“I better go now, it was nice meeting you.”
Chilton's intro...
Chilton back here again with a story from a forest and a tea garden and a hamburger place named Dave's. Some folk-tale stuff and some down-to-earth stuff. I haven't decided yet what it adds up to. If Kyler knows, I haven't heard it.
Personally I don't know where I would go with this story. As an empty character my own self, about all I can do is wonder. But I've got my ideas. I can see myself in a plot that involves a forest.
You've got your forest characters, which are traditionally mysterious or scary. Then you've got your run-of-the-mill people living in a town that's pretty familiar to the modern world. I mean, it's not lost in an overgrown medieval garden, is it?
The way I figure it is that the town and the forest get along with each other. They aren't civilization versus the wild, whichever one you want to call the wild.
Oh yeah, me, I think I wouldn't mind a walk in the forest. Preferably when the sun is shining. I'm not gonna tell you I want to be out there after nightfall. I'll check on back with you in the OUTRO and let you know if that's still how I feel.
A TEA GARDEN IN THE BLACK FOREST
Twice Upon a Time
Twice upon a time there was a boy who fell in love.
He believed that the two boys had liked him back but he could never be sure. If they did, they were the only ones who ever did.
For the other boys he liked, they simply did not like him back. Frustrated and made lonely by his fate, he had set out from the black forest.
He would leave behind the tea garden which was a place that had treated him well, the tea and sustenance.
He would happily return to it if he could find the third boy, the one where the secrets they might keep from one another would fall at last to the open truth.
The name of the first boy was Vaughn. They did know each other for a while as friends. Nothing changed and that was the point, that the boy remained lonely.
Then he met Lee. The things between them happened fast and must have meant a lot to both of them. Again the secrets blocked the real meaning if there was something greater. It compared perfectly to how it had been with Vaughn, only it was much quicker in every way.
What the boy believed was that it was real, what he had had with Vaughn and Lee. It just wasn't real enough.
The boy didn't say anything to them. All he knew was that they were different toward him than other boys had been. He could sense it, that what was happening wasn't like it was with the boys who didn't care.
Chane
The story of Chane nearly had to end there. He was the boy that was not able to find love but most likely did find it twice.
If the story belonged to Lee or Vaughn, it might be the same tale of loneliness. And for the same reason, that silence always pinned down everyone involved. Any one of those involved could have broken out of it.
They couldn't find a way.
Chane was determined not to let it happen to him again. A sophomore in a high school far beyond the black forest, he found a boy that he liked. The boy was a preacher's son, not necessarily someone to get involved with in the first place.
But the boy from the tea garden in the black forest was unlucky in love. And most likely lucky in love as well, twice.
He found out the name of the third boy, Giles. And he got the phone number of the house where he lived. Giles's father probably received plenty of calls.
Giles
"Hello."
Chane couldn't tell who it was but it wasn't the father. Maybe a younger brother of Giles's.
"Is Giles there?"
"Just a minute."
Chane could hear them talking through the uncovered receiver.
"Who is it?"
"How should I know?"
It sounded like everybody was mad and Chane considered hanging up until a voice stopped him.
"Hello?"
The voice sounded like it could be Giles.
"My name is Chane, you don't know me but I'm a sophomore."
There was no reply. Chane had to fill up the space.
"Can you meet me after school at Dave's?"
Dave's was a hamburger place next to school and everybody knew of it.
Still no reply from Giles. Chane wanted to hang up but he had already put his name out there.
"I guess," Giles said.
It was not reassuring but for the first time ever Chane knew what to do.
"Cool," he said, "around 3:30?"
"Yeah."
Giles was probably glad to get off the phone. He was almost obligated to show up. After all he was a preacher's son and he had said okay that he would.
Chane knew very little about Giles but he knew that he liked him. He hadn't tried to explain that to anybody. He knew how he felt and that was all there was to it.
If Giles walked in to Dave's, Chane would have to wave him down. There was not much chance that Giles knew who he was.
Dave's
It almost happened, though, as if he did. He made his way to Chane's table at Dave's about three minutes early. Which meant that he caught him unawares when he pulled up a chair.
"Chane?" he said.
Shaken, Chane looked for words. He was fortunate to find them.
"Thanks for coming," he said.
"Of course."
That seemed like a nice answer from Giles.
"Um," Chane said, "this friend of mine." But then he stopped talking.
It was disarming to be so close to Giles. He looked really good. Also, like he might be friendly.
"This friend of mine," Chane said, "he wanted me to tell you something."
"What?"
"You know."
Chane braced for one of those "how should I know" answers like the little brother had used.
"I don't know," Giles said.
"You know, that he kind of likes you and stuff."
Giles's head moved a little, not that anyone could tell what direction it went.
"Thanks for telling me," he said.
His father had obviously trained him to be polite even when the situation was unpleasant.
"Yeah," Chane said, "of course."
"Is that all?"
"I guess so."
Giles pushed back the chair he had occupied until then.
"I mean," Chane said, "if you want me to tell him something."
"Nothing in particular."
Chane's plan was not the best in the first place. And it wasn't getting better. Silence was practically his only option.
"Um," Giles said, "there is no friend, is there?"
Chane put his hands on the table, palms flat.
"No," he said.
"I better go now, it was nice meeting you."
"You too."
If nothing else the meeting was a good example of how Chane had always tried to get involved with guys who were the wrong guys. At least Giles was nice about it. Not that any of this had happened before like it did this time. Chane had never pulled the "my friend likes you" stunt before.
He was pretty sure Giles had seen through him. And that he wasn't interested.
Chane was, though. Giles was everything to him.
The Forest
The forest was outside his hometown where he had grown up and where he was no longer located. He liked it back there and continued to think of it as his own. He could picture himself sitting in the tea garden across a wicker table from Giles.
They had strung up lights in the garden and it made the place attractive. People from town went out there. It was a summer destination and often in winter, too. There was a lodge for that and the lights in the garden remained burning against many a white snow.
Chane wanted to take Giles there in a season of the year. It wouldn't matter which one. If he could sit at a table in Dave's across from Giles, that would also be nearly perfect. The one thing missing was that Giles would have to like him back. In their first meeting at Dave's, he didn't. He seemed to make it clear that he did not feel that way.
He must have understood how Chane felt. Chane had not started out with him honest but finally did come around to admit there was no friend. That was approximately the same thing as sitting there in the restaurant and saying, "I want to be your boyfriend."
Chilton's outro...
It seems this boy Chane is from a town near the forest and now he's in another town, the one that Giles calls home. Apparently we've got two towns and one forest. Now if there's a forest outside Giles's town - well, I'm not writing the story, Kyler is. And he doesn't consult with me on the setting of one of these things.
I don't know where Chane feels more comfortable, in his hometown or in the forest over there. But I think he's awkward in Giles's town and I think it led him into that scene in the restaurant. He has blown his cover, something he had never done before. He told Giles the truth when he could have continued to lie.
If I was in the story, I would have stuck to the lie all the way, that there is a friend and all I'm doing is saying what he said. I'm just the messenger, don't try and put it on me.
Yeah, like the story said, Giles probably knows what's going on. Hopefully he won't be all mad about it and try and get even.
No, the forest is not my escape. I will just plan on being so irrelevant that they don't notice me. It happens every day.