There was a beast in Theodore Tar's belly, reaching up through his esophagus and tickling his gag reflex. The beast was hot and harder than rock. It made his insides feel humid. Theodore ignored it.
He was good at ignoring things.
There was one question which he desperately wanted someone to ask him, so he could give the answer he whispered to himself sometimes before he fell asleep."No," he would say, gazing straight into his interrogator's face. "No. I've never cried."
It would be a lie. They would make some exclamation, and ask with wide eyes if there had ever been a time?as a child, surely, he must have??
"No," he would mantain and then say, with firm conviction, "And I never will." That part ? he knew ? that part, at least, would be true. He never would.
When Theodore slept with his sometimes-girlfriend Ducky, he often felt the beast twist and writhe in his gut, and rise in his throat and obstruct his breathing. He guided her pale hands to circle his neck, then, so he could feel like he was being strangled by something tangible. The fact that he so often was engaged with himself more than any other being often disturbed him, so, he found her choking instinctual, comforting, and necessary. Ducky found it "kind of kinky."
Theodore Tar was bad a funerals. His suit was shabby and he didn't own any dress shoes so he settled for sneakers. They squeaked on the floor every time he stood up for a prayer to a god that the boy in the casket didn't believe in.
"I know this must be hard on you," she said as she snaked a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to take in her red eyes. She was a ghost of the woman he used to know back when he and the corpse in the room were both small. Then she sported pony tails and battery pack fans in hot Florida heat - a real mom's mom. All dolled up with no where to cry, now.
He wanted to say fuck you because it made him mad to have her pity him. She was the boy's fucking mom. She was the one who needed comforting and that truth pissed him off. She pissed him off. He was just angry, really. Why use the words hard on? Was that some sort of passive aggressive jab or a freudian slip of the tongue? He rubbed at the back of his neck and shrugged, eyes becoming crescents on his face as he down cast them so as not to look at her.
It made him uncomfortable.
He was bad at funerals.
Theo remembered little from his childhood, but he recalled his sleep overs with Daniel with a tangy sharpness that forced him to swallow every time they surfaced in his mind. He was his best friend since the third grade. They remained glued at the hip 'til they separated for universities.
One time they'd spent the whole night out "alligator hunting" which really only meant paddling around in circles in the suburban swamps. Theo had been rocking the boat, antagonizing the other teen, and it'd flipped over, submerging them both into the muck. When they waded back inside and the blond boy went to the bathroom to change, Theo had found polaroids in his sock drawer of him in makeup. He stole them.
Theodore Tar clenched the wheel with bony fingers, speeding down the interstate all the way back from Michigan or, to clarify, away from the new home Daniel'd bought.
He'd been visiting for a week one summer since they were both out of college now to catch up and it'd inevitably lead to much more than that. After a spectacular day, the beast in Theo's gut had cut demanded that he run away, and he was suddenly careening all back to Florida three days early - all the way back to where the two of them swore they'd never want to stay, the place with their parents and high school and bunk beds resided. More importantly, away from Daniel's lips - the lips that left the flesh underneath them searingly hot as they trailed along his skin - the lips that uttered such beautiful things- too beautiful things for ears like his to hear. Those lovely words terrified Theodore more than he terffied himself.
He left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.
Daniel didn't call but Theo really hadn't expected him to.
One time Daniel's mom stumbled in on them touching each other, faces flushed with teenage eagerness and hair slick on their foreheads from sweat. They were both under the covers and when the door creaked open, their hands froze. Theo pretended he was asleep, eyelashing fluttered shut against Daniel's collarbone. She didn't see anything, but she knew. They knew she knew. "I made pizza rolls." she said, mouth turned into a straight line.
Daniel couldn't say anything but Theo felt his adam's apple quiver. A stillness washed over them and after a while Daniel had fallen asleep, wrapped up snuggly in their silence. Once he'd begun to mumble nonsense under his breath, as he always did, Theo opened his eyes and watched him, gangly arms wrapped around the other's body and spidery fingers tracing the freckles on his shoulder. The pizza rolls went cold.
Daniel's family owned a beach house and on summers, they'd all pack up and stay for the night, Theo in tow. When they were very, very small, their parents would just tell them to share the same bed, but on the year he turned seventeen, the boy's dad groughly muttered about how because Daniel's older brother was sick at home, the bed was free for him to use and they wouldn't have to sleep with one another. Naturally, they didn't.
Theo'd never felt lonelier than he did that night.
When Theo got a call and heard Daniel's sister's voice on the phone, he half wanted to end the conversation right there. It'd been a good year since he'd left Daniel and avoided him even as he left voice mails that pledged forgiveness he hadn't asked for- a year since he'd directly spoken to the him at all- and his latent homosexuality was a can of worms he'd rather ignore, like he ignored a lot of things. When she told him that he had passed away, he hung up and vomitted right on his kitchen floor.
"I never will." He whispered it under his breath as a mantra. He thought it as he inhaled, as he exhaled. When they made love (they seldom did anything else together), he murmured it despite himself into her dark, messy hair or into the curve of her shoulder.
"Hmm?" Ducky dragged a fingernail lazily over his neck, not drawing back to really look him in the eye. "Did you say something?"
"Nothing, baby," he started to reply, but her mouth was already on his.
It was too cold in Theo's flat; his muscles were stiff, but the chilliness made him lethargic and he didn't want to get up to stretch.
He sat on the corner of his bed wearing nothing but a towel, and had been there since Ducky left his flat in a huff several hours ago. Goosebumps dimpled his arms and legs as he slumped on still damp fabrics. He knew it must be getting late and that he should be getting up ? he was supposed to be going to a Christmas party held by his work that evening with Ducky, though it seemed now he would be going without her if he went at all.
He felt rather like an abandoned house, unchanging without occupants, quietly taking up space in the world.
He didn't go to the Christmas party.
Instead, he let the monster in his stomach consume him from the inside out. He realized only once he went to stratch his stubbly jaw that tears, thick, hot, and sticky, trickled down his face, each one made up of all the words he didn't say and the things he didn't do.
They would ask him why he hadn't gone to the party the next day at work and he would simply say with tired eyes and a bruised ego, "I forgot." But the truth of the matter was the Theodore Tar could not forget a damn thing and there wasn't much more he wanted in this world than to do just that- forget all about each and every tear he'd shed, about the sick tendrils of darkness that loomed in his gut, about the fact that the better part of his life was no more than a well constructed lie, about his bubbling pit of self loathing, about those beautiful fucking words- those goddamn beautiful fucking words that replayed in his brain over and over again, about how he wanted their summers again and again and the feeling of his breath as they curled up in blankets under the starry dynamo. He wanted to forget that the only woman he'd ever loved was Daniel in drag.
Haha! Well, there that is. I don't normally write stuff like this, I swears it. Critiques or comments welcomed as always. :)
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/De4bfPBeLFo/viewtopic.php
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