Eight weeks ago I escaped the place I grew up in. It feels like a lifetime.
Truthfully, this outside world scrapes against my skin like raw wind. It’s loud, fast and too full of color and noise. Lights burn all night. No one prays before touching merchandise on store shelves. For the past two months, I’ve been walking through a foreign land, desperately trying to learn the language without giving myself away.
Now I’m in this strange house. The air is thick with sweat, cigarette smoke, and something sweet and rotting underneath. People shout over each other, drink from bottles I’ve only seen in whispered warnings and grind their bodies together like animals.
It’s chaos. Senseless, wild chaos.
Every flash of bare thigh feels indecent. Also, dazzling. Back home, a woman showing her ankle would be caned. Here, women compete over who can wear less clothes. They laugh with their mouths open wide. Kiss men openly. Laugh with their heads thrown back.
My prior self screamsyou shouldn’t be here.
The sinful part of me thinks maybe I belong.
The only thing I know for sure is I won’t go back.
Even if they find me.
I’d sooner die first.
“Hey, are you the singer?” A baby-faced boy is suddenly in front of me. “You can start any time. Find me after and I’ll payyou.”
He’s off without another word. With his directive to start, I need to do as he says. I don’t want to lose any of this money. My life depends on it.
On the first song, a ballad by a singer named Justin Timberlake, my voice shakes, but my fingers somehow remember the chords. As I continue, to block out the dark cloud, I squeeze my eyes shut.
My set is filled with other people’s hit music. To me they’re brand new. When I sing, I pay attention to the words and pour myself into it. Try to exorcise pain I’ve hauled around since long before I tore my name off like old skin and started fresh with the one I found on a gas station receipt.
Avonna Parilla.
It’s beautiful. Close enough to who I was, but far enough from who they’re still looking for.
After about an hour, I open my eyes to realize nobody at this party is really listening to me. Not the guy with the broken glasses sprawled on the couch. Or the girl pouring something into a red plastic cup. Certainly not the boy in the corner sketching tattoos on his arm.
I’m background noise. Which is fine by me. The less conspicuous the better.
It’s comforting, actually. None of these people know my name’s not real or I’m only sixteen. They probably assume I’m a student enrolled at the college trying to pay tuition.
It’s no one’s business if I’m sleeping in a storage loft above an abandoned mechanic’s shop with a backpack full of clothes I stole from a laundromat.
Besides, I’m used to being ignored and fading into the background. Considering my circumstances, it’s probably for the best.
By the time I play the last few songs, my fingers smart and I’m ready to leave. I long for the solitude and quiet of my own space, where I can carefully plan my next move.
Then my eyes are drawn to the kitchen.
Two boys who don’t interact like the others. They’re not loud or obnoxious. Both move in tandem. There’s a quiet tension between their bodies like an invisible thread pulls them together, the rugged one carries unleashed emotion like scripture, his dark curls brush his shoulder.
He has secrets too, of this I’m certain.
The other guy is solid and grounded, confident in his own skin. Capable. Kind.
I can’t help but stare at the way they lean together. How their feet mirror one another’s stance. I feel their energy from here, across the entire room. Something deeper than attraction. A closeness I’ve never witnessed in real life. Intimacy never spoken of where I come from.
I notice the way the one says something and the other boy laughs, head bowing for a breath. It’s gentle. Beautiful. They don’t even touch, but my whole body lights up. Like an awakening, of sorts.
I’ve never seen two men together like this. Where I come from, love only counts between a man and a woman. Anything else is wicked. Unnatural.
A stain on the soul.
