Tell Me It's Real

  By TJ KLUNE

  NOVELS

  Bear, Otter, and the Kid

  Who We Are

  Tell Me It’s Real

  ELEMENTALLY EVOLVED

  Burn

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Tell Me It’s Real

  Copyright © 2013 by TJ Klune

  Cover Art by Reese Dante

  http://www.reesedante.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-62380-353-7

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-354-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  February 2013

  If you have ever been told that you’re not skinny enough, smart enough, straight enough, beautiful enough, strong enough, masculine enough, or any other “enough” that made you feel less than you actually are, then, man, do I have something to tell you: this one is for you because you are perfect just the way you are.

  Chapter 1

  Way Too Much Information About My Anatomy

  JUST so you know, I don’t have a gargantuan penis.

  Shocking, I know, right? Most of the time when you hear stories like the one you’re about to, the narrator is this perfect specimen of man, whether he knows it or not. If he doesn’t know it, it’s because he’s most likely damaged and needs some hot piece of ass to bring him out of his shell and to help him realize his outer beauty dwarfs his inner beauty. Or he knows he’s attractive and uses it as a weapon until the object of his lust-fueled heart breaks down that narcissistic wall with spooge and flowery words. Then they frolic off into the sunset and go live in Everything’s Perfect Land where everyone has a ten-inch cock and big balls that can create semen by the bucketful every hour, on the hour.

  But if we’re going to be honest, I’m not small either. I was fourteen when I first noticed other boys in the locker rooms at school (and when I say “first noticed,” I actually mean when I first allowed myself to look to see if they would give me a stiffie—which they did), and I realized penises were like snowflakes—no two were exactly the same. Some were big, some were small. Some had hair around them and others were smooth. Jacob Sides had one that curved wickedly to the left, and every time I saw him in the hall, I couldn’t help but think, There goes Captain Hook, and would blush furiously, sure he would know that I was thinking about his frank and beans.

  So the point is, I don’t have a Coke can for a dong, but I don’t have a Mike and Ike either. I’m somewhere in the middle. Average, if you will. Regular. Normal. Ordinary.

  But then that describes the rest of me too.

  I guess you should know what you’re getting into before we go any further. If you leave before the story is finished, I wouldn’t blame you. Too much. Okay, okay, I’ll probably call you a bitch behind your back. But hey, it’s behind your back, so you won’t even know about it. So feel free to walk away. Bitch.

  Anyway, here’s the rest of me. Sorry for the info dump I’m about to take all over you.

  I don’t have huge pecs, nor do I have stone-hard abs that you could attempt to grate cheese on. Those two things are so stereotypical amongst gay men that it’s almost offensive. I watched a porno once where this little twinkie dude went to some haunted house in the middle of nowhere (which really looked like a set from an all-white elementary school production of The Wiz—if you get the reference, you’ll know it’s not racist). The little twinkie had little pecs and abs and a huge penis that could have posed as a third arm if he tried hard enough. Anyway, the little twinkie dude then got gang-banged by fourteen ghosts (guys that started out wearing sheets with holes cut out for eyes and ended up wearing nothing but spunk), and I swear to God, every single one of them had pecs and abs that went on and on. For days. So after I finished watching said porno (which, by the way, wasn’t scary at all, especially since it was supposed to be about ghosts. Where was the story?), I decided that I could easily get pecs and abs, so I went to a gym not far from my house, intending to sign up with a personal trainer who would let my outer beauty shine through.

  On the way there, I got distracted by the fact that a Dunkin’ Donuts had opened up right down the road from my house and they were giving away free donuts. It was as if God himself saw that my intention was to make my outer self match my inner fabulosity and didn’t think the world could handle such an explosion of amazingness. So instead of letting me get to the gym where I would have transformed myself into a walking sex god, he created a Dunkin’ Donuts out of nothing and then gave them away for free. I didn’t make it to the gym. I had a bear claw instead. And a maple bar. And some donut holes. And then some more donut holes.

  So, I don’t have pecs or abs. Not even close. As a matter of fact, I probably have a bit more around the middle than I should. I’m not fat or anything. I’m more… husky. My doctor told me I could stand to lose ten pounds (okay, okay, he said fifteen) and that it would make me a healthier person. I thought he was a cute older thing, maybe forty, forty-five, and I flirted with him until I realized he was calling me morbidly obese.

  “That’s not what I said,” Dr. Suddenly Getting Less Attractive said with a knowing smirk. “I said you could lose fifteen pounds and then you’d break all the boys’ hearts.”

  I glared at him. “How do you know I don’t break their hearts now?” Kind of like how I want to break your stupid face.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “All the time,” I lied. “I’m really a way hot bear. Bears need to have a little extra junk in the trunk and a bump in the front in order to maintain the bear lifestyle.”

  Dr. I Don’t Know When To Shut My Mouth almost rolled his eyes. “You? A bear? You have, like, three chest hairs,” he said, reaching out to pull on one. It came off my bare chest almost immediately. “And this one’s a cat hair!” Which was weird because I don’t have a cat.

  “It’s a new thing,” I said, insulted. “No-hair bears. We have monthly meetings and talk about how smooth our skin is and how our leathers start to chafe because of it. We’re thinking about switching to denim chaps and vests. Sort of an old-school look. I suggested we also get denim gloves, but it was agreed upon that was too much denim.”

  “Paul.” Dr. Not As Gullible As He Looks rolled his eyes and said, “My partner is very active in the bear community. There’s no such thing as no-hair bears. Trust me. I would know.”

  “You’re a homosexual?” I screeched at him, trying to put my shirt back on as quickly as I could. “I demand a straight doctor so he won’t judge me!”

  “Can you even grow a beard?” he asked me, obviously judging me.

  “It takes a few weeks,” I admitted. “I thought puberty would be the end of all my miseries, but it just gave me zits on my butt.”

  He looked like he could
have done without that information.

  Story of my life. I tend to say things without thinking them through. It is my gift. It is my curse.

  “Not anymore,” I told him hastily. “I’m almost thirty. I don’t get butt zits anymore. Or zits anywhere else.” That was a lie. I’d gotten a zit the other day in the middle of my forehead that I glared at in the mirror until it went away. You don’t need Proactiv when you have the sheer force of will. Justin Bieber is a liar and a fat mouth.

  “Uh-huh. Paul, I just want you to be healthy. It won’t hurt you to get some exercise.”

  “Well, it would hurt you if I punched your face off,” I grumbled.

  He stared at me. “What?”

  “What?” I asked innocently, batting my eyelashes at him.

  So, seriously. I’m not fat. I could stand to lose a few pounds. There’s just a bit more of me to love.

  Wow. That sounds way lame.

  All right. So you know I have an average penis and I’m not a ripped Adonis, nor am I hairy bear man. That’s a good start, I think. What else is there?

  Well, I have black hair that I keep short because it starts to curl when it gets longer and looks like a homeless poodle died on my head. Sometimes, when I’m feeling really adventurous, I spike it up with gel, but usually, I don’t do a whole lot with it. I don’t have dandruff, which is good. And my hairline is not receding (yet), which is even better.

  I have blue eyes and I could tell you that they’re the color of ice that covers a frozen lake in the Himalayas, but that wouldn’t be exactly true. I bought contacts to give myself ice-blue eyes one time, but they made it look like I had big cataracts in my eyes, so I took them out. Nothing says “Hey, would you sleep with me?” like milky cataracts. But mine are just a plain old blue, like most everyone else in the world.

  Um, what else. Oh, I’m five foot ten, though I like to tell people I’m actually six feet tall because it sounds so much bigger. I don’t wear my glasses like I’m supposed to because I think they make my face look too wide, so I tend to squint a lot. I can be shy around people I don’t know, unless I’m drunk and then I can’t seem to shut up at all. I like video games and loud action movies that pretend to have plots but really are about blowing shit up (oh, and just between us, I’ve probably seen every romantic comedy ever made—hello, I’m gay. It’s a requirement that we pretend to like Jennifer Lopez when she’s playing a maid in New York who still happens to look like Jennifer Lopez. J-Lo, no one believes you when you try to play working class, so knock it off). I tend to have a bit of a swish when I walk, and sometimes I wave my hands too much when I talk. I’m a homo, but sometimes I can be a big homo. I’m not effeminate. I’m just… animated. But I can be totally butch if I wanted to. Like, way butch. Like “going outside and taking off my shirt to chop some firewood for winter” butch.

  As you heard earlier, my name is Paul and I’m almost thirty years old. My last name is Auster. Family legend says that our last name was Austerlitz, but it was changed after World War II because my dad’s parents didn’t want anyone to think they were Nazis when they fled Hamburg to come to America. I suppose I should thank them for that. I don’t need people asking me if I’m related to Hitler.

  That would not be a good start to a friendship.

  But my grandparents are dead and I never met them, so I can’t thank them unless I was into psychics and mediums. I’m not. Well, not anymore. Not since I dated a guy who told me my house was haunted with the spirit of a woman who had her period over and over again and moaned continuously about menstrual cramps while she wandered between my bedroom and the bathroom.

  George lasted six dates before I couldn’t take it anymore (“There’s just so much blood!” he’d moaned to me, huddled in the corner of my couch). I kicked him to the curb and went on the Internet to find out how to get rid of menstruating ghosts. Funny, no one could really tell me. So I just bought a box of heavy flow tampons and made a big deal about putting them under the bathroom sink, telling my ghost Flow that she could use them whenever she wanted. Needless to say, two weeks later all tampons were still accounted for and I was slightly disappointed that I didn’t really have a ghost haunting me, even if she was on the rag all the time.

  Am I worried about turning thirty? Nah. Maybe. Sort of. Okay, I’m freaking out. Because when I was sixteen, I’d sit in front of the mirror and sing “Some Day My Prince Will Come” while brushing my poodle curls, sure there was a big strong man out there for me, just waiting to whisk me away to his castle on a beach in Cabo San Lucas. One who would pick me up with his massive arms and cradle me against his chest and tell me, in varying accents (sometimes he was Cuban and other times Chinese—I didn’t use the Chinese one too often because I couldn’t stop giggling at the Chinese voice I’d hear in my head. Don’t ask me to do it. It’s way wrong.) all the things he just couldn’t wait to do to me once we got to my Dream Castle. We’d live there happily ever after and he would love me for the rest of my days while feeding me grapes and tickling my nipples.

  Oh, by the way, I have very sensitive nipples.

  I certainly did not expect to be almost thirty and working a dead-end job as a claims adjuster for an insurance company. I’m not going to tell you which one; suffice it to say you’ve probably seen our commercials on TV and chuckled once or twice until they played over and over and over again and you wanted to dropkick the stupid little animal spokesperson. You think the commercials are bad? Try working here. Sometimes, they have some idiot dress up in the animal mascot costume for human resource events. The person in the costume is always chipper and waving hysterically as if they’re under the impression that if they stop, their hands will be chopped off. I hate that damn costume. And, I’ll admit, it scares me a bit. I was the kid who never wanted to have birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese because I was sure the animatronic monsters that were Chuck and his friends were actually real and when my parents weren’t looking, they’d jump down off the stage and snatch me, taking me back to their dungeon where they would eat me slowly. I was the life of every party, let me tell you.

  Sorry. I got distracted again.

  Where were we? Oh, yeah. My job.

  My soul is slowly being sucked dry in a cubicle that is smaller than a prison cell. Trust me, I measured it. But of course, management was not impressed when I brought this up. They tend not to like it when I speak at staff meetings. I understand why, though; what starts as a simple observation usually leads to another of one my “tirades.” Their word, not mine. I can’t help it. I get loud about things that matter to me (“We’re donating to the Salvation Army again for Christmas? They hate gay people! Those bell ringers are nothing but homophobic ex-junkie fascists in disguise! Why are we even donating to a religious organization at Christmas! Jesus was born in April!”). So yeah, they prefer if I don’t speak in staff meetings.

  I never expected to still be living in Tucson, Arizona, land of the Border Patrol (aka the Fascist Regime), home of 115 degree temperatures (but at least it’s a dry heat, we always say). I’m too pale to live in the desert. I don’t tan. Instead, I get pink, so much so that I look like one of those oddly disturbing hairless cats that nobody wants to own. I went to a spray-tan salon once, but the woman at the front desk was orange and I was convinced that I would get melanoma just by breathing the same air as her, so I left immediately, after accidentally telling her she looked like a perky blonde carrot. She didn’t think that was very funny. Either that or she normally looks like she’s perpetually pissed off.

  When I was younger, I thought I was going to get a ten-picture deal from Paramount, where I’d be paired with all the handsomest leading men in Hollywood and travel all over the world in my yacht. After a hard day of filming a gay action adventure along the lines of Romancing the Stone (called Fluffing My Jewels) we’d all retire to my yacht and have an orgy filled with riotous passion.

  Instead, I live in a small adobe house right smack-dab in the center of a middle-class neighborhood. The neighbors
to my left are a husband and wife, and they’re seventy-year-old nudist racists who like to have swinger parties in the hot tub of their backyard. They’ve invited me over for a couple of the parties, but I’ve seen the type of people that show up. When that much of your body has fallen because of gravity and you’re still wearing clothes, I can only imagine what your balls will look like hanging down by your ankles. I politely decline each invitation. Each time there is a party, though, I sit at my front door with a spray bottle filled with water, ready to spritz any randy old people who want to have a bone sesh in my driveway. So far it hasn’t happened, but I did wake up one morning, went outside to get the mail, and found an empty travel-size lube packet near my mailbox. I went back inside, got gloves and bleach, and scrubbed down the mailbox, trying hard not to gag at the images in my head of two old people wearing chaps boning against it.

  After that guy told me I had a ghost who perioded (that’s a word I just made up; doesn’t it sound gross?) all over my house, I thought it best that I get a pet to protect me and keep me company since I decided to swear off men for at least seventeen years. I briefly considered getting a cat, but then decided against it because I didn’t want to be one of those people. You know what I mean. My grandmother, Gigi (Mom’s mom), was one of them. She’d make tuna fish and then sit in her old chair, which smelled like Bengay and broken dreams, and chew it, then open her mouth and let her cat eat it right then and there. She said it was because Mrs. Tingles was too old to chew her own food and she wanted to give her a treat. I told her I was the only person in the world who had a grandmother who made out with her cat and smelled like fish while doing so. My grandmother wondered aloud if that made her a lesbian.

  When she died, I was kind of sad. The cat, not my grandmother. Gigi is still alive. She has a homophobic parrot now. His name is Johnny Depp. When I went over to her house to meet him for the first time, the first thing Johnny Depp did was squawk at me, “Pray the gay away!” while my grandma giggled from behind his cage. Gigi swears up and down he was like that when she got him, and I almost believe her, because she doesn’t have a hateful bone in her body. She likes everyone, for the most part. But it’s kind of hard to go to see her now, since Johnny Depp screams, “Here comes the rump ranger!” every time I walk into her house.