Justin,

Well, I woke up today and other than my bed, the loft is empty. Justin, you left early, deciding to work a shift at the diner because Deb needed someone to cover. I was left all alone with my thoughts. I was surprised that I didn’t feel remorse or regret selling everything and losing everything to stop Stockwell. It was worth every penny. I knew I could sell anything but how the community got behind me without even knowing I was behind the ads was gratifying. I have never seen such an apathetic group suddenly, instantaneously acquire big ones. Did you ever think that they would grow balls to vote? So many. It was amazing the power that ad evoked. Even I was flabbergasted. I took a deep breath when they had announced he lost. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. I should have been committed. I had put everything on the line to gamble on politics of all things. It had to be done.

Well, since you are at work maybe I should get to work on the loft. I see so much dust in corners that were not available before. Is it me? I can’t be this much of a neat freak but I plan on cleaning from top to bottom every inch of this place. I know. I know. I sound like Emmett. Whenever he is troubled, he cleans. Well, there always was so much stuff here that I couldn’t keep up with it all. I already did the windows and the floors. Well, back to cleaning and to thinking. I will write more later.

Believe it or not, I am writing this letter in installments as thoughts come to me and each time I finish a task. Turning on the CD player which I still have, I started listening to some of my favorite singers while dusting. I was actually humming. I can’t believe what I am doing and how happy I feel. I can’t believe how calm I feel. I bet reality will set in soon. This euphoric feeling can’t last. Suddenly, I found myself crying, I was dancing around, the broom as my partner, pretending it was you, and tears started streaming. I had been wondering what would happen now. What would I do now? No one wants someone who undermined his client. Yet, there were reasons. Will I, Brian Kinney, have to go and declare bankruptcy? Will I need to sell the loft to survive? Shit! Must be the song that came on or is it that I am crashing from the high that the other night caused. The sudden relief and the reality engulfed me. I need you. I need you now. Collapsing to the floor, my body feels like lead, the broom flies from my hand knocking the bookcase and some books go flying. Thank God, the bookcase is part of the wall or else it would have fallen on me. One book lands by my feet opening, its pages fluttering open and a page or is it a paper falls out. It doesn’t register. I just don’t give a damn. I sob, but for some reason it isn’t what I expect. It feels more like a cleansing and not just a self-pity party. I realize I don’t know what I will do yet, but somehow it will work out. I will survive because I have Justin. He is here with me. He came back to me and on his own volition. I didn’t know how much longer I cried but it was a while. It seemed like hours. I cried letting out all the pent up emotions I haven’t acknowledged in forever. I cried out the hurts from long ago. I cried out the hurts from childhood to the present. I cried out the hurts from you. I still felt some residual until you moved back in. I cried because of all the wrongs done me with our family. God, their callousness is worse than mine because they figure they can’t hurt me, yet it is like thorns on a rosebush but sharper and more damaging. I never said I was anything but heartless, yet I never really was heartless just honest. It was all an act, an act that you only could see through and then you stopped. You know, Sunshine, that hurt the deepest because I let you see my underbelly. I laid myself bare. Yes, bare in so many ways, ways that Mikey could never understand and would never know. I gave you all I could then and then I thought I could. I gave you me. I let you top me. Do you really know what that cost me? I felt completely vulnerable, completely out of control, completely in love. Yes, love. I wish you were here hearing me talk to the four walls, and crying to the heavens and beyond, to the whole universe, I shed my tears. Then you could hold me and calm me down. I know I needed this cry. Another way to start afresh, but I would have liked to have shared this moment with you. Yes, this Brian Kinney wants you to see me vulnerable. I don’t know how long it will last but right now, I wish you would walk right in and take me in your arms. I need you, baby. Can you feel me, my anguish? Can you see how fragile I feel without my feelings hidden like they have been all these years? It is funny but I am more scared of falling back into old habits, my old demeanor, and my old fears. I need you to keep me looking forward. Well, the tears are stopping and books are all over the floor. I better pick them up before you get home. Well, back to work again.

Picking up the books that fell, I realize it is not part of the book but a paper with my name on it that I snap up, about the paper I wonder whether to put it back in the book without reading or should I continue reading it. I am a bad boy because I read it. ‘Others may think it is because of the loss of the back rooms but you are so complex and I know that you would never have done this just for a piece of ass Hell, you could always get that. Besides, you have mine, now don’t you?’ “Yes, my boy, you are right. It isn’t about the back rooms or your ass or a piece of ass. I do own your ass don’t I? It’s mine, only mine and I love that fact. You never allow anyone else to eat that ass or live in that ass. It is mine, ALL MINE!!! AND DON’T YOU EVER FORGET IT! Hmmm! I remember the first time, such a treat. I never look at people as young as you. You were so beautiful and scared and seductive at that lamppost. I had so many feelings going through me when I caught sight of you. I couldn’t believe the beauty of you and knew you would be beautiful underneath and large. I wasn’t wrong. G-d your cock is perfect and you know I have seen quite a few. To feel your velvet blond bush tickling my nostrils is such a delicious delectable delight but your ass is divine. Its round mounds, call to me, their taste a passion of mine, but to penetrate your sweet ass pucker is like having a heaven full of ambrosia given to me. To lick around and hear your moans and then push in with my tongue, your sighs, sounds that stir and send me into delicate thrustings that get more frenetic as our needs multiply exponentially. I never want to leave that place except to let my cock be encased in it. G-d, I love that ass. I can never get enough. I can worship it twenty four hours a day and not get enough.

Let’s see what else you have written here. ‘I can’t believe you took what I said about sacrifice to heart. I meant it, but I had little to lose. My school was all that was in jeopardy.’

Hmmm. That is a good question, Sunshine. I took it to heart because it is one of the lessons you have taught me so well. That I will need to give everything, sacrifice everything if I believe in something. Well, I believed that Stockwell should never be mayor. He was a homophobic prick who actually wanted to be an honest politician, an oxymoron if I ever heard one but knew how to hide his dealings. Well, if he wanted to play the honest politician. I will give him Brian Kinney honesty. Let it all hang out, Mr. Stockwell. Let the truth be told. You have rules for different cultures within your society and we, the gays will not stand for it. Not now! Not ever.! At least, this gay wants his culture back even if you don’t like it and even if I decide never again to use the back rooms, it is part of gay culture. It is not for all gays just like straight sex clubs are not for all straights but it is necessary for some. But the backrooms are not what I did it for as you know. It was because he is zeroing in on Gays, like the Jews of the past. Your first poster showed me that. I had never equated what he was doing with past events. That knowledge sobered me up, made me realize what we were really dealing with. You opened up my eyes to inalienable truths. Closing down everything that defines us, everything that we feel free to be in, and it is wrong. Gays fear their fate, afraid to kiss in the streets, hold hands, show that they are queer. Becoming ashamed of who they are. We don’t need anymore shame. He had to be expunged from power. We have enough thrown at us from society. We need our little area of safety, of freedom, of happiness. He won’t last forever as police chief either. He can’t keep attacking us now that it has been shown he doesn’t treat us the same as other citizens. It is a scandal he isn’t going to walk away from.

‘And then you gave up your last bit of materialism, your ‘vette without a thought. You are fuckin’ awesome.’ Awesome, yeah, I am that, aren’t I? But not because I gave everything up. You know what. It isn’t the ‘vette that I miss, it is the naked guy. Could you draw me a new one, maybe of you, instead. As to materialism, those are only things. I only wanted the best, but they aren’t important they never were. They were only substitutes for the real thing. You know what the real thing is, don’t you. Or is it the real one, you. I was just waiting for this to happen to me and I am glad, my eyes were open when it did. I wanted it more than anything and feared it more than anything. I made rules just so that I didn’t have to deal with the pain of finding out I didn’t deserve it. Even now, I fear you will leave me. Someday, you will tire of me. Maybe, not now, maybe when I start to wrinkle and get gray, I am sure you will leave me somewhere along the line, but I am ready to just enjoy the ride and not worry about it till it happens. I guess you finally showed me that I do deserve it. You came back after all. You still love me. I can’t believe it really happened and how devious you were about it. Getting a job at Vanguard was worthy of the master. You are starting to surpass the master. That is good, I think, but it scares me too. Was I that good of a teacher? Or are you more like me than I realized.

‘You are the most moral among us. Maybe, not the normal idea of morality, but it is the most truthful.’ I don’t know what you think of me now. Moral! ME! Not me. I am not moral. I sin constantly, but you don’t mean that do you. You are talking more about beliefs. I am not sure if I would tag myself moral. I am not even sure if I am not hypocritical. I am two people after all. I try not to be but I make judgements like any other person. I just don’t make them be my way of living. If I judge another, I am usually judging myself. Since I live outside of societies rules, I do have my own set of rules. I am true to them. Is that what you mean Sunshine? That I am truthful , I am true to myself. I am not, not really. I have hidden my true self for others to see the emotionless Kinney, the other Kinney. Is that true to myself? I wonder. I sometimes hide the true self from me as well. I guess I forget to clock in and say hello to that hidden self, forgetting who I am. Now, you helped me let that hidden person out. It is scary. Will people like the new me? Will I be comfortable since I have shed my thick watermelon or is it more like a coconut skin? Will they accept me this way, preferring the one they were used to? Will they think I have lost it and want me to commit myself? It is such a drastic change, after all. When I did this, I didn’t realize I would feel this way, FREE. It was a pleasant wonderfully surprising epiphany. I figured I would feel loss and a fear of open spaces because I was laid bare. I got $25,000 for that naked picture alone. I had only spent $2,000. Imagine what another 2 yrs would have brought. That was enough for 5 ads shown.

‘You always said you wouldn’t be caught dead as a part of it, yet you did this, all this. Not just a small feat either. It cost you dearly.’ It didn’t cost me dearly. Money is just money and I will get money again, because I believe in myself. I think. No, I know. I will find my way, yet again. I pulled myself up from the depths of despair once, when I left home. I can do it again. Yeah, I always said I was never gonna be a part of this community but think about it. I am an intrinsic part of it and always have been. I was their king, king stud of Liberty Avenue, out there in my full splendor and everyone knew who I was. I came to the diner, daily, also a tradition and a foundation of the community. If you ever needed anything, run to Deb. Deb the faghag Imperial Mother. I put down a lot of the community because a lot of it was run by fags who hated themselves and us but they never found the way for them to feel good or better about themselves except to put judgment upon the community as a form of reaching out to the community. The two at the GLC is a great example of this. I don’t befriend queers that are that self-loathing and hypocritical and why should I frequent their domains. Why would I want to go somewhere I really am not wanted. Did I go and get my award? My priorities were screwed on right thanks to you. I made amends with Mikey. You keep sending me back to him even though he still wants me and is jealous of you. You know it too. Not much gets pass you, does it Sunshine. You keep the three of us together because my relations with Mikey you know are important to me. You want me happy, one of the few people that do. I hope one day that Mikey comes to understand but I doubt it. I know you tolerate him and wonder about him. No, scratch that, you know I am loyal to him because of our past and the fact that he is like a brother, a slow brother at that. He is an idiot servant when it comes to comics but I think he really doesn’t have all the marbles we do. If he does, they are definitely twisted or strangled or something. That thought makes me laugh. Just picture it. Little worms strangling his brains. Such a perfect picture, don’t you think. Okay. Okay. I’ll stop. Yeah, I am loyal but I have a sense of humor. Need it to deal with Mikey. Need it to deal with things at work too. They may be scared of me but I do have a sense of humor within my office and Cynthia knows it well. Sometimes, I want to crack up laughing but make sure my mask is intact and I stop the fun outside my office and go inside to have a good laugh. Did you know that my office has extra soundproofing behind the walls? It is so they can’t hear the laughter I can emit. I don’t want them to think I am human. Maybe, I don’t need that anymore either. What do you think, baby? Maybe, just maybe, I can finally let my laughter shine. It would be nice if I can laugh when I want to and not worry about what others think. Only you have had the privilege of that laughter. Don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. I probably, won’t change all that completely. I like my smirk. Besides, others expect it, like my glare. I don’t want to change everything. It would be too much for everyone, including me. Somehow, no matter how I act, you will always love me. Won’t you, Sunshine? The people were happy weren’t they? I am glad I wasn’t high last night so what I was feeling was real and what I am feeling now is real. It is one of my favorite memories or will be, I think. One of the top ten. Yeah, last night was life changing. Ready for a partnership, baby? Am I? I think I am. We already are. We have always been connected, just separated for a bit. That’s all! A necessary thing. Now we will appreciate each other all the more. You belong by my side.

‘What a wild party you throw, Brian Kinney.’ Yes, I do and it cost a fortune didn’t it Sunshine, a fortune in smiles. Too bad, I can’t take that to the bank. But I am a realist, the smiles won’t last. They will forget that they almost lost it all. They will never know that the King of Liberty Avenue took it upon himself to show the beaurocratic asshole, Stockwell, who really ran this place. US! We all had a say. It’s called the inalienable right to vote. We had a good time, didn’t we, Sunshine. A very good time. Tell me you had just as good a time as I did. Knowing you, probably more. You are used to letting yourself loose, experiencing it all. Dancing in the moonlight was special. I know we did it at pride but this had a different feel to it, didn’t it?

‘Brian Kinney, you haven’t lost it all. You still have me and this time we will build together. No job, no prospects, no money coming in, debt, but at least we have the loft. Oh, and the bed.’ I know I haven’t. I have you, sonnyboy. Oh, and I don’t know what I would do without you. You are great. You are my life and my sunshine. You light up the loft on the most miserable of days. When you are happy, the sun and the moon dance upon the horizon. You make me feel like all is not inane; all is pleasant even at my worst days at the office. You are my hero, my knight in shining armor. It makes me so happy to know you are proud of me. Now, I see a future. Before you, I never did. I expected to die young. Now I don’t want to die anytime soon. I want to live my life out with you. Glad I could oblige, yet again, to be your hero. Just ask! I am always here.

B

Shit! The elevator. Better get this put away before he opens the door. Hope it is in the right place. Don’t want to get caught. I can’t wait to hold him in my arms. G-d, I love him.

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