Author's note:

Okay, my lovelies, it's true. In honor of chapter number FIFTY (!) (WOW!) ... for the very first time in the entire story, we are going to hear from Curt. I have avoided this to date, as I find writing from his perspective too damned daunting. It's very hard for me, for some reason, to get inside his head and reflect his thoughts in a way that seem real enough and gritty enough and Curt enough, but I've given it a go here, and would love to know what you think. Thanks.


Fuck's sake, Brian's got nothing to worry about. I mean, ya, Angelina's pretty.

Okay … she's fucking gorgeous … and even sorta smart, judging from her questions (with a surprisingly deep musical knowledge) but, christ, she's just a fucking kid. Ya, my dick spoke it's mind that day when her mother forced us to dance, pressed right against each other n all… but then, that's a penis for ya – an organ not exactly prized for it's maturity or tact. It was a total mechanical, kneejerk thing … and it meant absolutely nothing.

It's so frustrating to me that Brian, as a guy, doesn't understand that – that dicks really do have minds of their own. I'd expect that from a chick; not him, because, I mean, isn't it clear by now just exactly what he means to me? How much he owns my heart? That I've never felt this intense a connection, ever before in my life?

Isn't it clear that he's my future?

And that I wouldn't have it any other way?


I peer down at this kid at my feet, blushing and stumbling over her words, and wanna say to her, look, it's cute, and all - your little crush - and you seem like a nice girl … but don't be an idiot. You and I are on entirely different planes – different fucking planets. Trust me that you don't want a completely and utterly fucked up headcase like me for a boyfriend. Nor do you wanna waste your virginity on a, until just recently, suicidal junkie. You're from a good family for god's sake. Probably getting straight A's in school; bright future, and all – maybe one day you'll be a newspaper editor, or a writer, or something.

Go and find yourself a nice, clean cut, baggage-free college boy.


After the interview concludes, we walk into the freshly scrubbed, sweet smelling little chapel, and, honestly ... I just wanna fucking die. It's just so goddamn beautiful, the place, let alone what it represents ...

Ya have to understand. I've just so, truly never been happier ...

And you know what?

It scares me to death.


I've had this phrase, for eons, playing on a loop in my head: "There's no such thing as a happy ending. If you're happy, it's not the fucking end." Yup, total downer. In a fucked up way, though, it's been comforting, expecting, and usually getting, the worst. Because. When you're as pathetically screwed up as I've been my whole life, you sure as hell cling to the familiar, out of desperation for the sense of stability that 'familiar' gives you – no matter how shitty and unhealthy it may be – a bad habit; a rotten, poisonous 'friendship'; an abusive, damaging 'relationship'. (You don't see it until you get clean, that smack addicts don't really have 'friends' or 'relationships' – not in any real sense - and not with people. Heroin is our main man and our sole reason for living, period, end of story - the only thing we love, and the only thing in the world to which we are 100% devoted, committed, and faithful.)

So … what the fuck am I supposed to do with this happiness shit? I keep finding myself floating, blissed out, relaxing into it … but there's this persistent nagging voice in my head: Don't get too comfortable, asshole. Since when has fate ever been on your side?


Just as I'm pondering this, for me, typical combo of fear, paranoia and bitter negativity, a certain sensation brings me immediately back to the present: the soft, simple feel of Brian's arm sliding round my back, followed by a warm, private, reassuring hint of fingertip slipping under my shirt, lovingly brushing my skin ... which as it happens occurs simultaneously with the two of us passing, what feels like in weird slow motion, through an incredibly beautiful, multicolored stream of light radiating from the antique stained glass above … and, as hokey as it sounds, in that moment I swear to god I'm hit with this inexplicable, super intense sort of revelation thing, this palpable, soothing warmth flooding my gut – so fucked up! - like total calm and peace and what I guess would be called contentedness, or whatever. In fact, it feels in a way like the discovery of some sort of long hidden antidote … to something. Like a secret that's been kept from me that everybody else knows, and now, I do, too.

I look. Lips are moving. There are voices ... but I don't hear 'em. Gestures are made, facial expressions suggesting delight and pride with the clean, fresh smelling state of the little building, all as I stand here in a daze. Happy-shock, I guess you could call it.

I don't see it at first – my vision's sorta clouded – but then there is Brian's face, his lips, closing in on mine.

When they make contact, the room bursts into applause.

In my head, on a loop?

"Things are gonna be okay."


The week passes quickly, and it's semi dream-like. I feel a lot of the time like I'm floating, like I'm suspended in some unreal state. Even the light around us seems to have some sort of special filter on it. Everything's in a weirdly warm, golden hue.

Each morning starts the same: a swim in the cool, sun-glinted ocean, which, despite a mental effort to stifle the negative inner back-talk, always seems to turn into a sort of challenge – Fate vs Curt. Is this the day you drown me?, I ask it. Is this the moment you tell the water to stop holding me up? And so I float, waiting, arms crossed, staring at the sky ... but the answer keeps being 'no'. Or rather, as I hear it: "How about getting over yourself, asshole?"

So I exit the beach, chuckling, and from several yards away, always, it hits me - the scent of fresh, homemade fucking breakfast. And there, always, at the door, stands he, achingly beautiful with lips chewed from worry, with relief evident in his eyes, holding a big fluffy towel, kissing me, drying me off, inquiring as to my swim, making me promise to be extra super duper careful, sitting me down, and in what to me is an almost unbearably loving gesture as he pours my coffee, threading tender, gentle fingers up the back of my hair …

I mean … it's all I can do to sort of not keel over from happiness.


So … the marriage thing. I've made a small list, just in my head, in no particular order, as to why this crazyass idea came to me in the first place, and why it's got such a tight friggin hold:

I mean, Brian.

Like, completely to myself.

Pretty obvious, huh?

Here's an admission – a really significant and important one - that I feel ridiculously privileged and grateful to be able to make:

I don't honestly think it would be possible to love him more than I do.

(I guess I didn't know it was possible to love, and need, another human being quite this intensely, at all.)

As it turns out, he's kinda the person I've been looking for my whole life, but was too stupid to realize. More incredible, (but less understandable:) he seems to feel the same way about me. He, who could – I can't emphasize this enough - truly have anybody he wanted, certainly people far better looking, richer, smarter, etc. etc., and yet, somehow, of all things, all I see in his eyes is fucking adoration – like I'm some huge, amazing deal. I mean, is he nuts?

So. Marriage? Like, uh, ya … duh.

Before Brian comes to his senses and realizes what a total fucking loser I am.


Okay, I'm half kidding. Brian's not stupid. He knows pretty damn clearly by now who I am, and what he's in for, and what I'm about. And he loves me – really loves me - despite it.

(Can you believe it?)

Ya, I know, blah blah, two guys can't get married, whatever - it won't exactly be legal. So fucking what? 'Legal' and 'legit' are two entirely different things. This will be very, very legit, and real, in my eyes. Dead fucking right.

Like I told Brian: fuck 'legal'.


There is, always, though, this niggling voice in my head: Don't I get a whole lot more out of the deal than he does?

All I can say in answer to that is, that in one of many signs that this relationship is The One, for both of us, the very things that I've come to realize I need and crave beyond all others in this world – namely, stability, security, and, embarrassingly enough, (and for lack of a better term) nurturing, it turns out are the very things that Brian craves most in the world to give. (He says it's broken down all the unceasing emptiness and bullshit in his life, and, for the first time, given him meaning and purpose.)

Not stuff anyone on the outside would have guessed about him, right? (Or even suspected – because he comes off like such a hard case – your average asshole corporate businessman masquerading as a pop star.) Nor did he really even realize this himself until we got together, he says. Which in a way, I love best of all, because that makes it a secret … which to me is one of the best things about our relationship – that, pretty much for the first time in our lives, we each have somebody we can share all our secrets with.


Somehow, in the week before our wedding, we actually manage not to screw, suck, or generally manhandle each other. Miracle, yes! Okay, we come close, a few times. Okay, more than close. It's tough, let me tell you, waking up, not once, but three times, bone fucking hard, with the crease of the world's most perfectly formed human ass, whose owner is asleep, pressed tight against you.

It takes every possible bit of willpower, but each time I do manage to creep away without waking him up, and go and run myself under the cold.

Then there's the time he wants to put eyeliner on me – like the stuff I wear on stage - because he says it looks hot (I agree, actually.) We're in the bedroom, in our towels, fresh from (separate) showers. I sit down on the edge of the bed, tilt my head slightly back, and he moves in close and stands right in my face with those beautiful nipples and perfect naked fucking chest. I shift my gaze away – downward, stupidly – and there's those gorgeous hip bones, pale, flat stomach and screaming-to-be-removed towel.

I slap my eyes shut, but he whines to me immediately.

"Keep them open, Curt. Your lashes are so long, they get in the way of the pencil."

So I do so, keeping my eyes above his neck, and stare into that crazy-beautiful face, full high cheekbones … full, not-of-this-earth lips … perfect, perfect skin … I mean, seriously. I've never in my life been with anybody this gorgeous. Or sexy. To say nothing of how he smells, right now, all naked and fresh from the shower ...

I'm okay. I've got it under control. Only when he's done, the fucker has to put a hand on my chest and go and whisper something sexy in my face, in that incredibly hot accent.

"I know we have to be good, but the way you look right now ... I'd give a million pounds to rip that towel off you."

And without thinking, I grab his face with both hands and pull him down over me, and then we're kissing and grinding into each other, hip to hip, towel to towel, before we freeze and he rolls off and I stand and we look at each other, panting, overheated, balls swollen, and he wordlessly heads off into the shower while I pace up and down, talking to my dick, cursing my weakness, awaiting my turn in the ice water.

From this point on, we're good, though. We really are. But it doesn't mean our dicks, or our minds, are any help. I'm tormented nightly, visited with the most intense sex dreams I've ever had, and wake up, each morning, hard. And then yesterday I crawl out of bed only to walk in on Brian, in the bathroom, carefully pulling his underwear around his own raging hard-on and down both legs as he slipped into a cold shower, himself.

So yes, for the record, do not let it be said that Brian and I don't continue to struggle, mightily, with this goddamn celibacy thing, nor that there isn't a lot of painful goddamn unexpended sexual tension in the air. I joke to him that between the two of us, there's enough pent up energy to power a fucking generator.

"For the whole house," I add.

"The whole block," he quips.

"No," I laugh. "The island."


So, truth be told, maybe fifty times a day I curse the moment I came up with the idea of holding off. But for each one of those times, I also find myself giddy – truly - to have something to hold off, for.

A wedding night.