Alma's Will

by Anel Viz

  Cameron and Ed immediately protested, but there was no dissuading Baron. Cameron insisted on at least covering the tip.

  Despite the varied menu, they all ordered barbecue ("So Cameron won't be the only one eating with his fingers," Ed quipped) and beer to go with it.

  "So, what is it you two do for a living?" Baron asked to get the conversation rolling.

  "Ed's in social work and I'm a fancy-pants lawyer," Cameron replied.

  Ed snorted. "Hah! Don't you believe him. This 'fancy-pants' lawyer could be raking it in right now, but he chooses to work for Lambda Legal, taking cases pro bono and earning a risible salary. All I do is volunteer at Pride House one measly day per week."

  "You work for Lambda, Cameron?" Baron asked. "Ever come across a case like this before?"

  "I can't imagine there's been another like it, but it's not the kind of case I handle, nor would I, even if I had a license to practice in Georgia. And besides, it being my mother's will would make it a conflict of interest."

  "Cameron must be the only Lambda lawyer who hardly ever takes on a discrimination case," Ed explained. "He defends gay kids who've gotten on the wrong side of the law."

  "Picked up for hustling, you mean?" Baron asked.

  "Some of that," Cameron said. "Also theft, drugs, vagrancy, you name it. And you'd be surprised how many kids who aren't even hustling get charged with prostitution. You know, entrapment. An undercover cop hits on him and he agrees to whatever, but money was never a part of it. Of course, nobody's gonna believe some kid's word against a cop's. Not that there aren't plenty out there turning tricks for money or drugs."

  "That could've been me," Jay said in a whisper.

  "Or me," Ed said. "It could've been any of us."

  "You know—" Cameron began.

  Their server came with the food, and he cut himself short. The second they were alone again, though, he turned to his husband and said, "You know damn well it was me, Ed. Not the drugs or hustling, but I got arrested for shoplifting and vagrancy more than once."

  Baron was surprised. "And they let you practice law?"

  "All my convictions were as a juvenile, and my record's been sealed. By some miracle I managed not to get caught after I turned eighteen, and I eventually cleaned up my act. I'm not proud of what I did, but I am proud that turned myself around, and I did it without help."

  "I've told you before," Ed said gravely. "Whatever you had to do to stay alive, I'm glad you did it."

  "There're probably still a few cops in Atlanta who'd recognize me," Cameron said, continuing his story, "but I was Cory Smith to them. They'd've brought me down to Macon if I'd used my real name. Home was the last place I wanted to go. So they'd hand me over to Child Protection, who'd try to locate my parents, give up, and stick me in a foster home. I'd run away, sometimes take another name, and the cycle would start all over."

  "When did Cory Smith become Cameron again?" Baron wanted to know.

  "After I migrated north in my early twenties. Enrolled in junior college, did well, went on to get a four-year degree and from there to law school, met Ed, and—"

  "And gave me the best fucking blowjob in the galaxy, so I decided he was a keeper," Ed interrupted. "End of story. You've said enough, babe—a lot more than enough. Let's talk about something else."

  Ed's frank (and more than slightly exaggerated) revelation caused Jay to blush. Baron suppressed a smile and said, "I'm sorry; I never meant to pry. When I made that remark about your being allowed to practice law, I wasn't looking for a confession. But I must say I'm impressed. It's not everyone who's so comfortable in their skin that they can tell that sort of thing to somebody they just met."

  "I think it's amazing he can talk about his experiences at all," Jay said.

  "I can do it because I don't go into the details."

  "That's true," Ed agreed. "You don't."

  "And confessions aren't always hard, Baron. I don't know if it's some kind of defense mechanism or I actually was numb at the time, but when I think back on my days as a street kid, it's like I'm looking at someone else. I really don't feel all that much."

  With his hands on the table on either side of his plate, Cameron leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. Ed reached for one of those hands and held on to it. "Why don't we drop the subject now, before it moves on to things that still hurt," he said.

  The blood drained from Cameron's face. "I dread meeting her, Ed. I just know she's going to be like him."

  "He means his father," Ed explained to the others, who nodded their understanding.

  "I don't think I could go through with it without you there to back me up. No way could I do it alone."

  "Not only him," Baron said. "We're all in this together."

  "I'd still better prepare myself. What else can you tell me about my sister?"

  "For one, she's utterly clueless. Would you believe she didn't figure out Jay and I were a couple until after Marker read the will and Jay let slip he was a safe-home graduate?"

  "You mean that was the first time you'd met her?" Cameron asked, surprised.

  "Second," Jay said. "We were at the funeral."

  "But you lived next door to my mother… For how long?"

  "About three years, give or take."

  "And Livvie never came to visit? Not even once?"

  Jay shook his head.

  Cameron was fuming. "She neglected her like that and she has the nerve to… That bitch! That filthy, greedy, bigoted bitch!"

  "I don't think greed has anything to do with it," Baron said. "If your mother had left three times as much to any other charity, she'd be fine with it."

  "The way I feel now, Baron, I'm ready to move in next door just to spite her."

  Baron shook his head. "We'd love to have you, but it's not worth the risk. You might lose it and do something that could compromise our advantage."

  "Besides, you never know, babe," Ed mused. "Finding you might get her to reconsider her homophobia. It wouldn't be the first time finding out someone you know is gay brought about a change of heart."

  Jay shook his head. "You haven't met her yet. In the back yard this afternoon, the way she looked at me, you'd think she blames gays for everything bad that's ever happened to her. So, in the long run, maybe, but she's not gonna run out and join PFLAG when Cameron tells her who he is."

  "But I can see her simply caving in and giving the whole thing up," Baron said, picking up from where his partner had left off. "Wouldn't count on it, though. But whatever happens, it'll go well for us tomorrow."

  "That doesn't mean it'll be easy," Ed reminded them. "Cameron isn't exactly looking forward to this."

  "Baron doesn't mean us personally. He means the Ronnie House."

  Cameron cocked his head. "The Ronnie House?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Jay said. "That's the name I've given Alma's safe home in my head. That okay with you, putting your name on it?"

  "I love it. Ronnie isn't my name; it's who I was. And Livvie will be furious."

  "This calls for a toast," Baron said, signaling their server. "Champagne, the best you have, and four flutes."

  "Does champagne go with barbecued ribs and collard greens?" Ed asked.

  "Champagne," Cameron said decisively, "is the one wine that goes with everything."

  They pushed their beers to side and toasted the Ronnie House.

  "You're right about the champagne, Cameron," Ed said. "I vote we order a second bottle, this time on us."

  "You're forgetting we have to drive home after this," Baron said. "You two can walk back to your hotel."

  "But not in a straight line if they split another bottle," Jay chimed in.

  They ordered coffees instead. Beer after champagne somehow seemed very, very wrong.

  When the check came, Cameron pulled two twenties out of his wallet, plunked them down for a tip, then got up and headed toward the restroom. "Do you always leave thirty percent tips?" Baron asked.

  "Isn't one of those a ten? Ed, if you ha
ve a ten on you, could you switch it with one of the twenties?"

  "Which twenty?" Ed asked.

  "Leave her the crisp one."

  "I get the impression there's something going on here Jay and I aren't in on," Baron said.

  "And you don't want to know," Cameron shot back before he hurried off.

  "Don't believe him," Ed told them. "You want to know, all right, but I'm not telling."

  * * * *

  Ed taking the twenty-dollar bill meant that Cameron would be getting a blowjob from him that night. It was what Cameron had charged during his years as a street kid. When he and Ed started dating, the first time they had sex, Ed swore that Cameron had just given him "the best fucking blowjob in the galaxy," and Cameron said, "That's because I'm a pro. If we're going to take this relationship seriously, there're a few things you'll have to know about my past."

  In Ed's opinion, Cameron's blowjobs were worth a lot more. "What'd you charge for anal?" he asked.

  "I didn't bottom. Not for strangers."

  "Does that mean I won't have to pay you to fuck me?"

  "Yeah, just for the blowjob. Everything else is on the house."

  Since then, as an inside joke, they'd been passing the same old, wrinkled twenty-dollar bill back and forth when one of them wanted to be sucked off. Everything else they played by ear and came free of charge. Ed bottomed most of the time, which was fine with both of them. Once in a blue moon, Cameron would ask to be fucked, but he readily obliged if Ed was in the mood to be on top.

  Lovers

  The Lambda lawyer agreed to meet at the coffee shop of Ed and Cameron's hotel an hour before they were scheduled to go to Evan Marker's office. Much as he would have enjoyed seeing Mrs. Redding's face when she learned who Cameron was, at the last moment, Jay opted not to go to the meeting. The whole affair upset him too much. He simply couldn't cope with the emotional rollercoaster ride of, on the one hand, the hurt and panic brought to the surface by all-too-vivid memories, and on the other, the rage he felt that anyone would oppose using that dear old lady's house as a shelter.

  After Baron left, Jay sat down with a magazine and tried to relax but found it impossible to concentrate. He got up and stood in front of the window, looking out, and let his mind wander, thinking about what Cameron had told them, comparing his experience with what he'd been through himself, daydreaming, wondering what his life would be like now if things had been different.

  As bad as Jay had had it, Cameron had been through worse—not days or even weeks on the streets, but years! Jay would never have made it; the man was clearly a survivor. And now, a quarter-century later, to have to deal with the turmoil of conflicting emotions that must be tearing him apart: the thrill of finding out his mother had kept him in her heart; the pain that she'd died and he would never see her again; the angry hurt of knowing there was still a sister who rejected him.

  Alma's legacy now made perfect sense. What guilt and sorrow she must have lived with all those years, and how tragic she hadn't lived to be reunited with her son! Jay wondered if his own parents felt the same. Not at all likely, if they were still alive, and he was an only child; no brothers or sisters to reunite with.

  His mother had found him sucking a friend off in the garage when he was fourteen. She'd dragged him to his room by the hair, cursing him and screaming like a banshee. The last words she ever spoke to him were "I'm going to leave this to your father."

  She did. Jay remembered the sound of his steps coming up to his room; he could see him standing in the doorway. Sometimes he had nightmares about it and woke up in a cold sweat, his body aching from the blows. He'd go to the mirror to see if the livid welts still covered him. But no; it was all in his imagination.

  In the middle of the night he'd taken what he'd saved up out of his allowance and climbed out the window with the idea of hitching to Boston from their small town in western Massachusetts. The cops picked him up almost immediately and drove him back home, though he showed them the welts and bruises from his father's beating. "You won't be able to make peace with them if you run away," one of them had said.

  But his parents refused to have anything to do with "that filthy faggot", and the police had to take him down to the station for the night before handing him over to Child Protection in the morning. When the officer in charge of watching him went to get him something to eat, Jay slipped out the door. He hid in the alley. They passed within a few feet of him without seeing him. He made it as far as the woods, spent the whole day there, then went to the road to start hitching as soon as it was dark. He was terrified that any approaching headlights would turn out to be a police car.

  A man picked him up, brought him to a motel and raped him twice—Jay's first experience with anal sex. When he woke up, the man had left. He didn't know if he'd paid for the room. If not, the motel owner would call the cops. He sneaked out, walked to the nearest town, and took a chance, using his money for bus fare to Boston. He arrived with less than ten dollars in his pocket. For the next week, he scrounged his food in dumpsters and slept in alleyways or under bridges until a street kid directed him to Marc's shelter.

  Beating off with a friend and that abortive blowjob, the first he'd ever tried giving, were the only sex he'd had before the rape, and afterward even the thought of someone touching him made him physically ill. He couldn't even bear to hear people talk about sex. Until Baron. Baron had opened him up, literally and figuratively. Opened him to love.

  * * * *

  They'd been friends for about a month when Baron came out to him.

  "I am too," Jay whispered. He still had trouble saying the words.

  "That's marvelous! Now if we fall in love we won't worry that sex is the only connection between us."

  He'd meant it as a joke, of course, but Jay had hedged, and from then on he drew back from any contact that seemed remotely physical. He learned later that Baron had thought his race was an issue, though nothing had stood in the way of their quickly becoming close friends. On top of that, it was only the physical connection Jay avoided; their emotional attachment was growing stronger by the day.

  Jay had fallen in love and suspected Baron had, too, or was at least well on the way to falling in love with him. It was his own fault, because of the distance he kept putting between them, that Baron was avoiding the L word. Jay wanted to get closer to him… very close, all the way close… but he was afraid. He couldn't help himself.

  Then one evening it had started raining hard while he was on his way to visit Baron. The closest parking space he could find was halfway down the block, so he had to make a dash for it and was soaking wet by the time he reached the front door. Baron gave him a pair of lounge pants and a pajama shirt and sent him to the bathroom to change into them. They were much too big for Jay and he couldn't tie the cord tight enough to keep the pants from slipping down, but it didn't matter since he hadn't taken off his underwear.

  He sat hunched forward on the couch. Running through the downpour had given him a crick in his neck. Baron came and stood behind him and began to massage his shoulders.

  Jay immediately tensed up.

  "Relax," Baron said. "It's just a shoulder rub."

  It was just a shoulder rub, and he trusted Baron. Jay leaned back into it, let himself go, and moaned softly. It felt good to be touched.

  Without taking his hands off Jay's shoulders, Baron climbed over the back of the couch and sat down, drawing Jay close to him so he lay on Baron's chest.

  The strong arms wrapped around him, the soft lips brushing his neck, the smooth tongue flicking his earlobe, for once raised no fight or flight response in Jay. "Did you put something in my drink?" he murmured.

  "What drink?"

  "Then I guess you're the drug."

  Jay moved as if in a dream as Baron led him to the bedroom and lowered him onto the bed. He raised his arms and let Baron slowly pull his shirt up over his head. He didn't protest when Baron untied the cord on his lounge pants. For a moment he thought "No" when Ba
ron started pulling off his boxers, but the word didn't come to his lips.

  Lying there entirely naked, he felt afraid—afraid of his own nakedness, not of Baron.

  Then kisses all over his body, and hands, too, and the agonizing temptation of a man's hardness pressing on his leg, larger than he thought possible… and then a mouth around his penis. Jay's hands reached down of their own accord, and he felt the short, tight wool of Baron's scalp and skin sleeker than satin.

  Baron bent Jay's knee up against his stomach and was licking every inch of his groin. Then he pivoted him on the extended leg and buried his face between Jay's ass cheeks, lapping like a puppy. Jay caught his breath and held it, then exhaled. The soft teasing of his lover's tongue was nothing like an invasion. Baron moved up and lay on top of him, covering him with his body, making him feel protected. He whispered something in Jay's ear. Only the gentleness of his voice registered, not the words, but Jay nodded without knowing what he had agreed to, although he suspected. It didn't matter. At that moment, he felt loved. He would have agreed to anything.

  Baron quickly undressed, coated his fingers with lube, and slowly pushed one into him, opening him, stretching him. It didn't hurt, but Jay didn't think he'd have cared if it had. How easy it was just to relax and let it happen! Gradually, the pleasure increased, grew more intense.

  Jay barely noticed when Baron slipped on a condom and entered him, carefully, tenderly. But, boy, did he notice once Barons cock was fully lodged in his ass! He pushed back, eager for more, and received in joy what he hadn't realized he'd been longing for.

  After Baron ejaculated, he asked if Jay wanted to take him too. But Jay was soft now, and the sheet beneath him was sticky with his semen.

  Then, when Baron started to pull out, Jay asked him not to. "I want to feel you inside me as long as possible," he said. And when at last Baron had grown soft and did slip out, Jay hesitantly, placed his hand on the now flaccid penis, and murmured, "Was that really inside me?"