Asmo's Love

Distaste

I CAN NEVER TRULY BE honest with myself.

Since I had learned about my gender identity, I have been extensively experimental about who I really am, trying to learn more about my dreams and desires. I had kissed Colin, left my hometown for good, and even abandoned my own parents betraying their plans, just for my own pursuit for freedom. My rebel nature was what truly led me on to keep up with my bravado, forcing myself to reinvent everything in my life even when I still feel unsure of who I really want to be.

But with the subsequent events that took place since the moment I'd discovered my affable interest for being in front of a camera, the liberating resort of such environment immediately created a profused identity of my own that I could no longer control within my grasp. Dazzled with the highness of such luxury, I eventually abused myself with the desire to charm and captivate everyone around me. And even with Colin, I have begun to maintain a facetious act, despite knowing the fact that it also meant keeping a lot of skeletons away from his knowledge.

I know it sounded very calculating, and I seemed like a person who keeps defending his wrong intentions for wrong reasons. However, I would have felt extremely bad for this if Colin was really not doing the same too. Even from the start, I've always felt an untouchable issue that Colin kept hiding from me whenever we start talking about feelings. And even when it truly hurts me knowing that he was still not completely honest with me, I could not really speak for myself given that I was doing the same thing as well.

It's crazy, but I cannot bear to lose Colin just because we have secrets we still haven't said out loud to each other. And I know, at some point, it could really affect us big time. But I just have to keep a blind faith and continue living for the present now, since the present is still all about my dreams.

I have to be honest, my dreams weigh more urgency than being honest. And yes, it's ugly and brutal to even admit this myself but that's what actually brought me here. And it's even working. I'm starting to delve deeper, gradually losing the sense of what was real and held no account for the repercussions of my extremity. All I could ever really think of next is what more I can do, what more I can give... and what more is there to come for me.

"You're really ruthless," Leo noted this after putting down his camera on top of his desk, chuckling. He paused and stared at me as I was again being caged into the depths of those sea-green eyes. I kept silent as I stood with my bare chest exposed inside his studio and wearing nothing but my unbuttoned denim jeans.

"Do you even know how much of a tease you are right now?" He blatantly intonated, applying a discreet sultry tone laced in his words. I masked my sudden delight upon hearing his lewdness suggestion and just nonchalantly smirked back.

"Can you even tell when exactly are we going to finish this photoshoot or was there really even a magazine waiting for me at all?" I asked, defiantly laying out what I have been truly anxious about.

We've been meeting like this since two weeks ago. Every day, he will pick me up from someplace he would ask me to meet him and once he finally had me settled in a car, we will drive straight to his family's upscale mansion doing the same thing over and over again. I will always enter his creepy studio and stood in front of his camera in compliance, expecting nothing, as Leo goes over his work taking pictures of me.

The first week, I let it go unsuspicious. I even went so into it, I really tried so hard to give him difficult angles and posed like there's no tomorrow. But when the second week came by, I started to feel bored and impatient. Yet every time I tried to bring the question up, Leo would always find an excuse to brush it off or worse, ignore my chattering.

I was beginning to feel really put off by his unpredictable plans. I am no longer sure if his offer was actually true or was just a bait for me to keep posing inside his weird studio for some untold reason I am unaware of.

Could Leo be actually some kind of a creep?

"I'm in no way could be anything that you're thinking right now, David," I heard him firmly bellowed in a low grumbling voice and I reflexively woke up to my senses to the loudness of his words.

"I'm not thinking of anything, why would you say that?" I pretentiously remarked, keeping an innocent facade.

"Don't patronize me," he sighed back. "I know you're having doubts but you have to practice your patience, David."

As if.

"Can you be really honest with me even for just one second, Leo," I huffed at him, nagging.

"Okay," he replied almost immediately and mirrored back my glare, "The magazine offer is real and the contract has been drawn up. But to finally get that, you have to prove your worth to me first."

WHAT DOES THAT even supposed to mean?

I suppressed an angry curse as I glowered at Leo, not trying to hide my distaste. I breathed deeply and let the air puffed out of my mouth in an audible wheeze.

"Now that's an interesting look," Leo snidely remarked making me scowl even more.

"It's not amusing that you're making things too hard for me."

"That's the point," he pressed on, "Hard work is the key, David."

I scoffed at his insinuating response and kept glaring. Hard work has been a constant deprivation to me. I have been suffering for two years now just to face the difficulty of getting my dreams come true. If hard work is what he was really insisting me to do, then he should have said it already way before I had myself fully indulged in the very idea that I was finally getting into action.