The Sun Has Found the Back Room

I wrestled with clay on a spinning surface, all out of depth, having only ever done this when I was very small. There was a sweet silent girl beside me. She was entirely immersed in the bowl forming under her hands. She was so meticulous. She had on earbuds and her cheekbones were round apples, her lips out-turned, her jaw and chin pushed forward over her pottery wheel. She wore boots and jeans and an apron. She looked strong in the way that artists are strong. Her forearms were covered in clay. Her intent gathered around her in a pool that I could step into. She was so focused on her work that I didn’t mind feeling like a fool beside her. We didn’t talk, and I know she wasn’t focused on me, and that invited me to sit next to her and not focus on her, too. Her silence, her focus on something other than me, an invitation to mess with clay like a kid and not care about making mistakes. 

And then I was alone. She left once her bowl was done. She cleaned everything – the wheel, the tools, the surfaces around her. Her hands were clean again. And then she was gone. Sunlight filled her absence, but it wasn’t warm. I felt all out to sea. The clay raged against me. 

Jesse visited. Jesse is a potter himself, and knows what he is doing. That made him fantastically unpleasant company – to tell me everything I was doing was wrong, the clay warped and wobbled, the wheel too fast or too slow. He took my hand and jammed it with the due pressure upon the wheel and the side of the clay lump. My hand started warming with the friction of the wheel, a rug burn. Perhaps his wheel at home was smoother, but this one had wood splinters in it. The clay came apart and splattered us both. He left after apologies. 

I tried again. The art house could spare another lump of clay for practice. Brandon came in. My clay-covered hands, hovering in the air like wet birds. He sat on the chair. The sun returned. I discovered how beautiful the light in that room was. 

We both possess the same kind of nervous energy, but something else was able to let it settle. I think it was something about how wheel throwing is all about finding and feeling a center. I narrated my uncertainty as I tried the bowl again. Bent over it for stability. Opened it with my thumbs. He was self-consciously congratulatory. I was self-deprecatory and pleased. I sliced the bowl from the wheel with the wire and set it on the shelf to dry. 

Brandon reminds me of someone I knew before I moved cities – Matthew. That was the sort of thing Matthew would have done – he would have visited and he would have been unexpectedly gentle. Would have paused the jokes for praise. Would have scared himself with how tender he felt. These sorts of men are not usually tender, not used to showing softness.

Brandon is yet another diametrically opposite person from me. I don’t know his story but I know it involves pain. It’s more than I can bear. I have a feeling that the flashes of pain he shares are only surface wounds. I fear that sort of pain - fear what it creates and how people cope from it. But I’m also drawn to it. I want to place my hand over the wound and heal it by some magic I do not possess. I want to heal his pain like I wanted to heal Matthew’s.

I know I cannot heal these men. They’re men, after all. It’s not my place or duty to owe them healing. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to hug them all so hard. At least once. Maybe only once I get to hug someone and have that mean what I want it to mean – it’s not love or lust but something else altogether, a sort of celebration that happens when I see someone discover that they can be tender. I had hugged Matthew goodbye. I remember that. I imagine there are a set of circumstances that would lead me to hug Brandon in the same way, but I don’t think I will let that happen.

All the same, I hope Brandon felt the same kind of peace that I felt from him in the pottery room. If he felt sunlight, I hope it was warm. 

The clay had given me a bowl. My hands are clean now. I will find a center. I will be my own sunlit pool.