“Hey, did you know that people who often take long, hot showers are lonely?”
He sits on the bed by the large windows, watches with silent eyes as the sky pours down tears and pains. The entire human race is reduced to red and yellow neon lights. He turns the pages of the book, not necessarily reading them, but it seems like he can feel their loneliness. It is oozing out from his bony fingers and the blue veins on his thin wrist. His hair covers half of his face. My eternal anguish is not knowing what is in those eyes, so dark with sadness and so unfathomable with fears. Every time I gaze into that darkness, I always wonder, Lord, have mercy on me. But Lord never has it.
“Did you know that people only take hot showers to mimic the warmth of human skin?”
His finger lingers on the corner of a specific page. I cannot make out the lines and the words, but I don’t need to feed into my curiosity and peek because as soon as he catches my eyes, he reads out loud:
“Did you really love the city? Or did you just pretend?”
“So it says,” I whisper as I lay on my side, hand in his hand, head on his lap.
“So he says,” he laughs, turns to another page, “Leonard Cohen, never gets old.”
“So did you really love the city?” I fiddle with his fingers, twist them, bring them closer to my lips, and place butterfly kisses on his fingertip, “Did you?” I turn my eyes up to catch his in a sweet embrace.
“Do you think I did?” He leans in closer, and I can smell the powdery fragrance on his hair, “Or do you think I just pretend?”
“No one can pretend that long.”
“Really? No one?”
“No one.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
He laughs. The sound rings on my ears like silver spoons clanking on glasses, “Honey, do you know the lonely race?”
“The lonely race?”
“The race where people are soft-boiled eggs with scars and bruises all over. You gather them up and they are just a heap of longing and solitude. A beautiful mess. Bleeding and living. The race where people take long, hot showers because they want to feel the warmth of human skin.”
“And are you a part of that race?”
“That depends. Are you?”
He leaves a soft kiss on my forehead as I look at him with bewilderment and completely held hostage by his beauty. Relentlessly hurt by the serene sadness. Captivated by his firm profile reflected on the windows, wondering if he, too, would disappear when the first step of spring comes by. And at that singular moment, amidst the thousand molecules and evolutions within billions and billions of years, I get a painful premonition that no matter how much I try, he will never fall in love with the city. No one ever will.
“I want a kiss,” he says and plays with my fingers the way a lazy cat would. His eyes stare fixedly at the page. The neon signs underneath keep flashing, crying out for the solitude of humanity because the human race has lost that ability since the Babel Tower was built on lands where they don’t belong.
Opposite us, a window silently lights up. Someone just returned home from a long trip. Perhaps they will take a long, hot, steamy shower. They belong to the lonely race, and all the lonely race wants from God is a human’s embrace.
“I want a kiss,” he says.
“You are persistent.”
“I am not persistent. I long for it.”
“For a kiss?” I gently place butterfly kisses on his fingertips.
“For a kiss.”
He smiles indulgently and shakes my fingers off, with no force at all. He knows I won’t let go and because he knows it so well, he is always the one to let go first. I watch as his hair falls. His eyelashes spread into a thin, quivering black veil, half hiding the twinkle in his eyes, half hiding the empty void of his existence. I am no believer and he is no godly being who needs worshiping. But in that split second, when he tucks his hair mindlessly away, when the long eyelashes dance gently under the shadow of the moonlight, I pray that God will have mercy on me and throw my whole existence into his warm bosom.
“Me, I long for love and light. But must it come so cruel, must it come so bright?”
“Isn’t that a Leonard Cohen song?”
“You know I only listen to Leonard Cohen nowadays.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you switch it up.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know – to something that would make you happier?”
“But I don’t feel sad.”
“Not feeling sad does not equal happiness.”
“And you think you’d know that?”
“I know,” I stroke his hair and find an escape route to the black jewels that pull me in and lean in closer, my forehead to his, “I always know.”
I place gentle kisses on his lips, the next one with a stronger force than the last. I want to get to that deepest part of his soul. I want to cross the Styx River and bring him a human heart. I want to see it beating in my hands and forever protect it before the thunder and roars of the ancient Gods. I want to ask his soul whether he is a part of the lonely race and whether the lonely race is incapable of love.
His smile returns the favor. As a smile is not what I am looking for, I keep on pushing. He pulls away laughing. His hands form a barricade in front of his chest, his hair falls on the pillow as he slips from my embrace. The dark galaxy on a rainy day, with no stars of hope and no stars of existence. I think to myself, if there were ever a mark to identify the lonely race, this must be it. I catch him by the waist, then pull him slowly back to my chest. He punches jokingly at me with one hand, his book in the other. He pushes me back with jocularity. As he comes to the realization that I am not in any mood for a joke, he looks up. Those black jewels will be the end of me. It reminds me too much of my mom’s black porcelain bowls in the rain. I can still see the raindrops glisten on the edge of the bowl, reflecting the darkness of the hard-boiled porcelain and the rainbow. A magical creation.
“Okay, fine, a kiss. Is that what you want?” He laughs, and bestows a kiss on my lips. His breath falls on my face. His hair tickles my skin. I can taste his peach-flavored lip balm and at once, I am reminded of the reason I love the taste of ripening peaches.
I inhale and bury my head in his neck. A faint smell of cardamom and burnt cedar wood overwhelms me and I can’t help but think that this is what I had longed for all those billions of years ago when I was one of the first humans to walk on this immense living ball of loneliness. Now I can see why people love staying in the hot shower. I, too, never want to leave this warmth. I can feel the thin layer of skin quiver under my lips and the pulse of his vein palpitates to celebrate the mortals’ existence. With each pulse, I lay down a kiss. He is no longer laughing and his heavy breathing teethers on my mind like the wolf’s fangs. I collapse on his chest; my head lies on his heart. He strokes my hair in a slow and mindless motion as if he is still contemplating what all of that was about. I count the lights on the windows opposite me. A lot of people are coming home. The life twenty stories below is ever bustling. I walk back on the road that all humans need to walk to find the origin of the lonely race. I find myself sitting in a cave, billions of years ago, staring at the shining dots in the sky, none are shining for me.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because the stars are dying.”
“But that’s the whole point. People only see their beauty when they are dying,” he says. We both stay silent and listen to the still night.
“That’s the origin of the lonely race.”
