Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles)

by Derrick, Zoey

  “Everything,” I breathe.

  Our eyes meet, sincerity radiates from him in waves. “Everything,” he whispers.

  HE'S right, dinner was probably over the top, but I needed to find a way to put him into an agreeable mood. Alcohol is best served on a full stomach and him knowing that I cooked for him might help him see past what I'm about to tell him.

  "Jesus, Cal, this is fantastic," he praises and I smile at him.

  "I'm glad you like it. It's one of the only things I know how to do well."

  He blushes slightly before taking another bite. Watching him eat is the kind of thing that would turn me on if that were possible. I've always found food to be arousing, but in true Calvin's dick like fashion, he sits softly inside my jeans. The disgust that makes me feel causes my whole body to lock down momentarily, but Eric is too engrossed in the food in front of him and he doesn't notice. I fight the churn of my stomach by focusing on my food.

  I want him drunk, but rationally drunk. I know that sounds bad, but Eric on alcohol is a true Eric. His honesty is brutal and real and I need that tonight. I need to know what he's thinking and alcohol takes away his filter.

  "You wanted to talk?" he says between bites.

  "After we eat," I tell him before taking a big gulp of scotch.

  "Why can't we start now?" His voice is soft and unsure. "I don't like this awkward silence between us."

  I frown. "It's not intentional, I promise."

  His eyes are sad when they meet mine. "I know, I guess I just wish we could go back to the way things were between us."

  My heart breaks a little. "How so?" I swallow.

  "Before this wedge was driven between us, before we…before you decided to tell me off in Orlando."

  I set my fork down. "I told you off in Orlando because I wanted you to be free. Free of me, free of how you feel about me."

  "Because you can't be with me?" he asks.

  "Exactly. It's not fair for you to keep hanging on to me when there will never be an ‘us'." I gesture between us.

  He sets his fork down and quickly picks up his glass of scotch and downs it in a single gulp. "Is that why you brought me here tonight? To remind me that we can't be anything more than what we are?" He stands up, grabbing his glass.

  "No, I brought you here tonight so that I can explain to you why we can't be together." I follow him with my eyes as he goes to the counter behind me. "Can you please finish eating? Then we will talk, Eric, I promise."

  I hear his glass click with the decanter and the liquid pouring sounds a million times louder than it should be. I hear him sigh behind me and I turn. His hands are on the counter and his head is down. His pain is evident and my heart twists. I stand up and reach out for him. "Please don't," he whispers, "I don't want your comfort right now." He raises his head and our eyes meet. "I want answers. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way."

  "What, about answers?"

  "No, about being together."

  "You're right, Eric, you're not the only one that feels this way," I tell him softly. "Please, finish eating."

  "I'm full." I look at his plate, it's nearly empty, but I know he can put away way more than that. I decide not to press it.

  "Help me clean up?" I ask and he nods, before taking a large pull of scotch and setting the glass down.

  Moving around the kitchen, cleaning up, rinsing and loading the dishwasher starts to feel all too natural to me as we set about the task of cleaning up. Something we've certainly done before, but since New York, it takes on a whole new meaning. Since he tried to kiss me in Orlando, everything has changed between us. Now it is going to change between us forever. He will walk out of this house and sometime over the course of the next few days, he will find it in himself to get over it and we will go back to the way things were between us. Back to being Mouse and Peacock. Right? Right.

  "Thanks," I tell him as I wipe down the counter one last time.

  He turns around and leans against the sink. "You're welcome." He cocks his head at me, desperate to read my expression and I watch as his fingers twitch like he's aching to do something, to touch me, or something. Then he licks his lips and my mouth goes dry and my breath catches in my throat.

  He takes a step toward me, then another, and I know where this is going. "Don't," I whisper.

  "Why?" he counters in a voice equal parts soft and hurt.

  I lean back against the counter, looking at the floor, my body tense. "Because, dinner was good, we need to talk, and I don't want to ruin it by throwing up all over everything."

  He freezes. "Do I repulse you that much?" he asks, his voice laced with emotion.

  "No, Eric. I want nothing more than for you to kiss me, to hold me, to show me that you love me, but you can't, I can't."

  "But I can, I want to, you want me to. What's so wrong with giving into what you want?"

  "Because what I want is buried deep inside my brain, hiding behind concrete walls so thick that it would take the Hulk a hundred years to even put a dent in it."

  "Cal, I don't understand."

  I raise my eyes to his, holding him in my gaze. "Because," a single tear escapes my eye, "Because I've been raped, beaten and tortured for being gay."

  CALVIN’S words knock the wind right out of me and I stumble backwards. “Because I was shown unimaginable images, forced into believing that being gay is a sin, that being gay is the highest form of blasphemy, that being gay is an abomination.”

  I can barely breathe, but I reach for my scotch and down the entire glass, feeling the burn slide down my throat. I look at him and there’s pain in his eyes, unimaginable pain. “I was first beaten by my father, more than a few times, when he caught me with a couple guys. He’d break bones, including my cheekbone.” I watch as he rubs at his left cheekbone. “When my father realized that beating me on a regular basis wasn’t going to be enough to make me change who I was, he institutionalized me in a nut house. One that specialized in conditional therapy.”

  “I don’t under…” I can’t breathe enough to talk, let alone think.

  Calvin sighs deeply. “You know that movie, that one where they force the rapist to watch movies of people being raped?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ…that shit’s real?” I finally manage.

  He nods. “Well, it was fifteen years ago and where I’m from,” he shrugs, “I never believed that it really worked, not until I got into the outside world and tried to have sexual thoughts about men.”

  “I need to sit down,” I manage to say before pushing away from the counter. I go around him to the alcohol and fill my glass full of scotch before downing half of it. “Fuck me,” I groan as the burn slides its way into my stomach.

  “I wish I could,” Calvin says and my eyes snap to him and my cock stirs involuntarily in my jeans. “I fucking love you, Eric. I’ve been in love with you since that morning you came to my dorm to pick up my last baggie. I fell in love with you along that entire ordeal, but I didn’t realize it until I was free of the coke.” He leans into the counter and I manage to fall into his chair from dinner. “I’m pretty sure I did it long before then. In fact, I like to believe that it happened the first time I saw you. But at that time I was completely and totally incapable of looking at any man long enough to feel anything for them.”

  “You…you love me?” My brain is hung up on what he’s said to me. I’m struggling to process it all.

  “I do, very much. But just because I love you, doesn’t mean I can be with you,” he admits with a soft smile.

  “I fail to see what is standing in your way.”

  “Everything I’ve just…god, I knew I should’ve done this with Dr. V. Damn it.” I watch as his nerves take over and he becomes frazzled. It’s actually pretty cute to watch, that is until his demeanor hardens and he braces himself against the counter, staring at me with an intent expression. “Because,” he swallows, “Anytime I let my mind wander into being with you, carrying on an actual relationship, having,” he swa
llows again, “sex,” the word is said through gritted teeth, “I want to vomit. My entire body physically locks down and I-,” he swallows again.

  I can’t help but notice now the small beads of sweat forming on his forehead and his face is pale. His knuckles crack as he grips the countertop. I spring up and round the counter, not thinking, not even considering the consequences of my actions and I pin him gently against the counter, wrapping my arms around him. “Breathe, come on Cal, breathe.” His entire body starts to shake and I can feel him sweating through his clothes. “Come on, Cal, please, relax. Think about something else, anything else.”

  “I can’t,” he growls.

  “Yes, you can, the sunshine, oceans, cats, dogs, anything, come on, you can….”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Why?” I breathe against his neck.

  “Not until you let me go and step back. Please E, I’m begging you, let me go.”

  With all the strength I can muster, I release him, pulling my body off of him and I take a step back. “You make it impossible to think about anything else,” he finally says in a hushed tone.

  I try and find something else, something to change the subject. “You said you were raped?” Yes, that’s what comes out of my mouth before my fucking filter can catch it. “Shit, don’t answer that, I’m sorry.”

  He turns around and admonishes me, “Shh, it’s alright, Eric. Yes, I was. Several times, as a matter of fact.”

  “How?” I ask.

  He points toward the living room with his head. “Come, sit down,” he tells me as he polishes off his glass and quickly pours another one. I follow his lead and take a seat on the larger of the two couches, on the far end, and he takes a seat in the chair opposite me. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his glass between his palms, rolling it back and forth from his wrists to the tips of his fingers.

  “Can I ask something else first?” I ask.

  “Go ahead,” he tells me, but he doesn’t look at me.

  “Who’s Dr. V?”

  He gives me a small smile. “He’s my therapist. He offered to let us talk in his office, in front of him, to let him help with this conversation, explain the things to you that I can’t. I don’t know much about the process of the therapy I endured, other than I was forced to watch,” he shudders, “to watch some seriously nasty shit. Mostly anti-gay bigotry, religious nut jobs who talked about being gay being wrong and how being gay means you’re going to hell. Those speeches were usually followed up with movies of men being raped by other men, the ugly side of society, in a nutshell.” He takes a sip of his scotch before continuing, I follow suit. “Watching that kind of stuff wasn’t really where the “process” came into play. If I got turned on, slightly excited emotionally, like my heartbeat or breathing changed, or god forbid I got a hard on, that would get me shocked.”

  I’m watching him carefully and I can see his eyes glazing over as if he is thinking back to that time.

  “The shocks started off more like a tickle, then gradually progressed to voltages high enough that it would humiliate me in some fashion or another.”

  “How so?” I breathe out. He doesn’t look at me, but I watch as he shakes off whatever it is that he was seeing and he looks at his glass.

  He sighs, “I would often piss myself.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, are you kidding me?” I stand up in anger. “How the fuck could anyone even consider doing-”

  ‘Breathe Eric, please, believe me, it was all legal at the time, though it still didn’t stop me from suing the shit out of them once I was able to get my head straight, but that’s beside the point.” He takes a huge gulp of scotch and I finish off my glass before walking to the counter. I grab the decanter and bring it back to the living room and fill up his glass. “Thanks,” he whispers.

  “What else?” I ask as I fill my own glass.

  He frowns. “Are you sure you want to hear more of this?”

  “No, but I’m still trying to understand, and I’m trying to see how this all leads back to you being raped.”

  “I’m getting there,” he tells me before drinking down half of the scotch I just gave him. “One time I was shocked until I not only pissed myself, but I lost all control of everything.” His eyes meet mine.

  “Fuck, I can’t even imagine what kind of force that would take.”

  “I thought that I was dying,” he tells me. “But that was nothing compared to what happened that night and many nights after that. What happened at night were the primary grounds for my lawsuit and the criminal charges that were later brought to the person responsible. The opposite happened at night. I was forced to get hard before he would set about raping me, usually repeatedly….”

  “Stop, I can’t…” I stand up and start pacing, “I don’t know if I can handle hearing any more about that.”

  I catch Calvin as he nods solemnly. “Now do you understand why no matter how much I love you, I can’t be with you?”

  I stop in my tracks and look at him. I don’t know what to say to that. “How am I supposed to respond to that?”

  “Just tell me that you agree, that you understand that you can’t be with me and walk out the door. Fuck, Eric,” he stands up, “You deserve someone who can love you emotionally and physically. You don’t deserve my baggage and I certainly don’t deserve your love when I have absolutely no way to reciprocate it.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Fuck Eric, damn it, you’ve already seen what happens, three times now. I’ve puked on you twice.”

  “That wasn’t…”

  “No Eric, it wasn’t alcohol, either time. That is what my body does, among other things, like locking down, convulsing, puking, sweating, growing weak…those are just a few of the things that happen. The worst of it is the mental disgust I go through after the fact. It took me three years and a lot of cocaine before I could finally get an erection, get myself off, or even have sex with a woman without vomiting all over the place. Even still, to this day, being with a woman still repulses me enough that I have to fight back the bile that rises, but my body and the shame are different now. Usually, I end up feeling guilty because I’ve walked out, waited ‘til they’ve fallen asleep and left or left them half-naked in a bathroom somewhere. I can’t masturbate.” I flinch at that idea. “If I can even manage to get hard, I usually end up in a repulsed pile of goo on my bed with a raging hard-on that I can do nothing about. Let alone even,” he swallows hard, “in the kitchen when you came up behind me…”

  “You freaked out,” I tell him.

  He nods, “Ironically, it wasn’t because you touched me.”

  “Then what was it?”

  His eyes dart to my crotch and back up. “Shit. Damn it, Cal, I…fuck.”

  “Stop, it’s alright, Eric. You didn’t know, I’d barely begun to explain anything to you, how could you have even guessed,” he tells me softly before sitting back down.

  “Now what?” I ask him unwillingly after a few minutes of silence.

  He frowns and shakes his head. “We go back to the way we were, friends.” His eyes meet mine once again and once again I am lost to them, lost in him, drawn like a moth to a flame.

  I shake my head, “I can’t do that.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “Like hell I don’t, Calvin.” I cock my head at him. “You told me this so that you could drive me away, so that I would find you repulsive and storm out of here, and find it within myself to get over you and we could move on?”

  “Who wants to be with someone who wasn’t strong enough to fend off an attacker, who wasn’t man enough to…”

  “Stop right fucking there, Calvin Caldwell, I will not listen to you talk like that.” I round the couch to draw closer to him, moving his glass on the coffee table before sitting in front of him, my thighs on either side of his. “Look at me,” I tell him.

  “I can’t. I think you should go.”

  “No, I won’t. Calvin, we all
have our own fucking baggage. Yes, I see what yours is and it is quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever heard and three thousand times bigger than I could have ever imagined, but I’ll be damned if I am going to let that stop me from trying to help you.”

  “You’re insane. Eric, the only thing that is going to happen in all of this is that I’m going to freak the fuck out and we will never be able to be closer than we are right now. I can’t have that, Eric. I can’t have you being hurt every time something triggers me and I will be damned if I am going to have a sexless relationship with you.”

  “I want to meet Dr. V, I want the two of us to meet with him, Calvin, I want to help you get over this.”

  He stands up and manages to skirt past my entrapment. “I can’t just get over it.”

  I stand up, facing him. “Bullshit, you did it with women. Why can’t you do it with men? The problem with men for you, Cal, is the fact that you’ve had countless women to help you work through your issues, your wall that ‘Hulk can’t smash’, but how many men have you had since the abuse?”

  “None,” he finally breathes.

  “That’s my point. You haven’t had anyone to work through this with. You haven’t been able to even try.”

  “And you think I want to do that with you? Do you honestly think that I want you to watch me puke every time you try and kiss me? Or break into the sweats when I think about you? What the fuck kind of relationship is that, Eric?” I don’t answer him because I don’t have an answer. “That’s my point, it doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.”

  “That’s where I think you’re wrong and I want to prove it to you.”

  Our eyes meet again, this time I see some concern, fear and anxiety buried deep in his soul. “I’m not running away from this,” I tell him firmly. “I haven’t waited this long to just walk away. To just give up on you, on a chance for us to actually happen. Are women really what you want?” I watch as he shakes his head. “Are men?” He shakes his head again. “Then what is it, what do you want?” I ask him softly.

  He looks at me, his eyes red with tears. “You,” he breathes and my world stops spinning.