101518 Have you learned to turn off the fear? Remember when you first stepped into the forest? The path was summer-dusted. Tufts of tough grass and plantain lined the way, reliably as little lights along an airplane aisle. The way sloped gently downward. You didn’t have to shit. You didn’t have to piss. Your shoes felt good and your feet weren’t too hot. The sky was so deep and clear, an upside-down swimming pool of potential. Everything was great, OK? He was practically yelling now. There was a reddish patch going down the middle of his forehead. He calmed down. Then you hit the edge of the woods. A patchouli-smelling breeze fluffed up from somewhere down in the valley below. You and your friends smiled and laughed easily. The sound of crunching footsteps slowed, fell out of the steady overlapping rhythm it had been in, and piled up in a heap of people slowing, stopping like dominos falling back up into place. You all paused to stare into the mild green slight darkness of what lay before you now. He scratches his throat a bit, right where the cords of his neck lead his gnarly skin down into his mock turtleneck. He looks off somewhere. His eyes are watery but only because he’s old and rheumy. He’s aware that you’re waiting for him to continue, and is a little annoyed by it because even at his age, being the center of attention, even if it was what he was trying for, tends to leave him feeling a little like, oh shit, here i am and now i’m supposed to keep saying something. Remember the first time we all went in there together? he says, deftly not quite exactly changing the subject. So and so got a rip in her pants because of the barbed wire sticking out of the ground. The remains of an ancient fence, all but buried under successive generations of this place being too commonplace for anyone to care if every trace of man-made intervention rusted away completely. Everything not made of plant or dirt or animal or rock was rusty. That fence line peeping up like a half picked carrot. Old buckets. Old drums. Old fenders. Old cans with the old style pull tabs. After a few steps in, you didn’t even see those anymore. He stops to sneeze. Bless you, he says, looking right at you, you were the only one who made it out alive. You feel like you should feel some way about this but you’re not sure how you feel about it. When I found you on the other side, you were so tattered and ravished and lean and pale, you could hardly speak your native tongue. Talk of roots and berries. Demons in the night. Negotiations with small feral beasts and the filtered moonlight through the silvered leaves. You left a part of yourself in there, and I suspect you’ll never get it back. Yessir, you mumble, even though it sounds half dumb. He looks up again, directly at you suddenly. He looks at you. You look back until the juicy deliciousness of being unable to keep looking makes you look down and away. That’s it. That’s the moment you come here for. That’s the moment you’ve been living for. Admit it. You will admit it; you live to admit it. You love to admit it. Giving yourself permission to admit it has rent a great big hole in the protective covering over your heart, your mouth, your posture, your youth. Come here, he says. Without getting all the way off your knees, you scoot forward. His hand rests on your head, the weight and roughness of it sending little sparks down through your neck into the center of your gratitude. You are open-mouthed, thrumming, tingling, unabashedly in love. This is so everyday it means nothing, and nothing has ever happened exactly like this before. The weight of his hand shifts almost subliminally, and you let your head be steered like a horse whose rider doesn’t need a bit. Your cheek grazes hot denim as your face floats towards his zipper. The bulge there grows bigger. You breathe on it slowly. Watch it twitch and grow bigger faster. Undo the belt. Listen to the sound it makes, in slow motion. Undo the button. Feel the indententation in your thumb, in your stomach. Unzip the zipper carefully, not wanting to hurt or pinch what rapidly swells to fill its newly-created freedom. You are a saviour. You are a creator of freedom. You are the freer of souls. You are the young, the astonished, the pliable, the rescued. Touch him with your lips, caressing, soft, hard. Inhale his scent. Flick your tongue out, once, look up. Look up. See the faint lines of the smile forming. It is all you need. Look back down. Continue.