About Not Perfect, but Striving to Be

by Jey Hawkes
28 pages / 12000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-753-4, 1-60370-753-2
Available file types - html. lit, pdf, prc

Joshua is a ballet student moonlighting as a mechanic in his uncle's garage. When fireman Elias' truck breaks down nearby, he heads to the garage, and gets more than he bargained for when he sees Joshua.

The two men decide that their mutual attraction is worth exploring, but the situation is far from perfect. Joshua isn't sure a firefighter is for him, and Elias doesn't know if Joshua is right for him, either. Nothing is perfect, but will Elias and Joshua find enough common ground to keep them together?

Sample

Working on cars makes Joshua feel manly. It’s silly, he knows, but as soon as he slips out of his day clothes and into his green overalls he feels like a macho man. There’s just something about poking around under the hood of a car that makes him feel like a real man instead of an impostor. Sarah says that wearing less pink would help with his manliness issues, but who’d listen to her? He looks damned good in pink, that’s what he does.

Jeff, his ever helpful brother, says that helping out in Uncle Jeff’s garage is Joshua's macho outlet and, as loath as he is to admit it, Joshua thinks Jeff might be right. During the day he’s quite all right with being gay and maybe a little feminine (even though a guy that stands at six foot five without his boots on doesn’t exactly come off as feminine), but come night he’s itching to change into his overalls and get some dirt on his hands.

Of course, detailing cars would be manlier if he could bring himself to listen to the classic rock station his uncle tunes the radio to during the day shift, but instead he turns the dial to the classical station and listens to Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Handel while he works.

It’s kind of embarrassing if a client turns up, but Joshua doesn’t really see a lot of action during the evenings; mostly he just finishes up some of the work left after the day shift, even though the garage is still officially open. In the beginning he tried to work more regular hours, but he always had to beg out of work for school and rehearsals and ended up working every weekend for six months, so in the end they worked out this compromise. It’s been great so far.

Joshua works when he can and Jeff can have his garage open at odd hours. It doesn’t bring in a lot of additional work, but every now and then a desperate customer drops by and has Joshua do some emergency work which the garage, of course, charge extra for.

He finishes tightening the bolts after changing a tire and checks the air pressure; perfect. He straightens up and wipes the sweat from his brow, undoubtedly leaving an oily smear across his forehead. The tune on the radio changes from a piece by Grieg to one by Vangelis, and Joshua's face lights up in a smile. He loves Vangelis, especially anything from Voices, and this is the title tune playing now.

Some people may sneer at Vangelis for his haphazard career and, at times, very experimental music. He’s not in any way a classical composer, but Joshua fell in love with his music after seeing a new production of The Beauty And The Beast set to an original Vangelis score. Joshua was only six years old at the time, but he’s fairly sure that was when his love for ballet was born as well. In hindsight, it was a kind of clumsy production by students from the local ballet school, but at the time it was pure magic.

Without even meaning to he starts dancing across the floor. At first it’s only to practice his pas ballonné because his sur le cou-de-pied landing needs some work, but then he kicks his oily sneakers off and dances barefoot across the uneven floor. His ability to improvise is one of his greatest strengths as a dancer, and he dances across the floor to a choreography only he can know.

His calloused feet hardly feel the unevenness of the floor as he jumps through the air, landing with cat-like grace before taking off in a new direction to avoid the parked cars. Sometimes he might doubt his choice of career, knowing he won’t have that many good years as a dancer before his body tires, but in moments like this, when he lets the music carry him, he knows there is nothing else he could do.