Bad Stereotypes - 18. Friday 12th July 2013

“Here?”

“No.” Issac’s lips moved in my hair, “Lower.”

“Here?”

“I can still feel that.”

“Here?” I slid my hand further down his thigh.

“Yeah, you’ve gone now.”

I walked my fingers carefully back up Issac’s thigh to the place where feeling faded into numbness and I felt him smile against my scalp when he could feel my fingers again. I had ended up on his left side in the bed, and Issac had been weirdly alright with my curiosity about the stump. The leg ended just above where the knee joint would have been, and those muscles seemed just as firm and strong as the other leg. The stump was shiny at the end, the skin a bit more pink, the scar a soft curve over the end, long healed over. As I ran my hand down his thigh, the only weird thing was the lack of hair. Issac said the hairs got rubbed off by the leg-cup and eventually the follicles died off.

“So if I tickle you here…” I started a tickling motion about three quarters of the way down the leg, just past where sensation died.

“Can’t feel a thing,” I started to move my hand up and Issac gasped, “Ah! Ha he…. Stop it Bay!” I started tickling his ribs with my other hand until we were both thrashing in the bed again. I knelt over him when I stopped, and kissed his heaving chest.

“I like you better naked.” I grinned at him, and Issac glanced down to see our new erections lying side by side.

“You’re insatiable.”

“I’m eighteen.” I shrugged, my age had to be good for something.

“Oh yes,” Issac wrapped his hand around us both and I moaned into his shoulder, “So you are.”

Afterwards we lay side by side on the mattress, the sheets twisted up at the bottom of the bed, panting. I tilted my head to rest on Issac’s shoulder, and I thought about the places we touched, shoulders, hips, thigh, hands. Issac’s false bionic leg stood in the corner like a strange robot. Once during the night I had woken, forgetting what it was, and my fevered brain has twisted the shadowy shape out of control until Issac had rolled over, dragging me with him and I’d remembered what it was. Only slightly sleepily I played my hand over Issac’s chest, from sternum to groin and back again. He had a wonderful body.

“How did it happen?” I asked gently, and when Issac didn’t reply, I didn’t think he was going to at all. I figured it was a question a lot of people asked.

“I met Zupan and Zoltan in sixth form. You think those guys are massive now? They were the only people at college that tall, they both got asked to join the rugby team, they both turned the coach down. He wasn’t so happy. We met on the track, mucking about on dirt bikes. Zupan loved anything with wheels. He drove like a madman. Still does.

“We spent all our time together, three best mates: and neither of them minded that I was gay. Once Zu and Zol have decided to like a person, that’s it, you can do no wrong. They took me to my first club, hell, Zupan dragged me into my first gay bar when I was nineteen and got me my first ever date. I was shy back then.

“And then we were twenty one.” Issac took a deep breath, and his fingers went to the tattoo at his side. I hadn’t been able to look at it that much, but I looked now. The black patterns made up what looked exactly like tyre tread, running down Issac’s side from armpit to hip. In the middle of the tread pattern, the shapes twisted to become three interwoven names; Zupan, Issac, Zoltan. Down one side of the tread was a much more cursive script, smaller letters reading off a phrase: the day will come. I had a horrible idea where this was going.

“It was October, it was dark, it had rained and it was perfect weather of off-roading like mad hyped up young men do. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going, and that was our first mistake. Zupan drove. I was in the back behind him.” Issac stopped, and the silence stretched out before he started speaking again, “We hit a tree, Zupan swerved to avoid it, there were rocks, boulders. Zu got thrown straight out the front windscreen, broke his neck and slashed open his shoulder. Zoltan was wearing his seat belt, he stayed in the truck as it rolled, but he was unconscious. I got whacked by the tree, and fell as the truck rolled over and spent four hours lying with a one ton four by four range rover on my leg. They had to take it off. I got cracked ribs and an amputation, Zupan got the chair, Zoltan got to feel guilty for ages for not coming round sooner and calling for help. He felt like it was his fault. If he’d called sooner… I might still have a leg. Who knows.

“We all have that tattoo, got it the year Zupan left wheelchair rehab, same year he started up with Murderball. A reminder not to be so stupid next time.”

“Issac…” I had no idea what I wanted to say.

“Shhh,” Issac arms came around me and he nuzzled my hair, “You have to say anything babe. Just lie here with me.”

“Those words; the day will come…”

“I was awake. I blacked out during the actual crash, but I was awake afterwards. Fate is cruel. It was dark. I had no ideas what had happened to the others, did not know if Zupan was alive or dead, didn’t know that Zol was OK but unconscious in the truck. I had no idea. I couldn’t reach me phone. And all I kept on thinking was that the day would come, morning would come and they’d be dog walkers or kids on bikes on their way to school or something. That if I could stay alive until the day came then everything would be alright.” Issac sighed and curried his face in my hair, “It had another reason too. That day that Zupan got out of the rehab, became a day visitor, I thought that one day, the day would come when this didn’t hurt so much. When we could look at each other without thinking only of the crash and what happened after, when we could be like we were before again.”

“Did that day come?”

“Yes babe. Yes it did.”