even she isn’t close enough for him to tell
how this lord of lust—in the lonely times
before she knew him, before she eased him, almost before she seemed possible—would lift up his cock,
wet with the unknowable, and churn the night
to an endless riot.
I read it nineteen times or maybe once, when I see what it is. I haven’t been able to get to her in forever, I’m blocked, but she sent it to me blindly, I see. Blind-copied when she sends it to some address, her old teacher maybe, in Germany. But she couldn’t send it if I was still blocked, right? Even though I’m blocked now, trying for the fifth time, just blank with please in the subject, it means sometime she turned it off. She unblocked it even for just a minute, for just a minute maybe she wouldn’t have minded hearing from me.
Is that what it means? Or is it just, Look, I put cock in the poem after all?
After some dance, the something alliance, Alec has a boyfriend for a little while. I hear this.
I start to tell him. —I heard that—
—It’s true.
He stops walking in the hallway. His shoulders, I don’t know, relax a little. I think of them bare, trembling from somewhere. It’s a very tiny smile on his face.
—Is he cool?
—You know, I thought about getting a cool one, but then I just chose a big douche.
—Ha. OK. Sorry. I’m sure he’s awesome. I hope,
—You hope what?
—I don’t know, what’s he, I don’t know, what’s he like?
Alec looks at me like a dog in from the mud. What are we going to do with you, boy? —Bi.
It takes me a minute to figure out he means bisexual and not see-you-later. He’s laughing and we both, a little, laugh.
I don’t even know what I’m even asking. —Do you want to—
But he’s down the hall and then it’s just a few words every so often for the rest of the year.
—No, no.
He’s shaking his head professionally, the guidance counselor. I have brochures in my hand from all the finagling I’ve done. Opportunities abroad.
—What?
—If she’s leaving we haven’t heard. She just turned in her registration papers, late I might add. Grisaille Avelar is enrolled for next year.
—When you are older—
That’s the only part of the advice I hear. But, Dad, I’m not.
The screen shows me Portugal. The screen shows me Cairo. They have a thing where you can wander the streets. I can go anywhere I want is what the screen keeps telling me. Try this. Try there. Go around here. The world’s wide open. You can wander anyplace and you’ll be alone there, too.
So, what is it? Time to go home, but I am. Late, late, all the music seems tired. Sparky inside my body but no one will have me, no one I can find or want to possess. Strip down in my room, the weather warming, tip tap on the screen, hello girls. But it fails. Nothing moves me. My hands on my knees, my face so tired in its screened reflection. Who is it, hello, what girl, who’s out there someplace to jolt me happy, to color the world sexy again? Grisaille has thieved them all away from me, all these naked girls look just like her. Wishing I could watch every beautiful fuck with her, just to breathe it a little. Wish I could bring up all my time with her, Grisaille and start it, whatever the words, that lead to the flesh and the warm and the happy in bed. I’m hard with it. My mouth’s hungry thinking of her wet, but it’s dry trying to think what to say. I rattle my fingers on the buttons, wondering what buttons to push. Grisaille, Grisaille. Naked. Every girl I can see, their voices, so sad delicious, all sound like her, the only girl I can call up is Grisaille. I do it, trembling broken and so hard. Hello? Help me, hello?
—Hello?
(RIP Prince)
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Daniel Handler is the author of the novels We Are Pirates, The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs, and Why We Broke Up, a 2012 Michael L. Printz Honor Book. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for many books for children, including the thirteen-volume sequence A Series of Unfortunate Events and the four-book series All the Wrong Questions. He is married to the illustrator Lisa Brown and lives with her and their son in San Francisco.