1.1 - George
His room was neater than he expected at four o’clock in the morning, but he had no intention of messing it up or going back to sleep. As this thought crossed his mind, his gaze shifted to the bed, which he hadn’t touched all night. It was still pristine, like some kind of sculpture or the freshly laid grave beneath one. It was still dark. Sleep wasn’t something that came easily or often enough for him to dream, and on every flat surface of his room, you could see traces of the insanity growing inside him. Sketches of things he thought he “saw” all around him, visions or delusions, one or the other.
This particular page, held two people, featureless, so unrecognizable to anyone but himself, they represented him, and another boy, Steven, “just a friend from school,” When he really meant to say, “My boyfriend.” In fact, most of these sketches were of Steven, or about Steven and him, or something beautiful and altogether wonderful like that, but Charlotte would never understand, and he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t deal with the additional drama, or the trauma of telling her that her only Man left in the world, was hardly even that. That her father had been right when he called George a “poof.” Thank God he was dead and buried far, far away.
“Lovers,” was the title of the sketch, in which these two androgynous characters, embraced beautifully and tragically. He began to hum. Some song he had heard the day before, for some reason it was just good enough to stick in his memory and make him just a tiny bit happier. Although he sometimes confused happiness with other things, like being dead. It was still dark, and the room was now this weird color like deep burgundy, almost bluish brown.
It was loud outside, crickets, frogs, airplanes. Hours will soon pass and the sun will either kill this chorus, or simply let it sleep. His mother Charlotte was still wrapped in her covers, with one of those bright pink eye-covers over her eyes to help her sleep, or keep out reality. He loved his mother, dearly, and would never want her to hate him. She would hate him if she knew...if she knew he was gay. That would be the end, there would be no point to anything anymore, to his “art” to himself, or to this life. Steve was in hiding as well, from himself, from everyone he knew and even a few he didn’t.
George called him Steve for short, it was just cuter that way, Steven was what he called him when it was sexy. Nobody could know about them, but a few did, but it would only stay that way, the numbers wouldn’t grow. The thing about small towns anywhere in the world, was that news traveled fast, right here in their town, they had three local newspapers, and his school had one as well. So, when someone blabbed on someone else, it didn’t take long for that blab to hit the front page of the next paper to hit your doorstep.
Awe was probably the right word to describe what George felt for Steve, sure there was love in there somewhere, but just finding each other by itself was something so amazing, that it deserved to be admired, and they knew it. Five thirty just rolled around, and the sun was somewhere far away burning holes in the ozone layer or making the sky glow brilliantly, or whatever it was that the sun does on early mornings to amuse itself. This destroyed angel wondered if there would ever be justice in the world, a place for his love, a life for him outside his multitude of colorful objects and cartoony drawings, but there were no straight-forward answers, except to the one about Steve’s whereabouts at that moment.
There was a tapping on the window, somewhere in the hedges that lined the outside of his bedroom wall, crouched his lover, quietly rapping on the window pane, awaiting permission to enter. “This is the part where it gets really beautiful,” George thinks to himself, as he silently but perfectly lifts his dark silhouette from his bedroom floor, kind of like a black butterfly drifting toward the darkness beyond his window. He is aiming for the lock, releases the tension, and raises it up, instantly being enraptured by the mirage of fire that are his lover’s kisses on his bare skin.
The light to his darkness, Steven floated in through the portal, surrounded by rippling fabrics of white and silver, buttons bursting from excitement, two bodies, theirs, collapse to the carpeted floor, and shoulders become visible, as well as hips and thighs, all unraveling into a black magic fire flight. “I love you,” was said, more than a few times, but it was hard to keep count beneath all the heavy breathing and brushing of fingers over skin. Beauty.
