Chapter Sixteen Comfortable and Confident 6 страница“Why?” I probed more, walking over to his side. I stood next to him, but didn’t touch him. I just watched as he unlatched the door, but didn’t open it entirely yet. “She has freedom now,” he told me seriously, not taking his eyes off the beige feathers. He kept his head up high, chin arched, eyes narrowed down to gaze at the mystic creature. “Freedom?” I screwed up my face, thinking hard, his word choice throwing me off. If this bird really was free, wouldn’t he let her outside? She was a caged animal, brought in from the wild, even if it was the wild of a pet store and not that of Paris as Gerard had previously claimed. She was still going to be in captivity, even if she was just flying around the apartment. “Yes, freedom,” Gerard established, sticking a finger in and stroking the bird. She moved into his digit, pecking his skin lightly and rousing a smile on the older man’s face. “She can leave the bars behind and fly around here.” He looked up from the affection of the animal, our eyes locking. I felt a sudden sensation I had not felt before wash over me. It was odd and I couldn’t entirely place the sentiment; it almost felt like he was petting my feathers – and that I had them to begin with. “Around us,” he added again, voice rustling in between the new layers I had so magically acquired. “Okay…” I said unsure. “But what changed?” Gerard drew his olive eyes away slowly, looking back down at the bird. He screwed up his face as he stroked, seeing the faults in his argument. I watched him, waiting, my weight on the balls of my feet, feeling so light at the same time. “Nothing, essentially,” he answered after a few moments of deliberation. “The situation hasn’t changed. She’s still a bird; a dove. But opinions have changed.” “What changed your opinion?” I asked with a slight twang in my voice. He may have changed his mind – he did that a lot. It was an artist thing, he had told me, probably derived from that chaotic pattern he loved so much. Opinion changing or not, this didn’t alter the fact that I would still be the one cleaning up bird shit. “You,” he answered suddenly, throwing me off guard. “I changed your opinion on letting your pet dove out of a cage?” I enunciated each word, making sure I had the situation clear in my mind. I leaned in a bit, making sure I got all of the answer distinctly. “No,” he told me, a small laugh seeping through his serious demeanor. “You changed my mind about freedom.” He looked up at me, the dove’s feathers still against his skin like velvet. The deep green colour of his eyes was so strong at that moment I could practically touch the olive colour exuding from him. I stared at him for awhile, watching the pupil of his eye dart back and forth, searching my confused countenance for something that I was only unsure of. I wondered if my eyes were as gorgeous to him as his were to me. “Some things need to be shackled,” he informed, turning his gaze away in a split second and focusing back onto the bird. I was left staring into his dark raven mane, unsure of where the pearly whiteness dotted with the dark, earthy hue of jade of his eyes had suddenly gone. “They need to be kept away for their own good. But, like Maya Angelou said, ‘the caged bird sings.’” He smiled, remembering a work of poetry by a woman I had no clue about. “The dove still coos despite its lack of freedom. And love still flourishes in places it’s not supposed to.” He paused, not looking at me, the smile gone from his face, but stronger emotions displayed. His eyes never did meet mine, but I could feel his irises on me, his colour washing over me like the warm air in the room filled with soft coos. “And though there are some times where things need to be shackled and kept away, there are other times where freedom is persistent. Even if it’s just around an apartment building,” he finished, his voice slightly tipped with somber qualities. He sighed deeply, but more so out of relief. It was almost as if he had been thinking about this startling concept for a long, long time – and really, maybe he had been. He had gotten the dove years ago, before I even knew this apartment building existed. He had gotten it when he wasn’t allowed to go to Paris; when things were shoved in his way, constricting his own freedom. Vivian gave it to him, to show him that he could still be free in the confounds of a dirty apartment building in the middle of fucking New Jersey; one of the most gray and violent places there were (at least in my opinion - I hadn’t been to that many others to see that much of a difference, like New York or Paris where dreams were made). Maybe he had spent all this time thinking about this damn bird, trying to figure it all out, but it was only now he was getting closer and closer to some reasoning; some answer to an impossible question. He wasn’t going to accept the standard ‘some questions have no answer’ for this lesson to himself. He knew there was an answer, he could practically hear the dove whispering it to him all this time; he just couldn’t decipher the coos yet. I still didn’t know if he could completely understand her, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was finally getting something off of his weighted chest, and it felt good to both of us as it hit the air. I could feel the extra meaning he seeped into his words in my bones, but I couldn’t speak back or form sentences to do the situation justice yet. Instead, I just watched as he flung open the cage door. “Go on,” he breathed out like it was his last breath ever taken. It may have been, judging by how slow he took in his next one, his jaw rigid and eyes closed. “Go free.” He removed his hand from stroking the small creature, backing his arm away and motioning out with it, his fingers waving like the wind. The beige bird stood on her perch for a moment, cocking her head at both Gerard and I, almost unsure if this was for real. I spotted Gerard nod his head - just barely - to her request, but it was only after I tipped mine with his that she flew forward. She flapped her wings tentatively at first, then something seemed to grab her by her beak, and flung her flying into the air. I watched her wings spread around her pear-shaped body and fly out again and again; out so far I thought they would fly away as a separate entity. As I watched in awe, I realized that I had never seen her fly before. I had seen her flutter and stretch previously, but I always had control; her body either in the cage or in my hand. She was never really allowed to fly; never given that much room or consent to do so. Now that she was, she was taking all that she could and using it to its full extent. And fuck, I thought she was so beautiful when she was merely in my palm, but I had been wrong. She was forced to be beautiful then, captured and groped into a majestic creature. As she flew around the room, her wings elongating and releasing her dreams, she was that majestic creature, and fuck, that was beauty in its finest forms. I was astonished as she circled the apartment, her coos becoming drowned into the sinuous sonata of arching wings and small, bitter tastes of sovereignty. My mouth fell open in wonder, not just with her beauty, but because she wasn’t even close to being finished yet. She wasn’t totally free, but this was as far as she could go for now. And she was going to take every last inch of it, making it fucking count. I could only imagine just how gorgeous real freedom was, and when she would have the opportunity to take it. I was startled from my real life daydreams with Gerard’s presence beside me. He slid his arm smoothly around my waist, pulling me closer to his nude body. He found my hand, still weak with veneration at my side and gripped it surprisingly strong, lacing our fingers together. He rested his head in the crook of my neck, lips coming to my skin like small pecks as I still stood entranced with the bird. His skin was hot against my own, his forehead nuzzling me as his lips continued to touch my skin, creating that new sensation washing over me again and again. I felt light on the tips of my toes, his arm around me and anchoring me, watching the bird fly. I could have sworn in that moment that I was having an out of body experience, because I felt like I was flying too and I was looking down on all of this like a spectator. “You’ll be my dove, Frank,” he whispered, breathing softly into my ear, bringing me back down to our own reality. “And we can be free together.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I want to try something with you, Frank,” Gerard mentioned freely, moving his head back from mine slightly. The dove was still flying around her confined freedom, and we were still getting used to our own. The somber and philosophical quality had vanished from Gerard’s voice, a mischievous and childlike grin left in its place. “What’s that?” I asked, his smile infecting me like a disease that I did not want treatment for. I had not seen that smile since this morning when he told me of the new rule to the apartment, and I wondered where it would take me this time. He grinned again, the wrinkles in his face growing deeper. He took his hands off of my waist and cupped mine in his own. I smiled and sniggered as I let him drag me forward into another idea that was beginning to come forward from his constantly thinking head. He took the blanket I had dragged out only moments earlier and placed it on the ground in the centre of the room, where most of his painting supplies were. He backed away from it for a while, looking down and judging if it was in the right place as he twisted his lips to the side. He moved some of his panting supplies out of the way while I just stared at him, a nervous smile on my face. “Lay down,” he finally instructed me, motioning with his arms over-dramatically. “Okay…” I uttered slowly, getting to my knees and then laying on my chest. This better be good, I thought to myself meekly. I noticed my hands tremble as I placed them down on the sheet, supporting my weight. “No, no, no!” he objected right away. His voice made me jump, even if he was only joking. I looked up at him and he shook his head, a hand on his face, overextending his mock disapproval. I was back to being a naïve young teen in his mind. “On your back, face up,” he instructed again, demanding in an impish manner. “I want to see you.” I smiled with him, laughing off my nervousness that had suddenly returned. God, he wanted to see me a lot. I didn’t think there was that much to look at anymore, considering I had been naked since late morning, and he had just seen me in that moment of weakness – as he called it – not too long before. I figured soon he’d grow tired of observing every inch of me and finally beg that I put on clothing. But of course, the artist never begged for anything, so, I flipped my body over again. As I laid down looking up at the ceiling, displaying myself much like I had on the orange couch earlier that day and feeling my heart pound inside my chest, I heard Gerard digging through his cupboards. They weren’t his normal cupboards where he kept his paint supplies, but the ones closer to the now empty birdcage. “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice quaking a bit – not with anxiety, but pure excitement. I could hear the hollow banging of plastic boxes, and cardboard rustling; an unfamiliar sound in the apartment usually filled with the clanks of wine bottles or paint cans. “You’ll see,” was the closet thing I got to an answer out of him. He appeared in front of me soon after, so I never had the chance to ask anything else. He was holding up a see-through bag filled with minuscule little brown and yellow dots. I wasn’t sure what the bag contained until he got on his knees next to me. “Why do you have birdseed?” I asked absurdly, my eyes widening. I propped myself up on my elbows, trying to get a better glance and grip of what was going on. “Shhhh,” Gerard purred, playing around. He placed a finger on my lip, trying to silence me as he laid his body down closer to my own. Instead of becoming quiet, I merely opened my mouth and consumed the finger, sucking on the tip like I had in his bed moments earlier, but leaving no chance for biting. There was something so sensual about his fingers in my mouth that went way beyond just what we had done for sex. His hands were so strong and artistic; fucking gorgeous. I wanted to convey my appreciation for them. That appreciation only lasted a few moments before he took his finger out of my mouth quickly. He rolled his eyes down at me playfully, chastising me. He was in a lively mood, and just not for that game. The game he wanted to play involved birdseed and I didn’t quite know if I was keen on the idea just yet. Especially since I was going to be used as the game board. “I want to see something,” Gerard explained as he began to open the bag, ripping through the sheer plastic with his stubby fingers. “What?” I inquired, straining my neck and feeling the hard surface dig into my elbows as I kept looking up at him. “To see if freedom chooses you,” he stated seriously, the coy demeanor fading from his face. I didn’t have much time to deliberate over this scheme before he plunged his hand into the bag, and placed a handful of birdseed on my chest. I gasped the moment the cold seeds hit my skin and began to roll down my front. Gerard merely chuckled to himself (and at me), continuing to spread the mess up and down my chest until it looked like I had a million freckles or some horrible skin disease. The seeds clung to his flesh too, black dots forming all over the back of his hand, then clumping together in the ridges of his palm. They draped and fell down his arm slowly as he looked around the room, trying to see where the dove was flying, making cooing and clucking noises as he did to call her over. He didn’t have to make them for long before the beige bird came and flew with all her might and landed in the centre of my chest, just above my belly button. Again I gasped, my eyes bulging out of my head at the black beady ones staring back up at me. “I guess she has chosen you,” he said through a smile and a suppressed giggle. Though the bird was blocking some of my view (and nearly all of my attention – she had started to peck my skin and was getting dangerously close to an area I did not want or need pecked) of the man before me, I could have sworn I saw something twinkle in Gerard’s eyes. I wanted to believe it was pride, but something deeper resonated there. Something I wasn’t supposed to find out until later. “It feels so weird,” I said, not really to anyone in particular as the feet of the dove began to poke at my skin. The sensation of the seeds mingling and sticking to my malleable flesh had been weird enough, but now as she bobbed her head around when she walked, her smooth and sharp feet pricked me with every step. It didn’t hurt too much, just felt itchy and uncanny. When her head came down and she took parts of the unshelled seed into her mouth, her beak would poke more than the claws, but it never hurt. Her feathers though - they felt fucking magical. Her tail brushed up against my skin as she strutted past, pushing excess seeds away and sending chills up and down my spine.
I cut him off, finding a flaw in his two theories. “I thought chaos was good?” He looked up at me with a sly grin, stopping his rubbing motions for a brief second. “It is, but when everything is the same and everyone is free, people take it for granted. People no longer yearn for that sense of self and sovereignty. Then ultimately, not many people have a purpose to their life. If the whole existence of yourself is to be free, and it’s given so easily, it takes the fight away. It takes the passion away. Passion and fighting, as well as freedom, are there for a reason. We are confined for a reason, for a purpose, and even when we are alone we are not free. We are just left to dwell inside an open cage, wondering how to pass the time and make this life count. We can’t be completely free, but we can dream about it. We are given outlets to express ourselves: art, music, love, among others. These are the things that make a life of confinement worth living. These are the things that make us get up in the morning, and these are the things that give us the freedom we can never have in reality.” When he was done, I honestly didn’t know what to do. I could still hear his voice inside my ear drums, and I could see his face in front of me. His eyes had lit up like an ember in a dark fire pit when he had spoken the word dream. For some reason, that stuck out in my mind. Probably because after those words, if only for a split second, I felt my body jump outside itself. Maybe I was dreaming, or at least in the process of falling asleep I was so relaxed and intertwined with his words. I could listen to him talk all night, all morning, every single fucking day, and still find out something new, either about him or the world I had been living in for seventeen years. I knew wisdom came with age, but I felt like an infant next to him, and I knew there would be no way I could ever match his skills. I could live to be the oldest man in the world, and still never reach his level. He seemed as if he had been around for centuries from the way he talked, and how he spoke. Each word was well crafted, well enunciated, and riddled with meaning after meaning. I wondered if he practiced this hours before the conversation ever took place, if he wrote this out before it happened, because surely no one could be this brilliant without thinking things over about a thousand times first. Sometimes I didn’t even know what the words he used meant; they were too large and foreign. Other times, I could not decipher what certain paragraphs meant, what his philosophies went on about, but I still listened. He could captivate anyone around him, even if they didn’t speak English. I wasn’t even sure if it was English in the traditional sense that he was speaking some days. His flare for French would fall through occasionally with a specific word, or phrase, but it was the way he drew out English words, gave them his own spin and dialect that I was enraptured with. They needed to teach it in schools. It didn’t matter what he was saying anymore, if I understood the meaning, or if he blended the words into something new; I was always listening. The only aspect that weighed heavy in my chest was that I never knew what to say back to his words. Even if I understood, even if I agreed, I couldn’t just say a simple yes. He needed someone with more punctuality, more dexterity with their tongues. I didn’t have that. I touched him a lot of the time in agreement because I knew hands were a universal language, and he seemed to comprehend. He barely noticed my lack of words (actually, he probably did notice because of his attention to details, but just chose not to comment on it) he was so feverish, so passionate about what he was saying and doing. And pretty soon, he no longer had to speak, but submerged us both into the only language I could decipher of physical avowals. He placed a small open mouth kiss on my inner thigh, his tongue undulating against the tender flesh. I felt his hands start to go up my leg, fingers like spiders’ claws, sending shivers up my spine. I breathed jaggedly, feeling myself become turned on again. I could see the bird’s head bobbed up and down while my chest did the same thing, both picking up a faster pace. Gerard was touching me, but I didn’t know if it was going to lead to sex at this point. I was too distracted by his words and the sensation, and the manifestation of it all perching on my chest. “Love…” I said through a breath, discovering something I could understand and express. I felt Gerard cease movement. “You said that love gave us freedom. But what about this?” I breathed in and out, waiting for him to answer my question, but only felt him place his lips on me again. He knew what I was talking about, but still didn’t acknowledge me yet. “We can’t tell people about this,” he finally said, not really answering my question. His kisses became slower and longer between his words. “They wouldn’t understand.” His remarks were true, but I still couldn’t accept either of them. They contrasted. They conflicted. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t care if I was being naïve again. “Then is it really freedom?” I pondered out loud. “If we keep this a secret, how can we express ourselves?” The dove stopped moving suddenly and looked at me. Her small black beady eyes stared into me, her coos barely escaping from her throat, strangled by the noose shaped patch around her neck. I felt her claws dig into me more and she opened her beak, just as Gerard spoke his words. It was as if I was hearing the voice of reason through this small bird’s mouth. And it was singing. “There’s still freedom in two bodies,” he told me, his voice clear as liquid. “Even if they are contained inside this room.” I was about to say something – what I wasn’t sure of anymore – before I felt his hand wrap around me. I was only half-hard, but the initial contact of a squeezed fist made me lose control completely and give into his action. It was easier than trying to think of something as enlightening as him. I was sure this had been Gerard’s plan all along. We were getting too serious, and we could both feel the air around us growing thicker. Freedom was supposed to be that – free, but it was far from easy. Once the topic was brought into discussion, it was sometimes too hard to handle. Gerard wanted to distract me with another form of independence between two bodies; by merging and making one all over again. The bird still pecked at my chest as Gerard’s strong grip began to move up and down, his kisses became wetter around my thighs, but it was not as simple as that. He was going to be able to distract me from verbalization, but my thoughts were constant; my thoughts were free. I knew that we were free, just inside a smaller area. You could never be completely free; Gerard had just said that. You had to have an outlet for it instead. Art, music, love…I was sure there were more, but I couldn’t conjure them up right away. And though I wasn’t entirely sure about everything that was happening just then, I was pretty sure we had freedom in one, if not all of those elements. Gerard’s kisses soon were relocated from my thigh to the head of my cock, causing me to moan in pleasure, even before he took all of me into his mouth. We had only had sex an hour or two before, but it didn’t seem to matter with us. We had no time, especially in our climatic state. We just did what we wanted, and we wanted each other. Gerard licked the underside before he took me all into his mouth, his tongue still moving and twirling around me, eliciting all sorts of noises. The muscles in the back of my throat loosened and I swore I heard what I thought to be a coo come out of my own mouth.
It was after he repeated those sequence of events a few more times when I came hard and fast into his mouth. He placed his hand on the base of my cock, riding out my orgasm as he used the sheet to wipe any excess away. I noted that Gerard had swallowed, and though the idea of it disgusted me a little, I figured that since we had done a few things earlier in the day, I had less and less of a contribution. It amazed me that he could swallow that of all things. He didn’t look like he enjoyed it too much, but he still did it. I really wouldn’t have cared if he had spit, because I was pretty sure it didn’t taste too good. I caught him cringing a few times, but for the most part, my eyes were closed, and gave no indication to his emotional status. I had not given him a blowjob yet – in fact, I had not really given him anything yet. I had grabbed his cock a few times in the throes of passion, but for the most part, I was too afraid to do anything that was beyond kissing or whatever I let (and encouraged) him to do to me. The whole idea of swallowing that, however, just seemed odd. Then again, that was what I had thought about anal sex, and I found that quite enjoyable now that the pain had subsided. When I had finished and Gerard was recovered, his fingers traced themselves up my body, flicking the birdseed off as he passed it by. Some of it bounced off the sheet, hitting the hard surface of the floor with tiny flicking sounds. He brought himself up to meet with me face to face, and I propped my body up on my elbows so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck anymore. We didn’t say anything, just looked at each other, our eyes scanning up and down before we kissed again. I could taste the bitterness of tainted flesh in my mouth from his previous action, and I dove my tongue in deeper to keep tasting it. I wanted to be apart of the raw human emotion and physical passion that I was still too scared to perform on him. He wrapped an arm around my back and pulled me closer, feeling the bold urge I had in me right along side. Our talk from before had seemed to open even more boundaries and it left me wanting him more; something I never thought possible. Gerard relocated his attention to my neck, where he sucked hard and occasionally bit the skin, evoking soft moans. My eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings, until I saw something that shot them open completely. I had totally forgotten that the dove was in the room and when I opened my eyes completely, she had been almost right in my face. I gasped when I saw her, then moved my hand to shoo her away. She was on Gerard’s back, climbing up to his shoulder. I didn’t know how the hell he hadn’t noticed that. “Go away…” I called at the bird in a whisper, trying to not disrupt Gerard from his task at hand. I struggled to remember the bird’s name, finally using the last one I remembered him using – a female Spanish painter’s. “Leave us alone…Kalho.” Gerard laughed into my neck, his tongue still on my flesh. “She can stay,” he informed me, slowing his movements. He was still as passionate, but he dulled the pace to talk about the very important issue. “And her name isn’t Kalho anymore.” “Really?” I asked surprised, though I really shouldn’t have been. Gerard changed the name of the bird all the time. For all I knew, he could have changed it right then and there just to fuck with my head. It fit his character; that was for sure. “What is it now?” “Frank,” he said seriously, his face still buried in my neck. His kisses were slow now, like the ones he had placed on my thigh previously. These kisses were not about sex, however. It was about something more; something more that evaded me at first. “There is an artist called Frank?” I asked with a smile on my face. It was dumb, especially with my name being as common as it was, but anytime I found a celebrity or song or something with my name it in, I always got insanely happy. It was a sense of pride that I could let myself have without being too self-indulgent. And the fact that this person that shared my name was an artist, and artists were important to Gerard, made this discovery ten times better.
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