A New Era
This is for a writing challenge in a Telegram group I joined (link here if you're interested: https://t.me/+Ck96orNI_hRmMDgx)). At just over a thousand words, we would write a short story fitting a chosen theme. The new theme for this week is, "Write about a morally gray character."
Once again, we return to my Resonance universe and have another look at two occupants of the Motel (6)9 in Crossroads City, Utah. We travel back in time to the early 1990s. The Cold War is over, the Disney renaissance is in full swing, CD players are considered futuristic, the biggest concern for Americans is Y2K at the moment, and two young men are dealing with the fallout of a spectacularly failed marriage while one of them is coming to grips with his suppressed homosexuality.
I hope you enjoy yourselves, and thank you for reading! <3
The strobing lightning strikes and thunderous rain pouring outside did little to distract us from the motel room’s TV. The minifridge-sized modern contraption displayed a rerun of a popular sitcom about a family and their science-obsessed next-door neighbor. Jason would let out a hyena cackle at some immature joke, while I would only let out a wolfish chuckle due in part to his infectious laughter.
Meanwhile, we traded a single cigarette back-and-forth while cuddling closely together in the nude, barely covered up and yet spent from a recent good time. The scent of raw sex and faint cigarette smoke clung to the air, the second-hand nicotine almost tempting me back to full hardness beneath the blanket. I’d often had the stamina to go for round two before. Yet something else weighed heavily on my mind as I passively watched my boyfriend take a deep inhale of the half-burned cigarette, and I curled my canine tail between my legs.
“Hey Jase, am I a terrible fucking person?” I finally asked.
Jason blew out a puff of smoke from between his lips, his finger still holding the stick.
“Why do ya think that, Bill? Just because you’re finally doing what ya want?”
“I’m divorcing my pregnant wife,” I reminded him. “Any other decent guy out there wouldn’t abandon his family or cubs. And I chose you without a second thought…”
“Ya having second ones?” he asked, looking at me with slight worry.
“No,” I said, without even thinking. Doing so only made my tail curl even tighter and my ears more crestfallen. The guilt was weighing my shoulders further down like concrete barbells. “No, I…No, you’re right. This…This is long overdue. The…My marriage died a long time ago. And I’m not gonna torture my future kids by forcing them to listen to me and Vicky fight every single night like we always do…But it doesn’t mean it feels great to do this.”
“I getcha. I really do. You still love me though, right, buddy?” he asked, then promptly inhaled another swig before handing it to me.
“Of course, I do,” I answered. “Just not looking forward to the alimony checks, or moving to Cali, or the stories Vicky’s gonna tell our kid about me. Fuck, it’s gonna be brutal. Probably gonna say I’m a fuckin’ perv and died in the gutter.” I inhaled a large swig and then blew it out through my nostrils. Nicotine harshly trickled between my fangs as I spoke further. “What if I wanna reconnect with the kid at some point?”
“You don’t even know if you’ll ever want to come back here,” Jason argued. “Don’t get me wrong, I get what you’re feeling. But this is a new era for you. It’s a new era for us. Golden Gate Harbor…It’s gonna be a great place to start all over, and if you ever feel like you wanna get in touch with your old family, we’ll get there when we get there. Till then, Vicky’s not gonna let you near the house, let alone your kid when it’s born. Not after…” He let it trail off, sighing.
Once upon a time, two boys met and fell in love without knowing it. The two of us had been the best of buddies since our frat days at the University of Utah. We partied just as much as we studied, being there for each other as classmates, fraternity brothers, best friends, and wingmen whenever we dated girls. The only thing that truly changed was when Jason suddenly discovered (following a really drunken dare) he happened to be gay. I barely let it affect our friendship, and he’d ‘gross me out’ by boasting about his dating life while I did the same to him. We were inseparable.
However, the dynamic between us did shift one night after my girlfriend/future wife/current ex-wife Vicky dumped me out of jealousy, and Jason was there to give me a sofa and comfort me in the middle of the night. Some crying and a few shots of liquor later, it led to the charismatic hyena giving me a handjob. Things…escalated after that.
“No, she ain’t,” I agreed before taking another large swig.
Jason started to chuckle. “Honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t throw away all your shit.”
“Me too,” I muttered. “But why do I feel awful though?”
“It’s ’cause you’re a good guy, Bill.” Jason turned his muzzle towards me and licked at my neck. He planted a rough yet affectionate kiss on my cheek and then turned my snout to his in order to kiss me properly. “It’s all my fault, really. I shoulda said something the moment you came to my place that night. I…I wish I’d had the courage to tell you how I really felt back then. Back when we were doing all this to ‘relieve stress’ or some shit.” He craned his neck away to inhale another drag, then exhaled the smoke into the TV glow. “Oh well. That was that and this is now. All we can do is think about the future and this new era of our lives.”
My paws reached for the cigarette, which I was handed back. “Together?” I murmured.
Jason turned to me and smiled softly. “Yeah, this time, together.”
The sitcom rerun returned after commercials, and Jason got back to laughing at whatever joke was playing on the small screen. I stared down at the cigarette between my fingers, still letting a thousand thoughts and a hundred memories collide together. I looked up back to Jason and watched him cackle or smile back at me in the light of the TV.
Things really did escalate after that night all those years ago. Handjobs had turned into blowjobs between Jason and I, and it became a ritual of sorts. We’d slowly stop and resume, repeating the phrase ‘no homo’ to each other. Grinding turned into naked, frottage, and eventually awkward exploration. I tried breaking it off with Jason after Vicky and I got back together and eventually moved in, but Jason was always there for me. He stayed there. Even after I popped the question to Vicky and we had that epic premarital fight a couple of days before the wedding, Jason stayed there for me in the background. I had also been there for him between terrible boyfriends, family members that disowned him, and at least one angry religious uncle that tried bashing his own nephew after finding out he liked dudes.
Years passed. It all became a routine, a never-ending dance of misery between three unhappy souls. Everything came to head the previous week, however, when Vicky caught me and Jason in bed together. To add insult to further injury, she’d been at a doctor’s appointment that same morning, and left work early to tell me the news.
I inhaled the last of the cigarette, only letting out the smoke when it started to burn my lungs, and I released the plume like a chimney. The smoke stung my eyes until it drifted away.
If it weren’t for the terrible rainfall and thunder outside, I would’ve considered going for a walk on my own around the Motel 9 we were in. Perhaps I could travel out to Jason’s car and play music on the CD player I’d managed to take with me. If I were luckier, I could’ve even convinced Jason to join me for drinks at the nearest bar to drown my lingering guilt. Instead of any of that though, I tried burying it all with rationality; Vicky wasn’t a saint herself, always getting into verbal fights with me whenever she could, nitpicking my choices, or complaining that I didn’t do something good enough. A part of me even wondered if the kid she was carrying was, in fact, mine.
However, that didn’t change the fact we used to love each other.
For several long minutes, I kept idly watching the cigarette smoke dance and curve in the air before turning back towards Jason. The big hyena had fallen asleep, snoring as a campaign ad for Bill Clinton played on the TV. Stubbing the cigarette stub into an ashtray on the nightstand, I grabbed the remote from my lover’s paw and turned off the flickering screen before cuddling close to him. I reflected on his words as I listened to his steady breathing and relaxed snores.
“All we can do is think about the future and this new era of our lives.”
Whatever our future held for us, I wanted to appreciate every moment of it. I especially planned to do so while living openly and happily with Jason. That, I promised myself.