Chapter 2
Vanished

 

Dane flushed the toilet and then turned around. He took a step but stopped, as he suddenly realised he was whistling softly. He was not whistling a song or a tune but rather, he was subconsciously involved in one of those times when good feelings made a person whistle for no rational reason. He chuckled softly then began to move again.

 

Stepping across to the other side of the room, he turned on the tap and rinsed his hands beneath the cool water streaming into the basin. He shook them and then wiped them on a nearby towel. He was about to leave the bathroom but then he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was handsome and quite the sight, as he stood naked in the tiled room beneath a bright light. His study of his reflection was not a look of self-admiration; it was a look of surprise. Dane had noticed the vitality in his eyes and it had easily caught his attention.

 

For quite a few years Dane’s eyes had been somewhat dull and lifeless. There had been something missing from his life and he felt it had lessened the man he was. In that way, the brightness in his once-captivating blue eyes had become lacklustre and tired. As he stared at the change in his eyes, a smile formed on his face. It was not an amused smile. It was pleased and even happy and that awareness brought with it a thought.

 

“Only one thing in my life has changed to cause this alteration of my appearance and it’s the man lying naked on my bed down the hall.”

 

Dane grinned at his thought. There was a sense of absurdity about the thought but still he could not deny that the stranger, a man he knew nothing about and who also unnerved him, had to be the reason for this sudden change. Additionally, the stranger was the cause of the feelings that seemed to be continuing to lift his mood.

 

Everything about what had occurred with the stranger was unlikely. Every choice Dane had made and every action he had taken that afternoon, which had brought him to this moment, were anomalous, unconventional and unfamiliar to his standard life. He thought the whole unfolding was bizarre, freakish and mystifying. Additional adjectives slid silently through his mind in regard to how far he had stepped away from himself, however, for some odd reason where the man was concerned, Dane could not bring himself to care.

 

“Take it slowly and don’t let your vain hopes blow things out of proportion. Maybe something could come of this but he’s not a standard man. He’s like no one you’ve ever met or been attracted to and then there’s that raw and unrefined side that you know is dangerous. Be careful,” he whispered quietly, not wanting his words to carry down the hall.

 

Turning while unable to stop a feeling of growing excitement, Dane crossed the room, opened the door and as he began to walk the short hallway, he tried to compose his demeanour with a façade of confidence. As he turned into his bedroom, he stopped in his tracks and stared at the mess of sheets strewn across the bed. The bed was empty.

 

For a moment Dane’s face was curious and he looked around the room, sure that the man would be standing off to his side. The room was as it always appeared but without the other person he was expecting to see. Confused yet not too concerned, he turned and looked down the hall toward the living room.

 

He called out, “Are you there?”

 

No reply followed and his curious expression gave way to an unsettled appearance. He walked to the living room and looked around but it was empty as well. He considered the kitchen but then turned toward the front door. For a moment he thought it was closed but then he realised it was slightly ajar. His face fell and the brightness left his eyes once more.

 

Confused while growing angry, he walked to the door and pulled it open. He looked out onto the veranda, scanning to see if the man was outside. He heard the wooden boards of his house creak, as they contracted with the deepening of night. The thing that concerned him, though, the isolated feeling he felt within the stillness and emptiness of the veranda.

 

He stepped outside while still naked but his emotions laid waste to his usual unwillingness to be naked outdoors, even if it was late at night. He stopped at the stairs leading down into the yard and he looked up and down the street. Anzac Parade was a main road, which ran all the way from the coast to the edge of the city. Dane was not surprised by how lifeless it seemed, simply because of the time of night and the fact he lived at the coast-end of the road. Either way, he did not care about his lack of apparel because the missing man was all that was on his mind. Nothing looked back at him, except for trees and tar and telephone poles, all shrouded in darkness while lightly bathed in the bluish haze of the moon. The street and all its surrounds were quiet while devoid of movement.

 

The disappointed sigh that sailed from between his parted lips, could have given rise to the concept of an epic novel about frustration, that is, if anyone had been there to hear it. He felt an ache in his chest that he did not understand clearly or at least, to its full degree. A single thought told him to dismiss the entire event but as he turned, despite his mind’s suggestion, he felt a true hurt within. He returned inside his home and closed the door.

 

An unexpected thought went through his mind and he ran to his bedroom to check his wallet. He found it where he had left it, four hundred dollars untouched and still within its folds. He fell onto his bed in a seated position, his head hanging low and the disappointment rising once again.

 

Dane tried to tell himself he was overreacting, however, no matter how he tried to strengthen his resolve and take control of his thoughts and emotions, he knew that somehow the man had gotten under his skin. His head lifted and he stared up at the white of the ceiling, his initial, silent thoughts, a condemnation. It was a censure of himself though, not of the man who had run from his house into the night.

 

Uncertainty came easily to Dane when it came to the degree of commitment he believed he could find with a man. His yearning for a partner consumed him, always. He wanted a man, someone to fill the emptiness of the hole that scarred his heart daily. He wanted someone real, someone true. He did not want to just fuck around with different guys for the entirety of his life. Unfortunately, following what had taken place earlier that evening, as well as what had occurred in his bedroom during the previous hour, somehow his choices and actions with the stranger now vanished, had been decidedly carnal and therefore exactly the course he always avoided.

 

“So why the fuck did you do it? You know better and you know that choosing sex on its own has never brought you what you wanted but still you crossed all those lines with him.”

 

Throwing his wallet back where he always placed it, he let his body drop down onto the bed, his head onto his pillow. He knew he was angry with himself and he knew he was angry with the stranger as well. He also knew he was angry for dismissing his beliefs and doing what he never allowed himself to do. However, what was really bothering him was the one thing that seemed to make no sense at all. He was angry that the man had left and that the man was not fucking him once again, right now.

 

“Fuck,” Dane screamed at the top of his voice and then his mind drifted back to the events of the afternoon and evening at the harbour, which put him in this position in the first place.

 

Instantly Dane thought about his best friend, Daniel. He wished Daniel were with him right at that moment because if he were, Daniel would say all the right things and help him to put everything into some sort of perspective.

 

“Ironic, considering perspective was the reason I was at the harbour in the first place,” he thought.

 

Remembering the harbour, he remembered the man and how irresistible the stranger had been in the daylight.

 

“In the daylight? Damn, he’s fucking irresistible no matter what the shade of light. Hell, blind or in a completely pitch-black room, he’d be irresistible no matter what. What a man! He was so fucking handsome and yet so raw and hot and male,” he thought.

 

Incongruity took the stage because considering how he was feeling and what he was thinking now, uncharacteristically, still he smiled as he began to remember those earlier events, which had brought the man into his life. His recollections were intense, a detailed journal from the moment the man was in front of him, as well as all the memories of their time together that followed. Finally, there was the inarguable thought of how good the man had eventually made him feel.

 

***

 

Two men, fundamentally two strangers, both in separate locations but only a short distance apart, were a reflection of each other both physically and mentally. They both lay on their backs staring up to an answerless point above. They both were frustrated by the memory of the other while trying, seemingly pointlessly, to come to terms with the respective roles each had played.

 

Both stood on the edge of a blade, threatening to damage them further then they already were. Both were trying to find a release from their maddening needs, which begged them to change and to embrace an uncomfortable alternative. Additionally, both were remembering the hours now past, when a multitude of mixed emotions had forced them to be in the positions they were in now.

 

To be continued...