Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 34

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

“What you want and what you need, are rarely the same thing”

It was as clear as the nose on my face, which is actually a damn stupid saying. Clear as the nose on my face, your nose isn’t bloody clear. At best you can see a blurry double vision of it as you cross your eyes and look down so hard that it physically hurts, and that’s only if you have a big nose. So anyway it was clear, as I don’t know, as clear as a video camera on auto-focus, that’s not bad, it was clear that I had managed not to see the forest for the trees.

Now what the hell is the deal with that one? The trees are part of the forest. If you can see the trees you can see the forest. Sometimes, depending on where you’re standing you can only see several trees of a forest; that does not mean that you have in fact missed the forest.

And another thing, why do people say they slept like a baby? Babies don’t sleep well, they are horrible sleepers, it’s the thing they are most known for. When someone has a baby no one says to them, oh geeze you’re going to get a lot of sleep, because your little fella will sleep like a baby. No they say, “You’re going to have some restless nights coming up, you tool”. The one thing every parent has in common is that at some stage they complain to every person they know that they are up half the night every night with a baby screaming because it wants its arse wiped.

That one is about humans, but as usual the cruel ones are reserved for the animals. “Sick as a dog”! Why do people say they are sick as a dog? I have never owned a dog, but I have seen many and dogs don’t seem to me to be sick very often at all. They seem to be either running around like mad men, or doing poo’s all over the place, usually in a spot where someone is planning on stepping very soon, often me, or they’re barking at you and threatening to bite you, while some asshole bully is standing near you laughing his head off yelling “sick him!”

Cats get it the worse though. Why are people ‘Scardy Cats’. Cats are not scared, cats are some of the most powerful and vicious animals in the world. Have you seen a tiger roar at you with its teeth on display? Do they look scared? The lion did not get to be king of the jungle by being a scared cat; he got there by hunting down and devouring more antelope than any other animal out there. And why are people ‘copy cats’, what the hell do cats copy? They seem pretty damn independent to me. Why don’t we say clean as a cat? Cats spend more time cleaning themselves than any creature on life, just not cruel enough to be a cliché though is it?

Sorry I have gotten off the point a bit. It just makes me mad all of these stupid sayings. I mean I’m not some tree hugging animal fucker or anything. It’s just that when you’re like me, and have spent much of your life barely saying a thing, over time you realize how stupid most of what people say actually is. Which makes it doubly hard to start becoming a talker, because it’s hard to start talking by saying something which you know to people like you sounds completely moronic. So Anyway, I was telling you about Hannah.

Hannah and I spent the whole day together that day. After we eventually got out of bed, Hannah took to me to a café where we had a mountain of pancakes each, covered in ice cream and maple syrup, so that when we were done we felt like we wouldn’t eat for a week.

Then we went to the movies, where we loaded up on candy, chocolates and ice-cream, and saw a cute kids film about a nerdy kid from an American high school, who was nerdy enough to travel all the way to New York from his small town hundreds of miles away, just because the president was giving a big public speech in Central Park. Anyway, completely by accident, he bumps into a guy, who falls over and spills a rifle from his overcoat, and it comes out that he had saved the President from an assassination attempt. Suddenly he is a national hero and celebrity, and doing TV interviews and meeting celebrities. When he gets back to his small town suddenly all the cool kids, who had treated him like shit all his life, want to be his friend, and all the pretty girls want to go on dates with him. He becomes one of the coolest kids in school, only thing is, he starts to neglect his one close friend from before, Katie. Eventually she tells him he has sold out, and that he is everything he used to hate, and that he had lost a chance to be with her, and that she had secretly loved him since they were ten, but had now gotten over it. In the end he realizes she is right, and rejects his new found popularity, and goes back to her, and wins her love back for a happy ending. I think it was called ‘The Story of an American Hero’, you should check it out sometime.

I thought it was quite an adept movie choice by us that day, considering how I was feeling. After the movie we went bowling, which I hadn’t done in years. After starting with six straight gutter balls, I found my rhythm, and by the second game I was hitting regular strikes and spares. Hannah was unbelievably terrible at bowling, but her incredible enthusiasm every time she got anything, even one pin, was just so endearing. I thought it was a good lesson to watch, that it’s not always about how many you get, it’s about doing your best, and enjoying any success you can, as much as you can. Hannah always teaches me valuable lessons about life, and she does it without saying a word, just by living life with so much energy, enthusiasm and enjoyment. The three E’s to ecstasy.

After bowling we went into the adjacent video arcade, where we found all these games we had played when we were little. We found a machine with ‘Double Dragon’ on it, which we had both played a lot in our tweens, and kept putting in coins until we had completed it. It was really fun.

With the day coming to an end, we went back to Hannah’s place. And we spent the night cooking some pasta together for dinner, and watching some TV, and doing a jigsaw puzzle together, this one made a picture of a farm house surrounded by wild flowers of every color imaginable. It was surprisingly enjoyable; I hadn’t done a jigsaw puzzle since I was about eight. That time as soon as I was nearly done, my brothers took real joy in pulling it all apart so I couldn’t see the complete picture after all my hard work.

As the night wore on Hannah asked if I wanted to stay the night, which was something I could not refuse. As we lay in bed next to each other, again cuddling together, it occurred to me that Hannah had not raised the topic of Ellie, or how I was feeling once all day. Which was actually exactly what I wanted and needed. In fact everything that day was exactly what I needed, a bit of fun like I used to have when I was young, and the issues of love and sex and relationships hadn’t even entered my mind. Not that they didn’t enter my mind all day this day. Only when I thought about them, I wasn’t thinking about Ellie, I was thinking about Hannah.

I lay awake most of that night. Just lying there feeling Hannah’s warm body against mine, and feeling her body move as she breathed. I spent the whole night thinking about Hannah. About the first day we met, how she had approached me, and asked me to be her partner. About the first time she came to my house, and straight away sat so close to me that I could feel her breath on my skin as she talked, and how she had made jokes about wanting to sleep with me. I thought about our day taking photos, how amazing she was, how gorgeous she was, how erotic she was, and how comfortable she was in letting me see all of her. I thought about weeks after it was done, and her coming to my house and telling me she wanted me in her life, and that I didn’t even have a choice. I thought about her many attempts to improve my life, like introducing me to her friends, and ‘Metrosexualising’ me, and always encouraging me to do new things, and experience more out of life. I thought about how on all the times I had stumbled on my journey, she had always been there for me, doing what ever she could to make things better, things like the past two days, spending something like forty hours with me in a row, every minute of the day, the whole time being as sweet as a bag of sugar, and then letting me spend two nights in a row sleeping with her as close to me as I wanted. Had Hannah been trying to tell me something all this time?

I thought about myself. About how shy I was when we met, and how uncomfortable I was when we met. How back then I used to hide away from the world, only coming out of my hiding place for necessities, money and food, and how Hannah had changed me from that so much, all for the better. I thought about how I felt about Hannah from the moment I saw her. I was in awe, I was dumfounded, I was turned on beyond any word like ‘Horny’ could explain. I was drawn to her, but I was intimidated so much by her. I thought of myself so low, I thought of her so high, I didn’t think our paths physically could meet, but they did, and amazingly when they did, she was so much more special than I could possibly have dreamed or fantasized. Had I been ignoring my own feeling all this time? Had I let my lack of self confidence get so bad, that I even denied my own feelings just because I couldn’t yet fathom them being returned? Had I ever met anyone as special to me as Hannah was? Had I ever met anyone who had gone so far out of her way to show me how much she cared about me, me Jason ‘JayJay’ Domey, was it possible that I, of all people, was put on this earth to find Hannah Lillyfeild, and to cherish her, and love her, and dedicate my life to her happiness, and she had been put on this earth to do the same for me, and fate had crossed our pasts and our characters so that we met when we did, and how we did, and with who we were, all so that magic could spread through our lives the way it had, the way it could for ever more?

I had to tell her. I had to take that risk. This was something that could be too good to not be willing to sacrifice everything in my life for. This was a chance at undeniable lasting happiness.

“Hannah I love you” I said completely out of the blue, while we were in her kitchen eating bowls of yummy chocolate flavoured cereal for breakfast. She smiled warmly back at me, as I looked deep into her eyes, and she looked back into mine

“I know you do JayJay….I love you so much too” She remarkably replied, only with a difference in her tone than was in mine

“I know you do…..and I am so happy about that….but I mean I really love you…I mean I am in love with you….I mean I want you to be more than my friend….I mean I want to spend every night sleeping in your arms”

“Oh JayJay…that is the most incredible thing that anyone had ever said to me….and you have to know I love you so much….you have to know that I hope you’re in my life forever…you have to know that feeling you next to me is one of the most comforting things I could ever feel….but….but….um…..but surely, surely by now JayJay….you must of figured out that I am a lesbian”

“You’re a fucking what?” I thought

“You know that if you were a girl….I’d rip your clothes off right now…and satisfy you in a way that I know you have never felt…and then spend the rest of my life doing what ever I could to make you the happiest girl in the whole world…but I can’t…you’re not a girl….you’re a boy….you’re a man….you will have to be satisfied with me trying to make you the happiest man in the world…only thing is there are certain ways I just can’t make you happy…I’m sorry JayJay”

“You’re a lesbian?”

“I never tried to hide it from you….I thought you would just figure it out…everyone else in my life has found out that way”

We talked for a while longer, and then I went home alone. I went home and I thought about the fact Hannah had no problems letting heterosexual males see her naked, I thought about the time she had said her bisexual friend Jenny was great in bed, and “Trust me I know”, I thought about the time she had disappeared into a bedroom with that ‘Lost in Life’ singer Marlin, and had not come out for hours, and was wearing different clothes. Actually I thought about that for quite a while. I thought about her and Jenny for quite a while too. Those weren’t bad thoughts. Hannah, the hottest girl I’ve ever seen, and two other hotties, having a lot of girl on girl sex. That’s a fine thought. That was a good enough thought for me to forget, at least for a little while, about how stupid I had been to think, at least for a little while, that Hannah could have had feelings for me all this time, and how I had missed so many so obvious signs about her sexual persuasion. That was the type of thought that required some rapid hand movements to get the full value out of, that was the kind of thought I could glue to my brain, and peel off on many, many future lonely nights. Still Hannah and I a couple, some things you think of are fucking ludicrous JayJay.

That morning was eight days ago. Since then I have spent pretty much every spare second of my time going over all these thoughts in my head. Going over all of my humiliations, and my deep down depression periods, and then my recent improvements and my recent successes and my recent truly happy moments.

I have spoken to Hannah several times in the past week, we’re still the best of friends, and Hannah has promised me that we will soon go out cruising for chicks together, that sounds like fun. I still think about Ellie every day. I miss her. But I have also realized that even though I did truly love her, and even though under different circumstances I would be with her right now, and I would love being with her right now, she wasn’t the one. I knew it all along. She was my first love; she was my first proper sexual partner. She had changed my life forever. But she has played her part, there will be others, and others will have equally dramatic parts to play in my life. I know there will be ups and downs in the future for me. I know I will humiliate myself many, many more times. However sitting here right now I am one hundred percent confident that the good times will outweigh the bad ones. That’s a remarkable outlook for me to have. I no longer hide away. I have many people to thank for my transformation, but more than anything I have myself to thank, for making the decision to change myself for the better. No matter what happens from now, that will always be the best decision I ever make.

Drunk with Happiness! I wouldn’t say I am off my face with happiness yet. More like tipsy. Like the fifteen year old half way through his first beer, of what will become a life long love affair. Not really sure how he feels, just that he feels good, and feels a part of something, and feels like making friends, and he hasn’t even had his first drunken vomit all over a friend, or his first drunken bar fight where he wakes up under a pool table in a pool of his, and other peoples blood.

Serene! I couldn’t claim to have found life long serenity. But I have found the sun rise. I have found art, and I have found beauty all around me.

Divine! Divinity is a hard one. I don’t think I will ever find religion, at least not in any deeply meaningful way. But I have found a positive outlook. The way you look at things can make such a difference. I used to look out my window and see drug dealers and prostitutes. Now I see mothers, and school children, and friends, and still drug dealers and prostitutes, but they are no longer just more people like me who are human waste, they are who I have risen above, and it’s nice to be above some people.

Filled with Light! I’m far from the star of the show. I am not however some unfortunate understudy hiding in the dark, I am now on the stage, I’m in the play, I’m the biggest star who doesn’t get his name mentioned on the marquee, I have lines, I’m important to many people, and when the show ends, I get to bow right next to the star, and I have real hope and reason to believe that one day I will be in the center of the stage, with the spot light firmly shining on my face.

Energy bursting at the seams! I am not going running with the bulls anytime soon. But I do now wake up every day and spring from bed, I look forward to my day, I have the energy of an animator for a major international production company, who spends his time in the company of rich and powerful men, and beautiful girls, and if that doesn’t give you energy nothing will, well except maybe a case of red bulls, but that can’t be that good for you.

Smiling! More than I ever have before. Not yet as consistent as the sunrise, but not as irregular as say Haley’s comet, so infrequent that if you blink just one time in your life you could miss it. I’m like the full moon, it comes all the time, it comes so often that you know you will always see it again, but to those who are looking for it, it’s still enchanting every time, and for the first time in my life I have people who are looking for it all the time, and with their help, one day, one day soon, I will smile so often that you could set your watch to it, and that is all I need to put a smile on my face right now, and if you’re smiling right now, who is to say there has to ever be a time, ever again, when you will do anything else.

The End

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 33

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

“Respect your enemies;

And one day they may become your allies!”

She didn’t really have to say anything when she came over. I had spent the past three hours thinking of nothing but when I would see her next, and I had come to the conclusion that there was only one possible thing that could happen. Still she came, and we talked.

“Hi” I said

“Hi” She replied

“Where is my fucking hug hello” I thought

“Come in”

“Thanks”

She walked over and sat on my couch. I followed her in and sat on a milk crate chair opposite her.

“I’m sorry” She said

“You don’t have to say that” I replied

“Yes I do”

“No you don’t”

“Well I don’t want to argue about it….done enough arguing today”

“Sorry” I said

“You don’t have to say that” She replied

“I know”

“I’m the one who is sorry” she said as tears began to well up in her enormous brown eyes

“I know you are”

“Please don’t say it yet” I thought to myself

“I’m sorry about Brad….he had no right to come over here”

“I know….how did he find out?”

“You sent those flowers….and he was home when they came”

“Why was he home….you said you had broken up?”

“I know….I lied”

“You fucking what” I screamed at her in my head

“I’m sorry….I didn’t think for one second that you could be so incredibly sweet and romantic to send me flowers and a poem, such an amazing poem, so soon after I told you we could be together…you’re just so amazing JayJay….I’m not used to being with someone so amazing…you caught me by surprise”

“So why did you lie?” I asked

“I’m sorry….I didn’t mean for it to be a lie…it just was….I was going to tell him yesterday…all day, then I was going to tell you that we could be together….I opened my mouth to tell him ten times…but I couldn’t find the words….they just wouldn’t come out….so I decided to tell you first, I decided that if I told you that we had broken up, and that you and I could be together, and that I was coming over tonight, to stay….then I would be trapped….I wouldn’t be able to avoid telling Brad…..I decided I would come home tonight and pack a bag….then I would wait till Brad came home….he would see me with the bag and ask me about it…and I would tell him….Brad it’s over…I know you’re hurt, I know this isn’t what you want, I know you love me…and I love you…but not like that….not anymore, and its over….I want to be friends…but tonight we should not be together, so I will stay with a friend for a couple of days, I wasn’t going to say you….then Brad could decide what he wanted out of our relationship…given that it would be friendship or nothing….I thought it was a good plan….I thought it would work out, at least as good as possible in such a situation…..but I didn’t think you could be so sweet….you’re so amazing JayJay…I’m so sorry”

“I’m sorry…I ruined it all” I replied

“No you didn’t…I did…it was me who fucked up”

“Well…I’m sorry anyway”

“Thanks….oh fuck…I’m sorry JayJay…I haven’t even asked how you are, are you ok? I heard about the fight….well Brad sort of had to tell me, I came home and he was sitting on the couch naked with a huge ice pack on his balls….they’re pretty purple, you crushed them pretty good….I’m so sorry….are you ok?”

“Yeah…I’m a bit sore…well I’m a lot sore….but I’m ok….the only really bad thing is this” I pulled my bottom lip down to reveal a quite gross looking cut in my gums, which had bled quite consistently for the past few hours. There’s nothing quite like a bowl of cereal for dinner with both milk and blood for lubrication

“Oh my god JayJay….I’m so sorry”

“Its ok…I’ve had worse…much worse”

“I’m sorry”

“Stop saying your fucking sorry” I yelled at her in my head

“It’s ok…is Brad ok…I didn’t want to hurt him…he sort of gave me no choice”

“Well no he’s not really ok…but I hurt him more than you did”

“Well I hope he feels better soon”

“You really are amazing aren’t you JayJay…you’re actually concerned about your girlfriends boyfriend who spent the afternoon trying to crack your head open and trash your apartment”

“Well Brad’s actually a nice guy….he doesn’t deserve all this”

“I know….but you don’t know what he’s like with me….he used to be nice….not lately”

“I know I know I know…I wasn’t suggesting that you didn’t have your reasons”

“Its ok…I know I have fucked up big time”

“Well….I can’t argue with that one”

“I’m sorry” she said, as she turned her head from me

“Yeah I know”

“Yeah”

“So”

“So”

“Well”

“Well”

“Hhhmmm”

“Hhhmmm”

“Um”

“Um”

“So”

“So”

“So….I noticed you didn’t bring a bag of clothes with you”

“I can’t believe you made me bring this up first” I thought

“I know” she said as she turned back to look me in the eyes

“So”

“Well I can’t stay”

“I figured that”

“Oh god” tears started to flow down her cheeks “I love you JayJay….I do, I really do…..but”

“Don’t say it, please don’t say it” I interrupted with

“I have to”

“No you don’t….I know what your going to say”

“I don’t think you do”

“Well I know its not going to be good”

“I wish it could be…..but you’re right”

I knew it, but my heart still sunk into a deep pit with this news

“Ok”

“I’m not getting back with Brad…I promise I’m not….he doesn’t want me back anyway….but that’s not it, I don’t want him….we’ve talked about it….he knows it’s over…I know”

“And?”

“Well…I love you”

“You have said that already”

“I’m sorry”

“I know”

“The thing is…..I cant…..I just cant….I cant be with anyone at the moment”

“Why not?” I asked, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it from her

“You just don’t know JayJay…you don’t know what it’s like to be in this position….I just can’t deal with it…I know I love you….but I can’t look at you without feeling so guilty about all the pain I’ve caused…..even the pain I’ve caused to you….I know it’s stupid, to hurt you because I cant handle the fact I’ve hurt you…..but its just so hard”

“It seems stupid to me”

“I know it does….but it’s not just that…it’s…I mean I have been in a relationship for six years, six whole years….it’s a long time….I can’t just jump from one long term relationship straight into another one….and I know….with you…if I was with just you …..then it would have to be a long term relationship….because I love you….I adore you….it’s just….I just need some time for myself, to be myself, to find myself…the real me….the me that isn’t just trying to please the man I’m with”

“You can be you with me”

“I can’t JayJay….its different….you don’t know….you haven’t had a long term relationship”

“Yeah I wonder why…even the girls who love me back don’t want me”

“I’m sorry”

“So why didn’t you feel this way yesterday, yesterday you wanted to be with me”

“I did…I do…I want to be with you so much…it’s just that I want to be with you, but I need to be without you”

“Again….why didn’t you say this yesterday?”

“Honestly?”

“Of course honestly”

“Well the fact is I was using you”

“You were using me?”

“Well you were my escape mechanism…you were the reason to end it with Brad…you were the thing that stopped me from letting myself believe being miserable was ok…you showed me I could still find happiness…you showed me that I wasn’t with Brad because I thought I couldn’t have anything better…you showed me something better….you gave me courage….you gave me joy…you made my heart start beating again….you made my vagina start working again, for Christ sake, I’ve had more orgasms in the brief time I have been seeing you than in the whole six years I was with Brad…you taught me….that my future could still be bright…..I’ll always be grateful for that”

“Really more orgasms than six years with brad, that’s not fucking bad, I must be fucking awesome in bed” I rather surprisingly thought to myself quite gleefully

“You just don’t think that bright future has me in it?” I asked

“I didn’t say that…just not right now….who knows what could happen in the future”

“I guess that’s something”

“JayJay….please, please, please believe me that I truly do love you….if this was different circumstances I would be the happiest person in the world to be with you…it’s just fucked up circumstances”

“I love you too”

“I know….but I have no doubt that you will find someone to love you who you will love, and you’ll be happy together for ever…and I’ll sit and watch it happen….kicking myself, killing myself for letting you go”

“I don’t want anyone else…I want you”

“Oh JayJay” She launched forward and hugged me. She hugged me tighter than ever before, and I held onto her just like you do when you’re holding something you love for the last time ever. When we eventually pulled away both our faces were drenched in tears. As I wiped my face dry with my sleeve, leaving a trail of wet snot all the way from my sleeve to my face, like melted mozzarella from a fresh baked pizza, Ellie rose to her feet.

“I have to go JayJay” She said

“I’ll miss you”

“I’ll miss you too….maybe one day I’ll be knocking on that door, and we’ll be together….but until that day….just know….just promise me you will remember…you’re in my heart, you’ll always be in my heart, and I’ll be thinking of you”

“Bye Bye my Ellie Belly”

“Bye Bye my sweet JayJay”

And just like that she was gone. So was I. I burst into tears like never ever before. I cried so hard that my whole body shook, and I ached in parts of my body that I didn’t even know I had. I rolled up into a ball on the floor, just crying. I fell into a state of near unconscious, just crying, and barely thinking.

The weirdest thing about it all was that what had just happened was exactly what I had guessed would happen. Even more amazingly it was what I wanted to happen. I did truly love Ellie. However she was right, the events of that day had changed everything. The events of that day had brought into light how disgraceful I had been in seeing her despite knowing about Brad. The events of that day meant that I could never look at Ellie the same way again. I could never see her without seeing the site of Brad in my bath sobbing like he was. A grown man who just a little while before had been smashing my face so hard that I slammed to the floor. The look on his face was a look I never wanted to see again. And I would have seen it every single time I ever saw Ellie again. I knew I couldn’t stay with her. It tore me up inside like I had swallowed a bag of ninja stars. It ripped at my heart like some voodoo master ripping my heart from my chest while I was alive and awake, and quick enough so that I could watch it beat in his hand as my life slipped away.

Before Ellie had come over that night I had already decided if she doesn’t end it then I will, but I really wanted her to do it. I didn’t think I could say the words. “I love you….but”. The hardest words in the world to say. I didn’t think I could sit there and break her heart. I didn’t think I could watch that pain on her face. Then it occurred to me, that then and only then, I actually fully understood what Ellie had gone though with Brad. I felt guilt for contributing to that pain. It hurt me so much to think I would lose Ellie, but only one thing hurt more, the thought I could hurt Ellie that much myself.

Still hearing her say those words to me, no matter how much I was expecting them. No matter how much I wanted her to say them, were still the most painful words ever spoken to me. I cried for a long time, I cried for a loss of something I had never had before, and had no way of knowing if I would ever have again.

Eventually I realized that I had to get up off the floor. And I realized that I wanted someone there with me. I wanted Hannah there. I called her up, and just cried into the phone, I don’t know if I even said hello. Hannah simply said, “I’ll be there in five minutes JayJay, just hold tight”, and no surprise at all, Hannah as always was true to her word, and five minutes later I was crying into her arms, two seconds after she knocked on my door.

I cried for a while, but then, feeling a little embarrassed I stopped and look Hannah in the eyes, and she looked at me back and wiped some tears from my face. Then she told me to tell her what happened, and I did. We spent hours talking about it. We talked till the sunrise was starting to break on the horizon. Then Hannah and I went outside for a walk and sat at a park and watched the sunrise. It was a beautiful one. I thought about the last one I had watched, the most beautiful one I had ever seen, the one outside Wendy’s house, the day I was bashed nearly to death. This one wasn’t as beautiful as that, but it was beautiful, really beautiful.

Again I had found myself sitting watching a sunrise and also watching a beautiful girl. Only this time she knew me, this time she was my friend, this time she was sitting there trying to think of anything possible she could to make me feel better. There was nothing she could say to make me feel better, but it’s the thought that counts, and her amazing thought cheered me up more than any words in the dictionary could have.

After we had watched for a while we walked back to my place. By now we were both exhausted, and Hannah asked if she could stay with me at my place. I of course said yes. We went to bed in the clothes we were wearing, and as soon as my head hit the pillow Hannah’s arms came around me and she pulled me in close to her. I had my back to her, and we snuggled into together like two kittens snuggling together for warmth. I smiled as I felt her body against mine, and fell almost immediately into a deep slumber.

When I woke up the day had well and truly begun, and Hannah’s arms still held me tightly. I smiled again. It was the first night ever I had spent a whole nights sleep cuddling. I rolled around and looked at Hannah asleep. It had been a while since I really looked at her. Her eyes were closed tight, and she had what looked like a small smile on her face. I wondered if she was having a nice dream, I hoped so. She looked so peaceful lying like that. I had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful she was. I had forgotten how incredibly lucky I was that someone as beautiful, and as wonderful as her, would even say hello to me once, let alone become my best friend in the whole world. And we were truly best friends, I would tell Hannah anything, my dark secrets, my hopes and fears, I would turn to her in my darkest moments. I used to want nothing but to be alone when I was desperately sad, now I just desperately wanted to be near Hannah.

I stared at her face for ages. I remembered the first time I had really stared at her face, in the class room, all that time ago, when she asked me to be her partner in photography. I remembered thinking I could stare at that face forever and not get bored for one second. As I looked at her face again now, I realized that that was still definitely true.

Eventually Hannah stirred from her sleep. As she opened her groggy eyes she saw me looking back at her, and simply smiled at me, and closed her eyes again. It was that exact moment, right then, that I realized something; something I should have known for a long time, something that would change everything in my world.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 32

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

“Speak from your heart and you will always find the words you were looking for!”

“Are you Jason?” Brad said to me in a tone suggesting that he didn’t want me to say yes

“Yes” I replied, perhaps stupidly

“You came and bought underwear from me didn’t you?”

“Yes”

“With your friend Hannah?”

“Yes”

“You said your name was JayJay, I remember”

“Well its Jason Junior….J-J…see”

“I told you stuff”

“I know”

“You said it was horrible, you said you felt bad for me”

“I meant it”

“Yeah fuck shit you meant it”

“I did….I didn’t know you were talking about Ellie”

“I said her name was Ellie”

“I know…..I meant I didn’t know you meant my Ellie”

“SHE’S NOT YOUR FUCKING ELLIE MATE, SHE IS MY ELLIE” he screamed

“I know”

“Then why, how, when?”

“I just met a girl….a girl I liked…and she liked me too…that’s all”

“And she didn’t tell you about me?”

“She did…she didn’t say nice things though….did she tell you about me? I mean how did you find out?”

“You sent a fucking poem and flowers to my house; you didn’t think I would notice?”

“Your house, I thought you were gone”

“And what gave you that impression?”

“Ellie said…she said you were broken up….she said I could have her all to myself”

“She never mentioned anything about it to me”

“Really”

“Yes fucking really”

“I’m sorry”

“I bet you fucking are”

“What the fuck is going on, why would Ellie lie to me about this?” I thought

“You know I came around here today to beat the shit out of some guy called Jason Domey….I was going to make him hurt like he had never hurt before” Brad said

“I don’t think you should” I hastily replied

“I bet you fucking don’t…fortunately for you I actually liked you when we met…I thought you were nice…I don’t know if I can hit you…I still can’t believe you’re the reason Ellie was withdrawing from me”

“Its not because of me….she was withdrawing from you because you treated her bad…she was withdrawing from you because she wasn’t attracted to you anymore…she was withdrawing from you because she wanted more from life than you could offer her”

Brad then swung a punch which crushed in the side of my skull like someone had just thrown a bowling ball into my ear.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that” I thought as I rapidly collapsed to the ground.

Brad came after me and reached down to grab at me. He missed me as I rolled away, he was too inflexible to get at me quick enough. However he was now in my apartment with the door now behind him. I jumped to my feet and moved quickly to the furthest corner of the room, which had me about six feet away from him. He charged at me, with another big round house punch. This time I was ready and ducked away from it and scrambled to the opposite corner.

“You don’t want to do this Brad” I said

“Don’t tell me what I fucking want to do” he said as he charged at me again, and I again managed to scramble away to the opposite corner. He was much stronger than me, but fortunately very overweight, unfit and slow. Each of these charges left him tired and out of breath quickly. However he was determined and tried again, and again I ducked under and got away.

“Seriously mate this wont make you feel better, this won’t get Ellie back for you” I pleaded with him

Again he charged, again I ducked to avoid his punch, this time however he was ready for my scramble, and he grabbed my shirt. I pulled hard to try and get away from him, but he was able to reel me in, and soon had me wrapped up in a tight, tight bear hug. I struggled back and forth to try and break free, but he was too strong. His arms were around my lower back and holding me too tight to draw in breath. I began to panic.

So I arched my head back as far as I could and drove it forward as hard as I could to smash my head into his. It felt like I was driving along on a motorbike and didn’t see an overhanging branch, which smashed straight into my face throwing me from my bike. Pain raced from my head to my whole body as I fell to the ground from Brad releasing his grip. I lay on the ground briefly trying to regain my breath, as I tasted blood on my lips. I looked up and saw Brad’s face, he had no blood on him, this blood was mine!

Before I could shake off my brief feeling of disorientation, Brad had grabbed me again, this time two hands on my collar and he lifted me clean off the ground, and proceeded to charge me back first into the wall behind him. He then backed off, still holding me, and again charged me into the wall. This time my head and my back were crushed up against the brick. He backed up again, this time further, nearly the whole way across the room, and with fire in his eyes charged for a third time. I reached out in vain hope of grabbing something, anything, which could prevent me from having my whole body crushed again. I snatched at air with my right hand, my left hand though felt the cold of metal, the bunk bed frame, and just as I was about to be a sandwich suddenly I fell to the ground, as Brad too fell to the ground, and the whole bunk toppled over. I rolled to my left, and then climbed over the bed, which was now lying like a divider in the room.

Brad lay on the floor. He was completely out of breath, breathing heavily and weasely, that real throaty breath that old people who have been smoking their whole lives breathe. Unfortunately I was on the opposite side of the divider from the door, so I couldn’t escape. Brad pulled himself to his feet, and slowly began climbing over the bed, which he struggled with the way I would struggle to climb over ..Mount Everest... I sat in the corner shaking, wondering how I could escape this time.

Then I decided, escape was the wrong game plan, I had to fight back, and I had to attack. As brad slumped over the bed wall, and struggled to his feet, I suddenly burst into action, and swung my hardest possible punch, right into his stomach. My hand was suddenly engulfed in a huge roll of fat, like some enormous bowl of jelly, and then gooped back out to freedom. Brad just laughed it off, then again smacked me in the side of the head. This time I remained on my feet and turned back to him drove a straight punch into I think his eye socket.

“You fucking cunt….god that hurts” He yelled

“Plenty more where that came from” I optimistically threatened back

Again I went for the stomach, with a rapid fire raid of lefts and rights. Then he shoved me to the ground, clearly unaffected by this barrage of punches.

I sprung back to my feet as he moved towards me, throwing another big hook, which I was able to avoid, just by arching my back, and watching it whistle by my nose. Then I countered with another straight one right into his ear. He grabbed at his ear in pain, and then looked up at me just as a left uppercut was hitting him under his chin, followed by a straight right into his nose. This one was followed by a splash of blood exploding out of his nostrils.

His eyes widened with his brow narrow in the middle, and his teeth clenched, and he just sprung towards me, not with a punch, but just using his body weight to drive me to the floor. I tried to stand, but as I got to my hands and knees my stomach was met with a massive foot hammering it. I fell to the floor again, and was suddenly plummeted with a series of kicks to the head and arms. The pain was immense and I couldn’t move out of the way at all. Then they stopped. Brad stood over me looking down, his breath all spent, breathing deeply and heavily again, like a marathon runner at the end of the race. He stood there staring at me, just waiting for the energy to attack again, while I lay in pain. Then I saw his eyes drift off me and to the other corner of the room. My chance!

I whipped my arm out reaching forward for my last hope of survival, towards the area which man has both avoided as a sign of respect for his opponent, but then turned to in desperation for as long as fighting has been part of our lives, the grand pole of adventure and his two side kicks, the jewels for which the kingdom was built, the three wise men, the bat and sports bag, the snake and its eggs, the friends to us all, the second brain, the most painful spot on human beings, the soft spot of vulnerability, the remote control and batteries, the rooster and feed bag, the seaman’s ship and his crew, the happy camper and his backpacks, the balls and penis, and I clamped my hand on there like a mountain climber hangs on to a cliff face while an unexpected hurricane blows though. I hung on like a vice hangs onto a piece of wood, like a child hangs onto his last piece of candy, like a pregnant women hangs onto her husbands hand while she gives birth to their triplets after he had said “don’t worry I’ve had a vasectomy”, like a crocodile hangs on to a zebra it has snatched from the river bank, like a vigilantly holds onto the piece of wood he is using to crush in the head of the filthy peeping tom before him, like someone scared of heights holds onto the railing of the bouncing bridge he is on over the rapids of the river during an unexpected gush of wind, like a bank robber holds onto his bag of cash as he runs from the cops as they close in fast, while his partner in crime lays in a pool of his own blood at the bank entrance door, I crushed them like grabbing a big ball of clay and squeezing it so hard that it starts to ooze through your clenched fisted fingers.

At first he struggled a little, he reached down at my head trying to push me off, but all his strength was being sapped by his testicles attempting not to explode. He tried to pull my hair, but couldn’t make a fist to hold it. Then he began to shake, and just swing his arms around. Then just as I could physically feel his balls begin to mush up like mashed potato he let out a scream. Not just any kind of scream, the kind that you make when someone breaks your leg so bad that the knee is bent to ninety degrees the wrong way, he screamed like an opera singer trying to break a glass cup. Then I let go, and he keeled over, and cupped his hands to his nether region, as I leaped over the bed divider, opened the door, and ran down the street like I was attempting to break the world record for the two hundred meters.

I think I had run about a mile as fast as I could before I turned around to make sure he wasn’t behind me, then I realized he probably couldn’t run that far in a whole day, even without having to carry a three times their normal size swollen scrotum bag.

I didn’t know what to do. He was in my house; I couldn’t just leave him there. I turned and began to walk back. I walked slowly, always weary that every person coming in my direction could be him, so I would pause, and wait as they got closer, while my heart beat faster and faster, then I would breath a sigh of relief when it turned out to just be an eighty year old women. It had taken me about five minutes to run the mile away from my house, but I took about thirty minutes to walk it back, still it felt way too soon before I was standing across the street looking at my door.

I couldn’t look in the window, some idiot had spray painted it black, and I was too scared to open the door, in case he was waiting for me there. So I sat and waited, across the road from my own house, for three hours, barley taking my eyes off that front door the whole time. Eventually I realized that he must be gone.

I slowly walked across the street, and put my head to the door, trying to listen for any movement inside. Nothing. Then I suddenly burst open the door, running into the apartment as quick as I could to try and surprise back anyone who was trying to surprise me, then I tripped over one of my milk crate chairs, went face first into the ground, before rolling over and looking up to see an empty apartment.

Something was strange. I couldn’t work out what at first, so I sat down on the sofa to survey the scene. That’s it. “The bed is back up where it is supposed to be” I thought. In fact the whole apartment had been tidied up; it hadn’t looked this clean in weeks. I sat there quietly just thinking to myself, trying to make sense of what had happened, when I realized there was a noise coming from the bathroom, it sounded like water dripping slowly.

I eased open the bathroom door and poked my head in to see a quite unusual site. Brad was sitting in my bath, sobbing.

“Hello” I said

“Hello, you can’t just fucking say hello you idiot” I thought

“Hello” He said back without even looking up

“Are you alright?” I asked, genuinely concerned

“No”

Silence, I couldn’t think of a thing to say, completely blank mind

“No I’m not….my life is ruined…I’m sorry, its not your fault….its not your fault I lost Ellie….Its mine…you didn’t deserve to be attacked in your own house….you didn’t deserve to have me come after you….its not your fault you love Ellie, Ellie is the most lovable person I have ever met….I can’t believe anyone would not love her….but I took her for granted….I treated her poorly….I argued with her….I should of treated her like a queen…I fucked up….I always fuck up….I deserved a lot more than what you did to me before you left….I just wish I had of gotten it three years ago….it would of woken me up….it would of made me realize that I had it all, and I was going to lose it, I was giving it away…how could I do that, how could I give away Ellie….Ellie, the best thing that ever has or ever will happen to me….I’m sorry….I’m sorry….I’m sorry….I’m sorry I am still in your house….I cleaned up, and I was going to leave, but then I realized….I didn’t have anywhere to go….Ellie is my home….I have lost her, I have lost my home, I have lost everything” he mumbled through a whimpering chin

“I’m sorry…I never wanted this”

“I know”

“There is only one thing I can tell you….Ellie still loves you…she told me….she loves you, just….just as only a friend though….it’s still love….she told me….she told me that the reason she didn’t break up with you earlier was that she couldn’t bring herself to break the heart of the person she loved most in the world….she couldn’t think of a way to lose you as a boyfriend and keep you as her best friend….I know it’s not much….but you haven’t lost everything….go to her, tell her that you still want to be part of her life…I promise you, you still have a home” I said

“That’s really the truth?”

“I swear to god”

“Then thankyou, I really mean that, thankyou”

He reached his hand towards me, and I put mine out and we shook. It was a very weird experience; I think we had earned each others respect. As we shook he pulled at my hand, and I pulled back to lift him to his feet. He stepped out of the bath, and walked gingerly out of the bathroom and towards the front door. “Maybe I shouldn’t have squeezed quite so hard” I thought to myself, as he hobbled like he had spent the past six months riding a horse. When he reached the door he opened it and turned to me, just looking at me with a look in his eyes I had only seen once before on anyone, a combination of sadness, and hope, and respect, but with that look of being beaten, the last time I saw it was on me, as I looked in the mirror, badly beaten and crushed, but I had made the decision then to improve my life anyway I knew how. I hoped Brad had made a similar decision. I hoped he would find something to help him. “Good luck” I said as he looked at me, he turned and hobbled away without another word.

Three hours later I had a knock on the door, it was Ellie.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 31

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

“It doesn’t matter how smooth the road has been so far;

There will always be potholes ahead!”

“JayJay….I have to tell you something…..it’s over” Ellie said to me on the other end of the phone as soon as I answered.

I knew this day was coming, I had spent weeks preparing for it, and yet hearing her say it, those words stabbed me like the sharpest knife in the world. Without responding at all I burst into tears. Tears that had been brewing inside me for weeks on end, just waiting for the final nail in my coffin of love. The kind of tears that you only cry once in your entire life, the day your first love tells you she is breaking up with you. Those tears flowed down my face, like the time when I was five and my brother decided to urinate on my head, and I just took it and let it drip right down my face into my mouth, sour and disgusting, and oh so wet. Those tears came with sobs too. The sobs which mothers make when they find out after a week long negotiation with her baby’s abductor, that he had already killed her son, and all hope was lost. Losing all hope is the saddest moment in anyone’s life. I was sobbing so hard that I didn’t even hear what Ellie was saying next, until she repeated it several times

“No JayJay, not with you, not with you, No JayJay, not with you, not with you’ she said over and over until I finally registered

“What?”

“I am not ending it with you…I have ended it with Brad, with Brad its over, I love you, I want to be all yours”

Then there was a knock on the door. I walked over and opened it up, and there was Ellie with her cell phone in her hand. She looked at me for about one second then threw her arms around me. Then kissed my wet lips. Then again I broke out crying. I cried the tears you only cry once in your life. The tears you cry when the greatest moment of your life is a possibility and the worst moment of your life is also a possibility, and its teetering on the edge, and your nerves are as shot as a drug dealer sentenced to face the firing squad in Thailand for trying to smuggle heroin up his rectum, and its coming down to this moment, the worst moment or the best – then incredibly it’s the best. The single happiest moment in your life! And your body just doesn’t know how to react to such intense joy. It has never had to deal with this before. So it responds in the way it had dealt with extreme emotion before, usually pain, so you cry. You sob like a woman who as a result of being rapped when she was twelve has been told her whole life that she could never bear children, and still desperate to be a mother she never gave up hope, and so painful operations later, and years of daily hormone injections, and years of expensive IVF procedures, and many, many times being told that the most recent time was again a failure, and then the unbearable heart break of finally conceiving only to have the baby disappear from her via a bloody miscarriage, to now when she finally, finally has carried a baby to full term, and after a whole night of agonizing labor, and fears for the babies health, she holds her healthy new born daughter in her arms, while her loving husband strokes its small crop of hair . I was sobbing so hard I didn’t even hear what Ellie was saying next, until she repeated it over and over “I love you JayJay, I love you JayJay, I love you JayJay”. “I love you too my Ellie Belly” I replied.

Ellie and I spent the night making such good love that they should have filmed us and made it into an instructional video. I then slept that great sleep of someone who is both physically exhausted and mentally exhilarated, and woke up with a smile so wide it could barely fit in my apartment. I was buzzing with excitement. I actually was in love, I was actually loved, and it was actually the same person, how unbelievable!

We had made plans for her to come around that night after work, she just had to go home first to collect some clothes so she had clothes to wear for the next couple of days, when she would be spending the night at my place, yes you heard me right, I had a beautiful, wonderful girl coming over, and she was planning to stay with me, in my place, in my bed, for days, where we would have colossal amounts of sex, spend more time hugging than a prisoner spends in his cell, and just be together all the time. I was higher than any crack addict in the world.

As you can probably imagine I had little else on my mind this morning. Hannah called up to see if I wanted to hang out, and for basically the first time in my life I actually said no to her. I just wanted to think about Ellie. I didn’t want my mind distracted from it. When you have had some of the experiences which I have had over the years, then you spend lots of your time trying to forget about them, but I was now building up a memory bank of happy memories, memories which I could call on anytime I ever needed a lift, and I wanted to think about them over and over again until they were burned into my brain.

I thought about going and seeing Ellie at work, but I knew she didn’t want me to. Still I needed to let her know in someway that she was on my mind today. I thought about what I could do for ages. I could send her a text message. But that’s hardly the most romantic thing in the world. I could call up and have her paged, but that’s just bound to piss her off, especially if she was with customers and lost a commission.

Then I decided the best idea was to have something waiting for her when she got home, some kind of present. I had never sent anyone flowers before, not that I am not romantic, I love the thought of doing something nice like that for a loved one, but I just had never had anyone in the world who wouldn’t just get scared to death to receive flowers from me. So that’s what I decided to do. I loved the thought of seeing Ellie’s face when she came home with a big bouquet of red roses on her door step. I called up a few florists from the phone book and found one which said they could have them there by the time she got home. Then I hit a snag. “What do you want to write as a message?” the lovely lady on the other end of the phone asked.

“I don’t know” I responded, because I didn’t have a fucking clue in the world “what do most people put?” I asked.

“Can be all sorts of things, a thankyou, a declaration of love, a poem you have written, anything you want really” She replied.

“Ok I’ll get back to you”

“What to write, what to write, what to write” I thought in my head over and over, until I realized I wasn’t even thinking about what to write, I was thinking about just those words, and was slipping into some unplanned meditation zone.

“I love you Ellie, I am so glad you have broken up with your boyfriend” Hhhhmmm nah, not that romantic

“Ellie making love to you is like spending time in heaven with Jesus” Maybe a bit too homosexual and sacrilegious

“Ellie my belly, I like being with you more than watching tele” Too crap

“Every day I spend with you is like spending a day happier than I have ever been, even though we have never actually spent a day together, in fact I have barely ever seen you in sunlight, well actually have I ever seen you at sunlight?” No

“I love my Ellie oh yes I do, I love my Ellie, that is who” No

“Ellie is quite contrary I like her better than Mary” No

“When the work day ends, Ellie comes to me, that’s the way I like it to be” No

“I told you my name was JayJay, that was unusual for me, that’s what you did to me” No

“I fell in love with you at first site, I can’t wait for you to stay the night” Getting better, but no

“One day I was sad and all alone, but since I met you I’ve really grown” Good start, but no

“Brad is sad, because I have you, and I am glad” No

“Hannah told me that I would get laid soon, and I have that thanks to you” No

“These are getting fucking worse JayJay, better think of something soon” I thought, then I decided the problem might be that a quick jive like that is not long enough to say how I really feel, maybe I should try writing a poem. This was my first attempt

Ellie I saw you on the warehouse floor

I had to lean against a wall

To stop from falling on my face

To stop the spinning in that place

My heart was floating in the air

I just watched it float up there

Hoping you would see it above

And share with me all your love

I didn’t get with you that day

I thought my chance had gone away

But I saw you on a train at night

You gave me such a pleasant fright

And we talked like old friends

And I didn’t want the trip to end

I called you up on the phone

I no longer felt all alone

We had dinner and a hug

We rolled around on my rug

And now you’re all for me

You didn’t know how happy I could be

Tonight is my biggest dream come true

I couldn’t be happier than to be with you

I was very pleased with this effort. Hey who knew I could write a poem? But I wasn’t quite satisfied. It was just a little too literal. Ellie knew our story, but she also knew the part Brad played in it. I didn’t want this poem to remind her of her betrayal, just of how happy we were going to be together. So I tried again. This is my second effort.

True love only comes around

When the moon is blue

When it strikes you down

You feel your flowers bloom

For so long now my

Flowers have done nothing but die

My crushes have ended

With me having a cry

But then you came into my life

I’m not sure why

And my flowers rose up

With colors so true

And it’s because of this

I’m so in love with you

What do you think? I was very happy with this. It was just what I hoped it would be. I might not be a wordsmith. I might not be about to write a book of romantic poems, but for an amateur, sending his first bouquet of roses, and his first poem to the girl he loves, how much better could it have been? I called up the florist again, and shyly read it over the phone for the lady to write onto the card, “That’s very sweet”; she said when I was done. This made me feel good. And she promised my poem and the roses would be on Ellie’s doorstep by the time she got home.

This was still three hours away. Ellie still had to pack up when she got home, and come over. So I wasn’t expecting to see her for about four hours. This was going to be a very hard four hours to kill. Staring at a clock for some reason makes the hands go really, really slowly. I tried doing some drawings, did some Explosion Man, but I just wasn’t in the mood for the battles of Explosion Man versus his evil brother Desert Fire. I tried drawing a picture of Ellie just from my memory of her. And then decided that either I was a very ordinary face drawer, or that I actually had a mutant coming around to see me that night, “Could I possibly of fallen in love with a mutant, is love really that blind?” I thought to myself. I went for a run; sport is usually great to take your mind off things. However running is not! Running is great to think of things over and over again.

I tried watching TV. There was only crap Saturday afternoon TV on. Some crap movie from 1972 or something, about a short man and how his love for horses was making it hard for him to love his women. Then there was a documentary about the lives of the world’s deadliest spiders, and they kept showing footage of spiders running through people’s bed linen, and hiding in their shoes, not pleasant things to think of. Then there was a crappy reality dating show, this one was a competition to see a guy answering a serious of questions, which three girls had already responded to. They were questions like “How long after you have fallen for someone do you want to sleep with them” and then multiple choice answers. And in the end he is introduced to the girls. And he has to pick which one he likes the most, and if the one he chooses he thinks is most attractive is the same one he matched the most with from the questions, then they got to go on a date all expenses paid. The whole thing was fatally floored from the beginning, because the guy was just some average guy, he didn’t look that much different from me, and the girls were all really pretty, but this show was based on the idea that all three of the girls wanted to date him, which is about as likely as finding three girls who all want to go to a bar prowling for boys, with a plan of buying all the cute ones drinks, and taking one home each for a hot night of sex. That’s just not realistic. Girls are not that easy. He guessed wrong anyway. He chose the prettiest of the girls, and matched best with the least pretty. I think it was all a scam to show guys as being chauvinistic and only caring about looks, and to try and teach us that the real best match for you isn’t necessarily the prettiest. That’s just stupid though. When are they going to teach girls not to judge a book by its cover for once? We’ve been coping this ‘men are shallow’ crap for decades, but you girls are just as bad.

Anyway, TV was distracting enough that three and a half hours had gone past before I began staring at the door just waiting for it to shudder from the force of a fist hitting it. When it finally did shudder, it shudded way more than I was expecting from cute little Ellie. Still when I opened the door I was a little surprised to find in front of me a large round chubby sort of fattish, man with a neat office like hair cut, and an outfit which looked slightly too small, clean shaven and smelling like he worked in a perfume factory, yet with a face that suggested he answered calls on a complaints line all day.

He looked remarkably familiar, until he said

“I can’t believe it’s you” With a voice both angry and laced with sadness

Then it hit me, it was Brad.

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

“One lesson life teaches us over and over again,

Is that even when everything seems to be going bad,

It doesn’t mean it will remain that way forever!”

It started with guilt. I had been able to avoid any real guilt towards Brad from the start. For one thing he didn’t seem real to me. I had never seen him, I had never met him, he was just like some made up character in a movie which I hadn’t yet seen, and didn’t really want to see, an illusion.

The other thing was the only time I ever heard him mentioned was obviously by Ellie, and when Ellie mentioned him it usually was in context of something like “You wouldn’t believe what fucking Brad said to me today” or “I can’t believe what an asshole brad has been lately”. Ellie never had even the slightest kind word to say about him. She made him out to be like some demonesk creature, sent to earth from the devil himself just to mock her, and berate her, and make her feel ugly and worthless. And I was her angel sent to treat her like a goddess, and make her feel loved, and beautiful, and wanted.

I had no reason to feel guilt for Brad. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was saving Ellie from evil, I was spreading happiness, and I was taking away misery. I somehow conveniently forgot to think of the fact that Ellie had once loved him, that he may still love her, that I only ever heard one side of the story, and that maybe Ellie wasn’t the same incredibly being around Brad as she was around me.

That all changed though on a day I decided I needed new underwear. Well actually Hannah decided I needed new underwear. She was around at my place watching television with me in my as usual messy apartment. I had crap flown all over the place, including pretty much all of my clothes, which for some reason included having a pair of underpants hanging from the rabbit ear aerials I used to get television reception. Actually they were there from the night before when Ellie had ripped them from my body and tossed them aside right before letting her hunger overtake her and devouring my penis for her dinner. I didn’t tell Hannah that though. As sexual forward as Hannah had always been with me I had never been able to feel comfortable with talking about my sex life with her at all openly. In fact our sex talk usually just went along the lines of her saying something like “You got laid last night didn’t you, you little sex fiend?” and I would reply by smiling just a little, then trying to hide the smile from Hannah, which would make me smile even more, before Hannah would jump on me yelling something like “Watch out for JayJay sex god”, or “When am I going to get my turn you sexy little stud?”

Anyways I had underpants hanging from the aerial. They had been mentioned briefly earlier in the night when Hannah had arrived, something like “Nice decorations”, but nothing else. Until about two hours after Hannah had arrived when she turned to me and said “If you’re going to use underpants as decorations, then you should at least use your nice ones”

“What do you mean nice ones? ….all my underpants are like those” I replied

“I really hope you’re joking JayJay”

“No…why…there just underpants”

“Jason, those are disgusting….they are old and they have started to turn brown….I hope just from age….and surely you don’t let Ellie let you see you in those”

“Um…..well….yes”

“Oh no Jas, that’s awful….I would have got you some nice ones if I had of known you were wearing these all the time”

“What’s the difference….there just too….um….you know….hold in your bat and balls, its not like I parade around in them”

“But they are the last thing Ellie sees you in before you have sex?”

“Yes”

“Well that’s gross….that is not a pretty sight”

“All the more reason for her to nudenise me all the quicker then” I declared

“And you wouldn’t care if she was wearing disgusting old panties under her skirt?”

“No….well you know nice underwear is nice….but guys don’t care about stuff like that…we’re all about getting to what’s below the panties”

“Well trust me JayJay….girls care about the state of a guys underthings, it tells us a lot about you….and these say ‘I’m going to give you genital warts’”

“Really….?”

“Yes really, well more likely ‘really are these your underpants? Then no I have changed my mind and we won’t be having sex after all’” Hannah said, with her best attempt to replicate Ellie’s oh so cute baby voice

“Then what should I wear?” I asked

“Don’t worry about it…I’ll take you shopping tomorrow”

“Um…well thanks Hannah…but I think it might be better for me to go underpant shopping alone”

“Don’t be silly JayJay…you know I’d never let you pick out clothes on your own…I want you to look good”

And so the next day Hannah was around at my house bright and early to take me underpants shopping, hip hooray. She took me to this place called ‘Big Brothers Smalls’, which apparently was quite a fashionable place to go to buy underwear and things like pajamas, handkerchiefs and toiletries. Upon entering we walked through about three hectares of women’s lingerie, in all sorts of arse flossing design’s, mostly looking incredibly sexy, and putting some quite nice images in my mind, until I started to look at the clientele around the store and found it to include a large smattering of older women and larger women. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. Just that I don’t want to picture women like that in a g-string small enough to be stored in a match box.

Eventually we found the menswear section hidden way in the back corner. Now for some reason underwear manufacturers feel that the best way to encourage a person such as myself into buying their products, is for them to put on the cover a large picture of a man with a six pack as obvious as the rocky mountains, and with a penis bulge as prominent and as big as their heads.

I can promise any of you out there right now, if you want to sell me underpants, do not, I repeat DO NOT, force me to buy a product which both makes me feel completely inadequate as a man, completely unattractive, and make the shop assistant question whether I am in fact buying them because I need underpants, or if I’m buying them because I am a closet homosexual and find this the least embarrassing way of buying porn for me to masturbate to. That does not make for a pleasant shopping experience. Why cant we have the pictures of women in lingerie from the women’s section, like Kylie Minogue in a g-string on the men’s underpants, and girls can have Marky Mark and his amazing twelve inch tool over there.

“So what should I get” I asked Hannah while looking at a male g-string out of the corner of my eye and getting ready to run out of the store if Hannah even suggested they were a possibility

“You need boxer briefs”

“What the hell are boxer briefs?”

“They’re sort of like boxer shorts, only with the tightness of briefs, so you can still show off your package”

“And that’s what the girls like us in these days?” I asked, full of skepticism

“Depends…if you have a good body, then these are the ones for you”

“So then they are not the ones for JayJay!”

“Jason…I know you like to joke that your still the fat kid from highschool, but you know that you are not anymore, time to start being proud of that hot little body you have been working so hard to achieve”

“Well I don’t really work that hard, just the odd run…..I guess my metabolism just changed”

“Even fucking better…you’re naturally hot…you dress like it on the outside now…now start dressing like it on the inside…trust me, girls have a sixth sense…they can tell when they will like what they will find under a guys jeans, and if they think they will like it then they will want to get there all the more often”

“Ok….so which ones then”

“These” She handed me up a box of Calvin Klein white boxer briefs which had a picture on the cover of a guy giving me a look like he was saying “Come on you know you want to get into my underpants”.

I looked at the price and literally dropped them on the floor. They were seriously more money than the entire rest of my wardrobe had cost me with Hannah at the second hand store. I think Hannah could sense my disapproval, because without even asking me she said “JayJay, we got your other clothes at a second hand store, you cannot under any circumstances buy second hand underwear, you get the rest of your stuff cheap so you can afford these…besides you have your big animation man money now anyway”.

“Oooooo…kkkk” I gave as my usual reluctant give in response to a tirade from Hannah. Hannah jumped up with enthusiasm at having again talked me into something, and then went about stacking my arms with a section of boxes of underpants with enough semi naked boys on the fronts to cover the whole gay porn industry.

Hannah then pushed me on to the check out counter where I plopped them down on the counter. The check out chick was surprisingly a man. He was a large plump roundish sort of fat man, with a shaved head and little goatee beard, wearing a suit which looked a couple of sizes too small, and a look on his face which clearly suggested that he had had one hell of an awful day.

He sighed as he went about scanning all of my extravagantly expensive undergarments, and then proceeded to look sadder and sadder as we waited for him.

“Are you ok?” Hannah asked, being the one of the two of us most likely to have the confidence to ask a question like that

“Yeah I’m ok” He replied

“Are you sure”

“Yeah just been a hard day” He said while clearly now struggling not to cry

“Oh my god” Hannah said “What’s wrong…you can tell me”

“Well….I don’t know” He said now clearly now no longer trying not to cry, and instead trying hard not to cry too much

“It’s ok mate….you can tell us…we might be able to help” I said

“You gay fag” I thought, about myself, not him

“You big girl” I thought, about him, not myself

“Well….um….it’s just that” he paused while he wiped a stream of tears away from his face “well it’s a lot of things….I just got demoted, I used to work in the computer section of our parent company, ‘Tifamart’, and I love computers, but they sent me down to here to sell underwear…and wouldn’t even tell me why”

“That’s horrible” Hannah said with genuine affection “Go on”

“Then down here all I get all day is women buying sexy underwear to wear for their boyfriends and their husbands, and they’re are always asking me questions like ‘Do you think my husband would like me in this g-string better or this teddy better?’, and I’m like ‘I don’t know, how do I know what your husband likes’…..and the thing is….it just makes me so depressed….especially when I see a happy couple like you two….because I love someone…my girlfriend….but I don’t think she loves me anymore”

“Oh my god why do you think that?” Hannah asked

“We’re not actually a couple, we’re just friends…I have a girlfriend though….its just not her” I added, which actually didn’t help anyone

“Its just that….I don’t know….she’s not affectionate anymore…..we don’t hug anymore, we don’t kiss anymore…..we live together, so we see each other every day…..but we haven’t actually been together for months”

“You mean you haven’t had sex?” Hannah asked, I thought quite nosily, but he didn’t seem to mind, he seemed quite happy for the opportunity to talk about this stuff in fact, I could think of better people than two strangers buying underpants to talk about my relationship issues with, but I did honestly feel bad for him, I know what its like to feel un-loved, and its not a good thing

“Oh no, sex hasn’t been an issue for at least two years…I don’t even bother suggesting it anymore….Ellie actually told me once…that I was too….that I was too…..that I was too fat to have sex with anymore” He struggled to get out without falling into a huge mountain of crying

“Ellie! What a coincidence” I optimistically thought to myself

“So what do you think she wants?” Hannah asked

“I think she wants to break up with me…..I just don’t think she knows how, and I love her way too much to make it easy for her….its just getting so hard now……I just want things to be the way they used to be….we were happy…she loved me too….I want that again”

“That just might not be possible” Hannah said

“I know…I know….I can’t let go…not yet….just not yet” He said before suddenly wiping away some more tears, then giving himself a shake “Ok ok….that’s enough….I don’t need to bother you two with this anymore….I mean thanks for listening, but it’s my problem…I’ll deal with it, I don’t need to bother customers”

“You have been no bother….honestly, I’m glad you told us…I just wish we could help more” Hannah responded

“No no…you have helped honestly….I haven’t talked to anyone else about this…..I just couldn’t, but….I don’t know…..I just needed to....and you have such a friendly face”

“Well thanks…..listen here’s my number ok” Hannah said as she grabbed a business card off the table and began to write down her number “you call me anytime you want to chat…seriously….I know it’s good to have a stranger to talk to sometimes”

“Well thankyou” he looked at the number and read her name “Hannah….I’m Brad by the way” he reached out and shook her hand

“Nice to meet you Brad….we’ll leave you to it ok…call me promise, ok?”

“Ok….really nice to meet you too” He said

“That’s a fucking huge coincidence, isn’t it, that his name was Brad and his girlfriends name was Ellie, and they were having troubles, just like my Ellie and her boyfriend Brad, what are the odds on that, two couples in this area, with the same names, and the same issues, quite ironic actually, is that irony? What is irony anyway, that’s more like when you go to the doctor to complain that you might have a brain tumor, and he does some radioactive scans on your skull, which show that you in fact have no tumor, but then the radioactivity of the machine gives you a brain tumor. Or is that just bad luck? JayJay Domey kind of luck. What is it with bad luck anyway? Do some people actually have bad luck, and others actually have good luck, and it will always just be like that forever? Or is it like tossing a coin, there is a fifty percent chance that it will land on heads, and a fifty percent chance it will land on tails, and that’s always the case, on average every second one will be a head and every second one will be a tail, but if you throw the coin a few billion times there will still be times when the head comes fifty or a hundred times in a row, its unlikely, but over enough throws it will happen. So is luck just like that? People with bad luck are just the one in six billion people alive who just happened to have picked tails at a time where heads are running. Even though he has got it wrong fifty times in a row, statistically he still has a fifty percent chance that the next throw will be a tail. That’s quite a comforting thought actually. I know I have received heads most of the time in my life, but I have hit some great tails. Like meeting Hannah of course, someone who has pre-set bad luck couldn’t possibly have meet such a great girl, and had her be so willing to let him see her naked like she has at certain times, and even better let him be her friend for so long. Or like Ellie. How lucky am I to have found her. The one girl who I fell in love with, not just lust with, on the first time I saw her, and she is the first girl ever to feel that way about me too. That’s not luck. That’s fate, that’s divine intervention, that’s someone planning out in advance. I mean Ellie isn’t perfect; there is that whole Brad thing of course. I can’t believe there are actually two Ellie and Brad’s in this area out there, that’s an enormous coincidence. It is different though. Ellie’s Brad is a real asshole, she is always telling me, where as that other Ellie, the one with Brad in that shop, well that Brad didn’t seem like an asshole, a bit fat maybe, a bit girly maybe, not like physically, but like the way he cried in front of us. But then again if it was me, I wouldn’t have the guts to talk to strangers. I’d crawl into a hole and scrunch up into a ball, and cry my eyes out alone. Maybe it is manlier to have the guts to tell someone you’re sad, and scared, and lonely, than to just hide it all away. Real coincidence though, those names being the same, as you know my Ellie and her boyfriend. That Brad couldn’t possibly be her Brad, could he? Surely not. But what are the odds of there being two. I hope that’s not him, I don’t want to be doing this to him. I don’t want to not be seeing Ellie either though. Why does everything bad happen to me? Why do I have all the bad luck? What’s the deal with bad luck anyway? Are some people just born with it?” I thought to myself as we walked out

“I know what you’re thinking” Hannah said to me as we approached the train station

“Yeah” I replied

“And you’re going to do something about it aren’t you?”

“Yeah”

“Ellie Belly?” I said to Ellie the next time she came around, two nights later

“What Hooray for JayJay” She replied (she had started calling me ‘Hooray for JayJay’ recently, in retaliation for the whole Ellie Belly thing, we both complained, but I think we both secretly loved it)

“Remember earlier tonight…when you walked in the room and dropped straight to your knees, and then undid my belt and then pulled down my jeans, and then pulled down my underpants, and then did that lovely, well you know?”

“Yeah of course I remember…do you want me to do it again?”

“Well no….well yeah, but that’s not why I brought it up”

“Then why?”

“Well you know when you pulled down my jeans? (She nodded), and remember when you were giving me my loving? (she nodded again), well remember the bit in between, you know, did you notice anything different?”

“Oh yeah…your new boxer briefs….they are so sexy…I was going to say something before….but seeing you in them just made me want to get to what was under them as quick as possible”

I smiled “Thanks…yeah I went underwear shopping… I got a whole pile”

“That’s great! I mean I wasn’t going to say anything, but your old ones were seriously gross” she confessed

“I know…that’s what Hannah told me”

“And when was Hannah in your pants” She said with a glare

“No no no no…she just saw them on the ground” I said suddenly scared

“Ha ha ha ha…I know JayJay…besides you can sleep with whoever you want to”

“Ok (‘what the fuck?’) Well anyway….the reason I brought it up……the thing is right”

“Yes”

“Well the thing is I went shopping for underwear two days ago…..and …well … um….well we…me and Hannah that is…..we went to ‘Big Brothers Smalls’ to by them”

The look on Ellie’s face right now, like a star trek nerd seeing a real live alien ship and discovering right away that they were not in fact searching for new frontiers, but were looking for anus’s to examine, just complete shock, confirmed for me what I was really trying to find out, but I continued still “and we met this sales assistant there, a male one”

“Oh my god…what did you tell him?”

“Nothing….I promise nothing….only thing is, he told us some stuff”

This was to be the start of what soon turned out to be lots of major arguments between me and Ellie. I had made a decision now, I loved Ellie, I wanted her in my life, I wanted all of her though, I couldn’t let it continue as an affair. I wanted us to be in a real relationship. Ellie had different ideas though. She said she loved me too, she agreed that a relationship between us would be great. She just couldn’t bring herself to go through the pain of breaking up with Brad.

We began to argue about this issue every time we saw each other. It was awful. I hated arguing with her. I never wanted to make her feel bad. I wanted to make her feel like a princess on her sweet sixteenth birthday. I wanted her happiest moment of the day to be the first moment of the day she saw me. I just didn’t want to be so cruel, like a kid with a magnifying glass on a sunny day at an ant hill, to a guy like Brad, for me to have her in my life. I would have hated to be in his shoes. I could think of nothing worse in the entire world.

Yet it was this massive catch 22, which is a stupid name for something to be. What the hell does catch 22 mean? Why 22? Why not catch 3245? And while I think about it, how on earth can something be a rule of thumb? What the hell has thumbs got to do with rules, it’s just stupid? Why not rule of index finger? Why not rule of pinky toe? Why does it have to be a body part at all? And what’s the deal with ‘Curiosity killed the cat?’ Why do so many clichés have to involve the vicious killings of cute helpless pets? Sorry, just these sayings are so stupid most of the time.

Anyway, the big catch 54786 was that I didn’t want to have Ellie if it meant cheating on anyone, but I loved Ellie and couldn’t bring myself to end it. Where as Ellie loved me and wanted me in her life, but just as long as that didn’t mean she had to break the heart of her former lover, whom she still loved, just as a friend. Maybe that’s what irony is? Or is it all that bad luck stuff from that Alanis Morrisette song, you know ‘Ironic’, she said all that stuff was ironic, ‘like having lots of knives when you just need a fork’ or something, I don’t know just too confusing.

So this was a massive problem for us. We fought about it lots. We started to end our evenings together, not having desperate problems ending an embrace, not trying to sneak in just one more kiss before she ‘really, really, really have to go’, but sometimes just regretting that we saw each other at all. When we first started seeing each other she wouldn’t be over more than two minutes before we would be in the act of spreading some love around. Now she would come and stay for three hours and we might not even get into sex or even cuddling, we would just argue.

Then I would start to resent Brad again, for putting this rift between us. And I’d let up on her for a while and things would be good again. Which would make me feel guilt towards Brad again, and we would fight again. It was a vicious cycle. Thing is I know I was being hard on Ellie. I couldn’t fathom being in her situation, it would be six years away before it was even possible for me to feel the same. Ellie was easily my longest relationship, and we weren’t even officially in a relationship, I was just her affair from her long time love. Thing is, I know she felt the guilt too. I know she still loved Brad in her way, I know she loved me too; she was consumed by her guilt. She didn’t need me reminding her all the time.

But then I would get the guilt trips from Hannah too. She now knew them both, she knew how Ellie felt about me, but she cared for Brads feelings, and she would pressure me to make Ellie end it officially. It put strains on my friendship with Hannah aswell. Soon enough none of the people in my life were really ever happy about me, even though they clearly still cared for me deeply.

After a while the solution to all the argument and all the strain ended up being that Ellie and I gradually started seeing less and less of each other. From four nights a week, to two nights a weeks, to once a fortnight, to once every three weeks. I hung on, because I loved her, but I could feel that we were dying. I didn’t want us to die, but there was nothing else I could do.

Then Ellie did something which changed my life forever.