We've all been broken. There is something in the polaroids we take of the ones we love. 8

I wish they would say about how people look if you look at them under a certain angle under the sun. I wish they would say how manic love can make you.

I wish so many things would’ve been said and not from my own mouth. I had to sit up in a complete haze, feeling a sour emotion in my mouth, looking at Valentine who was passed out on the rug next to the guitar I was playing with before we fell asleep. Her hair was tousled and pushed behind to make sure she wouldn’t wake up with a heavy bed head. 

I wish mornings weren’t filled with misunderstanding. 

Instead I just went to brush my teeth and see what else would it bring, as I would recall, opening the bathroom window some nostalgia and regret. We had both decided to drink alone, drinking far too much, not enough to forget but enough to make the day and night pass in a single baby grasp. I brushed my teeth far too fast, as if tired of the action because it would still allow me to be within my own head and that was something which made me loathe existence, the fact that no matter what you do you’re still left alone with your thoughts.

You never know when you fall in love, you never know when you like someone, that’s why I couldn’t pinpoint by looking back at the conversation when I had started liking her, because it was all a blur and I could only think of her face shielded by her hair, even if she was right besides me. 

The problem with life is that it’s a harsh waiting game, where you never know the next roll of the dice or what squares are even there to land on.

The loneliest feeling in the world is if you don’t know if you should be feeling lonely at all. It clocks exactly when you don’t know how the other person feels. It’s the worst when you’re alone with love.

The days slip and hold no meaning.

I can’t even concentrate on my own reflection and I end up sitting on the floor, right next to her sprayed out on the sofa. 

Talk can lead into many different paths. I end up lighting a cigarette, feeling a bit too creeped out by watching her, but she seems to be sound asleep and from the amount of alcohol we have drank, it’s not surprising at all. I’m surprised at how we had both dissolved entirely and allowed ourselves to talk, nearly in the opposite sides of the room and the more I talked the more anxious I would get that perhaps I didn’t sound interesting at all to her, as she would keep drinking, but Valentine kept listening and I even went in to talk about Brian, but I kept Miles out of the picture for now, just saying that I had loved many different men in my life. She kept listening, perhaps wondering how she could fit.

She’d be different.

I didn’t know where to stick myself as she was sleeping, because I was no longer in contact with Miles. It gave me some time to just sit next to the window sill and open the window, allowing the smoke to still seep into the apartment and halfway meet the clouds. It seemed to be immersed into some heartbroken solution and odd idleness, because she was there.

I had never really liked a woman. I just felt everyone pressure me into liking one and I tried not to think of my parents, who would be thrilled to know if I take a woman’s hand to the altair. I thought of sex briefly and the idea of constantly being on top was odd, but that could’ve been fixed, I wasn’t stupid. I just leaned harsher against the window sill and felt an odd desire to jump, so that I would never know what would happen. 

The same songs happen on repeat in the mind and I have no idea when she will wake up, just because I managed to wake up rather fast and early, now making barely any noise besides the click of a lighter. 

I’m scared of her leaving me, like Brian did. 

It’s as if being scared in front of a game of chess, when you’re blindfolded and just screaming out where to put the pieces, without knowing the results. 

I had a really bad ex, who told me that love is like a game of chess, to which Brian had laughed and told me that you should surely stay away from such people who claim that, but as years went on I wondered if it would actually still be a game of chess, what if it is between a man and a woman for instance? Something I never seemed to understand. And it was odd to be sitting next to the unknown. 

She opened her brown eyes and we were left in the idea of a morning long gone, night creeping in on it’s toes and the day being a mere excuse in this weather. 

What if it is a chess game, because you’re scared to move? Is that the whole commotion about love? Valentine ended up sitting up and we still looked at each other, eyes locked and all the snippets of yesterday’s conversation crawling back up, with her slumped against the couch and telling about her boyfriends and making sure that she wouldn’t mention who her current crush is. 

I wonder if she likes me, even if I’ve heard Miles talking about how Arielle said that she has a crush on me. The different music taste and movie taste seemed to be an itch, but conversations would still intertwine like vines on a brick wall, clouding everything until you’d only see wild grapes. 

In the end, she started mumbling excuses on how she should be leaving, that she stayed far too long. 

“Stay, it’s okay.” I had told to reassure her, nearly grabbing her hand and wishing to simply keep going and spending the rest of the day together, hell, she could sleepover again if she wanted to. Valentine looked down, probably thinking of her change of clothes, which seemed to make her nervous. I could offer her some white shirt which I had, but I kept my tongue shut and now we seemed to be switching partners in the dance, not knowing who were we dancing with besides the fact that we were dancing away from each other. 

I could see her leaving and then I would end up sulking about Miles and that’s when I wondered if I should’ve opened the last treasure chest to reveal the last ex of them all. 

Was Valentine worth it as well, as I watched her stand up and excuse herself? Would it be worth it to be depressed about a break up? Would it be enough to be numb and not understand love again? I don’t know how else to tell her to stay.

When she does indeed leave, it feels like all the loneliness has managed to climb all of it’s way up to my throat, allowing all the thoughts to come back and wander in, allowing me to think if I would be able to buy a hitman for myself. And I know that I would prefer sitting sipping coffee in a cafe, calmly, knowing that this would be it. I would end up spending all my money that day and I would just wait, knowing what awaits and I wouldn’t flinch and probably my corpse would be smiling. I try not to think of it much, as I make myself some tea, not even registering properly that Valentine had left, herself not sure how she would properly fit into my life, after yesterday and it made sense trying to understand why another puzzle piece managed to get in here. 

I truly wish life could somehow end and then there would be no worries, that credits would somehow roll and I would still be walking from that cafe, that I could be calm. When I was a child, I wished that I would be a ghost, because it seemed like a calm thing to do. 

I end up sleeping far too much, both of us avoidant at first and I don’t know how to kill time until the next time I see her. 

She comes in my dreams, but she’s different there and that causes me some alarm, what if I don’t know who I’m falling for?

But while you’re sane you can still think whether the person is good for you and even if I understood that I could call Miles I couldn’t understand how could I even pick up the phone and still keep talking. I didn’t know how to even talk to him once more. 

It kept going in circles, as I would light cigarette after cigarette in the apartment, laying on the couch, legs dangling and colliding with the scattered on the floor pillows and I would imagine Valentine looking at me. Maybe there’s a reason she had left me, for me to understand how much I had wanted her.

Did I even want a woman in my life?

I’ve never been with a woman this way.

Would that even somehow work?

I light another cigarette, barely feeling anything this time, curling up into a ball and wondering if a person who didn’t text me or call me after such a connection is even worth it. And since there’s no Brian obviously, Brian felt as distant as Spring really was, because the months would just go slowly without any explaining, devouring weeks mindlessly and yet the dates on the calendar seemed the same, because only a day had passed when a month should’ve. 

And the struggle kept going around in circles, not explaining itself and now I would go to sleep thinking of her besides me. I didn’t want to think of it as love, but if I were to write poetry early in the morning with no sleep the brushes would describe it with such words, just to make it pretty. 

And no matter how much I’d try my mind wouldn’t turn off, instead I’d ask myself where would I even want to be going. Because no matter what you do, the mind is still on and you’re left alone with your conversations because why the hell not, because someone had decided that it’s a good idea. And being alone gets worse up to the point that I just decide to head out, choosing the warmer old coat, recalling far too much drama on my sleeve. Is it a good thing when your worse drama is from your heart? And it’s far too cold, even in the coat and I realize that I didn’t even check the weather, allowing whatever part of my bipolar to reign over me entirely to the point that I can’t even function and I end up in the grocery store, not even knowing what I want, besides maybe some alcohol, which I have plenty back home. I end up wondering near the milk cartons about Brian and how could I even let him go eventually and how come Miles was a far more tragic death to me. But people end up expiring and sometimes we still pick them up, hoping that just like yoghurt there is some secret knack to it being more sour. But it rarely ends up being so. 

I keep asking myself if I want someone who hasn’t texted me yet, but then I didn’t text her, so I do her the pleasure of texting and that’s when I’m left smoking for a reply, not sure who would I even share her with and I wonder of ever running into Arielle. She’s her friend and then we could gossip and I would feel guilty about never telling her about her cheating boyfriend, because she’s naive just like me, she believes in love. Maybe that’s why we’d get along. Not the cheating, but the pure belief in our boyfriends. 

-

I actually have an exciting (at least more exciting) backstory this time. I'm happy to announce that I'm back to writing fully, even if it's a bit slow for me. I'll be putting out chapters as I'll be done with them, if not, I'll put up a chapter of the animal and then an ode once I'm done with the animal. But I kind of missed fanfiction a lot and I guess that's what I specialize in, innit? 

A lot of this came due to the rollercoaster from having a crush. Woah, Jamie, aren't you poly? Shouldn't you have crushes all the time? 'Fraid not. I haven't had a proper two-sided crush in two years. I've had crushes with odd circumstances, but not somewhere which ended up being a two-way street. I have no idea where it's going now and it might be gone, but it sure gave me enough fire to write. 

I had only a bit of this chapter written and I picked up this story, because it was a first for me where I in a waltz with a fellow gay man. I hadn't done that since I came out, so it was all new and foreign, that's why this story was chosen, because Jamie has it weird for him as well. Also, I have my insecurities so this story was really there for me to vent. I also struggled whether not to write this backstory, but I really enjoy venting and telling what's going on, because after all, a story is a gem when you know what inspired the author. We all crave to know. 

Everything is such a rollercoaster of emotion, that I'd write phrases down as they would come, when I was sure I was liked back, when I wasn't sure. 

Talks sometimes vanish and go into nowhere, so that's why Valentine goes away so abruptly, I don't know where does mine go, but for Valentine I know where it's going. 

I think one of my favourite metaphors which isn't accurate would be that love is a game of chess. It was told by my ex to a friend of ours and then in turn she had told me, and that had stuck with me 9 or 8 years on. 

The hitman thinking was actually because I saw a post on tumblr and that had inspired me to write and when I was writing so seldom, I would grab anything which would take my attention to be fairly honest. 

I still wish to be a ghost at the end of my life actually, it just sounds so pleasing. 

I'm quite open about things in the story to be honest.

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much

<3

Jamie

the animal thirteen

The next morning another fight had started between Nathan and Julien. This time I was in the kitchen, sipping on my coffee, my hair already in my bun as I was watching them fight, nearly comically because they would try not to hit each other too hard so that no blood would be spilled and would try to keep their mouths entirely closed without screaming so that no saliva would drop on the floor. This time they had been fighting because Nathan had decided to flirt with Julien in his own morning’s coffee as I had understood from watching around the middle of the beginning of the flirtations from the older man. During the fight it had escalated to the knowledge that Nathan had known some older man which was with Julien. To which I presumed was the teacher and that just made me far more interested in watching their usual fight, which became so usual that it lasted through Dick getting his morning yoghurt while patting me on the back with a greeting, Peter had walked in, evading them through as he walked in the corridor, excusing himself as he nearly touched Nathan and got his own breakfast. 

Dick had stayed with me and I felt bad pointing out to him that his nail polish had chipped badly, as I recalled his mother, but he had been awake for many nights working so it was a miracle he was even up now. I watched his circles under his eyes, as he just sat in some black tanktop with his binder sticking out a bit on the hem. He just smirked asking me who was winning and that’s when I told him that they were fighting over an older gentleman who Nathan had known and was linked to Julien. 

So, Dick had clicked his tongue, moving in his seat, that meant that we had another queer man in the house then and that seemed to give the fire in the man’s eyes, as he possibly wondered what would cause Julien to sleep with him since he was in a never-ending quest to get laid with everyone who wasn’t Dick’s boyfriend. I didn’t tell him that it was Julien’s teacher, even if I was itching, I figured that Lazarus was one to share that secret with and the said notebook. 

The darkness was starting to get to me, I just felt far more trapped and I couldn’t properly look outside of the window without seeing streetlights which lit up nearly nothing and I felt strangled by the darkness which was just daunting. It just felt awful to barely see any sunlight and with waking up later each day I started getting used to the idea that eventually I wouldn’t see any sun at all. 

I noticed that the more I spent time with Dick the more I’d notice him eying Julien and I didn’t know how long would it take for me to get the courage to ask him, when was he going to do anything at all and if he were, what would he even do? Instead I just kept quiet and once I told Lazarus about it, he just laughed at me and called me jealous because he’s obviously read that I wanted to dive into Julien’s pants and he enjoyed reading about the bike ride. I couldn’t muster up the courage to actually walk up to Julien and ask him out again, because I had no idea what would I be able to even ask and where to. It seemed to drain out my head because nothing had happened and I was still on the way of getting to know Julien. So maybe I shouldn’t be so attached, but then I wasn’t. I was just curious and I had only known about him and his teacher.

I tried knocking on his door the other day, but he had been out and ever since he’s had that fight with Nathan he’s been out a lot. I wondered what was on his mind, what was gracing it and how come he’d been avoiding being in so often.

I ended up spending far more time with Dick instead up to the point that he had decided to invite me bowling and we split the bill, and decided to eat out later as well. Dick ended up being quite good at it and while I was waiting for his turn to end, I couldn’t help but realize how bored I had felt these past days. I had really tried not to spend anything at all, but I had no idea how to make other friends other than Lazarus, who frankly never left his house other than to get food. Julien was absent and Dick himself was just bored as he had admitted. 

Now I didn’t hide the fact that I wrote a lot in my notebook, I did it openly in front of Dick as well, as he bowled. I never really described Dick besides his dark undercut and how he was actually very good looking and I presumed that if he’d want to reveal his face on Grindr he’d even manage to cruise a lot more, but instead he kept it under wraps, having an oval face but still lacking proper facial hair. He had wanted to do Movember but said he’d only get a neckbeard which was something Lazarus had sported a while ago and frankly hadn’t suited him at all and ended up being a reason for everyone to snicker until he went back to his usual clean shave. I had noticed that there was now much less of Dick’s boyfriend these days and as I bowled I wondered what had been going on between the two men. I decided not to ask for the sole fact that we’ve decided to keep our distance, but as I threw the ball I realized

we are friends.

Hey Dick, I asked, as he jumped up lightly, he was used to people mostly calling him Richard while Dick was actually a nickname I heard his boyfriend call him once and because I thought he was a dick that stuck to him in my mind and every time I’d let it slip Dick would look at me surprised with his dark eyes, so how are you and the boyfriend.

Dick just frowned. 

He told me that actually things weren’t so smooth because the other had discovered his Grindr profile and that was causing both of them trouble, because they didn’t want to open it and neither did they want to end it. The trans man rubbed his eyes, yawning, but he still seemed concerned and it dawned on me that his earlier waking was most likely due to his now released insomnia monster. I wondered how bad did he sleep, but I didn’t ask, throwing the ball again and watching a split show up, cursing. We didn’t have that much time left, but we were surely making the most of the time bowling. I wondered how come his boyfriend didn’t chop off his hands for it, but I figured it’s a good thing that they’re trying to work it out somehow. I didn’t know how anyone could work out after cheating and having something so complicated that one decided not to trust the other, but it wasn’t my relationship to begin with and Dick had cheated so many times that I wasn’t the only exception.

Dick threw the ball and missed. 

I kept looking at him from behind, already wearing a sweater with polar bears and anchors and penguins. I wondered how the fuck was he going to survive the holidays and what were his plans now that he and his boyfriend weren’t too well together. I didn’t get surprised when Dick offered to pay again for another hour and his hands were trembling, he surely wanted to get away from it all and I couldn’t blame him. On the opposite, I felt happy that we were both getting away from things we didn’t want to deal with.

I started pondering on searching further for a different apartment and far more extensively than I ever have. I decided to face my fears and actually bother to call up people, even ask Lazarus to help me. As I asked Lazarus I realized that I was actually sad that I wouldn’t be able to see someone as often as I saw Lazarus. I wondered if he was sad about it, but he just went on to translate flat ads from Swedish to me and laughing all of the scams. Maybe he wouldn’t be as sad to see me leave, until he mentioned that he’d travel through the night to get some sugar off me, laughing at me. I felt at ease after his words. I surely didn’t want to let go off him even if he was odd and I was sure that me living elsewhere and him visiting would do Lazarus some good, since he barely walked outside. He’d walk to the supermarket which was away for sure, but all he would do is possibly stop and stare at the ducks for a while. That had been it. Then he’d proceed to do all the groceries which included a few kilos of sugar. 

-

I gave Max a manbun because I want one, once I start T that is xD

I get really bad in winter due to the lack of sunlight and since I live in Sweden it gets as bad as going dark at 2 pm, which is a full nightmare to be honest. 

The sweater Dick has is something I have, actually.

I'm sorry for the very unexciting backstory, it's really because nothing was going on, nothing was happening and I just kept writing out of my pure brain, with no associations even.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and thank you for all your support.

<3

Jamie

the animal twelve

When I had gotten back into the apartment after spending the whole day with Lazarus and dragging my groceries back (I’d usually stick the bag into Lazarus’ fridge as we’d chat and then just retrieve it) I was faced with Nathan sitting outside of the bathroom at the end of the apartment. 

Earlier a few days ago Julien had a petition that we should kick Nathan out of the house, because he was frankly far too creepy and monopolizing all the door and mail and he would (we presumed under Peter’s control) knock on each of our doors demanding to show our rooms to him and then he’d report to Peter whose was a mess and whose wasn’t and who was stashing plates and whatnot. So we had a sort of inspector on our back as well. Julien knocked on my door, asking to sign until he had noticed my red eyes as I was looking down and just gave my signature, I was the last one and surely everyone else had signed at this point ‘cause frankly nobody liked Nathan. Peter told all of us to fuck off and reminded us just how easily we had thought we’d replace Nathan (since anyone wants an apartment these days or let alone a room) he would replace all of us for this indecent behavior. 

Julien was banging on the door asking Nathan to let him out as I had heard when I had entered the apartment. Then Nathan stood up as if nothing had happened when he saw me and unlocked the door for Julien to storm out and start fighting the much older man. I just avoided the fight, probably chanting for Julien to win in my head and went towards my room, exhausted and dragging the groceries with me. Thankfully by the time I decided to emerge and put my stuff in the fridge the fight had settled and both of them were rubbing the carpet from their fighting saliva. 

The next morning the day was graced with Julien banging on what I understood to be Nathan’s door as he was screaming the older man’s name but meowing cats were the only reply, all three of them as they had continued meowing even louder with every single knock. What I understood through his screaming was that he had lost his mobile phone and was accusing Nathan of doing so.

The mystery of the mobile phone lasted throughout the day as he kept asking every single one of us in different tones if we had seen it or we had any idea at all who could’ve possibly taken it or in Nathan’s case once the older man was back with pizza (sometimes he would collect it from the restaurant himself with the fact that it would be a pleasing end to his walk). 

But soon enough Lazarus had knocked on my door, never allowing himself in, only after I would allow him to and he invited me over to his to show me something. I ended up being too curious and that had ended up being him showing me a mobile phone, which I had  seen before, but it was proven to be Julien’s as he unlocked it and threw it at me, as I caught it, a bit confused.

Isn’t that the fellow you have a crush on, at least you always write about him in your notebook, Max, Lazarus had told me and turning back to play Call of Duty which I was too anxious to recognize as I had held the mobile phone. Lazarus had told me that he had just found it under the staircase and possibly it had just fallen and was lucky enough that it didn’t break. He told me not to be a fool, and check the content of the phone for anything interesting as it had no passcode, which seemed odd for a quiet guy like Julien.

He had a few year worths of photos which I guessed where transferred onto his new phone from iCloud or something, as my hands started shaking and I didn’t feel very comfortable from flicking through even if the back of my neck was burning from curiosity. I didn’t know what to do as I held the information and the twist of events even now made me guilty from even holding the notebook and writing all of this down. I ended up going to the photos and even if I didn’t learn the names, I had started to learn a bunch of faces which were in this city, gracing all of the classical touristic spots with smiling women and men, but none of them which seemed to be intimate with Julien. 

Then I paused to wonder if this was even honorable in Lazarus’ eyes, but he just kept playing the game, trying to excuse himself from my behaviour which he was fully sponsoring. So I kept flicking through the photos until I saw that it was a different city and there was even a selfie of Julien and his mother, which was smiling brighter than I could imagine her smiling now with her son so far away. I wondered how his mother was and if she would do the same actions my own would, as I still had shards up in my arm which ached every day from my mom’s own words and how she would continue and now try her best to watch the same movies we would previously and she would just make sure that everything was the same, as if nothing ever changed, which was true but I wasn’t sure on how I had felt about it, wondering far too much and feeling tense nearly every day now. It had been hard to get out of bed again, knowing that so much had changed and all the words were rinsing my hair again. 

I kept flicking onwards, going through all the photos until I had landed on something which possibly Lazarus had found earlier and that was the reason he had shown it to me. 

It was an older man, which I presumed to be the teacher and his arm was around a flushed from the cold Julien and both were in a rather intimate embrace, at least one that I hadn’t wanted anyone to see me in if it was someone who I wasn’t related to. I glanced at Lazarus who was just smiling to himself and quietly playing his game with volume on rather loud so I was flicking through all the content with gun noises and something going on, a plot which I was surely not following. I continued to see more photos of the man and Julien and that’s when I was getting even more rewarded by seeing a photo of Julien kissing the man’s cheek, both of them making out and even one nude of the man which didn’t make me question much of Julien’s desire and no nudes of Julien were to be found, which I presumed was something with the teacher would surely have left on his phone. At least why delete nudes of people who you no longer date when you can even keep them not even as trophies, but reminders of where your lips have once wandered. 

I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t figured out Julien as gay, because I had known of his sexuality, not just by radar but he just seemed rather queer to me, so I had left it at that proudly and gladly, but now I had the evidence in my hands to preferably act on even if I had no idea what should I have done now with this information. 

I also saw the recent photos which was Julien posing with Le Monde for some unholy reason and I figured that he was most possibly sending it to someone to show that he had bought it. 

Dick had told me that once he came out (Dick dyed his nails black for most of the time) his mother after confronting him about him wearing make-up, his mother had told him to do a manicure because his nails were undone and that had fucked him up, because she wasn’t willing to accept him and moaned about his nails, as if that would fix him somehow and he said he had been fucked up for weeks and then eventually left, knowing that they would never accept him and all had been for the best indeed. 

That fucked me up, that I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know how to approach anything and the denial my mother had been doing now. It was terribly messing with my head that I simply couldn’t keep my thoughts straight even on paper when I was managing to write the same story about Julien’s phone, I just couldn’t help and keep continuing about it. I couldn’t help myself. 

I was wondering if I should’ve given the phone to Nathan to give it to Julien, which would cause another fight and I wondered if I even wanted those two to fight again. Instead after watching all the photos and even seeing some throwbacks with Julien as a child, I decided to give the phone to Julien. I just left it outside his bedroom, implying that someone had found it and I decided against inviting him on a date now, even if I had known now that he was gay, I decided to let life somehow resolve itself because what if we would bore each other, let us at least do it the way life intends us to. 

-

I know I've been behind, but I'm trying my best x)

One of the weird moments I still have after I came out was my mom talking about my make-up how I should boost up my game even if I already use a lot of make-up and much more than the average man. So I kind of gave that to Dick.

Also the whole running theme of cleaning and shitty apartments was me trying to see if I could make the worst of them and after I finished writing it I kept thinking other ideas and yeah, I could've made it much worse, but it's already awful. 

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you

Please write a comment below x)

<3

Jamie

the animal eleven

I ended up knocking on Dick’s door in the morning instead of calling my mother as promised and my whole body was running up and down with adrenaline, as I just asked him about his coming out again. He had told me once more, watching me shake as he ran his hands down my back, but no tears were coming out this time, instead all I could feel was pure torture that my mother didn’t love me anymore. That’s how it had felt, it was just a cycle and a constant understanding that now I was truly alone with a trans man running his hands on my back. In that sole moment I had wished that I had gone to Julien, that he had loved me. I wished that Lazarus had loved me. I wished that Dick had loved me. I wished desperately for a family and I felt like praying for anyone at all who would tuck me in at night and I desperately wished that I was young again, that I had told about the boy I had kissed at school, how it had felt to nearly be caught with my skin so tense that I had felt my ears getting pulled apart. How his tongue had felt, how the kiss had ran through my entire body and I wanted more. My pants had gotten tight, but we kept our hands to ourselves. 

When it came to my first girlfriend whom my parents were thrilled of, I had felt truly nothing, I just wanted the kiss to end and that had been it, that’s why such an intense whirlwind had lasted so many years and just confirmed to me that I was gay. I just kept going on kissing more boys and soon enough the first was forgotten as if a dead letter somewhere that I had barely recalled his face. I remembered the lust and all the feeling, and his warmth. 

I didn’t know how to get out of this hole, all I had known was that I felt tortured and I knew that Lazarus didn’t help and neither did Dick. It crossed my mind to have sex with him and images were crawling around in my mind as I put my head on his shoulder, he just patted me, kissing me on the forehead and in that moment I was solely thankful that he had been my friend, just like with Lazarus, I was thankful that I had at least something to fall onto, I had someone to just rely upon, even if I didn’t trust them fully and in years I would forget them as if they were a first kiss, I knew that for now they were family and I had ended up loving them as such. Maybe we’re all wanderers with lost families which detach from us like shooting stars. But then what is the purpose of family if we lose them so quickly over conflicts of the self? 

What was the point in having a blood tie which was worse than the media itself? 

The more I thought about it, the more I seemed to lose the sense of what even was the purpose of a family specifically in this society, where everyone would get blamed for coming out and living their lives. Life didn’t revolve around specifically having children with a partner who could reproduce with you, life didn’t revolve around having cis heterosexual relationships and in Dick’s case staying cis, he didn’t have to do that. Instead he ended up getting kicked out and working alone, making ends meet somehow and found himself a boyfriend who they accused of manipulating their poor child, who they screeched was still a daughter. Dick’s relationship with his parents was non-existent as he claimed but I could hear him call them from time to time with a very dry voice, rubbing his eyes on the phone and they would comment on how deep would his voice got. 

While he was rubbing my back that night, when I knew that I had committed a brutal mistake of even letting my parents know, he told me that he was told that now he would never be pretty, that he’d be just a muscle mass and that was it. Dick told me that parents would say the most hurtful words, just to make sure to convince us somehow to state that we’d do something else, but obviously that fails terribly and we’re left with nothing besides a broken relation and a parent who will never apologize to forever blame. And then when all is settled and forgotten you’re the one left wondering why did you even bother to tell. 

Lazarus was contemplating whether to start putting up the Christmas decorations which he hasn’t even bought yet. I hated going out with him to do the groceries because he would stand reading every single ingredient of the products as if in a week something would’ve changed and he did that wrapped in his big black cloak and the almighty fedora. Lazarus always made me wonder how the fuck was I even friends with him, but now he had traded his hat for a warmer one, but keeping the cape over his fur coat. He kept scratching his stubble as some other fellow walked past with a sword on their back. I got a glare, while Lazarus nodded, continuing to read and started complaining about the peas not being as good as they once used to be. 

The thing was, Dick would explain to me, because nothing would get out of my head for the remaining days of everything, fear would still straddle me and I could feel it, I was terrified of every call because it had included yelling and how wrong I was, the thing was that it wasn’t that they hated or loved me, it was the fact that I was breaking their beliefs of a happy family and that had been it. 

I had started sleeping more than half of the day just to pick up the phone to go into another round of yelling and that had been my days so far. That’s why I’ve barely written and that’s why I just walked to get groceries with Lazarus, because then I had a motive and I would make sure that he’d buy enough sugar for himself, but he’d ask for it anyway but I convinced myself that it had been solely to check up on me. I ended up getting angry at Julien for not checking on me, but he did, but until he did I had been rather pissed for some reason, as if he owed me, as if I knew what turmoils did the other quiet man have. I had no idea what had been going through his head and why specifically was he always so quiet around everyone else, I didn’t know his story besides his lover which I had barely taken out of him and looking back I was even surprised how I had managed to do so. 

Lazarus himself had love stories, but surprisingly they barely contained anything about the friendzone, it was just a couple of girls who he hadn’t worked out on and even one he had cheated on with the second. It surprised me that he had even dated even if it had been quite a few years ago now for him. I kept staring at him as he was telling me while playing an old Battlefield and cursing through the middle of it while he was waiting to be respawned, so I just watched him play as he would tell me of the old girlfriends and I  wondered if everyone cheated by the end of the day, since I had helped Dick doing so. Did cheating make you a really bad person or were we all just trying to judge ourselves somehow for our wrongdoing? What if it wasn’t as bad as we all imagined, but just like hiding secrets was bad, maybe not telling things wasn’t as bad as well. Maybe we just wanted to judge ourselves much more. I told that to Lazarus and he called me a fool saying that cheating was still bad and he understood that he had done it. 

The words still stung from my mother but I tried to concentrate on Lazarus’ words but it was hard, so he ended up repeating each story twice and watching me, as I would just stare into a blank spot. I could barely follow and he had read that after I showed him the notebook and he just suggested that it was better for him to read it to see how I was feeling. The problem truly was that I just couldn’t get out of the loop, I felt as if I was stuck on a skipping rope and it just kept going on and on and there was nothing I could do and I couldn’t move anywhere else, as if the whole room was filled with skipping ropes. My problem was that I couldn’t forgive her because she didn’t even ask to be forgiven. 

Lazarus’ girlfriends were three in total, the first one was solely because she had liked him and he figured to go ahead with it, the second was because he had gotten bored of the first and had decided to date the second one, without telling the second that he was dating someone else. The third ended up with him because he was actually single and that was the only one which wasn’t wrapped up with the first drama of the teenage years. It was odd but because he was the one reading my journal or even asking me all these things, I felt awful writing about his experiences even if he had told me that he didn’t mind while he was waiting for a new Call of Duty mission to restart (he had given up on Battlefield at this point). 

-

I had an awfully eventful Valentine's this year, so I'm rather knackered and I just want to sleep, but I've been trying to go back to a normal posting schedule, as well as writing in general. Thankfully I've managed to slowly start doing both.

The whole novel's backdrop is coming out to parents, so I keep going over and over it in my head, to be awfully honest. I'm happy that the novel kept me sane.

I end up rereading it and laughing about it, rather than doing some actual backstory. I really don't have much to add, I was depressed and I brainstormed it during playing Sonic and I miss the story dearly. 

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much for your support, it means a lot.

<3

Jamie

the animal ten

To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to the holidays because I wouldn’t talk to my parents by that time and I was positive that I wouldn’t want to go see them either and I wasn’t sure if I could manage to score an apartment until then and that meant that I would be locked up in my room or I would ask to go to Lazarus’ apartment and celebrate there, but he had a plan (because I had asked) of playing video games like he always had to celebrate with all his buddies online, but he still said that if I wished he would do an exception and celebrate with me, but he had no idea how since he hadn’t been doing that in years. I promised to help him choose a tree this year, instead of his small plastic one and the more we talked about it the more I saw that indeed we would both end up in his computer room working out how Christmas should be really celebrated with all the crackers stored under the tree. I had no idea what to give him as a gift and the fact that I had now roommates which would demand gifts wasn’t too thrilling either, I wasn’t excited about that and I had no idea what to give any of them, Nathan for instance probably wanted me or some other young boy, so all gifts which he’d want were taken away as ideas. I didn’t know what to get Dick, I didn’t know what to get Frank, Peter or Julien. I’d give myself to Julien, but he clearly didn’t want it even if I came in glitter and wrapped with a huge ribbon. We kept walking on in silence, as we slowly started reaching the apartment. 

I offered for him to go into my room, to continue the conversation, but he sadly said that that had been all, that the rest was really things dear to him and which he wanted out of... And he stepped up close to me and tapped on my chest where I had hidden the notebook in the pocket of the coat, that it was all he’d allow to be written down because some memories should be killed alone with the person since the other lover doesn’t want them anymore. 

I went into my room then, quickly glancing at the silent Julien going to the kitchen for a snack, since he had barely eaten. 

When my brother had come out, it had been weird, it was like watching a whole spectacle unravel and see them yell how it was unnacceptable, that if he had been bisexual with just flings on the side it would’ve been okay but this way how they even expect something which I had been yelled that I was the support they needed. They had seen me as the son who would do everything correctly and before my brother had come out, I had the days where I was counting down to tell them that I loved men as well, but instead he had called us all to give out the news and even I hadn’t known it. 

In the end I had a dream where my mother was shaving me and that had been the crispest shave I had ever gotten, I recall how smooth my face had felt. She had done it with one of those razors which I grew up with watching my father shave. That stuck to me and I remember I had shaved that morning with a different blade, now we’ve got them fancier and with all the world cups combined we get all this additional crap to it. 

I decided to give my mother a ring. 

She was furious that the university had started in the beginning, but I had that dream and soon enough she calmed down, saying that she trusted me. The thing is, we have far too much faith in our parents. Far too much. We think that they’ll always be on our side and that they will always defend us, but the thing is once you open up with who you really are, they’ll never bite you, meaning that they’ll never dare to touch you in the way a mother’s touch should feel. Instead they’ll accuse you of everything you’ve ever done.

I came out.

I told her that I was gay. 

And I wrote it all down, crying as I came to Lazarus and he had read it all, patting my head and then he had hugged me and I couldn’t stop crying. 

I have to write this down a second time, because I was crying all the first time and that ended up sagging up the paper, but Lazarus had somehow managed to read it through my tears and sobbing. Also I had ripped out the pages, still having everything flash in my head and not understanding how could it so happen that I wasn’t accepted even if I had known everything, but the thing is I had relied on the dream, to which Lazarus stroke down his skepticism and just stared ahead of me, thinking probably and saying that perhaps by the end of the day she would manage to accept me somehow, maybe that’s what the dream meant and regardless of what was done, that I had done the right thing. 

I hugged him again, feeling easier that I would be celebrating Christmas and New Year with him instead of my family and now I didn’t know, what if she would decide to visit me after all and I didn’t know how I would feel about it. I just wanted to spend it with Lazarus instead and all of a sudden I thought of the apartment and how everyone else would celebrate, at least hypothetically I could picture Dick with crackers and I could see Julien on his phone, I could see Peter being angry about something but still gossiping with Frank with whom they had started to bond and it only made sense that they would continue bonding even more. I wondered if I even wanted to spend New Year’s with them and what would happen to Christmas. With whom would I spend it even if both holidays had been decided with Lazarus. I just felt lost as soon as I had left Lazarus’ apartment and that’s when all the wordings had started circulating in my head all over again, reminding me how unwelcome I know I was in my mother’s home. I had ended up biting my lip so much that I was bleeding and I was tracing my blood around my lips as if I were in Velvet Goldmine. 

I didn’t know what to do, because fear was ceasing me to exist and even write, I could barely write the past few days after it had happened, making all the days slowly sink and remind me that I was pages behind my goal, the whole idea that I should be doing this to keep myself sane and the fact that something was happening was the reason I had kept this delightful journal, because I had the pure belief that I would manage to somehow make the world turn and give it some events. 

I ended up getting bored of the journal and I would start thinking of different men and how they would act in different settings, how they would feel and what would motivate them. I wanked to a few, allowing my mind to drift and believe in some fictional love as I started doing sketches in another cheap notebook, how they would look and what would start motivating them to do things. 

And with every hour I could feel a cold jerk that I had finally managed to come out to my own mother and I had no idea how she still tolerated me, how the words I had uttered managed to root in her brain. I had never felt so exposed, it’s as if confessing to an old crime, because if jail defined a person then so did my homosexuality. It defined me to the core, it was a part of who I had been, of who I was. I just ended up trailing my blood further down the chin, as I realized how deep that cut must’ve been or I had been fiddling too much. I ended up pressing the toilet paper and then rinsing it with alcohol. 

Regret kept filling me up.

Why had I done it?

What kind of stupidity had motivated me and specifically with the fact that I had no intentions of telling that to my dad, so it was a parcel of explosives sent solely to my mother to do as she would wish and it felt like a matter of time until she would send it back and lit to me with my father’s words. It felt so surreal to tell her, as if I wasn’t gay at all, as if I was faking it for attention like she had told me or that all the volunteering jobs had gotten to me as I had held the phone against my ear. I had heard it all, all the perversions she had accused me of and I couldn’t say anything at all. All I had known that in her eyes I was entirely guilty and that somehow I couldn’t bring myself to tell her to stop suggesting me girls whom I had never been interested in. 

It was like standing in her kitchen all over again, against the yellow light and watching her cut the vegetables, knowing what terror was entirely ahead. 

I couldn’t let my mother out of my head, because I had brought this cruel nightmare upon me selfishly, I had some hope that somehow it wouldn’t happen to me because of one dream and it did, it came and crashed upon me and I was drowning under all the waves. I couldn’t help but just keep feeling regret all over again and again, as she would avoid the topic day after day and the more I felt like a grenade, whenever she would come over and see me with other men, I knew what was coming. 

I hadn’t known what to say, just feeling betrayed from her words and not understanding why couldn’t a parent’s love stretch deeper than where it ends and actually manage to reach every corner as advertised? Why can’t a parent love their child unconditionally? What’s the problem with not being said as advertised?

-

It was hard to choose a moment where to trim it, because the animal comes without chapter dividers, so I pray that I did a good job x) also sorry about the delay, I've been tired and busy. But I'm doing my best to put the blog back up again. 

I like the whole atmosphere, story-wise, of the animal because it's quite stuck in the moment and filled with fear of tomorrow which doesn't seem to be coming, which was how I was feeling when I was writing it and it was an awful headspace to be in, but it made the novel really pop out.

I was also stuck without an apartment and I was dreading that I would spend the holidays in the one I had, which was the worst I've even been at. 

The whole fiasco was something I heard when I was a teenager, that being bisexual is okay, while being gay isn't. 

I had a dream that I believe my mom shaved me and that was the smoothest I've ever been shaved, so that was an odd thing I saw in my dreams, so I decided to use it for the story, as it was briefly after I had come out to her. The whole novel ended up being more desperate because my coming out hadn't gone well.

A lot of what Max's mom says is something I was told, so yeah.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you

<3

Jamie

the animal nine

I should on the opposite be freaking out about how he had stolen the comic book or should’ve told on him, but instead I ended up crushing on him even if I don’t seem to be very attracted to him properly or know him. So I decided to ask again after all, because the first time had only been in my head. I asked him about the lover he had mentioned, looking around to make sure that we were indeed the only ones in the train, Julien first looked at me confused that I was speaking and scanned the surroundings in front of him for my notebook which was on my lap and which I would usually carry in my hand or stick in my coat pocket. Once it was spotted, maybe he was easing that I wouldn’t be writing any of his words down right away. He still seemed concerned about talking on the subject. 

Is that your journal, he had asked and firing back at me to which I nodded and indeed explain that I do write everything down there, to which he frowned and apologized that he’s not to comfortable with having his story written on paper, to which I replied that I had started this journal not only to keep my sanity, but to make things happen because things start happening once you start writing them down. Julien agreed to that, but he still didn’t seem too eased and I wouldn’t tell him that I had given it to Lazarus to read either. Julien didn’t get along with anyone in the flat besides me, so when it came to neighbors it was more than obvious that they were distant to him. 

Julien pondered for a while and then asked me what had I wanted to know, to which I was a bit speechless, but then just shrugged and said, as if continuing the topic of the journal, that perhaps if I had written about him, then something would happen to the young man as well, to which he just shrugged and realized that the past is not something he should care about anymore. 

He told me that he had an affair with his teacher for the two last years of high school, after that he had taken a year off, before he moved here. He started off awfully dry, as if summarizing what had happened, a back cover of the book. I just kept looking at him as I could see through his eyes that he was now rehashing the whole relationship he had with the said teacher. I didn’t gasp at his confession, instead I nearly actually grabbed the notebook to write everything down, but instead I just clenched onto it, letting the pen dig into my fingers along with the spiral spine. Julien sighed, as if not knowing what else should he tell, instead he held a much longer pause and blew at the window again. I was starting to die out of curiosity so I asked how did it so happen. 

He said he has a very dumb face when he falls in love, that it’s written all over him as if in permanent ink and it’s easy to see. There’s even some photos of that, Julien had started says and looked away, his cheeks a bit flushed and a small smile gracing his lips and teeth, as he started talking of his former lover, giving him a childish glow now, as if bringing his teenage years now which he had just peeked out of. I wondered how it was through out those two years and my curiosity was about to be burst, because Julien just remained silent looking outside of the window and I couldn’t even ask him one more time to please speak out indeed. Instead he just laughed by himself and looked back at me, biting his lip, smiling, knowing how badly I was dying from not knowing the full story. That’s what happens when you get interested in someone, you start wondering about their history and what had built them that way. Through the whole thing I still could remember how he had torn the label away from the comic book. 

Julien had been back in school, he avoided pronouns through the whole thing, making me curious, but I figured maybe it was still some female teacher and my imagination was playing tricks on me, because he surely should’ve mentioned a she somewhere, but my mind just went blank when I was trying to recall everything, instead I would lay on the bed and imagine myself as the teacher on Julien’s bed stool, as he had uttered that he still kept a photo there. He didn’t allow me to go into his room once we were back home to look at the photo for obvious reasons, so I remained silent, nearly begging in my mind just to see the gender of the said teacher and how they had looked like. Instead he started talking how he had developed a crush on the teacher, just because they had been beautiful and frankly he had never cared about maths and even now as the years had gone, he didn’t care about it even more. That’s why it had been so easy for young Julien to imagine anything other than the boring lesson all filled with numbers that he wouldn’t understand. That image also was caught in my head as I would imagine myself in school next to the daydreaming Julien with his eyes firmly focused on the teacher. 

He kept telling me onwards and I could picture everything vividly, but he never described the teacher. So Julien kept talking onwards how he was excited about other lessons such as French and English, but the Maths teacher just stayed inside him, it wasn’t a young teacher either or a substitute. Neither was Julien a math genius, what had happened was that once he was ill and he had to catch up on an old test he missed due to the mentioned pneumonia. That’s when Julien got the guts to ask the teacher if they were married, just like that, taking the teacher aback and just leaving a silence between them. Exactly after that Julien had noticed that the teacher would space out, concerned themselves about the curious student, who asked the obscure question and it wasn’t that Julien was young enough to ask such things out of a childlike curiosity, there was something behind those words indeed. 

Then, Julien coughed, recalling that he didn’t tell me that he went after someone older, it had been a plain crush, but somehow nothing happened, but just like any crush our dear protagonist of his love life Julien was heartbroken, so the crush on the teacher had come in such a good way and time. That was all he had told about the older crush, also avoiding pronouns and I had no guts to ask him if he were gay or queer or bisexual and if somehow any men were involved in his love life. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him, so I just remained silent to be the listener in his story. It felt like another fear, back when I hadn’t thought my parents to be ignorant and homophobic, when I just wanted to come out to them and I couldn’t, when fear would grip me and wouldn’t let me go, when I just couldn’t bring myself to speak at all. I couldn’t speak here either, I was scared that he would take it the wrong way or what if he himself was somehow homophobic, even if we had Nathan and Dick in the house and he specifically didn’t get along with either of them. 

Julien continued his story, saying that he had noticed his teacher’s curiosity, so eventually once he deliberately fucked up with the thermometer to stay at home during some test, so that he would be able to redo it much later than everyone else had and he’d be alone with the teacher, but now he had no ideas for questions, instead he just started talking about the tests, how he was sorry that he had gotten ill, saying that the teacher just kept staring at him, as if with eyes opened that someone would pay attention to them, it dawned on Julien how lonely they seemed. He laughed bitterly at his own comment, but continued without explanation, saying that they would just have small talk about school eventually and that’s how it kept going with Julien staying behind lessons. Once they had started talking about blues, it had just been random, Julien wouldn’t even recall how. Then they shifted onto literature. And every week it had been a different topic and Julien would make sure to miss the tests and write them right after. He said that he had been ill often as a child and that progressed, so it was no big deal, it didn’t seem out of ordinary. 

And they kept talking and talking and talking, until they had both leaned in and made out. Julien said that he wasn’t even sure about the age at that point, all he had known that he was attracted and somehow for a first time the attraction had been mutual. He paused, wondering if he should go on, looking down with tears in his eyes. Then that’s when the train arrived and we had to get out of it, Julien instantly lit a cigarette, forgetting to share the box with me so I had taken out my own and lit by myself as well, as Julien was forgetting to drag, looking ahead as he was walking back home. I knew that if I didn’t start I wouldn’t hear the rest, so I poked him to keep going, to which he spoiled that eventually the teacher understood that more students which weren’t into Maths would be interested and then they started screwing others, two years in when Julien had already fallen in love, confessed, slept over at the teacher’s place and so on. 

Then I stopped walking to which Julien stopped as well. I didn’t do anything drastic, as telling him that I would be there for him or I could try to be his senpai, I just paused to look up and see the first odd flakes of snow which were spiraling down, reminding us of the cold weather ahead and contrasting with people putting up their Christmas decorations already at an increasingly huge speed, coating the city into a different atmosphere rather than winter misery, which all of us expected every year until we would be reminded of Christmas. 

-

I'm sorry for the late post. I was in a bad headspace, but here I am trying my best x)

I've also written today more than I actually have in ages. 

I don't really know what to say, because the whole novel was really written under playing a Sonic racing game to brainstorm and then I would write everything down, sometimes Callie would do notes instead of me and then I would write everything. 

I hope you're enjoying this and thank you

<3

Jamie