Bloodlines - 2. Chapter 2

January 26, 1998

“Carrswold, what the fuck is your problem today?” the coach yelled across the ice. I inhaled through my nose, sucking the snot back up into my sinuses.

“Sorry Coach, I've got a cold,” I said. A cold. Chills, sore throat, coughing, aching, everything fucking hurt. A cold.

“Well either you get your ass moving out there or you get your ass in bed!” he yelled.

I turned to skate away when the most horrible feeling ever hit, a feeling that I knew all too well. I was going to puke. I felt it, the gurgling bile in my stomach, but unlike other times, this just shot straight up my throat. I collapsed on the ice and puked all over it, blowing out my mouth guard in the process. Everyone stared at me and the ice, totally grossed out.

“Oh for Christ's sake Carrswold. Get your ass out of here. You two, clean that shit up,” he said to the rookies.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to them as I skated to the locker room. I headed to the showers, a hot shower that would hopefully stop some of this aching, and it seemed to help. No one came in to check on me, which was probably just as well, but it gave me the opportunity to feel sorry for myself as I lugged my sick ass out to the GMC. I was never sick. This totally sucked. There was a game tomorrow night; no way was the coach going to let me play after puking on the ice. Fuck.

I sat at a stoplight and pondered how my life had gone to hell over the last few days. Saturday night I'm the fucking school hero, hockey star, making out with two of the hottest chicks in Cleveland, and hooking up with my very first guy. Life was good. Then Sunday things went all to hell. The fucking Green Bay Packers lose the Super Bowl, and I'm too hung over to get drunk enough not to give a shit. Ashley calls and breaks up with me for making out with Jessica and Kaitlyn. I get this fucking cold. And Cam Heely doesn't want to talk to me.

And of all the things, that pissed me off the most. I'd woken up first and put my digits in his cell phone, then left. He didn't call me all day on Sunday, but I blew that off. Until Sunday night. Then I called him and left him a message. Nothing. Nada. No call back. What the fuck was that about? Was he so weirded out about fucking around with me that he couldn't even talk to me? Was I that fucking gross? A horn honked to tell me I wasn't paying attention and the light had changed, so I flipped them off and hit the gas.

I guess it makes sense that he wouldn't call me back if he wanted to forget the whole thing. If he thought he made a huge mistake, that it was just some big experiment, then that made sense. And it made me sad. I guess I thought it was more than that, and I wanted to be with him again. I checked my breath and it was nasty. Halitosis on top of everything. Even my body was falling apart.

I parked in the garage and wandered into the house. Mary, the housekeeper, was there. “You look pretty bad,” she said.

“I feel like shit,” I said. I climbed the stairs to my room and collapsed on my bed. How miserable can one person be? My phone rang and woke me up about an hour later.

“Dude, are you like dead yet?” It was Kelso.

“Not yet. Why? You want my TV when I'm gone?” I glanced over at my kick-ass plasma TV on the wall.

“Fuck yeah. How long you think you've got? There's good hockey on later this week,” he joked.

“Fucker. I'm leaving it to Garner instead.”

“You wouldn't dare. Not after I helped those two rookies clean up your puke. That was gross dude.”

“Thanks. Sorry about that. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me,” I said sincerely. “I'm gonna rest tonight. Maybe I'll be up for the game tomorrow.”

“It would be nice,” he said sarcastically. “We're playing Maple. Those fuckers are pretty good this year.”

“Can't handle them without me, eh?” I teased.

“Whatever dude. Heal your nasty body.”

“Later,” I said. I hobbled back down the stairs, although I'm not sure why. I wasn't hungry. I went into the television room, with a bigger plasma TV and kicked on reruns of “Facts of Life.” What a lame show. It reminded me of Ashley.

“Mary tells me you're not well darling,” Mummy said as she breezed into the room. “What's wrong?”

“My whole freakin' body aches and I vomited during practice,” I said. She put her hand on my forehead.

“You're burning up. You must have a fever,” she said. “You stay here, I'll be right back.” Like I was going anywhere. I watched “Facts of Life” and thought about how hard I'd like to fuck Blair.

My mother came in with one of those thermometers you stick in your ear. Much more sanitary than the ones that go in your mouth, I thought, or your ass. That made me grin for a minute. Maybe I could get Cam to check my temperature with a rectal thermometer. Fuck, I couldn't even get him to call me.

“It says 101 degrees. Is this right?” Mummy asked the thermometer. If it talked back to her, I decided I would go to the hospital and add hallucinations to my list of ailments.

My father chose that time to come home from work. He put down his gin and tonic long enough to take my temperature again. Then he felt my neck, and looked down my throat. I humored him, even though it seemed like a waste of time. He was a fucking eye doctor, not an internist.

“You need to go to the doctor in the morning,” he said firmly. “Can you take him?” he asked my mother.

“I don't want to go to the doctor,” I whined. The last thing I wanted was to have my mother take me to the doctor.

“I'll make the appointment first thing. In the meantime, you relax here and I'll have Mary bring you some soup,” she said.

“I don't want to go to the doctor,” I said firmly. They ignored me and left the room. It was snowing outside, again. I looked at the windows and saw them shaking from the force of the winds, while here inside a fire blazed in the fireplace. I grabbed an afghan and a pillow and lay on the couch, watching television and feeling sorry for myself, but glad that I was inside and not outside.

After dinner my parents came in and we watched some special news show. The President was being accused of fucking around with some pudgy intern named Monica Lewinsky. He sat there in his chair and did that thing with his thumb, like where he made a fist, turned it perpendicular, and let his thumb stick out over the end. My parents were Republicans and after five years they still couldn't believe that this guy was President, so they watched him with jaded looks.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he said firmly. Shit, I believed him. If I were President, I sure as hell wouldn't fuck her. There'd have to be a lot hotter chicks willing to bone the leader of the free world. I watched him and felt his charm captivate me. He was pretty attractive, in a certain kind of way. Hell, I'd blow him. That made me laugh, and got me a weird look from my parents. I went up to bed and checked my phone, but no one had called me. No one gave a shit. I lay, languorous in my pity party, enjoying feeling sorry for myself, until I was too tired and had to put the maudlin thoughts away for the night.

January 27, 1998

“I'm not going to the doctor,” I told my mother firmly. “I feel better today. I just need to rest for a few days and kick this thing.”

“What if it gets worse?” she asked logically.

“If it gets worse, I'll go to the doctor,” I replied. The last thing I wanted to do was go see my creepy doctor. I only went to him because he was a friend of my father's. He'd find a reason to run his clammy hands all over me, to play with my balls, and to stick his finger up my ass. The guy was a fucking pervert. I kicked back on the downstairs sofa, thumbing through magazines and watching the television at the same time. Last night it had been the President on TV, this morning it was his wife. Figures she'd be there on the Today Show, gabbing away. She was rambling on about this whole affair rumor being part of some right wing conspiracy. You'd think if they were going to drum something up they'd have picked a hotter woman.

I finally felt the fatigue overwhelm me so I went upstairs and crashed. When I woke up I had a call from Kelso and a call from Garner, plus a few calls from other buds at school, but no call from Cam. Fuck. I immersed myself in my thoughts and my misery, relishing the opportunity to indulge in such unadulterated self-pity.

February 11, 1998

My father was home for breakfast, which was unusual. He was normally up and gone before I even got up. He sat there, at his chair, reading the “Plain Dealer” and eating his eggs at the same time.

“Anything exciting in the world?” Mummy asked cheerfully. He smiled at her, that radiant smile. God! They'd fucked last night. How gross was that?

“It appears that voters in Maine have finally come to their senses. They voted to overturn that gay rights law their legislature passed last year,” he observed with satisfaction.

“Thank goodness,” Mummy said.

“What's wrong with a law that protects gay people?” I heard myself say, forgetting my personal rule to never talk about issues like this with my parents.

“They're trying to convince us, convince the whole country, that this lifestyle they've chosen is normal. You watch, soon they'll be teaching about it in school, trying to convince everyone they're born gay,” he said.

“Heaven forbid! Soon they'll be trying to get married,” Mummy said with a shudder. I felt my stomach churn, the nausea rising as I thought about who I was and what that meant to my relationship with them. I forced food into my mouth, not wanting to look any different than normal, wanting to be normal, to only like girls.

“We're playing Shaker Heights again tonight. Will you be there?” I asked them. Might as well enjoy their love and support while I could. Carpe Diem.

“I've got a meeting that doesn't end until 7:00pm, but I'll head straight there afterward,” my father said.

“Cool,” I said with a smile and headed up to my room. I looked at my watch: I had an extra ten minutes. I headed into my bathroom, dropped my pants, and started stroking my dick. It didn't take me more than a few minutes to blow my second load of the morning. I re-dressed and ran down to the GMC and headed to school.

It had been two weeks and fucking Cam Heely still hadn't called me back. That asshole. The scary thing was that every time I thought about him, I got horny. Shit, it was like he awakened some beast in me. I found myself staring at guys all the time now, so much that it was going to get obvious really fast if I didn't control myself. Just yesterday in the showers I was thinking about Kelso, watching him wash off his amazing body, and I felt my dick start to plump a bit. I looked up and met his eyes and he gave me this weird look, like I was busted or something. I graduate in four months. I had to hold it together at least until then.

I pulled up to a stoplight and looked to my left. There was a really handsome guy in his mid-20s driving a late-model Nissan Maxima. He looked at me and our eyes met. He smiled, and I raised my eyebrows, flirting like I would with a chick. He put his hand on his crotch and squeezed his dick, and I instinctively licked my lips. He pulled down his zipper and stuck his hand in his pants, and I stared at him, practically drooling. The light changed and he pulled ahead of me, and then signaled that he was turning right into a park. I followed him to a pretty secluded area and parked next to him. Now he had his cock out and he was stroking it. My mind lost all reason. I got out of my SUV and nervously opened the door to his car. He smiled and motioned me in. We said nothing; I just leaned over the seat and came face to face with his cock. It was short, like Kelso's, but not quite as fat as his was.

I took him in my mouth, practicing what Cam had taught me, focusing on the pleasure the guy was getting, on his moans. His dick was leaking like crazy, the salty taste permeating my mouth and urging me on. He pushed me off and back, and then reached for my zipper. I helped him with that and took out my own dick. “Nice,” he said, then dove in on it. The stimulation, the anonymous encounter combined with his lips on my dick, set me free. In less than a minute I was blasting down his throat. Now that I'd cum, I felt dirty and gross and just wanted to get the hell out of there. He seemed to get that, so he just sat back and jacked off while I stared at him. Finally, he came, making kind of disgusting grunts. I said nothing, just hopped out of his car and into the GMC. I was late to school, but I decided it was worth it.

The arena was packed. This was a big game and everyone knew it. If we won this game, we'd be headed to the playoffs. If we lost, we'd have to fight like hell to make it. There would be no margin for error. We skated out on the ice to do our warm-ups and I saw Cam skating over on his side of the rink. He looked at me then looked away, avoiding my eyes. Fucker. I felt the rage burning inside, the uncontrollable rage to match the uncontrollable passion he'd lit in me.

The whole first period I kept my eye on him, hoping to get a chance to nail him against the boards. I wanted to hurt him so bad. I got the first goal, putting us ahead, and that just made me cocky. Then, finally, we were both on the ice and he had the puck. I charged at him and he passed the puck. I was supposed to stop, I was supposed to pull up, but I didn't. I went ahead and smashed right into him. I knocked him on his ass hard and fell right on top of him, knocking the wind out of him.

“Fuckin' cheap shot,” he wheezed.

“Bitch,” I said with a sneer. They pulled me off of him and he hobbled over to his bench. I was escorted off the ice, and kicked out of the game.

“What the fuck is wrong with you Carrswold? You're going to miss the next two or three games at least! Dumb fuck,” growled the coach. I went to the locker room, showered, and just went home. I didn't give a shit about any of them.

March 4, 1998

I stood in the bathroom peeing, horrified. I looked down and my urine was all smoky. It wasn't yellow like normal, it was almost brown. I felt a tear run down my face. My dick was broken. What the fuck was wrong? Did that dude that blew me have some sort of venereal disease? I finished peeing and inspected my cock. There, there was a bump. Probably the beginning of syphilis. I looked more closely. Was that a red spot? Maybe it was gonorrhea? How the fuck was I going to explain this to my parents? Hey Mummy, hey Dad, I gave some anonymous guy a blow job and now my pee is brown?

I sat down on the toilet seat and put my head in my hands, unable to stop the tears. I was so fucked now. I wallowed in the hopelessness of the situation, and managed to convince myself that my dick hurt and that I was peeing fire. I'd have to go to a clinic, one of those clinics for poor people. I'd give them a fake name and pay in cash. What if they demanded ID? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Weren't there confidentiality laws about that stuff? Maybe, but I didn't turn 18 until next month. That was it. I'd have to wait until next month and go then, when I wasn't a minor. Then no one would know. They could give me a shot and make this fucking disease go away. In the meantime, I'd just have to let it ravage my body. I wandered out to the television room to find my parents watching the news. Things couldn't be worse.

“Amanda, have you seen this?” my father demanded.

“What darling?” Mummy asked, looking up from her trashy romance novel.

“The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of those homosexuals! It's just like I told you. They're trying to make it normal,” he groused.

“Ruled in favor of them how?” I asked like an idiot with a death wish.

“They ruled that sexual harassment laws apply to same-sex employees as well,” he groused.

“Well, you're not planning on hitting on any guys are you?” I teased, hoping to put some levity into the situation.

“That's not funny Matthew,” he said firmly. He only called me Matthew when he was pissed. Like he was that night I flattened Cam Heely and got tossed out of the game.

“I just don't see what the big deal is. People shouldn't be harassed at work regardless, should they?” I persisted.

“You don't get it,” my father said angrily. “It's what those people do.” He said ‘those people’ the same way my grandfather had said it when he was talking about blacks. “One minute it's sexual harassment laws in their favor, the next minute your children will be programmed to think it's OK to have sex with members of the same sex. We have to stop this now, before it gets out of hand.”

They just stared at me, waiting for a response. “Matthew, are you OK? Mummy asked, concerned. Was my Chlamydia visible? Did I have herpes sores on my face?

“I'm fine,” I said, and got up.

“You're not fine,” she said and put her hand on my face. “Your face is all swollen.” At that, my father was up and staring at me too.

“Is anything else swollen?” he asked.

I nodded. “My ankles.” They were big too. Fucking syphilis was hitting my whole body all at once.

“Come on, we're taking you to the hospital,” he said firmly.

“Dad, can't we just wait and go to the doctor in the morning?” I asked.

“Get your coat,” he ordered. At this point there was no use arguing. They drove me to the hospital then, pelting me about my symptoms. We went to University Hospital, where everyone knew my Dad, so we spent zero time in the waiting room. A handsome young doctor came in and seemed to sense my nervousness.

“I'll need you to put this on,” he said, handing me one of those backless hospital gowns and looking at my parents meaningfully. They took the hint and left. I'd just gotten the stupid ass thing on when the doctor came back in. He grinned at me, and that made him even cuter.

“Do you have any other symptoms besides this swelling?” he asked. I looked at him nervously and he sensed my mood and smiled, telling me it was OK to explain it to him.

“When I pee, it's all smoky, almost brown,” I said lamely. Because I have gonorrhea, I wanted to say.

“Have you had unprotected sex?” he asked.

I stared at him, begging him not to make me answer. “Yes,” I said softly. I looked down in shame, until I felt his hand on mine.

“Look, you know that's never smart, but I don't think that's what this is, OK?” I just stared at him. It was as if I thought I was going to die, and he told me I was going to live. “I want to do a urinalysis. Can you pee in a cup for me?”

“Sure,” I said, smiling. He pointed to the bathroom and told me to pee in one of the cups on the toilet. I did, staring at the contents afterward. My pee was reddish brown. He took the sample and looked at it carefully.

“I'm going to send this to the lab, and we're going to take some blood. In the meantime, you can just relax here,” he said. “And by the way, I seriously doubt it's a sexually transmitted disease.”

“Thanks Doc,” I said.

“My name is Aaron,” he said, and flashed me that smile of his. Uh oh. “I'll be back soon.”

“Good,” I said. His eyebrow went up at that, but he smiled again and left, carrying my pee. I sat there for about ten minutes, expecting my parents to come back in, but they didn't. Instead, Aaron came back.

“I need to do a few more tests,” he said. His eyes had a different look to them. There was definitely some lust in there. “I need to check your prostate.” Now he looked nervous. “I'm worried that this has something to do with your kidneys, but I wanted to check out the rest of you so we could rule that out,” he said defensively.

“That's fine,” I said, looking at him. When I stood up, he couldn't miss the fact that my hospital gown was tenting as I started to throw wood, thinking that this hot guy's finger was going to be in my ass soon. I saw him swallow hard. I turned around and bent over the table, spreading my legs wide, flashing my ass at him. There was a mirror in front of me and I could see him staring at me and licking his lips. I flexed my pucker at him to tease him and saw his pants start to tent. I was hard as a rock now.

He ran his hand across my ass and I knew now that this was no mere professional inspection; otherwise he would have put on a glove. I felt his fingers run down my crack and across my hole and I moaned involuntarily. He slipped on his glove and lubed his finger, then began to rub it around the rim of my hole. I bit my lip to keep from sighing loudly. Then he pushed in, gently but firmly. I'd had prostate exams before, no big deal, but this guy knew what he was doing. His finger explored my ass, looking for something. I knew it before he did when he found it. It was like he found a magic button and it just lit me up. This time I really moaned and pushed back into him.

“Shhh,” he said. “People will hear you.” He pushed another finger in, moving in and out, rubbing them against my spot. I started panting now, my body so keyed up I couldn't stand it.

“Unghh!” I cried softly, and then blasted my load all over my robe. I came for fucking ever, his fingers nursing me along the whole time. Finally, panting and spent, I turned around, a huge grin on my face, an agonized look on his. Shit. Cam Heely all over again.

“I'm sorry. That was really unprofessional,” he said.

“I'm not sorry. That was amazing,” I said, pleading with him not to freak out. Why couldn't guys like me? What was it about me that grossed them out and made them want to run away as soon as I had sex with them?

He gave me a lopsided grin. “I'll get you a new robe.” He left briefly, came back and handed me the new robe, then he was gone. My parents came back in and sat with me, a surreal experience to be sure. About half an hour later, an older doctor came in.

“Where's the other doctor?” I asked innocently.

“He's in the middle of taking care of another patient,” he said disinterestedly. “Have you had strep throat recently?”

“No,” I said.

“You were sick at the end of January,” Mummy said. “Could that have been strep?” He rattled off the symptoms and they fit my ailment. They also sounded a lot like the symptoms of a common cold, I thought skeptically.

“Why do you ask?” I asked.

“Because it seems you have post streptococcal Glomerulonephritis,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“PSG is a disease of the kidneys. It's a nasty after-effect of strep throat.”

“Is it serious?” Mummy asked.

“Not usually. Normally the body fights it off on its own, so we just have to monitor it. In some cases, it requires steroid treatment to eradicate.”

“So that's it, that's the worst-case scenario?” I asked. “I have to take some steroids to clear it up?”

He shook his head. “Well, that will likely straighten things out, but it's possible that your kidneys could ultimately cease to function.”

“Cease to function?” I asked. “Wouldn't that kill me?”

He smiled, a fake smile, and it did nothing to make me feel better, it merely pissed me off. “There are alternatives: You'd have to either have a kidney transplant, or go on dialysis.” I just stared at him, horrified. That one fucking cold could ruin my whole life. “Let's not worry prematurely. The steroids will probably work just fine. I'd like to see if this gets better on its own.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I want this thing out of my body.” I had just watched a re-run of Star Trek, the Next Generation last night, where the whole ship was infected by something that turned them all into primordial creatures. I looked at my hands, expecting there to be ape hands instead of my own.

He stared at me, and my parents. “I'll prescribe steroids for you. We'll let those work, and we'll see you back here in four weeks.”

April 8, 1998

We sat in the waiting room of the doctor's office, waiting to see the specialist. My father was reading the paper and ranting about the latest homosexual crisis.

“This is just disgusting. Just absolutely disgusting. George Michael was arrested in Los Angeles, in a public park for God's sake, trying to have sex with an undercover policeman!”

“Didn't he sing that song, ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’?” Mummy asked. “I so love to dance to that.”

“Well we're not dancing to that ever again. What kind of pervert would do such a thing? There could have been children there! You see! This is just what I was talking about. First the law in Maine, then the Supreme Court ruling, and now gay men are having indiscriminate sex in the public restrooms in our parks.”

I tried to ignore his tirade, but I couldn't. George Michael was still pretty hot. I wish I'd been in that bathroom with him. Ever since Aaron had played with my prostate and made me cum, I'd been trying to re-create that feeling. I'd stuffed all kinds of shit in my ass, trying to replicate it, but I couldn't. More than anything, I wanted someone to fuck me. I wanted a cute guy who knew what he was doing to fuck me. Was that too much to ask?

I sighed, and that got a look from my parents, that same worried look I was so fucking sick of seeing. At least it shut them up. I was damaged goods anyway. We all knew the steroids weren't working. My face and ankles weren't as swollen as they were, but I was still pissing out reddish brown pee. I was facing the worst-case scenario. Who would want someone like me anyway? I mean, I'm pretty handsome, I've still got a decent physique, but I'm fucking damaged goods. My kidneys are on borrowed time. I knew it. They knew it.

Four days ago they'd done biopsies of my kidneys. They'd also tested my parents to see if either one was a potential donor candidate, and even though they'd done it at our insistence, that they'd done it at all told us all what we already knew.

“The doctor will see you now,” said the nurse. She led us back to an office that looked like our library: Lots of dark wood and burgundy leather chairs. The doctor was an older gentleman, and I instinctively missed Aaron. It would have been nice having someone younger that I could relate to, even if he didn't give me the best fucking orgasm of my life.

“We've gotten the test results back and to be candid, it is what we feared: The PSG hasn't responded to the steroids.” Mummy started to cry softly and my father put his arm around her.

“So what does this mean?” I asked, needing to hear my options again.

“Well, your kidneys are functioning at the moment, and may continue to function for a while. Eventually, you will begin to feel a malaise, very tired, and then we will have to start dialysis.”

“What about a kidney transplant?” I asked. My parents were very uncomfortable. Were they unwilling to give me a kidney? They had two. I mean, I know it's asking a lot, but I'd give either one of them a kidney in a heartbeat. I suddenly felt very alone, like someone pulled the floor out from under me and I was falling into an abyss.

“We are going to put you on the donor list,” the doctor said delicately. He was hiding something. They were all hiding something. Suddenly the floor was firmly below my feet again and I wasn't sad, I was pissed off.

“How long will it take to get a new kidney?” I asked.

“The waiting list is long. It will be a while,” he said, not answering my question.

“But if I could find a donor, couldn't I get a transplant then?” I asked.

“Only if it's a family member,” he said cagily.

“And my parents aren't a good match?” I asked.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Neither of them?” He shook his head. “Is that possible? How is that possible?” I demanded. He looked at me, unwilling to say anything. “Answer my fucking question, God damn it!” I yelled. “Answer me!”

He looked like I'd hit him, but I didn't care. “Matt, calm down,” my father said.

“No way. It's my life on the line and this dipshit won't even tell me the truth,” I said, pointing at the offended doctor.