Too Much Light For Shadows: Another Remembrance

by

Candy Apple

Bud has been dead for a long time now. Dead and buried and out of my life. Hell, even out of my memory for most of that time. I guess you could say he had a profound influence on me. He's still changing the course of my life even from six feet under. He was a mentor, a companion, a father figure, a role model...

The cop in me would call him a predator. The criminal justice system would call him a child molester.

It's funny how wolves really do come in sheep's clothing. Sometimes the disguise is so fucking good that you don't even realize it's a wolf until years later, when it sinks in what was really beneath all that deceptively soft, inviting wool. Being with Bud filled a void. He was in my dad's age group, he was a successful businessman too - but he made time for me. He played football with me and talked to me about believing in myself. He made me feel special. Singled out.

Today, a man who did that would be viewed with a great deal of suspicion. Strangely enough, I remember my dad asking some pointed questions about what exactly it was that Bud and I were doing when we got together back then - but I chalked it up to him being a control freak. Not wanting me to have any friends or to have a father figure who cared. I brushed off the questions, evaded them, or just plain lied.

At first all we did was throw a football around - it was real father-son stuff. The first time he took me somewhere in his car, I found out he had more in mind that just football. And nothing I knew about fathers and sons had anything to do with it. It's funny how when a kid doesn't get a lot of touching, any kind of touching fills a need. At least that's how I've tried to rationalize why I went along with it. Why I let him have what he wanted and did the things he asked me to do, even though I knew it was wrong. Why I still loved him, and why it took me years to remember the dimension of my relationship with Bud that was not all sunshine and light. I was lonely. I could point a finger at my father and say it was his fault, and maybe to a degree it was, but the fault lies with the man who did the deed. So as much as I wanted him to remain some shining idol - my hero - I have to lay the blame at Bud's feet, which turned out to be feet of clay after all.

I remembered the Country Club Strangler in all his gory, lurid splendor when his son picked up the gauntlet and started killing again. When he made it personal by leaving one of my childhood photos at the murder scene, pieces of my past started falling back into place. All the pieces except that one reasonably significant one. Even when I went back to my dad's place and we argued, and I was thinking of all the things he missed doing, all the slights and the hurts I blamed him for in my childhood, and I was holding Bud up as this shining paragon of companionship and fatherly love, I didn't remember. I didn't remember our prolonged trips for ice cream in Bud's '71 Caddy. Or how much I hated the sight of the inside of that goddamned black car.

I remembered Bud tossing me a football, telling me to believe in myself. Even my subconscious only let me have the good pieces of my times with Bud.

Then it all came crashing down around my ears in one simple gesture. Blair and I, sitting on the couch, talking about something stupid - what color cushions to buy for the patio furniture - yeah, that was it - and I happened to notice how nice his hair smelled, that he's letting his hair grow out long again, that he hadn't put anything much on it to settle it down, how much I like the way he looks with his glasses on and all that hair falling loose on his shoulders...

It wasn't his fault. He wasn't doing anything. He was just... being Blair. Which would be a bit tough for him to avoid. He looked good, he smelled good, and there was a sort of warmth radiating from his body being just a couple feet away, partway across a cushion, as he sat facing me and babbling on about blue versus green or a vine pattern or something. My big mistake was watching his mouth while he talked. Thinking about what those lips would feel like, taste like, and how all that hair would feel if I had both hands buried in it.

So I reached over, buried both hands in his hair, pulled him toward me and kissed him long and hard, with tongue. And he responded. Oh, boy, did he respond. In a heartbeat he was on me, hands roaming, mouth sucking on mine like crazy. We were lying back on the couch, kissing and groping and feeling each other up - and as soon as his hand went around my bulge, it called up another memory. It was all I could do not to hit him. Not to punch him out and beat the living shit out of him. But as soon as I pushed him away, and I really looked into the wounded blue eyes and that familiar face, I knew I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't stand to look at him either. I can't stand to look at myself, but then again, I can't send me away. I just have to avoid having eye contact with myself in the mirror.

I said something to him about making a mistake. I said something inane about him coming on to me - which he hadn't unless you consider there's something erotic about discussing patio furniture. He was angry, justifiably, on his feet and pacing, accusing me of being the one who stuck my tongue down his throat, and that if I were going to do an asshole thing like that and then leave him hanging, the least I could do was be man enough to own up to it and not try to make it his fault. I got really mad then, and I told him to get his sorry faggot ass out of my home and my life.

And just that easily, I could destroy my life. After a momentary flash of hurt, Blair disappeared into his bedroom. Twenty minutes later he came out with a suitcase and a travel bag and threw something over his shoulder about coming back to get the rest while I was at work. He closed the door behind him and I was alone. Really alone. More alone than I've been since the day I met him. Not alone because he was out for the evening, or at the U, but alone because he was gone and it was over. Whatever it was. Killed in its infancy by Carl "Bud" Haidash - mentor, companion, child molester.

I went out on the patio and sat there in the cold wind for a long time, some small part of my brain taking in the appearance of the furniture and agreeing with Blair that we should go with the vine pattern. The other part of my brain was struggling with a torrent of images, memories of feelings I didn't want to ever deal with again. Feelings that screwed up my sexuality for my entire adult life. Feelings that gave me a love-hate relationship with sex. Feelings of being controlled. Of having to give someone something so they wouldn't leave me.

I did what I did with Bud because I was afraid he wouldn't want to spend time with me anymore if I didn't. This is going to sound perversely self-centered, but as long as I initiate the sex in a relationship, I'm usually okay. If it's my idea to make love, I'm all for it. If it's my partner's idea, I can go along with it, but I don't enjoy it. If I'm not the aggressor, the initiator, I don't want any part of it. Carolyn found me to be self-centered, cold and unresponsive. And I was when it was her idea to have sex.

Using that theory, what happened between Blair and me should have gone along fine. It was my idea. But it was what he did. I came to that realization about the time rigor mortis set into my butt as I entered hour four of sitting on a patio chair, staring out at the night. It was the way Bud always started things. With that goddamned grope. So when Blair put his hand there, just that way, I lost it. The memories all flooded back, and I wanted to take him apart. Only it was Bud I wanted to attack, not Blair. Thank God I made that distinction.

I hurt him, though. I "took him apart" with my words. He was fighting hard against crying, and if he eventually did, he wasn't going to let me see him do it. Blair's eyes speak volumes all on their own. You can see into his soul, and you can see a soul-deep wound when you've inflicted one. At least I can. He was hurt and confused, but when I threw him out, he went. Maybe I didn't expect him to do that. Maybe I thought he'd fight me more or try to analyze what was wrong. Maybe that's what I wanted most. I needed him to fight me. I needed him to force me into telling him the dirtiest secret of my life. Blair's always there when I need him, but this time, it was just too convoluted for him to figure out, and he was gone.

I locked the patio door for the night and pulled down the shade. Lost in my own thoughts, I was actually startled when I heard the key in the lock, and a moment later, the door opened. Blair set his suitcase and his travel bag back inside and closed the door behind him. He stared at me for a long time, his red-rimmed eyes searching my face for some answer. It was as if he didn't know exactly what was the right move, but somehow, he knew leaving wasn't it.

"I drove to the U, and then around in circles a while." He put his keys in the basket and took off his coat, hanging it on a hook near the door.

"I thought you were leaving."

"So you said," he replied, taking his glasses off and sticking them in his pocket. He'd obviously had them on for driving. I wondered what it was like for him, when things were sort of blurry without them.

"I'm sorry about what happened."

"Sorry about kissing me or sorry about throwing me out?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the couch.

"Maybe a little of both."

"Why'd you do it?"

"Kiss you or throw you out?" I asked, and we both had to smile a little.

"Either one."

"Because I wanted to - kiss you, that is."

"What happened? I mean, did I read you wrong when you started licking my tonsils? I thought that was something sexual."

"It was," I admitted quietly.

"I touched you 'below the belt' first - I mean, I raised the stakes. Then it was over. So I got to thinking... I thought, maybe there's something wrong I don't know about. Or maybe something went wild with your senses... I got worried so I came home. If you still want me out of here, my bags are ready to go."

"I don't want you out of here." I sat on the coffee table, facing him. "I never want you out of here." I reached out hesitantly and pushed some of that soft hair back, but he recoiled from me.

"Let's not get sidetracked here."

"You want answers I don't think I can give, Chief." The name hung heavy in the air to my ears, and stuck in my throat. I didn't know if I could call him that anymore. Not now. Not when I remembered. Not when Bud's smiling face became twisted in my memory until he started to look like some sort of demented Jack in the Box from a child's nightmare.

"You're shaking," he said gently, putting a hand on my arm. I held out my hand, and no shit, I was shaking.

Blair knows what I need. Instinctively. I don't have to tell him.

He tugged on my arm and steered me over to sit by him, and then I was in his arms. But there was nothing sexual in this. It was just Blair's strong arms around me, the warmth of his body against me, the soothing comfort of his voice murmuring that everything would be all right. That voice could talk me into walking off a cliff. God knows it's pulled me back from the edge of one enough times. Somehow he shifted us so my head was on his shoulder, and his hand was stroking through my hair.

"Don't leave," I said in a voice that didn't seem to want to work past the constriction in my throat.

"Never. I'll never leave, Jim. Don't worry about that. Don't be afraid. I'm here."

I didn't expect, or want, to lose it and start bawling like a baby, but that's what happened. I don't know if it was me at ten years old finally confronting how I felt about what Bud was doing, or if it was me here and now, finally confronting what that festering emotional wound had done to me for so many years. Maybe it was just the first time in my entire life I had felt safe, and that someone had truly been there to take care of me and only me. As emotionally selfish as that was, I clung to the idea that I was Blair's priority. That he loved me in a way he loved no one else. That I always came first. I've never been first with anyone before.

And I've never let down my guard, either. I don't know if that was a result of what Bud did, or maybe when my mother left, or maybe it was because my dad wasn't around much. I don't know, but I'm not used to being protected. I'm not used to having someone put themselves between me and a threat. My mother took a powder, Bud turned out to be the monster in the closet, and my father was barely there.

So here I was, all 6'1" of combat-trained cop/ex-military/general all around bad-ass, hiding in the arms of my 5'7" pacifist scholar partner. Blair's deceptive, though. He's not a big guy, but he's sturdy - and I don't just mean his body. His soul is sturdy. His heart is sturdy. He has the determination of a pit bull and the courage of lion when the heat's on. I know he'd walk through fire for me or give his life in a heartbeat to save mine. I know anyone who hurt me would have to answer to him, and anyone would have to go through him to get to me, even if he had no chance of winning the fight. I know if I'm down for the count, he'll take care of everything. No, not everything... me.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. The next thing I remember was feeling his hand rubbing up and down my back while he just kept reassuring me that he was there for me, that whatever it was, we would tackle it together. I think it was that one phrase that made me start talking. That made me give a halting account in the explicit, awkward words of a child, fumbling with how to really say what had happened with Bud. Remembering it is frightening enough. Giving it life in words is a new kind of terror, and one I would have only faced where I felt safe.

Blair cried with me. Maybe he cried more than I did while I talked. I was pretty well drained, and all that was left was letting the memories tumble out in garbled up words and phrases. Clinging to Blair and feeling the solid strength and the love that was there to wrap around me and protect me from all the ugly things in my past.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that," Blair said gently, still stroking my hair. "You know that none of what happened with Bud is your fault? You understand that, right?"

"I know that now. When I was a kid... I'm not sure what I thought. I suppose I thought I was consenting to it."

"That's why they have laws like statutory rape, Jim. As a cop, you know that. Children aren't considered able to give sexual consent below a certain age. And those are good laws, man. Kids have a lot of reasons for accepting behavior in adults that is offensive to them. That they don't want. You were afraid of losing Bud's friendship, and he was a predator who took advantage of that fear."

"The memories just... happened," I said. I wanted to explain to him that I didn't want this to be our swan song, that I didn't want my reaction to freeze him up, make him stop touching me. Then again, I wonder if we ever really could stop touching each other. As if to answer my thoughts, Blair's hand started moving slowly up and down my back again. "What happened with us earlier..."

"We don't have to talk about that now," Blair said quietly, resting his head against the top of mine. "Just relax and don't worry about it. I'm not going anywhere."

"Blair, I still... it wasn't that I didn't want you. It was... just that touch, I guess... I don't know. I didn't expect it to come back like that. I didn't know... I couldn't remember."

"You didn't remember Bud or the killings at all until recently. It's pretty natural that this would be buried deeper, but that it would follow once the other memories came back."

"I haven't been with anyone since I remembered," I confessed, but I figured I wasn't damaging my image too much - it had only been a month or so. There's only so much emasculation a guy can stand in one night. Admitting to a six-month dry spell would have been pushing it. Though since I've had Blair with me, I've had those too. Actually, most of my life lately has been a dry spell, because I'd rather sit on the couch and watch the Jags with Blair than have wild, animal sex with a willing woman. I don't know if I'm gay, or just have no libido. Correction, I know the libido's there. It showed up real clearly when I grabbed Blair by the hair and played dueling tonsils on him. I'm in love, which automatically makes a sap out of you every time. I'm in love with another man, so dodging the "gay" label is my own issue I need to handle.

"Then it's pretty natural the first time someone touched you that way, or touched you in a way that reminded you, that with the memories right up there by the surface..."

"It wasn't you, Blair." I finally moved away a little and straightened up a bit. It was surprising how cold and shaky I felt when we separated. I guess I'd been leaning on him more than I realized. Like always, he sensed that and reached over and took a hold of my hand. "Thank God you didn't take me at face value," I said tightly, knowing my hold over my emotions was tenuous. I'd done enough bloodletting for now. It was an old wound, and I had no delusions that one time discussing it was going to be a magic fix-all. Like all old wounds, it would still throb when conditions were right for it. But for now, I had to do, or say, something positive. I needed to move on from the past and Bud and his black '71 Caddy.

"It was partly that," Blair said, looking me straight in the eyes. "The whole reaction was so strange that I figured it had to spring from something else. But another part of me just couldn't say good-bye." He looked down then at our joined hands. "I drove around in circles trying to go to a hotel, and I couldn't do it. I tried to go to my office, figuring I'd sleep there tonight, but I couldn't seem to make myself do that either. I kept feeling it was too final, that things would be over between us, and..." His hand flexed a little on mine then, and his eyes were moist when he looked up at me again. "I don't think I could make it without you. I love you, Jim. I just want you to know that I'll always love you, and always be here - no matter what turn things take. You don't have to do, or be, anything particular for me. I love you." Blair laid a hand on my cheek when he said that, and rested his forehead against mine. I think I fell in love with him all over again right at that moment.

I love you. Not what I could do for him or some character I could invent to fit his image of me. He loved me. For who and what I am, faults and all, no conditions. Unconditional love that wasn't going to be taken away from me if I didn't come across with something. For Bud it was sex; for my mother it was something I obviously didn't produce; for my father it was perfection; for the army, it was conformity and performance; for Jack Pendergrast, it had been conformity of sorts, though he'd never gotten from me quite the image he wanted; for the PD it was an arrest record; for Carolyn, it was a man who opened up and spilled out his emotions to her like a halved ripe melon. I've had varying levels of success in pleasing the people in my life, but I've always seemed to be working damn hard at it. Loving Blair was effortless. I was reeling from the thought that being loved by him was just as easy.

I turned my face and kissed the palm of his hand. Then I took a hold of it with my free hand, the one he wasn't already holding.

"I love you, too," I said, feeling my voice shaking, though I managed to get the words out pretty smoothly. His face lit up like Times Square on New Year's Eve.

"Then we can handle anything," he said simply, and I believed him.

"I don't know how this is going to affect me..." I let the words trail off. I didn't know if I was going to be a hyper basket case in bed that couldn't be touched in a certain place without breaking into a cold sweat and wrestling flashbacks. I'd fooled around with a couple buddies in the army, so being with a man wasn't totally new. Having sex all the way - the big Tab A into Slot B moment - that was another story. I never did that to another guy, and another guy hadn't done it to me before either. I wondered about Blair. I never smelled another man on him the whole time we'd been together -at least, as near as I could tell. He could have taken steps to keep me from noticing, but I didn't think so. Blair didn't strike me as the type to be hiding his lifestyle - especially not from me. I suddenly realized I was sitting there with my mouth sort of hanging open, lost in my own thoughts, while he was still waiting for the rest of that sentence. When he realized that was the whole thing, he filled the void.

"We'll just have to take it slow and easy, when you feel ready to try something."

"How much... have you...?"

"With a guy? No."

"Are you sure you want to...?"

"I'm sure I want you. That's all I need to know. The rest'll work itself out." Blair looked down at our joined hands again. "You've got some experience? You know how to do this?"

"A little. Nothing heavy - just some experimenting with a couple buddies in the army. Let's put it this way - if one of us had been a girl, nobody would've gotten pregnant." I smiled and Blair chuckled, then his face became serious again.

"Maybe you should see somebody... you know, about Bud," Blair suggested carefully. Something in his hesitant tone bothered me. I never wanted him to fear bringing something up with me. I squeezed his hands gently.

"I don't think I want to do that just yet. Maybe never. I just need to let this sink in and deal with it a while."

"Promise you'll keep an open mind though, if you feel like you need help?"

"I promise." I smiled then, and it came easily. "But I've already got you to talk to. What do I need with a shrink?"

"You've always got me," Blair said, smiling back.

"I want to always have you," I said, not really planning on saying it out loud. But there it was, and Blair seemed to feel the impact of it as much as I did.

He didn't answer me with words, but moved into my arms, holding on tightly, letting me hold him this time.

There are still some things I need to resolve in my own head about what happened with Bud, but something like that is a lifetime process. You don't handle it and forget it. You learn to live with it, and rise above it. Blair's always been good at lifting me up, so I can honestly say I'm not afraid of it anymore. It's there, it's ugly, and looking at it too closely hurts like hell. The more I face up to it and confront it, the less power it has over me. Or so Blair says, and as much as I usually don't like to give him credit for it, he's right.

I don't know if I'll ever get over hating Bud for what he did to me. For using my emotional dependence on him to take such sick advantage of me. That kind of hate could eat a man alive, turn him bitter and angry, destroy his chances for a happy, healthy life. That isn't going to happen to me, though. That much I know, so I have courage to deal with this thing now. I have that courage because I have something better to do than spend my life hating a dead man - I'd much rather spend it loving Blair.

Our progress in bed has been slow and clumsy. He's nervous to touch me the wrong way, I'm nervous about being his first man... but we end up laughing about it, and when worst comes to worst, we start giving each other directions. Blair loves joyfully and with his whole heart, mind, body and soul. He approaches making love with great passion and his honest, open desire to make me happy is probably the single thing I love most about him.

Last night, while we were lying in bed, sticky enough that we should have gone down and showered again and having absolutely no intention of doing so, I showed him the rings. I bought us matching rings. They aren't exactly wedding rings - just simple, tailored men's rings with a couple of small diamonds in them. I'm not sure what we'll end up doing about "coming out" or how we'll handle the larger issues of being a couple, but I know I want him with me forever. I wanted to show him that somehow.

He was excited at first, then very quiet and still when I slipped the ring on his finger and promised to love him for the rest of my life and into the next. He took my ring and slipped it onto my finger, and promised that he'd always be with me, and that he would love me with all his heart forever, and that he'd find me in whatever lifetimes lay ahead of us. I wondered then if there had been other lifetimes before this one, and I prayed there would be more after this one ended. Thinking of ending my life with Blair is too sad to contemplate.

He's sleeping next to me now as I type the last few lines of this, using his laptop. I tease him for having it up here in the bedroom - I accused him of having "separation anxiety" from his computer, but here I am using it while he's sleeping. I'm not sure what I'm planning on doing with it. Maybe it was just something I needed to think about, maybe it's something I'll even let him read someday. Or maybe I'll put it in one of those "open this in the event of my death" envelopes, so that if I have to leave him behind for a while in this lifetime, he'll know how much I adore him with every breath I take. He's my life, my heart, my soul and my joy. The old ghosts can't hide in the shadowy corners of my mind anymore. With Blair here, by my side, sharing my life, there's just too much light for shadows.

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