We stripped him out of those horrible suits and dressed him
in leather, denim, drag, or nothing; but when we wanted him to blush
he stood brazen and unashamed, and when we wanted him brazen he
stared at the floor and looked miserable. So we took pity on him,
and dressed him up warmly; we asked him if he had regrets, and he
said no, but we saw the glint of tears in those sea-green eyes that
wouldn't quite meet ours. And he looked so sweet when he slept,
innocent, angelic; we were sure that if we really wanted to, we
could make him good.
We made him good. We redeemed him. We pled his case before
those who called him names. We gave him a voice to explain what he
had done and why he had done it. We made excuses for him. We forgave
him.
But just when we thought we had wiped his slate clean, we
would turn around a second too soon and see the gleam of a knife
in his hand. And he would smile—how we loved to see him smile!—
and say it was nothing.
Of course, we knew better.
So we decided to indulge him, let him be bad; we made him
a liar, a thief, a whore, and a murderer. We gave him the chance for
revenge on his enemies. We watched him kill and did not judge him for
it. We gave him power; sometimes he revelled in it, sometimes it just
bored him. We took him to Russia and he taught us the language. One
night we got him drunk on cheap booze and he told us the story of his
life, but when he was sober he denied everything and the next time we
tried it the story had changed. We gave him strange habits, expensive
tastes, and every kink under the sun.
We asked him, why?
He said, why not?
He took up residence in our minds and left pizza crusts
everywhere; he waked us from dreams at midnight with a gun in his hand
and a wild look in his eyes; he read our favourite books and underlined
passages we couldn't remember reading; he played all our records so
loud we were sure the neighbours would complain; yet, oddly, they never
did. When we sat on the couch he sprawled beside us, as elegant and
boneless as a python. When we sniffed the air we could smell him, that
scent of sex and danger and something else we never even tried to put
into words. It got worse and worse: when the phone rang and nobody spoke,
it was him; when we heard the creak of leather in a crowd it was him;
when we dreamed of phantom lovers they wore his face.
And he would not do as he was told.
So we gave him pain. Abusive childhoods. Unrequited love. Sorrow
and loneliness and physical torture. We gave him the ache of a missing
arm and the deeper ache of a wasted life. We made him suffer, and
sometimes we thought he deserved it, and sometimes he did too. We found
poetry in his suffering; his tears were diamonds, his scars a palimpsest,
his blood the soul of a rose. And when he had suffered enough, we gave
him joy; and that was almost as bad as the pain.
We gave him Mulders: playful Mulders, vengeful Mulders, Mulders
of anger and Mulders of joy. We gave him their pain and their sorrow and
their love. We gave them their bodies (elegant, rangy, insatiable) their
minds (brilliant, sharp, twisted) their hearts (aching, wounded, generous)
and their souls (pure, true, untainted). And he gave them what he could;
and sometimes it was enough. And when it wasn't, we were there to dry
his tears.
We gave him other lovers and he broke their hearts, sometimes
on purpose and sometimes just because. We gave him friends and they
betrayed him—and he betrayed them right back.
We made him laugh—he made us cry. We made him cry—he made
us laugh.
He was everything we were not.
He was more us than we were ourselves.
He was Alex, and he would never leave us, even if we wanted him
to; especially if we begged.
Not that we ever would.
The End
What We Did To Alex
by Katherine F
He was just a bad guy in a bad suit when we first met him,
with no story of his own. We thought we could take advantage of that.
We thought that if we gave him a story, he'd do what we wanted. We
were wrong.
