Snowman

the story below is from the section in my memoir entitled ‘Stroking Naked Men’. The book is structured into 6 sections while remaining nonlinear throughout. It is a book of postcards. It is me configured into a paperback book.If you’d like to read it, you will find it in all the usual places - Amazon, any online bookseller, and any real world bookshop.

SNOWMAN

It takes a few minutes to drop down into my body, into the beating of my own heart. Into this now familiar position.

Familiar, even though it is brand new each and every time. Brand new if I am welcoming a regular, or a brand-new human.

I stand at the bottom of the table and take his feet into my hands.

The sun slithers in through the cracks of closed shutters, light dapples and dances in my blue room.

I hold his feet in my hands and breathe. He breathes. I start to find him, this long, lean, spare man, laying unwrapped on my table, while light dances over his skin.

I start to find him.

I drizzle him in warm oil, stroking gently into his skin, and his soul, what I have to offer. I feel his bones underneath and the proximity of vital organs. I feel the small pulses, tiny waves moving under my fingers. I touch a bruise inside his right thigh and wonder what made this mark on this man.

I am starting to find him.

I see a snowscape. I see a conspiracy of whites and shades of night that would break a heart or kill a soldier. I am tasting an unfathomable longing in this quiet man.

I take him in, as much as he can allow. I taste the snow in him. I taste the fire at the core of his ice. I taste his privacy and recognise it.

I take him in as much as I can bear.

I kiss the bird wing of his shoulder blade. I stand on the ground where this is what I do, with his head in my hands. I touch his face, his eyebrows, the edge of his mouth. I hold his skull in my hands.

I am astonished to be allowed to touch so much.