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[Jumping on the bandwagon. All words contained herein are in Swedish. You can read this, your character(s) can't, same old, same old - you know the drill by now. Comment in OOC if you'd like.]
My God, maybe I'm growing a conscience.
Now that would be a new development, wouldn't it? When I slept with Wayne Primeau, I actually felt a twinge of guilt. No, not a twinge - a LOT of guilt. Even before I came, my heart was somewhere down around my moving hips. I thought of Peter Forsberg's face and...just, fuck. I knew I was in shit.
And this is certainly be a new development. Cheating on my boy/girlfriend was just something that was a given. Even if I tried not to - I didn't always try - I eventually ended up doing it. So what was the point? Because when you cheat once, that can't be undone. So you might as well do it again. And again, and again, and again...
But Peter was all I want - all I've EVER wanted. A saga, a story, that spans 15 years...and I could ruin it all so easily. So damn easily.
I'm not sure I've ever truly given my heart away; but, to make up for that, I give my body away freely. It's been like that since I was 12. At 13, when I graduated to those infamous Leksand locker-room orgies, my older brother Anders pulled me aside.
"You've got to stop this, Johan," he insisted. "I know you love the hockey team, but they've got a reputation, and you're starting to get one too. You're so young, this isn't right - "
"Anders, if you don't shut the fuck up, you'll regret it."
He shut up. He didn't want to regret it. He knew he would.
I was a bad kid - I can admit it. Leksand, my home, was a poison town. Small enough that everyone knew you if you were important enough - and I WAS important enough. Star of the hockey and soccer teams. But it was big enough that you could keep secrets. And to boot, it was a tourist town. Nothing like an endless cycle of hotel rooms and tourists' beds to jade you to sex. They got in, they stayed for a drink and a fuck, and they left with good memories of Sweden and the cocky, smiling teenage boy. That's how it was.
At 12, I gave my first blowjob.
At 13, I lost my virginity. To the captain of the Leksand Junior Stars, in his bed. His parents were out for the night. He was 18 - I vaguely remember pain, a little bit of blood. I think I remember not entirely wanting it, but time clouds that memory. It didn't matter if I didn't, anyway. I was a rookie, and he was the captain, and that's just How Things Are. Being a goalie, I was never the captain, but I got to take advantage of that too, in my senior years. How Things Are.
By 15, I was the starting goalie and one cocky motherfucker. I enjoyed breaking rules. School was something that I went to when I felt like it - the teachers were going to pass me, anyway. I drank. I smoked - not just cigarettes. And above all, I had sex. Played games. Sex games.
Sex became boring after awhile, and sex games became my passion. The actual act of intercourse was practically an afterthought. It was the thrill of the chase - the questions that demanded answers, such as can I get my principal to blow me? or, can I break the most commited couple in school apart? The answer was yes. On both accounts.
At 16, everything changed. I met Peter Forsberg.
Peter was a quiet kid. A nerd, even. Nothing like the animal he is today. He wore glasses, and he had these horrible buck teeth sorts of things. He was shy, and quiet. But everyone knew that he was a future star, even me.
But he was on Ornskoldsvik - and in Leksand, that was a bad thing. Not that we liked anybody, really, but we absolutely resented Ornskoldsvik for their seemingly scandalous ability to put out good players. Just in my class was Forsberg and Naslund, and just a few years removed was Sundstrom, Timander - and the twins. Just what the fuck were they feeding them over there?
Markus was the captain, and you could tell. Even at 16 he exuded this - classiness, I guess is the word. An aura. Something even I couldn't touch. For every one of my shouted taunts, "Hey Naslund, suck my cock" - he wouldn't even look at me, just hold his head higher and smile more. I shrank in his presence. He was not an ideal target. Sometimes I wonder if Markus remembers that, the ghost of our pasts, my jeers and my reputation. He's never said anything, never been anything but a good friend to me on the Canucks, but that isn't surprising. Classiness.
Peter was perfect. A loner. A dork. His eyes widened when my team called out sexual taunts and cruel remarks, and he hurried past, his head down. The first time we played Ornskoldsvik, I was shocked to see the youth who had been so brazen on the ice reduced to near-tears when confronted with my captain. So good, yet so scared.
And so damnably pure, too. He was never at any of the league-wide parties that were held every tournament season. Never participated in any of the locker room sex outings, or at least I didn't see him - and if I didn't see him, he wasn't there. Simple as that. People began taking bets on who could get him in the sack first. Others said it was hopeless.
But it wasn't hopeless. These kinds of bets had surfaced before, and I had won damn near all of them. I was determined to win this one. I remember...
"Here he comes!"
I grin as my teammates' excited whisper echoes throughout the hallway. Most of the Ornskoldsvik players have already left, and we're waiting for stragglers. It just so happens that Peter Forsberg is among them, and I've got first dibs.
I make the move the second I see his glasses, slamming him up against the wall. He looks surprised, and aghast to see me right in his face, already gloating. "Hi, pretty boy," I sneer at him, "Where you going?"
He practically shrinks against the wall, blinking repeatedly. "I - home...please, excuse me..."
Ever the fucking gentleman. I shake my head as my teammates snicker behind me. "Uh uh uh, I don't think so. All the way from fucking Ornskoldsvik and he wants to leave already - what fucking hospitality, huh boys?" My teammates laugh, and I'm filled with a surge of confidence. "First time here in Leksand for you, ain't it?"
He doesn't answer my question, just grunts and shoves my hand from his chest. He's stronger than he looks. "I apologize that you're bitter over your weak goaltending skills, but take it out on someone else, right."
He did NOT just say that. I feel my jaw tightening as I crack him back against the wall, my teammates 'ooh'ing behind me. "Pretty boy thinks he's FUNNY. Fuck you, man, I'm trying to be nice here. I was gonna take you for a little ride. My teammates, however, have plans for you that involve duct tape." And they do - 'duct tape the bitch and throw him in Lake Siljan' was a very popular choice. "Take your pick."
His head hits the wall as I shove him again, and he winces. His voice quavers. "I want nothing to do with anyone on the second rate team, excuse me, I have to catch the bus." And in a second he's out of my grip, jogging out the doors.
My team starts to pursue, but I shake my head. "Relax...he's going back to the hotel, they aren't making the trip all the way to Ornskoldsvik tonight..."
We went back to that hotel, and somehow, someway, I got Peter into my car. I threatened his roommate - Naslund...I think that was how. Anyway, I drove him up to Lover's Lane and fucked his brains out. He didn't enjoy it, I could tell. And when I continued to press him, he backhanded me in a smack that would hurt for three days. I ended up shoving him out of my car and driving away without him - and there he was on Mount Siljan, before the days of cell phones, alone and half-naked. Sometimes I wonder how he got back to civilization. But back then, I didn't care. I remember growling obscenities at his receding image in the rear-view mirror.
We played Ornskoldsvik the next week, an away game for us. I didn't think of him once, until the day of the game, when I decided to try for it one more time.
Through my powers of persuasion, we ended up going back to his house and us falling asleep together after a blowjob - me doing the sucking, of course. It wasn't until I woke up and I didn't want to leave that I realized just how fucked I was. How my newfound information - that he was closeted, that I was his first - kept ripping at my mind. I had been gentle with him in an effort to make that first night up to him, and I had actually stayed the night. It was a first for me.
We didn't see each other for two months. And for two months I fell asleep thinking of him and waking up with half-remembered dreams of him. For your average veteran whore, this was a very dangerous thing.
And then something worse happened.
It was tournament season, and parties were abound. I had made the mistake of bad-mouthing Tommy Salo to the wrong people - his teammates - and had found myself on the bad end of an ass-kicking. And who should come around the corner to be my knight-in-shining-armor but Peter goddamned Forsberg. I was covered in blood, and dirt, and come - they had jerked off on me prior to beating my ass - but he still took me to his room, gave me a shower and fresh clothes, and put me to bed. I cuddled with him that night. Another first.
The next two years were a whirlwind, fucked-up kind of romance between us. He and his parents spent every summer on Lake Siljan, where we regularly hooked up, had sex, clowned around. I taught him to loosen up. Took off his glasses, changed his clothes, introduced him to the party scene. He taught me how to enjoy the things in life that didn't involve someone else naked. There were summer days where we'd do nothing but ride bikes in the woods and summer nights that would be spent stargazing and talking. During the season we'd meet up when we could.
When we were 18 he could drafted and the bitter pill of reality got shoved down my throat. Everything I knew wasn't right anymore. High school was graduating, and my years of doing nothing quickly caught up to me. I was supposed to be on my way to America after being drafted - but it didn't happen. At the very least I was supposed to be signing a hefty paycheck with a Swedish Elite League contender. But that didn't happen, either. In the age-old wisdom of How Things Are, I was a nobody at age 18 and my lover was a superstar on the way to America. Trust me when I say he didn't call.
At 20, Mom got sick.
She was my favorite person in the world, and she had cancer. I was devastated as I watched her die slowly. I stayed in more to be with her, and eventually I answered "no" enough times to invitations that they stopped coming. I lost my old, poisonous friends group. I started doing things I would never have considered...'pussy' activities like sitting around and reading a book, painting, poetry, those things. And I promised myself - and her - that I was going to do something with my life instead of sitting around. I promised her I would follow my dreams of the NHL.
I did. I went to college, played some hockey. The Leksand Stars finally called - they needed someone, and fast. Both their goalies were out with injury. I jumped in, and within a year I had a job. The Flyers drafted me. Things were finally going right.
At 24, Mom died, but I was determined that my promise to her would not. The Flyers hadn't called me yet, so I figured it was as good of a time as any to go to America and try to make my own breaks.
In the minor-leagues of America, my old tendencies came back - the sex, the games. But I was damn determined to never again become that bullying jerk who had lived in the 1980s in Sweden. I got friends. REAL friends. I had children. I got married, mellowed out, learned how to live. Started meditating. Still, speaking English was a struggle, considering I never paid attention in my high school English course. I bounced around - Baton Rouge to Detroit to Manitoba to Kentucky. Peter and I briefly reconnected in the 1998 Olympics but then he was lost in the big-time glitz with Nick Lidstrom and others like him. And I was left alone again.
When I finally made it to Pittsburgh, I was a much better person than I had been all those years ago, but I was still spending my nights in the same way. 15 years, one wife, two kids and countless nights later, it is back to the old routine - me and Peter. This time, though, I do not have to change his clothes or take off those glasses or teach him how not to be a dork, but he still has a lot to teach me about the virtues of spending a night without another naked person.
And now here I am, at age 31. A good person, but a whore. He learned his lesson, I did not.
Sometimes I wonder if I ever will. I wonder why I can't commit to anybody, not even the man I've wanted for 15 years. I wonder if I'll end up dying alone, or if I'll end up getting something like AIDS and wasting away. It's self-destructive, but I can't stop. One day it will catch up to me...I just hope that day isn't soon.
God, it's like a fucking Hollywood movie! Romeo and Romeo, or something. Due to extenuating circumstances and the main characters' stupidity, things just don't happen. Star-crossed lovers. No Hollywood ending there; they both die. Somehow I don't feel a Hollywood ending for this one, either.
Maybe there's still time to rewrite the script.