Crying Games

One stuffy afternoon, many years back, I had company in my room. He’s someone I met from IRC, the in-thing back then, before MSN messenger, Gay.com and Fridae, together with its wannabe sister Axcest, infiltrated the local online cruising scene.

I could not recall much detail of the fun we had, that was because it got memorable only after the climax was out of the way. I remember we were in an embrace, he on me, and I was just waiting for him to finish the session perhaps with a comment about the hot weather and the need for a quick shower, or the amount of work waiting for him back in the office. But he held on and stayed very still. And then something very strange happened.

He started to cry.

It was a muted sob at first, coupled with intermittent sniffing, which I brushed off as the symptoms of a momentary lapse of the body’s defense system after a (good) climax. But the sobs quickly accelerated in pace and intensity, becoming more and more definite with each turn. And soon the writhing began, limbs started to shiver and then got contorted in an awkward way, as though trying hard to fight the onslaught of pain. Finally the reservoir of grief could hold no longer, and it quickly degenerated into an ensemble of acute display of defeat.

Utter defeat.

Over my body ran streams of tears that picked up my sweat along its path, before rolling off and landing on the bed. The mid afternoon sunlight filtered through the fading curtains and threw a cloak of intricate pattern of twigs and flowers on our entangled limbs, and then this peculiar matrimony of bodily deposits was complete.

I started to feel his pain, the indescribable urge to tear your aching heart out of your ribcage. Yet I have no idea what or who caused this. Perhaps I could, if he has allowed me a few years of exploring the scene, if only I know of the sheer brutality that this queer world is so capable of. But at that time, I did not move a muscle, or say a word. It didn’t seem necessary at all.

Before long, there was silence.

The stream of tears finally run dry, his eyes incapable of any further onslaughts of sorrow. Slowly, he lifted himself from me; his face was a wet clutter of twisted expressions. I looked at him and lifted my hand to trace it across his cheeks, wiping away the concoction of tears and sweat along the way. He looked back at me and broke into a weak smile.

So from the depths of the fathomless pool that had consumed him earlier, he rose again, freed and liberated, for now, from the dark water of yesterday. The sorrow had subsided, banished once again into the darkest recess of his subconscious mind. He turned and looked towards the bedroom window, and took a deep breath.

“Hey, didn’t notice the pretty curtains earlier.”

••

We didn’t meet again after that afternoon, but the image of his weak smile after the broke-down solidified in my memory as a single moment of renewed hope and new-found peace.

Life just goes on, doesn’t matter how painful it gets.