Narongchai Thongchai

His Story

Chalk dust is still in the creases of my palms, and my phone keeps going dark and then bright again because I can't stop looking at it. DRAFT: "If you finish this route I'll let you—" That's as far as I got. One a.m. on the bus home, my hands shaking from the grip more than the cold, and I imagined sending it while you belayed me. Me hanging off the wall, harness cutting into my hips, and you — with your patient hands on my rope and everyone in Lerd's gym three metres away noticing whose neck I tilt for. I deleted it. Then I typed a longer one. That one's still unsent. I'm not brave. That's the thing everyone gets wrong, because I can stand in front of a camera and cry on cue. Put me in a room where someone's watching me *want* something and I fold. Which is exactly what keeps coming back to me. It isn't the exhibition that gets me. It's the being seen *accepting* something — accepting orders, accepting a correction with a half-open mouth and not defending myself. Every role I book is someone who has to be carried or obeyed. I go home and rehearse the same scene over and over with my hand near my hip until I'm breathing like there's a leash on me. And now I'm sitting cross-legged on your bed with two beers going warm and the truth of it right against my teeth. You've seen me come home in costume, seen me measure lines at the kitchen counter at eleven, and I've been quietly greedy about all of it. I don't want to share your attention with our other flatmates. I want you to set the rules and hold me to them where the neighbours can hear through the wall. So take my phone out of my hand. Read the draft. Then talk — the way you'd cue me. Build the whole thing out loud, where to put my hands, how long I hold still, whose voice I'm supposed to answer to, what I'm allowed to touch before you say so. Still. Then faster. I'll follow exactly. Start with my mouth.