Night Report: Aphrodisius Alive Again

on a number of nights & subterranean secrets

I see you looking at me.

I’m looking back.

A night out doesn’t have to be spent in the club. And night doesn’t just begin when the sun goes down. No, it starts the moment you think of me, the second you accept my invitation to spend time together. Initiation is as soon as you begin to disconnect from the life of the real and the daylight and the norm. When the shadow begins to loom. A norm must die for a newness to infiltrate. If you’re holding onto what you know, how can you hope to penetrate into the unknown?

You want to join me in the world of the dark, don’t you?

Not a specific moment but a series of them comprising a pattern leads to the erosion of a feeling. Tangled up together, I’m trying not to think about the ending of us. Relationships must be maintained, covers must be paid. I worry about the politics of skipping the lines and it matters, of course, what you wear when you break the rules. Black is the uniform. Much can be communicated in the nanoseconds of the movements of eyes. A world forms around two people walking hand-in-hand. Coordinations. Fates criss-crossing over each other as beams of steel. Scaffolding is always visual metaphor and it stings me every time, like seeing a photo of a beautiful ancestor. Aesthetics of dwellings prompt bodies to act.

We should always be going deeper. Closer to the bone. Rooms of red are rippling around us. Rooftop views, banter in the basement, secret subterranean messages. Black marble tables, red satin throw hurled over black leather couch. Up all night again. Silk dress, satin sheets. A hand emerges from the ocean within the mirror. The mating calls of angels echo in the silence between songs. The iridescent labradorite moon is fixed on a pedestal just for me to see.

Nothing new here but neon. Outside of the club we ran into some women who recognized me from two lives ago. Placid pleasantries exchanged. We kept it pushing. Minutes later, I confessed to A. that I never trusted them, they never bothered to show me any empathy, I always got the sense they hardly wanted me around. A. sensed it too, she could tell from my energy that I wasn’t happy to see them. I’m more of an open book than I realize, or, everyone knows the contents of my heart before I do.

What we wanted will never happen again. The best of it all, maybe, is already behind us. Only we won’t know it for certain until we’re too old and tired to keep searching.

I admit. It’s vanity to imagine I can speak for us. Or that my pain is poignant enough to be shared with you. I’m named after my father, unlike you, named after an angel, a god, a mythical hero. We’re allowed our sins and our tragic flaws, you know — they were written alongside us.

Sentimentality shackles. I warp myself into conformity if I let the flow take me. The life I want to live is unfamiliar, uncertain, curtained by dense fog; I must be brave, ruthless, uncompromising. I have to be cruel. To myself more than anything else. It’s been my mistake, not yours, that I’ve kept my power quiet within me.

It won’t happen again.

Friday night fever, Nueva York: Aphrodisius alive again, his head in his hands, teeth grinding from the G6. I’m on new drugs now that you’ve never even heard of. And I’m exploring the black hole within me which originated not just within my family but my ancestry, transgenerational traumas which still manifest here amongst me in the dark. I hesitate, I ensure a green light go signal before I dare to make a move. Caution to some — cowardice to me. I keep asking what is there to fear for your sake but mostly mine. Because fear was beside me early, when no one else was. Abandoning the worldview I’ve nurtured for this long threatens newness, loneliness, but I have to be brave, I have to lead the way. I want to lead the way. The reframe is important. I’ve been advocating it to my clients so I have to live it myself first.

Some Fridays ago I was supposed to interview a don of the New New York Nightlife and it didn’t happen. I had a group of beauties amongst me, I wore my favorite suit, I felt powerful and free, and yet — time worked against me. I don’t like to rush and I’m always late because time is arbitrary and I’ve moved mostly away from apologizing for it. But I forgot not everyone is as liberated as I am.

I walked my way into Hearsay on a Thursday just because I could. I told them I’m not on the guest list and the bouncer looked me up and down and accepted it. Inside, I made new friends, including a husband who smiled as his wife danced on me until he realized I’m not gay.

Do I unnerve you with my sincerity?