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Chapter Fourteen

Lesson Five: Sound

I finally brought my guitar in for Gerard later on that week. I had been playing
it a lot since the day where my feelings and realizations reached a crescendo,
making a symphony I could finally understand. And I hoped all this practice,
this tearing out my hair with calloused fingers, wasn’t all in vain. I had written
a few things down, gone through a few different pieces of paper, pens,
screamed a few good times and smoked the rest of the pack of cigarettes
before I felt like I finally had something worthy enough to show the ingenious
artist. Even if I did end up sucking in front of him, the way his face beamed as
I entered the apartment later than usual, my acoustic guitar under my arm,
was enough to make my day.

“Finally!” was all he said when I appeared, exaggerating the tone.

He burst forth from his seat on the ledge looking out the window, showing his
enthusiasm in ways his voice could not portray. There was a moment where
my heart fluttered and I hoped he had been at the window looking out for me.
Knowing Gerard, he was probably looking at some cobweb in the corner,
dissecting it for his own art, but I could dream. And even if he wasn’t studying
that cobweb and really was waiting for me, he would never admit it.

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed shakily as I stepped inside.

I dropped my bag down and hung my jacket on the hook, then stood
awkwardly in the hallway, waiting. I had been coming to Gerard’s for a few
weeks at that point, and this was the first time since the beginning that I felt
awkward. Usually, when Gerard welcomed me with opened arms, I would
ease into the place with a smile, and then we’d start in on our task for the
day. But now, the task was undetermined and I didn’t know where to go. The
light weight of the hollowed instrument was suddenly like a ball and chain,
dragging me down and making me unsure of my surroundings. I could feel
myself shaking but I gripped the neck of the guitar, willing it all away. The
rough strings dug in and I knew I would have a mark.
“What are you waiting for?” Gerard called over to me in a mischievous tone.

Since he had sprung to his feet, he had not moved from his position in the
bay window to come down and embrace me with a hug like he normally did.
Instead, he merely stood solidly, a hand on his waist as he motioned to me
with the other. “Come over here and serenade me. Right by the window; all
clichés included.” He gave me a small smile and a wink, his thick locks falling
over the side of his face.

I smiled at his joke, easing some of the tension off my back, and stepped
forward. While I fiddled with my backpack straps and guitar neck, he cleared
away his art supplies so I could have the middle of the floor to myself. I
wished the paint cans and brushes were scattered around me, though. It
would have given me something else to focus on other than Gerard’s stare.
His look wasn’t too intimidating, but the fact that he was looking at me,
waiting for me was unnerving.

“I haven’t played for anyone before,” I warned, pretending to tune the knobs
at the end to pass time and adverting my eyes from him.

“I feel honored then,” he smiled, shaking his bangs out of visage. The way he
spoke, the way the words flowed out of his mouth, made my knees weak. He
actually wanted to hear me. And I still couldn’t figure out why.

“I’m not that good,” I warned him again, stalling for more time.

“Your opinion doesn’t count, Frank,” Gerard informed me, cocking an


eyebrow. “You’re subjective and can’t see the beauty in something you do
everyday.”

I acknowledge his answer quietly, keeping my eyes lowered. I remembered


the conversation we had had about this before and though I would have
much rather relived that memory over and over again, Gerard cut me off.
“Just play, Frank,” he instructed with a calm demeanor. He folded up one
knee onto the bench he sat back down on, gripping his hand around it and
pulling it close. “I want to hear. I want to know what goes on inside your head
and how you’ve expressed yourself…” he trailed off, giving me another wink
for encouragement. “And I want to know if I’ve taught you anything.”

I nodded and swallowed hard, his kind words going in one ear and out the
other as I tuned my guitar more. I stood in front of Gerard for the longest
time, straightening everything out on the instrument, but ignoring my stature
entirely. I was hunched over, my shoulders folding in on an angle I didn’t
think was possible.

“Frank, stand up straight or I’ll never hear you sing,” Gerard ordered at me,
only half-serious. When I lifted my head in perturbed expression rather than
following orders, he continued. “There is singing, right?” His eyes were wide
and hopeful, but his brows were furrowed, sensing a small dilemma.

“Well…uhh,” I muttered debating whether or not I should continue.

The truth was, I had actually planned this whole day out a lot longer than it
seemed. Though I acted like I was a bumbling fool who had not thought about
my performance until fifteen minutes ago, I had laid awake half the night
before, just thinking about my every move. In my perfect fantasy of
everything, I was going to sing as I played guitar (and Gerard would find it
amazingly beautiful, of course). I even had lyrics to the small piece I was
performing for him. It wasn’t a song or anything, not really, but a bunch of
verses and repeated lines put together. The whole composition didn’t rhyme
and some parts were a little awkward, but it was still something that had
come from me. It was the only good entity out of the mess of scribbles that
had taken me hours to come up with. But I couldn’t sing. Not for the life of
me, despite what my fantasy had contrived. And when I told Gerard this issue
I had, he argued with me yet again.

“Your opinion doesn’t matter,” he repeated; smile growing on his pale face
from my aggravation.
He was enjoying this. Whether or not he got a serenade (as he called it) out
of me, he was having enough fun fucking with my head and watching me
squirm. He wasn’t a total sadistic bastard when he did this; I knew there was
some method to his madness. He was trying to boost my confidence, even if I
ended up feeling slightly masochistic giving into it. And eventually, I just saw
no use arguing with him anymore. I felt naked and exposed standing up there
in front of Gerard anyway; I didn’t need to add other emotional scars to the
list of things. I gave in and started playing, swallowing my fear, pride and
everything else I had to lose.

I began to strum my fingers over the chords slowly, just to warm up. I could
fucking feel Gerard’s anticipation as he sat on the edge of his seat, leaning
forward, bouncing his feet casually as he listened intently. His eyes were
wide and psychotic, looking at me as if I was prey ready to be devoured. This
was like a fucking drug to him. Art, in any form, by any person, got him high.
He was ecstatic right then, and I hadn’t even done anything but scales. I
couldn’t imagine what would happen when the real thing came out.

Part of me wondered if he’d keel over from an overdose of his favourite


addiction, and though that would get me out playing for too long (and
probably save me some embarrassment) I had to admit I liked how much
attention he was giving me. I wanted to hold it as long as I possibly could.

I gave him a quick glance with my eyes, catching his brimming smile in my
gaze before I was sure I could do this. I let out little murmurs at first to catch
my breath and find the right key (one that didn’t hurt my ears), and started
to play.

The composition I had written was simple and pure; something I could read
and remember as I played the equally simple chords. Though I felt inferior for
deducing myself to elementary level work on the guitar, I needed something
easy and straightforward to perform, because this act of performing itself was
the hardest fucking thing I had ever done. It was difficult enough to open my
soul up to people, but to do it in front of Gerard was a whole other ball game.
I respected this man so much that I didn’t know if I could take doing this.
He’d see my weakness, see my soul and most of all, see my mistakes. He
encouraged me so much, but I still didn’t want to let him down.
I had to close my eyes as I played, to shut myself off from what I was really
doing. No matter how tightly shut they became, however, I could still feel that
anticipation of a forty-seven-year-old man bouncing in his chair listening to
the song that was written just for him. And really, though I tried to pass this
off as just a normal composition, this really was just for him. He had been on
my mind more than ever now, and that’s what I had spilled onto the page. I
couldn’t help it; I had to write about him before my head exploded. And once
I had it all out, edited a few times and I had screamed a bit, I was left with
what I was performing in front of him, along with the back thoughts of my
subconscious.

I needed him to like this. There was some small part of me, in the back of my
psyche that even I didn’t want to venture into that had this highly
preconceived notion about everything. If he liked my song about him, then he
would like me. He already did like me; I could tell that, but I didn’t know if it
was the way I wanted him to. And honestly, I didn’t know how exactly I
wanted him to like me just then. He was the teacher, the older one, the
smarter one in the situation. He had the answers. I was the naïve teenager,
always coming to him for those answers. And my song, well, that was my
form of a question finally being uttered. I needed to speak in music though,
because using real words was far too dangerous for both of us to handle.

During the opening lines, my voice cracked a few times from sheer
nervousness. I also wasn’t entirely sure how to adjust my tempo, but I came
around. My fingers only slipped on the strings a few times and there was only
one awkward pause where I forgot a lyric from the anxiety of it all. Within a
few pain-staking moments of my stomach twisting in agony, however, it was
all over. Simple as that.

I was done with my song, the lyrics spilled out onto the floor in front of me
where Gerard was. I kept my head lowered, the relief running through me,
not wanting it to end. Gerard didn’t say anything and when I finally raised my
head; he was still quiet and thinking hard, his hand poised on his chin. I was
unable to tell if his thinking stance was good or bad, though. I wanted to
know his opinion – I really did. I brought the guitar for his request and I
learned and played it all again for him. It had benefited me too in the long
run, keeping me from going insane while spending time alone in my house.
But he had been the sole person as my inspiration. I hoped he knew, because
I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him. And though I wanted him to know the
question I was asking, and get an answer in return, I didn’t want my feelings
to be too obvious in the words I had written down. All teenagers spoke of
unrequited love and feelings of confusion. They didn’t have to be about him.

“What did you think?” I finally broke the silence, my voice cutting through
everything like a knife. Gerard had been looking down at his one extended
foot, but now brought his face up to meet mine. He breathed in deeply and
tilted his head to the side.

“Do you want honesty? Pure and complete honesty?” he asked seriously, his
lips pursed together.

My heart dropped. I knew from previous experiences that this was never a
good opening line. I had a feeling if I didn’t say yes though that Gerard was
going to tell me the brutal truth anyway. I agreed, if only to make myself
think that I at least at some control over the hurt I knew I was going to feel.

“Well,” Gerard started, nodding his head and swallowing, clearing his throat.
“I think that you’re doing very well – for a beginner. That was my main
concern, however. Everything seemed too elementary. Too redundant and
simplistic. You ran things together too quickly and your words didn’t match.
They were too choppy while the music wasn’t choppy enough. There were too
many stock phrases in words and music. You need a lot of work…” Gerard
trailed off, looking me up and down and then off to the side, my guitar in his
viewpoint. “But you are good for just starting out.”

I bit my lip and swallowed hard, his words washing over me like salt water
and stinging the open wounds he created. It took me awhile for every
connotation, meaning and significance to hit me, but once they did, they
weighed me down. If they had been bullets, I probably would have been
bleeding and dead on the floor at that point, regardless if I had a vest on or
not. They stung. They hurt.

What hurt even more though was I hadn’t really just started to play. I had
played before, on and off, for a few years when I was still a little kid. I knew
the basics already – that elementary knowledge that Gerard thought I had
just acquired, I had known for years. Essentially, I had made no improvement
since I had picked up the old and sick instrument and started again. My
nights at home, guitar in my lap and magazines open in front of me had been
a waste. A complete and utter waste. I had been trying so hard – all for him –
but apparently it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t trying
hard enough and I had been wasting my time. I was unsure about what hurt
more though: the fact that I wasn’t good enough or the fact that that Gerard
had said I wasn’t good enough.

Was my inspiration supposed to turn its back on me like this? I found myself
asking as the blood drained from my body. I didn’t know the answer to my
internal question, but I could feel my insides falling apart. My stomach
churned and my muscles loosened off of the bone. I nearly dropped my
guitar, the corner of it hitting the floor and making a loud echo noise
throughout the small apartment, snapping us both into reality again.

“Okay…” was all I could say.

I remained stationary in my stance where he had torn me apart, then I


suddenly realized that I had to move. I was still naked and exposed in front of
him and I no longer had a guitar to hide it. I needed to move and turn away
fast, before I did something else equally shameful. I stepped back and started
to busy myself with something behind me, going over to my bag.

“Oh, Frank,” Gerard called after me.

I heard the cushion he was sitting on give way as his body relaxed and got
off, chasing after me. He walked up behind me, putting a hand on my
shoulder and gently turned me around. My face was red then, blood finding
its way back into me through embarrassment and utter pain, seeping and
bleeding under raw cheeks.

I hated that he was seeing me like this; it was worse than the actual criticism
itself. I felt my eyes burn, but I knew I wasn’t going to cry. The air suddenly
felt drier, the dust being stirred around from when he had attacked me. It
also didn’t help that I was getting worse and worse at lying to myself.
“Frank, where are you going?” Gerard asked me, his eyes pleading deeply
into mine. I looked around then, realizing I was holding my bag and getting
my keys out.

I really had no clue where I was going; I just wanted away from the criticism
and embarrassment I felt, but I really had no place to go. Gerard’s apartment
was my one and only sanctuary. I couldn’t go home; I didn’t want to. All I had
there was my mother and father, their dream crushing hands out and ready
to pounce, especially if they saw me carrying a guitar home. I had already
been damaged enough that day, I didn’t need to go home and have it done
all over again. Sam and Travis were long gone, off to get high or find some
way to get liquor. I didn’t feel like numbing myself anymore anyway. Even if I
hurt so much right then after Gerard’s verbal beating, I wanted to feel this
pain. It seemed essential and necessary, because in the long run, I knew he
was just trying to help me. I knew I would stay here anyway, in Gerard’s
place. Besides, the way his face twisted and contorted when he talked, he
looked genuinely sorry.

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” I told him, only half-lying. He cocked a skeptical


eyebrow at me as I put down my keys, but I ignored it. I lowered the guitar,
dropping it with more force than I needed to. The hollow sound echoed
through the apartment again and I couldn’t help but wonder that if my heart
had been dropped with it, if it would make the same noise.

“Good, then you can come and sit on the couch with me,” Gerard interjected,
buying into my lie. He moved his hand down my shoulder to my palm and
grasped it with his fingers. He started to walk and began to tug me along,
warm hand interlocking with mine. I went with shaking knees and locked
joints, grateful for his guidance.

“I was honest with you, Frank,” he confirmed as soon as we got on the couch.
He let go of my hand, and folded his own together, placing them diligently on
his small girth of his belly as he talked. “And honesty hurts.”

No shit Sherlock, I said in my head bitterly. I hated it when he stated the


obvious; it always felt like he was talking down to me. I didn’t trust myself to
say anything back to him out loud, however. At least, not yet. I wanted to see
if Gerard had a point to all of this, or if he was just trying to make me feel
even more like shit.

“You can keep going after this though, Frank. In fact, you must keep going,”
he spoke clear and concise, pointing strongly with his index finger to
emphasize his point.

I hadn’t planned on giving up my guitar per se just because of his remarks,


but I certainly wasn’t going to be playing with oh-so fond memories anymore.
I didn’t bother speaking much, giving Gerard a chance to continue, finalizing
his thought.

“If you keep going after and you don’t give a fuck what people think, that’s
what makes you a true artist.” He beamed at the depth of his words, but I
could only drown in their meaning.

“How though?” I asked perplexed. “If other people hate it, then what’s the
point?”

“Do you like it, Frank?” he asked me, his eyes probing me deeper. The
answer was obvious; I did like it. I didn’t want to give it up. It had really
helped me the past few days, channeling my thoughts and feelings into
something concrete. Before I could even part my lips for verification, Gerard
saw the answer in my eyes.

“It’s worth it then,” he concluded, nodding his head with a pleased smile.

I approved weakly, shrugging my shoulders as I stared off in the room.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I got rejected?” Gerard asked, cutting
through me once again.
Beforehand I had never really thought of Gerard’s opinion and what had
happened using terminology. It had just fucking hurt. I could only concentrate
on the feelings. When he labeled it with the big R word however, I found my
stomach drop beneath me again.

Gerard had rejected me. Right then, I realized that the answer to my question
I had asked in chords and melodies was a no. It was a no to him liking my
song, liking me and thus, anything that had been going on in my head the
past few days and weeks was a product of my overactive imagination. Gerard
didn’t like me. Gerard couldn’t like me. Fuck, he was an adult, and I was
merely a child in his presence, falling under his grace in so many forms. A
naïve teenager in the true sense of the word.

This realization itself hurt more than exposing my soul and his words against
them. I could feel my whole body render itself useless, as I gazed at the man
before me who I had read completely wrong. I found it so ironic that he could
spend so much time teaching me, using lesson after lesson and it was all
useless in the end. I had failed the biggest test to date.

I shook my head to his question, wanting a distraction. I was still slightly


curious to see where he was going with this, too. I was sure he wasn’t trying
to make me feel totally bad…

“It was my first year in high school,” he started, leaning back on the couch,
getting into his story. The past came easier to him in this situation, mostly
because he was proving a point with it, and not dwelling on it. He was going
to teach me something with it, and he never passed up an opportunity to do
such.

“I failed an art project because the teacher didn’t ‘get’ what I had done.” He
made a snide face at the remark and used air quotes before continuing. “I
was devastated. I had worked for hours on that piece and she had failed me
because she couldn’t understand why I had drawn people walking on grass
instead of the sidewalk that was right next to them. It was a statement about
nature!” He raised his hands in the air suddenly, getting too into his
narrative. He looked over at me and smiled, succeeding in getting some
positive response out of me.

“I went home with the picture and I burned it. I didn’t want to see my failure
over and over again. But it was when I looked at ashes that I realized that I
had not been wrong. And neither had she. We had our different
interpretations of art. Hers wasn’t like mine and she had failed me for it – but
at least she would always remember my picture. It caused a response in her,
even if it was a bad one. I realized that was what art was supposed to do
then, and I didn’t give a fuck if people liked it or not anymore. If they saw it,
that was enough.” Gerard paused for a moment, chuckling to himself. “Now I
just burn my art for the sheer fun of it. Not because I was rejected.”

I nodded my head slowly, taking in his story and advice, even smiling a bit
with him at the ending line. That situation was all well and good for him, but
guitar and music weren’t the same as art. You could interpret art more, in my
opinion. You heard music and that was it. Some people liked it, some hated it
but that wasn’t because of their interpretation. It was not because it caused a
reaction in them. It was a predetermined quirk they had in their own interests
that I had no control over. I didn’t like that aspect of it, and Gerard’s advice,
though nice to hear, didn’t do anything for me. Mostly because it didn’t
matter if someone else had liked what I had written, I wanted him to like it.

And he hadn’t. End of story. It was starting to become useless to dwell on this
over and over again.

“I’m not sorry for what I said,” Gerard said suddenly, after we had both been
silent on the couch for awhile after his story.

I had been breathing uncomfortably ever since I first sat down and this next
statement didn’t help matters. His words cut through me again, but by that
point I was pretty sure I was numb. And definitely confused. The more time I
spent there, the more it seemed that Gerard cared about me. But at that
moment it felt like he was my father, crushing my dreams between his index
fingers. Only Gerard was going to make an art show out of my destruction
because that was just what he did.
“It was my opinion,” Gerard clarified his thoughts, seeing that his words were
doing nothing to help me. “And you should never apologize for your opinion,
even if it’s wrong. If you can still back it up, then it’s yours. And it makes
sense, if only to you.”

I nodded, staring at the broken TV in front of me. I didn’t want to look at him
then. I just wanted to space out and maybe occasionally listen to see if he
would build my spirits up. That was wishful thinking at best.

“It’s like a painting…” Gerard continued comparing his thoughts to that of the
art he was so good at.

“Would you just stop it for a second?” I barked at him, surprised at my own
tone. “Not everything is related to art, Gerard. Some things can just stand on
their own.” I shot him one final glance before I rested my face in my hands,
leaning forward on my knees.

I had no idea that those words had been building up inside of me. I had
always marveled at Gerard’s theories in the past; eating up every word and
drinking down every glass of wine. But I guessed I only loved his theories
when they were benefiting me, not hurting me. My opinion had changed, and
just like Gerard’s new crack pot theory, I was not going to apologize for it.

“You know what?” Gerard asked, not shaken by my out burst, but not exactly
pleased by it either. “You’re right. Some things can just stand on their own.
Like your lyrics – can I take a look at them without anything in the
background?”

My head snapped up at a breakneck speed, eyes locking on the artist. His


hand was out and open, waiting for me to hand him the crumbled piece of
paper that I had essentially bled my heart on for him. His eyebrows were
raised and his eyes spacious; he was going to give this (and me) another
shot.
“Umm…” I uttered, digging through my pockets and pulling the requested
item out. I handed them over to him slowly, acting as if the paper would
break into a thousand little pieces if mishandled, just like my feelings already
had. Glue began to form and heal the cracks with Gerard’s second chance,
and I prayed as he took the paper and held it close to his face to read my
scrawled handwriting, that he would treat what was left of me with care.

His lips moved as his eyes brushed over the words I knew were already there.
It was short and simple, but God, at that moment, it spoke volumes.

The sun sets low

With your face painted high

Atop trees where mountains should be

And down below where hell fires grow

I saw your face in an amber liquid

And your nose in the crest of a cave

I would dance with your nimble fingers

If I could be more than minimum wage

The day grows warmer

The earth we lay on blooming

But the sun still sets low on the mountains

And caves where trees spell out others’ name

And my heart is still stuck

In those hell fires of the sun

“This,” Gerard finally said after moments of waiting and wondering, my


thumbnails digging into the fleshy part of my palm from clenching my fist so
tight. “This can stand on its own. This is something I would read, love, and
maybe quote from later on. Like…” He trailed off, bringing his nose down to
the paper again. There were only a few phrases on the page, I thought he
would find it difficult to pick up something from them, but apparently, it was
not. “‘I would dance with your nimble fingers, if I could be more than
minimum wage’ – that, Frank, is absolutely gorgeous. Your analogy to a life of
poverty and happiness in the freedom of dancing amazes me. I love to dance;
it’s really gorgeous, just like this. And this whole thing has potential.”

He looked at me and tried to smile, hoping that he had made it all better. His
interpretation made no sense to me – that had not been what I was trying to
say at all. I hated to dance and I surely was not poor. I didn’t exactly know
what I had been hinting at, however; it was just there. But that was the point
with art, I told myself, recalling his words and quoting him in my mind much
like he had done with me. Different interpretations to different people. At
least he was finding some kind of meaning in something I had written. At
least he was quoting me. My upset feelings from before were getting better,
his words healing some open wounds, but the salt he had tossed out earlier
still stung the others.

“The guitar…” I mentioned, trailing off and looking over to where I had placed
the instrument causally.

“The guitar,” Gerard repeated, drawing in his lips together. “That needs work.
And these words do not go with it. They don’t need music to make them
stand out.” He smirked at me again, encouraging me through his stained
smile. “Just keep practicing Frank. Keep bringing it here and I’ll listen.”

I lowered my head again, nodding solemnly. I had been practicing. I had been
doing everything he told me to do. And I still wasn’t good enough. I failed to
see how bringing my guitar to his place would help me anymore. It would
only make me more self-conscious because I would feel like he was judging
me every five seconds. I let out a sigh, silently declining his offer.

“Come on, Frank,” he jabbed, sitting closer to me on the couch and putting
an arm around my shoulder. I shuddered and moved away from it. I didn’t
want to touch him right then. I felt too weak still. Gerard got the hint from my
body motions and, with a reluctant sigh of his own, slid his arm down from
my back slowly, resting it inches away from me. Inches that were too close,
yet too far at the same time.
“What I can do to make things better, Frank?” he asked suddenly into the air.

His voice right then was so clear and pure. He was really trying to make me
feel better. He really wanted things to be okay. This was a first for the artist I
had known over the weeks, who had demeaned me because of my lack of
culture and knowledge. He was going out on a limb here, and it was all for
me.

I brought my eyes to meet his own, and I saw the olive shade tint slightly,
perturbed by how upset he had made me. I knew it was for my own good, like
he informed me in his rejection lesson, but it still hurt. And he knew that.
Unlike all the other times when he wanted me to stew in my own juices and
think about what I had done, he wanted to save me from them this time. Or
at least throw me a line to make something easier.

“Anything you want, Frank,” he added, knowing he had caught my attention.


“Consider it a favor. You’ve done plenty for me.”

I approved eagerly, then drew back a serious countenance to think of what I


wanted from Gerard. And as soon as I opened that flood gate in my mind I
was bombarded with image after image, sound after sound.

I saw Vivian on the same couch we were sitting on, her naked body displayed
in front of Gerard. I saw the way his hands moved as he drew her, taking in
her every feature and desire. I saw the way he admired her body as a work of
art, and just how gorgeous it had been. I heard him tell me how much he
loved her and how they had been intimate together. But most of all, I felt the
jealousy churn within me, tying knots and then cutting them out over and
over again.

I knew what I wanted from Gerard.

It was a favor that he had to commend to, despite his opposition before. He
had not liked the song I sang, but I still liked him, and just like playing the
guitar, I was going to keep doing it. There was something in your blood that
made you an artist, Gerard had told me once. Maybe that same principle
applied to here as well. There was something in his blood, and in my blood,
and I was positive they were being pulled together. I certainly didn’t choose
to like him as much as I did, but now, I was able to choose one thing. Gerard
may have said no to my question, but I was going to give him one final test.
And this time, I wasn’t just going to accept anything without a fight. He may
have been trying to teach me things, trying to be kind and tender, but I was
finally going to get what I wanted from him. I was finally going to win this
game, this battle he had started from the moment he had dumped blue paint
on me from his balcony, showering me with something I had never known
before.

I turned to him and talked solidly, my mind made up. “I want you to draw me,
right here, on this couch tomorrow. Just like you did Vivian.”

Chapter Fifteen

Everything

Part One

The next day was Friday, and all throughout school, I felt like I was going to
throw up. My head constantly ached; there was a small dull pain near my left
temple that didn’t cease to exist, even after I took pill after white pill of
aspirin. I had to practically beg Sam for the meds, which only put him in a
foul mood and added external forces to the tension that was brewing inside
myself. My stomach churned, feeling empty and full at the same time,
twisting and tying together in knots.

During lunch, when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I had gone to the
bathroom in a vain attempt to make myself feel better. Instead, I only felt the
cool slick of the school toilet on my bare arms as I sat there and waited, just
waited, for the near empty contents of my stomach to overflow. I even tried
making myself throw up by sticking a finger at the back of my throat, but
nothing happened. Eventually, I was too embarrassed by people coming in
and seeing my jean-clad knees on the tile ground that I just gave up and
went back to the lunch room where Sam and Travis didn’t even notice my
lack of presence. When I took a seat back down, causing a shift of weight,
Sam looked at me, eyeing me and my half-eaten sandwich up and down.

“Can I have the rest?” he asked, his eyes wide. I just shrugged and gave it to
him, not really caring that he offered his pop to me as an even trade.

He scrunched up his face as he ate the rest of it, bouncing off his seat and
talking to Travis heatedly about their plans for after school. The fizzy liquid he
had given me in return didn’t help at all. In fact, it only succeeded in making
my stomach feel as if it was being burned from the inside out.

I tried to chalk up my sickness to the fact that the night before, I had smoked
the final slim stick from the pack Gerard had given me. It had taken me
awhile to finish off the whole thing, my smoking habits becoming quite
sporadic during the weeks it had been since the gift had been given, but I
figured that maybe I was still going through some form of nicotine
withdrawal. I had to be. I generally only grabbed the pack when my nerves
were shot, and that had happened more than average within those weeks.
Somehow, the tarry substance always made me feel better, making the bad
feelings inside subside while bad air filled my lungs instead. But I knew at
school, as my knees and voice shook, that this was more than just a craving.

I was nervous to go to Gerard’s that night. Nothing had changed between the
artist and I, at least, not yet. If I had my way though, things were hopefully
going to be changing for the better. I wasn’t nervous for this change; not at
all. It was the action that I had to do – the catalyst to get it all started – that
scared the living daylights out of me. Even with being scared to the bone,
almost throwing up and my constant headaches, I was still going to go. You
could not talk me out of this. Sam had even invited me to a party that night –
my first social gathering in months from my friends who barely talked to me -
and I still turned it down. I was going to forgo everything, even if it was just
so I could see the artist I had seen day in and day out that past month. If
change happened tonight, then I would embrace it, I knew that much. But if
nothing happened, if I chickened out or whatever, I was still going to go and
be happy that I went. I would have turned Sam down on any other day of the
week; today was just more important than the others.
Gerard was going to paint me, so it was more than our normal every day
meetings, if you could even call those normal occurrences. Gerard was going
to draw me, in my rawest form and show me what he thought. He was going
to take my painting and my picture – my essential image and put down his
own interpretation. I needed to see that interpretation. I needed to know how
he saw me so I could judge my actions. I already knew how I felt about him; I
was falling hard and fast, even after he tore me to shreds with my guitar
playing. It only made me fall for him more in a way, because he had been
brutally honest with me; something else no one had ever done.

No one had done a lot of the things Gerard was doing for me and I could feel
myself growing more and more attached to him because of that. I called him
my friend, my mentor and almost everything else out loud when I was around
him but there was still one thing I could never get my head around. My
boyfriend.

The term itself sounded so juvenile. It sounded like something you would say
when you were in middle school or high school. And though I was in that
dreaded high school holding pen, Gerard wasn’t. Gerard was older and more
distinguished. Gerard didn’t have boyfriends. Gerard had lovers, like he had
said. But the idea of being Gerard’s lover never held the same dignified
quality with me. I couldn’t imagine myself being Gerard’s lover (or anyone’s,
really). I could see myself with him, I could feel myself with him and God, at
night when I felt alone and horny, and my hands were under the sheets, I
thought of him then. Only in little clips of images, but his name was definitely
on the tip of my tongue and in the forefront of my mind as my sheet hid my
shameful deeds. Even with these acts, which I half-denied in my own mind, I
didn’t know if we could be together or would ever want to be.

That’s where this painting came into play. I needed to see how Gerard saw
me. I needed to see what words he used and what paint strokes went with it.
His interpretation would guide me, but I couldn’t leave this all up to Gerard. I
couldn’t just depend completely on his answer because I already knew mine.
I wanted him. I didn’t know in what way or form just yet, but I wanted him so
badly I could feel it in my bones, and not just the one between my legs. I
wanted to talk to him, to be with him and to let him touch me. And though I
did wonder what would happen if those touches went beyond my shoulders, I
couldn’t just tell him that. It would leave me too open and vulnerable without
knowing his answer. I had come up with a plan, devised by my jealous
thoughts of Vivian. I may not have been able to tell Gerard my answer for a
question he had not asked yet, but I was able to show him.

Just like Vivian, when Gerard painted me, I was going to show up naked. I
needed to see what he would do, if anything at all. Maybe he had not
furthered his advances on me because he did not want to make the first
move. If he made the first move, and I didn’t like it, then he would appear like
the bad person. He would be the pedophile and the rapist. He had more at
stake than I did. If I made the first move and touched him and was wrong,
then I would just look like a stupid teenager. I could get over that, I hoped. If
Gerard made a mistake though, he would go to prison. He had to be careful,
but I did too.

I couldn’t just make a move and touch him; that was too risky. And fuck, I
was way too nervous. We were both stuck, which was probably why we had
remained in this state of awkward tension for so long. The day before, I
realized I had to meet him halfway. If I showed up naked, I figured that was a
pretty good move. And I told myself that if it all went horribly wrong, I could
claim my naked flesh on art and nothing else.

But art is sexual, he had said, I reminded myself. There would always be a
second meaning to my actions, even if Gerard didn’t want to see it or not. I
wondered where it all would take me, and if he chose to be blind or not.

All of my perverse recollections aside, I knew the true reason I felt my blood
drain from my body was because of the naked aspect in this whole ordeal. I
had never been naked around anyone for so long. Even then, it had been just
my parents when I was younger. Every kid goes through the ‘clothing is evil’
stage and runs around buck-naked while their parents chase after them with
a camera to catch the oh-so precious moment on film. I had grown out of that
later than most kids and had still been doing it every day when I came home
from kindergarten.

Once, however, when Sam came home with me and I tried to do it, my
mother had given me a good talking to about being naked around someone
other than family, and I began to hide my body like it was the plague. Even
though my mother had stated that it was okay for family to see me naked, it
still seemed like a horrible and evil idea. I began to wear long shirts and
pants as a child, even in the summer. And especially when puberty hit and I
started to develop what I believed to be grotesque hair from a disease, I hid
my body and began to become ashamed of it.

I was a lot better now, after my parents realized that their hypochondriac son
thought he was dying and invested in some very beneficial ‘What’s
Happening To Me?’ type of books. I still didn’t like being naked all that much,
but then again I never had anyone to be naked for. I had never dated anyone
seriously enough to reach that point where we could take off our clothing in
front of each other. I had never had sex. I had never gone skinny dipping. I
had stopped running around like a wild-child in front of my parents when I
was five, and they hadn’t seen anything since. I always closed the door when
I showered. I was only naked around myself at that point, something which I
never did very often at all. When I got out of the shower, the towel was the
first thing in my hand and around my body, keeping away the chills, both
physical and emotional. I didn’t like the cold exposed feeling of being nude,
and I didn’t like the way my body appeared most days.

I had a short stature, smaller than most of the guys my age and I thought it
gave me a square appearance. I was a little stocky because of the box shape
I had, but I wasn’t fat. I just had some flesh that people could grab onto (and
did, especially in elementary school when it was ‘cute’). I didn’t have as much
extra skin as Gerard though, and for that I was so grateful.

I never thought of Gerard as fat, but the fact that I weighed less than him and
carried less chub on my frame made me feel ten times better about taking
my clothing off for him. At least I wasn’t bigger than him. It gave me the
illusion that he wouldn’t be able to make fun of me, though I knew he never
would. He may smile and chuckle and ask what the fuck I’m doing when I
start to disrobe for him, but he would never judge me. At least, I hoped. I still
had no idea what his reaction would be.

Ever since Gerard had expressed his thoughts on the male body, I also began
to feel worse about my appearance. It was sort of hard to explain. On one
hand, I liked my penis – mostly for the actions it was capable of. But, when
Gerard planted the horrible mental analogy of a gooseneck and gizzards into
my head, it made me cringe anytime I thought of touching myself. I got this
weird image of strangling a turkey and my mother at Thanksgiving and that
was not pleasant. In actual fact, when I thought about it without vomiting, I
realized Gerard was right; penises were so ugly.

I remembered standing in front of the mirror one night before I had a shower,
just looking at my hips and most of all, my dick. My hips were nice, the bones
slightly protruding out and the triangle of muscle coming into focus, but I
crinkled my face up in the mirror when I examined the flaccid area of wrinkly
flesh. My cock just kind of flopped there and didn’t do much, unless it was
excited.

And then, when I started to review these memories well after lunch, during
the middle of chemistry class, fear gripped my chest. I began to wonder what
was going to happen that night at Gerard’s place when I was finally disrobed.
If I got hard or at least started to get hard while he was drawing me, then I
was pretty sure the world would end. I didn’t want him to know that being
naked in front of him could be turning me on as he drew.

Another pang of jealousy for Vivian hit me over the head. You could never tell
when women were turned on just by looking at them. They never had a body
part that would betray them and expose their deadly secret. They did it all by
themselves, telling you if they were or not. Vivian could hide her secrets,
while I could barely control myself. It just wasn’t fucking fair. I suddenly
wanted to back out of my plan because of this horrible thought, but I made
myself shove that notion out of my mind. I was going to do this. I had to. And
besides, I might even be too nervous to even entertain the idea of getting it
up. It certainly felt that way right then, and I was still in school at that point,
counting down the hours.

When I finally did make it to Gerard’s place, I was over an hour later than I
usually was. I had been so excited to get the fuck out of school but when the
time came, I nearly froze on the spot. I even talked to Sam awhile I was so
desperate to not leave just yet. And when I eventually had begun my walk, I
had to take some steps three times because I kept stopping, debating and
turning around again. I made it though and with only some nerve damage.
“Hello,” Gerard’s voice called out easily from the kitchen. He was lying
nonchalantly in a chair, tipping it back so his feet could rest on his table. He
had a coffee mug placed near him and his sketchpad on his lap. “I was
beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“Nope. I’m here.” My voice came out quick and fierce and Gerard’s face fell,
sensing my apprehension.

“Just relax. I promise I won’t butcher your image too much,” he kidded,
baring one of his trademark smiles. I nodded back weakly, silently thinking to
myself that he had no idea what he could be butchering. And again, more
mental images I didn’t need of Gerard waving a butcher’s knife around my
naked body came to my mind.

“Where do you want me?” I asked quickly, trying to get my attention focused
on actions, rather than the emotions I was feeling. I smirked after I said the
statement, reading into the extra implications.

“I was thinking by the window,” Gerard instructed, moving right into his task
at hand. He had gotten up from his seat by this point and started to walk to
the back of his apartment, his arm outstretched and pointing to the big glass
paneling. He stepped up to the raised level and patted the mustard yellow
seats with his hand. He had clearly been thinking about this for awhile now. I
wondered that if I were to flip through the sketch book he had close by him, if
I would find preliminary drawings of the surrounding area.

I followed behind him reluctantly, but didn’t get on the raised level just yet. I
just looked up at him as he talked, my fingers twisting in front of me. I tried
to crack my knuckles, but only succeeded in bending a finger a direction it
wouldn’t bend. I in took a sharp breath at my near-breakage, and Gerard shot
his glance my way, instead of marveling at the window paneling.

“Are you okay, Frank?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and looking me over
skeptically. I felt my eyes widen and my breath catch in my throat, but before
I could embarrass myself further, Gerard interpreted my actions for himself.
And for once, he was wrong.

“I know you wanted to be drawn on the couch…” he started to explain his


response, letting me finally breathe again.

For a second there, I thought he had seen through my entire façade. I


thought he knew exactly what I was thinking, and more importantly, what I
was about to do. He usually did every single other time we were together; I
figured it would be only natural that he had seen through my skin and into
my core. But instead, he yammered on about the couch not being good
because he had spilled coffee on it earlier that day, so I couldn’t sit there. He
thought I was upset because I wouldn’t be exactly like Vivian, and was trying
to make it up to me. I let Gerard keep talking, grateful that he was still in the
dark about everything.

And then it hit me again; he didn’t know that in moments I would be


undressing for him. He had no clue whatsoever that I would be presenting
myself, asking him a question with my body. To him, this was just an art
project, and I was just a subject.

I bit my lip at the thought. If he didn’t know about my plans, then there would
be no disappointment if I backed out. I could back out and just have him draw
me instead, leave my feeble naked notions behind and maybe not be so
scared.

No, I told myself almost instantly. I had to do this, and more importantly, do
this now. There may not have been another time where Gerard would agree
to this. There may not have been another time where I was this close to it.
And even if I was scared shitless right then, I only knew that if I backed out, I
would only lead the rest of my life (either here or on the outside world) in
fear. This was going to happen; there was no doubt in my mind at that point.
However, doubt still radiated across my face, and Gerard kept on talking.

“I think right here is good,” he stated again, looking around the perimeter of
the window then back down at me, his hands on his hips. “The way the sun
will come in against your body will give you a glow. You’ll look gorgeous.”

He smiled at me quickly before he stepped off the platform and walked past,
brushing my shoulder slightly and sending chills up my already flipping body.
He sauntered over to his art supplies and began to dig through them while I
still stood in the same spot. Just because this was for sure going to happen,
didn’t mean it was going to happen all that fast.

“Well, go on,” Gerard teased after a few moments of me not moving. “Get up
there. Make yourself comfortable. I don’t know how long this will take me.”
He was still digging through his art supplies, in a desperate search for
something. I nodded weakly, stepping up the two stairs and then making my
way to the cushion.

I had only been up to the raised level a few times, and that was to clean out
the ashtrays. I had never really stopped and looked around, seeing how the
sunlight came in. I still didn’t do it then, just trusting Gerard with his
placement and hoping that if I did ‘glow’ in this position, that it would hide
the red hue that was creeping over my cheeks. I saw the dove in her cage to
the left of me and smiled nervously at her. The way her head cocked as I sat
down and she cooed made me think that she knew what I was doing. I looked
over at Gerard who was still digging and couldn’t help but think just how
clueless he was and that for once, I knew something before he did.

Oh well, I thought timidly. He’ll know soon enough.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up and flinched, hearing the boards creak
underneath my weight. Gerard still hadn’t moved from his spot and I decided
that watching him was only giving me added nervousness. I closed my eyes
and touched the hem line of my shirt. After ragging on it a few times, I finally
pulled it over my head, feeling the cool air from the window hit my back
immediately. Other than that first quick sensation, I felt fine. I was nervous as
hell, but that was for Gerard’s reaction, which I kept myself from seeing right
away by keeping my damn eyes closed. I wasn’t too anxious about being
naked; not anymore. It was just something I had to do, something I realized
at that moment that I wanted to do.
I tossed my shirt down on the cushion beside me, hearing it slink to the floor
instead. I took another deep breath as I began to fumble with the waist of my
pants, sticking one finger in the belt loop. All of my actions were halted
though when I heard a familiar voice, but with an unfamiliar tone.

“Frank – wait –“ Gerard’s voice came into my ears so suddenly, it stopped my


breathing. Again. I didn’t want to open my eyes and look though, because I
could already tell what was going on.

Gerard was shocked.

In all of the time I had spent with him, I had never once seen or heard him be
shocked. Everything we did that was always a surprise to me had come from
him. He was never the one to be caught off guard by anyone’s actions
because usually he was the one making the outrageous ones in the first
place. Now however, I was making the daring and bold moves and it didn’t
compute with him. I froze solid in place, not moving to either undress more or
to put my clothing back on and run out of the apartment apologizing
profusely. Just because Gerard was surprised didn’t mean he didn’t like it…

“Frank…” Gerard’s voice came into my ears again, this time a little softer. He
was still surprised, but there was pity etched into his words. A pity that I did
not want to hear. My heart sunk even further within my chest at the next
lines mentioned. “Frank. Don’t do this. Wait. No.”

In spite of the pity, his words came out choppy and through labored
breathing. The sound and sensation threw me off guard and I had to open my
eyes.

Gerard was still at the back near his mural, digging through his paint
supplies. He seemed closer somehow, maybe because his emotions
transcended easier. His brow was furrowed in some kind of pained
expression, but I couldn’t tell how he was hurting. He held a handful of
brushes in his left hand while the other went over his face, rubbing his
forehead and then going through his thick raven locks. He kept looking at me
looking at him, shirtless, then turning his eyesight away. He pursed his lips
over and over again, opening his mouth in between to say something else,
but giving up. Even after moments had passed, his breath came out weak
and uneven – just like mine. And that’s when it hit me.

Gerard was nervous for this too. He may have said words that told me to
stop, but the way he carried himself, the way he looked at me then looked
away and the pain in his eyes told a different story. Or I at least thought they
did. Gerard looked just like I did in that moment in time, and in my head, that
meant he wanted me too. If it was real or not though, I was going to fight for
it. I was halfway there already. There wasn’t much further I could fall.

You have to take risks, I told myself, manifesting some of Gerard’s teachings
into one. Especially for art.

“Why not?” I broke the air, my plea echoing in the sudden vast space of the
apartment. My hands were still on my waist, looped into my belt while Gerard
continued his own deliberation stance. My voice was small and quiet, but the
strength in the two words was unstoppable and remarkable. They were
breaking down the two men in the small apartment, in more ways than one
way.

“This wasn’t part of the deal, Frank,” Gerard finally said, weak and tired. He
closed his eyes when he said it, pinching his temples while he shook his head.
“This wasn’t our deal.”

“You said you would draw me yesterday,” I argued, trying to be stronger than
the weak artist in front of me. It was easier said than done. “Like Vivian.”

“Yes,” Gerard agreed, sighing and flipping his hair out of his face once more.
“But that was drawing. Just drawing, Frank. Art. Not…” He drew in a deep
breath and looked at my bare chest. His eyes probably stayed for longer than
they should have for someone who was arguing against the forthcoming
action. “Not naked. Not this.”
Hearing him say the words, despite his opposite body movements towards it,
still hurt like fucking hell. They hurt more than any insult anyone had ever
told me, including his rejection the day before. But I knew that deep down
inside, I still had to fight for it. It was what I wanted. Gerard had always told
me that there is passion in life. You need to go and get what you want. I
wanted him. I was going for it.

“If you don’t want to paint me naked because of the imperfections…” I


began, not exactly knowing where I was going, but hoping it would lead me
somewhere good. “Art doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“I know that much, Frank,” he smiled, pleased for a moment that I was using
his words. His expression turned back somber too soon though, analyzing the
situation again. “But this, for once, isn’t about art.”

Something inside me twanged. His words didn’t match, and I was getting
somewhere. “What is this about, then?”

Gerard looked straight at me, heaving an aggravated sigh. He didn’t want me


to play dumb; it was clear between us what was going on. We felt the same,
but there was still a thick block between us. A thick block we couldn’t even
say out loud yet, for fear of the world caving in around us if they heard. I
knew what was blocking me - the nervousness of being rejected. But I had no
idea what was blocking him yet.

“You’re too young, Frank,” he informed me, answering my question.

I bit my tongue at the words, feeling anger swell within me. I hated it when
people used my age against me. That day in the comic book store when I was
eight and I had been rejected by my new friends came back to me full force. I
was not getting cast aside on solely my age again, especially when I knew –
when I could see – that in Gerard’s eyes this was not what he wanted to do.

“I’m not too young,” I stated flatly, my angry tone conveying across the
room. I took my hands off my waist and flung them down as I talked, adding
more of a menace to my weakened self. “You told me I was growing up.”

He paused for a moment, realizing his words were now being used against
him. He recovered quickly however, spouting something else from his lips
slowly. “You are. But that doesn’t mean anything right now. I’m too old for
you.”

I took in a breath, ready to argue, but instead it deflated out of me like a


dead balloon at a birthday party. I wanted to yell and scream at him, to tell
him he was wrong, that everyone was wrong, but I merely looked and
pleaded with my eyes. He met them only for a second, then turned away
quickly. I couldn’t take it.

“But…” I uttered, not knowing what else to say or do.

“But nothing,” Gerard stated clearly. He wasn’t mad or sad, just trying to
state facts right then. Spewing numbers because they didn’t have feeling.
Neither of us could handle our feelings then anyway, but I seemed to be the
only one willing to try. “I’m forty-seven, Frank. You’re seventeen. That’s thirty
years difference. That’s too much.”

“Nothing is too much…” I muttered under my breath. I looked down at my


feet, still in their shoes, watching my toes wriggle underneath the thin
material keeping them covered. I clenched my fist, seeing and feeling my
rage within me. It was going to come out any moment now, I could feel it. I
didn’t know where the catalyst would be, but I had a feeling it was going to
come from Gerard. Everything else had been about him since the beginning;
why not have him spark the ending as well?

“This can never happen, Frank,” Gerard added expressively, enunciating


every word. “This should never happen.”

That did it. Bombs away.


“God Gerard!” I yelled, snapping my head up to meet with his eyes. They
widened seeing my fury, but quickly set back to a normal gaze. He was
getting better at switching his emotional fronts and I didn’t like it. I knew
Gerard hated repressing his feelings and he was being a hypocrite not taking
his own fucking advice. I looked at him, my breath coming in and out of me
quickly, my bare chest rising and falling fast. He gazed back, waiting for me
to continue. Begging me to almost, wanting to hear an excuse to make this
possible. I didn’t have an excuse. All I had were my confused thoughts and
bitter laments. I didn’t think anyone had an excuse for anything anymore.

“God - Gerard –“ I repeated, my breath wheezing as it went between the slits


in my teeth, almost growling at him. “You invite me here. You give me wine.
You say you love having me around. You start teaching me how to paint – and
then you start to entice me,” I began my rant, my arms moving wildly as I
recounted what had gone on in the past month leading up to this final
meeting. “You tease me. You touch me. You spout sexual stuff like it doesn’t
matter. It does matter. That day we painted the wall you acted like it was
sex. That fucking meant something. You hugging me and touching me. That
means something. You made me want you, Gerard and now you’re rejecting
me. It doesn’t make sense. What the fuck do you want from me?” I raised my
arms up high at Gerard, completing my final begging interrogation.

When I was done, but not even close to starting the rest of my feelings, I felt
like a weight had been lifted from my chest. And when I said it all out loud, I
began to realize that none of this was my fault. All these weeks I had trapped
myself in my room or at his place, feeling the guilt creep into my system
when an impure thought entered my head. I had yelled at myself internally
and out loud for feeling this way. I had even started smoking to eliminate it in
the first place, with no avail. Just guilt. Though by now I had finally come to
some kind of acceptance, there was still that bitter aftertaste in my mouth
from it all. There was still the fact that I was falling for a forty-seven year old
man that I couldn’t just wrap my head around so easily. But there, half naked
in the middle of his apartment, I realized that this wasn’t my fault. Gerard
had been tempting me and teasing me. He made me want him; this wasn’t
my fault.

It wasn’t Gerard’s fault either. He knew this was wrong; I could see the guilt,
that useless emotion, in his eyes and I knew he was trying to fix things. He
was trying to fight me, to get me away and to understand that this should
never happen. It just wasn’t working out all that well. This entire mess we
were in we had both created, but, in the end, there was no one to pin the
blame on.

Then why did I feel like we were both suffering for it?

“What do you want from me, Gerard?” I asked again when I received no
response from the man before me. My voice was a lot slower this time and a
lot less harsh. Gerard still seemed hurt however, lost and crushed beneath its
weight. Usually he had this effect on me; it was hard watching the one that I
had learned off of for so many weeks be the one that needed something to
follow.

“I want you to be an artist,” was all he finally said, his voice so quiet I could
barely hear it through the pounding of our hearts. He didn’t look at me; he
seemed detached from his body, staring at the floor. It was as if he was
saying the answer he had prepared beforehand, the answer he told himself
was right and repeated it over and over again until it was.

“Bullshit,” I said back, causing him to look at me. I had never challenged his
answers in art before. But fuck, I had never felt this way. There were going to
be a lot of firsts that day; whether they were good or bad was still up in the
air.

“That’s what you want of my talent, my dreams or some other foolish


notion,” I continued, probing deeper into him, cracking open his shell of lies
and hopes further. “What do you want here?” I took the palms of my hands
and pressed them strongly over my bare chest, moving them up and down to
emphasize the fact that I was almost naked. Almost naked for him. And then,
taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, I finished with the hardest line,
“What do you want from me, Gerard?”

After a few moments of tense silence, I glanced out the slit of my tightly shut
eyes. Gerard was just standing there, looking at me like I was one of the
Seven Wonders of the World; as if I wasn’t real. I was real though, and I had
to prove my existence to him.

I began to move from the seated area, walking down the stairs, my shoes
clunking down on the hollow steps and echoing into the quiet room. Gerard
was still by the wall that I was walking towards, and I stopped a few paces in
front of him. His eyes seemed to widen as I came closer, him becoming more
aware that I was not some art project anymore. I was a real human being and
asking what he wanted out of me. I stood there, my hands at my sides and
asked the question one final time.

“What do you want from me?”

For a long time he just stared. It was like he was catatonic, detaching himself
from everything around him. To him I wasn’t real, but to himself he wasn’t
either. I could see life behind his eyes, fighting to break free. He wanted to
see me. He wanted to answer my question; there was just a thick film over
his eyes that were blocking him. I sighed, pursing my lips together as I
muttered his name through clenched teeth. It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t really
meant to be anything; I had just needed to vent frustration. It seemed to
strike a chord in him nonetheless, snapping him into reality again. The film
that had all but blinded him before started to melt away bit by little bit. He
re-collected himself, looking me up and down, pausing on my face and bare
skin extra long, before he finally took in a deep breath and answered.

“I’m an artist,” he stated. “I want everything.”

I bit my lip at the pain in the response. With those lines he admitted
everything to me. He wanted me. He had secretly for the longest time. It was
why he gave me alcohol in exchange for service. It was why he wanted me to
paint. It was why he touched me, hugged me and inspired me. It was all to
get closer to me. He wanted to be with me in every way possible, but only
thought he could through an artistic relationship. He wanted much more than
that – he wanted everything – but never thought it was possible.

I walked closer to him, causing him to step slightly back and drop the paint
brushes he still had a grip on. He was against the wall now, waiting to see
what was going to happen. For once, waiting for me to make that final move
and just do something. I looked at him the way he had with me, pausing for
extra long everywhere. Then, I spread my arms out, in a giving up stance.
Only I wasn’t giving up, I was starting something I hoped would win.

“Take everything,” I said, barely above a whisper.

I could see him swallow hard at my words and his lips part slightly, his tongue
coming out to lick them. We stood so close to one another, our breath going
in and out shallowly for the longest time before I finally made that once
dreaded first move. I stepped forward, closing in the limited space we had in
between us and placed my lips on his own.

I had no idea what I was doing at first; I just placed myself where I belonged. I
soon realized though, that as I began to move my lips slightly, pressing into
him more and feeling him press back, how long I had wanted to do this. I had
never let myself think about it until the past two weeks or so, but I had
wanted to kiss him since the beginning. It had been a bonding urge I had
inside of me; I wanted to kiss him to become closer to him, to hopefully have
an insight to what was going on in his head. There were times when we got
so close, the day in the kitchen where his hands were all over my face
coming to mind. Along with those afternoons where we had talked for hours,
leaning over the same canvas with our hands brushing up against each other.
Those times where he had taught me all I needed to know for that one day,
hugging me as I left his apartment. It was then where I had wanted to kiss
him, as if to say thank you.

This night I had finally gotten my chance to let him know how I felt, but I was
saying more than just thank you. The action itself was more than just two
mouths pressing together in passion; it was something so much deeper than
that. I was conveying all of the emotions I had for him: respect, admiration,
gratitude and intense friendship in one kiss.

And God, what a kiss.

It was the first time I had ever initiated anything myself without the aid of
alcohol or childhood games, and it was the best one I could remember. I had
never wanted to kiss someone as much as I had wanted to Gerard, and now
that it was finally happening, I felt so good in so many ways. His lips were
softer than I had expected, my own sensitive flesh moving over his slowly. I
felt myself flutter inside when he moved against me, even if he was more so
pressing against my lips, rather than kissing them. He went painfully slow,
the whole gesture seeming too intimate for him to handle. But it was still
happening. We were kissing and I could feel myself getting braver by the
minute, knowing now that this was a reciprocated action. I had been right all
this time. I didn’t know what felt the best though; being right or the outcome
of my accuracy.

Progressing gradually, I moved my hands out to touch his waist, steadying


myself. My knees were weak and I knew I could fall over at any moment. My
hands had barely even touched his clothed sides before I felt my stomach do
jumping jacks once again. I opened my mouth slightly, to give him a hint that
I was ready for more. When I finally dared to enter my tongue into his mouth
though, everything stopped. He pulled his face away then, turning to the side
and leaving me with full view of his soft cheek and wondering just what the
fuck had happened.

“You’re too young…” Gerard uttered again, biting his lip. He didn’t look me in
the eyes, probably for his own safety. He was having a hard time controlling
himself, even though I had told him he didn’t need to. There was something
new forming within him, another consideration that we had overlooked until
then.

Society.

I knew all about the pressures and misconceptions about this whole situation
beforehand, I had just never considered them. I never thought my own
feelings would be reciprocated, so there was no use debating about what
society would think if it would never get off the ground. Now though, Gerard
and I were so close to what we wanted– we had kissed – but we were still
miles away. This was a dangerous relationship I was asking for – we were
asking for. I knew that things could go horribly wrong. We could get caught,
found out and I could be a social outcast while he went to jail. This was
dangerous. More dangerous than my liquor and drug habits beforehand, more
dangerous than his smoking, more dangerous than anything I had ever come
across. But even though we had only kissed for a few seconds, that danger
and everything around seemed worth it just to do that again. Gerard was still
struggling however, biting his lip (the one that I had fucking kissed) and
spouting the same line over and over again, refusing to look at me.

“Gerard,” I finally cut in, my voice resonating knowledge while my mind came
up with something that sounded like knowledge. When he had lamented, I
glanced over to the side, seeing the canvases where Gerard had spent his life
painting. And then as memories of the day we laid down on his floor and went
through every single piece came to my mind, so did a brilliant idea. One that
could win this thing for good.

“You were going to paint me today, right?” I probed, finally getting him to
look at me again because we weren’t talking about the issue anymore; we
were talking about art.

But art is everywhere, Gerard would say, I reminded myself. And art is sexual.

“Yes, draw you…” he said unsure, trailing off like I had done so many times
before.

“Well, you told me you can make a painting anything you want it to be.” He
nodded, and I continued my tangent of hopefully genius thought. “You can
make the sky orange and the grass purple in a painting and it can mean
something. Anything you want it to be. Art has that power. You were going to
draw me today. Turn me into a work of art. You can make me older, Gerard,”
I begged, tugging at the sides of his clothing that I had not let go of, and that
he had not forced me from yet.

“Make me into something else that allows for me to be with you,” I


concluded, pausing, to let my words hit him as deep as they could. I saw his
eyes flicker, as my thoughts collided with the ones already existing in his
head. I was using his words against him yet again, but I had a feeling he
wanted to lose this inner battle. And I had one final blow to do it.
“Make me everything.”

With the mention of the words, tying in the acceptance of it all and the
approval of danger into a work of art, his lips met mine. And this time, we
kissed like there was nothing wrong with it. In our own picture, captured in
both of our minds merging together, there was nothing wrong with it.

Chapter Fifteen

Everything

Part Two

At the mention of the words, tying in the acceptance of it all and the approval
of danger into a work of art, his lips met mine. And this time, we kissed like
there was nothing wrong with it. In our own picture, captured in both of our
minds merging together, there was nothing wrong with it...

With this embrace, we moved faster together, but still maintained a sensual
speed. Our lips raised and parted together, letting both our tongues enter
and explore. I tasted the inside of his mouth, trying (and needing) to
appreciate every little detail.

I noticed the ridges and bumps of taste buds on his tongue and the feeling of
wet flesh against flesh. Our mouths were damp and warm, making gradual
sucking and smacking noises as our speed progressed. My hands that had
always been light touches and slight clothing yanks at first, settled in for
something more. They were on his waist, but I found myself pushing them to
the small of his back, especially as he finally touched me with his own artistic
hands. My back was bare and the fair skin on his palms felt like an electrical
volt through me, sending shivers down my spine. He traced his fingers lightly
down my skin like he always had before, except the barrier of clothing was
now removed. He placed his hands on my waist, exuding this new bravery
inside of him, and brought our hips together.

I felt the slight bulge in his pants against mine, and I gasped into his mouth,
shocked. I was well aware that I was getting turned on; my pants seemed to
be getting smaller and smaller by the second. I had never given any thought
to his own arousal, however. I was still focused on the fact that he was
kissing me. Once I recognized his state, I pushed back against him, feeling
him do the same to me. His body was so warm and soft, I felt like he was
wrapping me in the warm comfortable silence we sometimes shared.

He broke the kiss with one swift movement, only retracing his attention to my
neck, where he continued his open mouth wet kisses, sucking on my tender
flesh. I had never had anyone give me a hickey before, let alone touch my
neck in a sexual manner, and I writhed under his embrace. The skin had
essentially never been touched and was so sensitive, I found my knees
buckling and soft moans become strangled in the very throat he was kissing.
My hands went to the top of his back and his hairline, tousling his locks and
getting my fingers intertwined in the raven mane.

We stood there, semi-pressed against the wall, for what seemed like ages. He
changed his focus every five seconds in this forever, however. He brought his
lips to meet mine for another quick meeting of the mouths, before
descending down to my neck and nibbling my collar bone, proving that he
really did want everything. And I was going to give him everything, with no
regrets and no guilt. We had fucking waited so long for this, fought so hard
for it that I was going to enjoy it.

And finally, so was he. He had cracked out of his shell and was allowing
himself to be with me. Before, I had thought my kiss was showing my
thankfulness towards him, but as our embrace progressed and he opened up
to me, I wasn’t entirely sure if I had summed it up in that one gesture. It had
only been a few moments (that felt like forever), but I could already feel so
much more gratitude well up inside of me that I didn’t know where to put it
and how I could show him. Kissing had been working so far, though, so I kept
right on track with that.

The night sky began to descend upon us, with little of our recognition towards
it. The sunlight that had been filtering in through the window before, had
given everything we were doing an added extra aura to it. That ‘glow’ Gerard
had wanted me to possess, we had both possessed as our mouths met
together over and over. And even in this new darkness as the sun set in the
backdrop, the glow still remained.

“Do you want to go to my room?” he asked me, tracing his tongue up from
my neck to around my ear, where he proceeded to breathe the question in.

I felt my knees grow weak from the small action of the breath (my ear was
another sensitive spot I discovered I had), and my voice catch in my throat.
My cock twitched and I pressed it against him, showing my answer rather
clearly. He refrained from moving until I nodded and breathed a small ‘yes’
into his neck, but from then on his actions were swift. He smiled as he
continued to kiss his way back down to my neck, finishing his journey back on
my lips. He took my hands from his sides and moved them into his, running
his fingers over the backs of my hand first, before we interlocked fingers. We
pulled away from the kiss mutually, smiles present on both our raw lips, as he
began to lead me to his bedroom.

I smiled and beamed inside as he touched the knob of the black door, my
thoughts a happy mess inside my head. I was finally getting to be with the
person I wanted to be with, and he was letting me inside his room. Inside that
room where nothingness existed beyond the jet black door. That room where
he said he was only able to be himself in. He was letting me into the abyss
that was Gerard and I couldn’t have been happier. I felt so honored and
privileged to be in this mysterious room, that its lack of decor didn’t
disappoint me.

The room was fairly plain, with nothing on the interior off-white walls other
than a few scratches and smoke stains. There was a nightstand and an
armoire alongside the main focal point of the room; the large bed with a
disarray of sheets on top. It was boring and disappointing compared to the
rest of his house, but in a way, that was what it was supposed to be. It was
supposed to be nothing, to be an abyss where only emotions and feelings in
their raw state existed.

And fuck, I was actually inside there. Gerard and I could have taken our make
out session to his couch or kitchen – anywhere in his apartment, really. But
no, he had taken me inside his room, inside his life, and inside his head. It
was an amazing feeling that washed over me in waves, my eyes wide and
bright looking around and drinking everything in. The only feeling that made
it better were his lips crashing against my own once more.

We started up our kissing again, standing in the centre of his room. From my
mangled and mushy thoughts the only thing I could comprehend was that I
was the luckiest person in the world. I didn’t know what was going to happen,
and that thought sent shivers up and down me in anxiety, but it didn’t matter
what happened. I was with him and I felt safe.

I had always felt safe with him beforehand, but there was an added
dimension to that suddenly. I was going to be naked around him soon, I knew
that much, but I felt okay enough, safe enough to do that. If we had sex that
night – did that everything that I told him he could do – then it was okay with
me. I had always wanted sex before, but then when I really thought about it
or got too close, I’d back away. I wasn’t backing away now, especially as he
gently pushed me onto his bed, slowly getting on top of me, never once
breaking the kiss.

His body weighed more than I thought it would, but it could have been
because I was so weak with nerves, it was an initial shock. He wasn’t too
heavy though, and he kept himself propped up with his arms as he continued
to kiss me up and down my neck and face. That was the thing too – it wasn’t
just my lips he was kissing, it was my entire face.

When he first positioned himself on top of me, he brushed my bangs out of


my eyes and just looked at me. I was nervous at first; his eyes were strong
and baring into me, but no matter how much he stared, he wasn’t
intimidating. He was intense, fuck was he ever intense. I thought the dark
olive hue of his eye would overtake the whole room at some points. I kept
staring back at him though, wanting to be engulfed.
At first, when he stared for so long, I thought that he would spout something
else about me being too young or that he would back out of everything when
we were so fucking close, but he didn’t. He just took his fingers, his long and
delicate fingers, and traced around my head like he had the day in the
kitchen. Only this time instead of seeing my age, he was making my age. He
was making me older - older than what I already apparently looked - so he
could actually go forward with this action. He was preparing himself for what
was coming because he was just as scared as I was.

And when he had finally done that, he kissed me again softly on the mouth,
but brought his lips everywhere else. He kissed each of my flushed cheeks,
my nose, my forehead, before finally placing a soft embrace on each eye,
smiling as my lashes tickled his skin. He looked down at me and smiled for
real this time, baring his tiny nicotine-stained teeth as he brought our mouths
together once more, tongues meeting again. He was finished with his task; I
was older. This was going to happen.

With my new age, Gerard began to change his movements once again, only
this time not limiting himself to my lips and neck. He sucked down on my
collarbone, digging his teeth in slightly as he lowered himself down. His lips
worked their way along my upper chest, progressing further by the second.
Gerard seemed to be breathing me in with each open mouth kiss he placed
on my bare flesh. He was inhaling my skin, sucking me whole into his mouth,
much like he did with the dangerous cigarettes we now both consumed. His
tongue jutted out from all angles, sucking and licking my skin as he trailed
down. When he reached my hard nipples, his teeth grazed over the flesh,
only nibbling tenderly as his tongue moved around them, creating a wet
suction noise.

Just like his warm mouth, his soft hands also began to explore my body. As he
kissed my neck, he ran each one of hands up and down my arms, applying
just the right amount of pressure. He was pressing hard enough for it to feel
like a massage at some points, moving and shifting the muscles around, but
light enough at others to make my stomach flutter with its absence. The
more his fingertips traced over me, the more I wanted to press him into my
arm, and the more he pressed into my arms, the more I wanted him further
and further, deeper and deeper.
I tried to reciprocate the kind of touches and embraces that he gave me, but I
found it hard to compare. Aside from being older than me and more
experienced, Gerard seemed to want to have me all to himself and it didn’t
matter if I was reciprocating. I had my hands around his neck and back when
his lips were pressed against mine, my fingers in his hair, but as he went
lower I found it harder and harder to hang on. He was still wearing his
collared shirt and corduroy pants too, and it made gripping his flesh and
feeling any kind of sensation difficult. And as our hips pressed against one
another and we began rocking in a rhythm, I pretty much gave up all hope of
reciprocating actions. I was going to let Gerard do whatever the fuck he
wanted. I laid there in a happy anxiety state as I felt his lips on me and his
hand pressing on my stomach, massaging me with his palms, as he sunk
down my flushed body.

He shifted his weight off of me slightly so his upper torso still met my face,
but our hips were no longer in contact. I whimpered slightly as I felt him
move away and I was thrusting into nothing, but he was making up for it. He
had gone back to kissing my face again, unable to stay in any one spot for
too long. He pulled away to look at me, just as his strong hands hit my fly. He
pressed his forehead against mine and gazed at me, asking a question
nonverbally. Even though I had agreed to go in his bedroom and had planned
on stripping for him only hours earlier, he was still making sure I was
consenting to every single action he did. If I had of said stop then instead of
murmuring a faint yes, I knew he would have listened. If I had yelled and
cried and said it was all a mistake at that point, I knew he would have let me
go home. He would have stopped everything - even if he was enjoying it - just
to make sure I was safe.

I had no intentions of halting however, especially as I felt him undo my fly


slowly and slip his hand into my pants, gripping me through the fabric of my
boxers. I was no stranger to masturbation, but I never knew that someone
else’s hand doing the same essential thing that I did nearly every night could
feel so much better. Gerard’s grip was even through fabric and I still felt my
eyes roll back in my head and my mouth fall open, displaying moans I could
not make just yet. His hand was strong and his grip just enough to make me
thrust into his fist without him even starting any kind of rhythm.

After giving me a tight squeeze and a few pumps, he found the opening in my
boxers, and soon we had skin to skin contact. He located the slit and pushed
his thumb over it, feeling the bead of precome that had started to form. He
started to pump me slowly, eliciting quiet moans to spring from my mouth. I
soon felt another mouth over my own, absorbing all the sounds I was making
and adding a tongue to fill me up. I placed a hand on his cheek to keep him
there, to keep him doing what he was doing, because God, it felt so good. His
hand was tight and rough around me, but the speed at which he was going at
was just enough to not make everything seem like just an oversexed
adventure. Gerard kept going sensually slow, making everything mean ten
times more.

Soon, however, the artist began to move again, changing things up. I didn’t
know why he had such a short attention span in bed. I was the teenager who
had had ADD as a child and I would have been content if he had only kissed
me all night long, running his fucking amazing hands lightly over my skin. I
would have probably come without him even touching me, but now he
insisted upon touching me, then stopping, kissing me, then stopping and
moving around in every position. It was annoying, mainly because I wanted
everything just as much as he did. Only I didn’t have as much patience.

With each change of position things kept progressing further. When Gerard
moved that time, it was to completely slip my jeans off my round hips,
looking me in the eyes for another consent before he slipped my boxers off
too. My pants were kicked off the rest of the way, along with my shoes
somewhere in his dark room.

I bit my lip as the sudden coldness of the room washed over my now
completely naked body. My eyes were still shut from pleasure, and I could
feel Gerard halfway down my torso, his head just under my underarm.
Despite his heat beside me, the cold still gripped my body, mostly because
he wasn’t there to shield me anymore and he was now there to strictly look. I
wasn’t afraid to be naked per se, but it was certainly a different feeling. I
knew this is what I would have been doing if he had drawn me, but I still felt
unprepared. And most of all, I wanted him to get naked as well. All of my
friends who had had sex said it was always so much less awkward being
naked because the other person was naked too. Even by that point, with all
our heavy petting and kissing, Gerard was still fully clothed. A few of the
buttons at the top of his shirt were undone, but other than that he was still
covered and next to me who was nothing but a pink hue of human flesh.
With my pants now removed, I pried my eyes open only to watch Gerard as
he took his time to look at me yet again, studying what he saw before him
like he had done my face. It made me feel awkward and ugly, his talk about
men’s bodies coming back to my mind along with about a billion other
thoughts, but I was so turned on I didn’t care anymore. I wanted him to touch
me soon, like he had only moments earlier. His hand was resting on one of
my protruding hip bones – so close, yet, so far away at the same time. His
other hand was moving slowly back at forth caressing my thigh while he took
me all in.

“You’re gorgeous, Frank,” he uttered at last in hushed tones. His voiced


dipped off at the end, showing his true amazement. It was almost as if he was
looking at me for the first time. And really he was; not only was I naked but
he was finally allowing himself, telling himself that it was okay to see me as a
sexual object, something that he could desire.

I felt myself flush with embarrassment from the comment. He brought his
eyes up to meet mine, his face completely bare. He was honest and sincere
and oozing with the truth. His olive eyes were now completely cleared away
from the film that had been blocking them before, and he was allowing
himself to absorb everything about me.

“You’re a work of art,” he breathed again.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, unsure of what to say. I couldn’t really return the


compliment just yet because I hadn’t seen him. He reached forward and gave
me a quick peck on the lips, which I tried to get more out of, but he had other
plans in mind.

He began to descend down my body again, this time starting at my navel. He


sucked the skin that once used to be pudgy but now had grown taut with
anticipation. He dipped his tongue in and out of the small opening, making
my stomach jostle as I tried to maintain a steady breath. His hand gripped
my cock again, squeezing it strongly as he slid up and down, his thumb over
my slit. My hands gripped his shoulder and hair, and though I didn’t realize it,
I had been pushing him down, wanting more contact. He shifted under my
hold again, this time sinking lower, straddling my thighs slightly. He looked
down at my cock for a moment, still holding the base of it in his hands. He
kissed the tip, sliding his tongue softly around the head. It so small of an
action, and I was so surprised that nothing registered right away. Once it did,
I began to breathe harder and faster, small noises erupting from my mouth.
Just as I was adjusting to the new environment, he surprised me once again,
wrapping his tight lips around me, hollowing his cheeks and nearly
swallowing me whole.

“Ohhhh,” I uttered finding my voice in between choked gasps.

God, I had never done anything that sexual before and fuck, I had thought his
hand had felt good. It was nothing compared to his mouth. His lips were firm
and gripped me as he went up and down, sliding his tongue around
sometimes and occasionally rubbing his teeth against my shaft for added
sensation. I kept breathing hard and fast, occasional mutters and murmurs
coming out as I gripped the blankets that were tossed around haphazardly
around the mattress. I felt him suck my skin with each stroke further down
and I could feel myself leaking into his mouth.

With his hand that had been caressing my leg, he began to trail it down to my
inner thigh and then eventually to my balls. He stroked them lightly, using
those barely touching fingertips of his, just as my head hit the back of his
throat, which sent another eruption of moans from me. It felt so good. It was
warm and wet and just had such a good rhythm and a flow to it. I could feel
my knuckles turning white from the pressure at which I was grasping the
sheet and I could feel my toes curl again and again.

I was going to come at any moment. I could feel it in the base of my stomach
and loins and if he kept making me hit his throat like he was doing, there was
nothing I could do to stop myself. There was nothing I could do to warn him,
either. I kept moaning other stuff and biting my lip at the same time to be
quiet.

Just when I thought I was about to explode however, my cock throbbing


madly, Gerard removed his mouth and began to suck on the flesh around my
navel again.

He is not changing positions, I seethed in my head angrily, feeling the


mounting sensation diminish slightly. I was still turned on, I just wasn’t as
close as I had been before. I finally opened my eyes and looked down at
Gerard who was enjoying himself just fine suckling away on my skin, working
his way up to my lips again.

“Wha-what…” I uttered in confusion just before he pressed his lips against


mine again, his tongue diving right in. Though in still a near-climatic induced
state of confusion, I kissed him back, sliding my tongue into his mouth. He
tasted different this time, more raw and gritty, the amount of salvia in both of
our mouths dwindling on next to nothing.

“Undress me,” he requested in a whisper, only pulling apart our mouths


slightly. He traced his tongue along the outside of my lip, waiting for an
answer. I looked in his eyes, which were covered by his dark bangs.

I was aware of how I looked; lust-filled and provoked, but he was entirely
different. He was raw and exposed, his eyes the same olive colour, but a hue
lighter. It was as if that film from before had been contacts, but now that the
lenses was out it had the reverse effect, causing him to see the world for
what it really was. He wasn’t as lust-filled as I was. He wanted the sensations
just as much, but there was more behind his gaze. He was bonding with me;
we were sharing the feelings and sensations; we were making each other feel
good. We were becoming one person and like Gerard had said – everything
all at once.

“Okay,” I agreed slowly. Gerard grinned genuinely, kissing my lips heatedly


and grabbing the bottom one with his teeth before he backed away from me.

He stood up on his bed, on his knees and spread out his arms wide. He had a
half-smile on his face as I got up and stood the very same way in front of him,
my arms at my side. I looked him up and down, sensing him out before I
finally reached out and started to undo each one of the small buttons. My
fingers shook as they grazed the small plastic items, and I did all in my power
to go as fast as I could so Gerard couldn’t see how nervous and anxious I
was. I had only undone maybe three of them when his voice came into my
ear.

“Go slower,” he whispered sensually.

I changed my focus to glance up at him, his pointy nose off to an angle and
his eyelids halfway down his eyes. He was breathing normal deep breaths,
different from the heated ones on the bed, enjoying everything.

I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to go slower. I was still hard and


eager to do something, for him to touch me again the way he did. I figured he
would have wanted his clothes off quick so we could move on with
everything. Gerard must have sensed my confusion, and be began to speak
again, clarifying. “Go slow to appreciate everything. To build up a memory
full of sensations that you can clearly remember. We waited too long for this;
let’s take our time.”

He opened his eyes fully then, glancing down at me. I had been biting my lip
to keep from quivering but as his voice and calm demeanor washed over me,
I felt my muscles loosen. I leaned forward, my lip not so shaky, and met with
his again.

We kissed for what seemed like ages, following his advice and going as slow
as we could. I let my hands work their way into the small opening I had of the
shirt and wrap around the small of his back while he did the same with me.
We pushed our hips together again, my bare cock brushing up the odd
texture of his pants. The sudden fabric reminded me that I was still in the
process of undressing him, but I no longer had to hurry.

I slipped my tongue deeper into his mouth, while I let my hands explore his
upper torso more. My fingers traced around his love handles, gripping the
flesh and surprising me with its consistency. His skin soft for the most part,
with a few patches of dry here and there caused by the winter and lack of
sunlight. My palms worked their way through his thick skin, feeling the areas
where he had more pudge than others. For some reason, giving his age, I
always expected to feel wrinkle upon wrinkle in saggy skin when I did this,
but that was not what I found. I didn’t see or feel any wrinkles on his body at
all, other than the deep lines rooted on his face. And those I never thought of
wrinkles anymore; they were age lines. Places where I could see the amount
of times that he had laughed and smiled and frowned. Gerard was an
expressive person; I could see it in his face.

I continued to undress him after our slow kiss, his hands still on my back this
time, stroking and guiding me. They only moved from my body when the shirt
was finally undone all the way and then shrugged off of his shoulders and
arms onto the fabric-littered floor. When we met for our embrace again, my
hands ran down his now bare thick arms and met at his waist. I was almost
done my task and my fingers began to shake again, especially as I fumbled
with the button on Gerard’s pants. This was the moment of truth.

I had never seen another person’s penis up close before. I had seen them
many times in changing rooms and places like that, but that was never in an
intimate setting and never this close. I was only an inch from Gerard and I
was going to be even closer to a completely naked one in a matter of
moments. I was almost afraid that when I finally undid his pants and set him
free that I would realize what I was doing. I would see his cock and realize
that I was about to have sex with a guy. Though it was clearly obvious
without seeing his dick that Gerard was of the male gender, I had managed
to convince myself that that was not what I had fallen for. I fell for Gerard the
person, the artist and teacher. He was a good guy; it didn’t matter that he
had a cock. That had been what I had told myself in the beginning, trying to
detach any sexual preference from it. But when I still found myself thinking
about him constantly and wanting to press my lips against his, the sexual
connotation could not be denied. I wanted to be one with him; I just still
didn’t know if I could take the reality of wanting to be one with a person who
had the same sexual organs as I did. And ugly sexual organs at that.

I wasn’t entirely sure how Gerard could get turned on by the male body if he
thought it was ugly, but clearly from the girth that I felt as I pressed my
hands against his fly, he was having no issues with me. Or with any of the
other men he had been with. Gerard was gay, he had admitted that, but it
still didn’t make that much sense in my mind.
I had never had a problem with gay people before. I had never really thought
of it that much, mostly because I never thought that I could become one of
them. If I was one of them…I didn’t know exactly what I was. I agreed
wholeheartedly with Gerard that the male body was fucking ugly; I always
thought that little fact had made me non-gay. But here was Gerard, spouting
off at the mouth of the beauty of women and still wanting to be with men. It
left me confused, even if I had never been attracted to a guy before.

There was still one thing I knew for sure, however. I was fucking hard. Despite
everything else that conflicted, it was clear to both of us that we were very
attracted to each other, gender not included. I just hoped it stayed that way.

When I finally managed to undo Gerard’s pants, my worries were disproved.


His cock spilled forth immediately, his tight pants prohibiting him from
wearing underwear. His size took me by surprise, probably for the sheer
reason that I had never seen a cock other than my own. We were about the
same length, I couldn’t help comparing, but he was much thicker than I was.
He was only about half-hard then, and I wondered if he would change much
more in length and girth.

We stood there, his cock out and exposed, his pants still tight around his
waist for awhile, just looking and staring as I caught my breath. This was
really going to happen. We were both naked, and all that was left to do was
prepare.

Gerard moved his hands up and down my shoulders slowly to snap me back
into the world we were creating for ourselves. I reached around his waist,
taking the pants in my hands and gently tugging down. I heard Gerard moan
slightly as my hands brushed over his butt, and he pulled me close to him
again, kissing my lips feverishly. He leaned me back down on the bed, kissing
me and taking the rest of his pants off before he laid on me again.

My breath was knocked out of me as I felt his skin against mine, creating a
warmth that I could not fathom. It was so hot between our bodies, but it
wasn’t a sticky heat. It was just warm air and warm skin with warm breath up
against each other, getting closer and closer. I felt his hard cock brush up
against mine and I thrust upward instinctively. He was still kissing me as he
took one of his hands and found where both of our cocks lay in between us.
He teased and touched my own member for awhile before he tried to dissect
his way further through the folds of my skin. He brushed my balls like he had
before, but spent minimal time there, instead pushing past skin. Soon, I felt
his finger press against my opening. It sent a spark of fire up through me, but
it wasn’t in pain. It was in pure and utter shock. We were going to have sex. It
was happening. The same thoughts had been running through my mind, but
as he touched my hole just then, it made everything final. He was preparing
me for the action now, trying to get his fingers inside of me to make it easier.

I vaguely knew how gay sex worked and it had never really sounded that
pleasant to me. It was my ass; just think of what came out of there. I had
heard horror stories from people on losing their virginities, speaking of pain
they never wanted to feel again. That was for straight vaginal sex, but I
assumed that the same properties of pain would be applied. Probably even
more since technically a dick wasn’t supposed to be shoved anywhere near
that hole. I felt my breathing quicken as he merely hovered around my
opening with his fingers, not actually going inside but feeling it out.

“Do you want to?” he asked softly, breaking away my lips from his own and
looking me in the eye. He noticed my hitched breathing and began to coo
into my ear softly, nibbling on the earlobe as he waited for my response.

He was being so great about everything; I knew that. Again, I recalled horror
stories of violent nights where the other person was drunk and didn’t give a
fuck, plowing into the victim on the bed. Gerard was kind and gentle, not
wanting to hurt me in any way or do anything that I didn’t want to do. But my
breathing was still labored and hard. I was trying to grasp the notion that we
were going to have sex; that I was going to lose my virginity. And that it
would hurt. I had wanted this to happen but now that it actually was, it didn’t
seem real.

“You don’t have to,” he said softly still nibbling on my ear. He began to take
his fingers away from my entrance and started to brush my cock again.

“I’m scared…” I confessed, crushing my eyes closed as he touched me again.


He stopped his motions suddenly, merely resting his hand on my shaft as
looked at me, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply. He pressed his
forehead against mine, adding an intimacy to his next words that I had not
heard or seen ever before.

“Me too,” he finally answered, his breath tickling my raw lips.

“What?” I asked back surprised. I shifted so I looked him straight in the eyes,
watching as his pupils dilated. He simply nodded his head slowly with a dull
smile. When I still looked confused, he sighed again, shifting his weight off of
my torso, nuzzling beside me. He kept his hands on and around me, touching
the side of my face and bringing it closer to him as he began to talk.

“Don’t you think that I’ve been afraid of this happening ever since you came
here?” he asked me seriously, his eyes wide and open.

I blinked a few times, trying to comprehend what he was getting at. “Then
why did you keep me coming back?”

In all the time I had spent with Gerard, I was only doing what he wanted me
to do. If he wanted me to clean his brushes for alcohol, I was going to do it. If
he wanted me to clean his bird cage and receive paint lessons, I would do it. I
would always listen to him and do everything because I wanted to. But if he
had told me, one day, to just get out of his house and never come back
again, I would have done that too. If Gerard had had the upper hand in
everything leading up to this point, then why had he thrown himself into a
game he knew he would lose?

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did. He looked me dead


centre in the eye saying his next line, showing his sincerity. “Some things are
just too good to pass up.”

This time, upon hearing his words strung together with a warm silent
background, it was me who leaned forward and engulfed his mouth in mine.
His words hit me hard, but in all the right places this time around. They were
not like the day before when he had torn me to shreds about my guitar
playing. Those words had stung open wounds. These sentences, phrases,
words and even letters healed and mended those former wounds, leaving me
to be a new person, a blank canvas with him.

I felt my stomach drop, but only to a certain level. It was okay to feel the way
I felt just then, because I knew I wasn’t alone. Gerard wasn’t just some suave
experienced lover anymore. This was going to be a first time for him too. His
first time with someone so young, his first time allowing himself to do what
he knew he should not. His first time not being afraid anymore, and that was
definitely not going to be a last.

I leaned my body closer to his, letting him know that I still wanted to do the
everything that I had promised. But even still, after a few minutes of kissing,
his hands found their way to my hole and he asked again.

“Do you want to?”

This time, the statement held no shock factor in my mind because I knew
what I wanted. I nodded, my face pressed into his shoulder, sucking on his
neck. I had agreed, but still had no idea what to do next and I prayed that he
would guide me.

He nodded with approval against my neck as well, his hand roaming all over
my back. He pushed me into him while he moved away, so I was face down
and my back was exposed to the air. I laid there feeling him move away from
me and stand up on his knees. Not knowing what else to do, I raised my butt
slightly in the air, thinking that I was doing a good thing. I felt his hands run
down my back, starting at my shoulders and I knew that he was smiling,
laughing a little at my ill-fated attempt at anal sex.

“It will be easier on you if you stand this time,” he informed me, leaning down
and whispering into my ear. I nodded quickly, feeling my face grow flushed.
I got on my knees again, like we had been before when he was undressing
me, kneeling rather than standing up completely. I was glad this positioning
seemed satisfactory to Gerard because I wasn’t sure if I could stand up then.
I could feel myself shaking, inside and out, especially when I felt Gerard’s
cock every once in while brush up against one of my cheeks. He saw my lost
state and took hold of my arms, placing them on the headboard of his bed.

My fingers gripped the wood as his hands became steady on my back, tipping
me down so I was out and exposed even more. In this position, he ran his
fingers so softly down my spine, coming to align with my hole. I froze when
he paused, then slid a slightly wet finger into me, probably lubricated with his
own saliva. I cringed and receded when I first felt his nubby digit go into me,
letting out a jagged breath as he slid in up to the knuckle. He paused for a
moment, letting me adjust while I just squirmed. I shifted my weight from
knee to knee, fingers furling and unfurling against the headboard, but I never
once tried to get away from the sensation. Gerard leaned his chest against
my back again, and I could feel his heart beating hard, even through the
layers of flesh separating us.

“It’ll get better,” he assured me, sliding the same finger out of me a little,
then pushing it back in. He curved the digit inside of me as well, stretching
the hole a little bit more before he placed a second in. “This is the awkward
part.”

I bit my lip and nodded, not knowing if I could talk much. It didn’t hurt per se,
but it was certainly an invasion. I could feel the way his fingers curved, the
joints and the distinct lengths of the digits. I didn’t like the sensation; there
was no pleasure and it was uncomfortable. I told myself that it was only
because it was a finger inside me and not his cock, and that it would get
better when there were no literal bones inside my sensitive area. But I also
realized that his cock was bigger, much bigger than the two or three fingers
he was sliding in and out. And though it didn’t hurt much yet, it may have
only been a matter of time. The horror stories came back to my mind again
and I could feel my chest constricting with nervous anticipation. The feelings
only grew stronger after he slid his fingers out and leaned over to his bedside
table, grabbing out a bottle of hand lotion.

“I haven’t done this in so long,” he mentioned under his breath with a smile,
smearing some liquid in his free hand and lathering up his now fully hard
cock. His other hand was placed on my side for balance as he took some of
the excess lotion and placed it around my opening.

My hole felt a little bigger from the work his fingers had done, but as he
placed himself closer to me again, both hands now on my waist, and I felt his
cock outside my body, the hole didn’t seem that big anymore. It felt like the
smallest thing on the earth, and he was the biggest. I remembered hearing
somewhere a woman describe childbirth and pregnancy as ‘going in like a
banana and coming out like a pineapple’ and the thought stuck with me,
despite the disturbing fruit references. But what if it wasn’t a banana going
in? I asked myself in a heated rush. What if it was a fucking pineapple? It
certainly felt that way just then. The fear that had gripped me before became
more persistent, just as Gerard grew his mouth to my ear.

“Are you ready?” he breathed.

The question was simple but the thoughts in my head weren’t just a yes or no
answer anymore. They were fucking fruit analogies, and most of them didn’t
even seem to be English.

“Is it going to hurt?” I blurted out the first, and really the most important,
concern that came to my head. I could feel the heat from his cock outside my
hole and it spread through my body, making my muscles tense and writhe.
He wasn’t even inside me at all yet, and I was already convinced it was going
to hurt like a bitch.

“Everything in life hurts, Frank,” Gerard stated seriously, trying not to be his
philosophical self but having it come out that way.

I breathed out hard, not wanting to deal with theories at the moment. I just
needed an answer and reassurance. I knew by that point that we were going
to have sex. I wanted to and so did he. We were too fucking close to just
stop. He was right outside my opening, just hovering there and waiting it out
until we had a definite answer. We weren’t at penetration yet, but God I knew
it was coming. My muscles tensed and my heart pounded fast.
Sensing my aggravation with his answer, he continued. “Yes, it does hurt,” he
stated honestly, rubbing his hands up and down my back to ease my tension.
With a response like that however, it did nothing to cool my nerves. “But it
depends on the amount of pain you need.”

“What?” I asked to his addition. I had always thought all pain was bad and
you had to avoid it.

“You need enough pain to know it’s real,” he informed me, pausing for a
second. He placed his hot cheek against my upper back, right by my right
shoulder, nuzzling me. “But not so much that it makes you want to stop.” He
turned his face over again, to kiss my back, tracing his tongue along my
shoulder blades.

“Are you ready?” he finally asked, after we stayed in the same semi-awkward
positions for what felt like forever.

“Yeah,” I answered honestly, voice clear and whole.

I knew what pain was. I had been hurting all my life; whether it was school,
friends or family. I knew what it was like to hurt. When I was with Gerard was
the only time I didn’t feel like an empty cell, the only time where I didn’t feel
pain. But Gerard was offering it to me then, saying that I needed to have it.
You can never remember the actual sensation of pain, but only the feelings
around it, I remembered hearing somewhere. Gerard had to remind me of
that fact, making me finally able to accept my fate. Pain was a horrible thing,
but when I was with him, it was worth it for the memories.

I nodded to his request strongly, breathing out and gripping the headboard
sturdily. He nodded too, then began to get himself into position. I felt him
place one final kiss on my back before he gripped my waist, slowly pushing
the tip of his cock into my lubricated entrance. I gasped right away, feeling
the head pop inside me within moments, sending an initial stretch of pain
through my body.
“Shhhh,” Gerard cooed, keeping one hand in a firm grasp on my waist as the
other extended to my shoulders and hairline. He massaged my skin and
glided through my sticky mane, while I pressed my chin to my chest,
struggling to breathe in an even manner. He had stopped moving inside of
me, but I could still feel the blood pumping in his organ that my insides were
wrapped around. His palm grazed my skin, extending to my neck where he
pressed my head up and turned it, bringing his face close to mine and
pressing a small kiss on my lips. I cringed into his soft embrace as he pulled
our bodies together, feeling him enter me more and more, slow but constant.

“Almost there,” he whispered into my mouth as he pulled away from the


short kiss.

I whimpered at reply, putting my head back down on my chest and gripping


the headboard hard. My knuckles reached a fair shade of ivory just as he
filled me all the way up to the hilt, keeping his word. I let out the jagged
breath that I was unaware I had been holding. He was inside of me now.

And God, it hurt. The pain had started out as just a discomfort as his cock
stretched my skin further than his fingers had, but it turned into a searing
pain when he plunged deeper into me. It had hurt so fucking much, despite
his reassuring words, his rubbing of my back, the slowed pace and the
copious amounts of lube he had used. It had still hurt, no matter what he had
done. And it was still hurting then, his girth just resting inside of me, waiting
for the next moment. But like Gerard had said, the pain was just enough so I
knew it was real. Gerard was real; he was inside of me then, apart of me. And
it wasn’t enough pain to stop, not by a long shot. I never wanted it to stop.

We seemed to stay in those positions forever, waiting for my body to finally


adjust to the new part of itself. Eventually, my knuckles loosened their grip,
the skin colour returning to my hands and the searing pain became more of a
dull ache; something I could handle. Even if I had still been in pain, I wouldn’t
have wanted it to stop. This was what I had always wanted. I had wanted to
be with Gerard, in so many ways and I was finally accomplishing that. It felt
fucking amazing.
“Are you ready?” he asked again, when my breathing had begun to become
more normal and rhythmic.

Gerard’s face was still hovering around the top of my back, placing small
kisses on my shoulder blades as his hands rubbed to reassure me of
everything he was doing. I felt so fucking safe with him then, completely
contrasting the amount of pain I was in. Gerard would never hurt me; I knew
that. The pain I was experiencing was something that he could not control,
and something that was going away bit by bit.

“Yeah,” I breathed again, not be able to say much else.

I could feel my muscles tighten again, along with the grip on the headboard,
anticipating the next actions. I felt Gerard take a deep breath against my
back, placing one final kiss and squeeze to my body before he started up his
own movements.

He pulled out of me a few inches, letting the cold air come in between our
two bodies and then slid back inside of me, sealing off our warmth once
more. He started again, and began to repeat the sequence of events over
and over. His first movements were slow and steady, but didn’t increase that
much speed as I began to get used to it, my breathing returning to a
somewhat normal state. At first I only thought he was going slowly for me,
because of the pain I was in, but when I told him he could go faster, he
shrugged it off yet again, his face pressed against my back and neck.

“Go slow to appreciate everything, to appreciate sensations,” he told me


between panted breathes. Our bodies had begun to sweat slightly and our
clammy skin clung together each time our flesh met. “I want to appreciate
you.”

His words from before when I had undressed him came back into my head,
making me smile despite some discomfort. The pain was getting better, his
movements in and out of me becoming easier partly helped by his slowed
pace and only hurting every once in awhile. Gerard wanted to remember
everything about this night, I told myself. He wanted to go slow to touch me,
taste me and fuck me as long as he could. And I felt the exact same way. I
needed to remember this, because it almost hadn’t happened. Our fight
came to my mind as well, and I had never been so glad I had fought for what
I believed in. I believed in this, and fuck, it was working out just fine. It was
real.

I let out a breathy sigh as my response, letting my grip detach on the


headboard as I leaned my head back to him, where he placed a small chaste
kiss on my mouth. We started to increase our speed slightly, but it was not by
much. We were not moving too fast to meet out-of-breath standards, but we
were both so nervous and turned on it affected our breathing pattern. We
began to pant a lot, anything slower coming out jaggedly. Feeling braver as
the pain subsided more and more with each of his movements, I began to
meet his thrusts, pushing back on him as he pushed into me, letting out a low
moan each time. I had tried to suppress any noise I wanted to make at first
by biting my lip, but Gerard encouraged me to be vocal.

“I want to hear you,” he said, tracing his tongue along the outside of my ear.
“I need to hear you because I can’t see you just yet.”

And heeding to his request, I let the first of many groans roll off my tongue. I
had never been accustomed to making noise when I pleasured myself, mostly
because I was in a house with other people and really couldn’t make noise
without receiving unwanted attention. Now though, we were in Gerard’s own
little world, his black abyss of nothing and I could be as loud as I wanted to.
My vocalizations weren’t too noisy at first, but when he found this spot inside
of me, only brushing up against it for a split second, I let loose a straggled
yelp in my throat.

“There?” he asked, whispering in my ear and halting his movements for a


second.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded my head with a loose,
‘yes’ falling out of my mouth. He nodded against my skin, pulling my body
closer to him by wrapping his hands around my chest, locking them in the
centre. He started his motions again, going at his same rate but hitting that
spot I never knew existed inside of me. There were a few stings of pain from
my hole not being used to being attacked at from that angle, but wherein lied
pain, also lied pleasure. He got that spot a few more times, right on contact.
Each hit felt as good as a fucking orgasm, only quicker and didn’t make me
come. It just made me want more and more.

I began to become aware of the other sensations around my body as he hit


that spot, and the tingling feeling that ran through my bloodstream and
stretched out through my fingertips. I could feel him sliding in and out of me,
and fuck, it was a phenomenal feeling. We were one person then, moving in
unison, breathing and moaning at the same time. At one point, I swore we
were both going to come at the same time too, but that would have been too
perfect and nearly impossible.

One of Gerard’s hands that had been locked in front of my chest, feeling my
heart beat and my breathing spasm, gingerly began to drape down my taut
stomach and curved hips to reach my cock. At the beginning of our action, I
had been only half-hard from lack of initial contact and quickly fading
because of the pain. However, as Gerard found that spot in me and the pain
had become less and less, I was hard and leaking again. His hands clutched
me like he had an hour before on the bed, his thumb finding my dripping slit
while he gripped me solidly in his hand, the other one on my waist, helping
brace himself with his own motions. He squeezed my cock firmly at first,
causing me to emit a boisterous moan again. He smiled into my back, feeling
his nubby teeth against my hot skin as he began pumping hard with his fist,
going slightly faster than his thrusts inside me.

We were grunting together by that point and as he hit that spot in me one
last time, I exploded in his hands, my hips bucking forward and
incomprehensible moans falling from my wide opened mouth. My head fell
back onto his chest and he brought his lips and open mouth to mine, letting
us share in a sloppy embrace while I still rode out my orgasm into his fist. I
was still being thrust into from behind and reeling from it all as our tongues
mixed together, my jaw so slacked that I could barely kiss back. I finally felt
him change his rhythm and force inside of me, as he too began to explode,
moaning into my open and wet mouth. I let my head fall back down onto my
chest in exhaustion after the wet kiss, feeling completely drained inside from
my orgasm, the remnants of it coating his dark sheets and my thighs.
I could still feel the distinct motioning of his cock when he had come; the
initial blood surge and pounding signaling it was about to happen. I felt the
constant twitching that I had felt moments earlier in my own cock take place
inside of me, where I was suddenly shot with a full feeling that resonated
within my body. It was warm and sticky, and as Gerard began to slide out of
me, I could feel it start to come out as well, falling down the backs of my legs.
Gerard still left me feeling full though, but with something far better.

He rode out his orgasm for a few more thrusts before he pulled out, and as he
did, he turned me around to face him properly again. We crashed our lips
together once more, like we had done when we first started the action in the
centre of the room. We were both sweaty and sticky from our passion-filled
night, and I was a little weak but it didn’t seem to matter. His soft lips went
over mine, opening his mouth and letting my tongue slide through to taste
him. We were acting just like we had when the act first started, and I knew
this was a good sign. It meant this was going to happen again, that this
wasn’t a fluke or a one-night stand. This was something so much more, and it
was far from over yet. And we were going to enjoy for however long it lasted.

He kissed me and kissed me like there was nothing wrong with it and like we
were still horny and hadn’t come yet. It wasn’t a lustful sex-crazed kiss,
though. He was kissing me to kiss me; to make sure I was still there and that
he was too. That we were safe. That our action was so much more than just
sex. I knew because I kissed him back, touching his face and arms and neck
for the same reason. We wrapped our arms around each other letting our lips
fade away, pressing our foreheads together and just breathing as we hugged.
Our flesh clung together in a clammy mess, but we were still hugging. We
were alive and we were together.

As we looked into each other’s eyes in the dark room, we knew that this
could be the end of the world for us. We had done what we were never
supposed to do. We had had sex and the evidence of the event was all
around us. There was no hiding from it. We didn’t want to hide per se. We
knew as we kissed and hugged and touched each other that we didn’t regret
a single thing. Regret was a useless emotion, especially surrounding this. We
had wanted this to happen; we needed it to. And it didn’t matter what people
thought about it anymore, because we wouldn’t tell anyone. It would be our
own little secret plan; our own painting, our own song. If the outside world
saw it and made their own interpretations, all they would have seen was
gender and numbers. They wouldn’t have seen what we saw. They wouldn’t
have known our own message behind our work.

Just by looking and not exchanging a single sentence, Gerard and I saw these
conclusions in each other. By the way our eyes and bodies moved, we knew
what the other was thinking and that act in itself was why everything was so
right, even when people would just view it as wrong. And because of that
fact, we would keep our picture hidden in this small apartment, in this black
abyss of a room. We would keep it here where we could have the world in our
hands, where desperate and dangerous situations would not affect us, and
where we could take what we needed from each other.

And in this world we were creating in each others arms, we needed


everything.

Chapter Sixteen

Comfortable and Confident

When I awoke the next morning, I had no clue where I was. I somehow knew
that the artist was supposed to be with me though; it just took a long time for
everything to come back. I was still half-asleep when I turned over in his large
bed, expecting to find his body right next to me, just like it had been the
night before when we had fallen asleep. Instead, I was greeted with a mere
imprint of him, etched away in the scattered sheets. I reached over and
placed my hand in the concave area of the bed, and no longer felt his
warmth. He was gone, and I still had no idea what was going on.

I couldn’t ignore the pounding inside my small chest up against my ribcage,


and the nervous anxiety that crawled into my system soon after. Sleep fell
from my eyes rather quickly, the surroundings shocking me awake. I sat up
and scratched my head, still feeling sweat from the night before. Memories
replaced my sleep-filled gaze, and the final piece was put into place as I
glanced down at my naked body, only covered by a small thin blue sheet.

I had had sex with Gerard. We had finally done what we were not supposed to
do, the action we had been stepping around for months, and now, it had
finally happened. We had kissed and touched and fucked on his bed. He had
seen me naked, and I had seen him in that way too. We even fell asleep in
the same bed after, not trying to run from the act we committed, but lying in
its aftermath. We kissed for what had seemed like hours, barely exchanging a
single word. We didn’t have to talk then; there was no need to talk, and we
had done too much of it by that point. We had just focused on kissing until we
had run out of saliva and stamina, holding our sweaty bodies against one
another in the middle of the bed. There was such urgency in each action we
committed, such desperation for understanding that we would never get from
anyone else on the outside world.

In the darkness of the room, I barely saw anything. But I did remember
seeing Gerard’s eyes. Somehow, they still shone as green even in the
absence of light. I remembered looking at them, if only for a few seconds,
and realizing that I never wanted to see the outside world again. If they were
going to judge us for doing this, for acting like this, then I didn’t care. I
wanted to be here, I wanted to be with him. I wanted to see his eyes in the
dark all the time now.

Last night, I had only left his side for a few small seconds to call my parents
and tell them I was staying with Sam and Travis for the night. I needed to tell
them something, anything, to keep them from coming to look for me. I
needed to avoid getting in trouble, too. If I was grounded now, all of my few
privileges taken away, I knew I would probably die. You couldn’t give
someone a taste of something so much better than what they had always
known and always dreamed of, and then take it away in the next moment. I
needed to stay here, at least for the night.

I had no idea what time it was when my mother answered, but her voice was
tired. It was probably well past my curfew and she had been worried. She was
reluctant to say yes to me at first, but eventually gave it. Whether it was
hearing the happiness in my voice that did it, or just wanting to avoid the
hassle of saying no and then having to come and get me from Sam’s
(because that’s where I was, of course), I didn’t know or care. I just hung up
the phone and got back in bed with Gerard. He placed his arm around me,
pulling me close, and kissed my face again, before sleep finally took over.

That had been the last clear memory I had of last night. I vaguely recalled all
other details, such as turning over in the night, only because when I did, I
became aware of Gerard’s light snoring. I engaged in a minor freak-out then
like the morning after, not knowing where I was at first, but it had lasted
mere moments when I took in the view him laying next to me. It had been
dark, but I could see the calm expression on his face, his lips moving slightly
as he breathed. A smile had spread itself across my tired face as I watched,
knowing that I had kissed those lips. I slid my arm around his waist, nestled
my head into his pillow, and slumber hit once again. And for the rest of the
night after, I was dead asleep. It was the best night’s rest I had ever had.

Come morning though, I couldn’t believe it all. I blinked my eyes rapidly, and
looked around the room. I saw my clothing littering his floor, and the images
from the night before replayed in my mind. It all seemed too much like a
dream to me; I was imagining it all. I had worked this idea out in my head so
many times, now that I was thrust into the situation, I had nothing left to
dream about, to think about. The memories, the sounds, and the slight pain I
was in still flooded me, and drowned me in my thoughts. I had to believe it. It
happened and there was no taking it back.

Good thing I didn’t want to. Even as I rustled between the sheets a bit, and
saw the slight rust coloured stain, and felt slight pain, I still didn’t want to
take it all back. I had a feeling that I was probably going to bleed a little bit
from what had happened. I had heard about most girls bleeding when they
lost their virginity, and that had been in the traditional way. I could only
imagine what would happen to me. The stain wasn’t too big though, which
elated me to no end. Maybe Gerard wouldn’t notice it. I felt my cheeks take
on the same rust colour as I was filled with embarrassment. He better not see
this, I told myself. I didn’t want him to worry or fret like he had the night
before, thinking he had hurt me. I was fine - better than fine. I was with him.

Well, not entirely. The bed was empty, his image only a mere shadow of
where he had slept. I was worried as to where on earth he could be, but my
wretched nerves were calmed by the fact that I was inside his room. Behind
his black door, and essentially, inside his mind. Maybe now I would know
what he was always thinking, and thus figure out where he had gone.

I sat up straighter in the bed, leaning my back against the headboard, looking
around to take in the full view of this dark room. The night before I had seen
it, but just barely; my eyes had been focused on other areas and other
purposes. Now that I finally did have enough time to open my wide eyes and
see this mysterious space, I saw a mere skeleton of a living quarter.

There was a queen size bed in the center, bedside tables in a light oak
colouring lining both sides. There was a lonely lamp on one table with no
shade, just the bare bulb out and exposed that flooded musty amber light
into the room. The walls weren’t black like the door, but they still seemed just
as dark. Coming from a man who was full of colour explosions, these walls
were an insult to art. They weren’t white, but a creamy dull shade, made
even more lifeless from the years of smoke and cancer breathed into them.
The only thing that lined them were cracks and holes – no pictures or paint or
works of art at all. If the room was a person, the furniture the bones and the
wall the skin, then they were emaciated. Starved, and damaged. It didn’t look
like the room belonged to an artist at all. There was no colour, no life, no
light. The only mere resemblance of anything in the colour spectrum were the
sheets, but even those were in a darker shade. They were blue, but it still
managed to be as dull as ever. They were almost the colour of hospital
scrubs, and they had much the same consistency of the thick bunching
fabric. The floor held the most life in the room, my red shirt and other
colourful articles looking back up at me. Light from the outside apartment
cast its way inside the room, and danced on the hardwood, almost inviting
me out of the drab area.

It didn’t take too much coaxing.

I suddenly felt very vulnerable as I noticed my bare legs under the thin
sheets, and Gerard’s lack of presence. I had no idea where he could be. The
last memory I had of him was snoring peacefully, and now he was just gone.
As I looked for my clothing on the bed, I didn’t even see his corduroy pants
and black shirt anywhere. It was all my stuff. I tried to convince myself that
he was still in the apartment, because he just had to be. There was no way he
was gone; it was his place, and just… no. There were no excuses for
anything; it had to be a solid answer. We had just had sex. Why would he run
off like this? I was sure he wasn’t running per se, but I still had a heavy
feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

Why would he leave me?


All this time, I had felt safe with him. He may have looked dangerous to the
outside world, but I knew deep down, he would never and could never hurt
me. And yet… as I slid my clothing over my bare legs, and a shirt over my
back and walked into the apartment, I saw nothing. The light came in through
the bay window, illuminating the apartment in a blinding golden aura. I saw
the dove, perched high in her cage, head bent down under its wing, sleeping.
I listened closely to her breathy coos that I could hear all the way from across
the apartment because there were no other sounds. There was no Gerard.
There was no nothing.

And I was crushed. I felt naked all over again. Exposed and more vulnerable
than ever. This wasn’t something that Gerard would do. Something was
wrong. This was totally out of character. My mind began to extrapolate on
circumstances, assuming the worse each time. Maybe something bad had
happened. He had opened his door to get the paper, and the police had taken
him away. Maybe he had been caught. We had been caught. All of these
instances ran through my mind but I knew I was just over reacting. I would
have heard if they had taken him away. There was no way anyone could have
caught us this fast. We barely had a chance to start a relationship; it couldn’t
be over all ready.

And yet, here I was, standing in the middle of his living room in my t-shirt and
boxers. Gerard no where to be seen. Completely gutted.

Was this over already?

I didn’t know why I had a sudden urge to be with him; it wasn’t like I hadn’t
just spent the entire night with the man. My urge was something different
than just wanting to see him for company, or even for sex, though. I almost
wanted to make sure he was still there. He had been a part of me last night –
he had been in me last night. I couldn’t just relax if he suddenly disappeared.
It was like we were one person when we had had sex, and it still pertained to
now. If he walked away from me and I stayed put, I could feel us tearing.

And I could feel myself tearing right then. My chest hurt, right in the centre,
where all of my anxiety seemed to bubble and swell within me. It wasn’t just
the chest pain that riddled my body. I had pain in other areas too, like where
he had entered me the night before. It wasn’t the exact same type of pain as
when it had first occurred, but the after effects of it. There was a bit of a dull
ache, only occurring when I moved a lot. I forgot about it for the most part,
but my walking around his place and desperately putting clothing on to
search for him, it had come back. My hole felt a little raw, and maybe even a
little bigger. I figured that was a very good sign; maybe there wouldn’t be as
much pain as before when we did it again. If we did it again…I sort of needed
Gerard in the apartment for that wish to be fulfilled.

It wasn’t just my body that felt different, I felt different. I had taken someone
inside of me, and that feeling alone was enough to shock my very core.

I had lost my virginity last night, and fuck, that whole concept in and of itself
was just plain weird. I had dreamed about it for so long and in so many ways,
but never like this. Never in a million years would I have ever thought I’d lose
it to a forty-seven-year-old artist in his apartment up my ass. The chest pain
subsided a little bit and I laughed to myself, shaking my head. This was just
downright absurd and wrong.

If it was so wrong though, I asked internally, then why did it feel good last
night? It wasn’t just in the physical sense that it had felt good. It had in other
ways, deeper than that. I felt good knowing that we were connecting at a
deeper level. That his touches, kisses, and fucks meant more than just sex to
him. It felt good when I could still feel the after-sting of it all and I realized
that he had been inside of me. A part of me.

The realization alone felt so good. Sex was one thing. Sex was fun and
exciting and a little nerve wracking. But what we had done was not sex. I
didn’t know what it was, but it was something more. We had joined and that
felt good. And even after it was all over, it still felt good. And though we
hadn’t really talked about it much more than consensus, I figured it had felt
good for Gerard too. He hadn’t been the one in pain; I was taking it, not him,
so he didn’t even have the physical downfalls of sex. Last night must have
been good for him in every way.
If so, why wasn’t he here to reap the benefits with me? Why wasn’t he in his
apartment so I could tell him that I wanted to do it again, in any way possible,
just to feel that close to him? Did he not feel that close to me? I wondered to
myself. Were things that much different when you gave instead of received? I
didn’t know. Sex, and gay sex at that, was entirely new to me. Maybe leaving
your partner alone in the morning was customary. I had no fucking clue, and
for once, he wasn’t here to teach me the rules to everything.

I had always been naïve before; I hadn’t done much with any gender, I knew
the terms, but not how to apply them. I knew little things, but was too
shamed to speak up about them entirely, go into detail or ask questions. I
may have done a lot of bad things in my life, but they were never my choice.
Someone else’s. I had always held a foolish notion in the back of my mind
that once I finally made my own decision to have sex, I became an adult and
a man, and then the naivety would disperse. Everything would be easier. But
now it only seemed to be ten times worse, leaving me half-naked and so
fucking confused in a place that once used to be my home away from home.

I shook my head and ran my hands through my matted hair annoyed. I didn’t
want to think about my own downfall; my naïve naivety. I had a feeling I
would be thinking about that a lot later on, when Gerard did come back. If he
came back… I knew I was worrying over nothing, because even if he had left
me, he had to come back. This was his apartment, after all. He wouldn’t just
get up and leave it all to a seventeen-year old boy (no matter how good or
bad the sex had been). He was going to come back, I could convince myself
of that much. But how long it was going to take, and what he would be like
when he did come back was still up in the air. And I had nothing I could do
but wait.

I moved from the centre of the room, drawing my attention to the kitchen. My
tongue felt like the Sahara desert in my mouth suddenly. Gerard and I had
both used up all of our saliva last night kissing furiously, and any other
excess liquids were gone from my body completely, either in sweat or other
forms. I was fucking dying of thirst.

I took quick strides getting me to the fridge which I hoped wasn’t a mirage in
my mind. It seemed to be that way once I opened the steel handled door and
saw nothing but wine bottle after wine bottle. I sighed, yet another thing not
going right this morning, and made my way to the sink. I filled up the glass,
and had only gotten about a gulp in my mouth when I heard the familiar
sound of keys jingling.

Gerard was back.

Watching closely from behind the corner in the kitchen, I saw him step into
the apartment slowly, blind to my spying. He was fully clothed, his dove
jacket hanging loosely off his shoulders, and his collared shirt flared
underneath. He placed his keys down on the side table along with what
looked to be some envelopes, bills perhaps, and ran his fingers through his
hair. His face was expressionless, but seemed to radiate this cool
nonchalance, especially as he discarded his jacket gracefully on the back of
the door. He was completely unaware of me watching him, and my stare
seemed to be frozen in place. He looked the same as ever before. And for
some reason, that disappointed me.

I was not the same as before. Not only was I standing in the middle of his
kitchen wearing far less clothing than I had started off with, we had done
something so personal. I didn’t want to see The Artist Gerard in his front
hallway, no expression but cool arrogance. I wanted to see Gerard, the
person, the one I had slept in bed with. I wanted to see his green eyes again.

Suddenly, those eyes met with my own, as if heeding to my internal request.


Gerard had finally noticed I was up and awake, inside his kitchen. He smiled
right away, baring his rather ugly nicotine stained teeth, but the rest of his
expression I didn’t see. I turned away, feeling blush rise under my cheeks
(again), suddenly self-conscious.

“Hey,” I heard him call easily, then start walking slowly.

I kept my eyes down, looking at the beads of water collecting in the bottom
of his steel plated sink. I could hear his shoes clonk on the floor as he came
nearer, but even as I felt his body beside me, I didn’t look up. The connection
we had shared was abruptly becoming too much inside my mind, especially if
he was just The Artist again. That person had seen too much of me.
“Good morning,” he greeted in the same light and airy voice. He leaned
against the sink, waiting for a reply which never came. My knuckles grew
white as I gripped them tightly around the glass.

“Are you okay?” he voiced, skepticism and concern blurring into one within
his voice.

I nodded.

“Are you sure?” he pressed again, leaning into the counter space, and trying
to see into my line of view. He placed a hand gingerly on the small of my
back, rubbing it up and down. It shocked me, sending electricity radiating into
my spine. I had not expected him to do that. And what do you do once you’ve
been electrocuted?

You jump. Far.

And so I did. My hands uncurled from the glass and my arms pushed it
forward, sending it rattling and cracking into the sink. It landed with a dull
thud, and a sharp break, though there wasn’t much distance between my
arm and its now final resting place. The velocity of the action was strong
enough to break anything, except the nervous anxiety between Gerard and I.
As if things couldn’t get much worse, and I couldn’t look any more naive.

At least the glass broke in the sink, I tried to tell myself calmly. At least there
wasn’t glass on his floor, and there was no way of hurting us. My logical
reasoning did nothing to calm the deranged teenager inside me, however. I
stepped back from the mess I had created for myself, my arms raised high
above the counter and twitching frantically. I could feel my face flush with
embarrassment, and my uneasiness didn’t settle whatsoever. Apologies fell
from my mouth instead of curses, but Gerard seemed unaffected by
everything. He had not moved against my sudden actions, and was still
leaning leisurely against the kitchen counter.
“Don’t worry about it,” he insisted, stepping forward into my panic and what
may as well have been a battle zone. I had been shifting my gaze all around,
but still managed to avoid his eyes. I could not escape his touch so easily,
and I felt his heavy palm connect with my back again. He rubbed it gently,
but it was no longer electric. It was soothing. He was calming me down.
Perhaps the water had dulled the circuit, but he no longer seemed
threatening.

“I’ve broken hundreds of those damn glasses,” he joked around, natural


charisma coming through. “Although most of the time it was on purpose.”

I could tell he was smiling, though I still didn’t bother to look at his face. I was
calming down however, and I slowly lowered my arms back on the counter,
stance returning to normal, no glass to grip for stress. His hand felt warm on
my back, and this time, sent shockwaves of realization into me. Despite his
recent disappearing act, I knew I could trust him. He had come back, after all.

“Yeah,” I breathed out shakily, still nervous under his touch. His hand was
nothing sexual, and no matter how far he moved it down, it still stayed on my
back, and maintained a caring edge. He would have done this type of thing
before; he was just making sure I was okay.

I could see the periphery of his black locks in my view, and I remembered
how they had fallen over his face as he slept, like cobwebs forming over his
sleeping mind. I had the sudden urge to forgo my nervousness and looked at
him straight on. I only saw his eyes, those eyes I had seen in the dark, and
had to turn away again. It was still too intense for me to handle. I didn’t want
to look at him full on, just in case he disappeared once again.

“Frank,” he called my name, noticing my hesitation. I didn’t move. I grasped


the counter tighter; so tight I thought I may break it too.

“Frank,” he repeated, a little more insistent, but never angry. His hand
motions on my back stopped, and he began to slink his way up my neck
gently. He curled his fingers in my hairline, sending shivers down the spine
he had just touched before he took his hand to the base of my neck, thumb
trailing along my jaw line.

“Frank, are you okay?” he said again, imploring nature to his voice.

“Yeah,” I insisted, swallowing hard, my eyes closed, as his thumb began to


move down my face ever so slightly.

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

There was a quality to his voice I had never heard before, or maybe I had,
just forgotten about it until now. He was sad – not desperate, but
disappointed. And the way his fingers furled and unfurled against my mane,
proved he was nervous, too. It wasn’t a caring rhythm (though that was there
too), but a nervous twitch.

More shockwaves came through me. I realized I wasn’t talking to the arrogant
artist anymore. I never had been. Gerard had been with me the entire time,
and now, he wanted me to look at him. If I only had before, then maybe I
wouldn’t have been so skeptical, nervous and broken so many things before
us. Gerard was just as exposed as I was, and the fact that no one was seeing
this side of him hurt just as much as me being left behind.

“Look at me and tell me you’re okay,” Gerard repeated again slowly, some
resilience finding its way into his voice. He must have seen or felt the way my
body changed, stiffened under realization, because he shifted closer to me.
He moved his hand from the back of my neck, gingerly tipping my head up to
meet his eyes. And there, even with the blinding golden rays of the sun
shining in at odd angles, I saw what I had seen in the dark.

“I’m fine,” I told him, and this time, it wasn’t so hard to keep staring at him. I
looked at his face too, branching away from his eyes and seeing his caring
expression.
He smiled, and for a moment I could have sworn he was going to kiss me. His
hand was still on my face, thumb rotating in small circles, even though I could
now look at him. I wanted him to kiss me, but I was still a little nervous about
everything. I didn’t know what things meant, exactly. I knew that he cared
about me; that was clearly evident with this recent display of affection. I still
possessed some reservations, probably due to my naivety.

“Where have you been?” I found myself asking boldly. It was a strong
question, coming from someone who couldn’t even look anyone in the eye a
few seconds ago, and who had just broken a glass, but it was less daring than
actually reaching out and kissing him again. I would have thought it would
have been easier with all the practice last night, but nothing seemed to come
free flowing and natural anymore. I hoped I hadn’t fucked his up already.

“Oh,” he uttered, as if he had been caught in a forbidden act. He let his hand
fall away from my face slowly, resting on my shoulder. “I just went out. Got
something.”

He motioned to the counter, where a small cellophane bag had been placed.
It was an opaque white shopping bag, the red logo for the store scattered in
amongst its folds. I stared at it for the longest time, not trying to decipher
what it was, but when the hell he had put that there.

“Oh,” I uttered, my turn to commit the forbidden act. I shifted my weight on


my bare feet, looking back to him. “Why didn’t you say goodbye to me?”

Gerard sighed deeply, his brows knitting in a wrought concern. He ran his
free hand through his black locks, but still kept the other on my shoulder.

“I didn’t want to wake you.” He smiled suddenly, drawing his hand back to
my face. He brushed his thumb along my cheek, finishing his line as he curled
my hair over my ear. “You look really beautiful when you sleep.”

I had to turn away from him then. Not because his gaze was too intense, but
because I didn’t want him to see me blushing. I was not used to these kinds
of compliments or behaviors. And it seemed a little foolish in my mind for a
guy to be beautiful. Wouldn’t he be handsome? And myself being handsome,
or even beautiful, was out of the question.

“I kissed you goodbye,” Gerard’s kind words broke into my train of thought
again, his hand moving through my matted hair in a vain attempt to
straighten it out. “But I didn’t want to wake you. I didn’t know how long I
would be, and I didn’t want you to wait up. I didn’t even want you to know I
had been gone…”

His voice grew softer, as his eyes drew down to his feet. If I had known any
better, I would have thought he looked ashamed. But this was Gerard; no
matter how real he was to me then, shame was not something he would
know and embellish.

“I wanted to be alone.”

“Why?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

“I needed to clear my mind. Think about a lot of things…”

“Like what?” I knew I was being annoying and insistent. He was a grown man
and could do what he wanted, but I was still clinging onto him for answers.

He raised his eyes to me slowly, taking a breath before he decided to say


anything. “You…”

“Oh,” I uttered, and then ran out of questions as we both ran out of words.

“Here, let me explain,” Gerard cut in rather quick. He removed his hand from
my shoulder, gliding it down my arm and linking our hands. “Come to my
room for a little while. Just to talk, I promise.”

He looked at me for some kind of approval before he started moving again,


taking the bag on the counter with him. It crinkled loudly as he ventured back
into the same space I had just come from. He placed us at the end of his bed,
both our knees touching as we faced inward to talk. I closed my legs tightly,
feeling the fabric of his pants against my skin, and realizing I was still very
much exposed. He placed the bag behind us, and then fidgeted with his
hands, trying to find his words.

“Last night…” he began, an unsure tone to everything. He tried to look at me,


but looked away, and I was tempted to cup his face in my own hands and
make him stare directly into me. I knew I could never emulate him, no matter
how hard I tried and how much he had been apart of me.

“We don’t have to do what we did last night again,” he finally spat out, and
then I was glad we were both looking away from each other.

I felt that same sensation in my chest again, coming back full force since it
had ceased momentarily when he entered the apartment. Did Gerard not
want this anymore? Did he not want me? Is that why he left? Was all of this a
big mistake? Had I been right all along? The questions came at me like
bullets, but the vest I had been wearing was only twisting with my flesh,
mixing as I grew wounded and making me this hard statue before him. I
stared at my bare feet, naked like I had been last night, trying to make sense
of things.

God, fucking sex changed everything. And not in the good way. I had hoped
by giving me giving myself to him, allowing for us to be together, and even
fucking building our own world, our own picture, that everything would be
okay. We would be together and things would be easier. I would be an adult;
it was just the same principle as my waning innocence and naivety. I wanted
it gone, and my adult relationship with Gerard to begin.

I had honestly really liked what we had done that night. Despite the pain, the
initial awkwardness, the fact that I was completely naked and the bleeding, I
had liked having sex. It did end up feeling good about halfway into it, which
surprised me to no end. I didn’t know putting anything in my ass would feel
good. I didn’t really sit at home and wonder these things at night. And what
pain I did have from the action was something that Gerard had told me
needed to be there. I needed to remember it. And I would for a long time. Not
just because I had lost my virginity that night, but because of who I lost it too.
I had no idea I would lose it this way, and with this man, but fuck. That didn’t
matter anymore. I wanted this.

What had changed? Everything had, or at least it seemed to be that way. I


just hoped that the metaphorical everything, the one that he asked for – and I
fucking gave him – didn’t change. Maybe Gerard was just nervous now.
Maybe something had happened when he went out. There were dozens of
possibilities, and my rash thinking and his rambling solitarily weren’t helping
either of us.

“We don’t have to do this again,” Gerard repeated, motioning with his hands
as his eyes stayed focused on the floor. “I know we went really fast, and we
don’t have to have sex again. We can do something else, or we can not do
anything at all. You can leave if you want, too…”

He was speaking faster than normal, but the last line still came out loud and
clear in my mind. And thinking about what he meant wasn’t going to cut it
anymore.

“What?” I stammered, my voice still rough and hoarse. Gerard stopped


talking almost instantly, his hands freezing in place in the air. He turned his
head to the side to meet my surprised gaze, and pursed his lips before he
repeated his statement, much slower.

“You can leave right now if you want…”

“Is that what you want?” I practically choked out.


God, how could I have been so stupid? This was probably why he left me
alone in the first place. He just wanted to get rid of me. For me to get the hint
and leave. Fucking hell. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“It’s not about me, Frank,” he informed me solidly. I had no idea how his
countenance could remain as smooth as stone while I felt like I was
shattering on the inside.

“Then who is this about?” I stammered, fisting the sheets on the bed in
nervous anger. If he said anything about society, I was fairly sure I was going
to lose it.

“You,” he responded, not skipping a beat. I stopped fidgeting and breathing


hard. I even stopped looking at him with my cryptic stare. I couldn’t find the
words to dispute that answer; I was already arguing with myself in my head
enough.

“If you don’t want to do anything that we did last night again, Frank, we
won’t,” Gerard insisted again delicately. He shifted his weight on the bed,
coming closer to me in his plea. He placed his much larger palm over my
hand, and rubbing it soothingly. He would have cupped it and held it entirely,
but I was still clenched the sheets for comfort, and I did not want to let go.
His face was so close to mine, and so far away at the same time. I wanted
that kiss I had been missing since the kitchen, but was too frozen to do
anything about it.

“I know we rushed things,” Gerard began to repeat.

“Do you regret it?” I found myself spilling out, and locking eyes with him. He
was taken aback by my sudden movement, but recovered quickly.

“You know I don’t regret anything I do.” He was giving me the standard
answer, the one he had rehearsed and said so many times inside his
apartment when we were just doing art. I didn’t want art right then. I wanted
us.

He could see the changes in my body, and smartened up, giving me the
answer I needed to hear, even if it wasn’t the right one. “And I especially
don’t regret this.”

He leaned into me more, but we were still too far away to do anything. I could
feel his breath, and I know he wanted assurance somehow. I just nodded, and
looked at my bare feet again.

“Sex is personal,” he started again, leaning away, and for once, I just wished
he would shut up. He was trying to make excuses to not be with me, when all
this time I thought we had come to a consensus of needing to be together.

“Sex is huge. And I took it from you for the first time. I’ve taken a lot from
you…” His eyes dwindled down to our palms, not linked together, but merely
on top of one another. “And though everything was called for last night, that
doesn’t mean I expect it from you all the time now. I’ve never had any kind of
expectations with you, and I still don’t, Frank. I just want you to know that…”

“I do know that,” I insisted, sighing forcefully. “You’re making me feel like a


child again.”

I saw him bite his lip, almost wanting to argue that point, and say that I was a
child. Just because I was thirty years younger than him meant nothing to me
anymore. He had made my age last night, and perhaps he recalled the
memory just as vividly as I had, because he only sighed instead of
responding as his head tipped down, his hair going over his face.

“I just don’t want to hurt you…” he murmured softly.

“You didn’t,” I answered strongly, not caring if he had been talking to himself.
His head perked up almost immediately, and he looked back at me again. He
was still in his unfazed and stressed professional glare, but a smile was
forming in the corners of his mouth.

“You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that,” he gushed, the
emotion in his voice surprising me. “Hurting you is the last thing I want to
do.”

It was silent after that for a while, the gravity of the situation falling down
around us like the glass shards that still remained in his sink. He seemed a lot
better than before, his nervous twitch gone and his cool demeanor coming
through again. I wasn’t as angry, and I didn’t feel like a child anymore. I could
feel his much larger hand over my own, his fingers brushing against me in a
small motion and I finally let go of the sheets. I flipped my hand up and
locked fingers with him easily, but he was still too far away from me.

“What do you want, Gerard?” I asked, when our eyes had met for a brief
moment, and lingered too long in indecision.

“Ah, well,” he sighed and shifted his weight, drawing out the comment almost
laughably. “I told you what I wanted last night.” He paused for a brief
moment, seeing if I could remember.

How could I forget?

“But right now, I think I’d settle for just a kiss,” he informed me, lazy half-
smile on his face. I picked up the slack in the action, smiling fully for both of
us.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I mentioned quietly, and suddenly, he didn’t


seem so far away anymore.

We both stared at each other for a long time, our eyes wandering down to the
other’s slightly open mouth. We leaned in mutually, and my heart jumped
into my throat at the first slight brush of our lips. This was the first time we
had done the same actions as we had the night before. Gerard may have
been touching me and talking about sex, but he had always done that. He
spouted sexual stuff like it was nothing, and always touched me so much,
and yet, so little, every day before last night. Last night was the first time
things had changed between us, but come morning, it felt as if we had gone
backwards in time and unraveled everything. I didn’t want that. With this
kiss, we were bridging the time gap once again, and restoring that
everything. It was a little awkward getting into things, but we eventually got
the hang of it.

I moved closer to Gerard just as I parted my lips to let his tongue go into my
mouth. I felt his hand reach around the back of my head, tangling into my
mane before finally resting on my neck to deepen the action. I shifted closer
and closer, still not knowing what to do with my own hands just yet. I touched
his side gingerly, and when he proceeded to kiss me deeper, I decided that
was the right course of action. I wrapped my hand around his thick side, and
shifted the last bridge of space between us. We were still sitting up on the
bed, but my torso was touching his, my tongue was in his mouth, and I felt a
warmth I hadn’t felt since I had been sleeping and we both had been naked. I
trailed my finger around the end of his shirt, and dared to slip a finger inside.
I needed to touch his skin.

“What do you want, Frank?” Gerard asked, pulling away from the kiss a few
moments later. He still kept his hand on the back of my neck, and pushed our
foreheads together a bit. I could feel our bodies sloping downwards onto the
bed, and I felt my heart beat inside of my chest. The nervous anxiety of sex
washed over me, and though I had been through it all and done it before,
everything was so big, so new, and still so scary. I knew it was just as scary to
Gerard too, even if we had a lot cleared up now. He still didn’t want to hurt
me, and honestly, I didn’t want to be hurt either.

I tried to get our bodies to lie down on the bed fully, instead of answering his
question, because I really didn’t know what to say. I wanted him to decide
like he had last night. I knew I would be okay with everything he did to me
because I trusted him, but I was still so inexperienced I didn’t know what to
do and when. He let himself be pulled down on the bed, angling his body so
he could look down on me, but he still wanted an answer. He had made this
very clear that nothing was going to happen unless I stated it first.
“What do you want, Frank?” he asked again, between small kisses on my
neck. He gripped my face in his hands again, pulling our eyes and lips
together. I tried to keep kissing, but he pulled our tongues apart.

“Tell me. I’ll do anything you want,” he assured me, barely above a whisper.
“I promise.”

I stared at his green eyes. The pupils were large, but the ring of green I spent
my entire existence focusing on was still there. It was so clear too – just like it
had been at night. And that when it hit me at what I wanted the most.

“I want to stay here all weekend,” I told him solidly. I wanted to see those
eyes in the dark again, and the only way of doing that was sleeping in his bed
again. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay right here.

He laughed at first; light and airy breaths from his now swollen lips. He petted
the side of my face as he looked down on me, gauging my seriousness.
“What about your parents?” he pondered out loud.

“I don’t care,” I insisted, louder than average. We had been whispering,


because there was no need to yell when our lips were practically hovering
over one another’s as we talked in hushed tones. “I’ll call them and tell them
I’m staying at Sam’s again. I’ll go home on Sunday night. I don’t care. I’ll
figure something out.”

It was now my turn for my voice to be fast and choppy. My hands did not
move in a frantic pattern; they gripped Gerard’s biceps instead.

The artist was unaffected, and drew his attention down to kissing my neck,
avoiding a response much like I had only moments ago. “I don’t know…”
“You said whatever I wanted, Gerard,” I urged, gripping his biceps more. “I
want to stay here.”

He raised his head up from my neck, lining up our lips once again. He looked
me over skeptically, his lips pursed with deliberation.

“With you,” I added to my former plea, and then pressed my lips into his own.
Not only was this another chance to kiss him again and again, it was an
attempt at silencing him so he did not try to argue. And for once, he went
into forfeiting very easily.

We kissed much like we had before, slow pecks followed by deep tongue
dives, hands and lips roaming everywhere. He touched and petted the side of
my face a lot, twirling my hair in between his fingers as he breathed harshly
through his nose. He was not on top of me, but I felt his body shifting closer
and closer, his legs interconnecting and tangling with my own. His pants
fabric, and his shirt too, felt weird against my skin, but all I could focus on
were his lips.

“You know,” he stated slyly, drawing our mouths away and leaving me
kissing the air. His hands moved from my face, and began to toy with the
fabric of my shirt playfully slipping his fingers inside. He danced around my
navel, watching the show against the red fabric before finishing his thought
as he looked at me. “If you do stay the weekend, you have to know the one
rule of my apartment.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, playing back into his game. I nuzzled my head
against the side of his, urging him on.

“No clothing,” he joked, but still searched my eyes for an approval. I nodded,
and lifted my arms off his body, above my head, giving him the permission he
needed. I could see the relief etched across his face as he lifted my shirt off
me, and I was pretty sure that he addressed the idea as a joke, just to see
how I reacted. Luckily for both of us, we had never wanted anything more.
Chapter Sixteen

Comfortable and Confident [2]

“No clothing,” he joked, but still searched my eyes for an approval. I nodded,
and lifted my arms off his body, above my head, giving him the permission he
needed. I could see the relief etched across his face as he lifted my shirt off
me, and I was pretty sure that he addressed the idea as a joke, just to see
how I reacted. Luckily for both of us, we had never wanted anything more.

He discarded my shirt easily, tossing it over our heads and across the room
carelessly. He looked down at me and ran his hand up my chest, tip-toeing
his long and delicate fingers like spider’s legs. He brushed over my nipples
smoothly, making me crush my eyes shut as he brought his lips to mine
again.

We started to kiss more readily this time, his hands exploring me again. He
made his way to my boxer shorts eventually, taking his time, so as not to
seem like that was his first objective. Once there, his fingers danced and
pressed into the elastic, pushing it off my round hips slightly, but never
removing it entirely. It wasn’t until I broke the kiss with my nod and groaned
yes, that he removed them completely, the cold air around making its way
across my skin.

It wasn’t so nerve racking being in front of Gerard naked; he had seen


everything there was to show last night. It was lighter in the room now, so
any imperfections I possessed would be magnified, though it never did seem
to matter to Gerard. Once I was only wearing skin and abiding to the only rule
in his apartment, he took the time to run his hands up my body smoothly,
eyes trailing briefly all around.

“You’re beautiful,” he gave way to his new favourite phase, burying his head
in my neck and whispering it into my ear. I felt myself blush, and I brushed
him off with a gleaming eye and a devious request.

“Your turn.”

He smiled right back and took his attention away from my body. He flipped
onto his back, leaving me with a void I needed to fill next to me. He
unbuckled the top of his pants first, easing down the zipper gently. Like the
night before, his cock came forth almost immediately, and I saw he was half-
hard. I was nearly erect myself, being much more easily stimulated than him.
Everything was so new to me still, even kissing and calm touching got me
hard in a second. Gerard hadn’t even touched me there yet. Just my chest
and shoulders.

He peeled the pants away from his body, making awkward angles with his
elbows until he was finally rid of the lower half of his clothing. He turned his
attention back to me, his still-clothed chest looming over mine. He looked at
me uneasily, casting glances down at himself and it took me awhile to realize
that he wanted me to undo his shirt for him. Once I caught on, it was a
matter of seconds before it too was scattered across the floor.

Gerard looked a little different naked when he was illuminated by the day. His
skin was so much paler all over his body, and that was saying something
considering he was pretty white to begin with. I ran my hand up his bicep and
over his shoulder, touching the smooth milky ivory texture and marveling
internally at how much like marble he looked. He was encased in the sacred
stone, but it did not make him look like a Greek God by any means. His
imperfections were exposed more so than ever now.

I saw the wrinkles over some parts of his skin that I had not seen in the
darkness, along with the unevenness around the dry patches at his sides. I
saw the way his extra weight folded and fell over his waist, and around his
chest. I even saw small traces of chest hair – something I had only felt briefly
last night, and was relatively unconcerned with. It was collected in the centre
of his chest, dark curls that trailed so minutely over his pecs. He also had a
small circular trail around his navel, which led down to his pubic hair of the
same shade, but much coarser. Despite the apparent ugliness of some of his
features, I couldn’t turn away. I wanted to see everything on him, good or
bad. It was a part of him, and I was still trying to grasp the fact that I was
seeing him naked.

I didn’t have too much time to stare and contemplate, my attention soon
diverted back to his face. He still stayed in his same position, his bare chest
over my own, our hearts pounding on the opposite sides and our breath
coming into each other’s mouths. He wasn’t completely on top of me, but his
off to the side from me, our legs brushing up against each other occasionally.
We kissed slowly for awhile longer, the awkwardness of our naked bodies on
top of one another dwindling down. We were comfortable with the other
person seeing us in this way, but the act of being naked in itself took some
minutes to get used to, at least for me.

Our breath was sharp out of our nostrils, and warmed our faces as the
panting grew further. I suddenly felt the weight shift, and his hips press into
mine, completely on top of me now. He leaned down to kiss my neck,
lowering himself onto my body. I felt his hands wander to my waist, and I
stared at his ceiling, breathing fast and knowing what was coming next.

“Face to face?” I questioned, not used to the change of position. We had


stood up the night before to make things easier, or so he had said, but I
didn’t know if I wanted to switch things up just yet. I wanted to get used to
one position first, then try new things.

“Yes,” he answered, slowly kissing my vulnerable throat. “It’s more intimate.”

He raised himself up to my face again, pressing a soft kiss to my flushed lips.


I could feel our cocks hitting each other every once in awhile, and though I
wanted the friction and I kept bucking ever so slightly, I was still nervous.

“But I don’t want to have sex yet,” Gerard informed me, throwing me off
guard. I felt my nervousness disappear, and suddenly, I wanted to have sex.
Or at least, I didn’t want him to stop on my part.
Before I could argue, he sunk down lower, extending a hand out to the side,
and grabbing the bag we had nearly knocked off the bed by that point.

“I want to show you what I got, first,” he smiled, propping himself up on his
elbows, and placing the bag on the centre of my chest. I smiled back,
relieved.

It took us awhile to get comfortable but once we did, he begun to extract the
items one by one, my attention captured. He pulled out a large dark blue box
first, with an all-familiar logo on them.

“Condoms,” Gerard explained, as if I had no idea what they had been. He


placed the front of the box forward, as if on display, and continued talking
while I breezed over its small writing. “I’m sorry I didn’t have any around last
night. I know we probably should have used them…” Gerard looked down
again, while I made a confused face, unsure of why exactly we had to use
condoms. It wasn’t like we could have gotten pregnant.

“I promise you though, I’m clean. I have an appointment a few times a year
to check on these things, and I’ve always been clean,” Gerard explained
further, and everything clicked in my head. I nodded solemnly when his eyes
met mine again.

“So, I have them now, just to be on the safe side. If you want to use them the
next time we do, go right ahead. Again, everything’s up to you, Frank.”
Gerard nodded, and was about to place the box off to the side, and move on
in his bag of tricks, when I grabbed him for a second.

“What about you?” I asked again. “What do you get a say in?”

Gerard smiled weakly, and took my hand in his own, squeezing it hard.
“Anything you want me to have a say in. I’m here to explain things when you
have questions,” he answered, then waited to see if I did have any questions.
I had about a million, but I started with the easiest.
“What’s the next thing in the bag?”

We both smiled wryly as Gerard stuck his head in the plastic further to
dissect my answer. He pulled out a long rectangular box, then opened it
quickly and held a tube in his hand.

“Lubricant,” he explained because this time, I really didn’t know what it was. I
had never had the use for it before. Sam and I had passed down the condom
isle in the drug store, but we never really bothered to do much other than
giggle at the extra large sized ones and then run away when the manager
told us to leave. And that hadn’t been since we were thirteen. I never really
searched for lube, and had no idea what it looked like.

“For, you know…” Gerard motioned with the bottle, rolling his eyes a bit.

“Yeah,” I said, snapping myself out of my tiny flashback, hoping that Gerard
didn’t think I was completely dense and naïve. “I’ve seen it before,” I lied,
and though Gerard knew it, he moved on, placing the box down with the
condoms. I was surprised when I saw him reach in and pull out something
else from the smaller bag, and even more surprised when it was another tube
of lube.

“Why did you get so many?” I asked, before he had a chance to explain
anything.

“If we do have sex,” he explained rather quickly, still trying not to make it
sound mandatory. I felt bad for his tension, but also relieved at the same
time. “I don’t want to use hand lotion again. It works under extreme
circumstances, but if we do this again, and I do this with you, I want to do it
right.”

He placed the bottle down on my chest, and moved his hands to touch my
arms slowly. I couldn’t quite tell the emotion on his face, nor the sentiment
that sunk through to his voice, but I wished my own countenance possessed
the same features. I could see right in that moment just how much Gerard
cared for me. It was more than just him not wanting to hurt me. He actually
wanted to do this right. And it was with me of all people.

I didn’t know how I could ever portray that back to him.

“And besides,” he added on rather quickly, to as not dwell on the extreme


emotion too long, “this is warming lube.” He raised an eyebrow at me,
suggestively, taking the object into his hand.

“Really?” I asked, eyes wide. Again, I had only heard of this stuff, from late
night TV ads that I ignored. Now it held my complete attention.

“Yes.”

He raised his eyebrows again, fiddling with the lid but never taking it off. “It
feels really good too. Trust me.” The allure in his voice could not be denied,
and I felt my hips raise a little under his suggestiveness, bucking into him. He
smiled back at me, raising his eyebrows again as he untwisted the top.

“Do you want to try some?” he asked, as if it wasn’t obvious enough. I


nodded, and watched as he proceeded to pour a little into the palm of his
hand, rub it with the tip of his index finger, and then touch it to the centre of
my chest. It was only a small bead which he chose to share, but I felt the
warmth spread through me almost instantly. I closed my eyes, the feeling of
the lube on my skin, and Gerard’s body still pressed into me becoming too
much.

“Do you like it?” he asked slowly, once he had added another bead to my
skin, spreading it around more and making me flush in more than one area.

I craned my neck back and nodded, gripping his biceps lightly and raising my
hips every so often. I suddenly felt Gerard move his weight off of my body
again, but before I could protest, he had added a bigger globule to my nipple
and started to spread it around there, distracting me to no end. My eyes were
closed, so I didn’t notice as he took the thin sheet that was on the bed and
covered it around us both, giving us some privacy, and a tent to keep all the
warm air in, heating us more than the lube ever could. I missed the feeling of
him on me, but his hands went every place his body didn’t. And soon enough,
I felt his hand grip me strongly around my base.

“Feel okay?” he asked concerned, but I couldn’t care less. My eyes were
closed, and I was still gripping his biceps. I nodded and felt him add warming
lube to my cock and rub it up and down slowly, pleasure building within me. I
bit down on my lip hard, needing to find some release of things. Everything
was feeling really good, and my air of nervousness was washing away,
melting away, with each stroke of lube he used.

I placed my hands on the back of his neck, and pulled our mouths together
more. It took him by surprise, his hand that was on my cock going out to
support himself. I soon began to miss his touch, and bucked my hips into
nothing. Our actions began to get hotter and faster, just like the lubricant had
intended.

“Here,” Gerard ordered kindly, breaking the kiss and reaching up head for his
pillows. He grabbed it and slid it around to me. “Put this under you. It’ll make
things easier.” He looked me in the eyes, and I felt my heart leap into my
mouth. We were going to do it again.

I did as I was told swiftly, my hands shaking again, with more excitement
than nervousness. Gerard and I were going to have sex again, but like he
said, we were going to do it right. I would have a pillow to keep myself
supported, we had lube – warming lube – and he may even wear a condom. It
was going to be better than the first time, I had a feeling, and not only that,
but we were going to be face to face. The idea scared me, and thrilled me at
the same time.

Once in position, Gerard lowered himself so he was level with my thighs. I


bent my knees and spread my legs more, feeling totally exposed. He looked
up at me for approval before he started to touch me, twirling his thumb at my
inner thighs before he worked his way to my cock again. He pressed his
fingers once around my entrance, but stopped before he put anything inside.

“You bled last time…” he mentioned, catching me totally off guard. “I want to
be careful.”

“How did you know?” My breath caught in my throat, and I could feel deep
rooted embarrassment once again.

“I saw the spot.”

“Shit,” I breathed through clenched teeth.

“Don’t worry. It’s natural. I bled a lot more my first time.”

I let my eyes wander to Gerard, his statement surprising me. There were
some days that I totally forgot he must have had another dozen people
before he had me. I felt a pang of jealousy enter my system, but ushered it
away. He may have had other people before me, but right now in this
moment, I was the one he was with. He had even left and come back, and it
was still all to me.

“But your sheets…” I added, looking over to where I had located that damned
spot beforehand. “I’m sorry…”

“No, I’m sorry,” he insisted again, guilt creeping its way where it didn’t
belong. “I don’t give a damn about the sheets. You’re more important. I don’t
want to make you bleed again. Right now, it’s so soon after, you probably
will.”

“So…” I trailed off, thinking there was more to his statement.


“So, I’m just going to finger you,” he explained. “Just like last night, but a
better job. I went too fast before, and I want you to get used to it.” He
paused, reconsidering his actions. “That is, if you do…”

“Yeah,” I approved back.

I was a little disappointed we weren’t going to have sex, but I trusted him. He
knew what he was doing, and the dozens people he may have been with
before me suddenly came in handy. If we both had been as awkward and
naïve as I was, then the sex may not have even happened for sheer
ignorance of what to do. Knowing my luck, someone would have probably
poked an eye out, or we would have gotten stuck.

Gerard started slow, touching my inner thighs and pressing up against my


hole for the longest time before he actually inserted himself. I cringed and
receded back by instinct, but settled down once he was in deeper. He kept
his free hand on my waist, toying with my skin ever so slightly to provide a
distraction. He brought his lips to my kneecaps and legs every once in awhile,
planting a soft kiss when he wasn’t whispering small encouraging words. I
fisted the sheets with my own hands, sometimes reaching up and gripping his
biceps. The pillow helped significantly, and the position felt almost natural.
He used a lot of lube, so soon enough, two of his fingers were gliding in and
out of me without too much pain. There would be times he’d hit an old wound
from the night before, and a twinge of pain would ripple through me, but it
was minuscule. Gerard knew what to do with himself, but he still seemed
dissatisfied. When I did have my eyes open, I took him in briefly, and all I saw
was his narrowed countenance. It was almost like he was searching for
something inside of me.

Thankfully, that search came to an abrupt end.

“Unngh,” I groaned, making the first vocalization since the entire act had
started. He had brushed up against something inside of me, causing my
whole body to tremble. I vaguely remembered the feeling from the night
before, near the end of the act, when we were both tired and sweat-
drenched. Only this time, it was much better. Gerard had hit it almost dead
on, and there wasn’t as much pain. I was relaxed, too, and it made all the
difference.

“Finally, I got it,” Gerard breathed out proudly. I didn’t open my eyes to look,
but I could tell he was smiling.

“What-what?” I asked, hoping Gerard understood my inquiry.

“It’s your prostate,” he answered. He twisted his face in concentration for a


second, hitting the spot again, and making me cry out.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, logic getting broken down into small fragments
inside of me. “Why does that feel so good?”

“I have no idea, but I’m sure glad it does. It makes all the pain worth it,”
Gerard agreed, brushing his two fingers up against me again. All I could do to
agree was moan, and fuck, that was enough.

“Males can come without anyone or anything touching them by hitting the
prostate enough times,” Gerard spouted off more random knowledge, and as
if on cue, brushed that place again. Each and every time he did it, and I
moaned, I swear I could hear him laugh and smile in pride. I didn’t care what
he did at this point, so long as he kept hitting it.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, replying to his comment once I had collected my head a
little bit. “I want to try that.”

“I figured you would,” Gerard replied, shifting his weight a bit. He kept his
fingers inside of me, but desisted movement for a minute. I was glad,
honestly, because it gave me time to catch my breath and actually look at
him again. Sure enough, that arrogant smile was plastered all over him. It
was slightly different this time, because at least I could share in his pride.
Hell, I was his pride right then and fuck, that felt amazing.
“Here, take my hand so you don’t touch yourself,” Gerard directed me,
holding his palm face up. I gave him it willingly, and felt another surge of
butterflies shoot through my stomach as he held my hand in his own. We
locked eyes for a moment, and I wanted to kiss him, but he was too far away
and it would have just been awkward. He squeezed my hand tight, and that
seemed to be enough.

I kept my other hand gripping his shoulder as he continued to finger me,


determined to reach this new goal. I had no idea why I wanted to do this, to
impress him maybe, or just to see what my body could do. I had no idea
there was even a place that felt good inside my ass, let alone it having an
official name and actually being able to make me come. It was so new, and
so weird, I wanted to know everything about it. And I had a feeling, from the
abundance of knowledge that Gerard seemed to posses, that he was going to
be a good teacher. We were going to move on from art now, and start
branching into other things. He was going to teach me about my body, about
sex, and all these things I had never had a chance to learn before. I had
always wanted to learn them, but I never thought in this way. Now, as his
finger brushed my prostate yet again, I couldn’t imagine a better setting.

Gerard’s fingers were fucking amazing. I never could figure out just what he
was doing to them to make them feel so good (other than hitting my
prostate) but I didn’t care. I lost count of how many fingers he had in me;
when he scissored me, it felt like more, but there couldn’t have been any
more than three. My cock was hurting it was so close to coming, but though
he kept hitting the place inside me again and again, nothing was happening
yet. And soon enough, I lost patience. I took one of my hands off his
shoulders and started to touch myself in a hurry, mumbling something to
Gerard in the form of an excuse. I had only run my hand up and down my
length a few times before I felt his fingers slide out of me, and his body shift
upwards in the bed. He ran his hand over my own, cupping it and making it
stop as he placed his lips against mine.

“I want to…” he demanded weakly after the kiss, and I couldn’t say no, even
if my vocal chords worked. I took his tongue into my mouth immediately, and
let his hand take over.
It was only a few short thrusts and then I was done, my groans muffled by his
kiss on me again. I felt myself come onto my chest and his hand, and though
I felt guilty about getting him dirty, it was the farthest thought from my mind.
I instinctively pulled his body closer to my own, making us even closer than
before. He gave into the pull, and kissed me all the way up and down my
neck until I came back down to reality.

“You okay?” he whispered into my ear, once he noticed my breathing was


normal. He placed his hand on the side of my face, turning me in to look at
him to the side. I nodded dopily, and stared back up at the ceiling.

“Oh,” I realized, moments later, when I still felt his heat next to me. I looked
at him awkwardly, wondering how I should phrase my offer. “Do you want me
to…?”

“No,” he said immediately, and placed a quick kiss over my mouth to silence
me further. “I’m fine. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I nodded, not wanting to argue with him. I didn’t exactly know what I had
offered to do per se, but I was sort of glad in the end that he had said no. I
was nervous enough when he was doing things to me. I had no idea what to
do in the first place, and wanted to avoid it as long as possible. I breathed a
contented sigh, knowing it would probably be awhile.

As we lay there for awhile, just breathing under the light sheet he had now
pulled up around us, I let my mind wander. I could hear our breathing both
come down from frantic pants to shallow breaths, and it sounded so
wonderful, and so fucking natural. I had never felt so comfortable with
someone in a long time. I didn’t even feel that weird being naked around him.
He was just as exposed as I was, and our bodies were shielding each other. It
wasn’t really that bad of a thing to be, and I appreciated the fact that I could
be that way with him. The awkward air from before had been shed with the
many layers of clothing, and even Gerard’s mannerisms were back to their
normal self, except I was right there next to him.

“You should call your parents soon,” he thought out loud later, but made no
effort of letting me out of the bed. He still held my hand tightly from before,
fingers interlocked. I squeezed it back, and turned around to face him.

“Just give me a few more minutes,” I smiled, and started to kiss him again. It
was what I wanted, after all, so he couldn’t argue.

Chapter Sixteen

Comfortable and Confidence [3]

“I was actually serious about the no clothing rule,” Gerard mentioned


casually. I had just pried myself off of his body, succumbing to the fact that I
had to call my parents soon before they started phoning around first, trying
to figure out where I was.

I lifted the sheet and got out of the bed, the much colder air from the
apartment coming around my body and shocking me. I realized that I was
very naked still, and scanned the room for where my clothing had been flung
from before. Gerard’s eyes had been closed contently when I had gotten up,
and I tucked the sheet back around his thought-to-be sleeping body on the
bed, moving quietly to not wake him. I moved silently on the balls of my feet,
the floorboards creaking no matter how little pressure I applied to them. The
moment I started to slide my boxers over my small hips was when the
vocalization had occurred, and the sleeping Gerard was awake and alert once
more.

“What?” I stammered, turning around quickly and pulling the rest of my


boxers on myself.

I looked at him in bed, with his arm hanging lazily over his head, his
prominent dark armpit hair furling out against the pillow case. His eyes were
open now, and a small smile was spread across his face. He had this joking
tone to his voice, but the way he nodded and turned his grin into a smug
smile made me question him again. I was used to questioning Gerard though,
and now that the huge barrier had been broken between us, there wasn’t a
frantic nature to have the answer to these questions. After all, some
questions didn’t even have answers. Gerard was probably just being himself,
seeing what he could say and get away with.

“Yeah, okay,” I nodded back to him, a sarcastic edge to my voice. I un-tensed


my shoulders as I walked over to his side of the bed, looking down on him
with my own self-righteous smile on my face, trying to play into his joke. I let
my hand dangle over his free one, and he tugged on my fingers delicately,
looking up at me unwaveringly.

“You’re really funny sometimes,” I teased him, my body still invigorated from
the orgasm I had encompassed ten minutes ago. “But I should call my
parents.”

“You should know by now that I’m not funny on purpose,” he explained. “It
just happens when no one appreciates my art and my interpretation.”

I let go of his hand and started to chuckle to myself as I walked away,


listening to him ramble on and on about art. It seemed like the old art
teacher was back in Gerard, his suave and naturally sarcastic nature coming
through. It wasn’t such a scary thought in my head anymore to have The
Artist Gerard back as it had been when he first entered the apartment. He
wasn’t blocking me out this time, and not letting his feelings come through.
He was just talking about art again, and rambling about something that I
would struggle to understand later.

I used his phone rather quickly, clutching the ivory receiver in my hand as
ringing echoed in my ear. I could feel my heart pumping inside my chest, just
the thought of my parents saying no to my request being enough to work me
up. My mother answered the phone again, and I was so relieved. She seemed
just as tired as she had been the night before, only this time there was no
excuse for it. It was not the middle of the night again, and I had not broken
curfew. I didn’t know the time at all, but it was still morning, I was fairly
certain, and earlier than I would have normally gotten up on any normal
Saturday. I sometimes slept until the early afternoon, so seeing the sun
before it hit its zenith in the sky was a change for me. I didn’t need sleep
anymore because there were so many things I wanted to see with my eyes
wide open.

Despite her weariness, my mother agreed once again to let me stay over at
Travis’s house this time. I figured I should switch the names up to make
things more believable. I felt guilty lying to my mother, especially when she
sounded so worn down. There was a brief second I considered the fact that
she may have known where I was and that’s why she was drained, but I
dismissed it right away. No one knew I was here. No one could have known I
was here. Gerard had been the only person that had left the apartment, and
there was just no way that people could tell he had been with me. Sam and
Travis were probably doing something asinine this weekend, spending most
of it plastered. I doubted they would have even noticed I was there, and I
doubted they even missed my presence when I wasn’t.

I hung up the phone after a few brief minutes of conversation with my mom,
and then slinked my way back into Gerard’s room. I was still only wearing my
boxers, and despite the warm glow from the sun, I missed the warmth his
body provided me.

When I arrived back into his room, he was still in bed, his eyes closed
contentedly as his chest rose and fell under the sheet. I smiled to myself,
thinking of how calm he looked. I wondered how much earlier he had gotten
up from me, especially since he had had time to go for a walk, and get the
supplies. When we had been kissing on the bed, he had smelled faintly of
aftershave as well, meaning he must have had time to shower too.

He must have gotten up at dawn, I told myself. He looked really exhausted.

I decided that I wouldn’t crawl next to him just yet, not wanting to move the
bed too much and wake him. Instead, I looked around the floor, trying to
gather up my clothing and maybe tidy the mess I had already made. Only,
when I started shifting through the fabric on his hardwood floor, I saw no sign
of my red t-shirt I had worn to his house. It should have stood out brightly in
the dull drabness of the room, but all I could see were his black shades of
fabric everywhere.
“What are you looking for?” I heard him call suddenly, making me jump a
little. I had been crouching and looking behind his nightstand when the voice
had hit my eardrums. I looked over at him and saw that he was as wide
awake as ever, propping his body up on one elbow. He was smiling
mischievously, but I had no idea why.

“My shirt…” I answered, trailing off as I continued to search. I was suddenly


glad that I was in a crouching position, covering my semi-exposed body a
little more.

“It’s gone?” he questioned, cocking an eyebrow, mock inquiry in his voice. I


locked eyes with him and when they flared, I knew something was up.

He had taken my shirt.

“Give it back,” I whined, half-playfully, half-seriously.

I moved myself to the bed, sitting next to him and letting my hands wander
all around the sheets. Since he was still under the covers, I figured the shirt
couldn’t have gotten far; it had to still be in the same bed. But my search
came back with nothing, and Gerard wasn’t budging with any of his
information, either.

“I told you,” he stated again, matter-of-factly. “It’s a rule in my apartment. If


you stay the weekend, no clothing is allowed.” He smiled another one of his
wry smiles, baring his nicotine stained teeth a little bit.

His smile was infectious, and despite my vulnerability, I found myself


returning the gesture. He seemed relieved from my grin, and reached out to
touch my bare shoulder caringly.
“Vivian abides to the same rule when she comes over,” Gerard informed me,
bringing back the mention of his friend who I only knew without her clothing
on. “I figured it was only natural for you to follow the rule as well.”

I sighed, teasing him a little. “Since when have we been good at following
rules?”

“Very funny,” he replied coyly, running his fingers up my shoulder, barely-


touching.

“I’m not funny on purpose,” I mocked, pulling away from him. “It just
happens when no one appreciates my art and my interpretation.” My
countenance turned smug and playful, tipping my chin up at Gerard, who
shook his head at me.

“That’s not going to get you your shirt back.”

“Fine,” I insisted, forcing myself to stand up. “I was thinking of having a


shower anyway, and I don’t need it there.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Gerard insisted, motioning to the bathroom just outside his
door with his hands. “It’s all yours.”

I smiled as I got up quickly, rolling my eyes at Gerard as he tried to pry off my


boxers in the same motion. I held a tight grip on their elastic, and walked to
the bathroom avoiding another incident of near-clothing removal.

I didn’t know why I was so insistent on keeping myself clothed. It wasn’t like
he had never seen me naked before, or anyone else had seen me naked. And
he was naked too. He had the barrier of a sheet to protect himself, but he
was still bare underneath. Maybe it was the whole idea of protection that I
liked about my clothing, I thought to myself, starting to run the water in the
shower stall. I wanted to keep my clothes on me, at least one article, because
I felt safe that way. It had been what I always known, and since everything
around me was so new, I needed something to cling to. And that happened to
be my boxers.

Once the room started to fill with steam, I knew I had to finally discard the
last layer of clothing around myself in order to get myself clean again. I felt a
bit grimy from all the actions I had been doing over the past twenty-four
hours. I was clammy from sweat and other liquids that had been secreted on
my body, and I needed a final burst of hot water to wake me up.

I always felt odd having showers in other people’s places, but Gerard was
different than other people. Besides, he smelled so good already, I wanted to
do the same. I made sure the bathroom door was locked when I took off my
shorts, and in one final act of paranoia, I placed them under the sink for
hiding. Once under the jet stream from the shower, I located many bottles in
the corner, most of which had weird names I didn’t recognize. I decided to
forgo using any kind of product, just in case I didn’t know what it was, and
just ran the water over my hair. I found a bar of soap eventually, and finished
my cleansing ritual.

After my shower, I stepped into the steam filled room, and reached out to the
towel wrack, but instead of gripping the fuzzy items I had seen only fifteen
minutes earlier, I grabbed a bare wrack instead. The towels were gone, and
as I searched frantically under the cupboard, I found my boxers missing, too.
The door was slightly ajar, meaning that Gerard had somehow undone the
lock and come in, enforcing his new ‘rule’ to the full extent.

Gerard was smarter than he looked, and that was saying something.

I had no idea whether to be angry or embarrassed or indifferent. I knew he


was probably doing all this to get a rise out of me, to see what I’d do or say,
but I was not in the mood for this. When he did that with art, it was different.
He was teaching me something, or showing me how he thought. This was
something completely different that I did not want to deal with. Sex was
personal, he had told me less than an hour earlier. He seemed like such a
different person a few hours earlier. He had once been so concerned with my
feelings and making sure I was okay, and now he was stealing my boxers?
Declaring that it was a rule to be naked in his house? So what if Vivian had
followed it. That didn’t mean I had to as well. This was not what I wanted.

I waited for a long time in the bathroom, but I knew I eventually had to come
out. My hair was sopping wet and water dripped down from my body like I
was a cloud shedding rain, but I knew I had to go. If I got his hallway and his
shit wet, maybe he would think twice about not letting me have towels.

I walked out of the room in a huff, knowing that if I was going to do it, I had to
do it quick. The air rushed over me, chilling me to the bone, and I could only
cover so much of myself with my one hand. I kept that hand over my flaccid
cock, trying to hide at least some of my shame. I knew my whole body was
red, from my cheeks to my toes with embarrassment, but no amount of
covering – even if I did get my clothing back – was going to make that any
better. I had to live with it for now.

“Where did you put my boxers?” I demanded once I set foot in the hallway. I
looked into his room at first, found an empty bed and had to retrace my
attention to where I heard some paper’s rustling. He was in the living area,
lying down on his putrid orange couch with the Saturday paper open and in
his lap. And that was all that was in his lap, too. He was as naked as me, only
he was much more comfortable with the idea.

He looked up from his paper haughtily and smiled, shaking his head.

“I told you, Frank,” he said calmly, flipping a page in his newspaper, casually
glancing up at me from between the lines. “No clothing. It’s a rule.”

I heaved an aggravated sigh and shook my head, causing beads of water to


fly and land on his reading material. He merely chuckled and turned the
page, unaffected by my struggle. I stood awkwardly, with my hands over my
package, getting colder by the minute. I looked around the room for
something, anything, hoping to find where he had hidden my clothing. I
wanted to argue with him, but found it harder than I had anticipated in the
bathroom. I was mad at him, yes, but I knew he was joking around. I knew he
cared for me deep down inside. As he peered up from the printed lines, I saw
that glimmer of green. He was still concerned about hurting me, but I had
assured him so many times already that this was okay he finally believed me,
and was going to do what he wanted now. I told him he could, and now I had
to follow through on my words, because I knew he always would on his. I
didn’t like his joke all that much, but I could see in his eyes and body
language that he was only teasing me. Or testing me.

That’s the thing, I told myself, a thought catching in my head. Maybe he was
just testing me, seeing how I would cope under these circumstances. He did
this all the time before, why was this any different?

I turned around the room quickly, searching for something. I didn’t know what
I was looking for until my eyes laid on it. The black bedroom door. I ran to his
room, his cry of confusion a distant memory. I reached for the sheets on the
bed, taking the one that had once covered us and tucked it all around my still
soaking wet body. I heard his footsteps echo slowly behind me, walking into
his room and then sighing at his defeat.

“You’re a tricky one,” he joked around, standing beside me.

I had the hugest grin on my face as I held my arms stiffly at my sides, pride
oozing from the fact that I had beaten the artist. He had once held the upper
hand in this little game we were playing, but now that I realized it was just a
game, I was much younger and more agile. I was sure I could win this.

“I’ll get you eventually,” he jested, a caring edge to his voice. His arm
extended and he placed it around my shoulder, catching me off guard. His
face was no longer twisted in a scoff of arrogance; he looked as if he just
wanted a hug. He was still very much naked next to me, but I didn’t let my
eyes divert any further down below. Instead, I let my own pride fall from my
countenance, and leaned into the embrace.

He ran one of his hands into my sticky hair, and the other down my back,
rubbing over the lump the sheet formed. I only had one arm around his naked
waist, the other still clutching the front of my new shield. I suddenly felt
Gerard’s sneakiness come through as he slipped his fingers over the sheet,
trying in vain to pry it off. I pushed myself away from him playfully, and over-
exaggerated my grip on the towel.

“All right,” he insisted, waving his arms in the air as a temporary defeat.
“When you’re ready to be naked, I’ll be here.”

I nodded at the mutual consensus, and leaned into his trusting body again,
just in time to feel him place a kiss on my forehead. My grip on the sheet
tightened, though his hands no longer wandered where they weren’t
supposed to be. In his arms, I felt the safety that clothing provided and the
sheet stood in for. But I was going to keep it on, at least, for now. I had no
idea when he would pull more of his tricks on me, but I’d have the whole
weekend to find out.

***

As the day worn on, I discovered that he was fairly adamant about keeping
me naked. Only, he was a lot more subtler in his appeals. He decided to make
his bed soon after our small embrace, but I eventually pieced together that
he was stripping his mattress so I wouldn’t have any more chances at hiding
myself if I lost the sheet I was in. He did the same with anything else I could
use to cover my body with, like his own clothing, the pillow cases – even the
small tea towels he kept in the kitchen for dishes. He gathered them up and
placed them all in his armoire, attaching a lock to the front. I watched him do
this, and I didn’t know what to think. I was too transfixed with the way his
muscles moved as he struggled against closing the door to really form any
kind of opinion just yet. I still had my own sheet, which I was not letting out of
my sight, so I was safe. Gerard never pushed me to take it off again, but he
made his preferred choice very clear.

He wanted me naked.

He himself remained wearing nothing but the pink hue of his flesh, even as
he did the most mundane activities. He finished reading his paper in the
nude, ate breakfast, and fed his bird, all the while not caring if he was
undressed. I watched him a lot of the time while he did this, just in fucking
awe that he could.

The whole concept of being naked outside of sex frightened me a little. The
only other times I had been naked outside those conditions was at the
doctors, or being born. And neither of those experiences had been the best in
the world. Even when I was a little child and used to run around naked like
there was no tomorrow, I had been scolded for that. Gerard wasn’t scolding
me; he was encouraging me and demanding that I be naked. He had started
to in a joking manner, but that had only been to get my attention; to start a
brief game so things weren’t so serious anymore. We had engaged in enough
long talks and discussions about our future, how wrong this was, and how we
didn’t want to get hurt. We needed something light and airy to occupy our
heads.

We needed to just run around naked.

Well, at least he did. I was still perfectly content with my sheet. Gerard
wasn’t exactly happy with my newfound clothing, but he let it go. When I was
ready I would take it off (which I hoped that would be before Sunday night
because I was pretty sure that I would gather some unwanted attention if I
walked down the street wearing nothing but his blue sheets), I would take it
off. I didn’t think about it too much, or worry to that extent. I felt safe with
Gerard, I always had. I just didn’t feel safe with myself.

I found myself constantly watching my sheet, guarding it almost. The


moment I had let my defenses down, my boxers had been stolen, so I was not
going to let that happen again. I wasn’t protecting my makeshift shield from
Gerard per se. I didn’t even let my sheet that far out of my sight when I was
alone for a brief minute when Gerard went to the washroom. In fact, my grip
got tighter, my security wavering. I didn’t want to drop the linen and be
totally exposed again. Even if I was alone, that feeling was not something I
wanted to accompany just yet.

“Why don’t you want to be naked, Frank?” Gerard asked me once he came
back from the bathroom. I was sitting on the putrid orange couch, and felt his
body ease and shift in next to mine. He placed a hand on my leg and moved
it up and down, but it was purely comfort. He was not trying to disrobe me.

“Umm,” I started, my eyes darting around the room nervously as I tried to


explain myself. My words never sounded very poetic or even made that much
sense inside my head compared to his, so I had a hard time articulating what
I wanted to portray. “I don’t know. I just don’t want to be. Is that good
enough of a reason?”

Gerard laughed a little, amused by my plea for approval. “Not for me it isn’t.”

I bit my tongue, unsure of how to please him further. He stopped rubbing my


thigh, and leaned forward on his legs, propping himself up with his elbows.
“There has to be a reason you don’t want to be naked. I’m curious as to what
it is.” He glanced over at me, looking me up and down as he took a frayed
corner of the sheet into his hand. “I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t seen you
that way before.”

“I know…” I looked away, his gaze too truthful. “It’s just, different now.”

“Different how?” he asked, but there was an air to his voice that made me
think he already knew the answer.

“I don’t know…” This seemed to be my new favourite phrase. “You’ve already


seen me. Why does this matter?”

“Yes, I have, but that was during sex.” He said the word sex almost as if it
was something forbidden. It fell out of his mouth like a delicacy, and he
cradled it inside his open palms. “This has nothing to do with sex now.”

“Really?” I asked, in complete shock.


In my mind, I had always equated getting naked to having sex. That was the
only reason you got naked; to fuck. And you had to be naked to fuck. Every
last bit of clothing off. That was one of the reasons it was so scary. I had by-
passed that fear now, if only temporarily. If Gerard wanted to have sex now, I
was pretty sure I could undo my sheet and go at it. I had earlier on his bed,
and the night before. But this wasn’t about sex at all, he was right. Gerard
didn’t want to have sex; I snuck a quick glance down between his legs, and
nothing was happening. He wasn’t turned on, and it was still too soon (and I
was too nervous) for me to be as well. If this wasn’t about sex though, I still
didn’t see where being naked came in. It was like eating without being
hungry in my mind. There was no need.

“Yes,” Gerard nodded, imploring and honest nature to his voice. “I don’t care
if we ever have sex again. But I want to see you naked.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to be comfortable with me.”

“I was naked for sex,” I told him reiterating the thoughts in my head. “Isn’t
that enough?”

“But what about for yourself?”

“Huh?” I asked, gripping the sheet tighter. This sheet was for myself. I didn’t
want to be naked, and this protected me from it.

Gerard sighed a little, realizing that this whole concept – whatever it was –
was not sinking in anymore. He looked around the room, lips pursed in
thought.

“Are you confident, Frank?” he asked suddenly.


“Ummm, I don’t know,” I stated again, completely thrown off guard. Why did
he just randomly switch topics like that? He was going to kill me with
confusion if he kept this up, or if my embarrassment didn’t take me first. “I
guess.”

“I’m confident,” he stated, as if I had ever doubted that in him. He smiled to


himself, vanity approaching. “I’m really confident.”

He stood up from the couch suddenly, turning around until he faced me. He
perched himself in front of me gallantly, hands on his hips and chin tipped
upwards.

“I’m confident enough I can walk around my apartment naked all day, and I
do,” he started up again, moving and walking around, mimicking his words.
He stopped by his dove cage, his paint supplies, and his black door,
sauntering like a madman. A naked madman. I watched him in amazement,
still perplexed and intrigued by what was going on.

“You would not believe how many times I had to put on clothing before you
came over,” he mentioned, sighing lightheartedly at a distant memory.

“Why did you?” I asked, before I realized what I had said. He cocked his
eyebrow at me, shaking his head with a dull laugh.

“Well, first of all, I would have scared you off if I had answered the door
naked, now wouldn’t I?” He looked at me with pursed lips but didn’t wait for
me to respond. “That aside, I put on clothing because you weren’t ready to
see me naked. You were never supposed to see me naked, essentially. And I
was never supposed to see you, either.”

He grew somber there, his eyes falling down to his unclothed body. I wasn’t
sure, but I could have sworn I saw him scowl at himself. He was so far from
me, though he was only at his mural. I wanted him to walk closer to the
couch again, if only so he would look up instead of gravely down. We both
knew this was wrong, but so far since we started playing our small game, we
had completely forgotten that part of everything.

Gerard recovered quickly, mostly because he had to, and started to talk
again, looking straight ahead.

“But we did see each other and we gave ourselves to each other. We were
naked to have sex at first, but now,” he looked over at me, and began to walk
slowly back. I had been pouring myself over the edge of the couch watching
him, but now sunk down into my seat. He sat next to me once again, and
rested a heavy hand on my leg.

“Now, we can be naked in other ways. We’re comfortable with each other, if
you let yourself be,” he added, and left his voice open for interpretation.

I was never good at his interpretations. Even for art, I had needed his
assistance. This went way beyond art, though. We had left that behind ages
ago, and I didn’t know if we would ever see it again. I knew we would, or at
least Gerard would. He couldn’t just leave that behind without a single
thought. At least art was something three-dimensional. I could grasp it and
hold it in my hands. At least if I couldn’t make my own interpretation, I could
appreciate the solidity of the object, the beauty of it. I had no idea what I
could latch onto here, except for the sheet around me.

“I don’t get where you’re going with this,” I finally stated, my voice dead and
dull sounding.

“It’s all about confidence, Frank,” he informed me, motioning greatly with his
arms. “In order to be comfortable with me, you need to be comfortable with
yourself. Both with clothing and without. In order to be comfortable with
yourself, you need to be confident.”

Once his lips had articulated that God-forsaken word, it all seemed to click.
He wanted me to be naked, not to play a game, not to piss me off, or fuck
with my head. He wanted me to be naked because he wanted to feel closer to
me. He wanted me to feel comfortable enough with him that I could just take
off my clothing and walk around without a care in the world. We had bonded
so much when we had sex, but we had skipped a lot of steps in the process.
We rushed; Gerard admitted that. He also admitted that he wanted to do
everything better now. The right way. I thought he had just meant sex before.
That we weren’t going to skip all of the steps or bases (did gay sex have
bases, and if so, what were they?) and we were going to take our time.

But this wasn’t about sex; there was so much more to it than just sex. There
were the emotional aspects to everything, not just the physical. He wanted to
make sure I was comfortable – not comfortable in that I didn’t bleed anymore
when we fucked, but comfortable in that I could take my clothing off around
him. He was okay with himself, he wanted me to be okay with myself, and
have us both witness the other.

He had realized early on that this wasn’t as easy for me as it was for him. He
couldn’t just skip right to being naked and nothing else. He couldn’t just
make a rule and expect me to understand why it was in place. He had to go
back to the root of everything, and that was confidence. I needed to be okay
with myself before I was okay with him. And it was clear that I was not sure
with myself just yet. I was getting there; I was definitely a lot better off than
when I had first come into his apartment. I barely knew myself then, barely
had any confidence. And that had been with my clothing on.

The moment I stepped foot in his door, I started to build up what I had been
missing with that protective shied because it was imperative at the
beginning. Essentially, Gerard should have never taught me this lesson, but
there were some things you couldn’t change or control. Gerard understood
that, and he was making do with the situation at hand, and so was I, but
much slower. I had enough confidence now so I was able to be naked during
sex. It just kind of stopped there. I thought I was done. Just like I had on the
outside world when Sam and Travis had been my mentors. Gerard was now
my mentor (amongst other things) and he was showing me right now that
there was so much more to everything. Different angles, different
interpretations.
And that’s when it hit me again, another realization, coming with a full force
of electricity. This was art all over again. He was still my art teacher, but the
lessons were diverging. He was now teaching me the ways of the world, this
time using sex and our relationship as the main example. He wasn’t just
teaching me how sex worked in the physical sense like he had that morning,
it was so much deeper. When we had fucked the night before, I realized what
it meant to be everything. And right then, he was trying to teach me how to
be comfortable and confidence disguised in the folds of flesh. This was art all
over again, even if the paintings weren’t present just yet. He was an artist; he
couldn’t give up his craft, but he could mold it in many other ways.

Suddenly, I felt his hand begin to reach down from where it lay on my waist,
his fingers dancing eagerly where the sheet was bunched together,
concealing myself and my confidence in hiding. He began to push his hand
under the fabric, drawing it down slowly and more seriously than he had been
the times before, glancing from my body to my eyes cautiously. He and I both
had realized that this was no longer a game we were playing, but a lesson he
was teaching. And he wanted to be that kind and caring teacher I had
possessed, leading me gently into the world.

Before I realized all of this, I would have fought him off; I would have fought
that naked and exposed feeling. Now that I knew Gerard was only trying to
teach me, starting different kinds of lessons, I let him push the sheet off. He
released me from the cotton prison, kicking the dreaded object away and off
of my bare body. He was about to get up and store it in his lockdown closet
so I couldn’t change my mind, but when I touched his shoulder as he began
to move, he saw the look in my eyes. I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither
would he. The sheet would stay on the floor as we got up together to walk
around the apartment, confidence exuding from our naked bodies.

Gerard rose to the occasion first, extending his thick palm to me which I took
eagerly. I was shaky on my feet, mostly because I had no idea what I was
doing. Feelings and thoughts and fucking everything were washing over me,
and I was glad he had a strong grip on my hand to lead me easier. We started
up with the same walk he had taken only moments ago around the
apartment, hand in hand. He shimmied a little as his feet went forward, and
he encouraged me to do the same. I felt the awkward sensation I had been
avoiding of my bare flesh out of context, but Gerard’s hand in mine made it
easier for me to keep walking, talking and eventually, shimmying right next
to him.
“There you go,” he smiled happily, just as I gave my first hip thrust. I felt
myself blush all over, and secretly beam over his approval. With his genuine
smile still planted on his face, he pulled my hand high up in the air and over
his shoulder, locking us into an embrace. I felt his naked body against my
own, and I knew what it was like to be confident.

I was getting there, I told myself, but more importantly, I was ready to learn.
There was so much more I didn’t know yet.

Chapter Seventeen

Beauty and Freedom [1]

Once I was able to open my mind to Gerard, now that we were naked and
exposed, I began to notice all the other things he was trying to teach me. It
seemed like all of the actions he did had some other meaning to them;
something rooted deeper than face value, something to be interpreted like
art. And though I knew that I was supposed to be making those
interpretations, I couldn’t help but be distracted most of the time. I would be
sitting and listening to him talk at the kitchen table, and then randomly zone
out. I’d look off to the side and just think. It was an action so necessary and
so foreign at the same time; it began to feel like I was relearning to live all
over again. As if I was a newborn with fresh eyes and a sponge-like mind that
could take in everything I needed, and clean off all the dirt I had accumulated
before.

I couldn’t believe I was at his house. I couldn’t believe I was going to be there
until Monday – and that it was still only Saturday afternoon. Gerard and I
essentially had so much time on our hands, even if he would never let me see
a clock. The main fact that took centre stage in my mind of impossibilities
unleashed was that we had had sex. And that I was still naked from it all.
Being naked all the time really took some getting used to. It was weird feeling
myself just hang out there with no support. I never liked to be constricted
when I did wear clothing; I bought boxers and the loosest pants I could find,
but the breathing space I gave to my skin between fabric was so much
different than what was thrust upon me wearing only myself. It was almost as
if I had been suffocated before, but with the removal of clothing that had
been a gag, my skin really could breathe again – and now it was sucking up
all the oxygen it could get.

I felt light and ethereal at times, then weighed down and clammy the next. I
became aware of how my skin folded, something I was normally (and happily)
blind to. I never realized that the slight pudge I was used to feeling as I
slipped on my jeans creased as much as it did. It made me feel fat at first,
and I tried to wrap my arms around myself to hide my flaws. That was, until I
saw the exact same markings on Gerard. His skin rolled and bunched
together just like mine did. His was even worse in a way; he was older, and
the skin had less elasticity. He sagged at some parts, like his thighs and legs,
but it didn’t turn me off. It didn’t turn me on that much either, but it did
something far better.

It made me feel comfortable with my own body. I had flaws, I could see them
and feel them now, but fuck, so did he. Only he didn’t care about his flaws.
He sat down and talked, not caring that if he hunched at a certain angle,
more rolls would become visible. He didn’t care about his wrinkles, or the
sagging skin he had in some places. He just accepted it – flaunted it. It was
amazing, empowering, and I unwrapped my arms from around my sides,
exposing myself like he was. He smiled at me and continued talking, shifting
his weight to the most unflattering position and just not caring about it. I
couldn’t do that just yet, but I was getting there.

It wasn’t only when I was sitting down that I would notice the difference in my
body. When I stood up and walked, everything felt like it was falling down. I
didn’t have the thick barrier of cloth, or even anything like a backpack to
carry. I was just carrying myself, and that impossible to describe. I would
walk odd at some points, totally thrown off by the new rhythm I seemed to
have. I looked down as I walked, but had to stop that when all I could see was
my cock moving haphazardly. I tried to avoid moving at all for the most part,
but Gerard seemed to like switching the locales where we talked. There
weren’t many places we could go in the small apartment, but he was
determined to cover them all.
I had to walk with my head up, looking around to avoid watching my cock
dangle in front of me, but even that felt like a new and unmarked territory. I
always walked looking down; it was just what I did. When I walked to his
apartment, I just didn’t want to see the gray and drab streets of Jersey, nor
did I want to see people in my high school all that much either when I
ventured there. Now that I was forced to look up, it was a completely new
experience, budding from a previous one. With my head up and my clothing
off, I had a new skip to my step, something I couldn’t place right away.

“It’s confidence,” Gerard informed me, placing a hand on my back as he led


me to the bench by the window. “Pretty strange, isn’t it?”

I nodded vigorously as I looked at him; really looked at him. It was the first
time I had actually seen eye to eye with him on a literal standpoint. I was
short for my age and there had always been a small gap in between our
statures. As I looked into his olive eyes, however, there was no gap - no
nothing. We were on the same playing field; both naked, both exposed, and
now, both confident.

We went to the window and sat down together, both of us unashamed and
unabashed by our bodies. We were both men after all, we had the same
parts, but we still appreciated the small differences. Gerard always held me
in some form or another, either a hand on my knee, thigh, or in my own as he
talked, and it made me feel more connected to the conversation, even if I did
zone out every once in awhile.

Gerard talked a lot, I noticed, trying to derive meaning from the smallest
things. We stared at a vase for over an hour at one point, and I had only been
startled back into reality by his lips against mine. That was pretty much how I
was always brought back into reality; an embrace from Gerard. His hands
would roam into my inner thighs, his lips would press on my neck, or his
tongue would hover in and out of my ear. He had to touch me so I knew I was
still there. And though everything was sexual for Gerard, his embraces were
not always sexual invites. It took me awhile to learn that, too.
We were on his ugly orange couch sitting and conversing, Gerard explaining
some painting technique to me that I had never heard of. While his lips
fluttered between the exotic words, his hand had oh-so casually slipped over
my knee, and began to make its way further up, never quite reaching my
cock. He stopped about halfway, just resting his palm on my skin and twirling
his thumb softly, as his other hand motioned wildly, continuing his story. I
was still sitting awkwardly, adjusting to the feel of the fabric on my ass when
he did the simple action. My scattered (and hormone-filled) mind totally
misread the situation and I dived forward, placing my lips against his and my
tongue in his mouth. I shifted over and placed myself in his lap, responding to
what I thought had been a proposal. Gerard and I had not had sex since the
night before, though we had been close enough, and naked enough to
proceed for many hours now. Sex still scared me, even if I had already
engaged in the action, but I wanted to try it again. The feel of confidence
running through my body and his trusting embraces gave me enough
courage to lean forward into his proposal and make the first move into the
desired event.

Gerard kissed me back at first, though startled, but eventually broke away
the embrace, his palm pushing my chest forward gently.

“What are you doing?” he asked, tilting his head to the side with an innocent
smile. He seemed to be pleased that I was suddenly showing an abundance
of affection for him. He knew it was there; he just couldn’t place why it had
come out all of a sudden.

“I thought you wanted to…you know…” I looked down at our tangled legs and
laps, and saw that out of the two of us, I was the only one getting excited. My
face fell and started to blush beet red when I realized my mistake. I mumbled
something through my raw lips and shifted back over to my spot on the
couch, turning away from him. I wrapped my arms around my bare chest
again, concealing myself.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Gerard countered, instantly placing a hand on my shoulder. He


turned me towards him again, and began to subtly pry my arms away from
my body, and place them around his instead. I met his warm and open eyes,
head tilted downwards.

“I still liked the kiss,” he whispered sensually. His eyes traced down my face
once, before he spoke again. “I just don’t want to have sex right now.”

He smiled as his hair fell down from his eyes, but his gesture, no matter how
kind and compassionate, did nothing for me. I was still slightly confused (and
really horny).

“But you were…?” I trailed the question off, finishing it by pointing at his
hand now making its way back to my inner thigh, just not as close.

“I can’t touch you?” he asked smoothly, his voice so low and clear it was like
water rushing over my body. He moved his hand up further, massaging the
area slightly as my blood churned. Both of us closed our eyes into a deep
breath, even if I wasn’t touching him back. He continued, eyes still closed,
“Everything doesn’t lead to sex, but everything is sexual.”

“Huh?” I broke the sensual appeal with my gawking gaze, trying to ignore the
heat radiating between my legs.

Gerard chuckled a bit, still loving the fact that even if he had taken my
virginity and was sitting naked on the couch with me, I was still so
inexperienced.

“Everything is sexual,” he repeated, flipping his raven locks back and talking
with the same hand after. “Everything has a will and want for passion in their
life. Everyone wants to live. In order to live, we must procreate. We need this
passion, this raw energy in order for that to happen.” He turned away from
me with a sly grin and locked eyes with a lamp, minus its shade. “Even
inanimate objects are sexual. They remind us of what we want to see in
things. We see what we desire, what we crave. We give our own
interpretations to things even if we don’t see that we’re doing it.” He turned
his gaze back to me, the grin continuously growing on his cherub face. He
brought the hand he was speaking with forward, brushing my cheek
sensually, extending his point. I didn’t turn into the embrace, not yet, at
least.

“Okay…” I said, not really getting it, like most of Gerard’s theories. But that
always happened; I never got them when I first heard them. He may as well
be talking to me in a foreign language. Once he gave me time to adjust
however and a few examples, I understood. Or could at least fake it for
awhile.

“What do you see when you look at that lamp?” Gerard cut into my thoughts,
answering my dilemma. He motioned to the light, the bulb a dirty yellow
colour from its ember inside burning long and bright. Its base was long and
cylindrical, standing up straight.

I looked from the lamp and back to Gerard a few times, biting my lip afraid to
say my answer. Gerard said everything was sexual… and well, that lamp
looked like a cock. When I finally released my lips from my teeth, spilling my
thoughts (and apparently my cravings) to him, all he did was laugh. A deep
belly laugh that was not directed at me, but felt like it all the same.

“That’s what you desire at this moment in time,” he smiled and chuckled
again, rolling his eyes and hair out of his face. I blushed, red veins creeping
like spiders’ legs across my face. In between spurts of his laughter, I
swallowed my pride and raised my chin high, challenging him.

“What do you see then?”

He stopped laughing, took a deep breath, and exchanged glances between


the two objects he was set out to study; me and that fucking lamp. He let his
face rest in his palm, clucking his tongue in thought as his breath became
shallow. Finally and more serious than I had ever seen him, he answered, “I
see life. The light at the top, though dirty and repugnant still serves a
purpose. Though the lamp is ugly, broken, and missing pieces, we still turn it
on because we want what it offers. I see life.” He took a deep breath again
and turned his full attention towards me. “I want life. I crave it now.”

“Didn’t you always crave it before?” I asked him, feeling slightly intimidated
by his stares and brain power.

“I want this life,” he stated seriously, eyes probing deeper inside of me than
he had the night before.

He clasped my hand in his own, squeezing our skin together. He leaned


forward, never breaking eye contact, even through his thin lids when he
closed his eyes and placed a small kiss on my lips. I tried to dive my tongue
into his mouth, but he pulled away and grabbed me into a hug instead. Not a
sexual grinding hug; just a hug. A wrapping of old and new tainted flesh into
one person. I felt his fingers curl and uncurl against my hot skin, and I could
feel him breathing me in – not just breathing on me, but breathing me in as a
person into his lungs. He wanted me. He saw life in the lamp that I saw a cock
in, and I was what he desired. Our desires were different at that time, but we
wanted the same essential thing.

And then I understood.

Everything was sexual; it reminded us of our cravings, our needs, our wants.
But everything wasn’t sexual in the juvenile way. Gerard wasn’t giggling at
stuff that looked like a dick, and he wasn’t making sexual innuendoes
whenever possible. He was making philosophies whenever possible. And he
was sticking by them. When he touched me and tasted me only for those split
seconds, he wasn’t craving sex. We had done something sexual an hour
earlier. He just wanted to touch me, to be with me, and make sure I was still
there. He wanted to remind himself of the life he loved, and the life he
wanted at that very moment. There was something more intimate than sex in
his actions. He was appreciating me with all of his senses, smelling my hair
and running his hand through it as he pulled me into his lap to deepen the
hug. But we would not have sex, even though I could feel him start to get
hard as our hug and kiss intensified. We wouldn’t fuck on the living room
floor. We didn’t need to then.
I draped my arms around his shoulders, pulling my face into the crook of his
neck. I placed soft kisses there, my tongue staying in my mouth. I started to
breathe him in more and more, just like he did with me. I started to do the
same actions he had been doing all along, masking his viewpoint over my
previous one. And when I looked at that lamp, I no longer saw a cock. I saw
life; a life with Gerard who I could and would hug – but that was going to be
it. At least, for right then.

Everything was sexual, I told myself, smiling into his flesh. But it was possible
to touch without sex itself.

***

I could never be sure how long the embrace lasted; I probably zoned out
again. The next thing I remembered was Gerard taking me off of his lap,
gently laying me back down on the couch. His hands lingered on my body as
he got up, his lips pressing into mine for a few too-short seconds before he
descended upon the kitchen. I could hear him rooting around in his fridge for
wine, the bottles clanking and creating a symphony of sounds, spreading a
smile on my face. I breathed out a happy sigh, small bits and pieces of the
memories I had only just started to form coming to me.

I felt so warm then, even when Gerard took his body away from mine. I was
wrapped up in the moment, in the second, in the everything that we were. I
stretched out on the couch, hitching my feet up at the end opposite of where
my head rested. I looked up at the smoke stained ceiling, the thick, yellowed
clouds of nicotine painted to the stucco over time, and appreciated the warm
air on my body. I was totally exposed then; my arms were above my head,
making a pillow, and I was naked from head to toe, legs wide and all of me on
display. I felt myself shiver internally, but it didn’t get to the surface this
time. I was getting more comfortable, confident, and the display I had
created was not only for Gerard, but myself too. I knew that when I got up the
next time, my legs would stay strong and I wouldn’t be so out of rhythm.
Gerard came sauntering by me, taking a seat on the armchair adjacent where
my feet lay. He gripped the neck of the emerald green bottle with his fist,
bringing the uncorked top to his mouth without a glass. He smiled at me,
proud that I was making myself more than at home on his couch, some of the
deep purple liquid trailing out of the corner of his lips. He wiped it away with
the back of his hand, and I breathed out a laugh at his slight mishap. I rolled
my eyes, but when they met again with his, it felt like we had just had an
hour-long conversation in split second reaction time. We just knew what the
other was thinking at that moment, and corresponding to it without words,
and barely any actions. I couldn’t believe how comfortable we were with each
other already, and it had barely been twenty-four hours into our relationship.

I studied Gerard’s face as he studied me, realizing that I had only ever seen
him this comfortable with Vivian. He had known her way longer than he had
ever known me, seen her naked many more times, but it still felt the same. It
felt longer; better. Right at that moment, I was displayed in the very same
manner that his friend and part-time nude model had also been displayed the
time I had walked in on them together, what seemed like ages ago. Only this
time, Gerard was naked too.

“You never did draw me,” I stated, the sudden thought and the images of
Vivian coming to my mind. I tried to continue staring at him, but I found my
vision wandering to the ceiling, feeling a tad odd for saying what I had.

A part of me really wished that he had drawn me that night, just so I could
see what his interpretation of me as a person had been. But as I felt my bare
skin under my hands, and the fabric of the couch on my bare backside, I
knew I had gotten a far better trade off.

My compromised state was altered when Gerard responded with a clear and
concise, “I did.”

“What?” I asked unsure. I craned my neck as I looked over at him, furrowing


my brow. He had taken out a pack of cigarettes (from where, I had no clue)
and was beginning to light one. The spark of the lighter matched the embers
burning in his eyes, excited for my reaction. He still held the bottle by the
neck, but he alternated what vice took main priority in between his fingers
and thin lips.

“I drew you already,” he smiled smugly, the cigarette bouncing in his lips as
he talked. He moved the stick away, taking a giant swig from the wine bottle,
closing his eyes. I watched as his throat rose and fell to accommodate the
consumption, before he stopped and passed the bottle to me. I waved it
away, ignoring his subtle change of subjects. He was still smiling
complacently, sticky remnants of wine and smoke on his chin.

“When?” I asked, my brows knitting in the centre of my forehead.

“While you were asleep.”

He took a long drag from his cigarette, sucking his cheeks back to his face
before he blew out a cloud of smoke. He closed his eyes, I noticed, and I
wondered if he consumed me the same way he was doing with these two
vices.

“It was early this morning.” He began again; his eyes open but far away in a
memory not so long ago. “I woke up hours before you. I don’t need sleep. I
hate sleep.” He twisted his face into a sneer, then took another drag,
extending everything because he knew I would sit there on the edge of my
seat, even if it took ten years for him to reply. Gerard had this way of
captivating people, especially when he was smoking. Or drinking. Or talking.

“Sleep interferes with my work. Takes up too much time and is essentially
useless. So, I drew you.” He looked over at me, giving me a sly smile and a
bit of a wink; I couldn’t be so sure through the tendrils of smoke around him.
“You said you wanted me to anyway, and so had I for awhile now.”

He nodded his head, indicating that he was done. He took another puff on his
cigarette, focusing his gaze back onto me in the present, and not the past
that was a few hours ago.

“Can I see it?” I asked, shifting my gaze and weight around, unsure of how
this worked.

I had realized by then that some of Gerard’s drawings were like his own little
diary, and though I had been apart of his entry for that day, I still wasn’t sure
if I was allowed to see it. Maybe he kept his diary under a lock and key like
some people did. Also, I was a little nervous to see myself, if he did let me
into his world. I sort of wanted to be awake and around for when he had
drawn me; I felt like I would have had more control over it that way. But then
again, this was Gerard; no one had control, especially over him. Sometimes, I
wasn’t even sure if he had control of himself most days.

The artist sat there, blowing smoke out of his mouth and nose for awhile,
thinking hard. His elbow rested on the burgundy, felt-like material of the
armrest, his thumb just under his chin. His other hand was on his bare knee,
holding the cigarette out between long fingers when he wasn’t smoking it.
The wine bottle was now completely forgotten about, his thirst quenched, as
it lay by his left side on the hardwood floor. His breathing became shallower,
only deepened when he breathed in and out the thick smoke. Finally, he
clucked his jaw and nodded.

“Come with me,” he ushered, getting up quickly from his statute-like stance
and walking over to his bedroom. I followed behind him reluctantly, still
unsure.

He led me into his black abyss of a room, surprising me to no end. I had


always thought that he kept all of his art supplies in the large clearing in the
middle of his apartment. The limited amount of conscious time I had spent in
his room it looked like it was not a place where he got his creativity out. The
walls were drab and dark like the door and it appeared to be a sheer vessel
for sleeping in. I thought creativity meant colour – and hell, that was all over
the damn apartment, from the butter yellow kitchen, to the ruined mural, and
the putrid orange couch, it was as if a rainbow had exploded in Gerard’s
place. There was no way an imagination could exist through a black abyss.
When Gerard opened the bottom drawer of his bedside table, however, I was
proved to be very wrong.

Coating the insides of the drawer were sketchbooks after sketchbooks, along
with a few composition notebooks, piled up fortuitously at the bottom. Pens
and pencils were scattered about, looking like bones to unknown carcasses,
while the feelings that lined the thick bundles paper were the marrow that
used to fill them. There were no slashes of colour that littered through the
rest of the apartment, almost blinding at some times, but I began to see that
the creativity was still there; just a darker, bleaker version. As I looked at his
barely trembling hands riffle through the bottom, I recalled a key piece of
information about Gerard.

This dark room was the place where Gerard came to get out those dismal and
hurtful emotions. This is where he came to be his dark self; to be nothing. He
came into the black room when he needed to be a nothing; something that
was horrible and desolate, yet could not be destroyed. If you destroyed
something, that meant it had to have existed in the first place – it couldn’t be
nothing in the face of annihilation because it would have taken up space, and
thus proved itself something worthy. It was paradox, and since Gerard
himself was an enigma on most days, the two could not work together
without conflict. Rather, it was imperative for them to work side by side in
order to prove productive. He could not destroy nothing, so kept it, tended to
it, and preserved it. He came into this dark room to do all of that
conservation. He came here to cry, to yell, and scream because in a world of
colour, it was hard to appreciate shading. It was when the shading
surrounded him that he could begin to dissect it and actually appreciate the
pain it caused.

Some of the most beautiful works of art started with shading, just thin lines
on paper, Gerard had told me in one of our first art lessons. It is in the
darkness where we get our best ideas, sketch, and mold them, and then
make them presentable for the real world. People can only see in colour;
people only want to see in colour, because on most days, black is just too
black. Too dark and scary. People don’t want to see that. Artists paint and
perform in colour to please the masses, but we each have our own darkness.
As Gerard sat down on the bed and opened the book for me, I realized he was
showing me more than just a picture. He was showing me his darkness, his
bleak attitude that he thought no one would understand. He was showing me
the beginning of a picture that we both hoped would turn into something
great; something allowed to be painted with colour. He was showing me his
world – but it wasn’t just that anymore. It was our world, it was our picture.
This was his soul he was showing me down on paper, but it was me that had
somehow managed to be encapsulated in that image.

I had never felt more honored in my entire fucking life. I thought it had been
amazing enough when he let me in that dark room when we had had sex
together; I thought we had been close then. This was so much more than sex
(everything was so much more than sex with him, I was soon coming to
realize). This was his fucking dark art; something he could never show
anyone before (or at least, that I knew of), but he was showing me. I
straightened my posture and stared down at the piece he was about to
display, knowing that I needed to pay attention to every last little detail.

The paper was white and grainy, feeling textured as I held the drawing by its
edges. It was done in dark pencil, some of the shading smudged from the
greasy fingers drawing it. It was no bigger than normal printer paper, but it
was all bound in a coil book. My picture was halfway through the book, but
not the last one he had drawn. I didn’t have time to concern myself with the
other pieces of art; I was too entranced by what he had depicted of me.

There I was, in the centre of the page, illustrated in the bed. I was on my
back, face up and to the ceiling, naked like I had been when I had woken up
earlier that day. The drab sheet was pulled halfway down my torso, stopping
just barely after the belly button. My legs were not visible, but I could see the
criss-cross formation they had under the thin sheet. My hips were displayed
as round curves and valleys just before the sheet cut off, their trail leading
down to the shadow and thin veil where my genitals were. My arms were
twisted up above my head, underarm hair shown as a dark and curly
silhouette. My face was placid and calm, and the way Gerard had drawn it,
my skin was smooth and flawless, draped over my cheekbones in the same
manner that the sheet was over my legs.

I would have loved the picture even if it hadn’t been me. The fact that it was
though made my legs go weak as I held it in between shaking fingers. I
thanked God or anyone who was listening that I was on the bed or I may have
fallen in the middle of Gerard’s room. I stared at it, opened mouthed for the
longest time, just absorbing everything.

“What do you think?” Gerard inquired, raising his eyebrows and searching for
meaning that I thought should have been obvious. He was sitting across from
me on the bed, his legs draped over the side, tips of his toes touching the
hardwood floor while I was fully on the mattress, legs crossed Indian-style.

“I fucking love it,” was all I could choke out.

I placed the book down to the side delicately, as if it were porcelain and
would burst into dust or flames if handled wrong. My page was still open, and
it took me a long time to finally look away and back at the artist who had
drawn it. My face was weak, the muscles tired from expressing all of the
emotions I was feeling at once. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I reverted
to our position from the couch beforehand.

I leaned forward, almost falling into Gerard’s chest. He sighed luxuriously,


feeling my arms wrap around him, while I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted to
fucking hug him. I could feel my face start to twitch and my eyes brim with
something that had been a stranger for the longest time. I didn’t know why I
was about to cry, I didn’t even know why I was so thankful for all of this. It
was just a picture, after all.

But it was my picture, I told myself, blinking back the foreign invader. I had
never seen such an accurate depiction, and I had never thought that
someone could find that in me. I didn’t even know what it was; it was just
there. And Gerard had found that.

“Thank you so much,” I oozed, my breath hitting the back of his neck hard.
My arms were still locked around him and I refused to give anyone the key.
He didn’t seem to mind as held me just as close. The pads of his fingers
gripped my shoulders, pulling me down and into him more. I was in his lap
again, the folds of flesh once found embarrassing, together into one
indiscernible flesh puzzle.

“It’s not just a picture, Frank,” Gerard said, seeming to hear my thoughts.
“It’s you down on paper; all of you. I drew you naked while you were sleeping
after we had sex. That is the weakest position you can ever put yourself in.
And I’m so glad I was able to capture it.” He paused for a second, collecting
his thoughts and breath, blowing them both out together in a heavy, but
meaningful, sigh.

“Thank you for letting me draw you.”

He squeezed me harder and I could feel my bones turn to dust. Gerard’s


words stung my ears, commencing my mind to think on different planes, in
different parallels.

“But I don’t look weak in the picture,” I interjected, not trying to argue but
bringing up a valid point. I didn’t look weak there. I just looked calm,
sleeping, and happy. I looked strong, even. A strength I knew I possessed
because of Gerard, even though I didn’t quite know how just yet.

“You look beautiful,” Gerard answered honestly, loosening our grip a bit. He
let go and backed up slightly, just to look me straight in the eyes for his next
line. He pushed our foreheads together. “You still look beautiful.”

Again, the words burned and my mind raced. It was a good burn though; like
a cleansing of old skin, creating new. He was branding me with something
that I wasn’t even sure that I possessed.

People had always told me I was pretty good looking. I knew I was never ugly
or anything; I saw myself in the mirror everyday. I wasn’t too bad looking, but
I never thought I was anything special – certainly not beautiful. That trait
always seemed so feminine, and though some of my features, like my eyes
and lips, were softer than a lot of guys I knew, I definitely did not look like a
girl. My jaw line was too rigid to ever pass off as the opposite gender, and
though I was severely vertically challenged, my body had those crests and
straight lines that Gerard hated in men.

And yet, here he was calling me beautiful. He hated the male body in terms
of art, but somehow, he cradled my face and called me beautiful. I just didn’t
get it. When he described me with any positive good-looking feature, I felt my
apparently gorgeous skin crawl. I just didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it, though. I
wasn’t supposed to. My opinion of myself was subjective, and that meant it
wasn’t my place to see what other people saw when they told me I was
handsome, gorgeous, and yes, even beautiful. Honestly, I didn’t want to see
it, afraid that I may become narcissistic, and become lost in myself. There
were so many other things I would have rather been lost in. I myself was
futile and unimportant. And I just did not want to believe that I could be
pretty. Or beautiful. Or gorgeous. Gerard had called me all of those words
that weekend and it still hadn’t sunk in yet.

Right then however, as I looked at the picture again, breaking Gerard’s


intimate eye contact, I saw something. I saw what everyone else had seen. I
saw beauty in the way my face was draped so smooth like a blanket. The
causal way I held my arms and the ridges of my torso. I saw how beautiful
they were – but more importantly, I felt beautiful. I had never felt that before.
It had always been too cliché and seemingly unattainable. But with pencil and
paper Gerard had been able to get me to see and feel that aura of beauty I
had to myself that I had never bothered to know. He made me believe
something I never thought possible but more importantly, he made me feel it.

Confidence was one thing, I realized. I had confidence in myself, that I could
do all of these things and be okay with my body naked, but that was so very
different than feeling beautiful. I had always been insecure about myself, the
way I acted and looked. I began to realize that there was something
extremely different about confidence and security.

Confidence meant I could do all of these things without a problem; security


meant that I could do it and know that I was doing a good job. They were
entirely different, and now I had both of them.

I looked back to Gerard from the picture, my mouth hung open in sheer and
utter amazement.

“Thank you so much,” I said again, looking him in the eyes. My brows hung
low on my forehead, my countenance tired.

We leaned forward again, our foreheads against each other in a visceral


manner. He nodded and breathed out a casual response, pulling our lips
together to show his own thanks to me for allowing him this wonderful
specimen to work with. I kissed him with more passion than I had felt in a
long time, feeling his hands go up and down my bare back. His fingers
hovered over my spine, sending razor sharp chills that somehow managed to
warm me inside and out. He broke away and began to kiss my neck, both of
our breathing becoming sharp and intrusive. I smiled as I felt his palms go to
my lower back, fingers splayed as they began to reach my backside.

Not only did I feel beautiful when he touched me, in every sense of the word,
but I had learned from our previous lesson. He smiled into my skin with me,
us both coming to the same conclusion as he began to lay me down on the
mattress, still kissing my body hurriedly.

This time, it was okay to have sex.

Chapter Seventeen

Beauty and Freedom [2]

We had sex on the opposite end of the mattress, our feet tangling together
where our heads usually went. Gerard went slow, almost as slow as our first
time, but without the air of nervousness and urgency we had possessed
before. We started with awkward glances and concerned gazes as he
positioned himself between my legs and began to prepare me for the second
time that day. He used the normal lubricant, slathering up his fingers more
than the time previous because he knew something more intrusive was going
in its place. I was fairly familiar with the act of fingering now, and once he got
his first two digits inside of me, the rest was easy and known territory. He
kissed my kneecaps and my inner thighs as he worked steadily, barely any
words spoken other than hushed mews falling from our lips. He only began to
speak clearly when he released his fingers from inside me, and lowered his
chest over my body.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered into my ear, asking a question in his delicate


statement.

“I know,” I whispered back to him, nodding and pulling his bare chest against
mine. He let out a deep breath, and that seemed to be the answer he had
been searching for.

I tried to be as strong and confident as he had taught me to be only moments


earlier, but it was hard. I was ready for sex again, I wanted to have it again,
but it was still sex. It was still such a huge deal. Though I had been okay the
night before, nervous as hell, but still okay, it was different. I had been
blinded and distracted from everything because I just wanted to do it. I
wanted to get it over with and just be with Gerard. Now I knew I had him, and
I knew what sex was like. I didn’t have to have it again – and he told me we
didn’t. This was a conscious choice I was making to continue, and though I
wanted to, I still needed his guidance.

He situated our bodies face to face, adding an intimate appeal. He wanted to


see what I looked like, he told me, and when I informed him that he was
already well aware of my physical appearance (and all of me by that point),
he merely shook his head.

“I want to see you in your weakest moment,” he told me, kissing his way over
my chest. He lifted my legs up to get into position, and looked down on me
with a gaze I had never seen before, but still knew exactly what he meant. He
wanted to see me as I climaxed.

“Why should I let you?” I asked him, my nervousness leaking through. I could
feel his heat outside me, and my breath was catching in my throat every
other second. I didn’t know why he wanted to see me as I came – I figured I
wouldn’t be making that many attractive faces, and I wanted to limit my
embarrassment while being completely naked and having him inside of me.

“Because you’ll get to see me too,” he answered so distinctly, so clearly, and


so strongly that it removed any inkling doubt from my mind.

I nodded my head diligently; I was going to let him do what he wanted. What
he wanted was to lower himself and place one final kiss on my mouth before
he started to enter completely. It didn’t hurt as much as it had the first time,
and any pain I did feel at the beginning was from me being so tense.

“Shh,” he calmed me, grabbing my hand or face whenever he could. “Just


relax. You’ll be okay.”

I nodded, gripping him tightly back, as he went in further.

And like he had promise, I was okay. Once he was all the way inside of me,
he rested for a moment, giving me his finger to bite on in case I felt anything
else unpleasant.

“I don’t know how you feel,” he admitted, referring to my less than flattering
position. My legs were widely spread, hunched up close to his shoulders. “But
if you bite down when it gets too bad, I’ll at least know when to stop.”

I murmured something in approval, but it came out muffled under the digit
rounded inside my cheek. He started up a rhythm, and though I never really
wanted him to stop completely, I bit down on his finger the first few times. I
felt guilty, but it was a hard impulse to control – whether I was in pain or
pleasure. Gerard paused each and every time my teeth gnashed against his
flesh, and cast me a caring look, waiting to see what his next course of action
would be. Even if it was feeling really good to him, he still stopped, biting his
lip and holding his breath as he looked at me with his whole, caring, green
eyes. And no matter how hard I bit on his finger, he kept it inside my mouth,
tucked off to the side. I gnawed on it particularly hard once, when Gerard
caught two sensitive areas in one go, and even though he hissed in pain, the
finger was still there. He wasn’t moving it, even if he was in pain, and he was
going to stop if I needed to, even if he was in pleasure.

I didn’t realize how big of a deal this was until after we both came. Just like he
had wanted, he saw me in my weakest moment, my face twisting in the most
unflattering ways as his hand ushered me into orgasm.

“Soon?” he had asked quickly before, pressing his lips to the side of my face,
breath hot against my skin. His hand’s efforts outmatched his own hips,
which were still thrusting into me docilely.

I could barely talk myself, so I bit my lip and nodded next to his face, my eyes
shut tight. I felt his hand press against my forehead, arching my chin and
neck up and exposing my Adam’s apple as his fiery mouth attacked from an
angle. He made it hard to swallow and breathe until the final release came. I
could practically feel his eyes burn into me as he watched, his hand
movements dulled out to last longer, stroking the much more sensitive skin
harder. He had been too soon after for me to have a chance to look at him,
and though disappointed, I wrote off any concern to the back of my mind. I
knew I would have many other opportunities to see him in that way. We
would definitely be having sex again, and I realized the real reason why
(other than the fact it felt good) as were laying on the bed in its aftermath.

Gerard was so fucking caring about everything. He was going above and
beyond what he needed to do; with sex and with everything else. He was
teaching me things all over again, and we had already covered several
lessons already. No one I knew had ever done that for me, and I had been
around for seventeen years. They had had plenty of time, and yet it had all
gone unused until now.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said in a hushed breath, his body beside me. His voice
ushered me back from my thoughts, and I looked over at him. His chest was
coated with pale sweat laden skin, gleaming under the small bitter fragments
of light washing in from the door and cascading along the sweat and pores of
his body. His chest rose and fell softly, his eyes half lidded and gazing at me.
He smiled weakly, and had to shut his lids for the grin to reach its full
potential.

I wanted to argue with his statement. I wanted to tell him that, no, I wasn’t
gorgeous – not because I didn’t feel it, because God, did I ever. His hand was
resting beside mine, his fingers leisurely twirling themselves next to my wrist.
I felt that chill go up my spine each time he barely touched me. I felt that
wave and aura of beauty wash over me again and again. It was only when I
opened my eyes after reeling from it where I felt something else, something
better. I was not gorgeous.

Gerard was.

At first I had been disappointed that I never got to see his face in the same
weak quality that he had with my own, but I was able to shrug it off. The
gnawing and gnashing from the urge still remained imprinted on my mind,
like teeth marks and punctures wounds I would never be able to see. But I
could see now – I saw something better. When someone climaxed, they were
at the complete will to their body’s own urges. The sensations rushing their
system made them twist and turn and groan and moan in ways that they
wouldn’t normally. It was their weakest moment because they couldn’t
control it. It was interesting to see, an interesting concept to hold in front of
you and watch, but when it came down to it, I knew that it wasn’t the best.

The way Gerard was at that moment was so much better. The time right after
someone climax, where their body feels weightless and they can take on
anything in the world – that was the best feeling, and it was an even better
thing to observe in another person, and I was doing it with Gerard. He wasn’t
even moving or saying anything. He was just there. Being. Breathing. He was
himself then, truly himself, and I liked – loved - what I saw.

Gerard was gorgeous, and I wanted to tell him that.

He began to open his eyes a sliver before I could get the strong words out of
my mouth, and I swallowed them whole, settling for a weaker anecdote.
“Gorgeous? I thought I was beautiful?” I opted for instead, trying to wriggle
my eyebrows in a suave manner, but merely coming off as immature.

Gerard’s smile rose to that of a snide quality, and his eyes fluttered, but
never opened. His words were more austere than his carefree atmosphere.
“You can be everything you want to be, Frank.”

I felt my lips move, I felt them want to move – I urged them too, but nothing
happened other than weak mews. I wanted to tell him he was as gorgeous as
I could ever dream of being, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t form the words as
eloquently and beautiful as he could. It must have been an artist thing.

So instead, I crawled closer to him, thanking him meekly with my displays of


affection. Being bold, I slid an arm around his and linked our hands again as
our heads stayed unsupported by the soft pillows at the other end of the bed.

Then, like him in that moment, I just was.

It was weird looking at the dark room from a different angle. I thought I had
seen it all before, in all its glory, but I realized there were small details I had
overlooked, mainly because I had not been seeing them in this light before. I
saw the unlit corners hidden in the side of the dwelling, stray cobwebs
nestled and hung together, like my arms that were draped around Gerard’s
waist. When the air was clearer around us, he told me that he sometimes
slept at the different end of the bed, just so he could observe the different
traits he had missed, being too consumed by the proper angles from before.
He said that it was when he changed positions he changed mind-sets, and
got some of the best ideas for his work.

“You have to shake up your life in order to get better ideas from it,” he
informed me when I had looked at him strange for his odd sleeping and
creative habits. “The mind gets bored of a routine, and it can no longer think
in chaos.”
“Why would you want chaos?” I probed curiously.

I had always been taught that chaos was something to be avoided, and I
stood by that fact. I hated the way my stomach would get tied in knots,
cutting off the blood circulation to the ever-flowing thoughts in my head
whenever something appeared too random, too there, without an
explanation.

Just like Gerard had at first. He was the one thing that had been a constant in
my life, but chaotic at the same time when I didn’t know what was happening
in regards to our relationship. I knew now, or at least I thought I did. My
stomach was no longer in knots, and I had accepted my feelings of wanting
the forty-seven-year-old artist. His wanting me right back had made
everything a lot easier to cope with. Now, he was bringing chaos back into
the mix, and I couldn’t see why.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s the point,” he stated, nodding smugly. “Life doesn’t make sense. And
therefore, art doesn’t make sense. Art imitates life, and life in turn, imitates
art. It’s a constant chaotic circle.” He smiled, proud of his tortuous tongue-
twisting idea. “Why should we force sense on something that is so much
more beautiful in confusion?”

He looked down and raised his thick bushy eyebrows at me, seeing if I
understood. I was met with that confusion he found so glorious at first, then it
all started to become clear… or everything became just as jumbled again.
And in a way, if everything was the same, messy or clean, I could make my
way through it because it was familiar.

Though we both knew how each other felt now, we still had to live in chaos.
We had to switch things up and around to keep it all interesting. We had just
started our relationship and, in theory, we shouldn’t have been bored of it
already, but Gerard still wanted to change things. We had sex at the end of
the bed to prove that chaos in a small step of rebellion. Our whole
relationship was going to be based on rebellion, I realized, tracing my fingers
over his much older skin as I turned to the side. Though we had some sense
of understanding with each other, chaos would leak inside the apartment
from the society around us. We merely had to shake things around to be
prepared and ready. And creative while we waited.

“Come with me,” he requested next, startling me.

The chaos discussion was suddenly long gone from our minds, and
manifesting itself in another form. It felt like hours, or maybe even minutes,
after we had both climaxed and were panting on his bed, still positioned at
the other end. I never really had a good concept of time when I was with
Gerard. There was no clock anywhere in his house, except for a small broken
wristwatch that he kept in the bottom of his bedside table. He hated to look
at the time, because he hated working on schedules. If Gerard wanted to do
something, he was going to do it; whether it was at three in the morning or at
five at night, it was happening.

“Time is such a feeble object,” he would tell me, shaking his head as he saw
my neck crane to find a wall clock. “Much like sleep. Neither things we can
hold in our hands. Both are just there for the sake of productivity. I don’t like
either of them.”

I would usually laugh and eventually, though it had only been a day since I
had been there, I gave up asking the time. My only indicator was the way the
sun reflected inside his apartment off his paintbrushes, casting long shadows
and making me my own little sundial.

Just after his request, he took my hand and dragged me out of his dark room,
and the rest of the apartment was cloaked in the same darkness. It was night
again and it looked like, as well as with time, we’d be giving up all aspects of
sleep.

In a way, I agreed with Gerard about sleeping. I always found that when I did
my homework or did anything creative, the night was the best time for my
ideas. I would be sitting in my bed at three in the morning, my mind flickering
back and forth again and again, just going crazy with realizations that would,
literally, never see the light of day. When I would wake up in the morning, it
would all be gone, and I’d still be tired. Sleep was useless, and I was
beginning to understand why most artists were nocturnal.

We were still naked when we walked out into the middle of the apartment,
but one of my fists had grasped some of the sheets we had fucked on,
tearing them from the bed as we walked. (Since I had embraced my
newfound confidence, Gerard had unlocked his closet and placed back all of
the objects I had once been tempted to use to hide my shame).

I wrapped the blanket around my back and brushed the corners of it on my


chest, clearing away the sticky remnants on our bodies. Gerard didn’t seem
to care that I was covering myself for a few seconds as he plowed on ahead,
his mind doing the same flickering like a candle in a nighttime storm. He
stopped with a dead halt as he reached the dove’s cage, dropping my hand
and removing the fabric he occasionally kept on top of the wire bars.
Sometimes the bird got too loud with her cooing and Gerard couldn’t stand it
when there was unwanted white noise, so he would cloak her, telling her to
calm down. Now however, he seemed to be challenging himself and his
artistic principles; a battle I was quite interested in watching.

“What are you doing?” I questioned, tilting my head to the side.

I let the sheet fall away from my loose grip, hitting the hardwood floor with a
soft, oomph sound. Gerard stood in front of the cage, looking inside at the off-
white bird moments after he had de-cloaked her. She had placed her head
underneath her wing, nestling it as she slept, but now that the shawl was
drawn back and her owner in view, she began to bob her head, coos falling
out of her beak. She looked excited and happy, and as she cocked her head
past Gerard’s side and saw me standing close behind, her coos grew even
louder.

“I’m going to let her out,” Gerard stated, his sing-song voice the perfect
octave to accentuate the music the bird was already making with her vocal
chords. He was so calm and cool with his words, treating this as if it were an
everyday occurrence.
It wasn’t, though; letting the dove loose was not an idea he had ever
entertained before. Gerard always kept her caged, at least when I was
around. He would only take her out for small amounts of time, just so she
could sit in his hands and he could pet her. He’d let me do the same too,
mostly when I had to clean, but he was always very adamant about not
letting her get away. He seemed to think that the world would somehow
collapse if his bird got out of her cage for more than five minutes. He didn’t
want her to destroy anything, pecking at his works in progress, and I didn’t
want to have to clean up her shit. We were both in agreement over the bird. I
didn’t know what had changed.

“Why?” I probed more, walking over to his side. I stood next to him, but didn’t
touch him. I just watched as he unlatched the door, but didn’t open it entirely
yet.

“She has freedom now,” he told me seriously, not taking his eyes off the
beige feathers. He kept his head up high, chin arched, eyes narrowed down
to gaze at the mystic creature.

“Freedom?” I screwed up my face, thinking hard, his word choice throwing


me off.

If this bird really was free, wouldn’t he let her outside? She was a caged
animal, brought in from the wild, even if it was the wild of a pet store and not
that of Paris as Gerard had previously claimed. She was still going to be in
captivity, even if she was just flying around the apartment.

“Yes, freedom,” Gerard established, sticking a finger in and stroking the bird.
She moved into his digit, pecking his skin lightly and rousing a smile on the
older man’s face. “She can leave the bars behind and fly around here.” He
looked up from the affection of the animal, our eyes locking. I felt a sudden
sensation I had not felt before wash over me. It was odd and I couldn’t
entirely place the sentiment; it almost felt like he was petting my feathers –
and that I had them to begin with.
“Around us,” he added again, voice rustling in between the new layers I had
so magically acquired.

“Okay…” I said unsure. “But what changed?”

Gerard drew his olive eyes away slowly, looking back down at the bird. He
screwed up his face as he stroked, seeing the faults in his argument. I
watched him, waiting, my weight on the balls of my feet, feeling so light at
the same time.

“Nothing, essentially,” he answered after a few moments of deliberation.


“The situation hasn’t changed. She’s still a bird; a dove. But opinions have
changed.”

“What changed your opinion?” I asked with a slight twang in my voice. He


may have changed his mind – he did that a lot. It was an artist thing, he had
told me, probably derived from that chaotic pattern he loved so much.
Opinion changing or not, this didn’t alter the fact that I would still be the one
cleaning up bird shit.

“You,” he answered suddenly, throwing me off guard.

“I changed your opinion on letting your pet dove out of a cage?” I enunciated
each word, making sure I had the situation clear in my mind. I leaned in a bit,
making sure I got all of the answer distinctly.

“No,” he told me, a small laugh seeping through his serious demeanor. “You
changed my mind about freedom.”

He looked up at me, the dove’s feathers still against his skin like velvet. The
deep green colour of his eyes was so strong at that moment I could
practically touch the olive colour exuding from him. I stared at him for awhile,
watching the pupil of his eye dart back and forth, searching my confused
countenance for something that I was only unsure of. I wondered if my eyes
were as gorgeous to him as his were to me.

“Some things need to be shackled,” he informed, turning his gaze away in a


split second and focusing back onto the bird. I was left staring into his dark
raven mane, unsure of where the pearly whiteness dotted with the dark,
earthy hue of jade of his eyes had suddenly gone.

“They need to be kept away for their own good. But, like Maya Angelou said,
‘the caged bird sings.’” He smiled, remembering a work of poetry by a
woman I had no clue about. “The dove still coos despite its lack of freedom.
And love still flourishes in places it’s not supposed to.”

He paused, not looking at me, the smile gone from his face, but stronger
emotions displayed. His eyes never did meet mine, but I could feel his irises
on me, his colour washing over me like the warm air in the room filled with
soft coos.

“And though there are some times where things need to be shackled and
kept away, there are other times where freedom is persistent. Even if it’s just
around an apartment building,” he finished, his voice slightly tipped with
somber qualities. He sighed deeply, but more so out of relief. It was almost as
if he had been thinking about this startling concept for a long, long time – and
really, maybe he had been.

He had gotten the dove years ago, before I even knew this apartment
building existed. He had gotten it when he wasn’t allowed to go to Paris;
when things were shoved in his way, constricting his own freedom. Vivian
gave it to him, to show him that he could still be free in the confounds of a
dirty apartment building in the middle of fucking New Jersey; one of the most
gray and violent places there were (at least in my opinion - I hadn’t been to
that many others to see that much of a difference, like New York or Paris
where dreams were made). Maybe he had spent all this time thinking about
this damn bird, trying to figure it all out, but it was only now he was getting
closer and closer to some reasoning; some answer to an impossible question.
He wasn’t going to accept the standard ‘some questions have no answer’ for
this lesson to himself. He knew there was an answer, he could practically
hear the dove whispering it to him all this time; he just couldn’t decipher the
coos yet. I still didn’t know if he could completely understand her, but it
didn’t seem to matter. He was finally getting something off of his weighted
chest, and it felt good to both of us as it hit the air. I could feel the extra
meaning he seeped into his words in my bones, but I couldn’t speak back or
form sentences to do the situation justice yet. Instead, I just watched as he
flung open the cage door.

“Go on,” he breathed out like it was his last breath ever taken. It may have
been, judging by how slow he took in his next one, his jaw rigid and eyes
closed. “Go free.”

He removed his hand from stroking the small creature, backing his arm away
and motioning out with it, his fingers waving like the wind. The beige bird
stood on her perch for a moment, cocking her head at both Gerard and I,
almost unsure if this was for real. I spotted Gerard nod his head - just barely -
to her request, but it was only after I tipped mine with his that she flew
forward. She flapped her wings tentatively at first, then something seemed to
grab her by her beak, and flung her flying into the air. I watched her wings
spread around her pear-shaped body and fly out again and again; out so far I
thought they would fly away as a separate entity.

As I watched in awe, I realized that I had never seen her fly before. I had seen
her flutter and stretch previously, but I always had control; her body either in
the cage or in my hand. She was never really allowed to fly; never given that
much room or consent to do so. Now that she was, she was taking all that she
could and using it to its full extent. And fuck, I thought she was so beautiful
when she was merely in my palm, but I had been wrong. She was forced to
be beautiful then, captured and groped into a majestic creature. As she flew
around the room, her wings elongating and releasing her dreams, she was
that majestic creature, and fuck, that was beauty in its finest forms.

I was astonished as she circled the apartment, her coos becoming drowned
into the sinuous sonata of arching wings and small, bitter tastes of
sovereignty. My mouth fell open in wonder, not just with her beauty, but
because she wasn’t even close to being finished yet. She wasn’t totally free,
but this was as far as she could go for now. And she was going to take every
last inch of it, making it fucking count. I could only imagine just how gorgeous
real freedom was, and when she would have the opportunity to take it.

I was startled from my real life daydreams with Gerard’s presence beside me.
He slid his arm smoothly around my waist, pulling me closer to his nude
body. He found my hand, still weak with veneration at my side and gripped it
surprisingly strong, lacing our fingers together. He rested his head in the
crook of my neck, lips coming to my skin like small pecks as I still stood
entranced with the bird. His skin was hot against my own, his forehead
nuzzling me as his lips continued to touch my skin, creating that new
sensation washing over me again and again. I felt light on the tips of my toes,
his arm around me and anchoring me, watching the bird fly. I could have
sworn in that moment that I was having an out of body experience, because I
felt like I was flying too and I was looking down on all of this like a spectator.

“You’ll be my dove, Frank,” he whispered, breathing softly into my ear,


bringing me back down to our own reality. “And we can be free together.”

Chapter Seventeen

Beauty and Freedom [3]

Gerard’s tongue danced inside my mouth, almost like it was trying to fly
away with the bird in the apartment. We had drawn our bodies closer
together, face to face, lips pressed and hands wandering, groping gently the
other body that was so new, and yet so familiar to both of us. Our lips came
together peacefully, the action set in our minds and no longer foreign. There
was a calm and relaxed pace to it, and eventually, we stop kissing, and
pressed our foreheads together in an act purely intimate, concentrating on
something deeper. We breathed contentedly with each other, the hot air
coming out in bursts and hitting our skin, noses rubbing together sometimes,
causing smiles to glide over our faces.

“I want to try something with you, Frank,” Gerard mentioned freely, moving
his head back from mine slightly. The dove was still flying around her
confined freedom, and we were still getting used to our own. The somber and
philosophical quality had vanished from Gerard’s voice, a mischievous and
childlike grin left in its place.

“What’s that?” I asked, his smile infecting me like a disease that I did not
want treatment for. I had not seen that smile since this morning when he told
me of the new rule to the apartment, and I wondered where it would take me
this time.

He grinned again, the wrinkles in his face growing deeper. He took his hands
off of my waist and cupped mine in his own. I smiled and sniggered as I let
him drag me forward into another idea that was beginning to come forward
from his constantly thinking head. He took the blanket I had dragged out only
moments earlier and placed it on the ground in the centre of the room, where
most of his painting supplies were. He backed away from it for a while,
looking down and judging if it was in the right place as he twisted his lips to
the side. He moved some of his panting supplies out of the way while I just
stared at him, a nervous smile on my face.

“Lay down,” he finally instructed me, motioning with his arms over-
dramatically.

“Okay…” I uttered slowly, getting to my knees and then laying on my chest.

This better be good, I thought to myself meekly. I noticed my hands tremble


as I placed them down on the sheet, supporting my weight.

“No, no, no!” he objected right away. His voice made me jump, even if he
was only joking. I looked up at him and he shook his head, a hand on his face,
overextending his mock disapproval. I was back to being a naïve young teen
in his mind.

“On your back, face up,” he instructed again, demanding in an impish


manner. “I want to see you.”
I smiled with him, laughing off my nervousness that had suddenly returned.
God, he wanted to see me a lot. I didn’t think there was that much to look at
anymore, considering I had been naked since late morning, and he had just
seen me in that moment of weakness – as he called it – not too long before. I
figured soon he’d grow tired of observing every inch of me and finally beg
that I put on clothing. But of course, the artist never begged for anything, so,
I flipped my body over again.

As I laid down looking up at the ceiling, displaying myself much like I had on
the orange couch earlier that day and feeling my heart pound inside my
chest, I heard Gerard digging through his cupboards. They weren’t his normal
cupboards where he kept his paint supplies, but the ones closer to the now
empty birdcage.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice quaking a bit – not with anxiety, but
pure excitement. I could hear the hollow banging of plastic boxes, and
cardboard rustling; an unfamiliar sound in the apartment usually filled with
the clanks of wine bottles or paint cans.

“You’ll see,” was the closet thing I got to an answer out of him. He appeared
in front of me soon after, so I never had the chance to ask anything else. He
was holding up a see-through bag filled with minuscule little brown and
yellow dots. I wasn’t sure what the bag contained until he got on his knees
next to me.

“Why do you have birdseed?” I asked absurdly, my eyes widening. I propped


myself up on my elbows, trying to get a better glance and grip of what was
going on.

“Shhhh,” Gerard purred, playing around.

He placed a finger on my lip, trying to silence me as he laid his body down


closer to my own. Instead of becoming quiet, I merely opened my mouth and
consumed the finger, sucking on the tip like I had in his bed moments earlier,
but leaving no chance for biting. There was something so sensual about his
fingers in my mouth that went way beyond just what we had done for sex. His
hands were so strong and artistic; fucking gorgeous. I wanted to convey my
appreciation for them. That appreciation only lasted a few moments before
he took his finger out of my mouth quickly. He rolled his eyes down at me
playfully, chastising me. He was in a lively mood, and just not for that game.
The game he wanted to play involved birdseed and I didn’t quite know if I
was keen on the idea just yet. Especially since I was going to be used as the
game board.

“I want to see something,” Gerard explained as he began to open the bag,


ripping through the sheer plastic with his stubby fingers.

“What?” I inquired, straining my neck and feeling the hard surface dig into
my elbows as I kept looking up at him.

“To see if freedom chooses you,” he stated seriously, the coy demeanor
fading from his face.

I didn’t have much time to deliberate over this scheme before he plunged his
hand into the bag, and placed a handful of birdseed on my chest. I gasped
the moment the cold seeds hit my skin and began to roll down my front.
Gerard merely chuckled to himself (and at me), continuing to spread the
mess up and down my chest until it looked like I had a million freckles or
some horrible skin disease. The seeds clung to his flesh too, black dots
forming all over the back of his hand, then clumping together in the ridges of
his palm. They draped and fell down his arm slowly as he looked around the
room, trying to see where the dove was flying, making cooing and clucking
noises as he did to call her over. He didn’t have to make them for long before
the beige bird came and flew with all her might and landed in the centre of
my chest, just above my belly button. Again I gasped, my eyes bulging out of
my head at the black beady ones staring back up at me.

“I guess she has chosen you,” he said through a smile and a suppressed
giggle.

Though the bird was blocking some of my view (and nearly all of my attention
– she had started to peck my skin and was getting dangerously close to an
area I did not want or need pecked) of the man before me, I could have sworn
I saw something twinkle in Gerard’s eyes. I wanted to believe it was pride,
but something deeper resonated there. Something I wasn’t supposed to find
out until later.

“It feels so weird,” I said, not really to anyone in particular as the feet of the
dove began to poke at my skin. The sensation of the seeds mingling and
sticking to my malleable flesh had been weird enough, but now as she
bobbed her head around when she walked, her smooth and sharp feet
pricked me with every step. It didn’t hurt too much, just felt itchy and
uncanny. When her head came down and she took parts of the unshelled
seed into her mouth, her beak would poke more than the claws, but it never
hurt. Her feathers though - they felt fucking magical. Her tail brushed up
against my skin as she strutted past, pushing excess seeds away and sending
chills up and down my spine.

“Freedom isn’t supposed to feel natural,” Gerard said, replying to my earlier


comment. He had moved himself down, still close to my body, his shoulders
next to my upper thigh. He rubbed his hand up and down smoothly, his
fingertips osculating slightly as he led me through a darkened tunnel of his
mind. “Freedom isn’t supposed to happen in real life. Life is too complicated
and complex with too many lives running and crossing through each other.
There are too many knots to untie for the rope to be completely straight;
there are too many things to break out of to have complete freedom. If
everyone did what they wanted when they wanted, there would be complete
chaos -”

I cut him off, finding a flaw in his two theories. “I thought chaos was good?”

He looked up at me with a sly grin, stopping his rubbing motions for a brief
second. “It is, but when everything is the same and everyone is free, people
take it for granted. People no longer yearn for that sense of self and
sovereignty. Then ultimately, not many people have a purpose to their life. If
the whole existence of yourself is to be free, and it’s given so easily, it takes
the fight away. It takes the passion away. Passion and fighting, as well as
freedom, are there for a reason. We are confined for a reason, for a purpose,
and even when we are alone we are not free. We are just left to dwell inside
an open cage, wondering how to pass the time and make this life count. We
can’t be completely free, but we can dream about it. We are given outlets to
express ourselves: art, music, love, among others. These are the things that
make a life of confinement worth living. These are the things that make us
get up in the morning, and these are the things that give us the freedom we
can never have in reality.”

When he was done, I honestly didn’t know what to do. I could still hear his
voice inside my ear drums, and I could see his face in front of me. His eyes
had lit up like an ember in a dark fire pit when he had spoken the word
dream. For some reason, that stuck out in my mind. Probably because after
those words, if only for a split second, I felt my body jump outside itself.
Maybe I was dreaming, or at least in the process of falling asleep I was so
relaxed and intertwined with his words. I could listen to him talk all night, all
morning, every single fucking day, and still find out something new, either
about him or the world I had been living in for seventeen years. I knew
wisdom came with age, but I felt like an infant next to him, and I knew there
would be no way I could ever match his skills. I could live to be the oldest
man in the world, and still never reach his level. He seemed as if he had been
around for centuries from the way he talked, and how he spoke. Each word
was well crafted, well enunciated, and riddled with meaning after meaning. I
wondered if he practiced this hours before the conversation ever took place,
if he wrote this out before it happened, because surely no one could be this
brilliant without thinking things over about a thousand times first.

Sometimes I didn’t even know what the words he used meant; they were too
large and foreign. Other times, I could not decipher what certain paragraphs
meant, what his philosophies went on about, but I still listened. He could
captivate anyone around him, even if they didn’t speak English. I wasn’t even
sure if it was English in the traditional sense that he was speaking some days.
His flare for French would fall through occasionally with a specific word, or
phrase, but it was the way he drew out English words, gave them his own
spin and dialect that I was enraptured with. They needed to teach it in
schools. It didn’t matter what he was saying anymore, if I understood the
meaning, or if he blended the words into something new; I was always
listening.

The only aspect that weighed heavy in my chest was that I never knew what
to say back to his words. Even if I understood, even if I agreed, I couldn’t just
say a simple yes. He needed someone with more punctuality, more dexterity
with their tongues. I didn’t have that. I touched him a lot of the time in
agreement because I knew hands were a universal language, and he seemed
to comprehend. He barely noticed my lack of words (actually, he probably did
notice because of his attention to details, but just chose not to comment on
it) he was so feverish, so passionate about what he was saying and doing.
And pretty soon, he no longer had to speak, but submerged us both into the
only language I could decipher of physical avowals.

He placed a small open mouth kiss on my inner thigh, his tongue undulating
against the tender flesh. I felt his hands start to go up my leg, fingers like
spiders’ claws, sending shivers up my spine. I breathed jaggedly, feeling
myself become turned on again. I could see the bird’s head bobbed up and
down while my chest did the same thing, both picking up a faster pace.
Gerard was touching me, but I didn’t know if it was going to lead to sex at
this point. I was too distracted by his words and the sensation, and the
manifestation of it all perching on my chest.

“Love…” I said through a breath, discovering something I could understand


and express. I felt Gerard cease movement. “You said that love gave us
freedom. But what about this?” I breathed in and out, waiting for him to
answer my question, but only felt him place his lips on me again. He knew
what I was talking about, but still didn’t acknowledge me yet.

“We can’t tell people about this,” he finally said, not really answering my
question. His kisses became slower and longer between his words. “They
wouldn’t understand.”

His remarks were true, but I still couldn’t accept either of them. They
contrasted. They conflicted. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t care if I was being
naïve again.

“Then is it really freedom?” I pondered out loud. “If we keep this a secret,
how can we express ourselves?”

The dove stopped moving suddenly and looked at me. Her small black beady
eyes stared into me, her coos barely escaping from her throat, strangled by
the noose shaped patch around her neck. I felt her claws dig into me more
and she opened her beak, just as Gerard spoke his words. It was as if I was
hearing the voice of reason through this small bird’s mouth.

And it was singing.

“There’s still freedom in two bodies,” he told me, his voice clear as liquid.
“Even if they are contained inside this room.”

I was about to say something – what I wasn’t sure of anymore – before I felt
his hand wrap around me. I was only half-hard, but the initial contact of a
squeezed fist made me lose control completely and give into his action. It
was easier than trying to think of something as enlightening as him. I was
sure this had been Gerard’s plan all along. We were getting too serious, and
we could both feel the air around us growing thicker. Freedom was supposed
to be that – free, but it was far from easy. Once the topic was brought into
discussion, it was sometimes too hard to handle. Gerard wanted to distract
me with another form of independence between two bodies; by merging and
making one all over again. The bird still pecked at my chest as Gerard’s
strong grip began to move up and down, his kisses became wetter around my
thighs, but it was not as simple as that. He was going to be able to distract
me from verbalization, but my thoughts were constant; my thoughts were
free.

I knew that we were free, just inside a smaller area. You could never be
completely free; Gerard had just said that. You had to have an outlet for it
instead. Art, music, love…I was sure there were more, but I couldn’t conjure
them up right away. And though I wasn’t entirely sure about everything that
was happening just then, I was pretty sure we had freedom in one, if not all of
those elements.

Gerard’s kisses soon were relocated from my thigh to the head of my cock,
causing me to moan in pleasure, even before he took all of me into his
mouth. We had only had sex an hour or two before, but it didn’t seem to
matter with us. We had no time, especially in our climatic state. We just did
what we wanted, and we wanted each other.
Gerard licked the underside before he took me all into his mouth, his tongue
still moving and twirling around me, eliciting all sorts of noises. The muscles
in the back of my throat loosened and I swore I heard what I thought to be a
coo come out of my own mouth.

The dove had flown away by this point, sensing our movements, but still
remained close and watched as Gerard’s head was now the one to bob up
and down. I was still covered in a lot of birdseed, but at that point in time, it
didn’t matter. It began to fall away as Gerard’s hands gripped my waist, his
fingers brushing past my coated skin. The motions he was doing with his
mouth were amazing and I gave into him fully, letting my head fall back
against the floor to one side, as my cheek rubbed up against the fabric of the
sheet. I placed my hands on Gerard’s shoulders, bracing myself more so than
him. He had complete control of the action; he knew exactly what he was
doing. He ran his tongue over my slit, licking it and feeling pre-come gather
before I felt myself hit the back of his throat.

It was after he repeated those sequence of events a few more times when I
came hard and fast into his mouth. He placed his hand on the base of my
cock, riding out my orgasm as he used the sheet to wipe any excess away.

I noted that Gerard had swallowed, and though the idea of it disgusted me a
little, I figured that since we had done a few things earlier in the day, I had
less and less of a contribution. It amazed me that he could swallow that of all
things. He didn’t look like he enjoyed it too much, but he still did it. I really
wouldn’t have cared if he had spit, because I was pretty sure it didn’t taste
too good. I caught him cringing a few times, but for the most part, my eyes
were closed, and gave no indication to his emotional status.

I had not given him a blowjob yet – in fact, I had not really given him anything
yet. I had grabbed his cock a few times in the throes of passion, but for the
most part, I was too afraid to do anything that was beyond kissing or
whatever I let (and encouraged) him to do to me. The whole idea of
swallowing that, however, just seemed odd. Then again, that was what I had
thought about anal sex, and I found that quite enjoyable now that the pain
had subsided.

When I had finished and Gerard was recovered, his fingers traced themselves
up my body, flicking the birdseed off as he passed it by. Some of it bounced
off the sheet, hitting the hard surface of the floor with tiny flicking sounds. He
brought himself up to meet with me face to face, and I propped my body up
on my elbows so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck anymore. We didn’t say
anything, just looked at each other, our eyes scanning up and down before
we kissed again. I could taste the bitterness of tainted flesh in my mouth
from his previous action, and I dove my tongue in deeper to keep tasting it. I
wanted to be apart of the raw human emotion and physical passion that I was
still too scared to perform on him. He wrapped an arm around my back and
pulled me closer, feeling the bold urge I had in me right along side. Our talk
from before had seemed to open even more boundaries and it left me
wanting him more; something I never thought possible.

Gerard relocated his attention to my neck, where he sucked hard and


occasionally bit the skin, evoking soft moans. My eyelids fluttering like
butterfly wings, until I saw something that shot them open completely. I had
totally forgotten that the dove was in the room and when I opened my eyes
completely, she had been almost right in my face. I gasped when I saw her,
then moved my hand to shoo her away. She was on Gerard’s back, climbing
up to his shoulder. I didn’t know how the hell he hadn’t noticed that.

“Go away…” I called at the bird in a whisper, trying to not disrupt Gerard
from his task at hand. I struggled to remember the bird’s name, finally using
the last one I remembered him using – a female Spanish painter’s. “Leave us
alone…Kalho.”

Gerard laughed into my neck, his tongue still on my flesh. “She can stay,” he
informed me, slowing his movements. He was still as passionate, but he
dulled the pace to talk about the very important issue. “And her name isn’t
Kalho anymore.”

“Really?” I asked surprised, though I really shouldn’t have been. Gerard


changed the name of the bird all the time. For all I knew, he could have
changed it right then and there just to fuck with my head. It fit his character;
that was for sure. “What is it now?”

“Frank,” he said seriously, his face still buried in my neck. His kisses were
slow now, like the ones he had placed on my thigh previously. These kisses
were not about sex, however. It was about something more; something more
that evaded me at first.

“There is an artist called Frank?” I asked with a smile on my face.

It was dumb, especially with my name being as common as it was, but


anytime I found a celebrity or song or something with my name it in, I always
got insanely happy. It was a sense of pride that I could let myself have
without being too self-indulgent. And the fact that this person that shared my
name was an artist, and artists were important to Gerard, made this
discovery ten times better.

“Oh, yes,” Gerard said, somewhat sarcastically as if it should have been


obvious.

“What’s his last name? What kind of stuff did he paint? Is he still alive?” I
asked all in a rush, still excited. I could feel Gerard grin again before he
began to answer my questions, out of order to fuck with my head even more.

“He is still alive, he’s still learning to paint, and his last name is Iero,” Gerard
answered the last part softly, so soft that I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. I
could feel myself freeze in his embrace, and he took his face out of my neck
to look at me in the eye. He had a smaller smile placed on his countenance,
but it was brimming with pride nonetheless. And for once, he wasn’t selfish.

“You’re the artist,” he finally informed, clearing me of any doubt I may have
had, or wished I did.

“But…but…” I trailed off, unsure of how to reply, because really, I didn’t get
it. I wasn’t even an artist yet. I could barely paint without his help. I could
barely paint even then. I wasn’t famous. I didn’t have shows. And certainly no
one knew me as an artist. Just Gerard.

Then again, that’s the only person that mattered.

My chest rose and fell; words and images escaping me. All I saw was Gerard’s
open and giving eyes staring back at me; his crystal clear voice inside my
ears.

“You are an artist, Frank,” he told me again, his voice resonating the truth in
so many forms; literal and figurative. “You paint. You make music. You love,
fuck, and fight. You have passion.”

He had been saying his words fast, to convey the sense of urgency in the
same passion I supposedly possessed. He slowed down his pace, taking a
deep breath, making sure I took it all in wholly.

“You are an artist. And now that you know what freedom is, and she’s chosen
you, you are a true artist. And you can do or have anything you want.” He
smiled, baring his tiny teeth this time. My breath was still hot and sticky in
my throat and mouth, my body in a twisted state of disbelief.

This wasn’t just about being any artist or even art anymore. He had begun to
teach me life lessons, using whatever tools he had at his disposal; our bodies,
our minds, and now this bird in front of us, to teach me things I never knew
existed, or even wanted to learn. Gerard was letting me grow up – something
I never thought I wanted to do. But he was going about things in a very
different way. I wasn’t growing by means of numbers, ages, or wrinkles. I
wasn’t growing by means of responsibility, bills, or debts. Those were the
aspects that had scared me before, shooed me away from life almost
completely. Gerard put a mask on those fears for now, and was letting me
grow up on the inside, by ways of culture, art, and freedom. Soulful means
that I never knew existed before and were so much more tangible. Gerard
was letting me grow, but he was only going to take me so far.
“What do you want, Frank?” he asked me, concluding his thought and
message.

This was as far as he was going to take me. I had to decide right then what I
wanted. I was an artist now; I could have and do anything I wanted. Anything
I desired or craved. I could paint pictures, write melodies, and be famous in
my own regard. I could, and more importantly, would do anything I wanted.

I took an unlabored breath in, and bit down on my lip. I looked into Gerard’s
eyes and he saw it too. We knew we could be anything together; be artists
together. I wanted him and no one else.

I leaned forward and pressed our lips together, consuming him whole. I heard
the bird fly around the room, and one thought clearly resonated in my mind:
freedom. I had the freedom to choose Gerard now, but I also had the freedom
to change it in the future, when and if I needed to. I had a feeling though,
that my mind would be made up for a long, long time.

Chapter Eighteen

Art & Age [1]

As we lazed around on the floor for a few necessary moments, the off-white
bird was still watching us. Her head was cocked to the side, and she began to
coo incessantly as Gerard and I declared our mutual want for each other
again through small pecks of lips. Gerard’s hands were on my waist, my back
– everywhere, but so was the birdseed, and it was beginning to become a
burden against my skin. The sharp edges stung and itched. I knew I needed
to get them off soon. The dove, Frank, was now done eating and there was no
way she was coming back for more. All of the seeds had been tainted by
flesh, sweat, and other bodily fluids anyway; she wouldn’t want to eat them
even if she was starving.
I looked at the bird as I got up out of Gerard’s grasp, and she stared right
back intensely with her beady little black eyes. She was named after me now,
acclaiming that I was an artist. I felt so awkward then, some kind of foreign
celebrity forced upon me. I was not used to people paying attention to me for
my actions, justified or not. I was always used to people focusing in on me,
the image, or just not at all. I was Frank; the seventeen-year-old high school
student with little or no aspirations. I didn’t even know that image all that
well, mostly because it was a shell of something. Those were merely facts of
a person, not traits. Traits were something unique and distinguishable,
whereas facts applied to something rigid and were over generalized. I was a
high school student, which meant I sat around and stared at a clock most
days, wishing that I didn’t have to be there. But so did nearly every other
high school student. That description was not about me as a person. You
couldn’t tell who I really was from the label, and I didn’t really know who I
was.

All of a sudden however, I was transformed into Frank the artist. It had only
taken Gerard naming the bird after me, but it somehow sealed this new fate.
Really, I had been acquiring this new façade for a few weeks now. It had all
started with the blue paint can, covering me in my own metamorphosis. I was
an artist; a person. Though the term artist was still just a fact – much like
being a high school student – it embodied so much more than that. Being an
artist allowed you to be born into something that was able to form specific
traits to the individual. Artists were sensitive, intuitive, creative, and
imaginative. Artists were real people with real thoughts, feelings, and souls.
An artist could be molded into anything, any shape or form, using any
medium. The term was flexible, unlike the harsh stone façade of a high
school student. An artist was what Gerard was, and I was beginning to fall
more and more for that ideal (if not the person manifested in its form)
everyday. I was making a transition that I wasn’t even close to being finished
with yet, even though I had already come so far – at least, in Gerard’s mind.

That was the issue though – it was all in Gerard’s mind; it was all his opinion. I
couldn’t see what he was supposedly seeing: this young budding artist. It
didn’t make sense in my mind. I had never displayed any talents before. I had
only written something similar to poetry when I felt like my head was going to
cave in, I only played guitar because of someone else’s dreams, and I only
slathered paint on a canvas because Gerard wanted me to. Though I enjoyed
those activities, I never really thought they were a talent, a calling. Maybe it
was because I never really thought about things in the way Gerard did, I
never really had that artistic focus on everyday life. I was sleeping on the
normal side of the bed every night; I had to turn myself around in order to
see what he saw, and maybe even dream while I was at it.

Apparently those talents were there. I was still learning, Gerard had said, but
I had potential. The word itself was so alien and almost frightful when it had
come out of his lips, and embedded in my mind. It was one of those delicate
declarations that I would absorb as I listened to him speak only because of
the way it glided over his lips. The sound of the word was hopeful, creative,
but the implications left a mark on me – a mark only he could see. I could be
Frank the artist, in time. Now, I was just the budding artist, learning my way
through the pages and pages of uncalculated dreams inside my very own
head. It seemed like a new and foreign land.

“But why do you have to name the dove after me right now?” I questioned,
my insecurities dragging behind the lesson plan still. I looked up to Gerard,
our positions now switched on the floor, my body leaning into his. “I mean,
can’t you just name the bird Frank when I am an actual artist? I’m still just
learning now.”

“I know,” Gerard nodded, his brows showing his disapproval. He laid his head
back down on the mat, looking up to the ceiling as he talked. “Naming it now
only makes everything possible for the future.” He paused, making me think
he had something more to say. When he merely sighed, I probed further.

“What do you mean?”

“By naming something, you claim ownership of it. The situation is similar with
a child or a pet. When you name it, it’s yours.”

He stopped again, eyes transfixed with the thoughts above. My head was on
his chest, chin angled so I could look at him as he talked. His arm was around
my waist, and he dragged me closer, as if to focus on me more. I let my mind
wander with his idea on naming to my parents. I cringed, thinking of the
complete and utter trepidation I felt in the fact that they still owned me. It
was so true, in a way. In a few months I would be eighteen and legally an
adult, but I would always be ‘owned’ by them. They had named me; I was
theirs. At this moment in time, they had control of my actions – and if they
knew I was with a forty-seven-year old artist, naked on his living room floor,
they would not appreciate it one little bit. I would have much rather be owned
by Gerard, because at least he would keep my best interests at heart. And
then it hit me, as the artist’s voice and my inner thoughts cascaded together
into direct reasoning.

“My naming of my dove as you,” Gerard started to explain again, motioning


with his free hand, “means that you can take ownership of yourself. You can
take your artistry in your hands, like clay, and mold it into everything that
you want.”

His hands moved in a fluid manner, as if constructing his own sculpture out of
my potential – or perhaps ours together. He looked down at me, drawing my
attention away from his flying fingers. “You have the power over yourself
now, if you choose to take it, that is.”

He smiled through the stare, but all I could feel was intimidation. I couldn’t
help but feel overwhelmed by everything. I had been used to someone else
owning me all this time; myself as the object, not the possessor. I had always
been empty-handed, so much so that now that something was in them, they
felt odd, heavy, and chaffed with resistance. I wasn’t sure if I could take
myself – all of myself – and truly own it just yet. That was why I had wanted
Gerard to be the middle man before I was completely on my own. I knew I
hated the idea of my parents owning me; they would never steer me in the
right direction. But I knew I also hated the idea of myself owning me; I too,
would never steer myself in the right direction, only crash on my way down. I
was stuck, in power, with or without it. All of this power I had acquired so
soon; too soon. I had only just started to grow up; there was no way I had
already completed everything in this small weekend. I had lacked so many
years prior to my meeting Gerard, I may have needed another lifetime to
catch up. I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t think I ever would be. I began to feel all
the hope I had mustered before, all of the confidence and security melt away,
and I wanted to claw my way out of my skin.

My eyes darted away from Gerard, not answering anything.


“Do you want to take it, Frank?”

His voice called into my thoughts, rousing me from them. He was talking
about the power to own, currently making me want to turn myself inside out.
I let out a labored sigh and brought my eyes to meet his, ready to tell him I
wasn’t, when something else caught my attention. A small smile was on his
face, his expression softened from the initial intensity it had held before. It
was warm and inviting, the invitation extended further as he began to rub my
arm up and down soothingly. And then I realized something else, something
that was less scary than ownership.

I recalled the not so distant memory of Gerard’s hands in mine and the
dove’s wings fluttering throughout the apartment. Not only was I this
apparent artist, I was Frank the dove . Not only had Gerard named my artistry
so I could take hold of it, but he had named me his dove so he could take
hold of me. He was going to keep me, direct me and guide me so I wasn’t
completely alone in this task at hand. I had control over my art, but Gerard
was going to be there to guide me until I got it right.

I looked back up to him and nodded to his question with a weak smile.
Everything seemed far less scary than it had been only moments ago. I
marveled at the sheer polarity of our relationship for a few minutes, as our
mouths came together and our voice boxes dulled. Something was either
good or bad, black or white, dangerous or safe. Our emotions seemed to
teeter on the edge of despair, to the edge of euphoria with nothing (and
everything) in between. It was a hard way to live, especially during those
morose times. Art was like that though; the best in its extremes. There is no
such thing as half a colour; just bright blinding red, to deep dark red. People
don’t want what’s in between because it’s dull, and all around us. Art is an
escape; you don’t paint daily life.

You paint dreams.

Or at least that’s what Gerard had taught me. There was always going to be
art around our relationship, and there was always going to be a little fear, I
realized too, even when I felt so fucking safe in his arms. There was always
fear and pain in life, and with the new added benefit of apparent freedom,
everything was going to feel strange. It wasn’t supposed to feel natural, he
had told me. His arms were a smooth and even texture however, disputing
that fact. He was comfortable; we were comfortable. And I clung onto him as I
let my mind wander.

Though this freedom had been there in the first place, I had never decided to
take it. Maybe that was why the dove had needed to fly over to me; I wasn’t
going to go to her. I could have named my artistry all along, I could have
taken possession of it long before Gerard, but I hadn’t. I didn’t choose
anything until it was all thrust upon me, in a mix of birdseed-covered flesh,
off-white wings, and paint resin. And even when he had done it for me, I was
still a little hesitant to everything. Freedom wasn’t supposed to feel natural;
shackles were in place for a reason. Rules were still meant to be broken
however, and we were doing a damn good job at breaking all of them. I had
freedom, at least a little of it, and I was going to try and grab it by being all
that Gerard wanted me to be.

But what did I want? I questioned myself, Gerard’s words popping into my
mind again. I couldn’t just forget about myself in this. Artists were selfish
people, so I divulged my senses. I wanted to paint, but that was more so to
please him. I wanted to be like Gerard, just as much as I wanted to be with
him; be inside of him. He was my mentor, teacher, and now my lover, but
that didn’t change the fact that I wanted so much more out of him. I wanted
to have his charismatic abilities and his phenomenal voice that broadcasted
such lucrative beliefs. I thought I could only get that through painting, fully
channeling his essence. It was not that I didn’t want to paint, or wasn’t good
at it, but it didn’t really answer the question of what I really wanted, what I
needed. I thought long and hard then, of what that answer would be, and
only came up with one fairly universal conclusion.

I wanted to be myself.

It was just too bad I had no idea who that could be yet. There were so many
roles, so many functions and traits being thrust upon me, good and bad, that
I had too many to choose from. I was a high school student, but that was
inconclusive. I was an artist, but that was daunting, and I still needed to find
out what that meant entirely. In order to be myself, I needed to use art. That
was how Gerard got to be the way he was.

I looked over at him, the forty-seven-year old artist lying naked beside me.
What did artist mean for him? I knew it meant he could paint, draw, and all
that other stuff, but what about personality? He used his art to find himself.
He was self-assured with a smidgen of arrogance, kind and tender, and one
of the most philosophical people I had ever met. He challenged the way
people thought, and he felt things more than he ever let on. He had become
this person before me because of his art. He had used painting to find
himself.

What could I use to find myself? I turned my attention back down to myself,
wrapped up in his embrace, and thought longer and harder than I ever had
before. I didn’t have very many options, I realized, and I came to the most
logical conclusion at the forefront of my mind.

I could make music. I could strum my fingers along the guitar and throw
some words down to it perhaps. I could have people interpret what they
heard rather than what they saw, like with Gerard’s paintings. Seeing was
well and good, but music could shake a person’s inner core, literally shaking
their surface as well. I could do that - in fact, I wanted to do that. I listened to
music all the time; I always had my headphones on while I walked down the
hallways at school and sometimes even during classes themselves if I could
sneak them in. My bedroom wall was plastered with posters of bands I liked,
not art. I admired musicians very much the same way Gerard admired artists.
We were a lot alike, but with different vices.

The limited time I was at home, I would take the guitar out of its hibernated
state inside my closet and play some notes. After Gerard had crushed and
then feebly rebuilt my soul when I played for him, I was determined that the
guitar would not see the light of day outside of my room again. I was still
going to play it – in fact, I had that very night, muffling the strings so my
parents didn’t hear – but I was going to keep it tucked away from anyone else
until I could play better, play right. Even if that took ages and it never saw
the outside world for years, I was still getting some form of creativity out.
At least the instrument didn’t look as sick as it had, the dull wood regaining
some life anytime it was touched. The guitar really had looked sick before I
had started to play it again; it was dull, lonely, and eating away at itself from
being out of use. For something that creative to survive, it needed someone
to help it along.

No one can do art alone, Gerard’s teaching came into my head from one of
our very first lessons. A person may be able to paint a picture, but the
inspiration comes from other people, other things. If each person painted
something from inside themselves, without help from anyone else, there
would be nothing. Just black. Each aspect of yourself is built through an
event, sparked by another person, triggered by an experience…it just went
on and on. You have to be creative to survive, and no one can survive alone.

When I randomly played my guitar at three in the morning one night, I


realized I was not alone, but it was in a peculiar way. I knew I had Gerard,
that was obvious, but I also came to the conclusion that I was a lot like the
once dull instrument I played. I had also been sick; sick of my life and friends
and just everything in general. But now, the playing of the guitar was a
reciprocal life saving action to both me, the guitarist and healer, and the
guitar, the patient. We both had a metaphorical type of cancer, and together,
we were seeking treatment, bringing ourselves back to life one note at a
time.

During those nocturnal playing sessions, the door was closed and I hung my
comforter over it to muffle any other noises. I’d stop periodically, my ears
strained and listening to see if I could hear anyone coming. I had not been
caught so far, and I thought I was getting pretty good at being inconspicuous.
I was getting to be a good liar too, bluffing the places I had been when I
stumbled into the house past ten every night. (Most artists are liars; they just
don’t always need to speak them - they can paint them). Even with my
amount of lies (or art pieces?) piling up, my mother and father just somehow
knew I was playing the damn instrument again. Maybe they had spotted the
bleak wood suddenly coming to life when it was sprawled across my bed. My
mother would occasionally ‘clean’ my room when I was at school, and no
doubt she saw it and told my father. It was his guitar after all, he deserved to
know.
My father didn’t even like the fact that I was listening to music most of the
time, always saying it was a waste of time. I could be studying. I could be
getting a job. I could be doing a lot of things, according to him – none of them
creative. He had been especially hard on me ever since I had asked to take
the music course. We never brought the subject up again, but I could tell
from the way his eyebrows raised slightly and his jaw locked when I got home
late at night that he thought something was going on.

Art, in his mind at least, was even more of a waste than music. He had played
an instrument in his youth and could comprehend its importance, to some
degree. I was pretty sure that was why he had yelled the way he had at the
dinner table. He had been angry, but it wasn’t whole-heartedly at me – it was
at himself. He was resentful and bitter for the fact that he had to give up
music. He had given the guitar to me, passing down his dream, but at the
same time, he never wanted to see it fulfilled. He wanted to see me fail. If his
hopes of a guitar player were never matched, then why should my own? He
passed down his dream, giving up on it – but he wanted me to do the exact
same thing as him. And after I had, we would partake in some sick and
twisted father-son bonding session because now we both had caught our
fantasy, just to let it go. It was part of the ownership he had by naming me.
He wanted to make me suffer like he had, so he forbid me to take the course.
He hadn’t insulted the ideology behind the music itself because he couldn’t;
he had done the same thing, in his youth.

But art? There was no way he would support that, even if I told him I was
getting free lessons. He could barely grasp the music he used to live for;
there was no way on earth he could ever understand art, something he had
never even bothered to study. Art was fruity, and my teacher even fruitier.
My dad would have had a fit if he had known about my relationship with the
artist when he was merely my unqualified art instructor. Now that we weren’t
just doing art, I knew my dad would kill me. Or Gerard. Or maybe both of us
together in a bloody mess, stabbing us to death with paint brushes. I didn’t
want to think about what would happen if anyone – not just my father – found
out about Gerard and me. The consequences would be way too harsh,
painful, and I knew I couldn’t take them. Gerard and I were just beginning;
hopefully it wouldn’t turn sour too fast.

I shook my head, wanting something else to focus on, something frivolous. I


got my answer when I heard the seeds from my chest fall off around me and
grip my skin in other places. They were fucking itchy, and I needed to get
them off soon.

I slid out from under Gerard’s arm, getting up gradually from the floor and
starting to make my way over to the bathroom. He grunted as I stirred, his
weight shifting to accommodate my leaving. His eyes were half-closed, and
though it was night, he was not sleeping.

I could feel the seeds under my feet as I got up, and could hear them fall off
my body, making minuscule sounds of pitter-patter as they hit the ground. I
shivered, feeling the coolness of the rest of the floor under my toes, only
accentuated by the tiles in the bathroom. I flicked on the light, sending a
great flow of bright florescence into the room, causing me to squint.

Gerard’s apartment had been pretty dim up to that point, the dark sky
coming through the window and only one small lamp on. I put my hand up to
block part of the demanding light, looking at my reflection in the mirror. The
door was jarred open still, and I could see Gerard in the mirror image of the
glass. The bathroom hadn’t been too far away.

“Where are you going?” he asked me slyly, lying down and splaying his legs
out so all of him was visible in the mirror. He wasn’t hard, but I could tell that
his mind was wandering around to sex in some form or another. I squinted
back at him, still blinded from the light.

“Shower,” I called to him, cocking my head to the side so I could see him
more. I threw in a playful bit of spite to my next words. “After all, someone
just covered me in birdseed.”

“All for art,” he smiled, leaning his head back and exposing his throat. His
Adam’s apple protruded and bobbed up and down as he swallowed. Even in
the faint radiance I could see that his neck was littered with patches of purple
hued skin. I smiled, knowing that I had been the one that made those marks.
Looking into the bathroom mirror still, I shifted my gaze to my own body,
seeing what I looked like for the first time in over a day.
I was shocked by what I saw. Not only was I still covered in the finite black
and orange specks of seeds, but my whole body, not just my neck, had
Gerard’s markings all over it. There was a particularly dark shade of purple
on my left side, right below the ear, close to the chin. I looked over and
touched the spot, feeling my skin clench into goose bumps as I did. I could
still feel Gerard’s lips on me, his teeth nipping at my flesh and his hands
roaming everywhere. That spot was probably Gerard’s favourite on me; he
was always sneaking up from behind and surprising me with a kiss to the
area.

I closed my eyes tighter and savored the memory, remembering just how
good it had felt. I cocked my head back like Gerard had done on the
hardwood floor, exposing my neck and throat fully, Adam’s apple out. I
touched the skin with blind fingers, sensing out and feeling each memory
over and over again, making it new. I didn’t know how I was going to hide the
hickeys when I left his place, but that was the farthest thought from my mind.
When I opened my eyes again to look at what I thought were bite marks on
my chest, Gerard was standing behind me, Cheshire cat grin planted on his
face. He was standing in the door frame solidly, his arms folded over his
chest, body leaned against the wall.

“Gerard, I have to shower,” I said quickly, somewhat startled. I did not hear
him come in.

I snapped my head back to its normal position, removing my hand from my


neck and shifting my weight. Instead of listening to my request, the artist
walked closer, his pace agonizingly slow. He placed his feet sturdily behind
me, his hands slinking around my waist like a snake, as his lips relocated to
his favourite spot, previously investigated by my hands. I cringed to the
newly sensitive area as his tongue came out and began to undulate against
the fair, yet darkened skin.

Though I didn’t want to, I melted into the embrace, Gerard’s hands flicking off
seeds as he wrapped himself tighter around me. Giving up, I reached a hand
behind me and placed it on the nape of his neck, trying to pull him down
closer, but he ignored me, stopping the action. He was a fucking tease most
of the time.
“I made a work of art on your body,” he whispered, looking at the hickey. He
touched the spot carefully with his free hand, the pads of his fingers just
hovering as he screwed up his face, rethinking his statement. He looked at
me in the mirror, nestling his head on my shoulder, and smiled. “But then
again, you already were a work of art.”

I grinned at the comment, meeting his eyes in the pane of glass before he
bent down and started to kiss me again slowly. He spotted my shoulders with
small kisses, tongue staying put in his mouth. His patterned motions
reminded me of the disorganized mess that was still littering my torso.

“I have to shower,” I repeated, my voice hitching in my throat.

Gerard’s hands that had been placed along my waist were cupping my
hipbones, slowly reaching down to my cock. He gripped me in his hand,
touching and stroking, though I wasn’t hard. It was still a little too soon for
me to get it up again since our last action, but his hand still felt good. If he
kept doing what he was doing though, I would probably have an easier time
than usual getting an erection again so quickly. Gerard knew what to do with
his hands and lips and just… everything. I somewhat felt bad, not being able
to do all of the wonderful things he did to me – I just didn’t know how. Gerard
never seemed to mind.

“How do you know what to do?” I asked, pressing myself into his chest, my
arms coming out and making sure he didn’t leave from his position.

“Do what?” he inquired right back, accepting me into his body. There was no
space separating us, and his lips hovered above my ear. He still stroked me,
long and slow, setting up a constant pattern until it eventually became
something so normal, so comfortable, it wasn’t even about sex anymore.

“This…” I gasped, my eyes closed. “Touching, kissing…” I paused, bringing


my eyes to meet his in the mirror. “Sex.”
“Ah, it’s easy to know what to do with sex,” he stated in a quicker tone, his
sensuality easing off a small fraction and lecturing tone coming through. He
countered the serious nature and started to kiss down my neck, as if
demonstrating his point. “You just do it.”

“But where did you learn?”

He didn’t answer me at first, too involved with my neck. He was sucking on


that spot again, his breathing quickening and matching my pace. His hands
moved away from my cock to my waist again, and I could feel him start a
grinding rhythm against my backside. I pressed into him and let my head roll
back onto his shoulder. He continued to kiss me and I opened my eyes for a
brief moment, my sight centering on the bookshelves Gerard kept lining one
of his walls.

“Did you learn from books?” I suddenly asked, no longer completely


distracted.

“Hmmm?” he asked, then proceeded to kiss and press into me harder.

“Sex,” I panted, pushing the word forward in my mouth quickly. “Did you
learn about it in books?”

Maybe if I had coherent thoughts, and Gerard and I weren’t in the middle of a
passionate embrace, the question wouldn’t have sounded so stupid. He
laughed at first, his breath tickling my skin, but when he locked eyes with me
in the mirror and saw that I was serious, he answered a declarative “No!”

“Then where?” I pressed, slightly affronted. Gerard met my gaze tenderly in


the mirror once again, running one of his artistic fingers down the side of my
face. Our grinding was officially put to an end, and now he was just up
against me to converse, and probably teach me something else.
“Sex is something so natural, so pleasurable, so basic…” he went on, stroking
my face more with each adjective added. “A human is born to know how to
have sex. We are given hormones, passion, and then tempted with beautiful
people.” He paused, kissed the side of my face, temptation presenting itself.
“I will not have books in my house that tell me how I should be a human. I
know how to be a human, and being an artist is a special breed of the
species. Artists have a better appreciation for the body than most people,
and therefore, have a higher appreciation of when bodies come together to
be one. Artists are born with sex in their blood. Everything I know about sex
I’ve been born with, or is self-taught, as it should be.”

“Really?” I gawked, the ideology behind everything unknown to me. “How


can you self teach something like that?”

“Through practice,” he hissed adroitly, and then proceeded to start another


exercise in precision through kisses on my neck.

I nodded; practice made sense. I had been doing a lot by that point, but I still
didn’t feel like I was any better. I knew a lot more, a hell of a lot more, but I
had no idea where I was going. I wanted a book, a guideline to tell me if I was
at least embarking down the right path, and how much farther I had to go. I
was used to an artificial environment that was high school and told me how
to be that specific human being they churned out each and every year. I may
have been an artist, but they had taught me for so long that even if sex was
in my blood, that I had to deny it. I was used to denial and repression. It was
hard to unlearn that, but as I did, I needed something else to guide me along.
I needed to learn to unravel in the same way I had been put together. If they
had to teach us everything about our bodies in sex-ed classes, why not have
other classes, other books, and other lessons to teach people how to go
beyond getting a condom on?

“Practice makes perfect,” he added, just as his tongue began to surge


against my skin.

“But how will I know if it’s perfect? There’s no book to tell me how…”
“Haven’t you learned anything from being here?” Gerard stopped kissing and
touching me abruptly. He placed his hands on my waist and stared into me
from the bathroom mirror. His eyebrows were raised, questioning. “You never
need a book to tell you you’re right.”

“Then what are those art ones for? And all the other ones you have?”

“Most of those art books are of collections. They’re just pictures. The others
merely display techniques, tell me about them, and then move on. They don’t
tell me if I’m right or wrong. They just tell me to paint.”

I paused to think, while Gerard looked at me through the glass. I thought


about our lessons and the techniques he would employ. He would open up his
books every once in a while, where we would pour over them and absorb
each and every art piece. But he was right – the words right or wrong never
passed through our lips. I liked Andy Warhol’s work, but Gerard didn’t. He
thought Warhol was too fake and simplistic, whereas I thought it was quite
the opposite, and he was innovative. We discussed why each of us thought
that way, gave examples and proof through pictures, and then we moved on.
We didn’t argue for ages over who was more valid in their opinion. It was just
there and we accepted it. We just painted.

And here, I supposed, we were just going to have sex.

“I’m not here to tell you if you’re right or wrong. I’m just here to let you
practice on.”

Gerard was still talking, and I found when his voice didn’t bring me back into
reality, his lips against my own did. He tipped my head back as he ran a stray
hand along my jaw, and we engaged in another act that I had definitely had
enough practice on. More couldn’t hurt, though. You could never get enough
art, Gerard had told me. I was starting to assume that it applied to this too.

Why should art be any different from this? I found myself asking, as Gerard
slipped his tongue into my mouth. Art was all around us, and he used it in his
lessons. He was teaching me about sex now, but I realized something.
Though he couldn’t be right or wrong, there still needed to be something
giving him the backbone and the knowledge to be a teacher. You had to learn
in order for that to take place, and I wanted to know where that came from.
You couldn’t just wake up one day and commit yourself to teaching without
any kind of credentials before, I told myself, but then again, this was Gerard I
was talking about. He may have fallen from the sky and obtained everything
in one simple day.

“And what about you?” I asked when the kiss had ended.

“I’m still learning just as much as you are,” he replied, though not entirely
answering my question. I could tell this was about as much information as I
was going to get out of him however, at least, for tonight. “You’re never too
old to stop learning, Frank. And you’re never too young to start.”

“I don’t know if I’m doing anything right,” I confessed, rolling my eyes at my


own embarrassment.

“It’s not about doing anything right. It’s about doing what feels good.”

Keeping his eyes on me in the mirror, his hands relocated to my hips, and
slowly began to inch their way down my pubic bone. I bit my lip, feeling the
warm pads of his fingers linger over my skin, and just knowing what was
coming next. He was proving to be quite a distraction tonight.

“Does that feel good?” he whispered into my ear.

“Yes,” I answered, just as hushed, and felt his hand go over myself again.

“Then this is all you need to follow,” he stated with finality, and I was afraid
he would stop his actions when he stopped talking. Luckily, none of them
were paused.

“Some people have different interests. Some like pain, leather, chains, role-
playing, feet, and many people at once. But they know what’s right for them,
and they’ve known it all along. It’s an urge inside and it’s imperative that
people listen. Some people do, some people don’t – and they don’t have sex.
Then again, there are some people who do listen and find out they just don’t
like sex at all.” Gerard cocked his head to the side, making a disgusted face.
“God, I don’t know how they live.”

“Me either.”

My breathing was still hitched under his touch, and we brought our lips
together to kiss. I could feel his growing erection against my thighs and butt,
but he wasn’t grinding into me. I pressed into him a little, only to have him
continue the focus on our mouths working together. He took one hand away
and positioned his hand on my neck to deepen our kiss. We still needed
practice here, apparently.

“But Gerard,” I paused for a second, breaking away. “What do you like? What
are you into?” I clasped the hand that was on my neck and brought it down to
my side so we couldn’t get sidetracked again. I waited, and prayed his desire
wouldn’t be something weird.

“Whatever you’re into.” He went to kiss me, but I placed my other hand out
and caught his lips, making him continue talking before distracting me again.
He sighed, giving me a coy grin as he gave in.

“I like experimenting. Trying new things. Teaching you…” he went in to kiss


me again, but I was not satisfied with his answer, and apparently he had a
whole list of desires that he kept drawing from. “There are a lot of things I
like about sex, and there are a lot that I haven’t even experienced yet. But
there is a bliss in inexperience that I haven’t quite been able to find
anywhere else. Sometimes the best part about sex is relearning how your
body and someone else’s works. And even better, how they work together.”
He gave me a look through the mirror, his eyebrows raised in a question
before he even went for what he was after.

“All right,” I said, nodding, finally satisfied. We both leaned in mutually and
our lips connected again. I was about to turn around so we could be face to
face to embrace and my neck would stop hurting, but then I remembered
something.

The birdseed. I didn’t know how Gerard could stand running his hands up and
down my torso when I was still covered in the small black flecks.

“I have to have a shower, Gerard,” I stated with more determination. Gerard


only moved his lips to another locale.

“That’s no fun.”

“Yeah, but I still have to have one,” I countered, referring to the seed yet
again. He laughed, but didn’t say anything for a while. He just continued to
kiss my neck, tongue coming out of his mouth and tracing along my shoulder
blades, trying to provide a distraction.

Fuck, I let myself be distracted.

“It’s those mundane everyday activities that drag the fun out of life,” Gerard
suddenly stated, notable tone to his voice. My eyes had been closed,
breathing sharp and shallow, and I almost hadn’t heard him. He removed his
hands from my pubic area, moving them up my chest and locking them in the
centre. We both breathed in hard as he brought my body closer to his, folding
me into his skin.

“We do those mundane tasks because we have to, not because we want to.”
When he emphasized those two words, he brought his lips and body into me,
closer than I thought possible. “And we waste time on these things, day in
and day out. I timed myself once,” he paused, for once not adding a sexual
edge to his words. He opened his eyes, glancing at the mirror and checking
to see if I was actually listening. My eyelids fluttered as he kissed and
touched my sensitive spots, making me look like I was in a completely other
zone. He stopped his actions then, hands now just resting solidly against my
heaving chest, assuring that I would pay full attention.

We were not practicing right now. I was learning. He still gave me some kind
of contact, his hot breath on my neck and his fingers on my chest providing
some kind of physical stimulation while his words worked on my mind. It was
times like these where I was sure that Gerard never shut up, and where I
never wanted him to.

“I was in college when I did this experiment. I don’t like that word though –
experiment. Too sciencey. I prefer to use the term experience, because that’s
all life is: a big jumbled mess of experiences overlapping each other and
mixing together to form different situations, different colours. It’s an abstract
painting. Even modern art, if you will. We all know that life most days is
bullshit.”

He chuckled, his hot breath hitting my throat with a light edge. He looked at
me from the mirror, smiling. I remembered the day we broke the beer
bottles, the amber liquid spilling away, its stench filling the room and my
childhood disappearing as we made modern art. I smiled back, though it hurt
a little. I thought I was growing up so much when we had done that – too
much even, in that one day. Now it was weeks later and I had advanced
years, lifetimes even. Or at least it felt that way.

After our brief reminiscing, Gerard continued his story, placing a kiss on my
neck before his lips twisted with words. “I timed how long it took me to walk
to each of my classes, to do my dishes, cleaning, piss around in the cafeteria
with some acquaintances. Little things like that. And do you know what I
realized?”

He barely paused, shooting me a quick glance and not giving me a chance to


answer as he leaped on to his next point. “I came to the conclusion that I was
wasting my life. I realized that by the end of the week, I had spent almost a
day doing menial tasks. Twenty four hours, Frank!” He waved one of his arms
on my chest, causing us both to bounce and bound with his comical outrage.
He sighed and chuckled at my sudden shock, drawing the hand back down to
a calming stroke against my skin.

“I could have been painting during that time, writing, drawing, reading -
anything creative, really. But instead I was caught in a repetitive vortex.
What’s the point of doing something, if you’ll just have to do it again?” He
sighed and gave a mock shrug, but I could sense the serious state behind the
question.

I thought for a moment about his words. He made a point, though I was
pretty sure he was over exaggerating his numbers. His reasoning started to
make sense in my mind about why he always made me do the dishes at his
place, and why he never cleaned his paint brushes. He didn’t want to waste
time – and essentially his life – doing small tasks. So he just got me to waste
my own. I chortled, realizing his selfishness with that matter, until I
discovered that something had changed. He didn’t make me clean his
brushes or his dishes anymore. Ever since we had started our art lessons, he
had been relying on my maid-like qualities less and less. He didn’t want me
to clean; he didn’t want me to waste my life anymore. I was an artist, or at
least becoming one then. Their lives were too important to waste. It had just
taken him awhile to realize that, and even me a little while to accept the offer
of actual life, instead of just being alive.

I glanced to his green eyes through the looking glass, both of ours lighting
up. He was trying to save me, in a way, and was still doing it right then. But
there was something I was missing.

“What does this have to do with me wanting to take a shower?” I cut in,
screwing up my brows.

“Ah,” he breathed, glad to see that I was paying attention, even as his hands
were massaging my chest again. “That’s the tricky thing. Though we want to
be clean, the society also tells us that we need to be. And bathing is one of
those mundane things. It’s boring. It’s dull. It’s repetitive. And we have to do
it every day.”
He sighed, blinking slowly, then looking down at me mischievously. He raised
his bushy eyebrows and leaned down into my neck for a quick kiss, his teeth
coming into contact against my skin. I could see the real reason of why he
followed me in here coming through and I smiled, knowing where it was
going.

“Some things are worth doing again and again, though. Like sex,” he added,
pausing and leaving me to draw my own conclusion. He bobbed his head
down and began to kiss my shoulder this time, biting slightly. It made my
eyes roll back into my head as a groan escaped from my throat. That,
apparently, was all the answer Gerard needed.

He removed his arms from my waist and his mouth from my skin at a
leisurely pace, going over to the shower stall and turning it on. I nearly fell
backwards when he moved, my barrier I had been melting into now removed.
He had been standing there and talking for so long that when the time came
to actually have a shower, I had almost forgotten one was in the room.
Everything around us when we were together just didn’t seem to exist as
much as we did in that very moment.

The water dripping on the tiles inside the small stall made me jump back into
reality. The sound whirred and trickled into my ears, seeming so mundane
(like Gerard had said), but so exciting as I drew my eyes over to him.

He was standing casually by the door and sticking his hand inside the jet
stream, letting the clear liquid fall around his dancing fingers as he made
sure the water was a good enough temperature. All of a sudden, he extended
his arm back to his side, drawing his whole body into the small, already
steam-filled booth. Clouds of mist filtered outside, making my skin feel
clammy as I watched his naked body become coated by small water rivulets.
Gerard had been right; what he was suggesting was no longer a banal
occurrence. It was fucking exhilarating.

I had never taken a bath or shower with anyone else before. Even as a little
child, I was always alone in the gigantic white tub, having no siblings or no
cousins in my direct age group to share the sudsy water with. I had heard of
some parents joining their kid in the water, but I was so relieved my parents
had never done that. As far as I was concerned, their clothing was a
permanent feature of their body. It was weird even thinking about it,
honestly. I was always alone when I bathed, just like when I was naked. I had
liked and preferred it that way, but now Gerard was challenging my
previously conceived ideas.

I didn’t really mind.

I bit my lip as I saw him inside the stall, the water rushing down over his
body. His stomach was round and hung over his waist a bit, the constant
water current from the nozzle causing the flesh to ripple where it made first
contact. The water had attacked the top of his head first, his smooth,
feathery, dark hair becoming chunked and separated into extremely wet and
still-dry patches. Once his hair was fully damp, it was so jet black and shiny it
looked like motor oil on top of his head, contrasting with the white skin that
was blinding in the areas that never saw the sun. The hair clung to his face,
falling down in front of his eyes and looking like obscure spider webs,
constantly moving against the rushing stream.

He ran his hands over his chest, dotted with fine curled hair, but relatively
bare, and through his top mane, instinctively flipping it back. He placed his
head under the shower spout, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth, letting
the water pool and fall off to the side of his chin, never swallowing any of it.
He appeared to be off in his own little world, the shower consuming him
whole as I watched, not doing much of anything else.

Finally, he cracked open his eyes, and gave a sly smile as he gazed over at
me, still standing awkwardly in awe. The inept feelings of being naked I had
first possessed were coming back to me, but they were easily hushed away
by Gerard’s devious grin, and the size of my erection in front of me. Gerard’s
sultry and husky tone as he uttered a low, “I’m waiting,” also helped
significantly.

I gingerly stepped forward onto the tiles, shaking off my worries as I rolled
my shoulders back. He knocked the door open for me as I stepped inside the
shower with him, trying to make sure too much water didn’t pool in the
bathroom. Gerard didn’t seem to care about the state of his floors or his
neighbors down below however, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me to his
wet mouth to meet with a kiss.

Our lips slid all over the place more than usual because of the jet stream
above us adding a slippery quality to our skin. Gerard’s hands glided like the
water down my body, over the small of my back, before gripping my ass
lightly as he pressed our hips together. My hands reached around his thick
middle and went to the back of his wet hairline, the strands feeling like
octopus tentacles. I could feel the layers of dirt, sweat, and birdseed start to
fall off of my body, only to be replaced by Gerard.

We kissed under the falling water for the longest time, saliva and water
blending into one entity, before Gerard pulled our bodies apart. He looked me
up and down, smile visible through the steam of gushing current in between
us. I struggled to keep my eyes open for very long as my own bangs fell
before them, steam and liquid blurring my vision, but I could feel everything
that was going on. I knew we were going to have sex again.

His hands were around my waist, moving up my chest and removing any
other form of dirt and grime from my physique with his fingers before he
dropped to his knees in the shower. He was right over the drain, causing the
water to form thinly at the bottom. His hands explored in between my thighs,
pushing my legs apart a bit so he could fit himself in between. I obliged,
feeling his warmer than the water mouth wrap around me. I tried to find
something to grab onto, my knees feeling weak as the hot steam around us
extracted the strength from my nerves. Gerard’s head was being pummeled
by the water rush, his hair pushed apart and scalp forming where the water
concentrated. He didn’t let it stop him however, his hand gripping my ass and
thighs for support as he licked, sucked, and tongued me in his mouth. He had
only given me a blowjob an hour earlier and I couldn’t believe he was doing it
again.

I knew that teenage boys were always horny and I really agreed with that
assumption. We really did think about sex every eight seconds. But God, I
didn’t think we were supposed to actually follow up on those thoughts every
time. It felt like all Gerard and I were doing was having sex (albeit handjobs,
blowjobs, or actual sex), with brief interludes of conversation. We were going
at it like bunnies; bunnies that had been injected with an extra dose of
hormones, and in his case, maybe Viagra too. Though it was strange and
something I was not used to (or had even heard about), I wasn’t complaining.
My body was complying, my cock at full attention inside his mouth, and I was
moaning right along with it.

The thin layer of water at the bottom had begun to grow rapidly, and each
time Gerard shifted his weight on his knees, loud sucking noises echoed in
the stall, other than the ones he was making with his mouth.

It was somewhat awkward giving a blowjob in the shower. Gerard’s hair was
in his face now, the water was pooling around him at the bottom and falling
down from his thick bangs, constantly making it a tad harder to breathe
(since he couldn’t use his mouth, after all) and I was taking a while to come. I
had just climaxed an hour earlier; I really didn’t have that much in me this
time, and though I was now completely hard, it was going to take a little
more than a few sucks to get me off.

Eventually Gerard replaced his mouth with his hand and proceeded to kiss his
way up to my face. He leaned me away from the shower nozzle, against one
of the tile walls, our tongues mingling together, both of us panting from
exertion and harder breathing capabilities. His hand didn’t stay on my cock
for long as he traced it down to my balls and then my hole, easing his fingers
into me with surprising relaxation. I was getting better at this action too,
though both Gerard and I agreed that I still needed practice.

He positioned himself at my opening, his hands on my waist and creeping


around my backside to hold me up with surprising strength as he entered. I
wrapped my legs around him once he was all the way inside, no longer
touching the tile floor and giving my trust to him completely. He held onto me
tightly, his nails making small crescent patterns in my skin that the water
could not wash away as easily as the dirt covering our bodies. I pushed my
head over his shoulder and breathed the hot mist of the shower in deeply,
both of us cringing from the awkward positioning.

It was getting easier and easier for him to enter me without being in as much
discomfort, but we had never done this standing up before. It was a hard
thing to do, let alone when there weren’t buckets of water being poured on
top of both of us. I could feel my fingers and toes getting pruney, and they
weren’t even touching the water that much anymore. Though we were both
in slightly more pain than usual, or than was needed, it didn’t seem to
matter. The setting of the shower, with its warm mist and water flooding both
of us as pleasure managed to seep its way in, made up for it.

Gerard held me up against the wall as he thrust into me faster than usual.
The slow, intimate pace was harder to maintain when both his arms and legs
were ready to give out. I leaned into his body, my face buried into his neck,
biting his shoulder periodically in lieu of the finger he used to have inside my
mouth. We both gasped and choked as he hit my prostate, taking some water
into our lungs. Gerard managed to keep hitting the same spot over and over
again, almost dropping me at one point. He apologized profusely as he
leaned us both against the shower wall, the tile grating my back as we moved
in unison. I held on tight as he continued to thrust up, my orgasm mounting
inside of me.

I was brave enough to let go of his shoulder as we progressed, pumping my


own cock this time because his arms were too busy supporting me as he
worked on pleasure for himself. I came first in between our wet bodies, my
breathing short and fast. Feeling me clench around him sent Gerard over the
edge a few minutes later, moaning into my shoulder louder than the rippling
water around us. He was now completely weak from his orgasm and his
exertion of holding me up, and he let both of our bodies slink down to the
shower floor slowly. He spread us out and blocked the drain, starting another
thin layer of water to form on the bottom. He switched our positioning so he
was against the wall, and I was cradled in his lap, his cock no longer inside of
me. I was a bit sore and achy when I sat on his thighs, but I was doing okay.
He reached up and shut the water off completely as I got comfortable, and
the cacophony of the emptying drain echoed in the stall. Coming back down,
he drew our damp foreheads together, kissing me hard between pants. We
sat in the wet mess for a long time, just catching our breaths.

“See,” he panted hard, tossing his wet hair back. I was still on his lap, but our
foreheads were no longer drawn together, my head resting on his shoulder
instead. I looked up at him as he began to talk, watching as a single droplet
of water ran down and fell off his pointy nose, onto his chest. I leaned forward
and licked the spot instinctively, earning a smile from him.
“All for art.”

Chapter Eighteen

Art & Age [2]

We dried off together using Gerard’s large, orange, fluffy towels. Despite the
fact that Gerard hated to do meaningless tasks, his towels smelt so good and
were so soft, I swore he must have washed them every day. Or maybe Vivian
did; she seemed to be a mom just as much as a best friend to the artist,
constantly bringing him food and probably doing his laundry. Gerard
obviously didn’t have a washer in his place, and I doubted, with the state that
the super kept the building in, that they had a (working) machine in the
basement.

I found it slightly funny that a grown man still had people taking care of him,
but enforced luxuries were minor complications he didn’t need. He never
asked Vivian to bring food; in fact, he always rolled his eyes at his best friend
when she showed up with her Tupperware containers filled with leftovers. He
never asked to be helped because he was content on his own, even if his
towels didn’t smell like a mountain stream, or he didn’t have a tuna casserole
to eat. If people were willing to help, on the other hand, he was more than
willing to let them.

I shook my head to get the heavy wetness off of my hair, while Gerard
dabbed at himself daintily. He twisted the towel along his back, blotting his
sides and hips before he turned his attention to me. He insisted on drying me
off most of the time, pulling the towel around my head, almost wrapping me
up like an infant. It felt weird at first, but just like Gerard let other people take
care of him, I let him do the same to me. He was so delicate with the soft
item against my body, barely touching me, only enough to get the film of
water off my clammy skin, and sending warm shivers of care all through my
nerves.

He started with my head, messing up my hair with his palm, and ended at my
toes, on his knees again in front of me, looking up with wide eyes as he
dabbed my feet. I smiled, appreciating the act, sexual nature completely
removed. It was all about care this time, and I noticed that this care took a lot
more time and effort than the sex we had just had only moments, maybe
really hours, ago.

When we finally stepped into the rest of Gerard’s apartment, the less dense
and cooler air washed over me, along with a huge wave of tiredness. The
heat and steam from the shower, coupled with the sexual nature of our entire
day hit me like a ton of bricks, smashing my kneecaps so I could barely
stand. Gerard was by my side though, and seeing my brief stumble, he
wrapped his hands around me quickly. His brows knit with concern as he
looked down at my surprised and tired face. I had crushed my eyes closed
when I staggered, shocked that I had actually let myself fall. When I opened
them and saw Gerard’s expression, I tried to give him a smile, showing him
that I was okay, just drained. My grin displayed this weakness, especially as I
still tripped over my feet in the few paces we went forward. I was fucking
wasted and it was probably well into the early morning by this point. Gerard’s
grip tightened around my waist, purely in concern rather than urgency this
time, shaking his head and rolling his eyes, chuckling slightly at my obvious
(and failed) cover-up.

“Let’s go to bed,” he breathed quietly into my ear as he steered me to the


left, through his black bedroom door. I had no objections, as well as not much
strength left, so I let myself be led.

His room was dark, void of any light, except for the small inverted shadows of
florescence from the main part of the apartment coming through the door
and displaying themselves on his bed, light sliced like oranges. His hand was
on the small of my back as he led me to the sheets, peeling them back like
the skin of a fruit and holding them up until I got under, mingling with the
layers of fabric. He kept the door ajar so light still etched its way into the
room, allowing our night vision a lapse in its hard work.

He slid in next to me, his thigh grazing my exposed front and sending heat
throughout my already flushed body. He pulled the sheets up to both of our
shoulders as he lay down on his back, but they eventually fell and drifted
further down. A sigh escaped his lips as he looked up at the ceiling, sinking
into the bed in utmost relaxation. It looked as if he could fall asleep right then
and there, but he blinked his eyes open a few times, refusing sleep as a
nocturnal aid, and settling for meditation instead. I had been lying on my
back as well, but shifted to my side, grazing my hand along his arms, which
were folded haphazardly over his thick chest.

Though I was weak from the steam draining me, my mind still raced. My eyes
burned from tiredness; I temporarily shut out the flame of pain when I closed
them, but I refused to do so for too long. I could fall asleep if I wanted to, but
I couldn’t find it in myself to just close my eyes and have that be it for the
day. So much had happened and I still needed to process it before my
subconscious took over, turning and twisting it into dreams with seemingly no
meaning.

Sleep seemed like such a waste of time right then, just like Gerard had said it
always was. It was unimportant and took him away from his work. I could
totally sympathize with that now, only Gerard was my work and I wanted to
do as much as I could with him before my body finally gave up again and
forced me into slumber.

I was too physically tired to have sex again, and I didn’t think I had anything
left inside of me to give to that action. Gerard seemed pretty exhausted too,
especially after supporting me in the shower like he had. His arms looked as
if they weighed a thousand pounds the way he kept them draped over his
chest, sinking into his skin. They also appeared to be throbbing, but it could
have been the darkness and my tired eyes confusing me. I let my hand drop
over one of his arms, no longer grazing as my eyes took over the roaming
action.

I began to look at Gerard, really look at him. The thin white sheets that he
merely threw on his bed fortuitously were by our waists, the shadow of the
place in-between them visible in the dim light. Though I had seen Gerard
naked many times now and I had let him touch and taste me while being
naked against him, I had never really looked. There was only that small and
brief time when I was learning about confidence, but that didn’t last too long
because of my sheer nervousness over the act. We had seen each other
when we came, but that was different too. I had gained the confidence I
needed now, if not fully, then enough to continue looking – no, studying -
what I saw.

I commenced this new field of analysis, this new lesson on my own, but still
using Gerard to teach me. The more I looked, the more I saw that I had never
seen before. I noticed the way his skin, in some patches, took on a different
texture, overexposed to chemicals and the sun. And by age. His skin, for the
most part, was smooth and a creamy white colour, especially on the backs of
his hands, but there were some areas that seemed to scream his numerical
value at me. I could have sworn there was a forty-seven written somewhere
on him, just put there to taunt me as I looked more and more.

Ignoring the supposed omen, I took his hand in mine, furthering my


investigation into something more tangible. He noticed me staring at him, but
chose not to comment on it, a first for the man who I probably could not pay
to shut-up. He merely narrowed his eyes and watched as I watched, waiting
for his perfect moment to step in. His eyes fluttered open every once in a
while, blinking slowly as he breathed deeply. It was clear that Gerard was
tired too, but he probably had the same thoughts as myself; that sleeping
was a waste, but me ogling him at four in the morning wasn’t.

I felt his palm in my own as I gripped him, and took note at how it was
abnormally clammier than before, but chalked it up to the water we had just
been in. I noticed how thick his hands were, how the flesh was distributed
evenly on the front, small veins raised up when held at certain angles. I
noticed the creases in his knuckles, where his flesh gathered into pudge,
giving him a sturdier grip. His hands were almost always warm from this
abundance of flesh and it always made them seem so much bigger in my
own. I unlocked our fingers at one point, lining up our hands perfectly,
creating a warped five-pointed star in the shadow as I watched his extra skin
take over my hand. He was just so much bigger than me, and when we
clutched each other once more, I was pretty sure I saw my hand disappear
inside his.
The only place on Gerard’s hands that didn’t match the creamy whiteness
were the fingertips. They were stained a putrid yellow colour, like the ceilings
of his apartment, damaged from nicotine spilling into his pores when he
smoked. Other than the minor tinge, his fingers and hands were gorgeous;
stout and chiseled into real artist’s hands. They weren’t perfect, but used,
giving him that artistic edge that most other people I knew lacked.

Gerard had no hangnails or cuts (unlike me), but his nails were in awful
shape. The fleshy tips where the nail bed sat was round, the enamel curved
into that shape. I saw paint buried under some of the surfaces, put there so
many times it almost seemed like a permanent marring. Most of the nails
appeared to be flaking and chipping away, bitten down to the nub and
stained a fairer shade of nicotine honey.

Despite the slight unsightliness the yellow tinge had to it, I still found his
smoking habits awe-striking. I watched him smoke a lot of the time, still with
just as much reverence as I had been in the first weeks at his place. The
danger element to it all came out again, only with a much deeper-rooted
meaning, particularly when we were both naked as I watched. Even when he
wasn’t smoking, we were still consuming danger at every turn. When we
kissed, I could barely taste the tobacco lining his mouth unless he had just
had a cigarette. It was just slightly bitter and it eased away the more we
kissed.

I probably wasn’t tasting a lot of the vexation because I smoked occasionally


myself now. It was hard to taste a difference in someone when you had the
same flavor yourself. I didn’t smoke nearly as often as the artist did, but that
was because I didn’t need to as much anymore. I had the art that I had
wanted to create with the thin stick and I was holding it in my hands right
then. I could taste a cigarette on Gerard if I wanted to anytime now. I didn’t
need to smoke to hide my feelings because they were all out in the open;
naked and displayed on his bed, his hand in mine.

I glanced away from his stained fingers, back to the unique features of the
base of his hand. I gripped him solidly for no real reason other than to see
how his skin oozed between my own, and I felt him do the same action back
hard, sending a message of understanding. I looked up to him from the grip I
had started, eyes lingering as we locked together.

“I love hands,” Gerard stated alluringly. He broke our gaze, taking control and
contorting my hand around so he could look. I gave a weak wrist and let him
mold me the way he wanted.

He studied my smaller hand, noticing the same veins on me that I had on


him. My skin wasn’t as pudgy as his was around the knuckles, nor my fingers
as short. They were slightly longer, the flesh spread out, giving my hand a
more delicate appeal. My fingernails were chewed down to the nub like his
too, but were littered with hangnails and bloodied nail beds, giving me the
flawed appearance that smoking did to his hands.

I had an unpleasant habit of chewing at my nails and skin when I was


nervous, or just plain bored. In the summer my hands always looked amazing
because I wasn’t in school, and therefore, not bored out of my fucking skull. It
was the middle of the school year now, and the pattern was starting all over
again.

I hadn’t been playing guitar long enough for my skin to develop calluses, but I
was already covered in scabs and red marks that were still healing. I thought
Gerard would cringe when he got to a particularly nasty red welt on my
thumb, but he only brushed over it slightly with his own thumb, then brought
it to his mouth to kiss it, his eyes locked on me intensely as he performed the
action. He moved on to my other fingers, taking the fleshy pads in his mouth,
kissing and sucking on them lightly, his eyes drawn thinly shut.

“What’s so important about hands?” I asked, feeling a bit awkward under his
embrace. I had never come across someone as passionate at Gerard, and
though most of the time I welcomed his affection, this was a little strange. He
was kissing my hands and fingertips with the same ferocity as he did my
face. I couldn’t see why. I wanted to pull my hand away and replace it with
my lips, but I could tell this meant a lot to him. As I queried, my voice came
out hoarse, nearly as weak as I felt.

“Everything about them is important. They’re so fascinating,” he stated


swiftly, with more emotion than I could have mustered just then. He had
taken my hand away from his mouth, but still gripped it tightly, his eyes not
wavering. He was looking at my palm, starting to trace up and down the deep
groves rooted there. His eyes were narrowed and poised down, staring
intently.

“They can tell a story,” he started up again, now taking my one hand in two
of his own, sandwiching it in warmth. “Every body part tells a story. Hands
especially. They show a person what they are passionate about.” He shifted
his weight to look at me in between my splayed fingers, absorbed in his new
task. “You are passionate about so many things. That’s why there are cuts
and scrapes everywhere.”

I somewhat scoffed, hearing the explanation for my sheer and utter boredom
come out of his mouth. I couldn’t let him get away with calling me
passionate. I still wasn’t convinced on that fact, but he could keep
encouraging me. Being passionate had nothing to do with those cuts though,
unless mutilating myself to pass the time in chemistry counted as a passion.

“Have you been playing your guitar again?” he inquired excitedly, ignoring
my scoff. He rubbed his thumb over a small scab, which he had mistaken for
a callus that was beginning to form. My hand went rigid in his grasp, unsure if
this discovery was good or not. For the first time, he broke his intent gaze
and just looked at me, cocking an eyebrow as he persisted. “Have you?”

“Umm, yeah.” I finally gave in, not caring if he called me crap again. I took a
deep breath, preparing myself for the blow, but nothing came.

“Good,” was all he said, taking his eyes back down to me, a sly smile spread
on his face. I let out an awkward deep breath and he started up his
philosophical discussion again. “Hands also tell you how old a person is. You
can see the fine lines and details; they tell a story, just like wrinkles. Passion
is threaded all throughout our lives and you can see that story in a person’s
hands.”

I waited for him to give me yet another interpretation of my own hands, but
when he merely spread out my palm and interlocked fingers with me again, I
was left feeling empty. He smiled at me, knowing exactly what he was doing.

“What about me?”

“You’re too young to have your story completed yet,” he informed, grin still
persistent on his face. I widened my eyes at him, not wanting to get
tormented and needing more to go on. He brought our hands together to his
mouth, kissing quickly before he went on. “But you have a very wonderful
start. No story can ever be complete, however. I’m still going.”

He held out his own hand, extending over my own, waiting for me to analyze
him.

We unlinked our fingers, but never our grasp as I took him ungracefully,
unsure of my actions. I had studied his hands before just to do it, but now
that I had a task, I was nervous. Gerard wanted me to tell him his story, and
though I had heard it at the kitchen table that one day, I didn’t think I could
recall it, especially when given his fucking flesh to work with. I thought words
had been hard enough to remember concisely; his skin and wrinkles had no
beginning, middle, or end to them. How was I supposed to come up with a
clear story when I was just given a chaotic mess?

Then again, Gerard had told me that chaos was import. And so was this.

With a sigh that racked my entire body, I tried to set aside my own
inextricable contemplations and focus on the new patch of creamy white skin,
instinctively biting my lip in nervousness. I looked at the skin I had been
studying before, the deep ridges and valleys of incalculable whiteness, until I
finally found something that didn’t belong.

It was on his left hand, the one I had not been examining before. I thought
both of his hands would have been essentially the same, but I was proved
wrong with the discovery of his apparent flaw. It was a small brown dot, rigid
in its circular formation, too big to be a freckle and too light to be a mole.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the mark I had yet to understand.

Gerard didn’t even have to look down at what I was referring to. He kept his
eyes locked on the ceiling, his head pushed back in the pillow. He had just
automatically known what my sudden captivation was and he rolled his eyes
back, sighing as he answered calmly. “An age spot.”

I nearly dropped his hand at the statement.

An age spot? I thought, my mind going into a disordered frenzy. I had never
seen an age spot on anyone before that had not been related to me. And
even then, it was on my grandmother, someone much, much older than
myself.

When I was younger, my parents and I used to go and see her in her nursing
home every Sunday. She had always been my favorite older relative, which
wasn’t a hard thing to be in my family, full of drunken delinquents on my
father’s side and delusional guilt-trippers on my mother’s. This grandmother
was from my father’s side, and one of the very few people to not pick up the
bottle in all of her eighty-two year existence. She had always been my
favorite for that fact (and the fact that she dished out hard candies like
oxygen but I treated them like gold), even after her death. Out of all the
memories I had of that woman with her blinding white curly hair clung in
rollers to her scalp, I choose to recall the time she had taken care of me just
after Christmas.

My father had been on a business trip and my mother had gone to see her
sister upstate, leaving my grandma as my baby-sitter. There had been a
particularly bad ice storm, sending thermometers plummeting down to scary
temperatures, but I still wanted to go outside. Everything else around the
situation was vague in my mind, except for her doing up my coat, zipping it
to the chin, her small fragile hands getting in the way. Her hands were the
only things I could remember clearly at that moment in time, infinite on
Gerard’s bed.
Her skin was slightly more tanned than mine just from heritage (being on my
father’s side she had more Italian in her), but it was even darker on the backs
of her hands because they were riddled with age spot after age spot. The
brown dots littered her hands, some even forming ugly masses together that
looked like small islands in a sea of wrinkles.

This initial memory of that winter day was a catalyst. I began to recall more
and more of this woman, all with a central theme focused and concentrated
like those Godforsaken brown dots.

When I was much younger and had a lot more energy in me, it was my
grandmother’s job to calm me down, grasping me in her lap and holding me
in place. Her hands were always visible then, and I tried to play a Pictionary
game with the markings. I had thought I found a dog in her hands at one
point, but I was never too sure; there had been too many spots to choose
from.

Looking at Gerard’s spot just then sent chills down my spine, memories
attacking just as plentifully as the marks on my dead grandmother’s hands.
My grandmother had been in her eighties when she died last year, but had
always had those age spots for as long as I could remember. Even in pictures
I saw of her way before my time, there was always some kind of discoloration
on her then unwrinkled skin. It boggled my mind just then, for the sheer fact
that Gerard was old enough to get those spots. I didn’t know how old my
grandmother had been when she first got them, but Gerard was only forty-
seven and he was starting his collection. He was starting to get old.

But then it hit me, I stopped my train of thought, backing it up on the tracks
back to the last station I had been at. Gerard wasn’t starting to get old.

Gerard was old.

I had suddenly found a flaw in the artist I had been looking up to, and now
sharing a bed with, all this time. He wasn’t young like me, or even like
someone in their twenties or thirties. Hell, Gerard was even old for his forties,
just narrowing the cusp of that decade, finishing it and reaching half a
fucking century in a little under three years now. I had always known that the
artist was never my age, and even if he had been, I treated him like he was
older. He had more respect in my mind, more regard for humanity because
he was my mentor and teacher. Even when I started to develop stronger
feelings for him, I still kept in mind that he was older and forty-seven; it was
one of the reasons I wouldn’t allow myself to be with him, at first. His whole
being had managed to change my perspective on his age (and being with a
man, too) because one fact was pure and simple.

He never acted his age.

He was so full of youth, laughing and joking around, destroying his paintings
for the sheer sake of it. He was unlike any other adults I knew, actually
following his passion instead of settling for a menial and repetitive job. He
talked eloquently, but still had the mind of a teenager, focusing on two major
priorities: what he wanted, and sex. It was because he acted like a teenager
so much of the fucking time that I never seemed to fully comprehend the fact
that he was thirty fucking years older than me.

Gerard, I began to realize, in another thirty or more years could be just like
my grandmother, when I would be only just catching up to him. He could be
old and gray, covered with wrinkles and those fucking age spots like she had
been, just a big, brown mess and no more of the creamy white skin I had
been so used to clutching in my own. He could be in that horrid nursing home
they shoved my grandmother into when she got too old to tell the difference
between night and day, rotting away in a rocking chair on the porch, waiting
for a family that only came on holidays. I recalled the last time I had seen my
grandmother, a month before her death. Her knees were weak and she could
barely stand up, her skin stretched down her face from the force of gravity
and sheer age.

God, Gerard was aging right before my very eyes. I could have sworn he had
more wrinkles now than he had displayed when I first came over and we sat
across from each other drinking wine. He was aging, and he was getting old.
Fuck, he already was old. I couldn’t picture Gerard in the same place as my
grandmother. I didn’t want to picture him in a cold and desolate place, losing
his mind with the person moaning in pain in the next bunk. I couldn’t and I
wouldn’t picture Gerard as old in my mind.
I crushed my eyes closed, willing it all away, but when I opened them again, I
was greeted with his hand, the brown spot staring at me, mocking me. My
throat felt like it was being closed off, air turning to dust in my lungs. I let go
of his hand, almost throwing it out of my grasp. He went limp, fingers falling
away like the years on his body.

I swallowed hard, looking up at his face and trying not to show my fear as my
gaze locked on yet another feature of his age: the crows’ feet around his
eyes. Gerard was also old enough to get wrinkles; he had a lot of them. Even
his hands in some places creased from age and sun exposure. He didn’t seem
to notice my sudden horror-filled state just yet, and I hoped it stayed that
way. I didn’t want to upset him, I really didn’t, but I just couldn’t help not
comprehending it all just yet.

Aside from not acting like a middle-aged man, Gerard didn’t look that much
like one. He dressed in casual clothing, tight pants and black button up shirts,
accentuated with scarves and the occasional pair of sunglasses. What kind of
adult dressed liked that? He owned no business attire, and everything was
purely based on comfort and style. His hands, the objects that I had drawn
the startling conclusion from, had never looked old before, until I had found
that damned spot. God, I wished I never had looked and asked because I
found myself searching his body for more and more of the markings,
anything really to grasp his actual age in my hands.

And the more I searched, the easier the items were to find, invisibility melting
away with knowledge and intent. Now that I was looking for something, it was
getting easier to find it. It was like being blind to something for your entire
life and then when someone points it out, you see it everywhere. I was seeing
Gerard’s age everywhere now, and though it scared the shit out of me, I had
to keep going.

I rubbed my hand over his chest, going slowly to ease back into the intimate
pattern we had had before, as I felt the different textures of skin. The way his
skin sagged and bunched together, elasticity gone from his weight
fluctuations over the years, came to my eyes, and I scanned it for greater
meaning. He had experienced enough in his life to have his weight change
drastically, proved by small, almost unseen stretch marks lining his side.
I had never had my weight change before. I was always a chubby kid, cheeks
consistently red from aunts pinching the padding. As I grew older, my weight
never really changed, but spread out more. I was still a little chubby, but it
had disappeared from my face and worked its way to my sides, forming love
handles and a bit of a belly, running into strong thighs. When I touched and
prodded those hued lines on Gerard’s side, it looked as if he had been very
big at one point in his life. He was never fat in my mind, but he carried more
weight on his hips, his curves almost feminine looking. I traced my fingers
over the markings, cupping them in my palm along with some mass, blocking
them in my mind and working with something else.

I hoisted myself up more on the bed, running my free hand through his hair,
flicking the spider-leg like strands out of his eyes to see the forehead wrinkles
and crows’ feet more distinctly. Gerard’s hair had always been a jet-black
shade of coal, like the charcoal he used to draw with, falling forward on his
prominent forehead in loose bangs, or to the side. His mane was fairly long,
and when I studied it more I should have been aware of the unnatural
darkness of his locks, but was much too distracted with the whole other new
appearance he took on, once his bangs were no longer in the way. I saw how
large his forehead was, not from a natural eminence, but from losing this jet-
black hair. He was in his forties and his hairline had already begun to recede.
It wasn’t too much, and it wasn’t even noticeable unless you pulled
everything back (which was probably why Gerard kept his hair coifed in the
front most of the time). His hair was thick and lush, but it was slowly fading
from its original state, some places reduced to baby fine strands.

When I pulled back his hair more I took note of his roots. I had to tilt into his
head more, my nose nearly pressed up against his now rather large forehead
until I could see the colour distinction. I always knew that his hair was
probably too black to be real, but I never really thought that he actually dyed
it. No men I knew ever did that. Here was the proof though; small but distinct
roots of a chestnut brown colour coming up. And as I looked even closer at all
of Gerard, him not saying a word, I realized something else.

There was a gray hair, more than one actually, especially as I started to look
for them. White was mixed in with the chestnut, which was hidden
underneath fake blackness, making everything fucking gray. I hated gray; it
wasn’t black or white, wrong nor right. It wasn’t a clear answer to anything.
But this gray that littered Gerard’s hair was. This had an answer, even if I
didn’t want it. It told me that Gerard was old. Really old. Forty-seven years
old. Thirty more years than me, and thirty times more the nervous anxiety I
was used to feeling.

Gerard didn’t seem to notice my small groping fit with his hair; he was lying
back on the pillow, his neck arched and neck exposed again. His eyes were
closed, and he breathed happily when my fingers entangled in his mane. He
was enjoying this, but it was only scaring me. I removed my hand, slowly
dragging it down his body and finally letting it rest on his chest, right over his
beating heart. God, even his heart felt old, it beating slower than my own.
Then again, a mouse’s heart on speed would have been beating slower than
my own.

“You’re old,” I suddenly said, not realizing that the words had fallen out of
me. When they hit the air and filled my ears though, I wanted to grab them
and shove them back into my mouth. They were so strong they would
probably knock out my teeth.

Oh God, I unexpectedly thought again. What if Gerard lost his teeth? Could he
lose his teeth? My grandmother had owned dentures, but I thought that was
just for the really aged. Did Gerard suddenly fit into that category now? Oh
God, I thought again. I was having a lot of biblical moments, but I wasn’t even
close to finding the light. Oh, someone save me.

“Thanks,” Gerard scoffed sarcastically. I felt his chest rise under my hand as
he chuckled a bit, shaking his head in mock agitation. He wasn’t mad, but I
could tell it wasn’t the best thing he had ever heard about himself. He kept
his eyes closed as he moved a hand to interlock with mine on his chest.

“I mean,” I quickly countered, hoping to better explain myself. I ran through


my perplexed thoughts for some reasoning, but came up with nothing. There
was no reasoning in age. It just happened. And I wasn’t around for most of
Gerard’s life to provide an explanation. “I don’t know. I just…Oh, God.”

Hallelujah, I thought bitterly in my head.


I looked down at him, his eyes still closed. Apparently, he had blind faith.

“You’re forty-seven, Gerard…” I breathed out the last part, unsure I would be
able to take another in.

“I am,” he agreed in a clear voice that I could decipher no emotion from.


“And you’re seventeen, Frank.”

The way he said his words, so acrid and tactful, spouting facts along with a
harsh reason made me quake, until he finally opened his eyes. There was a
serious tone reflected in the back of the olive shade, but I could still see the
humility that set me at ease. He swallowed hard, continuing his thoughts. “I
already know these facts. What else are you finding new?”

“I don’t know…” I trailed off, feeling like a complete idiot. And a jerk. I could
feel the embarrassment welling up inside of me, creeping its way across my
cheeks in an unwanted scarlet hue. My thoughts felt vapid and conceited, but
I said them anyway. “You have gray hair.”

He scoffed, yet again. “I already know these things, Frank. Quit being
redundant,” he warned, his voice suddenly growing austere, but for a mere
split second. I knew he wasn’t mad at me then, just his own faults we were
both now well aware of.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, my head hanging down.

“No, it’s okay,” Gerard insisted, squeezing the hand that was on his chest.
“You’re just stating the obvious, Frank. It’s knowledge I already know. It
would be like me telling you you’re short.”

“Hey,” I cut in, brows forming down in a V pattern.


I always got defensive about my height. I hated being as tall as most girls I
knew. And I couldn’t help the fact that I had inherited my mother’s short legs.
Then again, Gerard couldn’t help the fact that he was aging.

“You’re sensitive about height, I am about my hair,” Gerard teased, making a


joke to clear the air. It was only a second before the small bursts of laughter
died down, and were replaced by tension, gripping me once again.

“Gerard, you’re –“ Thankfully, he cut me off, before I could be redundant yet


again.

“Old? Yes, I know,” he breathed the words quick, trying to forget about them.
He waved one of his hands in the air, as if to shoo them away. When he
caught a look in my eyes, he stopped being so apathetic. He may not have
wanted to talk about his age, declaring it frivolous and unimportant, but I did
want to talk. I needed to talk; I was practically squirming in my own skin. He
saw that, and realized he needed to help me. His eyes grew more caring,
sensing my inner turmoil and easing it with his hands caressing my back
softly, words hitting my eardrums.

“Is there anything wrong with age?” He hushed the words by quickly, not
giving me much of a chance to respond. “It’s just numbers and figures. We
don’t need math in this society. We need ar-”

It was my turn to cut him off now, finally letting my answers get through. “We
need art, I know,” I told him, waving my own hand in the air. I mocked his
actions skillfully, my face growing concerned. I dropped my hand back down
to his chest, focusing the attention on us. “But not everyone will understand
this. I’m not understanding it…”

“Not everyone understands art either, Frank. Even you at first,” he retorted,
his voice piercing the air that was too thick to move in. He sighed and
continued when I didn’t give much of a response. “When it comes to art,
there are two different types of people. The first kind looks at the picture, and
then goes to look at another. They know they are viewing art, but they don’t
understand what art really is. They cannot comprehend that art is all around
them – in a variety of forms. To them, Rembrandt and Pollock did the same
thing – make pretty pictures.” He lifted up his hands and waved his fingers
with a snide voice, mocking his own words. I bit back any pondering as to
who Rembrandt was and what he had painted. “They don’t, and most, won’t
understand that art is everywhere; hiding under rocks and stones, around
corners, and in alleys. In garbage cans and inside dirty old apartment
buildings.”

His last line made my heart flutter. I knew that we were that art in dirty
apartment buildings he was talking about.

“What’s the other type of person?” I asked Gerard, his gaze meeting mine.

“Ah,” he breathed, smile inching across his serious face. “This kind is my
favorite. They are the type of person who will look skillfully at each piece,
notice the brush strokes and the thickness of the paint on the canvas. They
will question why the artist chose to paint this, as well as what they think it
means. But when they step outside of the museum, their eyes don’t stop
analyzing the beauty they see all around them. To them, Rembrandt and
Pollock and Picasso are very, very different painters, and each of their pieces
are very, very different, too. They do not lump together everything in art, and
therefore don’t lump together everything in life. They know the rules, the
guidelines for things, but they know where there is an exception. They know
that the Sistine Chapel is a work of art by modern standards, but it’s no
better or no different than the graffiti on the side of that dirty apartment
building.”

When he was done, there was a dulled aggravation to his voice. He was
tranquil in the way he laid his head into the thickness of the pillow, but a
somber quality, heightened by the darkness of the room, dragged its way
across his face. It made the wrinkles I was seeing deeper, and the meaning
transcend into my small, pitiful little mind.

Gerard was the second type of person. He saw art all around him, and not
only that, but he saw exceptions. He knew when to break the rules, and he
did it often enough. It wasn’t even breaking to him, because it was meant to
be that way in the first place. Gerard was the second type, but I could tell
from that despair etched into his pursed lips that he was giving way to
believe that I was still closed into that first category.

It made my heart drop. I knew I had been that way in the past. Prior to
meeting the artist, and even during the first few weeks of my visiting him, art
was just art to me. I never appreciated it. But I wasn’t like that anymore, or at
least I thought I wasn’t. I had been growing up, and I had been understanding
art.

I didn’t know who Rembrandt was, I found myself thinking. I didn’t know what
Gerard was talking about. I hadn’t come as far as I thought I had, especially
as I began to focus more and more on his gray hairs, other than on what he
had said in the first place.

“Sadly,” his voice drew me from my thoughts, thankfully. He spoke with a


deliberate pace, and looked down at his age-spot hand superficially. “The first
type of person is way too common, and the second type is not nearly
common enough.”

He drew his eyes to me, and I felt my heart sink inside my chest and lodge at
the bottom. His eyes, normally green, had lost their colour in the dark. He
could not be giving up on me, giving up on this, now, I told myself callously.
No, not because of his age. I knew that there were so many other people and
things in the world that would tear us apart. There were too many type ones,
and not enough twos. I wanted to be in that two category with Gerard so
badly I could feel it hurting inside. And yet, with all this pain, all this want and
desire and passion to be with him, I couldn’t speak. I didn’t say a damn thing
to defend myself, to defend Gerard. I was silent and mute, hoping that this
would fix itself. Even if it did, I still knew I probably couldn’t find it in myself to
just let go. Maybe it was easier for Gerard to deny his age because he had
more life experience and he just knew how to, but I was still learning.

He found the vigor to sit up suddenly, using his elbow and then propping
himself against the headboard. I went up with him, partly dragged by his
hand that I was still clutching for dear life, for our life. I was shaky in my
movements, unsure of what was to come. Gerard noticed and with strong
hands and eyes, touched me on my cheek, moving me forward to look at
him. I did, our eyes meeting and darting across the irises and pupils,
scanning each person wholly. Gerard wanted me to just look at him, his eyes
and not his age, and though I could do that, I still couldn’t let it all go.

Gerard was old. I was young. And this was just so bizarre.

“If you want to stop this, Frank,” Gerard whispered softly, our foreheads
drawn together, but lips still far apart. His voice grew even more concerned
and I could have sworn I detected a little depression as well, something so
atypical from the constantly smiling artist.

“Just say the words. We can stop this. You can say no; you don’t have to be
with me. You can put on your clothes and go home and we’ll pretend this
never happened.”

“But I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen,” I suddenly found my voice,


located deep within my heart. I started to say what I was thinking without any
thought behind it, and once the words were out in the open, I could look at
them objectively.

I really didn’t want this to be pretend, a mistake, a flaw - just like the one on
Gerard’s hand, which was still gripping the side of my face. I didn’t want to
forget this. Gerard was teaching me so much, either about art or life in
general. It was true, he could still be my teacher, just with our clothing on
and not panting hard, but I still didn’t want that. Once I had everything, it was
hard to go back to nothing, or even just something. I wanted to keep
interacting with him like I was. When we were together, not just as a teacher
and student, but as two people naked in each other’s arms, it was so much
easier to learn, grow, and just be. I needed Gerard as a teacher, but I needed
him more as a lover, friend – whatever the hell we were then. I knew that if
we ended this the way it was now, my confusion in the forefront of my mind,
that I would never, ever be a type two person. I would always be a one. I
didn’t want to be a one. I needed to work past this; I couldn’t let it be over.
The freedom conversation came back into my mind from earlier that day. We
could be free, if we let ourselves. Age was getting in the way of that,
becoming those shackles that were needed, but not always necessary. Age
was needed so we knew the danger in front of us, but we could choose to
break free. Age was only numbers and figures. We didn’t need those to
survive. We needed love, passion, and art to survive. Gerard was all of those
things to me, and growing to be more every second. In freedom, I needed to
find what I wanted, and God, I wanted Gerard. Looking at him right then, and
the sheer desperation that must have been displayed in both of our eyes,
made me see it ten times clearer. I wanted to be myself, but I needed Gerard
to help that transition along in me. I wanted him.

Yes, he was forty-seven years old. I knew that fact and could deal with it. He
was also a man. Both of those things I never thought I would even consider
being with, but here I was, naked in his bed, his hand on my face, foreheads
pressed together and kisses still fresh on our lips. He may have been all
those things, unattractive at best, but he was making sure I was okay. He
was telling me that if I wanted out, I could get out, and it wasn’t the first time
he presented this opportunity. That spoke louder than gray hair and age
spots ever could.

“I want this to keep happening,” I told him honestly, my eyes boring deep
into him. I saw him crack a smile and the creases, those creases that showed
just how old he was, deepen.

He wanted to keep me too.

“Then we can keep this happening, however long you want, however long
you need,” Gerard spoke earnestly.

His hands had made their way off of my face, slinking behind and grasping
the nape of my neck. He pulled me into a hug, which I accepted and shifted
closer, our bare flesh touching and sparking something together. Something I
couldn’t name yet, but I had a feeling it would be good.

“You remember when you quoted my words, Frank?” Gerard asked suddenly,
still in the embrace. His head was on my shoulder, sharp chin pressed into
me. I pulled away and looked at him skeptically, unsure of what he meant.

“When I was going to draw you,” he clarified, motioning with one hand he
had removed from my arm. “Before all of this happened. I had said that you
could make a painting anything you wanted. Orange sky, blue grass, red dirt.
Anything was possible.” Gerard paused, letting me relish in the memory that
wasn’t very long ago at all.

“You told me to make you older so I could let myself be with you.” He drew
out his words, elongating them as he cocked his head to the side, making me
follow on his train of thought. He nodded with a smile, continuing when he
saw my eyes light up.

“Make me younger, Frank. Do the same to be with me. Make me your own
work of art.”

I breathed out a contented sigh, the words and memories hitting me like a
good blow to the face, if that was possible. I leaned forward into the embrace
again, our lips meeting in a kiss, my mouth opening so I could breathe all of
him into me. I was so grateful to have him then, to hold him in my arms. In
that moment the fact that we never could go back to being student and
teacher (even if I had wanted to) was chiseled inside my brain, embedded
inside of me someplace I had yet to find. He had seen too much of me, and I
had seen too much of him to have it all go back to normal. And really, we
were only just beginning.

We kissed for a while, hunger coming into the embrace, my teeth nibbling on
his bottom lip awhile before I pulled away. I didn’t go too far, but looked at
his face before I began to kiss all around it softly like he had done the night
we first had sex, trying to make me older. Only this time as I kissed, at first
trying to make him younger, I started to realize that his imperfections, his
wrinkles, his gray hairs, and yes, even his age spots, were what I wanted
from him. He got those seemingly imperfect flaws from living his life, from
being himself, and that was who I wanted. He needed to have experienced
things to make him wrinkle so that he could teach me about them later on.
He needed to tell me those stories so I could learn and hopefully tell my own
some day (who knew, he may even be a part of that future tale). I even
needed his age spots to remind me of my grandmother, and realize the
distinction of true age. Age was only numbers, but the markings he had from
those years gone by, those were the real triumph. Those were what I really
wanted, and their negative connotation didn’t matter anymore. I just wanted
Gerard as a person.

My embraces moved slower as my thoughts collided on planes of realization.


I ended my journey with a quick kiss on his forehead, before settling back
down to our previous position, smug smile adorning my countenance.

“Done so soon?” he asked, getting the playful tone back to his voice. He
furrowed his brows in confusion, but couldn’t hide the pleased air to his voice.
I nodded, my grin still across half of my face.

“There wasn’t anything I needed to change,” I told him with the same
affectionate arrogance he always possessed.

The corners of his mouth faltered, growing weak as his eyebrows knitted in
the centre of his forehead. I could see the excitement and happiness
bouncing inside his olive eyes like a young child on Christmas day, cascading
bright lights and colours of shiny wrapping paper and arraying bows. And for
once, Gerard didn’t say a word. He was quiet and just let everything happen,
appreciating it all. He let us kiss again, taking tongues into each other’s
mouths over and over again, this time with a new lease on life.

We felt more comfortable with each other, something I didn’t think was
possible. We just kept growing and growing more together, and even if we
appeared to be tripping a lot of the time, we picked ourselves right back up
again. It seemed so essentially easy, too.

When our kissing finally led us down to the bed, covers over top of our bare
bodies, sleep clung to our eyes and I couldn’t believe that it had only been
the night before when we had first really been together as all we were just
then. It felt like a lifetime ago. Ages ago.
And really, maybe it was.

Chapter Nineteen

Intimacy

The rest of the weekend was spent in a haze of flesh, sweat, and the
fluttering of off-white wings. We fell asleep fast that night, and though our
eyelids fluttered every so often in the morning, we were never fully awake
until late the next day. Gerard refused to tell me the time when he kissed my
eyes open, but I knew it had to be well into the afternoon from the way the
orange sun came in through his window. The eerie glow cascaded over the
floor, turning the almond colored wood to a ginger shade, and illuminating
the dust in the morning light. When we eventually crawled out of bed, the
chilled air hit my bare chest, and I wrapped the sheet around me to keep
warm as I walked over to the brightened area. The floor was lukewarm to the
touch, and I no longer saw the need to shelter myself. I let the sheet drop
lazily just as Gerard took its place around me.

We didn’t feel tired anymore, but after a quick breakfast, we were back in
bed for most of whatever was left of the day. We entwined our bodies then
proceeded we explored every feature on the other’s with our hands, and
when Gerard was more daring, mouths and tongues. I kept my lips pressed to
the regions I was more familiar with, Gerard’s face and neck, and let my
hands take me almost everywhere else. We rose from bed every so often,
only to go and watch how the sun reflected in the bay window. There, we
continued the same exploration in front of everything and everyone, but too
high and too far inside to be seen. The sun and our hands kept our bodies
flushed and awake. The dove was perched on the cage that she was no
longer confined to, watching us with her bobbing head. I barely saw her; I
was more alert the scenery outside. The sky was so blue, and the sun so
warm, despite the small chill from the cold, dense air outside. The snow had
been gone from the ground for a long time now, but the grass was still
struggling to grow against the frigid air. I stole occasional glances at Gerard,
and each time I did, he was only staring at me.

“This is what intimacy is about,” he informed me randomly, once I had caught


his gaze for the fifth time, and decided to let it linger. He moved closer to me
all of a sudden, wrapping his hand around the small of my back. He kissed
the top of my forehead, and finally looked outside.

He never said anything relating to his statement in the moments that passed.
Even when I shifted from the crook of his neck to gaze up at him, probing for
more, he was quiet. His face was austere, eyes narrowed to block out some
of the sun’s rays that came through. He was thinking, but I didn’t know about
what just yet. He was lucky he could get away with just making statements
and following no conclusions. I didn’t think I was that daring yet.

When we finally left our spot, it was only to bathe – together, of course. We
didn’t fuck in the shower this time; we actually washed each other instead.
His small fingers worked their way through my hair like a masseuse as he
poured on copious amounts of shampoo. The container was a dark shade of
blue that I had never seen at the drugstore before. It was apparently some
European brand that was for coloured hair, he informed me through the jets
of water. It smelt somewhat bitter as he cranked the lid open, but he assured
me that it ‘worked wonders’. I didn’t really care what my hair looked like; it
was fairly short and, for the most part, clung to my scalp, not doing anything
appealing. But the way his fingers descended down and around, lathering the
soap and scratching my hairline… it was almost better than sex. Almost. I let
my head rock back into his palm as he worked and I closed my eyes, letting
my jaw slack. It felt so calming and soothing; I even caught myself moaning
at one point, but covered it up as best I could. I was pretty sure Gerard heard
me from the way he smiled as he turned me around to get the front part of
my hair. He didn’t seem to mind. He kissed my neck and ear as he continued
to wash me, occasionally grabbing and stroking my half-hard erection, but
never fully jacking me off.

“It’s Sunday,” he whispered into my ear while we were still in the shower, the
water’s light rhythm acting as a guide for the movement of his hands. “The
day of rest. We need to take a break from fucking each other’s brains out.”

He laughed light and airy, while I just smiled. I didn’t know what we were
supposed to do if we weren’t having sex, but I was willing to find out. His first
act was to push my head gingerly back under the stream of water, the white
soap bubbles descending down my face and into the drain. He kissed me, and
though I was rock hard and it hurt, it didn’t seem to matter right then that we
weren’t, as he so eloquently put, fucking our brains out.

After our shower, he dried me off, continuing his intimate. It didn’t occur to
me until later on that his two very bold statements were related. I had figured
he was being Gerard, making audacious statements for shock value. I was so
relaxed as he dried me off with his towel though, I didn’t think I could be
shocked. It felt so comforting to be in his arms, to just let him do everything.
He was taking care of me, but it wasn’t in a parental or teacher way
anymore. It was in a relationship way. Boyfriend to boyfriend or whatever the
hell we were. We were tending to each other’s needs - or as many as they
could handle. I felt bad not reciprocating, but he never asked me to.
Technically, I never asked for him to wash my hair or dry me off, or later on
bring me food, he just did it.

A lot of the time when he took care of me, I just let it all happen and went
into a dreamy state, zoning out for a while. When I did manage to snap out of
it and offer to help him in the same way, he merely took the hand that I had
extended, wrapped it in his own and kissed my fingertips, distracting me from
what I had been doing in the first place. He was pretty damned determined to
take care of me, and hell, I wasn’t putting up much of a protest.

Later on in the day when hunger took over our bellies, Gerard opened his
fridge and took out the loaf of crusty French bread that we had been
consuming the entire weekend. It was now more than half gone, but he still
was able to section off three or four thick pieces of the loaf and hand them to
me.

I had always seen these loaves in the supermarket, stacked on high shelves
and wrapped in brown paper, but never paid much attention to them. My
mom always bought us white Wonderbread, and never deterred far from that
path. Those breads were to remain on the shelves, simply not for us. I didn’t
know whether it was because I was eating it at Gerard’s or the actual bread
itself, but it tasted good; better than anything Wonder had ever made. Its
sticky and fluffy centre was a different texture inside my mouth. I had to
chew it thoroughly and crack through the thick, outside crust. Gerard never
cut the bread, merely ripped off chunk after chunk. He said that cutting
something to a shape it was not defined to be only ruined the tang and touch
of the item. Also, it was too fresh most of the time and the knife (once
through the crust) would crush the fluffy centre into solid mounds. So he
tugged off piece after piece for me, and anything too large we shared.

I thought that after the first day of the bread I would get sick of it, but I never
did. Perhaps because each time there was a different variety of cheese to go
along with the meal, as well as a large tub of creamy butter.

The cheeses were some of the weirdest things I had ever tasted. I was used
to the cheddar and mozzarella he put in front of me, but when he produced
the brie and feta, I had no idea what I was dealing with. They tasted too salty
or bitter inside my mouth, but I swallowed them down anyway to not
disappoint him by showing my lack of culture. We also usually waited for the
last possible moment to eat, and by that time, I was desperate for anything
to make my stomach walls stop folding in on themselves.

“You’ll get used to it,” Gerard told me with a smile on his face as he watched
me choke down feta for the first time. I apparently had not done a good job at
hiding my disgust. He lopped off a large chunk into his mouth, as if
demonstrating that point. He continued to talk and smile, the food bunched in
the side of his cheek. “You got used to the wine, after all.”

I nodded and rolled my eyes, taking a swig from the glass of beverage that I
had come to love. The purple liquid that had sickened me at first, I found
myself craving. I liked the way it tickled my taste buds, especially those at
the front and back of my tongue. I had even started to hold the wine in my
mouth longer, letting the taste percolate much like Gerard did every time. He
generally bought the same type of wine (or at least I thought so, I was not up
to date on this kind of thing), and even when he switched it up slightly, I
could still drink as much as I wanted.

We always got drunk when we drank wine, but it was never with the actual
liquid itself. We would mostly drink to accentuate the food we were eating, or
to accentuate each other. But the aura and the atmosphere of the other
person, that was what we really did get drunk on. We’d drink down each
other whole, kissing their body and face and exploring new regions not yet
seen. We didn’t even need to have sex for this to happen, we just needed to
be intimate.

Intimate, I repeated the word in my head. I was starting to understand


Gerard’s random statements.

The best part about this high was that there was no hangover, just a slight
twinge of morning mouth and waking up with Gerard next to me. It was
hardly an after effect I wanted to get rid of.

We would have almost looked high class and civilized as we ate our dainty
French bread with a variety of cheeses, followed by delectable wines, but we
were far from sophisticated. We would eat our food in the middle of the
apartment, spread out on a bed sheet like we were going for a picnic,
amongst his array of books and paint supplies. We would be naked most of
the time as we ate, and I highly doubted that civilized people made out on
the same blanket they ate their fine wine and cheeses on. I loved kissing him
this way. I could always taste the bitter berries inside his mouth, contrasting
with the saltiness of the cheese. The bread, with its warm and spongy
qualities, seemed to absorb all of the flavors together. If I kissed Gerard right
after we had eaten, it meant he tasted like food, and it let me believe that I
really could consume him whole.

When we weren’t eating or bathing, we were on his bed, on top of each other
and so tangled it sometimes hurt to move. We spent some time looking out
his window, but never actually venturing out onto the balcony. We didn’t
want to put on clothing and we didn’t want people to see us outside together,
being as intimate as we were. We couldn’t help ourselves sometimes with our
physical touches, and more often than not, we didn’t even know we were
doing it. We knew there was no actual need to touch the other person when
we were talking or dozing in the afternoon light, but we subconsciously would
link hands or arms. Gerard would often play with my hair and rub my
shoulders, even once giving me a massage as we lay down after eating. His
hands were tough and strong, artist hands working out the kinks inside my
small teenage back. He said I had a lot of stress, though I knew it had
diminished so much since I had started going to his place. I may have even
grown a few inches, not from actually gaining height itself, but gaining
confidence. Gerard still found some minor strain, and as he worked his hands
over my waist, squeezing hard and then rubbing each notch in my spine, I felt
it going away bit by bit.

My stress began to accumulate again when I realized that it was Sunday, not
this magical day of intimacy, but the day I had to go home. I had spent
probably the best weekend of my life at Gerard’s place, inside his arms and
him inside me. God, I just didn’t want to leave. I wanted to live here forever,
even if that term didn’t exist in his mind. There was no such thing as forever,
but however long something could last, I wanted to spend that duration with
this artist, this man - one of the most magical people I had ever known.

It wasn’t just Gerard causing this urge. There was something about his
apartment, something about these walls splashed with paint. I felt like I could
really be free in here. I could express myself and have it be okay. Even if
what I had done with my guitar sucked in Gerard’s mind, he still let me do it.
He still encouraged me. I had never had that sort of support before.

My parents had always told me I was a good kid, but that was at school,
something I was less than passionate about. And they were my parents; they
had to say something nice about me because I was their own flesh and blood.
Gerard was a relative stranger I had met in front of a liquor store. He was
thirty years older than me, and much better off than I was. He didn’t have to
tell me anything. Hell, he didn’t even have to have me in his apartment just
then. But he still did. He told me the truth about everything, but still
encouraged me to defy that truth. I may have sucked at guitar, but I had the
ability to change that. His words and actions meant more to me than
anything anyone had ever done because he didn’t have to do them.

My parent’s prerogative was changing more so than ever now. They were no
longer telling me that I was good, but barking at me that I had to be good.
That I must be good. If I wasn’t good, I wouldn’t do well in school. If I didn’t
do well in school, I wouldn’t get a job, and if I didn’t get a job, I would fail at a
life. They may not have reiterated that exact cycle to me in those blatant
terms, but the meaning was there. I could see it every time my mother
sighed when she saw my report card, and every time my dad forbade me
from doing something fun. They were disappointed in me.

There was no ‘must’ in Gerard’s place. It was all up to me what I wanted to


do, including sleeping with this man so much older than myself. Gerard left
that totally up to me. I could back out at any time. I wasn’t going anywhere
anytime soon, though. I wanted to stay here, in these brightly colored walls
encased in paint for as long as I could, forever or not. My time though, at
least for this weekend, was coming to an end much sooner than I wanted.

I phoned my mother a few more times from Gerard’s, letting her know that I
was still with Sam and Travis, but we were at one of their friend’s houses, so
she wouldn’t try to call them. Her voice seemed to keep escalating with more
deep rooted concern for just why I was spending so much time outside the
house. She was appearing more and more tired with each dial tone, getting
older and older with each excuse I made. I had never been close to my
friends, even when they weren’t being pricks, so this was extremely out of
character.

When I phoned on Sunday, she told me to be home by my usual time, making


my heart fall. I knew I would have had to have been home – it was a school
night – but there was still some part of me that was hoping I could convince
her to let me stay longer.

“I’ll just be at Sam’s tonight,” I told her, my voice wavering with the number
of lies it was carrying. “We’ll both go to school in the morning…”

“No,” she said sturdily, surprising me. The phone line went dead for a little
while, both of us taken aback by everything.

“Just come home tonight, Frank. You’ve spent all weekend with them.”

I nodded at first, watching the black door that concealed Gerard out of the
corner of my eye. “Okay. Thanks.”

I knew the artist would have told me to fight for what I believed in, but God, I
wasn’t stupid. If I pushed any harder, I could have been grounded, or she
could have demanded I go home at that very moment. I needed to stay on
her good side so I could spend as much time here as possible. And I thanked
her for her time, even if I didn’t get what I had wanted.

It was my mother’s turn to be quiet. She seemed surprised by my manners; it


wasn’t every day a teenage boy thanked his mommy for not giving him what
he wanted. Gerard really was starting to change me, as my mom could see
(though blind to the cause), for the better.

“Be safe,” she told me before I hung up the phone.

She said those same ending lines each time I had called this weekend, and
they always struck me. My mom cared about me, and I felt guilty for lying to
her. I didn’t like to lie to my parents, and this was the first time I had in a
long, long time. Other encounters with them I had merely not said the whole
truth. They had no idea I had ever been drinking or doing drugs, but that was
because they never came right out and asked me. So therefore, I had never
lied.

The function of the ‘be safe’ line seemed to apply more than ever now. I was
enthused with Gerard and he seemed to be with me as well, but that didn’t
mean he couldn’t turn on me at any moment. When I reviewed the facts in
my mind in the brief moments where we were not touching or talking, they
never sounded right lined up logically. A forty-seven year old man was
fucking a seventeen-year-old boy. Oh, and he was getting him drunk too.
That didn’t sound right at all, and it made my heart beat faster inside my
chest, wondering if I had just been brainwashed this entire time.

But when I turned around from the phone and saw Gerard’s open waiting
arms and exposed flesh, I knew that this was the safest place I could be and
he was not harming me in any way, shape, or form. In fact, he was soothing
old wounds from my family and friends; people I had never even questioned
before as being a physical, mental, or emotional threat. Sam and Travis were
probably more dangerous in reality than Gerard ever would be to me.

When Sam and I were younger, he had gotten me into stealing merchandise
from stores. Then he had turned me on to drinking and drugs. And never
once did Sam ask if I was okay with everything. He just assumed I was.
Gerard never made assumptions. He pushed people so far with just his
words, to see if his theories were right, but he would back down when (and if)
he was wrong. Of course his arrogant self would never admit to being wrong,
but that was a part of who he was. He was very persuasive in his ways, but
he knew when to stop. He knew how much the human body and mind could
handle, and he’d only push it to that barrier. I often wondered how many
times he had to experiment in order to get the symmetry he was looking for
correct. He knew exactly what he was doing, but he would only do it in a
manner so that no one got hurt. That, in my mind at least, made him the
safest person I knew.

“What time is it?” I asked eventually, a while after the phone call was
complete. Gerard and I were tangled on his bed again.

I had asked, though I pretty much figured that he’d refuse to tell me the time
like he had all day. I could sort of already answer my question myself; I knew
it was getting late. We had gotten up in the afternoon, already wasting away
so much time sleeping that we could have used doing nothing. Our ‘nothing’
consisted of what we were doing right then: sitting in his bed, just laying on
each other, sparking conversation when we felt the urge. We didn’t need to
talk to have a good time. The way his hands went over my body like water
was a language in itself.

Gerard sighed, his chest moving up and down significantly. He knew I would
only grow more anxious if he told me, but he shifted his weight and opened
his bedside table to glance at the watch he kept in the closed space. He
scrunched up his face when he saw the numbers, then looked back at me. He
was lying on his back, while I was on my side, propped up by my elbow. My
brows furrowed seeing his expression, which made him frown even more. He
closed the drawer and shifted closer to me, wrapping an arm around my
shoulder.

“Come here,” he whispered, pulling my exposed body towards him.

I went somewhat meekly, letting him position me under his arm, my hand
draping over his stomach right above his navel. I rested my head on his chest
and I felt him place a chaste kiss on the top of my skull. My hair was dry by
that point from our shower and no longer clung to my scalp in a matted
mess. The shampoo apparently had worked wonders and now my locks had
some kind of volume to it.

“Are you going to answer me?” I asked again quietly. I wasn’t trying to boss
him around, but my voice had come out sharper than it needed to.

“It’s almost seven-thirty,” he informed me, his voice growing with weak
dismay.

I crushed my eyes shut once I heard the number, though I already knew the
dark sky outside was a good indicator.

“Fuck,” I breathed, swearing for the first time since being there. “We have
two hours.”

“No,” Gerard countered. I looked up at him from his chest, seeing his lips
purse. “We have two and a half.” He cracked a weak smile down at me, but it
did little to help.

“That’s still not enough time,” I pouted, not looking at him anymore. I focused
on a stray thread of fabric on the sheet and started to finger it aimlessly.

“No time is enough time,” Gerard opposed, yet again being philosophical. I
was not in the mood for it. I loved him teaching me, but when it came to
theorizing about time at that very moment, it in itself was a waste of fucking
time.

“Shut up about that will you?” I said with a hot stutter.


I felt Gerard’s hand stop moving from its circling motion on my back, and I
looked up at him again. He didn’t seem mad or unhappy, just not really
impressed. I sighed, forgetting what little anger I had.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. When he didn’t flinch, but started the circling
motion again, I pulled myself closer to his face, running a finger along his
cheekbone. “I just don’t want to leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave either,” Gerard stated, the exhausted quality in his
eyes and voice surprising me. I was taken aback, forgetting that all this time
he probably felt the same as I did. Gerard was always so confident and
alluring that I seemed to overlook the fact that he was a real human being
and did have other emotions.

The night and the morning after we first had sex came to my mind suddenly,
and I recalled when he had confessed that he was just as scared as I was,
maybe even more. He was the one that would be arrested if this all went
down, not me. He was the older one, the wiser one that should have known
better than to get involved in a situation that would have no happy ending for
anyone. He was the one taking a huge risk with some foolish teenager, and
had a lot to lose if we were ever caught. He had every right to be afraid, but I
just couldn’t fathom that. He was my teacher and my idol still, even if I tried
to look at him as an equal right alongside me. He simply wasn’t capable of
fear. Even if I had seen that in his eyes on Friday, Saturday, and now,
Sunday, I was seeing the pain of separation, I still didn’t get it.

It started to clue into me bit by bit though as I felt his chest quiver a bit as he
breathed. He was missing me just as much as I was missing him, and there
was no reason we had to feel this way alone. Gerard, in my mind, may not
have been able to feel such dark emotions, but if I intertwined us together
and we felt them as one person, then I could see its plausible nature. I felt
something inside me swell that wasn’t my cock for once that day. We still
hadn’t had sex yet – a change for us who always fucked or at least did
something sexual, even if this relationship was still in its infancy. I didn’t care
about sex then, and that surprised even me. I wanted to kiss Gerard to make
us that one person again, and tell him that everything was okay.
The finger that I had used to trace along his cheek, I put to the back of his
neck and pulled him forward, letting our mouths meet in a dry breath first,
then deepen into something more. He was taken a little off guard (for once)
with the action, mostly because I rarely initiated long and deep kisses. I was
always ready to comply, but still too shy to lead.

I opened my mouth and let my tongue slide forward slowly, a wet pant
escaping from both of us. He let his tongue go forward too and in no time, we
were exploring each other again. He was warm and soft, and I kept my
fingers curled then splayed at the back of his neck, interlocking with his hair.
His hands rubbed up and down my arms before they slipped under them and
made his way to the small of my back, pulling me closer to his naked body.
Our noses brushed together as we kissed, our mouths disconnecting slightly,
then crashing back together, sometimes changing the angles of attack. Our
breathing was heavy, though our motions were relatively slow.

I took the one hand that was not on his neck and rubbed it down his chest,
stopping at his hipbone and leaving it there. I could feel him press me into
him from his hand at the small of my back, and my hips bucked forward
slightly. From my hand gently rubbing his protruding pelvis with a slight belly
in between, I could feel his hips rocking forward, but definitely not as strong
as my own.

We continued to kiss, tongues lashing into the other’s mouth and feeling the
warm depths as his hands went down from the small of my back and rounded
over my butt cheeks. I moaned into his mouth, knowing how sensitive I had
discovered my ass to be in the past few days. He kept his hand on the cheek
for awhile, rubbing up and down, before he finally went down the length of
the bottom, cupping the top of my thigh hard and bringing me closer to him.

I thought he was going to insert a finger into me and prepare me for the sex
we had not had all day, but desperately wanted. I liked everything we had
been doing that day, but I really wanted to have sex. It wasn’t all just
because I was horny, though I was sure that had some merit on my decision.
Sex was some kind of closure in my mind. I was leaving soon, and though I
would be coming back, I needed this farewell fuck. I wanted to have our last
action of the day to be big and important, just like our first. Parallel to that
first night, I needed to show Gerard just how much I wanted everything.
He didn’t finger me, to my surprise. I just continued to kiss him, figuring it
was a matter of time before his hand returned and began to prepare me.
Gerard was always big on foreplay, and sometimes it lasted for hours on end.

Just the mere thought of sex had me breathing harder, my cock growing in
much the same way as I pressed against his thigh. I was rocking into him and
I knew he could feel it, but he didn’t do anything, either. I had to take my
mouth away from his to catch my breath, slipping my tongue out discretely
and moving gracefully over to the side so he could get my neck instead. I was
panting hard and could no longer kiss as slowly as I was, just breathing
through my nose. I nuzzled his shoulder with my head as I lapped up air and
felt his wet mouth attack my throbbing neck, making me to moan through a
breath.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said, still breathing pretty hard. He stopped for a
minute, as if recalling the seemingly distant memory of my immature worries.

“There is no need for apologizing for what you’re feeling,” Gerard finally
expressed, the allure returning to his voice. He kissed my neck softly
between each statement, my groans becoming muffled by my own self-
restraint. “Feelings, no matter how irrational, never need an apology to go
with them.”

I felt myself smile at his words, his second meaning jumping right to the
forefront of my mind.

“I can see you again tomorrow,” Gerard continued, his voice coming back to
a real life quality. “You can come back everyday after school like you did
before. I can still teach you how to paint.” He paused, taking a breath and a
break from kissing and releasing the words subdued and slow. “If you want.”

“Of course I want to,” I said almost immediately, bringing my face up to meet
him again. My eyes were wider than usual, just from the sheer fact that he
had possessed doubt of my return. Did he not feel how hard I was just then?
He smiled up at me, recognition beaming through him. He took one of his
hands that had been on my upper thigh and ran it along my face and in my
hair, grinning at me the entire time. I rolled my eyes slightly, becoming a
little self-conscious under his constant gaze. He eased my feelings by
bringing our lips together again, kissing long and slow, tongues only going to
the front of the mouth, and not deep inside. The embrace only lasted a few
moments, before I broke away, rubbing my hand on his hips that had ceased
rocking as I talked.

“I hope we do more than painting,” I said, trying to sound seductive but


coming out as unsure. My eyes had been down when I said the statement,
focusing on the way his skin folded on his chest, but now I brought them up
to his eyes to sense his reaction. He smiled and laughed slightly, probably at
my attempt of seductiveness.

“We will,” he said, bringing me closer again, his voice actually succeeding at
being sexy. I let him kiss me, wishing that I could obtain his voice. My
teenage existence had rid me of any kind of elegance in my speech. The
closest I could get to that were the reverberations I felt in his mouth when we
kissed.

As we embraced again, I let my hips rock harder into him, being more forceful
in showing him what I wanted. His hand was now at the back of my neck, but
he still had one on the base of my thigh. I rocked into him more, panting
harder and trying to get my point across without actually saying anything.
Like with a lot of other tasks, I never initiated the sex, but gave fairly obvious
hints. I had done it so much in the past few days, I was surprised he hadn’t
picked up on them by now, but I was still new to all of this. I figured I wasn’t
being obvious enough yet.

I could feel his hips rocking slightly against mine. I continued to rub his skin,
but relocated my hand to his pubic bone, inching my way slowly down it. I felt
the rough patch of pubic hair and nearly bit Gerard’s lip in anticipation of
what I knew would be coming. As I reached my hand further down however,
his hips stopped moving, and instead of finding an erect cock, much like my
own, I found a flaccid one between his thick legs. With my surprising
discovery, my hips ceased movement, and subsequently, he sighed
disdainfully.

“It’s not you,” he told me, bringing his lips away from mine and nuzzling my
neck, not wanting to make eye contact. I furrowed my brows, moving my
hand away from his crotch and back to his thick middle.

I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought Gerard was just as turned
on as I was. We were both rocking our hips and kissing hard, but nothing was
happening with him down there, while I, on the other hand, was aching. It
didn’t make any sense at all, considering he was the one who fucked me all
the time, and there had never been this problem before.

The way Gerard was carrying himself just then didn’t compute with me
either. He was still nuzzling my neck and kissing me, but it was in a frenzied
fashion, his pecks occurring as fast as the breath from our lungs in a
desperate attempt to try and distract me from what I had not seen. Gerard
hadn’t been hard when I touched him, but he said it wasn’t my fault. That
statement still didn’t clear the air though, and I was left wide eyed and
staring down at him. I pulled away so I could finally see his face, where a soft
tinge of red was draped across his cheeks, not from arousal. Gerard was
embarrassed, and again nothing made sense.

“What is it then?” I asked, closing my mouth and trying to remain calm.

I put a hand on his face and tried to bring his chin towards me. When he
finally met my eye contact and we stared for awhile, my deep concerning
glances probing into his ashamed ones, he did the unthinkable.

He began to laugh.

It wasn’t a deep belly laugh, but it wasn’t a nervous chortle either. He


actually seemed amused by the situation, a huge contrast from the blush
streaking his cheeks.
“Oh,” he sighed, bringing one of his palms up to meet his face, and closing
his eyes as he squeezed his temple. He breathed in and out once, the palm
still pressed against him. When he finally looked at me again, he raised his
eyebrows cynically. “My poor cock.”

“What?” I asked, unsure if I heard him right. When Gerard talked, everything
was elegant and poetic to a certain degree. The harshness and somewhat
absurdity in these lines left me baffled.

He sighed and scrunched up his face, realizing that he was going to have to
do a lot of explaining to me. I was still getting used to the mechanics of gay
sex; I didn’t know what to do when something broke down. He shifted his
weight and offered a space beside him for me to rest while he started this
discussion.

“I’m old, Frank -”

“No, you’re not,” I said quickly, trying to comfort him. When he looked down
at me skeptically, I corrected myself a little bit. “Not that much.”

“Thanks,” he said with a contemptuous sigh. “I’m older than you at least, and
well…” He shifted his eyes around, ultimately glancing down below his waist,
sending a hint to me. “Things just don’t work like they’re supposed to all the
time.”

“Oh…”

The air was knocked out of me when the realization finally hit.

Gerard couldn’t get it up.


My mouth was open again, but it was hard to shut it in my surprised state. I
had always heard of men having these types of problems before. I would fall
asleep with the TV on some nights and wake up to infomercials about how
every man could ‘be a man again’. I’d always cringe and die a little inside
when I saw the ads, running full speed to turn the TV off before they got to a
demonstration. I knew what Gerard was talking about, to some degree. I just
never thought it could happen to him of all people.

“Didn’t we just fuck yesterday?” I asked, my face twisting in confusion. It was


possible for this to happen to older guys, but fuck, did Gerard age ten years
the night before, rendering his cock useless? “I mean, you’ve been hard
before. You were hard all weekend…”

I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so condescending, but it came out that
way. Gerard didn’t seem to mind; the voice inside his conscious was probably
telling him the exact same thing in the exact same way. He just shook his
head and crushed his eyes closed, not wanting to, but explaining it anyway.

“I’m probably like this now because we did fuck a lot this weekend, Frank,”
he said, his voice low and dull. “I usually don’t have this problem. It’s really,
really rare. But Frank, you’ve been tiring me out.”

He managed to smile in spite of himself at the last line and shot me a deviant
look. I smiled too, and we briefly forgot about the (not so, in some areas)
tense anxiety in the room.

“I’m sorry…” I trailed off, not know what else to say. Normally, Gerard would
have come back with his theory on feelings he had said only moments
before, but instead, he merely shook his head. There wasn’t much to theorize
on cocks, anyway.

“Not your fault,” he insisted, waving a hand in the air. “Completely me this
time.”
I nodded, and let my eyes trace down to the bottom of the bed where I
watched my feet. I thought for a long time, some of Gerard’s quirks finally
making sense. This was probably the reason we hadn’t had sex today yet. He
was spent, tired, and there was nothing left for him to give, literally. This
issue was probably why we moved so slowly when we did have sex, because
he wanted to appreciate what he had when he did have it. And it was
probably why there were hours to our foreplay. It may have taken that
duration of time to get it up fully. I started to doubt some of the other times
we had had sex, if we really had completed the act, at least, on his side. I
tried to remember the time in the shower, if he had actually come or not, but
it was too hazy. Both of us were straining so much to keep ourselves
balanced that I really didn’t pay that much attention to him. He may have
come, and I thought he had come, but that was before I knew this problem
was even an issue for him. I tried to remember our first time together too,
and I compared everything I had experienced since to that night.

When I had taken off Gerard’s pants on the bed, after we had been making
out and I had been disrobed entirely, he had only been half-hard. I had been
completely erect and leaking for some time by that point. I never saw
Gerard’s penis that close again that night, and for all I knew, he could have
only gotten hard moments before he entered me, all of the preparation
beforehand for himself as well as me. Even with all of the sexual tension we
experienced finally being released, it had taken that long to finally be able to
perform the task that most teenage boys (and some adult men) start (and
complete) in an instant. It boggled my mind, and as I thought more and more,
I started to realize that it had taken Gerard longer each time to get ready for
sex the more we had it. He was still capable – I could assure that fact – it was
just the time taken to get there that was the issue. And the issue was
growing bigger and bigger now, unlike other things.

I shook myself out of my contemplation and looked down at Gerard. He was


hidden below the sheet, as was I, but I could still see the faint shadow of
pubic hair and thin veiled presence of a cock. And it still wasn’t hard,
especially now that embarrassment had set in. He himself may have been as
horny as fuck, but sometimes, I tried to figure, the body just didn’t do what
was wanted (and needed) in an instant.

Everything from last night about Gerard being old was coming back to me.
This was yet another factor, another obstacle that I had not thought of when I
had decided that I wanted this relationship. I had spent so long trying to deny
the fact that he did have a penis, and that I wanted to have sex with him, and
now that I had finally accepted it, the stupid thing wouldn’t work. Unlike
Gerard’s gray hairs and wrinkles, I could not ignore this aspect.

“What are we going to…do?” I asked unsurely, not knowing if I should be


pressing the subject. I was sensitive about my dick, and it worked fine most
of the time.

Gerard looked over at me and pursed his lips, not at the question but at the
answer. It was clear that we weren’t going to be doing anything at that
moment in time.

“Do you have any pills or something?” I asked again, not liking the silence
between us. He scoffed at my question, finding humor in a not-so-funny
situation.

“No, I don’t have Viagra. I hate taking pills for anything. Especially ones that
don’t always work,” he sighed, somewhat bitterly. It looked as if this had
been an issue before, if not with him directly, then someone else. Even that
sounded really weird – Gerard being with someone else. I was still getting
used to him being with me.

He ran his hand through his hair, eyes forward, explaining and clearing some
distant cobwebs from my mind.

“I’ve never needed it. I’ve never had someone that has tired me out this
much before.” He tipped his chin down to me, smile growing on his face. A
wink began to crease into his eye, but I didn’t reciprocate. I felt embarrassed
for him and it wasn’t even my own body.

I couldn’t imagine not having my dick work properly. I hated not being able to
masturbate when I was really horny. My family and I had once gone on
vacation and we all had to share a hotel room and I nearly died. It was only
three days, and you would think that I could have lasted that long without
touching myself, but no, I couldn’t. The first day was okay; I was tired and
grumpy from driving so much, but by the second and third, I was ready to
hump anything that moved. Fuck, even crossing my legs had felt good. My
mom seemed to be knocking on the bathroom door if I was in there longer
than two minutes and asking if she could get her hairbrush, so that place had
been a no-go. My dad never seemed to leave the hotel room when I was in
there, either. We were also in so many goddamn museums that not many
masturbation opportunities had occurred.

And I had been fucking pissed off.

I finally ended up jacking off in a McDonald’s bathroom, cleaning myself off


with the two cent toilet paper, when we went out for lunch on the last day. I
felt so guilty, ashamed, and downright dirty after I had done it, but I managed
to sleep peacefully the entire way home. In the end, it was worth it, for my
sanity if not my hormones.

Gerard took another deep breath, and I focused back on his story. I couldn’t
imagine being in his position right now. If not for the embarrassment over his
inability, then for the sheer frustration of not being able to get off. He was
horny; he had been rocking his hips into me and kissing me just as much as I
had been doing to him. And yet… nothing. His face was flushed with arousal,
his skin hot to the touch too. He was turned on, but in the only place it
mattered right then, nothing was happening.

Gerard must have noticed my harsh stares, because he started talking again.
His voice was stronger than it was before, trying to brush off any discomfort.

“But I may still be able to get it up. It just may take a lot longer. That’s what
it’s been doing the past few days. I’ve needed to hug and kiss and touch you
all over to get it to cooperate.”

He bent down towards me, placing a kiss on my lips as he talked as if to


prove this action. I kissed back, his words and voice throwing me off guard.
They were fast and choppy, not in his normal tempting quality, and the kiss
seemed to ease both of our nerves. When he broke away briefly, he added,
looking down at my just kissed lips almost somberly, “Even then it took a
long time.”

I nodded, my thoughts confirmed. He cracked a weak smile, pleased with my


reaction, or lack there of. I was still trying to grasp everything and my
countenance remained relatively placid. He took this as another invitation to
kiss, and we continued slowly, returning to our normal make out stance.

The discussion was closed, at least to Gerard. He was starting to use his
tongue for other purposes. Though I kissed him right back with just as much
force, I still couldn’t help but hear his words over and over again inside my
mind. I let him touch and kiss me, his hands wandering all over my back,
telling myself that it was all a part of the process that got him up and ready
to go. If he kept doing little things to me, then he would be able to move onto
the bigger outcome. But, I reminded myself, he said it took a long time. Hours
sometimes. We didn’t have hours. It seemed like ages ago when I had first
asked him the time, and even then there had not been enough - and that was
when I thought we were having no difficulties. Now there was an even worse
equation. More problems, less time. I was no mathematician, but I knew
those things didn’t add up right, and I knew I had to find another solution.
Fast.

“What if I do that to you?” I asked suddenly, a light bulb going off inside my
head.

“Do what?”

I had broken our lips apart, but Gerard didn’t mind, changing his focus to
sucking on my collar bone hard.

“What if I kissed you and touched you to get you hard?” I asked quietly. I
dislocated my gaze from his own, running my fingers over the small buds of
chest hair he had. I felt a little embarrassed asking what I could do to him, for
this of all things, but he had already felt a good share of the dreaded emotion
that night. I may as well pick up some slack. “Would that make things go any
faster?”
He pulled himself away from my shoulder, the wet spot he left becoming cool
under his breath. He placed his hands on my chin, making me look at him,
deeper than usual. He seemed to tilt my head and observe me from different
angles, judging my sincerity.

In our relationship, though still new and exciting, he always initiated the
actions. I never had, and he had never let me. He was taking care of me,
pleasuring me all the time and forgetting about himself. The morning after
our first time, he had left to get supplies so I would feel better about
everything. He had given me numerous opportunities to leave, and once I
told him that was not in my mind, he still focused on me. He was so kind and
tender that morning, and even though I had offered to help him out, he had
declined. He wanted me, but he didn’t want me to help him. It took me a
while to realize how the two were different, but it was a lesson I had to learn
myself. It was always about me and him having control over that. (It was
never a negative control, more like a responsible control; despite how
dangerous he may have seemed to be, he was doing all he could to make
sure I was safe).

Perhaps one of the reasons it was such a sudden struggle for him to get hard
was because of this protective atmosphere. He wanted to keep me safe from
danger, and he himself was danger in its finest form. He wasn’t letting
himself get too turned on because he didn’t want to be thought of as taking
advantage of me. I gave fairly obvious hints that I wanted him to ‘take
advantage,’ and it had taken weeks for us to get to this place, and now there,
though there was constant consent, it was still hard (or not …). There had
been such a fight for this relationship in the beginning, such passion and
momentum blinding us to those conflicting factors. We were ignoring them
and literally saying and doing ‘fuck you’; we had spent the whole weekend
fucking.

Maybe now though, his blindness was wearing off. We had engaged in a lot of
silent time together, just sitting and thinking. Though I spent those times
thinking of him and how wonderful this all was, maybe he was looking back
and realizing just how much sex we had had and, in theory, just how wrong
that was.
In reality, at least inside my own head, it wasn’t. Now that I was suggesting
the action in the first place, I hoped it wasn’t so wrong and definitely not
being taken advantage of. I wanted to touch him and taste him and do all of
the brilliant things he had been doing to me. A relationship was two sided,
after all. He had been the one to teach me that.

“Are you sure?” he asked, curling a hair over my ear.

I paused to give him the benefit of the doubt, then nodded.

“Then I’m sure it couldn’t hurt,” he agreed with a smile, the consent
loosening some of his inhibitions from before.

We brought our lips together again, sealing the deal.

“If you need help or something, just let me know,” he added, his voice losing
its cool nature and coming out scattered.

He was nervous about the forthcoming actions; I could read it in his face and
hear it in his broken tone. His crows’ feet deepened, lip trembling slightly. As
he rolled his body over a bit, exposing his bare torso moving up and down in
a rhythmic breathing pattern, I saw him shake a bit. I smiled as I slid an arm
around his waist, planting my first hesitant kiss on his portly middle. I
whispered something calming to both me and him as I straddled his hips,
realizing that I had already given myself to him so much over the past few
days, and he was finally allowing himself to do the same.

“Don’t help me,” I told him sincerely. Our eyes met as our faces came in
close proximity once again. “There are some things I need to do on my own.
Practice makes perfect, anyway.”

My whispered words fell off my lips and into his mouth, and I felt him smile as
I reiterated the moral of one of our previous lessons. We connected in
another deep kiss before I began, opening the flood gates of human emotion.

With trembling hands, I started my exploration. The kiss we shared had been
deep, tongues wrapping around the other in our mouths, saliva pooling and
sucking noises emitting that I could still hear and feel as I moved down away
from the puckered flesh. I sucked and licked his neck gingerly, sometimes
going up and attacking his earlobe. I blew in his ear slightly as I poked my
tongue around the ridges, hoping it felt as good to him as it did to me any
time he did the small action. When he groaned, even before I placed my
tongue there, pressing his palms into my fleshy back, I knew I was already
doing a good job.

My hands had been braced on his shoulders and giving a slight squeeze, but
as I began to move down, I cupped his chest and rubbed his nipples with my
fingertips. My tongue lolled out of my jaw, leaving a wet trail from neck to
collar bone, where I started to suck the new flesh with surprising ease.

I wasn’t too nervous with this part; I had done this before, but in a heated
moment of passion where my head couldn’t think straight and I was being
fucked. I couldn’t feel fear then, just Gerard. It wasn’t too hard, essentially.
Kissing and touching were such basic human needs and emotions, and were
relatively the same for any gender. Now however, I felt the fear and
nervousness coursing through my veins. I had kissed girls before, although
not many and under the influence, but this was going to go way beyond
kissing. I had never done anything with a guy. I didn’t know how it was
supposed to feel or what I was supposed to do, because he had been leading
me all those times before. But as much as it made my hands shake and my
mind race, I somehow knew I could handle it. This was Gerard I was thinking
about. I could feel him – all of him – right beside the fear and anxiety. I was
tasting him, his essence and flesh radiating in my mind and down to my cock.
I had gotten a little soft as we were discussing his issue, but now that I
started with physical contact once more, I was ready.

Gerard, however, was still far from it.

I could feel him underneath me and nothing had changed, other than his hips’
small movement into me. I knew what I had to do, but that was the part that
scared me the most. I was going to have to touch him. I wanted to - God, I
had wanted to for so long. But Gerard had experienced many more people
than I had, and had many more hands touch him. He was thirty years older
than me, and though I didn’t know of his past flings, I knew there would have
been many. I had a lot to compete with, and no previous experiences
beforehand to draw upon to help me.

What if I did it wrong? What if I hurt him? I asked myself inside my head
frantically. I no longer had any indication now that I was doing my task right;
he couldn’t get hard to show me, and anyone could fake a moan.

I began to move my way down his body, focusing on kissing his skin again
and again. Sometimes they were light pecks, my rounded lips brushing the
skin ever so slightly, but the rest of the time they were deep, slow sucks,
taking his flesh and anything else I could into my mouth and feeling the heat
of his body. My fingers had already brushed past his nipples, now stationed
on his hips, and causing me to slide down a little more, legs still straddling
him. When I got to the perked pieces of scarlet flesh with my mouth, I took
one inside, swirling my tongue around the area and breathing hard on it. My
head was down on his chest and I could hear his blood pumping, heart
beating, and the moans reverberate inside his flesh. I sucked harder in
response, knowing that he couldn’t fake his heart beating the way he did. I
even nibbled a bit, grazing my teeth over the taut part that stuck out sharply.
I shifted to the other nipple shortly after, picking up my pace a bit as I gained
a little more confidence. Gerard’s hips bucked into me with the small switch
and his hands that had been rubbing up and down my back moved to grasp
the love handles at my sides. I was straddled on his thighs, leaving a space
where both of our crotches were exposed. He moved and took my hand in his
strong grip and guided down below his waist, but not fully placing me there.
He led me close enough so I knew what he wanted, but not so direct as to
actually place me there. I almost wished that he had, that way I wouldn’t
have wasted time thinking and debating my moves.

I continued to suck on his chest, moving to the center and down, merely
rubbing the skin at the pubic line, still afraid. I could tell Gerard was biting his
lip, keeping from saying anything to help me. Seeing him like that, head
cocked back, eyes closed tight and biting his lip, trying so hard to get hard,
made me finally take his cock in my hand.
He gasped and his eyes sprung open at the contact, surprised I had finally
done it. When the touch had sunk in, he let out a low mewl in approval.
Despite this guttural utterance, his cock wasn’t totally limp in my hands. I
could tell that it was beginning to grow flushed and hardening a little bit, but
the change was so minute, it could have been my imagination willing it to
happen. Regardless, I took him in my hand and lowered myself down his
body.

I was now stationed at his navel, dipping my tongue in and out as I tried to
figure out what to do with this in my hand. From my own experience, even if I
didn’t get hard right away, I knew that just touching myself limp felt good, so
I tried to do the same with him. I ran my hand up and down it, tightening my
grip in some places and touching the head quickly with my fingertips. He
moaned and rocked his hips into me, gradually progressing. Sometimes, I
stopped kissing him just to watch what I was doing, completely in awe that
that was my hand on his cock. The more I watched, the more I squeezed and
got used to the idea. And the more I got used to the idea, the less and less
scared I became.

“You’re doing really well,” Gerard breathed suddenly, disturbing my


progressive thoughts. He rubbed my shoulders where his hands had been
encouragingly placed. “It’s working…”

Hearing the small simple words made me beam on the inside. I was doing
something right, and Gerard was enjoying it. I suddenly grasped the reason
why Gerard was constantly doting on me and never really wanting to receive
pleasure for himself. This act in itself, bringing someone else a good feeling,
made me feel good too. I loved the fact that my hand was making him pant
the way he was and making his face twist in those expressions. Even if he
wasn’t completely hard yet (or even half-hard), I was doing something good.

And really, in school, at home, with my friends or Gerard, that had been the
only thing I ever wanted. To do something right.

My kissing began to grow more and more south-bound until I was at his pubic
line. I looked down at my hand and its motions, and I suddenly had the urge
to make Gerard feel even more bliss. It took a while of staring and pep-talk to
work up the nerve, but my curiosity and need to please won over as I placed
my lips on the head of his cock.

I was hesitant at first, my closed lips hitting the tip before I spread my lips
apart and took him bit by unsure (but willing) bit. It was an odd fleshy taste,
different from that of his normal skin. This was softer and undamaged, still
sensitive to touch. It was so sensitive in fact that just me licking the head
caused Gerard to moan out the loudest, rolling his head over on the pillow to
contain himself. My stomach flipped as I smiled, my grin pressing into the
flesh around me, and continued to do my job.

It was hard to suck him when he wasn’t hard, but I tried anyway. I licked him
most of the time, going from the base to tip, spending most of my time at the
top, knowing that got a better response of out him. I could feel him starting to
harden more and more and I couldn’t believe it was taking this long. I was so
hard it hurt, and his moans only made things worse by getting me even more
turned on. I had been touching his balls with my hands as I licked, but I had
to take one away to finally grasp at my own erection. I didn’t want to come
yet, but I needed something touching me before both of my heads exploded.
I couldn’t help but let a moan fall out of my mouth at first contact with my
own body, but the vibrations must have felt good to Gerard, for he bucked his
hips into me. I groaned again, pressing his hips down with my free hand, and
continuing to tug on myself.

“Frank,” he panted a few moments later.

I was still sucking him, but I had since stopped touching myself so forcefully. I
had been getting too close, and since he was not even half-way there yet, I
needed to wait to even the scores. I brought that hand to his cock and
worked double time, tonguing the tip while my hand squeezed the base, my
newfound confidence astounding. Gerard had lifted his head from the pillow
and saw my efforts, (or struggles, to paint a more accurate picture). I didn’t
really realize how awkward I looked just then, sucking rapidly and trying to
pump him at the same time, my lower half squirming from lack of contact.
Normally, I would have stopped, feeling embarrassed I was getting so into it,
but I didn’t really care. There was no way I was stopping now, and potentially
ruining something that we had both worked so hard for.
“Hmmm?” I responded, looking down.

“This is probably as good as its going to get,” he declared, his voice quiet but
still excited from panting. He placed a hand on my shoulder to brace me.
“You probably won’t make me come and I don’t want you to get tired.”

My face dropped and my tired jaw ached even more. I didn’t care if I got
tired, or if I was late by that point. I was hard and not thinking clearly. He was
not going to get away with just casting his own needs off to the side again.
He was going to get hard, and I was going to make him come, Goddammit.

“I don’t care,” I informed him, placing my head back in between his legs and
keeping all of my attention there. “I’m not tired. I’ll keep going.”

I could tell he was laughing a little, from the way the muscles in his chest
moved, but I ignored them and kept on my mission. He moved his hands from
my shoulders to my neck and chin, whispering soothing tones to me. I tried to
shut them out and kept licking him harshly, knowing that all he was saying
was some bullshit about me being late and getting into trouble.

“I don’t care,” I mumbled back, pumping him harder.

“I do,” he countered, squeezing my shoulders. He continued to whisper, and I


continued to ignore him, until something in his voice pattern changed. He
went from concerned to seductive, and I swore I heard a sly “Fuck me,” slip
past his lips. I paused all movement, unsure of how to proceed. I kept my
eyes down however, knowing that if I looked him in the eyes, he could
convince me to do anything. And if he was trying to convince me to stop,
then that just wasn’t happening.

He started to rub his hands over my shoulders slowly, once he took note of
my stopped movement.
“Frank,” he called out in the dead night of the room, voice raspy. “Have sex
with me.”

This time, I thought it was fairly safe to look at him. He took my chin in his
hands when I did, making me keep my eyes focused on the shape of his body
in the dark room. I could still see how flushed all over his skin was, and I saw
the flicker of his green eyes. His fingers brushed over my lips as I searched
his face for meaning.

I wanted to have sex with him; that was obvious. But he still wasn’t hard
yet…

“I can’t get hard enough to get inside of you,” he corrected my thoughts


slowly, eyes darting down shamefully. “But there is no reason you can’t do
anything with me.”

“Oh…” I said, barely audible as his previous statements began to make more
sense.

I kept forgetting that this was gay sex; the places could be switched. I was
still so naïve about what to do even when I wasn’t thinking about actual sex,
sex. Touching Gerard’s cock and giving him a blow job were scary enough.
Fucking him was a complete other thing. I had been petrified when he had
done the same to me, and he had been leading then. I didn’t know what to do
with this. It would be like losing my virginity all over again. Within three
nights, I would be losing it twice in two different ways.

My head spun with the possibilities.

I thought I was already so close to Gerard. I already thought he had seen me


in my weakest moment, seen me naked, and that he just knew me. But I
slowly began to realize that I still lacked in a lot of aspects towards him. I was
blinded by my own faults being found out and exposed, and I was thrown off
by the newness that everything possessed. I was too ego-centric for once,
worrying so much about my own fears and actions that I forgot Gerard
possessed them too. That was why his telling me of his fear hadn’t made
sense; I hadn’t dived deep enough inside of him yet. I was still doing it to
myself. I saw him naked just as much as he saw me, and that I misread for
something else. I had never actually been inside of Gerard, physically or
mentally. When he tried to open up to me, I didn’t get it right away and he
shut himself down. He didn’t want to be too exposed either way because he
shouldn’t have been. I had to authorize everything, and I had been too self-
involved to realize that things went both ways. There was an imbalance that I
had never realized.

Things were never supposed to be balanced with us, anyway, I had thought.
He was older, wiser, and my teacher. I wasn’t at the same level with him, but
that didn’t mean I couldn’t be. When we were teacher and student, it was
different. There had to be authority and inequality in order for things to work.
We weren’t solely that relationship anymore. We were something else,
something given the chance to be equal – if I only listened.

Gerard was giving me this chance now. I had already given myself to him, but
tonight, he was just starting to give himself to me. This was the ultimate act
in everything we had created Friday night. I had always thought everything
had been summed up with that one event. I thought Gerard and I were
already being intimate, but he was showing me then, in an indiscrete way by
finally letting me into his body, that intimacy was not one-sided. It wasn’t
even two-sided. It was like an onion that had layer upon layer. We were
peeling away each and every single one of them (or so I thought) this
weekend. I thought I had lost enough body fluid to finally be a part of him
completely. But no, we had to keep going. An onion was a plant; it
regenerated, things grew back. You took off a layer, no matter how deep, and
there was another one. Maybe it was close to the same thing, hell, it could
even be the same layer repeating again. But you still had to take it off and
dig deeper.

With us, we were that onion, but a little different. We had so many other
opposing issues outside our bracket. We were coming together, bit by bit, but
no one would ever see it as that. We were an onion in a broken mirror, our
reflection getting contorted back onto society if they were to ever see us
together. We were too far apart in age to be doing this, and we were two
men. Opposites and parallels like that just shouldn’t have been together
when placed inside, next to, or by a cracked mirror.
Thankfully, this mirror was not one of those two-way traps that were placed
inside police stations. We created our world where they didn’t even exist. No
one could look inside, and no one saw us. There was always a chance, as with
anything that’s breakable and fragile, that we could be discovered. That our
mirror could lie and let the light in. We were an onion; we had a distinct
smell, a distinct taste, and we could make eyes water. But for the most part,
we were alone. And we weren’t done cooking everything just yet.

I brought my lips and body up closer to Gerard in the ultimate act of


comprehension. I kissed him hard and quick, showing him that I wanted to do
it. I wanted to do everything with him. I was fucking terrified, and he could
see that as he locked his arms around my body, my shivers radiated through
him. He was going to help me, let me practice on him without actually telling
me what to do. He was going to let me go inside him any way I wanted, but
he was giving me the road map to get there. And the first thing he did for this
approach was grab the lube that was still so brand new from his bedside
table. I was tempted to ask him what time it was when he went in, but I knew
it would only spoil the moment.

He handed me the lube and I popped the top, remembering the actions
Gerard took each time we had sex. I remembered what fingers he used, the
direction he rubbed the clear liquid on himself, and even how much he used.

I was straddling him, legs around his waist, as I got my fingers lathered up. I
put the tube off to the side, knowing I was going to use it later, and I looked
down at Gerard. He smiled up at me, the realization of the act we were
committing flooding through him. He grabbed my hand again gently, and
moved it down to his crotch, directing me towards his opening. I was about to
stick my finger inside of him when I remembered something from the first
time we had sex.

“Do you want to stand up? Will it be easier?” I asked softly. For some reason,
I had started whispering. I didn’t know if I trusted myself enough to talk at
normal volume, probably because I knew I would end up yelling from all of
the emotions going through me.
“I want to see you,” was all he said as a response. His face was so earnest, I
could barely contain myself.

I leaned down and placed my lips against his softly, having him latch onto my
bottom one almost immediately. He sucked on it for awhile, during which I
found his hole and gingerly pressed my finger inside of it. He was much
better than me relaxation wise, the first finger venturing in without too much
strain. It felt weird, even to me, sliding in the second finger, but Gerard
seemed to be okay. His breathing became shallower and his kisses less
urgent, but he was still there. I repeated the actions he had done to me over
the past few days, scissoring my two fingers before I added the third, sliding
them in and out. Normally, he would kiss me during the act, but I had given
up on that a long time ago, and just settled for resting my flushed cheek next
to his skin. He kissed me when the action grew more intense, his nails
digging into my sides. I thought I hit his prostate at one point as I watched his
eyebrows raise, but he never said anything. For all I knew, I could have hurt
him.

“I’m ready,” he declared, surprisingly clear, a few moments later. He opened


his eyes and I exchanged an unsure look with his own confident glare. This
was the hard part coming up. He saw the struggle in my eyes and added a
final, “When you are.”

I kissed him again, hoping the action would portray my utter thankfulness.
Gerard understood so well that there had to be two people in each act of sex.
If one person was ready, it didn’t mean the other one was. Gerard got that;
he understood that more than even I did on some days.

After I pulled out my fingers, causing Gerard to cringe slightly at the loss, I
positioned myself in front of his opening. I grabbed the bottle of lube and put
a lot in my hand and on my cock, spreading the excess around the hole I was
about to enter. I knew he had done this before and he probably wasn’t going
to get hurt too bad, but I was still worried and ended up using an excess
amount. I lined myself up with him, feeling my stomach jump as I felt the
heat around me. The positioning was weird; I was just hovering before I knew
I could move into my more solid base. I had been shaking before, but now my
body was wracked with even more nerves and I felt like if I crouched there
awkwardly any longer, my legs would snap in two under the pressure. Gerard
helped me by sliding his legs out a little more, and then assisting further as
he draped them over my shoulders a little. He arched his hips, causing me to
hiss as our skin touched for a brief second. I was holding onto his sides tight,
staring down at his chest, when I felt him slide his hands over my own in
reassurance. His breathing was hard and shallow, and he swallowed hard as
we made final adjustments until we both were comfortable. When we locked
eyes one final time, we both nodded sincerely. We were ready now.

I began to push into him, very, very slowly at first. I could feel his tight ring of
muscle around my very sensitive head and I let out a deep breath that I had
been holding. I could see Gerard close his eyes and wince as he opened his
mouth, but I was unsure if he was in pain or pleasure. I couldn’t form words
to ask him anything, so I didn’t. I knew he’d let me know if I was hurting him.

I pushed on further, feeling as if I was getting nowhere. He was trying to relax


but I could feel him flinch every so often. When we had had sex the first
night, he said he hadn’t done this in a long time. That had been for giving,
but I assumed it was the same for this as well. I tried to go easy on him, for
both my sake and his, but all of a sudden I felt my head just push inside. My
strain and the amount of lube around us had finally paid off. The entrance
was a shock to both our systems, and we gasped in unison as it happened.
He felt warm and tight around me; it was unlike anything I had felt before. I
thought his hand had felt good, I thought his mouth had felt good, but my
God, so did this. And it was just my head. I had a sudden urge to just keep
driving myself into him, but I shook it away. I could still feel his hands
gripping my sides tightly, and running up and down my body. It shocked me
back into reality that there was another person I was doing this with, and I
needed to pay attention to them.

“Are you okay?” I gasped, looking at his face twisted in what I hoped wasn’t
pain. I knew it had hurt me when he first entered, and I wanted to make sure.
I tried to find something of his I could grab onto and squeeze for reassurance,
but all I felt was his muscles unclench and clench around me distinctively.

“Yes,” he groaned after a few moments of thickly filled silence. He shifted his
weight slightly and took my hands in his own, giving me that squeeze I had
wanted to give him. He took a deep breath through a rigid jaw, composing
himself before he spoke.
“I’m wonderful.” He gave me a weak smile through thinly veiled eyes and
though I knew he was sugarcoating it, I believed every word he said.

I leaned over to give him a quick kiss, going in a little more as I did. He
wanted more out of the kiss this time, but I couldn’t get myself to function
properly just yet. I wanted to focus on getting inside of him safely and easily.
I propped my arms on either of Gerard’s sides as I went in as slowly as I
could, feeling his body tighten around me, squeezing and tugging me more
than a hand, mouth, or anything could ever do. It felt fucking amazing and I
groaned with each inch I went in farther. I closed my eyes and arched my
head back, my mouth hanging open. I started to hurry once I was more than
halfway inside, hearing Gerard moan and wanting to kiss him again properly.
I knew he was doing much better than before, his hands just rubbing my
sides, and no longer clinging to me for support. It seemed like it took hours
from how slow I was going in contrast to how good it felt, but when I was
finally inside, both of our open mouths crashed together sloppily, tongues
going everywhere. Right then, I thought it was the best kiss we ever had. It
was messy and careless and just awkward from the way we were positioned
and the minor pain he was in, but it fit with everything so much.

Having sex wasn’t this perfect thing; it was messy, sloppy, and it hurt. But
God, it felt so good knowing that we were hurting as one person. As we
kissed, our mouths missing completely sometimes, I began to pull out slightly
and then go back in. I thought just going in felt good; once I started to thrust I
felt like I was going to die from bliss. I had never had sex this way before.
Hell, I had never had sex at all before. I never knew what it was like to be
encased in such a warm and tight environment. I now completely understood
why people would crave this act so much and all the time. Never having done
it before, I didn’t know what I was missing. And now that I did, I loved it.

Gerard began to buck his hips into me after a while and I kissed him hard,
thankful that his pain had fully subsided. He started to get into it more and
more, meeting my thrusts when I pulled out of him. We began to groan and
pant instead of kiss each other, and finally I just removed my mouth and
buried my head in his neck, my arms above his head, breathing hard. I
started to go faster and faster, not really able to control myself anymore.
Though Gerard met with my thrusts every time, no matter the pace, he
brought his hands down to the small of my back, pushing me forward. At first
I thought it was a sign for me to go even faster and harder, which I complied
to readily. It wasn’t until I felt his head nuzzle me again, and his lips hover
over my ears that my thoughts were changed.

“Slow down,” he eased, trying to not make his words sound like a command.

I lifted my head out of the crook of his neck, worried expression written all
over my face. I had stopped my movement entirely, thinking I had done
something horribly wrong. Gerard cupped my face in his hands, curling and
brushing away my matted hair with a lazy smile. He tried to calm me down,
when really, it should have been the other way.

“It’s okay,” he relaxed, bringing us together in a kiss that magically calmed


me.

“You need to appreciate the moment,” he added seconds later, and


everything made sense again in my mind. He wasn’t in pain (or maybe he
was, just not admitting to it), he just wanted me to appreciate everything as
much as he did.

I nodded, lowering myself over his lips once more, feeling a trace of a smile
thread its way across my flushed face. I started up my thrusts again, feebly
attempting to slow down. It was hard; with each minute I felt like I was
getting closer and closer. I wanted to delay release as long as possible
however, for a multitude of reasons. I looked down in between us to see if
anything on Gerard had changed. He was barely hard, but there was a vast
improvement from when I had last checked. I briefly wondered what would
happen when and if I hit his prostate. I had just barely gotten inside; I
doubted I would have that much luck actually nailing that spot dead on my
first attempt. From the amount of groans he was making at the moment, I
was doing pretty well for an amateur.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” I asked in a labored breath, lowering
one of my hands to his groin. He rolled his lips together, his eyes closed and
took my hand in his own instead.
“No,” he said, cracking an eyelid open slightly and looking at me sincerely.
“This is about you now. Whatever feels good to you, feels good to me.”

I felt a pang of guilt inside my chest strike me with mention of the words.
Gerard was opening his body to me, but he was still making sure that
everything was about me, not letting himself get any pleasure. I wanted to
argue with him, let him know it was okay for me to touch him, but I gave into
myself instead. I hated being so egocentric, even if artists were supposed to
be selfish. At least Gerard had let himself get some kind of pleasure before
we started this. It wasn’t his fault his body just wouldn’t cooperate. Maybe in
time, things would change, I told myself, and began to kiss him feverishly
again. The hand I had been navigating further south with I used to clasp him
tightly.

“I like this,” I breathed, disconnecting our kiss and looking him in the eye. His
dark bangs were all over his forehead, his once pristinely pale skin a red hue.
He nodded firmly, and pulled my body closer.

Heeding his request fully, I began to slow my pace. My thrusting in and out
continued to send shivers of pleasure throughout my body, but I gripped
Gerard’s hands harder instead of going faster. I was fairly determined to keep
this slow pace, even if I felt like parts of me were going to fall off if I didn’t
speed up anytime soon.

This must be what Gerard feels like, I suddenly concluded to myself. I wanted
to climax, I could practically feel it within me, but I never went fast enough
for it to happen. Gerard must have felt as trapped as I did right then, only he
didn’t have any control over it. At least if things got too bad for me, I could
just go a little faster and I’d be done. Gerard was completely helpless to his
condition, and it wasn’t getting any better any faster.

I looked at him, his face, his body, everywhere but his still half-hard cock,
while we were having sex, and I swore that no one would have been able to
tell that he was having difficulty. He looked so strong beneath me, so sincere,
so into it. His eyes were closed a majority of the time, his lips pursed every so
often, a small gleam of sweat over his brow. This was feeling good to him, but
he wasn’t letting the weakness of his old age get to him. He was just dealing
with it. He wasn’t complaining, he wasn’t refusing to have sex, and he wasn’t
making me feel bad because I could do what he couldn’t. Instead, he was
letting someone else get full pleasure while he tried to reap in some leftover
benefits. He was complying with the fully submissive role of receiving it,
when he was strong enough (and still strong enough in that moment) to
always be the dominant partner. His hands, when not linked with my own, ran
up and down my back, encouraging me when his small moans didn’t. I was
determined to never speed this action up, because I wanted to stay like this
forever.

As we had sex this time, we sensed each other so well. We didn’t have to
communicate as much as we had the first time. Though I was nervous and
scared, it all seemed to be melting away. Our movements were face to face
this time, more intimate than ever before. We had done a lot of sexual
actions this weekend, but it was in the pure act of being sexual. Everything
was sexual, like Gerard had said. But for the first time ever, the actual act of
sex wasn’t sexual. It was intimate. We didn’t have to talk to know what the
other wanted. We started to feed off that communication, and it made the act
even more pleasurable.

When I saw Gerard gasp and groan, I knew that I had hit that spot in him that
he had been hitting in me all weekend. The action had been a complete fluke,
and the shock of me actually getting it caused my body to shift. I couldn’t
find the spot again after trying for some time, and in seeing my struggle,
Gerard took my hips and assisted in aligning me. We didn’t even have to
exchange words. Our hands and bodies just moved together, and started up
everything. I hit him again, with his strong hands still on my hips as
necessary guidance. It took a few more nudges for Gerard’s erection to fully
get up to standard. I didn’t even notice it at first, until I noticed one of his
hands disappear from my side and begin to grasp himself. I watched him for
a few moments, transfixed with the action.

I had never seen Gerard touch himself before. In all the time we had been
naked in his apartment, touching and kissing, his hands never went farther
than his waist. I never understood why, especially if he did have erection
problems. I would have thought he would be touching himself non-stop, to
get and keep himself at attention. It was never the case, or at least I never
saw it, which was probably why I was so enraptured just then. The way his
hands that already fascinated me ran over his cock, and the way his mouth
fell open under his own touch sent shivers down my spine.

I wasn’t sure how long I watched before I added my hand to his. Gerard
recoiled at first, surprised that he had been touching himself, that I had
caught him, and was now offering to help. It seemed like he didn’t want to let
go of himself that easily at first, but my insistent hand and needy eyes were
enough. He relinquished control, and wrapped his hands around my back.

It wasn’t too long after I started to stroke Gerard more and more, that I felt
myself grow weak. I had still been going slow, but I wasn’t sure how much
longer I could handle this. It felt like anything touching or hitting me would
send me over the edge soon, and I just couldn’t fight anymore. I started to
stroke Gerard harder and faster, hoping he would come before I did. It was an
insane notion, I realized, but I didn’t really care. I pressed my lips against his,
not really kissing. Just touching him for something to brace me for some kind
of stability. He could tell I was struggling, and wrapped his legs around me
tighter, pulling me inside of him more, again and again, until I couldn’t help
but climax. I gasped and nearly inhaled his lip at the expected action, but not
wanted yet. It was a deep kiss as my slowed motions stopped completely,
and I rested on top of him. My hand had stopped, and when I noticed he was
starting to slip away from me, I started up again. We both hadn’t worked so
hard to lose it so fast.

“It’s okay, Frank,” Gerard cooed quietly. My head was under his chin, his
hands slowly snaking their way up my back. “You can stop.”

“Hmm?” I queried, my voice still rough and jagged. I brought my eyes to


meet his, but only felt him place a small kiss on my lips instead.

“You haven’t come yet,” I told him bluntly, his cock still in my hands.

“And I probably won’t,” he explained quietly. His fingers curled against the
back of my neck where my sweat collected.
“But you’re still hard.” I knew I was half lying, but my eyes probed him, still
unwillingly to let the topic go.

“Sometimes…things don’t always work like they should,” he repeated,


glancing away, ashamed. “I probably won’t come tonight. My body is tired,
Frank. It won’t always work, but that’s not your fault.”

“I know it’s not…” I trailed off, unable to process things. I could feel myself
sliding out of him, and it didn’t help matters either. “It’s just…”

“Annoying?” Gerard answered for me, expressing his own thoughts.

I nodded. I didn’t know where I had been going with things, anyway.

“It is annoying, but we just have to live with it. Like a lot of other things…”

I felt my heart skip a beat. He had said ‘we’ had to deal with it. Not just him.
It sounded so trivial and stupid, but I couldn’t help but beam inside right then
at the fact that he wanted me to stick around and deal with that with him. It
wasn’t the best thing in the world to bond over, but fuck, he wanted me
there.

I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

“It’s okay,” I agreed wholeheartedly. He smiled at me, and then looked down,
where I noticed my hand was still gripped around him tightly. I was no longer
moving it, but even me holding his erection wasn’t going to help anything. He
was softening more and more. I let go as I pulled out of him, but I didn’t stray
that far from his body. I was still on top of him, but I raised myself a little so I
could connect with his face again, kissing him a little while longer. He curled
my hair around my ears again, though it was already tucked into place.
“You better get going soon,” he said meekly, just to say something.

“I know,” I agreed, but didn’t move far from his body. I laid my head down on
his chest and shoulder, wrapping my arm across his waist. We were both like
fire to the touch, and the blankets encased this heat to the point where I
could have sworn we were living in the tropics during summer, instead of
being in Jersey just barely out of winter.

“Frank…” he said again after a few moments of me just breathing against his
chest.

“I know,” I insisted. “Just five more minutes.”

He sighed, bringing his hand down to my lower back, his lips connecting with
my forehead. “Whatever you want, Frank. Whatever you want.”

I turned my head, catching the kiss on my lips that had been meant for my
forehead. For once, I was grateful he had no concept of time.

***

I crawled into my house over an hour later than when I was supposed to. It
was almost eleven o’clock at night – still fairly early for some kids, but
deathly late for my father. I walked with the stealth of a mouse, trying
desperately not to wake my parents up. I didn’t want to explain to them, or
get yelled at for being late. I didn’t even want anyone to talk to me. I hoped
and prayed that they had gone to bed and forgot about their son. Maybe my
mom had just assumed I was sleeping at Sam’s place, and not bothered
asking questions. It was a long shot, but I didn’t want to ruin my best mood
ever with any negativity pulling me down. If I could, I would stay like this
forever.

I wasn’t sure how long those five minutes in Gerard’s arms had lasted, but
when they finally expired, he had helped me get dressed and gather my
things. He hugged me tight against his still naked and trembling body as I
buried my face into his neck. He smelled like sweat, cigarettes, and the wine
we had drank all weekend. I honestly didn’t think there was a better smell.
We kissed for all of those five minutes before we thought we were ready to
leave each others arms. He said goodbye to me in the apartment, not
wanting to get dressed himself or come into the hallway and risk getting
caught.

I had been saddened at first when he refused to walk me to the stairs. It


would always slip my mind how this was all a secret. It was hard to conceive,
just from the open and caring atmosphere in the apartment. It just felt like I
had lived there all my life, and that was just how life was. That it was filled
with paint and art and sex and wine. That there was no discrimination, just
creativity that oozed from every wall. It only occurred to me on my walk
home that I had to go to school the next day and I would have to see Sam
and Travis instead of just using them as an excuse. Though I was sad that
Gerard’s world wasn’t constantly around me, I was glad it was a secret. I only
wanted to experience it with him. Not everyone should live the way we had
lived. It was too free, and like he had taught me, there are some things that
are supposed to be shackled. Everyone else should remain restrained, and
while I was with them, then I should too. I was okay with that; I embraced
that. It would make me appreciate Gerard more in the end, if that were
possible. I had only spent a weekend with him, and already it felt like that
was just how things should have been. Maybe the paint fumes had gotten to
my head, or maybe he really had given me too much wine, and I was
completely drunk as I stumbled in my doorway.

I could still feel him and taste him in my mouth when I got home, and though
my stomach rumbled slightly, I didn’t want to eat or shower or do anything
that would wash him away. But I did need water, I was willing to admit, as I
filed myself off to the kitchen. I walked into the room quietly, very pleased
that the house on the second floor was dark and my parents seemed to be in
their rooms. I never really had a curfew because I never went out all that
often, I would just have to tell my parents what time I would be home every
night. I was really late this night, something that had never really happened
before, and I hoped I didn’t get into too much shit. I shifted through the
house quietly, trying to blend into the background.

“Hello,” a voice conjured me out of my thoughts suddenly. I gasped, nearly


dropping the glass I had gotten out of the cupboard for some water. I looked
over at the kitchen table and saw my mother sitting there in the dark, in the
dim glow from a light she was reading a magazine by.

I didn’t know how the hell I had missed that before. The stove light was
almost always on, so perhaps I mistook the other presence of light for
something mundane. It didn’t help that my head was too up in the clouds for
me to notice anything other than myself, too.

I felt my heart sink before I responded. I could tell from the tone of her voice
that she was disappointed, rather than mad at me. And really, that was so
much worse.

“Hey.” I stood there awkwardly for a moment, my mother’s eyes not moving
from their focal point. I turned on the faucet and got water, just for something
to do. “Sorry I’m so late.”

“It’s okay,” my mother responded sincerely. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

She looked up at me from the table and smiled. It threw me off balance. She
wasn’t happy, but she was really relieved. My heart sunk again, and I pressed
the glass to my lips. They felt bigger, swollen against the cool plastic, and I
prayed it was too dark still for her to notice any other signs of my weekend
on me.

I felt my stomach fall again, the guilt creeping into my system. I knew guilt
was a useless emotion, but this was my mother. As much as I had grown to
dislike her in my youth, I couldn’t help but notice now how much she really
did care for me. She may not have been able to understand, but she cared.
Those were two entirely different things. Just like sex and intimacy.
Reluctantly fighting the urge to bolt upstairs, I took a seat with her at the
table. The chair scraped against the tile floor as I pulled it out, making me
cringe and my mother place a hand on her head. She looked so worn out
then. I recalled each time I phoned her, and how her voice kept aging and
aging. Now I saw the manifestation of that voice sitting in front of me. The
amber light she was reading by made shadows dance and leap across her
face, and gave her eyes a sallow appearance. I hoped it was the shadows, at
least. I didn’t want to think that I had caused those markings, those changes.
My mother normally went to bed early, so eleven at night was really late for
her, especially when it was drenched with worry.

“Your father already went to bed,” she stated matter-of-factly after some
silence. “You’re lucky he didn’t wait up for you. He’s mad.”

I winced, dreading having to see him in the morning. I took a drink of water to
distract me.

“And you?” I wondered out loud, hoping she was not going to punish me. She
and my dad usually did tag team efforts when it came to things like this. My
father was always too mad and irrational; he was just there for the fear
element to be bestowed in me. My mother was there to be the judge and jury
all in one, deciding upon the appropriate punishment. Now, I was awaiting my
sentencing.

“He told me I should ground you,” she stated dryly. She flicked a page on the
magazine, only pausing for a second on each one, not reading. I felt myself
tear inside, knowing that if I was grounded I couldn’t go and see Gerard. That
was simply not happening. Just because they needed shackles didn’t mean
they could force them on me. I had just worked so hard to get them off.

“But,” she added, surprising me with her lenience. “I don’t think so. It’s just a
warning this time.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. “Thank you.”
“You rarely go out with your friends for long periods of time,” she started
explaining, though I had not needed any explanation. If I wasn’t grounded, I
was good. But I continued to listen, giving her all the attention she needed. I
was pretty sure my father didn’t let her speak her mind and talk all that
often. It was certainly a shock to my system that she was declaring his
punishment useless. And so she wanted to relish in her fair ruling, and maybe
even hear the sound of her own voice for a while. She was so quiet, I was
pretty sure she forgot what it sounded like.

“It’s good for you to get out of the house. I worry about you sometimes, you
know, Frank. It can’t be healthy for you to sit up in your room all the time and
not do anything.”

I wanted to butt in and argue there, tell her I did do something, but I kept
quiet. I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Sam and Travis are good kids. At least, Sam is. I remember you and he used
to be inseparable when you were younger. I don’t know Travis, but I’m sure
he’s okay too. I’m really glad you started to hang out with them again. I
remember when you were thirteen or fourteen and they would constantly be
at the door, asking you to come out. I swear, for all of the first semester at
school, the door bell would ring at six o’clock every night. And it went on like
that for a long time. I don’t remember when it stopped. It just sort of did…”

My mother paused for a second, sighing as the lines on her face grew deeply
rooted with nostalgia. I couldn’t help but let myself slip back to that time
span, although it was not as pleasant as my mother was making it out to be.
That was when we had really started to first get involved in drugs, drinking,
and all the rest. It had been fun for a while; it was like Sam and I were kids all
over again, and had something fun to do. We were spending all this time
together, and I never thought I could be as close to anyone before. It was just
the drugs and the alcohol making us close, I knew that looking back. Sam had
stopped coming around so much when we stopped doing drugs. Or at least,
when I stopped doing drugs. He clearly still did them, along with drinking, but
I didn’t care for that lifestyle anymore. I had so many other things to look
forward to.
“I don’t want being late to become a habit, though, Frank,” my mother
lectured, snapping back into parental mode. She narrowed her eyes and cast
me a concerned, yet condescending look. Her stare hurt, making me turn
away.

“I can’t handle this becoming a habit. I don’t want to sit up and worry every
night where you are. It’s hard, but not as hard as calming your father down.
You’re lucky tonight, but if you do this again, I can’t guarantee anything. He’s
unpredictable.”

It hurt me that when she was giving me reasons as to why this couldn’t
happen, she focused on my father. She was clearly being affected; she was
the one staying up late to wait for me while he was in bed, and yet, he still
somehow managed to have power over a conversation he wasn’t even
present for.

“Did you have a good weekend, at least?” she finally asked, shifting her
weight in the chair and leaning forward. She folded her magazine up, getting
ready to leave soon.

I smiled at the question, all of the memories from those three seemingly
small nights come together inside my head. I had had the best fucking
weekend of my entire life.

“Yeah, I did,” was all I said however, my voice oozing with sincerity.

She just smiled at me as I finished my water. I got up shortly thereafter to put


my glass in the sink, figuring that our conversation was over for the night.
When I looked back at her however, she was still sitting at the table, the
magazine bunched in her hands. She showed no signs of moving.

She looked up at me standing ineptly in front of her, a weird smile on her


face. It was different from the prior ones, out of relief and security. This was
almost playful, unsure and tentative. And she kept looking at me with
softened eyes. I didn’t get it. I felt my confidence from before waver slightly
and began to look down at myself, seeing if there was some indication of
what I had done with Gerard. I touched my neck to check for the marks, but
they were hidden behind my jacket. My mother kept staring.

“What?” I finally asked her, rolling my eyes self-consciously.

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. I cocked my eyebrows at


her, begging for more.

“It’s just…” she started, motioning with her hands slightly, trying to find the
right words. “I’ve never seen you so happy.”

Chapter Twenty

The Art Of Sex

Part One – Names

All through Monday at school, I felt like there was something trapped in my
chest. There was a constant gnashing and fluttering of something trying to
escape. It felt like Gerard’s dove was there, wings rustling and hitting my
tender organs, trying to break free and actually fly. I felt so restricted in the
classroom. The teacher droned on and on about some math principle, and it
took all of my being to not get on top of the desk and yell at the top of my
lungs that math was useless, and we should be more concerned with the
cubist period of Picasso than how to find the area of a cube itself. Numbers
couldn’t help me, numbers couldn’t set me free – unless it were the numbers
on the hands of the clock, slowly counting down until I could finally unleash
the bird in my chest.

At first the feeling inside of me was a mixture of happy anxiety. Soon enough
and my shackles would break and I could go to the artist’s house and see the
real dove. I wondered if she was still flying out of her cage, and how far she
had explored the apartment. I knew there were places that she had probably
never seen before. There were places that Gerard probably hadn’t seen
before, and I wondered if he was learning with her. If he was wearing clothing
or not…I couldn’t believe it when I first had a sexual fantasy of Gerard in
class. It took me completely by surprise. My mind had slipped, and so had my
thoughts into his apartment on the night where it all happened. I swore I
could feel the sensations all over again, him entering me. Thankfully I
couldn’t feel everything, or I would have had a problem explaining my boner
in the middle of computer science class. The fantasy only lasted a few
minutes at most, but it still left me smiling, my chest swelling with something
I had never experienced before. I reveled in it all.

Until lunch, however, and I met up with Sam and Travis again. That was when
the nervous energy turned into desperation. The first words out of Sam’s
mouth were ‘where the fuck have you been all weekend?’ Apparently, he and
Travis had been ‘constantly’ calling my house. I felt my blood run cold when
he mentioned this, images of the lies I had only just started to tell crashing in
front of me and my dove being shoved with choking hands back into a
confining cage. I didn’t say or do anything – I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to
cover my tracks because I had not thought this far ahead.

Thankfully, Travis brought me back down to reality informing me that every


time they called, my father had picked up and they didn’t want to deal with
him. No one ever wanted to deal with my father, really. Even some of his
business colleagues avoided calling the house and opted for coming over
instead. I couldn’t blame them. My father was loud in real life, but on the
phone everything was maximized. He didn’t have a concept of volume, or
how close he should hold the device to his lips. Most of the time when I called
home for a ride, I would hold it out a foot from my face, waiting to hear the
tell-tale bark. Even with it that far away, I could still hear him and his harsh
breathing distinctly. I was positive this was the reason my mother usually
handled phone calls, but for whatever reason, she had been busy this
weekend and had not bothered to pick up. Thank God.

Travis, always being highly sensitive to noises and sounds and lights (a side
effect from being high most of the time), had nearly thrown the phone across
the room when my dad had answered. That had been the end of that call.
Sam had taken over the duties later on, but when my dad kept answering the
phone, Sam never bothered to say a word. He hated authority figures,
especially my father, and wanted to avoid them as much as piss them off. My
father wasn’t worth pissing off, and he gave up calling after three tries. That
was the definition of ‘constant’ for Sam with the attention span of a fruit fly. I
felt like blessing every little fault all of my friends and my father had right
then because they had just saved my ass. I was pretty sure I had never loved
my dad so much in that very moment. I used to curse that loud and
obstructive voice, but it had saved me from damnation.

I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if my lies had unfolded


already. My mother would be crushed; she was already so worn out and tired,
and that had been when she thought I was spending time with my friends.
And my father, well, I knew he would kill me. I had been saved for now, for
whatever reason. I still had time to keep weaving the lies that nearly choked
me.

Sam, Travis, and I sat down for lunch, but barely exchanged any words.
Travis was off in his own world, and Sam kept sending me snide looks from
across the table. I had been looking down at my sandwich, when I told myself
to hold my head up high instead. I saw over Sam, over Travis, over
everything in the cafeteria and I felt a million times better. The dove inside
my chest started flying again.

I was really shocked that they had been inviting me places that weekend in
the first place. They hadn’t last week, or the one before that. I wondered
what was so special about now, but when I asked Travis, he was half-asleep
from the night before and gave little explanation. Sam was just so pissed at
me for not answering the phone and ‘disappearing’ on them that he was of
no use for an explanation. I found it ironic that they accused me of
disappearing, when they had been becoming transparent to me for a long
time now. But of course, it was all my fault, according to Sam. Even if we had
known each other since we were five, he could still be mad at me without a
problem. Maybe it was because we had known each other so long. We were
sick of each other. We had each seen the other grow up (or not, in Sam’s
case), we had each seen the other’s faults, and now we were realizing we
didn’t like the other person all that much. We had been forced together from
school, but school was almost over. We were both realizing that we had other
options. Better options, even if we couldn’t fill them entirely just yet.
Therefore, anger sparked quicker. We were way past that stage of being nice
because we were still getting to know each other. We knew each other. And
now, we didn’t like each other.
He and I would have our moments, however, when he laughed and joked
around with me like old times. He would still invite me with him to places –
but only when he wanted to and, probably, mostly out of the history we had
shared. It was impossible to rip out our history together from the text we had
made; there would always be frayed edges to pages of the time we shared
together. At the moment, I was just the back-up friend, dragged along with
when it was okay to have a third wheel. Travis was Sam’s best friend now.
Normally, I would have been mad and hot-headed over it, but I was still riding
on the afterthoughts of the night before. Gerard was my best friend now – he
was more than they ever were or could be if they did want me back. And I
realized that they would want me back. They needed me. They needed me to
be there when they couldn’t take each other anymore. When Travis got to be
too weird for Sam and Sam too angry for Travis, I was sent to be placed in the
center. I remembered when that used to be Travis’ job. I wondered when the
exact switch had taken place, and when it would happen again, only with
someone else. Sam went through friends really fast, but I knew I was never
going to get thrown too far back in the mix again. I would hang around during
the day, but then I would be gone, free from my shackles.

I never did find out what was so important about this weekend, but I assumed
it was drug related. They invited me out again to do something with them
after school that day. I said no almost immediately, thinking of the time I was
planning on having with Gerard again. And honestly, I had the confidence in
myself to say no regardless of Gerard’s presence now. I didn’t want to hang
out with them anymore beyond the confines of school. They never treated
me that well anyway. I was beginning to realize, slowly and surely, that my
friends were not who they said they were. Apparently, I was not who they
said I was. At least, not anymore.

“You’ve changed, man,” Sam spat at me tiredly, after hearing my decline. He


twisted his already odd face up into a sneer and stepped up from the lunch
table, leaving his garbage behind. He slung his backpack over his shoulder
abruptly and signaled for Travis to follow. Travis merely shook his head at
me, zipping up his coat all the way before he followed after Sam down the
hall.

That used to be me, I thought to myself, watching the lanky boy follow
closely behind. I was glad it wasn’t anymore.
My two friends didn’t speak to me the rest of the day, but it didn’t matter
anymore. Maybe I had changed, but it wasn’t my fault. It was the dead and
dull life that I had been surrounded in that changed me, and their apathy
towards its all. It wasn’t my fault I had changed, when they hadn’t. Their
disapproval of it for sure wasn’t going to stop me.

***

When I finally was able to make that trek to Gerard’s place, I wasted no time
in removing my clothing. I had knocked on the door to let him know that I had
arrived, but jabbed my key in at the same time, so fast I nearly broke it off. I
was so excited and eager to see him, especially after the day I had
experienced. It wasn’t necessarily a bad day, it was just different. Not
something I wanted.

When I finally entered the paint clad home, the one place I wanted to be, I
saw Gerard walking over to me from a small piece he had been working on
for days now. He had the biggest smile on his face, a gesture not out of the
ordinary for him. I kicked the door closed behind me as I leaped over to him.
He wrapped me up in a large hug, pulling me close like he had the night
before when I had left to go home.

“I missed you,” he said into my neck.

I felt my insides warm and jump around, like there were kids playing on the
trampoline in my stomach. I hugged him tighter, jumping up a little and
wrapping my legs around him. He was surprisingly strong, and was able hold
me easily.

“It’s only been a day,” I teased him, even though I felt the exact same way.
There were so many intense feelings in our relationship that it needed to be
contrasted with sheer joy to make a perfect balance.

“Sometimes a day is too long, and sometimes a night is never enough,” he


informed me gallantly, squeezing me right back. “And we shouldn’t have to
wait. You know how I feel about time.”

He laughed into my neck, the hot bursts of air tickling me along with his vocal
vibrations. We parted from the hug slightly, only enough for my feet to touch
the ground again, and our lips to meet in a passionate kiss. We were acting
like old couples in fifties films that had just gotten back from the war and
hadn’t seen each other in years. It would have been comical, if it hadn’t been
so beautiful at the same time.

He was wearing clothing surprisingly, but as we moved away even more we


began to shed them bit by bit. Before long, we were naked and in each other
arms, kissing any region of bare skin we saw. He was lying on his back on the
floor, murmuring as I began to trace my way down his body with my mouth
and teasing his entrance with my fingers. I was straddling him, but my
position changed constantly while his hands remained strong and stationary
on my sides.

It amazed me how much more confidence I had than the night before. The
task didn’t seem so scary anymore, Gerard’s body no longer a mysterious
landscape, but still so new I could explore and find new places we both liked.
And that was what we did for the first little while. We didn’t have sex right
away, though we were both naked, and the lube was in and on our hands. He
had brought the warming one out from his room, and I took time to rub it on
his chest like he had done with me on Saturday. His eyes were closed for
most of the act, but when they did open, they were half-lidded and desire-
filled. I eventually found my way to his opening, spreading the lube copiously,
and entering as slowly as I could. Gerard dragged some of the couch cushions
for himself to prop himself up on, the hardwood floor being too awkward for
our sensitive skin. I fucked him this time, like the night before, but he was
much more responsive. He was able to come, just shortly after I had, both of
our hands bringing him to the final spot.

I lay on top of him after, too tired to move and not really wanting to. It was
hard to stay inside of him too long after sex, both for comfort factor and
because of the conditions changing. I tried to savor the feeling that I didn’t
get to have the night before as long as possible before I finally needed to pull
out. It was a security issue wanting to be inside of him, I figured, just to be
that much closer. We kissed with slower darting tongues once freed, this
action of sex the fastest yet we had participated in. Gerard moved and went
to his bedroom, but instead of pulling us in there, he tore the contents away,
dragging blankets back to our spot instead.

“What are we?” I found my lips forming a question that I was still knocking
around inside my head. We were still basking in the afterglow of sex, both of
our bodies naked, but half-hidden under the sheet. He had me tucked under
his arm like a precious package, my eye level right with his neck and chest. I
had been tracing my fingers over his skin, curling his hair, and mapping out
an alternate route when the question had come to me, and I now drew my
eyes to his own.

“We’re living,” he answered, his eyes staring up at the ceiling and his fingers
dancing over hair.

It was not quite the response I had wanted, though I wasn’t sure what I was
even asking. I knew we were in a relationship – we had to be - but I had no
idea what to call each other. Boyfriend was too young and immature, though
I couldn’t think of anything else to put in its place. If I didn’t have a name for
our status, then I had no idea what we were doing every day, day in and day
out.

“I mean,” I continued, trying to clarify my thoughts for him and myself. “What
are we, together? What do I call you?”

I looked up at him unsure, while he was still staring at the ceiling, seeing
some beauty I couldn’t quite fathom yet.

“You call me Gerard,” he said seriously. “And I call you Frank.”

I sighed. He was toying with me again and I wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Yeah, but what does that mean, Gerard?” I emphasized his own name, to
almost spite him in his previous point. He smiled, realizing what I had done,
very proud.

“It means whatever you want it to mean, Frank,” he countered, the tease in
his voice balancing out the seriousness. I smiled in spite of myself as I let the
information process. I lowered my eyes back down to his smooth chest and
started to rotate my thumb around while I thought hard.

“What does it mean to you?” I finally asked, not meeting his eyes. He took a
deep breath and stopped rubbing my hair. He placed his hand down my bare
back instead.

“It means a lot of things to me,” he began, thinking hard and still looking up.
He furrowed his brow, searching for something deep inside his mind. “We
gave ourselves to each other in more than just bodies. I showed you my art,
and you showed me yours. It’s deeper than what we just did right here. And
honestly, I don’t think there is a word for that.”

He paused, rubbing a hand to his chin as he thought. “I suppose you could


call us lovers. Artists use that term a lot. And they had many lovers,
sometimes at the same time.”

I had been listening intently to what he was saying, enjoying and agreeing
with everything he said. Until he came to that last part. What did he mean
when he said they had many? Did he have anyone else other than me? I had
merely assumed that I was the only one he got naked with every day. I never
thought there was a need to ask him.

I shot my head and looked up at him, my brows wrought with concern. He


saw me, his face falling as he leaned down to place a small kiss on my still
twisted lips.
“But I only have one lover,” he stated after, rubbing my hair again to soothe
me. “I’ve never needed anything more. You’re quite the handful.”

He smiled, trying to ease my tension. I was still a little afraid, but not because
of him anymore. It had been my reaction to the simple honest statement. My
stomach had dropped out and a wave of panic had washed over me. It scared
me how intense my feelings were, and how much jealousy and fear seeped
into my system when there was just the thought, the mere implication of
someone else. And it had just been a weekend.

With Gerard passion and intensity were praised, never feared. I had to get
used to this. He tipped my chin up from where it rested against my chest,
and kissed me hard. I was more than willing to try.

“What about you, Frank?” he asked, when the embrace was done. “What
does it mean to you?”

“Umm…” I said, thinking hard and trying to process my scattered thoughts.


The memories of all the times we had had together came back to me, even
before we had started having sex. I thought of meeting in the park, him
throwing paint on me, and then teaching me with that very bucket of paint.
And then my mouth just opened and I started to talk, pouring the feelings on
like the cool liquid.

“You’re my mentor, I guess. My artist. My teacher. My friend. And now, I


guess my lover, too.”

I sort of shrugged my shoulders, trying to get the attention off of me. It felt a
little weird using the term lover. I felt like I was in a bad eighties romance
novel when I used it; it felt weird against my tongue. Maybe it was one of
those things I had to get used to. The wine had felt bitter at first, too.

“That’s a lot,” Gerard said, cutting me off from rambling. He was smiling,
beaming with the praise he was getting. “But that’s not what this means to
you. It’s what I mean. What does us together mean to you, Frank? What
would you call that?”

I bit my lip thinking, feeling inadequate because of my answer. Then, as my


brain riffled through even more memories, one leaped to the forefront.

“Everything.” My voice enlightened, my emotions riveting. I looked up and


Gerard and smiled, and I saw his eyes flash, recalling the same thing I was.
“We’re everything. Just like the night we first fucked -”

“We don’t fuck, Frank,” Gerard cut me off, spoiling the mood. He crushed his
eyes closed and shook his head slightly, confusing me.

“What do we do then?” I asked a little harshly, the tone to which he ignored.

“We for sure don’t fuck,” he repeated, making the word flick violently off his
tongue. He raised his eyebrows high to emphasize his point. “Fucking is the
raw natural animal urge to just fuck. To enter and thrust and come all in one
go. To obtain pleasure and to get off. Our relationship is definitely focused on
pleasure,” he added with a coy smile, his hand massaging my body even
more. “But we obtain pleasure in other ways than just getting off. Like
touching and kissing.”

As Gerard stated the last line slowly and seductively, he began to bring our
mouths closer together, opening and sliding his tongue into my own,
deepening the kiss. I smiled and laughed as he did, pulling him closer. The
act didn’t last long, only there to prove a point in a fun manner.

“You could say we’re having sex,” he continued, motioning with his one free
hand that wasn’t wrapped around my shoulder. “But that is too technical.
Having sex is the biological term. You have sex to procreate and to bind
marriage. I somehow don’t even think we’re going to be able to make
babies.” He smiled down at me before he added with a slightly somber tone,
“Or get married.”
I found and squeezed his large hand in my own, making him smile again. It
was silent for awhile, before I realized he hadn’t even answered my question.

“What do we do then?”

He nodded, as if he had been waiting for me. “We don’t fuck or have sex. We
make –“

“Love?” I finished for him, hoping and praying that was the answer he
wanted. It was cliché, and I had heard it on all the televisions shows, and
again, more eighties romance novels. But if the term lovers worked, why not
this?

“No!” Gerard scoffed, almost immediately and sending my heart sinking to


the bottom of my chest.

“Oh…” I uttered, looking down and away, ashamed I had even suggested it. I
suddenly felt his free hand on me again, his finger running down my jaw line
and bringing my face up to meet his own.

“We don’t make love,” he emphasized and repeated. “We make art.”

In one quick and swift motion, before I could make any utterance, he brought
our lips together in a kiss. He turned me slightly, pressing my back into the
sheet in order for him to mount me. Our hips and areas connected, and
though his words, gestures, and devious smile radiated sex, we were far from
it. He leaned down and kissed me lightly, and we made art again.

We continued in this pose, this position, this piece, for the rest of the night,
his words echoing through my head. He always found the right words for
everything. He always knew how to describe things and what they meant. Of
course we made art, I told myself harshly. We made art every day with our
bodies, with our minds, and with everything else, even if we hadn’t touch the
paint cans in awhile. I should have already known this.

As I looked up at Gerard and his crafty smile, I envied him. He possessed


something I never imagined, never thought possible. He had a talent for
discovering the blatantly beautiful, and I was still so far behind, though
already given the materials to work with. I took some satisfaction in the fact
that at least I could see the picture we were painting.

Part Two – Colors

We got quite good at making art with our bodies; we were always practicing.
Whether it was the way Gerard took my hand as soon as I entered the
apartment, or the way I said his name, it would always come back around to
the most primal and most basic art form: sex. We would be naked on the
floor, or in his bed, or even against the wall, one of us gasping and
whispering something incomprehensible as penetration occurred. I gained
more assurance, while he gained more stamina, and we even began to switch
positioning half-way through the act, just to change things around. Gerard
always liked to see different viewpoints of art work, different interpretations,
and different meanings. Switching positions was his way of doing that. It
made a new picture with a new meaning. We were sleeping at the other end
of the bed again.

Everything seemed to always lead to sex with us. We could be doing the most
mundane task and the next thing we knew we were on top of each other, our
hips crashing together, long and hard. Our sex always changed slightly with
each time, a tongue finding a new pleasure spot, tasting a new area or a
slightly different position. He held all the ideas with the new placements, my
naïve mind knowing nothing about standard gay sex before I came here, let
alone mixing it up a little bit. Some of the positions he suggested were
awkward, for me and for him, but when his hands clutched my waist
reassuringly, everything was fine. There was something sturdy and safe
about his hands on me. They were always warm, much larger than my own,
and gripped me tightly. His fingers splayed out along my tender skin,
kneading me, and his palm drawing me closer. I let myself be led into new
adventures. I found out how far I could bend. I had never known I was so
flexible, so bendable. And still so gorgeous, according to Gerard.

I was pretty sure we had had sex on almost every surface in that apartment.
At the beginning of the week, the floors and bed - anything horizontal - held
our delicate interest and focus. We even tried his kitchen table at one point,
after we had eaten a small dinner he prepared for me. Soon enough,
horizontal surroundings were no longer good. We were insatiable, and we
moved to vertical horizons. His walls screamed out to us, and without
exchanging words with each other, we were up against them, him supporting
me much like he had in the shower that one night where we had deviated
from our scopes. Gerard always had to be the one to hold me up; I wasn’t
strong enough to carry all of his body weight. My back sometimes returned
with paint flecks that had dug into my skin from our positioning, but it was
okay. Art covered his walls, and since we were art itself, we covered it right
back and had it consume us too.

We laughed at a lot of the time when we had sex, each action carefree and
innocent, as much as it was alluring. Once when I had been pinned against
the wall, Gerard dropped the lube when we were just about to start. Instead
of cursing and becoming aggravated with how strained his arms were
becoming, we just laughed it off, and he started to kiss my neck slowly. We
directed ourselves over to the couch, and he picked up the lube, ready to
start again. There was no sense of urgency when we had sex either. If
something went wrong, we dealt with it. We had encountered a few more
incidents like the Sunday before where Gerard couldn’t get it up, but there
was no more freaking out. I just had sex with him, or we didn’t have sex at
all. Though not having sex was a rare thing for us. There were no more, or at
least not many, discussions about age, fear, or guilt. We just had sex and
tried not to dwell on things too much. Gerard hadn’t even been teaching me
that many lessons anymore. Everything was a lot more art focused,
pleasured focused, and in turn, I supposed that was a lesson in itself. There
was something worth living for in this world; it wasn’t all bad, and he was
trying to show it to me. For the most part, we were just having fun, and it
seemed like something we both hadn’t experienced in a long time.

I was pretty sure the reason we fucked everywhere was because of Gerard. It
was his mission; his new project. He wanted our art, our story, our everything
written all over his apartment. He wanted to look around and have a
reminder of us somewhere, a reminder of what we had done, or were going
to do soon. He needed to leave our mark everywhere in that place because
we couldn’t step foot outside the way we were. The only place we had not
fucked in the small apartment was on the balcony, its surface closed off, the
window remaining locked because of the risks the outside world possessed.

“But I love risks,” Gerard countered one day, after I had brought up the
subject.

“There is a difference between good risks and just plain stupid ones, Gerard,”
I retorted, batting his hand away as he tried to pull me towards the balcony.
We were in the middle of tearing our clothes off for that day, myself only clad
in my jeans by that point, and his body completely naked save for the
unbuttoned black collared shirt that hung loosely on his shoulders. Despite
my pulling against his grasp so he didn’t toss us off the balcony or get us
caught by showing our secret to everyone, I grinned at his childlike nature. It
was times like these where I forgot his age and the fact that he could be
taken away from me at any point.

I knew what we were doing was dangerous. Many times before I had played
out scenarios in my mind of what would happen if we got caught. It was how I
spent most schools days, when math class got too boring, or my computer
tech too redundant. Instead of risking getting a boner by thinking of what
Gerard and I would do that night (or to talk one down) I thought of the
consequences. Almost getting caught by Sam and Travis, so close to the
beginning, had made me be more vigilant. At least, more vigilant in not
hanging around with them all that much, and keeping my thoughts on more
serious topics. I would replay the scattered images of what I would if
everything folded down around us; Sam’s disgust, my mother’s tears, and my
father’s wrath. I imagined jail sentences, police cars, and trials.
Discrimination and no hope for redemption. Never once did I imagine a good
fantasy. I didn’t think there could be a good outcome in all of this. I toyed
with the idea every once in awhile, images of Gerard and I running away if we
were caught (there were no scenarios where we weren’t caught either), but
knowing how the police system worked, we would have been caught before
we even made it out of Jersey. Most of the people living here couldn’t make it
out of Jersey while trying, and they weren’t risking everything. Gerard and I
were doomed no matter what, I was growing to realize and accept. Society
would get us eventually, tearing us apart bit by bit, creating destruction for
no apparent reason.

I recalled the art lesson in which I walked in on Gerard destroying his own
work. You destroy the things you love, he had told me before smashing his
art into pieces. If society was going to destroy us eventually, it was only
because they were jealous of what we had. They were afraid, because they
secretly loved us. They wanted what we had; they wanted art, they wanted to
be free.

I didn’t know how long it would take for society to ruin us, and I hoped it took
another thirty years for it all to catch on, and I was the same age as Gerard. I
knew I didn’t even have to wait that long. I was going to be eighteen in a few
months; I would be an adult and I could make my own decisions. For once,
that thought excited me. I wanted to grow old then, if only by a little bit. I was
still scared shitless of bills, responsibilities, and jobs but I would give into that
fear if it meant that I could choose to be with Gerard and not have anything
bad happen to us. Gerard made growing old seem like a way of life,
something you just did. And it was, but he also had a way of making it
beautiful.

When you grew old, that didn’t mean you had to be old. Being responsible
didn’t have to mean boring or uptight, and getting jobs didn’t have to mean
nine-to-five. I hated the whole nine-to-five existence. It was what my father
had, and what my mother had part-time. They were miserable, even if they
didn’t want to admit it. I had seen other people go through that dull repetitive
life and they were miserable too. I had been so dejected only months ago, on
my own, and I didn’t have a job, nor had I ever worked. I could have only
imagined the depression that would have set in if I had been catapulted into
the real adult world and I had never had Gerard to influence me.

Gerard had never had a nine-to-five job in his life. He had worked before, in
petty employment when he was trying to put himself through college, but
almost all of them related to art in some way. He gave tours at a gallery, sold
paint and paint brushes, gave art lessons on the side, tutored at the school.
He had worked, but he had made his work exciting. And all of that was only
temporary. To get ahead enough so he could solely do art and art alone. He
wanted to get on his feet like everyone else, only unlike them, he ran once he
was there.
Gerard was showing me then that bills, responsibility, and jobs were not the
only thing that you had to look forward to in adult life. There was also art,
sex, and freedom to do whatever I wanted. He was giving me a taste of that
life, and himself, before my real age had even begun to set in. I was teetering
in limbo between adulthood and childhood, and he was guiding me gently
with his hands on my back, and lips over mine.

After sex, he would let me explore his body with wide eyes and eager hands,
just feeling out where he was different from myself. We were both men, but
there were so many differences I spotted, so many ways he was unique from
me, and I wanted to find them all. I explored, but it wasn’t like before when I
found the age spot and cowered away in surprise. I knew he was old, and I
accepted that. The way he carried himself, the way he chose not to let his
age affect him I admired so much. And it made me want to get closer and
closer to him. He was letting me now, so I did.

“You have a mole here,” I informed him one day, touching the browned fleck
on his inner thigh. I had been in the process of giving him a blowjob, when I
suddenly noticed the disparity of his skin. I waited until after we had finished
until I told him, though I was pretty sure if I wanted to stop the action right
then and there and discuss this new ‘flaw’, I knew we would have.

His head had been arched back on the pillow, Adam’s apple cleanly exposed
and covered with the markings I gave him. He swallowed hard before he
raised his gaze to me. He squinted his eyes curiously as I tried to show him
the spot far on the underside of his thigh. I ran my finger over it
compulsively, showing him in touch when he couldn’t spot it yet. It wasn’t too
big or anything special, but it was something I had found, and when Gerard’s
eyes had locked on it, I knew it was something he had never seen it before. I
felt an odd sense of pride wash over me.

“Oh, what have I done to you?” he questioned quietly.

“What?” I gasped, not recognizing his tone right away. I thought I detected
melancholy at first, and it perturbed me. We had been getting along too well
the past few days to bring up anything about corruption or guilt. Seeing my
distress, he pulled me towards the center of his unclothed chest. He was
sitting up now, and he rubbed my hair with a smile, easing my thoughts as I
eased into him.

“You’re getting better at this than me,” he quipped simply, and my pride
returned.

Not long after, he began to explore my body too.

***

We began to paint again. He was still teaching me art, bit by bit, inch by inch,
and kiss by kiss. I would take off my clothes when I got there, sliding up next
to him and giving myself up to him completely. He would dictate what we did
for the most part, whether we painted a picture first before we had sex, or
the other way around. When I showed up one night, I found out that we were
combining the two art forms.

Gerard told me one night as I left his apartment that the next time we were
together, he would have a surprise for me. He tried to play it off as something
he had thought of just in that moment. It was very like him to be spontaneous
and change things constantly, but I could tell from the slight off-cast grin he
possessed that he had really been planning this night a long time in advance.
I had no idea how long; we had only been together a short time. I figured he
had wanted to do this ages ago, with perhaps another lover, but the idea
never got off the ground. Either they ignored it, or Gerard never spoke up
about it (I found the latter harder to fathom for the sheer fact that Gerard
never shut up). Whatever there the reason, I couldn’t wait for the next day.

When I got there, Gerard was already naked and ready, in front of his mural.
It had been left destroyed with paint swirls everywhere on it since that day of
the destruction lesson, but now it was painted all black for a completely new
base. He held the used paint roller in his hand, admiring his job from afar,
evening up sketchy patches. The stench of fresh paint clung to the room,
making me start to breathe shallow within moments of entering the
apartment. I dropped my bag and pressed on, just as Gerard turned around
and gave me a small wink. There were a few black patches from misshaped
paint swipes on his forearms, along with one small line down his left cheek. I
smiled back and walked over shedding my clothing with each step, and
appeared behind him, resting my head on his shoulder next to his ear.

“What are we doing?” I asked, though I already had a fairly good idea. I knew
Gerard always liked to voice his muse – as he called it – so I let him. I waited
patiently for an answer, tugging on his ear lobe as I did.

“We’re going to paint tonight,” he stated clearly, still staring at the wall. His
hands were crossed over his thick chest. There was a lull in speech before he
said the next part. “Using the best supplies there are. Us.”

He turned into me, discarding the paint roller and wrapping me up in his
arms. We kissed heavily for a while, before I felt his hand on my back, slick
and wet with an unfamiliar substance. I gasped into his mouth, pulling away.
He stood in front of me, holding out his hand, which was covered in the green
goo of paint. He smiled at me deviously and brought his hand forward,
tracing his fingers down my jaw line seductively, leaving a wet trail where he
went. It sent shivers up my spine. He drew closer to me, still spreading green
handprints all over my body as if there wasn’t anything foreign invading his
pores.

“What are you waiting for?” he whispered to me, his lips hovering above my
own. Both our eyes were open, and we stared at each other’s pristine gaze,
practically feeling the other’s eyelashes move as they blinked. He was always
so intense during sex, during art, I couldn’t imagine how we would be when
we literally combined both forms.

Breaking the stare, he took my hand in his wet one and brought me over to
the many buckets of paint I had to choose from. They were all set up and
open, adding to the fumes of the room. I felt my head spin and the rainbow
blur.

“Pick your favorite color,” he told me, then let go of my hand. I was covered
in green in some places, but that didn’t stop me from diving my hand into the
medium shade of blue paint can in front of me. Though the label on the side
was caked over in its color, and some others, I was pretty sure the name of
this blue was Azure. I had always loved that word, and the way it sounded in
my mouth. It felt even better all over me.

“Why blue?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, very proud that I had dove
right into the paints without a second thought.

“Blue is what started it all,” I told him honestly, looking him in the eyes.

Without a second thought, he nodded. He understood. Gerard knew right


away I meant that day which seemed so long ago. That day where I was still
a kid trapped inside a coating of paint, wanting to break out but too afraid to
do anything. That day where he had first started his enticement, and his
lessons, though I hadn’t even realized it yet. I was sure Gerard knew all along
what blue meant to me, but wanted reassurance in his actions.

As I watched the liquid bubble and ooze in between my fingers, I realized how
much I had grown up. I had never wanted to do that; I had been so afraid. But
here I was. I was with someone I never thought possible, and they were
making me believe in things I never thought I could believe in. I could be
creative, exciting, and a work of art. Gerard and I could be a work of art.
Together.

“Sacré bleu,” he whispered softly, nodding his head with his eyes closed. He
took a deep breath, diving his hand into the green, a distinct shade between
a traffic light and a pine tree. It’s labeled was peeled away concisely, but I
was pretty sure it was called Jade.
“Why green?” I asked him.

“It’s the color of nature, of new beginnings,” he began, his eyes still closed a
bit longer than a standard blink. He opened his lidded skin when he delivered
his last line. “Of growing up and old.”

I nodded with a grin, knowing exactly what he was saying. I liked the way
jade sounded, too.

“Are you ready?” he asked, brushing over memories and focusing on the
now.

“Just a sec,” I informed him, another idea coming to my mind. I reached over
with my other hand, not yet coated, and dipped it into a red can of paint.

In technical terms, this red was called scarlet. The name sounded sexy and
exotic, but it didn’t do the color justice inside my mind. Red was so much
more than sex, than passion, than anything like that. Red was for the anger I
felt being attracted to Gerard. All the nights I wanted him out of my head,
only to have the red color, that scarlet hue over and over again in my mind.
Red was for when I realized that something else was there. That it wasn’t just
red but scarlet. It was a deep shade that I couldn’t shake off. It stuck to me,
stained me. I had seen the shade, that tinge, and something more in his eyes
that day I was supposed to start work for him. Red was the shade I had been
afraid of, but now that I held it in my hands, it wasn’t so scary anymore. It
was just red again, and I could deal with that.

“Why red?” Gerard asked, a new hint of curiosity to his voice. This time, and
for once, he really didn’t know the interpretation.

“Red is forbidden, Gerard,” I deterred his question, and answered it all in the
same sentence. “I’m not allowed to tell you.”
I gave him a sinister smile, and he gave me one right back, lolling his un-
coated hand in my hair and tousling it. Then we started to paint.

Our colors made sense, and followed a succession. Blue was for the
beginning, for change and for cursing the present. Red was for the fear and
passion that we managed to capture when things started to progress further.
The green that Gerard had marked the future. Green meant you grew up, like
me, and old, like Gerard. These colors made sense; they were us.

As we threw them against the black wall, mingling and mixing them, nothing
could go wrong. In art, we had the power to control things. The society was
the black background and we were painting over it. Society was going to
destroy us, eventually, I knew that. I could accept it now. But I also could
accept art, and I had been doing that for a long time. Art was my weapon of
choice, and by fighting myself first, painting with myself, I knew I could fight
any other battle with anyone who came along. And Gerard could do the
same. We could stop the society from crushing us here in this little apartment
using paints for our mock battle. It was small, but nothing ever was. The
smallest fleck of paint on a canvas could change someone’s life, and the
smallest action could change the world. That was what the butterfly effect
was about. We were becoming butterflies; we coated our bodies from head to
toe in paint. We let our hands blend together as one, and spread the mess
over ourselves, inside and out, metaphorical and real. Then we slammed
ourselves against that wall, against society, against everything.

No – not against everything. For everything. We were everything, and as the


paint started to harden, forming cocoons, I wondered how beautiful we would
turn out in the end. I didn’t care if we won the battle or not anymore, I just
wanted to look good in the process. And really, that’s all art was. Meaning
and purpose, but looking good while achieving it. Maybe if we covered the
black wall or society in an aura of paint, we could change it. It was worth a
shot; I had been changed the very same way.

We began to add more colors, after we set the basis for those three. It was
going to be an abstract piece, but Gerard always said that for it to be a true
abstract, a picture would always be born by nature. You could find an image
amongst the swirls and splotches; you could find another interpretation to
chaos. But you had to be blind to the entire process. The moment you set out
to make the picture is the moment it loses all meaning. If you tried to make a
sunset represent love, it won’t by the time you’re done. It just won’t. The best
things in life, people don’t plan for. Gerard had been planning for this night
for a long time, but his constant mental processes stopped the second after
he put his hands in the paint. We were both blind now, but we still managed
to find each other’s hands in the process.

We forgot about any rules to our painting, sometimes we forgot about the
painting itself. We stopped every once in awhile to rub some of the goo on
the other’s back and face, toying around with body art that we would try to
press into the wall after. We’d sometimes just stop in the middle too, our
hands dripping, and just kiss. I ran my stained fingers through Gerard’s hair
and he did the same for me. I didn’t care that I could feel the strands he had
contacted clumping together. We touched each other everywhere, leaving
greedy handprints that soon got smeared into seductive splotches. Gerard
touched my lip with his thumb, leaving a dark blue blemish which I passed
onto him as well. It was a mutual transfer of inspiration and ideas.

We got so into our mural, we’d pant and sweat and curse as we threw each
color down. Sometimes we got so into each other too we’d pant and kiss and
thrust our hips into the other. Art was sexual, after all. I was getting harder
and harder as we began to finish everything off, adding a pink hue here,
mixing purple there, but we were not going to have sex yet. Gerard was very
determined on that fact. Anytime I tried to do more than just crashing into his
hips he would pull apart our mouth and declare, “We can finish ourselves, but
the art can’t.”

And we’d begin the painting process all over again.

I was never sure how long we painted for. Time seemed to always slip
through my fingers, much like the paint we tried to hold when we were
together. The wall looked gorgeous in my mind; it was full of pinks, yellows,
and bright oranges alongside the three colors that composed us. Though
colors bled and mixed into one, sometimes creating colors I had never seen
before, nothing was ever ugly. Even the burnt brown shade we had gotten
when blue and orange were mixed too deeply was not an imperfection. There
were no imperfections in art; imperfections made art. Though it sometimes
hurt my eyes to look at the shade, it was supposed to do that too. If it hurt, I
would remember it. We needed some pain in our lives.

It was always very hard to tell when an abstract work was done. Since there
was no design pattern to begin with it was always based on natural instincts.
Fifteen minutes before we actually finished the piece, I thought we were
done. I had been adding less and less, watching as the black disappeared
before me turned into a hue of other colors. I started to stand back and just
watch Gerard go at it. I knew painting was his life and he could do it for ages,
going right over a masterpiece without knowing it, so I pulled him aside too.
He went willingly, gaining the composure he had shed when the paint had
stripped him of his inhibitions.

We stood back from the mural for awhile, just looking at our placement of
colors. The brightness of the hues seemed to fall around the outside border
while on the inside were the three colors that we represented. The distinct
handprints no longer existed, but were spread into little waves and spirals,
taking on a pattern of their own. I loved it, and I wanted to keep it how it was.
But Gerard still stood there, paint-coated hand on his paint-stained face,
thinking hard. We had given up on being clean. Both of our faces were
streaked with paint, making us look like the savages we were.

After waiting for some time, I slid an arm around his waist, nuzzling his
shoulder with my head. I was trying to pass the hint to hurry up, but he
wasn’t getting it. I started to bite his shoulder slightly, and though his
breathing changed a bit, I got no response out of him.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed honestly.

“Of course it is… but…” Gerard said, trailing off and looking around. He
glanced towards the end of the wall, where the door leading into his bedroom
was. That was the only place where we had avoided putting paint. It was
Gerard’s door after all. It was supposed to be black. That was where he kept
all his inner feelings, that was where he cried, and that was where he was the
person that no one wanted to see. It needed to stay black; it was a
nothingness that had so much meaning.
Gerard began to walk towards his door, looking at it with bright eyes.

“I know what we need now,” he stated, exchanging hot looks between the
abyss and myself. I furrowed my brow at him, knowing how clever he was,
but also being skeptical at the same time.

“What?”

“Frank, come here,” he redirected the question, tender air to his voice. He
bluntly pointed to the spot right next to him. I was a mere foot or two away,
but it seemed too far, especially since I didn’t know what was going on.

“Bring the paint can too,” he added, raising his eyes wide with anticipation.

“What color?” I inquired, looking at all the rainbow shades we still had left.
Some lighter colors, like the yellow and rose pink, now had flecks of the
darker colors in them, spiraling at the top. It looked good at the moment, and
still would even after being mixed, despite some eyesore qualities.

“Yellow,” he said without hesitation.

I picked up the paint can, noticing its true identity. Goldenseal. I liked the
sound of that, too. I handed the bucket over to him, standing steadily by him,
not uttering a sound. I didn’t bother to ask why he chose yellow, knowing that
he would probably explain it later, along with what the hell he was going to
do just then.

“Great,” he said, the enthusiasm dripping from his voice as he rubbed his
hands together devilishly. He turned to my side suddenly, offering out the
can to me. “Now, put your hand in the paint.”
Slowly, and trying to cock an eyebrow, I did as he asked. The previous paint
had dried on my hand, so there was no threat of anything but the goldenseal
color coming out. It felt oddly synthetic getting the thick liquid over the dried
cocoon. I stood there for a moment after my hand was removed, feeling the
color begin to drip down my wrist.

Gerard gave me a devious smiling, a light in his eyes ten times brighter than
the yellow coating my fingers. “Now put your hand on the door.”

“What?” I almost choked, widening my eyes. My actions only caused him to


grin harder.

“Put your hand on the door, Frank,” he said slower, but his dictating tone still
resonating.

“I thought you wanted the door black?”

“I did,” he answered honestly. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“But…” I trailed off. I had always loved his black door and the meaning
behind it. The fact that the door itself possessed a lack of color and shapes
that most paintings strived for, it was just as drenched with so many
interpretations. It had always fascinated me. Now he was asking me to ruin it.

I had a feeling this was a test.

“I don’t care, Frank,” he told me, eyes on fire. He wasn’t trying to trick me.
He was being honest and sincere. This is what he wanted.

“But why?” I probed further, not understanding at all. It had been a long time
since I had been this confused around him. I felt like we were back to the
beginning, and he was spouting knowledge everywhere and it had been too
much to handle.

“Just put your hand on the door!” he exclaimed in excitement. He waved his
hands in the air slightly, trying to get me to convey his emotions. It didn’t
work too well. I only jumped back at his loud out cry, wiggling my fingers that
were coated in the soon to be dry paint.

Gerard subdued himself, placing a hand on my shoulder and guiding me


back. “If you trust me, put your hand on the door.”

I swallowed hard, looking at the blackness, and then him again. I couldn’t say
no to his request. I walked forward the few steps and stood there for the
longest time. I could feel Gerard hover behind me like a shadow, and when I
glanced back at him, he gave me another encouraging nod.

“Go on,” he probed, more excited than I had ever seen him. Taking a deep
breath, I heeded to his words and lunged forward, channeling some
exhilaration from his remark. My paint dripping hand collided with the black
abyss, and I kept my eyes closed. I felt as if the world would crumble around
me, or my hand would be burned off from the act it was committing. Or
worse, I’d fall through into the abyss and never return. Instead, I hit the old
aching wood with an exasperated breath. It was just a door, I told myself. And
we were just painting, my hand print now in the center.

“Good,” Gerard breathed, the smile still on his face. He came up behind me
and began to rub my back up and down, supporting me as I stepped away.

“Thank you. That was all I wanted.”

He glided away from me just as fast as he had appeared, running off to get
something from his art supplies. I stayed there for awhile, just looking at the
door. It was so odd now; the bright sunshine yellow in a sloppy handprint in
the middle of blackness. It made something inside me twist around, but I was
unsure if it was good or bad at that moment. All other meanings were lost on
me.

“Why did you have to use my hand?” I called over to him, hearing the crash
and opening sounds of the paint supply drawer.

“I told you,” he started, not looking at me, “I like hands.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why did you have to use mine?”

“Because there are some things I can’t do on my own,” he said clearly, lifting
his head from going through the drawers. I nodded my head, his words
cracking part of the paint shell around myself.

When Gerard came back shortly thereafter, he was carrying another bottle of
paint. It was smaller, hand held, and he unscrewed the tiny cap with his
clumsy fingers, crouching down again as he began to write something
beneath my handprint. I watched from a small distance, not going down to
his level yet. I couldn’t read the words until he stepped away and stood back
proudly, arms folded over his multi-colored chest. I struggled to read the
words that were obviously in another language.

“Come… le … what?” I spat out, squinting my eyes and hoping that the paint
was just blurring the letters. They were written in fairly delicate handwriting,
but some of the sharp edges were now turning into curves as the white liquid
began to drip down. I got on my knees and drew myself closer, but it was no
use.

“Comme le soleil interminable,” Gerard corrected eloquently.

“What does that mean?” I asked, still confused.


“Like the endless sun,” Gerard nodded his head, his pride for his work
disappearing, and his humble nature coming out. “It’s a line from a poem I
like. I’ve forgotten what one now it’s been so many years, but that line has
always stayed with me. I thought it was perfect for here.”

He looked over at me and smiled, raising his eyebrows, wondering if I liked it


too. I got up from my knees and stood next to him, but didn’t answer his
question.

When Gerard asked people for opinions on his art work, most of the time, he
didn’t care if they liked it or not. Paintings could be interpreted different
ways. Interpretations depended on life experiences and not everyone had the
same life, and therefore, not everyone would get the same thing out of the
painting. The same went for any other piece of art, he assured me. Gerard
always wanted to know others opinions, but if they didn’t get it and therefore
didn’t like it, he had learned to shrug it off. It wasn’t his fault. If it meant
something to him, it was worth it. After years and years of harsh criticism and
rejection, he eventually learned that lesson by himself.

But the way he looked at me then, his eyes pleading and smile crooked, it
was almost as if he needed my approval. We needed to come to the same
interpretation on this art piece, in order for it all to be worth it.

I stared from him, to the writing, and back at my bright yellow hand. I had a
vague idea of everything, but nothing was set in stone. I knew this meant a
lot to Gerard; he was letting me taint his abyss of nothingness with a part of
myself. My hand. My endless sun… I guessed that was what the yellow was
for, and why I had used my hand. On the door, the way my fingers had
splayed against the backdrop sort of made it look like a sun…But I knew
there was more to it. It was Gerard I was dealing with – there was always
more to things. It was a comparison for something, something I had not
figured out yet. There was double meaning behind this all, triple meaning
even, but at that moment I wasn’t getting it. All I knew is that it meant a lot
to Gerard; I could see it in his olive eyes. Really, that was all the
interpretation I needed.
“I love it,” I said, not really lying. I could still love something, without knowing
exactly what it meant. Gerard’s smile branched out fully, losing the nervous
edge. He reached over and grabbed me into a hug, just breathing as our
paint cracked bodies touched. I clutched back onto him just as hard, burying
my face in his neck.

I could have guessed from the tentative way he kissed me after that he knew
I wasn’t entirely sure what this was. I was still a naïve teenager, no matter
how much I had grown up. But he let it all go, and he kissed me more
passionately than ever with his blue stained lips. This entire process had
always been about me, anyway. He wasn’t going to let his own feelings, his
own art, overshadow my own. He knew I would come around eventually and
get what he meant. I still had a lot of teaching to sit through.

He ushered me off into more lessons, but my mind still wandered to the
endless sun. I’d occasionally look past his gaze as he was yammering on and
on about other colors and their shade meanings, only to see my snaking
yellow fingers, dancing on his door. I’d get this warm feeling each time, deep
down inside of me. I didn’t understand, I didn’t know if I ever would, but I
wondered if Gerard could ever comprehend that this still meant everything to
me. He seemed to notice my sneaking glances, but he never said a word.

Part Three – Inspiration

The words on his door weren’t the only French phrase to filter through our
small lives in the apartment. We had our shower that night soon after, to
remove the paint and supposed sins from our bodies. The colors drained
away, and we began to emerge from that cocoon, the layers we stripped off
becoming more inventive with the water. As they followed slowly down the
drain, their twisting vibrant colors made art itself.

Gerard washed my hair again with his European shampoo, which I had
actually missed. When I had bathed at home the past week, my hair had felt
dry and stiff after, not as lush and full as it had when I used his brand.
Gerard’s fingers were somehow better than my own at getting the dirt and
grime out of my hair, probably because he was taller and had a better
vantage point. I wasn’t sure if it was the shampoo, the way his fingers
penetrated and massaged my scalp, or just Gerard himself that I had missed.

He let me wash his hair this time too, making things a little awkward because
I was shorter than him. He ended up having to get down on his knees in order
for me to do as good of a job. While already in the compromising position he
proceeded to give me a blow job in the shower, but only after I was done. He
had tried to do it while I was in mid-scrub, but my fingers were rendered
useless the moment his tongue flicked my slit. And since he wanted to make
sure his hair was done just right, he stopped sucking me, and just let me
finish.

It was after we were dried off and ready that Gerard brought out some more
French tongues. He walked over to his long and tall bookcases, grabbed down
a few titles and displayed them on the floor. I had brought out a sheet from
his bedroom, and was lying on my stomach waiting for him to join me. He
began to open and flip through the pages, waving his hands in the air and
talking rapidly about this poem he just ‘had to show me’. The paint smell was
still infiltrating the room, making me feel a tad nauseous. The wine that
Gerard had brought out for us as well didn’t help matters, but I drank it
anyway, quenching my thirst in some form. I looked around the room
aimlessly as Gerard furiously searched, my eyes locking on our mural.

Now that we had stepped back from it for awhile, done other things and got
rid of the sexual tension in the shower, I could see it for what it was really
worth. I saw the way the colors blended and images began to pop out into my
mind. I saw in the center, where the red, blue, and green paint remained
formed an image of a bird. Or at least to me, it was a bird. There was a small
pear-shaped body, with splashes of blue and green to make the wings flap
around the base. The head was a red patch, bobbed more forward than that
of the neck. Wave like patterns, from when Gerard and I had let our hands
glide along the wall, were made at the end of the bird, forming tail feathers.
The other colors that were around it, the bright oranges and pinks, formed
background noise; outside creativity coming in to inspire the bird’s flight.

But not just any bird, I began to theorize. My eyes scanned the mural,
noticing all the small, specific details. I noticed the distinct curves and
symmetry of the body, the way the colors blended together. It was still
vibrant, but there was a calming hue to everything. All the colors touched.
There were no definite lines where the blue started and the red ended. They
blended together at the borders and edges while in the center, they were at
their most vivacious. As if on cue, another bird flew by the still drying mural,
and there was no doubt in my mind that this image was of a dove.

I knew, like the dove in real life, this one on the mural was flying too. The way
its wings appeared to be thrown down on the mural, and how far they were
spread out from its body made it look like it was soaring. It was when my
eyes followed its flight path that I got the surprise of my life.

The dove was flying in the direction of Gerard’s door; the one that I had just
marked. It was flying towards the sun, and the endless sun at that.

I sat there for awhile, ignoring everything else that was going on around me
and thought about this. There was so much double meaning in everything.
The bird, this mythical and magical creature, was flying towards the
handprint on Gerard’s nothingness. The words he had written began to make
more sense and the feelings that were coursing through me were beginning
to overpower everything. I looked at the painting, my mouth wide open and
breathed out a shocked breath. I couldn’t believe we had made that without
trying to.

“Gerard,” I called in weak voice, still drained.

“Hmmm…?” he said, not looking up from his poetry books and flipping
through the accented pages quickly.

“Gerard, look at our mural,” I commanded, my voice strong yet humble at the
same time. Sensing this tone, he raised his head, his hair still damp from the
shower and looked. He saw the image right away, always able to grasp art
abstract concepts much more readily than I had ever been able to. He
glanced over at me, a smile wide on his lips. I noticed the small blue tinge he
had to the area, still not fully unstained from the shower.
“The most beautiful art comes when you’re not trying,” he informed me,
taking in a deep breath. He had stopped flipping through poetry, and the
book rested soundlessly on the white sheet. There was a lull in conversation,
consciously drawing me in. He looked at me seriously, and touched the side
of my face. “I wasn’t trying to find you, Frank. You found me.”

“I didn’t know I had been looking,” I confessed, looking at my feet. His hand
still rested on me, just relocated to my neck. Everything was too intense, and
I almost felt a little ashamed. I figured it was sort of true that I found him, but
it was not like I had been trying to look for a forty-seven-year-old fag artist. It
just kind of… happened.

“That’s the point,” Gerard depicted, putting his book off to the side. “It’s
because you weren’t looking for me that we can make beautiful art together.
We don’t have to try. It just sort of…happens.”

My eyes locked with his across the room, hearing him mimic my thoughts.
Fuck, I thought inside my head. This was real.

His smile afterwards was warm and inviting, but his words still washed over
me with an odd self-conscious and awkward feeling I hadn’t felt in ages. It
was the good kind, if there was one, though. It was the kind of feeling I got
from being paid attention to, appreciated. Maybe even loved. We had never
said or discussed the word before. Love seemed too frivolous and fleeting,
and yet so permanent at the same time. I had a feeling it was there, but I
liked that it wasn’t out in the open. It could neither be confirmed nor denied.
We called each other lovers, but that didn’t mean we loved each other or
were in love. I knew there was a difference between the two, but I didn’t
know it yet. I wasn’t sure if either were capable of being real. Then again, I
never thought this could be real either. Whatever it was…

Some questions didn’t have answers, and others didn’t need them.

“So, can you actually read what’s in these books?” I asked, deflecting the
attention off of our ‘moment’ and back to the original task. Gerard snapped
out of his state and began to plow through the cracked and worn spines in
front of him.

“Of course I can read it,” he countered playfully. “That doesn’t mean I’m
saying it right though. But, damn, I sure sound good trying.”

I chuckled. “You’re probably ten times better than me. I never even took
French.”

“Ahh!” he sighed with mock agitation. “The things you kids today are missing
out on.”

I just laughed more as he began to dig through more books, scanning the
contents carefully before choosing another.

“I took a course or two in university,” he informed me, telling me yet another


story. “But I hated it with a passion. The professor was an old bat and insisted
upon grammar lesson after grammar lesson. It was horrible.” He lifted his
hand in the air, adding a bitter French twist.

“Then why do you continue now?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

He sighed before he continued. “I wanted to go to Paris. I still want to go to


Paris. It has such an alluring quality to it. There’s so much art there. So much
culture. So much romance…“ He shot me another playful look. “I figured if I
was immersed in the culture, I’d learn the language fast. I nearly failed my
French courses because I refused to do grammar, but I still passed. I still got
my credit and despite not doing the work, I had been around the language
enough to carry on some limited conversations. It was good enough for me. I
was still dead set on going to Paris…”

He paused for a minute, recollecting everything that had happened and made
him stay. The story of his youth, college days, and wasted dreams turned into
art, though told weeks ago, was still fresh in my mind.

He bit his lip and willed it all away.

“You know how that went. In rebellion for not going, I went out and bought
book after book of French poetry and on French poets. I wanted to know
everything about the place that I swore I was going to go to…eventually.”

The pace at which he was flipping through the pages had slowed and I could
tell he was losing his zest from unpleasant memories. Gerard was a lot more
fragile than he looked. He put up this cocky arrogant front, but when
something happened that hurt him, it hurt him for years after. I almost
couldn’t stand to look at him then, because it was like he was crushing my
dream with his own. I stared down at the sheet, fiddling with a piece of stray
fabric.

“Do you think you’ll ever go to Paris?” I asked, hoping the prosperity might
cheer him up.

“I don’t know,” he sighed begrudgingly, too honest. “I’m old now. I’m settled,
for the most part. I don’t know if I could ever uproot myself again. It’s a lot of
work, a lot of stress. It’s always worth it for a dream, but I don’t know if I
could handle something like that again, at my age. I think I’ll probably end up
dying in this apartment…”

My breath caught in my throat. Never once had I ever thought of Gerard


dying. He had spoken of others’ deaths, but his own had never been a topic
of conversation before. The prospect, when I looked at it logically right then,
probably wasn’t too imminent, but suddenly his life became more precious
than before. He would die. Everyone would die, including myself, but Gerard
was definitely going to die before me. He was going get old before me. And
not just the old that I saw in him now. He was going to get really old. Broken
hips, white hair, and littered with age spots old. I looked at him then, trying to
picture Gerard without his raven locks and without his bright countenance. It
didn’t compute. It didn’t work. But it was a possibility.
“Don’t mention death,” I begged him, nuzzling my head against his shoulder.
When I had been lost in my thoughts, Gerard had found the book he wanted,
and moved closer on the sheet with me. He was laid flat on his stomach, the
book propped open in front of him, our shoulders touching. He flipping
haphazardly through the pages when I made my request, unknown to the
other triggers it set off in my head. He breathed out an apologetic sigh,
nuzzling me back.

“Death is important in our lives,” he whispered softly into my forehead. I


couldn’t tell if he was being quiet because we were already so close to one
another, or if he was trying to speak his mind without me hearing him, and
further upsetting me.

I didn’t know why death upset me so much, especially when both of ours
weren’t imminent at that very moment. Death, either my own or others’, had
always been a weird fascination with me ever since I was fully able to grasp
the concept of it when I was eight. I remember going to my grandfather’s
funeral on my mother’s side and being completely oblivious to everything
around me. I didn’t know this grandparent as well as all the others, so I really
had no reason to grieve. I stood there in a corner for most of the wake,
shaking other older people’s hands and hearing them go on and on about
Bruce. The casket was open, but I had avoided looking inside, when I did, it
looked as if he had been sleeping. And I chalked all of what was going on
around me to sleep. And a joke. Bruce was apparently a mad joker,
constantly pulling pranks. He had been born on April 1st, so it was in his
blood, or something like that. Either way, I expected this to all be a big joke,
and I kept thinking that right up until they lowered the casket into the ground
and the dirt started piling up on top. I remembered realization gripping my
small eight year old rib cage. Bruce wasn’t joking. Death wasn’t a joke.

I still never cried, or properly grieved at that funeral, but my thinking


changed. A lot. I was suddenly a hypochondriac thinking that each thing I did
could possibly lead to my death. As I got older and I was still alive, but other
people around me were dying, I started to divert that attention and fear
towards them. First it had been my dad, seeing as he was one of the oldest
people I knew and saw on a regular basis. When I was in grade eight and we
learned all about heart attacks and heart disease, I had been paranoid. My
dad did almost every single action to cause heart disease. I had hid butter
from him for a week after those lessons, in a vain attempt to not clog his
arteries anymore. My father had been mad, not seeing that I was trying to
help him, instead of annoy him.

I was pretty sure my fear of growing up surrounded my fear of death in some


odd way. If I grew up and got older, I would be one step closer to my death,
and that was a scary thought. I knew that no matter how depressed I had
ever been in my life, the fear of growing up and responsibility plaguing me,
that death was never an answer. I would never commit suicide. It would
defeat the whole purpose. Instead of growing up, I had no idea what I had
wanted. To stay in a world where everything was the same all the time, and I
was perpetually seventeen over and over again? Maybe, though before
Gerard had come into my life, that sounded like a far worse fate than death.
Being seventeen was not all it was cracked up to be. When I was at Gerard’s
place, I had no age. I was just younger than the man I was sleeping with, and
I was pretty sure I could deal with that. Even if I couldn’t deal with death at
that very moment. The both of us moved on, and Gerard placed a kiss on my
forehead, before gallivanting through his book again.

“Ah,” he suddenly breathed, his finger landing on a page and keeping it


there, opened. “I found the poem I wanted to show you.”

I moved closed to him, grateful for the change of topic. I focused on the tiny
words on the page, but gave up reading them once I saw the first placement
of an accent. I waited for him to begin, curious as to how it would all sound.

“On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans,” he said quickly, his French
accent taking over his voice. My eyes widened, seeing a side of Gerard I
never had before.

He had spoken French on a whim throughout the house, but it had been little
statements or phrases. Sacré bleu, bonjour, bonne nuit, and sometimes
pointing to objects and trying to tell me what they were. I could remember
that a painting was called peinture, but I could never duplicate it myself. I just
knew what he was talking about when he got that look in his eyes as he
painted and said that word. This was entirely different. I couldn’t understand
anything that Gerard was saying this time, but the way he carried himself
altered. Though lying down, his stature took on a more gallant and arrogant
façade (I didn’t think it was possible either). His tongue flashed and flicked
the words so gracefully out of his mouth that if he had been pronouncing
them wrong, I would have had no clue. It was as if he had spoken French his
entire life. He really had been practicing hard.

“Gerard, “I interrupted, gaining my bearings. I placed a hand down on the


page, his voice catching in his throat as I did. He was nearly halfway done the
poem now, and looked at me, perplexed as to why I had put an end to it.

“I can’t understand French. If you want me to get anything out of it, read it in
English.” I shook my head at him, rolling my eyes. It may have been a
beautiful language, but beauty is lost to the blind.

“Oh,” he said, shifting his weight. “I’ll translate it for you.”

He stared intently at the poem, trying to rearrange the words and put them in
an English order. From what I did know about French, I knew it was a mixed
up language, everything being backwards and other confusing details. I
waited patiently while Gerard worked over each verse.

“When you are seventeen, you are not very serious,” he began, catching my
interest right away. He smiled as he saw my eyes light up, and started to
translate faster. “One fine evening, you’ve had enough of beer and
lemonade, and the rowdy cafes with their dazzling lights. You go walking
beneath the green lime trees of the promenade.”

He took a breath there, letting the words sink in for me, and scanning the
next passage for translation. I could see a coy smile brim on his lips; he knew
what he was doing. He was making me see very clearly why this poem
reminded him of me.

“June night! Seventeen! You let yourself get drunk. The sap is champagne
and goes straight to your head. You are wandering; you feel a kiss on your
lips, which quivers there like something small and alive…”

His reading became more and more dramatic as the poem went on, and I
could feel myself being sucked into his words, sucked into the poem, and all
of the life it had in it. I watched Gerard’s lips move as he read out loud, but a
lot of the time, I would let my vision wander straight ahead on me, where I
would focus on nothing but his voice in my ear, and the connotations behind
the verse.

“You're in love. Taken until the month of August. You're in love. All your
friends disappear, you are not quite the thing you used to be. Then your
adored one, one evening, condescends to write to you! That evening... you
go back again to the dazzling cafes. You ask for beer or for lemonade...”

He paused again, and looked at me straight in the eyes. The poem was
coming to an end, and I had to pay attention here more than anywhere else.
His lips parted slowly and he pronounced the poem’s final lines with such
clear enunciation. “You are not really serious when you’re seventeen.”

It was done, and I didn’t know what to say. Each and every verse had
something to represent me. I was seventeen. I was drinking beer, and getting
drunk on something else. I was in love, even if I didn’t know with what or who
I was in love with yet. I knew I was in love with this lifestyle, this apartment,
but somehow casting those feelings onto another person left me grasping for
something more. I wasn’t in love with Gerard because I couldn’t be. I had felt
my heart swell when he read that part to me, repeating it twice in the poem
for emphasis. It was as if he was reading it to me to tell me he knew I loved
him. I could say I loved him – that was very different from being in love. I
wasn’t sure how; it just was. I could always love him, but I could always fall
out of being in love. I had done enough falling in my life. I didn’t need to get
my hopes too high again, only to crash down, especially since I knew we were
doomed.

Even if I was just talking love as the raw emotion, no in or out, but as a
constant, I had never really come to terms with it. I didn’t want to say it;
didn’t want to describe something I had never felt before. I couldn’t just slap
down a word to it and have that be it. How could you define something you
never saw?

A poem was a series of words, a definition of in itself, though and maybe, just
maybe, I could identify with that. I could use that to show my love – or
whatever it was – to Gerard. And by him serenading me with those words, it
was as if he knew, and was saying them right back.

“What do you think?” the artist asked me, placing the book down and turning
over to look up at me. His coy smile had now vanquished from his face and
he was just content. Calm.

In love? Or loved? Maybe. I wasn’t too sure yet. I wasn’t going to say anything
about that aspect.

“I liked it…” I said nodding my head surely, breaking eye contact.

“Good. It reminds me of you,” he stated the obvious. He wasn’t as enraptured


with the verse as much as I had been, and was moving on quite quickly from
the intense nature. He ran his hand up my bare back, tousling it in my hair. I
smiled and let some air out of my lungs in some breathy laughter, but
suddenly, something else grasped my interest. The last lines of the poem,
and the initial first one, came back to me, making me think of something else
entirely.

When you are seventeen, you are not very serious.

“But I am serious, Gerard,” I argued slightly, then feeling my doubts creep


their way into my system. “I think…”

Gerard laughed at me and my complete and utter contradiction in terms.


“I know that, Frank. You’re actually very serious. Very distinguished and
intelligent.” Though he smiled, his voice became crucial like at the ending of
the poem. His hand relocated from my back, running down my neck and to
my face, tipping my chin up high. “But you need to know that. You need to be
serious about that.”

I felt awkward under his touch, probably proving his point even further. I
knew what he was saying was true, at least the part about denying my
talents. I was only confident when I was around Gerard and in his apartment.
On the other side, I didn’t pay much attention. I blended into the walls and
didn’t ask for anything. But by not asking, I for sure wasn’t going to get what
I wanted.

“It’s also not June,” Gerard cut in, thankfully interrupting me from my
thoughts.

“If it was June, things would be a lot easier,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “I
would be eighteen by that point. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting
caught.”

“Yes,” he agreed solemnly nodding his head.

I felt a sudden urge to touch Gerard, so I shifted my weight, and draped an


arm across his back. He turned into the touch, flipping himself on his side and
pulling us both until we were on our backs, the book done and served its
purposed, kicked away off our island made from his thin bed sheet. My head
rested just under his chin, and I looked up at him, waiting to hear more.
Instead of words, Gerard began to brush his fingers over my sides.

“Do you think we’ll make it to June?” I asked him quietly.

We had only been together for about two weeks by that point, and it already
felt like ages. It almost frustrated me that we had only been together two
weeks. Two weeks sounded so trivial and fruitless. It sounded like no time at
all, when it had really been all the time in the world. I almost wished the clock
went faster, just so I could say that Gerard and I had been together for
longer, and therefore, making the relationship more valid. It was a stupid
thought, I knew, especially since I couldn’t tell anyone about this. Even if I
did, they wouldn’t think the relationship was valid, no matter how long we
had been together for. Besides, there was no time in Gerard’s apartment, so
really, we could have known each other for ages and not even been aware of
it. It already felt like we had known each other forever and we were
comfortable with that. But June was a few months away. Would this forever
feeling of comfort be extended? And even more importantly, could it be
extended? There were so many obstacles in our way, I didn’t know anything
anymore.

“Of course,” Gerard answered instantly, as if it was the easiest question in


the world.

I smiled and beamed inside, but it was brought down again by my infernal
worries. “How do you know we will?”

“I don’t,” Gerard answered honestly. I could feel his breath going shallow as
his hands began to rub me up and down again tenderly. “I just have hope.”

“But what if we’re caught?” I interjected again, ruining the pleasant


atmosphere he was trying to bestow.

“And what if we’re not?” he asked back, his words somehow obtaining more
power than I ever thought possible.

I didn’t know how to answer him, but that had been what he was going for.
Instead, I brought my lips to his, sealing the conversation. He met with my
mouth eagerly, opening and letting our tongues touch. It was an intimate
kiss, hands wrapped around bodies as tongues danced in the forefront of
everything.
When we pulled away, Gerard moved his hands to my face, curling the hair
over my ear. “That’s another good thing about the French language,” he said
to brighten the mood. “The kisses.”

He leaned forward again, letting our tongues mingle once more and
somehow, passing on some of the French dialect he loved so much.

***

“Who wrote the poem, anyway?” I asked moments later after the kiss was
done.

The heavy aura from our previous conversation had dissipated, but we were
still on the ground in our positions, my head resting on Gerard’s chest. I knew
it was getting late; the sun had set long ago, though I had no idea what time.
It was getting to the point in the year where it remained high for so long,
then in an instant when you weren’t paying attention, it would disappear and
blackness would surround. We were in that nighttime blackness now, but the
small lamp sans shade by the couch illuminated the room with an eerie
amber glow. It felt like we were in candle light almost, with the way the
shadows danced across Gerard’s bare back. I knew I should go home soon,
but I made no effort to get up.

“I was hoping you would ask that,” Gerard gushed. I felt his belly shake a bit
with excitement as he went on. “It’s by Arthur Rimbaud, a famous French
poet. He wrote his first poem when he was ten –“

“Ten?” I cut in, utterly amazed by the feat. I didn’t know what the fuck a
poem was at that age, and this guy was writing them. I knew Gerard had
started drawing early, but that was different. You could form lines on a page
when you were five; it took real prestige to be able to place words together
into a poem at such a young age.

“Yes, ten,” Gerard repeated, brushing me off and going on with his story. “He
wrote constantly, poem after poem, when he was in his teens, after having
run away from home. He had a few pieces published and was pretty
respected, especially for being so young. He was a bit of an ass, but most
poets are. Most artists are.” Gerard chuckled in spite of himself. “He stopped
writing when he was twenty after –“

I cut Gerard off again. “Twenty? He stopped?”

If this guy was so fucking talented, why the hell did he just give it up like
that? I had been trying so hard the past few weeks just to be creative, let
alone talented. This guy was born with poetry in his blood – that was clearly
obvious. Why would he drain himself so readily and so easily? There better
have been a good reason.

“Yes, will you let me finish the story, Frank?” he huffed, playfully batting my
arms.

“Okay…” I said, finally being quiet and listening intently. Gerard talked a lot,
so I had been getting very good at listening.

“He stopped writing after he had a love affair with another man.” Gerard
paused for a second, feeling me jerk forward, wanting to say something, but
struggling successfully to keep my mouth shut. Not only was there meaning
to the poem, it seemed that Gerard had picked a good poet to talk about, too.

“His name was Paul Verlaine,” Gerard continued, playful smile on his face.
“Verlaine was already an established poet, but he was by no means as great
as Rimbaud. Verlaine was mostly love poems, sonnets, and all of that good
drivel. He was also over ten years older than Rimbaud.” Again, another
pause, a jerk forward, a silent cry, and a playful smile before continuing.
“Anyway, they traveled Europe together, fucking, writing, and being
complete and utter assholes. Verlaine had a wife, and a few kids too, I
believe. They eventually divorced and Verlaine was thrown in jail.”
When Gerard paused this time, he didn’t pick up right away, and I couldn’t
contain myself anymore.

“Why?” I choked out, concentrating all my thoughts onto one word.

“He shot Rimbaud in the hand,” Gerard answered, nodding his head as his
thoughts came together. “And the police found out about Rimbaud and
Verlaine’s relationship thanks to Verlaine’s wife. He was put into jail for two
years for sodomy and assault, while Rimbaud went back home. They met up,
years later, and that’s when Rimbaud said he would no longer write.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” Gerard shrugged, shaking his head. “He was a good poet, but
in my mind, totally giving up on something makes you worthless. You can be
the shittiest painter in the world, but if you do it your entire life, because you
love it, then it’s worth it. If you’re good and just give up, it was a waste of
time, talent, energy, and art itself.”

The harshness of Gerard’s words surprised me and I suddenly understood


why he was always urging me to play my guitar. He told me flat out that day
that I needed work. A lot of work. I sucked, basically. But he always
encouraged me, no matter what. Trying to have talent was better than
having it and wasting it. I was finally starting to see that.

“You are not an inspiration if you just give up. I’d rather be an inspiration
than talented. Inspiration is always better than art, because if you just have
art, that’s all it is. But if you have inspiration, there is something backing up
that art. There is the possibility of having so much more, striving for so much
more. You could make or do or be art in writing and literature and culture.
Everything.”

Gerard drew his eyes to mine, smiling. I felt my heart sink into his chest. His
words, though stated in a broad sense, trying to reinforce a lesson of some
kind, were deeply personal. In his mind, I could tell, that he thought he would
never be a famous artist. No one knew his name. No one had ever showed
any interest in knowing his name. I was pretty sure he had sold some art
pieces, but he was by no means famous by definition. He was an artist, but
he wasn’t famous, and therefore, in the technical approach, that meant he
was not talented. No one wanted to know him because of this lack of talent.
He had failed at being able to go to Paris. But, he had never given up. And
because of that urge to keep going, keep painting and trying to defy
something (though never actually having been successful) that made him an
inspiration. That’s all he had ever wanted. As he looked at me just then, I
knew he wanted to be an inspiration to me of all people. And he had been. He
had been so much, but I didn’t know how to convey my words.

My mouth hung open, then closed again, and the process repeated a few
times. I reached up to touch his face, at loss of what to do, but he caught my
hand half way there. He pressed my fingers to his mouth, and began to kiss
and nibble them lightly. The subject was dropped, because he already knew
my answer.

“Anyway,” he spoke again, still tasting my fingertips. “I guess in some sick


twisted morbid French version, Rimbaud and Verlaine remind me of us. You
know, without the hand shooting, jail time, and giving up.”

He laughed at his own joke and since it was infectious, I found myself
laughing moments later.

“Only in this case, the younger one is the less prestigious artist,” I countered,
trying to make my own joke, but having the serious tones come out.

Gerard stopped laughing and looked down at me. He dropped my fingers, and
instead cupped my face in his hands, pursing his lips to the side.

“I don’t know,” he countered, squinting as he pretended to think long and


hard, studying my face as if it held the answer. “I think you could give me a
run for my money pretty soon. You just have to keep going. With guitar, art,
anything you want, Frank. Anything. Everything. There are so many
possibilities if you let yourself find them.”

“Thanks…” I uttered, unsure of what else to say. I lay my head back down on
his chest as a comfortable silence filled the room.

Even when we weren’t talking with our mouths, we seemed to be able to


communicate against the silence. Gerard would play with my hair and I’d
know what he was saying to me. I would trace my fingers along the ridges of
his arms, dipping at the elbow, and he would let out a contented sigh to
answer me. We had our own language, and we didn’t need to use our
tongues for speech to understand each other. The silence was comfortable,
and kept us warm like the blanket we now wrapped ourselves in. There was a
general consensus between the two of us that during these times, things
were just plain good. We didn’t worry about anything then. We just were.

I found my thoughts wandering inside my mind, thinking of all the


accomplishments for that day. I felt so productive, so fulfilled, I didn’t want to
go back to my house and start the drudgery all over again.

“I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” I randomly said out loud, not really
expecting a response. I received one anyway. Gerard could never pass up an
opportunity to bash a government-run facility.

“I can’t say I blame you,” he sympathized, rubbing his hands against my


hairline at the back of my neck to calm me. “You have no creativity in your
school. High school in general has none. It’s a place where they just keep
you, packed together like sardines, until bigger places are ready to take you.
It’s a holding pen, only in the past few years it’s become more like a zoo.”

I laughed out loud when he stated his philosophy. This was one of the rare
ones I didn’t have to strain my mind for; I got it right away.

“You are so right.”


“Of course I am,” he replied smugly, messing up my hair. “Even if I haven’t
been in high school for thirty years, I still remember it. You don’t forget those
days.”

His voice tweaked with nostalgia, and I had the urge to ask him about his own
high school experiences. I couldn’t tell if he was recalling the good or the bad
at that very moment. I said nothing to extract the story though, and let the
silence infiltrate the room again. If Gerard had wanted to share with me, I
knew he would have just gone into details not waiting for my approval. He
didn’t want to talk about this, so we exchanged nothing but touch.

“I want to skip tomorrow. And come stay here with you all day,” I stated
moments later, breaking our silence. I bit my lip, waiting to hear his verdict.
Skipping tomorrow meant possibly getting caught by my mother, or worse,
father. But skipping also meant not being insane for a day. I liked the odds; I
hoped Gerard did too.

“Sure,” he agreed, his voice somewhat distant and thinking. I was about to
reach up and thank him profusely, when he began again. “But you have to
bring your guitar. And play it for me.”

I opened my mouth to interject, saying something about my lack of talent,


when I remembered Verlaine and Rimbaud, and Gerard’s inspirational
journey. I had to bring it. Even if I sucked, Gerard would still have respect for
me. I would get out of my house, out of school, and out of my redundant
existence. And maybe become an inspiration, too.

“Deal,” I said, as we brought our lips forward making it final.

Part Four – Music


I had to leave the house later than usual so my parents didn’t see me try to
slip the guitar past their gaze. Ever since I was young, I had no luck in
concealing anything in front of people. I was too nervous and I always let it
show that I had something I wasn’t supposed to. When Sam and I used to
knock off little dollar stores and other places with minimal security when we
stole stuff, I always had to be the look out. I could never steal anything, not
because I didn’t want to (I didn’t really care for the most part, those stores
had enough money and the merchandise was overpriced anyway), but
because I was the nervous one of the bunch. My skin was transparent and the
clerks could see right through me. Sam did most of the stealing, his tough as
nails attitude finally coming into good use.

We actually made a pretty good pair. That was, until our parents caught us
and everything went to shit. I was pretty sure I wasn’t allowed out of the
house unsupervised for a good year. Luckily, I was only twelve or thirteen so
it didn’t affect my nonexistent social status too much. And I couldn’t get a
criminal record. My dad had threatened to phone the police, especially when I
refused to rat Sam out, but my sudden display of tears had made him put the
phone down, un-dialed. It had taken all of that year in solitude, plus some
more time to work back all the trust I had lost with those minor crimes, and I
wasn’t in the mood to lose it that morning by sneaking out my guitar while
my parents drank coffee in the kitchen. Though I wasn’t stealing, it would be
obvious I was skipping because I had no use for a guitar in school. Even
taking the thing outside to pursue something more than a leisurely pastime
activity at home would have made my dad furious.

So, I waited. I waited until my dad left for work in his blue Honda and until my
mom went out for groceries. I had pretended to leave for school and just
waited at the park until I saw the two family cars drive by, before I booked it
back to the house, opened the door and grabbed the instrument and a
backpack with cat-like stealth. I was becoming pretty good at this, I thought
to myself smugly. I didn’t like lying, but I forgot the horrible sins I was
committing as soon as I got to Gerard’s. Probably because I was about to
commit more of them.

I let myself in as usual, walking quietly into the silent apartment. The window
cast yellow light in bright sun beams, which fell over onto the hardwood floor,
making it shine in an almond hue. The dove was out of her cage, sitting on
the top of it, still and asleep. Her head was tucked under her wing, small coos
of light, sleep-filled breathing sounding around her. I could sense the
drowsiness as soon as I stepped into the place. I had never been in Gerard’s
apartment this early – conscious at least. We always slept pretty late when I
spent the weekends because we were up most of the night, and I always
came to visit him after school. It had been after eight when I left my house
and probably wasn’t even nine yet now. In essence, it wasn’t even that early.
For an artist who thought his best pieces were accomplished in the twilight
hours of the night, this was a sacred sleeping time.

The quiet atmosphere made me tip-toe quietly into the living space,
discarding my bag and my jacket near the door, but carrying the guitar
farther into the abode. I saw Gerard’s door slightly askew, the man asleep in
a big lump in the center of the bed. I smiled, knowing I would be the one to
wake him up. The precious task had been all his own before, and he
committed it delicately each time, either by placing kisses all over my body,
or gently calling my name to rouse me. Once, I had even woken up to him
sucking me off. I didn’t think I’d go that far today, but I definitely wanted to
be the first thing he saw when he unveiled his eyes.

I dropped my guitar down on the ground as quietly as I could by the front of


his room. I heard him stir when the echo of the chords hit the air, but he
didn’t move. I pushed open the door more and began to walk inside, fiddling
with my belt buckle as I did. I slid my pants off my hips and discarded them
on the floor with the rest of Gerard’s clothing.

He was covered up a lot with the sheets, but I could still see the pale flesh of
his arms, and the flushed cheeks on his cherubic face. I knew he was naked
underneath the blankets and the idea thrilled me. I began to take off my
shirt, my head popping out in time to see Gerard roll over. I was still wearing
my boxers, but I dashed over to him, sitting on the side of the bed, one arm
on either side of him as I looked at his sleeping eyes. I could see the pupil
begin to dart back and forth under the lid, signs that he was just waking up.
One of his hands came up and rubbed his nose, then falling down on his
pillow where his hair was messily spread. I smiled down at him, just watching
him sleep before I decided to do anything. I loved how he looked right then;
so calm and peaceful. Most of the time he was energetic and ready to do
anything, to give advice, or spout theories. But now, he was human. He was
resting.
“Hey, Gerard,” I whispered, leaning down and bringing my lips close to his
sleeping ones, but not touching them just yet. “I’m here.”

I pressed my mouth to his, just pressing, until he finally roused himself from
sleep. His lips remained limp for quite some time, before he subconsciously
began to kiss back, the urge second nature to him. He opened his mouth
slightly and let me taste the bitterness that had accumulated after a night’s
sleep.

“Morning,” I whispered after our lips had parted. His eyes weren’t open yet,
but he was waking up slowly, one arm extending to touch me and the other
rubbing his nose and eyes roughly. He started groaning, the stiffness
rendering in his body and I shifted with him so we were both comfortable.

“What time is it?” he said, a strain in his voice. He opened his eyes after I had
told him the answer and he brought a hand to my body, pulling me down
more.

“It’s too early, Frank,” he whined, moving over and letting me have a spot in
the large bed. “Go to sleep again with me.”

I moved off the bed for a moment, taking off my boxers before I slid under
the covers he held open for me.

“I thought sleep was a waste of time,” I teased him, pressing myself right
next to his body. I began to kiss his neck and down his arm instinctively, not
being able to wait any longer without touching him.

“It’s not when you’re in the bed with me,” he smiled, eyes closing again and
turning over to meet my kisses with his mouth. He still tasted bitter, but I
wasn’t complaining.
“Wait,” he said suddenly, opening his eyes and looking at me widely. “Did
you bring your guitar?”

I breathed a sigh, hoping that he had forgotten about that minor detail. This
was Gerard I was talking about, though; he never forgot a thing. I nodded and
pointed to his door, where the neck of the instrument was just visible outside.
He lifted his head up tiredly and after seeing verification, slammed it back
down on the pillow, letting out a sigh.

“Good,” he declared, pulling me closer. I accepted his warm hands around


my waist and gave into his pull. “Because I would have had to make you
leave if you didn’t have it.”

“Yeah right,” I challenged, still in a teasing mode. I was still smiling, but I was
sure that I hadn’t stopped since I entered the apartment. “You would not
have kicked me out.”

He opened his sleep-filled eyes and cocked an eyebrow, challenging me right


back.

“Don’t test me,” he warned, his voice still thick with sleep. “Besides, now that
you’re here, I can do this all morning,” he added, burying his face into my
neck and kissing the tender skin readily. I laughed and pressed my hips
against his under the sheet, running my hands through his hair.

“What happened to sleeping?” I laughed, smiling from the pleasure he


inflicted this time.

Challenging my words once again, Gerard stopped kissing and looked at me


in the eyes with an animal urge. He flipped me over and straddled my hips,
gaining some energy that he had been lacking. I giggled as I looked up at
him, his arms propping himself up as he brought his lips to mine.
“Sleep is a waste of time.”

***

Despite his claims, after we had sex on his bed, going achingly slow because
of our stiff bones, we had fallen asleep together, tangled in the stained
sheets. I loved sleeping in the same bed with someone, especially Gerard.
The few school nights after I had spent the weekend at his place, I had rolled
over in my own bed and stretched out an arm, expecting to find someone
else there. My heart had sunk a little each time when no one had been filling
that void. I missed the company, even though I had never had it before and I
had always been fine alone. Sleeping with someone, and strictly sleeping,
was just nice. If I got cold, Gerard was there to act as my blanket. He was
also my pillow, his skin feeling so much better than any cotton material. It
wasn’t so much the falling asleep part I liked a lot, though that was good too.
I remembered how I stayed awake that first night at his place, for most of the
night, waiting to see when Gerard would fall into slumber. I liked hearing the
changing of his breath and the ways his eye movements changed. I liked
watching when he was dreaming and wondering just what was captivating his
subconscious. I’d sometimes ask him in the morning if he remembered, but
he never did. Dreams were fleeting like that. Intense and vivid with closed
eyes, and then just a sensation of a better time once it slipped too far away. I
forgot a lot of my dreams too, partly because they blended in with reality so
readily.

The part I loved about sleeping with someone more was the act of waking up.
Bodies moved at night, subconsciously to the proper positions. I loved waking
up in the morning to find that the roles had been reversed; that Gerard was
sleeping on my chest and his hand was around my waist. I especially loved it
when we woke up facing each other, our noses pressed together and the
other’s hot breathing tickling our faces. We had made it a game almost, that
when we woke up in that way, it was a race to see who could kiss the other
first. Gerard always won, rubbing the crusties out of my eyes gently first
before placing a kiss on each lid, waking me.
Today, however, I was the first to wake up, and I was able to do the very
same to him. He smiled at me as he awoke, knowing and secretly
congratulating me for a job well done. He pulled our mouths closer together,
deepening the kiss. This time, we both tasted bitter, and it was like I had
spent the night all over again.

Sunlight was spilling into the room at that point, mocking us with the fact that
half the day was gone already. We still kicked around on the sheets,
stretching them above our heads to make a tent and hiding underneath,
sneaking kisses from the other side. The dove even came in at one point,
perching herself on Gerard’s night stand and cooing rhythmically when
Gerard rubbed his thumb over my nipple as we kissed for about the
thousandth time that day. I always marveled at how it could never get old.

The cooing seemed to stir an image in Gerard and he moved away from my
mouth quickly, changing topics like it was nothing.

“Let me hear you play, Frank,” he whispered, the zest returning to his eyes.
He was now fully awake and back to his old, friendly self. I sighed under his
grip, knowing he was right; I had a promise to fulfill.

I got up from the bed after kissing him again, grabbing and dragging the
instrument and its case over to the bed. Gerard stayed lying down while I sat,
one leg folded on the knee to give me a good platform to play on. I could feel
Gerard watching me, but his eyes didn’t feel as intense as they had the time
before. They felt encouraging and kind. His touches were extra gentle today, I
noticed, probably for this key fact. Maybe this time, playing would be easier
because I knew he was not trying to hurt me. I wondered if he would still be
as harsh as he had been before, or if he would go easier on me. I was
sleeping with him now, whereas before, I was just a student.

I started to strum the chords randomly, jumping out of my skin when the
noise first hit my ears. It seemed ten times louder in Gerard’s place than it
ever had at my house. Maybe because creativity wasn’t always placed on
mute here.
“Play me a song,” Gerard demanded sincerely from the bed. I had just been
playing random scales to warm myself up, mentally and physically.

“I don’t know many songs,” I told him, and it was true. The ones that were in
the guitar magazines for beginners were all stupid nursery rhymes that I was
not playing for him. I wanted to impress Gerard; I was pretty sure he was
aware that Mary did indeed have a little lamb. He didn’t need to hear it again
from me. But he didn’t need to hear scales either.

“Make one up,” Gerard insisted. “On the spot. Anything. Doesn’t have to be
good, just as long as it fills the air and has a purpose.”

“Isn’t filling the air the purpose itself?” I asked, looking over at him in the
bed. He had told me to bring my guitar for background music. I thought that’s
all it was. I didn’t think I’d be called on the spot again. I wanted to impress
Gerard, but I had no idea what else was on his agenda.

“You have to give it a purpose,” Gerard smiled at me, nodding his head. “It’s
just like with any piece of art or writing. It can either occupy space – in this
case sound – or it can mean something. The best pieces of art do both.”

I nodded my head, brushing over the strings lightly, but not playing them.

“Captivate me,” Gerard commanded, his voice taking on a mysticism I hadn’t


heard in a while.

His demand was astronomical in my mind. Gerard’s attention span was not
an easy thing to captivate or keep. You had to be something special to get a
place in there. I knew I was already in there to a certain extent, but it was not
for my talent. Again, it was for the fact that I was now sleeping with him. I
was special because we were lovers; I doubted my attraction as being special
as an individual.
I took a deep breath, forgoing my thoughts, and began to play the first thing
that came to my head. Like I had expected, my nerves shattered. I began to
play with my eyes closed to not be aware of my destruction, but when I
opened them for just a second, I saw Gerard’s eyes dart and watch my
furious fingers. Though it was somewhat superfluous, I realized that I was
sitting on his bed, in his apartment, naked. I had had sex with him only hours
earlier, and I had been in a relationship with him for almost two weeks now. I
already captivated him. And it wasn’t just with our physical relationship. I saw
the way his eyes lit up as he watched my fingers. He was in awe, or at least
happy, that I was making an effort. Really, an effort was all I needed to do. I
needed to not give up; not be like Arthur Rimbaud. I was pretty sure I could
do that. That thought alone, made everything seem so much easier. I began
to spill my soul more freely, knowing that I already had his full attention.

I let myself go completely into the music. My fingers seemed to take on a


mind of their own and I felt this thing just grab me, forcing me to sit down
and play. I kept going, my hands just knowing where to go and what felt
good. I felt like I had zoned out, gone into a catatonic state. I knew I was
playing music, I could hear it and feel it, but it didn’t always feel like that at
times. It didn’t feel like I was there, like I was the one making the sound that
hit both of our eardrums. It was like an out of body experience almost. I had
always heard of those before, but I never computed what they really were.

My neck suddenly became weak and began to bob up and down, my chin to
my chest and then back up again. My jaw became slacked, doing much the
same motions in contrast to the neck. My eyes closed and I just let it take me
away. I didn’t know how long I played for, but when I came back down to
reality, my fingers felt numb from the rough texture of the guitar strings. I
looked down at them and noticed how red they were. One of my already
scratched up finger pads had ripped open its scab and small blood droplets
were spread down my finger. It was so red; scarlet like the paint we had used
for the mural, like the one for anger, forbiddance, and most of all, passion.

I stopped then, my hands resting peacefully over the chords until they ceased
vibrating. My neck regained its composure and my mouth closed. I stared
down at the floor for awhile, regaining myself and rehashing in my mind what
had happened. I played guitar, really played it. I didn’t copy a bar of music
down from the paper, I didn’t doubt my hands. I didn’t even memorize
something and then regurgitate. I played for playing. I was the guitar and I
lost myself completely.

It felt fucking amazing. The only thing left for me to do at that point was to
look at Gerard.

He was still sitting on the bed, his head leaning against the wall, chest
exposed and covered in a few purple welts I had left on him. His hands were
folded in front of him, not moving, much like his face. He seemed to be
permanently struck in a look of thought. His eyebrows were furrowed deeply,
so deep his wrinkles added thickness to his skin. His mouth was open slightly
and he was staring at the blanket in front of him. He was listening, he was
paying attention, but I still didn’t know what it all meant.

“So?” I asked, biting my lip and hoping it wouldn’t be too bad.

He raised his head like he had forgotten I was in the room, looked at me, and
I saw it in his eyes.

“Frank,” he uttered, his mouth open and as slack as my jaw had been.
“You’re an artist.”

***

The rest of the day we lazed around and didn’t do anything too fantastic,
which was perfectly fine by me. Gerard wanted to paint something, saying
that he had this mad image that he just had to get down on paper. He went
over to his easel and began to pour tubes of paint onto his brush and scatter
it all around, smiling over at me every once in awhile. I went off to the side,
by the window and sat on the bench, the guitar in my lap. I started to play
again, more so for practice. I entered my catatonic state a few more times, to
Gerard’s delight, but for the most part, I strummed random medleys while my
mind wandered. Gerard said he did that a lot when he painted and especially
drew. He said that as mind wandered onto other things, his hand eventually
found a rhythm, allowing him to visit other planes of thoughts. He said he got
his best thinking done when he was like that, and I had started to agree with
him.

As I played the chords, I thought of the dove that flew around the room; how
happy she must have been. Though she was only allowed to fly around within
the confines of the apartment, it was still better than nothing. I found myself
flying with her as my hands fluttered over guitar notes. I would occasionally
write something down that I thought was good, repeating it over and over
again to get it right, and then broadcasting it briefly to obtain some approval
from Gerard. He never lied to me, telling me flat out if the riff was just a small
‘okay’ to ‘really good’ and at one point during that day, ‘astounding’. The way
he had said that magical word sent chills down my spine. I had to keep it, and
I played it for the rest of the day, when nothing new came to me. I trusted his
opinion so much more than anyone else’s around me, because he was so
blunt and honest. He wasn’t trying to hurt, always help. He seemed to be
much more real when he told the truth, and not just some fantasy in my
mind. He told me when I was wrong. And I did the same for him, not as often,
because I never really got the chance. When that chance came up, I was for
sure going to take it.

“Do you remember when you first played your guitar for me, Frank?” Gerard
questioned, waking me up from staring out the window. I had been watching
school children pass by and thought I saw someone that looked like Billy, the
little boy who appeared so happy at first, but sad on the inside, from the first
time I had met Gerard, at that park where he invited me back to his place. If
it was Billy, then he looked ten times happier now, and I was glad. Gerard
was good at bestowing certain emotions on people.

“Yeah, of course,” I answered his question, the memory still a bit off-putting
in my mind, no matter how ‘astounding’ something I produced now was. The
guitar was still with me, just in my lap, waiting for when the next piece of
inspiration hit.
“I was being hard on you,” he admitted softly, taking his eyes off his work for
a second. I met his gaze with a confused look of my own.

“You were? How so?” I questioned, remembering the time not for its insults,
but for how I had played. I thought I really had sucked.

“I ripped you apart on purpose,” he said earnestly. “I picked on things that


probably didn’t need to be picked on. I was ripping apart your playing style
when that has no merit on anything. You could play guitar upside down and
backwards, so long as music still comes out. And it did. You played pretty well
for me the first time. You’re just exceptional now.”

He tried to smile at me weakly, but I turned my gaze to the floor. I digested


this knowledge, replaying the words from that day. He had been so harsh
with me. He had never used that tone of voice before in all of the days I had
come to see him. Not even when I had stolen his cigarettes, gone through his
wallet to find out his age, or walked in on him and Vivian had he ever talked
to me that way. I had violated his privacy on several occasions, and he acted
as if the way I played guitar had been the bigger travesty, my biggest
mistake. Creativity was something Gerard admired, something he kept inside
of him and had flow from his fingertips into the paint he used. I thought I had
let creativity flow through my own fingers and into the guitar. He had been
stifling that urge. It was like I was inhuman, incapable of feeling emotion.
That what I had showed him was not a part of myself. Did he not understand
that I had been exposing my soul to him? That I had trusted him enough to
show him this? He didn’t have to lie to me, but God, he didn’t have to do that
either.

“Why? Why would you do that?”

My face shot up to him, and I just stared. My words came off more high-
strung and hysterical than I had wanted to sound, but this was extremely
important to me. I had thought I had sucked the entire time, up until now.
And even now, I still had some doubts of my ability. Anytime I played, I had
his words in the back of my mind, telling me what I was doing wrong. It didn’t
matter if I thought the rift I had played was good, the criticism had been
imprinted in my mind. Gerard’s opinion seemed to be the only thing of some
merit. My own beliefs were discarded, even if it was what made me happy. I
was pretty sure if I had been brave enough to play for anyone else, I would
have discounted their opinion too. Especially if it had been good. I wouldn’t
think they were as intelligent as Gerard or knew what they were talking
about. Gerard didn’t know what he was talking about, in the sense of guitar
and playing went, but he had been honest.

Or at least, I thought he had been. There was something to be said for


honesty, and then completely berating someone. He could have been making
suggestions rather than malignant statements, or telling me that I had done
something right. That’s all I had ever wanted; some approval for my actions.
He hadn’t even given me that. He was trying to now, because apparently, I
had been doing it right all along. Suddenly, in a world of constant extremes
and opposing forces, being right or wrong didn’t matter anymore. It was the
whole principle behind everything.

I stared at Gerard hard. Did he not realize how much I had hurt after he did
that to me? Did you really do that sort of thing to someone you cared about?

He sighed, after meeting with my stare for a few long, agonizing seconds. I
could tell he was pained in his expression, but I didn’t care. He had hurt me
too. He put away his art completely. I thought he was going to come over to
me, to comfort me or something, but he stayed stationary in the middle of
the room.

“I wanted to teach you about rejection,” he confessed, folding his hands in


and out against his body, fidgeting. “You needed to know what it felt like for
someone to hate your work for no reason, whether it was good or bad. You
also needed to know that just because someone hates it, doesn’t mean you
have to stop. I had to learn that lesson the hard way. And I learned from
someone I barely knew; an art teacher who didn’t even know who Rembrandt
was.”

He threw his hands in the air comically, motioning to the absurdity of it all. I
held my tongue and didn’t let him know that I had no idea who Rembrandt
was either. I didn’t fucking care.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I still felt the weight of the guitar on my body,
and I wanted to throw it off. I was disgusted with myself for believing Gerard,
but I was even more disgusted with him for making me doubt that belief. All
this time, he had been building up my faith, only to be there to take it down.
When I finally turned my gaze to the hardwood floor, he sighed. He knew I
was hurt (it was sort of hard not to), and I suddenly felt his presence go back
to its relaxed, slightly concerned stature.

“Frank, what’s wrong?”

I snapped my head up, letting my mouth hang open in surprise. He looked


back at me plainly.

“Are you kidding me?” I cried out.

“I don’t kid. I’m never one for misplaced humor. I prefer sarcasm and dry
wit.” He tried to smile, and touched his chest proudly. I shoved him off.

“Gerard, do you not understand what you did to me?”

“I understand very well, Frank. I did it to you for a reason.”

I heaved an aggravated sigh, rolling my eyes. “Shut up about a lesson, okay?


I don’t want them if they hurt me.”

“But you need to hurt. Everyone needs to hurt. It’s your way of making it -”

“Yeah, I know,” I cut him off, hearing this pain philosophy from the first night
we were together. My God, he could be so fucking repetitive. I wasn’t a two
year old. He didn’t need to explain everything to me. “I need to hurt if I want
to remember. Just enough to know it’s real, but not enough to stop. I know,
Gerard, trust me, I know. But, I want it to stop. I don’t want this to be real. I
don’t want to remember this feeling.”

When finished, I placed the guitar roughly by my side, just so I could fold my
arms over my chest. I looked out the window, biting my lip to suppress
myself. I could hear Gerard shift his weight and I saw him run his hand
through his hair coolly from the corner of my eye.

“That’s with physical sensations, Frank,” he started calmly. “Sensations and


emotions are two entirely different things that feel pain two entirely different
ways. And therefore, should be treated two different ways.”

I looked at him, not amused, but wanting to hear him out. This better be
good, because I needed a reason to why my stomach felt like it was folding in
on itself.

“We need physical pain to remember something physical. Like how bodies
move together during sex. That is something worth remembering.” He
smiled, raising an eyebrow. I was unaffected.

“But emotions, they hurt too. They hurt a lot more, and run a lot deeper than
anything physical. Their scars are invisible – we can’t cover them, though we
want to. Humans try to hide themselves instead of their emotional wounds,
but that only leads to more and more. We have to live with them, wishing and
hoping to forget. You can never fully forget, though. Even repression
sometimes backfires.” He grew somber for a moment, and I had no idea why.
His playing hadn’t been ripped apart.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” I was practically begging now.

“You make it better,” he said, regaining that resilience I still lacked. “You take
those hurt feelings, and you say ‘fuck you’. You do what you want. You keep
playing, you keep writing, you keep painting. Whatever you want to do with
yourself, you do it. Fuck everyone else who may come along.”

“But what if they were right…?”

The way he had said ‘everyone else’ had thrown me for a loop. I could not
even imagine playing to other people, especially when playing to him had
gone so horribly wrong. I could trust him, or at least, I thought I could. He had
still hurt me, even in that position of trust. I couldn’t imagine what anyone
else would do who didn’t give a damn what happened to me.

“And what if you’re the one who’s right? There is no such thing as right or
wrong, Frank. Especially in art. It’s always the principle,” he smiled, and I
hated him reading my fucking thoughts. There was a small lull where he still
sensed my despair, so he forced himself to continue.

“Frank, there is always going to be someone who hates you. No matter what.
You can bend over backwards to try and please them, but once there,
someone else will hate you. Your art form shouldn’t be about popularity,
because as soon as you start getting popular, that’s when everything
backfires. You get lost in people instead of lost in your work. That’s never
how it should become. People are bendable and malleable – they change
their opinions with the drop of a hat. You need to stand by your own beliefs
and attitudes so you know you won’t be let down. The more people that love
you, the more people hate you. It’s far easier to say something bad about
someone than to say something good. It’s a lot more fun too, especially if you
don’t care how they react.”

I had been listening to him fine for the past little while. What he was saying
was even starting to make some sense, and I even found my head nodding at
one point. But that last part, that made something inside me sting.

“You didn’t care? You don’t care about me?”

“No, Frank,” he replied quickly, his voice almost painful. “I do care. I care
about you a lot, and I did then. That’s why it had been so hard for me to say
what I did. I had to be both the good and bad because you weren’t going to
show anyone else – just me. I knew that, so I had to give you a taste of what
someone else would be like. It was mean, nasty, and unfair, but that’s the
human existence, Frank. We’re mean. We don’t care about people other than
ourselves.”

“I care about you,” I found myself replying without thinking. “I care about you
more than I care about myself because I feel like I’m not good enough. And
when you say things like that, it only reinforces that feeling, Gerard.”

He opened his mouth for a second, about to say something, but he gave up
on that route. Now, he was coming over to me. He didn’t see the need to
comfort me with anything but logic when I had been struggling with my art.
Struggle was necessary to prove your vision – or some other foolish thing he
had taught me. But suddenly, this wasn’t about art anymore. Or at least
tangible art. This was about myself, and he had fucking hurt me. A lot. I didn’t
know why he had, especially since he was telling me now that everything was
better. My playing had been just okay before, but now I was exceptional. I
should have been happy about that, but I wasn’t. I was still dwelling on the
past. If my playing had been average, but he still found the need to hurt and
criticize me, I took it personally. I took it so much deeper than a lesson in
rejection. It was a personal stab I wasn’t ready for. When I let myself really
feel it, I was surprised at how much it had hurt. I was really falling for Gerard,
and this had been the first time where I didn’t feel his hands catching me.

Soon, he was sitting next to me on the bench. He moved my guitar out of the
way gingerly, nestling his body next to mine. He placed the hands that had
been lacking before on my back, pulling me forward into a hug. He touched
me, kissed my forehead, and though a part of me wanted to throw him out
the bay window, I held onto him. He was the person who had hurt me, but he
was also the only one who could make it better.

“Oh, Frank,” he whispered, the emotion in his voice startling me. “Please
don’t ever say that about yourself. Don’t even think it, because it’s not true.
You care about yourself more than me. It’s clear. You’re worried about how
you feel, how it’s affecting your playing, and how you’re going to handle
things. You care about yourself more, like you should.”
I made a noise in the back of my throat, but I didn’t argue. Even if I had
wanted to, I couldn’t form anything logical. I just let him hold me. Both of his
hands were pressed tightly to my back for awhile, rocking me. Gradually,
when he decided I had enough strength, he let go, and simply placed his arm
around me.

“I’m not apologizing for what I did,” he stated, latching onto my side quite
distinctly. “It needed to be done. And I needed to tell you now. I could have
easily ignored it, and moved on, especially since your guitar playing has
gotten so much better. But I don’t like keeping secrets, Frank. Especially from
someone like you. You deserve to know everything.”

He looked down at me, a bittersweet quality to his eyes.

“I want to know everything,” I said earnestly, touching his side.

“Then I guess you have to take the good with the bad,” he breathed out,
raising his eyebrows.

It was in that moment, in spite of myself, where I realized he was right. He


always had been. As much as it hurt him opening me up and tearing me
apart like that, it had to be done. He would never purposely hurt me. I could
see that in his eyes and feel the way he held me. He was treating me like a
fragile object; he could easily throw me down and watch me break, but he
wasn’t. He was holding me, making sure I didn’t let myself crumble. He had
to crack me, to show me I was breakable, before anyone else had the chance
to. Before, I had no idea I would react this way. I needed to do it with him
around, so he could be the one to comfort me. He had to play devil’s
advocate while still being by my side. He had been my first rejection, but he
had also made that experience a lot easier. He had almost turned it into a
pleasant experience. Without that self doubt in the back of my mind, I would
have never been able to do anything as well as I had. I would not be this
‘astounding’. I would not have spent most of my free time after trying to
learn and perfect the way I played. He had been doing a good thing, even I
hadn’t seen it right away.
“Thank you, I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders, and the remaining emotion
away.

“No,” Gerard cut in strictly. He held the hand up that wasn’t around my
shoulder, signaling this halt. “Don’t thank me for this. You really shouldn’t. I
didn’t enjoy what I did.”

His voice fell at the end, and I reached over to touch him again. I ran my
hand along the arm that wasn’t around my shoulder, stopping before his
palm. He gave me a weak smile that I mimicked. We were both a little
drained.

“My reasoning behind that gesture was somewhat selfish as well,” he


admitted candidly shortly thereafter.

“Really?”

“Yes,” he laughed at himself, looking down at our hands. He rotated his wrist
as he talked, making our fingers crash and dance together. “I wanted to see
if you would still come back and see me, even if I was mean to you.” He
raised his eyes to meet with mine again, his countenance coming off as pure
and almost innocent.

“And you got your answer,” I stated, a calm smile spreading across my face.

“Yes, indeed,” he replied cheerfully, fully linking with my hand.

We were quiet for awhile after that, the conversation seeming to lose its
spark. He let his grip on my back loosen, until eventually, his arm had slid off
of me completely. We were still touching; we just weren’t hanging on for dear
life anymore. I felt restless suddenly. Something still wasn’t right. Something
was still missing in this whole argument, if I could even call it that. I raised
my attention to Gerard, who was staring off into space. He wasn’t satisfied
either.

“Things shouldn’t have to be the way they are in this world,” he spouted,
rubbing his chin and underside of his neck as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have to
be so bitter and harsh with you, but I know other people will be. When you
make art, when you create anything that is a part of yourself, it’s strong. It’s
so strong, people are going to get mad at it because they don’t understand.
They don’t want to understand. But Frank,” he suddenly spoke with more
fever, and turned me so I was looking directly into his dancing pupil, “if
you’re causing people to form some kind of opinion about you and your work
– positive or negative – then at least you’ve done something right.”

I smiled, and I felt his lips come over my own. It was a short kiss, but well
needed. His hands relocated around my body, and we stayed that way for
awhile. The silence was comfortable again, though my wounds were still a
little fresh.

I had a feeling I would never fully heal from this. No matter if I knew that
Gerard was still supporting me, and his words had been vicious on purpose,
there was still that prospect of people thinking that in the future. I didn’t
know if I would ever let my guitar playing get outside this room, but when I
did, I knew it would be hard. I tried to picture myself reading my first bad
review. I knew my fingers would shake, my heart would race, and I may not
even get through the first sentence before I felt like it was too much. I
wanted to separate myself from that side of art, but I knew I never could.
Gerard would never let me. I had to take the good with the bad, even if the
bad seemed to outweigh everything.

I told myself, right then and there, that I could never let the bad outweigh
anything. I had to become aware of the hate people may harbor towards me
in the future, but I also vowed that I didn’t have to become a part of it. I
didn’t have to read every single bad review. I had to be aware of them,
maybe read one or two, and then say fuck it. If I dwelled on the past too
much, then my future would be gone before I knew it. I couldn’t let bad
reviews hold me back. I couldn’t let anything hold me back, whether it was
present in that moment, or would be later on. I had no reason to let anything
hold me back.

I was already doing something right.

Part Five - Dance

Eventually, the afternoon sun began to fade and night began to bleed into
the sky. Gerard went back to painting and I even joined him. Over the past
little while I had been getting back to painting, not needing to have him lean
over me every other brush stroke and tell me where I needed to put things. I
had begun to paint on my own, testing my abilities farther and farther each
time. I was able to paint a sunset one night, having us both sit out on the
balcony and watch it go over the Jersey skyline. We had actually been able to
keep our hands off each other for that art session, and focused on the art and
beauty in front of us. The picture had been decent, actually looking like what
it was supposed to. Nature was always the easiest to paint for me because if I
screwed it up, it didn’t matter. Nature came in a variety of shapes and sizes
and could adjust to any misplaced brush stroke. It was painting other things,
like the furniture inside Gerard’s place or the dreamlike images that came to
my mind, that were the hard ones to create. Everything I painted that was
supposed to look life-like always ended up coming out cartoon-ish. It had
begun to frustrate me, and during the week prior, I had tried to smash one of
my paintings, pissed off that the table I had painted looked like a run-over
horse. Gerard had grabbed me before my hellion hands could do anymore
damage.

“I thought I was allowed to destroy my own work?” I asked him, huffing and
puffing and struggling against his arms.

“You destroy the things you love,” he said slowly, rubbing my back as he
tried to calm me down. “You learn from the things you hate.”

He had made me keep the Goddamn picture and even put it up on his wall. I
looked at it as I painted then, hoping that maybe I could learn from the
disaster I was creating at that very moment.

I had been trying to paint, draw, or do something with Gerard and his image
ever since I had come to this apartment. He had invited me to learn how to
do each medium; it was only natural for me to want to encapsulate my
teacher inside the strategies. Ever since I found out that he refused to paint
himself, or do anything with that image, it had stuck with me. I needed to do
something since he refused the task. He was just one of those people you
had to paint; he called out for it. The way his body moved, his facial features,
his mannerisms. He was an enigma that I had cracked open, if not all the
way, then I was slowly getting there. I knew I would never crack him open
fully; he was always surprising me each day with a new secret or story to tell.
But I loved that essence about him. He never got old, despite his age. I
wanted to capture that in a painting. Or anything, for that fact. It would be a
travesty if left undone.

I had the hardest time painting noses. They were three-dimensional and I had
a hard time portraying them coming off of the page, off of someone’s face.
They always turned out to be pig-like in comparison, or too skeletal. It didn’t
help that Gerard’s nose was a peculiar shape, the tip very prominent and
pointy, and depending on the angle, it could be totally unnoticeable. On some
days, it appeared triangular in shape, and with his deep-set eyes, he almost
took on the look of a jack-o-lantern. Other days, his nose was normal, but still
a challenge to capture.

Eyes were my favorite to draw and paint, and I probably spent a good half of
the time, perfecting the olive hue in Gerard’s. I liked doing his hair too, the
flows and tendrils of black over a pale white skin. I had drawn his hair and
eyes a lot before, and though struggling with everything else a fair amount, I
always finished the picture. Every time I did hold the final copy in my hand, it
just wasn’t right. It didn’t matter that Gerard’s nose was slightly off center
and his lips were too thin, it wasn’t him in other ways. A picture could be
anything I wanted it to be, but I knew I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
Probably because I didn’t exactly know how I wanted to portray Gerard. He
didn’t paint himself for that very reason. And I wasn’t becoming any more
successful.

I eventually stopped painting, my hands growing tired and the colors


becoming dreary against the textured paper, and I finally just studied Gerard
for the sake of studying him. He was still naked, as was I, and we had been
that way for the entire day. I was getting used to the feeling of immediately
stripping as soon as I got to his place. I had even forgotten about where I was
a few times and found my hand at my belt buckle as soon as I got inside my
own house. Thankfully, my parents never noticed. Even in my room, where I
was alone, I still kept my clothing on. I missed being naked, but it wasn’t the
same unless Gerard was around with me. There was something special about
being naked around him. He made me want to stay that way; exposed. He
appreciated it. He made it okay to just be in my own skin and be comfortable
with it. I just loved to watch the way he walked around his apartment, so
effortlessly as if he were wearing the barrier.

I watched him at that moment, his confidence oozing from him. Since I had
stopped playing my guitar and moved onto a different medium, he had put
on some of his French opera that I really didn’t like. It was growing on me
little by little, only because I saw how happy it made Gerard. Perhaps it
reminded him of France and Paris and all of those wonderful things he was
missing. I figured I let the droning of the singer leak into my ears for those
very reasons.

As soon as he slipped the CD in the player and the first note was belted out,
he proceeded to sing, moving and swaying his body completely into the
music. He got so into it in fact, he began to dance with himself, imagining a
mysterious partner by his side. It had been hard enough to suppress the
laughter beforehand when he merely sang the words out loud, but now that
this mystery dancer had been added, I couldn’t contain myself. I smiled
brightly, wishing I had a camera or something to capture all of this.

When my giggles didn’t rouse him from his state of a total living daydream, I
shouted at him, a sharp edge of a joke in my voice.

“At least you dance better than you sing.”


It was true too; his voice often broke at high notes and he over exaggerated a
lot of parts, but the way his bare feet moved and glided against the
hardwood floor and the sweepy nature of his hips was just amazing.
Astounding, actually.

I thought he hadn’t heard me or was ignoring me until he piped up with a


response.

“Dancing is painting a picture no one else can see.” His eyes were closed, but
he somehow knew where he was going. He had painted this picture before, I
could tell.

“But I can see your picture, Gerard,” I called over to him, only half-joking. The
way he moved with his invisible partner, the expressions on his face and his
sheer joy of it all made me see something I thought was beautiful. A forty-
seven-year-old man recapturing his youth again.

“That’s because you are meant to dance with me,” Gerard stated, suddenly
cutting across the hardwood floor over to where I sat down. His eyes were
open now as he extended his hand for mine, his brows forming a V formation
as he extended the offer. I just stared at his hand, unsure of what to do.

“I don’t dance,” I told him, breathy, nervous laughter coming through.

I had never done anything beyond shuffling at elementary school functions


where they made you pair off with someone. I never went to proms, or any
social function at my school. They didn’t interest me for the awkward dancing
element alone. I had not learned anything fancy, complicated, or beautiful. I
was uncoordinated at best.

“You’re an artist now,” he chided with a crafty grin on his face. “You do
everything.”
He reached forward and took my hand without asking, pulling me into the
middle of the apartment, right up close to his body. He placed the hand he
was holding on his waist and the other in his own. He looked deeply at me,
his eyes shoulders back professionally and his breathing hard.

“Are you ready?” he asked, though I had a feeling my response didn’t matter.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Gerard,” I informed him, my voice quiet. I was
right up next to his body, my head just under his chin. I didn’t know how we
could move this close together, but Gerard insisted upon it, a thin smile
spreading over his lips.

“It’s just like having sex, Frank,” he conveyed, starting to move our feet
together. “Just like making art. Do what feels right and everything will come.”
He smiled at the double meaning in his last words before literally sweeping
me off my feet.

Our motions were taut and awkward at first, me almost tripping a few times
as he dragged me into his swaying motions, but he held me up. I could see
the trust in his eyes, though touched with a tad bit of crazy that night, he was
not going to let me fall. He whispered words of encouragement in my ear, in
between verses of the opera music, guiding me along with his hands. He
kissed my forehead and mouth in small bursts, in time with the music. Any
time I tried to step on his feet so he could just lead me, he kicked me off.

“You need to learn some things on your own,” he told me, déjà vu hitting us
both over the line. I smiled at him and brought our lips together for longer.

Dancing was just like sex, I told myself. If I kept that in mind, I was going to
do okay. And eventually, just like the awkward first time of having sex, the
bumps and the kinks were worked out and we were moving together,
swaying magically to the rhythm as one person. We danced and danced for
what seemed like hours, my feet sometimes growing tired and the act itself
looking ridiculous when I saw our reflection in the window against the night
sky, but we kept going. It was what Gerard wanted. We were painting a
picture only we could see. It was a shame no one else could see what we
were making, because it was absolutely gorgeous. Astounding.

We danced until the CD ran out, not even noticing it until Gerard pushed me
gently into a wall, placing a chaste kiss on my mouth. When we realized that
it was now our turn to make a rhythm for a different kind of dance, I opened
my mouth to deepen the embrace. I put a hand on the back of his neck,
rustling his hairline. We had both started to become hard during our long
dance session and our kiss against the wall was helping in moving matters
along. Gerard took my light and limber body from dancing for so long in his
hands, lifting me up slightly so he could enter me with ease. Gerard had
taken to placing lube in places throughout the apartment, so we had found a
small bottle with no problems. I groaned as I felt him push upwards inside
me, our mouths crashing together. He started to thrust over and over again
while I wrapped my legs around his waist, helping him to keep me supported.

Having sex standing up provided a lot more strain than our normal
endeavors, but it seemed to be worth it in the long run. All sex with us was
worth it in the long run. We were up against the mural wall and I could feel
the distinct, different textures from the paint against my back. It felt cool and
interesting, especially since my skin was now becoming flushed with arousal.
My hands were around Gerard’s neck, pulling him into kisses whenever I
could. He grunted a lot from the effort, but I could see from the way his
mouth would suddenly open deeper on occasion that he was doing just as
good as I was. My cock was being pressed up against both of our bodies,
providing enough friction to keep me hard and get me to come in between
both of us. As I clenched around him, reeling from my own orgasm, he came
inside me, his legs almost giving out and sending me dropping to the ground.
Gerard was strong though, especially in situations where it counted. He
managed to hold me up until he finished, then gently let us both tumble onto
the hardwood floor. I had brought the bed sheet out from earlier and we
wrapped ourselves up it in. I leaned my head against his forehead, breathing
hard and catching my breath. He did the same, and reached a hand around
the back of my neck, making sure my head stayed where it was. I could tell
there were so many things he wanted to say to me then, and I did too. We
didn’t know how to form words just yet, so we just spoke with silence, and
that was good enough.

I had to leave soon after, the blackened sky from the window threatening me
with my father’s possible rage. I gathered up my stuff that I had brought,
pulling on my clothing while Gerard continued to nuzzle and kiss my neck,
providing a large distraction.

“You should skip more often,” he breathed into my skin, wrapping his hands
around my waist. I leaned back and put our hot mouths together, kissing him
again.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Screw education.”

“Exactly.” Gerard nodded, finally letting me go and get my backpack. “I can


be your teacher. I already am.”

“And I’ve probably learned more here than anyplace else,” I quipped.

We both laughed, but saw the complete and utter truth behind the matter.
When I was in school, I was miserable. In that kind of environment, I didn’t
want to work. I didn’t want to learn or do anything. In Gerard’s apartment,
everything was available to me. I had learned more in one day here than I
would have ever had if I had gone to school all week. And I learned more
important things, too. Sure, I learned things in school, but out of all of the
lesson plans I had been given, how to actually live this life they were
preparing me for was never on the list. That was what I had needed the most,
and real school never provided in all of the years I had gone there. I wished
that I could just skip everything, drop out of school, and become an artist and
just live the rest of my life with Gerard. It sounded corny, but more so than
that, it sounded impossible.

With a sigh, I reached over to the other side of the couch, where my guitar
was sitting and resting. Before I could even lay a hand on the instrument,
Gerard’s voice cut in.

“That stays here,” he informed me, reaching his hands out and snatching the
guitar away.
I screwed up my face, looking at him slightly askew. “Why?”

“Because I want to hear you play again.”

He placed the instrument down and moved closer, wrapping me into yet
another embrace. I was almost out the door at this point, going home. And
though I wanted to stay with him, I knew I was going to be late.

“This is a better place for it,” he breathed shallowly into my neck.

I had to agree with him. There was so much more creativity flowing out of the
fucking walls. This was like chemotherapy for my poor guitar that had gotten
cancer from years of misuse. All I could do was nod.

“Great. The guitar lives here now,” he said, pulling my face closer to his and
leaving me with one final kiss. “Just like you.”

His words threw me for a loop at first. In technical terms, I did not live at
Gerard’s. I would never be allowed to, no matter how much I would want to.
But as I gazed into his eyes after, I saw the real meaning behind it all. When I
was in the apartment, it was the only time I actually lived. I did things. I
created things. I lived and fucked and fought. I played my guitar, which was
now going to be housed there until I could make arrangements, impossible or
not. I had a home where I lived, but I was only rooted there by tradition and
family. Where I wanted to be was some place entirely different; a place where
I felt alive. After all, how can you live without being alive? I wondered how
long I had been dead before I had met Gerard, and how many other walking
corpses were around me. I knew the answer would be too many.

I left Gerard’s right after, giving him yet another hug and kiss. The door shut
behind me, and I was left staring at the green paint chips for the longest
time. As I began to walk away, going down the stairs slowly, the day repeated
itself in my mind over and over again. The painting, the dancing lessons, and
more importantly, playing music. Gerard now had my guitar; the instrument
to my soul. Not only did it live there now, but he was clearing away a spot for
me, another artist, still young, still budding, still growing more each day.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mother to Mom

It was dark when I left Gerard’s apartment. The small city lights flickered
against the jet black night, illuminating parts of the street, so I didn’t feel like
I was walking into nothing. The cool air was a pleasant sensation through my
slightly damp hair, still wet from perspiration and a small shower I had taken
with Gerard earlier in the day. I breathed in deeply once I got outside, and I
immediately noticed the difference in everything around me; the air smelt
fresh, clear, and like things were growing again. There was no longer a bitter
aftertaste and smell of car congestion. This was natural, normal, real. I felt a
small smile curl its way onto my face, realizing that spring was coming soon.
Jersey’s gray skyline throughout the duration of winter had really put a
damper on things. We had just had daylight savings time the weekend
before, and though we lost an hour (an hour I could have been with Gerard)
the sky was lighter longer and everything seemed to be falling into place. The
grass was becoming a proper shade of green in some areas, spread out
thicker in between the dirt that children’s feet had upturned. Tree branches
were snaking out higher towards the sky, which was a pale shade of blue
most days, the clouds fluffing and rolling themselves like waves.

I’d begun to realize on my walks to Gerard’s place just how much color had
come back into my world. I had no idea if it was spring itself bringing out the
shades, or my new affinity for naming and recognizing what I saw before me.
I was no longer looking at the ground; I looked up at the sky, the grass, the
patches of flowers, and weeds here and there. I knew I would have never
have noticed these things, in such a fine, minute sense of detail if it had not
been for Gerard’s critical eye. Art was a beautiful thing, but I could extend
the metaphor now. Everything around me was beautiful, because in turn,
everything was art. I had kept myself so closed off from the outside world for
so long, it felt like I was being reborn that night. My mind raced with creative
thoughts, and I figured this was how Gerard must have felt every day of his
life.
I looked around, and even in the dark, I could picture everything that I saw
with a clear light. I saw the blinding yellow of dandelions and the calm mauve
of snap dragons that seemed to spark up everywhere, even in between the
cracks of gray sidewalk slabs. The ground was damp, and some of the clouds
collected in the center of the sky, threatening more rain. It seemed to rain
now instead of snow, furthering the melting process. The rhythmic pattern of
the rain against the window made falling asleep at night easier, and the
nocturnal showers helped the plants that were just starting to grow move
their renewal right along. The puddles would be thick during the morning,
before the sun had dried them up, and sometimes children would fall in,
getting caked in mud from head to foot before they had even gotten on the
school bus.

Not everything was beautiful though, I realized as I walked alongside the


filing-cabinet-like apartment building. There were still cracks in the
pavement, dirt without a hope of grass ever covering it, and litter infecting
the patches that were lucky enough to have growth. There were still
homeless people, drug dealers, and bodies being found in the local park. In
fact, there may have been even more (public) crime because it was spring
and the sun was out longer now, so more felonies were visible. But God, I was
still finding beauty in it.

I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, breathing in the night air. I looked
over next to the convenience store alleyway. I saw the same bum I saw in
there every time. An older man, maybe even around Gerard’s age. His skin
was white, but he almost appeared to be brown by the amount of dirt and old
facial hair that covered him. He was dirty, but his eyes were bright blue and
could pierce the night sky I was walking under. He had on a black hat, its rim
rolled up and his greasy, long hair sticking out. But the most striking thing
about this individual, other than his eyes, was the dog he kept by his side. It
was a mutt of some kind, looking like a black lab, only not as big. The old
bum’s feet were tangled under a putrid green and tattered blanket, his dog
perched next to him.

The man looked miserable. Though it was spring and it was warming up, if
you were outside too long, you would feel the effects of the chilled air,
especially if the wind was strong and blowing directly on you. The bum was
dirty, poor, and sad – you could see it and feel it in his presence as you
passed by. But when the dog looked up at him, its wet nose pressing against
his chin, he smiled. His teeth were crooked and missing, but he bared them
anyway. He saw his dog and he petted her, realizing that not everything in
his life was completely miserable.

I could finally see beauty in that again. Before, I would have just ignored the
man, kept on walking and maybe even thrown a curse under my breath. Then
I would have forgotten. I may have not even noticed the dog. I did now, and I
certainly wasn’t forgetting. I was drawing another conclusion, back to art and
inspiration. You didn’t forget inspiration; it kept on creating. It was possible to
forget art. I wasn’t going to forget Gerard, my inspiration, and now, I wasn’t
going to forget this man. I almost wanted to walk up to him, take his hand,
and shake it. I wanted to thank him. He would probably think I was as crazy
as he was.

It was true; I did feel crazy most days. Gerard was having that effect on me. I
couldn’t believe it was all going on. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was
changing and growing so much, I didn’t even think I would be able to
recognize myself if I was placed out of my body. If I were to look at the
situation from that outside viewpoint, I would just see an abnormally happy
seventeen-year-old boy. And that’s what I was. People didn’t see the artist in
me, or the guitarist, or anything else creative that I had become. They didn’t
have to see it yet. Essentially, they weren’t supposed to. They didn’t see
Gerard and they weren’t able to judge that either. I was a normal kid, happy
and well-adjusted.

Finally.

My mother had even said I was happy. She was seeing a change in me too,
and she was happy right along with me. No one had to know that it was
Gerard making me feel this way, but I knew it was all his doing. My painting
and guitar habits helped as well, but he was the one who made me take them
up again. He was the one that directed me towards them, either demanding
that I play or teaching me how. I had Gerard to thank for everything, though I
never knew how to form the words. He was always so much better at that.
Maybe one day, I thought happily, he could teach me how to do that, too.
There would be some times, when I would be at home and I would just look at
myself in the mirror. I’d be naked, of course, because I felt much more at
ease with my body. I’d look at my bumps, ridges and yes, even my curves
now. I could see and comprehend that my slight belly pudge that I had
carried since childhood was no longer ‘fat’. It was curves, it was attractive. At
least to Gerard. He’d run his hands over me, kiss that region, and tell me
every part on my body was beautiful, including those curves I had once
struggled to hide. I still found it hard to believe when I thought long and hard
about Gerard finding me attractive. Not because I wasn’t - I had learned to
think of myself as at least somewhat handsome - but because I was attracted
to Gerard right back. When I looked at myself in the mirror during those
times, I saw the marks he left on my body. I’d close my eyes and I’d be taken
right back to his touches, his lips everywhere on me, and eventually, him
inside me or the other way around. I had had sex with him; several times by
now. I had initiated it, and then I had let him take me any way he wanted me.
I was having sex with a man, something I thought I’d never do.

In all of my life, I didn’t think I was gay. I had been in relationships with girls
(no matter how short or petty, they were still relationships with girls) and I
had never really been that attracted to a guy. I’d seen them naked, but I saw
myself naked, too. There wasn’t too much of a variation; I didn’t think I’d get
excited by parts I already had. I had to admit, though, I was curious during
gym class and I’d sneak a peek. I just did it for vanity’s sake, to see if all guys
looked the same, and if I was bigger or not. After I found out, I was good. I’d
never in a million years think of putting my mouth on anyone’s cock, or any
male’s lips, for that matter.

But when I was with Gerard… it was different. It was so different. He made
me feel okay. He made me feel better than okay. Like I was beautiful, artistic,
and smart. He made me want to kiss him, touch him, and fuck him. It seemed
like inside his apartment was the only place I felt safe to act the way I did. It
was only with him where I ever felt attracted to another man, and it was only
with him that I would ever consider doing those things to. But I still had to ask
myself: Was I gay?

I had done everything you could think of with a man. And I liked it. I wanted
to do it again and again. If that made me gay, then I figured I had to accept
it. If it meant I was gay with Gerard, then that fate didn’t seem too bad. I just
couldn’t tell anyone – I knew that much for sure. I only had the freedom and
security behind the four brightly painted walls of his apartment. Society was
harsh to gay people in general; if I was gay and with a forty-seven year old, I
knew that it would be so much worse.

I continued my walk, going slightly slower than average to take in all of this
beauty never seen before. I wasn’t too far away from Gerard’s apartment
when something caught my attention. For once, it was not the street lamps
and their amber glow illuminating nature; it was the bright florescent
beaming of the still-open liquor store. I shielded my eyes as I walked past, my
pupils horrified by the fakeness.

“Hey, Frank!” I heard someone yell from somewhere around me. It wasn’t
quite behind me or in front of me, but more off to the side. My arm was
blocking them, but I could have recognized that voice anywhere. Every
function in my body ceased movement, and I was paralyzed on spot.

It was Sam. Worst of all, he was coming over here, and Travis was following
close behind. I didn’t know what to do. I saw the red glow of a cigarette that I
didn’t know he smoked come over to me. Sam usually walked with such
haste and a bouncy quality. He always had to be going somewhere,
anywhere fast. But right then, he walked with a stride in his step, a bitterness
furrowed deep down beneath his shoes. I remained on the sidewalk as he and
Travis took a place in front of me.

“Hey…” I said uneasily. I jammed my hands down in my pocket deeper and


resisted the urge to look behind me at Gerard’s place. I sometimes wondered
if he watched as I left, from his balcony and often checked to see if my inkling
was right. I swore some days, I saw the white and pasty figure in the window,
but I was never quite sure.

If Gerard was watching in that moment, I wanted him to save me. Throw
paint on my former friends again or just do something. I couldn’t be left alone
with Sam and Travis. They had been asking too many questions recently and
I had been disappearing more and more. There had already been another
weekend where I had lied to my mother and said I had been at their houses,
but they had not called like last times. Or at least, they didn’t tell me. Maybe
that was what they were going to confront me about now; I had no idea. All I
knew was that I was coming straight out of the place where all my secrets
were encased in a thin layer that was beginning to chip away.

“Where have you been?” Sam asked casually, not bothering to disguise the
slightly bitter tone in his voice. He placed a hand against the pole that was to
my right, leaning back a little as he started to smoke. I watched as he
breathed it in and out through his scrunched up nose, wondering just when
the fuck he had picked up that habit. When he blew the noxious substance
out, I was relieved to see that he didn’t look half as good as when Gerard did
the same action. He just looked like an awkward teen trying to be cool. Trying
being the key word.

“I’ve been… around,” I answered, shifting my weight from foot to foot, along
with my gaze around the place. I locked eyes with the bright orange light of
the liquor store and quickly changed topics. “Hanging out for beer again?”

“We have enough beer at home, actually,” Sam interjected, motioning to


Travis to his left with the lit cigarette.

Travis was standing hunched over a little (he did this a lot when he was
around Sam and me because he was at least six inches taller than the both of
us… put together), his dark hair falling in his face. He was thinner than I
remembered him being, and his skin hung close to his cheeks, his flat tipped
nose off the to side. Perhaps it was because of the dark, but it looked like he
was glaring at me. Travis was never one to glare; he either ignored you or
told you straight up how he felt. He didn’t waste time glaring.

“Oh,” I uttered, trying to make conversation that somehow didn’t incriminate


me. If they had enough beer, why were they still at the liquor store?

“We were waiting for you,” Sam stated slowly, taking another drag of the
cigarette and prolonging my agony. I breathed in a little too sharply, taking
Sam’s smoke with me. I coughed a little, but that was for sheer terror.

“You…were?” I asked them lowly, biting my lip and unable to move any part
of my body. I wanted to run away so fast; I just wanted to bolt and never look
back. I’d probably run back up to Gerard’s apartment and ruin everything,
but I didn’t care. I still felt his key deep down in the bottom of my pocket. If I
could just grab it, then I could…

Sam cut my thoughts off.

“Yeah, we were. What were you doing in that building anyway?”

Sam’s voice was harsh, strong, and to the fucking point. He took a final drag
on his cigarette, then threw it on the ground and stamped on it. The way he
did the action, never losing eye contact, made everything seem like a threat.
Sam himself embodied the very notion of hostility and violence.

“I was in that building?” I asked, just to fucking say something. I didn’t want
to admit to anything at all; even if it was just being around the apartment.
Maybe they were testing me, teasing me to see how much I really did know.
Maybe they hadn’t seen everything.

“Yeah, you were, dumbass,” Sam cut in again, his voice reaching the many
octave ranges it got to when he was angry. I heard Travis breathe out a
huffed breath and I knew this wasn’t going to end well. Sam demanded again,
“Just tell us what the fuck is going on.”

“Nothing!” I exclaimed, raising my hands out of my pockets, nearly knocking


the key ring out with them. I held up my palms as if to show them I meant no
harm.

Sam scoffed, and my two so-called friends began to look me up and down. I
felt like fucking livestock, ready to be evaluated. And then eaten alive. I
wanted to throw up on the fucking street, and if I had been able to move, I
just may have.
“Look, we were just wondering who the fuck your new friend is,” Sam said
sharply, his voice like a razor in the cool night sky.

My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open. Oh God, oh God, oh God, was
all I thought. Had they seen me with Gerard?

“Yeah,” Travis finally added, flinching his head up slightly. This was the
strongest I had seen him, without the aid of any kind of substance. This was
getting serious. Too serious.

“I don’t have a new friend,” I lied again, hoping they would believe
something. Anything.

“Fuck you, Frank,” Sam finally let out. He dropped his hand down from the
pole with an aggravated sigh. “Jesus. I thought we were friends? Why the
fuck are you acting like a little bitch?”

“I’m acting like a little bitch?” I spat back right away, leaning my body into
the conversation. I had no idea where the burst of extra confidence had come
from, considering the fear that had overcome me only moment earlier, but as
Sam’s eyes widened and he began to lean forward too, I knew this was a
mistake.

I couldn’t fight Sam. People just didn’t just fight Sam. He may have been
short, but God, he knew how to handle himself. He would kick their ass if
anyone ever tried anything, and so far, I had managed to avoid being on the
wrong side of a beating. I had been his friend, or so he thought, which made
me able to escape his fists. Now, he was accusing me of leaving them.
Friendship was just too fucking complicated.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I finally said, after pulling away from the center and
calming myself down. Sam recoiled as well, nodding his head and folding his
arms over his chest, satisfied. I knew he thought he had won inside his head,
and I was going to let him relish in that victory. He had stopped talking about
this new friend I had, which made me think that Sam knew shit. If he had
seen me and Gerard, he would have said something right away. I knew Sam’s
vindictive nature too well to realize he would not let something this
incriminating bypass him. We may not have been friends anymore, but I still
knew his personality. Friendships changed, but people rarely did entirely.
Even I was still the same semi-submissive Frank I had always been in front of
my friends, despite Gerard’s influence. I made a fucking mental note to listen
to him more.

“Are we done here?” I asked, shrugging my shoulders after we had all been
silent in our bitterness for awhile. I didn’t want to sound too rude, but my
anxiety manifested itself that way. I looked back up at Sam and Travis, my
eyebrows lowered just in case there would be another bout of anger. Instead,
Sam and Travis parted, and Sam extended his arm, allowing for me to pass
through.

“Be on your way, Frankie,” Sam said to me, being so polite and child-like, it
just came off as fucking mean. I crushed my eyes closed, and pushed my way
past them, keeping my head low to the ground. As the cold air from their
glares burned into me, I wondered just what the fuck had happened to my
friends.

“Oh, and Frank,” Sam called once more when I was only a pace ahead of
them. I stopped and stiffly turned around to meet them, my eyes closed in
aggression. What the fuck did they want now?

“Yeah?”

The way Sam looked at me, with a half-smile and a crooked glare, made me
think something else was behind his eyes. Something worse than seeing my
‘new friend,’ even if that was just bullshit. Sam had something under his
sleeve only for me, something that would hurt a lot more than losing their
friendship.

“We went to your house,” Sam started, his smile not faltering. He practically
hissed as his venom came out through words. “Next time you tell your
parents you’re with us, make sure you actually are.”

My eyes widened as my blood drained away from my body. I watched Sam


and Travis, both with evil, wicked grins on their faces, giggle for a while until
something inside of me just snapped. My stomach dropped, and my eyes
remained wide with horror.

And then, I ran all the way home.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mother to Mom

Part Two

It couldn’t have been more than ten o’clock at night, but all the lights were
turned off at my house. This was not a good sign. I hovered outside of the big
white door like the moths around my porch light. The ocher color cascaded
over me and the wings of the moths hummed in my ears as I debated what
the fuck I was going to do. I knew that Sam and Travis had done something.
Something fucking bad and I hated them for it. They had gone over to my
house and they had talked to my parents. At least one of them, and I didn’t
even want to think about what one it was yet. If it was my father, then I knew
I’d be dead the moment I got in the door. My mother had already informed
me that he had not been pleased the night I had shown up late. The next
morning at breakfast, he had cast scowls at me from across the table, but
hadn’t actually put those feelings of spite and malice into words so far. I
figured my mother had told him how happy I was or something, and she
managed to convince him not to be his normal militant self. Ever since then, I
had made sure I was home on time. The latest I had been since then was five
minutes, but that was nothing to fret about.

This was.

What if my parents were to find out I wasn’t even spending the time with the
people I told them? I couldn’t believe Sam and Travis had fucked me over.
They never came to visit me. Virtually never, unless I called first or we
arranged something, and they especially hadn’t been doing much in the past
few weeks. Why the fuck did they have to do it now? I knew it was jealousy.
Sam couldn’t take that I had found someone else, even if he didn’t know who
it was. Sam knew I had a new friend, and if it wasn’t him, then he had to
destroy it.

“I destroyed it so we could build it together,” Sam had told me the day we


first met and he had crushed my sand creation. He was going to crush this
too, just so he could have me back to himself again. It didn’t seem to matter
to him that I was unhappy and cast aside, so long as he had control over me.
The moment I had some futile little piece of myself, Sam had to take it away.
He had to make it a piece of himself.

I was beginning to see how damaging our friendship really was.

Though we had a lot of good times together, Sam dictated most of them with
his moods. He had been diagnosed as bipolar when he was about fifteen or
so, but it was never followed up on. He had only gone to the counselor
because he had been forced to by the school when they had discovered pot
in his locker. When his mom had heard the diagnosis, she immediately
thought it was pure shit. Sam was cast aside without treatment, left to take
out his negative energy on me. When we were kids, and we’d fight, they
would sometimes last for days at a time. We’d get vicious and violent with
each other, once even having to go to the office for starting a brawl in the
middle of the lunch room. Eventually, our wrath would calm down, but I could
never work up the nerve to go to Sam first. If I did, he’d still make some
bullshit excuse to be mad at me. I’d always have to wait for him to come and
act like everything was normal again. Then it would have to go back to being
the same as before. I couldn’t stay mad at him when he came back to me,
even if I still was. When I did wait around for him, because that was all I could
do, he’d later on give me bullshit about never caring about the friendship. It
was a lose-lose situation with Sam all the time.

Suddenly, I didn’t mind losing Sam. It was Gerard’s status I was more
concerned with.
As I stared and stood in front of the metal door, I seriously considered
running away to his place. I wouldn’t even need to pack a bag. I had clothes
on my back (not that I wore them when I was with Gerard) and he would feed
me. Most importantly, my guitar was there. My guitar belonged there, and
fuck, so did I. I really wanted to run away, especially because if I didn’t, then I
could have been forced to face losing everything at once. Logically, I knew
running would be pointless. If I told Gerard what had happened, he’d only
give me some random theory and then send me back on my way again. Or
Sam would lead my father (and a mob; we were Italian and this was Jersey,
after all) back to the apartment and everything would get torn down. I
needed to solve this on my own, even if I failed. I needed to do this by myself.

My mother was the first thing I saw when I went inside. In my house, when
you open the front door, there is a closet to the left, and then the staircase is
dead center, with the living room and kitchen around it on opposite sides. My
mother was sitting on the second step, her rose-colored robe wrapped around
her significantly smaller body. Her dark hair was gathered in the back with a
hairclip, all of her make-up and hair products removed. I saw the remnants of
a cotton nightgown and lace under the robe and realized that she was
probably waiting for me to get home before she could go to sleep. She had
done the same thing when I had shown up late, but she had at least waited in
the kitchen. She wanted to catch me as soon as I got in the door this time.
This couldn’t be a good sign.

Her hands were folded on her knees, her face down. Her head popped up
when I entered the house, the bags under her eyes more visible, and
matching the dark surroundings of the front hallway. We both froze almost as
our eyes locked, a worried and anxious smile spreading across her lips.

“Is dad home?” I asked too quickly, not even bothering with hellos. Hellos
were small talk; I had a feeling the next few minutes were going to be
anything but small. Besides, if dad was home, then I knew my death was
imminent.

“No,” she said softly, her eyes tracing down to her hands. I followed her gaze
and noticed a shade of dark pink set against her usually pristine hands. She
had been picking at her skin; a worried habit we both shared. “He went out
with his friends tonight. He certainly picked the right night for it.”
I could sense the emotion in her voice, only it wasn’t the harsh or bitter
quality I was used to with Sam, or even expecting from a worried parent. It
was tired and defeated - deflated. She had been so worn down each and
every time I called her and informed her of my whereabouts, and she had so
desperately wanted to believe me that one night I came home too late. She
badly wanted to believe I was happy, with my friends again. Those friends
had burst her bubble tonight and she was sinking lower and lower. I could see
in her eyes that she felt like a failure. I wasn’t entirely sure what she thought
she had failed at, and I was too afraid to ask.

“I’m sorry…” I finally apologized, my voice quiet and weak. I had been
standing in the doorway, the door wide open and ready for an escape. I
finally closed it and began to walk more into the house, but not too close.
This could all be a trick. My dad could have been hiding right around the
corner and ready to pounce on me.

I shook my head distinctly in the middle of the hall, not caring if my mother
saw. I hated how skeptical I was over my own fucking family. My own fucking
mother.

I blamed Sam for everything.

“Frank, where were you tonight?” she asked despairingly, tilting her head up
towards mine. Her eyes were sullen and weak, her mouth slightly agape in
horror that she had to even ask this question.

I had not lied to my parents since I was young; well, I had not been caught
lying. I had been a good little boy in my mother’s mind. Seeing this display
crushed tonight was absolutely heart-breaking for the both of us.

“And all of the other nights?” she questioned again, adding more fuel to the
fire. “And the weekends? What about the time you came home late? Where
have you been?”
With each word, she grew more and more fraught. With each lie unfolded, I
grew more and more ashamed.

“Out…” was all I said. It was all I could think of saying. Just like with Sam, I
didn’t know what to say or do. If I lied again, then I could get caught again.
But the truth was so much worse than ever getting caught. I had to lie to her,
but I had no idea what to say.

She heaved a long sigh upon hearing my response, and started to fiddle with
her hands. We stood in silence for a long time, the tension choking us and
making us both immobile and unable to speak.

“You know,” she started, her voice cracked as it hit the dry air. “I was
cleaning today. I went into your room. I know I shouldn’t have snooped, but
you shouldn’t have lied to me.” She shot me a quick glare, more out of
somber than fury. “I went through your things. Your closet, mostly. I was just
looking for laundry, I swear. If you didn’t leave it all over your floor instead of
in the basket, then I wouldn’t have had to do that. When I was in your closet,
I noticed that your guitar was gone…” She trailed off, taking a deep breath.

I felt my chest tighten when I heard my mother talk. I fucking hated it when
she went into my room like that. I spent most of my time cleaning the place
to avoid her nosy face in there. It was true that I had been lacking on my
laundering abilities, but fuck. I didn’t care if I had clean clothing for tomorrow.
I cared more about not getting caught tonight.

I quickly scanned my virtual memory for anything incriminating in my room,


and I deduced that I was okay. There may have been a few poems I had
written, but none of them were ever entitled “Ode to A Forty-Seven Year Old
Lover,” so I was pretty sure that things were safe. I still hated the fact that
she snooped, but like she had pointed out, I had lied.

We were even, I supposed.


“Yeah…” I said, waiting for her to continue. She said she didn’t find my
guitar, so what? It was at Gerard’s, but there was no way of knowing that.
She lifted her head to finally make eye contact with me.

“Are you taking guitar lessons?” she asked, her voice dead flat and serious.
Her eyes were wide open and reaching out to me. It was almost like she
wanted that – needed that to be the answer. If it was anything else other than
cute and fun guitar lessons, it might have killed her, especially in the state
she was in. She was already keeping so much from my father. Even if it was
just one night of me coming in late, she was still keeping it from him,
defending me, and not getting me grounded. My mother was usually so
submissive towards him. All of these things were huge fucking feats for her.

I didn’t actually want to say a yes out loud to her, because then it would only
trap me in another lie, if it were ever found out down the road. If I didn’t
verbalize it, I could dispute it. I didn’t know how else to answer, anyway. My
mother needed me to agree with her, and I didn’t know what other lie to
shove down people’s throats. I was already fucked over with so many. I knew
Gerard and I had to be a secret, there was no debating that. There was also
no debating that I was disappearing more and more, and it was now known I
wasn’t at my friend’s place the entire time. People were seeing me come out
of his apartment. I could deny the fact that he and I were in a sexual
relationship, but why the fuck was I going to his apartment every Goddamn
day then? I needed an excuse soon, but I wasn’t going to find one out in that
moment.

So I lied through my teeth, biting my tongue hard as I nodded.

My mother breathed out a sigh of relief, letting her head rest again. I felt my
heart swell inside, knowing that I had at least done one thing right that night.
When she met eyes with me, she was still tired and sad, but there was a new
hope in there.

“Am I in trouble?” I found myself asking. I sort of wanted to just remain quiet
and not poke at a seemingly good situation, but I had to know if I my dad was
going to find any of this out.

“I’m very mad at you,” she enunciated distinctly, her voice gaining any
authority she had lost before. I felt my heart pound n my chest as she looked
at me precariously. “I hate it when you lie to me, Frank. It makes me more
worried than I need to be.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again, motioning with my hands. “I’m so sorry.”

She looked at me suddenly, tilting her head to the side and squinting. It was
almost as if she saw something new she had failed to recognize before. I was
squirming and dying in the front hallway, but so was she. Sighing heavily, she
drew the conclusion that we both didn’t need to be in pain.

“You’re not in trouble,” she pronounced slowly. “Just please, don’t lie to me
again.”

She screwed up her face, scrunching up her nose like she smelled something
bad. I had no idea my lies were so obvious that they had a fucking smell to
them.

“I’m sorry…” I begged, because it was all I could do without breaking her only
request.

“It’s okay. I understand,” she started up quickly, talking at me rather than to


me. She had all these thoughts in her head, I could tell, and she needed to
get them out. There was no way my dad was going to listen, even if he was
up to speed on everything, so just like that night in the kitchen, I let her talk.
She needed to, and I wanted to hear.

“Your dad wouldn’t let you play, and you’re stubborn. You both are. You
probably got your stubbornness from him, too. You’re playing now and I
guess that’s how it’s going to stay. There are worse things out there. At least
you’re not coming home drunk every night!”

She gave a quick breath of laughter, then glanced over at me with precarious
eyes to affirm her statement. I smiled and laughed with her, putting her at
ease. I wondered if she had known exactly how many times I had come home
drunk before, but I didn’t press the issue.

“Guitar isn’t all that bad,” she stated, reassuring herself more so than me. “If
it’s making you happy…” She smiled at me again, and I did the same right
back.

“I am happy,” I said honestly, finally feeling good about something.

“Good,” she nodded, some of her hair falling down from her hair clip.

She got up off the stairs and brushed her robe down so there were no
wrinkles. She picked off a stray fiber, looked at it meticulously, and tossed it
down on the stairs. I stood awkwardly, shifting my weight from foot to foot.

“I won’t tell your father. Just be careful,” she warned me with finality. “You
got your stubbornness from him, but you also got your clever ways. If I can
figure this out, he can too.”

There was an ominous tone to her voice I had never heard before. It was an
empty threat, something she wasn’t going to do directly, but it still hung in
the air, the implications evident. She wouldn’t tell my father, but I had to
start being more careful. He could figure all of this out just as easily as she
had. And, in a way, he could figure it out more. My mother was simple, and
didn’t like to suspect people, especially those she loved. My father didn’t care
if he loved them; in fact, he would probably suspect the people he loved
more because they had more merit in his life. If he knew I was taking guitar
lessons, he wouldn’t just stop there. He would keep investigating, or at least
trying to, and then, the real truth would come out. I couldn’t let that happen,
and she was telling me that indirectly. I needed to cover up my tracks a lot
better than I had been doing.

I needed to think of a new lie.

She brushed off her somber nature quickly thereafter, clucking her tongue in
her mouth with a small laugh. I nodded, and as she began to go up the stairs,
I followed closely behind.

I knew she wasn’t just warning me about my dad. She was warning about
other things, other people. I could see it in her eyes that the guitar lessons
was what she wanted to believe. What she needed to. She still knew that
deep down in her heart, that’s not what I was doing. After all, what kind of
guitar lessons last all weekend? She knew something else was up. She may
not have known the exact issue involved, but she knew something was going
on with me. She probably just thought it was a girl, and decided to not
intervene because I was happy. I wasn’t coming home drunk, and it wasn’t
hurting anyone. Yet. She wanted me to be careful just in case I did, and just
in case more people than my father caught on.

As I sat on my bed that night, I thought long and hard. I would have to do
something about my friends, and it honestly should have been done months
ago. Even if they weren’t around fucking up my lies, I realized how truly
destructive my relationship with Sam was. I couldn’t be around him anymore;
he couldn’t be my friend. It was too hard, and I was a different person. Even if
I hadn’t welcomed art or Gerard into my life, I had still cast aside alcohol and
drugs. That was their main existence and I didn’t need to live that way
anymore. I wasn’t entirely sure how someone was supposed to ‘break up’
with a friend, but I hoped the process wasn’t too horrific.

I needed to talk to Gerard. I needed to find out what to do about everything,


so I could avoid the intense fear I felt tonight. I did not want to have to live
my life this way, running from one lie to the next, dread hitched in my chest
and throat. I usually didn’t mind lying so much, but I found that tonight, the
act came harder and not just because I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t lie
to my mother as easily as I once had. At first, I had no idea why. What was so
different about this night from the one on Sunday? All the other times I had
lied to her when I was stealing, doing drugs, and yes, coming into the house
when I was drunk?

The realization came slow, after repeating her words, mannerisms, and tired
expression in my head. Tonight had been the only night since I was a child
that my mother had actually felt like a person to me. She wasn’t just
someone who shared the house with me, and occasionally made small talk
with. She was no longer another identity smeared in with my father. Tonight,
she had removed herself from him, telling me that she would keep secrets
from the person she was once so attached to. Before, it had always been my
mother and father, as if they were one person, one word. If there was
anything separate, it was my father. He was the authority. My mother was a
far cry from authority right now, but she was something better.

She was my mom again. Not my mother; someone who was forced to look
after me, give me food and shelter, but my mom; someone who was going to
talk to me, care about me, and protect me from things. Even if those things
were my father, and protecting me meant lying to herself every day. She was
going to hurt herself, so she didn’t hurt me. She was doing it all because she
loved me, and I was surprised to realize just how much I loved her back.

I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my chest. My mom was a real person,
not just a parental unit. I liked that idea, a lot. More than I thought I would.
Most teenage boys want their mothers the fuck out of their life. I didn’t. I had
possessed that mentality for most of my earlier teenage years. I was
welcoming the change now, along with a lot of others. The only other person
that I saw as a true being was Gerard, and though I didn’t quite have the
same, or as strong of a respect for my mom, I saw her in a better light. I saw
how much she loved and cared for me, but just as I was drifting off to sleep, I
realized how much I was hurting her at the same time. She was sacrificing
herself and her sanity to believe the lies I told her, while disassociating from
my father. I was changing, and so was she, but she was changing around me
– for me. She was forgetting herself in all this mess, and in turn, forgetting
how much being a mom actually hurt.

Being a mother and child was easy. There was less care involved. Being a
mom and a son, however, was something entirely different. It was tiring her
out. I wondered how long it would take before I finally broke her.
You destroy the things you love, Gerard had told me. I loved my mom a lot
right then. I only hope that when I did destroy her, because it was inevitable
if I continued on this path, that she would understand.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Questions

The next morning, I skipped school. I didn’t care what happened to me, I just
needed answers. I wasn’t too worried about getting caught by the school
when I skipped. The worse that would happen was that they would call me
down to the office the next day and ask to explain myself. That had only
happened once out of my entire high school career, when I was in grade nine.
For the most part, if you were in the upper grades and not failing your
courses, you were semi-ignored in the system. It would still appear on your
transcript as a missing class, but the teachers and principals didn’t really give
a fuck where you were. They figured you were old enough to fuck up your
life, so they would let you. The staff still held some responsibility for the
failing kids and had to pull out of class to smack some sense into them, but
even they slipped past the radar sometimes. If you skipped enough times,
you got to know what teachers would let you get off with it. It was a big
school and there were other things that they needed to deal with, like kids
keeping switchblades or drugs in their locker, and the trivial school gang
planning a makeshift rumble outside the seven-eleven. I knew I wouldn’t get
caught. And this time, I didn’t even have to wait extra late for my parents to
not see me sneak out my guitar.

I left earlier than usual, avoiding my father at all costs and giving a little nod
to my mother. Things weren’t better between us by any means; she was still
submissive and wishy-washy around my father (everyone was) but there was
a shared understanding in our eyes. She knew (or thought she knew) my
biggest secret. It was okay again, for a little while, at least. My heart still
ached knowing that we weren’t sharing the same thing, but sometimes, you
just have to let people dream.

I needed to complete my dream. I needed to see Gerard, because right then,


there were giant holes in the clouds that I had been resting upon. I needed a
new thread of lies to start sewing everything back together again. Gerard
always had answers. I could go to him.

I arrived at his place relatively at the same time as I had the day before.
Only, he wasn’t sleeping. When I turned my key into the lock and practically
barged inside, he was sitting on the bench that lead to the open windows,
actually wearing clothing. I wondered if he had seen me walking, and why he
was actually fully clothed if he had. He didn’t move as I came inside the small
apartment. I shut the door behind me and dropped my small bag off to the
side before I went up behind him.

“Gerard,” I called as I walked, hopefully getting him to turn around. It worked


and as he looked over at me, his eyes widened and he gave a little mock
jump of surprise.

“Frank!” he said casually – too casually, making me think he was humoring


me. “If I had known you were coming, I would have gotten undressed.”

He gave me a little devious smile that normally would have had me grinning
right back, but my mind was occupied by other things.

“I need to tell you something,” I informed him, my face twisted with worry. I
had walked in with such haste that I had over shot where I was standing and
ended up leaning over slightly. I placed my hands in the back pockets of my
jeans instinctively and shrugged my shoulders, unsure of how to bring the
issue up. Gerard’s countenance fell, and he twisted his face right back at me,
but with more of a mocking glare.

“You’re skipping school again,” he stated randomly, looking back at me


oddly. I could tell he was in a joking mood this morning. Perhaps our
discussion the night before had still left him horny and rambunctious.

“Yeah, but there are more important things than school,” I told him in a huff,
raising one of my arms, over-exaggerating. I had crushed my eyes closed,
but when I opened them again, he was merely giving me a conniving smile. I
sighed again, rubbing my temples. I never thought a day would come where I
wanted him to stop his seductive glare.

“Sam and Travis saw me coming out of here last night.”

That seemed to do the trick to snuff out his dirty thoughts. His raised
eyebrows fell down abruptly, his mouth tipping open and off to the side as he
in took a deep breath. He looked around the room, then at me, and nodded.

“And what happened?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. He looked
worried, but it seemed like his concern was directed at me. Granted, I was in
need of some worry, but did he forget about himself in this situation? He was
the one who was going to go down for all of this if we were caught.

“I don’t know…” I confessed, balling my fists in the rough fabric of my pants.


“They asked me questions. I couldn’t answer them. And my mom found out I
was lying, too. I still couldn’t answer her questions… I just don’t know what to
do, Gerard.” I swallowed hard and let out a sigh, my arms waving and
shoulders shrugging wildly as I talked.

Gerard merely leaned forward on his black clothed legs. He placed his elbows
on his thighs and held his face in his hands, very distinguished as he asked,
“And then what happened?”

“God, Gerard! Aren’t you upset?” I cried out in aggravation. My voice cracked
as I hit the higher note at the end of my phrase, my head shaking slightly.
How could he be so fucking calm? Especially when I was asking for help? He
was supposed to help me. That was what Gerard was there for.

“Why would I be upset?” he countered, his face becoming whole and serious.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied sarcastically, waving my hands in the air. I didn’t
mean to take my anger out on him, it was just happening. “Maybe because
you could go to jail?”

“Eh, prison isn’t so bad,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm. “At least
they feed and clothe you, and give you a roof over your head. I’m sure it
would be difficult to do art inside, but I’m willing to bet that I could have
Vivian or you slip me some supplies through the bars.”

“Gerard!” I enunciated through clenched teeth. The idea of him being taken
away from me was so prominent and so close, I did not need him adding
humor to the situation. Not one little bit.

“Frank, calm down,” he soothed, losing his sardonic nature. He got up from
the bench gracefully, walked over to me, and put a hand on my back. I
wriggled out of the embrace for a second, feeling the side effects afterwards.
We both closed our eyes tightly and I murmured a sorry, which he merely
brushed off.

“It’s okay,” he insisted, placing the hand there again. I let it stay. He rubbed
my back for awhile, our bodies coming closer together. He led me over to the
couch, where he continued to have at least one hand on me, either my back
or knee. I was sitting on the edge of the couch, while he settled completely
inside, almost being swallowed by the orange fabric.

“Aren’t you at least a little bit worried’?” I asked him quietly.

“Yes, I am,” he confessed earnestly. His fingers delicately brushed the


notches in my spine for support. “I don’t want us to get caught, Frank. I don’t
ever want us pulled apart before we’re ready. But, I know it may happen. I
know that, logically, but we haven’t been very logical the past few days.”

“What do you mean?”


Gerard sighed, taking his hand back and rubbing his face. “You keep skipping
school. You keep coming home late-”

“That was just one time…”

“True enough, but that’s all it takes, Frank. Just one time. We screw up once,
and that could be the end of us.”

He was speaking so calmly, so matter-of-factly, and I hated it. He would grow


despondent every once in awhile, but he was sitting back and taking it.
Literally. He was sitting, being swallowed by the couch while I teetered on the
edge of sanity. I didn’t understand how we could be so different, but in the
exact same situation.

He noticed me staring at him intently, and started to lean forward a bit. He


touched my knee, in a vain attempt to calm me. “Don’t worry right now
though, okay? We don’t need to. If things had turned out badly from
whatever happened last night, I think the cops would have been here by
now.”

We both tried to laugh or at least smile and brush away the remark, but the
heaviness of almost getting caught weighed us down.

“But what if there are other times? Other times where I’m not so lucky?” I
probed further, though it hurt me. I turned around, and gradually let myself
sink a little more into the couch with Gerard. He moved his arm, taking my
hand in his instead of rubbing my back.

“I’ll have to deal with it then.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, squeezing his hand. “I thought we were in this
together?”
“We are,” he whispered, drawing himself closer to me. “We’re always in this
together.”

He leaned over and kissed me lightly, his lips hovering over my own, and his
other hand touching the side of my face. I pressed back into him eagerly,
trying to prolong the kiss, but I was unsuccessful. I wanted him so much right
then, probably because I had been so close to losing him. His hand was warm
and comforting in my own, and I missed that feeling all over my body. I
wanted to kiss and touch and fuck him all day. Even if we had just done that
the day before, so many things had happened. Usually, I stared at my dull
wall for most of the night when he wasn’t around, but last night, everything
was almost taken away. I needed him more than ever now because I had to
store up, just in case there was no later.

“We are in this together, we need each other. But…” he started up again,
moving away so he could talk rather than kiss. He narrowed his eyes at me
caringly. “Save yourself in this, Frank. If we get caught, don’t worry about
me. Always save yourself.”

My mouth hung open in shock. I tried to speak a few times, it all coming out
in small squeaks, before I finally found the words.

“But why? If we’re in this together, how can I just leave you?”

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, not answering my question. He gave a weak smile,


and squeezed my hand a little more. Neither action helped to put me at ease.

“That doesn’t answer my question, Gerard,” I stated, my voice quaking


slightly. I wasn’t going to cry; I wasn’t even close. I was just so fucking
emotional this past day. I needed to smoke. To drink. To fuck. To do
something other than debate our less than stellar future.

“Frank,” he told me, voice clear and fluid like water. His large free hand
gripped the side of my face, his palm unmistakably warm against my skin. He
looked into my eyes deeply as he continued to talk. “I’m older than you. I’ve
had a life. I can take whatever punishments they may give me. I can face the
scrutiny. I’ve faced it all my life living here, alone with my art. It’s nothing
new to me.” He paused, taking in a deep breath, and focusing on me even
more than before. “But you, Frank. You’re young, beautiful, artistic… you
have a life ahead of you. I can’t get in the way.”

“But you’re not in the way!” I almost screamed. I wanted to pull away from
his grip because he was making me so mad, but I couldn’t stand to be away
from him at the same time. Did he not realize that I would not be any of those
things – beautiful and artistic – without his fucking help? I would be dead
without him, either mentally or physically.

“I will be in the way if we’re found out,” he enunciated slowly, picking apart
every word. “Society won’t see me as you see me, Frank. Our opinions on
ourselves and our situations are invalid. Everyone has their own
interpretations of art.”

“Fuck society,” I spat at him, my voice wavering with the amount of emotion I
was putting into it. I kicked my foot a little, not knowing what to do with my
body in its angry state. “We won’t be found out.”

Gerard smiled then, despite the serious nature of our conversation. “We can’t
control that, Frank. Just look at what happened last night. It’s a warning
sign.”

His words hurt me more than they should have. He was just being a realist,
not the dreamer I was used to. The words were almost foreign against his
tongue. My chest tightened again and I thought it was going to crack in half.

“We can’t live our lives in this manner for much longer,” he started again, a
sullen quality to his voice.
“Then how are we supposed to live?” I shot back, my jaw locked with fury.
This was the only life I had ever had where I was living. I couldn’t die again.
There was only so much my body could take.

“We’re supposed to live like it’s our last day alive.” There was a mysticism to
his voice, and it seemed so much farther away from me. His eyes wandered
around the room, his face pensive. When he came back to me, his voice was
strong, sure of himself. “In essence, we were doing that already. We were
doing what we loved and not caring about the consequences. We were
happy. But we were blind to the fact that our death was imminent and it
made everything less special.”

I scoffed. How could these past few weeks not be special? I didn’t get what he
meant, and I was a little insulted by it. We were living like it was our last
days, but wasn’t it better that we weren’t aware of our death? It meant we
didn’t have a reason for doing what we did; we just did it. We didn’t know our
death was close, we were just having fun in the moment. I thought doing
things out of instinct was better because you had the right answer all along? I
didn’t know anymore. I sighed, not wanting to fight him at this point, and
leaned back into the couch.

“I need your help, Gerard,” I started slowly, trying to level my breathing. He


tilted his head a little, paying close attention. “If I can think of what to tell
people about us, about me coming here, about everything, then maybe we
can avoid being caught. At least for a little while.”

He sighed quietly, and then unexpectedly pulled me into a hug. He stroked


the back of my head and hair, and I got the worse feeling in the pit of my
stomach. It felt like someone had scooped out its contents and dished them
all on a platter. Gerard’s hug was so tender – too tender. It was almost as if
we were saying goodbye.

“We can still live like it’s our last day, like we know our death is soon,” I
pleaded, trying to draw back to his point. I cringed under the words meaning,
but pressed forward frantically. “Just tell me what to tell people now so we
can avoid that death for a little while longer.”
“Frank, shhh” he insisted calmly, stroking my hair and willing me to shut up. I
balled my fists into the black fabric of his shirt and tried to pull away. I
wanted to scream no over and over again, but I couldn’t. Gerard held me
tighter, and continued his statement, his voice resonating the truth I didn’t
want to hear. “I can’t do that for you.”

“Why?” I yelped into his shoulder. My eyes were watering under the closed
tight lids and my voice was weak and hoarse.

Fuck, this was not happening. I thought I had been home free, avoiding
certain death at home, and now Gerard was killing me. Weren’t we supposed
to be preserving this? Worst of all, I was crying. At least starting to. My eyes
were just watering, but so far nothing had fallen from the tear ducts, and
fuck, I was going to make sure it stayed that way. I pinched part of my hand
with my fingernail, hoping to deflect some of my inner pain onto something
more tangible. It worked. I blinked and choked back whatever I had just had
inside of me.

“You can’t answer anyone’s questions if you can’t ask them yourself,” he said
seriously, his words resembling that of the philosophies he always used.

It threw me off guard. Threw me off so much, I forgot that my eyes were
probably red and pulled away and look at him. He let me move, but still held
on tightly to my arms. I could still feel a rim of dampness around my eyelids,
but I blinked it back until it was unnoticeable. Even the reason I was crying
had been lost among his other words. He wasn’t breaking up with me, he was
trying to teach me something else.

“What?” I asked, my voice still weak.

“Frank,” Gerard said, a small hint of anguish in his eyes as he closed them,
grabbing both of my hands. He realized I had been on the verge of tears and
was now trying to be extra gentle with me. We were facing each other on the
couch now, but his arms were extended so that his fingers grazed my knees
through my jeans, sending shivers up my spine.

“Exactly what happened last night? You never told me the full story,” Gerard
requested, furrowing his brows.

“Oh…”

Once I collected my thoughts into some coherency, I began to tell him the
whole thing, right from when I stepped outside and noticed the bright liquor
store lights, finishing with my mother and I sharing a secret. He nodded his
head thoughtfully, rubbing my knee as he pondered a moment.

“You couldn’t answer them because you don’t know how to form a question
yourself, Frank,” he finally stated easily, like it was the simplest thing in the
world.

“What?”

“You don’t know how to ask questions,” he repeated again, folding both arms
across his chest now and leaving me with a lack of physical contact.

“What?” I probed further, trying to lean forward and grasp at him. “I can’t ask
a question? Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?”

“Well, yes,” he agreed, shifting his weight, and then his viewpoint. “And no.”

“Explain, please,” I demanded, not in the mood to play around.

“You can ask questions, Frank, but they’re not real questions. You ask things
for clarification. Why? What? Who? That sort of thing. You never ask real
questions, the deep, hard hitting stuff. You never ask what is really on your
mind, and what you really want to know.” He paused, his arms poised on his
knees, hands raised up in the air. He locked a cynical eye on me, letting his
wrist drop from its elevated position. “Especially about me.”

“Huh? But I know a lot about you. I’ve asked questions.”

“Yes, but I’ve always started the conversation. I’ve always started the story,
and you’ve just asked the who, where, what, when, why, and how of it. You
never actually asked me to tell you my story. I just did it,” he clarified, his
voice thick and strong. “I’m here for you to learn from, and you don’t ask me
anything. It’s a waste.”

I was taken aback, his harsh words hurting me in that moment more so than
helping me.

“But…” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish anything anymore. I could see
the difference now, between Gerard’s definition of real and pointless
questions, but I thought I had asked real ones, especially to him. I began to
relive our conversations in my mind and the more pieces I put together, the
more images of a quiet me fawning over his every word came to mind. I
never led the discussion with words. My questions and I were merely
backburners, just there to pick up the slack and ask for details a narrator
would forget about. I relived last night, and noticed that no answer that I had
given was a complete one. I had done an awful job at lying when I was with
my friends, totally deflecting everything, and my mother had fed me the
guitar lessons story. I probably wouldn’t have been able to come up with
anything to tell her if she had not found the missing instrument. I wasn’t good
at this game at all, I began to realize. Whatever it was, questions or answers,
I was always following. Never leading.

“Frank.” Gerard’s voice was gentler this time, and his hand reached forward
to touch my knee. I looked at him, his anguished, serious demeanor gone and
his playfully momentous countenance back. He leaned forward, his lips just
barely above my ear.
“Ask me anything,” his whispered, pulling back from me slowly and leaving
me to relish in the thought. He pressed his lips to mine, silencing me until I
could think of a question. So many came at me all at once, I felt like I was
drowning.

Gerard had always been an enigma to me, even after he had given me a key
to his apartment, and let me be a part of him physically, mentally, and
emotionally. There were things about Gerard I wanted to know, things I
shouldn’t know (but wanted to anyway), and things that I needed to know –
and now I could ask them all. My thoughts pooled into this vast ocean I had
created, ready to take all of me without a second guess. Some questions I
had were waves, rapids even, with white dotted heads, crashing up against
the inside of my psyche. Others were small ripples, only taking place because
the others had caused them to be pushed forward. I was standing at the
shore, looking down on them all, not knowing what one to swim into first.
Rocks lined the coast, my thoughts appearing as an oasis in a beach. I kissed
Gerard, and it was as if I had picked up a flat black rock like I did when I was
younger, and skipped it across the surface. The questions still came in waves,
but I had something to calm them down; to remind them I was coming. At the
moment, I was busy.

I concentrated on kissing him, slipping my tongue past his lips and rubbing
my hands up and down his back. The feelings from before of almost losing
him, twice (even if one was me overreacting), came back to me, and all I
wanted to do was touch him all over and make sure he was still there. I
crawled into his lap, wrapping my legs around his waist. I heard his breathing
change and start to quicken, while moans began to erupt in his throat as our
crotches rubbed together through the out-of-place fabric. I slipped my hands
around his back, finding the end of his shirt. I lifted it up carelessly, and
pressed my warm palms into his skin. It had been so long since we had done
these actions with clothing on; I wanted to rid us of the unnecessary barrier
soon. Our actions calmed me and made all of my questions line up in order of
importance, each wave coming to the shore and tickling my feet in
recognition. I drew our lips apart, a sly smile spreading across my face before
I formed a small inquiry, a mere ripple design in the ocean that was coming.

“Do you want to go to your bedroom?”


He smiled and nodded, knowing that we were both just getting started.

***

We lay on the bed, aftermath of sex in the air around us. We hadn’t even
bothered to crawl under the sheets, just making love (or art, as he insisted
upon) on top of them, too rushed and focused to even notice we had not
curled them back as usual. I had grabbed his hand in mine and led him from
the couch and through the black door, taking the lead for once. Inside his
room, we had resumed the consumption of the other’s lips and faces,
clothing tossed down like they were nothing. I undid his pants slyly while I
dove my tongue in and out of his mouth, then slipping down to his neck, until
finally I was on my knees in front of him. He was wearing no underwear as
usual, and he spilled out in front of my face as I rolled the tight pants off of
his round hips.

I had given him very few blowjobs, maybe two or three since that night where
he had needed my assistance to get up, but I was getting the hang of it. I
usually only sucked on him for foreplay and to help him get and stay hard. He
was already hard now, his skin taking on a dark red hue from all of the blood
rushing to the one area. I stared at it for a few moments while I pumped him
over and over again with one of my fists, his hands coming down to rest on
my shoulders. I took him in my mouth fairly easily, and began to suck long
and hard. I was surprised at how much I was getting into it, my hands
gripping his bare butt as my face collided again and again with his front. He
hit the back of my throat at one point, and though my eyes watered and I
gagged a bit, I had still done it. It always amazed me how he could do that to
me so easily, but I figured he just had many years of practice, and I was still
just starting out.

We were going fast with a lot of our actions; the tearing off of clothing,
kissing frantic spots, and when he finally dragged me onto the bed before he
came, our sex was rushed and urgent too. It was the first time we hadn’t
actually gone slow and sensual like we normally did. He would always move
and in and out of me steadily, only speeding up slightly to get himself off. I
had been getting better at controlling myself when I fucked him. It was really
hard; I was still a teenager and when something felt good, I wanted to do it
really fast and all the time. When we had sex on the bed that day, though we
were going faster than usual, it was by no means just blatant animalistic fast
fucking. Gerard was still tender, taking time to brush hair out of my face and
kiss me before we both came. It was after we both climaxed that it began to
draw down to a slow pace, me sliding out of him and rolling over to my side,
staring up at the ceiling while we both caught our breath. His hand, though
clammy and sweaty, reached over and clasped mine as we breathed hard
and heavy, in some form of nonverbal communication.

“We do this too much,” I stated with a blunt humoristic edge. I let out a slight
chuckle after, knowing how true it really was. Today wasn’t an out of ordinary
day. We always did this almost the second I was in the door, and sometimes
again before I left for the day.

“Impossible,” Gerard countered in his high and mighty voice. He flipped over,
bracing himself with his elbow and placed a small kiss on my pink and
swollen lips. “Simply impossible. You can never have too much sex. Like you
can never have too much art, music, or beauty.” He brought his other hand
over to me, his fingers magically dancing just above the bare flesh on my
stomach. I shivered under his lack of touch, his words entering my system.

“True,” I agreed, taking his hand in my own again and bringing it up to my


face, so I could nip at the fingers. He smiled and finally gave in, just touching
my stomach wholly and no longer teasing. “But this can’t be normal, can it?”

“Define normal,” he scoffed, chipper tone still remaining. “I think the


situation we are in is far from normal, Frank.”

I rolled my eyes, finding new words. He always managed to find a mistake in


what I was saying, making me almost always rephrase everything I said. At
least I was becoming very skilled at the English language again.
“But can this be healthy?” I emphasized. “Is it possible to have too much
sex?”

Gerard laughed again, tipping his head back and exposing his pale neck. I
had to resist the urge to reach forward and mark it up with the purple marks
that had started to fade.

“Oh, Frank,” he uttered, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “You really
are hilarious.”

“Hey –” I countered, getting somewhat defensive. He hadn’t called me


hilarious since we first started seeing each other everyday. He hadn’t picked
on my naivety in a while. I thought I was finally catching up to his stature.
Little did I know, no one could ever catch up to Gerard.

“Hush,” he said, placing another quick kiss on my lips, it working to aid in his
command. “When you find something you love to do,” he started, looking
down at me and giving me a slight wink, “you want to do it all the time. It’s
healthy. It’s normal. It’s what I do with my art.”

I shot a look up at him, making a feeble attempt to cock an eyebrow. He


understood my perverted joke and rolled his eyes.

“Not like that,” he jested, pushing me a little with the hand he had on my
chest. “Get your mind out of the gutter. I do my art whenever I get the
chance. And when I’m with you, I take every opportunity to be with you in
every way. Even if it is starting to have effects on me.” His voice projected a
dark humor when referring to his small inability.

“It’s okay,” I insisted, flipping myself on my side too, placing a hand on his
chest and pulling him slightly closer. My hand began to roam in between our
two bodies until I grasped him in between us. It wasn’t hard, and I didn’t
expect it to get that way anytime soon, but I still clutched and rubbed it softly
to prove my point.
“I don’t mind helping you out there.” I gave him a devious smile, which he
returned as our lips met.

After we pulled away, and Gerard started to trace his fingers up my back
again, I thought about what he had said. It made sense about our sexual
exploration and his art habits. I could remember when I was a kid and just got
my first bike. I rode it constantly, to the point where the rubber on the tires
had started to crack and peel away. I loved it so much and never wanted to
be away from it. But after awhile and after a few tire repairs, I rode it less and
less, until it became another shadow of my childhood, hiding in the garage
with my soccer ball and boy scout uniform.

“Will we ever get tired of this?” I asked Gerard suddenly. His fingers stopped
tracing, and rested steady and firm on my back, in an attempt to keep me
grounded and secure.

“Who knows?” he stated honestly, his eyebrows raising to show the


uncertainty of it all. I felt my heart flutter and drop.

“I haven’t been painting as much as I usually do in the past few days. There
are some mornings where I wake up and I just don’t feel like it. There have
been weeks like that. But I’m still an artist. I still love paint. And when I finally
go back to it after that urge in me has returned, it’s always ten times better. I
feel it ten times more. And I fall in love with it all over again.”

His eyes had been darting around the room as he talked about his first love,
his voice high and happy. He returned his gaze to me, adding a caring and
serious tone as he continued. “I’ll be the same way with us. Right now, you’re
new – we’re new. We want everything. And we’re taking everything every
moment we can. Later on, we may be satisfied. We will not have sex as often,
but I think the passion will still be there.” A deep smile spread across his face,
baring his tiny teeth and deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. “There
will always be passion between artists. It just can’t be helped.”
I nodded my head thoughtfully, his infectious smile and contagious reasoning
drilling its way into my head. It made sense again, but everything Gerard said
did. Even if I never understood it fully, he seemed to radiate reason and logic,
but in the most illogical manner. He was a genius, and I sometimes wondered
just how his thought process worked. I wanted to be inside his head. I had
already managed to be inside his body and soul, but his mind seemed like
unmarked territory. I didn’t think even he knew what was going on in his
head most of the time. I wanted to find out, I wanted to see what was buried
beneath those striking olive eyes.

Gerard had said that we were new. What about the older people in his mind?
The other people he had shared this passion with? What happened to them?
And then I remembered the very reason we were sitting on this bed, and why
I was missing another day of school. I had been prompted to ask questions. I
had been given a key to his head, and just like the one to his apartment, I
needed to use it. I just hoped I didn’t drown in the thoughts. I tightened my
grip on his side, clinging onto him as if he were a lifeboat.

“Gerard,” I started, my voice creeping into the silence of the room. It seemed
then, that I was asking more than a question. It seemed like I was taking a
test, only in reverse. Gerard’s eyes met my focus, his face wholesome and
blank. He waited for the words to come out of my mouth, knowing where they
were coming from.

“How many people have you been with?” I blurted out, getting it off my
chest. And when I did, yet another thing came to mind and it flew past my
lips before I could stop it. “This passion…how many people have you felt that
with?”

“Ah, well,” Gerard smiled. We had started our new lesson. “You are asking
two very different questions there, Frank. I have been with many people, but
felt passion with very little.”

I nodded again, my mouth slightly agape. “Tell me about all of them.”

He grinned artfully, pleased that I was learning so quickly. “I’m glad you
skipped today,” he stated out of the blue.

“Why?”

“Because we are definitely going to need the whole day for this!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Answers

Gerard began to tell me his story in of the order of events, myself only
cutting in to ask even more questions. Before, when I had interrupted his
stories, like the ones about the two poet lovers, he had teased me and told
me to wait and be patient. Now, he was accepting my voracious glares and
fast mouth, spurting inquiry after inquiry about the many men (and one
woman) that Gerard had been with. I didn’t have to ask too many clarifying
questions; he definitely gave me enough detail.

“First, there was Simon…” he started. We had made our way under the
covers, knowing that we should probably get comfortable. Gerard was almost
half a century; who knew how long it would take us to tell all the stories he
had accumulated?

Gerard was sitting against the headboard, bare chest exposed, and blankets
drawn up to his thick middle. He had his arm around me, pulling me close. I
put my head on his shoulder, listening as he spoke. I had my hand draped
around his chest so I could feel his heart beating and his lungs expanding
with every big mouthful of air he took in. I would look up at him as he went
on, watching the way his chin moved at a jagged angle, waiting my turn to
ask anything I needed to.

“He was my first,” Gerard started up again, waving his free hand as he
talked. “First everything. Kiss, boyfriend, fuck…”
“How old were you when you first had sex?” I chimed in, a question perking
up in my mind already.

“Fourteen.”

“What?” I coughed, moving to stare Gerard in the eyes.

Fourteen was so young, especially considering I only just lost my virginity at


seventeen, and that was still pretty young. There was such a pressure in high
school, especially if you were male, to just get it over with, but even with the
pressure, the bragging, and peer stories, many people were still virgins.
There must have been at least a fifty-fifty split. The ones who had lost theirs
had done so pretty early, but never fourteen - at least, no one I knew
personally. I was sure someone had, but they didn’t broadcast it. I was pretty
sure Sam said he lost his when he was fifteen, but then again, he could have
been lying; he was always so full of shit. I knew kids lost their virginity fairly
early for my generation, considering all the sex in the media, but holy fuck.
Gerard was thirty years older than me. I thought his generation would have
been more conservative, particularly since he was gay. Did people even know
how to have gay sex back then? It was such a hidden lifestyle around when
Gerard would have just been discovering that part about himself. At least
nowadays they talked about shit like this on TV a lot. I couldn’t imagine the
frustration involved in liking men sexually, but not knowing what to do with
them. Apparently, he had never had this problem. Sex was a natural instinct,
and he had managed to figure something out.

Gerard merely smiled at my horrified expression. “Yes, fourteen, Frank. I


didn’t make a mistake. I am quite old, but I’m not losing my mind…yet.”

“But… but…” I ignored his joke, trying to grasp my words. “That’s just so
young.”

Gerard just nodded his head, and gave a weak answer of, “I know.”
I stared at him awhile, calming down enough to get back into my original
position. “How was it?” I finally probed, feeling myself stiffen under his arm.

He laughed again, his free hand going to his face as the embarrassing
memory came back to him. “Awkward. Weird. I was freaking out and I was
naked. I didn’t know what was happening and then it was over.” He laughed
again, looking down at me.

I smiled up at him, my insides beaming. I was somewhat glad to hear that his
first time had been a mess. Even though it was long out of the way, I could
feel jealousy stirring within me as he mentioned another man’s name. I could
tell that this conversation would bring out my possessive and sensitive
nature, even if the relationships were over, but I still wanted to know.

“Was that…taking it?” I asked nervously, unsure of saying exactly what I


wanted.

“Yes.” Gerard nodded, ceasing all speech.

Normally, he would have gone on and on with the story, but he waited,
purposely baiting me, so I would cave and ask.

“How was it when you gave it?”

“A little better,” he continued with a smile on his face. “I was still fourteen
and still very naked, but I wasn’t as freaked out. We had done it a few times
so I had gotten used to it, but that was from the other end. When I tried to do
it to him…” He began to chuckle again, his hand covering his eyes as he
shook his head. “Well, this time I didn’t know what I was doing, then it was
over.”

I smiled, beaming even more inside because none of our sexual experiences
together had been like that, and hopefully never would. Maybe I wasn’t as
naïve as I thought. I snuggled up closer to him, nudging him with my head.
“Keep going.”

He nodded, kissing the top of my forehead before continuing on, finishing up


the little details about Simon. His voice took on a story-teller quality, bringing
me right back to the small, red brick house where he had grown up.

“He was my next door neighbor. It was the summer before I started high
school and my mother insisted that I go and talk to this boy about what it was
like. He was sixteen and already attending the school I was going to go to
come September.” Gerard paused for a second, just as my mouth hung open.

I had been a bit shocked at the age difference; two years was a lot when you
weren’t even in high school yet. And to be having sex so young with someone
in a different level of schooling was a lot, too. I couldn’t imagine losing my
virginity before high school. That sounded too scary to me, considering I had
barely finished puberty by that time. I still had yet to have my growth spurt,
and looking back now, I really didn’t think my spurt consisted of more than
three inches. I could remember my first day of high school and how all the
other guys around me where so much bigger, taller, and stronger than I was.
The school corridors were dense, with most of the kids in the town being fed
into the Godforsaken place. That first day, I had crashed into someone in the
hallway. He loomed over me; his breath hot in my face as he yelled at me to
get the fuck out of his way. Recalling the memory in Gerard’s bed, I was
pretty sure he was sixteen years old. I couldn’t imagine losing my virginity –
up the ass, no less – to someone like that. It would be so… awkward, to use
Gerard’s delicate wording.

I looked back at Gerard, about to mention something about the alarming age
difference between Simon and himself, when I recalled the situation we were
in. Gerard wasn’t in a different level of schooling, but decades older. Three
decades older, consisting of thirty fucking years. That was some age different
right there; enough to be illegal. Somehow though, this disparity was in a
much better context. I was growing up, and maturing more and more, while
Gerard, though middle-aged, did not have the bitter resistance towards life
that other adults had. We may have been lifetimes apart in numbers, but
together, we balanced in age. I didn’t understand how – I couldn’t form words
to explain why we, as a whole, were so much better than Simon and him, so I
didn’t. I kept quiet and Gerard continued, unfazed.

“I didn’t want to go over to see him at first. He didn’t seem like that nice of a
kid. Your typical good-looking high school prick, or so I thought. Tall, skinny,
and golden blonde hair. I used to see girls going in and out of his house all
the time. I never thought he would want to associate with me.”

“What changed?”

“He caught me staring at him.” Gerard smirked, closing his eyes in


embarrassment and clucking his tongue. “Even though I didn’t think he was a
nice person, ever since my mother had wanted me to go over and talk to him,
I had been staring at him to work up the nerve. And all this staring led to the
birth of a small crush. Apparently though, I wasn’t alone in this venture. He
caught me sneaking peeks as he mowed the lawn one day. He came right up
to me and asked me over. He was a confident little bugger, but so was I. I
said yes, of course, just as unashamed as he was, though secretly inside I
was cowering, hoping that he didn’t hurt me or call me a fag for what I had
been doing. I had just recently begun to notice that my same sex tendencies
were unaccepted… My father had started to bash the two ‘pansies’ at his
work who were getting too close, and when I had asked what was wrong with
that, he belted me for well over an hour.”

Gerard grew quiet for a moment, reflecting on the story, having suddenly
veered into the depths of a horrid childhood memory. I could feel the abrupt
heaviness in the air from the comment, and my heart ached for him. I knew
my own father would never, ever accept this relationship with Gerard,
whether he had been my age or not. There was some hope in me though,
that if I ever chose to tell him that I was gay, he would eventually come
around. I was still the same person after all, and it wasn’t like I was growing
up in the culture Gerard had been raised in. People were more accepting of
gay relationships now. My dad had never said anything out right awful about
gays, but I could tell they made him very uncomfortable. We had rented a
movie once about a year ago, and when he found out that a secondary
character was gay, I could see him shifting his weight uncontrollably on the
couch. The character’s role wasn’t even that big, nor was their orientation,
but anytime they appeared on the screen, my father would clear his throat,
twitch, and then make some excuse to get up. He must have gone to the
bathroom sixty times during that eighty minute movie, just to avoid indirect
contact with the issue.

Despite that small incident, he had never done anything disrespectful


towards gays. He may have tried to avoid them at all costs, but there was still
some fraction of hope that he wouldn’t avoid me either. He wouldn’t be
happy, but God, he would never beat me like Gerard’s father had. Especially
for something I couldn’t help. I was his child - he may not have liked me or
what I did all that much, but I knew deep down inside, he would never touch
me. He had never given me a reason to think otherwise. Even after I had
come home after shoplifting, he did nothing physical. He yelled at me until he
was blue in the face, took away my things, and grounded me for about a
year, but he never hit me. He never touched my mom either, or yelled at her
all that much. They had fights, but they were small, petty arguments, usually
ending with my father scowling in a corner.

On the other hand, if my dad found out about Gerard, that was something he
could help. I didn’t think he would beat me for seeing Gerard, but I was fairly
certain he would be a little hostile. There was no doubt in my mind that he
would go after the other man perpetrating the action. My dad was never a
violent person per se, but he certainly held a lot of anger inside of him. He
had a big booming voice that was designed for yelling, and he practiced this
act quite frequently. If he thought I was in jeopardy, however, he would
definitely turn violent to those who he thought meant harm. I was sure of it,
and just the thought of Gerard hurting even more made my stomach jump.

I looked up at the artist suddenly, realizing that I couldn’t get lost in my own
memories, when he seemed to be trapped in his. I touched his chest gingerly,
letting him know I was still there.

“I had red welts all up and down my body,” Gerard reflected, his voice not
even talking to me anymore; he was getting lost in himself. “My brother had
to take care of me for three nights after because I couldn’t move very far
without hurting. I was always the one who took care of him; it was a total role
reversal and it shocked both of us so much. He was only ten.”

Not being able to take much more of Gerard’s despondent behavior, I


removed my hand from his chest (since it seemed to do nothing), and
touched his face instead, running my hand against his cheek and bringing
him down to look at me. His eyes were dark and somber, but when he saw
my face, he perked up, realizing that he could no longer be hurt or punished
and that he never deserved to be in the first place. He knew all along that his
actions were never wrong; being gay was not a crime or a reason to hurt
someone. It was because of times like these as a child that Gerard came to
realize that some things were worth being penalized for. He didn’t deserve to
be, but if he had to give it all up or be punished, then he would much rather
take the penalty.

He held me closer as he told me this, pressing his lips to my forehead in a


painfully intimate embrace. The things he had told me about saving myself in
all of this if we were caught, and his lack of caring if we were, finally started
to make sense to me. Gerard knew that what we had was worth getting
punished for and right then in his small little apartment, it didn’t seem to
matter if we were ever caught.

“So what happened with you and Simon?” I asked, breaking the heavy
tension between us. We needed to get back on topic, to less weighing
subjects. Though I loved talking to Gerard, some things (especially about us
and our ultimate demise) I just didn’t want to think about. I didn’t want to
worry about the future. If the present was all we had, then we were going to
live in it now.

“Ah, yes,” he breathed, smile on his face, the pleasant memories returning. “I
went over to his house and the moment we were inside, he started to kiss
me. We kissed for a long, long time. And did many other things, of course.”
Gerard leaned back on the head board, his eyes half-closed and small smirk
on his face, feeling very satisfied.

“How long did it last?” I asked.

“The sex? The first time, I swear only five seconds, though it felt like five
hours.”
I sighed, “That’s not what I meant, Gerard.”

“I’m well aware.” He shot me a devious grin, and I shoved him playfully.

“How long did you guys last together? As a couple?”

Instead of answering, he screwed up his face, letting out a repulsed, “Ugh. I


hate the word couple; it’s too old sounding. Couples are the people you see
every day at the supermarket in matching clothing, looking alike, and buying
everything in bulk for their house. They live boring and mundane lives with
each other, and that’s the only thread of romance keeping them together.
They don’t fuck – they barely kiss. They sleep in the same bed as if they were
related, hovering on the opposite ends. They only stay together because they
don’t know how to live apart, but they don’t actually touch each other
enough to fully be together.”

I nodded my head in approval, pretty sure I had seen one of the couples
Gerard had been talking about before. My parents could even fall into that
category. I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen my father kiss my mother,
and I doubted they ever had sex. Then again, those were good things. I didn’t
want to see or hear or think about them doing… that. As far as I was
concerned, they had sex once and that was to get me. When I removed
myself from the situation though, I saw where Gerard was coming from.
There was no passion in that. Love needed passion; not normalcy and
routine. There was nothing routine about the way we acted, though I wasn’t
sure if what we had was love yet.

“All right,” I agreed with a quick head nod. “Then what should I call you and
Simon?”

“Lovers, Frank!” Gerard raised his hands in the air overdramatically, rolling
his eyes. “Artists have lovers. I thought we already went over this?”

“Ah, you’re right. How foolish of me,” I played back, surprised at how easy
this all was. We were so relaxed, making no effort and just feeding off the
other’s creative and emotional high.

“So how long did you and Simon last as lovers?” I enunciated properly, and
Gerard went back on with his story.

“Not long. Just the summer.” He paused, biting his lip in deliberation on if he
wanted to tell me the next part. “Before I went back to school, we were
caught kissing in his house. His mother found us, thankfully. I don’t think we
would have been able to survive if one of our fathers had found out.”

“What did she do?” I questioned, feeling my heart race.

His and Simon’s relationship was a lot like ours, in a way. There was the age
difference; no matter how small theirs may have been, in emotions and
status, it was still big. I may have told myself all the time that the age
difference between Gerard and I wasn’t too bad because I was almost an
adult, almost done growing. Though that was true in the physical sense, the
mental was far off. In my own head, I was still very much a baby, or at least
had been when I first came into the apartment. Gerard outnumbered me in
mental age like he did with numerical value, but instead of taking advantage
of that like so many people would have done, Gerard took care of it. He made
it okay for us to be together by allowing me grow up in so many ways. And
since he refused to get old himself, there were some days, especially like this
right then, buried in his side as he talked about his love life, where it didn’t
seem like we were so far apart.

“She did nothing, at first,” Gerard answered my question, looking off to the
side to find the memory, as if it was written in the walls. “She opened the
door to his room without knocking while Simon and I were lying in his bed.
We were going to have sex that day – we pretty much always tried to
whenever we had enough time – but we were still fully clothed. His hand was
up my shirt, I believe, but nothing more than that. It had been plenty,
however, considering our lips were practically fused together as one.

“We didn’t even notice she was in the room at first. Simon just stopped
kissing me all of a sudden, and when I opened my eyes, I saw his mother
standing in the doorway, looking as if she had seen a ghost. Simon and I both
couldn’t move. We stopped kissing, and he took his hands off of me,
practically shoving me across the bed in the act. We couldn’t say anything to
defend ourselves. How do you defend that, anyway?”

I shrugged my shoulders, unsure if it was a rhetorical question or not. Gerard


barely noticed, and pushed on.

“We all stood there in silence for the longest time, before his mother just shut
the door and left. Simon and I stopped kissing for good, and didn’t have sex.
We stayed in his room, just staring at each other and exchanging very little
words, wondering what the fuck to do next. Our whispered words never got
us very far. When I finally had to leave and go home, she said nothing to me.
Simon told me the next day she said nothing to him, too. ”

“Then what happened?” I probed. There was so much suspense in the story,
the detail Gerard was putting in, and I knew it just couldn’t end here, so
prematurely.

“Nothing,” he stated bluntly, proving me wrong. Some things were just that
simple, I figured. “School started the next week, and Simon and I were done.”

Just as quickly as we had started talking about the blonde haired boy next
door, we moved on. Gerard continued to tell me about the other people he
had been with, none of them as significant as that neighbor who took his
virginity from him. He and Simon had remained friends throughout most of
the duration of school, but it had to be in secret, and they were never lovers
again. They couldn’t be, Gerard tried to explain, but I just didn’t get it. How
could he give himself to someone so easily, and then not care if they were
there in the same way anymore? In some ways, it almost sounded like Gerard
was a slut, moving on so quickly. I knew it that couldn’t be the case; that just
didn’t fit his personality. He loved sex, and he had many lovers, but he wasn’t
a slut or whore about anything. He philosophized sex so much that he
couldn’t be a slut; there was too much thought behind it. He pondered over
each and every single person he had been with; he remembered each of their
names and why he had wanted them in that specific moment in time. When
he had sex with someone, it meant something, even if it was small.

He and Simon’s time had passed, he tried to explain; their passion had died,
providing it was even there to begin with. Simon had been a test run, an act
of desperation to finally grab onto someone who shared the same feelings for
men as the other did, but not necessarily for each other. Once in high school,
Gerard realized that he and Simon weren’t the only gay people, and there
was no need to go back to him. High school changed people, and even if
Simon’s mother hadn’t caught them, they still would have broken up.

Simon’s mother had not told anyone about what she had seen them doing,
but she was gravely affected by it. She tried to ignore it by never speaking to
her son about it, but it was buried inside her, and came out in other ways.
She acted differently around him, not touching him or really caring that much
anymore. It was as if he was infected now, and she couldn’t bear to catch his
disease. She gave him the basics like food, clothing, and shelter, but she was
no longer a mom; just a mother.

I bit my lip as Gerard brushed over these details quickly, wondering if my


mother would ever do the same. She had come into her mom role so quickly
and so recently, that she could easily recede out of it just as fast. But as
Gerard kept talking, those thoughts evaded me.

In high school, he had had a lot of girls fawning over him. Despite his chubby
and nerd-like appearance, he was in a lot of the female oriented classes, such
as art and home ec, and they flocked to anything that had a penis. He
brushed most of them off, befriended a few, and dated very select girls,
nothing going beyond a kiss. He needed to date women, he explained, to try
everything once; to see if he liked it.

He didn’t.

The female body just didn’t excite him like the male did, and though not
many male dating relationships had come out of high school, the appeal of
men in his life certainly had. He told me embarrassing stories of random
boners in his science class over his young, just-out-of-school teacher with
dark eyes and curly hair. The text book had been his best friend in that class
– not to read it and actually do the homework, but to conceal his secret
behind a barrier so no one else would notice how good of a morning it really
was to see Mr. Brundage. He told me other stories of being sneaky in the gym
change room, catching looks at the boys around him as they horsed around,
completely naked.

“Thank God phys ed was only mandatory for one year,” he sighed, rolling his
eyes at his awkward teenage life. “I don’t think I could have lasted
undetected if I had to watch that all four years.”

Male fantasies aside, the homosexual life at Gerard’s high school was almost
nonexistent. Almost. Gerard kept dating a few other girls, just so no one
asked too many hard questions, but his eyes were always open, hoping for
something new and innovative to come along and challenge the system. He
would have done it himself, he assured me, but it was too risky to go into
something alone. If he had someone by his side, he could do it.

No one ever came forward.

There had been a few gay teens at the school, it was just that no one was
completely out of the closet yet. There were always rumors and name calling
around the topic (something Gerard had been subjected to, but it was
nothing in comparison to the hell he put up with from his father) but there
was no solid evidence that someone was indeed gay. And if you were, you
rarely confessed it, unless you were fearless. Gerard thought he had found
that fearless person one day to lead his rebellion with him. There had been a
boy he had started to befriend in that science class he loved so dearly. A tall,
thin kid with sad eyes, he described, named William. Though he had
confessed one night to Gerard that he could be gay, when Gerard saw this as
the perfect opportunity to revolt and went to kiss him, William freaked out
and ran away. And then, he never spoke to Gerard again.

“Didn’t that hurt?” I asked him, adding salt to the old wound.

“High school in general hurts, Frank,” he quipped remarkably fast, probably


having thought this theory out for a long time. “Relationships hurt - even if
they’re good ones. Pain is there for a reason. This kid was just too afraid to
feel it.”

I could see the anguish in Gerard’s eyes as he mused, and though I wanted to
touch him and make it all better, I let my hands rest at my sides. His high
school tales ended soon after those quick remarks, and the story took a turn
for the better. He moved out during the summer, going to New York – and
that was when his love life came alive.

“New York was just going through a renovation of sorts,” he explained,


getting very into his story. His eyes began to dance and light up, matching
that of the disco ball in the gay bars he spoke of.

“The underground club circuit was just starting in New York, and that
changed everything. Being gay not only was becoming accepted, but fucking
flaunted in everyone’s faces. There was gay bar after gay bar, drag clubs,
and kink clubs. It was a fag boy’s candy store, and there were rainbow
candies galore.”

He smiled and winked at me, before carrying on in a more demure manner. “I


wasn’t really into flaunting my sexuality in the way they were. I had gone to a
few clubs just to get my sexual aggression and frustration out. These acts
had never been accepted where I was from. I thought I was in heaven when I
first got inside. Little did I realize, it was hell in velour and plastic.”

Gerard had gone on to tell me of the heavy drug use inside the clubs, most of
the homosexual behavior not actually being legitimate love, but drug induced
orgies. That was not what he wanted. He didn’t need love to have sex, but he
needed a person who actually gave a fuck about him. The first week going to
clubs, he had hooked up a few times. He had gone from one extreme to the
other, without stopping in the middle. From being caught by his best friend’s
mom, to openly having sex with another man in a public washroom. He didn’t
even know if there was a middle point he could stop at. There was always
that gray area, and in this scenario, it was not to be feared. It took pulling
himself out of the gay clubs, out of the night lust, and into the day time at the
local cafes where he discovered the right amount of shading he needed.
Once he uncovered this new horizon, he stayed there. He told me he had
found a few people to have short, brief relationships with, but there was
nothing too spectacular. He made friendships more than anything, finally
being able to bond with other gay men about their experiences, and finding
out that half the shit he had put up with was next to nothing.

“I met one guy whose boyfriend had been killed,” Gerard stated solemnly.
“The reason for his death had been deduced to robbery, but you do not bash
someone’s head in with a baseball bat for ten fucking dollars. My belting
scars seemed like nothing after he told me that.”

My breath hitched in my throat, just thinking of the horrific crime. I had been
in fist fights before, but I couldn’t imagine ever actually killing someone;
taking a baseball bat to someone’s head and ending their fucking life. No
matter how much I had wanted to hurt people on some occasions, and the
amount of times I had mumbled the threat under my breath, there was a
huge distinction between words and reality. In reality, I could never kill
someone – especially over something as trivial as orientation. Apparently,
other people begged to differ and saw this as a justified cause for murder. It
scared me so much what some people were capable of, just because they
didn’t understand.

There was something else in Gerard’s story that made me pay attention -
belting scars. I was just being made aware of his past life of abuse, but those
memories had only been manifested through the words he chose to share
with me. But was there a visual aspect to this? Did Gerard say he had scars
on his body from this horrific act?

I started to touch his skin tenderly and frantically at the same time, my hands
a blur of white fingers and open palms. I felt out his chest and stomach to see
if I could touch and reveal these markings he had so casually mentioned.
Gerard paused his talking, seeming to understand what I was doing. He sat
quietly while I searched, and shifted his weight to the side to help me along. I
had never been looking for something like this before; I had always accepted
Gerard’s body for all that it was, never asking questions. It never occurred to
me to look for scars or markings, aside from wrinkles, and even then, I never
questioned them. I should have been; I should have been asking question
upon question – it was what Gerard had wanted me to do, and what I was
supposed to be focusing on.

I thought it would take me ages to find anything marred against Gerard’s


skin, but now it jumped out like it was still as fresh as the memory in his
mind. When I found the mark, so small and no longer prominent from years of
being untouched, I ran my finger over it. I knew there were more of them, I
could see the flecked pattern of rose against his skin now very distinctly, but
this one was the biggest. It was right above his hip and only about two inches
long, faded through time. I traced my finger over it slowly, and suddenly
didn’t fight the urge to bring my mouth over the marking as well. I kissed and
sucked gently on the spot that I once thought to be a wrinkle. Gerard played
with my hair and neck, eventually pulling me up so I could kiss him instead. I
went willingly, but still kept my hand on his side, on that spot. I didn’t want to
let it go. I didn’t want to let him go.

Eventually, we went back to talking. Gerard held me closer, my head tucked


under his chin as he ran his hands up and down my back while my hands
were on his marred side. He talked a little more about the café where he had
met a few friends, but he didn’t dwell on it. When he was in New York, he was
more concerned with art than anything else. He was still poor and living in a
shitty apartment, trying to find a way to make it to art school. When he did
make it there, everything he thought he knew about love and sex had
changed forever.

“Art school was the most sexual time in my life,” he stated seriously, a huge
grin present on his face. He had started to become giddy talking about it, and
I ran with the sweat drenched and paint-filled memories right alongside him,
grateful for something pleasant.

“Why?” I probed, wanting to hear the lurid details that I knew Gerard would
not skip on.

“It was art school, and art, in itself, is a purely sexually cathartic experience,”
he explained, drawing out his story and explanation, motioning with his
hands and creating a delicate picture of this place in my mind. “We were
asked to create things over and over again. We were taught how to paint,
how to draw, and how to make art. Essentially, we were taught how to
breathe again.” He took a deep breath seriously, to emphasize his point. “We
were taught that art is life. And our life at that time was sex. It was college;
the whole fundamentals of that place are based on sex. But this time, it was a
safe environment where experiments and experiences were encouraged,
drawn upon, and put on a canvas. Anything was possible…and I mean
anything.”

Gerard looked down at me, a fire lit in the color of his eyes. He placed a
passionate kiss on my lips, our tongues darting together so fast, creating art
itself, before he continued on.

He spoke to me of drunken parties, where wine and flesh was the main thing
they all consumed. He spoke of nude models, and gay love triangles within
dorm rooms, but most of all, he talked about Vivian.

“She was the first girl I had ever actually had feelings for,” he said seriously,
conjuring up the image in my mind of the cheery, dark strawberry redhead I
had seen naked on his couch. “All of the other girls from before, I had felt
nothing for. They were just there because they had to be in my life to keep
from getting beaten. I had only ever felt for men before; I loved men. They
were what gave me my passion in life. But when I met her, everything
changed. Well, not exactly.” He halted for a moment, furrowing his brow to
find the right words he wanted. “Everything stayed the same – I still loved
men, but she single-handedly made me divert from my pathway in life. She
tempted me and I very willingly took the bait. There was just something
about her; the way she carried herself, her laugh, her carefree nature… I
wanted to be near her. At first, I thought as a friendship, but when I
convinced her to model for me naked, there was just no going back. I knew I
wanted her more than anything I ever had in my life to date. And I always got
what I wanted.”

I stared at Gerard as he talked, trying to picture him with a woman. He was


just so fruity and artistic that I couldn’t do it. He was gay; he had had sex
with me. He was supposed to like men and he did like men. I could maybe
understand it all a little better if he had said he was bisexual, but he wasn’t. I
asked him and he laughed it off, stating that he liked men and only men.
There was no going in between the two extremes for him. He wanted one
clear pathway and took it. I was still confused as to how Vivian fit into all of
this. I knew she was a woman for sure – I had seen her naked – but I didn’t
bother to ask. He was dead set on being gay, but still declaring his undying
love for this woman.

I had to admit, I was jealous. Even if I didn’t understand it to its full extent,
hearing him talk about her with that spark in his eye made my stomach
contents leap to the forefront of my gut. I was almost glad I didn’t quite
understand it, because I knew I would have been so much more envious if I
had. I tried not to let my disdain show through, and gave Gerard my complete
attention. He skimmed over a lot of the details about Vivian and their life
together, probably because it was still going on. Out of all the people, friends
or lovers, he had mentioned thus far, she was the only one who had retained
a permanent spot inside the artist’s memory and real life. I found it
fascinating, and though I wanted to know more, the main preoccupation for
knowledge took the form of how Vivian went back to being just a friend from
a lover.

“Ah well,” Gerard started to answer my question, shifting his weight and
getting comfortable again. “Art school ended for me. I graduated and I was
no longer around the constant sexed-up atmosphere that I had been used to.
I was now just surrounded by the passion of painting. Vivian and I had started
to have sex less and less, and before I knew it, we were back to just friends,
no longer ripping each other’s clothes off. We only kissed once in awhile, to
show affection for the other. But that’s all it ever was; affection. We had
started up in a lust and sex-filled atmosphere, letting the art with our bodies
drive us, but that’s all we had been doing. Making art. We loved each other
as friends, and once art school was out of our system, friendship came in the
form of affection. Things changed, but it was for the better. She was
interested in other men, and so was I by that point.”

“Really?” I offered, a foolish smile appearing on my face at the mention of


another lover and yet again another story. We had been talking now for well
over an hour and though my side felt slightly numb from remaining in the
same relative position, and my bladder ached because it was full, I was so
comfortable and warm that I didn’t want to move. “Who’s next?”

“Alexi,” Gerard stated, grinning hard. “The man who reminded me why I was
gay in the first place.”
After some giggles and quick kissing, Gerard proceeded to tell me the story
of a Russian man he had met while trying to sell one of his paintings. He was
an art collector, coming directly from Russia to live in the states for a while to
acquire some good pieces for his collection back home. He spoke fluent
English, but, according to Gerard, his accent was so thick you could walk on
it.

“I’d fuck his voice if I could,” he oozed at one point, his tone dripping with
lust.

“I thought you didn’t fuck, Gerard,” I teased him, patting his shoulder.

“We don’t fuck,” he corrected me. “But for the most part, all I did was fuck.
The pure and raw animalistic urge to just get off. I fucked Alexi, for seven
long months before he had to go back to Russia. He said he would phone me,
or at least come back for a few more months, but he never did. I never
wanted him to. Our relationship had been physical, and though I was glad it
happened, I’d rather just keep the memory as is.”

I nodded, completely understanding where he was coming from. I had never


had any lovers before him, but I could relate to his feeling through friendships
I had acquired, and then subsequently lost. My one and only female friend,
Jessica, from grade nine had moved a few towns over by the end of that
school year. We were nothing more than friends out of sheer desperation,
meeting in our English class and getting by on alternating doing the
homework every other day. She had four brothers and was a tomboy, so she
wasn’t as feminine as the other girls I knew, and that was what had attracted
me to her in the first place. I was usually very nervous around girls (anyone,
actually) but she made things easier by being really down-to-earth. We hung
out outside of school a few times, going out to a comic book store and
arguing over who the better superhero was. We were never as close as Sam
and I were, but that was my fault, and I knew it. She gave me her number the
last day of school, knowing that she’d be moving in a few weeks, and insisted
that I call her. I kept the number with me all day in my pocket, the small
piece of English note paper burning a hole through the fabric of my jeans.
When I got home and finally released the number from its confinement, I only
tossed it into the trash can. I didn’t want to talk to her anymore. Long
distances always ruined things. She had been a good friend, offering me
advice whenever I had asked and listening to me bitch and moan about my
parents, but I needed to let go. Sam had always given us such a huge hassle
for hanging out together all the time at school. He made snide remarks and
sexual comments, so much once that Jessica had even kicked him in the nuts
to get him to shut the fuck up. He had spent the rest of the day at the nurse.

I did see her again after she moved, at the same comic book store we used to
always hang out, but I never said hi. I didn’t want to. I still had the image of
Jessica, the tough as nails fourteen-year-old chick who had made Sam cry, in
my head and I wanted it to stay that way. I didn’t want to hear that she had
gotten a boyfriend or made new friends, because as far as I was concerned,
we were still innocent, fourteen years old, and discussing The Teen Titans.

This was exactly what Gerard had wanted with Alexi. He wanted to remember
the Russian with the fuckable voice – not the Russian who may or may not
have come back ten years later with forty more pounds and significantly less
money.

“I fucked a lot of people after Alexi,” Gerard continued, snapping me out of


my own nostalgia. “When people would come to see me and ask about my
art, about eight times out of ten, we’d end up having sex. Sometimes right on
the art itself. None of them were women. I had a few come onto me, but no
one could change my mind the way Vivian had. I never fucked her. We made
art, just like you and me.” He nudged me with his elbow, drawing me in
closer to his chest. I smiled up at him, meeting with his lips as he brought
them down over my ready, open mouth again.

“Was there anyone else you didn’t just fuck?” I asked after the embrace, my
curious nature taking over once again. I almost wished I hadn’t asked the
question, because of the somber nature Gerard gave off as he whispered a
faint, “yes.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Answers - Part Two


“Was there anyone else you didn’t just fuck?” I asked after the embrace, my
curious nature taking over once again. I almost wished I hadn’t asked the
question, because of the somber nature Gerard gave off as he whispered a
faint, “yes.”

His name was Raymond and like with all lovers thus far, Gerard met him
through his art. He was the curator at a museum which Gerard often went to
for inspiration. The frizzy haired man was always sitting behind his desk as
Gerard sauntered in every Saturday morning; one of the first people through
the door. Gerard would spend his entire day there, sitting in a different area
for over an hour, sketching what he saw (the people, never the art) or just
looking at the pieces. Some people would walk by him as he sat in a corner,
whisper questions to the person they came with and Gerard would eavesdrop
and answer them, giving details and descriptions of each artists’ work. The
people began to think that he worked there, and throughout the week, they
would ask Raymond for ‘the dark haired tour guide who always had a sketch
book’ to show them around. Raymond finally had to offer him a job one day,
when his last full-time worker had just quit. He had not wanted to hire Gerard
before, mainly because that would mean yet another person to pay, and if
Gerard wanted to give out his knowledge for free, then he wasn’t about to
shell out any money for it. He was also a little jealous of Gerard, though he
wouldn’t admit it just yet.

“What did you say?” I asked, speaking about the job proposal.

“No, of course!” Gerard answered, his face alive with mischief.

He further explained to me that he didn’t want to work at the art museum,


even if he loved art and was practically doing it already. He didn’t want to
turn into Raymond, the old art school drop out, living behind someone else’s
dreams, someone else’s paintings, and hating every minute of it. Raymond
had wanted to become an artist himself once, when he was younger (he was
only about three years older than Gerard), but had to give it up. He couldn’t
take being poor and hungry all the time, and he was getting pressure from
his friends and family to just get a ‘normal’ job. So he had succumbed early
on, dropping out after only his first year and working his way up the food
chain in the art gallery system. It had been surprisingly easy, what with the
amount of museums opening, his solid work ethic, and his half-finished art
degree. Raymond had taken a nine-to-five job that he hated, secretly painting
in his spare time, but never even thinking that anything he did would amount
to anything. He never showed anyone his paintings, but Gerard had found
one of them on one of his Saturday trips.

He had grown weary of the unchanged art displays; the gallery was supposed
to change its exhibits at least once a month, but Raymond’s staff had been
dropping like flies and not giving a shit about the New Artist Gallery feature,
so Gerard went out to find something he hadn’t seen before. He went
snooping in the basement and came across this somewhat childish rendition
of a fireplace with two kids sitting at it. Despite the roughness of the edges
and the unevenness of the painting, he loved it. It represented childhood to
him; the sloppy structure with the cliché use of colors, topped off by the
children watching the whole display. Gerard interpreted it as if one of the kids
watching the fire had drawn it, projecting this innocence he had not seen in a
long time, living in New York and all. Gerard thought it was perfect, and when
he saw the name signed at the bottom, he thought it was even more perfect.
He smiled to himself that the lonely worker sitting behind the counter really
was a budding artist, hidden under so many layers of stress that he could not
be seen for what he really was.

Gerard had placed the painting back into its spot in the basement, but he did
not forget about it. He grinned knowingly at Raymond every single time he
entered the gallery, but didn’t say a word about finding the piece until much,
much later on. Instead, on the day he refused the job and Raymond had
asked why, Gerard informed him about finding the lost relic, and straight up
told Raymond that he didn’t want to become like exactly him. He listed off
Ray’s faults right in front of him, talking in a solid, even voice and not
stopping until he was done. He wasn’t trying to insult the lonely curator; he
was only trying to teach him. Gerard was a natural born teacher - even in art
school, he had always taught himself the lesson before he went to class, and
blew everyone away. That was just how Gerard was programmed. And he
was fucking fantastic at it.

“What did Raymond say to you? What did he do?” I prodded, wondering if an
older man took the deprecating rant as well as I had first taken it. When
Gerard had critiqued my guitar playing, I had been crushed, and I had asked
him to do it. Raymond hadn’t asked to be butchered – he had offered Gerard
a job - but Gerard had done it anyway.

“He didn’t say too much at first. Just told me politely to leave,” Gerard
replied, thinking hard. A smile spread across his face, his eyes lighting up.
“The next day, he quit his job. And he appeared on my doorstep.”

That had been the day he and Raymond’s relationship had started. Raymond
wasn’t gay, or at least that was what he had told Gerard when he stepped
shakily into the man’s apartment. Gerard had kissed him anyway, never
being one to back down from a challenge, and knowing that Ray had been
lying to himself for most of his life. When Ray practically melted into him,
Gerard knew his inkling had been right all along. Eventually, after a few
months of careless blowjobs with no feeling, awkward and inept touches on
Ray’s part, and dancing around the issue by painting over emotions,
Raymond began to open up.

He, just like Gerard, had been beaten by his father when he was young
because of his same-sex liking. Only Ray probably had it much worse. He was
an only child, and since his parents had no siblings to focus their attention
and wrath on, he got the brunt of it. His hair had been long when he was a
teenager, but when they found out he had been taking art classes in secret
and fooling around with his best friend, they did the worst anyone could have
ever done.

They cut off his hair.

It was humiliating. He could take the beatings, the name calling, and the
forbiddance of art, but shaving his head in front of the mirror so he had to
watch the only part of himself he had control over fall away in front of him
had been the final straw. It was then, Gerard said, that Raymond’s soul had
been crushed. He gave up on men, found a nice girl to date that he had
known since childhood, and started to settle down. He never grew out his hair
long again. When Gerard had met him, his hair was almost nonexistent it was
cut so short, and so curled to his thin skin scalp. He had been allowed to go
to art school after building up trust from his parents again with an
appearance of a girlfriend. He didn’t keep her long, especially after she found
his stash of lewd, all-male magazines in the back of his closet and trunk of his
car. After the girlfriend ditched him, art did too, and he was left behind a
desk, living someone else’s dreams, not dating anyone, and being miserable.

Gerard told me that the day Raymond had finally confessed everything to
him was the first day they had actually made art with their bodies. They had
sex filled with passion, and he noticed that Ray was a lot gentler. The first
time the two had sex, Gerard confided in me, Ray had been a horrible
monster.

“He didn’t mean to be,” Gerard insisted, voice filling with sympathy for the
man that had hurt him. “He had just never had sex before in a completely
controlled and supporting atmosphere. He didn’t understand that sex didn’t
have to be fast and rushed and something to feel guilty for. Our first time had
been relatively soon, and I didn’t realize these things about him yet. He
treated sex as some horrible object to be feared, but craved it as much as I
did. In turn, when he had sex, he was constantly fighting a battle inside
himself. A battle he ended up taking out on me that first day…”

Gerard’s voice trailed off, and it took some time for him to actually come up
with sound details about that event, ones I could comprehend, and
(unfortunately) picture. Gerard had been the one taking it that first time –
something he rarely, rarely did. He preferred giving it first, he explained,
because he wanted to set the standard of intimacy before anyone did
anything to him. This new policy and rule probably stemmed from what had
happened that night. Ray didn’t rape Gerard by any means – oh no, Gerard
had consented, and Gerard even admitted that he pushed for sex, thinking it
would help Raymond fight some kind of demon, and get him more in touch
with his artistic side. It had started off fine, but once Raymond started to
enter, there might as well have been only one person in the act, and only
Raymond was giving consent. He went too fast, too hard, and too long
without stopping that first night, and didn’t seem to be able to hear Gerard’s
commands of ‘slow down’ or ‘hold on’. So eventually, Gerard stopped making
them. He held onto part of the mattress and hoped it would be over soon.

“Why did you let Ray stay after that?” I asked, my face twisted in a horrified
gaze. I could see and tell from Gerard’s eyes as he went over that night in his
mind that Ray had hurt him. Badly. I couldn’t imagine anyone being so rough
and forceful in bed, let alone not stopping when someone said they wanted
them to. How on earth could Gerard have let this man stay with him, if he
acted like this so early on? Wouldn’t it only get worse? Gerard was a strong,
confident, and independent person – he didn’t need to be in a relationship to
be fulfilled. He could have kicked Ray to the curb and been much better off.

Gerard’s eyes, however, displayed something very different. I couldn’t


pinpoint the emotion, but there was something there, something holding
Gerard back from speaking the next part in its full context. “Because it wasn’t
Raymond’s fault.”

“But how can -” I started to argue, motioning strongly with my hands. Gerard
reached forward and clasped them inside his own, trying to explain Ray’s
mistake.

“He didn’t know what he was doing. After he was done, and he pulled out,
Frank, you should have seen the look on his face. He was so disgusted with
himself. He left the room immediately after. I went to the bathroom to fix
myself up, and by the time I came back, he was already gone. He came back
the next morning, but before I let him into my place, I told him to never do
that to me again. If he did, he would be out of my life in a second.”

Gerard’s voice grew harder at the last words, and I could see his resilient side
coming forward, fighting against the burdens he had not needed. He dropped
my hands from his own carefully, my agitation cooled.

“What did Ray say? What did he do?”

“He started to cry…” Gerard trailed off, the pathetic quality in the action
conveyed through his weak voice. He told me that Ray cried for most of the
morning, apologizing profusely to Gerard for what he had done. He tried to
make everything better – he offered to leave, to take Gerard to the doctor, to
buy him new bed sheets – anything. Gerard declined every single offer, and
merely hugged Ray instead. He hugged him and rocked him back and forth,
trying to calm down the person who had almost raped him the night before. It
was then that Ray’s childhood and fears of homosexuality came out through
his thick lips and bitter tears. The stories of fear, anger, and repression,
trying to lead a ‘normal’ life. When Gerard had confronted him in the
museum that one day, he began to realize how abnormal he really was, or at
least how fake he had become. He hated his job. He hated his life. And he
hated himself for what he had done to Gerard who was just trying to help.

“Raymond had been holding so much guilt inside his body, it was bound to
explode eventually. I just happened to be the catalyst behind it all,” Gerard
explained calmly. He smiled, and laughed at his own dark humor. “I seem to
have that effect on a lot of people.”

Ray didn’t open up entirely on that first day after that horrid night, but it was
the start of something far better. His stories started to come out of him bit by
bit, but it was his physical intimacy that had the most improvement during
those first few weeks of the relationship. That night, Gerard had had sex with
Ray, showing him what to do, and how to do it better. As much as some
people (including me) would have wanted to inflict the same kind of pain on
Ray for the acts he had done the night before, Gerard started with a clean
slate. He pretended that event had never happened with his own actions, but
kept them inside as a bitter reminder. He couldn’t be mad at Ray for what he
had done to him the night before, because he hadn’t known any better.
Gerard was going to teach him better, and gradually, the man learned.

The next time they had sex, which had to be a few days after to allow Gerard
to heal, he had vastly improved. He listened to Gerard when he said to go
slower, and even started to kiss during the action – another foreign concept
to Ray at that point. The first time Gerard felt the man’s lips wander across
his back was when he knew he had been doing something right.

Ray was always a little rougher around the edges during sex than Gerard,
and sometimes slipped into his aggressive nature – especially closer to
orgasm. It took all of his stories and fears coming forward to finally be able to
trust the other man enough and, ultimately, himself too. That was the first
night Gerard could ever remember calling the sex they had had gentle. Most
of the time when they had sex, Gerard was always the one leading in the
more passive behavior. But when Raymond started to match his nature,
Gerard no longer strived to be the better one at it. He focused on matching
Ray’s ability; not trying to beat it. He focused on the two of them being equal,
and it started to develop into something Gerard had never known before.

Vivian had been – and still was – something special. She was a woman,
though, not Gerard’s true calling. Gerard loved Vivian; they were friends and
always would be. But with Ray, Gerard was in love. He never said anything
along those lines – the word love (unless in lovers) was not even uttered
when he was talking about Ray, but I could tell. Opening up changed
everything.

Raymond had been living in his apartment prior to quitting his job, but when
his savings officially vanished from not being able to get another job since
the museum, Gerard offered up his place. They lived there for awhile,
Raymond going around and doing nothing, trying to figure out what he
wanted to be. Even when winter reared its ugly head and the cold cut
through their small living quarters, the heat turning off from a missed
payment, Gerard refused to let Ray go and get a normal job. He didn’t want
him to end up in the same spot where he was before, only ten times as
miserable. Raymond had to realize his purpose in life. If it wasn’t art, then he
had to find something that he wanted to do. He didn’t have to do that as a
job per se, but it would be better if he at least knew the reason he got up
every morning.

They spent almost two years like this, trying to find themselves in each other
in a dirty apartment in New York before Gerard’s mother died.

“He was so good to me then,” Gerard recalled, his voice becoming poignant. I
reached out and wrapped myself around his body more, not stopping his
story, but bracing both of us for the outcome. “He held me so much, and was
so gentle to me. It was like the first night in my apartment where Raymond
had been crying – only our roles had been completely reversed. It was him
rocking me to sleep again after I would get up at three in the morning just to
walk around the apartment, crying, pulling out my hair from thinking about
her. My mother’s death was so sudden; too sudden. She wasn’t that old, and
she certainly never lived as recklessly as my father. He smoke, he drank; she
never did any of that. She got emphysema from his secondhand smoke, and
that was what had killed her. She didn’t deserve to die, and it reminded me
of my grandmother too much. I told myself I was over her death. It had
happened while I was in art school, years ago, and I thought I had grieved
properly. I hadn’t. My mother dying proved that. It was bad; I was a mess.”

I tried to latch myself onto Gerard more. I could tell from his voice, the
slowed movements of his hands, his whole essence around him that this was
still hard for him. His grandmother had been the only one to truly nurse his
art. She had been the only one to believe in him. In times when he was down
on himself, doubting his craft, he thought of her. He got up again because of
her. The mortality of the other people around him perpetually reminded him
of his first fan. He was never going to forget her, and as much as it hurt him
in that very moment, it was good at the same time.

Gerard kissed my forehead suddenly, whispering something into my ears that


I couldn’t decipher after. I could have sworn he said ‘thank you’, but I was
never too sure. He began to talk again, focusing his attention on Ray.

“When I was upset, so was he. He didn’t sleep and let me go insane, he got
up too. He held me. He listened to me yell, scream, cry, and complain. It was
the most he had ever done for me. It was the most anyone had ever done for
me. Then I had to leave for the funeral the next morning, his smell still
clinging to my shirt. I never took that shirt off the entire time I was there. I
didn’t care if it wasn’t black and didn’t match the normal funeral attire and
my brother was giving me weird looks. My grandmother wasn’t normal, and
neither was my mother. They would have been okay with that.”

Gerard continued the heart-wrenching story, while I hung on his every word. I
kissed his skin occasionally, just small pecks to let him know I was still there.
He had a habit (I was never sure if it was good or bad) of losing himself
completely in his memories, sometimes to the point where he was living
them all over again and not even there. His words wavered at some points,
but he never cried. He was a lot stronger than me and I could see that. I
would have probably been bawling, being dissected like he was willingly
doing to himself for me.

When doing art, you have to dissect yourself. Daily. Gerard had told me this
before, during one of our painting sessions at the beginning, when its
meaning had still been too complex for me to fathom. He had seen his insides
lots of times before. He knew how ugly and pretty they were, he had already
cried over them, and it was okay to be sharing now. He wanted to share now;
I could see it in his eyes as he pressed on forward through the words, the
waters getting deeper.

Ray was forced to stay back in New York while Gerard attended the funeral.
Gerard’s father was not keen on having a gay son, but had stopped his
beating episodes. Ever since Gerard had moved, things had gotten better
between the family, even with Gerard’s alternate interest. Mikey, his brother,
was still around and had the normal life his father craved. Despite some
roughness around the edges and in his past, Mikey was the good brother and
son. And that was fine with Gerard. What wasn’t fine with Gerard was when
his brother suddenly cornered him, told him about getting married, his soon-
to-be wife’s pregnancy, and begged him to move back. Gerard had always
taken care of Mikey, no matter what, and even though they were both adults
now, the protective urge inside of Gerard still reigned. He agreed to help
Mikey, albeit begrudgingly, because he loved his brother. He moved back to
Jersey, just when he was just establishing something he had always wanted
with Raymond and Vivian in New York.

“It hurt so badly when I first got that news,” Gerard explained. He tugged on
his hair as he talked and for the first time ever, I saw a nervous habit appear
in him. He was almost never nervous when we were together. The only other
time I had seen him like this was the morning after we had had sex. That was
entirely different from this. He was concerned with me, not himself. His outer
shell was always cool and composed, and even if he was scared, he still
maintained himself. That morning, he had been concerned with me more
than anything else, and after his faith in that was restored, so was he. Seeing
him tug on his hair just then, made me feel ten times closer to him because it
was about him this time. It was about his story and his pain, and he needed
to twirl his hair to get through it. We were breaking past another layer of
intimacy and I could feel the shell falling off around us.

“What did Ray say when you told him?” I inquired, preparing myself for the
sad answer that never came.

“He didn’t say anything,” Gerard said, placing the hand that had been
tugging at his hair by his chin. I could see a small smile spreading across his
face. “He packed his bags.”
Eventually, Vivian made her way out to Jersey behind the two lovers, after
she had gained very limited success in the art field, too. It was a good
passion to pursue, just so hard to become famous with, Gerard explained. It
wasn’t that all three of them wanted to be famous, they just needed to eat
and have a roof to stay under, and sometimes they didn’t even get that. They
needed to make a living, because they already had a life. Gerard was set,
living off his grandmother’s and then parents inheritance when his father
eventually died a year later (which he split evenly with his brother). Vivian
moved up here and got a job at a pet store at first, then finally worked her
way into a small teaching business for art students, while Raymond still
struggled with almost everything. He painted with Gerard a lot of the time,
but never seemed that eager to learn. He let his shy nature win a lot, acting
like a lost puppy dog that had been kicked too many times. He didn’t know
what he wanted to do with his life, and that included both career and love
interests. It seemed like the only aspect he was good at was being with
Gerard, but that was never healthy, Gerard confessed.

“You can’t just live for someone else,” he told me, motioning strongly with his
hands. I felt my chest tighten and stomach drop, but I remained quiet until he
finished. “You can’t spend your life obsessed with another person, and watch
their life unfold for the better. You have to have a life of your own, something
else to get up for in the morning, because that person may not always be
there when you do.”

I breathed deeply with Gerard, and I could tell from the way he spoke, and
the way his hands finally relaxed in their motion that his relationship with Ray
was going to be coming to an end very soon.

Ever since Gerard’s parents had passed away, Ray had been there for him.
He’d wake up and find Ray wrapped around his waist, squeezing him hard
because Gerard had been crying in his sleep again and not woken up from it.
Gerard began to have these vivid nightmares, where he saw his
grandmother’s, his parent’s (and other people, like his brother) death over
and over again. Ray would always be there beside him anytime it happened,
cradling the younger man in his arms. They continued to have sex (not as
much as we did, Gerard assured me) and they continued to be together until
something inevitably changed.
“Actually, it was because something didn’t change that caused it all to fall
apart,” Gerard said sadly, shaking his head. His morose quality wasn’t
towards himself, but directed at Raymond. Gerard began to speak again, the
story behind the disparity coming out.

Ray had taken a nine-to-five job again. It was a few towns over, but he had it.
It wasn’t even a nine-to-five job like Vivian’s, where she at least got to teach
her art form or like the one he possessed before. At least when Ray had
worked at the art gallery, he was still surrounded by art, even if it wasn’t his
own. This new job was at a bank, sorting and shoveling out numbers again
and again. Numbers held no creativity. Gerard had been so furious at him
when it happened, and they ended up fighting the worse that they ever had.

“It was great, actually,” Gerard said, cutting the dark atmosphere in half with
a light in his eyes.

“Great?” I probed, perturbed and confused.

When he talked about Ray, he sounded so happy, so in love, and that scared
me. He sounded like he really cared for Ray and wanted him to still be
around. And the fact that he wasn’t, made me ache inside a little. Perhaps if I
had shown up that day in his apartment to clean paint brushes and another
man had been here, with frizzy hair and a golden tan, then I wouldn’t have
fallen for Gerard. I wouldn’t be in the situation I was in right then and it
scared me. I couldn’t imagine not being in his arms. I felt my jealousy swell
within me again, realizing that Ray had been almost the perfect mate for
Gerard, at least from the way he was described. I wanted to know what had
happened to make things change, even if that change had been better for me
in the long run.

“Yes – fighting is fantastic,” Gerard oozed, the emotion and feeling just
dripping from his words. “It’s another form of passion. You can’t have love
without hate. They are such similar emotions, along with fear, and it is
essential for them all to come together and explode into one thing. Fighting
with someone shows that you sometimes disagree; that you aren’t perfect. It
makes a relationship interesting. It’s just getting through the fight that’s the
hard part. If you can get through it, then you know it’s meant to be.”

I nodded my head, the information sinking in. “And you and Ray? How did
that end?”

Gerard pursed his lips slightly and drew his head down. I swallowed hard and
probed more. “Badly?”

“Nothing ends badly,” Gerard corrected me, his voice becoming despondent.
“They just end.”

Ray had left Gerard that night. He took what little things he had (most of
what they owned was Gerard’s) and left. Just left. Gerard confessed they
hadn’t even said goodbye. They had been fighting – yelling and screaming at
each other when suddenly, Ray had gone silent. He left the room and packed
some clothing, and without a word, he was gone. Gerard had been getting
into the fight, and was at a loss for words when it was over so abruptly. He
stood and watched Ray leave from the bay window of his apartment, but
never said a word. Ray didn’t come back until a week later, where he told
Gerard that he had been cheating on him for the past month with a woman
from the bank he now worked at.

“He wasn’t cheating,” Gerard stated bluntly, bitterness seeping into his
illogical statement. “You can’t cheat in relationships like the one we had
together.”

“What did you have?”

“Dependency,” he told me, his fingers tapping on his jaw lightly. “You can’t
cheat on dependency. You only switch sources.”

When Ray came back that week, he and Gerard had fucked one last time.
Ray hadn’t wanted to, and even Gerard had been hesitant to let Ray inside
his bedroom to collect some possessions, just because he knew it would
happen again. Ray had told Gerard all of the news in the kitchen, both of
them standing and looking at each other as opposed to sitting and getting
comfortable. There was no reason to be comfortable anymore. They weren’t
allowed to be, at least in Raymond’s mind. Gerard still didn’t know the exact
reasoning why Ray just suddenly felt the need to leave for something he had
once hated. He had always thought the life they created together was so
much better than the one Ray had nearly drowned in before, but he figured
he had been wrong. He thought he had taught Ray everything he needed to
know, and really, maybe he had. That was why Ray had to leave. He just
wasn’t heading in the right direction, at least in Gerard’s mind.

When they veered into the bedroom under Ray’s small request, Gerard knew
that maybe one lesson had sunk into Ray’s mind. Things were different here.
The moment he sat on the bed, Gerard was next to him, and within seconds,
their hands were all over each other; they were kissing, then naked, and
finally fucking. And it had gone back to just fucking. There was no caring in it.
They both wanted to care – Gerard can remember looking at Ray just before
he came and seeing the utter despair and hurt locked in there. All his life,
Ray had just wanted to be loved, but was afraid of it at the same time. Gerard
had only wanted love and intimacy too, but never feared a Goddamn thing.
They were perfect for each other, complemented each other so well, but they
were too stubborn to admit it. Ray left after, giving Gerard one final kiss,
landing too hard on his lips and cutting him with his bottom teeth. There were
no goodbyes.

“I kept picking the scab his cut had left on my lip for weeks after,” Gerard
confessed, his hands going up to touch the phantom marking.

“Why?”

“I wanted the pain to remember,” he answered solemnly, biting his lip to


bring it all back. “I needed to remember Raymond.”

He continued to pick and gnaw on himself, harming himself beyond the point
of recognition. One day he saw himself in the mirror and realized the hurt he
was inflicting was merely a form of distraction from other pain, and not one
to remember what he had possessed with Ray. The next day, he stopped
touching his lip, and let Ray go.

Gerard said their relationship was all about dependency, but as I listened, I
could never tell who was dependent on whom. I didn’t think Gerard knew that
answer either, and it was supposed to stay that way.

“Did you ever see him again?” I asked, breaking the silence we had had for a
few moments.

“Yes, a few times. I saw him at his bank once. He had grown a beard. It was
honestly the stupidest thing I had ever seen, and I told him. I never liked
kissing him until after he shaved, and I said that, too.” Gerard paused,
frowning. “He nearly kicked me out of the bank after I said that. His wife was
working in the next till. She was pregnant at the time.”

“Wow…” was all I could say.

Gerard’s stories were so spellbinding and engrossing, I felt like I was fucking
there. I could see this tall man, with thick thighs and golden-brown hair,
curling around his face, working in a bank with his trophy wife standing next
to him. It was all so real – and really, it was. I may have been calling what
Gerard was telling me a story in my mind, but it was like ripping the pages of
an autobiography from his mind and displaying them before my eyes. This
was real. This was fascinating.

Gerard told me that Raymond had a few more kids after the first one, but he
had to find it out through the grapevine. Ray had cut off all contact from
Gerard and Vivian, only talking briefly, or acknowledging eye contact if they
happened to be in the same area. Surprisingly, Gerard wasn’t hurt. He had let
go of Ray. He didn’t need to see him constantly, talk to him, or meet his wife
and kids. He knew that Ray was happy, or at least pretended to be. Raymond
was a fag, just like himself; Gerard knew that deep down inside. But Ray was
having a family now - something he had always wanted.
“I wasn’t going to get in the way of that,” Gerard admitted. For the first time
in awhile, he looked genuinely sad. His free hand found a part of the sheet
with loose fibers on them and began to tear them off after fingering them.
Gerard had a lot of nervous habits, I noted. My tongue felt thick in my mouth,
but I still wanted to speak.

“Maybe you could call up Ray again? See how he’s doing?” I suggested, even
though I knew that it was a dumb idea. If he were to call Raymond up and
they hooked up again (because it would just happen with them, according to
Gerard), where would that leave me? Gerard said you couldn’t cheat on
dependency, but what did we have? Was it cheatable?

“I can’t,” Gerard said firmly, flicking away the sheet and clenching his hand.

“Why not?”

“He died.”

I felt my mouth drop open. My voice came out all dry and scratchy as I
uttered a strained, “How?”

Ray was only three years older than Gerard. He couldn’t have been any more
than fifty when he died, and he was probably younger than that. That was too
early, too young, I found myself thinking, even though I was in the same bed
with a forty-seven-year-old who I constantly thought was old. Suddenly, his
age seemed so fragile in my mind with the death of his past lover in my ears,
and I clung onto him tighter. He hugged me back, sensing, and perhaps
feeling, my fear as well.

“It was about two years or so ago,” he started slowly, trying to get the details
sorted out in his head. “It was a car crash. The streets were too icy and his
car flipped off the road into a ditch. He had been drinking a little too, or so I
heard. It was an accident. Just a bad accident. I knew Raymond; no matter
how unhappy he was, would never do a thing like that on purpose. He had
kids and a wife. I bet he was so mad when he died.”

Gerard laughed a little, adding some dark humor to the situation. “I bet when
he got to heaven, or wherever the hell he believed he was going to go, he
was pissed right the fuck off. He was probably worrying about inventory he
had to do at the bank, or some other meaningless job he needed to get done.
He was always like that -- worrying about the little things while the bigger
things over-showered him, eventually knocking him off that road.”

Gerard’s laughter died off, and it was quiet again. Too quiet.

“He sounds like an awesome person,” I commented, just to say something.

“He was.”

“How long did you two date for?”

“We didn’t date,” Gerard corrected me again. “But we were together for
almost seven years.”

“Oh, wow,” I uttered.

I knew the few weeks I had been with Gerard weren’t the longest amount of
time in the world, but they felt that way to me, especially given the intensity
of our relationship. I knew the year or two he said he had been with Vivian
was a long time. But fuck, seven years? That was a lifetime to me, and really
was for some people.

Gerard had gone to Ray’s funeral, but felt out of place the entire time. He and
Vivian had gone together, crying in each other’s arms the whole time. Vivian
didn’t know Ray as well as Gerard had (no one knew Ray that well, not even
his own wife and kids) but Vivian was an emotional person, crying over
anything remotely sad. After the funeral, they had gone out for coffee, and
started discussing life.

“We asked each other if we were happy,” Gerard stated bluntly, almost as
blunt as the two best friends had been in the smoky café that rainy Saturday
afternoon.

Gerard always thought it was fitting that Ray’s funeral had been on a
Saturday. It was a Saturday that Gerard had met the man, so many years ago
in a museum. Gerard was also convinced that wherever Ray was at that
moment in his infinite death was at a museum, a giant one in the sky where
all his paintings were laid out from end to end. Ray had never found his
purpose, or at least admitted it to anyone, but Gerard was pretty sure it was
painting. Either that, or children.

Gerard had seen Ray one day in the park, interacting with his daughter, Mina,
and his heart was blown away. Ray had a smile plastered on his lips the
entire time, even when Mina threw a tantrum and kicked dirt in his face. Ray
just brushed himself off, and picked the little girl up, giving her a piggy back
ride all the way home. Ray loved his children, and Gerard was content
knowing that at least he had that as his purpose in life. He had two little
beings to wake up for every morning, and even if you weren’t supposed to
live for another person in Gerard’s mind, these two people were enough to be
the exception to that rule. Ray’s death had been way too premature, but at
least he hadn’t lived it completely in vain. Gerard had gone to Ray’s grave
site a few times, mostly on the anniversary of the day Ray had left him. That
day, out of all of them, was appropriate; it was when Raymond finally found
what he had wanted: kids.

Each time Gerard went, he always saw fake red roses on the site, stick figure
cards that his kids had drawn with the words ‘daddy’ written in childlike
handwriting. Gerard admitted openly that he had cried when hearing of Ray’s
death, and at the funeral, but what helped him stop crying and feeling so
remorseful about everything, was visiting the gravesite and seeing the new
cards the kids had written to their dead father each time. Gerard even added
a card himself, a few weeks after seeing the first one. It was then, he said,
that he was finally able to let go of Ray for the second time.

“What did you and Vivian say?” I asked, reminding him of his and Vivian’s
conversation on happiness, before we had gone off in a tangent about Ray
again.

“We both said no,” Gerard answered honestly, his hand on his chin
thoughtfully. “We had always thought we were happy, or at least content
with our lives. But his death gave us a chance to look over things, evaluating
details we may have missed the first time around.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“That we were happy doing art. With each other.”

Gerard looked down at me after the statement, catching the surprised look in
my eye. He nodded to me, confirming what I had been thinking. He and
Vivian were happy with each other, being lovers and having sex. They walked
out of the café after they reached the same conclusion in their mind, and
straight to Gerard’s place where they picked up their old life again. Or at
least gave it a second shot.

“We tried,” Gerard explained, his voice no longer just out there and hitting
the air, but coming right into my ear. He was reaching the end of his timeline
of love, and was almost up to my point. He felt the need to talk to me now,
instead of talking around me. “But we couldn’t do it. I love Vivian with all my
heart. I love drawing and seeing her naked. But together…that way…it just
didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. I didn’t want to have sex with her. We
weren’t in art school anymore. We were adults with our own lives, and I think
once we realized that, we were okay.”

“Realized what, exactly?” My mind had been reeling since Vivian had come
back into the picture, and I thought I missed something.
“That we were in control of our happiness. We could do anything we wanted
to make ourselves happy. And that, in turn, made us so.” Gerard smiled, his
stained teeth poking out from fleshy lips as he looked down at me. “And that
brings me to you.”

He leaned down towards me, and I, unwilling to wait, brought my head up to


his, our lips meeting and tongues entering mouths right away. I wrapped my
hands around his neck, pulling him towards me, and diving my tongue in
deeper. I couldn’t tell exactly from the way he told his stories, but I wanted to
believe that I was the best relationship that he had had up to date. Raymond
and Vivian were close behind, however, so close, I could feel them nipping at
my heels.

“Do you ever regret anything?” I asked, after calming down, letting Gerard
have his lips back. We had been silent for awhile, letting it wrap us in a
comfortable familiarity and my question seemed to catch him off guard. He
looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Like, with Ray or anyone else?” I continued, adding detail.

“Regret is one of those emotions that we have in existence only so we fight


harder to wish it away,” he stated, very vague and open-minded. I still looked
up at him, waiting for him to actually answer me. “But no, I don’t regret
anything I do. I learn from everything, and I have made mistakes; I admit
that. The whole human existence is made up of mistakes. We wouldn’t have
anything we have now if not for someone screwing up. That’s why I never
want to take any of my mistakes back. Without them, I would not be where I
am today.” He paused, squeezing my hand. “And I like this place.”

I blinked a few times, my insides warming from the tips of my toes to my


head.

“And I especially do not regret anything about Raymond,” he added,


motioning with his hand to emphasize his point.
“Why?”

“Raymond got what he wanted in the end. It doesn’t matter that we were
both hurt in the process, he had a family and that’s all that mattered.” His
voice dipped down to that somber level that we had managed to avoid for so
long then. I felt my stomach skip and curiosity beckon once again, on a
different yet similar subject.

“Did you get what you wanted?” I questioned meekly.

He looked down at me and smiled. “I think so.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Secrecy

As morning filtered in through the small cracks in the doorway, I lazily opened
my eyes. Gerard wasn’t there. I could still feel him – it felt as if he had just
left, the way his sheets still etched his body, and his warmth on me. My body
was sticky and grimy, which is how I felt most mornings when I woke up with
Gerard. There were some times when we would have numerous showers
throughout the day; sweat and paint collected on our tenuous skin. My skin
wasn’t as clammy as usual, probably because I had woken up without his
body pressed into mine. It wasn’t too often where at least some part of us
would be touching the other, grasping for something more. I pressed my
sleep-laden eyes shut and my face into the pillow, his smell wafting up to me.
It was a distinct odor, half the time scented with cigarettes, and the strong
astringent smell of acrylic or other paint. Depending on how long ago he had
devoured wine, or we had devoured each other, there would be a pungent
odor to him. It smelled so good, despite the invasion each smell was on some
days. I was pretty sure I only liked the odor because it reminded me of him.
This smell was Gerard, and the moment it hit my nostrils, I was brought back
to him. Scent triggers memory, I had always heard, and it was very true, even
if the memories that were being triggered were only a few hours old. I had no
idea what I smelled like. I couldn’t tell, and really, I was never supposed to.
Now that I was fully awake, frivolous topics gone from my mind, I began to
over-think the situation. I panicked. I had been accustomed to waking up in
his arms by this point in our relationship. Suddenly, his smell didn’t trigger
good memories of the first time he had smoked in front of me, but of the first
morning after. Had Gerard abandoned me? Where was he? He couldn’t have
gone out to buy supplies; we didn’t need any more. He couldn’t have been
going out for food either; there was always fresh bread and cheese in his
house, and the wine bottles were still stocked. Even if he was out of food, he
would have waited until I woke up to tell me. At least, I thought he would
have. I didn’t know for sure; the issue had never come up. The déjà vu feeling
hit hard, but there was no way in fucking hell he was leaving me again. Not
after the night we had had last night. He had told me almost everything
about himself, and his former lovers. We even talked about love, or
consumption, as he put it. Whatever it was, we had talked about it.

Did it maybe scare Gerard off? I asked myself, but still not having a clue of
the answer. My rushing and irrational thoughts were put at ease in a few
moments when I heard the tap running in the bathroom close by. I was able
to breathe again. He was still here, and things were still as good as they had
ever been. My memories were put at ease, though my body felt stiff and rigid
from our lack of movement to sudden thrusts of pleasure during the night,
and from the way I had slept. I gingerly extended my arm behind my head,
an idea collecting at the back of my mind. I flung the sheets off of me in a
hurry, my limbs becoming suddenly healed, and running as quiet as I could
out to the kitchen.

Gerard always had to eat the minute he was out of bed. He was constantly
going without food for such long periods of time, completely engrossed with
his art or me, that when he went to bed, his hunger was still there. It was
always so pertinent that in the morning, before anything distracted him, he
needed to fill that void. His breakfasts were always huge, involving pot after
pot of coffee, some fresh fruit, the thick French bread we ate and the cheese,
sometimes butter. Sometimes he had milk, too, but never cereal. It was too
commercial for him, he told me. Too much sugar. I had been tempted a few
times when I stayed over to bring my box of Frosted Flakes when I had gotten
sick of having French bread all the time, but I never bothered. I wasn’t at his
place to eat; I was there to consume him.
I knew Gerard would be coming into the kitchen right after whatever he was
doing in the bathroom. I hoped he wasn’t showering because I wanted to
come inside with him, though I knew we would probably have another
chance. Even if we didn’t have sex under the running water, I missed having
his fingers in my hair and the acerbic smell of his fancy shampoo. I passed
the bathroom quickly, satisfied with only hearing a sink, as I went into the
kitchen. Wearing only a devious smile, I hopped up on the table, after
clearing away old newspapers and random dishes onto a chair and then lying
down completely, my back hitting the cold ceramic. I was going to give
Gerard a surprise when he came out of the bathroom. We had had sex on the
table a few times before, during our phase of ‘having sex on anything and
everything’ (which was still going on), but it was never as planned as this.
Usually, we would just be in the kitchen, getting wine or some kind of
nourishment, and Gerard would suddenly appear behind me, his hand up my
chest and lips on my neck. Then one of us (usually me) was back up on the
table, fucking and kissing from awkward angles.

I breathed in, feeling the warm morning light on my skin from the window.
For once, we hadn’t slept until noon and Gerard could actually have his
breakfast at the appropriate time. And I would be part of the main dish of this
breakfast, literally offering myself on a platter to him. I had never felt so
devious and seductive in my entire life. I loved it. And I knew Gerard would,
too.

It was amazing how easily I could just do this, my legs wide open and ready
for the artist in the bathroom. Only a couple weeks ago, I had fought so hard
to keep my clothing on, wrapping myself in whatever material I could find.
Now, I hated the constricting material just as much as Gerard did. The cool air
from the apartment hit my skin, making my nipples perk and my skin tighten
with goose bumps. I let my head rest back on the table, my neck too tired of
supporting it as my eyelids dwindled as well.

A sudden movement jostled my attention as Gerard completely bypassed my


display of affection and went to the kitchen counter to put on a mug of
coffee. My head was by the counter he was at, my groin being the first thing
he should have seen as he walked into the kitchen, but seemingly didn’t; he
made no effort to touch any part of me as he worked, too. It was very
unusual for him. Even more unusual was the thick black fabric that coated his
legs and his dove blazer wrapped around his shoulders. He was wearing
clothing, and when he turned around and took in an eyeful of my naked body
and shocked face, he merely took a seat at the table. He placed his mug
down and began to stir, the heat radiating into my side.

“Morning,” was all he said, his hand holding up part of his face. He looked at
me sloppily, his eyelids half-down. I couldn’t tell whether it was in allure, or if
he was still tired. What I did know was that he was acting as if every day a
random teenage boy was naked on his kitchen table. And I certainly hoped
that wasn’t true.

“Why are you wearing clothes?” I asked, turning on my side a little to meet
his gaze. I did not bother to shelter myself at all; in fact, I opened my legs a
little wider, just in case Gerard seemed to forget that I was indeed naked. I
was being the tempter this time.

He mumbled something, as he put the mug to his face to drink, which


sounded like, “I needed to.”

I slid a hand closer to him on the table, reaching over and touching his wrist
with delicate fingers. I made my lips pout slightly, having my face furrow
down into a puppy dog stare. I was going to toy with him, I had decided, like
all the times he did with me. He was the one who had made the no clothing
rule, after all, and I was damned if he wasn’t going to adhere to it. He looked
so good that morning, too. He had just shaven (not something he did very
often; his facial hair barely grew during the week) and his hair was gelled
back slightly, his clothing nicely pressed and not wrinkled, almost as if he was
going somewhere. It baffled me as to why he would put so much time into his
appearance when he was just going to end up naked and panting on the floor
in a matter of moments, if I had my way.

Flicking the sleeve collar on the shirt that stuck out of the blazer,
accompanied with my pouty face, I proceeded to try and seduce Gerard. “I
was hoping we could have some fun on the table,” I whispered, barely above
hushed tones. My voice came out smooth and ashy, making my skin constrict
even more with goose bumps. Gerard looked at me, surprised by my
forwardness and cocked an eyebrow. He began to drink his coffee again
complacently and looked behind me at what I assumed to be the fridge, so I
sweetened the deal.
“After breakfast, of course. But you can still be naked for that.”

I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, and
apparently, neither could Gerard. He kept looking at me with his skeptical
glare, his eyebrows folded and twisted into an odd contortion.

“Well, okay,” he stated hesitantly. “But let’s do that after Vivian comes over.”

I nearly jumped off of the table. My hands leapt forward and covered what I
had growing of an erection, now deflated with the mention of Gerard’s best
friend’s name. “What?”

He let out a deep belly laugh, bringing his mug to his mouth again. He took
his time answering me, savoring his coffee while I squirmed, trying to conceal
myself like a fish out of water on his ceramic table.

“She usually comes over every Saturday for breakfast. It’s a tradition we
have. She hasn’t been coming the past few times because she had to take
Cassandra somewhere, and then her mother was sick. But she told me she
was going to make up for it this weekend. Viv’s very good with surprises.”
Gerard smiled a little, eyes running up and down my body. Apparently he was
going to get two surprises today, and I was going to have a heart attack.

He paused for a minute, though I had a feeling he wanted to say more. His
eyes drew away from my body, and he tilted his head to the side, just
waiting. Within moments, there was a knock on the door and a smile was
thrown on his face, growing wider with each cheery knock.

“That would be her.”

He got up from the table slowly, leaning over me and bringing his lips to
mine. I didn’t kiss back, my fear, shock, and humiliation taking away any
mobile abilities. Gerard was almost at the door by the time I managed to fling
myself off the table.

“Gerard!” I called, my tone high and frantic. I was still cupping myself, using
both hands, just in case he decided to open the door anyway. He looked over
at me, his face normal as if this was an every day occurrence, but his feet still
lead him to the door.

“Yes?” he called evenly.

“What do I do?” I asked, my eyes bulging in out of my head.

“Umm…” he said, biting and playing with his lips, over-exaggerating his
features. I could see he was fighting back a smile, losing the battle at the
end. “Say hi?” he suggested, looking me up and down. He paused,
scrunching up his face a bit. “But wash your hands first.”

He started to laugh again, as I stayed in the same spot, in the entrance of the
kitchen not knowing what the fuck to do. I heaved an aggravated sigh,
knowing that he was fucking enjoying this torture. I gave up, letting my
hands go off of myself at that point as I looked around everywhere to see
where my clothes were. All I could spot were my socks balled up in the corner
by Gerard’s art supplies. And a lot of good a sock would do me. My heart felt
like it was going to explode in my ribcage it was pounding against it so hard,
its thumps matching the rhythm of Gerard’s upcoming footsteps to the door.
He was calling and talking to Vivian on the other side, none of the
conversation saying that he had a fucking naked teenage boy in his living
room.

I couldn’t believe Gerard was doing this to me. He was leaving me stranded
and exposed, letting someone else into our world. It was his best friend he
was letting in; she had seen me before, but that was when I had been
wearing clothing. Was this some sort of twisted payback for seeing her
naked? I didn’t want to find out. I shouldn’t have even been at Gerard’s place,
in theory. If she walked in and put two and two together, then we were both
screwed. She could tell people. She was his best friend and supported his
lifestyle, but she didn’t know that would include a fucking minor in the mix.
Did Gerard want to get caught? Was he really as stupid as he appeared to be
just then? His hand was on the fucking doorknob by this point, and there was
no stopping him.

But, I told myself for once thinking a rational thought, I could stop myself.

I finally managed to grab real guts to run and get my ass into his room,
slamming the black door behind me. I found the lock and slid it over, pressing
my back to the door and just breathing. I was safe, or so I thought.

I strained my ears far and wide to hear what the other two adults were
talking about on the other side. I heard Vivian’s cheerful distinct throaty
laugh as she stepped into the apartment, then a soft enveloping sound that
probably meant the two were hugging. There was nothing but mindless
banter for a while, asking about the weather, how each other were feeling,
while I tried not to breathe too loudly. My lungs felt like they were going to
cave in, but I figured I was safe. Maybe I could pretend that I wasn’t there. I
could hide out in Gerard’s bedroom until she left, however long that would
be. She may not have heard my screams and pleas of help from Gerard on
the other side, and she may not see my clothing scattered around. Gerard
was an odd one; that clothing and those screams could be for a number of
reasons. It didn’t have to mean that a seventeen year old was in his
bedroom, still very naked.

For a second, I had some hope that we would not get caught.

“We are eating for three this morning, correct?” I heard Vivian ask, her voice
penetrating the door and reverberating inside of my eardrum. I felt my
stomach start to rip itself from the walls of my body and just float in the
center of the room. My body was killing itself before anything else did, and
surely would.

“Yes, three people,” Gerard stated, his voice distinct.


Trying not to breathe and spontaneously combust at the same time, I still
held onto some hope. I tried to tell myself that maybe Cassandra, Vivian’s
daughter, was the third. My stomach officially sank to my feet when Gerard
concluded his ill and vile words. “Frank is just getting ready in my room. He’ll
be out in a minute.”

Fuck, was all I could think. Just a whole slew of fucks and Goddammits
entered my head and spun like a merry-go-round. Not only did he give my
name, but he told her I was in his bedroom. Vivian knew I was coming over to
paint, fair enough. But what teenager would come to a man’s house in the
morning to have these lessons, and then get ready in his bedroom? One that
was fucking the artist. I let my head lean back against the door, slamming it
slightly.

“Right, Frank?” Gerard’s voice boomed, shaking the door, or at least my skin
on its bones. I thought it couldn’t have gotten worse, but I was wrong.

“Yeah,” I said weakly, my voice small and cracking. I should have just shut
my mouth and sunk into the black abyss, but what was the point? She knew I
was there. If I didn’t come out, Gerard would have just come in and got me
himself. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

I heard giggles and laughs of approval as I stepped away from the door, my
actions hard and rigid from the menace flowing through me. I was
determined that when I did see Gerard, and when we were alone (if we didn’t
get taken away by police during the time at which Vivian was here, who
knows – maybe she could have been a spy and this was all an elaborate set
up) then Gerard was going to get a piece of my mind.

I couldn’t believe the anger flowing through me; I hadn’t felt like this in such
a long time, and it angered me even more because I didn’t want to feel this
way, especially about Gerard. I had hated feeling this way when it was
towards people who deserved it, or at least people I didn’t care about. I cared
about Gerard, and I thought he cared about me. Our relationship possessed
so much security before that I felt like I could be myself. I could be naked, I
could do art – I could fucking display myself on his table and wait for him to
do whatever he wanted to me. I didn’t know this is what he had wanted. It
was as if he had sawed the table legs off that table, and I was left in a pile of
wood. I had splinters all over my body. I hurt. And the only thing that hurt
more, was that Gerard had done this, and if I went down for this, he would
get it worse.

We had had such a good night last night. Why would he deliberately sabotage
himself? I asked myself, not getting anywhere near a reply. This relationship
was stressful; there were too many things to hide from too many people. And
they were all getting smarter. Sam had actually shown up at my house to
deflate my lies. Gerard had invited the a person over. He was just getting
dumber, and I was getting fucking pissed off.

I couldn’t find my clothing in the abyss of Gerard’s dark room, so I ended up


having to squeeze my way into a pair of his tight pants. They fit very
awkwardly, since I was shorter and weighed a bit less than the artist, but it
was clothing nonetheless. I had to wear no underwear in them, because I
couldn’t find mine and it irked me a little knowing that he did the same. It
was odd; I could have his cock up my ass, in my mouth, and in my hand, but
the thought of wearing his pants without underwear gave me a squeamish
feeling inside. Maybe it was because I was already in a bad mood.

I found one of Gerard’s black button up shirts located in the back of the closet
and threw it on, the shoulders way too broad, before I stood in front of the
door, working up the nerve to walk outside. I waited forever, trying to breathe
in an even tone, and trying not to look as if I had just woken up from being
fucked the night before. When I did finally crack open the door and sneak out,
they were already conversing at the kitchen table, just like old times. They
were sitting across from each other, coffee in both of their hands, a shopping
bag next to Vivian’s legs. Her back was to me, but Gerard could see me come
out of the room perfectly clear. We locked eyes, but I slowly turned away
from his casual arrogant stare, just as I heard the woman’s voice enter my
ears.

“Oh, Frank!” Vivian exclaimed.


I heard the screeching of a chair on the linoleum floor and felt her start to
come over towards me, wrapping me in a hug once she reached her
destination. I had just met this woman before only once, and she was already
acting like we were good friends. I probably knew way more about her from
last night’s conversation than she knew about me, considering the
circumstances. That didn’t seem to matter as her dark strawberry hair (which
smelled like the fruit it resembled) grazed my cheek as she tore herself away
from the embrace, her blue-green eyes staring at me wide.

“It’s so good to see you again!” she gushed, taking my hand in hers and
leading me to the table.

I gave a weak smile and let myself be led, but kept my horrified gaze on
Gerard the whole time. He was still sitting, a distinguished smile on his face,
which was held up by one of his palms. Vivian led me to the spare chair that
she had set up right beside him. I reluctantly sat down, not wanting to draw
any more suspicion to exactly what kind of relationship Gerard and I had. This
concept of secrecy in our relationship seemed to mean nothing to Gerard,
especially as he pulled my chair leg closer to him, taking me by surprise and
fright as our knees touched under the table.

“Now that we’re all together,” Vivian started, taking her seat again and
looking at the two of us before her. “We can get started on making breakfast.
I brought pancakes!”

She donned a high toothed grin, the sides of her face stretching out instead
of up to accommodate the expression, making it appear childlike in nature.
There was a shrill excitable quality to her voice, adding to her childish ways.

It was so odd to me, seeing adults that still acted as if they were children. I
was so used to being around the ones that were in school, at home, or at
church, who took life so seriously. They were always serious, whether it was
about the weather outside or what they did yesterday. It was always the
straight cut and clear answer. There was no joking around. There was smiling,
but it was within proper context. Gerard was in his late forties, Vivian in her
late thirties, and they were still getting excited over pancakes on a Saturday
morning. It boggled my mind, and gave me something to focus on other than
the anger that coursed through my veins. I was no longer that angry as I saw
Gerard smile and wave his hands in the air playfully at the mention of the
breakfast food option. He loved food, he loved Vivian, and I really hoped he
loved me. He was just merging all of them in one wholesome combination.

I was over reacting, I told myself. I was being like those adults who never
wanted to dip into their youth. I was still in my youth; I might as well be a
carefree idiot, right beside Gerard.

I let go of a breath I didn’t know I had been holding, and slipped down into
my chair. Gerard looked over at me, and smiled, nodding his head.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered into my ear, getting dangerously close as Vivian


began to route through her shopping bags, creating a crinkling noise so she
could not hear what was going on between us. I found it hard not to worry,
but my thoughts were relocated as I felt Gerard’s hand slip below the table
and rest on my thigh. He rubbed it back and forth, his vivid eyes staring at
me. I breathed out another jagged breath, wanting desperately for his hand
to go further up, but fighting the impulse at the same time.

“Okay,” Vivian said, getting up and holding the box of pancake batter to her
face. She arched her hand under the box, creating a Price Is Right pose as
she donned another childlike smile. Gerard didn’t turn his face away from me,
but I moved with quick stealth to take in an eyeful of Vivian acting like the
woman on the box. I giggled louder than I should have, to distract everyone
(including me) from the underlying scene at hand.

“Who is going to help me out with this?” she asked, putting the box down by
her side and looking back and forth between Gerard and I innocently.

“Frank will,” Gerard answered quickly, leaning back in his chair and removing
his hand from my thigh, leaving a chill in its presence. I jumped out of my
skin hearing my name and looked back from Gerard to Vivian, unsure of my
next move.
“You’re so lazy, Gerard,” the redhead teased, walking over and past Gerard,
smacking him with the box lightly on his back.

The counter where the stove was placed was right next to the fridge, right
behind where Gerard and I were seated. I was on the edge of my chair, my
hands on my knees, alert and ready to move. The kitchen was small and
cramped, and my nerves were out of whack, so Vivian directed me to the
right position.

“C’mon, Frank,” she laughed, extending her words to exaggerate her point.
She grabbed my shoulders from behind, rubbing them as if she were warming
me up for a boxing match. “I don’t bite. I just need your help since Gerard is
obviously too fancy to get his hands dirty.” She moved her hands over to
Gerard, batting at him slightly and messing up his hair.

“Hey!” he called, grabbing her wrist gently and pulling her hand towards his
face, nipping at her fingers jestingly.

I felt a wave of jealousy wash over me, a nice change from my normal fear
emotion. The only consolation was that the action was far from sexual, like
when Gerard did it with me. He was just trying to annoy Vivian by messing up
her nails, her most prized piece of her body, just like she had done with
Gerard’s most prized, his hair.

I got up from the table and chair and turned around, busying myself with the
pan Viv had set out to distract myself from their display of affection.

“I spent all that time getting my hair ready for you,” Gerard teased, giving
her back her hand.

“Yeah, right,” she called sarcastically, shuffling away from Gerard and
standing beside me, her small body taking up a large amount of room with
her attitude. “We all know that you did your hair like that for Frank,” she
added, talking to Gerard, but looking at me.
My face went red and I nearly choked on the air I was breathing. Ever since
she had stepped through the door, Vivian had not said a thing about the
absurdness of the situation we were all in. She seemed to be completely
oblivious to Gerard’s hand on my knee, the fact I came out of his room
(wearing his clothing, too), and his too close whispering in my ear.

With this remark, she changed my thinking. Vivian joked a lot, but I could tell
that this wasn’t one of them. There was a truth behind her words, one that I
had always known, but hoped she was still an oblivious child to. The
realization hit me hard to the chest, like her elbow jab to my side. I looked
over at her, my eyes dark and serious, but only saw a smiling countenance
back at me. If she knew something, then she didn’t appear to be upset about
it. She was her normal, carefree self. Just with added knowledge that made
me nervous. I couldn’t shake the feeling, even as I worked hard on preparing
the batter, and I felt like she was staring at me the entire time.

“Frank,” she called, a few moments later after the first pancake was down
and cooking. The sounds of the batter popping and fizzing and the heat of the
pan cooking them was all I wanted to think about, and I felt the urge to break
another glass. I swallowed hard and looked over at her as she leaned against
the counter, contented smile on her face. Without warning or asking, she
reached a small arm over, running her hand along the collar of Gerard’s
apparel that I was suited in. She ran her finger over a crest logo and as I
looked down and followed her finger, I realized it was the art school where
Gerard and Vivian had attended.

No wonder the thing had been buried at the back of the closet, I told myself,
mentally berating myself. It was so old. With this small piece of information
that Vivian was running her fingers over, it sealed the fact that I was not in
my own clothing. Vivian’s eyes traced back up to me, her smile deepening,
another form of a happy understanding behind her aquamarine eyes. She
scanned those jewel-like eyes over to Gerard, sharing a laugh with him,
before finally returning to me, letting her lips part and words spill forward,
making those electric volts of embarrassment render me almost useless.

“I like your shirt.”


Chapter 24

Parts 2 & 3

***

Making the pancakes got my mind off everything that was happening. Once
the batter started to hit the pan, and Vivian began to get creative with the
shapes she was making, it roused Gerard up from his chair. He saw another
opportunity to make art, and he was not going to pass that down, no matter
how lazy he was. I even started to get into it a bit, straying from my normal
circular pancakes to making a bear claw, while Vivian was determined to get
a heart done. She had failed numerous times, because pancakes were not
designed for sharp corners. Gerard laughed and teased her the entire time,
egging her on and intentionally screwing her up by knocking into her arm as
she went to pour in the batter. Even when she was so close to getting it right,
and Gerard stuck his finger in the goo, burning himself, but being successful
in his destruction mission, Vivian never got mad at him. She pouted and
yelled, but you could see in her eyes that it was all good fun.

And that’s what we were having; good fun. It was like we were all friends that
all went to that art school in New York whose crest I had adorned on my shirt.
Once the red mark was pointed out to me, I noticed that it was of a paint
brush and a pallet sewn in red threads on a black (now off-gray) thick
collared shirt. When at first the shirt had felt awkward and bulky, it was now
like a second skin. I had heard so many stories about art school and all of the
amazing things there that when Vivian and Gerard cracked an inside joke, I
found myself laughing along. It was still awkward as hell, especially as I felt
Gerard’s hand on the small of my back as he leaned in between me and
Vivian to watch the pancake batter bubble, but he touched Vivian just as
much as he did me.
I knew she thought something was going on, but if we never confirmed it,
then we couldn’t get in trouble. That was my philosophy, anyway. I figured it
was about time to start making my own, especially since Gerard seemed to
be getting stupider by the second. I supposed he thought he was being
daring, but nuzzling me with his nose against my neck, rubbing his hands in
my hair, and even sneaking a small kiss on my neck, was going to look
suspicious, no matter who you were. I felt good when he touched me,
especially when I loosened up, but each time I saw Vivian look over at me
with that smile, I felt the knots start again. It wouldn’t have been so bad if
she just looked for the sake of looking, but it was that smile that drove me up
the wall. She was gazing with a purpose; I just hadn’t figured it out yet. The
way she bared her teeth, and the light in her eyes, lids slid halfway down just
said something else entirely. Vivian was always a person who wore her
emotions on her sleeve; you knew what she was thinking. And the fact that I
wasn’t sure just then drove me crazier by the second.

At one point, during Gerard and Vivian’s battle to make (or not make) the
perfect heart pancake, a batter and flour fight had started. Gerard dipped his
finger in the beige goo, coating a thick and goopy line down Vivian’s thin
nose. Her mouth opened wide in shock and it was moments before she
dipped her whole hand in the bowl. The liquid dripped from her fingers and
spread in between them, making a webbing appear before she smacked it
lightly over Gerard’s left cheek. The sound was so distinct, so unique; it
snapped me right out of my worries. I just watched as they stared at each
other for a while, throwing false insults back and forth before Gerard leaned
forward and licked the batter of Vivian’s nose. She squealed delight and
disbelief as my eyes popped out of my head in the latter of the two emotions.
She then proceeded to do the same to Gerard, licking a big glob that had
collected at the base of his chin, getting more batter on her face.

I realized that was too intimate for me, and though I knew of all the stories
and inside jokes of art school, I could not compute with the relationship they
had had back then. I felt jealous, but I knew Gerard was with me; this was
just something I didn’t understand and didn’t want to at that moment, so I
focused back onto the pancakes. The newest pancake was burning and I was
about to flip it over before I felt the same wet mess collide with me as well. It
was Vivian, her handprint making the same stain on my face just like Gerard.
I stood there for a while looking at both of the adults, older than me by a few
decades and didn’t know what to do. I almost felt like if I fought back I would
be punished, sent to my room, or something like that. When Vivian insisted I
continue, practically threatening to make a pancake out of me if I didn’t, I
gingerly dipped my fingers into the cool goo. She closed her eyes and braced
herself for retaliation, surprisingly calm and cool. She stretched her arms out,
inviting the invasion but I walked past her to Gerard.

I was still slightly mad at him, and decided to show it by rubbing the batter on
his shirt under the blazer instead of his face. I chuckled and smiled
mischievously and his mouth opened in horror. I heard Vivian’s shrieks of
laughter from behind me and felt the biggest grin spread on my face since I
had gotten there. I closed my eyes from laughing right along with her, but
opened them to find Gerard’s tongue on my face, tracing along my jaw line
where the batter was and up to my ear. He flicked his tongue and breathed
hard once he reached there, causing my knees to weaken slightly and place
the still caked hand on his shoulder for balance.

It was all part of the tiny pancake war we were having, I told myself. Vivian
shouldn’t get suspicious over this because Gerard had done it to her, even if
it was in a distant ‘art school’ moment, working on past memories. I thought I
had rationalized the situation when Gerard just had to make everything more
intimate by slipping his hand around my waist, pulling me closer. I pulled
away quickly and looked over my shoulder at the redhead to gauge her
reaction. Vivian was blinded by the battle, and went after Gerard next.

She switched up her ammunition this time, placing a print of dried flour on his
forehead, catching us both by surprise. Gerard found the bag she was
working with, and started to blow it across to his former lover, the white
particles getting stuck in her hair. There was another few bursts of off-white
clouds, and coughing fits from awkward inhalation, and then it was over. We
probably could have kept going, but we wanted to be relatively clean for
breakfast, and still be able to have some food left to eat with. Vivian was
probably the worst damaged out of all of us. She was covered in dust from
head to toe, and it seemed like no matter how much she brushed herself off,
or shook out her red hair, it just stayed. It didn’t clash so badly with the blue
shirt and light pants she was wearing, at least, not as much as Gerard and I,
who were mostly wearing black apparel. We had more of the pancake batter
on us – Gerard especially, from when I had been mad and rubbed it on his
shirt. His dove blazer was long gone, tossed across the room on the couch to
prevent his favorite article of clothing from getting ruined. Most of the batter
on both of our shirts had turned into a clay like substance in a neutral shade,
and was drying quickly. We were able to brush most of it off easier than Viv,
since ours chunked and flaked, and I was pleased to see that nothing – not
even the flour – had touched the art school logo. It was like it was invincible,
standing through the stains of time, and our flour battle.

I could hear my stomach start to growl after we had declared a truce among
ourselves, and Gerard’s eyes lit up, his hunger pangs coming back to him and
making him antsy to eat. We finished off what little bit of batter we had left
quickly, and then took our seats at the table. The delicacy was stacked in an
uneven pile with malformed shapes, teetering to the side and threatening to
fall at any moment. Vivian rustled in her bag and emerged with butter and
syrup, finishing the ensemble completely.

“Thank you, Vivian,” Gerard stated seriously.

He was sitting close to me again, but both hands were on the table, one
reaching forward and stabbing a fork in the middle of the pile, sending them
all to knock forward. Gerard giggled and took the ones he wanted onto his
plate, pleased with his handy work.

“Gerard!” Vivian squealed, trying to reach forward and save the rest of the
breakfast before it fell onto his floor. Her face was horrified, but as Gerard
started to laugh again, she breathed out and calmed herself down. Her face
was so expressive, and the more she moved it, her real age began to seep
through. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. The lines around her eyes deepened,
and parts of her hair, fell in front of her face, letting the visible silver
highlights be seen. I was smiling and laughing along, especially as she threw
a small pancake at Gerard, it bouncing off his shirt and landing on his plate to
the side. It was so nice to just have fun with people, even if they were
decades older than me. It certainly didn’t feel that way.

“Here’s your pancake, Frank,” Vivian dictated, scooping up the bear claw I
had made onto my plate, along with a few other ones. I wasn’t too hungry,
my nerves quelling any appetite I had in me, but even as I informed Vivian of
this, she merely shook her head and gave me even more food.
“You’re a growing boy,” she insisted, giving me a wink that, for once, didn’t
give me second thoughts as to what she was thinking. She was just being a
mom then. And a very good one at that.

As we ate, Vivian filled our ears with mindless banter about her seemingly
fun-filled life. Her daughter was at her mother’s place, the unofficial baby
sitter for her. Vivian and Cassandra lived in a townhouse a few blocks over
from Gerard, and her mother was just around the corner. Vivian spent a lot of
time over there, her mother growing older and older by the second and her
health failing fast. She was diabetic, and had broken a hip a few months ago,
sending Vivian to find another baby-sitter for six intense weeks. Apparently,
Gerard had taken over the duty for a while, reluctantly sucked into doing a
favor for his best friend. It had lasted merely a day, Gerard screwing up and
leaving his wine out and opened, Cassandra mistaking it for grape juice. She
didn’t get drunk, but very, very sleepy and then complained to her mother
each time they went to the store to buy the juice that ‘Uncle Gee’ has.

I found it so cute that Cassandra referred to Gerard as her uncle. I couldn’t


help but grin like a fool and shoot Gerard glances anytime Vivian mentioned
the name. Gerard gave me looks right back and slid his hand onto my thigh,
batting me under the table to stop. He was just so composed and enlightened
– not an uncle type of figure. If you called someone uncle outside your family,
they were usually the happy-go-lucky guy, watching sports and goofing off all
the time. My father’s best friend Randy had been my ‘uncle’ when I was
around Cassandra’s age, and the only clear memories I have of him are the
most unclear ones for him. He was drunk a lot of the time; coming over to my
house when he was already plastered to drag my dad out for some fun. He
was a mechanic like my father, but still worked with cars and was almost
always covered with grease. It may have been his week off, but he would still
have the small distinct hue (and odor) on his shirt, knuckles, or shoes. Randy
was a good enough guy, but Gerard didn’t fit that model of uncle that had
been set up. Then again, Gerard didn’t fit into anything much.

We had gone over the night before about the absence of his own children in
his life, and the term uncle just threw me. It was a family term; Gerard was
not a family man. He was solid and strong by himself, only choosing to allow
some people into his life. But they were never his family. His best friends and
lovers. He had a brother, but they were close; just like friends. And his
parents were dead now. Gerard just did not fit the confines of the family
nickname, and I could see his face cringe whenever I looked at him and
Vivian used the term. I knew he only let her get away with it because she was
one of those valued people he chose to keep around.

Vivian was back to having her mother as a baby sitter again, Cassandra had
overcome her minor alcohol addiction, and things were pretty good for the
late-thirties single mother. She had dated a few guys after the father of
Cassandra had left, but it was nothing special. Gerard and Cassandra were
apparently all she needed for companionship, she stated seriously as she
slipped her hand over to rub Gerard’s free wrist. He smiled and nodded, but
didn’t say much. Neither of us said much, which was a relief. Sometimes it
was just nice to listen to someone else talk for a change.

She worked as an art teacher still, at a local gallery, and was hired out to
places, hosting shows and functions in the art community. Jersey actually had
an art community, which surprised me to no end. I thought Gerard had been
one of a kind with his fruity fascination, but apparently there were more just
like him. None quite as eccentric, Vivian assured me when my face dropped
at the shocking news, but many that could relate to the artistic field. Vivian
was actually getting ready to host an upcoming show, but she was struggling
to find new vendors. It was for new artists only, and the newspaper ad wasn’t
getting as much hype as she had hoped. Since it was for newer artists, it
meant a majority of them were too shy to have people view their work. And in
the already existing art field, the ones who thought they were distinguished
enough to voice their opinion usually talked down on the beginners,
forgetting that they too were once in their very own shoes.

“They’re complete assholes sometimes,” Vivian uttered, her face twisted in


disgust.

It was the first time I had heard her talk with such a negative emotion that it
surprised me. She had finished her breakfast, crumbs lathered in sticky syrup
lining the edge of her plate and her fork. Gerard was still eating, working
away on his pile ever-so slowly. He was only eating with one hand, the
remaining one still placed on my thigh beneath the table, so it was slowing
him down considerably. Gerard had been carelessly and continuously flirting
with me, even being daring enough to lick syrup off the side of my face with
his pointy tongue in a quick flash, but Vivian either hadn’t noticed or didn’t
say anything. It was confusing me to no end, but I was beginning to relax.
These people were my friends. I barely finished the mountain of food Vivian
had given me, because I felt full with other things.

“I mean,” Vivian continued, grabbing her mug of coffee and holding it tightly,
her knuckles showing through her light skin. “We need artists in order to
grow as a community. Who cares if they aren’t very good? They need this so
they can get critiqued. Critiqued. Not insulted.” She scoffed, rolling her eyes
in disgust as she swallowed her coffee. “And really, there is some amazing
talent out there. I’ve just gone to Cassandra’s elementary school and seen
some of the stuff the little fourth graders do. It’s better than half the shit the
pompous assholes produce, and the little kids don’t want any money for it.
They thrust the picture at you, and want a hug in return. At most.”

Gerard gave Vivian a look, tipping his head down and narrowing his eyes.
Vivian snapped out of her serious banter and shook her head.

“Of course you’re not one of the pompous artists, Gerard,” she insisted, too
dramatically so it came off as sarcastic. Gerard gave her a fake scowl and
dug his fork into a piece of pancake, chucking the small syrup-covered piece
over the table at his best friend. She let out a little yelp, catching it halfway
with her hand, and placed it on her plate. Her only retaliation was a snide
smile and her tongue pushed past between her peach lips.

“As I was saying,” she began again, drawing her attention away from the so-
called pompous artist. “There is a lot of talent out there. Undiscovered talent,
too. To make great discoveries, you have to do some not-so-great things, and
go to some not-so-great means. If you have to dig under a rock, you do it.”
She smiled contentedly, leaning back on her chair, satisfied. There was a
small silence to pass, which the only sounds were the clanking of silverware
as Gerard finished the rest of his food, and stole a bite off my plate, giving
me a quick wink. Vivian seemed to be distracted as she looked around the
kitchen, then the back and to Gerard’s art supplies.

“Do you remember your first show, Gerard?” she asked suddenly, a smile
draped across her face. Gerard placed down his fork with a slight clang and
put his palm to his face, shaking his head in embarrassment.
“I want to forget.”

“Too bad,” Vivian perked up, leaning her chair back into position. “I
remember. Might as well tell Frank yourself rather than me sully your name.”

She winked, and Gerard caved.

“It was horrible. I didn’t get the times right and I showed up late,” he
breathed out, grunting at his immature attempt. He continued on with his
story, even though it was embarrassing him, to tell of no one being able to
pronounce his name right, one of the frames breaking, his brother (being the
only person from his entire family to actually show up) breaking out in a rash
from the food or someone’s paint and having to leave halfway through, and
finally, as if the worst had not come yet, someone accusing him of copying
another person’s work.

“And I didn’t sell a single thing,” Gerard concluded the story, shaking his
head and then looking around the room with a slight bittersweet edge. “Not
much has changed.”

We all exchanged a small chuckle, my mind creating vivid images of a much


younger, and more awkward Gerard stuffed into a suit that didn’t fit, thrown
into a room of strangers and told to dazzle them. He was always so put
together that it didn’t make sense. Maybe it was from his experience where
he learned to handle himself. Maybe this was a lesson he had taught himself.
I wondered if I would be able to possess the self-teaching skills he had.

“But they were good paintings,” Vivian added, bringing the coffee to her
peach lips. She paused for a second, a wholesome expression on her face.
“Not much has changed there either.”

“Quiet,” Gerard insisted modestly, batting his hand at Vivian and telling her
to stop. She merely laughed and took her drink, while Gerard turned towards
me. He nuzzled his head against my ear, making shivers go up my spine. I
never returned the gestures when he acted on them, unsure of what I really
could do. This time was different and I felt my eyes close and my body lean
into him slightly, just before he pulled away. I turned and looked at him, a fire
in his green eyes.

“I have an idea, Viv,” he said, looking at me as the fire raged, but talking to
the other person at the table. I heard Vivian lean back into the counter, an
‘oh no’ type of sigh emitting from her mouth. I cocked my eyebrow at Gerard,
wanting to know, and yet fearing where his train of thought was going. If
Vivian – his best friend for years – had breathed out a reluctant sigh, this
must not have been something good. She knew him better than I ever would.
What I knew now was that he was already acting like an idiot today. Things
couldn’t get much worse, could they?

They could.

“Frank can be in your show,” Gerard breathed, his smile reaching the tops of
his ears. I felt my mouth fall open and my heart lurch in my chest, my mind
reeling a mile a minute. No way. He did not just suggest that. My breathing
started to quicken, especially as he turned his gaze back to his partner in
crime and they began to plan my demise.

“Oh, yes!” Vivian squealed, clasping her hands in front of her chest. “I
remember you telling me about painting lessons. How is he progressing?”

“Very nicely,” Gerard said, a sly smile on his face. I was stiff and unmoving
next to him, his hand still on my thigh, but I felt like I wasn’t in the room.
They sure as hell were talking about me that way. “I’ll show you his work.”

The warmth from his hand was suddenly removed as he and the red-haired
temptress were now descending from the kitchen into the rest of the
apartment, Gerard heading for where I had the very limited amount of
canvases I had done. Most of my ‘portfolio,’ as Gerard called it, was from the
exercises we had done that week or two before we finally were in a
relationship. They were nothing special, most of them turning out horribly
wrong in my mind, but Gerard had insisted on keeping all of them. I agreed,
because there was still that shred of hope that they could be something
good. I couldn’t destroy anything, even if I didn’t love it. I had also agreed to
make Gerard happy, but never once did I tell him that I wanted other people,
strangers in a gallery, to fucking judge them. Vivian had already said that
those people were assholes, and Gerard had told me of the horrors of his first
show. This was not encouraging. This was not something I had agreed to. It
didn’t seem to matter as Gerard pulled them out and began to show Vivian
each piece, one by one. She had a grin on her face, her eyes wide as she
glanced over my misuse of color and awfully poised brush strokes, but she
never said a bad word. Even as she got to my very first portrait of a person
that looked like a fire hydrant, she smiled and nodded, mentioning something
about Picasso to Gerard. I had walked over to them, being somewhat
masochistic in my actions, wanting to know what they were saying. Their
backs were to me, shoulders touching and faces close together, chuckling
and smiling as they talked about my art like I wasn’t in the fucking room. I
felt myself seething, just a little bit, but not enough have myself raise my
voice and object to any of this. After all, they were saying nice things. I
couldn’t yell at them for complimenting me, even if it felt like an insult.

“I could definitely see this one in the gallery,” Vivian stated, as I walked past
the two of them, hopefully reminding them that I wasn’t invisible. Her voice
was clear and even as she held up one of my nature pictures, smiling at me
as I past. I returned it weakly, knowing she was only being nice. Nature was
easier to paint and therefore, the best picture I had done. It wasn’t that big of
a deal. I turned away and kept walking, their chatter in the background.

I saw a random flutter of wings over by the window, and continued my


journey over there. The dove was on the off-yellow seat cushions of the
bench, pecking and cleaning her wings. She looked so beautiful right then,
bending her head and neck back to tuck itself away in her wings. She even
cooed as she cleaned, her head bobbing between her feathers elegantly.
They were spread wide and graceful, white patches contrasting themselves
from the faint taupe of her body, just visible underneath the feathers closest
to her skin. As she cleaned and this pristine color became visible, it almost
looked as if she was going to shed the brown tinge to herself, and fully
become the mythical creature that everyone loved. She ceased movement
for a moment, looking out of the window, still spreading her wings as if to
show people on the other side that she could be the beauty that they saw.
That she was this beauty.
I shook my head as the thoughts entered my mind, knowing that I was really
hanging out with Gerard too much. He was beginning to make me dissect the
most mundane of things, like a bird cleaning itself. I breathed out a feeble
sigh, and sat down gingerly on the couch, trying not to disturb the dove. She
fluttered a bit, her shock evident, but as she realized her pursuer was a
familiar face and hand, she cooed. Bobbing her head, she extended her claw-
like feet to sit in my lap.

“She’s so gorgeous,” I heard Vivian gush, a lot closer than she was before. I
looked up from petting the soft creature in front of me and saw that both she
and Gerard had moved up, standing a few feet in front of me now, proud
smiles on their faces. “So what’s her name this week?”

“Umm,” I uttered, struggling to remember the last known artist that Gerard
had named her after. I had been taking care of the dove for a while now,
during this past week when Gerard had been painting and I wanted
something to do, but I never called her by her name. It never registered since
Gerard changed it so much.

“Frank,” Gerard answered quickly, getting a startling reaction out of Vivian.

“Really?” she uttered, making large eyes at Gerard.

“Yes. Same as last week. And the week before that.” Gerard looked up from
the painting he was holding, giving me an innocuous smile. The memories all
came rushing back as a warm sensation formed in the pit of my stomach. I
was an artist, and therefore, I could be a dove. I was just really surprised – I
had no idea that Gerard had kept the name for so long. And apparently, so
was Vivian.

“I never got to be a dove!” she disputed, throwing her arms over her chest
like a pouting child.
“You’re not an artist,” Gerard disputed right back. His eyes wandered back
over to me again, his voice warm and whole. “Frank is.”

I felt my cheeks grow hot, and the warm sensation in my stomach filtered
through me.

“True,” Vivian concurred with Gerard. She flipped her dark curls over her
shoulder, placing her hands on her hips. She was feeling more cocky than
usual as she uttered her next line. “But I’m a work of art.”

“Or just a piece of work,” Gerard snickered, causing her to bat at him
playfully.

We all laughed at bit, myself more so at them than with them. They were just
so humorous to watch sometimes. And for once, I wasn’t jealous when they
acted like a married couple. I had no reason to be; I was in Gerard’s bed
every night I could manage. Not her. No one needed to know it for it to be
true.

“I’m proud of you, Frank,” Vivian said, after there had been silence for a little
while.

I was caught off guard by her statement, only managing to utter a confused,
“Why?”

“Anyone who can get Gerard to not change his mind for weeks is really
someone special,” she stated sincerely, nodding her head with an earnest
gaze.

I could feel the blood surging in my cheeks. It wasn’t in embarrassment this


time – it was pride. My conclusions last night – about me being one of the
best relationships Gerard had ever had - were right, or at least, they were at
that moment. I was sure the dove was significant in some way. I just couldn’t
figure it out at that moment.

I pulled my gaze over to Gerard, red still flirting with the color of my skin on
my cheeks. Gerard was looking back down at the painting in his hands, his
hair falling over his face, but I could still see his expressive countenance.

“I know,” was all the man in front of me answered. His voice was warm and
rich, like the butter we had placed on our pancakes only moments before.
There was a silent pause in his breathing, his head cocking to the side slightly
as he thought of another thing to add. “He plays guitar, too.”

I crushed my eyes closed, my pride and happiness disappearing and being


replaced by nervous energy in my veins again. Vivian’s squeals could be
heard once more, and she discarded the artwork that had once held her
interest into Gerard’s waiting arms.

“Let me hear!” Vivian insisted, coming over to me. She stood in front of me,
her eyes bright and filled with determination. She waved her hands around
while bouncing on the soles of her feet, her excitement clearly evident.

“Umm…” I trailed off, feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.

I hated this. I felt like I was being paraded around, like a one-man talent
show. Only I didn’t have talent. At least, I didn’t think so. Gerard always kept
insisting upon it, even when I told him to stop, but I had learned to live with it
- when we were alone. I was getting better at showing him what I was good
at, but Vivian was a new spectator. Someone I had to be careful of, be fearful
of. She was friendly and lovable, but she was also scary with how excited she
was. What if I let her down? She’d never show it, but I still didn’t want to look
like a moron. And she wanted to put some of my art on display. I didn’t want
to be on display, even when there were only two people in the room. I was
hiding away in this apartment, in this secret relationship, for a reason. I didn’t
want the outside world to see me because, not only would they not
understand Gerard and my relationship, but they wouldn’t understand me.
Hell, I didn’t understand myself half the time. I wasn’t going to let anyone
else figure me out before I did. It felt like things were falling down around me,
just when they got built back up the night before.

I shot Gerard a look and he merely shrugged his shoulders. If he was going to
be parading me around like a trophy, then I thought he would at least have
more worldly advice other than that.

“Not right now,” I said, my voice coming out blunter than I had meant it to. I
didn’t bother to apologize though, because I didn’t feel sorry. I was done with
these people for the day. I felt pecking on my pants (actually, Gerard’s pants)
and the loose grip of claws working their way over to my arms. The only thing
that I felt I could count on was myself and the dove, which were now the
same person. Or at least, we had the same name. I knew I could never be as
elegant or beautiful as the creature I had on my lap. And I knew I could never
be on display.

“Okay,” Vivian said, stopping her frantic movements, but her voice still
remaining chipper. She watched me as I stroked the bird, getting up from my
seat and walking over to her perch, now outside the cage. I carried the dove
in my hand; the other one over top of its smooth outer shell of feathers,
making sure it didn’t get away.

“Maybe I should get you a bird, too,” Vivian stated calmly. “Teach you about
freedom.”

I looked over at her, the small animal still in my hands, her heart beating fast.
That was the thing about small animals; their heart beat ten times as fast as
humans. They say it was why they have a shorter life, because your heart can
only take so many beats. If it was true, then I would probably die right along
side the dove, because my heart always beat fast between my ribcage, that
morning particularly bad. Finally though, Vivian had managed to say
something that calmed down my heart, prolonging my life by a few extra
beats. A few that I would definitely need in the future.

I liked the idea of a dove of my own. I was having fun taking care of Gerard’s,
and I was getting used to cleaning her cage. I had gotten bird shit in my hair
a few times, but it was worth it hearing her coo in delight when I gave her
more food and put a fresh liner down. And I just got into the shower after to
get it out with Gerard anyway. It was a win-win situation.

“I already taught him that lesson, Viv,” Gerard cut in, boasting proudly.

“Good,” she declared, looking back at Gerard, then me again. She leaned into
me, petting the small bird on her bobbing head. Viv’s lips parted coyly, baring
her teeth as her aqua eyes remained on the bird. “I still think he should have
one of his own soon. When he doesn’t get to be around yours as much.
Freedom is such a hard lesson to learn. Sometimes you need reminders.”

“Tell me about it,” Gerard scoffed, running his hand through his hair,
exposing his prominent forehead.

My head twitched to the side, something perking my interest. “When did you
have to learn about freedom?” I asked Gerard candidly.

Just like when Vivian had called him uncle, and I had found out the details to
his first show, I couldn’t see this other side of Gerard. He was always so put
together. He was kind and enlightened. And most of all, he was free. He had
taught me that lesson on freedom ages ago now. We had the freedom in our
lives to choose what we wanted to do, and he had done that. He wanted to
be an artist, and he went for it. Even through the hardships, he was still an
artist, and he was still making brilliant pieces. He had made that choice, and
he had freedom. I couldn’t see it any other way. He could never have not
been any of those character traits. They were already ingrained into who he
was, standing right before me. What had he been before? What was he like
when he was my age? Didn’t these things stay with you all the time?

“We all have to learn about freedom, Frank,” he sighed, bouncing on the balls
of his feet slightly. I could see a tiredness in his eyes as he began to look
around the room, at the buckets of paint and memories written all over the
wall, at the dove, and the two most important people in his life, thinking
about everything. “But I needed to keep learning about freedom. I seemed to
forget the concept after I heard of Raymond’s death. I was happy, but I was
confined. Bound. I kept those shackles on that I thought I had shed years ago.
I kept thinking of all the things I missed, all the things I hadn’t done. Paris.
Being famous. Loving. I kept these things, these unfilled things with me,
buried deep inside me. But they didn’t have to be there. I needed to set them
free. They needed to fly away.”

He stopped moving, stopped the little bit of pacing he had started, his gaze
moving towards Vivian. Her countenance had grown in melancholy, but a
smile was still there, proving that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

“And that’s where the dove came in,” Vivian said, barely above a whisper.
She continued to pet the bird, letting Gerard pace and continue.

“I needed the bird to show me that I could fly,” Gerard breathed, his voice
carrying no emotional bags like his previous statements. “She needed to
show me how to fly, and that flying was even possible to someone as old as
me. I could be free from everything. My art. My life. My dreams. And more
importantly, myself.”

When he stopped this time, he brought his gaze to me from the center of the
floor. He placed his arms at his side with a dull thud, from the poised and
dignified motioning they had been doing before. “It was a chain of events, a
chain of people that set me free. You cannot be free on your own, as
ridiculous as that sounds. The whole idea of autonomy is the auto – alone –
part. But you need someone to teach you how to be alone, how to be
independent, and everything else there is to know. You need someone else
there to teach you these things, because without them, nothing would ever
happen. You would be lost.”

My heart fluttered. That was exactly what he was doing with me.

“Then how are you ever free?” I probed, feeling like I was cutting into
something I wasn’t even a part of. Gerard looked at me quickly, snapped his
neck from his first viewpoint, but met me with whole, caring eyes. I was a
part of this conversation and this process, as far as he was concerned.
“Ah, that’s the tricky part, the part I was lacking. Or am still lacking…” he
trailed off, but didn’t dwell on things as he went right back to his speech.
“Once you realize you’re done learning, you cut off all ties. You go into the
middle of the woods and never come out again, at least not for a long time.
You do something extreme, to prove your freedom. And if you won’t do it,
then someone has to for you. Either way, you are free.”

I nodded my head, seeing the correlation with his own life. He secluded
himself in his apartment after he realized he could. He did something
extreme; never coming out again, only for the essentials. He trapped himself
with his art, with his bird, and that in turn set him free.

“And so you got the dove?” I questioned, though it was more so a statement.
I looked down at her on my lap, petting her gently. I smiled, thinking of the
beauty in the tiny bird holding so much power.

“Yes, I did. And I let go of my past dreams and hopes,” he nodded, brushing
his hands down the front of his shirt rather quickly, and finishing up the
talking just as fast. “I could really live again.”

The next few moments were only penetrated by the soft coos of the bird that
had saved the man’s life before me and Vivian. We all shuffled in our places,
hearing the words again and again, appreciating their importance. I thought I
had gone deaf it was so quiet, the white noise from the hum of the lamps and
the cars outside hurting my ears. The silence was rejuvenating from the
mindless banter from before. Gerard had released intelligence and theory
into the air, and now we were sponges, soaking it all up unlike the interludes
of conversation prior where everything was so light and airy that it rolled off
our backs. Nothing was that serious before; just pancakes and mock fighting.
Now, we spoke of grave matters, and lives saved from entrapment. I had led
the dove back to her perch, her clawed feet scraping as she got on, bobbing
her head. She sat high like the regal Queen she was while the rest of us just
waited.

“Give me your hands,” Vivian suddenly said, breaking the cool ripple of silent
waves.
“What?” I questioned, scrunching my face up. She didn’t answer me, but took
a few paces forward, holding her own hands out, palms up waiting for her
request to be filled.

“Give me your hands,” she repeated, her eyebrows raised, waiting. She
motioned with her outstretched hands once more, her weight shifting to the
side, before I finally snapped out of my confused state and placed my hands
in hers, palm to palm. She grasped them, one at a time, quickly inspecting
them. Her face hovered above my slightly tanned skin on the back, her
fingers tracing around my own digits, analyzing the broken nails and tiny
cuts. Her eyes were narrowed with intense concentration, her mouth open
and tongue sticking out at an obscure angle. She was really working hard at
whatever the fuck she was doing. I wanted to pull my hands away a few
times, freaked out by how intense she was getting, but I kept them there,
limp in her grasp. Curiosity welled up within me, and though I tried to look at
Gerard for an answer, he merely put his hands up in the air, declaring that
this was not his place. Vivian was in complete control, for once.

“Hands tell a person’s story,” she stated, finally giving me some insight to
her mind. She had been an open book most of the time; this act slamming
the pages shut right in front of my face. She still studied my left hand, her
smooth skin grazing against my own, not looking up as I asked a question.

“Is it like palmistry or something?”

“Not quite…” she said, flipping my hand over now and actually studying the
palm. She scrunched up her face and shook her head, quickly turning my
hand back over and inspecting my fingers once again. I was under such
scrutiny that I felt at risk of getting a cavity search at any moment

“She’s not telling the future with this,” Gerard cut in, his voice making me
look up to him, ignoring the objectification my hands were going through.

“Then what is she doing?” I asked impatiently.


“She’s more so finding the present that we’re still blind to.” Gerard pursed his
lips together and nodded, concluding his thought, which still made absolutely
no sense to me. But before I could argue anyway, Vivian had finally found
what she had been searching for.

“Your hands are telling me that you haven’t found your passion just yet,” she
declared, taking her hands away from mine slowly, giving them back to me
as she gave me my verdict. She stood in front of me again, backing away and
her face returning to its normal chipper gaze.

“What?” I wondered, perturbed and confused again. I felt like I had gone back
in time, and it was my first day I had met Vivian, while she was naked on the
couch. Only after the ogling my hands had just received, I felt more naked
than the nude model. I was still a naïve teenager and so blatantly dumb to all
their little inside jokes and theories.

“Your hands,” she started, reaching out and grabbing them again. I leaned
into her with a jerking motion, startled and angered by the touch again. But I
wanted answers, so I let her fingers trace over me.

“Your hands are worn in the wrong areas,” she started again, running her
hand along the sides of my index finger, into the ditch that led it to my
thumb. “Right here is worn, while the other places,” she paused as she ran
her hand in between my middle and index finger and then on the underside
of the four main digits, “aren’t worn. Those are the places that an artist and a
guitar player would use. And yet, despite the amount of times you’ve played
your instrument, or your ability to paint, they are not worn. Your body does
not want them to be worn down there. You may enjoy doing those things, but
your body knows that something is still missing. Whatever fits between that
worn area,” she emphasized her words by running her long index finger in
that same ditch again, “is what your passion is.”

Giving my hand back to me, she stepped back again, a pleasant smile
painted on her face. She thought she was helping, but I could not have been
more confused.
“I’m not supposed to do either?” I asked for clarification. I could understand if
I wasn’t supposed to paint. I only started that to get closer to Gerard and
hopefully gain a little more confidence, just like him. I had that now, or at
least, I was working towards it, and a whole lot better than when I first
started. But the guitar? I had been playing that since I was a kid. Granted, it
was my father who turned me onto it, but still. I liked it. I played it. And when
I had played it for Gerard, he said I was an artist. Who the fuck was Vivian to
tell me that I wasn’t now? After all my hard work, it all seemed like it was for
nothing.

“Don’t worry, Frank,” she stated, reaching forward to place her hand on my
shoulder. “You’ll find it. Keep doing what you love, and it will lead you there.”

God, I thought roughly, her hand on my making my skin crawl. It sounded like
a bad high school special.

“Did you do this for Gerard, too?” I asked suddenly, not hiding the bitter
pretension in my voice. Maybe she predicted Gerard’s wrong as well. And if
she had, then I knew for sure she was full of shit here.

“Yeah, years ago,” she declared, finally taking her hand off my shoulder and
waving it in the air, signaling the passing of decades. “He had artist hands
then, and I’m sure he still does. His hands are worn in between the middle
and the index fingers and on the pad of his thumb. Just where he held his
paintbrush. When I read his hands, it was before he started painting seriously
– just drawing, mostly. But after he realized that the brush fit there, he went
all out for it.”

She glanced back at Gerard, who smiled and nodded modestly, his bangs
falling over his forehead.

I had begun to notice that whenever Gerard got praise from other people, he
tended to brush it off as nothing, especially if it was Vivian or people he cared
about. In general, however, if he was talking about his own work, he was an
arrogant prick. At first, I thought it was because he had very good self-
esteem, but seeing the way he acted with Vivian, I changed my mind. He
complimented himself to get people to pay attention to him, so he could get
some kind of recognition – but that was from strangers. He was presenting a
whole different façade to them. He didn’t want them to get deep inside of his
skin, because, I soon realized, he didn’t like that skin. When people did
manage to get close to him, and he let them, he hated to hear compliments.
He brushed them off, acted as if they were nothing. He didn't want to believe
the people he loved because he respected their opinion. Everyone else could
think he was a fucking fantastic painter, and he would love it because they
didn’t know him. It was almost like an insult, in some lights. The minute
Vivian or I complimented him, he brushed it off, and sometimes insulted
himself for the lack thereof of negativity. He hated it when other people (who
didn’t know the real him) called him fat, ugly, or stupid, but he had no
problem using them for himself. Or having us say it back to him. It was his
way of hurting himself before anyone got the chance to, his way to build up
resistance and take it when people didn’t like him. He had spent forty-seven
years having a lot of people dislike him. He had to start finding coping
strategies at some point; self-loathing was just one of many.

And just then, I felt my heart drop.

“I’m sure if I read his hands today now, they’d be slightly different,” Vivian
added, gladly interrupting my unpleasant thoughts.

“Really? What would they say?” I said, taking the distraction.

“That they belong in yours,” she stated seriously, her eyes penetrating me
whole. I felt my body stiffen, while my jaw unhinged and fell to the floor. My
tongue began to swell again inside my throat, allergic to the words she fed
me. She had not said anything suggestive in a long while and I thought and
prayed she had forgotten or just not noticed that Gerard and I were very
close.

Apparently not.
“Frank,” she said, her voice soothing, almost lullaby-like. “It’s okay. I know.”

My eyes had been dropped to the floor, trying to crawl into the cracks of the
floorboards, but as the next set of words flew out of her mouth, I met her
eyes. They were just as soothing as her voice, the color of the iris like the sky
on a clear day. I was still in shock from her words, but something in her voice
and eyes, her very being, made it feel like something was going to be okay.

“I know, Frank,” she repeated when no words had been spoken by the three
of us in too long. “I know and it’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

I still stayed frozen in time, thinking that maybe I was dreaming. There was
no way she could be talking about what I thought she was and be that calm.
A normal person would have been freaking out and calling the cops, and child
services would have taken me away. There was no way she was thinking of
me and Gerard dating. And I wasn’t going to say anything to clarify. It could
be another trap.

“I’m happy for you guys,” she finally said, removing all doubt from my mind
about subject matter. Her smile widened, baring her white teeth as she
exchanged a look with Gerard who was in the background, his hands in his
pockets casually. He didn’t meet my eyes when I looked over, but kept on
staring at Vivian. The scene didn’t make sense to me. I felt like I as going
crazy.

“What?” I choked out hoarsely. “How can you be happy for us?”

Vivian looked back at me, her face screwed up. “How can I not be happy for
you guys? An aspiring artist is dating my best friend. I couldn’t be happier.”
She paused for a bit, cocking her head to the side at my confused
countenance, and continued on with her little blissful banter. “I knew it the
moment I saw you two together. The way you looked at him and the way he
looked at you. I don’t know. There was something in your eyes; the ways you
carried yourselves. Even if Gerard decided to deny it when I came by the next
Saturday, I knew each of you were special, and even better together.”
She glanced over at her friend, who just shook his head at the notion, but
smiled right back at Vivian, confirming her words. She nodded at him,
continuing the gesture until she turned to me again.

“I’m very happy for you guys,” she clarified once more, just in case I had
forgotten. She gave another airy smile, still innocent as could be. I felt bad
corrupting the situation, but it had to be done, for my own sanity.

“Don’t you think the situation is a little odd?” I asked, my head tilting to the
side. It felt like the understatement of the century.

“Why?” Again, innocence in its purest form. She scrunched up her face, not
quite getting it, but not referring back to Gerard. He had managed to blend
into the wall at this point, a hard task for the flamboyant artist. Finally,
Vivian’s face seemed to expand as something clicked in her mind. “Because
it’s a gay relationship?”

I sighed. “Not quite…”

She cut me off before I could continue, though I didn’t exactly know what I
was going to say.

“Because I’ve been around gay people before. It doesn’t bother me at all. I
love Gerard and if Gerard loves cock, then so be it. It doesn’t make him any
less of a person. And I don’t even mind it when he’s around his partner.”

She smiled and touched me on the shoulder. If I had not been so confused
and annoyed, I may have laughed at her use of the word ‘partner’. It was so
mom-like. She didn’t want to go too overtly sexual and say lover like Gerard
did, but then again, she didn’t want to be completely childlike and say
‘boyfriend.’ I found myself liking Vivian again, despite my nagging urge to
smack her dense skull against the hardwood floors.
“No,” I uttered through gritted teeth. “I mean the age difference. Don’t you
think it’s a little odd for us to be together at these ages?”

When the words came out of my mouth, I didn’t like the way they sounded. It
was the internal question I had been struggling to answer ever since this
whole ordeal started, but I was always on the other side of it. I was always
the one who thought it was a perfectly fine union, but was preparing myself
for society’s blunt reproach. It almost sickened me, hearing the words come
out of my mouth, especially as I saw Gerard’s tired gaze in the distance. I
made it sound like I didn’t want to be in the relationship, which was the
farthest from the truth. I was just…confused. Very fucking confused.

“What age difference?” Vivian responded, and I could feel something inside
of me snap. I was letting down myself and Gerard and for nothing. This
woman was clearly not getting it. But then she started to speak again,
restoring all of my faith in everything.

“Souls don’t have ages.”

***

Vivian left soon after, letting us keep the mess of pancakes and sticky syrup
all for ourselves. Gerard kissed and hugged her goodbye, saying that they
would do it again soon and something about how I was invited for the next
round. I wasn’t really listening or doing much of anything, which is why
Vivian’s open armed embrace took me off guard, her strong and prolonged
hug knocking me back on my heels. As she pulled away, her peach lips met
mine with a strong kiss. It didn’t last for long, and it was only one sided, her
soft lips just pressing into mine in a chaste gesture, but it shocked me
nonetheless.
“Calm down,” she joked, when she had taken in my white as a ghost
expression before she closed the apartment door. “It’s only a kiss. It’s just
how people show affection.” She gave a slight wink and an arm wave, before
she was completely out of the apartment.

Gerard stood facing the door a while, collecting himself before he turned
around, heading into the kitchen. I was in relatively the same spot in front of
the window, only closer to the couch. I couldn’t have felt farther from
everything around me, though. Too much had happened in one day, and I
was pretty sure it wasn’t even twelve yet. Vivian had managed to come in
and shake up my nice little niche I had made with Gerard. After the close call
of almost being caught, I thought we could go back to our secret life inside
the apartment with no threat or no risk of anything anymore.

Then Gerard had to bring in an outsider.

I liked Vivian, and even found myself growing to love her in spite of myself,
but I didn’t understand why she was allowed in on everything. And why she
was okay with it. She knew that Gerard and I were dating. Were kissing.
Fucking. She knew I was a minor, too. And she wasn’t going to call the police.
She wasn’t going to get grossed out. And fuck, she was going to encourage
us. She had known it all along, she said. How could she have seen it before
we even had a clue? And why would you choose to see something like this?

“I don’t get it,” I stated out loud, not really caring at this point if Gerard heard
me or not. He seemed to be fucking everything up today, so why would he
even bother listening and then moreover, helping me?

“What?” he called from the kitchen, water running in the background. I could
hear him scraping the remnants of pancakes off into the trash before he
submerged the dishes underwater, leaving them to soak while he made his
way to the doorframe of the kitchen. He wiped his hands on a towel which he
flung over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing at me. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I breathed, my vision darting around everywhere. I raised a


hand in the air, to grab a stray thought, but I gave up and let my arm fall
back down into place at my side. My eyes gaze eventually met with Gerard’s,
feeling how vacant my stare was as I met his full glare. “What the hell just
happened here, Gerard?”

He sighed, shifted his weight and moving forward towards me. He put his
hands on the top of my arm, rubbing reassuringly. Though he was only a few
inches taller than me, I felt so small right then.

“Vivian came over,” he stated the obvious, his voice tired. We had talked so
much last night that I didn’t think he had much left in him to explain.

“Why does she know? I thought it was a secret?” I scraped together some
mangled thoughts with the masking tape of my mind and flung it through my
mouth.

“There are no such things as secrets,” he started. His voice was gaining
resilience, but it was like pumping sugar into a tired child. They would only be
up for a few moments, before lethargy took over their system once more.

“How so?”

He sighed again, taking my hand and leading me to the couch, where he


continued. “The human mind is incapable of keeping secrets. It can only hold
so much valuable information before it explodes, or folds in on itself. If you
tell it something that it cannot share, it will find ways of getting out. It’s
stubborn that way. And we’re just humans. We have this biological urge to
share. We can’t overcome it.”

“What can we do then?”

“Pick the right people to share with,” he concluded, nodding his head. His
eyes brightened a bit, continuing on as he waved his hands. “Vivian was that
person. She won’t tell. I know she won’t. She loves me too much to see me
hurt, and I love her too much to not keep this within me. I had to tell
someone about you.” He reached forward, rubbing his hand against my knee,
causing me to smile weakly as I still listened hard.

“When you share something with someone who isn’t a part of it to begin with,
the whole dynamic changes. You suddenly have a person to gush to that’s
not the member in question. I can tell Vivian all the things we do and we can
do things in front of her. When I touched you, kissed you, an hour ago, it was
different from when I touched and kissed you last night. It made things seem
more real, like this was really happening because we had someone there to
witness it all. Before, we were living in a fantasy. A secret we created. And I
was afraid…” he breathed in deeply, drawing back slightly, and shocking me
with his information.

Gerard wasn’t capable of being afraid, I told myself, but I was wrong.

“I was afraid that if the element of secrecy disappeared, then we would as


well. Sometimes, things aren’t as fun when someone knows about them.
Sometimes secrecy is the only exciting factor of a relationship. That was what
happened with Simon; it was exciting because we weren’t supposed to be
doing the things we were. We had to hide. We,” Gerard grabbed my hand,
shifting the focus to our relationship, “have to hide, but that doesn’t mean we
have to be a secret. I don’t want our whole relationship to be based on that,
and I was afraid it was getting to that point…”

He looked up from his focal point on our hands then, staring at me deeply, his
eyes asking the question his mouth and mind wouldn’t do for him. And for
once, I knew my answer.

I leaned into him, our lips meeting together slowly, a sticky mess still
remaining on them from the breakfast we had consumed earlier. His lips were
warmer and more inviting than usual, and I didn’t know if it was from the
comfort food or just the situation at hand. I kissed him harder than normal,
biting his bottom lip carefully, wanting to devour him just like the pancakes.
As our tongues began to touch, Gerard’s hand went from my knee to the
back of my neck slowly, touching every inch of my body on its journey to get
there. He pressed against my neck, deepening the kiss, and then pulling our
foreheads together when the kiss was over. We sat there for a while, the
breath still going in and out of each other’s mouth, foreheads and minds
meeting at the forefront.

“Gerard,” I called, my mind creating another misshapen question.

“Yes?”

“The thing that Vivian said…about souls,” I started, biting my lip and tasting
Gerard instead of the sugary sauce. “Do you believe it?”

He sighed, but not discontentedly. He was thinking again, which was a good
sign, I hoped. “The soulmate ideal you mean?”

I nodded.

“I believe it, to a certain degree,” he started again, the heat in between our
faces becoming unbearable. “In different parts of our lives, we have different
soulmates, because I don’t think we ever keep the same soul. We change it,
add to it, and sometimes even sell it. I’ve had soulmates before, I think, for
different times in my life.” He paused, gathering up the story in both of our
memories.

“What about now in your life?” I asked, after careful seconds of deliberation.
He pulled his forehead away from mine, to meet my eyes. His pupils were so
dilated and strong, they penetrated me with an unknown expression. He
didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know how to answer either.

“There are different times…” he tried to repeat, but I wasn’t going to have
that.
“Right now, Gerard,” I told him, taking his hands and linking our fingers.
“Forget about the past – you don’t like living there. Forget about the future –
there is no point in worrying. What about right now, Gerard?” I breathed,
adding the next part with careful precision. “Am I that soul?”

He breathed in deeply, crushing his eyes shut for longer than a blink, and
opened them again. A layer peeled away from his green eyes, brown flecks
appearing against the pristine backdrop. He looked at me, taking my hands
and moving closer. Our noses rubbed against each other, foreheads pressed
together in a moment which was almost painful.

I knew we were both having issues with this concept, this word, this promise.
We didn’t want to say anything definite like ‘I love you,’ because we knew it
could all get taken away. Not everyone was like Vivian. Not everyone would
be this nice and support us. So we didn’t want to say anything. We didn’t
want to plan in advance, we just wanted to live. We needed to live, like
Gerard had said. We needed the freedom right now to just give it our all,
because I knew that we couldn’t do it forever.

Gerard had always defended himself from other people, whether he was
completely aware of it or not. He would insult himself first before they could,
and that idea applied to here as well. If he didn’t promise himself to anyone,
then nothing could be lost. He had lost too much with Raymond. He had
almost lost himself, his freedom, everything until he was down to nothing
again. But we knew we were different. We knew that the moment we had
sex, after it was all over, that this was not nothing. It was everything he had
been lacking. An artist wants everything in life, even if they can’t have it.
Admitting it is just the hardest part. For both of us.

I didn’t think Gerard was ever going to answer my question. We sat on the
couch, our legs wrapped around each other, foreheads pressed together and
hot breath on our cheeks. We could have stayed that way, and I would have
been happy. I wanted an answer, I wanted that everything and that vow to it,
but I could deal with it not being there. I was just as scared as he was. As we
heard the dove that bore my name fly in the background, however, we found
some bravery in each other.
“Yes,” Gerard finally answered, his voice jagged from the emotion (both there
and fighting to stay there). It was all he said, all he could say, but God, it was
enough.

“You’re mine, too,” I answered back, a heartbeat after he had concluded. And
then we pressed our lips together, to silence any other words, because none
would mean as much as those.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Solitude

When I was at Gerard’s place, I truly felt like I was at home. There were times
with us where it really did feel like I had lived there all my life. I knew where
things were. I knew he was weird and kept his knives in a separate drawer
from the rest of his other cutlery, closer to the cutting block. I knew how to
work his ancient gas stove; that you had to push the knob in before you
turned it, and that the back burner never worked to begin with. I found his
pots and pans and cooked with them, opened his fridge and took what I
wanted from it without feeling guilty or asking for his permission first. I knew
where his spare light bulbs were just in case one of the lamps burnt out and
had to be replaced. I even knew what kind of dish soap he used and what
scent he preferred and went to the store to buy more one day. It was just a
basic knowledge with me and demonstrated it accordingly.

I felt so proud and strong when walking through his door. I felt like the place
was mine, too. I started to lead without waiting for him to show me the way,
because I already knew the way. And half the time, I didn’t even have to ask
Gerard where we were going; I just knew that, too. Leading was something I
had never done before, even in my friends’ houses. When Gerard and I
weren’t together, talking or having sex, I would be able to find my way
around. We didn’t have to talk all the time, or be together.

When I was with my friends, a lot of the time, I would strain my mind to think
of something to say. I’d panic if we were quiet, because that just never
happened and it would be my fault for not being interesting enough to keep
up the flow of dialogue. Usually, Sam never closed his mouth, so I didn’t have
to worry about that issue. Around new people, that was a different matter all
together. I would struggle; a lot. I’d always feel inferior and boring because I
couldn’t maintain a simple conversation. I wouldn’t be able to get past ‘how
are you’ without feeling awkward in my own skin and most of the time, I’d
revert to talking about the weather so I didn’t feel like I was a total mute. And
honestly, if you had to revert to Jersey weather as the main force of
conversation, then that was bad. The weather never changed. With Gerard
though, if we weren’t talking, we weren’t struggling about it. We just weren’t
talking; we were being with each other and appreciating the silence.

I had to admit - it unnerved me at first. I thought things had gotten boring


and he was tired of me. Gerard generally talked a lot, but it wasn’t drivel like
I was used to filling the air with. When he said something, he meant it. It was
poignant and detailed, always mattering. When that first silence washed over
us, especially after we started our relationship, I remember that panic
returning to me. It had never been there before, when I was merely the kid
cleaning his art supplies and getting lessons. It didn’t matter that we weren’t
always talking because that was not the reason for our meetings. But now
that we were fucking, it seemed like a very important aspect to have
conversation. And I froze. My tongue had felt like a dead weight in my mouth;
a cadaver ready to be cut up and out. In trying to cope and stay alive,
something happened inside of me that was as if someone had attached a
defibulator to my voice box.

I started talking again, and talking a lot. I spouted anything that came to my
head. I started telling Gerard about one of the paintings I saw in a book when
I was probably seven, and how I didn’t get it. How I hated the museum,
because my mother had dragged me there to meet one of her friends –
anything, really. I was pretty sure I told him about the weather on that fateful
day too, but I couldn’t remember. I didn’t hear my own words coming out of
my mouth, I was just talking. Spewing out random details. I told him I never
liked museums, even when my mother wasn’t around, because I preferred
field trips in school that went to zoos and farms and stuff because of the
animals – and did he know I liked animals? Did he like them too? - I just kept
going. It was kind of sad, looking back on it, especially since Gerard wasn’t
responding all that much, making me even more nervous. I thought I was
going to pass out from lack of air due to my breathless self-conversation
before Gerard finally seemed to notice I was dying.

“What are you doing, Frank?” he asked, looking over at me from the bed we
now shared. It had only been our second or third time having sex, well past
noon of the day after the first act had been committed. I chastised myself
inside my head for fucking this up – whatever it had been then – so soon.

“I’m talking…” I answered slowly, but my thoughts still spinning a mile a


minute. I could feel my face flushing, and it wasn’t from the act we had just
finished.

“I know,” he said, nodding his head. “But why are you talking?”

And that question, finally, stunned me silent.

“You don’t always need to talk, Frank,” he said after the color had been
drained from my face. I felt like I was being rejected in some way, thrown
aside, and discarded as a hole to fuck and not talk with. I almost expected
him to tell me to get up and start to clean his paint brushes again. When he
shifted closer to me in the bed, placing a hand on my shoulder, his words
came into my ears, slowly, calmly and I should have realized that my
aforementioned thoughts were not in his character at all.

“Sometimes silence is good. Sometimes it’s necessary,” he declared, looking


me up and down. He extended his hand, running his fingers along my
unmoving jaw, cupping my chin, but not bringing my face forward just yet.
“Silence is louder than anything I’ve ever heard. It lets us get to know each
other in different ways. It has its own message for us, if we shut up long
enough to listen.”

He gazed into my face for a few moments, judging my reaction, but not
letting me say a word, even if I had thought of something. He brought my
face forward in his hands and kissed me softly, letting our tongues mingle
together. I regained my composure and kissed back, and for the rest of the
day, I don’t think I uttered a word. I was able to hear the silence’s message
then, and it spoke loud and clear.
I belonged in Gerard’s apartment. But more importantly, I belonged with
Gerard.

There was just something about the way we acted together. When I would
come to see him every day after school or all the day on the weekends, like
the one we were in the middle of then, he’d always be happy to see me. His
eyes would light up as I stepped into the apartment, and we’d be in each
other’s arms before my keys hit the table. He’d kiss me like he hadn’t seen
me in years, his lips pressing hard against mine, or softly trailing away from
me to make me follow him further into the apartment for more. We would
talk briefly, about our day or something small before we went into his
bedroom if we could wait that long to make the trip. We had sex a lot of other
places than the confining four walls of his room. We liked to mix it up, taking
it over to the floor by his art supplies, against the wall, or anyplace else we
could muster.

The unwritten rule of no fucking on the balcony still applied, however. We


didn’t want to risk getting caught by fucking there. It was too risky, and
especially after the close call when we hadn’t been doing that, I didn’t want
to push our luck anymore. We didn’t even venture outside all that often; the
apartment was our safe haven, our art museum, and our home. It wasn’t just
his home or my home. It was our home. I didn’t own anything there, I didn’t
pay the bills, and Gerard and I weren’t bound by law or marriage, (or ever
could be, for that fact) but I still knew I belong there.

The way Gerard touched me after sex was like nothing I had ever
experienced before. His hands ran over my body, like water flowing over
contours and shapes, creating rapids. He wouldn’t just touch me sexually,
he’d touch me sensually. Everything about Gerard was sensual. He wasn’t
sexy in a ‘fuck me now’ type of way. He was forty-seven-years old, a little
chubby, and was going bald. That wasn’t sexy by today’s standards, and not
mine either. He exuded sex appeal, however, because everything he did was
elegant and mysterious. You wanted to get to know him, you wanted him to
be around, and most of all, you wanted to be wanted by him. He was sexy in
that regard, wholly and completely separated from the physical appearance.
It wasn’t that he was ugly – because he wasn’t. Despite his imperfections, he
cleaned up quite nicely. He just wasn’t my type. He was…male and old. I had
no idea that would be what I ended up being attracted to. I was not attracted
to his body parts, though; not his dick, his hair, his skin, anything. I was
attracted to everything as a whole; Gerard the person. Gerard the teacher.
Gerard the artist. And even better, Gerard the lover.

And those lover’s touches were amazing. He may have exuded that sexual,
lustful edge, but when things came down to where it counted, Gerard was far
from a fucking maniac. He liked sex, but there was more to it. He was tender
and caring. He wouldn’t just touch me to get me off; he’d touch me to let me
know that he was still there, and that he still cared. He’d hold my hand
whenever he could, interlocking our fingers and running his thumb over my
skin. If we were close enough to do more touching, he’d leap (sometimes
literally) at the opportunity for that, too. He’d link onto my waist, glide his
hands over my shoulders and even play with my hair, petting the side of my
face and then twisting his nubby fingers into my locks. It felt so good having
someone else play with my hair and skin. I had forgotten how nice it was just
to have someone touch me.

It was weird. I was never one to give out hugs, or get them from my friends,
but once Gerard had started those actions with me when I was still his art
student, it was as if a light had gone off inside my head. I liked to be touched.
I wanted to be touched, and more often than not, I needed to be touched.
The feel of someone else’s hand on my shoulders made everything seem so
real. I was used to people being around me, talking at me, or near me, but
the gap between us had never been bridged. When Gerard touched me, he
was talking to me. He wanted to be with me.

Before him, I often drifted off into my own mind, my own worries and
completely forgot about the surroundings around me. I wanted to forget
about them. His touch made it so I couldn’t just wish amnesia upon myself.
He brought me back into the moment, and he made me realize that reality
wasn’t as bad, as long as you were connected to something, to someone. It
was hard to explain, but I never needed to give reasoning for why I held on
extra long in our hugs. Gerard just accepted it and let it happen naturally.

Most nights, I’d fall asleep with his constant and soothing actions, like his
light fingertips going all over my back. It felt just as good when I did the same
thing to him, though I was convinced I was never as good at it as he was. He
seemed to just be capable of so much with his hands; I figured it was an artist
thing. One day though, I thought my wish had come true, or one of them, at
least. His head was positioned in my lap as I looked out the window, both of
us just recuperating from a long day of sex and art. I was watching the colors
of the sunset, and saw a particular nice shade of orange to show Gerard. (I
was convinced his favorite color was orange, or something bright like it. He
always seemed to have a zillion shades of it, and always used it in his work. I
didn’t want to ask what his favorite color was, because honestly, that was
really juvenile and stupid. He would probably laugh at me, and we’d start a
paint fight and end up fucking in the center of the room. Not that there was
anything wrong with that, but since we were probably going to do it anyway, I
figured I would avoid my embarrassing question and just assume it was
orange. Anytime I saw him use the shade, I would smile to myself, and I was
pretty sure he caught onto what I was thinking). This particular shade in the
sky reminded me of a piece he had been working on earlier that day, and I
wanted to point it out to him. Only, when I returned my attention to my lap,
all I could see and hear were his closed eyes, and light snores in my ear. He
was dead asleep.

It was then I knew that I had finally done something good. Gerard was
comfortable with me. It was one thing for him to just take off his clothing;
that was a confidence issue for himself. Falling asleep and leaving himself
vulnerable in my arms was another case all together. I remember planting a
kiss on his forehead and wishing him good dreams before I too gave up
myself, falling asleep with him. It was getting dark by that point, anyway.

These little nuances of actions seemed better than sex most days, although
that was nothing to hide from. Our sex was more than sex. It was intimate,
loving, and caring in every single way. We’d have our moments of really fast
and random fucking, more often than not after I came over from spending a
long and annoying day at school. It was a way of getting aggression out and
expressing feelings of missing each other. Even after those fast fucks, we’d
spend hours with our sweaty limbs interlocking and those special touches
that I loved so fucking much.

It was also in the way Gerard talked, that made him more sensual than
sexual. We had sex all the time it seemed, but it never once seemed dirty or
pornographic. His voice was so eloquent and expressive; he never used slang
or derogatory terms, for the most part. And when he did use them, they just
seemed so much better coming from his mouth. I could analyze the way he
would say ‘cock’, how it sounded so smooth and stylish, though in reality, it
really wasn’t. His voice sounded like liquid - like the water his touches
resembled as they rushed over my body. Even in the moment of passion and
heat, he’d retain this ability to remain articulate. Instead of saying ‘you make
me hot’ it was a simple ‘you’re so beautiful’. He’d ask me to touch him,
instead of jerk him off. And he would never, ever ask for sex. He would just
let it happen. If we started kissing and things just happened to steer in that
direction, he was fine with it. But if they didn’t, and I just wanted to kiss him
for a few good hours (something that happened a lot), then that was okay,
too. Sex wasn’t something to be planned, in his mind, and he vocalized this
view point quite often. It was when things weren’t planned, or weren’t
expected, that they were the best.

“Kind of like you,” he joked, rubbing his hand through my hair. I had laughed
then, leaning over to kiss him, and of course, it led into sex.

His opinion was true, too true, for the most part. We as a couple (even though
he hated that word), had not been planned, by no means. Even when the
idea of us was forming in both of our minds, we didn’t want it to happen. We
knew it would be too much trouble, too much of a burden, and too
dangerous. We didn’t even know if the other person felt the same way, but it
didn’t matter, because it just couldn’t happen. When we both found out we
were harboring the same answers to questions was when things started to
get difficult, and much easier at the same time. Some things were just too
good to pass up, and some things were too loud to ignore. Like the silence
that was echoing all around us, telling me that this was one of the best things
I had ever had in my life.

Nothing was ever expected or predicted in our relationship. But it was a


stable instability. We would change forms constantly, with our moods and
sexual habits, conversations and art progressions - but it would always be us.
Together. There was a stability in each other that I had never felt before,
even from my parents. It was known that my parents were supposed to be
there for my entire life. They had chosen to have me, and they were
expected to keep me. I knew that wasn’t always how it worked out, but my
parents were fairly rigid about keeping me as theirs and would always be
there. My father seemed like he hated me on some days, but he had stuck
around all these years, with all the shit I had done – mostly because he had
to. He didn’t know anything else.

But Gerard – he knew everything else. He had done so much, seen so many
things, and been with so many other people. He didn’t have to stay with me.
But each time he said he was there for me, I began to believe it more and
more, and it extended on through my years. Gerard would always be there,
even in years to come and even if technically, our relationship was doomed
to begin with, I just knew that somehow, someway, he wasn’t lying about
that. In the present time, which is what we decided to be concerned with, he
was always going to be there, too. Our souls were bound now, and he had
told me that. And with no hesitation, I believed him.

There was a sincerity in Gerard’s voice that made me believe every word he
said. His voice was sweet, but not cliché or drenched in sugar. It was honest.
When he told me that first day there, that we were a lot alike, he fucking
meant it. It had just taken me longer than average to see it; my teenage
naivety and my denial to it all had helped, and when we had finally started
our relationship, my lack of confidence blinded me, too. When the belonging
started to feel real, I got my vision back. We were a lot alike. And we
belonged together; I didn’t care what anyone else would say.

The secrecy of everything had to be maintained, however. Despite the fact


that most days I just couldn’t get over how fucking perfect all of this seemed,
no one would understand. No one beyond the confines of Gerard’s small inner
circle. Vivian understood us and Vivian loved us. She supported us and
wouldn’t tell a single soul. Vivian was one in a million, Gerard joked to me
one day, and he was right. I didn’t know where we could find more people like
her, but I was sure there had to be another in the state of Jersey. We had a
population of eight million, or something around that, so it was entirely
plausible. There were at least seven other people like Vivian in this state, and
maybe, just maybe, we could luck out and there would be one in this town.
Even luckier if they were my age, so I could at least have someone to share
with.

There was one other person who supported this union, but she wasn’t even of
the same specifics. It was the dove that flew all around the apartment, her
beige wings with undercoating of white fluttering majestically. She would
come and visit us, as we lay down on his bed, kissing the remainders of the
day from each other’s skin and just watch. She would coo and bob her head,
and I knew she was nodding yes. She supported us, too. She knew what it
was like to feel confined in a cage and room, even if it was a nice room to
begin with. She understood our feelings of restraint for something that was
not wrong in our eyes, but wrong in many others. Gerard and I needed each
other, and doves needed to fly. They just couldn’t always get what they
wanted. People saw doves as a majestic creature, and they wanted to
capture them, in a vain attempt to hold the beauty in their hands for a little
while longer. It was the opposite with Gerard and I – they only saw the ugly in
the matter, but in the end, both us and the bird’s face would end in
destruction. Because of that fact, I loved the dove more and more with each
passing day, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we were both ever going to
break free.

In spite of the secrecy that we knew we had to keep, Gerard and I found
ourselves becoming more confident (as if that were possible for him). Seeing
Vivian’s bright shining smile that morning gave us the courage to do
something we never thought possible.

We sat on the balcony.

We bypassed our own unwritten rule and set foot outside the place together.
We didn’t even have to communicate it. I had been standing by the window,
just looking out at the way the clouds were shape-shifting when Gerard had
appeared by my side. We had both been off in the apartment, doing our own
thing. We didn’t have to spend all of our time in the same room together, just
like we didn’t have to talk all the time. I had been playing guitar, strumming
the chords defiantly only moments earlier, while he had been in his room,
writing something down or sketching ideas for a new painting he wanted to
do. Now, he stood next to me and began to look at the clouds as well, his
hand sliding beneath my arm and on my waist. I leaned into him more, my
fingers lightly tracing down the side of his legs as we stood and watched.

“Beautiful day,” he mused, and wasn’t just commenting on the weather to


make conversation. I could tell in the way he looked at me after, and the way
his hand was gripping my side that it was an invitation. We were going to go
outside.

We had to put clothes on first, because though we weren’t going to be afraid


to step into the warm spring air, we weren’t going to be entirely stupid. We
wouldn’t be fucking on the balcony. We were just going to go there to sit. It
was proving a point that, though we were still afraid and knew better to be
seen in public, we could still defy the laws we placed on ourselves and sit on
the two stray chairs on the small ledge. It was a free country. You could do
whatever you wanted in your house, and the balcony was a part of that. Just
because him and I were on the balcony together, didn’t mean we were
together. No proof, no problem.

We stepped outside, and as the air hit my skin, I felt liberated. I took a deep
breath. I clenched and unclenched my fist, rolling my fingers out into the
open air. I moved to the edge of the balcony, where the barrier was that
blocked everything off and looked over the edge. I saw what Gerard must
have seen the first day we technically met as he threw off the bucket of blue
paint. I looked down on everything; on the sidewalk where teenagers walked
by, on the liquor store where I used to stand, on Jersey itself. The buildings
and small stores were on a hill, and so we really could look down and see
everything. It was a bird’s eye view. I felt Gerard’s presence beside me and
we looked down together, when suddenly, I could feel the deeper meaning in
our action. We really were looking down on everything; we were better than
them.

He slipped his hand over mine on the railing as we both came to that
realization. I let him, and I wasn’t afraid to. I felt his face draw closer to mine,
his nose pressing into the side of my face, nuzzling me. And I let him do that,
too. We were testing the boundaries and as I turned my face towards his own
and pressed our lips together, the world didn’t cave in around me. No police
showed up at his door and no one shouted names at us.

The world didn’t end.

The embrace lasted mere seconds, and was mostly us pressing our lips
together than anything else, but it was still there. Still taking up space in the
air we weren’t allowed to breathe. After our faces had pulled away from each
other, we went back over to the skeleton of chairs and filled up the bones
with ourselves. Gerard got out his cigarettes and lit one up, passing it off to
me as he inhaled the first breath. We sat there, sharing a cigarette between
both our lips, consuming the same air with our hands interlocked. It was
almost disappointing that the world didn’t end, all of our fear surmounting
into nothing, but it was calming nonetheless. We could blend into the
background, into the smoke we breathed, and everything actually would be
okay.

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight,” Gerard stated, taking a large drag off of the
cigarette before passing it to me again. I didn’t take as big of a drag, only
smoking to be that much closer to him. I didn’t really see the need to smoke
anymore, considering its major purpose when I first started was to calm my
unnecessary thoughts about Gerard down. I wasn’t as frantic anymore in
trying to control what went on in my head, concerning Gerard, at least. There
was really nothing to fix; I only smoked now to be that much closer to him.
And to make art, of course. I was getting better at making the pictures dance
in front of me as I blew out the substance, but I was still a minor compared to
Gerard.

“Where would we go?” I asked, considering his question. It was one thing to
sit on the balcony, it was another thing to go into a public place together. I
knew we would act accordingly, but it was still challenging something we had
only gotten our hands on that very day. But then again, if the world hadn’t
collapsed with our presence outside, then maybe we could take it over
instead.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told me, breathing out smoke through his nose. “I just
want to go outside with you.” He looked over at me, the light from the liquor
store dancing across his face. The sun was going down fast in the
background, and night would be around soon enough to block us out and
make us the shadows that we were used to being.

I nodded my head. He smiled, breaking the mellow mood he had conjured up


as we were breaking down boundaries. Now that his recent challenge had
been accepted, his unruly smile spread across his face and made my heart
skip a beat. He brought the cigarette to his lips once more, sucking back hard
to finish it, and brought his untamed lips to mine, breathing the smoke into
my mouth and sealing the deal. I remembered why I started to smoke in the
first place.

“I was getting sick of French bread, anyway,” I told him after the kiss was
over, nicotine and adrenaline running through my veins.
He laughed, smiling as he said his next statement. “Go get some nicer
clothes on. I want to take you someplace special.”

***

Chapter Twenty-Five

Solitude

When I was at Gerard’s place, I truly felt like I was at home. There were times
with us where it really did feel like I had lived there all my life. I knew where
things were. I knew he was weird and kept his knives in a separate drawer
from the rest of his other cutlery, closer to the cutting block. I knew how to
work his ancient gas stove; that you had to push the knob in before you
turned it, and that the back burner never worked to begin with. I found his
pots and pans and cooked with them, opened his fridge and took what I
wanted from it without feeling guilty or asking for his permission first. I knew
where his spare light bulbs were just in case one of the lamps burnt out and
had to be replaced. I even knew what kind of dish soap he used and what
scent he preferred and went to the store to buy more one day. It was just a
basic knowledge with me and demonstrated it accordingly.

I felt so proud and strong when walking through his door. I felt like the place
was mine, too. I started to lead without waiting for him to show me the way,
because I already knew the way. And half the time, I didn’t even have to ask
Gerard where we were going; I just knew that, too. Leading was something I
had never done before, even in my friends’ houses. When Gerard and I
weren’t together, talking or having sex, I would be able to find my way
around. We didn’t have to talk all the time, or be together.

When I was with my friends, a lot of the time, I would strain my mind to think
of something to say. I’d panic if we were quiet, because that just never
happened and it would be my fault for not being interesting enough to keep
up the flow of dialogue. Usually, Sam never closed his mouth, so I didn’t have
to worry about that issue. Around new people, that was a different matter all
together. I would struggle; a lot. I’d always feel inferior and boring because I
couldn’t maintain a simple conversation. I wouldn’t be able to get past ‘how
are you’ without feeling awkward in my own skin and most of the time, I’d
revert to talking about the weather so I didn’t feel like I was a total mute. And
honestly, if you had to revert to Jersey weather as the main force of
conversation, then that was bad. The weather never changed. With Gerard
though, if we weren’t talking, we weren’t struggling about it. We just weren’t
talking; we were being with each other and appreciating the silence.

I had to admit - it unnerved me at first. I thought things had gotten boring


and he was tired of me. Gerard generally talked a lot, but it wasn’t drivel like
I was used to filling the air with. When he said something, he meant it. It was
poignant and detailed, always mattering. When that first silence washed over
us, especially after we started our relationship, I remember that panic
returning to me. It had never been there before, when I was merely the kid
cleaning his art supplies and getting lessons. It didn’t matter that we weren’t
always talking because that was not the reason for our meetings. But now
that we were fucking, it seemed like a very important aspect to have
conversation. And I froze. My tongue had felt like a dead weight in my mouth;
a cadaver ready to be cut up and out. In trying to cope and stay alive,
something happened inside of me that was as if someone had attached a
defibulator to my voice box.

I started talking again, and talking a lot. I spouted anything that came to my
head. I started telling Gerard about one of the paintings I saw in a book when
I was probably seven, and how I didn’t get it. How I hated the museum,
because my mother had dragged me there to meet one of her friends –
anything, really. I was pretty sure I told him about the weather on that fateful
day too, but I couldn’t remember. I didn’t hear my own words coming out of
my mouth, I was just talking. Spewing out random details. I told him I never
liked museums, even when my mother wasn’t around, because I preferred
field trips in school that went to zoos and farms and stuff because of the
animals – and did he know I liked animals? Did he like them too? - I just kept
going. It was kind of sad, looking back on it, especially since Gerard wasn’t
responding all that much, making me even more nervous. I thought I was
going to pass out from lack of air due to my breathless self-conversation
before Gerard finally seemed to notice I was dying.

“What are you doing, Frank?” he asked, looking over at me from the bed we
now shared. It had only been our second or third time having sex, well past
noon of the day after the first act had been committed. I chastised myself
inside my head for fucking this up – whatever it had been then – so soon.

“I’m talking…” I answered slowly, but my thoughts still spinning a mile a


minute. I could feel my face flushing, and it wasn’t from the act we had just
finished.

“I know,” he said, nodding his head. “But why are you talking?”

And that question, finally, stunned me silent.

“You don’t always need to talk, Frank,” he said after the color had been
drained from my face. I felt like I was being rejected in some way, thrown
aside, and discarded as a hole to fuck and not talk with. I almost expected
him to tell me to get up and start to clean his paint brushes again. When he
shifted closer to me in the bed, placing a hand on my shoulder, his words
came into my ears, slowly, calmly and I should have realized that my
aforementioned thoughts were not in his character at all.

“Sometimes silence is good. Sometimes it’s necessary,” he declared, looking


me up and down. He extended his hand, running his fingers along my
unmoving jaw, cupping my chin, but not bringing my face forward just yet.
“Silence is louder than anything I’ve ever heard. It lets us get to know each
other in different ways. It has its own message for us, if we shut up long
enough to listen.”

He gazed into my face for a few moments, judging my reaction, but not
letting me say a word, even if I had thought of something. He brought my
face forward in his hands and kissed me softly, letting our tongues mingle
together. I regained my composure and kissed back, and for the rest of the
day, I don’t think I uttered a word. I was able to hear the silence’s message
then, and it spoke loud and clear.

I belonged in Gerard’s apartment. But more importantly, I belonged with


Gerard.
There was just something about the way we acted together. When I would
come to see him every day after school or all the day on the weekends, like
the one we were in the middle of then, he’d always be happy to see me. His
eyes would light up as I stepped into the apartment, and we’d be in each
other’s arms before my keys hit the table. He’d kiss me like he hadn’t seen
me in years, his lips pressing hard against mine, or softly trailing away from
me to make me follow him further into the apartment for more. We would
talk briefly, about our day or something small before we went into his
bedroom if we could wait that long to make the trip. We had sex a lot of other
places than the confining four walls of his room. We liked to mix it up, taking
it over to the floor by his art supplies, against the wall, or anyplace else we
could muster.

The unwritten rule of no fucking on the balcony still applied, however. We


didn’t want to risk getting caught by fucking there. It was too risky, and
especially after the close call when we hadn’t been doing that, I didn’t want
to push our luck anymore. We didn’t even venture outside all that often; the
apartment was our safe haven, our art museum, and our home. It wasn’t just
his home or my home. It was our home. I didn’t own anything there, I didn’t
pay the bills, and Gerard and I weren’t bound by law or marriage, (or ever
could be, for that fact) but I still knew I belong there.

The way Gerard touched me after sex was like nothing I had ever
experienced before. His hands ran over my body, like water flowing over
contours and shapes, creating rapids. He wouldn’t just touch me sexually,
he’d touch me sensually. Everything about Gerard was sensual. He wasn’t
sexy in a ‘fuck me now’ type of way. He was forty-seven-years old, a little
chubby, and was going bald. That wasn’t sexy by today’s standards, and not
mine either. He exuded sex appeal, however, because everything he did was
elegant and mysterious. You wanted to get to know him, you wanted him to
be around, and most of all, you wanted to be wanted by him. He was sexy in
that regard, wholly and completely separated from the physical appearance.
It wasn’t that he was ugly – because he wasn’t. Despite his imperfections, he
cleaned up quite nicely. He just wasn’t my type. He was…male and old. I had
no idea that would be what I ended up being attracted to. I was not attracted
to his body parts, though; not his dick, his hair, his skin, anything. I was
attracted to everything as a whole; Gerard the person. Gerard the teacher.
Gerard the artist. And even better, Gerard the lover.
And those lover’s touches were amazing. He may have exuded that sexual,
lustful edge, but when things came down to where it counted, Gerard was far
from a fucking maniac. He liked sex, but there was more to it. He was tender
and caring. He wouldn’t just touch me to get me off; he’d touch me to let me
know that he was still there, and that he still cared. He’d hold my hand
whenever he could, interlocking our fingers and running his thumb over my
skin. If we were close enough to do more touching, he’d leap (sometimes
literally) at the opportunity for that, too. He’d link onto my waist, glide his
hands over my shoulders and even play with my hair, petting the side of my
face and then twisting his nubby fingers into my locks. It felt so good having
someone else play with my hair and skin. I had forgotten how nice it was just
to have someone touch me.

It was weird. I was never one to give out hugs, or get them from my friends,
but once Gerard had started those actions with me when I was still his art
student, it was as if a light had gone off inside my head. I liked to be touched.
I wanted to be touched, and more often than not, I needed to be touched.
The feel of someone else’s hand on my shoulders made everything seem so
real. I was used to people being around me, talking at me, or near me, but
the gap between us had never been bridged. When Gerard touched me, he
was talking to me. He wanted to be with me.

Before him, I often drifted off into my own mind, my own worries and
completely forgot about the surroundings around me. I wanted to forget
about them. His touch made it so I couldn’t just wish amnesia upon myself.
He brought me back into the moment, and he made me realize that reality
wasn’t as bad, as long as you were connected to something, to someone. It
was hard to explain, but I never needed to give reasoning for why I held on
extra long in our hugs. Gerard just accepted it and let it happen naturally.

Most nights, I’d fall asleep with his constant and soothing actions, like his
light fingertips going all over my back. It felt just as good when I did the same
thing to him, though I was convinced I was never as good at it as he was. He
seemed to just be capable of so much with his hands; I figured it was an artist
thing. One day though, I thought my wish had come true, or one of them, at
least. His head was positioned in my lap as I looked out the window, both of
us just recuperating from a long day of sex and art. I was watching the colors
of the sunset, and saw a particular nice shade of orange to show Gerard. (I
was convinced his favorite color was orange, or something bright like it. He
always seemed to have a zillion shades of it, and always used it in his work. I
didn’t want to ask what his favorite color was, because honestly, that was
really juvenile and stupid. He would probably laugh at me, and we’d start a
paint fight and end up fucking in the center of the room. Not that there was
anything wrong with that, but since we were probably going to do it anyway, I
figured I would avoid my embarrassing question and just assume it was
orange. Anytime I saw him use the shade, I would smile to myself, and I was
pretty sure he caught onto what I was thinking). This particular shade in the
sky reminded me of a piece he had been working on earlier that day, and I
wanted to point it out to him. Only, when I returned my attention to my lap,
all I could see and hear were his closed eyes, and light snores in my ear. He
was dead asleep.

It was then I knew that I had finally done something good. Gerard was
comfortable with me. It was one thing for him to just take off his clothing;
that was a confidence issue for himself. Falling asleep and leaving himself
vulnerable in my arms was another case all together. I remember planting a
kiss on his forehead and wishing him good dreams before I too gave up
myself, falling asleep with him. It was getting dark by that point, anyway.

These little nuances of actions seemed better than sex most days, although
that was nothing to hide from. Our sex was more than sex. It was intimate,
loving, and caring in every single way. We’d have our moments of really fast
and random fucking, more often than not after I came over from spending a
long and annoying day at school. It was a way of getting aggression out and
expressing feelings of missing each other. Even after those fast fucks, we’d
spend hours with our sweaty limbs interlocking and those special touches
that I loved so fucking much.

It was also in the way Gerard talked, that made him more sensual than
sexual. We had sex all the time it seemed, but it never once seemed dirty or
pornographic. His voice was so eloquent and expressive; he never used slang
or derogatory terms, for the most part. And when he did use them, they just
seemed so much better coming from his mouth. I could analyze the way he
would say ‘cock’, how it sounded so smooth and stylish, though in reality, it
really wasn’t. His voice sounded like liquid - like the water his touches
resembled as they rushed over my body. Even in the moment of passion and
heat, he’d retain this ability to remain articulate. Instead of saying ‘you make
me hot’ it was a simple ‘you’re so beautiful’. He’d ask me to touch him,
instead of jerk him off. And he would never, ever ask for sex. He would just
let it happen. If we started kissing and things just happened to steer in that
direction, he was fine with it. But if they didn’t, and I just wanted to kiss him
for a few good hours (something that happened a lot), then that was okay,
too. Sex wasn’t something to be planned, in his mind, and he vocalized this
view point quite often. It was when things weren’t planned, or weren’t
expected, that they were the best.

“Kind of like you,” he joked, rubbing his hand through my hair. I had laughed
then, leaning over to kiss him, and of course, it led into sex.

His opinion was true, too true, for the most part. We as a couple (even though
he hated that word), had not been planned, by no means. Even when the
idea of us was forming in both of our minds, we didn’t want it to happen. We
knew it would be too much trouble, too much of a burden, and too
dangerous. We didn’t even know if the other person felt the same way, but it
didn’t matter, because it just couldn’t happen. When we both found out we
were harboring the same answers to questions was when things started to
get difficult, and much easier at the same time. Some things were just too
good to pass up, and some things were too loud to ignore. Like the silence
that was echoing all around us, telling me that this was one of the best things
I had ever had in my life.

Nothing was ever expected or predicted in our relationship. But it was a


stable instability. We would change forms constantly, with our moods and
sexual habits, conversations and art progressions - but it would always be us.
Together. There was a stability in each other that I had never felt before,
even from my parents. It was known that my parents were supposed to be
there for my entire life. They had chosen to have me, and they were
expected to keep me. I knew that wasn’t always how it worked out, but my
parents were fairly rigid about keeping me as theirs and would always be
there. My father seemed like he hated me on some days, but he had stuck
around all these years, with all the shit I had done – mostly because he had
to. He didn’t know anything else.

But Gerard – he knew everything else. He had done so much, seen so many
things, and been with so many other people. He didn’t have to stay with me.
But each time he said he was there for me, I began to believe it more and
more, and it extended on through my years. Gerard would always be there,
even in years to come and even if technically, our relationship was doomed
to begin with, I just knew that somehow, someway, he wasn’t lying about
that. In the present time, which is what we decided to be concerned with, he
was always going to be there, too. Our souls were bound now, and he had
told me that. And with no hesitation, I believed him.

There was a sincerity in Gerard’s voice that made me believe every word he
said. His voice was sweet, but not cliché or drenched in sugar. It was honest.
When he told me that first day there, that we were a lot alike, he fucking
meant it. It had just taken me longer than average to see it; my teenage
naivety and my denial to it all had helped, and when we had finally started
our relationship, my lack of confidence blinded me, too. When the belonging
started to feel real, I got my vision back. We were a lot alike. And we
belonged together; I didn’t care what anyone else would say.

The secrecy of everything had to be maintained, however. Despite the fact


that most days I just couldn’t get over how fucking perfect all of this seemed,
no one would understand. No one beyond the confines of Gerard’s small inner
circle. Vivian understood us and Vivian loved us. She supported us and
wouldn’t tell a single soul. Vivian was one in a million, Gerard joked to me
one day, and he was right. I didn’t know where we could find more people like
her, but I was sure there had to be another in the state of Jersey. We had a
population of eight million, or something around that, so it was entirely
plausible. There were at least seven other people like Vivian in this state, and
maybe, just maybe, we could luck out and there would be one in this town.
Even luckier if they were my age, so I could at least have someone to share
with.

There was one other person who supported this union, but she wasn’t even of
the same specifics. It was the dove that flew all around the apartment, her
beige wings with undercoating of white fluttering majestically. She would
come and visit us, as we lay down on his bed, kissing the remainders of the
day from each other’s skin and just watch. She would coo and bob her head,
and I knew she was nodding yes. She supported us, too. She knew what it
was like to feel confined in a cage and room, even if it was a nice room to
begin with. She understood our feelings of restraint for something that was
not wrong in our eyes, but wrong in many others. Gerard and I needed each
other, and doves needed to fly. They just couldn’t always get what they
wanted. People saw doves as a majestic creature, and they wanted to
capture them, in a vain attempt to hold the beauty in their hands for a little
while longer. It was the opposite with Gerard and I – they only saw the ugly in
the matter, but in the end, both us and the bird’s face would end in
destruction. Because of that fact, I loved the dove more and more with each
passing day, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we were both ever going to
break free.

In spite of the secrecy that we knew we had to keep, Gerard and I found
ourselves becoming more confident (as if that were possible for him). Seeing
Vivian’s bright shining smile that morning gave us the courage to do
something we never thought possible.

We sat on the balcony.

We bypassed our own unwritten rule and set foot outside the place together.
We didn’t even have to communicate it. I had been standing by the window,
just looking out at the way the clouds were shape-shifting when Gerard had
appeared by my side. We had both been off in the apartment, doing our own
thing. We didn’t have to spend all of our time in the same room together, just
like we didn’t have to talk all the time. I had been playing guitar, strumming
the chords defiantly only moments earlier, while he had been in his room,
writing something down or sketching ideas for a new painting he wanted to
do. Now, he stood next to me and began to look at the clouds as well, his
hand sliding beneath my arm and on my waist. I leaned into him more, my
fingers lightly tracing down the side of his legs as we stood and watched.

“Beautiful day,” he mused, and wasn’t just commenting on the weather to


make conversation. I could tell in the way he looked at me after, and the way
his hand was gripping my side that it was an invitation. We were going to go
outside.

We had to put clothes on first, because though we weren’t going to be afraid


to step into the warm spring air, we weren’t going to be entirely stupid. We
wouldn’t be fucking on the balcony. We were just going to go there to sit. It
was proving a point that, though we were still afraid and knew better to be
seen in public, we could still defy the laws we placed on ourselves and sit on
the two stray chairs on the small ledge. It was a free country. You could do
whatever you wanted in your house, and the balcony was a part of that. Just
because him and I were on the balcony together, didn’t mean we were
together. No proof, no problem.

We stepped outside, and as the air hit my skin, I felt liberated. I took a deep
breath. I clenched and unclenched my fist, rolling my fingers out into the
open air. I moved to the edge of the balcony, where the barrier was that
blocked everything off and looked over the edge. I saw what Gerard must
have seen the first day we technically met as he threw off the bucket of blue
paint. I looked down on everything; on the sidewalk where teenagers walked
by, on the liquor store where I used to stand, on Jersey itself. The buildings
and small stores were on a hill, and so we really could look down and see
everything. It was a bird’s eye view. I felt Gerard’s presence beside me and
we looked down together, when suddenly, I could feel the deeper meaning in
our action. We really were looking down on everything; we were better than
them.

He slipped his hand over mine on the railing as we both came to that
realization. I let him, and I wasn’t afraid to. I felt his face draw closer to mine,
his nose pressing into the side of my face, nuzzling me. And I let him do that,
too. We were testing the boundaries and as I turned my face towards his own
and pressed our lips together, the world didn’t cave in around me. No police
showed up at his door and no one shouted names at us.

The world didn’t end.

The embrace lasted mere seconds, and was mostly us pressing our lips
together than anything else, but it was still there. Still taking up space in the
air we weren’t allowed to breathe. After our faces had pulled away from each
other, we went back over to the skeleton of chairs and filled up the bones
with ourselves. Gerard got out his cigarettes and lit one up, passing it off to
me as he inhaled the first breath. We sat there, sharing a cigarette between
both our lips, consuming the same air with our hands interlocked. It was
almost disappointing that the world didn’t end, all of our fear surmounting
into nothing, but it was calming nonetheless. We could blend into the
background, into the smoke we breathed, and everything actually would be
okay.

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight,” Gerard stated, taking a large drag off of the
cigarette before passing it to me again. I didn’t take as big of a drag, only
smoking to be that much closer to him. I didn’t really see the need to smoke
anymore, considering its major purpose when I first started was to calm my
unnecessary thoughts about Gerard down. I wasn’t as frantic anymore in
trying to control what went on in my head, concerning Gerard, at least. There
was really nothing to fix; I only smoked now to be that much closer to him.
And to make art, of course. I was getting better at making the pictures dance
in front of me as I blew out the substance, but I was still a minor compared to
Gerard.

“Where would we go?” I asked, considering his question. It was one thing to
sit on the balcony, it was another thing to go into a public place together. I
knew we would act accordingly, but it was still challenging something we had
only gotten our hands on that very day. But then again, if the world hadn’t
collapsed with our presence outside, then maybe we could take it over
instead.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told me, breathing out smoke through his nose. “I just
want to go outside with you.” He looked over at me, the light from the liquor
store dancing across his face. The sun was going down fast in the
background, and night would be around soon enough to block us out and
make us the shadows that we were used to being.

I nodded my head. He smiled, breaking the mellow mood he had conjured up


as we were breaking down boundaries. Now that his recent challenge had
been accepted, his unruly smile spread across his face and made my heart
skip a beat. He brought the cigarette to his lips once more, sucking back hard
to finish it, and brought his untamed lips to mine, breathing the smoke into
my mouth and sealing the deal. I remembered why I started to smoke in the
first place.

“I was getting sick of French bread, anyway,” I told him after the kiss was
over, nicotine and adrenaline running through my veins.

He laughed, smiling as he said his next statement. “Go get some nicer
clothes on. I want to take you someplace special.”
***

Chapter Twenty-Five - Other Parts

After searching through Gerard’s closet for so-called nicer clothing, I decided
to just wear the art shirt that I had borrowed from him before. He tried to talk
me out of it, showing me a stain on the sleeve and the missing buttons, but I
still insisted upon wearing it. It made me feel more at home, if that was
possible. I ran my fingers over the red crest of the school I had never been to,
but felt at ease with. And when I explained to Gerard that I wanted to wear
the shirt for the very same reason that he kept it for years, even though it
was dirty and missing buttons, he smiled and let me.

His idea of nicer clothing was tight black pants, a button up collared shirt,
and his dove blazer. Though this was all his normal attire, he managed to
look ten times better in it. The only changes he made to his ensemble was a
small scarf, despite the lack of cold in the air, and some sunglasses, which he
combed through his hair to have rest at the top of his head. He kissed me
before we left the apartment, knowing that we would not be able to on the
outside. I followed him down the stairwell, holding back a little while so
people didn’t think we were completely together. It felt odd, not being right
beside him when I had the chance to be, and it reminded of me of just how
far we had come. The first meeting with him in the darkened stairwell, I had
felt odd and vulnerable. I didn’t like the idea of being left alone with a forty-
something man. And now, I was fucking that man and loving it. I felt a smile
creep onto my face and shook my head. Everything was so different and it
amazed me how, despite those differences, everything around us remained
the same. We were evolving, while everyone else was stuck in the past.

When we stepped outside, I was surprised to see Gerard heading for the
small parking lot at the back of the building. He extracted keys I didn’t know
he had from his pockets and looked back at me standing in one place unsure
of where to go, and motioned to follow.

“You have a car?” I asked, my eyebrows cocked. I had never even thought of
him having any kind of vehicle. He didn’t seem to leave his apartment all that
much, and if he did, I assumed that he didn’t go very far. He told me he had
gone for a walk that one morning, and I just assumed he walked everywhere.

He merely nodded at me, still sauntering his normal pace, up ahead of me. I
had to jog to catch up to him as he started to shove his key into an old silver
van.

“Wow,” I stated when he opened the door for me, beginning to walk around
to the other side. “You have a van.”

Again, though I had never pictured Gerard with any kind of vehicle, a van just
didn’t fit at all. I pictured soccer moms and families with truckloads of kids
needing a van. Not Gerard, who never went anywhere. When I set foot inside,
the whole concept starting to become clearer. Canvasses were piled up in the
back, along with buckets of paint. He noticed me staring as he sat down in
the driver’s seat, and nodded his head.

“I’m just full of surprises,” he grinned nonchalantly before turning his key in
the ignition. I nodded my head right back at him, knowing that was true
beyond anything I had ever heard before.

He adjusted his mirror, which had a pine air freshener hanging off of it, the
scent long gone. He put his arm on the seat to brace himself as he turned
around, glancing to see if he was okay to back up. He did each act with such
precision and ease, that I couldn’t help but be transfixed by it. He probably
hadn’t driven anywhere in a long time, but his movements were done with
such elegant dexterity that it seemed like something he did daily. Everything
came so easy to Gerard, or at least, it felt that way when he was compared to
me.
He pulled out of the lot, and began to drive down the street, leaning back into
the seat with only one hand on the wheel. The other one branched over to
me, resting on my thigh again. I had been looking out the window, hoping
and praying that Travis and Sam weren’t waiting outside the liquor store.
They weren’t, and the hand on my thigh quelled anymore nerves I had inside
me from the new task we were completing. He gave me a wink as I met eyes
with him, before continuing on the road. I watched the muscles in his neck
contract as he steered the car coolly, making being so focused look so easy.

“Do you know how to drive, Frank?” he asked, knocking me out of my


thoughts.

I felt my face flush. I hated this question. I didn’t know how to drive, nor had I
ever bothered to learn. Even though it was completely my decision and I was
perfectly fine with it in my mind, I always felt so inferior, being almost
eighteen and still not knowing how to drive a fucking car, while some people
got their licenses the day they hit sixteen.

“No...” I said causally, hoping Gerard didn’t beat me down like most people
did when I said my answer.

“Do you want to learn? I’d be happy to teach you,” Gerard answered,
throwing me off guard. I had always known that Gerard was encouraging, but
that was for different topics other than learning how to drive a car. I expected
him to be like other people and insult me for not knowing, because it had
happened so many times before. The only other people who didn’t flat out
call me stupid for not knowing would always tell me to go off and do it, but
they would never give me options on how to; not that I would have taken
them. I had never really wanted to learn all that much since I could walk to
most places. But seeing the way he drove with such elegance made me want
to change my mind.

“Sure,” I said, a bit too enthusiastically. I saw Gerard smile smugly out of the
corner of my eye, and brought my enthusiasm down a notch. “But don’t I
need an instructor for that kind of thing?”
“You don’t need an instructor. You have me,” he stated, his pride resonating
in his voice. He glanced over at me, his grip on my thigh tightening. “And
that’s all you need.”

I smiled and nodded, not seeing any fault in his argument.

After about fifteen minutes of driving, Gerard finally pulled into a small
parking lot, outside an even smaller restaurant. I had seen the place before in
passing by it with my parents as they went to the grocery store, but I never
paid much attention. It didn’t appear to be that big of a deal on the outside. It
was small, and the only color outside other than the gray and dreary walls
was the sign for the place in a deep olive hue. Its name was written in cursive
writing, high above the small entrance on that sign, but it looked worn down.
I could still see the letters, but I couldn’t read it to save my life. It was French;
Le Petite Bijoux – I had barely gotten the comme le soliel interminable and
there hadn’t been an x in that word. I gave up on even pronouncing this one,
but I couldn’t escape hearing it come out of Gerard’s sly lips. As we pulled in,
he told me that it meant The Small Jewel, and that it would own up to its
name. He said he went there all the time when he first moved to Jersey and
didn’t know how to cook. He still didn’t know how to cook; he just got better
at stomaching his own food. As he talked in the car, the night sky quickly
darkening into a black sheen, his eyes seemed to glow. This was an
important place to him, and I felt excitement welling up inside of me that he
had taken me to this place, of all people.

He held the door open for me as we went inside, but that was where his
friendly behavior stopped. As we were greeted by the hostess at the front, I
was surprised when Gerard said we would be needing separate tables.

“What?” I nearly coughed, the dim lighting of the front hall making me squint
as I looked over to Gerard.

“We need to eat alone,” Gerard said, as if it should have been as clear as
day. He smiled at me, and moved over so the other people behind us could
talk to the hostess who was laughing and smiling as she marked them down.
We still had to wait for her to find tables for us to eat at, since it was so hard
to find a table for just one. Let alone two separate ones.

“Why?” I asked, not being able to hide the disappointment in my voice.

I thought Gerard had wanted to share something special with me. I thought
we were testing the boundaries of our relationship again. If we were going to
be so brave, why the fuck were we eating alone? There wouldn’t even be that
much of a danger; most people may just think we were father and son and he
was being a good dad. The thought almost made me shudder, considering
what we had just done before we had gone out, but those people didn’t know
that. Only we did; but the fact that we were still hiding made my stomach
churn anyway. I felt like I was being rejected, and I felt the layers of the
confidence I had built up fall away in shards.

“Because being alone is like silence,” he said, his chin high in the air as he
talked. He didn’t get to say much more before the hostess came over to us
again, directing us to our new tables. She took Gerard first as he waved me a
small goodbye, descending to his table, complacent smile on his face.

“Wait – Gerard!” I tried to call after him.

I knew I had probably just blown the father/son act by calling him by his first
name, but I didn’t give a fuck. If he was going to leave me alone in this
(probably expensive; anything with a French name was expensive)
restaurant, then there was one thing that still needed to get cleared up. “I
need money!”

“Check your pocket,” was all he said and all I managed to hear against the
steady roar of the people already at their seats. Shaking my head with
confusion, I reached into the pocket of my pants. Lo and behold, there was a
wad of bills wrapped up with an elastic around them. I didn’t have time to
count, but I knew there would be enough for dinner.
He planned this, I told myself, my thoughts collecting together fast. This was
about more than just a cover story. Gerard was trying to teach me
something. Again. And if he had put this much planning into it, then it must
me worth my while.

The chair squeaked as I sat down in it, making me almost jump out of my
skin. The dirty-blonde haired hostess was long gone, back at her podium to
greet other people, and lead them to their small, dark brown tables. People
already surrounded me, their wine glasses clinking together and their
conversation murmuring into my ears. I could hear business meetings going
on, discussion of a wedding, and a couple talking about bills together. I
looked around and saw suits with ties, with brand names I had no idea now to
pronounce. Suits that probably cost more than Gerard’s van outside. I looked
down at myself, at the art shirt for a school I never went to, and my black
pants with a tear in the knee, and sighed. I felt so out of place. The white
table cloth that draped the small circular table I was placed at looked to be
more money, or at least better fabric, than all the things I was wearing
combined.

“Good evening, sir,” the waitress said, coming over to me. Though her nose
was twisted up as she glared, she still had to address me properly.
Everything about this place was proper, and I felt like I was breathing wrong.
It was too loud, or I was doing it too often. She tossed the menu down at me,
clearly disapproving of my presence in such a high class place. Normally, I
would have been mad, and challenged her right back, demanding that I had
the right to be there, just like everyone else. My voice was lodged in my
throat though, and I could feel my skin crawling away from my body out to
the van, out to Gerard’s apartment, anywhere but here.

“What can I get for you?” she spat out, her tone defiant. It was clear she
thought I didn’t have any money, even if the wad of bills felt like they were
burning a hole in my already damaged fabric. Ignoring her bitter
countenance, I glanced at the menu, its leather binding throwing me off and
making my shaking fingers visible.
“I don’t know…” I said, locking eyes with the first page. I felt her sigh and
shift her weight, clearly not pleased with what was going on. I finally just
picked out the first thing I saw, some kind of weird French soup and just told
her so she could leave me the fuck alone. She left willingly and quickly,
taking the menu with her even though what I had ordered was just an
appetizer. I didn’t feel that hungry anymore anyway, and I honestly wanted
to get out of this place as soon as possible.

Once gone, I set my sights to find Gerard in the crowded room. Scanning past
the heads of gray and fake hair, I was finally able to spot him at a corner
table, right by the window (I felt myself smile in spite of myself, mostly
because I knew how much Gerard liked window seats, and I knew he would
be having fun watching the outside scenery). He was sitting quietly, his
elbows on the table, hands folded in front of his face. He glanced to the side,
looking at the street and gave a contented sigh. He looked so peaceful then,
just absorbing the ambiance of the restaurant. When the waitress came over
to him, a girl slightly younger than the one I had been given, and definitely
less bitchy, he gave her a warm smile and they talked for a few moments, as
she gave him the menu. He didn’t even have to look - he stated his order
right away and then cracked a joke I couldn’t hear, but was apparently pretty
funny. When the girl left, Gerard extended his arm to the bread basket in
front of him, taking out a thick wedge and starting to butter it. He looked up
momentarily, and we locked eyes. He merely smiled at me, nodding his head,
and heaving another contented sigh before taking a bite out of the food,
tearing it into more manageable chunks. There was no other interaction
between us, and Gerard carried on like I wasn’t in the restaurant.

Even as he looked away from me, back out to the window, I couldn’t stop
staring. I had no idea what was going on. Why did we need to eat apart? He
was having so much fun by himself it seemed, doing relatively nothing. It
didn’t make sense, and I felt too awkward or and uncomfortable to have it
ever make sense. I gave up and began to eat my cold soup.

In all of my life, I had always hated to be alone in public. I could be alone in


my house all I wanted, but that was because no one saw me like that. There
was always such a stigma when I left the house, and especially entered my
school area, that if you were alone, you were a loser. A loner and a freak.
That ideology had been ingrained in me since elementary school, when kids
would buddy up like there was no tomorrow. I had learned very quickly to
seek social solace, even if it was with people I wasn’t too keen on. I didn’t
have to talk much; I just had to stand with them, so I wouldn’t look like I was
by myself.

I could remember coming back from having lunch at home in elementary


school, timing it just right so I could find my friends and even avoid walking
alone. When I was off on my timing on those rare days, or my friends were
sick, I would almost refuse to go to school. Or I would walk around,
pretending to look for them, and ask people if they had seen so-and-so, to
make it look like I was talking. And not alone. I just hated the feeling; I always
felt like people were staring at me. And for the most part, in elementary
school when popularity was as big as the new toy craze, people were. But
even in high school, when being a loner was preferred by most people, I still
couldn’t stand it. That was probably why I stuck around with Sam and Travis
for so long. Even if we weren’t the best of friends, didn’t talk anymore, and
they were complete dicks to me, I wasn’t alone. I had someone to identify
with, even if that identification was merely sharing the same space.

Out of all the things to do alone, the worst in my mind was eating. When you
ate alone in the cafeteria at school, it felt like you were surrounded by people
who didn’t give a fuck about you and were staring and laughing as they ate
their own lunch with their friends. I hated that feeling. When I was eating too,
I could do nothing else but focus on the fact that I was alone. When I would
be waiting to go to class by myself, I could listen to music or read something
outside the class. If it was just me in a class itself, I could work on my
homework. If I was walking somewhere solitarily, it was presumed that I was
going to meet someone else, and not be by myself anymore. There would
always be something to distract me when I was alone in other situations, so I
didn’t look and feel like that much of a loser.

When eating, that safety net of distraction was completely removed, leaving
me exposed. The action I was doing alone was eating, but it was supposed to
be the distraction itself, when it only made me feel like an idiot. Not to
mention I was always afraid that I would do something stupid as I ate; spill
something or get something caught in my teeth. And there would be no one
around to tell me about it.

I was dying in that moment. I literally felt like crawling out of my skin, just to
stop the people from looking at me and at least some part of me getting
away. It was probably worse this time around, because I knew that people
were looking down on me as I ate. The businessmen and housewives with
their doctor husbands had no pity for a lone teenager, especially in a place
that he should not be in, at least without a guardian. My guardian was
halfway across the fucking restaurant, and acting like I wasn’t there. It was
clear that I didn’t belong. The waitress had made her point very well. I wasn’t
high class enough to be here, or old enough. And worse off, I was alone in
everything.

I had no appetite, and spent most of the time breaking off the bread from the
basket into small chunks, dipping it into the liquid they called soup, watching
the pores of the bread absorb everything, then discarding it to the side. I kept
my eyes down for the most part, because if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t
see me, and in theory no one was staring at me. I could still feel their eyes on
me, but at least if I couldn’t see their condescending glares, I could pretend
they didn’t exist. The few times I did look up, I kept my focus on Gerard. Each
time I saw him, I wanted to be over there with him. He was having so much
fun, even if he was just sitting by himself and absorbing everything. There
was a smile on his face, and anytime the waitress came over to him, he
grinned more and said something I couldn’t hear, but I could tell it was
pleasant. I wished I could be next to him. We didn’t have to talk, I just wanted
to be around him. Maybe then, people would treat me better.

“Finished, sir?” the bitchy waitress articulated, taking my bowl and giving me
the check before I could answer. I threw down some money instead of
dwelling on my anger and thanked God that my ordeal was over. I bee-lined it
over to Gerard, weaving in and out of the tables, blocking my peripheral
vision from seeing their sneers. As I approached the artist’s side, I saw that
he too was just finishing his entrée, remnants of tomato sauce and a foreign
kind of noodle clinging to the china plates.

“Let’s go now,” I said, my voice rushed and choppy. My eyes darted around
nervously, and I was on the balls of my feet, ready to make a quick getaway.

“So soon?” he asked, his face forming a frown. “I just ordered dessert.”

“You what?” My voice hitched in my throat, and my face dropped. I had been
so close to freedom, and now he was adding another course to things.

“It’s devil’s food cake,” he stated, his eyes growing wide. He licked his lips
comically, and made nibbling noises with his mouth.

“Ugh, fine,” I grunted, looking around me for a spare chair. I found one in a
recently vacated table and pulled it over to the side. “I’ll just sit with you until
you finish.”

“No,” Gerard articulated, his voice clear and concise. I looked up at him, my
eyebrows furrowed tightly.

“But…Gerard…” I uttered, my desperation shining through. I fingered the end


of the table cloth nervously, trying to pull away loose threads and starting
more. The material was strong, and it was hard to get a good start; they’d
probably make me pay for the table cloth if I did anymore damage, so I
stopped. I lowered my gaze down to my lap, feeling my face flush with
shame.

Fuck, I couldn’t take much more of this.

“Go and get yourself a drink,” Gerard insisted, sliding his hand over the table.
I looked up, hoping he was going to hold my hand, give me some kind of
encouragement, but I only saw the off-green color of money on the table.

“I don’t want a drink,” I spat out, anger filling my shame. I threw the money
back at him. “I just want to leave.”

Not waiting for him to answer, and for once not caring about what he said, I
got up from the table, almost crashing into the waitress that brought Gerard
his cake. I could hear him utter something, but I wasn’t sure if it was at his
dessert or me, and I didn’t care anymore. I was going to go outside and wait
for him and if he didn’t come within five minutes, then I was going to leave.
I’d walk back to the apartment. I was mad at him, but I didn’t want to go back
home. I’d rather stay with Gerard and be pissed at his antics, then go back
home and face my mom and father. I’d just spite him by walking home, not
accepting his ride. Just like he didn’t accept me in that restaurant.

The cool night air hit my skin, and the darkness around me swallowed me
whole. It felt so good to be in darkness right then. I felt invisible, and it was a
good feeling. I felt too real and solid in the restaurant, all eyes focusing on
me, slowly breaking me down. The dark night around me was the glue for the
pieces that had fallen away. I headed to the parking lot, and leaned up
against the van. I was feeling better, but I was still cracked and broken from
Gerard’s actions. And after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only
fifteen minutes, I started to walk back to the apartment. Gerard still hadn’t
shown up, and I was sick and tired of fucking waiting for him.

I jammed my hands deep in my pocket and started to walk, but it was only
five or so minutes before I heard the familiar trudge of footsteps behind me.

“Frank,” I heard his voice call, concerned and stern at the same time. I froze,
my back arching and my breath hitching in my throat. I paused for a moment,
listening to see if he’d say anything more or do anything more, but when
nothing sounded, I continued to walk. I was relieved to hear him again, but I
had to keep reminding myself I was still mad.

“What?” I asked, my footsteps hitting the cold concrete of the sidewalk hard.

“Frank, come here,” he commanded, his voice soothing. I could hear him so
close behind me and it made my heart pump faster and faster.

“Why?” I inquired sharply, bitterness resonating. “I thought we had to be


alone.”

“We did,” he stated, no sign of the sympathy that used to be there before. I
didn’t know why, but hearing his sudden apathy towards his actions made me
even madder than the actions themselves. I could deal with him doing
something stupid – I was sure I did that all the time. But not caring if he hurt
me? That fucking hurt more than anything.

I turned around to face him, startling him slightly with my sudden movement.

“But why, Gerard?” I asked him, my jaw locked and neck pulsing. I held my
arms out to the side, opening them up to catch his answer. When he didn’t
reply right away, I could feel all of my anger welling up inside of me, the
memories tainting them, and just everything turning into hurt. I couldn’t be
mad at Gerard; I could only be upset.

“I don’t like to be alone…” I whispered, almost inaudible.

Gerard must have heard something, because he began to walk forward,


closing in the short distance we had between us. He wrapped me up in a hug,
neither of us being afraid of getting caught. The night sky held us close in
comfort and there were just some things worth getting caught over. This was
one of them. I didn’t have to be angry or hurt anymore, and I let those
emotions melt into his skin as he gripped me tight. I wrapped my arms
around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder. He reached up and
patted my hair, breathing sharply.

“I didn’t know you would get so upset,” he finally uttered. He had no real
intention for the statement, other than to let it hit the air and mingle in our
ears.

“Why did you do it, then?” I inquired, feeling my emotions start to churn
again.

I hated feeling so many emotions in that very moment. I wished I was back to
my old life, where the only things I could grasp were anger and fear. I drank
all of the others away, and sometimes anger and fear were so blurred with
the alcohol in my system, that they were null. Gerard made me feel things
again, feel things I had forgotten how to feel, forgotten existed, or never even
had to begin with. Though I loved the sense of belonging and caring that
rushed through me each day I was around him, I hated how crushed I got by
a single action that didn’t match anything I was used to. It tore my insides
apart, and at the exact same time, it built everything up again.

He pulled away from the hug, but slinked an arm around my waist instead.
“Let’s go for a walk, shall we?” he cordially invited. He looked down at me,
raising his eyebrows at the option. “We can walk and talk,” he concluded,
sealing the deal. I nodded my head and let him lead, my trust in him always
there.

“I wanted to teach you something tonight,” he stated as if he had never tried


to do that before. “I wanted to teach you how to be alone.”

The clicking sounds of his shoes on the pavement, seemed to match the
intonations of his voice. He really did seem like a teacher then, the way he
held his head up high as he talked, his back straight and leading me along.
He motioned with his free hand, a finger poised like a pointer. I had no idea
where we were going, but that was the least of my concerns right then.

“But why?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing. “Why would I need to be alone


when I could have you with me?”

“That’s exactly my point,” he informed me, looking down and nodding his
head. “You can only truly appreciate someone or something when you learn
to appreciate being alone first.”

I nodded my head, trying to process the information exactly how he wanted


me to. There were so many double (or triple) meanings in every single little
action he did, that I wanted to understand everything fully. I tried to remove
myself from the situation, and look back down on it, subjectively. I saw a boy
in a restaurant, too fancy and important for him, shifting nervously in his seat
because he hated to be alone. And why did he hate to be alone? I asked
myself before Gerard could.
Because he had done it his entire life, I concluded almost instantaneously.
And then I felt more foreign feelings rise within me, and the only one I could
recognize from some prior use was bitterness. I already knew what it was like
to be alone. I didn’t need to have it inflicted upon me again.

“I already am alone,” I told him, my voice gaining resilience. “I’ve been alone
my entire life, Gerard. I’m an only child. I don’t have many friends. And the
ones I do have, I don’t like very much. I don’t need you to teach me about
being alone.” I felt defiant right then, being able to prove one of his points
wrong.

I should have learned from before however, that no matter what Gerard said,
he was never wrong. Nothing was ever wrong, as long as you could back it
up.

“Yes,” he agreed, nodding his head along. “But in those time when you were
alone, what were you trying to do?”

I thought about it for a while, thinking back on the memories. “I was reading.
Listening to music. Waiting for my friends…”

“Exactly,” he said, cutting me off literally with speech and action, making me
look directly at his wide eyes. He motioned with the one hand that wasn’t on
my waist, talking furiously to get his point across. “You were trying to find
ways not to be alone.”

“So?” I said, getting defensive.

I was normally okay when he was trying to get one of his philosophies across,
but I just felt like I was under attack here. I knew that was not what he
meant, that was never what Gerard meant with anything, but I couldn’t help
it.
“I was still alone. And I still hated it. I hate the fact that you just left me
there…”

The words flew out of my mouth, some of my spittle even flecking off in small
drops. I turned my head away from Gerard, not wanting to see his
countenance after my outburst. He’d probably just try to prove yet another
point, and I was not in the mood for that.

Instead, he stopped walking and moving completely, drawing me forward


again, into his warm body and wrapping me in his arms. Despite my dislike
for his actions, I was able to separate those from his personality. I cared for
Gerard, and I wanted him to hold me then, so I let him, burying my face in his
shoulder like before. I felt like such a baby, but I didn’t care. If I was being a
baby, Gerard didn’t mind and was going to take care of me.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he apologized, something very rare for him. My arms tried
to squeeze him tighter when hearing him utter those rare words, but I was
already as close as I could get. “I didn’t know it would do this to you.”

“No, Gerard,” I insisted, his next words resonating in my mind and making
me feel guilty. I pulled away slightly so I could see his face. It was dark, but
the street lamps cast a glow on him, allowing me to see his green eyes, deep
with concern. “It’s okay. I don’t know what came over me.”

He shook his head again, but didn’t say anything else. We weren’t going to
argue over who was more sorry. That was pointless. I had always hated it
when I saw couples doing that. It was so trivial and annoying. Like arguing
over who loved the other more. Gerard and I had made recognition that we
were both wrong. We were sorry. We were forgiven. It was over now. We had
had our first fight, in a way. Gerard had always said fights were important.
They made you realize how much you could take of the other person, and if
you still wanted to go back to them. As Gerard gently curled a hair behind my
ear, I was pretty sure that we both wanted to stay with each other. I felt a
warm smile creep onto my face, his touch cascading down as he softly
pressed his lips against mine. It was dark out, and getting late. No one was
around and could see us. We were safe from stares, at that point.

“Come on,” he said after his soft kiss was gone. He unwrapped our bodies
from one another, taking his hand in mine and leading us forward. “I have an
idea.”

He smiled, showing me just what a good idea it was. I followed him, giggling
as the skip in his step returned.

After five minutes of awkward running, our hands still fused together, we
wound up at the park where we had our first actual meeting. It had been the
day after the paint throwing fiasco, and where he had come to conjure some
inspiration. It was where he had drawn the boy Billy and I had first learned
about his people reading skill.

The park looked odd at night, the twists and turns of metal play structures
taking on an almost menacing quality to them. The night air was cold on our
skin, the metal structures even colder, but our running and hands clasped
kept us warm. I was surprised to find the park vacated, especially since it was
a Saturday night. Most teens or people in the drug scene would hang out
there and make deals. I thought it was always so odd that drugs deals would
be going on at one of the most innocent places there were in Jersey, but it
almost fit in an ironic sort of way. They were selling away their innocence;
why not do it at a local park?

Gerard dragged me over to be bench where we had both sat that day, and
plopped us both down on its wooden frame. He let go of my hand, but still
brought me close to him, so our legs touched and intertwined slightly.

“Why are we here?” I asked, a smile on my face from our run and the
memories this place brought back.

“When you were in the restaurant, did you notice anything?” he asked back,
completely ignoring my question for one of his own. His eyes scanned the
perimeter of the play area, scoping out for other people, and then analyzing
its contents.

“Um, not really,” I said, not wanting to remember back to the dreaded affair
from before. “Should I have?”

“Yes,” he stated honestly, turning his attention back to me. “You should have
noticed everything.”

I screwed up my face at his comment, and seemingly excited countenance.

“You should have noticed the people around you,” he continued, trying to
clarify things. As he gazed back out onto the playground, he motioned with
his arms, as if the metal poles twisted in the artificial night light were the
people that I should have been watching. “It’s when you’re really alone, that
you can appreciate things. Like the people around you. I saw this man in front
of me. He couldn’t have been much older than myself, as sad as that sounds,
but his hair was gray. Almost bone white. His face was tired and he was
covered with wrinkles. I couldn’t figure it out at first. Why was this man,
healthy and not that old, so aged? There is a difference between being old
and aged. I am aged. The numbers I have accumulated say so, though I don’t
like to believe them most days. But I don’t like to think I’m old. I like to think
I’m still as young as I was when I was in art school.” He paused, looking down
at me and giving me a lopsided grin. “I like to think that you keep me young.”

I smiled and blushed, not wanting the attention to be on myself much longer.
“What happened to the man?”

“Ah, yes,” Gerard uttered, going back onto his train of thought. “His wife. I
saw his wife and I realized everything. The way she talked down to him and
harped on him. It aged the poor man significantly. And it was then that I
realized I was so happy to be alone right then, watching all of this.”

“Why?”
“Because it is in those moments of alone time, those moments of solitude
that you begin to see the answers to the questions other people have asked.
You begin to see reflections of something that could be you. It is by observing
other people, that we hold the keys to ourselves,” he stated, pursing his lips
together, failing to add anything else to his theory.

I breathed out a sigh, knowing that he was right. I still hated the idea of being
alone with a fucking fiery passion, though. I had people watched before.
When we were in the park that we were just then, we had people watched
and he had been sitting right beside me.

“I don’t really want to talk about being alone anymore, Gerard,” I told him
honestly, even if I was being a big baby.

“This isn’t all about being alone anymore,” he informed me, looking over at
me as I looked away. He ran his hand down over my jaw line and tipped my
face to his own.

“What is it about then?” I asked, sarcasm seeping through.

“It’s about being together when we’re still apart.”

“What?” I exclaimed, my voice harsh and just fed up. I began to consider the
fact that maybe Gerard had lost his mind. We went on the balcony today, he
took me out into public, and now… this. Maybe he was senile…

“Frank,” he started slowly, placing the hand that was on my face to my knee
and shifting even closer to me. “You’re not going to be able to spend every
waking moment with me. You can’t skip school like you have been. As much
as I love having you over, it won’t always work. You have to be on your own
at some point. And when the day comes that we’re split apart, I want you to
be okay.”
I heard his words, and though they made sense, I refused to let them
compute. The more they echoed in my mind though, the more I began to
realize just how afraid I was about being alone. It wasn’t just the whole stupid
childhood popularity thing anymore. I had grown past that; I had been able to
ditch my so-called friends in order to hang out with Gerard. The idea of being
alone now was not just about them anymore. I associated being alone,
subconsciously, as being without Gerard. He had taught me so much, I had
changed so much, and it was all because of him. I had done everything with
him for so long, even if we were just sitting in his apartment. I couldn’t take
not doing that without him.

“If that day comes…” I tried to argue, knowing it was useless. The idea of
being alone was there now. It was solid and in the air. It was going to happen,
and what scared me the most, is that I had no idea when. It could surprise us
in the very moments of weakness. Or it could come on when we thought we
were invincible.

Like right then in that park.

I suddenly snapped my neck, surveying the area for people. My chest started
to constrict at one point when I thought a mangled tree was a person coming
to tear us apart, but I was brought out of that delusion.

“It will come, Frank,” he corrected me and I could feel the pain in his voice.
He was always clear and concise when giving his theories, but when he was
an example, it was hard to remove emotion. “It will come. I don’t want it to,
but it will. And for now,” he said, drawing his arms around me and bringing
me to almost sit in his lap. ”Let’s just learn how to be alone together.”

I could feel my stomach dropping, and my heart exploding inside my chest at


the mention of the word alone. We had said it so much that night, I would
have thought I’d be desensitized by this point. I wasn’t. I hated it; hated it
with a fucking passion. The fact that he was going to teach me how to deal
with it, how to cope and more importantly, how to do it together, made some
of my emotional blood loss a little easier to handle.
I shifted my weight into him more, wrapping my legs around his waist and
pressing my lips against his hard, our teeth clicking and the skin mashing
together. The pain from the action was small physically, but mentally hurt us
ten times more, making us want to kiss forever. Our lips became more
reverent, moving across each other. I darted my tongue out, and traced it
along his mouth until he opened in a gasp and let me inside. His hands traced
around the fabric of my shirt and his fingers began to weave their way down
under it, his warm hands shocking against the cool night air. I wrapped my
legs around him tighter, pulling him closer and grinding against him, causing
a muffled moan to erupt from both of our throats. My hands slipped under his
blazer, nudging him to take it off. It slung off his broad shoulders, but still
remained as both our hands refused to move from the other’s body as we
explored our chests and backs, touching skin and moving our lips and
tongues in unison. I could feel myself getting hard, and from the way his
breaths were changing to low and incessant growls, I knew he was getting
turned on, too.

It was so dangerous, what we were doing in that very moment. Anyone could
walk by and see us going at each other, but it didn’t matter. We felt like we
owned the park, the memories of observing people from before still in our
minds. If we were going to lose each other anyway, we both saw no reason
why we shouldn’t just give it all we had right then.

Using that new braveness I felt welling up inside of me, I pulled myself away
from his lips, moving my hands to where our crotches were colliding and
started to undo the buckle of his pants. I could see his chest rising and falling
as he breathed in and out hard, his face still pressed against the side of my
neck, nuzzling me as I worried myself with the intricacy of our clothing. I had
no idea what we were going to do, in the park of all places, but I had a feeling
it was going to be good. The idea of having sex outside made my blood boil
with anticipation, especially as Gerard grabbed my livid hands and began to
lead me to the grass.

He laid me down first, getting on top of me slowly, and kissed his way down
to my neck. We were off to the side of the playground, where a border of
trees divided the area up. The grass was cool under my skin, and I felt myself
sink into the soft brown earth as Gerard straddled my waist, our crotches
rubbing against each other in much needed friction. His hand was underneath
my shirt as his tongue traced along my neck, down to my collar bone while
my hands were on his waist, desperately trying to remove his pants.

“Frank,” he breathed hard into my ear, taking his lips off of my body and
leaving a cool wet patch in their place. The night air brushed over his former
spot, sending chills of anticipation up and down my spine.

“Yeah,” I panted, his breath in my ear driving me crazy. His pants were too
tight for me to just stick my hand down and touch his cock skin to skin, but I
had been cupping him in the front, feeling his girth expand each time I did so.
He was having no problem getting hard tonight.

“I have another idea,” he said, feeling his smile pressing into my ear. Before I
could answer, I felt his weight release from my body, my hand that had been
gripping him suddenly empty. I opened my eyes and looked over at him, lying
down next to me.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer, but merely started to undo his fly, setting himself free. He
pulled out his cock, still in the process of getting fully hard. Even in the dim
light, I could tell that it was flushed red, the thought of what was to come
becoming too much for it to bear. I saw his facial expressions change as his
hand gripped himself tightly, his eyes closed and his lips rolling together to
suppress a slight moan.

“Get yours out, too,” he told me, sliding a hand over to my waist and
motioning to my bulge. Just as I touched the top button on my fly, his own
hand disappeared and wrapped around his own thick cock again, pumping
lightly to get it at full attention.

I did as I was told, not giving a second thought to the matter. I took my cock
out of my boxers, sliding them down my hips slightly. I was already
completely hard, just from watching the man I was sleeping with touch
himself in front of me. I didn’t exactly know what we were doing with both of
our cocks whipped out in the middle of the night in a playground, but it felt
good, so I didn’t care.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded, his voice barely above a whisper. He


followed his own order and picked up the pace on his movements.

“Why?”

Concentration proved to be more difficult as I squeezed my dick hard, but I


still wanted a response. When he first whipped himself out, I thought he had
wanted me to blow him. Knowing that he never asked for sex though, it had
seemed out of character. For some reason, him asking me to jack off for him
wasn’t out of character.

“I want to see what you do when you’re without me,” he said, halting his
movements to look at me. His hand was still on himself, but there was not
enough pressure to completely distract him. “When you’re alone.”

I opened my mouth, partly from the sensation, and partly to try and say
something, but God, it was hard concentrating on a conversation when this
was going on. Either I was doing things to myself, or I saw the things that he
was doing. I couldn’t look anywhere without getting turned on. “Why?”

“You can only truly appreciate someone or something when you’re alone,” he
repeated from before, his voice only breaking a few times. His eyes were
closed as he lolled his head back and forth in the grass. I had managed to
keep my eyes open, but seeing him the way he was then, I crushed them
shut again and gripped my cock hard, eliciting a moan.

“You can’t be alone just yet,” he told me, bringing me back down to the
conversation I had started. I was listening, I really was, but it was just so
damn distracting.

“Sometimes being truly alone is too hard to bear. So, we’re going to do this
together. We’ll appreciate our solitude and then go back to each other right
after.”

He lolled his head again, turning it softly to meet my shoulder. He opened his
eyes and smiled at me, giving me a devious grin. I smiled back and gave him
a quick peck before we each went off into our own worlds, our hands
wrapped tightly around ourselves.

This form of being alone I knew I could handle. Gerard was right next to me,
his head occasionally rubbing against my shoulder. We were solitarily in our
acts, but we were there for support as needed. It was like the silence that
shrouded us from before. It was loud; telling me that I belonged. This alone
was comforting, telling me that I could do it, bit by bit until eventually Gerard
wasn’t around. I didn’t want to think that far in advance, however, so I
focused on my task.

Then his other words began to sink in. I realized how much I preferred his
hand to mine, even if what I was doing felt good. There was something else
about having another hand, another skin texture, rubbing up against your
own. Gerard did things with his thumb and fingers that I didn’t know even
how to do. As I glanced over at him, during one point in our demonstration on
the grass, I realized that I preferred doing the act to him as well as having it
done to me. I saw the way his mouth opened and eyes creased when he hit a
particular pleasure spot. I liked touching him, I realized, because when he
made those faces I knew that I was the one who had caused them, and it
gave me some sort of strange and twisted sense of pride. I appreciated him
so much more then, probably more than if I had actually been alone in my
room, just masturbating for the hell of it.

I still masturbated sometimes, even if I was going to see him. It was usually in
the morning before school, just so I could make it through the day. Though I
was getting plenty of sex, it seemed like Gerard had made me hit my peak
early, and I couldn’t get enough. I loved the way my body felt after orgasm,
and I loved it even more when I had someone else to share it with. When I
masturbated by myself in the morning before school, I never thought about it
as being alone. I never thought about it much at all.
But in that moment, the fact that Gerard and I were choosing to do this alone,
to touch ourselves rather than each other, made everything seem more real
and everything more fleeting at the same time. This could be taken away
from us. We just had to stare that threat in the face, finding ways to cope
before it even happened. We were alone; but together at the same time. It
was comforting, and more importantly, it made me feel stronger, like I could
handle it if it were to happen. I didn’t want it to be soon by no means, but I
felt good. Okay. I almost wanted to go back to the restaurant and spite the
waitress. I wanted to sit with my head up high because I felt like I could do it
now, and not be afraid.

Instead, I focused my thoughts back on the action I was doing. I tightened my


grip, squeezing and pumping myself hard. I had never masturbated with
anyone before, and it was sort of exhilarating. In the lapses of my own hard
breathing, I could hear Gerard’s pants and moans. I would open my eyes
sometimes and see his face, and it would only turn me on more. It was no
time before I was trying to cork screw myself, and only succeeding in coming
hard inside my fist. I arched my back and hips into the movement, hopefully
catching everything. I relaxed back into the grass, smearing my mess away
on the patch next to me. I still stroked my cock gently, the skin becoming
startlingly sensitive.

When I looked over at Gerard, I was surprised to see that he was still going
strong. I could tell from the way his voice sounded, low and husky, breathing
hard and fast, but still having it hitch every once in awhile, that he was about
to come as well. I watched, transfixed by the way his elegant fingers wrapped
and clutched himself. I watched as the skin turned and twisted from the force
of the action, his hips bucking furiously into his hand. And then, finally, the
moment when his eyes rolled back in his head behind the thin lids and he let
out a low moan. He came rather quickly, one hand used for catching and the
first one wrapped around his cock as he rode out the rest of his climax.

Gerard collected himself soon after, wiping his hands down on the grass next
to him like myself, and then glanced over at me watching him. He smiled,
probably knowing what I was thinking. He didn’t say much, and really, he
didn’t have to. I could feel the echo of orgasm flooding my bloodstream, the
endorphins kicking in, and I knew he felt the same way. I laid back down on
the grass next to him, looking up at the stars in the night sky. And just then,
for maybe a moment, I truly felt like I was weightless, like I had no problems
in the world, like I was flying above and beyond everything – like the stars in
the sky.

“Why can’t we just be normal?” I found myself asking Gerard moments later,
both of us still quiet and reeling from pleasure. Our cocks were still out, our
hands were on them, still loosely gripping them to preserve the memory and
protect them from the cold.

“You don’t want to be normal,” he proclaimed, his voice back to its normal
tone. “I don’t want to be normal. It should only fit that together we are far
from the standard cry.”

“Yeah, but why do you always have to teach me things?” I inquired, asking a
question that had been on my mind for a while now.

I loved spending time with Gerard, and I loved his philosophies and theories
on life, and I didn’t mind when he tried to teach me things (because I really
did need the things he taught me), but it seemed like everything with him
had to be a life lesson. We couldn’t just sit and do the normal things couples
did. We couldn’t go out to dinner without him turning it into something big;
something extravagant. We couldn’t even just touch ourselves without him
finding some deep rooted meaning it. I somewhat longed for the days where
we could just watch a movie and do something mindless. Not all the time – I
would get bored too quick and our relationship wouldn’t be the same. But one
night. Just one night, we could sit and watch a movie and not have to think all
the time about the bad things that were going to happen to us.

“I’m trying to prepare you for the world,” he informed me. He shifted his
weight a bit, folding and tucking away his cock.

“Yeah, I guess…” I trailed off, tucking myself away as well. “But what if I
don’t want to learn one day? What if I just want to sit and talk about
nothing?”

I turned on my side, branching an arm across his chest. He turned into me as


well, and linked our legs together on the soft earth.

“There is no such thing as nothing,” he told me clearly, not taking another


opinion on this statement. He breathed in, collecting his thoughts with a
breath of air before continuing. “Life is a painting. There are layers and
meanings and interpretations. You can’t just look at it and have that be it.
There are too many parts to everything, too many things to dissect and
understand.” He paused, tracing his fingers down my waist to my back. “You
are a painting. And I’m just trying to show you the many layers and how they
combine together. I’m trying to help you find your own interpretation. It took
me long enough to figure them all out for myself.”

He smiled, his words emphasizing just how old he was. He made those jokes
a lot, and it had stopped irking me. I just accepted his age, as just what it
was. It didn’t diminish anything else about him. It just was a part of him, and I
accepted all of it. Being with Gerard had many things to it; age was one, his
persistent thoughts on everything another, and my own securities about
being gay came into there as well. As long as I could have Gerard to myself,
however, I knew that it was a worthy deal.

“What if I don’t want to be a painting?” I asked after a few moments of


silence.

Gerard always related everything to art. Everything. It could be something


completely different, but he would find a way; literal or metaphorical. I had
heard it so many times before, though, it was losing its meaning. He was
overdoing it. I didn’t want to be a painting. I didn’t even want to be a painter
all that much. Vivian had said there was something else for me, something
else in my hands I needed to do. I didn’t know what, but as I traced through
my mind, I came upon something that did appeal to me. In my hands or not.

“I want to be a dove.” My voice surprised me; it didn't sound like me talking. I


wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing.

“But Frank,” Gerard gushed, pulling me closer to him and placing a kiss on
my forehead. “You are a dove.”
“No,” I argued, trying to clarify my point. “Not the one in your apartment. She
just has my name. I want to be a real dove.” I felt my cheeks flush slightly,
for admitting something so stupid and foolish, and something that could
never happen.

“And you are a real dove,” Gerard corrected me again, tilting my chin up to
meet with his eyes. I looked at him, confused and intrigued at the same time,
especially since he wasn’t teasing me. “You’re my dove, just like the one in
the apartment, only much different. You’re more special, more free, more
human. You’re my dove and I’m your keeper.” He halted, touching my hair
and placing a small kiss on my forehead, the gesture so intimate, I had to
close my eyes to absorb it all. “Each lesson I teach you,” he continued,
wrapping his arm around me more, pulling me closer and bridging the
minuscule gap in between us, “is bringing you one step closer to freedom.”

“I thought I already had freedom?”

“I did teach you about freedom, yes,” he agreed, nodding his head into my
shoulder. We were both on our sides, my head right under his own, my chin
and face on his shoulder and neck, tucked inside the folds of his jacket, skin
and warmth. “But that was freedom for each other. To be with each other.
The freedom to choose what you wanted to do in life. There are many layers
of freedom, Frank. There is freedom in art, freedom in music. That was
proving there could be freedom in love.” His voice broke, not being able to
truly emphasize the importance of the last word. “But you still have a long
way to go, Frank. Tonight proves that point.”

I sighed with the still fresh recollection, feeling my heart sink. He quickly
rubbed my back at my disapproval, speaking softly into my ear.

“You did not fail, though. It is impossible to fail while you are learning to be
free, because if you don’t succeed at one aspect, you learn another. That was
true tonight. And all the other nights we’ve been together. You’re learning
wonderfully, but you still need to figure out who you are.”
“I’m Frank,” I told him, not really knowing what else to say.

“Yes, but what does that mean?”

“A dove…” I said, my voice wavering slightly. He always got me thinking on


such parallels, that my voice never transcended the meaning I wanted. It
appeared to be good enough for him, however.

“Yes, exactly,” he agreed, adding on onto the rest of his story. “But there is
more than that. You need to read each one of your feathers and tell me what
it means. You’re still working on that. I’m still working on that. And I’m going
to keep teaching you until you find it all out. I’m going to keep you, my dove,
until I have to let you go.”

He concluded his speech, trying to pull me into a hug, but I couldn’t do it. I
pulled away, and looked up into his eyes.

“Let me go?” I repeated, his words scaring me. “Why are you letting me go?”

In all this time, I knew we were doomed, but I had always thought it was
society that was going to tear us apart. I never thought Gerard would let it
happen. I never thought he was going to give me up and actually be the one
to let me go. Wasn’t he going to fight to keep me as long as he could? I was
willing to do the same for him.

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head. He placed a finger on my lips, shushing me


from my frantic thoughts. “I need to let you go, but only when you’re ready. I
would never leave you before then.”

“How will you know when I’m ready?”


He paused for a bit, then redirected the question. “Why do you want to be a
dove, Frank?”

I paused too, finally at a loss for words. I watched Gerard’s dove so often, I
felt like I knew her. The more I watched, the more I wanted to be her. But I
could never quite pinpoint where it all came down.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I thought of the bird’s beauty in her jet
black eyes, her beak, her feathers and then – her wings. “To fly?” I answered,
the anxiety in my voice making the statement sound like a question. I looked
up at the sky again, seeing the stars strung out like beads. I wanted to touch
them. I wanted to be up that high, as impossible as it sounded. If I could, I’d
probably be that dove, and then take down every single star from the sky,
just to keep for the sake of keeping.

“Then I will never leave you before you know how to fly,” he stated honestly,
finding my hand and gripping it tightly, showing his commitment in a single
gesture. “Ultimately, though, you will have to be the one to let yourself be
free. I can give you all the lessons I want, and I can leave you when you’re
ready. But it’s you who has to spread your wings and actually fly away.”

I could hear the emotion in his voice, the future aspect of our possible
departure wavering in the air. I clutched his hand in mine for dear life,
sensing a strange déjà vu to his words and feeling like it would only be
moments before we were carted away. I closed my eyes and held my breath
and waited, but nothing happened. Like before, the world never caved in.
Nothing bad happened. When I opened my eyes, we were still in the park, the
night cloaking us away from danger and Gerard’s olive eyes still staring at
me.

“What’s in this for you?” I asked curiously.

All this time, it was him teaching me everything, him giving me all he had in
order for myself to retain my freedom. He said so himself that he was my
keeper, and it was his duty to teach me the ways of the world. That’s why we
could never be normal, and now, I never wanted to be normal. I’d much
rather lay in a bed of confusion and unanswered theories with him, than do
nothing any day.

But what was in this for Gerard? I kept finding myself wonder. He was pouring
out his heart and soul, thinking of new ways to set me free. I didn’t feel like I
deserved this, especially when he was sitting there empty handed.

He breathed in deeply, a smile forming across his face.

“Oh, Frank,” he said, his voice slightly condescending, as if I should have


known the answer all along. There was also deep rooted care in his tone and
actions as he wrapped me up in a final hug, sending shivers down my spine
as he whispered his answer in my ear. “I get to watch my dove soar.”

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