There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

―Ansel Adams

I've been having some of the strangest dreams lately. They were a necessity to me, could be turned into something tangible, and it wasn't often that scenarios would inhabit my head as I slept, but lately I've been having quite a few nighttime experiences. They've been insightful and informative in my subconscious but that was the only way that I could reach them because by the time I woke up they were gone. I was trying to tell myself something, something that I so clearly knew but ironically had no idea how to figure out.

Details that I thought I knew became these obscured blobs all wilted and incomprehensible. It happened every time I attempted to paint their reoccurring images. In my head I could see these things in such vivid clarity that it disturbed me when I couldn't recreate it on paper. It was like everything just went dumb, both my hands as well as my speech when I tried to describe what I managed to recall to others.

Many nights I only succeeded in splattering paint on my skin and staining the carpet while canvases supposed to contain an epiphany held nothing but blurred stuff like abstract bumblebees and sunflowers floating in ocean and algae, sometimes the silhouette of a black bird against the yellow sun. It was just hard because the moment I woke up with the dream fresh in my head, it would disclose itself somewhere far, far away just as quickly. And I would watch it recede slow and fast all at the same time, desperate to snatch just a fraction of it with my fingers because brushes would've taken too long to search for. And my paper that had once been much too small on the brink of awakening was suddenly much too large since forgetting so soon.

Not even my artistic intuition could decipher what these completely unintelligible things were supposed to be because I wasn't even sure if they were bumblebees and sunflowers or birds. I would stare at them distastefully, waiting for their vague masses to give me a clue as to why pink spots were dotted throughout the useless painting, why none of it made sense and yet it's been waking me prematurely every night. When Clyde saw them, he'd comment that I was losing my touch, and maybe I was. None of my professors liked what I was handing in but I couldn't blame them. All I wanted to draw was Tweek so that was where all of my effort went, but I wasn't about to share him with any of my teachers or classmates so I had started putting together halfassed shit just to keep my grades steady with enough time left over to occupy myself with more Tweek.

And honestly, I was just going to go ahead and admit it: I was borderline obsessed with this goddamn health nut. I liked to draw him in the seclusion of my room while eating salads with the dressing he'd helped Pretty Lady make. He was filling up a good portion of paper in ways Stripe never had because it wasn't just waking hours that I busied my time with him. It was just before sleep and during sleep and those times in-between I'd termed "sleep drawing". In the early mornings where at times I'm meant to be unconscious, I've been instead replicating him and grown sleep deprived because of it.

All of this―every single goddamn doodle and sketch and drawing and painting I've done since Tweek left―has been done near incoherently. On one unfortunate night I'd gotten the version of him, the one from the last night I saw him, stuck in my half-dead brain and that hadn't been good because I'd ended up drawing him on the cusp of orgasm so many times that―fuck, I'd let it get to me.

I'd been hysterical on this night when it happened, utterly lost to my surroundings and unaware of anything but the shape of his parted mouth on the paper and the tousled disarray of his damp locks. There were other details that I wanted to draw, wanted to see, but I could only guess. It was the feel of his fingers digging into my skin, his warm little palm cupping me for that short moment. I'd wished noise had a physical appearance as I sat there etching out the half-mast image of his eyes because I could hear him as I remembered those quiet sounds and soft mewls, the whimpers and my name on his tongue.

His thighs had been small in my hands, skin smooth and lips glistening. The featherlight touch he'd applied to my hips―I had been able to recall it so well, and I hadn't even realized it when my hand had gone limp, when I had quit drawing and only been able to see what was inside of my head. That night I'd been hunched forward, forehead leaning into my easel, fingers aching not for a brush or pencil, but as they reminisced his body and the state he'd been in, the one I'd touched and made feel.

Unfortunately for this particular Tucker, I don't know how I'd done it, but I had given myself more boners in a week than I have in an entire year.

Seriously, I just didn't know what to do with all of them. I was so tired of my seemingly uncontrollable abundance that I had them organized. The first I beat off, the second I took a cold shower, the third I just let go until I went soft. That was the pattern I lived by as the days commenced. I just hoped I didn't doze off during the day and get a hard-on in the middle of class because number three had been my last erection.

To be honest, I had no idea how Clyde and Kenny handled them. They were masturbating fiends. It wasn't even that I didn't like them or didn't want one because it was a phenomenon when they did decide to appear in my life, but so fucking many after never having any was just strenuous on my body. And I was exaggerating the amount but it just felt like a lot, like too many and not enough energy in my body to amount to their remarkable quantity of numbers. A flood of boners―that's what was happening to me. I was being attacked by a never-ending flood of fucking boners.

Cure for erectile disfunction aside, by the next day I wouldn't even realize that I'd drawn him incoherently until I spot my pad of paper removed from beneath my bed or my sketchbooks open and laying on the floor. It was like I couldn't sleep at all, my brain too full of too much stuff for it to fit, and so to empty it out I'd taken to sleep drawing since ninety percent of that nonsense has been Tweek as well as numerous variations on the interpretation of that one dream. So many papers with Tweek's fucking face have been collected, cluttering up my space, that I had to ask Pretty Lady to help me organize the mass—not the mess, the mass. Two hands just didn't seem to be enough.

We were on the floor of my bedroom with piles of paper circling our bodies. They were the loose sheets that didn't belong to my sketchbooks or paper pads and there were a lot. When I'd first asked her for help, she hadn't been expecting such a massive clutter. Though she appeared unfazed, I didn't know if so many alterations of Tweek's face and facial features were creeping her out or not. I mean, he was everywhere front and back.

There were his sad eyes, ashamed eyes, glittering eyes, foggy, laughing, scared eyes. There were his lashes in the dark, bold and black, and then in the sun, scarce dusty blonde lashes catching the light. There was the bridge of his nose and apples of his cheeks sprinkled with a blush, and contrasting levels of paleness that varied whether or not he'd been caught, was worried, or frightened. There were the palms of his dainty hands cupping numerous pills or his little-knuckled fingers resting limply against my bed as he slept. There were his lips stretched into a smile, puffed out in a pout, shining after he wet them, swollen from the abuse of my mouth and teeth.

I had recorded the delicate shape of his skinny legs in different articles of clothing from tight black jeans, to crumpled blue jeans, to cutoffs that revealed his small calves and bony ankles. Sometimes I would sketch certain pairs of his boots that happened to catch my eye or a scarf I might've liked. And then there were the others where clothes weren't included at all. I'd carve the slender curve of his back or the bones of his hips into my paper. A few were of shadows catching his spine and ribcage. I wanted to emphasize the smooth texture of his skin in some.

As I looked them all over I remembered snippets like the softness of his hair and the slip of my fingertips over his lips. I wasn't going to say anything then and I wouldn't now but he would always turn his cheek into my hand whenever I got a feel for him. My mouth curled when I saw favorites of mine like the first portrait I ever did of him in my room, the same one the Julibeages had loved fetching for me now all chewed on at the corners and slobber-stained; the one of him sleeping with the dogs and this one from my most recent state of sleep drawing: a memory from the day we'd all eaten at IHOP where he was peeking up at me from the rim of his giant coffee cup. They'd fallen out of my sketchbook at some point to join these looseleaf ones on my floor for whatever reason inanimate objects had.

Pretty Lady held two papers in her hands, considering both before putting them down with the others. She'd wanted to look at them all before they got put away into folders, some of different sizes because at times I liked to work with larger sheets of paper or cut regular ones in half. "These are beautiful Craig," she said. The two she placed on the floor were newer ones that I'd slept drawn. Any older pieces had already been sifted through. I felt smug because I hadn't created the majority of these in the right state of mind and yet they were still attractive enough to compliment.

"Because they're of him," I told her simply. I was looking down at his nearly symmetrical face as he slept, the similar slope of his brows and identical placement of his eyes. He hadn't known I'd woken up, had barely even shifted in my absence, and I hadn't meant to draw him—I'd honestly just needed to use the bathroom—but the compulsion had been there when I re-entered the room, so of course I'd had to do it.

She glanced at me before picking up another drawing. "You think he's beautiful?"

"I think he's gorgeous." Tweek Tweak was definitely something else and it was nice whatever it was.

Her smile was mischievous, reminiscent of Kenny. Perhaps they were in league with each other. "Have you ever shown him these?"

I shook my head. The blonde actually hadn't seen much of anything that was related to my artwork. I've been too busy coddling him—ironically—with my artwork for him to view any of it.

"You should," she suggested. "He'll like all of them."

Snorting, I asked, "He won't think I'm creepy and stay in South Park forever?"

The brunette girl laughed at my humor before surely stating, "I think he'll be flattered."

That didn't sound too bad. That actually sounded quite rewarding. "Flattered enough to suck me off?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You don't need to flatter him for that."

My brows rose in curiosity. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Shrugging her shoulders, she said, "I don't know. Why don't you figure out the meaning of that dream of yours and maybe that'll help."

Well that was a low blow. I pursed my lips because that dream was still a phenomenon and the woman I lived with had just used it to take a stab at me. "Do you know something that I don't?"

"You poor, poor man," was all she said for a minute. During that minute I watched her shuffle through any remaining papers until she was finished. "What?" She finally asked. My obvious silence was her answer. "I know many, many things that I can't wait for you to realize."

Because I definitely needed her to be just as illusive as my goddamn dream. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I can't say anything to you because it will be so much sweeter if you do it on your own." She scratched her cheek to shake off my unrelenting stare.

"Dude," I huffed. "You fucking suck."

Her smile was excited. "Speaking of fucking, I put Tweek's number in your phone. So you should text him. Or call him."

Speaking of fucking. "What?" I was so genuinely confused.

"It'll make his life knowing you finally got his number, okay? Just do it." She stood up from my floor and jumped across the piles before sneaking out my door, careful not to let the Julibeagles in.

I toppled over as gently as my beanstalk body could manage to keep from wrinkling any of Tweek's portraits. Closing my eyes, I tried to bring up any repetitive images from my dreams, specifically the ones I always tried to draw because they seemed to be the most important, but the only thing I could picture were my blurry interpretations of them. It really sucked having to do this—or at least feeling the need to do so. Documenting dreams was one thing, and that was something I was good at, but analyzing was something else entirely, and I couldn't even document this one because the only thing that came from it were blobs when I knew that there was something more.

This was such a hassle. All I wanted to do with my life was raise my dogs, draw stuff, draw Tweek, and continue to be best friends with Clyde and Token. None of this other stuff was necessary. This dream shit and Pretty Lady suddenly saying weird stuff and Kenny having to come over every time Tweek did. That last one wasn't even of grave importance but it still added to my turmoil.

Dejected—lately I've spent so much time on my dream that by now I thought it was useless to ponder on it for too long—I rooted around in my pocket for my phone and lifted it in front of my face. I scrolled through my contacts until I found Tweek's name, a thing of which I noticed I kind of liked being there, and debated on calling or texting. It'd be fun to mess with him. Maybe I could pretend to be the murderer he'd worried over the night before he left.

Instead, I held my phone against my ear and waited for him to answer. It was later in the afternoon, so hopefully he wasn't busy. After the line continued to ring, I thought about hanging up but then I imagined Tweek throwing his phone across the room at the call of an unknown number and decided not to be too hasty.

I'd just gotten through a few verses of a 1980's Genesis song when someone picked up and it definitely wasn't Tweek. From afar I heard, "You're such a baby." Their voice was smoother, more controlled. To the phone, they said, "Hello?"

"Hey. You should give the phone to Tweek."

"I would, but Tweek's too busy being a puss—" In the background Tweek clearly said the name Thomas in a scolding manner. No fucking way. "Dude, Thomas! Tourette's Thomas?"

"Yeah," the guy confirmed curiously. This was like the best day of my life. I loved this kid back in South Park. "Who's this?"

Sitting up, I exclaimed, "It's Craig! I did your laundry on multiple occasions, remember?"

There was practically an explosion from the other side of the phone. "Craig, yeah! Of course I—bitch—remember!" Oh God, I loved him so much. He was still so cool.

"Thomas, give me the phone," Tweek ordered. A scuffling sound followed shortly after.

"You got cute!" Thomas confessed.

I could see the two of them scuttling around a room I've never seen before, one trying to keep the phone, another desperate to take it back. "Yeah?" I laughed. "I'll bet you got cute, too. You should send me a picture sometime."

"Oh," he exaggerated at his friend's expense. "You mean nudes? I'll definitely be sending some to you."

"Thomas!" Tweek's screech was vicious. I'd never seen him angry before and I wondered how the light played in his eyes when he was.

"Hey, calm down," Thomas consoled. I felt a punchline coming on. "When I get some back I'll be sure to share them with you."

Everything was silent for a moment and I really wish I could've been there to see Tweek's expression. "Thomas," he finally threatened coldly. "Give me the fucking phone."

Sighing, Thomas relented with a mournful, "Bye Craig. Maybe some other time."

Before speaking, Tweek took a deep breath that I don't think he knew I heard. Thomas was giggling, encouraging him to bring up the nudes exchange. Once he let his breath out, his anger along with it, he squeaked into the phone a barely audible: "Hi, Craig."

He could be so endearing. "You're cute," I teased. When he started sputtering, I added, "How have you been?"