Deathless

or, "Dancing on the Edge of the Knife": You can't spell erotic without rot.

It wasn’t until tomorrow that I knew where I’ll be living next month. Everyone is afraid for me, but I refuse to be. The thing about faith is that you have to keep it even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone, yourself included. All I’ve known thus far is how I’ll be living: just as I wanted: dancing on the edge of the knife.

Be careful what you wish for. I’ve been getting just what I craved — opportunities, candidates, blessings — and the only thing I’m lacking is stable ground beneath my feet. And it’s all teaching me I don’t need that.

What I lose is what I can live without.

Once, I repeated to myself that I am strong in every situation, until it came true. Now I’ve been telling everyone I am deathless. It’s more than revolutionary for me of all people to declare this. It is my praxis. I’ve been surviving countless attempts on my life from every angle. Despite who I am and where + when I have been made, I refuse to be killed by heart diseases, STDs, accidents, diabetes, homicide, macroeconomic inequity, police brutality, or even the consequences of my own actions.

A friend accidentally poisoned me with pecan whiskey last weekend. I hurled it up and snorted a crushed up Benadryl and chugged a Red Bull to offset the lethargy and I never felt better. Then I went out and danced all night. I’d never felt so connected to my body. If I were a ruler I’d be susceptible to poison, but I’d always survive and it would only make the masses respect me more. I’d be a figure of apocryphal legend. Like de Gaulle I’d only make a martyr of a man that refused to put himself in danger. But all attempts on me are welcome. If you can, drag me off my throne, and I’ll honor your superior power.

A few nights back in Midtown a black Challenger with neon purple underlights started doing screeching donuts in the middle of a busy intersection and I was a hair’s breadth from being side-swiped off my Silver Surfer Citibike as I flew by. I was going at least 30 kmh. I had flowers in the basket that I somehow saved. People leaned out the windows of their cars to cheer. I couldn’t tell if they were excited by the stunt, my near-death experience, my survival, or all of the above.

The city feels paved with my insides. I can’t explain the stirring of knowing it is time to leave, but I’m sure you understand how it can ruin you when you never know where you’ll go. Or if you’ll arrive at all. The only thing you can do in the face of such instinct is to listen, to go, and trust that you’ll end up where you’re supposed to be — whether or not you recognize the destination or you’re comfortable with it.

Unlike other mortals I do not rest. My skin and exoskeleton the same color as the night. I show up to the function whenever I want. That’s when the night starts. My watch is an astronomical clock on a gold bracelet. I forgive you for the wound before you’re done taking out the knife. No one can kill me except me.

I met my shadow self two nights ago and it made sense, again, why I’m such a Gemini. Myself and I exist apart. There are no coincidences. The other me has cruel eyes and isn’t afraid to command. His anger is chilly and sharp like a scalpel. He sits with the ease of a king.

Us healers have the bloodiest hands.

It’s not tomorrow yet, and I still don’t know where I’ll be living after next weekend. As I lay in bed every night trying to calm my tempestuous heartbeat, I’ve been telling myself the old familiar lie: everything happens for a reason. Maybe this is destiny’s way of handing me the torch of the zeitgeist to carry. I’ve written about homelessness and the crisis of America’s infrastructure before, but many things must be truly experienced in order to be communicated (well). Perhaps I have to suffer greatly to be able to create something that really explains and sells the rot in this system. And because it is coming from me, I have to make it sexy, I have to look good doing it.

It isn’t a coincidence, is it, that you can’t spell erotic without rot.

Living is character building. We are characters and our souls are the actors. Living fully as yourself has a powerful effect on others. People start smoking again when they’re near me just because they feel liberated by my nonchalance about it. They start to open up and dance more, too. If I love you I will encourage you to be the artist you never thought you had time to be. Imagine the cumulative effect we can have on the world if we all were more ourselves!

As I write this, my body is shaking and the inside of my fridge collects dust. Rats squeak inside of my walls. I’ve learned that I thrive on destitution and the stress of hunger. It keeps me going. I refuse to be nondescript. I looked up the symptoms of what I’ve been feeling for the past week and the Internet told me I’m suffering from stress-induced migraines. How interesting! The body feels pressure even if the mind can transmute it.

But pain fades. What’s worse is this yearning for you, wherever you are.

I wish I would have known thoughts of you would never leave. Only get less frequent, but never fully fade. But it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The eternal is the same as the ephemeral. And it’s already been an eternity since we’ve seen each other…

I’m revolutionizing the system by refusing to conform to it — exposing the insides in the not-doing, exposing out loud that it can function without its rules and its deadlines, showing better than I could tell. Let’s abandon gender. My procrastination is praxis. My bosses and my clients alike respect that I wear all of my jewelry every day to work, I show up with bags under my eyes and send emails at three in the morning without explanation. I’m trying to fit as many rings as possible on all of my fingers. I can’t make a move without divinity singing around me, like wings attached to all of my vertices, some covering my mouth and some my feet. I, auphanim.

And la luna is still an eye that blinks when I want it to. Yes, I’m King of the Moon; as long as she shines, so too will I.

Every day I tell someone suicidal: It’s uncommon for me to meet someone who really doesn’t want to be alive. More often than not, when you really look at it, you don’t want to live like this anymore. So what can we do to change things without killing you?

We can’t know if Antinous took his own life. Ultimately it was desire that killed him. Desire, that old emperor, may be the only eternal thing (besides ourselves): it never ends!

In the old days I would have certainly been done in by a stilted ex-lover of my current obsession turned zealous nationalist assassin. And it would have been beautiful, you’d still be reading about the mystery of me.

Life bursts from me like a dialectic, I’m always so filled with the dead. My brother is having a baby; life regenerates. My first (good) novel features a main character that has lived so long he dreams of dead friends and drinks with their descendants. Birthdays of dead friends still populate my Google calendar.

S. described me as an ancient soul weighed down by the mundane. The trouble is that I’m even captivated by the beauty of my bonds. Another S. calls me when she is self-conscious, and it is easy for me to refill her coffers with pride and power. For a month now I’ve been convening with a different S. about the state of love in our lives and the beauty of language. Two weeks ago I was at another S.’s birthday party and saw a beautiful ghost. Libra season is over now and a fifth S. celebrated her birthday alone right on the cusp. She was the first one I met and is always one of the first to show up for me. I wish I could have been with her then, just as I wish I could have celebrated at least once with my first brother-born-dead, whose birthday approaches. We should celebrate deathdays too, I think, as I start to plan my half birthday party.

Somewhere along the way, in the midst of all my struggling and stressing, the pressure morphed me into the kind of person that I wanted to look up to back then, in those years in the dark: the type of human that could have saved everyone I’ve lost.

I no longer feel self-conscious about looking rich while being poor, because now I know that my wealth is immaterial. Nor am I letting the migraines keep me from showing up, smiling, and believing in myself. My boundless wealth is thus: all the life I was born with and all the love that surrounds me. Nothing and no one can take them away from me.

Being this close to losing it all has me appreciating everything. My family which is eager to house me, my friends who are generous with their sympathies, the blessings which I’ve enjoyed for years until now. Even the hardships which make me gnash my teeth at night are opportunities for growth and reflection which I appreciate. My voice, too, is something to cherish, the bravery I know I have when it comes to admitting the tenuousness of my situation, and the skill I’ve been able to hone in making it sound beautiful. Lesser men than I have struggled more, and they’ve made it out to tell the tale. As will I.

So be it. Where I am tomorrow is where I am supposed to be: Alive, still.