Six Days for Salvation
Day One
This time, when I arrive, Michael is already there waiting for me.
I see him before he sees me. He's sitting up on the table, just as he was last time, his posture so identical to the one before that I get the impression he has not moved for the past twenty four hours. The binder is open on his lap once more and he is thoughtfully flicking through each page, eyes unfocused, as though his thoughts are really somewhere else. He glances up at me, and the briefest flicker of a grin flares up on his face. "Gabriel," he greets, flip the binder shut and moving it off his lap. "Come on in,"
"Sorry I'm a little late," I say, clicking the door shut behind me.
"Forget it," Michael says, waving his hand dismissively. "Nobody cares."
This is a change.
I take a seat in the same chair, feeling my muscles aching with exhaustion and stiffness. I was kept up all night alternately by strange dreams and my mother's weeping down the hall. My mom. Dear lord, she wouldn't even talk to me after I got back from the meet and greet yesterday. Just cooked me dinner and disappeared into her bedroom with my dad. Arguments ensued, sometimes in whispers, sometimes in screams that evoked this physical sensation all over my body. A burning, tingling hatred.
Sodom.
"You look tired," Michael says. Great. I shake my head and brush my hair off my face.
"Long night," I reply.
"Ahh," Michael says lightly, putting his binder aside. He does not press. For this, I am thankful. At this point, I'd rather not discuss why. Because it all ends up coming back to me, and this…fixation.
Disgusting.
Instead, there is a brief pause as my now official councilor shifts his weight, digging into his back pocket and giving me a strange, knowing grin. I say nothing, lowering my eyes slightly. He is wearing a shirt that still looks a tad too small for him, green this time. As he bends his torso, the material rides up, showing me a glimpse of skin that is just as tanned as the rest of him, smooth, soft looking despite the wiry muscle underneath. I find myself staring.
"Dude," Michael's voice breaks into my thoughts. Alarmed, I wrench my eyes away from his stomach, feeling my face heat up, hot enough to burn. Michael is holding something in his hand, something as dusty and green and faded as the t-shirt. His lips have cracked open slightly to reveal a row of not-quite-white teeth, small, slightly crooked. It's a hacky sack.
"You play?" He asks. I can't help it. The corners of my lips quirk slightly.
Yeah. A little.
-0-
Five minutes later, I've forgotten the fact that not even myself can stand me. Michael's a pretty good hacky sack player. And I'm having fun.
We punt the thing back and forth for a few minutes, occasionally cradling it on a foot or shoulder just to show off a little. Michael's playing bare foot, something I've never been able to really get a handle on. But it seems to work for him just fine. I watch as he bounces the hack on the outside of his foot, tongue tightened into a hard point and gently touching the arc of his upper lip, bobbing his head in time to the thwack of the bean bag. Effortlessly, he switches it over the inside and hits it towards me.
"You ever seen some of the stalls they come up with around Morningside?" He asks as I start passing from left to right.
"Naw,"
"It's crazy stuff," he says, eyes casually following the hack. "There's this kid down there who can flip around and catch that thing in the back of his knee,"
"No shit?"
"No shit. I've seen him flip it up into his pocket too, no hands."
"Man," I pass the hack back to him, and he tries to cradle it into the back of his knee, but ends up nearly crashing into the table as it rebounds off of his thigh, hitting the tile with a dull thwack.
I laugh. He laughs. He straightens, shaking his head, pulling at the hem of his shirt to smooth out the wrinkles. The sunshine yellowness of the room doesn't seem quite as irritating as it did before.
"We really shouldn't be doing this," Michael says, shooting an awkward glance at the door as he rolls the hack back onto the top of his right foot and launches it into the air. "The programmers would probably have a shit fit if they knew we were horsing around instead of working."
"They tell you what to do?" I ask, as we begin volleying it back and forth.
"They give us the program outlines. What we say is up to us," Michael shrugs, "I think connecting is more important than getting through a schedule, though. It sounds corny, but I really wanna help, y'know?"
I know. I know.
There's a silence that is only broken by the occasional gasp of air and satisfying thud of the hacky sack as we pass it back and forth, reveling in the fact that it hasn't hit tile for three turns…four turns…five turns…Michael occasionally breaks the concentration to tell me about this guy he knows who can do this…and this group of people he hacks with on Saturday nights…and this girl he knows that can manage to juggle three hacks at once…I can't help but notice the way he moves. Most kids jerk around when they hack, bouncing around as much as the hack itself. But he's really…fluid, I guess. Like he knows where the thing is going and it's only a matter of getting there before it does.
I gotta admire him.
"So, do you pray?" he asks, and with a flick of his foot, sends the hack in my direction.
I cradle it on the top of my shoe, my arms spread for balance, wobbling back and forth slightly. The question catches me slightly off guard, but I hide my anxiety, flicking the hack back up into the air and letting myself fall into a rhythm as I keep it going.
"I dunno," I say, truthfully. In reality, my life is saturated with prayers. Ever since I was a child, I've been kneeling out of habit. God is the last thing I speak to before I sleep, the first thing I speak to when I wake up. The dinner time graces my father concocts are not so much prayers but masterpieces. I never take God's name in vain. But I invoke it daily as I pray for blessing on me, my family, my friends, the unfortunate…but whether I really mean it?
Good question.
Michael, again, does not press right away. He lets a comfortable silence sink in as we play, and only speaks a few minutes later.
"Y'know, it's a good idea," he says finally. "I don't wanna preach at you or anything. But don't you feel alone, sometimes?"
I concentrate on not meeting his eyes.
-0-
After Michael's third attempt at catching the hacky sack behind his knee, and his third subsequent fall, we decide that maybe packing it up would be a good idea. He shoves the hack into his back pocket again and gives me another knowing grin.
"This is between you and me?" He says lightly. His skin seems to be glowing from the inside. Underneath the green of his t-shirt, his chest is rising and falling slightly with the brief exercise. I nod.
His grin cracks open an inch wider, and he rewards me with a quick wink.
As we sit, it doesn't occur to me to ask how much time we have left. It doesn't feel like we're part of New York City's time. Maybe it's the surreal yellow paint, the starkness of the room, or the fact that there are no windows, but it seems as though we're locked away in an entirely different place. Or maybe it's the way I can't stop looking at his stomach whenever his shirt rides up like that.
For my own sake, he better appear tomorrow in a sweatshirt.
"So you don't pray much?" He says, collapsing in a second fold out chair a table away from me. He pulls the hack out again and begins tossing it up and down, his thin wrists bending lightly as he captures it in his long, thin fingers. I find myself following the hack with the same casual interest that he displays.
"Well, that's not true. I pray a lot…" I begin, "but…I guess I don't know if I mean it or not."
"Man," he says, a slight grin coloring his lips. "I know how that goes."
"You do?"
"Yeah. Ever since I was a kid my parents made me pray. I was pretty much on my knees 24/7."
"Yeah," I say, feeling a strange surge of feeling through my stomach. "Same with me."
"I dunno," Michael says, quirking his lips to the side. "After a while, all the feeling went out of it. I didn't know why I was doing it, I just knew I should."
"Uh huh,"
"A few years later, I ended up here," he catches the hacky sack one last time and plops it down on the table. My eyes trail up his arm to his face, and I see him staring at me, bestowing me with another enigmatic grin. "Exodus Youth."
We hold each other's gazes for a moment, saying nothing, just letting the similarity of our situations sink in. After a moment, I attempt a smile that falls rather flat, and lower my eyes to my hands, folded tightly in my lap. I can hear the swish of him tossing the hacky sack up and down once more, and begin picking at the skin around one of my nails. It peels off in thin white flakes.
"So…" I inhale slightly. "When did you…how did you end up at…"
"You mean when did I start liking guys?" he finishes for me. I glance up at him to see him smiling again, understanding.
"Yeah."
"When I was fifteen," he says easily. He lets the hacky sack fall to the table once more and leans back in his chair, the look in his eyes becoming somewhat introverted. "This kid from California transferred to our school that year. His name was Liam." I glance up at his face which, while still friendly, seems to have grown slightly impassive. His eyes are focused on the table top, absently tracing the fake grain.
"Was he…" I begin, but Michael cuts me off.
"He was having troubles with his sexuality," he says shortly. "He hadn't accepted Jesus, hadn't accepted God. He was in denial, he thought that the things he felt towards men were right, and pure. He didn't know how mistaken he was."
I drop my eyes back down into my lap. I had never met this Liam, but I could picture him in my minds eye. A California boy. Blonde, dark eyed, skin permanently golden from the Western sun. I pictured him standing next to Michael, and found that the image translated all too easy.
"Needless to say, I was intrigued," Michael laughed shortly. "I hadn't met anyone like him before. I began to forget what was good and right and became…seduced, I guess you could say, by the darkness in Liam. Or…just by Liam."
I let out a brief laugh, and Michael smiled. "I spent two years with him. They were the worst two years of my life," he confessed somewhat awkwardly. "I was depressed, constantly in low spirits. I couldn't figure out why. The more time I spent with him, the emptier I felt. It wasn't until I told my mom and she sent me here that I started to realize I was missing out on one of the most important things of all." He grinned, and cocked his head to the side. A lock of hair fell out of place, lightly brushing his forehead. "How 'bout you?"
"Me?" I repeat abruptly, raising my eyes to his. "Me what?" The anxiety must show on my face, because he laughs and slides the hacky sack across the table to me. I stop it with one hand and let my fingers curl into the faded, knit skin.
"When did you start liking guys?"
"Me?" I repeat dumbly. He nods, still smiling slightly. I look down at the hack, mind moving slowly and cumbersomely over the question, the possible answers. His story seemed so clear and concise. But I honestly couldn't remember a moment where the realization had hit me, a moment when my attraction to men had become distinct.
"I didn't meet anyone," I finally manage after a long pause. "I just…never really liked girls. I always liked…y'know…"
"Guys," Michael finishes.
"Yeah," I glance up at him to find him studying me in a most disconcerting manner. Why are these words so hard to find? It's not as though I'm on trial. And he just spilled his story. After a moment, I begin to speak again.
"I think it became clear when…we had the Valentine's day dance in grade six," I say, still determined not to meet his eye. These are things that I have never told another living person, spilling from my lips, easier than I thought. "This girl…Jessica. I had only talked to her…like…three times before. But as soon as we started dancing, the whole school thought we were a thing, y'know?"
"Grade six," Michael smiles ruefully.
"Grade six," I echo. "And she kept twirling around in my arms and bubbling on about how much she liked me, and I found I just…I couldn't tell her the same thing. No matter how hard I tried. 'Cuz there was something about her I just didn't like." I glance up and catch eyes with Michael once more. My knuckles rub against the hacky sack until I can feel the skin burning in protest. "I didn't like her 'cuz she was a girl."
There was a brief silence. My chest didn't feel quite as tight as it did before…I even felt a little better. I swear, I could even hear that corny song that was playing while we were dancing.
Disgusting.
"I ended up saying that I liked her anyways," I finally say, my face coloring slightly. "I know I shouldn't have lied, but I guess I just wanted…acceptance."
"Did you not have many friends in elementary school?" Michael asks. I shake my head.
"I don't have many friends in high school."
"Not a sociable guy?"
"Well, I had friends." I amend quickly. "But no…real friends."
Michael nods. I look up to see him smiling, and find myself smiling back. For the first time, I find myself achingly grateful that my parents enrolled me in this. Achingly grateful that the person I'm talking to is not an old guy with a pointed gray beard and a backdrop of shelves and shelves of psychiatry books. Instead, it's a kid my own age who knows what I'm talking about. Knows and a heck of a lot more.
Michael digs into his back pocket once more and procures a dark leather wallet. He opens it up and flips through a couple cards. I toss the hacky sack up and down a few times, liking the feel of it my palms. After a moment, Michael snaps his wallet shut and leans forwards, handing me a photograph.
I take it.
Staring up at me is a young girl, probably around my age. Her hair is a dark brown, tinged here and there with glints of red, and her eyes are the most startling blue, not the kind of eyes you'd expect on a brunette. Her teeth are sort of crooked, but the sincerity of her smile seems to draw attention away from that.
"Cute, isn't she?" Michael asks. I glance up at him with raised eyebrows. It's not like that matters much to me.
I don't say this.
I look down at the paper and try, with my whole life, to see her as cute. As hot. As sexy. I try and picture her kissing me, but come up with nothing. In the back of my head, all I can think is that there is something so vaguely Un-Christian about all of this.
No. She's cute. She's a cute, cute girl.
"Yeah," I say finally.
My voice is as raspy as gravel.
Michael smiles, and nods briefly towards the picture. "She's my girlfriend."
I glance up at him in surprise, and then back down to the photo, immediately feeling guilty for visualizing this girl all over me. Instead, I try to visualize her all over Michael. For some reason, it's easier to see Liam with Michael. But I can't be thinking like that.
"She's…she's really cute," I finally say, after a few moments of internal debate. "Real nice."
"Yeah," Michael grins. I offer him the picture back, and he raises his eyebrows as he takes it from me. "And ah…don't tell my supervisors around here but…" he leans in and winks. "She's a devil in the sack."
I can't help it. I'm laughing. Michael's laughing as well. For a boy that probably thanks Jesus with every step he takes, this confession is contrary enough to almost be ironic.
"All I wanna say is you can beat this thing," Michael says, sliding the picture back into his wallet. I toss him the hacky sack and he catches it single handedly, rewarding me with one of those smiles. "You can if you think positive, see?"
"Yeah," I smile. "I see."
-0-
"So listen," Michael says, as the clock slowly draws us closer and closer to the completion of our very first session. "Got a little homework assignment for you, okay?"
"Alright," I reply, shifting slightly in my seat. Absently, I'm wondering how far these Christians are willing to go in order to cure me of this disease. I'm wondering what this assignment is.
"I want you to go out tonight," Michael says, a slow smile creeping across his face. "And find yourself a girl."
"What?" I ask, my voice bordering on the edge of a squeak. How embarrassing. At least it doesn't crack.
For this, I am thankful.
"Just talk to her," Michael says quickly, spreading his fingers out wide. Look. No weapons. "Just have a conversation with her. You don't even have to flirt. And don't go leading her on or making promises you can't keep. Just talk. And appreciate her."
I let my eyes drop to my lap and study my kneecaps to avoid that trusting, chocolate gaze. The idea of approaching a girl makes my stomach twist up, not because of nerves, but because I'm terrified that I won't be nervous. Terrified that time after time, I'll come up empty handed. Empty hearted.
Michael, once again, seems to read my mind. "Hey, don't worry, Gabe," he says, smiling. "It's only day one."
-0-
UPDATED! I don't know why, but I'm suddenly inspired to write. So very inspired, I nearly spurned my boyfriend for the computer. How embarrassing.
Obsidian Empire - I had never heard Michael by Franz Ferdinand. But I have now! I'm angling to get their CD, but for that I require money, and for that I require Dad. As soon as I can convince him…they are all mine. Thanks so much for the lovely, lovely review!
Mondie - Oh Mondie! I love you! And I miss you! HA HA! Buttery? I love it. All things buttery. I'm posting! I'm posting! See me post! Love you, squishee.
Charlie Bird - Hey man. Move up to Canada, and we can get married like there's no tomorrow. Gay marriage for everybody! It occurred to me when I saw them fencing during "Carrying the Banner". And you know what they say about fencing. -wink- Actually, they don't say anything about fencing. But I still think they're lovely.
Iambic Pentameter - Hey! I know you! I just shout outed for you in IJWQ! Lovely. Ha ha ha! You're lovely words, their so wonderful that you shall inflate my head so large I will simply float up into the sky…and think lovely things about myself. Thanks so much!
Omni - -hugs you- -hugs you some more-