Curious

by Seth King

  The truth is that I was never going to be strong enough. I always knew. I felt it lurking in me during those seven days of heaven, those days I will remember for the rest of my life. But I was never going to be able to get over my mother’s assumed disapproval, my nerves about how the world would accept us, my uncertainty over the future…

  This would’ve happened anyway. Trust me on that one. So please don’t be angry at me. Looking around now, at a world that seems to be going backwards if in any direction at all, confirms this. All I did was cut the cord sooner rather than later.

  Oh, Natie, I miss you so much already. Don’t ever think that’s not the case. Sometimes, when I really really need you, I imagine we were born into a world that actually let us love each other instead of driving us apart in fear. I want you to take a moment and imagine that place with me, too, even if it never becomes reality. Just think: it’s last year again, and I am standing on that beach behind the Waldorf. You walk out onto the sand and find me. I turn around and smile. And the waves never stop breaking, and the breeze never stops blowing…

  Until that world happens, I do the only thing I can: I set you free. I only pray that one day, even if it happens far in the future, you will forgive me.

  -Beau

  I take the letter, seal it in a plastic box, put it under my bed, and do not touch it again for another eleven months. And the next time I do touch it, Beau Lindemann is someone’s husband.

  Beau Lindemann marries, of course, to one of the girls he was juggling before those halcyon days when we allowed ourselves to be together. After that I block him on every single social media account – seeing his posts come across my feed is like taking a knife to the heart, and so I learn to remove myself. I still follow his life with a sense of removed horror, though. There are occasional updates I find when I get drunk and let my mind wander onto Google – he had his children, naturally, two little brunette ones, and got a job at a big company that outsourced jobs to India or Bangladesh or somewhere. Really, he acquired the life we both knew he would always find. Key West was just a detour. A temporary one. And so was I.

  Most of the time I am okay, because I have learned to tell myself I am okay until I believe myself. Mostly I just think of him. No matter how much time passes, that never changes. Even though I do change.

  Is he happy? Is he proud? Is he…well, is he Beau, the same Beau he let himself be around me? More than anything in the world, I hope he’s himself.

  And I even though I pretend every day that I am okay, I am really not fine at all. The years speed by with increasing swiftness, and soon I am pulling grey hairs from around my temples. Several nights a week, I still close my eyes and watch him dance in the dawn of my memories. Where is he out there? Who has he become? He will never know how often I still sail back to those times in my mind, revisit the days when we were together and the whole big bright daring world was ours. Does he still miss Key West? It never ended for me. But does he still think about when his smile was the only thing I saw, when I could reach down and feel firm ground under me? After all these years – well, decades, really – I’m still not over him. I’m still not over the fact that society wouldn’t let us be together because we were both boys. His hands will never let me go, even if he’s physically gone. A love like ours, I know now, sinks down deep and doesn’t let go, and now all I can think about is when he was mine and I was his. When we were each other’s, and my home was in his eyes. When the whole world was thrilling, when the only things we could see were the lights. When we were nirvana…

  So one day in the late afternoon of my life, I sit down and write him something:

  Beau,

  I was a wide-open prairie

  fertile and strong and good and proud

  and you treated me like a patch of dirt

  in your rearview

  and now

  I’ve carried the burden of your departure for far too long

  my back is so sore,

  and my dreams

  are so haunted

  so this load, this baggage

  I cast it off

  and give it to you

  because darling,

  I enjoyed every moment I spent loving you

  but I never deserved

  all the sorrow you left me with

  so take it on your back

  and get going.

  because I don’t deserve to hold

  all the anger you left me carrying

  you know,

  I used to think I was like an old sailor removed from the sea –

  I would still think of you forever

  but not if I can help it

  so now I am freeing you

  to be just as lost as I was

  without you

  because I was the best gift you never opened

  and losing me

  is about to become your greatest mistake

  and my own

  greatest triumph

  I sit back, pleased with myself, as the memories sear my mind. And then I do what I knew I would do all along: I get up and throw the letter in the trash and get on with my life.

  Some things, I know, are just better left unsaid.

  I get the letter on a cold morning in March. It is halfway into the new century, and although much has changed, humans are still the same. I’ve moved into the assisted living home by now, and my favorite nurse, Michelle, drops the letter in my box with a big smile. I smile back and open it up, confused as to why someone’s handwritten me a letter when nobody’s done that in years – and then I see the Charleston return address and feel my heart sink.

  Nathan,

  I’m sorry for writing. I’m an old fool. But if you’re reading this, I’m already gone. Life’s funny that way – one day you’re twenty-something years old under the moonlight with the great love of your life, and five minutes later you’re being told the tumor in your lungs is going to take you in a few days, and you’re far too old to qualify for a transplant. Before that happens, though, please know that you gave me the time of my life. I am so grateful.

  It’s also funny how, as you grow older, you think more about the things you didn’t do than the things you actually did do. Nathan, I would give anything to roll back the clock, find myself with you back in Florida, and prevent myself from leaving. Walking away from you wrecked by whole life – I can admit that now. I knew it very early, actually, and just didn’t know how to fix the mess I’d made.

  In another world, we found a way to be together. Just not this one. Now, this is all I beg of you: please remember the best of me. Please remember who I was, not who I became. Again, I beg you. There’s nothing else I can do now but beg.

  I thank the universe for letting me smack into you, Nathan. If I could, old friend, I’d do it all again. And when I go on to the next world, whether tonight or in five minutes or five days, know that I will go with only your face in my mind. Nobody else’s.

  With all my greatest love,

  - Beau Lindemann

  Michelle, the nurse, appears at the door to my unit again as I sit there, slumped in my chair, sobbing silently. It would’ve meant the world to me for Beau to have said any of this when we were actually together, when the sun was still over our shoulders. But that’s the thing about humans – they’re always letting you down when you need them the most. But oh, well. A love that big can only be found once. Never again.

  “Is everybody on?” Michelle asks. I look up at her and sniffle.

  “What, now?”

  “I said, is everybody on?”

  As I stare up at her, her face blurs, and her voice changes. Then I hear it again: is everybody on?

  But then I realize it’s not her speaking at all – it’s someone else.

  It’s a man.

  ~

  I open my eyes and rub them. I’m back on a bus, in a seat next to Beau. But the young version of him. The real version. And the bus driver is calling out to see if everybody has returned to the bus.

>   I look over at Beau.

  “Jesus, what’s wrong?” he asks me. “You look like someone just died.”

  “Beau, what – what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What year is it? How did we get here?”

  He laughs a little. “Um. It’s 2017, Natie. You punched Lane, we got on the bus, and you passed out. The driver stopped at the gas station and got into a conversation with the clerk that lasted forever. But we’re leaving again now.”

  I feel my arm to make sure I’m awake. “We…we’ve been…hooking up, right? I didn’t imagine all that, did I?”

  He peers over his shoulder. “I mean, yeah, but I didn’t know we were talking about it so loudly like this yet…”

  Relief flows through me like cold water. Jesus, I know I have vivid dreams, but that one just took the cake…

  I throw myself against his body, clutching him like I’ve never clutched him before. “Oh my God, Beau. I…I just dreamed you didn’t want me. It was so vivid. You were so mean. You said we couldn’t hang out anymore after we get back to Charleston. And then we got old, and…and you were married, and...and…”

  “Nate,” he asks, concerned. “Are you okay? Why in the world would I ever do that? We’re best friends.”

  Finally I try to get ahold of myself. “Yes,” I gulp. “Okay. I know. I’m fine. Sorry. Dear God, that was just so real…”

  He pats me on the head. “Looks like you’re gonna have to get over your self-doubt. Enough anxiety dreams. You’re my favorite person, Natie. Start believing it.”

  He wraps an arm around my shoulder and tries to pull me in. But the dream still hangs over me.

  It was so real, and so disturbing. I would rather die right now than have that become my future. If I could use this moment, this one moment, to convince Beau to stay with me forever, what would I say?

  I lean closer. And this time, I am the one who brings up our tree house promise, which he says he remembers. No more evasions. It is time for all of my truth. It is time for me to speak now.

  “Well, the thing is…I want to keep that promise,” I begin. “This might sound weird, so just…bear with me. But I want to see where this goes, Beau. Because I…I think I love you. I mean, obviously I did before, and I always have. But now I love you in the way…in the way beaches love sunrises, in the way TNT loves a spark. I think I loved you from the beginning, and I think I love you now, but in a different and better and bigger way, and I know I’ll love you tomorrow, too. I always will.”

  His lips part. “You really love me? You really do? In…that way?”

  Ugh. How can I say this? How can I say: I dreamed about you in dreams I never even knew I was having, and you are the answer to prayers I never even knew I was making?

  How do I describe all of that without having him fill out a police report for stalking?

  “I already knew I loved you, as my best friend,” I say, the gentle hum of the bus providing background music. “But this week changed my life. Now I think I love you in…in ways I never even realized, in ways I can’t even wait to start exploring, in ways that make me want to fall asleep with you and wake up with you and be around you every second, ” I say with my eyes closed. Then I sigh, open them again, and wait for his response.

  At the end of the day we are just two guys, abandoned by the girls we thought we’d once loved, alone at the end of the road together. But maybe we’d been alone for a reason – maybe we’d been waiting to strip away all the fear and admit we felt the same love inside. From two little kids in South Carolina to two men in a chain of islands in Florida – maybe everything had led to this. I’d been on a desperate search for happiness my whole life – in the form of women, partying, booze, whatever. But I’d been looking so hard, I’d failed to notice that the key to contentment was perhaps right in front of me all along.

  “You know what? What the hell – I love you, too,” he says, then he laughs into the darkness, and I feel lighter than oxygen. “I’ve been so fucking terrified so say it, but – I love you, too, Nate! I just needed to be budged into saying it. The stuff with my mom will nag at me, but fuck it, I’m an adult – I’ll deal with it. But isn’t that strange and wonderful to say? Oh, what a fucking world! I love you!”

  He grips me harder and laughs into my shoulder. And suddenly I feel like I just won every race that was ever run, every lottery that was ever played, watched every sunrise and sunset that ever bloomed and died over this rock we call home.

  He loves me. He really, really loves me. My best friend loves me. As more than my best friend. And I love my best friend, too. Forever, maybe.

  I smile into his hair. I know the trip ends tomorrow, but we have so much time to explore what this is, to explore each other’s souls, to travel and learn and read books and watch Netflix and try to build a life together in ways we never even imagined before. But he is worth the wait – and the risk, too. Because this could be hard. Our world is decades behind with this issue, and also, we know each other in a platonic way that could prove tricky to transform. But he’s worth it. And the transformation is already happening, too – slowly, but it’s happening. Already.

  The bus rolls to a stop outside the dark hotel, and together we head to the front of the aisle and wait by the door. It’s time.

  “Fuck,” he laughs soon, still sort of in disbelief. “How will we know how to act? What will we tell our families? Oh, we…”

  “Beau,” I say, shushing him. “Shh. I have you, and therefore I have everything. And fuck – if nothing else, we just found the biggest adventure of our lives, right?”

  He nods as the door slides open with a whining sound. As we exit together, I take his hand. He lets me take it, too, and squeezes it in return.

  And into the misty night we go, walking bravely but unsurely into a world of a million possible tomorrows…

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  I Lied

  from the diary of Nathan Sykes

  I have a confession to make.

  I lied

  in the twenty-or-so years I’ve been lucky enough to know you,

  I’ve told more than a few untruths

  like:

  when we were eleven

  and you accidentally kicked me on the trampoline

  I said it didn’t hurt

  but my leg was throbbing like hell

  and in high school, when you went to homecoming with that girl

  I said I was having a great time

  but every second of watching you with her

  was a machete in my guts

  and when I told myself I didn’t love you

  every single time –

  those were lies, too

  the other night I had a dream

  starring God

  and He told me

  that the bravest thing anyone could ever do

  is to be bold enough to love

  in a world that just wants you to be afraid

  and now I feel so bold

  because I know

  that you and I

  were written in the stars

  and meant to end up

  in the same epilogue

  together

  still,

  I know it’s scary

  and I know that sometimes

  you don’t know the boundaries

  of this new kingdom between us

  but you are my destiny

  so darling,

  pick up your pen

  and let’s keep writing this thing

  forever

  even when

  we must

  write our own way forward…

  Five Weeks Before Halloween

  Nathan Sykes

  Spoiler alert: the world is not kind to all forms of love.

  Seasons change. People change, too. They get older and soon they’re not themselves anymore. Take my parents’ love, for example. The
y are not divorced, but they barely live together, and when they are in the same room an icy silence suffocates everyone who is near. Or maybe Beau’s parents’ love – his mom drank and drank and drank because she was left alone all the time by her distant husband, and they’re both dead now. The world is full of the ruins of all kinds of love it killed – gay love, straight love, romantic love, platonic love. How do people keep it safe at all? How do they maintain love in this place?

  It hasn’t been kind to Beau and me, either, in some ways. Our former “friend” – I won’t even say his name here – has not said a word about either of us, but he hasn’t exactly told the world, either. We have a sort of unspoken truce in place, but he has been whispering hints here and there, and they’re getting back to me in the forms of confused questions and questioning glances. Soon we will have to confront some things, considering we live in a place like South Carolina, a place where politicians were calling for outlawing gay sex until a few decades ago. That day will come, and I will have to be ready.

  But, another spoiler alert: love can also be kind in other ways. Oh, it can be so kind, actually. It can be kind in the way I wake up every morning and get to rest my hand on the back of the guy I am starting to full-fledged love, in every sense of the word, not just in a friendly sense or a platonic sense, but in a sense that makes me so happy I cannot sleep at night sometimes. It can be kind in the way I’ve unofficially moved into his small apartment downtown, making every day a new miracle. Yes, in some ways, the world has been kinder than kind to us…

  I have never been this happy in my life – yes, we face certain obstacles, but I am drenched in sunlight all the same. I am happy to step out of bed, I am happy to take out the garbage, I am happy to go about my business all day because it means I am one minute closer to getting to see him again, getting to grab him by the jaw and kiss all of my happiness into him. Nobody knows about us yet, but thanks to Lane they will eventually – and I am absolutely fortified in the knowledge that we will get through it when it comes. I think we could get through anything.