TOGETHER

"I could never tell you before, Jason, what our life together has meant to me. But in a few minutes they'll come get us and put an end to it.  You and I, Jason and Justin, apart, forever. I'm scared Jason, really scared.  What will I do without you always by my side?"

"I know it's the right thing to do, Jason. But that doesn't mean the way it is now is wrong. How could it be?  Did we have a choice? Sure there were hard times. A lot of them. Nothing was ever easy for us. But what could ever bring two people closer than we have been?"

"We've always been there for each other.  If I would stumble, you would hold me up. And if you couldn't, we'd fall holding on to each other.  Then we'd laugh because we knew that the only way to get up was to work together. And we did, always."

"Nothing was able to come between us. Not the pointing fingers or the whispered comments. Even when they called us freaks we found comfort in each other. We knew what we were, and were able to turn our heads and look at them with disdain. They looked at us and saw freaks.  We looked at them and saw disgrace. I looked at you and saw a boy, just like me."

"No Jason, it hasn't been an easy road. But buried in it we've found a treasure. A love, like we can never have with anyone else.  We share more than our feelings and our deepest secrets.  More than our bodies and our bed. We share our very soul."

"I know Jason, it's getting close to time.  Please, let me just finish telling you what I've never before taken the time to say.  Funny, you've always been the talkative one.  Always speaking up first and saying what you knew were my thoughts as well as yours.  But now, with just a few minutes left before our bond is cut, I feel I have to let it all out.  To say those things that have burned in me for all these eighteen years."

"Do you remember when we were young, how we would take turns staying awake at night, listening for mom to get home?  How, if we heard she had a man with her, we'd scramble out of bed and hide in the closet before they came in?  And, if she got so drunk that she told him about us, how we'd hold on to each other hoping he wouldn't find us in there?"

"Oh God, Jason, remember what it was like when he did?  How mom would make us take off our pajamas and parade around naked for him so he could watch?  How she’d get the really mean ones to chase us around and hit us.  How both of them laughed till they puked."

"That always hurt me the most.  That's when I would start crying.  I just couldn't help it.  Being hit was something we had both gotten used to.  But hearing them laugh at us made me wish I'd never been born.  I always felt that if it wasn't for me, none of it would ever have happened."

"I know you never felt that way.  You never could.  You're as much a part of me as I am of you.  We could never love each other any less than we love ourselves."

"Oh Jason, they're coming down the hall for us.  This is really it.  In a few hours we'll be apart.  Hold me now, my dear brother.  Hold me tight and feel our bodies joined for one last time.  When we wake up, you and I will stand alone.  The kidney that we now share will be yours, but our soul will always belong to us."