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18 Weeks of Twoey - 122. Week Eighteen Wednesday Dec 31, 2014: Blessings
acceptance
beatific, blissful
lightening ,encouraging ,blessing
climate of comfortable calmness
contentment
– David
***
Two things overwhelmed me this morning when I first woke up near sunrise. The first was the sharp taste of rebuke from my dream. The second, which thankfully eclipsed that dream, was my memory of his exquisite sign of love, when David gave himself to me last night.
The dream was simple, stark and sobering. Danny was with me, sitting on that white bed where he left me after we were shot. He smiled and gave me a kiss. Then his face became stern. He admonished me, reinforcing all the guilt I already felt for having failed my love during his time of greatest need.
“You did not fight hard enough for him, Twoey! You almost lost him. It was his love for you that caused him to wage the war with his own mind in the first place. It very nearly cost him his life. It was only love – his love for his brother – which saved him. But now you are together and I’m happy for you both. If you never forget how difficult it was to get where you are, you will succeed. I’ll wave goodbye to you a little later.”
Danny kissed me again, and then vanished.
I was humbled. Forcing my mind to return to thoughts of David and last night, I could not comprehend how, after only two days into our “us,” his love for me was so great that he wanted – almost needed – to have me enter him. I tried everything I knew to make it easier for him, but I realized he must have experienced pain. Pain for me! Remembering what Danny told me, I vowed to never let him go. That began right away, as I hugged him more tightly and drifted back to sleep. This time my sleep was peaceful and happy.
A lick to my ear was the next thing I felt. When my eyes popped open, the lick was followed by a nibble and then a kiss.
“What time is it?” I was still groggy from the contented second-slumber.
“Eleven. We’ve slept in.”
“I was awake earlier, but it felt so right with the two of us in bed that I drifted off again.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Pee.”
“And then?”
“Shower.”
“And then?”
“I thought that while we were showering, I’d give you practice making love to me in a vertical position.” I figured there was no sense wasting the experience I gained at the hands of Erik.
“Let’s go.”
My angel was a fast learner – that is, if we can judge by the load of cum he forced out of me onto the shower wall. It made me even more determined for us to get tested. I wanted to feel his skin inside me. Erik did that, “by accident,” a few times and it was electrifying, but also made me worried, and more than cautious. The last thing I would ever want is to give a disease to my angel, especially one from that devil.
By the time we had finished with all our morningnanigans, it was afternoon. David and I decided on a small lunch of cheese quesadillas made with some tortilla shells we found in the freezer. He whipped up a spicy, tangy cheese sauce for the filling with some Piri-Piri sauce he came across in our fridge. He also found another peach and stuck thin slices inside the wraps. I began to believe that perhaps the peach was his weakness!
After enjoying that little warming treat and having cleaned up, we were once again on the sofa – but this time to talk. I could sense a small concerned look on his face.
“School begins again on Monday.”
“Yep.”
“You just came out to all your friends.”
“Um-hm, and so did you.”
“I guess I did. So do you see any need to hide the fact we’re boyfriends?”
“Not for me.”
“Good. Then we won’t.”
“There might be a few who don’t like it.”
“That’ll be their problem. And with some of the friends we have, it could become a significant problem for them. But I think we owe it to ourselves, as well as every other gay kid in the school, to be out and secure about it.”
“Maybe we could start a gay-straight alliance. They had one in Nottingham, where I went to school in Syracuse. I should contact Lisa Brock. She could get us in touch with the right people.”
“She’s Sam’s friend.”
“Our Sam?”
“Yeah! He told me about her a while ago.”
“All the better.”
“Well, it’s a thought we should seriously consider. Maybe it’s about time Daleville discovered the twenty-first century.”
We were interrupted by his ringtone.
David looked at his phone. “It’s my father. I’m going to decline the call.” And he did.
“Angel, you’re going to have to talk to him at some point in time. He’ll be home in a few days.”
“I know. I’m not ready yet. I need to purge myself of this hate first.”
“What hate? Why do you hate your father?”
“Something happened to me when I was young. Something so terrible that my brain has shut out its memory to protect me. He was supposed to protect me; he was my father. She was supposed to protect me; she was my mother. She was in league with the evil responsible. So, I ask you, what was he? He told me a story of whisking me away to Gary’s house, but it was just a story. Things don’t add up. Maybe they will when I remember. But for now, I’m suspicious. I’m suspicious because he continues to ignore me. He’s ignored enough important stuff that my gut instinct has been to distance and protect myself from him. Am I right? I don’t know. But I think my instincts are trying to protect me. If they are, I’ve got to go with them for now. Maybe our mom will help me unravel all this shit, but for the time being, I have to protect myself. Does that make any sense to you? Am I wrong?”
“Oh, God! Angel, I never knew. I don’t know how to answer except that your instincts have been pretty accurate when it came to me. I have to agree with you, I think.” He gave me a kiss, and then I had a thought.
“What about the rest of your family?”
“I don’t know. It’s like Tommy and I have been living in a bubble. He’s the only one who watched out for me. My sister Liz has been basically absent. When I was in the hospital, she told me some startling stuff about when we were younger. But since then she’s avoided me. My Aunt has taken the place of a mother in our house, but not really. I mean, I like her enough, and she’s been good to me, but there is a strange disconnect between us. This wall I’ve felt between them and me led – during my confusion –to the belief they would hate me when they discovered I was gay. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Now I just think they don’t give a fuck about me. During my confusion I wondered if I was really their son. I thought maybe I should I get a DNA test. Then, from some stuff Gary had mentioned, I even thought I might have been some kind of child hostage held between his uncle and Enos Johnson. I was really whacked-out and over-thinking stuff during that time. This is the crap that had been consuming me before.”
“Before what?”
“Before you. Now I don’t care, but I still need to keep a distance. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m misreading everything. I know I have to consider that possibility. But for now, I need to protect myself and keep a distance. My new therapist will help me straighten it all out.” My angel graced me with another kiss.
At that moment, my phone chimed. “It’s Gary.”
“Hey Gary, what’s up?”
“Twoey, do you know where David is?”
“Yep, sitting right here next to me.”
“Oh, thank God. I was beginning to worry. I hadn’t seen him at his house.”
“Nope. Been with me 24/7, he has.”
“Really? That’s great. Hey, Mel is here. Are you guys decent? Maybe we could visit for bit?”
I hit the mute button. “Gary wants to come over with Mel and visit for a few minutes. Is that OK?”
“Sure.” But then he got the strangest look on his face.
I went back to Gary. “Yeah, we’re just sitting here talking. Come on over.”
After I disconnected I looked at him. “What?”
“He got orders from New York City to check up on me. They don’t like that I declined the call …hehe.”
We threw on ‘more-decent’ clothes and returned to the living room just as Gary knocked on the door. David answered it.
“Gary, Mel, how are you guys? Come on in.”
He showed them in and directed them to the little love seat as he joined me on the bigger sofa. I took over my duty as host. “Do you guys want anything? There’s soda and leftover snacks from the party.”
Gary was looking around. “No, we’re fine. I see you guys got everything cleaned up and returned to normal.”
“Yep. My mother will be back Friday. At least that’s what she told David. He’s been the only one who’s talked to her. I’ve been trying to avoid her witchlike powers. She’ll figure out I had a party though. There’s no doubt in my mind.” We all had a chuckle about that.
Then Gary looked at David. “So, you talked to Twoey’s mom but won’t talk to your father?”
“Pretty much. Sooo, what did they send you to find out?”
Gary smiled at my angel’s bluntness. “Just to see if you were OK.”
“I’m OK. Actually, I’m better than OK.” That was when he put his arm around me.
“I can see that.”
“What else do they want to know?”
“Nothing I haven’t already verified. I think they were just worried.”
“How novel. Well, as you can see, we have everything under control. Are you guys going to be at the lake tonight?”
“Sure. We wouldn’t miss the New Year’s Eve shindig for the world. Especially with the mild temperatures. Do you remember how we froze our asses last year?”
“Yeah, my body didn’t thaw out until February, I think.”
Gary and Mel stood up. “Well, we’ll see you later down at the lake. I’ll go back home and report that you’re perfectly fine.” He was chuckling.
After they left, I hugged my angel. “Are you really alright? Did Gary upset you?”
“No, not at all! He was just being a good little soldier. He could have told them without coming here, but the fact he did, and witnessed me with his own eyes, is important to them.”
“Them? Who’s them?”
“Someone once told me: never ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
He followed that with a kiss and then a make-out session which left me unconcerned about the details of his weird family. After that, we started a fire, got back into our ‘comfortable’ clothes, watched a movie and hung out until about eight when I got to watch him make a meal.
“This was the first meal our mother taught me. You were still in the hospital. It’s fast and easy. Chicken and mushrooms in a quick little sauce over pasta.”
Sure enough, we were eating in about forty-five minutes. Mom had made this for me before, but the fact my angel prepared it, before my eyes, made it more special. The rest of the evening flew by until a little before eleven. We dressed and bundled up a bit but, as Gary mentioned, it was in the high 40’s tonight and so it felt unusually mild to our winter-thickened blood.
The first thing I noticed, as we entered the park, was the music. It seemed somehow foreign, this human music-making intruding on the beauty of nature. But it was a gathering to celebrate the arrival of 2015. I thought about the year as we made our way into the park. I was born in 1999 and so had lived in two centuries. If I lived until I was over one-hundred, I will have lived in three centuries. I had a vision of the two of us, all cranky and old, living in some home and celebrating the New Year of 2101. That random thought was erased when we ran into Matty and Martin. When he came to my party Sunday, Matty had told me how his brother and Cory Snyder’s younger brother had this big talk and swore off boy-sex to become fully straight for high school. I guess at about the same time Martin had decided he was more gay than anything else and the two gravitated together. It seemed so weird seeing Matty in a relationship, but I’m happy for him. Maybe it was all for the best. At least he won’t be pawing David during gym – he’d better not!
The lights were on, but seemed at half their usual strength. I noticed the small rose-like explosion of a skyrocket over the lake. Gary and Mel appeared. He grabbed David in a tight hug and seemed to whisper something in his ear. He hugged me too, but I didn’t receive that best-friend whisper. Too bad Mike wasn’t here. Maybe I could get him down next year. The crowd began increasing pretty rapidly as the clock moved on. Every so often a little pattern would appear in the sky. I couldn’t tell if they were being sent from somewhere on this shore, or from the other side of the lake, but they weren’t very loud.
We saw Donny and Chuck. They had the look of freshly discovered love – sort of like David and me. The only difference was, I’d known David long enough to understand him. I thought that made our new-love status a little easier. In a way, it seemed we were old friends. Whatever it was, I knew I would never stop fighting for him, for us. That lesson had been seared into my brain. Chuck hugged David and whispered something in his ear, and then Donny did the same thing, whisper and all. I’d have to ask him about those whispers tomorrow.
Just to reiterate a point I had previously mentioned, Tommy and Barbara appeared with two other couples. One was Matty’s brother Mark with a cute girl and the other couple I didn’t know at all. When they were introduced to us, I guess it was Mark’s other best friend, a kid named Curt. I wondered if that was Cory Snyder’s younger brother – the name almost rang a bell – but by the time I had thought of the possibility, they were gone and lost in the growing crowds.
David kept his hand firmly in mine the whole time. I guess he didn’t want to lose me in the confusion. We made our way down to the shore where we could see the fireworks barge in the lake. It really looked like there would be quite a display at midnight, just as David had explained. Every once in a while, the crew on the barge would send off a quiet rocket to ‘bloom’ over the lake. There was even some guy on the beach with one of those backyard kettle-grills cooking hotdogs!
We met Sam and Deena down there. With them were Lanni and Benny. Lanni approached us and had a knowing grin on her face when she spotted our clenched hands. She then held my face in both her hands and kissed me. She repeated the kiss with David. I cautiously glanced at Benny, but he was smiling broadly – almost proudly.
At about that time the half-strength lights slowly went down and off completely. A display lit up the sky in bright red, then white, then blue stripes. The stripes began to fade as the crowed turned even more jubilant. I checked my phone and saw it was almost midnight. I looked back at the sky and noticed the red and white stripes were nearly gone, but the blue persisted, although weakened.
The mayor’s voice replaced the music over the audio system. He was at 60 seconds, counting out every 10 seconds at first. It was at this moment the last display began to fade gently into a pattern of soft blue stripes which quickly lost their brightness and became mere vestiges. With the park lights off, and no brightness from the fireworks, except that quickly decomposing blue background, the entire sky lit up as the stars were now visible on this crisp winter night. You could even see the quarter-moon reflected in the lake. I smushed myself closer to my angel. It was truly a spiritual moment.
We were in awe, staring at the sky, when suddenly an amazingly bright shooting star slashed across the sky and across that rapidly fading blue pattern.
“Danny!”
We both said it at the same time.
David and I looked at each other, still a bit shaken.
The mayor was now into the last ten seconds. The crowd joined him in the countdown. But we were both crying, and then kissing while crying. The sky must have exploded with a brilliant display at midnight. But all I could make out through my tears was the enormous brightness as I heard the deafening sounds.
My angel and I were oblivious to it all because the three of us were now joined forever in love.
The End
And so our short (?!) tale comes to an end.
There will be no epilogue, no promise that their growing love will, in fact, be forever.
But one thing is certain. They each have experienced life-altering trauma.
We can hope that David’s general popularity will encourage the needed acceptance of the other gay couples in this small, out of the way town.
We can hope that David, aided by his new therapist/mom, will successfully navigate his difficult path forward.
We can hope that Twoey, taking Danny’s admonishment to heart, will robustly fight for his other half.
And so, let us leave our no-longer star-crossed lovers with those hopes.
Your encouragement, comments and messages have meant more to me than you will ever know.
Thank you all so very much!
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