A Series of Shadows (Nonfiction)

I.

I spent my boyhood drenched in sunlight.

My hometown felt like a bowl of sand back then. In all directions, we were surrounded by the blue spikes of California mountains, and in their center were me and this city, still building outward and sprawling. The only way out was down the Cajon pass, a long winding highway between the San Gabriel mountains, or a road that would take you all the way to Las Vegas after miles and miles of dusty landscape, Joshua trees, and Yucca.

When people talk about the High Desert, they’re talking about us, between three and four thousand feet of elevation and blanched in dry heat. Our summers regularly topped out at a hundred and ten degrees for weeks on end, and our winters were blistered by windchill and clear blue sky. The sun was a killer there, heat exhaustion and sunburns, rashes and dehydration. The desert left my body freckled and sensitive.

But my boyhood was spent in sunshine, my boyhood was golden, days with my feet blackened by asphalt, my skin prickling with sweat, eyes tired from chlorine pools. Of course, I didn’t know it was a boyhood at the time, only that it was bright, and that I found sand in my shoes. When I think now of growing up, I don’t think about being a little girl, I think about sun.

II.

My senses are easily overwhelmed. Loud noises and flickering lights are felt as deep physical sensation, rattling I can feel all over my body, electric impulses firing along my nervous system, shaking in my hands. I didn’t know that other people did not experience the pain of sight, the ache of fluorescents, the overstimulation of a crowded room.

I would have days as a child that I could only describe to my parents as being “too bright.” Every room would appear somehow different, sharper, the image too clear. I couldn’t see it because I was seeing too much. I would cup my hands over my eyes to dull out the world, so I could focus, so I could see. I remember teachers pulling my hands open, telling me it wasn’t polite to hide away. If I tried to bear it, I would end up shivering, hands cold, heart racing. Panic attacks or meltdowns, I still hardly know the difference.

The worst was not being able to explain it; all I could say was “too bright.” I didn’t understand how no one else could see what I was seeing. The world was too much. Even the sun hurt my eyes. I would try to stay home, curtains drawn, hiding myself in shadows. My boyhood ended the day that I came to love the dark, to envy its shape, to desire its ability to cover me, to love the way it wrapped up my body like a secret.

III.

Every moment of intimacy I experienced was cloaked in darkness.

Jax and I playing video games in the dark of their living room, the way they turned towards me for a kiss, but something inside me made me curl my mouth away. I can still feel the hot press of their mouth to my cheek, the whisper of their breath behind my ear, down my neck. Owen in that pitch black room in our high school theatre, the ghost of his hands, the electric almost-touching, the way I pictured over and over that if I could find him in this fumbling blackness, I would be able to pull his mouth to mine.

In a tent we pitched in his backyard, I let Nick touch one of my breasts through the two layers of tank tops and the sports bra I wore to keep my chest small. He said he was excited, his hand not moving, but just placed over my breast for a while. I can’t remember what I said, but I remember how disgusted I felt with myself and him after that, climbing out of the tent to brush my teeth and shivering in the silence of his mother’s bathroom.

Ezra in the hot tub at midnight, the way he pulled my fingers into his mouth, how my lips hung open, how I couldn’t believe someone would want to worship my body like this. For years we acted like nothing had happened or would ever happen between us.

Camille let me touch her breasts over her bra in her room with the lights off, even before her boyfriend had gotten the chance to (he was so upset with me). I remember the warmth of her in my hands, her soft gasp as I held her. I could barely look at her without blushing.

Every sensual touch was done to me in the dark, in secret, I cannot imagine it happening anywhere else.

IV.

Even in my fantasies, we fuck in the dark.

Every imagined moment between us is set in the late hours, bodies hazy and orange from far away light. He is whispering to me, touching me, but his face is obscured and out of focus. I don’t recognize him as anyone I know. Our bodies meet but it is censored by shadows. Some of my fantasies are fully clothed, or in darkened corners, or blindfolded—him and I both. Some of them have nothing to do with our bodies, just words, hushed and prayer-like, praise and degradation in equal measure.

Once, my friends laughed about me having sex, said they couldn’t imagine me doing it, that I have too many issues with my body, too many issues with textures, that I’m too easily overstimulated. They said it nicer than that. I laughed too, but only because it was true. My virginity had long been part of our banter.

Is there a way for us to touch without my body having to be a part of it? Is there a way to dull out the world enough that when our bodies finally find each other it doesn’t send me into the choral hum of panic? Even imagining him touching me is too much, too bright. Like I can feel his hands all over me, like I can feel his eyes on my skin, like I can feel every place that I am visible. Even when I touch myself, I am covered by bedsheets and my eyes are shut. I hardly make any sounds. In a moment where I am meant to be so completely inside of myself, I still try to disappear. But, at the same time, I am craving it like nothing else. I am picturing him and I in every doorway, on every counter, in every bed. In daydreams, I am begging for his touch, I am whimpering for just the slightest graze of his fingertips, shivering for the press of his mouth to the spot behind my ear. But at some point, I shake myself out of the fantasy. My mind dulls the want of my body, like pulling a curtain over a lamp. Disappearing until the darkness is all there is.

Parker Dean (he/him) is a queer and trans writer based in Seattle, WA. He holds an MFA from the University of Washington – Bothell and is the Managing Editor of Silly Goose Press. When not writing, he can be found scouring the wetlands for birds of all kinds.