Paper Moons
Paper Moons
written, performed, edited, and produced by Michael John Ciszewski
featuring voice performances by Kevin Becerra, Elissa Bonito, Bryan Guffey, Sarah Oakes Muirhead; music by Nicky B, "Drawn." special thanks to Brian Dudley.
“Paper Moons”
We got drunk, together again.
I came to you, I sought you out. I bent my plans, my whole timeline, so that our paths could cross again, so that our lives could overlap for a little while and we could be underneath the same stars, together again.
I did that, a wholly elective choice followed by work that begat pains that made me sweat. I lent us my efforts.
You did, too, I think. A venn diagram is composed of two circles, and the less ours overlap, the more we’re squeezed together in the little space we share.
When I got to your place, I was damp from walking downtown in the rain. And rather than dry off, I just wanted to start the night. I wanted to dance together, as long as we could, in the time and space we made for each other. So we went out and drank.
Drinking, to me, has always been about deepening something. False, of course, it was a false virtue, I know, but the romantic in me figured that I could wring more from an experience if the experience was as damp, sodden, and weighted as could be. So I poured myself into the things I wanted the most from. More often than not, I only got waterlogged and pruned, at best. At worst… I drowned myself. I suffocated myself. Just to come up, gasping for air, the next morning, my heart racing… Not only had I survived the drowning, but I wake with every part of my body on fire, on high alert, heart racing, head pounding, muscles aching… the fight to survive this romantic affliction felt like the most I could possibly live in this big, stupid trap of a body. I never drank to numb, I drank to feel more, live more, know more.
A foolish, abusive exercise.
I know.
But my heart is in the right place, I promise. Awful.
It is. It comes from love. Maybe loving the wrong things, but it’s love. I love life. I love you. I want more. Mis-trained, mis-understood, mis-fired—listen, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have plenty of excuses, I have plenty of reasons why. I don’t need them, but if you do… there. they. are.
So we went out to drink.
We went to this perfect hovel… on another planet, worlds away. Somewhere we can hide. We rode the train for seventy minutes gesturing towards familiarity, catching up, but you know… just playing a good game of “who remembers the most about each other.” Foreplay for those who think themselves forgotten.
We get there and I see friends. “Friends.” I don’t know them well but we’re all sort of complicit in making our worlds more familiar than foreign, as friendly as possible, for us to carry out our elaborate self-actualization rituals. I introduce you to them. We’re told how cute we are together. It’s a comedy. We laugh. We sit in a corner, on fire with liquor and red light, basking in the pyre we’ve made of our love and our bodies and our life shared together. I request songs for us and we dance. We find the rhythm. We match our time signatures to one another. Our hearts follow suit and pull our bodies along. Our bodies, looser and looser with each drink, older and more tired with every passing second we take to work up the courage to leap into nothingness and kiss, shouting our secret desire onto each others’ liquor wet lips, soft to touch and sharp to taste. We lean in to the center of the venn diagram. Our circles tug at us, we press closer and closer together.
Everything feels good. Closeness and singularity, this perfect moment in time that we constructed together, from the deepest shared commitment to all the exquisite pain we’ll keep calling pleasure until we can’t tell the difference.
Another drink
Another drink
Another drink
Another kiss
Another drink
Another drink
Another kiss
Another drink
Another kiss
Another drink
Another kiss
Another drink
Another kiss
Another kiss
Another drink
Another kiss
Another kiss
Another drink
Another kiss
Another kiss
Another kiss
We leave.
I don’t want to go back. I don’t know if my atoms can survive another trip across the galaxy to our home planet, I don’t know if I can endure it.
So we go to the river and spill out against each other as the waves lap at our naked ankles. We wash over each other and into the water, it masks the sight and the sound and we become one with the stars that reflect in its surface. We are submerged. We disappear into the cool murk of the waterway that connects us to all the places we’ve been before and will have to go again, the entirety of our circles that pull us apart from one another and break the venn diagram. We drown and the currents catch at us. We clasp hands and vow to never let go. At this point, we’re weak with drink and affliction. We’re too loose, too lost to be strong. The currents cut in to our dance and partner us away from one another, clumsy. Bad dancers. No rhythm, no heart. But they lead and carry us away, away, away.
I close my eyes.
Let me go.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Let me go.
Let me drown.
Let me feel this or let me feel nothing.
…
I wake up next to you on the subway.
We fell asleep, together again.
You look down at me, trained to your shoulder, trying to squeeze myself into smallness beside you, trying to make close and fit myself in… You smile at me. I smile back.
It’s still dark, and this night is still ours, but it’s done. We can't wait for the sun to wake us up.
…
Forgive me.