemnation. He accused me of being blind to what we had. You’ve been staring at The One this whole time and you didn’t even know it. Don’t you see how lucky we are? I did not. He withdrew for a while and spent more time online. I imagine other men there enthusiastically confirming the horrible truth: we are all cruel harpies who thrive on suffering. Vulnerability must be avoided at all costs. Bravado must conceal weakness. He said all the right things for a while. He didn’t try to be the centre of my attention. He seemed to accept our expanding group and my occasional flings. Until he tried to kiss me again and I shook my head, please no. He grabbed my arm and whispered something vicious. He knew which buttons to push. I hadn’t planned to experience that kind of disappointment that night, but when do things go according to plan? We joined the others and there we were, drinking and dancing and beckoning our future amid the tombstones.
This is not a story about the peculiar environmental effects of an unusual cosmic alignment. Why should the position of rocks in space have any bearing on decaying matter? I don’t know. I never believed in horoscopes and signs and the rest of that exploitative nonsense. Perhaps the same would have happened in the middle of a bright sunlit day. It might be that some people end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. All I know is that it was outrageous and stupid and utterly inexplicable and it happened. The dead rose. They burst out of the dirt all around us and just like that, we were surrounded. They regarded us for a time, with not a shred of flesh on them. Just mud and grass, and insects nesting inside their empty eye sockets. Vacant grins on beings that can do nothing but grin. They lifted their arms and pointed at us. Then they somehow shifted their position and they were on top of us. There was only a shimmer and a rustle; I didn’t see them move. They made no sound as they ran their hands through our hair and clasped our heads in a sturdy grip. I looked at my friends as they faced the inevitable. They held us there while we stared into the cavernous depths of their open mouths. Seth fell first. They let him slide to the ground like spent snakeskin. Others followed, left to lie where they dropped without a trace of a recognisable expression. I felt myself drift and fade. It was then that I frantically sought something familiar: the clickety clack of the Karl Skellingtons with their clumsy pirouettes and silly shrieks. All motion stops and starts in the old epic battle. Jason shows up and brandishes his blade in practised flair. Skeletons falling from a cliff, helplessly twitching. Skeletons in operating theatres, standing guard. Skulls and crossbones on pirate flags. The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone: doin’ the skeleton dance. I was suddenly free. They let go, momentarily. I grabbed Alexander’s hand and pulled him away. We ran as fast as we could, just like when we were little and we raced. Only I was faster. I was always faster. I lost sight of him. I turned around one final time before I escaped, alone but alive.
This is not a story about the way his eyes looked that last time, before bony fingers were wrapped around his shoulders and he was dragged back: frightened, regretful, pale blue eyes. What I felt above all then was not guilt, nor sorrow: it was relief. Overwhelming relief that it wasn’t me back there, that I made it. The other feelings came later. I saw him when I slept, and I saw him when I woke. These days he doesn’t visit me as often. His image is frayed around the edges and it’s gliding into obscurity. I won’t stop it.
This is not a story about me versus him. Ophelia versus Alexander. Ophelia wins. The patriarchy is dismantled. Our resentments persist and our mutual hatred is justified. Opposing armies gather, eternally at odds. No, I’d like to believe that he was capable of learning, that we all are. We might not have salvaged a friendship, but we could have eventually settled on understanding and respect. We could look back with affection for the journey, with all the flaws and missteps of life as work in progress. This isn’t where we ended up. I am here, and he is back there, where no skeletons dance and time has no meaning.
This is not a story about anything in particular. I just happened to be the one to tell it, and it won’t end here. It’s your turn now.
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