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
