The alarm went off again. Todd thought that his last punch on the snooze button would have taken care of it for good, but then his father always told him that he swung like a sissy. Since he had been unable to return to the dream that the alarm's first scream had interrupted, this time he shut the alarm off, and slowly rose out of bed. His cat Butch gave him a sleep-glazed glance from the foot of the bed, yawned deeply, then laid his head back down on his paws. "All right for you Butchie," Todd said, wondering what Butch dreamt about, while he lightly scuffed the back of the cat's neck.
He felt his eyes drawn to the picture of Bryan on the dresser. Todd took it last summer when they went camping. The camping trip was a surprise that Bryan had planned for Todd's thirty-first birthday. He had never gone camping before, actually never had much of an interest in it. His mother had always said that camping is for animals, that the outdoors is where it belongs - outdoors, away from decent folk. So Todd never developed a real interest in camping in the mountains which were a slight distance from his childhood split-level home; he respected the beauty of the countryside from a distance; he just didn't want pieces of it in his hair, his underwear, or his morning coffee. Bryan loved camping. He told Todd that it made him feel in touch with himself, in sync with the world, comfortable with life. Todd felt that way being with Bryan, and he was willing to risk dirt, even gravel, in his underwear just to be with him.
"I miss you," he said softly to Bryan's picture. Even from a still photograph, Todd felt Bryan's eyes looking through him, felt his smile warming his soul. Todd never felt so complete as when he was with Bryan, and with Bryan gone, he felt such an intense emptiness. Emptiness more intense than before; when it was just him, when a life was something he thought he'd never have, instead of something that was lost. He missed Bryan so much that it hurt to breathe. The space inside his soul which used to be occupied with Bryan and all their dreams and plans now felt like a vacuum, empty of everything except pain. Wondering if this space could ever again be complete, if the feeling of emptiness would ever again be a memory, he set the picture down, and carefully brushed away first the dust from the top of the frame, then the tears welling in his eyes. He touched Bryan's photographed face lightly with his fingertips, and could almost feel the warmth of his skin. Butch interrupted to rub his side against Todd's leg. "I miss you," Todd said as he reached down to pet Butch's arched back, "But, I need to try, I just..." He never finished the sentence, and took Butch's purring for understanding his unspoken thought.
Standing in the shower, he let the stream of water fall against his head and run down his back. The warmth of the water felt good against his skin. Today was the first meeting of the support group. He expected to be nervous, but so far all he wanted to do was go back to bed. He'd been standing in the shower for a long time now, and he swore he could hear his father pounding on the door, yelling that he was wasting water, that water cost money, and that Todd had always been such a thoughtless little shit anyway. "Waste not want not!" was one of his fathers favorite platitudes to yell, slamming his fist down to end all discussion on the matter. Todd shook his head, hoping that his fathers voice would fall out and wash down the drain, although he felt sorry for anyone at the water treatment plant who had to listen to it when it arrived.
The mist from the shower clung to the mirror. Todd turned the blow dryer to it to dry it off, and then dried his hair. He hadn't gotten his hair cut for so long, he hadn't concerned himself with such things for some time, and now it was sloping down along the side of his eyes again from its part on the side. As he ran his hands through it, he remembered the first time Bryan kissed him, brushing his hair off of his forehead and gently cradling the side of his head, as though Todd was a delicate baby bird, fallen hard to the ground from its nest above. The memory made his heart ache, and as it was beginning to overwhelm him, the doorbell rang.
Little Bobby Wolverton from next door was standing at the door wearing the New York Yankees cap that Bryan and Todd had brought him from their visit last year to Bryan's sister. Bobby loved the cap so much that Todd now found it difficult to remember what he looked like without it. It was so large on him that it hung on his head like a lampshade, covering his forehead as well as his head. But then everything he wore always seemed to be too big for him. Between the cap and the plate of chocolate chip cookies that he was precariously holding, all Todd could see was a pair of big brown eyes. "My mom says you should eat these," Bobby said as he handed Todd the plate of cookies before running his coat sleeve under his constantly running nose. "I had one, but don't tell Mom. She said I already ate enough to spoil my dinner for the whole week." "Thanks kiddo," Todd said with a smile, lifting Bobby's cap back on his head so he could see Todd without tilting his head back so far. "When I get home later today, maybe we could play some ball, what do you say?"
"All right!" Bobby yelled with excitement. "I'll bring my new comic too, Spiderman really gets the Green Goblin good this time!" He then grabbed a cookie off the plate and turned to leave, almost tripping as he did. From the back he looked like a cap and a coat, it was hard to tell a boy was involved in the form at all. Todd smiled as he waved, and then helped himself to one of Mrs. Wolverton's cookies. She was always sending things over with Bobby; he decided he would have to do something for her soon to thank her for her kindness and concern.
"Love is a stranger in an open car, to tempt you in and drive you far away," the Eurythmics sang to Todd from the car stereo as he drove to the group. His hands were shaking as he pulled into the parking lot at the school. The support group was meeting in room 101, where he had study period for his senior year of high school. He took a moment and thanked God that Mrs. Flory wasn't going to be there, and entered the building.
The hall seemed to move away from Todd as he walked down it. His goal was the far door on the right side, next to the exit. Yet as he moved, the other doors sped past him as though he were driving down an empty stretch of rural highway. The blur of the moving center stripe shows progress, but the mountain in the distance appears no closer, and time seems to stand, or rather to slouch, still. He could hear voices coming from the room, and he wondered if they were talking about him. Why was he always late? His mother liked to say that he was two weeks overdue at birth, and he hasn't been on time since. (She was always so punctual that Todd used to wonder if maybe her uterus didn't have some type of quartz timing device implanted in it.)
He finally seemed to be on the threshold of the door, but now he was unsure if he should cross it. He wondered if this is what Butch felt like when he raced across the room, and then stopped suddenly in a doorway, testing the air in the next room with twitches of his nose. When Todd signed up for the group he was sure that it was the right time for him to take a chance, to enter the room, to get out of the doorway. He was tired of feeling helpless, and the ad about the support group in the paper seemed to shout at him to jump. "This is it," the ad seemed to say, "the time is right! Be on time for a change, Todd." The ad was really rather nondescript; all it said was "Men's Support Group Forming," with a number to call for registration. He signed up for it before he changed his mind, and even though he knew that it had been so long that he had to do something to help himself deal with Bryan being gone, he almost instantly began to wonder if it was right.
Now that he was finally at the door he thought he would never reach, he thought about changing his mind. His father used to say that the only thing less decisive than Todd was a large bowl of cherry jello left in a hurricane. Todd never thought the comparison was fair, after all, cherry jello left in a hurricane could be as decisive as it wanted to be, any hurricane would still generally send it wherever it damn well pleased, and what would cherry jello have to say about it anyway. There were plenty of times in Todd's life when he felt as though he was being thrown about in a hurricane of emotion and disillusion; and Todd always wondered why his father refused to acknowledge the pain or depth of the situation, reducing everything that was complex to something basic and simple like cherry jello.
How long had he been standing at the door? A mousy looking woman passed him in the hall, and watched him out of the side of her eyes, her face downcast. He wanted to say hello, but his mouth wasn't interested in moving, just hanging slack while he stood there. The woman's footsteps echoed in the hall, growing louder in his head as she moved further away. He wasn't sure what was causing the feeling of uneasiness which had enveloped him, but somehow through its fog he thought it was the familiar fear of rejection. He had felt the same on the playground and in the classroom of each new elementary school to which his parents moved him. He had felt this fear throughout his adolescence, in the judgmental eyes of classmates, and the critical, disappointed glare of his parents. He had felt this fear in each of the different bars he went nightly before Bryan, with the hopes of meeting someone through the cigarette smoke haze, over the thump of the sound system, and despite the collective weight of hopes, expectations, and desires.
The door opened and Todd jumped. He felt as though he had been caught at something, although he wasn't sure at what. The breeze from the antique air conditioner must have opened the door, because no one was standing there. And the creak of the door opening had caused the discussion from within the room to stop for a moment. Todd was in the room before he realized that his feet were moving. The wooden school desks had all been moved to the side, the other group members were sitting in a circle on the floor. The discussion resumed as Todd said "Hi," and sat down quickly on the floor. He thought he sounded a bit like one of the Chipmunks screaming the greeting through a bullhorn, and wondered why he had the luck of being given a voice roughly two octaves higher than most men. However no one else in the group seemed terribly upset by it, and as they turned toward Todd, he looked at their faces and somehow felt like he was in the right place, maybe even at the right time. He ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath, and smiled.
Tom Thomas is living in Seattle where he is paid slave wages to work with personal computers, and spends his free time having out of body experiences and attempting to decipher the hidden messages in musical recordings. This is his first published fiction, the shock of which still has him in a stupor.
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