Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“Always keep your eyes open;

Treasures can be found in the least likely hiding places!”

When I made the decision to go back to University, as you may recall, my criteria had little to do with future job prospects. I decided to go back to school because I knew that I needed to do something which would introduce other people into my life. It had been more than successful in that regards. I chose to study art because I had some interest in the subject, and had some talent in the subject. However it had never really occurred to me that art could be a career. Don’t people only make money off art four hundred years after they have cut off their ears, gone insane and killed themselves while drunk on Absinth, on some crazy night just after completing their new masterpiece, which is a self portrait of themselves nude if they were actually a women? That wasn’t the sort of career I had in mind. I had never really thought beyond the fact I’d be on unemployment benefits, they would eventually get me a job, I’d eventually embarrass myself and be fired, then I’d have unemployment benefits, they’d give me a new job, which I’d fuck up and be fired, then I’d have unemployment benefits and so on and so on. Wasn’t really what I wanted to do with my life, but hey I’m still me, what the hell else was I going to do.

So it came of a bit of a surprise when ‘teacherman’ called me up one night, and said “I think I might have found you a job!”

“Really…..I didn’t even know teachers found students jobs….I mean I thought they were supposed to teach you so that you could get your own job….not that you have done a poor job in teaching me….just that….um………..what kind of job?” I replied

“Well the thing is I had a call from a friend of mine who works for EMK Productions, you know the guys who bring out all those amazing animated movies….like the one last year about the space alien who is accidentally left behind in the Amazon, and befriends the family of monkeys and they don’t know that he is from another planet, and ….oh well you know, it was great wasn’t it?”

“Yeah”

“Well anyway he called me up and told me that EMK are going to branch out to television. They are developing a whole range of new cartoons, which they are going to put on a cable channel…you know a whole channel for cartoons…..so he calls me up and says that they are obviously looking for new staff to work in this new division, and especially animators….so he asks if I want to join the team…and I say no, I mean it sounds bloody fantastic, but I’m a teacher…I love to teach, I couldn’t give that up….so I say to him how about one of my students…and he says “Well are any of your students good enough?”…and I say “You know I have this one student, he wrote a whole first edition of a comic book for a class and it was really, really good”, so he says “You mean the writing of the book was good, or the drawings?” and I say “Both”, and he says “can I have a look at this?”, so I say “Sure” and I sent him a copy of Explosion Man, I hope you don’t mind, and I sent a few of the other drawings you have done for me, and I got a call back today from him saying “This kid is great, can you send him in for an interview”, and I say “sure, well I’ll have to call him to see what he thinks”, which is what I’m doing right now….making the call I mean….to you”

“Fuck” I responded “Oh sorry I didn’t mean to swear”

“Don’t worry about it man….fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck….sorry…I’m just so excited for you…so I assume you’re as keen as superman is strong?”

“Of course…..that’s just amazing….I had never even thought of such a thing”

So as it turned out, two days later I skipped school to go to a job interview in the city. You may have heard before that I don’t like job interviews. In fact I would say I am quite crap at them. I am about as good at them as superman is good at losing arm wrestles with six year old girls. This was not an interview I wanted to screw up though. So I called in my super hero - Hannah, and asked once again for her to save me.

Hannah told me that first impressions would be very important, so I would have to dress up. Despite the fact she had chosen several outfits which I looked good in, none of these apparently would make a good first impression for a job interview with a major production company. I needed a suit.

So Hannah again took me to a second hand clothes shop, a different one from the time before, and again she managed to sort through racks and racks of crap and find some good stuff. She found me a dark grey suit with a light pin strip, and a white shirt and black shoes. And amazingly I looked dashing in it, or has Hannah put it “As handsome as a penguin in a tuxedo”, which I didn’t think made any sense, so she thought again and said “so good, that I’d rip your clothes off and do you right here, if that didn’t mean you were no longer wearing the suit”. That was enough for me, so I bought it.

Hannah then oh so sweetly spent the next twenty four hours showering me with more compliments than a supermodel demands from a photographer. “You’re hot”, “You have such a nice voice”, “Your drawings are so good”, “You’re the most creative person I’ve ever met”. It got to the point that by the time I was on my way to the interview I actually had begun to believe some of it. I felt good, and confident, and in control. Until I got to the building.

The building was a gigantic sky scrapper, one of the ones that you could see from the hotel where I met Lisa, and EMK’s reception was on the seventy second floor. As I walked though the lobby, looking dashing as I’d mentioned, I gradually became less and less confident, and more and more sweaty, and my heart rate got faster and faster, and my confidence fell off a precipice and was free falling towards a pile of jagged rocks on the ground below me. I got into the biggest lift I had ever been in, which had television screens on each wall showing a news channel, and in the lift with me were four men in suits. They all looked so much older and so much more mature and important than me. As we climbed the levels, so fast that the blood in your head drained to your feet and you felt like fainting, well I did, might have been the nerves too; people began to get off and others began to get in, each one looking about a million times more capable than I had ever been, at anything.

On each stop I was faced with a reception desk, often with a cute girl sitting behind it, with those ear piece things that important people wear, so that they don’t have to pick up the phone to answer it. It looked so daunting to have to walk into one of those reception areas, watched as you come in, and have to explain who you are.

After about four or five stops we were only on the forty eighth floor and I was beginning to think it might take quite a while to get to my floor. But then in one big whoosh we flew up and the doors opened to a reception area with two girls behind it and big letters EMK behind. My floor.

I stumbled out, feeling light headed from the lift, and said “I’m Jason Domey….here t t t o s s s ee Shannon Michaels”. “Great, that’s all I need - to suddenly develop a stutter?” I thought to myself. I was told to take a seat and wait. It didn’t take long. I had assumed that Shannon Michaels was a man, sounds like a mans name to me, but it turned out to be a women. She was about forty and dressed like a twenty year old, in jeans and a t-shirt, and had a really friendly face.

“Hi, Jason, I’m really glad you could come in” She said as I rose to shake her hand.

“Thanks for asking me” I replied. I was happy with this response, I sometimes really screw up first comments in situations like this, I’d say something like “Why, didn’t you think I would come” and suddenly think about nothing else except what a stupid comment it was I’d just made, until I had basically missed the next three things the person had said to me, then panic about that, then fall in a crumpled heap. ‘Thanks for asking me’, wasn’t brilliant, but it wasn’t bad, I suddenly felt relaxed.

She took me into this board room with the best view I had ever seen in my life, it looked like you could see the whole world from up there, it was a clear day and the city looked incredible, so vast and so peaceful from so high up.

“Great view isn’t it” ..Shannon.. said, she must have seen my jaw resting on my shoes, and my eye balls squashed up against the window

“Just awesome” I replied

“Well you’ll get to see it everyday pretty soon”

“I’ll get to, not I might get to, not if I we offer you something you will get to, just you’ll get to, that sounds good” I thought to myself

“So sit down”

“Thanks”

“Your not quite what I was expecting, Jason”

“How so? I asked “How fucking so?” I thought

“I don’t know, your more handsome than I was expecting, better dressed…I was expecting your stereotypical comic book nerd….I guess that’s what I get for having stereotypes…its not like that’s what most people in here look like”

“Thanks” I replied

“This is going fucking great” I thought

“So tell me about yourself Jason”

“Um well ok….well…..my name is Jason, some people call me JayJay…um…I’m 21”

“No, no, I mean tell me about you…what do you like to do?” she interrupted me with

“I don’t know….I guess I spend most of my free time either with school, or hanging out with my friend Hannah, or working on my comic book”

“You mean Explosion Man? Well yes I have read your first edition, it’s really good”

“Thanks”

“And you still work on it a lot?”

“Yeah…all the time…I’ve done three editions now”

She seemed to like this answer because she just smiled warmly for a good twenty seconds and then said “I’d love to read those one day”

“I’m sure that can be arranged”

“Quick” She tossed me a pad and a pencil “draw me Desert Fire running”

“Oh no – a test” I thought....

“Ok” I said, before spending about two minutes drawing a pretty rough version of Desert Fire with my hand shaking like I had recently picked up a nasty bout of Parkinson’s disease, and handed it over to her

“Remarkable, you’re very talented JayJay”

“Thanks”

“Well I don’t know what John told you about the position we’re offering you yet, but it will be a semi-fulltime, five days a week, but you’ll have some afternoons off so you can still study, you’ll be working on drawing for a new cartoon we are producing, its called “The reluctant hero”, its about a horribly shy high school nerd who has discovered he has super powers but is too shy to use them so far, I think you’ll like it……you’ll mostly be doing drawings, but you’ll also have the opportunity to offer some creative input….um….what else….oh you’ll be starting on $40,000 a year, but that has lots of potential to move, as you become more accustomed to the work….so how does that all sound?”

“So you’re actually offering me this….its not a maybe still?”

“No this is the actual offer….you’re very good JayJay, we want people like you working here”

“That sounds fantastic then” I said

“That sounds fucking absolutely fucking unbelievably fantastic” I thought to myself

“So can you start on Monday, um not next Monday, but the Monday after, the first of the month?”

“Yes”

“That’s great….one more thing, you don’t have to wear suits in here…we just wear whatever we want…….oh just one more thing, here is a sheet for you” she handed me a form “you can fill this out anytime before you start, but can you just make sure you drop it off by say….the twenty eighth….it just asks what kind of snacks you like, and what you like to drink….see every desk has a bar fridge and we fill it up with whatever you want at the start of the month…don’t worry you can change it every month…we like to keep our employees happy around here….you’ll find out some other cool stuff once you start”

“That’s…..that’s bloody great”

She smiled “Yeah most people like that”

We said our goodbyes and see you soons, and I caught the lift and walked out of the building feeling the happiest I had in my entire life, can you believe that? Happy! From being offered a job, but what a brilliant job!, I felt happier than if the government had made a new law requiring all attractive girls to be naked at all times, I felt happier than if I ran into a homeless man and discovered it to be Julian or Christian, or one of the other assholes from my school, I felt happier than if I had won the lottery, I felt happier than if the girl of my dreams suddenly knocked on my door and said she was in love with me, I felt on top of the world, it was just down right incredible.

I was so excited when Hannah knocked on my door that night, coming around to see how it all went, even though I was naked at the time, and had to quickly get dressed, she always had a way of knocking on my door while I was in the middle of something. Well ok, I guess I should be honest with you, I mean you know most of my dirty secrets by now, I guess this isn’t the time to start lying, it didn’t seem important, but the truth is I wasn’t getting dressed, I was lying on bed naked, you know with a magazine open in front of me, it was an exciting day, why not spread my excitement all over my body? Anyway Hannah was knocking on the door, and I had to rush to get dressed. Only thing was when I finally opened the door, trying to stand in a way to hide my only semi-disappearing erection, it wasn’t Hannah standing there. It was Ellie.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

“Nobody gets everything right”

Hannah spent the next few weeks in a desperate attempt to cheer me up. She kept telling me that I shouldn’t be so upset about Lisa, that I should be happy that I had done so well in chatting her up that night. Apparently a girl losing her virginity isn’t something she does just because some guy, any guy, is willing to relive her of it. Not like me, I gave mine to a fat old hairy person who barely resembled a female. Apparently the fact that Lisa had waited till she was twenty already and then decided that night, and JayJay Domey, was going to be her first time, was a sign that I was actually completely desirable. I mean for the rest of her life when she thought back to when she first did the deed, it would have been me that she thought of.

I’m not sure if that made me feel better or worse. I mean the thought of being remembered forever by anyone sounded pretty good to me. So the thought of missing that was awful. Of course the thought that she was willing to have that be me was quite good. Although this also reminded me that forever more, when someone asked me to tell the story of my cherry being squashed, I would either have to lie, or would have to put up with five minutes of laughing and pointing in my direction. Also of course the fact that at this point that was still my only sexual experience didn’t really make me feel good. Not that I am lying around just dying for sex, well I am, but not enough to go and have sex with prostitutes or anything, but just to have your only memory of sex include the memory of an eight inch hair growing out of a mole, is not the best library of memories to keep.

It didn’t really matter though, because the reality was I wasn’t really pissed off about Lisa. I mean having a famous (I’d since done some research, and apparently 'Lost in Life' are fucking HUGE, so my lack of recognition for them became a huge embarrassment in hindsight. Does anyone else get really embarrassed in hindsight? I mean the moments passed – so what if I made a fool of myself two weeks ago, I didn’t know that I was then, I didn’t feel it then, it wouldn’t even be the humiliating event of the night that they would remember. I did though, I always allow stupid emotions to cripple me, hindsight humiliation, HH, can you go to a psychologist and complain you suffer from HH?) band like L-I-L all laughing hysterically at you because you had misunderstood another countries slang and missed an opportunity to de-virginise a pretty young Canadian girl, who had already let you fondle her ample bosoms while an orgy was taking place between three band members and a bunch of groupies, is not the best way to end an evening. But I did feel good that I had gotten so far with Lisa, I also felt good that it wasn’t because she was drunk or desperate, we just liked each other in the moment. I’d never been liked in the moment before, at least not while I knew in that moment, and I had certainly never seen a girl, liked her and taken a chance and had some success before. That was all great.

What I really felt bad about though was Ellie. I mean I loved Ellie, maybe not in that way an eighty year old man loves his seventy nine year old wife who he met down by the lake way back when he was thirteen and she was twelve. But I did love her, in my way. And I had lost her, after just a fleeting moment of thinking she could be mine. And why? Not because she didn’t like me back, not because I had done something wrong, but because she thought seeing me would make her want to have sex with me and that wouldn’t be right while she had a boyfriend she didn’t want to be her boyfriend. That’s enough to make anyone upset, especially someone like myself.

I didn’t tell Hannah this though. She would have made me fight for Ellie, I know Hannah well enough by now. She would be getting me to make some grand gesture or at least tell Ellie how I felt, and the reality is I just didn’t have the guts. I wanted to call her, but I was so nervous about that roommate boyfriend of hers answering that the furthest I ever got was dialing her number a couple of times and hanging up before it even started ringing.

I did send her some txt messages, one time I even got a reply, it said “JayJay, please stop txting me, I just can’t see you, I know you understand”.

I wrote a text back saying “Understand, fuck no I don’t understand, it makes no fucking sense to me” but then sent to Hannah. Hannah called and said what’s wrong, and I lied and said that I was still upset about the Canadian party. This was not the right thing to say.

About fifteen minutes later Hannah was knocking on my door. She was dressed in one of her “everyone look at me, and just wish you could fuck me” outfits, with more skin showing than clothes.

“We’re going clubbing” She said

“Hhhhmmmn…..well…..no….I don’t really want to” I replied

“I know you don’t JayJay” She said in a breathy tone which suggested that she had heard all this crap before and knew it was coming again, but still didn’t really want to go through our usual pattern, which of course I made her go through.

“You can’t stay in this apartment all night…..You owe me…..Stop feeling sorry for yourself….it will be fun, I promise….if you don’t like it we can come home early, but you have to come for a little while….lets go inside and get you all dressed up….have I told you how cute your looking lately…..if a virgin like Lisa liked you, think how much all those sluts in a nightclub will want you…..what if I promise you’ll get laid tonight, promise, absolutely, I’d even do it myself with you if we cant find someone else who will….no not pity sex, sex with you would be great for anyone…..I reckon I would know ten girls I could get around to sleep with you tonight…..no I wont get them around…..how about this if we go out tonight and you don’t pick up a cute chick, and take her home tonight, then I’ll introduce you to all my friends that would sleep with you….or how about if you come out and even of you do get some I’ll still introduce you….you know I’m right about this don’t you….have I ever steered you wrong before…..I mean the Canadian thing was partly my fault, but look how good you did…..come on JayJay…I’ll be your best friend forever…..I’ll let you touch my tits….seriously…..look” She said before raising her top to reveal herself to me.

“O….k I’ll come” I said as I reached out to grab them only to have Hannah pull her top down before I got there, then give me a hug, and say “Not till the end of the night, and only if you don’t get any others”

Hannah must somehow have sensed reluctance on my part to come with her, because she came straight in, had a go at me for leaving all of my clothes on the floor, and then found the ones she thought looked best, or maybe were just cleanest, and practically dressed me herself. She then dragged me out of the apartment by my arm and down to the train station.

The club she chose for our evening of fun was called ‘The Secret Box’, which I thought was a little inaccurate, seeing as there were about fifty people waiting to get in “not a huge secret” I thought. For once Hannah didn’t know anyone, so we had to wait in line like everyone else. This turned out not to be too bad, as the line did include two scantly dressed cuties. I mentioned to Hannah that I thought by their dress that they were obviously up for sex tonight. They were both dressed the same, but in different colors, with tight barely more than a bra tops, small barely more than underpants shorts, and knee high fury boots, which looked like polar bear feet. Hannah said that this attire didn’t necessarily mean they were looking for male attention. Apparently some girls just get dressed up all scantly just for a girl’s night of dancing, and don’t actually want to meet any boys. Seems a bit fucking stupid to me, if you don’t want to attract guys, why wear clothes that will attract them, I will never understand the other sex.

Despite the fact that most of the guys were wearing clothes quite similar to mine, I felt completely out of place as I entered the club. I felt like a black man at a Klu Klux Klan meeting, and I was sure everyone was starring at me. Hannah saw it differently, as we sat down at a table she said “Did you see all those girls check you out on the way in, well you do look hot, even if I did pick that outfit out myself”. I didn’t feel hot, well I did, I mean it was stinking hot down there, there were no windows and the place was packed with people dancing and heating up the place, but I didn’t feel that kind of hot.

Hannah said she would get drinks and asked what I wanted, and I said I’d have whatever she got, and I was told that that wasn’t allowed, because she would be having a “girl drink”, and if I got one, the girls wouldn’t like me, and I should get a beer. Have I mentioned how silly I think girls can be sometimes yet?

So we sat back and I had a beer and Hannah had something which glowed florescent yellow, and she said I needed to have a game plan.

“What kind of game plan” I replied

“You know….what’s your tactics going to be…to pick up?”

“I don’t know…I don’t have tactics”

“What have you done in the past?”

“Hannah, I think you know me better than that by now….in the past I have just not come to places like this”

“You mean you have never been to a nightclub, ever!”

“Never ever” I honestly replied

“Oh my god”

“Just not my kind of thing really”

“What” She could hardly hear me, I could hardly hear her, the music was very loud

“JUST NOT MY KIND OF THING REALLY”

“Oh…..well I’m going to make it your thing”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“By making sure you have a good time”

“How do you plan on doing that?”

“I’m going to get you pissed off your face….I’m going to get you shaking your ass on the dance floor…and I’m going to get you fucking a moisty before the sun is up”

“What was that last bit….I can’t hear” I heard everything up till the dancing bit

“I”M GOING TO HAVE YOU FUCKING A HOT CHICK BEFORE THE SUN IS UP”

Why do the quiet bits of the songs always come on just as someone is yelling something like that at you? This particular line was heard by at least thirty people around us and I was more than happy to have all those people starring at me, and just delighted when one girl said “It won’t be me” in my direction.

Hannah did get one bit right, she was going to get me particularly pissed. She was buying me beers like they were some antidote to a severe disease I had contracted and I would die if I didn’t consume at least my own body weight in beer before ..two am...

Subsequently much of the rest of the night is a bit hazy. I have a great recollection of sitting with Hannah with her telling me to “drink up”. I have some memory of me being dragged out onto the dance floor and doing the ‘drunk mans stumble’ with Hannah for a while. I have an ok memory of Hannah telling me numerous times that apparently some girl had “Checked me out” and I should go over and talk to her. I have some memory of telling Hannah over and over “I just can’t…I’m sorry”. I also have some memory of sitting on a stool feeling kind of ordinary while Hannah went and talked to just about every girl in the entire place. I didn’t really like the thought of her trying to talk girls into having sex with me. I did like the thought of her being successful at it. I didn’t like the fact that none of them actually came over.

I have no memory of the time Hannah swears I went up to a girl and said “My friend says I am going to get laid tonight, so do you want to come home with me?” Seems like something that firstly I wouldn’t have done, and secondly if I did I would remember, or at least I would still be able to see the mark left on my face from where she inevitably would of slapped me. I also have no memory of when Hannah apparently made good on her promise to let me feel her breasts if I didn’t get to feel any others, also sounds like something I would remember.

I do have a memory of waking up next to Hannah, who was wearing one of my t-shirts, and had her arm around me, and thinking “This isn’t bad”, then urgently launching myself off the top bunk, slamming down on the floor right on the side of my foot, then vomiting on the carpet next to me as I screamed in pain at my now rapidly swelling badly sprained ankle.

I also have memory of the next two weeks when I couldn’t walk and had to get around on crutches, and was in severe pain for long periods. Although I also have memory of the two cute girls who came up to me that week to see if I needed any help. I didn’t, but I wish I had of. Maybe I should have just lied and said “Some help would be great”. Why do I always think of these brilliant ideas way, way, way after the event?

Unfortunately despite all that had resulted from Hannah’s attempts to cheer me up, I was still feeling rather down. For once it just seemed that Hannah was not going to be the person who would turn my frown up side down. It was about to happen though. And it happened from one of the least likely sources imaginable.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“Sometimes what would be considered a success to you will be considered a failure to others;

That doesn’t mean you have been any less successful”

I sat down on the floor outside her room for a few minutes, feeling rather despondent, and a little unsure about what to do next. The thought of the full on orgy taking place in the bands room was rather a turn on when I was getting some loving myself. Now it made me feel sick, just slutty girls and asshole guitarists taking advantage of their starry eyed fantasies.

I clearly couldn’t just go sit in the corner and watch until they were done, and then ask if there was somewhere I could sleep. “Where the hell is Hannah?” I thought to myself. There really was nothing for me to do except go for a walk. I went down the hall to the lifts and waited for one to arrive. When I got in I studied what was on each of the floors, conference rooms, and ball room, and restaurant, lobby of course, and ah hah, a fitness centre.

It was the middle of the night so the fitness centre wasn’t staffed and had no other guests around. I went inside to the gym area and found numerous televisions, and was able to put one on and sit on a bench press bench and watch some weird sport from ....Sweden.... which seemed like a cross between indoor soccer and dodge ball. “Not quite as good as having sex with Lisa” I mumbled to myself.

I’m not sure how long I was watching for, I just remember waking up sometime later with a security guard standing over me.

“What are you doing down here….the fitness center is closed?” He grumbled at me. He was an old man, must have been seventy, but he was still strong, I could tell by the strength he put behind the pokes he was giving me

“I’m sorry” I said

“What room are you in?”

“I haven’t got a room”

“Then what are you doing in this hotel?”

“I am hear for a party…..with the band….you know up stairs….L-I-L….I mean lost in life”

“Are you really with them?”

“Yes”

“What room are they in then?”

“2407….it’s the suite, top floor….down the hall…on the right”

“Ok….well why aren’t you at the party then?”

“They were…um….they”
”They were what?”

“Well to be honest…they were having sex…..I couldn’t stay”

“The girls left that room an hour ago” he grunted

“Are you sure?”

“I’m quite sure….the guys called me to have them removed themselves”

“Ok….well I guess I better go back up”

“I think you better lad; because if I catch you sleeping in the fitness centre again, you won’t be coming back into this hotel ever again….you got me”

“Yes sir”

So I made my way back over to the lift, stalked the whole way by this grumbly old security guard, “I have always hated fucking security guards!” I thought to myself. He watched me press the button for the twenty fourth floor, then gave me a look which said “You’re under my power now, you little brat, and I’ll wield that power over you any chance I get”. I didn’t really want to go back to the room, but I knew I had to now. Who knows what that old prick would of done if he thought I was lying about being with the band?

I opened the door slowly and eeked my way through it, expecting everyone else to be asleep. They weren’t. Instead the three guy band members were all sitting on the couches, dressed again fortunately, smoking cigarettes.

“HERE HE IS” One of them yelled at me as soon as they spotted me coming in

“I HAVE TO SHAKE YOUR HAND AYE” Another of them said, before they all got up and grabbed my hand and shook it so hard that I semi dislocated my shoulder

“What have I done?” I said

“HEY….WHAT’S ALL THE FUCKING RACKET OUT HERE…SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO SLEEP IN HERE” Hannah yelled as she finally came out of the bedroom, with messed up hair, and wearing pajamas

“Your friend JayJay here has cracked that Lisa…..us boys have been trying to pry open those legs since she came to visit Marlin in Malaysia” One of the band members said to Hannah

“Did you really? I’m so happy for you JayJay” Hannah said to me, suddenly awake and excited

“I didn’t do much” I replied

“No need to be modest there Jay aye…we saw what you two were getting up to on the floor over there….and you’ve been off in her room for three hours” the third band member said

“Woo woo…go JayJay” Hannah said with a huge smile

“I wasn’t in her room….I was in the gym” I said

“Don’t give us that…you had her practically cumming all over the floor there just from sucking on those titties of hers….she was gagging for you to fuck her aye”

“That’s what I thought….she just needed me to help her with her fucking room key though…then I didn’t want to come back….you know with what you guys were doing in here” I said

“She wanted help with her fucking room key?” one of them screamed completely in shock “what a bitch aye….I would of bet one of my houses on her wanting to do you” Said band mate two

“You’re telling me…..can I ask you guy’s one thing though?” I asked

“What?” They all said

“Why do you guys call your keys V-cards?”

Suddenly they all burst out it fits of laughter. They were absolutely pissing themselves

“Ha ha she said ha ha ha….that she wanted help, ha ha ha ha …with her V-card” One of them laughed out “Ha ha and you thought ha ha ha and you thought ha ha ha that she meant her ROOM KEY” Laughing like hyenas. It must be hard to be a hyena everyone thinks they’re laughing at everything. Maybe that’s why they are so vicious; they’re just trying to prove how tough they really are. You don’t look like you’re laughing while you’re ripping the flesh off a giraffe! Just another example of a cliché that’s not fair on animals isn’t it? Like ‘Hungry as a hippo’, they’re big ok? They like to eat, leave them alone. Anyway

“What is a V-card then?” I asked now a little concerned

“A V-card isn’t a room key JayJay” Hannah said, not joining in on the laughing “A V-card is Canadian slang….meaning virginity….if you have still have your V-card, then you still are a virgin”

“No fucking way” I said

“By the sounds of it….Lisa was asking you to take her virginity” She continued

“No Fucking way” I said

This made the boys laugh even harder, they laughed like they had just smoked a forest of pot and were watching videos of monkeys eating poo. It had been a while since a room full of cool guys had laughed themselves stupid at my continued misfortune. I can’t say I’d missed it.

“I’m sorry JayJay” Hannah said

“Can we go?” I replied

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

“Sometimes you can do everything perfectly and it still not be enough!

Normally when a situation like this one arose, well not exactly like this, I mean something like this had never happened, but circumstances where something bad happened to me, in the past I would have escaped into a hole and not come out for weeks, and that’s what I felt like doing, but Hannah would have none of it. She just happened to stop by the next day out of the blue. By now I had gotten quite use to the fact Hannah was a stop in out of the blue kind of girl.

I asked her about it once, and she said it was because when you stopped in on people out of the blue you could read their faces and see if they really were happy to see you or if they weren’t quite happy to have you around, that way, she said, you could tell who your real friends are.

I questioned why it didn’t disappoint her then that I wasn’t always so enthusiastic about her presence, and she said that she had learnt early on how to read even my faces, and that no matter how much I resisted, she could tell that deep down, even if only subconsciously, I was always happy to see her.

She was right! I was always happy to see her. Even the times when she would rope me into doing things that from the outset I was completely against the idea of. She would talk me into it. I would go and complain the whole time. Then I would come home and smile and be happy that I had tried something out of the ordinary, and realize that most of the time they ended up being great experiences.

It was the same this time. Outwardly the thought of doing something new and social with Hannah while I was heartbroken, seemed about as appealing as trying to make a sculpture of my own body by carefully extracting a thin layer of skin from my entire body to use as a mold.

However inside, down where this painful extraction wouldn’t be felt, I was ecstatic that Hannah was on my couch about to explain idea for an interesting way to spend the evening. I mean I wanted to curl up in a ball in the corner and cry, but I knew for the future, for tomorrow and the next day, I would be much happier letting Hannah guide me. Maybe that’s a sign of maturity, being willing to do the thing you fear because you know it will improve your tomorrow, I was happy that making decisions like that were becoming easier for me.

As we walked down the street Hannah explained that she was taking me to a hotel, for a Canadian party. Despite recognizing my growing maturity, I still had a whinge about this plan.

“A Canadian Party?” I whinged

“Ok JayJay (I’d told Hannah the story of Ellie by now, she laughed at me at first. First because she said she knew that Ellie had a boyfriend, and if I had only told her that I liked her she could of warned me off. Then she saw how upset I was about it all, and started to sympathize with me, which didn’t stop her at all for laughing at me when I told her about telling Ellie my name was JayJay, she laughed her ass off, then said under no circumstances would she ever call me anything else, I wasn’t overly upset about that) lets just skip the usual pattern this time” she said “I’ll give you a guilt trip….you’ll give in….you’ll come….you’ll have a great time….tomorrow you will call me to tell me how endlessly grateful you are that I was born into this world…and I’ll say most people are grateful for the existence of Hannah….and you’ll agree…and I’ll bask in the glory of my popularity….and you’ll worship my wisdom”

“Ok”

So off we went into the city and into one of the fanciest hotels in town. We got dirty looks from the staff as we walked through the lobby and into the elevators, I don’t think we really looked like the hotels usual clientele, and then we got the elevator to the top floor. We walked down the hallway towards the room at the end with music blaring out from it so loud that the whole hallway seemed to shake.

Just as we were about to knock on the door it suddenly swung open and out stumbled a clearly drunk man with long hair and no shirt on, carrying a bottle of champagne in one hand, and a beautiful blonde girl in the other hand, wearing nothing but her underwear and an open robe.

“HANNAH” He yelled as he spotted us “EVERYONES IN THERE MAN….I”M JUST GOING DOWN TO MY ROOM FOR A MINUTE (he looked down at the girl he had his arm around who was about a foot shorter than him) well what do you think hon, maybe three or four minutes this time?”

“I don’t know if you’re capable of that sort of stamina” She replied to him.

We all had a laugh (mine was the fake sort – I was a little too nervous about this impending situation to actually laugh), then me and Hannah walked in.

The room was the biggest hotel room I had ever seen. It was about three times as big as my parent’s house, and had this awesome view of all the surrounding sky scrappers. Sitting around on the numerous couches and chairs were three members of what was now clearly a band. All three had long hair and tons of tattoos, they all had some form of facial hair, one had massive hairy side burns and looked like he should have been living in the seventies, and one had a goatee beard which was about ten inches long, and the third just looked like he hadn’t had a shave in about six days.

Sitting around these three rockers were about twenty different music instruments lying all over the place and about ten of what I guess I would describe as groupies, all girls, all semi naked, all about seventeen or eighteen, all listening to every word which these guys were saying as if they were Gandhi.

Sitting over in a corner were two girls who didn’t seem to fit the mold of the rest of them. One of them was dressed a lot more like the band mates; she had red streaks in her hair, and red make up around her eyes, and was dressed in tight black leather pants and a black baggy ripped singlet. The other one looked completely out of place; she was a little round, and wearing jeans and a jumper which said ‘....University.. of ..Calgary....’ on it.

We entered the room barely noticed by anyone. Until suddenly the rocker looking of the girls in the corner looked up, her face exploded into a huge smile, and she ran over and launched herself at Hannah with a big hug, which then turned into a brief competition on which of them could lift the other the most of the ground.

“How was your show?” Hannah asked the girl

“It was awesome aye….you guys have the best crowds here” She replied

“This is Marlin” Hannah said to me as introduction “She is the lead singer of ‘Lost in Life’”

“Oh my god nice to meet you” I said like a huge fan, even though I had never heard of the band ‘Lost in Life’

“This is JayJay” Hannah said with a smile

“This is my friend Lisa” Marlin said pointing out her friend who had slowly come over to join the rest of us

“Nice to meet you” She shyly responded

“HANNAAAAAAH” The other three band members suddenly screamed out from over on the couch

“Not many girls tonight? Must have had an off night boys” Hannah said back to them all, suddenly making all the groupies look a little self conscience

“You don’t need more than this when they look as nice as these girls do!” One of them responded, making the girls instantly seem happy again

“Do you guys want a drink?” Marlin asked us

“Yeah we’ll both have a beer” Hannah replied for us both

“I’ll help” Said Lisa, and the two of them walked off towards the kitchen area where a makeshift bar was set up

Hannah explained to me while they were gone that she had met Marlin a couple of years earlier when she was out here as a backpacker. Marlin was singing on the street to make some extra cash, and Hannah had stopped to have a listen and couldn’t walk away, she was just that good. At the end of her set Hannah had gone up to talk to Marlin and they had become good friends for the rest of her holiday.

Hannah said how she was just so proud that Marlin and her band had become such massive world wide stars, and I sat there wondering who the hell they were. I mean Marlin did look semi familiar, but the rest didn’t, and the name ‘Lost in Life’ didn’t sound familiar at all.

The girls came back over with two beers for us, they were called ‘Elk Beer’, and Hannah complained at them for bringing their own stuff from home, and not trying the local stuff. Marlin said that the tour organizers had done it all. Marlin was drinking some weird looking light pink cocktail, and Lisa was drinking a coke.

“Hey I have to show you something aye” Marlin said to Hannah, and they suddenly disappeared off into a one of the bedrooms of the suite, leaving me alone with Lisa

“So” I said

“So” She replied

“Yeah”

“Yeah”

“So do you like know Marlin from ....Canada....?” This was a stupid question, she clearly did, for one thing she had a Canadian accent, and secondly she was clearly hoping to stick to Marlin the way I was hoping to stick to Hannah. Lisa was giving off that same odor that I know I always do in these situations, the odor of uncomfortabilty. At first I started to panic about the fact that I was about to have a conversation littered with devastatingly embarrassing silences, lots of one word answers to five word questions, and with us both constantly looking over towards the bedroom door which Hannah and Marlin were in, preying that it opened as soon as humanly fucking possible. Then I remembered my mantra, “How can I improve my situation right now”, and decided that I wasn’t going to fall into the normal bloody traps. I could tell Lisa was shy as hell. That’s something I know all about. I knew what she was going through, and I knew that she was not standing there worrying about whether I said something stupid, she would be happy for me to say anything at all. I could be the one in control here. I could be the outgoing one, the talkative one, the interesting one. It was an interesting and alluring position to be in. I suddenly felt in control.

“Yeah” She replied with a one word answer

“So how did you become friends?” I asked “that’s the way to do it, ask questions with no possible one word answer” I thought to myself

“We actually went to school together aye”

“And you’ve been friends ever since?”
”Yeah…been like ten years now”

“That’s great….so what did you think when she told you she wanted to be a rock star?”

“I always knew she could do it…she used to sing all the time when we were younger, just on the playground at school and stuff aye”

I began to relax and just sort of interview Lisa the way Hannah’s friends had done with me at that dinner party. I found out that Marlin had been a bit upset that the two of them hadn’t been able to spend much time together, since ‘L-I-L’ (as Lisa called the band) had become so huge, and Marlin had convinced Lisa to come on this tour with her, even though Lisa had been reluctant. She was having a good time, she mostly enjoyed the opportunities to go site seeing on the days they weren’t traveling, they had been all though Asia already and had seen some awesome stuff, but she was less happy on gig nights when the band would have post gig parties and bring all these slutty girls back, which made her feel uncomfortable.

The more I talked to Lisa the more I liked her. She was just so sweet and down to earth. And the more I liked her, the more attractive she became to me. She was a little overweight, but she wasn’t really fat or anything, just roundish, she did have quite large breasts, you can’t complain too much about that. And her face was more than pleasant to look at, nice smile, nice blue eyes, and long wavy blonde hair.

I asked her about what she did back home - she was at university studying to be a dental assistant, which I told her she must be nuts to want to do. I mean who wants to suck blood out of people’s mouths while dentists drill holes in their teeth, and while the patient rolls around in absolute agony. That’s not what I wanted out of a career. Lisa said she just wanted to help people, and didn’t have good enough marks to be a doctor, or nurse, or dentist, so this was the best she could do. I thought that was amazingly generous of her, to do a job which is gross, and which is rarely appreciated by the patients at the time, but is most certainly helping them in a time of distress.

She told me about the ..Rockies.., which she now lived just on the fringe of. She talked about them with such wonderment in her voice that I suddenly had a desperate urge to take up skiing.

After a while I realized that we had been talking for a long while and Hannah and Marlin were still hidden away in that bedroom. I asked Lisa what the hell they could be doing, and she just rolled her eyes and said “I have an idea”. She didn’t elaborate though.

.. ..

I decided not to raise the fact that the band on the couches with the groupies had now turned into the band on the couches having an orgy with the groupies. I had barely noticed it happening, I had just turned around one time and the three guys all had their heads back with there mouths open making faces like their brains were being sucked out of their ears. They all had a selection of girls on their knees in front of them. Didn’t seem like too bad a position to be in.

Lisa had obviously noticed before me, she was in a much better position to watch than me, and she hadn’t said a word. So I decided to just ignore it and keep chatting about mountains. I did start to look around slightly more frequently though. It was a little weird to be sitting on the floor while three guys were having sex with three girls each right behind me. “Lucky fucking bastards I thought”, “How can I become a rock star?”

About the third time I swung around, one of the girls was in the process of giving oral sex to one of the other girls who was lying on the couch, while one of the guys was having sex with her from behind; while another girl was sitting legs open naked above them just watching.

I casually turned back around like nothing was going on and said “So are the views nice from the chairlifts?” Meanwhile a mountain of its own was developing in my pants, which was in desperate need of some skiers sliding down it. I couldn’t just sit there like that and do nothing.

One of the girls separated from the group behind me and walked past us down the hall towards the bathroom. Lisa turned as she walked past, just for a second watching where she was going, and when she turned back to face me I met her with a kiss.

.. ..

She jumped back from me, stunned at what I had done, I was semi stunned myself. Then she suddenly smiled and launched herself at me, pushing me onto my back and lying on top of me, before burying her tongue so deep in my mouth that I nearly choked. She pulled back off me and lifted her head up and smiled at me, I smiled back, she seemed to like this and responded by such rapid tongue movement in my mouth that it felt like a family of snakes were trying to make their way into my mouth to make a new home.

I couldn’t say I was an expert kisser by this stage of my career. So I was somewhat pleasantly surprised and somewhat unhappily surprised that Lisa was quite an ordinary kisser herself. Her method was to just open her mouth as wide as she could, then engulf my mouth with it, and move her tongue in and out of my mouth like she was trying do dig a burrow in my gums. This was good because I didn’t get embarrassed straight away that she would catch my inexperience out, which allowed me to relax a lot more, but then after a while I began to think “Really is this what people do when they kiss? It’s just not that good really”. It seemed to me that if billions of people decide to kiss each other as often as they do in this world, that there must be more to it. I wanted to know.

I grabbed Lisa around her waste, and rolled her onto her back so that I was on top of her. We caught each others eyes as we found a comfortable position for me to lie on her, and she looked about as happy as anyone I had ever seen, which in turn made me the happiest I had been in as long as I could remember. It was then that it hit me that I was in the process of making out with a cute Canadian girl, a girl who so easily could have just been another one of my all too many embarrassing conversation memories.

I moved back down towards her and began to gently kiss her neck; this made her arch her back in a way that let me know that she definitely liked it. So I continued to kiss her like that all around her neck and then up towards her right ear, and onto her cheek. I withdrew just for a second and could see her eyes closed and her lips pursed.

So I moved onto them, just gently, with one lip above hers, and one lip right in the middle. She went to open her mouth, just as I pulled away again, and she sort of kissed the air. As she completed this air kiss my mouth came back down and just sort of took hold of her upper lip. I withdrew again. Then repeated this, three or four times, this was more like it. The next time I held it there longer and kissed her fully, then again, this time allowing us to open our mouth long enough for our tongues to meet fleetingly.

I moved onto her neck again briefly, and Lisa started to breath heavier and moan lightly. This time when my lips met hers again we had a deep pure kiss with just the perfect amount of tongue and wetness.

“Ok now I get it” I thought to myself

“You’re such a good kisser JayJay” Lisa whispered to me

Our lips were like magnets now, couldn’t be apart for more than a minisecond, without sucking each other back together. It was awesome. I was feeling fantastic now, I was in control, I wasn’t nervous, I was confident. Time to move this little event on to another level!

My hands at this stage had gone nowhere apart from her back, or her sides, or her lower legs. I wanted to know where else they would be permitted to explore. First spot I wanted to get at was her ass, well the first place I was willing to try and make a move for anyway.

I rolled her back over so that she was on top of me. Then I started to rub her all over her back, moving further and further down until I reached her tail bone. I paused there for just a second then slowly slid each of my hands over each of her ass cheeks. She didn’t even flinch. So I started to squeeze and caress them. She had quite a big butt, but it wasn’t anywhere near as soft as I was expecting. It was just firm and round, and I got myself well acquainted with it, top to bottom, side to side. Once I was quite sure I had felt it up everyway possible, I decided to move to phase two.

Then I moved my hand back up towards her back, this time letting my hands slide under her jumper and under her t-shirt below. Her skin was soft and warm. She had just a little layer of fat around her sides, and it felt nice in my hands. I moved my hands up all over her back, so that I was pulling her in close to me and my whole hands and fore arms were up against her skin, it was delightful.

Meanwhile she had one exploring my hair, and her other one was being used as support on the ground as I engulfed her with my hands. I rolled her back over onto her back, and her other hand went immediately to my ass. This I took as a good sign. She obviously wasn’t upset about where I seemed to be moving our adventure.

I put one hand back under her shirt, just on her side, and moved it up over onto her tummy. She was lying on her back, so her stomach was all flat and quite firm; I rubbed it all over until I found her belly button, which I played with gently.

She pulled her lips away from mine just briefly, she needed to catch her breath for a second, but then jumped straight back in; she was clearly not in the mood for this to end yet. I decided to see how far up I could get my hand under her shirt. As I kissed her I would move my hand up just a couple of inches and hold it there. Then a couple of inches more and hold it there. Then again and again until my finger tips were up against the bottom of her bra. After a longer pause in this spot I suddenly moved my hand over her entire right breast and then over to the spot in the middle between the two of them. No protesting. This was a good sign. The second time I went for a breast grab, again at the right, this time I had a good solid grip on it. Oh it was magnificent. She truly did have gorgeous breasts. Much bigger than my hand could cover, which allowed me to move my hand in circles all around. I particularly liked the bit above the bra where the cleavage protruded from the bra and was soft and smooth.

She didn’t seem to mind at all where my hand was now at. So I moved my left hand underneath too and started to fondle her breasts like they two big chunks of clay that I was about to make a pot out of. I was in heaven. As good as it was though, as much as I had dreamed about a moment such as this for as long as I had had hair where there had previously been no hair, I still was feeling a little unsatisfied, I wanted more.

I decided to make a move towards the forbidden forest. Towards the slippery cavern. Towards the opening of desires. Towards the hole of opportunity. Towards the creator of life. Towards the best fishing spot god ever created. Then I realized if I was actually going to do that I should stop thinking up metaphors for the word vagina and make my move.

I moved my hand down off her breasts, reluctantly, I mean I could have quite happily continued fondling those for quite sometime, but I had other uncharted waters to explore. My hand slid down her stomach until it rested against the edge of her jeans. Then I let just the tip of my finger break the seal and rest up against the edge of her panties. No resistance, actually her only reaction was to suddenly stick her tongue in my mouth so deep that I’m sure she was licking my tonsils.

So on I pressed. I pushed my finger in further again, this time penetrating the edge of her panties. Still no resistance. So I suddenly thrust forwards so that my finger was now engulfed in her pubic hair, which caused me at once to nearly soil my underpants, I mean more than they were already, and also to realized my new major obstacle, my finger was no where near long enough to get all the way to the holy land, and her jeans were way too tight to consider getting my whole hand under there. This was just enough of an obstacle to give me an excuse to chicken out of that particular adventure, for now anyway.

I was very disappointed with this decision though. I had felt enough of that area to desperately want to feel a lot more, but I couldn’t summon up the confidence to undo her pants right there on the floor, despite the orgy going on just meters away from us. I needed a new plan, plan B, plan breasts. If I couldn’t get under those panties I wanted to get under that bra. I was less shy about going breast hunting now, and moved by hands back over them as casually as I would pick my nose at home alone, no self-consciousness at all.

After a good solid fondle I went for a tunnel under. Again I was struck down by tightness. It’s almost like these clothes items are designed to frustrate us boys. I pushed on in vain for several seconds until Lisa stopped me, “damn busted” I sighed to myself

“You can’t go under there” She said

“I’m sorry…I’ll be a good boy now…promise” I replied with hope pouring out of me that she wouldn’t cancel the whole thing because of one error in judgment

“No….I mean it will give me a breast wedgie if you put your hand under aye….hang on” Then she reached up under her jumper around her back, and when her hands reappeared she was holding her bra

“I like you” I thought

“Now come here sexy” She said to me as she pulled me back on top of her and returned to kissing games.

It didn’t take me long to return to my exploration, and the now naked breasts I found underneath were just down right spectacular. Like two enormous soft cushions. I squeezed and fondled and rubbed like a blind man trying to find his way home from the pub.

Then I decided to test out another of my senses on this area of wonder, my taste buds. I kissed my way back down her neck, then jumped down on to her stomach, and then kissed my way back up under her shirt so that my head was lost under there too. I couldn’t see where I was going but her breasts weren’t hard to find, like trying to find Everest I suppose, if you’re near by your going to run into it. I started licking and sucking like a lost sailor on a deserted island who had finally managed to get one coconut down from the tree. Until I found her nipple, which I engulfed with my mouth, so that it felt practically as big and as hard as my own erect body part. She moaned as I began to flick it with my tongue. I moved over to her other breast and repeated this and then swapped back and forth each time I ran out of air, having my entire mouth and nose smothered in sweet breast fat.

After a few times on each Lisa whispered “JayJay…..kiss me”, so I returned my tongue to other duties and began to think of a new plan of attack on the holy land. I had to try and undo those jeans, and there was no way to slowly move towards that, I just had to do it, right now. So down I went, both hands straight for her fly. “Why the hell do chicks have button up flies” I thought as I struggled with the first one, until I was caught by the holy lands defense.

“No JayJay” Lisa said

“Sorry” I replied

“Its ok….I just think its time for me to go to bed”

“Fuck, you’ve fucking fucked it haven’t you” I yelled at myself....

“Can you come with me….I need you to help me with something?”

“Ok I’ll come”

“Fuck yeah, I think you’re going to get fucked” I yelled at myself, this time with much more joy in my tone....

We rose to our feet and I looked down towards my crotch area. I was horrified to see not just a huge un-missable bulge like ..Mount Fuji.. in the Japanese country side, but surrounding it an enormous wet spot. I thought fast, and then pulled Lisa in towards me for a hug, she couldn’t see that if she was up against me, she could feel it, but surely by now she had felt that sticking into her.

I began to try and guide her towards the bedrooms, but she stopped me and said her room was down the hallway, even better. As we opened the door I couldn’t help but turn around and survey the scene behind me one more time. One of the band members was lying on the floor while one girl was riding him up and down, and one girl was squatting on his face. The two other guys were both having sex with one girl from behind, which I wasn’t quite sure how could actually work, while the rest of the girls just sat around watching in various states of self exploration. What a surreal night.

We walked down the hall holding hands until we reached Lisa’s room. When we got there she stopped and pushed me up against the wall and kissed me deeply and passionately. Then she stopped and turned to her door and pulled out her room keycard and began to fiddle with it in her hands.

“JayJay” She said

“Yeah Lisa” I replied

“This is sort of embarrassing”

“Don’t be embarrassed”

“Well you don’t know what I am about to say yet do you…..trust me its embarrassing”

“Its ok Lisa…..you don’t have to be embarrassed with me”

“I know”

“So just tell me”

“Ok……well the thing is…..I mean the reason that……that I brought you down here” She paused now for a long time all the while fiddling with her room keycard “is that I need…..I need your help with something”

“Yes”

“It’s just that…..I need you to help me with my V card”

“Your V card?” I repeated

“Yeah you know” The whole time she had been talking to me she had been starring down at that keycard in her hand, as she said this she looked up right into my eyes, just briefly, then looked right back down at her keycard.

“Oh your card….you need help with your card” I suddenly realized that she was talking about her keycard, she needed help using it to get into her room “You fucking prick tease, I really thought you might be bringing me down here to take me into your room, not help you get in and leave me all alone, fuck you” I thought, “No fuck you JayJay you stupid moron…you ruined this by trying to undo her pants….why cant you just be happy with what you get…you had unlimited access to a set of enormous breasts and as much kissing as you wanted…and you gave it up to try and get to a holy land your completely unprepared for” I yelled at my brain.

I took the key out of her hand and stuck it in the card slot at her door. It took about six slides in and out to get the green light to come on so we could open the door. “Now I know why she needed some help….not quite the sliding in and out I wanted” I thought. We paused there with the door open for a few seconds, with her standing in the door way and me using my eyes as best I could to plead with her to ask me in.

“So”

“So”

“Yeah”

“Yeah”

She kissed me. Then we paused again. Then she kissed me again. Then we paused again.

“So”

“So”

“Yeah”

“Yeah”

“I hate de-javu” I thought

Again she kissed me. Then she said “Goodnight” and suddenly closed the door and disappeared inside.

“FUCK” I screamed at my brain, so loud that if I was actually yelling it out of my mouth, instead of just in my head, then I would of woken people up in whole other cities.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Never ever give up;

All is never lost!”

Twenty three hours later and I was standing outside ‘Friendly Furniture’ not sure whether I was about to go on my first date or about to be beaten up for having the nerve to call Ellie up. The store closed at five, so I was concerned as to why Ellie would have me meet her an hour after closing when no one else would be around. Then she walked out the main doors and I could see why.

Ellie had clearly spent a good portion of the hour since closing getting herself all dressed up for our date. Yes it was now clearly a date. I could tell not just by how she was dressed but by that nervous rush of adrenalin your body pumps into your blood stream at moments where things could immediately go either very good or very bad.

Ellie was wearing a dress, one of those sexy ones with the frayed hem line which falls at an angle from the ground, it was light green and she looked incredible in it. She also had on high heels, which still left her shorter than me, and a nice array of jewelry and make up on. Quite a good deal different from her work outfit of shorts and a baggy bright red polo shirt with a “Friendly Furniture’ logo on it. I mean she looked great in her work outfit too, I already told you it was love at first site for me, but she was just breath taking in this dress. I did find it a little weird she would choose to get dressed up like this at work, rather than go home first, but hey if she was going to look like this, then choose to spend time with me, then she could of gotten changed in a filthy petrol station toilet for all I cared.

The best thing was that she seemed more than pleased to see me. She had a huge smile on her face “oh what a beautiful smile” I thought as she came up to me, and she gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek as a greeting. She even said “You look really nice”. I was most pleased with this comment as you could imagine. I was wearing more clothes that I had bought with Hannah, funky jeans with these cool “cat whisker” lines on them, and a button up black stripped colored shirt, with my old, old now cool again sneakers, and my “how cool am I?” haircut.

She asked if I liked pizza, which of course I had to reply yes to, and she said that she knew the best pizza place in town, right around the corner. We walked around and got ourselves a table.

“What topping do you like?” Ellie asked

“Um…..I like all sorts…but my fav is just pepperoni” I replied

“REALLY…me too…..they do an awesome pepperoni pizza here”

So started what ended up being a couple of hours of conversation which I have since titled ‘ME TOO’. Ellie and I talked about somewhere near a thousand topics and almost never failed to have a response which didn’t include “Me too” in there somewhere.

“What’s your favorite band?” She’d ask

“Radiohead” I’d reply

“Oh my god….are you serious….me too….they’re awesome aren’t they” Then we would talk about Radiohead for a while, then

“What’s your favorite soft drink? I’d ask

“Dr Pepper” She’d reply

“Are you kidding me….me too….I love Dr Pepper”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue”

“Me too”

“What’s your favorite season?”

“Autumn”

“Me too”

“What’s your favorite sport?”

“Soccer”

“Me too”

And so on and so on. We talked everything from entertainment preferences, sports, life histories, politics, food and beverages, just all sorts of things. And we had about as much in common as a pair of Siamese twins, only with it being a much less nauseating thought of us progressing the evening into some physical activity. I wonder if there is one of those weird fetish groups who get into Siamese twins having sex with each other. There are some sick people out there.

I’ve never found anyone so easy to talk to in my entire life. Usually when I talk to someone I spend half the time desperately trying to think of something to say, and I spend the rest of the time abusing my self for the crap that I have said already. With Ellie it was different. Different even from Hannah. Hannah is super easy to talk to, but that’s mostly because she does all the talking, she doesn’t mind at all when you reply with one word answers, and will keep asking a million questions even if I never really answer any of them. With Ellie though we really actually talked, I talked, I told her things about myself, I found myself talking to her about things I had never talked to anyone about. Things to do with my childhood and my family and school life, embarrassing stories and sad stories. Ellie had a way of looking at me which made me want to spill my guts about everything to her.

I guess that’s why people go to see shrinks. There was something very liberating about confessing some of my fears and hopes to Ellie. I always thought going to a councilor would be about the worst thing in the entire world, just spending an hour talking to a stranger about myself, who would then judge me on that, not for me thank you. Ellie made it easy though, partly I guess because she could often counter act one of my sob stories with one of her own.

“My dad made fun of me” I’d confess

“Really…that’s terrible…I’m so sorry JayJay” She would say with her gorgeous brown eyes full of empathy, then follow with “I know what that’s like….to have a bad relationship with your father…..my dad used to get really drunk then try and rape me!”

That sort of makes you feel just a little less hard done by because your dad called you junior when you didn’t want him to. Ellie’s never ending smile made me realize that happiness wasn’t such an unlikely prospect, if she could endure terrible things like her father trying (and thank god it was ‘try’ not ‘viciously’) to rape her, and still glow with happiness, then why not me. Ellie had a way of making me feel comfortable with her, like I had known her forever, and she seemed to be having similar feelings towards me.

By the time we had finished our pizza, I realized that it had been a long time since either of us had looked anywhere other than into each others eyes, except at our food of course, we weren’t eating by telekinesis, and without even remembering how, my finger tips were now gently rubbing hers.

“What should we do now?” Ellie asked after I had paid the bill (I’m nothing if I’m not a gentleman)

“I don’t want to go home yet” I replied

“Me either….so where should we go?”

“Can we go back to your place?”

“No…that’s not a good idea….my…..um….roommates home….can we go to your place?”

“Ok….its a bit messy though”
”That’s ok JayJay, I have a feeling I wont be looking at the floor much anyway!”

So we left the restaurant and jumped in a cab. In no time at all we were in my apartment and fighting our way through a pile of junk on the floor and moving over to the couch. Ellie said she liked the way I had decorated, but then again she had to didn’t she, she had sold me the furniture.

I threw a CD on and sat on the couch turning to face her.

“Do you get lonely living here all alone?” She asked me

“Yeah sometimes….some company would be nice” I replied

“Well we’ll have to see about finding you some more company” she said as she started to gently rub my knee

“Did you have anyone in mind?” I replied, with a hint of anticipation and nervousness in my voice

“I think you could have anyone you wanted here….I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be alone with you in such a cozy little apartment”

“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have here than you”

“Holy fucking shit…you smooth bastard, you do realize your going to have to move in for a kiss soon….oh my god my first real proper kiss with a girl I like….I hope I do it ok…please don’t fuck this up” I thought to myself as I moved in slightly closer

“I have had a really good time with you tonight JayJay”

“Me too”

“Me too”

“No….me me too”

“No me me too” Why are completely moronic exchanges so sweet under the right circumstances and a sign of a mental breakdown in others?

Then with my heart pumping full of love, adrenaline, nerves, fear and hope I slowly moved in to kiss her. Time went as fast as a turtle race as our lips slowly puckered and sucked together like two magnets. I could feel magic fill up the room as we inched closer and closer together. Then just as the thin layer of saliva which covered our lips oh so slightly touched, just not quite firm enough to break the surface and cause our lips to mold together as one, she suddenly jumped to her feet.

“I can’t do this” She said sounding like she was suddenly on the verge of tears

“Why not” I replied, crying like monsoonal hurricane – at least on the inside having gotten so close and not reached the pleasure of the kiss

“There is something you don’t know about me JayJay”

“What is it….I’ll understand”

“No you wont….you’re too sweet…you wont understand….you’ll think I’m awful”

“I could never think you’re awful….I think you’re the most wonderful person I can remember knowing”

“That’s exactly my point….you don’t know me….I’m not wonderful”

“What is it…you can tell me”

“I know I know I know….I have to tell you…I just don’t know how”

“Just spit it out”

“I can’t”

“Why not?”
”I just can’t”

“Ellie……please talk to me….we’ve had such a fantastic night…it can’t end like this” I replied with pure frustration, what had happened? What had I done to fuck everything up this time?

“I know I know I know….tonight has been perfect…that’s why this is so hard to tell you”

“But you have to now…don’t you…you can’t just leave me with all these horrible thoughts going through my mind without knowing which is true”

“That’s just the thing………what ever the worst thing you’re thinking is probably it” I hoped not. The worst thing I was thinking was that Ellie was actually a man, just dressed as a girl. That’s certainly not a good thing.

“I doubt it”

“Well what’s the worst thing you’re thinking?”

“Well the worst thing is that you were born a man”

She snorted a brief laugh out through her trembling voice “Well I guess it’s not the worst thing then”

“Well if not that…then what?”

“Ok……………………..ok……….sorry………ok”

“Just spill it….please”

“Ok…..well…….um….you know my roommate?”

“No”

“You spoke to him on the phone the other night”

“Oh….yeah that prick”

“Well the thing is he isn’t really my roommate……………..he’s my boyfriend………has been for six years”

“Fuck”

“See I knew you wouldn’t want to know that…………I’m so sorry JayJay…..I had the best time tonight……….you’re an amazing guy”

“Ok” I said as the monsoon inside started to crack some of the facial areas

“I’m sorry….I better go”

Then before I had the chance to muster up a don’t go argument, she had put on her coat and left me alone.

Ellie called the next day and told me two things. One of those things is something which I suspect every man on earth has dreamed of hearing from an attractive girl. The other was not as delightful.

The first thing she told me was that she was quite convinced that if she ever saw me again she would be unable to refrain from the act of sexual intercourse with me. Apparently she liked me and was attracted to me sufficiently enough that it would beyond her control levels to stop herself literally ripping my clothes off me and mounting me like a cowboy mounts a horse with the boom of the chasing sheriffs rifle in the background. This was the good thing she told me, in case you were wondering. ....

Obviously Ellie to me was a lot more than a potential sex toy. I mean there was certainly nothing I could think of which would have stopped me from having sex with her, should it be offered in my direction. However should she have said her big secret was that she was a virgin and not planning on offering a taste of her cherry coke to anyone until she was married, that wouldn’t of been the best news I could of heard, its not like I have had so much sex already that I could take it or leave it for a while, but it certainly wouldn’t have made me any less amazed by her, and attracted to her and it wouldn’t of made me want to spend any less time with her. That’s not what she was saying though; she was saying that if she did see me again, then she would definitely have sex with me. The problem of course was that dodgy “if” bit. If! Why if?

So inevitably came the second thing she told me. This is the not so nice one. With her estimations of her self control in my presence being somewhat in the low range, she had decided it would be “best for everyone” involved if she did not see me again.

I’ve always been curious as to why someone telling bad news to another person would choose to justify it as “best for everyone”, in situations where it clearly is not best for everyone, in fact it’s pretty fucking awful for at least one person, and that person is the person you’re spinning this crap to.

“I mean how could it possibly be ‘best for everyone’, when one of the ‘ones’ is me, and I’m a person who has fallen tit over ass love at first site with a girl, who is telling me that she desperately wants me to fuck her every way under the sun, and because of that she can’t see me. That’s not best for me! That’s fucking worse for me! Let’s pick the fucking roommate boyfriend who can’t even be civil on the phone to an unknown person for one minute, and choose the option which is worse for him, and best for me. That’s more fair. When does fairness ever come into life? When am I going to get some of what everyone else seems to have in barrel loads, like radioactive waste from building weapons of mass destruction, where they have so much they can just deposit it on the ocean floor and destroy every living creature under the sea, just so they can destroy the entire world four times over instead of three times over like they already could six months ago. Hang on, wait, I’ve gone off the point. I mean I deserve to have some companionship. I deserve to have some affection. I deserve to have some intimacy. I deserve to be treated nicely and sweetly. I deserve to have someone looking out for me. I deserve a lot more than fucking roommate boyfriend, I can tell you that much”

“I’m sorry to have hurt you JayJay” She replied after I had quite uncharacteristically ranted at her for about fifteen minutes

“Well you have” I replied quite harshly

“I didn’t mean to….but I never promised you anything….it was just one dinner together”

“I know…….just it was the best dinner ever…I wanted more like that”

“I wish I could be the one to have them with you JayJay….but you’ll find someone who will be able to give you everything you’ve dreamed of….I promise you……..Its just not me”

“I know”

“Take care sweet JayJay” She said, then she hung up the phone.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Never sing your victory song until the final whistle is blown”

I was crushed in a way I wouldn’t of thought was possible, I mean you wouldn’t think a guy like me who doesn’t think that any girl in the world will ever like him, could be so crushed by being rejected by a girl who I didn’t really ever believe I was a chance with anyway. Obviously I’d thought about it being a success, but then I’d thought about Elisha Cuthbert being on some movie promotional tour or something and spotting me on the street and declaring she had fallen in love with me at first site, but I didn’t really believe that was going to happen, and I mean Ellie was beautiful, and I’m a nobody, what did I expect? Why are humans possessed with this emotion of hope, which seemingly only exists to set us up for falls?

At about seven that night I decided I should probably get up, have a shower and eat my breakfast. I was in the shower singing to myself “Crazy….Crazy for ever believing I was a chance with you”, I’m not sure if that’s the actual lyrics to that song, but that’s how I was singing them, when my singing suddenly and strangely had an accompaniment. I paused for a second, and then realized “It’s my fucking phone!”

I launch out of the shower, scream across the room, sort through a pile of my valuable ‘Explosion Man’ drawings, ruining them for ever, and finally find my phone, conveniently in the bottom of one of my shoes and hit the answer button just as the ring tone stops. Private number! “Fuck you, you fucking fuck, how do you always fucking know when I’m in the fucking shower whoever the fuck you fucking are!” I screamed.

Back in the shower, not so much singing anymore as punching a hole in the tiles, when my phone rings again, however this time I don’t answer it, what’s the point of getting out of the shower again? I just couldn’t be stuffed to put in more effort when the likely hood was that any call directed towards me would just lead to more heartache. After drying off and getting dressed I had a look to see who it was, again a private number. “What’s the big secret for Christ’s sake?”

I was feeling hungry so I decided to walk down to the local ‘Seven Eleven’ and buy one of those dodgy hot dogs they sell, you know the ones, they spin on that machine for about two hundred and sixty five hours before someone is silly enough to buy them. Well that silly person is often me. They do actually taste quite nice, when you don’t find a finger nail inside them.

Anyways, I went and had a finger nail free hot dog, well I’ll be honest I had four of them; I hadn’t eaten all day. When I came home I checked my phone again and was surprised to see two more missed calls from a private number. I was starring at it racking my brain for who the hell would be trying to call me so urgently “it’s definitely not Hannah, I know she wants people to know when she called” I thought to myself just before I was suddenly startled by the phone jumping to life - vibrating and singing.

“Hello” I answered with curiosity

“Hi this is Ellie…how are you?” Ellie said, she was clearly walking outside somewhere, I could hear people talking around her, and strain in her breath from walking as she was talking

“Good…how are you?”

“Good…..now listen……do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

“I’d love to”

“Good….can you meet me at my work?”

“Yeah sure”

“About ..six pm..?”

“Sure”

“Ok…..seeya then…I have to go…bye”

“Hooor…..ay” I hesitantly said as soon as she hung up the phone “That’s GREAT…..I think”