Note: This is four months since the last entry in Blues of Summer: I may be on the cusp of setting a world record. I started BOS 14 months ago, and in all that time the word document in which the whole thing lives, single spaced, is all of 21 pages long. If that's not plodding I don't know what is. On a more serious note, as before, my hiatus was largely due to a relationship I was in; as before, I was very happy, foresaw great things in the future, and took it like a 2x4 to the kidney when it was cut off abruptly. So if you're one of the three people out there with attention spans long enough to keep up with my writing, my apologies, and I hope to turn out more soon. If you're new to the series, this episode cuts directly to a cliffhanger from the previous, so I suggest reading (at least) one back. Or, heck, try them all, and tell me if you think I'm getting better or worse. Enjoy!
Blues of Summer Mustapha Mond VII)
The world is still warm and the sun still shines; Tad is still smiling. My words -- my confession -- have dissipated into the air, and on that same breath I expelled the weights from my lungs. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I inhale and exhale like a free man.
Tad is still smiling.
"That's...I've just wondered for so long...I mean...that's rad, you know?" His voice seems to trickle out of him like water slowly pushing its way through packed sand, bubbling, gaining force and clarity, quicker and quicker. "I mean, maybe Irene made me sensitized to these things, but I've always wondered...and, God...here we are...I'm just so happy that you could finally tell me, Derrick! Wait'll...oh, no, no, wait, it's not my place to pass the word to her, that's you...but I guess you're ready now...[he pauses for a short breath] am I the first person you've told?"
Tad sets his eyes firm on me, grinning big and toothy. I'm a bit speechless, to put it lightly; I feel like I made a paradigm shift in my own microcosmic world -- invented fire, say -- and now, what, Tad expects me to small talk? But my sensations start filling back in like light slowly creeping across a hardwood floor. There's the sun, and the babbling brook (and, Jesus, are we still up here this high?), there's Tad, imperfect skin like gold, brown over brown, thin face bordering gaunt, tangled hair bearing a broken crown of burrs.
"Yes," I say, finding the thread of conversation. "No, take that back, I told my brother at the party the other night, but it still feels like the first time." Maybe I want to say more, but the words fall flat from my mouth before I get the chance.
"So your parents don't know?"
"No...although they might have some inklings. I haven't done much a job of playing it up straight these last few years -- in fact, I'm surprised that everyone doesn't know. You obviously had a pretty good idea."
Tad keeps smiling, but a little of the light goes out of his eyes. "I just thought...I dunno." His voice is softer now. "Like I just got a feeling. I've heard people talk about gaydar or whatever...but I guess I don't really know people -- any people -- well enough to see signs, or tell what gay people are really supposed to be like. The few times I've been to a movie and there's gay characters, they're not like you."
"Then why did you ask me?" I ask.
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize that they might have terrible weight. But Tad doesn't seem to notice: he keeps looking at me, smiling, seeing me, but with the same look of distance he's had since I first met him, a vacant space that only endless blue skies and pine sap breeze can fill.
"It wasn't planned or anything," Tad says. "I just felt like asking, so I asked. You're my best friend, remember? I want to know who you are...I know we're not the sort of friends who live in each other's heads...I'd never be much for that. But sometimes just knowing is enough to make things better."
I just nod, somewhere in my own head. I find myself staring at Tad's hand, now right at my side. How do you describe something so delicate -- with short, thin fingers, assymetrical, downy hair catching the sun -- how can it still be rough, scarred dozens of dozens of times with briars and twigs, rocks, campfires, pencils, paper edges, maybe scissors from vague childhood?
"It's like, when we were little kids, and all we had was physical substance, we swapped blood to form a bond. Then we got older, and inherited minds; remember when we used to camp out in the field behind my house, burning until the sun rose with words we heard, stories passed down, our own ideas just starting to caramelize? Then we swapped our minds; now we have souls, the high point of the triangle, and the best we can do on this pitiful, beautiful little planet is to let our friends glimpse what shade of light surrounds us. I want to know you. I want to know, what is it like to be Derrick? What is it like to be gay?"
I can't help chuckle a little. "That was a nice little soliliquoy (I'm serious and he knows it). And I wouldn't be much help answering the first question -- I don't know who the fuck I am either. But for being gay, hell, I don't think that's too hard...pretty much like being anything else, except you have to put a little more energy into keeping up with everyone else and being cool with yourself."
There's his hand, the way it lies with the curve of the log, as though cupping the pale skin through which some distant arboreal heart might beat. That delicate, rough curve. My hand is next to Tad's hand...I can see how it could take his knuckles, his fine hairs, his fingernails, all under my larger palm; how I could rest my hand on his and feel the simple, human warmth running though my own fingertips.
But.
That...
I close my eyes and breathe. I breathe. My eyes are closed and I take one more breath, hoping the new air will straighten the words.
No
My eyes are closed yet I know the world has not snuffed itself out with me.
I can still hear the water below; hear it, in fact, and water trips and stumbles over every rock, every valiant strand of lichen, in and out of little eddies; my eyelids know the sun's warmth.
He did, didn't he
Question mark?
No, he did.
Period.
...
If he were, he wouldn't have to ask.
I open my eyes and find Tad looking at me, light concern a dim undercurrent to his earthly bliss. "So you're...you're...not gay, are you?"
"Oh" is what Tad says. The smile seems to dissipate from his face, and he sinks down into his lean, falling a bit onto the log. "Oh. God...Derrick...I'm such an idiot...of course you would hope...Derrick...I'm sorry"
One expects disappointment to come with a great flash of something: darkness, perhaps, the world blotting out before your eyes; else a searing pain in your gut, like someone grabbed a hold of something important and twisted with all his might. I feel none of this. I feel nothing. So Tad isn't gay. My mind says, There are other boys in the sea.
And then it sinks in and I feel that something in me that I didn't even know before has died.
My eyes are dry -- Sahara dry -- and even when I blink nothing seems to lubricate them; the landscape is distorted, blotted like through wax paper. I look up and there's Tad, perfectly in focus. He looks like something is about to die in him, too. Tad, I said, does not communicate well with people, yet he seems to be possessed of unlimited empathy: for this reason alone I can understand his desire to get away from them, as the incessant pain of life for others must be constant thorns about his brow. And here he has seen me flinch, perhaps grow pale -- he must have read the agony in my eyes, because I see it blazing in his own.
Somewhere below the stream continues to rush, as it has and will for far longer than I will breathe. Nothing I can do, from our log or otherwise, not even if I dropped straight backward and tried to block its flow with my body, would affect its eternal place in the world. But Tad, my best friend, floating above the water with me: he I can help.
"It's nothing to apologize for," I say. How can my voice sound more boy than raven at a time like this? "I didn't really think you were...gay...also. I mean, what are the odds of something like that -- two greats buds like us -- that's like one in one-hundred. But it's more than that. I just didn't really get any vibes from you."
That's a half-truth, but I'm allowed. With rough grout do we patch humans back together.
He is silent for a moment, still pale and on the verge of tears. Then, "I can see I hurt you. All I wanted was to get closer to my best friend and I may have just broken his heart." He is not talking to me, exactly, but to some point off in the clouds, perhaps where he imagines his soul to nest.
"I'd be lying if I said...I hadn't hoped. But we always hope. That's what gets us through these years. When we watch our friends going through puppy love and actually getting it reciprocated."
"I'm sorry," he says again, barely above a whisper.
"Don't be," I say, smiling -- surprising myself. "I hoped, I admit. But you're not the one I've got my heart set on. I just got a little caught up in the last few days. I'm disappointed, but I've still got hope racing from the tips of my hair to my toenails. You hurt me a tiny bit, but it's passed. Let's just be best friends again."
I meant all I said, even though I didn't even realize the words as they came out. Tad has brightened some and is smiling again, sweetly coquettish; his eyes are bowed with the promise of tears, but we know if they come it will be from nothing so simple as sadness or joy. I reach out and put my hand over his and squeeze. We could not have more a bond if our skins twined into one another and our bloodstreams joined. This moment is poignant and perfect. So I lean over and kiss him.
We are both shy, yet neither of us seem surprised as my lips press against his and flood us with warmth. We kiss sweetly and when we must draw away we do so reluctantly, like children pausing at the exit door to an amusement ride, not wanted experience to fade into memory just yet. We hold hands the whole time, though I have no sense how long that actually is. There is no tongue; this is not metaphoric sex; it is firm, enriched not by passion but by solidarity.
Only as we have drawn away from one another and look each other in the eyes do I realize that Tad has just given me the first real kiss of my life.
Just as suddenly, he gets a wickedly devious look in his eyes. "Hey!" He yells in mock anger. "Jeez, what did I just tell you? Are you one of those predators they always talk about on the news?" This kind of humor is unlike Tad, but then, I sense we have both become new people somehow (I just have yet to find my own change).
"Not even," I say. Moving with a quick jerk, I climb over him, causing him to flail about for balance, and move on along the log back toward the campsite.
"I was just paying you back for wussing out on me during spin-the-bottle."
"ME?" He yells. "I was all set, and YOU made the worst excuse I've ever heard in my life!" He scrambles after me down the log. As soon as I hit solid ground I take off, sound bursting forth like yells and laughter; Tad is after me in a flash. And so, like boys playing tag among the huckleberries, we crash back into camp, firewood forgotten, startling Dalton and Shark, who are throwing pinecones at one another over the corpse of a poorly-constructed tent. Needless to say within moments the four of us are brawling, rolling around in the loose underbrush, yawping, and as I wrestle with Tad I think, I have never been happier.
Final Comment: I guess, if I get hit by a bus tonight, that could almost substitute for an ending. But don't be alarmed. I've got some loose strings still dangling here and there that I might just pull on -- don't be surprised if some crazy stuff goes down. Or not. I haven't honestly decided what the hell is going to happen from this point. Let me be honest: I want nothing more than Derrick to find his soulmate at the end. Whenever I go back to BOS, I always root for the poor kid. But life doesn't really work that way, now does it? But then again, sometimes we just get lucky...
And I'm kind of lonely, and kind of sad. I've been in New York by myself for quite some time now, and so much introverted time takes it toll after a while. Write me, XfragmentofanangelX@hotmail.com, and if you're intelligent or interesting enough, maybe I'll write back. Email is like my manna right now; I'm in the desert, and I need every scrap I can to stay alive.