This is a short story about the ttribulations of a married gay man, the relationship he has with his wife, and the encounters he have had in his other life. It is less sexy and much darker than B,B & B. It too is utter fantasy, so do not indulge in this behaviour if it risks your health or freedom. Neither should you read this if you're not supposed to. This is my second attempt at writing a short story in my second language. If you liked it please send a note saying so to sebastian.oak@gmail.com, if you'd like to point out improvements, you're very welcome.
Cuts a short story by Sebastian Thomas Oakland
Abe was walking home from work on a rather mild autumn evening. His bearing was slow but determined as dusk fell. The steady march of seasons made the twilight come sooner every day, it did little to illuminate the drab office clothes he was wearing or the dustiness of the pavement he was walking on. As Abe went he clutched anxiously at his upper left arm with his right hand. A steadily growing stain of blood seeped from under his pressing fingers through the polyester of his long sleeve shirt.
`Stupid, stupid man!' he rebuked himself quietly.
Abe had walked this way for near on twenty years. He knew every tree and lamppost along it. He had seen all the little shop fronts with their goods on display a thousand times and more. He delighted in the pretty little gardens of the houses as he got closer to home, and sometimes, just sometimes reached across some of the fences and low walls to pick little flowers for his wife, Lily, who was at that moment waiting for his return from a day behind a desk at the department. He had stuck out his time and had climbed through the ranks by working hard, meeting deadlines, and not rocking the little boat that was a career in civil service. He had left the crowd of clerks years before, but not after years among them. Now, in the summer of his life he had his own office, and a young lady that brought him tea at approved times.
He really loved Lily, and the dinner she would have waiting for him in a dining room decorated with lace, and blue china on a sideboard. His place would be set at the head of the table, which with chairs was a wedding gift from her uncle when they were married twenty-three years before. She had pushed it up close to a large picture window that overlooked the goings on of the street in which they lived. Lily would be sitting at the table and watch for him through dainty window dressings she had made herself. It was Friday and years of routine had taught him that a piece of hake, deep fried in a batter of flour and egg, was to be accompanied by a serving of potato chips and salad, and would be offered to him proudly. `We're having your favourite,' she would announce as he came through the door and she would take his jacket and lunch box from him, begging from him a kiss and companionship. Abe knew that he did not have the heart to tell her that it was not his favourite meal in the week, she so relished in his approval. He liked the fish, but his favourite was the sausages and mash with peas she gave him on Monday evenings.
Abe's left hand felt stupid as he grappled with the latch of the gate to their front yard. His right was occupied, and soaked in blood. He could not stain the gate, neither would he let go of the wound that still bled a little. When he released it a fresh gush of lukewarm blood spilled from him and took even more time coagulating. He closed the gate behind him and looked up to see warm light spill from the front door as Lily opened it for him. She came toward him worriedly and concerned. She had obviously already seen that his going was laboured and that he was holding onto his arm. Her jaw relaxed in an expression of shock.
"Oh my man, whatever came your way this time?" Lily asked of her husband as she took hold of his arm carefully and helped him up the steps into the house. "It's the crime in this city," Abe replied with his head bowed down as if shamed by the damage to his arm.
"Did they rob you?" She glanced apprehensively into the dark street behind them. "Where? Are you hurt anywhere else? How many were there?" Alarm rang in her voice.
"I'm fine, Love, I'm fine," Abe told his wife soothingly. "And there were none of them, I wasn't robbed.
"Then what crime did this to your arm," Lily pried away his hand and looked at the gaping wound that surprised them both with its scarlet colour under the light in the welcoming and homely entrance hall of their house. Lily bunched his folded jacket onto a hook in the wall and started to guide Abe to the bathroom down the short passage.
"It wasn't crime, it was something to stop crime," he started an explanation, "Ironic, really." Lily made him sit on the lid of the toilet bowl. She reached into the little cabinet that nestled under the bathroom sink and brought out a big bottle of antiseptic liquid and a wad of cotton wool. She had already started to fill the sink from the hot water tap. Abe stripped his shirt off as he sat.
"I cut myself on the barbed wire when I reached over the wall into Mr. Benson's rosebush to get you a blossom," he elaborated. She was reminded of the tenacious gesture with which he have delighted her since they started seeing each other, she thought it was romantic, he told her it was cheap, and a smile came to her face. She touched a cloth to the antiseptic water in the sink and gingerly dabbed at the cut relieving it of clotted blood.
"It's going to need stitches," she said, "Do you want me to do it?" He turned his face, flushed with trust, toward her.
"Would you?" he asked. Lily left the room and he could hear the opening and closing of a cupboard in the kitchen. She returned and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. In her one hand was half a bottle of cooking brandy, and in the other two glasses, one of which she offered to Abe. She clutched her sowing kit under an arm.
"Only if I can get a bit of bottle courage first," she sighed. This was not the first time Lily had to close a wound on Abe; she had always known him to be a slightly awkward, but not really clumsy man. Yet, she has seen how he knocked his thumbnail as black as night assembling a shelf. He was always the one who stepped on the blue bottles when they walked on the beach. Accidents always happened to Abe, and sometimes his injuries needed closing.
"It's not Mr. Benson's fault really, he is just trying to keep the crooks out, you know," he took a swig from the full glass. The comforting glow of the brandy on his tongue and down his throat held the promise of numbness, and at least a bit of delivery from the pain of having stitches put in an open wound. The very first time he asked this of Lily was the first day of their honeymoon. He had gone for a walk on the beach by himself and returned hours later with a cut as long as her little finger and alarmingly deep on the bottom of his foot. He had refused to go to the hospital and insisted that she did it for him. They had improvised with needle and thread, compliments of the hotel at which they were staying, and had robbed the little fridge in the room of all its little bottles of liquor. They had done it successfully and ever since, Abe had trusted his wife with a needle in her hand and a bit of bottled courage in her belly.
Lily drank from her glass deeply too. She hated doing what she was about to and never really understood why Abe would not trust a job like this to a doctor. He had always insisted that something this small would only invoke laughter from the professionals, and that `vultures like them are just out to rob us of our hard earned money'. She knew better than to argue with her husband over issues such as this. Apart from the fact that he had an open wound on his arm he was amiable. He even started smiling a bit, the brandy working its magic on him.
"Don't you have something more flesh toned, Love?" he teased her choice of cotton thread colour, "was that the green you used in the dining room?" She gave him an annoyed look.
"If you stop your joking maybe I can rake together the guts to do this." Lily tried to thread the cotton through the eye of the needle. "How many times has it been, Abe?" She dropped her hands and looked at him counting the times in her head. "God, it's just too many to count, isn't it?"
"Nine, Lils," Abe said smiling, "nine times only. It's not that much, and by now you're quite good at it."
"I'd still rather you went to the doctor with this." Lily pinched the thread between two fingers and let the needle dangle from it. She suspended it over the brandy bottle lowering it slowly until it, and some of the thread, sunk beneath the ochre liquid. She swirled the bottle a number of times expecting the alcohol to disinfect the needle and the thread. She took it out, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed.
"Better hold on to something, Love," she warned him, "This will hurt." She measured the cut with her eye, picking a spot at which to place the first stitch, not too far away from the rim, and close to the centre. She estimated that it would take five knots to pull it close, the first one in the middle and alternatively adding two to either side. They couldn't be too deep or she would not be able to pierce the needle through and out the other side, nor too shallow for she might tear through the muscle when she pulled the severed flesh back together. She knew this from trial and error.
Abe reached for the little towel ring, hinged into the wall over his head, and braced himself. He had installed it not long after they had moved into the house. Lily had gone to help her sister with the birth of their little niece for a few days; he wanted to surprise her with a newly fitted bathroom when she returned. He had laid the white tiles himself, but when she came back she scarce had time to see what he had done. That time he told her that he cut himself breaking a tile to fit around the base of the toilet he was sitting on. He trusted the veracity of his own handy work, the towel ring would hold.
The first prick would by no means be the worst. He forced his lungs to breathe deeper, and slower. His heart rate increased nonetheless, anticipating the resistance the uppermost layer of skin would present to the needlepoint. The pink skin, swollen, and inflamed by the proximity of an open wound was very sensitive. Sensitive to the point that ordinary touch would send aching waves through his arm, but now Lily was audibly straining with the effort of breaking the skin with her small sowing needle. The tissue in his bicep was even more resistant than the skin. The needle had to tear sinuous fibres from each other to create a corridor for the thread trailing it to pass through.
"Nearly there, Love." Lily declared when she could see the silvery point emerging from inside the flesh exposed by the cut. Abe cradled his contorted face in the crook of his arm, tears rolled first down his nose, then onto his elbow, from there to drop to the shiny tiles below. I deserve this, he thought to himself, she trusts me, and I did it to her again. The grain of the thread she was sowing him up with was rough and uneven. It stuck to the muscle it was pulled through. The pain should have been unbearable, and even if Abe bore it in silence, his knuckles gripped white at the towel ring. The pierced flesh stung with the force of a needle pushed through, it bled into cotton soaked with brandy. If I can break my promise, Abe lamented to himself, I can take my punishment. Lily did not know the tears from the man she loved so much were not only tears of agony, but also tears of guilt.
It had been more than two years since Lily had last sown him up. He told her that he had a collision with a man on bicycle; he had been walking home under promise of a summer storm when a man on a bike came down the pavement and hit his shoulder hard enough for Abe to have lost his balance and hit his face on a traffic sign. It took her a deft five minutes to have him good as new and into dry clothes. He was not only wounded, but also soaked to the skin. That day he had intended to walk his regular route home, but an approaching storm had caught up with him by the time he passed a city park. Water fell from the sky as if fissures had opened in heaven above. It rained, small bits of ice warned of hale. Abe scouted for shelter. There was no bus stop or other cover; the only dry place he could see was the rest rooms in the park, and he had been avoiding those for years. He had no choice; he dashed for the men's room holding his lunch bag over his head in a vain attempt to stay dry. The bicycle propped against the wall by the entrance warned him that another unfortunate traveller had been caught by the rain; he was relieved at the licit intention of the other refugee. The smell of urinal disinfectant, and stale pee slammed into his nostrils. It was the smell of male ablutions; dirty and clean at the same time. Inside he found the cyclist, a younger man, wringing out his soaked shirt over the basin, when he noticed Abe and smiled shyly, conscious of his vulnerable appearance. They were stuck together for a while. When the rain had cleared Abe picked up a broken bottle left by some vagrant and looked into the mirror as he took the shard to his own face.
Lily tightened the little green knot and the stabbing pain brought Abe back to the room where his wife tended him. The bleeding had stopped, but the dull ache returned, as Lily told Abe to brace himself for the insertion of the next stitch. She had threaded a new piece of cotton and already submerged it in the brandy. She took another swig herself and grasped his upper triceps with a sure hand; she placed the needle and pressed. Her confidence in her labour had returned and a quick jab and upward thrust exposed the sharp point once again.
The pain tore at Abe, he sat motionless and silent as Lily repaired him. His face was still cradled in his arm, and his mind reeled behind closed eyes. Even if the scent was faint, and imperceptible to her, he recognised the musk from another man's body that clang to his clothes, and to his skin. He had left the office after lunch to deliver a report to another building and was confronted by a construction worker and his moistly gleaming muscles in the afternoon sun. Abe only glanced at the man who then held his gaze unconsciously. He did not intend to stare at the man, but when he saw the man smile back at him he realised that an encounter had begun. He felt the familiar loss of control and an expansion of his own body's sentience. A flush of blood touched is chest and his cheeks, and a slow breath of air thumped through his ears in a melody mixed with the sounds of a busy street, and a construction site. He did not mean to, but he smiled back. The man strolled over.
"Hot today, mate. Feel like a beer?" The man indicated the site office, a converted container that towered over the dusty labour performed by an army of men. The room was air conditioned, and the sudden chill sent waves of goose bumps across both their skins. The man never gave him a drink. As soon as the door closed behind them he tore first at his own shirt before he reached for Abe's. When they touched at first Abe's being groaned with the collapse of inhibitions. He smelt of concrete and sweat and musk. The smell lingered with Abe after their encounter had ended, but so did a guilt that tore at his sense of propriety. The construction worker demolished a wall of self control, and his physical delight stabbed at his love for his wife. On the walk home he saw the bladed wire defending an old man's garden from a cruel world. He walked up to it and bit his lip as he scraped his arm across the barbs. It bled more than he expected.
By now Lily had tied the third little knot that aided Abe's body to repair itself. His skin was coming together nicely. In a week or so his tissues would be strong enough to keep together by itself, but until then Lily needed to apply more stitches. She had opted to use a longer piece of cotton. The sowing up process took less time, but the cotton that fought its way into the raw flesh was longer. It took more effort to pull it through, especially now that the thread itself had absorbed as much of his blood as it could. Her latest thrust bled hard, she had perforated a shallow vein. She dabbed at it with the antiseptic cloth stemming the flow of scarlet, at the same time jabbing the needle through in to the torn wound and out the inflamed skin on the other side. Abe sat motionless.
A usual paradox battled in his mind; although the stinging brandy afforded some numbness for the ache his loving wife was inflicting upon him, his mind furtively escaped to places and times his body felt joy instead. As an escape his mind took him to the bodies that lured him to sin, and this eventual punishment, but it was the memory of these sins that made the penalty bearable. It was the towel ring he so desperately clung to that invoked the recollection with which his soul subconsciously escaped the burdens of his wife's labour. He was younger then, and his wife a caring sister and excited new aunt. He had known of her intent to travel to tend to the new arrival in the family. He had planned the new bathroom since then.
At the sanitary ware shop he browsed the showroom. Gleaming toilets, basins and tubs all beckoned his desire for them, but the prices were not suited to the pocket of a civil servant. Sensing his hesitation a lanky, blonde attendant approached, his sales pitch startled Abe for a second:
"The lilac dream set is one of our more popular options!" Abe turned his gaze from the ghastly purple bathroom display, the tub alone of which would surely fill his entire bathroom. Inadvertently his eyes dropped to the young man's shoes, trailing their way up the tall handsome frame. For a moment his eyes delayed at the low riding jeans and the visible scraps of muscular thigh. The obnoxious shirt emblazoned with the shop logo hugged the torso tightly, and the upturned collar framed a friendly smile of salesmen's teeth and sapphire eyes. Abe was speechless.
"If you are looking for something more masculine I can show you our more conservative selection." Abe was still transfixed by the blonde hair and the minute piercings that decorated his handsome ears. He followed the man to another aisle, using the opportunity to stare at his butt and the faint suggestion of crack penetrating well defined mounds, all lain bare by the jeans that seemed to have drifted even lower. Abe's body responded. He could feel blood rushing to his chest and face, a twitch in his groin warned him of crumbling inhibitions. Only then did he notice the man had brought them to the `conservative' selection and snapped around to face him, it was too late. The blonde grabbed for Abe to minimise the collision as he stumbled straight into him. He did not raise his arms in defence, nor reach for Abe's arms to hold him away. Instead he grabbed a hold of Abe's sides, placing his palms and fingers flat against his obliques, and giving them a slight squeeze, taking his sweet time to let go. Abe knew the man saw him look at his ass. The warm hands on his abdomen and the glint of a smile in the bluest of eyes suggested that the admiration was not unwelcome.
"I think there might be a huge discount on these," he said with a closed smile, Abe not even looking at the white glazed ceramics that he came for, "and if you want I can deliver them myself, today, after work." His `Hello my name is' labelled him Sean, and a bulge pressed from inside his denim.
"Damn'it!" shrieked Lily. Pain grabbed Abe back into a bathroom which was now stained with watermarks and years of use. She had misplaced the needle and pierced through perfectly good skin that was not in need of mending;
"I'm sorry my love," she said stroking at the unintentional damage. Abe remained quiet and again cradled his face in his elbow.
Sean had added a selection of freebies when he drove up to the house in the shop's delivery van that evening, the towel ring was in the mix. He had come alone, but between the two of them they made short, hot work of carrying in the bulky goods and stowing them in the corridor until the bathroom was ready for installation. The carrying was enough excuse for both of them to remove their shirts, and an even better excuse to open a couple of beers that chilled in the fridge since Abe anticipated the pale beauty's delivery. His carefully thought out plan to first come on to, and then seduce the man was pre-empted when Sean, after a long draught from his bottle came up to him, encircled his middle with one arm pulling their slick torsos together and leaned his face in for a long, sweet kiss. This was the only time ever Abe shared his bed with another man for an entire night. He made sure to let Sean have his side of the bed for letting him sleep on Lily's spot would feel too much like a traitor's act. But being with a man in the comfort of a bed with no risk of discovery gave Abe his most intimate experience with a man's body. Sean was about as tall as he was, he was milky white and wiry muscled. They kissed a long time languishing in the contact between their naked bodies, rubbing their penises together, and humping at each other until their mutual licks and cuddles made way for musky sex and a series of powerful but diminishing climaxes. When they had to get up for work they were both tired, but satiated and glowing with good sex. It was only that evening that Abe realised he had bought the same bathroom set as the one they already had.
A soft kiss on the top of his head signalled the end of the ordeal. Abe's arm was cleaned and dressed. It still ached, but his wife popped two tablets at him and said,
"Take these and call me anytime you want," she winked at him and turned to walk away. Abe grabbed her without warning. He clutched his wife to his chest in a great big hug, she hugged him back and giggled about his spontaneous show of affection, and the brandy. The blood had washed away the trespasses of his body, and the pain his wife inflicted ended the chapter and restored to her the right to be his wife, and the affection he had for her.
"Never again," he whispered to himself, vindicated, as always.
"I made your favourite for dinner, fish and chips!" He smiled at her appreciatively and nodded, he had no appetite, but his husbandly duties demanded that he took from his wife that which she so lovingly bestowed. He checked the bandage before fastening another shirt around his collar. He felt fine.
The End
Copyright 2008 Sebastian Thomas Oakland
If you'd like to comment I'd like to read `em: Sebastian.oak@gmail.com