At 25 and three months, I was a knife. The sharpness digging into the life I knew.
Knife hips that cut my waist. Sharp collarbones reflecting club light. My eyes angular in a feigned desire to catch the gaze. The gays. Men saw me as all gloss and invitation. A shimmer of stars and planets pulling on their desire. I was lean with trying, catching their gaze in flashing lights. They’d feel my angles and pull their hands away, bleeding from my sharpness. But they grabbed despite the blood, unable to overcome their hungry desire and my desire that surely this would not end. The answer a knife at my throat.
At 25 and four months, I was classified. The council of male gaze called me a twink.
Twink /twiNGk/ n. Brief but baffling. Men would stumble trying to reach the blades on my back. Prominent. Promiscuous. They saw me from behind. Not a face. Not a personality. A temporal category with a cut-off creeping closer day by day. And I mourned the inevitable loss of my Twinkdom; a kingdom ruled by the Dom Twink. The newly championed gays bent on stabbing me from all angles. They roam the clubs, the streets, the coffee shops with glittering swords. They steal the gaze from me. A coup. A direct destruction of my reign.
At 25 and seven months, I was abstract. Distracted by my own delusions that it wouldn’t end.
My body was historical. A museum with plaques pleading Please Touch. But sometimes history surrenders to a population’s subconscious. Walking through my swords, they would touch, bleed, pull back. With every passing moment their desire lessens like they’re counting the days, too. I pointed to the plaque pleading Please Touch. Their softness stung with reluctance. They forgot my past.
At 25 and nine months plus 13 days, I have chronology in presence.
My shoulders round laterally. Their sharp angles smoothing by the second into two dull knives. Men aren’t willing to bleed out just to touch youth again. The attention came more slowly and the newly categorized twinks catching the gaze, men want to touch their angles. Bleed for them.
At 25 and 11 months plus 27 days, it was coming.
My twink death: cut-off from the easiness. Men no longer scrambled to my aid. I dug my car out of the snow. No man ran across the street with a shovel in hand. My expiry date approaching. And at this time, a time of snow and battered backs, I saw my future with no men, no fumbling of their words as I put their hands on my waist. No more bleeding. I searched my body for evidence of collapse. The ending of brevity. My sharp wit stilted. No longer a dagger in men’s ears. No more blinding youth. The men looked through me, a window where the usurpers gathered to mock my fall.
At 26 exactly, it was a mourning of one.
I stood at the mirror and mouthed “twink.” The aftertaste young, temporary. I mouthed it again but nothing. The body stayed for years, but twink death eroded me. I outlived the spotlight, the effortlessness. Now no one bleeds for me.