‘Here’ Here

Dennis & Louie

“Okay so you two got it like that, but why did he have to do it like, on that night? Isn’t that breaking the rules?”
“There are no rules.”
“What do you mean there’s no rules?”
“It’s open.”
“Yeah, but like… aren’t there, isn’t there like a code. Like don’t rub it in my face. Don’t bring ‘em to the house, unless you two… have you two like… done it with other people?”
“What do you think?”
“You have?”
“I didn’t yes or no.”
“Anyway… isn’t it against the rules for him to hook up with someone else at his going away party?”
“I told you it’s not about rules. He can do what he wants. So can I.”
“But you don’t do you? You’re just here. You just wait for him to come back.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s free. I’m free. I don’t tell him what to do. He doesn’t tell me what to do. And anyway, I don’t want that kind of power, to tell him what he can and can’t do.”
“Like in an open relationship, I kinda feel like someone wants it more than the other person. Like someone wants it to be open and the other person just kind of goes along.”
“Every relationship’s different, but it was like that from the beginning.”
“Wait what? I thought it was cos of the visa stuff.”
“Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t have to tell you everything.”
“You don’t really tell me anything though…”
“That’s not true. I tell you what’s important. Besides, I spend most of the time listening to you and all of your stories.”
“That’s because I have stories to tell you. I talk so much because you hardly say anything.”
“That’s because I’m the silent one and you’re the loud one. You like to chat. You tweeted before twitter and twittering… is that it… twittering’s a t thing right?”
“There’s no such thing as twittering. You tweet or you tweeted, and I don’t twitter.”
“You don’t have a twitter?”
“You know I do… shut up!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You laughed too.”
“You’re so stupid. I thought I was here to cheer you up, not for you to laugh at me.”
“You wanted to make me laugh… You give me a lot to laugh about. You don’t have to say anything. Just stand there, and I can laugh. At you. With you. About you.”
“Shut up… but seriously are you okay?”
“...Yeah… uh… yeah… I didn’t ask you to come over here. Did I say come over and cheer me up?”
“You didn’t have to. I know you, even though you are quiet and you keep things from me. I can tell that somethings wrong and no matter what you say, I know it bothers you. Nino’s legs are always open like peanut butter and jelly. He’ll fuck anybody.”
“You know… if I was bothered about this and I’m not saying that I am… this isn’t helping at all. And what do you mean about peanut butter and jelly? Is this another one of your Americanisms?”
“Wait… you don’t know what I mean? Peanut butter and jelly dude… spreads. Spreads!”
“Spreads?”
“Like you… it’s really not that hard. You take the peanut butter, you take the jelly and you spread it on the bread. Y’all eat bread out there don’t you?”
“‘Out there!’. Hmm. Out there. The way you say it, it makes it feel even further away than it is to me in my mind. ‘Out there’… when you say it like that, it’s like it only really exists in your mind, and it’s always just gonna be a place in your head. Five years. Five years here in The Europe. I haven’t seen them for five years. Clara. My sister. The bab. She’s got a boyfriend.”
“You’re gonna see them soon.”
“I hope so.”
“Speaking of peanut butter though, do you have the peanut butter your cousin… what’s his name was supposed to bring?”
“Colby.”
“That is the whitest white boy name.”
“Shut up, he didn’t choose it…”
“He should set up a peanut delivery, peanut butter delivery service.”
“Gross.”
“What?”
“I know where your dirty mind is going. I can see you picturing Colby spreading peanut butter all over you. Gross!”
“I mean… that’s not what I was thinking about… but... “
“Good luck. Colby will be single in his fifties. He’ll be a old ass single man. He’ll never be with just one woman. He doesn’t have to. He cheats on whoever he’s with, left and right. It’s those dimples.”
“Do you think his other cheeks have dimples? Did you two ever…”
“Okay, I’m uncomfortable with this.”
“Sorry. But I guess you don’t have the peanut butter then?”
“You ate all of it don’t you remember? The last time I had some was in 20…”
“‘The Summer of No Responsibility’.”
“‘The Summer of No Responsibility’.”
“That’s when you met Carlos.”
“Yop.”
“It’s yep. Yep!”
“What is this imperialism?! Stop correcting my English.”
“Boy bye. I am just tryna help you not sound so… cute.”
“I sound cute in English?”
“Yop. So he leaves next week?”
“Yep. That’s when he goes back to the UK.”
“I’m so glad I had my oma. I wish she coulda taught me the Deutsch though. She tried to teach my dad but he wouldn’t do it. He understands but he can’t speak it. It’s weird. They have whole conversations where she speaks to him in German but he answers in English.”
“Having a German grandmother sounds kinda weird too though.”
“A ha ha ha ha. Yeah, it was. She wasn’t one of those like, evil white people. I mean she was white and she said some really fucked up shit. My mom hated her. Like hated her and didn’t want us to be around her when were little but… she, I don’t know, she kinda came around. I think she respected my mom and my mom was just like, ‘You’re family but I’m not gonna have you saying the things to my kids, that you said to my dad’. Like the things she said to my dad, not my mom’s dad. Obviously my oma didn’t know my mom’s dad… well, she did, but like later. You know what I mean.”
“Yop. I do. But I didn’t have a white grandmother. A white German grandmother even.”
“What about you? Did you know your grandma’s and grandpa’s?”
“No. They all died before I was born. But I knew some of my great aunts and uncles, and I met one of my great grandparents. Just once. His eyes were always, like he was looking really, really far away. I remember he was really quiet, and he drank coffee. A lot of coffee. And he always wore the same blue polo shirt, and it was really thin with holes in it, but it was his favorite.”
“When did he die?”
“Who said he’s dead?”
“Oh… shit… I just thought… wait are you fuckin with me?”
“I had you for a second.”
“That… that is so fucked up!”
“You shoulda seen your face.”
“You’re a asshole.”
“Thank you! I work at it. Very hard.”
“That was messed up. It was. But asshole’s too strong. I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay. I wanted to… to laugh.”
“Is it really okay?”
“Yeah. It is. He can do what he wants. I told you. It’s been like this… since the beginning. I’m used to it. When he has to leave or when I have to leave him something like this always happens. We never really fight. Just something like this happens and no one says anything about it.”
“Yeah, but you don’t do shit like this… I mean if you do, you don’t tell me but you don’t tell me a lot.”
“It’s not always like this, but he’s done… fuck, I don’t want to say it like that. He hasn’t done anything except what he’s free to do. He hasn’t done anything to me. He’s been… he gets weird when we have to leave. Sometimes we don’t talk for days before he goes. I’ve just learned to deal with it. He wants me there, so I’m there like he wants it.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I want to be with him.”
“Even if he doesn’t talk to you?”
“We don’t have to talk all the time, just like we don’t have to have sex everynight or see each other everyday. There’s something there.”
“What is it?”
“What is what? The something?”
“Yeah. What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. I just know that it won’t go away. It’s there when he leaves every ninety days. It’s there on whatsapp. It’s there when he gets back. It’s just there, and I don’t want it to go away. I won’t let it go away because of this, because we have to be separated all the time right now. 


Nino & Carlos


“Why are you sitting so far away?”
“Cos I like it right here. For now.”
“Oh okay. Just for now. If it’s just for now, it’s okay.”
“What is this place that you have me in?”
“It used to be an old bank.”
“You live in an old bank? That’s rich.”
“Ha ha ha ha.”
“It’s different.”
“It’s home.”
“You own it?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
“I… I thought you weren’t coming. You came… you were late and you didn’t text and I thought you might not make it here.”
“Ah, yeah I was just late. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Why are you still sitting so far away from me?”
“I’ll be over there in a minute. I’m just getting settled I guess.”
“I didn’t think you’d call me.”
“I didn’t call you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m here.”
“Yes you are. Even if you’re all the way over there.”
“Do you want me to just put the drink down and we just go to your room?”
“That’s not what I meant, but if that’s what you want…”
“I asked you what you want?”
“We can talk. Talking is good. For now.”
“So what do you want to talk about?”
“This is weird. I feel… Kind of nervous.”
“You feel nervous?”
“Um, yeah. A little.”
“Why nervous?”
“I don’t know… You were never really… you just never seemed interested in me.”
“Uh, okay? I didn’t really think about… about you, or about being ‘interested in you’. Maybe that’s what you picked up on I guess.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean… we didn’t really talk. All this time. You were always with Louie, or talking to someone else.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s right. But Louie, he’s my boyfriend… so that’s why I was with him and maybe not talking to you. Also… we don’t really know each other. We just are always around the same people, but I never really felt like we had anything to talk about. Maybe we talked about the party we were at, or the place where we went to eat, but talking about something else… it would be like talking just to talk. But we talked on Saturday and we did more than talk. A lot more than talking.”
“Yeah. Yeah we did. You came out of nowhere. Were you drunk?”
“I don’t know. I was having a good time. What about you?”
“Was I drunk? Probably. It was a party. That’s what you do.”
“You seemed more relaxed than normal. More chill.”
“That’s not normal for me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“You’re a little funny. Like sometimes you’re really...  you talk a lot. Ha ha, and then you’re really quiet and you just look at whoever’s, whoever’s talking and you seem like you’re really interested and I always thought, ‘Where is he? Is he really interested’, cause a lot of the time when someone else was talking they weren’t saying anything important, or interesting. They weren’t being funny. They weren’t saying something new, but you, you look at people like they’re really interesting.”
“Is that… did I look at you like that? Is that I how I look at you?”
“Ha. You don’t want me to answer that.”
“I do. Yes, I do.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I just said that I did.”
“I can’t say it. There’s no way to say it and not sound like I’m full of myself, like an asshole.”
“Okay, now you have to tell me.”
“No I don’t.”
“C’mon. Stop. Just tell me.”
“Okay. Shit. I’m doin this. Okay. You look at me and it’s really obvious that you…”
“That I what?”
“That you’re… interested.”
“Oh I thought you were gonna say something else.”
“Really? Like what?”
“I don’t know but something worse… a lot of people look at you Carlos. Don’t act like you don’t know it.”
“A lot of people probably look at you too. Am I right? Nino!”
“I don’t know… They’re looking at me. But they don’t… I don’t know what they see.”
“They see something that they like.”
“So it’s just like the people who look at you. But they like the way you look, you must know that. Do people like you for you? Like when people look… the way you look, I always kind of wonder that. And me, well... It’s like you said. I’m… I can talk a lot but I also get really quiet sometimes. All of our friends, everybody’s so smart, so creative, or saving the world.”
“You’re not smart. I’m leaving! I promised I wouldn’t sleep with stupid people.”
“You know what I mean. I work in IT. Boring!”
“It’s not boring. You stare at computers all day.”
“Okay, I can make jokes about my life but you...”
“So I should stay right here the whole night?”
“We can... have sex there if that’s where you want to do it. I have a dimmer.”
“Of course you do.”
“Does Louie know?”
“Everybody knows. You were so loud… but it’s alright.”
“What? People could hear me over the music?”
“No. I was… not being serious…”
“Oh…”
“But people know. Some people, and yeah Louie knows.”
“Did you talk about it?”
“No.”
“But you two are open right?”
“You didn’t care if we were at the party.”
“I don’t… I don’t know if I ‘care’ now, I don’t not care. I’m just asking. He looks like he can fight.”
“He’s not gonna fight you. If you thought it was gonna be a thing then why did you do it then?”
“You kind of told me to meet you in the bathroom.”
“And… you kind of more than followed me there. You weren’t worried about it then.”
“I wasn’t. I’m not ‘worried’ worried about it now. I just don’t know what’s gonna happen or how it’s gonna be like to see Louie when I see him the next time.”
“And here we are doing it all over again.”
“But does he know?”
“You mean that I’m here? No. He doesn’t know.”
“Okay let’s stop talking about him.”
“Alright.”
“So when are you leaving?”
“Next Monday. Midday, but like usual I have to be there really early.”
“Are you going with Brussels Airline or British Airways?”
“We... don’t all live in banks. It’s more like Easy Jet.”
“Okay… what does that mean? What does that have to do with it?”
“I guess you don’t, I mean look around at all of this. Only really rich people don’t have stuff on the walls. It’s like this super rich vibe. You definitely fly British airways.”
“Okay, uh… first of all I’m not super rich. I didn’t grow up rich at all. My mom left us, and my dad raised all four of us or it was more like my older brother raised us while my dad drove buses. I may be weird and not cool like all of you, but don’t take that like you can disrespect me and my bank vault. I earned this shit, and everybody the teachers, the white kids, even the brown kids told me and my sisters and brothers that we were nothing. I don’t have to put anything on the walls. They’re mine. I’d rather send money back to my dad and our family.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like…”
“Yeah, but you’re getting too, I don’t know the word in English...”
“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. I…”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I’m sorry Nino. That was, that was fucked up. I’m… I’m a dick. Sometimes. I am. And I’m sorry for, for being like that tonight. I didn’t know… about your family.”
“Why would you?. I just don’t like when people think they know me because, none of them really know anything about my life. You’re the only one who’s ever even been here.”
“Really? I’m the only one that’s ever been to your place? And that’s how I acted...”
“Just… forget it.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come off like that.”
“Yeah… just change the subject, like now.”
“So... you were born here?”
“In a small village.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“He moved back. He came here for my mom. She left us… her family was more important than us and they didn’t want to have… Blacks in the family. She was his only reason for being here, and then, and then it was us, and as soon as he could leave, he left. He never felt at home here. We always tried to… tell him that this was also his home but he always wanted to go back and we had to let him go. When my younger brother finished school, he told us he was leaving and it was like he was gone. Just gone. Like, he said he was leaving, and then, next thing you know we’re all at the airport. I see him, I go visit him and the rest of our family every year.”
“Do you see your mom?”
“I hope I never see her again. If I saw her, I don’t even know if I would recognise her.”
“I didn’t know you had a white mom.”
“I think that’s one of the reasons why it was so easy for her to leave us.”
“Why?”
“Because… I don’t know… maybe we weren’t the mixed raced looking kids she was hoping for. We’re all this colour. My sisters have really… I guess you say full hair. But we all look just like my dad. What about your family?”
“Yeah, we’re all over the place. I had a similar story with my dad… but maybe your, it sounds like your dad was more there for you. I don’t know?”
“He did what he had to do. He worked a lot. He really wanted to be that provider, you know? We had it all, the food, clothes, shelter. Back then I knew we had what we needed, even if I wanted more… but now I really, really see how hard he worked to support us and to, I think, make up for my mom not being there for us. I think for my dad… I think one of the reasons why he went back was because he felt like he failed because he could only give us the material things. He didn’t understand that we all knew that was his way of saying I love you, even if we wished that he would have been around a bit more. When he was around, he tried his best, but he doesn’t see it that way. He told us before he left that we are… how did he say it… we are meant for this place. And he’s not. He never was. One day my sister called me crying. It was really bizarre. She said something like baba left us because he felt like we were his, his own, but that we would never be able to live in the same world under the same terms or something like that. That’s what she thought. She said it just kind of came to her. And yeah, I think she’s right. Sorry. Sorry. We weren’t supposed to be talking about my, my life.”
“No. It’s okay.”
“Do you want to be here too?”
“Hm?”
“I… I know you want to be here for Louie but do you want to be ‘here’ here? Do you feel at home here?”
“Home… home? I don’t know if I have a home. I don’t know what a home is. Everywhere that was supposed to be a home was… just some place that you tried to live in without... being too loud or getting in the way. That’s what it was like for me. Louie though... With Louie, he… he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want me to be invisible. He doesn’t want me to hide myself or hide anything, even if I think… you know, it’s better that way. To hide, at least, you can’t be honest about everything all the time? I think that’s his idea of home or a good relationship. I don’t know? Is that love? I think it could be. I don’t know if that’s what it’s supposed to be. I think… he wants me… but like you said he doesn’t just look at me, like everybody else does, I mean he kind of does… but it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
“He sees the… whatever it is, the other things, about me. No one else does that, or no one else does it like he does. And it’s mostly good with us. I bought him this mug. Actually it’s a planter with a little black face, a man’s face. And I bought one for me too. He acted like I bought him a car or something and then he went and bought me the same mug so we could both be drinking out of the same cup when I have to go away for three months.”
“That’s... cute I guess.”
“You guess? It’s more than that. He knows that I don’t want him to… that I bought it so he would have something to remind him of me and, and him buying the mug for me or the planter, that was his way of saying I’m not going to forget you. I don’t know if I’m explaining it.”
“Do you… do you think it’s love with him?”
“Phew, love. Love. Love. Y… yea, but it’s weird cos I have trouble saying it. I ask myself is it? Is it that? How do I know, cos love always comes with something, at least with other people that I knew, that I was close to with something else. Something that hurts. I literally can’t to him, like ‘I love you’. We don’t say that. Not in my family. I’ve never told anyone… never said those, ha ha ha, ‘three little words’.”
“Do you have to?”
“No. But I want to. I say it in other ways, maybe like how you said your dad did it. And he… he sees it. He takes it. He doesn’t try to force me to do… anything… that’s why I’m always scared when I have to leave him because it’s so perfect because he doesn't try to be ‘over me’. One day I think I’m gonna leave and he’s gonna realise that…”
“I’ve seen him. Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve seen him one the phone with you when you’re not here, and he’s out with us and I guess you call him or he calls you, and he looks like he’s okay. Like he’s with us, but he’s… he’s thinking about you. I don’t know what he’s thinking but… maybe you should go to him. Maybe you should tell him.”
“Is that what you would want… if you were him?”
“If I were him… I don’t know. That’s what I want, what I would want. Maybe.”

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021