Misery and Desire
The wind screeched through the northern Wisconsin pines. January howled with rage, and the bitter air sealed everything with ice and rain. A small town existed among the miles and miles of trees. It was a puddle of buildings and houses. A limestone quarry outside of town sat like a gaping mouth. Floodlights illuminated the very bowels of the hole, shining up and into the sky, revealing millions of snowflakes whirling around like small insects.
In the middle of the town, inside a warm house, with the shades drawn in the upstairs bedroom, was Grant.
Grant was lying on his bed with Mark, his friend for almost twenty years. Mark straddled Grant’s waist. Both were naked. Both were having sex with a man for the first time.
Grant’s father was downstairs in the living room glaring into a deafening television program. He was unaware of the passion happening upstairs; he was too busy thinking far away thoughts about the misery of his life and his chapped, aching hands.
His wife was halfway across the country sitting at a bar and making sideways glances at the men who caught her eye. She thought nothing of the man she had married. She thought of desire.
In the bedroom, Grant clutched Mark’s neck, urging him closer to his face until they kissed. Their lips pinched between their teeth.
Grant gasped, held his body up against Mark, and shuddered.
“Sorry,” he whispered, looking up at Mark, at the only person in his life for whom he felt some vague sense of love.
Mark shook his head, panting. “No, no,” he said, pushing Grant’s black hair off his forehead. “It’s okay.”
Outside the house, endless wilderness.
Perhaps that is what made them drawn to each other. They sensed the miles of nothing around them and let themselves become a burning ember glowing faintly in the middle of it all.
