Between Impossibilities

walked into the winter, came out on the other side

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:33:21 GMT

I know I haven't posted for a while, but I've been working apx. 6 million hours a week which doesn't leave a lot of time for ... anything.

Quitting is definitely an option. Some days I think that going back substitute teaching would be better than this. Brandon says I'm making a difference, and that I should stay. I dunno. It IS a desperately poor school with desperately poor students who have, on average, a junior high level education.

I wish I were exaggerating.

I teach geography on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The students come in and I see them paying attention and engaging in the class and trying. But -- here's the thing, we do map quizzes for every section and I never count spelling because it's always so atrocious. I never exactly understood why until this most recent quiz on South West Asia. Their map labels -- and this was for over 80% of the class -- included places like Lemmon On and Sadia Rabia. They listen to what I say and write it down, but they don't (or more likely CAN'T) read it themselves. They're learning this stuff phonetically.

Also, my attendance rates are way down. The school itself has a 50% attrition rate per semester. That's an unbelievable number. When I started asking questions about it, I learned that it wasn't that students were failing or that they hated the teachers, it was that they got their last financial aid check and dropped out.

Seriously.

Students themselves tell me this. They enroll, come to class until mid-semester, collect their last dispersment check, and then drop out.

I ask them what they're going to do about paying the loans back and they tell me that eventually they'll declare bankruptcy. BUT WAIT. You can't get rid of student loans that way! Only I seem to know that, though.

Oh well. My political science class is fun, at least. They're debating all of next week. My World Civ class has almost all high school students (the Pueblo school systems are so bad that the school districts themselves PAY to send their students, starting when they're sophomores -- I have FIFTEEN YEAR OLDS -- to the community college.) Most community colleges have systems like this, but not in the numbers that we do, and the classes are usually meant to replace an AP class. NOT OURS. This is "school choice" -- not a reward for high achievers.

How am I supposed to "meet the educational needs" of 50 different students in what is supposed to be a college classroom, when I have kids that can't drive yet sitting next to mill workers who have been laid off?

To my horror, I have given my first scantron test this semester. I can't grade essay tests, or even short answers, for classes as big as I have.

With the economy the way it is, the state of Colorado has instituted a spending freeze. That means the the community college budget is reduced (if that's possible) to less than usual, and that our classroom space is even more limited since we had to halt the renovations to one of our buildings that was condemned for asbestos.

It's kind of this weird, horrible nightmare.

I do have health insurance, though. And I used it today to go to the rheumatologist who prescribed flexeril and ordered an MRI. She also suggested that I might not want to commute two hours a day and then spend ten hours setting at a desk.

At least this schedule is only temporary. In the spring, I should have a four day week and not have to work the utterly insane hours -- if I decide to stay.

Brandon has, of course, been amazing. He cooks me dinner when I get home at ten thirty at night and he gets up with me at six in the morning and reads cheezy romance novels to me while I get ready. :)

In other good news, my brother and sister in law have decided to try to have a baby. They already have names picked out!

I feel so. damn. old.

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:35:15 GMT

So, um, I don't know how many swimslashers are left lurking around here. But I have to say that this has inspired me more than anything else in the last year. I just don't know that the world is ready for Melo/Michael. OR IS IT.

Thanks to scrawl42 for pointing the link out to me.

the dizzy, dancing way you feel

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:05:57 GMT

Oh, hectic week. I got back from Phoenix (where I had a WONDERFUL time with horizon_greene) on Tuesday and had to rush to get ready for school tomorrow. So, because I don't want to think about that anymore before I go to bed, and because I think the trip to Phoenix and the two basketball games while there inspired me, here's a Nuggets picspam.

Starting here:

With AI's "come hither" thing.

He's pretty excited about it.

He thinks he deserves a little something after plays like this.

Melo agrees.

They're adorable together. Seriously.

Also?

Nene is apparently getting some action. Who knew?

more books.

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:34:37 GMT

The Golden Compass was a bit meh. Oh well. I'm actually looking forward to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. I think that the first entry that I made in this journal mentions the first AVP movie. :)

Tomorrow I'm meeting the brother in Old Colorado City for Christmas shopping. Then I plan to bake Christmas cookies and go to to the library. I need to take back various books, including When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin. I just finished it today while I was working out and I would definitely recommend it. It's a memoir of Godwin's relationship with his father and his life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Admittedly, I'm a little tired of memoirs about fathers and sons; however, there is more to the book than just that, and more to Godwin's father than just their tense relationship.

The book is, foremost, about identity. Godwin is a white African and he admits from the start that he's among one of the few groups in the world that garner the least sympathy, no matter what their situation. I did find it very hard to sympathize with him at first. He fought on the side of the white government in Rhodesia before independence, and then he just ... left, first for London and then for America. In the process, he abandoned his family and his life in Africa, a daughter in London, a law career, and then started a half-life in New York with a new girlfriend and new kids. But even then, with a new job as a freelance journalist, he couldn't stay put and traveled from Poland back to Africa for every publication he could find.

It's only later, as he begins to talk about the death of his sister in the war for independence that I can begin to feel anything for him. He grabs my attention further when his sense of self becomes even more muddled. It turns out that he's not just a white African (Rhodesian - now Zimbabwean)/Briton/New Yorker, but also a Jew. His taciturn father isn't who he claims to be (a stodgy, old Englishman), but is instead a Polish Jew whose mother and sister died in Treblinka. Godwin doesn't deal well with this revelation. This, of course, comes on top of the fact that his home (or the place he was born, at least) is falling into ruin.

The central conflict of the book -- beyond Godwin's search for identity -- is President Mugabe and his policies in Zimbabwe. Since independence (from Britain) in 1980, and under Mugabe's reign, Zimbabwe's economy has gone from one of Africa's strongest and most promising -- a "breadbasket country" -- to one of the world's weakest. There is runaway inflation (on scale with the Wiemar Rep.) and rampant corruption. But the real story is the "land reform."

Statistically, most of the arable land in Zimbabwe was owned and farmed by the white minority. Mugabe has, over the years, confiscated and the redistributed land mostly as favors, or to militias of "war vets" completely unprepared to work the land. Production on Zimbabwean farmland (and whether you approve or not, they were the second largest producer of tobacco in the world) has dropped to almost nothing as a result. Life expectancy in the country has fallen to 37 and 34 for men and women respectively, the lowest in the world, and over five and a half million people live in the country with HIV.

Godwin, as a journalist, maintains his neutrality about all of this unless he's talking about his parents and their refusal to leave the country or the plight of the white farmers driven off of their land, beaten, and sometimes killed in the process. His father, the catalyst behind Godwin's desire to write the book, dies in Harare, devastating Godwin who is still struggling with getting to know who his father was. Even in death, his father remains elusive. This Polish/British/Zimbabwean dies as a -- wait for it -- Hindu. The situation in Harare is so dire that the Elder Godwin has to be cremated within a certain amount of time following his death or he will be buried in a mass grave.

There is no fuel anywhere in the city for the crematoriums to continue working.

The only place that can burn bodies is the Hindu temple and the only way they'll burn the body is if it's the body of a Hindu. No one in the Godwin family objects, and by this point in the memoir, with this last tragic twist, (for some reason) I finally feel connected to this family that there was no way I could relate to before. Still, the point Godwin makes at the beginning of the book sticks with me: it is hard to alter my viewpoint to feel for the white Africans. But that's what the books does, it challenges me to look at Africa differently and to look at a part of Africa that gets less press (if that's possible) than the rest of the continent.

book reviews, etc.

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:29:10 GMT

.... and I'm done.

This has been a LONG ASS day, and also cold. And snowy. Which is fine because Slim is bringing firewood tomorrow and we will use it after we eat Indian food and go see The Golden Compass to celebrate the doneness.

I gave my last final from 1-3:30, during and after which I did the grading and submitting thing. Then, I came home, bathed both dogs and partially cleaned the house. I needed clean dogs, specifically, because my mom knitted me a blanket for Christmas and it is made of furry green and pink awesomeness. There will be no smelly dogs on the blanket.

Also, I just finished both The Kite Runner and Land of a Thousand Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I liked The Kite Runner, but I LOVED Land of a Thousand Suns. Both books are set in Afghanistan and follow roughly the same time line, from the overthrow of the monarchy in the mid-seventies to the rise and fall of the Taliban. The Kite Runner is more autobiographical and uses the male perspective. It also deals with the life of Afghani immigrants in America. There is a deeper focus in The Kite Runner on ethnic conflict than in Land of a Thousand Suns.

Both books have friendship and belonging as central themes, and the country of Afghanistan is put the starring role. Land of a Thousand Suns looks at women's lives from the 60s until the American invasion, and Hosseini pulls absolutely no punches. Because his prose is so stark, and his language so plain, the pain that the women feel in the novel is never obscured.

Mariam kneeled to the ground and tried to pick up the grains of rice and put them back on the plate, but her hands were shaking badly and she had to wait for them to stop. Dread pressed down on her chest. She tried taking a few deep breaths. She caught her pale reflection in the darkened living room window and looked away.

As an aside, I don't know if the Land of a Thousand Suns is partly informed by Hosseini's work with refugees in Darfur, but I don't know how it couldn't be. When he talks about Sudan, he talks about the plight of women there.

I teach the history of Afghanistan only briefly and only in one class. Students never remember exactly how the ethnic conflict between Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras came about. They rarely remember the country's Buddhist, Bactrian or Persian past; they inevitably get lost in the Soviet invasion, the Mujahideen and the origins of the Taliban. However, they do remember the numbers. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is in the 40s. The country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and that includes sub-Saharan African nations. The same goes for women who die in childbirth. The literacy rate for women in Afghanistan is currently at 21%.

Despite all of this, and despite the fact that Hosseini left the country in 1980 -- shortly after the Soviet invasion -- his love for the country and the people in it is evident. And because he has never lost hope for Afghanistan, his characters don't either. I think that both books are beautiful, painful, accessible, and important.

Review of The Mist

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 04:35:18 GMT

Saw The Mist last night and No Country for Old Men the night before. No Country is essentially Fargo in the desert. The Coen Brothers stripped the book of all of its deeper meaning and left the gratuitous violence and odd humor. Since Fargo is the only Coen Brothers movie that I like, No Country wasn't bad.

The Mist, though. Wow. I thought it deserved a special review all of its own.

Spoilers, etc.

~OPENING SCENE~

THE PUNISHER: *paints a picture of THE GUNSLINGER*

AUDIENCE: Is this irony?

LIGHTING: *flashes*

TREES: *collapse*

~SCENE OF MOTHER NATURE'S PIQUE~

MRS. PUNISHER: There's a tree in our house, muffin.

PUNISHER: The only reason that would be a problem, pumpkin face, is if you needed an airtight place to hide from monsters.

TINY PUNISHLING: A tree smashed our boat house, so you guys should check that out. And also the mist.

PUNISHER: Hmm. Weather sure is wonky the past few days.

PUNISHLING: It's an inconvenient truth, dad.

PUNISHER: Right. I should really go menace the neighbor.

NEIGHBOR: *is incompetent at chain sawing*

PUNISHER: *menaces but is easily distracted* Sweet car.

NEIGHBOR: Seriously, are you menacing me because I'm the only minority and intellectual character in this movie?

PUNISHER: Why else? Let's head into town to fix that pesky hole in my house and see about getting power back. And cell service. Just so everyone's clear on the fact that we are COMPLETELY CUT OFF FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD, KTHNX.

They exit in what has to be the oldest Land Cruiser in existence, rigged with enough external lighting to illuminate a football field.

~UNASSUMING MARKET~

THE RUNNING MAN: THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIST

EVERYONE: Idiot.

EARTH: *quakes*

MIST: *envelopes*

THE RUNNING MAN: I REPEAT, THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE MIST

EVERYONE BUT THE CRAZY LADY: Idiot.

PUNISHER: *wanders off* *hears the thing that goes bump in the night* *runs away like A LITTLE GIRL*

PUNISHER AND VARIOUS MARKET WORKERS, HUEY, DEWEY AND NORM. AND OLLIE: *go check it out*

H, D and N: Nothin' back here but a smelly generator. Needs fixin.' Ayuh.

PUNISHER: oh?

H, D and N: Just gotta run on outside and unplug the sucker and it'll run like a charm. We'll send Norm.

NORM: *is tentacled to death*

PUNISHER: Hmm. Perhaps we should warn the others? Tell them to stay inside?

EVERYONE BUT THE SMART, MINORTY NEIGHBOR AND HIS NEW BEST FRIENDS, AND ALSO THE CRAZY LADY: Staying inside sounds like a fabulous idea. Nothing bad ever happens to masses of people caught in dens of capitalist consumerism in these kinds of movies.

NEIGHBOR: I don't believe you. I may be a lawyer, but I'm also incredibly stupid due to the rampant and obvious anti-intellectualism in this movie. Therefore, I'm going to walk right out that door.

NEIGHBOR: *becomes a cinematic cliché*

PUNISHER: Now that we have that taken care of, we can deal with --

CRAZY LADY (just emerged from her own private séance in the bathroom): THE WRATH OF GOD.

EVERYONE: I'm sorry?

CRAZY LADY: THE PLAGUES ARE UPON US.

PUNISHER: This movie has a lot of ... personal issues. Also, I don't think I like where this is going.

OLLIE: I have a gun.

~THE MARKET, NIGHT~

Everyone lies behind a makeshift fort of dog food bags and fertilizer. They are in deep shit.

EVERYONE: *huddles around their Coleman lanterns* *is afraid*

CRAZY LADY: *froths*

BUGS: buzz

PUNISHER: Bugs?

CRAZY LADY: LOCUSTS.

BUGS: *smack into the glass of the windows*

AUDIENCE: Bugs, lanterns ... there is quite possibly a connection here.

PUNISHER: If they break in, light the little fuckers on fire.

BUGS: *break in*

IDIOT: *lights himself on fire*

OLLIE: *shoots the bugs*

~BUGS, THE AFTERMATH~

PUNISHER: Idiot is hurt really bad. We need to go to the pharmacy.

MORE IDIOTS, INCLUDING ANGSTY MILITARY GUY: Excellent idea.

~PHARMACY OF DESPAIR~

PUNISHER: Cocoons with people in them. And one is STILL ALIVE.

RANDOM MILITARY POLICEMAN FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE THAT EVERYONE FORGOT ABOUT: BLAAARHG BUGS.

PUNISHER: What was that?

MP: BLAARG .... our fault.

PUNISHER: Did he just say--

MP: *chestburster thing*

PUNISHER: Ew.

~BACK IN THE ~~TEMPLE~~MARKET~

CRAZY LADY: EXPIATION. *rinse and repeat*

PUNISHER: What does she even mean by that?

ANGSTY MILITARY GUY: Never mind. Where are my suspicious buddies that no one's seen since forever ago?

SUSPICIOUS MILITARY GUYS: *hanging around*

PUNISHER: Why would they kill themselves? And what did the MP say?

CRAZY LADY: Actually, I'd like to know that as well.

There is a small riot. Nothing unexpected.

ANGSTY MILITARY GUY: So, yeah. The military? Tore a hole in the space-time continuum and let the ~~dogs~~monsters out.

CRAZY LADY: I KNEW IT. WE HAVE ANGERED GOD BY WALKING ON THE MOON AND WHORING AROUND. THE ONLY ANSWER IS EXPIATION.

PUNISHER: Still not sure what you mean.

CRAZY LADY (pointing to angsty military guy): KEEL HIM.

BUTCHER: *STABBITY*

CROWD: *surfs him out the door to be expiated*

CRAZY LADY: WHO'S NEXT?

PUNISHER: Time to go.

~NIGHT TWO IN THE MARKET OF DOOM~

PUNISHER: I've got a full pack of cigarettes, a half a tank of gas and a map to Chicago.

HIS ESCAPE BUDDIES: Wrong movie.

PUNISHER: I've got a Land Cruiser and Ollie's got a gun.

HIS ESCAPE BUDDIES: Bingo.

~GOOD MORNING, CASTLE ROCK~

PUNISHER, PUNISHLING AND VARIOUS ESCAPE BUDDIES, INCLUDING NAMELESS, POINTLESS FEMALE LEAD: *sneak*

CRAZY LADY: Wazzup.

PUNISHER: Dammit. Lemme guess? Expiation?

CRAZY LADY: Amazing. I WANT THE BOY AND THE WHORE.

AUDIENCE: Whore?

OLLIE: *shoots the bitch*

PUNISHER: *runs for it*

~TOYOTA OF DESTINY~

OLLIE: *is munched* *drops the gun*

WHORE: Leave it.

PUNISHLING: Dad, seriously. Floor it.

PUNISHER: *leaves no gun behind*

AUDIENCE: That was weird.

~INTO THE MIST~

Oldest Land Cruiser in existence coasts through a surrealistic landscape to the soundtrack of "Celtic Woman."

LAND CRUISER: *is out of gas*

PUNISHER: *fondles the gun*

WHORE: Seriously?

PUNISHER: There's only four bullets and five of us, counting my son. So, really, that should discourage me from making this kind of horrific decision and spoiling what has, thus far, been a mildly enjoyable movie.

WHORE: Oh?

PUNISHER: Mmm.

AUDIENCE: HOLY MOTHER OF ---

*BANGBANGBANGBANG*

MIST: *clears*

PUNISHER: *stands alone in front of a tank which obviously represents the military industrial complex whose fault this all was*

Subtle.

a meme.

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:07:14 GMT

First and last lines of the last ten stories I've posted in reverse chronological order (I saw this on nycscribbler's journal last, I think):

"The Light in Our Eyes." NBA AU, NC17, multiple pairings.

First line: Melo doesn’t tell anyone, but he has a secret suspicion that there aren’t any kids in Denver.

Last line (19,000 words later): He doesn’t even think about him.

"Let the Rain Come Down." MLB ficlet, PG, Troy Tulowitzki, Yorvit Torrealba, Ubaldo Jimenez.

First line: Rain makes Yorvit's arms slick and tight, the tendons tense and snappy.

Last line: And he because he is patient, he gently loosens Jimenez's fingers one by one and doesn't think about anything other than September and baseball and rain when Jimenez slides his hands back down Yorvit's arms and leans in to rest his head on Yorvit's shoulder.

"Lying to Beat the Sun." NBA, NC17, Steve Nash/AI

First line: Nobody notices when Steve spits vodka all over himself and the bar.

Last line: The battery dies before the call goes through.

"Love Like Fading (Summer in September)" Bandom, NC17, Pete/Patrick

First line: Dreaming is a tricky proposition for Patrick, most times.

Last line: “There’s nothing left to leave.”

"Dreaming My Way Deep." NBA, NC17, Melo/AI, Melo/Eddie

First line: In the dream, Melo’s home in Baltimore, alone.

Last line: Melo’s not sure whether Eddie just complimented him or made fun of him, somehow, but that’s Eddie, and Eddie’s making him waffles now, and he’s willing to take that as a sign that, either way, they’re going to be okay.

All Stars and Crashed Cars." NBA, NC17, Melo/Eddie, Melo/Eddie/JR

First line: It takes JR until the middle of the third quarter to ask Melo how they’re getting home.

Last line: Then, thinking about Eddie and snowflakes and the quiet and the dark, he says, “I just want to go home.”

"Last Rose of Summer." Bandom AU, R, Pete/Patrick

First line: Rough-hewn stone scrapes along the palm of Pete’s hand, raising the memory of calluses and rope burns.

Last line: He hums one of Patrick’s old songs to himself as he falls asleep.

"Better a Fashion Show Than No Show at All." Bandom AU, NC17, Pete/Patrick

First line: Slipping, sliding and trying not to scrape his back, Patrick makes an honest attempt to get comfortable while laying at the bottom of a big concrete bowl.

Last line: Patrick figures he won’t be able to wear it much longer since it’s about to unravel on him, come apart at the seams (Pete looks over the back of the front seat and winks), but it doesn’t really matter if the shirt disintegrates the next time Patrick washes it; if he’s going to be living in Vegas, he’s going to need new clothes anyway.

"Sex, Lies and Money." NBA, NC17, Melo/Eddie, Melo/Dwyane Wade

First line: Melo’s late.

Last line: “Me neither,” Melo lies, turning around.

"We're After the Same Rainbow's End." Bandom, NC17, Jon/Spencer, Jon/Spencer/Ryan

First line: Touring almost constantly hones Spencer’s body and his nerves to a razor’s edge.

Last line: Jon buys Spencer an old copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Spencer thinks that the two of them might really be on to something.

I don't know why YIM won't let me log in, but it's a tiny bit frustrating.

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:45:21 GMT

The Nuggets are playing some basketball, apparently.

Those two.

Melo: "It was, like, ZOMBIES! Glarg!"

AW.

The caption for this was, "Allen Iverson dances for teammates." There's nothing I can add to that.

!

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 05:18:51 GMT

OMG ROCKIES.

They played the lights out.

Kaz! (With the intentional walk!) Yorvit! U-Ball! Boys! COVERED IN CHAMPAGNE.

*flails*

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 3.

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:07:20 GMT

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 3.

For warnings, etc. See part 1. There is also a part 2.

it’s a cold world, and i can never go numb

Steve’s a bitch for not warning Allen before he moves in. But, okay, so’s Melo for not having the courage to say anything for the past year. It’s easier to blame Steve, though; Allen’s fragile enough without having to deal with this.

So they (Eddie and Melo) decide to lie. To hide. Just for a while. (And you know what happens to best laid plans.)

Steve drops Allen off and Eddie, Melo and Tia all meet him at the door.

“Hey,” Allen says, slow and quiet, and then, “Hey,” when he sees Tia, dropping down to eye level with her. “Baby girl,” he says, and she touches his cheek (sunken, thin-skinned) tentatively.

“Dad?” she asks, and Melo grabs Eddie, tugging him into the kitchen; he can’t watch this.

They collect a couple of beers and a Dr. Pepper for Tia and then make it back into the living room where Allen and Tia are still sitting on the floor, talking about the earrings that Melo bought for her last week at the same pawn shop he bought Brendon’s guitar.

“Good to see you,” Allen says, reaching for Melo and pulling him down into a hug. “The real thing,” he runs his hand up and down Melo’s back. “You’re so damn tall. I couldn’t tell -- couldn’t really see -- not from behind the glass.”

Back of the neck, jaw hinges, temples -- they all hurt suddenly as Melo tries not to cry. Allen smells like childhood to him: old smoke, Cool Water stuck to his collar (it’s an old shirt, the cologne’s had years to sink in), and sun.

“Mm,” is all Melo can say, disoriented by hugging Allen because Melo’s looming and then enveloping him, and that’s backward, because Allen’s supposed to be bigger and stronger.

“Just like old times,” JR says from the doorway, and Melo can tell from where he is, that JR’s pretty fucked up -- rolling, maybe. “Except for --”

Eddie jumps and Melo jerks away from Allen at the same time but they don’t get to JR before he finishes: “ -- Eddie fucking your boy -- ow, bitch,” he says, just as Eddie tackles him.

“Eddie --” Allen starts, looks at Tia. “What?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “Um.”

Allen gets up and grabs his bag. “I don’t even -- no. Just. Where do I sleep?”

*

Which is the worst of it, actually. Allen doesn’t talk about it, at first. Not until he catches Melo and Eddie kissing on the floor with a bottle of vanilla vodka between them. And it’s late, three-ish; the time of night where you have to make the decision to either sleep or wait for dawn. An edgy, between, time. Melo’s jittery from coke and loud music; chilly in the cold of the apartment after the heat of the club. He just wants to come down (to come) and get his muscles to quit going into spasms every time he takes a deep breath.

“How long?” Allen asks, sitting on the ottoman in front of them and grabbing the bottle.

“Year,” Eddie says.

“Since I was seventeen,” Melo says, defensive.

Melo’s favorite Jadakiss album is playing softly and Allen is sitting with his back to the big windows so Melo can’t see his eyes.

“I knew,” Allen says. “About you.” He tips the bottle toward Melo. “Since forever.” He stretches his legs out, forcing Eddie and Melo apart by a few more inches. “So, I asked Steve to look out for you.” He sighs, dramatic. It feels to Melo like he’s trying to hold on to his temper. “Didn’t see this coming, though.”

He takes another drink and then stands up, looking out of the window -- out over the glowing Denver cityscape. When he turns back, he runs a hand through the white lines on the coffee table. “Wanted something more for you than this.“ Then, turning: “Thought you’d make it out,” he finishes, fading into the dark of the hallway.

Out of where? Melo wonders. He is out; he left Sun Valley a year ago and he hasn’t been back.

Eddie kisses his neck and then his shoulder, biting gently on the still-tender skin where his newest tattoo is.

*

Painting and sketching seem to be the things that hold Allen together. He doesn’t go out with Eddie and Melo and JR. “If I got caught with you guys and all the shit you’ve got on you?” he shakes his head.

The art thing isn’t that odd. Melo remembers the old sketches -- Allen’s been drawing since the afternoon they met. And he sold a few prints in jail, sketches he did from memory of places and people around Sun Valley, and then some of his other inmates. The thing is, they were really good, and Chauncey -- of all people -- helped Allen to sell them.

Melo can’t stop himself from rooting through Allen’s things, spending hours with his sketches, trying to figure this new Allen out through the images he creates.

One sketch, particularly, catches his eye. It’s him, leaning on the old Caddy, with a bandanna holding his braids back and a gun held loosely, pointing down, in his left hand. The look on his face is old and angry and distant; the way he stands is almost liquid; like if he moved, he would stagger and fall.

“This never happened,” Melo finally points out, showing it to Allen while he’s sitting on the balcony. “That’s not my gun.”

“No,” Allen says, eyes closed against the sun. “Just how I saw you in my head sometimes.”

He’s quiet so long, Melo thinks he may be asleep, but he cracks one eye and says, “It’s my gun,” before getting up and going in.

They could live comfortably off of Eddie’s salary, all of them, but Melo still deals on the side and Allen takes comissions for his work. “Neo-Contempory Urban Expressionism” someone calls it, and Melo promptly forgets the label. There’s a lot of steel, chrome, glass and guys with mean faces and vague, shadowed eyes. Until Chauncey comes up with a new buyer, someone who bought some of Al’s early stuff from a T-Wolves’ charity auction.

“Some French guy,” Allen tells Melo. “Bought something with you and JR --” he shrugs. “The two of you playing ball.”

There’s something bugging Allen, though, Melo can’t place it. He’s taken odd commissions before. Even some for gay buyers that like Allen’s perspective on the male form. “He wants something specific,” Allen finally says, hands smeared with charcoal, looking through one eye at his sketchpad.

“And?” Melo asks.

“Sexy,” Allen says. “With you and someone white.”

Eddie hears that and laughs, “Festishist.”

“Something,” Allen nods and draws a few sweeping lines. “So, um,” an arm starts to take shape. “You wanna model for me? You both? ‘Cause,” the sinuous curves of a waist appear. (It’s a woman, Melo thinks, enthralled.) “ ‘Cause,” he keeps going, “I can draw a lot from memory, but I can’t usually draw what I’ve never seen, y’know?”

Melo nods. Makes sense.

“It’s a big commission and I can pay you,” Allen uses his finger to shade in the hollows of hipbones.

“Whatever,” Melo says, and Eddie smiles.

*

It only works late at night. That three-ish time. In between going to bed and getting up. Between fucking and fucking up. It’s only when the moon is low and full over the mountains, spilling stark grey and yellow shadows into the apartment, that Allen feels comfortable enough to try to draw Melo and Eddie.

Furniture has to be rearranged so that they can spread out -- shirtless and barefoot -- on the floor.

“Just sit,” Allen tells them. “Closer.” And then, “Closer,” as he leans back against the ottoman with the sketchpad between his knees. “So,” he says, after a minute, not looking up, “do -- whatever. Slowly.”

And Eddie turns and kisses Melo, laughing a little to himself, and Melo lets himself be pushed back -- slowly -- until he’s on his back. He’s loose and tired, sore too, but sober, able to focus on Eddie and block Allen out.

“Stay,” Allen says, and they do, just making out on the floor, until Allen says, “Yeah, no. You need to -- move? Touch? But not like that.”

Move, and Melo does. Knowing he can be more sexy than clumsy when he wants to be, but telling himself that he’s absolutely not trying to move a little more fluidly than usual, keep his voice a little lower, and flex his muscles a little harder. He’s not trying to show Allen anything -- not trying to accomplish anything but art with the way he rubs his hands up Eddie’s back or the way he pushes up off of the floor and rolls his body with Eddie’s.

“You have -- “ Allen starts and stops. Paper rustles, tears and then, “I mean,” he says. “You look alike.” He’s talking to himself, but he sounds surprised. “I see you. Both.” More rustling. “Apart -- all the time and you’re big, tall. So -- stop, a minute.”

They hold still and Melo feels twitchy all over. “Just,” Allen’s backed up, it sounds like, to get perspective, maybe, and he sounds preoccupied. “Lay down. Like, over him, I mean, Eddie.”

Under Eddie, Melo feels a degree of relief, like he’s out of the spotlight and the show’s over. Not like it was a show, or anything, just that Allen was looking at him and now he’s mostly covered by Eddie and that’s hot, temperature-wise, and comforting. Until Eddie starts to whisper to him, ask him why he’s so hard (because Eddie’s not really; just mildly interested), if he’s an exhibitionist, or does he just want to show Allen how much he’s really grown up?

“Fuck you,” Melo says, and Allen tells them not to fight, that the anger is showing in the lines of their bodies and he doesn’t want that right now. Later, though. Maybe.

Melo hears Allen shifting around and then he’s there. “Need you to move again,” he says. “Like this,” pulling Eddie back and then over. “On your arm.” So Eddie’s propped up on one hand, and, “This hand here,” touching Melo’s hip with his other.

“And you,” Allen says, grabbing Melo’s legs, “like this,” pulling until Eddie is between them, and Allen’s sliding his hand down and inside Melo’s right thigh. “I mean,” he leaves his hand where it is, his fingers drumming on the tendon, “this is how you --?”

Nodding, Eddie shoves forward with his hips, miming fucking, and catching Allen’s hand between them. “Sometimes,” Eddie says. “Sometimes the other way.” Melo misses what Allen says, because he’s trying to swivel his hips out from under Eddie’s and away from Allen.

“Clothes off?” Eddie asks, calm, holding Melo in place while Melo panics, staring up and out of the big doors.

Allen blows out a quick breath and then sits back up again. “Uh, yeah,” Then, “Shit,” quietly, frustrated and tired sounding.

Eddie strips and then waits for Melo who’s moving, slowly, before bending back over him, blocking Melo’s vision, his hair falling in Melo’s eyes.

A second later he shifts sideways and Melo has to blink the starlight away. Nothing happens for the longest time -- long enough for the pressure to build and for the urge to stretch his legs to become almost unbearable -- and then Allen kisses him. Hard. He tastes like all the alcohol Melo hasn’t had tonight, and his thumb pushes brutally into the hinge of Melo’s jaw.

His other hand, and Eddie’s, are between Melo’s legs, touching and squeezing and stroking until Melo’s knees fall open and he turns his face away from Allen’s, letting Allen’s teeth slide along his cheek and catch on his ear and then his neck.

When he was six years old he would fall asleep on Allen’s thin chest, fingers knotted in the extra fabric of Allen’s too big shirt. He’d wake up with a cramp in his neck, wheezing, from the smoke that lingered in Allen’s hair and on his skin.

When he was a little older, he wrestled with Eddie -- fighting the loneliness and the shame and the anger out. They’d roll on the ground, pressed hard against each other, while Melo bit and kicked and grabbed. He still has the scars from where Eddie hit back.

Now, Allen’s sucking on his chest and working Melo’s cock while Eddie licks his balls, his hair trailing over and between Melo’s thighs.

Melo comes like that, before they do can anything else to him.

*

“Maybe this -- “ he rolls so he can breathe. “Wasn’t, y’know?”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, glancing at his watch, tilting his wrist until the gold catches the light and the band glitters. “Gotta go. Flying to LA in the morning.”

He sits back into the dark, looks at Allen and Melo, and then gets up and walks off.

*

Allen sits up and rubs at his forehead, looking dizzy and drunk and Melo sits up with him, thinking that he doesn’t have a lot experience with this, the awkward aftermath shit and that the lack probably has to do with not having a lot of sex with people he doesn’t want to hurt, or, he guesses, with people that don’t want to hurt him.

It’s like a crossroads, or a turning point or a rite of passage. Something. Melo can’t put his finger on it, but there’s a significance that he’s missing right now. Something’s been redefined (ruined?) with the three of them.

“I should -- “ he says, leaning toward the hall and starting to get up.

“Don’t.” Allen says, and he sounds angry as he reaches for Melo’s braids, pulling him back down. “Just … do this.”

*

Honestly, Allen doesn’t have a huge cock, but Melo feels like he’s choking the whole time he has it in his mouth.

*

Four nights later, on a night without a moon, Allen sketches while Eddie presses Melo face first into the carpet, pinning his hands over his head and kissing the back of his neck.

It feels contrived and Melo’s arms ache and cramp; his wrists have bracelets of bruises the next morning and Allen pretends not to notice.

“Going out tonight,” he says, looking past Melo, just to the right of his head. “You should come with us. I mean,” and he shifts his weight from one bare foot to the other. “With the girls and me. And JR.”

“Girls,” Melo repeats, popping the joint in his thumb.

“Mmm,” Allen says, studying the ground now. “Y’know.”

“Yeah,” Melo says. “Fuck you.”

*

There’s nothing left.

Eddie’s there and gone for most of the rest of the season, and Melo doesn’t bother to keep track, but he’s shocked at how much he misses him -- like, his head hurts and he can’t stop chewing the gum Eddie keeps in the ashtray of his Mercedes. It’s watermelon Trident, and Melo chews it until his jaws click.

Allen’s never around either, but if he is, he ignores Melo, even through Melo’s obsessive gum smacking

The summer drags. The dog days linger through August and September, and Melo almost forgets that he’s another year older; nineteen doesn’t feel any different than eighteen. He’s still a little too tall and little too thin and maybe a little lost outside of Sun Valley.

When basketball season gets closer, Allen starts to notice Melo again and they play together at the gym where it seems like Allen hates Melo more and more with every shot. He doesn’t hide his bitterness anymore or his disappointment in both of them. He tells Melo to quit dealing and get a fucking job, and Melo, for the first time since he was five years old, starts to tune Allen out.

Chauncey gets traded to the Pistons, and when they come to play the Nuggets in November, it’s just like old times: Chauncey and Allen and JR and Melo, only instead of drinking in the little house that Tuwanna still lives in on 11th and Federal, they’re all drinking at Crave first, and then Club Sutra, where none of them fit in and the tension crawls up and down Melo’s spine even as he gets high in the club’s private VIP bathroom.

“You,” Chauncey tells Melo, shoving him with his shoulder, “should go to junior college. Play ball. Fix this shit,” he shouts over the music, and looking at Allen who’s shaking his head.

“Can’t do it,” Allen says. “Too big. Too slow,” he shrugs and glances at Melo. “No point now.”

Blinking back the hurt and chewing on another piece of gum, Melo lets them fade into the crowd and away from him, shouting and pushing at each other and everyone around them, Allen getting obnoxious and angry to cover his resentment of Chauncey.

It all happens -- when it does -- on the periphery of Melo’s vision, just outside his line of sight. He can hear voices raised above the music, the sound of glass breaking, and then -- for a second -- everything is quiet.

Allen and JR are standing by the door, in a crowd, and Chauncey’s slipping toward Melo and the backdoor.

“Caron,” Chauncey whispers to Melo, and then he’s gone, bodyguards too.

The coke hits when the realization does (oh shit, Caron,) and Melo twitches. He’s frozen, looking at the mirrors over the distant bar, waiting.

Waiting. And --

There. The cracksnap of a gunshot. Yelling -- like white noise, rolling through the club. And another two shots.

fear in the eyes; say I’m never going to run

Rehab is white walls and silences; loose clothes and loose lips. People with bruises under their eyes and nails chewed to the quick spill their guts to nodding, smiling therapists twice a day. Melo feels stripped and light and disconnected. Saying he’s adrift is something only someone like Brendon can get away with, so Melo doesn’t. But there is a sense -- while he sits in soft, grey sweats and a white undershirt -- that he’s lost his anchor; whether that’s his own clothes, his heavy chains, the drugs, or even Eddie, he’s not sure.

The compulsion to talk is exhausting to resist. Even the bad therapists like Dr. Karl have perfected the trick of sitting and waiting and breathing while Melo and the others sit and sweat and shake and then finally start to babble to fill the void.

This is how Melo realizes that he has secrets. There are things that he’s ashamed of; there are things that he wants kind of desperately to keep to himself. He chews on the inside of his mouth while guys like Ruben (asshole, Melo thinks, over and over) talk about how they hit their wives and sleep with strippers.

*

“Not your problem?”

It takes a second to realize that someone is talking directly to him (an orderly -- a familiar one?), and another second for Melo to decide if he wants to talk back.

“What?” Melo asks, slowing down, waiting for the orderly to catch up.

“Beating your girlfriend?”

“No,” Melo shakes his head and reads the orderly’s nametag. Raja, right. The guy who sat up with him the night Eddie admitted him.

Raja shrugs and tilts his head down the hall. “Going to work out?”

“Yeah.”

“Want company?”

“Don’t care,” Melo says, honestly, and keeps walking.

*

“It’s just that--” Raja starts again when Melo’s spotting him on the bench. “It’s easier if you have someone waiting for you, right? Wanting you to get better?”

“So?”

“So, do you have someone waiting?”

“Maybe,” Melo shrugs.

“A girl?” Raja asks and then sits up, shaking his head. “Or what?”

Frustrated, tired and dizzy from all the different people trying to get into his head and all the chemicals leaking out, Melo drops the weights with a clang and snaps, “Or what.” He’s not used to hiding, but he’s never come out either.

“I’m gay,” he says, rubbing at his forehead with his shirt and then tying it around his head and heading for the basketball court.

There’s no one else playing this late and Raja’s still two feet behind him.

“And?” he asks.

Melo picks up a ball and presses between his hands. “And because I am,” he throws the ball hard in Raja’s direction and Raja just dodges it, “someone’s dead.”

Raja leans against the wall and traps the ball under his heel. “How does that work?”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Melo settles on, not knowing how to explain Allen and not willing to, certain of his guilt, though; clinging to it now, tearing at its raw edges.

“Did you love him?”

Melo grabs a different ball and shoots his fifteen footer. It rims out and he lets it go.

“Yeah. In a way.”

*

The last thing Raja asks him before he gets out on his own again (no, not on his own; never alone, always with JR or Tuwanna or Steve or Brendon or Eddie), “In what way?”

There are moments -- rarely -- in life when you have the chance to be completely honest with someone because you’ll never see them again (in a cab, on a plane, in a hospital); so, Melo tells Raja, “I can‘t live without him,” (with what I am) and means it absolutely.

*

The second time he goes into rehab it’s because the judge tells him he has to. The facility isn’t nearly as nice and the therapists aren’t as patient. They don’t get into Melo’s head and he doesn’t have to fight the urge to tell them that he’s into dick and that coke makes it easier to swallow.

He doesn’t want to die anymore, but he’s still not sure how to live either.

*

Chicago, if anything, is more depressing than Denver in the winter. After four years, Melo feels a little like the wind’s leeched something important out of him, but at the same time, the humidity is settling in on him and rotting him from the outside in.

Eddie’s spent three mediocre seasons with the Fire and Melo’s not sorry, (“I mean it,” he keeps saying,) that he came with him. The way Eddie asked him to come to Chicago -- when he was half-conscious and lying in his own vomit on a December night, late in 2002 -- it was as if Eddie was asking something else.

At least that’s the way Melo remembers it.

*

Melo’s been clean for two years and class is just about to get out and he’ll take the train to their apartment. It’s his last English class (he only needs two), before he can start focusing on his business major; he’ll be lucky if he makes a C in it, and Eddie’s no help. “I don’t speak English,” he tells Melo, in all seriousness, and then talks dirty to him gently in Spanish the rest of the night.

Melo’s minoring in Spanish.

Eddie’s tired from training when Melo gets home and Melo tries to be encouraging. It works better when he’s high, and so he smokes a bowl and then they eat together while Eddie talks about Spring. Their place is a lot smaller than the penthouse in Denver, but housing costs are a little higher in Chicago and Eddie isn’t making as much anymore. Melo doesn’t really care; it’s not the projects and that’s important, still.

His phone vibrates while they’re watching tape of one of last season’s games, and Eddie waves Melo off, stretching out on the couch when Melo gets up, letting his hair (longer than ever, but naturally dark and curling at the ends) hang over the arm.

It’s Brendon (of all the people to find in Chicago), reminding Melo that he’s supposed to come and see Brendon’s band play tonight, seriously. Because they’re awesome, and Melo will hate them, but Brendon appreciates the irony in that.

And Melo, who’s stuck between a silent Eddie in a cold apartment and a venue full of tiny, tiny kids that will think he’s the bouncer, appreciates the irony too, and goes.

*

He hates Brendon’s band and the band that’s playing with them, but Brendon’s still using the green guitar, and wearing too much make-up. He’s like a fucking circus act, all by himself, but it fits and Melo feels a little jealous.

“Did you ever fall in love?” Brendon wants to know after the show, cramming Melo backstage with him and smirking at his guitarist.

“No,” Melo tells him.

“Liar,” Brendon says, and threatens to sing a song about him.

*

Sleeping with Brendon feels wrong this time, and Melo’s surprised. He’s sure -- damn sure -- that he’s less happy than he was four and a half years ago, that he’s nothing more to Eddie than his roommate (has he ever been?). But he can’t focus on the feeling of Brendon’s hair on his cheek or the sting of his teeth on his chest. He can’t lose himself -- not like Brendon loses it when he buries his hands until they disappear in the masses of Melo’s braids and winds himself around him.

Melo goes home smelling like Brendon -- with makeup smeared on his shirt -- and he showers before getting in bed with Eddie, who’s not stupid, but he doesn’t say anything,

*

To make up for the Brendon thing, Melo goes to the Fire’s season opener against Dallas and wears Eddie’s jersey. He’s eating a hot dog with extra mustard and drinking a Corona when Eddie goes down.

The heat is awful and the hot dog isn’t very good, Melo thinks, waiting for Eddie to stand up. His seat’s comfortable and if he’s not careful, he might fall asleep -- he did get in on a late flight. When he glances from his beer back to the pitch, and Eddie’s still not up, he puts his beer down. When Eddie gets helped off of the field another minute later, Melo calmly gets up, tosses his beer in the trash, finds the nearest bathroom, and throws up everything he’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours.

*

“It’s the ACL,” Eddie tells Melo back at his hotel. They have the curtains drawn against the setting Texas sun, and the air running quietly in the background.

“Surgery?” Melo asks, proud of himself for holding it together so well and not, y’know, either losing the power of speech, OD’ing on his own stash of coke, or just locking himself in a public bathroom and refusing to come out.

“As soon as we get back,” Eddie says.

“To Denver?” Melo asks.

“To Chicago,” Eddie says, looking at him curiously.

Melo smiles at him and nods. He knew that. He remembers now.

*

Going to rehab for a third time isn’t really an option for Melo. He looks at it as a three strikes kind of thing. If you can’t get clean on your first two tries, then you’re not going to. So even though the need is there (finding oblivion, losing himself), he gets Brendon (who is oddly supportive) to take him to a meeting and he gets over it.

Summer school keeps Melo busy (he’s never told anyone that the last thing Allen ever told him was to quit dealing and get a job). That and taking care of Eddie, whose brother’s come up from Chihuahua. Melo met Rico once years ago when Eddie graduated from CU with his degree in sociology and then again when he signed with the Galaxy. He’s never been sure if Rico knows about Eddie and him and is cool with it, or if he’s just an easygoing guy. Either way, he’s a good cook, and Melo takes full advantage of that, even if Eddie doesn’t.

“Make him eat,” Melo tells Rico as he hovers over him, breathing in the steam coming off of the tostadas Rico’s making.

“He’ll eat when he’s hungry,” Rico says, reaching around Melo for the cilantro. “And he’ll get hungry again,” he tells Melo with a smirk and a kiss on the cheek. “Trust me, Carmelito.”

“Wait -- “ Melo says, stealing a bite of chicken. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Mmm,” Rico says, and smacks Melo’s hand.

It gets Melo thinking, though, while he watches Eddie work out, his hair pulled back in the same kind of half pony tail he used to wear, sweating and yelling at Rico.

Maybe he did mean that.

*

No matter how much work Eddie does, though, the Fire aren’t impressed. His age, combined with the severity of the injury put him in a delicate situation with them regarding the renegotiation of his salary and playing time, and in the end (after talking to Melo) he leaves Chicago and goes back to Denver for a coaching job with the Rapids.

Melo transfers to Metro State and Eddie buys a house in the suburbs, well away from downtown.

There are boxes that Melo won’t touch, and Eddie doesn’t ask him to. They move from storage unit to storage unit and Melo promises himself that someday, if Tia asks, she can have them. The worst part of that long November when he was nineteen wasn’t really JR’s indictment for manslaughter (Eddie and Melo were gone by the time he was convicted), or the funeral (because Melo was too high to remember more than quickly melting snowflakes on his black suit and the fact that Tuwanna had shaved her head); instead, it was the mundane stuff. Melo was supposed to settle Allen’s estate, with Steve’s help, and that’s what finally broke him: sorting through the years of letters and emails that Allen saved from when he was in prison, boxing up his high school and college basketball awards and jerseys, and organizing what seemed like endless sketches.

A few of the pieces had buyers and Melo had to track them down -- even Diaw -- the guy who commissioned Allen’s last work. He added a bonus to the commission and all of the money went into a trust for Tia that Steve set up, and that according to him, she refuses to touch.

Melo knows how she feels.

*

The night they move in, Melo turns the music up loud and corners Eddie -- pressing him up and back against the wall of their bedroom.

Eddie tugs Melo’s head to him and kisses him. And it’s been forever. Longer.

He can’t keep still when Eddie’s hands slide under his shirt, skimming his skin, touching him deeper than the surface.

“Glad to be back?” Eddie asks.

And Melo shrugs, “Dunno. Maybe.”

i shoot for the stars

Melo makes a game out of scaring people on the light rail. If he can get them to leave before their stop, he wins. It’s all in the look; it’s just a matter of staring back. And he does get a lot of looks, as tall and as broad as he is now, braids past his shoulder blades.

A look is the first thing he tries on Tia when he gets home, finds her there, and the house literally torn apart. She’s not intimidated, though.

“Where is it?“ she asks, sitting in the middle of a pile of clothes.

“What?” Melo asks, edging around her.

“Your stash,” she says, twisting one of Eddie’s shirts in her hands.

She’s got to be fourteen or even fifteen now and Melo can see Allen’s ghost in her, around her eyes and in the way she tilts her head. The difference is in the weight she’s gained; it doesn’t sit well on her frame and she looks desperately uncomfortable.

“There is none, baby girl,” he says, quietly, still keeping his distance.

“Fucker,” she spits out. “I’ll call the cops, see if they can’t find it.”

“Do it,” he tells her, sliding down the wall and crouching at her level. “How did you find us?”

“JR,” she says, and the fabric of Eddie’s shirt tears. “You’ve been to see him, what, all of three times since you’ve been back?”

“Maybe,” Melo says, waiting for the rest.

“Eddie let me in on his way out. Told me to wait for you.” She pushes herself up and sways a little on her feet.

Melo looks, and then looks again and reevaluates everything, suddenly feeling more out of his depth than he has since her dad died.

“I hate you,” she says, snuffling into the back of her hand and looking at the mess on the floor.

“Yeah,” he says, kneeling up so that he’s about a head shorter than she is. “Okay.”

*

He convinces her to stay and then cleans the house because he doesn’t know what else to do. He tries to call her mom, but Tuwanna doesn’t answer her phone and Melo figures that if Tia wanted Tuwanna’s help -- or, if Tuwanna wanted to help Tia -- Tia wouldn’t be crashed out in the guest bedroom wearing one of Eddie’s old Galaxy jerseys, crying sliently to herself.

“At least you’re not sick,” he tells her in the morning while she eats a bowl of oatmeal with him and Eddie.

“I was. That only happens in the beginning, most times,” she says, drawing a diamond in the spilled sugar.

“Oh,” Melo says, kicking at Eddie, grasping at straws.

“Do you have a doctor?” Eddie asks, twisting his hair up into a spiky knot before he starts to clear off the table. “A boyfriend?”

“Yes,” she says, and then, “no.”

“When are you -- I mean,” Melo hesitates. “When does it -- ?”

“Come out?” she actually smiles a little and Eddie laughs. “A month, maybe.” She stands up and does her dizzy looking thing again before blinking it off.

*

Kiyan is premature, sick and addicted. Melo stares at him through a glass window, wondering if this is his fault too, watching him wave his little arms aimlessly as he breathes through a tube. It seems like Melo’s always on the outside looking in on the most important people in his life. He can never get close to them, touch them, tell them something secret. When he goes to see JR, there’s nothing left of the guy who used to race him for popsicle sticks -- not even in the distorted cracks and holes in the edges of the screen they talk through. When JR presses his fist to the barrier that separates them, there are tattoos on his knuckles that Melo can’t read and doesn’t want to.

For about ten minutes one night Melo started to believe, with all of his heart, that Kiyan was his, and that with a little persuasion, Tia would just leave the baby with him and Eddie. When he asked Eddie though, manic and shaky with the idea, Eddie just squinted at him (almost a glare), and said, “Jesus. Let him go.”

Obviously he wasn’t talking about Kiyan.

*

Tuwanna sits next to Melo in the nursery and he can barely see her, she’s so faded and dull. She’s never let her hair grow back and her face seems skeletal under the buzzing, fluorescent lights.

“When he’s ready,” she says, cocking her head at Kiyan, “I’ll take him home with me. To Virginia,” she clarifies. “Tell Tia that I did that, if you see her.”

Melo nods. He doubts that he will. She took off as soon as she could get up -- hours after Kiyan was born -- and Melo has a feeling that she won’t ever be back. She wasn’t lying when she said that she hated him.

*

With Tuwanna and Tia gone, Melo spends his time in the gym or on schoolwork and Eddie slips into a bright, but inconsistent afterthought. Melo assumes -- hopes -- that Allen’s ghost will follow his daughter and his grandson, but it seems that with them gone, Melo struggles even more with the memories (he sees Allen everywhere and nowhere) and the guilt. It’s shocking, but Melo hates the house in Aurora more than he hated the apartment in Chicago. The mountains are just a purple haze to the West and the prairie stretches out forever in every other direction. All the houses look the same and no one looks like Melo.

He’s twenty-five and tired.

Michelle’s living in Birmingham now with her husband and they have a daughter that Melo’s never seen. He wonders if he’d hate the South, or if the heat might somehow sweat him clean once and for all.

He’s looking up plane fares when Eddie gets home early and stands behind him, rubbing his shoulders. His hands are cold. “Why don’t you come with me tomorrow?” he asks, rubbing his thumbs up and down Melo’s neck when Melo drops his head. “Work out in our gym, hang out, whatever.”

“How are you going to get me into your gym?” Melo wants to know, clicking on fares to Chicago, just for fun; although, the last time Brendon texted him he’d been back in Vegas.

“Spouses and partners can use it,” Eddie says, tugging on Melo’s braids and moving over to the fridge.

It takes a second, but Melo gets it.

“Oh?” he says, shutting his laptop and watching Eddie crack open a beer.

“Mmm,” Eddie nods. “It’s just --” he hitches himself up on the counter. “We’ve been living together for, like, seven years and so, y’know.” He shrugs. “Seems like, sometimes, you’ve never not been here.”

“Yeah,” Melo says. “I know.” He stands up, spotting a silver strand in the hair Eddie has down and loose. “I know,” he repeats.

*

There isn’t a time of day or night when DIA isn’t busy, and Melo has to take a crowded shuttle (shoulder to shoulder with businessmen; briefcases jabbing the back of his legs) to his concourse before he can shuffle through security to Gate B17 to wait for his flight (which is late) to Alabama. He doesn’t call his sister; he figures she’s busy and if he can’t manage to make his own way now, he never will.

Common’s Finding Forever is playing on his iPod, blocking out the steady, monotonous reminders from airport security not to leave baggage unattended and the hoarse, hopeless crying of little kids up past their bedtime.

He sits, legs sprawled out, taking up four seats in a long row, while he replaces all the jewelry he had to take off to get past the metal detectors. The ring on his left hand is just another cold piece of gold that feels like it’s always been there. It’s silly, kind of, to need something to show the sort of commitment he’s made to Eddie now (always -- not seven years, eleven years, now, since Allen and Steve gave up and left Eddie to take Melo’s punches and his tears.) Eddie brought it up, though, laughing and blaming it on his age and soft, sentimentality, but Melo went along with it, bought them himself, and he has a picture of he and Eddie wearing them and looking painfully awkward about it stored in his phone so he can show Michelle. He wants her to know, to see.

When he dozes off, his dreams (sitting on warm asphalt, eating something sweet and sticky) are in a mix of English and Spanish. He doesn’t dream about Allen. He doesn’t even think about him.

END

"The Light in Our Eyes" part 2.

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:55:12 GMT

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 2

For warnings, etc. See part 1.

forever begins, just because i thought about it

“He told me to take care of you,” Steve says, calm, brushing his hair back behind his ears and then digging the knuckles of his right hand into his back.

“Fuck that,” Melo says, pushing past Steve and out the door of Ra’s house, into the unforgiving sun of another Colorado summer. “Fuck that and fuck you.”

“What’s with the rage, man?” Steve asks, following him out. “It’s not like he left you on purpose.”

The punch that Melo aims at the door of Steve’s pick-up goes wild and his knuckles skid off the rusting paint and catch on the warped seam where the door doesn’t close quite right. Skin rips and pain flares.

“I know,” he says, growling. “No one ever wants to go to jail.”

“So?”

“So,” Melo shakes his hand out and then shoves Steve backwards a step. “I don’t care how often you had to suck Al’s dick to get him to like you, but I don’t need you. Or your boyfriend.”

Pinned back against the truck, Steve only looks mildly shocked, putting his hands up and then back down when Melo launches himself again. A head shorter, a few pounds lighter, Melo figures. But he’s got anger and betrayal on his side, and this hot, clawing, cramping stitch in his belly that never lets up and only gets worse when he’s around Steve or Eddie.

“Why do you care?” he asks, voice breaking -- low and then high -- desperately pushing Steve into the blistering hot metal of the truck’s fender. “You want me?”

Melo barely understands what he’s asking. Leaning now, instead of shoving; rubbing, he tries to soothe the hard ache inside, dropping the bloody hand between them. “I made out with someone at basketball camp,” he says. Random and apologetic.

“Girl?” Steve asks, sliding out from between Melo and the truck and turning back towards the house, flinching, touching his back with his fingertips.

“No,” Melo says, drained. He wants to go back inside and sit and start over and totally forget everything; especially the fucking basketball camp, but he’s always been shit at keeping secrets, except for the one, and to do that, he had to stop talking altogether.

“Okay,” Steve says, and shrugs. “And?”

“It was,” Melo starts edging for the house, “because of Chauncey.”

Behind him, Steve chokes on a laugh. “How’s that?”

The screen door slams and Melo flops onto the couch, breathing easier in the colder air. “I said I knew him. Chauncey,“ Melo clarifies. “And this kid got all -- “ and Melo wiggles a little. “Like that. Excited.”

Silence from Steve and Melo sighs, starting to feel twitchy and angry again, like, damn. Nobody fucking understands. And besides, he’s thirteen now and doesn’t need to be taken care of anymore, like he ever did.

“Whatever,” he says.

*

“Gone?” JR asks between coughs, funky-sweet smelling smoke trickling out of his nose. The weed is harsh; Melo can tell from the other side of the room.

“Yeah,” Melo says, sipping his Coors and keeping an eye on his bedroom door. His mom’s working for a change, but he’s never quite sure what Michelle’s schedule is. “Back to Boulder. Law school shit.”

“Nice,” JR says, nodding. “It is so royally fucked up that the Buffs went to The Dance this year and Chauncey got drafted all while Al sits in fucking jail, bro.”

Melo agrees, for the millionth time, that it is indeed, royally fucked up.

“Do you think the faggot is bullshitting you about giving up soccer and going to law school because of Al?” JR asks, hoarse from the bad weed. “Being all inspired and shit?”

Honestly, Melo doesn’t know. He’s never really been inspired to do anything by anybody, and if it were true, it might mean that all of his nightmare fantasies about Al and Steve are somehow real. “Could be,” he says, thinking about how Steve had said bitterly, “You aren’t the only one who loves him, you‘re just the only one he loves,” right before he left.

“Whatever,” JR says, echoing Melo’s apathy from earlier. “At least I got to touch Lala’s tits last weekend, man. Tits, man. Fucking tits.”

“Yeah,” Melo snags the Pepsi can pipe they’re using and nods. “At least.”

*

Steve doesn’t come down much after that. He sends Eddie instead. Melo pushes his boundaries with Eddie too, alternately insulting and flirting with him, and ends up with a broken nose when he’s fourteen. JR, doing a quick stint in juvie, tells him to check himself and let Eddie do his thing. “It’s what Al wants for you,” JR says, looking a little older than his years, now, but giddy at the bag of candy Melo brought him. “I mean,” he says with a mouth full of Snickers. “I know you can handle yourself and whatever, but still. You’re --” he stops and chews. He doesn’t say anything that Melo’s afraid he will, terrified he will, flashing back to that night when their friendship started to crumble from the inside out. “Difficult,” is what JR settles on. “With your breathing thing.”

Even though Melo hasn’t had an asthma attack in years, he just grins and nods, “Sure, bro.”

Better to be broken than queer.

After that, he starts to learn Spanish -- but only the good parts -- and how to drive a stick (in Steve’s truck).

It’s sexy; Melo can admit that, sometimes, when he’s high. The way Eddie drives the old truck like he’s punishing it -- grinding the gears and slipping the clutch and revving the engine until it screams -- it turns Melo on. They drive up into the mountains, above the brown clouds that suffocate Denver and through fields of alpine wildflowers, the truck’s tires tearing wide, black furrows through bunches of geraniums, columbines, and roses.

When Melo’s fifteen, Eddie moves to LA to play for the Galaxy because he’s really that good. Caron gets out of prison and Ra dies there.

ashes and snowfalls

Late summer afternoons, after a long workout, are the only times Melo feels really comfortable sleeping naked anymore. He showers, and then lays in bed, under the window -- long without a screen because he and JR cut that bitch out years ago -- and jerks off until he dozes. Usually on his belly, hair still damp and spread out across his shoulders in knotted, tangled braids.

The old lot is cracked and covered in a patchwork of bubbling tar and clumps of crab-grass, but they don’t do a lot of dribbling, just a lot of shooting at a rim that doesn’t even have a chain net anymore. The games are usually one on one with JR, or free-for-alls with the other guys from North that Melo plays with on the varsity team (while kids, little ones, watch from the steps whispering to each other: “Dude, that’s Carmelo Anthony“). And the workouts, along with the hot showers, help ease the ferocious aches and pains in his knees and back from what he hopes is his last growth spurt. He hit 6’5” this summer and he’ll probably get taller, but he prays that it won’t happen again so fucking fast.

His body is a stranger to him; all long legs and arms, muscles where there were none a few months ago. He’s lean and hard where he was soft and round. Just walking is a challenge. He’s always tripping over his feet and banging into things like the kitchen table -- things that have been in the same place for eleven years; he’s just in a different place. A new elevation; a new fucking zip code.

To compensate, to try to make it all fit again -- to make his body his own -- he starts marking it, coloring it in where he thinks something‘s missing. The insides of his arms, his chest, across his back: Remembrance. That’s for Ra. Melo’s never been sure if he grieves for him or for something else -- something about him.

*

Whistling wakes him up -- wolf-whistling and laughing and muttering in Spanish.

“Kiss my ass, Najera,” Melo says, still more asleep than awake, forgetting who he’s talking to, and jumping out of the way when he feels warm breath on the skin of his lower back. He doesn’t cover up, though, because that would mean losing at their game of chicken.

“How’d it go?” he asks, to prove he hasn’t forgotten why Eddie’s in town to begin with.

“Good.” The bed sinks a little. “They made the deal.”

“The Rapids?”

“No, the Nuggets, shitforbrains,” Eddie pinches Melo’s waist. “Yes, the Rapids.” And he lays down next to Melo, crowding him in the tiny bed. “Tired,” he says, muffling a yawn with his arm. “Can I crash here?”

“Right here?” Melo asks, already making room, putting up with an elbow in his side as Eddie pulls his shirt off.

“Mmm,” Eddie says.

“Keep your pants on,” Melo says and shuts his eyes again.

*

A psychedelic sunset filters through slate-grey clouds and leaves Melo’s room a riot of pink, purple and blue velvet shadows. Eddie’s asleep, still and heavy on the side of the bed farthest from the wall, pinning Melo in.

Lazy, aroused, unguarded.

Acting without thinking gets Melo in trouble more of often than not. It leads to being questioned in the back of cop cars -- bubble lights flashing in his eyes -- a broken nose and bad trip after eating two sweet hearts (be mine) and (love is sweet) soaked in acid. But he can’t seem to change the pattern, and doesn’t want to; feels an impulse (lick the back of Eddie’s neck) and does it; waits for the fall out.

Salty, soapy, skin. Eddie’s skin tastes like any other skin Melo’s ever licked, boy or girl. Just clean, and a hint of deodorant the closer Melo gets to Eddie’s shoulder.

Seconds pass and there’s nothing from Eddie. Breathing slow; muscles limp. The stitch in Melo’s side starts to twist and stab and ache with every inhale; the skin between his shoulder blades crawls with tension; the muscles tighten and cramp there too, sending tingling, rushing sensations down Melo’s arms and up his neck to his jaw. This, touching Eddie inside the slowly fading (gold to grey now) twilight, is something he wants so desperately to do -- to finally (now, yes) figure it out: why girls are a mystery and boys are a fantasy.

Because it isn’t okay. Not really. He’s known that since JR flipped his shit over it five years ago, and if anyone could change Melo from one way (the wrong way) to another, it’s JR. Or Al, maybe, except in the years since Al went to jail and Melo’s gotten to know Steve better, he’s sure there was (is?) more between them than an odd sort of roommate friendship. Despite the bullshit about Al and Melo and love that Steve always feeds him.

“Mmm,” Eddie says, rolling a little so he can look over at Melo from behind his hair. “The hell are you doing?”

“Dunno,” Melo says, backing off a little, hoping Eddie will follow, tell him what he’s supposed to be doing, or maybe just do something to him. “Show me?”

“What?” Eddie asks, following Melo over, like Melo thought he would, until he’s on top and Melo’s trying not to catch on fire. “This?” his asks, and grabs Melo’s hand, putting it to the front of his shorts.

Melo nods and reaches for the waistband, tugging at the elastic, getting them down over Eddie’s hips, before Eddie sits up and slides them off. He doesn’t kneel back down, though. He stays propped up over Melo on hands and knees, looking down at Melo’s dick, hard and sticky already against his belly.

“Shit,” he says, quiet, under his breath, and Melo reaches between them -- reaches for Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t stop him, but just keeps looking.

“Is this enough?” Eddie asks, finally sinking back down, pressing onto Melo and touching him for the first time, rubbing him softly. “What you want?”

Pushing up into Eddie’s hand, Melo sighs and grunts. “Yeah -- goddamn,” coming suddenly, embarrassingly, all over his chest and Eddie’s hand.

“Huh,” Eddie says, and sits back, almost painful weight on Melo’s knees. He licks at his palm, and then shrugs, wiping his hand on the t-shirt he yanked off earlier.

“What?” Melo asks, uncomfortable and self-conscious. “Taste weird?”

“Young,” Eddie says, smiling almost gently.

Melo waits but Eddie stays where he is, half-hard still, letting the breeze from the open window blow his hair around his face. He doesn‘t look like he wants to go.

So, anxious now, “That wasn’t it,” Melo says. “Not what I wanted to see.” He breathes deep and touches himself softly, fingertips on the long vein, down to his balls, waiting until Eddie’s watching. He has no idea what he’s doing, and Eddie shakes his head at him.

“No?”
“I’ve seen myself come.” Butterflies. Something’s telling him it’s time to quit, but he doesn’t want to listen. The adrenalin’s too loud.

“And?” Eddie shifts over until they’re side by side and Melo reaches for him, touches him, and watches his dick twitch and swell.

“I don’t know,” Melo’s getting hard again and he thinks Eddie can tell. “What happens next?”
Eddie laughs, short and sharp. “I fuck you.”

It’s a dare and not a very good one. The bottom just dropped out of Melo’s world because he didn’t know (how the hell could he have known?) that he was waiting for someone to say something like that to him?

“Okay,” he says, and his voice cracks just a little bit.

Eddie shuts his eyes and says something to himself in Spanish; it sounds like a prayer, that ends with: “Sorry, sorry. Shouldn’t’ve said that --” he presses a quick, oddly sweet kiss on Melo’s forehead, “about fucking.”

“You’re such a bitch sometimes, Najera,” Melo says, fear (of doing it; of not doing it) making him mean.

Nothing, for a long minute. Just tension.

Then, “Roll over. And keep your head down,” as Eddie leans over the side of the bed to dig in his bag.

Melo rolls and bends, letting his braids curtain his face, but looking toward the window. The mixed scents of hot asphalt, crushed weeds, and car exhaust are slowly being replaced with the heady, spicy smell of the early-blooming Russian olive trees and the burning hickory and meat smell from someone‘s barbeque..

“This new?” Eddie asks, a second later, fingers on the small of Melo’s back and trailing lower. “Done this part?”

“Uh,” Melo rubs his face into his blanket and focuses. “Kind of.”

Eddie doesn’t ask for details, just slides a finger in. Melo spreads his knees a little bit farther apart and breathes slowly. No pain; stretching, pulling, stinging, tingling. Weird, Melo decides. Uncomfortable.

He thinks that he should tell Eddie to stop, and hey, thanks for trying but maybe --

“You,” Eddie mumbles into the side of Melo’s neck, moving up Melo’s body, sliding skin on skin, as he slips another finger in. “You are a real dick. All up on me since you were fucking fourteen years old, and what the fuck?” He twists his wrist and Melo bites down on whatever is closest -- Eddie’s forearm.

Hissing, Eddie bites back, at the slope of Melo’s neck and shoulder, digging into the muscle, sucking hard, making it ache and bruise. “And now,” he says around Melo’s skin. “You -- what is this, even?” biting into the Remembrance. “Who are you?”

His free hand roams Melo’s side, like he’s trying to find a beginning or an end. “So much of you,” he says, whispering, hot and soft, meant to be sexy, finally.

Empty suddenly, Melo bucks backward in frustration, arching and then slumping, panting and trying not to come just from Eddie’s hands on his sides and back and legs. He wants to say “fuck me,” but he’s not sure if guys say that, or if that makes him a slut, or if that’s okay. So he has to wait, wanting it, so bad that he hurts in the strangest places, like the very center of his back and joints of his hips.

“Ed,” he says, trying for grown-up, but his voice fails him. “Are you --”

“Yeah, yeah -- listen, when you feel me push, if it hurts? Push back.”

Melo nods and then it’s there: pressure, pain. He lunges forward, opposite of what Eddie said to, but Eddie’s got him, holding him around the shoulders, forearm pressed against Melo’s chin. Not quite a choke-hold. Not quite. He lunges again and Eddie pushes again and tells him to, “Settle the fuck down.”

“How?” Melo snaps, because, oh, Jesus Christ, he’s getting fucked and if anyone ever found out then -- just, no -- and he shouldn’t want it and he shouldn’t like it and it might change him somehow, right? Like, people will be able to look at him and see Eddie’s handprints on him -- the bruises, the bites, what’s happening inside.

A slap. Hard. Eddie’s hand landing flat between Melo’s shoulder blades, knocking him off balance, knocking the wind out of him.

Coughing. The room is airless, now. He falls into an old, comfortable, familiar fear.

“Stop.” There’s movement, adjustment, a hand in Melo’s braids. “Stop panicking.”

Sudden stillness and pain, and then Eddie’s talking to him, low and fast, sexy and reassuring. “Won’t feel like this next time,” Eddie says, promises.

And Melo pushes back, because that’s it. He has the assurance he needs that this isn’t just for now, that there will be a later.

Motherfucker.

“ ‘k,” he tells Eddie, open now (he thinks that’s what he means: open) and getting fucked, not hard, but steady.

Eddie knows. He eases Melo off the edge a little, talks him around it, a lot of Spanish and nonsense and stream of consciousness about what feels nice where. He shifts back and leans over Melo at a different angle and pushes at Melo’s legs, wanting them wider. Melo stalls, playing, and Eddie tells him, “Be good,” and Melo inches his knees a little farther apart and then comes.

Rolling Melo onto his back again, Eddie slips out and takes the condom off so that he can jack off over Melo while he grits his teeth and keeps his eyes fixed on Melo’s chest.

It has the odd, half-satisfied, half-ashamed and slightly awkward feeling of a fantasy fulfilled, Melo thinks -- having only experienced that once when Kirk Hinrich (one of North’s theater queers) blew him in the back of Allen’s Caddy after the Homecoming bonfire last fall.

*

Eddie’s a warm presence next to him and then he’s gone, packing up his gym bag again and finger-combing his chin-length hair (which is new, and blue streaked. It was longer last time Melo saw him.)

“Gotta go, kid,” Eddie says. “Find my hotel and then tomorrow I’m gonna look for someplace to live down here. Steve might show up for lunch or something. Y’know?” Which pisses Melo off because Steve is always in the middle of everything and yet never close enough to Melo.

“But you should come with me -- to look at apartments?” Eddie finds a clean shirt and pulls it on. “If you want.”

Melo nods and flops onto his belly, sulky at being left.

Eddie fools around with his hair again, finally settling on a messy half-pony tail, and then kisses the back of Melo’s head. “You’re alright.“ A statement. Melo almost believes it.

And then he’s alone and the apartment is quiet again.

Melo pulls on a pair of thin, ratty plaid boxers and heads for the fridge. He cracks open the last Coors Light and calls JR (out of juvie, but on probation for another minor assault charge) to come and smoke a bowl with him.

*

After Eddie and before JR, Melo’s mom walks (staggers) in. She should be too drunk to know but there’s some vestige of her sixth sense left. She knocks a chair over rather than walk around it on her way toward Melo.

She doesn’t say anything at first, just breathes hard and looks at his neck and chest, squinting a little and chewing on her lower lip.

The slap catches him off guard.

“You think I don’t know?” she asks, and it sounds the same as it did ten years ago when she asked it about Allen and his drugs. “Carmelo,” she says, raising her hand again, “do you honestly think I haven’t heard?”

He catches her wrist and looks down at her. At some point he got taller than her, but it must have been recently. “Heard?” he asks.

“About you,” she says. “Why you never have girlfriends.” She’s not raising her voice but she doesn’t have to.

“And?” he asks.

She touches the crucifix around her neck and shakes her head. “Your father --”

“Isn’t here,” Michelle says from the kitchen doorway, back from work to grab a sandwich. “Leave it, mama.”

Melo’s mom gives him one last, long look before grabbing a bottle out of the freezer and slamming the door to her bedroom.

*

JR brings a surprise -- no, not acid-coated sweet hearts -- but not just nasty, bottom of the bag swag either. He’s got hash, and the smell of it (as it curls through Melo brain, untying certain images and cobbling others back together) scours away the lingering scent of sex from Melo’s skin and hair.

“And?” JR asks, when they’re high and the answers to serious questions matter less.

“I hope it gets better,” Melo says.

*

It’s not really something that comes up with Michelle again, not even when Melo gets kicked out of school. She just quits talking to him -- cuts him out of her life -- but he’s almost positive that’s because of the coke he starting to sell and to need more and more and not because of the other thing.

It’s also not something that comes up the next time Melo is facing Allen through a warped, Plexiglas barrier. Allen wants to know about basketball and school and Melo has to lie to him about both, and the lies come surprisingly easy.

Y’know, Melo used to hear -- used to know -- that the only way out (up) was drugs, music or basketball. But that isn’t true; Melo’s found a new way, (his story doesn‘t fit into the movies JR started religiously watching when they were in junior high -- Menace II Society, Boyz in the Hood, when Cuba Gooding Junior was only ever cool when he was staggering and spitting blood all over the streets of Compton). Melo’s found his own way, without Allen and without his real family, either. And it only hurts a little.

i wonder when the roll call for heaven’s going to come

No one misses Melo after he moves in with Eddie except for Tuwanna because he’s the only reliable babysitter she has. Tia’s ten now, and unhappy. Her dad’s in prison and her mom fixes hair and gets high, so Melo relates, in a way.

“You’re the only person she talks to,” Tuwanna says, tired, ten extra years in the bruises under her eyes and the lines around her mouth. Life with -- and without Allen -- will do that to you. “You’re big,” she pats his shoulder, chest-high to her while he‘s sitting at the kitchen table and she‘s pacing. “Safe, I guess.”

Eddie’s on a road trip with the team, gone six days, and Melo’s alone except for Tia most of the time, JR sometimes, and Tuwanna now.

Tuwanna moves off in a clatter of bracelets and high heels, clicking a cheap, plastic lighter, over and over until it catches and she can smoke. Leaning one hip on the edge of the table she exhales up and away from Melo, considerate in the only way she knows how to be.

“Something new?” she asks, lifting up and then dropping two, then three different braids. “Shorter?” she wonders, mostly to herself, pulling one straight so that she can see that it’s past Melo’s shoulder. “Loose?”

Laughing, Melo shakes his head. “Just fix them.” Same as always; six years of it. “But hey, hey, Tia. Flip on the stereo, baby girl,” he says, yelling into the living room. The clicking and jangling is grating on his hangover.

“Mmm,” Tuwanna moves off of the table and around behind him, kicking off her shoes and taking up handfuls of his braids.

It’s hours before she’s got them all undone and Melo’s neck is stiff and achy.

“Sink,” she says, and he obediently gets up and then bends low over the counter, humming along with the music as she digs her fingers into his scalp and scrubs at his head. Eddie’s penthouse may have a lot of things going for it, but a giant sink isn’t one of them and Melo and Tuwanna both end up soaking wet. Since he isn’t wearing a shirt to begin with, Melo just lets himself air-dry, but Tuwanna’s t-shirt is wet and clingy and transparent and Melo catches himself looking, out of curiosity.

“What?” She touches herself, unselfconsciously, and then reaches for her pack of cigarettes.

“Dunno,” Melo says, pulling her to him, swaying with the music, letting his hair drip on her, beading on the skin of her neck. She smells like smoke and pink body spray and home. Like his sister, JR’s girlfriends, and the girl who sat next to Melo in freshmen algebra.

“Have to do your hair before it dries,” she says, soft. Small hands on Melo’s hips, long-nails pricking his skin.

*

Getting used to living downtown -- in the Golden fucking Triangle, man -- takes longer than Melo wants to admit. He was so out of it when he moved in that he let Eddie blow him in front of the big, front windows where anyone could see, if they were looking up.

No one IDs him at the clubs, and Eddie’s friends all seem to like him -- fast, angry, sunburned kids with bruises and scarred, bumpy legs. They all try to talk to him in Spanish and then laugh at his mistakes.

He thinks, sometimes, sitting out in the concrete Greek-looking thing in Civic Park with the homeless guys, that maybe he can shed his skin -- like his starter jackets and torn jeans and old Reeboks -- and put on something else, like the soft, pullover hoodies and shiny white Nikes that Eddie gives him (he’s sponsored -- they’re free), and be someone else.

Taking off people is harder than taking off clothes, though. He can’t just shake off Tuwanna and Tia and JR and DerMarr. Especially not when JR is always telling him to remember where he came from and DerMarr is always handing him a little something to sell to Eddie’s friends, or at the clubs they go to.

Steve is the worst part, though.

“Still here?” he says, letting himself in and not bothering to be subtle about the way he looks Melo up and down -- lingering on the chains around his neck (or just his chest?) and rolling his eyes at the glittering blue bottles of Sapphire Gin littering the living room. He kicks over a wine glass on purpose as he’s walking toward the couch. Melo tries to make a metal note so that he doesn’t step in the spreading stain.

“Where should he be, hermano?” Eddie asks, rubbing his eyes and adjusting himself in his boxers while he stands in the door to the bedroom.

“School?” Steve says, sitting in a semi-clean chair. “Or no. Wait. You decided to quit going to night school, right? So,” he unbuttons the top button of his white shirt, “on the court?”

Flinching, Melo finally looks away.

“No, no,” Steve goes on. “Could’ve gone to college like Allen or like Chauncey --” he draws out Chauncey’s name, “but you and JR fucked that up too.”

If you count selling coke to the assistant coach fucking up, then yeah. Melo may have misjudged that situation, and he’s grateful to Steve for making it better, making it so that he just got expelled and had to go to night school, but shit. He’d already been living with Eddie and driving back and forth to night school wasn’t high on his list, honestly. Not even in his new Range Rover -- “Happy 18.” Love, Eddie.

“Why’re you here?” Eddie asks, and Melo knows he’s tired of hearing this.

“He’s eighteen and you’re twenty-five, man,” Steve says, dead serious, refusing to let it go. Melo knows it’s the lawyer in him. The brand new public defender, Eddie says. Out to save the world, one gay black kid at a time.

Eddie coughs into the crook of his arm and tips his head back to rest against the wall. “And I’ve been fucking him since he was seventeen. So?”

Steve stands and shakes his head. “Allen’s coming up for parole.”

*

They celebrate by getting high; Eddie cuts jagged lines down Melo’s back with a credit card and then fucks him on his elbows and knees, one hand caught and tangled in the chains around Melo’s neck, looping them tighter and tighter around his wrist. It’s weirdly possessive and painful, but Melo’s reassured by it. He doesn’t need to be petted and kissed and played with; he doesn’t need affection (he’s survived this long without it.) He just needs to know where he stands, and where he belongs.

*

Next time Steve shows up, Melo’s alone.

The place doesn’t look much better, probably smells worse, and Melo’s toasting PopTarts in a pair of blue and white striped track pants. He’s planning on cleaning; Tia’s coming by later to stay for a few days and he doesn’t want her getting into whatever kind of shit they have laying around -- booze, pills, white powder on the counters.

“It’s tomorrow,” Steve says, not commenting on the house. “The parole hearing.”

“He’ll live with Tuwanna?” Melo wants to know, ignoring the bubbly feeling in his stomach, the old aching stitch, the tickle in his lungs.

“Maybe,” Steve shrugs and waits for Melo to eat about half of his strawberry PopTart. “DerMarr still lives there and I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

It clicks. Melo finishes the PopTart and slides around the table so he can look down at Steve. “You want him to live here.” And that pisses Melo off.

Nothing. Steve doesn’t even blink, he just pushes his hair back out of his eyes and waits.

“You think,” Melo says, backing Steve down and out of the kitchen. “You think if he comes here, that he’ll take care of me, don’t you?” Steve’s knees hit the back of the couch and he sits, still not scared. “He’ll make Eddie stop sleeping with me? Get me back in school? Tell me to just say no to drugs?”

“Something,” Steve says.

Leaning and then climbing over Steve, Melo suppresses the urge to hit him. He’s still a little high and more than a little tired and scared about Allen coming back into his life because, oh god, he wants that bad -- wants to be safe and loved but not. Not exactly anymore. Now -- shit, now? Maybe he just wants Allen. Which is inappropriate, Eddie says. “As inappropriate as us?” Melo asks, and Eddie just laughs.

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, or say, he picks up in the middle of his own conversation, laying on Steve, wanting to explain everything suddenly (it’s the coke talking, he knows).

“Not as bad as you think,” he says, earnest, in Steve’s face, feeling his body twitch. “Haven’t been with anyone but Eddie. So I’m not, like, a --”

“I don’t care. No --” Steve shifts under him but doesn’t move. “That’s worse. Somehow, that’s worse.”

Which doesn’t make sense, so Melo kisses Steve instead, hard and open and wet. “Eddie likes it.” Quiet, in Steve’s ear. Melo’s moving on him now, sliding a leg between Steve’s, pressing down. “How old I am. Or not.”

Steve groans, a little frantic, and tries to roll out from under Melo, but not very hard. “Lemme up,” he says. “This is stupid.”

“Nuh uh,” Melo says, pushing his tongue against Steve’s teeth. “This is nice.”

Lean, knotted muscles shift under Melo’s hands, below the thin material of Steve’s Men’s Wearhouse button up. He seems small for a minute (he is, kind of), and Melo remembers looking up at him and hating it.

When he works his hand between them (clean this time, not bloody), he squeezes hard, making Steve yelp and jerk away from him. Melo grins and takes Steve’s collar in his teeth. “Take if off, or I’ll tear it,” he says, reading a new script, improvising, making shit up as he goes, because this is new: a new body (more hair, lighter skin, thinner bones) and a new position.

With his shirt unbuttoned all the way, Steve looks more familiar. It’s the same Steve after all, under the suits and the fake smile. And with his armor gone, he lets go.

“Melo,” he says, a hard whisper, when Melo sits up to pull down his pants and unbutton Steve’s grey slacks. “Just -- okay, yeah.” He looks at Melo and then shakes his head. “I mean, goddamn.”

Melo laughs, and, head spinning, slides down Steve’s body. Cock, Melo figures, tastes like cock, and he’s into it, which should make this good whether he’s got the technique down yet or not. Steve seems to like it, burying his hands in Melo’s hair and letting out little grunting sighs from between clenched teeth.

Impatience gets the better of Melo and he pulls off before his jaw even starts to hurt (which is a sign you’re doing it right, he‘s been told),and leaves Steve on the couch so he can find condoms and lube. His head aches and his heart is still beating a little too fast, but he’s coming down hard and he wants to get this done before he crashes.

Steve’s stroking himself when Melo gets back, arched back off of the couch a little, eyes closed and mouth open. Quiet.

As he slides his fingers between Steve’s legs, Melo watches the tension drain from Steve’s muscles, starting with his neck and working down. It’s sexy: Steve naked except for his unbuttoned shirt, laid back and laid open for Melo.

Steve’s tight around Melo’s fingers and he gets tighter for a second before he relaxes and Melo can see, from above him looking down, how close he is.

“Hold on,” he says, and hopes it sounds reassuring. This is all new, from here on out, and he needs to take a little time.

“Can you?” he asks, looking down at his condom-covered cock. “D’you think?”

Steve blinks and then looks down.

“Nice,” he says, just on the edge of being mean, echoing Melo from earlier. “But I can take it.”

“Had bigger?” Melo asks, curious about Steve and sex and cocks, and surprised suddenly by the lack of variety in his life.

“Mmm,” Steve says, working himself harder now, waiting on Melo, who’s already climbing on top, rearranging Steve’s legs until it works and he can start to push in, which is awesome. Hot and too tight and slick, and there’s something crazy about the way Steve wraps his legs around Melo and grabs at his hips, wanting more.

And all Melo wants is to give it to him. More cock, harder sex. Higher brain function is shutting down and the primitive part -- the wild part -- takes over. He leans, and then falls halfway onto Steve, putting one leg on the floor for leverage.

Words refuse to form; thoughts race and spin. Melo can make noise -- hard, cut-off grunts from the back of his throat -- but he can’t speak; can’t say how he feels turned around and inside out and on top of something he should be below.

Control slips -- he’s eighteen, too big, and too high. Eddie’s his height, his weight, in charge. Steve’s smaller and trusting Melo not to tear him up.

When Steve gets a handful of Melo’s tangled braids and gets Melo close enough to kiss his cheeks and his chin -- dry, fast touches of cracked lips on wet skin -- Melo gives up, his body fucking on fire, and comes in little, awkward thrusts that push them almost off of the couch.

And even with the dizziness and the dry, fuzzy mouth, Melo manages to hold onto Steve as they roll.

“Can you --” Melo breathes and pulls at Steve. “Like, stand up, upupup,” sitting back on his knees. “Want to,” Melo says, waiting for Steve to get up and get within reach. “Like this,” and he takes him in his mouth, more serious this time, a better angle.

Steve stands, unsteady, with his hands on Melo’s shoulders, kneading at the muscles there. And when he‘s on the edge -- swelling hard and twitching against Melo‘s tongue -- Melo thinks he hears his name (or Allen’s? Something with an “L”) under Steve’s harsh breaths.

*

Honesty has never been Melo’s policy, but there’s a shaky part of him that wants to know what Eddie will do, what he’ll say, if he’ll even care.

So he blurts it out before Eddie’s even in the door. “Steve and me -- “ he starts. “While you were gone? We fucked.”

Eddie puts his stuff down and then sits down with it. “You what?”

Waving his hands (like, no big deal, bro. It’s not like he’s your ex or anything) and sneaking toward Eddie, Melo just says, “Me and Steve,” again.

“Why?” Eddie cracks open a water bottle he was carrying and drinks, little ribbons of water dripping from the corners of his mouth down his chin. “Tired of me? Mad at me?”

“Not really about you,” Melo says, irritated. “Just happened,” and “You never told me I couldn’t.” Which is childish, but Melo feels young.

Shit,” Eddie stands and brushes past Melo, cold and hard. “Did you forget who pays your bills, Carmelo?”

*

It ends with Eddie passed out in the bedroom and Melo at Club Valentine, which is not nearly as kitschy as it sounds. There’s nothing pink and frilly and gay about it unless you consider concrete and iron and industrial chic to be gay.

Melo’s not out to prove anything. He’s just gonna dance a little, let the music take control, and make a little money too, maybe.

Or not, since this kid -- like, really a kid -- has attached himself to Melo and is scaring everyone else off because he’s one of those. Thin and sad and desperate and trying to hide behind too much makeup and bared teeth.

“I can get you back, like, tomorrow,” he says, hoarse and congested, right in Melo’s ear. He’s plastered to Melo’s side, digging all his sharp edges in, playing a role, because the nearness isn’t natural. “I’ve got something lined up in the morning. Like, whatever --” he jumps and follows Melo on the dance floor and away from the bar, eyeing Melo’s Coors. “ -- an acting thing, right?” The words are slow, tortured, drawn out of him, like the half-smile, half-snarl.

“Porn?” Melo asks (snaps), loud enough for people to look and then look away and for Smiles (as Melo thinks of him) to flinch.

“Um,” there’s a lot of blinking; he’s shocked. “Maybe? Do you think so?” His hair flops into his face, a little like Eddie’s when he was younger, and he bites at a thumbnail. “I’ll do it anyway,” he says, under his breath, but Melo can read his lips. “So?”

“No,” Melo says. Putting an arm around him, curious. He weighs maybe 130 pounds. “Don’t work that way ---” he trails off, a question.

“Brendon,” he says, no louder than before.

The music drives them together and Melo tips his beer to Brendon’s lips, and he drinks without touching the bottle, curling his lips like it burns him when it drips on his skin.

Leaning, sliding, slithering forward, he says, “I’ll suck you for it.” Lips cold and wet on Melo’s neck.

“Um,” Melo says, breaking out in goose bumps.

*

There’s something impressive and intimidating about a limo that’s just waiting for you, and Melo hasn’t gotten used to it, even after a year.

Brendon looks at it like he’s hungry.

“Someday,” Melo thinks he hears as they get in the back.

Black leather seats and pale, bruised skin -- Brendon watches out of one eye while Melo cuts a line along the middle of the seat, in the foot of space that separates them. The white coke looks almost blue against the black and in the light from the halogen security lamps in the parking lot.

Brendon bends down and his hair brushes Melo’s thigh; Melo suppresses the urge to rub frantically at his arms to make the shivers go away. There’s nothing sexy about runaway, jailbait, white kids willing to suck dick for coke. Seriously. It’s a bad cliché. And Melo keeps telling himself that as Brendon’s shaky hands fight with the fly of his jeans, and as Brendon’s cold lips slide over his skin.

“Come home with me,” Melo says. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t really have to. He’s twice Brendon’s size and he has a gun. But Brendon just nods and touches his tongue to the corner of his mouth, catching a bit he missed.

*

They’re both high at sunrise, sitting on the couch in the penthouse, and Brendon’s nursing a nosebleed -- it’s the altitude and not the coke, he says. “Came up from Vegas fast,” he says, stuffier than earlier, harder to understand. He’s hunched over with his head in his hands along with a wad of red and white-splotched Kleenexes. “Had to get out, like, yesterday.” The conversation jerks along in stutters and stops. “North sounded good. Epic, or something. Empty, the farther you go.”

Melo’s never been farther north than Cheyenne, and that was just to get fireworks one year with Allen and JR, but it was pretty lonely. And dusty.

“ -- to write music,” Brendon says, “Music in high places where there’s nothing getting in front of the sound, right?” He turns and then crawls over Melo to make his point, ending up straddling Melo’s lap. “Right?”

“Mmm,” Melo says, watching the ugly, grey light of dawn start to wash the room in old-movie colors and textures -- grainy and blurry in spots.

“I just -- I don’t know,” Brendon says, rocking his hips. “I thought I did? About music and friends and bands?”

“Yeah,” Melo says, drifting. “So, yeah -- like this” and he puts his hands on Brendon’s hips, rolling him over and around, and, “if you want to stay.”

Brendon stops moving and tosses the Kleenexes, running his wrist under his nose. It comes away streaked in brown-red. “Can I stay if I don’t?”

Melo smiles. Genuine, and it stings. “Yeah.”

“ ‘k,” Brendon says and slips back off, already closing his eyes as he rolls onto the big couch.

*

It’s almost like a tourist attraction: Boy Asleep On Couch! Except, not really. Just Eddie and JR and Steve have anything to say about it, and it’s all the same thing: “One of those?” And Eddie looks uncomfortable about it and doesn’t say why and it makes Melo wonder (wish?).

“Have you ever, like, been in love?” he asks Brendon over coffee and cigarettes on the balcony, watching Brendon’s hair curl a little as it dries in the wind.

“Mmmyeah,” he says, mumbling and shrugging. “Aches.” He sits back and props a bare foot on Melo’s chair. “Makes me grind my teeth. Get all frustrated and shit.” He exhales up and grinds out his Parliament in his coffee mug. “There was,” the ceramic of the mug scritches over the glass top of the table. “This girl. Always got really tense around her. Tense and jumpy and all -- “ he rubs at his temple, “trapped half-way inside myself most of the time.”

Melo tries and fails to imagine that, wondering if Brendon needs a Xanax.

“But, like,” Brendon shakes his head. “When we were together, talking, for hours, I could see the future.”

There’s no point in asking what happened because there’s no girl, not now -- and maybe there never was; Brendon wants to tell lies to people for money -- but it makes a kind of sense. Enough that Melo knows that if he loves Eddie, it’s not like that. Not like walking a thin line or holding broken glass.

That -- the feeling of being gutted -- he’s only ever felt for Allen. Like, dying slowly. For the past thirteen years.

*

Melo lends Brendon five thousand dollars and buys him a crappy Ibanez Roadstar in funky, glittery green.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells Brendon, standing at the Greyhound station. “Pay me back later. When you’re famous or something.”

He’s glad to see him go, and Brendon’s glad to leave.

The Golden Triangle.

continued in part 3.

NBA fic: "The Light in Our Eyes" NC-17, multiple pairings. part 1.

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:46:58 GMT

Title:”The Light in Our Eyes”
Pairing(s): Carmelo Anthony/Eddie Najera, Carmelo Anthony/Eddie Najera/Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony/Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony/Steve Nash, Allen Iveron/Steve Nash (implied), Eddie Najera/Steve Nash (implied), and for my final trick, Carmelo Anthony/Brendon Urie. Yeah, I went there.
Disclaimer:This is the product of my twisted imagination. It never happened and I'm not implying that it did. I make no profit from writing this.
Word Count: Apx 19,800 (posted in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3.)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, Summary and A/N: This is an AU in which I take Melo and chart the course of his life, assuming he never made it to the NBA, starting when he’s five years old and ending when he’s twenty-five. Along the way I throw in every basketball player I can possibly justify using as cops, drug dealers, art buyers, lawyers and soccer players. Be warned for drug use, dub-con, violence and character death.

“Thank you,” can’t possibly express my gratitude to horizon_greene for holding my hand through writing this (starting in May), believing that NBA fandom needed an epic AU, and then betaing the damn thing when I was done.

All of the chapter headings taken from Common’s “Forever Begins,” except for the title, which is mine.

the light in our eyes

Melo doesn’t tell anyone, but he has a secret suspicion that there aren’t any kids in Denver. He worries about it a lot on the drive cross-country, scrunched in the back of his mom’s Taurus wagon with his sister, Michelle, and all of their stuff, listening to his Walkman. There were a lot of kids in Baltimore, and there can only be so many kids in the whole world, he figures. Plus, Denver is so far away that if there are any kids there, they’re probably green. Like the Ninja Turtles. He keeps this theory to himself because his mom and his sister are quiet and worried about their own things and not listening to him much right now.

When he finally sleeps, he dreams about big, grey buildings, holes in the ground and everyone in black. He doesn’t dream about his dad. He doesn’t even think about his dad.

*

Melo gets lost in the chaos of moving, trying to stay out of everyone’s way and blinking in the bright light of the Colorado sun. Eventually, he just decides to sit and wait it out, dangling his legs over the edge of the front step, until a shadow falls over him and drops a basketball into his lap.

“Who’re you?”

“Melo,” Melo says, watching as a kid, smaller than him and carrying a popsicle, sits down.

A grown-up passes, talking with Melo’s mom and says, “JR, you stay put. And be nice.”

JR doesn’t even blink, just waits for a second and then says, “Hold this,” and hands Melo his popsicle (it‘s the red, white and blue kind). “You have to see how fast I can run up and down the stairs. Because it’s the fastest of anyone ever.”

Melo nods, watches JR pound up and down the stairs, and eats the popsicle. They wrestle for the stick -- which might be magic -- and then decide to race for it, until Melo’s mom catches him in mid flight and hauls him inside, yelling at him about running and about his breathing and about being careful.

Later that afternoon, JR and his mom show up at Melo’s apartment door. JR’s mom hands something that smells like spaghetti to Melo’s mom, telling her in a funny voice -- like she doesn’t really mean it, or that she’s sorry for something -- “Welcome to Sun Valley,” and JR hands Melo the popsicle stick before squealing and taking off. Melo ducks his head out the door quick enough to see JR trip over his own feet and tumble, laughing, over himself at the end of the hallway.

“It was the sugar,” his mom explains, heading after him. “He’s not supposed to have any after lunch. Then, “JR.” And, “JR!”

*

“Sun Valley, building H,” Melo repeats to his mom, for the gazillionth time.

“Apartment?”

“618,” he says. “Can I go?”

His mom sighs and shrugs. “Only on the front steps and only as long as your sister is with you.”

Melo disappears before she’s done and finds JR pushing himself down the hall on an old skateboard. On his stomach.

“We can go out,” Melo says, putting his hands on JR’s back and pushing, “but only as far as the steps.

Tumbling off the skateboard and into the wall, JR lays and blinks up at Melo, his mouth stained purple from something he had with lunch. “We can’t see from there. Not really.”

“I can’t go anywhere else,” Melo repeats, and JR sticks his tongue out at him. “Loser.”

“Dick.”

“Let’s go then,” JR says, standing and marching for the stairs, offended by Melo’s lack of coolness.

It turns out that they can see okay from the top of the steps, and JR keeps a running commentary on the guys playing basketball in the parking lot, only occasionally drowned out by the rattle of the chains in the hoop, or the yelling of the players.

“ -- won State last year, and he was only a sophomore, who played football, usually.”

Distracted by the storm coming in over the mountains, turning the sky green and purple and silver, Melo glances back at JR and shakes his head. “Who played football?”

Rolling his eyes, JR points to one of the shortest guys in the lot, dribbling around his ankles with the flat ball, and says, “Allen Iverson.” Like, he means, “God.”

“He’s short,” Melo says, and waits for the rain to start to fall.

Thunder claps a second later, and combines with a sharp clang when the ball hits the rim and shoots off in their direction.

“Hey! Get that,” one of the guys in the lot yells at them, and JR is off and running, and before Melo’s thinking about it, he is too. They spring across the lot and the street and then into the field, kicking the ball in front of them now, forgetting the steps, the storm and the guys behind them that might someday make it for real.

It’s hard to tell which happens first, JR launching himself at Melo or Melo’s lungs shutting down. Or maybe it’s the rain.

A giant rubber band pulls tight around Melo’s chest and every breath is a fight; every time he tries to inhale, he feels like he’s trying to breathe through sand.

JR kneels wide-eyed beside him, and Melo wonders what he sounds like.

“What the fuck did you two midgets do with the -- shit.”

There’s someone else in the field with them, but Melo can’t focus, not even when he’s picked up and held close, face pressed against a boney shoulder. Minutes pass and his blood sounds like the ocean; unbearably loud, harsh pressure in his head and ears and fingertips.

Hands on his back, pounding at first, then soothing. And then hands in his face, opening his mouth.

“Your inhaler, Melo. Breathe.” His mom’s voice is scary-calm as he tries to get enough air in with the chemical in the inhaler. He must; the band loosens. His entire body starts to shake and that’s familiar. The medicine acts like adrenaline, and sometimes, when he’s had to actually go to the hospital, they’ve given him stuff that’s like actually speed, and he can’t sit still for hours afterward, or even hold a pencil steady enough to write his name.

He cracks an eye and sees the skinny guy that JR likes sitting in his living room drinking a Coke with his mom, looking at him with eyes so big it’s almost funny.

“Okay?” Allen asks Melo’s mom, who nods and looks at Melo all squinty.

“Thanks,” she says, and gets up. It’s probably time for her to go to work and now she might have to call in and that will make her really, really mad.

“I’m fine,” Melo says, trying not to let his teeth chatter.

“And I can stay or whatever,” Allen says.

Looking at the clock and then at Melo, Melo’s mom rubs at her eyes and then shrugs. “I’ll go get your sister, too,” she says, and kisses Melo’s forehead on the way out.

too young for the marches, but I remember these drums

North takes on George Washington at the State Championships again in 1992, and this time Melo and JR are in the stands. Melo feels as important as an eight year old can in situations like this. He and JR plan their heckling beforehand, not completely secure in their ability to heckle on the spot and needing to have good material for George Washington’s star shooting guard. The problem is coming up with things that rhyme with Chauncey.

*

Melo’s mom is never as comfortable around Allen as she was the afternoon he saved Melo; she’s not stupid, she tells him and Melo. She knows what Allen’s friends do. “I know about the drugs,” she says in a whisper.

Allen’s response is always a smile and a shifty glance at the glass in her hand. “So?” You do what you have to, he tells Melo, and living in Sun Valley, that kind of stuff really isn’t a secret. Melo can sit on the front steps and watch guys he knows and some he doesn’t sell anything and everything in the lot where he first saw Allen play. That’s during the day; at night, he can watch the girls come out and stalk through the breezeways between the buildings, or stand on the corners and smoke and laugh and then disappear.

Melo and JR spend more and more time with Allen, hanging around the high school, or at Allen’s house (a little place with a yard on 11th and Federal, near the park), staying the night there sometimes when he falls asleep before he can take them home. And Melo’s mom just works and drinks more and says less about it.

*

The weekend before State, Melo and JR are crashed out on a mattress in Allen’s living room, playing on GameBoys he bought them, and whining about the cold. They’ve curled up together for warmth, and Melo’s comforted by the familiar, Kool-Aid sweet way JR smells, and the steady mumble-talk from the kitchen where Allen and Tuwanna are arguing.

“If he wins, he’ll buy us new Walkmans,” JR says, pressing his toes into Melo’s thigh. “He told me so yesterday.”

“He’ll win,” Melo says, because it’s what has to happen. Melo believes it like he believes that JR has a stolen pack of Starbursts in his pocket that he‘ll forget about and his mom won‘t find and then will wash, and which will permanently meld parts of his jeans together in the dryer. He believes it like he believes that he’ll see the ocean again someday, even though he never liked it much when he lived in Baltimore. He believes it like he believes that Allen will always and forever protect him. Even from things like vampires and Jason Voorhees. (Allen gets cable and Melo and JR sat paralyzed through all of Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives two weeks ago.)

“Yeah,” JR nods, setting his GameBoy down and stretching out. “He’s gonna break Chauncey’s ankles, man --”

“Shit.”

Melo turns just as Tuwanna stomps past them, Allen right behind her. “It’s not like I don’t know how to take care of kids,” he says, standing still, not trying to stop her.

She spins and her hair snaps around her shoulders, beads hitting each other in angry clicks. “Them?” She points at Melo and JR. “Your strays?”

Melo tries to shrink into JR, to blend into the shadows creeping around the corner of the room.

“Babies can’t live on sugar and video games,” she says, finally, and lets herself out.

*

North wins State, or, really, Allen does. Nobody’s ankles get broken, but Melo and JR are convinced that Allen’s gonna make it in the NBA and that Chauncey’s done. “I mean, he looks like the Fresh Prince, or something,” Melo tells JR, who nods back at him. Nobody who looks like the Fresh Prince will ever succeed in anything. It’s a known fact.

*

For two weeks in April, Allen doesn’t leave the house -- someone’s a little bit mad at him, he tells Melo -- and Melo thinks it might be the best thing that’s ever happened. Ever. Melo goes from home (where he has Rice Krispies, Michelle has a waffle, and their mom has a Bloody Mary made with tomato soup if they‘re out of V8) to school to Allen’s, and Allen is there every day. He teaches Melo and JR to play cards (go fish) and dice, and since the lot is iced over and they can’t play basketball, he starts to teach them how to box too.

On his knees, he’s a little shorter than JR and about Melo’s height (Melo prays every night that someday he’ll grow; JR’s still skinny, but it seems like Melo’s always cocking his head, just a little, to look right at him.) They push the living room furniture around and Allen kneels on the old mattress and JR and Melo take turns punching at his hands. He’s always too quick for them and their boxing matches usually end up with them flailing in his direction while he slaps them until their cheeks start to sting and they tackle him.

The only problem is Ra. Ra is Allen’s cousin and, “this is Ra’s house,” Allen reminds them. Ra spends most of his time in jail or on work release (Melo thinks that this might be like what happens on the Discovery Channel, where they catch the crocodiles and lock them up for a while, but then poke them with a little remote control thingy and release them), but he’s out for now, hanging around, making Allen jumpy and nervous and mean.

Melo and JR spend a lot of time thinking up ways Ra might get sent back to jail.

“He steals the diamonds from the Natural History Museum,” is JR’s favorite scenario, because he’s been watching a lot of James Bond movies lately.

Melo thinks it would be much more awesome if Ra were to steal the Tyrannosaurus Rex from the museum, but he and JR always get stuck plotting that one out.

“I wish,” JR says, sprawled over the back of Allen’s couch, “that Ra would eat shit and die.” It’s JR’s new favorite thing to say and he applies it to everything.

“I know,” Melo says, squirming around on the floor, looking for the M&M he just dropped. “He ruins everything.”

“Not everything,” Allen says, laughing, and softly kicking Melo in the side as he walks past. “At least I can go out again.” He ties a black bandanna around his head and shrugs his coat on. “You two little shits stick around here. There’s peanut butter on the counter. And clean spoons. “ He waits, and Melo sits up, hoping he’ll change his mind and sit back down with them and watch The Three Amigos.

“There’s one Pepsi,” Allen says finally. “So, share. And J?” He pushes JR off of the couch so that he bounces on the cushions and lands on the floor. “Don’t touch the beer, little man.”

He leaves in a rush of cold air that makes Melo draw his knees up to his chest.

*

“Check this out,” Allen tells Melo a week later. He shows Melo a letter and Melo doesn’t get it at first. He can’t read well enough to figure out what it says, but there is a picture of a Buffalo on the top and that means --

“Really?” Melo asks, and reaches for the letter, wiping his hands on his pants first to get all the sticky off.

“Mmm,” Allen says. “You’ll have to start hitching rides up to Boulder to see me in the fall, Jello.”

Melo takes a half-hearted swipe at Allen and then goes back to looking at the letter. He can’t believe that Allen really, actually got into college, or that he’ll be leaving. For a minute he tries to imagine life without Allen to take care of him and his breath starts to catch funny in his chest. Then the walls of the little kitchen start to collapse in on him and his lungs burn.

“Oh, hey,” Allen says. “Hey, no.”

Sometimes, Melo forgets how fast Allen moves. Like, when he’s sitting in front of Melo one minute, and then a second later he’s throwing a half-empty beer can at Ra and telling to get his ass up and outside, “Now, lazy fucker.”

Melo’s kind of too big to be carried, but Allen manages it -- just out to Ra’s Caddy -- and then he holds Melo in his lap while Ra drives him home.

Denver North

wars and battles, we fought for ours, caught in ghetto tragedy

Really, the only thing that’s surprising about it, is that it Melo’s already nine years old (almost ten) the first time he sees someone get shot.

*

Allen’s only gone a month. He has to come back because Tuwanna has her baby. She wasn’t going to let him near her, or it, originally, and that was kind of what the whole thing back in April was about, Melo figures, but Tuwanna never can make up her mind about anything except that she loves Allen. “Like, I can’t help it or something,” she tells Melo, as if he understands this shit. And actually, he does.

Tia is a tiny thing, and really, really pissed off. Tuwanna says Tia looks like Allen, but Melo thinks she looks a little bit like an alien. And that’s not because he and JR watch a lot of the X-Files, either.

“I’ve got two kids,” Ra says, sounding bored. “They don’t get any more interesting.”

Tia’s all laid out on an old blue and orange blanket, kicking and flailing and working up to a really big scream, or maybe just a lot of drool. Melo’s on one side of her and JR the other, just to make sure she doesn’t roll away and get lost under the couch or something.

“I’ve got shit for you to do,” Ra says, getting impatient, like the fact that he drives them around and lets them keep hanging out at his house makes him, like, the boss of them or something.

Melo ignores him and JR keeps trying to smile at Tia but he can’t because it hurts, and all of his smiles turn into weird grimaces while he tries not to move his face.

“Ow,” he says, finally, and Melo resists the urge, for the millionth time, to flick one of JR’s ears where Ra pierced them two days ago and put in little diamond studs that glitter pink from the blood still crusted around them.

“What do want them for?” Allen asks, quiet.

“An errand.”

They stare at each other for a minute and Allen gives first, shrugging. “Be careful,” he says, and Melo doesn’t know whether it’s meant for them or Ra.

*

Errands for Ra are easy. Take the bag -- like the one Melo’s mom packed his lunches in before he got his Jurassic Park lunch box -- and give it to Caron by his car (a red Mercury Cougar) in the alley on 6th. Sometimes Caron gives them something to give back to Ra, and sometimes not.

“So, holy shit,” JR says when they get out of Ra’s house. “When Tuwanna was feeding Tia? I totally saw her boobs.”

“No way,” Melo says, picking his way along the sidewalk, absorbing the late fall heat.

“Boobs,” JR repeats, smacking Melo’s chest for emphasis, and Melo shrugs, wondering what it is he’s missing.

Caron’s waiting for them, smoking and leaning on his car, with another guy -- a big guy -- Melo’s never seen before. They give Caron the bag and wait while he glances inside.

“Not enough,” the big guy says, twitching a little while he talks, and rubbing at a tattoo on his neck.

“No?” Caron asks, voice dull, like he doesn’t care. Then, “Guess it isn’t.” He squints down at Melo. “Ra give you anything else?”

“No.” Melo starts backing away, pulling JR by his shirt.

“The earrings.”

“No,” JR says, holding his ground now.

“Kenyon, back off,” Caron says, throwing the bag in his car. “We’ll talk to Ra later.”

*

Melo and Allen play one on one until it gets dark and Ra grills burgers and hot dogs for everyone, splitting a beer with JR when he thinks Allen isn’t looking. Allen keeps his shirt on despite the heat and JR just keeps licking his lips and grinning at Melo. “My face is numb,” he says, around a hot dog bun he’s covered in ketchup.

“There’s no hot dog in that,” Melo points out.

JR’s eyes get big and he starts to laugh at himself, spilling ketchup on his shirt (Melo’s shirt. His faded, old Elway jersey) and then he stops. “Um,” he says, and then Melo hits the ground, smothered between hot, dry dirt and Allen’s chest.

Gunshots echo between heartbeats. Melo can feel the recoil of Allen’s gun as it slams through his body into Melo‘s.

When it’s quiet again and still, that’s when Melo starts to cry hot, silent, suffocating tears that scald his cheeks and his neck.

*

No one sees anything. Allen didn’t have a gun. Ra did; it’s Ra’s gun and Ra’s house and Ra’s fight. Caron’s in the hospital and Kenyon’s dead and Ra’s back in prison.

JR and Melo weren’t even there.

When Allen goes back to Boulder, Melo stops speaking for a week. JR does his speaking for him, and almost no one cares. One night they take the old Elway jersey with the red stains and burn it in the lot where Allen used to play basketball and Melo and JR watched him from the front steps and fought over magic popsicle sticks. Back when they were kids.

hand me the joint, good music and room to breathe

Blinking lights make Melo dizzy and headachy. The strong, sharp smell of pine doesn’t help, but he’s stuck with both, rubbing his nose with one hand and trying to string a set of chili pepper lights around the kitchen window with the other.

“Help,” he says in JR’s direction, getting nothing but more frantic blinking and the sound of a candy cane being enthusiastically chewed.

Melo drops the chili peppers into the sink and, stepping carefully off of the rickety stool, backs out of the tiny kitchen looking for JR, finding a large, boy-shaped tangle of sticky lights parked under the Christmas tree instead.

“Can you get loose?” he asks, half-serious.

“Dunno,” JR answers, unconcerned. “ ‘S nice under here.”

Folding himself up under the tree, Melo starts unwinding a passive, pepperminty JR, who occasionally tries to stick the remainder of his candy cane in Melo’s ear, getting bits of it stuck into Melo’s brand new braids. Melo’s completely given up on the untangling and is choking JR when his mom breaks them up, ignoring their shrieks and kicks.

*

Thankfully, Melo’s mom is a deep sleeper, especially after finishing that last bottle of McCormick’s. It makes it easier for Melo and JR to sneak out and sit shivering and sniffling on the front steps waiting for Allen, because he said he’d be driving back into town that night.

He’s late, of course.

After fifteen minutes, JR confesses to Melo that, “I’d eat you if I had to, man. Like, if we were stranded in the snow?”

“Like Alfred Packer?” Melo asks, pulling his beanie down over his ears. They’d studied him in social studies earlier that fall, and when Melo told Allen about it -- all the grisly details -- Allen just laughed and said that one of the cafeterias on campus was called the Alfred Packer Grill, and Melo thought that Boulder must be the coolest place in the history of ever.

“ -- meaty, y’know?” JR’s saying.

“What is?”

“You,” JR says, poking Melo in the ribs. “Could live off you for days.”

Melo’s about to stuff a snowball down the back of JR’s shirt when Allen drives up in Ra‘s Caddy, window open, smoking and waving at them to hurry.

“In. Ininin,” he says, ashing on the ground and grinning at them, not bothering to turn the radio down.

*

During the ride back to Ra’s house, Allen talks a lot about school and about basketball and Chauncey and his roommates, who’re soccer players.

“I‘m taking art classes and a music class,” Allen says. “And I failed math.” He takes the turn onto Federal a little too wide and the El Dorado spins out into oncoming traffic.

Melo digs a fingernail into some loose stitching in the Caddy’s upholstery and nods, not listening to the words, just to Allen’s voice.

“Me n’ JR,” he starts, then sniffles with cold and hunches down into his Avalanche starter jacket. Someone broke the back window out the Caddy the last time Allen was in town, over Thanksgiving, and he hasn’t bothered to fix it. There’s just a Hefty bag and duct tape keeping the snow from building up on the inside of the car. “We got drunk the other night on mom’s vodka (all he remembers is trying to pick the red label off of the glass bottle and then the headache) -- so we‘re grounded and s‘posed to spend all of Christmas break with her and Mrs. Smith. And I have to go to mass too,” he finishes in a rush. He hasn’t been to mass since his dad died, he’s pretty sure. Churches are bad luck.

Allen thinks for a minute and then punches Melo hard on the arm once, waits for a second, and then does it again, like when you play slug-a-bug and get two for flinching. “Asshole,” he says to Melo,” jerking the wheel so they’re back in their lane. “You‘ll be okay.”

*

Tuwanna is already at the house, but she and Tia are asleep, so Allen gives Melo and JR each a CD, a sketch he made of them in his art class, and a Zima.

“To Santa Claus,” he says. “The holly, jolly motherfucker.”

It’s the first time they all get drunk together.

Toward midnight, Melo starts to feel bubbly instead of snuffly and sits down in front of the radiator with Allen’s sketchbook. It has some of the old stuff in it: Ra playing ball; Tuwanna before she had Tia, sitting in the yard and laughing; Melo and JR wrestling; and Melo alone at the table, concentrating on a game of cards. But there’s new stuff two: a silly still life with fruit; an old building labeled Kettredge West -- the dorms where Allen lives; and a naked dude.

“My roommate,” Allen says, looking over Melo’s shoulder. “Steve. I can’t get his hair right, and it’s a little longer than that now.”

An itch in the middle of his back makes Melo press the sketchbook closed and hand it to Allen with a blank face. “You still suck pretty bad at drawing. Stick to playing ball, man.”

i’m more like a fool, for soul and passion

Money is a problem for everyone, but Melo’s almost twelve now and he doesn’t care about anything but hot asphalt, a new pair of Reeboks, the perfect fifteen foot jump shot, and making the buzzing, pins-and-needles feelings in his body go away. He’s growing; he aches; and he’s restless.

Tuwanna’s cousin, DerMarr, offers to let Melo and JR run errands for him. Allen says no and Melo knows why, but Allen won’t even bring it up -- the why -- and Allen’s totally not in charge of him and fuck Allen anyway. Where the fuck is he? Boulder? What kind of shit is that? Leaving his baby and Tuwanna and Melo behind. Fuck him. So, yeah. Errands for DJ are just like errands for Ra, only they get paid better, ’cause they’re bigger now and work longer hours and wander farther from the Sun Valley projects.

At breakfast, the day after school’s out and Melo’s officially done with the sixth grade, Michelle corners him, slamming a piece of paper on the table and telling him through gritted teeth that unless he takes summer school, he ain’t gonna pass the grade, and “what is this shit, Carmelo?” she asks, yanking on one of his raggedy braids -- Tuwanna did them for him a week ago and they’re already growing out.

He doesn’t answer her and she shrugs. “I don’t care, Melo. I really don’t. But I will lock your ass in this house until you make up your work if I have to because that’s what mom would want.”

Which is totally not fair and makes the milk in his Rice Krispies taste sour. Seriously, his mom isn’t dead, she’s just in the hospital with chest pains, or vodka withdrawal.

“Whatever,” he says, but he means “okay,” and he goes back to school for a month over the summer so he can pass the grade.

It’s just coincidence, then, that he’s home one afternoon when the doorbell rings.

*

“A couple of questions,” Detective Duncan says. “That’s all.”

Michelle sits next to Melo and cracks her knuckles over and over, a steady rhythm over the rattling hum of the old air conditioner.

“Were you living here two years ago?” Duncan asks. “Two summers ago?”

They both nod. They’ve lived in Sun Valley for almost seven years. Forever. Now, Baltimore seems like a dream. A hazy, humid, half-forgotten dream.

Duncan flips open a notebook and clicks his pen, thinking. Melo feels like biting him and running for it, hitching to Boulder and living in the Alfred Packer Grill, but Michelle has a hold of his arm now, her long, silver nails biting deep into his skin.

“Carmelo,” Duncan starts, making a quick note. “Do you know Allen Iverson?”

Melo nods again and starts to sweat, fear a knot in the back of his throat.

“Do you know if he owns a gun?”

“No,” Melo lies, wondering if Michelle has made him bleed yet.

Duncan makes another note, looks off into the space to the left of Melo’s head and then asks, “Did you see Kenyon Martin get shot and killed?”

Michelle jumps and coughs and Melo twitches his arm away from her.

“I wasn’t --”

“He wasn’t --”

They stop and Michelle finishes, “There. He wasn’t there. He was here.”

Another note; the pen clicks and Melo reminds himself to blink.

“Some new evidence has come to light that places Mr. Iverson at the scene,” Duncan says, standing. “So, if you remember anything, let me know.” He puts his card on the arm of the couch and lets himself out.

*

Melo takes his time walking to Ra’s, in case he’s being followed. He walks through empty lots and cuts behind buildings, working some of the tension off and slowing his heartbeat.

The house is usually overflowing with people, but it’s quiet when Melo finally gets there, dragging his feet in the gravel of the walk and kicking up clouds of white, fluffy cottonwood pollen. There’s a strange truck in the Caddy’s place on the street, an old red Toyota pick-up covered with bumper stickers that say things like “The People’s Republic of Boulder,” and “Keep Boulder Weird,” and “Widespread Panic World Tour 1995.” There’s some ski passes hanging from the rearview mirror and a bungee cord holding the tail-gate up.

The primer-grey metal of the right front fender is hot and rough to the touch when Melo runs his hand over it. It’s mean and beat up and cool and real; not like the shiny, slinky cars Melo sees everyday. Not like the Caddy.

Allen and JR and two guys Melo’s never seen before are sitting in the living room, smoking a bowl. Well, JR’s not. Allen says not until they’re thirteen, which is another year, but he’s really serious about this, and Melo doesn’t feel like pushing. Not now.

The screen door creaks behind him and Allen points in his direction.

“There he is,” and he slaps one of the guys -- the one with lighter hair -- on the leg. “There he is. Like, my baby brother,” he rolls off of his chair and onto his back on the floor. “My soul brother,” he says to the ceiling. “My Melo.”

Melo nods and grins.

“This,” Allen says, pointing to the guy he keeps slapping. “Is Steve. And Eddie.” He flips over onto his stomach. “They play soccer,” he says; an afterthought.

Bouncing on his heels, patience worn out, Melo whispers, “Al, the police --”

Only to be waved off. “I know,” Allen says. “Can’t do nothin’ but wait.”

*

The second time that Melo gets drunk, things are a little different. Everyone is tense; JR’s been into something he shouldn’t be, and Eddie and Steve don’t really belong. Steve passes out, eventually, on the couch, with his hand tangled in Eddie’s long hair, while Eddie talks to Allen, non-stop, in a mix of Spanish and English that makes Melo want to cling to him. And the drunker Melo gets, the more uncontrollable the urge is.

There’s a memory, hidden so deep that Melo can only feel it anymore, of a big, solid body holding him when he was small and murmuring to him in Spanish. Eddie’s accent is wrong -- he’s Mexican and Melo’s dad was Puerto Rican -- but when Melo leans against Eddie’s side, the vibrations -- the tone feels the same.

“Hey,” JR says, “Hey, guys,” loud and sharp and Melo flinches. JR is staggering toward the couch, squinting and looking almost mad about something.

“Guess what?” he says, stretching and almost falling onto Melo.

“Mmm,” Allen hums from the floor, not paying any attention.

“No tits,” JR says, smirking.

“What?” Eddie asks, eying JR warily. Melo isn’t following either.

“Melo,” JR starts again, “doesn’t like tits. Girls. Both.”

“He’s twelve,” Allen says, still muttering. “So’re you.”

“Shut up, dickface,” JR says, scrunching his face up and stumbling for the bathroom.

Melo holds his breath and counts backwards from fifty, getting stuck on thirty-three and saying it four times. He wishes, very hard, that when he opens his eyes, everyone will be gone.

“Hey.”

Melo pretends not to hear.

“Hey, Melo.”

He opens his eyes and looks back at Steve. “What?”

Steve sits up and shrugs, “I‘m not always into girls.” And he tips Eddie’s head back and kisses him on the lips, which is so gross that Melo can’t even sit still, squirming across the carpet away from Eddie.

*

JR apologizes in the morning by offering Melo half of his Milky Way bar and they don’t talk about it again that summer.

The Central Platte Valley, Denver. Where the Sun Valley Projects are, roughly.

continued in part 2.

if i had someone else's voice

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:22:58 GMT

I just finished reading Susan Bordo's The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private and I'm trying to process. (I'm re-reading her Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body now.)

Her point in writing the book is to try, as a feminist concerned with the power (in a Foucualt-ian, post-structuralist sense) culture exerts over women's bodies, to see what result that power has on men's bodies and how we view them. Her thesis is simple: "Male scientists and philosophers have created a nearly unbroken historical stream of tracts -- philosophical, religious, scientific -- on women's bodies and their distinctive maladies and excesses, all linked to our reproductive systems and sexual organs. But they have been remarkably good at forgetting that men have a sex."

Alright, I can see some problems with that, but I'll leave it alone. She supports this with discussion of evolutionists and body-image specialists who ignore the existence of the penis, or at least its importance. She makes an excellent point when she challenges the perception that women aren't as visually oriented as men. Perhaps, she argues, we simply haven't been allowed to be. The uncomfortable truth, as Bordo would have us understand it, is that size does matter. Not just physically, but visually. Why else, she asks, would the human penis be as large as it is? None of our primate relatives have a penis proportionately as big. Why do we assume that the human penis was not meant to act as part some sort of male display?

I don't often get to use my degree in anthropology and so it's a bit rusty, but she's right about this. I remember entire lectures dedicated to rape as an evolutionarily sound strategy, the usefulness/uselessness of the female orgasm and to the evolutionary oddity that is the human penis in comparison to its primate cousins. But never anything about why the penis got to be so big. Again, when polled, women in the US (and some men who shall remain nameless) seem to find the penis unattractive. Bordo asks if this isn't a Western bias, and provides some proof that in other cultures size, appearance and the sensation of a particular penis with or without modifications (piercings, etc.) matters.

In any case, Western society has long been uncomfortable with the sight of male flesh of any kind, let alone below the waist. Although to be fair, Bordo admits, the appreciation (and objectification) of the male body has come in phases. Sword and sandal epics exposed plenty of male flesh in a surprisingly sexualized way: sweaty and bloody, often being whipped or otherwise tortured. Starting in the sixties, though, movies began to represent a new kind of masculinity: androgynous and angsty, reflecting actors' like James Dean and Marlon Brando's bisexuality. The seventies saw a backlash against the feminist movement that would carry into the eighties: angry, silent, teeth-gritting, grunting, gun carrying men like Clint Eastwood and later Bruce Willis, whose characters were defined by a subtle air of misogyny. These men were misunderstood by the women who passed briefly through their lives. The exception, Bordo maintains, was John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

A change occurs, according to Bordo, with the infusion of gay aesthetics into the culture in the early eighties thanks to Calvin Klein and his underwear ads. For the first time there were men on display who weren't muscle bound freaks, squaring off with us in a contest of dominance. These men were reclining, or leaning, or standing with their heads bowed, willing to to be looked at, subjected to the female (or male) gaze.

There is a price to be paid for this. Once men realize they're being looked at, then they have an image to maintain and beauty to preserve. This leads to the same problems, Bordo almost reluctantly admits, that women face (on a smaller scale) in regard to eating disorders and related problems.

She also address male anxiety in regard to women. As culture idealizes/objectifies women, she argues, they become unreal to men and therefore unapproachable and objects of anxiety and sometimes anger or even rage. She uses the case of rapist Eldridge Cleaver and his book, Soul on Ice to dig deeper into this issue, as well as race and sex. This is a dicey subject at best, but she has some good points when she talks about impotence and the fear of impotence that drives the Viagra industry.

(As an aside, Margaret Cho comes at this from a different angle with her comedy, demanding that if insurance companies cover Viagra then they should cover morning after pills. A more realistic analogy I've heard would be to consider addressing or treating women's sexual fulfillment/dysfunction on the same level as men's, but I doubt that we'll ever see that happen. Our society is hyper-aware of male virility and sexual function and completely ignorant of women's. Bordo, I'm sure, would explain this as an issue of fear of female power, and I'm not sure that she would be wrong.)

I agree with her up to this point, and again when she talks about the racial aspects of how we perceive male sexuality (she goes into painful detail regarding Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill), and I also have no problems with her section on phallic imagery. As she closes the book, however, I feel like she loses the plot a little. She spends a great deal of time on literary criticism of Lolita, and then compares the book (unfavorably) to the movies. Her point here is clear: the movie adaptations of Lolita both make Lolita into more of a seductress than a victim and that disgusts her. It's a valid point, but what it has to do with the male body and our perceptions of it, I'm unsure. It feels as if she's reverting and talking about male privilege instead.

Disregarding Lolita, Bordo's arguments resonated most with me when she talked about the myth of women as less visually oriented. This is simply because of my time spent in fandom. The old idea that men tend to judge women on appearance and women judge men on status loses something when dragged through fandom muck. Just consider the appeal of Sam and Dean. They are pretty, first and foremost. They occasionally show skin. Also, they are emotionally accessible. They own nothing but a (phallic) car and have no status as our society reckons it. I've also noticed in SPN fic that there is a lot of attention paid to dicks. Is this the product of trying to write from a deeply masculine perspective? Trying to capture the POV of someone we imagine is comfortable with his body? Or is that we are comfortable imagining his body? All of it. And we find all of it attractive?

I feel like I had more to say about this, but I saw Eastern Promises earlier tonight and I can't get the image of Viggo, covered in vaguely cheesy tattoos but otherwise naked (like, cock and balls all over the place) and bloody on a bath house floor, out of my head. It's not pleasant, but I guess it does relate. Viggo's nude and semi-nude scenes in the movie were meant to shock, not to arouse.

Which makes me curious. What scenes in (straight) movies show you male flesh in a way that is specifically intended to arouse you in the same way that female flesh is almost always shown -- even in death?

Yeah. I'm done.

"Dreaming My Way Deep," DVD Commentary

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:57:25 GMT

Title: "Dreaming My Way Deep"
Pairing: Allen Iverson/Melo, and some light Eddie/Melo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1781
Summary and A/N: This is kind of a deleted scene from "All Stars and Crashed Cars," only from Melo's POV. Part of it takes place during the 2004 Olympic Games. Many thanks, as always, to horizon_greene for the beta, and also to a_bit_surreal for asking me about the dynamics of the AI/Melo pairing, which prompted me to write this.

Dreaming My Way Deep

My fandom was Buffy, in that I wrote fic and I posted it to the yahoo lists and I even went to writercon, but my first fandom obsession was the 2004 Olympics. Everyone has probably heard this story before, but here it is again just for fun.

I had graduated with my MA in history in June and hadn't found a job and wasn't really looking very hard for one over that summer. One of my professors sent me to Berkeley to sit around (all expenses paid) and read for a couple of weeks, and I made enough money to go to Vegas with it in August. I had lost a lot of weight, lost a long term girlfriend who had also been married and a bunch of good friends who all bailed on this mean, conservative shitpit of a town after graduation, and I was by turns euphoric about finishing two degrees in record time and having nothing to do for a summer, and ... having nothing to do. Then the Olympics came along. And I loved everything about them. I loved the gymnastics and the track and field and then, THEN, I saw the swimming and I literally fell apart.

When I got myself back together, I started writing and it was the best work I'd ever done.

Once the Olympics ended, I got a shitty job as a sub, moved out of my parents' house, and then got a shitty job as an Aardvark. So, the Olympics are all entangled with this last summer that I was really a kid and all the angst and heat and sundowns that went with it.

Basketball represents my first Grown Up fandom -- not that I treat it much differently than other fandoms I found since 2004, but I certainly do treat it differently than SwimSlash. With SwimSlash, I poured everything that I was experiencing and everything that I was feeling into those fics. It was cathartic and euphoric all at once. Basketball and the characters I write about in basketball couldn't be more removed from my experience, and therefore I don't overlay as many of my own issues onto my basketball stories -- the character of Steve excepted; although, he certainly represents the new phase of my life. The basketball stories are about the sport and the characters and their lives and not mine.

This doesn't mean that I haven't been desperate to find a way to revisit the 2004 Olympics, and it always seemed perfectly logical to do so with basketball, since the players were there, making fools out of themselves. So, this is my way of bringing basketball and everything that's happened in the last three years (a lot of getting older -- I won't quite say growing up; a lot the pain of independence and a lot of the frustrations too) back to the younger, softer, more hopeful work that I did when I was writing SwimSlash,

In the dream, Melo’s home in Baltimore, alone. Everything’s familiar, from the bed he’s laying in to the old Mets jersey he’s wearing. His house smells like his mom’s coffee and waffles, and if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the window that overlooks the basketball court and next to that, his shelf of trophies.

Smothering heat, a slight sense of seasickness and his dry, swollen tongue start to splinter the illusion. The knifing pain behind his right eye and the feeling of rough carpet underneath him and warm, damp skin behind him, shatter it. He’s not home; he’s half-awake, half-hung over and half-naked on the floor of T-Mac’s suite. He’s on a fucking boat, outside of Athens, and he’s supposed to be playing USA Basketball. And that -- that used to mean the Dream Team, right? But Melo’s already heard the press call him and Allen and LeBron and T-Mac and everyone else the Nightmare Team.

I'd been talking a lot of shit about the Melo/AI pairing since the AI trade was finalized and the two of them started groping each other. The problem was, I couldn't work out the history and the dynamics of it in my head. I didn't want to write the epic that I felt was required to explain their history if I wrote the fic in the current verse, and I didn't think that I could get away with a short, one shot with a complex AI-on-top dynamic and no back story.

The solution came to me while I was really, really hungry and on the third draft of this (which looked nothing like this and actually had Melo reading a newspaper of all things). I thought, OMG, flashback. Of course, then I had to deal with the fact that I HATE flashbacks in fic and so had to work it in a way that was organic to the fic and the verse.

I also like the disorienting way this begins. Beginnings being vital to me.

Speaking of, someone shifts behind him and an arm slithers over his waist. It takes effort for Melo to force his eyes open and then there’s a few seconds where he has to think about focusing, but then he can see and he wishes he hadn’t bothered. Arms can be fairly anonymous until you start inking enormous black panthers across them. Melo figures that Allen must still be asleep, though, or mostly, and thinking that Melo’s one of the girls he had last night.

There's a story about the tattoo. Apparently, he used to have a grim reaper tattoo there and then covered with the black panther.

Or not.

Allen’s softly -- so softly that if Melo were really asleep he wouldn’t wake up for this -- dancing his fingers over Melo’s stomach and down to the waistband of his shorts, and then he stops, moves a little so his body is pressed flush with Melo’s, and palms Melo’s cock.

Melo chokes on the heavy, wet air, gagging on the salty smell of the ocean.

Tension rolls off of Allen in waves, sparking in all the places he’s touching Melo, and Melo twitches, trying to breathe, wondering if you can die from something like heat suffocation.

I love those two lines. I think it describes them both and their relationship in this moment perfectly (also, the choking on the salty smell? Hehe. Subtle.) Fire, air and water.

“Don’t move,” Allen mumbles, into Melo’s back, and Melo does nothing but reach for the ornate, metal leg of the table in front of him, hoping to ground himself by holding on to something sharp and solid. He wonders how Allen is holding so still -- just using his fingers, tracing the shape of Melo’s hard-on through his shorts and then down to his balls, rolling them and squeezing them gently -- because the thing that defines Allen, aside from his unpredictable and viscous mood swings, is his energy.

The lightning/storm thing I've got going continues: grounding, energy, etc.

Gripping the table leg tighter, Melo focuses on the pinching pain and lets Allen move him -- angled this way, an inch to the left -- as he pulls Melo’s shorts over his hips to the top of his thighs. Then, a little farther down.

Drifting into dubcon here. I wonder if I should have warned for it, or if everyone who reads me, especially my basketball stuff, expects some line-fuzzing/gray area stuff in regard to consent? It isn't gratuitous. AI is who his is here, and who he was at the time was a screwed up guy that had been accused of chasing his naked wife out of his house and then going after her with a gun, among numerous other things. The comment that always resonated most for me in regard to Melo and these Olympics was what a profoundly bad in influence AI was on him. So, that's where I was going with this bit.

“You were watching me,” Allen says, still talking into Melo’s back, barely getting the words out, slurring the sounds together until Melo isn’t sure what he’s saying. “Watching me fuck,” Allen finishes, and he gets that last word out clearly.

Melo takes a long breath and arches back into Allen’s body. “Don’t remember,” he lies, seeing Allen bent over the balcony railing, bent over a girl and hiding her body with his. Melo fixated on the jump-slide of the muscles in his back, distorting the Fame and the Realist above his shoulders, and making all the little stars between them dance.

The detail about the stars makes me happy.

“Whatever,” Allen says, and Melo feels something hard and wet against the back of his leg at the same time Allen starts jacking him off.

“No, don’t --” Melo starts, not sure what he’s asking Allen not to do exactly, but convinced it’s gone too far already.

“I’m not,” Allen says, “not that.” And he pulls Melo’s legs apart, just enough, and starts to move between them, sliding easy, quick. The friction is electric; fire centered at the base of Melo’s neck where Allen’s dragging his teeth over the bumps of Melo’s spine until he latches on and bites down.

Melo’s hand, sweaty and sore now, slips off of the table leg, catching on one of the metal spikes, cutting the heel of his palm -- not deep, just enough to bleed -- and he sucks at it, gagging himself as he comes over Allen’s hand, white and wet on top of black lines and swirls.

It takes several long, hot minutes for Allen to come and Melo thinks that this might be the dream; it has that almost desperate, edgy feeling to it that you get right after you realize that you’ve gone blind and right before you wake up.

The come on Melo’s stomach and then, in a minute, on his legs, is real and sticky, and he wants to shower like he’s never wanted anything ever, but Allen’s telling him no, to leave it. And, yeah, Allen’s in a fucked up place right now, Melo knows, with the guns and the assault thing last year and the gambling problem and pissing in public, but Melo prays like he hasn’t since he was a kid that Allen doesn’t want to drag him down with him.

Because he could.

If he does shit like this, he can get to the one place Melo’s never let anyone else, and he’s already got a fingernail in the crack of Melo’s defenses because of who he is -- he’s Allen fucking Iverson and he’s hardcore. He’s been in prison. And he’s everything Melo’s mom tried to keep him away from, including Melo’s own brother.

And he’s right here.

I don't know if I resolve the consent issue. It's open for interpretation. AI is older and an idol of Melo's, but Melo is obviously bigger and stronger. What happens is more of a mind-fuck than anything physical, but the damage (and there is damage) is just as long lasting.

*

“Did you guys do anything else?” Eddie asks, startling Melo out of the heat of his memories and back into the cold.

“Nah,” he says. “I mean, not then. Not in Greece.”

Eddie looks down at him from where he’s propped up and back against the headboard. “You were, what? Twenty?” His eyes are wide and almost sad, and Melo’s never seen him look like that before. He rubs at his palm, finding the tiny ridge of scar tissue.

It doesn't bother Melo (never did, consciously), and yet it does. He hasn't said anything after all this time with Eddie because it didn't seem relevant, but maybe it is now?

“Just,” he answers. “He was twenty nine? Thirty, maybe?”

“Damn,” Eddie scoots closer and pulls on one of Melo’s braids. “It all went to shit after that.” Not asking.

Melo shrugs. He’s not sure what Eddie means.

“The weed in the backpack thing and the bar brawl and the DVD?” Eddie rubs at his eyes. “All right after the Olympics. He fucked you up.”

Now I'm tying up loose ends and opening up future plot lines (because I will NEVER abandon this verse). My Melo isn't a bad guy, or stupid as is sometimes alleged (even by me). He just has issues because of what AI did to him.

“No. I mean, maybe I was just --” Melo’s not sure how to say that he was confused more than anything else, because that sounds like he’d be admitting to something about himself that he and Eddie understand but don’t ever talk about. “I don’t know. He was this big, big thing that happened to me, all of me, and I didn’t know how to deal.” That sounds better. “I wanted his life. His cars, like the Rover. But -- oh.” He grins at Eddie. “He drives a Mercedes kind of like yours.”

I like this because it's the first time, aside from a sarcastic (and awkwardly written on my part) moment in "Through Broken Glass" where Melo himself addresses his sexuality. Also, it is a lovely coincidence that canon AI drives the same Mercedes that fictional Eddie does.

“Yeah,” Eddie smiles back, lopsided and tired. “I’m not him, though.”

I get really excited about the future possibilities opened up by that line.

“I know that,” Melo almost snaps, still drawn tight and hot from reliving it. “Anyway, I wanted his body and his hair, but not so much him, I guess. And --” he stops Eddie from interrupting. “I don’t know what he wanted from me. Wants,” he corrects himself.

“Still?” Eddie asks, pushing his hair back, face neutral.

Melo just sits and stares back. He can’t fight with Eddie right now. Not over this and not with JR asleep in the next room. Finally, “You haven’t wanted me in a while, man. Not ‘til tonight.”

“I’m not mad,” Eddie says and then mutters to himself in Spanish. “Do you fuck?” he asks, a minute later, and there’s suddenly distance between him and Melo.

“Once,” Melo says, feeling stripped. Honesty is all he has left. “He likes me to suck him.”

“Because you give good head,” Eddie says, a little forced, and then he’s on top of Melo again, pushing him into the bed. “How did you do it? Did you get to --”

“What do you think?” Melo puts his lips on Eddie’s. It’s not quite a kiss, but it brings them closer again.

“I think that the new, dedicated, family-oriented, team-leader and good citizen AI should let you fuck him. As, like, as show of good faith. Or something.”

“Right. Do you want it to stop?” Melo is genuinely curious. He’s never sure where the line is with Eddie, and what, or who, it takes to cross it.

Perfect. One sentence, finally to get across everything I was trying to in "Freedom and Fame."

“Kind of,” Eddie rolls over and stretches, popping his knuckles -- two rows of joints -- in quick succession. And then he kisses Melo back, gently, hands on either side of Melo’s face and thumbs pressing into his jaw.

Melo sinks back and sinks into it, glancing at the frost covered windows and shivering thankfully, glad for the cold and for the slow, quiet way Eddie moves over him.

The transition here from the heat of the Olympics to the Colorado cold, and from AI to Eddie is effective, I think.

*

“Narcissism,” Eddie tells Melo later. “I think Allen has a thing for you because you’re just a bigger version of him.”

That makes no sense to Melo, so he just blinks at Eddie and watches him make tea. JR should be up in a minute and Melo wants to be done with this conversation by then.

“You’re like a mirror,” Eddie says, tossing Melo an orange. “A bright, shiny mirror into his past. Or, like, a possible past, where he didn’t get arrested when he was seventeen and where he never had to live in a place with no heat and no water and shit on the floors, and he got to grow up without having to fight so hard.”

Peeling the orange, Melo thinks about it, breaks it down, and starts to get frustrated.

“So he fucks me because I remind of him of being young, somehow, and you fuck me to stay young?”

Eddie turns to him and cocks an eyebrow.

“You told that to Steve once. I heard you.”

“Not exactly. But the thing is, you have this -- ability. This way of seducing people into believing in you, whether it’s that you can soothe their souls, or heal their bodies, or -- “ and Eddie turns to the kitchen door, “make them into superstars. Like you.”

This could be too much exposition. I've gone over all of this before, for the most part, in other fics, and said it better. Except for the narcissism bit. I like that.

JR’s there, looking tired and wary, but he sits, dodging an orange peel that Melo flicks at him.

Melo’s not sure whether Eddie just complimented him or made fun of him, somehow, but that’s Eddie, and Eddie’s making him waffles now, and he’s willing to take that as a sign that, either way, they’re going to be okay.

And ... I bring it back into the context of "All Stars and Crashed Cars" with the appearance of JR and the orange peel. I think it's a decent transition. Not the most creative, and not the most compelling ending either, but functional.

End.

meme answers

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 05:34:10 GMT

Steve

1. Why Steve?

horizon_greene, actually. I had little interest in basketball or in writing anymore, until I visited horizon_greene in Phoenix, May 2005, and we watched some Dallas/Phoenix. Then, when I got home, I started watching Steve play on my own and discovered one of the greatest passions of me life. Who knew? A scruffy, aging, white point guard.

2. Best trait:

His intensity combined with his intelligence.

3. Worst trait:

This is difficult. Maybe his sarcasm? Makes him hard to read sometimes.

4. I find it profoundly easy to write Steve. Easier than any other character I've ever written before and it's because, on some level, I relate to him.

5. Paragraph(s) that describes him:

Not moving later because he can’t - his knees are locked and stiff - Steve stays kneeling over Manu until the various pains in various joints become too much. His body isn’t built for this. It’s old and it’s beaten to shit and he’s gonna pay for his acrobatics in the morning. But if Manu is there, then maybe the usual aches and pains won’t seem so sinister; maybe Manu will make him young again for a little while.

With an audible pop in his left knee, he straightens out and then rolls over, leaving Manu free to get up and clean up.

When he lays back down, Steve throws an arm over him and it’s as much of an admission as he can make to Manu about feelings and Manu doesn’t seem to want to press for anything more.

Comfortable, then, he just lays with Manu, like people do after sex, until he thinks that Manu must have fallen asleep.

He’s awake though, Steve discovers, when he tries to move his arm because Manu catches his hand - the one with his ring on it - kisses it and says, more carefully than usual, “I would wish that this were different, somehow. That we were other people living other lives, but I can’t. I wouldn’t have ever wanted you if you weren’t Steve Nash and I would never want to give up what I have.”

All the glittery things, Steve thinks without rancor, feeling a little hollowed out by what Manu’s saying as much as by the fact that he’s saying it at all. And besides, if wishes were horses . . .

But there you have it. Life’s full of could haves and should haves and Steve’s racked up a year’s worth of those in a month. And when it comes down to it, he’s a better fit with Manu than maybe anyone else he’s known in over three decades, Dirk included, but yeah. He wouldn’t wish them over the rainbow either.

He tightens his hand in Manu’s because there’s nothing to say, really, but there never really has been, and shuts his eyes.

They’ll take what they have - a summer that might just be endless if they play it right - a summer where Steve doesn’t age and Manu is a star, before the season starts all over again and they go back to being fathers and husbands and basketball players.

Back to being alone. -- "All the Glittery Things"

Of course I plan to write Steve again. I just don't know when or where.

Melo

1. Why Melo?

Three reasons: 1) horizon_greene again. She pointed out his smile. 2) I could watch him three nights a week and familiarity breeds obsession. ;) 3) Eddie. That first season I watched the Nugs, Eddie and Melo were all over each other. It was like soft porn, just for me, on a regular basis.

2. Best trait: His looks. Hands down, I just find him attractive. Plus, his seeming innocence in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

3. Worst trait: His lack of intelligence. It's an intregal part of his character, but it's a challenge in writing him

4. Melo is a fairly easy character to write, when I'm in the mood. I prefer, however, to write around him and not deal with his POV because of his vocabulary issues. Also, I just think it's sexier to see Melo through other people's eyes.

5. Paragraph(s) that describes him:

Complaining about it won’t do any good, though. Just like with everything (and everyone) else, Melo thinks he owns the road and I’m not gonna go anywhere near that ego tonight. Although I’d like to. Damn. The kid said once that he wanted to be bigger than John Elway. Which is such shit. Saying that in Colorado is like saying you’re gonna be bigger than God.

But hey. If he keeps making miracles happen then who knows.

Prophet. Savior. Baby superstar. -- "Promised Land"

Melo’s got this whirling thing going on in his head and it’s a good thing Eddie’s holding him up, otherwise he might do something gay, like, fall over, or giggle or even squeal. -- "Through Broken Glass"

“No. I mean, maybe I was just --” Melo’s not sure how to say that he was confused more than anything else, because that sounds like he’d be admitting to something about himself that he and Eddie understand but don’t ever talk about. “I don’t know. He was this big, big thing that happened to me, all of me, and I didn’t know how to deal.” That sounds better. “I wanted his life. His cars, like the Rover. But -- oh.” He grins at Eddie. “He drives a Mercedes kind of like yours.”-- "Dreaming My Way Deep"

in the black hills, the badlands, the calloused east

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:12:59 GMT

Got Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot for a little, light bedtime reading.

Also, a meme stolen from nycscribbler

1. Comment to this post with the name of a character that I have written in fic. Or geeked out about.

2. I will comment telling you the following:
a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character*.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.

mlb slash: (drabble) "let the rain come down"

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:12:31 GMT

So, hey.

Bored and unwilling to clean the apartment = Baseball drabble!

(Rockies!Slash)
pairing: Yorvit Torrealba/Ubaldo Jimenez
rating: pg
word count: 846
summary/notes: Yorvit muses on baseball in September, playing in the rain, and rookies (of the shortstop and pitching variety.) This is obviously my first attempt at writing baseball, and it's unbetaed since it's little more than a drabble.

let the rain come down

Rain makes Yorvit's arms slick and tight, the tendons tense and snappy. He blinks, and blinks again, shaking water out of his eyes a second too early. The first ball is high but the next three are over the corners and he can't see them through the rain. When the third strike is called, he doesn't argue (not because he's cold and sore -- the sudden weather change settling deep in his bones), but because he's tired. Clinging to hope in the first week of September is exhausting. Relying on other teams to win and lose isn't fair. The Rockies should have fallen off of the ledge one way or the other by now -- be either in the race or out of it -- but they keep playing in limbo.

He gets caught in the press of warm, wet bodies in the dug out, shoved up in between Tulo and Willy, trying to find room to strap his gear on, while Tulo keeps asking himself, "Why don't they call it?" Over and over.

"It's just that -- look at the water behind first," he says, turning to Yorvit. "Someone’s going to get dirty.“ He sticks one hand out of the dug out and then jerks it back. “Why don't they call the delay?"

Shrugging and standing, Yorvit slides around him and into Jimenez, who's shivering in his coat and watching Julio warm up in the bull pen. He mumbles something under his breath and Yorvit doesn't even try to decipher it. It doesn't matter what the kid says, anyway; it's the wild, frustrated look he gets that worries Yorvit. "You did fine," Yorvit says, with a big smile. "Can't always be perfect." He doesn't mention number 762 for Bonds; he doesn't have to.

Fact: Yorvit hates no team more than the Giants but he, oddly, has no opinion one way or another on Bonds. Seriously.

Jimenez is blank, seeing that number on a marquee in his head (Yorvit imagines; that's how he sees it), gripping Yorvit now by the forearms, digging fingers into black, blue, yellow and green marks. Jimenez's thumb finds the soft, swollen spot behind Yorvit’s elbow from where Wilson's pitch hit him yesterday and squeezes. He's the only starter on the roster that can pitch the hundred mile an hour fast ball (future of the team), but he can't control it (has no patience, shakes off every call and falls back on what he knows). The pain hits Yorvit's neck first and then his shoulder and then spikes back down his arm into his fingers. He makes a fist and keeps smiling.

Tip: Keep your feelings about young, hot-shot pitchers to yourself. Whether good or bad, warm or cold.

Bonds isn't even bothering to chase balls in left anymore, and Correia is screaming at anyone and everyone that his front foot is slipping on the wet dirt of the mound.

The rain is coming down in steady, silver sheets in front of the big lights.

"Why don't they fucking call the game?" Tulo asks again, out of nowhere, and Jimenez glances past Yorvit to Tulo and then beyond him to where Francis is sitting, hunched, by the coolers. Jimenez hisses and his breath is lemon-lime sweet.

Fact: Jimenez will never be the pitcher Francis is; he'll never have that complete game (hot, bright, and beautiful), and he'll always melt in the rain.

Yorvit will never admit to anyone, ever, that he has to urge to cover the kid up and make him stop shaking.

"If it was up to you, would you call a delay?" Tulo's cornered Atkins, now, pestering him until he admits that he's unhappy with the rain and the mud too. There’s a persistent rumor that Tulo just might be Rookie of the Year material (he is Rookie of the Month for August), and Yorvit bets that it'd be a sure thing if crazy points counted, because Tulo is certifiable.

Fact: No sane person voluntarily wears Derek Jeter's signature cologne. Or, more importantly, gives it as a gift to his teammates. In Yorvit's opinion, Tulo may be the best shortstop since Jeter (better?), but he's hopeless.

Tip: Never leave Troy Tulowitzki unsupervised with a pair of electric clippers. His motto in regard to hair has become: "If bald works for David Wright, it'll work for you."

But while crazy can't be cured (at least not Tulo's particular Jeter-worshiping, Wright-mimicking brand of it), patience can be taught, and that's what Yorvit's on the roster for. After nine years of riding the bench and playing in the minors for the Giants, the Rockies picked him up to baby sit, and so that's what he'll do. He'll teach English and patience and finesse when he can to kids like Jimenez, and he'll smile while he does it. And he because he is patient, he gently loosens Jimenez's fingers one by one and doesn't think about anything other than September and baseball and rain when Jimenez slides his hands back down Yorvit's arms and leans in to rest his head on Yorvit's shoulder.

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:05:50 GMT

The AU is done and off to beta.

Looks like someone has a case of the giggles. Personally, I've never thought Amare was that funny.

I swear, Kobe just won't leave him alone. Odd, that.

meme and melo picspam :)

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:31:57 GMT

5. Lucy Lawless -- Goes without saying, I should think.

4. Steve Nash -- I just think he'd be amazing in bed.

3. Claudia Black -- Her voice is what does it. Her voice and her hair. Also, Farscape was one of the most edgy and innovative television shows ever. Or something.

2. Aaron Peirsol -- Just thinking about him makes me happy.

1. Melo -- Not because I think he'd be a great lay, but just because. Because he's Melo and he's vaguely smishy and sometimes he has a fantastic smile.

Which leads us to:

Melo/Lebron

Melo/Lebron/Kobe

Kobe/Melo

HOLY SHIT

Melo

I have no words.

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 06:34:33 GMT

I've seen some good movies lately (Stardust), some harmlessly bad movies (War -- Quick! Name your favorite Jet Li movie, and also, help me win a bet -- has he ever kissed a girl in a movie? He almost danced with Aayliah in Romeo Must Die, and did he maybe almost kiss someone in Twin Warriors?), but then tonight I saw Septemper Dawn, and it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

My brother and I went into this knowing nothing other than it had John Voight in it and that the poster said it was "CONTROVERSIAL." Which, yeah, I guess. You could say that a movie that sets out a clear agenda to conflate Islam and Mormonism without a basic understanding of either, and uses a massacre as a plot device, could be "controversial."

NBA fic: "Lying to Beat the Sun" AI/Steve

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:57:43 GMT

title: "Lying to Beat the Sun"
pairing: Allen Iverson/Steve Nash
rating: NC-17
words:: 3900
summary: Steve gets drunk, angsty and horny over the All Star Break. AI is also drunk, and perhaps horny. There are cameo appearences by: Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki, and Eddie Najera (by phone.)
Disclaimer:This is the product of my twisted imagination. It never happened and I'm not implying that it did. I make no profit from writing this.
A/N: This takes place in the same 'verse as all of my other NBA fics. This is the same Steve from "Almost Broken", and this fic takes place at the same time as the last section of "All Stars and Crashed Cars". Someday I'll move on. Today is not that day. Many, many thanks as usual to horizon_greene for betaing this in a hurry and for generally listening to some strange shit from me lately. So, because this has Steve in it, this is dedicated to her.

Lying to Beat the Sun

Nobody notices when Steve spits vodka all over himself and the bar. Mostly because nobody’s paying attention to him, and that might be number three on the list of things he’s really pissed about. Number one being that he is now damp and sticky after being bump-mauled by a careening Carmelo Anthony. Melo just smiles and hugs him, like Steve’s one of his charity cases, and slithers back into the crowd.

*

“What’s number two?” Dirk asks, leaning against the bathroom wall and watching Steve wash his hands a minute later.

Steve stares at him.

“Things that you’re mad about,” Dirk prompts him, not even flinching when Steve flicks water in his direction.

“AI, probably,” Steve says, and Dirk being Dirk just nods, a little vacant from the long weekend and the alcohol.

After another two drinks, Steve feels the need to elaborate, but he’s yelling over the music and somehow can’t manage to make Dirk understand that it’s pretty much AI’s existence that pisses him off right now, but it’s the little things too, right?

Like -- he pokes Dirk to get his attention -- they were drafted at the same time, but AI was first and Steve was fifteenth. But it’s not even that. It’s that they’re -- both of them -- in their thirties now, and AI doesn’t look stiff and sore and worn out, sucked dry from the desert heat and the stress. He still looks like a kid, dancing and drinking and hanging on Melo, unconsciously physical, unaware or indifferent to the people around him, to the expectations on him. Which is so painfully unfair. Because for Steve, it’s this year or it’s never, and he can’t let himself forget.

Steve tells himself that over and over, through every ache and every pain , after every win and after every loss, and every time Shawn visibly -- humiliatingly -- chafes at living in Steve’s shadow, or Boris slips farther away from them, from the game, and into himself.

“He’s been to the finals,” Steve says, and Dirk looks thoughtful, condescending almost, because, oh yeah, so has he.

“That was a long time ago,” Dirk says. “He’s not the same as he was.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair, missing it’s length for a minute and --

“Who?” Someone asks, touching Steve's back.

Steve looks over his shoulder. At AI.

“You,” Dirk says to AI and shakes his empty glass, nodding at the bar before walking away.

Ignoring the embarrassing he’s going to hurt me thoughts, Steve looks down into big eyes and a half-smile.

*

AI (“Allen, man. It’s Allen.”) is all thin limbs and electricity spinning around Steve. He doesn’t say how much he heard, or if he’s insulted, or where Melo is, but starts somewhere in the middle of his own conversation.

“My first All Star Break -- goddamn. It was in Cleveland, right?”

Steve nods and follows Allen out of the club and into the casino.

“Shit, man. They hated me out there. They never stopped yelling at me, y’know? Isiah called me a thug and Chuck came down hard on me too. Like, they couldn‘t forget about when I was in jail, or forgive me for braiding my hair.” He touches his head self-consciously.

There were a couple of months in Dallas when Steve was pretty unpopular, but Steve doesn’t really think that compares, so he shrugs. “Not really.”

“I could feel it,” Allen says, stopping suddenly and waiting for Steve to come along side of him. “The hatred? Made my skin crawl.” He drags his fingertips over the skin of Steve’s shoulder and down across the ridge of his collarbone, making Steve shiver despite the heat, goose bumps rising on the damp places Allen touches.

Everything fades: the angry mutter of late night gamblers, the jangle of slot machines, and the canned music.

“Let’s go,” Allen says, and spins away, disappearing into the maze of craps tables.

*

Traffic on the Strip is at a standstill and Allen has all the windows plus the sunroof open in the limo. The weak breeze doesn’t cool Steve off, though. His shoulder burns where Allen’s wedged against him, leaning over him, so he can see out of Steve’s window. Allen wants to see the Treasure Island show, but the angle isn’t quite right from where they are, and so he’s crawling up and over Steve and half out the window, talking on his phone at the same time.

It’s hard to tell what’s worse for Steve: leaving his hands where they are, trapped in his lap between his body and Allen’s, or trying to find something else to do with them. He makes a compromise, convinced Allen’s forgotten that he’s even there, busy describing to Melo and whoever’s with Melo now, what he’s seeing on the street. It’s like a running commentary.

“Football players,” Allen’s saying. “I think. And some guy juggling fire. But that’s on the pirate ship. Man, you are so missing some seriously crazy shit out here tonight. Is JR with you?”

Steve listens, sort of, and takes one hand out from under Allen and then sits for a minute like an idiot, before the limo lurches forward a foot and knocks Allen slightly off balance. Steve puts his free hand on Allen’s back, just to steady him, and then leaves it there when Allen glances back at him and grins so quick that Steve convinces himself he didn’t see it.

The limo starts and stops again while Allen’s lazily arguing with Melo over the merits of getting a new tattoo while in Vegas (Melo thinks he should; Allen thinks he shouldn’t, dumbass,) and Steve has to catch him with both hands this time, feeling desperately awkward at the way his fingers fit between Allen’s ribs, prominent even through the thin cotton of his tank top.

“What about you?”

The conversation -- Allen -- has left Steve behind again.

“Me what?” he asks, concentrating on not getting hard.

“If we went to get new ink, would you come too?”

Laughing, Steve shakes his head no. “Not my thing.” But he feels like he has permission now to look at Allen’s skin.

“Which one was your first?” he asks, wondering if that’s okay, if it’s meaningful (hurtful?) in some way that he can’t imagine, or if it’s some place he shouldn’t be asking to see. Which is an idea he should have stayed away from. He was doing so well, too, imagining stuff like Dirk’s mouth guard and Al Harrington’s head and Shawn’s jump shot.

“Here,” Allen says, twisting, so that he can point to the shoulder closest to Steve. “That one, when I was eighteen? Nineteen?”

Hold My Own, it says and Steve touches it lightly before he can stop himself, thumb tracing the fading black lines, and need -- suppressed, forgotten -- buzzes at the base of his spine.

And oh, oh no. Steve falls so hard and so fast and it hurts for so long after that he can’t -- can’t let this happen now. The thing with Manu, that bright, ugly, drawn out disaster, finally died (a mercy killing) a year ago, and Steve hasn’t thought about dick (other than his own) in about that long.

“We should switch,” he says, inching out from under Allen. Infatuation and Allen Iverson seem like a toxic mix to Steve, and his stomach hurts even considering it.

“Mmm,” Allen says, letting him go and looking at him funny before turning back to the window.

The murmur of traffic and voices combined with the soft, wide seats of the limo help Steve to calm down and even start to drift, until his window starts to roll up, almost catching parts of him -- a hand, an elbow -- in it.

“Why?” he turns to Allen, who’s flipping his phone shut and digging in the mini-fridge for a bottle of champagne.

“Drink?” Allen says, in answer, popping the cork and laughing as he spills all over himself, the upholstery, and Steve.

“Okay.” Steve is already sticky, so he takes the glass and drinks too fast, giving himself hiccups.

“Why,” he starts again but for a different reason. “Why are you having fun? You don’t do that. Or,” he grabs the bottle and drinks straight from it. “You shouldn’t. I mean, are you happy? Did moving make you happy?”

“What are you asking, man?” Allen asks, taking the bottle back and looking up through the sunroof.

“Dunno,” Steve admits, tired now.

Allen drinks and wobbles as the limo accelerates. “Moving was good,” he says. Or maybe it’s: “ Melo’s good.” He tends to mumble and Steve’s not really listening, just letting his mind wander.

“No pressure?” Steve asks, squinting across the seat in the dark, the tint on the windows filtering out the neon daylight of the Strip. His noses itches from drying champagne.

“Less,” Allen nods. “Less … attention.” He’s closer to Steve again, sprawling in the seat. “Hate people looking at me.”

Steve scrunches his eyes shut, which is a silly, drunken thing, but, “I can’t see you now,” he says. “Not looking.”

“Good,” Allen tells him, inches away now, breathing on Steve’s cheek. “We should,” he starts, shuffling around, muffled for second. “Get out and walk.”

Blinking his eyes open, Steve watches Allen finish pulling his shirt over his head and then use it to mop champagne off of his arms.

“Do what?”

“Get. Out,” Allen repeats, now doing the same to Steve’s face before leaning over him and opening the door.

They fall out onto the street in a tangled heap, scraping bare skin on hard asphalt.

*

The crush of people on the street leaves Steve annoyed and breathless and lost. He and Allen keep bumping into each other and every time they touch it leaves him more frustrated. Allen moves fast and it's hard to keep up with him, even in the lobby of the Bellagio where he darts in between people on his way towards the banks of elevators, dashing inside one that’s filled almost to capacity, holding the door impatiently for Steve.

Steve melts towards the back, pulling Allen with him, trying to avoid being recognized or worse, not being recognized and having the elevator full of rich, sleepy, white gamblers freak right out over the half-dressed black man standing in the middle of them.

“Back,” he says, quietly, smiling, tugging on Allen, pleased that he moves with him, conscious all the while of his stained shirt and blood-shot eyes, torn pants, and the raw, red patches of skin on his palms and forearms where he caught himself falling out of the limo.

Out of sight, out of mind, and the mumbled conversation returns to normal when he and Allen are pressed against each other and the back wall. Steve slumps with relief, head on Allen’s shoulder and wonders if he can get away with licking the spider web on Allen’s neck -- if Allen will even notice, as wired and twitchy as he is.

Steve isn’t a risk taker, usually, but he not usually here, with damp, bare male skin so close to his mouth.

Allen tastes like salt and fruit from the champagne, and it makes Steve’s back ache when his muscles tense in his lower body with expectation. He wants to push away a little, or pull closer, or a least adjust himself but he can’t and he feels a little crazy with it, settling for sliding his legs apart slightly instead.

Allen does nothing for a second, and then he tilts his head. And then he leans back.

Four floors left, and Steve closes his teeth over the spider web and prays. He knows there are things he’s wanted more in his life than this, but he can’t remember them.

*

There are people in Allen’s suite. All over. Sleeping, drinking, fucking. And no one’s is paying any attention to Allen and Steve, and the bedroom is empty. Allen’s still moving quickly, collecting a beer from the bar, locking them in, and then ending up on the balcony, pinning Steve between him and the railing.

“This,” Steve says, wiggling a little to relieve the pressure on his spine. “It’s?”

“Nothing,” Allen, says, unbuttoning Steve’s shirt. He looks at Steve critically for a second and then backs up a step and picks up his beer. Another step and he’s back in the room, sitting on the bed, expectant, hand resting between his legs.

“Nash,” he says, and Steve holds his breath. “C’mere.”

Steve stumbles as he walks and is already falling when Allen says, “Down.”

Loose pants, old, supple belt, sticky zipper and then hot, slick skin. Steve’s knees are already starting to hurt, but it’s okay because he never does this; his body will last. He can’t help the noises he makes either, when he starts to suck, the little, wet grunts and hard breaths, and Allen seems surprised.

“You like it?” he asks, running a hand through Steve’s hair, more gentle than Steve thought he would be, or thinks he should be. Part of the thrill is who this is and what Steve imagines he’s done (can do), which is hugely inappropriate, but so is the whole situation, so Steve’s okay with indulging himself.

He hums back at Allen, nodding a little and drooling, working his free hand down his pants because he doesn’t know how far Allen goes and --

Allen’s hand tightens in his hair and Steve goes a little limp.

“Uh huh,” Allen says. “Get up.”

And Steve starts to sink. He doesn’t mean to and he doesn’t really want to, but everything starts to fall away anyway and he relaxes as he stands, not bothering to swipe a hand over his mouth. Allen shakes his head and runs a finger over Steve’s lips and down onto his chin.

“This is you?” he asks, moving back so Steve can get on the bed.

Steve unzips his pants, pulls them off and rolls onto his stomach. “Yeah.”

There’s lips at the top of his spine, teeth, scraping down, down over his hips and then licking and sucking on the bone before biting, making Steve jump and rub himself into the blanket.

Allen drops a condom and lube down near Steve’s head and Steve’s wonders for a second about the lube and then figures that with the orgy in the front rooms, anything’s possible.

“So you,” Allen lays on Steve, hard and sharp, “get fucked,” he says, turning Steve’s head so he can kiss him lightly, “a lot?”

Which is a shitty thing to say and such a fucking cliché, and Steve tries to roll out from under Allen because it isn’t even true. But he can’t move, because Allen’s stronger than he is, and pinning his arms now, and that’s a little scary. Which is so alright with Steve that he has to hold himself still or he might come on the blanket.

“Don’t,” Allen says, lazy, drawling. “Stay put.”

“If I move?” Steve asks, arching up and back and clawing at the blanket.

“Mmm,” Allen says, moving, sitting up and bracing a knee in the middle of Steve’s back, right where it hurts, making Steve sob out loud and then bite his tongue to keep quiet.

He tastes blood and pain in the back of his throat and he lets the fear creep out of his belly and into his chest and down into his legs.

This is what he wants. How he wants it.

Who he wants. No, never mind. Steve shuts down and pretends this is casual. Pretends it doesn’t matter.

He hears the condom wrapper tear and then feels hands on the back of his thighs -- the knee is gone but he still can’t breathe and it feels like a rib is bruised. It’s hard to concentrate on the softer touches and the less intense sensations, now. Allen’s fingers trailing up, and then in. Two without warning, twisting and curling.

And that’s all he gets. After all this time, being a good husband and a good father and denying, denying, denying himself gets him --

Pulled back and up and onto to Allen’s cock, and Allen’s hand slapped hard over his mouth to stop him (is that him?) from wailing and swearing and snapping. Which is just wrong, because Steve used to have an iron fucking control that only Manu could crack, but even then he didn’t lose it like he is now -- skidding so close to the edge, slamming himself back onto Allen -- that he’s terrified that he can’t come back. That he won’t be able to pull himself back together and stitch up the cuts and be Steve Nash again for his family and his team.

Allen moves suddenly, breaking rhythm, thrusting one minute and then pushing Steve away the next. Steve falls face first into the blanket and then Allen manhandles him onto his back. Then he’s inside him that way, sitting up and pulling Steve’s legs over his thighs so Steve’s bowed back, uncomfortable and exposed. Allen’s looking down at him and so Steve can’t see his expression, but he imagines it’s like when he’s playing and everything’s clicking and no one’s telling him he has to give up the ball and no one’s telling him that he’s getting old -- wide eyed and intent.

“Melo,” Steve says, out of malice, trying to save himself (don’t look at me like that, he thinks) and sacrificing someone easy along the way, and Allen’s eyes snap up.

“When?”

“Year ago,” Steve says, and runs one hand down his chest and stomach, stopping just short of his dick.

“Do it,” Allen says, bending forward a little and leaning on one arm. Then, smiling and dismissive, “Did Melo when he was still a kid.”

There’s no reason to believe Allen’s lying and Steve gives up and grabs himself, shutting his eyes before he can see Allen smile at him again.

It doesn’t surprise Steve at all that Allen pulls out and takes the condom off so that he can come on Steve’s chest. Steve comes in his hand a minute or two later, feeling hot and filthy and tired.

*

What does surprise Steve is that there’s a second time.

They shower separately; Allen goes first, leaving Steve to sit and dry in the frigid air coming out the vents now that Allen's bothered to turn the temperature down. But when Steve’s done and trying to get dressed, Allen stops him and turns him against the wall.

It’s slow this time, and Allen spends a lot of time touching Steve’s hips and stomach and thighs, digging fingers gently into sore, shaky muscles. He licks and bites softly at the flesh of Steve’s shoulders, leaving tiny, purple bruises behind.

Disoriented, upset, Steve just leaves his hands flat on the wall and listens to Allen talk between bites, mumbling about Melo and Denver and how his wife wants to go back to Virginia. Steve makes noises of agreement and tries to follow along as Allen flips backward to a party he was at last night and a pair of twins he met there, then to a nightclub he was at once in Miami (in DC, in Boston, in Hampton, in Philly) where someone got shot, but it wasn’t his fault, seriously.

“I think recycling is important,” Steve says, interrupting Allen’s flow, done with it now, mad at Allen again for being the guy he’s always been compared to (unspoken, implied, he’s the new image; the white image), and falls short of, in pure talent.

Mad because that shouldn’t excite him like it does, under the anger; and mad because he could get used to this (get used to Allen and his anger and his half-smile and his child’s eyes and his pure, volatile, energy), and that’s a lesson he’s learned the hard way over and over, with better men than Allen Iverson.

Laughing softly into Steve’s neck, Allen doesn’t move faster, just deeper and Steve folds his arms over so he can rest his head on them and groans.

Allen comes in him this time (after Steve, when Steve’s loose and drifting), flush with Steve’s body, pushing him into the wall.

*

Steve opens all the windows and the sunroof in the limo, spreading out on the seat so he can look up at the false dawn over the Strip. He smells alright now; a little like sex and a little like Allen’s cologne, but the breeze is off, heavy with chlorine (from all the fountains and the stupid pool with the stupid pirate ship) and decades of spilled booze, vomit and sweat. He’s hungry for crap food -- IHOP or Denny’s pancakes -- and so tired that his eyes burn when he blinks.

Underneath it all, though, is that spiky, itchy feeling he gets when he’s fucked up.

He flips open his phone (the battery’s almost dead) and scrolls through numbers until he finds one he wants and hits send.

Eddie answers on the second ring.

“Been drinking?” he asks, crunching on something.

“Yeah.”

“Seen Melo?”

It’s mild, but Steve can hear the tension.

“Briefly. Hasn’t he called?” He thinks about the standing invitation he has to get a tattoo tomorrow with Allen and Melo. “Or something pierced,” Allen had said, with the half-smile.

“Had phone sex last night,” Eddie says. “Kind of.”

Steve wonders about that for a minute and then says, “So. Uh -- “ he rubs at his left eye and switches ears. “How do you like, y’know, playing with AI?”

Eddie snorts and then chokes on whatever he’s eating, coughing loudly into Steve’s ear for a minute before saying, “Dunno. How do you like fucking around with him?”

Steve considers throwing up out of the limo window and then dismisses the idea. “What makes you think --”

“I know you,” Eddie says. “And I know him, a little. Enough.”

Silence. Melo, Steve thinks, and then tells the limo driver to circle the Strip again before taking him back to his hotel.

“How was it?” Eddie asks. “Hot?”

“Like,” Steve says. “Yeah. That.”

“And?”

“It was a stupid thing to do.”

“Probably,” Eddie says, and Steve hears water running. “You’ll get over it though.”

“Mmm,” Steve nods to himself, noticing that Eddie didn’t say, “You’ll get over him.”

“I can see,” Eddie starts and then stops. “For you? I can see how he would be difficult.”

Why? Steve thinks. He’s been fucked by guys that were better looking. Maybe. And guys that were better in bed, definitely. But, okay, never -- not when he was a kid and not since he’s been the Model Athlete -- has he known someone with that kind of arrogance and rebelliousness on top of such deadly energy.

Steve flinches. “Something like that.”

“Think you’re in love?” Eddie’s definitely smirking.

“No.” Not exactly.

“Yeah. Don’t let it get to you,” Eddie says. “Or whatever. Look, I have to go. But don’t --” a car door slams. “Don’t see him again.”

“I won’t,” Steve says, and hopes that he’s not lying.

*

Dawn finally breaks on an ugly, smoggy Vegas morning and Steve drags himself out of the limo and up into the Wynn. He flips his phone open in the lobby and scrolls through the A’s, pausing on Allen before deleting it and then moving up one to Alejandra.

The battery dies before the call goes through.

end.

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:21:30 GMT

Fashion/girl type question: I have this dress. It's a hippy/sundress/thing. It's full-length, and black with turquoise threading and beaded straps. I want to wear it tonight but I'm not sure if i should wear a bra with it. I don't actually own more than, like, two bras because I don't wear them very much, being built like an eleven year old boy. I could try to find a strapless bra while I'm out shopping, but what are the chances that I'm actually going to find one in an A cup?

I thought so.

-

Should I run this morning or not? It's not as hot as it has been, but still. I've already cleaned the house and have one load of laundry done. And at some point I need to go grocery shopping. I hate nothing, nothing more than grocery shopping.

-

Also, I finished a fic! And it's not the AU! 3900 words of AI and Steve Nash being drunk and having sex over the All Star break. Why can't I write anything that takes pace after March?

"Silence and Cold" -- DVD Commentary

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:58:49 GMT

For thorne_scratch. Next up, "Dreaming Myself Deep."

Silence and Cold

Cold in life's throws, I'll fall asleep for you
Cold in life's throws, I only ask you turn away
Cold in life's throws, I'll fall asleep for you
Cold in life's throws, I only ask you turn
As they seep... into me, oh, my beautiful one, now

Your sins into me
Oh, my beautiful one
Your sins into me
As a rapturous voice escapes, I will tremble a prayer
And I'll beg for forgiveness
(Your sins into me)
Your sins into me...
AFI - "Silver and Cold"

So, where to start? How about with the fact that I know better than to preface my fics with song bits and yet I seem to have done so here? Hmm. Anyway. This fic was, more than any other fic I'd written up to this point, an exercise. I had been extremely inspired by the Olympics, but that was finally wearing off and plus, it was February. I hate February. I hated this particular February especially. I had moved out of my parents house in November; I had started working at the Home of the Aardvarks and was just hating it, and I was seriously questioning my writing ability. thorne_scratch posted a story that was stylistically interesting to me and I wanted to see if I could challenge myself to write something more specifically visceral than anything I'd tried before. And hence, this story was born

I wrote it in two sittings, mostly in my bedroom, freezing to death, watching the snow fall.

Aaron’s fingers trace silly designs on the cold, wet glass of the window. A baby’s foot, a lopsided smiley face, a backwards iH to greet the people passing by. They don’t notice him, though. They’re all wrapped up in their ski jackets and their knit scarves and their beanies and their narrow, narrow lives. All except for the guy leaning on the lamppost with the cowboy hat on. Aaron squints at him - his contacts are hurting him in Aspen’s high, dry air - and thinks that perhaps the city council pays the man to stand there like that. With his sheepskin coat and his hat and the scuffed tips of boots barely visible under the cuffs of worn jeans, he could be actually be the Marlboro man (in the time Aaron has been in the mountains he has heard the area referred to variously as God’s Country, Big Sky Country, and Marlboro Country). The man, hunching into his coat and ambling away now, adds a feeling of sad authenticity to the sparkling little town full of stars on skis.

First sentences have always been vital to me. This one was no exception. It was all I had for a while, and I still like it. I also like "narrow, narrow lives;" although, I'd probably change "perhaps" to "maybe" in the city council sentence.

When Michael gets up, he bumps the table and spills Aaron’s coffee and some drops hit his hand. “Ouch,” Aaron mumbles to himself, more out of habit than pain, and Michael doesn’t even notice. Aaron wonders for the tenth, or maybe the fifteenth, time if Michael knows where he is or whom he’s with.

This is progressing just how I wanted it to. With, um, jagged apathy. I wanted it to be apparent immediately that there was very little emotional investment (on the surface) from either character.

“Where are you going?” he asks Michael, not really caring. He has the local paper and he’s reading an article about a skier who used to play football but left the game for the money. The story unduly fascinates Aaron. He’s always been an individual sportsman, but for a while, he had as much of a team as one can have in swimming. Of course, he’s given that all up now. Given it up for money, which is something that Brendan and Ian say that they understand but their eyes tell him something different. They think, and Aaron knows this because he knows them, that he’s sold out. That he’s banking on his looks now as much as his talent and that he’s not much better than a whore because of it. Not much better than Michael or Thorpe. But this kid, the kid in the paper in front of him, left a team and a school and a state all behind. Left stadiums full of screaming fans - something that Michael doesn’t even always have - for cold and silence and money.

Jeremy Bloom! I doubt anyone got that reference, and maybe that's a bad thing? I don't know. I was obsessed with him at the time, and I think the direction it takes the narrative is okay -- we get a little bit into Aaron's head -- but it could have been edited down. The Connecting Theme is there, which is good. But I use "whore" and I wouldn't now. It's jarring.

Aaron thinks he’s beautiful.

“Did you hear me?” Michael asks, his voice flat, like he’s trying to disguise an accent or an emotion.

“No.”

“I’m going back to the lodge. There are too many people here.”

Michael’s agoraphobia worries Aaron in an abstract way, the way he worries about the twinges of pain he gets in his shoulders sometimes or about how convincing his smile will be at Lenny’s wedding.

Lenny/Aaron!

“Do you want me to come with you?” Aaron asks, not caring either way. He’s wasting his spring break in a ski town, surrounded by strangers, all because he saw something he shouldn’t have one afternoon in Athens. He’s discharging an obligation and he can’t do it sitting alone watching the snow fall.

Michael doesn’t answer right away, but the tremor in his hand - the one that rests on the newspaper now over the skier’s face - betrays his anxiety.

“Never mind, Mike,” he says, getting up and shrugging into a coat that he bought especially for the trip. He likes spending his money, if not in the extravagant ways that Michael does, and the swish of the shiny fabric makes him happy for a moment. “Let’s go.”

One of my favorite things to do from the time I started to write in this fandom was to compare and contrast these two. Also, hey, the plot thickens.

Aaron never knew, or perhaps never considered, what a soothing smell woodsmoke was. But as it is everywhere in Aspen, he’s getting to like it - like the way it clings to his clothes and to Michael’s hair. He thinks that because Michael smells of woodsmoke and shampoo when he climbs into Aaron’s bed at night rather than chlorine or alcohol, it makes this different somehow than the long nights after Athens when he was forced to remember what the rest of the world had forgotten: Michael Phelps was nineteen. Just a kid. Not a god. He bled; he cried.

Oh god, the angst. So here I'm trying to build story without making anything too obvious. I think I'm okay up to the paragraph below, then things start to get forced and false sounding.

More than that, he was guilty of letting his overwhelming pride get the better of him. Of rubbing his wealth and his success in the wrong faces, and now he was paying for his sins. Paying and paying.

*

This night begins like all the others, with Aaron reminding Michael to brush his teeth, helping him find the right pills and take them in the right order and then tucking him into his own bed.

It’s always a relief to them both with the Xanax kicks in and Michael stops shaking and biting his lip. Sometimes he’ll sleep right away and leave Aaron to watch Letterman with the volume turned down or to catch a glimpse of himself looking young and smiling on VHI. He gets to know the late night lineup on most of the channels pretty well. He doesn’t sleep much because there’s not a lock on the medicine cabinet and his greatest fear - besides someone finding them - is that he’ll find Michael the way he did on their fist night in the mountains, with the bottle of pills in his hand and a dark, closed look on his face.

So, now I've made Michael suicidal. Like everything else about this story, though, I wanted it to be understated. I think I managed that.

“Are you going to call your mother?” he asks Michael as he watches him slide a little white pill under his tongue, unconsciously counting the remainder, just to be sure.

Michael thinks about it and nods. It takes a little while for him to find his cell phone under the piles of clothes he leaves littered about the room and then a little longer for him to actually dial the number but Aaron is patient. He doesn’t want Michael’s mother calling the police. He can’t imagine how he’d explain living in a room in Michael Phelps over their spring break, when they are supposed to be someplace like Miami, especially with the state that Michael’s in.

Michael’s conversation with his mother is short but fairly lucid and Aaron is relieved. It’s a good sign. Maybe he’ll be able to sleep tonight without Michael appearing ghostlike beside him in the dark, staring with wide, terrified eyes. His hope is unfounded and Michael is beside him, clinging to him, before Kimmel is over. He’s reliving his nightmare over and over and Aaron is no psychologist. He has no idea how to break the cycle or how to turn the record off repeat. He hoped, after it happened, after the night that the hot, drunk and resentful men decided to prove to themselves and to Michael that he was human after all, that Michael would get professional help. But Michael never did beyond going begging for pills. He latched onto Aaron instead because Aaron was there at the end and because Aaron didn’t turn away.

This is rushed. The transition to Michael appearing in bed and the exposition. The story (like all my plots) came at me in pieces and was secondary to setting the scene and the mood. So we end up with a three line explanation of what's wrong with Michael (he was gang-raped) and why Aaron cares (he doesn't, but he was there). Actually, that's not true -- in the paragraph below I try to explain more about Aaron's motivation, which becomes, I hope, a larger part of the story than the rape itself.

It was because of that, because Aaron had been there at the end, that he had come when Michael emailed him. He had borne witness to something terrible and now, because it hadn’t happened to him, because he has never felt that kind of pain or been forced to face that kind of shame, that he has to assuage his own guilt by caring for Michael in his silence and in the cold.

The bond is there and it’s strong but strange. The bond between witness and victim. The bond between rivals pales between that forged in dirt and blood and silence.

I'm torn here. I like the idea of the reiterating the Connecting Theme, but the paragraph is a little purple.

Aaron says the same thing that he always does, night after night. “You should talk to someone.” He says it into Michael’s hair or into his shoulder or even to his back, but he always says it.

And Michael always answers the same way. “Could you tell someone? Could you say it?”

Of course not. It doesn’t happen to men.

So after Aaron says what he has to, he asks something easier. “Does your back hurt?”

And Michael always tells him that it does and lets Aaron push his shirt up and rub at the knotted muscles there. All day long Michael will let no one, including Aaron touch him, but late at night when the memories are cutting him, he can let Aaron rub his back and Aaron wonders if it helps.

This night is no different, Michael’s skin is damp and Aaron’s fingers slip and slide over his back. It’s awkward trying to do this laying on his side, but Aaron’s learned not to lean over Michael because it scares him.

“Who was that boy?” Michael mumbles into the pillow, sounding like he doesn’t care.

“What boy?” Aaron says, honestly confused.

“That one in the paper. The one you kept looking at.” This is said so quietly that Aaron has to strain over the murmur of the TV to hear.

He slides his hand over Michael’s spine, trying to keep his touch light and impersonal while he thinks. “The skier?” At Michael’s nod, he goes on. “Just some kid. A kid who gave up playing football so he could ski.”

“For the money,” Michael says, more clearly. That’s something that Aaron imagines that Michael can understand. Money is simple. If you don’t have it - you want it. If you have it - you buy shit with it.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “For the money.” It’s not that simple for Aaron, of course and he’s uncomfortable with his new status. He doesn’t feel like he belongs in Aspen, and doesn’t understand how a kid from Baltimore can shake off his roots like Michael has and mingle so easily with the glittering snow bunnies.

Michael shifts under his hand and looks up at him and it’s the first time that’s ever happened. Aaron doesn’t know what Michael thinks about when he comes to his bed at night or when he touches him like this - so platonically, so brotherly - but Michael never looks at him while he does it, never acknowledges him.

“Why were you looking at him that way, Aaron?”

Aaron, very spitefully, wants to say, because if he were here in my bed instead of you, than I’d be getting fucked instead of rubbing your back like you’re a goddamned five year old. He knows his anger is misplaced and that it’s there, smoldering, because he doesn’t know how to deal with Michael’s pain and he doesn’t think that he should have to. And because, deep inside, he was caught up the Myth of Michael and when he realized that Michael was just a boy he became a little bitter. Like when he discovered that there wasn’t a Santa Claus.

Yeah, so this is me and Aaron and probably you all asking why the hell Aaron is there again, as well as a not so subtle hint that this Aaron is into guys.

“Because he’s attractive,” Aaron admits, as a compromise to himself.

“Would you sleep with him?” Michael wonders, seeming to try out the idea and Aaron feels like he’s wandered into a minefield.

“Yes.” He’s terrified of what Michael will ask him next because the conversation it playing out like a bad script in his head. Aaron knew that it might come to this point, that there might be a time when Michael wondered if men could love each other without pain and if Aaron was the one to tell him about it.

“Would you sleep with me?”

“Yes.”

Now we're getting into tricky, but one would assume inevitable, territory. It's clear now that Michael got raped; that Aaron feels that it was maybe a little Michael's fault, but since he saw the whole thing and he's into dudes (which we now know as well), he has some kind of reason to take care of Michael. Even though he doesn't like him and feels disillusioned by him. Obviously, this equals h/c sex, right? Hmm.

Michael seems to sink into the mattress and the room becomes too hot for Aaron. He kicks the blankets off and lets the cool, dry air play over the skin of his legs, giving him goose bumps. He can feel Michael looking at him and it’s a look that he hates. It’s why he’s almost given up on women. They’re either voracious in bed, demanding things he can’t give, pleasure he doesn’t understand, or they lay under him terrified of his size and his masculinity. They tremble and wince and flinch and whimper and he has to move slower than he’s accustomed and touch them with more gentleness than he usually possesses, guiding their hands to him and reassuring them in quiet tones that, yes their bodies are meant for this - they can take him - it won’t hurt.

I don't remember how people reacted to this -- is it too much? I think it's honest and I still like it. It's Aaron's POV, not mine, obviously, and it echoes conversations I've had and I wanted to try to capture in context.

That's the look Michael is giving him and Aaron doesn’t know if he has it in him to go through the ritual. Touch this . . . it can’t hurt you - I won’t hurt you. But Michael’s hand is on his chest and that light touch, the first he’s ever had from Michael, arouses him more than he thinks is appropriate. He catches Michael’s hand and presses it over his heart. “Don’t. This isn’t what you want. It’s some kind of reaction. Some syndrome or something.”

At the same time we know the sex is coming, Aaron isn't so sure he wants it, or that Michael really does and to make sure we don't venture into taking advantage of the victim twice, Aaron is sure to -- not to ask, he's not like that -- but to tell Michael that he's fucked up, at least.

All Michael does is breathe deeply; he doesn’t move. He waits and it works. Aaron has been too long without even jacking off and maybe if he gets Michael off tonight it’ll shake something loose and Michael can start to heal. Sexual healing or something. It sounds ridiculous and dangerous, but Aaron moves Michael’s hand down his chest and belly until he thinks that Michael has to pull away but he doesn’t. He touches Aaron gently, almost as if the whole thing is something foreign to him.

Okay. Here's where it gets tricky again. As an author, you (I) don't want to get caught writing that ugly romance novel trope about The Healing Power of Cock, yes? But, since it's extremely limited 3rd person, I'm just giving you Aaron's POV, and, yeah, he's thinking along those lines, but doesn't that fit? Hasn't he already proven that he's kind of a jackass?

“I won’t hurt you,” Aaron says by rote. “It won’t hurt you.” As if his cock is a separate organism from his body. But isn’t it? He wonders. Men - and women too - often separate men from their penises. “You’re thinking with your dick again, aren’t you?” they accuse. So, perhaps it does have a mind of its own, and a life of its own. A will to hurt when it should please.

Could have edited out everything after the second sentence here.

He tries again, holding himself still on his elbow next to Michael, trying not to intimidate, not to frighten, even if Michael is bigger than he is. “It’s just like yours.”

There’s no way to know if Michael believes him because the fire is dying and in the flickering light Michael’s expression is inscrutable. So for minutes, the only sound is Jimmy laughing at himself on the TV and Michael’s slow breaths as he runs his fingers over Aaron. By the time Jimmy’s musical guest is screaming, “You had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend,” Aaron is dizzy from holding his breath and holding so still. His muscles are beginning to shake and all he wants, really, is to run into the bathroom, wash a handful of Michael’s pills down with the bottle of Hennessey that he keeps in his gym bag and then take a cold shower.

Why does Aaron have a bottle of Hennessey? My god. How random is that?

When Michael’s hand leaves him, all Aaron feels is relief. He’s hard, but he can sleep with a hard on; he’s done it before and if the he can get through tonight with just feeling a little grouchy in the morning rather than feeling like a child molester, than he’ll be eternally grateful to god and all the angels. But Michael’s started touching himself, as if taking Aaron’s mumbled, half-hearted assurances seriously. He’s comparing Aaron’s body to his own. He’s wondering, Aaron is sure, how it works. Two men, together because they want to be.

There's my comparison kink again. Subtle, but there.Also, Aaron is redeeming himself momentarily, and maybe he shouldn't have. It seems a little out of character, the "god and all the angels" line especially.

Aaron moves slowly when he makes his decision. He pushes himself down the bed until he’s staring at Michael’s stomach. He can do this, at least. He can do this for Michael and it should be enough. After all, girls do it; at some point Michael has to have gotten head from some willing woman. It won’t be foreign, Aaron tells himself as he pulls Michael’s boxers down. It won’t be weird. Michael won’t freak out. Still, he keeps his eyes open and he’s prepared to run when he touches his tongue to Michael’s cock.

Nothing. Michael doesn’t move or make a sound.

And all the time that Aaron works him with his tongue and his lips - until his jaw feels like it’s going to lock and his chin and his neck are wet with spit and precome - Michael doesn’t say anything. If Aaron hadn’t done this before, if he hadn’t sucked a lot of dick in his life, he wouldn’t have known when Michael was about to come, and Aaron isn’t the swallowing kind. Of course, if he hadn’t been the dick-sucking kind then he wouldn’t have been in the part of Athens that he was that fateful, fateful night when he saw what he did - a boy’s curiosity and belief in his own sudden immortality gone wrong - and he wouldn't have suddenly become responsible for the life of an American hero, a stranger, a hurt boy. It all comes down to having a cock in his mouth, really. And that’s ironic, he really did think.

I like what this is saying, and I like the first two sentences. I just don't like the way I say the rest of it. "Fateful, fateful night?" No. And we could have done without the Alanis ref.

It’s the tiny tremor in the muscle of Michael’s thigh and the sudden tension under the soft skin in his mouth that gives it away. Aaron has only a second before he has a mouthful of Michael’s bitter come. When he looks up, Michael is staring back down at him through slitted eyes, and his face is no softer, no less distant than it had been before.

Aaron shrugs, leans to the side and keeping his eyes on Michael he spits into the fireplace.

Ah. And one of my favorite things that I've written. Ever. If I could have every character that I write that gives head spit come into a fireplace, I would.

As he wipes his mouth and chin with the back of his hand, he thinks he sees Michael smile.

*

Aaron’s gym bag is within reach, not far from where he sits on the floor with his back to the wall, and he feels daring. Like this night, in the middle of nowhere caught between Michael’s silence and cold, he can step a little closer to the edge than usual, swim farther out than he should, cut a little deeper.

The whiskey washes the taste of Michael’s come out of his mouth and burns its way into Aaron’s stomach. Warding off the cold. Filling up the silence.

The Connecting Theme with a side of Emo.

“Can I?” Michael asks, holding his hand out like a child.

“No,” Aaron answers, and his tone is sharper than he meant it to be. Chastened, Michael withdraws his hand and lays down with his head pillowed on his arm, watching Aaron warily.

“You’re already stoned. I’m surprised you could get it up with all the shit you take.” And Aaron isn’t proud of what he’s saying, but it’s the cold and the booze and the blowjob talking and he’s not sure that he can stop it now.

He must have surprised Michael into honesty though, either that or getting great head loosened him up, because he doesn’t lapse back into silence. He nods and then mutters, “You’re right. I haven’t been hard in a long time. Not with . . .” He waves a hand toward the bathroom and the pills that Aaron had convinced him that he needed. He’s never told anyone what happened, and Aaron only knows what he saw: blood, bruises and tears. Nothing, it turned out, that couldn’t be hidden. But after he stopped swimming and took up drinking, Aaron talked him into seeing somebody just to get something to keep him from looking so longingly at sharp objects. It had been working, mostly.

Until now. Until the long winter took its toll and Michael called Aaron away from his beaches and his beer and his friends to come to a place where the air was too thin to draw a proper breath and the walls of snow created echoing canyons.

Aaron thinks about what Michael just said and grips the neck of his bottle tighter. “You’re not taking them all are you?”

Michael shakes his head and stretches, burying his feet in the blankets. “If I want to swim again I can’t be a walking pharmacy.”

“Do you want to swim again?”

So this: lazy or compelling? Being raped violates your very core, why shouldn't it disrupt your identity -- in this case, for Michael, swimming? Or, since it is so disruptive, you may take solace in the familiar, the routine -- in this case, for Michael, swimming. My spin has more to do, again, with Aaron's issues with Michael, and his secret blame for Michael for what happened to him. When I say that below that not even being a cock-sucking drunk will make him a true asshole, I (Aaron) am lying. He is. Right there, he is. Again, too much?

There’s more to that question than just a problem of a desire to compete and Aaron is sure that Michael knows it. Michael was punished for being who he was - for doing what he did and what he loved - and he’s not recovered from that. The question should be: “Can you swim again?” but not even whiskey in his belly, come on his chin and a throbbing, clicking jaw, will make Aaron into a true asshole. He won’t ask that. He won’t ask if Michael can ever believe in himself again. He won’t ask exactly what it is inside of Michael that's broken, because then he might be asked to fix it, and he’s not strong enough to do that.

“Yes,” Michael says and there’s a hint of emotion in the word. A glimmer; a possibility that he’s not dead. “I want to swim.”

Aaron hears him, but he hears a the echo of desire in his voice and he wonders if it’s for the sport or if it’s for sex, companionship, love, all the things that being violated has taken from him.

The fire crackles and Aaron jumps and then smiles at how tense he’s become. He sticks his tongue into the bottle mouth and pretends it’s somewhere else - warmer, with slick, soft walls. Maybe what he and Michael need, really, are a couple of women. They may be completely incomprehensible to Aaron, but they are good in situations like this; they’re naturally caring, nurturing and sympathetic. They know when and how to touch someone who’s been hurt and they know the right things to say. And, most importantly, they understand fear. Aaron had thought about it earlier, but it keeps coming back. There are predatory women, but many of them live in fear - fear of him, of Michael, of men and their dicks. A woman could relate to Michael where Aaron can’t. Who knows? Maybe for one night, Aaron needs that soft, giving kind of comfort too.

Michael has been watching Aaron tongue the bottle, and Aaron can’t help but act up a little, just for him. Rimming the glass lip, letting the amber drops burn his mouth.

“Can . . .” Michael looks unsure what he wants to ask but then comes to a decision. “Can you do that to me?”

Backed myself into a corner now, didn’t I? Aaron tells himself, even as he nods. “D’you want me to?” ‘Cause it usually leads to fucking, he thinks.

Unsure, Michael just rolls away from the edge of the bed, making room again for Aaron. They lay in silence for a while with Aaron just barely brushing his hand over Michael’s hair, imitating a soothing motion that his mother had used when he was scared and fretful as a child. His own erection, flagging after sitting on the cold floor, is reviving with Michael’s proximity and Aaron reaches down to touch himself, more to readjust than anything, but Michael’s hand on his arm stops him before can remove his hand.

“Keep going. I wanna see you make yourself come.”

There is enormous power in words; Aaron knows that. And to hear Michael, in that flat, lisping voice, tell him to jack off, strikes a very deep chord. He pulls his boxers all the way down, and begins to move his hand on his cock, slowly to start, the way he always does. Michael gets up after a minute and then comes back with a little bottle of lotion from the bathroom. It’s lavender scented; that scent, mixed with the harsh smell of whiskey and smoke, is a combination that Aaron knows he’ll never forget.

Michael changed the TV station when he got up and now it’s on MTV2, and Aaron finds himself with a handful of purple lotion, jacking himself off while Davey Havok stands on the railing of a bridge and screams, Your sins into me, oh my beautiful one. Michael hasn’t taken his eyes off Aaron, and Aaron finds a side of himself that must have been buried deep. He finds that he likes to be watched like this, pleasuring himself.

Pleasuring himself? What?

He pushes it; he steps across the boundaries of his and Michael’s relationship and falls, with Davey, over the bridge into the cold, your sins into me. But he’s not quiet about it. He can’t help the noises he makes, the grunts, the growls, the gasps, as he slides two fingers inside of himself. He almost laughs when he sees Michael’s eyes widen. The thought is forming in his head then; Aaron can see it. He spreads his legs and looks at Michael thoughtfully. “Fuck me,” he says, and it carries over the TV. The room is cold, but no longer so silent.

Now Aaron thinks that Michael has sinned somehow and it's Aaron's job to play the martyr. I thought I was a little more subtle that this; apparently not. I was so focused on mood (I wanted you to smell the smoke and the lavender and focus on how incongruous that was with the situation) that I let the plot get heavy-handed.

It’s unnerving when Michael is suddenly over him and then pushing into him with more force and eagerness than finesse. For once, Aaron is afraid, afraid that Michael will snap and hurt him, take out all those long months of silence on Aaron, on Aaron’s clean, unviolated body. But it doesn’t last; Michael is just inexperienced and nervous. Once Aaron wills his body to relax, to take Michael inside of him, it’s not so bad.

Michael doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and Aaron has to help him place them on either side of his shoulders and then he has to catch Michael’s hips and steady his rhythm. Time seems to stretch on endlessly, and Aaron no longer has to wonder about the vacant look on the women’s faces that he's fucked: it’s boredom. It’s a wish to be elsewhere, anywhere that your body isn’t being used as a tool to satisfy someone else’s rage, fear, or need.

Experimenting with bad sex -- no real Healing Power of Cock, here -- and I like the last line there. It's something I've tried to work on (out?) in fic since.

When it’s over, Michael pulls out of him and sits with his back to the headboard, looking a little crazy. There’s nothing that Aaron can say, nothing that Michael wants to hear. Instead, Aaron starts to get up and is stopped by Michael’s hand on his chest.

“Don’t.”

“I need to clean up.” Aaron says it quietly, not trying to provoke Michael. But Michael isn’t looking for a fight. He holds Aaron in place with the hand on his chest and puts his other hand between Aaron’s legs, pushing them apart and then trailing a finger across his inner thigh and then higher.

This may have been the only place that I was actually trying to write something vaguely, weirdly, sexy.

Breath is a precious commodity suddenly, and the silence is back and it’s deafening. Aaron’s cock aches from being denied release twice, and his thighs, where Michael’s hand is, are wet with come and lavender lotion. Your sins into me, Aaron thinks.

“Leave it,” Michael tells him, and when he moves his hand to touch Aaron’s cock, it’s with more assurance than anything he’s done in months, it seems. Aaron’s never been one to play games; he’s never understood the appeal. But to try to sleep with Michael’s come inside him, on him, making him wet and sticky, is enough to finally bring him off in Michael’s hand.

When Michael presses his hand to Aaron’s mouth, Aaron understands that it’s a punishment for what he did earlier, for spitting into the fire. He puts up with it, swallows the salt and the bitterness, because it’s the old Michael, the vindictive, competitive, selfish Michael that does things like that, and Aaron’s pleased that he’s back, if only for a moment.

I maybe should have ended the fic here, or at the very least after the next paragraph. I don't like the ending as it is.

He’s taken on Michael’s sins, taken them in, every way that he can and he hopes that it’s penance enough for being a witness to Michael’s pain. He hopes it’s enough to compensate for the fact that he can sleep while Michael’s nights are filled with ghosts.

When Michael came in him, he spoke, he ranted, he cried a little. The silence is broken and Aaron can feel the heat in the room, despite the fact the fire is dead.

And that's it. I was working on technique -- on creating atmosphere -- and the plot got away from me and turned troublesome. Like I said, it was a classic Colorado February when everything is dead and ugly and bitter cold, and I wanted to convey that. I needed to get the swimmers to Colorado somehow, and Michael freaking out and wanting to go to Aspen sounded reasonable to me. I just needed a reason for him to freak out. Way back, in August or September of 2004, I'd started writing an epic non-con Ian/Michael in which Ian "saves" Michael after something similar happens. Only, I think it's Aaron that gets too forceful with him. Something. Anyway. Again, I tied swimming and power and sex and water together and in it, instead of healing sex, Ian teaches Michael to swim again. I liked to play with that theme too: the idea that Michael was secretly afraid of drowning, drowning imagery, etc. Anyway, I cannibalized that fic a little here, only I twisted it beyond all recognition.

At the center of this fic is, ostensibly, this rape that I never clearly address, and yet I have Aaron, this main character that is supposed to be the sympathetic comfort-giver in the classic h/c scenario, and he's reacting in all the wrong ways. He's blaming; he's enabling; he's lost and disillusioned in regard to his life (personal and professional) since he since he went pro, and he's just a little misogynist. Also, he's aroused by Michael's vulnerability and even though that bothers him, it's not enough to stop him from having sex with him.

In the long run, this fic was a huge turning point for me, technique-wise. I think the changes in my writing style become very evident, post "Silence and Cold" with the NBA slash that I started writing that summer. Also, it signifies closure for me and marks the end of my swimslashing (until next summer), except for "Change Your Latitude," which was a ficathon piece.

~end~

Songs:

AFI - "Silver and Cold"
The Killers- "Somebody Told Me"</ljcut>

i keep looking for that blindfold faith

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 07:37:12 GMT

I don't usually bitch about the way women sports fans are treated. I leave that to unloveablehands because she's better at it than I am. But, this is just too much, guys, seriously. Check out the comments on this deadspin post previewing the Broncos season, which was written by a woman.

It includes gems like:

"Women football writers? Boy, I never thought I'd live to see that."

"But is she hot? Kidding! (sorta)"

"So are all of these going to be ridiculous farses then? First we had a fake author, and now a girl?"

"I don't get it...how is she a editor/writer for a university while in the barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?"

"Why didn't Will use this description as her intro: Jen Philion is a freelance writer who, when not writing, is presumably making out with some dude Mike."

Finally, this prompts Will to post a response:

I'm really don't understand why it's considered so strange around here that a woman would write one of these previews. I really don't. Frankly, it's somewhat disturbing. And there are more women writing previews, so, you know, in all honesty, and with all due respect ... grow up.

+

The Rockies game was good. Slightly damp, but good.

+

Ah, Casadaga. I can't stop listening. I don't like all of it, admittedly. It sounds like Conor's been hanging around with Jack White too much (a squatter's made a mural of a Mexican girl//with fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl//she's standing in the ashes at the end of the world).

And channeling Johnny Cash, maybe, (she was a real royal lady, true patron of the arts//she said the best country singers die in the back of classic cars).

There's some Dylan in there too, (little soldier, little insect//you know war, it has no heart//it will kill you in the sunshine//or just as happily in the dark.)

He has his moments of irony:

I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
With a post-modern author who didn't exist
In this fictitious world all reality twists
I was a hopeless romantic now I'm just turning tricks

-- "Soul Singer in a Session Band"

But there are parts that just kind of ache.

I keep floating down the river but the ocean never comes
Since the operation I heard you're breathing just for one
Now everything is imaginary, especially what you love
You left another message said it's done,
It's done.

-- "Lime Tree"

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:54:13 GMT

Toshiba: hey

Me: Shh. I'm working.

Toshiba: watcha doin'?

Me: Working, I told you. Leave me alone.

Toshiba: Well. Let's just see what we have open over here ... Wow. Is that what you do? Like, for a job?

Me: Yes. Quit messing around with it.

Toshiba: That's a pretty intense network thingy -- woops. What's over here? Browsing for porn?

Me: Research!

Toshiba: Mmm. Something big's open in Word. I'm SURE you've been backing that up -- Wait, do you have the DVD player running too? Do you have the attention span of a lima bean?

Me: No, I mean. What?

Toshiba: No wonder I'm so tired. I may get a snack and then take a little nap.

Me: ... a nap, huh. *clicks*

Me: dammit. *clickyclicky*

Me: *CLICKY*

Toshiba: *snores*

Windows: *is frozen*

Me: *claws feebly at screen, whimpering*