The Empress

The Becoming of Men

 The sun shone through the leaves in little splotches of warmth between the shade. It was hot, but the sun felt good on his back, even as a trickle of sweat made its way down his spine. They didn't wear shoes, but why should they? The dirt path felt warm on bare feet. A light breeze sifted through the branches overhead, moving those little sun splotches like their very own light show. The boys who were not quite boys still, or rather men who were not quite men yet, were bathed in a greenish sort of glow, two tall and lanky plants photosynthesizing in their own little garden. For others, even perhaps for the other boy, this was a place of clean air and ocean and sun, where the plants grew green and strong and the breeze whispered its secrets to anyone who was still enough to listen. And if one were to speak, the world seemed to quiet itself to hear.

It was suffocating. He didn't know how words could lodge themselves in his throat and feel like a stack of bricks before he met the boy. He remembered a time when he said whatever he thought. He didn't stutter, or say the wrong thing, or have to think before he spoke. He didn't appreciate it then; one doesn't appreciate breathing until they choke. Now? Now, it felt like a construction crew was building an entire house in his trachea. Every time he opened his mouth, that glorious silver tongue felt like lead. Every thought crawled up his ribcage just to be thrown back down into his stomach and bounce around like rubber balls. If that's what the whole "butterflies in your tummy" bullshit felt like, he wanted his stomach sprayed with pesticides.

Even his mouth felt like it was covered in spiderwebs, like a deep dark cave filled with untamable creatures that needed to protect their secrets. Oh, so many secrets there were. And the beasts, they were savages; they built a wall of skulls from stray thoughts and foreign feeling.

"You good, man?" the boy asked, his goofy half-smile and questioning eyes directed toward him. That smile.

No. No I'm not good. I'm not good. Not even a little.

"Yeah, man. All good," he said lightheartedly. He wanted to scream. The other boy removed his shirt and tossed it over his shoulder while they walked. Was he walking too close? Being too quiet? A few months prior, he never had to wonder how he should act around his guy friends. Around anyone, really.

Not until Atlas.

Even his name made him weak in his knees. He knew it as soon as he saw him, as ridiculous as it seemed even to himself. Not love at first sight, no. No, he didn't believe in that. Lust, maybe. But it wasn't anything as superficial. It was a primal feeling, a key entering a lock, a puzzle piece put into place. He knew that something had changed within him as soon as he lay eyes on the boy-- only a few months ago they were still boys. Now they had had women, and were considered men. He thought it was frivolous to be a man only once a boy has a girl, but there was that nagging feeling of wanting to be a man and wanting to be friends with men. He hadn't wanted to be with men until Atlas. 

Oh, Atlas. With his dark skin, olive beneath his tan-- he never noticed the undertones of skin until he found himself staring at his back, all narrow shoulders and muscular ridges, and wondered how he'd never noticed that his skin was, in fact, olive. And his eyes. Oh, his eyes! Green, like the forests and the algae and the grass and the little lizards that roamed around the portico. He didn't notice how much green there was in the world until he compared every green he saw to Atlas' eyes and decided that every hue fell short of his green.

"Race you to the water," he heard, followed by a flash of bare olive back and navy swim trunks and chocolate brown hair. He took off after the boy and caught up quickly, mouth open in a laugh that seemed unending. Their feet hit the dirt in swift thuds, stirring up clouds of dust as they sped to the little path that didn't look like a path to the untrained eye. There, they had to slow down or grab each other to get past, and Atlas had no qualms about touching other men. He yanked the other boy's shoulder back and skimmed past him, bare skin against bare skin; calf against calf, thigh against thigh, stomach against back-- he didn't care.