Ties That Bind

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life.

--"Bittersweet Symphony"

The Verve

***

Normally, I pride myself on not being haunted by voices out of the past. In the course of my career I've seen a lot, heard a lot, had to deal with a lot, but most of the time, after a little while, I was able to just let things go. Sometimes, though, the past creeps up behind you, and while it's slamming you down to the ground, you can't help but listen to what it has to say.

What about you, jeune chiot? I am sure you have had your share of les filles, yes?

Someone from Montreal; I can't remember who, anymore. Penney, maybe. Asking a question I wasn't prepared to face, not at the time, not in front of an audience. Not while I was still figuring a few things out.

I… I mean, I do not… I never…

Patrick. A Patrick very different from the one most people know now. Who else knew that Patrick, the one who was unsure and vulnerable? Young men and women from his past, as young as he was then? His soon-to-be wife Michele? Who else knew that young man besides me, who really had no business knowing at all?

It happens every day, Chris; it's how things work here, it's the way things are... some things you just can't change...

And Larry. Something he told me well after... well, after. Larry.

Jesus Christ.

I rub my face briskly, my callused hands scritching over stubble. But I can't rub out the thoughts and memories, no more than I can rub out the lines that, somewhere along the line, etched themselves onto my face when I wasn't paying attention.

I will clean this... I will get it back to you.

Patrick again. Just minutes after his last statement, only he was now a lot wiser and older in ways that mattered. That at least was my fault. And like so many mistakes I've made in my life, the reason why can only be summed up by saying that it sounded like a good idea at the time. Patrick learned a lot that night, but he still had a few things yet to figure out. One of them was that he might be able to wash my shirt, but he'd never be able to really get it to be clean. Because it's mine, and I'll never be clean. I think, though, that if I'd thought to have asked him when he was here, he'd have told me that now at least, he knows that very well.

Nothing really stays a secret for long in the League. There are so few, relatively speaking, who are called to play pro hockey, and even fewer who can make a living at it. Among those who make it, it's more than a game. It's a way of life and a way of thinking that no outsider can really understand. It has its own unspoken rules and its own code of conduct; one example is that what happens among us stays among us. There's the occasional "tell-all" interview, usually with young players who should know better, but even they don't really tell ALL. But whether by word of mouth or maybe some sort of group osmosis, we always seem to know what's going on with each other, and I learned over the years that Patrick's career was very exciting, both on and off the ice. I heard a few things that surprised me, and I also pride myself on not being easily surprised; I'd heard he took lovers that I would never... well, I wouldn't have thought he'd...

Yeah. When Brett was in Detroit, he'd litter the dressing room with his CDs, and inflict his taste in music upon us all. He loves Carly Simon, Brett does. It's not something you'd think of him at first, but once you've heard No Secrets about nine hundred times, you're left in little doubt. One of the songs he used to play on repeat had the chorus you're so vain, you probably think this song is about you. We used to sit and hum it to ourselves on the bench because the damn thing would get lodged in our heads. Used to drive Scotty batshit. During intermissions he'd end his talks with "and enough of that fucking song. Enough!" Cue Brett grinning like an idiot and the rest of us, with pained expressions, trying like hell to be silent. The song's in my head again now, because maybe I'm heading down that road here. Maybe it's not my fault. I was Patrick's first (man, at least), but everything that happened with him after that... but maybe if it had been in another way, at another time...

Clouds in my goddamn coffee. Fuck, I don't know anymore. All I know is that last thing I want to be doing now is sitting here ruminating over my past when I should be in bed with my arms wrapped around my future.

At least, what I think is my future. That right there is a whole other can of worms that I do not want to open right now. What I want right now is to go back to sleep. I don't want to be holding this damned shirt, feeling the worn cotton and hearing Patrick's voice in my head slowly be replaced by Larry's. That's something I thought I'd gotten past.

I used to hear Larry's voice a lot, back when I was first starting out. I'd remember his instructions, and then repeat them to myself. Gradually I began adding my own instructions, and over the years my own voice canceled out his entirely. I was pretty proud of that, too. And happy. Yeah, I know, sounds funny that I'd be happy not to hear my mentor's words anymore. I was proud that I'd grown as a player, and into the player Larry thought I could be; I was happy because when Larry's voice went away, a lot of unpleasant memories went with it. And until Patrick showed up at my door this morning, I thought I'd gotten rid of them for good.

I guess it was my first year playing when Larry took me under his wing. I was thrilled, I knew I'd never get a better teacher than him, and I couldn't wait to learn. I was like a kid on the first day of school; hell, I WAS a kid on the first day of school. The very first day, before I figured out that school ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially if the other kids are ruthless and the teacher can be a shit. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it; it was the opposite, actually. But Larry was not... is not, all he's cracked up to be. As a player, he's one of the best, but as something closer...

He didn't touch me until he knew two things: one, that I was mature enough to not cause problems; and two, that I liked guys. I wonder if the second requirement was really all that important to Larry, because over time, I got the impression that what was going on between the two of us wasn't as rare as I'd thought at first.

It's been a long time since I was in school, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I can't remember now if it was the Greeks or the Romans... I mean, all things considered. But in one of the cultures, the philosophers, see, they believed that men and women were meant to marry so that they could breed. But a man's true love could only be experienced with another man. Then these philosophers would take young boys as both student and lover, until the boys were old enough to go out and be philosophers on their own, and find their own young boys to screw. Sounds a lot like Child Molesters U, if you ask me, and doesn't that make me look oh so much better? Because isn't that exactly what I'm doing now?

Oh, I can tell myself that Jiri's not a child, that he wasn't a child when we started this thing between us. And I have told that to myself, over and over again. I still don't quite believe it, and I know exactly why, even though I've been avoiding the reason for a long time. I can't avoid it now; the memories are all over this shirt. Because before I had Patrick, Larry had me, and though I was legally old enough, I was in no way prepared to be embraced, taught, fucked, dumped, and finally told to find my own men to induct in the same way. Wash, rinse, repeat, but you never come clean.

It was good in the beginning, I won't deny that. There was some flirting mixed in with the teaching, real careful flirting. Sort of testing the waters, Larry was, and he found those waters very warm and very receptive. I mean, come on. I was young, I was finally living my dream, I had a future hall-of-fame-er teaching me the ropes, and fuck, he thought I was hot! And I thought I was hot, too, hot shit. I thought I had everything.

Larry wasn't my first, but damn. It was the first time I had a man take an interest in me who was much older and much more experienced. The things he showed me in those first few months were incredible. I thought he'd fallen in love with me- "After all, who wouldn't?" asked the arrogant young man I was. You know, as opposed to the arrogant old man I am now. But at the time, I thought I'd won the jackpot. I thought I was in love. That is, until this terrible little thing called reality intervened.

My first clue was how he always stopped me when I tried to go down on him. "Not now," he'd always say. "There will be time for that later." As with many things he told me, he was right. There was also time later to consider that when Larry said "Not now" what he meant was "not ever." Well, that's not true; what he really meant was, "not me." He said the same thing when I wanted to roll him over and fuck him. "Not now." Not now, not ever, not me.

I tried to argue the point, many times, but he always got his way in the end. Not just because he was older than me, or that he knew better than me, or that he'd earned his place and I was still scratching mine out. Usually, he won because he'd start licking my cock or fingering my ass. These, as you might understand, are very persuasive arguments. And I was still happy, but at the same time I wasn't. The feeling started to gnaw at me that maybe Larry kept putting me off because I wasn't good enough for him.

Toward the end, I started to think that maybe it was that he didn't care about me enough. I think that's the answer, at least part of it. He cared about me, just not the way I thought he did.

Before training camp of my second year on the Habs roster, I took a version of Patrick's virginity. To this day I'm not sure exactly how it came about. Sometimes I suspect Patrick planned it from the beginning, although it didn't seem rehearsed at the time. Aw, hell, maybe I'm reading too much into it. We were young, we were horny, should there be any more to the story than that? At the time, I sure as hell wasn't ready to let my teammates know what was going on, but I felt I had to say something to Larry. I felt that after all he'd done for me (and to me), I owed him the truth at least.

I told him when we got back into the city. He was... surprised. We'd never spoken about seeing other people; he'd never brought it up and I'd had no reason to want anyone else. I was prepared for him to be angry with me for cheating. I was not prepared for him to be pleased.

"Very good," he'd said. I can't remember what I said back, but I remember being shocked. He'd used the same words and the same tone that he used when I covered my man or poke-checked the puck away during practice. I do remember the rest of Larry's words, though. I remember them very well.

"You're learning fast," he told me, nodding approvingly and smiling- I couldn't believe he was actually smiling! "I didn't think you'd be at that stage yet, but I guess you proved me wrong."

I think the reason I can't remember what I said was that at the time, I had no idea what TO say. I mean... I had already gone from considering Larry and I in love to thinking that he was using me. And now, from what he said about what I'd done with Patrick... what was he trying to do to me, teach me how to fuck?

I eventually came to the conclusion that that was exactly what he was doing. He was training me to do what he'd done to me; teach, mentor, impart knowledge. Develop a close, loving relationship with your student, one that dominates, and teach him to carry on the grand tradition: to fuck not only with the body of my student, but to fuck with his mind and his way of thinking, as well.

I was... it's hard to describe now how I felt. It'd be easy to just say that I felt betrayed, but it was more than that. I felt... tricked. I guess tricked is the best word for it. I felt that Larry had plotted it from the start, and now he was laughing at me. And even worse, when I finally confronted Larry with my conclusion, he told me I was right.

"It happens every day, Chris," he told me. I was stunned at how calm he was about the whole thing. "Don't think I don't care about you Chris, because I do."

And the hell of it was that he did care about me. Even through my rage, even with my youth, I knew how horrible that was.

"It's how things work here, it's the way things are... I know you might feel like I tricked you-"

He was dead on about that. Larry was no slouch, you know. But then, of course, he'd gone through the same thing himself when he was young.

"I was just like you, once. My teacher took care of my education just like I took care of yours. And some day, you'll take a young man under your care in the same way. Some things you just can't change, Chris."

I swore then that I wouldn't. It was soon afterwards that Larry... well, he decided my training was complete, and we went our separate ways. And I went on with my life and lived it and this game to the limit, and along the way I did many things that I regret. Patrick wasn't the last man I felt guilty about. But still, I swore that I wouldn't be what Larry told me I would.

And then one day, years later, I saw Jiri Fischer for the first time.

Like I said, Larry was right about most things.

I forgot to mention something earlier, when I was talking about the ancient Greek (was it Greek? I think that it was Greek) philosopher/pedophiles. It was rare that the old guys let their young lovers play any sort of dominant role. It was always the old guys who were topping, or getting jerked off, or getting blown. All part of the learning process, I suppose, and considering what happened with me, I can say that I know exactly how those young boys must have felt.

But there is an exception to every rule, and somewhere along the line, there must have been at least a few old philosophers who actually fell in love with a young student. Ones who didn't just use the young men as convenient holes and who really cared about the well-being of their protégés. Ones who were willing to blow as well as be blown, I guess you could say.

It wasn't like that with Larry and me. But what about me and Jiri?

I don't know. Fuck me, after all my years and everything I've seen, heard, and done, I just don't know.

I do know, however, that the young man in question has been listening in the dining room almost since Patty and I sat down. Huh, I may be old, but I'm not deaf. And even if I was, I could probably still hear him snoring. Poor kid must have fallen asleep, waiting on yours truly to finish sifting through his memories. I hope that noise he's making doesn't shatter the crystal.

I get up, wincing at the pain in my back. I haven't been sitting here THAT long, have I? Surely no more than an hour. Jesus, I should schedule another appointment with the masseuse, I really am getting old. I let the shirt in my hands fall to the table and I leave it there; I'll deal with it later. I step softly into the dining room, and I can't help but smile at the sight of Jiri's big body curled up against the wall and the highboy. I touch him lightly on the top of his messy curls.

"Hey," I say, my voice just above a whisper. "Jiri. Wake up."

He comes awake with a start, blinking around him. As he grows accustomed to his surroundings (gotta be weird, waking up in a dark dining room), he looks up at me. My smile gets wider as his blue eyes focus, his face confused. And despite my own concerns, I feel like I really do love him. Because this overwhelming emotion that I'm feeling now can only be real love, right?

But that nasty little tremor of doubt (and guilt, too; guilt at what I am) won't go completely away, and despite myself, I can feel my smile fade. Fuck me.

Suddenly, Jiri's eyes change, so quickly that I can't quite make out when they did. I've seen that look on his face before, but it's never been directed at me. As he pulls himself to his feet much faster than I could have, all I have time for is one confused thought: oh shit!

And then his fist hits my jaw and I hit the floor.

TBC

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