To Miles 58

I didn't want to think that this could be the last time I would see home for a reason that I might just not be alive. I thought of other men telling how they had seen hell in war and it didn't matter what would happen anymore. I wondered if those who fought would go to Heaven or Hell. Would we be sinners for spilling so much blood? Me specifically as a gunner, I would be responsible for not just one death, but an entire enemy ship. Did that send me to a deeper circle of Hell?

I ended up knocking on Matt's door, greeting his mother who was just as happy and surprised to see me as if I had just come off the platform and just as if I was her own son, she inspected me to see how I had aged with her own eyes. Matt was deep in a nap, but I decided to wake him up anyway, after all the hassle of going up the same old stairs past photos of my dear childhood sweetheart. I ended up watching him for a brief while, as I was holding the door. I didn't know what to do as my whole body ached to just lay besides him, forget about all the other loves I've had and give in to my first one. Was the first one the true one? Was it really that one? Just because it had yanked me open?

I wake him up and sit on the other end of the bed, kicking my shoes off and just resting my legs on his bed. Matt looks at me sleepily and bewilderedly and by now I should be used to people's confusion, but that is still not the case for me. He just keeps looking at me softly, as if no other love stood between us and I end up shifting slowly to his side, as if it were yesterday again and we could continue the same kiss and somehow get much more. I don't want the hook up to just become a hook up, I don't want to remain thinking that I could have done more and I didn't.

He doesn't kiss me.

He doesn't say a word and I wish I could read his mind, so I lean and kiss his forehead just because life keeps going and there is never an ending until you die, life gives more complications and more twists and somehow much more love, depth and understanding, as if the novel was never enough.

What if he won't love me tomorrow?

I try to calm myself down and I hug myself, as he is still trying to even hold his eyes open and failing, I have to poke him a few times to make sure he stays awake. Eventually he falls asleep again and turns around, which causes me to just stare at the ceiling and eventually I close my own eyes and I don't even know where all this desire to sleep comes out from, but then I barely get any sleep with Jamie and I'm sure that with age it will catch up and I won't stay up as late anymore. I end up fading away thinking of how would it be later on, how will we continue sneaking around and if there was any hope for America. But there was no hope for queer men and nothing was even imaginable. It's some sort of consolation if you manage to go on with life without getting caught just like all the other men who came before us.

Maybe we were both stalling because we didn't know what to say. Was it really it?

We had slept until lunch time, at least that's what it sounded like with Matt's mom knocking on Matt's door. I still sat up fast and moved away from Matt, as she opened the door. But it wasn't a first that we had napped together and the benefit of it all is that no matter how hard you try people will still see it as friendship between two men. Of course in this case nothing had happened.

“Alex, will you join us for lunch then?” She asks politely and it was my turn to see how much she had changed. She seemed to be ageing well or possibly it was because I just saw her as Matt's mom and liked her always with that sole fact. Since we were best friends it was obvious that the parents would accept the other's child and slowly became friends themselves and now were both parents of a navy boy.

“Yeah, I'd love to.” I ponder if I should've given my own mother a call, but I'm not sure what the use would be at this point, I just hope that no extra food will go to waste. I shake Matt lightly as she walks away, leaving the task in my hands and I hope not to fail.

I decide that I can easily just talk to Matt afterwards even if I don't have the right words aligned to speak up. Lunch was taken quite slowly, mostly because Matt was still sleepy and I wondered if he had decided to go elsewhere after the dinner last night or maybe he just stayed awake. He had told me once that he would go through everything in his room nostalgically, and maybe yesterday was one of those nights or days. I thought that I would remember that, but eventually I decided that it's better to sort of pick off where we left off, because if he just kisses me like that what does that even mean? I watched his parents and they both stated that they were proud of us boys, serving the country and all, and that America would be safe under our guns and wings.

I felt guilty as Matt offered to go into town again for a drink, so as soon as we left the house we both lit our cigarettes. It felt like it would be dark, because it felt like we had slept to dinner time, but alas. It was sunny and warm enough for the current season.

I couldn't ask him if he loved me.

Or could I even utter such words out loud?

“Do you love me?”

“What kind of question is that, Al?” And he looks at me, to see me pale and ask it, a question which has weighed on my shoulders for years and seems to be like a pendulum, because I always come back to him. He looks away, inhaling and then down. “Of course I do.”

He looks back at me.

“Do you love me?” He ping-pongs the question. I nod before I speak, as if the letters would wobble in front of me. Matt doesn't even allow me to speak up and we continue walking under the trees which had grown over the years, just like we had and soon enough we'd get closer to the town. “But you're with another man.”

I can't throw the same back at him. I think he's single. And I am supposedly committed, but am I really when we had talked about us with other men? I think of Jamie briefly, because this is about me and Matt after all, so I discard my lover, as if he were a wedding ring. I feel like this conversation is slow, dreaded and far too painful, filled with different riddles where we hold hands and don't understand them at all in some kind of Wonderland.

“You still kissed me... knowing that.” I quickly pick up the pause.

“You're the one cheating behind his back.” He realizes how stingy that might sound. And takes the blame to only shift it onto me, making himself safe and glossy. “Sorry, that sounded far too harsh.”

I thought that I'd have the answer to that, but instead I just look down at my feet, exhaling the cigarette smoke, letting it mix with the feelings and I just think of the milkshake that I could get in town, but then maybe I should choose alcohol for once and switch subjects just for my own sake. Is Matt someone who I should talk commitment to? A man who had wanted a lady in every port? Was it somehow different because I was in a relationship with a man? Was it because word had gotten out that it was serious, since I had taken him out of a marriage? Was that the word out of the mouth? Was it really all that people had thought of me and were that a bad thing? But what did they really think of Jamie? I was surprised that word about Miles hadn't travelled. Maybe Matt saw me as heavily infidel because I had slept with him when I mentioned that I was into another man?

It had been so long ago.

Days come and they go, leaving nothing behind besides memories in an hour glass which somehow shows that death is coming but it seems to be taking forever and that is somehow no reason for alarm.

Matt looks at me, sadly, realizing that he had lost the topic and decided to ask me how was the ship, how was work and decided to leave it at that. We didn't kiss again.

We didn't kiss under the trees either. Just like I had imagined in my childhood.

I still didn't have much time to think. Me and Matt decided to act as if nothing had happened and he would avoid discussing Jamie all together, just eyeing me once when mom handed me a letter from a James Hince, who I said was a dear friend from the ship. I ripped open the letter, as I had read all the poems Jamie had given me, terrified that I had broken some code with Matt, so Jamie would've been angry or disappointed in me somehow. I read every word slowly, tracing his handwriting with my own fingers, as if I could feel him digging the pen in. I had cried that night because of two men.

Letters arrived late, but more than I had expected and I would reply to them right away, Matt with me in the post office and doing just one remark maybe I should've written to someone else to make it less suspicious, but then he looked around, to make sure we were alone besides the lady which was digging in a mail drawer, that perhaps I was right and we were immune.

After all, since we worked together, couldn't we have become close friends? It's always the close friendship which ends up being two guys fucking each other behind their wives' back only in our case, there was even a divorce involved and no wife on my end, besides a phony girlfriend photo I held just in case and with Lana holding her end of the bargain. I should tell her to start writing me letters far more often.

I went to bed every night with the mere thought that I should raise the subject again, no matter how hurt I was feeling and at least somehow manage to put it to rest, put it to peace. Matt dominated my dreams and I wondered what if I was in love with another Matt, with the Matt that was always there for me and wouldn't shy away from a subject and told me to go get whomever I had wanted. The Matt that I had kissed and slept with once. It all seemed like sole occasions, nearly ceremonial. By the time I finally decide that it's time to have the talk, it is a cold morning. I end up overdressing or maybe it's my anxiety rocking from side to side and I think of myself as a child on a rocking horse. I end up knocking on Matt's door very early, confused by the slow response time and I knock harder, until Matt's mom shows up on the doorstep all in tears. But she seems pleased to see me.

“Matt got called in earlier.” Were her first words through older tears, which I hadn't seen her cry. I take a step back, as if I were to fall down, but instead I just hold onto nothing, trying to keep my legs standing.

“Oh. Right.” She stares at me, wishing probably that her son had much more time with her than seeing me all these remaining days. But then Matt's shore leave had started earlier, maybe it was due for him already. Then her eyes shine up, recalling something. She turns back to get a letter from the window sill and she hands it to me.

Maybe I should've counted that Matt would be gone by now. I should've talked to him much earlier.

I don't know how to comfort her, but I do hug her and we hold onto each other. I wish during the hug, that she never finds out my feelings and the odd web between us. I don't think she would ever be able to stomach it since Matt had always shown interest in women, it was me who was the late bloomer to everyone. I had even shown the photo of Lana to all of our parents and an amused Matt, who just said that Lana was the perfect girl for me and that she does indeed miss me, but a certain time will come, he said, that we would both be reunited, possibly after the war.

The war had caused an eruption of talk, specifically what was going on in Britain, making summer's colour a popular blood red with disruptions of the living and dead. I'm sure the dead were shifting in their graves. But the topic was soon dropped, because all should be feared, if it's moving at a rapid speed and dominating everything on its way.

Matt and me discussed the war sometimes, but it was just something which was rapidly colouring our minds a dark colour and since we were navy, it would be a heavier war in our minds than combat, we wouldn't be out on the front, we'd be fighting everything in a different way, like we were trained and waiting for any second to be blown up while on the ships.

It was a different war, it was a waiting and more precise war.

I decided to go back home and turn on the radio just to listen what was going on, as if someone's death could somehow distract me and I decided to sit and listen, missing the reports which Commander Molko would tell us and now here I was, listening to the reports myself, hearing what was lost and how many lives we had lost.

I don't know why I decided to colour my worries with war, but maybe it was enough for me to cry under in my room.

I actually started thinking and wondering for once what would befall America and how the fuck would we get away from all of this. As much as I had no patriotism, I didn't want the lands to fall to Hitler and I didn't want anything gone like what was happening with Europe. And even if it felt like I would be doing nothing, it was better than just surviving a few days on the front. My mind was racing. How many days would one even survive on the front these days? I started crying even harder. Maybe this was all the fear I had been holding inside me and then I decided to rip open the letter, but my eyes were far too blurry to read it and I held it with trembling hands, seeing tears drip on it as I wanted to tear it to shreds and tell myself that one man is enough. No need to chase for a love which was long gone.

-

It's only fitting that in the honor of To Miles' 3rd anniversary I give To Miles a 3rd Nanowrimo shot. I actually wrote this quite a few days ago and I just didn't have the energy to post it and I was struggling to write, so I didn't get anything done. But with Nanowrimo rolling in, it's going to be much easier now to write because I'll simply have to. 

I get inspired a lot in the bad way if I watch something or read and then write right away, because my thoughts are crowded with impressions and whatnot. And that's how the first few paragraphs came to be because me and Callie watched Apocalypse Now and I was kind of left wanting much more, I probably expected it to be as good as Full Metal Jacket but I didn't get the bond, so yeah. But overall it just made me realize how interesting the Vietnam war was. Another weird thing is that we accidentally watched the extended version so that could've been it why I didn't really click with it so well. Who knows. But it still inspired me, so if you know what I'm talking about you'll find a reference. 

I kept pondering on how Alex would/could ask Matt when it came to whether Matt loved him or not and then, knowing Alex, I just realized that it would just be so straight forward so I went with it. 

I just kind of went forward and just kept sprinting and onwards, I'm really just trying to tell the story here and I'm excited to go further on with Nano, it's going to get exciting! Well, it already is, but I'll finally be revealing plots I've been dying to do for years!

If you enjoyed it, please tell me so and thank you

<3

Jamie  

To Miles 57

I wish I'd know what to do with him. I don't think of Matt much because I don't even want to converse to myself about it. I go to sleep with nothing but a haste kiss from Matt, as if we were very good friends, that a haste kiss on the lips would be some sort of handshake. I ponder far too much into the night of loves old and new, I fall asleep guiltily thinking that I should always be doing that to Jamie's touch.

The next day I wake up with the dream still lingering that I'm in school, somehow Matt has no idea of my crush and everything feels wrong with not wandering around a bunch of men whom I have a past with and have exchanged glances at least once and pondered if I could just feel their life trickle down my hands before I would utter his name. I turn around, still wishing that I could fall asleep in this old bedroom of mine, which I always visit on shore leave making mom and dad somehow happy. They never disrupt their schedule, making a pocket for me as if I had never left. I always wondered how come parents start playing such a small role in one's life. I wasn't one to think that I would be a father some day until I had discovered who I was, but if I were to think that I would even end up being a fatherly figure to anyone, would I be disappointed in knowing that the first years would be all I was given? And overall why do we give children so much credit when they just fade? Maybe it's just mine and me. I could barely recall the cards I'd be given on my birthday through out the years.

I loved them because that's what you're supposed to do.

Jamie doesn't speak much of his children, just like someone would avoid a divorce from someone who had believed in love for far too long, but sometimes he gets drunk and does and I wondered once before falling asleep how would I even be presented onwards, but I'd never be as easily explained as if he would've found another wife. And it was probably best that his children wouldn't know anyway, at this age I would barely know myself, so why would you try to understand someone else? And that someone would be your dad. I don't know how would I have reacted to find out that both my parents swung that way.

I wondered where did Alison's tale end and where did mine even start properly, where was it able to be told?

I turned around again and thought of Matt. What if he was an expired lover, where would he fit in and his whole blessing of me and Jamie? Were that really it after all the daydreaming and the one time sex we had? Was that all an empty echo of me screaming in the woods? Was I alone on that front-

I turned around again. I didn't want to think of war and how it would slowly be raised like a glass of wine to toast to peace which we're all clearly lacking and don't seem to ever achieve, like a bad expedition in a museum explaining what is wrong with our nation. I didn't want to think of it at all and I didn't want to come back and hear the sailors over powdered eggs say how America would surely survive Hitler and how we would destroy him in a day. I didn't want to hear any of it, patriotism long gone when I had discovered that I had just happened to be somehow queer in a way that the church would frown upon and would be something that I would never tell my parents and that's how the boat drifts from the shore.

Eventually I knew that I'd have to wake up and face breakfast and the sooner the better, not to disrupt anything. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to cook normal food again which wasn't disgusting and powdered or canned. I was positive that I would be overwhelmed by the scent and look of real food and how I'd be able to cook it. I ended up getting dressed in civilian clothes which I had left, which seemed odd because I would only touch them ever so brief.

Today wasn't the day when I'd even like to make any decisions and I hoped that I wouldn't get that in the form of food either. Thankfully, it was early enough, even in the weekend, to see my mom and dad be eating. They both seemed surprised to see me, as if they hadn't forgotten, but they still looked at me from head to toe, something going on in their heads about how much I had grown and it felt surreal to be somewhere far more spacious than a bunk bed and then progress downstairs to the rest of the house. It was in a way different from Jamie and Alison's house which was touched by children and Alison's obscure objects so it was weird to see two people who were hard working and had a son long gone in the navy. It was weird to be in a different looking home and soon enough the memory of the previous were erased. Mom offered to make me some eggs and I couldn't help but want to say how great that would be, but instead I felt shy in front of my own mother. As I waited I couldn't help but wonder again how much do parents drift and how many secrets I had held back away from them. I didn't know how they would feel about me being queer and that I had lured like a mermaid, men to their death-

I was a mermaid. Or was it a siren. I was a siren, only frankly I wasn't signing, maybe unless Carlos had convinced me once to be in his drag show. I wondered if in the next shore leave he would actually get some fabric instead of old bed sheets, because he had been complaining that we should expand our horizons clearly. My thoughts were a storm of their own. All of them mixing at sea.

But if I was a siren what would that make Jamie? A supernatural sailor who managed to breathe underwater?

I didn't ask those question to my parents and I was patiently waiting for a question which was something among the lines of have you ever managed to meet a nice girl on the shore and if so, where would you go from there? I had spoken to them briefly of Lana, in big fear that I might need something to confirm that photo I had held of both of us which was getting old and we would need retaking the next time we would meet. But then wouldn't that mean that sweethearts just held onto older and more older photos of each other? And I hoped that holding a photo of us both was alright. I ended up eating the eggs a bit too fast, too engulfed in the fact that food tasted like food really, and after a long period of eating things which were probably leftover mashed potatoes (or whatever the substance had been) from a month ago.

Mom kept asking me how has the navy been treating me and what was ahead, sort of tip toeing around war even if I could know that she most likely sat next to the radio every evening to hear a report and picture how it would all look like in all worst case scenarios. I would've done that as well if I had a child I cared about, no matter how close.

I think adolescence starts when you start holding secrets you can no longer tell, like Matt or my infatuation with Jack. Sometimes he would come back to me and I would recall how much I had lusted after that certain pilot, making me question how much I had wanted Matt. But I would tell myself even upon the another man's lips that I was melting because Matt was heterosexual and that had been it. I had no idea that there were some lingering thoughts. And now we were left as former lovers nearly and my own desire was asking me whether I had wanted to go further and if so, what had I wanted? How would it all be arranged and where would poor Jamie be? I heard of the sailors which Matt would speak of when we were growing up, who had so many girlfriends on each shore so that they would never meet and he would speak of them so fondly, so enviously, because he had wanted them, simply because he liked girls too much.

Did I want a guy on every shore? I guess I wouldn't mind the possibility but my love for Jamie and my desire to settle somehow with him, a desire Miles had once shared, was something which was new, shiny, foreign and was slowly creeping on my thoughts. I always thought that I would never manage with Alison and even now, how would that be pulled off? Maybe if we were close in ranks, but there was rank bias and an age difference. I drank my coffee quickly as well, as if I had wanted to grasp the day even if I knew that all I could buy would most likely be left behind besides a few books which could be squeezed into the coffin locker and somehow that would be sufficient. I should also bring Jamie some gift, which would be a bit smarter than wine. I could get him a novel of sorts, anything Russian I could get my hands on and I needed to guess something he hadn't read as well. I wasn't even sure that the selection would be that rich somewhere so small and away from a port.

I briefly wondered about the bars around, if I would ever have the guts to even approach another man with a sole intention that I really wouldn't want to travel around town. I suddenly felt ashamed of holding as many secrets as if I was holding a full deck of cards. I could've hung out around my parents but instead I decided that it would have been better if I made my way to town, as if the month would stroll fast and I was due Jamie a letter after the poems he had tucked in for me to read, not at once, but slowly and when I would be lonely. I hadn't touched them yet, remembering them now, as I had been far too immersed in the whole thought that I would be away from him for so long again. And this time no new resolution would be made, besides how much love gets stretched and torn but remains just as elastic with the new strains.

I went out to town, feeling like a kid again and I felt anxious, just browsing and wondering what to even do with Matt and maybe I should've called him over and enjoyed the day with him, but then maybe Jamie was right and I needed some recollection of my own, that I needed to look back and reflect. I had been building a web and I hadn't looked back at all. And overall I had been way too tired for anything, so my memory had been getting worse.

I felt like I should've just stayed back home in bed and curled there, reading all the poems, but instead it was like I wanted to torture myself from not reading them, as if all of a sudden I could forget that I had loved someone so dearly and for a while now. The stores just seemed the same only catching up with the latest trends which I had not seen and I peeked at the store fronts with dresses to see what I could get for Carlos, what he could've asked for and what could I do a mock for or actually be serious. I even had a kid bump into me with a slingshot, making me realize that I had probably stared far too long. I wondered who had done Karen's dresses and how she had managed to make them so pretty but then my attempt had been bed sheets and I barely tried.

I ended up emerging from the book store empty-handed after I had realized that they probably had the same that Jamie had on his bookshelf and for a long while I sat on the bench next to the drug store with an older woman, thinking what could I get him as a gift and maybe wine wouldn't even be such a big bad idea, even if it seemed highly predictable and was something which wouldn't last us both too long. I just wanted to give him something that he would keep longer than a wine bottle and nothing besides a new lighter or a cigarette holder came to mind as well, as I would recall my own mother saying how hard it is to choose a gift, let alone one for a man. It wasn't about it being for a man, but rather for someone I held dear.

I watched the older woman from the corner of my eye and the kid with the slingshot which was still running around with a friend, not really using the weapon, probably waiting while his mom or parents were in a store. Or maybe it was a sibling, who didn't look much like him. I wondered how were it to be a kid again, but there was far too much I enjoyed now, sex included, which I wouldn't give up and kind of being away from the idleness and holding everything in myself wasn't something I would look forward to again. I still would tell Matt a lot and he knew too much, but I didn't want to be alone again with my own thoughts and guilt.

So that depressing thought had to be shoved away. I left the bench, causing the old lady to look up at me. I decided that maybe I should check the lighters and whatnot, even if it didn't feel very thoughtful and I had given him a notebook already, which he had slowly and carefully started going through. Sometimes recently he would stay up a bit after I would fall asleep and I could hear him scribble, nearly in the dark, just something and I wondered until the hours would come where I had to wake up. Mostly he wrote in the day when he was done or while he was waiting for me, in breaks with reading, but recently even that had been taking away from his reading. Maybe he was on a boring chapter? I wasn't one to admit being a muse, but as I smiled slightly, looking at the reflective lighters in the shop.

Maybe I should've even brought Matt along and I wondered if it was even alright to drag a former lover-

Was he even a former lover? What was Matt anyway? I ended up going back home emptyhanded or rather going back home, stopping right before Matt's place and wondering how much would his own bedroom echo mine even if I had been in it numerous times over the few years. It would remain just like mine untouched by time, allowing our moms to hold everything the way it had frozen by the time we had decided to join the navy.

And even if I dragged Matt would've that been okay? Or was this a gift I should've chosen by myself? Of course it was, but I just felt lost and I could only imagine that Jamie would possibly get gift advice from Karen who would mock him horrendously, probably saying that he should get me a dildo or something to spice it up.

-

I've had another mental health leave. And I don't think I've taken a month off in a while, usually it's days and days, but anyway. It happened and I'm terribly sorry, I'm just so tired because I binged 1k just now. 

I've got good news (if you're reading this of course) I'll be doing To Miles for my Nanowrimo this year in honor of its 3 year anniversary and it's going to be my 3rd Nano with To Miles as well. I'll be honest I'm terribly anxious and tired xD But hey, it's going and it's happening! So in order to get ready I decided to get back into writing by writing this monster and I've got an outline planned out for Nano, so let's all sit and pray that I get to the end of part 1 of To Miles this Nano. A lot of things ahead and frankly, a lot of things finally ahead. 

This was mostly binging rather taking things from my life or inspirations to be honest and telling and letting Alex just talk about what's in his head rather than my own. 

I had a dream where no one knew my name and I would get called by my birth name, so that was an unpleasant dream, but I guess it's a regular nightmare for anyone trans. 

I really like some bits which are sort of left untold in To Miles like Jamie's children or the state where Alex lives and locations, it's funny because I really hated the whole thing in Russian literature as I would study it in school how they would leave it anonymous or call a city X and so on and it was very repetitive and I had an essay on it. I would really enjoy analysing things and overall you do a lot of essays in school. And somehow, I'm being hypoctrical by using it myself, because you can just make the location yours really. But in this case since it's sort of told from under Alex's pen and a memoir, it's more for protecting certain things and leaving some things untold, not really an unreliable narrator though. 

I mused on my own polyamory and that seeped through into the story. 

I hope you enjoyed it and are as excited as I am. Thank you for all your support.

If you enjoyed it please feel free to tell me so. 

<3

Jamie