Stand Up
This is my third cigarette today.
I stub it out on the curb by the Holiday....No wait, it's the Hilton...then shudder in the cold. It was good while it lasted.
I should be grateful.
Then I wonder if everyone else has ever seen that movie, "The Devil's Rain"? The one with Ernest Borgnine, where he plays the devil? And everyone who follows him melts like a popsicle and has to live in misery forever, separated from happiness like there's a sheet of glass between good and evil?
Sometimes, I feel that way.
God, I wish I could be proud of who I really am, like Dustin. Dustin has guts.
He is who he is.
I watch him through the window separating this patio from the inside of the hotel; He's actively talking to this guy that he's been dating. Someone told me that he's an exec; that he's even Terri's new husband's friend from work. Everything looks easy, as they leave the restaurant, arm and arm, not even caring about the way people stare at them.
Dustin doesn't know it, but he's one of my heroes. Not that he could ever break the Heroic Trinity I've had since I was old enough to think; Daddy, Jesus, and Matt.
Matt, the fucker, has it easy; he's always been a hetero, straight-laced, curtain-sewing man. Women flock to him all of the time, and he has no trouble satisfying them. Now he's got Amy, until we go home to Daddy and have to be a family. Then he spends his time trying to rearrange my life.
Daddy. The man I've always wished I could be like. Who accepts that one of his sons dyes his hair green because "He just in't right since his momma passed on." Who loves me, but probably prays every night that I'll just settle down and find some nice girl to marry, let my hair go brown again and have a couple of grandkids. People he can relate to.
Sorry Daddy; tried it, can't do it. I never wanted to in the first place. If only I could just tell you that.
At least I can escape Matt and Daddy; Jesus is always there, staring down at me from wherever, demanding I do right or melt in the Devil's Rain like John Travolta crossed with Italian ice.
He's there when I cruise the clubs, looking for someone to play with for the night. He was there when Rob and I met for the first time. And He was probably laughing His ass off in triumph when we broke up.
Rob. I could still be with him now, living in a little house, planning for a commitment ceremony, even hauling ass to Vermont and making it legal.
But he wanted me to come out. And I can't.
He couldn't understand why, and I couldn't tell him, so we spent hours screaming at each other. Does he know how lucky he is, to have had a liberal upbringing? To not be afraid of being who he is? I'm still looking over my shoulder for that Big Hammer In The Sky. And he's running around with a rainbow-striped decal in his back window.
"I love you," he told me. "But I don't want to watch you kill yourself." He was actually crying when he said that.
I haven't gotten to that level yet.
As confused as my life can be, I've never had the urge to pick up a gun or a bottle of pills or whatever and just do myself in. Jesus is still looking over my shoulder. Suicide is a sin, after all.
Everything I do is a sin. Especially loving another man.
And that is the saddest thing of all: I really want to be loved.
Sounds like a stupid, girlie little cliché, doesn't it? But it's true; I only want the most basic thing in the world.
Yeah, I know; I get forms of love that I'm grateful for: brother love, paternal love, hero worship, the intensity of which scares me.
But not romantic love. If romantic love really can exist between two guys in their twenties. No, I know it can; it's been handed to me on a silver platter.
But I'm afraid (yes, Jeff Hardy's afraid; hold the presses...) I CAN'T have it until I lose my sense of fear. It won't be fair to anyone else.
Maybe I need help.
Because sitting out on the curb, smoking my fourth cigarette, ranting at Jesus (who's probably really too busy to care about my affairs anyway), I'm no good to anyone. Worse, I'm a detriment to myself. Like Ernest Borgnine in that movie, trying to scratch my way over to the better side of life.
Tobacco stunts your growth; I need to put down roots.
Rubbing the cigarette out on the curb, I get to my feet.