2001
Dream as Richard Glatzer
Artefact: Article, ‘There’s a Fluffer in Us All’, written by Andrew Copestake, published in Gay Times, December issue, 2001.
Richard sees snappy images
Two-minute trailers that cycle through his practised mind
Lately, fabrications that arise from Wash, not from himself
Brand-new pictures
From the man he is falling in love with
Is going to marry, one day
Is going to forget, eventually
That’s the fear
Though impossible to ascertain
To know
Unscientifically, in the soul
If he loses Wash at all
In the kernel of things
In his pulse
The last seconds
Now, it’s 2001, and he can sleep
Making a quick break
Pushes his comfy office chair into recline
Dips back into the editing room of his mind
Gold glitz
Thighs
Pomade
Neon aspirational body-of-desire
White mainstream slab-hunk
Chipped from gym-hours
Carbon-copied from men’s monthlies
Selling their pumped-up hyper-goals
Gay for pay
Denim, bad light
Pool at night
Water slicking off that body again
Movie-selling giant
One, two, three
The kid, the star, the girlfriend
All kissing
Kissing their own lips
Sucking fingers
Squeezing pectorals, mirrored
Caressing eyes, closed
Shaking fingers
Shaky acting
Pumping arms
Flicking hair
Bleach, stubble, bad-hair
Bike, surging
Running
Burning
Camera, pulling in super-speed
To a hard leather-clad back shot
Rock-face wall
Bad-boy
Getting there, thinks half-waking Richard
Some combination of this
Some last tweaks
Has a good feeling in his chest, expanding
An anti-anxiety
Honey, spreading outwards through synapses
Sure, suddenly
That this two-minute organisation of frames
Or the next version
Can do the thing
Can carry him and Wash together
Forwards
Into their new life
Two-minute trailers that cycle through his practised mind
Lately, fabrications that arise from Wash, not from himself
Brand-new pictures
From the man he is falling in love with
Is going to marry, one day
Is going to forget, eventually
That’s the fear
Though impossible to ascertain
To know
Unscientifically, in the soul
If he loses Wash at all
In the kernel of things
In his pulse
The last seconds
Now, it’s 2001, and he can sleep
Making a quick break
Pushes his comfy office chair into recline
Dips back into the editing room of his mind
Gold glitz
Thighs
Pomade
Neon aspirational body-of-desire
White mainstream slab-hunk
Chipped from gym-hours
Carbon-copied from men’s monthlies
Selling their pumped-up hyper-goals
Gay for pay
Denim, bad light
Pool at night
Water slicking off that body again
Movie-selling giant
One, two, three
The kid, the star, the girlfriend
All kissing
Kissing their own lips
Sucking fingers
Squeezing pectorals, mirrored
Caressing eyes, closed
Shaking fingers
Shaky acting
Pumping arms
Flicking hair
Bleach, stubble, bad-hair
Bike, surging
Running
Burning
Camera, pulling in super-speed
To a hard leather-clad back shot
Rock-face wall
Bad-boy
Getting there, thinks half-waking Richard
Some combination of this
Some last tweaks
Has a good feeling in his chest, expanding
An anti-anxiety
Honey, spreading outwards through synapses
Sure, suddenly
That this two-minute organisation of frames
Or the next version
Can do the thing
Can carry him and Wash together
Forwards
Into their new life