Work Text:
On this day.
Write a few lines, find a good photo. Put it all together, and out if goes. Doesn’t seem so hard, does it? He doesn’t want it to seem hard. He’d rather no-one stopped to think how long it takes, how much thought goes into it. And oftentimes, though he explicitly pointed out that he would be the one personally curating this part of the site, that it would not be chosen at random, he’d rather no-one paid too much mind to what it means. And how much.
One doesn’t want to give too much away. These things have power. One wants to give away just the right amount. But no matter how much time and attention one puts into it, thoughts and memories have a way of blindsiding you. Especially when they don’t belong to you alone. Multifaceted things, like crystals inside a geode. Hit them with a beam of light, they’ll return it to you broken into pieces of colour you didn’t expect or even imagine. Unlike a geode, there are no calculations, no matter how abstruse, you can apply to measure precisely the ripples the memories you put out there will stir, or return. In that twilight place there is untold power neither Jimmy nor anyone can hope to tame. – That’s quite alright with him. He relishes a measure of chaos. The thrill of the unexpected.
Then again, there is also the archivist in him. The technician. Out of all that chaos, a cosmos. Order. Sense. He’s a hoarder. Either organise systematically, and keep it neat, tagged, and tidy, or drown in the vast, unfathomable amount of chuff he’s kept through the years.
Accumulating is easy. Building an archive, however, takes a great deal of time, and an obsessive vein. The kind of drive and perseverance he put into mastering his art, now turned to document, classify, file, and index his entire life. Where his own records lag, do research. Follow his own trail in the world. He’s unwittingly scattered breadcrumbs all over the globe. Traces. Ghosts of past selves. It’s a sobering thought, should someone apply to follow and collect them all, the picture that would emerge. –He’s not afraid of it, but he is uneasy. It’s not really his life that’s out there, it’s an effigy, crude and inaccurate, with enormous, critical gaps. Revealing, perhaps, but not all revelations are just, or true. He knows his place in this gallery of statues. He’ll have his own do justice to himself, if is to do justice to the band, which is ultimately what matters.
For years now, he’s been busy at work curating his legacy, preparing it for posterity, creating an authorised version of himself. Not quite spin – that battle was lost long ago, they didn’t even put up a fight – but control. You can’t control the rumours, but you can ignore them and, in doing so, disown them. They don’t quite die out, but like a child having a tantrum, they too get tired and lose strength after some time. Memories fade, diverging, clashing versions emerge, adding to the confusion. People don’t know what to believe. They may even come to the conclusion that the truth is unknowable. Good. But if you’ve kept quiet long enough, you will find, when you finally speak, that everybody’s listening. They’ll hang on to your every word, and won’t even notice the vast shadowed areas you won’t shed light on. – They don’t really care, do they? When one is a national treasure, it’s the official version they want inscribed on the pedestal. There’s no room and, frankly, no real interest, in nuance and greys and dark and shade. A name. Some dates. Lots of praise. All carved in stone for the ages to come. We all know monuments lie. How can there be any truth, anything real and meaningful, in four lines and a more or less accomplished likeness. But the point of them is understood. It’s the memory that counts. Leave a tidy one.
Jimmy’s truth is in the music. That’s where he wants it sought for, that’s where he wants it found.
But see, the thing is, people hear “the truth is in his music” and think in terms of complex tabs and chords, double-necked guitars, modified equipment, novel recording techniques, esoteric instruments, masters and influences, the violin bow, that sort of thing. They will take you at face value, as they always do.
Don’t they know him by now? That’s not what Jimmy means. Or not altogether. You see, his music has a dual soul. One half came from him, and the other half...
There’s Jimmy’s truth. Right there. Plain to see for those who are looking. It was never hidden at all. It never cowered in the shadows. It does demand, however, that one adjusts the lense just so. Not very much, mind.
And that’s the truth. Make of that what you will.
Well, what do you know, now. According to Jimmy’s records, it would appear that on this day, in 1994, he sat down with Robert Plant, for the first time in god knows how long (that may be on record too) to start work on what would later become their first reunion album, No Quarter.
On this very day, twenty-six years ago.
“Shall we dance and never stop, take my hand and stop the clock from turning over.”
(“Bring on your late, late smile. Come on and dance another mile...”)
Goddammit, Robert.
He reads these, Robert, of course he does. Each and every one of Jimmy’s daily entries. Patterns and meanings, choices and omissions, Robert will look for them, and he will find them. Better than anyone, too, reading into it with a keener eye against the complete picture. He knows Jimmy altogether too well.
As if curating this thing wasn’t hard enough work already, he has to do it feeling him hovering over his shoulder (Remember this? Remember that?) A benevolent presence, forever smiling. Demanding too, overbearing. – Remember this . Remember that . There’s no escaping him. He’s all over Jimmy’s journals of course, on countless photos, and also in ticket stubs Jimmy’s kept for fifty years, in tatty postcards, trinkets from all over the world, a note on a scrap of yellowing paper, left a long time ago on the pillow for Jimmy to find when he woke up. His hoard. His treasure. Priceless. A scrap of paper which has variously made him smile, and frown, and choke, and smile again today, so many years after Jimmy first had it in his hands. How could he throw it away. It’s not rubbish. It’s a talisman glowing with power.
How much of Jimmy’s life is defined by Robert Plant. His presence, and his absence, curving space and time in Jimmy’s memories, in his mind. It gets heavier and heavier every year, as other people and other influences fade away and vanish, but Robert’s remains. Everybody else came in and out of Jimmy’s life leaving but a trace. Ghosts. Robert lingers. His voice. The echoes of him in the world as he follows on his journey. The half of Jimmy’s everything he still carries everywhere, tugging at Jimmy from far away now and again. Very strange indeed.
Who could have bloody imagined when he first set eyes on him, August 1968... Who could have possibly imagined.
“Reaching out to find you, I put it all behind you. I’m back again, I know...”
(Whenever the hell were you really, actually gone. It’s only really gone when you truly stop missing it. Yearning. Needing.)
One quite forgets how it feels to be around him. As a means of survival. His spell is very real, and very powerful. Some men acquire a sort of aura with fame and glory. With Robert, that’s not so. His is genuine, and none of it is borrowed: it emanates solely from him. He doesn’t put it on, for the cameras or the audience or whatever. He’s had it since Jimmy has known him - he felt it, pulling, drawing him in. And just like it wasn’t given, it can’t be taken away, nor when the lights go off, nor when the audience goes home, when the retinue disperses. When Zeppelin disbanded. It never goes off. In a place far, far away, remote, wild, uninhabited, Jimmy watched it flare high in the night, brighter than ever, with only the sky and the stars and Jimmy for witnesses. He’s not quite of this world.
All of Robert’s fire aimed at one can be quite overwhelming. Intoxicating, life-giving. And just the same, when he leaves and takes it away with him, one is left gasping for air, crushed under the burden of the grim boredom and mediocrity of the days to come, shivering in the cold.
What the hell was Jimmy doing in 1994, exposing himself to this kind of loss again.
(Oh, you know what. You know why.)
For years, they had done well to steal a few hours now and again; a whole night, even, sometimes. Here and gone, and almost immediately it would start to feel like a dream – intense, but not quite real. It lingered in the day as a strange misalignment, something not quite right, until reality reasserted itself, as it was wont to do, and just like Robert, the dream was gone.
That was not what Jimmy had been after this time, what he had been after for years. And Robert knew it.
Oh, when Jimmy started talking about new projects, Robert was happy for him, chuffed that he’d found the hunger again, and wished him the best, but he jealously guards and is loath to risk every inch of ground he had gained on their past. He wouldn’t work with Jimmy for anything substantial, certainly nothing like the renewed partnership Jimmy wanted. He didn’t want his hard-earned name as a solo artist (eye-roll) to be diluted in Jimmy’s, and the band. He was very happy having full control, choosing how much or how little contribution (or interference) he put up with. That would not be the case with Jimmy around.
Unspoken, but much more humiliating, perhaps, the nagging suspicion that Robert thought Jimmy didn’t have it anymore. Generous as he is, in this he won’t do anyone any favours. His time is precious, his standards exacting (guess who he got that from.) A true bloody artist, he is. Either the chemistry is there, and good music happens, or there isn’t, and it doesn’t, and then he’s off, on his way, seeking the living thing, the thrill, the magic, wherever it may be.
Fifteen years, he’d been on the run . I am more than that, he’d said, and cut his hair, hid in baggy clothes, and went looking for himself. In all the wrong places, if you ask Jimmy.
More than that. The golden god was never more full of hubris than in those sad years of the aftermath. More than that! We were gods! There is no such thing as more ! Bow your bloody head to your own glory. Have some respect for what we achieved.
(Oh, never mind all that now. Never mind.)
The artist seemed quite unavailable at this time, too wrapped up in himself. The man, however.
With the right motivation, Jimmy is not above playing dirty.
It was a long shot. Throwing the deck, showing his cards not just to Robert, but to the whole world. There was only one way in which this didn’t end in resounding humiliation for Jimmy. And it all quite depended on a foggy, uncertain hope that the thread between them had not worn so thin that it wouldn’t snap if Jimmy pulled hard at it. If one has truly stopped caring, if one has moved on, jealousy might prick them, but it won’t sway them. Rattling chains is one thing. Persuading someone like Robert to put them on again is quite another.
(This is a game we would never have played in the old days. We were young. We were serious. We were frail. I would have broken your heart. I would have broken my own. –This time, if it all took a turn for the worst, it was only Jimmy’s heart on the line. He was willing to risk that. If it had been Robert’s too… He’s only ever wished the best for Robert, always tried to do right by him. How can people even think… Oh well. Robert knows.)
Jimmy would have paid a king’s ransom to have been a fly on the wall the day Robert finally budged. If what Jimmy was doing was blatant, bordering on ridiculous in its shamelessness, how exactly would you describe the one who willingly falls for it?
It was all hysterically funny. Jimmy chuckles, because they are a ridiculous pair indeed, both of them. So ridiculous, in fact, he’d bloody do it all again today, if nothing else for the glorious rush of triumph that picked him up and took him dancing. (And for the breath making unspoken hope burn a bit more brightly.)
“Robert’s people called ” – Oh sweet lord, bloody finally. Yes! Not a few free hours in the studio, thanks and goodbye. No more dabbling for old times sakes, no more stolen moments which had become rarer and rarer. Something else entirely. A new journey. A new start. But there was one rather colossal condition, however: yes to sitting down together, try to make some music, “see if it was still there, if they still had it.” Robert was not interested in a nostalgia fest. He wanted new life breathed into things. Change them. Expand them. He had ideas. Stuff they’d talked about before, years and years ago – a good omen, full of promise. The suits had gone a bit green hearing them go on about it, though. That was not quite what they’d had in mind. But this was not a reunion, Robert said. This was a new partnership. New account. Otherwise, he didn’t want to know. So it would be on their terms (mostly Robert’s) and only if they confirmed that they could still do it. That was the whole extent of the initial agreement. All clear on that.
Then again, there was a side to this which one doesn’t discuss at meetings. Jimmy had made abundantly plain what he was in for. But what about Robert? All that Jimmy knew was that Robert knew the full extent of Jimmy’s -oh, shall we call it ambition-, and that he was there. What was Robert in for?
One supposes a grown man ought to be able to simply approach another, take him aside, and talk about this sort of thing. Sounds like a sensible idea. Better than throwing quick tentative glances across the vast boardroom table, for sure – as always, carving a parallel space for themselves in plain sight. But it’s not a matter of being sensible, is it? Let’s be fair. One doesn’t dare ask this kind of thing unless one is certain to like the answer. And Jimmy wasn’t certain. Perhaps not even Robert at that point, who knows.
There was nothing for it, then. Sit down, try to make some music, find out “if they still have it, if it was still there.”
And on this very day, twenty-six years ago, they did just that.
They’d had some Mauritanian drum loops sent over from this chap Robert knew; he had access to all sorts of things, he said. Let’s go for an African or a desert sound, he said. Jimmy had been toying with the loops for days, trying this and that. Robert, no doubt, would have a notebook or ten packed full of poetry at the ready. Maybe he’d been writing new stuff for this too, for today. Jimmy was thrilled to find out what sort of thing Robert’s mind had been up to, the kind of haunts it had been dwelling in. Robert’s lyrics are not an oracle, though they may sound like one, and Jimmy always made a point never to ask what they were about (or about whom), but there are threads one can pull. Jimmy was bound to be in there, in one way or another. Precisely, it very much mattered finding out in which way.
Don’t hope for much, Jimmy kept telling himself. Don’t expect too much . If it’s all business, then it’s all business. It was a good business, making music with this man. It should be fun. If that’s all there is, then so be it, and be glad for it. (When one has to belabour a point again and again, it’s a clear indication that the spirit of it isn’t quite sinking in. Oh well, nothing lost for trying.)
He came in early, to warm up. Clench fists, wiggle fingers broken several times over. Wake up, wake up, old buggers, rise and shine. I don’t know how many chances we’ll get. I don’t know how many he will give us.
Start running the loops. They had talked with Robert about slowing them down, and they acquired a sort of strange resonance, a different weight, a long, heavy drag that wasn’t reverberation or echo or anything quite like Jimmy had worked with before. The sound sort of opened wide. Over such a simple base, all sorts of intriguing possibilities.
Possibilities. Business, was it? How could it ever be. No: birdsong, calling to your brightly feathered mate. Draw him in. Jimmy’s plumage was not as pretty as it had once been. Certainly not as colourful. This was all that was left, a pair of hands that had seen better days. Would it be good enough. Did Jimmy still have it. Was it still there.
When Robert finally arrived, gosh, how embarrassing. Butterflies inside, like a teenager. His eyes on Jimmy, his smile. The rush! Oh, it had no bleeding right to feel this much . But it did, and it passed straight from Jimmy’s churning stomach to his hands. And where had this been all this time. Where the hell had it been hiding? In a castle hedged with brambles, in the tallest tower, where a hundred years ago a princess pricked herself with a poisoned needle and the entire kingdom fell asleep. And here comes bleeding prince charming, to call princess and kingdom back to life with his kiss. – Or just the bloody sight of him, to be honest. The stride of a king used to crowds parting for him, magnificent, and well aware of it, tall and broad, his face harder, starker, the suppleness of youth all gone, but not missed. His lion’s mane loose, lovingly tended to, spun gold. And the leather trousers, blimey. He didn’t have to push it so hard. Jimmy’s focus was dangerously all over the place already.
There was no “alright, this is it,” no ritual, no momentous threshold to cross. There was a “hiya” and “alright?” and “where do you want to start.” Jimmy said, let me kick around the loops for a bit, or something of the sort. Robert said he was going to grab a beer. Jimmy said alright.
Later, Robert would tell excitedly in interviews that they had it in ten minutes. Sometimes he’d say seven. Jimmy doesn’t care for the number, he cared for Robert bouncing like a child and going on about it to anyone who would listen. Very hard not to hug him when he’s like this.
When Robert came back with his beer, Jimmy was deep in it already, a place of greater safety compared with the outside, where he was walking around with his chest torn open and his heart exposed to someone who still hadn’t decided what to do with it. The trancelike quality of the drums on an eternal loop, slowed down as they’d agreed, were quite different from anything Jimmy had ever played against. His heart could go to hell for a while, he was working.
And making songs is work, hard work at that. If you’re doing it right, it’s supposed to be. You don’t just bloody stumble upon them, you assemble them from a number of raw materials and then carve those out, trying to get them closer to the idea in your mind - if it’s indeed the mind where these things come from. The kernel, the seed of it, is always a bit of magic. But from there to completion it’s about grit and grind, and trial and error, a contrite, self-conscious process, the furthest thing from easy or effortless. Even with Zeppelin, you had to earn your miracles. It’s a craft, a trade, and for every streak of gold you may come across, if you do, you’ve had to dig up whole mountains. The process of putting any number together, when you look behind the curtain, appears quite far removed from magic.
But with Robert.
He’s talked about it as plucking a song from the sky. Maybe that’s how he does it now. Back then, it was quite a different story. It rather felt as if he buried his hands in the music to dig up something that was already there, waiting to be found. It was that organic, that wondrous. And when he got them out, words, vocals, they were nothing like Jimmy had expected, and unlike anything anyone else would do with it. It seemed downright impossible the tracks Robert was able to sing against. And how: soaring with sheer power, resplendent, layered with meaning, soulful, completely unexpected, and just exactly right. In a hall of a teacher’s training college in Birmingham, Jimmy found a prodigy. And what’s more, he was granted the insight to feel it. He did not know, he could not possibly foresee, all that Robert would become, but that evening in that unlikely place, he heard that primal scream and it gripped him right through, and he felt it. This one. Him.
He had the voice, the charisma, the stage presence, he would have the looks and the pluck like very few have ever achieved, and then, on top of everything else, he would turn out to have the words . Robert Plant is a miracle. His miracle.
And plucking songs from wherever the hell they come from was magic. As if the song had always existed somehow, and had been split in two halves. Jimmy had the one, Robert had the other. And when Jimmy’s half called, the one in Robert recognised its own name, and came out to speak itself.
It was a dance, a rush. It is so whenever voice and guitar come together like this, weaving and tangling, sliding into each other, making a beautiful whole. It’s sex. Bloody great sex at that. Best he’s ever had (For one, you can do it for three hours non-stop and there’s no part of it that isn’t an absolute thrill.) They both understood it like that, Robert and him, from the first moment. It was identifying that same passion in each other what fired them up and forged them. And that’s how they played. Like ritual sex in front of a crowd of the faithful, Robert’s voice lying on top of Jimmy’s guitar and moving together, sliding together, lovers tumbling between the sheets; other times, the music fucking the voice, the sounds from Jimmy’s hands literally making Robert moan . (They really were anything but subtle. No idea how they got away with it, to this day.) Performing on stage together was an indecent thrill, brazenly obscene. Oh, the fun they’ve had.
But alone like this, just the two of them, doing it from scratch. When you’ve never heard the song before. Something new flowing from their alliance, their union. Like seeing the face of your newborn child for the first time.
Yes, of course Jimmy was expecting some of that magic today. Wasn’t it precisely what had brought them there? There, physically in that room, and there at that point in their lives, after all that had happened, all those years. Drifting away to seek, and coming back to each other, hopefully to find. There is no-one else like it. No-one. Not for Jimmy. As for Robert...
Focus, focus. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Robert standing there, in his leather trousers and his soft grey top and his flowy golden hair and his beer, and he doesn’t dare look up. Robert starts humming. It’s still jarring when it’s not that boyish timbre anymore from his mouth. The sharp, bare, arrogant peaks, the primal scream piercing the skies, an eagle’s shriek, now softened by sun, wind, rain, by time; cracked, marked. Even his range is lower, closer down to earth.
He unspools a phrase. Mutters something.
“That is why, that is why...”
Oh. Jimmy must look now. He dares, and Robert’s warm gaze is there to greet him, and he remembers now, as if crashed on by a wave and dragged tumbling over the breakers, why he thinks of Robert as the light.
Robert sits down, leaning towards him, physically drawn to the sound. He sways to the ambling riff. His head dances with it. That smile. His eyes dip to Jimmy’s hands, sparkling, excited, fired up. Jimmy muffles a chuckle of pure joy, of relief. He wishes he could... – Oh, it’s useless. He doesn’t have the words. Who has them. It’s impossible. Light, warmth, life itself, returning, seizing him. And all of that, all of it, because that one man has that look on his face. My wide eyed boy . Angel, god, muse, soulmate, partner, love of his bleeding life. For the first time in so many years, Jimmy felt he was, once again, singing the right song.
“Shall we dance and never stop, take my hand and stop the clock from turning over...”
It quite feels like crumbling to small pieces and falling apart, as the terrible fear that had kept him together all these days melts away and something else comes to replace it, to build Jimmy up again into something lighter and looser. Robert sings a wordless phrase, the Eastern lilt so natural to his timbre, so pleasant. Jimmy’s loose in a garden of wonders, spun in the colours Robert’s wrapping him in. A tune begins to take shape, finding its roots in Jimmy’s music. The structure unwinds, or grows, or falls down from heaven, some thing or another. There, this is the refrain. The verses. Is this the coda? Jimmy almost giggles, he’s high. Oh baby, it’s beautiful. This is beautiful.
“Show me your eyes, oh light of the son,
Touch me with fire, my mind is undone.
All life conspire, my freedom has come.
I drift through desire, my wonderful one.”
Oh, my baby. Is this your half that you found one day and kept it somewhere, for this moment? Have you had it long, wondering how it would go, what the tune was? Was it waiting for this, for me?
“When you do what you do I can never, never ever let you go.
When you feel the way you feel you must never, no, never let it show.”
Jimmy is smiling like a giddy child. A passer-by might wonder why. “ Never let it show? Surely, that’s a tragedy.” – No it’s not. It’s not. You see, now Jimmy knows for sure Robert is singing about them. He could break into dancing. He almost does. His partner is here. This is their song. They all are.
But they keep it going, a nod and a look and a handful of words here and there. Stop, start again. Bring this down a bit, how about this, do that again, keep this going a bit longer then we take it back and again from here. Hair falling on Robert’s face as he scribbled, scratched off, scribbled some more. Picking up and discarding lines, trying them out with the tune. Seeking for Jimmy’s eyes, his mind. Excited. Both of you. Effervescent.
When they put that number down to rest, done for now, they were glowing. Ten minutes. A drum loop, a guitar, a voice, and nothing else.
It was in Robert’s eyes: They very much still had it, then. It was very much still there.
They were on a roll, too good to stop. Oh, it was fun . They kept kicking around the loops, pulling out more numbers. The mood was quite feverish. They were relieved too, quite obviously. It was a good feeling realising how nervous Robert had been before. Jimmy had been too focused on his own anxiety to notice earlier, but he noticed now. Hopes and expectations had been on both sides. How reassuring.
The strain of it was resolving into a different kind of tension as the moment to wrap up for the day approached.
How bloody odd, when you reach this point. The stares have been lingering more and more. The question hovers in the air. Could very well be that the last time they’d been in this situation was summer of 1968.
So who moved first? I don’t remember. Honest I don’t.
How long can you gaze into a chap’s eyes like this without making a decision in one direction or the other. How very bloody scared Jimmy was, even after that glorious session, brimming with promise. Yes, even then, he didn’t want to hope and be rebuffed.
Might have been Robert, then. He knew the lay of the land, didn’t he? What would have been stopping him?
Robert’s hand on Jimmy’s face. After so many no’s, Robert’s overwhelming yes. Smile and wait and wonder, and wonder what the hell are they waiting for. A kiss, just one, serene, almost reverential, as fateful as the first.
“Let’s go home, eh?”
On this day, twenty-six years ago, I got you back.
*
Skittish, there wasn’t much talk on the cab. Stepping into the house shivering like a leaf. I swear to you, Robert, if you offer me a beer… - How bloody nervous can you get when you’ve done this more times than you could possibly remember. But just the same, had it been for Jimmy, they might still be waiting there.
Good job it wasn’t, then. Robert’s hands on him, drawing him near. As tender as they were forceful, holding him down as if Jimmy was going anywhere, as if he wasn’t precisely where he had been desperate to be. Scared, sure. Overcome. But he would not run away. Flee into his arms, rather. In despair, at first, need beyond telling, claws in Robert’s hair. One cannot be greedy who has nothing. One can be greedy only when one is full. It would be a while until greed was possible for Jimmy again.
Robert’s always been good for both. Take him in his need, and then give himself to his greed. Pour over Jimmy like that, soak him in all that he is. His mouth, his arms, his hands. His sounds. The scent of him and the taste of him. A slow dance, no haste. They had time. Nobody was waiting for them, nobody you need to account to. No home time, no school bell. Unshackled and free, with a whole house to themselves to bring Jimmy in from the cold. A cold Robert couldn’t even imagine. A loneliness he could not comprehend. And both he can banish so thoroughly that even Jimmy will forget at his own peril they’re even there, always looming at the edges beyond Robert’s light.
Home now. In the light. He lay you down and held you, groaning as if in great relief, as if having you in his arms and in his bed soothed something that had been in pain. You were aching too. Grabbed his neck, kissed him, getting him out of his clothes like they offended you, furious for every day defined by the absence of him, every day you had lived around what was missing, circling the dead, dry remains like a vulture, not even trying to move away. You had laid everything on the line for this. Now you demanded what you’d fought for. Give me back my voice, my words. Our music. Our memories. Our dreams. The light. The warmth. Give it all back to me. Give me back myself.
Yes. Yes, Jimmy, yes.
He’s coarser and bigger and rougher, as fiery as always, but has more control; learned, modulated. His body like his voice. Fucking like he sings, singing like he fucks.
Nobody fucks like him. No-one. Skill or stamina or whatever are beside the point. It’s the joy, the intensity. The ferocity, even. Without any drama, it’s a big, big deal. Sacred. The transcendence of things being born and dying every day, the turn of the seasons with its miracles and its rituals. Robert can turn himself into a sublime animal of instincts, and transform you too, if you let him. And make you come spectacularly in the process.
And how beautiful he is when he fucks. You lay him down like a feast for kings. Like a diamond mine, he likes being discovered. Like treasure, he likes you to count your riches – worship his beauty, take inventory, roll in your hoard of gold. Make him feel your greed. Make him feel coveted. You’re the only one he will suffer possessiveness from. Only by you he will suffer being owned. So you stake your claim. Inch by inch, you take back what’s yours.
Of course there have been other men (never mind the women), but you choose to believe you were the first. And as if you had loaned him out to the world for a while, now you take him back, all of him. Mine . You won’t suffer interferences, you won’t suffer interlopers. He’s loved many, but not like you. Never like you. No-one. You suck, you bite, you sink your claws in him. Not greedy now – craving. Deeply, vastly bereft. Tell me. Say it.
He makes it sound holy, liberating. Your gift to him .
“You’re the only one.”
He likes you needy. He likes you open. He knows you find it hard to let go, and he likes to undo you. You’re a quiet one, and he likes to get you talking loud. He breaks through your shell and leaves you exposed and raw. He wasn’t aware of what he did to you when you were young. He did it without realising. After, you’d be shaken up, crawl to a dark corner to lick your wounds by yourself; he’d be puzzled and lost and had no idea what the hell had happened. And you would never tell him, of course.
Now he knows. He rips you open so gently. Layer by layer, he takes you apart. And when he finds you hiding there, he knows to hold you and be with you. Be with you there as he unfolds you.
You trust him. You want him to open you up and expose the tenderest parts of you and touch them. You want what it makes you feel. How much. You like that he knows how much it means. The parts where you’re softest and most vulnerable are only for him to see and touch.
He doesn’t need you to tell him that he’s the only one. You couldn’t if you tried anyway. So you just do your darndest to unfold for him, to call out his name and all the other things he needs to hear, to let him see and hear and feel that he’s getting through, and that you want him to. It’s all you can do.
Anyway, he knows.
*
He can be as terrible and ruthless as an elemental power, but he brushes his teeth and has a piss before bedtime just like any man.
When you settle down for the night, there’s a very familiar, gentle rhythm to it. Trust, comfort, certain rituals that persist. The sense of domesticity and intimacy that takes twenty-five years to build, but with the sort of effervescent thrum underneath of a first night with a new lover. Quite simply put, it’s wonderful.
He won’t be gone in the morning. Or the next day, or the day after that. You are together now, in every way, just like you wanted. You’re going on an adventure. The whole world feels to you right now as young as if it had just been born.
On his front, with his most playful, wickedest smile, tired eyes.
“How long?” he mumbles, stroking your hair. “How long had it been.”
You don’t say you could probably tell him down to the hour, given a couple of minutes to do the math. (An archivist in love, what are you going to do about it.) No, you don’t tell. He’s seen enough.
He steals closer to kiss you goodnight, but goodnight comes and goes, and you’re still kissing. It’s unlikely that you’ll fuck again tonight, but you still tangle together and hold each other.
You’re not sated. You’re never sated, but the time of plenty has come. The wheel of the seasons turned and turned and here you are, at last, the springtime of your loving. The second season you are to know.(*)
You think of the silly thing who wrote those lines in the first place; he thought he knew pining, and loneliness, and cold. What a bloody idiot. You won’t give him a hard time, though. There is beauty in a youth so extreme. You’ll go gentle on him. You forgive him for thinking himself an old soul. He’s the one who brought you here, in the end. You’ll forgive him anything.
*
“If there's one more, only one , only one more night
Come on and dance with me, baby
Make me feel alright, make me feel alright, feel alright.”
Jimmy’s gaze is unfocused, his mind wandering far. It finds its way soon enough. He can see him, with his silver-streaked mane, an old lion, his beauty changed, but still resplendent; his power undimmed.
He told you he would wait. You told him, don’t. He said, there’s nothing else I can do. Then he put his own birdsong in the world, where it remains. And if we take his word for it, he’s still waiting.
On this day, twenty-six years ago, Jimmy wanted nothing more than...
It’s been a long, long time. Can you forgive him yet?