Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:25:31 -0800 (PST) From: Stephen Aramburu Subject: Power of Love 3 I remembered it extremely clearly. I was holding him in my arms...having the greatest, most gratifying sex that anybody could ever have. I woke up...was it all a dream? Was it just another figment of my imagination brought on by my fantasies? No! It was real! I was actually holding him! What had happened? What was happening to me? I was scared and confused...but holding him felt so good...it gave me a strange sense of happiness that I'd never felt before...a happiness that no girl could possibly give me. He was still holding onto me and there was a smile on his face...a genuine, heartwarming smile. I noticed that my other hand was placed squarely on his ass. Then, I got horny again. He woke up, at that moment, and smiled...then, our lips closed in on one another and we started making out savagely and lustfully. Suddenly, I looked at the clock...it said 6:45. "Shit," I said out loud. "My parents will be up any minute!" "That would be a problem, wouldn't it?" he said, genuinely concerned. "Let's hurry up and put our clothes back on...so it looks like we've been sleeping all night." I agreed and climbed out of bed and threw on my clothes. Then, I have him his. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes...that look made me melt. "Thank you...thank you for...comforting me, last night," he said quietly. "Nobody ever..." "Don't worry about it, man," I replied, kissing him softly on the forehead. "So what we did last night," he continued. "What does that make us?" "We're..." I gasped for the right word. My facial expression changed suddenly. I was even more confused and more scared than I had been. Then, I heard a shudder in my parents' room. "They're awake," I whispered. "They're definitely gonna check on us...put your clothes on and act like you're asleep!" We quickly threw our clothes back on and "went back to sleep" in our designated areas. Just in time, too, as my mom opened the door slightly and peeked in. Her hair was messy, her nightgown was frilly and wrinkled, and she looked absolutely exhausted. Her eyes scanned the room and then she left, angrily mumbling under her voice. Yecheng and I showered (separately) and ate breakfast. He fixed up his highlighted hair and put on some khakis and a messed up collared shirt. God...he looked so sexy. What we did realize that disturbed us, however, was that mom and dad didn't say a word. The two of them looked extremely depressed and extremely disappointed...the same way they were when I got a B+ on a biology test some months ago when I should've gotten at least an A+. The two of them never even looked at me...or at each other. Not looking at or talking to me was typical of them. But not even passing glances to each other? My parents were soul mates...lovers created for each other. They rarely fought and would spend hours in each other's arms, babbling endlessly about how much they loved one another. They would talk like best friends everyday and their conversations would always be light-hearted and cheery. The fact that they walked past each other, like complete strangers, with their heads hanging, meant that they were really upset, not just a little disappointed, but extremely pissed off. Yecheng and I were really scared? We sat at the table, concentrated completely on our food, unable to muster the courage to speak a single word. Our faces remained calm, but the two of us were sweating profusely inside our shirts, despite the air conditioning. Suddenly, it hit me! What if they knew what we'd done last night? What if my parents knew of our affair? What would they have done to me? What would they have done to him? I started losing my composure...I wanted to scream...the silence was killing me. "I have to go to work," my dad muttered under his breath all of a sudden, stopping my urge to scream. My mom, looking down onto her breakfast, just nodded in approval before my dad sat up, took his briefcase and government papers, and walked out the door. The TV was loudly playing mom's favorite soap opera in the next room and sounded pretty dramatic, but mom wouldn't even give it a glance. I knew something was wrong. Yecheng urged me to eat more quickly, which I did. Then, when we were both done with our food and cleaning up after ourselves, we stood up. "Mom...I'm just going to show Yecheng around the town," I said. Mom nodded in approval, but didn't look up. That's all the approval I needed. The tension was killing me and I couldn't get my ass out of my house quickly enough. Xuzhou was a bustling town with a lot of cars and people buzzing back and forth. It was loud, but gave you an unexpected sense of privacy and comfort. We decided to take a relaxing walk by the lake, instead of going to the arcade. Xuzhou had a beautiful lake full of clear, green water that was famous throughout China for its size and beauty. It is now a popular tourist attraction with hundreds of people walking and working by that street everyday. Both of us were pretty tired after last night's affairs. "Man, that was harsh," he laughed. "I was sweating my ass off! Your mom looked really pissed, dude!" "I know, right?" I responded. The two of us burst out laughing and I took my hand and playfully messed up his hair. He laughed and gently shoved me. Cars and taxis buzzed past the streets and bakeries and electronic stores were everywhere along the sidewalk. We checked out the newest MP3 and IPOD models and the latest video game releases. People in the store could tell that we were incredibly close, old friends, perhaps, but suspected nothing of what it actually was. Then, after about fifteen minutes of walking around and talking about nothing, we made a turn into a narrow street with less people and more privacy so that we could talk about something more intimate. "Yecheng," I said. "What we did last night..." "What about it?" he said, his expression suddenly changing. "I...I'm so confused," I confessed. "I just don't know what to make of it." He placed his arms around me and held me gently. "Zequin, you're the best friend I've ever had," he whispered softly, his voice cracking. "Whenever I'm around you, I feel wanted. I feel cared for. You make me really happy...happy to be alive. I've realized that I really care about you and I love you as a friend and a brother...maybe more...I think I love you." "Same here," I whispered back. "I feel really warm when I'm around you. Seeing you makes me all tingly inside. I don't know why...it's just, for some reason, you're the long lost friend that I'd been looking for all my life. Life was okay before I met you. But now that I have met you, I just don't know what I'd be like without you. I can't stand being away from you. I think...I think I love you, too." "Do you think..." he paused for a second and looked away from me. "What is it?" I said. "Nothing," he replied. "C'mon," I urged. "It's gotta be something!" He looked into me, his dark, brown eyes penetrating into my soul. "Do you think we could just be together like this for the rest of our lives? Just you and me like this..." Tears started welling into my eyes. I had no clue why...I just felt like crying. I was so happy and so scared and unsure at the same time. Yes, I did love him. Yes, I did want to be with him for the rest of my life...but weren't boys supposed to love girls? Weren't guys supposed to marry and have sex with people of the opposite sex and have children with them? Suddenly, I thought back to my parents and the looks on their faces this morning. What would they think if they knew? What if they already knew? What if my friends at school knew? What would they think? Years ago, there was a Polish exchange student who attended our school. He was nice and made friends quickly. But that boy enjoyed being womanly. He'd always fantasize that he was a girl and would dress up in women's clothing when he was alone. One day, he was caught by students from our school and beaten brutally for his girlish actions. People called him a hermaphrodite, a woman, a penisless eunuch, a castrated pig...all sorts of nasty names. Would the same thing happen to me? "I want to...I want to so badly," I cried. "But..." "But what?" "I don't know," I said. We embraced one another and the two of us started crying. I didn't tell him of my fears and my insecurities, but I didn't need to, either. He understood them. He was feeling them every bit as much as I was. "Don't you wish that we were the only ones in the world?" he cried. "Don't you wish that we could just run away someplace where we could spend 24 hours a day with one another...cracking jokes, telling stories, having sex?" "I do...I do," I sobbed. The two of us looked around, to make sure that nobody else was around. Then, our lips closed in on one another, and we kissed passionately. Thankfully, we'd managed to get home without being caught making out with one another. We spent the day watching a movie and going to the mall to check out some of the newest gadgets that Cingular and Motorola had to offer. Before we knew it, it was already 6:00 and we had to head home. I was sure that my mom would've calmed down by now from whatever it was she was suffering from. But as I entered the door, I saw that she was still depressed. Her eyes were downcast and her expression was bitter and depressing. "Hey, mom!" I cried out. "Zequin...I have to talk to you," my mom said. "Yecheng, please leave for a second." "Yes ma'am," Yecheng said obediently, before stepping out the door. My mom got up and approached me. "It's about Yecheng," she said. "Shit," I thought. "What if she knows about me and him? What if she knows that I was not normal...that I love a boy? What am I gonna say? What am I gonna do? What is she gonna do? Was she going to disown me? Tell dad and have him punish me?" I stood there, petrified...uncertain of what was going to happen to me. Was my mom going to kill me?