Ben--
It's 22 degrees fahrenheit outside. Dry and miserable even inside the bus, regardless of what I try and do to keep my nose and throat in good enough shape. I remember during quiet times when it got cold like this, when we were at some rest stop in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming or whatever, and I’d shiver next to you ‘til you'd pull me close and hold me in your arms awhile to warm me up. Sometimes you'd unzip your coat and cocoon me in it, against you. I loved that. You would tease me about being so small at first, about how no wonder I was cold when I was so slight a stiff breeze could knock me over and when was I going to remember to get a REAL winter coat and not just a “California-winter” coat-- but you got it eventually. At least you understood something. I'm shivering and I miss you and I hate that I miss you. Fuck you.
Nathan started playing little licks from and off of Harf on his own during soundcheck-- I could barely believe what I was hearing the first time, it stopped me dead in my tracks, and I think the whole thing, and him playing it later when we were alone, affected my judgement.
It was after we’d had sex– that had gone very well. Singing is less and less consistant for me, and that can affect my enthusiasm in other areas. Tonight I was in a surprisingly good mood, amplified by the fact that he was very much in the mood for me-- it seemed like he really had missed me, at least to some degree. One of those nights that was about enjoying him and his body at my own leisure more than the typical adrenaline rush that I try my best to give him (in other words, I missed him). I made sure he liked this, too, though; I was never too gentle with any of it.
But I was leaning against him after that and he was noodling around on his unplugged guitar again, and he played Harf. --I told him that time, when it came up, that it was a Farsi-language song my mother had loved. That I sang it to her while I took care of her and when she was in the hospital. That I’d also sing it to Ben before we went to bed, when he was able to stay the night.
And I said that I also sang it to Rick, before I even learned all the words, because I could already grasp the FEELING of it. --I’m not sure why I told that to Nate. I didn’t think before I said it. And he asked who that was, of course, and I had to figure out what the hell to say. I’m not sure how careful I was able to be, in the end. I told him that I’d met him at a little gay club back in ‘74. I told him that the other drug dealer I was with the year before-- when Nate and I first met-- was someone I’d been living with at the time. Working for. That I’d left him by the time I met Rick, but was still poor. Struggling to make ends meet. Rick was the bassist for the house band, and I became their singer for the weekends. He also sang, and beautifully, and we could harmonize so well… he was already beautiful-- his hair was like Nate’s, but a bit more tightly curled, he was tall, had great style-- but that made it even easier to fall in love with him. I got the idea in my head that the house band could just be its own BAND-- get signed to a label, get some kind of big. We both really believed in each other. And we got stupidly fucking close. --And then I told him about the walk on the beach. The party. The car crash. How it was hard not to feel like I did it to him, somehow, even just by making him chase after the wrong thing for my sake.
So Nathan knows more about Rick than Ben ever did. For no fucking reason. I feel so stupid for it now, but I didn’t feel nervous about it or nauseous or anything at the time. “...You really have been through some rough fucking shit, huh?”, he said. He also said he didn’t think it was my fault that Rick died, that I was trying to get something better for the both of us. “Fucked up shit just happens. You can’t plan for everything. I mean, you know me, I barely plan for shit. You probably wish you could, but shit’s just random sometimes. And it sucks, but… you don’t have to be alone.”
Bullshit, but I still let him hold me, this time. He told me my hair looks “really cool” right now, and that he always "dug" the side-shave. He also said he “knew” I was gay near-immediately because of how… shiny my hair was, at the time? I told him that doesn’t mean shit. “Guys don’t take THAT good care of their hair!” Well, maybe they should! And I'm a guy. “And you’re GAY!” Well your hair’s about the most beautiful I’ve seen and we’ve fucked quite a few times by now, so what does that make you? “...Fuck, man, I dunno, I guess kind of bisexual or somethin’?” Fair enough! --The silliness mostly ended there, and after awhile we traded places and he was in my arms, my face in his hair. It’s funny that he likes my hair, too… but probably not as much as I adore his. It’s astounding, really, how much he looks like an angel when he is how he is. Sometimes unbelievably frustrating. I can fully appreciate it during sex, of course, and I very much do…
I fell asleep there, leaning against him, but I woke up while he was putting his clothes on to leave, this time. Didn’t say anything immediately, didn’t let him know I was awake at first-- I was just listening to the sounds of him getting himself put together, sometimes having an eye half open to watch him (couldn’t help but tell him not to forget his hair gel right as he was about to walk out the door, though, ha). You know what? So many things are stupid at once that I don’t care at all how stupid this is getting. Fuck it.
Told Nathan tonight about my silly fantasies of feeling him from behind as he plays-- because I was already sitting behind him, massaging his biceps (shoulders still feels... ugh), kissing his neck. I wanted to give him something so much more beautiful than that choir director gave me; I wanted to make it right, I wanted to cut through all the layers of grime in my memory and put something better in its place. It could've been dangerous. It could've reminded me of too much; it could've sent me flying towards the bathroom to vomit. But it didn't.
So I was feeling his body, kissing him, and telling him about wanting to feel what his body was doing, what his hands were doing, wanting to get as close to the source of the sound as possible, have it run through me. I was pulling his shirt up and running a hand over his chest, unzipping his jeans, feeling him up slow, telling him how those old daydreams morphed into this in the past year, how much it drove me crazy, how much and how long I’ve wanted to fuck him like this. Please. It started out as flirting, seduction, and ended up closer to begging. Certainly not something I planned or expected, but it’s been harder and harder not to give into what I feel over what is likely wise (and I’ve wanted it on some level for years, and it was like that time’s worth of wanting poured out of me all at once).
He did give me what I wanted, at least-- he was very amused and seemed almost confused by the simplicity of that request after everything else we’ve done, teased me about it, but gave it to me. So we kept kissing while I took the rest of his clothes off, and eventually he was sitting on my cock, facing away, and I was fucking him, kissing him, breathing him in, sucking on and biting his neck and shoulder, jacking him off, squeezing his pecs and nipples, running my hand up and down the trail of hair that goes from the middle of his chest down to his bush. He was kissing me back, stroking my hair, his other hand gripping the wrist of the hand of mine that was feeling him up, sighing, moaning. I wanted, and succeeded, to cum inside him and do so as close as possible to when he came (easy enough to control by when and how I play with his hair), and I collapsed into him, we sighed and heaved together, as one. And it was so fucking good. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about him holding my wrist like that-- thankfully it didn’t make me panic; it was very easy to read as a sort of “keep going and don’t stop” that I was already very in the mood to agree to.
I finally did ask him, after everything, what he thought about my voice-- not just “it’s good” or whatever, because I’d thought it would be more than that, considering how natural singing with him is for me, how naturally we play off each other. Of course he had to be willfully obtuse about the question first anyway and make a sarcastic little quip about how they've all let me stay so long because my voice was just so awful, and then he had to say well of ~course~ he's always liked my voice, that he's said so to me and to everyone else since near the beginning, and why ask now, etc.
I don't know why I'm tempted to be so vulnerable with him at this point. Maybe it's because I know the end is so close and I don’t know what the fuck to do. But I told him about the first time I ever heard Sam Cooke's voice. I was ten, sitting in the passenger's side of Mom's car, listening to the radio. I already had so many things I couldn't talk to her about and they were such a weight on me. I was so young, I’d already lost my father, and I was so afraid of the distance I already felt from her. I was so afraid of losing her, too, in any way. I remember staring at the radio, spacing out, really, wallowing in dread, and the only thing that brought me back was Sam's voice. If the church window of Michael was the visage of a perfect angel, the sound emanating from that car speaker was the voice of one. I could feel it wrap around my heart, hold it and me in an embrace, and I felt warm, floaty, a little aroused-- maybe for the first time, but if not, very close to it; a feeling not just in my heart but in my gut as well, and even lower-- but in a safe way, not in a way that threw me into panic (Nate giggled at that because he's still a child). And then it was gone, he was gone, and the emptiness that remained was as cold as his presence was warm. I was old enough to know better, but I still wanted to beg the radio to bring him back to me, please, I wasn’t ready to move on, wanted to linger with that voice as long as I could, didn’t want to go back to all the dread--
Hearing Nathan's guitar for the first time was like that. Singing with it was something else entirely, something I could barely allow myself to understand for the longest time. I wanted to reach that musical heaven with Greg, wanted to pull it down to share with Ben, but Nathan is the only man outside of Rick that can bring me there himself. It's the same place. I don't think I could accept it for so long because-- well, it's obvious in retrospect, isn't it? Richard wasn't just an amazing musician and beautiful singer but an incredible man, such a kind, creative, loving man, the only man besides Ben that could carry me back to shore when I was hell-bent on drowning. Nathan....
Fuck, Nathan breaks my fucking heart every fucking day and I don't know if he'll ever understand why (he breaks it and repairs it and fills it and breaks it again). The end is so fucking close and I still can't find a way to express it to him and know he'll believe me, know he'll see, understand... I don't want to love someone like him. For so many reasons. And if Walter ever found out, and if Nathan wasn't ready to do what was necessary... he would destroy me. Utterly destroy me. And I can't see Nathan saving me. I mean GOD, Walter was going to fucking out me to the general fucking public and Nate was able to brush that under the rug somehow. All just some big misunderstanding, that's all! What the fuck. I swear I could tell Nate the earth was round and he'd walk up to Walt and ask him, Walt would tell him the earth was flat, and I'd be the idiot walking around thinking the earth is round. How do you break through that. HOW. And in the amount of fucking time I have left?? --On stage, none of this matters. On stage, on good days, his guitar and my voice embrace, coil around one another, enter each other, make love, bask in afterglow. On stage I can love him. On stage, on good days, I know he loves me, in whatever ways he can manage.
Anyway. I did tell him some of that (not that he broke my heart, or any of that), far more carefully, and he told me-- in typical defensive Nate fashion at first-- that he "guessed" my voice was "special" like that for him, too. But then-- "I play just to practice and I hear you in it. Like those nights you lean on my shoulder n' hum stuff with me. You don't even need to be there. I think of the way you'd phrase something or what melodies I could hear you sing and I just hear 'em. It just all kinda comes out naturally. Easily. Like nothin'." I get so damn angry with him and then he says things like that; he lets me hold him and bury my face in his hair and breathe him in and stroke his neck and he relaxes in my arms (--I allowed him to touch me, again, and he held me, and it didn’t feel too bad--he started taking my jacket off and I noticeably tensed enough that he changed his mind, ran one of his hands against my chest under my jacket instead[115]), he acts like such a darling, and I almost feel hope again. Almost.
But Walter's coming tomorrow. He's staying for an entire week. How the fuck do I tell Nathan I'm terrified of even touching him if Walter's around. How the fuck do I do any of this.
When I was young, I always dreamed of an angel with a sword rescuing me. Now I feel like I have to be the angel with the sword, and I have no idea how. The more I think about it the more I want to be that. Somehow. For him. The way no angel was for me. I wish I knew how. I wish I knew what I was doing. There's no practicing for something like this, though. Not really. Whatever happens, you just have to be ready for it. I want to be. I need to be.
[115]“Doesn’t it get hot in all that shit?” Yeah, but not unbearably. I air everything out enough later, and it should be obvious that I wouldn’t mind being sweaty, myself.