During the time Meaghan and I were inside the wine bar, it had turned cold. I’d consumed two glasses of white and she’d had Cabernet. It was too loud to talk. And the waitress mostly forgot about us. Too young and unnoticed, we drank and were quiet with each other, comfortable in our sadnesses.
The wind blew freely across Boston Common, the lamps dotting the paths bright as we walked down Tremont Street.
“I’m freezing and need some food!” Meaghan said, the steam of her breath rising above the cobblestone.
“But, the movie—“ We were going to see Call Me by Your Name the first night it showed in Boston.
“We have time, and you already got the tickets online!” My twin sister’s arms were crossed on her chest tightly. “I should have brought my jacket. I really didn’t think it would be this cold. I always forget about how cold it ends up getting.” It was a few days before our shared Christmas Eve birthday. The residual snow, gaslit lamps and cobblestone streets of Boston heightened the seasonal chill.
Her face formed that taut expression I always called her I’m-gonna-beat-you-up face. We laughed and grabbed some pizza and garlic knots.
*
We left home at seventeen. We graduated from the high school outside Charlotte, North Carolina in January because our stepmother wanted us out of the house and her life as soon as possible. The options for us were a federal service academy or enlistment. We didn’t have much of a say, these decisions were made for us. For me, wispy boychild who my parents saw as “redeemable” and therefore still somewhat supported, the process of applying to and gaining admittance to the US Merchant Marine Academy was a possibility.
They did not think the same of Meaghan, calling her “a dumb girl” when she messed up her academy applications. She was forced to enlist in the Coast Guard. Seventeen-year-old girl, alone. She was strong willed and balked against authority. She stood out, her loud eyes and smirking mouth. She was too powerful.
Meaghan was delighted to escape and had been counting down the days. All day, every day until we could get out we were both in our alarmed rooms with the doors shut – a magnetic sensor installed on the top of the door frame detected when the portal opened, triggering a chime that echoed throughout the house. My sister would sneak under the pretense of going to the bathroom, lower her face to the carpet outside my room and whisper under the door crack to me: one more month, three more weeks, fifteen days, single digits until she was out. No touching, only barely audible words and underbreath laughter.
I couldn’t imagine the house without her. This world was all we knew, or I did. She always knew it wasn’t real, that authority and the constraints I fell towards fantasizing the perfect wife and family I’d have in the distant future down to each excruciating detail, but she always knew a real life existed and she ran towards it.
It was March when she left for bootcamp. I was sitting at the end of a hallway staring at the wall, a unique punishment for being too untrustworthy to sit in the dark of my empty bedroom during the day. Imagine what happens inside gated communities behind closed doors, even in homes owned by a retired cop and special education teacher! I had nothing but my body and when I used it, I was called a devious animal. It was made clear that nothing about me was natural, but soon I would be gone.
“You’re never going to see her again,” my stepmother said. Remembering this now, it doesn’t make any sense for her to say such a cruel thing to me about my sister, a child.
I was never going to see her again. But I was a child and I believed her.
I don’t remember if I was allowed to get up to give her a hug. Nobody in the house spoke about my sister after. Throughout the days the light changed slowly but evenly. I didn’t think of anything but static, my fantasy future life with my imaginary friends, wife, job, kids.. I remembered her by counting down each night to my own departure for the Academy in July.
**
Elio was seventeen and he cried :: because of a man. A dream we never had, idyllic Italian summers :: calm reflecting pools. The secret is nobody’s life is that perfect :: cruel ponds, rapids, ocean waves. Inside of :: between us. We love making men cry, our secret power :: small revenges. Seventeen :: seventeen :: seventeen.
(we are never alone)
People ask if we have twinspeak. I have a vague memory of Mom telling us :: did we have it? Did you understand me when I snarled :: even then I didn’t have the language to say :: the violence of the unspoken. Our twinspeak is built out of cold water and ice :: the frozen layers of a forcefully stilled river.
***
A. enjoyed helping. Helping boys. Boys he thought were gay but confused. Younger boys with wide eyes and smooth faces.
I was the third or fourth member of the crew team he had “helped” during his tenure as the captain. J., C., Me. Someone else. I knew it wasn’t me or my body he wanted when there were still two feet between us on the quilted bed. I couldn’t focus on the small television. Winona Ryder’s voice mixed with my brain static inside of me, sloshing.
I felt drawn to him and his power. I moved towards him, that pulsing and his body. Perhaps some decisions we make were always inevitable. Maybe they’re made for us.
**
J. asked me to become the novice coxswain because I was the smallest Plebe in First Company. He had wandered the halls during morning inspection when we all stood outside our doors at attention or parade rest, depending on who had walked through the doorway from the ladderwell: Attention On Deck was called for officers like the Company or Platoon Commanders.
J., however, was only one year ahead of us. It seemed like he was so much older and more important, but maybe that was because he had to shave every day or because the difference between being nobody or being somebody was indefinable — a year in school, a body that moved a certain way, an attitude or way of looking across the water. He came over and told us to relax a bit.
“You, what’s your name?” and he pointed at me. I had no idea who he was but I figured it mattered. My wide eyes. “You’re the perfect size.”
***
The first poem I remember writing was about my twin sister and water. She has always been stronger than me. In my memory, she wandered into the pond where our father took us to feed the ducks. In the poem, her bright face shone under afternoon sun with the mallard’s green wings. The white reflection of the water rippled from her legs, her smallness failed to pull her foot from the mud, the world disappeared her shoe. Meaghan’s foot absorbed the dirt in a soaking wet sock. The ducks swam away from the violence of the water taking from her. The ripples spread and we all laughed about it. The two of us and our father laughed.
What happens when we never call things what they are? Nothing to see, it’s just water moving. The rapids, white foam and static. A pond, a river. Ripples, currents.
*****
The day after we saw Call Me By Your Name we did not talk about our feelings. We moved away from the pond years ago and there’s no going back. We used to fight every time we saw each other and it always felt like the end of the world; just being present with each other dredged up body memories we couldn’t hold with each other, causing us to erupt. On the way home from the movie, she drove fast and reckless away from Boston, cutting across multiple lanes at once well above the speed limit. We didn’t have to speak or trigger each other into a fight again. We knew how the water works to smooth over everything.
We did have to go back into the city the next day, her for school and me to amble around in the name of art, nostalgia, shame. When all we ever knew was the constant struggle to keep both our heads above water we couldn’t stay mad about misunderstanding. I went by the Charles River to think melodramatically while listening to a Spotify playlist based on the movie soundtrack.
I stood at the section between the River Street and Western Avenue Bridges for a few moments. Every year I was at the Academy, I came to Boston with the crew team for the Head of the Charles Regatta. This was always the easiest part of the race for me because the river is wide, multiple arches are safe to pass through, it’s early enough in the race for the crew to be easily focused, and the water is as still as it can be. My crew was in my control, the oars slicing were in my control, that wildly turning river was tame. I’d call a power ten. Coming up on the stern—even with—passing—pulling ahead.
Today there were no boats; too late in the morning and too cold to row outside. The water was as still as ever although uncontrollable currents slid just below the surface. I thought about how strong my sister was and started crying as the piano notes of Une Barque Sur L’ocean opened towards waves. There weren’t even birds, and I imagined being a swan rising above the surface with my long neck. Two swans, one above and one below the surface, taking turns at who gets to breathe or drown. It was a terrible day and the dead vegetation was ugly against the grey sky, so I was not at all pleased. And yet I couldn’t help luxuriating in the beauty of pain.
Then I turned away. It was so ridiculous – luxuriating in my vague emotions, fixating on the movie, standing like that next to a river, all of it – but I felt alive and I laughed at myself. Sometimes there don’t need to be words to explain being in a body. Sometimes, just being near water is enough.
***
The Head of the Charles is a coxswain’s race because of the river’s curves. It’s all in the steering: cutting the best lines in the water, passing the other boats at strategic times. There are six bridges and only one ideal arch in each. Passing through the wrong arch or misjudging the amount of time your shell needs to pass through, how much time you think and the other coxswains think it takes—it’s a game of power.
If I misjudged how much time it took for my crew to move their bodies, my body, the weight of their oars and fiberglass shell between here and there under the cement and brick, through the graffiti from BU and Harvard crews and the echoing snap of their oarlocks and my voice calling focus ten on timing one two the ratio three four that’s it five hear it six the echo seven together eight moving nine one more ten. If you get that timing wrong and there’s another boat under the bridge you just lost a whole minute. You just lost the race. Weigh Enough.
**
We ran into Boston Common with the garlic knots and Meaghan called Jason even though he wasn’t yet her boyfriend. I climbed a tree, laughing at her and myself looking down on her. Her voice was loud, coarse, throat-damaged gravelly and she laughed across the empty night of the park. Couples holding hands floated away from us. I was in one of the funks I have when I wish I felt joy but I only feel white noise.
I don’t know how Meaghan felt, but I think she was lonely because of her divorce, our birthday and Christmas. This time of year was always strange to us. It wasn’t snowing but it had the stillness of that falling. Some shadow people walked dogs that didn’t bark and floated away from us. When she felt bad my masculine twin acted strong. I laughed again because I was so unhappy and wanted the moment to mean as much as it could, but Meaghan’s voice was too loud. It distracted me from my desperate thoughts. I climbed down from the tree.
I couldn’t resist the Parkman Bandstand when I saw it. It was a pagoda decorated with white lights that caught my eye. I’ve always adored pagodas, the wooden beams and thatched roofs, the cracks in the deck planks. It was a place to fall in love. I fell dramatically on the tiles, hearing her talking on the phone, wanting to be alone and for this to be a moment in a poem — but life is not a poem. I was not alone. Meaghan laughed across the park. I took a snapchat story of the lights because I wanted to remember it forever.
**
Our memory :: the ocean, where the rivers end :: it was ruined, we were ruined :: the dark of a bedroom with the curtains drawn and the small volume of whispers :: our hands moving imperceptibly in sign language letters, spelling out each word :: sand on the floor and static, static :: your brown eyes and wide pupils :: the smell of water from the tap and our dry mouths
(if we’re ever separated, you know—)
the words spoken and unspoken :: our twinspeak in the stones :: nobody needs to know as long as we can open their mouths :: our currents and imperceptible finger movements :: ethereal words and cold night washing over :: you
(if we’re separated, if they separate us—)
you whispered in the dark and didn’t care if they heard you speaking
(—we will find each other.)
***
The coxswain resides in a position of power in the crew shell. In the four-man boat, he will sit tucked into the bow, his legs encased by fiberglass so just his head appears above the gunnel. Small in stature, hidden, slitted eyes darting down the course, he pulls the wires controlling the rudder of the boat. He sets the direction and decides what lines to cut in the river, demands more or less speed from the rowers, uses his voice to command them.
The rowers, lost in the physical stress of propelling the boat forward, find themselves entranced by him. His voice projected through a microphone and speakers. His being as he becomes during the race.
From the decisive push away from the dock, the coxswain becomes something other than a small person steering a boat. He becomes powerful, trance-inducing. The coxswain, in the adrenaline rush of other bodies, becomes a god.
****
After Call Me By Your Name ended, we poured out of the theater with the rush of people we didn’t know or care about on the escalator.
“I can’t help thinking of you.”
“But it isn’t me, that’s not my story or how things happened.”
“I know, but you deserved it. To be. To be loved like that. And those parents.”
“You did too.”
“No, no. But I had to do that for you—“
“It’s still not our story…”
“Joey, just let me have this. This one moment. Let this be mine for once. Everything has always been yours. Let this one moment be mine.”
Back in the cold, the grey snow on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street shined under the streetlights. We walked through the North End towards the Coast Guard base. The cobblestones and squat buildings. It felt like we were in Italy when I squinted and swayed. Meaghan was still drunk. She talked for a few minutes about misunderstandings, and I wanted to say something to heal her but I couldn’t. Things don’t mean the same to different people, even for us.
I said, “I know,” pressing my lips against my teeth.
*****
The night before my first Head of the Charles, D. invited me to his room. When I asked him, he took his shirt off and looked bemused, eyes downturned at me even from underneath my body. I was seventeen and drunk off the two screwdrivers he had given me. He was twenty-three. I came to his room in the Mariner’s House. Beetlejuice was on TV. I was enamored but unable to speak to him. D. laughed at how drunk I had gotten.
I didn’t know what to do with the ideas in my body when he pressed his mouth against mine, wet. I never much liked the taste of vodka. His tongue made me think of beef. It was dark, there was nothing else to do and I wanted. So badly, I wanted to be someone. Longing has no words and no realistic way to inhabit a breath. His breath was hot on my face and I didn’t like the way it stuck to my cheeks.
“That was my first kiss,” I whispered. I can’t remember what he said, but of course he knew.
“This is so strange.”
I put my hands in his underwear and just held his scrotum. We were on top of the covers, so he must have been cold. It didn’t occur to me whether he was erect or not. The skin was taut and I traced my fingers along the ghost ridges of him. I used to feel my own body that way when I was a child. The scrotum clinging to itself. He laughed, and when he tried to touch me, I giggled, then pushed him away. I was ticklish and didn’t know yet how to relax, how to let someone. How to give parts of me away.
“I just never thought that I was gay. Or could be. You know?”
I felt more like an observer than a true inhabitant of that body. The things I wanted from D. had nothing to do with our physical forms.
“Well, are you hard?”
I was. But what could that mean?
“Then you are.”
He made that much simple, and I liked being explained. Just being cold on top of the covers with him, I decided to believe him.
**
(we don’t have to say each other’s names. it’s not worth talking sometimes. there is no need for words. let’s just walk in silence, cold, drunk and alone together.)
*
Almost at the end of the race, the crew reaches the most difficult stretch: a long, uneventful stretch culminating in a 180 degree turn. The coxswain calls out the strokes, keeps the rowers engaged and focused, but they become tired. Coming into the apex of the turn, the rudder is not enough. At a crucial point he calls out five hard on starboard in two one, two and the force of the starboard oars against the water one turns the vessel imperceptibly two more than before three until the entire shell has turned four enough, he calls out even pressure.
The rowers focus together again, and the shell is propelled click over a few strokes click through the final bridge of the race, into the last stretch to the finishing line. Now, the race isn’t about power. It is about endurance. The coxswain, the port rowers, the starboard rowers come together. The finish line is reached whether they can control the vessel or not.
