Sept. 9, 2012, 9:47 p.m.
Immutability and Other Sins
Family (1962-3): Chapter 2
M - Words: 7,980 - Last Updated: Sep 09, 2012 Story: Complete - Chapters: 25/25 - Created: Jan 26, 2012 - Updated: Sep 09, 2012 390 0 0 0 0
He'd been raised mostly by his father - well, and Mrs. Jones, but still. For a significant portion of his life, weekends and evenings had been just him and his dad, and his dad didn't share his affinity for Hollywood Musicals or grand romances, so they spent a lot of time watching Westerns. Sometimes there was a movie about football, and variety hours were a good way of each finding something to enjoy in the same hour of television, but Westerns were the movies of his childhood. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry fighting for good and singing their way through the West. The boys from Bonanza wooing women who always somehow died right afterward. The Lone Ranger was a favourite - his dad said it was because he had listened to it on the radio when he was a kid. Then his dad would talk about how, by the time Kurt had a son of his own one day, it would probably be on some big hologram that was projected into the room and three generations of Hummel men would watch The Lone Ranger together.
Kurt wasn't sure if his dad had figured out that wasn't going to happen yet. He had assumed after he asked about whether his dad could picture him with a family last year, that maybe the two of them had come to a tacit understanding about what Kurt was, what his life was going to consist of, but judging by his father's response to Kurt moving to New York with Rachel - his 'girlfriend', for all intents and purposes except the ones that really mattered but were best kept unmentioned to one's parents - and his concern about Rachel's honour, Kurt guessed they weren't to that level of understanding yet.
Of course, Kurt hadn't expected this was what his life would consist of, either. He had never imagined-
The point was, he had seen things about jail. He had seen movies and watched tv shows and knew what to expect. There were single cells with bars and a sheriff who was the good guy and protecting the town from-...from bankrobbers and stagecoach-jackers and murderers and guys who blew into town wearing black hats to cause trouble. They were places where Otis the town drunk went because he'd been violating the law and causing trouble, maybe, but sheriffs were meant to be the good guys. They-...they wore the white hats, they were meant to protect the people of the town, they weren't...
They weren't meant to lock you up when you hadn't done anything. They weren't meant to throw you into the back of a trailer with no windows and only one door and no way of moving without being on top of someone else, where it felt like you couldn't even draw a full breath. They weren't meant to drag you through halls like an unruly dog on a leash and taunt you all the way to the booking room. They weren't meant to take your hat and call you a girl. That wasn't supposed to be the nicest thing they could come up with to call you...and they weren't meant to come up with slurs for you you had never heard of but somehow knew exactly what they meant. They weren't supposed to ask how much of a pervert you were and-
Kurt couldn't be sure, but he was fairly certain sheriffs weren't supposed to make him count out loud the articles of male clothing he was wearing as he stripped them off. And he was almost completely sure that their taunting him while he shivered in the processing room in his undershirt and underwear and socks, holding a striped uniform out of his reach and asking if they had an option with a skirt for him, wasn't what they were meant to do.
He should really speak to their supervisor. He-...he should tell someone because there was no way that this was proper arrest procedure.
...Right?
He had never felt so much like he wanted to disappear in his life. The way those men's eyes roamed over him with such disgust...he wasn't sure if the simultaneous revulsion and fascination he saw from one guard was better or worse. Watching them paw through the pockets of his suit had been nearly more than he could take, their fat clumsy fingers poking at his elegantly-cut trousers to dig out his wallet. It was tossed unceremoniously into a carton with his keys, his watch, the elegant chain that had draped from his lapel to his buttonhole, his tie, and his hat. After another minute, they demanded he add his belt to the box, clutching awkwardly at his pants to make sure they sat high on his waist instead of letting them slip down. He didn't trust those looks, even if he didn't know for sure what they meant.
The thick hand on his shoulder took him by surprise, and he flinched, stiffened; the four guys standing around him laughed. "She thinks she's got a new boyfriend, Carl - be careful!" one of them chuckled.
He wasn't going to start crying. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to hold his head high. He had spent the better part of his life being the butt of jokes, the object of scorn and ridicule. He had survived middle school and every practical joke Puckerman had ever played on him and every derisive look Finn had ever tossed his way. He had figured out from the time he was six that the other children in town thought he was hilarious in a bad way, and the adults didn't know what to do with him, and that whenever he went somewhere people would stare at him like there was something wrong with him. He had gotten used to that and to not-...to not cry until he had left the view of people. He had learned not to give them the satisfaction.
But this...
His jaw was so tight he thought he might grind his teeth down, his neck held stiffly and tilted just so, his eyes forced just wide enough to avoid the squinty crying look but not wide enough to actually start crying, as he was pushed down the hall toward a telephone. "One call, queer."
He had no idea who to dial. Mercedes would kill him - flat out kill him - for waking her up in the middle of the night and for getting arrested and for being stupid enough to get into this situation in the first place. She would remind him how many times she had objected to the fact that he sat out at that damned fountain, she would tell him what a moron he had been for going into the park without knowing what he would find...and then what? Even if she wanted to help him out, what could she do? She didn't have enough money for bail-
Assuming they even set bail. Did that happen now? Later? Was he stuck here until then? What if it wasn't until next week sometime? How quickly did that happen? They never talked about bail in shows with kindly sheriffs, except to say sometimes that a person needed to make bail.
Should he be calling his office to let them know he might not be in for awhile? Would the switchboard operator even be able to take a message this late?
Rachel, at the very least, would have access to his bank account, or his chequebook, or something. She could at least bring that and see about getting him out of here. She would ask too many questions and complain - loudly and often - about interrupting her sleep while making the entire night about her, but that...that would be good right now. If he was rolling his eyes at Rachel, at least he wouldn't be remembering the way they stared at him. Besides, she had been there for him plenty of times, including the entire summer between junior and senior years when he didn't know how to explain to anyone, including Mercedes, what he was going through and how much it hurt. Rachel had just sort of...understood, and he was grateful for that. She might make the entire episode about herself, but at least she would also be there when he needed to talk about how ashamed he was and she wouldn't tell him he was stupid for even trying.
If anyone understood searching for love with disastrous results, surely it was his fake girlfriend who had spent years pining after his stepbrother.
With quivering fingers as he tried to keep his voice from following suit and trembling, he dialed the apartment and waited. One ring...two...three...His muscles tightened as he tried to keep himself from seeming impatient, nervous - the guard stared at him, his look bored and skeptical as though taunting him still: Who could he be calling? His wife? His buddy? Who would ever want to answer a call from a faggot like him?
Maybe he was reading into it a little. He couldn't entirely help it.
By the time the phone rang for the eighth time, he was clutching the handset with white knuckles. She had to pick up. She had to answer - surely she was just stumbling from the bed and trying to find the phone in the dark. They always had a hard time finding the switch for the lamp when the apartment was already dark, usually they had to keep the entryway light on for that reason until the living room was already illuminated. So surely she was just trying to get through the room to the lamp to the phone to answer-
The guard slapped two heavy fingers down on the hook switch, cutting off the sound mid-ring. "Can try again in a few hours," he replied gruffly.
"She was waking up-" Kurt tried desperately, not wanting to leave the phone. Rachel would answer and she would come get him and they could leave the entire incident behind them. He could call her back and she would answer and they could-
"She?" he scoffed. "Wives make this part fun. Look on their face when they find out their husband's a cocksucker...'course with you, I doubt it's the first time." He shoved Kurt's shoulder again, steering him this time into a cell with a rough push. Before Kurt could righten himself, he heard the door slide shut behind him with a loud clang.
He wasn't sure why, in retrospect, but he had expected they would all go the same place. They had all been brought in together - himself and the other homosexuals from the park, those men who...while engaging in activities he would never undertake in public (and several of which he would never try ever, under any circumstances...were at least like him. At least they wouldn't look at him like the guards, they would understand. After all, they were all in this together. They were all here for the same reason. He would be okay in a room of other people like him. Maybe he could even start asking some of them about better places to go. Places that wouldn't end up like this.
But the cell wasn't divided by offense; it wasn't split by when people had come in. He didn't recognize anyone else in the holding cell - none of the men he had seen in the park, none of the men whose faces he had peered at in the dim light of the paddywagon, no one he had seen before. No one who seemed remotely like him.
There was a mix of people, each character more unsavoury than the last - people he would cross the street to avoid, especially at night. People he would never have seen in Lima. Thugs and drunks and criminals-
You don't know what they did, he reminded himself, drawing in a deep breath and trying to keep the most even, least-terrified expression he could muster. You're in here just like they are. Maybe they weren't hardened criminals who had been arrested for the murder of entire families, like some of them looked like they might be capable of. Maybe they were just men who were the victims of horrible misunderstandings. Maybe the police had just snatched them up when they went to them for help instead of assisting them because the police in New York City were jerks who jumped to conclusions about what a person was doing or who they were or whether it was even wrong in the first place.
Maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding.
Maybe it would all be over soon.
The cell wasn't one of the private ones he'd seen in movies about men who had been convicted of some offense or another; it was a holding cell, maybe 15 feet on each side, crammed with people. Apparently Wednesday night in New York City was a big time for arrests. Along the back and side were benches, and he started in that direction. If he was going to be here for awhile, and it appeared - he noted with resignation - that he would be, until or unless they would let him try to call Rachel again, at the very least he could sit down. His shoes, while chic and a great bargain when he had purchased them, were hardly comfortable for standing all night, and after everything he felt almost too exhausted to keep his head up, let alone to remain on his feet for the foreseeable future. He wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. Or to go back in time using some contraption out of an H.G. Wells novel and never go into that park. Or- no. To go back further, to a year and a half ago, when he'd made the stupid decision to actually come here.
Why had he thought this was a good idea, anyway? What had made him honestly believe that the image he had in his head of this gleaming metropolis was remotely accurate? He'd never known anyone who had moved here, he certainly had never known anyone like him who lived here, what made him think that somehow if he just got to the city he would be safe? Why had he thought-
At least Leroy could vouch for California. At least he had been there and seen other homosexuals and met them and talked to them and met them behind old buildings to-...
...To do what the men in the park had been doing, Kurt realized suddenly, his heart sinking further into his stomach. That was what he had been pinning his hopes on without ever knowing it, wasn't it? That was what Leroy talked about when he talked about the men during the war. They weren't boyfriends, they didn't have dinner parties or apartments or go on dates or become couples, they went behind buildings to rut up against one another and sink to their knees in front of other men's crotches and...
He knew the act didn't have to be disgusting or frantic. He'd had experience with it being something wonderful and sweet - Blaine had been so sweet even as he wanted something that seemed so ostensibly strange. But this...what he'd seen tonight, and what Leroy had seen before...
He had pinned his entire hopes and dreams on that story; he had invested every ounce of searching in a beautiful accessory. Both turned out to be nothing more than a twisted illusion, and not what he was looking for at all.
He wondered if Man #16's "homosexual marriage" was really no more than a secretive friendship with a few quick gropes in the darkness of a grove of trees.
Of everything Kurt had been through in the past few hours, all the insults and the humiliation and degradation, all the fear and uncertainty, that was the thought that made him want to cry.
As he approached an empty space on the bench, now more eager than ever to sit down and try to ignore his surroundings long enough to let them fade into nothingness until it was time for him to leave, a man with scraggly, unkempt hair and a sour expression glowered at him. "You want something, cocksucker?" he asked in a thick Brooklyn accent, fumbling for his own fly with one hand while he reached to snag Kurt's wrist with the other. Kurt's eyes widened and he took a startled step back, bumping into a man easily taller than Finn, built like one of his worst bullies from back home (David Karofsky, whose intellect was as stimulating as his appearance which was to say not at all) but with more visible muscles.
"The fuck you think you're going?" the guy demanded, and Kurt drew in a sharp breath, praying the man didn't hit him. He had no faith whatsoever that, were this man to decide to kick him around for awhile, the entire cell wouldn't join in. And when they did, he could almost guarantee no guard would break up the fight. Mumbling a quick apology, he darted around a few people toward the other side of the cell, near where the back wall met the side of the cell that was made of bars rather than cement block.
Then he spotted him.
The boy couldn't have been any older than Kurt was, possibly younger, with light olive-brown skin and curly black hair. Thin, with legs that managed to appear gangly and yet barely reach the floor from the bench. His legs were crossed at the ankles, tucked back under the seat slightly, the white tips of his Converse resting on the disgusting floor of the cell that Kurt didn't even want to think about when it was last cleaned. His jeans were black and tight, his t-shirt loose against his slim torso. The boy sat as straight upright as he could, as though trying to make himself appear taller and stronger, but his arms were folded neatly into his lap and his fingers unconsciously twisted together as he eyed the cell suspiciously with narrowed dark eyes.
But he was definitely like Kurt.
Whether he was picked up at the park or not, or ended up here through some other ridiculous set of circumstances, Kurt could tell. While there had been plenty of men at the park that Kurt knew he wouldn't have suspected had he passed them on Fifth Avenue, this boy...he knew right away.
There was a space on either side of him, and Kurt moved quickly to take the space closer to the bars. The boy stiffened a moment as he saw Kurt out of the corner of his eye, but as soon as he looked Kurt up and down he gave a knowing look and nodded as if to grant permission that Kurt hadn't even though to ask.
They sat in silence for a few moments, neither sure what to say. Kurt wanted to introduce himself, to find out what had happened to the boy, to see if this happened all the time and if he had done something actually wrong or could do something else instead that would mean staying out of this mess. He wanted to ask if they called the boy names, too, because while he was obviously a homosexual he wasn't wearing any designer accessories that had seemed to make Kurt a target so maybe that was the key...though Kurt doubted he would be able to keep himself from adhering to fashion just because there were ignorant people in the world. He wanted to ask if the boy had a boyfriend and, if so, how he found him and could he take Kurt next time because apparently this wasn't going to work out for him and maybe he could-
Before Kurt could figure out what to ask first, the boy glanced at him sideways but kept his eyes scanning the room as he whispered, "Thank God the uniforms only happen in movies. Horizontal stripes aren't a good look for me."
It wasn't at all the statement he had been expecting, and he wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. He could feel tears starting to well up in relief at even the thought of smiling and the mental exhaustion of the previous few hours, and he simply sucked in a quick breath and whispered back, "Black and white's classic, but so boring." The joke was hardly what was really going through his mind, but it felt better to stay on that topic. To talk about the hideous prison uniforms in Elvis movies and photographs of men on chain gangs in comically-oversized striped pajama-looking outfits instead of talking about what he really felt. Instead of talking about how much he couldn't bear the thought of the men staring at him and finding him disgusting (or, worse still, liking what they saw) and how a part of him wondered if everything he'd been looking forward to his entire life had turned out to be nothing more than a fairytale...making cracks about an ugly outfit felt safe. It felt like he could do that and still keep a disinterested expression instead of crumbling and leaving himself vulnerable for the bullies in the cell to take advantage of. The boy grinned and nudged his shoulder ever-so-slightly - enough that Kurt could feel it but he doubted anyone else could see.
"Who designed those things, anyway? Coco Chanel: The Early Years?" His accent was hard to place, sounding closest to the Puerto Ricans Kurt had heard on the subway; they had confused him because they sounded nothing at all like the boys in West Side Story but with accents not nearly as thick as the girls. But there was something lighter about it, a little more melodic, that made him sound more like...well, like Kurt.
He'd never heard someone who spoke similarly to him before. It was reassuring in a way he couldn't readily identify. He wondered if this was what other people felt like all the time, if guys like Finn just walked around hearing people who sounded like them and feeling comfortable.
"A fan of the New Look?" he supposed dryly.
"Baby, I've got hips, I'm not about to let them go to waste," the boy whispered back. It felt fake, like trying to put on bravado to cover up the vulnerability of the absurd situation they found themselves in, but mostly Kurt couldn't believe anyone would be proud of his hips. He had tried desperately to get rid of his own and associated them with exactly two things: having a hard time finding pants that fit just-so, and the fact that technically, medically-speaking, they were a sign of sexual inversion. Even if that was probably the least thing about this boy that was a sign that they were the same, it still struck Kurt as incredibly odd to be proud of something like that.
His confirmation of the put-on enthusiasm came a moment later, when the boy fell silent, stared down at his hands, then whispered, "First time?"
"Yes," Kurt whispered back, staring intently at a spot on a bar most of the way across the cell. "You?"
The boy nodded, fingers twisting tighter in one another for a moment, then he drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sudden bright smile. "Where did you get those shoes?"
Kurt was too busy to answer as he looked around the cell, noticing that every eye was on the two of them. He was used to people staring at him, that wasn't new, but this felt dangerous. It felt like being surrounded by the football team but with a lot bigger threat than a ring of discount milkshakes waiting to hit his favourite jacket and freeze his face off. The glares, the derision, the tightening of a fist from the guy he'd bumped into accidentally earlier, then another guy began to walk toward them - portly, wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, the collar of which was partially hidden by his greying beard. He was nearly-bald with narrow eyes and a confident strut when he walked. This was it, Kurt thought, the man was going to do exactly what every other man who had stared at him all night had wanted to do: kick him around. Punch him. Push him. Make sure he knew exactly how disgusting they found him, how horrible he was for even existing let alone for attempting to potentially act on how he felt.
He wondered if they thought it would make him stop being who he was. Was it a deterrent factor for them? Or was it just barely-controlled revulsion? Because while he didn't plan on ever setting foot in the park again - for any reason, at any time of day, no matter the circumstances - he didn't think there was any amount of arrest that could make him want a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend. No fists could make him like Rachel as anything more than a friend, roommate, and duet-partner. Nothing he could imagine could change that.
He tried to brace himself, to wait for the fist to slam down on his face, but it never came. Instead, the man stopped less than a foot from the pair, turned so his back was to them, and faced the room with a scowl and crossed arms. The message was clear:
Nobody messes with these two without going through me.
Kurt looked over at the boy, who seemed to be covering his surprise with a disinterested arch of his thick eyebrow. At the familiar gesture, Kurt held out his hand and whispered an introduction.
The boy stared at his hand, then up at Kurt with a look that looked frighteningly like Mercedes' 'Are you crazy?' face, then shook it. His hand was soft, his grip and wrist limp, his fingers long and delicate but poorly-manicured. "I'm Ricky," he whispered back. "That guy a friend of yours?" he asked, nodding toward the ad hoc bodyguard. When Kurt shook his head, Ricky simply nodded and settled in against the uncomfortable bench. "Least it means we can relax a little."
Kurt had no idea how he would relax no matter where the guy stood.
* * * * *
By the time he stepped out of the police station, the first dim streaks of light were beginning to illuminate the sky, but the stars hadn't faded completely. Clutching his belongings awkwardly, he shifted over to lean against the wall as he began to re-dress himself. He slipped his wallet back into his pocket first; it was emptier now - despite having most of his expendable income until payday in there, he had received it back with exactly enough money left in it to cover the fine and secure his own release. The change that had been in his pocket, that he had dutifully placed in the box last night before they made him strip off his pants, was gone too - there wasn't even enough left to get home on the subway. He had no idea where he was, but he knew he had been picked up no more than five or ten minutes' walk from home and they had driven at least a few minutes. Exactly what he needed on top of everything else: a long walk home.
He looked around as he stuffed his belt quickly through the carriers, searching for an address or a cross-street or something he might recognize. He could see the park at the end of the street a couple blocks away, but that didn't help him. For one thing, it took up most of uptown and could be seen from virtually anywhere north of 55th. For another, the last place he wanted to go was through there. Finally he saw an address: West 81st Street. Probably just over a mile if he had to walk crosstown at all. He was already too exhausted to think straight, and the prospect of walking for half an hour in his winklepickers was almost too much to bear. He halfheartedly tied his tie, not bothering to straighten it in his collar, and clutched his Schiaparelli hat tightly in his hand as he started down the street.
"Hey, kid."
Kurt would have jumped at the voice, but he was too tired. Looking over, he saw the bearded man from the previous night, hands jammed into the pockets of his black leather jacket. "Yes?" he asked, pulling on his best disinterested front. He didn't know who the man was, he still didn't know what the man wanted or, maybe more importantly, why he had stood there and watched out for them all night. Kurt wasn't sure how long it had been, he had no idea how long they had actually been in the cell - or even what time it was now - but it certainly felt like a long time.
"Where you goin?" He sounded like he had been raised as a jolly southerner, maybe as a farm boy in Kentucky - the accent was definitely further down than even southern Ohio, for all Kurt knew it might be further west too - Kansas or somewhere. What did people from Kansas even sound like? In his mind they all talked like Auntie Em, but that probably wasn't right.
"Home," Kurt replied. The word felt like a mirage, as though the mental image of his bed, waiting there for him, couldn't possibly be real. He wondered if it was because everything else he had thought was for-sure was turning out to be a lie, or if he was just so tired he couldn't fathom being un-tired except by some miracle.
"Where's home?"
"I don't know you," Kurt stated. "I may not have been born here, or- or raised here, but I've been here long enough to know that you don't just tell people where you live, especially not if they can follow you and kill you on the way there."
The man chuckled. "If I could follow you, you wouldn't have to tell me, now, would you?" he pointed out, and Kurt felt his cheeks flush red at the illogical statement he'd made. "And if I wanted to kill you, I would've just let those guys have at you."
"Why didn't you?" Kurt asked. He tried to feign disinterest, but it didn't quite work. He couldn't figure it out - why was this guy interested in helping him? Why had this man who looked like he was probably about like Puck or Karofsky or any of those boys as a teenager, who looked no different from any of the other men in that cell, stepped in to help him? No one helped him unless they either knew him or had some reason to like him. What made this man different?
The man looked down with a faint smile, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Been a long night, you mind if we talk and walk at the same time?"
He wanted to fight but didn't have the energy, so he simply forced a tight smile and replied, "Sure," starting off down the block once more.
The man fell into step beside him. "Saw your friend maybe twenty minutes ago. He rushed off but told me to thank you for the shoulder." Ricky had fallen asleep pretty quickly and, at some point, slumped over onto Kurt's shoulder. He didn't entirely mind, were he being honest, even though it was strange having a total stranger fall asleep on him. Mostly he was disappointed the boy had run off without a chance for another conversation or maybe the exchange of phone numbers. They had a lot in common, and it felt so good to talk to someone with the same shorthand, who could know what ten words were hiding beneath the one Kurt used. For awhile, as he felt Ricky's body shift against his side with each deep breath, he had thought maybe they could even be friends. Maybe even boyfriends - after all, hadn't things with Blaine started out like this? Not like this, there were no police officers involved, but as two boys interested in the same thing who spoke a common language. Part of what he had been setting out to find when he tried to search desperately for a boyfriend was a companion, someone who would understand him in ways Rachel and Mercedes never could. Maybe Ricky, he had thought for a few fleeting moments as he tried not to get lost in his own head, worrying about whether this would show up in the newspapers like when the drive-in in Ohio had been raided.
But that, like everything else in his life, had not turned out as-planned. He supposed he should be used to it.
"He's not my friend," he replied cooly, even though he desperately wished he could say otherwise. "I just met him."
"Oh." The man shrugged and they kept walking until Kurt turned left at the end of the block, heading south.
"So why?" he asked, reminding the man about the question he had promised to answer.
The man shrugged. "They're not gonna mess with me the way they mess with kids like you two. Just trying to help out where I can. Too many men blend in if they can and leave everyone else hanging out to dry. I'm not gonna do that."
Kurt looked over, confused. Surely he was misunderstanding. "Are you-"
"Yep." The reply was quick, matter-of-fact, and the man didn't even miss a step. "What? Don't tell me you thought we all looked like you."
Logically, Kurt knew he was a rare breed even among other homosexuals. Look at Blaine, who no one would suspect unless they asked too many questions or paid really close attention. There was a reason girls found him irresistible (though the thought turned his stomach). But everything the books had said about the condition fit him, and they fit Blaine, and they certainly fit Ricky, but they wouldn't fit this man. For one thing, the man's hips were no more rounded than anyone else's in relationship to his size, and he definitely didn't look like he had particularly feminine interests or pursuits, and he didn't-
The far worse assumption, Kurt decided, than assuming that the man couldn't be like him because he looked more masculine than his own father...was assuming the book knew anything when it had been proven wrong at every other juncture.
Perhaps the stranger thing was the notion of being honest and putting himself in a position to have to explain it when he didn't need to. Rachel's father told no one. No one guessed he was, and he wasn't about to volunteer that information to anyone; he had been skittish even speaking to the two of them when they went to dinner - it was Leroy who had done all the talking. But this guy...
...Blaine could have learned a lot from him, Kurt concluded bitterly. Someone who could hide and chose not to. Maybe he could've said something inspiring that would have convinced Blaine to come out here instead of running to California.
Some good that would have done.
He wasn't sure why he was more angry with Blaine: for not coming with him, because if his boyfriend were here in the city with him there would have been no need to go finding anyone else and he never would have been in the damned park in the first place...or for being right about everything? For now he was sticking with the former; he didn't know that he could handle contemplating the latter in too much detail just yet. He had started to in bits and pieces over the course of the night, but in the pale pink shadow of morning he didn't think he was ready for that much reality just yet.
"Thank you," he offered quietly.
"No problem," the man replied easily. "What's your name, kid?"
"Kurt. Kurt Hummel."
"Well, nice to meet you, Kurt, Kurt Hummel. I'm Ethel."
That one stopped Kurt in his tracks, and he turned slowly to face the bearded, sturdy man in well-worn Levis , beyond skeptical. "Ethel."
"Yep."
"As in Merman."
"As in Mertz, actually. Friend of mine back in Oklahoma is Lucy." Kurt had no idea how to even respond to that, what questions to ask, so he simply kept walking. "They make you count clothing?"
Kurt could feel the embarrassment washing over him as he even thought about the incident and found himself staring stiffly straight ahead. "Yeah."
"Magic number's three. Gotta be big ones, too, you can't get away with just having on men's underwear under a cocktail dress. And socks count as one, not separately. Friend of mine learned that the hard way. Technically it's just meant to be about 'impersonating' a woman, but we all know it's just to harass us. That's a nice hat, but be careful about it, y'know?"
"There are a certain number of men's clothes I have to wear at any given time," Kurt repeated slowly.
"Yep, three."
"Who gets to decide what's a man's outfit and what's for women? Do women who wear jeans get arrested for that?"
"Not unless they're lesbians," Ethel supposed with a shrug.
By the time they reached 68th Street, the sun was beginning to peek through the intersections of the cross-streets, not yet high enough to shine over buildings but enough to bathe the streets in pale light, the pink of morning slowly fading and giving way to the white of day. "Are you far from here? I've gotta check on a friend of mine that way," Ethel asked.
Kurt shook his head. "Five blocks," he replied. "I'll be fine. But thank you."
Ethel flashed a grin that made Kurt think he would probably look sweet and enthusiastic if he shaved that beard, dressed a little less like a motorcycle thug. Maybe that was part of his charm, he supposed. It had certainly served its purpose. "Take care," he said, peeling off as they got to the intersection and leaving Kurt to make the rest of the journey himself.
It really was a short walk, though the area was less than ideal. This time of morning it was more peaceful than Kurt had seen it any other time - shopkeepers opening the grates that protected their wares from nighttime criminals, sweeping off the sidewalks in front of their stores, chasing out the homeless men sleeping on the front stoops. Just another morning on the Upper West Side, he thought wryly.
Turning right on West 64th, he passed the first of several tenement buildings; Rachel still had to count them to avoid going into the wrong identical door, but for him muscle memory had taken over. Their home had been a palace at the time it was built, when the standard of living was judged by the filthy slums of the Lower East Side where entire extended families would stuff themselves into windowless rooms smaller than the cell he had spent the night in. At the time, a separate bedroom - which the landlord had later split into two in an effort to collect more rent - was a novelty in small, somewhat-affordable apartments such as theirs, and windows in more than one room were a luxury. But those days had long since passed, and most of the old homes in lower Manhattan had been torn down to be replaced with more livable quarters or converted into larger dwellings with multiple rooms with their multiple windows, leaving their tiny, crumbling apartment a relatively-cheap, only-partially-roach-infested home that was marginally safer than living in Harlem or Hell's Kitchen.
Well...sometimes safer than Hell's Kitchen. It depended on who was fighting with whom which week.
Rachel had been so excited to find out that their block had only narrowly escaped being demolished to make room for the new performing arts center, and even more thrilled to learn that the project had been delayed so they could film the exteriors for West Side Story. Kurt had been the one to point out to her that it wasn't such a good thing to live in a place that made a suitable background for a film about gang violence where half the main cast ends up dead by the end of the film. In reality, while there were far fewer warring gangs than in the eponymous musical about their neighbourhood - though apparently that was only because they had missed them by a decade or so, reported their neighbours - it was exactly as run-down as it looked. Row after row after row of decrepit apartments inhabited only by people who couldn't afford any better. Stores that were constantly broken into or robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight.
They had gone to see the film together, just the two of them; Mercedes was still at school, and Kurt had just gotten his job so they had a few whole dollars to spend on something frivolous and fun, and it was more affordable than going to see an actual production. It hadn't taken long before they started trying to identify particular corners in their new neighbourhood, laughing and teasing each other as they tried to figure out where the construction site was in relationship to the basketball court or the little fruitstand. There were only a few other people in the theatre to tell them to be quiet, and it felt like the first time they had been able to relax and smile since they had moved to the city - Kurt had his job, Rachel was going on auditions and would get her break soon, and they would soon be heading for the top again.
What he really remembered from the movie was the feeling of tears streaming down his cheeks as he mouthed the words to "Somewhere." They began somewhere around the time Maria said "But it's not us - it's everyone around us," and Tony replied "Then I'll take you away, where nothing can get to us."
That song had meant something, once upon a time. It had been a promise. It had been a vow between them that they were going to get out of Ohio and go be something together. That they were going to escape their small towns with the narrow-minded people who said that they couldn't be themselves, and they were going to be together in the big city and make all their dreams come true. And then suddenly it had been gone.
He hated wondering if Blaine missed him, because he almost always came around to the same conclusion: If he missed Kurt, he knew where to find Kurt. And he hadn't come looking. So that was his answer.
Kurt trudged up the front steps of the building and opened the front door, then climbed his way up two more narrow flights of stairs to their apartment. He could hear Rachel singing all the way down the hall - a fact he was certain delighted the neighbours - but he couldn't tell precisely what song it was until he got to the door.
There isn't an ocean too deep,
A mountain so high it can keep me away
Rolling his eyes, Kurt let out a quiet, exasperated sigh as he turned his key in the deadbolt and pushed open the door. Rachel stood in the kitchen with a bright smile, cooking pancakes; a bowl of cut-up fruit sat already at her place at their tiny kitchen table, and a glass bottle of syrup bobbed in a saucepan of warm water. She stopped singing as she heard him come in. "Well good morning!" she said enthusiastically with a knowing grin. "Looks like someone had a long night."
"Very," he replied.
He loved Rachel, he really did - more than he had ever expected to. But there were times that even looking at her was physically painful because she was so aggressively upbeat. Right now he wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and sob for a few hours about all the ways he knew his dreams were over; she was going to propose a duet over breakfast, he could tell already, and the song wasn't doing anything to improve his mood. Not after he had spent all night wondering if Blaine had been right all along and if maybe California was nice this time of year, if maybe people wore different coats out there. If perhaps they would appreciate him more out there, treat him better. The fashion scene out there was pathetically, laughably small, but maybe it was time for a change. Maybe if he started out on the bottom of a fledgling market, he would at least be able to work his way up more quickly. Maybe Rachel could take roles in movie musicals. Something. Anything to find a new place, because New York obviously wasn't wokring for them.
"Did you have fun?"
I will follow him
Ever since he touched my hand I knew
That near him I always must be
And nothing can keep him from me
He is my destiny
He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to be able to explain to her that no, it wasn't fun - it was horrible. He wanted to have someone, anyone, he could explain to about the clothing rules and how The Scarf had failed him and how all he wanted was someone to love him, someone to kiss him and take him on dates like any other boyfriend would do. How he desperately needed to know that coming here hadn't been a mistake or, at the very least, that there was some way to correct it now because if there wasn't, if what he had been working toward and wanting and dreaming of his entire life turned out to truly be this awful then where in the world - literally - did that leave him? He wanted to be able to tell her that he hated this city more than he hated Ohio because at least Ohio had never promised him anything and then ripped it away. At least he had always known not to feel safe in Ohio. Here...
...But the thing about Rachel was, her aggressive optimism made it impossible to tell her things sometimes. It was like kicking a puppy off a cliff, telling her all the ways that her ideas were completely ridiculous and full of logical fallacies and never in a million years going to happen. It was beyond cruel.
"No," he replied simply. He wanted to sit down, but he knew that if he did he would never summon the energy to get to bed. "It was definitely not a fun evening."
She looked sad for him, but recovered quickly, eagerly telling him about an audition she was preparing for and how this one was surely going to be her breakthrough roll, and how there was no reason for them not to give her this part because clearly she was perfect for it, all while happily flipping pancakes.
I love him
I love him
I love him
And where he goes I'll follow
I'll fol-
With an angry glare at the radio, Kurt slapped it off and padded heavily to the bedroom. He closed the door heavily behind him and locked the door just in case Rachel didn't get the hint; he would talk to her later and hear all about her audition, but for right now he simply disrobed, folding his clothes loosely over the end of the bed because he didn't have the energy to put them away properly.
Except for the hat. That he shoved to the very back of the shelf of his closet where he wouldn't have to look at it. It made him sick to see right now, to stare at, to remember how they had held it by their fingertips, the heel unable to support the weight from that angle so the entire thing bent slightly, and asked what kind of man wore high heels on his head instead of on his feet like a good faggot. He didn't want to see the pink and black thing ever again - not until he could think of it once more as a piece of wearable artwork instead of Item #1 of Female Clothing.
He collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to bother to cry, and fell almost immediately to sleep.