35. VIRGINITY

I‘m telling Two that there are no accidents and we did what we had to do and we acted in self-defense and we are blameless, which doesn’t even matter because blame is rooted in the Judeo-Christian bullshit of shame.

Two doesn’t respond.

We’re in our apartment. We’re on my mattress with no box spring.

I reach out and hold her hand. She won’t meet my gaze. I tell her we could go to the police this very moment, and it’d be hard, but we’d come out okay because what we said was True.

Two speaks to her lap: “I had a Gift of Understanding.”

“What? When?”

“While that motherfucker…”

“It’s over with.”

“I saw you kill him.”

“It was self-defense. Any jury would believe that. Some homeless Juggalo raping you, after trying to kill me with a bottle?” “Before you did it.”

“Before what? What are you talking about?”

“When he thrust himself into me, I saw you rising from the ground. I saw you slit his throat. But my eyes were closed. Then the next thing I know, they’re both dead.”

I reach out and try to comfort Two. She’s rigid in my arms so I let go. I tell her that was what happened and the mind has a way of making fiction out of trauma and I tell her I’m sorry for everything.

“I saw the future,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“Why?”

“Because we really are Gods.”

“We already knew that,” I say.

“Maybe. I mean, I said it, but I didn’t believe it believe it. But it’s True.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Right, it’s behind us. No proof. Not like we have any connection to—”

“ That’s not what I mean,” Two says.

“Then what?”

“I mean we can do whatever the fuck we want.”

I’m thinking about One saying the same thing. I’m thinking about murder provoking the same mindset. I’m thinking about our rationales for doing unspeakable actions and I’m thinking about how One was so close to arriving at the One Truth and how I needed to see his failures to be open to it with Two.

“Because we’re living in Honesty,” I say.

“Because we’re all Gods, but we’re the only motherfuckers brave enough to shoulder this responsibility.”

Two finally looks up. Her eyes are pure but broken. She smiles a smile that isn’t hers. She reaches out her hand and cups my face. Then the other hand. She leans forward. I ready myself for her forehead, but it’s her lips. We kiss awkwardly until we forget ourselves and then our tongues are furious and calm and those of serpents. I’ve never been with a woman. I feel nervous and insecure and like my penis isn’t big enough. My hands are arthritic. I worry this will ruin everything. Two moans like she’s drowning. She takes off my shirt and traces each of my ribs with her tongue. Her nipples are puffy in my mouth and then they harden. Our hips rub in a painful way. Her neck arches and it’s vulnerable and alive and her body is warm to the touch. My fingers are colonialists along the Amazon. Her vagina is wet and I realize it’s blood from the rape and I think about AIDS and this being immoral and she tells me to fill her. Her body tastes like sleep. She winces. She tells me to go slow. I do. She tells me she loves me and I believe her. She rides me and presses her forehead to mine and I tell her I love her more than anything and she looks into the whites of my eyes for Honesty and she finds it and tells me to fuck her. I think about Jerome and One and my father. I think of Dr. Turner and Five and my mother. I think about living a normal life and forgetting about all of this—sickness for the sake of Honesty, Honesty for the sake of change. Truth, fucking Truth, who cares about what is True and what is False because it doesn’t matter, and not in the sense of nothing mattering because we were Gods, but because it straight up doesn’t matter, as in isn’t our problem, them, anyone else, the world, as in it doesn’t make a single bit of difference if Truth is uncovered or closeted because I am still me, still human, still a boy with issues deeper than chemo can eradicate, still a shitting, breathing, wanting creature in desperate need of love.

And I’ve found it, love, the type that doesn’t exist in the real world or even in movies, the kind born from the shattering of Self, and offering up those scraps to another person, the kind shrouded in temperance.

My body flexes and Two stares into my eyes and I want them to be pure and Honest and they are because she’s crying and there are no accidents and we understand how everything works and we can foresee the future and we can change the world and Two says she loves me and I come into her and she collapses over my body and we breathe into one another’s ears and it’s our first loves and favorite memories and biggest regrets and we are free of everything that has ever happened or ever will and we are in love.