SISYPHUS IN LONESOME TOWN

Sisyphus wakes up every morning in his room at Heartbreak Hostel, which is just an old narrow house, with a too-short bed with thin sheets, flanked by even thinner walls, which do nothing to protect him from the sounds of the other men crying, the wounded sounds of men who look like him, or who he might someday be, and the whole place smells like sour wine and menthol cigarette smoke. He is here to get over his cowboy boyfriend getting over him, again, but all he does is stay in the house. He paces in the hallway until some other sad man pounds on his side of the door and begs Sisyphus to stop fucking walking in front of his room. Sisyphus goes to the kitchen and rearranges the plates and the cups and the silverware and then puts it all back the same. He moves the furniture around the shared living room until once again he is asked to stop, this time more politely. It’s just that he does this at home too. It’s just that he is waiting for the phone to ring. For his cowboy boyfriend to call and tell him he’s fucked up, he’s real sorry, he’s on his way. He didn’t mean to send Sisyphus away again, he won’t do it again. Sisyphus is always waiting for the phone to ring, but he always has to be the one to call. Sisyphus always calls.

In times when they’re on, not off, and he feels unloved or unlassoed, Sisyphus picks at his cowboy boyfriend until he unravels, one string at a time, one quick complaint chained to another, until he’s a pile of knots, until his cowboy boyfriend—who is handsome and dark and has a thick mustache, and speaks in a slow drawl—has had enough just e-goddamn-nough. Until he says I think you should leave in his warbling, wounded voice, picking at the pearl snaps running down his shirt. He says, just go, just get out now and Sisyphus does go, he does get out and go back to the Heartbreak Hostel, where a room is always waiting on the third story, even if it is just a shitty, creaky bed with thin blankets and musty sheets and two curtains that never meet in the middle, always letting the sun crack through. He knows all these other men, even if they’ve never met; they all rotate in and out in one endless square dance, hands in to circle left, and then off to sad drinking in their rooms and sad smoking in their rooms and long regretful nights in their rooms. He hates these men who are mirrors and doors, and just like him, waiting for their ride to come, Cadillac or cutting horse, saddled and dark as the wrong time of night. Sisyphus cries, too and he can’t bear the sound of them, he can’t bear the sound of himself.

When he can’t stand it anymore, Sisyphus takes the corded phone from its table and locks himself in his shitty room with it and lets everyone outside knock and knock, and he cradles the phone like a heavy head, waiting all night for it to ring. When that doesn’t work, Sisyphus calls until his cowboy boyfriend answers, even if it’s just to pick up and tell Sisyphus not to call anymore, that he doesn’t want to hear any more apologies. But if his cowboy boyfriend answers once, he’ll answer again. The other men crowd outside his room banging on the door in small groups; they are also waiting for calls that won’t come, they also need to start calling and begging. When his cowboy boyfriend finally answers and sits silent, Sisyphus calls him baby, he says I’m sorry baby, can I come home baby, it’s terrible here without you baby. Sisyphus folds his clothes, he sets them in the suitcase. He returns the phone to the hallway table, long cord coiled back up next to it like rope. Sisyphus calls one more time, and this time he says sweetheart, come pick me up okay? You have to call me your cariño again, okay? Yes, of course I missed you, I called didn’t I? I called so many times, but you never called me. No, I don’t want to pick another fight. I want to go home with you, come get me? Sisyphus waits on the porch of the Heartbreak Hostel for his cowboy boyfriend to come and he thinks next time it should be him staying here, his cowboy boyfriend hanging head over one end, feet off the other in this narrow bed, crying with these other men, here in Lonesome Town.

BE UR BOYFRIEND??

You are always thinking about him. He is small and fine-boned and see-through as paper. You want to find him after school, fold him up, and chew him to pulp like a straw wrapper. You want to spit him at the wall. You want bits of him to stick in your teeth so they stain when your gums bleed. After school you go home thinking about him and do your homework thinking about him and fall asleep thinking about him: when he stands in front of windows does light pour through him, does someone iron him and hang him up neatly in a closet at the end of the day?

For you, every day at school is roughly the same: the math is easy, the words come quickly, the pencil does what you ask of it, a couple of teachers think you are “bright but difficult,” but the kids who matter think your haircut is shitty, your clothes are shitty, everything about you is shitty, and they want know if you are a boy or a girl—and maybe you’d like to know, too. Besides, you don’t even disagree with them: yes, your mom’s home haircuts suck, yes,  you steal all your ill-fitting shirts and baggy jeans from WalMart, yes, you often smell like stale cigarette smoke, and yes, aside from being the smartest—no, second smartest—kid in school you usually fuck things up when you open your mouth.

The kids who matter call the boy who is better than you in math class the same names they call you, but they do it because he’s supposed to be one of them. When you stare at him, with his tucked in white shirt and split lip one day, and unscuffed Nikes and bruise-braceleted wrist on the next, and the look on his face by Friday like his body is empty—all skeleton no meat, it makes you feel like your own empty teeth are cracking under pressure. You want him to hit them back. You want to hit them back for him. You pinch yourself in soft places instead of screaming at him—upper arm, inner thigh, center palm. You watch him work through the problems on the whiteboard, same as you, and the worksheet packets handed back like a stack of hymnals, same as you, his small face still and solemn as a church. By the end of class you try to hate him for becoming a bruise on your inner arm. Looking at him so much, god it makes you want to bite him, you want to put his whole fist and forearm in your mouth and gnaw it like a dog bone, god you want to be his boyfriend so bad, and you don’t know why that makes you cry, right there in class, but you do, and when he bares his teeth at the kids laughing at you, at the one who shoves you down, when you are looking up at him from the floor, at his small and open hand, you know that you will never ever be able to stop thinking about him now.