by Natasha Kent
I couldn’t believe it. I was completely surprised! “You mean to tell me that all these weeks you knew what house I was talking about and you didn’t tell me that you owned it! You are such a shit!” I said good-naturedly, grabbing his head and giving him noogies.
“Stop! Stop!” he laughed. “I didn’t know for sure that this was the one you were talking about until we pulled up.”
“Oh man, you are so damned lucky!”
“It’s a great house, isn’t it.” You could tell how proud he was. “It’s gonna be great when it’s finished.”
“Oh, I’ll bet.”
He sat back down on the bed. “You wanna help me out?”
I smiled really big and sat down next to him. Then I reached over and started rubbing his package in his shorts. “Okay,” I said.
He laughed. “No, I mean on the house. Wanna help me fix it up?” I took my hand off of him but he grabbed it and put it back. “No, no, that too.”
I smiled as I felt his bulge growing in my hand. “Matty, I’ll help you with anything.”
“Yes!” he said.
I pushed him back on the bed and said, “But right now you gotta help me out.”
“How’s that?” he said in a real sexy voice.
“I’m feeling a bit…empty right now,” I said with a smile.
He grinned back and rubbed my back. “Ride a cowboy, save a horse.” I leaned in to kiss him….
* * * *
Pa
rt 9
The weeks went by and I barely spent any time at my apartment. Surprise! Neither of us wanted me to go back there. What was the point? Matt and I were always together and I was spending a lot of time helping him work on his house. Like I’ve said before I’d always wanted to renovate a Victorian and I was lucky enough to be working on the one house that I saw absolute potential in. And not to sell it. Hell, I don’t think that Matt would have ever done that, and it never entered my mind to ask him to.
I gained a ton of experience working on the cosmetics of the house. There was a lot that I didn’t know and Matt was right there with me…well, most of the time. He still had to make money with his own company so there were times I’d be working on the house by myself. My first major project was to begin stripping all of the old paint from the stair railing. Christ! what a job that was. I could’ve been environmentally friendly and sanded and scraped it but there was probably eighty years of paint on those spindles, so I used lots of chemicals instead. And besides, I’m not a green freak. I wanted to get that shit done, and fast!
Then the time came for me to start back at school. For the first time I had no interest in going back. Don’t get me wrong I loved teaching, I loved American History, politics and social studies, but I really wasn’t interested in spending that much time away from Matt—plain and simple. But then I couldn’t just quit working, either. Matt appreciated my dilemma and asked me if I wanted to work with him and help him grow his company. That was fine with me but stripping the paint off of a railing was a helluva lot different from growing a company. We finally figured out a plan that I’d work side by side with him, almost like an intern, so I could pick up as much knowledge as possible.
I made the move and quit my job at the school. I think five minutes after that I turned in my notice to end the lease at my apartment. I didn’t have tons of stuff but Matt and I hired a few of his subs to move my things to the his house. By now we had known each other for three months and on one hand I was concerned that we were rushing things. On the other hand, we didn’t want to lose any precious time with me being gone!
During the week we’d work on various construction jobs that he’d gotten and on the weekend we’d work on his house. I say ‘his’ because technically it was, and we were still in our own honeymoon stage of our relationship. Finally the day came where we had the exterior of the house caulked and primed and ready to be painted. The previous year he’d had the house leveled, so structurally it was ok. When he inspected the roof, again before I was in the picture, he discovered that there were two layers of roofing material on the house. He stripped all of that off and completely re-shingled the house with the exception of the bell roof, which he hired his subs to do. The shingles were new but laid in a really cool horizontal and diamond pattern. Apparently Matt had located a picture of Euclid Avenue in the 1890’s that showed his house, so any details that may have been missing he was able to at least investigate and try to restore.
When it came to choosing the actual paint, well, that wasn’t exactly easy. We had purchased around fifteen quarts of various colors to see how they’d look on the house. The first floor was brick so we climbed onto the scaffolding to paint swatches using different blends of colors across the side of the house in strips. If you’ve ever renovated and painted an older house you know what I’m talking about. There was siding, window trim, decorative trim, you name it! We wanted a really cool painted lady and had chosen colors from a Victorian home paint book. After we decided on one paint combination we began the task of painting! Working only on the weekends was hard but by Thanksgiving the exterior was complete. We finally had our “Painted Lady.” There were so many neighbors who had offered us support and compliments. Many of these people had renovated, restored or were in the process renovating their own homes.
That Thanksgiving we invited Matt’s sister, Jackie, and her family over to the house for dinner, along with my parents and grandmother. Matt and his sister mainly kept in touch on the telephone but were still somewhat close, regardless of the age difference. Jackie and John, her husband, loved the progress that was being made on the house. She remembered times there growing up before their parents split up and hadn’t been back to see it in several years. Since I’m such a retard when it comes to sports I hung out with her in the kitchen and we both worked on making dinner with my mother. While the inside of the house was clean it still needed some major updating. The only thing inside that was really complete was the staircase, thanks to me. I couldn’t wait until the day we could really start tackling the rooms but we had decided to wait until after Christmas and take a break from it for a while.
During dinner Matt and I made a major announcement. I was pregnant! Just kidding. We told everybody of our plans to combine our efforts officially and start a company together called The Renovators. Our main intent was to purchase houses that were rundown or somewhat dilapidated, fix them up and then try to sell them for a profit. Everyone congratulated us and we all ate and drank merrily. Especially Grandma. She’s such a hoot!
After our Thanksgiving meal I transferred a tradition from my parents’ house to ours (Matt’s and now mine) where we opened up the Christmas Season by playing Christmas music for the first time. Obviously you could go into any shopping mall as early as Labor Day practically, and see the Christmas decorations. But dammit! Let Thanksgiving have it’s day! I had a shitload of Christmas cd’s and put them into the player. Most of us helped clean up the dishes and Matt asked if I minded offering our house to the families every year for Thanksgiving. I reminded him that it was his house. He shook his head and said with all the hard physical work I’d been putting into it, now that I was living there too, I needed to consider it our home. Talk about! I was grinning from ear to ear!
“Sounds like a proposal,” I said.
He thought about that for a second and laughed. “Well, we can’t get married, but you can have my house!” Sounded like he’d had a bit too much wine.
“I accept,” I said, then I kissed him on the cheek.
Just before Christmas we closed on the loan for our first house purchase together. It was a small bungalow north of us, but still in Inman Park. Mostly what needed to be done was cosmetic, with the exception of replacing the bathroom fixtures in the two bathrooms. We finished it in about four weeks, just after the New Year. At the same time we had our other, or Matt’s other, g.c. business going. Brother, were we busier than one-armed paper hangers!
Our sex life continued to be phenomenal. S
o many times that horny bastard would walk by and rub my ass if he thought nobody was looking, or he’d grind his package into my ass as I’d bend over for something and say “Oops! Fell down!”, then he’d walk off. There’s no telling how many mornings I’d wake up with his mouth exploring my body. I think that we christened every room in our house. We absolutely couldn’t get enough of each other. I think we would’ve crawled into each others’ skin if we could.
We sold our first house and made around twenty-five grand in profit, which we sunk into the next house. All the while we were fixing up our home one room at a time. We ended up opening the kitchen up to the den like I had suggested the previous summer and actually added a bay window on the back of the house in the den. The kitchen took a while longer, and more money, to renovate. We gutted it and replaced all of the cabinets and appliances.
Several months had gone by and it was time for the annual Inman Park Tour of Homes. Every year anywhere from twelve to twenty homeowners open their homes for people to check out during the walking tour. Over near Springvale Park there’s a great big tent with tables, food, etc. There are different food booths and the whole place takes on the look of a carnival for the weekend. Usually different homes are opened each year and you can see restored or renovated houses in various stages of completion. It’s great because people can get ideas from other homeowners for their own projects. Matt and I opened our house. We got lots of compliments on the outside paint selections as well as the den and kitchen renovation. The rest of the house was still not finished but that’s not unheard of. The bungalow that we’d renovated and sold was also on the tour and we actually gained some business from that referral.
I really must say that life was going fantastic for Matt and I. Sure we’d have some squabbles or disagreements here and there, but we always made it a point never to go to bed without solving an argument.
We bought another house and flipped it. This went on for a couple of years, then we bought two houses. That was interesting. Trying to fix up two houses at once. It’s different when you hold the note on the house as opposed to someone hiring you to fix up their house. After we sold those two houses we pooled all of our savings together, along with the profits from the house sales, and bought a fairly big house in Druid Hills.
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Driving Miss Daisy,” it was filmed in Druid Hills, which is and area on Ponce De Leon east of where The Reunion Show was taped. Druid Hills was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the man who, along with Calvert Vaux, designed Central Park in New York City. Ponce de Leon gently winds through Druid Hills and there is a beautiful median park lined with huge trees. In the early part of the 20th century lots of upper middle class families built their homes there, setting back on large lots. Our house wasn’t on Ponce itself, but around the corner. This one had to have major work done on it which took around eight months to renovate. When we sold it we'd made a little over one hundred grand in profit.
We took that money and just kept rolling it into houses and in time we had made a lot of money, and had put a lot of money in the bank. It was time to take a vacation...
“FIVE…FOUR….THREE…TWO…ONE…HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!”
The apple dropped, or in the case of the live broadcast from Underground Atlanta, the peach dropped. We were officially in the new millennium. I know, lots of people thought that 2000 was the first year but it wasn’t. In a few weeks our new president would be sworn into office. The liberals and democrats (same thing, right?) were kvetching themselves to death about the whole thing, but I was just glad to hear something in the news other than “dimpled chads.” Crime in Italy!
Matt and I were invited to a New Years’ party over at Albert and Stacy’s new house near Piedmont Park. Over the years we had occasionally hung out with him and talked to him on the phone quite a bit. The three of us had all become friends and Stacy was really cool too. It didn’t bother her that her husband was really good friends with a gay couple. That wasn’t always the case, unfortunately. We’d met a couple of really nice married guys in our neighborhood but their wives weren’t exactly thrilled. I guess they’d imagined us with their husbands and it didn’t go over too well in their minds. Silly broads. Trix are for kids.
By now Matt and I had been together for three-and-a-half years and it was obvious to anyone with a pulse that we were exclusive to each other and in it for the rest of our lives. We kept working at our passion, which was restoring old homes and selling them. One great thing about having all of that money was that we were able to purchase more houses at once, and we added four crews to The Renovators. We were having a great time but I felt that something was missing in our relationship. We were still best friends and liked doing stuff together; just hanging out with him made me happy.
The one thing that we had done different recently is that we each found a hobby that was separate from the other. Once a week Matt and Albert met to play handball. I always thought it was cool to watch the sport, but I was such a pussy and normally ran away from fast-moving projectiles heading my way. Matt was always into sports so it was nothing for him to pick it up. And no, the two of them didn’t go off and bump uglies. I know that’s what some of you are thinking eventually happened that brought the nightmare into our lives, but it wasn’t.
The hobby that I found that I really enjoyed was singing. Surprise! But I wasn’t a lounge lizard or anything like that. I decided to try singing in a barbershop chorus. Matt had been in one before we’d met and I thought I’d try it out. For the most part I could sing the lead parts in songs, but the range in many songs tended to be a bit higher than I could comfortably sing. I decided to try out the baritone part and loved it. For those of you unfamiliar with the male singing parts in barbershop, the bass is on the bottom, next up in the range are the baritones, then the leads and finally the tenors. The reason I loved singing baritone was because the part’s really kind of bizarre when you hear it alone. It’s one of the more difficult harmonies but it’s the one that gives barbershop it’s distinctive sound. My friend Nick was thrilled because it was almost the only type of music that he listened to, so that was a good boost to my ego. But I digress. I also helped form a quartet and pretty much met once a week with them as well as the chorus.
So Matt and I had a couple of hobbies apart from each other. I could gush and bullshit you with us spending every waking moment together because love is nirvana, and when the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter lines with Mars....But let’s get real. We weren’t each others’ identity and I believe that it’s healthy to have some time to yourself.
But still, there was something that I wanted to give him.
After the apple/peach dropped we hugged and gave each other a quick kiss. Nothing gross or sloppy – we’d save that for home.
“Matt, can we talk?” I asked him.
He kind of squnched his eyebrows down a little bit. “Everything ok?”
“Yeah, everything’s cool. I just want to talk to you alone.”
He reached around and squeezed an ass cheek. “Hmmm.”
I laughed and headed out onto the back patio. Matt and Stacy had really decked it out nicely with a trellis, or arbor, little twinkle lights and an outdoor fireplace. There were people out here too but I was able to find a little secluded spot for us to sit on a plant ledge.
“So what’s up?” he asked, sitting down.
“Look man, we’ve been together for three-and-a-half years now-“
“Uh-oh, this isn’t a Dear John speech is it?” he grinned. Perfect fucking teeth.
I laughed. “Actually quite the opposite.” His eyebrows raised a bit. “Look, I know that we’re crazy for each other. We’re each other’s best friend, lover, all that good stuff. I know we’ve talked about this before, and that we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives together. But I know that we can’t get married.”
“Ok?” he said, sort of confused.
“Matt, there’s nothing else I have to give you that you don’t alr
eady have. You’ve got my heart and you’ve somehow” (rolling my eyes, smiling) “wormed your way into my soul. I hope that doesn’t sound cheesy” I said chuckling. He just smiled back. “I can’t imagine, and don’t wanna imagine, anything happening to split us up. You made me open up and I allowed myself to love and be loved. It’s an incredible gift and I…” (here’s where I choked up a bit) “and I can’t imagine giving myself to anyone else. You’re a sweet, and an incredible man.”
He grinned at that too.
“Plus,” I continued, “you’re a fucking fantastic lay!” He burst out laughing at that. “We pretty much have enough money to buy anything that we want, but I wanted to give you….give us…these.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out two rings. He just stared at my palm, looking at them. I could see that he was blinking tears away. He’s not a weepy type of guy but I figured he’d get teary eyed at this. I was right. Hell, I teared up too. Just a little bit. “We both know what these rings symbolize to married couples, and I know we can’t get married, but I wanted us to have the same type of ring that other married men have.”