My sense of self is still to be found. I won’t forget how this encounter catapulted me into absolute paralysis. That pain lingers everywhere, underlying another leaking pain, against my will. The weeps overcome me, and I shudder just at the thought.

My mother tells me that I must reckon with that younger self. I acknowledge his impenetrable curiosity and need for challenge. His tenderness soothes me. But the unwarranted aching torments me.

A stolen act. How did I enter with such a wrath of confidence? Each step led me closer to this perpetual aching. Wherever you go, whenever you are, look out for the red flag.

Those days of misery have faded, however, and I look back now with eyes dry finally. It was just a moment, a fleeting one. The repudiation that once consumed me is gone, so I think.

* * *

It was a raunchy tale of the two doves destined… to be forever apart. The sloppiness of their unfettered love left him prancing about the street. At most a fantasy in his mind, Koda and Amari’s tumultuous love affair consumed him.

Koda leads a nonchalant life. Amari falls for him. Koda falls away. The bicker, the drama, the cycle.

Set in the rural backwoods of Deerbrook, he carried his eff-the-system tendencies to class with Kodian-Armarian in hand. Deerbrook State was a rotted place full of drunks and stoners obsessed with D3 football, so who cares? Absolutely nothing to do there except wander about the quad, so he just spent his days prone on his twin mattress for days upon days. But Townsend College, the real deal, enshrined egotistical dim-wits in their secret eating societies. They were elitists in that privilege hailed above them and their success was implied and imminent. And yet, he needed a lick of it, for he hailed from a school of perpetual party-goers. 

To escape this hell hole was not only necessary but was going to happen soon.

He quested for a refined sense of self you could only find far, far away from Deerbrook. Begging for something so vague at its core yet so clear in its intention was the exact type of person he was.

Friday nights were characterized by fantasies in his mind far away from cold, ye olde Townsend. Like the Gobi Desert illuminated by aurora borealis where he would begin the day with Surya Namaskar A and end it with B.

Hermit tendencies kept him locked in the confines of his tiny dorm shack at Virgoan Hall. There, he would fall back into a Kodian-Armarian trance. Something about Amari’s charm enthralled him. A book set in Townsend College with its many secrets expanded his imagination beyond whatever was going on in Deerbrook. There was no space available to question the already questioned at that red-neck institution. He remained bottlenecked in a sameness that bore him to the bone.

Then he would feel the need to burst out of the room to bloom. Hark, we search for newness now! Everyone craves stimulation beyond surface-level hogwash. New quandaries. New spells. New anything. He longed for a new way of thinking beyond the plainness that plagued this school. Transferring was an option too, he sometimes pondered.

Aimlessly meandering the quad, he would wander into a vacuum of silence (his noise-canceling headphones). But, thankfully, the night picked up from here. An uneventful night transformed itself into a new fixation: Tinder, the forbidden fruit he often kept locked away until boredom struck a deeper and darker chord.

Left swipe, right swipe, left swipe, left swipe. It was bleak because he found himself unmatched. That is until he matched with a shaggy brown-haired boy who pole dances for fun.

(Violentlycold10) HELLO

(Him) hey

(Violentlycold10) We should meet.

(Him) i…

With Violentlycold10 left on read, an aura of confidence glazed his skin. The moon shined a bit stronger and with a new transience.

For a few days, he sat in a newfound glory via the male gaze. To be liked meant to never be lonely again. D1 diver and junior at the prestigious Townsend, Violentlycold10 showed brief affection that flooded him with an unmeasurable lust for life. It was peculiar (and alarming), so he responded with a facade of nonchalance after pondering for days.

(Violentlycold10) Pls come now

(Him) …

(Violentlycold10) You thrill me, come now

(Him) huh?

This guy is doing a tad too much. Out of his mind. Perhaps I lack spontaneity or a childlike wonder. The mere thought of traveling to him tonight is nauseating. Albeit, the bag is secured.

Still, he longed to visit that little prestigious college one day: to breathe their air and to exist as if he were one of them. They lived the kind of life he lacked and needed, and he was willing to risk it all for that experience, to fulfill a dark academia fantasy.

Violentlycold10 was incessant on him coming that night. Down bad. The attraction was alluring because it was novel. It conflicted with the perception he had of himself navigating his early college years as an amorphous figure in grayscale garb. Duty called now that he could materialize Kodian-Armarian in his own world, so he forced himself into a new identity, one that didn’t GAF (give a f***). It required a shrewdness to reach far within, away from how he had perceived himself. He glanced at himself in the mirror and saw mediocrity, but he was at Deerbrook now. It was time to renounce these childish behaviors and like himself a little bit more. Things were changing. Whoever he was then was now out the door.

(Violentlycold10) Plsssssssssssssssssss

(Him)

(Violentlycold10) Keeping me on my toes. I like that

Violentlycold10 responded with tenderness, a wholesome affability that made him ache; a master coaxer of sorts.

Only he could find out how this tale would entangle itself.

Koda similarly embarked on a journey across America to prove his worthiness and complete devotion to Armari. It was time for him to discover what led Koda back to Townsend for his lover, whom he longed so badly for.

Townsend was a liberal arts college that maintained a specific mystique he needed to understand for himself and conquer. He imagined his visit to Townsend as Judgement Day, walking down the campus one November afternoon with an eruption of realizations on who he is and what will become.

And when Judgement Day came, he would cover himself in calculated layers—a sherpa-lined jacket, HeatTech turtleneck, and a plaid scarf.

The journey was treacherous, to say the least. At first, he couldn’t find the bus.

And once he did, he couldn't find his ticket, similar to Koda’s red SUV breaking down outside of the ghost town of Calico.

Morale was low, but he knew that he would soon be exploring Townsend, and it would all be worth it. Despite the agonizing motion sickness on the bus, he made it through. He felt himself transported into his own Kodian-Armenian, and the antics of the story began to manifest into a better reality for him. He felt a new passion for the first time in a long time…

Between Angell and Benefit Street, a beaming truck driver waited for him to pass. This kind of kindness and patience never existed at Deerbrook. Life was slower here and he desperately needed it. His Friday night delusions finally became a reality. This town was homier, more rustic, compared to Deerbrook’s state school sterility.

Violentlycold10 possessed an unnerving demeanor from the very first interaction (and he didn’t even realize it). Violentlycold10 had confidence in the way he spoke. Violentlycold10 seemed to know everything. Violentlycold10 was the kind of person who intimidated him, but he had an innate trust in Violentlycold10 in a sinister way. He succumbed to Violentlycold10.

Side by side, they walked to the college art museum.

He begged Violentlycold10 to go, even though Violentlycold10 had no interest in the arts, and to him, the museum seemed like a waste of time.

He absorbed each room with a delicate grace, gliding from one corner to the other. Just like Amari, who had a keen eye for all things aesthetic, he would take in each piece carefully. Amari could break down a blank white painting into a million words, and Violentlycold10 seemed to possess this ability, too.

The pole-dancing diver spouted mansplainer interpretations of each piece, using haughty descriptions like “the presupposition of [x] means for [y]” and other blah blah blah nonsense. Everything Violentlycold10 said seemed right, and he believed it. He did not understand the interpretations, but he pretended to, in awe. He felt lowly compared to Violentlycold10.

One moment while he admired a metal spiral sculpture, Violentlycold10 violently grabbed his waist.

He stood there awkwardly in shock.

His rigid body did not know how to react and he could not find the words to speak, so he just stood there and began to see things differently.

In that stillness, he saw the room shift. The walls appeared to lean inward, subtly shrinking.

His entire body felt disconnected, as though he no longer was himself but floated somewhere else.

The lights dimmed and the art pieces became moving stimulants that overwhelmed him.

The colors of each art piece melded together, and he felt a dizziness and weakening of his knees.

He did not feel himself anymore.

He could not look at the art in the same way.

He imagined his 10-year-old self in an MRI scanner with ringing noises piercing his ears.

The same mechanical ringing pierced through his recollection, a relentless echoing in his ears like a warning siren. The memory blurred with reality, and in the flickering of lights, the room itself began to feel like the cold tunnel of the scanner.

The colors that had once seemed so beautiful now blended into one another, creating a dizzying swirl of hues that disoriented him, pulling him deeper into a sensory overload.

And it made all sense because he enabled Violentlycold10.

He mastered the art of performing extraversion, letting Violentlycold10 be however he pleased.

They barely made it through the second floor of the museum before Violentlycold10 begged for him to visit his dorm room. With a mind depraved of self and thought, they walked to Violentlycold10’s dorm.

As they passed the grassy quad, he looked around: the students seemed ostentatious, yet relaxed, each walking with a sense of purpose on their own paths.

They approached a little red cottage, one that housed some of the dorms designated to each student.

He took off his jacket, hooked it onto Violentlycold10’s door, and entered mindlessly.