Six Ways to Survive Celestial Events

A love story

TJ Benson
Gay Mag

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Image: Cameran Ashraf / Getty Images

When the mercury retrograde came two Decembers ago, I was twenty-five and madly in love.

Step 1: Do not argue with those important to you

SShe liked my left eyebrow. Her middle name was Rose but she thought it was too cliché or something. I thought it was cliché and beautiful. Our first physical meeting was anticlimactic. We both loved Drake’s “Sacrifices,” so I planned to start singing it the minute she came to pick me up from the reception of her hotel. But she made me wait too long. After all the things she planned to do with my body we hugged as though we were friends. “Do I undress and wait for you in the room or…” she had texted the previous week — and now this brief brother-sister hug. I was still scared of her back then, I think. Terrified of the possibilities of her. I wanted to observe her from a distance, but she was always pulling me close, come and sit here, why are you sitting far from me, investigating my eyes. We connected in the [LT1] strangest ways which stupefied me because I had believed after my previous relationship that there was no one else in the world for me. So who was this girl? Where did she come from?

She wanted me to write about us but I was against the morality of that, living a life just for the sake of writing it. She…

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TJ Benson
Gay Mag

Spirit Husband + Prince of Supermoons. Stories on Catapult, Transition and more. Visual Art @TJBenson_ The Madhouse from Masobe Books/Penguin Random House SA