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. :-)
Sorry this one took so long, but I am still writing!!!
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 Six
I didn't know what to say. What could I say? It wasn't as if I had a whole lot of options in front of me. I stared at Skit for a long moment as he stood there in the doorway, his pink hair all over the place, the black sweater like a second skin over his tight chest, his lips quivering ever so slightly and the baggy pants making him look like a two-year-old in his older brother's jeans. He looked so vulnerable and my heart...my heart was doing funny things inside of my chest. Panic swept over me and I started to get mad as hell. When I am backed into a corner, I don't try to think things out, I fight my way out.
"I'm not gonna be your fucking boyfriend, Skit," I told him, snapping the drawing pad shut.
Skit's hands went to his elbows, a protective stance.
"I didn't ask you to be," Skit informed me, which only made me madder.
"Good, well stop stalking me," I said, waving the pad around angrily as I talked. His expression became incredulous as he came further into the room. Even at my meanest, he was ready to go toe to toe with me. I knew guys on the football team who would turn the other way if I so much as looked at them odd.
"I am not stalking you." Skit exclaimed angrily. "I stopped staring at you on May 16th, when you did your Neanderthal routine in the gym. I can't help it that we both work here. I've been trying to stay out of your way and as for what I draw, this is a free fucking country and you can't dictate to me what I put on a sketchpad."
I stopped talking when he walked closer to me. He had never come so close to me since that time in the gym. The top of my head started to tingle and burn. Skit held out his hand.
"Give me my sketchpad," he demanded and I held it away from him. He came closer.
"I'm not sure I should give it back to you, you might show someone," I said uncertainly.
"I started drawing you over ten months ago and I haven't shown anyone a single drawing," Skit said and reached for the sketchpad, his chest brushing my forearm. "Why would I start now?"
He was so close to me that I could smell the cologne he wore, an airy, tangy scent that I had smelled before. I couldn't help it. I started staring at him silently. The perfect shape of his pink lips, the huge, doe-like blue eyes, the creamy, flawless skin. I wondered for an aching moment if he felt as soft as he looked. I reached up and ran my hand across the side of his face. He stopped straining for the sketchpad and stared at me. His eyes dilated and became dark. I ran the tips of my fingers down his left cheek. He was soft...so soft, even softer than I had imagined. I moved my hand shakily down until it reached the edge of his turtleneck.
"What I don't understand is how you can be supposedly so wrapped up in me and then come in here with hickeys all over your neck," I told him, a little roughly. He moved so that my hand fell away from his neck.
"You said it," he informed me briskly. "You're not gonna be my fucking boyfriend. So, somebody has to."
I stared him straight in the eyes.
"I just don't understand how you can go around telling someone they're beautiful and then hooking up with someone else," I said, illogically. I didn't know what I was saying...or how to say what I wanted to say. I needed to shut up.
"You know that if you even gave me half a chance, I'd -," he began, but looked away quickly, swallowing hard and fast. He looked back at me, his eyes hard.
"Don't play around with me, Eric," he said brutally. "I can't handle it if you do that, okay?"
His mixture of vulnerability and strength got to me.
"I'm not playing with you," I told him. "I swear, I'm not. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even know what the hell I'm saying."
I stopped talking before I made a total jackass of myself and we stood there for a minute, looking at each other and then we were closer. I don't know if I moved or he moved, but his lips were less than an inch away from mine and I could only acknowledge one fact to myself. I wanted to kiss him. I definitely wanted to kiss another guy.
The sound of someone at the door broke us apart. I shot about twenty feet across the room and Skit turned to look at the door. Drew stood there, staring at us.
"Shit," Drew said, with a laugh. He ran his hands through his dark hair quickly, his eyes bouncing between me and Skit quickly. He laughed again and then whirled on Skit.
"Is this the guy?" he said, gesturing at me with his thumb. Skit nodded and Drew laughed again. First of all, I don't like being laughed at. Second of all, Drew was really not my favorite person in the world at that moment, there were hickeys on Skit's neck to remind me of that.
"God, you know how to pick 'em," Drew said, with a laugh and that was it. I didn't know how to deal with whatever it was that was going on between Skit and me, but I had no problem getting angry. So, I charged across the room and picked Drew up by his throat. I pressed my finger hard against his windpipe until he sputtered.
"What's so fucking funny, kid?" I asked him and he looked down at me, his eyes wide and panicky.
"Eric," Skit's voice was soft, compelling and making me ashamed of my behavior, ashamed of the one thing I had always been proud of, my ability to intimidate anybody that stepped in my way. I dropped Drew and he crumbled in a coughing heap on the floor. I looked at Skit. His eyes were locked on me, asking me a question I didn't even have the answer to.
Fuck it. I was out of there. I walked out of the room. I paced back and forth in front of the door for a second before I grabbed my keys out of my pocket and headed purposefully down the hall. To hell with all of it, I was going home. I had not had a single, fucking problem until I set foot in the gay antique shop. So, maybe being there was my problem.
I was at the door when Morgan stopped me. He took one look at me and grimaced, looking away quickly and then back.
"So, you leaving early?" he asked, then plowed on. "Fine. But don't forget this." He handed me another manila folder. This one was thicker than any of the others. Fucking great. I walked out of the door.
"See ya tomorrow," Morgan called after me. Yeah, right.
I sat on the edge of a bench in Mulick Park, watching Mike and a bunch of guys playing basketball. I was supposed to be playing, too, but my heart wasn't in it. I mean, what had happened earlier shook me up and it was like life was not going to give me the time I needed to sort it all out in my head and make it right.
The truth of the matter was, I didn't exactly know how to make it right. I had almost kissed the guy. If that asshole Drew hadn't come in when he did, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have kissed Skit...and to make it all worse, I probably would have liked it.
I honestly never had a fucking gay thought in my head before I went to the gay antique shop and it was bugging the hell out of me. People can't make you gay, it's like a proven fact, but if they weren't making me gay, then I was gay all along and that made no sense.
So, I hadn't dated a lot of girls, but that was because I got shy and didn't know what to say around them. If anybody knows me, they know I like to feel in control and with girls, I never do, so that's why I avoid them... plus, I've never thought about guys like that. A bunch of bouncing dicks doesn't even make me horny. Sure I admire a nice set of pecs and abs, but just from a weightlifting stance.
I tried to think about Mike, buck naked and hard...nothing happened.
I tried to think about Cindi Patterson, one of the hottest girls in my class, buck naked and bouncing around...nothing.
This shit was so fucking lame. I really was screwed up in the brain. I put my head down and stared at the dark concrete underneath my feet. Maybe I had some kind of sexual dysfunction. I started thinking about Skit...his skin, the way his pants hung on his hips and the shy tilt his chin always took whenever I was anywhere around. My heart started pounding...and my dick started stirring.
Well, at least I could get a hard on. Viagra at the age of seventeen really would have been a fucking tragedy.
I sat there, scuffing my toe on the ground and allowing myself the freedom to think about Skit. I let out a shaky sigh. There was something about him...there always had been. Even when he was staring at me in the halls at school, it really hadn't bothered me all that much. If I was honest, I kind of liked it until the guys started in on me about it.
What I had done to him in the gym had made me more shaken up than anything else ever had. Honestly, if Deneghy hadn't stepped in when she did, I might have started bawling right there. With a kind of backward clarity, I saw what Deneghy had been doing. She saw how shaky I was about what had gone on in the gym and figured that I needed a little guidance. When she couldn't get me to open up to her on my own, she must have figured that spending the summer at the gay antique shop might help me out. I wonder if she had known that Skit would be there? Maybe I could e-mail her and talk to her about it. God knows, I couldn't think of a single other person that I could talk to.
When I looked up, Mike was standing over me, squinting down at me and dripping sweat every where.
"What's wrong with you?" Mike asked, digging around in his duffel bag until he rooted out a sports drink. He started downing it immediately.
"I don't feel good," I told him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Come on, I'll give you a ride home," he said, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
"Nah, I'm gonna sit here for awhile," I told him quietly. He paused and looked at me hard.
"You sure you okay, man?" he asked. "I can stick around and talk if you want?"
"Nope, just don't feel good," I told him. He nodded, knowing that it was pretty much useless to try to get me to talk if I didn't want to.
"See ya tomorrow," he called as he walked off and I waved him away, giving a couple of the guys dirty looks when they glanced my way on their way out of the park. They didn't know me and they were scared of me and I liked it that way.
I sat there with the sun beating down on my back for a long time before I decided to read what Paul and Morgan had written. It was an escape from my mind at least. ******************************************************************************************* Paul & Morgan 5
Paul:
It was four years before Morgan ever spoke to me again. Can you believe that? In that one afternoon, he fulfilled every pre-adolescent fantasy I'd ever had and then he dropped me and my family. I guess he and Ryan were still friends, but they did more hanging out at his place than mine. I saw him from time to time, but he was normally going in the opposite direction and if he wasn't, then he didn't even acknowledge that I existed by saying hello or anything.
At the time, I felt like my life was over. The first year, I kept hoping that he would start talking to me again. I rode my bike all over the neighborhood in the mornings when I delivered my papers, hoping to catch him jogging again, thinking that maybe he would ask me back into his backyard garden, but it never happened.
The next year, the anger set in. I started high school and Morgan was a senior there...dating girls. He was one of the most popular guys in the school, playing football and baseball and always driving a new girl around in his car. Ryan went off to college that year , since he was a year ahead and Morgan rarely came near my house. >From time to time, I'd see him speaking to my sister Louisa in the halls at school, but he never even looked in my direction. My anger resulted in a bunch of disciplinary notices for ditching classes and repeated threats to keep me back one year, which I knew they would never do because I was smarter than sin.
Skipping school just made things easier all around. I wouldn't have to hear about or see Morgan at all and I could usually get through my day okay. I knew that I wouldn't have to worry much about it in another few months because Morgan would be graduating and going off to college like my brother had. Then, even the glimpses into his life that I had would be gone and I could get on with my life. Somehow, this depressed me even more.
Sure enough, Morgan went off to State where my brother had gone. I figured that I would see little if anything else of him and tried to tell myself that was a good thing, but I was never really convinced. I would rather be that boy in the garden, holding a handful of Morgan's spunk, even if it meant that I was being manipulated or misused. At least then I was near him.
I knew that was a pathetic attitude to have and I told myself to get over it. Which I really did try to put forth an effort to do. I started having sex with Sammy. It was something that I didn't really have to think about. He was there and he never turned away from me.
*** Morgan:
When I turned nineteen, I had an epiphany. My whole life, I was doing what other people wanted me to do. I lived the life that other people wanted me to live. I went to State because it was expected of me. I dated Kelly Hendricks because she was always around and everybody seemed to think it was a good idea. I quit messing around with Paul because I figured that was what other people would say was the right thing to do.
God, no one should ever have a person under their complete and total power, not when that person is a twelve-year-old kid with his heart on his sleeve...and big, blue eyes professing their love for you every time you turn a corner. I wasn't man enough not to take advantage of that in the beginning, but when I stood outside of that fence and stared Ryan in the eye, the guilt ate away at me.
That was his little brother back there, tucked away behind the leaves, crouching where I had left him, covered in my sperm. I couldn't be the heartless guy, but there was one thing that everyone told me was even more wrong than two guys screwing around...and that was two guys caring about each other. So, I tucked the feelings right along with the lust away in the back of my mind and I promised myself and I made a silent promise to Paul that I was gonna leave him the hell alone...and I did.
I did.
Until the summer he turned sixteen. He sprouted up over the winter, I guess. I didn't spend a lot of time at home. Ryan was always trying to drag me back home with him for weekends or holidays, but I started working part time in a local canteen to pay tuition expenses and to give my friends and parents a valid reason for staying away from home. By the second summer of college, though, I was homesick and when the guy who owned the canteen decided to scale back his business to go fight in the war, I really had no excuse for staying away. Ryan and I drove his trasher the four hour trip home.
The first person we saw when we pulled into his driveway was Paul. He was mowing the lawn in a pair of cutoff jeans shorts...and nothing else. In those days, it wasn't every man's goal in life to have a massive chest and biceps you couldn't fit your hand around. Paul was a slender guy, tall and long. Every muscle he had was the home made variety, the kind you got from working hard, which I guess he did, stocking groceries at Miller's Market that summer. His blond hair was naturally highlighted and he had a deep tan all over his back and shoulders...and his chest when he turned around to see us driving up. He held one hand over his eyes to shield the sun away and squinted at us. I sat in the car, while Ryan hopped out, hauling his bags over a shoulder and heading for his front porch. All I could do was stare.
Louisa came out and banged on my door, her blonde hair and blue eyes a faded mockery of Paul's.
"You planning to sit in there all day?" she asked and I grinned and got out of the car. Paul was mowing again, his back to me. He didn't look my way again.
Paul:
I just pretended that Morgan wasn't around. It was easier that way. I went around doing normal things and acting as if Morgan hadn't suddenly popped back into my life. He was even hanging around the house more, eating dinner and helping Ryan fix on his junky car.
I went to work and came home and hid in our room. It wasn't always safe there. With Ryan away at college, I wasn't used to sharing a room with him and even less used to seeing Morgan sprawled across my bedroom floor, watching tv. I limited myself to times when they were not around and spent the rest of my free time at Sammy's or outside.
My mother told me that Ryan and Morgan were going to the lake with my dad, Louisa and a couple of cousins on a Saturday afternoon. I had worked that morning and Sammy was no longer working at all, so I told him to come over. It had been awhile since we had had any free time at my house, so I thought that it would be as good a time as any to mess around.
When Morgan came in, we only had our shirts off and were kissing. It could have been a lot worse, but even so, Morgan was hard to deal with. He came silently into the room and started picking up Sammy's things. I had never told Sammy about what happened with Morgan when I was twelve. I never told anyone that.
Morgan silently handed Sammy his things and opened the door. Sammy was frozen with fright as he jammed himself into his t-shirt, took his things and jetted out. I tried to be a lot calmer. Morgan hadn't seen much. If he'd been a few minutes later, he would have really gotten an eyeful.
I stood up and walked to my dresser. I got a fresh t-shirt and was pulling it over my head when Morgan turned me around and pressed me back against the dresser.
He started to kiss me, with the door open and all. His hands were trembling and he was so shaken that I don't even think he realized what he was doing. His kisses were gentle at first, then crushing and bruising. I didn't care, he was touching me and that was what mattered most to me. He drew blood before I even made a sound of dissent.
"You're hurting...me," I told him uncertainly between kisses. That his emotions were fragile or tangled, I never even fathomed. Morgan was always in control.
"Are you and...Samuel Pettigrew...an item?" he asked, against my lips. I shook my head, then nodded.
"Are you?" he asked again.
"Mmph...yes," I said, my lips still crushed.
"Stop it," he said and pulled back away from me. I followed him.
"W-what?" I asked, uncertainly, my ears ringing with need.
"Stop it...with Sammy," he demanded. I was silent. He kissed me again, gentler this time, slower, so slowly that I could feel each movement of his tongue as it glided against mine, it felt as if he were sucking my soul out in infinitesimal breaths.
"Okay?" he asked and I was almost unaware of what we were saying. Almost.
"Okay," I told him, nodding and he kissed me again. It was never even a choice. I loved him.
Morgan:
The thing with Paul began in earnest. Every free moment that either of us had, we somehow managed to sneak in together. In the woods on the outskirts of town, in Paul's bedroom when Ryan got a summer job at a small accounting firm, in the stock room of Miller's Market at five in the morning, in the backseat of Ryan's car whenever he let me borrow it.
It became even more urgent when we learned that instead of heading back to State after the summer, I was being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Almost every night, I held Paul in my arms and he welcomed me inside of him. At the peak of his orgasm, he would grab me and tell me how he loved me. I would wrap my arms around him and breathe him in, savoring every second I had with him, too afraid to say the words.
I knew that I would never say the words. My being called up for the war was providencial. When I shipped out, I never planned to come back. I wanted to die in Vietnam.
Well, I've done my best.
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