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A Hard Rain; chapter two, part three

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“Where have you been?”  Freddy didn’t bother to look up as he heard Amy stumble through the door.  It was after midnight, and she had been gone for a week this time—her longest stretch by far.

“Oh, Freddy.  I am so sorry.  I know how hard this is for you.”  Amy walked over to Freddy and wrapped her arms around him.  She was over six feet tall, lissome and had the grace of a ballet dancer—when she wasn’t manic.  Her blond curls and light blue eyes had caused many a man to instantly fall for her—Freddy included.  Tonight, however, he was immune to her charm.  He remembered the first time she had disappeared, two months after they had started dating.  He remembered how sick with worry he had been until she reappeared two days later.  Then, he had felt nothing but relief that she had come back to him.  Now, he was just weary.

“Do you really, Amy?  I don’t think you do.”  Freddy had no interest in rehashing the old argument, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.  “You quit your meds, didn’t you?”

“I had to, Freddy!  They were making me so numb.  I hate it when I can’t feel anything.  You know that.”  Amy hugged Freddy harder until he found himself relenting despite himself.  “Besides, I have some big news, and it’s part of the reason I left this time.  It’s also why I stopped taking my pills.  Partly.”  Amy wasn’t making much sense, but that was normal for her in her coming down phase.  Freddy waited to hear what she had to say.  In a far-off corner of his mind, he wondered when he had stopped trying to engage with Amy when she was in this mood.  It had to be at least six months ago, and that made Freddy unaccountably sad.  “Did you hear me, Freddy?  I said I have big news.”  Amy’s voice was rising, which indicated that she was still in the very tail end of her manic phase.

“I heard.  Tell me, Amy.  What’s your big news?”  Freddy couldn’t get very excited because to a manic Amy, finding a twenty dollar bill on the street was big news.

“I’m pregnant!”  Amy stepped back from Freddy and beamed at him.  “We’re going to be parents!”  Amy threw her arms in the air and started dancing around in circles.  Freddy watched her as if she had grown another head.  Amy danced a few minutes more before she realized that she was the only one celebrating.  “What’s the matter, Freddy?  Why aren’t you happy about the news?  You want kids.  You told me that.”  The last line was delivered reproachfully, and that tipped Freddy over the edge.

“I never told you any such fucking thing, Amy,” Freddy said savagely, grabbing Amy by the wrist.  “And, the baby is not mine.  Do you know how I can be so sure?  Because I am fucking fixed—that I’ve told you.  I can’t fucking have children.”  Fury filled Freddy as he forced himself to release Amy and step away from her.  Freddy had wanted to have children, but a family defect had made him realize that it would be better if he didn’t procreate.  After many years of agonizing reflection, Freddy had gotten a vasectomy when he was thirty.  He still felt the pangs of regret so many years after the fact that he would never get to hold a child of his in his arms.  The news that Amy was pregnant by another man was more than he could bear.

“What?  That’s not true!  You never told me that.”  Amy looked at Freddy, her eyes wide in shock.  “If you can’t have children, then how can I be pregnant?”

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Rainbow Connection; chapter two, part three

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“Rayne, it’s me, Vashti.”  The sound of her voice sends contradicting emotions through my body.  As much as she hurt me, she still has a pull over me.  My attraction to her hasn’t waned; I’m just more cautious about acting on it.  I think of her beautiful dark skin, hair and eyes, her full lips and the thin gold hoop through her right nostril.  Her lush curves.  I banish these images with difficulty and listen to her gorgeous voice which never fails to make me shiver.  “I know I have been making a pest of myself, but I can’t help it.  You are having every right to be upset with me—I am upset with myself.  I am wishing we can talk privately tomorrow so I can at least try to make things better.”  She pauses as her voice breaks.  She steadies it and continues.  “You are very important to me.  I will be very sad if we can’t at least be friends.  But I understand.  I’m sorry.  I do not know how many times I can say it, but it will never be enough.  See you tomorrow.”

I sit motionlessly long after the click.  This is the first time I’ve heard a whole message from her as I erase them as soon as I hear her voice.  The regret and pain in her voice shake me.  I had created this fantasy that she had withheld information from me intentionally because she cared more about the person she was trying to protect than she did me.  I needed to tell myself that in order to harden my heart against her—I needed that in order to not be stuck in the morass I found myself surrounded by.  After listening to her message, however, I can’t fool myself into believing that she meant me malicious harm when she lied to me.  I can’t even convince myself that she knew the other person was dangerous.  Being the person she is, Vashti tried to protect someone out of the misguided goodness of her heart.  She was the victim of an error in judgment—no more, no less.  That doesn’t mean I’ll trust her again, but at least I can begin letting go of the anger I am nursing against her.

I finish making the cookies.  I have ten dozen when I’m done, including the plate I gave to Paris.  I set aside fifty for the girls, which leaves fifty (after the twenty I’d already taken out for Lyle) for Paris and me.  To be more precise, forty for Paris and ten for me.  That’s the ratio between us—four to one.  I clean up the dishes—another gift from my mother.  She is lax in many ways, but she always cleans up right after baking.  She insists it’s integral to her mental well-being not to have dirty dishes sitting in her sink.  While I don’t mind letting dishes sit for a day or two, I really do feel better if I wash them right after using them.  Once the dishes are done, I go to the living room and flick on the television.  There is a college basketball game on, Florida versus Syracuse.  I’m not much for sports, but I do enjoy college hoops.  Not as much since kids are jumping to the NBA so early these days thereby decimating the college game, but I’ll watch a game when the mood hits me.

The game isn’t that interesting because Florida is thumping Syracuse.  There should be a mercy rule as there is in softball.  I switch to Comedy Central which is having a          marathon, a show I think is funny as hell.  Although they killed off my favorite character, Kenny, for good, and my favorite character from the movie, ‘the Mole’ died in the movie as well.  I’ll never forgive them for that, even if they did bring Kenny back.  I often thought if I ever had a kid, he would turn out to be like the Mole.  Bitter, cynical, brilliant, undercover guerilla.  More likely, the kid would be a staunch conservative who emulated Bush Senior and wore three-piece suits to school.  A kid like Libby.  If there is a god, she will end up with a kid like me.  I will laugh if that happens.  I can’t see Libby as a mother—she is so uptight and exacting.  If she has her way, her kid would eat, sleep, and shit on a schedule.  The kid would be painfully neat and not have an original thought of his own.  Then when he turned fifteen, he’d kill thirteen kids in his school before turning the gun on himself.  ‘He was such a quiet and nice boy,’ the neighbors would say, stunned that he could do such a thing.  Libby would be devastated and have to be heavily sedated.

South Park is showing one of my favorite episodes, the lesbian teacher episode.  Some of the dykes I know were outraged by the episode, but I think it’s hysterical to hear these little kids talk about ‘munching carpet’ and listening to the Indigo Girls in an attempt to be lesbians.  I think what I like so much about the show is that it truly captures how little kids think.  Like this episode.  It’s so obvious to adults that lesbians are women, but the boys don’t know that, so they think they can become lesbians by doing certain acts, listening to certain music and wearing certain clothes.  Logical thinking if you don’t know that a lesbian is a woman.  I become immerse in the episode, relieved to not be thinking again.  Eric Cartman is the perfect antidote for depression.

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Don’t Rayne On My Parade; chapter two, part three

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“Hello?  Paris here.”  He has one of those phones where a person standing near by can hear almost everything the other person says.

“Oh –y God, Pa—s.  It’s Ma—………..looking for Moira…….broke down the door….she’s de—.  You have to…….right now!”

“Max, calm down.  Are you sure about that?”  Paris looks concerned as he cradles the phone to his ear.

“She…..bed…..not moving.  Mur— .  Some—.  I want you…….now!”  Her voice rises hysterically as she talks.  It sounds as if she’s not even trying to control herself any longer.

“Ok, Max.  I’ll be right there.  Drink some water and take deep breaths.  Remember, stress is your enemy.”  He clicks off the phone and turns to me.  I’m eagerly waiting for the news, though I can piece together most of it from the excerpts I overheard.  “It’s Moira.  She’s been murdered.  Max’s going crazy.  We gotta go.”

“Who’s we, white man?”  I retort, trying to ignore his other words.  “She asked for you, remember?”  I do not want to see Max again, and I definitely do not want to see a dead Moira.

“I need you there with me,” Paris says soulfully, putting on the puppy-dog eyes.  “I need you for moral support.”  He leans over to kiss me on the cheek which breaks down my defenses.  Every time, I vow to be strong.  Every time, I fail.

“All right.  Let me pull on some clothes first.”  I walk toward my bedroom before something strikes me.  “The police will most likely be there.  Do you think this is a good idea?”

“I have to go,” Paris says simply.  “I want you with me.”  That seems to be the end of that.  We both throw on some jeans and long-sleeve shirts before jumping back into his car.  We are silent on the way there.

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Trip on This: Chapter Two (Part Three)

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Chapter Two (Part Three)

It is inevitable, the crash that follows the high.  Trip knows that, and yet, every time, she hopes to escape it.  She spends the day after the job is finished burrowed under her covers, not moving from her futon except to eat, drink, and shit.  If the black isn’t too heavily upon her, she reads, but that’s not always possible.  She flips on the television so there is background noise, but she keeps the volume on low so it’s not overwhelming.  All the energy and the adrenaline that fuels her while she’s performing dissipates once there’s no need for it to exist.  Trip has long since accepted this stage of the job, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.  She is not a woman who is comfortable feeling weak, so for those specific days, she unplugs the phone and refuses to answer the door.

Her best friend, Mowgli—nee, Roberto Esteban—hasn’t stopped trying to jolt her out of her funk on these days, but has yet to succeed.  She solves the problem of him dropping by on these days—he has a key—by simply not telling him when she’s finished a job until she’s functioning again.  Then she has to suffer through him lecturing her on how friendship is a two-way street and how she shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that she needs to lean on someone once in a while.  He towers over her at six-feet six, and was recruited by many prestigious schools to play football and basketball, but his true love was baseball which he excelled at.  The few carefully-selected teammates who knew he was gay didn’t two shits about it as long as he never came on to them and he continued to produce—both edicts which Mowgli followed to the letter.  He blew out his knee his third year in college and hasn’t played competitive sports since.  He’s good-looking with dark skin because of his Filipino blood, dark eyes, and a wide, engaging smile.  His tats and piercings, not to mention his swagger, don’t hurt, either.  If he were anything but a hundred-percent gay, Trip would be all over him like flies on rice.  Where did that horrid expression come from, anyway?

She calls him Mowgli because he loves animals.  When he tried to protest, she said it was either that or Dr. Dolittle, so he chose the lesser of two evils.  He is the only one of her friends who calls her Del because he can’t stand the name Trip.  When he is angry with her, he calls her Delilah.  When he’s pissed at her, he calls her Delilah Wire.  When he calls her ‘Delilah Esther Wire’, then she knows she’s in big trouble.  She met him on the streets one day when she propositioned him, not knowing he was gay.  It was her first year in San Francisco, and her gaydar hadn’t been properly installed yet.  He had taken one look at her and unofficially adopted her as his sister.  She refused to live with him because of her pride, and he couldn’t convince her to go to a shelter, but he made sure her life on the streets was as easy as possible.  He’d bring her food from time to time and gave her money when she’d accept it from him.  He was the first to cheer when she rented her first apartment, and though he might not like what she did, he never judged.  He works in the tech/gaming industry, but wants to write a book some day.

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