1.1

A year into this, and not much changed about me and Tom. I want to focus on hair: I reached my limit of growing mine out. It started to split at the ends otherwise. As long as my bun didn’t get any smaller, I’d take the defeat. And I even stuck with the hair color that Pilona chose for me. Tom, meanwhile, said he was not going to ever go back to the afro he had in music school.

At least I didn’t feel any more rivalry with him. Sculpting was his new favorite hobby, but still a side job in between albums. The artform was my life now, and it was painfully surreal. Or was that just my foot aching? I still had to be careful with it. As I was learning, rejecting physical therapy wasn’t my smartest move…

…at least I kept everything professional, unlike him! Aria Trill worked with Tom a lot. If he wanted strings on his album, Aria got him the whole orchestra. And they got kicked out of Beckett Theatre a lot for doing nasty things backstage.

See, I was going to be classy. In a gym shower. With someone who wasn’t greying yet. Maybe I had to tell Buster the truth after all. But back to the subject of beautiful, youthful hair: I must have inspired something in Kate and Matty with my mane.

I’ll be humble now, I promise.

Kate grew out so much hair that it went into a high, dramatic ponytail. Or maybe that was to keep it out of the way in the kitchen. As a new human dishwasher, but it would be easy to move up. They had high turnover among line cooks but Kate’s unlikely tenacity would keep her afloat. Not many people believed in her but I was proud to. To think I thought she’d never make anything of herself! But if Pilona was her spiritual uncle as much as he was my real one, then he must have had a talk with her about being an ambrosia chef. And a normal chef. He paid for lessons and I got some great omelets out of it.

Matty did not change anything about himself and I went days without seeing that strange little man. But one day he emerged with half his hair up in half a bun. I appreciated his length but he half-assed/half-did the style! I would never. My man bun was a sacred pact between me and some ballerina from back home. Possibly Kyla, who was still her bubbly self whenever I video-called her and Tarik. I spared them a lot of the details of my crazy life though.

Of course, I couldn’t confront Matty about hair like I could with anyone else. Or anything. “Get out of my studio, I need concentration” was his repeated mantra.

“Well I didn’t want to be here anyways,” I said. “But you have to let the maid in, it’s gonna get dusty in here.”

He liked the maid more than he liked me.

But like Matty, I did not rest much. At least we were young. He had nothing to prove about his artistry but I did. At least, I made it a lot more public. Originally, I thought I was unfit for it and hoped that Pilona would understand if I did something different. Then I got good at it and my great-grandpa probably shed a tear from the heavens.

I also had to do things I liked too, like everyone else.

Saying good-bye to Buster was easy. We were meant to be friends until the end and always linked through Victor. I’d still see Buster busking at the Maloney Tower station sometimes, which meant that he was healthy, alive, and living his best life.

I liked having that final goodbye though. I’d miss his stanky onion breath in some way. And the gross things we’d do in his pickup truck.

So I was off, hitting the streets, doing my freaky mating dance and pissing off bartenders. And I could swing around a stick and hit a bicurious guy at any time. The world put me up to bat a whole lot for a few weeks.

Subject #1: Apollo Bloom. He somehow lasted longer on Little Celebrity than Kate and Matty. They said it was rigged because audiences liked that he was a bit of an…airhead. But weren’t we all? I had a teacher call me a dumbass and she was right. Good thing I only had to be immortal, not smart.

Our place: Mick’s Karaoke Palace, and the photo booth. Let’s say the venue was loud and the curtain covered enough to not raise suspicions. I later learned that everyone and their mum had an “encounter” in the photo booth. If anyone asked, they were simply trying out new camera poses and knocked their arms into the wall of the booth. Worked for us. Apollo was a former model after all. No, we would not pay to turn the camera on.

And we could play pool later. Or arcade games. That place was fun.

“Oh my god Apollo you turned the camera on!” I held a print out of something that felt a lot sexier when I didn’t have to look at it from another angle.

“Yeah, this’ll go viral,” he said.

I tore it up instead. He was a little airheaded, and as arrogant as he was sexy.

Subject #2: Kai Leiko. Supposedly the boyfriend of Lola Belle, pop star. Not the kind that becomes a gay idol, though. I didn’t enjoy her music but she was Tom’s friend and other frequent collaborator. She flaunted Kai at every opportunity in front of the paparazzi. On the other hand, Kai tried to hide part of himself from the public eye, and co-parent Lola’s adopted son. He often worked out when I found myself practicing on the barre in another room.

Our place: AJV Wellness Center, and a shower in the men’s room. He worked hard to stay ripped. I wanted to pretend I still had the body I used to. It didn’t matter as much in a locker room.

“If I get caught, you’re dead,” he said to me afterwards, as steam billowed out of the room.

I had to laugh a little. “You’ll be eatin’ your words, Leiko. I already got them covered in cornmeal.”

Subject #3: Raphael Striker. Living in the shadow of his soccer star twin brother, Richie. In an actual relationship with a female vampire, but curious. As long as she didn’t bite my neck, I tried not to think about it. But I guess I would have more in common with her when I became a crusty old immortal.

Our place: Eugi’s bar, and its elevator. This was the least discreet I ever was with this. Everyone had to use the elevator. It was blocked for a few minutes, and there was a crowd on the ground floor that was mad at me.

“You’re gonna have to pay for dry cleaning,” he said. “That was filthy!”

“You’re tellin’ me.”

Subject #4: Devin Ashton, the recently-out actor. It was hard to ignore how much he wanted to be Matthew Hamming’s co-star in a steamy romantic drama. But I found him outside a film backlot and hoped to make him forget about Mr. Hamming.

Our place: I had it all planned out. Aquarius, and its rooftop hot tub.

We got kicked out. I never said I was slick all the time.

Our place: Tom’s old hot tub! He wanted to go to his old bodyguard’s 40th birthday and I somehow got invited too. and we snuck out to the deck. Yes I almost drowned. For a moment I forgot how to come up for air, Devin was super-gorgeous like that.

Now I told Uncle Pilona this after a lot of prodding. He reassured me that he had twice as many boyfriends as that in his life, and I think he was making up stories. And then he said that immortals with spouses do better in the long-term. He probably didn’t want me to be a single dad for the heir he’d bring up later.

But I was young and could not stop bringing it up, so my apologies, but hear me out first. I had to spend eternity as an old man so I could suffer with Pilona and Vega. Your priorities are shallow when you’re young, though. I was worried only about who Subject #5 would be. Or #6? With all apologies to Buster for forgetting him all the time. I swear that we stayed friends.

With a long, long life ahead of me, I wasn’t going to spend it feeling like I missed out on anyone. Or at least not missing out on some broad experience. Something in a hot air balloon? A hotel sauna? A bed? Don’t dream too big with that last one!

I knew the adventures would have to end. Just not immediately. Or in the foreseeable future.


So…Subject #6. Heathcliff Ironstar, a pretty good-looking chap from the Simislaus river delta.

Our place…my place? Waylon’s Haunt, where my friend Victor was a bartender. It was his 35th birthday, and he may have had to work but I was going to throw him a party anyways.

Victor got cake, beer, me singing “he’s a jolly good fellow”, and his great-grandma Mo. She and Cara picked up the slack in his life while his mum was reluctant, busy, or ignoring him for more gator wrestling with Samira. They had weird schedules in the underworld, though.

I figured that my gift to Victor would be the gift of extra tips. I tried to be generous to him but then my housemates said they needed food and electricity. So I used the power of advertising instead. I’d use my music contacts to get a good act in the bar, and with enough added drinks, Victor would be skipping all the way to the bank.

“Top it off, big boy,” I said, as Victor poured me another beer from a bottle. “And listen to the voice of an angel…and gimme your lighter because this song always pulls at my heartstrings.” I got the setlist ahead of time. Again, the power of contacts.

“Yeah, just make sure I can still take my smoke break,” he said.

Of course it was Tom. I called his band Tom and the Wordies and he would have punched me if I wasn’t so good at dodging. But between you and me, it’s what I billed them as to Victor and the guy who owned the bar. The idea was a smaller show full of songs and genres Tom would never play in public. He got to play his guitar more, at least.

I was starting to enjoy his music more. Getting out of ballet made me think about how stuffy it made me. Everyone in my class thought I was too loose with parties and beer and days off, so I did those things but then felt bad about it. Somehow it was easier to defend the intricacies of death metal to a bunch of ballet dancers than to say “yeah, I like a top 40 song too. Like this big, meathead rap-rock song to drink beer to.”

“Boys in Hell” was big when I was 14 or so. I never appreciated it correctly until then. Maybe things with Tom would go better if I did. But then again, I didn’t offer him anything to be a fan of about me either.

Oh well, call us oil and water. It didn’t sound like Vega got along with that many people either, though the old bat deserved that fate.

I leaned back into the bar. “Well Vic, you might say that I’m a pretty good gig manager.”

“What?” Okay, it was loud that night and the air was full of guitar feedback and pure bass. “Hey, is Tom dating your blonde friend?” Victor asked.

“What?” And I actually heard him.

Nah, it’s just a stage kiss. I learned all about it in dance class and middle school theatre class. They kissed, they were on stage, and Kate would do all sorts of things for attention. I mean, she let me spray her with champagne on a show she was about to get kicked off of.

Sure, she described Tom as a hunk, but so did I, and I knew my limits.

I felt stabbed in the chest for some reason. Maybe it was a premature heart attack and Sheila was right all along about it running in the family. Or more likely, heartburn from the beer. So I followed Victor and Mo outside for fresh air. And by fresh air, it was Victor’s secondhand smoke. It was his only kind of break.

“It’s not like I wanted Tom of all people, don’t you know how fast we’d get on each other’s nerves?” I asked Victor. “So why do I feel like crap?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Mo said. “And Victor tells me everything.”

“Well ain’t you lucky? He won’t even talk about his salary. I swear, old man Waylon is a cheap bastard…”

I must have been being too obnoxious for once. Victor wasn’t saying much. He smoked and looked towards the sky, which I didn’t get. I didn’t need any help to enjoy the Bridgeport skyline and the cool ocean breeze and the smell of burning trash.

So I was nervous about a kiss. Hadn’t I already had a lot of those? Something wasn’t clicking inside of me for once. Usually I overflowed with manly confidence. It’s why I could seduce anyone I wanted to…

“Heathcliiiiiff! Oh my god I probably scared the whole bar with that kiss,” Kate said, jumping onto me with a hug. “So as you can tell, a lot of things happened between Tom and I.”

“Yeah, you’re acting like it!” I said.

“Well, we’re an item now! We’re taking bets on which tabloid will run it first.”

“I’ll have Pilona scare the photographers away.”

“Don’t worry, I told him first.” Katelyn sighed contently. “We work so well together. I’ve never felt so complete.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said. Me neither. It wasn’t like I was in a worse place in Bridgeport. I feared my loneliness in Twinbrook the most and figured I’d be miserable or dead instead of vaguely empty. Wasn’t that preferable?

Have you ever had the fear of missing out? Apparently everyone felt it, and it tore me apart.

I wanted those double dates, okay?


And that’s how long it takes to do the Master Romancer LTW. I had a few practice runs with screenshots so there’s some stuff missing or confused between saves. Anyways Heathcliff’s heart was fully in that lifestyle until the moment his LTW completed and all he could tell me was “husband pls 🥺”, hopefully that yearning makes the next chapter make more sense…

I’ve been okay. Tater’s doing better with peeing in the right places, I’m apartment hunting, I made a ridiculous promise to finish this gen by November, and I changed a whole three sentences in 0.5 due to future implications…guess you’ll have to figure that one out yourself!

4 thoughts on “1.1”

    1. Some later chapters in the buffer are definite “a path was calculated but I’m bad at math” results but yeah I patted myself on the back for this one. like how Heathcliff got “patted down” at least five times this chapter

  1. Aw Heathcliff

    I kinda do ship him and Tom, but Tom don’t seem bi?
    So it’s like, poor love, you yearn for the straight ones. Have mah support

    1. I like writing their dialogue too (was just doing some!) but yeah Tom is straight as a board and Heathcliff’s calling him hot because it annoys him.

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