A Night at the Opera - 1. Part One

I was woken by the neighbor’s dog barking; it was a good thing, at least I was at home. My mouth was parched; I was dehydrated and needed water, but as I lifted my head from the pillow the room spun three-sixty degrees and I felt sick. I hated hangovers and I had a feeling that this one was going to be severe. I could barely remember the night before. It was my brother Simon’s seventeenth birthday and he came to my place with his friends to celebrate after a predictably tame party at my parent’s house.

‘Mom’s gonna freak when she finds out that I’ve corrupted her little boy again’.

I couldn’t remember if he had made it home or not.

‘He was with his girlfriend; I doubt if he went home. Probably been screwing all night’!

I needed more sleep but my head wasn’t allowing it. The answer to my immediate problem was no more than fifteen feet away and the bathroom became the focus of my concentration. I needed water, Tylenol, and a toilet to empty my bladder but I knew from past experience that this wasn't going to be easy.

With my head beating like a drum and last night’s tequila soaked chicken tandoori fighting its way to the nearest exit, I was in a vulnerable state and I cursed my stupidity for not taking a bottle of water with me to bed. I could have held my pee and gone back to sleep, but I was sure that I would die of thirst if I didn’t get some liquid in my body quickly.

‘I can make a dash for it and hope for the best or go on my hands and knees'.

There were no other options. My parents had cut off all help from above and I wasn’t expecting any sympathy.

‘Maybe this will teach me a lesson. I need to learn from this experience. I’m only human…my body can’t take this kind of punishment.’

I wasn’t much into God, but I promised myself that if I was able to survive the day, then I would never put myself in this position again. I would move my bed to the other side of the room and cut the distance by half. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about it before; it seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

‘It’s typical. All my best ideas come to me when I’m on my deathbed’!

Delaying wasn’t helping, so I decided to act before I was sick. I lifted the sheet and swung a leg off the bed in search of the floor.

‘The eagle has landed’.

Now, I just needed to do the same with my other foot and then stand up. It shouldn’t be all that difficult; I had been doing it nearly every day for the past twenty years.

It was easier than expected and I had a sudden jolt of self-confidence. However, the relief I felt at being able to stand was tempered by the sensation beneath my foot as I pressed down against the hardwood floor. I had trodden on something nasty. At first, I thought it was gum.

‘Somebody has spat out gum next to my frigging bed’.

It felt fresh, not even dry and slippery enough for me to nearly lose my balance. I decided to abort and sat back down on the bed to assess the damage. Whatever this foreign object was, remained on the underside of my foot as I propped it up onto my knee.

‘Urgh, that is so gross, I don’t believe I just did that’.

I did well not to vomit as I gingerly peeled the used condom from the bottom of my foot. My weight had expelled its sticky contents between my toes making me cringe. Worse was to follow, the owner of that sperm wasn’t that far away and when I looked behind me he was still in my bed, lying face down, his pale body barely covered by the sheet.

‘Shit! It’s Devan. What was I thinking’?

If I wasn’t fucked already, I was now, for sure. Devan was one of my brother’s closest friends and I had known him for years. He was the same age as my brother, maybe a few months older, but it barely made a difference. He was still only seventeen and I was twenty-eight.

My monumental hangover seemed to pale into insignificance as I contemplated the possible consequences of fucking my little brother’s best friend. I was drunk; totally hammered, but that wasn’t going to save me, neither was the fact that he had come on to me. I clearly remembered him making a move on me. He was cute and cheeky.

‘What am I doing, I need to get my shit together and get him outta my bed’?

First, though, I needed hydration and a pee. His clothes were scattered around the bed, where I had torn them off him a few hours earlier and I reached out to grab his t-shirt, using it to clean his mess from my foot. He had looked good the night before in that ‘One Direction’ shirt, but now Harry Styles had a glob of sperm smeared across his pretty face. It made me smile.

‘Probably not the first time’.

I was able to maintain my sense of humor; it had saved me in the past. I got to my feet again and managed to put one in front of the other a dozen or so times without falling over until I reached the relative safety of the bathroom.

To hell with a cup. I leaned over the sink and cupped my hands under the faucet to take on some much-needed water. I felt a little better as I splashed my face, but I needed pills and more sleep to recover from the hangover.

The mirror would help me to assess the damage, but when I saw my reflection, I had been replaced by somebody else. It looked nothing like me. I had never seen this person before in my life.

Looking in the mirror was a bad idea and it was difficult to take any positives from it. My eyes were sunken and red and my pupils were diluted, like piss holes in the snow. I could remember puffing on a few joints out back. They wouldn’t have helped any. Pot never agreed with me, it just made me ill.

‘What was I thinking? On top of all the beer and then the shots. Tequila! Yuk’.

I could still taste it in my mouth and it sent a shiver down my spine as I recalled the ridiculous ritual involving lemon, salt, and shots of Mexican firewater. I was old enough to know better, or at least I should have been.

Brushing my teeth would help me feel more human and that was high on my list of priorities as I began to formulate some kind of emergency plan. Young Devan; as sweet and adorable as he was, would have to go. My memory of the night before was still vague, but it seemed unlikely that my conquest would have gone unnoticed. It would probably be all over town by that afternoon and my name would be mud. I could take solace with the fact that I didn’t have much of a reputation to lose, or at least not a particularly good one, but this little episode was going to take a lot of beating.

‘Simon is going to hate me for this, but if mom and dad find out, I’m really gonna be in the shit’.

* * * * *

In one of our rare phone conversations, my parents had recently accused me of corrupting my younger brother. They didn’t like him coming to my house, and up until he turned sixteen he wasn’t allowed to visit. They were frightened in case I led him astray, but all I wanted to do was to look after him, and get him away from that crazy religion before it royally screwed him up.

I lived less than two miles away, on the other side of our small town, in a not so wealthy, but much friendlier neighborhood and Simon loved it. A year had passed since our parents had reluctantly agreed to relax their hard line rules and allow him a little extra slack and Simon was now a regular visitor to the house. He had his own key and had laid claim to the spare room, staying over whenever the school breaks allowed. It worried my parents sick, but they no longer had the control over him they once enjoyed and he was beginning to question their crazy religion.

He was encouraged by his friends, some of whom he had known for years. Friends like Devan, who he had grown up with and others who he had met while hanging out in my neighborhood. I allowed them to drink, which they couldn’t do anywhere else, but not to excess, and they would occasionally party there at the weekends. I tried to keep a lid on it and there were house rules, which I did my best to enforce, but without a partner, it was becoming increasingly difficult, and last night had got a little out of control.

Most of those rules had been flaunted and I had been the worst offender, setting a poor example for my impressionable baby brother and his slightly wayward friends, Devan included. I had my reasons for letting my hair down, but this time I had gone well over the top and my actions made a mockery of my attempts earlier in the year to preach to Simon about the values of one partner sex. I looked at the lifeless face in the mirror and shuddered as I remembered the lecture that I had given him after discovering that he had cheated on his long time girlfriend Suzy.

She had been dating my brother through high school and during the previous year, she had become a regular at my house. They were allowed a lot more privacy than they were with their respective parents and it was inevitable I suppose that they soon began taking this leniency for granted. They were both sixteen when they lost their virginity and after finding out, I allowed them a beer or two to celebrate. I had been away for the weekend at a music festival with a boyfriend and they had made good use of an empty house. Unlike our parents, however, I didn’t see anything wrong in it. They would have done it with or without my consent, but the fact that he had told me about it afterward, was all the justification that I needed for my open-minded approach.

I didn’t encourage him to have sex, but I didn’t make him feel as if he was doing wrong either. I wanted him to be aware of the pitfalls and not feel the need to hide or take unnecessary risks. I wasn’t concerned about which team he played for or if, like me, he felt the need to switch at certain points in his life. It didn’t matter; I was never going to judge him and he knew it. I provided him with condoms and even kept a bottle of lube in the bathroom cabinet. Better safe than sorry, and recently I had noticed that there wasn’t much left. Either he was switch-hitting with a friend or Suzy was letting him in the back door.

Whatever, it didn’t matter to me; I had always encouraged him not to hide things, conscious of the mistakes that our parents had already made with me. Their inability to discuss important issues and unwillingness to accept my sexuality had made my position in the family untenable and forced me to leave home at the tender age of eighteen.

They treated Simon in the same way and had tried to mold him into someone he clearly wasn’t. They used to organize his life and vet his friends in a misguided attempt to make him perfect and follow in the distinguished footsteps of our father. They were difficult shoes to fill and despite his good grades, Simon had no real interest in working at a bank and selling investment policies. At seventeen, he wanted to have some fun and that was my department.

I saw myself as being indispensable in the role of my brother’s spiritual guide in all the areas which I knew my parents would neglect. Sex, alcohol, and drugs were subjects which my God-fearing, respectable parents refused to ever discuss. I never understood why, but these important issues were routinely swept under the carpet as if they didn’t exist.

I remember my parents explaining to me how important it was to keep away from the road and to never accept a ride from strangers. It was commendable of them, but when I reached puberty, neither of them took the time to talk to me about contraception or STI’s. Their reasoning was simple. Sex was for married couples only and I was too young but it didn’t stop me from experimenting.

The last straw for them came when I told them that I was bi-sexual. My dad couldn’t cope with that and it made him ill. I wasn’t thrown out, but I didn’t want to be responsible for him keeling over in church at such a young age, so I did the decent thing and packed my bags. I was already prepared and took my brazen lifestyle out of the cherished family home and moved in with my girlfriend Lisa-Marie.

My folks hated her because she was much older than I was, but she taught me things that they would never have been able to, like how to respect myself and be open about my feelings. She helped me to understand who I was and to cope with the loss of family and friends who were no longer allowed to see me. It wasn’t easy; when I moved in with her I was very young, frightened and extremely vulnerable, but it proved to be the making of me.

What upset me the most was the fact that my parents—all too ready to believe the hard-line rhetoric of their church—made no attempt to talk me out of it. They were upset, but it was as if there was no other option available. As far as they were concerned, I was a lost sheep and by admitting to being attracted to people of the same sex, I had crossed the line of acceptability. I was defective and thrown from the nest so that they could concentrate on my younger brother. If ever I needed proof to back this up, it was made abundantly clear by the fact that they had never once visited me in the six years that I had been living on my own albeit with different partners.

Like everything else; I blamed it on my childhood and forced religion, but I wasn’t much good at holding down relationships. I left Lisa-Marie for a guy; a hairdresser named Caesar who worked downtown. When I saw Caesar climbing out of the back window to meet a girl one night, I made sure that his clothes and music collection followed him and embarked on a life of abstinence.

I wasn’t much good at that either and my fast was broken on the third night by a temptress from Walmart. She was the same age as me but that was the only thing we had in common and despite her stunning good looks and higher than average sex drive, it was never likely to work. Conscious of repeating my mistakes, I stayed at home for months living off pizza but the friendship I struck up with the delivery guy proved my undoing. Unable to resist his saucy toppings, I fell in love but it wasn’t to be and after six months of all you can eat for ten bucks, I had to leave.

There were a couple of others who I wouldn't admit to, but I wasn’t into one night stands or teenagers for that matter, although there was one fast asleep in my bed out there, who had spent most of the night pretty much banging me senseless. The gory details were only just beginning to filter through, gradually penetrating my self-inflicted, alcohol numbed barrier and causing further embarrassment.

* * * * *

Fortune, it seemed, was smiling on me because it looked as if I had managed to avert the usually compulsive vomiting that accompanied every hangover.

‘Maybe I’m getting used to them or maybe it’s just delayed. I’ll probably end up chucking my guts up over him’.

I still needed to pee though and this was now the focus of all my attention. The toilet was behind the shower and as I shuffled closer at a snail's pace, I noticed a pair of sneakers. They were men’s, and were attached to a pair of feet, angled wide apart and pointing upwards. I didn’t need to look any further, from the little that was visible, it was clear that the owner of those feet was either asleep or dead. Neither one, however, was acceptable to me. This was my bathroom, which was attached to my bedroom and other than the very occasional house guest, like my pre-school fuck-buddy out there, was for my use only.

‘Shit, who the fuck is this and why is he passed out on my toilet’.

I was naked. No surprise there, but I didn’t need the Lone Ranger’s help with that one. I always slept in the buff. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me before edging closer to the mystery man. I was right; it didn’t take a genius to work it out. It looked as if he had passed out on the John before he had even had the chance to take a dump, but on closer inspection, I changed my verdict.

‘You have to be kidding me…really’?

Whoever this numbskull was, his intention obviously wasn’t bowel related. His pants were still covering his ass, but his zipper was opened and he had his dick in his hand. Limp it may have been, but it was a dick alright and there was only one thing this guy had been doing before overcoming to the desire for sleep.

I was certain I had used the toilet shortly before playing Cowboys and Indians with the teenage stallion, so when or how he had managed to get in there without me seeing him was a mystery. Admittedly, there would have been times during the night when the eighth army could have marched straight through without either of noticing, but this was very peculiar. I had never seen him before in my life and as much as it freaked me out, I couldn’t help but jump to the conclusion that this guy might have been watching.

“I hope you enjoyed the show, pervert!” I said as I filled an ornamental vase with water and threw it at his face.

It was a knee-jerk reaction which I would probably have been better off thinking through beforehand, but I needed to get rid of this guy ‘toot suite’ if only to pee and satisfy myself that he wasn’t dead. The last thing that I needed was forensics nosing around the place and finding leftovers. Table scraps from a long since forgotten and regrettable night, especially with Harry Potter tucked up in my bed.

The cold water worked a treat and the secret toilet peeker woke up with a shock and a look of panic. His head flew backward, smacking the ceramic shelf behind him and I winced at the unsavory sound of skull hitting tile. Judging by the noise it made, one of them had definitely cracked and for his sake, I hoped that it wasn’t my shelf. For a second, I thought that he had gone back to sleep, but after going boss-eyed, he lurched forward, letting go of his shriveled penis and falling unceremoniously to the floor.

“Whoever you are, you’re a fucking asshole, mister.” I climbed over him to reach the promised land before pissing out a gallon of beer, tequila, and whatever else I had swallowed that night.

‘Fuck, I needed that so bad. I should’ve pissed all over him, he would’ve enjoyed that’!

I stood up and gave him a kick in the butt before heading out to wake up the boy wonder, but when I walked back into the bedroom he had already gone.

I hadn’t heard him leave and the door was still closed. When I looked at the floor his clothes were still strewn across the threadbare carpet. I felt a breeze on my shoulder and spun around towards the opened window. The curtains were drawn but the wind was lifting them and allowing in flashes of bright sunlight.

‘You’re kidding me’.

“Not out of the fucking window.”

‘Am I really that bad, that he felt the need to escape out of the first-floor window. Naked’?

“I can’t believe he did that. What a jerk!”

I may have been seven years older than the little pipsqueak, but I was still only twenty-four, not eighty-four.

‘Was he really that embarrassed that he felt the need to risk his life climbing out of the window. Do I look that bad in the morning? He didn’t seem too concerned last night’.

I was fuming although I wasn’t sure why. After all, his disappearance may have been odd, if not plain insulting, but it had actually done me a huge favor. Out of sight, out of mind.

‘When Simon asks me about it, I could simply deny all knowledge of it. I was drunk, I don’t remember a thing’.

I was sure that Devon—bless his little cotton socks—would also deny it, even under threat of extreme torture. First, though, I had to get rid of the evidence which was scattered around the bedroom floor and I stumbled around the room picking up his clothing. His socks, a pair of shorts, a New York Yankees baseball cap?

‘I knew he was a Yankee boy! But bright pink briefs, I would never have guessed that one’!

I had never even seen them in that color before, but it didn’t matter, they were going in the same direction and I took them over to the window and threw them out without bothering to see where they landed. My bedroom faced the back and there were bushes directly below with a drainpipe to the side of the window. I was guessing that he had climbed down it to reach the back garden. I would like to have seen that. I would have paid good money to have seen that!

‘I just got screwed by Spiderman’!

I dropped my towel and fell face down on the bed. I badly needed more sleep and a lobotomy, but first I had to laugh when I noticed his screwed up, cum smeared t-shirt on the bed. I hated ‘One Direction’, but I liked the t-shirt and so I decided to keep it as a souvenir. At least I would be able to get some amusement from it, even if Simon decided never to talk to me again.

I held my tender head and rolled onto my back, naked and praying for salvation, but before I could fall back to sleep, the bedroom door opened. It made me jump and I lifted my head to see Devon standing in the doorway. He was wearing my bathrobe and holding a tray.

“Morning,” he said. “I’ve made you some breakfast.”