Fixation

By L.A. Fields

In this last installment of The Disorder Series, these friends are finally forced to grow up.

Marley Kurtz is still looking for love when he discovers he'll also need to look for a new job. Is college still an option? His best friend Missy survives another health scare, and tells her long-suffering boyfriend he needs to move on to be happy. Can she take her own advice? Marley's ex-boyfriend Jesse bites off more independence than he can chew. When he comes crawling back, will anyone accept him?

No one is left untouched from the realization that they'll have to change to move forward. Faces emerge from the past, relationships are tested, and the one thing that's clear across the board is that complacency is not an option. Join these characters one more time as they grieve their mistakes, alter their behavior, and learn to prosper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebel Satori Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781608641352

L.A. Fields

L.A. Fields is the author of The Disorder Series, published by Rebel Satori Press, along with the Lambda Literary Award finalist My Dear Watson, the collection Countrycide, and her newest book, Homo Superiors. Her work has been featured in Wilde Stories 2009, Best Gay Romance 2010 and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet. She has traveled the world but now lives in Texas.

Book preview

Fixation

by

L.A. Fields

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Queer Mojo (A Rebel Satori Imprint)

New Orleans

Copyright © 2019 by L.A. Fields

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting

what one wants, and the other is getting it..

—Oscar Wilde

Prologue: Tulsa, CO

At eighteen, Tulsa thought his life was over. He’d done fucked up as his father put it, and Tulsa couldn’t argue with that. He was guilty of a crime, again, and he’d already used his first and second chances up, so it was time to face some consequences. He’d spend the rest of his youth behind bars, if not longer. Oops.

He was horrified by what he’d done at first, mostly because he thought he’d exposed himself irrevocably, outed himself for real and forever. However, because he was too busy crying to admit anything, by the time his lawyer caught up with him, he assured Tulsa that his situation was negotiable, survivable. His victim, Marley Kurtz, had turned up bruised but not broken, and what was even better (for Tulsa) was that though the boy was being treated for injuries that were quite clearly from a rough sexual encounter, he also had a mild concussion, and an eating disorder, and self-inflicted injuries—cuts all up and down his arms—and in the end the only dirt that stuck to Tulsa was the physical assault, and not the other one. Tulsa beat up a kid in a bathroom, and who knows why, but he’d always had a bad temper, so it was all just more of the same in the eyes of the court. Juvenile detention until twenty-one: case closed.

Though he was spared the extra consequences of a sex conviction in the legal system, his parents still found out about that part. His father disowned him immediately. His mother held on enough to make sure the lawyer got paid, but that was all the strength her love for her son could muster. She wasn’t allowed to come visit him, and she certainly couldn’t get any of his letters, not while she lived in her husband’s house, and Mrs. Randall did not believe in divorce—she was married before she was ‘Momma,’ wasn’t she? So she kept that commitment first. She wrote to her son telling him inane things about her life and the town for the three years he was incarcerated, but he couldn’t tell her anything in return. After a while Tulsa only skimmed the letters to see if she had any news regarding his lawyer or his case, and when she didn’t, he tore up the letters and threw them away. Why leave them around for someone else to find? He’d lost so much respect for his mother when she chose her husband over her son that he didn’t care about her anymore, he couldn’t afford to—Tulsa had to look after himself.

So: no mushy letters from mommy in his cell, no visitors for the others to take note of, no fights if he could avoid them, no money to steal, no ambition for petty power. It was just a high school you couldn’t leave for three straight years instead of four years’ worth of days, basically: okay then. He’d have problems on the outside, but so what, so would everyone else, and those would be good problems to have when they arrived, freedom problems. Tulsa was doing his time, earning good credits for an early release, he eeked out a GED, and he took a correspondence course on plumbing. He figured that would be all there was to it.

Until one day he met a boy, a new boy, a black boy, named Terrence. Tulsa didn’t pay him any regard at first, except to raise his eyebrows at the kid’s circumstances. He was in for rape, statutory, not at all like the kind Tulsa was secretly guilty of, and of a girl who was his girlfriend at the time, who was practically fifteen Terrence swore, when he was just barely nineteen. He managed to fuck himself more than her in a state with a Romeo and Juliet clause and everything—fifteen and up can get with four years older, seventeen and up can get with ten years older, but fourteen is off limits: nevermind that he was still hanging with his eighteen-year-old high school friends, and nevermind that she was in high school and a sophomore (smart, skipped a grade), the law only sees what it’s allowed to see, and her parents insisted that it take a hard look. Bad luck.

They didn’t become friends until Tulsa noticed him humming something familiar. When he realized it was Jailhouse Rock he was quick to warn Terrence to knock it off, not because Tulsa himself had any problem with it, but because the other guys might not think it was funny, all things considered. Terrence wanted to know if Tulsa thought it was funny, which he did. They started trying to remember all the lyrics, and worked themselves into such a giggle-fit about it that they became friends. Did it really say that one prisoner told another ‘you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see?’ That was pretty bold for such a goofy song.

They didn’t become lovers until another couple of weeks passed, maybe a month; neither could remember the exact day of the giggling, so they counted the day of consummation as their official anniversary. Then Tulsa got out first and early, and he thought he would die having to wait two years, four months, and eight days for Terrence, but he didn’t. He got into a couple of fights instead, lost a couple of jobs, until Terrence got him in with his uncle’s construction company, and for once in his life Tulsa took orders without resentment, tried his best. These were his unwitting in-laws, his family in a sense, not that anyone could tell by looking, and not that Tulsa or Terrence would ever say so explicitly. They were ‘friends’ for life, and that’s all they had to say about it.

When Terrence got out, they moved in together, officially to save money. They of course weren’t allowed to associate with other former inmates, but the trick they pulled was: their place was listed as Terrence’s family’s apartment on his paperwork, and Tulsa’s own place to his probation officer, and they just never wrote down the apartment unit in full. Apartment C, but on which floor? Don’t worry about it. They learned to keep under everybody’s radar as a habit, made it a way of life.

Soon enough the years will pass, and they will become more and more free of their restrictions. Terrence will most certainly get a raise due to nepotism, and he will bring Tulsa along with him. Tulsa will learn more than plumbing, will learn everything he can on the job because he’ll want to, he’ll need to, if he doesn’t want to be little more than a male wife, if he wants to be a true partner.

As more time goes on, Terrence’s family will die off, and he’ll inherit the business, some property. Together Terrence and Tulsa will find a lawyer in Denver to draw up paperwork to grant each other everything that marriage would bring, though without getting actually married, because they don’t want the spectacle or the title; they just want to square away their own private business. Tulsa will become a legal partner in the family business, though he’ll always feel like an imposter, no matter how many people call him ‘boss.’

There will be a time in Tulsa’s life, right around a sort of mid-life crisis, when he will consider making amends to the people he hurt in his past. He will think about tracking them down somehow, apologizing, and then letting them do what they must in response: hit him, slam the door in his face, forgive and dismiss him maybe, depending on the state of their own coping mechanisms. Tulsa will picture it a thousand and one times at least, and he will focus on Marley Kurtz particularly. What he did to Marley he’ll come to understand as the worst thing he could do to anyone, and he’ll wonder—what with the lifestyle he ended up living—what would have happened if he’d asked Marley out instead of attacking him? How different would each of them be?

But somehow Tulsa will never get the motivation to even ask around about the boy, where he went, what he did with himself. Instead, he’ll step out on Terrence, and Terrence will give him the punch in the face he’s so desperately looking for, but he will also forgive Tulsa eventually, and they’ll move on. They’ll live together until one of them dies.

It’ll be a long road for Tulsa, and by the end of it, he will have forgotten Marley’s name.

Part I:

The Five Moral Precepts

Chapter One: Do No Harm

Mitch also thinks intermittently of Marley.

It’ll catch him when he’s perusing a bookshelf, since Marley loved to read so much, and worked or maybe still works in that one bookstore. Mitch doesn’t understand how that place is still in business unless its business is money laundering. Big brick-and-mortar bookstores are going down, how does a little gay niche one stay afloat in some South Florida strip mall? The place is already painted like a daycare inside, with its rainbow theme. Probably it’ll get replaced by a daycare.

He thinks of Marley when he sees pin-up girl tattoos on people, not because Marley had one (he really didn’t seem the type), but he drank out of those Sailor Jerry jugs with the tattoo art on the backs of the labels, so that does it. Mitch thinks about him when he sees anyone with the same sort of long, lanky dark hair (usually girls). He also thinks of Marley when he thinks of his former best friend, Greg.

A twenty-year friendship fell apart around Marley, not because it was his fault, though he did serve as the catalyst, the occasion. Greg kept trying to flirt with the kid despite their age difference (and despite Marley’s boyfriend), and Greg kept feeding him liquor because Marley wasn’t even twenty-one yet (that’s how young he was, with Greg pushing 40), and Mitch was so sick of him being so flippantly destructive that he got sick of Greg altogether, at long last. He’d wanted to disengage a little before Marley, but after the stuff surrounding the boy, Mitch was ready to quit his best friend cold-turkey.

Now when Greg comes out with new books, Mitch doesn’t even read the back covers. He used to be the guy’s first reader, his audience of one. For as long as they’d known each other, since that first day of college… all of that went away in an instant. Like a house carried off whole in a flood; holding strong, then all gone.

It’s not more than once a semester that Mitch remembers Marley. He’s still got his own life going on, his eighth graders to teach, his pale tabby cat to come home to and feed, and he’s found he’s got a lot of TV to watch as well. He makes sure he calls his mother regularly, and tries to read a book a month to keep himself busy and well-rounded, in case a date ever falls into his lap. He got tired of chasing dates too, even before he outgrew Greg. Something about filling his days vaguely thinking he should lose fifteen pounds or change the design of the hair on his head—shorter hair, or longish and softer? goatee or no-goatee?—it all felt so pointless after a while. Now Mitch hopes that if he ever meets anyone, and they find each other mutually okay-looking, he’ll at least have something to talk about. Read any good books lately? He’s not holding his breath waiting for it to happen or anything.

The last time Mitch thinks of Marley before he runs into the boy again is when one of his students gives him a particularly withering glance. Mitch asked Brunette Jessica (as opposed to her white-swan opposite, the aggressively peppy Blond Jessica) if she was feeling okay one Friday when she let the whole class leave before her after the final bell. That’s a kid who dreads going home if Mitch ever saw one, and that worries Mitch far more than a kid who dreads another class, another test, or even a field trip. School is meant to be a drag, that’s good practice for the rat race of the real world, but home ought to be a sanctuary. If it’s not, you’re looking at a kid in trouble.

Mitch asked her, Jessica, are you feeling okay?

Nope, she said, hefting herself out of her seat like the weight of her own body was the world’s biggest burden.

Anything I can do to help? Mitch asked as she shuffled towards the door.

Oh please, she said sarcastically, making that sharp eye contact with him. It was as if Jessica was saying to him, Don’t bother pretending. You can’t help, and we both know that, so save your energy for anything else. That’s what reminded him of Marley, that sort of world-weariness on such a young face, though he does remember believing that Marley could be helped, even if it wasn’t by Mitch himself. He feels the same about Jessica. It’s the sterling bit of optimism that keeps him a teacher.

A few weeks later, Mitch is bringing his cat to the vet for her annual shots and check-up. On his way out through the parking lot, someone blurts a Hi! at him out of nowhere, and Mitch turns to find the kid he sometimes remembers, well into his twenties by now. It has been a couple of years, or as his students like to ironically say about all lengths of time, from months to millennia: it’s been a minute.

Marley. Where did you come from?

Bus stop, Marley says, pointing. Library. He holds up a book with a little due-date receipt sticking out like a bookmark. He seems delighted that Mitch is really there, as if Marley had just been casting a spell to conjure him, and can’t believe it actually worked. Meant to do it, but whoa!

His hair is still long, but it’s pulled into a smooth ponytail at the base of his neck. He’s still covered in sleeves, but not from an overcoat or jacket in this tropical April, more like handless elbow gloves, just a couple of beige-colored sleeves from wrist to bicep. Those look like a fashion statement, but they’re not. Mitch remembers that Marley has scars on his arms he likes to keep covered. He’s learned a way to do that without over-layering himself in the sweltering heat. Good for him.

You have a cat? Marley asks, his eyes alight trying to see into Mitch’s carrying cage.

I do, Mitch says, setting her on the roof of his car so Marley can peek in. Greg got him this cat, but Mitch doesn’t hold that against her. This is Tasi. Anastasia, but I call her Tasi.

I love cats, Marley says, wise enough to look without trying to stick his fingers in and touch a strange animal. Is she friendly?

She is when she’s at home, not so much right now. She’s a lap-sitter, really loves spreading out on homework pages for sure.

She’s so pretty, Marley says, with a smile so wholesome and clear-eyed that Mitch wants nothing more than to encourage him further.

You can visit her if you want, he says.

And Marley says, Like right now?

And Mitch says, Sure, because what else is he doing tonight? I mean, if you’re not headed anywhere. They both glance back at the bus stop and see the bus pulling away. Mitch decides, I’ll give you a ride home later.

Cool deal, I love getting free rides. Marley says that with a bit of a smirk, because that did have a whiff of double-entendre about it.

Mitch asks, What about your boyfriend? Jesse, was it?

Marley opens the passenger side door and says, We broke up ages ago, before ducking down into Mitch’s car. Ages, he says. Probably more like a literal minute. Mitch takes a second with Tasi above the roof of his car to wonder, What the hell just happened?

Did Mitch just ask a guy on a date who, not three years ago, was inexcusably too young for Greg? It’s still the same age difference, even though Marley appears quite a bit older and more mature than Mitch last left him. Does that emotional difference make the age difference go away? 

Mitch tucks Tasi behind the driver’s seat, and then gets in to find Marley buckling up his seatbelt, stashing his backpack at his feet. 

So… Mitch says, settling in and starting the ignition. Have you read any good books lately? 

*

While Marley is denying Jesse’s name in a fleeting dismissal, somewhere else Jesse is moving on.

Literally he’s moving on, moving out of the apartment he’s lived in for years, first with Marley, and then alone for the past year or so. He thought he would still keep his job at Kenny’s Garage while moving out. He asked for a raise to offset not living rent-free on the premises anymore, and because he was no longer anyone else’s assistant when it came to being a grease-monkey. He’d learned to do everything that Kenny could do and then some, learned to do it better in a lot of cases, and thought he deserved a raise and some better digs. When he was told that Kenny couldn’t afford to pay him more under any circumstance, Jesse decided it was time to move forward. Bigger and better pastures, farther and wilder places, better money and more respect.

Jesse got a new job fast, within a fortnight of inquiring. After that he found a squat little medicine-pink stucco house to rent close to his new job near downtown Fort Myers. He told Kenny to tell his wife that he’d be out after his two-weeks’ notice was up, since Jesse is sure that woman was the reason a raise didn’t happen. Let Kenny now do what he wants with this old windowless ‘apartment’—make a real office out of it instead of the corner stockroom he uses for one now, let him try to rent it out to someone he trusts with access to his entire business (his eldest daughter maybe, when she’s college-aged?)—and good luck to him on replacing his sole employee too. That’s his problem and not Jesse’s, though: who are Kenny and his family to Jesse at the end of the day? Nothing more than nobody.

Jesse will soon have to commute to work, about twenty minutes each way with traffic, but Jesse gets more thinking done in his truck than anywhere else, he finds it peaceful. His ex would do his thinking in the shower, Jesse does his in the driver’s seat. With the radio crooning at him, he can sort out what he’d like to do with his workday and then with his evening, or his weekend. He’s never felt so untethered before, and he likes it. It’s like a fun witness protection: sever all ties, go where no one knows you, be whoever you want to be from now on.

It only takes two trips with his truck to get what Jesse needs out of the old apartment. After his ex moved all the way out, sending his boss and some helpers to come and take away his many books, the place looked as empty as a cell, and it stayed that way. Jesse’s new place will be just as bare until he buys a couch (he hasn’t had a couch since he was in high school, living in someone else’s house), and he’s thinking about how to dedicate the rest of the space to a workshop. Why sweat in the garage when he has a dining area he’ll never dine in? The only issue will be dust and debris flying around. Maybe he’ll tape up some plastic sheeting, get that serial killer chic going on.

Jesse’s first trip moved the bed and the kitchen shit, now he has the rest of everything he owns packed and ready to go: the dresser and the bathroom supplies in the back, all his own peculiar odds and ends—his knives, tools, and fishing paraphernalia—sitting in the passenger side of his truck cab. He leaves the keys to this old place on his ex-boss’s desk and walks out. He plans to be unpacked in time to watch the sun set tonight.

Jesse finds he likes the ugly beaches where the families never go, and wants to know more about this strange state he’s ended up in, its nooks and nobs. Jesse’s not from Florida, so hurricanes, gators, and the prehistoric protoplasm that washes up out of the gulf still fascinates him; it’s really a hell of a place. Somehow, living in a windowless room, a mere staircase away from his job, he never thought to notice it all. Though of course, Jesse had his own caged creature to keep him busy back then, his boyfriend, but he’s been single for a while now. It turns out he’s not interesting enough on his own, he’s got to go out to be entertained.

Ugly beaches are full of ugly people, not physically ugly necessarily (although some of them have clearly overindulged in a life of squalling excess), but just ugly-hearted, mean and stupid, and though Jesse believes he doesn’t relish feeling superior to them, that is half the joy of people-watching when he walks along the sand. The other half of the entertainment is the sky.

Jesse arrives home to unpack in a hurry, changes into something that isn’t sweaty from the hauling, and tips his chin up briefly in the bathroom mirror, just checking to make sure he’s as good-looking as he was the last time he looked. He had been getting a little doughy living with Marley, because Marley cooked like a latch-key kid, only ate out of the freezer and pantry, and his habits filtered into Jesse’s habits. Since splitting up with him, Jesse has lapsed into eating like an upright savage: steaks still pink eaten right off the tip of his knife, vegetables that can soak up the meat juice, fruit so long as it’s handheld, with a core he can pitch into the dirt when he’s done. It’s making him lean again, too sharp to be pretty, but still too pretty to be scary. He’s managed to pick up guys on the beach once or twice. He believes that’s what the 80s called ‘cruising.’ Marley would have known the