Prank War

Although, there was that one tall, sexy redhead... But, Donna and Leah warned me off her. Not that I would really have minded being the next notch in her lipstick case. But, oddly since we weren't actually having sex, I didn't want to risk disappointing Donna and Leah.

And it wasn't like they weren't encouraging me to find someone else.

Not every night that we went out together was to their hangout. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, we would hit up one of the dance clubs on "Ladies Night" so they could drink for cheap. And I would wander over and give them a little bit of cover from the panting college guys out looking for the ladies on "Ladies Night."

On those nights, Donna and Leah would try to get me interested in some girl they noticed. And, those girls were usually pretty exemplary of the higher end available on those nights.

But, except for the whole "no sex" thing, I was pretty well content to hang with the two who had become my best friends.

In January, something happened that would cement our friendship into something that would last beyond college.

I stopped by, probably to pull a prank, and ran into Leah coming out and looking awful.

And, pausing to vomit in the plants just off the stairs.

"Leah?" I asked. "Did you two decide to have some fun last night without me?"

"No," Leah said, obviously miserable. "Flu, I think. Donna has it, too. And even worse than I do. I was going to go to the pharmacy to get some medicine for us since I'm in a little better shape."

I ended up chasing Leah back inside and going to the pharmacy for them. And the grocery store. And staying with them for three long days, catching catnaps on their couch between nursing them, holding their blonde and brunette manes while they vomited, cooking bland broths and Jell-O for them, and cleaning up their sick when they couldn't even keep those down.

Perhaps naturally, about the time they started to get well enough to fend for themselves on that third day, I started feeling unwell. And slunk off to my cave to wait to die or get better. And after a bit, I really didn't much care which.

Holy shit! When Donna and Leah found out, you would have thought I had strangled their puppy!

I have no idea just how they managed to find me. I wasn't listed and they'd never been to my little roach motel. I'd always gone to them or we'd met out somewhere.

Neither of them was big enough to kick in my door by themselves, but I think they were giving it a serious tandem try when I managed to crawl out of bed and wobble unsteadily to the door.

"You selfish motherfucker!" Leah announced her displeasure as she shoved the door open and knocked me on my ass.

Donna was, as usual, more reserved. But, no less unhappy with me.

Whether I wanted them or not, I got not one, but two nurses fussing at me.

Which was probably just as well since I got a lot worse before I got better.

We probably should have taken me to the hospital or at least a doctor, but we were young and stupid and didn't really understand just how dangerous the simple flu could be.

An interminable time later (that turned out to be seven days according to the calendar once I could check), I came out of my stupor enough one day to realize that I wasn't alone in my bed.

Or, perhaps that was just a fever dream since by the time I was all the way awake, Donna was standing on one side of the bed and Leah on the other, with both of them looking like a whole lot of bad road piled in one place.

"You two look like shit," I rasped as I struggled to sit up. My entire torso felt like Tom had me do a hundred leg lifted crunches while he whacked my gut with his shinai on the down.

"Look who's talking, monkey boy," Leah yawned.

"Are you back with us, Ben?" Donna asked.

"Uh, yeah," I said slowly. "Why? Where else would I be?"

Donna and Leah shared a look over my head which could have meant anything or nothing.

"Well, in that case, I really, really need a shower and to change clothes," Donna said.

"And some real sleep," Leah yawned again. "And you should definitely wash the stink off you. You smell like a teenaged boy's locker room."

I couldn't really remember just what all might have gone on since they tried kicking in my door and only spotty memories from the days before that. But, I had the feeling that I owed them as I followed them out. That embarrassed me.

"Hey, guys," I said, causing them to turn back. "Thank you."

"Yes, well," Leah shifted, obviously as uncomfortable as I was. "You just remember if you ever pull this crap again, disappearing when you need help, I'll kick the ever-loving shit out of you, dickhead."

Donna reached out and, in a rare gesture of physical affection, laid her hand on my arm.

"I'm glad you're feeling better, Ben. But, please, don't pull away from us when you need us again."

Fucking awkward. I mean, what the hell do you even say to that?

It took us about a week for things to return to normal, hanging out at the bar, pulling pranks on each other. But, even then, I knew we had reached a point where there could be no going back.

Don't ask me how I managed it because I'm still not quite sure. But, despite having five radically different majors, I managed to graduate that May along with Donna who had never wavered in her plan. We had our celebration at the hangout, of course. How could we not?

And I was awarded a certificate that night that was supposed to be a joke but meant more to me than my degree. Mollie, the owner of the bar, and several of the girls (not all, but many) awarded me with a framed paper certifying that I was an honorary lesbian.

I know it was supposed to be a joke, one final prank as we looked ahead to our future. And, I did laugh about it with all of them as we posed for a picture with it.

But, I was touched, too.

Donna left town and moved seven hours away to pursue her dream by working for a big paper in Dallas. Leah, of course, followed her.

And I was once more left behind. Alone. But, it was different this time. Maybe because I had known all along that I was just sort of an add-on to their relationship and would never be as important to them as they were to each other. Maybe it was as simple as that we'd never had sex and never would.

Or, maybe I was just growing up and recognized that part of loving them meant letting them go so they could continue to grow.

For myself, I was in a conundrum. I'd managed to graduate with a bachelor's degree in a field that didn't mean a damn thing unless you used it to springboard into a graduate degree. And I was more than a little tired of being a broke college student.

I managed to luck out and find a job at a local detention facility using my degree.

However, I made a critical error in judgment. The overnight shift paid a shift differential and I went for the money despite it meaning I wouldn't be interacting with the inmates/clients. And that, by itself, would have made it harder to segue into a casework or counselor position and continue climbing the ladder.

Then, too, there was my sense of humor which, as usual, got out of hand when I was bored. And, since my "job" was evenly split between sitting on my ass and watching video and sound monitors and walking around the building to physically look in on the sleeping residents to make sure they actually were sleeping, I was pretty much always bored.

I admit I may have taken my little games just a little too far when I reprogrammed the phones so that my direct supervisor and his supervisor, both named Richard, showed up on the crystal display as "Dick calling" and "Lil Dick calling" every time they used it. At least, looking back, I'm pretty sure that was the one more than any other that sealed my fate that I would never be able to move even laterally while I was with that facility.

Or perhaps it was the photoshopped "picture" of the Chief and Assistant Chief that made the rounds of the rather attractive female Assistant Chief wearing a gorilla suit and bending the older Chief over his desk as she pegged him...

Despite the warnings from my own romantic past, and despite the difficulties in meeting anyone when you sleep while the world around you is awake and vice versa, I did manage to meet someone.

I wish I could say that I loved Jeannie, but I honestly don't know that I wasn't just tired of being alone. And we were pretty well compatible in bed. Which is to say that she would let me do whatever I wished to her body whenever I wished.

However, whenever we weren't fucking, we were fighting. And sometimes when we were fucking, it was a little difficult to tell the difference.

Despite even that warning, I pulled that same dinky little ring out of my sock drawer and offered it to her after about a year and a half. Third time's the charm, right? Maybe this time, I would finally have the whole white picket fence with two-point-five children and a mortgage that we would both struggle for thirty-five years or more to pay that was supposed to be the hallmark of a successful person.

I even shelled out for a starter house in a neighborhood that wasn't the greatest but wasn't so bad as it might have been, even if the house was an old ramshackle building best described as "a fixer-upper."

I have no idea what happened, but one evening six months before the planned wedding, I woke up to an empty bed and that stupid ring sitting on my nightstand. When I went to her work, she had quit. When I went to the apartment she had kept despite spending most of the time one or the other of us wasn't working with me in the house that was supposed to be our home, there was a make-ready crew working on it. I still have no idea where she went or why she left and probably never will.

But, I knew what was important. I knew that it would be the definition of insane for me to ever try again. Even if I could find a woman that wasn't looking for a second ex-husband and step-father for her children from the first marriage.

Donna and Leah... And, yes. I'd kept in touch with Donna and Leah. Donna and Leah were supportive in their respective ways.

Donna assured me that I was a good man and would eventually make some lucky woman a good husband if I just didn't give up and set me up repeatedly, over my objections, with dates when I would make the drive out to visit them and could stay more than two days.

Leah made whimpering and bawling noises and otherwise poked fun at me. And, of course, pulled pranks on me. I'm still trying to convince a certain gay men's magazine that I really, really do want to cancel my subscription that Leah renews every year on my birthday and the top of my closet is full of various sex toys, still in their packages that I didn't order, don't really want much less have a use for, but can't quite bring myself to toss in the dumpster.

I "worked" at my job and brought home my paycheck to spend most of it on a house that I didn't really want or need but couldn't get rid of. I spent my mornings either working out or teaching myself all the myriad aspects of home repair. Around lunch, I would adjourn to the room with a small network of three computers to watch an array of porn that was gradually more and more explicit in nature and take care of my basic need as best I could without a woman in my life before sleeping for a few hours and doing it all over again.

At least once a month, I would make the trip to visit Donna and Leah. I think those visits and the phone calls we exchanged when I couldn't visit, and, of course, our little prank war were all that kept me sane.

And, I like to think I helped them as well. Both had "come out" to their families and neither family had been accepting. Leah's parents and three brothers had disowned her. Donna was an only child and her parents were in denial and kept asking when she was going to "settle down and give them grandchildren."

They didn't go out of their way to to make a big deal about it at their work or around town, but they were a couple and saw absolutely no reason to hide it anymore. And I think it cost them. I'm pretty sure that quite a few of Leah's jobs she actually moved on from because they couldn't accept that she was gay. And, I'm positive that Donna should have moved up rather than having other, less capable journalists who just happened to be straight, or at least closeted, promoted around her.

So, in one way, it wasn't really a surprise when I opened my door to a knocking one evening to find them on my front porch with everything they owned in the bed of Leah's pickup, although they hadn't expressly mentioned anything about it before they showed up.

Home is where, when you show up hungry and cold, they don't hesitate to take you in, warm you, and feed you.

The house I'd bought was a two bedroom and I didn't hesitate to move their stuff from the bed of the pickup into the one that had originally been intended to be the nursery. They assured me that it was just until they could figure something else out. I just shrugged and told them it was theirs as long as they wanted it.

Donna had given up her dream of a newspaper Pulitzer and turned her sights on a novel. Supposedly. If she ever managed to get more than a page before deleting it, I never saw or heard anything about it. Other than that, she spent a lot of time working out. At least she seemed to since about all I ever saw her in was work-out clothes and she was usually just drenched in sweat.

Leah managed to pick up a part-time gig working behind the bar at their old hangout that had been sold and, while it was still a lesbian hangout, none of the old crowd was around anymore. Realizing it wasn't enough, she also managed to land a job for an auto-parts store delivering parts to garages. I thought she could do more but she seemed happy. And it wasn't like my own college degree was paying big dividends.

Probably the biggest fight we ever had was when I refused to accept their offered rent payment. I didn't need it since I'd already been covering the house payment and utilities and everything without them and they weren't noticeably costing anything more except in the groceries. So, we compromised that they would buy the groceries and take care of feeding us and that would be their contribution.

Mistake!

Donna had gone to the vegan end of the spectrum and had managed to convert Leah as far as a vegetarian. The first week, I suspected an elaborate prank. And with good reason as our little prank war had resumed from their second morning waking up when I'd loaded the shower-head with a fake blood pack I'd been intending to use on my next visit.

I mean, I knew Donna was always a finicky eater whenever we ate together and Leah had been less and less meat-oriented over the years. But, I hadn't expected them to expect me to eat like that.

My ancestors didn't claw their way to the top of the food chain for me to eat like a rabbit, damn it!

I didn't say anything, however, but just quietly resumed purchasing my own groceries. I ate what Donna prepared when I couldn't avoid it, but I would fix my own carnivorous meals when they weren't around to intervene.

I admit, Leah got me good the day I came in from working in the yard and opened the freezer for a couple of hamburger patties to be greeted by a coiled diamondback rattlesnake with its mouth opened and fangs extended as if it were prepared to strike. It had to have been Leah since even without her vegan tendencies, Donna wasn't a fan of Herman as he began disappearing from the freezer periodically to reappear where and when least expected.

The second month they were there was the second biggest fight we'd ever had when they came home in the evening to find that I'd taken it on myself to switch our rooms. It just made sense to me that with two of them and only one of me, they should have the bigger room, and bigger bed. And, too, that room was at the back of the house with only two windows that opened into the backyard where the smaller front room had three windows some peeping tom could investigate hanging out into the front yard.

And, in my defense, I had tried to talk to them about it and been ignored.

However, Donna especially seemed bothered by the fact that I'd been handling their things in their absence. Leah eventually gave me some back-up. But, we reached an unspoken consensus that I would never again enter their room, their new room, without their being present.

I think the most difficult, for me personally, was on my nights off. While I did enjoy spending time with them as they sat on the couch together and I lounged in my Papasan, once they went to bed, it was hard.

I mean difficult! It was difficult.

Well, in honesty, it was pretty hard, too.

Donna and Leah had both aged well and looked even better than they had as the college coeds I'd first seen. More than that though, I knew them better. And if anything, my love and desire for them had just grown as I came to know them more.

Perhaps not coincidentally, my most elaborate pranks on one or both of them occurred during my second day off, Monday. Or perhaps it was just that I had the time and energy while they were out of the house to do a more elaborate setup and it wasn't really letting off some of the sexual pressures that were getting to me in a safe way.

Time went on, as it has a tendency to do, and they eventually gave up even the pretense that they would be moving back out. At least, until Donna sold her novel. But, even there, they often made jokes about having a back-house behind their mansion to keep me in as a groundskeeper, pool boy, and handyman.

One day as I was sharing the laugh while walking towards the shower to clean up after the pair had gotten me with yet another shenanigan, I noticed their bedroom door was standing open on the way past.

There, sitting on the other side of the bed in a rocking chair was a huge, life-sized stuffed teddy bear I'd pretty much forgotten about.

I had never really known just which of them Wittgenstein belonged to. He'd just always sort of been there from even before I had come across their event horizon. And, I'd largely forgotten about him as their bedroom door was generally only open for one or the other of them to walk through it.

But, seeing him there gave me an idea for the ultimate payback prank that would once and for all set my mark as the indisputable winner of our little decade-long war.

The only question in my mind as I showered was whether it was a good idea or not.

After the contretemps when I'd rearranged the house and moved their belongings without their consent, we'd had an unspoken agreement that each other's rooms were off-limits. As an unintended result, our respective rooms were the only safe zones from pranks. If I did what I was thinking of, I would be violating that safe zone and, possibly, their trust.

I mean, I knew that I wasn't going to be peeking in their underwear drawers or anything. I just wasn't fetished that way and had little to no fascination with any of their undergarments they weren't currently wearing. But, I could see how they would wonder if I would violate their sanctum for a prank, would I not also investigate it for other, more prurient purposes in their absence?

In the end, perhaps it was my vile sense of humor that determined that the resulting prank would be worth it rather than truly feeling that they should know me well enough to know better that made me move ahead with my plan.

As the first step, I researched, found, and ordered an identical bear to Wittgenstein. And lost a lot of sleep as I waited for its arrival to make sure that I was the one who received it at the house we shared.

Once I had him inside and safely hidden in my closet, the somewhat easier part of my plan began to unfold. It took me the better part of a couple of months, working in secret as I could make the time when neither of them was around, but I eventually got the giant teddy bear mostly hollowed out into a sort of suit I could wear.