Gang of Five

by Douglas

Chapter 14

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And that’s how things started getting weird, between me and Zach.

Well -- it’s how I started getting weird AROUND Zach; that might be a better way of putting it.  Except, some of it was his fault, too.

I got confused.

It wasn’t Zach fucking me, that got me confused; not really.  I mean, that part was great, fantastic, life-changing; life-affirming, even.  So, so wonderful . . . .

But Zach’s fucking of me -- it opened up all sorts of feelings.  Memories; emotions, lots of them, so many memories of Zach and me together as kids, all the things we’d shared, the love, the losses, the closeness --

And then, the memories my early times in the UK, when Zach was kind of an icon I held on to, in the middle of a strange country and strange people; I think -- even while I was talking to him, in emails -- I USED Zach, as an emotional life preserver, as a crutch.  My memories of Zach; my -- well, yeah, my idolization of Zach. 

I’d always looked up to him, even as a little kid; that’s just what people do, with Zach.  And it was easier still, from thousands of miles away.

I loved all of them, of course; Liam and Tim and Jarod, and I missed them all, I really, really did, while I was away --

But not as much as Zach.  Not nearly.

And I hadn’t ever, quite, totally, admitted that to myself.

“Christian?  Zachary’s here . . . ” my mum’s voice came floating up the stairs, and I heard the smile in it.  He’d always been embarrassed by his full name.

“Coming!”

I grabbed my backpack and headed down the stairs, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk, skipping the tread that squeaked; like I always used to do, three years ago.  Old habits.

And there at the bottom of the stairs was Zach, again, and I felt my face burning hot, hot, hot, and I couldn’t exactly look him in the eyes, just mumbled something like “Hey,” and then we were out the door, headed down -- all the way down -- the hill, and along the road, to Zach’s high school, and the pool, to informal swim practice.

*

After a time, in London, Philippe had come along; and he was perfect.  Darker than Zach, almost the same build, almost (but not quite) as beautiful --

And straight.  And that made him -- safe.

I even knew it, at the time.  Even while I was trying not to look at him too much, while memorizing his face -- even while my stomach was doing flip-flops whenever he sat next to me in the library, or made a joke to me in his accented English -- somehow, I think I knew, it was okay to agonize over him, because he was SAFE.  Unattainable.  Perfect.  Sans peur and sans reproche.  No possibility of anything every happening, between us.

And this storm of new feelings inside me was overwhelming, whenever I looked at him, regardless.  It coloured my whole time, in London; made my whole time there -- what it was.  What it turned into. 

And here I was, now, trudging down the hill, next to Zach.  And my stomach was doing the same kinds of flip-flops; and I was just as afraid to look at him directly.

No; it was worse.

*

“Those DVDs you brought over Monday night were really cool,” went Zach, after a long silence.  “Especially ‘Blake’s 7’; I’d really like to see the next episode.”

“Thanks.”

Zach had dug out his old desktop system, with the big monitor; I’d brought over some of my UK DVDs, and we’d played them on it.  Zach didn’t mind switching the DVD drive to European encoding.

Trudge, trudge.  The early August sunlight beamed through the dust we kicked up with our feet.

“Maybe,” said Zach, kind of neutrally, “you could bring it by tonight?   The next episode, I mean.  If you want.”  Pause, as I was starting to open my mouth.  “Tim and Jarod are coming by.  After their run.”

He said it -- casually.  Not looking at me.  Like it really didn’t matter.  But it was so clear -- it did matter.

“That would be great.”

Two and a half weeks, since Zach fucked me on the beach.  And we’d come to this.

*

Like I said -- I got really, really confused, about Zach.  About this new way I was feeling, about him.  My best friend; my more-than-brother.  Well, once upon a time, more-than-brother.

I wondered over and over if I was getting -- weird.  I mean, on one hand, it was glorious; it was like I’d woken up, after years, and was really SEEING Zach, for the first time.  My new feelings kind of combined with my old feelings --

And on the other hand, I wondered if I was being a freak.

And on the third hand -- it was impossible, totally, utterly impossible, that Zach could feel even remotely the same way, about me.

I could never, ever, let him know.

I was so, so fucked.  And not in the good way.  Not in the way I really, really -- desperately -- wanted.

*

It wasn’t something I could talk about with Tim, or Jarod, or Liam, exactly.  Or at all.

We were still getting together; still getting really sexual --

Well.  Except for Liam.  Sort of.

About a week after Zach fucked me -- Liam finally, finally got into Candace.  As in; real sex.  Coupled with real love.

Jarod made a kind of snarky comment, later, about us being lucky we were outside the blast radius when it happened.  But he meant it in good fun.

He meant it in love, actually.  We all love each other; honestly, and sincerely.  In different ways, maybe.

Anyway.  For Liam -- it was a completely life-changing event.  Shattering, really.  Kind of like Zach’s fucking me.  I guess.  But the result is -- it’s not quite the same, between Liam and the rest of us, anymore.

He still comes around; he still gets naked with us, he still has sex with us --

But only sort of.  He sort of helps US have sex; he helps get us off.  And he still has orgasms with us, sometimes.

But -- without penetration.

As in -- we don’t penetrate him; and he doesn’t penetrate any of us.

We haven’t even talked about it. 

We -- the five of us -- have always been a closed group, since there WERE five of us, anyway.  We all started as eleven- or twelve-year-old virgins; it’s why we never worried about condoms, or diseases, or anything.

And maybe it’s part of how, and why, we got so, so close.  When having sex is almost like putting your life in somebody else’s hands -- it kind of defines the word, trust.

So maybe, when Liam pulled back like that, did what he did -- maybe he was doing it to protect us.  Or maybe he was doing it to protect Candace.  Or maybe, both of us.

Or maybe he was doing it, because he wanted to save that INTIMACY for when he was with Candace.  I don’t know.

Still; just with his hands, and his talent, and his sheer sex drive, and his love -- he helped us all get off, whenever he did come over.  With, well, a lot of enthusiasm.

Maybe -- between all five of us -- Liam’s got the most difficult situation, of all.  Definitely the most difficult ethical situation.  But he lives up to it.  And I love him for it.

But.  My point was -- I didn’t really have anyone to talk to, about Zach.     

I didn’t even talk that much WITH Zach, the last two and a half weeks.  Not the way I wanted to.  Not the way we used to.

Oh, sure; we still hung out, together.  At his house, some days; at my house, a little.  He was taking a summer science program at the local junior college -- a program for fast-track high school science students, naturally -- and he didn’t have that many free days, anyway.

Zach did get me to swim with him, in his school’s (MY new school’s) pool; it’s regulation size, and it was a huge relief to get back to swimming laps, doing sprints, trying to build back up to where I was when I left the UK. 

Not that I was as fast, or strong, as Zach.  I doubted I ever would be.  But I wasn’t bad; and I was getting better.

But.

Wherever we were -- his house, my house, the pool, Starbucks down the road from us -- it wasn’t the same. 

Because I was weirded out, and I’d pulled back, a lot.  And Zach -- well.  Zach had put up a kind of wall.  To me, anyway.  The same kind of wall I’d seen that first weekend, a few times.  When we did talk -- it wasn’t about important things.  Not our feelings, not our plans, nothing at all even -- intimate.  I don’t even mean, intimate about us; just, nothing really substantial.

I thought at the time, maybe it was just part of the new Zach; there was a lot I didn’t really know about him, anymore.  Three years is a long time.

And here’s the really, really weird part.  We were still doing sexual things; with each other.  Of course.

But usually, only, when Jarod or Tim or Liam or all three of them were around, too.  Never just the two of us, alone, since that day on the beach; not once.  We didn’t talk about it; it just happened, like Liam pulling back.

And he didn’t fuck me again.  And I didn’t fuck him.  WAY too dangerous; to me.

Can you get more pathetic, more weird, than that?  Here I was, getting fluttery and melting and heart-speeding-up whenever I even SAW Zach; I’d get all weird, waiting for him to call my cell, HOPING he would call me, and I’d jump a foot whenever my cell did go off -- my family even noticed -- and still I didn’t say anything. 

We were even having SEX; and still not saying anything.  Anything important.

So I tried to control myself, and not be weird around Zach, and just gave in to my feelings in little ways -- like, when we’d spend a night at Zach’s house, I’d be really, really careful to be touching him, as we arranged ourselves to go to sleep; and sometimes, at night, I’d kind of lie awake and watch him as he slept, my arm around his chest or something, and whenever I could, I’d kiss him, like, on the back of his neck, just lightly, but with all the feelings I didn’t want to show . . . .

Yeah.  Pathetic.

All I can say now, is -- I’ve learned.  And if you’ve never made mistakes like that, if you’ve never been a pitiful wreck over another person -- you haven’t been in love.

*

It turned out, there was one person who could sort of understand what I was going through.

I’d been spending more time emailing my friends Robert and Jose in London.  Not about Zach, of course; not even anything close.  But about almost everything else in my life; the separate weirdness, of coming back to California from the UK, and all the differences, and frustrations, and things I missed, and how much I was not looking forward to starting a new school; and future plans, and -- well, everything.

And surprisingly, I felt like I was getting closer to both of them; it was the only good thing to happen to me, during this whole stretch.  I think, maybe, at least sometimes -- having a little distance, from your close friends, makes it easier to be more honest, with your feelings.  Especially when you’re doing it mostly by email.  At least it did, for us.

And it turned out -- Robert was going through a rough patch, too.  Rougher than mine, probably.

*******************************************

. . . . well, it’s been confirmed.  The F.O. told my father he’s to be posted overseas by the end of November.

The family feeling seems to be that, rather than uprooting me and getting me into a school in Peshawar or Nairobi or wherever, I should stay here and prepare for university.  I suppose that makes sense.

But as a result, there seem to be two options.  Either my mother stays here too, which might after all be better depending on where my father is posted, or I’m to be parked at a boarding school of some sort.  A Public School.  Possibly even an Old School Tie Public School.

You can imagine my enthusiasm.

What do I do now, C, about E. M.?  I suppose it was idiotic to even think about asking her out to begin with.  But I was all prepared to at least try to talk to her, once term started.  What do I do now, introduce myself by saying goodbye?

If I do have to leave, I’ll never see her again.

Gloom.

-Roberto

*******************************************

‘E.M.’ was Elizabeth Marshall, a girl in our class -- and an American, from Atlanta, actually.  With a story like mine; her family was in the UK temporarily.

I felt terrible for Robert.

Not least because -- well.

The thing is -- I really, really like Robert -- (I always called him ‘Roberto’, and called Jose ‘Joseph’; I claimed I couldn’t remember which one was from Chile, and which one was from Kent) -- but.  He’s not the most attractive boy in London, exactly; he has longish, black hair which sort of hangs down the sides of his face, and black frame glasses, and an okay face, I guess --

He’s my friend.  And it’s who he IS that makes him attractive, not his body or face.  Which really aren’t that bad.  It’s his cynicism and wit and his quirks and his personality that make him attractive.  (Well, except for his eating habits.)

The thing is -- Elizabeth Marshall -- well.  She’s not exactly beautiful, either; not like some of the girls in our school, like Ilse from Sweden . . . . 

But she’s really smart, and really NICE, and she has a kind of cute, animated, intelligent face --

They would make a good couple.  A REALLY good couple, and as I’d found out from his emails, Robert was almost as hopelessly in love with her as Liam was with Candace . . .

I could only imagine how I’d feel, if I could never see Zach again.

So I wrote back.

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 . . . well, you can look at it this way; you have absolutely nothing to lose by talking to her.  And by asking her out.  I absolutely think you should.

After all, you don’t know right now what’s going to happen; your mum might stay here with you, and you’d finish the whole year with E.M.  And even if you do have to go into a boarding school, you never really know what will happen in the future.  You might end up at university together, after all; it’s not impossible.  People have a tendency to meet up again; look at me and all of my old friends, from three years ago.

And either way, you will have tried.

You should just go up and talk to her, Roberto.

I wish I could help.  If I were still there, I could just approach her, start the whole Americans-overseas-bonding-together thing, and then include you in the conversation, and the rest would be easy. 

(Maybe Jose could still do something like that?  They’re both still Americans overseas, just different hemispheres.  You could ask him, anyway?)

*******************************************

And after I wrote that, and before I pressed Send -- I stopped.

And I thought; and I agonized, for awhile.  But in the end, I just had to do it.  I needed to talk about it, with someone.

So I added a very, very carefully constructed version of what was going on -- what was going wrong -- between me and Zach. 

Without names; without anything about sex, of course; and -- without gender-specific pronouns. 

Oh, it was a masterpiece; if I do say so myself.  I didn’t make it obvious, with constructions like “that person” or “they”; it was much more indirect that that.  Much less obvious.  But I did, finally, manage to get out the bones of the story, and so tell another human being something of what I was going through, something about the misery I was feeling. 

Partly to make myself feel better; but also to make Robert feel better.  Less alone, anyway.

And the weird thing is -- I knew perfectly well, I wasn’t going to fool Robert, by avoiding “he” and “him”.  It was just a way of -- well, not forcing the issue.  Not right then.

You see -- while I never came out to anybody in my life, before that day on the hillside a few weeks ago -- I never pretended to be straight, in London, either.  I never ogled girls; I didn’t have pretend-crushes, I never talked about being attracted to girls --

I guess you could call it self-respect.

The closest I ever came to subject with Robert and Jose happened when I mentioned once that I thought Emma Watson, the girl who plays ‘Hermione’ in the Harry Potter movies, was too pretty for the character.  There was a long silence; then Robert sort of tactfully changed the subject.

It must have been the way I said it.  Or maybe the choice of words; ‘pretty’, and not ‘hot’, or ‘brilliant’.

Like I said.  I never pretended.

Robert’s reply came the next day.

When he got around to what I’d said about the me-and-Zach situation, at first he used the same kind of cautious, gender-neutral wording I’d used, but then --

*******************************************

. . . oh, sod this, it’s getting too confusing.  Like one of those horrible creative writing assignments; ‘Compose a letter to a friend on an intimate subject in which the use of pronouns is restricted to ‘I’ and ‘you’.’

Tell him how you feel, C.  For exactly the same reasons I should go up to E.M.  (Well, I won’t tell her how I feel, of course; but I’ll talk to her, and I’ll show her how I feel.  Over time; if I have the time.)

I assume this is one of your old friends?  Probably it’s Zach.  I think I know how close you were, before you moved here.  I think you were half in love with him, even then.

Tell him, C.  You don’t know how he feels about you, after all.  And in the larger sense, you’re absolutely right, what you said to me before, you never know what other people think until you ask them.  Simply ask them.  I wish, so much, I’d talked to E.M. last term.  I wasted so much time, and now I don’t know if I have much of a chance left.  So talk to him, and tell me what happens?

I do wish you were still here, to help me get to know E.M. the way you said; that would be fantastic.  And no, I think Jose would be completely useless for anything like that.  Can you honestly imagine him trying?

Besides, I miss all of your neuroses, and your dad’s cooking.

If I have the gender of your friend wrong, by the way, no offense intended.

If I have the gender right, no worries.  You and Jose are my best friends in the world.

Cheers

-Roberto

*******************************************

And just reading that email, with all its generosity, and gallantry, and caring, and -- well, yeah, love, of a kind -- coupled with Robert’s pain, and the likelihood that anything between him and Elizabeth was doomed --

Well.  The screen seemed to get sort of watery, before my eyes, as they filled up.  And at the same time, I was hit with a really short, intense feeling of -- homesickness, I guess; for my old school, the Tube, Jose and Robert, just EVERYTHING there --

Whatever else happened -- I knew I was lucky.  In so, so many ways.

Robert’s email almost -- almost -- did it.  Almost changed things, for me.

It was my own advice to him, of course; thrown back at me.  But I KNEW I was right, about him and Elizabeth.

And, coming from Robert -- it sounded right, about me and Zach.  It FELT right.

But I didn’t do anything about it.  Not then.  I was still too scared.  Scared of losing Zach, even as a friend.  Forever.

The thing that changed -- not just me, but everything, for both of us -- was so, so simple; so minor, so basic.  Just a gesture . . .

*

It happened at the beach.

Another cool, foggy day; cool and breezy enough, we may have been the only ones there.  ‘Nude fog-bathing’, as Jarod put it, dryly; but it still felt good.

We were walking along the beach, right at the edge of the water, with foam from the waves just covering our feet, every once in awhile.

Tim and Jarod were walking together.  Zach was a little in front, on their other side; I was a little in back.

Yeah; that kind of sums up how it was, between us.

All of a sudden, Zach stopped.  “Hey -- look!”  He pointed.

There, in the gentle surf -- I swear, just a few yards away -- a brown, whiskery head was poking out of the water, watching us.  US!  A sea lion, I could tell.

And the thing is, he just kept watching; you could see the movements as he just tread water, looking at us so -- curiously?  I hoped it was just curiosity, anyway.

Tim had the same idea.  “Do you think he’s . . . . . . wondering, what the hell we’re doing on HIS beach?”, and he laughed.

“Maybe he’s just never seen naked humans before,” went Jarod, smiling.

Hmmmm.  Could actually be, I thought.

And then Jarod just casually -- just, like, unconsciously -- put his hand up on Tim’s shoulder; and left it there, as they laughed together, waved to the sea lion together, and basically just enjoyed the whole phenomenon.

Two smooth boys; one tan and dark, one milky pale and red.  So intimate . . . so together.

I wanted that.  I wanted that, with Zach.  So badly; so badly.

*

It changed me.  That one moment -- changed me.

I thought about it, a lot, that night; at home, alone.  I didn’t sleep real well.  As in -- at all.

Okay.

So, maybe I was -- weird.

Maybe I was a world-class freak, for feeling like this, for falling in love with my oldest and best friend.

And maybe the hardest part would be looking at him, watching his expression, as I told him.

I constructed the whole scene in my mind.  First he’d be -- confused, maybe.  Then embarrassed.  More for me, than himself; and trying, so hard, not to show it.  For my sake.

And then, because he’s compassionate, and caring, and, well, Zach -- he’d Talk to me.  Gently.  Letting me down.

But I was going to do it, anyway.  I finally decided, about four in the morning.

Partly -- I guess -- because, over the last few weeks, I wasn’t so confused about MYSELF, anymore.  I loved Zach; I really did, I admitted it to myself, now, and I didn’t really think it was bad or warped or creepy --

It was the single, biggest, most beautiful and noble thing I’d ever felt.  It was like my soul had just -- flowered, or something.  Germinated; matured.

It wasn’t like Philippe; it wasn’t pretend-love.  It was -- real.  I loved Zach.

And as much as I was going to hate that scene, when I told him -- as much as it was going to HURT, and risk creeping Zach out -- I had to tell him.

It was that moment, with Tim and Jarod.  Jarod’s hand on Tim’s shoulder.  The closeness.

Zach and me were so, so far apart, right then.  We’d been brothers; and I’d weirded us out, and we were farther apart than when I lived in England, and he lived here.

Maybe, after I talked to Zach, and we got over the hard part -- maybe, just maybe, we’d get some of that closeness back.  Some of it, anyway.  Maybe.

And way down deep inside me, a little, small voice was thinking, just maybe, over time -- knowing how I felt about him -- maybe he’d start feeling -- something -- back . . .

The walls of my old room were just beginning to glow red with the dawn, as I finally fell asleep.