Chapter Eleven The Doom Generation, dir. by Gregg Araki #2
“Is falling in love really as scary as it sounds, Eli?” Peter dares to ask.
“It’s terrifying,” Eli admits. Because it’s the truth. And it might be one of the few times he gets to be truly and totally
unbiased with Peter. Because he really does believe that. “But that’s what makes it special, what makes it truly one of the
greatest feelings in the world.”
Peter dares to smile, if even just for a moment.
“I hope I get to experience it one day,” he says.
And Eli has to look away. “Yeah... I hope you do too.”
***
Eli closes the apartment door behind him, peeking out the window when he walks through the empty living room. Peter’s still
out there in his car, having offered Eli a ride home. The angle is just right for the two men to be able to see each other if Peter leans over into the passenger seat. Eli waves at him, and Peter
waves back before he shifts into drive, pulling slowly down the street.
Despite how late it is, and how he feels exhaustion deep in his bones, Eli knows that he’ll never get to sleep, not with the
unease that rattles around in his brain, so he sheds his outfit, only then realizing that he still has Peter’s hoodie.
He doesn’t mind, though. He doesn’t even bother putting on sweatpants, just undresses down to his underwear and puts the hoodie
back on, wanting Peter around him as he walks through the silent apartment half naked, catching the scent of Peter every so
often.
Eli busies himself, pulling up the John Carpenter classic The Thing for the Halloween ambience before he grabs his laptop and goes to Google Docs.
There, right at the top, are both articles about Peter, half completed.
He has an entire night of details to add.
The laundromat, Peter’s dreams of being a novelist, that shared fear of failure and your life’s work amounting to nothing.
He writes about Peter’s empty apartment, the lack of interior decoration, how Peter felt trapped in a career he never wanted because he thought pursuing his dreams was too risky.
He writes about expectations in the queer community and how people like Peter are rarely afforded grace for things entirely out of their control.
Then, knowing just what Michael will say... he deletes those last paragraphs.
He sits there on the couch, his laptop precariously perched on the arm, staring at his blinking cursor, at the little M icon in the corner that shows it’s been shared with Michael.
He could delete this entire article.
He could. It’d be simple to wipe the entire project off his Google Drive, marching into the Vent offices and showing Michael what he’s actually been working on. He goes back to his article on Peter.
The real article.
He reads through it again, and again, and again. And then the thoughts begin to appear, and he starts to question every single
decision, every word. He wonders if the throughline is strong enough, if he’s shifted the focus just enough away from Peter to make this an article that hundreds of people can relate to. And the more he reads it, the more he
despises everything he’s ever written.
Without meaning to, he puts his sleeve-covered hand to his mouth, chewing on his thumbnail softly. He breathes in the fresh
scent of Peter’s hoodie, and something coils in Eli’s stomach. There’s that heady aroma, that warm tonic scent, the earthiness.
It reminds Eli so much of the approaching fall, the bright orange-and-red leaves of the trees straight out of a Hallmark movie
crunching under his feet.
He closes the article, his eyes catching the list of things he’s written, the pieces that he’s poured his heart into only for Michael to reject them outright under the excuse of “not meeting the brand.” And any chance of selling them elsewhere was gone with the noncompete clause he signed upon accepting the job at Vent .
Hours upon hours, days, weeks, months of researching, writing, editing, all totally and completely useless.
He scrolls further, his fingers moving quickly as the tiles come across the screen the deeper he goes.
Unhoused Numbers on the Rise, Many of Them Queer Youths
Tax Increases Doing Nothing to Help City
Shelters Are Meant to Protect the Unhoused, So Why Do Most People Feel Unsafe Staying in One?
California Governor Signs Trans Protection Bill Amidst Country-wide Attacks on Trans Youth
Five years given to Vent , given to Michael, all under the promise that someday, he’d achieve his dreams. He’d get that chance he wanted, finally be
able to prove to himself and to everyone around him that he accomplished something.
But how can he tell Peter to follow his dreams when he can’t do the same for himself? It’s so easy to tell Peter to go for
it, to take that leap. Submit the book to agents, let them sell it, give the book the chance to find the readers that so desperately
need it.
Why can’t he do that for himself? Why can’t he leave Vent ?
Why can’t he take that leap, leave behind this place and this team that he knows is holding him back?
If he left Vent , of course things would be rough for a while; he’d have to budget hardcore, make sure he had enough savings set aside, find
a part-time job to work while he focused on sending out his articles and essays.
So why can’t he do it? Why can’t he leave this bubble? Why can’t he follow the very advice that he gave to Peter?
Because he’s afraid.
Because he’s a hypocrite.
He considers the article for a moment, staring at it until the blue light starts to sting his eyes and he finally blinks.
He exits the article, going to Google and typing in “what to do with my life?”
In an instant, he’s faced with article upon article about “Finding the key to life!” How to find your passion, your friends,
your perfect job. How to align your chakras, how your life is already decided depending on your zodiac sign or the time you
were born. There are life-improvement classes where someone will take your money just to give you advice you could get for
free, and thousands upon thousands of self-help and lifestyle books.
Eli just sighs, closing the laptop. He slips it between the couch cushions before he turns the movie off just at the scene
where Charles Hallahan’s chest opens up and rips off Richard Dysart’s arms, walking into the bathroom and leaving his glasses
on the back of the toilet so he can wash his face.
Just be happy.
That was what his father used to tell him when Eli was younger. He’d meant it not in a “just get over it” sense, but more
that Eli should pursue the things that made him the happiest.
So long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters in this life.
It was a familiar mantra, one that Eli kept close to his heart. Because those were the last words that his dad had said to
Eli, when he’d dared to come out to his father just hours before he finally passed away.
He couldn’t live with himself, knowing that his father would die believing that Eli was someone he really wasn’t. Of course
both of his parents saw the writing on the wall for years.
He’d asked his mother to leave the room, just so he could tell him the truth.
Eli’s father had smiled at him. A smile that Eli never wanted to recall ever again, not with the breathing tubes in his nose,
not with the sickly pale yellow his once-golden skin had turned. But it stuck in his memory like the tumors that slowly sucked
the life out of his father, cursing him with an image that he felt desperate to forget.
“My boy...” his father had said. “Do you have a name for me?”
“Eli,” he said slowly. “Because of Elijah Wood.”
It was embarrassing, but shame wasn’t an emotion Eli was capable of at the moment. The Fellowship of the Ring was the first movie Eli’s father had taken him to see in theaters, way back when he was far too young to understand even a
fraction of what was happening. Elijah never felt right, but Eli... He’d loved that name for years before he’d chosen it.
His father looked at him. “I love it, my boy, my Eli...”
Eli had tried his best not to cry, but that was the moment that he broke, when he fell to the bed with his father, resting
his head on the very same pillow.
“Promise me one thing, Eli?”
“Of course.”
“Never settle for a life that you don’t deserve, because a boy like you deserves everything he’s ever wanted.”
“I don’t know if that’s true, Dad.” Eli had tried his best to wipe his tears away.
“It doesn’t matter what you know. This is what I know.” His father pointed to himself. “And I know that you’re a brave boy. And you deserve to be happy.”
“Dad...”
“Do that for me, Eli...” His father’s voice was rough, scratchy. “Just live your life in a way that makes you happy. Please.”
“I will, Dad.”
If only he could see Eli now.
He’d be so disappointed in me. How had he lived his life happily? How had he made his dad proud? He’s basically lived paycheck to paycheck, worked a job
he hates, held on to the heart of a man who’d crushed his. All in exchange for helping another man find the person he’s meant
to be with.
In what world had Eli respected his father’s dying wish?
He’s not happy, that much he can admit to himself. He’s not proud of the work that he does, he’s not proud of how he lost
himself in his relationship with Keith, he’s not proud of how he’s spent weeks misleading Peter. Even Michael, whom he’s been
lying to under the hope that he’ll be given even a crumb of a chance to make something of himself. He can’t even pretend to
be brave enough to share the real article with Michael.
Eli keeps the hoodie on as he crawls into bed, that ache stirring in his stomach again. Eli pulls his thighs closer toward
himself, his fingers slipping so easily past the waistline of his underwear.
He’s not proud of how easy it is to imagine Peter on top of him, whispering sweet nothings into his ear as he works himself
inside of Eli. He’s not proud of how he imagines that it’s Peter’s fingers instead that find his clit, rubbing softly at first,
his chest rising and falling slowly. He’s not proud of the way he wants to taste Peter, to pull his hair tight, to run his
hands along that strong back, his fingernails leaving crescent shapes on Peter’s soft skin.
If nothing survives what they have together, Eli could only hope that the marks would remain, as a reminder of just how grateful
he is. To have had the privilege to live alongside someone as honest and as kind as Peter is a luxury that few are afforded.
And as Eli’s back arches off the bed, his hand wet with release, his nose buried in Peter’s hoodie, breathing in the smell that he prays is etched into his memory, he mutters a name that does not belong to him.
One name. The name of the man who took his heart without permission.
“Peter...”
The euphoria of his climax washes over him before dissipating in an instant, the shame settling in as he realizes just what
he’s done. Eli stands and washes himself off in the bathroom before he hides underneath the covers once again, unable to let
go of Peter’s hoodie even in the spell of embarrassment that he feels dragging him down.
It’s that scent that lulls him into an uneasy sleep.
One where he dreams too much about a sweetly shy Korean man who deserves more than Eli could ever give him.