Memories

I’ve been toying with what I think is my favourite memory recently, just letting it play on repeat behind my eyes. It’s kind of a double edged blade, because when I’m in it, I’m happy. But happiness leads to overthinking, a sword I think many of us here at SP fall on regularly.

Okay, so it’s his 20th birthday. It feels like only yesterday but it was a lifetime ago now. We threw him a party at the house and so many people came. A testament to how loved he was. Scratch that. How loved he still is. I was actually enjoying myself being around other people in a social occasion, and the only drink in my hand was water. Sure I had a cigarette or two, but I can be forgiven one weakness.

It really started to get full around 10 o’clock, but everyone was heading out to the club at about half eleven. I’d had enough of mixing with people and for once when I said I was going to my room, people just smiled and said “Have fun.” No more insisting I stay, forcing me to drink more or cursing me when I said I really had to go. These were my friends and I loved them for it. I figured I’d head up to my bedroom, wait it out the hour or so until they left and then grab some shut eye before they all stumbled back. It was a good plan. Only it didn’t work out like that. Best laid plans of mice and men, eh?

I got to the top of the stairs before I was ushered into his bedroom. He wasn’t in there, just a lot of people I knew and some I really didn’t. Funny, out of everyone in there, I should have been the only one welcome. His friends had come from all over to see him for his birthday, and one of them, Dani, had baked some weed brownies. Now I don’t use drugs, but I have no problem with people lighting up from time to time. At least it doesn’t make them aggressive like drink does. They were all arranged in a semi circle around his wardrobe, turns out they’d found the tupperware container with the brownies in, and had proceeded to help themselves to them. Someone held one out to me and smiled. I said no, my stomach wasn’t tip top that night, but mainly I’d been told weed would just make me more paranoid than normal, so I didn’t risk it. Tonight was a good night, it was going to stay that way.

Pushed up against the skirting board was my birthday present for him. 12″ vinyl of Cities in Dust by Siouxsie and the Banshees, it was my favourite song by them, and I know he loved it too, plus he was an archaeology student and the song’s about Pompeii. Only, I didn’t leave it haphazardly on the floor, and neither did he. He’d put it safely in his wardrobe with the intention of sticking it up on his wall. All I could imagine was when they were searching for the brownies they’d found it and just tossed it aside.

That pissed me off.

I just wanted to go to my room, lock the door and put my earphones in until they were all gone. I could seethe in the morning. I bumped into his best friend from home on the way there. She was lovely, just a truly nice person. People say we’re very similar. We even have the same pair of glasses. I suppose that explains why I was his best friend there. He came up the stairs beeming to see her and I slipped past them and locked myself in my room.

Five minutes later he was at my door asking to be let in. He was furious people had taken his stuff. He slammed the box containing the remaining brownies hard on my desk and sat down muttering to himself. I tried to calm him down but he had some form of existential crisis, about how he was changed and he didn’t like people anymore, people were selfish and he just wanted to stay in instead of going to clubs and bars. He went quiet and shifted closer to me. We just started chattering about things we normally chattered about. Everything and nothing. I told him about the record. That annoyed him even more. He shifted backwards on the bed, leaning with his arms outstretched behind him. I glanced down for a second and saw… well… an irregularity in his general trouser area. Let’s leave it at that. I mean it wasn’t the first time he’d been like that around me. We didn’t hide anything from each other.

I can’t remember exactly what was said next, but he unbuckled his belt and pulled down his jeans and just started going for it in front of me. I didn’t know what to say. Or do. Again, we hid nothing from each other, this wasn’t the first time. I just stared at him, at it. His face suddenly changed and he pulled his trousers up. He apologized a lot and said that doing this wasn’t helping me get better. I put my arm around him and told him to stop being silly. He said he didn’t know how to get rid of it. I suggested I help because he told me frequently how much of a turn off I was to him.

I kissed him. And he kissed me back. We stopped when people knocked on the door asking if I knew where he was. We both decided it was best he went back out there and I went to bed. And he left. And I’ve never loved him more than I did in that moment. I didn’t love him because he was the same gender as me. I loved him in spite of that.

I lay in bed smiling for a couple of hours, unable to fall asleep. And they came back, in dribs and drabs. He was the last back, he was with his best friend from home. I needed to pee, but I’d hold it until he was in bed. I didn’t want to fuck up the night. So I sat on the edge of my bed, the light from the hallway creeping under the door. Something shuffled outside and the light was blocked out by someone standing there.

Two soft knocks. I opened the door and he wandered in and sat on the bed. “You okay?” he asked. I told him I was fine, but I was trying to sleep. He apologized but didn’t leave. He just lay back and spread out on the bed. The nerve. I asked him about the club and if he enjoyed his birthday. Eventually the conversation came around to the incident in the bedroom earlier in the evening. He asked me if I liked what I saw. You’ll think we had a very weird friendship, but that was not the first time he’d asked me that question. I liked to tease him. No one else picked on him, and I know he enjoyed it when I did. I told him it was a bit thin, compared to most. He got defensive and said it wasn’t, before promptly pulling it out and begging me to look at it again. He was drunk. But he was honest when he was drunk. Which I liked. I told him it was still thin and asked him to put it away. He wanted to see mine to compare. Such a weird request in hindsight. Such an obvious move in hindsight.

I told him no. I really didn’t want to do this. Not tonight. It was fun at first, but now I just wanted him to stop. He kept asking so I leaned close to him and said, “No, blow me gay boy.” Whenever I’d said this to him before, he’d get the message and drop it, only he didn’t this time. He looked at me and said, “Okay.” And then he kissed me again. Things went from there. The first time we’d properly had sex. It was nice. Wrong. But nice. And we were both happy after.

Things went rapidly downhill the morning after.

I moved out two days later.

Put a razor blade to my throat a few week after that.

Now months later I find myself drawn back into this memory.

My sick twisted little slice of heaven.

I apologize for the length and semi-crude nature of the piece.

What’s your favourite memory?