> Depeche Mode – Precious
> Depeche Mode – Suffer Well
> Depeche Mode – John the Revelator
> Massive Attack – Heat Miser
> Queens of the Stone Age – Song for the Dead
> Nine Inch Nails – Love is Not Enough
*ding*
Your mailbox has 60 new messages.
God how I love coming back after trips.
I have hundreds of blog posts to catch up on, and two Netflix movies. I have a feeling I’m not going to get much sleep tonight. But then again, that wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary considering my week of sleeping in with impunity.
It took me for ever to get home. The trip went swimmingly, until I learned from a traffic billboard in Eureka that the bridge across the Klamath River was closed 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for repairs, so at 11:45 I had to call Jon and ask if I could stay at his house in Arcata for the night.
This episode is going to be a journey through fields of emotional and sexual desolation that I had long since thought banished, but here goes. If you haven’t heard my amusing rendition of my coming-out story to my dad, it involves Jon. He lived down street from me and we both came out at about the same time (sophomore year, I believe). We had the same bus stop, so we would often hang around there and talk after school. One day he invited me over to his house and we ended up fooling around. It was one of my first sexual experiences, so of course I thought that I loved him. That same week, his mother found out that he was gay and kicked him out to live with his father in Arcata. We would talk on the Internet about how lonely we were. The whole ” if only someone would hold me and tell me everything will be all right” thing.
Through the years we had made plans to see each other, and they would always fall through, but I never forgot what we had shared on those lonely nights in high school. And now here I was, years into the future, pulling into his driveway. He showed me around his house, a leaky but charming mobile home with a tarp over the roof. It was filled with DVDs and high-definition TVs. I slipped off my shoes and got comfortable on the loveseat, watching him talk on the sofa. He’s one of those people where you can never get a word edgewise, but he never bothers me because when I hear him I know he’s taciturn. His endless conversation is cute, but still a façade. I smiled at him as we talked about Stargate SG-1 and all those other shows on the Sci-fi Channel. For years he was obsessed with the Buffy series and that was such a turnoff but now that he’s into sci-fi my usual secret vault of vitriol was mysteriously empty. I stared at him with almost a look of wonderment as he kept finding more and more subjects to talk about. It was like witnessing an incredibly complex football play.
I obseved his mask. Could he still love me? Even a little? After all these years? At around 1:30, he announced that he was off to bed. My estimation of the next 12 hours flashed through my mind: sleep on the couch fighting off his cats, and a humdrum 6 a.m. drive back to Crescent City.
“You can sleep in my room or out here, but it gets cold on the couch because I have turn off the heat.”
15 minutes later, we were in bed together. I really didn’t know what to expect. Jon is a difficult person to read. His endless banter serves as an almost impenetrable smokescreen for his true intentions and wishes. Half of me wanted to cuddle up to him, but the other half was embarrassed because I was a guest and it would be presumptuous to assume that he wanted to cuddle. He talked on and on until about 4 a.m., often giving detailed descriptions of his sexual encounters. Obviously, that wasn’t exactly helping me get to sleep. He started to slow down in the banter.
Of all people, the voice of Molly popped into my head. I realized that all these burning questions in my mind would never be answered unless I point-blank asked him. It’s impossible to direct a Jon conversation in any sort of way — you can only get in the occasional “yeah.” So I just did it.
“Do you think that back in high school we ever — you know — had anything?” He paused.
“Well, we were both really young back then…I mean, I had no idea what love was– I was going out with that guy from the Internet. No… I don’t think we had anything.”
One question down, one to go.
He talked a bit more about this guy that he went out with and more of his sexcapades. At one point he talked about how he just didn’t pick up on sexual offers based on innuendo.
“So do you want to have sex?” I replied.
He was silent for a moment or two, and then gave this vague “yes… but no” answer. At the next apropos moment, I asked him if he wanted to cuddle. He said yes, and as soon as I felt him near me it felt like all those years of subconsiously needing him were lifted off of me because I had experienced what it would be like to be with him. I felt so at peace, and for once I didn’t wish that it would last forever. I would hold him for a while, and then later I would be back in Crescent City… and I was okay with that. That need which had formed deep in my 17-year-old psyche was now satisfied. As he talked, ideas would blossom in my mind (his emotional metamorphosis [Kafka], the person he used to be and wants to be ["The Becoming" by NIN], etc.). He’d never heard of Kafka. He doesn’t listen to Nine Inch Nails. I knew I could never love him, but I could finally be at peace with it. There was only one thing left.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
*smile*
“Can I kiss you?”
“Well, kissing would lead to rubbing which would lead to sex.”
“It’s not about sex… To say that I don’t want to have sex with you would be a lie, but just being with you is enough.”
“Don’t you get my sarcasm?”
“Sarcasm?”
his head was turned away from me, I nudged his shoulder.
“Come here.”
The kiss itself wasn’t particularly amazing, but the symbolic nature of it blew me away. Years I had waited for this moment. Smashed was my “what would have happened if me and Jon had fallen in love” fantasy that had been simmering in the back of my mind for years. I moved away from his lips, inspecting his face. What drew me to him? Was it that first bit of unbridled high school passion that we all mistook for love? I wanted him to open his eyes and tell me something that would explain it all. I slowly caressed his face. The moment was gone though. I leaned down and kissed him again.
His body looked different then I remembered it, but the same in all the ways that mattered. In that moment I was more in love and in lust with him than anyone I’ve ever known. Soon, he came. It was the 21st century equivalent of Cinderella’s clock striking twelve. I felt no guilt or remorse. I loved him…in that sublimated, unconditional way that you can only love those you’ve known since childhood. And finally, in the warm silence, I did want him to hold me forever. It was an ancient and childish notion though. I now knew that dreams like that were gone. I snuggled close to him one last time, then turned over to fall asleep.
We slept through his alarm. His room was filled with piercing spears of sunlight. I stumbled through the brightness, fishing my iPod out of my shoe to check the time. 9:05.
It was over. Just like I had known last night. And I felt nothing a great lightness. He had slept through his class, and escorted me to the door. We hugged, and I knew that it would be the last time I would feel him, but it still didn’t bother me.
His taste was still in my mouth. I chugged a quart of Silk that I’d picked up at the Safeway in Willits, and set my mind to driving. I looked at my trip odometer. It would read over four hundred miles by the time I was back in Crescent City. With the trip to San Francisco we took, that was around 1000 miles of driving. What did it all mean? Would I ever find anyone to love? But that voice was but a whisper behind my smile. As I pulled onto the freeway, this feeling of certainty and clarity washed over me. Kelly would always be a good person. Jon would always be his talkative façade. There would always be people that loved me, even if it wasn’t in the exact way I needed. The realization was cliché, but on such a beautiful morning I didn’t care. We’re all searching for something. This morning I didn’t care what it was, I just liked being along for the ride.
It was a beautiful morning. I turned on the Depeche Mode, locked in the cruise control, and finally recognized that feeling I’d been having all night. It was pure, crystal happiness. I had known it all along.
Categories: Ennui
