dead men tell no tales

I wanted to fuck the dead man. Or, rather, I wanted him to want to fuck me. The same way I needed all those men to want me. To want me, of course, but only in spite of themselves. It was a belief I maintained as a puny grapple for power. My path to the upper hand. A broadly meaningless gesture that grows its meaning like a skin tag, or several, when poisoned with grief. But that comes later. First comes the belief, the imaginings. The scenarios in which we are both drunk after a long shift, I pick him up at his pizza place and we fuck in the parking lot behind our apartment building, or in the stairwell, or on the roof. None of my fantasies ever involve either of our beds.

We were great friends, although perhaps not the kind who tangle together, gather filth and detritus until tangle becomes object. Certainly not the kind of friends that possessed that unique tension. Not a friendship you get your body stuck in. But believing was fun. Hoping, even if it had the tang of my own cynicism, made our rapport feel momentous. Momentous enough that I can refer to it every time I feel my grief is an imposition on those who were better entangled with him.

He died, very suddenly, like all young men do.

That same old belief keeps him alive for me. It tastes better now, sweeter. The dead can’t humiliate you. The dead can’t prove you wrong. There’s no risk now. Just the static fiction of a man who is always twenty-two, a man who always wants me, a man that can only really exist like this.

I don’t think anyone dies whole. The particles settle over everything you’ve touched like fine dust.

There are other tiny ways he’s kept alive, but unlike fantasy those dull over time, turn opaque like seaglass until he’s no longer visible in the reflection. Habits, sandwich orders, images and sounds all poisoned with him until they aren’t. Eventually even these will stop tasting like dabs and Marlboros. Even these, with time, will stop sounding like his name in the dark.

He taught me when I was nineteen that you should always flip two lucky cigarettes in a fresh pack.

“Why two?” I asked.

“Luck for me, luck for a friend.”

I maintained the habit until I couldn’t. I’m not a smoker anymore.