420

My two halves are at war. I am a scientist and dramatist. My nature is to document every little moment, to sculpt a narrative from chaos, to distill logic from the noise of the world, to commit those moments into words before my memories turn gray. And yet since February, the recluse in me has hoarded it all inside, as if these treasures that stay in my brain will forever remain mine and mine alone.

He and I sit at the Carousel Bar in the French Quarter. The carousel spins round, one revolution every fifteen minutes, as the bartender serves two sazeracs on the counter. The canopy above is dotted with fairy lights, and I watch my reflection in the mirrored panels floating overhead, twisting like a kaleidoscope. I can't recall any of the conversation with clarity, but I remember the overwhelming hyperawareness of one's proximity--a hand on the back of my chair, a brush against my shoulder.

When we make it to the House of Blues, the smell of pot pervades in a haze. The stage is larger than I imagined, glowing blue in the darkness. Fifteen minutes until show starts, but the bouncer shrugs."It's 4/20 -- might take another 50 minutes before anything happens." I'd expected to see more gutter punks, with their grunge-punk tattered chic, like at the FKA Twigs show, but it's easy to forget that the tickets for this show were fifty bucks--especially when I won the pair of tickets for free.

I don't know any of Tyler the Creator's tracks, other than "Yonkers" and "She" from a cursory search on Youtube, but my bones move to the beat as the bodies bounce in sync all around me. I don't know the words coming out of the rapper's mouth, save the f-bombs littered indiscriminately here and there. I become one of a myriad, a myriad becoming one dark entity of limbs slinking entranced like a cobra before a spitting snake-charmer.

We talk in the car as he drives me home. I have sat here many times since that first time in February, but I feel on edge--more so than usual. Days away from the eve of my twenty-fourth year, and I remain a thirteen-year-old, watching the string of firsts play out half in terror and half in thrill. After that evening at Bacchanal when the revelations spilled out one by one, he has dealt with me as if I am a deer--slowly and patiently, no sudden movements. I have grown less anxious in his presence in the past two months, but there is something different this evening. Subtle gestures, ghost touches here and there, and I can feel it in the stilted air as we stand on the porch an hour before midnight. When I pull away from an embrace, I feel it, hear it, before I register that flutter of movement against my cheek and realize what he's done. Eighteen hours later, and I am still frozen in that moment on the porch--dazed, feverish, restless, and terrified of the uncharted territory before me.