Sweet Dreams I’ll Never have them-5

Chapter 5

Monday?

It hurt, dreaming had hurt. It had been awhile since I had dreamt about my dad. It had been as much as about him as it had been about my childhood. Yeah I know I’m not really that old.
But I really feel old.
I know, that I shouldn’t be but.
There’s just got to be a point where you just can’t take it anymore.

I’ve been crying again, I hate crying, I really hate crying because it doesn’t help anything. It never solves anything. It just let’s them know that whatever made you cry is something they can use to hurt you with.

I’m in Alex’s bedroom…I move fast, fast enough to hurt and really regret it. Alex wasn’t in the bed with me. And once more I’m a little more than confused in a scary way because I’m not sure if I’m relieved or if I’m disappointed.
My pain makes me lay back down.
I’m in a real bed, with clean sheets and covered up by this really nice and clean smelling fluffy comforter. I fall asleep for awhile and my bladder wakes me up. I almost don’t want to get out of the covers. But while it’s cooler than under the sheets it’s actually got heat running through the vents. The floor is warm. And clean. I just can’t over how clean and new everything is here.

It’s about 2 in the afternoon I see by the clock on the wall and its still Sunday. I slip into the bathroom and stand there for a minute, just in the panties I’m wearing and that’s the thing. I’m a guy, in panties. It’s not like I’d fit in anything he’s got but…do I like this? Am I some kind of faggot, or am I just nuts trying to not be me and having mommy issues. Gawd wouldn’t that just be too gay. A gay boy with issues with his mother. How Cliché.

I don’t even really stand like a guy. I try but it’s really not working, I can’t stand like a block. It’s not even comfortable, I need to sit in myself, be loose not rigid. And trying to look all tough guy is next to impossible in satiny nylon panties.

I look like one of those too skinny chicks you see on TV. Thin, gangly, hugging herself. My bladder calls again and I sit and pee. Yeah, I just sat to pee.

I have a headache now and lean my head against the cool porcelain of the sink.
I pull off some Tp and wipe or rather dab. I do this as much as I can I hate having drips in my underwear. I pull them up and wash my hands and then look at myself in the mirror again. I study my face. That picture was me and it wasn’t me, I’m trying to see that person in the mirror. I see me, and it’s the same sight I’ve always seen. Loser, freak, faggot…I don’t see whatever the hell that Alex saw.

That really bothers me you know. I really, really hate not getting things, not understanding stuff.

I pad out and watch him in the living room he’s sitting on the floor his back against the couch. He’s got a pile or two of textbooks on his coffee table and his laptop open…of course he’s got two computers. He’s doing some writing on a yellow notepad and he’s watching a football game on the laptop. It’s no pro-game; he’s probably studying another team.

His books are all stuff like AP English and Math and I see some books titled Wordsworth and Emerson and Kerouac. I never thought that a guy like him would even try to read stuff like that, much less be taking all those advanced classes. It looks like he’s doing trig equations. He looks…He’s just wearing a pair of black worn jeans and is barefoot and bare...chested. I’m looking, I know I’m looking in a way I shouldn’t be looking but, I can’t help it. I feel now all hot and hard or turned on and want him to fuck me or something but it’s kind of a Jane Goodall thing where I’m very quietly studying an species so much like me but I don’t understand.

He’s tanned and he just seems to be made of muscle, over his muscle and there are these deep scars partly on his sides and his back, thick, whitish lines in his tanned skin. I know scars and these were really bad, like he could have died bad and they’re old too. Just seeing them make the tips of my fingers itch. Part of me wants to touch them. I didn’t see his back when we were in the kitchenette earlier. The messy in his face half the time long brown hair hiding his face half the time. He tucks the hair back every once in awhile but not often, and it too makes me want to touch him.

Then there’s the quiet. I’m not used to people being quiet beyond myself. There’s a lot of people who can’t be just quiet even when they’re alone. Alex is spookily quiet. I’m not sure if he’s being quiet because I’m here or not. But there is this beautiful intensity about him. I slip away kind of feeling…I’m not sure.

I just admitted that there was something beautiful about him. I’m so confused I just want to freak out and have somekind of breakdown because I’m a faggot. It won’t change anything to freak out and cry. Instead I’ve got this headache. I actually go back to the bed and slip back into it and pull the covers up around me and stare at that picture. All over again. It, she shakes me every time I look at her. She stares right at me, into me…her face is just so delicate, lovely and those eyes seem to burn into me.

I fall asleep again mostly from just trying to close my eyes from the headache. I dream again but it’s more disjointed. The stuff at home but one of Cliff and Mom’s boozer and druggie parties. I can almost taste the second hand smoke of the cigarettes and the crack cocaine and Methe all mixed up with the smoke from so much weed. I can remember the over my head to waist level clouds of the stuff and the contact highs…the headaches and…This is the shit I grew up in. is it no wonder my brain’s all messed up. Between that and their fucking abuse. It’s no wonder that I’m all messed up. School…School had been my way out, a scholarship…even with Maxx and the gangs and the shitty neighborhoods…Now I don’t really have that…I can’t go into the system.
It’s not a pleasant sleep, not really. It goes from all that to the silver haired cute guy at the porn store, and what he was doing to me. In mid dream it changes, we change positions and I’m the one kneeling…like my mother did for guy after guy…then he becomes Alex…
Alex…
Alex…
“Alex….” And I make a mess out of the sheets in his bed waking myself up as I whisper/whine his name. It takes a minute before it starts to sink in what I did…My body shakes, and I’m drowning in it, panic because of what I did…shame because of what I did…I feel like one of those underfed mangy mutts that doesn’t belong anywhere… I feel like I just shit on the floor of what might have been someone who might have given a shit if I hadn’t been such a disgusting freak.

I’d be put down for sure at the pound.

“I hate me; I should just do myself and the world a favor and just die.”
“You do that and they win.”
I barely look towards him, I stay curled up. I’m scared though, really scared. He could so easily hate me, hurt me, turn on me…treat me like everything else has in my life. But he came for me.
He’s hugged me with no pain coming after that.
Alex has kissed me before.
I liked it, I don’t get how or why it felt good. Even remembering it, his butter suede soft lips on mine, and the smell of him. It get’s me aching in a way I don’t get.
“Alex…?”
“Yeah?”
“Why?”
“Why what?” He comes closer but doesn’t sit on the bed, but on the floor beside the bed and leans against it. He passes me his big can of red bull; I take it and have a drink.
“Why’d you kiss me on the bus?”
“I had broken up with Jennifer over the summer and she thinks that because she didn’t say we were broken up that it never happened. She hasn’t stopped putting the pressure on me to get back with her.”
“So why me? I mean you could have anyone you want.”
“Jennifer scares off most people around here, I thought she’d have no idea who you were and I’m right, or was right. I’ve heard she’s been going out of her tree trying to find out who you are.”
For some perverse reason the thought of that kind of makes me smile. Hunter’s not my real name and she knows nothing about me. There’s that and she’ll never look in my neighborhood.
“So, can I ask why you two broke up?”
“I couldn’t love her, didn’t love her.”
“And that matters?”
He tenses… “Yeah, it matters to me.”
“Never mattered in my life, that kind of stuff is just stuff in cheap romance novels and on TV.”
His head turned towards mine.
“I can’t live like that Hunter, I just can’t. I grew up like that.” his voice gets a little thick…full of pain.
“So she didn’t love you…” I prompt hoping he’ll keep going; I need to know where I stand. I take another sip of his Red Bull and I’ll admit it’s clearing out the cobwebs even if it tastes like battery acid.
“Jennifer wants the trophy husband, the athlete and the football hero so she can social climb to the top of the high school food chain. We’re in our freshman year and she can’t take not being on top considering we’re in a new school and she was at the top of the food chain when we left our old school….It’s just one day she’s just talking and it hit me, she was jabbering away and had all of high school planned out for me, and everything else and then I just couldn’t take it anymore. Not her or her friends…any of it. So I dumped her in the second week of August and she still hasn’t taken the hint.”
I actually roll over onto my belly to look at him.
“That’s Stalking you know that right?”
“Yeah, and who’s going to believe me? I tried to talk to the people I thought were my friends about it and they’re like boo hoo you got it so hard Alex……Yeah, I’ve got a real great life…”
He kind of hunches, broodingly. It’s that wanting to pull your legs to your chest kind of hurt. I can see the side of his face now, or could if it wasn’t for his hair hanging down again.
“A lot of people’d think so with the stuff you’ve got, the way you live.”
“Every…single…thing….” his hands clench and unclench…”Every…single thing Hunter, all of it, it all comes with a price or with strings….Adam makes sure that his kid has to be perfect, great grades, football, get the scholarship but not because you need it no, because you have to, have to win, have to have the prestige of it….” Alex’s breath is ragged and near the end of it he was hitting the floor with his fists like it was punctuating his statements.
“Why don’t you leave?”
“I did, he sent people after me.”
“Cops.”
“They were some of the people he sent.”
“That’s not legal is it?”
“He’d find a way, he a really good lawyer, just a fucking shitty human being.”
“Have you thought about getting emancipated?”
“He’d still send people.”
“To do what?”
“Mess with my job, my apartment, my landlord and super…he’d love it too. It’d be one of his life lessons.”
“Oh….”
“So you’re stuck?”
“No…I get my scholarship and then I’ll get away, he can’t do as much then once I’m out on my own.”
“I know exactly the feeling; it was going to be my way out of hell too.”
He turns and looks at me. Fuck he’s gorgeous, that tan, that gym rat shiny skin and that long brown hair still kind of in his face. Those brown eyes that seem to have these little golden flecks in him. They are so intense and so soulful; I’ve never seen soulful smoky sultry eyes before…

Have you ever ached in a way, you didn’t get…like inside but not inside, It’s like this ache inside that’s not really a physical thing.

“Was?”
“Uhm, yeah…It’s not like I can go back there, I can’t afford a place on my own unless I started dealing drugs or hooking.”
“No, You’re not doing either of those.” He said it kind of quickly.
“I’m not but, I can’t go back there to school, I’m not going into the system. I actually don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You can stay here; I’ve got the room and My Parents (He air quotes with his fingers.) don’t bother me here, there’s no rent..”
“Okay...” I interrupt him.
“Okay?”
“Yeah…okay…I’d be uhm stupid not to.”
“Uhm...yeah.”
“You sound confused.”
“I was kind of expecting a fight.”
“Alex..?”
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you draw me?” I point at the picture, my hand shakes. God I’m scared of the answer.
“I don’t know, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since the bus.”
“But…I’m a guy…Please don’t get pissed…Are you gay?”
“No…I don’t know, I just…I don’t think of you as a boy?”
“You think I’m a girl?”
“Yes…, No…I just think of you, of Hunter and Hunter was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my entire life….and…”
“And What?”
“And you made me laugh.”
“What, what did I do to make you laugh? Act like a girl?”
“No, it was the way you went off on me for being one of them, a jock and all of that. You’re smart and you’re funny and I can really talk to you…like now.”
“Well given you where dating Jennifer I’m surprised you never killed yourself or her. That must have been like dating the entire cast of Desperate housewives playing in the next Bring it on movie.”
He laughs.
It changes him, he shines when he laughs.
It felt really good to make him do that, to make him smile.
“Alex..?”
“Yes Hunter.”
“What did I do before? I mean I hurt you. I know I did. I’m sorry but…What did I do?”
And with that I ruin the mood.
He gets quiet on me again.
“You didn’t trust me, you thought I was up to something and pretty much said it…and there it was…me being compared to my dad…like a user and with me making that deal with you and everything else it just felt like it was becoming true…that I was becoming just like him.”
His head is down, and his shoulders are slumped and there’s part of him that’s still hurting, still smarting over it. How the hell would I feel if I got compared to my Mom or worse Cliff?
And I’m doing it before I even know I’m doing it. I’m sliding acrossed the two and a half feet between us on the bed and I wrap my arms around his neck and I kiss him.
Yeah…..
I kissed him.
I kissed a boy and I liked it and I have no idea what the hell any of it means but I’m liking it. I’m really liking it. And I’m selfish for doing it. Because for some fucked up reason I believe him and just like he did. I’m not kissing a boy; it’s not a gay thing. Instead I’m kissing Alex.

He smells so good, it’s like this drug I’m inhaling that’s blessing me out as we kiss. I swear I can feel happy curling around my brainstem. He tastes good too. Although that’s kind of muted by the tasted of the Red Bull I’ve been drinking and him too.

But…sigh…
I so don’t know what this is.
It shifts into I don’t care what this is as his hand comes up and his fingers slide through my hair gently and he kisses me back.
And I kiss him back.
Then he kisses me back.
We’re both kind of shivering at this point and my head is spinning and he breaks the kiss first. And he lets out this very, very cute shaky breath. “You kissed me.”
“Uh huh, I figured it was my turn and I…I couldn’t help it, you looked like somebody…like…you looked like a puppy I had kicked Alex. I…I wanted you to…I wanted to make you feel better.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I like you…I think.”
“You like me?”
“Yeah, A lot actually.” I feel the heat in my face as I’m seriously blushing. God I’ve never felt like this. I’ve never been this close with anybody.
“Hunter…Nobody, nobody’s ever cared about what I’ve ever felt before…”
“Me too Alex, I never dreamt that anyone would actually give a shit enough to save me…even when I called you and passed out, I …I thought I was just meant to suffer…y’know because I’m such a freak and I…I thought that I was gonna die…I thought I was going to die alone.”
“You’re not alone anymore Hunter, I don’t got a clue to what’s going on with us, but you’re not gonna be alone anymore, I won’t leave you behind…You’ve…you’ve got me for as long as you want me.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise…I’ve never felt like this about anybody before.”
“Me neither…Alex, I’m…I’m scared of this.”
“Me too.”
“But whatever this is…I want it.”
“Me too.”

Alex wrapped those massive arms around me and slid me off the bed and into his lap and we just sat there and held each other for awhile. It had to be the nicest feeling that I’ve ever had in my life. I new that we both shook for awhile and I calmed down after I’m not sure how long but it was awhile after he stopped shaking himself.

“You should get dressed.” He murmured.
“Why?”
“I need to go out and get some things at the store.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“You’d rather stay here alone?”
“Okay, I’ll get dressed.”

I got up and noticed him staring at me…or rather the wet stain on my panties. I blushed, I mean really blushed, like not just my head but I could feel the burning heat of it on my chest and shoulders. I looked at him. “It’s your fault.”
“My fault?” he asked kind of in a surprised way.
“Yeah, your fault.”
It was really cute the way that he suddenly blushed.

I went to the wash basket that had my freshly washed things in it and took some things and headed off to the bathroom. I hopped into a quick shower and again just about died from the pleasure of a really nice, hot shower. I shampooed and conditioned and ever used the blow dryer. I’ve never had one of those before. I styled my hair a bit and slid into a clean pair of panties and then put on my black tights and a pink scoop necked breast cancer t-shirt and then my faded denim skirt, my big grey wool socks and my Keds, then did my make up. Yeah I look and dress like a girl, I’m broke and had to steal Mom’s stuff but there’s also the fact I’ve done this for like three years or so when they just stopped paying for stuff. I like the skirt even if I couldn’t wear it around cliff because it’d be faggy and he’d kick my ass. I thought I’d look punker and stuff but really, looking at myself I look like a girl, even more now than ever and I just don’t get why I have to dress like this, how I just don’t look right all guy tough and butched up.

I look like a girl, albeit a really too thin and kind of anorexic one but yeah, I look a lot more like a chick than a dude. I take my old brown plaid shirt and put it on over top of everything and that adds a bit of butch to my look. I top the look off with a spiked choker, and some cheap gothy and ganger like necklaces and my heavy flat chain bracelet. Yeah I look very punker, kind of a mix between goth and grunge really.

Alex smiles at me and passes me this really big fleecy white and blue zip front hoody to wear with his name on it. “It’s cold out you might want to wear this.”
“And in case we run into Jennifer?”
“Uhm, yeah really if you don’t mind.”
“Mind, Alex…we just moved in together why would I mind?” I ask playfully in my best cute voice.
“Here.” He passes me a drink of water and a Tylenol. I take it gratefully. He grabs his jacket and my knit black cap and pulls it on over his head. It still looks good on him. And I like that I’m wearing something of his and he’s wearing something of mine.

He gets in the car and opens the garage door and warms it up for me before we leave. It’s all sorts of strange and nice like him opening my car door. I slide in the seat legs together twist sliding my but into place. Alex smiles. “Are you sure, you’re not a girl?”
“Alex, I’ve no idea what I am.”