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