Okay, this is not a story with a whole lot of sex. Some will come in here and there, but it is not the central theme. It's a story about love between men and self-acceptance, kinda like all of my stories are.
If you're under 18 or 21 or whatever, be aware that in some odd corner of the universe, you could possbly be breaking the law.
If you like anything of mine, please e-mail me at virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com and I will be very grateful to you and a lot more likely to write faster updates. If you don't like what I write, keep it to yourself. :-)
IMPORTANT!!! This story includes excerpts of Paul & Morgan's memoir, which I will separate from the rest of the story with asteriks like the one's below. If this is confusing, e-mail me and let me know and I will try to figure something else out!
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Part Nine
Morgan & Paul 5:
Paul:
I'll never be able to forget the feeling of dread that lay over me like a blanket as we pulled up to Morgan and Louisa's pristine, two-story home. It looked like something out of a sitcom, painted a gleaming white with a picket fence. My insides clenched as I stared at the life that Morgan had built without me.
My sister was his wife and they had a daughter together. For the first time since I had left, I was fully aware of what I was about to do and my reaction was complete nausea. As Ryan parked the car, I sat stock still in the seat next to him, quietly willing myself to calm down. I was going to see Morgan again and just the thought of it made me ache.
I was not over him, I realized, after over five years of trying to convince myself otherwise. I was not over him...and I probably would never be. The man I loved with all of my heart, who I would most likely spend the rest of my life loving...was married to my older sister.
The knowledge hit me like a ton of bricks, fresh and renewed... as if I had never set foot out of Michigan. It was like I'd hit the pause button on my life and played in the tulips for the last five years and now the drama was about to resume.
"Are you gonna be okay, Paul?" Ryan asked me from the driver's seat and when I glanced over at him, I noted the worry lines around his eyes and his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Tears filled my eyes. I hadn't cried since the day Morgan came home from Vietnam, when I had wanted nothing more than to blow my brains out all over my parents' bedroom.
"I-I don't know if I can do this, Ryan," I stumbled over the words, staring at my older brother pleadingly. If I'd just had time to prepare, to think things through before I was faced with this, I knew I'd be handling things much better. So, I'd always been more sensitive, more emotional than the people around me. Still, I had been certain that I could avoid both Morgan and Louisa when I came home and that any time I spent with them would be limited and impersonal.
Instead, I was going to go into their home and do what? I honestly had no idea of what I would say to either of them.
"Paul, please," Ryan said quietly. "Just go in there. Whatever happens can't be any worse than what's going on now."
Maybe he was right. If things were as bad as he said they were in the Anderson home, my presence was probably not going to make things worse...but I wasn't thinking about them, I was thinking about me.
I nodded and somehow managed to get out of the car and walk the short distance from the curb and up through the picket fence and across the yard to their front door. I knocked tentatively, probably too quiet for them to hear. Then, I heard the picket fence creak open behind me and turned around to see Ryan placing my bag just inside of the fence. He looked at me, then started back towards his car. I gaped at him.
"Ryan, are you leaving?" I called out to him. He nodded at me, then quickly got into his car, started the engine and drove off. How dare he feed me all of that crap about standing up and cleaning up this mess when he wasn't even willing to come inside and help mediate things? I was still gaping after him when the door behind me swung open.
I whirled around to face Louisa, who was standing on the other side of the now open door, her brown hair down around her shoulders and naturally unkempt, like some kind of flower child. She had on a peasant-style dress and a cigarette dangled from one slender hand. She was much thinner than I had ever seen her and there were shadows under her eyes. Her cheeks were almost hollowed and her eyes, nearly bloodshot. I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat.
"H-hey, Louisa," I said a little bit inadequately. In a way, I missed her. She had never been a bad sister, always just kind of there in the outskirts of my life, being herself...but the thought of her with Morgan had eroded any pleasant memories I had of her. Not that I hated her. It wasn't exactly her fault that Morgan decided to marry her and build a life with her.
She smirked at me and stepped out onto the small cement walkway that served as entrance to the house.
"The valiant knight returns," she intoned in a sarcastic mumble and eyed me. All I could do was stand there. She wasn't the same woman I had known when I had left five years before. She'd been pristine then, a mockery of my mother in a starched skirt and frilly blouse, the image of the perfect housewife she aspired to be. Obviously that vision was long gone.
"How are you?" I asked and she looked away from me, walked past me to lean against the bark of a tree, taking a long drag of her cigarette and blowing smoke rings into the air. For a moment, I was one hundred percent certain that she was high on some drug, then she looked at me... and the misery in her eyes took my breath away.
"How the fuck do you think I am?" she asked in a wobbly tone. I shifted from one foot to the other like a guilty altar boy, and stared at her. What was I supposed to say?
"I'm sorry, Louisa," I said...that always worked...and I really was. I hadn't stood up and told her about the man that she was marrying. At the time, my hurt was the only thing on my radar and I hadn't fathomed that things would turn out this way. When Morgan set his mind to do something, he made it work...and he normally made it work well. The fact that their mariage was in shambles was a shock to me.
"Sorry for what?" she asked with a laugh. I shook my head.
"I'm sorry that this is what we've come to," I told her. "I should have told you that Morgan and I had a past....but I was too shocked by the fact that you were getting married, and too hurt to do anything about it."
She laughed outright at that and all I could do was kind of stand back and watch and hope that she wasn't losing her mind right in front of me. When she had stopped laughing, she took another drag of her cigarette and smiled, shaking her head.
"You were naive then and you still are," she informed me quietly.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I knew all about you and Morgan," she told me. "Everyone did. I came home early one day and heard you two in the pantry. You were so loud, the neighbors could have heard if they were listening. We all knew what was going on between the two of you. It was obvious...especially with you mooning around waiting for him to write you letters from Vietnam."
I stared at my sister. I had no words for her. I didn't want to rant at her, I didn't have it in me. I was tired. I was obviously unaware of what had been going on around me. Of course, her knowledge of what had taken place changed things. I couldn't really feel sympathy for her.
"I just thought you'd get over it," she told me, with a bitter laugh. "I thought that the two of you would get over it and build lives for yourselves. Morgan's a catch, Paul. He's handsome, he's smart. He's the kind of a guy a girl wants to marry...and when he asked me, I couldn't say no."
"Did you know that I love him, Louisa?" I asked her and she looked away from me. She took a few puffs of her cigarette before she answered.
"Yeah," she said, quietly and a tear fell down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily. "I hoped that you'd get over it. I never expected you to just up and leave...and what that did to him. God, Paul, you wrecked him."
I laughed at that, fighting tears myself.
"I was the one who was wrecked," I told her.
"You should have seen him, I couldn't even get him to eat half of the time," she said, shaking her head. "He thought I didn't know why he was so depressed, but I knew. He got it in his head that you were down there selling yourself...a rent boy or something...and he had all these fucking letters that you'd written to him, all of that senitmental nonsense about the home you'd have...the fucking picket fence. He'd get drunk and read them, leaving them on the floor under the couch and I'd find them and read them.
"Then he got delusional. We would be sitting and having a normal conversation and he'd call me Paul. Just...Paul, could you pass me that or what do you think of that, Paul? I thought if I gave him a baby...something that you couldn't give him..."
She swallowed hard and stopped talking, turned away from me to face the road.
"Even then, he talks about how much she looks like you," Louisa spat the words out at me, cutting her eyes off to the side at me.
"None of this is my fault, Louisa," I informed her quietly. "I didn't tell you to marry him. I didn't want you to marry him. You knew how I felt and you still chose to marry him. You can't expect me to feel sorry for you."
She whirled to face me, her eyes flashing.
"So, tell me its true, you've been turning tricks down in sunny California?" she asked me, grinning.
"Of course not," I told her very quietly. There was a malicious gleam in her eye, as if she wanted to hear about me turning to a life of sin and depravation. I sighed and looked past her.
"I put myself through school," I told her. "I got involved with art. I was a waiter for four years."
"Of course," she nodded, then she was silent, just looking at me. I stared back at her, taking in the lines etched on her face, the stark look of hopelessness that covered every inch of her.
"He has these dreams, Paul," she said softly. "He can hardly sleep at night, dreaming about Vietnam, about war. He calls out for you at night, its like your name is being ripped from his throat."
"What do you want me to do, Louisa?" I asked her.
Tears spilled onto her cheeks.
"He needs you," she said, sobbing lightly. "I want you to take him back."
Yeah, right. I laughed lightly.
"Don't laugh, Paul," she said and came to stand close to me. "I know its ridiculous, but I'm in love with him. I have been since high school. I tried to steal him away from you, I thought it would be better for him to be with me than for him to be queer. But it doesn't work that way. I should have told him no...I'm leaving him. I'm leaving...this."
"Where are you going to go, Louisa, to mom and dad's?" I asked and she shook her head.
"Hell, anywhere, New York, Chicago, California, wherever I can find a life for myself," she said, almost frantically.
"Louisa, how are you going to drag Leslie around like that?" I asked and she stared at me and shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.
"I can't, Paul, I can't take her with me," Louisa said and I stared at her in horror. She was going to leave Morgan with a little girl? A Morgan who had become a delusional drunk?
"Louisa," I started slowly and she put her hand over my mouth.
"Don't tell me," she said emphatically. "I've been through it all in my head a million times, Paul, but there is no other way. I can't take care of her by myself and I can't stay here with Morgan and watch him drink himself to death over you. I'll file for divorce and you can have him."
"I don't want him, Louisa," I told her, uncaring about the fact that I was lying through my teeth, I had to do something to knock some sense into her. "I'm with someone. I - I have someone back home."
There was a strangled sound behind us and we both blanched and I whirled around to see Morgan standing in the open front door. God, he looked awful. He hadn't shaved...and it looked like he hadn't bathed in awhile, either. He was dressed in a crumpled shirt and jeans and he'd lost most of his body weight. He was rail thin. I gasped in shock.
"Morgan, go on upstairs to bed," she said shakily from behind me, but Morgan's eyes were fixed on me. I stood there, shaking like a leaf, fighting the urge to go over to him and sit him down, sober him up and feed him. I had spent five years in misery over him, I could not simply forgive him.
"Paul's here," he said, as if I wasn't really standing there in front of him. Louisa was breathing erratically behind me.
"We're talking," she told him as if he were a child. Morgan took several steps in my direction.
"I love you," he said to me, just out in the open for all and sundry to hear. I backed away as he got closer, back and further back until I was stopped by the trunk of the tree Louisa had been leaning against earlier. Morgan pressed close to me, his arms came up around me. He reeked of alcohol, it was seeping through his pores.
"Paul," he said and then kept repeating my name and sobbing. The feeling of warmth that went through my body as I stood there in a drunk man's arms is indescribable. Here in front of me was my true north, a man who had betrayed me in what I had imagined was the worse possible way and all I could think about was the fact that I never wanted to be away from him again. I started crying, quietly, small sobs that built up in my throat as Morgan touched me, simply ran his hands up and down my sides and across my chest, trying to make himself believe that I was real.
His bloodshot eyes locked on my face, noted the tears there.
"Hey, Paul," he slurred, unsteadily. "Hey, I'm sorry, you know? I'm sorry, okay?"
I nodded.
"So, y-you, got a boyfriend down in San Fran?" he asked loudly.
I couldn't lie. I shook my head.
"H-hey, Paul," Morgan called out, in a voice so loud, I could have been halfway across the room. "You still...you still love me, Paul?"
He looked at me, his drunken eyes clear for the moment.
I nodded and he nodded back at me.
"Yeah, I still love you, Morgan," I told him quietly. He pressed his head against my shoulder and I carefully, uncertainly put my hands on his sides to hold him up. I could feel how thin he was through the fabric of his shirt, each impression of bone underneath.
I looked around for Louisa. She was gone. ********************************************************** Eric:
I was sitting in my truck in the parking lot of the gay antique shop, reading while I waited for Skit. I spent the entire night at home going over what I was gonna say to him in my head. First, I had to let him know that I wasn't threatening him or anything like that anymore...and if he wanted to look at me, he could look at me or whatever.
Then, I had to tell him that I was interested in him, not that I might be gay or anything...just that there might be something there if he's still interested. Not just that there might be something there, but that I also could not make any promises as far as being with him because what if I chickened out or it felt weird or something?
But I wasn't gonna be like Morgan had been when he wasted five fucking years married to someone that he didn't even want. I kinda felt like he and Paul paid the blood, sweat and tears so that people like me would not have to do the same, you know? I mean, the thought that I might be gay doesn't fucking thrill me (unless I'm thinking about Skit), but I don't have to marry some chick just to try to get by in life. There's gay tv shows and everything now.
Anyway, I had everything down. I was taking him to this place called Bombay Cuisine, which Mike had told me was a decent place to eat, but not like a date and not like fast food. When I called him last night, he wanted to know what girl I was taking out to lunch...and I just kind of brushed him off.
When we got there, I'd say what I had to say and then... and then I had no fucking clue.
The thing that irked me the most was that my palms were sweating, thats like something from tv or that you read about in books. I kept trying to wipe them off on my knees so that they wouldn't be clammy when he got in the car...not that I was planning to touch him.
What if he wanted me to touch him? What the fuck was I getting myself into?
I was ready to bail when I saw Skit come out of the loading dock door. My heart started beating in my chest the way it does when he's around. I watched him walk to the truck, he looked almost scared. He had toned things down a bit as far as clothes went, his hair was dark green, but he had on cargo jeans and an 80s throwback t-shirt, Rainbow Brite or something. He came up to the passenger side of the truck and peered at me through the open window. I stared back at him.
"Hey," he said quietly and I had to force myself to talk, my insides had started quaking.
"Hey," I said back.
"We still going?" he asked uncertainly. I guess I looked sort of mean or something because he looked like he didn't want to get in. I nodded and tried to relax.
"Yeah, get in," I said and he reached for the handle and opened the door. After a moment, he climbed up and sat down next to me. Skit has really small hips...narrow, I guess. Anyway, I got a boner just from him climbing into the truck.
He started fiddling with things, the button on the glove compartment, the unopened mail behind the visor, the scuffed door handle, then some of the raggedy fabric on the edge of the passenger seat. I could tell he was nervous.
"You ever been to Bombay Cuisine?" I asked him and he peered over at me, the blue eyes shining. It was surreal having him there, like I was in some kind of dream awake state.
"No," he said softly.
"My friend Mike thinks it awesome, so I figured we could go there," I told him.
"Mike Thompson?" he asked and I nodded.
"Yeah, he's my best friend," I told him.
"I know," Skit said quietly, intently, pretty soon I would learn that this soft, measured tone was just Skit's general manner, the way he always was even when he wasn't nervous. "I've seen you two hanging around."
"Yeah, he said you guys used to live in the same neighborhood," I said, starting the car and beginning the short trek the few blocks it would take to get to the restaurant.
"That was a long time ago," Skit said with a little smile.
"Yeah," I said for lack of anything better to say. Silence settled over us for a moment and I tried to think frantically of something that we could talk about.
"I-is this place really expensive cuz I've only got like five bucks," Skit said after a minute.
"Oh, no, don't worry about it, I'm paying for you," I told him in a quick rush, then felt extremely awkward as I realized that it made it seem even more like we were going out on a date or something. Skit's face went red and he stopped fidgeting. If I thought he was nervous before, he was really nervous now. He wouldn't look at me and the conversation sort of died right there. I cleared my throat.
Skit looked over at me curiously.
"Are you taking me somewhere to kick my ass?" Skit asked me quietly, point blank. It was almost funny, but I couldn't laugh. The fact that he even thought that I would was enough for me to know that if anything was going to happen between us, I would have to change his opinion of me.
"No, Skit," I said and was silent until I found a place to park near the restaurant.
"Well, if you don't want to kick my ass, then what do you want?" he asked and I breathed a deep sigh, trying to figure out how I was going to tell him what was going on in my head.
"I just want to talk to you," I said, at a loss.
"About what?" he asked.
"I just want you to know that I'm not some kid that goes around beating up people for no reason," I told him. "If I'm fucking pissed off, then I can't guarantee I won't fight but I don't just go around doing...you know hitting people and shit."
He was quiet. Probably because that was the most he had ever gotten me to say.
"And I'm sorry about attacking you in the gym," I said.
He looked at me, his blue eyes were very soft. My heart started thudding in my chest again.
"I mean, you looking at me wasn't a big deal," I went on. "It didn't bother me until the guys started ragging on me about it. I wouldn't have ever said anything to you about it...I mean, I kind of liked it...not like I liked it but just..it didn't bother me." God, my mouth felt like cotton. What the fuck was I saying?
Skit started smiling at me.
"And I just wanted to apologize about it," I said after a moment.
His grin widened.
"Apology accepted," he said simply and I took my keys out of the ignition. Then, I looked back at him quickly.
"And I take back what I said," I said quietly. "If you wanna...you know look at me...or draw me or whatever, you can."
There. I'd said something I really wanted to say. Skit looked over at me and I tried to smile at him, but I felt like my face was concrete.
"I think...you know...that you're art is fucking awesome," I told him. His face flushed with color, but he held my eye. God, he had more courage in his little finger than I had in my whole body.
"Will you sit for me?" he asked me.
I nodded. "Yeah, if you want me to," I said and his eyes started gleaming.
"Do you like boys or girls?" he asked me, point blank and I was at a complete loss for words.
"Um..." what was I supposed to say, I don't know?
"That's a simple question, Eric," he said...and my name on his lips was like a fucking symphony. God, I wanted to hear him say it all the time.
"Yeah, I know," I told him. "Not a simple answer."
"Are you bi?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow at me. I swallowed and looked away.
"Nah, I don't think I'm bi," I said quietly. "I haven't been attracted to a whole lot of people in my life before."
"You haven't?" he asked and I shook my head. "What about Jennifer Lopez?" I shook my head. "Brad Pitt." I shook my head again.
"Then, who have you been attracted to?" he asked.
"Um...I don't know," I said. "I - uh - I think I might be attracted to you, maybe."
He paused, got very still and stared at my face, maybe he was trying to figure out if I was sincere.
"To me?" he asked and I nodded again. He sat there for a minute, thinking and then he moved across the seat closer to me. He put his hand on my forearm. I looked at him. God, he smelled like paint and that tangy cologne he wore. His touch made the hairs on the back of my arm stand up.
"You think?" he asked me.
"I'm pretty sure," I said and my voice came out hoarse and a little strained.
He leaned in and placed his lips on mine, kind of an open mouthed peck. He pulled back a little.
"Pretty sure?" he asked. I leaned in and kissed him back, and let out a relieved sigh as I let my tongue delve into his mouth. The nerves between my cock and my mouth must have been like a superhighway because I was bursting at my seams. I hadn't kissed a whole lot of people in my life, but Skit's mouth was now officially my favorite residence.
He pulled back and all I could do was look at it, his lips were a little swollen, soft and a perfect bow shape...just begging me to kiss them. He kissed like an angel. He talked like an angel. He looked like an angel.
"Pretty sure?" he repeated.
I shook my head.
"Abso-fucking-lutely, one hundred percent sure," I told him and his smile was wide enough to split his face in two.
"There is a God," he breathed before he kissed me again. ********************************************************** More to come!
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