The Sandbox

By Justin Jackson

Noah Parker is a man trying to forget the end of an old relationship so he can begin a new one. He left everything he knew and moved to Chicago in order to start over again. He isnt, however, the same person. He only knows a few people and after one drunken night out, he realizes the ex-boyfriend he left behind also moved to Chicago and is now standing in the same bar!

Confused, Noah tries desperately to adjust to this discovery and ends up trying to transition from an old relationship that wont die into a new one. He is left emotionally confused and frustrated and doesnt understand his feelings. While he valiantly tries to move on, he finds a new job, gets arrested on false drug charges, and realizes he is barely getting by in the wilds of Chicagos gay scene.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440153020

Book preview

1.

What was I saying?

You were telling me about last night.

Oh, right. So I was on this date with a guy named Pete. He was that guy I met a few weeks ago at Susan’s housewarming party.

Yeah? Noah lit a cigarette. I remember him.

So we’re standing outside of his apartment, and he says something about how I’m overworked and need to loosen up. He then tried to make out with me and actually had the nerve to grab my tits in the middle of the street.

So what did you do? Noah gasped

I smacked the fucker across the face and then immediately got in a cab. Do you want to get another drink, Noah?

Nah, I need to get ready to take off soon. I have to prep for a meeting with a client.

"Yeah, I have paperwork to do anyway. Besides, Designing Women comes on in an hour."

Noah had just moved to Chicago and had been fortunate enough to land a job midyear. After five years of taking classes and working two jobs, he’d graduated with a degree in social work. He’d finished in December and impatiently accepted a job in January with the Department of Child Services. He had just through Christmas to pack his life up and move. To say the job was demanding would be an understatement. Now Noah spent his days working with children from deplorable backgrounds, families riddled with alcoholism or abuse. Although he had an office, he shuttled regularly between clients’ homes and court. He provided his clients with access to counseling, employment opportunities, anger management, rehab, and other integral resources necessary to foster a stable home. Because he spent so much time out of the office, the piles of reports to write for his ever-increasing caseload often went home with him.

The girl was Jenny, a divorce attorney. They met at a Bette Midler concert. Drunk at the time, she’d imagined that Noah might be straight and hit on him. He’d laughed at her for thinking a straight man would pay money to see Bette live. They had been friends ever since. Noah appreciated Jenny; he still didn’t know many people in the city. She was an individual who took her job personally, and it altered her perspective on relationships. After years of listening to her brokenhearted clients, she’d decided not to experience similar custody battles or alimony arguments personally. She dated often but never allowed herself to get too close; she hid behind sarcasm. She saw each relationship as a potential divorce and left when it stopped being fun. This typically took only a few weeks.

As he walked back to his apartment, Noah’s thoughts were divided between remembering where he lived and dwelling on what he’d left behind. He had attended college at Indiana University, known for its diversity. More specifically, there were a large number of gay men in the student body. He plummeted into his sexuality, experiencing gay life for the first time. It was the catalyst that would deform the rest of his life.

Growing up, he hadn’t thought about being gay. He never had a teenage gay love at summer camp or messed around with the male lead in his high school’s drama club. He did look at guys and decide whether they were attractive. Noah assumed that everyone thought that way—everyone knows ugly when they see it. But he carried a hidden urge somewhere just below his belly button. This urge was small at first, which was why Noah never realized his attraction to men until later. As he matured, the urge started to grow. He started to fantasize about men while masturbating—first no more than a flicker of a male torso, and then full love scenes. His mind would wander when he stared at the men in exercise magazines. Awake at night, he would think about being romantically involved with another man. His fear of the unknown and need to keep his secret meant that he kept his urges to himself. At least for a while.

Then, one drunk night, he ran into an openly gay guy who lived on the same floor in his dorm. He asked Noah if he wanted to watch a movie in his room. Noah, wobbling slightly, agreed. The evening ended with heavy petting and a handjob. Afterwards, Noah did not go through a transition of trying to understand his sexuality. On his way back to his dorm, he nodded, accepting what had been rising to the surface all these years. Noah went about his business, the same as always, just with a different and defined sexual preference. He made no apologies and gave few explanations.

Lost in thought, Noah realized that he was lost. He tried to call Jenny, but her phone was off. He looked around for anything familiar. There were only pedestrians scurrying about while talking on cell phones, angry taxi drivers cussing at the traffic, and international tourists pausing to take pictures every time they spent their euro, yen, or drachma. He decided to backtrack. His apartment was about eight blocks from the restaurant. He must have missed the street.

Musing on his new life in Chicago and his job, cursing himself for not carrying cab money or a map, he tried to focus on getting home. While wandering around, he finally recognized a landmark, a pizzeria that was just a few blocks away from his apartment.

After almost an hour of meandering, he was home. Noah’s apartment was a work in progress. He’d been lucky enough to find a tiny, affordable studio. He unlocked its three locks, his barriers between everything he owned and burglars. Noah had been so focused on his job that he had still yet to unpack everything. He kept the boxes in the middle of his apartment so that he would see them every day. He originally thought that this would encourage him to unpack them. That had been in January; by now, it was late April.

There were the occasional pictures of his family around the various rooms, a few pieces of poetry he had managed to get published, faux art masterpieces, and pictures of writers whom he admired. His bed, always unmade, was in the far right corner of the room. His kitchen had dirty dishes and two cheap, empty wine bottles. The rest of the apartment, aside from the bathroom, was open space. He had managed to hold on to a few pieces of furniture that he’d decided weren’t too tainted with gin and cigarette burns to use in his first real apartment. He had a rickety futon, two end tables, an old stereo balanced on a couple of egg crates, a TV stand, and small bookcase. Reading was one of Noah’s favorite pastimes. This bookcase, due to its small size, could not hold all the books that he had collected over the years. Small piles of Hemingway, Burroughs, Larsen, and Fitzgerald littered his apartment.

Noah set his iPod to Nina Simone, made himself a cup of coffee, and sat down. He took up a new case file, a typical case: a single mom, busted for heroin possession, had lost her kids. Noah was responsible for helping this woman keep clean so she could get her kids back. Noah already had six cases that he was trying to close. He had seen children burned by parents, eating only occasionally, and living in dilapidated homes. His job wasn’t always nine-to-five. He had to be on call at all times. He never knew when he would have to leave a movie early or be available at 4AM because of something that had happened with a case.

He looked over the details now and took notes. He despised going to any client’s home. He never knew what he would encounter. He was fast becoming acquainted with not only the worst neighborhoods in Chicago but their inhabitants. Most of his clients did not want his help. They saw him as the man or a peon of welfare who wanted to tear families apart. Noah found that stance to be the most frustrating aspect of his profession; these people were so set in their ways, they didn’t understand his role in their lives.

He rubbed his eyes and stepped onto the fire escape to light up a smoke. He took a deep breath, held it in for just a second, and then exhaled slowly. The surge of nicotine woke him up. He stared at the city, a glorious light show. The flickering billboards, the taxi lights moving up and down, and the random lights of the offices and apartments were captivating. Noah felt peacefully at home. He was awakened out of his cigarette-induced gaze by his cell phone. It was Steve. Noah had known him in college, but Steve had graduated a year before and moved to Chicago immediately afterwards. Steve had spent his college career becoming an expert networker. Through an internship in Indianapolis, he had been able to land a job with an ad agency. He was a natural for the ad industry. Noah’s move to Chicago had rekindled their friendship.

Hey, Steve.

Noah! Steve yelled. Where you at?

I’m on my fire escape, smoking.

Ugh, when are you gonna quit those damn cigarettes?

When you stop being gay. Noah chuckled.

Steve laughed. Whatever. What’re you doing tonight?

I don’t have any plans as of yet. Is something going down somewhere?

Yeah, he squealed. Me and Paul and Joey are heading down to Blue Martini for some drinks, and maybe some dancing afterwards. Care to come play with us?

Um. Noah hesitated. I’m working at the moment. What time is everyone getting together?

Oh, don’t start with that ‘I have to work’ bullshit. It’s Friday.

I’m not saying that I can’t go, I just have to get my stuff done.

Tell you what, we’ll pick you around 10:30, Steve insisted. Don’t make me have to come up there and get your ass.

Okay, fine. I can be ready by then.

I’ll see you tonight then.

2.

And with that, Noah’s Friday night was taking shape. He had almost three hours to prep for his new case. He put out his cigarette in an old coffee cup and finished his work. He switched Nina Simone for Lynyrd Skynyrd, and then went to his closet to look for something to wear. This was always difficult. He had been out with Steve and his friends on several occasions. He always had a good time, but he seemed to stick out. Noah was perturbed by the fact that Steve and his group of friends were always so put together. They wore nice clothes from nice places and appeared just overdressed enough to be noticed. Noah tended to stick with wrinkled T-shirts and worn-out jeans. Noah liked nice clothes, but he detested having to iron anything or pay for dry cleaning. In his job, especially in the field, he was able to get away with a lot of casual wear. Working with neglect cases, it was advised by his superiors that one should wear old clothes since the smell of oppression tends to linger.

Noah picked out a pair of jeans and grabbed his favorite pair of dirty sneakers and a faded red T-shirt. He bundled it all up and threw it on the bed. He showered, dried, and took a look at himself.

Finally getting my body back, he thought, running a finger across his stomach. During the last few months with Jon, their drinking had gone out of control, and neither of them had exercised often. Noah’s unhappiness had become evident in weight gain. Once he moved to Chicago, however, Noah had completely altered his diet and worked out constantly. The fat slowly melted away. He was finally slimming down enough to fit into his old clothes.

Singing along to Free Bird, he ran some gel through his hair and spritzed on some cologne. He was sitting on his fire escape when his cell phone rang. It was time for him to forget about work briefly and enjoy his Friday night. Noah could see the cab in the distance. Inside was Steve with his two friends, Joey and Paul. Noah spent weekends running amuck with them in Boystown. Overdressed as usual, they joked about Noah’s lack of effort in that area and caught up after a busy work week.

Steve tried relentlessly to please his boss, a tyrant who demanded constant creativity and a yes to every request. She made sure that he and his co-workers understood that they could be fired at any time for not performing to her high expectations. Even someone as charismatic as Steve couldn’t seem to please her. He hated the fact that that his boss was the one person who couldn’t seem to understand his value at the company.

Paul was a nurse and loved every minute of it. He enjoyed the action, the pay, and the schedule. He was single thus far. Paul’s relationships not only failed miserably but involved situations that none of the others could relate to. His last relationship started off in typical Paul-fashion: he met someone randomly and fell fast. This guy, however, decided to take a three-week vacation to Italy and allegedly forgot to tell Paul. Being eternally forgiving, he was willing to overlook the mistake. His friends, however, saw past the bullshit and snapped Paul back to reality. He had not dated since that happened.

Then there was Joey, a personal trainer. He was also the group’s man-whore. His body was the envy of the other three. He was tall, with a flawless dark complexion. Everything he wore looked as if made for him. Joey had realized at an early age that he was attractive, and his sex drive seemed to match