It was only for pure alphabetical chance that I met Albert. We shared a college dorm room since Idlewild and Ien were next to each other on the list.
Sharing a room with Albert had both pluses and minuses but we became inseparable friends. He helped me with my studies and I helped him socially. I never did find out exactly from which town he was from but it must have been somewhere beyond beyond since he had no social skills at all, unless you count animals. Animals just loved him. Unfortunately, so did I. That was the minus. I’m gay. Totally committed gay and Albert was a prime specimen of the human male. So was I. In relationships I believe in equality. I completely reject the notion of “passive” and “active” and am both a giver and a taker and want my partner to be the same.
At first being gay on campus was a bit awkward. If you are gay you are supposed to be progressive. Not all of us are. In fact, I’m rather conservative and a strong believer in traditional values. You know family values, though not necessarily mixed sex. Fidelity, love, compassion, children as a result as an act of love, responsibility, commitment and all that. However, I’m a very social animal and that little bump was soon behind me.
As I said it was unfortunate that I fell in love with Albert. It was obvious he had absolutely no romantic interest in me. I was too afraid to alienate Albert to even hint about my feelings. To make things worse he didn’t really have a nudity tabu. Anyway, we became inseparable friends instead. My considerable social skills ensured that we both had a great time at college. Besides, Albert was a fast study. Soon he didn’t need me the same way I needed his help in my studies but we were best friends and that close, platonic, relationship remained the same all through college.
I buried my feelings for Albert and found myself a boyfriend. I believed I was in love with him. Perhaps I was, at least at first. At first Paul ticked every box for me. He was good-looking, he was smart, he was fun but not irresponsible, he wasn’t the jealous type that insisted to keep Albert away. Actually, the three of us spent a lot of time together since Albert never got a girlfriend.
Then Paul became more and more assertive, morphing into being dominant. He started to insist on only being the active sex partner. He tried to separate me from my friends, even Albert. At first I didn’t realize what was happening but then I started to push back. It all ended with an acrimonious break-up the day before graduation when he demanded that I turn down a very good job offer, that I had already accepted, in another city than the one he was going to.
Instead of partying that night I stayed in the dorm room. Albert found me there on the floor sobbing. I completely bared myself to him. How I loved him. How Paul had abused my lover for him. How I desperately wanted children of my own but never would have any. Albert, ever the logical one, started to walk me through that issue. He assured me that knowing me better than anybody else he was convinced that I’d be an excellent father. Adoption? Not my child. Artificial insemination? I strongly believe that procreation should be an act between two persons who love each other. And so on. I cried. I sobbed. I wailed. I must have been a pathetic sight. Albert held me lovingly.
Then Albert said something that I hadn’t expected.
“You say that you love me. Does that mean that you want to have sex with me?”
“YES! That and much more”
“If you could, would you commit the rest of your life in a family with me?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“I’m sorry but that won’t be possible. I love you dearly but not in the way you love me. Nonetheless, I will give you a parting gift”
I was heartbroken even if I could see in his face how much he cared for me. Loved me, even if not the way I loved him. He picked me up from the floor and started undressing me and then he put me on my bed and proceeded to undress as well.
That night we had the most amazing sex I ever had had. I reached such levels of ecstasy I never imagined could exist. Indeed a parting gift to be remembered for ever.
Albert went away the next day after graduation. He had been talking about how he had to travel for a job involving sociological research. The formal goodbye was a mere formality. We had spent the night for the real goodbye.
Anyway, that night with Albert had made me to reconsider my options. Perhaps artificial insemination wasn’t such a bad idea? I wasn’t prepared to accept that concept but I was thinking about it. Enough that a month later I asked the doctor doing the obligatory physical exam at my new job to include a fertility test. Just in case.
I was surprised to be called back to the hospital. The first thing I thought was that I was infertile. That would settle that.
As it turned out it wasn’t that. In a distracted way the doctor just said that both quantity and quality of my sperm was the best he’d ever seen. No there was an “anomaly” that he was concerned about. Now I started to get really worried. Did I have cancer or some other disease? Was I about to die? The doctor refused to answer any questions and then I had some extra tests and a specialist of some kind was called in. Then they had me wait for an hour while all the tests were processed. Apparently they rushed things. That had me REALLY worried.
Finally, I was called in to the office. My doctor and the specialist were there looking bewildered.
“So, doctors, what disease do I have? How long do I have to live?”
“Oh, there is nothing wrong with you, not really. As a matter of fact, you are incredibly healthy. If there hadn’t bee for a small anomaly I’d have said that you were a perfect specimen of the human male”
“Anomaly? What anomaly?”
“It appears that you are four weeks pregnant.”
At that moment I promised my best friend, that I realized that I’d never see again, that I’d would be the best parent possible for his loving parting gift. I’ll always miss you. I’ll always love you, Al Ien.
Comments
Very very Sneaky
Bru, my pet, you were in full bloom on this one. Until the end I was going to refuse to acknowledge I had read it. A little too much for me but the ribbon on the end clinched it.
Hugs Bru
Barb
I'm not borrowing any of your dresses for a few months. I'd freeze my only god knows what off if I stepped out in those little pieces of cloth you call a dress. Have any Snow Bunny outfits I might borrow until spring?
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
So I wandered a little bit off the usual path
I usually don't dabble in the dark arts (apart from Economics/Business Adminstration) or, as in this case, Science Fiction in my stories. More sex than usual as well. However, I don't recognise any limits.
Sorry, I'm going to use myself the (really) warm winter clothes I bought when a snowstorm hit Vilnius in September 2012.
Yer Snowballing Me
Love, the temp in Vilnius that year was a mean..., Petronys, LT Weather In September 2012 -
https://tcktcktck.org › lithuania › vilnius › september-2...
Avg Temperature · Min Temperature · Dew Point ; 18.84°C (65.91°F)
The girl who wears the almost nothing dresses at the Ice Palace Hotel in Iceland is trying to convince me into believing she needs a Bunny Suit in 65 degree temps? Exactly what kind of Bunny Suit and what kind of government or military meeting was going on at that time? Forget I asked to borrow anything of yours for the winter. I'm positive me staying warm would mean building a fire under any male looking at me. I've got to cultivate a new batch of spies. No one sent me any pics of that event.
Hugs Bru
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
It appears that I'm getting old and memory is slipping
It was in October.
On the other hand I tend to take with a grain of salt any statements from someone from a state with 2000 legal cannabis outlets.
PS
Iceland is too warm to have a really good Ice Palace. Try Ishotellet in Jukkasjärvi or Hôtel de Glace in Québec instead.
Movie Fiction?
Die Another Day The ice palace scene was filmed at Jökulsárlón—a large, iceberg-strewn glacial lagoon in southeast Iceland. If you go there today, you'll find no palaces, and no pantomime villains: just ice. I didn't have any spies spying on my favorite spy that time either. I need to recruit more reliable spies and villains.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
So you didn't buy the red herring?
Oh well, then we'll have hákarl for dinner instead.
If you absolutely must press me on the issue I blame it on only visiting the more inhabited parts of Ísland. (Where you can see how Europe and America quite literally are drifting apart.)
If you grow tired of ice, maybe the Icelandic Phallological Museum might be of interest?
Freeze your doolallies off?
In Oklahoma?
It hardly gets down to freezing there. And heaven forbid you get an inch or two of snow. The apocalypse cometh!
Then it's gone the next day.
A Couple Years Ago
In Houston, we had an apocalyptic storm with a few inches of snow. Normally, snow is an occasion of Jubilee, but not this time.
Then there was the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm, which I unfortunately missed. Houston got its White Christmas. Victoria had scenes of Winter Wonderland with a foot of snow.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
what nice gift!
I'm a little jealous !
Oh, it's quite simple, Just find yourself
an alien and then establish a very close relationship. Quite elementary actually.
Change your name
Change your name to make the story ending unpredictable again.
Sweet story, by the way.
Not everyone is as perspicacious you
Thank you!
I did guess . . .
. . . the pregnancy, but not the reason for it. You’d think I’d have spotted the alien angle, prolly. :-)
Nice story!
Emma
You if anyone :)
Rather ironic that the narrator was afraid to alienate Albert.
Albert
You got me on this one, I was thinking more supernatural than super natural as in alien.
Time is the longest distance to your destination.
Just for once I didn't tag the story
Real World. Then you have a choice of various extremely unlikely, as opposed to the usual very unlikely, events. This time it was SF. I think I have used magic twice before (Not including the Dragon story, of course).
Lordy lordy
That was terrible! But I clicked the kudos box anyhow. I did like it.
So bad it was good?
Thank you (I think) ;)
Speculation
It's probably not a good idea to speculate on what happened or how it happened, or what's currently happening. Let's just hope that it's not one of those chest-bursters.
EDIT: Honestly, I didn't get the Al Ien bit until just now.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
I don't think there will be a chest-burster
From all signs Al Ien cared for our protagonist and he is another kind of, kind of kind, alien.
I have no intention to delve into the details of how Albert's species handles miscegenation. Given their stage of development in biosciences and ethics I expect that both human progenitor and child will be extremely healthy humans (at least as far as we can ascertain).
Excellent yet again.
There’s only one apposite comment that I can add, Bru.
Bra Vo.
☠️
Vo Vo!
Thank you.
(I needed two Vo's to fill the bra.)
Eating for two...
Very nice, a wonderful story. Loved the ending...
Not what his new employer expected
A friend of mine didn't get a job because the company was afraid she'd get pregnant and take maternity leave. She was 25 at the time. Instead they hired a woman aged 38, who soon afterwards got pregnant.