The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Sunday 8 May 2011

Chapter Seven: Storm (Part VII)

The air in the cottage was cold when the grey morning filtered in through the shutters, but Sim’s naked body, next to me under the thick down covers, radiated heat. For a while I stared a the ceiling, and beyond it I saw all the ceilings under which I had woken in the past, in my mum’s flat, in juvie, in the flats of strangers, in the guest room of aunt’s, in the pit in Leeds, in all those hostels, in Dewey’s tent, and the different skies I had woken to when there had been no ceiling, from the night of being buried to the lost time in the Mullardochs.
I turned my head and looked for Sim’s face, peaceful and asleep, being slowly lifted out of a sea of shadows that clung to him, that caressed his cheeks and temples, the dark locks stuck by dried sweat to his forehead, his lips and neck, that clung to and caressed all of that like a mother saying good-bye to a child forever.
It took me a while to realise what the feeling was that filled me then. It took me a while because it had been so long since last I had felt it. It had been 484 days, to be exact, I later figured out since the day Hendrik first kissed me. The feeling was bliss, the sort that makes everything else meaningless.
And then, as if sensing my gaze, he opened his own eyes, sleepily, and smiled – a puzzled, content smile, almost as if in wonder where he was. I know it is impossible, but I swear that in that moment a single beam of sunlight broke through the clouds, found its way through the blinds covering the windows, graced his face, and made his eyes glow like a clear, cool, mountain lake in the spring sun.
“What’ss t’ time?”
“Not sure. Around seven. Maybe bit before.”
He smiled again and without letting his eyes leave mine tentatively moved closer, as if expecting me to push him away. When I didn’t he carefully laid himself into the crook under my shoulder, his head on my arm. Like that first kiss, in the holiday home, it was as if he entered my embrace like someone testing and then immersing himself in unknown water.
He pushed the covers down and ran his dirty fingers over the tat on my chest: A clock-face framed in two curved words, “pain” above it, and “killer” below.
“Is tsat whit ye feel?”
“Not now, no. But at the time it was very, hm, comforting.”
He took my arm, the one below his head, the way one wraps oneself into a coat an looked at the silver scars running along it inside, from the wrist almost to the inside of the elbow.
“Whit wuss ut tsat ye gat first?”
“I got the tat afterwards. After I… got back. To remind myself that the option remained. That even if I didn’t do it, every day would bring the day closer that…” I trailed away without finishing the sentence. Sim nodded.
“Wull ye tell us hou ye dead ut?” He looked back into my face. “Tsat’ss why tae ye Sassenach.”
“I know,” I said, running my hand softly through his curls. “I’m not all stupid, ye ken.”
“Och aye te noo,” he said, deadpan. And then: “Wull ye?”
I let my head drop back into a pillow. “I…” I faltered, took a deep breath, tried it two more times. But I didn’t find any words that didn’t either make it sound ridiculous or pathetic. “Not now, okay?”
Something must have stopped him from pursuing that one. Instead he pushed himself up on an elbow and began to inspect my body.
Last night we had done everything in darkness. Sim had wanted to turn on the light, but still in the role of the teacher I had advised him to try it by touch, smell, taste, and sound at first. Like with picking a lock, those senses are far more useful in sex than sight, and as long as we can we rely far too much on our eyes. It diminishes our world. And like the good Padawan that he was, Sim had heeded that advice then. But now he took the chance to fill in the blanks that particular experience might have left him with.
He touched the blackened, L-shaped scars on my shoulder almost with reverence. Two nights before, sitting by the lake, I had told him about Julie and about Ponyboy. Sim made as if to kiss the scar, but in the end didn’t.
“Hou mony tattoos uss’t tsat ye hae?”
“Three. Painkiller was the first one.”
“Whan wat uss tsat ye hae’t made?”
“Three years ago, pretty much.”
He whistled, a real boy whistle from between his lower lip and his upper incisors. “Yer paurents alloued tsat?”
“Are you daft? My mum totally lost her rag, every time actually. But it wasn’t like she make me wash it off, could she?”
“Daur say no. Shaw us t’ issers?”
I rolled onto my belly and showed him the barcode on my bum cheek with the tiny words – in some dot matrix font – “sold under sin” printed underneath.
“Hendrik had me get that one. He paid for it… in a way.”
Sim nodded. “And t’ last ane?”
I showed him my other shoulder, opposite the scarred one. The tat there looked unlike the painkiller and the barcode tattoos a little amateurish, in a pale blue ink. It was a three-layered piece of cake with what might have been a cherry on top.
“That one’s from juvie. My mate Sebi did it with a sewing needle and ballpoint pen ink.”
Sim thought about it for a while, then he smiled. “T’ cake uss a lee?”
“Och aye.”
I was still grinning back at him when the bed cover began to slide off the bed and off both of us. Sim caught it quickly, but not quick enough to keep me from noticing the welts on his back, and buttocks, and his upper thighs. He covered them as if nothing had happened, but there was a weariness in his eyes now as he tried to gauge my reaction. I didn’t show any reaction, I’m sure, but I probably kept my face blank for just too long. But, anasını satayım, too many things suddenly made sense:
Why Conall had been so ready to believe me, and why his father hadn’t. Why Sim had tried to get me away from the house, and why he had been so sore when he came by the next day. Why he was so skilled an emotional reader, and such a master at misdirection. And all the little, bitter comments.
When I didn’t say anything, he echoed me: “Och aye.”
What else was there to say – except that question that burned inside me. Had it been because of me, because he had warned me? A question didn’t dare to ask, afraid of what obligations it might put on our friendship.
Instead I asked: “What’s on the agenda today?”
I think Sim was relieved when he laid down on the bed next to me. At least he didn’t move away.
“Want tae come wi us tae kirk?”
“Don’t you think that’d be risking a bit much?”
Sim grinned at me, his beautiful, crazy, wild grin. “Nae at aw. Te day uss kirkin at Saunt Lorcán’s. Tsat means t’ kirk wull be fou o’ fowk, wi t’ pipe band, and awbody clappin haunds wi t’ priest and aw. Smookin ye in and oot wull be a pure skoosh!”
I hemmed and hawed, feeling very uneasy, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and his excitement was catching. The thought was kind of thrilling. And anyway, I never could refuse him anything.
He had told his rents he was spending the night at a friend’s. The friend was in on it, more or less, and used to covering for Sim. Sim rode together with me to the A832, but dropped me off there to loiter behind some rocks and wait for him. I had taken the Zimmer Bradley along and spent the next 45 minutes in the company of Rumal and Orain, until Sim returned together with Conall and Caena in the Defender Pick-Up. The rest of the family had ridden either with neighbours or in their dad’s saloon.
Sim reintroduced me to his brother and sister, who he declared loudly to be trustworthy, and Conall excused himself for having almost gotten me nabbed.
“Masel uss sae sorry, Danny. A really dinnae expect fer ma paw tae actually gae and clipe on ye.”
I tried to take it with some grace, which I might have gotten off reasonably well, and they complimented me and Sim that with the new hair cut, dye job, and different clothes none of those who had seen me before would recognise me as long as I staid in the background.
The church itself was a big, grey, squatting block of a building, and brimming with festive worshippers. Once we arrived there, Sim bade me stay behind, and dashed off – turned out he was one of the altar boys and had to change before service. But as soon as he was away, a young man, early to mid twenties, walked up to me. He was wearing dark slacks, brown suede shoes, and a moss green blazer. He had Sim’s dark curls and bright blue eyes.
“Hey. A’m Aidan. Ye must be Danny.”
Carefully I shook his hand. He was tall and look good in that charismatic way that has nothing to do with looks and that people have who see more than they let on and who can form an opinion without sharing it.
“I’m Sim’s brother. He asked me te look efter ye, while he’s busy.”
Aidan was there in the company of his girlfriend, Lydia, who in turn had a younger brother, John, who was in Sim’s year at the local High School. Aidan left me with Lydia and John while he said hello to his mother and his siblings. He no longer lived at home, and, apparently, wasn’t currently on speaking terms with his father. Lydia started to chat with me, but it was awkward with unspoken chunks of life barring us every way. When John asked me about football we were all very relieved.
That mass was the first time I actually prayed to God again since ‘Nette’s death. I prayed the way I had done before she had gotten sick, the way she had taught me. In prayer you do not ask God for anything. If you have eyes in your head and a brain to understand what you see, you know that God does not change His plans because of the whims and wishes of humans. And if anyone ever comes to you with tales of miraculous cures, ask them why no amputee, however deserving, however hard praying, ever re-grew the littlest finger, let alone an arm or a leg? What, God does cancers and comas but no missing limbs? No, there is no heavenly wishing well. Prayer, done properly, means giving thanks for the world as it is, and listening for God’s voice, to tell you how you can contribute to its beauty and splendour.
Fittingly the sermon’s theme that day was Job 37:14 – “Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God.”
I reserved the right to heed or not to heed his words, as I saw fit, but we both – God and I, like God and Job before – knew that to do either was at my own peril. So I knelt down, in all the earnestness of my heart, and swallowed my pride, and for the first time in 3 ½ years I gave thanks. For, though I knew that my life was fucked up beyond belief, on that morning I was grateful for it indeed.
Afterwards Sim dodged his rents, and joined Aidan, Lydia, John and me. It was clear enough that Sim and Aidan shared a special closeness. Amongst his brothers Conall might have been Sim’s every day best friend and companion of many small adventures, but Aidan, the oldest of the siblings, was Sim’s hero and role model.
Aidan had come with Lydia and John in his extremely sexy black Toyota MR2 roadster, a car he had treated with luxurious contempt: The inside smelled of smoke, dope, and spilt beer, and there were parking receipts, betting stubs, and crushed cigarette boxes littered about. Aidan took me along, first dropping off Lydia and John at their rents’s place, and then me at the cottage. On the way there, along the A832 and down the port hole riddled cart rut across the moor, Aidan quizzed me.
“Sim thinks pretty big of ye.”
“He thinks pretty big of you.”
“Aye,” Aidan laughed and tried to dig a pack of fags from the breast pocket of his blazer. I leaned over, got it out, lit a fag, and gave to him. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So. Oniweys.” He took a puff and hemmed and hawed a bit. “I’ll ask ye straight up. Are ye plannin’ on playin’ some sort o’ con on him and ma family? Or usin’ him fer some other crooked deal?”
“What makes you think I would do that?”
He looked at me through a screen of smoke.
“Sim told me just enough about ye te hae me worried, but nae enough to know what yer up te.”
“Did he now.”
“Look. I dinnae care what the two o’ ye are doin’ up here, as long as ye daena play fause wi ma wee brother.” And when I didn’t say anything: “Ye see, Sim doesnae put trust in fowks. But fer some reason I cannae fathom, he put his trust in ye.”
Not enough to warn me about you, I thought. But then, he probably put more trust in you than you deserve yourself. Do you really know your own brother so little?
I took a fag for myself. The cottage appeared at the end of the track. The car shuddered and shook on the uneven ground.
“I have no intention of playing false, Mr. MacLeod. I have no intention of hurting Sim. But…”
I searched for words outside amongst the heather, the crags and pools, and didn’t find any. Aidan stopped the car. He opened the door, dropped the fag end onto the ground and extinguished it with a well practiced twist of his right brown suede shoe. He looked at me and nodded. “Aye. Life sometimes deals us a shite hand.”
We both got out. There was a hint of the sea on the air.
“Well, Danny.” Aidan offered me his hand across the roof of his roadster. “If ye’re ever in need of a place te stay, feel free te come te me.” And he handed me his card, naming him a solicitor, and giving his address in Port Maree.
***
When I saw Sim again later that day, he was in a foul mood. Tourists had rented the cottage and would be arriving on Wednesday. Our time together had gotten an official time limit. But – he had to grin at the cleverness of himself – he had strategically annoyed his dad into giving him the chore of making the cottage presentable for the tourists. That meant he also had an official reason to come by after school on Monday and Tuesday, which he did.
The weather was rather dreary and cool, but we still had a blast. On Monday I met him at the gates of his school and together we played two cons I had dreamed up. The marks were day tourists passing through, minimising the threat to Sim of being caught, and the nature of the game made maximum use of the fact that he was well known to the locals, while I was a stranger as well.
Tuesday we rode the horses to the tip of the peninsula and swum in the sea. Later we fished in the lake. And later still I helped Sim clean up the cottage while he introduced me to his favourite Scottish punk band, The Real McKenzies. And then he put on Nick Cave and we practiced dancing some more. From dancing one thing lead to another, and ended with him kneeling in front of the bed while I buggered him energetically.
Had we been caught doing this before 1861, it would have meant death by hanging for me. Until 1980 it would have meant penal servitude for life or no less than 10 years. (Though only if I had been of legal age myself, I suppose. I never understood the British rules regarding the age of criminal responsibility.)
This is what it meant in 2008:
Suddenly Sim grew pale as death and stared over my shoulder. Someone had come in under the cover of Nick Cave singing about the Mercy Seat.
I turned around as fast as I could, given the circumstances, and could hear Sim wince as I did. Then my ears were ringing and I stumbled backwards and fell over the edge of the bed, the entire left half of my face in sickening flames.
Over me stood, face contorted by rage, fists balled and in the air, Sim’s father. I have no idea what he screamed or even if it was English, Scots, or Gaelic, but the meaning was clear enough: “I will kill you.”
I doubt though that he really had that resolve. Few do. He just thought it was the correct and manly sentiment to show at such a moment, and  that in the end some judicious violence would suffice. Of course neither of us knew that he had actually succeeded, but that it took one year and two months for the impact to run down the skein of fate and finally break my body.
I was still stumbling to my feet, hampered by jeans and boxers bunched around my ankles when Sim – his legs were untangled and naked but for a single, vividly orange sock – jumped up and went between his dad and me, begging – begging! – him to stop.
His dad caught him with a backhand slap to the temple that sent Sim flying across the room like a rag doll, until the corner of a table connected with his head and broke his flight curve.
He crumpled to the floor like a heap of wet clothes.
I told you I sometimes see red?
I assume I must somehow have gotten out of the jeans, and I must have grabbed whatever I got my hands on, Sim’s heavy-duty bicycle lock as it turned out, and I must have attacked Mr. MacLeod.
I only remember that I heard two sound: Furious and insane sounding bellowing – that must have been me – and then a soft whimpering. The red haze receded enough for me to realise that the whimpering had come from Sim’s limp body. That was enough to bring me back into the real world.
Mr. MacLeod was lying on his back, his right wrist and leg apparently broken, his face almost as pale as Sim’s had been when he had seen him. And I was standing above him, the bicycle lock held high and about to be brought down with all my strength onto his head.
I still wanted to murder him. That is not a figure of speech. I wanted to see his skull crack, his face split, and his brains run across the floor in a pink, frothing mush. I wanted to stomp into that mush and make it squish. I wanted him to be eradicated from this earth.
But the rage was fading almost as quickly as it had come. Having heard Sim’s one whimper had been enough to cut away the bottom of my heart and to let everything boiling in it fall out, leaving nothing but a terrible and cold emptiness.
Keeping the lock firm in hand I retreated to Sim and knelt down net to him, to feel his pulse. I didn’t feel it, but I was probably too shaken to do so anyway. He was breathing though, so he was still alive. There was blood pooling under his head and I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I didn’t dare move his body for fear of doing more damage.
Instead I fished his mobile from the pocket of his jacket – a jacket he had hung over the back of the chair – now knocked over – just an hour ago, when we had still been laughing. And hugging. Dancing. And kissing.
Pushing aside premature grief was very hard.
I concentrated on dialling emergency services.
“There has been an accident. Someone has been hurt at the head. He is losing a lot of blood. Unconscious. Fourteen years.”
She wanted to know where I was. I asked Mr. MacLeod. When he didn’t answer right away, I roared at him and hit his broken leg with the lock. He roared, too, in pain, and then told me what I needed to know. I passed it on to the shocked emergency operator and hung up.
I got dressed, gathered up my few belongings, stuffed everything in the nylon backpack Mr. Roth had given me, and waited by the window. I had expected an ambulance, but when I heard the helicopter, I knelt down next to Sim and gave him a small kiss on the forehead and, ignoring his father, hurried out of the house and hid amidst the birches.
I watched the medics carry Sim and his dad away. I saw that they had put a serious looking inflatable brace on his neck and that his face was uncovered. I couldn’t give tuppence about his dad.
When the helicopter had left, I picked up the bike Sim had left again carelessly lying on the gravel of the cottage, and rode off.
***
I went to Aidan’s place, the one noted on the card he had given me. There was no police car at his front door. When he opened the door for me, he was holding the telephone in his hand.
“I heard. What happened?”
I stumbled over my words, anger and grief and self-reproach tying my tongue. With a few quick, precise questions he sussed the situation.
“Stop apologising,” he said absentmindedly. “I know ma dad.”
I took a deep breath. I looked at him hard. Then I said:
“If you know your dad, you know he will put all of this on me.”
Aidan looked up, his face a question mark.
“I want Sim to live,” I continued. “I don’t see what I can do to help beyond this, but if there is anything, I will, even if it means going to the rozzers. But if your dad thinks he can finger me for Sim’s attacker and get away with it he’s wrong. If none of you will speak up, I will. I’ve seen the marks he left on Sim. Everything will come to light and he will go down with me.”
Aidan still didn’t react.
“I don’t know how badly you want to see him in jail, but they got my voice making that 999 call. They have me shouting at him and hurting him. My fingerprints are all over that cottage, and probably all sorts of other traces. And my prints will eventually lead them to everything about me. You’re a fucking solicitor, you do the math.”
He looked back at me for a while, thinking. I believe he was really pondering whether he should let both me and his dad go to jail. But then he took his phone again:
“Ma? It’s Aidan. I know, I’m on ma wey there. But ye must listen now, ma. Send Iona te the wee cottage. She must scrub it doon. No, everything. Change linen, and do every light switch and door knob, water tab. Anything somebody might put his hands on. No, ma, if ye daenna want yer husband in jail fer a very lang time, ye will dae it. Richt noo! Aye, A’ll see ye there. And ma? If ye get ther first, make him shut oop until A’m there, too, aye?”
He turned to me, looking grim and a bit sick. “I have te go now. Ye can stay or leave. There’s food in the kitchen. Help yerself.”
It was one of the longest nights of my life. I spent most of it sitting on the windowsill, staring out at the street, expecting police cars. I finished all my fags, remembering with each one the two boxes of Marlboro Sim had brought me. Remembering every damn thing we’d done together.
I got up once to pee, and another time to drink some water from the tab.
The sky was greying when Aidan returned.
“He’ll live. It’s a fracture and they say his brain is swollen, but they say he’ll make it.”
I slumped down in a corner against the wall.
“Ye gotta leave. They dinna believe our yarn aboot the accident and ye havin’ been chust a hiker passin’ through, but I daena think they’ll be able to pruive anything, once ye’re gone.”
I nodded. I gave him my e-mail address, in case he or Sim ever wanted to contact me later, and we went down to his car. We rode in silence. The land was still just as beautiful as it had been when Conall had taken me. He let me out at Braemore Junction. We shook hands, and he said farewell cordially enough, but there was little doubt he wished I had never set foot in his family’s house.
Then he took off, in his sexy black roadster. I stood where he had let me off, at the car park for Corrieshalloch Gorge and the Falls of Measach. I was 1,971 kilometres from Lake Iešjávri, as the crow flies. 1,971 kilometres and 86 days. And 1,533 kilometres and 191 days from a little, run down farm house in Lower Silesia.
And 3,026 kilometres and 393 days from that dinghy Greek guesthouse near the Aegean Sea.
Not that any of these places would have meant shit to me then. All I knew, as I stood there, was that I couldn’t go south. That I couldn’t go back.
So I struck out my thumb and waited for a northbound car to take me along.

10 comments:

  1. oi. beautiful writing; harsh topic.

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  2. @Jes: Which topic? Choice of tats? How to pray? T_T I suppose I know which you mean. Och aye, eh? The high cost of living...
    Maybe this explains some of my, er, shall we call it fervour, back on John's board. Why I couldn't accept those simplistic explanations. For any of it.

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  3. Although I sympathize for the pain the situation has brought to you, I must admit that your life is a very engaging read.

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  4. Yo, mate, no sympathy need, least not of the pittying kind. Hope I'm not sounding as if I'm asking for that, or I'll have to cut this short. I don't want to apologize for Sim's dad in any way, he's a bloody bastard and he deserves to burn in hell, but it was I who fucked that up. That blood, all of that, that was on my head. Screwing around in the middle of the day, door unlocked, and music at full blast. I was insane. Like when I let Huey and Louie catch me in that sorry state, or when I fucked up with Tim. The world is a harsh place, I should have learned that by then a thousand times over. Like the bible says: Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God. There's no point in taking Him to trial. Even on earth justice goes to the powerful ones. Fate's the same. And Sim didn't know any better, he was a bloody kid, even with his past. No, I should have had things under control. I should have prepared for a storm, like a good little piggy. I should have known how fast the weather can change.

    Btw, I do have a weird twisted recounting of that same week in the works, from a different perspective. No guarantees it'll show up on SC&V, though, it might not come together. It's meant to be more than just porn, you know? Though if I get you to wank to it, I'll be proud and honoured. ^_^

    I still want to know your POV on violence, queer sex, sadomasochism, travelling, football, God, crime, and all that. Don't worry, this is the internet, you're as anonymous as we all ever get to be these days. Btw, hope the weather improves. Bloody thunderstorms. We got temps as high as yours, but not at that sort of humidity. Sheesh, don't you just melt in little puddles? ^_~

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Hey man, I'd love to share my thoughts on these topics. I sent you an email by the way. :)

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  7. i think it said: despite the stuff you say above like you should've learned - i jus don't believe you that you drop yr guard so thorough and easy? like going to the fucking church - i kind of hid my eyes for a second, read the rest peering over the top of my arm. it's like, ok you present this god of yrs as - i dunno - totally disinterested, kind of malign? but then you give it away by mentioning yrself and job in the same breath. i know job's trials were the result of some lighthearted tea-party wager between satan and god, but - uh - i bet he felt kinda special :) it's like you feel neglected if you're not tempting fate or something. I don't know, i'm probably reading it wrong and it's just that doing that stuff is pretty regular, normal, yr resentful that you HAVE to be on guard, or something. i had more force of conviction the first time i wrote this.

    stylistically - you could just say you were fucking him, rather than give us some faux coy detailing of historical sodomy laws. it's irritating. i'm usually all for making up words, but 'unobstructedly'is clunky and lacks elegance. unobstructed is sort of ok, 'without obstruction' maybe? i don't like being distracted from the text at this point.

    i think i'm so bitter cos i was just writing, or trying to, some similiar scenario - kind of - without the high drama and hand of god though? maybe we've all got that story though - it's still like yr stealing my thunder.

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  8. @Mischa: YES! Thank you! You're bloody right. Part of the problem is that this is a bloody first draft, and in the attempt to get what I thought was important onto the screen I made some bad choices how to present it. (For example there is a whole episode with one of Sim's brothers, Aidan, that I left out, that I will probably need, and that again changes how a reader will see some choices... life is so bloody complicated, I'm only beginning to appreciate that since I'm trying to write about it.) But you are totally right about feeling special in my persecution, and suffering, and how a part of me wanted to fuck this up. You will, that gets a lot worse in the next part. I already shiver from shame thinking about how to write that.
    I just hate that I am usually just good enough to get away myself, or probably not even good, just cowardly enough, and how I usually leave other peeps with the hot potato. I'm bloody poison ivy, and there is no need to make up a God to blame for that. Or to feel special about. Though at the time, well, I really did. I needed one thing to cling to, the one coin without which my purse would have been completely empty.
    In a way *you* have stolen *my* thunder, this way, though, because I did have something of the sort (vaguely, un-thought-through) in mind for the end of the novel. Because some of that I did figure out by the time I was in Bulgaria and Greece, one year later. And that is part of what prompted me to want to write this bloody thing.
    Still, thanks a lot for putting your finger on it. Helps in getting my own thoughts on this straightened out, and to figure out how to present what I did back then... to, um, plot my learning curve.
    That is something I haven't yet figured out: I am narrating this partly from my POV now, after all that is over and done with, and partly from my POV back then, when I was still green and stupid. I have to come to grips with that discrepancy. *sigh*

    As for the buggery laws, yeah, I suppose you're right as well, though... I kinda have this thing for change, and numbers, and distances, and how things can be put into exact numbers, and in some ways cannot, and so. I really liked the history of homophobia being in the room, as it were. But this is probably not the way to do it.

    God's hand is always there, if you allow for God at all, that's His definition: That which moves the world meaningfully. And besides, I will never steal your thunder, no matter what I write. We could write the exact same story, plot-wise, and reading them would still be this completely different experience. The stuff you do... the stuff you do well... I don't have that in me. I wish I could write like you, but it will never happen. It's just not who I am. (See, THAT is something where I hate you from that greed and envy we talked about, totally!)

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  9. The whole chapter (and the previous one) has been rewritten, quite extensively in places. I'd be glad about comments. ^_^

    If not, I'll continue soon with "Whispers in the Dark."

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  10. An intense episode, man. Still processing it all. You have a way of making Rikki/Danny both endearing and tragic.

    The part in church about Job seems appropriate, but I think the better parallel to your character might be someone like Jacob. Since Job was the theme of the service though, it's probably better to stick with what you have. It still works really well.

    About the sodomy laws conversation - I didn't mind it, really. It fits with the other moments up to this point when you do throw in a numerical blip. I don't know if the wording, the tone, is exactly right yet. It's going to be tricky -- you want to roll it in smoothly and not get too deadpan or too sarcastic or too lighthearted about it. Have you tried it a couple times, tried a few different voices with it?

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