Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 15:19:23 -0500 From: Karla Schulz Subject: Carrots and Celery Part Three Chapter Five Happy Birthday to me! Yes friends. Today (August 29th 2003) I am 18 years old. Ha! See you in hell 'childhood'! Oh yeah, and um, enjoy the chapter. Let me know if you did, or didn't, and possibly why. --- Friday night and finally an end to a very strange week. Such a range of emotions (strange in itself and odd just to be experiencing them again) and experiences. Exams, the ongoing first ever extended fight with Celery, discovering my straight doppelganger. Jonas and Kyle have their own problems so I haven't been seeing them much. As I was leaving my final exam (English) I bumped into Colin and he told me to expect him over around 7. We never made plans to hang out or anything but it didn't really surprise me or strike me as odd in any way. Making such announcements seems to be the kind of thing I'd do in his place. The inviting himself over is also like me. It's 7:15 and he's still not there, but I didn't think he'd arrive until 7:30 so in a weird way, it doesn't FEEL like he's late. Colin shows up at exactly 7:29 and I try to adopt a Frodo Baggins-like look of disapproval, folding my arms. "You're late." Colin smiles, rolls his eyes and cocks his head. "Are you really going to make me be Colin the Grey?" More like Colin the dirty blond, but hey, he picked up on the reference. I just keep standing there with my arms folded across my chest. Colin sighs. "Fine - a wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives exactly when he means to." I laugh and we share a quick, ultra-hetero, manly, one arm each, hug. 'Cause hey, that' s what happens in the movie. You've gotta do these things right. "Let's go upstairs. None of my family seems to be home but I've got the best CD player and I'm going to force you to listen to all of Once More With Feeling." He groans. "Isn't that the fucking Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack?" "Something like that. My little brothers gave it to me for Christmas as a joke, but I've been too depressed to listen to it," he reaches over and gives me a supportive slug in the shoulder. "I'm not exactly alive with desire to hear what's-her-name sing about bunnies, but if it's a sign of your improving mood, I'm all for it," I smile gratefully. This is a big part of why I love hanging out with Colin so much. It never feels like there's any pressure. We're always both so relaxed and oddly open when we're together. I feel safe with him, and it's a different kind of safe than with Celery, or even Kyle and Jonas. I feel like I can trust Colin to know my limits, simply because that freaky connection thing of ours tends to mean he has the same ones as me. And I mean, listen to me. We've only hung out twice. But it already feels like we've got this rhythm, this ease. I push open the door to my room and the first thing Colin does is chuckle at my roomy double bed. "That's convenient." I nod. "Yeah. When my parents presented it to me at 15 I didn't for a second comprehend what they meant it for, but now, looking back, I can see they were basically saying, `Here you go. Use it well'. It's obvious to me now they meant it for the both of us." "And you didn't even start taking advantage until over a year later," shakes his head, eyes glowing mischievously. "Pretty much. But we had to go at our own pace I guess." "Didn't it drive you crazy though? I mean, honestly? Weren't you like, well, incredibly frustrated?" "Frustrated? Like about not being able to tell him how I felt?" Didn't we already cover that? "Well, that, but I kinda meant more along the lines of being like sexually frustrated," Colin shrugs. Amazingly, I don't even blush. "Dude, of course I was. I mean, Celery is my ideal - and I certainly don't mean that just emotionally. He's fucking hot. I spent the first couple years of puberty half crazy wanting him." "And the other half of you was crazy from other stuff." "Quiet, you," I say, smacking his shoulder. "Throw on some tunes." Colin tells me, sitting down on my bed. I put Once More in and sit down with my back to Colin. We inch our way closer until we're resting comfortably against each other back to back. I spend most of the time explaining to him what was happening in the show during each particular song, which keeps me occupied enough that I don't have to cry. Still I get flooded with memories of Celery. We haven't talked since Monday night. When the CD ends, Colin starts asking me questions about Celery again. Early stuff mostly. History and all that Again, I find it all strangely easy to tell him. We get down to some more business about him too. I hear more about Colin's childhood, the way his mother just wasn't there one day when he came home from the babysitter when he was five years old, the way she never came back and how he's still trying to deal with that, his closeness with his father. He gives me more details about his adventures in public schooling. I can totally see how all that would have been quite traumatic to have experienced in the moment, but it gives us both lots of laughs as we discuss it now. Whenever we get back to talking about me and Celery, Colin continues to gently encourage me to work out my feelings and start talking to him again. I make the lame argument about phones working both ways, but Colin quickly shuts that down. "He's obviously afraid to. Both times he tried to explain what he was feeling you got really hurt and upset. From what you've told me of the guy, I'm thinking those are about his least favourite things to do to you." "Time." "Yeah, sure." He eases off. "What about you though?" Curious about that side of him. "Huh? What about me what?" "Like, romance, love and everything. What's that been like for you?" I feel his shrug. "Nothing like you, as I believe I've mentioned. I've had crushes I suppose, just the typical, juvenile adolescent kind. I don't really like a lot of people, liking someone enough to want to like, date them, or even go so far as to one day love them, there's been none of that as of yet. People are so like, I don't know, stupid most of the time. Immature and all that. Not that I'm not, I just have a higher tolerance for it in myself than I do with other people." I chuckle. "So that's it? No serious like crushes? No love skeletons in your closet?" "Nope." And yet, somehow I don't believe him. "Colin, man, don't hold back on me," I say, only half teasing. "It's nothing." "Dude, I've given you like my whole life story. Angst, pain, delirious moments and all. This is not a one sided deal, may I remind you." "It's sort of out there." "What do you mean?" "Like, I don't know, soap opera-ish." "Okay, you can't stop now, I'm insanely curious and totally confused." "No, really, Carrots. It's nothing you want to hear about." "Colin, there's no way you're not telling me. Like come on, if you don't trust me back, then we've got nothing. And I don't want this to be nothing. You've gotta show me I haven't been wrong opening up to you like I have." He sighs heavily. "Okay look, I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to get all weird on me. It's not a big deal. I mean, it sounds like really dire and like, after school special meets Dawson's Creek meets Law and Order or whatever, but it's really not anything that big. It's just something that happened to me once. It's part of who I am like everything in the past is, but it's by no means everything I am. I don't let it define me, and I don't let NOT letting it define me define me either, if that makes any sense. I'm just saying, I don't spend my life obsessing about it, and I don't want you to either." "Just tell me, I promise not to judge you, or act all 'oh my god that's like so totally' or whatever. Just trust me." He sighs again, doing the mental preparation thing, and then begins. "When I was 15, an old friend of my dad's came to stay with us for the summer, him and his wife." "And?" when he doesn't continue. "And I guess I sort of had an affair with her," he says it very offhandedly, very blasé. "What?!" I'm like, stunned. So much for my promise not to overreact. "You're freaked," he sighs regretfully, turning to face me. "No, I just..." He smiles. "Get why I'm kind of down on serious relationships?" "What happened? I mean, it's over, right?" He laughs, not even especially bitterly. "Very much so. It was just a summer fling. You know, she was bored and like, I guess wanted to do this one crazy thing, maybe get back at her husband a little. I was just like there at the right place, right time." "That's all it was to you too?" Somehow I doubt that, despite how he's acting. His face grows much more serious. "No. I was naive, I sort of let myself believe we were in love. I swallowed all the lies she told me about how awful her husband was, about how she really wanted to leave him for me, but she was just so afraid, so worried it wouldn't be the right thing for me and I'd end up resenting her." "That's sounds awful." He smiles, with a faraway look in his eye. "In some ways it was. But like I said, I don't let it have a whole lot of power over me. It was just something that happened, that's all. She wasn't a bad person. Not really. Just really frustrated, angry at her husband, looking for a distraction. And maybe she did care for me a little, in the same twisted way I did for her. For me, a lot of it was confusing sex for love. That's a really easy thing to do when you' re 15 – in my experience anyway. For her, I don't know. I think sometimes she almost believed the stuff she told me, you know, about us being in love, her wanting to be with me if only there was some way. She was desperate, and it was long time since her husband had shown her any affection. I guess she just used me as some kind of substitute. After it all came out at the end of the summer in some drunken argument she had with my father, they left. I heard she got divorced a few months later, but we've never spoken. My dad wanted me to go into counselling, and I did, for awhile, but it never really changed anything. Jeanine is just a fact in my past. She's part of who I am, what made me who I am, and I'm not especially unhappy with myself. I see now what I felt for her wasn't even close to love, and I've long stopped deluding myself into thinking she felt love for me. No one ever believes me when I tell them this, but I'm really past it. It was almost three years ago anyway." "Still, I mean..." "I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I'm just a guy, a normally abnormal one. And we're pals, so be a pal and don't go all weird on me and treat me all delicately now. I'm still your weird lab partner guy, now you just understand a little better how I got to be the weird guy that I am. I think you liked that guy, so just stay cool, okay?" I nod. "Sure, I just like, I'm here for you or whatever, if you want to talk about it more sometime. That both ways thing again, you know?" He smiles, I think gratefully. "Yeah, I think I'm finally getting that." --- Colin and I continue to hang out, and we rapidly become very close. Most of what we're about is laughing together, and just hanging out like buds do, nothing too heavy, but we've got the like silent understanding thing. We know that if more serious things need to be discussed, we'll be able to handle that too. All our deep conversations at the beginning have left very little room for reticence and being shy. We've found lots of other ways that our personalities seem to blur together, but we've come up with a revised look at our connection. Colin worded it best a couple nights ago when we were just chilling, watching gag after gag worthy video on MUCH. "Dude, I think I've changed my mind about you and me." I smiled. "Yeah, you don't want to be pals anymore?" Knowing that wasn't it. "You're an idiot. And also no. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think we're like exactly each other, I think it's more like we're opposites." "Opposites?" "Yeah, like, we've got that fundamental like each other thing going on, so we're still like the same coin, but just like the opposite sides, you know?" " 'Cause of all our different experiences and shit?" "Yeah." "Sounds strangely logical in the insane way everything else about the way we've hooked up has." "Your vote of confidence is overwhelming," right away, I welled up with tears. "I'm sorry, man, that wasn't supposed to make you cry," he says with a touch of humour and a healthy dose of confusion, but takes me into a hug. "It's okay," I say, trying to pull myself together. I'm crying, if you haven't figured it out, because that thing Colin just said up there is basically a Princess Bride quote (though I don't think he knew it), and I've been really shaky and emotionally volatile concerning everything that reminds me of Celery. "Something about Celery?" I nod. "Yeah." In a really pitiful voice. "You've got to call him, man," he says, and I know it's true. "I just can't yet." His eyes are sad. "Just make sure you don't leave it so long you're calling too late," which is both good advice, and partly a line from a very depressing song by Dashboard Confessionals called the Best Deceptions. My batting average in fights on the issue with Colin does not improve in the days that follow, due to his freaky Celery-like ability to cut through every single one of my arguments and rationales. Also, it's been widely recognized that I'm being an idiot. As a result of this, here's me, mustering courage and swallowing pride, getting ready to dial that number years of concentrating on nothing else would never let me forget. And honestly, it's probably got more to do with the fact that I can practically feel my insides shrinking up and dying, just from missing hearing his voice, than Colin's debating skills. I finally manage to marshal enough of all the things I need in order for it to be possible, and I dial the numbers. "Carrots?" his voice asks hesitantly after he picks half-way through the second ring. "I love you, Celery." He lets out a shuddering sigh of relief. "I didn't understand. I was too mad and confused to even let myself try to understand. Maybe I still don't totally - but I do understand how that you're acting, it's not out of the desire to hurt me, or like, pull away from me." "Of course not!" He seems horrified and shocked. "Okay, well, I'm just saying that was basically my problem. I couldn' t see past what you were saying or even really hear you. Not enough to see what you were really trying to do. Which I finally see was just makes things better." "I love you, Carrots. So much that sometimes, I get really stupid. I think you know what I'm talking about," a smile finds its way onto my lips. "I got the idea in my head that what I was doing was right, and I couldn't stop to consider anything else. I guess I wasn't hearing you very well either. But please never think what I'm doing is trying to get away from you. Never think I want anything more than I want to be with you. You're my heart and I love you. I just can't always be so fucking selfish. I can't love you so much that it blocks out everyone else. It's just not fair to them and it's not fair to you. But I love you, in case you missed it the first millions times I've said it to you. And, I always, always will." I whimper slightly. "I love you too - but there's just one thing I still don't understand - can't understand." "What?" he asks gently. "I want so badly for you to be holding me right now. I want it like it's the only thing that matters in the world and I don't understand why that's a thing I'm supposed to not be feeling." "That's not - you are!" He falters and inhales sharply. "I want the same thing, baby, I don't mean we have to love each other less, or stop wanting each other or anything." He sighs shakily. "It's like Jonas said," his voice returns sounding strangely calm. "Jonas?" "Yeah. Back in the day, when we were first starting to be friends. It's not that our connection has to weaken, it's not that we're starting meaning less to each other. We're just opening ourselves up. Letting other people in. I love you, I want to see you happy. I need to be able to see you with friends, I need to learn to see you having fun with other people and not feel threatened. Our love for each other doesn' t go away, it doesn't even have to diminish, but it may have to change. Just a little, to make sure it's REAL love. The kind that isn't jealous and controlling. It's like that verse in the Bible, you know? I don't know about the rest of that thing, but I'm pretty sure whoever wrote that part - I think maybe it was that dude Paul - got the love thing right. You know, love is patient, love is kind, all that good stuff. That's what I want for us. I want us to be sure that's the way we love each other." Always thinking ahead, always judging situations and using both his heart and his mind. My husband, my best friend. My beautiful idiot. "I want that too. But you have to understand something too, Celery - okay?" "Okay." "I think it's good, what you were trying to do. I think it's necessary even. But you can't decide stuff like that just by yourself. You don't get to make all the decisions for both of us. That's not how it works. Know what I mean? I don't mind," I sigh, "I know in the past I've left a lot of stuff up to you, or that somehow, I've just gone along with a lot of stuff, but it can't work like that, especially now. So I' m saying, yeah, I understand what you were doing, and I'm not really mad anymore – but I was, and I feel I had a right to be. No more unilateral decisions like that one, okay?" "Okay," he whispers, sounding a little taken aback. "I'm serious about this, Celery. I'm not trying to be a bastard or anything, and I love you very much, but you can't control me. You said you wanted to make sure our love was the patient, kind, not jealous and controlling kind? Well, make sure you mean that, make sure it goes both ways." "Carrots, I'm... you're right. I did it all wrong." "It could just as easily have been me, but I don't want either of us making mistakes like that. That's sort of the point." "I get it. I'm with you 100% on this." "Good." I'm feeling a little shaky. I'm not used to being take charge guy like that. "I love you." "Love you too, always." "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "It's... well, not forgotten, because that sort of defeats the purpose, but forgiven, Cel. It's forgiven. Like I said, it's not like you're the only one with the capacity to screw up." I hear a soft chuckle. "I guess." "Just one more thing, this is just for now, right? You are still coming for Spring Break, right?" Almost able to say it teasingly. "Try and stop me," Celery says fiercely. Exactly what I needed to hear to become fully alright again. I sigh steadyingly, mind made up. "Okay. I can do this. I can be okay. I can accept this. I can be happy, recognizing all the wonderful people in my life, still missing you, but dealing 'cause I'll know you're okay. You are okay - aren't you?" "I'm feeling pretty great right now." "Good. Is that it then? Should we say bye for now?" "And definitely come back in awhile," it's lame, but it's also comforting, which is what's more important to me. "Yep. Love you." "Love you too, Carrots." "Bye." "Yeah." When I get off the phone, I find myself feeling strangely energetic, like I'm filled with purpose. I feel like I want to, just, like, hang out with people. I want to be with them for them and show them I can have a good time doing it. I've got the like, thirst to prove myself. go down to the living room, and find Mom and Dad reading together. I watch them for awhile from the doorway, but they seem to be enjoying a private time together, so I sneak away without announcing myself. Next I try Kyle's place, but he's alone studying. We talk for a few minutes, and I can feel Kyle trying to keep the conversation going, but knowing that's mostly out of the desire for an excuse to get out of studying, I don't linger very long. Finally, I knock on the twins' door. "Hey," Jon says, opening up and looking at me strangely. "Hi," I say, smiling. Dave's head pops up over Jon's shoulder. "Do you want something?" he asks. "I was just like, wondering what you guys were up to." They look at each other, and share some silent communication, and then turn back to me, still with blank faces. "Just playing video games," Jon begins. "Why?" Dave wraps up. "I don't know, I thought we could hang out, if you wanted." They smile. "Sure." So I go in, and it strikes me as very strange when I think about how long it's been since I've been in their room. Months probably. It's quite their own private world, and none of us really go in there much, but with the way I've been acting lately, that's been an extreme case. They have bunk beds, though the room could easily fit two normal ones in addition to the old couch they so greatly covet. It used to be in the living room, but when Mom redecorated they immediately staked their claim. The walls are covered in posters of soccer players, video game ads, movie posters, the occasional comic strip, and now, for maybe the first time, one or two pictures of girls appear to have snuck their way into a place on the walls. Their desk is practically sagging under the weight of all the junk piled on it, and I smile, because it reminds me so much of my own. The beat up TV they have hooked up to their video game console is frozen, some game I don't recognize set on pause. "What are you playing?" I ask, still standing, watching them get settled back on the short couch. "Zelda, but we've got the new Harry Potter game, you might like that," Jon answers, Dave is already off the couch digging around for it in their extensive pile of games. "Okay," I say agreeably, taking a seat in the middle of the couch, leaving Dave his spot on the corner opposite Jon. "It's really easy," Dave says, and then launches into a series of instructions for playing the game. Most of which go right over my head. "I'll uh, just try to pick it up as I go along," I say, taking advantage of a pause in his diatribe. "Yeah, okay," Dave says a bit sheepishly, handing me a controller. "You can just try it out, I'll help you along until you get a feel for it." I look over at Jon, but he's already in lounge mode, his hands folded behind his head, a content and relaxed look on his face. I stick around for about an hour, and while Dave and Jon have a good time laughing at my expense and totally wiping the floor with me in various games (we kept trying to find one I didn't suck at) during that time, I figure sticking around much longer wouldn't have been the greatest idea, as I was beginning to sense their desire to get back into some competitive play. It was still fun though, and I'm glad I got the chance to hang out with them a little bit. We had a good time, so I think they were glad too. --- Edited by Ed.