Paper Boxes

Klayter McCabe

000

Sometimes, when I see something worthwhile, I want to keep it.

I don’t have very many possessions – there are few things worth owning. My car, my clothes, my cigarettes... Things like that, transitory in nature.

Sometimes, when I see people worthwhile, I want to keep them.

I know the world better than anyone. Sometimes, I think that I have read the mind of every person on it, whether I have wanted to or not. I have been intimate with every evil that there is to know. What everyone forgets, what I forget, is that I have seen all of the beautiful things as well. Who better to keep people than someone who knows everything?

I know your hurts, your fears, your wishes, your laughter, your yesterdays and your tomorrows. I can enfold you, I can protect you, I can keep you safe forever.

In my room, stacked up against the wall, there are a hundred paper boxes. In each box, there is a soul. The world is always pushing itself onto me and into me, and of that world, in these boxes are the bits that I have kept. All the people I have loved.

(I used to think that I would never love anyone, that I was too twisted and gone to remember the sweet things. I was wrong.)

Sometimes, when I see someone worthwhile, I fall in love with him.

When I fall in love, I have to keep the person.

(None of my boxes are labeled, but I know exactly who is who.)

Crawford is my most important box. There is no order to anything, but somehow his box is always on top. When I open it, I smell coffee and newspaper and cigarettes, but a different brand than the one that I smoke.

I take out the Crawford box when I am angry and dying and falling apart. His mind is silence and refuge. He is the only sanctuary that I have ever had. I remember him naked, deceptively muscular, the hair on his chest somehow surprising. Though he wears the best suits and designer glasses and everything about him screams sophisticated money, the soap that he uses is cheap, cheap, cheap. He smells like buying in bulk, getting the best value for your money, like cars that break down halfway to your destination

Crawford wears his wealth well, but he is not used to having it.

I hold his box to my face, and it is like wrapping myself around him. Crawford is cold, you see. Crawford has a chip on his shoulder. He has an agenda, and everyone else in the entire world is getting in his way. If you are in his way for too long, he will kill you, and he will walk on your corpse.

These are the things that Crawford wants you to think.

All of it is true, but none of it is worth listening to. I remember the smell of his sweat, his muffled groans. Crawford wanted to believe that he was too refined to yell during sex, but I proved that he was not. Though taking refuge under Crawford’s strength is great, there is something even greater in breaking him down.

I love it when he gets mad at me. I love it when he looks frustrated and yells, love it when he hits me. Sometimes it’s a turn on, but I usually I’m just glad that he knows it was me. Crawford doesn’t need anyone, you see. He doesn’t even notice that other people are there. But I am becoming a part of him; I am under his skin. I love that he knows it, even if he won’t ever forgive me.

I treat Crawford’s box with reverence, because together we are more than the sum of our parts.

Nagi’s is the only other box that I am so kind to. One has to be gentle with Nagi, or he retreats. He goes even farther than Crawford. Crawford wants to destroy only those who get in his way, but someday Nagi will kill everyone.

There’s a glory in his hatred, and I always feel welcome making my home there. The hatred is what Schwartz has in common. It is what makes us what we are. I am sweet to Nagi because his is the most beautiful. He has never wavered, and never doubted. Nagi was innocent once, and I have no doubt that he was something like pure. But everything that Nagi could have been was ripped from him, and if he has never told his stories, they are easy enough to guess. I love him not only for his anger, but also his regret and despair. Nagi is whispering, always, that he is lost. If you are willing to wade in far enough, you can also hear him whisper that he wants someone to come for him.

Mostly, though, I love him for his yet impotent rage. Nagi is powerful. In truth, what he wields is nothing short of wondrous. But it is not enough, not yet, and he knows it. His power, so close but not close enough, is slowly driving him mad.

I love that for all of these things raging just below the surface of his mind, Nagi is silent. He remembers everything, he forgives nothing, and he will never whisper of the cross that he bears to anyone. Schwartz is the only place that he will ever be understood, and I am the only person who will ever want him so feverishly for it.

Nagi never lets anyone touch him, no. To do so without permission is to be thrown against the wall with bone-snapping strength, while he glares at you with contempt and betrayal. (Oh, Nagi still feels betrayal. He thinks that he is past it all, that there is no more trust left in his body. But there is. His love is very different from my own, but his dependence on Schwartz is no less real.) Still, I want to touch him. Nothing sexual, nothing like with Crawford and some of my other pretty boxes. No, I would like to comfort Nagi. I would like to tell him that if he can still trust (however unwillingly), then he can still love. I would like to promise him that someday he really will find his happiness, even if the lies would taste of ash on my tongue.

Nagi has earned his sweet nothings and comforting lies, after all. I wish that someone would give them to him.

Farfarello is my only box that I do not understand completely. His mind is deceptively simple, and yet it swirls with all the loops and duplicity of madness. I should understand him, because I have been a hundred liars, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I should understand him.

I do not.

While the rest of us aim to take our revenge on the world that wounded us so permanently, Farfarello has higher goals. His images of God are many, and most of them conflict with each other. To make it worse, he retains ideas about the Holy Trinity, and mixes himself in with the Divine. God is God is Abbadon the Great Destroyer, and Farfarello will never forgive him that. But the Christ Child is Jei, worshipped and martyred and then betrayed and forgotten. Farfarello blames God for the Messiah’s abandonment, and his heart bleeds. That will never be forgiven.

He does not know what to think about the Holy Ghost.

I think, in the end, that what drove him crazy was the ‘truth.’ As long as he kept his images separate, there was a certain rationale to be found in his logic. But because Jei and Farfarello are one, because the Holy Trinity is always in existence, and each is always the others, he had to lose his mind. God is eternally sacrificing himself for the benefit of people who don’t care, and Farfarello is always evicting Jei and breaking both of their hearts in doing so.

I wonder what it’s like to hate yourself so strangely.

God, but Farfarello’s beautiful when he hates. Even down to his ridiculous battle cry, he is beautiful. When he is mortally wounded and bleeding to death, Farfarello will still be moving, still be laughing, still drinking the blood of the innocent and killing unicorns. I have nothing but respect for Farfarello, nothing but scorn.

Because of this, and because Farfarello holds me in the same light, we have never had a conversation. He is a malkavian God in his own right, transcendent with spider webs of truth that illuminate his vision. don’t know if he hears voices, and if he does, I don’t know whether they are sinister whisperings or choruses of angels. Perhaps, following the popular bumper sticker, he listens only to his Rice Crispies. I wouldn’t know, because he keeps his mind locked up. I am afraid that if I should ever break in, I will be trapped there forever. There are worse fates, but I have no desire to contemplate any of them.

Perhaps when we rip down the world and stand on its embers, he will tell me what is in his mind. I would be proud to know.

No one would believe how strong we are. There are not many who truly understand the power that hate has to unite. Divided we stand, and divided is the way that we will always be. will worship Crawford, and fuck him, and try to bring him down. Likewise, he will lend me his silence, and let me give him the release of sex. Nagi will let me watch him from a distance, and he will think that he knows what is on my mind when I do so. will laugh in my face and then withdrawal, jealous to the end of his mind. (He thinks that in reading everyone, I read God. Perhaps I do.) But all of these things, all of them, are wrong. These are merely the surface things. These are the dividers, they are what keep us strong. The minute we admit to the rest, that is the minute that we will fall. If Crawford ever admitted that he needs me, if I ever held Nagi in my arms, if Farfarello ever put himself back together and had us to thank, we would be unforgivably weak. We are strong, Schwartz is strong, we will bring everyone down.

That is why I keep my paper boxes. I will love and protect and comfort them, I will touch my – I do not even know what to call them. Well, I will touch my Schwartz’s soul. I will keep us strong.

Because if we are not strong, we know exactly who will bring us down.

000

End Part One

000

July 31, 2003