“What friends?” he demanded.
“Joel, for one,” Brandon said.
“You told him this? Why in the world would you ever say such a thing to anyone?”
“I didn’t tell him. He figured it out all on his own. He took me to my first gay youth group meeting.”
“He what? When? Where? Why didn’t I know about this?”
“Did you know that he has a gay sister, a gay cousin, and a gay uncle? Maybe you should talk to him if you don’t understand it. He’s been incredibly supportive and helpful, and I’m grateful for a friend like him. And he’s been good with Tyler too.”
“I don’t believe any of this. I’m living in a freaking nightmare. Brandon, stop and use your fucking head for a minute. All your life we’ve been working to get you to the place where you can become an Olympic competitor.”
“Yeah? So?”
“How many gay Olympians can you name?”
“How many do you want to hear? How about Tom Daley for one? How about Brian Boitano? How about Matthew Helm? How about Mark Tewksbury? How about Greg Louganis? Gus Kenworthy? Matthew Mitcham? Carl Hester? Ian Thorpe? Want me to go on?”
As if he hadn’t spoken at all, his father said, “Brandon, you cannot be an Olympic athlete and be known as queer.”
“I hate that word, Dad. I’m gay. It’s no big deal. I just like guys.”
“Don’t say that!” his father yelled, visibly cringing. “Olympic competitors are under public scrutiny in ways you cannot imagine. To compete on an international scale, you need to be as all-American and clean-cut as possible. There cannot be any hint of some scandal or something as disreputable as being homosexual.
“Have you had sex with a woman?”
“No.”
“Why not?” his father demanded.
“And just when would I have had time for something like that, Dad? Huh? You’ve kept me on such a tight leash for so many years I’ve barely had time to myself to pee.”
“How do you know you wouldn’t like it and you’re just confused?”
“I’m gay, Dad. It’s simple. I don’t need some woman to tell me I’m gay.”
“Pick some girl at school and invite her out on a date.”
“I will not,” Brandon said, shocked at the direction their conversation had taken.
“Do it, Brandon. Fuck her. I don’t care how you get the girl, but you’ve got to get on one as fast as possible. How can you know you don’t like it until you try it?”
“Not gonna happen, Dad. I cannot believe what I’m hearing from you. Did you have to fuck a man to prove that you weren’t gay?”
“Brandon!”
His father walked out of the room and made several phone calls. When he returned to the room nothing further was said about being gay or dating women. But that was not the end of the argument.
THE FOLLOWING morning, following breakfast, Brandon’s father said, “Come on. I’ve got to run an errand and you’re coming with me.”
“Why?” Brandon asked.
“Brandon, enough with fighting my every word. Just get your fucking ass in the car and let’s go.”
“Maybe I had plans.”
“You do have plans,” his father told him. “They’re with me right now in the car.”
Brandon was suspicious but got into the car. He was curious as well as cautious.
Once they were on the road, Brandon asked, “Where are we going?”
“I’ve got to go see somebody.”
As if that answered Brandon’s question.
For about half an hour, they drove in silence. His father turned off the main road and onto a rutted dirt road, driving about five hundred yards back off the main road before stopping in front of a dilapidated trailer set off by itself. It had clearly been in its present location for many, many years. The place looked deserted and unkempt. It looked like one good windy winter storm could send it tumbling down into pieces.
Brandon took one look and asked his father, “Who do you know that lives here? And how?” His suspicion was on full alert. His father was up to something. He just didn’t know what it was yet.
“Come on,” his father ordered, getting out of the car.
Without looking to ensure Brandon was following, his father strode up to the door and knocked. The entire door wobbled with each knock. A moment later a woman pushed the door open and said, “Hi.” She smiled and continued, “Thanks for calling. Come on in.”
“Brandon, get in here.” Brandon proceeded cautiously.
Inside the trailer was dark, but there was enough light coming through the windows for him to see the woman. She looked… old. As he studied her face some more, the best he could in the present light, he realized that she actually wasn’t as old as he’d initially thought. No, it was more than that. She looked haggard. No, even that wasn’t enough. She looked used up. She might at one time have been pretty, but that was a lot of miles ago.
“This him?” she asked, addressing his father.
“Yes, this is my son that I was telling you about.”
“Sure, I can do him. Rate’s a hundred, like I told you on the phone.”
Brandon watched his father pull cash from his pocket, count out five twenty-dollar bills, and hand it over to the woman.
She shoved the cash into her pocket and turned to Brandon. “Come on, stud. Let’s go do this thing.”
“Do what thing?” Brandon asked.
“He slow or something?” she asked his father.
“Sometimes I wonder,” his father answered. “Brandon, go back with her to the bedroom and fuck her.”
“What?” he yelled.
“Do it. Go see for yourself what you’ve been missing. Maybe this will get you back on the track you need to be on.”
Brandon was appalled. His father had actually just paid a woman—a used-up shell of a woman—to have sex with him. His father wanted him to go to be with… a prostitute. Brandon could not believe any of this was happening. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
His entire focus had been on his father for a moment, so he jumped when he felt the woman place one of her hands over his crotch and squeeze his penis.
He jerked away from the groping hand. “I’m out of here,” he declared as he stormed out the door. Rather than go to the car, he just started striding back toward the paved main road they’d come in on. He did not know exactly where he was, but he had a rough idea in his mind. It would take him forever, but he could get home by walking. All that mattered right then was putting as many miles between himself and his father and that woman as quickly as possible.
He hadn’t even gone a mile down the road when his father drove up and stopped directly in front of him.
“Get in the goddamned car, Brandon,” he ordered, but Brandon walked around the car and, without a word, kept striding down the road.
Three times this pattern repeated, until his father stopped the car and got out.
“Get in the car, Brandon.” His father looked angrier than Brandon could ever recall seeing him before, and over the years Brandon had seen the man angry in any number of situations. He had witnessed temper tantrums of monumental proportions.
“And where are we going this time?” Brandon calmly asked.
“Home.”
Brandon was suspicious, but he got into the car and they drove home. Neither man uttered a single word during the half-hour drive. Once home, Brandon immediately took his cell phone out into the fields that surrounded their house and called Tyler. He put as much distance between himself and the house as he could before punching in Tyler’s number.
“Hey!” Tyler said as he answered. “What’s up?”
“Hey,” Brandon said.
“What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.
“What makes you—”
“I can hear it in your voice. What’s wrong?”
“I came out to my father last night,” Brandon said.
“You did? Holy crap. Why didn’t you tell me you were goi
ng to do that? How did he take it?”
“Well, let’s say that he responded but not in the way I had anticipated.”
“More words, please.”
“When I told him I liked guys, he asked me if I’d ever been with a woman. You know, had sex with a woman. When I told him no, this morning he drove me to some dilapidated old trailer out in the middle of nowhere, dragged me inside, paid some tweaked out woman a hundred bucks, and told me to go fuck her.”
“What? Holy shit!” Tyler shouted into the phone. “What did you do? Did you—”
“Hell no. I’m freaking out. It just hit me that my dad just gave some stranger a hundred dollars and wanted me to stick my dick into her. He never parts with money that easily, but I just watched him count out the money and hand it over.
“And she looked drugged out and had God alone knows what kinds of diseases, if that’s how she makes money to supply her habit. I can’t believe he did that. That is just so fucking crazy. I’m so goddamned pissed at him. This is just insane.”
“I’m so sorry, Bran. I’m so, so sorry. The man is an absolute ass.”
Brandon chuckled. “He’s been promoted from dick?”
“I think today’s move clinches that. Do you want me to come get you?” Tyler asked. “You know I don’t trust that man, and I worry about you, even more so now that he’s tried pulling some shit like this. I really don’t like the idea of you home alone with him.”
“I know. I think I’m okay. I hope I will be anyway. Graduation is in two weeks, and I am counting the days between now and then. That’s what started this whole thing.”
“Huh? I don’t understand? How did graduation lead him to taking you to see a prostitute?”
“He said that he was giving me an eight-week extended tour through Europe as a graduation gift.”
“Awesome, man,” Tyler said, although his voice lacked the enthusiasm that would usually accompany those words.
“No, it’s not. The only reason he was doing it was to separate the two of us. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Europe, and even less about me seeing it. All he wanted was a way to keep me under his thumb and under his constant surveillance and to have you nowhere near me. That’s the only reason he told me he wanted to do this. And remember, he was going to take me so I’d be seeing great places but with him along constantly. I’d rather wait until a future time when you and I can go and see things that we want at our own pace, even if we have to do it on the cheap or postpone the trip for a few years.”
“That’s fair,” Tyler agreed. “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay there with him tonight? I can come over.”
“No. Don’t come over. I think that would only make it worse right now. I’m gonna try to hang in here. Two weeks. Two weeks and counting. Two weeks. I need to go study for one of my finals. Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime. I’m here for you, babe.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too. Good night.”
“Night.”
Chapter 14—Enough
FOR THE following two weeks, the inhabitants of the house walked very carefully around each other. Brandon was totally focused on studying for and then taking his finals. As soon as exams were finished, it was graduation rehearsal time and invitations to a string of parties thrown by the families of other graduates. Brandon’s father was not throwing a party, one, because his father wouldn’t spend the money, and two, because they didn’t have any friends, nor did he care for his son to have friends.
Tyler came to see Joel and Brandon graduate just as Joel and Brandon had gone to see Tyler graduate one night earlier. Brandon had been happy with the day and the event—until he saw the look of scorn that passed over his father’s face when Tyler hugged him. Joel saw it as well and gave Brandon a look of concern.
Graduation included posing for the obligatory pictures in caps and gowns, so Brandon and Joel did that. Joel wanted to get some photos of Brandon and Tyler together, arm-in-arm. When Brandon walked out to where guests were waiting, his father had cornered Tyler, and appeared to be working himself into a major temper tantrum.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you are to leave my son alone. Just turn right around and get the hell out of his life. I do not want to see you coming around him ever again or so help me I will—”
“Hey!” Brandon yelled at his father. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m being your father and doing what you do not seem capable of doing for yourself. I have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to get you to where you are now to have you just turn your back on it and throw it all away.”
“Who’s throwing anything away, Dad? Huh?” Brandon demanded. “Not me. And I think you’re mistaken about who’s been working. It seems to me that it’s me in that pool every fucking morning doing laps and endurance training. You’ve been flying off to Florida and California to smoke cigars and drink bourbon with your friends while I’ve been left at home with lists of chores longer than any ten guys could ever hope to finish. So you need to stop and back off until you see things more clearly than you are at the moment.”
“How dare you, you ungrateful—”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Joel asked when he walked out to join the fight already in progress.
“Leave us,” Brandon’s father ordered. By that point several of the other guests, parents, and graduates were paying closer attention to the dispute between father and son, especially now as it drew in more people than previously.
“You’re causing quite a scene,” Joel said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it sure seems to be of interest to all those people who are watching you and trying to listen to what’s being said over here. Do you really want to have this debate here in front of all these people?”
Brandon’s father nodded his agreement, but it was clear from the expression on his face he was not happy, but then few people who knew him well could recall him ever being anything other than a hyper type-A personality, so most folks likely expected such behavior from him. Brandon knew that there was occasionally more to him than competition, but in recent years his competitiveness and fixation on things had gotten so overwhelming that nothing else mattered.
“Very well. We will continue this conversation at home.” Brandon could see the way his father had clenched his jaw and could hear it in the way he spoke. This was not going to be a fun afternoon, but it was a conversation that was long overdue.
As Tyler was getting ready to head home, he looked uncertain. Brandon’s guess was he didn’t know if they should hug before he left. Brandon solved that issue for him by reaching out and drawing him into a big hug.
Joel drove Brandon home. Surprisingly they were quiet during the ride. Brandon’s mind was completely occupied with what was coming. He considered any number of strategies for how to proceed, not sure if any of them were right or logical.
“You okay?” Joel asked quietly as they turned onto the road they lived on.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I’m not so much now, but I think I will be by the end of the day. It’s time I stood my ground and crawled out from beneath his control.”
“I agree, but be careful. The man scares me. He’s so tightly wrapped. I don’t want to be around him when something happens to make him start to unravel. It’s not going to be pretty.”
“Yeah, well, I think that’s what’s going to happen today.”
“Do you want me to come in with you? I can stay for a while to be sure you’re safe.”
“Thanks, but no. I’ll handle him. I probably know how his mind works better than anyone else, so sadly I am uniquely qualified for this job. You’re taking off tonight for your trip. I hope you and your folks have a great time. I’m gonna miss you.”
“Thanks, man. I’ll call you when we get back and tell you all about it.”
Joel dropped Brandon off at his house and then slowly drove away as Brandon walked inside. His father was already there waiting for h
im.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a stool at the kitchen counter, opposite where he was seated.
Brandon sat, but unlike his typical behavior of waiting submissively, quietly, this day Brandon held his head high, his gaze locked on his father.
“So, what’s on your mind?” Brandon said.
“You miserable, ungrateful little pissant. I have sacrificed and focused all my time on you and your development for years now, and suddenly you meet some guy you know nothing about and you’re ready to throw it all away.”
“I’ve never said one single word about throwing anything away.”
“Then where is your focus these days, Brandon? Let me tell you—it’s all on that guy. You used to be focused with laser-like precision. Nothing could distract you.”
“Except for you.”
“What did you say?” his father demanded.
“You are the chief distraction for me and for all the other guys on the swim team and you have been for years. You think you’re helping, that you’re ‘coaching’ me, but all you’ve been doing is feeding your own ego. For too many years, I’ve just gone along with what you wanted instead of standing up for myself, but I’ve had enough of that. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve got to live my life my way. You’ve got your own life to live. You’ve tried to live your life by trying to live mine, trying to control my every movement. No more.”
“You be very careful, Brandon,” his father said. “If you walk out the door right now, you do not need to ever bother coming back here ever again.”
“So let’s see. You had two sons, and now with me you’ve succeeded in chasing both of them away and made both of them despise you. Quite a winning score you’ve got there. What are you going to do now that you don’t have any more sons’ lives to control and ruin?”
But Brandon’s father was equally adept at dirty fighting. “If you leave, you can kiss goodbye to any hope of having my financial support for you to attend college.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you reminded me of that,” Brandon said with a smile. “There is the little matter of my competition winnings. You do remember those summers I’ve been winning competitions, trophies… and money. I’d like to have my money, please. I did all the work, so it seems only fair to me.”
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