Today’s the day. How strange it is to attend your own funeral. This whole time I’ve felt like I was not really here. Not really. I’m an echo of who I used to be, watching as the voice that created me fades away. I should feel pain. I should be in anguish over what I’ve lost. I’ve lost you, and you’ve lost me.
Our song, playing at my funeral. I catch a glimpse of my collar, hidden beneath my clothes. You’re burying me with it on. Friends who know, touch my collar as if to say a prayer. I look to see that you’re wearing yours. You haven’t taken it off since you’ve heard the news. Family who don’t know, hesitate to ask as if afraid to learn.
Mutual slavery, we said. Sometimes I would wrestle you to the ground. Other times you would have me bound and trembling. Your body was my playground. My body was your canvas. My pleasure is your own. Your pain is my own. Our pleasure – our pain. Us. We owned each other. And now that I’m standing here, watching you cry, I don’t feel your pleasure or pain: just detachment and release and peace and a profound sense of love. I’m sorry I can’t share in your grief.
I place my hand on your cheek like I’ve done a million times before. You put your hand on mine like you’ve done a million times before. This time, your hand passes right through mine. I touch your body, then you walk right through me. Every inch of you forbidden from my touch. I try to breathe your air, smell your pheromones, taste your skin. Nothing. You’re not here either; you look right through me.
Day after day, I watch, unable to do anything, unable to tell you anything. Day after day, you walk our apartment naked, wearing nothing but your collar, as if waiting to submit to me or waiting for me to submit to you. We are separated by the numbness of death and the pain of loss. Yet that separation seems so thin to me and so unfathomable to you.
I watch you break down, night after night, in the bathtub filled to the brim with scalding hot water – just the way you liked it. You drink cheap wine and blare our song on repeat, singing every line except one. “If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend.” You break down sobbing every time it comes to that line, then quickly regain composure to sing the rest of the song. If I could bring you with me, I would. If I could hold one more time, my arms would never let go. I wish I could say it hurts to watch you. I’m sorry – I only feel my love for you.
And then one day, you take out a rope from our play chest. Our rope. Our favorite rope. The one that smells like us. The one that has soaked in both our sweat. The one we should have thrown away long ago – frayed and unsafe – but we’ve kept because of how many good memories we’ve shared with that single length of rope.
This length of rope had kissed our skin countless times while we practice cruel love on one another in our dance between top and bottom. We learned shibari together with this rope. We learned suspension with this rope.
I watch you make a knot. It isn’t one I learned, and yet this knot is all too familiar. I didn’t think you knew this knot. Before you finish, I try to grab it away from you. I want to think I can knock it out of your hand, but my hand passes right through it. You drop it all the same.
You break down right there, falling to your knees. You sob so hard you can hardly breathe. When you finally regain control of yourself, you sing, “If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend,” over and over. Just that line. The line you couldn’t sing. Your prayer for release from this life. A prayer to me.
I’m sorry, but that isn’t what that line of the song means. You would follow me anywhere – that’s what the song is saying. You’ll be with me soon enough, I promise. For right now, do me a favor and live. Please?
The next morning you take off the collar. You make an appointment. You call a friend. And I drift away…
Inspiration and Song Referenced: Still Remains by Stone Temple Pilots.