Little house in a big town

“I fear that from this moment on, you will hate me forever. But I have decided to be very frank.” The old man leans his small head against the muscular shoulder of the young man. He caresses his friend’s supple, athletic body with his fingertips. He follows the lines of the rib cage, he strokes the tiny rubbery nipples.

“I am not a renowned criminal lawyer at all, as I have always told you. I have no law degree. I have no experience in the judicial system. Nor do I ever go to court. Let alone provide legal advice to clients, or do research current affairs,” the elderly man whispers.

The younger man has closed his eyes. Like his lover, he is naked. A single sheet covers part of his body. The table lamp on the nightstand spreads pleasant copper-colored light through the area, giving the elements in the bedroom an elegant character. The velvet headboard, the pastel-colored quilt, the emerald, green curtains.

“In everyday life I am a clergyman,” the gray man confesses. “I am the pastor of a parish in a village in the countryside. If you were to meet me, you would not recognize me. Every day of the week, I am dressed very stately, formerly. I wear a black jacket, combined with charcoal-colored waistcoat and dark anthracite trousers.”

Through the closed curtains, muffled sounds of the city can be heard. Buses, honking taxis, loud music, cooing pigeons.

“When I met you so many months ago, I decided to be candid,” the cleric admits. “Why would I lie to you? Lovers have no secrets from each other, do they? But when you told me during our first conversations about your childhood, about your religious upbringing, about your realization that you were different from the rest of your family, about your class mates, about your discovery that you were attracted to boys and men, about the disgust of those around you when it came to homosexuality, about the suppression of your feelings, then I decided to keep quiet.” The shepherd runs his hand through the soft, velvet like hairdo of his loved one.

“The moment I saw you for the first time, I knew immediately that you were someone like them,” sighs the sleepy man. He yawns, he rubs the sleep from his dull eyes. “You are exactly like my father, my uncles, my neighbors, my elders. The same hairstyle, the same look, the same clothes, the same language, the smell. But above all. The same hypocrisy, the same insincerity. Like you were all cut from the same cloth,” explains the young lover.

Meanwhile, his hands glide over the pale, thin body of the older man. Lovingly he strokes the small round birthmarks, the gray-white hair, the fragile blue veins, the pale shoulders.

“That’s why I decided to pretend to be a barrister,” the older lover says. “Deep down in my heart, which is what I wanted to be. It seems like an honorable profession. To follow the law. But I come from a family of ministers. My grandfather, my father. They were preachers as well. And since I am the eldest son in the family, the choice was more or less made for me. I was meant to be.”

His gaze drifts over the wallpaper on the wall opposite the dark blue box spring bed. The pink and mint green stripes, the exuberant floral patterns. The colors, that atmosphere. After all these times, it has become so familiar, so nostalgic, so safe, so sentimental.

“I know that from now on you will hate me for good, but I have decided to be open-hearted anyway,” the modern man mutters. He sits up. His stiff back leans against the headboard. “My reason for getting involved with you was that I wanted revenge. Vengeance on my youth, retribution on my family. And you seemed to be the easiest and nearby victim. I would make you fall madly in love with me. I would make sure that you could no longer live without me. And once I had achieved this, I would dump you. Disdainfully, contemptuously. Just as I was once dumped, left to die.”

“Before I met you for the second time, I immersed myself in my role as a criminal lawyer,” the minster says with a smile. “I learned the jargon, I read about court cases. So that you wouldn’t notice. So that I could play a new person when I was with you.”

“I honestly had to laugh at how much effort you put into pretending to be someone else,” the friend explains. “You wanted to be a lawyer? A legal adviser? A member to the bar? I still do not know what profession you feign to be. When I ask about your work, you keep stuttering and stammering. How you were blushing when I asked for clarification! It was clear to me from the start. You cannot lie. You cannot act. After you visited me the first time, I knew within seconds of Googling, who you really were.”

The young Romeo leans over the man to the bedside table. With a practiced gesture he opens the drawer, takes out a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and an ashtray. He sits down again and lights a cigarette. Thoughtlessly he blows the smoke towards the red glazed bookcase, the white crystal ceiling lamp, the wooden cupboard.

“That was the case in the beginning. You wanted so desperately to go to the pubs, the dance hall, to your friends,” the priest explains. “I was terrified that we would run into a parishioner in the city center. That is why we always went to your place at my request. The little house in the big city, as you affectionately call it,”

“I kept my original plan in my head for a long time,” the young companion grumbles. He taps the ash into the metal ashtray. He stares ahead. “Every time I waved goodbye to you, I knew for sure: next time I will give up. Our next meeting will definitely be the last. I understood how much you were in love with me. How you needed me. To escape that gray, suffocating hell of your family, your marriage, your ministry, your circle of friends, your village.”

“Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable with you,” the vicar mumbles. “Because I do not have to be a minister, a preacher. With you, there is no god, no commandment, no bible, no church council. With you, there is the fun, the enjoyment, the humor, the true life. In this place there is an oasis of individuality and love,”

“I am ashamed of it now. But before, I even toyed with the idea of ​​calling your wife,” the satisfied smoker confesses. “Or someone from the church council. To expose your secret life.”

“Despite the pleasure, despite the love. I’m never completely free,” sighs the venerable man. “Somewhere it keeps gnawing. The lie, the double life. Of course, it consumes me. Every minute of the day it’s like I’m being eaten up inside by shame, by guilt, by disappointment. Apparently, I can’t live the way I want to. Ostensibly, I don’t have the courage to express who I really am,”

“But strangely enough, I never dumped you,” the lovesick young man declared. “I never even considered calling your family. Or a church member. Maybe because of your fumbling, your fiddling with your identity, with your life, with your guilt. I started to like you. I fell in love with you like you fell in love with me. I began looking forward to it. To our secret visits, to our time together in my little house in the big city, to our discussions, our silence.”

“That’s why I think it’s important that I’m open with you,” the pastor concludes. “I want you to realize that I lead a secret life. And that I have not been honest about it with you. Maybe, this is the first step to a whole new living? Perhaps more will follow soon? Maybe you’ll get really angry with me now. Because I’ve been fooling you all this time. Because I have cheated on you. But this is okay for me. Bottom line, I don’t want to lie to you anymore,”

The old partner does not dare to look at his friend. His glasses are on the bedside table. He finds them by touch and puts them on. The younger soul mate puts out the cigarette in the ashtray. He wraps a sheet around himself. He snuggles closer to his bosom buddy.

“Now I am glad I have you. You are like a father to me. As if my memories have taken on a different color because of you. As if my youth is not a torture anymore for me,” the young partner explains.

This is how it always goes. When the lovemaking is over, the old man is the first to get out of bed. He prepares coffee, he makes sandwiches. When he - fifteen minutes later - puts the tray with the fresh food on the mattress, the young man has turned on the TV. The images can be seen on the screen and the title song of their favorite series ‘Little House on the Prairie’ can be heard.