The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,116

then you realize they don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you. You realize that you’ll never share one heart and one mind with anybody. There’s nothing in the universe that knows you, nothing that sees inside. Maybe there’s nothing in there to be seen, just neurons going off like fireworks. We’re never known, never seen. The glass stays dark. You realize even your family doesn’t know you; maybe especially not your family, and they’re supposed to be the litmus test, the spiritual nucleus of the universe. You figure out it’s all bullshit—the sanctity of families, the divine calling of motherhood. Mothers cannibalize their children. Fathers chain their daughters up in basements and rape them for decades. Family is just biology; it’s nothing magical or special or sacred unless you make it that way.”

“Is that really what you believe?” Jem asked, his hands tightening on Tean’s shoulders.

“I don’t know. Sartre would say that family is one of the past determinants that rarely tells us anything about the choices we’re most interested in. The really big decisions, in other words. The ones that matter. He would say we have to look elsewhere for answers. And he would say otherwise we’re abdicating our responsibility to make choices. Existence precedes essence. We have to determine who we are through our choices.”

“But did Sartre’s parents thoroughly mindfuck him?” Jem asked.

“He was a philosopher, so probably.” Tean reached back, resting his hand on Jem’s, and Jem stopped massaging. “For existentialists, the world is absurd. We want meaning, but the world is chaotic and random, and it defies our demands for rational, reasonable explanations. And part of the absurdity is that we are irreparably alienated. We’re strangers to each other, strangers to the world. But we’re also strangers to ourselves.”

“Crypsis,” Jem said; his smile felt crooked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe that’s the human condition, that inability to know or be known. The ultimate evolutionary defense mechanism against meaninglessness. Maybe we keep ourselves safe by being hidden even from ourselves. Sartre would like that, I think. He said the authentic life was so terrifyingly free that most people chose an inauthentic life rather than face it.”

Jem combed his fingers through Tean’s hair.

“I don’t even know why I let them treat me that way.” Tean’s voice broke at the end. “If you put me in a room with anybody else in the world, I wouldn’t put up with that.”

“I know.”

“It’s humiliating, and it’s worse that you saw.”

“Stop it, Tean. You need to stop thinking like that right now.”

“But the really bad part, the awful part, is I don’t know why I let it happen. I don’t know why I let it go on like that for all these years. I’ll talk to strangers about how well my family and I get along. I tell my friends. Ask Hannah—well, if she weren’t in jail you could ask her. Jeez. How in the fuck am I supposed to understand anything when I don’t even understand myself?”

Jem squeezed the back of his neck lightly, and then he said, “You’re doing an awful lot of swearing, and I appreciate that you’re rapidly filling up our Disneyworld fund, but right now, you’re overthinking things.”

Tean shook his head.

“Yes, you are. You need to get out of your own head.” Jem took out his phone and tapped it. Music started. A good beat, chill melody. Jem let his hand slide down Tean’s arm, and he took him by the hand and pulled him to his feet.

Tean shook his head again.

“I believe you told me I’m very white,” Jem said, guiding Jem’s hands to his hips. “So you’ll probably have to help out.”

Tean was starting to cry, but he sniffed and tried to smile. Jem brought their foreheads together. After a moment, Tean adjusted their rhythm, and Jem could feel it, feel how they met each other, how they met the music. He could feel the spring air, cool on the back of his neck. He could feel Tean, the wiry lines of his body, his warmth, the tiny tremors as his crying slowed. He could feel something he’d never felt, never in his whole life, before meeting this man.

“I like this song,” Tean said.

“DJ Khaled,” Jem said. “’I’m The One.’”

A beat passed, and Tean whispered, “I think you are.”

Then the song ended, and “Monster Mash” came on.

Tean fell back against the table, laughing. “What in the world is this?”

“It’s ‘Monster Mash.’ What do you mean, what is it?” Jem