Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 07:59:39 -0500 From: Tom Cup <tom_cup@hotmail.com> Subject: Tommy Series (Returning Home) Chapter 3 Gay A/Y, Y/F, Camping Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 by the Paratwa Partnership: A Colorado Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, except in the case of reviews, without written permission from the Paratwa Partnership, Inc, 354 Plateau Drive, Florissant, CO 80816 This is a fictional story involving alternality sexual relationships. If this type of material offends you, please do not read any further. This material is intended for mature adult audiences. Names, characters, locations and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Tommy By Tom Cup Part 3 Returning Home CHAPTER THREE We became a regular feature at James' house. He was always stopping by the campground to see how we were managing. It was great to have him showing up. All the renters assumed that he was the adult in charge. I noticed that people listened a little more when I spoke. I didn't have any real trouble, just a couple of college kids one week that had trouble keeping the noise down after hours. But when James showed up that next day, placing one of his beefy hands on my shoulder as he scolded them about disturbing the neighbors, things smoothed out. They were careful from then on to listen to what I told them. James was a great cook. He said he had to be. He didn't like going out and he didn't have a wife so he had to learn to take care of himself. It was a good arrangement for us all. Brian and I cleaned up the kitchen, and tidied up the rest of the house for him; and he fed us. "Why do we have to go over there all the time?" Brian asked, "Why can't we have dinner here, alone." "All we have is hotdogs, and mac and cheese. I don't feel like having that again. And, besides, we told him we would be over." "You told him that we'd over." It annoyed me but he was right. I had told James that we would be by for dinner. I hadn't asked Brian. I just assumed that he would go along. I always enjoyed the company of adults. I found them more stimulating than kids my own age. They always had read books I hadn't, or had been to places I hadn't, or had viewpoints that I hadn't thought about. James was full of camping and nature stories. He told stories about living in the middle of nowhere, with little or nothing, and made it sound romantic. He was born in Kansas, he told me, but had lived in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. I loved hearing the stories of his life. Brian didn't. I sighed and picked up the phone. Brian needed me. He needed to know that I cared about him. He got lost in the conversations that James and I enjoyed. I couldn't fault him for not wanting to go. And I didn't want to go alone. I knew that was what Brian was expecting. He thought that James and I would have preferred to be alone anyway. The truth was, maybe I would have like to be alone with James but not at the expense of losing Brian. "Now I feel bad," Brian said after I had given James my apologies for not being able to keep our dinner engagement. "Why?" "Cause I know you really wanted to go. I fucked it up. It's my fault." "Brian, you got to stop thinking like that. I didn't go because I wanted to be with you, I care about you." "I know. That makes it worst." "Come on. It's hotdogs and mac and cheese for you." I smiled and Brian smiled back at me, sheepishly. ************ When I woke in the morning, Brian was gone. It took me a few minutes to realize that he was really gone -- not just out doing something on the grounds. While I was getting dressed something kept flashing in the corner of my mind. I kept looking around the room trying to find whatever it was I was looking for, or trying to remember. I could almost catch a glimpse of it and then it would vanish. Then I realized it wasn't something that was bothering me it was the absence of something. Brian's stuff was gone. That's when it hit me. I grabbed my jacket and ran out the door. I didn't care if I missed the check-ins for the day or not. I had to find Brian. I jumped on my bike and headed for town. As I entered the center of town my anxiety grew. I remembered with regret that I hadn't bothered to learn where Brian lived. It just didn't seem like much of an issue. He made it clear he didn't want to be there and that he wasn't wanted there. So it seemed pointless to learn the information, until I was out desperately searching for him. I circled the lamppost that he had been leaning under the first day we met. Then I circled the blocks in every direction from it. I really don't know what I was looking for. I hoped that I would see him but other than that I didn't have a clue. Moments that seem small and insignificant often harbor important information; I had missed such a moment with Brian. I cursed myself for not paying closer attention, for not asking more questions. James' stories intrigued me because they were full of detailed information. He remembered the shape and feel of a particular rock he sat upon as he watched the reds, blues, and purples of the setting of sun over Pikes Peak. I had been in awe of the description. Now I understood why. Details. The story is in the details. I had missed the details with Brian. The only other place I could think of looking was the diner at the edge of town. I hopped back on my bike and headed there. Lou, the owner, cook and chief bottle washer as he called himself, was a rotund man. He loved to laugh, I discovered, though the sound he made sounded more like air escaping a tire than a laugh. Lucy was waiting the tables, playing cashier and busboy. She immediately placed a paper napkin, silverware and a glass at a counter stool, facing me, as I walked in the door. She reached into her pocketed apron, pulled out her bill order pad and pen before making eye contact with me. "I'm looking for Brian." She blinked as if not understanding the statement. "Brian... ah... we come in sometimes... ah... he's..." "Yeah, I know who your talking about." "Have you seen him?" She shrugged her shoulders, turned and refilled the coffee of the trucker down the counter. I guessed that meant `no.' More correctly, I think it meant she could care less and I was wasting her time. ************ James' truck was parked out front when I got back to the cabin. Questions swirled around in my head about Brian. Why the hell had he left like that? It made me mad. I hoped he was OK, not lying dead somewhere in a ditch. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't want company. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I wanted to figure these things out. I opened the door to find James sitting and talking with a red eyed, wet faced, Brian. I was awed and relieved. "Where the hell have you been?" It came out more angrily than I meant. "Whoa now, whoa now," James said as Brian lowered his head, shaking it from side to side, "Your little friend is a bit upset." I glared at James. Burning inside of me was the desire to scream at him. I wasn't blind. I could see that Brian was upset (and by the fucking way, if you haven't noticed, I'm a bit upset too!) I wanted to tell him to get out, that we could handle our own problems. I wanted to lash out at him because he was there, being a friend. Brian looked up at me. "You scared me," I whispered. "Sorry." James had just started out to do a morning run to the lumberyard. He wanted to get an early start mending some fences. The first light of the morning was just beginning to shine when he spotted Brian sitting on the side of the road, crying. He stopped of course. I was so busy looking for Brian that I hadn't seen his truck heading in the opposite direction, bring Brian back to me. I apologized to James, mostly for what I had thought of saying to him. He patted my back and whispered, "Be gentle with him. He's had a hard life." Before he excused himself to finish the errands that were yet left undone. The room seemed so large with Brian and I alone in it. He stared longingly at the floor as if wishing that the boards would disappear into a great monstrous abyss that would swallow him whole. I was frozen in place afraid to move, yet afraid to remain unmoving. Smoothing out the edges of a relationship is more frightening than painful. There is pain but the pain rises out of the fear that you might not be able to make the puzzle of your lives fix together. The pain is a manifestation of the fear that you might lose each other. "I'm scared," Brian said as if reading my mind. I nodded and found that I could move. As if with the truth of his words a binding spell was broken. "I'm scared too." Brian's body folded in two. His arms wrapped around each other, he collapsed on his knees, his head falling on his folded arms, and he sobbed. He looked so young, so fragile, so needy. I moved to him, knelt on the floor and covered him with my body. We talked about a lot of things that day. I told Brian everything I could remember about my life. He told me about his fear and loneliness. I had parents that loved me; even if they didn't understand me, they loved me. For the most part, I was never made to feel afraid. Brian's mom told him he was a mistake -- that she wished he was never born. The only friend he ever had labeled him a freak. I got paddled because my parents thought they were teaching me lessons that I needed to learn, and truthfully, except the one time, I never thought they went too far. Brian's mom would beat him, throw things at him, and hit him with shoes or whatever was in reach. "She hates me. She really does. She had a friend over once. And I guess he didn't like kids or something, cause she came out of the bedroom and just started pounding me with her fist. I didn't know what was going on. I fell on the floor and tried to cover my face but she kept hitting me and saying it was my fault.... It was all my fault." He cried and I cried with him. My heart hurt. I was sixteen and I wanted to do something heroic. I wanted to be his prince, his knight in shining armor. All the pretence I had about romping the summer away and then saying, `good-bye, been nice, hope to see you again next summer,' were washed away by the tears we both shared. I felt I couldn't -- wouldn't -- let him return to a house so devoid of love. He deserved better than that. One thinks great thoughts and makes great plans at sixteen. Most of what we dream at that age never materializes but it does shape our lives. I was precocious in my sexual development and now at sixteen I was taking on the mantle of adulthood. ************************************************************************ Send Comments to: comments@tomcup.com ************************************************************************ News: Name Change: Beginning March 1, 2002 access to the Tom Cup Library can be gained by going to http://www.tomcup.com. Access to the site will also remain available through http://tomcup.iscool.net. Calvin in Paperback We are pleased to announce the pre-ordering sale of Tom Cup's Calvin. This is one of the fans of Tom Cup's writing favorite stories. Being released in paperback, this story has been newly edited with new additions to the story. For more details visit http://tomcup.iscool.net or http://www.tomcup.com Youth initiative: Tom Cup and friends have launched Alternative Lifestyles of Youth as the flagship of the Anysexuality For Youth Initiative(AFYI). We are currently seeking donated legal advice for the formation of the AFYI Foundation (Name tenative) and other sevices. For a copy of the previous board minutes, please contact Tom Cup at tom_cup@hotmail.com New sites, New Stories, Old Favorites added to the Tom Cup Library: If you haven't visited the Tom Cup Library in a while, you're in for a treat. Calvin - Book 2 is in production, Kevin is back (as well as Antonio) in Kevin Part 3 - Donna, along with other new stories and sites. Check it out! All my best, Tom Cup "Why is it that the words we write for ourselves are so much better than the words we write for others?" Sean Connery as William Forrester in the film "Finding Forrester."