A Certain Kind of Light

A Certain Kind Of Light

by

Thomas Moore

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Queer Mojo (A Rebel Satori Imprint) on Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Moore

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Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This book is dedicated to David Rylance, whose generous help during the editing process went above and beyond and to whom I will be forever grateful. I doubt that this novel would be here without him. The warmest of thanks are also owed to Rebecca Dyer and Michael Salerno, for their help and enthusiasm in reading the first drafts of the book and for their constant support and encouragement during this time. In memory of my parents, who will never get to read this.

Chapter 1

Are you ok? I didn’t mean that. Most of the time I don’t wait for an answer. I use it as a greeting. It’s more like a reflex. So basically I just said hello.

Yeah.

*

Luke’s dad died a week ago. Since then it feels like he’s changed. His face looks different. I don’t mean that in a deep way; his eyes aren’t sadder; his expression doesn’t look like he’s had to deal with a lot of heavy stuff or anything, even though he has. I mean a real physical change. It looks like he’s swapped faces with this kid that we know called Alex. I don’t know for certain because Alex takes a lot of drugs and I haven’t seen him for a long time. If I were to see him now though, I’d be expecting to see Luke’s face. That’s the only way that things could make sense.

No-one else has mentioned Luke’s face, and this is the first time I’ve thought about it, actually. So I’m keeping quiet, because it could just be bullshit on my part, or because I’m really fucking stoned.

*

Luke’s not really saying much, which is good, because I wouldn’t know what to say back to him, apart from really obvious stuff like telling him that everything will turn out ok. He’ll have heard that a million times by now. I’m tempted to say it anyway, out of nowhere, because coming from me it might make him laugh.

I’m looking away from Luke, and at the cup on the floor. I’m trying to work out why someone stuffed the bird inside it. It must have already been dead when that happened. It’s all red and torn and pink between the feathers. I can only see little bits.

It’s too cold. Luke’s neck has disappeared because his shoulders have hunched up.

Where do you wanna go?

I want to sleep.

Wanna get stoned?

No. Well, yeah, but I wanna sleep more. Or I have to sleep more than I have to get stoned.

The wind just spat real fast. The feathers shivered like someone just walked on the bird’s grave.

*

Luke’s hard to read. Even more so now. I hate the part of me that thinks I might be able to have sex with him because his dad is dead. It’s more to do with how much I love him than how selfish I am; I’m almost positive of that. We’ve slept together four times, but we don’t talk about it. I guess that means we understand life. It’s hard to tell.

*

I used to feel bad about thinking about Luke when I masturbated. I could never work out why, because I knew that I found him attractive and I never felt bad when I tossed off thinking about other boys that I liked. I imagine I’m his girlfriend – this girl called Emma who I might be in love with too. Some of the things I think about are probably degrading, but I mean them with such veneration sometimes that it’s just unbelievable, even to me. I scare myself with the amount of love that I have for the world. That’s what I tell myself anyway. I tell myself that I’m lucky as if I’m talking to someone else. I think that’s because I wish I was.

*

It’s the funeral in three days.

Shit.

I know. Luke’s rubbing his hands together, but by the time that registers they’d disappeared up the sleeves of this really cool red and black check jacket that he’s always wearing.

Shall I come? I feel stupid for saying that.

I don’t know. Yeah. It doesn’t matter.

I’ll come. That feels stupider.

OK.

I’ll call you tomorrow.

*

I can’t stop looking at the bird. I want to turn it over. There are probably flies eating the flesh that I can’t see. The sound of Luke’s dwindling skateboard gives me goose bumps.

***

Emma is wonderful because she sees me as a really good person. I get the feeling that she sees me as sincere and vulnerable. I’m shy, but the other thing is I can still recognize what people think are my strengths.

I’m thinking about calling Emma because it’s late and she’ll be up and I feel pretty bad about myself. It takes awhile but I finally do.

Hello?

Hey Emma.

"Oh hi. I can’t make out whether she’s been sleeping or if she’s just tired. How are you?"

I saw Luke tonight.

Yeah, he said. If Luke was there then she would have said so at that point. So they must have spoken on the phone. It’s been so cold today.

I don’t know whether I should go to the funeral.

Did Luke ask you?

"Yeah." Even though he didn’t actually ask, I know that’s what he probably meant.

Then go. I can tell that I’m not going to get the sorts of things that I’d like to get from the conversation. It sounds like Emma might want to start talking about stuff that I don’t feel I could intelligently listen to at the moment. So I tell her ok and hang up.

*

I never know what to do with myself at night. Two guys on television are arguing about death. I don’t know but it sounds like they’re both arguing the same point. One of the men is a writer. I’ve seen him before. I suppose he gets more money from TV appearances than from his books. Maybe that’s why he always looks so pissed off.

The lights are off. Every time the camera cuts to a different shot the amount of the wall next to the TV that’s illuminated changes. On the same wall as the light, I’ve got a collage made up of photographs of me and my friends at some of the different gigs and parties we’ve been to. The television keeps turning it sky blue. My favourite picture is one of me and Luke. We’re sitting outside a tent at a festival. Luke’s sunburnt and high and I’m grinning because I felt good that day. We’re precariously close to each other.

A band I used to love are playing a song that meant everything to me about a year ago because I thought it was all about being inadequate and people not being able to see through ugliness. When I read an interview with the singer who said that he wrote it about falling in love with the most amazing person that he had ever met, it sort of stopped meaning so much. It felt like he didn’t understand his own song.

Bands let people down. I feel let down by them anyway. There have been times that I’ve tried my hardest to relate to this stuff so that I don’t feel so remote. I try to believe in things as hard as I can so that eventually I might actually feel a better way about them. Instead all it makes me feel like is that belief is dumber and deeper than I can capably imagine. I look at the light as I switch channels.

*

It’s too late to get a drink, because it’d mean going downstairs and risk seeing my dad watching porn. I know he watches it because I’ve seen the videos that he hides in the same drawer that my mom keeps her sewing patterns. I was about ten when I first watched one of them. I was old enough to be left at home when I was sick and had the day off from school. I can’t remember what I was looking for when I found it, maybe matches. I watched a woman screaming while a black guy kept telling her how tight her pussy felt. Her head kept bumping the headboard. I found a magazine in his briefcase before that, though, a different time. I was playing a game where I pretended to be a spy and ended up finding a glossy A5 pamphlet of women who looked like casual teachers dressed unconvincingly as school girls.

I know my dad’s drunk because I keep hearing the glass chinking on the bottle of whisky. It scares me how pathetic he is when he’s like that.

Switch back. The band has finished their song and is being interviewed by a guy dressed younger than he is. I wonder if Luke’s watching the same programme as me, because I know that he still likes the band. I don’t call him in case he’s managed to get some sleep. Maybe music is different for him now that his dad’s dead. I’m curious but I won’t ask him.

*

I’m looking at peoples’ profiles. You can enter your postcode and it’ll show you all the people who live near to you. I recognize quite a few. There’s a boy who I always see in town. His page says that he’s ninety nine, but I think he’s about eighty six years younger than that. I thought he was a girl at first. I’ve thought about what it might be like to fuck him a few times. I don’t think he knows how powerful he is. By the time people understand beauty, their bodies are usually way too gone. I only know that because my body is powerless, which means I have a better understanding of people who aren’t. His page says that he is willing to talk to anyone but just because people say a thing like that, it doesn’t mean that it’s true.

The boy is called Craig. It doesn’t suit him. He’s skinny and he’s got longish straight brown hair that’s brushed across his face and I’m staring at his pictures like they’re the only light left in the room, which now that I’ve turned off the TV, is the truth.

I’m imagining what it would be like if he and Emma had sex. The only way I could picture if is if I was Emma and I was riding the kid. In my mind he looks so exhausted and godly I can’t make out my own place in it.

I worry that it’s sexist to think that I’d make better use of Emma’s body than she does. Maybe it’d be worse if I didn’t admit that. I reckon I’d make better use of Luke’s, too.

Craig’s friends are hidden. The only ones I can see are the ones who have left comments on his pictures. I’m cross referencing people now. So many teenagers seem to think that the word Tragedy represents them – a lot of people seem to use it in their screen name. They’re trying to make a point. It’s like they decided collectively to torture themselves so they could feel less alone with one another.

Maybe the bird just fell from the sky. Although something about that doesn’t sit right. Maybe it landed on a road and got hit by a car. I think about what sort of sound that would make. Maybe it was caught by a fox.

It looks like Craig didn’t know the person taking the photo of him on his profile, or looks like he didn’t trust them. Someone saw the chance to be close to him and tried to use the camera as cement. His hood is pulled up and he’s just looks – blank? There’s only two photos. The second is really small, like it’s a thumbnail that’s meant to get bigger when you click on it but it doesn’t. I like that it implies he isn’t vain.

*

This girl is sixteen and from America but talks the way a fifty year old man from England would think that a sixteen year old girl from New York talks. I don’t know if what I said is true. Still, she says that Craig is beautiful, so it’s not all lies. All of the comments on her page are from people asking if they know her or if they’ve met her. None of her friends are sure they know her like she’s really familiar but her existence is confusing. Not that her friends couldn’t be liars too. Everyone lies. I lied to Luke when I told him that he was just being paranoid about me wanting to sleep with him or sleep with Emma. Now I can’t even remember what I said.

I’m looking at a photo of Luke now, like it will help me solve something. I know that it won’t because I’ve looked at it before and it’s given me nothing unless you count in lonely. After all I’ve looked for in it, it’s like I’ve stripped it of its meaning. Luke would tell me shut up if he could hear me thinking this stuff. He says I over think things which is like telling me I hit my head as a kid and now I can’t walk straight, but he isn’t wrong, I know I do.

A man in a white coat is holding a scalpel and telling a lady who is faking an interest that he could transform her life. On another channel, a bomb has gone off and an actor has died. People are running and there are some cars that look really fucked up like a kid’s had a tantrum and smashed up his toys.

I can’t even pronounce the name of the country where the bomb went off, which makes me feel bad, so I concentrate on its spelling and sound it out in my head. As for the actor, he’s in America. Everyone’s saying he committed suicide but no one knows yet.

I’m looking at the phone and thinking maybe I should phone Emma again and just start talking about sex so she’ll have to talk about it too if she wants me to stay on the line.

*

Whenever I’ve seen Craig around in real life he’s been walking on his own and looking