*

I don't think I would have ever been curious about doing anything on my own if everything with Nathan hadn't happened. What we had was working just fine for awhile, and even once Greg left, I figured something out. It's been satisfying enough for me on certain levels. But that happened and it lit a spark in me, something that started out as pure anger but became something thankfully more productive, more useful. I can't do what Nathan can-- of course I can't, of course Walter wouldn't allow it-- all I've been given is a single. That in itself would've made the anger surge back, but it came out of SUCH a sweet request from SUCH a cute guy, so, I get something after all.

His name's Kyle and he's a singer-songwriter type, sometimes a little country, sometimes a little folk, sometimes a little pop. "Soft". Kind brown eyes, a nice warm smile, neat beard, toustled brown hair just above his shoulders. He reminds me a lot of the older boys and young men I'd see around Carlton as a kid-- well, watch, really, spellbound, from a distance (sneaking out of doing my own chores!). Farmer's sons, deceptively thin, tanned, sometimes shirtless (even better, sometimes becoming shirtless), lean muscles flexing, sweat glittering in sunlight, doing their work for the day. I'd daydream about them protecting me from the guys that worked for Granddad or from Granddad himself, being kind to me, letting me kiss them on the cheek, raunchier things as I got older, but I never dared approach them. I knew the bubble would burst then. The moment I saw Kyle my breath caught in my throat-- he was my sweet kind hick boy in the flesh. Before everything with Nathan all those facts would have made me panic a little, I would've done everything possible to avoid thinking about it; I might've even rejected his offer for a duet all together. But things are different now, aren't they? Ben's gone too much, Shann's here too much, Nathan's Nathan. Everything's so damn stupid.

Anyway. Kyle met me for drinks and was so impressed with me, those brown eyes shining and full of amazement, and I can still be a sucker for that kind of thing when it's coming from a good looking, convincingly sweet guy. Couldn't help but press my luck a little even then-- drinks were on me, and I kept trying my best to make him laugh. Trying out my Shann and Nate jokes on him-- mostly successful! And what a cute laugh he has, but at the same time, he was able to easily keep up with me and had me laughing… my decidedly less-cute laugh. Well, at least it didn’t ruin anything; he still told me he looked forward to working with me. Anything else… well, that’s still to be seen!

He has his own studio setup in his house-- lucky bastard-- so we met there next, and I couldn't help but show off for him a little more obviously. Firstly, with how I dressed: my best showiest casual jeans, my favorite red silk shirt eventually half-unbuttoned, an extra gold chain, a new gold watch, a few rings, diamond nose stud, a little extra cologne[41] (also didn't shave for a few days prior, felt I needed some stubble to balance everything else out), a just-in-case nice pair of cocky briefs-- just all out. SUCH a little prince, something Granddad would have a heart attack to see, that Mom would panic over-- and I did hear their voices in my head, trying to make me panic with them-- but seeing myself in the mirror that way gave me such a thrill, like I was getting away with something instead of being caught in the act.

I used to panic imagining my mother's panic, my grandfather's rage, but lately I've been able to realize how impotent his rage would be at his advanced age, and the thought of being around him while being the hedonistic, decadent faggot from his nightmares, of talking like a queen, walking like a lady, dangling my wrists like a fop, dressing like a prince, him helpless to do anything about it-- all that gives me such a RUSH, right now. You tried to beat it all out of me and here I fucking am, you decrepit sunnuvabitch. Read it and weep. Thinking about it like that also makes it easier to get out of the fetal position Walter had me curled up in. Once I get back to work with everybody things might get worse again, but that makes me want to take advantage of the time I have now to remember what it feels like to not have to apologize for every single thing about me.

Shann noticed how well I was dressed, and asked me who I was meeting-- record company people, I said. That I liked dressing to impress in situations with the corporate side of things. She narrowed her eyes at it, wasn't entirely trustful of it-- so I pulled her into my arms, kissed her, told her she had nothing to worry about, that she'd be able to have her fun with me when I got back-- that it was for her, too, but good things came to those that waited. That worked fine, tho following up on my end of that promise was... well, I said I would, so I did.

Anyway, everything with Kyle is going wonderfully. I showed off to him with my voice as well, of course-- he told me he loved my singing, how excited he was to be able to write something with "a guy that sounds incredible as" me, how much better I sounded in person up close n' how much more versatile my voice was than he'd known[42]. "You're like a chameleon", he said with a little laugh, "But a chameleon with heart, with soul". I'm not always the best at accepting compliments, but I could take his in that moment-- I mean, I wanted him, and it was a sign that he might've wanted me, too (he also hasn't been TOO shy; the compliments don't have that annoying put-on air of "ohh, I'm not worthy" that Jeff's can have. It wasn't brown-nosing or bowing and scraping, it seemed sincere). I told him I loved duets, that I missed them dearly now that Greg was out of the band, and that he shouldn't sell his voice short-- it really is lyrical and sweet, but not too sweet; sweet like a fresh apple plucked from a tree more than vanilla frosting-sweet. So I also told him that the more we sung together the more we made each other sound better, and that making each other better was the most exciting part of duets for me.

The song we're writing is a simple, fun, swingy uptempo pop rock number, so not really too far out of the wheelhouse of things I've been doing with the band, but still so much more comfortable and still something... well... heavier, than Kyle would be used to. The lyrics and the arrangement are as much a flirtation as anything else-- if a girl is breaking your heart and something is pulling you... elsewhere, follow your heart (and dick). The classic kind of broad-sweeping wink and nudge plausible deniability, and interestingly I decided to often be the lower voice in the duet-- it could've gone either way, but his demeanor made me want to take charge, be the backbone to lift him up[43]. And it feels good to be able to do that, to work with someone who's willing to let me try, who doesn't sigh and sulk and whine about how ~fruity~ my tastes are. Like, whatever. I hope Nate has fun! I certainly am, now.

*

Well… things are still doing well with Kyle, but I almost ruined them, because of course I did. Or maybe I didn’t almost-ruin them, I just… ugh.

I dressed just as well for our second session together as I did for our first. Even nicer, really-- maybe I really did get too bold. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t quickly change into in my car (didn’t want to risk extra questioning from Shann), but my second-tightest pair of jeans plus going without underwear… alongside everything else I did last time… UGH.

We were working for just half an hour or so before he turned to me with a strange little smile on his face, like he was trying not to laugh (but his eyes didn’t seem mean with it), and he said “So, you always roll into the studio like you’re hitting a nightclub?” I was thrown for a moment, but was able to say something about liking to dress nice. That smile of his just widened. “I thought you didn’t care about how you looked…?” Did I really say that?? “Not to ME, but on TV!” You watch me on TV, huh? “When it comes with a song or two, sure! I love watching bands live.” You’ve been around for long enough, you know you have to bullshit for those interviews. “Oh. ...I kinda liked that you seemed down to earth, I guess. I try to be. I think you gotta be, at least a little, in this business, or it’ll eat you alive.”

So I was trying to seduce the guy, and the whole damn time I was just throwing him off! Or even TURNING him off? UGH I must’ve looked so nervous, because he just put a hand on my shoulder. His eyes had that sweetness to them again. “...I know I don’t know where you’re comin’ from, though. But you don’t have to try so hard around me. You’re great already.” Bullshit on the last count, but I know he didn’t know that, and at the time, I was just excited he might’ve been coming on to me, that I didn’t fuck EVERYTHING up. ...I still didn’t know how to respond to that, though. Just let out a little laugh of my own, couldn’t meet him in the eye anymore. It’s like he knew, though. He just pat my back, asked me if I was ready to get back to it, and G-D was I thankful for that. Anything to stop me from thinking about what had just happened!!!

At the end of things, he turned to me again with a sweeter smile and told me that “y’know, the rest of everything can be like how we sound together”. And how’s that? “Relaxed. Natural.” Wow… it truly was such a whiplash of a day, because it ended on SUCH a flirt. Or at least, it sounded like one to me. Like, we’re “natural” together? Oh wow wow wow...

*

It’s frankly a miracle things with Kyle went so well today. I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing with him. I thought I was, I was so damn confident about it at first, and then he casually took out what seemed to be a cornerstone of sorts for that confidence, because I’ve been in shambles since, even if it turned out wonderfully in the end.

I mean, I’ve TRIED to be more “natural”. “Relaxed”. But there’s just so little relaxing about my life. It’s hard to calm down in one setting when I have to be “on” everywhere else. And then… “Natural”? Ugh… I guess I usually don’t think about things like that, because the more I tried to think about what I “naturally” was, the less I knew. It was enough to make me almost panic. I envied Kyle for being so casually “natural” himself, but not in a way that it could turn to a more nasty jealousy. I like him too much already. I don’t want to fuck this up, especially because it’s so necessarily temporary to begin with. I want him to like me, but at the same time, I tried to be someone he might like and I apparently had no idea what that would actually be. I guessed and misfired terribly. Maybe he wants sweet, like him…

But I don’t think I can give him “relaxed”. I did admit that to him. That I was never someone you could call “relaxed”, and I apologized to him for it. “So singing’s your time to relax?” I laughed at that. Once I got swept up into song he did have a point, but singing for songwriting or recording purposes? G-d, that was the least relaxing of all! There’s no time to really get swept up, then. You’re working on perfection. “Well, this is a fun little rock number, right? It doesn’t have to be PERFECT-perfect. --Or, uh, what’s perfect for it might not be… literally-perfect? Uh-- loose, fun, casual, y’know.” I also could barely comprehend the idea of that, but I didn’t admit that out loud to him. I don’t think I had to, unfortunately, it must’ve shown all over my face. “And hey, I already told you, you’ve been sounding AMAZING. I feel like I’ve had to keep up with YOU, if anything!”

I knew he meant well and was trying to cheer me up, but I was still… well, un-relaxed. Un-relaxed without having any clue what to do about it. I asked him if he was just relaxed in general himself. “Oh, hell no. I try. But this IS my relaxing time, as much as I can make it. Recording itself can be a pain in the ass sometimes, sure, but THIS? This has been great so far, man! ...I wish it was for you, though. I mean, if there’s anything that COULD make you even a LITTLE more chilled out…”

It was a joke, but apparently I can never kiss a man I like in a planned way. He stifled a laugh after it, looked in every direction with a nervous smile before responding. “Well, uh, I can’t say I was thinking of THAT, too hard…” I felt like an idiot immediately, I felt my whole face go red while I launched into a rush of apologies… he slid a hand across the back of my neck and just smiled at me. Another sweet one. “It’s alright.” I told him there truly was nothing relaxing about my life. It wasn’t something I could really afford. I couldn’t afford to be ~natural~, neither. At least, not usually.

That was when he kissed me back. Just a little deeper. “I was tellin’ the truth when I toldja you could be natural with me.” Another kiss. And he stroked the back of my neck, pulled me closer when I started feeling his chest over his shirt… We started getting heavier then, and he let out such a sexy sound when he felt me start to get hard against him-- something that started as a sigh and ended as a groan-- and I asked him if he wanted me. Usually a question I ask when things are a lot more comfortable for me, a question I mostly know the answer to, something I just like to HEAR the answer to having known I made it happen. With Kyle, I really wasn’t sure. About anything. “I’d usually wanna wrap up work before I have ANY kind of fun, but… hey, you weren’t lyin’, this did help you relax.”

So we ended up in his bedroom-- and he’s SO hairy, UGH I love it; I had to fuck him on his back so I could run my tongue all over his chest. I was happily surprised he was fine with me fucking him… Greg had been so strange about it, and then generally speaking, it’s not something people who haven’t been total strangers had been interested in. I just decided to try anyway, to do so ~naturally~, and he laid down himself, lifted an arm above his head, smiled up at me even sweeter than ever before, and told me where the lube n’ condoms were. HA. So I stuffed my face in that pit he showed off for me while I lubed him up, fingered him; he had his hand around my cock and was moaning feeling how hard I got licking him, and WOW… ugh, it was so easy to fuck him, it felt SO good, and I thankfully made him feel good in turn. It was all SO sexy, but still sweet in that apple-sweet way of his. Even the way he came was like that.

“You REALLY didn’t have to try as hard as you did that first day.” He said that with a laugh, while we were laying next to each other. “You’re great.” He kissed me and I still couldn’t help but say, stupidly, that ~well, I was great for *sex*~. “That’s all? Really?” Fine. SINGING and sex.

He just grinned. “Guess we just gotta keep working together to find out how fulla crap you are.” It was a gentle tease, and he kissed me again, mussed my hair, got out of bed to clean up. Ugh, I think the one person who believes in my goodness even more than he does is Anna, and she only gets away with it because she’s my sister. (Well, Mom… it’s more like she believes in my POTENTIAL to be good, in her case. And Benny... ugh, I don't know, he believes in me but I know I worry him sick, too.) UGH, I really wasn’t expecting him to throw me off this much. Like, things ended up AMAZINGLY! But still…

*

I'd feel more guilty doing all this with Kyle but Benny's gone for another couple months and honestly, I missed fucking another musician-- working that closely with someone can still turn me on so much and I've told him so [45]. And getting that without any horrendous complications attached... wow. There's just nothing like it. There really isn't. And having to have sex with Shann, even if it isn't too frequent a thing, has still been driving me more and more insane. That was a powderkeg, Nate was a match. Now whenever I have sex with her it makes me want real sex so damn bad I feel like some animal in heat. Guys I would have thought of as cute or decently handsome before her might as well be Adonis now. And topping's just different, makes me think about myself differently, about other men, about me-with-other-men, differently. It gives me a different kind of confidence than getting a guy to fuck me used to give me.

I also have to admit that being flirted with the way Kyle flirts with me is so refreshing-- and he DOES flirt with me more, now. It's a nice counterbalance to the actual talking we do. It's like he can see right through me. It makes me uncomfortable, because anyone being able to see through me like that makes me uncomfortable. Hell, even when people TRY, like Jeff. There's nothing there for you. Nothing GOOD, anyway. Or so I usually think. Every time I try to discourage Kyle or even just tell him what I really think, he just cocks his head to the side and says something like "Do you REALLY think that?" or "I don't think it's as bad as all that, is it?", sometimes with such a concerned look but always a sincere one, and I so rarely know what to say. One time, too, he even said “You’re a lot less sentimental than you are on TV too, huh?” And I admitted that I WISHED I could be that sentimental, sometimes. But, no. Sometimes I’m so cynical I disgust myself. But it’s hard to trust enough to be that kind of sweet in a fully sincere way. Especially around the guys I was around. ...Like, why the fuck was I THAT honest with him. Fucking stupid.

I feel like I'm continuously disappointing him but he still wants to have sex with me, still wants to SLEEP with me, even. "Hey, looks like I found another thing that relaxes ya.", He said the first morning we woke up next to each other, with a smile. UGH he's such a sweetheart. I really hope he doesn't expect anything long-term. I didn't tell him about Benny but I did tell him we couldn't have anything beyond our working time together. He just smiled and told me he got it. "Even just giving you a little time to be yourself... I think you really needed it." I DID tell him about Shann, so he very much knows about that.

...I don’t know if he’s just so cute/hot or what, but I haven’t had to worry at all about keeping it up or freezing or doing any other stupid thing that'd fuck things up topping. Admittedly, it's another reason I sometimes avoid it: I overthink, I worry too much, and then I really DO go soft, or something. But with Kyle it's like pure instinct-- pure instinct and allowing myself to run on it for once. I’d been wondering if I should figure something else out for Shann (outside of how the hell to get out of it, if I can) and this just reminds me, for better and for worse, that nothing I could figure out with her could compare to this. There’s just such a charge to it, and it’s so instant, so electric. And the realization of it that hits me every time is like some dramatic agony-and-ecstacy[46]-- the realization that I never had a fucking chance. When I was with Rick, when I was at La Rosa, it didn’t feel like such a burden. There was so much possibility. It felt like a kind of positive defiance. It’s been hard to find that within myself ever since Rick died-- and everything with Walter and Shann and Jeffrey and Nathan just made it that much worse. It feels like something I’m resigned to again-- not apologetic about, but not happy about, either. A blessing-and-curse sort of situation, but admittedly more on the curse side of the ratio. Everything with Ben felt so good, felt so right, but I won't know where we are until he's back again (until then it's like he was never there to begin with, like I confessed my love to a ghost and it broke some spell keeping him here). Everything with Nate made everything feel even more like a curse than it had before. Everything with Kyle has a necessary time limit, and I feel the need to use that time to its fullest: a side-effect of that is not feeling quite so cursed, lately.

Anyway. He lives in San Diego so I've been explaining to Shann that the drive back and forth to SF is too much of a pain in the ass to make it a day trip each time (no pun intended, since it's not my ass anyhow), and she doesn't like it, but she understands it, and really, it's still true. Things are going well musically and legally, too-- our label officially okay'd us releasing this as a single, and I look forward to seeing how it does. Even if it goes nowhere, how could I regret this? Any break from the hell I'm living in, any little rebellion against Walt, any small step out on my own, is welcome.

PS: I did tell him about my silly old hick-boy fantasies... which he laughed about, but also said he thought was cute.

*

[41] One I usually don't like wearing, honestly-- it's called Jules, but it smells nothing like how I'd normally smell. But Ebi bought it for me last Christmas as an expensive laugh, so I have to wear it to family things now... ugh. Well, at least Kyle also seemed to like it.

[42]And I couldn’t help but say that people are often surprised at how versatile I can be...

[43]Ricky could be the higher voice, too. He was the one to first give me the confidence that I could be that kind of vocal backbone.

[44]Not that Benny and I haven’t had BEAUTIFULLY romantic sex! But I am strictly the bottom with him and it’s only the degree of submissiveness that varies. Which works VERY well with what we have, and what we do, but that's him.

[45]And sex, really, is just another way of making each other better than we’d be on our own; another kind of mutual creation, even without potential-babies in the picture. Something I wished Greg could have understood.

[46]Then again, I guess it’s an improvement over how I was when I was younger: every single step of doing anything with a guy was its own agony-and-ecstasy.