Page 2 of Hamartia

But yeah, it felt life-changing at the time, even more so later. Like some great event that would change me forever. I’d never had an inkling I liked men before that moment, and you know, I still don’t know if I do. I haven’t been able to definite it, honestly.

But him…well, he was my inevitability.Hewas when it started. When everything else ended. Everything I was before. He was the moon and the stars and everything in-between and all I wanted to do was worship at his feet. The band, my girlfriend, my dad, everything that I thought was important to me, just ceased to exist the moment I first saw him. I’m not proud of that. But it’s what it was.

There was before him and after him, two sides, and I am two completely separate people on each.

SIDE ONE

HIM

LIPSTICK

SAYONARA SON

MANHATTAN MOON

GREEN TEA

SHIBAL

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the things that had to happen so that we’d both be standing in that bathroom at that moment. Staring at each other across, what seemed to me then, like a fucking ocean.

DP should have been performing the Global Union show in New York, but our flight got cancelled due to unplanned strike action by European aircrew that weekend. The organizers of GU shifted the billing so we could stay in Paris and perform our set there instead.

His band were supposed to perform their spot the following day in Seoul, but the same airstrike had them stuck in Europe after a show in Berlin, while the European Committee for Workers Rights hammered out some pay increase that was equal to about 0.36% of the artwork cost of our last album.

I’d been downing water since I woke up because I’d gotten wasted the night before and so needed the bathroom right around the time his band had just come off stage.

I was in the group of three who stood there, mouths open with shock, when one of the people we’d just been spouting shit about had strolled out of the cubicle looking like some kind of walking sculpture.

He’d given me a look. A look that shifted something inside me in a way that all those separate parts that made up the whole changed imperceptibly. So that they didn’t fit back the way they were supposed to. Like I no longer fit insidemyself.That’s how I’d come to describe it. That was the power of that shift. The power ofhim.I was like a stranger to my own fucking soul.

I hadn’t noticed any difference right away—couldn’t see past the self-loathing and shame I’d felt in that moment. I wasn’t fit to kneel at his fucking feet and lick his Louis Vuitton boots. In lots of ways, I’m still not. I still see him like I saw him then: like some ethereal being, untainted by the likes of us, me, far above us mortal men.

I wanted to tell him that. In fact, I felt compelled to tell him that.

But I didn’t.

Couldn’t.

I’d stared at him feeling like the small insignificant prick that I was. Watched him cross the tiled bathroom, silver boots melodic on the cold tiles, and come to stand between us to wash his hands. He was slow about it too. Unrushed. I’d glanced briefly at Mase who was watching him too. Had he felt as small? As big of an asshole as I had?

When he reached for a towel to dry his hands, I’d caught a whiff of his cologne. Sweet, but still masculine. It made my cock do a weird twitch thing. He smelled like money. He smelled fucking incredible. So good my head spun a little.

He met my eye briefly in the mirror, so the power of his stare wasn’t as great as it could have been had it been head on, and smiled. A small flicker of a smile. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something small, something I thought was lipstick at first but was a ChapStick. When he swiped it over his lips, the way a girl might touch up her lipstick, I felt another vibration between my legs, then the base of my spine. He might as well have punched me in the fucking face for the impact that one act had had on me. I wish he had. I wanted him to.

I’d have let him do anything he fucking wanted to me right then.

Then, his lips red and glossy and so fucking kissable, he spun on his heel and left.

He hadn’t said a fucking word to us but I felt reduced to ash. Small and unimportant. I hadn’t felt like that in years. I hated it.

As the door swung closed behind him, Crawford looked at me, hesitating a beat before doubling over with laughter.

“Fucking hell. Thank fuck they don’t speak English.”

I could only blink, dumbfounded. Dumfounded and a lot of other things too. Things I’d think about later when I was alone.

As it turned out, Crawford was wrong. They could speak English. Because ten minutes later we’d listened to them thank the crowd of over 100 million people for their donations to the Global Climate Emergency. Every one of them spoke fucking English.