Reviving Sage

[Chapter 18:]

(New York)

Sometimes I really hated the city.

The traffic, the noise, the light's.

But especially the noise...the last thing I wanted to hear while I was working was the incessant squabble of taxi's from the street below.

And that reason alone, noise, the constant groan and drain or the city, was why I wanted to escape Manhattan and move to Stanford, California to pursue my dream of going to a university when I was eighteen. I mean, sure I got into Princeton and Columbia, and some of the other Ivy league's but none of them fit me. I liked Stanford because it was a melting pot of cultures that was far from home, but still diverse enough that it reminded me of New York and the diversity there. The other school's I had applied to were not like Stanford at all. They we were all schools built on a pretentious background's meant for pretentious white people to attend.

Something I was not.

Of course on paper I identified as a white male, but I definitely did not have the pretentious, typical mindset of the white male's I grew up around at Sacred Heart in Manhattan. Being snobby and racist did not appeal to me as it appealed to the boys I went to elementary and middle school with.

I never really fit in with their scene.

I begged my mom to let me go to a public high school like she let my brother, and finally she let me go to one my sophomore year.

I fit in with the people at Xavier high, and even though it was in Manhattan, there was a healthy mix of people from everywhere. It just seemed like I belonged and thrived more in that school than I ever could at Sacred Heart. The people at Xavier weren't trying to pinpoint where I was from, and what my heritage was, they weren't worried about my money or status. They just excepted me with open arms.

That was not the kind of welcoming committee I had at Sacred Heart...

The were threatened by me for being a foreigner, a mixed breed and a product of a Russian-Italian mother and German-American father. They didn't know what to make of me with my clear blue eyes and tan skin so they automatically assumed I was a dominican or something else along those lines. And that to them was different.

Which was bad.

The people there saw being different as ugly, and I saw it as something beautiful, they saw hues and shades of color darker than their own pale skin as a threat, while I didn't let it hinder how I viewed a person.

It didn't matter to me, ever. People were people and deserved to be treated as such.

I guess even as a child I had been a lover of all people. I always saw skin color, I appreciated it, and loved how it made everyone I encountered different. I also tolerated, respected and tried to see eye to eye with every person I encountered. And to the people I loved or cared about I was always looking to build a better relationship with them, and grow with them.

Like Sage...

I bit my lip and closed my eyes just thinking about her trying to will away the throbbing sensation in my dick, and the rapid hum of my heart when I thought about her, or was in close proximity to her.

She was unlike anyone I'd ever encountered in my life, and no one day with her was alike.

She'd soothed away the dull sting of heartache and loss from six years ago. The date i'd thought i'd lost everything rapidly approached and went without a second thought this year. A day i'd usually spent alone with a bottle of Scotch, and a photo-album was spent taking her out, and making someone else feel good for a change. There wasn't any crying, or loneliness, or rage filled shouts to an empty house, because I was with her, and only because I was with her.