Now

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Assuming you got this far by accident (maybe you'd better revise those search terms), remember that you can always page back if you read something you don't like. If you're shocked by the thought that some guys want to have sex (whatever that is) with other guys, you're probably in the wrong part of Denmark. Close your eyes as tight as you can and step back into the real world. It's simpler there. There's probably a beach somewhere nearby where you can stick your head in the sand until the tide comes in. Who knows, maybe there'll even be a cute lifeguard to save your ass. Don't say you weren't warned.

They brought me back to the room after they scanned me, and Eric was waiting for me. He looked terrible. There was a huge, swollen bruise on his cheekbone. When I saw that, I wanted to disappear. He tried to smile when he saw me, but he didn't quite pull it off. I felt sorry for him. Obviously this was hard for him too.

'Hey Kevin. You Ok?' He looked so sad. He was worried, but there was something else there, and I couldn't tell what it was.

'I'm fine, Eric. I just banged myself up a little. They're gonna let me out this afternoon.'

'What happened?'

I could tell he didn't really want to know. He wanted the whole thing to go away, and I couldn't blame him.

'You want the short story, right? I clipped a car, nailed a dog, and flipped your bike. Did you get it back?'

'Yeah, I had to go get it out of the pound. It's in the shop now.'

I knew I had to apologize, I just didn't know how to begin. I looked at him. I thought I was close to him, but there was something else between us now, something we still hadn't acknowledged. He was the same guy I'd been riding behind on the bike for the last six months. I'd been all over him on the couch, in the pool, in the shower, on my bed. It was the same person. I started to tear up, and for some reason that made me angry. I was tired of that shit. I didn't want to give it any more tears. If he didn't want me, he was just fucking with my head, and he wasn't worth it. If he wanted me, then he was the one who was fucked in the head, and I didn't really think I wanted him anymore.

The thing I couldn't get around was that he was my friend. He treated me like his little brother, and that was the problem, but he was still my friend. I couldn't cut him loose without even trying to make it right.

I closed my eyes and waited a few seconds, and then I just said 'I'm sorry.'

It didn't come out in my normal voice; it sounded kind of hoarse, but it was too loud to be a whisper, so I knew he heard me. I didn't open my eyes right away, I lay there and waited. I felt him take my hand, and when I looked up at him, he looked really upset. I'd never seen him that way. He wasn't crying or anything, he just had a lost look on his face like there was nothing anyone could do for him. I looked at him and felt a few more clueless tears sneaking over the rim and coasting down my cheek.

I wanted to help him. I didn't know what he needed. I'd felt the way he looked, and there was nothing I could say to him. I wanted to undo whatever we'd done to each other, but I didn't know how. I could only imagine what was making him suffer. He was my friend. I couldn't help him.

He let go of my hand and got up and walked to the window. All I could see now was his back. It looked completely defeated.

'You're not the only one', he said quietly.

I wanted to throw him a rope, but I couldn't find one. I kept fighting the tears, and I made my voice as calm as I could. I just imagined I was dead, and that's the way it came out. It didn't take much imagination.

'I don't know what's wrong with me, Eric, I just completely lost it with you. I don't really want to think about what kind of person that makes me. If I were you, I'd hit the eject button and move on. I don't know how to make it right, and I'm not sure I want to try. I think about where we are now, and I don't even know what to hope for.'

He turned back around and stared at me.

'I thought you were the one who knew what you wanted. I'm the one who's confused, remember?'

It was a rhetorical question, but his eyes were asking me a different question, and there was nothing rhetorical about it.

'Yeah, well, you're the one with the fencepost up your ass, but I'm riding behind you, so I'm stuck up there too.'

He cracked a smile. It was just a hairline crack, but it was something. Suddenly I knew it wasn't hopeless. It wasn't written in stone. Without even knowing it, I'd given him the right answer. We were friends. I could still make him smile.

'Yeah, I guess you are.' It was a smile, alright. His eyes had come back from the dead. And I was smiling now too. I had no idea what had just happened, but I felt better already.

His smile got a little wider, and he said 'You look like shit, you know.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. You look like someone who got his ass kicked in the comics. All you need is some little pound signs on your face, and you're set.'

'I think I wanna skip to the next frame.'

'That makes two of us.'

'You know I'm sorry, right? Did I say that?'

'Yeah, you did. And I'm sorry too.'

'But you're gonna make that up to me, right?'

His face clouded over. Obviously it wasn't the right thing to say. We hadn't come that far yet.

'I'm gonna try.' He paused for a minute. 'We need to talk.'

I looked him right in the eye.

'Well you sure as hell have my attention.'

'Yeah, but now is not the time. And this isn't exactly the place, either.'

'Ok.' I didn't want to be angry, so I let it go. I looked away. Maybe he was right. And something told me I didn't really want to know. A wave of depression rolled over me, then moved past me and broke softly in the distance.

'Kev, we're gonna straighten this shit out.'

I made my face a blank and gazed at a spot on his chin. 'Then why don't I believe you?'

'Maybe 'cause the last time you believed me, you got burned. I should have figured my shit out before I started fooling around with yours.'

I glanced up in surprise. Usually when I tricked him into talking about it, he found a way to dodge the bullet. I tried to find the answer I needed in his eyes, but I knew I had to take it on faith.

'Ok. I believe you.'

He walked over and put his hand on my shoulder. I gave him the best smile I had in me under the circumstances. I was willing him to lean down and kiss me, but he didn't do that.

He touched the side of my head with the back of his hand for a second, and then he turned to go. At the last minute, he looked back over his shoulder and said, 'and Kevin -- tell Jake thanks. I owe him big.'

'Yeah. Me too.'

The overly friendly doctor had arranged for me to see an Indian doctor about my head, and the Indian guy turned out to be pretty funny. He had a slightly ironic bedside manner that I liked. I don't know how much of it was intentional, but almost everything he said came out sounding humorous. He spoke better English than I did, but he spoke it like it was some kind of cheap card trick he was performing to amuse a group of dimwitted children.

He asked me if I was 'by some chance' an attorney, and I told him that I didn't have my driver's license yet. He laughed at that, and said I should stay away from motorcycles for a while. And hospitals. Then he gave me a long list of symptoms and told me to call him if I experienced any of them. His name was unpronounceable, but he told me to call him Dr. Lal.

Afterwards they signed me out, and I went home. My mom didn't say much to me in the car. I could tell she had something on her mind, but I sensed I was better off not knowing what it was. I guess I'd crossed some kind of line with her. I'd drawn attention to myself. Maybe she was calculating how much of a threat that posed to her. In her own way, she obviously cared about me. She cared about me more than she cared about, say, her nail polish. I was part of the sum of appearances she still did her best to preserve.

When we got home, I went to the kitchen and filled up a tray with snacks and carried it to my room. I put the tray down on the dresser and closed the door. I walked into the closet and looked at myself in the mirror. I don't know where my mom had found the clothes she had brought me to wear home from the hospital, but I made a pretty surreal-looking picture. It was like seeing a cheap cologne commercial in a Quentin Tarrantino movie. The shirt was sky blue. I had a big bruise over one eye, and one side of my face was cut up pretty bad. I took off the shirt. My ribs were bandaged, but you could see some ugly purple and black-and-bluish bruises that extended beyond the bandages, and that whole side of me was chewed up where the concrete had shredded my shirt. I dropped the pants and my boxers and checked out the rest of the damage.

When I got a good look at myself naked, I had to smile. I was fucked-up, alright. I didn't mind the way the cuts and bruises looked. In fact, I kind of liked it. It agreed with me. I looked like I'd suffered enough, and maybe I had. I'd seen it coming for a long time. It was the first time I'd looked in the mirror and seen something that wasn't false.

My mom knocked on my door, and I told her to come in. She walked up behind me and stood there and looked at me in the mirror. We didn't say anything for a minute, we just looked at each other. I had plenty of questions, but I knew she didn't have any answers. Maybe she was thinking the same thing about me. We'd long ago lost the ability to make meaningful conversation. We just recycled the same bits of dialogue over and over until they lost whatever trivial meaning they had. Neither of us really believed in our roles.

She told me she didn't want me riding to school with Eric on the bike anymore. I didn't answer her. What was the point? The chances that she would remember the conversation the next day were relatively slim. She didn't mean any harm by it. She was just trying to relieve herself of her own virtually weightless notion of responsibility. It didn't make any difference to either of us.

Then she gave me my pain pills and said she was going out. She was going to Catherine's and then to a dinner. She touched me lightly on the shoulder blade and told me to get some rest. I flinched slightly when she touched me, and some sort of cloud passed over her face, but I couldn't be sure what it was. I hadn't known where we stood with each other for a long time.

After my mom left, I turned up the thermostat and lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. I took a pain pill and sucked down a protein drink. Lying there naked, I was vaguely horny, but I didn't have the energy to do anything about it. Around six, Jake called and said he was coming over for a while. I put on some boxers and sweats and a shirt I left unbuttoned, and then I went to wait for him out front.

When I saw him, he had a smile on his face I hadn't seen in a while. My heart kind of leapt when I saw it. Then I felt a sort of dull ache when I realized how long it had been since I'd seen him smile like that. It had probably been almost a year. It was the same smile. It still blew me away.

'Hey buddy, how do you feel?'

'Not so bad. Kinda dopey actually, but that's a good thing.'

'Tell me about it.'

'Are you gonna tell me what you're grinning about?'

'Yeah, I have news for you.'

'So?'

'I went to the small animal hospital and saw the dog. She's doing alright. Her name's Hedy, and she belongs to a friend of Nessa's. She'll be in there for while, but she's gonna make it. The vet was great. Dr. Smart. He wanted to know how you were.'

I felt a surge of something, I don't know what it was, a kind of chemical elation, an incredible sensation of relief. I don't know why it affected me so much, I had almost put the dog out of my mind. I don't think I could have faced finding out for myself, but Jake had done it for me.

'Oh, Jake, thank you man. Thanks. I just... I don't ....' I couldn't put it into words.

He looked so happy, like he'd just given me a birthday present he was really proud of having picked out. The look on his face hit me like a blow to the throat. I choked up, and then I reached out for him. He wrapped his arms around my back, and I clenched my fist behind his head and brought it toward mine. I closed my eyes and pressed my face against his cheek.

'I'm such a fuck-up.'

'You're not a fuck-up, Kevin. You're a good guy. You just don't know it yet.'

I had to let him go before I lost whatever control I still had over myself. I pushed him away and left my hands on his shoulders. I couldn't look him in the eye.

'Look, you're a little confused, but who isn't? You'll figure things out. Just don't try to do it all in one day.'

'You're right, Jake. I'm through figuring things out for the day.' Suddenly I was exhausted. I let my hands drop to my sides. 'Let's go inside and eat and drink.'

'You left out the be merry part.'

'Yeah, that was implied.'

'Plus I already ate.'

'Well that just leaves drinking and being merry.'

'I can handle that.'

'Personally, I'm on pain pills, and I ain't sharing.'

'Yeah, you're always holding out on me.'

'Don't even go there.'

We went inside and brought a couple of beers and some chips back to my room and stretched out on my bed. I turned the TV on and started scanning for something that wouldn't put me to sleep. I was leaning against a bunch of pillows at the head of the bed. I had my knees up, and Jake was lying down across the bed at my feet. The bed was a king, so he could have been miles away from me, but he wasn't.

I must have drifted off to sleep for a while until the phone rang. Jake answered it and then handed it to me. It was Eric.

'Hey Eric.'

'Hey. What are you up to?'

'Sleeping through a movie. How 'bout you?'

'Calculus.'

'Hey, how hard can that be?'

'Are you going to school tomorrow?'

'No, I'm supposed to lie around in bed all day. Maybe the day after tomorrow.'

'Do you have a ride?'

'I don't know. Do you have a bike?'

'It's supposed to be done tomorrow after school.'

'Let me know what I owe you.'

'You don't owe me shit, Kevin.'

'Yeah, I do.'

'Ok maybe you do, but that's not the point.'

'What's the point?'

'I forget. Oh yeah, do you need a ride?'

'I don't know, Eric. My mom mentioned something about finding some other means of transportation.'

'She wants to buy me a car?'

'Not exactly. I think she had in mind one of those Chinese things, you know, with the tricycle and the little cart.'

'Very funny. So how are you supposed to get to school?'

'I forgot to ask. When she puts her mind to it, my mom can usually come up with something that doesn't involve driving me herself.'

'Ouch.'

'In my family, we call that being resourceful.'

'Right. So should I stop by tomorrow?'

'Yeah, stop by, pull up a chair, we can chat about things.'

He didn't respond to that. I don't know what came over me, I think I was channeling some leftover aggression from the day before. It didn't come out quite the way I intended it. I quickly tried to lighten it up.

'I can offer you a full range of pharmaceuticals. Or there's always beer.'

He laughed at that. I guess he decided to let me off the hook.

'Ok Kevin, I'll see you tomorrow. Go back to sleep.'

'Believe me, that's not a problem.'

'Why don't you put Jake on for a minute.'

I handed the phone over to Jake. He wasn't even pretending to watch the movie. He'd been watching my face, probably the whole time. I wondered what he expected to learn from it. If I didn't know how I felt any more, how could he? I was watching him, too, while he talked to Eric. He didn't say much at all, but Eric apparently did. After a minute or so he said bye and switched off the phone.

'So what was that about?' I knew he didn't want me to ask, but I couldn't help it. I really didn't want to turn my imagination loose on it.

'He wants me to eat lunch with him tomorrow.'

'And?'

He stared me down, but he didn't say anything for a minute. Obviously I was trying his patience, which wasn't usually all that easy to do.

'Look, Kevin, he's not my boyfriend. If you want to know what's on his mind, fucking ask him. I only stepped in because you were flat on your back in the hospital, but you're a big boy, you can sort things out with him on your own.'

I sat there and stared at a spot on my arm. I knew he was right, but I couldn't say that.

'Who said he was my boyfriend?'

'Whatever.'

'Yeah, whatever.'

'Look at me, Kevin.'

I didn't look at him. It was a trick; he'd used it on me before. He'd get me to look at him, and then he'd break me down with his eyes. I wasn't about to fall for it. He sat up and leaned over me and lifted my chin until my eyes were level with his. I looked away again. I was really too sleepy to resist, though, so eventually I gave in. I looked in his eyes.

'If you want to talk about it, Kevin, I'm here. I want to help. I just don't want to be the go-between in something I know you don't want me to know about.'

'Jake, it's not that. The whole thing is fucked. If I didn't trust you, we wouldn't be having this conversation. There wouldn't even be a question in your head. I'd just be your straighter-than-thou buddy, believe me, I know how to fake it.'

'I know you trust me. But maybe not that far. And I respect that. It's just that I know you aren't talking to anybody else about it either, and that's not good. So if you change your mind, I'm here. Ok?'

'Ok.'

'Do you want me to sleep here or go home?'

'Sleep here.'

'Then let's go to sleep.'

'Kay.' It was the same old shit. I couldn't fight him. Every time he reminded me what he was to me, it just made me weaker.

He got up and went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth and took a piss. I lay there on the bed and listened to him pee. It took him forever, maybe that's why he was impatient with me. Then he came back and stripped down to his boxer briefs and climbed into bed next to me. I got up and undressed and did my stuff in the bathroom and then turned down the thermostat. I sat down on my side of the bed. My ribs were killing me, so I took another pain pill. Then I turned out the light and slipped under the covers.

I lay there on my back in the dark and listened to him breathe. That was, maybe, of all the things, what I liked best. I knew exactly where he was. It was like hearing his heart beat. I could tell from the way he breathed if he was asleep.

When he slept with me, he slept near the middle of the bed, close enough to touch but not touching me. If I really thought about what that meant, I'd be lost.

'Jake?'

'Yeah?'

'Thanks. I mean, for all of it. You don't have to deal with my shit, but you do.'

He grabbed my arm and gave it a squeeze and then left his hand there. I lay there in the dark listening to him breathe until I fell asleep.

In the morning, I watched him get dressed for school. We didn't sleep over as often as we used to, but he still had plenty of clothes at my house, and I had plenty at his. Sometimes I wore his clothes around the house just for the hell of it. I don't know why they felt different, but they did. Even after they'd been through the laundry at my house a few times, they still felt like his. They felt different against my skin. For some reason I never wore them to school, though, even though he occasionally wore mine.

Before he left, he asked me if I wanted him to bring me anything after school. I told him to call me after he had lunch with Eric. I didn't want to have to talk to Eric before I knew what that was about.

I had some time to think after Jake left. I don't know why it took me so long to ask myself where our friendship was going. I knew we'd been drifting for a long time now. I wanted to turn back the clock, but that wasn't possible.

I'd told him something, and maybe it should have made us closer, but it didn't work out like that. For the last year I'd felt it slipping away. He tried really hard not to treat me differently, and the truth was that he treated me better than before, but I couldn't take that at face value.

I wasn't ashamed of liking guys. I didn't see any reason to be. I'd heard all the macho bullshit from my so-called friends, but it was just like all the other bullshit. Even the poor fucks reciting their lines didn't believe in them.

What I couldn't face was that maybe I loved Jake that way. Maybe I'd been wanting him all along, but I couldn't let myself feel that. I'd been pushing him away a lot more lately, and I think it was because once I admitted to him that I liked guys, I couldn't help being more aware of the way I was with him. I was afraid I'd catch myself doing things I couldn't explain any other way.

I didn't want to be in love with him. If I let that happen to me, I'd lose everything. If I tried to imagine myself without Jake, I couldn't even picture the void. I wouldn't even exist anymore. We weren't the kind of friends we used to be when we were kids, but he was the only thing out there that would break my fall. My family was a sick fairy tale, a fucked-up Greek myth. My other friends were a bad joke.

I'd never been all that confused about what I wanted sexually. I figured that was what my cock was there for. I mean, if the compass was reading North by Northwest, then that was your bearing.

With girls, I got hard when I knew I was going to get naked and have sex with them. No matter how hot a girl might have been, if I wasn't going to get laid, she didn't do anything for me sexually. I had to at least know I could do something with her if I wanted to; and even then it helped to be moderately wasted.

I looked at guys differently. It was really pretty simple. I guess you could say they were more significant to me. That was pretty much it.

I was around Jake a lot, and I didn't walk around with a permanent erection, so it seemed reasonable to assume that I didn't feel that way about him. Sure, sometimes I stiffened up when we shared the same bed, but I didn't need Jake for that, I could get that far on my own.

It never occurred to me that some third-rate stand-up comedian in my sub-conscious might be short-circuiting my dick when Jake was around. I mean, where was the motivation? If you can't trust your compass, where are you? You're fucked.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was just going around in circles. I had a mental image of Jake, of his eyes, his smile, his body. I had a hundred memories of the way he felt when I touched him. Wherever I put my hands, he was always a couple of degrees warmer than I was. His smell was the smell of my childhood. I knew what he looked like asleep.

The key to what I felt wasn't any of those things in particular, it was some sort of sum or expression they illogically formed that I still couldn't evaluate.

I could sense there was a mystery there, but it didn't smell like sex. What I wanted from him was what I already had. I knew I was losing that. If I thought I was never going to see him again, I'd probably have to kiss him, but that wouldn't necessarily be all that sexual either.

I loved him. That was the whole story. Let somebody else pin the label on it.

Well, that's all for now. Kevin is waking up, even if he can't quite smell the coffee. Eric's still on the fence, but at least he's feeling uncomfortable there. And Jake isn't perfect, he just seems that way to Kevin, who tends to idealize the few things he isn't cynical about.

Thanks again to all the people who mailed me their reactions to the story so far. Trust me, it matters. Drop me a line and let me know what you think. (Don't flame me, I'm already on fire.) Jay