The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.26 Fly on the Wall

June 6, 11:00 am

Although Richard cared deeply about the people he loved, they numbered very few. And for the rest of humanity, he really had little patience.

In the days before he died, if you had asked Richard who he considered to be his family, he would have immediately said Keith, of course. But then he would have been forced to stop and think for a moment. He had students, of course, and he had colleagues both at the University and around the world. He was fond of his editor at McGraw Hill, who published all his scholarly works. He had acquaintances and even a few play partners (although the number of those had declined in recent years).

But other than Keith, who did Richard Pratt really care about?

There was Cindy, of course. She had been a good friend since even before she had introduced him to Keith, and they had lunch together at the University at least once a week. But he suspected he enjoyed her company because she was nearly as cynical as he was and shared the same rather nihilistic view of the universe. According to Cindy, it was all going to shit around them every minute, and if the government didn't put them all in camps, then eventually they would all starve together because of climate change. Richard would nod and agree, and could match her pessimism and raise the stakes, as if they were upping each other in a game of poker. According to Cindy, who smoked like a chimney and could drink Richard under the table, there wasn't an answer for any of it, other than pursuing a hedonistic life as a way to say "fuck you" to all the bastards out there.

So, Cindy was definitely his best friend. And beyond her there were a few bears he found less annoying than the others. Most of them were in couples that he and Keith socialized with together. Joey and Rob, for instance, or Gavin and Wayne. And every once in a while, at a house party, he'd meet someone new that hadn't heard his schtick, and found him fascinating. If he could hold court on some academic subject he knew a lot about, or on some political topic, he was in his element. But once the conversation strayed to pop culture or typical bear gossip (usually who was sleeping with who), he excused himself and made his way to the punchbowl.

He enjoyed the flirting and the masculine energy that he found among bigger, hairy guys like himself, and the occasional sexy cub that found him to be a hot daddy bear, and climbed all over him at a party after a few too many drinks, still did his ego a lot of good. But how many of them were really friends, let alone family?

Truth be told, more than half of the bears they knew annoyed the shit out of him, and he found his tolerance for their shallowness and hedonism growing thinner and thinner, the older he got. Plus, he was convinced that a lot of their bear friends only tolerated him because Keith was so adorable. He imagined the conversations between their friends when they weren't around. One would ask, "So, do you know Keith and Richard?" The other would respond, "Yes! Keith is so sweet..."

But it wasn't just the bears that wore him out. It seemed that the older he got the less he liked people in general. Keith had always been the introvert, but Richard was finding that, as the years went by, he was becoming more and more content to just stay at home with the man he loved. Big crowds had come to annoy him, and the sound of chattering people or crying children in public felt like fingernails on a chalkboard.

In contrast, Keith hadn't seemed to change at all in the years they'd been together. He had always been shy around strangers. If one of them was going to suggest they go out to a dinner party, it was usually Richard. He received the invitations, and passed them on to Keith, whose first question was usually, "How many people will be there?" If the answer was more than a half dozen, and Keith didn't know at least half of them, then getting him to go took a lot of convincing on Richard's part. It was a tribute to Richard's persuasion that his cub usually gave in.