Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud
Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2018 3:32 pm
Nick sulked home after the confrontation on 34th Street. He took the scenic route home, through the more tree-lined avenues of Frazier’s Glen. A lot of people were surprised that Nick lived there, he’d always found. His rebellious nature, cheap magic tricks, and pristinely maintained unkemptness were all clearly very effective at making people think he was poor.
Or at least, Nick imagined they were surprised. He had thought that he had cultivated an aura, an image, a certain Celtic rustic quality, that was at odds with Frazier’s Glen. Maybe it was presumptuous of him to think it actually worked. Maybe it was some low-level attempt at problematically appropriating and commodifying relative poverty. Maybe. Wouldn’t surprise Nick. He was an arsehole, after all, as the events in town had so acutely reminded him.
He needed to get home early, but there was no reason to be hurried. While it was hard to try and think rationally in this time, Nick knew that the smart thing to do, the first step in damage control, was to break the news to his family on his own terms. Nick’s parents, esteemed university professors with a line in pompous ivory tower academics that had never quite been his forte, had taken every effort to be courteous and community-minded, and would probably not take too kindly to the idea of their son throwing coffee on the school’s queen bitch.
He wondered how he’d break the news to them. It’d get around the grapevine quickly. His younger brother Will would probably get nose of it sooner or later, being a passive receptor for gossip rather than an inadvertent generator, and Willie had a knack for thinking that mum and dad had the experience and sagacity to help solve all of Nick’s problems. He wasn’t a snitch, not really. Wasn’t moralistic enough for that. Had kept Nick’s secrets before. But there was a certain paternalistic timbre to how he looked upon his older brother, which was even more infuriating for Nick.
He had paused once on the way home, to sit on a bench, in a small park across the road from the cul-de-sac that his parents called him. He regretted his choice of seat almost immediately, after realising he was sitting next to one of those trees that smelled like cum.
He looked up at it. Ah, the linden tree. Nothing else in nature could quite remind him of that one time he accidentally blew a load in his pants. Still, if it ever happened again, he could just stand by these trees and nobody would notice. He looked at the ground, mentally replaying that relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch in his mind, mouthing as much of the dialogue as he could remember to himself.
It was procrastination. Eventually, with a sigh, he leaned back. Pulled out his phone. “Sorry I was a cunt,” he typed up, in a message addressed to Bret. He paused. Pressed back. No. Sounded sarcastic. His attempts at conveying the depth of his regret, to the only person in that whole scene who probably had acted justly, just came across as rubbing salt into the wound. He tried again. “I flipped out today and I’m really sorr-” Nope. Bret wasn’t his fucking therapist. Maybe there was a standard message for this sort of situation? No hard feelings? Let’s put this behind us? Agree to disagree? Nope, no cliche was up for the job.
Why was he even trying to do this? After all, it’d been Ivy and Myles that he’d assaulted, and while Bret wasn’t quite the same level of turd-flavoured wankstain as his brother, he wasn’t exactly a bloke deserving of sentimental apologies. Maybe it was some kind of mea culpa, some futile hope that he could prevent a backlash to this.
Nick sighed.
“Fuck it.” He gave up on that endeavour, and then spent the next couple of minutes idly scrolling through his social media feeds. Saved a couple of posts from illusion pages he followed, with the intention, but not the expectation, of doing some productive research later, and scrolled through the comments on a reality page meme site to check his favourites were still in vogue, but mainly he was keeping an eye out for any notifications, any messages, any status updates from sworn foes. Anything to let him know if this story had spread yet.
Nothing yet. And if there was, Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms had decided that Nick would rather see Drag Race memes and word game adverts instead of updates on his imminent social downfall.
Eh, the algorithm was right on this one.
Nick went home. Luckily his parents were both out. His mother was returning from Durham that evening, and his father was attending a business conference in downtown. His sister and brother were the question mark, though. As he entered the house, it was silent, but they were both fans of their afternoon naps, so that didn’t exactly mean anything. Nick frowned. He’d wanted to slouch around downstairs, but that would just lead to more stress if Joanne or Willie came downstairs and started asking about his emotions, like he’d want to actually talk about that.
Nick slammed the door to his room shut. Not deliberately or anything. Just, for a moment, forgot his own strength. He looked at the door for a moment, as if expecting it to fight back or insult him or something. He sighed. Slumped back on his bed.
And then the gentle rapping of knuckles on his door, followed by a slightly higher male voice with the same accent asking “you okay, Nick?”
Nick’s reply was, driven by an instant impulse and a merciless instinct, swift. “Fuck off!”
His brother’s sigh was audible, as if deliberately so. “Nick, man, you-”
“Fuck off!” Nick jumped up, opened the door, only so he could have the pleasure of slamming it all over again, savouring it this time, enjoying the sadism from throwing it shut in his brother’s face. “Fuck off!” he repeated, too blind with fury to think of anything more constructive. He heard his brother audibly sigh again, try and start a few other sentences, before leaving with a pitying and sympathetic murmur that only served to make Nick even angrier and feel even guiltier.
Nick brought his fist to the door, followed by a couple of swift headbutts, making sure to step back just far enough to get some nice momentum going. He heard his brother stop walking. Could imagine exactly what he was doing. Standing there, waiting to hear if Nick followed it up with a third one, just in case there needed to be some intervention. Nick didn’t give him the satisfaction. He rubbed his slightly sore forehead with his palm, and fell back down onto his bed, knowing now that the tone of his mood had been well-established.
He should tell Beryl. And Tristan.
Nick was happy with the way this unconventional three-way relationship was going. He had to be. Weren’t much else to be happy about, so had to make this work. Had to prove that he was actually stable enough and selfless enough to take care of two partners. And he liked to think he was succeeding. They’d had some great times together. Had similar worldviews, compatible personalities, a natural sizzling chemistry, and personalities suited to polyamory. At least, Nick thought so. Sure, he’d spent the first half of the relationship calling it polyphony, but the way they all riffed off each other and joked about and exchanged easy banter, that was just...y’know, it was what Nick had wanted?
He should call them. They needed to spend more time together, and wasn’t this sort of emotional support and no secrets ethos the secret to every long-lasting relationship ever? Well, except when those relationships were only held together by economic insecurity or oppressive divorce laws, but that didn’t count.
They had terrible taste in friends, though. Beryl liked Ivy, for one. And Tristan...yeah. Okay, so, Nick had known that, in an open relationship, non-optimal situations would emerge, and he knew that there was a high chance Tristan and Myles would sleep together. They had that chemistry, after all. Not as potent a chemistry or as romantic a one as the trio shared, but still. It was there. But the fact that Myles thought he could weaponise his sleeping with Tristan, use it to hurt Nick...did that mean anything?
No. No. Don’t think like that. Nick ran his hands over his beard, trying to soothe himself, but to no avail. He told himself to put that unpleasant train of thought aside, and instead decided that, while he would call Tristan first, it was because Beryl’s friendship with Ivy was more poisonous. There. That made sense. It certainly wasn’t ludicrous or self-defeating to think that, definitely not to act on that belief. No way.
And just as he was about to press the button to call Tristan, his phone began to vibrate. Beryl was calling him. So much for that plan.
Or at least, Nick imagined they were surprised. He had thought that he had cultivated an aura, an image, a certain Celtic rustic quality, that was at odds with Frazier’s Glen. Maybe it was presumptuous of him to think it actually worked. Maybe it was some low-level attempt at problematically appropriating and commodifying relative poverty. Maybe. Wouldn’t surprise Nick. He was an arsehole, after all, as the events in town had so acutely reminded him.
He needed to get home early, but there was no reason to be hurried. While it was hard to try and think rationally in this time, Nick knew that the smart thing to do, the first step in damage control, was to break the news to his family on his own terms. Nick’s parents, esteemed university professors with a line in pompous ivory tower academics that had never quite been his forte, had taken every effort to be courteous and community-minded, and would probably not take too kindly to the idea of their son throwing coffee on the school’s queen bitch.
He wondered how he’d break the news to them. It’d get around the grapevine quickly. His younger brother Will would probably get nose of it sooner or later, being a passive receptor for gossip rather than an inadvertent generator, and Willie had a knack for thinking that mum and dad had the experience and sagacity to help solve all of Nick’s problems. He wasn’t a snitch, not really. Wasn’t moralistic enough for that. Had kept Nick’s secrets before. But there was a certain paternalistic timbre to how he looked upon his older brother, which was even more infuriating for Nick.
He had paused once on the way home, to sit on a bench, in a small park across the road from the cul-de-sac that his parents called him. He regretted his choice of seat almost immediately, after realising he was sitting next to one of those trees that smelled like cum.
He looked up at it. Ah, the linden tree. Nothing else in nature could quite remind him of that one time he accidentally blew a load in his pants. Still, if it ever happened again, he could just stand by these trees and nobody would notice. He looked at the ground, mentally replaying that relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch in his mind, mouthing as much of the dialogue as he could remember to himself.
It was procrastination. Eventually, with a sigh, he leaned back. Pulled out his phone. “Sorry I was a cunt,” he typed up, in a message addressed to Bret. He paused. Pressed back. No. Sounded sarcastic. His attempts at conveying the depth of his regret, to the only person in that whole scene who probably had acted justly, just came across as rubbing salt into the wound. He tried again. “I flipped out today and I’m really sorr-” Nope. Bret wasn’t his fucking therapist. Maybe there was a standard message for this sort of situation? No hard feelings? Let’s put this behind us? Agree to disagree? Nope, no cliche was up for the job.
Why was he even trying to do this? After all, it’d been Ivy and Myles that he’d assaulted, and while Bret wasn’t quite the same level of turd-flavoured wankstain as his brother, he wasn’t exactly a bloke deserving of sentimental apologies. Maybe it was some kind of mea culpa, some futile hope that he could prevent a backlash to this.
Nick sighed.
“Fuck it.” He gave up on that endeavour, and then spent the next couple of minutes idly scrolling through his social media feeds. Saved a couple of posts from illusion pages he followed, with the intention, but not the expectation, of doing some productive research later, and scrolled through the comments on a reality page meme site to check his favourites were still in vogue, but mainly he was keeping an eye out for any notifications, any messages, any status updates from sworn foes. Anything to let him know if this story had spread yet.
Nothing yet. And if there was, Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms had decided that Nick would rather see Drag Race memes and word game adverts instead of updates on his imminent social downfall.
Eh, the algorithm was right on this one.
Nick went home. Luckily his parents were both out. His mother was returning from Durham that evening, and his father was attending a business conference in downtown. His sister and brother were the question mark, though. As he entered the house, it was silent, but they were both fans of their afternoon naps, so that didn’t exactly mean anything. Nick frowned. He’d wanted to slouch around downstairs, but that would just lead to more stress if Joanne or Willie came downstairs and started asking about his emotions, like he’d want to actually talk about that.
Nick slammed the door to his room shut. Not deliberately or anything. Just, for a moment, forgot his own strength. He looked at the door for a moment, as if expecting it to fight back or insult him or something. He sighed. Slumped back on his bed.
And then the gentle rapping of knuckles on his door, followed by a slightly higher male voice with the same accent asking “you okay, Nick?”
Nick’s reply was, driven by an instant impulse and a merciless instinct, swift. “Fuck off!”
His brother’s sigh was audible, as if deliberately so. “Nick, man, you-”
“Fuck off!” Nick jumped up, opened the door, only so he could have the pleasure of slamming it all over again, savouring it this time, enjoying the sadism from throwing it shut in his brother’s face. “Fuck off!” he repeated, too blind with fury to think of anything more constructive. He heard his brother audibly sigh again, try and start a few other sentences, before leaving with a pitying and sympathetic murmur that only served to make Nick even angrier and feel even guiltier.
Nick brought his fist to the door, followed by a couple of swift headbutts, making sure to step back just far enough to get some nice momentum going. He heard his brother stop walking. Could imagine exactly what he was doing. Standing there, waiting to hear if Nick followed it up with a third one, just in case there needed to be some intervention. Nick didn’t give him the satisfaction. He rubbed his slightly sore forehead with his palm, and fell back down onto his bed, knowing now that the tone of his mood had been well-established.
He should tell Beryl. And Tristan.
Nick was happy with the way this unconventional three-way relationship was going. He had to be. Weren’t much else to be happy about, so had to make this work. Had to prove that he was actually stable enough and selfless enough to take care of two partners. And he liked to think he was succeeding. They’d had some great times together. Had similar worldviews, compatible personalities, a natural sizzling chemistry, and personalities suited to polyamory. At least, Nick thought so. Sure, he’d spent the first half of the relationship calling it polyphony, but the way they all riffed off each other and joked about and exchanged easy banter, that was just...y’know, it was what Nick had wanted?
He should call them. They needed to spend more time together, and wasn’t this sort of emotional support and no secrets ethos the secret to every long-lasting relationship ever? Well, except when those relationships were only held together by economic insecurity or oppressive divorce laws, but that didn’t count.
They had terrible taste in friends, though. Beryl liked Ivy, for one. And Tristan...yeah. Okay, so, Nick had known that, in an open relationship, non-optimal situations would emerge, and he knew that there was a high chance Tristan and Myles would sleep together. They had that chemistry, after all. Not as potent a chemistry or as romantic a one as the trio shared, but still. It was there. But the fact that Myles thought he could weaponise his sleeping with Tristan, use it to hurt Nick...did that mean anything?
No. No. Don’t think like that. Nick ran his hands over his beard, trying to soothe himself, but to no avail. He told himself to put that unpleasant train of thought aside, and instead decided that, while he would call Tristan first, it was because Beryl’s friendship with Ivy was more poisonous. There. That made sense. It certainly wasn’t ludicrous or self-defeating to think that, definitely not to act on that belief. No way.
And just as he was about to press the button to call Tristan, his phone began to vibrate. Beryl was calling him. So much for that plan.