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Of Mice and Men

(The past will introduce the present)
Faulkner was in love with Hemingway, but Hemingway had no idea. Hemingway didn't even know that Faulkner was gay. Faulkner was too shy to tell Hemingway how he felt. They worked together, Faulkner and Hemingway, and every day Faulkner suffered because he saw Hemingway and was in love.

(The present will distort the future)
Faulkner decides:
"Love is suffering because I love Hemingway, even though I have never loved before and I have no prior experience on which to base my decision, and I suffer. I suffer because I am in love. Therefore, to love is to suffer. I must suffer because to suffer is to have strength and I am strong. I will endure. Endurance is the mark of bravery and I will endure. I must share this endurance and strength with my fellow men. I must share love. To love is divine, to forgive human. I must give this suffering back to the world, from whence it came, and love will come back to me threefold. I will be a strong person because of this. I will endure. Because I am strong, I will love."

Faulkner told Hemingway, one night when they were drunk on the job, that he knew what love meant. Hemingway asked him what he meant but Faulkner had passed out. Faulkner, in his blackout, realized that exposure meant to suffer because he needed to give his suffering back to the world in order to endure. Therefore, he must expose himself to all of mankind so that he may understand what it is to love. Faulkner was in love with Hemingway and he wanted Hemingway to admire him because of it. Hemingway let Faulkner sleep and, dreaming of these things, he made a resolution.

The Exposed Heart
Faulkner speaks:
"To give yourself away to the world is strength. The only way to understand one's self better is to show others how well one has endured the slings and arrows of love. Love is the color of my heart when it is beating. I will tell Him this, and he will see all that composes me and allow me the freedom to breathe once more."

Hemingway speaks:
"This ole' heart of mine's been broken into a thousand pieces. I no longer wish to put my heart back together again. I will not look at you, Faulkner, because I am not gay. I am merely the ache of a heart beckoning for the embrace of another."

Faulkner speaks:
"I am dreaming of a perfect place. It is a place that is not wounded. I am in a black out. I am dreaming of you, Hemingway. I am a wounded desire stranded in the beat of endurance."

Hemingway speaks:
"I am not, Faulkner, the island of forgiveness you seek from man. I am a figment of only your imagination. This is not real, Faulkner. You have constructed, again in only your mind's eye, a world in which your heart can breathe, destroying the very breath it creates. The color of love is that of blood, Faulkner, and you know better than anyone that endurance is a matter best left unsaid. I am not like you, Faulkner, in that I do not wish to relinquish this aching enfold. I will be the one to say, "Faulkner! You must not, in this world, tell of what you do not understand!" And you would look at me and say, "but it is you, Hemingway, that will bring understanding." I will not free you from your wounded place, Faulkner. I am not, Faulkner, like you in this. I will not endure."

Faulkner speaks:
"It is with you, in only this solitude, that I can begin to see the clear picture of my disregard for life. I have decided, in order to continue this blackout, that I am, indeed, responsible for myself. I will carry this message with me to my grave. I will only continue to believe."

Faulkner awakens after having this dream
(The future is elliptical, confusing both that past and this present for alternative realities)
Hemingway takes Faulkner in his arms. He kisses Faulkner on the mouth, opening up the tongue without words. Their kiss is the world's desire, alive in only the blackout of fantasy. Because of this, Faulkner dies, leaving Hemingway to feel the guilt of death. His desire for living rests on the tongue, as Hemingway awakens from sleep.

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