Bourne on the Backs of Humanity
"I think I'd settle for a cup of coffee."
Stevie, at 29-going-on-50.
I sigh and push my glasses up the slope of my nose, shoving them up to the bridge, "I could have just settled on a nice, empty-headed twink, you know."
He snaps his gum, looks over his shoulder. Perfect, shuttered Lolita eyes peer confidently back at me from under a recently streaked shock of hair "And what kind of fun would a twink be for you? You'd stick your cock in it, pat its head, and tell it that it's a silly child frequently. It would be a Chow dog, not a lover."
I open my mouth to refute him and he raises an opened palm: "And don't give me that S&M he-man bullshit, darling. I told you, I'd settle for a cup of coffee."
I chew on my tongue. Knowing that I could have had anyone else in the entire company, spending years making him mine, have given him a sense of humor about everything about me.
I fucking swear on a stack of Bibles or Torahs or whatever you want to hold sacred...(and he told me this story, so I can't exactly prove that it's true, but I press on): on one of my "coked up" nights, I pulled a switchblade on him and threatened to cut his throat out.
He told me that he just laughed.
I was aghast. "I could've killed you! Why the hell did you laugh?"
His smirk is flip as his long-standing attitude. "It's like I told you that night; if you kill me, you go to jail. You go to jail, you get fucked up the ass. And we both know how you LOVE that."
I winced then and I wince now, thinking about it. And he pinpoints me with those blue eyes and says, quite matter-of-factly, "We need to decide where this relationship is going, Scotty."
I slap my face with the palm of my hand. "I need a cigarette," I proclaim.
"You quit last year."
My blood quickens at the mere mention of tobacco, "So? I'm starving for a little stimulation here."
He cringes and crawls up on his knees. "Touché. Just for that, we HAVE to have the serious relationship talk now."
I grunt and grind a knuckle into my sleep-filled eyes, "You drive a man beyond all thought of caution, Richards."
"That's what they all say," He snorts, climbing out of bed and walking into the kitchen.
After my nicotine craving is placated by a surfeit of food, he looks into my eyes and insists, "Now."
I grunt; he's not afraid of anything, so what the hell's the use? "What? What do you want?"
He leans back against the farthest bedpost. "We need to decide where this relationship is going, Scott."
"Now?"
"Now."
"It's just fine," I go on the defense. "I don't see anything wrong with it."
He sighs deeply, "You want to know the truth? I'm sick of the layers between us." He picks up a pair of a pair of discarded handcuffs and tosses them onto the bed, where they land with a jingle. "This." He points across the room to the rack, "That." He closes his eyes, "I want to know what it's like to touch you without something holding me in place." His eyes meet mine, "Haven't you ever wondered what it's like without the games to reign us in?"
I can't meet his eyes. Should I bark an order; something to put him back in on the leash and keep the world in its usual, dreary sense of order?
His face falls a bit, "I...I can't live like this, Scott. Not any more. I can't go on pretending to be afraid when I've grown this much. I can't play the little bitch because it doesn't suit me any more. It was all an act, Scotty. Don't you remember that it was all an act at the beginning?"
"Everything you felt for me was an act," My voice holds its warning tone, even as my heart crashes to the floor in a horrific mess.
"How could you even suggest that?!," he hisses, the same sound he makes when I beat him, "You know how much this relationship meant to me, and it still means to me."He gestured desperately, "Don't you understand what I mean? I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME."
The words are so painfully spoken, so plaintive, that I reach up and cup his cheek. He turns away from me. Tears trickle down and coat my fingers.
"Stevie.." I begin, but there are no words. I feel a gap yawn between us: the empty artifice of the sex I had demanded for years standing in the divide of tender feelings he's ached for the entire time, "You know that..all of it...is my way of saying I love you."
He laughs, "Love? This isn't love; this is fucking." The truth seems to slap him suddenly in the face, "Fucking and love are not mutually exclusive. I know what love is; remember what we were like, before we crawled into these parts? The tenderness and the closeness? You were a gentleman, Scott, until the drugs came along. I thought it'd all end when you went to rehab, but now it's worse than it was then; you're not even doing it out of being drunk. You're doing it to maintain the quota."
"Why the hell are you bitching about..."
"..Because I WANT it. Don't you understand?! Can't you feel it? I want you to love me!" He closed his eyes, "I know what love is, Scott; I've seen it through the eyes of a million different people; all of our friends. And you know, we don't have to be like them, but I want it. I want the simplest thing in the world and you can't give it to me. Instead, you give me bruises, bruises everywhere!" He laughs then, bitterly.
"You're not going to go anywhere, Richards." I snap.
He laughs again, and at once I'm immobile. I don't stop him when he dresses and just leaves me.
Just like that, walks away.
Months later, I see him in the arms of a friend in the lobby of a hotel. It's a gothic-style place in Louisianna that serves cantoneese, decorated wholly with iron. God, does he look happy; there isn't a fucking mark on his face. It's such a pure, sweet expression that he wears. And he's not even aware that I'm watching him. But I watch and watch, amazed that meekness can metamorphous into convident joviality.
It smacks me across the face this time, as I turn around and walk away, self preservation driving me across the face. That he was right; that he just wanted me to love him. Wasn't about to lie down and die for it, that all of the shit he allowed me to do to him was in the hope of trying to get back what we'd had very briefly in the beginning of the relationship. That all of the games we played were my way of putting distance between us, because I was afraid of touching him without it. But he wasn't going to settle for less. We were screwed from the first. And it's better this way.
Yet I wonder if he thinks of me, sometimes. If he'll ever understand that he taught me the greatest lessons I've ever learned.
Jefferson had it right. Mankind was not born to bear the weight of itself upon its back.