Gabe - Nineteen

Gabe

On Thursday, May eighth, I woke up next to Erich. I could barely remember how he ended up in my bed at all. I remembered a nightmare, and thinking Leo was there. There were arms around me, and there was whispering, and I know I cried. It all seemed like an extension of the nightmare, to be honest. In my half-sleep, it never crossed my mind that anyone other than Leo would be there with me.

Even when I woke up in the morning, I thought I must have been back in Italy. Maybe all of England had been the nightmare, and when I opened my eyes I would be back in the cellar with Leo, the Leo I fell in love with, waking me for morning picking. When I opened my eyes and saw I was still at Wellington’s, the first feeling that flowed through me was disappointment. Then I realized there really was someone there with me, and it didn’t take long to figure out who. I recognized the feel of Erich beside me even though we had never been that close. His chest was just as broad as it seemed from a distance, his arms just as strong.

I knew then that it was Erich who had been with me in the night, fighting back my nightmare. He couldn’t have possibly meant to stay with me, but he was there now and there was nothing to do about it. I couldn’t wake him up; I knew that much. He would get angry, Jim and Hersch would wake up, and we would all be fucked.

All I could do was settle in and wait for him to wake up, since I couldn’t move without disturbing him. I tried not to focus on what I was feeling right then. The situation was already strange enough without bringing my feelings into it.

But, the longer I lay there, the more I realized how inexplicably happy I was. Erich was there in my bed; I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Did this mean he was… like me? I would be lying if I said I never suspected it. Obviously he was the toughest guy any of us knew, but there was something about the way he talked about girls. It was like he was overcompensating for something. There were things about him that didn’t add up. Why did he stay with Brigitte if he despised her? Why could his father never believe that he was a real man? He always, always reacted violently to any attack on his manhood. I thought about how he attacked the red-headed Wanker after he called Erich a cocksucker.

I thought about the night after the fight, when Erich said my name in his sleep.

No. I was getting further ahead of myself than was possibly rational. Nothing will come of this, I thought. It’s all a mistake. Erich came to make sure I was all right, and he accidentally fell asleep next to me.

This will be the only time I ever sleep next to Erich, I thought. The thought made me so incredibly sad that I had to bite the inside of my cheek. Suddenly, the feelings that I had denied were even there for months were impossible to ignore. Never in my life had I felt safer than I did lying there with him, his arm slung protectively over my shoulder.

I stared at that arm, since it was the only thing I could see without moving my head. Up close, his skin was almost translucent, so much so that I could clearly see the veins of his muscular forearm. I wanted to touch those blue lines, trace them from the inside of his elbow and up to his wrist, to feel his pulse, to weave my fingers between inward-curling hand. It took everything I had not to do it.

I gazed at that arm until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, when I drifted off with my head on Erich’s chest. When I woke up again he was gone, and he didn’t speak to me for a week.

…

It was the longest I had gone without speaking to Erich since the term started. I was used to his ignoring me whenever something strange happened between us, but his stony silences usually hardly lasted twenty four hours. This time, we didn’t speak for six days. All day Thursday I worried about what I would say when we had fire warden duty, but in the end Erich made Jim look his hand over that night �" with good reason, since either the cut itself or Jim’s stitching had rendered him practically deformed in his right hand. I spent the night on the roof alone, mulling over how I had done everything in my life wrong. It wasn’t until the next Tuesday that he had no more excuses, and we made our last trip up to the roof.

That was not supposed to be the last day Erich and I ever worked the fire warden shift together. We should have had a whole month left of our detention, punishment for an infraction we barely even remembered by that point. But after that night, we never sat on the roof of the school again, never smoked or talked about our lives or tossed Erich’s flask across the vast empty space between us.

If I would have known it then, maybe I would have appreciated the meaning of that place. Years later I realized that if we hadn’t been late coming back from London, if Erich and I hadn’t lost that race, if we hadn’t been forced to spend every other night for a month together, everything would have been different. I realized I should have clung to the memories of the endless climb up the fire escape, of the taste of those cheap cigarettes, of Erich’s face, shadowed through the dark and the clouds of smoke, his massive shoulders relaxing against the chimney.

But right then, all I knew was that Erich wanted nothing to do with me. And he might have gone on wanting nothing to do with me for the rest of his life, if I hadn’t said something first. We were an hour into the shift, and though I had promised myself I would not be the first one to talk, I just couldn’t take it anymore.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I started without preamble. “I shouldn’t have said anything about Leo. You didn’t need to hear that. And you shouldn’t have had to come when I had the nightmare. I shouldn’t have put any of that on you, and I’m sorry.”

Erich still wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t look anywhere but his own feet. I honestly thought that would be the last thing I ever said to him. A long, long few minutes passed, and I had given up any hope I had at talking through anything with him, before Erich finally spoke.

“It’s not about what…you told me, you know,” he mumbled. “I mean, it’s not... just about that. Or the nightmare. It’s something else.” His lips barely moved as he said it, like he was trying to force himself to keep quiet.

I really didn’t understand. “What?”

Erich groaned, looking at his feet. “Look, Gabe. I wasn’t really honest, you know, when I said I told you everything. And now that I know about you, I feel like I have to tell you. Because... I feel even worse about what I really did now that I know.”

“Tell me,” I couldn’t even think to be more delicate than that.

Erich touched his face uncomfortably, then took a quick shot from his flask. “Okay. You want to know? My father thinks I’m a queer.”

I could barely breathe. “What?”

“He really does. That’s why he really treated me as bad as he did. When I was a kid, he did it just to be mean. But, when I got older…” Erich shivered even though it wasn’t cold. “Remember how I told you I started fighting back when I was fourteen?” I nodded, though Erich still wouldn’t look at me.

“I think about that fight every day,” he said. “I walked home with a friend from school, a boy. I stood in the doorway talking to him for maybe two minutes before my father was screaming at him to get out. He saw something in me just then, something he hated that I hadn’t even known was there. I guess he thought he could beat it out of me. He wouldn’t stop screaming that I was a fairy. I was a disgrace and a disgusting queer. I didn’t even understand what I had done wrong. I just thought he was going to kill me if I didn’t stand my ground. So I hit him back.

“He was… proud of me, you know? Like I had proved him wrong. But he never let it go. Whenever he felt like I wasn’t being man enough, he would hit me until I fought him back. If I didn’t go to Brigitte’s for a night, or did failed at a Youth activity, he would go off again. That’s why I stayed with her as long as I did. If I broke up with a girl, I don’t think he would have let me live to see the next day. I was in hell.”

So that was it, I thought: his father had accused him of being homosexual. That was why it was so hard for him to know the truth about me, because it reminded him of his father, because the b*****d had taught him that people like me needed to be killed. “Bloody hell, Erich, I’m so sorry,” I said, and I really was. But Erich wasn’t done.

“Nothing I ever did would ever convince him I wasn’t that way. All I wanted in the world was for him to think I was a man. Just f*****g girls wasn’t enough, you know. But it never occurred to me to do anything about it until the night Brigitte told me she was pregnant. I was so angry. I had to do something to blow off steam. I met up with a group of a few guys from the Hitlerjugend, and we decided to mess with another guy we knew.”

Erich wrested his elbows on his knees, holding his face in his hand and letting his head droop. He looked completely humiliated. “His name was Burkhard, and he was a fairy. You never saw a fairy like him. Everyone knew, from the second he joined up, not that he had a choice about joining. He was the joke of the team. He got beat up a lot. Anyway, the guys had decided to lure him back to the gates by the steel mill and jump him. Well, they needed some bait and I was a little too drunk. All it took to get me to do it was one of them saying, ‘what? Scared you’ll like it?’” The disgust in Erich’s voice, the disgust for himself, made me want to cover my ears.

“We found him walking down by the park, and they sent me in after him. We got talking. He took the bait like a fish. It was no different than talking to a girl I wanted to f**k, I guess. I had always been good at that. I got him as far as the gates before he stopped.”

Erich took a ragged breath, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t forget how he looked under that streetlight. He wouldn’t stop looking me in the eye. And he said… he said he was so glad to have found someone else like him. He took my hand, and I was actually really scared. But before he could do anything, the guys jumped out. God, Gabe, they beat the s**t out of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t walk now. It was worse than the Wankers. There were probably eight of them. Nine, with me, but I didn’t do any fighting. I just stood there for as long as I could take it and then I walked away.”

It was all I could do not to cry. Burkhard, whoever he was, sounded just like me. All I could think was that, if I had known Erich back home, he would have let me get beaten half to death. “Erich…” I started, but found there was almost nothing I could even say, “How could you?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, managing somehow to hold back the tears I could hear in his voice but still could not see. “S**t, I don’t know. I don’t know! I wanted to prove to everyone that I wasn’t like him. My father taught me that the way to a man was to be as cruel as possible. All I had ever wanted was to show him I could do something like that.”

“Would you do it to me?” I asked angrily.

“No!” Erich’s head shot up, his eyes full of guilt. “Gabe, doing that to Burkhard is what makes who I am. Once I had done it I just wanted to kill myself!” Erich kicked a bucket of sand, which tipped over and slid down the roof. Neither of us even cared. “I think about him every day and when I do I want to die. I may have done some bad things to Brigitte but I will never be able to make up for what I did to Burkhard. So when I came here, and I met you, I thought maybe I was getting another chance. And it’s been really hard, but I know I have to protect you like I couldn’t protect him. I saw the look in his eyes when he figured out what I had done, understand? I saw that look, and it looked just the same as you think about Leo.”

I knew how I looked when I thought about Leo, and how Burkhard bust have looked when the world came crashing down on him: betrayed. Betrayed by the one person who was supposed to understand you. I felt like the wind had been knocked out me, and I found that I couldn’t get a single word out. There was a tear in the corner of my eye; I hurried to wipe it away. “Erich…”

“Just shut it.” He was done talking, but I wasn’t about to let this pass without saying anything.

“Erich,” I insisted. “You can’t hate yourself anymore!”

Erich shook his head, staring at his own hands. “I don’t know what to do, Gabe. Now… after what you told me, I can’t get it off my mind. I think what if my father was right about me? Brigitte never meant anything to me, but I still think about Burkhard every day. For God sake, I slept in your bed last week!”

“He was wrong about you,” I tried to assure him. “If you know he was wrong, that’s all that matters.”

“But I don’t know he was wrong!” Erich pushed himself angrily to his knees. “I mean, what if I do think about guys sometimes?  Even when he tried to beat it out of me. What if it happens when I don’t want it to? That doesn’t make me, you know… that way, right?”

Oh God. I knew it now, in the bottom of my heart. Erich was just like me. He was repressed to the point of denial, but he was the same way. I didn’t know how to tell him. How do you tell someone that? He would kill me, wouldn’t he? I was opening my mouth to begin, but Erich got there first. “I’m scared, okay< I’m scared of being like you.”

At that point, I realized I had been getting closer to him as he talked. I was barely six inches away from him. By brain stopped functioning, and something else took over. I was out of control of my own body, screaming at myself to stop as I pulled myself closer to him. I pushed myself high on my knees, trying to get on a level with him. Erich’s eyes were confused and sad. He was so beautiful.

I touched his face with my hand, the face I had longed to touch since the night we stole the whiskey, when I was crushed against him behind the chest. Erich seemed too stunned to comprehend anything, staring bewilderedly back at me. “Gabe?” It sounded like a question, like he couldn’t understand what I was doing. I had nothing to say. I drew his face to mine, kissing him softly on the lips.

I didn’t know what it was like to kiss someone first, and I was suddenly terrfied. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I was surprised he couldn’t feel it in his own. Erich’s mouth was hard and unresponsive for a second, and I was just about to pull away, admitting that I had made a huge mistake. But Erich stopped me. Erich stopped me. His hand rose to the back of my neck, and his lips began to move uncertainly against mine. It was just a second, but in my mind it could have been forever. I kissed Erich, and he kissed me back, and nothing would ever go wrong again.

Then he punched me.

Understanding washed over Erich violently, and I found myself sprawled on the roof with Erich standing terrifyingly above me. I wasn’t completely sure how I had gotten there, but the metallic taste of blood in my mouth made me realize that he had hit me, tearing my upper lip and knocking me out. I must have been out for twenty seconds, but Erich didn’t even realize, and I really thought he was going to kill me. He kept yelling and yelling in German, so angry I don’t think he even noticed when I got up.

Now I was angry. My head was still spinning. Now I understood the kind of anger Erich felt, the kind that bubbles up from a broken, scared part of you when you don’t know what else to do. I was so humiliated, so afraid, so disappointed, I still wasn’t thinking. So let him kill me, but he would not be able to say that I went down without a fight. I pulled back and punched him as hard as I could, right across his cheek. Erich was stunned, and I thought my hand was broken. I clutched my injured fist and stared back at him. I prepared to die, hand on my rosary, praying that Uncle Lorenzo was wrong about hell. But Erich just snarled at me, his lower jaw jutting like an animal, and stormed down the fire escape.

I spent the rest of the night alone, cradling my hand and trying to gingerly touch my split lip. I should have thought about what to do next, what a mistake I had made, whether Erich’s confession really meant anything. But I didn’t.

All I could think about, for the whole night, was that Erich had kissed me back. For the rest of his life, he would never be able to deny it. He had kissed me back.

Reviews

[Arianna]

OH MY GOD, i love you, did i tell you that before. you are the most amazing person to ever grace the earth. that was ADORABLE. up until he punchedhim wich was just so f*****g erich to do i mean really who kisses the daylights out of someone and then punches them! anyway that was just.... im glad he admited it. and holey hell gabe is like the man here. i have had moments where i wouldnt have done that with you know, an accepted by sociaty, straight relationship, with someone who isnt a violent raging slightly psycopathic ex nazi. gabes got some balls. :) anyway it goes without saying im in love with this chapter. it made my tummy all bubbely inside and if i dont get a new chapter soon i might just cry. just so your aware. tears. i mean it. eeeaps. :) im gonna go read it again!

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[Bexfinch]

*does a happy dance* tgey kissd yayayaya now i will reread that part