This is primarily a love story; sex will occur sporadically, not in every other paragraph.
Love will never abide by religion or by law. Love can be punished, but it cannot be cured. Love is the ultimate anarchist. The term "sin" is meaningless in love's language, as is the term "underage".
If you disagree with this statement, go find another story to read.
If some law says you should not be here at all, it's your own choice to stay or go away.
If you should happen to like my story, please tell me: winterboy@tutanota.com
And please remember: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
THE SOUND OF HIS FOOTSTEPS
Magnus Winter
CHAPTER 9
Sander was tired. Very tired. And homesick.
The October rain, that perpetual drizzle that never seemed to stop, got him down. The moisture that crept into everything, even his clothes on the shelves in his wardrobe felt wet. The fog that shrouded the city and changed all the sounds. The dullness of everything.
How absolutely daft he had been to think the bliss of his childhood summers could be found again. How short-sighted to think a different scenery, another language, an unfamiliar job could change and repair his fucked up life. Brighten his outlook. Bring contentment, if not happiness. How stupid to believe he could run away from his broken heart.
There wasn't much left for him here now. The short fling with Stijn proved to be just that: A fling. When Stijn's mother in March uprooted them and moved to the coast to join a Calvinist rehab program, he felt a small sting of loss, but very fleetingly. Stijn was in no way responsible for the hollowness inside him; in spite of his sweet nature and lovely body, he never filled the void left by Thomas. Nothing seemed to be able to do that. Why did he ever bother to try?
He had again begun to avoid personal contact with other people. He frequented the public toilets and the parks, but never spoke to anyone, never touched anyone anywhere except on their cocks, always creating a distance, a possible escape. Never investing anything but impersonal horniness into his interactions. At first he had a theory that this would take away his pain and still preserve the beauty of the almost sacred memories of his long gone Thomas, but it soon became nothing but routine. His thirst was only temporarily quenched, his memories haunted him and wouldn't stop aching.
And then, one late night in the park: Along the path by the wall, into the thicket. There, in the darkest corner, a man leaning against a tree trunk, skinny cigarette glowing. Sander approached carefully, alert to being rejected or possibly accepted. The man handed him the joint, Sander took a few pulls. The man closed in on him, put his hand behind Sander's neck and put his sucking lips to his throat. Sander withdrew and pushed his head and his hand away, the man instead opened Sander's jeans and rummaged inside them. Sander heard the sound of a second zipper being opened.
He felt his way down and encountered the biggest and fattest cock he had ever come across. Instant and explosive arousal shook through his body and froze his brain. He dropped to his knees and tried to put the cock in his mouth, but it was just too big for comfort. The man pushed forward, Sander gagged and choked. The man grabbed him in a steely grip, raised him up and turned him around, pushed him against the tree trunk.
And suddenly there was three of them. One held his arms, one wormed his way in between Sander and the tree trunk and sucked his cock into his mouth, so skillfully and without mercy that Sander didn't have a chance, he came immediately. His arousal subsided, he prepared himself to leave. But that was not to be. The guy holding his arms forced them around the tree trunk, the one who had sucked him held his upper thighs in a vise. He heard the man behind him spit, and then the cold and wet touch to his asshole as two fingers forced themselves into him. Hard.
This wasn't what he had come for. Sander squirmed, struggled to free himself, kicked out and shouted. The man behind him clamped his hand over Sander's mouth and drove his cock into him, the pain cut him like a thousand red-hot knives, and he blacked out.
He must have suppressed most of what happened, he had just one blind thought: Let this be over soon! He remembered their whispers as they left him, down on the ground with his face in something wet. The pain was unbearable, he managed to get up on his hands and knees. Panic soared through him, he shook as in fever. Eventually he was able to get up, pull his trousers on and stagger homewards, disbelief and rage growing in him, shame and humiliation threatening to blind him. Every step hurt, every memory howled in his brain. How? How in fucking hell could this have happened? To him?
He stood under the warm water for ages. His ass throbbed and stung, but the worst part was that corrosive feeling of shame, that nagging feeling that it was all his own fault. This is it, he thought. I've had it. I'm going home.
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→ Sander → → Diary 2018
I never learn, do I? Why do I bother to sit in a metal tube for hours and breathe other people's farts? Why do I expose myself to the situations and the surroundings that do nothing but confirm how ancient I feel, how obsolete I am, how indifferent the world is to me, and I to the world?
Yeah, yeah – food was great. Weather was perfect. Scenery was stunning. Boys were beautiful and aloof and oblivious to me. Housewives were drunk before noon. Bellies were sagging. Eyes were inquisitive. Nights were as empty as always. Thoughts were as useless and accusing as always. Soul was as numb and silent and as achingly absent as I fear it will always be. And there is nothing waiting for me anywhere. Nothing and nobody. God, I'm maudlin. God, I'm pathetic. God, gag me.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There was something vaguely familiar about the woman with the fiery red hair and the world's largest ear hoops, but it was the laughter that clinched it. It all came back to him, his last year in high school and the drama group they both had belonged to. She was sitting two tables away, two guys with her that were almost too easy to label: Shrieking voices, huge gestures, tons of mascara. Normally Sander wouldn't have bothered, but something made him get up and approach their table.
"Hi, Vera. Remember me?"
He could see she didn't have a clue. Somewhat bashful he fed her names and times and places, and then a light sprang up in her heavily made up eyes. She jumped up and hugged him, pulled him down on the vacant chair, and with almost alarming naturalness included him in the group. At first he felt like an oddball in the company, or maybe a contrast, but something titillated him, like he was breaking some unknown boundaries by sitting ringside to this group. A touch of anxiousness as well, what if they dismissed him as too square, too A4 for them? Sent out the wrong signals? But he wasn't aware of anything like that, he felt at once welcome. Maybe these people, as exotic and unusual as they appeared to him, saw behind Sander's conventional and housebroken façade, and glimpsed the hidden rebel, the carefully caged anarchist in him? Found and recognized secrets and passions that echoed in their own minds? Something beyond a handsome face and a sexual preference? Because Sander felt they passed from a chance meeting into some kind of interdependence, some kind of fusion between three gay men and a fag hag that knew they were going to stick with each other, at least for a while.
Vera ran a small gallery uptown. Sander had nothing on his agenda, and trotted along with her, the unpacking and installing of a new exhibition waited. He helped her with the job, they talked, everything seemed to move along without a hitch.
So Sander started to hang out with Vera and her crowd. Helped out in the gallery, partied with them all over town, time and again privately as well. He had never belonged to a coterie like this, and his prejudices, because he recognized he had them, against such brassy and flagrant types were put to shame. They were neither as bizarre or as elitist as he had thought or feared, they were warm and including, interested and inventive. Most of them, anyway. And yes, pretty loose regarding norms. Sander felt like he had been given something he had missed out on, some revolt he had wanted but never lived out in his youth. Something he needed. So he pierced his ears and felt rebellious.
As spring passed, Sander was busy changing hats from the sober part-time teaching he had taken on to the wild party animal he pretended to be in his spare time. The beginning of a mid-life crisis? Maybe, but he had fun. Carefree, elysian fun, accompanied by colorful people, exciting places, hot music and a lot of stimulating substances via nose and mouth. In one euphoric moment he was ready to chuck his teaching job and embark on a career as an artist – how hard could it be to slap up an installation? Or to pull off a performance? But reality caught up with him in the end: In the first place, he knew deep down he had no talent whatsoever. Secondly, decisions made while on speed? Get your shit together, Sander!
Anyway, he escorted Vera to Hamburg for the opening of an exhibition a friend of hers, a scruffy looking but cute little man, was represented in. The exhibited works of this guy seemed to have body fluids and waste as a general theme. The whole event left Sander cold, except for one installation: A white room lined with lockers, all lacquered white, a tiny date on each door. You opened them, and inside were old overcoats, most of them dirty, many in tatters, some heavy and some flimsy. It filled Sander's heart with an indescribable tristesse. The aesthetic purity and the desperate loneliness that lay under got to him, so simple, so well reflected, and with just the right amount of sentimentality. Vera's friend, Egon something, he couldn't recall his last name, started to explain his work. The coats were all from homeless people, the dates were the years they had died. Sander wished he would shut up about it, now his perception of the work got canalized and limited, and was not his own anymore. It hit him how damnable it is that you can never unlearn knowledge, you can never return to ignorance and innocence.
Later. The three of them walking the streets from St Pauli towards the river. An elderly lady in a hat like a bucket squashed down on her head came racing on her bike on the sidewalk, singing at the top of her voice. They had to throw themselves aside, and Vera twisted her ankle. Swearing like a fishwife she managed to hail a taxi that took them back to the hotel. Vera demanded an ice pack from the reception and sat down in the lobby and ordered whisky on the rocks for all three of them. The ice pack came with the drinks, she put her swelling ankle up, and seemed happy enough about the situation. Midway into the third whisky, she leaned over and kissed Sander on the lips and pushed an ice cube into his mouth. He returned it, she repeated the procedure with her artist friend, who in his turn leaned in on Sander. His beard tickled, not unpleasantly, but not really wanted either. The ice cube went to and forth until Sander accidentally swallowed it, and the odd bonding stopped. But there was a question still hanging in the air, and now Vera wanted them to retire to her room. To rest her ankle properly, as she said. Her bed was wide. She patted each side, like an order, and they obeyed. Then she lit and passed around a joint. And the smooching began. And escalated.
Sander, a true amateur in this setting, felt suspended in thin air. Female plumbing was just theory to him, unsailed waters, white on the map. He hadn't even worked his way out of a vagina to be born. And now there was fumbling and fingering, pants down to knees and an unfamiliar scent mixing with smells he knew only too well, that of a poorly washed dick. He felt helpless and a little stupid, completely at a loss as to what was expected from him. He looked for clues: Egon der Künstler moved forward, his tongue taking over where Sander's fingers had reluctantly made their debut. Sander's hand crept up under Vera's top and found her small breasts, kneaded them tentatively, fingered her nipples and was rewarded with little sounds from Vera's throat. Only those noises were more likely caused by the mouth exploring her cunt.
It became more than clear to Sander that he did not want to be there, and as Egon lifted himself up and steered his slightly unappetizing dick into Vera, he rose and pulled up his pants, mumbled an excuse and left.
Back in his room, he scrubbed his fingernails as he showered, as if his fingers were contaminated.
Something disagreeable seemed to still stick to him the next morning. He felt inadequate as well as unclean, he dreaded meeting with Vera. She was already at breakfast when he came down, undaunted and cheerful as ever. He coughed up an incoherent excuse for last evening, tried to explain why he had to leave. Vera merely waved it aside, she'd had a perfect day yesterday. Now she was on her way to Munich by train. Sander had a flight back to Oslo, so they just hugged a quick good-bye and split.
He felt so stupid. So full of shortcomings, so squeamish. How ridiculous of him not to participate, she must think him a proper square. He feared their friendship would change, he looked for ways to normalize his feelings for her, but everything seemed tainted to him.
It took him a few days to shake off the unpleasantness and visit Vera's gallery again. When he entered, wet from the rain, he was almost knocked back from the noise level: Everyone seemed to be there, split in two fractions, agitated voices almost drowned out the R.E.M song that played in the background. Vera held court in one part of the room: Just back from Germany, she was still in shock from her train journey from Munich. She had missed her train. And the train she was supposed to be on had gone off track and crashed into a bridge on the highway, hundreds of deaths. Sander had seen it on the news, broken and twisted carriages and rescue people all over the place, the worst train accident in German history. No wonder Vera was in a frenzy, escaping death by pure chance as she had done.
The other half of the crowd was gathered around Theo, one of two guys Sander had first met with Vera at the coffee bar, Theo with his waxed mustache and his scarves and his wild gestures, waving his black fingernails, tossing his hair and spewing fire and brimstone and inconsequent pronouns from his glossy lips.
"... and did she ever pay me back? Oh no, no, no, no, just lying there day after day on the couch playing with that big dick of hers, knowing she could twist me around her little finger, thinking she's irresistible just because she can suck her own cock, and there she was peddling her ass all over town and never even a thank you, Sir for taking him in and paying for his bloody beer and his fucking gym card..."
Suddenly he pointed at Sander and shrieked:
"Mister Aleksander! That shirt!!"
One of the guys, Sander had a vague idea his name was Anders, lifted his foot and let out a raspberry as if to underline this assessment of his shirt, and Sander felt affronted. Theo, on the other hand, held forth.
"... and I come back, and the bathroom is a pigsty and my Armani suit is gone and that little print I've always bragged was a genuine Munch as well, and I'll fucking clean out the toilet with her fucking face if I get hold of her!"
He sprayed spit and water from the bottle he was waving about, it literally felt like standing close to a waterfall. A goth girl Sander hadn't seen before broke into the stream of invectives. Well, girl, he guessed her to be well into her thirties, heavily inked and about a hundred piercings. The sight of her made scratches in Sander's consciousness.
"Want me to have him roughed up a bit?" she asked. "I know people."
Theo looked aghast at her.
"Are you crazy? I want my suit back, is all. And that yummy cock! And if that little whore thinks that picture is going to make her rich, she so getting it in her face, everyone knows it's a fake and it's not even worth his worn out asshole ..."
Sander left. This was obviously not the day for reconciliation with Vera. The rain had stopped, the smell of warm, wet asphalt and car fumes mixed with the aroma of freshly baked bread and coffee as he walked down the street, through the park, down to the harbor. He sat down and let the wind in from the fjord caress him. Like a cleansing, like a renewal.
There was one message on his answering machine when he got back to his small flat. From the main hospital. Would he please contact the Neurological Ward?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
→ Sander → → Diary 2018
Could it yet be that cells have a consciousness? A will? I've been watching those cress seeds on wet cotton in my window sprout and grow, at first they look exactly like any other seed sprouting, just two round little leaves, and then they suddenly seem to decide what to become. To become delicious on buttered bread instead of poison. Like eggs when they're fertilized and start to grow, at first they're just a lump of exactly the same cells, and then ploff! Some of those cells want to be a brain and some want to be a cock, and who the hell tells them what to become? Do they communicate, signal to each other like Hey! I wanna be toenails! Get out my way!
I really should have my head seen to.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The hospital was old. The ward looked worn and tired, faded paint, flaking at corners. Smell of disinfectant and old people, faint stink of sick feces and mold. A sunken man in a wheelchair slowly approached him, a wasted body of a woman crept through the corridor supporting herself with one bony hand to the wall. Beeps and red lights all over the place, but none of the nurses seemed to be in a hurry as Sander stood shifting his feet outside the ward office. Finally someone responded. He gave her his name, she sat down leafing through a bunch of papers. She didn't look at him.
"Let's see, you're the son of Janneke Sveen, right? She's in room twelve."
His heart sank, fearful scenarios fought for place in his brain. His voice came out small and pained.
"But why? Why is she here?"
The nurse looked up. Put on a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Oh. You don't know, do you? She was brought in this morning with a brain hemorrhage. I'll see if I can get hold of her doctor, he will inform you. You can go and see her, but she's not conscious."
Room twelve, to beds with a curtain between them to create an illusion of privacy. In the first bed, his mother lay on her back, motionless, mouth half open, chest rising and falling. His heart froze. She never slept on her back, always on her side. Both her hands lay on top of the thin duvet, IV tube in one of them. Another tube came out from the covers in the middle of the bed and into a clear plastic bag with darkish looking urine at the bottom.
He sat down and took her hand. No reaction. He stroked her hand, pinched it a little, but nothing. He started to speak, first as if to a child, but he heard himself how silly he sounded, she would cringe if she could react. So he started again, in his normal voice, told her of everyday events, of his doings the last days. If only he could have a sign! A sign that she recognized his voice, that she knew he was there! But emptiness was all he got.
He had been there for nearly an hour when the doctor came in, a short, dark and very tanned man of about Sander's age, black horn-rimmed glasses, sloppy handshake and bad breath that he tried to hide with peppermint. He explained to Sander what had happened and the possible outcome, which wasn't great. He spoke soberly and rather unfeelingly, but he might as well have punched Sander in his stomach.
The doctor left, Sander just stood there, looking down at the woman in the bed, seeing the blind half-moons of her eyes. It pained him, he closed them with his fingers and told her to wait for him.
He had the key to her flat. In her bedroom the curtains were still closed, the bed unmade. Her dungarees slung on the chair, underwear drawer half open. So typical, so everyday, and so strangely sinister. He grabbed the book on her bedside table, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and scooted out of there. On the way back to the hospital he bought a bag of cherries, and a sandwich that he ate on the tram.
Back in her room, he removed the pit from a cherry and gave her. Her sucking reflexes still worked, but she couldn't swallow. He had to dig the cherry out of her mouth. His mother suckled his finger as if it was a teat.
He sat down at her bedside, opened her book to the mark she had left and started reading to her. And there he stayed, only interrupted by the few hours he had to take care of his teaching job. On the second day the IV and the catheter was removed. He pretended not to notice, went on reading as if her life depended on him not stopping. Subconsciously he was aware that her breathing became more shallow and the intervals between each breath longer. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't just watch life ebb out of this body so closely connected to his own. Without this body lying there, he would not exist.
So when the night nurse carefully touched his arm and looked meaningfully at him, reality dawned on him: Now he was totally alone. No anchor, no harbor. He sat down on the floor outside her door and hid his face between his knees. But then they came rolling his mother's bed out, her body covered by a sheet, and he got up and ran. Out. Away.
The morning was on its way, bright and sunny, the smells and sounds of summer all around him. He slumped down on the bench at the tram stop, sat there all numb and empty until the first tram came.
Oslo, August 1989
Late at night, the day after he returned from Hamar and Jan Ola Braathen, his doorbell rings. The voice through the squawk-box almost hurts.
"Hi."
The lump in Sander's throat is too big, he can't get words out. He swallows and swallows.
"It's Thomas"
Sander buzzes him in. Opens the door to the landing and waits. And now he's here, holding up the note that Sander wrote to his father. Even on the dark landing, and Sander without his glasses, the boy in the hallway is so clearly himself. Sander can't take his eyes off him.
"Are you going to let me in?"
Oh, how his heart pounds and throbs, how his knees turn to jelly, how his brain turns to cotton. Sander moves to the side to let Thomas in. In with him. Into his home. And he turns into a pillar of salt.
And evidently so does Thomas. For a long time they both remain like this: No words, no movement. Until Thomas breaks the tension.
" Think I could have a glass of water?"
Where is his voice, where are his words? He coughs and swallows again. And now it pours out, fast, hectic, feverish:
"You can have whatever you want. Water, wine, juice, beer, coffee, tea. Just tell me what you want."
"Anything. What you want."
Thomas follows Sander through the small hall, crossing the dining room and into the kitchen. He turns his head, taking in the room.
"So this is where you live now."
Sander has no clever answer to this. He just stands there, gaping and staring. Registering nothing besides the fact that Thomas is here. In his kitchen. Thomas draws his breath heavily.
"This is so weird. I don't know where to start. I have a million times figured out what to say to you, how it would be, if I ever met you again. And now I've forgotten everything."
"Maybe we should just wait until the words come by themselves."
God, he wants to touch him, hold him, smell him. Sweep away all the years, get back into their warm little cocoon. But they're not in the dream, they're here in real life. And Sander dares not approach him. He fills to glasses with water and hands them to Thomas.
"Please take these to the living room and I'll bring some wine. If you'll have a glass with me."
Thomas leaves. Sander finds two wine glasses and a bottle of Ripasso he had opened the night before. Follows to where Thomas stands looking at the surroundings. Thomas puts the water down on the coffee table and walks over to the bookshelves, skimming the titles as if he's searching for something. Sander has only lit one low lamp in the room, does he need more light?
"I remember this one. And this one."
Sander pours wine and lights the candles on the mantlepiece. His hand is shaking. Oh, fuck.
"Please come and sit down. Let me look at you."
Thomas sits and lets Sander gaze at him without interrupting. In the soft light it's almost as if he isn't a day older, he's Thomas the way Sander remembers him, even though he knows it can't be so. His black hair, a little longer than the last time, the slanting eyes, the full upper lip, it's all there. Sander can't detect a single wrinkle, his skin seems as smooth and pure as before, glowing in the lamplight, his clothes hang loosely on his body like they used to. He may have added some muscle to his slender frame, but to Sander he is uncannily the same boy.
"You look exactly the same. How is that possible?"
"You haven't seen me in daylight. I don't at all look sixteen, more's the pity. You've changed too. Not for worse, you look good with short-short hair. You're almost more handsome than I remember."
Sander feels the heat in his cheeks as he blushes.
"Come on, don't bullshit me."
Pause. Then:
"Thomas. Where have you been? Lately, I mean."
"Oh."
Another pause. Sander feels the beginning of fear creep up on him. Has he ruined something now? Because Thomas suddenly looks gloomy.
"Here and there. With a friend, mostly. An ex-boyfriend, to be precise."
He smiles and his expression lightens.
"I thought it was only the police who were looking for me. I'd never thought that you would as well. Please, don't look at me that way, I will report to them. It's just that ... I panicked. I thought at first that dad had done it. I had to get away to think. To calm down. I may have overreacted, but the situation was incredibly tense beforehand."
"I know. Your father told me a little about the last year. But my god, how absolutely accursed that you should happen to be there when it had just happened."
"So you don't think it was me?"
"I'm sure it wasn't you."
"But you can't be! You don't know me anymore! And to tell the truth, there have been enough times when I would gladly have killed her, particularly this last year. Want to know the worst part? I may have panicked, I may have been stupid from fear, but I haven't felt an ounce of regret or sorrow. More relief, actually. But of course, sorrow may yet catch up on me."
"Why didn't you go straight to the police, though?"
"I wasn't thinking straight. I was furious when I got there, livid because she wouldn't let dad alone, or me, my only thought was to find a way to stop her. And when I came there, her door was ajar and she was in a pool of blood and I felt I had to throw up. And then I found a lighter that looked like dad's outside, and I panicked and ran. Stupid, but I wasn't rational."
"We don't need to talk about it. Drink your wine!" Sander has to laugh. "Wow, did you hear that? My teacher's voice? Drink your wine! Hand in your assignment!"
How wonderful to hear Thomas laugh again, be the laughter ever so small.
"Sveen, Sir."
Serious again, Thomas gets up and comes over. Stands in front of Sander.
"Sveen, Sir. Sander. Please touch me."
Sanders pulse goes from trot to gallop. Looks inquiringly up at him. Touch you? How? And as his raging heart threatens to explode, he puts his arms around Thomas and leans his cheek against his shirt. Lets everything sink in, forgets the question marks. Sits like this for a long time. It's enough.
Thomas strokes the top of his head.
"Right in between plush and sandpaper."
He pulls away from the embrace and sits down on the armrest.
"I want to ask something of you. Will you please put on that piano music we sometimes listened to at your place in Tromsø? I want so much to just be beside you and listen to it."
There's no other word than yes. Sander finds the record, puts it on and opens the door to the room that once was the guestroom, but now is his. Music flows through the hall and into his bedroom as he leads Thomas by the hand, lays him down on the bed, and himself after, and fully clothed they lay there, side by side, listening to Rachmaninov's second piano concerto until they're both asleep.
Oslo 1987
It felt helpful, if not good, to have his days occupied with practical things: Get in touch with the funeral people, discuss things with them, call people, write letters, plan a memorial gathering. If not, he would have collapsed in his own grief and buried himself in self-pity.
His mother's lawyer helped him settle her estate. Apart from two trust funds for his nephews, everything came to Sander. He had no idea of the amount, he had never asked or been told about her economy. He knew of course she was sitting rather pretty, she had more than once helped him out of a crisis without as much as a comment, but nothing had prepared him for the amount she had left him. All of a sudden he was the owner of a large apartment in the best part of town, a summerhouse by the sea, a portfolio of stocks and shares, and a six digit bank account. Even after taxes and death duties, it was more than he had ever dreamt of. And no one to share with.
He sold his heavily mortgaged two-room apartment, quit his part time teaching job, which had never felt satisfying anyway, but kept his contract with the publisher of romance novels. He moved into his mother's flat. Cleared out drawers and cupboards, went through boxes in the attic space that came with the apartment, had his sister-in-law and his two nephews over to pick what they wanted, and sent the rest of her clothes to the charity shop. He rearranged the furniture, changed the rooms, did up the kitchen, anything to push away his loneliness, his growing sorrow. He knew he was in denial, but he just would not let the emptiness and the feeling of meaninglessness take control.
He considered selling the summerhouse and buying a house in the Netherlands, but there was too much pain in his memories to really go through with it. Then he thought about Provence, or the south of Italy, but nothing came out of it, except the dizzying and somewhat frightening intoxication from how extremely far out the limits of his economy had moved.
But soon there was no more planning to do, no more renovating, no more tidying. His nights became longer and emptier, and eventually he gave in: Anger and regret filled up his soul, loss and sorrow screamed in his heart, there was no way around it any longer. There is a time for everything, and now was his time to give in and grieve. Over his mother. Over Jacob. Over Thomas. Over his own miserable person. Over all dead projects and aborted attempts to make something of himself.
Oslo, August 1989
He is awake. Sander hears the bathroom door close and shortly afterwards the flushing of the toilet. Thomas comes softly into the kitchen, and in the hard morning light Sander can see the years that have passed. He is a man now, his face has got a history. Sander hands him a cup of coffee and walks out to the balcony with Thomas at his heels. Thomas drinks his coffee slowly, no word is uttered. He puts his empty cup down on the floor, rummages in his pockets and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lifts his eyebrows to Sander in a question. Sander nods, and Thomas lights up.
"You and I", he says abruptly, but with a smile.
"You and I, Thomas."
"Do you know, the ghost I never could lay were all those impossible thoughts of how things could have been if they hadn't crushed us. Those thoughts pop up at the most inconvenient times and follow me around for days. So futile. So hard to get rid of."
"It's such a long time ago. We're not the same people now."
"Don't you ever get have thoughts like that?"
"I do. Often." All the time, Thomas, it feels like you're never out of my mind.
He leans over the railing, cigarette dangling between his fingers.
"I couldn't cope with it when it happened. The hysterics at home, the chaos in church. I had no choice, I just had to give in to them. I was too small and too scared, they all made me feel dirty and sick, and in the end is was just a matter of survival. That, and have them stop pouring my ears full of shit about you, how evil you were, how the devil lived in you."
Sander takes his time to respond.
"That is precisely what I was afraid would happen all the time we were together."
"It just happened, in a way. I was watched, I was prayed over, with hands all over me, I bet they would have handcuffed me to the pulpit if they could. They spoke incessantly at me, never with me. The admonished me, protected me, limited me, I didn't stand a chance. And I was so afraid of them, afraid that there was something seriously wrong with me, afraid that God had left me and I had to let these people lead me back to him."
He stubs out his cigarette and leaves the butt in the pot with the tomato plant.
"It's a terrible mechanism, that of brainwashing. Because that's what I was. And you know me, with my self esteem already at bottom level, I was an easy prey. I did all I could to change, to adapt, be one of them. In hindsight I see that I only sank deeper and deeper into some kind of mental dungeon, but then I believed them to be right. I had to believe it to live!"
Sander is overwhelmed by way that old familiar aggression still can surge through him. And how that feeling calls back his guilt, his shortcomings, his failure to save Thomas from their claws. He snorts and stamps his foot, like a captive horse. Thomas regards him with anxiety, and he notices.
"Oh, don't mind me. It's just old rage, old hate haunting my head. How did you get out of it?"
"It got easier once I left Tromsø. I met some Swedes at Bible camp the year I graduated, and one evening we just sat there singing together, and it felt so glorious. Young people singing with me instead of trying to overpower me. When they asked if I wanted to join their group and come with them to Gøteborg, I just did it. I thought I'd found the true and the free Christianity, right?
... Well, that didn't last forever. The Smyrna Pentecost Church in Gøteborg that they belonged to, proved to be much the same as my old church, and when the first drunken feeling of joy subsided, and I still felt the same way I always had, and the friendships started to get strained..."
He sits heavily down on the folding chair. Lights another cigarette.
"... well, it sort of all got worse. One thing was the guilty feeling of losing my enthusiasm, another the doom I felt at still having these feelings about ... you know, sex. The same old fantasies, same forbidden horniness. It just got more and more tangled and impossible. I even thought seriously about ending it all. And so I asked for help. And the help I got? They dragged me to the prayer-room and pawed me and shouted for Jesus to free me, and spoke in tongues and yelled in Swedish and pushed and pressed and I got almost mashed."
His hands with those long and slender fingers are the same, only the veins are a little more visible, Sander thinks. I've never stopped loving those hands.
"And then something happened. As in a flash, I saw everything from the outside. What it would look like to an outsider. And I couldn't help myself, I started to laugh. And that made it worse, they were convinced the devil had a hold on me and started some sort of exorcism, but I couldn't stop laughing. It all seemed so incredibly silly and stupid, and such a waste of time. But then it wasn't funny anymore. I realized that I had to get out of there, I couldn't go on living with the guilt and the deficiency they were pushing on me, the untruthfulness."
His hand crawls up along his neck, to the back of his head, finds the scar. Caresses it. Sander aches to touch him.
"And then I got an image in my head, an image I had tried for years to get rid of, an image that never left me: You, standing outside Filadelfia in Hamar waiting to see me. You stood there like a beacon, like a hero, like the most beautiful and most dangerous, the most unattainable and the most painful thing in the world. And there, on my knees, that image became like a symbol of everything they had stolen from me, everything they had destroyed, and I felt like exploding. I shook them off me, got to my feet, screamed at them that they had no right to take this away from me, all that was really the best inside me, my love, my life, I called them hypocrites and Pharisees and a lot of bad names, it just came out of me as if you'd have opened a faucet."
His fingers dance in his hair. And now he stretches both arms up. Like victory.
"And then I was out on the streets. And that incredible tickly feeling of having broken free, the ecstasy of escaping a confining dark hole, sort of. And the terrible fear of what would happen next. Lots of different feelings at the same time."
Sander clears his throat. Picks the cup up from the floor.
"And that was it? It sounds almost to easy, you can't just wipe out a whole lifetime like that, can you? That effortlessly?"
"Oh no, that wasn't at all the whole thing. But it was a break-through. Want to know what the first thing I did when I got out of there was? I went to a public toilet and let a man suck me off. Like if I was going to hell, I wanted the full reason for it, in a way. Strange to think back on it. It was such a ... such a definite act, such a statement, in a way. Like this was where I belonged, in the stench of piss with a stranger noisily sucking my cock. And it felt like I'd rather be there than in the dark prayer room at the Smyrna."
"Nostalgie de la boue. Oh, we have all been there."
Thomas rises, walks round the small space, leans back against the railing.
"The most thrilling part was the anonymity. Or maybe the feeling of danger. Or maybe most of all the feeling of not being Thomas, just being a cock, if you see what I mean."
They're side by side, they turn to face each other, but now Thomas turns his head to face the sun instead. The scent of his tobacco blends with the smells from the backyard and the overripe summer. Peace and contentment grows in Sander. No need to hurry, everything will come.
"But my god, I was heading for a schizophrenic time. On one hand I had the emptiness and the fright of having said no to everything I knew, everything I'd ever belonged to, on the other side there was the urge to live out everything that had been denied me. And I had almost no money. And my room belonged to the church. Can you imagine?"
He meets Sander's eyes, there's an apology in them, and a plea. A fat hawkmoth, almost like a small hummingbird, vibrates over the crate of flowers, pushing its snout in, looking for nectar. Almost erotic.
"By the way, I think you're wrong", Thomas says. "We are the same people."
Thomas leaves on the afternoon train to Hamar. When Sander enters his bathroom later in the evening, he finds three small birds of folded toilet paper sitting on the shelf beneath his mirror. His heart overflows. But his mind stumbles over an unwelcome feeling: Why am I getting so old? Why did you have to grow up?
(To be continued)