Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:53:55 -0400 From: Jeff Wilson Subject: W.A.R. Part 6, Chapter 6 W.A.R. Part Six - Commencement Chapter Six -- No Place Like Home by Jeff Wilson Brett drove us to Dustin's house, where we dropped off Dustin and I gathered my belongings. Then Brett drove me to my house. "Do you want me to stay with you?" Brett asked. "No, I need to do this on my own." I replied. "Okay... Call me. Please call me." "I will." I said. I walked into the house and Brett didn't pull out of the driveway until I was inside. The house was empty when I walked in. I was sort of relieved, but sort of upset as well. I wanted to get it over with. I walked to my room and dropped off my stuff. I looked around at my room and realized just what a mess I'd let it become. I gathered up some of the dirty clothes and put them into a hamper. I gathered up many of the papers that I'd let clutter up my room and tossed most of them away. I got the vacuum and swept up my room for the first time in months. I also cleaned up the top of my desk, and kept going until I finally felt that my room was back to the way it should be. I straightened the picture that was sitting on top of my dresser. It was a picture of me, Brett, and dad when we went on our camping trip. I took the clothes I had thrown into the hamper and threw many of them into the washing machine. After that, I walked into the living room and sat down. I ran my hands through my hair, and wished that it wasn't so long. I leaned back on the couch so that my head rested on top of the couch. I sat there staring up at the ceiling. I had a few things that I wanted to say to my mom when she got there, but I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. I started to feel a little bit scared. This might be the end. This might be the last time that I ever sat on that couch in the house that my dad had bought so many years ago. This might be my last hour in the house I grew up in. I heard the garage door open. I felt my heartbeat speed up. My forehead began to sweat. I was so unsure, so frightened. I didn't know what else to do, so for the first time in a long time, I prayed. "God please help me through this." The side door opened and mom walked into the kitchen. She stopped when she saw me. We were both still for a minute, I on the couch, she standing in the kitchen. My face was emotionless, I just stared at her. She also stared back at me. I guess we were both unsure of what was going to happen between us. "You're back." She finally said. "I guess." I replied. "Billy, we need to..." "How could you do that to me?" I blurted out. Well, so much for staying calm. "Listen to me..." "No, you listen! You took something that was my personal private business and made it the whole damn town's business. You had no right!" Mom walked into the living room and carefully sat down in her chair. She put her hand on my knee. "Billy... I have to know if you are having sex with Brett. I have to know what I'm dealing with here." I laughed and pushed her hand away. "Why would I tell you anything? You're just going to tell the whole town what I tell you." "Oh, you're not still upset about that..." "You're damn right I'm upset! You humiliated me and you betrayed me in front of the whole town and you don't see anything wrong with it! How could my own mother do that to me?" "I did it to help you, Billy. Don't you see that I'm trying to save you? I only want what's best for you. I don't want you to get hurt." "Well you may not want me to get hurt, but you sure caused me to get hurt!" Mom reached to me again, this time taking my hand. "I didn't hurt you! Those Reilly's are the ones that are hurting you Billy! Don't you see? Billy, you are not gay! You're not! You are my little boy and I love you so much! You just need some help!" I pulled my hand away from hers. "Mom, I don't want your help! I just want you to accept me the way I am." "Don't give me that acceptance crap!" Mom said, rolling her eyes in obvious disgust. "That's more of that Jennifer Reilly garbage that she and her son have been feeding you. Oh, how could I have been so stupid all these years to have let her poison your mind? To turn you against me. Against God! Well maybe she can just forget about God's laws and let her son go to hell, but I won't!" "You don't go to hell just because of who you love!" "You will go to hell for breaking God's laws! Billy, it's clear. It's so clear. I've had many in depth conversations with Pastor Carl since I first began to suspect that you were falling into temptation. He warned me about your closeness to that boy, and of Jennifer Reilly and her psycho-babble garbage. But Pastor Carl knows that you're not to blame here! He has told me that you can still be forgiven. But you have to confess your sin and not fall into temptation anymore! You have lust in your heart Billy! All boys do at one time or another. But if you fight it and just say no, then you won't fall into Satan's trap!" "Mom, I love Brett. I'm not just going to go out and have sex just because the devil made me do it." "Man shall not lie with man as he lies with woman." Mom said. "Well, I guess we'll just have to have sex standing up then." Mom sighed, frustrated. "This is not a joke Billy." "Yes it is. I should have known better than to try to come back here and talk reasonably to you. You're not even listening to me, so why even bother?" "Okay, you want me to listen? Well, I'm listening. Talk." I sat there for a minute, unable to think since she put me on the spot. "Well?" "No. No matter what I say here you're just going to reject it or mix it up and throw it back at me with 'sin and Satan.' That's what I mean. Sure you might listen what I say, but you only hear what you want to hear. I don't know why I came back." "Billy, I only want what's best for you! Why can't you see that?" "What you want is for me to forget who I am and pretend to be something that I'm not. Why can't you see that?" "You are not gay! You're my son!" "No, I'm your son and I'm gay!" "No you're not!!!" Mom said angrily. "Listen to me. You don't know what you're saying. How can you possibly come to the decision that you are gay? You're only seventeen." "I'm almost eighteen, mom! And it wasn't a decision, mom. You said yourself that you liked guys when you were like fourteen years old!" I asked. "That's different! It's unnatural Billy! Listen to me, Billy, sure it might feel good, these things that you are doing with that boy. It might feel right and you want to do it again because it makes you feel good. But that's not the way it's supposed to be! You're trapped, Billy! Satan is using that boy to tempt you; to turn you into something that you're not!" "The only person here who is trying to turn me into something that I'm not is you." I replied. "I knew this was a mistake. I'm leaving." "No!" Mom stood up. "Billy, please! I couldn't bear it if you left me. You are my little boy! Don't let your stubbornness destroy you like it did your father!" I felt a surge of anger flow through me when she brought up dad. "You have no right to bring dad into this, mom! I'm not the one who replaced him." "I didn't marry David to replace your father, Billy! No one on earth can replace your father. But you can't live your whole life mourning someone. Especially someone who spent so much time preparing us for his death. Billy, your father was a different man after that stroke. You know it as much as I do. You saw the way he changed. He knew his life was going to be short. No doctor had to tell him that. He was on borrowed time from the day of that stroke until the day he died." "Please don't..." I said, turning away from her. "You know it's true Billy. He accepted it. He knew that the combination of diabetes, and years of smoking, and the stroke, and the years he spent drinking before you were born were going to be too much to defeat. He only survived because he wanted to be here for us a little while longer. For you!" Mom put her hand on my shoulder and I shrugged her away. "He told me that he wanted us to be happy Billy. He told me that if I found someone that he didn't want to stand in the way after he was gone. Like you, I always told him that he was being silly and that he was going to be fine. I don't think I ever really believed him until he was already gone. You think it was any easier for me than it was for you? I spent thirty years of my life in love with that man. Thirty years... And then he was taken from me. He goes to sleep and never wakes up, and the nightmare begins for us." "How can you say that when you got married three months later?" I asked. "I can't be alone Billy. I can't. I've lost my whole family except for my sister and you. I've lost my mother and father, my husband of thirty years... I can't lose you too, Billy. I can't lose you over something so foolish! I know you always got along with your father more than me, and I was very happy that you were so close to him! He needed your love so very badly! I think it was why he was so easy on you when you'd get into one of your moods." "You don't have to lose me, mom. You're pushing me away." "No. I'm not! I could never do that! It's that boy and his mother who are driving a wedge between us! Billy, I would never push you away! I'm trying to bring you closer! I'm trying to get you away from that temptation. I'm trying to save you!" "Brett is the only person who could have gotten me through this year." "No! Billy, I wanted to help you! David wanted to help you, too! But you've closed yourself off from us! You need to open the doors and let us help you! But you won't let us!" "You don't understand! You never have. To you, it's about sex. To me, it's about love. I loved Brett long before I had any kind of sex with him. And it was so frustrating to have to spent all this time being two different people. Well I can't do it anymore. It's tearing me apart." "Then give up that boy and be the boy you're supposed to be!" "The boy I'm supposed to be according to you isn't the person I am mom. It never was. This is who I am. I'm the same guy I was yesterday. I've been gay all along and that's not going to change. I'm still your son, whether you like it or not." Mom sat back on her chair, closed her eyes and put her hands over them, trying to collect her thoughts. She moved her hands down along her face so that they ended up under her chin. "Very well..." She said. "I guess we need to decide where we're going to go from here." "What about..." "We're never going to solve this Billy. We're on two completely different trains. We're not even on the same track. If we were on the same track, we'd just be heading toward each other and into a big crash. Let's just leave it alone for now." "Okay." I said cautiously. "Now, do you want to stay?" "Well, yeah." "Good. I want you to stay. I couldn't take it if you left me over this." "I always figured you'd throw me out like that preacher said you're supposed to." "Billy, Pastor Carl has told me that he didn't mean that you throw out the person, you just work to get rid of the sin. Pastor Carl doesn't hate you Billy. He loves you! He loves everyone. He wants to help you, if you'd give him the chance." "You mean he wants to brainwash me. No thanks." I replied. Mom sighed deeply again, obviously upset that I would reject the pastor's 'good teaching.' "Well, as I said, I don't want you to leave. So you don't have to worry about that. I couldn't bear it if you left like that. However, like Pastor Carl said, we do have to get the sin out of this house." I didn't like the sound of that. "So what are you saying, mom?" I asked. "No more of that boy." She replied. "No way. That's not going to happen." "I know this is going to be difficult, but I cannot let you bring him here, Billy." I began to wonder if she had heard anything I said during our conversation. But I wasn't going to let her beat me. Not after I'd finally come to this point. "Well, good-bye then." I said. "Billy!" "You didn't listen to a word I said, mom! I'm not going to suddenly turn straight just because you don't let me see Brett. And I'm old enough to make my own choices. I can't live without Brett, so good-bye." "You're not leaving. You sit back down." Mom said sternly. I sat back down on the couch. I don't know why I did, it's not like she could have really stopped me from leaving if I wanted to. "Billy, I know that I can't stop you from seeing that boy." "'That boy' has a name, mom." I interrupted. Mom sighed again. "Fine... Brett. I know that I'm not going to be able to order you to stop seeing him. You're long past that point. But I am insisting that you respect my house and my rules in this house. I never want to see him in this house again." "That's not even close to being fair, mom." "It's the very least that I can ask of you. I'm not stopping you from going over there or from riding to school with him. But I don't want him in this house ever again. He ruined your purity, Billy. I don't ever want to see him again." "Well I don't want to see David again either. But I don't have much of a choice, do I?" "The discussion is over. You know what I expect. Are we clear?" I sat there staring at her, wanting so much to tell her to forget it. I wanted to tell her that she couldn't boss me around. I wanted to tell her that I was moving out and that was that. I wanted to do a lot of things, but I did the thing I didn't want to do at all. "We're clear." I said. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Well, not the decision you might have thought Billy would make, huh? Well, he's putting practicality over pride for once. Was it the decision you would have made? Anyway, I have email and a yahoo group that you can find and enjoy. The addresses for both are in other chapters. Go get 'em! I want to hear from you! I don't hear as much anymore now that we're so far along. Next time, Billy turns eighteen and Brett loses something close to his heart... or is it close to his face?