Sorry for my lack of activity lately. I was in Paris, surrounded by sweet sweet gospel, and some hot jazz thrown in too. It was a wonderful few days. And i will catch up on all the updates (already done most of it, yay!)
Another offering, a little angst here, I think, but also some sweet sentiment and a big fat dollop of oddness. Enjoy.
The song is owned by Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman.
Objects in the Rear-View Mirror May Appear Closer than they Are
The skies were pure and the fields were green
And the sun was brighter than it's ever been,
When I grew up with my best friend Kenny
We were close as any brothers than you ever knew.
You started working at the Zooniverse before he did, you remember that much. Why he decided to tell that particular lie; that he took you out of school and brought you there, you're not really all that sure. You can understand his other lies, they all have reasons, that you picked up on as the years went by, as you learned to follow him, and to play this game that took over your life in the end, changed your history, changed everything.
You found it odd at first how close he was willing to get to you. Most people are so reserved, so physically formal, however relaxed they might try to appear in every other aspect of how they interact with you, but not him. He dived on you, it seemed, like he was looking for something, and he just happened to see it in you. You had such a hard time figuring it out at first, but then it just hit you, and it really was the most obvious thing in the world.
He just wanted a best friend.
He saw you, thought you looked nice and friendly, so he went in. And he never bothered with the warming-up stage, just went straight on in there and acted like you'd known each other since childhood.
Which, incidentally, he later maintained that you had.
But that doesn't matter, really, and you pretend it's true because you want to. You're close enough to have known each other that long. Hell, you were close enough to have known each other that long within two weeks of meeting each other. Maybe it's because you were so willing to pretend with him. Maybe you caught on the game fast, and he was attracted to that. Or maybe you just clicked. Who knows?
But I can still recall the sting of all
The tears when he was gone.
They said he crashed and burned, I know I'll never learn
Why any boy should die so young.
It came as a shock to learn the kid had died. That's something no one should have to deal with, especially not at eleven years old, that's just wrong.
But it did explain a lot. You found out about him when you were bored and randomly Googled his name, and you found out about that little boy from the town he came from, born the same year, went to the same school, lived in the same street. You went through his drawers that night, and you felt so bad about doing it, and you knew you wouldn't have dared do it if he'd been home at the time. And you found it, in the bottom drawer, underneath papers and poems and unhinged snatches of prose, worn and thumbed, a battered Polaroid of that little boy, smiling and grinning, with another child next to him who is unmistakeably him.
Yes, it explained a lot. They must have been close. So so close. Closer than you can usually get to a person without years of building on it. You'd have to miss that closeness. You couldn't just build up another one, because no one could make up for that relationship. It could never be the same again. Even that level of closeness, you can't just get it back. You'd be cold, and people would seem so far away. And you know because that's how you'd feel if something ever happened to him. You can never replace that kind of feeling unless you spend years and years waiting.
Except with you, he could.
There are times I think I see him peeling out of the dark-
I think he's right behind me now and he's gaining ground.
It's one thing to go through that once, but twice and life just wouldn't be worth living any more. So that was when you decided you would never ever leave him.
You know he worries. He doesn't know you know, because you won't let it show, because if you let it show then he'd know you know about the other little boy, the one he sees in you, the one he saw die.
You've been in plenty of situations in the real world, let alone the world he's made up for you, and one or the both of you could have died at any time. But you know he's always looking out for you. He wouldn't let you go, ever, because that would be like that boy dying all over again. He'll always be there when you need him, and you're ashamed to say that sometimes you still need to remind yourself of that.
But then you think how much it would hurt you if he went, and you know that that's exactly how he feels about you, only he's seen it happen before so he knows what it's like.
You just think that, and you know how much you love him, how he'd never leave you, and how, when it comes down to it, you're right there for him too.
It must hurt sometimes, you wonder, for him to always be looking out for you like that, to be living in fear that you might not always be there, but you look in his eyes, his funny little eyes, and you know he wouldn't give it up for the world.
There were endless winters and the dreams would freeze,
Nowhere to hide and no leaves on the trees,
And my father's eyes were blank as he hit me again and again and again.
He never told you he didn't get on with his father. He never really told you anything about his father. He told you his father was a geography teacher up in Leeds, and you just assumed they got on fine.
It never occurred to you that they don't speak. That he never calls, or his father never calls him. You have no idea how he knows his father is still even alive.
It sickened you when you found out. Fathers shouldn't do that to their sons. It makes you happy, in some strange way, that you never knew yours.
And it confuses you how a man like Bryan Ferry, with no physical relation to you could have loved you the way he did, when back before you knew him he was treated so terribly by his own flesh-and-blood father.
You still wonder sometimes why he never made up some new addition to your pretend game because of this. He's told so many lies; that you were childhood friends, that he steered your life in the direction it's going in now, so why couldn't he lie about this, and say that he had had a proper loving father, and a happy adolescence. Maybe if he did that, he wouldn't look so haunted when you watch him sitting in his room through the crack of the door at night when he thinks he's alone. When you want to go in and hold him so badly, but you can't because you can't let him know you were watching. Underneath the pretending, there's another, deeper level of pretending. He pretends he's recovered from everything he's been through, and you pretend you don't know he hasn't. You can't end this pretence. You don't know how just yet.
But you can't help watching him. He's fascinating. His deep and intricate lies and stories, the persona he adopts to make them all ring true.
The chinks in the armour, the cracks he thinks he's never showed you.
Maybe if he pretended he'd had a loving father, he wouldn't need to pretend any more. But then if he didn't need to pretend he wouldn't be pretending that he'd had a loving father and would that start everything again? He wouldn't need to pretend and so the pretence that was keeping him from pretending would be lost and all his reasons to pretend would all come flooding back and if he couldn't pretend still he'd have to face them defenceless, or he'd start pretending again maybe and…
Maybe if he pretended he's had a loving father, he wouldn't need to pretend anything else any more.
But then, and you feel so guilty for thinking it, you're glad he pretends, because that was why he took to you so quickly.
But you don't think that for very long because it's like being glad his father did the things he did to him.
I know I still believe he'd never let me leave, I had to run away alone.
But maybe it doesn't even matter any more. The fact is, his father's not there any more, and you live your lives pretending, so why bother wondering how it'd be like otherwise? You love him, yes, so why think about changing things? What's past is past.
You know it was his choice to have it this way. Everything you've ever done was his choice. He created your world, he created your memories. He's the one who showed you how the moon talks, and who first realised the animals were talking back, but only to you. He chose you, and chose to make you special.
And if anyone tried to stop him, he would never let them.
You've heard of this father; dominating, controlling, possessive. You don't recall how you heard; certainly not from him, though you can't think of any other possible source, but you heard the stories. And it didn't sound like he would have cast him out. It sounded like he would have kept holding on to him and dragging him back, enslaving him.
So you knew he had chosen his life.
He had chosen to escape, to leave behind everything he had ever known and go into something strange and unfamiliar, with no one by his side. It must have been a daunting new world to go into so alone, but he chose to do it. To find something new.
And he found you.
You're so glad he found you.
There was a beauty living on the edge of town.
She always put the top up and the hammer down,
And she taught me everything I'll ever know
About the mystery and the muscle of love.
You know you weren't the first person he found. You know you couldn't be, because he came to you as a sad man, but a free man. And you can't just walk out of abuse and pain, just like that. Even when you've walked away from the pain itself, you can't walk free. You have to be rescued. That was what he chose. To be rescued.
He told you so much about her at first. She was a Russian widow, beautiful and thoughtful and intelligent and free. He used to sit with you at night and talk and talk for hours about her; how she had looked in the mornings, how she looked at night, how she looked next to him in the front seat of a convertible, how she looked from on top of him in the back seat of a convertible. How she had taken him in and taken him away.
She used her body just like a bandage, she used my body just like a wound.
I'll probably never know where she disappeared,
But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now just like an angel rising up from the tomb.
Later on, he began to talk about her like she was there, now, outside the door of the little hut, talking to someone they called a friend. He asked if she had come and called for him, but she never did.
And then she began to appear, and you think maybe you even saw her, as clearly as he did. She liked you, but she never looked at him, never spoke of him, never remembered him. You hated to watch him so sad, but you knew it had to be this way. If he was going to bring the game so close to real life, he would have to suffer in is own way. Because how could he ever love her if she wasn't really there? It was an unspoken agreement between the two of you. She liked you, not him; you pretended as best you could, he suffered for the chance to think for a while that she might really be there.
You had to make her cold, and unloving, but you did your best to make him happy, imagining ways to bring his name to her lips, because all the most elaborate and complicated of imaginings were worth it to see him smile. He didn't do it enough, though, when you had just met him, he had reasons to be sad.
You were grateful to her, really, the woman you never met, because she made him who he was, she saved him, and she brought him to you.
He never even told you her first name.
But it was long ago and it was far away, oh God it seems so very far,
And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car.
In time, she disappeared from your lives like so many other characters and so many other games. You suppose he must have moved on, realised she was never coming back and he would never see her in the flesh again. That she was gone, like his father was gone and the little boy who died was gone.
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.
He's still got you. You'll pretend with him as long as he still wants to pretend. Sometimes you take him for granted, but you do your best. Sometimes you almost shun him, but you always come back.
You will always come back.
He's already lost his best childhood friend, his father, and the one love of his life. You won't let him lose you. You'll be there forever, whatever happens to try and stop you.
It doesn't matter what you pretend, about your past, about his past, about anything.
Because you're his present. And you're going to be his future.