CHAPTER 23 YESTERDAY

Javi had left Kurt’s at about midnight. He was still riding high on falling in love, lust, hormones and adrenaline. Kurt had certainly proven himself an equal in sensual exchange. He was almost sure it was there, but he didn’t expect Kurt to reveal it quite so soon. He was looking forward to that bit of competitiveness he saw…and felt. It added spice to a relationship…and it spoke of a willingness to try some things new and different, even a bit quirky?

They’d decided to take a break until Friday. Kurt had classes on Thursday and had to work a couple of hours, and although for the time being Javi’s schedule was open, that could change with one text or phone call. A couple months before he’d met Kurt, he’d come off a 6-month tour of all points Latin America with a few stops in the Southwestern US and California. His manager actually told him that he needed a lighter schedule for a while and Javi agreed. It gave him time to be creative, record or just be. In his business, burnout was a reality, and he certainly didn’t want to head toward that abyss.

After he got home, and had showered and eaten something, he settled into this godsend of a house he called home. It was just big enough to entertain, house some guests and allow him to indulge his purist musical heart. He’d created a studio and also a media room. Actually, the media room was the largest room in his abode. Sometimes when he surprisingly had a whole day alone with nothing that required his attention, he would sit in there listening to music, some new music to keep in touch with the latest, and read.

He was used to being up at all hours of the night, so he decided to do something he rarely did because it just brought back too much of a part of his life that had nearly destroyed him. But knowing that Kurt had been watching some of the videos from that time period, he wanted to try to see Mateo as Kurt might be seeing them…and him. He also thought it might take his mind off Kurt for a while and even maybe help him continue to heal and move forward. The plane of his way too long holding pattern had come to what felt like a crash landing that everyone survived, but that put them all in shock hoping for a quick recovery.

He had footage of every concert, every official video, every interview, the entire story of the first 7 years of Mateo. The second incarnation of Mateo wasn’t something he avoided, he just didn’t think about it much. But he wanted to see what Kurt might be seeing, so he brought up Youtube. Kurt had already told him he had steered clear of interviews and Wikis and he believed him. He told Javi it wasn’t fair to him since none of Kurt’s past, true or false, was available to Javi with just a few keystrokes. Not many were that considerate.

He started with viewing the videos from the unplugged MTV show they’d done. He watched the ones Kurt had mentioned and knowing how perceptive Kurt was he was sure he’d picked up on the nuances, the subtle looks between him and Tonio that sometimes said far more than the words they were singing, as beautiful as those words were. Only Rigo and a handful of their support staff had really known about Tonio and Javi…and if they did know they kept it to themselves, he assumed if for no other reason, than out of self-preservation. If anything scandalous involving Mateo was picked up on, and the group fell apart, so did their jobs.

Mexico was such a contradiction of views, it was hard to know where you would be accepted as yourself and where you would not. They had been very choosy about who their “friends” might be. Rather than reflect on some of the false friends, he closed his eyes and tried to remember the good times, some truly fantastic and magical times.

Their friends and coworkers often referred to Antonio and Javi as the Sun and Moon because of their first initials. Although Tonio was obviously the sun and Javi, the moon, the point was one of them was a fiery wheel coming to Earth blazing with pure heat. You either had to take Antonio as the glowing orb of fire he was or look away before the sight destroyed your eyesight. Javi was the moon, glistening with his sparkle and spangles, but cool and calming, waxing and waning slowly, like a constant you could depend on. His light rarely woke you up or startled you like Antonio’s could. His mind slowly came back to where he was and he prepared himself for what lay ahead.

He tried watching Mateo as Kurt might see them…him. He tried to be objective and for once he actually succeeded at times. Kurt and Tonio were both in his head, almost having a conversation about the man they both cared very much about. Yeah, it sounded weird, but he was an artist! He was supposed to think differently!

Probably the most intimate song they had ever sung together was Coleccionista de Canciones (Song Collector) and they hadn’t even written it. The idea had come to them during a particularly busy time on tour, barely sleeping, living on coffee and adrenaline. They rarely drank alcohol and Tonio hated drugs of any kind. He said it dulled your senses and killed creativity. They’d commissioned a couple of songwriters they knew and respected, gave them the basic idea and this song became a theme for Mateo, not just to them but for their audiences. The song had honestly started out as being about God or your Higher Power, whatever you wanted to call it/him/her/they, that they both believed guided their lives. In fact, Mateo meant “close to God.” And it certainly was all of that, but as they sang it night after night, the lyrics became so personal that there were moments when the silent communication underlying their relationship almost exploded with intensity and they could hardly look at each other. How can you be on stage singing a song with lyrics like “you give me reasons to live,” “make me feel so that I can discover the eternal feeling inside your mystery” “you, my madness, my calm and my delirium, my compass and my path, “turn the magic of ‘you’ into my soul’s breath, ” and his personal favorite, “you have filled time with your light in every corner,” with the love of your life sitting mere feet away consumed in his singing and piano playing, yet looking right at you and into your soul? They had been like two halves of a whole and that is what made Mateo so successful. That, and Rigo’s quiet, yet ardent, skills on the guitar. A triangle, then, that fit together impeccably.

He knew Kurt wasn’t blind and certainly not insensate. Either he would ask at some point or it might be deferred until they knew each other well enough to talk about their past loves. For him there was only one, but he was unsure about Kurt. All he knew about Kurt’s past in that regard was that he had been very deeply wounded. He hoped to be a part of a conduit to healing for him.

He laid down on the brown leather sectional and closed his eyes. He was so pleasantly tired. Kurt’s voice swam lazily through his mind like a symphony of words and the sensation of hearing and feeling him whisper his name. It was intentional and spiritually erotic the way he had let Javi know that he wasn’t just interested in the public persona of “Javi.” He was interested in building the foundation they had talked about, that started with Javier Ramos Ruiz and Kurt Hummel. One growing up in Quintana Roo, Mexico and the other growing up in Lima, OH.

Javi growing up in a strict, church-going family, their faith defining every word and action, making his escape inevitable just by the nature of who he really was that they could not accept. They would say “what” he really was, a gay pop singer, although none of them ever asked or talked about his sexual orientation, being a pop singer was almost the equivalent in their eyes.

Kurt growing up basically without a mother, raised by his father, struggling to be true to himself in school and suffering for it. Moving to New York in search of his identity and his future.

And here they were, the two converging in San Diego, both finding something essential in the other. Javi had never lost his faith in God, never. He knew he had been created for a purpose. Meeting Kurt was no accident, no meaningless twist of fate. Kurt was created for a purpose, too, and he was hoping against hope that they were created to share a camino comun, a common path.