The Songbird's Abyss

Chapter One: Pigeons at Midnight

It all started, for the most part, around the time that I had contracted what Jack Kerouac would describe as a serious illness: my feeling that everything was dead.

To say that my heart had slowed would be too much of an understatement. To say that my blood had thickened into cement and scraped its way through my veins, painfully yet dutifully, would be an understatement.

But this incident in question was in the past. It was my past. We'll get back to that time soon. For now, I'd rather avoid looking at the memory directly. At least, if I allow it to burrow in the back of my mind, the memory will begin to fade—if I am so lucky.

The one thing that had saved me from my past: Oscar. And that's where I will begin this story, with him. Not the beginning, when we met (at least not yet). I'll start during one of our most common activities, in New York City, after we boarded the train and took it all of the way into New York's heart, running away from everything we never wanted to be.

* * *

When Oscar and I would sit together, we would imagine the world around us through a lens only deranged couples could understand. A humor only twisted, bereaved fathers would think up.

We were in Club Aura—one of our favorite places to go in New York City since the bartenders rarely checked ID's—playing our favorite couple guessing game. The object of the game was simple: find a couple, guess what each of them did for work, what their hobbies were, what kinks they had in the bedroom, etc.

"And that guy, leaning against the bar, asking for a drink," Oscar said. "Lawyer, one hundred percent. Look at the fucking grin, the money on his wrist, the glitter in his eyes. I bet he beats the shit out of his snotty kids."

Oscar was my plaything I had kept around since seventh grade. Now, as we entered our senior year of high school, we were considered a thing by the entire student body, but we never believed in labels or asked the other for some sort of relationship acknowledgment, so we were just good friends, I guess—which I was fine with, and I think he was, too.

It was my turn to give my input on who was what, and I liked to tease: "Glitter in his eyes? Look down darling, I think you're missing a big indicator that this guy is in fact not a lawyer, but a yoga instructor, one that really pleases his wife with that thing."

I looked back at Oscar, who began to eye-fuck the 'yoga instructor', looking first at the sharp cut of the man's hair and then down to his legs, as if he was sizing up some mansion for appraisal. "Holy... shit. You absolutely magical man, what I wouldn't do to you," he said, smiling, a half-laugh escaping his large lips. "That's gotta be what, a thousand inches?"

The club around us was loud. We had to speak at a certain soft yell to hear one another.

"A ménage à trois?" I suggested.

"As long as I get to ride that lumberjack all the way home to New Hampshire," he said. "I am just tired of the sloppy seconds you have been giving me. I want that New York dick new, I want that dick properly gay, like Justin Bieber early 2000's gay. The way in middle school we were all convinced 2010 Justin Bieber was gay. That kind of lust love all the girls had for him, you know?"

"How old was 2010 Justin Bieber?" I asked.

"Probably like 12," he said. He looked me dead in the eyes, his patented Death Glare piercing me. "Legal in my eyes," he laughed. I punched his arm playfully and then took a sip from my non-alcoholic juice pouch that I had snuck into the club. I was a very classy bitch, and I loved the idea of people in New York City, on vacation or something, seeing a pair of teenagers drinking juice pouches in a very expensive club they had no business being in.