first time synonym
how has a first time shaped you?
Of all firsts, I think of you.
Bacon Ice Cream. Yoshiyuki Okuyama.
A Little Life was written seven years ago. Seven years ago, on a bus through the upper Haight in San Francisco, I closed Hanya Yanagihara’s book and a blockade of blindness, sunlight burning through max brightness, lulled my eyes into tears. Tears met snot and I lapped it all up with a dry tongue. The woman next to me asked if I was okay, and I got off at the next stop, my mouth full of my bodily salt.
I didn’t know where I was, turning in directions of homes that weren’t mine. And I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep in the sun on the sidewalk on a weekday stretched past yawns and clouds and wished for next season’s cold or rain to wake me, wash me away as someone new. This was the first time I’ve ever read something that was so stark in its literary brilliance that my life felt finished. I felt the period at the end of the sentence and knew that I could rest, love, do my own kind of praying.
Introductory love is a love you never forget. I remember rest in your arms. The way our hands learned the difference between touch and feel. Kisses trickled down my neck. Soft spots opened, here and there. And then you were everywhere, in my pullover, in my breath, in my hair and dreams. This is why they say first impressions always matter because you burned holes in my skull to let steams of fantasy escape. Leading me to believe that your life was in mine or my life was in yours, this fleshed out inside-out ease that flung sense and wonder in my own geography.
Wet behind the ears. Isn’t that where you left a kiss? A whisper? My own name in your voice? Desire suddenly and wonderfully breathes, like the first thirst of the nascent universe.
Years later, I would later learn that your name meant the devotee of Dionysus. Such a fun age we had, you and I, too much dancing and drinks in the Castro, hyena laughs for every man that made passes at us, bets on who got the most passes, loser had to pay for a $1 slice around the corner, I got pepperoni and you got combo, chili flakes powdered on your mouth, spice-licked lips. You spelled it out for me.
j
o
y
This rush, this cold, that made it 3AM. Joy. The kind that sweeps the rest of the world under some heavy rug. No one one hurt nor old. Every face beautiful. Every object a marvel. All the drunk cries and secrets spill all along the Castro, astronomical miracles. And that’s how the fog forms, the San Francisco bay settles, the fishers and the bakers opening up the world in the next hours. America surrenders and the center holds.
Years after, I have these nights, shroud them as special, for new people. The evenings are dressed in the same adolescent theatrics, one history I’m bound to repeat. To show that I’m still fun at this age, that I’m still something, still worth time and joy. Because that’s what we do when we learn of joy. We craft it in many different ways with many different people to be enjoyed, swallowed whole, and ever again. Because joy, we learn, comes in such few doses that we better be damned grateful that they even occur. So, I let it reoccur at different times, later, reform all that is good. To keep it up.
A little life, a little gest.
Of all firsts, I learned from you.
