B E T T E R T H A N A D R E A M
by Dean Lidster =======================================================================
PART ONE DISCLAIMER ~~~~~~~~~~
This story contains sexual acts between boys. If this is not to your tastes, then why in God's name are you reading this in the first place, huh? If you're curious, then that's fine by me - just remember: an open mind and an open heart is the secret to a good and happy life. If you are UNDER the age of concent for state / geographical location / planet that you're in / on etc, please leave now (unless you want to be educated and have an open mind that is!)
I spose this story is copyrighted. By this, I mean that I wrote it and would not particularly want anyone to subtly alter it and pretend it is their own. However, you MAY post it to any newsgroups, archives etc, print it, give it to friends without my prior permission PROVIDED THAT I STAY ACCREDITED AS THE AUTHOR AND YOU DO NOT CHARGE FOR DOING SO. Easy :-)
The story, when it concerns the relationship between myself and Lee, is very nearly true-to-life, however everything else took place in my mind only (unfortunately!)
If you like this story, mail me at dean@deans-domain.nu. If you don't like it, mail me anyway and tell me why!
The latest version of this saga may be found at my web site: http://www.deans-domain.nu/ourplace/stories
Cheers, Dean
Dedicated to Lee - I will love you forever.
Author's note: This story is part five of an ongoing work entitled "Midlands of Nowhere" - it is strongly recommended that you read these parts before reading this!
The order is as follows:
"A Date with Taylor"
"Touring with Hanson"
"Zac and Mac"
"The Exchange"
"Better than a Dream"
Chapter One - Exodus
"Dean? DEAN!"
"Mmmph? What?"
"We've arrived, darling,"
I opened my eyes to the sterile fluroescent lighting of the Eurostar and the noise of people collecting their belongings from the overhead luggage lockers. My mind was in turmoil as it scrabbled to get a grip on what was real. And what was not. Where was my Taylor? I jumped out of my seat frantically looking up and down the aisle to see where he... wasn't. A wave of dispair flowed over me as the harsh reality began to sink in. I had just arrived back in London from our trip to Eurodisney. The last six months had been a dream. How could my mind be so cruel to me?
I felt like breaking down and just crying for the rest of the day. There was no-one special in my life, and I was no-one special to anyone. Not even Taylor. He didn't even know I existed.
That really hurt.
'It feels like you're all alone in a faceless crowd...'
How could he know how I felt right now? I bit my lip and screwed my eyes closed for a couple of seconds to prevent the tears that would all too readily flow from my eyes if I didn't do something about them, then dragged my backpack from the overhead locker. I was about to put it on my back when I had a thought. My heart leapt into my mouth as I opened the top and rummaged around for the pair of shorts I had given to Tay.
My heart made a rapid exit from my mouth and dropped through the floor as I found them, neatly pressed, under my Hanson T-shirt. I half-smiled at the irony - fate really knew how to twist and tug at your heart in the most subtle yet searingly painful ways.
"Lee?"
No response.
"LEE!"
Lee Clarke lay on his bed, staring up at the part of his bedroom ceiling where the plaster had cracked ever so slightly.
"Lee darling, you OK? We're leaving in ten minutes..." said his mum, poking her head round the door.
"Yeah, comin' mum..." he said, swinging his feet onto the floor so he could sit up, brushing his dirty-blonde hair out of his eyes.
Roz sighed and sat down next to her adopted son, pulling him to her.
"Things will get better, you know,"
He sighed and rested his head on her shoulder. "I know, just seems like things are taking their time," he smiled. He lifted his head of her shoulder and looked her in the eye. "and at this rate you ain't gonna live long enough to see the results,"
"Cheeky," she smiled, giving him a playful clip round the ear. "You all packed?"
"Yeah, just these last couple of boxes... Dunno where I got all this crap from,"
"Do you want to throw it away?"
"No,"
"Then it's not crap is it?"
"I suppose not,"
"Your father's already in the car - best not keep him waiting,"
"OK, mum - I'll be down in a couple of minutes."
Lee stood up and walked over to the window. Sprawled out infront of him was Wolverhampton in all of it's... well, shittyness. He was leaving. He was leaving his home. He was leaving the "friends" that called him a queer, an arse bandit, a shirt-lifter. The friends that chucked verbal abuse at him. The friends that broke his arm...
He smiled to himself and picked up the last couple of boxes from his now bare room and jogged down the two flights of stairs to the waiting Mercedes. He opened the boot, squeezed the two boxes into the already overloaded car and climbed into the back seat.
Eddie handed the map that he had been staring at for the last hour to Roz and started the engine.
"Right, has everyone got everything?"
"Yes, dad,"
"OK - here we go,"
And with that the Merc pulled gently out of the driveway. As they accelerated off, Lee felt a whole sea of contradicting emotions within himself. He was relieved that he no longer had to put up with his "friends", but felt worried at how he would fit in at his new school. He was looking forward to the fresh start that his foster parents had given him, but felt guilty that he had driven them to it, like it was his fault that people hated him because of his sexuality. And what if it didn't work out at their new home? What if things were worse than before? There was no way they could ever up roots and move again - it was just too much stress...
Lee decided that he could do nothing about the situation whatever the outcome, and hence there was no sense worrying about it. He closed his eyes and gently drifted off into a turbulent sleep, lulled by the muffled rumbling of the tyres...
"Dean! Shift this rucksack before I trip over the bloody thing again!"
I was in no mood to be told what to do, but I knew annoying my parents by not doing what they said would only result in the agro coming full circle, and it simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I flicked the lounge TV off and hauled my rucksack back up the stairs, the wildly flailing waist-band doing its best to remove half the pictures from the wall on the landing as I went by.
My mind was in complete turmoil. It felt as if the last six months of my life hadn't happened... Actually, they hadn't. SHIT!
This was too much for my disillusioned brain to cope with, and I simply burst into tears. The dream was so much better than the life I had, there seemed like no point in going on as I was. I'd never meet Tay. I'd never fall in love. I was still living a lie. I was straight to everyone who knew me in the real world.
My mind kept running over the duals that seemed present in the dream and my "real life", most notably the way I thought I had come out to my parents. No way would it be that easy - them just sitting there and saying "we know". It just can't happen.
I resolved to bring things to a head. The way my life was now, it seemed pointless to try and perpetuate the lie just to afford a small amount of security.
Mackie.
Why had I dreampt about someone I had never known committing scuicide? Was this my sick and twisted mind going through the "what- ifs" of me coming out? Option one: my parents still love me, I meet the guy of my dreams and live happily ever after. Option two: my father hates my guts and drives me to kill myself. The gun must've been a dramatification on my brain's part as we didn't own one - probably just there to underline the point... As if it needed underlining in the first place...
I took a deep breath and went downstairs. I smiled to myself as I thought it was lucky that my rucksack was still packed - it'd save me a job after they chucked me out...
I found my parents in the kitchen, my mum making a cup of tea, my dad munching on a breadstick, aimlessly flicking through the channels on the kitchen's small TV.
"Hi nit," smiled my dad, offering me a breadstick. I felt like a complete arsehole, about to bring disgrace on the family and another concern into my parents already more-than-hectic life.
Just this scene of contented normality, one that was so insignificant and that I had seen over and over in my life suddenly seemed so special. Only now could I see the love that my mum put into making my dad's cup of tea, and the smile on his face as she gave it to him. I could loose all of this love just by saying one sentence.
My mind waivered, no longer being a hundred percent committed to the course of action I was about to take. I then realised that the love between my parents was there because of the complete openness they had with one another: Not a lie was spoken or a truth withheld between them. I then realised if I was to share in this parental love, the same had to be. They had never lied to me, yet I felt I had been continually lieing to them over the past few years. I felt physically sick on this realisation and this made my mind up for me.
"Mum, Dad, I... I need to tell you something,"
"Sounds serious," smiled muy mum, leaning against the worktop to pay full attention to me.
This sapped my courage, so I hung my head and decided to tell the floor tile I was standing on.
"I'm gay."
The silence I was expecting to follow that statement suddenly seemed a whole lot quieter than I had anticipated, the steady ticking of the kitchen clock sounding as if it was slowing down.
"Dean?"
I daren't look at my dad, the feeling of shame and guilt washing over me. Oh for a bottomless pit I could jump into right now...
My dad reached out to put a hand on my shoulder and I impulsively jumped as he touched me, staggering backwards as if he had actually hit me into the rubbish bin, finally coming to a very ungraceful rest in a heap on the floor.
'This is going to take some getting used to,' thought Lee to himself as the Mercedes bowled along the anything-but-flat, single track lanes in rural Derbyshire.
"Eddie, honey, don't you think you should slow down just a bit? You never know what might be round one of these co..."
Roz didn't have to finish the sentence - Eddie slammed on the brakes as he was confronted by what could only be described as a sea of sheep, gently waddling their way along the lane. The farmer who was walking behind the flock gave Eddie the standard disapproving glare that can only be given when City Folk encounter Country Folk - both thinking how stupid the other is for doing what they were doing.
Roz caught her husband's arm as he reached for the horn. "He might end up being our neighbour, darling," she reasoned.
"But why in the Lord's name is he taking sheep down a public highway?"
"Uh, dad, this road has grass growing down the middle - I think it's more of a bridleway or something..."
Eddie resigned himself to the fact that he would just have to follow the sheep at their pace, watching in dismay as they blatantly ignored the passing place where he could have got the car past had they stopped and not spread out to the width of the road and the pull-in. Dumb sheep...
"Eddie, just relax - we aren't in a rush... We're in the country now,"
'And it's because of me,' sighed Lee to himself. Eddie had seemed more than willing to move t give his adopted son a fresh start, but what if he had really liked the city and just didn't say so? If he only was attracted to girls... It seemed like such a small thing when he thought of it in isolation, but realised that "society" didn't hold the same view. Infact, their view seemed very un-sociable. How ironic...
My mind had been running over so many of the negative scenarios I had almost completely forgotten that they may have taken it well - as they had done. I hurredly cleared the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand to see my dad standing over me, silhouetted by the light bulb that was almost directly behind him.
The only way I can think of describing the way I think I looked was a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon, just where Jerry is about to be clobbered by Tom and is cowering in a corner, only to recieve a reprieve at the last possible moment.
The silhouette held out his hand to me to help me up from the floor, and I tentatively took it. The world seemed to spin underneath me, such was the level of anguish and disorientation my mind was forcing on me, but it was all misfounded. I looked at my Father's face (now properly illuminated) and he was actually chuckling.
"You... You're not upset," I ventured.
"Well, I am," scowled my mother. Uh oh. "I'm upset that you didn't feel you could tell us easily."
"Huh?"
"You didn't fall into a quivering heap when you told me you'd broken the vase your dad gave me for our tenth wedding anniversary," she smiled, giving me a hug. It always made me smile when she did that as unless I bent over she had to stand on tip- toes to get ear-to-ear with me, and this was no exception.
"Oh..."
"It's OK by us, son... It kinda goes with your generation."
"Eh?"
"Well, your cousin Harry's gay for starters."
Harry, my mentor and acting big-brother was GAY?
"He IS? Why didn't he ever tell me?"
"He decided that for your own good he should let you figure it out for yourself... He knows you look up to him and he didn't want to provide the wrong kinda role-model for you. I think you should have a word with him at some stage, Nit..."
"Yeah... Sooo, you're not going to kick me out?"
"Kick you OUT? Dean!"
They honestly looked deeply hurt at even the suggestion that they could possibly concieve of the notion of making me leave.
"Dean, you're our son and we love you! We couldn't kick you out, not ever!"
"Unless you tangeled up my fishing reel again," smiled my dad.
How I could've mis-read my parents so much was beyond me and even scared me slightly. This was too much for my mind to take, and I broke down into tears, more through joy and the absolute releaf I felt.
I was home, I was no longer holding any secrets from the ones I loved the most, and I was safe. A feeling of security unlike anything I had felt since my mum used to cuddle me as a little boy when thunder woke me up in the middle of the night ran through me, and it was wonderful. I felt like I had been born again, and I suppose in many ways I had...
"I'm going out for a skate," I yelled, grabbing my blades from their home underneath the coat rack by the back door.
"Be careful, Dean,"
"Yes, mommy,"
"What happened to respect for your elders, mmm?"
"I blame MTV," I grinned, kissing her on the top of the head. "I'll be careful,"
For me, skating is a near-religious experience. It allows my brain to be completely diverted and sort out all the crap it's been bombarded with in to some form of inteligable order. The way I was feeling right now, I was gonna make it to London and back!
I kicked my trainers off and replaced them with my blades, doing up the fasteners with the quick "tug-push-fold" action necessary to lock them tightly onto my feet.
The warm afternoon air felt so good to me, rushing past my ears and through my hair as I picked up speed, zig-zagging through the copious and frequent mini-potholes that made our road look like some kind of lunar landscape. I decided that instead of skating in a straight line from home, I'd just do laps of the 'block' which would allow me to do the distance (one circuit was about two and a half miles) without getting too far from home.
I rounded the corner did a few 'push-strokes' to build up as much speed as possible then tucked myself into a ski-jump position, ready to rocket down the near 1:1 slope that was fast approaching in order to get up the other side without too much effort.
I cleared the brow of the hill and felt that wonderful fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach as gravity tried to drag me to the centre of the earth, accelerating me down the hill. I am convinced that I look little better than Eddie the Eagle during this manouvre, hair billowing out behind me like some out-of-control party streamer gone wrong, but there were very few things that I had experienced that paralleled it.
All too soon, the bottom of the hill was upon me and I braced myself for the incredible up-thrust of hitting the incline at thirty-odd miles an hour. It feels quite strong when you're sitting in a car, but to have that force applied directly to the bottom of your feet is something that has to be experienced first hand to be believed.
My speed tapered off fairly rapidly as I ascended the other side, having to skate hard as I reached about three quarters up the other side. To decide to stop at that point is nigh on deadly as there is very little you can do to stop yourself rolling back down the hill again and if you don't manage to turn round, you'd better be a man of faith...
Once I'd reached the top on the other side, breathing heavily from both excitement and physical exertion, I continued on the once again flat road, passing the familiar deserted cottage that not all too long ago scared the shit out of me (ghosts, you see) and the wonderfully contorted oak tree that seemed as if it's goal in life was to kinda grow through itself.
The only sounds I could hear were the rumble of rubber on asphalt and the twittering of hundreds of birds that blended into an ocean of symphonic sound all around me. The skating routine was beginning to have the desired effect on my mind: Gently soothing away the anguishes, disappointments and troubles that were plaguing my conscious mind like some kind of wonder drug. It made me feel happy and relaxed. It made me find peace with myself.
"Shit!" exclaimed Eddie as the Merc swooped down into the bottom of the hollow far quicker than the suspension could handle, the front spoiler making an undesired visit to the road surface.
Lee couldn't help giggling out loud as his tummy did its best to escape from the confines of his abdomen as the car had plummeted down the hill, and swallowing hard as very quickly returned to it's proper position at the bottom.
As the roads had now proved to Eddie that they needed approaching with respect, he allowed the car's momentum to drop off as it climbed the other side.
Suddenly, my train of thought was interrupted as the subdued growl of a car engine appeared as if out of nowhere from behind me. I somehow managed to have the presence of mind to skate as close to the edge of the road as I could. I didn't, however, have the presence of mind to stop myself from loosing my balence, slipping off the edge of the road and skating straight into the ditch which was, thankfully, dried up. As the car passed, couldn't help but mentally chastise them for going to fast. Had to be city folk: there wasn't a spec of mud on the vehicle anywhere... I don't know why us country bumpkins have such a stigma when it comes to townies, although truth be told we're probably as amusing to them with our "make do and mend" attitude as they are to us with their big cars, big bank accounts and big egos.
I was about to forget all about the encounter when I saw the car, now in the distance, slam on the brakes to the sound of the light chirruping made by a computer taking over from a stupid driver who would otherwise have locked the wheels solid. A moment later, the reversing lights came on and the car began to back-up at a much more pedestrian pace, then stop again and turn into the driveway of the near-mansion that had had a "For Sale" sign at the end of its drive for as long as I can remember.
I was half-pissed, half-pleased, at the prospect of having neighbours... Perhaps they had kids my age.... A son... Who I could be friends with...
And the pig presently flying overhead has two jet engines and retractable landing gear...