So I met a boy.

And I like this boy.

But here’s the thing: he’s nice.

 

Photo by Bogdan Suditu

I don’t want a nice boy. I want a real boy. I want a full boy. I want a boy who knows his depths, who is in touch with the part of him that would rape and pillage and kill. Not that I condone any of those things – in fact I actively work to STOP childhood sexual abuse – but I also recognize that those feelings are a part of human nature. They are there and when they’re beaten down, there’s a part of the human spirit that is lost. No, not lost. Suppressed. A source of power that is dampened, cordoned off, denied. And that’s both damaging and dangerous, because that carnal lust, that dark vengeful desire, is real and a part of our whole fullness – especially men.

I can feel the two of us falling into the nicey-nice dance, and it kills me. I get kind of shy and sweet around him and while there’s definitely a part of me that is sweet, there’s also a part of me that just wants to fuck. There’s a part of me that’s a straight-up, undeniable bitch. There’s a part of me that’s judge-y and hateful and vengeful and mean. And that part feeds the other part; they are the two sides that create the oneness, the wholeness born of owning all parts.

But how do I tell him that? How do I tell him that I lose energy and faith in the process and attraction and desire when we’re playing nice? I don’t know how to tell him that it’s a turn-off. I don’t know how to say it in regular words, in the non-threatening nice-speak that we’re getting so skilled at holding in our fists like so much cotton candy.

What I want to say is, I don’t want you nice. I want to feel your aliveness. I want to feel your rage.

It’s not something you can fake.

So I wrote him a poem. I haven’t shared it with him yet.

 

To the Boy on the Shifting Sands

You’ll never know how much I wanted you. You’ll never know how much I craved your essence and thought of you in those moments when dusk wants to kill dawn, when the raw nature of cherished bullying tactics and the ugly of ugliness comes out, when I saw you rage and scream and fight your inner nature that was always the dragon you sought to destroy fight fire and flame but formed the power cord of your power.

If you destroy it, they shall not come. They shall not beat down the gates to escape you, they shall not pour forth from the deluge that is your spine crackling along the shores of the running that you sprint when you throw your body hurtling through space when you careen over curves and primally groan, groaning and heaving to cleave the wind in two and beach out the essence of your primary face, the face you never wanted to half that only represents a part of you that has become all of you in certain moments that I hate.

I hate when you’re not everything to me.

Holding the everything at once is what I crave, the wanting and knowing and feeling and hating all at the same time, when you are fucking and loyal and free and tethered and thrashing and crashing into the forked beingness that has always been shrouded as long as it has been resisted and avoided.

There is space in you that is dying to be sought.

You ARE the wind and the essence and you know that but you are also the fire and the shadow and the destruction and the rape of existence. You are all these things you are Janus you are periodically aware and then it is stuffed and buried and pushed and downed and flayed, slated to that deep revolting mess that hides welling in you.

But that is what I want from you. I want it all or nothing.

Find it, and I will give you everything.