Work Text:
21 May, 2014
Dear you,
No, wait... Scratch that. Ugh.
Hi there…
Hell no.
If you’ve stumbled upon this in the sometime-future, you’re probably asking yourself why your handwriting was so neat back then, and why all your papers now are just scribblings with the resemblance of some human language.
You’d probably be admiring the loopy g’s and y’s you’ve written so long ago in this letter… to yourself.
We used to do this back in sixth grade, remember? Our teacher, Ms. Ral, made the whole class write to their future selves. She’d take the letters, store them in a safe place, and, by the end of eighth grade, everyone still there would receive their letter from two years ago on graduation day.
That never happened for us, actually.
We wrote the letter, but moved a year after. I wonder if Ms. Ral still has it, if she’s even still working there, or if she just happened to chuck it in the trash the week after I transferred schools. Nevertheless, I never got mine back during graduation.
Anyway, I’m writing to you (me?) because I’m about to act upon something that’ll change my life forever.
In my mid-teenage years was the first time I’d actually felt this way before. I mean, it was the first time I’d actually felt this is way towards someone. My stomach got this sick feeling, deep down in the pit of it; someday, I could have keeled over and gagged on my spit or something because of the unsettledness inside me.
I got those sweaty hands and a jittery stutter that does not go along well with my already-prevalent lisp. My heart started to beat a million miles per second; my mind muddled and attention unfocused.
When Mick discovered I’m, quote end-quote, head over heels for someone, he couldn’t believe it.
In fact, he teased me for three damned weeks about it. Everyday. Morning to dusk. Seven days a week, when our parents weren’t in our presence.
“Yee, boy,” he’d say, pointing to a photo of my crush on his crappy touchscreen phone. “Marco’s gonna get some. Save a horse, ride a cowboy!”
And, of course, being me, I’d pretty much either be on one end of the spectrum or the other: a) hide my face in embarrassment and run to my mama’s room, or b) slug Michael Bodt so hard in the diaphragm that he loses wind. There was no other way to get him to stop teasing me.
Mick’s always been that type of person. I don’t know if you can remember it now (it’s probably been a while since you last saw him), but whenever Mick cares about someone, anyone, he’ll taunt and tease them until they can’t handle it any longer, or just come to accept that’s how he is. Mick being my older brother, well, I’ve been living with his shit for years on end.
To be honest, I’m not even sure how he found out I like someone. I mean, yeah, Twitter is pretty much open to the public, but he wouldn’t have any interest in my account and my activity… would he?
Either way, he learned about my crush. And that was totally not okay.
“Sooo,” Mick drew out the vowel. “Who’s underscore-Kir-- whatever-slayer69-underscore?” he asked one evening when I’m heating up Hungry Man meals for dinner.
“Kirschslayer,” I corrected him without knowing it.
“Not Kirsch-Layer?” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
I think my face went red right then and there, because Mick busted out laughing. He laughed so hard; he was wheezing by the time I set our food on the coffee table in front of our TV.
“Marco’s got a babe, huh?” He smiled.
It’s unfair. How does he come to such conclusions?
“What? No,” I instantly retaliated.
“Lies,” he said. “All lies,”
Part of me wanted to agree with him at that time, but I was too afraid to tell him I liked ‘underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore’. It seemed too risky.
Plus, I wasn’t really sure at the time if I really did like said person or not.
For one, we’ve never met. Yet. A thousand miles and an ocean separate us from seeing each other, which kind of makes me sad that I should’ve thought about this before saying, no, typing the three letters: ily.
I. Love. You.
They’re so simple to tap on the screen of my phone, to pound on my laptop’s keyboard, but to actually say it? I just don’t know. I haven’t gotten there yet.
I still get razor-winged moths in my stomach when I think about ‘underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore’. We promise to write each other every day; send little snippets and comments of ‘I love you’ every morning, noon, and evening.
It tears me up writing about this, because I feel like a lovesick fool that almost wishes like he was a damsel up in a tower, waiting for ‘underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore’ to come haul me out of the window and onto his, what I imagine, perfect lap, and carry me to his homeland so we can, err, make out or whatnot.
Bejeezus. That’s hard to write.
Even my ears are hot-hot, just like a hot tamale.
And ‘underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore’ isn’t really named Underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore.
If that wasn’t already obvious.
No, his name is Jean.
Jean Kirschstein.
Hence the ridiculous handle he uses on the internet.
And mine isn’t even any better, either, because we’re so terribly gushy and gross with each other that I’ve changed mine from ‘McFreckledBodt’ to ‘FreckledFucker’. Because Jean likes it.
“O-oh yeah?” I typed out, anxiety clutching at my chest. Anxiety that he wasn’t on the same page as I was in our so-called relationship.
“Yeah,” comes his response. “Now we’re matching,”
My face burned bright as the glowing screen of my computer. “It’s fitting. Were you planning this or something?”
“Maybe I was,” Jean then sent me a winking emoticon along with his message.
I’m positively wrecked with emotion when Jean says “I love you” when I’m feeling down in the dumps. Those words grab both my arms and legs and lift me out of the dark pit of despair. My heart swells with overwhelming love for him.
I can never tell Mama or Papa about him. They’re so religious; sometimes it hurts to even attend church with them. I tried to talk to them about gay rights, but all I received was the ultimatum; if I was to marry a man, ‘Jesus would weep at your wedding’. I was terrified afterwards.
So the one night I felt so helpless and desperate about my sexuality that I was considering to jump from the freeway overpass, the thought of never meeting the guy I love propelled me away from the cut-open fencing that led to the big billboard sign. I sat on a park bench instead, sobbing my eyes out.
When I was escorted into the police car, hands behind my back like some criminal who had potentially murdered someone on the bridge, all I could think about was Jean.
Jean Kirschstein, my friend.
Jean Kirschstein, my love.
Jean Kirschstein, my savior.
As the street lights passed like flashing LEDs outside of the window in the back of the police car, I feared not being able to talk to Jean for over 24 hours was dreadful. I wondered what would happen to him, if he would think I was trying to avoid him. Or if I was dead. Or I thought he was annoying.
All these horrible ideas sprouted and thrived in my mind for some time during the ride, terrorizing me. I don’t remember pulling on my restraints, but I must have, because my wrists were bruised and sore the next morning.
I was sent to a hospital specializing in youth crises. I was given a set of new clothing first, a pitcher and soap, then sent to the bathroom to take a ghetto shower using the sink.
The water was cold when I filled up the pitcher. It was freezing by the time I was done soaping myself up and attempting to rinse it off. There were no showers available for me or any of the patients, for that matter. I felt horrible. This icky feeling stuck with me all throughout the next day as I doled out all my information to the dozens of nurses interrogating me about my situation and ‘how I got here’.
I can’t really explain it. It’s just this globby mess that’s kind of like chewed caramel that’s practically glued to your teeth. It’s sticky, tricky to scrape off. It leaves a residue, and it’s never quite gone until you’ve cleared your palate more than twice. It pulls you down with its weight, keeps you from moving freely; thinking and talking freely.
This is what I felt, only in my chest cavity.
My father came to pick me up in the afternoon the next day. He would not talk to me, as the psychiatrist I talked to beforehand relayed everything I told him before. Later on, however, my father admitted he was shocked (and slightly disappointed) that I had to come out to him in such a dramatic way. He said he was truly scared that I was about to take my life.
After charging my phone for two hours, I turned it on to see Jean left several messages asking where I was, and that he was concerned for my well-being.
God, I cannot explain how I felt right then and there. If my heart could just explode onto paper to show how relieved and tearful and guilty and happy and ugh I was, it would.
That night, I typed out ‘I love you’ so many times, I lost count. And, from that night on, I mean them so much more than I ever have in the past.
Mick was crying when I came home from the hospital, hugging me hard. He told me he knew I wasn’t kidding around with Jean.
“I hope he treats you well, or I’ll bash his stupid face like a cherry pie sitting in the middle of the road,” he said.
That sentence was enough to detach the sticky feeling from inside me; burned the stuff right off me. I laughed until my stomach was cramped and tears streamed from my eyes. There might have been some snot, too, but that’s not important.
Mick was smiling when I cleared my vision.
And he kept smiling, because things were good.
Good, up until the senior year of high school.
Mick had already moved out into his own apartment, though it was just a few blocks away. My parents would check in on him every week, making sure he was still eating properly and working hard. And he was, because he worked at a fast food joint close to my high school.
He worked by the Expressway, which is really just a kind of feeder road that goes onto the freeway; the same one I almost jumped off of. Anyway...
The burger joint’s smack-dab in the middle of the busiest, most dangerous (at night) places. Mama and Papa don’t trust me to go out there alone, even though I never thought it was such an unsafe place. But it is.
Mick went to work one night in February, taking on the late shift: 5pm to close. Mama warned him of the
recent vandalism and bikes being stolen. Someone even broke the window to the ice cream parlor that my friends and I love to go to after school.
But my brother shook his head. He said everything would be fine, that he’d closed before, and nothing would happen to him. He reassured he’d call the house as he was heading to his car, then to his apartment.
I believed he’d be safe, and stayed up late playing Silent Hill without any worry on my mind.
Our home phone rang once, twice before I picked it up. Mick was calling in, asking for our mama. I told him that everyone was sleeping except for me, so he stayed on the line a little longer and asked what I was doing.
“Nothing much,” I had said, cradling the phone in the crook of my neck while I seated myself on the sofa; picked up my controller so I could resume playing again. “Just fooling around,”
“With Jean?” he laughed.
I sighed into the receiver. “Fuck off,” I joked. “I swear, you love taunting me,”
There was the sound of his car door slamming shut. “Yeah, well,” He didn’t finish his sentence, like he didn’t want to reinforce the fact that I love Jean so much.
I paused my game right when my character was about to get smashed like a pancake by some box-headed dude with a huge sledgehammer.
“Hey,” My voice came out really soft. “Mick?”
“Yeah?”
“I… um,”
I don’t know if I wanted to tell him that I loved Jean more than anything in the world or not at that time, that I had a dream one time of actually wanting to marry the dude, but I never got a chance to because I heard a screeching cacophony of metal bending and glass shattering and the crunching of, oh God, I hoped that wasn’t bone and cartilage.
“Mick?” I started to shout into the phone. “Mick? Mick! Are you alright? Mick!”
I only got to see him once since then, and that was at his funeral, all made up and handsome like my brother was ready to get wed or something.
I couldn’t cry during the ceremony, not even when Papa stood to say encouraging yet sad things about his son, my brother, Michael Bodt. When we lowered him into the ground, threw a belonging of his with him, my eyes were dry as the Sahara Desert. I was so deep in despair, no tears would come to me in that moment.
It was too hard for me to bear. When Taylor Swift would play on the radio, I had no choice but to tune her out completely, because Mick listened to her all the time. I couldn’t not think about him when I walked home from school, passing by the little, white cross and flowers my mama put up at the spot he died.
And then, on purpose this time, I avoided speaking to Jean like a total prick. I was numb to my surroundings. I didn’t, couldn’t care for anything or anyone. Nothing in the world mattered except for my grief for Mick.
I ignored the messages each day, turning away from the ‘I miss you’s and ‘I hope you’re doing well’s. I could no longer go to school without shunning those in my classes. They thought I hated them.
Weeks later, the guilt of ignoring Jean at me up inside. Everyday, I would come home and pretend like nothing was bad when I checked my Twitter feed. When I hid in my room and cried for hours on end until one of my parents knocked on the door, I would blame all my tears on Michael’s death. It made me feel worse to use Mick, my late big brother, as a scapegoat.
I spiralled downward, faster and more intense each month until, when my class and I were graduating, I could not will myself to walk at the ceremony. Instead, I stayed home, received my diploma in the mail, and stared at the poster-covered walls of my room.
What baffled me was the fact that Jean never stopped trying to contact me. I’d get letters in the mail occasionally. Hand-written ones that came with packages of candy and interesting, dried foods; there would be CDs and concert merchandise he bought just for me. Sometimes, there would be little trinkets or toys, too, like Jean was sending a gift to a ten-year-old kid, not a just-out-of-high-school eighteen-year-old.
I wanted to write back, but couldn’t make my hand reach for my phone and send off a quick message of ‘thanks’ and ‘I love you’.
I still love Jean, is what I thought every day, multiple times a day. I still love Jean, and I want to talk to him again.
But I was such a coward.
Not until I was going into community college did I start glancing at Jean’s messages with longing to reply.
It was actually by accident that I began to communicate with Jean again. By this time, I had had enough time to mourn and mope. I was beginning to pick myself up again, even though it’d been years since Mick passed away and I shunned Jean for the longest time.
I was checking his messages during accounting class when one of my classmates, Connie, asked to borrow my phone so he could text someone who had his phone.
Being me, I handed over my phone like a complete idiot, trusting he’d do what he had to do and hand it back without going through my million messages from Jean.
He did give it back, but, this time, a notification popped up in the corner of my screen:
_Kirschslayer69_ has favorited your tweet…”Hey babes, long time no talk. :-* <3 ”
“You… didn’t,” I muttered under my breath.
Connie must have smirked at me or something. I don’t remember him responding to me. I was pissed off for the duration of the class.
He passed me a note that said, “you always stare at those texts like you’re about to snog the hell outta youre phone.”
“Your,” I said out loud, correcting his grammar. He rolled his eyes in sign of ‘whatever’.
_Kirschslayer69_: @FreckledFucker Hey you. :D You’ve been gone for a long time.
I admit, I should probably be thanking Connie for starting the conversation with Jean for me, but I’m too… well, arrogant isn’t the exact word I’m looking for, but it’ll do.
It was awkward and wibbly at the beginning to talk to each other constantly every hour, but, eventually, it became easier, better, and it went from ‘hi, how are you’ to ‘I love you so much, I don’t know what I’d do without you’.
In March, Jean and I joked about what our children would look like. They would, according to Jean, have my looks, but inherit his awesome personality. Of course, I disagreed, reasoning our children would be fifty-fifty. He stood firm on his opinion, however, and I could have sworn this was our first ‘argument’ in our relationship.
It makes me smile to think of our tiny arguments, which I like to call discussions. Because they’re not really arguments. We always make up somehow, whether it’s with virtual hugs and kisses, photos of food we’ve made or bought for each other (and ourselves; don’t forget that), or just a moment of blank space where neither of us talk to each other for a while.
We’ve deemed those discussions bonding sessions.
I graduated college when he was in his second year at a university. Took up a job that pays well, even though the work I do makes me drool on the desk because it’s so dull and straight-cut. I’ve been saving money since the day I started working, tucking that small twenty-percent away in the savings for the unknown future.
My life brightened after that tiny ‘mishap’ with Connie, and, soon, Jean and I were back together, like we never spent time apart. In fact, we were even more sentimental than before.
Some nights, the ‘I love you’s won’t do enough satisfaction, so we’ll get on Skype, and, uh, help each other out.
Not that ‘I love you’ isn’t enough. It is. Just… sometimes, a body wants something physically pleasuring, too.
Jean makes the best noises, moans travelling through my headphones and into my ears. His breathy pants cause me to bite my lip. His whines wreck my composure.
My chest swells with gushy love-juice every time I see his face scrunch up when he’s about to come, and he spurs me on to surrender to the pleasure of my own hand, with my wrist aching from repeated motion for over five minutes. His hazy eyes bore holes into mine; all I can look at is him.
But here’s the real issue that I finally get to write about:
There’s this absurd idea of wanting to propose to him takes me off-guard.
I still don’t know where this came from, but it nibbles and gnaws at me at the most inconvenient times. I’ll be shutting my eyes, trying to get some sleep in, when it pings into my mind. It drives me bonkers, to the point I can’t even pretend I’m sleeping.
I sit at the edge of my bed, head in my hands, playing out scenarios that may or may not come true. It haunts me throughout the day, more prominently in the evening and every second in the night, where I’m the most vulnerable huddled in my blankets.
Marrying Jean would be a dream. My feelings are so strong, I can’t properly… put them into words.
When I speak to him, my chest gets all tight. My face flushes, and I yearn to tell him how much I love him. I want to thank him for being there with me this whole time. I want to thank him for never giving up on me, because we would never have been here if it weren’t for his persistence and will to message me every day even if he didn’t receive a reply.
I will jump on a plane, get on a train, even swim across the Atlantic Ocean to get on my knees in front of Jean and propose to him.
“Will you, Jean Kirschstein,” I would say with a nervous tremor in my voice. “Will you marry me?”
My mind starts to go nuts after that, boiling down to a puddle of messy, timid goop that has me writhing on the floor of my bedroom. I’m so unsure of his reply, although I do wish that the answer would be a big, fat yes.
Maybe that was what my subconscious was thinking, causing me to save up all this untouched money in the bank; I was saving it up so I could buy a ticket to see Jean. Maybe I was setting myself up, as if I knew there’d be a day I’d want to propose to marry him.
So, fast forward to present day where I’m sitting at the train, extremely jet-lagged, writing in a tiny booklet I bought the first thing I got to this country.
I’m travelling to see a guy I’ve never met face-to-face before, and yet I’m so in love with him that I’m going to ask him to marry me and stay with me for the rest of his time on earth.
I travelled to this land where I can barely speak the language, besides the few phrases Jean has taught me over Skype. I can never get them out of my mouth without stuttering, though. I guess I’m just not good with languages
I get stares from those on the train, who I guess aren’t used to seeing a mixed mutt of a person like me, with freckles positively everywhere, big brown eyes and hair dark as ink.
People hold back talking to me, because I clearly look and sound like a foreigner. But I don’t care. I’m too busy thinking about Jean.
There’s a ring in my pocket that I’m ready to present to him when I get to his village. It’s a pretty ring; a thin platinum band, jewels like opal and quartz encrusted in it all around. I chose it just for him, keeping in mind his love for sparkly things.
God, the seconds are passing by too slowly, and yet, they’re passing by too fast for me to get my act together before I step out onto the same land Jean walked over several hundred times during his life. Knowing my personality, I’ll probably recount the many years Jean and I have known each other just to reassure myself that what I’m doing is actually out of my own heart, and that I’m ready to devote my life to Jean.
I think they’ve announced my stop.
Well, here it is.
When I see his beautiful being, realize that it’s within touching range, I wonder what I will do. What I will say. Only you know that.
I hope that I muster up the strength and bravery to propose to Jean, who I had known as ‘underscore-Kirschslayer69-underscore’ in the beginning of our relationship.
I hope he says yes.
I hope we get married and live happily ever after.
I hope and hope, but now I’ve got to put those hopes and dreams to action. Will any of this actually happen? Will I do them? I just don’t know.
But you do.
Only you know how this will end.
I hope we made the best out of it.