3 AM

 

I hear my name being called out.  It’s distant, like a call over a roar of waves at the beach, or over a thousand talking heads in a crowded street corner.  I can feel myself stir.  It’s called again.  Closer.  It’s a familiar sound, though one’s name usually is. 

“Tom.”

I mumble something, still coming up from a dream.  I can see the surface of the waking world above me, all waves and shimmers.  Up and up and

“Tom.”

My eyes slowly flicker open, taking in the blackness of my bedroom.  I close them again.  I’m groggy and my limbs are just as slow to waking as the rest of me.  Again that whisper of my name sounds.  Like caffeine to the bloodstream my senses are suddenly jolted and I feel another’s presence.  Not the familiar warmth and feel of my wife next to me, it’s something else entirely.

“Hey Tom, are you…awake?”  The voice was soft and hesitant.  And familiar.

It takes me a moment for my waking mind to scroll through all the possibilities.  I open my eyes again and they are a bit more accustomed to the dark.  I see the outline of the figure.  Slight, hunched and staring at me from the foot of my bed.  I reach to my side.  She’s still there, sleeping.  Good.

“Who…”  I let my voice trail off as I pull myself up, leaning forward to get a better view.  “Kyle?” I ask.

I haven’t seen my brother in five years.  He had always been the “free spirit” of the family.  Other families would have labeled him the “black sheep”.  Really though, it was all the same.  He did want he wanted without the fear of the consequences.  He had always lived like a tide.  In and out.  One moment here, the next gone to some other shore, some other world.  It was all well and good, I suppose.  He wasn’t a big “contributor”, as our father would have put it. 

“Hey Big Brother,” he says.  “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

I rub my eyes.  I move to turn on the light at the bedside. 

“No, you’ll wake her,” he says.  “It’s fine.”

“I’m surprised she’s not awake already,” I say as I forgo the light and carefully start to slide out of bed.  “She’s usually such a light sleeper.  The slightest of noises and she’s up.”

I can’t quite see his face, but I can picture a smile.  I guess I can’t honestly say what his smile looks like now, what with five years spanning the last time we’ve spoken or seen one another, but I can picture what it would have looked like back then.  Wide, white and whimsical.  Totally uninhibited and without remorse.  No regrets or worry.  Just an endless sense of wonder.

“I’m sorry to call on you so late,” he says.  “I just figured

“That I would be up at 3 in the morning?  Making some coffee?  Getting ready for work?”  I can feel a bit of heat in my voice.  A bit of edge.

He says nothing.

I’m on my feet now, looking at the blinds shift and sway with the air pushing down from the ceiling.  Every now and then a slit makes room for some light from the lamps out back.  I look at my brother.  He’s wet.  Soaked, in fact.

“Jesus Kyle,” I tell him, making a few steps in his direction.  “You’re soaked.”

As I get closer I can see his face.  Worn and thin, as if his skin was made from sheets of tracing paper and not flesh.  His eyes are sunken and dark, his hair matted to his head from the water.  He’s dripping from his clothes to my carpet.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

He shrugs his shoulders and seems to wince doing so.  “Rain.”  He snorts, halfheartedly.  “Fucking weatherman, am I right?”  His smile is dull.  “You’d think with all the advancements now they’d be able to predict a little downpour or some sun.  You know?”

“Yeah, right.”  My voice is soft, as if what I said hadn’t actually been said.  There had been no rain, at least not in the past several hours.  He and I both knew he hadn’t ben rained on.  I just wasn’t sure what to say though.  Five years is an awful long time and to suddenly have him here, now, in my room, with my wife sleeping soundly and him wet as if he had been borne from the ocean.

He seems to sense my unease and shifts his weight onto his other leg.  He smiles meekly.  It was so bizarre to see him like this.  He suddenly moves past me and fingers the blinds, letting a little more light in.  They rattle at his intrusion.  I look to my wife.  Still sleeping.

“You remember that time with Ringo,” he asks after a moment of silence.

I ignore him, my sleepiness starting to rise up again and with it, annoyance.

“Why are you here?” I ask calmly.  I’m sure he’s here for money.  Or maybe place to crash.  That’s just how it was with him.  Always taking and never giving back.  I try to steel myself down.  I was sure he would ask for something and leave me feeling infinitely guilty if I didn’t. 

“You told me he ran away,” he continues on, as if the question that had left my lips never made it to his ears.  “You said that he must have made for the woods after Dad left the backdoor open.”  His fingers have brushed a blind out of the way and his eyes are fixated somewhere outside.

“Is it money?” I ask.  “Did you get yourself into some trouble Kyle?  Did you do something?”

“I was broken up about it,” he says.  “I loved that dog.  I insisted on looking for him, you remember that?”

I stand still, my eyes on his wet back.  I’m trying hard to contain the annoyance that is quickly evolving into anger.  I want to keep my voice in check, otherwise I’ll wake my wife and then things would just devolve into something worse.  Then he would for sure walk out of here with whatever it was he wanted.

“I asked you to help me.  I didn’t think you would.  You always hated him.  He ate a pair of your shoes, you remember that?”  He turns to look at me.  A sad, forced smile.  “They had been new and you got so, so mad.”  His gaze turns back to the yard, to the lights in the distance.  “I thought you were going to kill him right and then there.”

My fingers started to clench.  “Kyle.  What is this?”

“When I asked you to help me, you said yes.  You said it was what brothers do.  So we went walking out to the woods.  We called for him, you and me.  I thought for sure with you helping me, we’d get him back.”

He pauses.

“I had always looked up to you.”

I roll my eyes.  “Bullshit.  What is this Kyle?  You need money, don’t you.  Five years and some things never change, you know that?”

He doesn’t seem to hear me.  “You were always so sure and set on things.  You had this security.  When I was a kid I always imagined you had this like, forceshield around you that kept everyone around you from harm.  Nothing bad could touch them because they had Tommy around.”

I say nothing.  I’m sure this is just a ploy.  Him playing the same song to the same tune.  It works with everyone else, why not me? 

“We searched for hours and found nothing.  You told me that we could go back and make posters and flyers and that you’d have your friends help put them up over town.  You took a photo I had made copies and put all of it together.  You were like a soldier on some mission.  That’s how intent you were on doing this thing.”

I can feel myself slipping back to that time.  To those days when I was a teenager and he some annoying little brat who hadn’t quite yet come into his own as the “free spirit”.  Back then he had been the hanger on.  The crybaby.  The epitome of all those things little brothers were.  Good and bad.  Me, being a teenager, naturally saw only the bad.  The common thing, I think, is that we were still both young enough to take any problem, no matter how small or infinitesimal and give it the force and scale of a nuclear explosion.  So much so that it overtook our lives and always, always seemed to be the end of the world.  This had been his.  Ringo.  That damed dog who had, he had told the truth about that, eaten a brand new pair of tennis shoes.

With this memory I can suddenly feel myself start to soften.  My fingers unclench. 

“You were my little brother,” I tell him.  I wince.  “Are.”

His shoulders sag as he leans forward and rests his forehead on the window. 

“You did all those things,” he says.  “You did all those things to help look for him.  Why?”

I pause.  Where is this going?  What is his angle with this?  Why now?  So many questions. 

“I knew how much that dog meant to you,” I tell him.  “I didn’t like seeing you so down, you know?”

“You knew he was dead.  Didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, still so unsure about this thing he is doing.

“Mom and Dad told you to do all those things, didn’t they?  You were bent on telling me the truth.  You were excited about the truth.  You wanted me to know, not to know because that’s what had happened, but because you knew it would hurt me.”

My fingers clenched themselves up again.  Any shred of sympathy or concern seemed to evaporate immediately.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I hiss.  “Why are you here?  To try and make me feel bad for being a good brother?  Is that it?  To try and twist something good that I did for you into something awful so you can find some sort of justification for your shit poor views of me?  Is that it?”

He says nothing and keeps his forehead on the glass.

“When are you going to grow up?  When are you finally going to take some sort of responsibility for your life?”

He brings his head off the glass and looks at me.  His eyes, sunken and sad, tear through me.  For a moment I think I’ve channeled some of my fire into him and that he will launch out and strike me.  For all his whimsical, carefree spiritedness the boy had always had a temper.  He could house so much rage in that slight frame of his.  It was a wonder, I always thought, that it could live side-by-side with such a different emotion.

“They offered you a new pair of shoes,” he tells me, “for your willingness to go along.  To make me think that my dog ran away.”

He sighs.  I sigh.  What’s the use?  I slump back down onto my bed, hunched.

“Why are you bringing this up now?”  I look up at him.  “Can’t this wait?  Can’t we have this…moment or whatever the fuck this is sometime tomorrow?  Call my office and we can schedule a lunch or something.”  As if to sweeten the deal I quickly add: “My treat.  Anywhere you want to go.”

Again he offers me that sad smile.  “I don’t hold it against you, Tom.”  He almost laughs, but not quite.  “Hell, had the roles reversed and I was in your shoes, I probably would have told you to spite you and our parents.”

I can’t deny that.  “Or if you can’t make lunch we can do dinner.   I’m sure Stacy would love to chat with you too.  She always liked you.”

He steps up to me and places a hand on my shoulder.  He squeezes with the faintest of strength.  His fingers are bone.  “Tomorrow then,” he says. 

Relief washes over me.  I can finally get back to sleep.  With any luck he’ll forget all this.  My mind tells me that he’s high one something or other and that he’ll crawl back to whatever hole he’s been hiding in these past five years and stay there.  Or find a new one.  Yeah.  He’ll probably find a new one.  And then I can get back to sleep and get back to my life with my family…

“I promise,” I tell him.  “We can talk about Ringo or anything you want to talk about.  Tomorrow.”

He nods and shuffles to the door, water still dripping from his clothes.  He pauses in the door frame.

“You still did more than what they asked of you.  They just meant for you to walk with me for a bit in the woods.”  He swallows.  “It was Dad who finally told me about Ringo.  After you went off to college.  I can’t even remember now how it came about.”

I watch him, unable to speak.

“Tomorrow then.”  And he says this and walks out.  I hear the front door click softly.  He is gone.

I turn to my wife, still in peaceful repose.  I lie back down, turn to face the blinds and watch them dance in the air pumping down form the ceiling.  I close my eyes and think of tomorrow.

 

The alarm goes off promptly at six.  I stretch.  I am out of bed and into the shower.  I have the faintest notion that I am to do something important today, but I can’t quite recall what. 

I’m dressed and in the kitchen by half-past.  Stacy has brewed coffee.  She steps into the kitchen, smiling and kisses my cheek.

“Sleep well?” she asks.

I nod.  “Yes, though I think I had a strange dream.”

“Oh?”

“I dreamt I had some sort of vistor, some…guy I know.  Or knew.  I’m not quite sure,  it’s all so hazy now.”

She shrugs and pours herself a cup.  It’s our routine.

“It’s so odd,” I say, still trying to recall what had happened.  “It felt so real, but I can’t quite place it all.”

She turns on the television in the adjacent room.  The morning news blares.

“I almost want to say it was my brother.”

Stacy cocks her head to one side.  “Jason?”

"Kyle,” I say.  “Strange, isn’t it?  That I should be dreaming about him after all this time.”

She says nothing, though I know there is something cooking in her head.  She always had liked him.

I step into the living room, coffee in hand, still trying to work over the dream.  The news anchor is speaking.  I’m only half paying attention until I hear the following:

“…pulled from the river earlier this morning.  Police suspect a mugging or drug deal gone wrong.  The victim has yet to be identified.”

I can can suddenly hear my heartbeat.  My breath is caught in my chest.  I almost drop my coffee.  No.  It can’t be.  Impossible, I tell myself.  Just impossible.  And then I hear them, recalled as if it had all been a dream.  Distant.  An echo.  My own voice. 

Tomorrow.

---

Eh.  I’ll maybe come back and flush this out.  Iron out the details.  Put a bit more stuffing into it.  Just had to get the idea out there, I guess.  Funny what sort of things can come to a guy while brushing his teeth.  I still say the best thoughts and ideas strike me while I’m in the bathroom.  I don’t know what that says, if anything, about me.

7 pm

 

It blinks in a rhythmic beat.  Flash.  Dim.  Flash.  Dim.  It is off in the distance, far enough that I can see the entire structure the radio tower is perched on, but close enough to make the illusion that I could wrap my hand around it and

A cooler wind blows past.  I shiver.  The end of my cigarette flickers and flares as I inhale.  The red light on the end of the radio tower continues to pulse.  On the streets below, cars pass.  Small groups of people, one or two at a time, begin to mill out of their homes as the sun sets.  It is a signal for the fun that comes with the night to begin.

One day I will be dead and no longer able to participate in all that is going on out there in this vast complex of steel and glass; of flesh and blood.  I flick the cigarette off the balcony.  I watch it tumble, fast and sure, to the ground below.  The embers spark and splatter in a brief display of heat and light.  And then it was finished.

Inside the apartment someone waits.  A faceless body of artificial warmth that will still the shivering, if only for a little while.  I lean forward, arms folded across the black railing.  I inhale.  A car honks.  Someone yells out. 

The red light flashes.  Dims.  Flash.  Dim. 

I am fog rolling over the hills in the vast stillness of predawn.  Over dewed grass and wildflower I seep.  I encompass sleeping doe and fawn, a thin, elusive blanket.  For a moment, all is as it should be.

The sun rises.

The door opens.

I begin to melt away with each ray of golden run.

Footsteps.  Almost hesitant.  Eyes on my back. 

Melting still, fading over green pasture.

A gentle hand brushes my back before two arms slide around me, encompassing me, enclosing me.

“Let’s go inside.”

I open my eyes.  The sun is gone and it is full dark.  The red light on the radio tower, perched atop an old hotel, blinks.

“Yeah,” I reply, but make no movement.

Squeeze.  A gentle kiss on my neck.  A hint of more, but I can’t bring myself to care.

Another car horn blares.  The towers of downtown are checkerboards with darkened and lit offices.  I inhale.  He withdrawals and grabs my hand.

He leads me inside.  I pause before entering and look back at the night.

Flash.  Dim.  Flash.  Dim.

g-o-n-e

 

Today I was physically present at work.   I woke up.  I took a shower.  Dressed myself.  Poured my coffee.  Walked out the door.  Drove to work.  Sat down at my desk.  Poured my coffee from my thermos to my mug.  Made a bowl of oatmeal.  Filled my water bottle.  Ate my oatmeal.  Answered some calls.  Made some calls to some insurance companies.  Worked several patient accounts.  I stared out of the window in my office.  I checked over the headlines on cnn.com.  I browsed the latest gaming headlines on joystiq.com.  I browsed over the forums at gay-nerds.com. 

I stood at the fax machine while a co-worker told me of her problems.  I watched her lips move, but did not actually hear a word she said.  I received a text message from a friend wanting to know what was wrong.  I am not here today.  Nor was I there yesterday.  Chances are, I won’t be there tomorrow.

Corey is on a vacation.  Everything that is being done in his absence is pure automation.  The Brain has taken over.  Autopilot has been engaged.  Please keep your trays in the upright position for the duration of this flight.

Corey will be back.  In the meantime, enjoy the show.

nothing

 

there is nothing here tonight.  I had something earlier, a feeling or some words; an image or two to share, but now there is nothing.

I hope tomorrow is better.  I’m not quite sure why I’m posting this.  Something is better than nothing, I guess.  Maybe if I keep typing something of substance will come of this.  Or maybe I’ll just go to sleep.

That sounds like a more realistic option.  Saturday is what I’m aiming for this week.  My new iPhone will be here Saturday.  Sometime between then I will start this story that has been churning in my being since 2006. 

The one I had started to tell factually, earlier in this blog, but stopped because I didn’t wan to be borne back into the past.  Of course, when night comes and I’m lying awake staring up at my ceiling, and those images and voices that spawn from the swirling darkness, left to be created by an overactive imagination and a sense of deep longing and regret, I can’t help but be brought back there.

I don’t miss him or any of it.  I just miss what it all meant.  that’s what this story is going to be about.  Not about me or him or anything that happened.  Just the feeling.  The idea.  The power of a simple thing that can, though space and time, still reach out and scratch you from time to time.

maybe once it has been put out there I can finally…..

go to sleep.

Dream a la Lynch

Warning! The following events happened (probably) in my dream last night, whatever pieces I could fit together that is. With that said, there are somethings that happened in the dream that certain people might want to avoid reading altogether. So considered yourself warned any family or people who'd rather not get certain, ah, mental images in their heads.

Alright, disclaimer done.

-cef

------

I'm standing on the corner of Bell Road and Cotton Lane, watching as cars speed by. It is sunny and the air rests somewhere between chilly and warm. Upon awakening I will realize that this is not how the corner of this intersection actually exisits. But I'm dreaming and unaware, so things proceed as they will.

There is an "authentic" (beacuse the neon sign deems it so) Japanese restaurant with doors wide open, beckoning me inside. I enter. People lounge on floor mats around low-resting tables, word bubbles and noise flittering around their heads. Fire and smoke issue out of the middle of some of these tables, but I continue walking forward. I am meeting a party of friends.

I proceed down a rather lengthy hallway. The tiles on the floor are distorted and wavy, as if being viewed through an aquarium. They're teal and green and blue and speckled with flecks of gold. The ceiling is impossibly high, though at the time I thought nothing of it. I pass a long bar where talking sushi chefs in tall white hats and black aprons furiously slice huge slabds of raw fish. They toss small, white porcelain cups to the talking heads hovering above the stools. The heads open their maws and ingest the sake, (I assume that's what was in them), cup and all.

The fact that these heads have no body and mouths impossibly large don't seem to phase me. I have people to meet. Near what seems to be the end of the hallway, an oriental woman stops me. She starts talking about my the party I'm meeting and how they're are just in this next room and if I'd only come in through the door I'd meet them, only there is no door and I politely decline her invitation and continue walking. She's still talking as I walk away.

I finally make it to the end of the hallway without any further fanfare. The door is white and plain and wouldn't otherwise be present in a place like this. I open it and proceed to enter.

I come to find myself inside a family room with carpeted floor, a couch and two easy chairs facing a rather large and antiquated televesion. My friends are seated on every cushion available. I give a "hello" to the room, but no one seems to give it any attention. I turn to see what they are watching.

What I originally thought for an enclosed room was actually no so. Behind the television, where a wall would normally be in a room like this, was the open outdoors and, what appeared to be, the side profile of a white house with one of those wraparound porches. Big, old American cars drove slowly on the street in front of the house. Perfect lawn. Perfect trees.

A couple was on the porch, arguing rather violently. I realized, after closer inspection, that the two had an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Only they kept calling each other "Frank" and "April". I also realized that every word they spoke, every action they took was being played out in black and white on the TV.

"Stupid cunt bitch!" He yells and moves to strike her.

"Oh big man!" she shouts. "You gonna hit me, huh? You gonna show me what a big man you are?"

"April don't make me..."

"What Frank?! Do it you asshole! HIT ME!"

"One of these days bitch, one of these days-"

"Straight to the moon? Oh please! Grow a pair!"

And as if on cue he has these pair of gardening sheers and the next thing you know he's lodged them in her throat. She's wide-eyed and gushing blood.

Somewhere in the background a studio audience applauds.

I'm shocked at the events that have unfolded before my eyes and turn to leave. Sydney, a friend of mine on the couch laughs.

As I turn toward the door, the room is suddenly altered. I'm lying on a bed, hardly clothed. Conner hovers over me on all fours, naked and erect. He kisses me. He kisses me hard enough to draw blood. We begin to roll around, at some point the rest of my clothes are removed. Our hands move feverishly over one another and we're lost in the moment.

He starts to trail kisses down my chest, toward my abdomen. I open my eyes and I'm back in the sushi bar. Sydney and Ivan are laughing and spilling drinks over the table. I'm reaching forward from my seat between them to try and stop the spilling.

As my hand comes between their glasses I'm once more in bed, naked with Conner's head between my legs. I inadvertantly smack his head and he withdrawals, looking up at me confused. I shrug and he makes a move to return to his previous attentions, but suddenly gasps in pain.

With a speed I haven't seen, he's off the bed. His hands grab his visibly throbbing penis; his face eschewed in pain. I move toward the edge of the bed to get a better view of what is going on. I see him looking down at himself, his fingers moving over a piece of metal on the head of his penis. It looks like he has gotten himself a Prince Albert and it must have caused some sort of problem, but then he's unscrewing the metal.

He starts to pull it out of his shaft and I can then see that the metal piece is attached to a small hose. He keeps pulling and makes a motion as if to offer me the hose. I see now that it's actually a hose to a hookah and smoke has started to emit from his dick.

"Conner."

And then I blink and Frank and April are making up as if nothing happened. As if he hadn't, moments before, taken a pair of sheers and ended her life.

April smiles. "Pass the-"

CUE ALARM. I WAKE UP. THE END.

passages

two passages from "Call Me By Your Name" that really get to me.

Chiagneva sempe ca durmeva sola,
mo dorme co' li muorte accompagnata

She always wept because she slept alone,
Now she sleeps among the dead

I can, from the distance of years now, still think I'm hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that is was the last night they would ever make love again.

"Tomorrow let's go to San Clemente," I said.
"Tomorrow is today," he replied.

and

"I'm like you," he said. "I remember everything."
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.

The entire book is just good. A summer romance that is done by the fall, but lingers still over the years. I found that I could relate a lot to the feelings presented in this piece of work and I think that's why I find myself growing sad when I read it. Though I read it to remind me of him, even if I should just as well forget.

work in progress

i need to post what i have thus far. i really need to get my head back into my actual work, work. not having any bosses around has been good for my creative productivity, but not so much on my actual “hey, this is gonna get you a paycheck” sort of productivity. so i’m posting what i have thus far so that when i finish work and go home, i can pick it back up.

—

Are you going to betray me?

There was only the slightest of hesitations before she gave her answer. It was an honest hesitation. He knew it. He knew an immediate answer would have been a lie. He knew one that took longer to give than she had would have also been a lie. Everything fell into place as it should have.

She thought about it for a moment. Did he know what was going through her head during this brief passing of time? No, probably not. It didn’t matter. She leaned upwards with her mind made up and kissed him.

Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the shades covering the windows in his room. It danced and bobbed on her exposed flesh. She was warm. He was alive. They made love for the second time since crawling into bed together the night prior.

It was decided then.

the tragic ballad of tomas vega

an ink story



by corey fleming







He came to her because he required the special services that only she and her kind could provide. Did he, on occasion, take advantage of her otherworldly beauty and physique? Sure. He was only human, and a man at that. He knew that he would be given a hard time the next time he saw Elias, but it didn’t bother him all that much. Elias, he figured, should be the one here seeking the services of an Undine over him. Unlike Elias, he was a master at keeping his cool. He was a master at caging the beast.

If that’s true, why are you here? He swatted the thought away as the door closed behind him. It was always the same room. It was dark, almost to the point of pitch blackness, and cold. He knew she would be seated in her customary place near the wall furthest from the door.

“You’re here early Tomas,” she said. He could feel her cool eyes on his body, sharp and intent.

“Can’t get enough of you, you know that.” He smirked as he pulled off his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. There was hardly any furniture in the room. Most of the rooms had at least a coat rack or small bench for clients to set their clothes on. Not her.

“I’m not so sure about that one Tomas.” He could hear her shift from her position. “The blonde I’ve seen you with makes me think otherwise.”

Tomas furrowed his brow. “I need a quick a session.” He was not about to get dragged into discussing Faye with her. Nothing so emotional with an Undine.

Sensing his discomfort with the subject, Namine eased the lights on. Not nearly bright enough to expose everything there was to see, but enough for him to make his way to the brass basin situated in the center of the open room.

It was still a shock to him, despite the numerous times he frequented her place, to see the room’s interior. The walls bobbed and pulsed like a river with a lazy current. The various shades of blue overlapping and mixing with one another truly gave off the feeling that one was actually under the water. This was impossible, considering the building had no basement. In fact, he was on the second floor. The lights were small pulsating strings, wafting close to the walls, as if they too were part of the underwater scenery.

He had heard of some of the other Undine in the place simulating water life into their rooms, small fish and coral fixated in the walls, but he preferred the way Namine had made hers. Vast and open, a seemingly endless expanse of nothing but water. Less busy.

“You know the drill then,” she said, watching as he had already started peeling off the layers of his clothes. Tie. Shirt. Shoes. Socks. Pants. Everything went until he was as naked as he was the day his mother had birthed him.

Most of her other clients grew erect at this point. She was, after all, quite an alluring creature to witness. There were no clothes covering her dark blue frame, most Undine had no need for clothes. Those in her line of work needed them even less. She was taller for one of her kind, and slender. Most Undine are small and slight of build, making a shorter human woman feel not as small as she actually is. Like the walls in the room, her flesh seemed to pulse and shift with every moment, like ripples on a pond. Full lips, almond eyes and a head of thick, long dark blue hair rounded out her already exotic appearance. Yes, most of her clientele made obvious their attraction to her.

Not Tomas. He hadn’t even gotten hard the first time they had performed this little deed together. He was a consummate professional and, even she had to admit, that detail irritated her. She lost the leverage she had over most of her clients when she was with him. He gave off nothing and always remained a closed book to her.

She stood and motioned to the basin as she moved toward him. He climbed into the empty tub, goose flesh rising over him as the cold metal inside greeted him. Tomas closed his eyes and let his breaths come in slow, rhythmic intervals. He was getting relaxed.

Namine looked down on him and afforded a small smile. He was so unlike her others. So different from the men who came to her seeking pleasure from the bonds an Undine could share with a mortal man. The temptations and promises that they could fulfill in ways no other woman could. And while she never tired of such liaisons, she appreciated her connection with this one far greater than her other dalliances. It was always a new discovery with Tomas.

“Are you ready, Tomas?” She stroked at his forehead. He was so cold.

“I’m ready.”

Namine brought her hand down the length of his face, droplets of water trailing in her wake. Little-by-little her features grew more and more translucent. They lost definition and firm shape. She grew warmer. When she felt the change start to travel up her arm, she leaned down, quite literally pouring herself atop him and into the basin. Water filled the tub. Namine filled the tub.

Tomas managed a soft, content sigh as the warm water flowed around him. It was an unusual feeling to find yourself suddenly buoyant amidst liquid you knew to be alive. For the most part, it was as if someone had poured hot water over him. Unlike bath water from a spout, the water that was Namine was thicker and softer. Not gel-like in any shape, but not exactly pure running liquid. There was still an indefinable firmness to it.

The Undine ran over every inch of his flesh, tugging gently this way and that, pouring herself into every open pore of flesh. Her voice echoed in his mind.

Relax Tomas. Let me in.

Hearing her soft words, he let himself be pulled completely down into the water. She smothered his face with her warmth. He held his breath, preparing himself for the part that always seemed the most jarring. Clients that had been seeing her for years longer than the man presently occupying her tub still had trouble with the part that came next. It was just so natural a thing not to do.

Tomas was different. With only the slightest of hesitations, he inhaled. The liquid filled his nostrils and slid with ease down his throat. He did not squirm or thrash like so many others did. He remained poised and calm. In total control. He was always in control.

And then, there was darkness.

II

I don’t like stereotypes, but I know they exist for a reason. I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen into the stereotype of what most mainstream, straight people slap on a gay guy.

Stereotypes. That’s where I was. And that’s where I’m going to leave it.

My mind is bouncing all over the place because I’m not completely sure where to pick this back up again. I know my goal with this is to give my thought some form and presence. Something I can look back on, if I need to, just to remind me.

People say we have a past so we can look back on it from time to time and learn from it. Learn and move on. For whatever reason, I find that one of my feet seems to have gotten caught in an exposed tree root and I just can’t seem to move past it. Tug, tug, tug.

2006.

And now we get to it. The magical year. The year that held the story I thought I needed to tell. The one I wanted to write out in some grand, epic novel of self-discovery. A novel of a boy walking down that winding road of Life. A novel of love and loss, happiness and sorrow, excitement and terror. Only it’s been just recently that I’ve come to realize that this particular story doesn’t need to be hashed out in some emotional, Oprah’s Book Club novel. This story isn’t all that unique or worthy of that kind of accolade.

After my first full on sexual encounter with another guy, I realized that the next time it happened, I wanted it to be with someone I actually liked. Not just someone who happened to be available.

I had tried, prior to Isaiah, my hand at possibly “dating” someone. We met online, naturally, and set up a dinner date. In a random twist of events, we ended up at the Grand Canyon, parked someplace dark and removed. We made out. It was late, so we got a hotel room but, in a totally awkward moment, just went to sleep. Nothing happened and I was returned the next day to a worried roommate who thought my date had kidnapped me.

Coming into the New Year, I realized that I wanted to try an actual, honest, in the light relationship with another guy. A friend of a friend (I can’t even recall her name now) introduced me to one of her co-workers and suggested that we go out. He (I can’t even remember his name now) had just moved to Arizona from Mississippi. He was cute and seemed like a nice guy. Why not?

So we went out on a couple dates. Typical affair really. Dinner, a movie or two. The last time I recall ever seeing the guy was the morning after a movie-night he and his roommate held at their house. We had woken up and proceeded to fool around a bit. I had forgotten about a prior commitment I had that morning, so I didn’t realize the time. By the time I did realize what time it was, I had two choices: finish him off and leave and be late or….leave immediately and make it on time.

Looking back on it now, I’m pretty sure the fizzle and dying out of our communication was due to the choice I made that morning. (Or it could be, as I found out later on, that it was because he was a total crystal meth addict)

After Meth Head, I tried the online thing again. Friends of friends, I thought, could be so unreliable. I came across this nice-sounding guy and we talked a lot over the course of a couple weeks. We did the traditional crap. Movies. Dinner. Talked.

I recall one night we were walking in a park, just talking. We were walking kind of side-by-side, but not holding hands or really doing anything that would have signaled to anyone to think “hey, look! Two gays!”. At any rate, we’re walking along and this truck pulls up beside us. The next thing I know, he and I are being pelted by key limes and being called not-so-nice things. It got me pissed, but he was more passive and chalked it up to “high school shenanigans”.

That was also the same night I discovered he couldn’t kiss worth a damn. He was the type to like…devour your face when kissing. His mouth was all teeth and spit and it was just…no. It didn’t really matter because things died before anything could really begin. He had come out to his parents (something I still hadn’t done yet) and they flipped. They pushed him into some sort of ridiculous “de-gayification” Christian counseling crap. He voluntarily joined. He told me that he felt he really needed to get over that kind of thing. (Two years later I found he totally ditched the whole “ex-gay” thing and came to terms with who he was born to be)

By this point I was a little flustered. Zero for four. Think about it for a second though. Most straight guys are already accustomed to dating and working relationships and meeting people by the time they graduate high school. Why shouldn’t they be? No one looks down on a “normal”, “socially accepted” male-female relationship. All of this was new to me at 19 and it was an awkward touch and go kind of game.

I didn’t give up though. I was determined to find a guy I could connect with at any cost. I never really stopped to think why I felt I needed to be with a guy. At that point, having just come into my sexuality and, being a young guy, I felt that it was probably the most important thing I should be focusing on. School? Been there, done that. Work? I was working for my mom again. Nothing exciting about that.

What about writing? I was putting words together here and there, but nothing really stuck. I think my desire to be in a relationship, at that point, outweighed my dream of getting work published. That and I hadn’t yet been hit with something I felt could make that great of a story.

I was just checking my deviantART account to see what I had been writing around that time. Nothing. There is a lull from Dec 2004 and it finally picks back up again on June 2006. So I guess I hadn’t written anything that I published to an online source. Even the old hard-drive that I had Ryan recently comb through didn’t have exactly what I had hoped for. That has nothing to do with this though. So…

With writing taking a back seat and my best friend still living in New Mexico, I flung myself into finding the perfect guy. After my tryst with Meth Head but prior to my tryst with Denial Boy I started to fancy an acquaintance from high school. We didn’t really talk all that much during our school years, but we had shared my senior newspaper class together. I had met him again during the tail end of 2005 and he had confessed that he sort of had a crush on me way back when.

In this lull between the two aforementioned guys, I thought I really wanted to pursue him. Naturally he was taken, so he became shelf-candy to be ogled at and dreamt about. Nothing serious could ever come of that, right? Well, yeah but that didn’t stop me from wishing. Still, it was nice to just have a gay friend because those were on short supply in my life. Looking back on it now, it was through Marshall that I actually met a lot of really cool, decent people. (Not that I talk to any of them today)

Marshall was also the one to come to my rescue after the mess with Denial Boy. Summer was coming. Days of pool lounging and nights of parties. Clubs would be bouncing. Drinks would be flowing. Music would be pumping. And sex, sex, sex, sex, sex! It was everywhere! It was summer!

It was toward the end of May and I was house sitting for a co-worker of mine while she and her husband spent the weekend in Vegas. She had given me full access to whatever I wanted while I was there, most especially her booze cabinet. I had expressed my dismay with Marshall about my “single” situation.

He remedied it, but I need to stop for now. I really, REALLY need to get something done. I’ll probably post later after the hockey game tonight.

I

I’m too unfocused. Earlier today I told myself that when I get home from work I need to sit down and continue with this writing project I’ve been putting together. After mulling that idea over, I thought to myself that it would probably be better if I just blog. I’m not one who likes to force moments; especially moments of true, pure inspiration.

Since 2006 I’ve been writing this thing. That’s not to say everything I’ve written since 2006 is apart of it, but in some form or another the thoughts and ideas that I’ve put into whatever I’ve produced have helped nudge me further and further in the direction this story is demanding to be taken.

The idea, at first, was to write about something completely intimate and personal. Something that I wanted to express to anyone who cared to read; to share in the joys and triumphs, along with the pitfalls and the sadness. It sounds incredibly cliché, but it wasn’t until after I graduated high school that I really allowed myself to start to discover just who I was as a person. Prior to that point I think a lot of us are wedged into making decisions and formulating ideas that have been instilled in ourselves by family and close friends because that’s all we know how to do. It’s safe and secure. It’s the known and familiar. With the pressures put on about deciding what you’re going to do for the rest of your life at age 18, I can see why it would be easier to just go with the flow and stick to routine and normalcy.

I’ve never graduated college. I tried it twice. Both times I ended up dropping out. I can’t necessarily pin point it to lack of ambition, general laziness or apathy; or that maybe I was just scared and not ready to face the future. I think it might have been a culmination of all those things. Do I want to go back? Sure I do. Then again, part of me wonders if I just like the idea of being a student again. The idea that I would be doing academic things and advancing myself in a forward direction. That status of studentship and the atmosphere of matriculating with other people who are striving toward their own future goals.

I can’ even stay focused to finish that thought. I feel like I’m getting off track from my original purpose. If I even had one. I’m shooting a thousand thoughts and it’s like they’re all fireflies daring to and fro and I’m trying to catch them with a fishing net.

The idea was to write something personal. I started to come into myself after high school. I learned to formulate my own thoughts and ideas based on my own developing moral code and principles. One of the worst things I can think of is to be a slave to an ideology you haven’t even really given thought about. I started my freshman year of college at EMCC. It lasted two months before I just let it go.

No college? No problem. I got a job in the food service industry. I met some cool, interesting people. People from all different walks of life. Each who, in their own way, left an imprint on my life that would help change and define who I am forever. I know that alone is a grand and powerful statement. How does some no-named co-worker who makes minimum wage in a kitchen, barely speaking English help change and define someone else?

Alright, alright I’m moving into after-school special territory and that’s not what this is about. The point is, I was able to find a way to appreciate not being in school by learning about something else. Living life. Outside of over-priced textbooks and stuffy rooms.

Sometime in 2005 I finally admitted to myself that it was okay for me to be gay. That I didn’t have to feel bad or guilty because of some antiquated belief system that is around, for the most part, to give one group of people a reason to control another. I came out to a select few people. People I knew who would be able to accept me for me without any awkwardness or hatred or what have you. Random thought: I think it’s funny that someone can say “I lost my virginity”. Um, no, you didn’t lose it. You know damn well where it went. One doesn’t “lose” their virginity. It’s given up.

I gave mine on New Year’s Eve, 2005 in the backseat of a car in the middle of the desert to some guy whose face I can barely even remember. Isaiah something or other. I didn’t even like him. It was awkward and messy and we hardly even spoke afterward. Looking back on it, I’d say it seems pretty normal. It’s not like it was a movie or anything. Just two people coming together for a singular moment of intimate pleasure.

The idea was to write something personal.

I don’t like stereotypes, but I know they exist for a reason. I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen into the stereotype of what most mainstream, straight people slap on a gay guy.

I know this is ending abruptly, but I’m too unfocused to continue this tonight. I’ll continue later.