Chapter 9: Friday Night Surprises

Friday Night Surprises

My parents woke me up the first time. Well, I heard them come in, and the dogs started barking, and it was impossible to stay asleep with Dumb and Dumber jumping around the house barking like hell; their excited sounds could permeate an eight foot thick concrete cell, I swear. That was around ten. And then I went back to sleep. And right in the middle of a good dream, something better happened. My phone rang, and I picked it up to the sound of Roger’s voice.

“Hey babe, did I wake you up?” He asked me as I groggily mumbled something incoherent.

I growled into the phone and mumbled something about a dream I was having, then looked at the phone in wonder as I slowly realized I wasn’t dreaming anymore.

“You can go back to sleep.” He said once he realized I was already half asleep.

“No no no no no no no!” I mumbled, opening my eyes and forcing myself to sit up. “Time?”

“It’s a little bit after one. You sure you don’t want to go back to sleep? Your dreams sound better than talking to this old fart.”

“No no no no no!” I growled again. “I’m up, I’m up. Hi. How was work?”

“Ah, it was fun.” He started, and I interrupted him.

“Can I go get a drink and go to the bathroom? I have to, really bad.”

“If you take the phone with you.” He challenged me. I laughed.

“When people in hell get ice water. My parents are asleep, silly. I’ll wake them up.”

“Damn. You piss that loud?” He asked me.

“No. You’ll make me laugh.” I protested. “Just give me a minute, alright? And then I’ll be awake.”

I got up and went to the bathroom. I’ll spare you the details, but allow you in on a little known fact. Within the first five or ten minutes of me waking up, I can’t guarantee I’ll remember what I said. So most of the conversation I wrote above is most likely imagined on my part. After I get a drink, my memory generally starts because I run into objects on the way to and from the bathroom. I’m clumsy.

“Okay, I’m back.” I found my way back to the phone. “So tell me. Anything interesting happen? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. There were no hospital visits by anyone tonight. It was calm. I had a drunk old lady I had to remove because she was hitting on all of the young men in the bar, sidling up to them and offering them blow jobs.”

“Nice.”

“How was the rest of your night? Your little breakdown?”

“Bite me. When we got off the phone, I just went to sleep for an hour, then mom and dad woke me up around ten. I went back to sleep, and was in the middle of a very good dream when you called.”

“I offered to let you go back to sleep.” He argued. “Its not my fault you didn’t take me up on the offer.”

“I know, I know. I like talking to you better than talking to you in my dreams. You’re more fun when I don’t control your responses.” I think I was dreaming of him that night. I wasn’t really sure.

“You dream about me? Wow, I’m honored.” He said. “I dream about you almost every night. Mostly that your parents are going to kill me because I’m talking to their daughter, but sometimes it’s a good dream.”

“You have bad dreams about my parents?”

“Yup. I dream about them finding out, and then I dream of your father beating me to death with various household objects.”

“I see. Have you gone to a counselor about this?”

“Bite me. They’re just dreams. Its because I’m worried, I don’t want to lose you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I argued, smiling to myself. Even if he wasn’t mine, he was still adorable.

“You promise?”

“Yup.”

“I can never tell with you…” He started, then paused. “Before I go on, I want you to be completely silent and not argue with me until I’ve said what I need to say. I would have done it online, but we’re not there. Okay?”

“Okay…I’m confused.”

“That’s alright. I can never tell with you.” He began slowly. “You say you love me, and I try not to respond back in case you think I’m some sort of pedophile freak. I mean, you do tease me an awful lot about being old. But the truth is, since even before I broke up with Tina, you were the light of my life. I can’t remember a time without you, and I don’t really want to. You’re beautiful, intelligent, nice, and you seem to enjoy putting up with my odd ball ways. The mere thought of anyone kissing you or touching you makes my heart burn with envy. I…am I alone in my feelings? I guess that’s what I wanted to discuss tonight. You say you love me, but do you mean it as a friend, or more?”

Damn. It was like he knew what I wanted all along. He answered my prayers that night, to be sure.

“When I say I love you,” What was I getting myself into, here? I wondered as I continued, taking a deep breath; “I mean I love you. All of you. Every stupid little thing you do, and every silly little thing you say. From the times that we’re serious to the times that we’re joking around. I’ve been writing in my journal about the fact that I want you for months now, since the winter at least. I just always figured you thought I was too young. I mean, its not like we can date, right? I’m seventeen. You’re twenty eight.”

“The age difference just means we can’t have sex, and you turn eighteen next April.” He said. I had actually thought about it often.

“And what about my parents? I mean, I doubt they’ll notice anything has changed; I don’t let them listen to our conversations and they know I talk to you a lot because of the site…”

“My heart is yours, if you’ll take it.” He said. “I’m all yours – every little part of me. My heart and soul.”

“I knew that already.” I commented, laughing. “And as for me, I gave you my heart a long time ago, you just didn’t know it. Was that the big thing you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Does this mean we’re…” He tried out the words as if they were foreign on his tongue… “Boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“I think so.” I said. “Now that begs the question…Who do we tell? I think my friends mostly figured it out, and its not like they would go babbling to others about it.” I didn’t really want to have a secret love life. If we were dating; it meant I needed moral support for the times he pissed me off.

“As long as you trust them. We can’t go telling people on our site though, agreed? To them, we’re still just partners in web site building. They could get us in trouble.”

“Okay. Your friends?”

“Not a chance in hell. They’ll tease me, and possibly report me and get me arrested. So even my friends on the site – no. Got it?”

“Yes sir. If I was there, I’d salute.” I grinned, knowing the comment would only frustrate him more.

“Okay, since we’re going out, I have to be able to say it.” He started. I braced myself for the worst. “I love you I love you I love you I love you!” He yelled. I burst out laughing, thankful that no one could hear him.

“I love you too. I mean it.”

“And neither of us are going to go and break the other’s heart, right? No cheating, no dating other boys…”

“You date boys?”

“I was referring to you. No one likes me around here, especially not the boys. I tend to piss them off.”

“Am I still allowed to tease you?”

“As long as I’m allowed to tease you.”

“Sex?” I asked, suddenly.

“Not until you’re legal.” Again, the voice of god. And I protested.

“Cyber? Phone? Something?”

“Maybe. We’ll talk about it later.”

I have to stop to explain something to you. I am not what most people would define as normal. Why else would I submit to a relationship where I don’t get to see the person until I’m eighteen, and even then, maybe once or twice a year for five to six years after, depending on what major I choose in college? Only a masochist (for those of you who don’t know the term, its someone who submits themselves to pain for pleasure) would engage in that sort of thing. Well, my masochism doesn’t stay just in my relationship choices. I enjoy mild pain. Yes, I did just announce that to the whole world. I get turned on by thinking of being dominated, tied up, spanked, forced, and fucked. If you’re uncomfortable with it, I doubt you’ll enjoy the rest of the reading.

And yes, by the way. Roger knew all of these things. And though you can’t out right tell from how we speak together normally, he was the exact opposite of me on that spectrum. He gets turned on by thoughts of dominating, forcing, manipulating, tying up, spanking, and fucking a submissive person. Mainly, me.

That’s not to say that from this point forward, this book will be about sex. If a relationship was about sex, there’d be a lot more babies in the world. Anyway, on with our conversation.

“So…” I said after a comfortable pause in our conversation, “Does this mean I get to call you cutesy names like sweet heart and sexy and cheerio?”

“Cheerio?” I could almost hear the wheels in his head turning. “Um, if you want. As long as I get to call you poopy pants, munchkin, baby, sweet heart, princess and anything else.”

“Poopy pants? And I’m the strange one? Okay…”

“Just a thought.” He laughed. “In case you find one embarrassing. I have a good rebuttal.”

“Okay, cream puff.”

“Be careful, carrot head.” He said in rebuttal.

“My hair isn't even red, pookie.” Carrot head? How creative.

“Ouch, you’re straying into dangerous territory, cuddle butt.” He said after a moment.

“Don’t get me started, cutie pie.” I shot back with no hesitation.

“Two can play at that game, swivel hips.”

“Are we ever going to stop, cowboy?”

“Not unless we concede at the same time…sunflower.”

“This is going to be a long, long night…isn’t it Rogie-poo?”

“Yes Stormy-chan, it is.”

“Hey did you hear about the body parts on the news?”

“Um, probably not, considering I’m several states away from you.”

“Nooo… It was on CNN.” I continued. “Oh, yeah, you hicks don’t get big news channels. Well, in the rest of the world…Somewhere in Africa, some dude hitched a ride on a plane by hiding in the jet thingee or something. I’m not really sure. Anyway, the man died on the way over to New York City, and one of his legs fell out of the plane and onto a house in Brooklyn.”

“Sucks for him.” Roger said. “Its kinda sad that people feel that they need to get out of their own countries. Nothing’s really happened around here. You want me to grab the paper and read you the police beat?”

“If you want.” He had done this before, a few times. I got to hear about pigs escaping and bar fights erupting in his quiet little one horse town. My town was a little bigger – we hosted a college.

“Okay, lets see…Thursday night, a pig escaped from someone’s backyard…they’re offering a reward for Albert, and claim that someone may have abducted him. A man in the town nearest here got his, and I quote… ‘An emergency call was made to the dispatcher Thursday, around two thirty in the afternoon, when J. Williams, 27, was discovered on his front lawn, unconscious and bleeding in front of his lawn mower. After something had become lodged in the mower’s blades, he had attempted to remove the object while leaving the lawn mower running. He is in stable condition at the nearby hospital.”

At least the man hadn’t shot his own penis off or something. I remember reading a story like that about someone in Arizona whose gun accidentally went off while wedged in his jeans. Roger waited for my laughing to stop before he continued.

“Last night, a break in was reported at Piggly Wiggly’s convenience store. Thieves made off with the entire supply of latex gloves, and beer. They removed no cash from the store and were apprehended a short time after crashing their vehicle into a tree.”

“Latex gloves?”

“I don’t know. The town is fucked up, I tell you.”