Remembering Tim - 4. Chapter 4 - I'll Go

My desire for Kiel seemed to increase exponentially after Uncle Walter gave me a “good” talking to. I guess it was the old birds and bees talk most fathers are supposed to give their sons, but my birds and bees were mostly roosters and drones. It was probably the talk Kiel wanted me to get from Neil. All I wanted was to tell him I knew the secret handshake and my membership card was in the mail. Only, Kiel seemed to be spending a lot of time with Tim.

Two deaths in a year’s time is a lot for a fifteen-year-old boy, but to lose a friend, too; especially to a boy who you didn’t like, well, I was teetering on the edge rather quickly. Desire turned to heartache and eventually ambivalence set in turning my days into perpetual dreary hours between waking and sleep. I had no energy, no concentration, nothing interested me.

The only thing to do was take my basketball out to the driveway and throw the silly thing at the net. Since I was so pathetically awful at making baskets, a good shot made for a very good feeling in my worthless life; except, I wasn’t making any good shots. I wasn’t trying hard enough to make anything close to a good shot because the last thing I wanted as days stretched into weeks and the new school year bore down on my mind was to feel anywhere close to good. Happy wasn’t in my vocabulary.

I kept seeing Kiel and Tim together. They were everywhere. I was nowhere. I saw them laughing. I felt like crying. They seemed to be doing everything. I didn’t know what I’d done.

I wanted to hate Tim for what he’d done to me, for what he was probably doing with Kiel, for what he’d done with Stevie. He seemed so nice afterward, but now that he had Kiel I couldn’t imagine anyone being as horrible as Tim. I tried to hate him, but I couldn’t. I’d look at him and Kiel together and he looked like someone I’d want to know, too. That day in his bedroom had been so horrible, yet he practically apologized for forcing me to submit to his desires. You learn in church you’re supposed to stop hating someone if they apologize and Tim kind of apologized; at least, I thought he did.

Exactly one week before school started I came to the conclusion nothing really mattered anymore. My life wasn’t going anywhere so I wrote out a note. You have to leave a note or no one will believe you did it on purpose. My note said:

Dear Kiel,

I thought we might be friends. Then I believed we might fall in love. I wanted to love you, but you’ve chosen another. I can’t live without you.

Always forever,

Geoff

I folded the paper in half, wrote his name on the outside, and taped it to the Elkins’ backdoor. They’d see it sometime after I was gone.

I thought about using Dad’s pistol, but Mother had sold all of Dad’s guns, including the pistol. There was nothing else to do except go back to the bridge. The number sixteen trolley cost twenty-five cents and I’d be there in about forty-five minutes. Such a short time to live, but then I wasn’t having much fun anyway.

I got off on the far side and jaywalked across Aurora Avenue. It was after eight o’clock, so there wasn’t much chance of being killed from the meager evening traffic, not that I didn’t think about it. I walked slowly toward the exact spot where I’d almost done it before. I wasn’t going to sit on the railing this time. Up, over, and down, that was my intention.

Tears were in my eyes when I saw Kiel standing on the sidewalk. I didn’t know where he came from. I didn’t want to know what he was doing there.

I felt sick, nauseous, seeing him standing in front of me, blocking my way to death. Obviously, he’d read my note. He stretched out his arms as if welcoming me into a hug. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to feel his body against mine. I wanted out.

I walked up to him. Our fingers touched.

“Aw, isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen,” a voice behind me said. “Okay queers up against the railing.”

“What?” Kiel and I said together.

“You heard me. Up against the railing, or we’ll have to open you up.”

I turned to see two boys not much older than Kiel and I. They were dirty, scruffy, and both were holding knives, long, sharp knives, switchblade knives; the kind you see in movies with the kids who always seem to be wearing white t-shirts and have slicked back hair. The kind of knife you’d want in a fight. Obviously, these boys weren’t afraid to use them and probably knew how to use them.

“Up against the railing,” the tallest one said. He wasn’t much taller than me, the other a head shorter. What traffic there was whizzed by, a few cars honking, none stopping.

Kiel and I turned and placed our hands on the railing. There was a seaplane landing on Lake Union. It looked as if it was hardly moving as it glided down to the water, the crystal white splash of water.

“This is how it’ll be tonight,” the tallest one said, as the other one hadn’t said anything, yet. “One of you is going to jump. I don’t care which, but one will jump. Either that, or one of you will be breathing out between his ribs.”

“I’ll go,” Kiel said, pulling himself up onto the railing. Before I could say anything, he was gone. He didn’t even scream.

“Wow, did you see that, queer? Looks like your lover boy didn’t want the feel of my knife. Well, I’ll tell you what, that’s what I think you want.”

The pain wasn’t as excruciating as I thought. It burned, but I wasn’t paying any attention to them or what they were doing to me. Kiel was dead. That’s all I could think about. I don’t think I even heard the sirens, the gruff voices of the police pulling the toughs away from me, the firemen laying me down on the stretcher, all I could think of was Kiel killing himself for me. How could he do that?

And, then I couldn’t think anymore.

**********

Ever wake up unable to move your hands or legs? Ever wake up feeling pinned to the bed? It certainly isn’t the most comforting sensation.

They’re called restraints. Hospitals put people in restraints because they are a danger to themselves or others. Crazy people get restraints all the time. I’m so crazy I tried to kill myself twice and failed both times.

I was not fully awake, but I could feel the restraints holding me to the bed. I was not dead. I’d been saved, again. I was alive for no other reason than my own incompetence at killing myself. You’ve got to be pretty pathetic not to be able to do something as simple as offing yourself.

Tears filled my eyes, but I refused to open them. The plastic tube coming out the end of my dick tickled in a disgusting way. The restraints on my wrists were almost too tight. My nose itched. I could not scratch anything with my hands bound to the bedrails.

Then I remembered Kiel died instead of me. I didn’t want to be reminded that I was alive while my new best friend died to save me. The tears burned my eyes, but I could not open them. His last words, “I’ll go,” rang in my ears over and over like some mantra of an Indian holy man.

“Geoff? Are you awake, Geoff?” My mother’s voice asked.

I wasn’t in the psych ward. They don’t allow mommies and daddies to muck up your shrink’s good work. I remembered the stabbing and realized I must be in a surgery ward, the pediatric surgery ward. I’m still a kid, even after going so crazy, I was still counted as a kid.

Mother’s hand pressed lightly on my shoulder. No one else has her soft touch. I don’t know any other women who wear such cheap cologne, it is nauseously sweet. I’ve smelt it for so many years it no longer turns my stomach as much as it did in the beginning.

“Geoff?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re in the hospital.”

“I figured that,” I said, rattling the bedrails by jiggling the restraints.

“Will you open your eyes?”

“Not yet.”

“There’s someone to see you. I’ll go get him.”

The psychologist, I figured. Doctor Joshua Morgan, PhD, not your everyday child psychologist. No, Doctor Morgan wasn’t well versed in queer boys trying to commit suicide because their boyfriend died. He worked the county hospital psych ward trolling for patients who’d lost their god. Deep down he felt God was in control and that made him very ineffective as far as I was concerned. He’ll be disappointed I tried, again, I thought. I was not certain I cared what he felt.

“Hi, Geoff,” a familiar voice said. “I got your note.”

I’d never heard a ghost talk before. Well, they spoke in movies, but movies aren’t real, are they. This had to be a ghost because I’d seen Kiel jump over the railing. I’d seen him fall from the bridge before the knife sunk into my back as easily as a hot poker into warm butter with the other knife holding back a moment before slipping in to do its own damage to my young body.

Yet, this voice continued to talk to me, insisting it was coming from a living, breathing, substantial teenage boy who had a big dick. God, did that boy have a big dick. The kind every boy prayed for on bended knees at night before going to bed after discovering his own pathetic little willy was barely a handful and there were other boys out in the world that had bigger dicks. It was the kind of dick so far out on the bell curve, average dicks paled in comparison. The kind of dick where being uncut was an attribute along with its incredible length and girth. The kind of dick that doesn’t need a sock to make a bulge in your jeans.

“Will you open your eyes, please? I’ve never talked to someone tied to their bed.”

He was a scared ghost. Afraid of my craziness. That felt good, having something over him. My nose still burned from crying, but I opened my eyes and looked at him standing close to my bed. He wasn’t a bloody ghost. He must have died before hitting, scared of the fleeting, excruciating moment of pain before Death sucked the life out of you.

It was then I noticed the IV needle in the back of my left hand and felt something else, the pull of adhesive against my skin. When I was in the psych ward before, there was a story about a young kid who wanted to die so much he pushed his hand into the recently stitched incision the surgeons repaired when he’d tried to disembowel himself. By the time the nurse checked on him, the boy had pulled all of his intestines out and his bloody hand was trying to pull out his stomach. He died with his guts spilled on the floor like an upturned basket of slippery eels. You have to be really, really crazy to do something like that. It was only a story, of course, told to the new kids to scare them, to test their own reality, before one of the crazier kids shoved his cock up your ass.

I looked into Kiel’s eyes. They were real. You can tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes. Mine were full of tears. His were full of life.

Except, I’d seen him die.

“You’re dead. I saw you jump.”

“What?”

“On the bridge, before I was stabbed. They made you jump. No, you jumped on your own. You knew I couldn’t do it, so you did it for me. You died, so I didn’t have to.”

“I’m not dead, I didn’t jump,” Kiel said. It looked like he was scared. Why, I don’t know. Maybe he’d never talked to a crazy person before. “I still have your note, though. It’s in my bedroom. No one else has seen it. I can’t be what you want.”

“Because of Tim, isn’t it? He likes your dick in him, doesn’t he? That’s why you’re with him so much.”

“What?”

“I see you with him. You’re always with him.”

“He’s my friend. I haven’t fucked him.”

I turned my head so I didn’t have to look at him. He was better being a ghost. I wanted to scream, but crazy people screamed and I wasn’t so crazy I could scream.

“I love you,” I said, still looking at the other side of the bed. Fresh tears were falling from my eyes. The kind you get when love begins to tear at your heart.

“I can’t be your boyfriend. I lost one already. I don’t want to go through that, again. It hurts too much. We can be friends, though.”

“Like with Tim?”

“No, not like that. Tim is different.”

“I can’t share you with Tim.”

“I’m not asking you to share. My friendship with Tim is different. I can kiss you. Tim and I don’t even kiss, let alone touch each other. Can I kiss you, now?”

Our lips met.

“I’m gay, you know.”

“I am too.”

“My dad said I was. He was going to send me away. He knew about us. Will you fuck me if I ask?”

“No, I will not be your boyfriend. I cannot love you like that.”

“Can you love me, at all?”

“Yes, some.”

Once more our lips met. I could live with some of his love.

**********

I must have slept because Mother came back and introduced me to Dr. Timothy Randall, MD. He was so young, so short; he looked like, well, me. I’d swear he looked not much over fifteen. He was slender, too, like a diver. His face was older, though. You could see a lot of years in his eyes.

His hair was short, half an inch, maybe; and, black like Kiel’s. He’d been in the sun, more. His tan skin glowed with vitality. The grip of his handshake said a lot about how he probably liked to fuck, not that I’d ever get the chance. Mother smiled at me and left. It’s best if your mother isn’t there when you talk about things with a psychiatrist.

“Hello, Geoff, my name is Timothy Randall, but you can call me Tim. A lot of my patients call me Doctor Tim.”

“I know a Tim. He practically raped me. It was more forced sex than an actual rape. He deceived me into letting him fuck me. I’ll call you Doctor Randall, okay?”

“Sure, Geoff, whatever you want.”

“Will you scratch my nose? I can’t reach it, with these,” I said, pulling at the restraints.

“How about if I let you scratch your own nose?”

Doctor Morgan sent him to me. Doctor Randall specialized in teens that didn’t see any point in all the switchbacks on their trail of life. I suppose looking like a teen helped. I know it helped me. I felt like I was talking to someone just like me, someone my age, who understood what I was going through.

“I’m gay,” I said, wanting to get that out of the way. It felt good saying that, finally. Even though I hadn’t said it to Mother or anyone else; except, of course, Uncle Walter and Kiel, who just coincidentally were gay, too.

“Does that matter?”

“It explains a lot, about me, I guess, now that I think about all the problems I’ve been having. Will it be a problem, with you?”

“No, I don’t have a problem with that.”

“I didn’t tell Doctor Morgan.”

“I know; you didn’t tell Doctor Morgan a lot of things. He doesn’t deal with teenagers all that well. He’s still a good child psychologist, but teens aren’t his bag.”

“Kind of like my dad,” I said, feeling a tear well up into my eye. I hated him for hating me, but I could still cry for him and with a fresh tear in my eye, I added, “My dad is dead.”

“What did you like about him?”

And, so, our first session started. It felt good knowing I was going to be seeing a lot of Doctor Randall in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. He prescribed some pills for me, something to bring a little sanity back into my life. But, it was his willingness to trust me enough to remove the restraints that gave him the edge. It felt good scratching my own nose.