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Wasted Years

"Hey, thanks again for letting me stay here for a bit."

"Ah, don't worry about it, Terry. Mi casa, et cetera. And what the hell, man; an hour ago it was a 'day,' now it's a 'bit?' What constitutes a 'bit'?"

"I really don't know."

"Eh, that's alright. This neighborhood's too fucking static anyway."

I handed Winter one of my bags, the big black carry-on that held all of the clothes I owned. He grinned at me as he grabbed it, punk bravado accentuated by the two blue rings that coiled around his left eyebrow, glinting in the light of the streetlamp. I started at this; the earthy-brown weasel had changed very little, if at all, since high school.

Winter lived in the suburbs, one of the seedier quadrants, where the roads were poorly kept and everybody's yards were locked in by either weather-worn wood fences or rusty chain-link fences caught in the rapid-fire light of a single flickering streetlamp. The house was tiny but livable, a white single-floor affair with a worm-eaten porch that seemed like a Lilliputian birdhouse to somebody who only recently had left the basement of his parent's twelve-room log home in the Minnesota woods.

Winter wanted to carry in the rest of my luggage but I wouldn't let him. I only had three bags, and they weren't very heavy; one for clothes, one for travel paraphernalia, and one for my art supplies and my portfolio. Well, no, I didn't have my portfolio anymore, not after I chucked it into the Narragansett Bay. I don't care very much; the bag was that much lighter because of it. The weasel hefted my bag over his shoulder as he stepped up onto his porch, the buckles on his huge boots jingling like the spurs of a Hollywood gunfighter. He was taller than the last time I saw him, and certainly thinner. I wondered if he had latched onto a roots-and-berries diet that had actually done its job.

And done its job well, I observed. When he walked up the stairs, his grungy faded denim jeans pulled taut against his ass, bringing up memories of our sordid encounters back in high school, things we did in the janitor's closet, in the bathroom, up on the roof, in the library, in the classrooms that one time after we secretly stayed behind when the doors were locked...before schools made security cameras mandatory.

Goddamn, has the world changed.

But Winter, I realized, hadn't changed one single bit. I followed him onto the porch and through the door, my eyes repeatedly zeroing in on his butt. With his jeans he wore a black double-loop belt, an empty ornamental gun holster tapping against his thigh. A long, extra-large white tank-top clung loosely over his shoulders, sharpie marker words written on the back: "Get pissed! Have a laugh!" A length of red plaid fabric was cinched around his waist, whispering against his knees. His brown hair was cut short, done up in wild spikes like all the singers he emulated. It was a warm night, typical March evening, and he didn't wear a jacket. He probably wouldn't have worn one if he was knee-deep in snow, just because everybody else was.

I breathed a sigh as I followed him through the meager entryway and into the living room. He still made my heart twitch.

The living room was dimly lit by a ceiling light that shone from the kitchen, exposing rudimentary, unostentatious furniture. A couch rested against the far wall beyond what might have been a fancy ottoman; to the right, a recliner chair of the same weave rested in front of a wide window, looking out at the dark street; beside the hall, just to the right the television was set into the wall; the floor was a pearly white tile, kind of pretty were it not for all the dirt.

Winter flicked on a switch beside the television, and the three large bulbs of the ceiling fan above shone all around, instantly driving away the dark. The weasel set down my bag on the floor, dumping it down beside a chair, so I put the rest of my luggage beside it. Winter stepped over a short table, hardly construed as a table with the mound of beer cans and bachelor detritus that accumulated on top of it like a depressing reef, and fell down into the beige couch with a muffled puff. There was a patch of duct tape covering one of the arms, I noticed. Winter motioned for me to sit down, so I sat in the chair, smelling something like gasoline.

"You still don't drink, right?" he said, making it sound like something ridiculous. He felt around behind the ottoman, hidden aluminum clatter.

"Yeah. Still a water guy," I mumbled, shifting in the chair. I couldn't relax; I don't know why I can't just cool off and rest in new environments, I just get jittery, anxious for no rational reason.

"Gotcha." The weasel brought back his arm and tossed a bottle of Dasani at me. I caught it and thanked him, to which he made no reply. Winter grabbed a remote from the floor and brought the television to glaring life. He spoke to me as he channel-surfed, his voice still possessing that rumbly, soothing quality I remember.

"So that thing in Providence didn't work out, then?"

"No, it didn't," I said, not wanting to say anymore. Winter was silent, too, just kept browsing mindlessly through the channels until he stopped. It was just after ten 'o' clock and the world news was starting, beginning a long series of stories about blood, violence, stupidity, childishness. People being people.

For one story, they showed footage of an interview with the president of some large pharmaceutical company, a big and bloated frog of a raccoon in a dark blue three-piece suit.

"Holy shnikes!" Winter shouted. "That guy's got a whole other man hiding under his chin!"

It was the perfect moment for him to have said that; I had just unscrewed the cap from the water and taken a swig, and when the weasel finished the line a laugh had met the swallowed water. I sprayed the floor and dribbled into my lap, laughing and coughing. I held up a hand to my mouth, as if that would do something for the water I had already shot onto the floor. Meanwhile, Winter had broken into a peal of his own raucous laughter at my situation. I apologized several times, getting myself under control as I grabbed some paper towels out of one of my bags.

I cleaned up the mess, smiling, listening to the weasel as he continued to laugh. He had a fairly deep voice in ordinary conversation, but when he laughed he took on a bird-like titter, a wheezy girlish giggle that was as infectious as it was cute. After a time, he scratched his cheek and looked at me, his eyebrow rings glittering. I had to look away--I wasn't trying to be coy, I've just never been able to look someone in the eyes without a certain degree of uneasiness, even someone like him.

"You never grew up, Winter," I told him. I tried to make it sound like a chiding, but it came out more like adulation.

"Well, what do you get when you grow up, huh? That?" He pointed to the TV. The anchorwoman was starting to talk about a flight from Dallas to Chicago that had to be rerouted to Kansas City because somebody caused a panic by deliberately coughing too hard, allegedly as reparation for the price of her ticket.

"You know, my grandma used to say that we get older because we stop laughing. That's true, man, one of truest truths to ever have been truthed."

"Uh-huh," I said, trying to take that in. I finished cleaning up the water, heading into the kitchen to toss the paper into the waste bin.

In the meager kitchen, there was a window overlooking a pitiful backyard. I saw myself in the glass, white wolf reflected back at myself, and I swore in my head; I looked like shit. There were heavy, dark bags under my blue eyes, bags filled with long nights spent in worry. My black hair was longer than I liked, hanging well past my jawline, spidery and unkempt. It glistened with a grease-sheen, and a mass of hair stuck out to the right like a single wing--my mom would have called it a "sidewinder." My eyebrows seemed to be permanently tilted up, brow creased, a worrier doing what a worrier is wont to do.

"Damn it," I muttered, slapping at the sidewinder in an effort to get it back into place. I had to really scratch at my head to get it, but I got it done, pain notwithstanding. I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of Winter, though it was probably too late for that. I know I looked like an idiot no matter what I did.

I walked back into the living room, avoiding Winter's grassy-green eyes. I sat down and drank from the bottled water, throwing a dark look at Winter in case he had anything to say. He didn't oblige me.

We watched the rest of the news in silence. Eventually it dulled out into the late-night programs, and the weasel started flipping through channels again.

"So," Winter said after a time, startling me out of the peaceful silence. "How's your girlfriend doing? What's her name, Flora, Fiona..."

"Faun," I corrected him.

"Yeah, that one. You two still going strong?"

I grinned, I had to grin. The names and phrases I now connected Faun with were no longer what they were, never will be. Without looking at the weasel, I told him how Faun and I had broken up after I told her that I had been with a guy--"Suddenly," I told him, "the liberal hippie chick I thought she was became Tipper-fucking-Gore. Like a moral see-saw to the far right."--and she no longer wanted anything to do with me. I told her that the feeling was mutual, and she yelled at me for being so calm, trying to seem like the level-headed one in the conversation. At that point, I hardly cared what she said or did.

I typically don't like speaking to people out of fear that I'll say something stupid or unintentionally insulting, but sometimes when I start, it's like winding up a toy; I can't stop until I eventually get the point out. I told Winter that I had put everything into my portfolio, putting every ounce and fiber of my personality and existence into the job opportunity over in Providence, Rhode Island and giving up all my money just for the damn trip and some food, only to have the job ripped away at the last second by some little shit who you could tell was related to the prospective employer. The man had spent a total of twenty minutes perusing the samples of my work; each image had probably taken three hours to complete, and the man took up a good three to five seconds in their individual contemplation. He told me that what I had was something they weren't looking for at this time, that I would do better after taking some classes. I gave the man my thanks for the opportunity and perhaps to keep my name in their list, and headed out of the building. In a rage, I put all the blame onto my portfolio, my work, essentially reflecting the hate back onto myself. Fucking worthless garbage...I threw the fucking thing into the dark waters of the Narragansett, the words of actor Charles Laughton echoing a line from Captain Kidd in my mind. "Rest...in...peace."

"Damn," was all Winter said. I glanced at him, and he was looking at me with concern, with a real worry that I knew didn't crack over his face very often. He had stopped changing channels, and the TV was stuck on an episode of The Munsters.

I shook my head. "It's not a problem."

"Well, you know what, man? You've always got a place here, with...if you ever need it. You can stay here as long as you want, until you get back on your feet."

I looked at him, trying to hear that same sincerity in that same voice ten years ago, five years ago, and I could not. I looked at him, and he was giving me that tilted smile that had always set off a cloud of butterflies in my stomach, years ago, but I didn't feel anything anymore. There was no sensation, no spark, just memories.

"What about you?" I asked him, turning to the television; Herman Munster was garbed in a big leather jacket, hot-rodder's hat perched on his cubed cranium, strumming a guitar as a trio of girls danced around him. He was singing about "all that groovy junk" and that he'd "be your ever lovin' punk."

"Are you still working at the mill?"

"Yeah. You really work for the check, but it's worth a busted ass."

I nodded, and conversation lapsed back into silence. Winter and I watched The Munsters as moths began filling up the windows, lulled to the glass by the light. I wonder what the moths took the light to mean, what it meant to them, and why they couldn't differentiate between a gentle, loving light and a destructive, consuming fire.

---

Later, I gratefully took a shower in Winter's bathroom. It was kind of silly; Winter was never a guy who ruminated on cleanliness or made it a priority, but the one room that actually seemed pretty well kept was the bathroom. I checked myself in the mirror, making sure that the damn sidewinder was gone, and dried myself off as I tried to figure out how to get rid of those heavy bags under my eyes in the shortest amount of time possible. I looked like a heroin addict.

I put on a blank white t-shirt and a pair of black boxers, my usual nightwear ensemble. Heading back into the living room, I took my sleeping bag out of one of my travel cases, intending to use it as a bed sheet over the couch. I didn't mind the smell of gasoline; in fact, I couldn't smell it anymore.

"Terry?"

I turned around and saw Winter standing in the hall between the kitchen and his room. His shirt and boots were off, the double-loop belt around his jeans gone, and he gave me a reproving look. I stared at his body, lanky and sinewy, the body of fresh inmates and woebegone teenagers wandering trashy streets. There was a white tattoo on his abdomen leaning to the right, "The New Adventures" in big Broadway font. I remembered that body being thinner, with less muscle, but there it was. There were a couple new scars across his chest and stomach, shallow furless valleys made by small knives, pictures of bad fights, giving him an atmosphere of haleness and ruggedness. He looked amazing.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

"Getting ready to sleep?"

He shook his head and smirked, and I felt like an idiot again. He crooked a finger at me, slipping away out of the hall and out of sight. With a tightening in my chest, I followed.

Winter's room was an exact manifestation of his personality, and like his personality, it was overflowing with an anarchic stream of memorabilia of old movies and forgotten bands; movie posters from the sixties and seventies were taped up and swarmed by local concert advertisements and newspaper clippings; flyers for numerous ecological, environmental, and peace groups were dotting the walls alongside political cartoons and abusive artwork; there was a bed, modest king-size mattress with puffy black silk sheets flanked by a pair of cheap wood-veneer nightstands. The floor was covered by a number of old magazines, beer cans, clothes, and discarded Amazon boxes that had been thoroughly stepped on to form what seemed like a makeshift junk rug. Clothes were spilling out of the dresser that rested beside the bed, a single black shirt dangling over the mirror. The only thing that seemed to have a semblance of order was the computer desk; the monitor was equally distanced from the two game consoles, a box of flash drives arranged by color and capacity.

Right above the bed was a poster of the new metal band Indominus. A pale white lizard girl, entirely naked, was kneeling over a mountain of wreckage containing gore-soaked bones and twisted, burning vehicles. There was a wicked look in her face, as hurt as it was hateful, and blood dripped down from her mouth, rivulets curling over the hills of her bare breasts.

"You sleep with that over your head?" I asked him. Winter looked at it and shrugged.

"You can't see it when you're right under it."

He unbuttoned his pants and slid them off, denim whisper, revealing a pair of sea green briefs that clung to him like a second skin. His ass, the bulge that he casually scratched at, the tightness in his legs, it made something snap inside me. I can't explain it in any other terms; something just gave way. He looked at me, lips pulling up into a grin, and he winked at me, jerking his head to the bed.

He walked around the bed and slowly slid under the sheets, making sure to give me a look at his rear when he bent down. He looked at me, self-righteous smirk, and patted the other side of the bed.

Feeling my nerves jingling like a boxed chandelier, I stepped over to the side and sat down on the sheet. I ran my hands over the blackness, like creamy shadows. There was a conflict in my brain, one group telling me to get out of here and get back on the couch, and another group telling me to turn around, pull the covers over my head, and wrap my arms around that warm back. I didn't want to do this, but I did, and besides, he wasn't exactly telling me to bend over. He was giving me a place to sleep, a place where I can just rest and feel, I don't know, appreciated.

I suppose.

I stood up and tossed aside the sheet, crawling under and into its shadow. I rested my head on the scarlet pillow--that too was silk--and stared up at the ceiling. The weasel was right; you couldn't see the poster at this angle. It was as warm as it was soft, the weasel's heat radiating out from the side.

"I just want to sleep," I told Winter.

"I know."

He turned out the bedside lamp, bathing the room in shadows. A red light from the digital clock showed that it was nearly eleven, the dystopian blood-light dimly covering Winter's side of the bed. I closed my eyes, trying to shuffle toward that vague and indefinite border between sleep and wakefulness. I could not; the breathing of the handsome weasel beside me was keeping me from reaching the sleep I needed. I'd never been here, everything was different and unknown, strange. A truck moaned down the street outside, and I turned on my side.

This happens every time. I can close my eyes and breathe, but everything inside of me just coils, spring energy keeping my mind working on problems, always problems. When it's dark and still like this and the body is at rest, a little button is pressed in the mind, setting it to hyperactivity. Some people can suppress that button, but I can't; it just goes and goes and I can't calm down because every thought just careens to another thought like a fucking pinball machine like Plink!--what am I going to do for money? No funds, can't buy shit, no job...Plink!--I deserved that fucking job, what was that pissy little turd going to bring to the table, apart from a potential suit for nepotism...Plink!--that was a stupid thing I did, throwing my portfolio into the bay. I should have kept it; if one were to look into the book of my life they'd certainly find whole mounds of dumb, stupid things, ergo my current predicament. If I were smart and actually had an ounce of integrity I wouldn't be here. Fucking dumbass.

"You can't sleep?" Winter rumbled beside me. I opened my eyes, and I could see from his silhouette that he was looking at me.

"Nope."

"Why don't you try jerking one out? That usually does the trick."

I snorted back a laugh. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

I wondered if he was joking, but there wasn't the lilt in his voice he had when he was being funny. "No, Winter. I'm not going to masturbate in your bed, with or without you beside me."

"Why not? I already started."

I glanced over the surface of the sheet and saw a part of it slowly rising and falling. To punctuate the situation, the weasel let out a soft, pleasured sigh that sent a tingly pulse of heat down to my loins.

"You don't have any shame, do you?" I said.

"Shut up and get on the wank train, you prude."

I watched the part of the sheet that rose and fell in the dim red light, listening to Winter's easy breathing. How the hell could he be so calm? Each time the sheet fell, it released a wave of heat over my face, sweat and sex, pungent masculinity pulling me into more memories. Things like money, art skill, and my self-deprecation all vanished, filled only with man-scent.

My hand was already pulling at the elastic on my underwear, rubbing at the seams, unconscious action. I grabbed at my crotch, gave myself a gentle squeeze, turning my head away to the wall; even in the dark I was self-conscious. I hadn't seen Winter in years, and even though I had always wanted to be with him again, I was scared for some reason.

I slid my underwear down to my knees, enjoying the feel of the fabric brushing down through my fur. For reasons I couldn't interpret, that was a sweet spot for me; having my underwear down around my knees, leaving me bare and restrained. I didn't understand it, and I didn't try; all I knew was that it felt really damn good. After the shower I could hardly smell myself, which was just as well because Winter's musk was stronger, more vicious, burgling deserved territory in the dark room.

Winter moaned beside me, sensual hum in my ears, forcibly dislodging that niggling voice that told me this was crazy. I breathed as I worked myself into a rhythm, running my grasp over my cock, loving the feeling of taking a fleshy cylinder in my hand, hot and hard and humid as hell.

After a time, the environment within the bed became a jungle. We were both panting and sweating; my shirt felt like it was an object of constriction, tightening against my chest as it soaked up my love-fever. I felt the weasel shift under sheet, moving a little bit closer to me. He tilted his head, resting it against my shoulder. His Sid Vicious hair got in my eyes and I loved it.

"I forgot how hot you could get," he said. I responded by humming a sigh through my nose. The sheet was muttering as we kept going. I wondered what memories he had of me, which were the ones he focused on the most.

I had never felt as close to anyone like I did with Winter, not with Faun, not with anybody. I felt him breathing on me, whiskey wind down my neck and chest. The silk sheet was rubbing against the head of my shaft, and I could feel pre-cum shifting around it, coating it like a fine glaze. I worked myself harder, remembering the feeling of Winter being inside me, of me inside of him. I whispered his name and I felt his tongue caress my muzzle.

That was it, that lightning-fast touch, which sent me over the edge. I humped into my hand, feeling tension and energy flood my loins. I tried to move my knees, my right leg wanting to jerk outward but my boxers were keeping me from moving. Sweat fell into my eyes and it stung, sex-sting; I wondered if it was mine or his. I squeezed my legs together as the lightning struck, my shirt clinging to me and bunching up at my shoulders, the feeling of restraint pushing me forward.

I said his name over and over again as I came, my seed soaking into that magic black silk. I grabbed at my balls as I spasmed, the back of my hand getting wetter and hotter. A whine escaped my throat, though I don't know why I whined. I don't know if it was the sweat or if I had started crying, but my face was soaked as I jerked my head around in my convulsions.

The storm passed, fading quickly away, and I let myself go limp. Everything seemed loose now, tightened springs melted into gelatin from the heat. I fancied I could see my energy radiating out and away from me, a wavy cloud of red traveling upward and out. Although, that could have just been the light from the alarm clock.

Winter let out a growl, a grunt, and a moan, all packed into one explosive sound that ruptured the quiet. I heard the whisper of his hand brushing against the underside of the sheet cease, and the mattress shook as he bucked his hips into his hand. The motion was brief, punctuated by a broken sigh, and he relaxed against sweat-soaked, melting in his own excess and I with him. I rested my head against his, both of us waiting for our panting to peter out into normal, conversation-grade respiration.

I closed my eyes. It couldn't have only been seven years since high school graduation, it just couldn't have. Seven long wasted years. After a time, Winter's sultry, manly voice slipped into my ears like heavy satin.

"I can't believe that bitch really let someone like you slip through her fingers. I love you so much, Terry."

He kissed me, his lips like molten metal on the side of my mouth, and with a loosening in my chest I realized that that was what I had missed, his lips on my face and everywhere else. I hoped he would hold the kiss for as long as he could, but when he pulled away it was far too soon. I turned onto my side, my boxers still clinging to my knees like cotton shackles, and I moved as close to him as physically possible. If I could have fused with him on a molecular level, I fucking would have. I put my arms around him, nuzzling his face, drowning myself in his heat as the effluence of our passion mingled against our bodies. His arms wrapped around my back, strong lengths of hot and solid flesh. I wanted to be nowhere else in the world, not for anything. Distractedly, I was startled to realize how wet the mattress was.

We held each other in the red-scored dark, rubbing our heads together. I smiled a genuine smile of happiness that wasn't fake, wasn't a show for a person who didn't deserve it. I don't know how much time had passed, and it really didn't matter at all. For the first time in a long time, I didn't care about time.

But then like a seething black leech the worry crept in again, worry for a future I couldn't see, and I hated to not know something. I hated the unknown just as I feared it. I worried about another relationship that might too collapse, the frailty of my hobby-turned-career becoming all too apparent over and over again, and with that where am I? Somewhere in the grey.

"I don't believe in love," I told him truthfully.

"That's alright, Terry," the weasel murmured into my ear. "I do."

He kissed me on the cheek, and I faded away into a good dream.