Dedicated to A. Wherever you are now, I hope life has brought you only joy and love.
===
I puttered around, unpacking my kitchen, but my mind wasn’t on locating the box with the cast-iron skillet or which cabinet the spices should go in. Nor was it occupied by the subject that had taken up most of my waking hours for the past six months, namely the end of my marriage.
No, it kept returning, again and again, to the man re-keying the locks of my new condo.
There was just something about the locksmith, who had introduced himself as Mitch, that I couldn’t put my finger on. I was certain I knew him, or that I’d known him once a long time ago, but I couldn’t quite place where.
He seemed to know me, too, although he hadn’t said so. Instead, it was a vibe that I’d gotten from him when I first opened the door. He’d been looking at his tablet and started to ask, “Mr. Thomas…” before his head snapped up. Then, with the oddest smirk and the cocking of his head, he finished, “…Raines?” The smirk quickly vanished, or, rather, morphed into the sort of pleasant, professional smile one might expect. But that first one… that one had said, ‘I know something you don’t.’
I was still musing on the strangely familiar locksmith half an hour later, idly flipping the wall calendar until it opened to April 2019, when his voice shook me from my reverie. “Mr. Raines?”
Turning away from the counter, I looked down at the man, easily a head shorter than me, and saw the same familiar head tilt and smirk again, a mix of challenging, playful, and maybe a bit melancholy.
I knew that smirk. I knew the stance he stood in, too, the way he held his body, and I knew…
“The work’s all done.” The voice, so uncannily close to one I’d heard many times before, but still one I couldn’t quite place. More nasally? Or… a lower register?
I almost had it when he added a slightly belated, particularly enunciated, “Sir,” spoken in a way I’d adored beyond measure almost twenty-five years before.
No. No way.
“… Denise?”
===
“I just wanted you to know, before…” Denise looked to the side shyly; given what she’d told me, I could understand her uncertainty. “Well, before.”
We’d left from Ohms, the only goth club in town that had managed to stay open for more than a couple of years, to take a walk together in the early September air. Previous to that, we’d spent the night dancing, in between sitting at the tables out back and getting to know each other. I’d bought a few drinks for her–or, to be more accurate, I gave her money to go buy drinks for herself since I’d only just turned twenty–but Denise seemed stone sober when she asked me if I’d like to stretch my legs.
I, of course, said yes.
Physically, Denise was stunning, with a slim, petite build, pale skin, deep blue eyes, and bleached platinum blonde hair shaved on the sides and back but left long on top. She’d leaned into the androgyny of mid-90s goth fashion, as many of us did; hell, when we went for our walk, I, myself, was decked out in a top hat, Edwardian coat and shirt, a long flowing black skirt, and pointy buckle boots. It didn’t exactly match her peasant blouse, velvet tights, and Doc Martens ensemble, but our sartorial choices were definitely of a kind.
For me, my wardrobe had always been about catching the eyes of young, beautiful goth girls like Denise, not any kind of deeper statement on my gender. However, I knew a number of folks, men and women both, who used the androgynous nature of goth fashion to test the waters of their own concept of themselves. And, hey, to each their own. I supported people being who they wanted to be.
In theory.
In practice, this beautiful girl had looked up at me, just after we’d slipped into the shadows between two buildings and spent several very enjoyable minutes skirting the edges of Austin’s public indecency laws, and said, “Just so you know, I’m… I’m planning to transition to being a man.”
As if I hadn’t heard her correctly, I let out a short, confused laugh and asked, “What?”
“I…” Denise glanced away for a moment before returning her eyes to mine. “Yeah. I just… I’ve always felt… wrong as a girl. And I know we’ve just met, but I like you, and the last time I tried to- to hide how… who I am, it ended up bad. So if it’s going to be a problem, I just…” She smiled a sad little smile, as if expecting this to all end before it had begun. “I just wanted you to know, before… well, before.”
When I pulled back, her face fell. She sighed, “Okay, then, I guess we’ll just head back.”
“No,” I croaked out, then repeated, “No. Just…” I held up a hand. “Give me a second. I’m not… I’m just trying to understand.”
I mean, I thought of myself as an open-minded guy. I was a goth, after all, and these were my college years; I’d experimented with another guy once. While that didn’t get my motor going, I didn’t hate it either. It was fun in its own way, and novel, just not for me.
More importantly to present-Thomas, however, and especially present-Thomas’s dick, future-Denise–or Dennis or Dylan or whoever–existed only notionally, whereas present-Denise had just spent the last five minutes trying to count the fillings in my teeth with her tongue while grinding her crotch against my leg so hard that I’d probably have a bruise in the morning.
Given those circumstances, present-Thomas desperately wanted to spend the next few hours balls deep in present-Denise, come hell or high water.
Now, that might make me seem like a cad–hell, it probably does make me a cad–but goth culture in the 90s was a hookup culture, not a dating one. The phrase “Nice boots. Wanna fuck?” was only halfway a joke, and she and I both knew the score. There was a better-than-even chance we’d go bang each other’s brains out tonight and then never again, with neither expectation nor animosity lingering between us. If Denise wanted to be a man in a week or a month or a year… well, the chance of that impacting me was basically nil.
All of this flashed through my head while Denise stared up at me, first with slight disbelief, followed by something like concern, then mild annoyance. From the outside, I’m sure I looked like what I was: namely, a guy from suburban Texas, just barely past his teens, attempting to ponder the fluid nature of gender and sexuality with a toolkit short of more than a few conceptual socket wrenches.
“Thomas?”
“It’s fine,” I said too quickly, my brain snapping back into the very real, very horny here and now.
“It’s… fine?”
With an unintentionally dismissive laugh, I reiterated, “Yes, it’s fine. I was just… You caught me off guard. Look, I’ll be honest that you’re the first, um, person like you that I’ve been interested in, but…” I flashed a lascivious grin at her. “Well, that’s the thing. I am interested in you.”
The look Denise gave me was somewhere between dubious and hopeful, as was her tone. “Really.”
“Yes, really.” I took a step closer and tipped her chin up with one finger. “I’d love to show you just how interested.”
“I, ah…” She licked her lips nervously, almost unconsciously. “God, I wish I could, but I drove my friends tonight, so I, ah, I can’t. But if… Oh!” My hand had slid to her breast, tweaking a nipple through the thin cotton fabric of her shirt. “Th- that’s not fair!”
“It’s not?” A quick glance from one side to the next showed the street was deserted, despite us being only a few blocks from the busiest part of the city at that time of night. My hand moved lower still, down her belly and into the waistband of her tights.
“Thomas–” she began, then gasped when I found her clit and slid two fingers across it in slow, gentle circles.. “Oh. Oh. That’s- We shouldn’t- You’re- We’re going to be seen!” The last came out in a desperate, adorable whine that brought a chuckle to my lips. “Ah. Ah. Ah, fuck!”
“What will they see?” I teased, before leaning in to plant a deep kiss on her parted lips. Moving my mouth to her neck, I continued, “Two people making out? Plenty of that around here at this time of night.” The fingers that had played across her clit now slipped into her opening, forcing a low groan out into the still night air.
Her hands moved down to the one between her legs, but not to push it away. Instead, she guided it, pressed against it, as if trying to bring me deeper inside. “Nnf. Please. Please. So… Fuck! So close!”
We’d flirted and teased back and forth the whole night. Now that I had her… let’s say ‘well in hand,’ I wanted to find out how much of what she’d intimated in those back and forths was just talk and how much was real. “Please, what?”
“Wh- what?”
“You want something, don’t you? Permission, maybe?”
“Oh!” She gasped, understanding filtering through the fog. “Oh, fuck. Please… Please… Sir?”
“Again.”
“Please, please, Sir, may I cum?”
“Good girl. Yes, you may. Cum for–” but she’d already started to cry out, mouth buried against my chest to muffle the sound of her ecstatic wails.
“Good girl,” I repeated again, the weighty conversation from before almost forgotten. “Such a good girl.”
Later, after we’d managed our dishevelment, Denise and I walked back to the club arm in arm. Sadly, I hadn’t convinced her to procure an alternate ride for her friends. I had, however, argued–quite compellingly according to her–for why she should come out dancing by herself later in the week.
Denise, smiling broadly, leaned her head on my arm and said, “I’m glad that you still… well, you know. That you’re still, um, interested.”
“Oh, I hope I demonstrated I’m a bit more than just interested.” She slapped my chest playfully in response.
And then I said something that still haunted me years later, although not until time and maturity drove home how callous I’d been. No, back then I was still a swaggering idiot that had just made a gorgeous woman cum on my fingers, and all puffed up with pride as a result.
“It’s a shame, though. You really do make such a pretty girl.”
Denise stiffened for a moment, then kept walking. With a too-bright tone masking her hurt, she replied, “Well, I think I’ll make quite a pretty boy, too.”
===
Mitch let out a short bark of a laugh. “Hah! No one’s called me that in years.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”
He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Honestly, I was wondering if you’d even recognize me.”
“Yes. I mean, I knew that I knew you from somewhere, but…”
The words trailed off as I took him in again, this time in comparison with the woman I’d known two decades before. Still the same height, of course. Not quite as slim as before, but between the work shirt and pants, it was hard to tell how much of that was muscle and how much the bulk we all seemed to accumulate as the years wore on. His hair, no longer bleached, had returned to its natural dirty blonde, and he styled it in a less severe cut, somewhere between professional and shaggy.
Those eyes, though, still shone as brightly, albeit now with faint laugh lines, ones that deepened as he looked at me looking at him. “You can take a picture, you know. It’ll last longer.”
It took everything I had to not snark that I still had plenty from before, Polaroids that she’d enthusiastically consented to posing for after several of our times together.
I couldn’t tell if Mitch was just teasing or actually flirting with me. If it was the latter, I didn’t know how to respond. Part of me remembered the good times we’d had when Denise… no, Mitch, I’d need to work on that… would let the bratty side of her… his… submissive streak out, all the verbal sparring that inevitably led to punishment of various mutually enjoyable forms.
But the other part reminded me that, while things ended amicably back then, they did end. And even if they hadn’t, twenty-four years lay between then and now, and more than mere time between “Denise” and Mitch.
Erring on the side of caution, I decided to shift us back towards the more usual sorts of questions that two old friends and former lovers might ask of each other, starting with one I already knew the answer to. “Wow, it’s uh, it’s good to see you. It’s been… what, twenty-five years?”
The warmth on his face didn’t diminish, but it did shift to something a little more wistful. “Something like that. Last I saw you was… what, that party over at Theo’s?”
“… Yeah, I think so.”
No, I knew so.
===
Denise and I had gone hot and heavy for a while, pretty much always leaving together if we were both at Ohms on a given night. That wasn’t as often as either of us would have liked, although she didn’t often complain. “Complaining,” she once said, “doesn’t get shit done.”
Over our time together, I learned a good bit about Denise’s daytime life, and that quote summed up her attitude towards the world nicely.
She was about five years older than me, an actual grown-up with actual grown-up responsibilities. A single mother who’d gotten knocked up by her boyfriend in high school (he, of course, split a few months later), Denise lived with her parents and worked as an apprentice locksmith. That night we met had been her first foray out since her daughter, Amber, had gotten old enough for Denise to feel comfortable leaving her alone overnight.
While she and I never “dated” in a traditional sense, we did occasionally meet up outside of Ohms for dinner, and on some nights sex in my dorm room took a backseat to cuddling up to watch a movie or dancing to my ever-expanding CD collection. Those nights were the closest we got to feeling like a normal couple; I’ll freely admit that part of me had wanted more.
I think Denise did, too, but between the age difference, her responsibilities, and the different futures we wanted–me the wife, house, two kids, and dog; her the freedom to be who she wanted to be with a partner who didn’t just tolerate her transition but embraced it–we never really looked too far past the good times together.
And what good times they were.
I don’t think I’ve ever found someone I was more sexually compatible with than Denise. She was older but only a little more experienced; her time as a young single mom had put a damper on most experimentation. That said, she still knew what she liked, and her kinks pretty much ticked off all the checkboxes on my list. Gentle domination? Check. Restraint play? Check. Spanking? Hair pulling? Anal? Check, check, and check.
Denise didn’t ask for exclusivity, either, although I probably would have gone along with it; honestly, who wouldn’t, given what she brought to the table? However, much as we never discussed our future, knowing there wasn’t one, we also didn’t discuss any other partners we might have had. I made sure to stay well-stocked on condoms, but outside of that nod to safety, we didn’t talk about it.
At least not until our last night together.
As the school year came to a close, the sessions grew more and more intense, with her asking for things we’d only touched on in discussions of what we’d like to one day try out: flogging, shibari, breathplay, and more.
Our aftercare became more tender, and our endearments veered perilously close to the one word we’d both avoided: love. I think, if we were both honest, that we at least loved each other as friends, but I know that I avoided the word for fear of messing up the good thing that I had going. Cowardly, perhaps, but also maybe the most mature choice I could have made, given the circumstances, and one that I believe she made, too.
A couple of days before I headed home for summer break, we spent our last night together as lovers. Her parents had taken Amber on an overnight trip; without the weight of being a responsible mother pressing down on her shoulders, Denise went all out, getting me hard and offering herself up to me over and over again, almost until dawn. It’s still, to this day, one of my most cherished memories of that time in my life.
It was nearly eleven before we woke. While both of us were sore and tired, we spent the rest of the morning lazily making love, although still never saying the actual word. Then, it was time for me to pack and for her to go.
Just before she left, Denise picked up my Polaroid, pointed it at me, and asked, “May I?”
I nodded, so she snapped one picture, then stood next to me, leaned up to kiss my cheek, and took another. The first went into her purse and the other onto my bedside table. “I hope you have a great summer, handsome. Don’t break too many hearts, y’hear?”
“No promises.”
That made Denise roll her eyes with a laugh. “Tch. I know you won’t. You’re too sweet to hurt anyone like that.” Her smile dimmed as she finished the sentence, before she quickly forced it to brighten once more. “Anyways. I hope you have a ton of fun this summer. You deserve to be happy.”
“So do you,” I replied. Then, trying to lighten the mood, I added, “See you when I get back?”
Denise opened her mouth, sighed, then closed it again. With a melancholic half-smile, she finally answered, “Yeah, sure. That’d be nice.”
Maybe it would have been. Maybe our lives would have gone differently. Who knows? But that’s not what happened.
I did not, in fact, break too many hearts while back home. Between my summer job at a used CD store, hanging out with friends, and being too far out into the suburbs to go clubbing more than once or twice in Dallas proper, few opportunities presented themselves. I did have one disappointing hookup with an old crush who laid there like a fish, and a fairly decent one with a regular at the store just before we both headed off to our far-distant colleges, but certainly nothing like my time with Denise.
I won’t say that I pined for her, either back home or once I returned to college. Rather, I simply wanted to see her again; admittedly, I also wanted to see her naked again, but I mostly just hoped to catch up with her and see how the summer had treated her. In retrospect, it was somewhat of a foolish notion; the idea of summer represented freedom to me, while it meant more responsibility for her, with Amber out of school and needing care, but what can you do? I was only twenty. I had almost no inkling of what adult life looked like yet.
I didn’t see Denise out at Ohms the first month I was back, nor the second, but I also didn’t go out nearly as much; breaker classes started in junior year, and that meant I couldn’t party the way I had in my freshman and sophomore years at college.
If we’d met a decade later, I’d have called her cell, but in 1995 neither she nor I had one. I’d moved dorm rooms, so my landline number had changed, too, and she’d always been the one to call me, so I didn’t have her parents’ number. Even if I had, I’m not sure I would have tried to contact her that way; as segmented as she’d kept her life, it would have felt like crossing a boundary.
It wasn’t until I attended a party just before Thanksgiving break that I found out what she’d been doing all that time.
Or, rather, who.
Denise saw me first, bounding up to me and throwing her arms around me in the biggest hug her petite frame could manage. “Tom!”
“Hey, you!” I returned the hug, then drew back. “How have you been?”
“Good! Just so, so good. I…” Her smile faded a touch, and she shook her head before pulling away from me. “I’m doing really well.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. How about I grab us a couple of drinks and we catch up? Maybe we could take a walk and–”
“Oh, I, um, I’d like that, but… I’m here with someone.”
“Some-?” Then it hit me. We hadn’t seen each other in half a year, and she was… well, her. Beautiful, and sexy, and sweet, and witty, and… “Oh.”
I tried to hide my disappointment; I don’t know if I was successful or not, but Denise said, “Yeah. Jason. He’s… he’s really nice. I think you’d like him.”
“That’s, uh, that’s great. Good for you. And you’re happy?”
“Yeah,” she said, almost glowing. “I really am. He’s… um, we’ve been together for about three months, and he’s really supportive about… well, things.” She inclined her head conspiratorially towards me. “You know.”
‘Things.’ I got the implication immediately. ‘Things’ that we’d danced around since that first night. ‘Things’ that made us incompatible long term. ‘Things’ that meant she and I could be FWBs, maybe even FWBs that felt a certain amount of love for each other, but nothing more permanent than that.
Given that I did love her, at least as much as I allowed myself to, I tried my best to reflect the radiance I saw in her smiling face. Maybe it even worked. “That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you, D. Really.”
If she’d glowed before, she positively shone now. “Thank you. I’m… Well, I hope you find the person that you’re looking for, Tom. No, I take that back. I know you will.” She reached up and cupped my face. “And she’s going to be so, so lucky when you do.”
Before I could respond, Denise leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then half-turned away. “I need to get back. Maybe I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
But she didn’t. Whether by accident or design, I never saw her again. Last I’d heard, before I left town after senior year, Denise and Jason had married. After that, nothing.
Until now. And Mitch.
===
“So, man, twenty-five years. It’s a small world,” he said.
“It is.”
The dreaded lull happened then. I had so many questions to ask, and at least a few apologies to make, but I’d never been good at this kind of chitchat, at figuring out whether this question was too personal or that statement too inane, especially in a situation like this. From his body language, it looked like Mitch was in the same boat.
We both spoke at the same time. And again. And again. Finally, I extended a hand to him, indicating that he had verbal right of way. With a laugh, he asked, “So, what have you been up to all this time?”
Thank God, something to work with.
“Uh, let’s see. You want the short version or the long one?”
“I wish I had time for the long version, but I have to head for my next call soon. So maybe short one now, long one later?”
“Well, I finished up my degree. Moved back here for a job after college. Met Jen, my, uh, now ex-wife, a little bit after that, married a couple years later. Two kids, Alex, twenty, and Riley, eighteen. And, ah, now divorced as of about six months ago.”
“Oh, shit! I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It was…” I waved my hand as if to say it didn’t matter; you know: lying. “Anyways, so now that everything’s more or less settled, moving in here. Hence, needing the locks re-keyed. Cable and utilities got set up yesterday, so now it’s just a matter of unpacking boxes and assembling furniture.”
“By yourself?”
“Apparently. Amazing how people get busy when you mention ‘assembling furniture.’ So, just me, an assortment of little Allen wrenches, and copious swearing.”
“That sucks! Hey, you know what? I-” His tablet beeped, so he looked down at it. “Ah, hell. I’ve got to head out to my next call.”
“That’s okay. But, hey, maybe- I mean, I really would love to catch up later.”
“Me too! In fact, I was about to say that this next one is my last call. How about I swing back on by and help, and we can catch up?” Then, as if embarrassed at his own enthusiasm, he added, “Y’know, if you’d like.”
“Yes!” I said with perhaps a touch too much enthusiasm of my own, then tried to tamp it down when I continued, “I would. Very much. But, um, I think even with two of us, it’s going to take more than a night to get it all set up. There’s the guest bedroom, part of my office-”
“That’s okay. I’m at loose ends tonight. Was probably just going to stay home and binge something on Netflix, so I’m absolutely up for anything you might need.” Before I could respond, the tablet chimed once more. “Fine, fine,” Mitch muttered, flicking at its screen with irritation. “It looks like… Yeah, I’ll probably be done in an hour, so back here by… say six? Six-thirty?”
“Perfect. I was thinking about Chinese for dinner. Still Szechuan beef for you?”
“You remembered!” His face split into a huge grin. “That would be great.”
Once Mitch headed for his truck, I returned to my unpacking, but my mind still wasn’t on the task. After going through the same box for the third time looking for my corkscrew and ultimately noticing I’d already put it on the kitchen counter, I decided to go clean up for my… my…
Huh.
Well, not a date. The pattern was there–an excited meeting, an excuse to meet up again, a meal to allow for natural pauses in conversation–but a date? No. Of course not. Mitch was happy to see me, and I him, but this was just two friends getting together to catch up.
And, sure, I hadn’t seen a ring on his finger, but he worked with his hands all day. I knew plenty of guys like that who didn’t wear their rings. And even if he wasn’t still with Jason, or anyone else for that matter, that didn’t mean that his excitement was anything more than friendly curiosity.
Even if it was, so what? I mean, I’m straight. My sole experiment with another guy in college confirmed that I didn’t really have any interest in men. I felt some odd swelling of emotion meeting Mitch again, but I’d have been hard pressed to say what it was, exactly, and how much of it came from nostalgia versus anything else.
Still, that didn’t mean that I didn’t feel the effects of those memories, and even if we were just going to talk, eat, and literally rather than figuratively put tab A into slot B, I still knew that I should shower and shave.
Honestly, I’d gotten lazy about my grooming with no one but myself to answer to. I worked from home; who was going to give a shit if I had two-day-old stubble? The kids weren’t there, and Jen probably wouldn’t have cared if she was. Hell, she probably wouldn’t have cared for the previous couple of years, either.
Did that mean I should have stopped caring, too? No. But I had, and seeing Mitch again made me feel a renewed sense of shame at that, so I went to do something about it.
Once out of the shower and with a clean-shaven face, I took a look at myself through the same eyes I had when evaluating Mitch, the ones comparing what he’d looked like twenty-four years ago versus today.
Long gone was the blonde ponytail down to the middle of my back, a remnant of my high school metalhead days that still managed to pass muster once the band logos on my black t-shirts changed. When my hairline started to recede, I chose to shave it all off, rather than try to fight a war I couldn’t win; only short stubble remained now, as I’d found that the full-on Mr. Clean look didn’t work for me, either.
My body wasn’t in too bad a shape, although it was quite different from the one I’d had back then; admittedly, not so different as Mitch’s, but still. I’d never again have the lean frame of a kid who went out dancing all night and took the stairs every day to his room on the fifteenth floor; however, neither had I let myself fall too far into dad bod territory.
My gut had grown over the years as my marriage went from faltering to failed, but once I decided to escape–or, rather, once Jen and I had mutually decided to–I’d chosen the gym as my place of refuge until paperwork matched reality. I’d never be a cover model on one of the fitness magazines aimed at men like me–older single guys who wanted to pretend we were still as vital as ever–but I didn’t entirely look like one that had given up, either.
Sometimes, you have to take the small wins.
===
“Hey there!” Mitch beamed up at me from my front doorstep. He’d lost the work shirt, leaving only a tank top, and his shaggy hair seemed a little more coiffed than when he’d left. In one hand he held a toolbag and in the other a six-pack of beer, which he pressed towards me. “Housewarming gift. Still a Shiner guy?”
“Good memory,” I replied, taking it from him and stepping aside to let him enter. As he did, I took in the sight of him once more. Without the shirt, I could tell his arms had good definition; not muscular per se, but toned. Still a nice ass, too. Even through the loose work pants, I could see that.
When Mitch glanced back, I’m pretty sure he caught me looking but didn’t comment. Instead, he replied, “Well, we drank enough of those together that it’d be hard to forget.” Then, with a chortle, he added, “Or given how many, maybe it should be hard to remember! So, where are we starting?”
“The living room,” I said, leading him through. The couches had come preassembled, and I’d managed to wrestle the entertainment center together, but the shelves had somehow turned out to be a much bigger pain in the ass than expected.
Mitch peeked into one of the half-open moving boxes next to the entryway. “Wait, do you still have your old CD collection?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. I digitized them a while back–turned them into MP3s, I mean–and put them in storage, but I could never quite bring myself to throw the physical discs out.” Regardless of what Jen had wanted. “I figured that as long as I’m going through my midlife crisis, I might as well get a bitchin’ sound system and haul them all back out. Cheaper than a convertible, right?”
“Definitely.” He’d started picking through the contents, making little appreciative noises. “Man, you always had the best- hey! Concrete Blonde! Oh, and Front 242! And…” Mitch flipped through the jewel cases in the old, beaten-up cardboard box that held about a fifth of my collection. At one point in college, I’d had vague aspirations to becoming a DJ, but then I realized that I had neither the patience to listen to drunk sorority girls making the same requests every night nor a wish to live in poverty.
“Want me to put something on while we work? I’ll let you pick the first disc.”
Mitch glanced up with an affectionate smirk. “You always did.”
“Well, I tried to be a gracious host.”
With an arch of his eyebrow, he teased, “Is that what you call it?” before returning to his perusal. “Okay, then, this one.” He held up Concrete Blonde’s Still in Hollywood, a B-sides collection. I squeezed in beside him, snagging Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, one I knew to be a favorite of his in our younger days. He responded by adding one that I loved then and still did, The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut.
That set the precedent for the rest of our selections, each of us picking something to the other’s taste, until we had a stack of well over a dozen discs to load into a six-disc carousel. “So what if it’s too many?” he asked. “From the sound of it, I’ll be here the whole weekend helping you assemble all this stuff anyways.”
“Oh, hey, I don’t want to impose.”
“It’s not an imposition.” Mitch shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips. “I, ah, I might have undersold how little I have going on in my life these days. When I said I had no plans for the evening, I actually meant that I don’t really have much going on this weekend, either.”
“Really? That surprises me.”
“Well, you know, I moved up here a few years ago, and I’ve been focusing on my business since then.” The smile faded for a moment before returning with a more forced quality. “Whiiich reminds me, we’re supposed to be assembling some furniture, right? Why don’t you throw that music on so we can get to it?”
While I hit eject on the carousel, unloaded it, and reloaded it with the first set of discs, Mitch opened his satchel full of tools and hunkered down in the middle of my living room. Behind me, I heard the buzz of an electric screwdriver and the clunk of wood against wood, accompanied by happy, tuneless humming.
Once the music began, I settled in beside him to help, each of us alternating pieces to hammer in dowels, drive in a stabilizing screw, or quietly curse when we realized we’d read the instructions wrong. We attempted conversation for a bit, but the number of times that one or the other of us found that we’d fucked up and had to go back a couple of steps eventually forced us into silence. Instead, we worked to the music of my college years, occasionally joined by Mitch’s singing when a particular favorite of his came on.
He’d just finished belting out the chorus to “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” when I said, “You’ve still got a great singing voice.”
“What?” He glanced over, suddenly sheepish, before returning his gaze to his work. “Oh, I, uh, thanks. Sorry, I hadn’t even realized I was doing it.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s… Honestly, it’s nice to hear it again, even if it is a little, uh, different than before.”
That brought a laugh from him. “I guess it is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I put my screwdriver down. “You know, I gave you the short version of my life, but I haven’t even asked about yours.”
“Eh.” Mitch shrugged his shoulders, but I noticed he hadn’t put his work aside as I had mine, instead redoubling his focus on it. “There’s not much to tell.”
It sounded like bullshit to me, even ignoring his sudden, intense interest in flat-packed furniture. Part of me wanted to insist–hell, let’s be honest, to pry–because I was intensely curious about where the intervening two-decades-plus had taken him. Another felt like pushing harder would just make him shut down more, and I certainly didn’t want that. And then there was the little voice shouting, ‘Hey, don’t be an asshole, he doesn’t owe you anything.’
I’d just about decided to listen to that voice when Mitch spoke again. Maybe the silence had grown uncomfortable, or maybe he’d been having his own internal discussion, but he started, “Like I said, I moved here a few years ago. Three? No, four now. I don’t know if you’ve been to Austin recently…” He glanced over, and I nodded. “Then you know it’s not what it was before. Bunch of rich assholes kept coming in for SXSW each year, and each year more of them wanted to stay for the ‘vibe.’” He rolled his eyes and filled the last word with a heaping helping of scorn.
“Between that and the Silicon Hills thing, the idiots ended up hugging the place to death. Drove up the cost of everything, killed local businesses, started slamming down highrises and parking garages and… Eh, you saw, I’m sure.
“Within a few years, most of my friends had either moved away or…” He shook his head sadly instead of finishing the sentence. “Amber had headed up to Dallas for college back around 2010, 2011, and wound up staying here for her job and then because of the guy she got married to. She kept bugging me about moving up here to be closer to her, to them, and one day I was just like, ‘What’s keeping me here, in a town I don’t recognize where everything costs like six times what it should?’
“Nothing, it turned out. I’d been living on my own for… for a little while and worked at a job where… I mean, that’s the nice thing about being a locksmith: no matter where you go, some idiot will always lock themselves out of their house.” He flashed a toothy grin, the first happy one I’d seen since he started talking.
“So I decided to sell my house to some of those yahoos from… Well, I guess they weren’t from Yahoo anymore, more Google now, but same postal code, right? Moved up here, hung out my shingle, and done pretty well for myself.”
“That’s great,” I said. Which it was, but it didn’t even begin to answer all the questions I had.
“So, how about you?” he asked. “You gave me the short version before, but–” The doorbell interrupted his question; I felt a certain sense of relief at that.
“Sounds like dinner’s here,” I told him, rising as fast as I could. “Why don’t you go wash up, and I’ll grab it?”
