The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 38. Chapter 38

I was a little too tall

Could've used a few pounds

Tight pants points hardly renown

I stood in my back yard, looking at the moon.

So much had happened. So many strange and wondrous events. I had found the love of my life, after so much pain. I had been brought close to wonder, had brushed it, and had felt its gifts.

I had, I thought, found my soulmate in Taine. We had both tasted pain. Had suckled at its roots. Had become familiar with its name.

I stood in my backyard and considered my options. Taine had what he needed now. He had a brother, a father, a family.

What did I have?

I had lost my father, my mother, all my old friends. That bastard jock Kevin and his friends killed my dog. And it was only a matter of time before I lost Taine. That was just the way my life worked.

Taine had said that everything he loved would die. But it was me, really, for whom that was true. Everyone and everything that I loved just kept getting lost, swept away. I couldn't take it if it happened with Taine. I just couldn't take it.

I looked across the flat Texas land, stretching from my back yard all the way across the plains. To Lubbock, to Katy, to Abilene.

Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy

Out in the back seat of my '60 Chevy

Workin' on mysteries without any clues

Workin' on our night moves

What future did I see for myself? Would I find some love out there greater than my love for Taine? Never. Would I ever be happy in any career, any job that didn't include Taine? Never.

I stood in my back yard, contemplating what could be. What could be now. After Taine.

Tryin' to make some front page drive-in news

Workin' on our night moves

In the summertime

In the sweet summertime

I felt that what I couldn't possibly know in that mysterious, amorphous "future" everyone kept talking about was what I carried inside myself. That I was stupid. I was smart, I was an honor roll student and would be a debate champion and would be...well, shit. I was smart, but I was stupid.

We weren't in love oh no far from it

We weren't searching for some pie in the sky summit

We were just young and restless and bored

Living by the sword

Did I really love Taine?...I wondered. Was I just swept away by his pain? If Taine was ever happy, would I still love him? I kicked Texas mud from my boots, drifted across the yard. Where was Foxy? Where was anybody?

I wandered over to the old shed, far in back of the yard. Aluminum siding, rusty, barely standing. Like me.

It had been an emotional few weeks, and although the climax of that emotion over at Sly's house had been positive, I dealt with it as I dealt with any extreme emotion. Because that's the way I was wired.

And we'd steal away every chance we could

To the backroom, the alley, the trusty woods

I used her she used me

But neither one cared

We were getting our share

I looked around, stealthily, like anyone would even be awake to notice, then pulled the door of the shed open on its rusty tracks. It screamed like I was hurting it.

Workin' on our night moves

Trying to lose the awkward teenage blues

Workin' on out night moves

In the summertime

I slid the door open, ever so slowly, and stepped inside. It was warm in there. Damp. Almost comforting, like a womb. The daddy-longlegs skittering about in the darkness almost fit into the picture that played in my mind.

And oh the wonder

Felt the lightning

And we waited on the thunder

Waited on the thunder

I smiled then, and I don't know why. I picked up a campfire lantern, clicked the button to turn it on, and shone it around the inside of the shed. There were file boxes. There were some of my childhood toys. There were pictures in a box. Pictures of Rex and Tynah when they were happy. Pictures of them with my mom and dad. Everything looked so...so possible then. And then I came along.

The condom broke. That was the mystery. That was the secret. That was all there was. That was the meaning of life. At least for me. It became very hot in the shed. Very humid. I knew that Taine would be better off without me confusing him. I knew that what I was about to do was right.

I didn't know about things like chemical imbalances and clinical depression. I didn't recognize that something really good had just happened over at Sly's house, and that the emotional high had sent me into a reactive tailspin, and that it could get better in an hour. All I knew was that, at that moment, feeling the lowest I had ever felt in my life, and the future only looked like a black tunnel with no end.

I loved Taine. But he needed more. He needed to be normal.

I would never have him. And he was all I wanted. The only thing I ever wanted.

But...he had his Dad now. Sly. And Sly was the best dad anyone could want.

And he had companionship now. He had Blaine back. His brother. All the holes that Taine had been missing were filled now. There was no room for me. I was the problem. I was the faggot that would compromise who he wanted to be.

I woke last night to the sound of thunder

How far off I sat and wondered

Started humming a song from 1962

Ain't it funny how the night moves

I looked to the top shelf of the shed. There was Rex's shotgun, wrapped in a nice, red velvet casing. I stood up on tiptoes, beckoning it forward with my fingertips until it slid slowly off the top shelf and into my arms.

It felt good in my arms. It felt right.

I slid the soft felt covering off of the gun and ran my fingers over its smooth, well-oiled wooden surface.

When you just don't seem to have as much to lose

Strange how the night moves

With autumn closing in

I sat down on the floor of the shed. I felt so tired. So tired, and I was only fifteen years old. I knew that I could keep going. I could go to college, graduate, take any number of ridiculous jobs. Live on past thirty, past forty, past a marriage or two or three, and all I would ever want was Taine.

And I would never have him.

Not really.

I would have him for a moment, or a day, or a week. I might have him clutching me on a dirty couch in a shitty apartment when he felt lonely. I might be able to rub his feet after work if he didn't ever get up the nerve to talk to a young Mexican slut with tits big enough to make him able to ignore his real feelings.

But he was so far inside himself that not only me, but no one would ever be able to bring him out. It was time for me to realize that I wasn't fighting some amorphous, big-titted phantom hoax. I was fighting time.

And time always wins.

I caressed the barrel of the shotgun, and I stretched it across my legs as I laid against the wall of that rusty aluminum shed.

"Third place, and qualifying for State...from James K. Polk High School...Richard Spivey!"

I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth, sucked it like I had Jeff Salzburg's fat, insistent penis. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was Taine. Taine's hurt, sad eyes. Taine, who I loved more than life itself, but knew even from the beginning that he couldn't love me. He wanted what wasn't possible, like I did. He wanted a woman who didn't exist. I wanted a man who did exist, but not for me. Not for me. Never for me.

I looked at the ceiling of the shed, and I hoped that this one book I read in 5th grade was true. This book said that when you died, you got the one thing you always wanted in life, but didn't get.

I said one word.

I said "Taine."

And then I pulled the trigger.

Night moves!

Oh, ain't it funny how the night moves

Night moves!

Lord I remember, oh I remember, how I remember

The night moves

Night moves