Before
On 5th May, 2023
Before heading north
Before Yrjö
Before painting with that bright tangerine over brown
Before my birthday, turning forty
I remember being a child and my dad also turning forty, slicing a cake in the garden
I would have been six then
Before 1967
Reidar writes to Yrjö for the first time when he is forty-one
In the February
His birthday is in May, like mine
Born five days after me, fifty-eight years before
Before buying the house
Signing the contract
Transferring the cash to the new account
Buying a mattress to lay on the floor in one of the empty rooms
Before the first night of sleeping there together
Before the Sexual Offences Act in my place of birth
Partial decriminalisation
That happens in the last days of July, nearly a full two months from today, decades ago
In Finland, it takes four more years
Long enough to coincide with the end of Yrjö’s life
January, the law changes
February sixth, he dies
Four years since Reidar first wrote
At least he can paint it now
Two canvases, one metre thirty-five square each
Hang them on a wall in a gallery in Oulu for everyone to see
On Earth, Reidar painting
And In Heaven, Yrjö who is only a painted image now
Or a memory
Bad fucking timing
Some things in the universe don’t align
Sometimes time runs out
Before taking the train up to Oulu in the late afternoon
Slices of birthday cake wrapped in tinfoil, leftovers from the day before
Before changing for the connection to Rovaniemi
Before taking the bus up to the village
Before opening the door to the house again, taking the key from the lockbox on the wall outside
The code numbers the wrong way around, so that we stumble for a moment
Fear we’re locked out
Before packing the camera and tripod into the waterproof rucksack
And the sound recorder to capture Anne’s voice
The wind, the rustle of the trees
The sound of the room where the piano stands still
The sound of the paintings as they hang, backs against wood, facing each other
They’re speaking
What are they saying?
Before the paint takes over
Before commercial success
Fame
Earlier there are woodcuts, graphics made with metal
Reduced colours
Forms with decipherable edges, printed on the page
A line between ink and paper
In the fifties and the early sixties
Later, this line disappears in the paintings
The canvases are full
The beings exist in landscapes that flood the frame
Those worlds are thick and scraped
Humming with spatters of colour
A mould shimmering
Animating the bog, the grasses, the trees
The weather in the northern sky
It’s a life force
An artist’s device, like perspective, maybe, to wrestle the world as it appears to be and capture it
Paint it down onto this two-dimensional surface
Those flecks could be atoms in the air
Motes of dust, hanging behind and before the figures
The men, the birds
The animals with moustaches
Could be fireflies
The mosquitos that cloud in the summer night air over the wide river
Dark matter
Before coming here
Before taking the ferry for the first time, crossing the cold, long sea
Before the pandemic
Before people got sick
Before you pinned a map to the wall in the kitchen, where the air is hot and we have the windows perpetually open, the noise of the summer city a constant ghost in our lives, sirens and car horns, shouts from the neighbours, the cyclists who react down there on the crossing, middle finger up to the drivers who won’t stop, or slow down, it’s always an inevitable Fick dich
I know, because it comes from my mouth too
Before we took a plane to that city, ten days in our second summer
Before we met
Before before, I lived in a house
The one my dad celebrated turning forty in
I lived there since I was two, before I can remember anything at all
The house is on a slope
At the back is a garden, and beyond the garden is a square field surrounded by other houses
In the field, a line of trees and one weeping willow
I can see the trees from the window in my room, out over the flat roof of the extension
My window opens on the left, a plastic handle that lifts up
I imagine climbing out in the night, dropping down onto the roof below
To the lawn
Over the fence which we took out sometimes
For birthdays, for parties
My Dad lifted out the panelling so we could jump across the ditch into the long grass
Before the fire
Before the heart attack
Before sailing to Antartica
A long way south, almost as far as you could get from the Ounasjoki
Before painting himself small into the godlike arms of a being with Yrjö’s slim face
Spiked horns, black moustache
A snake trailing down the right of the image
Before painting the blue of the crescent moon that hangs above them, he paints other men
Cuts them into wood too
Fifty-two, Narcissus, who could be Reidar himself, gazing down at his own body, not the water
The tender couple of Arcadia
Post orgasmic swoon
Hand caressing knee
The horse close to these lovers
Skittish beast drawn to their cooling body heat
Flesh in the landscape
He paints that image twice
Fifty-four, the muscles of The Log Jam Breakers
Shoulders, biceps
Strong naked backs
Fifty-six, the hands of the man sitting in Pay Raise, handcuffed, passive on the thighs of his overalls
Fifty, the Arabic Male Model, nude
One hundred and sixteen centimetres wide, cushions surrounding him
A photograph of Reidar with this painting, outside the house at Särestö
The painting up on the fence, Reidar’s hands on his hips, fingers on his wide belt
It’s the stance of a conqueror
Their faces are the same scale in the black and white image
Reidar holds his chin up, the model’s eyes are cast down
His friend Robert takes the photo
Fifty-nine, the Chinese Fellow Artist, staring off with sadness or boredom
His red pullover, incomplete, floating into, or out of, the air
His face crackling, a relic
Fifty-seven, the Armenian Man
Strong beard, sad eyes
Robert, Roberto, two variants of his name, in brackets
Dark, red brown jumper
Sixty-four, A Boy With a Sick Bird
Red jumper
Fifty-nine, A Boy With a Snake
Also titled Boy in a Red Rocking-chair
All these painted before sixty-seven
Before Yrjö
Before going for a pizza together
I call my Dad
Because it’s my birthday, and I haven’t called for a while
I haven’t told him much about the new house
It’s not a long call
The video doesn’t work at first
Crunchy internet, or signal dropping
My Dad is thinking it’s because of the sea
Although he’s managed to make video calls to Germany and Canada just fine before
I don’t think the distance is affecting the software
But maybe it’s affecting us
How far away do you have to be as a Queer kid?
How far is too far?
How far is far enough?
Right now, I’m two thousand, one hundred and thirty-four miles from the house I grew up in
I tell him that, tomorrow, I’m going to take a train north to visit a museum to carry out some research
He doesn’t ask what museum
Whose
And I don’t tell him Reidar’s name
Afterwards you point out that he seemed more interested to talk about the new puppies
My aunt’s dog is pregnant
You’re cross
Or I’m ashamed
And I’ve upset you by now
That gap, that belongs to me, not you, spilling out in the empty pizza place onto the table between us, making the pool of mustard and ketchup swim around in a sad state
They look like paint Reidar would use
Before Yrjö
Before painting with that bright tangerine over brown
Before my birthday, turning forty
I remember being a child and my dad also turning forty, slicing a cake in the garden
I would have been six then
Before 1967
Reidar writes to Yrjö for the first time when he is forty-one
In the February
His birthday is in May, like mine
Born five days after me, fifty-eight years before
Before buying the house
Signing the contract
Transferring the cash to the new account
Buying a mattress to lay on the floor in one of the empty rooms
Before the first night of sleeping there together
Before the Sexual Offences Act in my place of birth
Partial decriminalisation
That happens in the last days of July, nearly a full two months from today, decades ago
In Finland, it takes four more years
Long enough to coincide with the end of Yrjö’s life
January, the law changes
February sixth, he dies
Four years since Reidar first wrote
At least he can paint it now
Two canvases, one metre thirty-five square each
Hang them on a wall in a gallery in Oulu for everyone to see
On Earth, Reidar painting
And In Heaven, Yrjö who is only a painted image now
Or a memory
Bad fucking timing
Some things in the universe don’t align
Sometimes time runs out
Before taking the train up to Oulu in the late afternoon
Slices of birthday cake wrapped in tinfoil, leftovers from the day before
Before changing for the connection to Rovaniemi
Before taking the bus up to the village
Before opening the door to the house again, taking the key from the lockbox on the wall outside
The code numbers the wrong way around, so that we stumble for a moment
Fear we’re locked out
Before packing the camera and tripod into the waterproof rucksack
And the sound recorder to capture Anne’s voice
The wind, the rustle of the trees
The sound of the room where the piano stands still
The sound of the paintings as they hang, backs against wood, facing each other
They’re speaking
What are they saying?
Before the paint takes over
Before commercial success
Fame
Earlier there are woodcuts, graphics made with metal
Reduced colours
Forms with decipherable edges, printed on the page
A line between ink and paper
In the fifties and the early sixties
Later, this line disappears in the paintings
The canvases are full
The beings exist in landscapes that flood the frame
Those worlds are thick and scraped
Humming with spatters of colour
A mould shimmering
Animating the bog, the grasses, the trees
The weather in the northern sky
It’s a life force
An artist’s device, like perspective, maybe, to wrestle the world as it appears to be and capture it
Paint it down onto this two-dimensional surface
Those flecks could be atoms in the air
Motes of dust, hanging behind and before the figures
The men, the birds
The animals with moustaches
Could be fireflies
The mosquitos that cloud in the summer night air over the wide river
Dark matter
Before coming here
Before taking the ferry for the first time, crossing the cold, long sea
Before the pandemic
Before people got sick
Before you pinned a map to the wall in the kitchen, where the air is hot and we have the windows perpetually open, the noise of the summer city a constant ghost in our lives, sirens and car horns, shouts from the neighbours, the cyclists who react down there on the crossing, middle finger up to the drivers who won’t stop, or slow down, it’s always an inevitable Fick dich
I know, because it comes from my mouth too
Before we took a plane to that city, ten days in our second summer
Before we met
Before before, I lived in a house
The one my dad celebrated turning forty in
I lived there since I was two, before I can remember anything at all
The house is on a slope
At the back is a garden, and beyond the garden is a square field surrounded by other houses
In the field, a line of trees and one weeping willow
I can see the trees from the window in my room, out over the flat roof of the extension
My window opens on the left, a plastic handle that lifts up
I imagine climbing out in the night, dropping down onto the roof below
To the lawn
Over the fence which we took out sometimes
For birthdays, for parties
My Dad lifted out the panelling so we could jump across the ditch into the long grass
Before the fire
Before the heart attack
Before sailing to Antartica
A long way south, almost as far as you could get from the Ounasjoki
Before painting himself small into the godlike arms of a being with Yrjö’s slim face
Spiked horns, black moustache
A snake trailing down the right of the image
Before painting the blue of the crescent moon that hangs above them, he paints other men
Cuts them into wood too
Fifty-two, Narcissus, who could be Reidar himself, gazing down at his own body, not the water
The tender couple of Arcadia
Post orgasmic swoon
Hand caressing knee
The horse close to these lovers
Skittish beast drawn to their cooling body heat
Flesh in the landscape
He paints that image twice
Fifty-four, the muscles of The Log Jam Breakers
Shoulders, biceps
Strong naked backs
Fifty-six, the hands of the man sitting in Pay Raise, handcuffed, passive on the thighs of his overalls
Fifty, the Arabic Male Model, nude
One hundred and sixteen centimetres wide, cushions surrounding him
A photograph of Reidar with this painting, outside the house at Särestö
The painting up on the fence, Reidar’s hands on his hips, fingers on his wide belt
It’s the stance of a conqueror
Their faces are the same scale in the black and white image
Reidar holds his chin up, the model’s eyes are cast down
His friend Robert takes the photo
Fifty-nine, the Chinese Fellow Artist, staring off with sadness or boredom
His red pullover, incomplete, floating into, or out of, the air
His face crackling, a relic
Fifty-seven, the Armenian Man
Strong beard, sad eyes
Robert, Roberto, two variants of his name, in brackets
Dark, red brown jumper
Sixty-four, A Boy With a Sick Bird
Red jumper
Fifty-nine, A Boy With a Snake
Also titled Boy in a Red Rocking-chair
All these painted before sixty-seven
Before Yrjö
Before going for a pizza together
I call my Dad
Because it’s my birthday, and I haven’t called for a while
I haven’t told him much about the new house
It’s not a long call
The video doesn’t work at first
Crunchy internet, or signal dropping
My Dad is thinking it’s because of the sea
Although he’s managed to make video calls to Germany and Canada just fine before
I don’t think the distance is affecting the software
But maybe it’s affecting us
How far away do you have to be as a Queer kid?
How far is too far?
How far is far enough?
Right now, I’m two thousand, one hundred and thirty-four miles from the house I grew up in
I tell him that, tomorrow, I’m going to take a train north to visit a museum to carry out some research
He doesn’t ask what museum
Whose
And I don’t tell him Reidar’s name
Afterwards you point out that he seemed more interested to talk about the new puppies
My aunt’s dog is pregnant
You’re cross
Or I’m ashamed
And I’ve upset you by now
That gap, that belongs to me, not you, spilling out in the empty pizza place onto the table between us, making the pool of mustard and ketchup swim around in a sad state
They look like paint Reidar would use