Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 02:22:13 +0100
From: Dean Lidster <dean@deans-domain.nu>
Subject: Better Than A Dream
B E T T E R T H A N A D R E A M
by Dean Lidster
=======================================================================
PART ONE
DISCLAIMER
~~~~~~~~~~
This story contains sexual acts between boys. If this is not to your
tastes, then why in God's name are you reading this in the first place,
huh? If you're curious, then that's fine by me - just remember: an open
mind and an open heart is the secret to a good and happy life. If you
are UNDER the age of concent for state / geographical location / planet
that you're in / on etc, please leave now (unless you want to be
educated and have an open mind that is!)
I spose this story is copyrighted. By this, I mean that I wrote it and
would not particularly want anyone to subtly alter it and pretend it
is their own. However, you MAY post it to any newsgroups, archives
etc, print it, give it to friends without my prior permission PROVIDED
THAT I STAY ACCREDITED AS THE AUTHOR AND YOU DO NOT CHARGE FOR DOING
SO. Easy :-)
The story, when it concerns the relationship between myself and Lee, is
very nearly true-to-life, however everything else took place in my mind
only (unfortunately!)
If you like this story, mail me at dean@deans-domain.nu. If you don't
like it, mail me anyway and tell me why!
The latest version of this saga may be found at my web site:
http://www.deans-domain.nu/ourplace/stories
Cheers,
Dean
Dedicated to Lee - I will love you forever.
Author's note: This story is part five of an ongoing work
entitled "Midlands of Nowhere" - it is strongly recommended that
you read these parts before reading this!
The order is as follows:
"A Date with Taylor"
"Touring with Hanson"
"Zac and Mac"
"The Exchange"
"Better than a Dream"
Chapter One - Exodus
"Dean? DEAN!"
"Mmmph? What?"
"We've arrived, darling,"
I opened my eyes to the sterile fluroescent lighting of the
Eurostar and the noise of people collecting their belongings from
the overhead luggage lockers. My mind was in turmoil as it
scrabbled to get a grip on what was real. And what was not. Where
was my Taylor? I jumped out of my seat frantically looking up and
down the aisle to see where he... wasn't. A wave of dispair flowed
over me as the harsh reality began to sink in. I had just arrived
back in London from our trip to Eurodisney. The last six months had
been a dream. How could my mind be so cruel to me?
I felt like breaking down and just crying for the rest of the
day. There was no-one special in my life, and I was no-one special
to anyone. Not even Taylor. He didn't even know I existed.
That really hurt.
'It feels like you're all alone in a faceless crowd...'
How could he know how I felt right now? I bit my lip and screwed
my eyes closed for a couple of seconds to prevent the tears that
would all too readily flow from my eyes if I didn't do something
about them, then dragged my backpack from the overhead locker. I
was about to put it on my back when I had a thought. My heart leapt
into my mouth as I opened the top and rummaged around for the pair
of shorts I had given to Tay.
My heart made a rapid exit from my mouth and dropped through the
floor as I found them, neatly pressed, under my Hanson T-shirt. I
half-smiled at the irony - fate really knew how to twist and tug at
your heart in the most subtle yet searingly painful ways.
______________________
"Lee?"
No response.
"LEE!"
Lee Clarke lay on his bed, staring up at the part of his bedroom
ceiling where the plaster had cracked ever so slightly.
"Lee darling, you OK? We're leaving in ten minutes..." said his
mum, poking her head round the door.
"Yeah, comin' mum..." he said, swinging his feet onto the floor
so he could sit up, brushing his dirty-blonde hair out of his eyes.
Roz sighed and sat down next to her adopted son, pulling him to
her.
"Things will get better, you know,"
He sighed and rested his head on her shoulder. "I know, just
seems like things are taking their time," he smiled. He lifted his
head of her shoulder and looked her in the eye. "and at this rate
you ain't gonna live long enough to see the results,"
"Cheeky," she smiled, giving him a playful clip round the ear.
"You all packed?"
"Yeah, just these last couple of boxes... Dunno where I got all
this crap from,"
"Do you want to throw it away?"
"No,"
"Then it's not crap is it?"
"I suppose not,"
"Your father's already in the car - best not keep him waiting,"
"OK, mum - I'll be down in a couple of minutes."
Lee stood up and walked over to the window. Sprawled out infront
of him was Wolverhampton in all of it's... well, shittyness. He was
leaving. He was leaving his home. He was leaving the "friends" that
called him a queer, an arse bandit, a shirt-lifter. The friends
that chucked verbal abuse at him. The friends that broke his arm...
He smiled to himself and picked up the last couple of boxes from
his now bare room and jogged down the two flights of stairs to the
waiting Mercedes. He opened the boot, squeezed the two boxes into
the already overloaded car and climbed into the back seat.
Eddie handed the map that he had been staring at for the last
hour to Roz and started the engine.
"Right, has everyone got everything?"
"Yes, dad,"
"OK - here we go,"
And with that the Merc pulled gently out of the driveway. As
they accelerated off, Lee felt a whole sea of contradicting
emotions within himself. He was relieved that he no longer had to
put up with his "friends", but felt worried at how he would fit in
at his new school. He was looking forward to the fresh start that
his foster parents had given him, but felt guilty that he had
driven them to it, like it was his fault that people hated him
because of his sexuality. And what if it didn't work out at their
new home? What if things were worse than before? There was no way
they could ever up roots and move again - it was just too much
stress...
Lee decided that he could do nothing about the situation
whatever the outcome, and hence there was no sense worrying about
it. He closed his eyes and gently drifted off into a turbulent
sleep, lulled by the muffled rumbling of the tyres...
______________________
"Dean! Shift this rucksack before I trip over the bloody thing
again!"
I was in no mood to be told what to do, but I knew annoying my
parents by not doing what they said would only result in the agro
coming full circle, and it simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I flicked the lounge TV off and hauled my rucksack back up the
stairs, the wildly flailing waist-band doing its best to remove
half the pictures from the wall on the landing as I went by.
My mind was in complete turmoil. It felt as if the last six
months of my life hadn't happened... Actually, they hadn't. SHIT!
This was too much for my disillusioned brain to cope with, and I
simply burst into tears. The dream was so much better than the life
I had, there seemed like no point in going on as I was. I'd never
meet Tay. I'd never fall in love. I was still living a lie. I was
straight to everyone who knew me in the real world.
My mind kept running over the duals that seemed present in the
dream and my "real life", most notably the way I thought I had come
out to my parents. No way would it be that easy - them just sitting
there and saying "we know". It just can't happen.
I resolved to bring things to a head. The way my life was now,
it seemed pointless to try and perpetuate the lie just to afford a
small amount of security.
Mackie.
Why had I dreampt about someone I had never known committing
scuicide? Was this my sick and twisted mind going through the "what-
ifs" of me coming out? Option one: my parents still love me, I meet
the guy of my dreams and live happily ever after. Option two: my
father hates my guts and drives me to kill myself. The gun must've
been a dramatification on my brain's part as we didn't own one -
probably just there to underline the point... As if it needed
underlining in the first place...
I took a deep breath and went downstairs. I smiled to myself as
I thought it was lucky that my rucksack was still packed - it'd
save me a job after they chucked me out...
I found my parents in the kitchen, my mum making a cup of tea,
my dad munching on a breadstick, aimlessly flicking through the
channels on the kitchen's small TV.
"Hi nit," smiled my dad, offering me a breadstick. I felt like a
complete arsehole, about to bring disgrace on the family and
another concern into my parents already more-than-hectic life.
Just this scene of contented normality, one that was so
insignificant and that I had seen over and over in my life suddenly
seemed so special. Only now could I see the love that my mum put
into making my dad's cup of tea, and the smile on his face as she
gave it to him. I could loose all of this love just by saying one
sentence.
My mind waivered, no longer being a hundred percent committed to
the course of action I was about to take. I then realised that the
love between my parents was there because of the complete openness
they had with one another: Not a lie was spoken or a truth withheld
between them. I then realised if I was to share in this parental
love, the same had to be. They had never lied to me, yet I felt I
had been continually lieing to them over the past few years. I felt
physically sick on this realisation and this made my mind up for
me.
"Mum, Dad, I... I need to tell you something,"
"Sounds serious," smiled muy mum, leaning against the worktop to
pay full attention to me.
This sapped my courage, so I hung my head and decided to tell
the floor tile I was standing on.
"I'm gay."
The silence I was expecting to follow that statement suddenly
seemed a whole lot quieter than I had anticipated, the steady
ticking of the kitchen clock sounding as if it was slowing down.
"Dean?"
I daren't look at my dad, the feeling of shame and guilt washing
over me. Oh for a bottomless pit I could jump into right now...
My dad reached out to put a hand on my shoulder and I
impulsively jumped as he touched me, staggering backwards as if he
had actually hit me into the rubbish bin, finally coming to a very
ungraceful rest in a heap on the floor.
______________________
'This is going to take some getting used to,' thought Lee to
himself as the Mercedes bowled along the anything-but-flat, single
track lanes in rural Derbyshire.
"Eddie, honey, don't you think you should slow down just a bit?
You never know what might be round one of these co..."
Roz didn't have to finish the sentence - Eddie slammed on the
brakes as he was confronted by what could only be described as a
sea of sheep, gently waddling their way along the lane. The farmer
who was walking behind the flock gave Eddie the standard
disapproving glare that can only be given when City Folk encounter
Country Folk - both thinking how stupid the other is for doing what
they were doing.
Roz caught her husband's arm as he reached for the horn. "He
might end up being our neighbour, darling," she reasoned.
"But why in the Lord's name is he taking sheep down a public
highway?"
"Uh, dad, this road has grass growing down the middle - I think
it's more of a bridleway or something..."
Eddie resigned himself to the fact that he would just have to
follow the sheep at their pace, watching in dismay as they
blatantly ignored the passing place where he could have got the car
past had they stopped and not spread out to the width of the road
and the pull-in. Dumb sheep...
"Eddie, just relax - we aren't in a rush... We're in the country
now,"
'And it's because of me,' sighed Lee to himself. Eddie had
seemed more than willing to move t give his adopted son a fresh
start, but what if he had really liked the city and just didn't say
so? If he only was attracted to girls... It seemed like such a
small thing when he thought of it in isolation, but realised that
"society" didn't hold the same view. Infact, their view seemed very
un-sociable. How ironic...
______________________
My mind had been running over so many of the negative scenarios
I had almost completely forgotten that they may have taken it well
- as they had done. I hurredly cleared the tears from my eyes with
the back of my hand to see my dad standing over me, silhouetted by
the light bulb that was almost directly behind him.
The only way I can think of describing the way I think I looked
was a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon, just where Jerry is about to be
clobbered by Tom and is cowering in a corner, only to recieve a
reprieve at the last possible moment.
The silhouette held out his hand to me to help me up from the
floor, and I tentatively took it. The world seemed to spin
underneath me, such was the level of anguish and disorientation my
mind was forcing on me, but it was all misfounded. I looked at my
Father's face (now properly illuminated) and he was actually
chuckling.
"You... You're not upset," I ventured.
"Well, I am," scowled my mother. Uh oh. "I'm upset that you
didn't feel you could tell us easily."
"Huh?"
"You didn't fall into a quivering heap when you told me you'd
broken the vase your dad gave me for our tenth wedding
anniversary," she smiled, giving me a hug. It always made me smile
when she did that as unless I bent over she had to stand on tip-
toes to get ear-to-ear with me, and this was no exception.
"Oh..."
"It's OK by us, son... It kinda goes with your generation."
"Eh?"
"Well, your cousin Harry's gay for starters."
Harry, my mentor and acting big-brother was GAY?
"He IS? Why didn't he ever tell me?"
"He decided that for your own good he should let you figure it
out for yourself... He knows you look up to him and he didn't want
to provide the wrong kinda role-model for you. I think you should
have a word with him at some stage, Nit..."
"Yeah... Sooo, you're not going to kick me out?"
"Kick you OUT? Dean!"
They honestly looked deeply hurt at even the suggestion that
they could possibly concieve of the notion of making me leave.
"Dean, you're our son and we love you! We couldn't kick you out,
not ever!"
"Unless you tangeled up my fishing reel again," smiled my dad.
How I could've mis-read my parents so much was beyond me and
even scared me slightly. This was too much for my mind to take, and
I broke down into tears, more through joy and the absolute releaf I
felt.
I was home, I was no longer holding any secrets from the ones I
loved the most, and I was safe. A feeling of security unlike
anything I had felt since my mum used to cuddle me as a little boy
when thunder woke me up in the middle of the night ran through me,
and it was wonderful. I felt like I had been born again, and I
suppose in many ways I had...
______________________
"I'm going out for a skate," I yelled, grabbing my blades from
their home underneath the coat rack by the back door.
"Be careful, Dean,"
"Yes, mommy,"
"What happened to respect for your elders, mmm?"
"I blame MTV," I grinned, kissing her on the top of the head.
"I'll be careful,"
For me, skating is a near-religious experience. It allows my
brain to be completely diverted and sort out all the crap it's been
bombarded with in to some form of inteligable order. The way I was
feeling right now, I was gonna make it to London and back!
I kicked my trainers off and replaced them with my blades, doing
up the fasteners with the quick "tug-push-fold" action necessary to
lock them tightly onto my feet.
The warm afternoon air felt so good to me, rushing past my ears
and through my hair as I picked up speed, zig-zagging through the
copious and frequent mini-potholes that made our road look like
some kind of lunar landscape. I decided that instead of skating in
a straight line from home, I'd just do laps of the 'block' which
would allow me to do the distance (one circuit was about two and a
half miles) without getting too far from home.
I rounded the corner did a few 'push-strokes' to build up as
much speed as possible then tucked myself into a ski-jump position,
ready to rocket down the near 1:1 slope that was fast approaching
in order to get up the other side without too much effort.
I cleared the brow of the hill and felt that wonderful fuzzy
feeling in the pit of my stomach as gravity tried to drag me to the
centre of the earth, accelerating me down the hill. I am convinced
that I look little better than Eddie the Eagle during this
manouvre, hair billowing out behind me like some out-of-control
party streamer gone wrong, but there were very few things that I
had experienced that paralleled it.
All too soon, the bottom of the hill was upon me and I braced
myself for the incredible up-thrust of hitting the incline at
thirty-odd miles an hour. It feels quite strong when you're sitting
in a car, but to have that force applied directly to the bottom of
your feet is something that has to be experienced first hand to be
believed.
My speed tapered off fairly rapidly as I ascended the other
side, having to skate hard as I reached about three quarters up the
other side. To decide to stop at that point is nigh on deadly as
there is very little you can do to stop yourself rolling back down
the hill again and if you don't manage to turn round, you'd better
be a man of faith...
Once I'd reached the top on the other side, breathing heavily
from both excitement and physical exertion, I continued on the once
again flat road, passing the familiar deserted cottage that not all
too long ago scared the shit out of me (ghosts, you see) and the
wonderfully contorted oak tree that seemed as if it's goal in life
was to kinda grow through itself.
The only sounds I could hear were the rumble of rubber on
asphalt and the twittering of hundreds of birds that blended into
an ocean of symphonic sound all around me. The skating routine was
beginning to have the desired effect on my mind: Gently soothing
away the anguishes, disappointments and troubles that were plaguing
my conscious mind like some kind of wonder drug. It made me feel
happy and relaxed. It made me find peace with myself.
______________________
"Shit!" exclaimed Eddie as the Merc swooped down into the bottom
of the hollow far quicker than the suspension could handle, the
front spoiler making an undesired visit to the road surface.
Lee couldn't help giggling out loud as his tummy did its best to
escape from the confines of his abdomen as the car had plummeted
down the hill, and swallowing hard as very quickly returned to it's
proper position at the bottom.
As the roads had now proved to Eddie that they needed
approaching with respect, he allowed the car's momentum to drop off
as it climbed the other side.
______________________
Suddenly, my train of thought was interrupted as the subdued
growl of a car engine appeared as if out of nowhere from behind me.
I somehow managed to have the presence of mind to skate as close to
the edge of the road as I could. I didn't, however, have the
presence of mind to stop myself from loosing my balence, slipping
off the edge of the road and skating straight into the ditch which
was, thankfully, dried up. As the car passed, couldn't help but
mentally chastise them for going to fast. Had to be city folk:
there wasn't a spec of mud on the vehicle anywhere... I don't know
why us country bumpkins have such a stigma when it comes to
townies, although truth be told we're probably as amusing to them
with our "make do and mend" attitude as they are to us with their
big cars, big bank accounts and big egos.
I was about to forget all about the encounter when I saw the
car, now in the distance, slam on the brakes to the sound of the
light chirruping made by a computer taking over from a stupid
driver who would otherwise have locked the wheels solid. A moment
later, the reversing lights came on and the car began to back-up at
a much more pedestrian pace, then stop again and turn into the
driveway of the near-mansion that had had a "For Sale" sign at the
end of its drive for as long as I can remember.
I was half-pissed, half-pleased, at the prospect of having
neighbours... Perhaps they had kids my age.... A son... Who I could
be friends with...
And the pig presently flying overhead has two jet engines and
retractable landing gear...