I'm a 40 year old man haunted by memories from my past and scenes from my present. I feel as if time has finally caught up with me and my entire life is unraveling before my eyes. My wife left me, my son doesn't want to have anything to do with me, my daughter barely speaks to me and I can't hide behind my work anymore. I worked 72 hour weeks for the entire time of my marriage, which is another way of saying that I avoided my family at all cost. I couldn't be around them because I thought they might realize that I didn't belong with them, that there was something wrong with me. Unfortunately, you can't hide forever.
My life started out great. I had a lot of promise and I knew the type of life I wanted and the type of father I was going to be. In my mind, I would be that cool father who was always there and easy to talk to about anything and never missed a game or important event. I was going to be the type of father to my children that I wanted as a child, but instead, I became my father, minus the cheating. I would never cheat on anyone because I saw the pain and torture that my mother endured as she stood by my father, silently disappearing in his shadow. I am not capable of inflicting that type of pain on anyone. At least that was what I thought before my wife decided to leave me. "You don't love me Daniel," she said one morning as I was preparing for work. I wanted to tell her I did, but I knew I didn't love her the way she loved me. I couldn't say anything and she didn't seem to want a response. "It's okay Daniel, I've known for years that you didn't love me. I know something is missing, and I know what it is. You love him Daniel, just face it. I see the way the two of you look at each other. You know I never see you smiling unless he's around or you're talking to him."
"Honey," I said before she interrupted me.
She motioned for me to be quiet. "I'm tired of trying to compete with him when it's obvious that there's no competition. I know you haven't done anything with him. I know you couldn't do that to me, but I also know that I can't continue to live like this; like I don't see where your heart lies. I love you and I know you love me, just not the way you love him. I don't want you to stay with me because you feel obligated"
I cut her off. "That's not why I stay."
"Yes it is. You're a good man Daniel, you deserve to be happy and I deserve to be with a man who loves me the way I love you." I walked over to her on the bed and put my arm around her as I sat down next to her. I looked at her face and noticed that there wasn't a hint of sadness. I knew instantly that she had been thinking about this for some time and she was finally ready to let me go. I felt a tear escape my eye and fall down my cheek. I didn't want to lose her or my family. "I'm going to let you go Dan. I just want you to be happy and you can't do that with me." She wiped the remains of the tear from my face, drying the water and rubbing it in to my skin. "You're such a sweet man. I won't keep you here anymore." She paused for a minute. "Don't worry, I won't say anything bad to Danny or Katie about you, and I won't tell them your secret. You can tell them whenever you're ready."
"What secret? I'm not in love with him." I knew I said it to convince myself, but part of me hoped that she would believe it.
"Yes you are, Honey. Yes you are. It's always been him."
"That's not true! Divorce me because I'm rarely ever at home. Divorce me because we don't have sex that often. Divorce me because I don't spend time with the kids, but don't divorce me because of him. Don't do that. I don't want him."
She pulled me in to a hug. "I know you haven't accepted it completely, but I know it's the truth. He's your soulmate, not me. Don't be afraid to love him. You deserve to be happy." I started sobbing and we ended up on the bed with me cradled in her arms like a baby. She just held me and rubbed my head. I never made it to work that day because we spent most of the day with her comforting me. When the day was over, I knew she'd always be my friend. That was almost a year ago and we are now divorced. She's dating a wonderful guy and she and I are still good friends, and she kept her word about the kids. She tries to force them to see me, but I'm a stranger to them. I was like a ghost in the house when they were young and now they think they don't need me. Ha, they don't need me, they're father! Danny's 15 and Katie's 14 and I'm the enemy.
Let me tell you how my life jumped off the tracks and my heart veered off course. The night that changed my life forever is still firmly planted in my mind. The images play over and over in my dreams and my nightmares. I was 24, fresh out of a two year MBA program, I had a great job waiting for me, I was engaged and I was looking forward to the rest of my life. I had a bachelor party the night before my wedding and I had a great time. I was surrounded by friends and family and strangers with smiles on their faces. A lot of my teammates from high school were there and the majority of my college and grad school friends were there too. The party was at a local strip club so the guys hired a stripper to give me a lap dance. She was a good dancer and really entertaining, but my eyes and heart belonged solely to Karen. I didn't enjoy the stripper much, but I did enjoy the drinks. After a few hours of festivities, it was time to call it quits and pray that I didn't have a major hangover the next day. Luckily, the wedding was scheduled for 5 in the evening with the reception following immediately after.
My best friend in the whole wide world, Jerry, took me back to his place so we could crash. Jerry and I were like two peas in a pod, we were best friends since kindergarten and we were inseparable until we ended up at different colleges. Neither of our families had much money so we had to go to the colleges where we got the most financial assistance. It turned out to be a good thing because I met Karen the first day of college, but it still hurt like hell to not be able to hang out with Jerry. We talked on the phone almost everyday and we talked about everything from our current girlfriends, which for me was always Karen, to our classes, to our hopes, to our dreams, to just holding the phone and not saying anything because even the silence was enough as long as we knew the other person was on the other end.
Jerry returned home after college but I went to grad school before returning home with Karen. Jerry and Karen had met several times before when Jerry and I visited each other, and I sometimes noticed a little tension between them, but I always dismissed it as jealousy because Jerry felt like Karen was taking his place, and Karen didn't understand why I spent so much time talking to Jerry. She knew I would cancel a date with her in a heartbeat if I thought Jerry needed me, and she hated being second.
I never thought of Jerry as anything other than a good friend until that night. He took me back to his place that night, and as we were undressing in his room, he started wrestling with me. There was nothing strange about it because we always horsed around with each other. We ended up with him on top of me and me pinned to the bed. He laughed, "Say Uncle."
"Uncle." I conceded.
We were both at various stages of undress, he only had on a pair of boxers, but I still had my pants on. I can't move that fast when I'm drunk. I thought I felt his dick pressing in to me, but I pretended like I didn't notice it because that's what we always did when one of us got hard while we wrestled. `Ignore it and it will go away' was our unspoken code.
Jerry rolled off of me and to my side. We didn't mind sharing beds with each other or holding each other, because we were completely comfortable with one another. He draped his arm over my chest and looked up at my face. "Daniel."
"Yes."
"I love you," he said.
"I love you, too." I told him.
"No, I mean I really love you."
"Aw, that's sweet. I really love you, too," I said putting my arm around him and pulling him closer to me.
"No, that's not what I mean." He hit me with the hand that was draped over my chest. He looked away from me and rested his head on my chest. I felt him shaking before I felt the first tear hit my chest.
"Don't cry Jerry. We'll always be friends. I'm just getting married, that's all, you're not losing me." I thought that was what he wanted to hear, like I said, I'm not that fast when I'm drunk. What he was really saying flew right over my head.
He sat up on the bed and his face hovered over mine. I saw the pain in his eyes and I didn't understand. A few of his tears slid off his chin and hit me on my face. I wanted to laugh but even after all that alcohol, I knew this was not the time. "I wish you were marrying me," he confessed as his lips lowered to make contact with mine. We had kissed on the cheek and the forehead before, but never on the lips. I opened my mouth and we French-kissed for about 4 seconds before my brain caught up with my body and I pushed him off.
"What are you doing?" I shouted. I sat up on the bed and rubbed my lips with my hand, hoping to wipe away his taste, but I was too late, he had already made me his.
"I love you Dan. I always have. I wish I could say I only love you like a friend, but I'd be lying and I don't want to lie anymore. Leave Karen and be with me."
"I can't. I'm going to marry her tomorrow. How could you do this to me? Why would you pull this shit now?" Needless to say, his actions were having a sobering effect on me.
"Because I couldn't sit around and lose you forever. I love you Daniel, and I know you love me. I can see it in your eyes."
"We're just friends." I stated. Then I had a thought, "What about all those girlfriends you had in college?"
"I lied, I only had boyfriends. I just told you girl names so you wouldn't be freaked out."
"But I met some of your girlfriends!"
"No, you met some girls who were my friends, who pretended to be my girlfriends because I asked them."
"You lied to me! All this time you've been lying to me?" I couldn't believe my ears. I thought we knew everything about each other. I thought we didn't have any secrets and yet here we were. "Did you think I wouldn't understand? My Uncle is gay! I don't have a problem with gay people. You know that!"
"I didn't think you would be able to deal with me being in love with you," he sniffled.
"Why now? How could you do this now?"
"I had to."
"No, you didn't! You could have kept your mouth shut! I didn't have to know about this!"
"Yes you did, because I can't be your best man tomorrow. I can't do it. I can't give you away to her."
"What?" I think that hurt me more than not knowing he was gay and in love with me. "You have to be my best man."
"I can't. I can't handle it."
"You have to. If you love me as much as you just said you did, you would do this for me, no matter how much it hurt you."
He laid back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. I watched as his tears began to stop. I didn't know what to do. Most of me wanted to hold him and comfort him, but part of me was still angry with him. He was supposed to be my best friend and now he was trying to ruin my life. The worst part was that my worst fear was losing him. I laid back down on the bed next to him, pulled him to me and let him cry his heart out on my shoulder. As much as I wanted to hate him, I couldn't do it, he meant too much to me. I don't know how long he cried because I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes in the morning, I was in the bed by myself and he was gone. I felt like I had a migraine. I sat up and was about to open my mouth to call out for him when his room door flung open and I saw him standing there with a tray. I watched as he walked in and sat the tray on the bed. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn't know what to say, part of me wondered if I had been dreaming.
"Drink this," he said, handing me a glass of some weird looking mess that he liked to call `The Fixer.' I never knew what he put in it, but it always stopped a hangover dead in its tracks. I took a few sips of the nasty stuff before gulping the rest down.
"Ahh!" I sighed. That stuff was rough going down, I never liked the taste of it.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Sorry for what?"
"Last night. I shouldn't have done that to you. I know you've made a commitment to Karen and you would never do anything to hurt her. I shouldn't have put you in that position." I didn't know if I should be relieved or scared that it wasn't a dream. If it were just a dream, everything would be okay, and although I was happy that I hadn't gone insane, I was afraid of what that meant for us.
"Don't worry about it, man. We both had too much to drink."
"That wasn't it. I meant what I said, I just shouldn't have said it." He looked at me and I looked away. "Well eat your breakfast because we need to get to the church soon." He turned to leave the room.
"What time is it?"
"2," he said without turning around. I watched him walk out the room and quietly close the door. I really wished he hadn't left me alone, but I couldn't tell him I wanted him to stay. I sat and ate the breakfast he fixed for me. He was such a great guy. So nice, and he was definitely easy on the eyes. I dropped my fork when I realized how I was thinking about him. I hadn't thought about him that way in years. I will admit that I had a small crush on him for about a year when we were younger and I was trying to figure out who I was and what I was, but the crush faded when I realized that guys like me can't be gay. Guys like me have no choice but to be straight, I mean I wanted a wife and kids and that was something only straight guys wanted, and I knew Jerry didn't like me, so I finally managed to work my way out of that silly crush. Now I wondered how silly it was. Maybe there was something there, but it was too late for those thoughts. I was going to marry Karen and that was it. I felt sick to my stomach, not from the food, or the alcohol, but from the realization that I might be making the biggest mistake of my life. I felt a tear slide down my face and I quickly wiped it away. I had to be a man.
Jerry drove me to the church and we got ready. It was awkward not saying anything to him, but neither of us knew what to say so we just let the silence speak for us. Everyone wanted to know why I was acting so strangely and joked with me about having cold feet, but I told them I was fine. As Jerry and I stood at the front of the church waiting for Karen to make her way down the aisle, Jerry leaned forward and whispered, "I'm doing this for you Dan, but it's killing me." I couldn't look at him, I just shook my head to acknowledge his words. During the wedding, Jerry cried more than my mother. He wept fairly silently minus the occasional sniffle. After the minister pronounced me and Karen husband and wife, I turned to look at Jerry. His face was pink, his eyes were red and his cheeks were wet from all the tears. He stared back at me for a second before he mouthed, `I love you' and turned his head.
A lot of people told me how sweet it was that Jerry was crying and how friends like that don't come everyday and how beautiful it was to see a man so in touch with his emotions and at peace with them. Some people thought he was crying because he was happy for me, while others thought he was crying because he was losing his best friend. They were all wrong. I was afraid of what he might say when they asked him to give the toast at the reception, but he did okay. He had cleaned his face and pulled himself together and he grabbed the microphone and said, "Attention, attention everyone. It's time to toast the bride and groom." The crowd was quiet. "I have known Daniel since I was five years old, and I have loved him ever since. He's the type of guy you can't help but love. He's kind and gentle, strong and humble, intelligent and driven, dedicated and faithful, and loyal, and most importantly, not too hard on the eyes." A few people laughed a little. "I always knew he would end up with someone wonderful, because he's too great to settle for anything less and although it's breaking my heart to give him away and lose him like this, I can't imagine losing him to a better person. So, congratulations you two. Now go make us some babies!" I don't think anyone realized how wonderful he was. I had broken his heart and here he was, giving me away and holding everything together. I knew in that moment that I had done the wrong thing because my heart sank. I looked at Karen and noticed she had a strange look on her face. I managed to force a smile. After our divorce, Karen told me that was the moment she realized she would have to fight for me.
Copyright Lustyville 2006 Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out my yahoo group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville.