Sydney/Taree Australia
Part 13

After breakfast, Lindsay showed us fresh rodent droppings in his bedroom. Some were along the window sill just above the bed where he and Sue had been sleeping. Ew! They were small droppings, so B figured they'd been deposited by mice. "Now we've got Myrtle invading the bloody place!"

I accompanied B to the local shopping center, whose size suprised the hell outa the old dude. "It's huge!" But the main shopping area was more than just "it". There were several malls and complexes, each with its own major retailer, like Woolworths, Coles, K-mart, etc, and a stack of boutique shops or smaller retailers like Tandy Electronics.

B's first stop was Mac's Liquor, where he ordered enough booze to sink a fucking ship, and arranged to have it delivered. Next stop was Woolworth's Supermarket, where we filled a trolley with a whole bunch of groceries, meat, vegetables, and several packs of rat poison. He also arranged to have those delivered. "Who needs a car?" he smiled. Actually, B still had the rented car, but decided not to drive it after having had a few drinks. A few? Yeah, right.

Every so often, while we were shopping, B would glance at the fly in my shorts to make sure I had my semi tucked outa sight.

"You don't really think I'd hang out the ol' fella in a supermarket, do you B?"

"I never know what you'll do next. You're the quintessential scallywag."

"What's quintessential mean?"

"Major stress."

Taree seemed like a pretty cool town to me. Not too big, not too small. No skyscrapers. Just a few buildings above three or four storeys. Most were one or two. The streets were so wide you almost needed to pack a cut lunch to cross from one side to the other, and most of the street parking was rear to kerb. The people seemed friendly, and nobody appeared to be in a hurry. Yep, this was a pretty neat ol' town.

"It's a city, Daniel."

"New York is a city. San Francisco is a city. Tampa is a city. Taree is a town."

"When is a dick not a dick?"

I also noticed a few Aborigines in the shopping center, but not many. And most of them weren't full blooded. There was one woman, maybe mid twenties, who was wheeling a pram with a little baby in it. She was helluva good looking, and the baby was just awesome, with skin the color of bronze, kinda like my bro Greg's. The woman also had a son of about eight or nine, who was destined to be a real heartbreaker by the time he reached his teens. He had the cutest face ever! Whoa! But I didn't see Bobby anywhere, and I was pretty disappointed about that. There was some kinda intriguing mystery about that dude, and I wanted to get to know him.

After checking the post office for mail, B and I walked home. "Can I hang my dick out now?"

"Jesus, Daniel! It's broad daylight for crying out loud!"

"So?" I shrugged, knowing that I was teasing the hell outa the old dude big time. "How's anyone supposed to see it in the dark? Hey! I just thought of something. How about we rock into that Tandy store and get us a web cam? You can fit it to your comp and..."

"Nobody wants to see me, Daniel."

"I wasn't talking about you," I grinned. "Y'know how Kot and Ivan and Peter do rad stuff on FunTB? Well, I was thinking..."

"Forget it, Daniel. You don't want your images all over the internet."

"It doesn't bother Kot or his buds."

"It might bother your folks."

"I don't understand why people get so fucking bent outa shape about nudity or sex. What's the biggie? It's all totally natural, B."

"So what are you saying? That you wouldn't mind nude pics of your mother being distributed all over the net?"

"Are you kidding? That's not the fucking point, B. My mom wouldn't do that kinda thing in the first place. She's not the type. So what you're saying is hippopotamus or whatever the fuck you call it."

"Hypothetical. So, if your mother wouldn't do that kinda thing, what would she think about you doing it?"

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Maybe she'd freak. I'm not sure. But it's not fucking fair! Why can't people be free to do whatever they wanna do?"

"They are free to do whatever they wanna do, Daniel, but at the risk of attracting disapproval from those who love and respect them."

"Love and respect? Like who? The person they think I am? What about the person I really am?"

"How can anybody truly love and respect you if you don't reveal everything about yourself, Daniel? Whose fault is that? Theirs or yours?"

"What are you saying, B? That my mom wouldn't love me if she really knew me?"

"That's a decision your mother would have to make, Daniel. I can only speak for myself. I know everything about you - at least I think I do - and I love you. So do your friends... Paul, Kyle, and countless others."

"Do I know everything about you?"

"Everything about me? Uh... of course you do, Daniel."

"Absolutely everything?"

"Well, there may be a couple of insignificant details that I might've forgotten about."

"You're blushing again, B. What kinda insignificant details?"

"I can't recall them at the moment. But whatever they are, they're trivial... of no consequence. So don't worry about them."

"How do you know they're trivial if you can't recall them?"

"Can we change the subject, Daniel?"

"No," I insisted as I sensed blood, then went in for the kill. "So the message I'm getting here is that I really don't know absolutely everything about you. And if I don't know absolutely everything about you, it's 'cause you're afraid I wouldn't like you if I did. Correct?" B didn't answer as we kept walking, so I continued my line of questioning. "So you're just the same as I am. Jeez, B. Are you listening to me? What does that say about people? Does anybody really know anybody? Or do we only know what people want us to know?"

"I suspect the latter. I know much more about you than your mother does." B paused a moment to check the mail box, before opening the front gate. "More brochures. But Sue likes them. She enjoys looking at the pictures even though she can't afford to buy anything."

"Seems kinda strange," I said as I followed B through the house to his office. "I mean about you knowing more about me than my mom does. It's like I'm cheating or something."

"I received an email the other day from a guy - an adult - who told me that he'd gotten home late, like 2am, and his washing was still on the line. He went to the door in the buff and thought, 'what the hell?' He remembered how you'd always gotten a huge thrill outa jacking off in the open air 'cause of the ever-present risk of being sprung... or busted, as you call it. So there was this fan of yours, sprawled out on the lawn under the stars, giving the ol' fella one helluva workout. He said it was the most awesome orgasm he'd ever had."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because he also wrote this: "I hope you don't mind me sharing this with you, but who else can I tell?" So you see, Daniel, that guy probably has a whole bunch of folks and friends like you do, but there's no way he's ever gonna tell them about what happened that night."

"'Cause if he did," I reasoned, "he'd be worried about them thinking less of him. Right? But, on the other hand, he told you, so he wasn't worried about what you'd think."

"He's an email address. He's anonymous."

"Do you think I'm cheating on my mom by not telling her everything about me?"

"When I was a boy, I did many things my mother never knew about. Eventually, during my twenties she found out about some of those things and she was very disappointed, not to mention hurt. But what was I to do? Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from day one? Should my entire life, or anybody's for that matter, past and present, resemble being cross examined in a court room? Is that what relationships should be about?"

"You're losing me, B."

"You need a beer."

"It's not even midday yet."

"The beer doesn't know that."

B returned from the kitchen with two chilled cans of VB, handed one to me, then planted his butt on his favorite seat, which was the ergonomic stool in front of his comp.

"What I wanna know, B," I asked after popping the ring-pull, "is what my mom would think of me if she knew all about me."

"You'll probably never know, mate. You're a very open and honest person, which is a quality I admire very much, but you also realize that being open and honest has certain limitations. You keep certain things from your mother because you don't want to hurt her, and you don't want her opinion of you to be jeopardized or diminished."

"It's like lying, though."

"Is it? Think of it this way. How much right do other people have to be privy to your innermost thoughts? Do you belong to yourself or to them?"

"I belong to me."

"Would you do anything to hurt me?"

"What kinda dumb question is that, B? Of course not!"

"Would you do anything to hurt your mom?"

"Fucking hell, B, what kinda crap is this?"

"Would you pose for a web cam if it might hurt your mom?"

"That's just the fucking point, B! I should be able to do it without fear of hurting my mom or anybody else! I should be able to do what I wanna do. What's so bad about getting naked and jacking off in front of a web cam? Who am I hurting?"

"If the answer to that question is nobody, then go for it."

"I don't understand any of this fucking bullshit, B. It's like you're telling me that I have to live my entire fucking life to please other people, and that I can't please myself. It's like I've gotta live a whole damn lifetime walking on eggshells. What kinda life is that?"

"I don't pretend to have all the answers, Daniel, or even just a few of them. All I'm saying is that you have to make a decision. You have to decide who you wanna be. All of you, or just some of you."

"So what's wrong with being all of me to you and my buds, and just some of me to my mom?"

"If you're happy with that, then..."

"Happy with that? I don't have a choice, B. I've gotta be happy with that. Don't you see? I can't behave in front of my mom like I behave in front of you. Get fucking real, B! You and mom are two different people for fuck sake!"

"And what about you? Are you two different people?"

"Are you?"

There was a long pause while B took a sip of his beer, and studied my feet. He had a thing about my feet. "Yes, I am, Daniel. One for you, and another for the rest of the world. But, in my defense, the gap between my two selves is closing. I'm realizing now that being anything other than one's true self is pointless. It takes quite a bit of courage to be totally honest, though. You can't just stand up one day and announce to the world your true self. 'I'm terribly sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but I've been giving you a false impression of myself all these years.'" Then the old dude smiled at me, and added, "It's not that easy, mate."

"So what about the web cam?"

"Ask your mother."

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