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 Eight
The thing that killed me about the Morgan and Paul thing was that it was so fucking stupid. I mean, I do stupid shit sometimes, but not that stupid. Yeah, cornering Skit in the freshman gym was probably the stupidest thing I had done, but what else was I supposed to do? He was looking at me and everybody was starting to notice. The bottom line was that I had been scared...and I don't normally do all that well with being scared.
Reading about how absolutely, fucking stupid Morgan had been in his 20s was the only thing that kept me from finding out where that kid Drew lived and beating the living shit out of him. I decided that I was not going to be as stupid as Morgan had been, plain and simple.
Which was reason number one that I was sitting in Morgan's office, biting my thumbnail down to the quick. I had called him up the night before and told him that I was going to take him up on that offer for conversation. He'd told me to meet him earlier than normal in his office. The sun hadn't even really risen and there I was, waiting for Morgan to get his morning cup of coffee.
When he got it and came to sit down across from me at his desk, I felt kind of the way you do when you are in a guidance counselor's office. For one full, solid minute I wanted to just stand up and get out of there, but something made me stay.
"Did you read the last chapter I gave you?" Morgan asked and I nodded, quickly.
"What did you think?" Morgan asked, his eyes were intent on me and I decided not to beat around the bush or anything.
"You were fuckin' stupid as hell," I mumbled at him and he started laughing. When he laughed really hard, he got these wrinkles around his eyes that were kind of nice. I could sort of see why Paul had been so into him when they were younger.
"That's a way to put it," Morgan said after he'd stopped laughing, but he was still grinning. "Paul thought pretty much the same thing...but as you know I won him back, I'm lucky. You, on the other hand, are pretty stupid and we don't know exactly what the outcome will be. So, let's talk about that."
I shifted in my seat, leaning forward, a bit with my legs spread wide and looked down at the carpeted floor.
"Yeah," I said quietly.
"So, where do you want to start?" he asked me and I just shrugged. I didn't really know where to start. "Why don't we start at the point where you tell me about how long you've known that you're attracted to guys."
I looked up and looked him in the eye.
"I've only ever been attracted to Skit," I told him, swallowing hard. "And I didn't figure that out until a couple of weeks ago."
"Did you date girls before that?" Morgan asked me and I shook my head.
"No, I never dated anybody before," I said quietly. "I just play football and hang out with my friend Mike. I haven't cared much one way or another about dating and girls."
"And how do you feel about Skit?" Morgan asked, quietly assessing, his eyes fixed on me like I was some kind of lab specimen or something.
"I don't know," I mumbled, faltering. "I like him, I think. I mean, I like some stuff about him. The way he looks and what I know about him...but I don't know all that much. I've talked to him like three times and one of those times I was threatening to beat him up."
"Yeah, Vicki talked to us about that incident," Morgan admitted, eyeing me for a moment to see how I reacted, I guess. "I have to admit, you were not my first choice for the job this summer, but Paul has a soft spot for hard cases."
I smirked. "I can tell by what I read," I told him and he smiled at me.
"So, what kind of game plan do you have?" he asked me and I just stared at him. Game plan? I was supposed to be the one to come up with something? Hell, I could barely even think straight. That's what I'd come to him for.
"I don't have a plan," I told him.
"Well, you need to come up with one," Morgan told him. "And you'll have what I didn't have when I was your age."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Someone to tell you whether or not your plan makes any sense," he told me. I ran my hand across the top of my head, a little stressed and trying not to show it. I looked at him and I must have looked terrified because his eyes softened when as he watched me. It was like a barrier came down between us.
"Don't be scared of who you are," Morgan told me. "Take everything one step at a time. A lot of what I'm saying may sound cliche and lame, but this kind of stuff wouldn't be repeated so many times if it didn't work. Just think of what you should do to make things right and do them."
"I should probably talk to him," I said. "But what if he doesn't want to talk to me? And what am I supposed to tell him, that I'm queer for him?"
Morgan laughed.
"Do what you think is best," Morgan told me. "But remember that if you never take any risks, you'll never get any rewards...and you're lucky. At least you already know that Skit is gay and that he's had feelings for you. A lot of guys come in here and they have no idea whether the person they are interested in is even gay at all. Imagine having to figure that out."
I agreed. I was pretty lucky because the guy I wanted was already out and had already basically said that he wanted me back. All I had to do was figure out how to talk to him...figure out what the hell it was I was trying to accomplish with all of this.
"And let me know how things progress," Morgan said, then reached into his desk and pulled out a folder. "In the mean time, you might want this." I took the next chapter and cradled it to my chest.
"Thanks," I told him.
So, I gave myself a pep talk on the loading dock, kind of like I do before a big game. I put a DMX cd into the boombox there and moved a whole van load of antique bullshit onto the loading shelves there. I also moved a bunch of peices that were just about ready to go on display in the store closer to the door so that they could get their last minute touch-ups or whatever.
It was just like my workout the night before the game, when I pumped myself up so that I not only felt like a raging beast, but looked like one, too. All the while in my head, I was thinking up scenarios of what I would do and say when I ran into Skit and what I would not do and say when I ran into Drew.
Because Morgan and Paul were doing a hell of a lot for me, not just as far as a paycheck, but helping me out with what was going on in my head and shit, I had made a promise to myself that I was not gonna fuck that up by beating Drew's ass on their store property. Now, if Drew came at me with any shit off of their property, I could make no guarantees.
By the time the CD came to an end, I was done working back there and I figured that I might as well go into another part of the store so that I could increase my chances of running into Skit.
When I saw him, he was standing in Misti's workroom, calmly helping her remove ugly puke green paint from a bedroom set. He was wearing work clothes, which consisted of a pair of cargo style khakis and an old, worn Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert t-shirt. It was the most normal thing I'd ever seen him wear...only his hair was lime green.
Drew was in there, too, of course, sanding some other pieces under Misti's direction. He looked over his shoulder at me, but I ignored him and walked over to Skit.
"Hey, Skit," I said quietly. I swear my stomach muscles were clenching so painfully I thought I was gonna puke right there in front of him. He turned and looked at me. His eyes were wide with shock and he stared up at me. At the look in his blue eyes, I was ready to turn around and get the hell out of there. What the fuck was I doing? Was I gonna be fucking gay?
"Hey," he said back...and his voice was smooth and almost liquid. I could almost feel it running down my spine. My heart started pounding in my chest. Yeah, I was gonna be fucking gay.
"I wanted to know if...you wanna maybe...um," I could feel both Drew and Misti's eyes poring into me and I shot them both a look, then kind of turned away from them so that I was shielding myself and Skit from them. "We could maybe talk and have lunch somewhere tomorrow?"
Skit looked at me as if I had grown two heads. He put down his scraper, there were flecks of the ugly paint all over him. I reached over and picked a couple of pieces off of him absently and he stood completely still. When I saw his eyes on me, huge and questioning, I realized what I was doing and stopped.
"Cuz, I need to talk to you," I told him and when his eyes turned cautious, like he was afraid of me, I felt like something inside of me was bleeding. "And I promise I... I'm not gonna do anything to hurt you." I hoped to God that he could see how fucking sincere I was because I wasn't good at all of the emotional bullshit.
"Y-yeah, okay," he said slowly, still watching me. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I could see that he didn't exactly trust me, but I could also see hope in his eyes as plain as day. He was afraid, but he was willing to take the risk. God, what made him feel so strongly about me?
"Okay," I said, a little more steady. "I'll meet you in the parking lot around noon tomorrow?"
"Okay," he said quietly and I smiled at him.
"Okay," I said. He was smiling back, so I stood there and watched. I hadn't seen him smile all that much before. We must have stood there for awhile, smilng at each other because when I looked over at Misti and Drew, she was grinning at us and Drew had gone back to sanding with a vengeance.
"Yeah, so, I'm gonna go," I said and turned in a full circle as I walked away so that I could look back and see what Skit was doing. He was watching me, clasping his hands together in front of him like he was nervous or didn't know what to do with them or something. God, he was cute.
Now, I just had to figure out what the hell I was gonna say to him when we were alone together tomorrow. ******************************************************************* Paul & Morgan 6
Paul:
It would be nice to say that I built a fabulous life in California...and I really didn't do as bad as a lot of guys I met. The things that probably saved me from all kinds of madness were my severe and unrelenting depression over Morgan, the fact that I was too straight-laced to do any drugs and my tendency to drown my sorrows in work.
I made a lot of money in the five years I spent there. I also met a lot of guys who were just like me, running away from a past that didn't jibe well with their own sexuality, but in the long run, you can never outrun your problems. They'll find you in the end...and when they do, they are normally a lot worse than when they started.
My dad was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1974. I'd been writing them all along, impressing on them the fact that I was queer and that I needed to build a life where I could be totally accepted. My mother begged me to come home and my dad did the equivalent, writing one sentence in a letter that my mom sent, telling me that he'd had a queer buddy when he was a teenager and that he wanted me to come home.
Of course, I didn't out Morgan. He was married to my sister. My mom had sent me a picture from the wedding and I kept it in my wallet as a reminder. But I knew that seeing them like that in the flesh was enough to kill me.
So, when I found out that my dad was dying, I jumped on the first plane home. I didn't want to go, of course, but what do you do in a situation like that?
In the years that I had been gone, Morgan had graduated from college with a degree in accounting. He and Louisa had a daughter named Leslie. I had her baby photo in my wallet as well. Ryan had married and his wife was expecting as well. I was the black sheep of the family, coming home from my hiding place. I didn't even know how I was going to handle seeing them all again, but I just tried to think of my dad.
Ryan met me at the airport. I greeted him with a big hug and handed over one of my bags. There were dark circles under hs eyes.
"How is dad?" I asked. Ryan looked at me for a long, silent moment.
"Dad's doing suprisingly well," he told me. "You look great."
I managed a short smile. My tan and sun-bleached hair probably made me seem as if I was living some kind of carefree life back in California to him.
"Thanks," I said, walking with him out of the airport. "Have you been staying up late with dad?"
"No," Ryan said. "Dad's at home. There's really nothing much they can do for him. We have to ride it out, but right now, he's practically normal. We know things will go downhill at some point, but he's holding up well."
"Okay," I said, nodding and letting that soak in as I climbed into Ryan's car. "So, why do you look so stressed?"
Ryan started the car and pulled out into traffic before he answered me.
"Morgan and Louisa are driving me crazy," Ryan said quietly. "I spent half of the night at their place."
I didn't ask any more questions. I'd made a rule for myself. I wasn't going to talk about Morgan. I was going to avoid all potential interaction with him. I was just going to focus on my dad.
Ryan looked over at me.
"You're going to have to do something," he told me as he drove.
"What?" I asked, my heart pounding a little in my chest. "For dad?"
Ryan laughed.
"No, Paul," he told me. "Dad's made his peace with life. He wants to see you, of course, but he's doing well. He could live another year or more. He's out playing cards with mom and her friends."
I looked at him incredulously.
"Mom called, she was distraught," I told him. "She said I had to come home now."
"Morgan has been drinking steadily for two weeks," Ryan informed me. "He's lost his job at the accounting firm. Leslie has been at my house for more than a week. Louisa has gone into some sort of hippie phase, she won't clean the house. She won't cook. She's been listening to Van Morrsion and Joni Mitchell and chain-smoking for about a week."
I stared at him in shock. First of all, nothing he said made any sense. Morgan had never been a drinker...and Louisa smoking was such a foreign concept that I couldn't even wrap my mind around it.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked.
"Go in there and take care of the mess you left behind," Ryan told me without batting an eye. I stared at him in horror.
"I can't go in there and talk to them," I exclaimed, turning sideways to stare at him. "I can't do that, Ryan. I have nothing to say to them."
"Well, you'd better think of something," Ryan told me and started driving through unfamiliar streets. My insides started quaking hard.
"Where are you taking me, Ryan?" I asked.
"Where do you think, Paul, to Morgan and Louisa's," he told me. "That's where you're staying." I put my hand on the steering wheel and caused the car to swerve in its lane on the little tree-lined street we were on. Ryan stopped the car and just like that, I hopped out.
I didn't have my bags with me, but my wallet was in my back pocket and I started walking in the direction we had come from.
"Paul," Ryan screamed from the car. I looked back and he'd parked haphazardly and gotten out. He started walking towards me.
"Paul, you can't keep running away from this," he told me and I sped up. He was insane. What was I supposed to do but run away? He sped up, too, so I started jogging. Ryan had always been in better shape than me, he caught up with me in no time and snapped me around to face him.
"Ryan, just take me back to the airport," I demanded. "If dad doesn't need me, then I'm leaving."
"No, Paul, I can't let you leave," Ryan told me. "I let you leave five years ago when everything inside of me was telling me to stop you. That was a mistake. I should have been there for you...and for Morgan. He's my best friend. I knew from the first moment you two met that there was something there, but I was too busy trying to deny it to realize how out of hand this could get. But I can't do that anymore. There are too many lives at stake here. This is driving mom crazy. Leslie doesn't even know what a normal home life is. Louisa's going to end up in an institution and Morgan will probably drink himself to death."
"I - It can't be that bad," I said.
"It's that bad, Paul," Ryan said firmly. "Do you want to know what Louisa told me a few nights ago?"
I looked at him, at the ferocious expression on his face and nodded very reluctantly.
"She told me that on her wedding night, when Morgan was taking her virginity, he called out your name," Ryan told me in a raspy voice. "At the point of no return when he was spilling his seed inside of her to make their goddamn daughter, Paul, he was calling out your name."
I swallowed hard, my face ashen.
"So, if you're not going to go over there willingly, Paul, make no mistake about it, you will still be going," Ryan told me and I nodded.
I walked back with him, got back in the car and didn't protest anymore. *******************************************************************
To be continued.......
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