We Stand By Him
We stand by him—this fay, pretty boy come from a dream to release us from the oppression we couldn't see.
We stand by him—this thing that we all once tried to categorize, to rationalize, failed; his was a path beyond us.
The air tastes like doom. The sand feels like powdered scorpion venom. There are a hundred of us, a thousand of us, and I've stopped counting even as more come. We are together, and that's what matters, and he brought us together, this Otherworld beauty. One line connecting countless spots on this devastated map.
This scorched earth doesn't feel like earth. It stopped being earth many decades ago, when a handful of people said the word “Fire." The standing strong swooped in and tightened their grip, rising, rising like something dark and filthy from the deepest abysses.
We stand by him—love and kindness are the drugs we needed, and he has been administering them since he came to us from the Somewhere.
Somewhere where there are fairies and spirits and eternal twilight. Somewhere that is warm but not hot, that is sweet but not sickly. Somewhere nice.
We stand by him—and there is no greater family.
They are coming. We see the armored personnel carriers as they roll up, crushing dunes and the things that might have lived in them. We hear the black helicopters before their beetle-black skin shimmers in the noon-day sunlight before us. They bear their insignias and ranks and titles like a marching band of assholes, and where once we were afraid we are now angry. They appear. We snarl.
They are here—there are too many. Much too much for us, and you know what? We don't care. Our presence shows them that they are not infallible, ineffable, incapable of failure. We are their failure, and we won't go away. They have weapons; we have weapons, too. I check to make sure all chambers are loaded, the names of lovers scratched into the barrel.
Five to one, one in five, and I visualize a five-pointed star above us, a circle to hold in and protect.
And he stands with us—he strides across the long barrel of his flagship tank, catwalk strut into the battle zone. He is wearing a pink pleated skirt designed to get caught on the wind and ripple to give hell to Tantalus. Panties flash, and we need no other flag. His black shirt is like raveneyes, two sizes too small, leaving bare a patch of his sweet soft skin, and his black bomber jacket is even smaller, like a second skin. His hair like chestnut smoke trailing in a short trestle behind him, rock-turned-to-air. We are all jealous of those black knee-high boots designed to dance on skulls, forever in contact with his young flesh. I desire him as I desire the universe.
He wears no defenses on his sleeves, no masks upon his face. What you see of him is what you get, and he never turns himself off for anything.
And he stands with us—his tears have long since washed away his makeup. Within those glistening eyes is something we have forgotten, something we lust for and want and need and hunger for, something we had destroyed long ago. His firm lips pout, but it is not a coy look; it is resoluteness. His face does not harden at what is to come, it just brightens as sunlight spears him.
When he shouts, we are together, and the infused roar of our voices and gunfire is a most thunderous, wondrous thing.
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