A Wall of Words
“He laid each word down like a brick — building a wall between himself and the person on the floor.” Simon sits on the floor and looks up, and in his gaze is hope — “the last kind, desperate and naked”: tell them. One word, and the night becomes real. Jacob holds for two seconds and bursts out laughing: “You fell for that shit that easy?” Each word is laid down “like a brick — building a wall between himself and the person on the floor.” The shoeprint on the notebook does not come off — and neither does that laugh.
This is an experience rarely spoken of in stories about secret love: what the one being hidden feels. Not just hurt — erasure. The person learns that his existence in the other’s life is conditional and depends on who is standing nearby. In a closeted relationship the price of secrecy is almost always paid by the one with less power and a greater need to be acknowledged. That is why, for Simon, this laugh is heavier than Craig’s blow: the blow confirms that he exists; the laugh — that he does not.
