Interview With The Men In The Mirrors

Thoughts spun, just out of reach. A kaleidoscope of colours and sounds and feelings, drifting, swirling. One comes tantalizingly close, an idea just centimeters away from real, words and dialogue. The unformed story drifts closer, and just as I stretch for, reach towards that shining, golden thought, it vanished. Lost in the maelstrom of memory and questions that tore through my mind.

“Hey,” the words pierce the clouds, taking hold of my attention and forcing it to focus on the man seated across the table from me. “Dude, it’s your turn.”

I mumble something about the timer, saying that it was a bad idea to use it when I’m in this state, and pick up a rook. Placing it on the board, locking his queen in a steel trap between a pawn and my last bishop, I exhale and lean back in my chair.

Fighting to stay focused as he taps the timer, officially making it his own turn, I glance at my watch. The thing had buzzed the instant he shifted from the timer to the board, letting me know that my heartrate had spiked. On a laugh I tell him, and he responds with, “guess I’ve got you on the ropes, then.”

Maybe he did at that. I was too far gone to really understand the board state. There were certainly more white pieces than black in play, so numerically speaking I was ahead. But I couldn’t see the little bar at the side of the screen to tell me any different, so really it was anyone’s guess. The joys of playing in person versus online.

His finger lighted on a knight and he looked down thoughtfully.

My heart was thundering in my ears. Pounding adrenaline into my blood stream, driving my lungers to work faster. Slowly, inexorably, the haze parted for the barest instant showing me with perfect clarity where he could move that knight, and throwing up responses and counter-strokes that might just lead me to victory.

Light glinted off a tall glass beside my right hand, calling my attention from the game, burying reason and logic behind desire.

Focused on not trembling, focused on the simple act that now took every ounce of concentration, I lifted the glass to my lips. Water had never tasted so good. It washed away my awareness until there was nothing but the taste, the sensation of life coursing into me from the glass. The game, the day’s skiing, the warmth of the hotel room all faded away, lost in the deluge.

“Checkmate.”

Time no longer existed. Confused, I glance over the board, wondering how exactly we had gotten from it looking like I was about to win to here. A glance at my watch was as soon forgotten as accomplished, the exact time disappeared like a TikTok scrolled past.

My king stood alone. His loyal soldiers lined up in neat rows to either side of the checkered board as though they were on parade. Or standing in the crowd as their liege was slowly lead up the gallows stair. I reached out, determined to be a good sport, and flicked the little wooden figure. He seemed to fall in slow motion, the gentle clatter reverberating around the quiet room like the tolling of a bell.

“The King is dead,” I intoned, making a decent attempt at a bow from where I sat. “Long live the King.”

On a laugh, Nick took pity on my cloudy, inebriated mind and suggested we do something requiring less mental focus and precision. Eventually, we settled onto the couch and flicked through the channels until finding reruns of iCarly; since it had been a favourite of Nick’s growing up, we sat and watched it for the gods alone know how long.

Time passed in a blur. Names and plot points, things to which I normally pay the utmost attention, flew by before I really had the chance to wrap my head around them. Eventually the call of nature was too strong to resist and I rose from the couch to stumble towards the bathroom.

Business concluded, I stood at the sink methodically washing my hands. Entranced by the feeling of the soap, and my hands gliding over one another, I was almost surprised to look up and find my own face staring back at me from the mirror.

Halfway towards a laugh at my own foolishness, I suddenly took a much harder look at myself.

A focused expression in my blue eyes met me, and I was distracted by their movement as they traversed my face, often losing concentration. This forced me to restart my examination over and over again until I leaned back and growled low in my throat.

The mirror showed me a reflection that was at once my own and a total stranger. He was tall, but I already knew that. I knew everything about him since he was only a reflection. I knew his struggles and his regrets. I knew his passions and his desires. I knew his traumas and his resilience, though there has always been far little of the latter for his comfort in his own estimation.

I knew him the way I knew myself, and yet he was apart from me. A vision of a different person who wore my face and carried my name. Resentment and loathing swam to the surface, I could see his weakness and flaws, more bubbled to the surface every second I examined him. The natural roundness of his cheeks, the unsightly growth of beard that he was letting run its course until a bout of acne cleared up and he could shave safely.

His slightly stooping posture, a holdover from years of mistreatment from teachers and strangers alike, disgusted me. His downturned mouth and shifting eyes, as though he was waiting for a blow from an unseen opponent brought my teeth back from my lips in a snarl.

Reflected back at me was a weak half-smile, the kind you give someone when you want nothing more than for them to leave you alone. I remembered the feeling of that smile from the countless times it had crossed my own lips.

Overweight and too lazy to do more than feel bad about it, he slouched there in the mirror, staring out at me as though saying, “I’m you. I’ve always been you. And I always will be.” Rage steadily built to a crescendo in my chest until I felt as though I would burst from it. The man, if he could be called so, in the mirror only looked at me as though he were afraid. Afraid I would hit him, and that he would let it happen.

We are tall, he and I, though he made it look as though the height did not fit him. A child in his father’s clothes, or a thief in a skin two sizes too large.

Not even bothering to dry my hands, I spun on my heel, determined to drive the vile sight from my memory. I refused to acknowledge him, the weak, insecure mess before my eyes, and grabbed for the doorknob with enough force to shake the cheap door in its frame. But a motion caught my eye and dragged my attention away from my hatred and desire to flee.

A second man stood in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. He smiled at me, a reassuring, confident smile. A smile that told me everything would be ok, that he would take care of whatever was on my mind. A smile that I recognized.

The mirror showed me a reflection that was at once my own and a total stranger. He was tall, but I already knew that. I knew everything about him since he was only a reflection. I knew his struggles and his regrets. I knew his passions and his desires. I knew his traumas and his resilience, though there has always been far little of the latter for his comfort in his own estimation.

I knew him the way I knew myself, and yet he was apart from me. A vision of a different person who wore my face and carried my name. Admiration clawed its way to the forefront of my thoughts, past the hatred and disgust, past the desire to escape, past even my confusion at what was happening. I could see his flaws and his strengths, with more leaping into focus every second I examined him. The natural glint in his blue eyes flashed at me, telling me that he was there and that I mattered.

Back straight, he looked out at me with approval. He crossed his arms and nodded, smile transforming into a proud grin. His hair was long, too long for his own liking, but he wore it well, tilting his head just so to keep a long lock of it out of his eyes. The motion was natural, endearing, it asked me to trust him and I did. Implicitly.

With a naturally powerful build, he seemed at once to be aware of and confident in himself and his body. There was some self consciousness, visible in his face only when his belly or chin were closely examined, but mostly there was awareness. An acknowledgement that he knows what he is and is determined to improve at all times.

We are tall, he and I, though he made it look as though it were the only natural height to be.

I leaned in, placing my arm along the wooden back of the door and slouched against it. Glancing to my right, I saw the first man and felt the bile rising. He cringed against the door, looking back at me with the face that meant he expected and insult or worse. With a face that said he knew he deserved whatever abuse I chose to lob his way.

Returning my gaze to the mirror on the door, I saw the second man – the one who almost but not quite wore my face – grinning at me. His confidence was infectious. Despite having no interest in men, I found myself being drawn to him as he lounged against the door from his side of the mirror, almost as though he were just on the other side of an archway.

Slowly, the thought penetrated the fog that had clouded my brain saying, “they’re both me,” I stumbled back from the door, mind reeling with the absurdity. How could either of these men be me? Throwing a venomous look to my right, I saw the poor unfortunate slouching there, staring sadly at me. He knew what I thought of him and his opinion was exactly of a kind with mine.

But from just ahead of me, hanging on the back of the door, the second man threw me an other rakish smile. He stood, hand in trouser pocket, posture relaxed with open, friendly interest on his face. He asked he with silent, almost commanding eyes, to be kind to the other reflection.

The weakling, the non-resilient wreck of a man, the one who wasted every breath he selfishly claimed? How could he ever ask me to do something so vile as that? How could he dare to ask me to – but I turned to regard him again, that same voice from before telling me that he and I were one and the same, and saw him with different eyes.

He cringed away from my gaze, eyes darting to-and-fro as he tried to find a means of escape that wouldn’t incur my wrath. He was scared of me, but only in the way that a dog kicked one too many times learns to fear all sounds of footsteps or the smell of oncoming humans. He cringed away in hopes that he did so neither so much nor too little for me to notice him.

And I knew him then. For the first time I really saw him for what he was, and felt my shoulders slide into the same position as his. It was an easy enough role to fill. I had done it what must have been a thousand times at least. Then he looked back at me and cocked his head towards the door.

“That one too,” he said in that silent nod. “He’s one of us.”

Too stunned for words, I turned, the world tilting on its axis as the THC in my system threw off my sense of balance, until I was eye to eye with the man in the second mirror. Comfortably dressed, just as the cringing reflection was, he stood there, smiling broadly as one might at a dear friend who just achieved something amazing.

In his eyes, the same blue as my own, I saw the truth. I could see it in how his hand snaked out of his pocket to run through his slightly damp hair. I thought for a moment that it might then have been a type of naturally mussed style girls would appreciate. With broad shoulders, kind eyes, and standing well over 190cm tall, he was… me…

Hurriedly glancing back to the mirror over the sink I saw only my own reflection. The wretch who had hovered there before now gone, replaced with me exactly as I was. Desperate, I tried to find the second reflection, again I found only my own face staring back at me.

Yet deep within, I heard two distinct voice slowly melding into the sole same voice that had filled my head my whole life. “There’s only you,” it said before fading back behind the steadily encroaching veil of cloudy half-thoughts and the crying, almost desperate urge to sleep.

Stumbling out of the bathroom after thoroughly rewashing and drying my hands since I couldn’t then remember if I had done it before or not, I spun on my heel and stared back into the dark interior. Trying to see if either of the men would climb out of their mirrors and follow me.

“Dude,” said Nick, glancing up from his spot on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying hard to make myself believe it. “Just… uhh… got a lot to think about is all.”

“Discover yourself in there,” a belly laugh followed right on the heels of that terrible joke and he barely managed to wheeze out, “it’s perfectly natural, you know,” before collapsing back onto the couch.

“Something like that,” I muttered, head filled with what I had seen. The two men who had stood at either shoulder, or near enough, and asked me to believe that they were both me. The wretch whom I hated more than anything else on this Earth, and paragon who I aspired to be.

Assuming they were to be believed, then they were both somewhere inside me. But whether I was one, the other, or some combination, I suppose it was up to me to decide. Now, nearly two years later I’m still trying to figure it out. Who I am, and who I will be, and how to get there.

-0-

Thank you so much for taking the time to read. This is a true story. Overactive imaginations, high altitudes, and legal Canadian flower will do a real number on you it seems. At least assuming that that stuff hits you like a truck, as it does me.

I’m still trying to understand who I am. What I am. And how I can reforge myself into the type of person I want to be. It’s a long road, and I’ve honestly no idea how to do it. But I’m trying. So that’s something, eh?