a winter fable
By Fabian Black
Jinx knew a lot of things. He knew that his local football team would never make it to the top of the league, but he supported them regardless. He knew he wasn’t good looking in a drop-dead gorgeous kind of way. By the same token nor was he ugly. He was an ordinary boy-next-door type with a sweet smile and neat ears, so his grandma had told him anyway.
He knew he preferred thin cut breakfast marmalade to thick cut, something his mother just couldn’t seem to get her head around, so that when he visited home he’d have to stoically chew on what felt like strands of bootlace because he knew she’d bought the marmalade especially for him.
He knew that his father was a man called Harry Coulter, but he’d never actually met him. In fact his mother had only met him once, at a friend’s wedding. It was a relationship that was caught like the bride’s bouquet at the height of a happy moment, but which expired before the bridal blooms had even wilted.
He also knew that the nickname Jinx would be with him until the day he parted company with life and his legal name, David Jenkins, appeared on the brass plaque on his coffin lid, thus confusing his friends and leading them to exclaim, who the hell is that? Are we at the wrong funeral?
Childhood nicknames are hard to shake off and sometimes Jinx doubted that he had another name in any concrete sense. His bio father’s surname had been Coulter, but Jinx had never shared it. His mother’s surname was Trent before she married Eddie Jenkins, the man who subsequently adopted David at the age of six. He became David Jenkins and finally Jinx to differentiate him from the three other Davids he shared a classroom with, one of whom he had a secret crush on throughout his school life.
Being in possession of a nickname early on in life had its advantages. It meant that when it came to creating an email account he had a ready made ‘emaily’ sort of name and didn’t have to invent one. He was Jinx101. Occasionally he harboured a regret that he hadn’t chosen something more fantastical, like the email addies chosen by blokes whose genitalia had taken over their lives and become an entity separate from the person that transported it around. Names like Wellhung, Everhard or 9andahalfinches. Yeah, Jinx knew a lot of things. He knew that a bloke whose email address was 9andahalfinches was probably seven at the very most.
Jinx knew other stuff. He knew that in order to get ahead you needed to get an education. So he studied hard and went to university and he had a good time, too good in his first year. He almost got kicked out because he disregarded the golden rule about fitting in a few lectures and essays between partying and screwing. His chosen university had an active gay social scene and Jinx was determined to take full advantage of it. For a while he lost control of everything but his groin region. Not that it complained or anything, but complaints were made, mainly by tutors when papers failed to be submitted.
That was the point in his life when he met Jim Chambers. Jim was a student counsellor. Like Jinx he was gay, and he could remember what it was like to go through those euphoric days of self-discovery and existing from the waist down only. He counselled Jinx wisely. He helped him organise his social and work schedules, so that one didn’t cancel out the other. Consequently Jinx wasn’t booted ignominiously out of university with only an STD to show for his endeavours.
Jim was a few years older than Jinx but they got on well together and once the official counselling sessions were over they became good friends.
During Jinx’s all-important final year his stepfather died suddenly, a heart attack. It came out of the blue one Saturday afternoon, while he’d been in the midst of cheering on his local football team. The St John Ambulance volunteers did their very best to revive him, but to no avail. He was gone.
Jinx was surprised by the grief that engulfed him for the quiet man who had married his mother and given his name to a child that wasn’t his own, a man who had staunchly been there during the lego years, the seaside days and the acne moments. He hadn’t realised how much he wanted that man to be proud of him and how much he had been looking forward to him being present when he received his degree.
It’s funny how you never really know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Jinx regretted all the words of gratitude and affection left unspoken for the quiet man whose name, he now understood, he carried with pride and love. That was when Jinx, who as a student already drank too much, began to drink way too much in order to dull the pain of unsaid words.
Jim helped him through it. He was a shoulder to cry on, someone who listened and comforted. He was also the man who physically hauled Jinx out of The Star And Garter the night before an important exam. He walked him miles in the fresh air and made him drink enough water for it to fall under the category of torture. He then stayed with him all night to ensure he woke up sober and got to his exam.
He was also the man who solemnly promised Jinx that if he got that drunk again before his finals were over, he would tan his foolhardy backside. In fact if he ever resorted to the bottle instead of friendship in the event of any future problems, he would do the same. Jinx had blushed at the threat, but not really believed it. Still, he made sure that he didn’t get drunk again until his exams were over.
Jinx got his degree, with honours, and landed a good job in the same city as the university he got it from. Life was sweet. He and Jim remained firm friends. They met up at least twice a week for a meal or to go to the cinema or just to chat over a pint in the pub. When something bothered Jinx he called Jim to talk it out and knew he could rely on getting honest advice. They sometimes messaged online during work hours and all in all they were part of the warp and woof of each other’s lives.
The days shaped themselves into months and seasons that flowed one into another, and the years fell from the calendar.
There was something that Jinx didn’t know. He didn’t know that he was in love with Jim. He thought they were just great friends, but they weren’t. They were lovers in all senses but sex. Did he but know it, Jinx had begun the process of falling in love in his second year at university, on a fine day in mid October when they were sitting by the river watching a kingfisher dive. He had shivered as a cool autumn breeze wrapped itself about him. Draping an arm around his shoulders Jim had pulled him close against his side and shared body heat with him, as they talked and laughed.
On the other hand Jim knew that he was in love with Jinx. He first suspected it one autumn day, as the leaves turned ruby-gold on the trees, and a kingfisher dived in and out of a fast flowing river sparking aqua diamonds from its wings, while Jinx nestled snug and warm against his side.
The suspicion was confirmed not long afterwards, on a winter’s day, as they walked on the Cleveland Hills. Jinx had clutched at his hand and exclaimed in spontaneous wonderment, as the sun went down on the frost kissed fields of the sheep wash, turning white to sparkling pink before their eyes. He told Jinx that he loved him. Jinx had hugged him and said he loved him too. Jim knew that he had chosen to interpret the declaration as one of close but uncomplicated friendship, and a shadow touched his heart.
Jim met Victor, a Canadian who came to the university to do some research for a year. Jim liked him. They got on well, more than well. Vic asked him to take a sabbatical from work and go back to Canada with him to see how they got along as a couple. Jim said yes, because he was lonely. Sometimes friends and family are not enough. Jinx was seeing someone, a stockbroker called Nigel, a smug individual with certain knowledge of his own worth. They were talking about setting up together. Jim wanted to set up with someone. The days of his life were slipping like sand through an hourglass and he didn’t want to spend the remainder alone.
Jim’s announcement that he was emigrating to Canada in the early spring hit Jinx like a thunderbolt. He was shocked by the grief that engulfed him. He suddenly understood with shattering clarity that Jim was more than a friend. He was a lover in every sense but sex. He’d had sex with many men, but been intimate with none, not in the way he was intimate with Jim. Why had he not seen what was under his nose? He wanted to beg him not to go. He wanted to tell him how much he meant to him, how much he loved him, and that he was ready to take their relationship a step further. But he didn’t. He believed that Jim loved Vic and that he had missed his moment, and a shadow touched his heart.
On the day he left for Canada, Jim told Jinx to phone him, email him or message him every day. Taking his face between his hands he told him that if he ever needed him, all he had to do was ask and he would be there. Then he waited, waited for Jinx to give the right response, waited for everything to fall into place and make this their moment. Nothing fell into place. Jinx didn’t make the right response and Jim got on the plane and went to Canada with Vic, but left his heart with a blue-eyed man in the airport bar.
Jinx missed Jim even more than he thought he would. He came to realise how important he had been in his life. How he had made him laugh and how he had accepted and forgiven his many flaws, such as his propensity to talk too much and too loudly when excited, his critical impatience and his blindness to things that were often under his nose. He missed the familiar scent of his aftershave and the way his soft brown eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Jim had helped Jinx keep his life together and with him gone it began to slowly fall apart. He and the stockbroker did not set up house together. Nigel did not like Jinx calling him to talk things over, because he was not an advice giver or a comforter, or a fucking nursemaid, as he tenderly put it. He believed that people should be responsible only for themselves and viewed domestic commitment simply as a means of maximising material assets. He was one of the hard hearted and self-serving, and Jinx wondered what the hell he had ever seen in him.
Autumn came. Jinx sat by the river, watching a pair of kingfishers dive until it got too cold, and he turned his footsteps homewards, stopping off en route at the pub. He was drinking too much. He had started to drink a little too much the day that Jim left for Canada. A little too much soon turned into way too much, but he didn’t tell Jim, nor did he tell him when he lost his job due to alcohol related absences. He didn’t tell Jim anything, because he didn’t want to worry him. He convinced him that he was keeping a handle on life and that everything was fine. The pretence became too much and he began to reduce contact with Jim. In the end he made the decision to stop talking to him altogether, because it hurt too much and he was too afraid he’d say something about his handle-less life and make his dearest friend ashamed of him. He changed his phone numbers and email addresses and tried to forget the kingfisher moments he’d shared with a man who had been not only his friend, but also, he now knew, the love of his life.
Sometimes you just had to accept that you’d messed up and missed out on your chance for happiness.
Jim had not liked Jinx’s gradual cessation of contact, but accepted it as being a natural aspect of the distance between them. He and Victor had never really set up as a unit. They had a friendship with occasional sex. When Jinx fell off the radar altogether Jim made urgent enquiries and what he discovered distressed him. He told Vic of his concerns.
Vic took Jim’s face between his big kind hands and told him to go back to the place that in essence he had never left. He described Jim and Jinx as two men who for too long had been trying to live as independent entities, when in fact they were interlocking parts of the same puzzle. The puzzle was incomplete.
It was time said Vic, smiling softly, to accept that the emerging picture was not of a student and counsellor, or friends, it was a picture of two men in love. He told Jim to take charge and press home the final piece, because that was his role. It had been his role since the first piece was laid down by a young man having a hard time adapting to life away from home and who subsequently walked into a counsellor’s office and asked for help, willingly taking what was offered.
Jim wrote snail mail to Jinx saying he was on his way back and that he’d be home for Christmas. He also told him emphatically that he was in love with him and he wanted to live the rest of his life with him.
The letter arrived at its destination on the same day that Jim’s plane touched down on the airport runway, but it didn’t get read. It lay unopened on the hall table, because Jinx didn’t realise it was a love letter. He thought it was just Christmas greetings from a distant friend and he couldn’t bear to open it and read a general message from someone he wanted so much, but believed he would never see again. Instead, he got ready and went out on a date with a man whose attraction lay in the fact that he looked a little bit like Jim.
Jinx knew he’d sunk to the bottom of the barrel when he woke up late on Christmas Eve with a terrible hangover and his bed companion from the night before turned out to be a chicken, and not in the sense of a young gay man, but an item of poultry that, while devoid of feathers, was still in possession of its head and neck. He stared in horror, wracking his foggy thoughts as to how he’d ended up in bed with a naked bird, and worse, wondering whether he might have given a whole new meaning to the term stuffing the chicken.
It came back to him, the club, and the date who had reminded him of Jim, but who turned out to be nothing like him. He remembered leaving the club alone, ending up in a pub and buying fur and feather raffle tickets, winning the chicken and arriving home too drunk to do anything but collapse into bed, still clutching the bag that contained his featherless friend and from whence it had obviously escaped during the night.
Taking the bird into the kitchen he sat at the table with it and pondered on the mess that he had made of his life. He was lonely. His thoughts turned to suicide and he got out the whisky bottle and all the pills he possessed, six painkillers and half a bottle of vitamins. Hardly a fatal amount, so he took a painkiller to offset his hangover and a vitamin in lieu of food, and then concentrated on reaching the bottom of the whisky bottle, while telling the attentive chicken all about Jim.
Jim had always had a spare key to Jinx’s house, a back up sort of thing. He had kept it when he went to Canada and he used it on his return, opening the door and stepping into the dark hall when his peal on the doorbell went unanswered. The kitchen tableau with empty whisky bottle and scattered pills told an alarming story, though Jim was uncertain as to what part the chicken had played.
Roughly rousing Jinx from his stupor he convinced him that he was neither dream nor hallucination, and then demanded to know exactly what the hell he’d taken. Jinx gave a slurred assurance that he hadn’t overdosed, well, not if you discounted the alcohol. Jim ruthlessly set about sobering him up, hauling him to his feet, roundly scolding him while making him drink enough water to qualify as a form of torture before walking him miles in the cold air.
Once home, before going back into the house, Jim turned to Jinx and asked, “why, why didn’t you call, David, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling? I would have come to you straightaway. I could have helped.”
Jinx’s fine blue eyes misted, “I didn’t want to impose on you. I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me, and anyway, I thought you loved Victor.” Tears fell, “I thought I’d fucked up.”
“You daft man.” Taking hold of Jinx’s cold hands Jim gave them a cross little shake and then raised them to his lips, kissing each in turn, saying, “real friends are never disappointed in each other, or if they are, they get over it. I told you a long time ago that I’d always be here for you. I meant it.” Releasing his hands he opened the door and ushered Jinx inside helping him out of his coat. Taking his hand he lead him into the sitting room and sat down on the couch pulling him onto his lap and cuddling him, while berating him for turning to the bottle instead of friendship.
Once the tears abated Jim told Jinx that he loved him, really loved him, did he understand? Jinx nodded and then cried afresh. A tender kiss of comfort gave way to kisses of passion and they ended up in bed where they became lovers in every sense of the word. It was as if someone had fitted the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle and the full picture at last emerged.
It snowed on Christmas day, as it inevitably does in stories that are set around the festive season. Jim and Jinx stood by the window watching snowflakes falling outside while they waited for their celebratory repast, chicken, to finish cooking. The bells rang joyfully out for Christmas Day. They embraced and kissed, knowing that they would be happy together for all the days of their lives.
The End.
Email: fabianblackromance@googlemail.com
Copyright Fabian Black 2009.