Norman had never really had any dreams, no
real aspirations for life. He had gone through high school with pain, due to
his lack of interest for most subjects, and went on to take six months off to
decide what he was doing next. His parents agreed but only because he had
really made an effort in his last year to get the best scores possible to get
into a good college. They weren’t magnificent scores but they were certainly
much better anyone had hoped him to have.
He loved animals so he thought of becoming a
veterinarian. But decided not to when he realized he would have to operate and
see wounds and things like that. He wasn’t the best person in the presence of
blood or any substances like that.
Then he analyzed the possibility of becoming
an architect. But he really sucked at mathematics and at drawing so it didn’t
make much sense. Engineering was also out of the question as well as anything
to do with math.
He turned to the arts and put aside at once
anything very plastic. He had never been good with his hands. Literature seemed
interesting but he didn’t very much mind reading and cinema required him to
work in a group. Which was very hard because he tended to like being alone.
There was also law school, which he found very
boring, and psychology, which he thought was garbage wrapped in trash.
Philosophy never ended up anywhere and there wasn’t really anything else he
could choose in the available colleges.
The only thing he was good at was typing, like
the secretaries in the fifties. He was really good and was capable of writing
really fast although he had no idea what he was writing about. So he looked it
up and decided it would be interesting to become a translator. It seemed easy,
it was something everyone needed in due time, they got to travel and it just
seemed right for him. Besides, he had learned two languages in school besides
his own so at least he had already begun his studies, in a way.
After two years of the career, Norman met
Drake. He was a stunning man who happened to be very well known in the small
world of high schools that compete against each other. When they first met in
college, Norman was sure he had met Drake before. The thing was, he hadn’t but
he had seen him several times when he and his classmates would attend football
matches to support their school team.
Drake was the star of one of the other high
schools and everyone knew him because of his slight accent and his popularity
with women. Norman had checked him out a lot back in the games but never really
thought of anything. Later on, through a mutual acquaintance, they met in
college and hit it off right away.
They would speak for hours about their time in
high school, their personal experiences there and also about their lives as
college students. Drake was studying to become an architect and Norman soon saw
with his own eyes that he was really good at drawing. When he did it, he was
always very focused, as if he was alone somewhere. It was something really nice
to see.
They labeled their relationship as friendship.
Norman went to Drake’s house often and vice versa. Sometimes Norman would judge
Drake’s drawings and designs and would help him find things to make his ideas
more appealing to the teachers. Drake also helped Norman by learning all the
verbs and their forms for the frequent exams that he had. He also timed his
typing skills and they always had fun with that.
Although Drake had two girlfriends during
their time in college, Norman barely saw any of them. They didn’t really talked
about it. It wasn’t really a surprise when, in their last semester, Drake
confessed he thought he was n love with Norman. And Norman realized he had been
in love from the first moment they had begun their friendship.
So shortly after they were done with college,
they moved in together and promised each other to make it work. They found a
small apartment midway between each other’s jobs and just lived a nice life for
a long time until Drake proposed. He was one of those guys that like all the
classic stuff. He wanted his life to have it all and Norman accepted because he
was happy and wanted Drake to be as happy as he could.
They got married in a beautiful retreat by the
mountains with friends and family and celebrated it by travelling to a faraway
island where they were treated like gods. Besides, their relationship grew
stronger and they felt they really had someone to trust and talk to whenever
they wanted to. It was one of their shared dreams and they had achieved it.
But then, some years later, Drake asked Norman
if he would like to get a child, through adoption or insemination. Drake had
entered those years in which men have a desire to leave their mark in the world
and the ideal way to do that is to have a child. Norman had to think about it
for a while because it wasn’t an easy decision. It was the life of some poor
kid they were talking about and he didn’t wanted to make a mistake with that.
Months later, they decided to go to an agency
where they would offer a woman willing to carry their baby for the duration of the
pregnancy. It had been Norman that made the decision, as he decided that if
they were going to have a child, it was best of it looked like one of them. He
felt bad for all the children up for adoption but he just thought it was the
best choice for them.
The pregnancy months were difficult because
one of them had to help the woman they had chosen with all her pregnancy
related issues and the one who was less busy was Norman. He took her to the
doctor and to the dentist and to those classes were pregnant women learning how
to breathe and how to stay strong. She was a very nice woman that just needed
money and had already been a mother so she knew what it was all about. She was
a single mom and her parents were not very happy with their decision but she didn’t
care about that.
Norman had some time to work, mainly online,
with official documents but had to stop travelling to take care of the
pregnancy. When the baby was born, the woman disappeared after being paid and
they had new responsibilities. Drake tried to get some months off but due to
fact that they were two men; they only gave him half the normal time. They sued
but nothing came out of that. They enjoyed their time together, now three, and
when he went back to work it was Norman who had to put almost everything about
his career on hold.
He got a break when the child was bigger and
they had people they trusted to leave him off with like their parents or
sisters or brothers who already had children. Being a baby, they didn’t feel
good doing it but now that little Kevin as older; it didn’t seem much of a
problem.
One day, it the supermarket, Norman realized
he was looking for a different cereal box for each one of them as well as their
favorite snacks and meals. He knew how to cook the best burgers with mushrooms
and he created Kevin’s favorite juice, a combination of three tropical fruits.
In front of the freezers filled with frozen fish, he realized he had become a “house
husband”. He had never really intended to and now he was doing all the things
that the house needed to get done in order to work.
He loved dressing Kevin up in Halloween and kissing Drake every morning and having sex in the most unexpected times.
Then, Kevin was in school, Drake was successful in
his job and now had a company of his own and he traveled from time to time to
act as translator for some government officials or in other events. When he did
that, it was fun but he had much more fun at home, when he was cooking or
making the house look good. He had finally found what he loved.
Maybe it wasn’t the most popular job of them
all but he loved the look on his family when they appreciated his hard work.
They didn’t teach any of that in college and he certainly had no use for those damn
high scores and grades.
