Go Ahead Rip My Heart out (Show Me What Love's All About)

Go Ahead Rip my Heart Out (Show me What's Love all about)

It started with a scar and a boy whose name he can't remember . . .

The long angry lash ran across his palm, a promise carved in his very skin. He doesn't know where he got it, he had it ever since he could remember. All of his childhood lost and he was ready to believe he have sprouted from the ground as a 14 year old boy. But as the scar on his hand becomes visible and a resounding name of a town in Maine pops in his head, he knew he had a childhood and he knew he spent that childhood in-love with a boy.

Sometimes the scar and the boy would entangle with different memories and would present itself as a laughing and violent clown. Sometimes its a stutter, a kippah or curly red locks. Most of the time, its a remainder of a hole his trying to fill.

1

The scar and the boy reminds Richie of pillow forts.

Cushions piled on top of one another to resemble a fortress. He recalls a certain night of his childhood where he sneaked out from home and went to the boy's house. He would knock on the window and the boy would open up for him.

"I felt like we were meant to be together. I mean, look how fate just kept throwing us at each other!", Richie greets him with a joke.

"It's midnight and you are on my window. How did you get here?", the boy questions him, but the smile on his lips betrays the emotion he is trying to show.

"Fate, weren't you listening?", Richie climbs onto the window and sees a pillow fort made. He laughs at the childish display, the boy raises his eyebrows, challenges Richie if he would rather stay out.

"Move over", the Trashmouth would say and they would spend the night bantering and telling jokes.

His mind has forgotten what it was they talked about that night but his body remembers the soft touches they shared. It was the one thing he never forgot. Not ever, not once, not really. The way their fingers hesitantly brush one another, the heat of the boy's breath on his shoulders and the delicate way the boy curls into him. They were best friends, no doubt, but there was pining, there was something else in the way their skin touches that tells Richie, maybe they could be something more. That someday he wouldn't have to be satisfied with the scrapes of bodily contact. That one day he would know what it feels for those lips to sear into his own. That one day he wouldn't have to hide.

2

The scar and the boy reminds Richie of milkshakes.

Those that have generous helpings of whipped cream and syrup. The ones large enough for two. Richie remembers that summer, they were in a diner with their friends. They all sat in a booth, they squeezed their small bodies despite the hot weather, sweat falling from their foreheads. Richie should think it gross and yet the boy looks nothing but majestic even though he has been running his mouth about this so called "Lyme disease" that are more prominent in the summer seasons. As they wait for their order to arrive, they talk of their summer holiday plans. They talk as if it was the only thing left to do, as if one silent moment would dispel the feeling that right now, in that very moment, they were happy.

When their order finally arrives, Richie calls out for the boy and takes the two straws in his milkshake, he was meant to share with someone, and tried impressing him by how fast he can finish the drink. It was no surprise that he ended up having a brain freeze but all of them were laughing. All of them were in such high spirits they were in their very own bubble. Outside of the diner, the world could have stopped spinning and it wouldn't have mattered because right now, they were together.

Richie knew that there were tiny pieces of these people he carries with him, that a single thought about them would explode like acid that would burn the world down. Just a memory, a joke or an afterthought and the floodgates would burst and all he would remember would be love. Love for the people he would soon forget, love for the boy to whom his eyes averts to, in case he relays a secret message, in case the pretense of being just friends was revealed. The longing for more given away. The boy returns the gaze with equal intensity, a question hanging in his lips but Richie retreats to that safe side of friendship. He shy's away and hides his vulnerabilities, he knew deep down there is no room in his body for anything but the boy. His arms desire him, his ears adore him and his knees shake with blind affection. It wasn't a question or fear of falling in love, it was just a matter of time. So when they parted ways that summer afternoon, Richie did not say he likes him like he wanted to, instead he kept it to goodbye because he knew love would mean some falling and he was afraid of heights.