BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 01

SATURDAY
05 OCTOBER, 1996
DORIAN

               You've haunted me for six years. It's for that reason that when I see you, I don't believe you to be real.

I think, I've seen you in every crowd, at every bus stop, in every silhouette I catch between bookshelves. After reciting the berakah over my solitary meals at the dining hall in Rav Eliraz Yeshiva and later at Julliard, I'd catch movement in the periphery and, for a split second, I knew you were standing at the entrance. I bite into an apple, see someone else bite into an apple, see an apple, and it's you — it's all you: the apple, the mouth, the bite. Someone laughs in a library. I catch the scent of castor oil or the moringa perfume you tried to mask it with, and, without fail, regardless of how improbable the reality might be, you're with me.

I think, this is just another mirage of my longing.

But you're not.

Rather than any style of braids, his hair is twisted into locs, the top half gathered with a scrunchie and the rest left to brush his neck. They're just long enough to pass the corner of his jaw, which is sculpted by his short shaped-up beard. The spinning Poundland party light catches structures in his face that used to be hidden by boyish roundness. He's not wearing a kippah, but then, neither am I.

He's alone (why does that simultaneously make my heart flutter and break it?), slumped against the wall with his eyes shut. There's no drink in his hand. Of course, there isn't. Unlike me, he never cares what people think of him.

It takes me a moment to recognise the loose jeans he's wearing. They sit differently, though I can't tell why because he hasn't grown taller or become less skinny. There's no doubt they're the same though: a couple shifts out of the way to reveal the apples embroidered on both knees to patch holes. The shirt tucked into them — lilac, floral, and a third unbuttoned — would've been out of the question while living with his mother. A Whitney Houston tee was enough rebellion.

All these add up to prove that you're not a ghost of the last time saw you. You're real, Isaiah. You're real and my heart stops beating.

Then it convulses.

A cold flush races from head to foot. I cram myself into the wall around the corner as my knees quiver. My body hollows in a single exhale and becomes so feeble a single touch might turn me to dust.

I can hardly make out the figure who pauses to check in on me. 'You alright?'

'Yeah. Drank too much.'

I glance at my can of cider. Someone thrust it into my hand when I arrived an hour ago. To avoid making myself a lighthouse of social ineptitude, I've taken sips that barely wet my tongue whenever the same group of friends has been in my proximity for longer than a few minutes, but it's still full.

Not once during my bachelor's at Julliard did I go to an after-dark event of any kind. I can confidently say there's nowhere I'd like to be less than a "frat party"... At least a third of my Black and Jewish forebears just disowned me for thinking that.

I got personally invited to this one, though. Well, as personally as you can be by a classmate who you happen to be caught in the doorway with, and they say "you should come" without ever asking for your name. This is my last chance, I thought. Next term I'll be far too busy, then I'll be out of university for good and parties won't have the same culture anymore. Then I'll be twenty-four without ever having gone to a party in my life.

I'll go. Stay at least an hour. I don't have to drink anything, no one will judge me for it.

I nearly scoff at myself. My mother is right: I am hideously malleable.