When my alarm went off in the morning, I thought that I had dreamt about everything I had experienced with Bernado. The carnival, the nature hike, it was all an elaborate reality that I had conjured up to escape my feelings, or at least that’s what my family back at the apartment would say if they heard about this.
I groaned under my arm, feeling more exhausted than I was previously before I fell asleep. Reaching out, I leaned forward to grab my phone, blindly reaching to hit snooze while I mustered the strength to open my eyes.
To find that everything was not a dream.
And that I was in a car.
In my panic, I scrambled back against the seatbelt, feeling the leather dig into my chest. I kicked a few pieces of trash that lay scattered across the floor, unable to comprehend anything Bernado was saying. The alarm continued to blare as I screamed, watching Bernado swerve to barely dodge a white SUV.
“FINALLY!” Bernado burst out, clearly annoyed at the ruckus I was making but smiling as he tossed me a breakfast sandwich from his bag. “I’ve been-you can stop screaming now-I’ve been waiting for you to wake up!”
My heart hammered painfully in my chest as I gripped the leather armrest, watching my finger turn a dull shade of white. Bernardo reached over, snatching my phone to kill the alarm as he carefully dodged another car.
“HOW THE HELL DID I GET HERE,” I screamed.
“Wow wow wow Rhy,” Bernado exclaimed, putting up one of his hands defensively as the other gripped the wheel, “I picked you up, simple as that.”
Yeah simple, simple in giving me a heart attack.
I felt like I was going to puke watching him accelerate the car as they swerved through lanes and dodged cars. He was always like this, a speed demon who had no concern for his or anyone’s safety for the matter.
In my sleepy daze, it took a moment for me to remember how to speak as I pushed back my messy mop of hair. I croaked, “Slow down Bernado you’re going to kill us.”
Bernado’s cocky smile was quickly replaced with a scowl as he slowed down. It was barely a difference as they continued to speed around the other cars on the highway but it helped to keep my stomach down. “Here take this,” Bernado huffed, thrusting a scalding hot coffee into my hand. The amount of energy he had this morning was obscene.
A thin smile crossed my face as I gracefully accepted the coffee, taking a sip before placing it in the cupholder between us. Despite everything, he still remembers that coffee was my literal lifeblood in the morning. Back at our apartment, we used to have this funny sign that we bought at a yard sale that we hung up in the dining room. Even back in the day, it used to crack us up in the morning, “Sleep is for the dead so drink some Coffee!”
I balled my fist, resisting the urge to cry as I thought back to the day, a hazy memory in a sea of thought. It wasn’t our apartment anymore since I was recently kicked out.
Bernado’s eyes burned with wild energy as he swerved through lanes so quickly, that he was bound to cause an accident. “So, I have a secret for today,” he asked unbothered as he lifted his tea to his lip, “I was thinking something explosive.”
I stared at him, trying to gauge if he was being serious or not.
He stared back at me, unblinking as he swerved into another van.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be important to Bernado to warrant his silence. So I pretended to look offended to get an answer out of him, but reluctantly he held his tongue for once and silently kept to the road.
Maybe I was worried about whatever he had planned.
Or maybe I was just scared that I’d wake up without him at my side.
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When they finally pulled into the parking lot alongside a huge apartment complex, the sun was nothing more than a smudge of burning red streaking across a pale sky. Streetlights slowly flickered on, lighting the road as we stepped out of the car. I for one was grateful to be on solid land, Bernado’s reckless driving and the multiple near-death experiences did little to quell my anxiety. And knowing Bernardo, who still hadn’t told me what we were doing or why we were in town, I suspected it had to do with the blasting reggaeton from a club down the block.
Walking down the parking lot with Bernado bounding behind me, I kept thinking that this would be the last night I had with him. It wasn’t a concrete thought, but more of a gut feeling that tugged at me. Yet, watching Bernado smile, I didn’t have the stomach to tell him, instead choosing to push it aside as we stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I groaned as a young couple bumped into us, the blaring music increasing with every step they took.
Bernado bounded to him, synchronizing his steps and he exclaimed with a wild smile, “Yes!”
I tried to glare at him but only mustered a crooked smile, and exclaimed, “You know this is my whole nightmare right Berny!”
He shook his head, seemingly unbothered as he laughed. “You’re a musician, Rhys,” he said with mock sincerity, tugging on a playful devil mask as they neared the club and the source of the music.
When PRISM was opened up in 1978, Bryan Peace originally thought that his club would be a hit sensation amongst bus riders and out-of-towners. Within a couple of years, Bryan feared bankruptcy when an amazing prosperity came out of the blue. Shortly, instead of turning a few bucks a night, he was instead making hundreds and even five hundred on a good night such as tonight.
At first, his clientele consisted of young, polite, exclusively white males. Some of them dressed outrageously, but like anyone with a good business, Bryan kept to himself. Then as his place became quite popular, other queer folk began to appear almost nightly, and it wasn’t till the 80s that he finally noticed that his patrons were almost exclusively Gay. But the club was making money and though Crystal Cove had four other bars, the PRISM was the only one in which his patrons did not regularly demolish the places. He assumed it was the fact that there was no woman to fight over, and these folk seem to have a secret to getting along unlike their counterparts who frequent the other bars.
Once he came to the light of his Patreon, rumors seemed to circulate across town, leaping from one uncultured ear to the next-but privy to him, these rumors have been circulating since he first opened shop. And yet, to his knowledge, it seemed as if most of these enthusiastic tales were men who wouldn’t be dragged by a chain into the PRISM for they fear that all their muscle would disintegrate or something else that was widely inaccurate.
That was one thing I liked about Crystal Cove, the community was provincial and the smaller gay community understood the shadow that had been cast upon them. But despite it, they found a way to light up a beacon, shining hope to those darker crevices of society.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
They had been coming to this bar since it first opened up, but with their sickness and the hostility they faced together, it’s been a while since they had come. Stepping into the neon club, with its bright strips of glowing colors that traced the outline of the building, was an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia.
In some ways, I was back to my roots but in others, I was a brutal reminder of Barnardo's passing that haunted my memory.
For such a huge group of people, I felt surprisingly invisible, and that for once, was a blessing in disguise. So much of my life was spent feeling like an exotic animal, forced to be under observation like a lab rat caught in a maze. But here, with the music pounding in my bones, I didn’t have to be anyone.
I could be myself.
Everyone had shown up in costumes, or at least a mask that obscured each other’s figures. That was how things were, everyone was themself and only pretended for their own sake and not society’s. Mermaids, devils, detailed disguises, and crappy ones that people threw on at the last minute flooded the dance floor.
Bernado was in his element. He always liked noisy places and noisy people, a whirling cyclone of energy that seemed most comfortable in chaos. Everyone cheered him on as he danced and drank, his devil mask glowing in the dark like a whimsical luminescent angel.
Even though I used to be a frequent patron, I didn’t recognize anyone and I had to keep reminding myself that nobody recognized me either. I was always scared of being in groups like this, fear of being singled out but I took a deep breath, joining Bernado in his wake of destruction in the center of the dance floor.
The air smelled of smoke, alcohol, and a sea of bodies. They joined a group of people crowded around a guy in a horse mask, laughing as he gulped down a beer. Bernardo whooped and cheered, regularly bumping into people as he drunkenly pumped his fist. People here really didn’t care, either they were inebriated to the point where they dulled their senses or so drunk off their merriment that nothing could change their mood.
“Beer?” a waitress asked, gesturing to the tray in his arm where a couple of glasses rested, foam spilling out over the cup edge.
“No,” I replied, tense with discomfort. Unlike Bernardo, I never was a casual partier as I watched the waiter slip away into the crowd. There were several reasons that I wouldn't say I liked parties, one of them was the constant pressure to drink. It was weird being surrounded by a bunch of drunk adults, and it felt like everyone’s eyes were on me.
But I took a deep breath, reminding myself that nobody cared if I was drinking or not, and focused my attention back on Bernardo.
It always amazed me how he wove between crowds as I tried to follow him deeper into the wave of bodies. A part of me wanted to reach out to him, but I couldn’t as more and more people jostled me around till I was stuck in between an elaborate couple with fur and a rubber mask, a wolf and a deer.
“Hold on Bernardo,” I shouted after him as Bernardo disappeared behind a pair of angels before reappearing at my side. The music blared in his ear but it didn’t seem to affect Bernado’s voice for he heard him loud and clear.
“After this song, I have a surprise,” Bernado said, his cold breath tickling down my neck as he grabbed my arm before pushing ahead like a staunch crusade towards the band stage till they were front and center.
The loud, pulsing music thumped in my chest as I closed my eyes, feeling the close press of the body nudge me like ocean waves, a steady ebb, and flow that matched the music. I felt it in my bones, a devouring sound that blocked out all voices except for Bernardo, a second heartbeat that pumped energy into me. Bernado swayed to my side, caught in a trance between life and death. He was strikingly handsome underneath the blacklight, his devil mask long abandoned, Bernado was achingly beautiful but in the way a thunderstorm is wild, rough, and electric but comforting simultaneously.
Being around him was the closest chance I had to feel alive.
Slowly they both opened their eyes and Bernado gripped his hand, leading him to the back of the stage. A thrill shot up my spine as we left the loud singing and random burst of laughter, retreating into the back room.
“My surprise is we are singing your song,” Bernado shouted, picking up a discarded guitar that was placed on top of a crate. He strummed a few strings, tuning it before staring at me, “Let the world hear you sing Rhy.”
I watched him silently for a moment, quite liking the mental image of Bernardo and me singing up alone on the stage, the whole world at the tip of our fingers. But fear held me, only he had heard me sing and the creeping dread of failure approached me.
But something was different this time, dread ebbed away into excitement. I don’t know if it was the fact Bernado was here with me or that the music numbed me down to my most bare sense.
I think I was ready for the world to listen to me and the idea of singing with Bernado set my nerves on fire.
“Yeah,” I jerked my chin toward Bernardo, grabbing a guitar before plucking a few strings to tune it, “Let’s set the world on fire!”
Bernado laughed, his face lit with enlightenment as he pumped his fist in the air. He grabbed his hand, directing him to the stage as the band members finished up.
One by one, I watched the members leave, a collection of black and silver that cast deep shadows on the wall. Once they had disappeared into the back, Bryan stepped up on the stage, “Our next band is called Division.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I heard our band name announced on stage. Following Bernardo’s lead, I stepped up onto the stage, watching the sea of eyes stare at us in silence except for the occasional erupting giggles.
This is my moment, I told myself, letting his eyes fall shut as he felt the icy finger of the air condition against the nap of his neck. He pressed closer to Bernardo, feeling his warmth and allowing his energy to flow through me.
Bright lights flashed across my vision as I opened them, feeling the heat of the spotlight on us. Everyone seemed to be waiting on a precipice, the spell broken from the last song.
I could fail.
Or I could fly
And today was a good day to fly.
Bernado began with a catchy pop tune, strumming his guitar as the crowd began to jostle in movement, their body intertwined with the music.
I raised the microphone to my face, strumming a mellow tune before shouting into the mic, “Every day I wake up in the morning, With an ache in my chest, Missing you so deeply, It’s hard to get rest, I, hurt myself today, Just to see if I feel, I wish I can kill it all away, But I still want to know, All the time we had together”
The crowd roared, and I rode the wave of their excitement, turning to Bernado who raised his microphone. I continued to strum my guitar, watching him step close to me as he sang, “One Song, That what I need, One Song, To tell the truth of our love, That rings true, like a blazing inferno, An eternal flame, One Song, To tell your story., But I can’t hold on anymore.”
All around them, the crowd was cheering but it was lost in the moment as I watched him, falling in love again as he carefully stepped to the side, his brown hairs glowing from the spotlight on him as if he was on fire.
They were flying, riding on a wave of excitement that coursed through them. They were unstoppable, nothing could stop them as I picked up the mic, starting where Bernado left off, One Song, It’s been so lonely without you in my arms, Every day keeps passing yet I yearn for you more, I feel like a bird without its song, Trapped alone down here without you, But I know that I don’t belong, That heaven has no place for me beside you, So, the only thing I can do., Is to tell you the truth.”
Another roar, another blast of ecstasy as they strummed their guitars in synchrony, a dance of motion. Colors flooded my visions, swirling streams of green and blue from my mellow melody while Bernado himself was a living God, lightened up with bright orange and yellow that brought tears of joy to me.
I kept grimacing, smiling wide until my cheeks hurt from the excitement. It was better than anything, a roller coaster of emotions that flooded every nervous system till I was drunk off my happiness.
Bernardo leaned forward as the crowd cheered him on. He turned to me, winking as he raised his microphone, “One Song, It’s been so lonely without you in my arms, Every day keeps passing yet I yearn for you more, I feel like a bird without its song, Trapped alone down here without you, But I know that I don’t belong, That heaven has no place for me beside you, So, the only thing I can do. Is to tell your truth.”
The energy in the club was bouncing off the walls as we both leaned in, staring into each other’s souls as we sang the last verse, “One Song, A lighthouse in the dark, One Song, To freeze the time, we had together, To keep it from flickering away, One Song, To tell your story, But I’m afraid I can’t hold on, Without you beside me, Anymore”
Time froze as they watched each other, before I leaned in, softly kissing him on the cheek as the spotlight focused down on us. The crowd cheered us on, a cacophony of madness that trembled in my bones.
Nothing could stop us.
And I was flying.