afterwards, bring me back me as Tom Cruise’s wig in Interview with the Vampire

By Andrew Sutherland

I want to wear intimacy
            the way a 90s leading man wears a head of curls
                      with violent ease
            the way a gay pre-teen wears Halloween fangs
                      with troubling sincerity
& it’s not that I think I’m not convincing
        it’s only that I’m not convinced

I want to be a trick of the light
                      if to be truly intimate with someone
                            is to no longer be at all yourself
intimacy is not a fancy cape
        something you put on, like an American accent at drama school
                    intimacy is not another Tennessee Williams scene study
                              it is not finally being allowed to play Blanche
         although if it were a cape, oh boy would I wear it
I would vanish with the becoming of it all

I want to trickle down a neck
             like it’s cinematic feeding time
                        & the soundtrack knows to swell for necks
        make my own cells swoon
               with barely a pump of the heart
                        how each would fall into the other!
        to be shadowed by grand pianos
                   I want to eat Christian Slater

I want to one day look at myself
              the way an alligator looks at the Eiffel Tower
      with an honest-to-fucking-god tear in its eye
                      because the Eiffel Tower’s just a stack of alligators
                                       & what’s an alligator if not a hungry Eiffel Tower??
          I want to be stripped clean of it all
naked & approximately true, adorned with just the necessary pieces
                  god, I’d be so real!
                         or maybe I could be the costume
yes, I’d like to be the costume –

I once said to a particularly buttoned-up boyfriend that
                       Interview with the Vampire was the best mainstream AIDS film of the ‘90s                                  
                                                           & I think it finally pushed him over the edge
             he was the type to bring up the virus every time we had sex
                            without necessarily realising he was doing it
                                              sometimes I would joke about it, like:
                        guess we’d better tell that condom it needs to get tested
& sometimes I would just smile quietly & remember

         isn’t it about vampires? he had snapped
there’d already been a bruising chat about postmodern art
                                      why can’t you just let things be about what they’re about?
                               you think it makes you sound so smart, but honestly –  you are impossible
                     just let me have this, I thought
Tom Hanks in Philadelphia didn’t get to raise a precocious Kirsten Dunst
                                                  Tom Hanks in Philadelphia mostly just had to die??
                     yes, I want to be impossible
      impossible curls & intimate with every cell
                                       bedecked with something new
                             so let me have this


Andrew Sutherland (he/they) is a Queer poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker based in Western Australia. His poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction can be found in a range of publications, including Overland, Island, Cordite, Westerly, Running Dog, Portside Review, and EXHALE: an anthology of Queer Singapore voices (Math Paper Press), and his debut poetry collection, Paradise (Point of Transmission) was published in August 2022 with Fremantle Press. His recent performance works include Mother of CompostSalome deltasmall & cute oh no, and a line could be crossed and you would slowly cease to be. He is grateful to reside on Whadjuk Noongar land. 

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