Page 30 of Shadowing My Dreams
“Funny. This is very frustrating. I think I know how we can make it a little more fun, though.”
He came over and sat down by me.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting closer.”
“That is a very bad idea. I’m wearing shorts, and so are you. If our legs touch…” He pushed his knee into mine, and the world slowly faded into the muted hues, but before it could fade all the way in, he removed his leg from mine, and the world turned back to color.
“Technicolor baby. It’s like the Wizard of Oz, isn’t it? The moment that girl opens the door, she steps into a world of technicolor.”
“You’re so stupid,” I snorted. “That girl?”
“Yeah, Dorothy. That’s right?”
“Yes, stud. You got a hundred percent on the gay card test. Can you tell me the actress's name?”
“Uh… Judy Garbo?”
“Wrong answer.”
“Do I win a prize?”
So, I did something stupid. I leaned in and kissed him. The world muted – I broke apart – the world faded back to ours.
“Does that make you feel bad? When we touch?”
“I could so make a joke right here, but no. It takes a little bit of time and I think some kind of proximity to him for me to feel ill.”
“So I can do this,” He reached over, grabbed me by the neck, and kissed me deeply. I shut my eyes so I didn’t see the other side; there was only his lips, and then… He withdrew, and I smiled as the room filled back with color. “That is so fucking weird but cool. If I were a kid, I would have driven my family crazy making this happen over and over.”
“So, we’ve come up empty, but we have names. Maybe we can find some older guys at the bar and ask around? Maybe they knew them?”
“They’d be between sixty and seventy, probably. I’ve had some of those guys slide dollars down my g-string when I used to dance. But that doesn’t mean they knew them or they even lived here back then. I think we’re reaching. Fuck!” The look on his face was priceless. “He died before he could even surf the web. Maybe before there even was a web.”
“Some places digitized, and with a refined search, maybe we could come up with something. If I could narrow down the years of Drew’s death, this wouldn’t be so much to sort through. But he could have died a year or two later than Isaac.”
“Or he could still be alive? It didn’t sound like Isaac even knew if he had been sick. This is crazy. There has to be a better way.”
“We just need to… clear our minds. Think of another way to look at this.”
“Maybe we should take our minds off it for a little bit.”
“What do you have in mind?”
He bent over and kissed me again. The world shifted in and out. He pressed his lips to my ear. The world shifted.
“I think we should go into my backyard. I have something I’d really like to show you,” he whispered before nipping at my ear.
The world shifted back.
“Do you?”
“I really do. Maybe if we relax, we can come back to this with a fresh perspective.”
“You want to get fresh.”
“In my backyard. When I touched you on my front porch earlier, nothing happened. So outside is…”
