3-02: I Drive Alone

The second episode of eight is here. Don't forget to listen to the soundtrack located to your left. See you next Thursday.

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I Drive Alone
“Can't move on... but I can't go home
and I'm not so strong... but I'll make my way to the place I know
inside my heart, where I used to go to get brave
and I don't want to be lost anymore”

Driving along Mulholland Drive, Ricky is only half interested in the mediocre head he is receiving from a blurry-faced twink whose name he can’t remember. Does it even matter? He wonders. Getting head while driving used to be one of his favorite things in the world, second only to rimming. He realizes he hasn’t been truly satisfied in almost a year. He admitted it to himself last night when the young piece of chicken he picked up from the Spa got in more positions than a Mongolian contortionist. Oh, he’d went at it with wild abandon, telling himself all the while that he was handling it just right. Get ‘em sprung handling. But when his bedroom walls yawned and the greasy chicken took a cell phone call in the middle of the reverse cowboy, he gave up that ghost.

At 1:43 in the morning, he found himself naked in his kitchen, eating a rubbery cheese sandwich, when usually he would be directing his latest trick to the box of Fleet under the bathroom sink. Afterward, in the shower, he tried to work himself by over thinking of past conquests. Remember the triplets from Black Knight? Remember how you triple dipped them? He laughed. By the time you were finished, condoms carpeted the back room, among other things. He couldn’t get hard. He was too wound up and tense, ready to stomp those thoughts he feared more than anything. He was tired of wearing the mental fatigues and war paint he donned in order to deal. Sure, his feelings were out in the open, but there was nothing he could do about them. Nothing would come of them. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he finally admitted to himself he was fucked up.

“Can you drop me off on Pico?” asks the nameless mouth, popping his head up from Ricky’s lap, letting the limp organ slide from his unimpressed mouth. “Anywhere, really. I need to get off.”

Ricky slams on the brakes, his red Audi screeching to a halt. “Get the fuck out of my car,” he spits.

Nameless Mouth sits there, mouth open, jaw elongated. Twenty seconds of silence follows before he says, “But we’re damn near at the top of the mountain.”

“I don’t give a shit. I want you out of my car.” Ricky reaches across the passenger seat and opens the door. He starts pushing the guy out the seat.

“Wait a fuckin’ minute…” The guy reaches over and pops Ricky in the left eye before hitting the pavement. The door slams and Ricky starts the car just as dramatically as he stopped it, leaving a shirtless caramel mess laying damn near at the top of the mountain.

“I don't know where I go
But I know I drive alone”


Mama Alex
“Noah, Ricky just showed up at my house, drunk, with a black eye. This bitch done lost his mind,” says Alex, holding his phone to his right ear, while washing Oje’s cloth diapers in the bathroom sink. “Trey is tearing my freezer up looking for shit to put on Ricky’s eye. Child, I ain’t had no sleep in two days; Oje’s sick; I’m ‘bout to kill somebody in a quick minute. Y’all better be thankful I know Jesus, ‘cause wouldn’t nothing be left in this house but me and the evidence!”

“ALEX!” Noah shouts into the phone. “Breathe.” Noah flicks the television off, and sits up on the couch. He checks the time. 11:34 pm. He had been asleep after a marathon session of writing. He hears Wade flush the toilet upstairs, then the slamming of the guest bedroom door, a sound as familiar as the silence between him and Wade. He wipes sleep from his eyes and tries to organize his thoughts. “Alex, calm down and tell me what happened,” he finally says.

Alex pours another capful of Dreft detergent into the sink and throws another pile of diapers in. “Girl, Ricky is on my couch holding a bag of frozen peas over his eye last I checked.” Alex opens the bathroom door, looks out, and sees Ricky vomiting into a wastebasket Trey is holding under his chin. “Now the bitch is throwing up. Let one drop get on my new couch. Ooh, Jesus. I got too much on my plate. You gon’ have to come get his ass. Some trick probably busted his eye.”

Noah swallows hard. “Um…I can’t, Alex.”

“Why not? I got a sick baby over here, and Noah you know the world stops for me when my son is sick.”

“Why can’t Ricky just crash on the couch until morning?”

Alex pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it for a few seconds. “Y’all doing stunts and shows!” He walks to the living room, pushes Trey out the way, bends down at side of the couch, and turns Ricky face toward his. “Ricky, boo-boo, I really feel for you right now, but you gotta go.” Alex looks at the phone. “Noah will be here SHORTLY to pick you up.”

Noah is already out the door, sitting in his car. “Here we go,” he says. With a sigh, he starts the engine.

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?
Chance removes the lasagna from the oven, sprinkles the top with parmesan cheese. “Eww, “he says. He opens the kitchen window and searches under the counter for a can of Oust. “How can something so smelly taste so good?”

“Honey,” Eddie calls from the top of the stairs, “I just finished talking to baby-sitter, and she says she’ll keep Kenya the whole night.”

Chance peeks out the kitchen door. “That’s great, babe. Dinner is almost done.” He sprays more Oust. Chance tries to remember the last time he and Eddie sat down to a candlelight dinner. Since Eddie was promoted at work, dinner has been a foil wrapped plate on the counter waiting for Eddie when came home. Earlier in the day, he found himself at Bed Bath and Beyond buying candles for their candlelight dinner. He bought even some for the bedroom time. And he resolved then to tell Eddie—the man he loves—that this whole band thing was silly and not practical. You know, stop the train before it derails. After all, he would want Eddie to tell him when he was being silly and not practical.

“You look amazing by candlelight,” says Chance, feeding Eddie a cherry tomato from the salad. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a candlelight dinner. I was trying to think of the last time.”

Eddie grabs Chance’s hand. “I remember.” He smiles wide. “You ordered Indian food and pretended to cook it. “

Chance eyes lights up. “Oh, yeah. And you found the containers in the morning. God, that was, like, a year and a half ago.”

“We’ll have a million more, honey. I’m so happy, Chance.” He leans forward and looks into his husband’s eyes. “You complete me,” he says.

Chance gets lost in Eddie eyes for a moment. An overwhelming feeling of protection comes over him. “Eddie,” he says, snapping out of his dreamy state. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Uh…can we talk about something?”

“First, kiss me.” Eddie pulls Chance close to him. They kiss until their lips go numb.

“Eddie,” Chance finally says. “Are you sure you’re not over taxing yourself these days?”

“No. Why? “ He never lets Chance’s hand go.

“Listen…uh…I-I…know this band is your dream…but—“

“What happens to a dream deferred?” Eddie asks.

After a swollen pause, Chance smiles. “Uh…Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

Eddie throws his head back and laughs. “That’s our new piece.”

Chance looks into Eddie eyes again. He breathes out. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

Fight or Fuck
“What the hell?” Wade finds a shirtless, black-eyed Ricky sleeping on the couch. He marches back upstairs and knocks on the master bedroom door. “Open up, Noah.”

“It’s open.”

Wade inches the door open to find Noah lying naked on his stomach on the bed, typing. In less than a second, his dick is hard. Like a magnet, he is pulled inside the room by no doing of his own. He grips the doorknob to steady himself. “Hey, uh, why is Ricky sleeping on the couch?”

Noah looks up. “He was drunk and sick last night. I had to pick him up from Alex and Trey’s.”

“Why didn’t you take him home?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it matters. I don’t like waking up finding your fucked up friends on my couch.”

Noah closes his laptop. “That’s just it, Wade. MY friends. I help MY friends. I wasn’t taking him home drunk to be by himself. He was vomiting. People choke to death on their vomit.”

Wade rolls his eyes. “I don’t want Ricky in this house.”

Noah stands up. “Is that so?” He walks up to Wade, gets in his face.

Wade hunches his shoulders. “Yeah.”

Noah hunches his shoulders. “This isn’t just your house.”

They stare.

“What are you going to do about it?” asks Noah.

Wade furrows his brow, bites his lower lip. “Are you up in my face like that?”

“I sure am.”

“You wanna fight me?”

“I asked you what are you going to do about it?”

They stare harder.

Wade gently places his left hand on Noah’s chest then slides it up to his throat. He grips him. “I’m going to fuck you.”

“The heat of passion is such
a beautiful thing as it overflows
Pleasure grows; all the dreams it can bring
Ooh, your lips and my eyes and gentle sighs
With body talk, body talk

Cool and calm, so soft and pure, a touching moment
Heated feelings once explode, but have melted
We were two souls torn apart with bitter ages
Through expression not aggression, we have become one”

Downstairs, Ricky wakes up to the sound of Noah moaning and Wade grunting. He jumps to the sound of what sounded like ass slapping. His head feels like two heavyweight boxes are battling for the title at both sides of his head. He looks down and wonders where his shirt is.

“FUCK ME!” he hears from upstairs. He gets up and tiptoes upstairs. He sees the door to the master bedroom open. He dares himself to look. Taking tiny, quiet steps he finds himself just outside the edge of the open door. Noah moans grow louder. He can’t. He won’t. He doesn’t.

Back downstairs, he calls a cab, and waits outside for it to arrive. He pulls his Sidekick out and starts scrolling through the address book. The cab pulls up eight minutes later. “Where to?” asks the driver.

Ricky sighs and looks at his Sidekick. He hesitates for a second before telling the driver to take him to an address in Westwood. Junito’s address.

- (noahsarcfanfiction [at] gmail [dot] com)

Lyrics used in this work belong to Esthero and Imagination and are used without permission.