He pushed the letter, irretrievable, his single chance, into the dark chasm of the post box. Irrevocable, he thought, as a grave. He did it quickly, as if he were throwing away all the hope left in the world.
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Expectations were high, my performance low. I knew the subject, but somehow couldn’t articulate my ideas coherently. Delegates didn’t hold back when it came to criticism and told me afterwards that my strategy was unclear, my content muddled and that I had given them no clear direction. It would have been so easy for me to have run my presentation by Louis in the days before I gave it - but I hadn’t wanted to subject myself to negative feedback. So I’d blundered on. I felt that I’d blown it and feared being sent back home.
Osita wished, much later, that he’d told Vivek the truth then, that he was so beautiful he made the air around him dull, made Osita hard with desire. “Take it off,” he snapped instead, his throat rough. “Put it back before they catch us.
OK, we’ll tell her you dug the grave.’ It’s the truth – stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?
He would understand, later, that there is a moment when your life must become your own; you must claim it from all the other stories you’ve been given, that have been handed down or thrust upon you, or that you’ve been left holding while someone else claimed theirs. He already knew that the life unchosen, left behind because of cowardice or shame, does not wither. But instead, without exception, grows rampant, choking the path ahead.
That was my message. I left it there, hanging before them with an unfinished feel to it. I could feel them expecting more, then realizing that I wasn’t going to say more, then biting down on what I had said.