My Gift To You

Chapter Twenty: I Wanna Talk Tonight Until the Morning Light ‘Bout How You Saved My Life

The building was huge, the top floors disappearing in a veil of clouds. The men looking up at the business housing felt smaller than ants.

“Okay, so….” Joel’s voice fell flat, muffled just by the sheer intensity of the situation he was about to walk into. “We go in there and stare our fate right in the eyes.”

“Fuck. We can’t do this,” Benji stated nervously. It was the first time in his brother’s memory that Benji had ever let his guard down, let himself become vulnerably and publicly afraid.

Billy put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, trying to calm Benji’s nerves. “Of course we can. One step at a time, Benj, just one step at a time. All we’re doing right now is walking through those doors. You can do that, can’t you?”

Words failed the older man, he could only shrug.

“Yeah, you can. Hand out. Grasp the door handle. Pull. Walk inside,” Billy explained simply, softly like a mother pumping up her small child before he went up the big slide for the first time in his short life.

Nerves, anxiety, fear, all of those emotions blocked out the feeling that Benji would have felt had his mind been clear. He didn’t feel like an invalid as Billy led him to the glass doors, his other bandmates close behind. Oddly, a warm sense coursed through him: a mix of pride that he was actually walking toward those doors and something he couldn’t place his fingers on, something that he knew only Billy could help him feel.

He started to repeat the mantra, not caring that the people around the pack of boys were most likely looking at the heavy-set man like he had a cyclops eye.

Hand out, he raised his right arm.

Grasp the door handle, his hand wrapped around the cold metal bar. He pulled, Billy catching the door so it wouldn’t swing back and hit Benji in the head, and walked inside.

Like his high school, he was standing in-between two sets of doored walls. He only had to repeat the simple actions another time which he did without a hitch.

The foyer didn’t seem to have a stopping point, like one day the earth toned marbled walls and floors decided to eat the entire first floor. He most certainly was in the belly of the beast, waiting to be attacked by stomach acid and digested. Benji’s legs felt as though they were going to give out, he really couldn’t do this.

At a reception desk off to his far right a nice looking black woman – highly attractive, even the gayest man would admit that – sat reading a magazine. She didn’t look up until Joel walked to the desk and set his elbows on the high, rosewood piece of furniture and leaned against it. He said something to the woman, but Benji couldn’t hear because his ears were ringing. A wave of nausea washed over him.

When his brother came back to the room, he gave Benji a reassuring smile. “Tenth floor.”

Billy’s hand was still on Benji’s shoulder, he suddenly became aware of the body part again.

“To the elevators. That’s all we’re doing now, going over to those elevators.” He really was a great friend, this realization only made Benji feel even more worse for treating him the way he did.

Nodding, Benji and the rest of Good Charlotte walked across the football field of a foyer, their shoes echoing against the flooring. Though the space they were walking through was immense, they arrived on the other end of it rather quickly. Four elevators had their homes in the marble walls, two on either side of the troupe.

Paul pressed the down button on the elevator console nearest to him and waited for the metal doors to slide open, eventually they did and the men all packed inside the space and rode up to the tenth floor.

With Billy helping him, Benji managed not to run in the other direction all the way back to the lobby, to the world outside the fancy walls of the building. He was actually able to make it to where he needed to be, sit down in front of a desk when he was told after eight minutes that Mr. Morris could see them now.

The office was half the size of the lobby at least with the desk in one part of the room and a sitting area in another. Picture windows ran from floor to ceiling on the wall across from the main door, both giving an amazing view of the city and instilling a horribly case of vertigo in Benji. He tried not to focus on the windows, but it was kind of hard because Mr. Morris’s desk was right in front of them.

Apart from feeling sick when Benji looked at him, Mr. Morris was a plump little man in a crisp power suit. He had thinning blonde hair combed back from his face, red cheeks, black oval lensed glasses and a crushing handshake. His voice seemingly shook the walls of his office when he spoke.

“It’s good to see you boys,” he announced kindly. “How’s your visit to this fine city going so far?” A Beantown accent clung to his words as Mr. Morris spoke, refined so it wasn’t as colorful as some other Bostonian’s speaking patterns were – which was quite sad, really, Benji thought.

“It’s been…interesting,” Joel replied. He was sitting in the leather chair to Mr. Morris’s right, Aaron in the chair to his left. The other’s were sitting behind them, in the chairs taken from the sitting area.

Mr. Morris laughed warmly. “Not used to a big city such as this one?”

Joel shook his head, living up to the agreement in the waiting room that he’d do most of the talking. “We go into DC sometimes, but it’s still so tiny compared to here. We got lost three times before figuring out the whole street system. You see, we’re not too bright.”

Like he had hoped, Mr. Morris caught the joke. “We wouldn’t want that anyway, would we? I’d be out of the job and have youngins like you running the place. That’s a scary thought.”

Aaron smiled. “We’d turn the lobby into a skate park for sure.”

“Things like that, they give me ulcers,” Mr. Morris stated with a smirk. “But let’s get down to business, boys. I’ve had a listen to your tape and I really think you’ve got potential. With the right management I know Good Charlotte can become a powerhouse.”

He broke off into a speech, getting up from his seat and pacing about the room, waving his hands in the air. The band had a real flare, a tinge of bitter and harsh realism with a coat of uppity rhythms, a great beat he told them. Mr. Morris seemed to grow as he spoke, the words enveloping the young men following the businessman with rubber necks, eyes wide in childlike wonder.

Ten minutes or maybe more Good Charlotte sat in those chairs in awe, mouths watering with the palpable taste of their futures unfolding before their minds’ eyes. This was it and they knew it. Their relief and dreams became real when the thick contract was set on the table, turned upside down so the members of the band could read the papers. It was almost too good to be true, but it was.

-

The hotel was only a Holiday Inn and Suites, but it could have passed as heaven even if it had no roof and was infested with creepie-crawlies too horrible to name. It even had a pool.

While Paul, Joel and Aaron were continuing the times of their lives down on the first floor, hanging around the weight rooms and aforementioned pool, Benji and Billy were mulling around the large hotel room.

Pausing the rented movie that no one was even watching, Benji left the small living room with the fold out sofa-bed and went passed the short hall housing the bathroom and door to the neighboring hotel room, sauntered into the bedroom. He looked out of the window before turning back to the only other person in the room, still waiting for a reply to his last statement.

Benji had just told Billy that he had come clean to his family a good fifty eons ago.

Billy continued to choke the pillow in his grip, his hands beginning to ache. “Kind of funny, isn’t it?” He forced himself to laugh. “We both come out at the same time. What did your mother say?”

Benji snapped his gum, now pacing back and forth in front of the beds. “It was like my nightmares. I had told my dad that I was gay the day he left, right? Well, when they fought that night it was mainly about me among other things. He told my mother, she’s known all along, was waiting for me to tell her.” He scratched his head, still in total disbelief over the whole ordeal. “It was really emotional. Like this family seminar or somethin’…. What about your parents?”

The former laid down, straightening out his legs and placed the pillow over his face. He voice came out muffled, but it was still understandable.

“It was kind of the last thing I said to my mom before I slammed the front door behind me, but then she got all sappy and ran out after me when I was heading for the curb – you know, to wait for you guys to come and pick me up – and said ‘I still love you, remember that.’ Somehow I wasn’t expecting it to happen like that. I’m pretty sure she’s told my dad by now, I won’t know what he and Sarah think about this until I get back.”

Something got onto the bed, he was 99% sure that it was Benji, and a weight settled itself on Billy’s lower abdomen. The pillow was removed from his face and he soon saw Benji staring back at him, knees planted firmly on either side of Billy.

“Don’t ask me what I’m doing because I honestly don’t know,” Benji said meekly.

Words didn’t come out right, Billy squeaked.

Benji smiled gently, looking down only momentarily to fix the hem of his companion’s shirt before meeting his eyes once again. “I didn’t want to be your Student Guide nor anyone’s for that matter. Joel made me go because he said it was the right thing to do, we had this huge fight about it. I saw you when you first walked into the school. You put your head down a few seconds after you went through the door, but I still saw a glimpse of your face. I swear to God that time stopped. I just stood by the drinking fountains trying to memorize every last detail about you, reminding myself to breathe. To me you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and every time I see you you keep getting more beautiful. One of these days you’re going to blind me…. I love you, Billy. I’m so in love with you it hurts.”

He wanted to spill his heart, tell Benji everything he had ever wanted to tell him, spend hours reciting a romantic speech that would be perfect in a chick flick. All he could get out was a “yeah”, and it wasn’t very strong or loud either.

Either not noticing or not caring about his companion’s lack of language skills, Benji continued on, his hands absentmindedly fiddling with Billy’s shirt. “I was always pissed off because I couldn’t really deal with the fact that I felt this way about you. I thought that if I was cold enough you’d stop hanging around the guys, stop being friends with Joel, that way you’d be gone and I wouldn’t have to face the facts. Damn you and your stubbornness, man. You were right, though. I kissed you because I felt like I needed to or I’d die, I couldn’t have given a shit whether you really needed a test or not. I remember watching you and Linzi dance that night, it was killing me, I wanted to be the one in your arms like that.

“Even though I wanted it, needed it, I told myself that I didn’t want you in my life. I was planning on never coming out, to just act straight until the moment I died – get married to a woman I could’ve ever truly love and have kids, the whole package. I was never prepared for you to walk through that double foyer, but I don’t regret coming into school that day to show you around,” Benji explained. He was going to go on and bring light to everything he’d ever done since Billy had entered his life, but he thought that he would be talking to much. His voice was getting softer the longer he spoke anyway, he might not have lasted through a nine-hundred minute story-telling.

So he just sat there on top of Billy and stared down at him, wanting to climb down into those blue eyes of his and never come back out. He didn’t need to say it, it was obvious about the way Billy was looking back at him that he knew Benji was only complete with this younger man. Whole, a state that had eluded Benji most of his life and he was finally that again. He couldn’t ever loose that feeling again.

Billy raised his hand, cupped the side of Benji’s face. For the first time since he had known Billy, his hand was warm – radiating with a love unable to be spoken aloud.

If Benjamin Madden wasn’t the one feeling this way, he would have called the whole scene as corny as Hell, gagging and pleading for the two men to separate themselves from each other. But being in this corny scene made it all the more amazing.

His own hand covering his lover’s, Benji leaned down and brushed his lips against Billy’s, finally taking the time to savor every last thing about this moment.

“I promise you, Billy, I’m yours and yours alone.” The sentence was whispered, barely audible from even three feet away, but to the man the words were spoken to they were screamed from a mountain top. “I’m nothing without you. You have my heart, my soul. I love you.”


He was expecting to wake up at any moment and find himself in bed at his father’s house, having never signed that record deal, having never moved to Waldorf, his parents still separated and the divorce not yet final. He was waiting for the hook, for some guy to come running into the picture, laughing, pointing at him and telling him that everything he had gone through over the past year – not even a year – was a joke, that it wasn’t for real.

Billy stood outside the tattoo parlor and watched Joel, Aaron and Paul go into the building. The sun was behind him, light beams hitting the large “Pauly’s” sign hanging above the door, serving as a metaphorical beacon to guide lost sailors out of rough waters. He felt a hand squeeze his right shoulder then slide down his arm, hold his hand like it was the only thing between that person and blackness. Turning his head, he met Benji’s gaze.

“This is the first day of the rest of our lives,” Benji stated calmly. “We’ve all come so far. Are you ready?”

Billy nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The older man leaned over and kissed his lover softly on the lips. “Then let’s get going, my sweet baboo.”

And with that, walking hand-in-hand, they entered Pauly’s Tattoo Parlor.

LA FIN

Rather than spending another year trying to get this chapter exactly the way I want it to be, I’m leaving it like it is. The sequel will be better, that I can assure you. I hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it. I can’t apologize enough for the long waits in-between the chapter updating.