We were doing a sensory deprivation experiment at the university hospital. We were locked into a box that looked like the ice chest outside of a gas station and it was pitch black. I could not tell how long we'd been in, but our breath echoed close to our ears and where I heard Reggie's face was this pale, no-color fire. He described an oversized, potato-shaped thing, with a bunch of bristly legs all over it, hairs that it used to propel itself. It vibrated instead of vocalizing.
I thought that was pretty good.
We had signed up because we had very little money. We were in this warm, breathy, matter-sucking soup, bathing in it. So dark it was as if we were being eaten by space. We were. I had no idea what was going on out there. Anything. It occurred to me that I could be in love with him. Which was news and as soon as I thought it, thought to reach my hands out and feel for his face his face, to mash our mouths together, stubble on stubble, it was gone. I gulped hard and dry. Reached for a thought. It was the box, for sure.
"What kind of creature would you be?" he asked me.
I said "Fuck this game." We hadn't been given instructions. Maybe the experiment was to see how long two grown straight men would passively sit in a dark, black box without kissing, or thinking to. Maybe the experiment was fake and we were locked in here to die. We were nothing, we were insubstantial, in a stasis, neither living, nor dead.
My ears were fumbling around for sounds other than our breathing. My eyes had started painting negative colors on the air. If I kissed him, would we fight, physically fight in a space we were both crammed into? We could say it was just the box if we liked it. He was my roommate. He was grossly familiar. I had walked through his old, balls-smelling laundry, had watched him cook lazy meals and eat them, his fingers clamped around a stuffed tortilla, hot sauce staining his mouth. Plus I didn't think I was queer, so none of this made sense.
I asked him if he heard the music, although I didn't hear any myself.
"A little," he said. "Like little beeps?"
Yeah, I told him. "Do you want to kiss?" I asked him.
His breathing stopped and his legs shifted a little. It sounded like thunder. "No," he said. "Are you serious?" He fake-laughed.
I told him I was.
"No way," he said. And then he said "Thanks, though."
It was quiet a long time. I was saying "It must be the box," when the door opened and light flooded in, wrapping around everything, clanging all over our hands and faces. A doctor was peering in. He made some garbled joke my ears couldn't even take. We both climbed out on wobbly legs. They made us do puzzles in separate rooms and asked us to describe what we experienced. Then they gave us a small bill and let us go. When I was done, I went right to the bus stop, although me and Reggie had driven together in his car. It occurred to me that the box had been like being held. But by no one in this case, nothing, no one who had to or could stop. When the bus came, I got into a seat, put my knees up on the seat in front of me and hunched into my own lap. I shut my eyes.
