A gay story: Big Mack Pt. 10
Yoshi got up, got dressed, brushed his teeth, and packed his books and notes into his backpack. He gently closed the mechanic’s front door behind him, checking it was securely locked before walking away. He bought a takeaway coffee and a muffin from a nearby café before heading to campus for his Monday morning tutorial.
His class about political speeches was uninspiring. He stared out the window, wondering if communications was indeed the right course of study for him. He remembered the high expectations his parents had when he finished school, and part of those expectations was continuing his education at university, but he was never sure what he wanted to study or even what he wanted to do with his life. He still had no clear idea, but the more he studied communications, the more he sensed it wasn’t right for him.
He met up with Amelia for lunch. “Hey babe,” he greeted her. “You look good.”
The goth smiled sideways. “Thanks.” She sat down. They’d each ordered lunch separately and were waiting patiently for their food to arrive. “Get up to anything last night?”
“Hung out with Mack. He showed me his vintage porn stash.”
“Nice,” came the goth’s disinterested reply. “Hey, we need to talk about something. We need to clear the air.”
“Uh-oh. Sounds ominous. What about?” Yoshi’s salmon salad arrived seconds before Amelia’s. “We ordered the same thing!” he exclaimed. He was about to joke that this odd coincidence made them soulmates, but he was glad he didn’t. Things weren’t like they once were, and he sensed there was something serious on his friend’s mind.
“OK, so here goes.” The goth took a deep breath. This wasn’t at all what she wanted to say, though given the circumstances, she felt she needed to. “You can’t sleep over at my place anymore. I like hanging out with you and I like having sex with you, but now that you’re with the mechanic, things feel a little bit different between us. If I invite you over for sex, then that’s all it is, and you need to leave when we’re done. Is that OK?”
This was all Yoshi ever wanted, though he hated to think that his friend-with-benefits had put herself through so much emotional turmoil to arrive at this point. He loved their relationship just the way it was before, and he never wanted it to change anything about it in the first place. He wanted to go to the movies with her, talk about books and plays with her, listen to music with her and have awesome sex with her without accumulating unnecessary emotional baggage, and he knew in his heart he’d been crystal clear with her about what he wanted right from the start. It felt like they’d run around a city block only to end up back where they started. “Yeah. Sounds sensible. I love having sex with you too, but yeah, there are some places we probably shouldn’t go, because it risks getting emotionally confusing. If I can be honest, I felt a bit out of place sleeping in your bed the other night. I should’ve taken myself home after you fucked me. I don’t ever want to cross lines with you, because I don’t ever want to lose your friendship.”
On the inside, he breathed a massive sigh of relief.
Amelia smiled uneasily. Deep down, she still loved him and she desperately wanted to be with him, but she knew she couldn’t afford to get hung up on him. It’d kill their friendship and she’d lose him completely. She decided to set up a tinder account. “How’s your salad?” she asked.
Yoshi smiled. “Exactly the same as yours,” he replied, spearing a piece of cucumber with his wooden fork.
They ate in companionable silence for a few moments before the emo dropped his recyclable cutlery into the bowl. “I hate my course,” he exploded. “I need to do something else. What’s a bachelor’s degree in communications gonna add to my life? What’ll I do with it? I feel so disillusioned. I don’t know why I preferenced this fucking course in the first place. I don’t want to spend my life writing catchy slogans for a government department.”
“What would you wanna do instead?”
“That’s the thing,” an exasperated Yoshi said, throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t know.”
Amelia fished a fat cherry tomato out of her salad bowl with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. She bit down, feeling the juices spurting onto her tongue. She waited for her friend to continue.
“I worry that so much of what we’re being taught about communications theory comes from the dark arts of propaganda. Are we being taught how to educate people, or how to manipulate them?”
“A little bit of both, I suspect,” came Amelia’s considered reply. She tilted her head slightly to the right, as she often did when deep in thought. “I wouldn’t mind getting into advertising when I graduate. To me, advertising is education and manipulation in equal measures, but a good piece of marketing, like, I mean, a *really* fucking good campaign, can also be a piece of public art that echoes down the ages.” She often recalled catchy jingles from TV commercials she’d seen in her childhood, catching herself humming them for no apparent reason.
Yoshi blinked and shrugged. He couldn’t imagine himself in advertising, he couldn’t see himself in political strategy, and he didn’t want a job in market research. “Fuck, babe. I just don’t know. But I need to do something, right? Like, I don’t want to work in a fucking supermarket for the rest of my life, but I don’t know what I *do* want. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, of course it does.” She remembered the brief note he left him a few days ago. “Hey, remember this? ‘Thank you for last night. I love you, but this is hard. Need to think things through.’ Who wrote that?”
The emo blinked. “That’s what I scribbled on your notepad when I slunk out the other morning, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” replied the goth. “It’s a haiku.”
The emo sat quietly for a second, grinning on the inside. “I know. I did that deliberately. I’m impressed you noticed.”
An imaginary lightbulb lit up above Amelia’s head. “How about switching to literature? You read a shitload of books, and you know how to write. Maybe writing is your domain.”
Yoshi winced. “I thought about that before I enrolled. At least a degree in communications leads to a job. What does a degree in literature lead to?”
“Academia, artistic criticism, journalism, theatre, museums, archives, the creative arts in general … plus, if you ever wanted to publish an anthology of haikus …”
The emo’s eyes opened wide. “I’m gonna look into this. Thanks so much for the ideas, babe. And for the encouragement.”
“Any time,” came the goth’s smiling reply.
They gazed into each other’s eyes for a few elongated seconds, but Amelia was the first to look away. His eyes were beautiful, but she needed to find a way to break the spell he seemed to have over her.
Yoshi flicked his hair away from his face. “I really want you to fuck me, babe. I’m so horny for your cock. Do you have classes this afternoon?” He wanted to kiss her, but he knew he couldn’t. Not anymore. Not like this.
“Yeah, I do.” She had a marketing lecture she didn’t want to miss.