Chapter 23 - Abnegation.
Jesse hit the curb a little harder than expected and his longboard went flying out from under his feet. He quickly tucked his shoulder under before he hit the cement sidewalk, rolling through the momentum of the fall, until he came to a stop next to a newspaper box chained to a light post. When he looked up, there was a pair of crystal blue eyes staring down at him filled with worry.
“Hey, Uncle Justin!” Jesse waved up at the starer.
“Very graceful there, Jesse ! What the hell do you do for an encore?” Justin reached out a hand to give his nephew some help up. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Enh . . . Not bad. I’ll live.” The teen bent to brush off the knees of his jeans and winced a little when he encountered a sore spot. “What are you doing down here, Unc? Did you have a premonition that I was going to wipe out on my board and come to save me? Or is this just a social visit?”
“If I had to come save you every time you fell off that thing I’d never be able to get any rest, kiddo.” Justin helped by dusting some dirt off the boy’s rear as he teased him. “Are you sure you don’t want to take up a less dangerous hobby - something that won’t give me a heart attack every time I see you falling on your ass? Maybe quilting? Or stamp collecting? Even video gaming would be preferable since at least then you’d be sitting down more of the time.”
“You always give me shit about gaming too much and tell me to go out and get some air. So now you’re going to tell me to go back to my room? Hah! Give it up, Justin. At least until my ‘rents get me a car, this longboard is my primary means of transportation, so you’re just going to have to live with it, Dude.”
“Hmmmm. I’m not sure I want you driving either. That sounds almost as dangerous. How about we just lock you in a bubble for the next five years or so?” the older blond kidded as he followed his teenaged nephew to retrieve the wayward longboard from where it had rolled up onto a nearby patch of dirt.
“Don’t think so, Unc!” Jesse said with that signature ’fuck you’ look that all teens seem to possess when they think the adults around them are being ridiculous.
Justin was still chuckling at the kid’s scornful face as Jesse bent over to pick up his board. The laughter died away pretty quickly though when the teen dropped the board, moaned and raised his hand to one temple as if he was suddenly dizzy. Justin was there with a steadying hand almost immediately.
“What’s wrong? Did you hit your head when you fell? Let me see,” Justin helped the boy to sit down on the curb, hovering worriedly over him until Jessie waved him away.
“I’m fine. It’s just a headache,” Jesse complained, swatting Justin’s hand away when he tried to tilt the youth’s head back. “Stop pawing at me.”
“Why would you have a headache? Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
“Shit, Justin! Don’t you have someone else to haunt this afternoon other than me?” Jesse swore, shaking his head gingerly and getting back up to his feet in order to show his friend that he was fine. “It’s nothing. I just stood up too fast, or something, and got dizzy. I’ll be fine.” He once again bent over to pick up the abandoned board, this time without any problems. “Now, did you just come see me to hover and be annoying? Or was there some actual purpose to your visit?”
“Shit! I hate when you guys go through the teen years. You’re always such cunts,” Justin snarked back, causing Jesse to break into a grin seeing as his guardian spirit was perpetually seventeen himself.
“Whatever!” Jesse hiked his board over his right shoulder and started walking down the street with his invisible uncle following. “I’m afraid to actually ask this, but ‘how’s Brian’?”
“Brian’s a fucking handful. Worse than a teenager, by far,” Justin sounded and looked dejected, dragging his feet as the two boys walked along side by side. “Last night he got pissed off that HIS cat coughed up a furball in his favorite pair of Prada shoes and he blamed it on ME. And just to be extra disagreeable about it, he went on this total bender. I finally had to drag his ass home at four am. It’s a good thing I don’t actually need sleep because I’m sure as hell not getting any since I decided to start stalking him.” Justin ran his hand through this hair - a nervous gesture left over from his life - and cringed. “Frankly, I’m not sure that my being there is doing any good. He’s still lonely and self-destructive. But I don’t know what else I can do.”
“Maybe there’s nothing you CAN do, dude. I mean, maybe this is just his life, you know. Maybe he’s not meant to be anything else.”
“No. I can’t accept that. I just can’t, Jesse. Brian is . . . He’s not meant to be like this. He’s got this huge fucking heart and he can be so sweet. But he’s just been hurt so often that he’s hidden it away,” Justin insisted, his conviction ringing out in his words. “I used to think that he’d get over it all by himself. That, once he got away from his horrible parents, he’d heal. You know? But it’s been years and he’s still so closed off. So lonely. So scared. And he fights everything that might make him better because he’s too frightened to let himself even try to be happy. I know that this isn’t all that’s in store for him. I just know it.”
“Yeah, well, you might think you know something that the rest of us don’t see, dude, but that’s cause you’ve got a little extra help from the universe. The rest of us poor schmuck’s can only go on what we see and hear with our puny human senses. So it’s not that big of a surprise that your Brian doesn’t believe there’s anything more out there for him than what he’s already experienced,” Jesse tried to explain his perspective. “I imagine that Brian feels a lot like I do sometimes - wondering if this is all my life’s ever going to be? Wondering if this is the best I can expect? And, if so, why I’m bothering?”
“Oh, Jesse,” Justin reached an arm around the young man’s shoulders to comfort him. “You can’t think that way. You’re still so young. You can’t expect to have an amazing, fulfilling life at only sixteen. Give it a bit of time, man.”
“I hear ya, and I know you’re probably right, but sometimes I still feel that way,” Jesse offered with a shrug. “It’s like everything in the world is just passing me by. Like I’m not really part of this life. I’m just a placeholder, taking up a spot in the world that will be filled in later, while the rest of the humans on the planet are busy living. And maybe that’s how Brian sees himself too. Like he’s just holding on and waiting for when his life will really start - if it ever does - which gets more and more doubtful as the years go by.”
“Shit, Jess!” Justin squeezed his shoulders even tighter, pulling the boy almost off his feet. “You’re not just a placeholder. You’re you. And someday you’re going to have everything you ever hoped for. You’ll find someone to love you and that will make you feel whole. I just know it.”
“Are you saying this because you’ve actually seen it? Do you have some special insight?” The teen looked over at his friend with a pleading look.
“Well . . . no. I haven’t actually SEEN it,” Justin confessed. “But I’m still sure of it. You’re just being too harsh on yourself, kiddo.”
“Yeah, well, I hope you’re right, Unc,” the youth shrugged off the constricting arms trying to comfort him, threw his longboard down onto the cement sidewalk and rested one foot atop the conveyance. “But, in the meantime, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brian didn’t feel the same way. So what you need to do is find some way to prove to him that he does actually have a life. Find some way to tie him to the NOW or he’ll just keep looking around him feeling left out while he watches the rest of the world pass him by.”
And with that deeply philosophic statement still hanging in the air, the skater boy shook out his shaggy blond mop of hair, grinned boyishly at a still contemplative Justin and waved as he pushed off with his free leg before rolling off down the street and around the corner of the next building without saying any further goodbye.
~**~**~**~**~
Brian was seated at the old, chipped, Formica-topped table in the Novotny kitchen, sipping at a longneck, listening with half an ear while Mikey squawked on and on about some new comic book character or other and waiting while Debbie bustled around getting the food on the table. It felt like a hundred other ‘family dinners’ before, only this time, the family included Lindsey and her girlfriend Mel. It also included Michael’s roommate, Emmett, who was busy discussing decorating tips with the girls. Brian wasn't sure which conversation was more tedious.
Brian was still kicking himself for inviting Lindsey to meet him for lunch at the Liberty Diner a couple of months before. If he had thought about it beforehand, he would have known that Debbie was likely to latch onto the lesbian woman who was having problems with her family accepting her decision to buy a house with her longtime lady lover. Brian had been trying to be an understanding friend - letting her vent to him about how ridiculous her WASP parents were being - but he’d been having a tough time staying sympathetic. The trials and tribulations of the upper class were a little out of his range of experience. He didn’t have much to offer. Lindsey didn’t seem to think his advice to tell her parents to ‘fuck off’ was at all helpful. So Brian had, at the time, been grateful when Debbie stepped in to offer some maternal words of wisdom.
Unfortunately, from that time on, Lindsey had been adopted into the little make-shift family. The two lesbians had now become a regular part of the weekly family dinners. Which meant that Brian was being subjected to far more lesbian drama than he felt comfortable with. Not that he had any way to escape from it though - family dinners were pretty much obligatory and Debbie wouldn’t let him get away with skipping out on them without some really good excuse. His standard, ‘something came up’ said with a sexy wink, definitely wouldn’t cut it. So he sat and listened to the blathering and tried to not fall asleep before the pasta was served.
For once, Brian was almost glad when his usual blond apparition popped into sight, perched on the edge of the kitchen counter right behind Michael’s chair. If nothing else, Justin was a good distraction. The boy seemed in a playful mood this evening too. He was acting like a total goof - making bunny ears behind Michael’s head, imitating his mannerisms as he talked, and pulling weird faces. At one point, the impish blond even blew into Michael’s ear, causing the irritated geek to brush at the side of his face as if to wave off some bug. Brian had the hardest time keeping a straight face. But at least the time flew by after the boy’s appearance.
Once the food had been served and Debbie had finally joined the crew at the table, the various conversations coalesced into one. Which really didn’t help much, since the topic that prevailed was Emmett’s continued search to find a man who was big enough and butch enough to satisfy him. It seemed that Pittsburgh’s tops just weren’t toppy enough for the big nelly queen. Apparently everyone wanted to be a bottom these days, according to Em, who was lamenting again, wondering ‘where had all the REAL men gone?’ Not really a problem that Brian faced.
Justin seemed to be amused by the flamboyant queen’s problems though. “Too bad Em can’t see ME,” the troublesome teen posited with a grin as he moved so he was standing right behind the man’s chair. “I could show him how a real man acts.” Justin laid his hands on Emmett’s shoulders and proceeded to thrust his hips forward and back as if fucking him from behind - complete with facial gestures mimicking a lustful top and even a cry of passion as he reached his climax. “Oh yeah, take it, baby. Take it! Just like that. You know you love it! Oh yeah! Oh. Yeah! Ahhhh!”
Brian burst out laughing, unable to control himself any longer.
Everyone else at the table looked over at him like he was crazy. Brian quickly tried to wipe the smirk off his face. Justin wasn’t helping though, as he mimed collapsing over Emmett’s shoulder with a depraved look on his face and his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Brian covered his mouth with one hand, trying to squelch the giggle that insisted on escaping.
“Well, I’m glad my troubles are so amusing to you, Brian,” Em commented, fanning himself like a southern belle in his pique. “I’m sure you don’t have that problem, but for us bottoms, it really is a struggle you know. Now that being gay is more or less accepted, more and more of the designated tops are fading away. It’s almost like it’s not fashionable to be a top-only these days.”
“Brian certainly doesn’t have that problem. He’s always been a top. As long as all the bottoms don’t disappear, Brian will be just fine,” Michael announced proudly on his friend’s behalf. Knowing that he had a captive and attentive audience, Michael continued to brag on his friend. “In fact, if he wanted, he could probably keep all the bottoms in Babylon busy single-handedly. You should have seen him last weekend. Did you even leave the backroom at all on Friday night, Brian?”
Michael looked over at his best friend with a hero-worshiping look. Brian smirked back, enjoying the glow of adoration he felt. Justin meanwhile was scowling at the pair with disapproval.
Justin wasn’t sure why Michael was rhapsodizing about that particular night. As far as the guardian spirit was concerned, it hadn’t been anything to be proud of. In fact, it had been pretty horrendous from Justin’s point of view.
On the night in question, Brian had been on one of his worst benders. The junior ad exec had had a bad day at work - getting dressed down by his unimaginative and stodgy superior for spicing up a client’s campaign without direction. It didn’t seem to matter that the ads were ten times better the way Brian had designed them. It wasn’t to the boring specifications that the senior ad exec had given him, so it was wrong. Brian hadn’t taken the criticism well. As soon as he left work, he’d hit the closest bar and things had gone downhill from there.
By the time Brian had made it to Babylon and met up with his friends, he was so drunk he could barely stand on his own. Justin was actually amazed that, as wasted as Brian was, he could still fuck. That white powder he was snorting must have been just enough to keep the man on his feet though, and the destructive bender had gone on. Brian hadn’t actually made it out of the backroom for more than an hour and a half, but it wasn’t because of any prodigious feats of virility, it was because he wasn’t steady enough to get up off the couch where he’d collapsed while two twinks were sucking him off. When Michael finally decided it was time to haul Brian home, he basically had to carry the drunken, drugged-out heap to the jeep. Michael also didn’t stay for the real fun after he’d dropped Brian off at his loft - leaving Justin to help the man to the bathroom where he’d spent the better part of an hour puking before passing out on the floor. The adoring best friend had also missed out on the bitch-fest that had followed the next morning as Brian suffered through the ensuing hangover.
Justin couldn’t believe what he was hearing as Michael continued to relate more of Brian’s drunken antics. The rest of the group laughed along at the stories of how much Brian had drank, how many guys he’d drunkenly fucked and how wasted the man was on the way home. This was the type of behavior that Michael apparently found praiseworthy? Why was he encouraging this? Didn’t he see that it was just a veiled cry for help? And why was the rest of the group laughing along? Maybe it might have been funny if it was a one time thing - just a night of excess drinking for fun that had got a little out of hand - but that’s not what this was. This type of thing had become far too commonplace in Brian’s life. It wasn’t good or healthy and it really wasn’t funny anymore. Laughing at it and treating this behavior as somehow not only acceptable but lauded was just enabling Brian’s poor choices.
As he watched, Justin could see even Brian buying into this revisionist retelling of the evening’s events. It completely pissed Justin off. All his efforts to help Brian come to terms with why he did the things he did - to force Brian into being honest with himself - were being negated by the co-dependent version Michael was spouting. He was turning Brian into some vaunted idol instead of helping the desperately angry and hurt man to recognize what was truly motivating these destructive binges. And Brian was getting caught up in Michael’s fantasies and manipulated into actually becoming that fantasy image.
This was not what Justin wanted for Brian. Debbie and Michael had been an important part of Brian’s past. He’d encouraged the friendship with Michael when they were youths because his boy had needed someone to support him and help him. Someone to understand him. Somebody to provide Brian with a safe haven from Jack. Not someone who fed off and encouraged Brian’s neuroses. How was Brian ever going to grow up and turn into the person he was meant to be if someone like Michael was constantly forcing him into the role of drunken playboy? Justin could see that it was time to either wean Brian away from his dependence on these people or, at the very least, to get him some distance.
“Oh, Brian! You’re incorrigible!” Lindsey laughed along with the rest of the group, clearly believing the rosy picture that Michael was painting, just like everyone else.
“It’s a good thing you have Michael so well trained.” Mel at least didn’t sound quite as approving. “Without him as your permanently designated driver, you’d never make it home at night.”
“I’m Brian’s best friend. It’s my job,” Michael chortled with pride, as if being an enabler was a good thing. “We’ve always been a great team. Brian does his Stud thing and I make sure he makes it home safe and sound. That’s just how things work.”
“Well, it sounds to me like you’re more Brian’s babysitter, than a friend,” Mel replied derisively before turning to her partner. “I can’t believe that THIS is the guy you wanted to ask to help us have a baby, Lindz. He’s not grown up enough to be a father yet. I say we go with the fucking sperm bank. At least most of them appear to be adults.”
“What? A baby? What are you talking about?” Debbie sputtered, almost choking on the sip of wine she’d taken.
“Mel . . . I thought we agreed we were going to discuss this in private,” Lindsey reproached her loud-mouthed lover before turning to answer all the questioning looks being directed their way. “Mel and I have been talking about possibly having a baby. We’ve been together for five years and I’m already twenty-eight. If we’re going to have a child, we don’t want to leave it too much later. But we hadn’t really decided on who to ask about helping us.” Lindsey looked over shyly at Brian. “I had only mentioned Brian’s name because we’ve been friends since college and I thought, because of that, he might be willing to make a little donation . . .”
“Who me?” Brian was incredulous. “Are you fucking nuts? I don’t want a kid.”
“The child would be Mel’s and mine, Brian. We’d be the parents. You wouldn’t have to do anything other than provide the sperm,” Lindsey pressed now that the cat was out of the bag.
“No fucking way, Lindz. You do know that just the thought of pussy makes me want to retch, right? That ship sailed a long, long time ago and I don’t want a second voyage,” Brian insisted, pushing his chair back from the table to physically put even more of a distance between himself and this abhorrent new development.
“Trust me, no one wants your dick getting anywhere near a pussy, especially not Lindsey’s, you pig,” Mel responded angrily. “What are you, a fucking moron? Haven’t you heard of artificial insemination?”
“Whatever. I’m definitely NOT interested. My little swimmers aren’t interested either. They’re not going skinny dipping in anybody’s cunt anytime soon,” Brian reiterated with conviction.
“You don’t have to decide right this minute,” Lindsey persisted, apparently unwilling to give up on the idea yet. “I’ve thought about this a lot, you know. We want our child to have the best possible start in life we can give it. Which means that whoever we pick as the father has to be someone who’s smart and healthy and maybe even physically attractive. Admit it, Brian - you’ve got great genes. You know we’d make beautiful babies. Just think about it, will you?”
“You know what - fuck this shit!” Brian shoved all the way away from the table and stood up so fast that his chair toppled over backwards. “You’re fucking insane if you think I’m the least bit interested in this crazy plan of yours, Lindz. I’m so out of here.”
“Brian! Brian, wait! I thought we were going to Woody’s together tonight? Wait up . . .” Michael was hollering after the retreating back, only to have his entreaty ignored and the door slammed on his final plea.
“Shit!” Justin cursed, as he started towards the door himself, following in the wake of the fleeing man who was obviously trying to escape from the very idea of fatherhood. “Looks like it’s going to be another long night.”