Hey everyone! Thank you for reading my story, and thank you for all the nice comments you've made me through email. This is the third addition to In And Out, and there will be many more. This is a true story, with a few scenes of fiction...Email me you comments and questions, and I promise to email you back as soon as possible, my email address is afowler6789@hotmail.com. Once again, thank you for reading my story, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it! Andrew
In And Out Chapter Three
As Cody and I were walking, I noticed something very peculiar as I watched him as he talked. I grew weary of his words, but attentive of his beauty. Call me shallow, but I call it admiration. From one point his eyes looked like they were blue, and on another angle, green. This suddenly confused me. I had to take a good look into his eyes to make sure. No, this wasn't an excuse to look into his beautiful, understanding, sparking eyes, I really was curious. I stopped in my tracks as he noticed I had stopped too. He grabbed me by my shoulders to make I wasn't going to fall, I was still very drunk indeed. I stood straight up and looked at him intensely, making sure not to mistake his eye color once again, perhaps it was only because I was drunk. But I noticed something completely amazing while looking in his eyes.
"Huh! You've got two different colored eyes!" I said in awe and in wonder.
I don't think I would've reacted the same if I wasn't completely intoxicated. I stared into his left eye which was blue, and then into his right eye which was green.
"Yeah, I guess it's a mix up of my parent's genes." He said with a happy smile. He seemed so happy, so nice, so content with life... it made me feel inferior. We continued walking, and continued talking. I found out his last name was Hilbert, Cody Hilbert, the same last name as Laura's. He was fifteen, like me, and he was also in the closet about being gay, except to Laura, who he claimed didn't care if he was gay. He told me that Laura was like a sister to him, and they shared everything. It made me a little mad that Laura hadn't cared that Cody was gay, and she kicked me out of her house because I was. I decided not to tell Cody about what happened with me and Laura, it might upset him to find out that she was more homophobic than he thought.
What happened today with Laura was one of the many reasons why I was still in the closet. It may be easier for some people, but certainly not for me. It dreaded the day when I would have to confess to my family. I wasn't as scared to disclose myself to friends as it was to my family, they didn't live with me. It's different having a gay friend than having on in your immediate family, I imagined. What if my mother and sisters wouldn't accept me? It would be like living under a roof of pointing finger and judging eyes, and the idea itself almost brought tears to my eyes.
"I hope you don't think that I'm some kind of alcoholic." I said uneasily as Cody looked at me in surprise.
"No, actually I thought it was kind of cute, how you were so easily intimidated by me back there. And I certainly don't think you're an alcoholic!" he said like the answer was obvious. Anytime I heard the word alcoholic, I pictured my father. I could never imagine my dad without a glass of red wine in his hand, and a cigarette in the other. My father had diabetes, and he had already had a heart attack before, and now with the drinking and smoking, he was destined for another one. I looked at myself and what I was at the moment: a drunken idiot smoking... I hated for my father and I hated us to be listed as some sort of analogy. I was nothing like him, no! He was easily addicted, easily entertained, stubborn, close-minded, immature, disrespectful, and all the other things that I could list him under when I was sober. I thanked my lucky stars that my mother had finally kicked him out of our home! Both of my sister's were older than me, there was Karen, who was 17 and was the middle child, and then there was Danielle who was 20, and was the oldest, I was the youngest in my family, the `baby', which my mother liked to call me.
Karen hated my father more than any of us. The way my father would treat her was so horrible! The names he would use for her, stupid bitch, cunt, and so many unthinkable slurs that made me sick when thinking that he had called her that. My other sister, Danielle, pitied him. She made herself feel guilty whenever she thought of him living all alone in a studio apartment. I was mostly in between both collections of feelings. I hated my father for what he had done to my mother, but I also loved him for the kind person who he used to be. I used to have this notion that he could change, what was I thinking?
"Are you all right?" Cody asked me in concern as he looked at me with those mismatched eyes.
"Yeah, I'm just thinking." I said plainly, when in reality the thoughts of my sexuality and my father were flooding my head like a pool with no plug. Then the sudden thought of how my father would react if he knew I was gay. He would be mortified! My father saw homosexuals as a morbid symbol of disgust. If he tasted a food that he didn't like he would say, `Go feed it to the fags!', and I would put my head down in desolation. I never knew why my father hated homosexuals so much, it was a mystery to me. I sometimes reminded myself of that when I was angry with him and felt guilty afterwards for saying I hated him. Why should I be sorry? He hates me, I'm a homosexual!
"You want to talk about it?" Cody asked with apprehension, I could tell it wasn't a front of his feelings, I could see in his eyes he cared. "Not really." I said, feeling guilty, feeling like this was a boy who approached me with courage to ask me out, not knowing if I was gay, and I couldn't even tell him what was on my mind. I was a bad person, I knew this. I pretended to be something that I wasn't just for a show. People who cared about me didn't even know who the real me was. "Anytime you need to talk to someone, I'll be here." He said and then smiled. This was comforting, he had been a complete stranger a full twenty minutes ago, and now he seemed like a friend I hadn't talk to you in years... Call it fate, call it a blessing, I just like to call it luck! This was pure and non-sugarcoated luck, and I was happy. "Thank you." I said as my hand brush against his hand as we walked. We didn't want to give ourselves away, being that we were both in the closet, even though we kissed on the side of the road for a few brief seconds earlier. "I just realized that I haven't given you my number." He said as he was ready to write one down. If he was staying at Laura's I had already known the number, by heart! But it would be weird calling Laura's after our recent quarrel and asking to speak to her gay cousin after she just discovered I was gay. "Let me give you mine." I said as I took the pen and paper he had already had in his hands and wrote down my seven digits, ten, if you count the area code. "Call me in a few hours, I should be sobered up by there." I said as he smiled and I handed him the number that said Gabriel Newsome at the top of it. "Well this is my house up here." I said pointing to the tall white house with green bushed surrounding the driveway. "I don't want to say goodbye." He said in anguish as our heavenly meeting was about to part. "I know I just met you, but I feel like I've know you for a long time." He said as he smiled again, I practically melted every time he smiled. I smiled then as well. We stood there like that for about two minutes.
"I do have to go though, I think I'll probably have chores to do around the house." I confessed, it wasn't a lie, I really did, and I knew I would get yelled at as soon as I got in. I didn't tell him that though, he was so understanding and noble that he would probably feel responsible. "You know you're way back right?" I asked we were ready to depart.
"Yeah, I've been coming down to this town for years to stay with my cousin." He said as he started off. "It was so nice to meet you Gabe!" he said in misery of leaving.
"Same here, call me in a few." I said happily, not happy that he was going, but happy that I met someone like myself who was nice and also unbearably cute as well. I started around the bush to get to the driveway and then to the concrete steps when I saw it. My father's car parked improperly in the driveway after he had knocked over trash cans and driven up onto the small curb when my mother's garden was. Her beautiful flowers crushed beyond repair under the tires. I approached the house in agony as I walked in, wishing I was someone else. I think I would be better off like those flowers.