To the Max

by Julie Lynn Hayes

  Holding the line to the max, and trying to keep it all together now.

  Chapter 13

  Of Mothers and Queens

  MY MOTHER taught me that I was a werewolf as soon as I was old enough to understand what that meant. Being gay I learned about on my own.

  Nowadays, being homosexual is not looked upon as quite the aberrant lifestyle that it once was, although obviously there are those who refuse to understand that it is perfectly natural, as is being heterosexual. Neither way is right, nor wrong. In fact, it seems to me that the current trend leans toward lesbianism as being chic, en vogue. Women kissing other women in public displays of affection doesn’t draw quite the attention it would have at one time. Neither does the sight of two males holding hands.

  But in the time that I grew up, that wasn’t the case.

  Not that I realized that, of course. What child is born knowing and understanding their own sexuality, much less that of the world around them? That comes with time, as well as physical and mental development. Although, as a rule, I think the body knows before the mind does.

  Sunday, November 16, 1969

  I REMEMBER the first time that I kissed another boy. I was thirteen at the time. Puberty was beginning to manifest itself on my unsuspecting body, which had enough to deal with on a monthly basis without throwing out-of-whack hormones into the mix. It was at Rachel’s thirteenth birthday party. If it hadn’t been for Rachel, I’d have had next to no contact with other children, being homeschooled and not inclined toward making new friends. Which was the way Juliet preferred it, determined to protect her little Max from the outside world. But Rachel’s mother had planned something special, and we begged my mother for weeks to let me go, until she reluctantly gave in.

  Rachel made sure that I was there well in advance. I had been careful to make myself presentable, although she encouraged me not to be too formal, so I made do with my best pair of cords and a nice shirt. Once there, I made myself useful and helped her mom set things up. Mrs. Sheldon was always nice to me—she was a very nice lady—she never minded how much I came over or how often Rachel zipped over to my house, never treated me like a pest, and always had time to listen to whatever I found the nerve to say. Which was a lot, surprisingly. She had a knack for drawing people out of themselves. She encouraged my and Rachel’s friendship, as did my mother, although for different reasons. Juliet seemed to understand that we were close friends, nothing more, and that was fine with her.

  The party was scheduled to go off at two, and a few minutes before the appointed time, the arrivals began. I had seen a few of the other guests at Rachel’s house before, had had limited contact with some of them. Most of them were her classmates from the local public school she went to, and there seemed to be far more girls in attendance than boys. For the most part I shyly kept to myself, spoke if I was spoken to, was polite. Rachel, my little social butterfly, although the center of attention, always returned to me, making sure that I wasn’t alone for long. That girl has always had my best interests at heart. Always watched out for me, even then. Still does, to this day.

  The party was being held in the basement, which was also the rec room. Adult supervision was right upstairs—Mrs. Sheldon and some of the other mothers were gathered together in the kitchen, drinking coffee and chattering—but for the most part we were left to our own devices, which consisted largely of talking, listening to music, and eating. Until the games began, that is.

  I was standing in the corner of the room nearest to the table where a vast array of pizza had been set out, as well as the mandatory chips and dip—what party was complete without the taste of homemade French onion dip, made from real sour cream and dry onion soup mix?—thinking what a terrific combination that was in my book, when another boy approached the table, looked over its offerings before selecting a slice of pizza and claiming it. He regarded me for a moment as he ate the pizza, giving me time to look him over as well. He had curly black hair and mocha eyes, and for a boy I thought that his bow-shaped lips were rather pink. I envied him his glossy curls; I thought my own hair boring and totally uninteresting, while his was dark and mysterious. I liked his looks, he seemed nice, and I didn’t analyze it any further than that.

  He chewed his pizza, swallowed, before he addressed me. “I hear they’re going to have games?” I nodded. Rachel had told me beforehand everything that was planned. “Girls.” He shrugged. “Hope they’re not too stupid.” I only kept nodding, like some sort of idiot savant. Luckily he didn’t seem to notice. “You’re Max, aren’t you? I’m Gene.”

  Before I had a chance to say anything even remotely stupid, Rachel bustled over and shepherded us to the other side of the room, telling us that our presence was required for the first game, which turned out to be pin the tail on the donkey, which pretty well ended that. Whatever that might have been.

  Everyone knows pin the tail on the donkey, right? Blindfold, pin, donkey—that’s about all there is to say about that, basically.

  The second game was spin the bottle.

  It’s not like I had never kissed a girl before. I had kissed Rachel. She wasn’t shy about that sort of thing, and we were kids; we didn’t know any better. It didn’t mean a thing. We had even played doctor once when we were about seven, which consisted mostly of you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine, that sort of thing. Forgotten as soon as it happened. No big deal. Kissing Rachel was no different than kissing my little sister Diana, who was about six at this time. Or kissing my mother. Nice, but nothing exciting.

  I really didn’t want to play this game, but I knew there would be no way around it. The girls especially were clamoring for it, so we all formed the obligatory circle, the empty glass bottle on the ground in the middle of the circle, like an evil predator waiting to claim its victim.

  The bottle was spun, the victims chosen, and amid the hoots of the boys and the giggles of the girls, the selected pair met awkwardly in the middle of the circle and kissed: lightly, tentatively. One boy, one girl, pink-faced but smiling. Applause. The bottle was spun again, the heavy glass skittering loudly against the tile of the floor, before it came to rest, one end pointing at Rachel, the other at a bespectacled young man with soft eyes and wavy brown hair. He blushed, Rachel giggled, and never one to be shy, she reached the center of the circle before he did. “Come on, James,” she encouraged him, and once again the ring of spectators was cheering him on. Their lips met, someone cried out, “Ooolala,” and everyone laughed.

  The game continued, more couples, more kissing, more laughter. When the bottle pointed to two girls, everyone went “Oooooo,” but it was done in fun. As long as it didn’t point toward me, I was happy. Every time it looked like it was going to stop in my vicinity, I grew cold, but it always seemed to be for someone else. Which suited me just fine. I noticed that the boy I’d been talking to, Gene, was never picked either, and I wondered, did he mind? I looked at him now and then, admiring the easy familiarity he seemed to have with the people around him. He struck me as being very nice, in fact, friendly. I didn’t have any male friends other than my cousin Sebastian who, at eighteen, wasn’t around much between working and preparing for college. And as for female friends, there was just Rachel.

  And then I was thunderstruck as I watched that cursed bottle stop dead on me. Damn.

  I didn’t want to look to see who was on the other side of it, but when the major giggling began I had to, raising my eyes to find my gaze returned by the dark-haired boy on the other side. Oh my God! Since there was a preponderance of girls to guys, this particular combination hadn’t arisen yet, so we were the first. And did they make a big deal out of it! I didn’t honestly know why. Not having been exposed to public school, I had no frame of reference for this, knew nothing about sexuality, straight, gay or otherwise. My mother hadn’t given me “the talk” yet.

  I bit my lower lip, looked at him. He just smiled and moved into the circle, waiting. For me. Damn.

  “Go on, Max.” I could hear Rachel’s
voice, encouraging me. And then her words were echoed by the other children, as easily as if they were all rooting for their favorite baseball team: “Go, Max, go, Max, go, Max….” What could I do?

  My movements seemed highly exaggerated, everything moving in a sort of slo-mo as I found my way into the center of the circle, miraculously without tripping on my own two feet. Gene continued to smile in a calm Buddha-like way. And as those around us cheered us on, he pressed his lips gently against mine.

  I wasn’t prepared for the reaction of my own body to that kiss, having been more worried that I didn’t make a fool out of myself or gross Gene out. But as soon as he kissed me I knew that I liked it. This was different from any other kiss I had ever gotten. This was good. Very good.

  If he hadn’t broken it off, I’d have probably stood there for a lot longer, so I guess it’s a good thing that he did. As it was everyone was laughing, but I didn’t hear them at first. It was good-natured, though, and as I slowly became aware of my surroundings, I managed to find my place again, as the game moved on. But something inside of me was different, and I could feel it, even though I couldn’t put a name to it.

  And to my embarrassment, I realized that something outside of me was different too: namely, I had an erection. Not that I had never had one before; that’s something that starts with males at a very young age, as well as masturbation. Whacking off, if you will. And I had begun having wet dreams about the age of ten, although I never seemed to remember the dreams afterward and was left with just the sticky sheets as evidence of my nocturnal emissions. But I had never gotten hard at someone else’s touch before. Male or female. Luckily no one else seemed to notice. I guess it was just more obvious to me than to them, naturally.

  But it had awakened questions in me. Serious questions. Which I took to the person I loved and trusted the most in the world, my mother. We were sitting together in the kitchen after dinner that night, she was putting the finishing touches on a chocolate cake she had made, and I watched her hands expertly smooth the rich chocolate fudge frosting into place using her big frosting blade.

  “So, Rachel’s party was fun, was it?” she asked me, flipping up some of the icing on the side for a textured effect.

  “Yeah, it was lots of fun. They had food, and soda, and stuff. We played music. And games.”

  “What kind of games did you play?” she asked, eyeing the cake as if to make sure it was perfectly aligned.

  “Pin the tail, musical chairs, spin the bottle.” I shrugged.

  She turned her head and smiled at me. “Did you kiss anyone?” she teased.

  “Yeah, a guy named Gene.”

  “Oh.” This must have taken her aback. “ ’Course it was just a game. Boys don’t really kiss boys in real life,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they don’t, that’s all.” She looked more closely at me. I flushed under her scrutiny. “Max, it’s not like you liked kissing him, is it?”

  “Well….” I waffled, feeling myself on precarious ground and not sure what to say. Was it such a bad thing if I did? I didn’t understand.

  She put her hand under my chin, raised my face toward hers. “Max, it’s just a phase, ’cause you’re growing up and things are confusing for you right now. It’ll be okay. Someday you’ll find the right girl, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  She was the one that was confusing me. I had liked kissing Gene, but she was making it sound wrong. At that point, I just dropped the subject, and it was a few years before I finally came out to her, although from that point on I was watching myself and the world around me for clues as to what was going on. And that is when I became aware of just what it meant to be homosexual. Like belonging to a secret society that everyone was aware of but no one wanted to talk about. I was left to grapple with my own feelings on the subject for a while before I dared to approach Rachel about it. I had no one else I felt I could talk to. And was she shocked? Upset? Perturbed in any way? No, not my Rachel. She just hugged me and told me if that’s how I felt, then I should go for it. No matter what anyone else said.

  Oh, do I hear a question? You want to know if I ever kissed Gene again, if anything ever came out of it? Yes, and no. Yes, I kissed him again, the next time he was at Rachel’s house. We snuck into my backyard, shielded from the house by the flowering shrubbery, and kissed each other ’til our lips were swollen. But no, alas, nothing came of it, for shortly afterward his parents moved to another city, and I lost track of him. Que sera, sera.

  Juliet is still in a state of denial about my sexuality. Obviously. Painfully so. Even after all these years, she acts like it’s just a matter of switching teams, stepping up to bat for the other side. I’ve asked her: if it’s that easy, why doesn’t she do it and start dating girls? She just tells me not to be impertinent and that ends that.

  I asked Richard once about his first kiss—with a boy, that is. I think Richard actually kissed girls, too, before he realized he was gay.

  It was the Sunday after our first meeting at the disco in Illinois. We had not been apart since that day, as if we had become glued together somehow. Every waking minute of every day was spent in each other’s company, and all night as well. After the first night, we had come back to my house. It just felt right. Natural. And on Sunday we went back to Kirkwood and got what few things he owned and moved them into my room, first saying good-bye to his friends and thanking them for their hospitality.

  Mother had taken Diana and gone out somewhere with Sebastian, lunch at the art museum, I think, so we had the house to ourselves. We had been invited to come, and under other circumstances this was something I would have loved to do, that being one of my favorite places to be, but today we had declined.

  Now we were simply naked and relaxing on my bed. I straddled Richard, my ass resting on his legs as we just talked. Still in that getting-to-know-you stage. The exploratory touchy-feely stage. So completely enamored of one another that we couldn’t seem to see or think of anyone else. Come to think of it, we’re still in that stage, most of the time. When he’s around, of course. Not being facetious, just honest.

  I was playing with his pubic hairs. They were the prettiest shade of blonde; they looked like he had rinsed them in lemon juice. They had a crinkly texture to them but were soft, and I was curling them around my finger, not pulling at them in any way but simply enjoying the feel of him. Not to mention, it gave me the opportunity to soak in the sight of his cock, which even at rest was a beautiful thing to behold.

  “Richard?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Do you remember the first time you kissed a boy or a boy kissed you?”

  “Mhmmm. It was when I was twelve.”

  “That’s young, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged lazily. “I looked more like I was sixteen. My mother liked to put eyeliner on me sometimes, and it made me look pretty, not to mention older.”

  “Why’d she do that?” Curiously.

  He laughed easily. “Because she’s her.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the first guy that kissed me was one of her boyfriends.”

  My eyebrows must have gone up at this piece of information. “How old was he?”

  “Thirty, forty, I dunno.” His face moved in a gesture of dismissal. “He also taught me how to suck cock.”

  “Shit,” I breathed, “that doesn’t sound right. Why didn’t you tell your mom what he did?”

  “I did,” he said quietly. “She didn’t listen.”

  “Why was he going out with her if he was gay?” I was confused.

  “Sucking cock doesn’t always mean you’re gay, love,” he said. “In this case it just turned out that I really was, and he was just horny. It was easier to give in than to fight it, and besides, I discovered that I had a talent for it, and I used it to get things.”

  I couldn’t imagine a mother that would allow something like that to go on under her nose. My mother would have emasculated the other man for even thinking about it, let
alone doing it. “Your mother should have done something.”

  “It’s not always that easy, Max,” he sighed gently. “I moved out not long after that, anyway, so it didn’t matter.”

  “You moved out? When you were twelve?” I goggled.

  “Well, she moved, so I ended up moving; we just moved in different directions, that’s all. I went to Chicago. She went to New Orleans. Maybe six months later she left that guy and found another one, and then we ended up meeting up again on some commune, and we lived together. For a while. Colorado, I think it was.”

  “How did you survive?”

  “The best way I could. Blowing guys for money and living on the street. I managed.”

  I was appalled at his words, his mother’s callous actions. Made me appreciate mine even more at that moment. I leaned down and tenderly kissed the head of his cock before I crawled up beside him, stroked his face gently, gazed into his beautiful blue eyes.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured me with a tender smile. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you know?”

  “I know, but still….” A pause. “Richard?”

  “Mmhmmm?”

  “Promise me you won’t leave me?” I was already deeply in love with him and totally committed. And insecure as hell.

  “Darlin’,” he sighed, “don’t worry. I’ll always come back. I’m like the proverbial bad penny. “

  If that was meant to be reassuring, it wasn’t. But it was rather prophetic. I just chose to ignore it at that moment.

  DAMN. There’s someone coming up the drive. I can hear the gravel spinning beneath the tires. I close my eyes, not wishing to be disturbed, just want to lay here in Richard’s arms, protected, secure.