(Warning: includes mention of prostitution and the sort, though nothing graphic hopefully. Mostly based off a story a gravedigger once told me, while I was visiting my grandfather's grave. Take it with a grain of salt. Or a bucket.)
There wasn’t much left to love in him.
He could feel the anger and the hatred rushing through his kisses, the denial in his touch, the resistance his mentality provided to his physical form. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. David couldn’t pretend any longer, and Ishmael wouldn’t let him. They were finally together. They were finally free. They remained utterly hollow.
The graveyard was quiet. A rooster crowed in the distance.
“That felt better,” Ishmael lied, turning to David dully, “Didn’t it, Davie?”
David shook his head. He was a shadow disgracing another’s grave with his presence, stashing condoms in his pocket out of shame. He had committed a social atrocity, damned himself to a life as a pariah. He covered his tracks, like a murderer would wash off blood, knowing full well all he could do was hope no one noticed. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said, pulling out the cigarette from his mouth. His shirt, fragrant with sweat and gasoline, was ripped open, revealing his scrawny but muscular form. He could’ve been a handsome man. He was only pushing towards thirty, it shouldn’t have been hard for him to find a good Muslim girl to settle down with—what happened?
What happened?
“I know,” Ishmael answered. “I know.”
There was no hotel vacancy that could hide their shame.
The more fortunate sinners would’ve gone that route, certainly. He knew rich men. He knew their secrets. The wayward creatures, they had temptations, desires that couldn’t be made public; that’s why people like Ishmael existed, wasn’t it? They called it the oldest profession. Well, it made sense—sin’s older than virtue, after all. And the creatures, they were determined to spend every last penny hiding their cravings, using him like tissue before throwing him out the garbage. Always pointing fingers. Always the holier one. Always the guiltless victim. Well, at least they paid, he’d think to himself. They know how to leave a good tip.
David did not pay, that night.
He didn’t have enough money for it, and Ishmael understood why. He’d found the man littering the streets of Surabaya, barely a rupiah in his plastic cups, and felt pangs of sympathy in him. The first time, he offered a coin, the next day two, the next day four, and so on until the other man had built the courage to talk to him. “Don’t bother with it anymore, you’ll be dropping your house in there at this pace,” he said, in an irritated fashion, “It’s not worth the trouble for one man, anyway. Go on and split it to more unfortunate souls.”
“Now, don’t be like that,” Ishmael answered, playfully, “I’ll spend my money how I’d like to.”
“You’ll get yourself bankrupt.”
“Then I’ll happily join your side soon enough.”
Their conversations were short. Full of life. Enjoyably eccentric. Their names were the most difficult things to come from their lips—everything else was open for discussion. David came from a religious household, lived a simple life with one wife and one wife alone. Isca was her name. She didn’t last very long. David barely remembered consummating the marriage. “Didn’t you love her?” Ishmael asked, earnestly, “Surely you’d remember that. You don’t just forget someone you love.”
David shook his head, sitting down cross-legged on the sidewalk. “She told me I didn’t, no matter how hard I tried,” he said, “She told me I couldn’t love any woman even if I wanted to.”
Isca knew.
Isca was smarter than David or Ishmael, when it came to these irrational things.
The first time Ishmael brought David to a graveyard, he told him a memory he’d repressed for years. “I used to go here, before I got my career in order,” he told David, slowly, knowing full well how it would come off, “I was young. I’d been kicked out of my old home, and this was the only place my—clients and I could afford the privacy.” He sat down on a block of cement, initials carved out on it. “It’s dark here. No one notices what goes on behind the headstones.”
Even in the dark, David’s face crunched in a familiar fashion, in the same sets of expressions Ishmael’s parents offered him before deciding to remove him from the household. “It’s…disturbing.”
Ishmael chuckled, knowingly. “Well, that’s how it goes, I suppose.”
“Aren’t you--” David paused. “Afraid they’re watching?
“Who?”
David stared at the headstones.
Ishmael paused, the realization hitting him. “They were the only things that didn’t stare,” he said, nodding to himself. “They were the only things that didn’t judge. I feel like I know them better than I do the living. I feel like I was always meant to go wherever they are now, several feet under the ground. I feel like--” he stopped. “My parents told me to go rot in hell. It’s only fitting I go here.”
They stood there, in the dark, staring at each other. Sharing cigarettes. The nights were long. The cemetery visits were frequent. Their first kiss was their coldest.
Ishmael often wondered what it would’ve been like to be different. He often wondered what it would’ve been like if what they did wasn’t wrong. Would they’ve felt better about themselves? Would Ishmael have needed to sell himself, then, if his parents didn’t think it was immoral? Would David have needed to face Isca’s wrath, her need for affection? Would they be there, then, searching for love in cracks of cements and buried cadavers?
They lay there for awhile, hollow and cold, two corpses waiting to be buried. The graveyard was silent. A rooster crowed.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
