Boys on Trains

Boys on

Trains WRITTEN BY JACKSON MACHADO

‘Have you got gonorrhoea?’ Is one of the many questions he could have asked you today. Instead, he opts for learning absolutely nothing about you before leading you into his bedroom.

The sun is up when you both lay down on his bed to watch TV. By the time the sun sets, nothing has changed. You barely talk through two episodes of House Hunters International. By the time regular House Hunters starts, speaking feels so far removed from possibility that you can’t think of a single thing to say to him. The 4 episode Friends marathon sucks the life from every periodic “yes I’m still here” giggle you can muster, to the point where the succeeding 4 episode Seinfeld marathon (a show you know and love) makes genuine laughter seem out of place. He gets to lean against some pillows while you sit uncomfortably on the bed corner. Your bones are fucked. Hours and hours and hours of this. You stifle delirious laughs at Elaine’s expense, becoming trapped in roiling waves of silent laughter. Tears stream from your eyes. Because this is so funny isn’t it? Absolutely HILARIOUS. Episodes of old comedy shows and breaking news alerts pass-by like sands through the hour glass – the days of our lives – painful and tedious. Until finally – something! He gets up and adjusts the blanket. However it happens, you’re laying side by side now, still watching the TV. You’re beginning to feel the life drain out of you and into the floor in search for hell below.

But there’s hope now.

The fire within you that desired so badly to fold perfectly into his arms when this date started is back.

Over the next episode of Barnwood Builders, you slowly inch your hand toward his. With one finger, you push against his nail (quite pathetically), begging him to meet you halfway and save you from the blisteringly boring night it’s been. The TV announces that a show called Best Of Postcards is about to begin and something snaps within you. You resort to lightly brushing his fingers with your fingertips like an annoying, lonely child. He moves, and you catch his eyes. He tries to cover a large smile with his pillow.

He’s nervous. Omg. I thought he was just made of fucking STONE. He slides his hand into yours.

The sun had set, but it begins to rise again.

Hours on this bed. But only now - straddling his hips, underwear against underwear – do you feel truly together.

His hands move from your waist, to your hips, to your thighs.

You kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his nose.

You kiss his lips for the first time. Kissing is always so fantastic in your head. Movies don’t prepare you for the feeling of a human skull against your own. A human jaw against yours. He kisses you back, but out of nowhere there’s too much passion. Lust, and far too sudden.

PHOTOS BY ALLEN GOMEZ & AGNIESZKA KOWALCYZK ON UNSPLASH

You spend a while gliding your fingertips over his arms, his shoulders, his neck, his chest.

Once you feel you’ve memorised his frame - you rest your head on his shoulder. You close your eyes.

Your eyes are still closed as you slip into wakeness. You feel his shoulder beneath your neck, and it’s wet.

Ew, I was drooling.

You quickly but softly wipe your saliva from his shoulder. He doesn’t stir, thankfully.

How odd you feel.

A boy you don’t know (because let’s face it, you don’t know him).

A boy that’s hardly even been nice to you. He hasn’t been horrible, or even mean. But he’s really made no effort to try and learn anything about you, or to understand you. Yet, it’s like with him you get to feel something you never get to feel. He has something that you have no access to without him. Him. It may be the only thing about him that you’ll ever come to truly value. If there’s a word for it, you don’t know it.

It’s just that boy thing.

That magnetism. That thing beneath their warm skin that makes you want to press yourself against them for the rest of your life. That thing that courses through the veins in their arms when they flex, and their lips and their cheeks when they blush.

You want to find it - spot it crawling up his arm (like a scarab from those Mummy movies), and cut it out of him. Just to ask it some questions, like

Why were you given to all the boys but me?

He doesn’t walk you out.

You leave his house.

You walk straight to the 7-11 down the road - and buy the biggest Kit-Kat you can find.