I am his You

He hears your voice

O’er a thousand fields

You caress his hair

You polish his armour

Shine his shield

Lift the sword he wields

‘Cause you come

Like the winds of winter

To burden his soul

To steal his heart

So he lights his fires

To warm him before

The chill that creeps

He lights his fires

To love you

And honour you

And find you

He hears your voice

In all his nightmares

You caress his dreams

You straddle his mind

Till blind he lays

Half—crazed and flailing

Awake or asleep

You stay always

Creeping the crevices

Crawling the cracks

Of his infested brain

He hears your voice

As clear as day

You caress his neck

You bathe his feet

For he aches

In body and spirit

At the end of a

Desert of a

Thousand plains

Just before the rains

The floods

The tides

He hears your voice

Near—crazed by now

You caress his lips

As he falls

Unto his knees

Tears on his cheeks

His hands upheld

In the prayer

Of some secret holy rite

Only you know

He hears your voice

He sees your shape

You caress his face

As you come forth

From the haze

A goddess born

A devil raised

You plant a kiss

Upon his eyes

And smile at him

He reaches for your lips

A man dying

He strokes you once

So he believes

Just before

You draw back

Into the breeze

That brings the rains

The floods

The tides

To sweep him away

To a far off land

Where he can live

And learn to love

And once more die for

Another’s music

In the beginning:

It wasn't Noemi's idea but it was her who made the decision: the trip and the dinner and then the nightcap.

Looking back, almost everything the three of us did together, or even in pairs (though I cannot take full accountability for their time together), was at night or early morning. Mitch the Cat was a self-described desert vampire, and we were willing if at first unknowing converts. The night was a time of stillness, the morning one of potent pregnancy.

Ah, but beware my rambling.

I was a student; Noemi was a dreamer and an artist; Mitch the Cat was all three and more besides. I have always found it hard to describe him to someone who he has never met, but I do try.

Mitch the Cat was a man of conflicting attributes, a puppet whose strings were pulled in innumerable directions by the many forgotten gods of this world: gods and goddesses driven by greed and higher purpose, by lust and by hatred, by love and by humility.

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.²

And he could. He was fundamentally and irreparably torn: precise yet disorganized, energetic yet disinterested, loving yet aloof.

Mitch the Cat was a prophet tainted by our society.

He once told me:

Judge me not by what I say, for most of what I say, I say to hear the way the words dance in the air. Understand someone not by how they are most easily and prettily described, but by what they do. Especially I, for I am a vessel of lies.

One now sinking.

Reader, remember this. You do not know Mitch the Cat; you never will.

Anyway, most dominantly and most simply, Mitch the Cat was a very sad man. And for almost as long as I knew him, he had no idea why. Which was the saddest part of all.

I do think Noemi knew why, or at least she understood him far better than either of us. That was her place in our triangle of ever-morphing insanity; she was the rock, the goddess of solemnity and benevolent calm. She was the one to whom he spoke in the most passionate of his work, when he needed her—when he needed his image of her.

She was his she and his her and often his temptress or his dark priestess.

But from the moment our eyes met, I became his you.

I like to think I always was.

We were cordially invited to a dinner at the winter home of one of my professors. Jonathan Schiele was his name, and I'm surprised that has stayed with me, for his face has not. I do remember I liked his work, enjoyed his teaching and respected his demeanor. When I received his invitation, I was both surprised and rather confused. Perhaps he never thought that I would accept—but why send it, then? I suppose we all do strange things out of loneliness; usually they are things we regret, and every now and then they are things with unforeseen and immeasurable consequences.

See, we lived in Kelown. Kelowna is a small town in British Columbia, Canada; it overlooks the great Okanagan valley and lake, home to the Ogopogo (the ridiculously named Canadian version of the Loch Ness Monster). We both attended the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Jonathan was a professor of mine there, and apparently he liked me, though I was far from a dedicated student. And one afternoon, several days after I had received my final mark in his class, he sent me an email and invited me to dinner with himself and his partner, some colleagues and some friends.

The queer part was that it was a dinner three months later and in a different country. I was close to politely declining, having seen it as ludicrous and put little thought into the matter, when I told Noemi of it. She, far more instinctive and ever wiser than I, decided that we should go.

The date fell just after the conclusion of all of both of our midterms for the coming semester, and, somehow, we had the extra money (I am nothing if not frugal).

And so: we took a long weekend off and flew down to Palm Springs, California. On the Saturday, we drove our rental car to the Schiele winter home—an exquisite and lavish affair on the exclusive side of the San Jacinto mountain range. The view was beyond incredible—though, ironically, I remember the thought but not the view itself.

There, incidentally, we met Aerys Isaiaksson: potent poet, desperate genius, tainted prophet.

As I remember it, I said not one word to him during dinner. My first impression, for what my fading memory is worth, was of a man with a light, handsome face and a dark, brooding expression. He sat next to Professor Schiele and across from Doctor Schiele (I never did know whom took the other's name—an uncommon practice among gay couples, I believe). A place of honour, for even at the time Mitch the Cat was a distinguished man.

Noemi had heard of him, if I had not. She had not read his work, but her belief at the time was that if you were famous, you were someone somehow meaningful to society. (I have never shared that particular view and gladly she soon after forsook it.)

The dinner itself was uninspiring and, now, quite unimportant. As was the trip. But, of course, for one aspect: Aerys Isaiaksson.

An overtly extravagant name, I thought. Later I would wonder whether he had changed his name (before I ever met him) from something much more ordinary. I would not have been surprised in the least. He was a man with no past; at least, not one I knew of, and I knew more about Aerys Isaiaksson than any living or dead.

He was sexually interested in Noemi from the first, he later admitted, and he laughed but did not answer when I asked him if it was love at first sight. He watched her secretly from across the long table all night, he claimed. Afterwards, he asked me if I would like to join him for a drink at his place.

Oh, but I remember this so well:

I was standing in some unnamable room of the professor's, staring absently at the art which lined its walls. Noemi was using the washroom; it was late; I was tired and annoyed by the evening and, all in all, cordially dissatisfied. We were about to depart for our cheap hotel. I was caught up in my own dark thoughts and I—no matter my mood, honestly—was wholly unprepared for the force that was Mitch the Cat.

As I gazed, a quintet of strong fingers gripped my upper arm—oh, I can feel them even now if I try—and I nearly whirled and punched the silly offender (pacifist that I am—don't fuck with me. Don't ask me silly questions. I won't play silly games³.).

But instead I was perfectly still: so still I didn't even blink.

Perhaps I knew: he had eclipsed me.

(Oh, and he never let me go.)