Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 39.1: May 9th, 2010
"Caramel Kisses" is an unfinished novel I began to write back in 2009 and stopped working on in 2010. The two main characters - Adriana Maguire Reynard and Emma Burking - would ultimately be revised for my later completed novella, "The Liffey Is Half-Asleep," in 2011. Several elements of "Liffey" can be found in their original forms in "Caramel Kisses," such as the characters' names, the haiku scene, and Adriana's penchant for writing.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Twenty-Five
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Twenty-Five
by Belinda Roddie
Robert met with Emma and me for breakfast. He seemed fascinated enough talking to both Emma and me equally, which gave me a strange feeling of comfort as I focused on my Belgian waffle. He had taken us from our cabin to a nice enough little diner on the edge of the town, even agreeing to pay for our meal as a sort of welcome to Shasta.
“My father always believed in hospitality,” he told us as he worked on his third cup of coffee; he was beginning to remind me more and more of Hudd in terms of his eating habits. “He would tell me that there wasn’t enough of this in this day and age. We as a society aren’t too good at it, you know?”
“I can agree with that,” I mumbled, finishing off a bite and downing it with an obligatory glass of milk. Robert grinned at that.
“See, you know. That’s why I feel like I need to do my part. Like with you guys.”
“We really appreciate it,” Emma replied. Whether or not I wanted to, I mentally agreed with her with a curt nod.
At this, Robert set down his cup and leaned toward us as if to tell us a secret. “By the way, and I don’t know if you girls have heard this from anybody else,” he said, “but you guys make a really cute couple.”
Emma naturally blushed. My lips split open with an unprecedented grin.
“I mean it, too,” Robert added. “And I’m happy to say it without getting evil stares. Comes with the state being a bit more progressive than others, you know?”
“Why do you think we stay here?” I replied, and the two of us shared an overly hearty laugh over it. I was already starting to act like a fellow guy friend around him. Old habits died hard.
We parted ways outside the diner while the snow gathered like dust around our heels, and Emma yanked at my sleeve and pointed towards the slopes behind the buildings. Robert grinned and gave yet another thumbs-up, which seemed to be another token of his, as Emma and I practically skipped to the car with the prospect of a big blanket of soft snow waiting for us on the other side.
***
Old habits indeed died hard. I had always acted like one of the guys, in terms of fashion, attitude, and interaction. In high school, my two best friends were guys. In college, it was a similar pattern. True, I had my fair share of female friends, but most of them were either the kind of friend who only seemed to appreciate my company in the classroom, or they were straight tomboys who shared similar behavior patterns with me but were still able to cling to societal norms by subsequently clinging to men.
I knew I was gay as soon as I was in college and I let my friends know it. My guy friends seemed to take it all in stride, and in truth, it gave me a stronger excuse to go out drinking with the guys and talk about “hot chicks” on the same level. While at first it was a bit awkward for the select few of my buddies, more of them were even eager to give me advice on girls, though some of their remarks on females versus males were completely overturned by the fact that I was sitting there with them in the pub, taking down bottle after bottle of Heineken while complaining about the same flaws of my own gender. According to my guy friends with the bigger gift of intellectual and a bigger vocabulary, I was a walking antithesis of what women even stood for.
I didn’t mind. I had my feminine moments and I knew they made good points. Still, it didn’t stop me from trying to be as freelance as the guys, especially sexually. There were times that the men would even take me to bars where they knew there were regular patrons who were lesbians, or at least “lesbians until graduation,” or L.U.G.S. Some of my more sick-minded friends would arrive with their digital cameras in order to tape me and whoever I had picked up for the night, but I’d take the girl’s hand and slip away in my car to my apartment where they couldn’t catch up with me and the doors were locked. Granted, I was not a player; I saved sex for those I truly had my heart set out for. Three had seen me in my true state in the bedroom, and three had walked away silently, as if ashamed.
Because even though I acted like one of the guys, I was not one of the guys. With those women, I was forcing them to step across a balance beam, where falling was simply suicide. We were crossing lines, taking risks, overthrowing an extreme order of society and its functions. I was upsetting that order simply by existing, by practicing the feelings I had, and by not subduing them.
I was not one of the men. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me from being tormented by the typical thoughts that a married man would have. Because no matter what, I was the husband in the relationship, and Emma was on that balance beam with me, and if I teetered, I would take both of us down to the hard, unwelcoming ground.
***
We went sledding the second day we were at the cabin because the snow was thick and heavy but damp enough to slip and slide in as if through cotton. The flakes had stopped dropping in wet clumps, twisting into my hair like loose feathers weighed down by the storm, and I saw the hillsides rise up in white glory like they were swelling up and breathing in the winter air. Emma was already out with the sled by the time I had pulled my gloves on and stumbled my way into the snow that threatened to swallow me up from the knees down. I watched her as she disappeared into a cloud of fine powder, emerging coated in the stuff and giggling as if she were a kid playing outside again.
I took the sled from her and we went up the hill together, our boots leaving deep holes in the sleet we trudged through. I sucked the cold, damp wind between my teeth, swallowed it down like an iced beverage, and propped myself behind Emma as she sat on the edge of the sled. She squealed as I wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled her toward me, my gloves heavy and wet against her jacket. We held that position for a moment or so, a single fleeting moment, before we were flying in a field of white and catching the clouds as the sled zipped down its pre-designed racetrack. We tumbled into a bush together, laughing and holding each other but not kissing for fear that our lips would frost over and fuse together. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing after all, I thought to myself, and I thought I’d mention it to Emma but she was already racing back up the hill, sled in tow.
There was something about this kind of winter that calmed the entire world around it, how everything the snow touched seemed to fade into a peaceful meditation. It wasn’t often that we, in our restless environments, had time to truly sleep, to find peace in a few hours of dreams and imaginary galaxies for us to walk across. But in an endless realm of white, a kingdom of ice and frost and spiraling turrets descending from the roofs and walls of our makeshift fortifications, we could truly slumber – we could dream – and we could forget. This was our snow globe, and the hand that shook the powder up around us in a crazed frenzy could only settle us in that whirlwind of winter wonder. In that whirlwind, we could finally rest.
At least, that what’s I hoped, as I kissed Emma on the forehead after her ninth trip down the hill on our very own Rosebud. We went inside and treated ourselves to French onion soup from a bag of mix since neither of us were willing to bring actual ingredients for that. Emma promised me a real meal once we got back, one not at a diner or a restaurant like we were always tempted to do in this cold. And with the warmth in our bellies, I felt the urge to curl up on the couch and sleep by the fire that was still flickering under the mantel, but Emma wasn’t done with the snow yet. Oh, no, she wanted to go out again, back into that white rush of energy and space to zip on her sled into the cosmos. And I didn’t blame her. I just felt too heavy to go back into that lethargic world just yet.
“I’ll be out in a bit,” I told her, as she pulled back on her hat that still dripped with melted snow. “Just be careful. It’s getting dark.”
“And you say I act like the mom,” Emma giggled, and she kissed my cheek and brought a rush of color back into my drained face before skipping out through the doorway and kicking slush from the step as she hummed to herself. No kiss on the lips in that hurry back into the tempest, where the snow was beginning to pick up again and fall in hyperactive puffs through the atmosphere.
I tried to relax while the embers sighed and glowed and glittered in front of me, casting orange shadows across my lowered brow. Even sprawled on the couch, I felt as if my muscles were turning to rock, my legs and arms set in awkward positions as the fibers constricted in my fingers. I felt increasingly rigid, tense, moreso than I had felt as the curtain first pulled away upon the scene of my play back in that small theater in San Francisco. This had to be what true anxiety was like. Truly honest, yet frivolous anxiety. It burned in my arms and legs and my throat and I felt as if I had heartburn that had decided, fuck it, I want to set every part of her on fire. I moved away from the couch, away from the fireplace, as I moved to the window as the snow became the only scattered light while the sun snuck behind the hills and snickered at me from its hiding spot.
There was my Elven queen, tresses flying beneath her woolen cap, her winter crown. I let my breath fog up the window, as I panted like a dog deprived of a bone, deprived of drink. Emma moved to and fro along the hill, dragging a sled that was growing sluggish from an impending snowy downfall. For a moment, I saw her turn her head as if looking straight at me, and I didn’t know if she could see me there, her wife standing as if drunk against the pane, tempted to press her lips against the frosted glass while I left dirty fingerprints beside my desperate attempt to kiss her again.
She was already on the sled preparing her next descent when I temporarily turned from the window. The fire must have completely gone out, for it was much colder and I could sense a blizzard impending outside as if I were an old man allegedly feeling it in his bones. The night was literally threatening to swallow the cabin whole, and I rushed to get more newspaper to reenergize the darkening fireplace. Emma would have to come inside soon, before the snowfall got too heavy. Maybe then we could sit on the couch and drink cocoa and this burning sensation over me like a manic fever would finally subside.
Outside I heard Emma laughing before suddenly it was cut off, and I felt the hair bristle on my head until I heard someone else laughing. A man’s laugh, cut in the middle of a guffaw and a chuckle as if not knowing which way to travel from its creator’s throat. I moved back to the window and stared through the frost, watching the blurry silhouette move toward Emma and lift her out of the snowbank she had collapsed into. Robert had decided to pay a visit.
Robert met with Emma and me for breakfast. He seemed fascinated enough talking to both Emma and me equally, which gave me a strange feeling of comfort as I focused on my Belgian waffle. He had taken us from our cabin to a nice enough little diner on the edge of the town, even agreeing to pay for our meal as a sort of welcome to Shasta.
“My father always believed in hospitality,” he told us as he worked on his third cup of coffee; he was beginning to remind me more and more of Hudd in terms of his eating habits. “He would tell me that there wasn’t enough of this in this day and age. We as a society aren’t too good at it, you know?”
“I can agree with that,” I mumbled, finishing off a bite and downing it with an obligatory glass of milk. Robert grinned at that.
“See, you know. That’s why I feel like I need to do my part. Like with you guys.”
“We really appreciate it,” Emma replied. Whether or not I wanted to, I mentally agreed with her with a curt nod.
At this, Robert set down his cup and leaned toward us as if to tell us a secret. “By the way, and I don’t know if you girls have heard this from anybody else,” he said, “but you guys make a really cute couple.”
Emma naturally blushed. My lips split open with an unprecedented grin.
“I mean it, too,” Robert added. “And I’m happy to say it without getting evil stares. Comes with the state being a bit more progressive than others, you know?”
“Why do you think we stay here?” I replied, and the two of us shared an overly hearty laugh over it. I was already starting to act like a fellow guy friend around him. Old habits died hard.
We parted ways outside the diner while the snow gathered like dust around our heels, and Emma yanked at my sleeve and pointed towards the slopes behind the buildings. Robert grinned and gave yet another thumbs-up, which seemed to be another token of his, as Emma and I practically skipped to the car with the prospect of a big blanket of soft snow waiting for us on the other side.
***
Old habits indeed died hard. I had always acted like one of the guys, in terms of fashion, attitude, and interaction. In high school, my two best friends were guys. In college, it was a similar pattern. True, I had my fair share of female friends, but most of them were either the kind of friend who only seemed to appreciate my company in the classroom, or they were straight tomboys who shared similar behavior patterns with me but were still able to cling to societal norms by subsequently clinging to men.
I knew I was gay as soon as I was in college and I let my friends know it. My guy friends seemed to take it all in stride, and in truth, it gave me a stronger excuse to go out drinking with the guys and talk about “hot chicks” on the same level. While at first it was a bit awkward for the select few of my buddies, more of them were even eager to give me advice on girls, though some of their remarks on females versus males were completely overturned by the fact that I was sitting there with them in the pub, taking down bottle after bottle of Heineken while complaining about the same flaws of my own gender. According to my guy friends with the bigger gift of intellectual and a bigger vocabulary, I was a walking antithesis of what women even stood for.
I didn’t mind. I had my feminine moments and I knew they made good points. Still, it didn’t stop me from trying to be as freelance as the guys, especially sexually. There were times that the men would even take me to bars where they knew there were regular patrons who were lesbians, or at least “lesbians until graduation,” or L.U.G.S. Some of my more sick-minded friends would arrive with their digital cameras in order to tape me and whoever I had picked up for the night, but I’d take the girl’s hand and slip away in my car to my apartment where they couldn’t catch up with me and the doors were locked. Granted, I was not a player; I saved sex for those I truly had my heart set out for. Three had seen me in my true state in the bedroom, and three had walked away silently, as if ashamed.
Because even though I acted like one of the guys, I was not one of the guys. With those women, I was forcing them to step across a balance beam, where falling was simply suicide. We were crossing lines, taking risks, overthrowing an extreme order of society and its functions. I was upsetting that order simply by existing, by practicing the feelings I had, and by not subduing them.
I was not one of the men. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me from being tormented by the typical thoughts that a married man would have. Because no matter what, I was the husband in the relationship, and Emma was on that balance beam with me, and if I teetered, I would take both of us down to the hard, unwelcoming ground.
***
We went sledding the second day we were at the cabin because the snow was thick and heavy but damp enough to slip and slide in as if through cotton. The flakes had stopped dropping in wet clumps, twisting into my hair like loose feathers weighed down by the storm, and I saw the hillsides rise up in white glory like they were swelling up and breathing in the winter air. Emma was already out with the sled by the time I had pulled my gloves on and stumbled my way into the snow that threatened to swallow me up from the knees down. I watched her as she disappeared into a cloud of fine powder, emerging coated in the stuff and giggling as if she were a kid playing outside again.
I took the sled from her and we went up the hill together, our boots leaving deep holes in the sleet we trudged through. I sucked the cold, damp wind between my teeth, swallowed it down like an iced beverage, and propped myself behind Emma as she sat on the edge of the sled. She squealed as I wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled her toward me, my gloves heavy and wet against her jacket. We held that position for a moment or so, a single fleeting moment, before we were flying in a field of white and catching the clouds as the sled zipped down its pre-designed racetrack. We tumbled into a bush together, laughing and holding each other but not kissing for fear that our lips would frost over and fuse together. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing after all, I thought to myself, and I thought I’d mention it to Emma but she was already racing back up the hill, sled in tow.
There was something about this kind of winter that calmed the entire world around it, how everything the snow touched seemed to fade into a peaceful meditation. It wasn’t often that we, in our restless environments, had time to truly sleep, to find peace in a few hours of dreams and imaginary galaxies for us to walk across. But in an endless realm of white, a kingdom of ice and frost and spiraling turrets descending from the roofs and walls of our makeshift fortifications, we could truly slumber – we could dream – and we could forget. This was our snow globe, and the hand that shook the powder up around us in a crazed frenzy could only settle us in that whirlwind of winter wonder. In that whirlwind, we could finally rest.
At least, that what’s I hoped, as I kissed Emma on the forehead after her ninth trip down the hill on our very own Rosebud. We went inside and treated ourselves to French onion soup from a bag of mix since neither of us were willing to bring actual ingredients for that. Emma promised me a real meal once we got back, one not at a diner or a restaurant like we were always tempted to do in this cold. And with the warmth in our bellies, I felt the urge to curl up on the couch and sleep by the fire that was still flickering under the mantel, but Emma wasn’t done with the snow yet. Oh, no, she wanted to go out again, back into that white rush of energy and space to zip on her sled into the cosmos. And I didn’t blame her. I just felt too heavy to go back into that lethargic world just yet.
“I’ll be out in a bit,” I told her, as she pulled back on her hat that still dripped with melted snow. “Just be careful. It’s getting dark.”
“And you say I act like the mom,” Emma giggled, and she kissed my cheek and brought a rush of color back into my drained face before skipping out through the doorway and kicking slush from the step as she hummed to herself. No kiss on the lips in that hurry back into the tempest, where the snow was beginning to pick up again and fall in hyperactive puffs through the atmosphere.
I tried to relax while the embers sighed and glowed and glittered in front of me, casting orange shadows across my lowered brow. Even sprawled on the couch, I felt as if my muscles were turning to rock, my legs and arms set in awkward positions as the fibers constricted in my fingers. I felt increasingly rigid, tense, moreso than I had felt as the curtain first pulled away upon the scene of my play back in that small theater in San Francisco. This had to be what true anxiety was like. Truly honest, yet frivolous anxiety. It burned in my arms and legs and my throat and I felt as if I had heartburn that had decided, fuck it, I want to set every part of her on fire. I moved away from the couch, away from the fireplace, as I moved to the window as the snow became the only scattered light while the sun snuck behind the hills and snickered at me from its hiding spot.
There was my Elven queen, tresses flying beneath her woolen cap, her winter crown. I let my breath fog up the window, as I panted like a dog deprived of a bone, deprived of drink. Emma moved to and fro along the hill, dragging a sled that was growing sluggish from an impending snowy downfall. For a moment, I saw her turn her head as if looking straight at me, and I didn’t know if she could see me there, her wife standing as if drunk against the pane, tempted to press her lips against the frosted glass while I left dirty fingerprints beside my desperate attempt to kiss her again.
She was already on the sled preparing her next descent when I temporarily turned from the window. The fire must have completely gone out, for it was much colder and I could sense a blizzard impending outside as if I were an old man allegedly feeling it in his bones. The night was literally threatening to swallow the cabin whole, and I rushed to get more newspaper to reenergize the darkening fireplace. Emma would have to come inside soon, before the snowfall got too heavy. Maybe then we could sit on the couch and drink cocoa and this burning sensation over me like a manic fever would finally subside.
Outside I heard Emma laughing before suddenly it was cut off, and I felt the hair bristle on my head until I heard someone else laughing. A man’s laugh, cut in the middle of a guffaw and a chuckle as if not knowing which way to travel from its creator’s throat. I moved back to the window and stared through the frost, watching the blurry silhouette move toward Emma and lift her out of the snowbank she had collapsed into. Robert had decided to pay a visit.
The novel ends here.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 9th, 2010.
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