The day it Rained (2 mini chapters)
The next two mini chapters
JAMIE, HAVE I LOVED
Jamie lives with me. I have known Jamie about as long as I have known Ray. Actually, we all three went to high school together. But never hung out the way we do now. Jamie I guess is my best friend. He is a bit of a drag queen, actually he is a drag queen but by local prominence only. Ray has come around to Jamie, but you can tell that Ray is still getting used to the whole thing.
Our house, (our little dysfunctional family, a modern version of Three’s Company) sits in the country. It’s a modest farm house with three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room which accommodates our needs very simply. Our bathroom, mine and Rays, actually adjoin two bedrooms and Jamie has his own room with a bath. The house was actually my grandfathers who left it to me after he died. I was raised by my grandfather and he did right by me. I miss him. And all my memories of him are in this house, the house that he built.
My dad works for the railroad. He’s never around that’s why I lived with my granddaddy. In all reality I remind him of my mother who was killed by a drunk driver when I was 9. Daddy felt guilty about it. And I live off my mother’s insurance and the settlement from that ole boy who killed her. I’ve made some wise investments and live on that also.
Ray stays with me five nights a week. Sometimes he comes by and takes naps out here because he really hates his trailer on his daddy’s land, the only memory he really has of his father.
Jamie is lithely and feathery. It took me some time to get use to him because we are such the odd couple to begin with. I am not really into fems but like I have alluded to earlier, he is my best friend. We have been threw the boyfriends together, all the bars and stupid time wasted on boys. He works at a salon giving makeovers and a stylist to all the fancy pants women in Hendersonville. He really doesn’t need to live here but he likes it here. With me, or us, or what have you. I like him being here because he tells the greatest stories and he keeps me happy a lot of times.
Ray likes him to. You can tell. He might not say it, but I have caught him laughing in the undertones of conversations and beer nights. Ray doesn’t say much. He acts indifferent to everything but he always seems to make good decisions when he has to, not when he wants to. That’s why I know it’s a big deal that he wants to be here.
Late at night when Jamie is finished with his long over the top stories, Ray will take my hand and lead me to bed. Usually by that time I would be droopy eyed, and beer belly full and ready to sleep. But as the song goes, I don’t sleep, I dream, when he is there taking care of me. He will pull back the covers and then I fall into bed and he will place the covers over me. He then turns out the light, either the overhead or the one on the nightstand and then crawls into bed. His arm comes across my stomach. He will kiss me on the back of my neck and then waits, so he thinks, until I fall asleep before he goes to sleep. In reality, he thinks I am asleep but not really, I pretend and wait until he falls asleep before I do. He pays attention to my every detail as much as I do his.
Jamie is one intuitive son of a bitch. He pointed this out to me…
I can tell you exactly what Ray does when he gets home from work. He will pull up in his J7 and park on the far side of the house. He gathers he stuff from this jeep and then gets out. You can tell, cause he slams the door to shut it. It won’t shut unless you slam it fairly hard. He then stands outside his jeep, in dirty boots and blue jeans from working at the Banning Stables near the old mill. He lights his cigarette. He then walks to the porch calls his mama in Villa Rica and sits on the stoop to finish his smoke. He takes his boots off and his socks and then comes in. He will come over to me and he says the same thing every time, “Hey handsome,” and he kisses the top of my head and runs his hands of tough skin threw my hair. I love the way his smells, like a spool of rope and dirt. Like sweaty leather and fresh laundry line dried clothes. He then takes off his work shirt, (or his Carhardt Pull over if it’s cold) and takes off his blue jeans and underwear and then heads to the bathroom for a shower. Afterward he comes back kisses my head again pulls on a pair of boxers and lays on the bed. I then go and lay next to him and we watch the news and just lay in each other’s arms. It sweet and kind, almost like a married couple. I even hate saying that aloud. But that’s what it seems like.
…“Goddamn, you are in love with him, aren’t you?” Jamie said.
I looked at the floor and then back at Jamie and responded, “Yeaaaahhhh.”
“Well, I tell you one thing, sista, I believe that our friend Ray is in love with you too!” He says in his best queen speak.
“But don’t you think that we are the most mismatched couple you have ever seen?” I asked with a confused look on my face.
“Yeah, honey, but love don’t know no better.” He illustrated with hand moments that defy description.
I believe he’s right. But a part of me, I know is in love with him, still the other part has not accepted it. I wonder if there is a small part of Ray that feels the same. Or maybe I have an active imagination or it’s because I have been hurt by those I have loved and those who have loved me.
He will pull up in his CJ7 and park on the far side of the house. I will be listening to R.E.M.’s Out of Time album…
COUNT, BLEED, BELIEVE
He backhanded me. I totally fell over the coffee table and hit the floor. I just laid there on my back. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t moan or cry. I just laid there, blood coming from my nose. I took my arm dressed in a blue ratty Oxford and wiped my nose. I looked at the crimson on my cuff and then I sucked in what was left in my nostril. The forming blood clot hit my sinuses with a metallic liquid slap which caused me to smell the blood very vividly. Still lying on my back looking at the popcorn ceiling, I drew a cigarette from my shirt pocket. I drew a lighter flame to it and began to smoke. I began to count the puff marks on the ceiling. I could hear him let down the tailgate of my truck. I could see him in my minds eye. His ankles crossed, the toes of his boots dug into the dirt. I can see him sitting on his hands and then looking at them as if it were their fault that they hit me. I could imagine him apologizing to himself about hitting me. I could see him smoking a cigarette. I hear the tailgate slam shut and a shout from Ray, “GODDAMN IT!” I just laid there ashing on myself not really giving a fuck.
The blood started to congeal in my nose. It was good that I was lying down though. You know that’s the best thing for a nose bleed either caused by you or someone else’s fault or just a regular old childhood nose bleed. I took a drag off my cigarette… 50, 51, 52, 53, 54…
…Maybe I need to get slapped around a little bit. He has only hit me two times before but not like this. Maybe I am being mentally battered. I am not a battered man. Maybe I am and that’s what I am supposed to say. It was my fault but then again maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the realization of something he wasn’t ready for, me neither now that I am in this spot. Actually, it is my fault. Why did she have to say such a fucked thing like that…75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80…
I had gone into town. I needed to get some groceries. I ran into Marcy Doolittle Thornton. If I remember correctly, they dated or something. When I told Ray this his face became red. “Did you talk to her?” he asked swiftly.
Jamie’s door opens and we could hear, Clint Eastwood, by the Gorillaz.
“Well, yeah, For some reason she said, ‘have you seen Ray?’ and I told her you were living here.” Ray just looked at me with a scowl on his face.
“What did she say?” he said his face growing redder and redder.
“She said, ‘oh really? That’s right, I heard from Justin, that heard it from his mama who heard it from God knows who that you guys were faggots together or something.’ Then she laughed that messed up laugh she got from that accident with that bull.” I said trying to defuse this situation.
“Goddamn it, you know she and I dated for a while before she married Doug Thornton.” You could feel the steam coming from him.
“Well, what else did you say?” he asks sternly like a preacher to a sinner.
I stood there just looking at him. I really didn’t know what to say to him so, I just barred down and tried to let him know everything that happened, “Well, I didn’t know what to say. She kept going on and on about how faggots were gross and that we were going to hell. I didn’t know why she was so compiled to tell me all this. She just did and I guess I let something…” I paused and cleared my throat, “I guess I let something slip.”
“Like what?” He said with his eyes about to come loose from his head and his hands started to become clinched, almost in a death grip on anger.
I bit the bullet, because I knew it was going to send him over the edge. “Like,” I took a step back and was caught by the coffee table.
“Like what?” he said stepping toward me.
I tried to take another step back from him but I just couldn’t go no where. And then I said it, “I looked at her with a smile and said, ‘He fucks like a champion.’”
“WHAT?” he screamed at me. He then turned around on his heal. I walked after him.
“Wait now, Ray, I didn’t mean for that to…” I said.
DON’T you KNOW what this MEANS?” he asked me.
“No.” I said looking at the floor though deep down I did.
“Don’t you know that she’s going tell everybody not just everybody but her mother and everybody will know?!” He said as if the apocalypse was coming down the chimney.
“I didn’t mean to say it,” I said, “I’m sorry, my mouth went faster than my thoughtlessness.”
He started walking toward me. I had never seen him so mad at me before. He walked me into the coffee table to the point I was sitting on it. The next thing I know the back of his hand was against my face and I was lying on the floor with a nose bleed.
305, 306, 307, 308,…
He comes back in from being outside and he sits on the floor with his right ankle behind his left foot with his left knee up. He looks down at me. He took my hand and just sat there. He took his free hand and tried to wipe my face. I just laid there emotionless while he was feeling my face and feeling the heat still radiating from my face.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a slow country voice.
I didn’t say anything. I just continued to lay there and count. I took another cigarette from my pocket and lit it.
“I just didn’t want people to find out about us.” A pause, “And I lost it.” Another pause, “I’m sorry.”
He stood up and took off to the bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. I didn’t know if I should have had followed him. I didn’t I laid on the floor awhile to gather my thoughts. The shower came on. I had my thoughts together…
339, 340, 341, 342,..
…I still just laid there for awhile longer until I heard him go back into the bedroom…
…415, 416, 417, 418,… somewhere in my lost mind, I could hear R.E.M. Fall on Me as I faded into a world beyond the dots. Do they know their purpose I wondered? Do they know they cover the uneven and unwanted ugliness of the truth underneath? They cover, that’s all they do. Cover… 439, 440, 441, 442…
…I opened the door while he was stepping in to his boxers. He looked up at me in mid pull and I said, “I’m the one who is sorry.” I paused, “and I forgive you.”
We just stared as each other as he dropped his boxers and his face went back to a natural color. He stepped out of them and came to me, hugged me and held me tight.
Jamie’s door opens again and the crazy silence in my mind is broken by Mirrorball, by Everything but the Girl.
I wanted to lay on the floor still and stare at the ceiling. There are 12 million and one puff marks up there. I swear it; I just counted every one of them.
JAMIE, HAVE I LOVED
Jamie lives with me. I have known Jamie about as long as I have known Ray. Actually, we all three went to high school together. But never hung out the way we do now. Jamie I guess is my best friend. He is a bit of a drag queen, actually he is a drag queen but by local prominence only. Ray has come around to Jamie, but you can tell that Ray is still getting used to the whole thing.
Our house, (our little dysfunctional family, a modern version of Three’s Company) sits in the country. It’s a modest farm house with three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room which accommodates our needs very simply. Our bathroom, mine and Rays, actually adjoin two bedrooms and Jamie has his own room with a bath. The house was actually my grandfathers who left it to me after he died. I was raised by my grandfather and he did right by me. I miss him. And all my memories of him are in this house, the house that he built.
My dad works for the railroad. He’s never around that’s why I lived with my granddaddy. In all reality I remind him of my mother who was killed by a drunk driver when I was 9. Daddy felt guilty about it. And I live off my mother’s insurance and the settlement from that ole boy who killed her. I’ve made some wise investments and live on that also.
Ray stays with me five nights a week. Sometimes he comes by and takes naps out here because he really hates his trailer on his daddy’s land, the only memory he really has of his father.
Jamie is lithely and feathery. It took me some time to get use to him because we are such the odd couple to begin with. I am not really into fems but like I have alluded to earlier, he is my best friend. We have been threw the boyfriends together, all the bars and stupid time wasted on boys. He works at a salon giving makeovers and a stylist to all the fancy pants women in Hendersonville. He really doesn’t need to live here but he likes it here. With me, or us, or what have you. I like him being here because he tells the greatest stories and he keeps me happy a lot of times.
Ray likes him to. You can tell. He might not say it, but I have caught him laughing in the undertones of conversations and beer nights. Ray doesn’t say much. He acts indifferent to everything but he always seems to make good decisions when he has to, not when he wants to. That’s why I know it’s a big deal that he wants to be here.
Late at night when Jamie is finished with his long over the top stories, Ray will take my hand and lead me to bed. Usually by that time I would be droopy eyed, and beer belly full and ready to sleep. But as the song goes, I don’t sleep, I dream, when he is there taking care of me. He will pull back the covers and then I fall into bed and he will place the covers over me. He then turns out the light, either the overhead or the one on the nightstand and then crawls into bed. His arm comes across my stomach. He will kiss me on the back of my neck and then waits, so he thinks, until I fall asleep before he goes to sleep. In reality, he thinks I am asleep but not really, I pretend and wait until he falls asleep before I do. He pays attention to my every detail as much as I do his.
Jamie is one intuitive son of a bitch. He pointed this out to me…
I can tell you exactly what Ray does when he gets home from work. He will pull up in his J7 and park on the far side of the house. He gathers he stuff from this jeep and then gets out. You can tell, cause he slams the door to shut it. It won’t shut unless you slam it fairly hard. He then stands outside his jeep, in dirty boots and blue jeans from working at the Banning Stables near the old mill. He lights his cigarette. He then walks to the porch calls his mama in Villa Rica and sits on the stoop to finish his smoke. He takes his boots off and his socks and then comes in. He will come over to me and he says the same thing every time, “Hey handsome,” and he kisses the top of my head and runs his hands of tough skin threw my hair. I love the way his smells, like a spool of rope and dirt. Like sweaty leather and fresh laundry line dried clothes. He then takes off his work shirt, (or his Carhardt Pull over if it’s cold) and takes off his blue jeans and underwear and then heads to the bathroom for a shower. Afterward he comes back kisses my head again pulls on a pair of boxers and lays on the bed. I then go and lay next to him and we watch the news and just lay in each other’s arms. It sweet and kind, almost like a married couple. I even hate saying that aloud. But that’s what it seems like.
…“Goddamn, you are in love with him, aren’t you?” Jamie said.
I looked at the floor and then back at Jamie and responded, “Yeaaaahhhh.”
“Well, I tell you one thing, sista, I believe that our friend Ray is in love with you too!” He says in his best queen speak.
“But don’t you think that we are the most mismatched couple you have ever seen?” I asked with a confused look on my face.
“Yeah, honey, but love don’t know no better.” He illustrated with hand moments that defy description.
I believe he’s right. But a part of me, I know is in love with him, still the other part has not accepted it. I wonder if there is a small part of Ray that feels the same. Or maybe I have an active imagination or it’s because I have been hurt by those I have loved and those who have loved me.
He will pull up in his CJ7 and park on the far side of the house. I will be listening to R.E.M.’s Out of Time album…
COUNT, BLEED, BELIEVE
He backhanded me. I totally fell over the coffee table and hit the floor. I just laid there on my back. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t moan or cry. I just laid there, blood coming from my nose. I took my arm dressed in a blue ratty Oxford and wiped my nose. I looked at the crimson on my cuff and then I sucked in what was left in my nostril. The forming blood clot hit my sinuses with a metallic liquid slap which caused me to smell the blood very vividly. Still lying on my back looking at the popcorn ceiling, I drew a cigarette from my shirt pocket. I drew a lighter flame to it and began to smoke. I began to count the puff marks on the ceiling. I could hear him let down the tailgate of my truck. I could see him in my minds eye. His ankles crossed, the toes of his boots dug into the dirt. I can see him sitting on his hands and then looking at them as if it were their fault that they hit me. I could imagine him apologizing to himself about hitting me. I could see him smoking a cigarette. I hear the tailgate slam shut and a shout from Ray, “GODDAMN IT!” I just laid there ashing on myself not really giving a fuck.
The blood started to congeal in my nose. It was good that I was lying down though. You know that’s the best thing for a nose bleed either caused by you or someone else’s fault or just a regular old childhood nose bleed. I took a drag off my cigarette… 50, 51, 52, 53, 54…
…Maybe I need to get slapped around a little bit. He has only hit me two times before but not like this. Maybe I am being mentally battered. I am not a battered man. Maybe I am and that’s what I am supposed to say. It was my fault but then again maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the realization of something he wasn’t ready for, me neither now that I am in this spot. Actually, it is my fault. Why did she have to say such a fucked thing like that…75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80…
I had gone into town. I needed to get some groceries. I ran into Marcy Doolittle Thornton. If I remember correctly, they dated or something. When I told Ray this his face became red. “Did you talk to her?” he asked swiftly.
Jamie’s door opens and we could hear, Clint Eastwood, by the Gorillaz.
“Well, yeah, For some reason she said, ‘have you seen Ray?’ and I told her you were living here.” Ray just looked at me with a scowl on his face.
“What did she say?” he said his face growing redder and redder.
“She said, ‘oh really? That’s right, I heard from Justin, that heard it from his mama who heard it from God knows who that you guys were faggots together or something.’ Then she laughed that messed up laugh she got from that accident with that bull.” I said trying to defuse this situation.
“Goddamn it, you know she and I dated for a while before she married Doug Thornton.” You could feel the steam coming from him.
“Well, what else did you say?” he asks sternly like a preacher to a sinner.
I stood there just looking at him. I really didn’t know what to say to him so, I just barred down and tried to let him know everything that happened, “Well, I didn’t know what to say. She kept going on and on about how faggots were gross and that we were going to hell. I didn’t know why she was so compiled to tell me all this. She just did and I guess I let something…” I paused and cleared my throat, “I guess I let something slip.”
“Like what?” He said with his eyes about to come loose from his head and his hands started to become clinched, almost in a death grip on anger.
I bit the bullet, because I knew it was going to send him over the edge. “Like,” I took a step back and was caught by the coffee table.
“Like what?” he said stepping toward me.
I tried to take another step back from him but I just couldn’t go no where. And then I said it, “I looked at her with a smile and said, ‘He fucks like a champion.’”
“WHAT?” he screamed at me. He then turned around on his heal. I walked after him.
“Wait now, Ray, I didn’t mean for that to…” I said.
DON’T you KNOW what this MEANS?” he asked me.
“No.” I said looking at the floor though deep down I did.
“Don’t you know that she’s going tell everybody not just everybody but her mother and everybody will know?!” He said as if the apocalypse was coming down the chimney.
“I didn’t mean to say it,” I said, “I’m sorry, my mouth went faster than my thoughtlessness.”
He started walking toward me. I had never seen him so mad at me before. He walked me into the coffee table to the point I was sitting on it. The next thing I know the back of his hand was against my face and I was lying on the floor with a nose bleed.
305, 306, 307, 308,…
He comes back in from being outside and he sits on the floor with his right ankle behind his left foot with his left knee up. He looks down at me. He took my hand and just sat there. He took his free hand and tried to wipe my face. I just laid there emotionless while he was feeling my face and feeling the heat still radiating from my face.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a slow country voice.
I didn’t say anything. I just continued to lay there and count. I took another cigarette from my pocket and lit it.
“I just didn’t want people to find out about us.” A pause, “And I lost it.” Another pause, “I’m sorry.”
He stood up and took off to the bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. I didn’t know if I should have had followed him. I didn’t I laid on the floor awhile to gather my thoughts. The shower came on. I had my thoughts together…
339, 340, 341, 342,..
…I still just laid there for awhile longer until I heard him go back into the bedroom…
…415, 416, 417, 418,… somewhere in my lost mind, I could hear R.E.M. Fall on Me as I faded into a world beyond the dots. Do they know their purpose I wondered? Do they know they cover the uneven and unwanted ugliness of the truth underneath? They cover, that’s all they do. Cover… 439, 440, 441, 442…
…I opened the door while he was stepping in to his boxers. He looked up at me in mid pull and I said, “I’m the one who is sorry.” I paused, “and I forgive you.”
We just stared as each other as he dropped his boxers and his face went back to a natural color. He stepped out of them and came to me, hugged me and held me tight.
Jamie’s door opens again and the crazy silence in my mind is broken by Mirrorball, by Everything but the Girl.
I wanted to lay on the floor still and stare at the ceiling. There are 12 million and one puff marks up there. I swear it; I just counted every one of them.