SmokeLong Quarterly

“Everyone always eventually leaves”—a belief the narrator holds that prevents him from forming deep connections. Though not an experience unique to him, his fear brings about a dissociative nature. What kind of personal loss do you imagine the narrator has experienced that’s caused him to pull away from his identity?

In times of crisis, it’s easy to lose sight of our place in the world, because the world we know, and the world we want to exist, are drifting out of reach. The narrator’s personal loss isn’t tangible like Noah’s, but that slow and gradual depersonalization—he, and the world he knew, are slowly drifting out of reach.

The pursuit of casual sex comes with an inherent divide between those involved. The narrator cannot convincingly say Noah’s name without forced practice. These men seem to crave a small moment of togetherness, to stave off panic and loneliness, and keep a piece of the other. The narrator carves the names of these men into his body. What do you imagine the others are keeping for themselves?

As I said, it’s easy to lose sight of your place in the world when the world darkens in the shadow of a grim future. For Richard, being able to grab the narrator by the neck, propose sex, and get it from him, is his way of maintaining his sense of self: if he cannot control the state of the world, he can at least control something smaller and more tangible, feel some sort of power in this fear.

There’s chaos in the lives of these characters. Death is an everyday acceptance. Do you think it’s a conscious action that the narrator is letting go of people around him before they are even gone, possibly as a form of coping?

It’s absolutely a conscious coping mechanism. It’s a central theme, even personally: I wrote the story following a week-long illness that left me unable to walk for three days, dealing with the emotional fallout of being ghosted by someone I had been casually seeing for a few weeks, and increasing international discord. It began as an exploration of the guy I was seeing, hoping to rationalize why he was choosing to ghost me. He became this anonymous hedonist, who flits from man to man, forcing connections that aren’t there; he is deeply troubled, an addict of everything unhealthy and meaningless. His world grew from there, as I was thinking about if what I’m experiencing is going to be forever, or if there is an end in sight?

I believe we see ourselves reflected through who and what we love. What is something you imagine the narrator would name as a love in his life?

I believe in my heart of hearts that the narrator felt what he could consider love for Noah, but that feeling terrifies him. Noah would never love him for who he is, but whatever male persona he has chosen to inhabit, and he absconds to preserve Noah’s feelings. He then inhabits Noah’s story as a way to find the sorta-love he felt for Noah in someone else: perhaps, opening up about appropriated trauma will get other men to like him more than he likes himself.

At the end of your story, the narrator carves a name superficially to prevent opening up a large wound, a way to see in. How long can he live this way before he has to look at himself?

The way I see it, Noah’s death from the most recent act of terrorism is the end of the narrator’s line. It is the closest he feels to guilt: inhabiting Noah’s persona with Richard, only to realize Noah has died in the most recent terrorist attack, is almost a proxy for his own loss of self. It is finally gone; there is nothing left. There is no opening up he can do to fix this, so he permanently shuts himself off from the world as it is. Where is there to go from here? What is there to say, or do?