Thursday, March 1, 2012

Chapter Five: Ain't No Mountain High Enough Part One


So one problem that I seem to have is what we call my "relationship cross over’s", and just after Sam is when that truly began to happen.  Where somehow because of the world and its wicked sense of humor I meet a great guy right after my current relationship has just ended.  It’s not that I really meant for each of my relationships to start that way and in no way did it make me not feel as strongly as I did for all of the following guys after Chapter 4.  But here is where that trend truly began, except for one exception but we will get there eventually.  But one thing I would like to address now is that most of the guys following this will have more than one chapter.  I know, I know just like when "LOST" came out, you are going to have to wait patiently for the next piece of Jeremy's life.  I just want to give the proper amount of words for the serious relationships you will learn about and that will take me some time.  But lets continue: 
            So during the course of this "Sam calling me frantically over weeks of time" I met someone else.  Rick.  Currently I was working in the ever so glamorous Starbucks department of a grocery store called Safeway.  I was going on my last months there because I was to leave for New York that August for school. I called Safeway our “family business” because my mother, sister, and myself had all worked there the course of our lives but thank God none of us work there now.  Well, I had two friends Stephanie and Nick who worked at the grocery store as well and we seemed to hang out quite a lot.  We were all kind of a goofy bunch so we had a lot of fun together.  They came over to my department on my break one day and asked if I wanted to hang out later that night.  Because I had really no life except for Safeway at this point, I agreed.  They told me that we were actually going to hang out with their friend Rick who they went to high school with as well.  I thought nothing of it and we made plans to meet after work.  When I met Rick, the first thing I noticed about him was his style.  He was very stylish, from his hair all the way down to his shoes.  He was also very cute.  He was shorter than me, and had dark hair, hazel eyes, tan skin, was built but not OVERLY built, and had a great smile.  We had a short introduction and then we all decided to go to Denny’s.  Rick was very nice and very sweet.  He was a pretty funny guy and pretty goofy as well.  But one thing I was truly struggling with over that first night was whether or not Rick was gay.  I mean he had good style but the kind of style that could be interpreted as metro sexual.  He was a very expressive and very extraverted but not in any way a gay sense. Now this was at a time before my gaydar had been installed correctly (I was currently waiting for a replacement from gaydarsforcheap.com) so I was being very cautious yet curious of this person’s sexuality. I was kind of confused and of course with that mysterious unknown territory, young Jeremy began to crush.  The night ended and we had taken Ricks car from the Safeway parking lot, so he drove us all back to our cars that were now in the completely empty parking lot.  I was the last one to my beat up Volvo and was letting the engine warm up a bit before I got going (at this point everyone else had driven away) when a car pulled into the parking lot.  It was Rick’s car.  He pulled up next to me and rolled down his window.  “Everything ok?” he asked.  I responded with a “Yes of course, my car just needs a little love before I tackle the road.” He laughed.  “Everything ok with you?” I asked.  “Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you got on the road safely seeing as its midnight,” he said with a smile.  Wow.  I really didn’t know how to respond because I was not really used to someone caring for my well being like that, especially someone I had literally just met that night.  So I responded with “Awe thanks, that’s very sweet.”  He said “No problem,” and him and I parted ways.  All the way home (which was literally maybe 8 blocks away) as my car strained down the road, I was thinking to myself “Now why would he do that??”  I was very confused because I again had no idea of whether or not he was even of the homosexual race.  I thought about it all night until I fell asleep that night then got up the next morning and went to work.
            Of course because that is just how my life works, Stephanie and Nick were also working morning shifts in their respective departments.  Again we met on our breaks and I brought up the question that was bugging me.  “Is Rick gay?” I asked.  They both looked at each other for a long time.  Stephanie spoke first, “well that is actually unknown.”  “What do you mean?” I asked.  “Well,” began Nick, “you see there was a point in high school that he was out of the closet and was fine with it, but then suddenly he wasn’t anymore.  He began dating girls, and kind of never brought up the whole ‘gay’ thing again.” “Hmmmm,” I responded.  Not a completely hopeless situation.  I told them both about the night before, and they both kind of agreed that it was a little weird.  Because Nick had a big crush on Rick (story of my life) he said, “Well, if he turns out to be gay let me know!”  Stephanie and Nick suggested we hang out again that night, and I said “Sure.”  Nick went to the restroom and Stephanie turned to me and asked, “Do you want me to invite Rick?” And I responded immediately with, “Yes.” 
            That night the plan was for Rick to again pick us up in his XTerra, and then we were going to drive around for a while and see what we wanted to do.  As we drove along one thing that made me enjoy Ricks company was that he all loved to sing full out to the radio.  He drove down the highway blasting the radio and sang his heart out.  Even if it wasn't exactly in tune. So because we hadn’t exactly figured out what we were going to do, Stephanie suggested we drive up to Lookout Mountain (I know, I know that is so Pleasantville).  Now Lookout Mountain was obviously a…well a mountain but what made it great was it had a spectacular view of all of Denver at night.  There were places to park and just look out across the state. It really is one of the prettiest places to be at night in Colorado.  So we drove up there and found a spot to park.  It was gorgeous.  It was such a perfectly clear night and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.  Now Rick apparently was a very adventurous person and he had this brilliant idea to climb over the railing and down some rocks to find a perfect viewing place.  Dangerous I know, and out of the three of us, I was the only one who took him up on his offer while the other two stayed behind the railing by the car.  After climbing down a multitude of rocks and after Jeremy almost broke his neck numerous times, we found a perfect spot to look over the city.  We sat there for a while in silence just taking in the atmosphere.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  All you could hear were the small sounds of the woods.  Whether it was the trees brushing up against each other in the small breeze or the snap of a twig by some forest animal like bigfoot or a lesbian.  All you could see were lights.  Now this was completely different than New York at night or Las Vegas.  These not only had the lights from downtown Denver but millions of scattered lights in the darkness all over the state which could have been outside lighting from a grocery store or just a simple porch light left on by a mother waiting for her teenage daughter to come home and ground her ass.  It is just a truly calming beautiful experience being up there.  And if you were to look to your left you could see cars coming up the mountain.  I turned to Rick and gave him a light punch in his arm.  He asked, “What was that for?” I said, “Slug bug red.”  “What?” he asked.  “Slug bug red,” I replied and I pointed to the left where you could only see the headlights of a car coming up the mountain.  He laughed and said, “How do you know that’s a bug?”  “I just know,” I replied.  “Ok then,” he said, “Well slug bug blue!” And he punched me lightly on the arm.  We then began to randomly hit each other all over back and forth saying random colored slug bugs.  He then softy brushed the side of my chin with his fist and we kissed.  We kissed for a long time.  It was very slow and not forced on either end.  I kind of was in a state of shock and also of empowerment.  I was also very scared.  I mean what if this was another repeat of Josh?  I mean I don’t know if I could do that again.  But that thought of course got thrown away in the moment and I lived in that very moment.  All that mattered in the time was he and I surrounded by the smell and sounds of the woods and the scattered lights laid before us like fireflies in the night sky.  We stayed down there for what seemed like forever. It was such an unreal experience.  A real scene from some movie based off of a Nicolas Spark novel.  After awhile we stopped, he got up and held out his hand to me and helped me up.  I thought, “Ok, I guess the moment is over.”  Not true.  He led me over to a small cave and we sat in there for a long time kissing each other.  Like I said, we never did anything more.  We just kissed.  Minutes literally turned to hours.  I got out my phone and looked at it.  4:00am.  Wait…What?!  How in God’s name (I apologize Lord, no means of disrespect) did it get to be so late? Or in this case early?  Funny thing is, I worked the morning shift and had to open Starbucks at 5:00am.  I told him we had to get going because it would take us at least an hour to get me back to Safeway, and thankfully I had my uniform in my car.  We climbed our way back up and found Nick and Stephanie asleep in the car.  We woke them up and told them we had to get going and for some reason Stephanie offered to drive.  Rick and I sat in the back seat.  He held my hand the whole way down the mountain, even if he hid it under a coat so the others wouldn’t see.  We finally pulled into the Safeway parking lot and Nick and Stephanie said their goodbyes, got in the cars and drove home to sleep.  Rick got into the front seat, and I said “Well, thanks for a fun night.” Gay I know.  He responded with, “Yeah, I had fun.”  He kissed me again and said, “You know what, I think I’m going to sleep here in my car for awhile.”  I said, “Ok” and got my uniform and went into work.  One of the longest days of my life, but for some reason I was on some sort of high.  I was overcome with so many different feelings, that I was able to keep going throughout the day even with serving grumpy people their morning coffee.  I had no idea what was going to come after this night.  I mean I didn’t want to even bank on anything because I didn’t want to get hurt, but for some reason I was just as happy as can be that whole day.  Funny thing is, I could see Rick’s car from the window of Starbucks, and he never left.  He stayed my whole shift.  I had no idea what was about to happen and what was all going to happen after that night.  I mean you never do, do you?  But I will say one thing, that first night started something.  It started my true journey about myself. I was set to learn a whole lot about myself and others and most important love and the dangerous feeling it is.  To be continued…

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