ESCHATON

I was twenty-two. I knew these things. I knew how to hit a mark, and I knew how to count an eight-beat, and I knew that a girl who wants a girl is a dead idol

Gawon, Diary 1:

Yes. I would look out the practice room window and count the girls reflected in the glass that once had fives faces and now seemed to have too few. Is that all? No.

There were other attempts, comebacks: stages bright -

and carried away. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I like the feel of my microphone. More than the contract? Yes, and I liked the waiting in the wings, watching the seats fill with people. I liked the eyeliner and hairspray of it, and soft floors in any light. I wanted to be wanted and visible.

That sounds overly desperate - like an idol. And my hands? My hands keep reaching for a girl whose body was warm and is now on the other side of a screen. Her being Anna. Yes. Do I love her? I dont have to answer that. This is where I trot out my sadness. Black coat, black eyeliner, mussed hair. I miss the point: the face in the camera is a little traitor. I want in, I want out, I want the five back. I miss my group.

I stand in front of the mirror with a tape recorder, hoping to catch something. I want to move forward but I can’t. Everyone in this group got here somehow and everyone in this group had to leave. So what’s left? Sing a song about the room we were in? Hammer in the pegs that affix us to the stage? The voice wnats to be a hand and the hand wants to hold something living. What did I really want? Someone to be seen by. I wanted more. I want what everyone wants.

I raise the lightboard and shine it on the empty practice room. Was there no one else anymore? Left-handed love, right-handed career, there’s no pure way to keep both. The company calls and it makes a noise. Anna makes a noise, cinched into my arms. The company tells us to leave and never come back - but Anna is cinched to me - give us a minute, please, give us a minute. We cry on the bathroom floor and it makes a noise. Was there no one else? My hands keep reaching for Anna, and Anna is always on the other side of everything. The hands must land. The hands must land.

I had a dream about Anna. We were in the gold room where everyone had schedules and stylists. Anna was eating kimbap and not making a sound. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. Anna said Do you think they’ll let us come back? And I said No, and I meant it, and Anna kept eating.

It’s all complicated. My dreams, these are dreams I shouldn’t be having, I shouldn’t have to clean them up like this. A man who’s going grey with warm palms and a dead wife is making me...

ego

I had dreams in a row where Anna called, about to call or on the line already - here I am in a wrong room, feeding the wrong life, i still want your gossamer lips, your teething bites on me. I wake up and I remember what she said: have a nice life, have a nice life, forget about me. The tape is already peeling off my walls - when will you come back?

id

I have to get off this train. I wanted to get off right here but I knew the doors wouldn’t open because the group is dead. I swallowed alcohol - the group is dead. Anna is a fever I am learning to live with - everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

egoid

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the hums of the city. I can’t write, can’t settle, or paint walls and I wake up and the group’s still gone. Whatever. Burn the practice room down.

idego

I don’t really blame them for disbanding but they can’t have my voice back. So, I said, now that we have our dead careers, what are we going to do with them? There’s a barstool and there’s a train seat, depends on which you sit in, depends on which damn seat you live with.

iidddd eooog

I have coats all over my body, it’s November, it’s cold, I feel so damn cold. And there’s a man at the bar, a landscape full of him. You can sit now, he said. You can sit now. He said that. I had a dream where he said that. I realized I had been standing the whole time.

What did I really want?

Gawon and Anna - lovers. Lovers who broke a group apart. For what? You’re unsure - differences, code of conduct, et cetera et cetera - your mind is considering the first option and it’s all so demanding that you shuffle back a little.

Why would she have this out.

She could’ve kept it a secret, yet it’s open-faced and the sunlight poured out in this exacting way - as if this was a revelation worth having - Gawon attached to Anna’s gossamer lips.

it’s all so confusing.

Later you were in her bed, under the sheets. She was on her stomach, your thumb on the ridge of her spine.

You read it. She asked.

Yeah.

And you didn’t say anything. I left it out for you

She continued, propping herself up on her elbows, I thought it’d be easier to - you know - keep it all out instead of explaining.

You nodded again.

She’s funnier than me, meaner than me. The camera doesn’t do her justice - she’s a princess on camera. She commanded so much power on her own.

So they couldn’t drop her.

Correct, she was outspoken on creative differences, prioritized her members - humanity over stockholders, as they say.

But they gave up on you, you both.

Correct too, we were attached to eachother and that was enough.

She continued, dropped her head further down:

The rest of the members don’t talk to us. Anna and I met before. I’ll elaborate on that later - the members dont talk to us. That’s important. Anna and I were together because we trained sixteen hours a day and we were told our bodies didn’t belong to us and the one person who made me feel like mine did -

is the one person the industry punished me for wanting.

She sat up, the sheet pooled at her waist. The light hit her collarbone - the ridge, the hollow of it, the scars of an idol, these hollow ridges of her collar.

And you know how it ended. Seoul, after everything collapsed. we were lying in bed - like this, almost like this - and I said I loved her. And she said she loved me. But it didn’t ring the same anymore. It didn’t land right. After all this fighting, we were tired.

Tired beats soulmates.

This performance became a way of method acting to us - sneaking and timing and stealing miutes in practice rooms stippling each other with red kisses underneath the clothes that inched too close to the red blooms we left on eachother. Take away the sneaking, the stakes, the company breathing down our necks? Two exhausted girls in a hotel room who love each other and can’t move.

The words kept smudging. I had all this language from the books. I wanted to say: you are the only person who has ever seen me and also the person who cost me everything and I love you, I love - I love you! But what I actually said was: I’m tired.

And that was it. You reply.

That was it, she flew back the next morning because all her fashion deals went through and the company had the dignity to not blacklist us across industries. Atleast. I stayed in the hotel room that Anna paid in advance for and I ate ice cream for as long as I could muster. I didn’t cry because I thought I’d used it all up.

She turned to you, with those beautiful eyes.