Thrust: A Novel

I do desire David unto death, god help me. His body, a color between white and wheat. His hair, the color of night. His torso, between muscle and some otherworldly fluid, its heavy grace apparent every time he moved in his sleep. When the sheet fell away, and I could see the glistening marks on his back, I thought of hundreds of feathers or wings. As if David were turning into a great crane. I wanted to crawl onto his cot and cup his body with my body, like a double parenthesis, something held inside another, where no one anywhere could find us. I want to push my cock into him I want to tendril my arm around to his waist to the velvet pulse of his cock I want to hold him and work the desire out of him in a rush. I want to put my face at the back of his neck I want him to violently throw me off him and then push my legs up until it feels like they will snap from my hips I want him to shove into me, sweet suction sweet thrust.

I also want none of this. I want David Chen to stay turned away from me, so that all there is of him is his back, the hieroglyphics writing the unsaid story of whatever happened to him, his back the new world. If he stays turned away from me, if he stays asleep, nothing and no one can ever take my love for him away. There is another kind of freedom in that.

Bless this man’s body. Bless his skin, his cock. Bless his sleep.

The girl pulled something from underneath her shirt and brought it over to me. A perfectly coiled white rope. “When do you feel most human?” she asked me.

I didn’t say anything. I just looked at David’s back: His hair. His shoulders. The rise of his hips. His feet. His sleep.

“This is kinbaku,” she said. “Kinbaku-bi means ‘the beauty of tight binding.’ This rope is made from hemp.” She placed the rope on my belly. “In the late Edo period in Japan, Seiu Ito studied the art of binding prisoners of war. Hojojutsu was used to capture and restrain prisoners, and sometimes to hold prisoners in place for execution or crucifixion or death by fire. Someone’s limbs might be tied to decrease their mobility. Rope loops at the neck, or anywhere blood vessels and nerves are, so that numbness might be achieved during struggle.” There must have been some look in my eye — a look of something unknown, unresolved — that made her pause, then continue. “Ask Aurora. She knows a different story from torture. David has met Aurora. He knows how to find her Rooms. Freedom isn’t what they say.”

I don’t say anything to the girl. For the rest of the night, I hold the rope tightly to my chest. My mouth goes wet, then dry, then wet again.

—

The next morning, she was gone. I’m not sure what the four of us were thinking about her anyway — did we think we could make a family inside our shared labor? Make this girl one of us?

But her words stayed with me. I did find Aurora. And her Rooms. And so did David.

It is possible that desire needs to let loose, here and now, before it is snuffed out by laws meant to suffocate and kill it. It is possible that we need to find the doors of the Rooms where we feel most human, and open them out toward the sky, the water, the world, and back to one another’s bodies.

I keep thinking about the broken shackle, the way it was supposed to be prominently held in the statue’s hand for all to see — and how it ended up near her foot, like something hidden or disappeared.

I keep thinking about how her skin changed from copper to green, its own kind of vitiligo.

After our work was completed, after we had no more reasons to be bound together, we broke apart. The breaking apart of the body of us happened in the same streets and political forums where Reconstruction had crumbled even as we were working. It happened in the same courts that crushed the rights and protections that had made us feel part of something larger than ourselves, as if we were living in a country that could see us and count us as real. It happened in the tightening grip of laws mandating separations of peoples in public schools, public places, public transportation, pulling us apart in restrooms and restaurants, pulling our very lips away from fountains of water.

Every day that passed, we were told in more and more ways that we could not fully exist. Could not vote. Could not hold a job. Could not get an education. We faced arrest, jail, violence, death, each of us in our own way. And I began to emerge between us, purely for survival reasons. It felt like the we of us couldn’t hold.

Endora found work at an orphanage. As a groundskeeper.

John Joseph returned to the nation north of here. He returned for many more ironworks projects in this city as it grew. So did his descendants.

For many years, Endora, John Joseph, David, and I would meet up in the fall and ride out together to see the statue. We’d make a toast together at her feet, smile and reminisce, then go back to our lives — the lives where we had to make a go of it, as Endora said, no matter what came next.