I'm Not There [chapter one posted]

Thank you, despite the warning in the description, for taking time out your (I'm sure) busy writing schedule. In case you were lazy and didn't read the warning, here it is again: WARNING--This story contains homosexual theme, underage drinking, drugs, prostitution, and relationships that would be considered unlawful (age-wise).

So, without further ado, here is I'm Not There.

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Preface

In my own mind he was the ugliest, and at the same time the most beautiful. This was a truth I had somehow never had the ability to tell him. He wouldn’t have understood, I thought, sure of that. If I had ever gotten the courage to say that to him, he’d have only stared back at me, his dull black eyes questioning my sanity and one black eyebrow pulled upward condescendingly.

Ugly and beautiful. “Pick one or the other,” he would have said, annoyed by my indecision. He would have tangled his fingers in his hair, clasping them behind his neck tightly. “Which one am I?” Ugly, I thought then to myself, sure of the answer he would have given if he’d answered his question. But you’re wrong. Not ugly at all. But to someone who’d never know him, those two opposites were the only way to tell them who he was. To tell them of the person, the one I knew so well… I could never, in words, describe him. If I could, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want any else to love him like I had.

Like I had… I shook my head at this and leaned closer to the window, sitting in my--no, his--chair, searching every alleyway, my eye catching every slight movement behind Dumpsters, my heart skipping at the sight of any black haired boy that stood under a streetlight. I’d peek around corners and call his name, or watch what I could behind the curtains of cheap motels.
Anything to tell me he was still there.

Hey Miffles!

Really, you should have reviewed two works before posting something of your own. It just makes sure that everyone gets critiques and it will make people more willing to review your work if you've given them a critique.

I would assume that this is the preface of something much longer? I liked what I read. It was slightly confusing, but that seemed intentional so I'm guessing everything will become clearer as the story progresses? I found it quite intruiging and it definatly drew me in and made me want to read more.

He wouldn’t have understood, I thought, sure of that

Cut off this sentence and make it just: He wouldn't have understood You tell us that you're sure he wouldn't have understood, but you would create more of an impact by showing this and giving it a much more decisive tone. It also re-inforces the way you, later, say you know him so well. Also 'I thought, sure of that' didn't really seem to make much sense to me.

Ugly, I thought then to myself, sure of the answer he would have given if he’d answered his question

Again, shorten this: Ugly, I thought then to myself, sure of the answer he would have given.

Also, possibly make it: I would have thought then, to myself

You were talking about a hypothetical situation, not something which was actually happening (hence your previous uses of 'would have' )

or: Ugly, I would think to myself

or something similar?

Overall I did enjoy it though, and I'm looking forward to reading more. Just remember that for every piece you post you need to have reviewed at least two other works by someone else. If you have any questions, feel free to pm me!

Sofi.

^^ Thank you very much, glad you liked it. And, yeah, this is all part of a larger story. Thank you for the corrections, I'll be sure to edit. Edits probably won't be posted here, since I'm lazy like that, but on my actual Word file, there will be edits.

Epdates will be soon, hopefully.

"This was a truth I had somehow never had the ability to tell him" -- This sentence was awkward to me.

"If I had ever gotten the courage to say that to him," -- I know this is just a preface but when I was reading this I felt like you should have said If I had ever gotten the courage to say that truth to him. Because saying, "that to him," didn't seem right to me, b/c you never say what that in the previous sentences. I just felt like saying that truth to him still kept it vague and made more sense to me.

Well I thought this was a good introduction I'm definitely interested in reading more. The only other problem I had is that I thought you were trying to say too much in the second paragraph and it become a little difficult to read, but I just reread it and it was good!

Chapter One

They all named themselves awful names, fake little names that no responsible parent would ever be able to name their children. There was a Dolce and a Legato who shared a stoop, and their friends Lyric and Symphony who would waltz down the block, sometimes sharing clients if business was slow for one of them. A pair of identical twins who always shared had named themselves Heaven and Neveah. As much as they all amused me, I knew that it didn’t matter how many names they gave themselves. Everyone else saw them, and they didn’t see humans. They looked at them like part of the landscape, beautifully ugly little things, and no matter how many names they gave themselves, everyone else knew them by one little grotesque word.

Whore.

Whether or not it was really a thing to brag about, I knew them all, and whether or not it was a good thing, they all liked me. I would look at them, Dolce had once told me, like real people.

“You don’t look at us and see someone who lives for sex,” he’d say, holding Legato’s hand while he looked on with a slight smile. Most of them, I’d found, would think back on whatever it was they’d run away from and wonder if there was still someone waiting for them.

Somehow I couldn’t look at them that way, and perhaps it was because I’d never used them that way. They delighted in seeing me, the tips of my fingers reddened from three hours of playing the same slow song on a piano. Dolce and Legato, though the latter would normally just sit and wait for someone to walk by, would call me over to talk, and I would, whether it was because I truly wanted to, or if I just liked seeing someone like that happy.

“I might be able to leave this soon,” Dolce said one night, hugging Legato tightly. The smaller, darker boy sat two steps below Dolce and leaned between his knees, his head placed delicately in his friend’s chest. Dolce, unlike Legato or Lyric and Symphony, didn’t work for anyone but himself and kept his money for himself. It was a mistake, Legato had said one night, that he had wished he’d made. On the inside of Legato’s wrist a large, black 6 was tattooed there, marking him as property.

“To him,” Legato had told me once, speaking of his owner so wryly, “I’m nothing but very valuable property now.”

“That’s why I never agree to being anyone’s slave,” Dolce cooed softly into his friend’s ear, taking a quick nip at him. To this Legato smiled and laughed a slow, smooth laugh, almost never breaking by a quiet breath.

“It’s also why you sleep behind a garbage can,” Legato said, turning his head upward. “At least I get to sleep in a bed every day, for as long as I want.”

Dolce considered this for a moment, then smiled again. How they could still smile amazed me. “Maybe someday I’ll meet a rich man who will want to take me in and teach me culture,” he said sweetly, biting the tip of Legato’s ear again. Legato made a quick hissing sound and slapped Dolce’s knee.

“That stupid Pretty Woman movie,” he spat, leaning harder on Dolce. “Nothing like that would ever happen. Someone with that sort of class wouldn’t take in a whore, and none of us are that cultured, and you know it.”

“And yet you all know those musical names?” I said finally, making them both look at me in a confused state, but then they both looked at each other with a strange warmth.

“You taught them to us, Mr. Summers,” Dolce whispered, grabbing the back of my neck with his small hand. Small, I say now in retrospect, because now I think of them not only as people, but people who had an age. At that time, Dolce was seventeen and, from what he’d told me, had lived behind a hotel and from room to room for two and a half years. “We aren’t smart, Mr. Summers, not on our own. Otherwise, well...we probably would have been smart enough to know we couldn’t sell our bodies so easily.”

To this, Legato sighed and hid himself underneath Dolce again, and Dolce wrapped his arms around the boy. “Oh,” Dolce said, looking up almost excitedly. “We’ve got a new boy. He calls himself Vivace.”

I smiled. Another who used musical names. “Is he new to the, uh..?”

“Lifestyle?” Dolce finished, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. He looked older suddenly, a sadness in his eyes that I’d seen when he first mentioned a new one. Shaking his head, he sighed. “No, he’s been gone from home for...two years now, I think.” I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. Two years. I’d always wondered what it was that these boys and girls ran away from, what could have been so bad, they thought.

“Do you know his real name?” I asked, cut off by another smooth laugh from Legato.

He blew a piece of black hair out of his eyes and looked at me from behind Dolce’s arms. “Of course not,” he said, an amused grin stretching across his dark face, the white-yellow of his teeth showing brightly from his skin. “He’s more secretive than Dolce. At least he’s told me his name. This new kid acts offended when anyone asks him his name.”

I nodded and leaned back against the door of the old hotel. From somewhere down the street, the twins chimed together, “Hey, mistah, want some comp’ny tonight?”

No one knew their real names either, or where they came from or why they left there. When asked, they said, “We’re goin’ to Nunya and comin’ from Business.”

Most of them, I’d found, were very adamant about keeping who they are–or were–completely secret. Dolce was one of the worst about keeping everything about himself out of the way. Legato, however, said he was too far from home (“You can do a lot of walking in three years, after all.”) for it to matter who he told his real name to.

“Clients don’t care about names,” Dolce hissed, grabbed Legato’s hair affectionately. “We’re things not people, and we don’t have names, real or fake. As long as we screw them, they don’t care. Most of the time, I barely get my fake name out before they throw me down and– ”

“Stop,” Legato groaned, slapping a hand over Dolce’s mouth. He lowered his head to look at the dark boy below him. Legato let go of his mouth and pushed himself harder against Dolce. “I don’t want to hear it. I already know.” I did wonder how in the world people could see them, these two or the twins or any of the others, still kids by definition of their age, and think of them as property or landscape. Something to be used or owned, or looked at like nothing more than that grotesque word. There was something, the thought that they were someone’s child, that made me stop and see them as what they really were.

But it seemed that no one else could see that.

The silence between the two was broken by the crunch of gravel and a low, irritated groan. They both looked up to a shifty eyed man, his face tired, his voice slurred as he looked at both of them and asked, “You two free?” he asked. He looked them up and down with that hungry look, a thirst in his eyes that sickened me, still, after seeing it so many times on all the nights I’d watched the two of them be taken in, grabbed up harshly or asked in whispered voices for their “services”.
Dolce leaned forward, a practiced smile on his face as he clicked his tongue stud against his front teeth, and in a practiced whisper that sent a shiver down my spine, “We ain’t free, but we come together, if you want,” he said, drawing the guy in closer. I stood from the stoop and slid a hand through Dolce’s thick coppery brown hair.

“You come with them, too?” the man said, and I was sure he was drunk. I could smell the thick stench from his breath and his eyes had that starved, villainous look that made me wish I didn't perform at a bar. Dolce and Legato, however, loved the drunk ones. They could usually get twice their usual price, at the very least, or sometimes the man would wake up to an empty hotel room and an empty wallet. I shook my head and waved over my shoulder.

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Summers,” Legato called as they walked into the dirty old hotel. Dolce led the man inside, smiling and laughing at anything he said. Legato watched him with disgust as Dolce slid his hand down the man’s back, sliding his fore and middle fingers into the back pocket of his pants.