Disclaimer: This story is fiction. It makes no claims to the true personality and sexuality of anyone involved. You already know if you shouldn't be reading this.
Note: This is the complete story with a few corrections. It only differs slightly from the numbered versions previously posted to Nifty.
------------------ HOME by JM
Part I
We listened to the final mix again. The band agreed that everything sounded great. I made them a copy of the mix and they were off. I started the back-ups of the tapes and cleaned up the studio. By the time everything was done and I got out of the studio it was 4am.
I stopped at a convenience store and picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket on the way back to my apartment. No, I don't actually think I'll ever win the lottery, but $2 once a week is no big deal for the possibility -- and besides that, it is up to $50 million this week. I dropped off a copy of the tapes in a FedEx box to go to the mastering engineer and got home at 5am. I grabbed a Guinness and sat on the balcony watching the sun come up.
My apartment was too quiet. Ryan, my last boyfriend, had left me two weeks ago. He said I spent too much time in the studio and was never there for him.
My name is Josh Matthews. I'm 27 years old. I'm an admitted workaholic, but I enjoy what I do. Working with local bands I have the opportunity to produce as well as engineer. I've gotten to the point where I can pick and choose the bands I record so I didn't have to do the bad ones. Nothing big time, but I liked it that way. I'd worked with a large recording studio in Chicago when I was first starting out and engineered some pretty big names, but the larger the record label, the more control they wanted over the music to sure it was "more marketable." Usually "more marketable" meant "fluff it up and make it sound like everything else." I got disillusioned and took this job in Cincinnati working for a smaller studio. The pay is lower and Cincinnati is not quite the happenin' town that Chicago is, but the job satisfaction is much higher. Also, my best friend, Nick, lives in Cincinnati.
We had been best friends in school at Northwestern. He was straight, but that never seemed to be an issue with us. Most of my close friends were straight. I didn't purposely plan it that way. Nick had taken a job with a housing developer in Cincinnati after graduating. He didn't care for the cookie cutter type housing and over-development of the suburbs, but he got to be a designer right away instead of a draftsman for ten years like most beginning architects.
I'd been in Cincinnati for exactly two years today, I thought. Life is going good in all areas except for relationships. Never enough time. I finished my beer, put out my cigarette, brushed my teeth and went to bed.
I awoke around 5pm. After a cup of coffee and a shower I went to the grocery store. Every Friday night Nick, Susan and I would get together for pizza and beer. Susan was another friend from Northwestern. She was a PR/Marketing whiz. Anyway, dinner was at my place this week. Instead of ordering a pizza like Nick and Susan, I always made my own. I love to cook for other people. It wasn't pizza, exactly. I make a great pizza with artichoke hearts, broccoli, garlic, parmesan and fontina cheese on a foccocia. Very good. I got my supplies for dinner and headed back. Nick and Susan would be over at 8pm.
Per usual, Susan was early and Nick was late. I had been looking to buy a house. Over dinner Nick was trying to convince me to buy an old building downtown and let him design the rehab for it. I would like nothing more, but I kept arguing with him that it would cost too much to find a place with parking, a big building would be too much for just me and I didn't really want to be a landlord. Susan suggested I just live in the top floor and let homeless kids stay in the lower floors. She knew I loved kids and hoped to adopt one day.
"That sounds great, except what about work?" I asked. "Not to mention money to feed them and the million other things it would take to make that work..."
"I'll just work my magic and get corporate donations."
"Uh huh... Cincinnati is a bit too conservative for that. I can see the headlines now. 'Gay man opens homeless shelter for kids. Sheriff investigates for child molesting.' No one would want to be associated with that," I joked.
"But their investigation would turn up nothing," she argued.
"Come on, Susan. You know better than I that fact doesn't matter. Once the allegation is made, I'm guilty."
"Yea..." she agreed.
"Maybe when I win the lottery," I joked.
They left around midnight. I sat up and read a book until 2am, then went to bed.
The next day I was in the studio from 2pm to 2am. The band wasn't very prepared and we'd only gotten basic tracks on two songs. I suggested they go home and practice before the next session on Tuesday.
I had the next two days off and planned to spend them house hunting. I got a paper Sunday morning and sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee and looked over the Open House listings. I marked a few of them. After I finished most of the paper I got to the lottery announcement. I read the number and put the paper down and started to get ready to head out.
Wait! I went back over and picked up the paper. I pulled out my ticket and carefully compared the numbers about twenty times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. I was in shock. I had won the lottery. $50 million dollars. I sat there stunned until the phone rang. I picked it up.
"Hey Josh, what's taking so long? I thought you were picking me up to go look at houses..." Nick said a bit annoyed.
"Uh...Nick...I think I won the lottery." I stuttered out.
"You what!?" he yelled in my ear.
"I said I think I just won the lottery. Can I call you back?" I said in a daze.
"I'll be right over," he said and hung up before I could answer.
I found the number for the lottery office and called to confirm. They took my information and said they'd get back to me. I was about to turn off the radio and put in a CD when I heard, "There was a single winner in last night's lottery drawing. The ticket was purchased at..." I didn't hear the rest. A single winner. Me. $50 million. What the hell was I going to do with $50 million? I put in "A Love Supreme" turned it up loud and sat down to let everything sink in.
Ten minutes later Nick was pounding on my door. I opened it and he and Susan rushed in.
"Is it true?" Susan asked excitedly.
"Uh huh," I nodded.
They both congratulated me with hugs and were more excited than I was.
"Aren't you excited," asked Nick.
"Yea, I guess. But what am I supposed to do with $50 million dollars?" I questioned somewhat dumfounded.
"Well..." hinted Susan. "You did say you'd open that shelter for kids if you won the lottery..."
That was it! I knew exactly what I was going to do with the money. We spent the rest of the day joking about how to spend the money in the most extravagant and wasteful ways.
Monday morning I was at the lottery office as the doors opened. So were a couple news crews. The officials checked over everything and had me sign a bunch of papers. They suggested I get a financial planner and a lawyer and sent me on my way. I would get the check next week at a very public ceremony.
I already had a lawyer and after talking with him called the financial planner he had suggested. It was recommended that I take the lump sum distribution and invest it. I agreed.
I was exhausted when I got home and went straight to bed.
The next week passed incredibly quickly and the next thing I knew I was being handed a large fake check for $50 million in front of a crowd of cameras and reporters.
After the ceremony I had to do a bunch of promos for the lottery. I was told that the money had been deposited in my account that morning. I went straight to the bank to check. It was such a strange feeling to see the balance of my account be $25,001,502.43. It felt like it should be a mistake, but I knew it wasn't. The bank, who hadn't been very helpful before, was now falling over itself to make me happy. It basically annoyed me.
By the end of the week I had $15 million of it invested in various areas. As much as I enjoyed my job, there was too much to do now. I finished recording the bands that I had started and then quit. The studio owner let me know that I could come back any time I wanted. I thanked him and went out looking for buildings downtown.
Nick had told me about an eight storey building just west of downtown. The neighborhood was kinda bad, and the building looked like hell, but it was structurally sound and all brick. I looked around the neighborhood and every other building on the block was vacant and in various stages of collapse. I went home that evening and thought about it.
The next morning I called my realtor and told her I wanted to buy the whole block. She was, needless to say, thrilled. I met her the next day and we drew up the contracts. They were sent out and all the owners agreed to the low price I was giving them. I had bought a whole block for $100,000. Closing would be in a month.
That Friday night I told Nick and Susan what I had done and asked for their help getting things rolling. Susan went into overdrive on the PR possibilities and Nick was creaming his jeans at what he could do with those buildings. I had my own ideas.
I wanted the place to be more than just a homeless shelter for abused kids. I wanted it to be a place they could call home.
Susan picked up on this immediately and suggested we call the place "Home." We all agreed and moved on.
"I only want to keep two of the buildings on the block," I said. "The eight storey apartment building and one of the others. Let's tear everything else down and make it green space. Maybe wall it in to keep it safe for the kids."
Nick didn't like the idea of walling it in, but agreed that it would be better for the kids to have a safe area in that part of town.
Basic plans were made and Susan and I planned to meet at the library in the morning to do some research on setting this thing up.
A month later and the whole block was mine. Nick met me and we did a walk-through of all the buildings. It was decided that the three storey warehouse on the far corner from the apartment building would be the one to stay. The walls would connect the two buildings. Nick called a demolition company that day. The other buildings on the block would be gone by the end of the month.
Susan, on the other hand, had started the PR train at full speed and I had ten kids waiting for me at my apartment when I got home.
'This is going faster than I imagined,' I thought. I couldn't turn them away for six months and it wasn't safe for them to stay in the apartment building yet, so I rented two more apartments in my building and put them there with the understanding that they would have to help rehab the building and would be guaranteed a spot. They didn't have a problem with this.
Six months and ten kids later we moved into Home. It still wasn't done, but it was livable. The top two floors of the apartment building were remodeled as two 2 bedroom apartments per floor. The next five floors down were for the kids. The ground floor was for administrative stuff. My apartment on the 8th floor was finished and three of the kid's floors were complete as well as the first floor.
The warehouse was the easiest to rehab so we did that first. I had professionals put on a new roof, but the kids and volunteers from the community did everything else. When it was done we had a computer lab and music studio on the third floor, a gym and art studio on the second and a wood shop and garage on the first. The wood shop being in would make it much easier to work on the apartment building. I populated the computer lab with iMacs and a T1 that also ran to the apartment building. There were a few upright pianos in the music studio that were donated by a local university and the gym had a bunch of machines that were donated by a gym that was upgrading their equipment.
As for the kids floors in the apartment building, I had decided that each floor would be called a "family." There were eight small bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and large bathroom on each floor. Dealing with eight other people would be easier than the 40 possible and make it more likely that closer relationships would develop. I tried to evenly spread out the ages between "families." The older ones would watch over the younger and it seemed to be working well. It was all boys because I didn't want to have to deal with the girl-guy thing.
I had only a few rules that I insisted on for the kids and had these painted on the wall inside the entrance. They are: Be kind to yourself and everyone you meet. Do your best at whatever you do. If you don't trust, you cannot be trusted. If you don't love, you cannot be loved.
The kids were kinda confused by the simplicity of the rules, but I explained that if everyone followed them, then everything else would follow. Each family also had their own rules. Mostly about who did what. Each family got $300 a week to buy groceries. The family would eat together. This is a rule they made up. I thought it was a good rule.