When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling

by Tom Collins

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of—”

  “Liam,” I was trembling, “do you remember saying that you trusted me, and I should know this because you let me put my dick in you? Well, that confused me, because I’ve let men I didn’t know, and certainly wouldn’t ever trust, do that to me.”

  He winced, a blink as if I’d slapped him.

  “I’m telling you this not to hurt you, but to explain. It’s easy for me to give myself physically to someone I don’t trust emotionally. Dangerous and stupid,” I added, shifting my weak knee, “but easy. What’s hard is telling someone a deep, dark, personal secret. You’ve always had your twin, your other self, to tell such things to. I was solo. I mean really solo. I didn’t even trust my parents, because anything they found out about me they used to hurt me. There are things I still haven’t told Sandy and she’s one of the few people I trust completely.

  “What I just told you about myself…you can throw it back in my face if you like. Or rip me a new one with it. Just don’t tell it to anyone else. Because if one of your relatives tries to offer me sympathy or advice or some well-intentioned joke about my childhood and my dad…I swear I’ll drown myself in the lake.”

  He was silent for a while, long enough to worry me. “I won’t tell anyone, Oliver,” he said solemnly. “Tongu do día toinges mo thúath.”

  *Liam*

  Oliver must’ve girded his loins while I was out of the room as, to my amazement, he settled onto the floor and began spilling his guts.

  He explained why he hated the warrior and black dragon painting and blurted out some painful stories about his childhood, filling in the blanks that he and Sandy had only hinted at up until now.

  Jesus fuck! I thought, as he offered me a glimpse into his Dickensian childhood and made me wish to Hell I could go back in time and murder his Cac ar oineach douche bag of a father. Worst of all was the way he told it to me, as if he was confessing to something shameful he’d done.

  It certainly cleared up a lot of mysteries, including what I saw as an upside-down view of trusting people. I had no idea how much he’d given me just by letting me into his apartment.

  I wanted more than ever to draw him up on the bed and hold him. I couldn’t help feeling it would be easier for him that way, but he’d deliberately chosen the spot furthest from the bed. That said he didn’t want me in his space, not yet at least.

  He concluded by pleading for my silence. I think his instincts told him that my family was a pack of teasers and we both knew how easily that could get out of control. He asked that I even keep it from Brendan and I had to think about that for a minute.

  I’d never kept anything from my twin by design before, but I felt certain that there were things between Jill and Bren that they held in reserve. That thought had never bothered me because I understood the need for privacy in some things, though I’d only recently experienced that need myself.

  We share everything, I’d blithely said of Brendan and I to Oliver last Friday, not minutes after Brendan had exposed some of those private things to the audience. Fuck a duck! No wonder Oliver had, at that moment, given our relationship second thoughts.

  He was gazing at me now, a kind of despair in his brown eyes, as if he didn’t expect any mercy.

  And why should he expect clemency from you? I demanded of myself, when the last thing you did to him that night was take every secret part he’d dared to reveal to you, set it alight with fiery sarcasm and throw it back in his face like burning pitch!

  God—it amazed me that he’d deigned to come see me, and then handed me more of those dark secrets, handed them to me expecting to get beaten up with them. Even so, the only thing he asked in return for all this was a little privacy.

  “I won’t tell anyone, Oliver,” I said solemnly. “Tongu do día toinges mo thúath.”

  “What?” Oliver shook his head sure that he’d heard me wrong. “What did you just say?”

  “It’s Gaelic, an old Irish oath that roughly means, ‘I swear by the god of my tribe.’ My siblings and my cousin and I started using it as kids to indicate a real promise. See, we were good at faking each other out when it came to promises, in you know, the kind where you say, ‘I promised not to tell Mom, but I didn’t promise not to tell Dad’?”

  Oliver blinked and I felt chagrined. “I guess you wouldn’t know about that kind of thing, huh? Well, anyway, we figured out pretty quick that we had to have a promise that was taken seriously by everyone, unbreakable, or none of us would ever be able to trust each other with anything. So, we asked Uncle Joel for a good, Irish oath and he gave us that one. When an O’Shaughnessy of my generation makes a pledge backed by those words, it means they’re dead serious. You can trust that promise with your life.”

  He nodded. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  The rain was easing up outside, the wild patter becoming gentler taps, though thunder rumbled in the distance; Gaea letting us know She wasn’t done yet. I thought for a moment, considering if I should test his new resolve to be accessible.

  “In keeping with this new openness,” I began; giving him notice that he might not like what was about to come out of my mouth, “can I ask you something?” He nodded stiffly and I saw him draw back into his shell like a hermit crab. “How in hell could you think that anything sexual that happened in the parking lot of the pub was against my will?”

  “It wasn’t,” he said, to himself, not me, and his hand, trembling a tad, alighted over his heart as if an internal pressure had been released. “Thank God!” then he flushed. “I guess you…listened to the message.”

  “Yeah,” I flushed also, but I wasn’t going to be distracted. “I still want an answer. How could you think I was unwilling?”

  “I thought it because I didn’t ask you, or warn you, or even try to talk to you. I just did what I wanted. At that moment, I didn’t care if you were willing or not. I mean, what if you hadn’t been?”

  “Then I would have yelled or punched you or something, and you would’ve gotten the message and stopped,” I replied with confidence.

  “You’re still not getting it, Liam. My impulse isn’t to stop.”

  I started to protest, but he held up a hand to forestall me before I’d made a sound. “It’s like the night after the crafts fair. I did exactly what I wanted and I wasn’t thinking of you. I took you by surprise and hurt you, maybe not a lot, but I could have. I could have hurt you in the parking lot, too. I-I have hurt men I’ve met at cruising places like…like the one in Westmore. That’s why I ended up there that night, by the way. Not consciously, I just ran and…found myself there.”

  “Because you needed…satisfaction?” The thought that he had to go to someone else, a stranger, because there was something I couldn’t give him was more than painful. It left the slick, alkaline taste of shame in my mouth.

  “Because that’s the sort of place I usually go when I can’t control my impulses. Because the men there are going to be as rough and selfish and careless as I am, and acting under the same impulses. It’s like a…cage of animals. I can claw and bite them, do what I like. They know what they’re there for. I won’t hurt them.”

  “And they can’t hurt you?” I wondered aloud. I didn’t believe that.

  “I didn’t do anything at Westmore, that night,” he added quickly, “I want you to know that nothing happened. Except that I….” He shifted his leg, “…got jumped. But do you see what I mean? My impulse, when I let it lose, is to be like my dad. I don’t care if I’m hurting the other person. All that matters is my enjoyment.” He shook his head. “I hate that. It’s not the way I want it to be between us. Not ever.”

  His clothes still clung to him and he shivered under the fan. I got up and moved behind him, thrust my hand into the pile of clean laundry and pulled out a towel. In part, I was stalling, trying to think. Kneeling in front of him, I draped the towel over his head and began drying his hair. I needed something to do with my hands anyway. He looked at me from under the towel, in
credulity written large in his eyes.

  “Look,” I started with a sigh, “What happened at the pub wasn’t your fault.”

  A comic, raspberry sound burst out, muffled by terrycloth and I lifted his chin to make him look at me, letting go the towel so it slid down to his shoulders.

  “Just listen, okay? You are a very masculine,” he flushed, “and aggressive man. I’ve known that since the first date. Hell, who am I kidding? I saw it about fifteen seconds after I laid eyes on you, I just didn’t recognize what I was seeing at the time. The thing is…that’s exactly what drew me, the intense passion I saw lurking under your cool façade.

  “What I’m saying is that what happened is my fault, not yours.” He opened his mouth and I put my fingers over it to stop him. “Listen, please. I pushed you too far. I said things that I never could mean, just because I wanted you to hurt as bad as I did, and for that, I’ll be forever sorry, but I didn’t know what would happen. I pushed and pushed until you reached a breaking point where you had to choose, fight or flight. An aggressive stud like you isn’t going to turn tail and run like a girl. That leaves fight. The reason I find it impossible to believe that you could, much less would, ever really hurt me is because you didn’t beat the living Hell out of me, which would have been totally justifiable.”

  “Jeezus, Liam—” he shivered and hid his hands in his armpits, as if to protect me from them, “don’t even joke about that—”

  “You didn’t even try to take me, for fuck’s sake!” I went on, “Instead, you tried to make me take you, and you didn’t hurt me.”

  “Didn’t hurt you? Bullshit! Brendan told me how he found you, puking up your guts and looking like you’d been roughed up.”

  Fuck, Brendan, thanks a lot!

  Put like that it sounded horrible. I sighed, wondering how to explain so it sounded more like it’d really been.

  “First off, Brendan was pretty freaked out, so his impressions were somewhat…” I considered my word choice for a moment, “skewed. You have to take what he said with a grain of salt. He didn’t get how much stronger than us you are, and he’s only experienced my break-ups with girls. Okay, I was puking, for sure, no point in denying it, but that was an upset stomach. I shouldn’t have said you didn’t hurt me though, because you did, emotionally, but not at all physically. Physically I was fine, just dusty, which is what he meant by ‘roughed up.’

  “Second off, concerning the day of the fair, I did not feel abused in any way.” I felt myself redden and tried not to grin like an idiot as the memory of it washed through my body. I concentrated on the small patch of carpet between our legs, feeling shy of a sudden. “I mean, you had my legs clamped to your chest and were just banging me like a fucking tambourine. Man…that was hot! It was the most exciting it’s ever been…next to the first time, of course.”

  Recounting it made me feel weak and hot with desire. I also remembered the feeling of confusion and vague shame I’d felt from the way he’d looked at me afterwards. I started to turn away, hurt all over again, when I had a sudden realization and blurted my thoughts.

  “That look of disgust afterward wasn’t aimed at me; it was aimed at you…wasn’t it?” I demanded, staring intently into his eyes.

  Oliver frowned at me. “I’d never look at you that way! Of course, I was disgusted with myself! I treated you like a back alley hook-up. A quick sound-bite of selfish pleasure, the sort men are always after—” he said this with loathing. “But that wasn’t what you were after from me. From the first, you wanted me to be…your hero. To give you what you’d never allowed a man to give you, and accept from you what you’d never given to any man. That’s why I tried to go slow and be careful every time we made love, because I understood how special this was, how special you were. I felt, well, honored. I wanted to get it right, and be worthy of that honor. I’m sorry…I’m sorry I…wasn’t.”

  “That’s not how your loss of control felt to me,” I offered. “It felt like I was so irresistible you couldn’t help yourself and that was hot as Hell. Don’t you get it? You are my hero, Oliver! That picture right there, that one you hate, says it all.”

  I pointed to Ollie the Barbarian then jumped up and snatched it off the wall. Dropping down in front of Oliver once more, I angled it so he could see it clearly.

  “Don’t you see? You saved me from the beast.” I indicated the dragon. “This is a black dragon. In case you didn’t know, not all dragons breathe fire. That’s just lazy moviemakers unwilling to commit time to explain this tidbit of information to the general viewing public. It’s easier that way, but that doesn’t matter right now.

  “My point is; black dragons spit acid, corrosive bile to be precise. Is there anything more corrosive to the human spirit than despair? I was beginning to lose all hope of finding my Jillian when you came riding in out of the sunset in your white rig and turned my whole world upside down, gave it a shake and turned it back upright again…all with a single look across a crowded pub.”

  He was staring as if I’d lost my mind, or he was questioning if I’d been sane to begin with.

  “What…? What’d I say?” I demanded, unsure of where I’d gone wrong.

  “Nothing, nothing, I just…didn’t quite see all that in the picture. I…I’ll take your word for it.”

  “But…I’m right there!” I pointed to myself in the background. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure why he couldn’t see it.

  He scowled at the picture, humoring me I think. He blinked a couple times, and then his eyes went wide with surprise.

  *Oliver*

  It might well be a metaphor for my whole relationship with Liam, but I’d entirely missed a very important piece of the picture.

  Liam had insisted I take a closer look at the painting and, not wanting to ever make him mad at me again, I did so. I didn’t see what he wanted me to see, and was getting nervous. Then he kindly pointed at it.

  “I’m right there!” he said emphatically.

  No you’re not, I almost said, before finally noticing the figure in the background. It was a woeful looking prisoner of the dragon. Chained to a rock, the head was bowed in sorrow or pain; the figure had black hair hiding the face and wore rags of clothing that made the sex indeterminate.

  How could that be Liam? Ever hopeful, ever optimistic, bright, sunny, beautiful Liam?

  Then I started to replay what he’d just told me. Despair. Finding his Jillian? Wait. The image of Brendan and Jillian came back to me, rocking away on stage, feeding each other’s passion, playing in sync.

  Liam thought I was that for him?

  “I’ve been through so many caustic break-ups,” Liam finished off, as if apologizing for how slovenly he looked in the picture. “I don’t think I could have considered another at the time, except it was you walked into the pub.”

  That hit me like a truck, one that allowed me to finally get it. Shit. I knew he’d been through several relationships with girls, all of them ending abruptly, but I hadn’t thought they’d left him in that bad a state. He’d spoken of these past affairs so lightly, never with any bitterness or tears. I’d imagined they were casual. Or, at least, that the split had been amicable.

  We’d even joked about his many exes one night in bed. He’d told me how he’d been attracted to one girl’s long hair and I’d run my fingers through his mop and told him that his “raven tresses” were what had lured me. This had led him to mentioned another ex-girlfriend’s curvy legs, and how much sexier mine were, even if they wouldn’t look so nice in high heels.

  We’d laughed out loud about it. I, callous, self-centered idiot that I was, hadn’t given the matter a second thought.

  Stupid of me! Gabe had said it and I’d had evidence of it from our first date; Liam wore his heart on his sleeve and he gave it away to whoever asked for it. Including to each and every one of those girls. Gabe had pointed out to me that when that heart was broken, Liam didn’t complain. He picked up the pieces and tried again. Even if the process eroded
his faith a little more each time.

  And he called me masculine! He was more man that I could ever be.

  I’d let his courage and determination fool me. Maybe I’d wanted to be fooled. Here, in pigments, on canvass, was the truth. How he’d really been feeling the night we’d met. A prisoner of that black dragon. Helpless and desperate for salvation.

  If I hadn’t felt ashamed before I did so now. I’d been so focused on the damn barbarian and what I was sure it said about me that I missed the real story: that of a helpless prisoner being saved by a brave warrior. In my mind, however, that story was incomplete. The prisoner wasn’t just anyone. No. He was a warrior, himself, and a poet and a prince.

  Fuck me. Is this what Fantasy Art was all about? The mind wandering off and making up stories? No wonder Liam always looked so dreamy.

  “That’s why I went so ballistic on Friday.” Liam broke the silence that had fallen between us. He looked shamefaced as he Frisbeed the painting onto the rumpled bed. “Usually, I don’t make that kind of scene when someone wants to end the relationship—”

  What? End the…? “You thought I was breaking up with you?” I stopped him.

  He nodded mutely, green eyes wide and sorrowful.

  I shifted up to a more comfortable position. “I wasn’t trying to break up with you. I can’t break up with you. I mean, I haven’t had that many relationships to test the theory, but so far, when I get involved, I get totally involved and if there’s going to be a split, the other man has to leave me, not vice versa.”

  “Are you serious? You’re telling me that we’re exactly alike? You can’t take but a few steps along the diving board before you’re in the deep end with someone?”

  “Which is why I never get up on the diving board,” I said.

  He thought about that for a long moment. “So…does that mean you want to be with me?” It was his turn to sound plaintive, as if he’d been waiting for an opening and couldn’t wait any longer.