A Day Gone Wrong
Disclaimer: This is a story about a guy who incidentally, happens to be attracted to other guys. If all you're looking for is a quick thrill that you can jack off to, then sorry bud, this one's not for you. If that's not what you're looking for, well... sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
Chapter 8: You've Got a Friend.
7:15 A.M.
The digital clock on Barry's car counter made me realize how so many things have transpired all within a small span of time. In just a matter of 4 hours to be exact, I had learned how to program a random number generator, missed out on the biggest party that I had ever been invited to in my life, lost all the possessions and belongings that I had left in this world, lost my only place to stay in this big, big city, found my dreams of success virtually going up in flames, went temporarily insane... and... and wonder of wonders, I made a new friend. Woo-hoo.
I looked at Barry and took note of his blood-shot eyes. His left hand was massaging his poor, throbbing brain. His clothes were all dirty and wet from struggling with me in the flooded streets of Kanluran City. I was definitely giving him a bad day. And if that wasn't enough, I've just given his girlfriend a justifiable cause to break up with him.
I hate myself and I want to die.
It's bad enough that all this shit was happening to me. I was also passing my bad luck on to other people.
I took note of the situation and made the conclusion that now would be a bad time to tell Barry that I had to go to the bathroom. Sigh.
After 5 minutes of holding it in and watching the driver make twists and turns in this really ritzy neighborhood, I was relieved to find that we were finally slowing down around the bend. I began to see a house around the corner.
Wow. Impressive. Saying that Barry was rich would be an understatement. I looked at the castle that Barry Ty called his home. It was a looming structure with a Spanish Colonial feel to it. Stone tiles made up the outer facade of the house. On the roof were brick-colored terra cotta shingles. Ornate iron-works made up the fence surrounding the house as well as the grills covering its windows. A nice, well-manicured lawn dotted with acacia and molave trees completed the whole ensemble.
"Well Dale, this is it. Welcome to my humble abode," Barry said, with a wry smile.
"Hey Barry, what kingdom did you say you ruled in?," I asked him. He chuckled.
With a smooth glide into the garage, Barry parked his green Nissan Terrano beside five other cars composing of a grey Dodge van, a red Toyota Rav4, a blue Chevy pick-up truck, a white Toyota Crown and a black Mercedes Benz. His family must take their Sundays off from showing around this collection.
Barry got out and called out to a man wearing a driver's uniform, "Hey Lucio, I've just been through hell this morning. Could you do me a favor and clean up the car?" Lucio nodded and went out to look for some rags.
"Come on in Dale. Make yourself feel at home," Barry said. I followed him in inside his house, terribly ashamed to be tracking in mud and stinking up the place with my stench.
More beautiful things greeted me as I got inside. It was exactly what I expected to find inside a haciendero's house. The Ty family had a lot of antique furnitures and furnishings. Stout brown narra couches and chairs covered with comfortable-looking upholstery made up the basic furniture set. The walls were look stark and unadorned save for a few paintings of rural life and of some oil portraits of some people who looked a bit familiar, but I didn't recognize. The floor was alternately tiled with wood over by the staircase, and with marble at the main reception area.
Barry led me upstairs where we walked past a richly-carpeted hallway, alternating a few doors in between. Barry opened a door.
"Get in Dale. Breakfast is usually late in my house, served at around 10:00, but if you're hungry I could get the maid to round up some sandwiches for you. Would you like something to eat?"
My stomach rumbled its assent but I was too embarrassed to inconvenience anyone any further. "Nah, it's okay. I'll eat whenever you do."
"Cool." Barry nodded and yawned. He began rubbing his tummy and smelled his armpits. "Peee-yew! I don't know about you, but I stink! I'm gonna take a bath okay? Just lounge around my room and listen to my CD's or whatever takes your interest. My computer's over there. If you get bored, just turn it on and play Starcraft or something."
The minute he said 'computer' my ears shot up and my eyes directed itselves towards Barry's study area. Oh bless my soul, a true-blue IBM!! And a 14 inch color monitor!!! And an ergonomic keyboard!!!
I must have died and gone to heaven.
Like a little boy who's found his way inside a candy store, I hurriedly booted up Barry's computer and gazed enrapturedly at his PC settings on the boot screen. I was in love. 128 megabytes worth of RAM with 50 gigabytes worth of hard disk space... a Pentium 586 processor... Internet access... a 3D and video accelerator... and it gets even better.
The computers back at the Com. Lab. in Sto. Dominggo were a vast improvement over the prehistoric 286 that I practiced on back in Sitio Maringgit, but still, those computers could not hold a candle to the beauty that was lounging in Barry's bedroom.
With loving tenderness I caressed the ergonomic keypads and pointed the mouse's cursor over the Windows 2000 Start button. A whole menagerie of programs and applications popped up and greeted my hungry eyes. A good block of the programs were games.
I checked out the whole menu and was dissappointed to find that Barry didn't even have a Turbo Pascal program, let alone a Virtual C++. Oh yeah, that's right... why should he? He probably wasn't even taking Computer Science.
I was curious to find an icon on his desktop that was named "For Emergency Purposes, Break Glass for Instant Relief" I double-clicked on it and a XING MPEG program booted up and began showing grainy pictures of Pamela Anderson giving Tommy Lee some righteous head.
I chuckled, amused at the sight.
"Aha! You found something interesting to look at, haven't you?" Barry's amused voiced echoed out behind me as he stepped out of his bathroom.
I swivelled around and I gave him a guilty look. "Ooops! Sorry man! I shouldn't have gone poking around your stuff."
Barry grinned, "Naw, that's alright! Hehehe. It's nothing to be embarrassed about."
I grinned. Barry walked on over from the bathroom unto his really wide closet, dressed in nothing but a towel tied around his waist. From my vantage point, I could see that although Barry didn't have that gym-induced artificial musculature common among the meatheads back in campus, he was still pretty buff and solidly built, with solid untoned arms, broad shoulders, a wide chest and a respectably flat stomach. Must be from good genes.
Barry took a towel from underneath his clothes pile and tossed it to me. "Hmmm... we might have a problem with clothes," he said. I could see that. Barry was a hefty 5'10" while I was only a measly 5'6".
"You wouldn't happen to have any underwear I could borrow, would you?," I asked him.
He gave me a horrified look.
"Kidding!" I told him with an apologetic grin.
Barry hefted a smaller pair of shorts at my face. "Okay wise guy, here's a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The shorts come lined with those flimsy panty things attached to them, so that'll have to make do for underwear. And as for the shirt, you'll have to forgive the hole on the armpit section. The last time I wore those clothes was still back in first year high school, so these things have a natural tendency of getting worn down. Bathroom's over there. Get in there young man and be quick about it. You stink."
I smiled gratefully at him. "Thanks man."
Barry nodded and dialed something in the inter-comm, while I got inside his shower.
I stared reverently at the whole room. It was bigger than my old cubicle over at the dorm.
I quickly took off all my stinky clothes and gingerly stepped into the bath area. A bathtub!!! I knelt down and rubbed my hands against its smooth, cold porcelain surface. I was used to an un-porcelain-lined stall with a plastic pail and a plastic cup as bathing implements, but this... this was something else!!! I have seen countless pictures of bathtubs in American magazines and movies. I never thought I would get in one and actually take a bath in it. I was tempted to fill the bathtub up with water and soak it all up with big fluffy soapsuds, like those people on TV did. I looked around for a yellow rubber ducky like the one Ernie had on Sesame Street. Finding none, I contented myself with looking at the rows of shampoos, conditioners, body gels and oils that Barry racked up. I smirked. This is definitely better than the detergent bar that I used to both wash my clothes AND clean myself up with.
I chose the least expensive-looking bath product and turned on the shower.
YYYYEEEEOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!
I let out a startled yell as hot, hot water streamed out like a river of molten lava above me.
Barry knocked on the door and called out in a startled voice, "Dale!!! What's the matter??? Are you alright!!!"
I hurriedly turned off the shower. "The water!!!! It's HOT!!!"
I heard Barry laugh out loud. "What's so funny??? I almost got myself burned in here!!" I called out to him.
"Dale bro, chill out. The right knob is for normal temperature water while the left knob is for hot water. Open both up slightly and work out a temperature that you're comfortable with."
I am such a dufus! "Oh. I knew that," I tried to say nonchalantly.
After getting a comfortable combination, I was finally taking a shower and and soaping myself up. Aaaaahhhh. I smiled contentedly to myself. I could get used to this.
After some time under the shower, I regrettably stepped out of the bathtub and towelled myself up. Putting on Barry's clothes, I stepped out of the hot bathroom and began shivering at the cold gust of air coming from the bedroom's powerful airconditioner.
The sight of Barry dressed comfortably in a t-shirt and shorts, sitting on a chair beside a table set with some food, chomping on pan de sal (that's what we call our local bread) and sausages, greeted me. He was reading the sports section of the newspaper. He looked up to me and smiled. "Good morning. I got hungry so I had the maid round up a snack for us to eat. Here, have some. There's some orange juice and some milk in that little fridge behind you, so help yourself if you want any. It'll tide us over until breakfast comes along."
You mean this wasn't breakfast yet??? Gee, this is a nice improvement over my usual stale pan de sal dunked in instant coffee.
I meekly took out my share and begun eating.
Barry closed his newspaper and spoke up. "So tell me Dale... you really are from the province, aren't you?"
I nodded my agreement.
Barry continued, "Gee, and all along I thought you were just a beatnik with some retro fashion theme going on. Cool. So where are you from?"
"Sitio Maringgit. It's this little barrio that's a long way off from this city. It's about three provinces away, I think."
Barry nodded thoughtfully. "So let me get this straight... that is if you don't mind me asking.... you're not rich, aren't you? I mean... it's true what they say that you're a farmer and all?"
I kept quiet. "Yes."
"Oh... so I realize." Barry kept quiet in return. Then he smiled and spoke up, "How stupid of me, I should've known!! You should've told me dude. I could have picked you up and brought you over to my party last night." He said lightly as if my being poor was nothing to take seriously about. This guy was something else.
"Listen Barry, could I ask you something?"
"Shoot."
"Why are you being so nice to me? I mean, I know you copy your answers off from me and all, but you're really doing a lot for me, you know? It's not like I don't appreciate everything you've done but I'm still wondering why a high-end guy like you would even care about a nobody like me. I mean, hey, we've only met each other through Algebra, and you're already going out on a limb for me like I was your best friend. You're a cut above the rest, you know that?"
Barry was obviously embarrassed by my question. He shifted his position uncomfortably and thought about what he was going to respond. He shrugged. "Hey, what can I say? Barry Ty's a nice guy." Then he grinned.
I was both relieved and embarrassed to hear that.
Barry then spoke up, "Okay, my turn to ask you. Where are you going to go now? How are you going to manage going to school now that you've lost everything."
Good question. I thought about it but I was still stumped for solutions. I faced Barry and quietly answered him, "I... I don't know."
Barry's face scrunched up as he thought of a solution. The two of us kept quiet at that point. I began chewing thoughtfully at my sandwich while Barry sipped some juice and stared at a blank space at the wall. He began to yawn.
"Tell you what Dale, I'm really too tired to think clearly right now. Why don't you and I get some sleep and we'll see what we can do once we wake up."
I nodded. I began to clean up the table when Barry said, "It's okay man, just leave it as it is. The maid'll come up later and take care of that. In the mean time, I hope you don't mind if I tell you that I tend to snore."
I shrugged. "Okay." and with that I began looking for a comfortable spot on the floor to lie down on.
Barry looked at me perplexedly. "Hey Dale, what are you doing?"
"Looking for somewhere to sleep of course. Your floor happens to be more comfortable than my bed back at the dorm." I told him.
"You've gotta be kidding me right?" Barry spoke out, "There's a perfectly soft bed that the two of us can fit in and you want to sleep on the floor??? Come sleep with me! I may be big but I promise I'll be careful and not squash you."
I looked at him increduously. "Really? I don't want to impose..."
Barry threw his hands in the air. "Will you stop it with that inferiority shit and get on the bed? We're friends, right?"
I nodded pensively. "Errr... yeah... I guess."
"Okay good. None of my friends sleep on the floor when they're staying over... not if I could help it. Now stop being such a wussy and go to sleep."
I submissively did as he told and lay down with him on the bed. Within minutes I can hear Barry's soft snore reverberating.
I took that opportunity to look at Barry's handsome face as he lay there on the bed, fast asleep. He looked like an angel. I closed my eyes and felt his presence beside me. His body heat was a warm comfort from the blasting coldness of the airconditioner. Sooner or later, I began to think lazy thoughts as I realized something before I drifted off to sleep's dark embrace:
I have never ever felt this safe with anyone in my entire life.
My sleep was dreamless and devoid of any pain and anxiety.
to be continued...
================================= How do you like the story so far? Tell me all about it at dale@toughguy.net All comments are welcome, although I can't guarantee an immediate reply.