Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 03:38:11 +0200 (CEST)
From: Nathan <nathan_tigger@yahoo.de>
Subject: Nathan's Soulmate

For all over-correct philologists and meticulous guards of the English
grammar and spelling: Please note that this is not my native language, so
regarding my frequent abuse of what I have been taught for far too many
years: please bare with me.

For all the horny (yet, aren't we all?) single-handed net surfers among us:
This time neither graphic language nor anything else arousing in here. Try
gettting your rocks off somewhere else J

For all straight homophobics, who still believe that being gay is a kind of
mental illness: Gosh, what are you doing here anyway??

For everyone else: So finally I decided to write this. I hope you find it
entertaining or even better it gives you something to think about. For me
writing this is a kind of therapy. I've been going through some hard times
in the past months, brooding, raging against fate, God and the laws of
nature. But when all energy is spent and the punching bag has still no
intention of going through that darn wall, there comes a time to think
anew, gather up what self-pity has left of my spirit and move on to new
things. So now exposing my feelings to the anonymous crowd of great people,
nice gays and horny old men will hopefully be the final step of regaining
focus and taking on new challenges.

			     Nathan's Soulmate

I have never believed in the concept of "soulmates", that exist for
everybody. "Love" to me, was a wonderful feeling, a strong bond that I
shared with many people. My family, my girlfriend, my friends: there were a
great many people that I loved as much as they loved me. As I viewed the
whole thing, there was nothing miraculous or mysterious about it, love was
simply a part of myself as a human being. I had also long ago admitted to
the fact that I was bisexual, and though at the time being I had never even
fooled around with any other boy (plus I share my life with the most
wonderful girl to live on this planet), my fantasies were pretty open, if
you know what I mean...

Yet, sometimes good, old fate goes throwing the dices again and if no one's
watching she decides to have some fun with us. But before we get too far
along the story, I ought to introduce myself. (If, Heaven forbid, my mother
should ever read this, there should at last be no doubt that I kept up good
manners...) My name's Nathan and I just turned 20 last month. For the ones
who take interest in these things: I'm pretty tall (about 6 feet) and weigh
80 kg (no fat as I do lots of sport, mainly Kendo, a Japanese swordart).
I've got dark blonde hair, which I prefer to keep pretty short. The thing I
like most about my body (in fact the only thing I really like) are my eyes,
which I inherited from my mother. They are a mixture of blue and green with
a ring of light brown around the pupil. Anyway so much for the looks
department, let's move on to more lasting things...

So, summing it up, things were running all fine. Before I would go to
university to become a teacher, I planned to spend some time for more
intensive studies of meditation and sword fighting. Well, just then, when I
was settled in comfortably, I was struck by my love to Joshua.

I met him at a summer camp week, where I was spending some time as a
counselor and bad role model for a bunch of kids from a friend's company (I
keep getting talked into all kinds of voluntary work, it's a curse. I just
can't say no to people...sign of weak character, I know. sigh!).

The first time I saw him, I was instantly transfixed by his eyes. He had
that kind of blue eyes, that is like the color of a saphire held against
the sun. The one glance we exchanged was enough to touch something inside
me, a cord in me that started swinging and made my blood sing.

Having made it through a pretty wild puberty with several more or less
severe crushes on both girls and boys, I was quite used to the feeling of
"falling in love". Yet this was something completely new. First of all it
was nothing sexual. There's no erotic desire inside me, when I look at him,
nore do I think is he attracted to me in an erotic way.

During that week, our relationship has become something different. It began
with him following me, wherever I went. Not that the other guys wouldn't
have liked to include him into the group, he just wasn't interested in them
all too much. Luckily the team spirit of the group was very strong, so they
didn't start to pick on him, asides from his sister beginning to refer to
him as my "shadow". We didn't talk all that much though, most of the time
camp activities kept us busy. Yet just by spending time close to each other
our bound strengthened everyday. It was then, that the term "soulmate" came
to my mind for the first time. I was light-headed and confused at the same
time, for the frontiers between friendship and love seemed to fade until
they vanished wholly.

In retrospect I often ask myself, if things would have been different if
one of us had wished to talk about our feelings. Yet we never did. And
while we were both growing closer everyday and foolishly starting to
pretend that this would go on forever (don't the young ones always do?),
time passed by.

I won't go into the details about the days we spent together at the camp.
I'm not so much of a story-teller, and if I told you about every moment or
affectionate gesture we shared, I'd probably exceed all limits of bearable
cheesy romanticism, even more than I already did anyway. Let's just say
that life for me was a sweet dream, one of those you don't want to wake up
from, yet you do when the morning comes...

Finally our last day had arrived. We had been outdoor with the kids the
whole day and were on returning to the camp for a shared goodbye-dinner
with the parents. Before dinner we went outside with most of the kids for
some final ball and wrestling games. It was then, when the kids were off
racing after the ball, I had a private moment to talk to Joshua.

I took his hands into mine and looked into his eyes: "Hey, Joshua... you
know, I'm gonna miss you.." He looked at me, first startled, then there was
that frightened look in his eyes when reality hit him: He had told me that
his family was going to move to Europe this fall, his father's company
requiring them to do so. And in 6 weeks I would take a plane to the other
side of the world, where I would study with my old martial arts teacher for
a year. Chances were few that we would ever see each other again... I'll
never forget the way he looked, when suddenly, he broke away racing towards
the camp's main lodge.

I should have followed him right then, yet in that moment the kids came
back cheering around and trying to tackle me again, while I was fighting to
hold back the emotions that were welling up inside me. Later throughout the
whole dinner, Joshua would sit on the opposite side of the room, trying
hard not to look into my direction. After the dinner there were a number of
speeches from a company representative, the counselors and so on. I don't
recall how I made it through my part of the speech though, my thoughts were
racing, but I guess at that time nobody was really paying all too much
attention anymore. So luckily I was largely saved from any major
embarrassments. After that everybody started saying goodbye, the parents
finally being quite relieved to return home.

I was just trying hard to get over the seemingly unavoidable small talk
with one of the mothers (the hard to come by "How did my little sunshine
behave with you?"-questions, that are inevitably asked by the group bully's
most naive mother...), when I suddenly noticed that Joshua's family wasn't
around anymore. Muttering some poor excuse to the quite surprised parent, I
raced to the exit, just to see Joshua in front of his family's car. He was
helping his little sister inside her seat. Realizing that he would have
left without daring to say goodbye to me again, I stopped dead at the lodge
entrance.

It was then when he turned his head and the pain in his eyes made my heart
tear apart 100 meters away.

In a just world, in a better, or a more Hollywood-like world, we would have
raced to each other, holding each other in a tight embrace and in some
miraculous way, a magic solution for all our problems would have appeared
out of the blue.

In the world that I live in, Joshua made several steps towards me, and
cupped his hands too shout all over the place: "Hey Nathan, I'm gonna miss
you too. - You know, I'm gonna miss you even more..." His voice broke and
then he turned away, towards his startled family...

The rest of the day, saying farewell to everybody, the drive back home -
everything turned into one big blur. It was like you have that wonderful,
perfect dream, and then you wake up and no matter how hard you try you
cannot fall asleep again and continue dreaming.

I was once told that humans have a certain scheme to react on disasters.

The first reaction is denial. This is what happened to me every morning,
when I continued waking up at the very same time as during the camp week:
Yet every time having to realize that I was back home again. The next phase
is rage. Boy, did I rage... I was furious, angry at life itself, at fate,
that had allowed me a short glimpse at life as it could be, just to toss it
all out of my reach when I tried do grasp it in my hands. Besides regular
training and running I took up rope skipping, as well as beating up my old
punching bag regularly until all my energy was exhausted, and in this total
exhaustion I discovered relief...

And slowly the rage went away and left me in melancholy, the love to Joshua
still burning inside me.

But in my sadness I discovered new strength, as my old teacher once said to
me:

"Inside beauty there is sadness, Nathan, and inside sadness there is
beauty. Beauty and sadness are two sides of the same coin..."

The burning inside me changed. It no longer hurts me to think of Joshua
(ah, the heck, of course sometimes it still does, but it got a lot better
by now anyway). Instead, thinking of him makes me feel a new kind of
responsibility inside me. I don't know whether I will see Joshua again or
not, but if I do, I don't want to have the time in between wasted. I have
to continue to grow, but now I'm not doing it for myself, but in the name
of my love, our love to each other. And on the day I realized this, I felt
the desire to write this down, as an oath, a poem. So here is a translation
of this poem (doesn't sound too well in English lyrics, maybe one day I
will work on a better version) and with it I want to, at least for now, end
this story of Nathan and Joshua.


From Nathan to Joshua:


I train my spirit,
For on his wings I will
Show you the world
I train my strength
For on its shoulders I will
Carry you through every storm
I train my senses
For with their sharpness I will Guide you on your way
I train my hands
For with their art I will
Weave you a dream
I train my heart
For in its love I will
Always be with you
I train my gifts
For with their skill I will
Help you build your world


So that was it. I hope you enjoyed my story. Maybe it wasn't what you
expected, but to be fair I may consider to get into writing a fictional
story that has more the touch of usual "Nifty stories". That would depend
on the reactions that I get from this story though. So please email me your
opinion, nice greetings or constructive criticism at Nathan_tigger@yahoo.de
(I really LOVE to get emails, so I even promise to answer, really J)

I also want to take that opportuniy to express my gratitude to some people.

A BIG Thank You to:

My Mum and Dad, my elder brother (who is the straightest guy I ever met, I
was just soo close to come out to him, just to enjoy the look on his face,
`evil grin'), my girlfriend and my best buddy Mike. All of them will
hopefully never read this, but if they do: Guys I love you more than my
life!!!

Joshua (not the one in my story), but the author of Joshua's story on
Nifty, who happens (coincidentally???) to have the same name as the deepest
love of my life. Joshua's story has inspired me to write this, and if only
half of the stuff he writes is non-fiction, he is one of the coolest guys I
ever read of...

Joshua, my heart and soul. Everyday I pray to meet you again. Maybe we
will, maybe it is our destiny to go separate ways. Only fate can tell. But
I am grateful for the time we could share, even if it was so short. I will
always love you, and all my thoughts, my heart and my soul will always be
with you on your way.

Nathan

"Everyone wants to be different. I want to be just normal. It's not my
fault that my vision of being normal is stranger than their version of
being different."