by Jamie Lake
He’s a straight guy, and Chris had only known him for a few days. He didn’t want to get involved with someone like that anyway: too much confusion, as was already apparent. That was so Chris over a decade ago: trying to figure out who he was. Thinking that straight guys could be converted like they were Coke loyalists trying out Pepsi. Now, Chris thought he should be way past that. If shoulds and woulds were raisins and nuts, he’d have a big bowl of granola, right?
About halfway through the day, Jessica stopped by with a pile of drafting she had edited, and a bunch of gossip that had nothing to do with anybody Chris knew. He was distracted the whole time, staring at the floor or out the window, thinking about Mason, about his little adorable daughter, about the awkward conversation they had earlier.
“Hello?” Jessica asked, “Earth to Christopher?”
“What?” Chris looked up. Had she been talking to him?
“You are so checked out. What the hell is going on with you?”
“Oh,” Chris mumbled, “I dunno. Nothing.”
“I know something’s up,” Jessica said.
“Yeah, it is. I mean, no. I mean, I can’t talk about it now. Or not yet, anyway.”
“You’re all kinds of fucked up right now.” Jessica exclaimed, and mock-slapped him in the face with one appliqué-nailed hand.
“I am, yes. But I promise I’m not thinking about Tim.”
“I know you ain’t thinking about Tim, because you ain’t got that sad I’m a worthless pile of shit face. Now you got this I’m-confused-as-fuck and don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground face.”
Chris looked at her in confusion.
“That’s the face,” she said, pointing at his nose, “right there. You gonna talk to me about it or what?”
“No. I can’t yet. Because it’s true. I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground right now.”
Jessica clicked her tongue. “I can tell, babe, I can tell. But I'd bet money it has something to do with that Mason. Don’t fall in love with straight boys, toots.” she said, as she grabbed her purse and swung open the door.
“Easier said than done, bitch.” Chris said, with an unintentional amount of bitterness. She huffed in satisfaction and walked outside.
Later on, he kicked off his shoes and stripped down, turned off all the lights and lay in bed with the sea of distant traffic echoing and the grandfather clock in his room ticking away. The crickets chirped outside. He thought of Mason’s smile, and how it had hooked him into a whole new cycle of hope, fear, and rejection in just a little over seventy-eight hours.
It fucking hurt.
Why didn’t anyone good want to be with him? Why did only the douche bags of the world end up in relationships with him? All of his exes, even the month-long-ones from Tim back to Allen, Michael, and Pablo before him were callous, narcissistic, and controlling. All the boys he had really wanted, who he had thought would be good for him, like Peter and Ben (back in his days at the University of Portland) always had a reason they couldn’t give themselves wholly to him. What was wrong with him? Was he that uninteresting? Unappealing? Unattractive? Maybe all the things that Justin, Alec, and his ex were saying on Facebook were true.
He sunk into his bed, refusing to cry. He had enough of the pity party and felt numb as he allowed his eyes to un-focus, staring into the snow of the television screen.
Bleep.
He looked at his phone. He left his Facebook messenger on. Who was it now?
Tim.
Just what he needed.
Hey, you got some mail sent to me by mistake.
What is it? Chris texted.
Looks like it could be important. Sorry. Boyfriend and I been so busy planning trip to Paris.
Such an asshole. Chris thought, kick me while I’m down, why don’t you? He knew that was one place he always wanted to go with him and now he was rubbing it in.
La dee fucking da. Thanks for letting me know. If the mail was that important, you could just tell me who it’s addressed from not just ‘looks important.’ Chris wrote.
Shut up bitch. So. What have you been up to?
So now he wants to be friends? Chris thought. He paused, wondering what he should write. Then it occurred to him.
Swamped with work. The novel’s coming along well; almost done and then with boyfriend over here almost every night I hardly get anything done. Chris wrote
Boyfriend? You didn’t tell me you were going out with someone. Tim wrote, Congrats.
Chris rolled his eyes, with a smile on his face, knowing Tim was having heart palpitations in real life. Any time Chris managed to succeed in spite of Tim’s efforts to control and contain him, it made him furious.
Thanks, in fact, I better go now. He’s trying to drag me back into bed. My ass is so sore. I can’t take another round. Have a great night. Chris responded.
Wait. You want me to drop off this mail at your condo? Then I can get a chance to meet your new fling. Tim wrote.
Fling? Chris thought. So typical of him to say something condescending.
Don’t bother. Just hold on to it or toss it in the trash. Ciao.
He logged off of his Facebook messenger before Tim could respond and it felt good doing it; until he broke out in a cold sweat, fearing he’d be caught in a lie again. Then it dawned on him with double the impact because of the lie: he was going to bed early, alone on a Friday night, once again.
What a fucked up night. Then, without missing a beat, the phone rang. He turned his head to see who it was on the ID.
Mason. He felt like clicking ‘reject’ on the phone, but clicked ‘answer’ by mistake. Shit. Now, he had to answer it.
“Hello?” he said, trying to sound more chipper than he was feeling.
“Hey, Chris,” Mason said. “It’s me.”
“Hi,” Chris said, his chipper voice slowly crumbling into obvious morose, hurt little-boy voice.
“Can we talk?” Mason asked.
“About what?” Chris asked, trying to pretend he didn’t have a clue, but obviously sad.
“You okay?” Mason asked.
“Well, yeah, why?”
“You just sound...different.” Mason explained.
“Why?” Chris said, getting a little irritated.
“You want to go grab an ice cream?” Mason asked.
“Isn’t that off the diet?” Chris half-joked.
“It’s Friday. I always cheat on Fridays. Besides, I just want to talk.”
“Didn’t we talk enough at the park today?” Chris asked, having a hard time hiding his anger.
“See? You’re pissed. I knew it. I was just trying to be honest with you,” Mason explained.
“And I appreciate it,” Chris said, coldly.
There was silence between them for a while, “Good to know what you’re like when you’re pissed,” Mason said.
“Okay, well, have a good night,” Chris said, as if it were a business transaction.
“You too,” Mason said before hanging up.
Chris felt like shit treating him like that. He obviously felt bad about it, and the more Chris thought about it, the more he realized he didn’t have a right to treat him like shit for being honest. Mason was a really good guy, and Chris shouldn’t push his own abandonment issues on him. Clearly, he wanted to still be friends, and Chris was just being a jerk about it. He lay there for a long time, feeling even more regret and guilt, staring at the wall, wondering when he would ever start to crawl out of the hole he’d dug for himself in Costa Rica.
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CHAPTER 16
The next morning, Chris knew he should have trained, but couldn’t find it in himself to even text Mason and let him know. He knew that it was super flaky, and he could just picture Mason with all his exercise equipment, sprawled out at the park waiting for him. He knew what he said about two-strikes-and-you’re-out, and that if he wanted to end things and move on, this was the best way to do it. He might as well self-sabotage
the whole thing and give Mason a chance to scrape him off for good.
Chris received the first text message from Mason fifteen minutes after the hour.
Dude, you okay?
Chris sighed and felt so sad and uncomfortable. He was ashamed of himself. It was so unlike him and completely unprofessional, but he had to really piss Mason off if he wanted him to not be around anymore. He wasn’t going to give the guy any chances to continue to string him along.
Forty-five minutes later, Mason texted him again.
Chris, what’s going on? I waited at the park for 30 minutes. Not cool.
Then that was followed by a phone call, which Chris promptly ignored, even turning his sound off. He thought he’d just ignore it until he heard a knock at the door.
Fuck. Did Mason show up at his house?
Chris got up from his desk and went to the living room window. From where he stood, he could see Mason, but Mason could not see in.
God. He looks amazing.
His buttocks and crotch standing out in vintage Adidas running shorts, bright red, and no more than seven inches from waistline to hem. His strong, tanned thighs were never more visible, and those knobby knees and weighty calves. He had on a super-loose white tank top that dipped just below his suckable nipples. Even angry, he also looked like a hurt, lost puppy and it broke Chris’ heart. It just wasn’t like Chris to do anything like this, but he really did feel it was for the best. If just seeing Mason like this was enough to give him palpitations, what the hell would it be like to hang out with him every day; but to never be able to touch him, to confide in him, to feel that same wonderful energy as that day on the couch?
Shit. Maybe he should just open the door and talk like an adult; but by the time he reached the door and looked out the peep hole, he saw Mrs. Berliner emerge from her condo.
“Oh, fuck,” Chris muttered.
“Hello.” he heard her say cheerily through the door. She checked her mailbox, even though both Mason and Chris knew that the mail never came before later in the afternoon.
“Hi,” Mason said tersely.
“You looking for Chris? Or Tim?” the German woman asked. Her hair was dyed a remarkably artificial shade of pink.
“I’m looking for Chris,” Mason said flatly.
“Well. You should know something...” Mrs. Berliner said. She leaned in
conspiratorially. “He’s a HOMOSEXUAL.”
Chris sighed, but couldn’t help but continue to peer out the peep hole to see what would happen next.
Mason looked at her, cocked his head. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Just thought you should know.”
“Wanna know something else?” Mason said.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re a nosy bitch,” he said matter-of-factly. She gasped and with that he grumbled something under his breath, pivoted, and danced down the steps.
It’s okay, Chris told himself, I can live without him. Forget about it, he told himself, whatever’s meant to be.
But after the first couple of days, it only got worse. Mason even tried to call him one more time. What hurt more was that Chris really liked Mason, not just physically, but he liked hanging with him. He liked how easy it was to talk to him and that he seemed to be open-minded, and yes, he did miss the possibilities; but it was the friendship that was the most upsetting loss. Mason might have been curious, but it probably wouldn’t have gone any further than that. What Chris missed most of all was the lost potential and lost promise of support, tenderness, and friendship; new as it was, it was the closest thing to real friendship he’d had in years, even with Tim in their good days. Most of the time, he and Tim couldn’t figure out what to say each other, especially during the last couple of years, and whenever Chris would start to talk about something in which he was interested, Tim would just say “uh-huh” or change the subject back to himself.
Typical.
Mason will get over it, Chris told himself. He’s probably not even thinking about me.
However, Mason was thinking about Chris. He couldn’t figure out why. Sure, one less client was less money that he could use to support his daughter, but clients weren’t all that hard to find in Costa Rica, especially since he spoke English. No, it was something else.
Mason told himself to just fuck Chris; he didn’t need any more flakes in his life, much less ones who were adding to his already thick fog of confusion about his past, his present, and his future. Normally, Mason was a silent, brooding, but unrepentant person. He made big choices to leave behind friends who wronged him or went too far in the past. In fact, he’d left his own father in Maine after their tumultuous relationship had broken down and never spoken to him afterward: part of why he was in Costa Rica. He could have left Chris behind like so much garbage, but something about that approach just wouldn’t work.
The memory of Chris’s twinkling smile, and big, trusting brown eyes...his laugh and his sharp wit. More difficult to explain was the physical rapport that was so obvious, so powerful when they touched. When Mason had held Chris’s hand, he had really felt, for lack of a better word, spiritually connected. It was like they belonged together, touching, sharing. He knew Chris had felt the same way; he saw the tears in his eyes and felt the power of all the grief that boy had gone through when he sat there on that couch and let go of so much pain.
It’d been a long time since Mason had ever felt connected, truly intimate with somebody. Victoria was, well, a huge disaster for many reasons, but she was never truly intimate, much less a soul mate. At best, they had been like tigers fucking each other: two perfect bodies seized with uncontrollable lust, destined to bring a magnificent child into the world, but to never live near each other again. On the other hand, Chris had got under his skin in just three days. He made Mason feel big, strong, wise, and good again: and it wasn’t because he was so trusting and sweet and young, either. He genuinely brought those things out in Mason, when most of the time these days, only his daughter Lili could do that. Chris encouraged him about his reflexology, whereas his ex-girlfriend couldn’t give a fuck about his dreams and goals.
Sure, he was scared about his feelings with Chris; he’d never had to confront those kinds of feelings. In junior high, it was just a wild horny exploration. He was a boy back then. A child playing doctor, exploring the world of hard-ons, wet dreams, cum, and the unbelievable world of that first smutty magazine with another randy and ignorant boy. This was different: they were grown men. Regardless of what happened, even if it could only be business, he still wanted Chris to be around.
He tried to keep his mind on his house chore duties and working out on his own, but he soon found his head in a fog, and although he started to call Chris a few times to see if he was alright, clearly the guy wanted to be left alone. Besides, if this was the way he handled himself when he was pissed, Mason wanted nothing to do with him. At least, that’s what he told himself.
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CHAPTER 17
Early one morning, Chris got an email from his publisher.
Chris: excellent reviews from the beta readers. This thing is dynamite. We’re talking bestseller lists, provided we can get the press and advertising right. Everybody here at the office has checked out at least a chapter and thinks it’s absolutely golden. And we’re a hard crowd to impress. At the very least, you can relax for a while--it’s perfect as is. Any further changes will just be minor edits. Great job, man. You’re going places.
Chris gave up a huge sigh of relief. At last, it was over. He had been outlining, drafting, redrafting, and revising that damned book for nearly six years. Even if it never sold a single copy, just having completed it and gotten praise from his publisher meant more to him than any accomplishment in his life.
Still, when Chris looked up at the grey sky, he felt his victory was a little bit hollow. Something was missing.
“This is insane,” Chris muttered. “I have to get over him. Both of them
. God dammit, I need to just move on.”
Chris felt like he was cheating, but an hour later, he stepped inside the local gym down the street, waiting for the personal trainer to arrive. It felt like forever and he was about to step away with a changed mind, when the monster of a trainer stepped up. He was built like a brick house, easily twice as big as Mason was, and he had the personality of a pile of cold sloppy Joe mix: gross, beefy, and totally artificial. He had oompa-loompa orange fake-baked skin, wore his hair in a blonde blowout, reminiscent of Chris’s brief and unfortunate time in New Jersey, and he was constantly nursing a massive bottle of antifreeze blue sports drink.
“Name’s Buck.” he shouted at Chris, and shook his hand so hard that he felt like he was going to leave it broken. As they started on their first set of butterfly extensions, Chris could still feel the pain in his palm.
After all, he had to keep working out: he couldn’t just lie down and feel sorry for himself and let all his hard work with Mason go to waste. No, he’d come too far for that. Besides, ever since he’d chatted with Tim on Facebook the other night, he felt even more driven to make himself look as hot as he possible.
“That’s a bit much more than I’m used to,” Chris complained, barely able to get through the first two reps of what the trainer instructed.
“You want me to train you or what?” Buck said, chomping on wad of bright green gum.
“Yeah, of course, but I'm just saying...”
