Chapter Twenty-Two Questions
I left earlier than usual, avoiding my father at all costs and giving a little nod to my mother. Things weren’t better between us by any means; she was still submissive and wishy-washy around my father (everyone was) but there was a shared understanding in our eyes. She knew (or thought she knew) my biggest secret. It was okay again, for a little while, at least. My heart still ached knowing that we weren’t sharing the same thing, but sometimes, you just have to let people dream. I needed to complete my dream. I needed to see Gerard, because right then, there were giant holes in the clouds that I had been resting upon. I needed a new thread of lies to start sewing everything back together again. Gerard always had answers. I could go to him. I arrived at his place relatively at the same time as I had the day before. Only, he wasn’t sleeping. When I turned my key into the lock and practically barged inside, he was sitting on the bench that lead to the open windows, actually wearing clothing. I wondered if he had seen me walking, and why he was actually fully clothed if he had. He didn’t move as I came inside the small apartment. I shut the door behind me and dropped my small bag off to the side before I went up behind him. “Gerard,” I called as I walked, hopefully getting him to turn around. It worked and as he looked over at me, his eyes widened and he gave a little mock jump of surprise. “Frank!” he said casually – too casually, making me think he was humoring me. “If I had known you were coming, I would have gotten undressed.” He gave me a little devious smile that normally would have had me grinning right back, but my mind was occupied by other things. “I need to tell you something,” I informed him, my face twisted with worry. I had walked in with such haste that I had over shot where I was standing and ended up leaning over slightly. I placed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans instinctively and shrugged my shoulders, unsure of how to bring the issue up. Gerard’s countenance fell, and he twisted his face right back at me, but with more of a mocking glare. “You’re skipping school again,” he stated randomly, looking back at me oddly. I could tell he was in a joking mood this morning. Perhaps our discussion the night before had still left him horny and rambunctious. “Yeah, but there are more important things than school,” I told him in a huff, raising one of my arms, over-exaggerating. I had crushed my eyes closed, but when I opened them again, he was merely giving me a conniving smile. I sighed again, rubbing my temples. I never thought a day would come where I wanted him to stop his seductive glare. “Sam and Travis saw me coming out of here last night.” That seemed to do the trick to snuff out his dirty thoughts. His raised eyebrows fell down abruptly, his mouth tipping open and off to the side as he in took a deep breath. He looked around the room, then at me, and nodded. “And what happened?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. He looked worried, but it seemed like his concern was directed at me. Granted, I was in need of some worry, but did he forget about himself in this situation? He was the one who was going to go down for all of this if we were caught. “I don’t know…” I confessed, balling my fists in the rough fabric of my pants. “They asked me questions. I couldn’t answer them. And my mom found out I was lying, too. I still couldn’t answer her questions… I just don’t know what to do, Gerard.” I swallowed hard and let out a sigh, my arms waving and shoulders shrugging wildly as I talked. Gerard merely leaned forward on his black clothed legs. He placed his elbows on his thighs and held his face in his hands, very distinguished as he asked, “And then what happened?” “God, Gerard! Aren’t you upset?” I cried out in aggravation. My voice cracked as I hit the higher note at the end of my phrase, my head shaking slightly. How could he be so fucking calm? Especially when I was asking for help? He was supposed to help me. That was what Gerard was there for. “Why would I be upset?” he countered, his face becoming whole and serious. “Oh, I don’t know,” I replied sarcastically, waving my hands in the air. I didn’t mean to take my anger out on him, it was just happening. “Maybe because you could go to jail?” “Eh, prison isn’t so bad,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm. “At least they feed and clothe you, and give you a roof over your head. I’m sure it would be difficult to do art inside, but I’m willing to bet that I could have Vivian or you slip me some supplies through the bars.” “ Gerard!” I enunciated through clenched teeth. The idea of him being taken away from me was so prominent and so close, I did not need him adding humor to the situation. Not one little bit. “Frank, calm down,” he soothed, losing his sardonic nature. He got up from the bench gracefully, walked over to me, and put a hand on my back. I wriggled out of the embrace for a second, feeling the side effects afterwards. We both closed our eyes tightly and I murmured a sorry, which he merely brushed off. “It’s okay,” he insisted, placing the hand there again. I let it stay. He rubbed my back for awhile, our bodies coming closer together. He led me over to the couch, where he continued to have at least one hand on me, either my back or knee. I was sitting on the edge of the couch, while he settled completely inside, almost being swallowed by the orange fabric. “Aren’t you at least a little bit worried’?” I asked him quietly. “Yes, I am,” he confessed earnestly. His fingers delicately brushed the notches in my spine for support. “I don’t want us to get caught, Frank. I don’t ever want us pulled apart before we’re ready. But, I know it may happen. I know that, logically, but we haven’t been very logical the past few days.” “What do you mean?” Gerard sighed, taking his hand back and rubbing his face. “You keep skipping school. You keep coming home late-” “That was just one time…” “True enough, but that’s all it takes, Frank. Just one time. We screw up once, and that could be the end of us.” He was speaking so calmly, so matter-of-factly, and I hated it. He would grow despondent every once in awhile, but he was sitting back and taking it. Literally. He was sitting, being swallowed by the couch while I teetered on the edge of sanity. I didn’t understand how we could be so different, but in the exact same situation. He noticed me staring at him intently, and started to lean forward a bit. He touched my knee, in a vain attempt to calm me. “Don’t worry right now though, okay? We don’t need to. If things had turned out badly from whatever happened last night, I think the cops would have been here by now.” We both tried to laugh or at least smile and brush away the remark, but the heaviness of almost getting caught weighed us down. “But what if there are other times? Other times where I’m not so lucky?” I probed further, though it hurt me. I turned around, and gradually let myself sink a little more into the couch with Gerard. He moved his arm, taking my hand in his instead of rubbing my back. “I’ll have to deal with it then.” “What do you mean?” I asked, squeezing his hand. “I thought we were in this together?” “We are,” he whispered, drawing himself closer to me. “We’re always in this together.” He leaned over and kissed me lightly, his lips hovering over my own, and his other hand touching the side of my face. I pressed back into him eagerly, trying to prolong the kiss, but I was unsuccessful. I wanted him so much right then, probably because I had been so close to losing him. His hand was warm and comforting in my own, and I missed that feeling all over my body. I wanted to kiss and touch and fuck him all day. Even if we had just done that the day before, so many things had happened. Usually, I stared at my dull wall for most of the night when he wasn’t around, but last night, everything was almost taken away. I needed him more than ever now because I had to store up, just in case there was no later. “We are in this together, we need each other. But…” he started up again, moving away so he could talk rather than kiss. He narrowed his eyes at me caringly. “Save yourself in this, Frank. If we get caught, don’t worry about me. Always save yourself.” My mouth hung open in shock. I tried to speak a few times, it all coming out in small squeaks, before I finally found the words. “But why? If we’re in this together, how can I just leave you?” “I’ll be fine,” he insisted, not answering my question. He gave a weak smile, and squeezed my hand a little more. Neither action helped to put me at ease. “That doesn’t answer my question, Gerard,” I stated, my voice quaking slightly. I wasn’t going to cry; I wasn’t even close. I was just so fucking emotional this past day. I needed to smoke. To drink. To fuck. To do something other than debate our less than stellar future. “Frank,” he told me, voice clear and fluid like water. His large free hand gripped the side of my face, his palm unmistakably warm against my skin. He looked into my eyes deeply as he continued to talk. “I’m older than you. I’ve had a life. I can take whatever punishments they may give me. I can face the scrutiny. I’ve faced it all my life living here, alone with my art. It’s nothing new to me.” He paused, taking in a deep breath, and focusing on me even more than before. “But you, Frank. You’re young, beautiful, artistic… you have a life ahead of you. I can’t get in the way.” “But you’re not in the way!” I almost screamed. I wanted to pull away from his grip because he was making me so mad, but I couldn’t stand to be away from him at the same time. Did he not realize that I would not be any of those things – beautiful and artistic – without his fucking help? I would be dead without him, either mentally or physically. “I will be in the way if we’re found out,” he enunciated slowly, picking apart every word. “Society won’t see me as you see me, Frank. Our opinions on ourselves and our situations are invalid. Everyone has their own interpretations of art.” “Fuck society,” I spat at him, my voice wavering with the amount of emotion I was putting into it. I kicked my foot a little, not knowing what to do with my body in its angry state. “We won’t be found out.” Gerard smiled then, despite the serious nature of our conversation. “We can’t control that, Frank. Just look at what happened last night. It’s a warning sign.” His words hurt me more than they should have. He was just being a realist, not the dreamer I was used to. The words were almost foreign against his tongue. My chest tightened again and I thought it was going to crack in half. “We can’t live our lives in this manner for much longer,” he started again, a sullen quality to his voice. “Then how are we supposed to live?” I shot back, my jaw locked with fury. This was the only life I had ever had where I was living. I couldn’t die again. There was only so much my body could take. “We’re supposed to live like it’s our last day alive.” There was a mysticism to his voice, and it seemed so much farther away from me. His eyes wandered around the room, his face pensive. When he came back to me, his voice was strong, sure of himself. “In essence, we were doing that already. We were doing what we loved and not caring about the consequences. We were happy. But we were blind to the fact that our death was imminent and it made everything less special.” I scoffed. How could these past few weeks not be special? I didn’t get what he meant, and I was a little insulted by it. We were living like it was our last days, but wasn’t it better that we weren’t aware of our death? It meant we didn’t have a reason for doing what we did; we just did it. We didn’t know our death was close, we were just having fun in the moment. I thought doing things out of instinct was better because you had the right answer all along? I didn’t know anymore. I sighed, not wanting to fight him at this point, and leaned back into the couch. “I need your help, Gerard,” I started slowly, trying to level my breathing. He tilted his head a little, paying close attention. “If I can think of what to tell people about us, about me coming here, about everything, then maybe we can avoid being caught. At least for a little while.” He sighed quietly, and then unexpectedly pulled me into a hug. He stroked the back of my head and hair, and I got the worse feeling in the pit of my stomach. It felt like someone had scooped out its contents and dished them all on a platter. Gerard’s hug was so tender – too tender. It was almost as if we were saying goodbye. “We can still live like it’s our last day, like we know our death is soon,” I pleaded, trying to draw back to his point. I cringed under the words meaning, but pressed forward frantically. “Just tell me what to tell people now so we can avoid that death for a little while longer.” “Frank, shhh” he insisted calmly, stroking my hair and willing me to shut up. I balled my fists into the black fabric of his shirt and tried to pull away. I wanted to scream no over and over again, but I couldn’t. Gerard held me tighter, and continued his statement, his voice resonating the truth I didn’t want to hear. “I can’t do that for you.” “Why?” I yelped into his shoulder. My eyes were watering under the closed tight lids and my voice was weak and hoarse. Fuck, this was not happening. I thought I had been home free, avoiding certain death at home, and now Gerard was killing me. Weren’t we supposed to be preserving this? Worst of all, I was crying. At least starting to. My eyes were just watering, but so far nothing had fallen from the tear ducts, and fuck, I was going to make sure it stayed that way. I pinched part of my hand with my fingernail, hoping to deflect some of my inner pain onto something more tangible. It worked. I blinked and choked back whatever I had just had inside of me. “You can’t answer anyone’s questions if you can’t ask them yourself,” he said seriously, his words resembling that of the philosophies he always used. It threw me off guard. Threw me off so much, I forgot that my eyes were probably red and pulled away and look at him. He let me move, but still held on tightly to my arms. I could still feel a rim of dampness around my eyelids, but I blinked it back until it was unnoticeable. Even the reason I was crying had been lost among his other words. He wasn’t breaking up with me, he was trying to teach me something else. “What?” I asked, my voice still weak. “Frank,” Gerard said, a small hint of anguish in his eyes as he closed them, grabbing both of my hands. He realized I had been on the verge of tears and was now trying to be extra gentle with me. We were facing each other on the couch now, but his arms were extended so that his fingers grazed my knees through my jeans, sending shivers up my spine. “Exactly what happened last night? You never told me the full story,” Gerard requested, furrowing his brows. “Oh…” Once I collected my thoughts into some coherency, I began to tell him the whole thing, right from when I stepped outside and noticed the bright liquor store lights, finishing with my mother and I sharing a secret. He nodded his head thoughtfully, rubbing my knee as he pondered a moment. “You couldn’t answer them because you don’t know how to form a question yourself, Frank,” he finally stated easily, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “What?” “You don’t know how to ask questions,” he repeated again, folding both arms across his chest now and leaving me with a lack of physical contact. “What?” I probed further, trying to lean forward and grasp at him. “I can’t ask a question? Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?” “Well, yes,” he agreed, shifting his weight, and then his viewpoint. “And no.” “Explain, please,” I demanded, not in the mood to play around. “You can ask questions, Frank, but they’re not real questions. You ask things for clarification. Why? What? Who? That sort of thing. You never ask real questions, the deep, hard hitting stuff. You never ask what is really on your mind, and what you really want to know.” He paused, his arms poised on his knees, hands raised up in the air. He locked a cynical eye on me, letting his wrist drop from its elevated position. “Especially about me.” “Huh? But I know a lot about you. I’ve asked questions.” “Yes, but I’ve always started the conversation. I’ve always started the story, and you’ve just asked the who, where, what, when, why, and how of it. You never actually asked me to tell you my story. I just did it,” he clarified, his voice thick and strong. “I’m here for you to learn from, and you don’t ask me anything. It’s a waste.” I was taken aback, his harsh words hurting me in that moment more so than helping me. “But…” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish anything anymore. I could see the difference now, between Gerard’s definition of real and pointless questions, but I thought I had asked real ones, especially to him. I began to relive our conversations in my mind and the more pieces I put together, the more images of a quiet me fawning over his every word came to mind. I never led the discussion with words. My questions and I were merely backburners, just there to pick up the slack and ask for details a narrator would forget about. I relived last night, and noticed that no answer that I had given was a complete one. I had done an awful job at lying when I was with my friends, totally deflecting everything, and my mother had fed me the guitar lessons story. I probably wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything to tell her if she had not found the missing instrument. I wasn’t good at this game at all, I began to realize. Whatever it was, questions or answers, I was always following. Never leading. “Frank.” Gerard’s voice was gentler this time, and his hand reached forward to touch my knee. I looked at him, his anguished, serious demeanor gone and his playfully momentous countenance back. He leaned forward, his lips just barely above my ear. “Ask me anything,” his whispered, pulling back from me slowly and leaving me to relish in the thought. He pressed his lips to mine, silencing me until I could think of a question. So many came at me all at once, I felt like I was drowning. Gerard had always been an enigma to me, even after he had given me a key to his apartment, and let me be a part of him physically, mentally, and emotionally. There were things about Gerard I wanted to know, things I shouldn’t know (but wanted to anyway), and things that I needed to know – and now I could ask them all. My thoughts pooled into this vast ocean I had created, ready to take all of me without a second guess. Some questions I had were waves, rapids even, with white dotted heads, crashing up against the inside of my psyche. Others were small ripples, only taking place because the others had caused them to be pushed forward. I was standing at the shore, looking down on them all, not knowing what one to swim into first. Rocks lined the coast, my thoughts appearing as an oasis in a beach. I kissed Gerard, and it was as if I had picked up a flat black rock like I did when I was younger, and skipped it across the surface. The questions still came in waves, but I had something to calm them down; to remind them I was coming. At the moment, I was busy. I concentrated on kissing him, slipping my tongue past his lips and rubbing my hands up and down his back. The feelings from before of almost losing him, twice (even if one was me overreacting), came back to me, and all I wanted to do was touch him all over and make sure he was still there. I crawled into his lap, wrapping my legs around his waist. I heard his breathing change and start to quicken, while moans began to erupt in his throat as our crotches rubbed together through the out-of-place fabric. I slipped my hands around his back, finding the end of his shirt. I lifted it up carelessly, and pressed my warm palms into his skin. It had been so long since we had done these actions with clothing on; I wanted to rid us of the unnecessary barrier soon. Our actions calmed me and made all of my questions line up in order of importance, each wave coming to the shore and tickling my feet in recognition. I drew our lips apart, a sly smile spreading across my face before I formed a small inquiry, a mere ripple design in the ocean that was coming. “Do you want to go to your bedroom?” He smiled and nodded, knowing that we were both just getting started.
***
I had given him very few blowjobs, maybe two or three since that night where he had needed my assistance to get up, but I was getting the hang of it. I usually only sucked on him for foreplay and to help him get and stay hard. He was already hard now, his skin taking on a dark red hue from all of the blood rushing to the one area. I stared at it for a few moments while I pumped him over and over again with one of my fists, his hands coming down to rest on my shoulders. I took him in my mouth fairly easily, and began to suck long and hard. I was surprised at how much I was getting into it, my hands gripping his bare butt as my face collided again and again with his front. He hit the back of my throat at one point, and though my eyes watered and I gagged a bit, I had still done it. It always amazed me how he could do that to me so easily, but I figured he just had many years of practice, and I was still just starting out. We were going fast with a lot of our actions; the tearing off of clothing, kissing frantic spots, and when he finally dragged me onto the bed before he came, our sex was rushed and urgent too. It was the first time we hadn’t actually gone slow and sensual like we normally did. He would always move and in and out of me steadily, only speeding up slightly to get himself off. I had been getting better at controlling myself when I fucked him. It was really hard; I was still a teenager and when something felt good, I wanted to do it really fast and all the time. When we had sex on the bed that day, though we were going faster than usual, it was by no means just blatant animalistic fast fucking. Gerard was still tender, taking time to brush hair out of my face and kiss me before we both came. It was after we both climaxed that it began to draw down to a slow pace, me sliding out of him and rolling over to my side, staring up at the ceiling while we both caught our breath. His hand, though clammy and sweaty, reached over and clasped mine as we breathed hard and heavy, in some form of nonverbal communication. “We do this too much,” I stated with a blunt humoristic edge. I let out a slight chuckle after, knowing how true it really was. Today wasn’t an out of ordinary day. We always did this almost the second I was in the door, and sometimes again before I left for the day. “Impossible,” Gerard countered in his high and mighty voice. He flipped over, bracing himself with his elbow and placed a small kiss on my pink and swollen lips. “Simply impossible. You can never have too much sex. Like you can never have too much art, music, or beauty.” He brought his other hand over to me, his fingers magically dancing just above the bare flesh on my stomach. I shivered under his lack of touch, his words entering my system. “True,” I agreed, taking his hand in my own again and bringing it up to my face, so I could nip at the fingers. He smiled and finally gave in, just touching my stomach wholly and no longer teasing. “But this can’t be normal, can it?” “Define normal,” he scoffed, chipper tone still remaining. “I think the situation we are in is far from normal, Frank.” I rolled my eyes, finding new words. He always managed to find a mistake in what I was saying, making me almost always rephrase everything I said. At least I was becoming very skilled at the English language again. “But can this be healthy?” I emphasized. “Is it possible to have too much sex?” Gerard laughed again, tipping his head back and exposing his pale neck. I had to resist the urge to reach forward and mark it up with the purple marks that had started to fade. “Oh, Frank,” he uttered, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “You really are hilarious.” “Hey –” I countered, getting somewhat defensive. He hadn’t called me hilarious since we first started seeing each other everyday. He hadn’t picked on my naivety in a while. I thought I was finally catching up to his stature. Little did I know, no one could ever catch up to Gerard. “Hush,” he said, placing another quick kiss on my lips, it working to aid in his command. “When you find something you love to do,” he started, looking down at me and giving me a slight wink, “you want to do it all the time. It’s healthy. It’s normal. It’s what I do with my art.” I shot a look up at him, making a feeble attempt to cock an eyebrow. He understood my perverted joke and rolled his eyes. “Not like that,” he jested, pushing me a little with the hand he had on my chest. “Get your mind out of the gutter. I do my art whenever I get the chance. And when I’m with you, I take every opportunity to be with you in every way. Even if it is starting to have effects on me.” His voice projected a dark humor when referring to his small inability. “It’s okay,” I insisted, flipping myself on my side too, placing a hand on his chest and pulling him slightly closer. My hand began to roam in between our two bodies until I grasped him in between us. It wasn’t hard, and I didn’t expect it to get that way anytime soon, but I still clutched and rubbed it softly to prove my point. “I don’t mind helping you out there.” I gave him a devious smile, which he returned as our lips met. After we pulled away, and Gerard started to trace his fingers up my back again, I thought about what he had said. It made sense about our sexual exploration and his art habits. I could remember when I was a kid and just got my first bike. I rode it constantly, to the point where the rubber on the tires had started to crack and peel away. I loved it so much and never wanted to be away from it. But after awhile and after a few tire repairs, I rode it less and less, until it became another shadow of my childhood, hiding in the garage with my soccer ball and boy scout uniform. “Will we ever get tired of this?” I asked Gerard suddenly. His fingers stopped tracing, and rested steady and firm on my back, in an attempt to keep me grounded and secure. “Who knows?” he stated honestly, his eyebrows raising to show the uncertainty of it all. I felt my heart flutter and drop. “I haven’t been painting as much as I usually do in the past few days. There are some mornings where I wake up and I just don’t feel like it. There have been weeks like that. But I’m still an artist. I still love paint. And when I finally go back to it after that urge in me has returned, it’s always ten times better. I feel it ten times more. And I fall in love with it all over again.” His eyes had been darting around the room as he talked about his first love, his voice high and happy. He returned his gaze to me, adding a caring and serious tone as he continued. “I’ll be the same way with us. Right now, you’re new – we’re new. We want everything. And we’re taking everything every moment we can. Later on, we may be satisfied. We will not have sex as often, but I think the passion will still be there.” A deep smile spread across his face, baring his tiny teeth and deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. “There will always be passion between artists. It just can’t be helped.” I nodded my head thoughtfully, his infectious smile and contagious reasoning drilling its way into my head. It made sense again, but everything Gerard said did. Even if I never understood it fully, he seemed to radiate reason and logic, but in the most illogical manner. He was a genius, and I sometimes wondered just how his thought process worked. I wanted to be inside his head. I had already managed to be inside his body and soul, but his mind seemed like unmarked territory. I didn’t think even he knew what was going on in his head most of the time. I wanted to find out, I wanted to see what was buried beneath those striking olive eyes. Gerard had said that we were new. What about the older people in his mind? The other people he had shared this passion with? What happened to them? And then I remembered the very reason we were sitting on this bed, and why I was missing another day of school. I had been prompted to ask questions. I had been given a key to his head, and just like the one to his apartment, I needed to use it. I just hoped I didn’t drown in the thoughts. I tightened my grip on his side, clinging onto him as if he were a lifeboat. “Gerard,” I started, my voice creeping into the silence of the room. It seemed then, that I was asking more than a question. It seemed like I was taking a test, only in reverse. Gerard’s eyes met my focus, his face wholesome and blank. He waited for the words to come out of my mouth, knowing where they were coming from. “How many people have you been with?” I blurted out, getting it off my chest. And when I did, yet another thing came to mind and it flew past my lips before I could stop it. “This passion…how many people have you felt that with?” “Ah, well,” Gerard smiled. We had started our new lesson. “You are asking two very different questions there, Frank. I have been with many people, but felt passion with very little.” I nodded again, my mouth slightly agape. “Tell me about all of them.” He grinned artfully, pleased that I was learning so quickly. “I’m glad you skipped today,” he stated out of the blue. “Why?” “Because we are definitely going to need the whole day for this!”
|
