Wehrmut - Cluster, Eno

When you are like them, your life begins at 16. They lived inland, yet now really sought to see the ocean. Some point in murky adolescence when everything that came before becomes thoroughly recontextualised. An eruption of understanding that is a slog to reach. It took them so long to figure out, and it will take them longer to understand. Coming to terms with being them, becoming the ‘them’, the other, the no longer a part of the ‘us’. It is a tough path to walk. Why even bother? Because it took them so long to reach this precipice. They’d wonder if there was anything else that could fool them so vastly.
They have reached their peace. They felt anything but peaceful. Chaos had always been in their life, but now they felt it inside.
First, they needed new friends. Find people at school, in an overcast cloud of croaking hormones. The single sex secondary school sought to make that leap towards friendship thoroughly difficult. School wasn’t the right place to look. There, they were taught that dyke was used to hurt. They are told not to listen, by some far away hidden instinct, maternal and marred. They worry what their mother will think.
She tells them that she has done everything she ever could have for this family. For their siblings. That the younger ones have lost their sibling. The houses next door can hear the whole argument. They wanted her to understand yet she would only drink larger glasses of wine, getting redder, getting redder every night until she keeled over in the living room many years later but by then they have already fled. They hope that never happens.

They are stabbed at university. First through the nose, around people who call them a dyke and they are unsure if that bothers them or not. They make close friends with somebody who is like them. It’s October 15th, and they all bought Bronski Beat’s The Age of Consent. Secondly, in the arm, with her nails digging into their arm, a callousness that does not hurt. Around her, they felt safe. Her nails are sharp as knives but they do not mind and only hold on closer and keep their breath baited and they don’t know what to do with their eyes but keep looking and hoping that she can figure out what they’re doing between them. Thirdly, in the stomach. They are beaten unconscious outside the bar on the other side of town.
When they are done dying, they are told about the damage. They feel like quitting. That thought only hurts more when they realise that they have friends, dear and sweet. To their surprise, one of their siblings visits. Not her, who made her feel safe, though. Everybody they knew went irritably quiet when another attack happened.
They are in a car going back to a flat where the rent is too high, with the dear friend who is like them. They stick by each other. Their sibling is in the back. She is talking about how she orders in her binders from France, and their sibling looks back at them,
‘What’s France?’
Summer comes back, eventually, and the three are in the same car, now driving south. Injury poorly treated, leaves them to use a crutch. They don’t know who they really are, yet they feel free, chaotic, and endeared by the people surrounding them. They wander off in this city, to look for cans and to see the sun set. Somebody approaches them and asks them if they are lost and they say yes. The somebody asks where they were from. They tell their approachee about everything that led until now. She tells them that there are places where you can marry, and love. They are entirely amazed. In one night, they cut their hair to new short lengths. They grow out their leg hair. They kiss. They hold her hand. They top. They laugh and feel an immediate intimacy. They both wash their hands in the fountains of Paris. Their sibling finds them and they think about before they were both born and they cry, before missing the first boat home.
They come back to where they were from and realise that Mother is dead.

Their sibling takes her own life and suddenly their own hair is growing out, they are surrounded by people and they are paying for a hole in the ground. They think about kissing the woman from Paris at their mother's funeral and then about the night Mother cried because of them. It is autumn now, and the skies are overcast. They are paying for the second hole in the ground. They feel responsible. They take the office job. A man named David invites them to dinner. He makes spaghetti, and fucks them. They yearn for Paris. They stay over. David fucks them again, and their hair keeps growing out. Their Bronski Beat tape goes missing. David keeps making spaghetti and keeps fucking them. Their piercing heals over. It hurts.  David is all out of spaghetti and so they buy him some more. And more. And more. And now they share a bank account, and a lot of spaghetti. They have a child of their own but they don’t make it past three months. They buy a house from David’s brother, James. They are now married to David. They have no vows. They keep their hair in an uncomfortable bun. Their friend who was like them goes to the wedding but the two do not recognise each other, though they both get drunk enough to forget whose wedding it was. Nobody dances aside from Gran. David calls it a success and dies a decade later from salmonella.
They live by the sea now. In the mornings, they watch the tide come closer and closer and they think about how it is going to eat away at their little house by the sea. James pushes for the land to be sold. They watch the ocean. They are old now but their hair is long. They cut it with David’s old razor and spill their faded hair over the beach. The ocean takes it quickly, and they understand. They lie to James about an illness they don’t have and he finally backs away.
There is a boat that goes by, of whom they thought the captain was cute. They have tea together and listen to old music. Together, they visit back home. There is a box in storage, with a shirt that says ‘dyke’, written in bold white letters. They cry, but the sailor moves into the house by the sea, before the ocean takes it all in a quiet night.