by AJ Matthews
He communicates the way only Ridley can, his smile. Damn that smile will be the death of me one day.
I was his first. He was my first. But it was beautiful and awkward. When I laughed he didn’t laugh, then he did laugh. At first he thought he was doing it wrong, but I assured him the best way I could that my laugh happened because he made so happy. The toys were a good call, the lube helped and it definitely hurt at first, for the both of us. But the pain didn’t last long for either of us. We fumbled when things got a little too slick. Yet the same as for every couple in history, we figured it out. I made love to my boyfriend. Not just sex. You have to be in love to make love, and we made love.
If it’s possible to feel closer to another living person, I cannot fathom the logistics of that one. He was already in my heart, then in my body. And although he has a harder time expressing his emotions, I have to believe he feels the same way. No, I know he feels the same. A man like Ridley wouldn’t be lying in this bed right now if he didn’t.
Once I help him dispose of the condom, we fall back, both our heads landing on his pillow. Ridley wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me so I rest taut against him. From there I roll onto my side and hitch my bent knee over his thigh, resting my chin on his chest.
“Rid?” He won’t look at me now and I’m dying to know what thoughts draw him away from me after what we’d just done together. “If it’s too much, I mean, for you to touch me now. Too much stimulus, you don’t have to hold me.”
“Are you happy?” he asks in lieu of answering my question.
“Awe, Rid. I couldn’t be happier.”
His eyes stay averted but his smirk creeps over his face. “This is what boyfriends do.”
“Babe, you are always my boyfriend no matter what. So don’t worry about what boyfriends do. I only want you happy. We can make our own rules as we go.”
He keeps his hand around my waist still, but the other goes rigid against my thigh. Open. Close. Only twice before he reins it in and calms himself down.
“Wow, Rid. You calmed yourself.”
“I’m an adult. Adults don’t have meltdowns. So I thought about touching you to calm myself. Touching you makes me happy.”
“Touching you makes me happy too.”
Rid starts absently trailing his fingers up and down my arm. “Gabe wasn’t your boyfriend, then?”
“Nope. Only had one other. I think Gabe wanted to be my boyfriend, but he’s still not ready to face it.”
“So that other guy, together five months and you never did that with him?”
“Nope. Remember, it’s what you do to show you love just that other person. I never loved him.”
“But you did with me, because you love me.”
“Yes, I did. Because yes, I do.”
“I’m the luckiest man in the world. You love me.” He says it as matter-of-factly as one would say “the sun is bright.” Then he bends his head to kiss me. “We’re going to do that again, aren’t we?”
“Whenever you want, Rid.”
“I think I’m going to marry you.”
“Oh, um… you do?”
“Not now. We still have college, but yeah. After. I’m going to marry you.”
Chapter Nine
Three days after he gave me the best night of my life, we have a couple packets and pamphlets from the college spread out over the dining room table. Both our laptops open, so we can look up classes for Rid to register for, for the fall semester. I registered for mine at the end of last semester. He’s trying hard to suppress the panic because him leaving, it’s becoming real. And as much as he wants to be independent, in his almost twenty years of life, he’s never spent a whole night away from his mom. She wouldn’t let him.
For the past hour we’ve been quasi-bickering about the classes he should take as compared to the ones he wants to take, which are the hardest classes. My thought, he should ease into his college experience. His thought, he’s just as capable as me. Like I don’t know that.
Before finding classes, we’d been in touch with the student’s with disabilities center at the college. He’ll be allowed to sit in front in all his classes and have an iPad with an external microphone to take his notes for him because as part of his autism, Rid can’t really handle touching pens or pencils. All his work he’ll submit via internet or have someone else write for him on group projects or whatever.
I know mess makes him agitated, so having these pamphlets spread over the table coupled with the stress of telling his mom he’s leaving for school, well, he’s antsier than normal. I’m choosing to think of it as cute because I know he can’t help himself. Part of me wants to make everything better for him, tell his mom for him, clean up the mess for him. But John the therapist says dealing with what makes him uncomfortable helps him to socialize better.
We hear his mother’s car pull into the driveway and I scramble to shove the pamphlets into my backpack while Rid finishes up and logs off the school’s website.
“Clear your history,” I remind him. Because she’s the type of woman to check and he’s not ready for the confrontation yet. He does, then switches to an online job listing site for our area. He logs on right as his mother walks in carrying two shopping bags, one in each hand.
“Do you need any help, Ms. McAllister?”
“Sure. Rid,” she says pointedly. “There are more bags in the trunk.”
“Can I help?” I ask, almost affronted. I’m trying here. How many times can a guy extend a damn olive branch?
“Ridley has it,” she assures me.
After he rose from his chair, shooting his mother a disgruntled look, and headed into the garage, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. “You, you just refuse to like me,” I mutter while packing up my computer.
“You have purple hair and piercings. Why of all the people you could choose, do you choose my son? The two of you couldn’t be more different.”
“It’s just hair. I think the piercings are cool. He thinks the piercings are cool, because we’re not as different as you might think. Rid’s a fantastic guy, loads of fun to hang with, so why wouldn’t I want to? It pisses me off that more people don’t.”
“That’s another thing, I don’t appreciate how you talk around him. He doesn’t need to hear words like that.”
I stare at her, I’ll admit, dumfounded. Because, what? “You mean piss?”
“That would be one he’s using now.”
“He hears worse than that at work.”
“Yes, well… you spend the most time with him.”
“So you’re saying I’m a bad influence?”
“You said it.”
“No,” I correct her. “I voiced it. You couldn’t be any clearer if you’d screamed it in my face. Open your eyes for once and look at the strides he’s made this summer. I’m not as bad an influence as you think. John doesn’t think I’m bad for Rid.”
“John’s not his parent.”
“Mom.” Ridley must have been listening. We both turn not having realized he had come back in with the shopping bags. She flinches when he calls her name a second time, “Mom,” he says again, more forcefully, gritted through heavily clenched teeth. “You will not talk to him like that.”
Wow.
Wow.
Without thinking, I go with my first instinct, to reach out to him, to hold him and comfort him. Let him know I have his back. Last minute I realize my mistake and stop abruptly. Apparently not good enough anymore for Ridley, he looks at me, shakes his head once and grabs at my wrist pulling me the rest of the way over to him, wrapping an arm around my waist. Not how one holds a friend. Even as blind as she tries to stay, she can’t deny his gesture. Though even if she were stubborn enough to try, what he does next well…
The bags he’d been carrying dropped on the floor by his feet. The hand not around my waist, he has hanging at his side, but not opening or closing. The man has never made such a dominant, confidant statement to his mother in front of me before. And judgi
ng by way her eyes go round and her mouth gapes open, he’s just never made it period.
Looking her directly in the eyes, he lays it out for her. “I’m in love with him. He’s my boyfriend. You won’t disrespect him like that again.”
I shouldn’t have found it hot. I should have found it scary, mortifying or a plethora of other emotions because he just dropped the L bomb. The BF bomb. To his mother. But hot, it’s the only thing besides an overwhelming sense of love that I feel. Because seeing Rid take charge, god, it’s hot.
“What?” She sort of whisper yells, aghast. Placing her hand over her heart. “Ridley, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then she looks at me. “What have you done to him? He’s not… he’s just… he’s just autistic.”
“No mom. I’m autistic, and I’m gay. You have to deal with it. You either accept it or you don’t, but either way, it’s the truth. I’m autistic. I’m gay. And I’m in love with Leif Fraser.” I can sense a little of his bravado draining away. Standing up to her took a lot from him. He starts to look away, but catches himself so she can’t throw that in his face. He ends with, “I love you, Mom. But you can’t talk to him like that. Never again.”
The woman looks like she wants to say something but there’s a long, what do they call it? Pregnant pause? I wish she’d just get on with whatever she wants to say so I can kiss my boyfriend now. Respectfully, of course, like other couples do in front of parents. My mother will be absolutely thrilled he’s put his foot down to his mother about us. My problem will be keeping her from showing up on their doorstep unannounced with her Autism and Homosexuality pamphlet ready to discuss Rid’s and my future together.
I’d been so tired of sneaking around, and now everyone of importance knows. My family, Amanda, and now Ms. McAllister. Rid doesn’t know the gift he’s given me.
Ms. McAllister looks at me, “You need to go.”
He’s my boyfriend. I love him. He loves me. Why is that so bad?
“Okay.” Ridley moves his arm from around my waist to hold my hand, and starts to lead me toward the garage door off the kitchen. “Let’s go.”
“I was talking to him.” She calls after us.
“No. You were talking to us both.”
When he reaches for the doorknob, I still his hand, “Babe, are you sure?”
“Leif, I gave her a chance. We could have talked it out like adults. Sat and given her the chance to ask us questions. She chose wrong. That’s on her. Now let’s go.”
Who is this man and what did he do with my sweet, demure, autistic boyfriend? It appears as if I’m dating a badass now.
Walking over to my car, he pushes me against the driver-side door and plants a hot and heavy kiss on me. Putting his foot down with his mother must equal us coming out to the world as a couple. I’m very okay with it. To hold his hand whenever I get the urge to hold his hand? To kiss him and not have to worry about who might see us, we’re on our way to living the dream.
Pulling back from a kiss with the intensity of the kiss he planted, we’re both heaving trying to recapture some of the breaths we didn’t take while our lips were locked. “Hey,” I ask him between pants. “You feel good enough to try driving again?”
“You’ll let me?” I nod. “Back roads?”
“Back roads are fine.”
“Then yes, I’d like to try to drive again.”
It takes us ten extra minutes to leave his driveway because Ridley has to be comfortable enough. Seat adjustments, mirror placement, in cabin temperature, as he calls it. Radio at the perfect volume. Though, seeing him back out with the confidence of a man makes the extra time so worthwhile.
I can honestly say I hate his mother right now.
He’s a man, not a child. So what, he’s gay. Get over it. He has. He’s been living that life, a life independent of her if she chose to see it, for a while now. But that’s the crux isn’t it? She doesn’t choose to see it. Wait until she finds out about school.
The silence filling the car, the concentration on his face, Ridley wants so badly to do well. Getting a driver’s license would mean the world to him.
A quarter mile warning before turns, that’s my job to warn him as the navigator. And then just to remind him, and to push his comfort zone, which John the therapist told me to do, I point out each turn he needs to take which dictates an, “I know.” Every time.
Finally we reach the backest back roads and I watch as Rid visibly relaxes his shoulders, loosening his grip on the steering wheel.
“Can I talk again?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers back, but without looking at me. At first I thinks it’s just concentration, but he has that look again. The one saying something’s swimming around in that brain of his.
Even with something on his mind, he has no reason not to look at me. I’ve told him time and again there’s nothing he can’t say to me. “Talk to me, Rid. What’s wrong?”
Silence.
“Please?” I beg.
My please breaks through to him. So when he eases the car over to the shoulder of the road, I have to gird myself for whatever it is, because well, it’s big again. Considering the last big thing he laid on me, I have to prepare for anything to come out of his mouth about now.
“My mom, she shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“No. She shouldn’t have. But thank you for defending me.”
“Like I wouldn’t? You’re my boyfriend. She’s my mother, but you’re my boyfriend.”
“I’ll always be your boyfriend.”
“No you won’t,” he comes back with, way too fast.
Uh, no I won’t? He still stares straight ahead when I turn to look at him, taking his hand in my hand. “Why would you say that?”
“Because the Supreme Court voted in favor of marriage equality. When we’re done with school, I’m going to marry you. Then you’ll be my husband.”
“Oh you nut-crack.” I laugh out, even as I relax. “You scared me.” And I can see that he meant to. Note to self: Don’t underestimate the autistic guy. He’s sneaky. “Something else’s going on, I can see it on your face.”
Silence.
“Come on, Rid. There’s nothing you can’t talk about with me. I love you, remember?”
“So you’ve never had sex in a backseat, right? Because we never have?”
“Nope.” I tell him, honestly. Trying very hard to contain my smile. “Do you want to have sex in the backseat?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be different than in the bed. Is that okay?” I ask.
Ridley looks down at his lap, but with one of his huge communication smiles. “I know. So long as it’s with you, it’ll be good. I like how you feel. I like being with you. Beside, you said we could whenever I wanted.”
“I did, didn’t I? What brought this on?”
“Just lots of pent up energy. My mom knows about us now.”
That she does. “Want to now? We’re pretty secluded here.”
“Yes.”
Things do go differently this time. He’s been taking charge more, which has been good for the both of us. I let him lead. However he feels like attacking our coital positioning, fine by me. Since the backseat sits three uncomfortably, we have to change up. Rid doesn’t let it faze him and our windows fog good and cloudy.
As human beings we’re capable of experiencing a range of emotions, even those among us who can’t properly express them still feel them. Of all the emotions satisfaction wouldn’t be the most popular by far. You’re not still hungry, not stuffed to the gills, you’re satisfied. Not overly excited with the result, but not disappointed either. You’re satisfied. No it may not be the sexiest, but I’d wager it’s one of the most important. And I’d wager that because as we lay across the backseat, cramped as we are, and he holds me to his chest, stroking the purple hair by my temple I’m satisfied, and it’s a glorious emotion.
“Will you be there with me when I tell my mom about school? I’ve been going back and forth abo
ut whether or not to ask you. I think I want you there.”
“You know I will.” Yes, his smile will absolutely be the death of me. So I turn to kiss him instead of dying.
We stay in our own thoughts again for a while, mine take me where I don’t want them to go because his mother is a bitch, but it’s somewhere he needs to go. “Don’t write your mom off just yet, okay?” I ask.
“I don’t know if I can forgive her,” he tells me honestly. Which squeezes my heart in a really good way.
“I know. And I love you for being so protective of me, of us. But it’s just been you and her for so long. Remember, it couldn’t have been easy for her to raise such an awesome son. I’ve never been a parent, but I’ve heard it’s challenging.” Then I brush my lips tenderly over his skin, just a peck on the center of his chest.
He laughs.
“Especially by yourself. Let what you’ve told her sink in. Then we’ll decide how to go forward with her.”
“I can do that,” He answers.
“Know you can, Rid. Just keep in mind, it’s really hard—”
“That’s what she said,” he cuts me off. My boyfriend, my autistic boyfriend just made a that’s what she said joke. And she thinks I’m a bad influence? Please? We both pretty much break into hysterics. So when we’ve both pretty much calmed down he holds my hand and looks directly in my eyes. “John said when I tell my mom about us, then I should start taking you out on real dates. Movies, ballgames, whatever. Just you know, couple’s things.”
“I’d love to, Rid. What do you think about it? Big step putting us out there for the world.”
“What do I think? I think I have the best boyfriend in the world and people should know. I have autism so it’s harder, might take longer for me to understand or express my feelings. But you know I still feel, like any other man.”
“You have nothing to prove to me or for me. I know what we have.”
