Hi folks.
Thanks to everybody who feedbacked me, you were the people that made me kick myself in the a...behind and sit down and finish this chapter. I think it's actually one of the best ones I've written so far. I chuckled while I wrote it. Let me know what you think
Rock_on_summer@yahoo.com
Now read on.
Disclaimer: I wrote this, don't copy it unless you ask. This is fiction. If there are people who are similar to people in the story or have the same name, I didn't intend it. Beware, gay sex! Don't like that don't read, you have been warned.
I know it seemed that Case and I were a couple that was constantly fighting but there also was lots of love and understanding for the other one's needs. Sometimes Case would annoy the heck out of me, but I think that was his way to get my attention, to make sure I knew he was there and loved me. I'd rather live with Case and fight a couple of times a day then live with him as if he wasn't there at all. It could get tiring, but we usually just fought about things that weren't really important and that you could have fun fighting about. Everything serious and important we "discussed" as Case put it. He would actually set a time for us to meet in a certain room, usually the dining room, let me know what he wanted to discuss and then remind me five minutes prior to our "meeting." I sometimes wondered if he wrote them down in his calendar.
All this made me feel awkward and I found these discussions usually a lot more tiring and emotionally straining then our fights. Fights could be fun and sometimes, after a little bit of yelling and teasing he would make me laugh and feel stupid and juvenile and it would feel as if a storm blew through the house and took away every dark thought that was hovering in the corners and left nothing but freshness and cleanness and our relationship would feel brand new again. But right now, we were sitting across from each other in the dining room, both in white terry-cloth robes, my left hand in his right while eating dinner. Discussing. Made me feel like an old couple. I wanted to tear off my robe, scream and punch something. I might settle for throwing. Emotional outbursts were unfortunately against the rules of the meeting. Made me even madder.
"I can't exclude my family, Lucy. You've got to understand that" he told me.
Part of me wanted to spit out that I didn't have to do anything and that everybody, half of them who I had never met anyways, could just go fuck themselves. But this was a discussion, not a fight. So I pulled on the reins of my temper and calmly said:
"I'm not saying exclude them and don't celebrate our wedding with them at all. I'm just saying let's have a ceremony and a party. And let's not invite the whole world to the ceremony. That should be our wedding, not theirs. They can celebrate with us, but it's our ceremony!"
Wow, I had kept my temper, I was impressed with myself.
"I know. And it will be our ceremony. But can't they have a part of that also? You know how my family is..."
Yeah. Huge, conservative, but surprisingly loud for that when it came to partying.
"...and I can't very well include, let's say, my parents but not my brothers"
"But if you include your brothers, you have to include their wives. If you include their wives you have to include their children, if you include their children you might as well include the aunts and uncles too. I know Case. We've been over this. I just don't want to have my "Yes I do" interrupted by crying children and the smell of poopey diapers" I said.
His aunts and uncles would bring his cousins. And they would bring their children. And their children would bring their children. It was so good to be an only child. Truth to be told, I didn't mind the little buggers. But I was scared of some of their parents not being as accepting as they pretended to be. I didn't want to feel any negative energy when I made my vows and I didn't want anybody to talk behind our backs afterwards. I wanted this to be about love.
"These are Asian kids. They are very disciplined and well behaved, and only one still wears diapers. Lucy I want at least my parents and my brothers to be there. They are my family" he said softly.
"They are not the problem. The problem is everybody else they will bring. If it was me there would be only the two of us. Because to me it's really something that only concerns you and me" I replied stubbornly.
"My mom will never forgive me if I won't let her be at my wedding" He sighed.
"You get why I wouldn't want everybody there, right?"
"Because it's a private moment, I get that. How about we split it up in three then?"
"In three?" I asked sceptically, not understanding.
"We have a ceremony, just the two of us. Then we could have another one for everybody. And then we could have the party" I liked that idea, but I couldn't decide now.
"Well, sounds good. We should consider it. Wow a compromise that wasn't to hard now, was it?" and he poked me in the arm, just to hear me complain about him being a brute. Then he tickled me and kissed it good.
I wasn't really satisfied with this. I decided to push it to the back of my mind for now and not let Case see that I still felt kind of ... gloomy
The weekend flew by and I had lots of fun with Case, happy that I could hog all his free time. I didn't want to let him go Monday morning, but somehow he wrestled himself out of my arms and got up.
The room smelled like shower-gel and him and when I felt him slap my bottom with his towel I realized that I had fallen back asleep and he had already taken his shower.
"Ouch! That hurt! I was sleeping, bastard!"
"Well, good morning to you too. Half an hour ago you didn't want to let me go and now you call me bastard Mr. Moody?"
"Half an hour ago you weren't beating me with a towel! And you woke me up! Get to work already!"
"You like it rough!" he grinned. Well, I did. Still, I wasn't a morning person. "And I was just going to tell you that I'm not sure when I'll be home, but I try not to make it too late"
"Fine" I told him "I'll be ...cheerleading" I mumbled.
"You serious?"
"Hm" What did he think? No, I'm not serious. I'm just telling you I'll go to cheer practice because I like to lie to you? Retard. Way too early in the morning for this.
"Did you know that that's one of the most dangerous sports in the world? Mostly spinal chord and head injuries, because they drop people on their heads. More dangerous then football. Be careful not to have them drop you, I don't want to have to visit you in the emergency room because they busted your scull open on the floor. Would probably kill the last couple of brain cells that you have, too. Then you couldn't talk, wait that might not even be so bad. Did you know it takes 30 IQ points to peel a banana? I don't want to end up having to peel your bananas for you"
"Excuse me were you making sense?"
"All I'm saying is: be careful" and he lightly tugged on my blond curls and kissed the part of my head that wasn't buried in the pillows.
I started a new painting that day. It was part of the series that I was making of Case. I had the eyes, I had his hair but I was missing several parts yet. I had it all planed out. I was going to make a huge painting of him that consisted of several small paintings of the same size. They were squares, about three feet long on every side. The actual painting wasn't hard to do; the thing that was complicated about this was planning everything. I couldn't just paint the whole picture and see everything in proportion, like I was used to, but I had to imagine the whole thing, which would be as tall as a large building, as a whole. The problem with that was that I would see my mistakes only after I put the whole thing up and it would be too late to fix anything. I had to concentrate very hard if I didn't want to mess up. Since this was pretty much impossible, especially because all the pieces had to come together and look as one, I had to do a lot of math to get how wide, for example his neck was compared to his nipple, make sure the proportions, the colouring, the depth of shadows was right.
In no time our living-room was as messy as ever. My sketches were scattered across the room, the canvas was on a rack and I was mixing colours. Today I was making part of his chest which would be a desert with a caravan of camels standing around in a circle around a dark well. The camels would be his nipple and the desert with its dunes his chest. It would be a desert at sunset, drawn from an angle that there wouldn't be a horizon. I was looking forward to it. It was going to be lots of work in detail though.
I forced myself to stop and prepare a Gulasch for Case. I hadn't really cooked in about a week but I wanted him to have something to have to eat if he got home before me. I prepared the food and then let it cook while I continued painting. I put bread next to the full pot and scribbled a note for Case:
Hi Casey,
I'm at practise. Be back at 8.30. Don't have to wait with dinner if you're hungry.
smootchsmootch
I never went to practice because I couldn't tear myself away from his painting. I felt that I was loosing my concentration and that I should eat something. That made me wonder if Case was home already. When I was deep in concentration it wasn't uncommon for him to sneak by me.
I called his name but didn't get a reply and the Gulasch was untouched. Case worked a lot. In the past weeks even more then usual because he was hoping to get some promotion. He got up early and he got home late.
"Hi Case, when will you be home?" I asked when I called him.
"Ehm. I don't know. I try not to be late, let's say, six?" He sounded tired.
"Hon, its eight" I chuckled.
"It is?" I heard him sigh "I'll quit for the day then"
"I'll see you in half an hour..."
When Case came back the table was set, the Gulasch heated and the rolls were warm and just out of the oven. I felt very domestic and I knew Case loved me that way. I poured us a glass of red wine while he changed. Then I stood by the kitchen window and thought about us getting married. The thought made me smile. I knew Case would accept every facet of my personality. I was a spur-of-the-moment guy, so when I felt like being domestic I would be. When I didn't I wouldn't. I knew Case would love me either way. Sometimes I did things I later regretted and I could always count on Case not to judge me for it. He was so much more focused and so much wiser then I was and I admired and loved him. And I had my own ways of expressing that.
"Lucy? Aren't you going to sit down and eat dinner with me?" He asked as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and kissed my neck. He then took one glass of whine, clinked his glass with mine, took a sip and kissed me with his ruby-red lips.
"I am" I replied, happy to have found a guy that I could love so deeply without being afraid of getting hurt.
I was upset. With Case. It was just a line that he had casually dropped but it had made me get up from the dining table and walk into the garden without a word, leaving Case sitting there, dumb funded. We had talked during dinner, he had asked me about practise and if I still liked the other members of the team as much as I had.
"Well, I actually skipped today, but they are all really nice. Apparently most are guys, makes me wonder if we have less lesbians in this town or if cheerleading is just too girly of a sport for them" I mumbled.
"And all of them are big, buff, cheer guys, huh?" He asked.
"Well...yeah. But I don't think I'm going again. I almost fell the other day and it was kind of scary" I said, eating my Gulasch.
"If you wanted to try a sport maybe you could get some of these home videos" he said.
"Well, Eddie said I should try team sports. Maybe there are other gay teams around? Maybe I'm a soccer guy?" I was getting excited again. I always liked trying something new, even though I was aware that I rarely pulled through.
"Soccer. You'd get your pretty legs kicked bloody. And why don't you just try out for a straight team?" he asked.
"Hellooo. Have you looked at me? I'm a flamer! I'd never survive in a locker-room full of straight guys!" Actually, I wasn't a flamer, but most people could tell. I was a jeans and plain T-shirt kind of guy so it couldn't be my clothes, but I guess something in my face or my walk gives me away. Maybe it was the fact that I actually bothered to put on a clean shirt at least once a week, or that I brushed my blond locks. Maybe I smelled gay or maybe I was to pretty to be straight.
Case sighed, dropped his fork and looked me straight in the eye.
"And I don't think I'd survive the idea of you in a locker-room full of big, buff gay guys"
But that wasn't the reason I was standing in our back-yard, shivering in my T-shirt in the cold, my arms around myself. I thought it was actually kind of cute that he was jealous so I had just raised my eyebrows to this and pretended not to notice how he purposely moved our conversation to other topics. I was just about to give him shit about it when he said the words, not more then a line when scrabbled down on paper that had shaken me so much.
I replayed them in my head. His voice had been calm, a carefully measured smile on his lips, not so much that I'd believe he was making a joke but enough so that he could believe he wouldn't upset me. Failed miserably. I couldn't believe he had said that, why had he said that?
'You know, if you wanted to re-think the getting married thing, I'd understand. I know you're not one for commitment.' And he had looked down at his plate, stabbing a piece of Gulasch with his fork. Felt like he was stabbing my heart. I had just stared at him and left.
'I know you're not one for commitment'
How much more committed could a single person get then I to him? His words had left me speechless, shocked. I didn't know he looked at our relationship like that. For me this was really IT. My live with him, my love for him, my commitment to him. This was my live – he was my live. Everything in my live was tied to him, was about him, around him. Even when he was away I would think of him. He was like an additional vital organ, a part of me that I might not fully understand but that was part of me wherever I went. That it would hurt to live without.
'I know you're not one for commitment'
Marriage was just the next logical step for me, not even needed because my soul had already bound itself to him.
'I know you're not one for commitment' I was happy when he was. I ached when he got hurt. I was proud of him when he accomplished something. I comforted him when he failed.
'I know you're not one for commitment' That was such crap! I was not putting up with shit like that. His perception of me obviously was totally fucked up. Time to fucking straighten his shit up.
"CASE YOU BASTARD!!!" I yelled on the top of my lungs. I stormed into the house and found him still sitting in the dining room.
"I DON'T FUCKING CARE IF YOU FUCKING THINK I'M DON'T FUCKING LOVE YOU! I FUCKING DO!" and dramatically banged my fist on the table, making the plates and silverware jump. I was glad I got to finish that sentence because that was the moment I turned into a blubbering mess. I was such a fag.
"Lucy" He sighed "I never said you didn't love me. I know you do"
"So marry me!" I yelled
"But I know you Lucy! You need to be free. Marriage isn't freedom!" he sounded desperate.
"It isn't? It's fucking what we have right now plus a ring! Where's the big!?"
"Its what we have right now. Plus a ring. Plus a future together! You live today Lucy. Everyday is today for you. You might be happy like that now, but will you want to live like that forever? As soon as you realize there is a tomorrow, something worth striving for, you might not want me with you anymore" He really was serious.
I was stunned. I had to think about that. I didn't know what to reply.
His statement held several insults. But was he right? Today was today for me and tomorrow was. . . well, I didn't know what tomorrow was. Case planned things like that. I tagged along. But did that mean that it couldn't stay that way? And did that mean if it didn't that I wouldn't want him around anymore? I didn't think the first had anything to do with the second. On the other hand, I had never really found anything worth striving for, he was right about that. What if I became dedicated to something? What if Case had other plans? Hold on, wasn't that his problem? Why should I change my plans? Couldn't he change his?
"Why don't YOU change YOUR plans?" I bitched.
"What?" He asked. Apparently I had lost him again.
"Well, you could, you know, compromise a little every once in a while. Why do I have to give up my plans so we can stay together? Why don't YOU compromise?!"
"Well. You don't have plans" He said uncertainly, not sure of what I was getting at.
"No I don't. But I might have some someday" I pointed out.
"Exactly! This is what I'm talking about! Until you figure out what these plans are I don't think you want to marry me"
"I'm going to bed. You're sleeping on the couch tonight" He had given me a lot to think about.
"And I still can't believe your taking it back just like that. That's not cool. Part of you might be right, but it's not cool"
And I went into our bedroom, leaving a confused Case in the dining room. The dining room and the bedroom with pictures of him, I thought, as I was staring at a painting of him and I in ecstasy on our bedroom wall.