“Do you believe in love spells?”

“What do you mean?” I ask him.

“Would you buy dreams from a haunted place?” He asked me looking into my eyes as if they were open windows and he could see beyond. Maybe in that moment I wished that I could’ve just taken out my camera and taken a clear photo of his intrigued eyes. I actually did wish that, but the problem is that I didn’t do it, I was too shy and a whirlwind of confusing emotions was taking place as we kept walking under all the trees which were shielding the moonlight. It wasn’t that long ago that he asked me, probably in the last two visits.

I pondered on his words for a long while.

I had always wished that I was somehow in a dystopia, something like Battle Royale where I would’ve made it out alive, maybe even Fight Club which just showed the tragedy of life. But my life already had the realistic feel to it, except for the times when I would dissociate for days due to anxiety or depression, back when it was something much more deeper than just being sad. Instead a melancholy came to replace and I pretty much woke up, recalling that moment.

I felt weary of going back. But it was such a usual stop that no one really minded us going there for a few days while I would travel. To make things worse, I would always remember the place because at first I had taken photos of the son, who was an acquaintance of mine. He was a bit younger than me, this happened in his early twenties while I was around my 27. He had awakened something dormant in me, but that I barely paid attention would’ve been an understatement frankly. I recall taking out my cock and jerking off when we were done with the photo shoot. I knew I had been into men, I was some twisted late bloomer, or at least I saw myself that way.

Afterwards, unsatisfied, I was too terrified to even go somewhere to cruise so I pretty much did what someone more experienced would. I downloaded the app and went for a quick fuck. I didn’t last long from being new to men and the guy didn’t either from the thought of fucking some straight guy. I don’t know what joy do the newly discovered gays bring because my blow job should’ve been the sloppiest thing ever.

Then I was reborn. I thought I was purely gay for a long while, using the same app but struggling to get hold of anyone to date and there was always some kind of fear holding me back. I did some friends with benefits with a few but that barely lasted. As I learned there was a higher demand for sex and the more I went the more I saw how others would settle with women. I seemed to despise that until my own turn came.

It was all prearranged, it felt as if my own parents knew what the hell I was doing which caused them to convince me to meet this girl who was fairly younger. I had slipped out that this girl wanted to meet me because she enjoyed my work. Sure, my work had its fair homoerotic touch but what were a few years of discovery compared to many of thinking straight?

I had gone reluctantly to her, terrified that she was just someone else who enjoyed the dream among men only to twist it. But who was I to speak when I would enjoy lesbian porn like the next guy would? It was a very thin line from dragging it into reality.

I remember when I came out I ended up talking to a friend, or rather a guy I was crushing on, but he had confessed to barely holding onto girlfriends, and I was too drunk to notice my flirty connotations slipping by me. He had noticed, a better drinker than I was. The height what seemed to him was dragging two girls with him to bed, something a roommate of his did in first year. I didn’t understand the thrill, because I just saw the other side of the coin and something just irked me. So that’s how I ended up abstaining from different gender threesomes. Hell, I never got caught up in a same-gender one either.

Then I met with the said girl. She was way above age of consent but there was something far too youthful about her, still. It was some innocence which I couldn’t understand or capture properly until I started taking photos of her. Both in the nude, which I kept to myself, and others which I would showcase. She was in love with me, I could tell. I enjoyed her. It felt strange to be flattered most of the time, one sort of mild groupie. Once allowed, or once I felt confident rather, I let her go through all my photos besides a few, the really explicit ones with men. But I wanted to believe that she knew.

That night she had kissed me in my small studio and we had sex. It wasn’t like I was a complete stranger to women but it messed my head a lot. It seemed like closing one tap was harmful only to close the other to have the same effect.

There was something terrifying about admitting to be queer, not gay. It felt that I should’ve settled already by now, so I just smoked with the window opened, looking outside and then back at her, not caring about the smoke filling up the house. But then with all the university students taking up all the housing for a few years, I was positive and even sure that worse things happened inside the walls.

We started dating because we both wanted to and I seemed to have fallen down the rabbit hole where I never admitted what I had been doing to my parents, as if they were patting me on the back that just like any other bisexual or queer I had gone back after fooling around. That bothered me, I never spoke up but then neither did they.

That’s when I visited again. It felt strange to walk inside the house, which was more than suited mostly for summer weather considering the climate more than enough. Rather, we visited. It felt strange to admit that I had a girl under my arm and wing. She was starting to dwell into photography herself.

The first time I came I was awestruck by the dad. I had known the son for a long while and knowing from who he had come from. That’s why even talking to him seemed surreal. Hearing a question about love was unique. Was I in love? I was infatuated for sure but if she weren’t in love with me… Would I have gotten a potion just to make sure she would be? I thought of it silently as we both remained silent on our trip there on the bus. It was a small detour, which we both insisted on doing this summer, knowing who the dad was. Was it bad to be awestruck? I wasn’t entirely sure. I kept glancing at my girlfriend, she was one to be too idle and kept her feelings to herself, so if I were to make another move, it would only be up to me. That’s something I didn’t really understand. All the mechanisms which seemed to be underwater and all this guide book. I missed men in that aspect, but I couldn’t say that I wasn’t happy. Or was I? I wasn’t sure anymore.

But if I were to give someone a love potion… Who would that be? I wasn’t entirely sure what was even going on in my head and all the buzz was gone after I woke up from a rather rough shove, I was quite a heavy sleeper, from my girlfriend. Now I felt alive and neurotic, full of fear of seeing him again. He felt like a psychologist, seeing a person right through his lens and always asking about love, since that’s all we really care about.

We all want to be loved and somehow be the one with the golden ticket of the best true love of the century. Isn’t that how the belief goes? Maybe I had lost that ticket. But I didn’t know what was even going on in my head. I just felt disjointed, paying models more and more, trying to find the whole idea behind photos. I was taking more photos of people, trying to find something. I even dabbled again into homoeroticism, trying to find myself, but I felt nothing, maybe I was really preferring women all over again. It felt like a constant struggle. It was really my mind versus matter. I didn’t want to be myself at all. It was just a small scab, yet I ended up itching it until it became a full fleshed wound. I didn’t want anything to do with myself, I didn’t want my sexuality somehow. We walked in silence, as she basked the surroundings and I smoked.

We had been in silence recently a lot. I knew it was my fault and sometimes I would go on for a long while, just lost in my thoughts. I didn’t know what was really happening to me. Sometimes I would quit mid photoshoot and would leave it as such. There was something going on with me.

“Yeah.” I had said. “If I knew who I’d want to fall in love with me.”

He smirked lightly and we just kept walking. His camera was in his hands, as always while mine was dangling around my neck. It was hard to find beauty in everything for me, specifically when I felt young and trembling. I felt so uncertain, as if I were a teenager all over again. Days pass by plenty with fear and uncertainty and so does the walk to his house. It’s always been a walk from the bus, but I always insisted on walking, because the place was so beautiful and it’s not like I ever took too many clothes with us. I was always a light packer, something my girlfriend found hard to grasp. I would end up with her backpack and she would carry my own lightweight one, also I would push the suitcase behind me.

She was in awe and I just looked at her, from the corner of my eye. If she weren’t in love with me… Would I have found that place just to make her love me the way she does? I don’t think so. I lit a cigarette and offered her one, to which she politely declined, insisting that we should both cut down on the smoking, but I didn’t really listen much to her concerns when it came to that.

I wish I knew who I was. I wish I would somehow find peace with myself, but it wasn’t coming, instead I would get insomnia and I would smoke with the window open, barely looking at the girlfriend after some passionate fucking, she would fall asleep nearly instantly, causing me to just hold her until she would do so. Then I would sit up and let my thoughts grasp my neck harder, like a noose waiting for the chair to be kicked from under my feet. I had no idea how to relax either, instead everything seemed like a recipe for stress and disaster. The closer we went to the house, the more nervous I seemed to be, I would’ve hugged myself when I saw his face again, but instead I just let it be. The girlfriend was overjoyed, kissing his cheeks far too enthusiastically, as I just shook his hand firmly, then fixing my hair and he let us in. The son was out, he had mentioned earlier, when I called to say we would be arriving.

I couldn’t help but still think of the question he asked me once more. We only got some time to ourselves in the forest, closer to the night, when the light was far from the greatest but he insisted on talking some photos of me. My hair had overgrown, which I apologized for, saying that I had too many things on my mind and I noticed that he had started dying his hair instead of letting it go salt and pepper.

He held my chin and snapped a quick photo.

“Would you buy a 99 cents dream?” I asked him back, finally. His hand dropped and he snapped another photo, focusing more on the forest around us, letting me be the background to the beautiful trees. Then he held the camera in his hands and smiled, looking at me. We were roughly the same height, but obviously he was much older, but only now I noticed some wrinkles around his eyes, he had held his age somehow. He barely aged.

“I would.” He said and let the camera now finally hang around his neck, putting his hands in his pockets, knowing that I had plenty of other questions to ask.

“Would it be your wife?” I asked cautiously, wondering if there was some secret lover I would get a glimpse of. He had plenty of photos of many different people through out his entire life, which always made me wonder, with whom had he slept with. Who was it really? I quickly went through all of the photos which came to me in my mind, but no one really stood out, once he shook his head to my subtle shock.

Maybe there was something in never loving wives. I didn’t know. Maybe there was something to being with one person forever and only them, I wasn’t so sure. I wanted to cross my arms, but instead I just stood there, waiting for an explanation.

“Wouldn’t that be the point…” He picked up the camera up and examined it all over again, as if he had just bought it. “That if it’s a dream, that we should choose someone we have no chance with whatsoever?”

“But what would you risk in return?” I asked, looking at him examining the camera, sure it was old, but it was something which made him enough money to live away from civilization in pure comfort for so many years and that led him sane somehow.

“Haven’t I already?” He smiled.

–

I actually ended up waking up at 6 a.m. today with the whole setting for the story, the trees, summer and the whole relationship mess. The opening lines were in my phone for a long while for a different story, but I felt stubborn and I had really wanted to write, so I stared at my notes which included the opening lines and stole them from the other story and started writing this one.

The fact that there are no names is intentional and I miss writing such stories. I’m currently holding at hostage a different story, which will be the next one I’ll be posting as it’s long. They both have a similar setting and feel to them, but this one is different obviously.

I’ve also been flip flopping around struggling with accepting being queer from gay, so my own musings went inside the story as well as insecurities.

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed it, don’t hesitate to tell me so.