the-crushing-colors-of-love-1-2.html

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This is a work of fiction. Again my story involves a teenager with post-abuse trauma and with difficulties coping with a brain that works a little out of the ordinary. But it is also a story of love between young and not so young, between related and unrelated males. Love, with all its aspects, does not always like to stay within the boundaries of the volatile laws of any society. Love is the ultimate anarchist. Do not look for quick JO-material in this story. Sex is an undercurrent, and stuff will happen from time to time, but the buildup and the tension is where the focus is. There"s also some father/son eroticism here, so if that"s a no-no for you, go elsewhere. It is my story, it belongs to me. Please don"t steal from it. (And just to mention it, English is still not my first language, and therefore the possibility of faults and clumsiness lurks in the shadows.) Feedback? Yes, please: ota * And remember to support Nifty. http://donate./donate.html * * * * * * * THE DEVIOUS COLORS OF LOVE By Magnus Winter * * Part One: WHITE DOOR TO ORANGE
 * Doctor Inger Miller tries hard to catch the dynamics between the two people in front of her, she searches for compliances, searches for gaps. She finds mostly gaps. The woman before her has a vague aura of being in an unwanted place at an inconvenient time, like she will constantly be a stranger, never really belong. You look at her, you don"t see her: She slips away like sand in an hourglass. Face perfectly painted makes it impossible to read what she really looks like, there is no mimicry, no presence. Hands gathered in her lap, her left-hand fingertips slowly slide along her right index finger, nails lacquered mother-of-pearl white. The sliding of fingers is her only movement. Her long legs in tight fitting jeans, fashionably torn at the knees and embroidered with pink roses at the hip, are immovably crossed at the ankles, stiletto heels stuck leaningly to the floor. Her eyes, neither evasive nor focused, meet Inger Miller"s as from behind a sheer curtain. The man at her side is altogether a different chapter. For one thing, he"s one of the most good-looking men she has ever seen. Time and time again his intense eyes travel between the two women, arrogant but watchful. There is something profoundly disturbing clinging to him, something that, in addition to his beauty, makes it impossible to ignore or overlook him, he commands the room, holds your attention without even trying to. You can feel or suspect a load of explosives ready to go off inside the stoic appearance, as if his well-dressed and seemingly well-adjusted body is charged with danger. Like he has swallowed a bomb belt or something. The woman beside him seems totally immune to him and shows no reaction to all the glances he sends her. The man"s voice is tense and impossibly deep: "I told you not to lock him in!"
The woman suddenly bends her neck slightly forward and then throws back her long purply black hair, her expression still as vacant as before. "He knows that"s the penalty for running off and doing that stuff he"s doing."
She speaks in a neutral and flat voice, there is a trace of the north in her careful pronunciation. The man repeats himself slowly, stressing each word: "I ? told ? you ? not ? to ? lock ? him ? in."
Inger Miller watches the woman. Tries to find something to sympathize with, some feeling of affinity or sisterhood or such. "What exactly is it he does when he runs off?"
The woman answers prosaically, unemotionally. "He hitches rides. Stops cars and speaks to the drivers in Spanish or German. He lies through his teeth to make them pick him up. He comes on to them. I can"t make him stop, and I"ve told him a million times he"ll be grounded if he keeps on doing this."
For the first time she looks hard at the man, an angry flash flares up in her eyes, then as quickly dies again. Her voice is even and impersonal again when she speaks. "You are never there. If I don"t lock his door, he"s off again. So, go fuck yourself."
The man rises, heavily and at the same time with a bounce, like a steel spring. He grimaces at Inger Miller across the table. "You talk to him. I can"t reach him."
He nods towards the woman beside him. "And neither can she."
They leave separately. Inger Miller opens the window and lets the cool breeze from the fjord in. It caresses her face. * * * The boy has been asked to wait until summoned, so he is standing outside the white door snapping his left middle finger against his thumb and holding his bandaged right hand close to his nose. The small sign by the door says Dr Miller, a white name belonging to a white door, this makes sense to him. Logic and harmonious. He concentrates on this while he waits. If he takes one further step closer to the door, he can block out a lot of all the rivaling and disturbing influences of the foreign environment. Suddenly the door opens outwards and hits his bandaged hand that consequently hits his nose hard, he stumbles backwards a few wobbly steps, arms going like branches in wind. "David? Please come in."
The woman in front of him is short and thin, he"s a full head taller than her. She is wearing black tights and a huge fawn sweater that hangs loosely down almost to her knees. She tilts her head sideways and observes his balancing act with a touch of amusement. He sees her as a bird; he hopes he"s not supposed to capture her. She stretches a wing out to him. He can"t make himself touch it. "I"m Inger Miller. I"m a psychiatrist, and my job is to help you, not judge you. Get it?"
He lets out a gush of air, grateful that her name remains white and puts a muting lid on the messy stream of colors and shapes that all the new smells and objects evoke and the jumble they create in his head. Her wing pulls him towards a blue chair; he realizes that it"s not he who has to capture her, it"s the other way around. The big black triangle pops up in his brain and threatens to eat him, he hyperventilates and mobilizes his defenses: I"m the one giving, no one is taking. I"m the one giving... "So, David. Tell me why you had to set fire to the curtains."
She sees the boy"s angular face contract and dissolve in a series of tiny movements, sees his eyes roam aimlessly all over the room until they settle on the one wall where there are no pictures. He will be beautiful one day, she thinks, when his acne is gone and his body is more familiar to him. When in a few years he grows into himself. "Too much air. Too much noise."
He wants to test her, wants to see if she rejects or tries to unravel his utterings. She senses this. "Couldn"t you just have removed them?"
Again, a longish interval where the small tics in his face tell her of the activity behind the red spots on his forehead. She feels a growing urge to find the entrance to what"s in there. Learn more about this strange and remarkable boy who has rattled his way into her professional life. "That would not have changed the smell. Things did not check. Very annoying, you know."
She was hit by his precise and meticulous pronunciation, totally unlike the other teenagers in her clientele. He looks at her and senses a question in her eyes. "Orange. Very sharp notches."
She waits for more. Nothing comes. Instead he mentally licks the empty wall and tries to stick his words to it: "Und so geht"s..."
He moves his gaze to the painting above the corner table where pamphlets and other printed matter is displayed, assesses it and dismisses it: Reproduction, no nerve, no temperature, 2 on a scale to 10. She speaks and breaks into his bubble of defense. "There"s much here I really would like to understand, but I can"t hear the words you think, I only hear the end of your train of thoughts. That makes me guess a lot, and that wouldn"t do you justice, would it now? Could you please explain to me where orange comes into this?"
He stabs her with those greenish eyes of his, searchingly, prickly, as if to find out whether she is real or not. She suddenly feels denuded, pierced. He decides to give her leeway. "Door locked, window ajar but handles secured."
He lifts his left hand and waves back and forth. "Flap. Flap. Flap. Stiff material. Pointy edges, no fit. The sound turns a threatening orange in my head. And the smell is not mine. It"s hers. Even more orange, even more pointy shapes and sharp edges because you see, things had been moved. Things were gone. And before you ask, I know that what I"m like inside my head is likely to have a name, but that doesn"t mean shit, because it does not explain what it does to me. Here."
He puts his finger to his forehead and draws a line down to his diaphragm. She decides to try another angle. "Why do you think the door was locked?"
*
"She wants me to be just one David. She can"t stand that I need more names. Then she would have to reconsider too much. Think in a new way. Admit she"s wrong."
*
"Ever tried to talk to her about this?"
His voice turns from slight goodwill into deep sarcasm: "Have you met her?"
She nods and curls her lips into a weak smile, wondering what he"ll come up with, if her assessment of the woman who is his mother is in tune with his. "If you untie the bow and remove the festive wrapping she wouldn"t know where she was. She has no direction."
He underlines his words with hand gestures. She decides to go out on a limb. "What color is she?"
*
"What color is she?"
He laughs, bends over until he sits like a seated embryo, his laughter turns into hiccups. -***** "I used to think all people were the same ... Then later I learned that it wasn"t so ... that I had, I don"t know, an impediment. Or a gift?"
*
"Well, so you found out that not too many people are blessed with synesthesia. And out of curiosity, what color is your mother?"
There is something here that does not sit right. And he has a problem: Should he bother to elaborate, or should he let it ride and let her stick this label on him? "You don"t get it. It"s not the colors. It"s not the images. It"s the drowning. It"s the closing in. What you call synesthesia is supposed to be helpful in a way, not destructive. A nice addition, I mean, like for composers and stuff? It"s not like that for me, not helpful at all. It takes over."
He balances on the edge of a cliff. He does not want to dive down, but how can he avoid the fall? Neutralize the oncoming gale with words? Hide? But he lifts his head. "And by the way, there"s no color in the world that would fit my mother. She isn"t tangible, she"s vapor. Her name is a washed-out dull blue, but her name is much too distinct for what*she*is. Her name is like a botched experiment."
She keeps her small smile in place as she scrutinizes the boy, fascinated and slightly puzzled by his choice of words and how articulate he is. "I"m intrigued. I think I"m starting to glimpse the way you think. What about your father?"
He has to dispose of her smile before the black triangle reappears. He forces her to a place way out on the edge of the swirling mass of impressions, the place that smells like lemons and detergents, and where she can easily be fully removed, or, if so should happen, be brought back in again. He rises, lingers a bit, seats himself again. Staring at the floor, he mimics her voice: "What about your father."
*
"Listen, I"ve met them both. First impressions are not always just, but they are there anyway. And I am curious, I want to know a lot about you, among other things I want to know how you view your parents. So yes, what about your father?"
*
"Incongruent. Like volcanos."
She gets an image. I"ll see if I can do this his way, she thinks, though he"ll probably look through my effort. "Fiery heart, smoking head?"
He looks up, suddenly alert and present, decides to gratify her. "Nice try. His body speaks colors, his mouth speaks grey. Like foreign movies with no subtitles."
She feels like she has penetrated something. A small hole, but a hole nevertheless. "You certainly do not talk like most teenagers I know."
*
"I don"t talk to most teenagers you know. They say I"m weird."
*
"And how do you like that? When they say you are weird?"
*
"Like doesn"t enter into it. If I"m being just David, they give up. Like a tree, like history. No one wants to know what"s behind the bark, what"s behind the words. Sometimes it"s easier to be unreal. Try not to be visible."
*
"What do you yourself think? Are you weird?"
*
"You have no idea."
He gets up, buries his nose in the bandages and sniffs loudly while staring her down. There is rebellion and there is despair in his eyes. "I have to go."
He pinches his eyes close. "This is Behemoth. It should have been Ganymede, and you should have stayed white. Like the eagle. We don"t amalgamate."
* * "He"s stopped talking to me. Probably because I don"t understand more than half of what he says. Or does."
It is just the man this time. The latent catastrophe she sensed behind the fa?ade is equally present now, head to head. She is struggling to keep the professional distance she knows is required, this man sends strange waves to her brain and her lower abdomen. Could be the voice, could be the taut tendon visible on his neck. Or the hands that rest on the table I front of him, they are uncommonly beautiful. She kills the sudden need to be touched by them. "I"ll give you an example. I went to his room to talk to him about his grades, to find out why they"d suddenly dipped so much."
He leans back, folds his hands behind his head and stretches. He"s wearing T-shirt and jeans this afternoon, she finds the shadow of his nipples through the white material almost unbearably disturbing. He continues: "He was just sitting on his bed, head between his knees. Didn"t answer, didn"t look up, just ... I don"t know, hid? I tried to stay calm, get to him, make him relax, right? But no. So I got really annoyed and grabbed his hair to lift his head, and he just let himself fall backwards onto the bed and stared at me like I was an alien or something. Not frightened, but like he was expecting ... something incomprehensible. I tried to make him understand I wasn"t mad at him or anything, that I worried. You know. Parent-talk. And I put my hand on his shoulder and he just shuddered."
He lets his arms down and glares at her. His eyes are the same color as his son"s: Grey with specks of green and yellow. "Like I was contagious or something. I got furious. No, exasperated, actually. I had to leave. If I had stayed, I"m sure I could have knocked him flat. He called after me: Cut off the red and the black stuff! See what I mean?"
*
"When was this?"
He does not answer, just sucks his upper lip in behind his lower lip and wags his head softly from side to side. "He"s such a izmit escort bayan smart guy, you know. Straight A"s all the way. Incredible, picks up languages just like that. Even reads Italian. He knows words I never heard of. And he"s fourteen, for fucks sake! Suddenly his grades drop to C"s and D"s, and why? Because he never answers questions with comprehensible answers, and he hardly ever hands inn papers because he finds most assignments either irrelevant or based on misleading information. Or so he says."
His eyes sparkle, she can almost touch the trapped and ready-to-burst power in his voice, she can clearly see the volcano. "I have absolutely no idea where it went wrong. He doesn"t get involved with anything, he has no friends, he"s not into sports, not into girls, not even into computer games. He sits in his room reading books way beyond his years or surfing the net for strange stuff. I mean, really marginal. Or he disappears. According to his mother, that is. When I"m home, he"s mostly in his room. But then my job often takes me away for days on end, and that"s when he goes off on his escapades. I mean, pretending to be someone else, playacting with strange people. I can"t speak to him about this, I guess I really don"t want to know why he does this. He knows he should not embark on these kinds of adventures, if adventure is the right word. We"ve impressed that on him time and time again."
She listens, she does not interfere. She recognizes his war with himself, his arguing against his guilt, his escape from his shortcomings. She is the catalyst, her role is to give him sanctuary, to open doors for him to get out of himself, she is an ear and a garbage chute. He stares at the wall, his shoulders sag and he lets out a long whistling sigh through his clenched teeth. "The worst part is that I can sort of understand some of this. I mean, Cecilie can be truly maddening at times, what with her conformity, and being so cool and unapproachable. So distant. And also a bit bigoted. Sometimes all you want to do is to shake her real hard. See if there"s life still left in there."
Suddenly he looks shy and regretful, like he has overstepped a line here. He tenses, tries to cover up his slip. "Don"t get me wrong, she has always been a good wife and a good mother. I suppose I"m the one who"s failed him, being away so much, having had so little time for him. But it"s my job, I can"t do much about that."
Now she wants to switch tracks, decide the direction. Push him a little further. "I find it rather interesting that David refused to take my hand when we met. And you told me he shuddered at your touch. Can I ask you about your attitude towards physical contact? For instance, with David? Has it always been as complicated as my impression is right now?"
She lets him reflect for a while, gives him time to find his way through something she suspects is alien territory. She is finally rewarded with a small lopsided smile, a sigh and a firming of shoulders. "He used to crawl into my lap and smell me after I"d had my shave. Tell me I smelled yellow and round. He"s always had that weird notion of colors and shapes in his head, especially with sounds and smells. And situations. He often explains his feelings this way too, I suppose he"ll do the same when he talks to you. And when the colors in his head pleased him, he would make weird little noises in his throat, like a strange kind of singing. Jesus, now you"ve made me miss that time. The trust. The peace. The feel of his little body when he was my boy, if you get me. I even miss those sounds he made. Where the fuck did it all go?"
He shakes his head, his voice has sunk all the way down to the basement. She feels a tingling down her spine, her muscles twitch to touch him. This man is danger. "What you tell me is all in the past. To understand more of David, I think we should try to connect his past and his present. I gather there is not much physical closeness anymore. Why is that?"
*
"Oh, lots of reasons, I think. Well, come to think of it, I"ll say it was mostly Cecilie"s doing. She started nagging David to stop being so clinging. Correction, she doesn"t nag, she just tells you in a cool and detached way how things should be, no argument. So, when she told David he was too big to snuggle with his dad, it suddenly felt all wrong to have him in my lap, to hug him and to touch him, you know, all that kind of stuff. Cecilie is not the huggy type, see. I don"t think she"s had him in her lap since he started to walk. So, it just stopped. I guess I pushed him away. Maybe I shouldn"t have done that. But he"d just started school, I was on the road much of the time, and then, well, we hardly ever touched. Only on a few occasions. If I wanted to explain something or admonish him, I would grab his shoulders, maybe a little too hard sometimes, and hold him still. And I"d notice his shivers, and the way he looked at me. Like he was frightened. No, not frightened, something else, I don"t know what. But the way he looked at me felt uncomfortable, and I let go. And he took off."
He rises abruptly, like a small explosion of tendons and long muscles. Squinting at her, hands clenched into fists. "Where the fuck are you going with this? You bitch! Are you trying to hear my confession, like a goddam priest or something? Make me feel like shit, like a bastard? Break me? Well, I"m not the one in therapy here, as far as I know!"
She folds her hands under her chin, feels a slight tremor in her arms. Forces herself to look at him calmly, focused. "All I did was ask a few questions concerning your son. You decide for yourself what and how much you tell me. It was not my intention to pry into your soul."
He tramples around in a circle, rubs his lips, puts his hands in his pockets and stretches himself up on his toes. Lets himself slowly down again. "I"m sorry. I"m really sorry. I don"t know what went into me, everything is in overload right now."
He reaches out to her. "Accept my apologies? Maybe we should talk later. I really want to help, but I just can"t stand this anymore now."
She takes his hand, but lets it go quickly, as if hit by a small electric shock. She tries hard to look professional and efficient as she says her goodbyes. * * * Inger Miller waits, but the boy does not show up. Five minutes. Ten minutes. A quarter of an hour. The house phone rings. She answers, listens, agrees, then hangs up. At the ward she is met by a nurse dressed in an oversized green shirt, her red hair in an untidy bun. "He refused to keep the appointment. I tried to talk him into it, but when I touched his arm, he started screaming and waving his arms and balled up in the corner of his room. We asked that he"d be sedated, and the doctor on duty agreed. He is in bed now."
She does not like this. Not at all. "I should have been informed right away. And you should have consulted me regarding sedation."
*
"Don"t give me that. When he"s up here, he"s our responsibility, not yours."
She does not argue, although she wants to. Instead she walks into the room where the boy lies on his back on top of the sheets, fully dressed, except for a pair of black trainers lined up under the bed. His dulled eyes see her coming, he slowly turns until he is facing away from her. She pulls up a chair, sits down and stares at his back. An image emerges in her brain: David in his current stage and size on his father"s lap, like one of Michelangelo"s marble works. She finds an odd, but calming beauty in this image, it softens her voice. "Now, my friend David. I"m so sorry you didn"t want to have a chat with me today, I was so looking forward to it. You are such an interesting guy."
He pulls his left arm from under him and gives her the finger. She does not seem fazed by his gesture. "I"ve been more than curious about these escapades of yours, these multilingual hitching rides I"ve been told about. I rather suspect you have a good reason for them that isn"t that obvious to others. Care to enlighten me? If not now, maybe later?"
He pulls his arm back, embraces himself and starts a slow rocking movement. His words come out slurred and fuzzy, like wads of cotton: "And how would you like a stiffy up your ass?"
She"s taken aback. This is bloody crucial, she thinks. We"re at a crossroads here. "I guess that depends on who the stiffy belongs to."
His rocking stops. She holds her breath. He stays still and silent for a long time, then she observes how his shoulders start to shake a little, like he is having a quiet, little laugh. She breaths out. But the shaking continues, he crawls up like a fetus, and it dawns on her that he"s actually crying. She has to brake her unprofessional need to hug him, hold him. Then she hears him mumble something. She leans over him, carefully, tries to hear what he"s saying. He seems lost in his own weeping, lost in his slow mantra: "It shouldn"t have been them ... It shouldn"t have been them ..."
She watches over him until he seems to have fallen asleep. She notices that his bandaged right hand is clutching an empty water bottle. * * * A bit unorthodox, maybe, but she wants to meet the woman, David"s mother, Cecilie, at their home. Her pretext is that she wants to see David"s room where he performed his curtain destruction act, but her real agenda is to observe this woman in her own environment, see if there is more to learn when the balance of power is in the woman"s favor. Now she finds herself in rooms that are far from surprising, nonetheless bordering on a parody. Everything is clean lines, predictably harmonious, like pages from a catalogue: White, grey, burgundy. Bamboo in pots, art chosen to blend in with the color scheme rather than for its own merit. Furniture is modern Scandinavian mixed with Art Deco and a couple of retro items from the fifties. Impersonal and smelling of money. Her eyes are drawn to the only jarring element: A multicolored scarf that has been dropped on the floor next to the sofa. David"s mother, barefoot, wearing grey shiny tights and a men"s shirt three sizes too large, follows her gaze, picks up the scarf and disappears into the hall. Is this for real, she asks herself. People are not clich?s! The other woman comes back, seemingly just as undaunted and polite as before, just as perfectly groomed, just as out of focus and hard to get. "You wanted to see his room? Come with me."
That voice. So well-modulated, so meticulous, so indifferent. Oh, surely not, she can"t be indifferent to all that"s going on. Cecilie takes her to a door and opens it. The contrast hits her like a fist: The window and ceiling above is streaked with burn marks and soot, half of the room, including the desk with a laptop on it and the unmade bed, is covered with a white powder. The smell is acrid and unpleasant. She memorizes everything: Bookshelves cover one whole wall, full of books, board games, jigsaw puzzles, stereo and CDs and DVDs, everything neatly and logically stacked. She steps closer and skims book titles and authors. Murakami, Doyle, Littell, Kundera, how on earth can these appeal to a fourteen-year-old? History of the Small People, the German Jew, Ancient Greece ... she shakes her head. And over there: Vidal, Leavitt, Hollinghirst. Something stirs at the back of her brain, she will have to look up these authors. No posters on the walls, no football shoes or hockey sticks. Across the white closet doors, written with a felt tip marker, the letters floating along like an ornamental border: K?mmere Dich um Alles. K?mmere Mich. She senses a certain impatience coming from David"s mother. She smiles at her as she passes on the way out. "David told me one of the reasons for his actions was that things had been moved around and some had disappeared. What was he talking about?"
Cecilie scrutinizes her and there is something disturbing and unpleasant in her eyes. She turns around and takes Inger Miller back to the livingroom, then points her down to a sofa. She seats herself at the other end. Her face looks like it wants to break out of prison. "A cucumber, a zucchini, and a small towel smelling of sick. Add it up, and please tell me if you come up with a different answer than I did."
She gathers her hair, pulls a black elastic band from her wrist and ties her hair into a ponytail. Crosses her legs. "I was in there to change his sheets. His room is always super tidy, so my curiosity was raised when I saw one of his drawers slightly open. Go ahead and tell me it serves me right for snooping, but I was completely knocked out by what was in that drawer."
Deep breath, fingers twirling her ponytail. Her fa?ade is about to crumble. "I"m not easily upset. I do my best to understand him, but he really scares me sometimes. I just want him to be ... well, normal?"
*
"He is what he is. And when it comes down to it, what"s normal anyway?"
*
"I"ll admit that I"ve always had difficulties understanding him, even when he was little. All those strange and meaningless things that would come out of his mouth. The things he would do. It"s easy for you to say he is what he is, the fact is he scares people away from him. I"ve tried so many times to make him modify himself, to adapt so he can have friends, but to no avail. Oh, but come on, a zucchini? God Almighty!"
She uncrosses her legs and rubs her thighs. "If we are to continue this conversation, I need a drink. Okay?"
They exchange looks and nods. Cecilie gets up, disappears and reappears bringing bottles and glasses. Gin and Bitter Lemon. No ice. This is getting more tangible, Inger Miller thinks, things are about to unravel. If I just have a tiny drink, I can still drive back home. She takes one small sip. The other woman pours about half of hers down her gullet. Inger Miller tries small talk. "What do you do? Do you work?"
*
"Part time. Porto Bello. The boutique, you know."
She empties her glass, pours herself another one. "And the rest of your time?"
Cecilie stares at the floor, then lifts her head up and squints at the other woman. Suddenly she explodes with laughter. Very loud. "I hang around waiting for a divorce!"
This was news, but little pegs fell into the right holes in Inger Millers head. Of course! "You"ve spoken to Daniel, right? Didn"t he mention it? No, I don"t suppose he would admit to it. It"s going to happen, though. Our relationship has been practically over since... I don"t know, five years, ten years ago? I just can"t cope with any of them, him or David."
She sips her drink more modestly now. Inger Miller wants to move on. "Let"s get back to David. We didn"t quite finish with the vegetables, did we?"
She sighs. "Oh God. All right. I confronted him when he got home from school. He just stood there, quivering like an angry bull or something, and snarled No toques mis cosas! or something like that, and I lost it completely. I yelled at him, and I never yell, never! But I yelled at him to stop his Spanish nonsense and his running off and his coming on to men I cars, stop his abnormal behavior and his izmit eve gelen escort playing with danger. And his answer? You wish! That was all he had to say. Thanks a lot. So, I grounded him and locked his door from the outside. What else was I supposed to do?"
She spreads her hands, her face one big question mark. "People look at me funny because of him. I can"t stand it anymore!"
*
"Listen, a couple of times you"ve hinted that he"s coming on to men. Is he gay? Has he said something, or have you talked about it?"
*
"What do I know? He never tells me anything. He just answers questions with incomprehensible gibberish. One of my co-workers told me he had hitched a ride with her husband and tried to seduce him. Nice to hear, right? Daniel won"t listen to me, won"t talk about this. He got mad when I brought it up. For all I know, or care, he could be gay himself. I don"t know him anymore."
*
*
*
Part Two: JUMPING FROG
* * The boy has fresh bandages. The new smell is immersive and soothing. He peeps at her over the gauze and finds she is still white, soft and light. "I have concluded that we may talk, regardless of what I said before."
*
"Great. What made you decide in my favor?"
He buries his nose in the bandages, furrows come and go across his forehead. His acne seems less angry this morning. "There"s this red and shattered thing in a trap, but it ought to escape. And I do believe you would not define it back into its confinement."
She smiles at him, her eyes ask for more. He has to fight off the black and serrated shapes that threaten to creep up and destroy the roundness and softness inside him. Her voice comes to him like pink rain on his head. "There is something you want to tell me, right? Something you want me to know?"
He manages to keep the nice and soft flow in his mind. "Well, yes, of course. But could you please ask questions, because it"s like ... too large, I can"t really find where to start, the end sort of merges with the beginning. I"ll try to answer sensibly. Like people."
She scrutinizes him. Finds he can meet her gaze unflinchingly, no quick finger movements. "Are you on medication today?"
He gives her a sudden smile, his face changes from pupa to butterfly, and the unexpected beauty of him blows her mind. She feels like she has got a jewel in her hand. He shakes his head. No medication. Just pure David. She hopes she will be able to tread carefully enough. She rests her chin on both hands. "I do have a lot of questions. There"s quite a lot I want to know. Could we start with the things missing from your room? Please hold on to the feeling that I"m not here to define you or judge you, I just like to know this: Why the vegetables?"
She can tell that he"s on the verge of disappearing into his world of images, but to her surprise he succeeds in keeping eye contact, even a small smile. "Practice. To be the best."
She gets almost the complete picture. Her hand moves from her lips to her lap as she asks: "Upstairs or downstairs?"
*
"Upstairs. Why the euphemism? I am going to be the best deep throat cocksucker ever. To save me from more of that boiling red and orange and barbed wire. And no more black triangles. That"s logical. To me, at least."
*
"Think you could explain a bit further? Just to make sure I don"t get lost in your words now?"
He seems to drown himself in thought, his eyes start to flicker. She"s afraid this is it, she"ll lose him again. But then he places a finger to his lower lip, almost coquettishly, and imitates a woman"s voice: "Gee, it"s so small! And as hard as a nail!"
Normal voice again. "That"s not really what you need to hear."
He swallows a couple of times, then sniffs his bandages again. And suddenly words come tumbling out at the speed of light. "And there"s that huge black triangle and my face is pushed into it and it will devour me and drown me and the sewer rat behind me drives an exploding dynamite stick into me and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts! and I know I"m going to die! But I did not cry."
He breathes again. Then shouts: "I did not cry!"
Tears spray from his eyes. She sits dead quiet as a scenario of horrors acts out in her mind. She wants to throw up. She wants to embrace him and hold him. But she has to leave him to his crying. Suddenly he looks up, eyes wild and penetrating while his tears still flow. "It shouldn"t have been him! It shouldn"t have been him! And not her either! They smelled all wrong! Knives in my nose!"
She speaks as softly as she can. "You never told anybody of this, did you?"
*
"It was all notches and cuts and everything was chipped and full of stripes and scars and I just wanted everything to be whole and round and peaceful again. So I had to put it in the trap. It had to go away, don"t you see? Too much noise! Not enough of the good words!"
*
"You do understand that I have to ask you now who did this? And when it happened?"
He hides his eyes from her, sniffles a couple of times before digging his nose into the gauze on his hand again. She is in anguish, afraid he"ll shut her out once more, but she knows that if anything more is to come out of this, it has to be solely on his terms. He"s so far out on a wobbly tightrope now, a false move from her will tip him over. How strange, he thinks. He had steeled himself waiting for all the cruel colors and the evil, jagged edges to surround him with pain, but now they just lie there bobbing somewhere in the back. The wide open gap in the middle doesn"t feel bad or dangerous, just new and unused in a deep blue way. She doesn"t feel dangerous, she still feels like feathers and cotton. He gets up and moves towards her. He very hesitantly touches her hand with the fingertips of his bandaged hand. Returns to the blue chair, looks down at his hand almost in wonder. And oh my, what is happening? He can"t understand why he suddenly feels an urge to tell her about the one that had no name. He whispers to the wall: "He couldn"t help me. I had to let him go. And then there was no one left."
She despairs over losing him to his strange mind again. For a minute she had thought the small gesture, the light touch, had sealed a pact or opened a door between them. But now she is left on the outside once more. "David. Now you"ve skipped something I need to know to be able to understand what you"re saying. I"m sorry, but I am not a mind reader."
He is pulled back into the room, to the chair, to the desk, to the doctor. He has to fight the need to dismiss her, remove her, erase her, but he wants the feeling he had just now back. That remarkable, great, and empty blue gap. He actually wants her to understand, he needs her to see. "Thebe. The three hundred. You know? Complement each other, give all you have, do your utmost for love and to be loved. Erast?s and er?menos."
He inhales deeply, she sees how something dreamy in his eyes dies. "Mom never liked me. Dad slipped away. I needed someone to be with. So, he came. And he stayed. And he helped me be good, so he could be proud of me. He held me at night when the noises got all red and prickly. Played word games with me. Did jigsaw puzzles with me. Strange that he never had a name, he was just there. No smell, no shape, no color, he was just him, see?"
There is hurt in his voice, but also dreams and hope. "I may be weird, but I"m not stupid, you know. I"ve read a lot about this, and I"m fully aware that you shortsighted grownup people would just dismiss him as an imaginary playmate, and devalue him, and label him undesirable. Nevertheless. Neverthefuckingless, to me he was almost more real than I was myself. But then, he couldn"t help me anymore, so he just faded. Died. After ... you know. What I told you. And there was no longer any reason for me to excel at school or behave well or anything. He was my Theban soldier, my friend. Without him there was no motivation, no one to show off to. But then I had to fill up the ugly void and the darkness he left behind, so I made up other persons that I myself could become, persons that could not be hurt, persons I could pretend to be to take away the suction and the shards of glass and the whole fucking orange stream that was suffocating me. Did I explain something right this time? Because I don"t feel like David anymore. I feel like a very angular textbook with purple covers."
She has been listening to his tirade, immobilized, spellbound. How, she thinks, how can a boy this intelligent and articulate be so incredibly screwed up in so many other ways? Like a boat with no keel, no helm? "These ... um, roles you play, or these personalities you put on, where do you think they"ll take you? I mean, I sense there"s more to it than just replacing an imaginary friend, am I right?"
The little movements in his face tell her that he is in the throws some sort of logical sequence in his head. She wonders what the outcome will be, if there is to be one, that is. He finally lifts his nose from his bandages. "I need to solve an equation with three unknowns."
He is teasing her, she is sure of it. Tries to find her limits of tolerance, wants to check out the amount of vagueness she will accept. She wants to get back at him. Wants to find how much goodwill there is in him, but it"s tricky. "Don"t push it, David. You are fobbing me off with a problem instead of an answer."
He looks blankly at her, and full of discomfort dives nose first back into his gauzy hand. "But I did answer your question. What more do you want?"
She curbs her impatience. It will not serve any of them to get annoyed. "Then I"ll try another angle. I don"t believe in your three unknowns. I think you know exactly what digits go into your equation."
Now he looks stubborn. He"s closing shop, she thinks, very soon now. He grips his skinny thighs, as if he is trying to lift himself out of the chair. "Okay, okay! X is looking for something, Y is escaping something, Z is revenging something. Helpful? My time is up. I want to go."
He rises, trips over his shoelaces and stumbles out the door, face flushed. She sits back. Sighs, dreading what she has to do. * * * She spots him in the far corner of the recreation room in the ward, crawled up in an armchair that he has turned back to front, so that he faces the wall. She closes in on him, seeing how he has buried himself in a book. She positions herself so that he can see her, but not directly in front of him. She is giving him the opportunity of not having to look at her. "What are you reading?"
He does not look up, simply holds the book out in front of her. Krandall Kraus, Bardo. She has never heard of the author, but somewhere at the back of her head the title rings a bell. "Bardo ... That"s something to do with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, right?"
There is no answer. The boy just holds the book to his chest, closes his eyes and breathes slowly and loudly in and out. He then leans his head against the back of the chair, eyes still shut. "What do you want? Do I have an appointment?"
*
"No. No, I just thought I"d see you. Talk to you. About some things you might think over until our session tomorrow."
All of a sudden, she feels a fool. What she has to say could very well keep until tomorrow. What is it with this boy that occupies her brain so much? She needs to sort out her priorities. Oh well, here goes: "I"ve spoken to your mother. About our last talk. About the abuse. Technically I may have violated the principles of confidentiality, but you know, the circumstances require action of some kind. I"m sorry if you should feel I"ve broken some sort of unspoken promise between us, but David, if what you told me is the truth, then we"re dealing with a crime. And if nothing is done, those people could go on hurting others. Hurting kids."
There is no way for him to stem the cataclysm of stinking memories of shrieking colors and piercing blades, and on top of it all, the flickering image of his mother is thrown into the mix. He tries as hard as he can to put a blanket of warm skin and yellow smells of aftershave on top, but the blanket is too flimsy, it slips off. He gets desperate, that awful red feeling is turning black, it is going to swallow him, he must find something, someone, to drown out the riot in his head. His book hits the floor along with the empty water bottle as he throws himself against Inger Miller, gropes for her hand, finds it and clutches it like a nutcracker, breathing his words: "Take it away! Please, take it away!"
She is bewildered. Is this for real, or is it theater? Is this David or someone from his gallery of characters? She slides her hand down to his wrist, notices his pulse, it is hard and fast. There are beads of sweat on his forehead, he smells like fear. What do I do now? she thinks. Do I call for the nurse? Somehow, he manages to find the words he can use, he repeats them in his mind: I"m the one giving, no one is taking. I"m the one giving ... The thunder in his ears gradually passes, he can push those grassy green words over all the burning reds and blacks. He finally lets go of her hand. Sits down on the floor. "It"s about a man dying. His last nanoseconds. Bardo. The book."
She feels slightly dizzy, searches for a meaning in what just happened. Her voice comes out soft and a bit shaky. "What was that all about? Are you okay now?"
He nods and dries his face with his shirtsleeve. "What did my mom say?"
She cocks her head, watches him carefully. "Yeah, well. What did your mom say? She wouldn"t believe it. She dismissed the whole thing as some fanciful story, like those characters you"ve invented for yourself. In the end she modified herself a bit, but still wouldn"t accept it fully. Said it had to be a massive exaggeration, said she would have known if it was as bad as I pictured it."
He refuses to look at her. Turns his head and talks to the wall. "And you"re wondering why I haven"t told her?"
*
"How do you feel about her not believing you?"
*
"No me importa. That"s her, that"s how she is. She"s not a carbon-based organism. You hand her in, you get the deposit back."
Wow, she thinks, slightly put out. How can anyone say stuff like that about his mother? "That"s rather a harsh thing to say. What exactly has happened between you and your mother?"
*
"Nothing. Nothing has happened. It"s like ... She watches me, and I can feel her dissatisfaction. She wants me to be something I"m not. As if the purpose of childhood is for it to pass. That her job is to wait for me to grow up and get out of her hair. But that"s not how it should be, is it? The purpose of a child is to be a child. In the moment. Not to become something else."
She shakes her head, slowly, reflectively. "You amaze me. I"ve never come across anyone as young as you who was able to think, or formulate his thoughts, the way you do. Is it all those izmit otele gelen escort books you"ve read that seep through? Your father told me you even read Italian."
He squints at her, actually giggles a bit. His head is calm under the green lid now. "Pfft. That"s bullshit, I don"t know Italian. I"m not really that good at Spanish either. I just like the beautiful colors of the words. I"ve got one book in Italian. And it"s a children"s book. And by the way, the words sort of fade in beauty when you start to get what they mean. And furthermore ..."
His nose wrinkles, he lifts his arm, inhales and sneezes twice into his sleeve. "Furthermore ... Furthermore ..."
*
* * David has left his ward and is wandering in and out of the downstairs shop, looking, assessing, not really wanting to buy anything. He needs to fill his eyes and his head with neutral matter; there"s an ongoing quarrel between two of the patients up at the ward. Not loud, no shouting and hurling stuff at walls or each other, just a lot of snide remarks and sidelong glances, but the overt antagonism disturbs his thoughts and brings on bad colors that he gets tired of fending off. His left hand is in his pocket, he is mindlessly toying with his penis, preoccupied and oblivious to the eyes that are watching him doing this. Suddenly he is aware of movement close behind him. A voice, still in the breaking stages, penetrates into his consciousness. "Feels good, right?"
He turns around, looks down into the face of a short, skinny boy, 12, maybe 13, with enormous, serious looking dark eyes, eyes that are starting to play havoc with his brain. The boy seems to be dressed for a funeral. He has to look away to strangle the riot of colors that is cascading through him. He is about to lose himself to the rush, unable to decide whether this is pleasure or pain, incapable of harnessing the sudden and terrifying flow of feelings. The boy whispers, but to him it sounds like thunder: "Can I see it? Please?"
He is totally unprepared for this, but his wild brain reacts in an unfamiliar way: Out of the chaos something warm and beautiful emerges, the dangerous threats of bad colors disappear, and his head is filled with lovely, growing circles of soft and watery shades of blue. I want this, his brain sings. I want this incongruous boy in his little black suit and tie, I want to see his cock, I want him to see mine and tell me it"s not so little. Prove her wrong. Shut her up. His erection strains against the confinement of his jeans, almost painful, almost unbearable. He follows the strange boy into the men"s room, into a cubicle. With no hesitation, the boy unzips and pulls out his slim, longish, slightly curved hard cock. The boy"s lips part as he looks hopefully into David"s face, then down to his crotch. The serene blue river in his head explodes in a rainbow that fills him completely. He trembles with want and fear, he fumbles with his fly using his good hand, but the buttons are stubborn. The boy whispers urgently: "Come on! I"ll help you."
He clenches his teeth as impatient fingers open and part his jeans, grab and grope to pull his rock-hard cock into the open, but he cannot help himself. He shoots into his boxers before the boy can get it out. His whole body convulses violently, his brain is torn with embarrassment, with conflicting joys and regrets: Oh God, this was intense! Oh fuck, why couldn"t I hold it back? The boy pulls his sticky, still-hard cock out anyway, holds it and looks at it keenly, like a scientist, then lets it go. Still staring at it, the boy jerks himself off quickly, professionally, shoots into the toilet and licks his hand clean, all in a few seconds, zips up and leaves. He feels exhausted, leans his forehead against the cubicle wall. He curses his crazy brain. Why can"t I control all these disturbances? Why do I always get lost in my own useless shit? And as the ugly red and lethal black shards of broken glass and steel gush into his unprotected mind, his last sensible thought is a nagging accusation that he forgot to compare their cocks, now there is no way to kill off his angst that his dick is too small. He tries hard to bring back some detailed memory of the boy"s penis, but the size eludes him. All that is left, is the numbing sense of failure. * * * The sky is already dark when the man enters the clinic. He strides more than walks into the reception area, only to be met with ill will and rejection. He counterattacks in a voice, although never raised, so intense and deep you need a bathyscaphe to get to the bottom of it. "I"m seeing him now! I don"t give a flying fuck about your rules, and if I don"t get to see him now, I"ll create one hell of a racket here and go on doing it until you need the cops to get rid of me and then I"ll sue this whole fucking place for every fucking drop of blood in here. I"m his father, for fucks sake! Okay, so at least get hold of someone from his ward that I can talk to. Now."
There is a gravity and an urgency in him that overshadow his threats. He is finally met by someone who recognizes his need, sees him and hears him. Takes him into the labyrinth that leads to the ward. "He"s in bed. He had one of his black moments and went to bed right after dinner. We"ve left him alone. Come on. In here."
The boy is on his back, the covers pulled all the way up to his chin. He sees his father enter, but he does not move a finger. His fearful eyes are wide open. There is a war of colors in his head, he is afraid of having to give in to one of the sides. There are no magic words to help him. His father walks over, sits down on the bed and grips the boy"s naked shoulders, hoists him up and envelops him in a smothering embrace. The boy is stiff as a board. His father rocks him slowly from side to side, his voice just a whisper in the boy"s ear. "David ... David ... David ... I"m so sorry. I had no idea. I didn"t understand at all. I wasn"t there. God, I"m so sorry."
The boy still seems frozen. A series of shudders run through his body. He is mumbling against his father"s neck: "I"m so fucked ..."
*
"No, you"re not. You"re my David, is what you are."
His father continues the rocking until much later the boy melts and turns into rubber in his arms and bathes his suit with soundless tears. Asleep now, he carefully puts the boy down again, and notices an empty water bottle halfway out from under the pillow. It is the brand he brought with him and drank from the first time he visited here, a brand they do not sell in the hospital store. His face as he gets up off the bed shows some kind of struggle. A struggle to find and to digest something he needs to understand. * * * Inger Miller puts her notes aside. "I"ve pondered a bit where we should go now, you and I, and I think I would like to go back to where we left off the last time we were in here. Is that okay with you?"
The boy drops his bandaged hand from his nose to his lap. Lifts his shoulders before he nods at her with a tiny twitch at the side of his mouth. She notices that there is a bulge in his shirt, just above his belt. Looks like he has put his enigmatic water bottle in there. "So, let"s go back to your equation and start with the X. Do you have an idea as to what you"re looking for? Or rather, what are you hoping to find?"
*
"I don"t know. Lots of stuff. Sometimes I think I"m looking for the perfect penis. And then I think I"m looking for Jesus. Or maybe The Sacred Band. If you want something really abgedroschen to solve the riddle, I"m sure you could put it down to looking for my dad."
She stores his statements for later reflection. "What about the Y? Why the escape?"
*
"Even you should get that one. Who the fuck wants to be me? I"m sure I don"t!"
She laughs. "Even I? Do you find me that dense?"
He blushes. Smells his hand again. He is really having a good time, no bad colors or frightening shapes in his head. Everything light and easy and all the edges nicely rounded. "No, actually I don"t. In fact, even though I don"t want to, I may be starting to like you."
*
"And that would be a bad thing?"
*
"No ... but yes, because you are like a tourist who gets to peep into dangerous places without having to move in. You are like a crew of renovators, and I don"t want to be tidied up just to have them leave when they"re done. I don"t know what"s happened to my tongue, why these words come out. I"m not sure they mean anything. Why are you doing this?"
*
"I"m not forcing you, you know. What I hope I"m doing, is allowing you to be you."
She releases a small laugh from her mouth. It"s like a string of tiny bells, the sound rolls down a green slope in his mind and tickles something deep down in him. He anticipates her next question. "The revenge. The retaliation. That"s the tricky bit. Because I thought I had it right, but I"m not so sure anymore."
He closes his lips tight, stares at the door. She wonders if he is about to bolt for it. Her voice sounds a bit hurried. "Don"t stop. I"m listening."
*
"Well, I want the revenge bit to gel with the search and the escape, and I can"t make it do that, but it"s like I can"t let it go either. But I don"t think you can possibly understand this. It"s still such an orange and bristling picture. Splayed. Like it stutters."
*
"I"m still listening."
*
"You know, the cock sucking part, the whole wanting to be the ace of the game, I think it may be based on a faulty analysis, but at the same time it"s utterly true and pure. I need to be the best, I need to drive them crazy with my skills, bring them to the edge and make them see God, because then I can laugh and leave them high and dry, or I may possibly just bite as hard as I can. Return the reds and blacks. The knives and the barbed wire. Seemed logical, still seems logical. But I just can"t control my gag reflexes. The practice always ends with a little vomit in my mouth. And I"m not even sure they would be the right people, although that didn"t worry me at all when I made my plans. I don"t even know why I care if you understand this or not."
She sucks on her pen, wondering whether to comment on this or see if he wants to go on. But he has quieted down, looking strained and forbidding. "I can understand your need to take your power back, David. To be in charge again. But I also see your method hasn"t really succeeded, has it now? Have you ever managed to go through with any of this out there along your escape routes?"
He looks right at her, dejected, irritated. "This is just messy and twisted! You can"t possibly know if anything I say is the truth. Even I don"t know! Maybe I want something completely different!"
He places two fingers on his upper lip, salutes Nazi-like, and puts on a growly, militant voice. ?Alles im allem, du bist ein dummes kind.?
*
"You are a lot of things, David. Stupid is not one of them, though."
He falls back in his chair as she continues to fiddle with her pen. "I also understand why you"ve been unable to speak to your mother about these things. But what about your father? I think he would listen to you."
He cuts through. Raises his hands like protection. "No! No! He disappeared! He changed his smell!"
He sinks and he sinks, almost drowning in a roaring black river over killingly sharp stones. He shouts in his head above the din: It should have been yellow! It should have been warm and soft! It should have been him! They stole what belonged to him! Now I"m damaged goods, and he will never, ever want me! Deep within his chaos he senses that she is staring at him in a very disturbing way. Suddenly he realizes that he must have said out loud what went through his head. Panic colors his whole brain with indescribably harsh and cruel orange and he is drawn deeper and deeper into a helix until his head explodes. She calls for a nurse. He is taken back to the ward, like he is deaf and blind, and she is left alone in her office with a new clarity. Well, well, she thinks. So that"s what"s at the bottom of this. * * * She avoids shaking hands with the man, just speaks his last name, and gives him a professional nod. "I was expecting both of you today."
The man sits down in the blue chair, she does not feel the same titillation today, maybe because he seems calmer, less tense, almost peaceful. "Is that so? Well, she"s away. She"s not coming."
Something in his voice. Something new and unusual with his whole being. Resignation? Relief? Her eyebrows ask the question. He wrinkles his nose, the shadow of an acid smile sweeps over his lips. "Yeah, yeah. It"s permanent."
He is close enough for her to notice an unfamiliar smell from him. How funny, she thinks, I can really relate to David"s perception of yellow. She has to know, even though it is highly unprofessional. "Excuse me for asking, but are you by any chance wearing a cologne from ... well, the old days?"
The man closes his eyes and raises his eyebrows, a small chuckle emerges from his throat. "I"m in the process of doing up his room. I found this half empty bottle at the back of his closet, I guess most of the content"s evaporated. The brand hasn"t been on the market for ages."
He gets up, picks up a brochure from the corner table, pushes the blue chair closer to her desk. He tears off a page, tears it into a square, then sits down in front of her. "I"ve asked what he wants done with all his things that were damaged. Books, clothes, you know. The stink lingers. He doesn"t want me to throw any of it out. Not even the stuff that was ruined by the powder. Now, that"s impossible."
He talks while his fingers fold, then unfold, then refold the piece of paper. "He"s been here for almost four weeks now. I want him back home. I"ve changed my whole work schedule, there will be no travelling for the next months. There is so much that needs fixing, and I"m not just talking about his room. I have to try, anyway."
I have to tell him, she ponders, if he doesn"t already know. He has to relate to it one way or the other. "You know David has a lot of conflicting feelings, and he is very vulnerable right now. There"s also the fact that he"s in love with you. I mean, really in love. That doesn"t make him less vulnerable."
He places a small paper figure in front of her. "I taught him how to make paper frogs like this when he was five. You can make them jump, did you know that? We used to compete for the highest or the longest jump. You just push down here."
He indicates the point where you push. She folds her arms in frustration, leans back. "Have you been at all listening to me?"
He looks up at her. A tense and worried smile curls the sides of his mouth, his eyes are moist. He presses his index finger sharply down at the back end of the paper frog. The frog bounces into a perfect somersault and lands in front of her. * (To be continued.) *
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My other stories on Nifty:
"My Blood sings in Bendik" fty//gay/incest/my-blood-sings-in-bendik/
"The Sound of his Footsteps" fty//gay/adult-youth/the-sound-of-his-footsteps/
"The Tower and the Maze" fty//gay/adult-youth/the-tower-and-the-maze.html