Snowflake: A Love Story - 26. Copenhagen, Denmark: The Rose

Brian, many years later
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I'm a few minutes from home in Fælledparken, a lovely park near central Copenhagen where I have lived and worked for these many years. It is here that we moved after we were married in Kakslauttanen and enjoyed a long honeymoon with my Snowflake's family. Such precious memories . . .

I'm sitting on our bench, here, looking at the lake and the beautiful fountain at its center. Denmark is such a gorgeous place in Autumn, though the cold comes a bit early as compared to most of the places I've lived (besides Finland, of course). Actually, a light flurry of snow is beginning to fall. I'm not as good with the cold as I once was. It's strange to remember my being an Olympic skier for that short time and actually winning medals and things. It seems like another life. But then, how many different lives have I lived in just this one. More than my share, I suppose. Gay sex addict, neuroscience student and then doctor, Olympic skier, and, most importantly, the lover and husband to my Snowflake. He always kept me feeling so young, even when we were both getting quite on in years.

My name is Brian Chesney. I am 85 and I was the lead neurologist for Rigshospitalet, a part of the University of Copenhagen's medical school. We chose to move here because Denmark's medical system in neurological research is so wonderful and, with my celebrity, the Danes were more than happy to accommodate my wishes to finish my residency there. I had no interest in returning to America. We were gay as larks and my beloved nation had started to turn against us there again. In Denmark, strangely, we could be free where we couldn't in the ‘Land of the Free." I'm no longer the blonde and blue-eyed All-American type that likes to surf, ski, and have sex parties up in a loft on Castro above Qbar with 25 or so of my really close friends. I doubt that I would even be visible to the young twinks in Castro now. But here in Copenhagen, older people are treated with a bit more respect and I can go to the various gay bars downtown and enjoy chatting with some of the most beautiful young men on the face of the earth! I never found our ‘Link' brigade we had group sex with in Helsinki, however. Those five probably went back to Narnia for all of me.

Gosh, how I ramble on these days. It's harder to keep a straight thought in my head and I don't mean that I've suddenly taken to women. I just have so much . . . stuff in there anymore. So many memories and experiences. I'm sure I bore poor Jimmy to death these days. Bless him, he moved out here to be with me when Snowflake passed on. He's been a great comfort to me. He lost so much in his long life and yet, he is still just as incredible as he has ever been. Sometimes behind the grey hairs and wrinkles, I catch a glimpse of that cute boy who flipped his hair at me in that ski lodge so long ago . . . whatever its name was. I can't remember. Auburn something . . .

Ah, yeah, we bring each other much-needed comfort, Jimmy and me. He's been a little worried about me lately. I don't know why. I've been seeing my Snowflake more in dreams and things lately. Sometimes I see him even when I'm not asleep! What's weird is I see him not as I knew him, but as, like, that fourteen-year-old kid that wasn't allowed to grow up all the way due to the terrible thing that happened. Snowflake, as a boy, smiles at me excitedly, almost like he's expecting something. I don't know. I am a neurologist and I can only figure I'm getting a touch of dementia. Lord knows with the amounts of alcohol I used to drink in my twenties I'm amazed I don't need a diaper and for someone to hold my head up to eat.

I'm rambling again, aren't I?

Well, I guess I can say that when Snowflake left me to join his Tristan in the great beyond those two long years ago that I rather stopped caring a lot about the world and what goes on in it. When you get old all the things the young get all fussy about seems not to matter so much anymore. Sports, sex, drugs, making money, getting ahead, etc. You realize you ain't gonna take none of it with you so you might as well not worry about it anymore. Memories and waiting to be with those memories again one day seem to be all that really matters.

Heh, I just pulled a picture of us out! I was hot as an H-Bomb in those days for sure and Snowflake was as bright and gorgeous as his namesake in the sun. We were so beautiful back then! But so much of that beauty came from our love! That never changed and I feel that I was just as beautiful at 83 as I was at 33 when Snowflake and I settled down and made a home together.

I'm tired, now, but fulfilled!

I've had a good life. A better life than probably I ever deserved! I found what I was looking for all those years ago when I was driving that length to Tahoe. I do remember the trip at least. I was so clueless, then, heh. Funny, that trip to Tahoe, the hours spent driving there listening to my electro-dance music crap would be the last hours I would spend as a boy. Snowflake really made a man out of me and he did it by building me up and not tearing me down. My life started anew that day I met him.

I broke the silly pointless cycle of hookups and binging and found something to really live for! Every day I was with him I was made more and more alive! He was my everything . . ..

I'm alone out here by the lake today. Jimmy wasn't feeling well so I came by myself. I seemed to need the solitude, I guess. I remember finding myself in those Tahoe mountains while looking up at the stars and the snow-covered hills all around me. I found my place in the universe. They'd been there always and they would probably stay there always. What is strange now, even in the finite amount of time I still have left on this earth, something about my relationship with Snowflake makes me feel like I could, possibly, be as timeless as those mountains and stars. The more I've lived the more I see things that tell me that things go on and remain even when the physical body dies. I'm not one of those neuroscientists that only believe in chemical impulses blinking out in a dying brain. I was for a long time, but no longer. I've seen children born that grow to so closely resemble a man I eased into death upon an earlier occasion that a connection can't be ruled out. Am I a believer in reincarnation now? Probably . . . among a lot of other ‘strange' things I've come to believe and know.

My main truth now is that I know Snowflake waits for me! I know that we were meant to go on together through every turn of the cycle of life and death. We are soul mates and I feel that we've lived many lives before and will live many together in the future.

I honestly can't wait to die! I want so much to feel him in my arms again . . .

I place a single red rose on the seat next to me where he used to sit with me. The red of it so beautifully offsets the small dusting of snow accumulating there. So many little snowflakes and I can still see some that haven't had a chance to break down so I can see their shapes.

Today is an anniversary of sorts. This is the anniversary of the first time we came here and sat on this very bench together all those years ago! It was also the first day we moved into our flat near the university. We fed the ducks and swans and watched the beautiful people and adorable children that live here. We became such fixtures on this bench that we actually watched some of those children grow into men and women! They still recognized us and would stop and chat. My Danish is shitty, but between my bad Danish and their slightly better English, I was able to communicate. Snuffy wasn't so lucky. He never managed to master Danish very well. I think he had a mental block against it. He used to say . . .

". . . that it was too much like Swedish, jö?" The voice is young and yet even in its youth, I would know it anywhere!

His pale skin, silver-white hair, slightly plumper face, and those hypnotic crystal blue eyes capture me. Oh, but he was such a beautiful boy! I could see where Tristan would have fallen madly in love with him.

I get up on my feet to walk over to the apparition that is only slightly veiled by the increasing flurry of snowflakes falling through him. Interestingly, I more jump up than ‘get' up. That is something I haven't been able to do for ages! I feel so light! How strange! But, I hardly have time to care because as I spring up to see if my love's vision before me is real, he comes to me with the same speed and with tears of joy in his eyes!

"I've missed you, my Butt Blossom! Oh, you are so cute at this age too!" I am beyond words as I weep openly to hold my Snowflake in my arms again, even if our arms are strangely smaller and thinner than I remember.

It's then that I pull away and look at my hands and I'm astonished! They're so smooth! So pink! So . . . young! I turn to look behind me and am not so much shocked as intrigued. I see the heap of an old man in a brown overcoat on the ground like he tried to get up but fell over like he'd been drinking too much. Then I see the red rose in the snow sitting on the bench next to the bit of a butt-shaped void where the old man must have been sitting. I then realize who it is and what has happened! Rather than horrified I'm relieved and overjoyed!

"Wow! That's it? That's all it took? I didn't even know anything had happened!" I ask and hear my young voice for the first time since I was fourteen myself!

"Yes. It is like stepping out of old clothes. The suffering beforehand is always miserable if suffering there is to be, but dropping the dead weight is really rather nifty!" Another voice answers. It is a voice with the same strange Finnish accent as Snowflake's, but a little deeper.

Tristan comes walking out of a beam of sunlight that has suddenly come to light up the lake and the glittering snowflakes and snow all around! Where he walks, only a leaf-strewn path exists. The snow does not touch him.

He is as gorgeous as Snowflake said he was! Tristan comes to embrace us both and gives us both a sweet little peck on our cheeks.

"So YOU are the famous Brian I keep hearing about! Well, Snowfluffs did not lie! You are every bit as gorgeous as he said you were! I am Tristan! Come now because I am bored and it's time to play!" He carries a soccer ball and he bounces it on the ground and then off of my head!

"Hey! Fuck you! Gimme that!" I start to chase Tristan with the ball who runs away giggling and Snowflake follows with twittery giggles of his own.

We run into the sunbeams and out of the snow and we have a ball playing just as kids do because we can!

We can because we are young again . . . forevermore!

Never The End . . .