Diary of a Whole

I’ve been at Whole Festival—the annual summit of the Queer Illuminati’s techno underground—all of ten minutes when I pretend not to see my most recent, most torrid ex-lover. We’ll call him Light, because I feel unbearably so when I’m with him, because it’s that with which he fills my heart. My understanding is we’re no contact, so imagine my surprise when he comes up to say hi, beaming. I squawk out some sort of reply, a fledgling bird scared to jump the nest. I jump anyway, away—anywhere but here. Too late. A seed of hope has sprouted in my gut, spread to my wings. Turns out I can fly. 

An hour later, I’m dancing at the Forrest Stage with Cal, my best friend and partner in litness. The music is steady, calisthenic; a warm-up. Our first Whole was all white-capped hedonia, wave after wave of climax, and we’re ready for round two. Light is dancing alone some ten feet away. A body chain hugs his waist, catches my eye; an invitation. “I’m gonna go make a mistake,” I tell Cal. He follows my gaze but says nothing. 

“Is that a chastity belt for your new boyfriend?” I ask. Hope and other palliatives soften my sardonicism. 

“That didn’t work out.” 

“What a shame. Why’s that?” 

His eyes bore into mine, a screw into a nut. I think about us before, screwing and nutting. “Something was missing.” 

He puts his arms around me. This is how we met: eyes locked on the dance floor, bodies speaking where words fail. And words certainly failed us. They fail us now, too—we kiss. Everything shimmers. Is Light illusory? Am I conflating its (his?) experiential quality with some sort of intrinsic value? Our shirts come off. I’m spinning out, film flying off a reel. Whole is already drama, already a movie. Not even—it’s the opening credits. Nicole Kidman bursts out of my mind’s AMC: “Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” Definitely illusory, but I suppose two things can be true.

My first Whole, I didn’t care about who I was, only what I wanted; now, what I want seems to intimate something of who I am. I remember Whole is held in an abandoned quarry, an omen perhaps—mining with no promise of discovery. 

[PHOTO BREAK]

Dark? Maybe, but I’ve got Light—all day, all night, swapping spit and secrets. Our connection is complicated but obvious. “Such a cute couple,” some guy gushes. “He wishes,” I say. Light rolls his eyes and tackles me in kisses. 

We smoke at sunrise, exhaling into each other’s throats. We danced and talked for hours, and while our conversations don’t portend the Happily Ever After I crave, they produce a mutual understanding that engenders its own kind of optimism. Words have not failed us today, but we are exhausted. He wraps his arms around me. I trace his veins, wishing they were highways I could drive back to a time when words might have changed, not confirmed, our present circumstance. 

I find Cal and tell him I’m sleeping in Light’s tent. He’s less than thrilled. I’m surprised. Whole is anathema to expectations—he’s inviting disappointment. I realize I’ve spent virtually none of this day with him, but my time here is scarce.  

Of course, so is his, so is everyone’s. Whole destroys chronology. Or we go there to destroy it. Asking to interview people for this essay proved fruitless, nonsensical, like asking someone to recount their dream before they wake up. And you can’t wake up if you never go to sleep. “I’ve been awake since Friday,” a close friend tells me, Monday morning. “Am I entering psychosis?” I nod. Light nods off; I don’t. Beyoncé appears: “Is it a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare? Either way I don’t want to wake up from you.” Maybe I’m entering psychosis. 

I give up, get up, find Cal. Next thing I know: we’re grinding to Citizens Union, sweat snaking between our torsos. I lock eyes with a man who yanks me into a bear hug, introducing me to his diabolically hot partner and friends in the process. By the time we’ve exchanged pleasantries, Cal is gone. Guilt devolves into delirium. He’s become a mirage; I’m losing my grip. Fortunately, the sexual tension between us is taut enough to tow us all to Whole’s Cruising Village. They work my throat from all cardinal directions, a carousel of cock I ride until I’m dizzy. Sex, like Tums, is a miraculous analgesic—fast acting, hard to overdose. Also like Tums: it treats the symptom, not the cause.

[PHOTO BREAK]

Untold time later: I’m sandwiched between Light and Cal. They face each other, volleying jokes like tennis balls. I envision myself as Tashi in Challengers, wholly ignoring how that movie ends. We get up to dance only to hear the DJ cut the music. They’re closing the festival grounds except the main stage, Arena; a thunderstorm is approaching.

The Arena fills like a DMV—too many people, everyone confused and agitated. Then the speakers roar to life. Valentina Spirito opens with an aggressive, percussive track so well suited to the thunder rumbling behind her I’m convinced she conjured the storm herself: it starts to rain. Those of lesser constitutions, or more sense, take shelter, Cal included. I grab Light’s hand and drag him to the dance floor. 

Our dance is an intimacy I didn’t know. He asks me questions I’d long hoped to answer, whispers sweet nothings I’d long hoped to hear. My heart and dick swell with the BPM. I’m raked in ecstasy, enough to fill the hourglass draining our weekend, enough to make me burst. He looks at me like he always does when he’s about to say something important. Maybe he’ll ask to see me after Whole, or to go to the darkroom, or—

“I should go spend some time with my friends,” he says. 

Everything shrivels. Suddenly the rain is colder, wetter. The words that escape my mouth are not my own. “Of course! Totally! Have fun.”  

All the stages re-open. The storm has waned, though another rages inside me, anxiety sloshing into the ark of my mind. I thrash about, distracting myself. I’m orbiting a girl named Beatrice, a vortex pumping her fist in the sky. “You punch the air like you’re fighting your demons,” I say to her. “I wonder why that is!” she replies, whirling away.

I wander off. I’m clearly projecting. I stumble into the Cruising Village and, met with faces more concerned than curious, stumble right back out again. I bum a cigarette, smoke it, stub it out angrily. What am I doing? I have asthma for Christ’s sake. I’m hardly the paragon of self-care this weekend, but the line between self-discovery and self-destruction has become too fluid, too rapid, a river. I’m drowning.  

I sit down. I’m not drowning—I’m holding my breath. Did I not just liken my mind to a boat? What I really need to do is captain my own fucking ship. I’ve let my romantic rekindling become a conflagration. I want to be with Light, but more than that, I want to be like him—to quell myself, to commit to my friends. I've been investing in him like insurance against a speculative future at the cost of the friendship that will actually carry me into it. Besides, the present is a gift. Isn’t the best part of a gift not knowing what’s inside? 

I check my phone. 2% battery. I check Find My Friends, Cal’s pulsating blue dot. He’s at the campsite sleeping. “Phone gonna die,” I text him and Light. To Cal: “I’ll find u when ur up.” How, I don’t know, but we’re nothing if not drawn to one another. To Light: “HAAi, midnight, back bleachers of the Forrest Stage.” A mercifully quick reply: “i’ll b there.” With that, my phone dies. I finally exhale. A gift indeed. 

[PHOTO BREAK]

I dance alone. It feels good, feeling my body and no one else’s, not that it lasts long; I’m a siren, luring in friends old and new. I forgot my magnetism, or maybe I’d given it up. We dance like we’re shooting moonbeams out of our fingers: luminous, without Light.  

I ask someone for the time. 11:58 p.m. I sprint to the Forrest Stage. It’s packed, tense with the energy I imagine precedes a stampede. Am I going to find him? No time to ask—his hand shoots out of the crowd, guides me to the front. We dance as one, conjoined at the waist and lips, ramparts into each other’s souls. We search each other’s eyes for nothing but the sake of it. Turns out mining with no promise of discovery can be beautiful. The present—I tear it open, stamp its wrappings into the muddy ground. HAAi’s set sounds not unlike a luxury car commercial. Light whispers in my ear, “She’s basically gay Fred Again.” It’s not that funny, but I laugh so hard I cry. Maybe it’s overwhelm, or maybe I’m shedding tears like dead skin, some new version of me bursting through.

HAAi’s set ends but the crowd is still menacing, a fleet of muscle riding a tidal wave of sweat. I cling to Light like a life raft as he guides me out of the crowd. We meander in the woods, joy caving into hunger. I was wrong: Whole rejects not expectation, but control. Like love, or desire, or being fucking queer, what happens here, and what happens after, is fundamentally uncertain. It’s a particular place for particular people—not everyone loves falling to their knees. I, however, do. I start giving Light head, his eyes pouring honey into mine. We relish each other, but our climax will have to come later. “It has been amazing spending this time with you,” I tell him. “It deserves a conversation.” I ask to meet later in the week to talk. He looks at me like he always does when he’s about to say something important. “Of course.” 

[PHOTO BREAK]

The first hints of morning kiss an opalescent sky. I sense Cal is awake, racing with the rest of us to the finish line. Light and I work our way to Arena for the closing set. I stop every person I know, have them text Cal on my behalf. With enough digital breadcrumbs, he’ll Hansel and Gretel his way to me. 

Sure enough, he does. I let Light drift off to dance with his friends while collapsing into Cal, each recounting our night to the other like a confession. Our respective groups become increasingly concentric, orbiting me like the sun. A constant radiance in an otherwise perennial unknown. Ah, but of course—I’m my own Light. Maybe it could have always been this way. No sense wondering. It is now. 

Bashkka’s and Quelza’s closing set is a long kiss goodbye. Light and I share our own, returning to our friends thereafter. It’s Cal’s hand I want to hold on the long walk back to camp. 

Where desire might camouflage as identity, Whole strips it bare. That was my mistake: confusing a change in the locus of my desire for change within myself. I turned a mine into a minefield, but at least blowing myself up allowed me to put myself back together. A work in progress, sure, but nonetheless: a Whole greater than the sum of its parts. No need to mine, I’m surrounded by gems. Maybe it’s delirium, but these gems seem to refract endlessly, tessellating into a vision of the kind of person I want to be. Someone loyal, someone kind, and above all, someone grateful. Sheryl Crow appears: “It's not having what you want / It's wanting what you've got.” Definitely delirium, but I suppose two things can be true.