Note: Greetings, good reader. Today's installment is a bit of an odd one (and a short one), but it's the story I wanted to tell; I only hope I had skill enough to do a halfway decent job. Thanks to Namaste, Nathan, Curt, Greg, Mondo, Josh, and Kip for their good feedback -- you guys and others like you are the main thing that keeps BOS alive. If you're new to the series, you'll like it more if you start from the beginning (believe it or not, there is actually something like a plot going), but if you're pressed for time, chapter IX finishes off the scene started in VI, so that's as good a place as any to dive in. Oh, and sorry about the bad punctuation on the last installment, I'll try to get it corrected (I swear I didn't write it like that!).
Blues of Summer Mustapha Mond IX)
I hear the others carry on a light conversation in heavy voices, tucked away with me in Dalton's car on the long ride home. But they seem distant, and even though I realize how tired I am (how tired we all are), I know this stems from a deeper concern than sleep or the lack thereof. My forehead is pressed against the cold glass window in the back seat; past rolls the soft line of the Blue Ridge, white clouds like fluffy garnish on and endless cerulean dinner plate -- I don't notice them, don't notice the stellar, ancient beauty layered in every direction over my view. My mind is simply too occupied.
Once, a few years ago, I got a phone call at three in the morning from a voice I didn't quite recognize. He certainly seemed to know me, though, and through sobs said he was about to kill himself. Though I was only half-conscious at the time, I at least had the presence of mind to tell him it wasn't worth it; that no matter how grim things seemed, the only constant is change, and who knows when tomorrow will bring new happiness into his life. I don't know how I did it, but I talked him out of it. He hung up, and I was instantly back asleep. The next day, and for weeks afterward, the call haunted me. I scanned the face of every guy I knew, looking for some hint that it was his life I saved, carefully diagnosed every voice babbling in the cafeteria, but I never did nail it down. Even more troubling, I was never sure that the phone call even happened: it certainly seemed real at the time, but it also seemed surreal, and when bizarre 3 am phone calls don't match up with daytime reality, the diagnosis of "dream" seems a safe bet.
That feeling of uncertainty, that doubt, keeps turning over and over in my head. Was what happened this morning just a dream? Or was it reality, but exaggerated until it lost its real meaning? Or -- and I'm scared to even ask this -- did what I thought happened really happen, after all?
The scene that repeats, endlessly, like a scratched record stuck in an infinite loop, is this:
There is a sensation of heat, and uncomfortable pressure, then cold light, thinly stretched blue. I am warm and my eyes are only opened into slits. Tad has his arms still around me, tightly even in sleep (this part I know to be true; they were still there when I woke up later).
The pressure again -- my bladder. Movements are not crisp and coherent. I'm standing all the sudden, shivering. I don't see anything more than a narrow strip of faint color. Now, perhaps blobs of trees, a mass that might be the campfire, some bright field of distant color, red. I'm aware of my groin. Beneath my feet, cold, crunchy ground.
(My feet were dirty when I woke up, but so what? They had been since I went to bed. And the ground was all fallen leaves, no chance to follow tracks.)
The field of red, getting closer, getting clearer. Its dimensions clear as the edges cease to blur, as it becomes a true geometrical shape. It is the tent, and I'm stumbling toward it, my bladder burning.
(This I don't understand. Why go toward the distant tent? I could have found much closer relief in trees nearer the sleeping bag. Does this mean I was dreaming? But then, when are the addle-minded known for rational decision making? Or perhaps a bright color attracted my temporarily primitive brain like an insect to a flower?)
There is no memory of urination.
But I'm stumbling back -- this clear -- and I pass the tent again. And I hear a curious noise, flowing across my senses like a wind through lingering fog. The gentle sound of sighing. I stop. And soft moans. And a rustling, like leaves across grass, or perhaps nylon against nylon, or skin against skin. And voices whispering softly: two voices, distinctly I remember this. One high and nasal, the other rich with bass.
Then, maybe motion, maybe not. The memory becomes even less clear here. I have one more recollection of warmth, or perhaps that was interposed from when I woke fully, with the sun full overhead, and Tad waking me by playfully yanking on one of my chest hairs.
The scenery continues to pour by. We make excellent progress. Although Shark isn't half the speed demon as Tad, he's also not a fourth the reckless maniac, and this is a compromise we're all happy to make. I stare out and wonder. I know the implication of the memory; although I have run quite a few possibilities through my mind, there are no other interpretations. If the memory is, in fact, a genuine one.
What do I know about Shark and Dalton? In concrete terms, we've been friends for less than two years, but given the weight time still has to my young mind, that's practically an eternity. I remember one fateful lunch period, early freshman year, when Cliff and I ditched the cafeteria to try and find more secluded -- hipper -- digs. Around the back of the swimming pool, and who do you suppose we caught spray-painting enormous, obscene pictures on the wall? I swear Shark dropped three shades paler (Dalton practically turned transparent), but we just sat back and laughed. Once they figured we weren't running to rat them out, they resumed their most graphic anatomical sketches, with a little "artistic guidance" from us. Needless to say, we were great friends from that point on. Even though Dalton and Shark were a year older than Cliff and I, we always had the best kicks together, equals all the way.
As I recall, they've been friends since forever, further back than even they can remember. That can be taken a lot of different ways.
Out the window, the cows are already starting to peter out, replaced by Ikeas and housing developments with names like "Shady Acres." I notice neither shade nor lots even approaching an acre -- just a lot of dead suburban space.
Hmm. If it had really happened; if the tent were real, and my memories real, then why wouldn't I have become more alert when I heard the noises? I've been waiting my whole life to find more of my kind: shouldn't my ears have perked up, shouldn't my eyes have bugged open? Why would I just drift back to my sleeping bag, and back to sleep?
And honestly, what are the odds of three-quarters of us being gay out in the big woods?
And for that matter, why in the Hell would those boys have woken up at such a godawful hour just for a little...fun?
"Are we there yet?" Dalton's voice trembles into a whine, deliberately I have no doubt, that would make a hungry dog proud.
"For the last time!" Yells Shark. "No, dammit!" He composes himself. "I keep telling you, just go with the flow -- all good things come to those who wait."
"Spare me your clichés. Besides, the end of the flow is swept out to die in the middle of the ocean -- and for that matter, the only thing that comes to those who wait is the grim reaper. Or those who flee. It's all the same in the end."
I see Shark's eyes flash with amusement in the rearview. "That's supposed to be My line. Pseudo-Buddhist, remember?"
Dalton seems to be awfully morbid today, but then, he always is when it helps him be a brat in an argument. To my side, Tad is staring out his window, giving me a scant profile of his face. He is all matted brown hair, greasy for lack of a shower. Something strikes me as appropriate there. Sweetly radiating sadness.
Pressure, rising, cold, light, red, tent, murmurs. Over and over.
"Are we there yet?"
A fist slamming into Dalton's upper arm. I even remember to laugh.
And over and over, until finally, we are there. I gather my things out of the trunk, say my goodbyes, and walk to my front door. And I still have no answers.
Just a dim hope.
Final Note: Intriguing, no? I bet you can't wait to find out what happens next. Or, heck, maybe you've got some Ideas about what you'd like to happen next. I'd love to hear 'em. Or write me to tell me how amazingly stupendously superb I am. Or whatever. I'm single again (in case you haven't noticed the DRIPPING ANGST), so proposition away, New Yorker boys.
(I wonder if pathetic groveling like this ever works in the dating world.)
Oh, and the contest from last week has yet to be won -- the metaphorical "cookie" is growing stale. Not that this surprises me in the least... sigh.
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As-salaam Alaikum