To fathom the falling: A third take on Ponyboy Curtis

This is the latest in a series of writings on Ponyboy Curtis: the first, titled The first coming of Ponyboy Curtis, was published on this blog in May 2015. The second, titled Other Hospitalities: Reflections onChris Goode’s Ensemble Ponyboy Curtis and their First Performance,At the Yard, 12-16 May 2015, was published by Contemporary Theatre Review in October 2015.

This was written in January 2016, after attending an invite-only sharing of a Ponyboy Curtis 'field' exercise, at Camden People's Theatre, 14 December 2015.

This is supposed to have a quotation from Neil Bartlett's Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall at the end of section ii, but I lost the copy of the book in which I'd marked the relevant passage, and despite buying another and raking through it twice, I haven't been able to remember which it was. I've used a different quote as the opening sentence.

This is dedicated to CG and CR, with love.

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Small gestures can be great pleasures, they can mean a great deal, when you get to know somebody else's body and its reactions as well as your own.

i. [you]

Even now, I can't pretend to understand what you're doing.

You ask what I see and honestly? For twenty or so minutes it's

nothing. Nothing! Just bodies

in space,

naked,

pallid in the half-light,

crouching, or standing, or walking with inscrutable purpose.

An abstract of porn, stripped of the fucking.

It's nothing

until it becomes everything.

And it doesn't seem to matter how much I watch, or think, or give my attention,

how much I absorb, am absorbed, it's still mysterious, unfathomable.

Maybe it would help to read more, but the words to explain are as hieroglyphs,

runes. I'm a believer in alchemy, transmutational process,

and that's what I see:

transformation.

Bodies become pellucid,

irradiated by gesture

a touch so soft

so tender

as to be almost unbearable.

The light, the lightness,

are almost unbearable.

And I don't understand it.

But as I look around this room (not without sentiment),

the tightness of its walls,

it strikes me again that while I see the crescent,

you see the whole of the moon.

ii. [them]

Of course I wonder how it feels, suddenly to have this intrusion of people in what is usually your private space. Some of you

I know; we hug before it starts, while you're still wearing your clothes; we talk about books,

or how we are, not really asking the question this time, although there is a shrewdness behind the eyes,

a reading beneath and between.

The lights dim and immediately you strip. I watch you, and I watch the room,

for awkwardness. There is a wariness, perceptible as a tension flickering in the skin, or perhaps just a question:

what will happen and how?

Familiar motions at first: crossing, striding; it's like a game of basketball, minus the ball,

the focus instead on infinitesimal gesture.

And then

And then

I can't remember how it happens.

Maybe it's Paul and Gareth – does it matter? – close enough almost to touch:

body hairs, electrified, reaching towards the other,

that close, nothing more.

Maybe it's two hands clasped, just briefly; or the first of the falls:

a murmur – falling! – and then there he is, holding you, supporting you, not keeping you up, but helping you down to the floor.

Maybe it's one of you wearing another's shoes: the intimacy of that sharing,

the hushed, calm statement that however different, we are the same.

The same in heart and blood and bone, the same in hurt and longing.

For a moment I wonder about jealousy, and notice how irrelevant that is.

Another – falling! – or maybe bodies leaning together, the curve of the spine, the tautness of chest.

Of course it's funny sometimes, how you'll be watching two people intently, and then a third will cross that path of vision, and suddenly all you see is cock and balls.

But this isn't nakedness so much as openness: a generous reaching, not just to each other, but to all of us watching,

just as long as we're ready.

iii. [him]

His loneliness slashes through me like a whip through the skin of a useless old nag.

The honest answer to how are you is somewhat more withdrawn.

I watch these bodies and wonder what he misses:

the touch of teeth (in any sweet kiss)

or stomachs that squash like pillows.

The burn from spine to thighs.

I see fingertips brush skin, limbs begin to meld,

smell their heat, hear its crackle.

Loneliness chokes.

  

iv. [us]

I know from the way you pull up from the floor

as though hauling your body through tar.

I know from the way you lean on the wall

how strong the storm in your heart.

I know

I feel it too

here in the pit of my stomach

here in the weight of my lungs.

I know when I leave

I won't want to speak

to anyone, only to you.

We've seen nothing but warmth, solicitude, love, but its impact has unbalanced us.

All we can do is cling to each other,

buffeted still, but protected.

Mine says I know, I felt it, and thank you

for not asking anything more.