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t__tj's review
4.25
NSFW. A light and fun read nonetheless. A great short story with moments of endearing awkwardness and a clean resolution. To explore how one memory can affect one's perception of identity and their intimate relationships is interesting and was well-developed in this story.
"We’d been tunnelling toward each other for years. It was hard work, but the assumption was that eventually our two tunnels would connect. We’d break through—Hallelujah! Clay-encrusted hands finally seizing each other!—and we would be together, really together, for the remaining time that we were alive. So long as we both dug as hard and as fast as we could, everything would work out. But, of course, neither of us knew for sure how the other person’s digging was going. One of us might have been doggedly tunnelling toward the other person, while the other person was curling away in another direction. That person might not even have been aware of how off course he or she was. One of us might have tunnelled straight down for a few weeks, in anger, and then tried to get back on track, but now honestly had no idea where to go. We might break through—Hallelujah!—only to find that we were seizing the dirty hands of a stranger. What to do then? Or we might simply get tired, and stop digging, decide that here was good enough. All the while saying things like “We must be getting close!” and “I can’t wait until the day finally comes!” We might never meet up at all; we might die before it happened. Or worse: maybe there had never been any hope of our meeting up, because what was that even a metaphor for? Oneness? A child’s dream of love?"
"We’d been tunnelling toward each other for years. It was hard work, but the assumption was that eventually our two tunnels would connect. We’d break through—Hallelujah! Clay-encrusted hands finally seizing each other!—and we would be together, really together, for the remaining time that we were alive. So long as we both dug as hard and as fast as we could, everything would work out. But, of course, neither of us knew for sure how the other person’s digging was going. One of us might have been doggedly tunnelling toward the other person, while the other person was curling away in another direction. That person might not even have been aware of how off course he or she was. One of us might have tunnelled straight down for a few weeks, in anger, and then tried to get back on track, but now honestly had no idea where to go. We might break through—Hallelujah!—only to find that we were seizing the dirty hands of a stranger. What to do then? Or we might simply get tired, and stop digging, decide that here was good enough. All the while saying things like “We must be getting close!” and “I can’t wait until the day finally comes!” We might never meet up at all; we might die before it happened. Or worse: maybe there had never been any hope of our meeting up, because what was that even a metaphor for? Oneness? A child’s dream of love?"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
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