Anthology
I write this for no one but myself. The events depicted in this 'story' are intimately known to me. Some I remember fondly. Some I remember bitterly. Each are true and factual, if such a word can even be attributed to me. This story is for myself. If 'The Fox' reads this... this story is still for me, and me alone. I can never atone; I can only try to make peace with what has already passed. You have my love, now and forever, no matter what. Please, know this.
To everyone else... I suppose the only thing to say, is to enjoy this if you can.
- The Dragon
Anthology
The night was cold. Chilly, breezy. Unlike any May night I ever had known before. Unlike any I would ever know again. The air bit deep. Perhaps the winds knew my future, carrying warnings back to me even then. If it had, I never listened. Perhaps I was not meant to. Perhaps I shouldn't have known. Perhaps.
Perhaps changes no events. It didn't stop the meeting, it didn't stop the congregating of friends and acquaintances. It didn't stop me going, either. A new city. New people. New friends. I hoped even for new family... what child doesn't, sometimes? I was no exception. There never really are exceptions.
He was there. The fox. In a new city, filled with new people, in a new restaurant, he was there. He never knew. Never knew the effect he had on me instantly. Some claim to know love at first sight. I don't know what I felt, but I'd never felt it before. Was it love at first sight? I don't know. All I knew was an attraction, a yearning. A desire. Destiny? Destiny needn't be light or dark. It need only be. Perhaps I sensed that.
It was new to the fox, as well. The people were new, the restaurant was new. The city was old... sort of. He lived nearby. It was new to me then, at least. We talked about home. We talked about life. We talked about interests. We talked about, of all things, the softness of his fur. I confess, I spent most of the night stroking his tail... and I still wonder, what on earth was I thinking? I confess, I thought I might scare him away. Was I infatuated? Perhaps.
We talked. We dined together. For me, the world faded away. The people and the city and the restaurant and the potential new family. Gone. Washed in a tide of red fur. An innocent smile, a light in his eyes. I was blinded. I saw nothing else. Not the jokes of the others around us, though I joined their words. Not the desserts as they went across the table, though I marvelled at them. Not the pizza, big as our entire faces, that the fox and I shared. Just him. I wonder if he ever saw me stare. I wonder if he felt the pull of the future on the wind. I wonder if he heard the warning. I wonder if he cared about the warning. I wonder... if he cared about me.
He must have, I decided. Dinner was done, and the new friends were moving on. Games, they claimed. Fun, and entertainment, and music. Pool tables. An errant thought flew through my head, though I didn't voice my cue-jousting idea. I stood beside the fox. I kept talking to him. Dimly, I was aware of another. The other spoke to the fox as well. Later, I would know that he too seemed interested. Was I interested? Was I something more than interested? Even thinking back, through a mind so often fogged to memories so clear, I don't know what I was. Was I interested? Perhaps I was.
I couldn't leave the fox's side. I didn't want to, even if I could. I was drawn, I was ensnared. I was trapped within his pull, and he never knew it. Not once, I think. The other spoke to the fox. I knew he liked the fox. I was not jealous; how could I have been? I was fearful though, that the fox would become more interested in the other, in anyone else. In talking to him, I felt more at peace than ever before. The thought of knowing that sensation and losing it in the same night... perhaps it would have broken me.
It needn't have ever broken me. The other knew the future, though. He spoke words to the fox, venomous, painful words. He spoke of me and of the fox, he spoke of pain to come. I never knew until days later of the words. On that day, in the moment, I dismissed them. Had I a time machine, I might go back and slap myself. All those words were visions of the future, vile spectres. They would haunt me... they still haunt me. They will never cease to haunt me.
The fox left with me that night. The trains did not run; he had no transport home. He was brought back with me, to stay with me the night. We spoke and planned, we talked of activities and games, and shows to watch. We suggested our fun, innocent and pure. We held one another. My intentions remained good.
I don't know when it happened. I don't know what brought it on. The cold night was suddenly hot, burning. Our flesh tingled and our clothes shed themselves of their own accord. Our bodies pressed tightly together, the fox and I. I felt him all over; I explored his body completely with my fingers, tracing and mapping out his beautiful form in my mind. Cute, was the word I used. Adorable, wonderful, beautiful... all would also have applied. Perhaps I used them, as well.
I tasted him; how could I not? His lips at first, a sweet kiss that left me dazed and reeling. I think he never knew the effect he had upon me, the desire and need he awoke in me, so unlike anything any had ever evoked before. For so long, I wondered if I would ever feel it again. Overwhelming me, pulling me under and drowning me in a sea of bliss. I thought I had found heaven in the embrace of his kiss.
His body twitched and his lips moaned, as I took the fox into my mouth. I sampled him, I savoured him, I loved him. I showered upon him affection unlike I had shown another before. I indulged myself richly, partaking of the deepest greed as I gorged myself upon his flesh and his seed. I was almost desperate, zealous in my want for him. In the moment and in the years later, I wonder if he felt the same. I hope he did. Perhaps he did.
We laid together for a time afterwards. Our act had been betrayal, the sweetest strike to a heart either of us had ever felt. It had been right though... I know it had. Our act, that which would start us down the road we had walked together... it started so right. Thoughts and acts and memories; each of them for those days remains locked within my heart. They ache, though they burn with love I still hold for the fox. With love that always will burn. Embers, left in the wake of a roaring fire, never to die.
The night of new cities and new friends was a Thursday night. The fox had to return home that night, but instead he had left with me. He had to return then the next day. He could not. We could not part. My heart leapt as we stayed together, as we shared of ourselves even more. Acceptance and adoration for the night we had spent, for the person laying in our arms. He for I, and I for him. Such a thing... sad as it is, was an alien concept to me. Perhaps it should have stayed that way. Perhaps I never deserved it. Perhaps I proved that.
Thursday night became Friday. Friday became Saturday. Saturday became Sunday. Sunday became Monday. Finally we were forced to part; the pull of laundry is a stronger one than the pull of the heart, sometimes. I remember his scent, left where I slept each night. It was strong, mixed with mine and of our love, shared many times over across the days. It had been an affair of the weekend and even longer, and still we needed more of each other. I wonder if he ever knew just how badly I needed him. Not his body, not his malehood. I wonder if he ever knew just how badly I needed him. I pray so. Perhaps he did.
Days became weeks. May turned to June, to July. Our love only grew as the world turned around us. We had little, and yet we tried. We were a source of hope and inspiration for each other... or at least, this is what he did for me, and I attempted to return. I hope he knew what he was able to do for me. I hope he knows what he was able to do for me.
We were inseparable. Days would stretch out before us as we spent it with one another. An empty house was simply a chance for mischief. We would walk, out for food and run about town. KFC burgers and lamb souvlaki subs, RvB and the couch. The massage oils. My back. The exploding lightbulb. The cold shower tiles and the hot, pouring water around us. Our bodies and hearts, joined as one.
Then August came. The end of winter. The end of all that I had known, and cherished. The day I destroyed my everything.
He was innocent, truly. There had never been another before me in his bed, and never had he connected so intimately with another male, either emotionally or physically. Others had left him before, he'd told me one day. I promised always to be there for him should he need me. I still hold myself to my word... though I never know how best to help. I never can do right. I sometimes wonder if it's best for me to remain silent. Perhaps.
A friend knew me for many years, and he knew me well as I knew him. We spoke often. I spoke of the fox... of my fox. I spoke of my love for him. I spoke of his love for me. I spoke of my hopes and dreams, of my most fervent desires with him. I believe I spoke even of lifetimes and eternity. I believed it all. Perhaps I was not wrong to.
Words... carry such power within them. The right words can attain for the speaker anything their heart desires. And yet the wrong words, words spoken without understanding of what they mean... those words have the capacity to do damage undreamed of. The capacity to cause destruction beyond the most dangerous bomb. The capacity to break hearts. The capacity to break a person.
The fox spoke such words to me. He didn't know what he had meant. Perhaps he didn't even know what effect they had on me. I loved him... and yet what he had said cut deep. He apologised, and yet did not understand for what he was apologising. He tried... and like a child, I would not listen. I don't know to this day why it took me so long to forgive the slight against me. I was stupid. I was mad. I was upset... and I want to take it all back.
My friend understood. He consoled me and spoke to me. He spoke words that carried the power to change things for the better. He spoke of a new life, of opportunity. He spoke of so much, on the night that I was to apologise for how I had spoken to the fox. My friend spoke of love. He spoke of love for me. A split in the path. Perhaps I should have stopped and thought. Perhaps I should have remembered my fox, and all those days and nights and weeks and months. All that love.
I spoke of love returned for him.
In that moment, I chose one path of two. I could not hurt the fox, the fox who had so spoken of painful losses to him. Of friends that would leave his side, of having no one to talk to or understand him. I could not break his heart. I never could allow myself to scar him so. And so I lied.
I told him nothing of my friend. Even as we moved in together, I told him nothing. Inwardly, I broke apart. Truly I did love the fox, with all my heart and soul. I would throw myself in front of a bullet for any friend of mine, but for the fox I would take the whole clip and then rend the limbs of the shooter. I would give anything and everything for his happiness. Certainly it was simply a decision to give away my integrity. To this day, I still have not recovered it. Perhaps there will not come a day when I will.
And yet, feelings for my friend I had suppressed for years bubbled over me. I needed to go to him; this I knew, no matter the cost. I found a way in time... I am there even now. But in those days after the dark choice I made in August, my feelings for my friend only continued to grow.
Perhaps it was the wrong choice, to try to make the fox end it with me, to free me from my torment. Never knowing the truth behind my actions, if I was so bad a partner that he no longer wished my presence, he would end it with me. He would have confidence, he would have been in charge. He would have been okay, and the fox would never have known the terrible thing I had done, or the terrible thing I had done to protect him from that knowledge.
The fox was innocent and trusting, beautiful and pure. He was amazing... and still to this day a more perfectly good person I have never known. I doubt that I ever will. And because of this... because of his innocence and his purity, it was at once so simple to deceive him, and so hard to break him from me. He believed in me... he trusted me... he loved me. And so he endured me, throughout all that I did to make him stop. He simply... never stopped loving me. Throughout it all he never stopped loving me... and I could never hate myself more. Until the next day.
It burned. I knew I was doing wrong... both with my betrayal and my deceit. My heart was a torrent of fire, a river of lava with no source or end. Constantly it flowed as I tried harder and harder to break the fox of me, to give him cause to leave me. All the while I looked out for him as best I could... showed him as much affection and care as I could spare. My friend told me I could even sleep with him.
The fox wanted it, I know... and I knew how upset he was about it. I built an excuse, a fiction based on truth; the most indiscernible kind. I told him I was incapable of such acts of intimacy. I blamed it on events from my past resurfacing. While those events did prevent me for some time being able to act on the fox's wants, my guilt and self-loathing was what truly kept me in line.
What he wanted was not mine to give. I had no right to his heart or his body with what he had done. I do not know if he thought, or thinks, differently. All I know is that I was already betraying him enough... far, far too much. More than anyone deserves. But he was not anyone... he was the fox. And knowing him as I did, knowing his heart and his mind and his soul... I might has well have carved my own heart out with a dull knife, so much less painful to watch would it have been. Despite what I had done to him, what I was still then doing to him... I could not take him. I could not betray him further. Perhaps he even believes me when I say that... I hope he does.
I even had a perfect excuse. A visit to a friend's house together, a trip to see a nearby convention. The convention turned out to be of little consequence. My mind briefly recalls a swelling of my ego during matches of Super Mario Kart at a later convention with different friends, and the art of orbiting red shells. Such things, fun as they are, pale terribly in comparison to what happened during that weekend. The fox made a new friend.
I was awake most of the night. Some nights I simply couldn't sleep, so badly did the guilt strike me. The guilt was only partly to blame; my friend was in a bad way, and I simply could not bring myself to sleep with either feeling in my head. When I finally awoke late the next morning, everyone was out in the entertainment room with me. All, but the fox and his new friend.
For a couple hours they remained within that room. We each had our suspicions. We joked about it... though my heart was cold. Jokes became proven as reality when I finally went to check on them. The fox had betrayed me, in some small way.
I did not hold it against him. How could I possibly have done so? With all that I had done, it was hardly a betrayal. It was perhaps the winds of fate once again, offering the fox perhaps a respite from my inability to be what he needed. Offering me perhaps a chance to flee, to use that opportunity to escape the pain I felt. Perhaps I should have taken it, right then. Perhaps I should have ended it there as an aggressor.
I forgave. I talked with him on the train ride home about it, and I held him. And as I spoke of my love for him, I remembered everything that he had made me feel. Everything he still made me feel, though my friend had suppressed it. Never had I stopped loving the fox. Never will I, I suppose... such a thing would be like the stars in the sky blinking out of existence. For me at least, the stars will never go out. Permit me a moment of levity, and let me assure you there is nothing on my back. Less subtle humour has no real place in a story such as this.
For months I argued with myself. I fought. I fought a constant war between two people, and yet my friend always edged out. My argument was that the fox could not forgive me; that I would never forgive me in his place. That argument was flawed, broken in so many, many ways. Chief amongst them, he was far kinder than I was. A better person in every single way. Yet it was enough argument for me... it would be better for the fox to leave me, or for me to leave and let him never know the truth, than for me to reveal it to him and ask forgiveness. Perhaps he would have forgiven me. Perhaps I might still have had a chance. Perhaps...
Already I had betrayed one person, and I was not strong enough to turn from the path I had set myself upon. I can only hope that none ever have to walk the path that I did... but I can take solace in knowing that those that do can truly understand what is required. I simply did not have it within me to turn myself around, to turn away from my friend and back to the fox. Knowing what I have now, knowing how I am blessed... a part of me still wishes I had been that strong. That I had known what I was giving up.
Plans were made for me to leave, to go to my friend. The fox still never knew exactly why, but a small group of friends helping me did know the truth. They helped me, more than perhaps they will ever know, to move beyond what I was doing. They gave greatly of themselves, and I am ashamed to say that I gave back only hostility in return. Their charity was given with words against what I was doing, the latter completely deserved and the former gratefully accepted. Even knowing what I was doing, I had too much pride to accept their words against me. I lashed out. I lost friends. They remain lost to me... too awkward to talk to, or potentially too hostile. My place, at any rate, is no longer in their lives.
I remember the taxi. I remember the morning it pulled up at the house, and the night I had spent getting ready to leave. All night, my heart screamed at me to stop, to listen, to stay. The fox and I sat up all night, not letting the other go. If my heart was burning with molten pain before, then that night it ignited with the full power of the sun. I fought back my heart as it lashed out at me. I told it that I was doing the right thing, that there was no turning back. Perhaps there was. Perhaps I should have seen it.
I remember the taxi. I remember saying my goodbyes. I remember his family around him, bidding me good luck and sending me off with their love. I remember the dog... that annoying little yappy mongrel. It drove me crazy... yet now I long for the sound. I remember the fox... and without fail, even as I write now... I cry.
I remember the taxi. I remember my belongings loaded into it. I remember the fox suddenly appearing in my arms, and I remember holding him tight. I remember kissing him, the kiss of a lover I knew I would not be seeing again. The kiss of someone who knows that they are making a choice from which they cannot turn. A kiss goodbye... and a more bitter one I have never felt. The sun burning in my chest impotently collapsed. It turned cold, to darkness. A void. The star became a black hole, as his lips drew back from mine.
... I left him.
I had a plan, to tell him the truth. The real reason behind my leaving, to join my friend. What I had done... and why I thought it would protect him. That I loved him, that I always would love him. I planned to tell him after three months. It was a cutoff point... a point of no return. If the three months passed, then my choice was ironclad. I was telling myself that it would also give him time to find others... but he still clung to me. Perhaps I never drove him away hard enough. Perhaps I never wanted to drive him away from me. Perhaps I always wanted him near... yes... I did. I wanted him away from the pain I would cause... but I wanted him near to me still. Reading this it might be hard to believe, but I swear on all that is good and holy... it was driven only by love.
My plan was good... but I did not anticipate outside interference. One of the friends I lost, one of the ones who knew the truth... he approached the fox. He told him everything. Perhaps the fox didn't believe him. Perhaps he needed to hear it from me. Perhaps he already knew. When he came to me the next day to talk, his words were different. I thought he was upset. I know now that his eyes had simply been opened to what I had done to him.
He asked me for truth... that alone should have told me that he already knew. Perhaps with his eyes seeing clearly, my own had been covered. Again and again he asked for truth, probing me deeper to see what I knew. My lies turned to half-truths. Then I simply turned evasive. Finally, five days before my three month deadline, I told him the truth.
If I had waited those days, I might have been able to tell him in person. I probably would have. Perhaps I should have waited. But I didn't. I told it all... bluntly, directly. Everything I felt, everything I remembered, everything I knew. I explained it all, invited questions... learned that he had been told everything already anyway. My anger was stifled by my despair. The truth that I had so desperately wanted to tell him for eight months... and someone else had beaten me to it by a handful of days. Perhaps I never should have lied. No... no, I never should have lied...
He's changed now... he's a different person. I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't talk to the fox very much now. I want to... I desperately want to. I'm fond of saying that not a day goes by where he's not in my head at least somewhat. I worry about him too, whenever I think of him. Life is harsh... and life has a habit of twisting beautiful things. Even if they've been tarnished by a corrupting influence. My influence.
I tried to watch out for him, and only hurt him more. I destroyed my moral code to try to protect him from me, and I still betrayed him. Perhaps he can forgive me. Perhaps he already has. I don't know. Perhaps one day I'll forgive myself. Probably not.
I chose one path. I chose one little turn at a fork in the road. Everyone turns at forks in the road sometimes in their life, more often than not. Sometimes we choose the right path. Sometimes we choose the wrong path. Sometimes we choose the wrong path for the right reasons. That doesn't make it the right path. And those of us that take that path for those reasons quickly find that out. Perhaps I should have considered my options better.
I love the fox. Truly, I do. As I promised, I always will. My life is different from what I expected when I met him... and when I betrayed him. My friend and I are no longer together, and my heart belongs to another good, kind soul now. I love him dearly, with all that I am, was and will be. I know that the experiences that have lead me here will never allow me to betray his trust in me. Trust in me is rare, these days.
But still, I think of the fox. And I do not believe that a day goes by that I will not. I may never know what to say, I may never know what to do. I may never make up for what I have done, either in his eyes or my own. I may never know what laid along the other path. Still I will continue to hope for him and pray for him, and care for and love him. And perhaps he will yet be happy.
For those who have read, I thank you. For those who skipped through, I hope you managed to read enough. For all who came here to hear this story, I hope something of myself has been imparted to you, and that you may grow as a result. In sharing this, perhaps some paths leading into shadow can be shown for what they are, and future hearts need not be broken.
For the fox... if you see this and wish it removed, you need only tell me so. I could think of no other way though to tell you how I feel, and this is the first time in a year and a half that I've been able to express myself at all regarding these events. They do not need to be public, and can be removed if you ask me. Privately or publicly is of course fine. You choose, hon.
For the one I am currently with, dearest, do not worry about me. You know where my heart lies and with what fervour it drives me for you. You know I love you, with all that I am, and that I hope never to lose that. Not for anything.
I write this openly. I began writing at 5:53am on Saturday, September 27, 2008, local time. I concluded at 6:51am of the same day. This has not been edited; it is a continuous stream of writing and emotion, and has been left unaltered. It is not the whole story. It is not even close to the whole story. It is, however, more of myself than I have ever exposed before. I share it openly, in the hopes that in doing so, I can find for myself some peace of mind. I do not expect to find it, but I hope. That hope is certainly worth striving for.