Jonathan C. Parrish

They call them cowboys but they are not so much about cows as they are horses. Or bulls. When I look at Trent all I see is bull—muscle and sinew and an imposing presence that refuses to be ignored, like an incessantly quacking duck in a sound-proof booth. Every time he walks past me I can’t help inhaling to try and catch his scent. A wake of leather, heated by the sun and his body, rewards me almost every time.

I spend parts of my day moving around so I can watch him surreptitiously, entranced by the shape of his thighs and the way they flex visibly under his jeans as he moves, even when he’s just standing. I fixate like that a lot now—just looking at the curve of a single limb, how a lock of hair falls or the way light catches a nose in profile. The images fix in my mind, you know, for later.

I tried talking about what I saw when I looked at the world, once. When I was twelve. Greg told me about his fantasy where he caught a burglar and extracted favours from her in exchange for silence. His story made no sense to me. I told him about a single patch of hair on Steve’s arm that caught my eye one day at the town pool, the way the air smelled of chlorine and the water cast un-shadows on the walls.

He didn’t hang out with me after that, but he and his new friends would often find me and call me faggot and show me what they thought of the inside of my head.

I didn’t talk about what I thought about anymore, kept the pieces of colour and light and shape and texture aside—part of me but fusing in their own space. I couldn’t write them down, no mere words could do them justice and there was no real way of expressing that amalgamation of sense. And sure as hell not to the people I shared these streets with.

It’s not just people parts. It’s horse and goat, cat and chicken. It’s grass and flower and root. It’s brick and wood and faded paint. That said, it’s mostly bull and man. The twisting of parts, the intertwining of sinew and branch, sun halos on the fine fuzz of a rear haunch. Late afternoon heat, and the smell of leather and hay and dung.

I don’t have to worry about ever confessing anything inadvertently to Trent, don’t have to worry about my stable job because I can’t articulate my ideal. It’s not him, it’s the cow/boy bull/man turning itself inside out that stops me. Stops me where I stand, every time.

 

 

Y is for Yahoo