Never Enough
@June 2007 by Shutterfly
 
Gapfillers for 5.11
 

An organ plays  "Ave Maria" softly in the background. The air is filled with  scent of flowers and the hot smell of burning candles.
 
Noiselessly I enter the funeral chapel, walk between the seats, the aisle that leads me to the open, brown, flower decorated coffin, standing in front of the altar, flanked by lit candelabras.
 
The room is full of people, whispered words, rustling of clothes, sobs. A nightmare.
 
Debbie. I bend down,  remain cheek to cheek, holding her hand.
 
Lindz. Mel. Justin. Ben. All dressed in black.
 
The pain within me is beyond description. It tears apart the piece of me that always belonged to Mikey. But this pain I have to share. Ben looks up as I press his shoulder, but it’s not enough to ease the pain. He’s so much unhappier than I because Mikey was his husband and I was… shit. I was just the guy who knew him for twenty years, sharing fun, joy and sorrow.
 
Gone.
 
My eyes are clear and no tears left.
 
I didn’t bring flowers. If Mikey loved anything that could fill his coffin, then it would be his comics.
 
As I step closer, I stare dumbfound. It’s not Mikey laying there, lifeless and gone for good.
 
It’s me – because Mikey’s standing right next to me. "Poor Brian," he whispers, his voice broken and choked with tears.
 
I jump when the lid shuts down and blows out the candle flames. 
 
 
 
I tear open my eyes. See gray. See black. And a dim light, coming from all corners, but I can’t identify them. I smell smoke, scorched wood and iron. Smoke curls from my fingers and I hastily drop the burnt down cigarette. A voice speaks close to me. "It was a bomb."
 
Ted’s here. Neat and clean, in his brown coat, looking like the fucking accountant he’s always been. "Someone placed a bomb."
 
Some strange dream. No, wait. You’re awake and the dream’s over. This here is reality. Theodore’s voice is sober and carries only a tiny trace of sorrow.
 
Another brown coat stumbles over debris in my direction. The catwalk has crashed down. Knocked over tables lie on the ground, together with the flood lights of the light machine. The steps crunch broken glass.
 
I can’t move. I feel dirty sweat on my face, ashes in my hair and on my torn clothes. I’ve never felt so horrid before.
 
Babylon’s dead. A battlefield. Maybe a cemetery too. And why? Because people want to have fun?
 
No - the last, reasonable part of my brain tells me. It tells me with Justin’s voice "They want us all dead."
 
   "Did he tell you?" Carl scares me. His old, wrinkled face is frozen in compassion and shock.
 
   "How many?" I croak.
 
   "Four dead, sixty-seven wounded." Carl Horvath has everything under control except for his voice. It sounds seriously touched. Finally the old, hetero geezer can show compassion to the gay community. I know, I do him wrong. I like this old, hetero geezer.
 
   "Eleven of them in a critical state."
 
Eleven people, Mikey included. "How’s Michael?"
 
He doesn’t know yet. All right. I can handle that. I can handle it in big Kinney-style, shrugging things off, knowing too well, that deep within me there’s a wounded boy, cringing in pain.
 
   "Hell of a thing. I’d never thought that this could happen in Pittsburgh."
 
Right, Carl. So, I’ll go to the damn hospital and leave it to Theodore to sort things out. A list of damages, a list of invited guests.
 
 
 
The place next to Justin is free, but I have to console Debbie, so I stick to her, sitting uselessly in the waiting room, still in her flimsy blue dress with a necklace, telling us that she’s sexy. Right. She is. Even now. My surrogate mother.
 
My eyes touch Justin’s without any expression. I can’t think about what I said right now. Put it aside. Forget about it – at least for now. The lights are still rotating in my head and the alarm system’s howling its gruesome, loud rhythm into the night. I can’t face him.
 
He’s changed his clothes and looks overtired. I’m the only one here looking like an entombed guy but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter.
 
My news, that it was a bomb, hits like a second. "What kind of sick fuck’s gonna do this?" Debbie yells much too loud.
 
Opposite her my boy’s as reasonable as ever. "The kind that went to Matthew Shepard’s funeral with signs saying, ‘Your son’s burning in hell’" he says in a bitter, resigned voice. "The kind we saw driving down Liberty Avenue with horns blaring, and shouting their hate slogans. The kind that support Proposition 14."
 
Yes. Or the kind that attacked you with a baseball bat.
 
I have no words to answer. We all know he’s right. For a boy, whose father had allowed him to be arrested because he was demonstrating against Proposition 14 – this proposition that would degrade all gays and lesbians in this country to people of a third class – he’s astonishing calm. My boy has grown up. Is equal to me.
 
No. He’s  a better person than me. He has an aim in his life. Straightforwardly he fought for his convictions as he patrolled the streets in his pink shirt and the pepper spray on his belt, kicking some straight asses. He’ll never know how much I worried. He would shrug it off.
 
Learnt from the master.
 
And I?
 
I am ready to celebrate Gay Pride Down Under, celebrate life and my cancer-free body. I’m healthy and able to fuck a hundred guys and more. But this here’s reality. Life’s not beautiful. I may have overcome my personal hell, but now it’s time to mourn the losses.
 
Before I can panic about what is happening in the OP, the doc comes out and gives us a message of cautious optimism that my best friend will survive.
 
My knees get weak. All the more as Justin says we can all go home and rest. He doesn’t look at me. And for sure he doesn’t want to go to his place with me, wherever that is. Being at home means the loft. For us. It’s our place, isn’t it. But he doesn’t want it anymore. I have hurt him once too often.
 
He goes without looking at me.
 
 
 
The loft is a quiet place. My refuge. My sanctuary.  I wash away the first whisky of the day and it burns like hell in my knotted stomach. I ignore it, rip off my clothes, bundle them up and pop them into the trash bin. So much for Armani.
 
Water patters on my head, as hot as I can bear it. Behind my closed eyes police lights are blinking, blue and red. The fucking alert system still howls, I hear the pandemonium, the chaos and confusion, the shouts and whimpers. I’m so fucked up that I even forget to jerk off.
 
Naked I throw myself upon the bed; the cool, silky sheets. It’s impossible to sleep.
 
Again, I’m at Babylon and search for him, not knowing whether he’s alive or dead or hurt. Automatically I squeeze myself through fleeing people and fire fighters who are trying to hustle me out.
 
There’s smoke biting my lungs, hanging in the destroyed room, curling up the ceiling, floating down as particles. There are people, running, passing me, neon-yellow flaming stripes of the paramedics in semidarkness. Gray. Black. Yellow. My lungs burn and my stomach painfully tightens up. Please, don’t let anything happen to him.
 
My shouts in the darkness sound hysterical and strange. I can’t find him. Electric cables hang loosely from the ceiling. Wherever they meet water, explosions flare up. The fire squad extinguishes the fire.
 
There’s blood on the ground and a lost shoe. A covered bundle. A wounded person on a stretcher. I’m sick. Cries, moans, screams for help. Lifeless bodies upon the catwalk. In this inferno of streaming wounded and shouting helpers, that everybody should leave this place as quick as possible, I ask myself, how I should explain to Jennifer, that her son is dead. How shall I live with this?
 
My own shouts are ringing in my ears. I stumble over steel, wood, broken glass and bump into someone.
 
   "Ted? Ted! What the hell happened here? Have you seen Justin?"
 
Ted mutely shakes his head. A dry cough is strangling me.
 
For a second an exploding cable brings light into darkness. Enough for me to see. An unreal figure. A silhouette. A body I would recognize with blind eyes. My heart stops beating. Air streams from my lungs as I pull him into my arms. Ashes whirl from his shirt as he presses his body against mine. He’s warm and smells of smoke. The best smell in the whole wide world right now. "Are you ok?" I see blood in his hair and on his neck.
 
   "Just scratches. Have you seen my mother?"
 
Holy shit. I mustn’t break down with relief. "She’s ok. She’s outside, looking for you."
 
   "Oh baby, there you are, thanks you’re all right." Emmett appears next to us, pale as a ghost.
 
   "Have you seen Michael?" Justin asks. Emmett looks away, not saying anything. My hand clenches his jacket. "Emmett?!" I shout hysterically and suddenly understand his silence. Shit, shit, shit.
 
At this very moment, nothing is more important than Mikey. If I lose him today, I can never tell him again that he’s so pathetic. The Kinney speech for ‘I love you’.
 
I don’t want to end like Deb, not being able to forgive herself that she can never tell Vic anymore how much he meant to her. She can never make up with him.
 
I tumble out of Babylon. Headlights pierce the night in broad channels. The blue lights of the ambulances rotate and this damn, howling alert system is still on.
 
A stretcher is shoved into an ambulance. My stomach cramps. As I hurry, my worst fear come true. It’s Mikey. Mikey with a scorched face, black with soot and red with blood, a bandage over his head and put to an oxygen system.
 
 
 
I wipe my face. Mikey’s saved. He will make it. How can I lie down and sleep now? So, I get up, pour another whisky and make coffee. Hot, black and sweet. With the cup in hand I stand in front of the window and stare into the morning. How can the sun shine so brightly after this night full of horror?
 
How’s Justin, what he’s doing? Does he sleep like a log or does he pace his room, still in his head the pictures of this nightmare? He was there and it’s been much harder for him than for me, being just a watcher. But he doesn’t know about my fear and angst when I was searching for him and couldn’t find him and thought him dead. What would have been if this funeral in my dream was for him? If he was lying in this damn coffin and not me. Or Mikey?
 
And what’s this fucking dream about anyway? Why was I there, looking down at myself, pale and waxen, gone forever, Mikey mourning me while Justin had no tears?
 
Have I lost him? Or my old life? Is my old life dead and I’m standing at the precipice to a new one? On my way to new horizons so to speak?
 
 
 
The coffee brings my spirits to life and my brain can recapitulate things. It’s night again and the nightmare’s not over yet. At least the alert has stopped and it is comparatively quiet. The injured people have been removed to hospitals, the fire squad is still working. There was a sort of silence around me when I went back to look after my ex-lover.
 
Time was moving in slow motion when we walk towards each other, he, leaving the paramedics, a borrowed leather jacket to hide his dirty, white shirt and the shredded jeans. His face was covered with soot and his eyes were radiating like two blue flames. He asked, if Michael was going to be okay and I pulled him to me into a tight embrace, clenched my fingers into the black leather jacket and felt him so alive that I wanted to explode. I’d never known before how much I missed him. In this very moment I wished to feel him everywhere, but I stood back a little and said  "When I heard what happened, I tried to call you on your cell but you didn’t answer."
 
Ignoring my tears I said, half-laughing "I was…so fucking scared. All I could think was, please don’t let anything happen to him." I begged that this wouldn’t come out as godawful as I felt.
 
Justin looked up to me and I couldn’t read his expression. For a tiny moment it seemed as if he was embarrassed. As if he wanted to pull back. His teeth gleamed white in his dirty face and I knew, I looked the same. I pulled him back to me. As tight as I could, but still being able to breathe into his ear and say "I love you."
 
Justin let out a sigh, barely audible and a tremble ran through his body, still clinging to mine. Suddenly his eyes were full of tears, his mouth half open and he was kissing me and holding me tighter. But I had to say it again, convincing myself that I did. Loud and clear, directly into his face. "I love you."
 
And once more, whispered against his lips.
 
He clung to me for dear life. And I knew it felt good. It felt better than good. It felt right. Something, that I never could say in five years though constantly felt.
 
Had I’d been frozen in shock? For sure. But my words were true. As true, that I was shocked by myself and had to think about what I’d done. He sensed my body tightening up, wanting to run away.
 
He let me go. Back to the hospital to learn whether Michael would live or die and then back to Babylon to rescue, what was to be rescued. He didn’t come with me. And I had this shitty feeling that I had said everything in vain.
 
 
 
But now that the night’s over, being showered and dressed in clean clothes, my declaration appears in a new light. Did I say the truth or did I freak out in fear? What did I expect? That he would instantly come with me with his bags and stuff to fill my drawers back with his life?
 
I turn and stare at the wardrobe. My own clothes have so much more room now because his have been missing for so long. How many weeks have passed since he went? Three or four? Five? I didn’t count them because I didn’t want to. My life had crashed with such a resounding thud with nothing to cling to except my job. I have nothing. Mikey left me and Justin left me. Lindsay’s pissed at me. My reputation being the stud of Liberty Avenue is history.
 
When I look into the mirror I see an aging man. The worst fear to fear. If I had killed off myself on my thirtieth birthday I would have been spared everything. I would have never gotten cancer, never have got through the radiation, never felt the burning pain of losing the love of my life.
 
The Brian Kinney, getting now a laughing fit, is dead. Lying in the casket and being buried. What the fuck happened to me?
 
How often did I lose him? When he was almost beaten to death. When I kicked him out because I was dead-sick. When he went away because of my obnoxious behaviour, trying desperately not to lose my label: Brian Kinney - King of Liberty Avenue, his fucks are legendary.
 
How can he love me?

Then a realization floods me: He doesn't believe you. His silence tells it all. With clear eyes and open mind he has to see that I'm still Brian-Kinney-I-only-believe-in-fucking. Have I ever proved him otherwise?
 
I saunter over to the bed, stand in front of the wardrobe and open the drawer. The last one is still empty, except for a lonely sock. 
 
A bitter laugh chokes my throat. Didn't we have this before? I close the drawer and turn around. In the depths of the wardrobe is something hidden I've never noticed before. I squat down to have a look. A cardboard box.
 
Like an idiot I gape at the content.


My fingers tremble slightly as they slide through the soft-hard fabric of the blood-crusted silky scarf.
How the hell did it get here?
 
I rummage deeper. A CD with the picture of Ian. Turning it, I detect the dedication: “To Justin”. Violin music is sounding up in my ears. The Cantabile.
 
Paper sheets: The storyboard of Rage.
 
A black eye mask of the opening party for Rage at Babylon.
 
Old sketch blocks from the times when Justin was able to draw with a pencil. I stare into my face. My face. My cock. My ass. My torso. My eyes. My hands. Even my fucking toes. A whole sheet is scribbled with my name in capital letters.
 
I drop it as if I had been burnt.
 
There's something else. From a corner I pull it out and unfold it. A thong. Christ. I always had the feeling that Justin had stolen it after our first night together.
 
I sit on my buttocks and knead the piece of fabric in my hand. In my other I still hold the scarf. The dried blood has gone black.
 
The sign of my guilt. 


As atonement I had it around my neck and only took it off when I was under the shower. I couldn’t stop beating up myself. Again and again I hear the sound, when heavy wood met bones. Breaking them. I suffered the scene night after night. Without stopping. With open eyes or with closed. The lifeless body at my feet. Covered in blood. I tried to kiss it away, defiled myself. It was a little price for my guilt. Jennifer was right. It was me, who had dragged him into all this. I had seduced him, integrated him into my lifestyle, from a bourgeois home and his flawless education into the abyss of gay barbarism.
 
My hand stops to tear the scarf. Bullshit. Bullshit! You should know better, Kinney. Nobody else was responsible for this than Hobbs. The classmate who couldn't cope with his own inclination and believed, that, when he killed Justin, he would kill his own feelings too. How paranoid was that?
 
Chris Hobbs, whom Justin years later put a gun into his mouth and let him feel how it was to be on the mercy of another, only that Justin had found mercy in himself and let him live. I remember the night when Justin told me. He came home, while I was sucking irritably at my joint and waited for him. As every night when he was on his way.
 
Well, irritated wasn't the right word. I was out of my mind. He swore to me that it was over and I was all too willing to believe him. There wasn't the powerful adrenaline anymore, pumping within him like the night when he had humiliated a Hetero for the first time, watched his trousers being ripped off him and being forced disgracefully back into his car. And because it was the first time he struck back. He was calm inwardly. I wonder that no newspaper had ever announced Cody Bell being found, beaten to death in a dark corner because he had crossed the borderline. Damn idiot.
 
The scarf had been the symbol of my guilt for weeks. It wasn't about being guilty for his homosexuality, for his fixating on me. But when I hadn't shown up at his Prom, when I hadn't dragged him to the dance floor, when I hadn't kissed him in front of all eyes, when I hadn't left with him...
 
Stop.
 
I paid enough for it, until the night Justin pulled it away from my neck. Shaken and moved and suddenly comprehending. That night I had let go. Freed myself from the unshakeable Kinney-Myth, that he hadn't bothered at all. Who had a heart of stone and a soul of ice. I think, this little time frame, where time stood still for us, had shown him that there was more. That Brian Kinney wasn't a monster, that he was human and able to show love. That must have been the reason for him to stay with me, to believe in me, to defend me, no matter what I had done to others.


He had had his doubts, I knew it well. My time frame closed again and I fell back to old habits. I never admitted to myself that I had gotten used to his presence. You have to stop and ponder for that, and I never had time for that. I've always been busy with more important things.
 
If I have problems, I go to Babylon and snatch a guy, dragging him into the backroom. Easy enough. No matter if Justin waited for me at home or not. It had little to do with him. Justin was something special and I didn't want to burden him with the everyday occurrences of my pathetic problems. He shouldn't be spoilt with that. Justin was made for the good things, the immaculate and the unblemished.


Why had he never grasped that?


I snort. For some things one's too young sometimes, Kinney. Justin's a smart boy, but you shouldn't have put too excessive demands on his ability to connect things. Who has engaged himself into a problem laden, complicated guy like you, can't always keep the general survey of your existential orientation.
 
Maybe you should have opened your mouth earlier. But, that never occurred to you. Until Ian came into the picture.
 
Ethan Gold. No competition for me. A little, black curled violinist, who played himself with his bow into Justin's heart.
 
With which bow ever.
 
When we had met on the streets I could have strangled him when he rejected my invitation to "Carnival" so easily on Justin’s behalf. Hadn't the boy learned nothing from me? Had I been really that horrendous that he accepted everything just to avoid being with me? This sounds as absurd now as it sounded absurd then.
 
Anyway – I underrated Ethan big time. Him and his abilities to say the right words at the right time, celebrate picnics on the floor and to allow Justin often than I to be the top in their sex life.
 
I can’t suppress an amused snort. As if  that ever had disturbed me. With the biggest delight it was always Justin who claimed defeat whenever I came up to him. 
 
My cock jerks. It isn’t used to so much abstinence.
 
But today by all means, I have to lift my ass and not my cock and fight. I won’t give up on him without a struggle for a second time. As it was with Ian. This fiddler had taken him away under my nose and I had watched, helpless as a high school girl when Robbie Williams had left "Take That". Not this time, Kinney. You have pots of money, so make the best of it. The only problem is, I can’t buy Justin. He also learnt from the master.
 
Actually, he didn’t. This was always part of his personality and one reason more to love him.
 
I give up the idea of getting some sleep. The best therapy’s work. The box I drag into the living room and let it drop onto the sofa as a reminder of what’s to be done.
 
 
 
 
Theodore’s there and Cynthia, telling me that she’s grateful that her mother has congestive heart failure, otherwise she would have been at Babylon last night. "Is everyone in the office accounted for?" 
 
   "Everyone’s okay except for Phil in the art department. He was trampled on his way out of the club." She talks in a conspiratorial voice. "Broken hip. Don’t think he’ll be back for some months."
 
Shit. Nonetheless I’m glad that it’s not even worse. "I’ll give him a call and send some fruit... and porn."
 
Cynthia grins. "Basic essentials."
 
Right.
 
Why’s Theodore so tightened up? He annoys me with his shocked face why I’m here and not in bed and forgets to ask for Mikey. Theodore’s always been a most strange colleague, but today he’s really insufferable.
 
I warp into my office and stare at my mute cell phone for a complete hour until Cynthia comes with coffee and the newest Eyeconics appointment. They want a brilliant slogan for their ski glasses. Right. As if I would bother for the moment.
 
He doesn’t call. He doesn’t ask me how I’m doing. He doesn’t want to see me and again I made a fool out of myself.  Wasn’t it what he was waiting for years? What he wanted to hear so urgently? The fulfilment of all his dreams, as if words would speak louder than actions?
 
Hours later too much caffeine is coursing in my veins, making me shake. Maybe I should eat. I try with more sugar in my coffee and pour it disgustedly into the potted plant near the window.
 
Jesus Fucking Christ. I can’t work this way. I can’t go on like this.
 
I light another cigarette, lean back and stretch my legs out wide. Again I’m standing outside Babylon between the ambulances and see him coming up to me. My brain’s playing this scene in a closed loop. It smells for smouldering wood and hot metal, of smoke and adrenaline, fear and death.
 
Somehow you’re barking up the wrong tree, Kinney. You don’t grasp the central point. You may prove Justin a hundred times that you love him, but sometimes one has to hear and not only feel.
 
Nowadays I stopped wondering that I use the word ‘love’ so relaxed in the dialogue I have with myself. There was no talk of speaking it out loud. But at this very moment, where we walked towards each other, both in shock, me – not knowing whether Michael would live or die, and he – happy to be alive, it sounded right. It was the only thing I could say. The only thing, big enough for my feelings. Damn, I knew that he believed me, I had seen it. I saw that he thought everything would be all right.
 
But you had to run away. After all, romance is something for lesbians and Brian Kinney is neither a lesbian nor a hypersensitive fairy like Emmett Honeycutt. He’s also not a Stepford-faggot, making himself comfortable with husband and kid, with Saturday Barbecues and a kindergarten place on call.
 
I follow the smoke rings, curling up the ceiling. The ground floor mirrors the classic, light furniture; the drain in the middle of the room reminds me at the hot times in this orgy room of the Everhard-bath before it was closed by Stockwell. How long had it been since?
 
Now Justin wants exactly this: A family. A home. With me and a golden retriever, an angora rabbit, a baby, crowing in the cradle and a square in the backyard’s garden, plucking strawberries in summer and potatoes in autumn.
 
I jump up and pace the room, careless dropping cigarette ashes.
 
I’m not made for that! I can’t do it! I’d go crazy. I wanna be free. Why can’t Justin be satisfied with the things I can give him? Why Michael had to have this nutty idea to say good bye Liberty Avenue and move to this shitty quarter in the suburbs, where every fag zips around with a buggy and exchanges cooking recipes over the picket fences?
 
I jerk to a halt and try to soothe my revolting stomach. Ok, Kinney. Now tell me what do you want exactly.
 
I light the next cigarette and stay in the middle of the room, arm propped up and head bent into my neck. You want Justin back. Right. And what’s the price? That I have to move to Stepford-Quarter, next to the Bruckner-Novotny family.
 
You've paid higher prices in life.
 
But, is this the Justin, you’ve always been crazy for? Principally not.
 
A scene shoots through my mind. My quarrel with Michael, where he had gotten my complete disdain for this hetero-crap. This levelling. This chumming up with the "normal" lifestyle everybody’s leading when they’re in love or horny for someone. They marry, alright. They get children. They buy a house and a dog. They cook cosy meals at the cosy stove, fall asleep at 10 by Jay Leno, fuck only on certain days and have arguments, who’s gonna take out the garbage. 
 
Michael asked me this exceedingly serious question: "The point is not, why have I changed. The point is: why haven’t you?"
 
Because I don’t want to, Mikey. I can’t. I won’t. I’m too alive for this. I’ve got too much pepper up my ass.
 
It was never a question of change, but of development. You really think I’m leading the infant life of a pubescent teenager, being infected by his first visit at Babylon’s backroom that much that I couldn’t live without it? Who realized how easy it was for me getting a man because they all wanted my ass and later, my cock? One look into the mirror told me, that I was the hottest guy in Pittsburgh, Hets inclusive.
 
But someday you have to become fed up with this. I found I was repeating my tricks after one year already. Of course, only the ones good enough. And then this twink crossed my path. A high school pupil, hardly eighteen and anything but my type.
 
Okay, I’m not going to be a Sigmund Freud, analysing why I’d been so crazy about him. Must have been the drugs. Some crappy thing cooked up in a bath tub in Tijuana. He was there and he remained there and turned my life upside down. For the best. I’m a hero of Liberty Avenue, not only its stud. The guys had set a star into the ground if you had fallen apart with cancer. I can show my son affection and pride without having to panic. I finished the Liberty Ride with a broken collarbone. Behind the fucking finish line.
 
But if Justin hadn’t been standing behind it, I'd have dismounted. Fifty meters before the end.
 
Isn’t it the same now? You stay fifty meters before the end and can’t reach Justin? Only, he’s not stretching out his hand and he’s not cheering you on.
 
There were just tears on his lips when you launched the most biggest hetero-love declaration, the gay world has ever heard. Except for Mikey of course. The world stood still and was filled with his presence. 
 
Where the hell does he actually live? I snatch my cell and punch in Jennifer’s number.
 
 
 
 
A loft. Could have thought of that. Justin’s more in love with my loft than I am. Only, this one looks even shabbier from outside than mine. And has no lift. Arriving at the upper floor I catch my breath. Bad shape, Kinney. The door’s of rusted steel and half open. Great. This must be the way he left my loft when it had been robbed.
 
I knock pro forma and hear low radio music.
 
   "Brian?"
 
Justin sounds scared, but not angry that I rooted him out. Was only a question of time anyway. The mountain has come to the prophet.
 
He’s looking in awe at me in my clean, dark coat and the callousness on my face. I fold my arms behind my back in best MomA-visitor-manner and inspect the venue. "I love how you’ve kept the original details - rusty pipes, filthy windows, grime covered walls."
 
Inwardly I’m shocked. I don’t even see a washbasin, not to mention a bed. How can he live here when at home Italian tiles line the bathroom, stainless steel in the kitchen and a designer bed?
 
   "Well, it may not be the country manor of my dreams with stables and a pool… but at least it’s mine."
 
Aha. So, it’s all about being his. Paid with his own money. Sure. Justin’s always been too proud to take my money. At least, it was aggravating for him. But, wait. Manor? Stables? Pool?
 
What the fuck?
 
He doesn’t leave me time to think. "Are you hungry?"
 
   "What do you have?"
 
   "Nothing."
 
   "Then why do you ask?"
 
   "I could run out for it."
 
Sure. A thousand stairs down and up again. By then the food would be cold.
 
Kinney? Why are you so pissed off? You’re not pissed off, you’re unsure. His presence makes you nuts. You can’t touch him. He’s miles away.
 
Photo copies of paintings hang on the walls. Must be his. Cans and bottles with mysterious contents like in an alchemists' joint. I open an old little cabinet behind its glass doors a glass vase is dusty. Must have belonged to his granny.
 
He’s busy painting a large canvas, lying upon a table. Over a lilac’s red he paints a seam in luscious, blue paint. I like it. Someday I’ll take down the painting of the naked man and ask him to fill the space. Why do you have an artist in the family? And while I’m busy to turn my life inside out, then let’s do it the right way. The oil painting of the Hungarian I always liked that much had been a present, belonging to another life. It doesn’t belong to him nor me. If he wants to, I'll throw out everything and we'll go shopping. What a nice, domesticated life I could lead…
 
   "I just stopped by to make sure you’re okay."


His brush strides over the canvas with ample coats, his hands are blotched with paint and so is his old, gray T-shirt. A bit of scab covers the scratches on neck and forehead, half hidden by his hair. His posture is so familiar to me. His moves, the line of his back when it passes into his buttocks. The straight legs, the gracious hand movements.
 
Something within me roars up like a wolf. I want to touch him, pull him to me, feel him and rip off his clothes in an instant, take him and let us feel that we are still alive. But he’s so damn sensible and turns his back to me. 
 
   "I always knew if someone would come out of this unruffled it would be you," I say more impressed than I want to be. What didn’t kill him, made him harder. My hurts, my hard, loveless words with them I tried to scared him away, my thoughtlessness, all this has changed him too.
 
Howard Bellweather comes to my senses. This best-selling author, adored by Theodore, the biggest hypocrite of all times, who dared to attack me openly, and who told in Justin’s face that I would take away his innocence. His youth. I’d never understood what this asshole wanted to say. Now I know that he’s right. Justin ceased to be the innocent boy in the heart a long time ago, he isn’t the boy anymore who was looking up to me with misty eyes, who wanted to spend every minute of his life with me, who wanted to make a better man of me. He’s gone his own way without waiting for me.
 
   "You know," he tells the canvas on the table without interrupting his work, "after the bashing, I found that the best way to survive was to create something, anything, a painting or a napkin holder, to prove that the attackers didn’t win." He briefly looks up. "That I’m still there."
 
   "And I’m glad you are," I say and can’t control myself anymore. I pull him by his arm to me.
 
   "Brian, you’ll get paint all over you." He lets himself be pulled willingly and puts his arms around my shoulders and for a moment everything’s as it was before.
 
   "Doesn’t matter," I say. "Didn’t you hear what I told you last night?"
 
A smile breaks out on his face, mirroring mine. At least I haven’t seen it in a long time and it’s killing me.
 
   "I heard what you said." He stops looking into my eyes. "You said you loved me."
 
   "Then how about marrying me?"
 
Justin thinks it’s the biggest joke of all times. For a tiny fraction there’s something that likes to say yes. I could swear. But then he grins. "Stop being ridiculous."
 
   "I’m not being ridiculous. I mean it."
 
What the fuck? This is not going the way I’d planned it.
 
Justin pulls back his arms. "You don’t mean it. How can Mr. ‘I believe in fucking, not love’ mean it? You detest marriage. You detest anybody who enters into an imitation heterosexual union that by its very nature is doomed to fail."
 
He skirts me. "Did I get that right?"
 
I sigh. "Word perfect."
 
For someone not talking much, you talk a bunch of bull, Kinney.
 
And now he’s stuffing back every single word back into your thoughtless trap. Your fault.
 
Justin’s voice sounds pissed off and sharp. Sure, if one has to listen for years to my bullshit, one believes me some day. He’s simply afraid to be disappointed for the umpteenth-time. How can I blame him.
 
   "I’ve changed my mind." I look into his face. How can he be so unmoved?
 
   "And so have I. I have no intention of marrying someone who by his very nature is doomed to fail."
 
The pain in my stomach pit returns.
 
   "Besides, the only reason you’re asking is because you’re freaked out by what happened to Michael."
 
I shake my head. What the hell happened? We change roles. I grovel on my knees, asking him back into my life and he’s pissing on it?
  
   "I had this dream..." My voice is rough with disappointment. "Michael’s funeral. Only, I was in the coffin, not he." If he doesn’t understand this, I’m at my wits end.
 
   "You see! As soon as everything’s back to normal, so will you. Back from the death." 
 
I turn and forcefully say, "Not without you."
 
Again he seems to hesitate for a second. "I know you too well. Way too well." I feel his hand in mine. "Thank you for saying it, but the answer is no."
 
His hand presses my fingers and then he pulls them back. I stand there as if I've been appointed and not being fetched, watch him going around the table, looking at his painting and know I have to clear out. Now.
 
After all there are more important things to do. The vigil tonight for instance.
 
I let the Corvette howl up, drive to the Loft and get shitfaced. At least until it’s time to go listening to the speeches and holding the lighters high.
 
 
*
 
I sit at my Mies van der Rohe table and get myself smashed. After the performance Zen Ben delivered at the vigil, he actually deserved a Whisky too. We should have been gone to Woody’s and got smashed together. Mikey’s in hospital and can’t nag.
 
Justin was beside me without taking much notice of me while Debbie sang her alleluia to her son, Drew Boyd made a pretty impressive speech and homophobic, old bugger held high their poster, shouting that Mikey should have died and rotted in hell. I was taking my time to pull off frantic Ben from that guy. Horvath was obviously thinking the same. It was his luck that this guy wasn’t pulp, otherwise Horvath couldn’t have glossed over the charge.
 
Justin had gone when I shipped Ben into the Corvette and drove him home.
 
 
 
I stare at a photo of him and me. Taken by Daphne in the GLC. I embrace him from behind and Justin looks more proud than happy. Surely enough, when Brian Kinney shows affection in public, you can be all smug about it.
 
It had been Justin’s first exhibition so to speak and he sold each drawing. Above all the drawing of me, I bought myself. I wouldn’t have left it at any price to some twerp who would soil it with his jacking off. Today it hangs in the bedroom over the commode, complete with frame and everything. Justin was grinning when he detected it, but didn’t say a word about it.
 
He knows me really too well. He knows when to be silent and when to speak. And finally, we’re in complete agreement. He also doesn't want to marry! Great. And where’s the problem now? 
 
I roll a joint and draw the smoke deep into my lungs.
 
The problem, Kinney, is, that he doesn’t want to know anything about you. No matter if marriage or not. He doesn’t come back to his side of the bed. He’d never be again with you in the hot shower, his hands pressing against the steamed up panes, letting fall his head in lust against your shoulder for you to catch and hold him. 
 
 
I gaze over to the bathroom and see the both of us standing under the hot water stream. I washed his back and he told me, it’s amazing.
 
   "That I’ve been soaping your crack for the past ten minutes and you haven’t asked me to fuck you?"
 
   "No, amazing that we’re still together when Mel and Lindz are apart."
 
   "Well who knows what wonders fate has in store."
 
He opened the glass doors and stepped out of the shower. "If Mel and Lindz can’t make it, who can?"
 
   "Guess, it’s no one."
 
   "Stop being cynical."
 
   "I’m not being cynical, I’m being…"
 
   "Realistic?"
 
We stood side by side in front of the wash stands and dried ourselves. I shot him with my stare.
 
   "Do you mind if I finish my own sentences? I despise when couples do that."
 
   "Do you hear that, rubber ducky? He said ‘couples.’ I should quit while I’m ahead."
 
This rascal. I pulled him close.  "Not before you give me some, mon amour."
 
Justin snorted a laugh. "Mon amour? I love how other people’s tragic marital plight makes you romantic."
 
He was scrumptious and I was getting hard. 
 
Justin looked down at me to the tent, lifting my towel. "Christ. What a big boner."
 
   "All the better to…" I pulled him even tighter into my arms.
 
   "Fuck me with?"
 
   "What did I just warn you about…"
 
   "About finishing each other’s sentences?" He bit my chin playfully.
 
   "Marriage is a doomsday mission destined to self-destruct. Fortunately, however, you and I will be spared such a dismal fate."
 
 
 
I take another gulp from the half empty Whisky bottle and a final draw from my joint. Sometimes I’ve got awful prophetic tendencies. When did that happen? A couple of days before he left me for good.
 
I could switch on the computer now and get myself some tricks from the internet. Unfortunately they are all more or less trolls. Babylon had the only backroom. And what are we going to do now? The "Adonis" has been re opened and seemingly it was cleaned up too. But am I in the mood getting my balls licked by foreign guys?
 
Aside from my dick’s hard as a rock, I’m perfectly well.
 
Aside from I was losing Justin for good, I do look acceptable. But if you’ll go on like this, you’ll never get a twink to blow you.
 
But does it really matter anymore? I swirl the alcohol in the bottle and stare upon the damn photo. I should tear it apart and stop bitching like a high school girl. The worse thing is, Justin’s stirred up other needs and wants in me he doesn’t want to satisfy now. Maybe I should look up Teddy’s "husband.com"-site to find out who wants to cuddle with me after a long day’s work.
 
 
And then there was this evening when I returned from Babylon. He was sitting on the sofa, football in hand and appeared being ready to fly with Rage to Gayopolis or some place else.
 
   "Babylon was packed tonight." Since there was no answer from him I asked, "What about you dear, how was your evening?"
 
   "Not nearly as exciting as yours." He rose and came over me in the kitchen. "I spent it here … alone … thinking." He gave me a smile. "And don’t say it’s always a dangerous sign."
 
My lips were stitched up and sealed. Nonetheless I was right. Thinking always leads to something. In this case to Justin’s departure.
 
   "I made a decision," he explained seriously.
 
   "About what?"
 
   "My life. What I want."
 
   "I thought you’d already worked that out,"  I said, my heart was beating fast, "you’re gonna live off your considerable Hollywood wealth and try your hand at being an artist."
 
His answer sounded tired but angrily. "Why are you making fun of me?"
 
   "I’m not making fun…look you’re making me fucking nervous as hell, just tell me what you want, what you’ve decided, we can go to bed… fuck.
 
Hm. Didn’t I make it clear that I was nervous and didn’t want to hear his decision because I knew it was no good for us? My voice was so low I could hardly hear myself. Apparently he thought his decision didn’t bother me, the main issue was, going to bed with him. Somehow I can remember a time when this had been everything to make Justin happy: to lie in bed with me. Now he obviously wants more.
 
Why had all the others passed me and left me behind? I felt like a school class repeater concerning emotions.
 
   "You already know what I want. I’ve already told you."
 
Sighing I turn. The usual crap.
 
   "That’s right, you have: a husband, a family, a home. All the things that make life worth living."
 
   "Cut it out. Just stop it …" He sounded so unnerved from listening to my bullshit and my rejection.
 
   "…and I know you can’t give me those things," he continued.
 
    "Not can’t," I interrupted him. "Cant’ implies that I’m incapable. It’s that I won’t."
 
   "I accept that. I suppose it’s why I’ve always loved you."
 
   "Ah, the untameable beast."
 
Justin continued unperturbed. "But to be a couple, both people have to want the same things, to move in the same direction. If they can’t, or won’t, they really have nowhere to go."
 
I looked at him, stunned at this realization.  "Probably not."
 
   "Then why are we still doing this if we both know it’s never going to work?"
 
   "Damned if I know."
 
A stinging pain was behind my eyes. Was it that? Would Justin leave me? Although we meant so much to each other that words actually had always been needless? Because we had to stop before it started hurting? Before it gets off kilter? Because love was sometimes not enough?
 
Justin had vanished in the bedroom and returned with his leather jacket on and his packed bags. Shit, I thought, and almost choked on my water bottle. He knew I wouldn’t stop him.
 

                      ‘I knew you too well. Way too well.’

 
He went to the door and dropped his bags. The Brian Kinney of three years ago would have let him go without batting an eye lid. The Kinney of today rushed to get out of the kitchen and crossed his path. He couldn’t leave just like that.
 
He pulled me into an embrace, taking my breath away, propping his chin on my shoulder, holding me. His heartbeat was fast against my chest.
 
   "Where are you going?"
 
   "I’ll figure it out."
 
For a second I thought I can’t let him go. But it was too late. Justin stepped back, took his bags and opened the iron door.
 
   "Let me know."
 
His face, a last time seen from the other side of the door, was pale but determined. And disappointed.
 
Would he have stayed if I’d said: stay? If I’d said: I love you?
 
Rather he didn’t. It’s not about said words anymore. He made it all too clear today. He doesn’t give a toss whether I grovel and whine for his love, or not.
 
The whisky bottle is empty and my head is spinning. One last joint good night before I turn out the lights. Sometime this perpetual circulation of farewell and hello again has to find an end. What, if I’d move my company to New York? My never dying dream that never will be fulfilled?
 
I’m almost like Theodore, whining that he can’t find a husband to settle down with. And why’s that? Because he doesn’t want one. He wallows in self-pity.
 
I cough smoke while I laugh. That’s crap. Meanwhile Theodore’s a real competitor to me when it comes to men. Maybe I also should try some plastic surgery.
 
When I stand in front of the mirror, slightly swaying, I can’t see actually what’s there to being beautified. No wrinkles, only shadows on cheeks and chin that a good shave wouldn’t smooth.
 
It just didn’t work out with the both of us. Basta. I throw myself upon the bed, join the carousel for one turn and shut my eyes.
 
 
*
 
 
It didn’t work? Why? Who had promised himself to lift his ass and win Justin back? At any price? Wasn’t this the irresistible Brian Kinney – sought-after by many, conquered by few?
 
In my head a little miner tries to mill a goldmine, so I flee under the ice cold shower, return as a boiled lobster and drape the towel around my hips, set the coffee machine in gear and light a butt.
 
It’s time to make plans and to do what I do best: act, not talk. Ben says that Mikey’s alright but not awake yet. Okay. If he comes back I’ll care about it. But first I infuse myself with lots of sugar and little coffee, light another fag from the old one, sit down on the sofa and stare at our photo. Recapitulate yesterday’s talk.
 
Something had stuck – in addition to his rejection of my proposal. A country manor, a pool and stables. What the hell does he want stables for? For rabbits or horses? He can’t ride, neither can I. At least not horses.
 
Alright. Put it aside for now. What remains is a house with a pool. Justin’s sense of humour has adjusted itself to my own over the years, so I don’t have a clue whether he was serious or not.
 
Let’s take a chance. I switch on my computer and click through offers of country manors in the area of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A photo appears among many others. A country manor, secluded, far away from Pittsburgh’s Stepford-Quarter and far away enough from buggies, kindergartens and barbecues.
 
 
*
 
Mikey has woken up, this cheeky monkey of Hunter’s back again and wants to take care of both in the future. They so deserve it. Theodore appears to be the same again and Emmett has certainly lost his job on TV, but landed the big hit of the season. The biggest football star Pittsburgh’s ever got, had outed himself in front of a running camera.
 
And I sit here with Jennifer and want to sell my loft. Again. New York remains a pipe dream. The biggest crash I’ve ever made is big time history. This time it’s serious.
 
After two weeks of silence, where my cell remained mute, I sit here now and listen to Jennifer saying that her psychologist prescribed her a double dose of Prozac. I shove over the Whisky bottle for swallowing.
 
   "Who do I look like to you, Judy Garland?" Grinning I get her a water bottle from the fridge.
 
   "How’s Michael?" she asks.
 
   "Fine. I was at the hospital."
 
She swallows the pills and sighs. "I spoke to Debbie. She’s a fucking inspiration."
 
Jeez.  "I can tell, she’s had a profound influence." The young guy she’s with has a profound inspiration too. I’d take her for Justin’s sister at anytime.
 
   "I’m so grateful that Justin’s okay," she says and we clink our water glasses to that. "And you."
 
Then she puts her glass firmly back at the table and is all business woman. "So. You want to sell your loft. You’re the fourth person today wanting to put their place on the market. Everyone wants to get off of Liberty Avenue. I never pegged you for a panic seller too."
 
I’m not living at Liberty Avenue, and Jennifer’s not stupid. She grills me because she wants to learn the real reason.
 
   "That’s not the reason."
 
   "Have you told Justin?"
 
   "No. And I’d prefer it if you don’t tell him either."
 
She nods and looks funny at me. "I respect my client’s privacy," and pulls out paper from her briefcase.
 
   "There’s no point in keeping it anymore." I stare at an imaginary point of the table. "I also asked him to marry me," I tell her casually. She whirls around.
 
   "Don’t worry. He turned me down."
 
   "I had no idea!"
 
   "I really just need to sell the loft as soon as possible."
 
Jennifer gives me the paper and a pen and I sign without reading through while she’s staring holes into the air. "Shall I leave you some of this?" He waves the bottle of pills. I shake my head no. Pills are not the solution, Jen.
 
She must be shocked. Her son almost lost his life because of me but she got her act together. Justin’s got to be proud to have a mother like her. She’s even arranged with me. More than this.
 
She’s packing her things and turns to me again. "I’m sorry. I mean, that I’m not going to be your mother-in-law."
 
A helpless smile freezes on my face. Why did I tell her anyway? So that someone can take pity on me for a change?
 
Shit.
 
What a miserable bunch of rubbish Brian Kinney has become. You whine like a street cur just because you don’t get what you want. You can’t handle rejection. You can’t handle emotions. You only know that there’s something cooking up within you that wants to be out. Maybe I need my best pal Mikey right now, but he hides himself in Stepford-Quarter, trying to get back on his feet and to forget you. You hadn't visited him at all. He must think me the same selfish prick I’d been when Justin was in a coma. Toy’s broken – get a new toy. Friendship broken – go, get smashed, fuck your brains out and everything will be back in order.
 
If he had have a last spot of feelings for me, it must be dead by now. Twenty years in vain. If you had been friends for twenty years and nonetheless you can break up just like this, what’s the point starting it in the first place?
 
Justin would say: because every single day was worth it. Fuck the come out. 
 
. 
*
 
I’ve always chosen the times when Justin wasn’t on duty in the Diner. He took back his old job after his Hollywood-dream had shattered. He never continued nor finished his education at PIFA, but after he had been the big star at Bloom Gallery, maybe he didn’t need to. What I had seen had been great. Strange, but great. Perhaps he could make a living from it one day. And pay me back for his tuition. 


With a grin on my face I enter the Diner and see him complete with apron and red sweatshirt hurrying from table to table. He freezes in the middle of his movement when he sees me. It’s my luck that nobody’s there from the old clique. Emmett plans his parties – if he isn’t busy helping Drew planting his seed, Theodore’s got nothing else in his mind than the pretty guy who’s crazy for him – for whatever reason. The lesbians are mad with me, Mikey’s food is delivered nowadays and it has never Ben’s world here anyway.
 
I wipe away a tiny, sentimental trace and step in front of him. "How’s it going?"
 
   "Fine. You?"
 
I shake my head. "I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon. You got to see something."
 
Before he can reply, I’m gone.
 
 
*

   "When you told me you got me something to look at I didn’t know it would be in West Virginia."
 
God. He still sounds pissed off. Will this be the basis we’ll communicate with each other?
 
   "It’s less than half an hour from Pittsburgh."
 
The air is rough and cool as we pace down the country road. Away from Pittsburgh. Justin is silent but turned on the stereo. He doesn’t want to talk with me as if I had done some outrage.
 
My final hope appears after a bend. The biggest and most beautiful country manor I could get. Timber framing of the last century. Big enough to invite the whole of Liberty Avenue to an orgy. The trees around are bleak, but in summer this must be heaven.
 
   "Wow." Justin peels out of the Corvette and seems to be impressed.
 
   "Wait until you see the tennis court, the pool and the stables." I lead the way to the door.
 
   "Who lives here?"
 
I hesitate. "We do. I bought it."
 
   "What? You bought this?" Justin appears shocked, so I drag him by the corner of his anorak over the threshold.
 
Teak and Mahogany. The heavy furniture, I bought with it, are covered with white dust sheets. I give him time to digest the shock and get myself busy at the open fireside, stir the covered embers I ignited this morning and spark the fire to a blaze.
 
A fine catchword. Bring back the fire to a blaze.
 
The mantelpiece is dusted, the windows are blind, bulbs are in the candelabras hanging from the ceiling. I’m not sure whether they still work.
 
   "You said that your small, but charming studio would do until your country manor comes along," I say as calmly as I can manage while Justin walks along the window front, asking himself  whether he could feel at home here. "I hope that’s all you dreamt of."
 
   "And more. But…"
 
   "You won’t marry me. I know."
 
He paces the huge, dark room and tries to embrace it which he doesn’t succeed yet. Me neither.
 
   "Who could blame you? I am without a doubt the worst candidate for marriage alive, but conversely that’s also the reason that I’m the best candidate."
 
   "And how is that?"
 
I start to lecture. It’s half unprepared speech and part of what I had arranged in my mind.
 
   "Because, as strongly as I was opposed to the idea, now that I’m behind it, I am as fervently and passionately committed."
 
How stupid does this sound? I have to suppress my grin and pull my lips into my mouth.
 
Our eyes meet. I don’t know what he thinks. He seems to suppress a smile too.
 
   "And what changed your mind?"
 
   "I finally thought of one good reason to do it."
 
   "And what is that one good reason?"
 
Justin’s not gonna make it easy for me. But I see his wall coming down while mine is lying crumbled on the ground already.
 
I approach him carefully. "To prove to the person that I love, how much I love him. That I would give him anything, I would do anything, I’d be anything to make him happy."
 
For the first time a smile scurries over Justin’s face. I feel like being in a puppet show where someone else is pulling the strings. But I mean it. I mean it the way I say it. That’s not some memorized text, done because the semen boils up in my left ball when I see him. He’s everything. Everything that Mr. Brian-I-don’t-believe-in-love-Kinney needs.
 
He’s building up in front of me and looks at me.
 
   "You’re fucking unbelievable!"
 
He skirts me and I follow him nervously with my eyes.  "It’s true. I am."
 
And suddenly it breaks free: "You bought this! You bought this palace!
 
   "For my prince."
 
Our eyes meet again. He knows how to understand and value my joke. "I’m also selling the loft and the club."
 
Instantly he’s serious again and approaches me.  "Without even knowing what my answer would be?"
 
   "I’m taking a chance on love."
 
Again he scrutinizes me. His nostrils dilate adoringly and I see it’s working behind his forehead. He doesn’t know whether this is bullshit or the truth. True feelings or calculation to get him back into my bed. But I see his eyes start to sparkle and a sunshine smile is spreading on his face. Deb wouldn’t hesitate to snap him into her arms. I do.
 
   "Then you mean it?" His voice sounds pressed, but somehow hopeful.
 
   "I’ve never meant anything more." And that’s my whole, my solemn gravity.
 
The wolf within me starts to roar again. He’s standing so close to me that I can feel his breath. His indecision. His fear to give love a chance – like me.
 
He scrutinizes me into my soul. I’m not sure what he’s found there but he nods and says, as calm and detached as possible "Okay."
 
   "Okay?"
 
   "Let’s do it."
 
   "Say it." I have to hear it. So there’s no mistake.
 
   "Yes." He beams at me.
 
   "Yes, what?"
 
He comes even closer and takes my face between his hands. "Yes. Yes, I will marry you. I will marry you." He pulls me down to him and presses his lips onto mine.
 
Jesus Fucking Christ.
 
Promptly the old intimacy’s back again. I gasp rather than I breathe. I can’t do otherwise. His scent is overwhelming, his vicinity, his body and the wolf within roars louder and with impatience. But yet he can’t be freed.
 
I cannot say anything. His body’s way too close. Hard and soft. I press my nose into his neck, try to breathe and am silent. He did say it. He wants me.
 
Justin looks at me again, searching for something he cannot find. Joy? Relief? "What? Don’t tell me you’re already having second thoughts."
 
   "Not one."
 
He pulls me back and I’m glad he can’t see my face. I did say it. But I’m not so sure whether I can pay this price. This huge house is beating me up already.
 
But I don’t care this very moment. I can handle it. I can handle it as I handled Mikey’s almost death, Justin’s leaving, the loss of Babylon. You get used to everything.
 
The important thing is, he’s with me. And understands me. I don’t need to tell him ten times a day "I love you," but I would do everything, give everything, be everything. Everything he wants. My personal turn of 180 degrees.
 
And in this special moment I believe it myself, when he rips off my jacket and unbuttons my shirt and my heart is doing a drum roll. Today I feel like the schoolboy he has been at his first time. How often did we do it the tender way? Two-, three times? Then this is going to be the fourth time.
 
It’s not cold on the oak floorboards; Justin had taken off a blanket from the furniture and spread it in front of the blazing fire. I’m only a watcher of his actions and let everything happen to me as he likes it. It’s not bad. It’s not bad for once to be the passive part of our relationship and let myself fall into his dynamic. Just the opposite. It’s amazingly exciting. I know my knees will be red and sore tomorrow but I give a damn shit right now. I feel nothing except his warm body next to me and beneath me, and – when I pull his bum over my thighs – over me. He lowers down at me and we both are secured in the cocoon of surrender, of fever, of timelessness.
 
This is all that matters, and I don’t mean my cock up his ass. It’s so much more. Much more than I could comprehend. But I can express. With my body, with my lips, my hands. I listen to the words he murmurs into my ear but I don’t want to understand them. Our mutual understanding has always been beyond words.
 
What started as slow dance unloads into explosions. He squirms like an eel under me and his moans are like a rumbling; deep – and I plunge deeper – but it’s never enough.
 
He rears up and I pull him to my chest. Deeper.
 
   "Brian?" I see his thoughts somersaulting while my mind is blank.
 
He closes his eyes. "Promise me…"
 
   "Yes?"
 
He wipes the damp strands from my eyes. "Nothing. Just be there."
 
My tongue draws his lips and my hands stroke the down on his legs.
 
We love each other until our lips are swollen and our members are sore; until the condom supply is spent and the fire has burnt down.
 
Pale morning light seeps through the window panes. Justin sleeps in my arms. Each bone in my body is aching. I open my eyes and think, this pain is absolutely exquisite. Gently I lay Justin’s body down the blanket, raise and pull on trousers, shoes and coat.
 
Yesterday I had seen something I want to have. Noiselessly I open the door and breathe cold air, smelling of snow and spring. At the wall, a yellow blooming bush is climbing. Winter Jasmine. I break off a twig.
 
Back in the lukewarm air of the huge room I squat down in front of the fire side, throw aside the coat, cover the ember with ashes and pour some water after.
 
With the bright yellow leaves I tickle Justin’s nose. It’s not a bunch of roses, but it will do. His head has sunken back upon his shoulder and his mouth is slightly parted, the lips red and swollen. His hair is mussy and damp, on his chest glistens a last film of sweat and white, smeared traces of white covering his abdomen. Mine and yours.
 
Justin wakes up with the rumbling of this stomach and I grin. "The feeding of the predators."
 
The wolf within me roars, but not for hunger. Justin looks puzzled at the yellow twig. "Hm. Do you think it’s eatable?"
 
My lips adheres to his mouth. "No," I whisper against his lips, "but you can put it behind your ear." My tongue wraps around his, I hold his neck and draw my fingers through his hair. My stomach growls too now - I want to drink him, eat him and keep him within me because I can never get enough. Never.
 
Justin grins. I feel it. "There must be some cookies in the car," I breathe into his ear.
 
   "Cookies? Are you kidding?" He loosens himself from me, licks my lips once more, puts the twig behind his ear, raises up moaning and gets dressed. I watch him in silence and catch the crumpled shirt he’s throwing at me. His eyes are glued to mine, sparkling, blue eyes, clear, despite the short night.
 
   "Thanks for the roses," he says seriously and breaks the silence with his laughter and pulls me at my hand out of the house. "To you or to me?" he asks, standing beside the Corvette.
 
   "You don’t even have a bed," I snap and he grins.
 
   "Always the romantic. Don’t you have enough?"
 
   "There’s no such thing..." I say with raised finger.
 
   "… as enough. I know."  He opens the door. In the car he attacks me, I bump my sore knee and moan.
 
No. There’s no such thing as enough.
 
 
                                                                                     END