A Valentine Story

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Yesterday, I wrote a story for Saint Valentine's day. Camy write stories about young gay love and the supernatural, and his latest is a valentine story. So, I sat down and wrote something inspired by it, incorporating those themes.

He was rather pleased with the result and said I should publish it somewhere. Well, I'm looking around for websites that publish the right kind of fiction - that is, stories which have gay elements but aren't just about being gay, aren't just for teenagers, and aren't porn.

Gay Authors looks promising. There's DaBeagle and AwesomeDude, and if I start to get established I might try the great Blithe House one day.

In the meantime, there's this here blog. I'm not sure what to call this story, but the working title was Future/Past. Here it is.

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February 14th 2038.

An old man sits in a cubicle, reliving the television of his youth. Virtual reality patches attached to his eyeballs and sonic vibrators on his eardrums, showing him entertainment, drama and music from fifty years before. This how he spends his days, and this is what he plans to do until he dies. He hears a woman’s voice.

“There are those who say a person’s life is shaped by a single moment.”

He looks around, startled, but there’s no one there. After some seconds uncertainty, he returns to the comedy show being shown directly to his eyes. He’s seen it dozens of times before and never found it funny, but it’s a comforting presence.

“It might be that time you got lost in a strange house when you were seven, or the time your father first hit you for telling lies when you were telling the truth, or the time you snuck out of the house and got caught in a thunderstorm.”

The man carefully switched off the devices, and took them out of his eyes and ears. He didn’t turn around.

“I don’t know who you are”, he said to the voice behind him, “but I’ve got nothing you could want. This room is protected by nanolock. Leave now and I won’t summon security.”

“Some say we spend our whole lives trying to recapture a single experience. Like the first time you heard a certain song on the radio and you thought it was the most incredible, exciting sound ever. Then there’s the first time you got drunk, and fell about laughing though you weren’t sure why.”

The voice came from the wall behind him, where there were no doors, but he still didn’t turn around. Trying to make his tone sound confident, he spoke to it.

“Look. I don’t know who you are. And I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But whatever it is, just leave.”

“I can’t. As for who I am, I could be a dream. Or an undigested bit of fish. Maybe you’re going mad. Perhaps if you turn around you’ll find out. Turn around, Charlie.”

He spun around in his seat, expecting to see a blank wall. Instead, there was a woman. An ordinary looking woman he’d never seen before. She spoke again.

“I’ve heard it said that every time you fall in love, it’s your way of trying to recapture the last time. But I’ve also heard it said that everyone falls in love just once in their lives, because no one could endure those emotions more than once. I hear a lot of things. It could be some of them are true.

But who says it has to be about love? Maybe the single defining moment of your life was that time when you were six, and you saw an old man riding a bicycle up a country lane. You couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t him pushing the pedals, but the pedals moving his feet.

“Who says it has to be from childhood though? There was that time you were twenty three, and you got a phone call saying your mother had been in a car crash. And your first thought was hoping she was dead, because you knew she was leaving you all her money in her will, and you were in debt. You never told anyone about that, did you?”

He stared at her for long seconds, incredulous. Then, “What are you? What do you want? Why are you…why are you doing this to me?”

“But you know what I think, Charlie? I think the defining moments of our lives aren’t those when we fall in love, or out of it, or give in to rage. Moments of terror, ecstasy, panic, joy, hope. No. I think it’s all about regret. Regret and shame.

If I asked you, Charlie, what is the one thing you wanted most of all…I think it would be to go back in time and change something you did wrong. What is it you regret, Charlie? What’s the one thing you wish you could make right again?”

The man snorted. “I wish I’d invested in nanotechnology. I’d be a billionaire.”

The woman smiled. “I’m sure you do, and I’m sure you would. But you don’t sit here day after day watching vidshows about money, do you. What else?”

He shrugged. “I’ve wasted my life. I can’t get it back. What else is there to regret?”

She nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a good answer. But not to the question I asked. What’s the one mistake you’ve spent decades trying to make up for, or forget, or persuade yourself wasn’t really a mistake?”

“You seem to know all about me, whoever you are. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Because you have to tell me. And when you tell me the truth, I can give you a second chance. But only then.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re probably an hallucination.”

“Maybe. If I am, why are you bothering to lie to me? What kind of man lies to his own delusions?”

“I’m not lying.” He was indignant. “I’ve got plenty of regrets. There’s probably hundreds of things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of. And hundreds more that I ought to be ashamed of. Going over them won’t make them better. It won’t even make me happier about them.”

“Don’t you understand what I’m saying to you, Charlie? You’ve spent years in this room trying to get back to the past. Reliving old memories again and again. You want to go back, because you want to do it differently. But which part, Charlie? Which part of it do you want to try again?

Not your fifties when you made enough money to sit here all day plugged into the past. Not your thirties when you saw the world and wrote all those songs about it. Not the earliest years of your childhood when you were secure and happy. Which part? Tell me the moment and I can send you back. Not in virtual reality, not in television, for real. You can start again from that moment.”

He stared at her, not believing but not dismissing what she said. His mind worked, trying to think of the one event that might be the one she wanted.

“When I was twenty five, I was living with…someone. What am I hiding it for? We were absolutely devoted to each other. And…I cheated on him. For no reason. We had everything together and I destroyed it. I cheated on him and then I told him about it knowing how much it would hurt him. I didn’t have to tell him but I did. It’s like I wanted to destroy our life together”

”So do you regret cheating on him, or telling him?”

“Oh I don’t know. It was all so long ago. I don’t know why I did any of it.”

“Find another memory.” She said it gently.

“I was eleven. I was playing near a cliff face with a friend. I can’t even remember her name. But I pushed her. I pushed her as though I wanted her to fall over the edge. We were just playing. She almost fell. I almost killed her.

She got her balance back and stared at me with the most hatred I’ve ever seen. She was my friend and I did the stupidest thing imaginable. I felt that if she pushed me over the cliff…she’d be right. I don’t deserve a second chance, because of what I did that day”

There were tears in his eyes.

The woman crouched down and looked up at him. “One moment of thoughtlessness, at an age when you scarcely thought at all. Is that the shame you’ve been carrying for six decades?”

“Yes.” He bowed his head and wiped his eyes.

“No. It isn’t.”

“Alright. Alright. I’ll tell you. But it’s so silly. Almost killing a friend, making someone I loved suffer for no reason – those are proper regrets. Those are the things I should be punished for.”

“Who said anything about punishment? This isn’t about the biggest crime you’ve committed in your life. It’s not about how much you’ve hurt other people. It’s about the one thing you can’t forgive yourself for doing – or not doing. It doesn’t have to make sense to other people.”

He took a deep breath.

“It’s so trivial. I was seventeen. It was Valentine’s Day, and I’d got a card. Just one. And I knew who it was from. He’d tried to disguise his handwriting, but I recognised it. He was so…”

“Go on.”

“It must have taken him all his courage to send it. He was so ashamed…hid his feelings all the time because he was afraid of what other people would say. What they’d do. But I knew. I knew how he felt. About me. It was just a silly crush. It would have gone away in a few months probably, and then he might get another crush on some other boy.

But just for those months, he was fascinated by me. Me! Why me?! I don’t know. He was just a kid, like me. We didn’t know anything. We thought love was something only old people did, and heartache was being dumped after two dates.

It must have taken him days to get up the courage to write it. Just a stupid valentine card. He wanted to tell me so desperately, and he was so terrified me knowing.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I never mentioned the card to him or anyone else. I just…ignored him. I don’t know if he ever found someone else. But I never told him I knew.”

“That’s it? He didn’t kill himself out of grief? Didn’t go mad because of what you did?”

“No. Nothing happened.”

“Thank you.”

The man closed his eyes and wept. After a long time, he spoke.





“So what happens now?”

“What’s that, Charlie?” asked his mother turning around. “There’s a letter for you on the table”

Charlie sat in the kitchen, his ears plugged into a stereo walkman. There was a small pile of letters on the table, one addressed to him in shaky handwriting. He pulled open the envelope and read the card inside:

Dear Carl,

You’ll never know I love you

Charlie – Carl to his friends – carefully folded the piece of card and put it in his pocket.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Mum.” He said. “Just going out for a bit.”

He pulled the headphones out of his ears, put on a coat, stepped out of the front door and started walking. After several streets he came to a low wall with three teenagers sitting on it. They nodded in greeting.

“Billy”, he said to the one on the left. “I got your letter.”

The boy on the wall froze, colour visibly draining from his face.

“Thanks, it means a lot”, said Charlie, turning away as if to go. Then he turned back, as though struck by a sudden thought.

“See you tonight? We can talk about it some more if you like.”

The colour rushed back, flushing with several conflicting emotions.

Billy managed a nod.

“See you.”

Charlie walked away.

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