The Diamond Affair

2000 words.

“This is insane!” I said as my friend wrote on the chalkboard. The picture he was drawing was alluring and dangerous, like so many other things in our lives. “B, c’mon. You know what will happen to us if we get caught doing this.”

“Case, I know what will happen to us if we don’t. We’ve already gotten into a lot of trouble for the little bit our parents found out,” he shuddered. “Your parents already sent you to that group, and made you get a girlfriend to change you. There is nothing worse than having sex with a girl! You’ve done it, you told me!”

“According to my parents having sex as a girl is pretty bad but I didn’t really understand what they were saying,” it wasn’t true. I knew what they were saying. I twirled a strand of my hair between my fingers. It was the one thing from my old life that my parents had let me keep, and that was only because it was trendy for boys to have long hair. “And let’s say we get the ring. How is that going to be enough to get us to New York City?”

Bryan sighed and flopped on his bed. His sweatshirt rode up, exposing his hairless belly and the band of his boxer shorts. Familiar stirrings began flooding my insides. He sat up, a serious look on his face, “I can’t go through what you did. You’re stronger than me. I’ll kill myself. My parents are already talking about sending me once they have the money.”

The fierce determination in his eyes told me that he would do it with or without me. The chalkboard full of details meant it was a plan that had been well thought out. “How do we do this? Talk to me like I’m stupid.”

“So you mean just talk to you?” He smiled at me. It was that damn smile that got me every time. We could never be happy together. Our small town would never allow two men to be happy together. Still those few minutes of passion we experienced together were nice. “It’s really easy, you distract the salesclerk and I’ll grab as much of the jewelry as I can. Including the blue diamond.”

“There is no way they are going to open up the case with the blue diamond for two teen boys!”

“Then we’ll go as middle aged hags. We can go as our mothers,” he laughed. His eyes sparkled like the ocean. He leaned in and kissed me. “And then we can sell the jewelry to start a new life in the best city in the world.”

“It does sound wonderful. But…”

“But nothing! This is going to be so great!” He pecked my lips again and brought me into the bed with him. His hands down my pants, my eyes closed, allowing for a peaceful feeling. “We can do this all the time without worry. Don’t you like when we do this?”

“I do,” it came out as more of a moan. “What if Shirley is pregnant? I don’t want to leave my baby behind, even if the mother makes me sick to my stomach. You know how to make a boy feel like a girl..."

“You can’t get pregnant your first time, idiot!” He laughed as I moaned again. He was rewarded for his efforts.

It was my turn to take care of him but he didn’t like me to use my hands, he only liked my mouth. And one time….

Neither of us heard his bedroom door open. But the guttural growl from his father was unmistakable. The leather belt smacked the bed right next to us.

We scrambled off of it, Brian tucking his mini-me into his pants. “It wasn’t what it looked like!”!

“What. The. Fuck. Was. It. Then?” The belt slashed through the air again. It missed me by inches. In no time, Brian’s father recoiled and sent it flying through the air again. We both avoided being hit by it again. “Fucking fags. Get out of here, get out of my house. Both of you. If I see you here again, I’ll kill you!”

Brian looked up at his dad, tears filled his eyes. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the house. We made it to the used Chevy Nova before Brian broke down in tears. “Why doesn’t he love me?”

“He does in his own way,” I gulped back a nasty comment. My eyes slid over to the heaving hulk running towards us and an idea hit me. Even as it formed in my head, I knew it was risky and insane. There was no way it would work...unless it did. We jumped into the car, Brian driving and me in the passenger seat. “I have an idea. It’s ludicrous and ridiculous but it might buy us some time.”

He looked at me confused and I explained the plot to him. His eyebrows lifted higher than Suzanne Sugar baker’s hair. “You’re insane, you know that. Absolutely insane and there’s no way this plan doesn’t work.”

“I’m concerned about surveillance cameras. They might catch us on camera.”

“We’ll dress up like women. Like the Bosom buddies!” The way the idea just hit him made me want to hug and punch him at the same time. “They’ll never look for two teen boys!”

“I hope this works,” I sighed. A quick glance over at him and I knew what was on his mind. For the first time since his dad discovered he was gay, he had hope. Who was I to take that away from him? A tear slipped down his cheek as he turned onto the expressway to take me to my house. For the last time.

The Heist

“Look who came to get me,” Brian’s father sneered. “My gay son and his little butt buddy. I hope you two queers didn’t fuck in the car, it would devalue it.”

“Too bad there isn’t arsenic in your whiskey,” I snapped back. His eyes grew large, his upper lip curled into a vicious smile: “Leave Brian alone. He didn’t have to come rescue your stupid drunk ass.”

“Rescue me? Like I need a Goddamn queer to rescue me,” from the backseat of the car, he slapped Brian on the shoulder. “My son the fag. Wasn’t enough you were a wimp. You had to be a pillow biter too. I really won the son lotto with you didn’t I?”

“At least he’s not an alcoholic, moronic, wanna be republican who couldn’t string together two coherent sentences, if I gave him three,” the insult was a direct hit. He turned redder than a tomato. “You complain about Brian being gay but you can’t hold your liquor. At least being gay isn’t a choice, being a bad alcoholic, that’s just pathetic.”

Brian pulled the car into the parking lot of the jewelry store. He sucked in a deep breath, and ordered, “Dad, out of my car.”

His father opened the car door, and pulled open the drivers door. Just as we knew he would as he tried to pull Brian from the seat. Getting out of the car, and sneaking around the side, I hit him on the back of the head with a baseball bat.

The hit must have connected more than I thought because he went down fast. Brian scooted over to the passenger side and we worked together to put his dad in the driver’s seat. Once he was settled in, we took off our Jean jackets and tossed them in the back, and fastened our wigs. It was comical how much we didn’t look like women in real life. All that mattered was we looked like women on the camera.

The car was put into drive, and Brian pushed the gas pedal was his foot. I watched as he expertly rolled out of the car just before it smashed into the building.

The jewelry store was open for business.

We had about 5 minutes before the sound of sirens would fill the night air, and we had to disappear from the suburban hell known as our lives. What had been our lives.

We scrambled into the store and filled the backpacks with the gems and jewels. A tiny emerald caught my eye but I shook it off. There was no time to grab pieces we wanted. Only what we could sell fairly easily and collect as much money as possible.

After the bags were stuffed, we tore out of the jewelry store. Brian looked back once, regret etched on his face. There was no turning back. His father would take the fall as the wheelman.

It hurt him to do this to his father. Even if I thought some jail time would do him some good.

The Escape

“Do you hate me?” Brian asked as he stripped his dress off of his body. Once again, he took my breath away. “That I can’t believe I did this to my dad,” and wryly he added, “and that I cannot wear a dress to save my life? You look great by the way”

“Of course not,” I gulped. Something had broken free in me. A truth that once had promised to stay under the rock I had put it, now needed to be freed. I searched Brian’s eyes for any sense of judgement or anger.

He grabbed my hand and smiled, “Say it. You’ll feel so much better. It’s not as if I don’t know Case.”

“I’m a woman. I’m a woman trapped in a fabulous, gay man’s body.” Unexpectedly tears fell from my eyes. It was the first time I had ever said those words aloud and it was so liberating. And dangerous. “Would you be with someone like me?”

“No,” the word hung in the air between us. “Not because I don’t love you, you know I do. But Case, I’m a gay man. That’s all there is to it. You’ll always be the penis that got away. Every man will have to stack up to the mythical image of Casey Chandler. The only man who ever broke my heart.”

We kissed one last time. When we broke apart, the breath left my body. Couldn’t we have just a few more months of this? He gave me a small smile. “B, thank you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us but I wouldn’t have made it to 18 without you. Whenever someone asks me about my husband, I’m going to tell them he’s out there. It’s just he's gay.”

“I’m good with that. But our friendship will stand the test of time. It withstood the devil, ain’t nothing gonna make us stop talking,” he dug through his bag and found what he was looking for. “I grabbed you something.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when he pulled out the emerald ring I had been eyeing. “How did you know?”

“I say this with love, but Case you’re about as subtle as Donald Trump. I’m surprised you didn’t whip it out and lick it,” he pecked my cheek. “When you wear it, please think of me.”

“We’re talking like we are never going to talk to each other again. We’re going to the city together,” with that he produced our bus tickets. And put the emerald on my finger. “We can tell people that we’re on our honeymoon.”

“You want to be cheated on, on your honeymoon?” I smacked him in his stomach, even as we both laughed.

The trip to the bus station was uneventful. We got there just as the bus started boarding. We found two seats together and took them.

As the bus took off, Brian grabbed my hand. Then with a sly look on his face, “you never did finish me off.”

“Honey, you don’t want me remember? Finish yourself off.”

“And this is why I cheat on you!” We laughed as I laid my head on his shoulder.