Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

Another heart in a different scene	By : fundamellie Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Pet Shop Boys Views: 1122 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the celebrity I am writing about. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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They walked in silence, taking Queensway and Bayswater Road until they entered Hyde Park by the Victoria Gate. Neil noted that Rebecca had not taken his arm this time, whether it was because she was simply lost in her own thoughts or to keep some distance, he did not really want to know. He just knew that he wished she had.
It was a lovely day; cold but sunny with a brilliant blue sky. Only a handful of tiny clouds drifted by on the horizon and half of London seemed to be on its feet.
The grass was crowed by kids playing football or chasing after Frisbee’s or adults walking their dogs. Most of the benches were taken up by elderly people or tourists, leafing through their copies of ‘London A-Z’. It was noisy but pleasantly so.
Neil found all the activity around him somewhat reassuring.
“So, what kind of questions did you have?” he finally asked, just to break the silence.
“Hmm?” Rebecca looked enquiringly at him, obviously somewhere else in her mind.
“Oh yes, the questions. Okay! But before I start, please tell me if I get too personal. I really don’t want to upset you again.”
He nodded, feeling a little weary.
“You said that you knew that you were gay from when you were quite young.
How did you find out? How old were you?”
He exhaled sharply and ran a hand over his head. He looked at her over the rim of his glasses and tried to figure out why the hell she had asked that question.
“How did I find out? Oh dear, that’s some story! I guess, I must have been about
9 years old back then,” he began and chuckled when he heard her gasp of surprise.
“So young?” she asked and he could hear the slight shock in her voice.
“Yeah, but don’t worry, it had no sexual dimensions at all.”
She laughed softly and took his arm again, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
Feeling a little more at ease, Neil began again.
“As I said, I must have been 9, in my last year of junior school. I remember waiting for the school bus in the morning at the end of our road. It could have been any morning but I think it was late August. It was getting a bit chilly to wait there in your short trousers. Anyway, the bus arrived and I was a bit nervous to get on it.
You see, I was not very popular in class and the guys who teased me were always on that bus, too. So I got in at the front door and stood there for a moment, looking for an empty seat I could take. And then I saw him.”
Neil paused, obviously reliving the moment very vividly.
“Then I saw him,” he repeated in a much lower voice. “He sat in the seat directly behind the driver. He was new; at least I had never seen him before. He was about two years older than me, dark-haired, pale skin. That slightly upper-class look about him that would make most of his class-mates despise him. I… I know it sounds weird but I remember that he had very dark brown eyes and that his lips were full. He had his backpack on his knees and looked directly at me. I was thunderstruck. Rooted to the spot. He… He was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I guess, you could say that I had fallen head over heels with him, but I didn’t know that back then. I didn’t have the words for what I felt.
Then someone shouted something at me and most kids laughed, so I moved on and sat down next to a girl from my class. I was so embarrassed. I was confused. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I would wait for the bus every morning for at least 4 months or so, always hoping to catch a glimpse of him. He always sat behind the driver’s seat and he always looked at me. But we never spoke a word. I still don’t even know his name.” He drew in a deep breath and Rebecca for once did not interrupt him.
“I got really moody over that. Sort of obsessed. When I tried to sleep I saw his face in my mind. I tried to figure out his name in class. I didn’t have any idea about… sex back then; I just dreamt that we would sit and talk together. That he would be my friend and that everybody envied me because of that. I dreamt… that he would smile at me and maybe take my hand. It was a bad crush, a really bad crush,” he concluded, trying to sound flippant about it but failing miserably.
“My parents soon noticed that something was wrong with me, but I wouldn’t tell them what. Somehow I felt that this was something I better kept secret. I don’t even know why, I just knew instinctively that it would get me in trouble if I spoke about it. Then, one evening my Mum and Dad were having some kind of row over dinner.
My sister Susan had brought a story-book home which my father considered to be ‘indecent’. I didn’t really understand what it was it about; just that Susan was pretty upset that he wanted to forbid her to read the stories. Then later, then they thought that we kids were in bed I sneaked down the stairs and overheard more of their quarrel. I heard my father say ‘They let her read Oscar Wilde at school! If that is not indecent, then I don’t know what is! They didn’t send that pervert to prison for nothing!’ My mum tried to hush him up but the next thing I heard was my father saying `He was a homosexual!’ I remember that I suddenly felt very cold standing on the staircase in my pyjamas. Cold and very, very uneasy, as if I had just seen something incredibly disgusting. I tip-toed upstairs and hid underneath my blanket.
I didn’t even know most of the words my father had used but somehow they all sounded wrong. It was some days later, on a Sunday afternoon, when my parents were not at home that I dared to take out Dad’s old dictionary and looked up all the words. I was horrified but I even read the short article about Oscar Wilde.” He looked at her for emphasis.
“You know, these were the 60’s, my parents were very strict and catholic and I was very religious at the time, I took it quite seriously. Sin and confession and all that. Anyway, this was not your modern dictionary where `homosexual’ might be defined as ‘a person, either male or female who is physically or emotionally drawn to partners of the same sex’. It was very explicit about how evil it was to be homosexual; that it was one of the worst sins possible. That was all bad enough but in the article about Oscar they said that he was ‘very fond of younger men’ and even wrote ‘abnormal’ poetry praising their beauty. I thought ‘That’s me; that’s exactly how I feel about the guy on the school bus!’ I locked myself in my room for the rest of the day and cried. I just couldn’t stop. I was so afraid. Totally horrified, I didn’t want to be a sinner and disappoint my parents. I did not want to be something that people were so disgusted with. Something that people got send to prison for. I didn’t want to go to prison. So I never looked at the black-haired boy again, I said Hail Mary’s for every time I caught myself thinking about him. I used to kneel in front of my bed after my mother put the lights out and pray endlessly. After a while I managed to bury those feeling for him deep inside my mind, then I started to kiss girls behind the library shelves and I had convinced myself that I was not gay.”
He drew another deep breath and pushed his glasses a little further up his nose.
“So, now you know how I found out.”
Rebecca did not say anything for a long time. Then suddenly she stopped and stepped in Neil’s way. She looked at him and then hugged him impulsively.
“That sounds pretty scary. And lonely. Can I go on asking some questions or are you fed up now?”
He returned the hug a little self-consciously and laughed.
“No, it’s okay. Really. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I survived after all.”
“Stupid git!” She boxed him gently and took his arm once more.
“So, you found out when you were 9, then when you were a teenager you said you slept around with your friends regardless of their sex, right?” she mused. When she saw Neil nodding his agreement, she went on. “So why did you have your first boyfriend that late? I mean, you were in the middle of your 30’s… And you once told me that you didn’t have any real relations in the 80’s. What kept you?”
“Ow,” he winced. “You always hit it right at the core, huh?” He fiddled with his glasses again and then fell silent for a moment.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded measured, as if he was trying to keep the emotions behind the words in check.
“What kept me? Well, the same as before: Fear. Okay, I had lost my faith in religion by then, but I still did not want to belong to the gay community. I didn’t want to be ‘it’. When I first moved to London, at the end of the 70’s I had a bad crush on my best friend. You know, Jeffrey? We lived together with a couple of other friends and he was out queer and even though I had a girlfriend, I was secretly in love with him. I never told him. I ended my relation because of that. Needless to say that it was all very complicated and tragic.” He added with a wry smile. “It didn’t work out. After a while the girl and I made up again and when we finally split, I was fed up with relations and never wanted to have one again. Then I met Chris and for a while put all of my energy into that friendship and into writing songs. And then…”
He paused, looking troubled. “And then the AIDS crisis began. And once again I was afraid and had another reason not wanting to be gay. Jeff told me in `85 that he was positive. It was like my whole world was crashing down around me. I took it very badly. I felt guilty. I was angry. With him. For being so stupid to catch this virus.
For getting himself killed like this. We didn’t know very much about this illness back then, just that it was tricky and that it was deadly and that suddenly politicians and religious leaders alike were openly homophobic, calling us ‘scum’ and things.
Saying that it was what we deserved, that it was all God’s will. It was very frightening. So there was I; emotionally still a complete mess, fearing that Jeff would eventually end up like those guys in America we saw in the papers. Those guys who looked like skeletons when they died. Fearing that I would catch this illness as well. For a while I was convinced that I actually was positive, though of course I had not done a test. I thought…” His voice trailed off and Rebecca squeezed his arm reassuringly.
“That you must have caught it because you had slept around when you were a teenager?” She asked softly. He nodded and swallowed hard a couple of times.
“Yes, sort of.”
“That explains why you were scared but why did you say you felt guilty? I mean, it was not your fault that Jeff got ill.”
“No, it wasn’t. I felt guilty because… When we were young, Jeff and I always had those dreams together that we would be different than the rest. That we would not have the same boring lives like everybody else. No 9-5 jobs. That we were somehow destined to have those glamorous lives.” He smiled a sad smile and when went on.
“And suddenly it was all coming true for me. I was in a band, we had number one singles; we travelled around the world. We got fan mail; everybody invited us to their parties; we stayed in fancy hotels. And at the very same time Jeffrey got ill, got told that he would die! It was all so unfair! I wanted to share everything with him, because he had always been there, he had always believed in me and then instead of going to those fabulous parties with me, he was ill in hospital! I didn’t want the fame and the success. I felt that Jeff was paying the price for me. I almost threw it all away. If it hadn’t been for Chris, ‘Please’ would have been our only album.
But I went on and it was great. But when I was alone at night in my hotel room, those thoughts came back to haunt me. I used to cry myself to sleep back then;
I felt so lonely. It was all insane, really. My best friend was slowly dying and we posed for ‘Smash Hits’!” He made a little sarcastic sound, which was not really a laugh. “Then Jeff died in `89 and then… Then we are almost here. You know the rest. About Tom and Dean and that last disaster”
“Wow, that was some story!” Rebecca commented. “I’m sorry; maybe I should not have bothered you with my stupid questions. I was just nosey. I just always want to know what makes people tick but I had no idea…”
This time Neil stopped and took both of her hands in his. He kissed the tip of her nose, hoping it would make her smile again. It did the trick and he smiled as well.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. If I had not wanted to answer your questions, I would have told you!”
She nodded. “Okay. One last thing, though. You said that running away and pretending that you are something you are not was no longer an option for you. Then why would you rather pretend that… you are not attracted to me? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to put you under pressure. I mean, the fact that we are friends is enough reason not to do anything about that anyway. But I was just thinking…
I mean, you are what you are, obviously. Would having feelings for a girl really change that much?” She looked at him earnestly, searching his face for a clue at how he felt about it. Neil just starred back at her, at a total loss for words. She let go of his hands and turned to go on walking. She had sensed that somehow she had hit a nerve of his again and that it was possibly better to let him brood over that for a while.
“Come on now, let’s get back. It must be getting late and I’m absolutely starving. What about take-away dinner at my place? From that little Indian thingy?”
He nodded slowly and caught up with her, taking her arm again. He was only too glad to let the conversation change into mindless gossip and small-talk over movies and plays they had seen, or what people had worn at this and that party and how Katie Price was an absolute laugh. They walked back a little way, along the Serpentine and crossed the Long Water, went past Serpentine Gallery and finally left the park. This time they followed Kensington Church Street back to Nottinghill.
They got their dinner at the small Indian corner restaurant and went back to Rebecca’s flat, still chatting about unimportant things.
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Another heart in a different scene