It's Like Sunrise All Over Again
I always thought I was the strongest of us. Stan was too emotional, Kyle was too fragile...and Cartman...well, Cartman was just too much of a pussy. So I had to be the strong one.
My own life didn't exactly leave me with much of a choice. Poor as hell, abusive drunks-fucked up parents, having been a magnet for so many, fucking gruesome deaths... Well, it's pretty remarkable I hadn't ended up in a nuthouse.
You know, there comes a moment in your life when you don't have the strength to doubt anything, anymore. When you just accept everything, no matter if they don't make sense at all, because you are too goddamn tired of fighting. And it becomes easier for you, if you re-evaluate everything you've ever wanted.
I had spent most of my childhood struggling to survive, making it through a week with only frozen waffles for dinner and dying hideously on a daily basis. So only if I convinced myself that I wasn't hungry, that the king size burger with fries did nothing to me, I could deal with the frustration that is my life. I convinced myself a lot of things actually. I made up explanations, pathetic little excuses for everything that was out of reach for me. It didn't matter that I couldn't afford going to college, I was a dumbass anyway. I was always going to be the poor boy, so there was no point in finding a decent job. I was always going to come back from the dead, so it was quite futile to mourn for me. No one was ever going to love a waste of life like me, so I might as well sell myself on the streets.
The thing is, when you convince yourself you don't want certain things, you end up not wanting anything.
High school came and went, I was too busy blowing my way into graduation to notice the small changes that were happening all around me. Suddenly the conversations didn't revolve just around crazy parties, hot chicks and the latest Terrence and Phillip season. Now phrases like bachelor, football scholarship, master in law studies, going steady, living together and other shit like that invaded our lives, making me feel even more isolated. I couldn't even leave my parent's house, at least my dad had stopped hitting me around fifteen so living with them was almost bearable. I was kinda stuck in time and place as I was watching everyone around me evolve and move on.
It was a day before Kyle left for Harvard when the both of us went to this quiet opening in our town, not far from the railroad tracks that still divide the respectable part of South Park from its trashy one. I used to think that they also divided my hopes from my reality-being all poetical and shit.
So we sat down on the dirty grass, a cigarette burning on my lips and Kyle's hand inches from my own. And it was there where he told me, that out of all the people in South Park he was going to miss me the most, not his parents, not his super best friend, not his brother, but me. He told me other things as well, how he'd been in love with me for as long as he could remember, how he had tried to get over it, how he couldn't understand why of all people he had to fall for someone like me and how he had been trying for nearly ten years to convince himself otherwise.
And then he told me what I thought at the moment was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me.
He told me to be his first. So, I fucked him as gentler as I could against the rocky ground and though I'd had sex a million times and more before, it felt like the first time for me too. When it was over we silently made our way back to the town and bid each other farewell with a small hug. And as I was lying awake in my bed that night, my eyes staring at the cracks on the ceiling, I came to the conclusion that it would have been unfair to Kyle if I continued this, just because I needed to feel loved...and worthwhile. So I didn't go to the airport the other day and I didn't contact him for the five following years that he was away.
Because I knew I couldn't want anything or anyone anymore.
I found a job in a shitty garage in the meanwhile, and got myself a place with Craig Tucker, since we were both stuck in that shithole of a town. I quit hustling too, I wanted to be in charge of who I'd fuck. So there I was, in my twenty two, with nothing to show the world than my survival (I was still dying on a weekly basis, though) when Kyle returned to South Park in order to work with his dad and slowly take over his clients. I knew he was back in town, I learned it from Stan with whom I had kept contact. I made no attempt to see him, I hadn't even read all the letters he had been sending me while he was away, damn I hadn't even opened most of them. But I knew he would try to find me. I could feel it, his desire for me burning inside him.
He came at my doorstep in the middle of a Saturday night and started yelling at me, how he'd thought that we were friends at least, that I was a huge fucking pussy for shutting him out of my life like that, since we had known each other from the womb and other shit like that, and I was getting more and more aggravated until he threw his arms around my neck, kissing me desperately. We made love for countless times that weekend (Thank God, Craig was staying over at his twitchy boyfriend) until we were both sore and intoxicated from our lust...but not satisfied. Never satisfied.
And I realized that happiness doesn't need much more than two naked forms lying next to each other.
And instead of being grateful for that small miracle of me having been cherished by a boy who was my idol, my role-model, my fucking dreamboat I just...I just felt guilty. For what I don't know. Maybe because when I was claiming I didn't want anything, I was trying to conceal that absolute, soul consuming feeling I had, that I didn't actually deserve anything.
I left South Park the following day with nothing more than my backpack and hundred dollars I stole from my mother's safety cash. And in the back of the first asshole's truck who picked me up, all the way to Arizona, I was wondering why the hell I did that. I could have stayed, I could have continued with my life, with my job and maybe...maybe I could have had him as well. But I was too afraid, and I had spent my whole life convincing myself I had no dreams, no hopes, no desires, just as Kyle had been trying to get rid of his single, heartburning, addictive desire of a blond trash. Luckily, I died at some point during the ride and I had some rest at least.
So there I was, in fucking Phoenix (what a fucking irony huh?), getting a job at a gas station and living in the streets for the first couple of months until a guy I worked with took me in. Kyle didn't try to contact me this time around. There was not even a single message in the voice mail of the shitty cell phone he had given me on my sixteenth birthday.
Six years I spent in that place. Six years of booze, drugs and random fucks. Time just seemed to pass so quickly there, even my deaths decreased. I got my own shitty apartment after the first couple of years cause Roy, my first roommate, kicked me out at some point. From my old friends I kept in touch only with Stan. Stan had always been my shelter from madness. If it hadn't been for Stan, I'd surely have gone insane many and many years ago.
And then one day, I was sitting on my pathetic excuse of a porch, around three in the morning with a bottle of whiskey, a pack of Marlboros and the moon as my silent accomplices, when my cell rang; I had a text from someone.
I was rather enjoying the silence and my loneliness and I couldn't fathom who might have thought about me at that hour, so I was kind of shocked to see the text was from Kyle. It was so simple, so short, so desperate...And so, once in a while, every full moon, I do have the right...to miss you
I didn't replied, I shut off my cell and went to bed. The following day, I got into the first train to Denver, making my way back. When I arrived in South Park I was greeted at the station by Stan, who gave me the most comforting hug I had in years. We went straight to his own place where I met his wife and kids. I saw Wendy again after all these years, feeling the cruelty of time.
Stan filled me in on the events that had taken place during my absence, nothing earth shuttering, mere proofs that life had been going on without me. People I had known since forever, got married, started their own businesses, graduated, gave birth, or even died...because even if you try to shut yourself off, reality always gets a hold of you. Maybe that was what I had been trying to do, stop life from happening, cause I knew I couldn't stand up to it...
And Kyle? Kyle was about to get engaged to a lovely Jewish girl, whom his mother had chosen for him, and erase me from his future. And his desires. The text he had sent me was his kind of closure. I had misinterpreted it. It was not a sign, it was a farewell.
After having spent nearly ten years denying myself the possibility of happiness, when I finally pursued it, it wasn't there for me anymore.
I became the obsessive, stalkerish guy around. I appeared at his house two days after my return, not really saying anything, not actually demanding something, just making my presence known. I would follow him around, calling him in the middle of the night, sending him letters with nothing more than my name in them. Nothing worked of course. I was twenty eight years old and desperately in love with the guy I had been rejecting for the last decade. And deep inside me, I knew that if I couldn't get Kyle, I might as well vanish for good.
His engagement was a quite spectacular event; Sheila wanted everything to be perfect and his wife to be had a rather good taste. I was there, of course, watching from the shadows, trying to drown myself in a bottle of whiskey and my sorrow. Stan tried to console me, as always, but I was getting more and more intoxicated, was it from the booze or the desperation, I wouldn't know, as I was intent on killing myself from alcohol poisoning. And then it was all over, the happy couple went to their own apartment and I was just laying there behind the heavily decorated buffet until the janitor of the reception hall noticed me and moved my body away. When I came back, in a small room at the back of the hall, I realized that I had just killed myself over someone. The same someone I had been running away from.
The day of the wedding arrived soon, Stan had organized a bachelor in a strip club for the night before, and of course I was invited. Kyle wouldn't even look at me during the whole evening but I could tell something was bothering him. I went home around four in the morning and there was a knock on my door about half an hour later. It was Kyle. Eyes soggy and red, disheveled hair, reeking alcohol and smoke and announcing me that he had called it off. He had gone to his fiance straight after the strip club and told her he couldn't marry her. I tried to hold him, but he wouldn't have none of that. He told me he hadn't done it for me cause I didn't deserve it, guess he was probably right, but he just couldn't drag the poor girl into the promises of a life, he wouldn't have been able to provide. And when I asked him if he still loved me, he looked into my eyes for a long moment and then he got up and left, slamming the door behind him.
At least he was speaking to me again.
I decided to make something of myself, now that I had a goal, everything seemed easier. Craig was now the owner of the garage, at which we had been working together many and many years ago, and with a little persuasion from his boyfriend he hired me back; Tweek had always been really fond of me. I got my own place, I had been staying in a filthy motel till then and started saving up for a car. Kyle would come and hang out with me, watching movies, describing how our days had been, eating greasy Chinese. And although he wouldn't let me lay a finger on him, I was...happy.
Three years passed, I hadn't done anything with anyone in the meanwhile, and though I could have never ever expected that of myself, I guess I didn't feel the need to. Two months ago, Kyle took me to the same opening that he had confessed his love for me, almost fifteen years ago. We sat on the same spot (the place hadn't changed much since) and I was getting my hopes high again; that maybe he wanted to tell me something by bringing me there. But nothing happened, he didn't make one move, he just sat there in silence, watching the sunset. And then everything I had been bottling up inside, just rushed out of me. I told him everything that had happened to me while I was away, I told him how afraid I had been that I didn't deserve him, how terrified I felt at the thougth that I would have been unable to offer him anything, how leaving had just seemed like the right thing to do at the moment. I told him that I had never quite understood how much I loved him. And needed him. And I also told him that he was the only thing, I had ever wanted in my life. He didn't respond to any of that, but I noticed a small tear making its way down his face. So I threw my arms around him, to comfort him? To let me be comforted? I wouldn't know.
And then he told me what I thought at the moment was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me.
He told me to promise him that I would be there when he'd die, holding his hand. I was in a loss of words, so I just nodded, and he put a hand to my face, pressing his lips to mine, staring into my eyes the whole time. Neither of us returned home that day, we just stayed there, lying on the dirty ground, holding each other, exploring ourselves once more and making up for so many, many wasted years.
I might have spent almost my whole life disdaining my needs, my cravings and I may in fact don't deserve any of them either, but there are some things that you can't deny and that if you attempt to, you just won't be yourself anymore. I was so young, and so scared and though I had been through a thousand deaths, they didn't make me wiser, or stronger and they definitely didn't teach me what I know now. That if someone loves you for real, they don't expect anything in return. They just do it...cause there is no other way.
The End