Chapter 22 #2
“Many have tried. Few have lived to tell the tale.”
“Catnip. Catnip and fresh tuna. No cat has ever resisted those twin charms.”
“You don’t know Dragon.”
Kim cupped Dídac’s face in his hands.
“I’m beginning to know you,” he said, “and liking what I know. It’s amazing: we’re from such different places—Australia and Sp—Sorry, Catalonia—yet we have so much in common!”
“You have a cat called Dragon too?” Dídac quipped.
Kim laughed.
“I wish. I couldn’t. The last year has just been non-stop travel—five different cities, and an average of two months in each one.”
“But what’s your… What was your life like back in Melbourne? Did you leave… Is there…”
“Anyone?”
Dídac nodded, without looking at Kim, keeping his gaze centered on an orange and black carp that was sitting waggling its fins in the pool nearest him, under the shade of a clump of fern.
“I…” Kim sighed, staring at Dídac’s collarbone, wanting to run his fingertip along it, lick it…
but now wasn’t the time, not if they were having this conversation.
“There was…” He thought of Tony, the Port Philip barracuda.
Did he count as… whatever Dídac was asking?
“I was seeing someone… up to a year before I came overseas…We broke it off. He was… I was… I’m not the easiest…
Plus, I was really focused on making a success of what became The Swan, and I… .”
“Wow,” Dídac breathed, “you just took inarticulacy to a whole new level. And I thought I was tongue-tied.”
Kim laughed. Dídac had an amazing way of undercutting his pompousness.
He grounded him—as well as making him feel years younger, reminding him of the person he used to be a decade ago, before he started worrying about stage productions and opening nights and budgets and coaxing what he needed from his actors…
before he became so serious, when he could just relax and enjoy life more.
Be in the company of a gorgeous, charming, endlessly smiling, sweet, witty, young guy whose smell captivated him, whose endless confidence astounded him, whose bravery before life seemed to be a lesson specifically fashioned to teach him to relax, open up, and trust that life can be a good thing.
That things can go well. That life is not always a war campaign to be waged against the hostile forces of other living beings arrayed against you.
“So, yeah,” he laughed, “in my incredibly articulate, directorial perspective, that was a succinct summary of my past emotional history.”
“Revealing,” Dídac breathed, smiling as Kim threw his arm around him and kissed him.
“So,” Kim went on when they finally broke apart, “I think I’ve quite clearly not told you about the skeletons in my closet; what about yours?”
“My closet,”—and as if that reminded him where he was, Dídac looked around, but they were alone in the shade house—“is roomy, very roomy, but it’s still a closet.”
“Are you not out?” Kim asked, slightly shocked.
“Well, I’m not out, but I’m not exactly in, either.
I mean at drama school, there were a couple of guys…
nothing serious, just playing around. I mean I’ve always known I was gay, and I’m not trying to hide anything.
But you know, when I got the first movie part, I decided to be discreet…
To be honest, the level of attention they started aiming at me…
the press, fans, even just people on the street…
Suddenly I felt as if people were watching my every move.
And then, just by neither confirming nor denying, you find that you’re veering more to the side of denying…
I mean not denying, but just not confirming, letting people assume you’re straight, as they generally do. ”
“So, are you telling me you’re… almost a virgin?”
“No! I mean, well…”
And suddenly those nights of escapism loomed large in Dídac’s mind.
Almost a virgin he most definitely was not.
But how to say it… That seemed like such a horribly sleazy part of his past that in that instant he swore he would never revisit, so it wasn’t worth telling Kim about because it was such a minor part of who he was, and it was over. Done.
“No, what I mean,” he stammered, “is that those guys, you know… I mean, we touched all the bases, so I wouldn’t say I was anywhere near a virgin.”
The guilty way he refused to meet Kim’s eyes broke his heart.
“It’s OK,” Kim whispered. “We all have pasts. It’s what we do with the present that matters.”
Kim enclosed him in his arms, and was rewarded when Dídac rested his head on his shoulder, hugging him tightly.
The fingers of one of Kim’s hands were in his thick curling hair, while his other hand stroked down his back, before grabbing onto the perfect, firm globes of Dídac’s ass.
He was tempted to tear down the guy’s trousers and fuck him there in the shade house, but at that moment a young straight couple wandered in, so he contented himself merely with giving Dídac the strongest bear hug he had ever had in his life.