I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW, PART 2 / 12
I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW
PART TWO
When Brian tells me what his father said to him, I feel incredibly guilty for encouraging him to come out. What the hell did I think would happen? I suppose, it was just lucky that Jack was so sick, otherwise Brian might have felt his fists. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined Jack’s reaction being so vicious. Who would say something like that to their own child?
But it isn’t about Jack. It’s about Brian. I don’t want him to feel the way I do all his life. My father ruled our family not with an iron fist but an iron will. It was always his way or no way. He never hit any of us, but he would shout and snarl at us if we stepped out of line and then ignore us until we gave in. When I was a child, I always wanted to make him proud of me. He didn’t have to tell me that I was a disappointment to him, I just knew. I was scared all the time to lose what little approval I got and the last vestiges of his love, too. So I never came out to him and I have regretted it ever since the day he died.
Brian is much braver than I ever was. He’s out and proud with no regard for how difficult that makes his life sometimes. He stands up to the bullies and mocks the people who disapprove on the quiet. He doesn’t believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. But what good is that going to do him in the long run, if he doesn’t stand up to the one person he fears the most, no matter how much he pretends that he doesn’t? At least, this way he will eventually be proud of himself for speaking up.
He says that he was so angry that he reminded his father that he was the one dying and how at that moment he was actually glad about that. He also tells me that he might have hit his father if he hadn’t been so sick. Brian can be vicious and angry when he gets hurt, but he’s not a violent person. I can only imagine how upset he must have been to feel that way. And how guilty he feels about that now. Personally, I think Jack would have deserved it. I hate the man, which is pointless since he’s dead now.
Jack dies five days after Brian’s visit. As far as I know, Brian never goes back to see him again, but I can’t be sure. I hardly see him in those days. His phone’s switched off most of the time and he doesn’t answer any of my messages. What he does do is come to the loft late at night a couple of times to fuck me into the early hours of the morning, but he blocks all my attempts at conversation.
The third time he comes over, he gets dressed in his Hugo Boss suit in the morning and when I ask him what the occasion is, he tells me that it’s his father’s funeral. This is the first time I hear that his father has died. Normally Brian shares at least the bare facts of what’s going on in his life with me. I can only assume that he blames me for his father’s reaction to his coming out. I should have learned by now that what is right for me may not be right for Brian. I can only hope that eventually he'll be glad that he did it.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I know it will probably bring more trouble than comfort if he takes me along, but I want to be there for him. No matter how much he pretends not to care, it must be a difficult time for him.
“No.” He doesn’t even attempt to soften the blow. In fact he doesn’t seem to be aware that it is a blow to me.
“Are you going on your own?”
“No.” That’s good. I don’t want him to be alone. If he doesn’t want to take me, he should take Michael. That won’t be too obvious, since Michael has been his best friend for years and actually knew Jack and knows Brian’s mother as well. Still, I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that he prefers Michael's company to mine.
“Do you want the Jeep?”
“’S all right. We’re taking Lindsay’s Beemer.”
That stops me in my tracks. I’m sitting on the bed, watching him fiddle with his tie in the mirror, looking stunning as he always does. He’s completely focused on his appearance, probably not even aware that I’m in the room, never mind how I feel about what he’s doing.
“You’re taking Lindsay?”
“She offered. And she looks good in black.” He sounds like he’s talking about some party he’s going to.
“Brian, it’s your dad’s funeral.”
“So? Who cares? He was old. It was his time.”
Jack couldn’t have been much older than fifty, if he was that. Maybe that really feels old to someone Brian’s age, but at thirty-three, it doesn’t seem so very old to me. I can’t quite imagine being that old yet, nor do I want to, but I have at least accepted that it’s going to happen one day.
“Why are you taking Lindsay?”
“Maybe because she doesn’t ask me so many fucking questions all the time.” He’s angry now, which is a sure sign that he’s not entirely happy with the arrangement either.
I watch him silently, as he picks up his wallet and his cellphone and stalks towards the door. I don’t want to make an already trying day worse for him by voicing my misgivings, so I catch up with him as he’s just opening the door. I fight down my disappointment and kiss him. When Brian turns cold and unresponsive, there are only two options, confrontation or seduction. In general, throwing the cold frog against the wall has proven less effective than kissing him. Quite often that transforms him into a prince.
He turns to me, slides one hand into my hair and the other into the back of my pants and kisses me back like we haven’t seen each other in days. It feels a little desperate. If we hadn’t fucked all night and in the shower this morning, this would be a sure way to make both of us late. When he finally breaks off the kiss, he hesitates to let me go.
“I’ll be here after work,” I say quietly.
Brian moves away abruptly, as if he just remembered where he is and what he’s supposed to be doing. “Suit yourself. I intend to be out fucking all night.” And with that he turns and walks down the stairs without a backwards glance.
It’s a day of reflection for me. I remember my own father’s funeral, the regrets I had and the feeling of being free and angry at the same time. It was also the day I met Brian and that led to changes in my life that I'm very grateful for. I’m a much happier person in many ways now than I was that day.
But mainly my thoughts are about Brian and how he might be feeling. It’s always difficult to tell with him. He’s so full of anger still, even though he has mellowed over time. I wish he'd open up a bit more, although I can see changes in him already. It’s just that he seems to be moving at an incredibly slow pace where his emotions are concerned and I’m not always sure anymore that I will have the patience to stick this out all the way to the end.
I’m dreading what this will do to him. His words this morning already gave me an indication that I can expect some acting out. It hurts that he looks for comfort in places that aren’t me. The tricks don’t mean anything, I know that, but if they don’t, why does he need them still? And unlike Melanie, I know that I have nothing to fear from Lindsay. I’m not worried about other people per se. I’m hurt that I’m not enough. I would like to be enough for him.
It’s not even about monogamy. I trick occasionally although not very often. But I want to be the person he comes to when he needs someone. At the moment he’s spending most of his time with Lindsay, but I assume that it’s more circumstantial, because they both live in the dorms and Lindsay’s very insistent. Then there’s Michael still, who’s struggling a little to keep Brian in his life while building a new one with Ben. I really admire Ben for being so calm about the situation. But when you have a Damocles sword hanging over you, maybe your boyfriend’s crush on another guy, which will never come to fruition anyway, pales into insignificance.
I’m very aware that after four years I’m still waiting for Brian, that I’m making allowances for his youth and his upbringing and that I’m just hoping that he will one day turn into what I need. Sometimes, I wonder if he hasn’t changed much because I haven’t demanded any changes. But if I do, he might just tell me to fuck off or, worse, he might actually change and I’ll be worried ever after that he just did it for me and will eventually break out of the boundaries I’m setting for him. I don’t want that. I don’t want to force him into anything he doesn’t really want, even if I could, and I don’t want to have to worry about him hating it - and me - if he complies. I want him to want what I want. So I’m waiting.
Today it’s more than figurative, because after I come home from my day at the gallery, there’s no sign of Brian. I told him I would be here, so I wait for him even though I know he’s not coming. This is how it works. Brian is free to do whatever he feels like doing and I’m confined to being the perfect boyfriend, because Brian might get hurt if I’m not and I couldn’t bear that.
I hear him come in when it’s already getting light. He staggers through the loft, kicking something on the way to the bathroom and swearing under his breath. Then he gets into the shower. Most likely, he fucked his way through half of Liberty Avenue, but he came home in the end.
He comes out of the bathroom butt naked and he’s still a little damp when he plasters himself against my body. His hand goes straight to my cock, which is half-hard just from seeing him without any clothes on. A naked Brian will always arouse me. In fact, he doesn’t even have to be naked to do that to me.
“I want you,” he mumbles, while his lips do goosebumps-inducing things to my neck. His pillow talk may not have improved much in the time we’ve been together, but he certainly knows how to push all my buttons. I’m already turning towards him, compliant and willing, eager even.
“Haven’t you had enough?”
“I only had one fuck,” he says and I know that shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. It also gets me thinking. If he was as wasted and high as I expected him to be last night, where did he spend the night? He’s still not quite sober but enough to have slept most it off somewhere. Did he go home and then change his mind in the early hours of the morning and decide to come here? Or did he spend the night with someone else?
“How was it?” I ask, running my hand through his wet hair and pressing our lower bodies together.
“It was just a fuck.”
“Not that. The funeral.”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.” He finds the perfect way to shut me up by kissing me, then distracts me in other ways - relentlessly - until I fall asleep again for a little while.
I half expect him to be gone when I wake up, but he shows no signs of wanting to leave. It’s not so unusual since it’s the weekend and he spends most of those at the loft. We have long moved past the stage where I feel the need to entertain him when he’s here. We mostly go to Babylon on Saturday nights, but the rest of the time we just hang out or go our separate ways if either one of us has plans.
When I come back after going to the library for a couple of hours, Brian is sitting at the dining table over his books. He must have gone back to his dorm to pick them up and his suit is hanging up by the window to air out. He keeps it at the loft because he’s worried about spoiling it at the dorms.
I pick up his leather jacket, which has slipped off the back of the couch to put it on the hook and find a Polaroid photograph underneath it that must have fallen out of one of the pockets.
“What’s this?” It shows a man - obviously Jack Kinney at a much younger age - with a baby in his arms. He looks proud and happy and it’s difficult to reconcile this image with the man who beat up on the same child later on in life.
Brian comes rushing over and snatches the picture out of my hand. I’ve invaded his privacy again. Anything to do with his family is strictly none of my business. It’s an impasse we never seem to get past. Debbie has told me more about his parents than he has.
“Claire gave it to me,” he says curtly and walks back to the table to make the photograph disappear somewhere amongst his books.
“Your dad must have loved you, Brian. Maybe he just didn’t know how to show it.” It’s inconceivable to me how any parent could not love their child. On the other hand, it’s irrelevant whether Jack actually loved him at some stage or not after what he did to him over the years. I say it more in an attempt to make him feel better, but I should have known that it wouldn’t work on Brian.
“Yeah, he knew how to show it alright, especially when he had a few,” he says sarcastically and starts making more notes, ignoring me completely. This conversation is over. Sometimes I could weep for the unhappy little boy Brian must have been all through his childhood, but I know Brian wouldn’t thank me for even thinking that.
“Do you want to go to the diner for lunch?” I ask.
“Sure, give me half an hour. I just want to finish this chapter.”
And that is the end of that.
Brian spends the weekend at the loft. And then he spends the next week there. And the following weekend. I’m pleasantly surprised every night when I get home from work or PIFA to find him still there but, of course, I don’t say anything. Mentioning it is the surest way to make him bolt. He will take it either as a complaint or it will remind him how domestic this set-up is. Either way, he’ll be gone in five minutes flat.
I meet Daphne for Sunday lunch and listen to her exploits of the night before. She went to a symposium and hooked up with the speaker afterwards. He must have been some fuck because she’s all starry-eyed and that takes some doing with Daphne. I’m surprised she could even bring herself to leave his bed to meet me.
Eventually, I tell her about Brian having practically moved into the loft and she shakes her head.
“You’re never happy, are you? You whine when he’s not there and now you’re whining that he is. Why don’t you just enjoy it?”
“Because something’s not right, Daph.” If I could shift this strange feeling, I would actually be ecstatic about him being there for so long. But it bothers me to think that something’s off and I can’t pinpoint it.
“He just lost his dad. Maybe he needs a replacement. You are much older than him.” She grins at me impishly. She loves to wind me up with our age difference. I find it creepy. It makes me feel like a child molester, even though Brian was never a child even when I met him at seventeen. One thing I’m certain of is that I’m not his daddy. If anything, I’m worried that he’ll discard me one day for being too old.
“Don’t,” I say warningly, in no mood to joke about this.
“Okay,” she says and I can see her change into her serious discussion mode. “What is it that’s bothering you?”
“Not sure. I want to know what’s going on. He doesn’t usually stay that long at the loft, at least not recently, and he seems to have withdrawn from everyone. He keeps ignoring his phone calls and that’s not like him either.” Like most people his age, Brian is glued to his phone on any given day. They will probably have to surgically remove him from it when he dies.
“So… he’s hiding out?”
“No, why would…” Damn! I’m so dense sometimes. Why didn’t I see it? It’s so obvious, now that she said it. He’s trying to avoid people. But whom? Maybe he had an argument with Michael? But if Michael wanted to contact him, he would. He would just turn up at the loft. So hiding there would be no more effective than staying in his room at Pitt.
“His family?” Daphne suggests.
“Not likely. Claire knows about the loft. She dropped him off once. She would tell his mother.” Not that his mother has ever made any effort to get in touch with him since he left home. In fact, I believe that the funeral was probably the first time he’s seen her in three years.
“Some people at college? Maybe he’s being bullied.”
“Brian doesn’t get bullied. Or if he does, he doesn’t run away from it. He’d rather take a beating than back down.” He does live in the same dorm as all the other scholarship students and most of them are jocks on some sort of sports scholarship, but he must have fucked a fair few of them by now and if there was going to be any trouble, it would have happened long before now.
We’re quiet for a few moments until Daphne’s face brightens. “The sponge. It’s gotta be.”
“Lindsay?” Daphne doesn’t like Lindsay very much. She’s met her a few times at the diner and at Debbie’s and she thinks she’s the worst attention seeker and spoilt brat she’s ever come across. It’s a personality clash of epic proportions, not softened in the slightest by Daphne’s usual professional detachment. Compared to her, I can be considered a rabid fan of Lindsay’s. She thinks Lindsay soaks up every bit of attention and emotion that anybody has to give without giving anything in return. Hence the nickname.
“It all fits, doesn’t it?” she says reasonably. “She lives at the dorms, so if he wants to get away from her, he can’t stay there. She would call him constantly if he stays away and he would ignore it. And she’d never follow him to the loft because she’s such a WASP that she’d consider that bad manners, with you being the boyfriend and all.”
It all makes perfect sense, except that Brian doesn’t usually have a problem telling people to fuck off if he doesn’t want them around.
“Lindsay wants Brian to father her child.”
Daphne barely manages to stop herself from spraying her mouthful of coffee all over the table. It seems that Lindsay is the only person who thinks that Brian is fatherhood material. I wonder if Brian even knows about that. Or maybe that’s the reason he’s now hiding out in my loft? Daphne listens with rapt attention as I relate the conversation I had with Melanie in Woody’s.
We spend another hour or so on the topic. Daphne points out that it’s quite possible that this is my best chance to ever have a child of my own. I’m well aware that I’m unlikely to ever be allowed to adopt a child, nor is it likely that I'll have another opportunity like this dropped in my lap. But whenever I thought about having a child, I always wanted to see my child grow up, in my house, not be a glorified sperm donor. Like I said, I would consider it with Melanie because I trust her and we could come to an arrangement, but I don’t trust Lindsay. If she broke up with Melanie, there would be no telling where I'd end up with regards to the child.
When I get home, Brian is watching TV. I know that Michael's been here because there are food wrappers on the coffee table. Only Michael eats those horrible Doritos that stink the place out.
Brian leans his head back as I walk past and I kiss him upside down. His hand comes up and grabs the collar of my jacket, pulling until I slither over the back of the couch and land half on it and half on Brian. He continues to kiss me and starts pulling my clothes off.
“Missed me?” I smirk, as I pull his top over his head and open his pants.
“Missed your ass,” he murmurs, too distracted by fishing for lube and a condom under the couch to pay much attention.
Sometimes, when Brian is horny and distracted, I can slip in things he wouldn’t normally tolerate, like saying something affectionate or asking him questions he wouldn’t consider answering if his mind wasn’t so focused on sex. Unfortunately, by that stage, I’m usually too distracted myself to take advantage of it, but not today.
“So, why are you trying to avoid Lindsay?”
I know straight away that it won’t work this time by the way he freezes for a few seconds. His whole body tenses and I’m assuming that the only reason he’s not walking away right now is because I’m practically sitting on him. I’m already regretting that I asked. Now we'll have an argument because he’ll accuse me of prying and his stint at the loft will be over. Brian only ever ignores things as long as they don’t get pulled out into the light of day and he can pretend that he forgot about them.
But I’m very much mistaken and he’s playing me at my own game. As he’s pulling back up with the supplies, he pretends to still be distracted, even though he must know that I noticed his hesitation. He starts to open the condom wrapper and says as nonchalantly as only he can: “I fucked her.”
And how bizarre is it that my first thought is, ‘God, I hope Lindsay never tells Melanie’?
*******
All I can say about the funeral is that I feel too warm in my leather jacket and that the cemetery looks kind of picturesque, bathed in glorious sunshine. Trust Jack to have a beautiful funeral. Always coming up smelling of roses.
Claire sniffles her way through the afternoon and I can’t help wondering if she’s actually upset or if she’s doing it because she thinks it’s expected of her. It’s possible that she’s mourning the old bastard. She still pines after Tom, instead of thanking her lucky stars that the fucker left her.
Mom doesn’t look too pleased with Claire’s antics either. She’s been stony-faced all the way through, but that’s no different from the way she usually looks. She must be pleased to be rid of Jack. There might be less money coming in now, but at least it’s all hers and she doesn’t have to worry about it being drunk away before the week is out. Well, she doesn’t have to worry about someone else drinking it away before the week is out.
She greets me with a curt, “Hello, Brian,” and ignores me the rest of the afternoon. She likes Lindsay though, I can tell. Well, it keeps both of them off my back. Until I tell that touching story about Pop ordering her to have an abortion when she told him she was pregnant again.
The day goes rapidly downhill from then on. Granddad gives me a stern talking-to about how children should honor their parents and people can’t get out of the house fast enough. I’m just glad that I managed to smoke that joint at the cemetery, otherwise I would never survive this freak show.
There’s no way I’m staying any longer than strictly necessary and after the first people leave, I get up to do the same. Lindsay is huddling on the couch, looking a little traumatized and trying not to draw any attention. I don’t know what she’s worried about, it’s obvious that everybody loves her.
Claire pulls me to one side, as I’m getting my jacket and Lindsay’s coat from the bedroom. “Daddy asked me to give this to you,” she says and hands me a thin envelope. “He asked me to find it and bring it to him at the hospital. I think he was hoping you would turn up.” Her tone makes it very clear what she thinks of my apparent absence and she obviously doesn’t know about the last conversation I had with Jack. Or maybe she does and thinks I had it coming.
I open the envelope and look at the photograph of Jack and myself when I was a baby. Why the fuck did he want me to have this? And what made him think I would show up again after what he said? He’s smiling in the picture and I can’t help but wonder why. He never wanted me in the first place and he made it very clear throughout his life that his feelings never changed on that score.
“Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, eh?” Claire says with a wistful smile at the photograph. What planet is she on? Dying doesn’t absolve people from the way they led their lives.
“Yeah, he was a peach.” I shrug into my jacket and make my way out of the house without saying goodbye to anyone. Lindsay comes hurrying after me and takes her coat off me.
“Your mother invited us to Sunday dinner,” she says. Okay, maybe I’m the one from another planet because that sentence doesn’t compute in my universe. Neither the fact that my mother thinks I might even contemplate coming to dinner at her house, nor the idea that Lindsay would.
“I need a drink.”
She smiles and hooks her hand under my elbow. “I’ve got drinks in my room. And other stuff as well.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Lindsay always has the best stuff. I should know because I buy it for her. Her parents give her so much money it’s sickening. She doesn’t even need to live in the dorms if she doesn’t want to. Last year she suggested we should get an apartment together for our last year. But I had to do an unpaid internship this summer, so I don’t have as much money this year as I usually have when I work during the summer. Plus, under the terms of my scholarship, I can live at the dorms for free. She said she would pay for my rent but I declined. If I thought it was okay for someone to pay for me, I would live with Justin. I would probably be less monitored with him than I would be with Lindsay, too.
Lindsay has money and a car, and her parents don’t even care that she changed her major after the second year and practically had to start all over again. But they would probably object to her buying booze and drugs with the money they give her. Lindsay is also pretty convinced that they'd object to her choice of partner and after meeting them at her sister’s wedding, I’m inclined to agree. But then again, I object to her choice of partner. Really, Melanie Marcus is the best she can do?
I get changed in my room and then make my way over to hers. She’s got changed as well and hands me a bottle of Beam, which is still three quarters full from my last visit. Good start. She opens a bottle of wine for herself, which probably costs more than the Beam. Fucking rich kids. Their idea of slumming it is drinking wine out of a water glass and nothing would entice them to drink anything other than ‘a good year’.
We make some idle conversation. She very quickly realizes that I’m not in the mood to talk about the funeral or my family in general. Why the fuck would I? I thought that part of my life was over and done with, couldn’t touch me anymore, but it always seems to come back to haunt me. I don’t even want to talk to Justin about it, never mind Lindsay, who's totally clueless.
So we chat about the classes we have together and some of the other students, playing the gay, straight or undecided game. But I don’t feel very talkative at all, which never seems to bother her much. She just curls up next to me, with her head against my shoulder, while I’m getting steadily drunk, wondering if I should take a trip to the baths instead. Once the alcohol is finished, she brings out her stash. I didn’t realize how large and varied her supply has become by now. I think she probably only ever uses it when she’s with me. Good. I don’t think I'll be finished anytime soon today.
I wake up when it’s still dark and for a moment I have no idea where I am. It’s neither my room nor the loft. I’m naked and there’s a naked body pressed against mine in a very small bed and this is so not good. My memory is more than a bit hazy, but I remember drinking and some pills and a few joints. And Lindsay. Oh fuck!
I feel incredibly filthy and all I want is a shower. The only person I can bear being ‘down and dirty’ with nowadays is Justin. But the shower will have to wait. Luckily, Lindsay is on the side of the bed that’s pushed against the wall. She’s snoring lightly and I think the bottle of wine probably had the same effect on her as all the stuff I took had on me. She just carries on snoring when I roll away from her and let myself drop over the side of the bed onto the floor.
I’m used to making quick getaways and I’m in my clothes and out the door within a minute or so. Obviously, going to my room is not an option at the moment. I fucked up. No doubt about it. And if I go to my room now, my fuck-up will follow me there. This is not like my other fucks. I can't just tell her to fuck off. Women don’t work that way. I think. Damn, I can’t even think straight. I wonder how intoxicated I still am.
I take a taxi to the loft - fuck the expense, this is an emergency. Justin is asleep, which is only to be expected at this time of the night. And then I can finally immerse myself in his shower. Bits and pieces from the night before come back to me, but none of it is very clear and I’m strangely grateful for that. This is so going to blow up in my face.
What on Earth possessed me to fuck Lindsay? I can’t say that I haven’t been curious what it would be like, but up until now I've never met a woman whom I’ve liked enough to even contemplate it. And I would probably not have done it if I’d been sober. Women, even women as attractive as Lindsay just don’t do it for me. That’s what makes me gay. I like guys. I only like guys. I’m surprised I even managed to get it up, because normally there’s zero arousal when I look at a woman.
Okay, so there were extenuating circumstances. I was drunk and high and I had a stressful day. Will that be enough of an excuse? Why do I need an excuse anyway? Well, almost all the people I know also know Lindsay and if she’s going to be upset about this, I’d better prepare a defense. Not that Melanie will accept that, or Debbie, or Lindsay herself.
But it’s not about them, is it? I don’t give a fuck about them or anybody else. Except Justin. It was just a fuck. He has to know that. My extracurricular activities don’t usually bother him, so maybe this is no different. Oh fuck, who am I kidding? He'll feel sorry for Lindsay if she’s upset. And he’ll be angry because I’ve broken the no names rule. He was very upset when the same thing nearly happened with Michael that time. In fact, he told me then that it would mean losing him. Double fuck! Better not tell him. Maybe Lindsay won’t remember anything or if she does, maybe she’ll keep quiet about it. Well, she can hardly tell Melanie, can she now?
There are only two ways to go about this. One, I go and see Lindsay as soon as possible, tell her it was just a fuck and somehow persuade her to keep this between ourselves. Surely she must know it didn’t mean anything. She knows I’m gay. But I’m not stupid. I know Lindsay likes me a lot more than is good for her. If I go round there, she’ll make a scene. I hate melodrama. Also, if I don’t say exactly the right thing, there’s no way she’ll keep quiet about this. And even if she does, I'll have that hanging over my head from now on.
So I decide on the second option: give her some time to calm down. If I leave it for a couple of weeks, she’ll realize that it was a mistake all by her little self and if I’m really lucky, she’ll be too embarrassed to tell anyone anyway. Everybody wins. I may even be able to salvage our friendship. I like Lindsay. She’s all soft and caring and completely focused on me. It’s different when it comes from a woman. I never really had that before. The closest I’ve come is Debbie looking out for me, when she’s not too busy blaming me for things.
But if Lindsay tells people, Justin will find out. And there’s no telling how he’ll react. We may not have rules that specifically apply to this kind of situation, but I can’t pretend that I didn’t know it was always implied that I don’t go around fucking people we both know. When it was Michael, he made it very clear that this was a line I must never cross. Does that apply to Lindsay as well? He told me he fucked Daphne once, so he knows how little it means. But I’m sure he’ll find a dozen reasons why this is different. He always does. No, it will be better if he never finds out.
For a week I’m in luck. I ignore Lindsay’s calls, voicemails and messages. With a bit of strategic planning, I manage to evade her when I go to class. I skip the two classes we have together, which is something I can afford and she can’t, and I move all the stuff I need to the loft and concentrate on the paper I have due at the end of the month. It all works rather well and even Lindsay’s calls peter out a little, although there are still two or three of them every day.
But it’s not so easy to fool Justin. He knows something isn’t right. I can see him watching me, but I’m hoping that he’ll put it down to Jack’s death. He’s very considerate like that. The fact that Melanie hasn’t turned up at the loft to ream me out tells me that Lindsay hasn’t told her. There’s no way Melanie wouldn’t make her displeasure known if she knew and she wouldn’t miss this opportunity to rat me out to Justin either. So far, so good.
I’m further reassured when Michael comes over the following Sunday and doesn’t say anything. If Lindsay told anyone, he'd know and there’s no way he'd not speak to me about it. I'll give it another week and then I’ll go and talk to Lindsay. Maybe she just wants to forget about it as well. She is a lesbian after all. We can chalk it up to experience and laugh about it in the future.
When Justin comes home from his little outing with Daphne, I’m totally unprepared for his question. “So, why are you avoiding Lindsay?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck! He knows! I really thought I’d got away with it. I have about ten seconds to decide what to do now. The smartest thing would probably be to act contrite, maybe even apologize and promise to never do it again. Yeah, like it’s ever going to happen again anyway. So I wouldn’t even promise anything that would put me out in any way.
But Justin is not my wife and I’m not my father. Jack always brought Mom flowers when he’d done something and it never worked. Because Mom wasn’t fooled and he never changed his ways anyway. And I don’t owe Justin anything. We’re both free agents. There’s no need to apologize or to regret anything. And it’s too late now anyway. If I wanted to allow him the right to be angry or upset about this, I should have confessed to him a week ago. Now it will just look pathetic, like I’m only doing it because I got caught, like Jack always did.
“I fucked her,” I say calmly, because no matter how I feel, I can always pull it off.
There’s a pause and I know straight away that I can kiss this fuck goodbye. I also realize that I made a grave mistake. He didn’t know. And I just told him! Fuck! I should have kept my mouth shut and denied that anything’s wrong. I expect him to jump up and tell me to leave, but he looks kind of stunned, so I blurt out, “It was just a fuck. I don’t even remember it.”
I just want him to stop looking at me like that, but my words seem to make it worse. His expression changes from disbelief to horror or maybe disgust and he scrambles to get up off the couch and me. I put both hands on his hips, pushing down to stop him. He stills, but he’s not looking at me. He does that thing where he rubs his forehead with his fingers, which he does when he’s trying to work out what to say and all of a sudden I don’t want to hear it.
I’m angry with myself for falling for his little trick of pretending that he knew when he didn’t. How gullible can you get? But I’m also getting more and more angry with him for making me feel guilty. He has no right to make me feel this way. I’m free to do what I want. I’m not Jack. I won’t apologize for the way I live my life because I don’t need to. Only thing is, I kind of just did. Because Justin has a knack for making me feel like I’m the biggest fuck-up in the world without ever saying a word.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” I snarl at him. It doesn’t. Whom I fuck is none of his business.
He nods a few times and when I relax my hands on his hips, he gets up slowly and this time I don’t stop him.
“I think I’ll have a shower,” he says, more to himself than me and walks towards the bathroom.
Bastard. Who does he think he is, getting on his high horse and riding out onto the moral high ground? Justin always has the moral high ground. Because he doesn’t do stupid shit like I do. Still, that doesn’t give him the right to throw it in my face all the time.
I hear the shower come on and know that he won’t come out for a long time. It’s his safe place. Well, he hasn’t thrown me out yet, but he may still do that when he’s had some time to think. Justin doesn’t make rash decisions, but once he’s made one, it will be irrevocable. I’d better get in there and make sure he makes the right one.
He doesn’t expect me to join him, I can tell by the way he tenses up when I step into the shower. His head is turned away from me and he doesn’t look around, but when I pull on his arm a bit, he allows me to guide his head under the water and lets me wash his hair.
I know that the only way Justin will ever be able to resist me is by keeping a physical distance. He loves sex as much as I do and he specifically loves sex with me. When I kiss and bite his neck, he leans to one side to make it easier for me. He pushes back against me and twists to encourage my hands to move where he wants them to be. I can’t help but smile. This should go a long way to convince him that what happened was unimportant.
I fuck him slowly, taking my time and making sure that he’s desperate by the end, just before I make him come. He is, but he never turns his head to kiss me and he’s very quiet. There’s barely a grunt when he shoots all over the glass of the shower wall.
Justin never withholds sex when we have disagreements. That’s such a hetero thing to do, neither one of us would even dream of it. We’re men, fucking is what we do. What Justin does do is withhold himself. When he’s not happy, he goes into this place inside of him to think and regroup and it’s as if he isn’t even here. I could fuck him for hours and never get any closer. I should know, I’ve tried.
He leans his head against the glass and, even though he’s still in my arms, he’s not exactly molding himself against me like he usually does. He’s in his own little world where I have no place. I’m not even sure if he realizes that he’s doing it. All I know is that I’m not welcome there.
Finally he straightens up and says, “You can’t go round doing whatever you feel like and ignoring other people’s feelings, Brian.”
Is he talking about Lindsay or himself? Either way, I won’t let it stand. “People are responsible for their own happiness. And their own pain.”
“You have to take some responsibility.”
“I take plenty of responsibility - for my own actions.”
“Your actions affect other people. You have to take that into consideration. Not everyone can shut off their feelings like you can. You’ll end up hurting people.”
It’s like I thought: poor little Lindsay. “It’s not as if I forced her.”
“No. No, I’m quite sure she wanted you. Maybe even initiated it. You’re missing the point.”
“What is the fucking point? She got off. I got off. It’s all good.”
“Jeez, Brian, even you can’t be that dense.” He sounds exasperated.
“Maybe I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’re hiding behind it.”
“I’m not hiding. I’ve nothing to hide. No reason to hide. I don’t owe anybody anything.”
He’s quiet for a while, then moves towards the shower door and opens it. “You have to stop drinking and drugging until you no longer know what you’re doing, Brian. You have to grow up at some point.”
He steps out of the shower and wraps himself in one of the towels. So far he has barely looked at me. But he finally raises his head and he looks so… tired. He gives me a sad little smile and a nod and leaves the bathroom. I stick my head under the spray and vow that I’ll never grow up. Who’d want to?
PART THREE here: http://kachelofen.livejournal.com/22449.html
PART TWO
When Brian tells me what his father said to him, I feel incredibly guilty for encouraging him to come out. What the hell did I think would happen? I suppose, it was just lucky that Jack was so sick, otherwise Brian might have felt his fists. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined Jack’s reaction being so vicious. Who would say something like that to their own child?
But it isn’t about Jack. It’s about Brian. I don’t want him to feel the way I do all his life. My father ruled our family not with an iron fist but an iron will. It was always his way or no way. He never hit any of us, but he would shout and snarl at us if we stepped out of line and then ignore us until we gave in. When I was a child, I always wanted to make him proud of me. He didn’t have to tell me that I was a disappointment to him, I just knew. I was scared all the time to lose what little approval I got and the last vestiges of his love, too. So I never came out to him and I have regretted it ever since the day he died.
Brian is much braver than I ever was. He’s out and proud with no regard for how difficult that makes his life sometimes. He stands up to the bullies and mocks the people who disapprove on the quiet. He doesn’t believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. But what good is that going to do him in the long run, if he doesn’t stand up to the one person he fears the most, no matter how much he pretends that he doesn’t? At least, this way he will eventually be proud of himself for speaking up.
He says that he was so angry that he reminded his father that he was the one dying and how at that moment he was actually glad about that. He also tells me that he might have hit his father if he hadn’t been so sick. Brian can be vicious and angry when he gets hurt, but he’s not a violent person. I can only imagine how upset he must have been to feel that way. And how guilty he feels about that now. Personally, I think Jack would have deserved it. I hate the man, which is pointless since he’s dead now.
Jack dies five days after Brian’s visit. As far as I know, Brian never goes back to see him again, but I can’t be sure. I hardly see him in those days. His phone’s switched off most of the time and he doesn’t answer any of my messages. What he does do is come to the loft late at night a couple of times to fuck me into the early hours of the morning, but he blocks all my attempts at conversation.
The third time he comes over, he gets dressed in his Hugo Boss suit in the morning and when I ask him what the occasion is, he tells me that it’s his father’s funeral. This is the first time I hear that his father has died. Normally Brian shares at least the bare facts of what’s going on in his life with me. I can only assume that he blames me for his father’s reaction to his coming out. I should have learned by now that what is right for me may not be right for Brian. I can only hope that eventually he'll be glad that he did it.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I know it will probably bring more trouble than comfort if he takes me along, but I want to be there for him. No matter how much he pretends not to care, it must be a difficult time for him.
“No.” He doesn’t even attempt to soften the blow. In fact he doesn’t seem to be aware that it is a blow to me.
“Are you going on your own?”
“No.” That’s good. I don’t want him to be alone. If he doesn’t want to take me, he should take Michael. That won’t be too obvious, since Michael has been his best friend for years and actually knew Jack and knows Brian’s mother as well. Still, I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that he prefers Michael's company to mine.
“Do you want the Jeep?”
“’S all right. We’re taking Lindsay’s Beemer.”
That stops me in my tracks. I’m sitting on the bed, watching him fiddle with his tie in the mirror, looking stunning as he always does. He’s completely focused on his appearance, probably not even aware that I’m in the room, never mind how I feel about what he’s doing.
“You’re taking Lindsay?”
“She offered. And she looks good in black.” He sounds like he’s talking about some party he’s going to.
“Brian, it’s your dad’s funeral.”
“So? Who cares? He was old. It was his time.”
Jack couldn’t have been much older than fifty, if he was that. Maybe that really feels old to someone Brian’s age, but at thirty-three, it doesn’t seem so very old to me. I can’t quite imagine being that old yet, nor do I want to, but I have at least accepted that it’s going to happen one day.
“Why are you taking Lindsay?”
“Maybe because she doesn’t ask me so many fucking questions all the time.” He’s angry now, which is a sure sign that he’s not entirely happy with the arrangement either.
I watch him silently, as he picks up his wallet and his cellphone and stalks towards the door. I don’t want to make an already trying day worse for him by voicing my misgivings, so I catch up with him as he’s just opening the door. I fight down my disappointment and kiss him. When Brian turns cold and unresponsive, there are only two options, confrontation or seduction. In general, throwing the cold frog against the wall has proven less effective than kissing him. Quite often that transforms him into a prince.
He turns to me, slides one hand into my hair and the other into the back of my pants and kisses me back like we haven’t seen each other in days. It feels a little desperate. If we hadn’t fucked all night and in the shower this morning, this would be a sure way to make both of us late. When he finally breaks off the kiss, he hesitates to let me go.
“I’ll be here after work,” I say quietly.
Brian moves away abruptly, as if he just remembered where he is and what he’s supposed to be doing. “Suit yourself. I intend to be out fucking all night.” And with that he turns and walks down the stairs without a backwards glance.
It’s a day of reflection for me. I remember my own father’s funeral, the regrets I had and the feeling of being free and angry at the same time. It was also the day I met Brian and that led to changes in my life that I'm very grateful for. I’m a much happier person in many ways now than I was that day.
But mainly my thoughts are about Brian and how he might be feeling. It’s always difficult to tell with him. He’s so full of anger still, even though he has mellowed over time. I wish he'd open up a bit more, although I can see changes in him already. It’s just that he seems to be moving at an incredibly slow pace where his emotions are concerned and I’m not always sure anymore that I will have the patience to stick this out all the way to the end.
I’m dreading what this will do to him. His words this morning already gave me an indication that I can expect some acting out. It hurts that he looks for comfort in places that aren’t me. The tricks don’t mean anything, I know that, but if they don’t, why does he need them still? And unlike Melanie, I know that I have nothing to fear from Lindsay. I’m not worried about other people per se. I’m hurt that I’m not enough. I would like to be enough for him.
It’s not even about monogamy. I trick occasionally although not very often. But I want to be the person he comes to when he needs someone. At the moment he’s spending most of his time with Lindsay, but I assume that it’s more circumstantial, because they both live in the dorms and Lindsay’s very insistent. Then there’s Michael still, who’s struggling a little to keep Brian in his life while building a new one with Ben. I really admire Ben for being so calm about the situation. But when you have a Damocles sword hanging over you, maybe your boyfriend’s crush on another guy, which will never come to fruition anyway, pales into insignificance.
I’m very aware that after four years I’m still waiting for Brian, that I’m making allowances for his youth and his upbringing and that I’m just hoping that he will one day turn into what I need. Sometimes, I wonder if he hasn’t changed much because I haven’t demanded any changes. But if I do, he might just tell me to fuck off or, worse, he might actually change and I’ll be worried ever after that he just did it for me and will eventually break out of the boundaries I’m setting for him. I don’t want that. I don’t want to force him into anything he doesn’t really want, even if I could, and I don’t want to have to worry about him hating it - and me - if he complies. I want him to want what I want. So I’m waiting.
Today it’s more than figurative, because after I come home from my day at the gallery, there’s no sign of Brian. I told him I would be here, so I wait for him even though I know he’s not coming. This is how it works. Brian is free to do whatever he feels like doing and I’m confined to being the perfect boyfriend, because Brian might get hurt if I’m not and I couldn’t bear that.
I hear him come in when it’s already getting light. He staggers through the loft, kicking something on the way to the bathroom and swearing under his breath. Then he gets into the shower. Most likely, he fucked his way through half of Liberty Avenue, but he came home in the end.
He comes out of the bathroom butt naked and he’s still a little damp when he plasters himself against my body. His hand goes straight to my cock, which is half-hard just from seeing him without any clothes on. A naked Brian will always arouse me. In fact, he doesn’t even have to be naked to do that to me.
“I want you,” he mumbles, while his lips do goosebumps-inducing things to my neck. His pillow talk may not have improved much in the time we’ve been together, but he certainly knows how to push all my buttons. I’m already turning towards him, compliant and willing, eager even.
“Haven’t you had enough?”
“I only had one fuck,” he says and I know that shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. It also gets me thinking. If he was as wasted and high as I expected him to be last night, where did he spend the night? He’s still not quite sober but enough to have slept most it off somewhere. Did he go home and then change his mind in the early hours of the morning and decide to come here? Or did he spend the night with someone else?
“How was it?” I ask, running my hand through his wet hair and pressing our lower bodies together.
“It was just a fuck.”
“Not that. The funeral.”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.” He finds the perfect way to shut me up by kissing me, then distracts me in other ways - relentlessly - until I fall asleep again for a little while.
I half expect him to be gone when I wake up, but he shows no signs of wanting to leave. It’s not so unusual since it’s the weekend and he spends most of those at the loft. We have long moved past the stage where I feel the need to entertain him when he’s here. We mostly go to Babylon on Saturday nights, but the rest of the time we just hang out or go our separate ways if either one of us has plans.
When I come back after going to the library for a couple of hours, Brian is sitting at the dining table over his books. He must have gone back to his dorm to pick them up and his suit is hanging up by the window to air out. He keeps it at the loft because he’s worried about spoiling it at the dorms.
I pick up his leather jacket, which has slipped off the back of the couch to put it on the hook and find a Polaroid photograph underneath it that must have fallen out of one of the pockets.
“What’s this?” It shows a man - obviously Jack Kinney at a much younger age - with a baby in his arms. He looks proud and happy and it’s difficult to reconcile this image with the man who beat up on the same child later on in life.
Brian comes rushing over and snatches the picture out of my hand. I’ve invaded his privacy again. Anything to do with his family is strictly none of my business. It’s an impasse we never seem to get past. Debbie has told me more about his parents than he has.
“Claire gave it to me,” he says curtly and walks back to the table to make the photograph disappear somewhere amongst his books.
“Your dad must have loved you, Brian. Maybe he just didn’t know how to show it.” It’s inconceivable to me how any parent could not love their child. On the other hand, it’s irrelevant whether Jack actually loved him at some stage or not after what he did to him over the years. I say it more in an attempt to make him feel better, but I should have known that it wouldn’t work on Brian.
“Yeah, he knew how to show it alright, especially when he had a few,” he says sarcastically and starts making more notes, ignoring me completely. This conversation is over. Sometimes I could weep for the unhappy little boy Brian must have been all through his childhood, but I know Brian wouldn’t thank me for even thinking that.
“Do you want to go to the diner for lunch?” I ask.
“Sure, give me half an hour. I just want to finish this chapter.”
And that is the end of that.
Brian spends the weekend at the loft. And then he spends the next week there. And the following weekend. I’m pleasantly surprised every night when I get home from work or PIFA to find him still there but, of course, I don’t say anything. Mentioning it is the surest way to make him bolt. He will take it either as a complaint or it will remind him how domestic this set-up is. Either way, he’ll be gone in five minutes flat.
I meet Daphne for Sunday lunch and listen to her exploits of the night before. She went to a symposium and hooked up with the speaker afterwards. He must have been some fuck because she’s all starry-eyed and that takes some doing with Daphne. I’m surprised she could even bring herself to leave his bed to meet me.
Eventually, I tell her about Brian having practically moved into the loft and she shakes her head.
“You’re never happy, are you? You whine when he’s not there and now you’re whining that he is. Why don’t you just enjoy it?”
“Because something’s not right, Daph.” If I could shift this strange feeling, I would actually be ecstatic about him being there for so long. But it bothers me to think that something’s off and I can’t pinpoint it.
“He just lost his dad. Maybe he needs a replacement. You are much older than him.” She grins at me impishly. She loves to wind me up with our age difference. I find it creepy. It makes me feel like a child molester, even though Brian was never a child even when I met him at seventeen. One thing I’m certain of is that I’m not his daddy. If anything, I’m worried that he’ll discard me one day for being too old.
“Don’t,” I say warningly, in no mood to joke about this.
“Okay,” she says and I can see her change into her serious discussion mode. “What is it that’s bothering you?”
“Not sure. I want to know what’s going on. He doesn’t usually stay that long at the loft, at least not recently, and he seems to have withdrawn from everyone. He keeps ignoring his phone calls and that’s not like him either.” Like most people his age, Brian is glued to his phone on any given day. They will probably have to surgically remove him from it when he dies.
“So… he’s hiding out?”
“No, why would…” Damn! I’m so dense sometimes. Why didn’t I see it? It’s so obvious, now that she said it. He’s trying to avoid people. But whom? Maybe he had an argument with Michael? But if Michael wanted to contact him, he would. He would just turn up at the loft. So hiding there would be no more effective than staying in his room at Pitt.
“His family?” Daphne suggests.
“Not likely. Claire knows about the loft. She dropped him off once. She would tell his mother.” Not that his mother has ever made any effort to get in touch with him since he left home. In fact, I believe that the funeral was probably the first time he’s seen her in three years.
“Some people at college? Maybe he’s being bullied.”
“Brian doesn’t get bullied. Or if he does, he doesn’t run away from it. He’d rather take a beating than back down.” He does live in the same dorm as all the other scholarship students and most of them are jocks on some sort of sports scholarship, but he must have fucked a fair few of them by now and if there was going to be any trouble, it would have happened long before now.
We’re quiet for a few moments until Daphne’s face brightens. “The sponge. It’s gotta be.”
“Lindsay?” Daphne doesn’t like Lindsay very much. She’s met her a few times at the diner and at Debbie’s and she thinks she’s the worst attention seeker and spoilt brat she’s ever come across. It’s a personality clash of epic proportions, not softened in the slightest by Daphne’s usual professional detachment. Compared to her, I can be considered a rabid fan of Lindsay’s. She thinks Lindsay soaks up every bit of attention and emotion that anybody has to give without giving anything in return. Hence the nickname.
“It all fits, doesn’t it?” she says reasonably. “She lives at the dorms, so if he wants to get away from her, he can’t stay there. She would call him constantly if he stays away and he would ignore it. And she’d never follow him to the loft because she’s such a WASP that she’d consider that bad manners, with you being the boyfriend and all.”
It all makes perfect sense, except that Brian doesn’t usually have a problem telling people to fuck off if he doesn’t want them around.
“Lindsay wants Brian to father her child.”
Daphne barely manages to stop herself from spraying her mouthful of coffee all over the table. It seems that Lindsay is the only person who thinks that Brian is fatherhood material. I wonder if Brian even knows about that. Or maybe that’s the reason he’s now hiding out in my loft? Daphne listens with rapt attention as I relate the conversation I had with Melanie in Woody’s.
We spend another hour or so on the topic. Daphne points out that it’s quite possible that this is my best chance to ever have a child of my own. I’m well aware that I’m unlikely to ever be allowed to adopt a child, nor is it likely that I'll have another opportunity like this dropped in my lap. But whenever I thought about having a child, I always wanted to see my child grow up, in my house, not be a glorified sperm donor. Like I said, I would consider it with Melanie because I trust her and we could come to an arrangement, but I don’t trust Lindsay. If she broke up with Melanie, there would be no telling where I'd end up with regards to the child.
When I get home, Brian is watching TV. I know that Michael's been here because there are food wrappers on the coffee table. Only Michael eats those horrible Doritos that stink the place out.
Brian leans his head back as I walk past and I kiss him upside down. His hand comes up and grabs the collar of my jacket, pulling until I slither over the back of the couch and land half on it and half on Brian. He continues to kiss me and starts pulling my clothes off.
“Missed me?” I smirk, as I pull his top over his head and open his pants.
“Missed your ass,” he murmurs, too distracted by fishing for lube and a condom under the couch to pay much attention.
Sometimes, when Brian is horny and distracted, I can slip in things he wouldn’t normally tolerate, like saying something affectionate or asking him questions he wouldn’t consider answering if his mind wasn’t so focused on sex. Unfortunately, by that stage, I’m usually too distracted myself to take advantage of it, but not today.
“So, why are you trying to avoid Lindsay?”
I know straight away that it won’t work this time by the way he freezes for a few seconds. His whole body tenses and I’m assuming that the only reason he’s not walking away right now is because I’m practically sitting on him. I’m already regretting that I asked. Now we'll have an argument because he’ll accuse me of prying and his stint at the loft will be over. Brian only ever ignores things as long as they don’t get pulled out into the light of day and he can pretend that he forgot about them.
But I’m very much mistaken and he’s playing me at my own game. As he’s pulling back up with the supplies, he pretends to still be distracted, even though he must know that I noticed his hesitation. He starts to open the condom wrapper and says as nonchalantly as only he can: “I fucked her.”
And how bizarre is it that my first thought is, ‘God, I hope Lindsay never tells Melanie’?
*******
All I can say about the funeral is that I feel too warm in my leather jacket and that the cemetery looks kind of picturesque, bathed in glorious sunshine. Trust Jack to have a beautiful funeral. Always coming up smelling of roses.
Claire sniffles her way through the afternoon and I can’t help wondering if she’s actually upset or if she’s doing it because she thinks it’s expected of her. It’s possible that she’s mourning the old bastard. She still pines after Tom, instead of thanking her lucky stars that the fucker left her.
Mom doesn’t look too pleased with Claire’s antics either. She’s been stony-faced all the way through, but that’s no different from the way she usually looks. She must be pleased to be rid of Jack. There might be less money coming in now, but at least it’s all hers and she doesn’t have to worry about it being drunk away before the week is out. Well, she doesn’t have to worry about someone else drinking it away before the week is out.
She greets me with a curt, “Hello, Brian,” and ignores me the rest of the afternoon. She likes Lindsay though, I can tell. Well, it keeps both of them off my back. Until I tell that touching story about Pop ordering her to have an abortion when she told him she was pregnant again.
The day goes rapidly downhill from then on. Granddad gives me a stern talking-to about how children should honor their parents and people can’t get out of the house fast enough. I’m just glad that I managed to smoke that joint at the cemetery, otherwise I would never survive this freak show.
There’s no way I’m staying any longer than strictly necessary and after the first people leave, I get up to do the same. Lindsay is huddling on the couch, looking a little traumatized and trying not to draw any attention. I don’t know what she’s worried about, it’s obvious that everybody loves her.
Claire pulls me to one side, as I’m getting my jacket and Lindsay’s coat from the bedroom. “Daddy asked me to give this to you,” she says and hands me a thin envelope. “He asked me to find it and bring it to him at the hospital. I think he was hoping you would turn up.” Her tone makes it very clear what she thinks of my apparent absence and she obviously doesn’t know about the last conversation I had with Jack. Or maybe she does and thinks I had it coming.
I open the envelope and look at the photograph of Jack and myself when I was a baby. Why the fuck did he want me to have this? And what made him think I would show up again after what he said? He’s smiling in the picture and I can’t help but wonder why. He never wanted me in the first place and he made it very clear throughout his life that his feelings never changed on that score.
“Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, eh?” Claire says with a wistful smile at the photograph. What planet is she on? Dying doesn’t absolve people from the way they led their lives.
“Yeah, he was a peach.” I shrug into my jacket and make my way out of the house without saying goodbye to anyone. Lindsay comes hurrying after me and takes her coat off me.
“Your mother invited us to Sunday dinner,” she says. Okay, maybe I’m the one from another planet because that sentence doesn’t compute in my universe. Neither the fact that my mother thinks I might even contemplate coming to dinner at her house, nor the idea that Lindsay would.
“I need a drink.”
She smiles and hooks her hand under my elbow. “I’ve got drinks in my room. And other stuff as well.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Lindsay always has the best stuff. I should know because I buy it for her. Her parents give her so much money it’s sickening. She doesn’t even need to live in the dorms if she doesn’t want to. Last year she suggested we should get an apartment together for our last year. But I had to do an unpaid internship this summer, so I don’t have as much money this year as I usually have when I work during the summer. Plus, under the terms of my scholarship, I can live at the dorms for free. She said she would pay for my rent but I declined. If I thought it was okay for someone to pay for me, I would live with Justin. I would probably be less monitored with him than I would be with Lindsay, too.
Lindsay has money and a car, and her parents don’t even care that she changed her major after the second year and practically had to start all over again. But they would probably object to her buying booze and drugs with the money they give her. Lindsay is also pretty convinced that they'd object to her choice of partner and after meeting them at her sister’s wedding, I’m inclined to agree. But then again, I object to her choice of partner. Really, Melanie Marcus is the best she can do?
I get changed in my room and then make my way over to hers. She’s got changed as well and hands me a bottle of Beam, which is still three quarters full from my last visit. Good start. She opens a bottle of wine for herself, which probably costs more than the Beam. Fucking rich kids. Their idea of slumming it is drinking wine out of a water glass and nothing would entice them to drink anything other than ‘a good year’.
We make some idle conversation. She very quickly realizes that I’m not in the mood to talk about the funeral or my family in general. Why the fuck would I? I thought that part of my life was over and done with, couldn’t touch me anymore, but it always seems to come back to haunt me. I don’t even want to talk to Justin about it, never mind Lindsay, who's totally clueless.
So we chat about the classes we have together and some of the other students, playing the gay, straight or undecided game. But I don’t feel very talkative at all, which never seems to bother her much. She just curls up next to me, with her head against my shoulder, while I’m getting steadily drunk, wondering if I should take a trip to the baths instead. Once the alcohol is finished, she brings out her stash. I didn’t realize how large and varied her supply has become by now. I think she probably only ever uses it when she’s with me. Good. I don’t think I'll be finished anytime soon today.
I wake up when it’s still dark and for a moment I have no idea where I am. It’s neither my room nor the loft. I’m naked and there’s a naked body pressed against mine in a very small bed and this is so not good. My memory is more than a bit hazy, but I remember drinking and some pills and a few joints. And Lindsay. Oh fuck!
I feel incredibly filthy and all I want is a shower. The only person I can bear being ‘down and dirty’ with nowadays is Justin. But the shower will have to wait. Luckily, Lindsay is on the side of the bed that’s pushed against the wall. She’s snoring lightly and I think the bottle of wine probably had the same effect on her as all the stuff I took had on me. She just carries on snoring when I roll away from her and let myself drop over the side of the bed onto the floor.
I’m used to making quick getaways and I’m in my clothes and out the door within a minute or so. Obviously, going to my room is not an option at the moment. I fucked up. No doubt about it. And if I go to my room now, my fuck-up will follow me there. This is not like my other fucks. I can't just tell her to fuck off. Women don’t work that way. I think. Damn, I can’t even think straight. I wonder how intoxicated I still am.
I take a taxi to the loft - fuck the expense, this is an emergency. Justin is asleep, which is only to be expected at this time of the night. And then I can finally immerse myself in his shower. Bits and pieces from the night before come back to me, but none of it is very clear and I’m strangely grateful for that. This is so going to blow up in my face.
What on Earth possessed me to fuck Lindsay? I can’t say that I haven’t been curious what it would be like, but up until now I've never met a woman whom I’ve liked enough to even contemplate it. And I would probably not have done it if I’d been sober. Women, even women as attractive as Lindsay just don’t do it for me. That’s what makes me gay. I like guys. I only like guys. I’m surprised I even managed to get it up, because normally there’s zero arousal when I look at a woman.
Okay, so there were extenuating circumstances. I was drunk and high and I had a stressful day. Will that be enough of an excuse? Why do I need an excuse anyway? Well, almost all the people I know also know Lindsay and if she’s going to be upset about this, I’d better prepare a defense. Not that Melanie will accept that, or Debbie, or Lindsay herself.
But it’s not about them, is it? I don’t give a fuck about them or anybody else. Except Justin. It was just a fuck. He has to know that. My extracurricular activities don’t usually bother him, so maybe this is no different. Oh fuck, who am I kidding? He'll feel sorry for Lindsay if she’s upset. And he’ll be angry because I’ve broken the no names rule. He was very upset when the same thing nearly happened with Michael that time. In fact, he told me then that it would mean losing him. Double fuck! Better not tell him. Maybe Lindsay won’t remember anything or if she does, maybe she’ll keep quiet about it. Well, she can hardly tell Melanie, can she now?
There are only two ways to go about this. One, I go and see Lindsay as soon as possible, tell her it was just a fuck and somehow persuade her to keep this between ourselves. Surely she must know it didn’t mean anything. She knows I’m gay. But I’m not stupid. I know Lindsay likes me a lot more than is good for her. If I go round there, she’ll make a scene. I hate melodrama. Also, if I don’t say exactly the right thing, there’s no way she’ll keep quiet about this. And even if she does, I'll have that hanging over my head from now on.
So I decide on the second option: give her some time to calm down. If I leave it for a couple of weeks, she’ll realize that it was a mistake all by her little self and if I’m really lucky, she’ll be too embarrassed to tell anyone anyway. Everybody wins. I may even be able to salvage our friendship. I like Lindsay. She’s all soft and caring and completely focused on me. It’s different when it comes from a woman. I never really had that before. The closest I’ve come is Debbie looking out for me, when she’s not too busy blaming me for things.
But if Lindsay tells people, Justin will find out. And there’s no telling how he’ll react. We may not have rules that specifically apply to this kind of situation, but I can’t pretend that I didn’t know it was always implied that I don’t go around fucking people we both know. When it was Michael, he made it very clear that this was a line I must never cross. Does that apply to Lindsay as well? He told me he fucked Daphne once, so he knows how little it means. But I’m sure he’ll find a dozen reasons why this is different. He always does. No, it will be better if he never finds out.
For a week I’m in luck. I ignore Lindsay’s calls, voicemails and messages. With a bit of strategic planning, I manage to evade her when I go to class. I skip the two classes we have together, which is something I can afford and she can’t, and I move all the stuff I need to the loft and concentrate on the paper I have due at the end of the month. It all works rather well and even Lindsay’s calls peter out a little, although there are still two or three of them every day.
But it’s not so easy to fool Justin. He knows something isn’t right. I can see him watching me, but I’m hoping that he’ll put it down to Jack’s death. He’s very considerate like that. The fact that Melanie hasn’t turned up at the loft to ream me out tells me that Lindsay hasn’t told her. There’s no way Melanie wouldn’t make her displeasure known if she knew and she wouldn’t miss this opportunity to rat me out to Justin either. So far, so good.
I’m further reassured when Michael comes over the following Sunday and doesn’t say anything. If Lindsay told anyone, he'd know and there’s no way he'd not speak to me about it. I'll give it another week and then I’ll go and talk to Lindsay. Maybe she just wants to forget about it as well. She is a lesbian after all. We can chalk it up to experience and laugh about it in the future.
When Justin comes home from his little outing with Daphne, I’m totally unprepared for his question. “So, why are you avoiding Lindsay?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck! He knows! I really thought I’d got away with it. I have about ten seconds to decide what to do now. The smartest thing would probably be to act contrite, maybe even apologize and promise to never do it again. Yeah, like it’s ever going to happen again anyway. So I wouldn’t even promise anything that would put me out in any way.
But Justin is not my wife and I’m not my father. Jack always brought Mom flowers when he’d done something and it never worked. Because Mom wasn’t fooled and he never changed his ways anyway. And I don’t owe Justin anything. We’re both free agents. There’s no need to apologize or to regret anything. And it’s too late now anyway. If I wanted to allow him the right to be angry or upset about this, I should have confessed to him a week ago. Now it will just look pathetic, like I’m only doing it because I got caught, like Jack always did.
“I fucked her,” I say calmly, because no matter how I feel, I can always pull it off.
There’s a pause and I know straight away that I can kiss this fuck goodbye. I also realize that I made a grave mistake. He didn’t know. And I just told him! Fuck! I should have kept my mouth shut and denied that anything’s wrong. I expect him to jump up and tell me to leave, but he looks kind of stunned, so I blurt out, “It was just a fuck. I don’t even remember it.”
I just want him to stop looking at me like that, but my words seem to make it worse. His expression changes from disbelief to horror or maybe disgust and he scrambles to get up off the couch and me. I put both hands on his hips, pushing down to stop him. He stills, but he’s not looking at me. He does that thing where he rubs his forehead with his fingers, which he does when he’s trying to work out what to say and all of a sudden I don’t want to hear it.
I’m angry with myself for falling for his little trick of pretending that he knew when he didn’t. How gullible can you get? But I’m also getting more and more angry with him for making me feel guilty. He has no right to make me feel this way. I’m free to do what I want. I’m not Jack. I won’t apologize for the way I live my life because I don’t need to. Only thing is, I kind of just did. Because Justin has a knack for making me feel like I’m the biggest fuck-up in the world without ever saying a word.
“It’s got nothing to do with you,” I snarl at him. It doesn’t. Whom I fuck is none of his business.
He nods a few times and when I relax my hands on his hips, he gets up slowly and this time I don’t stop him.
“I think I’ll have a shower,” he says, more to himself than me and walks towards the bathroom.
Bastard. Who does he think he is, getting on his high horse and riding out onto the moral high ground? Justin always has the moral high ground. Because he doesn’t do stupid shit like I do. Still, that doesn’t give him the right to throw it in my face all the time.
I hear the shower come on and know that he won’t come out for a long time. It’s his safe place. Well, he hasn’t thrown me out yet, but he may still do that when he’s had some time to think. Justin doesn’t make rash decisions, but once he’s made one, it will be irrevocable. I’d better get in there and make sure he makes the right one.
He doesn’t expect me to join him, I can tell by the way he tenses up when I step into the shower. His head is turned away from me and he doesn’t look around, but when I pull on his arm a bit, he allows me to guide his head under the water and lets me wash his hair.
I know that the only way Justin will ever be able to resist me is by keeping a physical distance. He loves sex as much as I do and he specifically loves sex with me. When I kiss and bite his neck, he leans to one side to make it easier for me. He pushes back against me and twists to encourage my hands to move where he wants them to be. I can’t help but smile. This should go a long way to convince him that what happened was unimportant.
I fuck him slowly, taking my time and making sure that he’s desperate by the end, just before I make him come. He is, but he never turns his head to kiss me and he’s very quiet. There’s barely a grunt when he shoots all over the glass of the shower wall.
Justin never withholds sex when we have disagreements. That’s such a hetero thing to do, neither one of us would even dream of it. We’re men, fucking is what we do. What Justin does do is withhold himself. When he’s not happy, he goes into this place inside of him to think and regroup and it’s as if he isn’t even here. I could fuck him for hours and never get any closer. I should know, I’ve tried.
He leans his head against the glass and, even though he’s still in my arms, he’s not exactly molding himself against me like he usually does. He’s in his own little world where I have no place. I’m not even sure if he realizes that he’s doing it. All I know is that I’m not welcome there.
Finally he straightens up and says, “You can’t go round doing whatever you feel like and ignoring other people’s feelings, Brian.”
Is he talking about Lindsay or himself? Either way, I won’t let it stand. “People are responsible for their own happiness. And their own pain.”
“You have to take some responsibility.”
“I take plenty of responsibility - for my own actions.”
“Your actions affect other people. You have to take that into consideration. Not everyone can shut off their feelings like you can. You’ll end up hurting people.”
It’s like I thought: poor little Lindsay. “It’s not as if I forced her.”
“No. No, I’m quite sure she wanted you. Maybe even initiated it. You’re missing the point.”
“What is the fucking point? She got off. I got off. It’s all good.”
“Jeez, Brian, even you can’t be that dense.” He sounds exasperated.
“Maybe I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’re hiding behind it.”
“I’m not hiding. I’ve nothing to hide. No reason to hide. I don’t owe anybody anything.”
He’s quiet for a while, then moves towards the shower door and opens it. “You have to stop drinking and drugging until you no longer know what you’re doing, Brian. You have to grow up at some point.”
He steps out of the shower and wraps himself in one of the towels. So far he has barely looked at me. But he finally raises his head and he looks so… tired. He gives me a sad little smile and a nod and leaves the bathroom. I stick my head under the spray and vow that I’ll never grow up. Who’d want to?
PART THREE here: http://kachelofen.livejournal.com/22449.html