The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

haguettes

I nudge him as we're venturing towards the booth in the back of the restaurant, my volume conserved. "Hey, are you all right?"

Lucien is caught by surprise, as if he was in a trance that brought him nervousness instead of his actual mind, the fully functional one whose magnificence will forever be insurmountable, but he's even more disorganized now than he was before. He eventually nods at me, though it looks like he has just woken up in an unfamiliar place but is too scared to tell anyone, like he's only inspecting the place to try and draw his own conclusions. His eyes are still positioned towards a singular part in the restaurant. Maybe it's not date anxiety that consumes him.

He's continues his trip of wariness as the hostess seats us at the table, whose location I'm now realizing is rather convenient for being out of site for Lucien to hide his anxiousness deftly, but he is forced to speak in order to greet the hostess appropriately for the situation, which I assist him in doing, because although he doesn't recognize my phobias (most prominently, social anxiety), I'm the integrous friend who would recognize his, but once the waitress departs, Lucien is back to that anxious state, so it's once again my duty to drag him out of it like the exasperated owner of a rambunctious dog who only wishes to stay in one spot as if a statue.

"Thank you for taking me out to dinner, Lucien," I acknowledge to break the silence and my companion's apprehension.

That's when he warms up as I had hoped he would, sped along by the slight astonishment of my praise, and he jocularly replies, "Well you're welcome. I figured neither of us could live off of my terrible cooking forever."

"I love your cooking."

"Really?" Lucien questions, lifting an eyebrow but with the expression not of belief but of mocking my absurdity for enjoying what he finds to be a monstrosity. "That's not what you've been saying for as long as you've had to eat it."

I shrug, rolling the napkin log through the tips of my fingers. "I guess I just appreciate the thought you put into it."

"I think the soup company is doing most of the work, but thanks." Lucien nods at me in the same manner as one would use to tip their hat to me but in this case without reaching for the brim of an invisible accessory. "But it seems you've got a good relationship with the soup company if they're thinking about you all the time like that. I'm jealous, Ginsy."

"No need to be. The soup company isn't nearly as pretty as you."

I can't believe I would actually say something like that in front of a real living, breathing human being, even if that human being is as bold as Lucien Carr. He's the spontaneous one who can charm anyone out of their clothes, not me, and I'm sure he's aware of this, seeing as he's been living with me and has seen just the kind of person I am, and I am definitely not the kind for uncouth spontaneous remarks like those. Where did a comment like that even come from?

"Isn't that just sweet?" Lucien marvels. He raises his glass to his lips, but that's where it stops so that he can survey me, eyes hungry and wild. "It seems as though I've bestowed upon you a newfound confidence, and I must admit -- you're looking fucking sexy in it."

While Lucien has indeed bestowed upon me a newfound confidence, it's not nearly as keen as his is, and I cannot yet keep myself under complete control when he makes comments like those. Scarlet invades my cheeks. I've lost for now.

Lifting his glass (which has already been filled with cheap champagne) higher in a toast, Lucien proclaims, "As a celebration of your blog's prosperity, I have drafted a poem for you, Allen. I just wrote it. Here it is." Lucien unclogs his throat, composing both himself and the poem, because it's clear that he has no idea what he's doing, though I would appreciate anything he spewed out at me with the intentions for it to be cherished. "Remember when I was a child, when my skin was clear and I wasn't queer—"

"Your skin is still clear," I interject, like a teacher hollering from the back of the classroom about how the kid presenting their project is delivering a lie meant to save their ass but a lie that the teacher can see through easily and calls out for being faulty.

I can't really argue the queer part, as if someone were to examine only one minute of our conversations, they'd have notebooks stocked with anecdotes of our sexual tension and homoerotic subtext, and even I am aware of that. First in the library, Lucien informed me that he was "gay as hell", though he later amended that he's "omnisexual as hell", another philosophical treat for him to glorify every gender for being perfect and just the way that nature has shaped them to be, and there are too many other accounts of his blatant homosexuality for me to list. Though I have never kissed him or agreed to any relationship besides a platonic one, there are subtle reminders sprinkled across our discussions that gently hints that we basically already are a romantic couple, at least one from a stereotypical high school novel about the rare gays of the education department. Long story short, Lucien is queer as fuck, and he's tugging me into this storm.

Kicking my legs from underneath the table, Lucien playfully orders, "Don't counter me, Ginsberg." He's laughing, and that laugh is a truly beautiful thing, like honey and the intangible crackling of a fire have joined together in a union of magnificence and have bestowed their gifts upon this boy, and I wish to revel in it forever, but it is when Lucien glances across the room to another table that the exuberant birds of his vocal chords are plucked and gagged.

He rises from his seat, folding his napkin precisely as he found it in a matter of seconds, and he scoots away, leaving me with only five plain words expelled in the calmest of tones that I know hosts acrimony underneath. "I'm going to the bathroom."  

~~~~~

A/N: shit gets wild and you are all dead

absurdism: man's attempt to find meaning in the universe will fail because there is no meaning

~Dakotoenail