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BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 32-EXCULPATORY

SARAH ROCKFORD’S POV


every silver lining has a touch of grey

Nate disappeared after breakfast that Wednesday morning, and as you were wandering through The Rockford’s kitchen, you could hear him playing the piano in The Tavern. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d heard him play in the morning, probably years. The music stopped an hour later, and you lost him again until you asked one of the housekeeping staff, “Have you seen my husband?”

“He’s in room five,” you were told. “I was just restocking up there.”

“Thanks.”

The entrance to the spa at The Rockford was specifically designed to transport you somewhere else when you entered, forging a permanent seal between its visitors and the outside world. The huge door closed with a hush and New Age music played as you walked down the softly lit hall to room five. There was no visible number on the door; it’d just always been room number five. You were stopped by Marta, the spa’s manager, and asked, “Can I get you something, Sarah?”

“My husband.”

Marta smiled and pointed to a closed door, “He’s in there. Alone.”

“Thanks. I’ll take it from here,” you told her, smiling as you wrapped your hand around the pewter door knob and pushed it open. The room was dark, the blinds closed against the cloudy day. Nate didn’t move, the intrusion barely noticed.

He was lying face down on the table, a cream-colored towel draped over his hips, his thumbs tucked beneath them so he could let his arms relax. You pressed on a bottle of lotion and filled your hand. He spoke when he felt your hands on his skin, “I know it’s you,” he said. And then he moaned in some sort of pleasure from the pressure you were applying to his upper back.

“How’d you know?” you asked.

“Your perfume,” he said, “And you always pump the lotion three times.”

“I do?”

“Ever since I’ve known you.”

“That’s a lot of lotion.”

He laughed, and then you felt his body tense and release, his shoulders falling again. Even to your fingertips, he felt heavy, burdened. You worked on him for a while, until he was almost purring, his hands slipping out from underneath him and reaching for you, pulling your hips against the headrest. It was strange, but somehow you knew that it wasn’t affection he was craving as much as comfort—something familiar. The moment seemed to hang like a clothesline suspended between the two of you. You cut it, but very slowly…

“Were you going to hide up here all day?” you asked him.

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

A red flag.

Nate was born, bred, and paid very well for his foresight, so if he wasn’t thinking ahead, he was making a conscious effort not to.

“Why?” you asked, lengthening the muscle from his shoulder to his neck. He flinched.

“Ow, that was too much.”

“Sorry.”

You backed off, lightening your touch, and then sat down on a stool so you could massage his scalp, his salt and pepper strands between your fingers. His arms lowered as well, his hands lying in your lap and not exactly still. “Don’t change the subject, Nate.”

“I’m miserable,” he admitted, sounding like a little boy who’d just lost his shovel on the beach.

“I can tell.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry; you’re entitled to your feelings—whatever they are.”

“I know I am,” he said, “I just don’t like them right now.”

*********************
LEO BROWN’S POV


the ABC's we all must face

shortly after your death…

Not to sound like the ungrateful dead, but a man should know that when he dies, the coffee will be for shit. He should know that although there are no chairs in the AfterDeath, there are picnic tables—cheap, sun-faded ones that give you splinters. He should know that passing time was sometimes worse than passing a kidney stone. Death was little more than a rape of expectations—at least when you were alive, you knew the exact opposite was coming.

When you were a boy and so terrified of thunderstorms that you’d hide under your bed, your father told you, ”God has a bowling alley, Leo. He’s just practicing.” Your father was right, but he didn’t know about the televisions or the diner---

(Fudgepackers.-- in blinking brown neon. “Jack named it,” Vic told you. “Right before I got here.”)

Your father didn’t know that evil men would mingle with good, that segregation had been abolished in heaven as on earth.

But regardless of all of that, you were facing facts—namely, that Leo Brown was a dead man.

A dead man talking.

……

Well, gossiping actually. Gossiping and playing cards at a picnic table with Vic, Emma, and Sandra. Vic was dealing the next hand and leaning across the table, whispering to you, “Just so you know, Ruth isn’t all there.” His finger whirled next to his temple, just in case you didn’t know what he meant. Emma and Sandra nodded over their cards as if they knew this was true, and then Emma added, “It’s true. She’s a little crazy. My son, he’s a psychiatrist.”

“So is mine,” Sandra added, prissy and proud.

“So we know,” Emma said. “She’s sick.”

“Probably over-medicated, too,” Sandra said.

“Well, what I don’t understand,” you told them, “Is how Jack was her pick up. She died in the 1980s; that’s impossible.”

“Which explains her hair,” Sandra hissed.

“She was a suicide,” Emma said, the shame thick in her voice, “No one came to get her.” Emma’s tone implied that Ruth had done something unforgivable by killing herself, something as awful as, say, not RSVP-ing to a dinner party.

“Oh god,” you said. “That’s so sad.” (You hoped they knew that you meant the suicide and not their opinion of it.)

“She calls Jack, ‘The Warden,’” Sandra continued. “I think he reminds her of some orderly at the mental hospital.” Tate walked by and Sandra immediately shut up. When she was gone, Sandra added, “Not that I think any less of her or anything.”

“It’s tragic, really,” Emma agreed, a condescending expression far too comfortable on her face. You decided then that Emma and Sandra were like the cheerleaders of the AfterDeath—well to do, well-educated, well-dressed and extremely stuck up.

It seemed a bit surreal to be sitting around a table with a bunch of Canasta-playing zombies talking about tragedy.

Talk about overkill.

“And she made it here all by herself, but she doesn’t believe that, no matter how many times we tell her,” Vic said. And just then, right on some kind of cosmic schedule, Jack smacked the silver bell in the diner window, and yelled, “VIC GRASSI, ORDER UP!”

Vic went completely pale as he rose from his seat and walked to the window.

“What’s going on?” you asked.

“Oh, this is awful,” Emma said, worrying her hands in front of her face. “Just awful.”

“What?” you asked. “What’s awful?” But no one paid any attention to you; they were staring at Vic. Sandra’s hands were clasped in front of her face.

When Vic reached the window, Jack handed Vic his order that he hadn’t ordered, yelling, “ONE PEPPERONI PIZZA!” and Vic walked back to the table as slowly as he’d walked away, staring at the tray in front of him, and when he got back, he put the pizza on the table, sat down, and started to cry.

“Vic, what’s wrong?” you asked. Emma and Sandra were both covering their mouths with their hands in shock when Vic pointed to the pizza in front of him and said, “Look at it.”

So you did.

Spelled out in small slices of pepperoni was the word ‘MIKEY.

“Who’s Mikey?” you asked, but no one answered you.

Emma began to get nervous, “Vic, get up. Come on. You have to go. You have to.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t move.” He was frozen.

“What’s going on?” you asked.

“His nephew. He’s dying,” Sandra said.

It took the three of you to pry Vic off the bench and push him in the right direction. He turned around and waved to all of you, and then right before he was about to vanish from sight, there was another burst from the kitchen, “FALSE ALARM!”

Vic turned around, horrified, “What? What do you mean?”

“FALSE ALARM!” Jack repeated, as if they were the only two words he knew.

Vic ran to the televisions with the three of you right behind him, grabbed the remote out of Ruth’s hand in a panic and tried to change the channel from Harper working in her studio to anything else, but it wouldn’t turn.

“He can’t be dying, then, Vic,” Emma said. “It was a close call or something.”

And then the Cindi Lauper music started blaring as the three of you pulled Vic back to the table, and when he sat down again and looked at the pizza, the pepperoni spelled absolutely nothing; it was just pepperoni. Vic picked it up, cursed, and smashed it on the ground. Five minutes later you were pulling him off Jack, trying to calm him down while Jack taunted him, “GONNA KILL ME, YOU AIDS-INFESTED COCKSUCKER?”

“You mother fucking hateful piece of shit!” Vic screamed.

……

Chris laughed from behind the counter where his bloody hands were refilling salt shakers and told you, “That happened six years ago. We just like to fuck with him.”

Turns out Jack had plenty of experience with false alarms.

*********************


why follow me to higher ground,
lost as you swear I am?


After you’d ‘lived’ in the AfterDeath for a while, you could see things a little more clearly, even when you didn’t understand them. Every new person who arrived in the AfterDeath brought pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and watched as those who’d been there the longest would try to force them to fit. But when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle on a picnic table…it’s a losing proposition. So after giving it the ol’ college try, everyone told their stories instead; they weren’t all true, but they became shared history anyway, even if some of them were the stuff of urban legends…

Like the other suicide in your midst—a Kenneth Reichert—a murderer by all accounts. Double jeopardy was no safeguard in the AfterDeath; Reichert spent his days alone or in the kitchen with Jack. No one wanted him around, Vic explained, because every time he walked by, all of the televisions would go off.

It seemed ironic to you that a man could leave his life, shed his earthly skin, and still be as addicted to television as he was when he was alive.

And then there was Dusty, a calm, sweet, centered woman who told you how it was Vic who came for her, how she was so thrilled to see him, how she was able to confirm for him (and had to on a regular basis, thanks to Jack) that Michael had survived the bombing, that she’d crossed over by herself.

And then Ruth had her story, the one she told over and over as if she expected a different ending, as if she hadn’t already told you ten times…

“It happened not long after Jack got here,” she said. “The first time I was called up. I was so nervous; I’d never been before. I didn’t know what to do.” It was always the two of you alone at a table at that moment, and Ruth looked around nervously before she continued, “I don’t even know if I’m supposed to tell anyone this. I haven’t really told anyone before…but I think for some reason I can tell you.”

You reached across the table (every single time) and held both of her hands, “I won’t tell anybody.” Her fingers were ice cold. Always.

“You have to promise me, Leo.”

“I promise.”

And after you reassured her, she’d launch into the same story—how Jack sent her on a wild goose chase with no name, how she ran and ran and ran trying to find someone, anyone, and ended up back where she started, her mission unsuccessful and no one by her side. How she’d come back and grilled Jack about what he’d seen, and how he’d tell her over and over that he gave her all the information he had, and that, “It’s not my fault you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, Ruth.”

When she’d recount the story to you, her analysis of it always had the same theme, “I think it’s because I’m a failure, Leo. I’m being punished.”

“Punished for what?” you asked.

She’d glance over in Emma’s direction and then back at you, “For taking my own life.”

……

And then a year or so later, according to Ruth, she was summoned again, only this time she had a name—spelled out in alphabet soup, JASON.

“Going to get him,” she told you, “It was a lot like the first time; it felt almost the same, only this time I had a name, so I just ran as fast as could calling for him and then I saw him, standing there waiting for me. He reeked of garbage,” she said. “And I don’t know why, Leo,” she’d lean in and whisper to you, “But they always send me to get the children.”

*********************


it's even worse than it appears

You worried about Ruth, and it felt strange to do that considering her life had already ended and there didn’t ever seem to be physical danger in the AfterDeath. Every time you were near her, you felt yourself soaking in her grief. Her sadness baffled you; hadn’t the worst already happened? Why fear anything in this place?

You figured if you could build and run a billion dollar company like Brown Athletics for thirty-some years that you could certainly help a woman overcome with melancholy. And things were going pretty well until the day Jack rang the bell and said the words that no one in the AfterDeath ever wanted to hear:

“RUTH HARPER, ORDER UP!”

Instantly, tears began to stream down her face soaking her nightgown. The game of Black Jack that you were playing with her and Vic, Emma, and Sandra came to a standstill. You tried to help, “Ruth, ignore him. He’s just fucking with you—"

“RUTH HARPER, ORDER UP!”

Ruth rose from the table, ignoring anything that you were saying and started walking towards the pick up counter, her wet nightgown leaving a trail of water, tinged with pink. She returned with a cake lit with two burning candles, shaking as she put it on the picnic table right on top of the cards. The five of you stared at it; there was no name on it anywhere.

“I don’t know what to do, Leo,” she whispered to you.

This wasn’t a story she was retelling.

You were furious at Jack for taunting her, so you got up, made Ruth sit down, and picked up the cake, determined to return it to the kitchen. But Chris was blocking you. “Sit down,” he demanded. You were ready to object, to finish this bullshit with him and Jack once and for all. You didn’t have any idea how to kill a dead man, but you were going to figure it out if it was the last thing you ever did.

And then as you were sitting the cake down, one of the candles went out, the smoky scent hovering above the table. Ruth grabbed your arm, pulling you back down beside her, and pointed at the cake, “Leo, look. Oh god.”

Half of the chocolate cake was covered in baby blue icing: ALLEY.

Ruth collapsed.

*********************


give me a word
give me a sign
show me where to look
tell what will I find


“Wake her up, wake her up!” Emma screamed at you, shaking your arm like that was going to help, but Ruth was getting heavier and heavier; you could feel her slipping out of your arms. Sandra grabbed her feet as if suggesting that the two of you should count to three and just toss Ruth into the path of incoming spirits.

“No!” you snapped at her. “We can’t do that.”

“Well, we have to do something, Leo,” Emma said. “She has to go get him—"

But there was no time to formulate a plan; the bell had rung again.

“TATE, ORDER UP!”

You froze where you were with your pair of existential fag hags as Tate walked up to the table, methodically, slowly, the way a hospice nurse delivers the lethal dose of morphine to end someone’s misery. Your eyes glanced down at the cake as hers did. The second candle had gone out and pink icing was rising up from inside the cake: MADELINE.

You looked at Vic for some sort of explanation, but he just shrugged his shoulders, “Don’t know.”

Tate ignored all of you, moving Sandra and Emma out of her way, kneeling down, picking Ruth up in her arms, and walking away with her like Ruth was made of blown glass and not cement. It took you a while to close your mouth, to stop staring at Tate as she carried Ruth into a fog.

“What do we do now?” you asked.

“I guess we wait,” Vic said.

……

Jack emerged from the kitchen and took Ruth’s place at the table. He lit a cigar, puffed a few times, and then glanced at Ruth’s un-played hand. You knew she was holding at seventeen; Ruth was never very good at hiding her cards. He tapped his huge fingers on the table top front of Vic and smiled, revealing rows of yellowed teeth,

“Hit me.”

*********************


I am one of those melodramatic fools

Alan’s passing and subsequent arrival in the AfterDeath breathed new life into Ruth. She smiled so often, she hardly looked like the same woman. Even Tate’s stern exterior softened as she played with Madeline, tossing her up in the air and letting her float back down into her arms. You’d watch her sometimes, watch her tell Madeline, “You look just like your mother, baby girl. Just like her. Your mother, she was a mess, too--just like you are.” Madeline would squeal as if she understood everything that was being said. For all you knew, maybe she did.

But when Alan’s televisions wouldn’t go off, not even for a short while, Ruth began to get agitated, began going around to all of the women for help. Ruth went to Emma first and to your surprise, Emma agreed to try, but after walking over and sitting down on the ground next to Alan, she never came back. Ruth began to pace around the picnic table; she was making you dizzy, so you reached out and stopped her,

“Ruth, stop. You’re giving me a headache.”

“Where’s Sandra going?” she asked. You turned your head and saw Sandra walking toward Emma and Alan. You called to her, but she didn’t answer. Their quiet gathering and Ruth’s anxiety was making you feel deathly claustrophobic. “I’m not going over there, Leo,” she said.

“You don’t have, too. You can sit here with me.” While you were talking, your eyes were everywhere but on her. Jack had gotten up and was walking toward Alan and Vic wasn’t far behind. “Ruth, I need to ask you something,” you said.

“What?”

“Why’d you lie to Alan when he crossed over? Why’d you tell him that this place was all sweetness and light, that all your questions had been answered in some warm breeze or something?”

She immediately got defensive, “He’s just a little boy, Leo.”

……

You looked over at Alan again; he was on his feet again, standing tall. “No, he’s not, Ruth.”

……

“I told you, Leo. They always send me to get the children.”

……

Ruth would believe that for a little while longer until it was no longer an option to sit at the picnic table. Your presence in front of the TV screens was mandatory.

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


letting the days go by
let the water hold me down
letting the days go by
water flowing underground


Less than an hour after vacating the tunnels, you stood on the tile floor in your bathroom at The Regency while Brian peeled your clothes off, bit by disgusting bit and stuffed yours and his into a plastic trash bag. “You know what this reminds me of?” you asked him. He was kneeling on the floor, having just taken your shoes off, “What?”

“My mother. Anytime Molly and I came in the house after playing in the snow, my mother would make us stand in the kitchen as she took off our wet clothes and put them in the dryer.”

“Well, these aren’t going in the dryer; they’re going in the trash.”

“And she’d usually have blankets warming in the dryer so we could wrap up in them and drink hot chocolate and watch TV.”

“I’m fresh out of marshmallows.”

And then the two of you were facing off under the opposing spray of dual shower heads, standing quietly while the water ran over you, melting the stench and grime off your bodies and down the drain. Half an hour later, the water silenced, Brian looked at you as you were drying off and said, “Do you feel clean?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

So he ran a very hot bath which you joined him in, an attempt to soak the morning away. Your skin sizzled when you stepped into the tub, but less than a minute later you were comfortable, leaning back against Brian, your hand hovering over his as he ran a tiny bar of hotel soap up and down your chest. And again it was quiet.

Quiet, but not quite peaceful.

……

……

“You know what this reminds me of?” you asked him.

“Our jacuzzi?”

“No. The time I jerked off in the swimming pool at our country club.”

“What is it with you and all these little boy stories all of a sudden?” Brian asked.

“I don’t know. You were untying my shoes before…popped into my head. Anyway, I was sitting on the first step in the shallow part--"

“Playing with yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“What color was your bathing suit?”

“Who cares? Red.”

“Go on.” Brian knees were sticking up out of the bubbles, you rested your hands on them.

“So, I was like twelve, maybe, and all of a sudden—"

“You splooged on yourself?”

“Do you want to tell this story?” you asked.

“No. Go on…Splooge-meister.” You reached up behind you to smack him, but he caught your hand, dunking it back under the water, and then put his lips right behind your ear, “Don’t you ever try that again.”

“You love it.”

And then he was wrapping his hand around your dick, perhaps hoping for an instant replay, “I’m listening.”

“So, I came on myself, you know, by accident, so I immediately went underwater, but my cum didn’t.” Brian started to laugh. “I tried to swim away from it, but it wouldn’t leave me, and then it floated by this girl and she freaked and told the lifeguard, and he blew the whistle and made everybody get out of the pool.” Brian was really laughing by then; you could feel his chest moving against your back. “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Shut up.”

“What did your Mom do?” he asked.

“She made me go sit in the car and went and got my father out of the clubhouse.”

“Uh oh. Is this the scary part?”

“So, it’s hot as hell and I’m sitting in the backseat of our van, wrapped in a towel, and watching through the window as my mom tells my father what I did. And then he got in the car, and then it was just me and him.”

“What happened?”

You wrapped your hand around Brian’s forearm, keeping his hand underneath the water and between your legs, “He says to me, ‘Justin, is that the first time you’ve ever done that?’ and I think he means in the pool, so I say yes, and then he says, ‘Well, if you can do that in cold water, son, you better be careful in the shower.’ And I’m thinking that I do it in the shower all the time—"

……

But that was the end of the story because Brian was kissing your neck and you were playing with his wet hair, pulling it through your fingers as you came, “I love you,” you said, closing your eyes as his chin rested on your shoulder.

His breath tickled your neck when he whispered, “Not a little boy anymore, are you?”

“No.”

*********************


crash into me

You’d been back from New York for two months at that point and in that two months you’d gotten married, gone on a kitschy honeymoon, thrown condoms to the wind and paintings to the floor, been discriminated against by high-end appliances (and gnomes), discovered that it really is a small world after all—especially when Brian has anything to do with it, been given an American Express Gold Card with no limit and a vintage Corvette, painted in your brand new studio, fucked in your brand new bed, had your ass eaten, your dick sucked, and a complete physical examination by the world’s hottest, yet least qualified, doctor, lost a friend only to realize that you never really knew him, trekked through sewage—risked your life—to see what you needed to see, and wondered why your partner, the man who was holding you and kissing you at that very moment, had some kind of weird grudge against Anderson Cooper.

The sheets were cool, but Brian was warm, and although you’d been fucking him for over a decade, you still got that flutter in your stomach when he kissed you in that way that always means we’re not done yet. And it would happen again and again in that hour as he took what he wanted from you and left you completely sated.

The bite of the vampire…intimate and transforming…every single time.

The price of inspiration.

*********************


when I was seventeen…

Brian would always be the master of shock and awe in the bedroom and as you lay beneath him enjoying the fallout, you’d begin to see him as the shock absorber of your life as well. It was a cycle in your relationship that would play out again and again as the years went on, and even when he was responsible for the inciting event, he was equally as obligated to manage the aftermath—as far as he was concerned.

It was hard for you to think of a moment that you’d ever spent with him that didn’t alter your life in some way. You were a naïve, headstrong kid when you met him, and every time you think about that instant, the next year begins to fly by in your mind’s eye like it’s racing to the finish line—the finish line that almost was.

When it picks up again, you’re the proud owner of a high school diploma that was never given to you personally, but rather just hung on the wall as if you just deserved one for waking up or something. Your friends were packing for college; you were trying to pick up a paperclip. Daphne was swooning over the thought of meeting ‘all those older guys,’ and you were wondering why yours didn’t want to come over and play catch anymore.

And then you found him and were invited into his lair for all the reasons you didn’t want but knew were inevitable—every pebble thrown in a pond eventually sinks.

And again time accelerates and the picture begins to move again, not stopping until the audio has caught up with the image of you taking off your clothes in Brian’s office, smiling as he kisses you as if he wondered where you’d been all that time. Bygones are always bygones when his skin is melded with yours.

And everything zooms by again until he loses his job because of you and never blames you for anything, and though you feel guilty, you never tell him because you know what he’ll say--I did it for me.

And then, while the camera is focused on the wrong thing—Vic’s funeral—the scene you should be watching is playing out behind your back and once you realize this, you’ve already been ejected from the sidecar. And when you try to return, you feel it again, the other side of that knife, and it’s the passion behind the denial that makes you realize what’s really happening.

Brian’s cancer will be cured because it’s not what’s killing him.

*********************


when I was twenty-one…

There’s little time spent on small overtures in this film, and you can honestly say that when you returned from Hollywood and saw him panting in his own element that you began to truly believe in his immortality, began to believe that he could survive anything…

Except a relationship.

So this time, you planned your exit, timed it for dramatic effect at a moment when no one could accuse you of sins of omission. There was nothing standing in Brian’s way when he returned from Babylon that night—no boyfriends you were denying, no opportunities he didn’t know about--nothing.

All of your cards were on the table.

Face up.

It was hard to admit, even to yourself, that walking out on him when he was horny and a little buzzed was the only way he would see himself for the teenager he was and see you for the one that you no longer were. And like any teenager who doesn’t get his way, he threw a holy fucking fit.

You taught him something that night, taught him that he should allow you the courtesy you’d always extended to him—because it was never what Brian said that mattered, it was what he did. And the night while you listened to his drunken tirade from the top of the stairs, you knew you’d done the right thing.

After all, the man was a superhero; he liked action.

*********************


take these chances,
place them in a box until a quieter time


And that Wednesday, at that moment, you wanted him to kiss you, to start out slow and let your body encourage him to make it last a little longer; you wanted to pull back a little and make him chase you, to smile back at you when you smiled at him.

You wanted to forget the morning, forget the upcoming funeral, forget the echoes of yourself you felt underground and just be his for awhile. Belonging to Brian even for a moment was a surefire panacea—then and now. So when he held your head still and breathed into your ear, “Eat your pretty, little ass,” you felt an electrified peace push its way out of you, making your eyes close as his mouth skimmed down your torso, your cock, and then you felt words being steamed into your thighs, but couldn’t remember what they were.

His tongue—a welcome and slick violation.

Brian.”

His hands were wrapped around your legs, and you could feel them tightening when he wanted to be back inside you, and in a motion so quick you could’ve easily denied it, you pressed him down, keeping him between your legs, and came hard all over your chest, letting the exhaustion--the real fatigue of it all--win out. He took you like you were the teddy bear he’d just won at the State Fair—a conquest but not an unexpected one--fucked you with far less finesse, but a lot more force.

He smothered you when he came, and the two of you lay in the tangled sheets breathing in unison until he lifted his head, smiled, kissed you, and reached for a cigarette in one fluid motion. He smoked it while he was still inside you.

*********************


come as you are

So there you were, lying in bed with Brian, little more than a foot apart at any given time, his leg crossed over yours and creeping up and down your thigh—his way of reminding you that he appreciates the pleasure you bring him. Sometimes there’d be a moment when he’d reach and touch your face which always meant that he was going to kiss you, so you'd instinctually turn your head to meet his, and when you did, his hand would slide down your shoulder, your arm, and rest on your lower back as his leg pulled you closer--drawing you into his web.

You lay there, comfortably spun in his arms, pressing your hand against his chest, and when his breathing became laced with expectation, you let your fingers drift down to his stomach. And then he cheated, letting his hips rise into your hand, but that was perfectly fine with you because you wanted to indulge him. He wasn't even hard anymore, but you knew he wanted to be.

When his hips had risen, your bodies had re-aligned and you were facing his chest then, and when you began to kiss the definition etched into it, he cheated again, steering your face so that your mouth was covering his nipple, and then you felt what you knew was coming, what you'd been waiting for--that heavy pressure on the back of your head meaning he wanted more. So you let him feel your teeth every so often, his body stiffening, moaning, his cock hardening in your hand.

And then you spoke, your voice a whispered invitation, "Roll over."

He hesitated, not because he didn't want to, but because he was kissing you again, hard and intense, and you had to end it, your lips a hair's breath from his when you told him again, "Roll over."

……

The first time you sketched Brian he was nothing like he was underneath you right then. He was beautiful but at a distance, and you were sketching to bring him closer to you. And even though your intention wasn’t to show it to him, you drew it with his approval in mind. That feeling surfaced again the first time you fucked him—a lazy Saturday afternoon when he’d come home from the gym to find you a little drunk and playing with yourself in his bed…

Brian was much more tolerant of your behavior after the prom, laughing at you as he put his gym bag away, and then picking up your pain pills off his nightstand and asking, “You’re not mixing the two, are you?”

“No,” you said, shaking your head.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

“Okay.” And then you burped and busted out laughing.

He took off his gym shorts and threw them at you. They landed right on top of your head.

When he emerged from the shower, you’d used them to wipe the cum off your stomach. “Here,” you said, trying to hand them back to him. “I’m done.”

“What do I look like, your fucking mother?”

“You don’t look anything like my mother,” you assured him. “Not even when she doesn’t shave.”

Brian was laughing as he was walking—completely naked and halfway dried off—to the kitchen, “I’m going to have a nice cold beer and then I’m going to fuck the shit out of you, Sunshine.”

“Whoopee.” He watched you from the kitchen as you flopped onto your stomach. “I’m all ready.”

He walked back over, sat his empty bottle on the night table, put on a condom and kneeled between your legs all without saying a word. Your knees dug into the mattress as he lifted your hips, and when you were nice and steady, he pushed deep inside you with one hard thrust. It made you dizzy; your head fell into your hands.

And then he didn’t move.

*********************


love remained a drug that's the high and not the pill

Art is about exploiting an ordinary moment, making it hold still so you can make it extraordinary, and advertising is about making that moment undeniably irresistible and that moment when Brian was hard and fixed inside you was the inception of the two. You were the way; he was the means. It was a truth that would always exist between you and hover over circumstance.

When his hand started to move along your stomach and you knew he was going to touch you and that your mind was about to explode like a fountain of pleasure, you almost wanted to tell him to stop, to stay like that just a little bit longer. He may have been reading your mind because all he did was stroke you, holding your hips perfectly still, and you really thought that he was going to make you come like that and that was a deal your body wasn’t willing to make. When your hips dared to move, he let out a deep breath, loosened his hold on them, and let you take it. His hand and his cock were all yours and you took such advantage of the situation that you made him come right before you did, right before you literally collapsed underneath him.

You were sleepy then because afternoon whiskey can do that to you, so you fell asleep next to him and when you woke up, he was still there, only he was way stoned and smiling at you.

“Fuck, what time is it?” you asked.

“Quarter to three.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“You’ve been snoring for sixty-eight minutes,” Brian said.

“You’re fucking high.”

“Yep.”

“I have to pee.” You tripped over his cum-crusted gym shorts on the way to the can and cursed when you stubbed your toe, “Fuck!” It was then that you saw an empty bag of (your) Doritos on the floor next to the bed. “Did you eat my fucking Doritos?”

Brian smiled, “Yep.”

“You hate Doritos.”

“I was bored. You were asleep.” (So, it was your fault.)

“You were stoned,” you yelled at him over your valiant stream of urine. When you returned to bed, Brian was still lying there smiling, and you were still grouchy, “I can’t believe you ate the whole bag.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Yeah, right,” you huffed at him as you presented him with your very cold shoulder.

“I will.”

“Whatever.”

And then he kept his word, “Wanna fuck me?”

……

It got so quiet in the room that you could hear the sunbeams burning the sheets.

……

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

“What the fuck are you smoking?”

“Yes or no?”

You turned back over so you wouldn’t have to keep trying to converse with him over your shoulder, “Are you serious?”

“The next word out of your mouth better be ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or I’ll eat all of your Cheetos, too.”

……

What the hell did you have to lose?

“…Yes.”

And then you sort of freaked out a little because you hadn’t really thought much about it before considering you never really thought it would happen, wishful thinking, no need to jinx yourself and all that, but then it was time, and all you could think was…fuck, you couldn’t think at all. It was like your brain had been unplugged or something.

……

“Why are you freaking out?” Brian asked you.

“I’m not,” you lied.

“Then why does your dick look so scared?”

Your dick? You’d forgotten all about your dick. This had something to do with your dick?

“Looks to me like it ducked into the Prophylactic Protection Program,” Brian told you.

“You think you’re really hilarious when you’re high, but you’re really not.”

“Yes, I am.”

……

……

“Okay, maybe I just can’t do this. I don’t know.”

Brian rolled onto his side, one leg bent, one leg straight, his head resting on his palm, “Do you want to do it?”

“Yes.”

“So, you’re just nervous.” Why do people try to apply reason to things like this?

And then he started to touch you, and his hands have always been like a goddamn truth serum, and you just started running your mouth, “It’s not that I just want to fuck you.” (It made no fucking sense, but you knew what you meant.)

“You can buy me dinner, too, if you want. And by that, I mean, I’ll let you carry the credit card.”

“Brian.”

“What? You can’t afford me on a twink’s salary, trust me.”

“Please stop fucking around.”

“Okay.” And then he made a funny face at you, and when you laughed, he apologized. “Okay, no more.”

……

And then his voice got much softer, a tone you rarely heard before the sun went down, “What do you want?”

You closed your eyes and just told him, “I want to make you feel like you make me feel.”

And then you opened them again and he was still there.

He didn’t say anything; he just closed the space between the two of you, tucking you underneath him, his thigh resting between yours as he kissed you. You stayed in his arms, making out, until the sun began to set.

He handed you a condom, lying on his stomach when the sky was filled with orange, but you didn’t unwrap it right away, running your hand on the inside of his leg instead, showing him what a good student you’d been all along. Your dick was unbelievably hard when you were rimming him because you knew that you were going further this time, and when you were finally ready and much more gentle with him than you needed to be, you pushed inside him, all the way inside him and then you didn’t move.

Your arms covered his, holding his hands as you kissed the back of his neck, and even though it was getting dark very quickly, you could see the smile on his face. “I like this,” you told him.

“It certainly doesn’t suck.”

“Is this going to be the only time I’m ever allowed to do this?” you asked. (Why is it when you win the lottery, you have to know—instantly—how much?)

“Hard to say.”

……

“Was that an answer or a metaphor?”

“I’ll refer you to my earlier answer.”

……

It was time to leave the starting gate.

Granted, the race was over quicker than you’d hoped, but you’d still come out a winner.

And a lifetime fan of Doritos.

……

The ordinary moment that was standing still for you right then in your hotel room was the man you loved reaching back and guiding your hip as you pushed inside him, an exercise in ceremonial control and one that quickly fell away as you fucked him, your thighs tucked inside of his, his on the perimeter bracing for both of you. You were able to prolong your orgasm, to really enjoy being inside him, to watch his face reflect the pleasure he was experiencing.

“Can you come again?” you asked him because it felt like he could, but you weren’t really sure.

You felt his entire body tense, preparing himself, as he answered you, “Yeah.”

“’Kay.”

And then, compliments of Brian Kinney, you really had something to fuck.

*********************
LEO BROWN’S POV


as restless as we are

As all of you arrived in front of the televisions—you, Alan, Ruth, Emma, Sandra, Jack, Chris, Vic, and Tate with little Madeline—the display began to change. Instead of all of the screens focusing on one thing, they began to differentiate into nine different feeds.

“This has never happened before,” Vic said.

Those who’d been in this place longer than you and Alan—you could feel their nervousness, felt like something strange was about to happen. And then it did—the sound went off. All nine televisions had gone mute. Alan tried to turn the sound back on, and it wouldn’t work, he smacked the remote, “Thing’s a piece of shit. Needs new batteries.”

Chris laughed, “Don’t need batteries here, duh.”

And then the remote was passed down the line to each person who tried to get it to work, and everyone had pretty much given up hope when Ruth passed it you. You hit the volume UP arrow and one of the soundtracks came back on line. You stared at your hand in disbelief, not knowing how you did that, but everyone else was staring at the audible TV.

“Who’s that guy, Leo?” Alan asked.

You looked up, not really sure what (or who) to expect…

It was Nate sitting by himself in a row of airport chairs, the kind that are strung together side to side and front to back, wrapping and unwrapping a long, skinny string of red licorice around his finger…

*********************
SARAH ROCKFORD’S POV


explain the change,
the difference between
what you want,
and what you need


After you’d hijacked Nate’s morning massage and given him a happy ending to boot, you walked with him back to your suite. He lay on the sofa with his head in your lap and spilled his guts…

“It’s just—"

“Just what, Nate?”

He started again, “I’m not comfortable talking about it because it makes me feel like an ungrateful shit.”

“Okay, let’s put that aside for a few minutes.”

“Amnesty on that?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He took a deep breath; you could feel a confession coming on, “I don’t think I want to do this.”

“Do what?”

……

“Run Brown Athletics.”

……

Your fingers bunched on his stomach, “You don’t?”

“I’m not happy.”

You unbuttoned one of his shirt buttons and slid yours fingers underneath the fabric, “What about it is not making you happy?” He didn’t say anything, so you poked him your with finger, “Tell me.”

“I’m lonely,” he finally admitted. “I miss the way it used to be.”

“You miss Leo?” you asked.

“Yeah, and I miss being second in command.”

“Well, that’s understandable. It’s a big adjustment. I mean, it wasn’t like you knew when Leo was going to pass or that you were going to inherit the company. It was a bit of a shock, and sometimes, shocks take awhile to recover from.”

He reached underneath his shirt and held your hand, “See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it because you make it sound so rational and expected and it doesn’t feel rational and expected to me. It feels awful.”

“And you want to feel awful right now?”

“You should probably just ignore me.”

……

You left Nate so you could begin to remedy the situation and to let him sleep off his massage. While you were booking your afternoon flight and hotel room for New York City, you wondered why you hadn’t seen this coming. Nate grew up in a resort where he was constantly surrounded by people who were essentially guests, people who his parents knew because they catered to them. He was never just seeking approval from his parents, but rather, from the greater North American skiing community. He was everyone’s child, everyone’s graduate, everyone’s success story.

Leo’s death had left a huge crater inside him that he was able to hide from you at first because Leo’s estate had to be settled, decisions had to be made, hiring and firing had to be done. But now that everything had settled down, Nate realized that the dust settling was, in fact, hiding a desert.

It really is lonely at the top.

But you knew you could help him through his, make him feel better—one way or the other.

*********************
LEO BROWN’S POV


that little faggot is a millionaire

When Nate and Sarah boarded the plane, the sound accompanying their image went off again. “Who’s that man?” Jack asked.

“His name is Nate Rockford,” you said, “He was—apparently--the unfortunate beneficiary of my athletic apparel empire.”

“Don’t be a drama queen,” Vic said. (Turns out pity parties weren’t well attended in the AfterDeath.) “He’s grieving. You have no idea the shit some of my relatives did when they were trying to move on—fucking Nightmare Before Christmas every day of the year.”

“It’s true,” Emma added, coming over to hug you, “My son, Daniel, he ate an entire Whitman’s Sampler every morning for a week after I died.”

Sandra, not to be outdone, came closer also, holding your hand, “And that’s drugstore chocolate, Leo.”

Emma glared at her best friend, “Well, it’s certainly more appropriate comfort than fucking a priest.

You half expected Jerry Springer to cross over at that moment.

……

But he didn’t.

……

“Okay, moving on,” Vic said.

……

The women had positioned you between them which you thought was probably a good idea.

The remote was passed down the line again and this time it only worked for Ruth, the fact alone startling the shit out of her. When the sound came on, everyone could hear:

Not a little boy anymore, are you?”

“No.”


“Fuck. This,” Jack said, trying to walk away, but his steps were fruitless; he was walking in place. “I don’t have to stand here and watch this bullshit.” (It was kind of funny because, actually, he did.)

“What’s your fucking problem?” you asked him.

“My son’s a goddamn fairy; that’s my fucking problem. A fact I’m already very aware of.”

You corrected him, “Your son is King Midas. Everything that man touches turns to gold.”

“Including Justin,” Alan said.

“Is that his name?” Ruth asked, pointing at the screen in front of her. She kept walking closer and closer to it as if her eyes were suddenly failing her.

“Yeah, Mom. He’s my friend; he’s the artist I was telling you about.”

But Ruth was less interested in Alan’s answer and more interested in pressing her hand against the TV screen as if the static electricity was pumping her full of something she needed. Alan looked at you, worried and confused, so you walked up behind her and put your hand on her shoulder, “Ruth, are you okay?”

She didn’t look at you when she answered your question; she just kept staring at her hand, “He’s the one, Leo. He was my false alarm.”


Lyrics taken from the Grateful Dead’s Touch of Grey twice, Collective Soul’s December, the Grateful Dead’s Touch of Grey again, Collective Soul’s Shine, Green Day’s Basket Case, the Talking Heads’s Once In A Lifetime, the Dave Matthews Band’s Crash Into Me, Frank Sinatra’s It Was a Very Good Year twice, the Dave Matthew's Band Ants Marching, Nirvana’s Come As Your Are, Seal’s Kiss From a Rose, the Smashing Pumpkins’s 1979, REM’s I Believe, and Dire Straits Money for Nothing.

Icon bases used throughout this story came from basicbases, basebeat, khushi_icons, obsessiveicons, graphical_love, anithradia, simplybases, randomicons, bases_by_maggie, foryourhead, some icon communities at Greatest Journal, and the website Absolute Trouble.

Chapter End Notes:

Original publication date 10/1/06

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