Blake was packing his stuff.

         He always had few belongings. His clothes - several pairs of jeans, ten tees, some undies, a suit, warm parka and a coat - were mostly bought by me. A stack of discs, a framed poster and a remarkably ugly contrabass-shaped candleholder he got from his course mate, Rita. Books were another story. For now, we boxed part of them and will take them to his place, and later I will send the rest with a courier.

         Rita had offered a hand, but Blake had asked her to wait for him at the apartment he had rented. He'd completely fallen out of the habit of spending nights alone. And also, he wanted someone to greet him when he gets home. At least, it will create some illusion that not everything is ruined. Moreover, in the coming days Blake will need a friendly shoulder. Rita's robust black one had long ago become more homelike and staunch than mine.

         "If something does not make you happy, ditch it!" Blake adored getting rid of rubbish…ditching items that were not making him happy. That candleholder, stained with wax and nail-polish, was doing the job for him.

         I was not anymore.

         He went to the bathroom and picked up his razor, toothbrush and shower gel. Except for the books and the coat, all his meager belongings fit into two rucksacks, one dark gray and one black and green, with which he had moved into my place two years ago.

         Two seen-it-all reasoners came out of our storeroom after a biennial sabbatical and went onstage again.

         "You see," the first rucksack said, "those two never had a future."

         "I guess," the other answered, "the second one has no future whatsoever. Just take a look at him."

         I understood that in my imagination two old rucksacks were reproaching me. I tried to smirk at it, but could not. All the furniture in the condo was kind of opposed to me. The cups were deeming me a schmuck. The couch would kick my ass if it could. The lamp was ready to yell, "Let's take it outside, shall we!" Dishwasher's thoughts were better left alone.

         But I had done nothing wrong. Never cheated, never betrayed, never even fought particularly bad. Considering the fact that, as Emmett can confirm, in an idle moment I can make crystal whoopee and maybe a small, cozy orgy, I had been a total goody-goody. I had just failed. I had fucked everything up again. "What a freak you are!" a telepathic message from the wallpaper was saying.

         Blake had asked permission to put on some music, and now my sound system was playing yet another blues tune. I hoped that my ex-boyfriend would take the blues with him, and I would never have to hear it again after he steps outside my door.

         I feel like it all started with the blues.

         No, if I am really allowing myself to up-end all that with the pretense of being objective, our relationship started to end even before it began. If, at a romance kick-off, a guy gives you some GHB and you immediately slip into a coma, it brings on a lot of intrigue, but does not offer much hope. Blake and I were highly unlikely to live happily ever after. Nevertheless, with the first chord of bass guitar, my brain bypassed my wits to make the following conclusion: You fucking, self-involved moron! You totally missed that moment when your partner practically became a stranger!

         I imagined the forthcoming events of the evening. First of mine. So far, I did not want to tell my friends what had happened, not even Emmett. Such confessions are like mirrors placed face to face. You launch the first wave, and it starts to reverberate endlessly. I definitely was not ready for that. I will live through my loss alone somehow, and then order some ad banners at Kinnetic. Rejoice Pittsburgh!! Theodore Schmidt is on the look-out again!

         And Blake will probably sprawl on the floor with Rita as soon as he gets to his place. They will listen to those damned blues of theirs. And Rita will certainly sing as well. She sings loudly. Many times on my way home from work, I could hear her powerful scattings from the street. Then they will probably bake a cake. Rita is over 200 pounds already. It is a distant prospect for Blake, although he's gained some weight in the last six months. But that's none of my business.

         Truth be told, I must acknowledge that it is good for Blake to have a friend. Certainly, our relationship has gone with the cunt wind with her involvement, but that was inevitable, and it is better this way. Everyone needs to have someone by his side in such a moment.

         And certainly, better it be Rita than news that Blake found himself some glamorous peacock and is leaving me for him. Then I would have thought of those two intending to have sex. I would probably have turned on and hated myself for that as well. The thought of having sex with Blake had not really been turning me on for about three months, and a glamorous peacock would have brought so much diversity. I'll hit a club tonight. Not Babylon - I don't want to meet my friends. Some other club. At least I will remind myself what butt-fucking feels like.

***

         "Nobody loves me, nobody seems to care," - the blues dude was croaking. I pictured him in my imagination…sixty something, skinny, black, drunk. He'd be sitting at his grand piano and ranting that nobody loves him. And then he’d drop his pants and a hundred chicks would immediately rush to blow him. Blake was singing along quietly and collecting his workbooks. I was being slowly overwhelmed with anger: at Blake, at the stuck-up prick who wrote that song, at Rita, at myself. I bit my lip and stopped feeling anything again.

         Blake turned off the player, ejected the disc and put it into his bag. Then he sat on the couch next to me and hugged my shoulders. All day I had been catatonic, watching him collecting his stuff. Not a muscle had twitched in my face for hours. Although – no, I am wrong - I had yawned a couple of times. But as soon as I felt Blake's hand on my back, I burst into tears, sobbing my heart out - the way I last sobbed, perhaps in my childhood. Mind you, that I never can be called particularly restrained. I am fucking sick and tired of all that! Forty years of my shitty life with everything always going ass backwards! Why can’t I just be happy?! It seemed to me I was going to flood the downstairs neighbor’s; that is if they didn't call the police before that. I barely choked the impulse to grab hold of Blake's knees and hang on to him as if to never let him go.

         "Come on, you see that it will be better this way," said Blake quietly, when I composed myself a little.

         I nodded. It did not make sense to ask him to stay. And not because he would turn me down. I wanted him to leave. I wanted to drive him and his belongings away and never see them again. To end up in honest solitude would be bliss after all those weeks of tense silence, the attempts not to run into each other in my small condo we were sharing, and to not touch each other lying in one bed.

         The most absurd thing was the fact that we had had sex that morning. And it had been fine. In the recent months the dreariness of our sex had been redeemed only by its rarity. Until that morning, we had not fucked for about a month. And after we did it, I thought ‘Is it possible that things have started to work out?’ I even planned to buy tickets to Miami again; we had had a great vacation there two summers ago. But as soon as we finished our omelet, Blake said, "Teddy, we need to talk."

         And we did.

         Having blown my nose and washed my face, I took the boxes and dragged them down to my car. When we drove to his place and unloaded his stuff, I stopped short of kissing Blake as we stood on the doorstep. It was just out of habit, although it's been a while since we kissed on a doorstep.

         Rita came out to meet us and greeted me compassionately. And, without looking at Blake, my Blake, my dear, beloved, sweet Blake, who was hesitating and not knowing how to close the door on me, I turned around and went down the stairs.

         I was in crippling pain. But the farther from Blake I got, the clearer I felt, not only emptiness, but ease. I was alone at last.

          That night's sleep was appalling. I should have taken that Sven, or whatever his name was, home. But I had anticipated that in half an hour I would want to throw him out of the window just for not letting him torture me by the sight of his face. So I recalled my naive youth and put out in the nearest alley outside the club. My ass had gotten unaccustomed to such treatment in the last two years, and also, I scraped my forehead against the bricks of the wall. But it was exactly what I needed. Stephen (Stanley?) has nothing to do on the ruins of my life; a smarting ass is more than enough.

           But I woke up about a hundred times that night.

           I was plagued by nightmares of breaking up with Blake. In fright, I was starting to grope for him to find solace in his embrace. I wanted to tell him: "Guess what I dreamt of!" Then I recalled he was gone. That was horribly painful, and I, unable to endure it anymore, got up and tried to work. But I failed to concentrate. When the clock struck nine, I called work and told Cynthia I had been throwing up all morning. Without elaborating, it was too true.

           I decided to sort Blake's books from mine. Yesterday we'd already taken to his place all his textbooks, guidelines and everything else related to his psychology classes. Fiction remained. It was not going to be easy to remember what he gave to me and what I gave to him. Collected writings of Dostoevsky were bought by Blake for himself. I opened "The Idiot" and started to thumb the volume. Farewell, Nastasia Filippovna! And you, Prince Myshkin, as well. I shuddered to think how Blake was sobbing at this book.

           We were waiting in the line at airport check-in, all tanned after a vacation with plenty of swimming. Perfect timing for being serene and relaxed. And had not I told him, "Do not take that brick of existential pain with you. Read, say, Wodehouse". No, in that fucking line he was sniffling and shedding tears right onto the book, driving me mad.

          Just before the vacation Blake had entered the university. During the exam prep he was awfully nervous and spread hysterical fluids eight feet around himself. Birds were dropping dead, one third of my hair became grey. And then, at last, he received his SAT results and then the order for admission. High time to have a rest, to relax. And to give me the chance, too. But he took Dostoevsky to the seaside, got upset and wept at the airport. I was not yet aware of what was ahead and what was the real reason of the sobs, otherwise I would have probably played Captain Nemo without a submarine.

           I smiled, recalling that vacation. Actually, but for a headlong collision with masterpieces of world literature, everything was gorgeous. It turned out Blake could not swim. That gave me a great chance to have real fun, splashing and fooling around. I stood chest-deep in the sea, my hands under Blake's stomach, and he paddled and laughed. In the end he managed to remain afloat without my support, and a couple of days later we were swimming together along the coastline and kissing, holding onto a buoy. And in the evenings we used to sit on the sand, holding each other, listening to the wash and looking at the stars or the moon gleam on the water. But after five days or so he apparently got bored with happiness again and started to read Dostoevsky. It was a great metaphor for our relationship at large. Only I had to hit on Kafka.

          Suddenly it dawned to me that I was also weeping over pages of "The Idiot". What a wonder of writing craftsmanship! One does not even need to read the book: you just open it - and burst out sobbing.

           I recalled sitting with Blake at the beach at night. There was nobody around, and only balm crickets were chirping. And Blake offered, "Shall we dance?" I said, "Just like that, without music?" And he goes, "What do you mean, without music? As for me, I hear violins and drums!" And he took my hand, and we started to waltz, laughing and sinking in the sand.

           A year and a half back. Felt like it was a whole lifetime ago.

 ***

           I closed the book and put it into a box. Took the next one. A photo fell out of it:  It was Blake and Rita, hugging. An amusing sight as Rita is both taller and bigger. Her tee is pink with "sexy" set in rhinestones on it and her afro is big enough to hide a watermelon. On the first day of Blake's classes I took him to a restaurant and asked him to tell me everything. I thought I was in for a synopsis of a lecture on the brain and its absence. But instead Blake said, "I met such an engaging girl!"

           Funny, huh? I was the one who drove Blake to the university half an hour before the classes because, otherwise he certainly would have been late as usual. So, he entered the classroom and saw Rita at once. He said it was love at the first sight. Come to think of it, all of Blake's loves are of that kind, why should this one be different. We first met in front of a club, and that was the start of the spin. Some GHB, a little crystal - an enchanting love story. And Rita had got the lecture time wrong, that was why she was sitting there and reading a huge volume of Sheckley. Blake sat next to her to ask what book that was - he will never ever miss a single book - and Rita told him the whole plot. She made some jokes and laughed at them; her laughter makes buildings crumble. Then she gave the book to him, saying that she had nobody to share her impressions with.

           "Is it possible that you have no friends?" Blake asked. And Rita trumpeted: "Gotta hell of a lot of them, but fuck it helps!!!"

           As a matter of fact, in the preceding six months many of my thoughts had been about finding friends for Blake. He had had only rehab colleagues to communicate with, and that had been all about work. I had met him at the get-together of gay skiers, but, as I learned afterwards, he had been there just to fuck with one of them. Having moved in with me, Blake had broken all the contacts with the rectal athletes. Of course I had wanted Blake to find friends in mine. But Emmett had never been able to stomach him, and one can become Brian's friend only accidentally (and after sailing over an ocean of disgust), and with Michael and Ben, everything had been complicated. We'd been to a score of dinners at the Bruckner-Novotny place, but every time Blake opened his mouth, Ben had looked at him with such hideous friendly compassion, that I had wanted to clap a bowl of miso soup on his head. Blake is anything but stupid, but to the PhD,  his discourses about literature had certainly seemed something like the naïve babbling of a toddler who's just heard about Mary and her lamb. And if I had been bending my ear to the babbling with tutorial pride, Ben just had nothing to do with it.

           Sometime a very long time ago, probably, on the occasion of Blake's SAT passing score, we had a small celebration and invited his coworkers. One of the women said to me, "You are everything to him."  Back then, I thought that being everything to someone is a second rate prospect. And also, I wanted my boyfriend to have plenty of hobbies and pleasures of all kinds, especially after all the shit he had in his life before he met me. So I talked him into entering college. I helped him out with the exams. I was personally spending an hour a day doing algebraic equations with him until he passed SAT. I hope that my lectures found a niche in his head, because psychologists study statistics. Basically, I did everything for him to have quite a different life, besides work and myself. And here comes the fulfillment of hopes!

           Blake has quite a different life. But I have no spot in it.

           I asked him if he was going to drop out. His answer, praise God, was, "Of course, not!" I told him I would keep on paying for tuition, but Blake turned me down. He said he would take two more groups at the rehab and hustle on Fridays. I said, "You will not pull off two more groups." And he answers with, "Then I will have to hustle Fridays and Saturdays." Then he convinced me that he would get some grant money, but I will have to call the financial department of the college now and then.

 ***

           Having sorted the books, I put mine back on the shelves. I arranged them first chronologically, then alphabetically, and finally by my personal rating. I took my cell, opened Blake's messages and thumbed through them. ‘Teddy, I'm cooking a duck. I love you more than anything in the world!’ ‘Honey, I'll be home at 8. Luv u!’ ‘Pls get my coat frm drclnrs! <3!’ I pushed "Delete all" and watched the phone swallow the messages one by one.

           Blake was absolutely right yesterday. We were not making it. Together we were just hurting each other. And separately, we will be just fine. Everything is not too bad yet; the last months were worse. Brian will get by without me somehow, because in the last five weeks I was working with barely any weekends off and security was ushering me home. I fucking hated going home because the home was Blake's and mine. And now it is my own. And here, I can do whatever I want, without being afraid of wounding someone's feelings and looking at them, all withered in a puddle of bloody slime.

           Yesterday, Stephan put his card in my pocket. Damn, he happens to be Stuart. I called him and told my address. Apparently, I can never have enough butt ache. But if I have any options, best to let it hurt because of sex.

      "Go slow and be gentle. I've just broken up with my boyfriend and I'm on the rebound," I told Stuart. He gave my knee a pat of compassion and, with the face of St. Panteleimon commiserating to all sinners of the world, honored me with such a ram that I wailed. Here came the gorgeous prospect of sexual rest. It matched the context of the overall situation. Let it be, anyway; my ass had repeatedly proved its durability even in more challenging tribulations…and the lube contained anesthetic.

        Except for the entry misunderstanding, the sex was splendid. Stuart put me through a lot of things I'd long been dreaming of. He bruised my calves with his teeth, left hickeys on inconceivable spots and shot his load all over the bedroom. Or was the load mine? All in all, that was a good boy. Such a grade of intimacy when you do not remember what is whose. I would have asked him to tie me up, but it was scary to do that with Stuart. In recent months I had been dying for dirty, rough and brutal sex, on the wake of which you blush, smile dumbly and look away. I had wanted to tell Emmett about it and hear ‘Uh-oh, I need to go to the bathroom ASAP.’ And for this I needed a brutal stranger, wooly and with a creepy square mug. Someone from the times when I had not yet met. With aching force of will I squelched the thought and returned to the present.

        So, Stuart was just fine - both in the marginal dark of the alley and into the dimmed light of my bedroom. We showered; I made some coffee. Blake had bought some decaf - for me to… Stop, no thoughts of that. Stuart reprimanded me for absence of any beer, and we went back to bed. When I put my head on the chest of that beefy monster, and he hugged me into his large arms I fell asleep at last. And slept till morning, about eight hours in a row. For the first time in quite a long time.

        "Will we hook up again?" my angel of coital love asked me.

        "Sure! Sometime later." A universal formula. By morning angels of coital love become irrelevant.

        I saw him off, listened to myself and understood: that night made me feel way better. I called my cleaning lady, got dressed and drove to work, in hopes that no one would spoil my optimistic attitude by questions like ‘Why hasn’t Blake dropped in for so long’ or ‘Has your wife cured your vomiting by applying a tourniquet?’ Although, certainly, that day I had a splendid way to get distracted from hollow vanities. I just had to shift my focus to the battlefield from which Stuart had withdrawn the night before. I needed to call Emmett to ask whether pharmaceutical brain had invented anything new in last two years to cure a snafu of this kind. And yes, to tell about the chain of events that lead to the contretemps.

***

        I was uncomfortable about meeting my best friend for two reasons. The first one was the possibility of getting overwhelmed by an emotional wave while telling him the news. I badly did not want that to happen. The day before I had not thought about Blake for a few hours in a row and deemed that the secret of my success. Just get him out of my head. At least for the period when any flashback rams my head as Stuart rammed my butt, abruptly and without anesthetics. And then I will be bound to tell that Blake… Yes, ten Stuarts at once rammed me, and those who did not meet a natural opening, made ‘new orifices where there were none before’, like in that Quills movie about Marquis de Sade.

        The second reason was the fact that, in recent months, Emmett and I were communicating sparsely and with a kind of strain. He only had Drew Boyd on his mind; they had moved in together six months before and were having the sweetest period. And if your relationship is currently sucking, you find it hard to look at a face on which a blissful smile of appeased desire shows occasionally through friendly sympathy. Em still wanted to spend time together and was calling me often and inviting me here and there. At first I used to go and stay as long as propriety required. But I had no desire to tell that Blake and I were doing worse and worse still (although Emmett was waiting precisely for this kind of conversation, because he thinks that speaking things out makes people feel better). Stories about Drewsie were like a hot iron on my balls. And there was no spot for anything else in my thoughts. Therefore, we saw each other only once in the past two weeks. And the meeting was making me so ashamed that a flashback of it almost made me throw my phone out of the car window.

        At the time, I was sitting at Kinnetic and drawing up agreements in the quiet of the night. Colleagues had left a long time ago, and I was feeling like a lonely financial wizard. I was making my magic, all focused and composed. In that troubled time, composed focus was much more superior for me than an orgasm, and it used to be difficult to obtain it. And then Emmett came unexpectedly and ruined all the painstakingly conjured charms by his, "Teddy, we need to talk." I told him I was working and had not expected any visitors. And he answered with, "Fine, I will wait for you to finish", sat down and started to thumb through a magazine.

        And what could I tell him? That the life of Teddy the Happy-and-Loved came to its logical conclusion? That I do not want anything, do not believe in shit and just ask to be left alone with my papers? I had to put the agreements aside and ask my best friend what exactly he wanted to tell me. As a matter of fact, Emmett also sometimes had problems he wanted to share. For example, that Drew Boyd started to fart in his sleep. Or a moth ate Emmett's favorite fur coat.

        "I know that your life with Blake is going to pieces," Emmett said. The favorite coat is just fine, and bloat does not threaten to ruin the bastion of love. I shrugged and went back to my agreements. "Listen," my best friend said. "The fact that your life with Blake is about to go up the ass does not mean that you are. You've got work …"

        "And right now," I interrupted, "although ass talk is very captivating, I would like to do that work!" Of course, my life with Blake really was on the doorstep of oblivion, but to hear it like this was excruciatingly painful. Perhaps, I was still having some hopes that I would wake up in the morning and see that everything is the way it used to be a year ago. I feel love, fondness and desire. Blake is glad to see me and wants to spend time together. And then Emmett came and delivered his verdict.

        "You've got your work," he continued. "You've got friends, you've got me. And, the most important thing, you've got yourself!"

        I got fundamentally angry at last and yelled, "For what the fuck do I need myself, Em!!"

        "Fine," my friend answered. "Now you probably do not give a fuck for yourself, but it will change. Meanwhile, at least remember how important you are to me. Although, apparently, you would not give a fuck for that either. But I would!" He decisively walked around my desk, turned around my chair and hugged me.

        Of course, he was afraid I would get hooked on drugs again. I do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat fat and carbs, do not have sex. Theodorus, the Asomatous Angel. I had a fugitive thought that it would be so cool to spit on this perishable earth, shed the chains of flesh and ascend. "Feel free to scream or sing as loud as you want. Because nobody’s listening." I would neither scream nor sing, and I did not care whether anyone heard me. I just wanted that finished.

        I was hugging Emmett and hoping that he would finally go. But he was not going. He was shedding tears on my neck. Finally, I gave way and said to him, "Look, I have not fucked for ages. Stop cuddling me, I am hard already."

        Em got embarrassed as hell. He withdrew, looked at me and said, "If the only thing I can do for you is put my ass out, I am ready to do it. But it seems to me you need something else."

        "Right!" I answered. "I need to finish these agreements." And my best friend, the only ally I still had, left.

        In conclusion, I was sure he would answer my call and come at once. But it was not easy to dial his number.

***

        Nobody bugged me at work. Those who cared had known me for three years, and it was clear to them, why I hung around in the office ad nauseum and then took a sick leave for two days. Brian asked how my bug was going. I answered I was fine, and he reminded me that Babylon was not only bills, and it would be good for me to go there at last. Then he patted my shoulder and handed me a stack of paper, a by-product of the club. I blissfully buried myself in it.

        Emmett's image was saying, "Nobody will see my anxiety, because I am a joyful conspiracy fairy" when he came to have a lunch with me. Pink shirt, glowing smile and not a trace of anger for my recent behavior. He understands everything. We had some coffee, and I delivered a speech, full of vigor, optimism and faith in the future. Like, Blake and I talked and came to decision that we both would be better off on our own. Using all rhetorical devices I knew, I was ranting about my life getting more beautiful every day. Em was nodding and saying that he did not doubt that was exactly what would happen. It was a really ludicrous conversation. We both knew we were lying, but the situation was requiring the lies.

        But apparently, our lies served me well; on my way home from work I had a clear feeling that everything was really starting to add up. And Brian was right. I needed to go to Babylon today after work. To hit it big time. To hook up with someone. I leaned out the car window and shouted, "Freedom, woohoo!!!" I was free at last.

        And that was true indeed. Freedom, freedom, freedom.

        I only had to recall what to do with it and what one needs it for.

        The first thing waiting for me on the free side were the wonders of unbridled sex. And the lack of those wonders had made me pine away completely.

        I spent very much time analyzing what put the bridle on my sex with Blake and when we passed the point of no return. The conclusion was that everything started to go wrong half a year after the meeting of anal skiers - when Blake yielded to my persuasions and started to pass high school graduation exams and then SATs. All that hardship made him miserable with stress, and the hell gate burst open to suck all our unbridledness into a black hole.

        Once, I woke up because Blake was trembling. Not just trembling, but shaking so badly I decided he was having a seizure. Scared shitless, I grabbed his shoulders and understood: that was not a seizure, but hysterics. Poor fellow burrowed his face on my chest and burst out sobbing. He was blubbering, spluttering and gasping for breath for about two hours until he vomited at last. I was so scared that barely fell into the mop bucket while cleaning the floor. The fit vividly reminded me of Blake coming to his senses in a hospital after he OD'ed - but then I was ready for something like this, unlike that night. In the evening we, as usual, had dinner, caressed each other and fell asleep cuddling. Then, in the middle of the night, such a thing happened.

        Then I thought that it was all about the fear of exam failure and tried to persuade my boyfriend that one can apply to a college every year, till the crack of doom. It is not surprising that my quasi-wise speeches were not helping: in a couple of months Blake told me what had really happened. That night he dreamt that instead of an interview the college board told him to take off his clothes and lean on the table. Poor Blakie woke up in a cold sweat: he had a flashback of one of those past moments lost into the maze of his subconscious and rotting there as a compost pile.

        About fifteen years ago, two douchebags were abusing him. They drugged him, made him strip and were pressing lit cigarettes to his skin. Supposedly, one of them was Blake's constant patron, owner, sponsor - I do not want even to think about how it is called. But he either gambled away or ran into debt and therefore gave his twink to the other bastard for a weekend - to play with. And that one had such an idea of playing with people. I hope both assholes are already dead and will burn in hell for eternity.

        Blake was seventeen or so. I've been recalling that episode for six months, and it makes my hair stand on end. And then, every time I was undressing my boyfriend, I was looking at barely visible pink circles on his thigh - discernible to no one unaware that they were there - and had to try my best not to cry with pity instead of blowing him. Many people are good at combining compassion with desire. Actually, I am one of those perverts. But, apparently, even my craze has its limits.

        Should he have only one hysteric, I would probably have recovered from that shock. Had not I survived that porn where my ass was starring with support from a score of junkies?! Although who compares adventures of their own ass with something suffered by a loved one? But then Blake had his dam ruptured. He had cried almost all summer. I would not have minded him crying because of himself. He was wailing over books and films, and the only thing I could do was cuddling him and always keeping a pack of tissues in my pocket.

        It was not diminishing my love of Blake. It seems it became even stronger. And we definitely were closer to each other than ever. But that love mutated. From a sexy boyfriend, just one stare of whose could make my knees tremble with desire, Blake was rapidly turning into a scared and wounded kid, whom I wanted not to fuck in the ass, but warm and comfort. It became clearer to me, why he'd run away when I'd been doing my twelve steps. And that intensity of emotions had worn me out badly.

        And Blake himself was in constant need of sex.

        I have no idea when age-related erectile dysfunction will knock my door, but for as long as I can remember I was sex-crazy. Sucking, leaking, kissing, touching, squeezing, snuggling, caressing, whacking, fucking and being fucked - there are a hundred thousand things one can do with human body to get and receive maximum pleasure. And it was not easy to find a boyfriend able to fuck me out - even me. But I was so lucky, that I managed to achieve even that!

        I believe, somewhere deep inside Blake's soul, on the very bottom of it, there lived a confidence that the only thing making him really attractive was sex. Of course, for quite a long period of his life it was 100% true. But then a handsome boy-toy hustler had grown into a mature, independent man. He managed to overcome drug abuse, find a kick-ass job and become godlike in it. He rescued a crowd of addicts, including me, and got to be adored by everybody. He read an insane number of books, passed exams and got admitted to a college.

        But once he saw that no steam was belching from my ears at the sight of his dick, fuck knows what used to start.

        Blake never complained, never grumbled, never criticized anyone: all these things are my specialty. But when scared, he sort of froze from inside. A moment ago you were hugging a merry and buoyant guy, he was laughing and kissing your ears. And in a couple of minutes he became glassy and sort of unreal. As if replaced by a robot. He was doing seemingly the same things, but there was no him in them. And I not only would suck him for as long as he wanted, I would do anything at all to make him return and become alive again.

        God knows, it was perfectly clear to me that all those sobs and hysterics were good for his revival. And yes, Blake needed to recall, acknowledge and bemoan everything. He told me straight up that with me it was the first time he could let himself go and relax fully enough for all that shit, accrued in long years and repressed as far as possible, to start to come out of him.

        But I had failed to estimate beforehand whether I was able to cope with it. Mea culpa, I turned out to be unable to do that. I also cannot be called a benchmark of mental health. So, I missed the moment when I got trapped by my own weakness. Because it turned out I needed help for coping with all that. And I could not habitually carry my torments to Emmett because the torments were not mine, and I had no right to share them. Moreover, it would have been too hard for Emmett himself. And also I was afraid that he would think (although never speaking his mind), "For what fuck does Teddy need this ass-ache?!"

        This is why I was so happy that Blake's college curriculum included some hours of personal psychotherapy. I was ready to cut capers when I was signing the check. And it seemed to work for him. At least, his hysterics stopped. But I failed to return that time when I was ready to give anything I had for feeling the taste of Blake's semen in my mouth. And then his studies started, Rita appeared, blues concerts completely superseded our opera evenings and the musical studio he was attending in the college replaced our dance classes. And we started to grow apart rapidly.

        The day after that horrible night hysteric, I came home from work and gave a sigh of relief: my boyfriend was cheerful and merry again. We decided to watch Une Robe d'Ete by Ozone. With the first sounds of that Bang-Bang song, Blake took off his tee and started to dance in front of the screen. He was moving way prettier that the actor. And also I was happy that my beloved was in good mood, had come round and was having fun. And I told him, "Right! Fuck that film! That cute blond is not worthy to black your boots!" And Blake said, "Yes! I am a king of cute blonds!!!", and unzipped his pants. I blew him in naïve hope that everything was fine now and we would we able to live and fuck as we used to.

        When Blake told me the real cause of his sobs, I understood how much bitterness there was in the phrase about a king of cute blonds. That bitterness had eaten me to the bone in a year and a half. And now I did not know how much time I would need to rehabilitate myself. But it was a good thing that I was able to turn to it at last.

        Of course, as soon as I thought about that, guilt started to torture me. Then I changed to my best shirt and went to Babylon.

***

        Em apparently had talked to our friends already, so nobody asked any questions. I tore my best friend from Drew Boyd and dragged him to the dance floor, and we set it ablaze. Latina classes I had been taking with Blake had sank in: my ass had learned to live its own separate life and was rotating as a double star in the blackness of space. After such a demonstration it was not hard for me to hook two machos at once and take them to the VIP-room. Let the first one lick and the second one suck. I am generous, and my beauty is enough for both of them.

        And I do not want to think about Blake anymore.

        And I do not want to think about Blake anymore.

        Naturally, the more furiously I was trying to repel thoughts about Blake, the more persistently they were trying to invade my head. Besides that, I was engaged in two activities: work and sex. Brian became so much clearer to me in those days! I had a feeling that as soon as I would stop seeing to quite concrete, practical errands - be it carrier things or seduction things - I would get sucked into a quagmire. And also, unlike Brian, who certainly has no self-esteem problems, I was in constant need of confirmation of the fact that, firstly, there is no task I cannot carry out and, secondly, that I am still able to hook any guy I want.

         The first agenda was simple enough. Am I not god of accountants, king of auditors, financial prodigy Ted Schmidt? I'll spit in the eyes of anyone who will dare to question it. If the spit recipient shows intention to beat me, I can lie that it was just a little diction problem.

         I managed to restore Babylon in three weeks. I'd have done it quicker if Brian had not backpedaled deciding whether he needed that broken toy or was it easier to ditch it. Moreover, I contrived to shake up the insurers the way that not only spared Brian from any losses, but also gained some profit. Brian gave it all to me as bonus, and I paid for two semesters of Blake's tuition.

         And that was only one of my endeavors! Babylon was thriving, Kinnetic was awash with money, and I was sitting behind the scenes and putting together the gear of business, assembling a perfectly frictionless machine. But if for a single day I had no Lernaean Hydra to plait, I was starting to feel vain and to freak out.

         Concerning the ability to hook a guy, Blake had probably spoiled me. No, I managed to keep that feeling that if you had decided that a guy will put it out to you, he would have no other option. Too bad that idea sank in only after I had a lipo and had half of my muzzle revamped by a plastic surgeon. Otherwise I could have saved much money. Damn Rita, for example, is huge as a cliff, and her clothes sense is atrocious - early Emmett style, - but she comes and takes what she wants. For example, she sees somebody's boyfriend, shoves him a book of sci-fi stories - nd so much for the boyfriend.

         In those two years good old Blakie had spoiled me as follows: I was fucking those guys, was feeling good and pleased (at least, my ass was staying intact), but somewhere on the brim of my conscience there was that itching thought: "Ted, what are you doing? What for? Is it what you need?"

         At first I was successfully ignoring the itch. Moreover, initially I really needed to prove to myself that the world of big sex was still ready to receive me back into the fold. To make sure that nobody cared I was forty plus and had been dying my hair for a long time. Also, the process itself is not lacking in fervor. But then I had enough of senseless libertinage and started to want something more.

         Because I still slept strictly on my half of the bed. And because every night I dreamt of Blake.

***

         I had usual household dreams about our life together. There we are, buying groceries and cooking together. We are walking in a park. We are swimming and laughing. We are dancing. The most painful were erotic dreams, of course. As soon as we broke up, I banned myself from letting my ex-boyfriend to take part in my wet dreams, no matter how hard he was trying to squeeze in. But in sleep, the human brain is doing whatever it pleases, and there is no way to stop it. And then you wake up at night and do not know where to press a tissue — to your dick or to your eyes.

         And very often I dreamt of us fighting.

         For the last six months, it seemed to me that Blake's role in my life was twofold: to leave garbage everywhere and to always be late. Once he stayed too long with Rita and made us miss the beginning of an opera. We had to wait for the start of act two, and I kept on lecturing him, probably until the very end of the entr’acte. He was not listening. He shrank into himself completely. His eyes were unfocused; his ears were just adornments pasted to his head. And it was pissing me off even worse than the fact he'd come late. I was pissed off by Blake and his disrespect towards art, my time, my attempts to make him happy (via a saw and a shovel, of course). And I was pissed off by my own grumbling, because even when the fountain was playing, I was perfectly aware I was not making the situation any better and adding any punctuality, any peace and any calm to the space-time continuum. I was just sitting and multiplying entropy to no avail at all.

         And also, I was pissed off by cups. Blake used to drink tea or coffee while reading. Having drained his cup, he just put it under the couch and take another one. Sometimes he would buy some tea yummies (although I had a thousand times asked him not to bring home any sweets to tempt me), and dirty cups were joined by dirty plates, crumbles and cookie wraps. Probably, Blake never once bothered to put dishes into the dishwasher. And at first I did not care at all. The more so since it was almost always he who cooked - and deliciously!

But the farther we were drifting from each other, the bigger the pain in my ass was because of that constant mess. Cleaning lady was coming once a week, and it seemed to me that I was doing nothing but walking around the condo and raking up after Blake: his clothes, books, dishes, garbage and all that shit. And every time he came home I would start to nag him for that. At first I was talking soft, like, my love, I put the cuppies into the washie again, but you, sweetie, can do it yourself for a change. And a kiss, for not letting Blake think that I was vexed by him. And then, when his cooking mood was gone, I started to yell.

         All those household glitches are not worth a grinded down dildo until a couple enjoys rapport and hot sex. Emmett and I once managed to learn to live together, although it was not easy at all. After that hideous fight because of the mess he made at my kitchen, I promised myself to learn not to nit-pick at my loved ones. But when you are all alone, wandering between anger and guilt, you want to just take those damn cups and crash them to the floor. Not in the least because in Blake's character he would rather throw them off than wash them.

         Oh, Teddy, you fucking Alfredo. Look at you sitting here scratching your balls and looking for excuses for yourself! And Blake could not bear it and left. Probably he really thought that I would be better off that way. Or he might have been fleeing from a grumpy monster that was choking him. Fuck it matters now!

And I did not know when I would be able to go to opera again. I stopped listening Verdi. I stopped watching movies. I stopped cooking. Because all those things were associated with Blake for me - even those that appeared way earlier than him.

***

         I opened a messenger and started to thumb through the history of our messages.

         You left for work, and I decided to write you how much I love you. Google was right, the day could not be clearer. Look how air is sparkling! The light is piercing me as a bead. Music in the laptop gets mingled with the sunbeams. I made some coffee, but put too much of it in the filter - a habit. You are on the other side of the screen now, about half an hour from here. And I am thinking of you, and drinking this coffee, too strong with this stunning morning. And I am so glad to think that now I will put on my clothes and go to meet you at Kinnetic. And I will get you, and we will go eat tuna salad together. You will make me laugh, and than we will kiss. And probably something more!

         For what such happiness can be given? Just as present, I know. Thank you for that. And I thank heaven for you.

         I'll take this happiness and bring it to my group. I will give it out to everybody, piece by piece, like a cake. Because I have so much of it in me, enough to go around.

         It is impossible to love as much as <3 u. That's it, I am coming to you!

         Blake wrote that eons ago. I hope he really was that happy then. If Vonnegut is right and in reality time is not just a row of landscapes speeding past the train of our life, then all ends are coexisting with all beginnings. And probably they are equal. Then it is not that important how much we lost because it is balanced by everything we ever acquired. All that shit, all those endless fights are worth that.

         I wiped my eyes and got back to work. I was on for one of the coziest things in the world: seeing to concrete practical errands. Praise Brian and havens, I had plenty of them that day.

        When a week passed, I told myself: "Enough of that anguish!" Buddhists think that reality is an illusion. And if real things are unreal, it is up to us to choose what to think about and what games to play. You will be eighty before you know it. And what did you do? Bartered away your life for drama and grief? No way in hell!

         Firstly, I paid a visit to Michael and Ben. I brought them some sushi and asked them about current book novelties. I borrowed a few books to read, drank all Hunter's cola (real cola, with sugar! enough of carbs to go to the bathroom to barf!), threw a plate of pickled ginger over the tablecloth, told a hilarious fisting joke that shocked and nauseated the Bruckner-Novotny family. In the end I broke a faucet in their bathroom and flooded every fucking corner of their house. In a nutshell, I pleased the hosts by my impudent and riotous demeanor.

         Then I went to my mother's place and for half an hour bullshitted her about a concert of an imaginary tenor Mario Bertolucci. The genetrix was unlikely to think of inquiring whether he really exists, and I had not been to a real concert for ages. On my way home I bought a ticket for a string quartet for the next day. I was hoping that it would not become just a fruit of my imagination.

         I visited Emmett and Drew Boyd's place and discussed with the latter sport’s nutrition and my training regimen. I drove Emmett to the gym, we had a bitch of a workout and then went to the Liberty Diner to recharge. Debbie was about to request my impressions of the break-up with significant other and inquire whether I was going to kill myself anytime soon, but Emmett gave her a tell-tale stare, and she shifted to a report about Justin's exhibition in New-York. Justin's goings on were interesting for me only as an appendix to Brian's ones, and I got all key moments from the phrase: "And Sunshine has an exhibition in New-York!" But I was glad to gasp with surprise, nod, move my eyebrows - in short, to follow all Carnegie's commandments as long as the topic had nothing to do with me.

         Having returned Drew Boyd's princess to their place, I drove my gym attire back to mine, showered, put on the most revealing pants - I do not count leather ones, and besides Blake probably had ditched them - and headed for Babylon. I met Brian there and asked him when he was going to check out works by new Warhol. Brian shrugged indefinitely. Yeah, my friend, I do not ask you how you are doing and you do not ask how I am. Perfect rapport.

         After a drink (I had soda, of course) we drifted away to seek adventures. Like two leopards in a jungle, we shared the territory: one of us went to the dance floor, the other - to the upper balcony. That day it was my turn to hunt in the upper tier. I quickly spotted the prey and dug my claws into it. It was a perfect specimen! Tall, beefy, with massive jaw. "Do you like it rough?", he asked. I cast down my lashes and gave him my signature sultry virgin stare.

         Then I drove him to my place and he banged me into oblivion.

         We'd been at it till about three a.m. The stud was hot. Undressing me, he tore off two buttons from my shirt. Splendid body, magnificent dick, superb technique. He was screwing me as if my ass was the last one in his life, but without being hardcore. No match to that Stephen beast. He entered smoothly, continued energetically, and the final was just Oscar-worthy. I let him tie my hands, and he grazed the skin of my wrist. This nice memento would stay with me for two more days.

         The beautiful stranger slackened my bind and fell on the bed. I leaned my head on his back. What a great one. Good enough even for hooking up again.

         "What's your name?" I asked.

         "It matters?" He climbed from under me and went to shower.

         He washed and started to dress. "Listen," I told him, "what about a night at my place?" He looked at me as at a moron. "Baby," he said, "What for? We shtupped damn good. Why the fuck should we spoil it with each others' morning snoots?"

         Yes, Teddy! What did you want? Welcome to the world of big sex!

***

         The guest dissolved into the night; I made up my bedroom and drowned myself in sleep. But in four hours or so I bobbed up again. It was Sunday, still dark. I had a cup of coffee looking at large snowflakes falling outside my window. Then I tried to read a book I borrowed from Ben. Some munchers there could not figure out what they loved — each other, spirituality or some other shit. Melanie came to my mind. She often called and encouraged me to take a break and come visit her in Toronto. "To chill out". As chilly as Canada may be, who chills out there? I opened my laptop and wrote an email to Melanie. I told her that I broke up with Blake after all. And that I was the one to blame.

         I was the one to blame.

         I recalled the first time I barked at Blake. He was late somewhere again or left something lying around, made yet another negligible error, and I broke down and burst out yelling. And Blake acted so damn weirdly. He shrank towards the wall, leaned on it and covered his head with his hands, as if I was going to beat him up. This reaction seemed to me so inadequate that I became angrier still and started to bawl even louder. In the end Blake sank to the floor and broke into tears. I shut up, dashed to him, hugged him, started kissing his hands, begged him to forgive me. He certainly did, and an hour later we were having conciliatory sex. But something broke then. Something broke beyond repair.

         And when, a year later, we were fighting for the last time, he was screaming: "Go on, hit me! Hit me! Come on, do it!" I turned to the kitchen drawer unit and clawed a hold on it. And he came to me, took my pants down, kneeled and started to lick me. He got really turned on, slid his hand into his jeans and was jerking himself off. I hate rimming. Do not rim, do not let others rim me. Blake knew it and, I believe, that is what egged him on it. But then I just straddled. There was nothing erotic in it. In fact, it was just dreadful. Blake helped me to cum, I put on my pants and silently left for Emmett's. I sat on his couch and wept with my head on my own knees. It was already clear to me that there was no point in fights. Everything ended.

***

         I did not go to work on Monday. Or on Tuesday either. I flushed the ticket to the concert down the toilet. I turned all phones off and for several hours dumbly sat between the table and the couch. I downloaded a golden collection of blues and listened all the way through. I went online to order the pizza and cookies that Blake always ate. I read "The Idiot" until I went berserk. Then I tore the book in pieces and strewed them all over the dining room. I threw the jacket of the book out the window, and it flew south, as a bird. A Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi joined it in the flight. A passer-by asked me whether a was an asshole. "A big one!" I answered. I was skipping around the condo and fake playing sax. I broke all the CDs with bare hands. I tripped over a table leg, fell and sobbed on the floor, with my snot dripping on the carpet. I crashed the orchid that Blake had given me against the wall, but felt sorry for the flower and planted it into a sauce pan. In the wardrobe I found a tee Blake had forgotten in the laundry. First I cuddled it, then jerked off, then tore it into pieces and threw it out the window.

         To make the long story short, I went on a rampage and did everything people don't do unless they are drunk as skunks. It is good to be me: quick carbs and ill nature suffice for me.

         Without sleep, you lose track of time. I was lying in the corner of the dining room, rolled in a blanket, with my gaze fixed on the wall. It was as light as at eleven o'clock when a key clicked in the lock and Emmett entered the condo. He anxiously looked round the room and called my name. The Idiot was lying on the floor in tatters, among other garbage, and that was me. My friend dashed towards me and cuddled me.

         "Lord, Teddy, praise God!"

         "What? You see, I had a small storm here." My tongue was twisting a little, and Emmett dubiously sniffed my frontispiece. "Nah, I did not drink, word of honor."

         "Brian called me to tell that you did not come to work for two days in a row."

         "Yeah, I am not feeling well." I yawned jerkily and scratched myself.

         "My poor darling. Well, you told me you will get over that. But I should have understood that had been bullshit. I am calling a cleaning company, and you go take a shower."

         There was no point to resist: the guinea pig was already too suppressed. I shed the blanket and hobbled to the bathroom.

        I took off my clothes, turned the water on and zoned out with my thoughts on my thirty-ninth birthday.

        Emmett and I settled into a hotel and - kings of life! - installed ourselves on the couch by the fireside. Crowds of merry people were gamboling around us, with icicles jingling in their eyebrows (and not only there). They were laughing, chatting, patting each other's shoulders. And I was sitting there, my eyes fixed on the fire, my mind engrossed in black melancholy. I was supposed to spend this weekend with yet another love of my life, to make tsunamis in a Jacuzzi and induce avalanches by blood-curdling screams of lust. We had been seeing each other for about a month, until I told him to get lost. I did not want to lose the room deposit, so scrambled to the mountains, anyway. And instead of that ghoul, I invited my best friend. Em promised I would have a fabulous holiday no matter what, and he had yet to discover how right he was.

        Emmett clapped his hands and my cake was brought out. I blew the candles and quaveringly delivered a heartfelt speech on maturity, wisdom and self-sufficiency. And about the ghastly, appalling exultance I felt because of the prospect to trudge along alone, in pleasure and prosperity, as a boner in the dark. Em was on the verge of tears when I was voicing all that cordial crap and squeezing his hand.

        And just in time to save cream roses from melting under my scalding tears, Blake called my name. I nearly overturned the couch springing to my feet and got suspicious of having a mental disorder. But he told me he had come there with a team of mountain homoskiers. I probably should have yelled, grabbed the cake and run. But unfortunately, my ability to make correct decisions is inversely proportional to the volume of the creaking of my bursting zipper. "I always preferred one on one sports," I said. "I just find the action more…" The right word was not coming to my mind, and Blake prompted, "Intense?" He also had yet to discover how right he was.

        Em gave us his blessing. Apparently, my clairvoyant (and soft-hearted) friend understood that if I stayed with him at the lobby bar, my eyes would be filmy, my limbs would be writhing, and I would be lucky not to have saliva oozing from my mouth. And as soon as he said his ‘Ready, steady, go’, I jumped on Blake and carried him to my lair.

        For starters, I fucked him with his clothes on. I made him lean against the door of the room - good thing, it was its inner side.

        When we were trying to use hand cream as a lube, a message came from the most caring and the best friend in the world… "Met a bud, cute one, will spend night with him. Strawberry lube and a year's supply of condoms are in my bag. Indulge in every pleasure." I followed the advice and indulged in all the pleasures I could. The opportunity to blow Blake to the accompaniment of the crackle of embers in the fireplace (it sounded much like applause, even if a very reserved one) was an incredible, fantastic birthday present. And I was absolutely sure that as soon as the night ended, the spell would be gone: Blake would lube his skis, and I would not see him again for another few years. But I would have been unable to rob myself of the magic, even had I known that his plans for the night were to dismember me by a pen knife and scatter my body parts all over the nearest snowdrifts before dawn.

        So, I was really surprised when, in the morning, we woke up, showered, had breakfast together, and Blake told me that since our first meeting and until that day he had been thinking of me constantly. He told me that he loved me and that our encounter here couldn't be just a coincidence. He suggested to me to give our relationship another chance.

        And we went home.

        On the back seat, Emmett was making out with his yet another flame, and Blake, as in prehistoric times, was sitting in my car next to me. It was a new turn of the spiral. Last time, I was driving Blake to the rehab. Then he was scared and confused, and I was terrified. Now I was not spared of terror either, but my happiness was a thousand times stronger. It was an inconceivable, piercing happiness, making it hard to breathe.

***

        Emmett broke into the bathroom and shook me by the shoulder. It turned out I had been sitting on the shower floor for forty minutes and had not heard my friend knocking.

        "Hey!" I tried to express resentment.

        "Do you mean you have something I’ve never seen?" Emmett took off his sweater and started to lather my hair.

        While my condo was cleaned, my friend dragged me for a walk. Because of nervous burnout and sleep deprivation I was feeling terribly weak, but Emmett was holding me by the elbow and not letting me blend in with the surrounding landscape by collapsing to the dirty snow beside the road. He was twittering away nonstop. Like, he recently saw quite a jacket, and as early as tomorrow we will go buy it for me. A new movie with Michel Pfeiffer was released, and as early as tomorrow we will go watch it. A new fish restaurant opened on Butler street, and as early as tomorrow we will go check out seafood soufflé. Bottom line: whether you want it or not, Teddy, but no later than tomorrow you have to be alive, well and at least relatively sane.

        With the fresh air I felt better. I stopped to watch snowflakes waltzing in the light of a street lamp. Once, Blake and I met after work and went for a walk. That winter evening was as gorgeous as this one. Snow was falling in large fluffy flakes. I hugged Blake, kissed him and told him we were currently a perfect example for sculpting a crystal ball. And Blake answered that we were currently a perfect example for sculpting a model of divine grace.

        Em noticed that I clammed up again and took me to a supermarket. We bought groceries for a couple of days and a new flowerpot for the orchid. When I was standing there looking dumbly at yogurt rows, it again began to seem to me that the goings on were not for real. That I was asleep. That I would wake up and see my Blakie next to me. I would complain to him that I was having nightmares again. And he would make me chamomile tea and say that I am overreacting to minor things. That everything is fine, and the main thing is we are together.

        I bit my lip but did not wake up. Everything was just the same. Emmett took my arm and led me home.

***

        The condo was clean and empty again. One of the walls remained dented, and Em covered the bruise with one of my engravings. Besides that, everything was more or less the same. Giuseppe Verdi was not looking at me from a shelf, though, and it was rather odd.

        Emmett caught my eye and asked, “Why is he gone?”

        "Fucking ditched him. Can't listen again, anyway."

        "Aren't you his biggest fan?" Emmett frowned.

        "Feels like I have to hand the fan-club over to someone else. I don't want any opera anymore."

        "How so? You adore opera."

        "Imagine. Do you and Drew Boyd have a song that is yours?"

        Emmett smiled and bowed his head.

        I went on. "And for Blake and me, all of “La Traviata” is our song. All works by Verdi. As well as Rossini, Puccini, Bizet…

        "Listen to something contemporary."

        "Contemporary opera? Hell no. Today the most important thing for composers is their works not being mistaken for a musical, God forbid. Ears roll up as withered leaves."

        "Fine. But what was before Verdi? Opera is a really old stuff. There must be something you may like."

        This is how, thanks to Emmett, I got hooked on baroque opera.

        We were listening to Marenzio's madrigals (that is, I was listening and Emmett was surfing the internet) when Brian came.

        "Theodore, can I have a couple of words with you?" he asked.

        I crawled out to the entryway to talk to him.

        "What words, Brian?"

        He looked at me for a while as he leaned against the wall. Then he shook out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

        "People work, that's what words," he said. "And also, stop jerking yourself off."

        "There are three couples of words."

        "Fine. Let them have an orgy. In sum, tomorrow you will bring your fat ass to the office at last. Or you can bury it here forever."

        "Listen, I clearly remember in what state I left the business. And now you would not lose a cent even if I go to the fucking White Party."

        "Yeah. But unless you are not going to the fucking White Party and are just sitting here with your head up your ass, tomorrow at nine you have to be at Kinnetic. Because people work. Or they sit with their heads up their asses and jerk off. Is it clear, Theodore?"

        I nodded.

        "Quite clear, Brian."

        He patted my shoulder and added, "Go to a sun-spa, your clock is periwinkle." He left. And I returned to the condo to watch Emmett cooking supper.

         In Blake's young days the skill to sex out any conflict was a survival technique for him. His stare could make men confounded with lust. It saved him from nuisances like being sold for a couple of grams of cocaine or thrown out of a car at full speed. It was a perfect response in any situation. Now this stare is naïve and a little exalted. Then it is wanton and suggestive. Or tender and full of kindness. And, unlike myself, Blake did not need to rake his brains for half an hour to understand what expression to put on his face. He was doing it by intuition.

         Larger guns would follow the suite. Once he licked his finger and touched his nipple. If I did it, leaving drops of saliva on my chest hair, everybody would laugh themselves to death. But when Blake did it, it was so natural, it was completely mind-blowing. He could turn his back on you and give you such a smile from behind his shoulder that you would need to change your underwear urgently. An arch of his loins, a touch of the back of his hand to his neck, and your forehead is hit by your dickhead (okay, let it be my forehead and my dickhead, because you apparently cannot do such a trick).

         And may plague take that pervert who told that relationship troubles need to be discussed.

         Fine, the magic of that "I took off my shirt, and you forgot all your sorrows" left our home after half a year of life together, when Blake got warm in my arms and let his demons out. But I believe it was his optimistic psycho-therapeutic approach that nothing must be stored up inside and everything has to be discussed that brought our relationship to a bust-up.

         We were somehow managing to live with an overdose of information about each other. In the end, although there was good reason to deem it extremely unethical for a psychological support counselor to put his ass out to a patient three times a day, we had decided to go for it. And yes, in certain moments, Blake's hustler ways stopped making me hard and started to make me feel absolutely inappropriate: compassionate (with a subtle touch of jealousy - and when I caught myself on it, self-hate brought me on the verge of a heart attack). But I was sure I would overcome it. Had not Blake embraced the stories of the incredible adventures of my ass in the kingdom of crystal meth addicts?

         But bloody relationship lip service was driving me mad. At Blake's instigation, I did some googling and learned to compose I-messages. I would start with warm words, mention my feelings, pronounce friendly requests and not accusations. I would discuss only specific acts. I was a true artist of I-messages. Mine could have been quoted in a fucking textbook. Good thing Emmett never knew what I achieved on that field: what he heard from me was just tedious and trivial vociferation.

         But there was a problem: all that psychological gobbledefuck was not working a shit. Blake would nod, tell me he heard me - and not change a thing in his behavior. And while he was keeping on irritating me with his negligence and slackness, my I-messages were aggregating and rotting inside him as food scraps on the dishwasher filter. And then they reached that critical amount after which it was easier to take that eternally dissatisfied asshole spouting with friendly requests and stick him into really deep shit.

         Probably the problem was that the game was going on his field exclusively. Either Blake had no complaints against me, or he was not able to word them. I even asked him whether anything bugged him, but he always answered I was anything he could have dreamt of. Well, after fucking creeps he used to date before, that was no surprise.

         But then Blake's studies started and he began to withdraw. And it would have been stupid to blame Rita. If your boyfriend again and again prefers to spend one more hour away from you, your relationship has already gone to "the vortex of the toilet", as another Russian classic wrote. Blake was a college student and a rehab counselor, and also he started to learn to play bass. I was wearing holes into my pants, taking as many side projects as possible, and when my brain would start to cramp because of overwork, I would go to Babylon. When my boyfriend and I managed to run across each other, I would voice discontent. In a year masterpieces of I-messages ran out without doing the trick. Yelling started. When I yelled especially hysterically, it woke Blake's adolescent reflexes and he made me that abhorrent rimming scene.

         About three months before that, Blake's blues band had its first concert. I was up to my ears in agreements and failed to come. About the second concert he told me post factum. Like, when we played at Billie's again…

         If now Blake came to me with his two rucksacks, I would not have let him in. No, I still wanted to hold and kiss him. Even my dick started to get hard when I recalled how Blake could smile when he wanted to be fucked. When your boyfriend shudders at an attempt to hug him, such reminiscences make you just grit your teeth, and then it became way easier to imagine him to wack off. In the end, who wacks off on a guy lying next to you with a Lenten face? But we amassed such a heap of shit between us - things we were unable to forgive each other and things I was unable to forgive myself - that the idea of moving in together again was making my guts cramp.

         But if the heavens burst open, and an angel descended from there via a silk ladder and gave me the tiniest chance to turn back the clock, I would not think for a second. I would return to first Blake's concert. I would put the agreements into a shredder. I would buy a huge bunch of freesias and go to that club. I would tell my boyfriend they were playing incredibly good. That Rita was singing as a nightingale. That my boyfriend was the best. That I love him more than anything else in the world. Then I would blow him right there, behind the curtain, and since then would open my mouth only for praise and blowjobs, that's all.

         I closed my eyes, and my imagination willingly pictured the club scene for me. I saw a shabby maroon curtain, soft light. Rita is singing soul. Blake next to her is playing his bass. He is stunningly beautiful. His grey tee is emphasizing his muscles. His eyes are ablaze. His lips are curled into that cheeky self-complacent smile that can be seen only on the faces of musicians during a concert. His hair is radiant under the border lights. He is damn joyful. He is happy.

         How could I miss that?

***

         Emmett nudged me by his elbow, and I returned to reality. A scene still was in front of me - the scene of Babylon. A very tall and fat drag-queen in sequined dress was dancing there with a mic. Some lousy machos were swarming around her like cockroaches around a garbage bin.

         "Now I will get out my magic wand," the queen said playfully, "and you will be able to make three wishes."

         "Thanks, next!" I shouted, and Em clapped his hands.

         "Look, what's going on?" he whispered. "Is the world sinking into the ultimate dark? They all are just horrible! Teddy, are we… ageing?"

         "No, Em. We cannot grow old. It's just winter, they did not come out of their hibernation yet."

         "They are not bears, mind you, to hibernate."

         I smirked. If bears are yet planning to come out of hibernation, I am up for a really glorious March.

         "I do not know!" I shrugged. "But I do not have any intention to pay Brian's money for this."

         "Are you suggesting to call Darren for cookies?"

         "That he will bake himself?"

         "Teddy, do not be so cynical!"

         Actually, there was a rational kernel in that idea. Shanda Leer was going through tough times. Since Darren was bashed, his leg was inflaming regularly, and he could not dance. As soon as it would feel any better, he would put on high heels, and the leg would inflame again. In the end, the poor guy went down in the grumps and apparently decided his fate was to lock his gowns in a closet and be a chef forever. But even with his limp he was way more gracious that all that nightmare that paraded in front of Emmett and me in recent days! And he never performed on Babylon scale. In the long run at least someone must have the happiest St Valentine's Day!

         "It's agreed, Em. Phone Darren and call him here."

         "Shall I order any cookies from him?"

         "Only zero-carb ones. I will eat them myself. Tell him to "sing", and we will provide the back-up dancers."

         And Emmett went to make the call.

        Emmett took a spare blanket from the closet and started to make a bed for himself on the couch in the dining room. It surprised me. A mountain of boisterous footballism was waiting for him at home, with kettle-balls of muscles, hand weight of a brain and treadmill of a dick.

        "Are you going to stay overnight?" I asked.

        "Uh-huh."

        "And what will Drew Boyd say?"

        "What does he have to say?" Emmett rose his eyebrows. "My best friend is in trouble."

        "Or you want to make sure I won't slash my veins towards morning?"

        I would have been better off gnawing my fridge. My words had a truly dramatic effect. Em froze with a pillow in his hands. He clenched his jaw and became pale in the face. I was expecting him to throw something at me and scream. But he closed his eyes and carefully put the pillow to the head end of the couch. And then he slowly straightened. It seemed to me that while he was drawing himself up to full length, ten new galaxies hatched in the darkness of space. As for me, during this time I dissolved in a cold sweat, had every single hair of mine go grey and got covered with nervous scabs.

        At last Emmett uttered, "I want to make sure you see I am with you and you can count on me."

        After a while he continued, "When Brian called me, I practically shit where I stood. And I, by the way, was discussing a wedding buffet with the bride. Do you think she would have been glad to have such a performance as a promo?"

        "Sorry, it was selfishly twatish of me to turn my phones off. I was a little busy." When I said that I hoped that Emmett missed all the sarcasm that poured out of me as manure out of a cow. On second thought, I made my face look guilty.

        My friend ignored those moves. For a minute he was staring at the floor and shaking his head. Then he looked at me and said, "Fuck the phones, Teddy. I thought you decided not all the bears of Pittsburgh fucked you and were making up for lost time. But not turning up at work for two days without notice is not like you at all. You scared us shitless. You should have seen the bricks we hatched out." He gestured the size of the bricks, and they were massive. "I want to spend at least some time with you."

        I swallowed jerkily and screwed my eyes. Lord, why am I such a selfish prick.

        "Forgive me, Em."

        He nodded.

        "So, I am here on the couch. If you need anything or cannot sleep, call me."

        "Thanks, Em."

        I kissed him on the cheek and went to the bedroom.

        I was failing to fall asleep, but had difficulty seeing how Emmett might help it. Although, I could see it. For example, we could have sex. Theoretically. I scarcely was able to do it now. But there was no chance to check. Next option was to call my friend to my bed and fall asleep cuddling him. I would not dare to offer this, although it would have really worked. What did he mean then? That at one a.m. I would feel an urge to play charades? Or to sing sing a duet? Or to bake cakes?

        Certainly, it was not I who needed him to stay, but Emmett himself. He was feeling anxious about me and did not know what to do. Magic fairies make every ugly thing fabulous, and how could he make anything fabulous out of my ugly and pathetic tragedy? I started to think what I myself can do for my friend. I needed to find a way to lead him out of the swamp of frustration. He must have been trying to wash off this morass since my crystal adventures. And of course it is high time I stopped shitting around and acting like a douchebag. It takes being a real lucky fucker - to get yourself such a friend as Em. He has to be prayed at. And I have to do anything I can to make him believe he is helping.

        I decided to ask him tomorrow to help me to choose a hair dye and go get that much-lauded jacket. And I liked that thought so much that I managed to fall asleep.

        In the morning I woke up and started to implement my plan. I ate the breakfast Emmett cooked. I did not want to get used to being cooked for again. As soon as you do, everything you make yourself starts giving you indigestion and rashes. Not that a chef is for shit, you just got addicted to a couple of ingredients one cannot add to his own meal. Love, care, all that stuff. But since you decided to stop being an ungrateful prick, eat up and praise your food.

        Having put on a face of a person who got his sense of purpose back with a turkey sandwich, I thanked my gorgeous best friend and left for Kinnetic.

***

        Brian lavished work upon me. I was wondering how he managed to put together such a busy agenda. When I was leaving on Friday, there was downright nothing to do at the office. And voila, now I had to sort millet from poppy seed, clean a hundred dildos to make them shiny enough for seeing your face as in a mirror… I was at it till about eight o'clock, and then Kinney told me I was to be honored by a mission to check a bunch of drag shows for St. Valentine's day and pick up the best option for the least money. I was to do it from seven p.m. tomorrow and until Babylon opens, every day till next Tuesday. It made almost a week without a break.

        "If you and Honeycutt at last decide to join some circus of vagrant drag queens, everyone will breathe easier," Brian said and dumped on my table a huge folder with portfolios of show groups.

        Emmett came to pick me up and, with joyful enthusiasm he was prone to in dubious situations, offered to keep me company at the drag queen parade. And I, as a counter with morning complacency, pulled a smile and underneath it began to rampage quietly.

        Because now, Emmett is with me. And at night, when I will be losing my fight with insomnia and ruminating drearily what to keep in mind masturbating in order not to wake neighbors by my sobs, Drew Boyd will fuck him. And if only fuck! That son of a bitch will kiss Emmett on the forehead, hug him and sleep with his nose touching Emmett's nape. Fine, I have a new orthopedic pillow. It is a really versatile thing! It alleviates tension in your neck muscles, holds up your head and can absorb eight liters of tears. Although, if I had had a chance to spend night sneezing out of my nose my love mate's hair, these wonders of absorption would not have meant a fuck to me.

        Brian was also pissing me off - by the fact he was sympathizing with me. He was sympathizing with me badly enough to try to hide it. Whenever Kinney the Almighty stepped in the middle of yet another of my mopey dramas, he never allowed himself to show simple humane compassion, but he was always heedful of disgusted pity. And now he had not a single proper scoff for me. Feels like he never mentioned either Blake or our break up. What a big joke he could have made of this topic if he wanted to do it! I would wither rather laughably. All in all, it was clear enough that Brian was damn sorry for me. Sorry enough for making a week-long festival of feather-clad fags for me without many words.

        Michael and Melanie were pissing me off by not joining the group of uninvited visitors to my house wishing to hold my hand. Although, should they join it, I would have been pissed off even worse. I did not have enough hands for such a crowd of claimants to hold one of them. The crowd was big enough for me to go to a sex shop and buy a rubber fisting fist. Should anyone try to hold my hand, I'd give him or her such a big intrigue.

        Certainly, most of all I was pissed off by myself. Firstly, by the fact I was creating problems for my folks and making them worry. A part of me wanted to say, "God, guys, this is Ted Schmidt! He is not worth it!" The second part wanted to claim five times as much attention. It wanted Michael and Melanie to come anyway and yes, hold my hand. It wanted Brian to hug me and pat my back, while I would dabble the cashmere of his coat with my snot. And Em… It would have been great if Em came and stayed for good.

        All those fantasies multiplied by guilt for my own ingratitude induced white fury on me. In order not to flaunt it in front of Emmett, I went to take a leak. Anger is anger and schmuckness is schmuckness. That's it, no schmuckness from now on. Boutique, barbershop, optimism without any restraint.

***

        Skillfully measuring out friendliness and sanguinity (if overdone, they will make anyone think again that their volatile friend went to hang himself), I convinced Emmett I needed some time alone with my new beautiful jacket and went home. No sooner than I took the jacket out of the bag, put it on once again and said to myself, "You look fabulous!", Blake called.

        "Hello, Teddy," he said.

        "Hello, Blake." My voice seemed to sound as if I was not only standing on a stool with a noose over my neck, but had already kicked the stool away.

        "Teddy…"

        "Yes, Blake."

        "I just wanted to check out how you are doing." Frankly speaking, his voice also was quite stool-like.

        "Great!" I answered gloomily. "And you?"

        "Best of all!" he sniffed.

        "That's right. I have to get up early tomorrow. Shall we say good night?"

        "Good night, Teddy," and Blake hung up.

        Naturally, I did not fall asleep that night. My dear sweet Em. It's night already, and I certainly will not call you. But how should I sort all this out on my own?

        I went to bed, rolled into my blanket and shut my eyes. A new day will come tomorrow.

         "Theodore," Brian sprawled out, "do you remember that we have a night club and not a fucking music hall?"

         My lip corner and eye began to twitch. To hide it, I fell down and started to convulse.

         "Brian, it's Valentine's Day. And Shanda Leer is a golden standard of drag romance." As for convulsions, I was just kidding. "Also, the DJ will mix everything together, and we will cater to several generations of fags."

         "If you are talking about generations of fags, alive and dead," Brian continued, "the dead ones are not going to pay us."

         By all means, Darren with his tender Gershwin masterpieces and observance of half-century tradition of fags' attempts to eclipse Marilyn Monroe was a little out of date. But the day before he was so ecstatic about the chance to perform that I decided to stick up for him no matter what. In the end, for a couple of times in a century benevolence can defeat pragmatism.

         It was pleasant to imagine Benevolence and Pragmatism as two youthful athletes fighting in a pool of jelly. But apparently we underestimated the scale of Darren's creativity. By the time I sorted out Kinnetic's current business and arrived to Babylon, Shanda Leer had already picked up a group of dancers and, with a helping hand of Emmett the Fairy of Magic Management, had taken care of background music, scenery, costumes and makeup. Are not the two of them geniuses? How to concoct a show in two days, is known only to those who can make five ball gowns of a piece of newspaper, a tin can and a pair of handkerchiefs.

         "Bravo! This is brilliant!" A one-man standing ovation does not look pitiful if you are the one who is paying for the show.

         "A director of a very small and very poor theater has no choice but to make do with a little," answered Darren modestly. "One more thing only: we will need pigeons. We will order them on the show day."

         "Whatever you need!" I liked the rehearsal so much that I was ready to join the corps de ballet, if anyone asked me. Fortunately, nobody did.

         I handed out service contracts to the performers to sign. One of the contracts came back to me with a sticker on which a phone number was written. I dialed the number immediately to look whose cell would ring. It was the dance group front man, and I, without losing any time, brought him to my place.

***

         "Mister Schmidt, you are sucking so amazingly!" the dancer told me when he was climbing out of my car.

         "Mister Schmidt, you are fucking so amazingly!" the dancer told me, trying to catch his breath.

         "Mister Schmidt, you are fucking and sucking so amazingly! What a wonder!" the dancer told me when he was spread-eagled on my sheets.

         Every time I asked him to call me Ted. And that 'wonder' word totally perplexed me.

         "Mister Schmidt, you have been sucking and fucking so amazingly for four hours in a row already!" the dancer said, when he was crawling to the bathroom. "I am dumbstruck!"

         "What are you dumbstruck by, Isaiah?"

         "Well…at your age…"

         I decided not to fuck a dancer ever again and called a taxi for him. It was three hours into the St Valentine's Day, and I fell asleep, art-worn.

***

         Having finished office chores by lunchtime, I headed for Babylon. On the doorstep of the club I realized that the yesterday's story was not over for me. That Isaiah guy turned out to be the first person I met. He was waiting for me in a snowdrift, ignoring the final run-through.

         "Mr. Schmidt," he whispered histrionically with an intonation of a person choked by sobs. "Why are you doing this to me?"

         "Doing what?" I hiccupped and got wide-eyed.

         "I mean nothing for you, right? Yesterday you… I thought… How could you?" he whimpered and, damn, ran away down the snowy street.

         I ran after him for a while, then got tired and cold and returned to the club. Darren popped up to me. And I do not know for what sins I was being punished, but he was hysterical as well. Make up did not allow him to sob, but his voice was quivering and breaking. Firstly, Isaiah went off radar as early as in the morning, and everybody was failing to get in touch with him. I dialed his number and heard: "The mobile phone is switched off or outside the coverage area." Secondly, the car with the costumes got stuck somewhere in the snows of Pittsburgh. We agreed that I will find Isaiah, while Emmett and Drew Boyd will recover the car from the snow.

         And there I was, running around Liberty Avenue in the snowstorm and exclaiming: "Isaiah! Isaiah!" I was looking as a complete idiot as one can be. I left a thousand of messages on his phone with promises of fame, recognition, buttfuck of his life, lawsuit for contract breach and fervent osculation right into… As soon as I finished this message, Isaiah turned up at last. He was wringing his hands, leaning ornately against a lamppost. With a languishing look at me, he struck a particularly exquisite pose and burst into tears elegantly, covering his face by his hands. I hugged him, covered him with my coat and lead him to the club. Isaiah was claiming his love, sniffling and smearing his face with mascara.

         Emmett brought the costumes and threw them on the table. My friend was furious: they fell out with Drew Boyd. Well, at least the spectacle was rescued. Darren put on one of his adorable gowns, sniffling Isaiah brushed up his makeup, and the rehearsal took place at last.

         At eleven o'clock people started to assemble at the club. Poor folks, if only they knew what would come next, they would run away into the snow of February faster that Isaiah did.

         As for him, he disappeared again.

         The dancers were almost demented; Emmett was feeding Darren Xanax. In the end my heroic best friend took up to save everybody again. We compiled a costume for him out of fronts Isaiah dropped, made him up and let him go onstage. Certainly, his solo Latina had little to do with the overall choreography of the group. On the bright side, Isaiah was short and sinewy, and in his attire Emmett could just stand onstage with his ass to the audience to make everybody absolutely satisfied with the dance.

         With the first chords of the music, beautiful Shanda Leer went onstage. DJ had made a good job: soft sunny retro was sounding fan-fucking-tastic in modern arrangement. Emmett was wiggling his ass and looking really hot. The folks seemed to like the show, and I relaxed a little. But the time for pigeon scene came. With jaw-dropping grace Darren waved his hands, a technician opened the cage behind his back, the pigeons rocketed upwards…and… We kinda had not thought that moment over when we were planning the spot.

         Bewildered birds started to flutter under the ceiling of the club and then - what else they were to do? - began to shit on the audience.

         It was a catastrophe. We did not have a single idea how to put the pigeons into the cage. Did we have to run through the crowd of clubbers and usher the birds to the street with a mop? I closed my eyes and started multiplying three-digit numbers. A snafu came about, and all we could do was making the show go on.

         In a break, I decided to take a breath and have some water. And what did I see? Right at the bar counter the huge drag-queen we ditched the other night was making a show of her own. Isaiah was helping her. I do not know how to describe the scene to make everyone feel as sick as I did at the moment. The fact is, the drag-queen lifted up her skirt, and Isaiah, with smacking sounds punctuated by sobs… Lord, there is nothing I can do, that was really going on… well, Isaiah was sucking her off. Yeah, right at the bar counter. I called a security guy, but the queen made a bored mug and said at the top of her professionally trained voice: "Honey, keep out, we are celebrating St Valentine's Day."

         I decided that it, just like the pigeons, could not be helped. All the more so, as Darren went onstage again and continued his show. At least a part of shit-specked spectators tore themselves out of the pericounter performance and returned to Shanda Leer. She was so charmingly fragile in her blue gown, sequined scarf and shoes - a true china statuette. She was limping worse and worse, though. And in the end Shanda broke down and started to fall. As in slow motion, Darren's leg faltered, he threw up his hands to catch balance, grasped the curtain - and fell down with it. At the last moment one of the dancers caught him and brought out of the heap of velvet and muslin.

         And then, amongst all that Apocalypse, something precious happened on the pigeon-shitted drape. Darren looked at the dancer. The latter asked: "Are you all right?" And the next moment their lips met in a kiss. The spectators made a furious ovation. And the dancer carried Shanda to a dressing room.

***

         I thought Brian would be livid. But when we, the creative and technical staff, dragged the curtain off the stage and returned to the hall, he was hooting with laughter like probably never before.

            February is so damn snowy this year. One snow storm follows another. I was walking, my feet sliding in the snow, and snow was beating my face, pouring under my collar, sticking to my eyelashes.

            Everyone was ditched by a loved one on some stage of their biography. This very second, certainly, millions of loved ones ditched those for whom they were the reason for being. There is nothing unique in it whatsoever. It is banal and commonplace. Yes, it hurts very much. It is as painful as a fundamental pulpitis. But it is clear what to do with pulpitis. It has to be shown to a dentist. And what to do with that thing?

            I needed a painkiller. I had been standing as firm as I could, but it had been intolerable. I knew where to find methadone. I was planning to go and take it at last. I just wanted at least for a little while to stop feeling as if a stilt was pegged crosswise in my breast bone.

            Yes, all my rehabilitation will be fucked up. Yes, everyone will turn away from me. Yes, I will fall out of this reality again. And yes, I am unlikely to return. Hi, the doom and gloom dude from the "Twelve steps"! You told me I would not be able to stop using and would end up in the rehab again. But you were wrong. I will not end up in the rehab. I will not need it already, because I am done up.

            Blake dropped by last night.

            When I heard the knock at the door, I thought it was Emmett again. And I opened the lock because I was not expecting any harm. I already started to say, "Does Drew Boyd…" Because how much time can be spent with me, if… But no, Drew Boyd was just fine. Emmett was with him. And on my doorstep Blake was standing.

            "Hello Teddy!"

            "Hello Blake." 

            "I... I just wanted to read Galsworthy's short stories and realized that I left them at your place."

            "The craving for literature must have been insufferable. It is almost eleven o'clock."

            "Well, you know me." Blake smiled and scratched his nape. It was a nice, familiar gesture. "If something gets into my head…"

            I went to fetch the book. I was trying to find it quickly, because I did not want to let him enter the condo. I failed. The door clicked.

            "How are you, in general?" I gave Blake the damned volume. Taking it, Blake touched my hand.

            "Great. We had one more concert. Rita is happy: one blogger called her a new Bessie Smith."

            "What was wrong with the old Bessie Smith?"

            Blake rose his eyebrows and shook his head. I felt ashamed for those words. Blake was enjoying his studentship - something he had missed in the normal age. At last he could play in a band with his friends. I had to be happy for the guy. But, for Heaven's sake, I wanted him gone. I had to think of something to make him go before we have sex. And at the same time, more than anything else in the world I wanted to grab him, to carry him to my bed, to crash on it back-first. I wanted Blake to be atop me, to bite me, to kiss me… 

            In one of the first days of our skiing reunion, I was rinsing dishes after supper. While I was wielding the sponge, Blake was hugging my back and kissing me on the neck and ears. It was very funny and tickly, and I was feeling so childishly happy - like some film kid getting a puppy from his parents - that I wanted to fool around. Then I blew the lather from the sponge right to Blakie. He laughed and splashed me with water from the tap. I turned and started to tickle him. We were pinching and squeezing each other until we fell on the couch, gasping for breath. Blake fell on my chest, hugged me in his arms and legs at once and even sank his teeth into my collar. 

            "You and me are like two kids on a block of ice. We are drifting in an ocean," he said, having released my polo shirt out of his mouth. I hugged him even tighter. The collar was wet. I was getting cold. But I was ready to get running ear if only Blake stayed like that, on my chest. My 'Little Boy Found.' I was kissing his nape, stroking his back and shoulders, and that moment was as long as eternity.

            Eternities end.

            "And how is Em?" Blake asked.

            "He and Drew are just fine."

            Blake was standing at the door, smiling and picking at the book. I wanted to bail through the window, slump to hell, slip into a coma - anything just to get out of there. And Blake stepped closer to me. He replaced the book in his left hand and clearly was going to touch my face. Go, baby, kill me again! You happened to do it already, so go ahead.

            Baby...

            I closed my eyes and tried to swallow the lump into my throat.

            Baby, please…

            "Listen," I said, backing away a little, "when you followed me for the first time… did you really like me or just wanted to make some money?" 

            Blake put his hand into a pocket.

            "I really liked you," he answered, "but I cannot say I did not want to make any money."

            "You never asked me to sponsor you."

            "And never objected when you did. But everything changed soon enough. You changed me, and I wanted to… Why are we talking about that now?"

            Please…

            "I don't know," I smiled. "Listen…"

            It was horribly hard to say that. But I had to.

            Baby, please…

            "Listen, Blake…"

            Do not kill me!

            "Blake, it's late, high time I went to bed."

            Anything could have followed. He could have cried. He could have asked permission to stay. He could have kissed me. In the end, a couple of hours after I met this guy I ended up in intensive care. But Blake smiled again, unlocked the door and left. 

            He left me to lie sleeplessly on my bed for many-many hours in a row, feeling as if a stint was pegged crosswise my breast bone.

            In the morning I went to work. I was focused, efficient, up to my ears in tax returns. And then I came home and decided I was fed up. I just could not bear that anymore. Who on Earth can bear this! Certainly, it is not me. Too much pain has amassed inside me in the course of my life. It is so much bigger than me that I just can't cope with it anymore. Apparently, that's it, the ceiling has been reached.

Therefore, I was trudging along through the snow to but some pixie dust that would take me to the Dreamland. The land of no pain. The land where everything is beautiful. The land where I wanted to stay forever.

            "Hey, Teddy!"

            Emmett called my name.

            "Em?"

            "What a coincidence, I am on my way to you."

            "Um, sorry, but I have some errands."

            "Oh do you?"

            "Yes, Emmett. I…"

            "Errands at this time?"

            I started to feel angry. Why in the hell do I have to explain myself?

            "It is the best time for this kind of errands! I am going to see a…" I blabbed the first thing that came to mind. "A psychic."

            "A psychic? Well, your psychic is here. Let me read your palm."

            He would not have left me alone, would he? I felt I was a pathetic moron. To tell my best friend to fuck off, to dissolve myself into the night and to get wasted by crystal meth under the veil of snow. It was a first-rate agenda, was it not? But Em would not have let me follow it. Where did he spring from, anyway, right at that moment? And who gave me the right to do that to him, especially after I promised myself to start to take care of him at last? 

            I sat down right on a heap of packed snow on the side of the road. Emmett looked at it with disgust, but joined me.

            He took my hand and told me, "Ted, listen to me. And try to believe me. Well, just listen at least, okay?"

            I nodded, and my friend continued, "You will get over it. I can tell you precisely when it will happen: a year from now. A year from now you will be free. Completely free, mind you. Of course, if you will think about it, recall things, rev yourself up every day, it will hurt even later. But not so badly and not constantly. As for this year, you will have to bite the bullet and live through it somehow. The most important thing is to know that life is not over. Do you understand me? Life is not over. I am with you."

            "If you will be with me all the time, Drew Boyd…"

            "Leave Drew Boyd alone, would you! Let's go home, my ass is about to get frostbitten. And I really need it intact."

            And we went home - to save Emmett's ass. In the end, for what else do we need our friends? 

            "So, what brings you here on this inclement midnight?" I asked Emmett when he was brushing snow from my clothes.

            "It would have been an inclement evening, but I was working." Emmett stamped the snow from his mukluks and entered my modest residence. "After lunch Brian called me to say you were suspiciously up-beat today. And also you did not answer my messages."

            "You sent me pics of waiters' asses. What should I have answered?"

            "One pic was of a cat. So, I decided I would go visit my good old friend Teddy. To have some coffee, to talk." The last word Em pronounced emphatically. 

            "We talked already. And there is no need for more talks." I went to fetch a floor cloth to put our boots on it.

            "Do you call a talk that "Blake and I decided we overgrew our relationship" bullshit? No, that was an ad poster. Pop a magic pill and go climb fucking mountains."

            "Emmett," I threw the cloth to a mop bucket. "Do you know when everything Blake and I had went up the ass? When he started to hang out with Rita instead of having sex with me. They had lots of coffee and talks. Does it ring any bells?"

            "So now you decided to shift the focus on me? Fine. Let me tell you something. Stop that crap about us letting you crawl into a crack and croak there quietly. If I will be fucking Drew Boyd and then learn that meanwhile you…" Em shook his head. "Well, my sex life will be over." 

            "Your sex life managed to survive way tougher times."

Em wrung the cloth out and emptied the mop bucket into the toilet. I felt ashamed and decided to play a pi for a little while. I sat on the couch and put a look of extreme openness to my face. My friend hugged my shoulders and said in the tone of a wise, gloss magazine reading lady,

            "Do you know that fuckistry about 7 stages of grief?"

            "That denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance thing?"

            "Are you sure the order is right?" Em frowned and scratched an eyebrow. "You have just ruined my concept."

            "We can google it," I gladly reached for my laptop, but Em intercepted me.

            "Never mind. Denial is behind you. You passed it when you did not believe you and Blake were over and when decided to fuck half of Pitts. I would have said it was bargaining, but since anger comes first in the list…" 

            "We can think outside the list, Em."

            My friend gave me a sharp look as if he was calculating the percentage of sarcasm in my words. I made saucer eyes, lifted my eyebrows and nodded. Emmett shook his head and continued: "Either way, you are on the anger stage now. And there is something I cannot understand, Teddy. Why did you decide to focus all your anger on yourself?"

             "What makes you think so?"

             "Let me see… In a month you managed to bash your condo, scrape all your fingers (I do not even want to think about your ass), almost lose the job you worship and, from the looks of it, to stop sleeping completely. And tonight I found you in some dog-pissed snowdrift. If your anger was not addressed to yourself, you'd be lying in a warm bed."

             I was really hating that conversation. I did not want to continue it and withdrew. But Em nudged me and gave the next cue.

             "Is it you who makes tornadoes?"

             "What?"

             "Tornadoes. Big twisting things that ruin houses?"

             "No, absolutely not. I never make tornadoes, Emmett."

             Apparently, my friend wanted me to catch hold on this metaphor. Like, I am not responsible for everything that happens into the world. And that the world is not revolving around me. But were not we speaking about my small world and those local tornadoes I was making for my near and dear. Who knows it any better than Emmett? Therefore, I just stared on the floor, gloomily and silently.

             "So, Ted, you have to go through the anger stage to get to honest depression and then acceptance. I'd rather you did not eat your heart out on this way. Blake broke it several times already, whatever was his motivation. And as long as you do not believe that he did it again this time, you will continue to hate yourself. Fuck, why am I angry with Blake and you are not?!"

             I wanted to object that Em was biased. And he really was biased! Hardly anybody hated Blake as much as Em. But after yesterday's night visit I did not want to protect my ex. Had he bothered to give at least a little thought to what condition he was going to leave me, would he have come? Of course, not!  Cruelty is not his thing. Blake's element is urge and fling!

             And I really was hating myself a thousand times worse. Because in our relationship, Blake was not a child only once: when I, smashed by withdrawal, was languishing on a drip in the rehab. Then he was holding my hand and wiping my snot. No sooner than I recovered, he returned to his favorite "I do what I want and let others think". Does not the one who thinks hold all responsibility?

             Did I ask for such a load of it? O yes, beyond any doubt. I cannot do otherwise. The Chariot of Fate is steered either by Theodore the Almighty, the Master of the Universe, or by no one. And since the responsibility is exclusively mine, so is the guilt. And then it dawned on me with extreme clarity: I needed someone to steer everything at least for a little while. And also Em is right: I had to vent my self-hate ASAP somehow. With so much of it I won't manage to rehabilitate myself. And I will punish myself until I hit the bottom again. And it will make my chrystal spree look like a black-tie function.

             Well, my birthday was due in a week. And I realized what present I will give myself. 

             "Em," I said with all cordiality I could, "you cannot help me by sleeping on my couch. Go home. Word of honor, there is no syringe with heroine and no choker under my pillow. I have too much on my mind to think about what Drew Boyd will say about your sleepovers here. If you send me any messages tomorrow, I will answer all of them. You can even put a baby monitor here. And by all means we will talk. Just not now."

             Emmett nodded, kissed me on the cheek and called a taxi.

             And I took my laptop and wrote to my course mate Dale Wexler. That very guy who gave me a milestone night in his dungeon. I worried he would not find a spot for me in his busy agenda. But Dale was surprisingly glad to take part in my initiative and invited me to celebrate yet another thirty fifth birthday in his secret chamber. He promised to take care of candles, and as for a cake, I can do without it.

***

              "I am glad you got it," Wexler said. "In reality, all this is not about sex. It is about control and pain. You can give control to someone else and take your inner pain and release it outside. So now we will do it as big boys." 

              "Can I hope for sex as well?" I asked.

              "Sure, Schmidt! Do you think I am some kind of a sadist or what?" Wexler laughed. "Go downstairs and take your clothes off."

              I cannot say I liked it, because it was something different. I do not think anyone can like that stuff. But I definitely felt clean and pleasantly empty when I came home. At least my urge to destruct myself was left behind, fluttering on the floor of Dale's torture chamber. With all my heart I was hoping that a cleaning lady will flush that urge down the toilet with all other relics of my presence there. 

***

             In the evening Em came over. I gave such a flinch when he hugged me that he unbuttoned the collar of my shirt and looked under it.

              "Yikes. Had a good time?" my friend asked.

               "Not a bad one."

               "Got to buy something in a drug store."

              When Emmett was rubbing an ointment into my back, I was thinking what to do with my life, after all.

               "Em," I asked, "why did Blake and I not make it?"

               "Besides the fact that he is a cunt? Well... Ted, such things happen. An oil can mix with another oil, but it can't mix with water. You can try real hard, shake them real long and get an emulsion. Do you know two-phase make-up removers? After you leave an emulsion alone, it breaks into oil and water again. It is not written on folks who is oil and who is water. We have to learn it from experience. But, look, concrete is used to build houses; so hard it is when it is dry. It is also a blend - water, sand and other stuff."

              "Too bad that when you mix shit with sticks, you get just shitty sticks."

               "Teddy…" Em sighed. "I am really sure the concrete for you to build your house will be mixed sooner or later. You will find right ingredients. But sure it won't be water with oil and shit with sticks. That's all."

               My forehead touched my pillow, and Em covered me with the blanket. Then he kissed me on the shoulder and left.

            Time is such an odd thing.

            Sometimes you blink on Wednesday, and when you open your eyes, it is Monday already. Whatever the day, it is always Monday again. Those are various Mondays, but where did all other days go? You went to work in May, looked around and saw it was February. One moment you are fourteen, and suddenly hit forty two.  

            And sometimes it is vice versa. You get stuck in some giant second as a mosquito in amber, and ten eternities pass between every two beats of your heart. You tell someone, "I love you!", and watch how galaxies are indolently imploding. Or you drop a cup of coffee on your pants and watch it slowly and graciously flying towards its destiny.

            My year of post-Blake Apocalypse managed to include the both extremities. On one hand, I did not notice how whooshed from the age of forty one to forty two. On the other hand, this year seemed to be the longest one in my life.

            It would be cool to describe some event of this year that changed my life. A turning point dividing bad from good. Like, as soon as I closed the gym door behind me, a prince on a white horse rode my way.  Although, with my luck, a horse would dump a shit on me, and that would be the end of the story. But I had nothing like this - neither prince nor horse.

            There was Emmett. Plenty of Emmett. We visited all places that were ours for Blake and me. Em and I were laughing there, bickering, tasting cheese, buying clothes. I was meeting some new guys. We went to St Musical Church to sing. We even watched a couple of operas together. Em told me that Pitts must not associate with Blake for me, otherwise I will go bananas. I cannot say we fully implemented our plan, but I felt better. In certain moments I was listening to myself and understanding: life became easier for me in this or that respect. The sky is blue, music is beautiful, it does not hurt to breathe, I want to live.

            I still associate with Blake: snow storms, Verdi, some restaurants, blues, chamomile tea and a shampoo brand. But it's worlds different in comparison with the past. Half a year ago I went outdoors and thought: "Oh, a tree! It reminds me of my life with Blake! It was a big wood year if you understand what I mean." And then my memory would rise to its surface six months of moderate seedlings and months of withered sprouts. Or once when I was passing an electronics store I caught a glimpse of a movie on a TV. I could not recall whether I watched it with Blake, but it seemed to me that I did. We watched a thousand of movies, why not this one? And I started to recall whether we saw it together. My imagination tended to put my ex into any mise en scene, including the ones he was never a part of. 

            All in all, I was seeing Blake's ghost wherever I looked.

            Now I will think, "In this restaurant I hooked up with a chef! And in this store Em picked up a fantastic coat for me." Or, "What a funny joke! I have to tell Cynthia!" Snowy weather, though, still makes me freak out. But for this case it is sufficient to know: in a blizzard it is better for me to stay at home and be busy.

            For a few months I got back to my usual sexual race and boyfriend search. Brian even signed on to make sexy pics for me, and the result was red hot. I printed the photos and keep them in an album. For some time, I was having a date every evening. Many of them ended with sex, but there were no second ones. I was comparing all my dates with Blake and Emmett. Resemblance of Blake in anything from intonations to favor for Russian literature or zodiac sign (God knows, I am embarrassed to acknowledge it now) was making me shrink away. And the quality of our communication with Emmett was so obviously exceling the boring lip service I had with claimants upon my heart and hand that soon enough I lost all interest in dates and with clear conscience continued to enjoy my promiscuity.

            I believe the point is that chances to fall in love are just lying under our feet. You walked, tripped, fell and voila - your sight angle changed. Whether you are tumbling downstairs or falling headlong on a slippery spot, you change. Some people drop as potato sacks and burrow their faces in mud. And for others, it is a chance to stop for the first time in ages and to see Moon on the water. 

            But nobody tumbles on purpose. Possibility of love cannot be spotted willfully. It can be either a dirty cobblestone or a powder-blue box with a bow. But you have to run into it abruptly and to trip over the surprise effect. Don't look for love with a magnifying glass, crawling on all fours along the road of life. Just walk and whistle songs. Like I am walking now.

            I just walked into Woody's to celebrate my birthday.

            This time Emmett achieved something impossible: he gathered the whole gang of ours. Melanie and Lindsay had brought their kids. Justin had come to spend some time with Brian. Of course, I'd already had dinner with Mel, but as for the others, I had not seen them for ages. And now we were eating cake, laughing and recalling some stories from the past. We met Hunter's girlfriend Lucy. I got wishes of happiness and Mr. Right coming my way.

            Actually, I have already found some right guys. And all of them are here with me. I have my glorious family. I have the folks that will never let me perish alone. And also I have myself - the guy who can find a way out of any hot mess and gain from the journey, as experience has proven.   

            It's a funny feeling when you are entering your future step by step. Who knows what is waiting for us there? Probably, I am in for a prince, or just for a horse and its dung. Chances are, I will bring to my future lots of crap from my past. I cannot help dragging yesterday's tails to tomorrow, as nobody can, in the end. But it is important to remember that tails are tails and not to carry them in front of you, tied in a knot. And I want to hope that many good things are in front of me. Why not?

            Emmett hugged me, kissed my cheek and yelled into my ear: "And now presents time!"

THE      END