We walk out into the expansive, blood red evening. My entire universe has been re-arranged. My head is painful to the touch and there is a high pitch ringing in my ears again. Even Michael appears to walk differently. The killer shark boy has gone. Instead, I am walking with some dangerous, spiky haired thug who I have tamed! Fuck I feel like St Jerome!! Or Daniel, I walk out of the den alive!! I climb onto my bike and grunt to signal my imminent departure.
Michael turns. `Keep you mouth shut, ok Jamie?’ he snaps but even his snap is different. In one giddy moment I realise he is talking to me like he talks to Max!!
`And you. Don’t tell Max about what I’ve told you – about me – ‘
`Wanting his ass?’ Michael’s face is made beautiful with a rather spiteful smile. I glare at him, although it is probably lost in the dusk. I pull in the reigns of my horse and kick the animal forward, `About me being obsessed about him!’
`Oh sure, right! Sorry.’
`Otherwise he might find out that we have both read Liz’s journal and that would be - unfortunate.’ I say.
Michael pauses, his eyes looking away for an instant and then back on me. `You know Jamie; I think I liked you better when you were some clueless little geek. Be careful of what you wish for, don’t get in too far.’ He turns and walks away, head down, off to return the evidence to Liz Parker. I watch him go, half tempted to follow. Theme music, titles roll up over the screen: awesome!!!!!
I feel like I want to scream with something – joy? Sheer terror! As I cycle back, I see Max looming in front of me, bollock naked, sitting on the end of my bed, wiping my spunk off his chest with a towel. He eyes are dark liquid gold, his body a landscape of quilted hollows and dimples, buffed wet shiny, my temple! My god! I almost fall off my bike and the world wheels bizarrely about me. I stop and try and get my breath. MAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXX!
What really freaks me out though, I mean really sets my heart-lung function to critical, is not the sight of boy God hosing me down with his cock seed, or even throwing me across his shoulders like contraband, to be shagged senseless live on a web-cam link to a major TV network, but the thought of him looking at me across a crowded school and smiling at me in recognition! To know that his shy, bemused, massively erotic smile is just for me and me only! OMG. Tears blur my geek boy eyes! I see him striding towards me out of the shower, polished, his hair wet and thrown over his face, his strong hand out to me, `Take it, come with me! Lets elope!’ This is the moment when my old life falls away and I stand at a new beginning! Fuck, it’s like the second coming! There is a loud bang, my face is slapped into something and I am sent flying through the air into a large cactus. I have hit the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.
My life is entirely, utterly out of control. I have just about made it to school. It took some time to persuade Valenti that the sores on my head and the strange marks on my face and neck had nothing to do with being propelled through the air like a human canon ball, with the bike still between my legs, and nothing to do with the three degrees of cactus burn. He was very interested in the hand marks. He wanted to take pictures, for god’s sake! It took me even longer to explain that I had not self harmed (what the fuck – there are easier ways to do that than over-applying Blonde Bombshell No 2! Blonde Bombshell No 1 is probably much easier! It probably takes your fucking head off, and half the street with it!)
Then Valenti got all interested and sniffy when I told him that I had been visiting Michael. He asked me straight up if I was friends with Max Evans, which I thought was super-weird. He said this like he wasn’t really interested, but I could see his fucking eyes were popping out on stalks behind his sunglasses. I said yes faintly, in my far off doomed Betty Davis voice. (`actually we are underage lovers, Valenti, and I am pregnant with his love child’.) He didn’t ask about the fight in the shower room with Kyle, or appear to notice any correlation between my dental records and the scars on his son’s arm.
Yet when I told him my address he looked really interested! When I got home I found out why. My house was surrounded by paramedics and local units of the National Guard. Mumsy, having grown bored of digging the Great Trench of Roswell, was on the roof covered in silver foil holding a TV aerial. Army boy had been officially declared missing. I spent the night in hospital having my head dressed and being interrogated by social workers! Then Valenti returned later, all sweetness and concern and started asking questions about Max. At one stage he asked me if Max had done this to me or to my mother? What the fuck – how could Max do this? What does Valenti think he is? There is mention of me going into care unless mother stops speaking Latin and talking about the arrival of space people.
School is weird. It has a strange tense atmosphere like a very hot day that is clouding over and ready to blow. In Texas, it would be called twister season. I turn up looking like road kill, or like Boris Karloff in a cheap remake of The Mummy Returns. I am distracted by curious acts of sympathy and by excessive Max-Michael activity that prevents me from trying to keep the lies about my accident either consistent or plausible! I have devised a simple scale for Max-Michael activity. It goes from zero to ten, with zero being no sightings and no interaction, to ten being either a double sighting of them sneaking into the erasure room to stab their cocks into each other, or going to piss together and have a conference in the boys room. Today we are off the fucking scale. We are off the scale before lunchtime.
At the end of third period I come across them in the main corridor near administration having what appears to be a full on row, like people have when they try and buy a present together or pick the paint for decorating their bedroom. Michael is doing his `what the fuck’ routine in mime and Max is looking beautifully bemused, hands in pockets, shoulders in, trying to take up less fucking space and is not saying much at all. Then Michael sees me hobbling towards them, he closes right up to Max like he is going to kiss his ear. Max jumps back and knocks someone over behind him.
Books and folders fly through the air and someone screams. Michael looks slightly embarrassed and CROSS, hurt that his apology has not been accepted, and suddenly takes Max’s hand and pulls him off towards the door. Max looks utterly stunned! He looks around in panic, sees me, and sort of grimaces a smile, before he looks back at Michael in horror and at his hand. Next minute Isabel turns up and says loudly (to Max) `What the fuck is wrong with Michael Is this still about the key?’ and then (to Michael) `Stop pulling Max around! We’ve both told you, you can’t go!’ then they go off towards the basketball courts.
A small group of people watch in amazement. What this has to do with the journal or me remains a mystery. However I have a sickening feeling that Michael has told Max something. Further proof comes of this when, in English lit, Max keeps turning to look at me. We are reading Shelly’s Frankenstein. Perhaps he is just genuinely curious over my resemblance to the fucking monster or is amazed how I can write with some many bandages on, but then at one stage he says something – something wordless -`are you ok?’ and my eyes water and great acres of sunlight fill my pain.
Perhaps, OMG, perhaps they have been rowing about me! I nod and smile, bravely. Love and lust swell up about me in equal measure. I see it all so clearly. I am propped up in bed in a white surgery gown and Max is standing close to me, naked except for a school blazer, talking to the doctor. I hear him ask if I will live. The doctor looks at Max and then coldly at me: `He might, although what possessed you to have sex on a sun bed is beyond me.’ Max winks at me and later I squeeze his hand. `Don’t worry’ he brushes my face, `we’ll use more lube next time!’
As the bell goes to end the nightmare of trying to read Shelly, Michael turns up and it is immediately clear to me he is terrified that I might say something to Max, or that Max might speak to me alone, if given the opportunity! His whole body language is wired and twitchy and he keeps running his hand over Max’s shoulder, STROKING like some possessive dog owner while looking at me. BASTARD. Max is getting clearly worked up about this, but seems indecisive. He is about to say something when Liz floats in, all smiles, wearing a sort of formless hat and sunglasses like she is trying to go incognito. She comes over to Max and then to me. `Hey Jamie, I heard about your accident! If there is anything I can do just let me know, ok?’ she sounds genuinely concerned. It is also clear she has heard about Mother and the Earth works in the garden because she then says `An you’re more than welcome to come and stay over at my place tonight if you want?’ Jesus! Is this geek solidarity or the Fuck Max deluxe club pass?
`No, you can’t do that’ says Michael loudly. `He can come and stay with me if necessary.’
Liz looks puzzled, the look she uses when one of the teachers gets a FACT wrong. It’s a look that has, apparently, been known to send a new member of staff screaming into the principle's office.
`That’s really sweet of you Michael, but what about, well, Hank?’
I am looking horrified and have my special pleading look on my face.If I coudl I would pass a small bit of paper to her with the words HELP ME written on it.
`Michael, will you stop pawing me!’ interrupts Max, who pulls away. Michael looks slightly taken aback. I smile painfully with icy triumph and painfully raise an eyebrow. `I want to talk to Jamie!’
Yeah Michael, back off. My eyebrow remains raised – fuck – its stuck in a sort of ironic grimace. Max SQUATS down and looks straight into my eyes.
Jamie what happened?’ He is standing close to me, I can smell him, a slight smell of incense, a smudge of testosterone thrown in with some sweat! OMG. We are in bed wrapped up tightly, the morning heat has made us wet and gummy. I taste salt on his stomach as I lick down towards his groin. His voice is a soft deep fuzz of words and I cannot look at him without feeling sick.
`Jamie?’ I come around and they are all look at me. It's like The Peoples Court!
`I ran into the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.’ I say, trying not to squeak with emotion.
`Fuck! Was it your fault?’ He comes closer. If he touches me I might spontaneously combust. Please don’t touch me Max, I am only 17. I am too young to die!
`It sure was!’ We all turn around to see Kyle, who has arrived on cue with his usual bodyguard of gum-chewing, gel-haired jocks. `Ah the Court of King Max!! Hi Liz, Michael, Lurch’ (looking at me), Max.’
The atmosphere sharpens immediately. Max stands up. He and Kyle stare at each other with their teeth slightly clenched and their eyes brilliant, narrowed, like two dogs circling (jesus, I might have an orgasm). Liz looks pissy and surprisingly hard. Michael drops the touchy feely position and gets ready to launch a direct assault on Kyle or any number of jocks. Fuck its like West Side Story! Isabel will probably turn up any minute with a clutch of cheerleaders to provide air support and then we’ll all break-out into song!
`Jamie boy wasn’t paying attention on the road last night, but some of the injuries seem to have been done earlier, isn’t that right, Lurch?’ Clearly he has been speaking with daddy.
`We know’ says Max, growling, a sort of deep snarl. He turns back to me, smiling `you fell into some stew, didn’t you?’ he smiles sweetly and innocently. I had forgotten this particularly STUPID lie. Everyone frowns and looks at me. Max has turned his attention back to Kyle. `He told me earlier yesterday afternoon,’ says my lover, unable to comprehend that I would lie, `when he helped me with the shopping’
Michael looks at me keenly and screws up his forehead. (Ueah Michael, we shop together baby!)
`Shopping? You met Max yesterday afternoon?’
`Yes’ I say weakly, coloring slightly.
`Oh,’ Kyle says, smiling, `was that was before you paid Michael a call? According to my father, you were wobbling all over the road having paid your respects to trash boy here!! I thought perhaps Michael had poured kerosene on your head for a camp fire? Or did you take too many drugs?'
Max looks at me and then lifts his eyes elegantly to Michael. `You went to see Michael?’ he is almost smiling, a little ironic smile. Michael looks uncomfortable.
`We ran into each other’ I say quickly – fuck this was getting really, really awkward.
`You ran into a lot of things yesterday.’ Kyle struts about, enjoying the script. `I didn’t know you and Michael were such good friends, especially after our little chat the othe day!’
`Watch it Valenti’ sneers Michael. Max, Kyle and Michael close up suddenly, all bristling, a rather frightening proximity surcharged with sheer male eroticism. Liz steps into the middle. It is beginning to resemble some form of Line Dancing.
I have switched on my Emergency Geek Brain Over-ride All truth routine! `I offered to help him catch up with his English lit.’ I say. This is utter nonsense since he isn’t even taking a class in it this semester. This is the worse lie since the stew one. I am losing my touch. Liz looks at Michael who looks at me. We all look at Max. Max looks at Michael.
`Are you taking extra credits this semester?’ he asks, his voice sounding ever so slighty suspicious now.
`Yes.!?’ Michael and I say simultaneously.
There is a tense stand-off. There is an ominous silence. `OK’ Max breaks away, he turns back to me. `Jamie, listen you can come and stay with me and Is until things get sorted out at home.’
`He can’t do that!’ says Michael.
`Michael what the fuck has gotten into you!’
`Nothing – sorry – he can stay with me, he can sleep on my floor!’ (yeah, right)
`He can stay with me!’ says Liz again – my head is going to explode. I hear Kyle say simply,
`Well he isn’t fucking stay with me!’
[/i]
Haulden in Roswell (UC, ADULT) (Complete)
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Patroclus76
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Patroclus76
- Addicted Roswellian
- Posts: 178
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
- Location: Bristol, UK
- Contact:
We walk out into the expansive, blood red evening. My entire universe has been re-arranged. My head is painful to the touch and there is a high pitch ringing in my ears again. Even Michael appears to walk differently. The killer shark boy has gone. Instead, I am walking with some dangerous, spiky haired thug who I have tamed! Fuck I feel like St Jerome!! Or Daniel, I walk out of the den alive!! I climb onto my bike and grunt to signal my imminent departure.
Michael turns. `Keep you mouth shut, ok Jamie?’ he snaps but even his snap is different. In one giddy moment I realise he is talking to me like he talks to Max!!
`And you. Don’t tell Max about what I’ve told you – about me – ‘
`Wanting his ass?’ Michael’s face is made beautiful with a rather spiteful smile. I glare at him, although it is probably lost in the dusk. I pull in the reigns of my horse and kick the animal forward, `About me being obsessed about him!’
`Oh sure, right! Sorry.’
`Otherwise he might find out that we have both read Liz’s journal and that would be - unfortunate.’ I say.
Michael pauses, his eyes looking away for an instant and then back on me. `You know Jamie; I think I liked you better when you were some clueless little geek. Be careful of what you wish for, don’t get in too far.’ He turns and walks away, head down, off to return the evidence to Liz Parker. I watch him go, half tempted to follow. Theme music, titles roll up over the screen: awesome!!!!!
I feel like I want to scream with something – joy? Sheer terror! As I cycle back, I see Max looming in front of me, bollock naked, sitting on the end of my bed, wiping my spunk off his chest with a towel. He eyes are dark liquid gold, his body a landscape of quilted hollows and dimples, buffed wet shiny, my temple! My god! I almost fall off my bike and the world wheels bizarrely about me. I stop and try and get my breath. MAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXX!
What really freaks me out though, I mean really sets my heart-lung function to critical, is not the sight of boy God hosing me down with his cock seed, or even throwing me across his shoulders like contraband, to be shagged senseless live on a web-cam link to a major TV network, but the thought of him looking at me across a crowded school and smiling at me in recognition! To know that his shy, bemused, massively erotic smile is just for me and me only! OMG. Tears blur my geek boy eyes! I see him striding towards me out of the shower, polished, his hair wet and thrown over his face, his strong hand out to me, `Take it, come with me! Lets elope!’ This is the moment when my old life falls away and I stand at a new beginning! Fuck, it’s like the second coming! There is a loud bang, my face is slapped into something and I am sent flying through the air into a large cactus. I have hit the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.
My life is entirely, utterly out of control. I have just about made it to school. It took some time to persuade Valenti that the sores on my head and the strange marks on my face and neck had nothing to do with being propelled through the air like a human canon ball, with the bike still between my legs, and nothing to do with the three degrees of cactus burn. He was very interested in the hand marks. He wanted to take pictures, for god’s sake! It took me even longer to explain that I had not self harmed (what the fuck – there are easier ways to do that than over-applying Blonde Bombshell No 2! Blonde Bombshell No 1 is probably much easier! It probably takes your fucking head off, and half the street with it!)
Then Valenti got all interested and sniffy when I told him that I had been visiting Michael. He asked me straight up if I was friends with Max Evans, which I thought was super-weird. He said this like he wasn’t really interested, but I could see his fucking eyes were popping out on stalks behind his sunglasses. I said yes faintly, in my far off doomed Betty Davis voice. (`actually we are underage lovers, Valenti, and I am pregnant with his love child’.) He didn’t ask about the fight in the shower room with Kyle, or appear to notice any correlation between my dental records and the scars on his son’s arm.
Yet when I told him my address he looked really interested! When I got home I found out why. My house was surrounded by paramedics and local units of the National Guard. Mumsy, having grown bored of digging the Great Trench of Roswell, was on the roof covered in silver foil holding a TV aerial. Army boy had been officially declared missing. I spent the night in hospital having my head dressed and being interrogated by social workers! Then Valenti returned later, all sweetness and concern and started asking questions about Max. At one stage he asked me if Max had done this to me or to my mother? What the fuck – how could Max do this? What does Valenti think he is? There is mention of me going into care unless mother stops speaking Latin and talking about the arrival of space people.
School is weird. It has a strange tense atmosphere like a very hot day that is clouding over and ready to blow. In Texas, it would be called twister season. I turn up looking like road kill, or like Boris Karloff in a cheap remake of The Mummy Returns. I am distracted by curious acts of sympathy and by excessive Max-Michael activity that prevents me from trying to keep the lies about my accident either consistent or plausible! I have devised a simple scale for Max-Michael activity. It goes from zero to ten, with zero being no sightings and no interaction, to ten being either a double sighting of them sneaking into the erasure room to stab their cocks into each other, or going to piss together and have a conference in the boys room. Today we are off the fucking scale. We are off the scale before lunchtime.
At the end of third period I come across them in the main corridor near administration having what appears to be a full on row, like people have when they try and buy a present together or pick the paint for decorating their bedroom. Michael is doing his `what the fuck’ routine in mime and Max is looking beautifully bemused, hands in pockets, shoulders in, trying to take up less fucking space and is not saying much at all. Then Michael sees me hobbling towards them, he closes right up to Max like he is going to kiss his ear. Max jumps back and knocks someone over behind him.
Books and folders fly through the air and someone screams. Michael looks slightly embarrassed and CROSS, hurt that his apology has not been accepted, and suddenly takes Max’s hand and pulls him off towards the door. Max looks utterly stunned! He looks around in panic, sees me, and sort of grimaces a smile, before he looks back at Michael in horror and at his hand. Next minute Isabel turns up and says loudly (to Max) `What the fuck is wrong with Michael Is this still about the key?’ and then (to Michael) `Stop pulling Max around! We’ve both told you, you can’t go!’ then they go off towards the basketball courts.
A small group of people watch in amazement. What this has to do with the journal or me remains a mystery. However I have a sickening feeling that Michael has told Max something. Further proof comes of this when, in English lit, Max keeps turning to look at me. We are reading Shelly’s Frankenstein. Perhaps he is just genuinely curious over my resemblance to the fucking monster or is amazed how I can write with some many bandages on, but then at one stage he says something – something wordless -`are you ok?’ and my eyes water and great acres of sunlight fill my pain.
Perhaps, OMG, perhaps they have been rowing about me! I nod and smile, bravely. Love and lust swell up about me in equal measure. I see it all so clearly. I am propped up in bed in a white surgery gown and Max is standing close to me, naked except for a school blazer, talking to the doctor. I hear him ask if I will live. The doctor looks at Max and then coldly at me: `He might, although what possessed you to have sex on a sun bed is beyond me.’ Max winks at me and later I squeeze his hand. `Don’t worry’ he brushes my face, `we’ll use more lube next time!’
As the bell goes to end the nightmare of trying to read Shelly, Michael turns up and it is immediately clear to me he is terrified that I might say something to Max, or that Max might speak to me alone, if given the opportunity! His whole body language is wired and twitchy and he keeps running his hand over Max’s shoulder, STROKING like some possessive dog owner while looking at me. BASTARD. Max is getting clearly worked up about this, but seems indecisive. He is about to say something when Liz floats in, all smiles, wearing a sort of formless hat and sunglasses like she is trying to go incognito. She comes over to Max and then to me. `Hey Jamie, I heard about your accident! If there is anything I can do just let me know, ok?’ she sounds genuinely concerned. It is also clear she has heard about Mother and the Earth works in the garden because she then says `An you’re more than welcome to come and stay over at my place tonight if you want?’ Jesus! Is this geek solidarity or the Fuck Max deluxe club pass?
`No, you can’t do that’ says Michael loudly. `He can come and stay with me if necessary.’
Liz looks puzzled, the look she uses when one of the teachers gets a FACT wrong. It’s a look that has, apparently, been known to send a new member of staff screaming into the principle's office.
`That’s really sweet of you Michael, but what about, well, Hank?’
I am looking horrified and have my special pleading look on my face.If I could I would pass a small bit of paper to her with the words HELP ME written on it.
`Michael, will you stop pawing me!’ interrupts Max, who pulls away. Michael looks slightly taken aback. I smile painfully with icy triumph and painfully raise an eyebrow. `I want to talk to Jamie!’
Yeah Michael, back off. My eyebrow remains raised – fuck – its stuck in a sort of ironic grimace. Max SQUATS down and looks straight into my eyes.
Jamie what happened?’ He is standing close to me, I can smell him, a slight smell of incense, a smudge of testosterone thrown in with some sweat! OMG. We are in bed wrapped up tightly, the morning heat has made us wet and gummy. I taste salt on his stomach as I lick down towards his groin. His voice is a soft deep fuzz of words and I cannot look at him without feeling sick.
`Jamie?’ I come around and they are all look at me. It's like The Peoples Court!
`I ran into the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.’ I say, trying not to squeak with emotion.
`Fuck! Was it your fault?’ He comes closer. If he touches me I might spontaneously combust. Please don’t touch me Max, I am only 17. I am too young to die!
`It sure was!’ We all turn around to see Kyle, who has arrived on cue with his usual bodyguard of gum-chewing, gel-haired jocks. `Ah the Court of King Max!! Hi Liz, Michael, Lurch’ (looking at me), Max.’
The atmosphere sharpens immediately. Max stands up. He and Kyle stare at each other with their teeth slightly clenched and their eyes brilliant, narrowed, like two dogs circling (jesus, I might have an orgasm). Liz looks pissy and surprisingly hard. Michael drops the touchy feely position and gets ready to launch a direct assault on Kyle or any number of jocks. Fuck its like West Side Story! Isabel will probably turn up any minute with a clutch of cheerleaders to provide air support and then we’ll all break-out into song!
`Jamie boy wasn’t paying attention on the road last night, but some of the injuries seem to have been done earlier, isn’t that right, Lurch?’ Clearly he has been speaking with daddy.
`We know’ says Max, growling, a sort of deep snarl. He turns back to me, smiling `you fell into some stew, didn’t you?’ he smiles sweetly and innocently. I had forgotten this particularly STUPID lie. Everyone frowns and looks at me. Max has turned his attention back to Kyle. `He told me earlier yesterday afternoon,’ says my lover, unable to comprehend that I would lie, `when he helped me with the shopping’
Michael looks at me keenly and screws up his forehead. (Yeah Michael, we shop together baby!)
`Shopping? You met Max yesterday afternoon?’
`Yes’ I say weakly, coloring slightly.
`Oh,’ Kyle says, smiling, `was that was before you paid Michael a call? According to my father, you were wobbling all over the road having paid your respects to trash boy here!! I thought perhaps Michael had poured kerosene on your head for a camp fire? Or did you take too many drugs?'
Max looks at me and then lifts his eyes elegantly to Michael. `You went to see Michael?’ he is almost smiling, a little ironic smile. Michael looks uncomfortable.
`We ran into each other’ I say quickly – fuck this was getting really, really awkward.
`You ran into a lot of things yesterday.’ Kyle struts about, enjoying the script. `I didn’t know you and Michael were such good friends, especially after our little chat the othe day!’
`Watch it Valenti’ sneers Michael. Max, Kyle and Michael close up suddenly, all bristling, a rather frightening proximity surcharged with sheer male eroticism. Liz steps into the middle. It is beginning to resemble some form of Line Dancing.
I have switched on my Emergency Geek Brain Over-ride All truth routine! `I offered to help him catch up with his English lit.’ I say. This is utter nonsense since he isn’t even taking a class in it this semester. This is the worse lie since the stew one. I am losing my touch. Liz looks at Michael who looks at me. We all look at Max. Max looks at Michael.
`Are you taking extra credits this semester?’ he asks, his voice sounding ever so slighty suspicious now.
`Yes.!?’ Michael and I say simultaneously.
There is a tense stand-off. There is an ominous silence. `OK’ Max breaks away, he turns back to me. `Jamie, listen you can come and stay with me and Is until things get sorted out at home.’
`He can’t do that!’ says Michael.
`Michael what the fuck has gotten into you!’
`Nothing – sorry – he can stay with me, he can sleep on my floor!’ (yeah, right)
`He can stay with me!’ says Liz again – my head is going to explode. I hear Kyle say simply,
`Well he isn’t fucking staying with me!’
[/i]
Michael turns. `Keep you mouth shut, ok Jamie?’ he snaps but even his snap is different. In one giddy moment I realise he is talking to me like he talks to Max!!
`And you. Don’t tell Max about what I’ve told you – about me – ‘
`Wanting his ass?’ Michael’s face is made beautiful with a rather spiteful smile. I glare at him, although it is probably lost in the dusk. I pull in the reigns of my horse and kick the animal forward, `About me being obsessed about him!’
`Oh sure, right! Sorry.’
`Otherwise he might find out that we have both read Liz’s journal and that would be - unfortunate.’ I say.
Michael pauses, his eyes looking away for an instant and then back on me. `You know Jamie; I think I liked you better when you were some clueless little geek. Be careful of what you wish for, don’t get in too far.’ He turns and walks away, head down, off to return the evidence to Liz Parker. I watch him go, half tempted to follow. Theme music, titles roll up over the screen: awesome!!!!!
I feel like I want to scream with something – joy? Sheer terror! As I cycle back, I see Max looming in front of me, bollock naked, sitting on the end of my bed, wiping my spunk off his chest with a towel. He eyes are dark liquid gold, his body a landscape of quilted hollows and dimples, buffed wet shiny, my temple! My god! I almost fall off my bike and the world wheels bizarrely about me. I stop and try and get my breath. MAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXX!
What really freaks me out though, I mean really sets my heart-lung function to critical, is not the sight of boy God hosing me down with his cock seed, or even throwing me across his shoulders like contraband, to be shagged senseless live on a web-cam link to a major TV network, but the thought of him looking at me across a crowded school and smiling at me in recognition! To know that his shy, bemused, massively erotic smile is just for me and me only! OMG. Tears blur my geek boy eyes! I see him striding towards me out of the shower, polished, his hair wet and thrown over his face, his strong hand out to me, `Take it, come with me! Lets elope!’ This is the moment when my old life falls away and I stand at a new beginning! Fuck, it’s like the second coming! There is a loud bang, my face is slapped into something and I am sent flying through the air into a large cactus. I have hit the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.
My life is entirely, utterly out of control. I have just about made it to school. It took some time to persuade Valenti that the sores on my head and the strange marks on my face and neck had nothing to do with being propelled through the air like a human canon ball, with the bike still between my legs, and nothing to do with the three degrees of cactus burn. He was very interested in the hand marks. He wanted to take pictures, for god’s sake! It took me even longer to explain that I had not self harmed (what the fuck – there are easier ways to do that than over-applying Blonde Bombshell No 2! Blonde Bombshell No 1 is probably much easier! It probably takes your fucking head off, and half the street with it!)
Then Valenti got all interested and sniffy when I told him that I had been visiting Michael. He asked me straight up if I was friends with Max Evans, which I thought was super-weird. He said this like he wasn’t really interested, but I could see his fucking eyes were popping out on stalks behind his sunglasses. I said yes faintly, in my far off doomed Betty Davis voice. (`actually we are underage lovers, Valenti, and I am pregnant with his love child’.) He didn’t ask about the fight in the shower room with Kyle, or appear to notice any correlation between my dental records and the scars on his son’s arm.
Yet when I told him my address he looked really interested! When I got home I found out why. My house was surrounded by paramedics and local units of the National Guard. Mumsy, having grown bored of digging the Great Trench of Roswell, was on the roof covered in silver foil holding a TV aerial. Army boy had been officially declared missing. I spent the night in hospital having my head dressed and being interrogated by social workers! Then Valenti returned later, all sweetness and concern and started asking questions about Max. At one stage he asked me if Max had done this to me or to my mother? What the fuck – how could Max do this? What does Valenti think he is? There is mention of me going into care unless mother stops speaking Latin and talking about the arrival of space people.
School is weird. It has a strange tense atmosphere like a very hot day that is clouding over and ready to blow. In Texas, it would be called twister season. I turn up looking like road kill, or like Boris Karloff in a cheap remake of The Mummy Returns. I am distracted by curious acts of sympathy and by excessive Max-Michael activity that prevents me from trying to keep the lies about my accident either consistent or plausible! I have devised a simple scale for Max-Michael activity. It goes from zero to ten, with zero being no sightings and no interaction, to ten being either a double sighting of them sneaking into the erasure room to stab their cocks into each other, or going to piss together and have a conference in the boys room. Today we are off the fucking scale. We are off the scale before lunchtime.
At the end of third period I come across them in the main corridor near administration having what appears to be a full on row, like people have when they try and buy a present together or pick the paint for decorating their bedroom. Michael is doing his `what the fuck’ routine in mime and Max is looking beautifully bemused, hands in pockets, shoulders in, trying to take up less fucking space and is not saying much at all. Then Michael sees me hobbling towards them, he closes right up to Max like he is going to kiss his ear. Max jumps back and knocks someone over behind him.
Books and folders fly through the air and someone screams. Michael looks slightly embarrassed and CROSS, hurt that his apology has not been accepted, and suddenly takes Max’s hand and pulls him off towards the door. Max looks utterly stunned! He looks around in panic, sees me, and sort of grimaces a smile, before he looks back at Michael in horror and at his hand. Next minute Isabel turns up and says loudly (to Max) `What the fuck is wrong with Michael Is this still about the key?’ and then (to Michael) `Stop pulling Max around! We’ve both told you, you can’t go!’ then they go off towards the basketball courts.
A small group of people watch in amazement. What this has to do with the journal or me remains a mystery. However I have a sickening feeling that Michael has told Max something. Further proof comes of this when, in English lit, Max keeps turning to look at me. We are reading Shelly’s Frankenstein. Perhaps he is just genuinely curious over my resemblance to the fucking monster or is amazed how I can write with some many bandages on, but then at one stage he says something – something wordless -`are you ok?’ and my eyes water and great acres of sunlight fill my pain.
Perhaps, OMG, perhaps they have been rowing about me! I nod and smile, bravely. Love and lust swell up about me in equal measure. I see it all so clearly. I am propped up in bed in a white surgery gown and Max is standing close to me, naked except for a school blazer, talking to the doctor. I hear him ask if I will live. The doctor looks at Max and then coldly at me: `He might, although what possessed you to have sex on a sun bed is beyond me.’ Max winks at me and later I squeeze his hand. `Don’t worry’ he brushes my face, `we’ll use more lube next time!’
As the bell goes to end the nightmare of trying to read Shelly, Michael turns up and it is immediately clear to me he is terrified that I might say something to Max, or that Max might speak to me alone, if given the opportunity! His whole body language is wired and twitchy and he keeps running his hand over Max’s shoulder, STROKING like some possessive dog owner while looking at me. BASTARD. Max is getting clearly worked up about this, but seems indecisive. He is about to say something when Liz floats in, all smiles, wearing a sort of formless hat and sunglasses like she is trying to go incognito. She comes over to Max and then to me. `Hey Jamie, I heard about your accident! If there is anything I can do just let me know, ok?’ she sounds genuinely concerned. It is also clear she has heard about Mother and the Earth works in the garden because she then says `An you’re more than welcome to come and stay over at my place tonight if you want?’ Jesus! Is this geek solidarity or the Fuck Max deluxe club pass?
`No, you can’t do that’ says Michael loudly. `He can come and stay with me if necessary.’
Liz looks puzzled, the look she uses when one of the teachers gets a FACT wrong. It’s a look that has, apparently, been known to send a new member of staff screaming into the principle's office.
`That’s really sweet of you Michael, but what about, well, Hank?’
I am looking horrified and have my special pleading look on my face.If I could I would pass a small bit of paper to her with the words HELP ME written on it.
`Michael, will you stop pawing me!’ interrupts Max, who pulls away. Michael looks slightly taken aback. I smile painfully with icy triumph and painfully raise an eyebrow. `I want to talk to Jamie!’
Yeah Michael, back off. My eyebrow remains raised – fuck – its stuck in a sort of ironic grimace. Max SQUATS down and looks straight into my eyes.
Jamie what happened?’ He is standing close to me, I can smell him, a slight smell of incense, a smudge of testosterone thrown in with some sweat! OMG. We are in bed wrapped up tightly, the morning heat has made us wet and gummy. I taste salt on his stomach as I lick down towards his groin. His voice is a soft deep fuzz of words and I cannot look at him without feeling sick.
`Jamie?’ I come around and they are all look at me. It's like The Peoples Court!
`I ran into the back of Sheriff Valenti’s jeep.’ I say, trying not to squeak with emotion.
`Fuck! Was it your fault?’ He comes closer. If he touches me I might spontaneously combust. Please don’t touch me Max, I am only 17. I am too young to die!
`It sure was!’ We all turn around to see Kyle, who has arrived on cue with his usual bodyguard of gum-chewing, gel-haired jocks. `Ah the Court of King Max!! Hi Liz, Michael, Lurch’ (looking at me), Max.’
The atmosphere sharpens immediately. Max stands up. He and Kyle stare at each other with their teeth slightly clenched and their eyes brilliant, narrowed, like two dogs circling (jesus, I might have an orgasm). Liz looks pissy and surprisingly hard. Michael drops the touchy feely position and gets ready to launch a direct assault on Kyle or any number of jocks. Fuck its like West Side Story! Isabel will probably turn up any minute with a clutch of cheerleaders to provide air support and then we’ll all break-out into song!
`Jamie boy wasn’t paying attention on the road last night, but some of the injuries seem to have been done earlier, isn’t that right, Lurch?’ Clearly he has been speaking with daddy.
`We know’ says Max, growling, a sort of deep snarl. He turns back to me, smiling `you fell into some stew, didn’t you?’ he smiles sweetly and innocently. I had forgotten this particularly STUPID lie. Everyone frowns and looks at me. Max has turned his attention back to Kyle. `He told me earlier yesterday afternoon,’ says my lover, unable to comprehend that I would lie, `when he helped me with the shopping’
Michael looks at me keenly and screws up his forehead. (Yeah Michael, we shop together baby!)
`Shopping? You met Max yesterday afternoon?’
`Yes’ I say weakly, coloring slightly.
`Oh,’ Kyle says, smiling, `was that was before you paid Michael a call? According to my father, you were wobbling all over the road having paid your respects to trash boy here!! I thought perhaps Michael had poured kerosene on your head for a camp fire? Or did you take too many drugs?'
Max looks at me and then lifts his eyes elegantly to Michael. `You went to see Michael?’ he is almost smiling, a little ironic smile. Michael looks uncomfortable.
`We ran into each other’ I say quickly – fuck this was getting really, really awkward.
`You ran into a lot of things yesterday.’ Kyle struts about, enjoying the script. `I didn’t know you and Michael were such good friends, especially after our little chat the othe day!’
`Watch it Valenti’ sneers Michael. Max, Kyle and Michael close up suddenly, all bristling, a rather frightening proximity surcharged with sheer male eroticism. Liz steps into the middle. It is beginning to resemble some form of Line Dancing.
I have switched on my Emergency Geek Brain Over-ride All truth routine! `I offered to help him catch up with his English lit.’ I say. This is utter nonsense since he isn’t even taking a class in it this semester. This is the worse lie since the stew one. I am losing my touch. Liz looks at Michael who looks at me. We all look at Max. Max looks at Michael.
`Are you taking extra credits this semester?’ he asks, his voice sounding ever so slighty suspicious now.
`Yes.!?’ Michael and I say simultaneously.
There is a tense stand-off. There is an ominous silence. `OK’ Max breaks away, he turns back to me. `Jamie, listen you can come and stay with me and Is until things get sorted out at home.’
`He can’t do that!’ says Michael.
`Michael what the fuck has gotten into you!’
`Nothing – sorry – he can stay with me, he can sleep on my floor!’ (yeah, right)
`He can stay with me!’ says Liz again – my head is going to explode. I hear Kyle say simply,
`Well he isn’t fucking staying with me!’
[/i]
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat May 20, 2006 1:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Patroclus76
- Addicted Roswellian
- Posts: 178
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
- Location: Bristol, UK
- Contact:
here is the commonest image of Max that haunts Jamie on a daily basis:
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d58/P ... kangel.jpg
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d58/P ... kangel.jpg
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Patroclus76
- Addicted Roswellian
- Posts: 178
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
- Location: Bristol, UK
- Contact:
So I end up staying with Liz. But this is after a period in which several people are literally FIGHTING over me. Clearly something has gone wrong with the laws of the universe. The food chain has been inverted. At one stage I fear they might carve me up and take appropriate bits home. God it is exhausting being popular. It takes nearly half a fucking hour! It’s like some biblical epic. Kyle leaves stage left, laughing demonically like Emperor Ming. They should draw lots or raffle me off.
I almost end up staying with Max, because he suddenly gets beautifully, masterfully assertive and says that I can sleep on his bed and he’ll sleep on the floor. I have difficulties breathing as the possibility emerges – indeed rushes towards certainty only to be ruined by Isabel. Isabel arrives like the fucking cavalry and keeps pulling faces at Max over my shoulder (I can sense her, bastard). She heads off Max’s approaches by finally saying `Max, he’ll give me nightmares looking like this’. She points indirectly at the bandages. I offer to take them off. She frowns again like a turd has been shoved under her nose.
`I shall be sleeping in Max’s room’ I say testily. `You won’t see much of me, Isabel, I only need a little space.’ Fuck I’ll be as quiet as Mahatma Gandhi. She frowns even more, as if this will result in the social death of her brother and, through some sort of osmosis – the collapse of her own social standing. Max looks crestfallen. Jesus. I want to ignite Isabel with a Bunsen burner! Liz then presses in, a massive upsurge of geek solidarity. She even flips out her cell to call her parents! I half expect her to say `two to beam up’. Actually I have noticed we are all wearing Star Trek uniforms, and that Max has pointy ears. Kyle is all black and covered in hair and keeps making those Klingon noises they did before The Next Generation clarified the language. Oh no, this is some sort of optical illusion caused by my failure to breathe.
I almost end up staying with Michael – my third perilous brush with death. As I concede to Liz, Michael GRABS me as if I am some kid in some fucking custodial battle and says `no way!!’ about several decibels louder than strictly necessary. Everyone looks at him; Isabel does this weird thing of looking at Max as if he should DO something!
`Michael!’ says Max and Liz in unison.
`I need to talk with him about something urgent!’ adds Michael, still not letting me go. I am in a sort of crash position and looking like a deer in headlights.
`Michael put him down!’ Max grabs hold of my arm and pulls me off Michael.
`I’ll stay with Liz, Michael, really.’ I am making emergency SOS signals with my eyes. Surely someone will notice if I keep rolling them like this? `We can talk about your theories of dark matter, at a later date perhaps?’ I roll my eyes again. I am drawing FUCKING HELP ME across the sky.
`Dark matter?’ says Liz. She says this because she is either interested in it or bemused that Michael is interested in it. It’s hard to tell.
`Shit, he’s having some sort of fit!’ says Isabel, looking at my eyes. She makes me feel as if I am gerbil or a pet monkey.
Michael knows the game is up. He goes to hand me over to Liz like some contraband and he says `OK, whatever, but be careful Jamie!!’ He then leans right over me, his strong masculine nose level with mine `I’ll catch you in the morning?’ My new owner then escorts me off. I look pleadingly at Max, but Max and Michael have gone off arguing followed by Isabel who is still looking at me in a puzzled, incredulous sort of way as if I am a talking tree or something. God she is some snotty bitch. How can she be related to MAAAAXX!
At Liz’s, I am given her bed and she initially goes to sleep somewhere else. Then we end up in the same bedroom. Fuck why are people so nice and why is being so nice so fucking complicated! The Parkers are really friendly and I am given some food and after a soaking bath with some of Nancy’s face cleaning mask on, I start to feel slightly more human and more calculating. When I close my eyes the events of the last few days flash and loom about me, and always the dark angel that is Max appears. I don’t even get a hard on, well not immediately. I don’t even think of Max doing unspeakable or indeed physically IMPOSSIBLE things to me, I now just see him totally naked except for the goddamn blazer, the bottom of which just brushes the top of his butt. It’s always open so I get flashes of tight abdominals and good solid disco boy tits.
Later I am propped up in bed with a towel on my head like Carmen Miranda watching Liz put her face to bed. All I need are some plastic fruit and I can do a Can-Can. Liz and I get on immediately and shockingly well. It’s the natural geek magnetism plus the emergent fag hag element within Liz. I keep struggling to see her as the MAIN rival, along with Michael, but she is soon getting me to talk about Mother and the bizarre events at home. She laughs and talks and is then interrupted by a phone call from Maria and then from Alex.
Later MICHAEL rings. Michael rings several times. Then Max rings to ask her how many times Michael has called her. Michael has called Max EIGHT times in one hour. She puts the cell down (fuck how her eyes lit up when she spoke with by God boy, how my cock thickened to hear his voice!). Michael rings AGAIN. She gets rid of him and then turns her cell off. `What is it with Michael and you?’ she rolls her eyes, `Its like he’s obsessed with you or something!’ She returns to the dressing table. Outside there’s some sort of fucking pantomime going on between her parents. I can hear them whispering and skulking about and the door handle keeps moving.
Nancy INSTINCTIVELY knows that I am no threat to her daughter. She took one look at me and relaxed. She is now outside Liz’s door remonstrating with Liz’s father, who is a bit anxious that we are on the bed together and that I am evidently now going to sleep on the floor in the same room. `He’s gay, darling’ she says in a stage whisper audible downstairs in the Crashdown. Jeff can’t hear. Perhaps he thinks I am gay as in just happy. Nancy says it even louder. Jesus! I can just go and tell him myself!
Liz’s reflection frowns at me from the mirror. `Sorry Jamie, my father gets a bit protective, but he’s kewl about you being gay.’
Good. She seems very kewl as well. Surely she must realise that my presence complicates the dark sexual triangle between her, Max and Michael. Surely she must realise that it is now frighteningly four square? I am feeling awake and my brain is re-engaging with previous damaged protocols. Ok, I may not look sexy or competitive at this precise moment in time, but soon I shall be rippling with definition and bursting forth to capture Max and possibly even Michael (just for fun, of course). I have an opportunity to gather information, to advice, even to warn? Why risk her happiness falling in love with a bi-sexual? Max will never be entirely satisfied with her? Michael will never let him go, nor shall I. Lets face it, she’s doomed from the start. Max is different. He doesn't belong with her kind. He said it himself (according to her journal).
For a girl who does not appear to wear make up she is taking a fucking long time removing something. She has bottles and bits of cotton balls all around her. She is telling me about Maria. I doze off. Her room is very pleasant. She is still talking about Maria (fuck I get the picture!) I look around, scanning for Maxabilia. I catch a picture of him pinned to a cork board. Nancy is outside STILL trying to explain to her husband that I am GAY and that there is no need to make sure we are monitored or kept apart! I feel like handing Nancy a megaphone. `JAMIE IS QUEER ...YOUR DAUGHTER IS SAFE, OVER’. Jeff seems to finally get it because he finally says `Really?’ in the way my parents used to acknowledge people voted Republican (ie, real meaning: `no fucking way!)
`Liz this is really kind of you to allow me to stay. I will go and sort out what is happening with my parents tomorrow.’
Liz turns around. She has her hair brushed long and straight, framing her face. I suddenly think how complimentary she is to Max. `Sure Jamie, but I want you to know that people have really taken an interest in you and that we really want to look after you!’ We hear the landline ringing in the house.
`It's really kind of you all. People have been so supportive, Michael and – and Max’ Fuck! There was a distinctive voice wobble there! I should have practiced mentioning God Boys name in public more. I swallow his name as effectively as I would swallow his boy juice. I probably looked as helpless as well. She spots it immediately. I see her hear it. Although she is pretending to look at her nose very closely in the mirror she is thinking very, very hard. Suddenly Nancy knocks on the bedroom door.
` Jamie? Michael wants to speak with you. He says its urgent?’
Liz looks even more intently at her nose and then at me. I make a sort of blank look I perfected years ago when I had stolen Army Boys adaptor plugs and then lost them. It is a look that conveys total innocence and slightly mystery.
`What has got into Michael? He is acting so weird!’ I mince out with my towels and take the phone from Nancy who is smiling beatifically at me. `Boy trouble?’ she says sweetly. (you have no idea, Nancy!).
`Hello?’
`What the fuck have you said?' The bedroom door is open. I can see Liz looking (and listening) in her own mirror.
`I’m fine really, really, its so sweet of you to be so concerned, Michael.’
`Jamie don’t fuck with me, if you mention the journal I will fucking tear you limb from limb!’
`That is so kind of you, Michael, really! I am at an utter loss what to say. No one - ’ I catch Liz’s eye in the mirror `No one has ever offered to do that to me before!’
`Jamie!! You’re not to mention that Max and I are in a relationship, Jamie! You little bas- ‘
I hang up. I smile broadly and evenly. The night is still young. hehe!
`Everything OK?’ asks Liz, slightly cryptically. I mince back in. I am swirling my castanets and stamping my feet.
`Yes thanks. Michael is very concerned about me. He thinks I should be in a hospital.’ I omit to mention what sort of hospital.
Liz, having finally run out of cotton balls or having finally exhausted herself, switches the main light off and sits on the bed with me. We are sitting side by side like we have known each other all our lives. `You seem to have hit it off with him.' she says `I don’t really know Michael yet, he is a bit scary to be honest. Scary but nice I think’. We both hear the phone go again. UTTERLY FUCKING SCARY is probably still the best description I can come up with.
`Liz’ I ask suddenly. I am relaxed. I am feeling adventurous. `Are you and Max going out together?’
She smiles at me, a beautiful smile that makes me feel suddenly quite safe and happy.
`You like Max don’t you?’ she says, not answering. She is still smiling, but it is slightly mischievous now, a slight glint in her eyes. I blush deeply and evenly. My face burns and tears prick my eyes.
`I don’t like Max.’ I say faintly. I am on stage in a black and white remake of an epic, a silent movie epic even, my face up lit. The camera zooms in and I look owl like and then the caption card clicks in with those little art deco edges
`I DON’T LIKE MAX, I LOVE HIM . WITHOUT HIM MY LIFE IS MEANINGLESS
There is a knock on the door, and Liz’s mother’s head appears. Nancy is looking slightly irritated now and the smile is definitely tighter.
`Liz, come and talk to Michael – he’s ranting about everyone being in danger.’
Liz stands up. She is looking at me in amazement.
`You love him?’ she says.
I freeze. Damn fucking fantasy error! So there was no caption card, all sepia and lined, I actually said I LOVED HIM – to Liz! Eh Hello!! Start self destruct sequence now!!!
`Liz?’ Nancy walks in and gives her the phone `Tell him it’s late and he isn’t to keep ringing the house phone!’ Liz takes the phone off her mother while still looking at me, opened mouthed. `Ohhhh’ she says
Michael is already talking loudly. Liz says very calmly, `Michael this is a bad time now, Jamie is asleep. He’s on strong pain killers and he is out cold!’ she then hangs up.
What the fuck am I to do! `Liz’ I say weakly, desperate now to salvage something from her, `I have read your journal, I know all about Max and Michael and you, I know what they are!'
I almost end up staying with Max, because he suddenly gets beautifully, masterfully assertive and says that I can sleep on his bed and he’ll sleep on the floor. I have difficulties breathing as the possibility emerges – indeed rushes towards certainty only to be ruined by Isabel. Isabel arrives like the fucking cavalry and keeps pulling faces at Max over my shoulder (I can sense her, bastard). She heads off Max’s approaches by finally saying `Max, he’ll give me nightmares looking like this’. She points indirectly at the bandages. I offer to take them off. She frowns again like a turd has been shoved under her nose.
`I shall be sleeping in Max’s room’ I say testily. `You won’t see much of me, Isabel, I only need a little space.’ Fuck I’ll be as quiet as Mahatma Gandhi. She frowns even more, as if this will result in the social death of her brother and, through some sort of osmosis – the collapse of her own social standing. Max looks crestfallen. Jesus. I want to ignite Isabel with a Bunsen burner! Liz then presses in, a massive upsurge of geek solidarity. She even flips out her cell to call her parents! I half expect her to say `two to beam up’. Actually I have noticed we are all wearing Star Trek uniforms, and that Max has pointy ears. Kyle is all black and covered in hair and keeps making those Klingon noises they did before The Next Generation clarified the language. Oh no, this is some sort of optical illusion caused by my failure to breathe.
I almost end up staying with Michael – my third perilous brush with death. As I concede to Liz, Michael GRABS me as if I am some kid in some fucking custodial battle and says `no way!!’ about several decibels louder than strictly necessary. Everyone looks at him; Isabel does this weird thing of looking at Max as if he should DO something!
`Michael!’ says Max and Liz in unison.
`I need to talk with him about something urgent!’ adds Michael, still not letting me go. I am in a sort of crash position and looking like a deer in headlights.
`Michael put him down!’ Max grabs hold of my arm and pulls me off Michael.
`I’ll stay with Liz, Michael, really.’ I am making emergency SOS signals with my eyes. Surely someone will notice if I keep rolling them like this? `We can talk about your theories of dark matter, at a later date perhaps?’ I roll my eyes again. I am drawing FUCKING HELP ME across the sky.
`Dark matter?’ says Liz. She says this because she is either interested in it or bemused that Michael is interested in it. It’s hard to tell.
`Shit, he’s having some sort of fit!’ says Isabel, looking at my eyes. She makes me feel as if I am gerbil or a pet monkey.
Michael knows the game is up. He goes to hand me over to Liz like some contraband and he says `OK, whatever, but be careful Jamie!!’ He then leans right over me, his strong masculine nose level with mine `I’ll catch you in the morning?’ My new owner then escorts me off. I look pleadingly at Max, but Max and Michael have gone off arguing followed by Isabel who is still looking at me in a puzzled, incredulous sort of way as if I am a talking tree or something. God she is some snotty bitch. How can she be related to MAAAAXX!
At Liz’s, I am given her bed and she initially goes to sleep somewhere else. Then we end up in the same bedroom. Fuck why are people so nice and why is being so nice so fucking complicated! The Parkers are really friendly and I am given some food and after a soaking bath with some of Nancy’s face cleaning mask on, I start to feel slightly more human and more calculating. When I close my eyes the events of the last few days flash and loom about me, and always the dark angel that is Max appears. I don’t even get a hard on, well not immediately. I don’t even think of Max doing unspeakable or indeed physically IMPOSSIBLE things to me, I now just see him totally naked except for the goddamn blazer, the bottom of which just brushes the top of his butt. It’s always open so I get flashes of tight abdominals and good solid disco boy tits.
Later I am propped up in bed with a towel on my head like Carmen Miranda watching Liz put her face to bed. All I need are some plastic fruit and I can do a Can-Can. Liz and I get on immediately and shockingly well. It’s the natural geek magnetism plus the emergent fag hag element within Liz. I keep struggling to see her as the MAIN rival, along with Michael, but she is soon getting me to talk about Mother and the bizarre events at home. She laughs and talks and is then interrupted by a phone call from Maria and then from Alex.
Later MICHAEL rings. Michael rings several times. Then Max rings to ask her how many times Michael has called her. Michael has called Max EIGHT times in one hour. She puts the cell down (fuck how her eyes lit up when she spoke with by God boy, how my cock thickened to hear his voice!). Michael rings AGAIN. She gets rid of him and then turns her cell off. `What is it with Michael and you?’ she rolls her eyes, `Its like he’s obsessed with you or something!’ She returns to the dressing table. Outside there’s some sort of fucking pantomime going on between her parents. I can hear them whispering and skulking about and the door handle keeps moving.
Nancy INSTINCTIVELY knows that I am no threat to her daughter. She took one look at me and relaxed. She is now outside Liz’s door remonstrating with Liz’s father, who is a bit anxious that we are on the bed together and that I am evidently now going to sleep on the floor in the same room. `He’s gay, darling’ she says in a stage whisper audible downstairs in the Crashdown. Jeff can’t hear. Perhaps he thinks I am gay as in just happy. Nancy says it even louder. Jesus! I can just go and tell him myself!
Liz’s reflection frowns at me from the mirror. `Sorry Jamie, my father gets a bit protective, but he’s kewl about you being gay.’
Good. She seems very kewl as well. Surely she must realise that my presence complicates the dark sexual triangle between her, Max and Michael. Surely she must realise that it is now frighteningly four square? I am feeling awake and my brain is re-engaging with previous damaged protocols. Ok, I may not look sexy or competitive at this precise moment in time, but soon I shall be rippling with definition and bursting forth to capture Max and possibly even Michael (just for fun, of course). I have an opportunity to gather information, to advice, even to warn? Why risk her happiness falling in love with a bi-sexual? Max will never be entirely satisfied with her? Michael will never let him go, nor shall I. Lets face it, she’s doomed from the start. Max is different. He doesn't belong with her kind. He said it himself (according to her journal).
For a girl who does not appear to wear make up she is taking a fucking long time removing something. She has bottles and bits of cotton balls all around her. She is telling me about Maria. I doze off. Her room is very pleasant. She is still talking about Maria (fuck I get the picture!) I look around, scanning for Maxabilia. I catch a picture of him pinned to a cork board. Nancy is outside STILL trying to explain to her husband that I am GAY and that there is no need to make sure we are monitored or kept apart! I feel like handing Nancy a megaphone. `JAMIE IS QUEER ...YOUR DAUGHTER IS SAFE, OVER’. Jeff seems to finally get it because he finally says `Really?’ in the way my parents used to acknowledge people voted Republican (ie, real meaning: `no fucking way!)
`Liz this is really kind of you to allow me to stay. I will go and sort out what is happening with my parents tomorrow.’
Liz turns around. She has her hair brushed long and straight, framing her face. I suddenly think how complimentary she is to Max. `Sure Jamie, but I want you to know that people have really taken an interest in you and that we really want to look after you!’ We hear the landline ringing in the house.
`It's really kind of you all. People have been so supportive, Michael and – and Max’ Fuck! There was a distinctive voice wobble there! I should have practiced mentioning God Boys name in public more. I swallow his name as effectively as I would swallow his boy juice. I probably looked as helpless as well. She spots it immediately. I see her hear it. Although she is pretending to look at her nose very closely in the mirror she is thinking very, very hard. Suddenly Nancy knocks on the bedroom door.
` Jamie? Michael wants to speak with you. He says its urgent?’
Liz looks even more intently at her nose and then at me. I make a sort of blank look I perfected years ago when I had stolen Army Boys adaptor plugs and then lost them. It is a look that conveys total innocence and slightly mystery.
`What has got into Michael? He is acting so weird!’ I mince out with my towels and take the phone from Nancy who is smiling beatifically at me. `Boy trouble?’ she says sweetly. (you have no idea, Nancy!).
`Hello?’
`What the fuck have you said?' The bedroom door is open. I can see Liz looking (and listening) in her own mirror.
`I’m fine really, really, its so sweet of you to be so concerned, Michael.’
`Jamie don’t fuck with me, if you mention the journal I will fucking tear you limb from limb!’
`That is so kind of you, Michael, really! I am at an utter loss what to say. No one - ’ I catch Liz’s eye in the mirror `No one has ever offered to do that to me before!’
`Jamie!! You’re not to mention that Max and I are in a relationship, Jamie! You little bas- ‘
I hang up. I smile broadly and evenly. The night is still young. hehe!
`Everything OK?’ asks Liz, slightly cryptically. I mince back in. I am swirling my castanets and stamping my feet.
`Yes thanks. Michael is very concerned about me. He thinks I should be in a hospital.’ I omit to mention what sort of hospital.
Liz, having finally run out of cotton balls or having finally exhausted herself, switches the main light off and sits on the bed with me. We are sitting side by side like we have known each other all our lives. `You seem to have hit it off with him.' she says `I don’t really know Michael yet, he is a bit scary to be honest. Scary but nice I think’. We both hear the phone go again. UTTERLY FUCKING SCARY is probably still the best description I can come up with.
`Liz’ I ask suddenly. I am relaxed. I am feeling adventurous. `Are you and Max going out together?’
She smiles at me, a beautiful smile that makes me feel suddenly quite safe and happy.
`You like Max don’t you?’ she says, not answering. She is still smiling, but it is slightly mischievous now, a slight glint in her eyes. I blush deeply and evenly. My face burns and tears prick my eyes.
`I don’t like Max.’ I say faintly. I am on stage in a black and white remake of an epic, a silent movie epic even, my face up lit. The camera zooms in and I look owl like and then the caption card clicks in with those little art deco edges
`I DON’T LIKE MAX, I LOVE HIM . WITHOUT HIM MY LIFE IS MEANINGLESS
There is a knock on the door, and Liz’s mother’s head appears. Nancy is looking slightly irritated now and the smile is definitely tighter.
`Liz, come and talk to Michael – he’s ranting about everyone being in danger.’
Liz stands up. She is looking at me in amazement.
`You love him?’ she says.
I freeze. Damn fucking fantasy error! So there was no caption card, all sepia and lined, I actually said I LOVED HIM – to Liz! Eh Hello!! Start self destruct sequence now!!!
`Liz?’ Nancy walks in and gives her the phone `Tell him it’s late and he isn’t to keep ringing the house phone!’ Liz takes the phone off her mother while still looking at me, opened mouthed. `Ohhhh’ she says
Michael is already talking loudly. Liz says very calmly, `Michael this is a bad time now, Jamie is asleep. He’s on strong pain killers and he is out cold!’ she then hangs up.
What the fuck am I to do! `Liz’ I say weakly, desperate now to salvage something from her, `I have read your journal, I know all about Max and Michael and you, I know what they are!'
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat May 20, 2006 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
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Liz looks at me in shock. No. It’s worse than shock. Liz looks fucking horrified: off the scale of all known horror. Its like she has been squashed completely flat by a truck that has smashed through her house and carried off Nancy and Jeff for good measure on the hood. If this were a cartoon show I would have to prise her two-dimensional shape off the bedroom floor and shake her back to life.
Liz looks so horrified that I am suddenly paranoid that she is not looking at me at all, but is looking behind me at Michael covered in bubble wrap wielding a pickaxe! I swing around. I bite the back of my hand to stifle a scream, a la Joan Crawford. Luckily there is just the wall. Jamie get a grip!
`You read my journal?’ says Liz eventually – to my evident relief actually! I was momentarily convinced that she had been struck dumb through some sort of biblical intervention. I have ruined the whole atmosphere of the evening. I am close to total panic.
`Liz – I can explain everything – Liz’ but Liz is not listening. Her super-geek brain is now in OVERDRIVE: I can see the cogs whirling through her dark eyes. She is recalibrating the entire known universe into one solvable equation
Jamie = M over M2 x by the square root of Y plus R Where: M is Max, M2 is Michael, Y is lust and R is fucking revenge.
`OMG’ she whispers. She is not looking at me. She is looking into the middle distance, the way my father used to look when he had worked out the sheer ungodly scale of my mother’s overdraft. `That’s why Michael has been hassling you – he is afraid you would say something! That’s why he didn’t want you to stay with me, or with Max!’
`Liz – I can ‘ oh god – it’s like trying to communicate with a super-MX computer during a download.
`Michael showed you the journal?’ She is clearly having problems with this. There is now growing outrage in her voice. I move forward quickly. This could get spectacularly unpleasant.
`No, no Liz it wasn’t like that! Michael stole your journal and then lost it! I found it outside Max’s house (id to ego: you fucking idiot!!) er - and I just read it ! I thought it was Michael’s! I returned it to Michael the other day – that’s why I went to see him – I hit Valenti’s jeep on the way back! Please Liz, Michael is as angry as you are, that’s why he is threatening me all the time!’
Liz looks at me now, taking all this new data in and analysing it. She sits down. `Did you say anything to Valenti? Anything at all?’
`No, nothing, nothing, and the journal was safely with Michael.’
I am hopeful she has not registered the `Max’s house’ bit and am just about to press my advantage when she says
`What were you doing outside Max’s house?’
`Er, I was walking home after our astronomy class –'
`But you live on the other side of town?’
`I was lost.’
`Jamie!'
`Ok, ok, I was desperate to see him! Liz, I love him, I am obsessed!’ Fuck I really am obsessed. She looks at me, expressionless, her lower lip moving. She goes to get her cell.
`Liz! Please, I haven’t told anyone! I am being honest with you, come on, I volunteered the information!’ I am using my special pleading voice. I am in a police detention cell about to have my remaining testicle turned into a paperweight. It looks like it might momentarily work, she looks at me again, but then she switches on her cell and starts speed dialing.
`Liz, please! He’ll, he’ll – tear me limb from limb!!’
I lunge forward in one final act of desperation. As I do this – in a sort of slow motion high jump – several things happen at once. Liz stands up and instead of grabbing her hand I grab her by the waist. As I do this, my towels come undone and I expose myself in a total state of geek boy nature. Due to the laws of inertia my forward motion is transmitted through Liz and we both collide with the dressing table. There is a vast unimaginable noise as we hit the mirror and scatter her belongings everywhere. There is a huge mushroom cloud of talcum powder. Liz screams (right in my fucking ear). I fall onto her and as we come to a halt the cell phone rings.
`It’s him, Mad Michael, please don’t answer!’ There is the sound of someone running up the stairs.
`Liz you have to trust me – please – I need you to trust me!’ I say this without affectation, all my ruses spent. I am holding Liz’s hand, which is still clutching the phone. Nancy is knocking at the door, the cell phone is flashing like an angry insect.
`Liz what in god’s name is going on!’ her mother opens the door to see me stark naked with a great splash of white powder over my face.
`Oh god – you’re doing drugs!’ she gasps. Liz looks remarkably calm.
`Its talcum powder. Sorry mum, its ok! Jamie and I were dancing and we hit the mirror!'
`He’s naked!’ says Nancy.
`I lost my towels, while, while –‘
`Dancing!’ adds Liz.
`Yes! Dancing’ I sound more positive now, as if dancing is what I do. The cell phone keeps ringing. `Dancing, I am sorry, I got carried away Mrs Parker.’ Nancy narrows her eyes. I see the resemblance to Liz.
`OK, but get to bed the both of you, its late! You can tidy up in the morning’ Nancy is on the brink of abandoning the entire friendly mother routine. You can tell. She is very close to the serial killer version. She looks like she might just come over and kick my ass. She walks out – eventually. I think she is trying to see if I have a hard-on.
`Cover yourself.’ says Liz firmly but calmly, as if she has people de- towelled in her bedroom on a daily basis. The ringing stops and then a text alert follows. It’s from Max.
`Liz I need to see you. I know its late but Michael is driving me mad with his demands. He’s sleeping over and won’t give up on nagging – he is exhausting me! M x PS How is Jamie, say hi'
`Bastard!’ I whisper, but – OMG – he is thinking of me –his fingers actually spelt my name in a text! Liz climbs up out of the ruins of her bedroom, ignoring me. She puts the light on.
`OK, Jamie. You have five minutes to explain to me how you got hold of the journal before I call Michael.’
`You haven’t told Max about it have you!’ I say this half desperately.
`I haven’t told Max who had it, no - but he knows it went missing.’ she says.
`He’d be really angry if he knew that Michael stole it off you? We can come to an arrangement wherein he will never know anything about this!’
There is a hint of a deal in my voice. Liz looks at me, calculating the odds.
`You have no idea what you have gotten you self involved with! No idea, this is very serious!’ she sounds almost frightened! OMG a seriously dangerous bisexual triangle! Finally at 17 and a half I have ARRIVED.
`Just start from the beginning Jamie, and be quick about it!’
I tell her everything. I tell her about my first meeting with Max, how he stood over me and how all the light in the room was dimmed by the sheer glow of his eyes and the sheen of sweat across his shoulders. Ok, I didn’t actually say that. But I wanted to. I wanted to tell her how Max has become my reason for living, how I live out each day waiting for him to illuminate my heart. I wanted to tell her how I managed to steal his briefs and how I have worn them to a thread. BUT. I tell her about how I knew - just fucking knew – that something was going on between Michael and Max because they were always skulking about together. Always whispering. Always plotting. I told her about all the weird stuff in the erasure room. I gave her a slightly sanitised version of my encounter with them in the men’s toilets. Silence. She thinks this is weird. I can see. It is weird.
`You followed Max around school, didn’t you!’ she says suddenly, recalling one of our mutual encounters in the bushes some time ago, staking out our huts like rival bird watchers.
`So did you!’
`I love him!’
`So do I!’’
`Jamie – lets get back to the journal.’ She looked very self-contained now. `What did you think of it?’ It seems an odd question to ask, like it's a fucking poem or something or a work of art.
`It just confirmed to me everything I already knew.’
`It did?’ she sounds puzzled. God for a super computer on legs she can be fucking irritatingly slow. I sigh deeply.
`Liz I told my parents I was gay when I was 16, but I have always been gay, always, and although its been hard, I have never tried to hide it. I just don’t understand why you are complicit in Max and Michael’s deception about their sexuality and why you can’t be honest about it. Your crap about Max and Michael being aliens is just a metaphorical cover-up! It's- ‘ I am momentarily outraged - `It's intellectually dishonest!’ I stop. I am exhausted.
Liz now has a very strange far off, slightly satirical look on her face. It is oddly similar to the look that Michael had when I confronted him with his behavior in his trailer. Fuck, perhaps they have a hive mind. I press on with my attack, staking my claim.
`But Liz, can you honestly see yourself having a relationship with an `alien’ who is having sex with Michael! Being gay doesn't make Max an alien for god's sake! Its almost the 21st century!! Michael is not the guy to let something go anyway!’ I look straight at her. She is biting her lip and looks, curiously, as if she is trying to hold back a fart or something.
`This has gotten so out of control! It’s nothing to be ashamed of! Why can’t they just come out the closet! Or are you hoping that this alien metaphor is all crap and he is straight! Its no use Liz, once he has a taste for it, it's all over!’ Its cock all the way - I am sure of it. I sound almost spiteful.
`The alien metaphor.’ she says slowly. `You told all this to Michael, he knows that –‘ she seems unsure how to proceed, ` he knows that you think - I mean - that you know - that him and Max are...'
`GAY lovers!’ Even now she can hardly bring herself to say the word.
`Wow!’ says Liz, `What did he say?’
`He was embarrassed and I think even slightly ashamed, and he swore me to secrecy!’
`I bet he did! Well, no wonder Michael is pissed! OK, hold it, I have to go to the bathroom.’ she stands up, struggling and goes to the door. As she walks out I think I hear a burst of hysterical laughter but it might be tears. It must be a dreadful shock for her, a huge trauma, to hear Max’s sexuality being talked about so openly. Clearly she has been in denial. I lean back, with a small towel draped over my genitalia like an Italian medieval painting of Christ.
I see Max standing butt naked, his back to me. I see a whole landscape of ridges and muscle, furrowed and shaded. He is pissing into the open pan of our dream bathroom. His butt cheeks are solid dimpled orbs of passion, nail marked from a night of passion. He is talking to me about our life together. He half turns so I can see the dark profile of his face and the curve of muscles in his neck, like a Picasso. He is minimalist, beautiful, a stroke of fine black ink on an ivory parchment. He is shaking his cock while talking as if spraying his scent. I have been sharing him with Liz and Michael for three years now. It’s a fantastic arrangement. He has five children with Liz (and one with me). Liz and I knit them identical clothes in green wool and we run about the hills singing. Fuck, it’s the porno version of The Sound of Music. Michael can play the entire German SS on his own without any extras!
Someone outside the window says `Liz?’ in a very loud whisper. There is a silence. And then someone says `Liz’ again.
Liz looks so horrified that I am suddenly paranoid that she is not looking at me at all, but is looking behind me at Michael covered in bubble wrap wielding a pickaxe! I swing around. I bite the back of my hand to stifle a scream, a la Joan Crawford. Luckily there is just the wall. Jamie get a grip!
`You read my journal?’ says Liz eventually – to my evident relief actually! I was momentarily convinced that she had been struck dumb through some sort of biblical intervention. I have ruined the whole atmosphere of the evening. I am close to total panic.
`Liz – I can explain everything – Liz’ but Liz is not listening. Her super-geek brain is now in OVERDRIVE: I can see the cogs whirling through her dark eyes. She is recalibrating the entire known universe into one solvable equation
Jamie = M over M2 x by the square root of Y plus R Where: M is Max, M2 is Michael, Y is lust and R is fucking revenge.
`OMG’ she whispers. She is not looking at me. She is looking into the middle distance, the way my father used to look when he had worked out the sheer ungodly scale of my mother’s overdraft. `That’s why Michael has been hassling you – he is afraid you would say something! That’s why he didn’t want you to stay with me, or with Max!’
`Liz – I can ‘ oh god – it’s like trying to communicate with a super-MX computer during a download.
`Michael showed you the journal?’ She is clearly having problems with this. There is now growing outrage in her voice. I move forward quickly. This could get spectacularly unpleasant.
`No, no Liz it wasn’t like that! Michael stole your journal and then lost it! I found it outside Max’s house (id to ego: you fucking idiot!!) er - and I just read it ! I thought it was Michael’s! I returned it to Michael the other day – that’s why I went to see him – I hit Valenti’s jeep on the way back! Please Liz, Michael is as angry as you are, that’s why he is threatening me all the time!’
Liz looks at me now, taking all this new data in and analysing it. She sits down. `Did you say anything to Valenti? Anything at all?’
`No, nothing, nothing, and the journal was safely with Michael.’
I am hopeful she has not registered the `Max’s house’ bit and am just about to press my advantage when she says
`What were you doing outside Max’s house?’
`Er, I was walking home after our astronomy class –'
`But you live on the other side of town?’
`I was lost.’
`Jamie!'
`Ok, ok, I was desperate to see him! Liz, I love him, I am obsessed!’ Fuck I really am obsessed. She looks at me, expressionless, her lower lip moving. She goes to get her cell.
`Liz! Please, I haven’t told anyone! I am being honest with you, come on, I volunteered the information!’ I am using my special pleading voice. I am in a police detention cell about to have my remaining testicle turned into a paperweight. It looks like it might momentarily work, she looks at me again, but then she switches on her cell and starts speed dialing.
`Liz, please! He’ll, he’ll – tear me limb from limb!!’
I lunge forward in one final act of desperation. As I do this – in a sort of slow motion high jump – several things happen at once. Liz stands up and instead of grabbing her hand I grab her by the waist. As I do this, my towels come undone and I expose myself in a total state of geek boy nature. Due to the laws of inertia my forward motion is transmitted through Liz and we both collide with the dressing table. There is a vast unimaginable noise as we hit the mirror and scatter her belongings everywhere. There is a huge mushroom cloud of talcum powder. Liz screams (right in my fucking ear). I fall onto her and as we come to a halt the cell phone rings.
`It’s him, Mad Michael, please don’t answer!’ There is the sound of someone running up the stairs.
`Liz you have to trust me – please – I need you to trust me!’ I say this without affectation, all my ruses spent. I am holding Liz’s hand, which is still clutching the phone. Nancy is knocking at the door, the cell phone is flashing like an angry insect.
`Liz what in god’s name is going on!’ her mother opens the door to see me stark naked with a great splash of white powder over my face.
`Oh god – you’re doing drugs!’ she gasps. Liz looks remarkably calm.
`Its talcum powder. Sorry mum, its ok! Jamie and I were dancing and we hit the mirror!'
`He’s naked!’ says Nancy.
`I lost my towels, while, while –‘
`Dancing!’ adds Liz.
`Yes! Dancing’ I sound more positive now, as if dancing is what I do. The cell phone keeps ringing. `Dancing, I am sorry, I got carried away Mrs Parker.’ Nancy narrows her eyes. I see the resemblance to Liz.
`OK, but get to bed the both of you, its late! You can tidy up in the morning’ Nancy is on the brink of abandoning the entire friendly mother routine. You can tell. She is very close to the serial killer version. She looks like she might just come over and kick my ass. She walks out – eventually. I think she is trying to see if I have a hard-on.
`Cover yourself.’ says Liz firmly but calmly, as if she has people de- towelled in her bedroom on a daily basis. The ringing stops and then a text alert follows. It’s from Max.
`Liz I need to see you. I know its late but Michael is driving me mad with his demands. He’s sleeping over and won’t give up on nagging – he is exhausting me! M x PS How is Jamie, say hi'
`Bastard!’ I whisper, but – OMG – he is thinking of me –his fingers actually spelt my name in a text! Liz climbs up out of the ruins of her bedroom, ignoring me. She puts the light on.
`OK, Jamie. You have five minutes to explain to me how you got hold of the journal before I call Michael.’
`You haven’t told Max about it have you!’ I say this half desperately.
`I haven’t told Max who had it, no - but he knows it went missing.’ she says.
`He’d be really angry if he knew that Michael stole it off you? We can come to an arrangement wherein he will never know anything about this!’
There is a hint of a deal in my voice. Liz looks at me, calculating the odds.
`You have no idea what you have gotten you self involved with! No idea, this is very serious!’ she sounds almost frightened! OMG a seriously dangerous bisexual triangle! Finally at 17 and a half I have ARRIVED.
`Just start from the beginning Jamie, and be quick about it!’
I tell her everything. I tell her about my first meeting with Max, how he stood over me and how all the light in the room was dimmed by the sheer glow of his eyes and the sheen of sweat across his shoulders. Ok, I didn’t actually say that. But I wanted to. I wanted to tell her how Max has become my reason for living, how I live out each day waiting for him to illuminate my heart. I wanted to tell her how I managed to steal his briefs and how I have worn them to a thread. BUT. I tell her about how I knew - just fucking knew – that something was going on between Michael and Max because they were always skulking about together. Always whispering. Always plotting. I told her about all the weird stuff in the erasure room. I gave her a slightly sanitised version of my encounter with them in the men’s toilets. Silence. She thinks this is weird. I can see. It is weird.
`You followed Max around school, didn’t you!’ she says suddenly, recalling one of our mutual encounters in the bushes some time ago, staking out our huts like rival bird watchers.
`So did you!’
`I love him!’
`So do I!’’
`Jamie – lets get back to the journal.’ She looked very self-contained now. `What did you think of it?’ It seems an odd question to ask, like it's a fucking poem or something or a work of art.
`It just confirmed to me everything I already knew.’
`It did?’ she sounds puzzled. God for a super computer on legs she can be fucking irritatingly slow. I sigh deeply.
`Liz I told my parents I was gay when I was 16, but I have always been gay, always, and although its been hard, I have never tried to hide it. I just don’t understand why you are complicit in Max and Michael’s deception about their sexuality and why you can’t be honest about it. Your crap about Max and Michael being aliens is just a metaphorical cover-up! It's- ‘ I am momentarily outraged - `It's intellectually dishonest!’ I stop. I am exhausted.
Liz now has a very strange far off, slightly satirical look on her face. It is oddly similar to the look that Michael had when I confronted him with his behavior in his trailer. Fuck, perhaps they have a hive mind. I press on with my attack, staking my claim.
`But Liz, can you honestly see yourself having a relationship with an `alien’ who is having sex with Michael! Being gay doesn't make Max an alien for god's sake! Its almost the 21st century!! Michael is not the guy to let something go anyway!’ I look straight at her. She is biting her lip and looks, curiously, as if she is trying to hold back a fart or something.
`This has gotten so out of control! It’s nothing to be ashamed of! Why can’t they just come out the closet! Or are you hoping that this alien metaphor is all crap and he is straight! Its no use Liz, once he has a taste for it, it's all over!’ Its cock all the way - I am sure of it. I sound almost spiteful.
`The alien metaphor.’ she says slowly. `You told all this to Michael, he knows that –‘ she seems unsure how to proceed, ` he knows that you think - I mean - that you know - that him and Max are...'
`GAY lovers!’ Even now she can hardly bring herself to say the word.
`Wow!’ says Liz, `What did he say?’
`He was embarrassed and I think even slightly ashamed, and he swore me to secrecy!’
`I bet he did! Well, no wonder Michael is pissed! OK, hold it, I have to go to the bathroom.’ she stands up, struggling and goes to the door. As she walks out I think I hear a burst of hysterical laughter but it might be tears. It must be a dreadful shock for her, a huge trauma, to hear Max’s sexuality being talked about so openly. Clearly she has been in denial. I lean back, with a small towel draped over my genitalia like an Italian medieval painting of Christ.
I see Max standing butt naked, his back to me. I see a whole landscape of ridges and muscle, furrowed and shaded. He is pissing into the open pan of our dream bathroom. His butt cheeks are solid dimpled orbs of passion, nail marked from a night of passion. He is talking to me about our life together. He half turns so I can see the dark profile of his face and the curve of muscles in his neck, like a Picasso. He is minimalist, beautiful, a stroke of fine black ink on an ivory parchment. He is shaking his cock while talking as if spraying his scent. I have been sharing him with Liz and Michael for three years now. It’s a fantastic arrangement. He has five children with Liz (and one with me). Liz and I knit them identical clothes in green wool and we run about the hills singing. Fuck, it’s the porno version of The Sound of Music. Michael can play the entire German SS on his own without any extras!
Someone outside the window says `Liz?’ in a very loud whisper. There is a silence. And then someone says `Liz’ again.
-
Patroclus76
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- Posts: 178
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
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- Contact:
Liz’s bedroom is weird. It has two large sash windows that lead out on to some sort of flat roof. Liz clearly spends a lot of fucking time out there because it is littered with strange girlie crap like: colored lights, wicker chairs, a telescope (jesus) and what looks like the remains of a barbeque.
Someone shouts `Liz’ again. I re-do my toga outfit with the towels and clamber out into the night. I can see the top of what looks like a fire escape ladder sticking up – fuck it’s like a film set for HMS Pinafore. I look out for arm-linked rows of singing marines. Is this Max? Has Max made his way here to me? Will I, if I look down over the iron bars of the ladder see God boy standing, each muscle tense, the personification of male beauty poured into pants and some slick, clinging T-shirt? OMG. I see his black massed hair hedged over his dark, shining eyes, twinkling up at me! He is a vision, a dark angel. MAAAAAAAAAAX.
I lean up and over, love shining through every orifice, but to my horror I see shark boy himself! I try to edge back, but its too late – super predator Michael is up the ladder like a fucking monkey, all arms and legs in a fantastic example of male cunning! I have never seen anything move so fast! I try to make it to the window but he grabs my legs from behind and floors me in one elegant, nasty move. He ignores by semi-nakedness and general towel attire.
`Come here you little bastard – you’ve told her haven’t you!’
I am momentarily winded. I am in a sort of crash position with both arms open. Told her what? Next weeks’ lottery number? The solution to Fermat’s last theorem? Next minute he pulls my head up and looks at me, beautiful, cruel, predatory.
`Eat me’ I say.
`What?’ he frowns.
`Hello Michael’ I try again, (my fantasy protocols are utterly fucked). I am all sweetness and light, like we’ve just met in an express elevator or in the local Mall. `How’s things with you?’
`You’ve told her everything - have you!’ God he is so horny when he is aggressive! I cannot imagine how he has managed to keep his Max shagging a secret, not just from the Evan’s household, but from the whole street! They must make enough noise to literally wake the dead! They must smash a bed a week, tear down plaster board walls and smash whole tables as they slam about, one frenzied blur of hands, mouths, asses, cocks, OMG.
`Jamie!! Hello? Speak to me, damn you!’ My eyes refocus. Michael is an inch away from me. With effortless alpha male assertion, Michael hauls me up by my armpits and shoves me against the window – this is it – he is probably going to stab me with his hair spikes. I look stoically at him, resolved, triumphant in death, the sort of look British movie actors have in WWII movies. `Yeah, you’re winning the war for now – but in the end.’ At this stage Liz appears, like Florence Nightingale with a candle.
`Michael!’ she stage whispers loudly through the open window. She is closing the bedroom door quickly. Yeah, Michael! What the fuck do you think you are doing – I am already injured? Release me! Liz is at the window
`Put him down, Michael, what is wrong with you!’
Michael complies like a pet tomcat dropping a bird. He has the equivalent of his paw on my back in case I run for the skirting board. I lay feebly flapping. Michael lifts up my towel with a free hand and smirks.
`It's too late,’ I say as he releases his grip, `The war is over, we have the plans’ Michael looks at me again with that weird frown he has, and his mouth sort of cork screwed in a half pout, half grimace.
`I mean she knows I know, we all know, and only Max doesn’t know I know, so lets stop this madness!’ I say, worried about the general grammar of that last statement (but for god’s sake, this IS an emergency!). Michael’s eyes roll to the sky and he buries his face in his hands, while Liz bites her lip. Yeah, messy isn’t it! I gather my towels with as much dignity as I can and suggest we all go back inside. Liz thinks otherwise and climbs out to join us. Some roof party this is turning into. I momentarily take control.
`So what’s the big secret?' I demand. Liz looks at Michael and they look like stage actors without a prompt.
`We’re below the age of consent!’ says Michael quickly. Liz looks surprised.
`It's illegal to have anal sex until we’re 21, so we have to keep it secret!’ This is balls. I am sure that the legal age of consent in New Mexico is either 16 or 18 or 100– and you don’t have to have anal sex – you can do something else – apparently – like swop underwear or hold hands. Yet I am momentarily stalled.
`So that’s why we have to keep it a secret, we could go to prison, man!’
`Yeah, Jamie! We have been trying to keep this quiet for ages –‘ Liz adds, looking genuinely upset. I recall her reference to Valenti and the sheer panic that my running into the back of his jeep caused her. Is this the truth? My sensors calibrate and quantify.
`Hmmmmmmmmm. So Liz, are you kewl with this love triangle, what’s the deal here? Do you share him?’
`That’s really none of your business, Jamie!’ says Liz, eyes swimming all over her fucking roof, like I’ve just shook my willy in her face. Oh, but it is now! Despite probably looking slightly under par in two ill-fitting towels I am prepared to stake a claim, plant my own little flag on Max’s left buttock for a share in the action. Before I make a bold move for my LOVER, the bedroom door opens and Nancy appears, outraged.
`Liz, what in god’s name is going on – all of you come inside immediately – and who is this?’ She stares fiercely at Michael.
`This is Michael’ Liz jumps her fences slightly, thrown off balance no doubt by the imagine of Max wiping himself down with still Michael panting on the floor and then switching into heterosexual mode.
`He’s, he’s Jamie’s boyfriend!’ she then adds. Michael looks truly fucking HORRIFIED at this, like he has been told he has ten minutes to live.
`His ex-boyfriend!’ he adds quickly. Nancy’s eyes relax a little,
`Oh, you’re the boy who’s has been calling all night?’ Nancy looks at me and I just stare at her like a fucking zombie. Can this GET any worse? All we need now is Max to drop by with a parachute and a sack full of vibrating dildos.
`Oh dear, it’s past midnight!’ Nancy, evidently a profoundly decent women, looks at us all as if she’s come across an illegal squat in her attic. She looks at me and then at Michael.
`Do you have issues to resolve you two?’ she asks.
`We do, Mrs. Parker, a lot, actually. I’m sorry to be the cause of all this, this noise.’ I am using my super creepy nice-boy-misunderstood voice. Nancy smiles.
`Ok, well look, come inside and Michael can stay over as well – but you have to go to school tomorrow and its already late’ Michael is about to go ballistic but Liz grabs his arm and squeezes it tightly like she is transmitting super long protein string to him or something.
`I have no objection to you two sleeping together but you are not to have sex in any form, Liz you can sleep on the floor’ Nancy shuts the windows.
`He’ll never have sex with me again! Not after the stunt he’s pulled tonight!’ I say dramatically, narrowing my eyes, and pulling my towels together defensively. Nancy looks vaguely shocked, like this might involve too much information and Michael mouths `bitch’ at me while she is throwing blankets about and rearranging the room.
`This is fucking unbelievable!’ he hisses as soon as Mrs. Parker has finished. Liz has lost the power of speech and is trying to set up the demolished bedside table. There is a great splash of talcum powder on the floor with foot and handprints everywhere. To my amazement, Mrs Parker orders Michael and me into the same bed and tucks us in!
`Now go to sleep, and I do not want to hear another sound out of this room, Liz?’
`Yes mom, sure. No sounds’
Nancy turns the light out and I have a sudden, irrepressible urge to burst out laughing, that is until I see Michael looking at me like a particularly violent and large carnivore on the wrong side of a cage in a zoo! He has that hot sexy smell again, oily, a hint of grease and semen, an alkaline male smell.
`Touch me and you’re dead’ he says. He turns with difficulty onto his side, his back to me. We are tucked in so fucking tight I have a blood clot forming in my throat.
`And likewise, times four!’ I say, defiantly.
`I wouldn’t fucking touch you if you were the last thing on earth’
`Likewise, I wouldn't touch you if there was nothing on earth.'
`Shut up both of you’ says Liz. She is trying to climb into a spare bed that looks like an emergency collapsible hospital trolley on wheels. `This is so unfair.` she exclaims as it collapses (again).
In spite of the tightness of Nancy’s tucked sheet, (which prevent turning and any hand movement), in spite of everything, I fall asleep. I fall into a shallow trough of REM sleep and I dream of Max. I am leaning back in his arms and he is about me, his chin on the top of my head. His broad muscled arms are through mine and curled around my torso. I am sitting on his lap, naked, looking out into a deep rose filled garden. He is rocking slightly, and I sense his movement transmitted through me like a sleepy childhood memory. Just beneath my balls, I feel his genitalia and the cool heat of his thighs mapped onto mine. The contact between our bodies causes a gossamer film of sweat to lick our skins together. It is a late summer evening and the air is heavy and spiced with a thick sweet scent. In the dream I am not sure whether it is the overwhelming, heady perfume from the massed blooms, or Max’s own musk, cloaked about us in the bluing gloom. It is an exquisitely erotic dream, very gently, like a fine water color painting. I awake from it carefully, like a man leaving his lover’s bed, careful not to wake them.
There are voices in the room. I am facing the wall, my back to Michael, but I sense he has moved or left. I also feel the weight of someone sitting on the bed near the door. I am disorientated with a painful hard-on forced down by the blankets. Someone is saying,
`How in god’s sake did it get so complex so quickly!’ It is Max speaking.
`You were some fucking help!’ Michael’s voice comes from the window. I squint open an eye, and through the shadowed frill of my own eyelashes I see it is almost light.
`Michael!’ Liz and Max both say together.
`Well come on, you were so fucking nice to him Max, it was clear he was dogging you up from the beginning – you’ve effectively been leading him on!’
`Michael, I had no idea he was gay!’ Max’s voice is beautifully low, subliminal, almost off the scale of human hearing. It vibrates in the bones of my feet `And stealing Liz’s journal was crazy and wrong, so don’t get all moral with me!’
`Ok, ok, I’ve fucking apologised, haven’t I! I just needed to know we could trust Liz!’
Liz goes to protest but Michael placates her. `So what are we going to do?’ says Max finally.
`We can’t tell him, we can’t tell him the truth, Max!’ says Michael firmly and with precision. His whisper is like a knife. `No one else must find out.’.
`Well we can’t keep this gay thing going for much longer – ‘ I hear Liz sigh, although it sounds almost like a laugh. `God, the idea of you two making out in the eraser room is funny, though!’
Max sniffs like he has smiled and thought better of it. `Perhaps we could do the odd kiss and cuddle?’ he says – it is his mischievous voice, I know the exact look he has on his face when he says this. I am now utterly awake and completely bemused.
`Yeah right, in your dreams Max.’ Michael’s voice is lighter now, like the ray of a joke has even warmed shark boy.
`And he wants sex with me?’ Max asks this in a strange crumpled voice, not one of horror or even dislike but one of simple incredulity.
`Well, he likes you. I can’t image why!’ says Liz, `And having told us about the pocket and the keys incident I am hardly surprised he thinks you were leading him on! God you have no idea what effect you have on people, Max!’ Liz is speaking quietly now, almost to herself.
`Astounding how he could read the fucking journal as a story of gay sex. Are gay men considered aliens?’ Michael asks. There is a silence. Max say,
`Look – we’ll have to straighten this out later today – its almost light. He can’t know the truth about who we are, he can’t know we’re really aliens or that I saved Liz’s life with my powers, he just can’t!’
`Then what the fuck are we going to do, Max!’
`Can’t you two pretend to split up or something, and Max you can just tell him you don’t want to be his boyfriend or whatever you say in this sort of – er – situation?’ Liz has moved and is sitting next to her saviour.
`Sure, but it might upset him.’ says Max thoughtfully.
`Jesus, Max will you stop being so fucking NICE– you have to put him off the trail. Valenti has already cased him up, he is already a lose cannon!’
`OK, ok’ Max stands, I feel the bed move. `We’ll pretend to have an argument'
`But will he buy it? He is a cunning little bastard!' Michael says this with a hint of admiration.
`He’ll have to. Hey Liz’ Max is standing by the window `We have some free periods today, I want to drive you somewhere pleasant for a change, a sort of normal day out? If we're seen together it might look as if we have finally resolved my sexuality!’
`Like I am your girl friend?' Liz's voice sounds odd saying this, flat.
`Yeah, and make it look like I no longer want Michael’s ass!’
`You're loss!' Michael laughs, `hey can I hit you or something?’ he adds thoughtfully.
`No’ I hear Max climb out onto the roof and I hear his feet hitting the metal rungs of the ladder.
`Thank god we're not gay!' says Michael `I mean being aliens is bad enough, think of the potential discrimination for being gay AND alien!'
Liz sighs. `God I am exhausted!’
I close my eyes tightly. There is a strange sickly feeling in my stomach.
What the fuck is going on?
Someone shouts `Liz’ again. I re-do my toga outfit with the towels and clamber out into the night. I can see the top of what looks like a fire escape ladder sticking up – fuck it’s like a film set for HMS Pinafore. I look out for arm-linked rows of singing marines. Is this Max? Has Max made his way here to me? Will I, if I look down over the iron bars of the ladder see God boy standing, each muscle tense, the personification of male beauty poured into pants and some slick, clinging T-shirt? OMG. I see his black massed hair hedged over his dark, shining eyes, twinkling up at me! He is a vision, a dark angel. MAAAAAAAAAAX.
I lean up and over, love shining through every orifice, but to my horror I see shark boy himself! I try to edge back, but its too late – super predator Michael is up the ladder like a fucking monkey, all arms and legs in a fantastic example of male cunning! I have never seen anything move so fast! I try to make it to the window but he grabs my legs from behind and floors me in one elegant, nasty move. He ignores by semi-nakedness and general towel attire.
`Come here you little bastard – you’ve told her haven’t you!’
I am momentarily winded. I am in a sort of crash position with both arms open. Told her what? Next weeks’ lottery number? The solution to Fermat’s last theorem? Next minute he pulls my head up and looks at me, beautiful, cruel, predatory.
`Eat me’ I say.
`What?’ he frowns.
`Hello Michael’ I try again, (my fantasy protocols are utterly fucked). I am all sweetness and light, like we’ve just met in an express elevator or in the local Mall. `How’s things with you?’
`You’ve told her everything - have you!’ God he is so horny when he is aggressive! I cannot imagine how he has managed to keep his Max shagging a secret, not just from the Evan’s household, but from the whole street! They must make enough noise to literally wake the dead! They must smash a bed a week, tear down plaster board walls and smash whole tables as they slam about, one frenzied blur of hands, mouths, asses, cocks, OMG.
`Jamie!! Hello? Speak to me, damn you!’ My eyes refocus. Michael is an inch away from me. With effortless alpha male assertion, Michael hauls me up by my armpits and shoves me against the window – this is it – he is probably going to stab me with his hair spikes. I look stoically at him, resolved, triumphant in death, the sort of look British movie actors have in WWII movies. `Yeah, you’re winning the war for now – but in the end.’ At this stage Liz appears, like Florence Nightingale with a candle.
`Michael!’ she stage whispers loudly through the open window. She is closing the bedroom door quickly. Yeah, Michael! What the fuck do you think you are doing – I am already injured? Release me! Liz is at the window
`Put him down, Michael, what is wrong with you!’
Michael complies like a pet tomcat dropping a bird. He has the equivalent of his paw on my back in case I run for the skirting board. I lay feebly flapping. Michael lifts up my towel with a free hand and smirks.
`It's too late,’ I say as he releases his grip, `The war is over, we have the plans’ Michael looks at me again with that weird frown he has, and his mouth sort of cork screwed in a half pout, half grimace.
`I mean she knows I know, we all know, and only Max doesn’t know I know, so lets stop this madness!’ I say, worried about the general grammar of that last statement (but for god’s sake, this IS an emergency!). Michael’s eyes roll to the sky and he buries his face in his hands, while Liz bites her lip. Yeah, messy isn’t it! I gather my towels with as much dignity as I can and suggest we all go back inside. Liz thinks otherwise and climbs out to join us. Some roof party this is turning into. I momentarily take control.
`So what’s the big secret?' I demand. Liz looks at Michael and they look like stage actors without a prompt.
`We’re below the age of consent!’ says Michael quickly. Liz looks surprised.
`It's illegal to have anal sex until we’re 21, so we have to keep it secret!’ This is balls. I am sure that the legal age of consent in New Mexico is either 16 or 18 or 100– and you don’t have to have anal sex – you can do something else – apparently – like swop underwear or hold hands. Yet I am momentarily stalled.
`So that’s why we have to keep it a secret, we could go to prison, man!’
`Yeah, Jamie! We have been trying to keep this quiet for ages –‘ Liz adds, looking genuinely upset. I recall her reference to Valenti and the sheer panic that my running into the back of his jeep caused her. Is this the truth? My sensors calibrate and quantify.
`Hmmmmmmmmm. So Liz, are you kewl with this love triangle, what’s the deal here? Do you share him?’
`That’s really none of your business, Jamie!’ says Liz, eyes swimming all over her fucking roof, like I’ve just shook my willy in her face. Oh, but it is now! Despite probably looking slightly under par in two ill-fitting towels I am prepared to stake a claim, plant my own little flag on Max’s left buttock for a share in the action. Before I make a bold move for my LOVER, the bedroom door opens and Nancy appears, outraged.
`Liz, what in god’s name is going on – all of you come inside immediately – and who is this?’ She stares fiercely at Michael.
`This is Michael’ Liz jumps her fences slightly, thrown off balance no doubt by the imagine of Max wiping himself down with still Michael panting on the floor and then switching into heterosexual mode.
`He’s, he’s Jamie’s boyfriend!’ she then adds. Michael looks truly fucking HORRIFIED at this, like he has been told he has ten minutes to live.
`His ex-boyfriend!’ he adds quickly. Nancy’s eyes relax a little,
`Oh, you’re the boy who’s has been calling all night?’ Nancy looks at me and I just stare at her like a fucking zombie. Can this GET any worse? All we need now is Max to drop by with a parachute and a sack full of vibrating dildos.
`Oh dear, it’s past midnight!’ Nancy, evidently a profoundly decent women, looks at us all as if she’s come across an illegal squat in her attic. She looks at me and then at Michael.
`Do you have issues to resolve you two?’ she asks.
`We do, Mrs. Parker, a lot, actually. I’m sorry to be the cause of all this, this noise.’ I am using my super creepy nice-boy-misunderstood voice. Nancy smiles.
`Ok, well look, come inside and Michael can stay over as well – but you have to go to school tomorrow and its already late’ Michael is about to go ballistic but Liz grabs his arm and squeezes it tightly like she is transmitting super long protein string to him or something.
`I have no objection to you two sleeping together but you are not to have sex in any form, Liz you can sleep on the floor’ Nancy shuts the windows.
`He’ll never have sex with me again! Not after the stunt he’s pulled tonight!’ I say dramatically, narrowing my eyes, and pulling my towels together defensively. Nancy looks vaguely shocked, like this might involve too much information and Michael mouths `bitch’ at me while she is throwing blankets about and rearranging the room.
`This is fucking unbelievable!’ he hisses as soon as Mrs. Parker has finished. Liz has lost the power of speech and is trying to set up the demolished bedside table. There is a great splash of talcum powder on the floor with foot and handprints everywhere. To my amazement, Mrs Parker orders Michael and me into the same bed and tucks us in!
`Now go to sleep, and I do not want to hear another sound out of this room, Liz?’
`Yes mom, sure. No sounds’
Nancy turns the light out and I have a sudden, irrepressible urge to burst out laughing, that is until I see Michael looking at me like a particularly violent and large carnivore on the wrong side of a cage in a zoo! He has that hot sexy smell again, oily, a hint of grease and semen, an alkaline male smell.
`Touch me and you’re dead’ he says. He turns with difficulty onto his side, his back to me. We are tucked in so fucking tight I have a blood clot forming in my throat.
`And likewise, times four!’ I say, defiantly.
`I wouldn’t fucking touch you if you were the last thing on earth’
`Likewise, I wouldn't touch you if there was nothing on earth.'
`Shut up both of you’ says Liz. She is trying to climb into a spare bed that looks like an emergency collapsible hospital trolley on wheels. `This is so unfair.` she exclaims as it collapses (again).
In spite of the tightness of Nancy’s tucked sheet, (which prevent turning and any hand movement), in spite of everything, I fall asleep. I fall into a shallow trough of REM sleep and I dream of Max. I am leaning back in his arms and he is about me, his chin on the top of my head. His broad muscled arms are through mine and curled around my torso. I am sitting on his lap, naked, looking out into a deep rose filled garden. He is rocking slightly, and I sense his movement transmitted through me like a sleepy childhood memory. Just beneath my balls, I feel his genitalia and the cool heat of his thighs mapped onto mine. The contact between our bodies causes a gossamer film of sweat to lick our skins together. It is a late summer evening and the air is heavy and spiced with a thick sweet scent. In the dream I am not sure whether it is the overwhelming, heady perfume from the massed blooms, or Max’s own musk, cloaked about us in the bluing gloom. It is an exquisitely erotic dream, very gently, like a fine water color painting. I awake from it carefully, like a man leaving his lover’s bed, careful not to wake them.
There are voices in the room. I am facing the wall, my back to Michael, but I sense he has moved or left. I also feel the weight of someone sitting on the bed near the door. I am disorientated with a painful hard-on forced down by the blankets. Someone is saying,
`How in god’s sake did it get so complex so quickly!’ It is Max speaking.
`You were some fucking help!’ Michael’s voice comes from the window. I squint open an eye, and through the shadowed frill of my own eyelashes I see it is almost light.
`Michael!’ Liz and Max both say together.
`Well come on, you were so fucking nice to him Max, it was clear he was dogging you up from the beginning – you’ve effectively been leading him on!’
`Michael, I had no idea he was gay!’ Max’s voice is beautifully low, subliminal, almost off the scale of human hearing. It vibrates in the bones of my feet `And stealing Liz’s journal was crazy and wrong, so don’t get all moral with me!’
`Ok, ok, I’ve fucking apologised, haven’t I! I just needed to know we could trust Liz!’
Liz goes to protest but Michael placates her. `So what are we going to do?’ says Max finally.
`We can’t tell him, we can’t tell him the truth, Max!’ says Michael firmly and with precision. His whisper is like a knife. `No one else must find out.’.
`Well we can’t keep this gay thing going for much longer – ‘ I hear Liz sigh, although it sounds almost like a laugh. `God, the idea of you two making out in the eraser room is funny, though!’
Max sniffs like he has smiled and thought better of it. `Perhaps we could do the odd kiss and cuddle?’ he says – it is his mischievous voice, I know the exact look he has on his face when he says this. I am now utterly awake and completely bemused.
`Yeah right, in your dreams Max.’ Michael’s voice is lighter now, like the ray of a joke has even warmed shark boy.
`And he wants sex with me?’ Max asks this in a strange crumpled voice, not one of horror or even dislike but one of simple incredulity.
`Well, he likes you. I can’t image why!’ says Liz, `And having told us about the pocket and the keys incident I am hardly surprised he thinks you were leading him on! God you have no idea what effect you have on people, Max!’ Liz is speaking quietly now, almost to herself.
`Astounding how he could read the fucking journal as a story of gay sex. Are gay men considered aliens?’ Michael asks. There is a silence. Max say,
`Look – we’ll have to straighten this out later today – its almost light. He can’t know the truth about who we are, he can’t know we’re really aliens or that I saved Liz’s life with my powers, he just can’t!’
`Then what the fuck are we going to do, Max!’
`Can’t you two pretend to split up or something, and Max you can just tell him you don’t want to be his boyfriend or whatever you say in this sort of – er – situation?’ Liz has moved and is sitting next to her saviour.
`Sure, but it might upset him.’ says Max thoughtfully.
`Jesus, Max will you stop being so fucking NICE– you have to put him off the trail. Valenti has already cased him up, he is already a lose cannon!’
`OK, ok’ Max stands, I feel the bed move. `We’ll pretend to have an argument'
`But will he buy it? He is a cunning little bastard!' Michael says this with a hint of admiration.
`He’ll have to. Hey Liz’ Max is standing by the window `We have some free periods today, I want to drive you somewhere pleasant for a change, a sort of normal day out? If we're seen together it might look as if we have finally resolved my sexuality!’
`Like I am your girl friend?' Liz's voice sounds odd saying this, flat.
`Yeah, and make it look like I no longer want Michael’s ass!’
`You're loss!' Michael laughs, `hey can I hit you or something?’ he adds thoughtfully.
`No’ I hear Max climb out onto the roof and I hear his feet hitting the metal rungs of the ladder.
`Thank god we're not gay!' says Michael `I mean being aliens is bad enough, think of the potential discrimination for being gay AND alien!'
Liz sighs. `God I am exhausted!’
I close my eyes tightly. There is a strange sickly feeling in my stomach.
What the fuck is going on?
-
Patroclus76
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So what the fuck is going on? I shout it out and my voice splinters and bounces about me. I think this is a rhetorical question, but I am so incredibly stoned I am not sure – and the word seems strange to me. Rhetorical? Or do I mean theoretical? Or moronical? Is that a word? It is 48 hours after the sleepover/ balcony party at the Parkers and I am somewhere off the old highway, high as a fucking kite, naked except for a sheet. I have a series of disjointed and dishonest recollections as to how I got here. I stagger to my feet and the buff grey-blue landscape gets up as well, leering about me, pervy with vertigo.
`What the fuck is going on?’ Placing the emphasis on fuck makes it seem a more sensible question. I smile, but my face feels inside out and my eyes are glued open. Holding out to draw a beer can from my duffle bag is a major feat of engineering – my hand is too large too coordinate. I am not sure it is my usual hand.
`What the fuck is going on?’ That doesn’t seem right either. I suddenly feel a rush of wet heat starting on my chest working up to my cheeks and I throw up neatly at my feet. Fucking weird vomiting when you’re hammered. It feels like someone else is doing it for you. My vomit is a pastiche of multi colored M&M's that get up and roll off over the desert winking at me. Pot should most definitely not be smoked by anyone under 100 or anyone prone to any existential incursions.
I wipe my mouth with a corner of my sheet and find I am crying. In the last 24 hours my entire world has been tenderised with sledgehammers, flayed, and then casually abandoned. I sink back and look up at the cold stars and they are laughing at me, or at something I cannot see. I stagger and fall over to the side of the road where I can see the tyre marks of Max’s jeep as it hurled off the road into the siding. It is very cold or very hot and Max – I think it is Max – keeps scurrying up onto a flat blasted rock to swivel his eyes at me and fleck his tongue.
Max.
_____________________________________________________________
When Max had left that morning, Michael climbed back into bed with me and Liz squeezed back into her small hospital cot and we all, for our own personal reasons, feigned sleep. I lay awake, my brain burning into my scalp re-editing the last month until Reich Commandant Nancy SS came breezing in like an F-4 hurricane and got us all up and out singing an Elvis Costello number. Michael looked subdued and tired. He asked me if I had slept and I said I had. Liz looked like she had been found on some archipelago after a year of eating fish and wiping her ass with seaweed.
No one spoke at breakfast. At one stage, I almost went head first into my cereal. Michael propped me up on my own arm. The shower helped a little, but I arrived at school in that curiously flat, two-dimensional over-lit space well known to the hardcore insomniac. Anyone who spoke to me was whispering and there was an odd disjuncture between thought and action. My three morning periods were the equivalent of two geological inter-glacial periods.
At first break I was summoned to the principal’s office: he was standing with his back to the door as if he was practicing his special face before turning around to talk to me. To summarise: Mummy is responding well to treatment and ought to be OK in a month of two (a month?!) but army boy is still AWOL and – how to put this – there is a lot of interest in the garden and in the various mysterious earth works that have been dug in the last few days, all visible from space. I am dreaming this. In my dream I say, `So the authorities think my mother killed my father and buried him in the garden?’ Panic, spilt coffee, phone buttons pressed `Good God no, Jamie! No one suggested that at all!’
When I grow up I shall be a better fucking liar than any adult I have yet to meet! Composure restored, the Principal wades off into his churchy voice reserved for the parents of expelled children and those suspended for making out in storehouses. Arrangements have been made for me to stay with a `local’ family until matters sorts themselves out. I stand staring at the Principal as if I am looking at someone far away through the wrong end of a telescope. A local family? And `sorting themselves out’?
This is coded for several things: until Mother becomes sane, sane enough to be convicted of murder, or until Army Boy returns and Mother remains locked up in a paddock somewhere, or – best out come this – Daddy returns and Mother regains her late 20th century sensibility and life returns to normal! Not quite, somehow. I left fucking normal last night actually, when sharkboy Michael, the new Prince of Darkness, leaned over my face and then said (to Max and Liz behind him) ` It's ok, I think he is out cold. We can talk.’. Yeah, good one Michael. And did they talk. All balls. They knew I was awake and they cunningly set me a double bluff – but why? And then perhaps they didn’t know I was awake – and they sounded all weird and grown up, like people living with but not enjoying a secret.
When I walked out I saw Max standing near his locker, looking inside as if he had lost something or just discovered a severed head in there. He was wearing the god shirt, the black one with the red edges that contoured and aligned his body like a temple. I felt really weird seeing him, actually. Then something really awful happened. Like fucking heart wrenchingly, stabbingly, kill-me-now awful. Off the scale of all awfulness. He looked up as if he sensed he was being watched and he looked straight at me. He like looked right into me, like I have never been looked at before and like he didn’t recognise me.
In that moment his face was so indescribably beautiful that I started crying – pathetic geek tears leaked up over my eyelids. He looked then as if he knew everything about me, had always known everything about me. Had he been waiting for me – was he going to say something? Just at that moment Liz appeared, all dolled up and radioactively aglow. He had been waiting for her. They were about to slope off together and at that moment, at that precise pulse in the heart of the universe, I realised he wasn’t gay and that he loved Liz and that I had been a complete and utter fool.
Liz had smiled at me, weakly, like she had lost control of her cheek muscles. Max was unreadable – ashamed, afraid, disgusted, curious? It was hard to tell. He looked hard at me with his brown feral eyes as he moved away. No one quite ever did the what-the-fuck look as good as Max. I felt my soul cave in. I sat for a while, blubbering and bewildered of Roswell in some abandoned part of the school until I was found by Alex Whitman holding a guitar case.
He asked me what was wrong and I said something like `where to begin’ and `nothing’ and then my face crunched up and I couldn’t speak because of my girlie lip tremble. Alex sat down and just put his arm around me – which frankly made matters 1,000 times worse. We sat for a while, and he said, ` Is it Max?’
`Yeah, Max, mad mothers, the end of the Universe, but yeah, Max will do.’ He tightened his grip about me in that extraordinarily unselfconscious way certain straight boys have when they are being affectionate.
`He does this to a lot my friends, or increasingly I should say ex-friends.’ There had been an odd tone to my fellow geek traveller that sobered up my self-pity. I asked him what he meant by that. Fuck, it was like Oprah. We just needed an audience to cat-call and shout, ` Yeah – bastard Max! Leave him!’
Alex’s problems were a bit indeterminate but they seemed to involve Liz and Maria becoming weird and secretive and different.
`These guys were my best friends’ Alex moved his hands to emphasise this `And now, now I don’t even know them, You want to know something Jamie. Liz loses her diary or her journal and you know what – she blames me – well actually – she gets Maria to blame me!’
I felt irritatingly complicit in this and yet slightly more in control. Alex had looked curiously – unusually – angry. `She would never have done that before Max, it's as if she is protecting him or something.’
`Alex, do you think Max is gay? Do you think he and Michael are lovers?’ I asked this spontaneously, unable to isolate my thoughts from the nth re-run of the early morning conversation overhead while blanket packed in bed. Alex looked at me as if I was suddenly speaking in tongues.
`Gay!’ Alex’s tone confirmed my recent revelation. `No offence, Jamie, but he is as likely to be gay as Kyle Valenti’s dad! You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? God! This guy!’ He stood up and walked about, agitated. `I mean the guys is cool, I like him but I hate this aura he puts out and I hate the effect it has on people. It's like the fucking Bermuda Triangle – once in never out!’ he sighed, thinking hard `Or it's actually like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!’
`What, as in alien?’ I said – my tone was quite normal – but I had started to re-think this now. What was needed here was a paradigm shift, a la Kuhn. Let’s go with this stupid double bluff alien shit. Alex laughed softly to himself,
`Yeah, alien, fuck I don’t know. How much do you know about Czechoslovakia?’
`Probably far too much for a normal 17 year old, Alex. Why?’
`Because Liz and Maria talk about it continuously as some form of code – it doesn’t exist anymore. Everytime I come across them they are deep in gossip and then they shut up when I approach. It’s got to be a code!’
`A code?’ I was by now fully functional, having drawn upon hidden reserves of adrenalin. `A code for what?’ My mind raced through the soft knitted handwriting of Liz’s journal. Cutting through the heavy forest of metaphor and girlie innuendo (`Max has such soulful eyes!’ Jesus. He did actually.) I had seen several references to Czechoslovakia. The term had stuck for the very reason Alex had mentioned. I had looked at Alex who had walked around in a large circle scuffing the floor.
`For Max I guess, and for Michael, and for what they seem to be involved in.’
`And it's not an illegal sex ring?’
`In your dreams, Jamie!’
Alex came and sat down next to me, sitting forward his head down. Suddenly he looked up at me, `Have you seen the Principal?’
`Yeah, but I haven’t seen any principles!’ we had smiled weakly at our little geek joke.
`You pleased with the news?’ he had asked, smiling broadly. I had looked a little confused. Had the principal left his public address system on during our conversation?
`News?’
`About the local family? Did he mention that from now on, you’re a guest of the Whitmans!’ he patted my back. He frowned when he saw me looking blankly, taking time to digest the news. My girlie lip re-appeared.
`Not good news?’ he asked.
`Alex, that is so fucking kind of you! That’s the best news I’ve had all day!’ We had stood up and walked out towards the administration block. We walked right into winged-rumor herself, flapping about like a fucking Greek chorus: Max and Liz had been involved in a car accident.
Of course this was Roswell, so it took about an hour to scale down the news to some rough approximation to the truth. First of all, Max and Liz had taken out a bus load of kids in a triple car accident involving a mammal of some kind and a low flying jet, then Liz was found dead in a tree, then they were both found dead in separate trees – fuck –but then it all settled down to the utterly horrific news that Max has been flat packed off to hospital out cold with concussion.
The accident had taken place off the old highway. I collapsed on the floor, knees first, like a man struck with a vision of his own death. Alex asked me if I needed help. I needed a fucking miracle. But wait!! This was no time to get all queenie and pathetic – my MAN needed me! Fuck the minor problem with the alien/gay cross-over, and fuck Max’s quintessential straightness – whatever the misunderstandings, one thing was as clear as the light of day – I loved him!
MMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAX!
Fuck the rest. Fuck everyone. Fuck Max! I bounced back onto my legs and demanded which hospital he was in! We were in a war zone and my handsome muscled man was out there, somewhere, amid landmines and Martians – lets go get himI had a fleeting, sublime image of dog tags bouncing over Max’s sweated, upper pectorals. There was a muscled cleft like a trench separating his boy tits as they curve away in a dirty sheen towards his dark nipples, and then up and away into the dark, contoured cave of his pits.
The medical orderlies are standing amid the smoking battlefield as I fall upon him, unzipping fatigues and, fighting back the tears, place his cock in my mouth. One of the orderlies says `Sir, I don’t think that is the correct procedure to revive a patient.’.
`It works for me!'
Alex looks a bit bemused at me. I looked like I was about to swoon, `Jamie, I am not sure we ought to go wading into hospitals–‘
I grab his arm. `Alex, it’s the Czechoslovakian Question again, they’re behind this!’
`They are? But they don’t exist!’ Alex, this was no time to go all analytical on me.
`The Slovaks then, or the Czech Republic – all those gay boys – hurry! Which hospital!’
Several names were doing the rounds, one turned out to be a nunnery and another a missing dog’s home. Finally we located the right place on a map but Alex proved to be difficult over missing a computer science class. Then suddenly Liz appeared – in a tight gaggle of fans. It looked like the Oscars. All we needed were fucking paparazzi and flash bulbs. She looked like shit though, with that odd stupid hat on. She came straight up to us and shooed her haze of journalists away. Alex and I spoke at once, I was very close to tears.
`Is Max alright? Is he seriously injured?’
She told me he was still unconscious but that his vital signs were fine. She then looked at Alex and said, `I need to speak with you,’ her eyes slid over me, `in private, Alex, it's really urgent!’ I felt my face flush with anger – nice one Liz, so much for the recently signed Triple Geek Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation! She must clearly have me marked out as a rival. I wondered then if she and Max had talked about me on their fateful drive, perhaps some sort of strategy chat. Alex then surprised me.
`There is nothing you can’t say to me, Liz, that you can’t say to Jamie.’
Liz looked momentarily out gunned, and glanced again at me before sighing and taking us both outside, away from the buzz around the main buildings.
`I need blood from you, Alex.’ She asked this in all evident seriousness, as if she asked for blood on a regular basis from her friends. Alex’s mouth opened and he looked seriously alarmed. He turned to me. My mouth was open as well – flapping a little – fuck, perhaps Alex and I were twins or something.
`Liz, what the fuck is going on?’ I could see then that Liz was very close to losing it. She had a tight sort of grimace on her face that people have before they scream or stab you with a pencil.
`Alex, I can’t say, I just can’t say – it’s just that they are doing tests on Max and we need, well –‘
`You need to substitute his blood with someone else's?’ I finished it for her. I tried to make my voice sound friendly or at least co-operative. Alex then whistled through his teeth and walked away from us. Liz remained very still, unsure whether I was a friend or a foe. `Liz, I’ll give it if you want!’ I blurted out. Alex rolled his eyes at me.
`Jamie – ‘ Liz seemed caught up in some sort of dilemma. `That is incredibly sweet of you, and I know how you feel about Max, and..’ she sighed and threaded her hair away from her face, `But you’re too involved in this already and Max and I..’ Max and I. Ouch! That had fucking hurt. She must have seen me grimace. Alex rejoined us,`If I give my blood for Max’s, do I get any idea as to why I am doing this? Any clue as to the big secret?’
Liz seemed helpless, caught in conflicting and irreconcilable obligations. `No,’ she said faintly. `I can’t. It’s not my secret to tell!’ There was a moment of indecision. Next minute we were all getting into Max’s jeep with an incredulous Isabel looking at us. `Why not bring the entire school, Liz!’. She drove us away with an expression that would have curdled a fresh baby.
Jesus, the ice women cometh!
Once at Accident and Emergency, it was like a fucking school reunion. Michael was patrolling the area outside the bay where Max lay in a sheet. Maria – who I had yet to really meet - was standing as go between, general teas and coffees person and look-out, while some weird guy in a suit kept walking by us, talking into his sleeve. A rather attractive female orderly meanwhile, was trying to get people away from Max. Michael did a `what the fuck’ shrug when he saw me, and to Liz as well, as if I was not there, but I glowered back at him.
Alex, flanked by Liz and Isabel, was escorted to the bay despite further protests from the nurse.
`No one should be here! This is an emergency bay, not a ward!’
Maria had nodded to Michael who moved in, switching from hardcore Israeli bodyguard to little boy lost in less time than you could say sermon-on-the-mount. His charm – point blank range – appeared extraordinarily effective. We all jumped slightly, like we had witnessed a small explosion. Bad news followed though: a blood sample had already been taken.
Meanwhile, there was some sort of argument going on with Alex. Perhaps he was having second thoughts. I walked up to join my new best friend. Liz had somehow produced a needle and was tightening a tourniquet around his very thin arm. It had looked quite bloodless to me. Isabel was telling her she was going about it wrong. I rolled my sleeve up and flexed my bicep - fuck, not bad I thought – and had offered it to no one in particular.
Maria said `incoming’ and everyone dropped everything and pretended to be talking about a math mid-term. I was fucking impressed by this apparently uncoordinated teamwork. I had my first inkling that this was the work of a group that had grown into the ways of deception. It was an odd thought. In the middle of it all, oblivious to the devotion and attention of his court, Max lay out cold. I so wanted to rush up to him and kiss him, to press my lips tightly to his and breath my life into him – perhaps it would revive him?
`Jesus, Liz, are you sure about this?’ Alex had sounded decidedly flaky.
`Look, take mine!’ I said, I frowned at Alex – he lowered his arm – Maria said `incoming’ again and we reverted to conversations about the weather.
Michael had followed the nurse off somewhere, while the man in the suit had inadvertently collided with a trashcan by the door and fallen flat on his face. A doctor appeared.
`Look, I understand this boy is popular, but can you all go back into the waiting rooms outside!’ He turned to attend to the dude on the floor.
`Lie here!’ Isabel had said suddenly, pushing me onto a vacant trolley and throwing a sheet over me `and stick your arm out!’. She swiftly stuck a needle in me before I could protest and drew out two vials of blood. Alex looked like he was going to faint – although I had noticed he was looking at Isabel all the time. In an effortless, split second throw, the vial went through the air into Michael’s hand – fuck, it was like Mission Impossible – and he vanished again. Alex had gone off with Liz. God, what the fuck was going on? I closed my eyes.
Max is standing looking at me. We are by his locker. I am giving him a gift. He takes it, bemused, with an _expression that freezes me heart, a smile growing on his face, unsure, tender. There was a jolt and I woke up to find that two male orderlies were moving my trolley off. I had been so sleep deprived that I had momentarily nodded off. No one was about. I thought I heard Michael and Alex having another row, a snatch of sound as the doors swung around. `Some friends you’ve made, Liz!’
`A stiff?’ said one of the guy’s, pushing me from the direction of my feet.
`Yeah, car accident. Take him to the morgue. They want to chop him up.’
What the Fuck? I had sat up, my head shoving through the sheet and both men had screamed simultaneously and I had shouted for Michael. Michael appeared like my evil genie, explaining to the outraged men that I was prone to stupid pranks and that I was a little `simple’. The explanation worked – although Michael was hard pressed – he glared at me as I climbed down, sheepishly trying to hide the blood scabbing in the crook of my arm.
`You are a fucking liability!’ he hissed.
`Stop treating me like a retard!’
`You are a retard!’ but something in Michael’s tone seemed different, it was like he was almost pleased to be bullying me. I saw great stains of sweat under each arm, he looked completely exhausted as well.
`You’ve got to hide this.’ he gave me a vial of blood with Max’s name on.
`What is it?’
`A cigar, what the fuck do you think it is! Its Max’s blood. That’s the one I substituted for yours – ‘ he gave it to me, he shook his head as if to keep a wake.
`But there were two..’ – we were walking through into the waiting area. Mrs. Evans and Liz were walking towards Max.
`Shove it up your ass.' he said, quicky.
`Fuck off!’ I was not in any mood for Michael. Michael looked genuinely taken aback.
`I’m serious, shove it up your ass – like a – whatever.’ he frowned. I was speechless.
`Where’s the other one?’ Michael sighed and frowned crossly.
`Where do you think! I can only risk one!'
OMG. I took it off him, checked the stopper was secure and slipped off to the gents. In one of the cubicles I squatted down on my haunches. It would be the closest thing I might ever get to having Max inside me.
When I rejoined the throng, Max’s mother and sister were standing beside him and he had regained consciousness. Liz was also there, looking awkwardly about her. There was no sign of Alex, although Maria and Michael were there, Michael a little stiffly, it had to be said ad with his legs oddly apart. There was nothing to be done now but to go our separate ways. Max looked ok, tired, but remarkably unscathed.
I turned to go and as I did so, mid sentence with his mother, his eyes caught mine. I looked away and realised then that I really didn’t belong there, in the inner sanctum. For a geek-gay boy nerd, I had been given an incredible ride for my money. Who would have thought it! My mind had turned to my mother and my own home. I pushed the swing door and slipped out, a parting glance showed that Max was still looking at me. I saw his mother turn to look as well.
I cycled away, feeling completely shitty. It was difficult to ride a bike with a large test tube up your ass. I was exhausted. I could hardly keep awake and I was now incredibly hungry. I had arranged to meet up with Alex later after collecting some of my personal stuff from home. Somehow the events of the last few hours had made my relationship with Alex difficult as well – and for the first time – I was worried about my own domestic circumstances.
I walked past the team of men digging around the garden and showed my school ID. I then unlocked the front door. Already this place and the bedroom seemed like a different world, a different life. Jamie BM – Before Max. In the bathroom, I cleanly and gently boned Max back into the world and then – then I did something I now bitterly, bitterly regret. I sat holding the body warm vial in my hand, thinking through the whole madness of the last few weeks. I thought again about the strange sense of belonging that meshed Michael with Max and with Isabel and with Liz, and then from Liz, working outwards like a web, to everyone, to Alex and then eventually myself. So what the fuck was going on? Why would Liz want someone to substitute Max’s blood? I showered and changed and all the time my mind whirled. Drugs. It had to be drugs.
In Army boys side of the medical cabinet was a basic urine test that I was made to undertake on a monthly basis. I trusted in my dad’s sheer obsessiveness when it came to testing. At the back of the cabinet was a test kit for blood, some weird NASA job with little time sensitive chemicals in windows that changed colors. I set it up, using the egg timer, and dropping blood from the vial until finished; I flushed Max down the sink. I was blubbering again. Bye Max.
A small residue of redness stuck to the bottom of the tube. It seemed to say something to me. I walked through with it to my bedroom. I started to pack some clothes and some stuff and then I saw my microscope, a present from Mother in saner days. I found a box of empty slides and mounted a blood sample. The egg timer pinged, and I went back to my experiment. All the windows showed negative results – although he seemed to have a high nitrogen level in his blood. The usual suspects were entirely absent. I went back to my desk. Outside people were digging underneath a great white tent. I put my eye to the lens and focused.
_____________________________________________________________
I throw up again but this time there is not much to come out, no M&Ms left. I am shivering with cold. I have been here for hours. Alex and his family might already have called the police, or called off the arrangements they had made to look after me. That makes me feel sad. So it is beginning to look like Max is a fucking, green blooded Vulcan! I started laughing again and then I felt scared. Really scared. Scared about having smoked too much weed, scared at having stolen the blood, scared at just knowing what I now know – and is Max the only alien? Shit! An invasion!
Max – this time I am sure it is Max – walks up to me.
`Jamie’ he says softly, in his best Vulcan. `Jamie, its Ok'
`Fuck off, you’re a body snatcher pod alien thing!’ Someone is standing next to me. If this is not Max, it’s a fucking awesome hallucination. Perhaps I can do a version of lucid dreaming and get him to take his clothes off. Perhaps he has a massive green horse cock wrapped around his thigh. `Jamie?’ someone takes me with infinite tenderness by the shoulders, `Come home.’
`What the fuck is going on?’ Placing the emphasis on fuck makes it seem a more sensible question. I smile, but my face feels inside out and my eyes are glued open. Holding out to draw a beer can from my duffle bag is a major feat of engineering – my hand is too large too coordinate. I am not sure it is my usual hand.
`What the fuck is going on?’ That doesn’t seem right either. I suddenly feel a rush of wet heat starting on my chest working up to my cheeks and I throw up neatly at my feet. Fucking weird vomiting when you’re hammered. It feels like someone else is doing it for you. My vomit is a pastiche of multi colored M&M's that get up and roll off over the desert winking at me. Pot should most definitely not be smoked by anyone under 100 or anyone prone to any existential incursions.
I wipe my mouth with a corner of my sheet and find I am crying. In the last 24 hours my entire world has been tenderised with sledgehammers, flayed, and then casually abandoned. I sink back and look up at the cold stars and they are laughing at me, or at something I cannot see. I stagger and fall over to the side of the road where I can see the tyre marks of Max’s jeep as it hurled off the road into the siding. It is very cold or very hot and Max – I think it is Max – keeps scurrying up onto a flat blasted rock to swivel his eyes at me and fleck his tongue.
Max.
_____________________________________________________________
When Max had left that morning, Michael climbed back into bed with me and Liz squeezed back into her small hospital cot and we all, for our own personal reasons, feigned sleep. I lay awake, my brain burning into my scalp re-editing the last month until Reich Commandant Nancy SS came breezing in like an F-4 hurricane and got us all up and out singing an Elvis Costello number. Michael looked subdued and tired. He asked me if I had slept and I said I had. Liz looked like she had been found on some archipelago after a year of eating fish and wiping her ass with seaweed.
No one spoke at breakfast. At one stage, I almost went head first into my cereal. Michael propped me up on my own arm. The shower helped a little, but I arrived at school in that curiously flat, two-dimensional over-lit space well known to the hardcore insomniac. Anyone who spoke to me was whispering and there was an odd disjuncture between thought and action. My three morning periods were the equivalent of two geological inter-glacial periods.
At first break I was summoned to the principal’s office: he was standing with his back to the door as if he was practicing his special face before turning around to talk to me. To summarise: Mummy is responding well to treatment and ought to be OK in a month of two (a month?!) but army boy is still AWOL and – how to put this – there is a lot of interest in the garden and in the various mysterious earth works that have been dug in the last few days, all visible from space. I am dreaming this. In my dream I say, `So the authorities think my mother killed my father and buried him in the garden?’ Panic, spilt coffee, phone buttons pressed `Good God no, Jamie! No one suggested that at all!’
When I grow up I shall be a better fucking liar than any adult I have yet to meet! Composure restored, the Principal wades off into his churchy voice reserved for the parents of expelled children and those suspended for making out in storehouses. Arrangements have been made for me to stay with a `local’ family until matters sorts themselves out. I stand staring at the Principal as if I am looking at someone far away through the wrong end of a telescope. A local family? And `sorting themselves out’?
This is coded for several things: until Mother becomes sane, sane enough to be convicted of murder, or until Army Boy returns and Mother remains locked up in a paddock somewhere, or – best out come this – Daddy returns and Mother regains her late 20th century sensibility and life returns to normal! Not quite, somehow. I left fucking normal last night actually, when sharkboy Michael, the new Prince of Darkness, leaned over my face and then said (to Max and Liz behind him) ` It's ok, I think he is out cold. We can talk.’. Yeah, good one Michael. And did they talk. All balls. They knew I was awake and they cunningly set me a double bluff – but why? And then perhaps they didn’t know I was awake – and they sounded all weird and grown up, like people living with but not enjoying a secret.
When I walked out I saw Max standing near his locker, looking inside as if he had lost something or just discovered a severed head in there. He was wearing the god shirt, the black one with the red edges that contoured and aligned his body like a temple. I felt really weird seeing him, actually. Then something really awful happened. Like fucking heart wrenchingly, stabbingly, kill-me-now awful. Off the scale of all awfulness. He looked up as if he sensed he was being watched and he looked straight at me. He like looked right into me, like I have never been looked at before and like he didn’t recognise me.
In that moment his face was so indescribably beautiful that I started crying – pathetic geek tears leaked up over my eyelids. He looked then as if he knew everything about me, had always known everything about me. Had he been waiting for me – was he going to say something? Just at that moment Liz appeared, all dolled up and radioactively aglow. He had been waiting for her. They were about to slope off together and at that moment, at that precise pulse in the heart of the universe, I realised he wasn’t gay and that he loved Liz and that I had been a complete and utter fool.
Liz had smiled at me, weakly, like she had lost control of her cheek muscles. Max was unreadable – ashamed, afraid, disgusted, curious? It was hard to tell. He looked hard at me with his brown feral eyes as he moved away. No one quite ever did the what-the-fuck look as good as Max. I felt my soul cave in. I sat for a while, blubbering and bewildered of Roswell in some abandoned part of the school until I was found by Alex Whitman holding a guitar case.
He asked me what was wrong and I said something like `where to begin’ and `nothing’ and then my face crunched up and I couldn’t speak because of my girlie lip tremble. Alex sat down and just put his arm around me – which frankly made matters 1,000 times worse. We sat for a while, and he said, ` Is it Max?’
`Yeah, Max, mad mothers, the end of the Universe, but yeah, Max will do.’ He tightened his grip about me in that extraordinarily unselfconscious way certain straight boys have when they are being affectionate.
`He does this to a lot my friends, or increasingly I should say ex-friends.’ There had been an odd tone to my fellow geek traveller that sobered up my self-pity. I asked him what he meant by that. Fuck, it was like Oprah. We just needed an audience to cat-call and shout, ` Yeah – bastard Max! Leave him!’
Alex’s problems were a bit indeterminate but they seemed to involve Liz and Maria becoming weird and secretive and different.
`These guys were my best friends’ Alex moved his hands to emphasise this `And now, now I don’t even know them, You want to know something Jamie. Liz loses her diary or her journal and you know what – she blames me – well actually – she gets Maria to blame me!’
I felt irritatingly complicit in this and yet slightly more in control. Alex had looked curiously – unusually – angry. `She would never have done that before Max, it's as if she is protecting him or something.’
`Alex, do you think Max is gay? Do you think he and Michael are lovers?’ I asked this spontaneously, unable to isolate my thoughts from the nth re-run of the early morning conversation overhead while blanket packed in bed. Alex looked at me as if I was suddenly speaking in tongues.
`Gay!’ Alex’s tone confirmed my recent revelation. `No offence, Jamie, but he is as likely to be gay as Kyle Valenti’s dad! You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? God! This guy!’ He stood up and walked about, agitated. `I mean the guys is cool, I like him but I hate this aura he puts out and I hate the effect it has on people. It's like the fucking Bermuda Triangle – once in never out!’ he sighed, thinking hard `Or it's actually like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!’
`What, as in alien?’ I said – my tone was quite normal – but I had started to re-think this now. What was needed here was a paradigm shift, a la Kuhn. Let’s go with this stupid double bluff alien shit. Alex laughed softly to himself,
`Yeah, alien, fuck I don’t know. How much do you know about Czechoslovakia?’
`Probably far too much for a normal 17 year old, Alex. Why?’
`Because Liz and Maria talk about it continuously as some form of code – it doesn’t exist anymore. Everytime I come across them they are deep in gossip and then they shut up when I approach. It’s got to be a code!’
`A code?’ I was by now fully functional, having drawn upon hidden reserves of adrenalin. `A code for what?’ My mind raced through the soft knitted handwriting of Liz’s journal. Cutting through the heavy forest of metaphor and girlie innuendo (`Max has such soulful eyes!’ Jesus. He did actually.) I had seen several references to Czechoslovakia. The term had stuck for the very reason Alex had mentioned. I had looked at Alex who had walked around in a large circle scuffing the floor.
`For Max I guess, and for Michael, and for what they seem to be involved in.’
`And it's not an illegal sex ring?’
`In your dreams, Jamie!’
Alex came and sat down next to me, sitting forward his head down. Suddenly he looked up at me, `Have you seen the Principal?’
`Yeah, but I haven’t seen any principles!’ we had smiled weakly at our little geek joke.
`You pleased with the news?’ he had asked, smiling broadly. I had looked a little confused. Had the principal left his public address system on during our conversation?
`News?’
`About the local family? Did he mention that from now on, you’re a guest of the Whitmans!’ he patted my back. He frowned when he saw me looking blankly, taking time to digest the news. My girlie lip re-appeared.
`Not good news?’ he asked.
`Alex, that is so fucking kind of you! That’s the best news I’ve had all day!’ We had stood up and walked out towards the administration block. We walked right into winged-rumor herself, flapping about like a fucking Greek chorus: Max and Liz had been involved in a car accident.
Of course this was Roswell, so it took about an hour to scale down the news to some rough approximation to the truth. First of all, Max and Liz had taken out a bus load of kids in a triple car accident involving a mammal of some kind and a low flying jet, then Liz was found dead in a tree, then they were both found dead in separate trees – fuck –but then it all settled down to the utterly horrific news that Max has been flat packed off to hospital out cold with concussion.
The accident had taken place off the old highway. I collapsed on the floor, knees first, like a man struck with a vision of his own death. Alex asked me if I needed help. I needed a fucking miracle. But wait!! This was no time to get all queenie and pathetic – my MAN needed me! Fuck the minor problem with the alien/gay cross-over, and fuck Max’s quintessential straightness – whatever the misunderstandings, one thing was as clear as the light of day – I loved him!
MMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAX!
Fuck the rest. Fuck everyone. Fuck Max! I bounced back onto my legs and demanded which hospital he was in! We were in a war zone and my handsome muscled man was out there, somewhere, amid landmines and Martians – lets go get himI had a fleeting, sublime image of dog tags bouncing over Max’s sweated, upper pectorals. There was a muscled cleft like a trench separating his boy tits as they curve away in a dirty sheen towards his dark nipples, and then up and away into the dark, contoured cave of his pits.
The medical orderlies are standing amid the smoking battlefield as I fall upon him, unzipping fatigues and, fighting back the tears, place his cock in my mouth. One of the orderlies says `Sir, I don’t think that is the correct procedure to revive a patient.’.
`It works for me!'
Alex looks a bit bemused at me. I looked like I was about to swoon, `Jamie, I am not sure we ought to go wading into hospitals–‘
I grab his arm. `Alex, it’s the Czechoslovakian Question again, they’re behind this!’
`They are? But they don’t exist!’ Alex, this was no time to go all analytical on me.
`The Slovaks then, or the Czech Republic – all those gay boys – hurry! Which hospital!’
Several names were doing the rounds, one turned out to be a nunnery and another a missing dog’s home. Finally we located the right place on a map but Alex proved to be difficult over missing a computer science class. Then suddenly Liz appeared – in a tight gaggle of fans. It looked like the Oscars. All we needed were fucking paparazzi and flash bulbs. She looked like shit though, with that odd stupid hat on. She came straight up to us and shooed her haze of journalists away. Alex and I spoke at once, I was very close to tears.
`Is Max alright? Is he seriously injured?’
She told me he was still unconscious but that his vital signs were fine. She then looked at Alex and said, `I need to speak with you,’ her eyes slid over me, `in private, Alex, it's really urgent!’ I felt my face flush with anger – nice one Liz, so much for the recently signed Triple Geek Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation! She must clearly have me marked out as a rival. I wondered then if she and Max had talked about me on their fateful drive, perhaps some sort of strategy chat. Alex then surprised me.
`There is nothing you can’t say to me, Liz, that you can’t say to Jamie.’
Liz looked momentarily out gunned, and glanced again at me before sighing and taking us both outside, away from the buzz around the main buildings.
`I need blood from you, Alex.’ She asked this in all evident seriousness, as if she asked for blood on a regular basis from her friends. Alex’s mouth opened and he looked seriously alarmed. He turned to me. My mouth was open as well – flapping a little – fuck, perhaps Alex and I were twins or something.
`Liz, what the fuck is going on?’ I could see then that Liz was very close to losing it. She had a tight sort of grimace on her face that people have before they scream or stab you with a pencil.
`Alex, I can’t say, I just can’t say – it’s just that they are doing tests on Max and we need, well –‘
`You need to substitute his blood with someone else's?’ I finished it for her. I tried to make my voice sound friendly or at least co-operative. Alex then whistled through his teeth and walked away from us. Liz remained very still, unsure whether I was a friend or a foe. `Liz, I’ll give it if you want!’ I blurted out. Alex rolled his eyes at me.
`Jamie – ‘ Liz seemed caught up in some sort of dilemma. `That is incredibly sweet of you, and I know how you feel about Max, and..’ she sighed and threaded her hair away from her face, `But you’re too involved in this already and Max and I..’ Max and I. Ouch! That had fucking hurt. She must have seen me grimace. Alex rejoined us,`If I give my blood for Max’s, do I get any idea as to why I am doing this? Any clue as to the big secret?’
Liz seemed helpless, caught in conflicting and irreconcilable obligations. `No,’ she said faintly. `I can’t. It’s not my secret to tell!’ There was a moment of indecision. Next minute we were all getting into Max’s jeep with an incredulous Isabel looking at us. `Why not bring the entire school, Liz!’. She drove us away with an expression that would have curdled a fresh baby.
Jesus, the ice women cometh!
Once at Accident and Emergency, it was like a fucking school reunion. Michael was patrolling the area outside the bay where Max lay in a sheet. Maria – who I had yet to really meet - was standing as go between, general teas and coffees person and look-out, while some weird guy in a suit kept walking by us, talking into his sleeve. A rather attractive female orderly meanwhile, was trying to get people away from Max. Michael did a `what the fuck’ shrug when he saw me, and to Liz as well, as if I was not there, but I glowered back at him.
Alex, flanked by Liz and Isabel, was escorted to the bay despite further protests from the nurse.
`No one should be here! This is an emergency bay, not a ward!’
Maria had nodded to Michael who moved in, switching from hardcore Israeli bodyguard to little boy lost in less time than you could say sermon-on-the-mount. His charm – point blank range – appeared extraordinarily effective. We all jumped slightly, like we had witnessed a small explosion. Bad news followed though: a blood sample had already been taken.
Meanwhile, there was some sort of argument going on with Alex. Perhaps he was having second thoughts. I walked up to join my new best friend. Liz had somehow produced a needle and was tightening a tourniquet around his very thin arm. It had looked quite bloodless to me. Isabel was telling her she was going about it wrong. I rolled my sleeve up and flexed my bicep - fuck, not bad I thought – and had offered it to no one in particular.
Maria said `incoming’ and everyone dropped everything and pretended to be talking about a math mid-term. I was fucking impressed by this apparently uncoordinated teamwork. I had my first inkling that this was the work of a group that had grown into the ways of deception. It was an odd thought. In the middle of it all, oblivious to the devotion and attention of his court, Max lay out cold. I so wanted to rush up to him and kiss him, to press my lips tightly to his and breath my life into him – perhaps it would revive him?
`Jesus, Liz, are you sure about this?’ Alex had sounded decidedly flaky.
`Look, take mine!’ I said, I frowned at Alex – he lowered his arm – Maria said `incoming’ again and we reverted to conversations about the weather.
Michael had followed the nurse off somewhere, while the man in the suit had inadvertently collided with a trashcan by the door and fallen flat on his face. A doctor appeared.
`Look, I understand this boy is popular, but can you all go back into the waiting rooms outside!’ He turned to attend to the dude on the floor.
`Lie here!’ Isabel had said suddenly, pushing me onto a vacant trolley and throwing a sheet over me `and stick your arm out!’. She swiftly stuck a needle in me before I could protest and drew out two vials of blood. Alex looked like he was going to faint – although I had noticed he was looking at Isabel all the time. In an effortless, split second throw, the vial went through the air into Michael’s hand – fuck, it was like Mission Impossible – and he vanished again. Alex had gone off with Liz. God, what the fuck was going on? I closed my eyes.
Max is standing looking at me. We are by his locker. I am giving him a gift. He takes it, bemused, with an _expression that freezes me heart, a smile growing on his face, unsure, tender. There was a jolt and I woke up to find that two male orderlies were moving my trolley off. I had been so sleep deprived that I had momentarily nodded off. No one was about. I thought I heard Michael and Alex having another row, a snatch of sound as the doors swung around. `Some friends you’ve made, Liz!’
`A stiff?’ said one of the guy’s, pushing me from the direction of my feet.
`Yeah, car accident. Take him to the morgue. They want to chop him up.’
What the Fuck? I had sat up, my head shoving through the sheet and both men had screamed simultaneously and I had shouted for Michael. Michael appeared like my evil genie, explaining to the outraged men that I was prone to stupid pranks and that I was a little `simple’. The explanation worked – although Michael was hard pressed – he glared at me as I climbed down, sheepishly trying to hide the blood scabbing in the crook of my arm.
`You are a fucking liability!’ he hissed.
`Stop treating me like a retard!’
`You are a retard!’ but something in Michael’s tone seemed different, it was like he was almost pleased to be bullying me. I saw great stains of sweat under each arm, he looked completely exhausted as well.
`You’ve got to hide this.’ he gave me a vial of blood with Max’s name on.
`What is it?’
`A cigar, what the fuck do you think it is! Its Max’s blood. That’s the one I substituted for yours – ‘ he gave it to me, he shook his head as if to keep a wake.
`But there were two..’ – we were walking through into the waiting area. Mrs. Evans and Liz were walking towards Max.
`Shove it up your ass.' he said, quicky.
`Fuck off!’ I was not in any mood for Michael. Michael looked genuinely taken aback.
`I’m serious, shove it up your ass – like a – whatever.’ he frowned. I was speechless.
`Where’s the other one?’ Michael sighed and frowned crossly.
`Where do you think! I can only risk one!'
OMG. I took it off him, checked the stopper was secure and slipped off to the gents. In one of the cubicles I squatted down on my haunches. It would be the closest thing I might ever get to having Max inside me.
When I rejoined the throng, Max’s mother and sister were standing beside him and he had regained consciousness. Liz was also there, looking awkwardly about her. There was no sign of Alex, although Maria and Michael were there, Michael a little stiffly, it had to be said ad with his legs oddly apart. There was nothing to be done now but to go our separate ways. Max looked ok, tired, but remarkably unscathed.
I turned to go and as I did so, mid sentence with his mother, his eyes caught mine. I looked away and realised then that I really didn’t belong there, in the inner sanctum. For a geek-gay boy nerd, I had been given an incredible ride for my money. Who would have thought it! My mind had turned to my mother and my own home. I pushed the swing door and slipped out, a parting glance showed that Max was still looking at me. I saw his mother turn to look as well.
I cycled away, feeling completely shitty. It was difficult to ride a bike with a large test tube up your ass. I was exhausted. I could hardly keep awake and I was now incredibly hungry. I had arranged to meet up with Alex later after collecting some of my personal stuff from home. Somehow the events of the last few hours had made my relationship with Alex difficult as well – and for the first time – I was worried about my own domestic circumstances.
I walked past the team of men digging around the garden and showed my school ID. I then unlocked the front door. Already this place and the bedroom seemed like a different world, a different life. Jamie BM – Before Max. In the bathroom, I cleanly and gently boned Max back into the world and then – then I did something I now bitterly, bitterly regret. I sat holding the body warm vial in my hand, thinking through the whole madness of the last few weeks. I thought again about the strange sense of belonging that meshed Michael with Max and with Isabel and with Liz, and then from Liz, working outwards like a web, to everyone, to Alex and then eventually myself. So what the fuck was going on? Why would Liz want someone to substitute Max’s blood? I showered and changed and all the time my mind whirled. Drugs. It had to be drugs.
In Army boys side of the medical cabinet was a basic urine test that I was made to undertake on a monthly basis. I trusted in my dad’s sheer obsessiveness when it came to testing. At the back of the cabinet was a test kit for blood, some weird NASA job with little time sensitive chemicals in windows that changed colors. I set it up, using the egg timer, and dropping blood from the vial until finished; I flushed Max down the sink. I was blubbering again. Bye Max.
A small residue of redness stuck to the bottom of the tube. It seemed to say something to me. I walked through with it to my bedroom. I started to pack some clothes and some stuff and then I saw my microscope, a present from Mother in saner days. I found a box of empty slides and mounted a blood sample. The egg timer pinged, and I went back to my experiment. All the windows showed negative results – although he seemed to have a high nitrogen level in his blood. The usual suspects were entirely absent. I went back to my desk. Outside people were digging underneath a great white tent. I put my eye to the lens and focused.
_____________________________________________________________
I throw up again but this time there is not much to come out, no M&Ms left. I am shivering with cold. I have been here for hours. Alex and his family might already have called the police, or called off the arrangements they had made to look after me. That makes me feel sad. So it is beginning to look like Max is a fucking, green blooded Vulcan! I started laughing again and then I felt scared. Really scared. Scared about having smoked too much weed, scared at having stolen the blood, scared at just knowing what I now know – and is Max the only alien? Shit! An invasion!
Max – this time I am sure it is Max – walks up to me.
`Jamie’ he says softly, in his best Vulcan. `Jamie, its Ok'
`Fuck off, you’re a body snatcher pod alien thing!’ Someone is standing next to me. If this is not Max, it’s a fucking awesome hallucination. Perhaps I can do a version of lucid dreaming and get him to take his clothes off. Perhaps he has a massive green horse cock wrapped around his thigh. `Jamie?’ someone takes me with infinite tenderness by the shoulders, `Come home.’
-
Patroclus76
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- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
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dearests
Jamie's journey is almost over - we come to it at last - will he merge effortlessly into the first series in such a way that most us will think, `yes, wait a minute, I do remember someone like that' or will he vanish....
Many thanks to everyone who has followed the poor boys hapless adventures -
Patroclus the Younger.
Jamie's journey is almost over - we come to it at last - will he merge effortlessly into the first series in such a way that most us will think, `yes, wait a minute, I do remember someone like that' or will he vanish....
Many thanks to everyone who has followed the poor boys hapless adventures -
Patroclus the Younger.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat Jul 15, 2006 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
- Addicted Roswellian
- Posts: 178
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:02 pm
- Location: Bristol, UK
- Contact:
I wake up in a very white room, momentarily brilliant and am instantly convinced I have died. I do not recognise where I am, but as my eyes focus I see Max sitting to my side, leaning down, resting his face in his hands, like he is waiting in an airport or a train station. He is wearing a tight, well-made shirt with the top three or four buttons undone, so I can see down into the curved, corded muscles of his inner pectorals before they disappear into the dark of the fabric and his lower stomach. The shirt is a deep cobalt blue, and it gives his tanned skin an incredible sheen as if it has been oiled. There is something ethereal about him with this shirt on, something powerful and exotic.
Sunlight catches the liquid veins of blue across his shoulders, and I think of luminous creatures deep in the ocean, phantoms of light, intricate and delicate, luring their prey with their brilliance. If I have died then I have clearly gone to heaven. Perhaps I shall have Max entirely to myself and none of this fucking alien chaos anymore. I will not have to worry about Liz turning up with a telescope in one hand and a bullet in the other. Or Michael crashing about without warning. Or my parents. He is my angel. I look at him for what seems an infinity.
I then focus on the room. It is a big bedroom at the back of a house, a bungalow, probably. It is early afternoon and the double window is full of bright, warm golden light. Through a partially closed Venetian blind I can see a tree and what seems to be a substantial garden. There is a desk opposite, dominated by a computer and several piles of books and several posters – a large one of the Hubble telescope. There is a photograph of Alex and Liz standing together at an art exhibition. Alex is grinning and Liz, side on, is doing her `I am really bashful, really’ pose. I carefully reconsider the death issue. Perhaps I am not quite dead. I am in Alex’s bedroom, and in all probability, Alex’s bed. I look about carefully to make sure that Alex isn’t in here with me. I then look at Max intensely. He hasn’t moved. He is asleep.
Recently my life has been a bit surreal. Max can’t be here of course, I just have a fucking awesome imagination, and as my life has gone dark and chaotic, my imagination has become finely tuned, like a high definition TV. God I can even smell him, he is so close to me. In this beatific, possibly post-death vision, Max and I are one. I look at him, sitting solidly, his legs spread so each buttock is probably taking their fair share of his weight. He is wearing grey canvas jeans and retro tennis shoes with ankle socks. The small strip of flesh between the hem of his jeans and his socks is incredibly, ball-drainingly sexy.
He is unconscious of me looking at him, unprepared. I want to paint him, or eat him, I want this moment to last forever, and this is the first time in my life I have ever consciously felt that. Jesus. Again I am dazzled by the shirt, like a moth to the flame. I have not seen the shirt before, I have not seen the way it contours his front deltoids so delicately that they are shaded like a charcoal sketch. I think disconcertingly of Blake – did he smile his work to see, did he who made the lamb make thee?
So Max is a fucking hot alien? Wow. And he is watching over me - did he strip me off and wash me? As I start to get a semi hard-on I become aware that I am wearing blue striped pyjamas, which, even if I am dead, and even if Max washed me, are pretty fucking horrible and about as sexy as Liz Parker’s hat. I have to get rid of them before Max sees me again. Yet as the thought take shape god boy wakes up, no doubt because his right elbow has just slipped off his knee and his head has collapsed downwards, making him bite his tongue. He jumps up and shakes his head.
‘Hey!’ he says, to himself, to no one in particular. His eyes are momentarily tired and sleepy, and his hair, randomly thrown by his waking jolt, has fallen chaotically over his forehead. He looks dishevelled, seductively post coital, sickeningly gorgeous. This is a fantastically real vision, even by my levels of play station level 9 interaction. Perhaps I can manipulate him to peel the shirt off and climb in next to me (and get rid of the fucking Rupert bear jimmy jams in the process). I think this through very carefully, imagining his broad shoulders hatching out as the shirt falls from him. Nothing happens. Max rubs his eyes and looks so boyish that I want to die – but then I am possibly already dead.
‘Hey Jamie, how are you feeling now?’ He stands up, drags a cane chair closer to the bed and looks at me with undisguised tenderness, like I am some kind of endangered species or a baby seal about to be clubbed into a fur coat. This is the best, the most wonderful vision or dream I have ever had – and there is no sex in it!
‘I’m fine Max, thanks. I am dead, right?’
Max frowns at me as if I am trying to be funny. Rather coyly he becomes aware that his muscle quilted upper chest is flashing at me rather provocatively. Perhaps he sees me drooling. He closes the fourth button on his shirt very carefully, trying (bless him) to make it look natural. It makes him look even hotter, coy, seductively touching himself as he tries to pretend he is fucking cold or something or that the button has just fallen off.
`Max, leave it, it’s fine, you - you look fine’ I say. He looks up, startled, still fiddling with it.
‘No, you’re not dead, Jamie. You’re in the Whitman’s house and you’ve been out cold for two days, since you called me a fucking green blooded Vulcan pod thingy or something’. This rings a bell of some kind deep in my profoundly fucked up imagination.
‘I called you that?’ I ask weakly, my mouth is dry. So it was Max on the rock.
`Yeah’ he says, his soft voice in the back of his throat, `or maybe it was a body snatching pod thingy, I can’t remember. You were pretty smashed’.
Various slabs of missing time are beginning to re-emerge in my consciousness. Max smiles at me, his dark eyes are luminous. I suddenly remember the hospital, the blood test and the drug fest that led me off to the highway where Max and Liz had crashed. I feel myself going red.
‘Max I am so, so sorry. I am so sorry about everything. I have been a complete idiot!’ If I could, I would now bury my face in my hands, but whoever owns these pyjamas is about three sizes smaller than me so I can’t move my arms. Either that, or Nancy Parker has been round again and tucked me in using one of her special confining tucks for the criminally insane.
‘It’s ok Jamie, its probably better that its worked out this way – Michael and I were going nowhere!’ he smiles mischievously, ‘I just couldn’t really get very enthusiastic about spending time with him in the erasure room any more, Michael gets a bit monotonous.’. He pulls a face and I smile, sitting up with difficulty. I appreciate his attempt at humor.
`So here we are’ I say, like we have just regained consciousness after a party or survived a nuclear war.
In the warm afternoon light it is almost impossible to believe what I now believe.
‘So you really did save Liz, and you really are an alien, you really have those kind of powers, and I really did have a vial of your blood up my ass! '
Max looks vaguely embarrassed but nods anyway, on the grounds that it is pointless denying it. `That was really good of you.’
`No really’; I say, `the pleasure was all mine – any time, I mean it was Michael’s idea, incidentally.’ I add quickly. There is a silence. `I won’t tell anyone, Max, about you being an alien. Do you believe me, if I say that?’
`I do, but Jamie, Alex doesn’t know and you must be very careful here, I mean, staying here, careful not to let anything slip.’
`I will be very, very careful. I would never let anything happen to you, ever - or Michael,’ I feel I ought to say `Isabel’ as well but I have yet to work on my brotherly feelings towards the fucking Prom Ice Queen. I have a go, to make him smile again.
`Or Isabel’ I say it thickly like I have swollen something bitter, and he raises an eyebrows as if to say `yeah, right’. He looks relieved, though, younger now, less cautious. I don’t want him to leave. We are looking at each other, and then he says softly, `I better go and get ready for work, Jamie.’ He stands, his presence quintessentially male, emblematic of everything in men I find sensual, beautiful, addictive. Is this what all male aliens look like on his planet? If so I am fucking off there now. I’ll volunteer to be their first ambassador!
`Max – ‘ I start to say something. What am I going to say? Id scrambles on the internal intercom to ego. Don’t say anything fucking girlie and stupid about LOVING him or wanting to be his best friend. Don’t say anything, and just DON’T Jamie, DON'T give him the puppy dog eyes with the paw moving through the air look. He is still, half turned, his face down as if he is thinking through something. If he were naked, I would see his back turned, curling out from the lower lat muscles like a semi-quaver on a musical score, a line curl of spine.
`Its Ok, you don’t have to worry Jamie. Everything will work out fine, you can be, well – we can be friends.’
`Can we?’ I had not intended to say that out loud,
He glances up and his eyes flash white, setting off in his dark features, shadowed, a half frown. `I want that, don't you?’
I think for a moment. `Of course I do, but I mean, Max – I’m gay and you’re an alien’ I pause. I’m not sure exactly where I am going with this. `And perhaps more to the point you love Liz and she sure as hell loves you, I mean she loves you beyond words and stuff – seriously – I read the journal. And, and you can never feel for me what I feel for you, even though I will behave and stop trying to steal your underwear,and even though I promise to stop sitting outside every classroom waiting for you, come hail or shine, each day, or ringing you and hanging up when your dad answers.’ God, I feel like Madam Butterfly. Waiting, waiting for something that never comes, a consummation I can never have. Max sighs, but he is starting to smile again, as if he has thought of something long ago and far away. His hands are rooted into his pockets, an exquisite, confining gesture as if he wants to make himself unobtrusive, invisible to my desire.
`Michael was always telling me to watch my boxer shorts, especially the white lycra cotton mix ones, the tight ones – I thought he was nuts!’
`You have lycra-cotton mixed boxer shorts? Tight ones?’ I say through a sort of strangled voice, not indifferent to this news I try to pretend that all my blood has not rushed into my groin. He suddenly changes the subject.
`I am not sure that Liz and I will work out, Jamie.’ This time he is not speaking to me.
`I beg to differ, Max. You’re half human, whatever the other half, half human is enough, and I know Liz enough to know she will get what she wants, whatever it takes, and she wants you.’ Where all this heaviness has come from,I am not sure – perhaps it’s the sort of mock Victorian death scene feel, with me in bed and Max as Heathcliff. Perhaps its because I have to get Max into some form of perspective in my life, if I am to come through this alive at all. Perhaps it’s because I fear to lose him without ever trying to express myself. `I mean, Max, however inappropriate, I love you as well’. Max turns away from the door, and looks at me with sudden resolve.
`Do you?’ This is a rhetorical question, I can tell by the inflection. `Or do you just want in my pants?’ Is Max flirting with me?
`Well – it started out like that – the boxer short issue – but it sort of moved on from there’ When does lust give way to longing, when does longing give way to love, and where is friendship in all this? How long and odd was the journey from sex to soul, and how bewildering it makes me feel.
`But if I had been fat and ugly, Jamie.’ He is flirting! He smiles and coyly lowers his eyes behind heavy lashes.The bastard!
`You would not have been Max, but look, ok – I just needed to say this. I love you but I’ll stop being a crazy bastard. Well I’ll try!, and I'lllove you and Liz will love you' I leave Michael out. It already sounds rather crowded. He is scrutinising me.
'You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you? OK, I do love Liz, I love her more than anything in this world, even though everything is now completely fucked up.’
I take this news stoically. I have my `Dear John letter’ look on my face. I look up slightly, at Max’s hair, so he can’t see me getting all girlie and weepy.
`Kewl, then tell her for fuck’s sake. She needs to know something, and soon! Just tell her’ Fuck the ease of straight courtship!
I change the subject slightly. `Did you come and fetch me the other night? Or did I hallucinate it all?’
Max, whose mind has been on Liz for a moment, looks at me. `Yes, I came looking for you. I figured you would go there. When I went to your house I found my blood vial and the microscope. I figured you had put two and two together.’
`Thanks Max, that was really thoughtful. I was way out of control’
`Yeah’ he turned to face me. His hands in his pockets makes him look solid, it broadens his shoulders and narrows his waist, he is stylised, an anime sketch of a boy. `You kept trying to kiss me all the way home’ he did a mock grimace and bit his lip.
`Shit, did I?’ I ask but he laughs. `Did I succeed?'
`You mean you can't remember?' He is enjoying himself. `But that’s our little secret!' he says quickly, `and we can only be friends if you stop obsessing about me, and..’ he straightens his face in a sort of exaggerated seriousness. `if you stop stalking me. But – you are the sort of fourth alien now and if we’re friends you won’t have to!’
I nod bravely. If only it was as easy as that! I will always want to touch him. Forget the rampant sex and the body fluids. In the end it comes down to that, something so small and yet so infinately impossible – a touch of the cheek, my hand in his. I smile broadly, like I have been let into a gang or a secret society. I think back t the moment we met, Max stud, gym jock, asking me to give his shirt back.
Max is doing something. He has removed his hands and is undoing the belt to his jeans. I am partly thinking about how I shall go about disguising my new alien identity (and what outfit I should wear) and partly watching Max unbutton his flies and, loosening the waist, letting his jeans fall off him. I hear the buckle hit the floor. I see, brilliant against the corded muscle of his thighs, the white of some incredibly well fitting lycra-cotton boxer shorts. He looks at me with a sort of daring smile and peels the shorts off, an elegant, smooth, almost effortless gesture, like a sort of mock strip tease. He pouts his lips. Leaning forward to balance as he slips them down his legs, the neon blue shirt tails momentarily part and I catch a glimpse of a dark, neat smudge of pubic hair, and his flat, toned lower stomach.
`Max what the fuck are you doing?’
`Here – have these – a token of my affection, a few days old, and they have a nice shape to them’ He throws a now very small pair of pants at me. I have no been able to breath for a minute or so and small black dots are SWARMING in front of my eyes. I can already smell the hot, spicy fabric from here. In a series of seamless feline movements, Max slips his jeans back on, and is surreptitiously tucking his shirt back in, `but whatever you do, don’t the fuck tell Michael because they’re actually his and they're fucking expensive!’ Max winks at me and turning, leaves me in the room. I wait a polite three seconds until I jump out of bed and rush off to the bathroom.
THE END
Sunlight catches the liquid veins of blue across his shoulders, and I think of luminous creatures deep in the ocean, phantoms of light, intricate and delicate, luring their prey with their brilliance. If I have died then I have clearly gone to heaven. Perhaps I shall have Max entirely to myself and none of this fucking alien chaos anymore. I will not have to worry about Liz turning up with a telescope in one hand and a bullet in the other. Or Michael crashing about without warning. Or my parents. He is my angel. I look at him for what seems an infinity.
I then focus on the room. It is a big bedroom at the back of a house, a bungalow, probably. It is early afternoon and the double window is full of bright, warm golden light. Through a partially closed Venetian blind I can see a tree and what seems to be a substantial garden. There is a desk opposite, dominated by a computer and several piles of books and several posters – a large one of the Hubble telescope. There is a photograph of Alex and Liz standing together at an art exhibition. Alex is grinning and Liz, side on, is doing her `I am really bashful, really’ pose. I carefully reconsider the death issue. Perhaps I am not quite dead. I am in Alex’s bedroom, and in all probability, Alex’s bed. I look about carefully to make sure that Alex isn’t in here with me. I then look at Max intensely. He hasn’t moved. He is asleep.
Recently my life has been a bit surreal. Max can’t be here of course, I just have a fucking awesome imagination, and as my life has gone dark and chaotic, my imagination has become finely tuned, like a high definition TV. God I can even smell him, he is so close to me. In this beatific, possibly post-death vision, Max and I are one. I look at him, sitting solidly, his legs spread so each buttock is probably taking their fair share of his weight. He is wearing grey canvas jeans and retro tennis shoes with ankle socks. The small strip of flesh between the hem of his jeans and his socks is incredibly, ball-drainingly sexy.
He is unconscious of me looking at him, unprepared. I want to paint him, or eat him, I want this moment to last forever, and this is the first time in my life I have ever consciously felt that. Jesus. Again I am dazzled by the shirt, like a moth to the flame. I have not seen the shirt before, I have not seen the way it contours his front deltoids so delicately that they are shaded like a charcoal sketch. I think disconcertingly of Blake – did he smile his work to see, did he who made the lamb make thee?
So Max is a fucking hot alien? Wow. And he is watching over me - did he strip me off and wash me? As I start to get a semi hard-on I become aware that I am wearing blue striped pyjamas, which, even if I am dead, and even if Max washed me, are pretty fucking horrible and about as sexy as Liz Parker’s hat. I have to get rid of them before Max sees me again. Yet as the thought take shape god boy wakes up, no doubt because his right elbow has just slipped off his knee and his head has collapsed downwards, making him bite his tongue. He jumps up and shakes his head.
‘Hey!’ he says, to himself, to no one in particular. His eyes are momentarily tired and sleepy, and his hair, randomly thrown by his waking jolt, has fallen chaotically over his forehead. He looks dishevelled, seductively post coital, sickeningly gorgeous. This is a fantastically real vision, even by my levels of play station level 9 interaction. Perhaps I can manipulate him to peel the shirt off and climb in next to me (and get rid of the fucking Rupert bear jimmy jams in the process). I think this through very carefully, imagining his broad shoulders hatching out as the shirt falls from him. Nothing happens. Max rubs his eyes and looks so boyish that I want to die – but then I am possibly already dead.
‘Hey Jamie, how are you feeling now?’ He stands up, drags a cane chair closer to the bed and looks at me with undisguised tenderness, like I am some kind of endangered species or a baby seal about to be clubbed into a fur coat. This is the best, the most wonderful vision or dream I have ever had – and there is no sex in it!
‘I’m fine Max, thanks. I am dead, right?’
Max frowns at me as if I am trying to be funny. Rather coyly he becomes aware that his muscle quilted upper chest is flashing at me rather provocatively. Perhaps he sees me drooling. He closes the fourth button on his shirt very carefully, trying (bless him) to make it look natural. It makes him look even hotter, coy, seductively touching himself as he tries to pretend he is fucking cold or something or that the button has just fallen off.
`Max, leave it, it’s fine, you - you look fine’ I say. He looks up, startled, still fiddling with it.
‘No, you’re not dead, Jamie. You’re in the Whitman’s house and you’ve been out cold for two days, since you called me a fucking green blooded Vulcan pod thingy or something’. This rings a bell of some kind deep in my profoundly fucked up imagination.
‘I called you that?’ I ask weakly, my mouth is dry. So it was Max on the rock.
`Yeah’ he says, his soft voice in the back of his throat, `or maybe it was a body snatching pod thingy, I can’t remember. You were pretty smashed’.
Various slabs of missing time are beginning to re-emerge in my consciousness. Max smiles at me, his dark eyes are luminous. I suddenly remember the hospital, the blood test and the drug fest that led me off to the highway where Max and Liz had crashed. I feel myself going red.
‘Max I am so, so sorry. I am so sorry about everything. I have been a complete idiot!’ If I could, I would now bury my face in my hands, but whoever owns these pyjamas is about three sizes smaller than me so I can’t move my arms. Either that, or Nancy Parker has been round again and tucked me in using one of her special confining tucks for the criminally insane.
‘It’s ok Jamie, its probably better that its worked out this way – Michael and I were going nowhere!’ he smiles mischievously, ‘I just couldn’t really get very enthusiastic about spending time with him in the erasure room any more, Michael gets a bit monotonous.’. He pulls a face and I smile, sitting up with difficulty. I appreciate his attempt at humor.
`So here we are’ I say, like we have just regained consciousness after a party or survived a nuclear war.
In the warm afternoon light it is almost impossible to believe what I now believe.
‘So you really did save Liz, and you really are an alien, you really have those kind of powers, and I really did have a vial of your blood up my ass! '
Max looks vaguely embarrassed but nods anyway, on the grounds that it is pointless denying it. `That was really good of you.’
`No really’; I say, `the pleasure was all mine – any time, I mean it was Michael’s idea, incidentally.’ I add quickly. There is a silence. `I won’t tell anyone, Max, about you being an alien. Do you believe me, if I say that?’
`I do, but Jamie, Alex doesn’t know and you must be very careful here, I mean, staying here, careful not to let anything slip.’
`I will be very, very careful. I would never let anything happen to you, ever - or Michael,’ I feel I ought to say `Isabel’ as well but I have yet to work on my brotherly feelings towards the fucking Prom Ice Queen. I have a go, to make him smile again.
`Or Isabel’ I say it thickly like I have swollen something bitter, and he raises an eyebrows as if to say `yeah, right’. He looks relieved, though, younger now, less cautious. I don’t want him to leave. We are looking at each other, and then he says softly, `I better go and get ready for work, Jamie.’ He stands, his presence quintessentially male, emblematic of everything in men I find sensual, beautiful, addictive. Is this what all male aliens look like on his planet? If so I am fucking off there now. I’ll volunteer to be their first ambassador!
`Max – ‘ I start to say something. What am I going to say? Id scrambles on the internal intercom to ego. Don’t say anything fucking girlie and stupid about LOVING him or wanting to be his best friend. Don’t say anything, and just DON’T Jamie, DON'T give him the puppy dog eyes with the paw moving through the air look. He is still, half turned, his face down as if he is thinking through something. If he were naked, I would see his back turned, curling out from the lower lat muscles like a semi-quaver on a musical score, a line curl of spine.
`Its Ok, you don’t have to worry Jamie. Everything will work out fine, you can be, well – we can be friends.’
`Can we?’ I had not intended to say that out loud,
He glances up and his eyes flash white, setting off in his dark features, shadowed, a half frown. `I want that, don't you?’
I think for a moment. `Of course I do, but I mean, Max – I’m gay and you’re an alien’ I pause. I’m not sure exactly where I am going with this. `And perhaps more to the point you love Liz and she sure as hell loves you, I mean she loves you beyond words and stuff – seriously – I read the journal. And, and you can never feel for me what I feel for you, even though I will behave and stop trying to steal your underwear,and even though I promise to stop sitting outside every classroom waiting for you, come hail or shine, each day, or ringing you and hanging up when your dad answers.’ God, I feel like Madam Butterfly. Waiting, waiting for something that never comes, a consummation I can never have. Max sighs, but he is starting to smile again, as if he has thought of something long ago and far away. His hands are rooted into his pockets, an exquisite, confining gesture as if he wants to make himself unobtrusive, invisible to my desire.
`Michael was always telling me to watch my boxer shorts, especially the white lycra cotton mix ones, the tight ones – I thought he was nuts!’
`You have lycra-cotton mixed boxer shorts? Tight ones?’ I say through a sort of strangled voice, not indifferent to this news I try to pretend that all my blood has not rushed into my groin. He suddenly changes the subject.
`I am not sure that Liz and I will work out, Jamie.’ This time he is not speaking to me.
`I beg to differ, Max. You’re half human, whatever the other half, half human is enough, and I know Liz enough to know she will get what she wants, whatever it takes, and she wants you.’ Where all this heaviness has come from,I am not sure – perhaps it’s the sort of mock Victorian death scene feel, with me in bed and Max as Heathcliff. Perhaps its because I have to get Max into some form of perspective in my life, if I am to come through this alive at all. Perhaps it’s because I fear to lose him without ever trying to express myself. `I mean, Max, however inappropriate, I love you as well’. Max turns away from the door, and looks at me with sudden resolve.
`Do you?’ This is a rhetorical question, I can tell by the inflection. `Or do you just want in my pants?’ Is Max flirting with me?
`Well – it started out like that – the boxer short issue – but it sort of moved on from there’ When does lust give way to longing, when does longing give way to love, and where is friendship in all this? How long and odd was the journey from sex to soul, and how bewildering it makes me feel.
`But if I had been fat and ugly, Jamie.’ He is flirting! He smiles and coyly lowers his eyes behind heavy lashes.The bastard!
`You would not have been Max, but look, ok – I just needed to say this. I love you but I’ll stop being a crazy bastard. Well I’ll try!, and I'lllove you and Liz will love you' I leave Michael out. It already sounds rather crowded. He is scrutinising me.
'You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you? OK, I do love Liz, I love her more than anything in this world, even though everything is now completely fucked up.’
I take this news stoically. I have my `Dear John letter’ look on my face. I look up slightly, at Max’s hair, so he can’t see me getting all girlie and weepy.
`Kewl, then tell her for fuck’s sake. She needs to know something, and soon! Just tell her’ Fuck the ease of straight courtship!
I change the subject slightly. `Did you come and fetch me the other night? Or did I hallucinate it all?’
Max, whose mind has been on Liz for a moment, looks at me. `Yes, I came looking for you. I figured you would go there. When I went to your house I found my blood vial and the microscope. I figured you had put two and two together.’
`Thanks Max, that was really thoughtful. I was way out of control’
`Yeah’ he turned to face me. His hands in his pockets makes him look solid, it broadens his shoulders and narrows his waist, he is stylised, an anime sketch of a boy. `You kept trying to kiss me all the way home’ he did a mock grimace and bit his lip.
`Shit, did I?’ I ask but he laughs. `Did I succeed?'
`You mean you can't remember?' He is enjoying himself. `But that’s our little secret!' he says quickly, `and we can only be friends if you stop obsessing about me, and..’ he straightens his face in a sort of exaggerated seriousness. `if you stop stalking me. But – you are the sort of fourth alien now and if we’re friends you won’t have to!’
I nod bravely. If only it was as easy as that! I will always want to touch him. Forget the rampant sex and the body fluids. In the end it comes down to that, something so small and yet so infinately impossible – a touch of the cheek, my hand in his. I smile broadly, like I have been let into a gang or a secret society. I think back t the moment we met, Max stud, gym jock, asking me to give his shirt back.
Max is doing something. He has removed his hands and is undoing the belt to his jeans. I am partly thinking about how I shall go about disguising my new alien identity (and what outfit I should wear) and partly watching Max unbutton his flies and, loosening the waist, letting his jeans fall off him. I hear the buckle hit the floor. I see, brilliant against the corded muscle of his thighs, the white of some incredibly well fitting lycra-cotton boxer shorts. He looks at me with a sort of daring smile and peels the shorts off, an elegant, smooth, almost effortless gesture, like a sort of mock strip tease. He pouts his lips. Leaning forward to balance as he slips them down his legs, the neon blue shirt tails momentarily part and I catch a glimpse of a dark, neat smudge of pubic hair, and his flat, toned lower stomach.
`Max what the fuck are you doing?’
`Here – have these – a token of my affection, a few days old, and they have a nice shape to them’ He throws a now very small pair of pants at me. I have no been able to breath for a minute or so and small black dots are SWARMING in front of my eyes. I can already smell the hot, spicy fabric from here. In a series of seamless feline movements, Max slips his jeans back on, and is surreptitiously tucking his shirt back in, `but whatever you do, don’t the fuck tell Michael because they’re actually his and they're fucking expensive!’ Max winks at me and turning, leaves me in the room. I wait a polite three seconds until I jump out of bed and rush off to the bathroom.
THE END
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat Jul 15, 2006 5:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Patroclus76
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guys - many thanks for your support and postings as Haulden finally backed into the same room as his hero. I really enjoyed writing this, Ilove this sort of farce, very British in some of its logic (misunderstandings, slap stick) I would love to update you with Haulden as he goes through his life never really escapng the first love of his life - I have an idea, just a sort of vague out of the corner of the eye idea, encouraged by DBT as ever that Haulden ends up studying genetics ina certain state next to certain mansion containing a certain professor and a certain dressing gown - but let us see.
You are a super crowd - transformative is the only word.
You are a super crowd - transformative is the only word.