Running for Home - 1. July 4, 2021

July 4, 2021

Dominik’s gone.

Fucking bastard.

He should have listened to me when I told him seven years ago it wouldn’t work. I told him to just leave it be. Told him he’d get burnt, that he’d fucking get sick of putting up with me, that he’d leave. He should have just let it stay the meaningless fucking hook-ups it always had been. Hell, I should have listened to my own fucking advice when I let him back in two years ago after he finally got out of Shangri La. Should have – you know what? Fuck it.

Some fucking love he was. Motherfucker. I bet he already has some tramp lined up to use. Bet he had that all worked out, well before I caught that things were going south for the last time. Bet he was even cheating on me, that bastard. But no, he isn’t the one who looks stupid, of course not. It’s never anyone else that looks stupid when my relationships go south. It’s always me, always little fucking Johnny who looks like the fucking patsy. The bitchy, impossible-to-live-with faggot who drove him away.

You know, I knew he’d leave. Always knew it. But I let him fuck me anyway. I just couldn’t… I couldn’t resist it. Couldn’t let it slip out of my fingers. Not my best friend. When we started hooking up back in Freedom Force, I just thought it was because Dom was horny and we were on a short leash and I was available. But Dom wasn’t as straight as I originally thought, not nearly as straight has he originally thought. And I was happy with that, the drunken hand jobs I gave him that turned into blow jobs that turned into full on hook-ups, and eventually not-so-drunken hook-ups.

But then there was that day in that secret government hospital where I was recovering from the living hell I went through in Iraq, that day when they finally allowed visitors. He came in. He got all emotional, something I never had seen in him before. And he kissed me. He fucking kissed me. He’d never done that in the four years we’d been hooking up. He was my best friend, and we were getting pardons, and we were about to move on with our lives and he loved me. At least, maybe he thought he did. It’s hard for me to believe that now. It’s hard for me to believe that he ever actually understood what he felt. Sometimes I wonder if what he felt that day wasn’t love so much as a relief from the guilt he held because he turned tail and ran when the going got tough on that mission, and I almost died in that hell.

But I went along with it, because why wouldn’t I? He was my best friend. We had some sort of chemistry, obviously, and it should have been easy enough. We’d lived in relatively close proximity to one another our whole adult lives at that point, so why the fuck not? What surprises could there be? I thought I knew him, knew him almost as well as he knew himself. So when Freedom Force collapsed, Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis and St. John Sebastian Allerdyce rose up together from its ashes, ready to conquer the world as newly-minted civilians.

And it was good, everything. It wasn’t the white picket fence, but that’s never been something I wanted anyway. Dom filled up that empty space in my heart that I’ve been carrying since high school, since I joined with Magneto. And that’s how real, sensible love should happen, right? Something that takes time to build, something that’s not this bullshit overwhelming love-at-first-sight infatuation that makes you act like an idiot. Something pragmatic and realistic.

Jesus Christ, who am I kidding? That’s just what I kept telling myself. It’s what I wanted to believe. It wasn’t really all that good, but I thought it was enough. I didn’t feel so empty anymore. At least it was at the beginning, before the carjacking.

Fuck it. He was a loser. A loser riding on the coattails of my royalty cheques for these goddamn books, on my contract paycheques for my journalistic work. And I’m an even bigger loser for letting him in, for trying so hard to believe in it, in him, when I knew it would come down to this in the end. At least I got seven years of easy sex out of the deal. It could have been more, too, if he wasn’t in jail for five years in the middle of all that. Then again, if he’d stayed out of jail this pathetic bullshit relationship probably would have crashed and burned years ago.

I guess I should be grateful. Celebrate my goddamn freedom since it’s the Fourth of July. I should go party, gorge on barbecue, fireworks and endless booze, the whole shebang. Maybe I will do that once I finish writing this.

Yeah, I’m gonna journal all this shit out, just like they made me do when I got back from Iraq. I’m going to spew out all of my feelings about that stupid fuck and everything else that is happening until I have nothing left to give and I can fill that space with something better, something real, something true. Writing shit down did actually help me back then, even if I only did it because they essentially forced me to do it. If I hadn’t complied, who knows how much longer I would have been stuck there in that hospital. Ugh. Anyway, maybe it will help now. I hope it will help now. I’m not so afflicted with toxic masculinity that I refuse to acknowledge that admitting my feelings and owning them is not a sign of weakness. I won’t let this, no, refuse to let this anger, grief, rage, hopelessness, despair… I refuse to let it get out of control. I can’t afford to let it take over my life. Not anymore, not after all the work I’ve done to fix my life and make myself into a somewhat decent human being. Not after all the hard work I’ve done to build a career, as stalled as it may be right now, doing something real, something lucrative, something I truly love doing and am good at. Something of real value to other people. Something, finally, with a true deep meaning found deep inside myself.

Fucking motherfucker.