DaySleeper

“What happened?” Mark exclaims. I beg him to quiet.

“It’s not what you think,” I assure him, “I got really drunk last night after me and Kane argued. I fell into the door.”

He looks at me, picking up my lie. He takes it to be a lie covering the domestic abuse I suffer. I scoff mentally. I am in control of the beatings, because I want them. Kane doesn’t want to hurt me, but he knows I like it. At least I think he does.

“You two still haven’t made up?” Mark asks, apparent guilt in his eyes. I shrug and avert my eyes. I bite my broken lip lightly and my eyes water. Mark gasps. “I am so sorry!” he insists, “I really, truly, am!”

“I know,” I say, looking at him through my lashes, “But you shouldn’t be. It’s not your fault. Kane is just too jealous for himself.”

“I shouldn’t interfere,” he mumbles. I smile sadly. A truck pulls up and a delivery man climbs out.

“I’ll leave you to your work,” I say, holding his hand for a moment. I see his eyes melt. I let go and leave, lighting a cigarette at the door.

~~
Most weeknights, Kane and I just stay in and have rough sex. On the weekends though, we are perhaps the busiest gay couple in the world. We hit every one of our top ten favorite bars, and Kane ends up shitfaced within the first three hours. Well, usually anyways. Lately, he’s been going out shitfaced and coming home to have extra rough sex with me. I will not complain, because I get what I want without having to insult him.

Works out for both of us, right?

~~
I blatantly insult Kane’s intelligence. He sniffles from the cold and looks at me. I realize he knows what I want now. I’ll need to think of a different approach. Most things don’t get him angry anymore. It’s a wonder I didn’t see it coming.

This plan has worked perfectly. Well, I wouldn’t say it didn’t go off without a hitch, but it worked. Kind of…

While I am not getting the rough sex I want, neither of us is getting sex. I think that I could do with fewer, better sex sprees than the awkward, not hard enough ones I get most every night.
That first day I pulled away, Kane seemed a little surprised. He didn’t get angry though. We just left it hanging awkwardly there and I went to see Mark. That did piss him off.

The second day I stopped him, he seemed a bit worried. He almost asked me if everything was okay. I’d stopped insulting him so much, and now I wasn’t putting out. I am sure he was shocked.

By the fifth day though, he grabbed me and pulled me back. I wriggled out of his grip and glared at him.

“You’ll get what you want when I want to give it,” I had bitten out. Me being hard hadn’t made it easy to walk away after five days, but I managed. I wouldn’t push this past one week, but I was hoping that by then, his sheer need and my acting rudely again would push him farther than before.

On the sixth day, however, my cousin, James, called. He sounded shaken.

“What’s happened?” I asked. He had then begun to cry. “James?! What’s happened?”

“Warner—” he bit out, and then cried again.

“What about him?” I demanded, my blood draining from my face, from my head. I felt like I might black out. Please, god. Please say he’s okay.

“He died,” James said finally and then I did black out.

~~
Kane stayed at the apartment while I went 300 miles east for the services. My mother ignored me the entire time, and I suppressed the urge to flip off her husband, only by burying it with my sadness. James hugged me tightly for a while during the service. I didn’t go to view the body with him. I wanted to remember Warner as he’d looked when I slipped out the door, sleeping and peaceful. I guess dead is rather peaceful, but it’s not the same. I knew he wouldn’t have hickeys on his neck or red lips in that coffin. I didn’t want to see him looking dead when I’d seen him last so alive.

He had been crossing the street. A taxi didn’t see him in the haze after the rain and hit him. He died on impact. I took no solace in his lack of pain. He was still dead. He was still my best friend, even after not having seen him for 4 years. We talked on the phone occasionally, and the fling and my theft had changed nothing. I think it had been cleansing, really. For both of us.

I stare at the coffin as it sinks into the ground. I hear Warner’s mother crying, wailing so loudly that I flinch at every high note and find myself joining in by the end. James becomes stoic next to me when the crying reaches its peak. His girlfriend holds his hand while I lean into his shoulder.

This is the worst day of my life. There is no doubt about that. A good man died because someone’s lights were on high and he was hidden behind layers of fog. An avoidable death, if I’ve ever heard of one.

Warner died on October 12, 2009.

People die every day, but Warner wasn’t people. He was... I’ll leave it at that, because there are no words for this. He was.