*

FUCK I'm such an idiot. I mean, it could’ve been worse-- or better, SO much better, I still nearly made a total ass of myself, but he was nice about it, at least, and I was drunk, too drunk, really, and he knew that--

Lou's wedding was nice enough for a wedding. Not at a church, thankfully. Got myself as nice of a black suit as I could find for it and made sure I had the time to tailor it all-- slacks included!-- and combed through every Persian market I could find (not that there's THAT many...) 'til I found perfumed oil like the kind Anna had given me years ago. It didn't smell exactly the same, but close enough-- still roses and incense resins, maybe some sandalwood. Rubbed some behind my ears and on my neck and wrists (the hair crap is already scented, which annoys me, but anyway--), got out the diamond nose stud. I'd done my line before doing any of that, so I didn't stop and think about how fucking stupid it was to dress myself up beyond the nines for this fucking thing-- like, I have nothing against Barb, this isn't some Greg and Lori type deal, but there I was anyway, hellbent on looking as close to perfect as I could for him, as if I was the fucking one getting married. UGH.

The wedding was a wedding, but the reception-- well, the reception started out awfully. Barb was dressed amazingly as well, and I shouldn’t be surprised at that, she’s the bride (and she’s Lou’s bride; he’d never get her anything less than the best). She was wearing black just like I was; in her case, a (truly lovely) knee-length dress that was sheer and lightly shimmery along the shoulders and the 3/4 length sleeves and became opaque at a ~respectable~ but non-stodgy point below the collarbone. She was even wearing diamonds like I was, and she laughed about us matching better than she and Lou did. Ha ha! Ha.

I didn't want to drink too much, but I still did. I couldn't bear myself. Eventually found a bathroom in the furthest corner of the place as I could and holed myself up there. I didn't really know what I was doing, or what I was going to do when I got out, or when I was going to get out of there. I was just sitting on a toilet in a locked stall, rubbing my face with my hands and thinking about how fucking stupid I am. Got just enough courage eventually to stand up and walk out, only to literally bump right into Lou as he walked in. He'd been looking for me, he said, which made me feel even more stupid-- he made a joke about me being gone just long enough for him to have second thoughts about his catering choices, which only made me feel slightly better. I said I just needed time alone, but when he asked if I still needed that time, I didn't want him to leave.

--I don't have this kind of thing in me anymore, though. I really don't. I'm not ~cute~ anymore. Fuck, six years ago I would've had his dick in my mouth before five minutes were up. But it just doesn't work now. Maybe that's another reason Ben left me, another way he'd grown tired of me; I couldn't be his little princess-boy anymore. --Anyway. Like I said. He was nice about turning me down, at least. "That would be very ill-advised, Julian.", he said, almost dryly enough that it was funny (...and he's still the only one who can call me by my full first name and have it sound good). Ugh. It was still so awkward walking out of that restroom; I wanted to dive into the closest indoor palm arrangement whenever I was in Barb’s line of sight. Left early, but not oddly early. Hopefully. Things still feel somewhat like a blur, but coming down now, sobering up some. I have no idea how I’m going to sleep, but that’s not new outside of the reason.

Maybe my mistake was trying to be ~cute~ with him to begin with. But I'm not sure what else to be with someone like him. With Jack or even Nathan these days it's easier to see myself as something quite different than cute, but what would work for Jack or (very optimistically) Nathan certainly wouldn't work for Lou. I don't know. Ugh.

*

Nate asked me today “why the fuck” I “did this to” him. It was obvious he was drunk, again, at work (and clearly this was something he'd wanted to say awhile, but Jeff's presence-- or Gabe's, or Mike's-- kept his mouth shut), and I REALLY wasn't in the mood for it. I still asked him “what the fuck” he meant, because I truly didn’t know. I didn’t do a thing to him, unless he thought asking for a different kind of playing was some kind of punishment (I did think it for a moment and dreaded that being the culprit). “You’ve been fucking with Walt for ages and I’ve always put up with it, man, ‘cause you’re my brother and I love you. (uh-huh) But all this lawyer shit, and fucking with Phil, kicking Sam and Rory out?? You just think you’re the fuckin’ boss now, huh?”

I apparently can’t help that I’m the only one around who gives a damn about anything outside of being able to coast along on neutral-- and again, none of that was something I did to him, and I pointed that out. “You’re really the most unbelievable fuckin’ bitch sometimes, man”. I did what I had to. And did he REALLY think I was doing this just to fuck with him, or spite him? If anything I was trying to HELP him, for quite some fucking time, and he was never grateful for it or apparently even cognizant of the fact that it was help at all. I also said that whatever I did to Walter and Phillip was about Walter and Phillip. They’d threatened me first-- and made good on some of those threats, in very personal ways. So they had to know they crossed a line, and that I wouldn’t tolerate that. Did he really want me to just roll over and die the way Walter wanted me to? How much did he expect me to shut up and take it for, for his sake?

And of course things started to get rough, then, because Nathan's a child anyway, but he's even more of one when he's drunk. Shoving, grabbing, grabbing, shoving, until I was finally the one to pin HIM to a fucking wall for once (another thing him being drunk helped with). I asked him if he was done, and he paused for a moment, looked into my eyes, and the snarl on his face began to fade. He took a deep breath (I couldn't breathe). Nodded. Gave a gruff little "yeah". UGH I was so turned on then, I swear my head went blank for a second. I was able to say, somehow-- now, was that so difficult, Nathan?, and I finally willed myself to let him go. He gave me that silly pout in response and part of me wanted to pounce right back onto him, but everything just hung in the air for a few more seconds, and we moved on. I must've breathed at some point before then, but that was the first time I noticed I did. Ugh, he's insufferable.

*

Nate, Lou, and Jack are all equally stupid things, now, and yet they're all lingering in my head in some capacity simply because they're still so much fucking better to think about than anything else.

I remember, four years ago, hanging around the back of our practice space, silent, watching Nate play, him not knowing I was there. I'd close my eyes and let the sound enter and fill me; I'd imagine my body pressed so tight against his it felt like an extension of his own, the sounds from his guitar resonating through both of us, my hands around his, not enough to obstruct his playing, just enough to feel and know every detail of what he was doing. Desire, but for something adjacent to sex, something that doesn't really exist, or maybe only exists for the duration of time we're playing music together. The wires not quite crossing. Now the wires are helplessly crossed. I go back to that same fantasy and then my lips and tongue are against his neck, my hands are under his shirt, running against his chest, his abs, unbuttoning his jeans; he tries his best to stay composed, focused, straight, but his resolve weakens more and more, I finally get a helpless little sound out of him, maybe a little whimper of my name while I bite into his shoulder (or maybe right before my teeth sink into his skin, while he's anticipating my teeth sinking into his skin, like crashing)--

In the real world the music's still playing, he still doesn't notice me, and if I kept going and he turned around I wouldn't be able to hide a single thing. There's an eroticism to that fantasy as well, but not to the reality of it. I finish things in the bathroom or in my car, or if I'm patient enough, play the whole thing back in bed. He jokes about amateur video camera porn enough that I'm sure it's actually something of a fetish of his, but my mind's always been good enough for me. I don't need a camera lens to feel like a voyeur.

Lou, of course, is obvious, and the most obviously stupid (of a choice, that is-- he's obviously smarter than I am). I have been surprised by the way my thoughts of him often turn out, nowadays. After he helped me with Walt, it was so easy to imagine him fucking me, being dominant with me, either pulling him into it or being pulled into it myself, feeling all that power of his for myself in the closest way possible. Now… I imagine him helping me, being so eager to do so, because he sees a power in me he wants to feel and experience, and I need to find a way to embody it. I want to, for him.

Things with Jack are a different kind of stupid than either of those. I wanted to call him just days after I told him we shouldn't, if only to hear how relieved he'd be. It's terrible how much I miss his wanting of me-- then again, out of the three of them, he's the one I know actually wants me. The thought of a young guy like that hanging off my every word and look and touch, so eager, never having enough of me-- me being a drug for someone else-- is its own fantasy. But then the reality of it hits, and the infatuation and adoration have consequences, and those consequences terrify me. Jack never getting enough of me means trying to see more and more of me beyond what I show him, and I show him what I show him for a reason. He thinks he's getting a well-off, put-together if sad older man, an experienced someone who can give him security and confidence and encouragement-- a daddy, in other words. What he'd get instead is an angry, half-numb speed junkie that'll probably be dead by suicide before long. If I was too much for Ben, I'd be horrific for Jack. I know that. But god, that fantasy of pretending otherwise...

Anyway. Both Nate and Jack ride motorcycles, so I'm insane enough that I bought one of my own and I'm learning how to ride it. I mean, it does fit with all the leather, gives it a more visibly-practical reason and purpose, and it's different from doing anything seriously unwise with either of them. And if I kill myself doing it, it's a win-win. So far it hasn't been too difficult, though. I do feel ridiculous doing it-- even the gays who ride motorcycles are such masculine ones, and they revel in that masculinity with each other. I, on the other hand, am usually the guy enjoying the other two guys reveling in that masculinity from my own distance (the voyeur, again). Trying not to be too insecure, to hold onto the impulse that got me to try it all to begin with, how easy it was to blend in with the more experienced leather crowd the more I acted like I belonged to begin with. The more time I sink into this after work, the less time I'll have to want to see Lou for anything, and the less likely it is I'll do anything even more stupid than this with anyone else.

*

Lots of time for thinking lately, which I usually have been doing anything and everything to avoid. Maybe that's another reason I've been missing Jack-- I'm not alone with my own head that way. It's been shockingly bearable, though. Less intrusions of abstract yet horrific memory, more detached wanderings of and wonderings about my own thoughts. They're still not always pleasant, but I'll take "unpleasant" over anything worse.

It's interesting, a little odd, maybe, how easy it's been for me lately to slip into things I was afraid to be seen as just a couple years ago. There's something almost thrilling, sometimes, in the way Walter or Jeffrey can't quite hold my gaze. When I was young I'd lay curled up in bed mourning that I couldn't be "normal", that I was just as freakish and disgusting and perverted as my grandfather and half my hometown thought I was, and now Walter and Jeffrey look at me and see some monster and I say, GOOD. God, he really did nearly grind me down to nothing a couple years ago, didn't he? And he really thought this year would finish the job. It just made me stop giving a fuck. Whatever, I'm a freak and a monster and a pervert, but you have to work with this freak-monster-pervert. Poor you!

Nathan looks at me differently than he used to, too. A lot of the time it's that resentful glumness I've come to expect, but sometimes, when he's in a better mood and I'm not, it's almost like he's playing with me. He'll be his stupid little guffawing self and I'll tell him to cut it the fuck out please and he'll look at me, a stifled grin on his lips, barely-suppressed giggles, and it's like seeing me glare at him is in itself funny. Which makes me want to fucking kill him, frankly, but it always just simmers in the air. Or there'll be things like the day I had him against that wall... no little giggles, no playing around, not quite a pout yet either, something not full formed yet, almost suspended between thoughts, and I want to pull him towards a particular line of thinking, bring him all the way to-- ugh, am I just imagining it? Do I just want to see it so I'm filling in the blanks?

And hell, even Walter's little anxieties about me hanging around his boys feel different now. I remember when we'd be on the road, on days he was around, and he'd be hovering around behind me, just in my peripheral vision, his eyes burning a hole into my head while I talked shop with Nate or Jeff or even Sam. I remember feeling a dread with it, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wouldn't be able to see myself normally for awhile; every interaction with any guy would feel off, like I was just trying to get something from him whenever I did any sort of favor for him, and I'd feel sick. Like I could only see myself through Walter's eyes. Now that I think of it, maybe the whole of '83 was like that, like some haunting I couldn't shake loose, and it's like part of me thought if I apologized enough for myself I could exorcise it.

Now it's almost funny knowing that Walter thinks I'm some sort of sexual vampire. Not to say it isn't disgusting, too. It is. But it's disgusting in a PATHETIC way, now, because he can't touch me and I made fucking sure of it. So it's easier to think of the funnier sides of fucking a coven for myself. Like the gay version of ~feminine wiles~, HA. Or maybe he really does think it's the same thing. ...Ugh, and thinking about all that with regards to Nate is even worse.

At times after I indulge in some of the fantasies that swirl in my head around Nate, I'll feel a twinge of nausea-- people like Walter think that I'm some inherently corrupting force already, and here I am dreaming of being exactly what makes them think we deserve to die. But thinking about it longer-- it's not about corrupting something "pure" (imagine calling Nathan Sorensen of all people "pure"!), it's about guiding out or simply drawing attention to what's latent (and in Nate's case it isn't even really latent, we just haven't fucked yet, and he hasn't been sober). Of course, even that's a terrifying enough thought for some to wish death on us. On the other hand, if they think I'm some corrupting force just by existing, might as well find a way to take control of it somehow, make it work for me, have some fun with it. Bite Nathan's neck.

Anyway! Really, there's a lot I don't know what to do about right now. The more I look back at the past couple months, and especially the last month, the more it all looks like pathetic flailing. I need to figure out something, and something a lot less embarrassing, or at least more stable. Hopefully something more stable is inherently less embarrassing. I don't know.