Jack Russo > Recent Status Updates

The gasp I just let out…

“During the next several weeks, I begin to wonder if he chose me only because I was available, because I was the ideal vehicle through which to fulfill his repressed desires, because he hadn't yet found others like me. I will repeat to myself: I am for him a boy he fucks, nothing more. I'm reduced to a body, a penis, a function.”


Okay. Werk.

“Above it is a headline: CAMBRIDGE COX SAYS "IDIOT" FOREIGN ROWERS ARE RUINING THE SPORT.


Tag yourself-I'm Idiot.”

Werk.

“"And besides, you give shitty head when you're distracted."”

The way I gasped?

Oh…

“My attachments are not to places, nor to ancestry. In fact, my only important ties are to the present, to people. Your affection for me ties me to the world. It is knowing that I am in someone's thoughts that causes me to be.”

“You say: At least you've said something, broken your usual silence. And, as always, when you break your silence it is to say something beautiful. Why don't you talk more often? There are things I need you to say, things that will reassure me, move me, keep me warm through the winters I have to endure in the midst of this summer. But you say nothing, or so little.”

Oh.

“If you should receive news of my death, this is what you should do. Firstly, you will be and will remain very calm. You will hold your nerve, you will not go about the streets howling your despair; your grief shall be calm and dignified.

RODOLPHE WURTZ

Letter from the front, September 1915”

I have a feeling this is about to be an emotional journey…

"I think this sort of ruthless pragmatism is the rule of the day for fags, the bravest of us, anyway. It may seem cold to put self-preservation before family love, but only if you've never doubted it when your parents said, "I love you—no matter what.”"

“If you think it's hard to dissuade a horny young muscle-boy from coming unbidden in your mouth, let me tell you it's just depressing to deny an ancient. Russian roulette with protein.”

oh my god.

“"Oh, he killed himself," said Paul with furious false cheer. "You know damn well, but thanks for making me tell you. Do you want to know what caliber of bullet he used? Should I tell you what a .38 does to the back of your head?"”

Oh.

“All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”

Oh.

“He had no words left in his head, no ideas.
He barely thought about Julian at all. All he could think about was throwing himself against a wall, over and over, until he'd smashed himself into shards so fine that the void inside him could finally slip free.”

Werk.

“"I always worry you're going to kill yourself," he said. "You're just the type, I've always known. Sometimes I wish you'd get it over with."”

Oh.

““All most people care about is pretending everyone is exactly the same as they are, and he 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯’𝘵, he couldn't be, he knew too much about what the world really is. Those people don't care about anything except reinforcing their own 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 normalcy by making you reflect it back at them—"”

Werk.

“I have to admit, there is something delicious in that--that we would provoke so much unease, so much discomfort, so much irrational, unfounded terror just by existing.”

“"I guess this is what it's going to be like now—all these new silences, and you fill them with whatever you expect to hear."”

“"Death and regret go hand in hand, don't they? I don't think you can lose someone close to you without feeling guilty about 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨."”

Oh… My god…

“[He] was sitting on the floor in front of the bars, pale and somehow insubstantial, as if he'd been stitched together from scraps of light and memory and illusion, like a patchwork doll.”

Oh…

“The door opens silently when I push—it hasn't rusted the way I have. The empty room gapes at me as I step over the threshold, braced for the pain of recollection to hit me like a thunderbolt.
Instead there's only a faint whisper, a sigh like the slightest breeze on the other side of the window glass.”

“I was reluctant to be left alone, more reluctant still to let another friend out of my sight, as though one or the other of us might simply disappear.”

HELLO?!

“James stared up at him from the ground, eyes bright and hard like steel. Silence settled, and I was struck by the senseless idea that we and everything around us were made of glass. I was afraid to breathe, afraid to move, afraid something might break.”

You’re fucking joking…