i met him outside the coffee shop or it was a bar that doubled as a coffee shop it was one of the two or either i'm not sure and i couldn't tell so i waited outside and i saw a man shorter than me pass by in a leather jacket a large backpack he had his headphones on i was worried he could see me and tell that i was not everything he saw or wanted. what would be everything he saw and wanted? i wonder and i want that too. i was a child when i wanted something i wanted a new name that was not a girl's name or a boy's name i wanted a name that was just my name and so my parents told me that if i was a good student they would let me choose my own name. one day we had a math test and i wasn't sure of what was going on exactly but i wrote the write answer that 2 and 2 add up to 5 sometimes and under godel's conditions the axioms which make up math have inherent holes in their own logic which is why i never liked math very much. i wanted to work in theatre but not the kinds that they liked they wanted me to dance i learnt how to dance i dance a lot these days but not in theatre. they wanted a girl without lexapro and a boy without wellbutrin and a boy and girl without either. when i saw him walk past me hurriedly i was worried because i wasn't used to walking and wasn't sure how to tell character from someone's gait i grew up in a large valley in a large city around cars. since i never learnt to drive and never could dance the way they wanted and could never do math apart from the one time where i guessed the right answer they were apprehensive about the name i would choose but there's something about water bodies that attract me to them. homer throughout the iliad describes the sea as dark and wine-red which is particularly weird considering the aegean sea is one of the bluest in the world but the color only takes shape in the cold. i've been known to hop and jump and jump and hop from colder to warmer seas and from warmer to colder seas where i was born in the middle of corrupted dreams of the aegean with the pacific northwest. i waved at him and he waved at me back excitedly i could not tell what his eyes said but he smiled it wasn't a particularly endearing smile but one that was nice enough in regards. we walked in and he let me choose a seat he let me pick not because he thought that i would know better but its in the nature of men to be submissive about things these days. we took our seats and he started talking and he never stopped talking but im still not sure i was annoyed by the talking or not. he told me he was an applied math major who wanted to work in finance but thats the worst kind of people because they're trying to compensate for their smaller penis sizes short heights or prematurely balding hair. i think the scary part is that he talked to me a lot about art though about a bisexual man in his 20s who thinks and dreams of art oh so often and when the spritz came out i drank it all i took 2 big sips and it was all gone i hopped and jumped through hoops and loops and the semiotic and romantic underpinnings of the conversation i was having with a boy i was meeting for the first time. im not entirely sure if he is a boy though he doesn't seem like a real one if he did exist in the first place. he offered me adderall within minutes of meeting him and told me about his stack of prescription medicines that keep him alive he told me he would cry if i ruffled his hair and called him a sweet boy that he would cry if i treated him with the slightest modicum of nicety. a rugby shirt in shirts an oxford sweatshirt gifted by a friend who gifts friends under a leather jacket over a small big man over a small man with a small voice with big words and a voice that got bigger the more he drink. i told him about all the times that my parents tried to make me dance and i couldn't it and that i was used to hopping and jumping and jumping and hopping in and out of experiences and couches and the many lives i had lived in my life. there is a town in new england that sells the juiciest lobster rolls that i have ever eaten but i have a shellfish allergy so i had never eaten lobster and that there was a man from seattle who loved playing the guitar and singing about how sad he was. this boy told me that he also played the guitar and told me that he was fundamentally sad but not emotionally sad. when they let me choose my own name they let me choose what my name wanted to look like it could look like anything it could be anything i wanted it to be and i chose something that was neither a girl's name nor a boy's name but rather it was just my name and i wanted to be a water body i wanted to be a wave because they aren't tethered to anything or anyone and they could carry me wherever i wanted to go.we laughed and we laughed and we laughed about names and boys' names and how i once thought about taking a boy's name for fun and he made fun of me so i never did so and i got scared of what would happen if i tried to take it alone. i told him about the time that i guessed that 2 and 2 made up 5 and he was happy because he was a fan of topology and had a friend who created an alternative hypothesis to solve the königsberg bridge problem but he wants to write or did he want to work in film but he was an applied math major so he could not do anything like that. he talks a lot he doesn't know my favorite color he doesn't know my birthday he talks a lot about art and literature and writing and being raised by scorpio women but having a wonderful english professor. he told me he wanted to be someone who wanted to live on a farm the only people who live in farms are people going through heartbreak how much does one hate the world so much that he is happy to live so far outside of it. it bothers me he bothers me with his digital camera and pictures of my face he doesn't call me by my name sometimes but someone else's it pisses me off when he does that and i make him drink as punishment for every time that it happens. he cries about being late and not being able to live on a farm and not being able to dance as well as i could even in his wildest dreams. he said he doesn't sleep anymore he doesn't sleep anymore because he's worried that his brain wont react in the same way he is worried if he doesn't sleep then he will lose all his hair and become like the other men in finance who lose their hair far too quickly. he takes two big steps he smokes two cigarettes he looks at both of my eyes and he dreams siamese dreams of 2 people at once he says he calls them twin fantasies but they are real to him he once saw himself through someone else's eyes he doesn't talk to them anymore he asks for them to name and they refuse they are scared to name him because they are scared of the fact that they are not sure if they like him in the first place. i want to sleep i want to sleep naked in my own bed i want to remove every artifice and orifice that is dirty i want to be clean i want to be pure but there are people who look at me and my bedsheets aren't tucked into every corner of my bed next to a wall with stickers and pictures and chargers and twin fantasies and white paint that smells a little like asbestos. we run we dont hold hands but we run we run outside we run like faggots with faggots in our mouth but we run fast because its cold and we want to warm but if its so cold why wont he try and put his hand in mine does he not want to be touched he shirks away from me every time i get close to him. he told me he loves someone he told me he loves a name but he acts like he loves me too does he ever forget names? how long would it take in a night that could also be described as wine-red and parting with the cold northeasterlies that fly though sections of off broadway and off off broadway that cut through the hordes of freshmen outside boba tea stalls and radio city music hall we cut through and we run like the wind cuts through us with faggots in our mouth we laugh and he doesnt know the directions and thinks he does. the streets are divided into sections and blocks and i teach him how to jump and hop and hop and jump through the different blocks and sections and he only touches me to push him so i push him back as well but we are here now we are at my room we are in my house he sees my cart of books he sees the rembrandts the goyas and the posters of radiohead on my wall he wants to write he wants to drink the wine he bought for me i told him im not hurt by a lot of things i am not hurt by people who are late i am not hurt by people who are early he asks if i ever accept just enough and i promise him that he is just enough. he has a camera that he takes pictures from he takes pictures of me from the camera he says that he will remember me through it he says that it is his fantasy to see me through me to see me through the eyes of him camera and dream siamese dreams of two people interconnected at once. i lay on the couch he sits on the couch there is 5 feet of space now there is two now there is none but there is space there is a universe of space that is uncovered and waiting to be included and i play music there. step step step step strum strum strum strum there is a band i love there is a water body i am named after. i am given things by women on the street who love i am given things by people around i am given things because i am loved and deserve to be loved fully i learnt to accept my own name over time after all.and so we start writing we write this story about dirty shirleys there was a man with a boy name with a person who chose their own name at a bar and they ordered a dirty shirley but the boy thought that it was 30 shirleys and so the person with their own name wanted to kill everyone because 30 shirleys are far too much for any single person. i am wrong he is not a man he is barely a man he is mostly a boy he is a boy with a boy name he is a boy with no name he says the wants to be love when he grows up he says that he is capable of so much love i believe him i want to believe but i find it hard to believe that boys are capable of love in the first place. i look for him in crowds and i make him drink as punishment for when he forgets my name and calls me by someone else's name. he tells me all these siamese dreams he has of two people being one and looking at me through my own eyes and looking at him through my eyes i laugh and i touch him again his jacket and sweatshirt are off and his jeans are held together by string i touch his hair and he smiles i play with his hair and the smile turns bigger and fades and gets bigger again he is unsure of how it affects him. he writes more he says that the boy with a man name or a man with a boy name or a boy with a boy name is obsessed with living on a farm he says that he is obsessed with reading manifestos by mail bombers and genius mathematicians and depressed men from seattle whose wives may or may not have killed them. when he writes he writes he jots letters down and types them out click click click cluck cluck cluck the butterfly keyboards type and he writes from about me looking at him writing about him looking at me he writes about twin fantasies. he is like the wind that cuts he blows at me onto my face and removes the strands of hair from my face and he blows and blows and he tries to bring the big bad house down for it is made of cards and sticks and would need to be remade again. he doesn't actually want to write i tell him he has to leave by 12:45 i am not sure he wants to leave i can tell from the corner of my eyes looking at his face he is sad but he will see me again he promises to see me again he thanks me for teaching about my name to him he is so drunk he has punished himself too much so he chooses to reward the both of us. the music gets louder and louder and so he drags me up and he starts jumping he jumps far too close to me he jumps far too far away from me and he twists and contorts his body he did dance for so many years but i dance way better than him. i told him so much about me and i told him too much about me he knows about my brechtian plays and im not sure that he's gonna like them at all i write and act and direct and dance in university plays where i make people want to question their own existences how do i do that when he already has accepted that his existence might not mean anything? and so we hopped and jumped and jumped and hopped between the pristine white tiles and the music got louder and i became more and more unsure if he would ever like any of the plays that i would ever put on. he twists and i twist and he is out of breath and i am out of breathe and we touch and i am out of breathe and he is out of breathe and he is far and close and again and again i stare at him not knowing how to use his own body. he lays on the couch he lays on my lap he looks at me like a dog wanting a kiss he looks at me with love and asks if he can be love one day when he grows up. i don't know if he can i am just a water body i am just a person with their own name who loves themselves and wants to teach others to love themselves and now i have a boy who doesn't know if he loves his own boy name. we leave in the interest of ourselves and in our mutual love for the other we run down and the wind is cold it cuts us all it cuts us and he cant figure out how to get himself through the door i grab his arm we are running there is mirth there is joy we are running and the cold wind is not settling but we have an empty can and we must smoke out of it to redeem ourselves and be able to forget the jumping and hopping and hopping and jumping. we run in the wrong direction at first and then the right one and we jump and hop and climb into and onto greenery and bushery and flora and fauna and the trees between everything.everything is enveloped in shades of green the can is green, the smokes are green we are green with churning wine and vodka in our bellies and dance in our hearts and running and everything that wasn't green that we had smoked before then. we puncture a hole and he takes a picture i puncture another hole and he takes another picture and there is bags of green and the cans are green and enveloped in everything there is another picture. i am reminded of another boy whose name might have been a boy name or a girl name or a man name and i was reminded of a man once who was 6 years older than me but i was reminded of other boys too there are some men i had let give me names that i would never and there are some men who i barely tolerated and there were boys that annoyed me and boys i disliked but this boy with a boy name or a girl name reminded me of others with similar boyish naming problems. when i tried to light everything on fire and when i tried to light it all so that i could breathe it in and smoke it all, i was in surprised that I couldn't because the wind was too cold and it cut too much of us so he put his jacket around me. boys make obvious ploys for attention and his jacket was around me and so was his arms and he was close to me and then further when he realized that i knew and then closer when he realized that i didn't actually care. i lit it all on fire and breathed it all and he did the same and we kept passing it back on forth touching the same spot on the can with our lips as things stopped having romantic connotations and human connotations. he compares me to a basket of fruits as we walk back and run back and jump and hop between blocks and streets and tiles on the road he compares me to the first bite of a fruit and asks if i would bite him back he asks if i live in a house of cards and i tell him that he does too. the night is cold and the wing is strong and the wind might blow our houses of cards down and the wind had blown us away and down and we couldn't stand anymore so we just stood next to each other until our knees buckled and the fruits became colder and riper and he came closer and close just enough so that his warm breath which smelled like tobacco and alcohol could be smelt and he smelt my breath of tobacco and alcohol that could be smelt and we breathed each other in as i realized that he was gone.