He looked at me funny.
“So what you told me last night is true. I’m the first guy you’ve ever let him meet?”
“Yeah. The very first.”
“Are you…are you thinking it might work between us?”
“What do you think?” I asked him. “Could it?”
We sat there looking at each other for a long time, neither of us saying a word. It was like we both knew whatever was said next could make or break whatever possibility of a relationship between us. I couldn’t read in his face what was going through his mind but I can tell you, I was scared to death. I didn’t want this chance to just slip away but I also knew if he didn’t want something committed and permanent then we might as well call it a day.
“Tommy, I don’t know. It’s taken me so long to come to this decision about the divorce. I want to be with a guy. I want a guy to love and to love me. I’m just scared. Scared it’s too soon. Scared I won’t make a very good lover.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m just as scared as you are. I swore I’d never have a lover. That I’d never get involved with another guy. And for the longest time, I didn’t ever fall for anybody so I just figured I wasn’t the marrying kind. Besides, I had Tiger and I had my law practice. That was enough for me. At least I thought it was.”
“When did it stop being enough?”
“I think it was about the first moment I saw you,” I said, looking down, afraid to look at him while I said this.
“That’s about the time I decided I had to get a divorce. I hadn’t really planned on going through with it when I saw you that day. I just wanted to really talk about whether I should or not. But I took one look at you and I knew I wanted you ‑‑ or somebody like you ‑‑ in my life and I couldn’t have that until I got out of my marriage.”
“Brian, we’ve got time. Let’s get to know each other. That’s all I’m asking. Just let’s give ourselves time to find out if it could be right between us. Could we do that?”
I tried not to sound like I was begging, and I don’t think I really did sound that way, but deep down inside, I sure was.
“If I didn’t think we could do that, I wouldn’t be here now with you,” he said quietly, smiling at me. “But if you’re still worried about Tiger, I could skip the baseball game tonight.”
“No! God, no. I’d never hear the end of it from him. Unless you don’t want to come.”
“No, I want to come. Believe me, there’s nothing more in the world I’d rather do. Well…that’s not exactly true. There’s one thing I would rather do than meet Tiger.”
“What’s that?”
His face got red in embarrassment.
“Spend the night with you.”
Chapter Four
Brian’s statement that he wanted to spend the night with me really took me aback. It was something I hadn’t exactly thought through. I hadn’t even gotten around to really thinking about us having sex. Well…at least not the logistics of it. What were we going to do? How were we going to get together? My sex for the last few years had always been at a sex club or bath house. I hadn’t had to think about the “where,” only the “when.”
We parted at the deli, Brian to go back to the job site and me to go back to my office. I took Ted his pastrami on rye and dill pickle.
“How was lunch?”
“Disturbing.”
“What was disturbing about it?”
“Brian told me he wants to spend the night with me.”
“And what, may I ask, is disturbing about that?” Ted asked, looking at me like I was a moron.
“I’ll tell you what’s disturbing ‑‑ where are we going to spend the night together?”
“As I remember, you do own a house that has a rather large bedroom and a rather large bed in it. What’s wrong with that?”
“The rather small little boy who sleeps in the smaller bedroom and the smaller bed next door.”
“Why is that a problem? You told me yourself Tiger figured out you were gay.”
“Well, figuring it out and seeing it are two different things. I can’t just have Brian sleep over.”
“Why not? Tiger does it all the time.”
“What? What do you mean ‘Tiger does it all the time?’”
“You’re always telling me about Tiger having sleepovers with his friends or going to his friends’ houses for sleepovers. Same thing. You’re just having an adult sleepover.”
“With one huge difference. Tiger doesn’t have sex during his sleepovers.”
“Are you sure about that?” Ted raised a quizzical eyebrow at me.
“You aren’t seriously implying that Tiger…well, that he…” I sputtered.
“Why not? He’s about the right age for it. It’s the time little boys usually start experimenting with each other. The ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ stage. When they’re a little bit older, they move on to circle jerks and then more sophisticated forms of sex play. But that usually doesn’t happen until puberty.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Well, first of all, because it was like that when I was growing up. What, you didn’t go through anything like that?”
“No, I went to boarding school. Before that, I was sheltered from anything that had anything to do with sex.”
“Well, then let me assure you, straight or gay, little boys are little boys and little boys experiment. It’s all part of the normal growth and development of males. That’s particularly true of jocks.”
That made me think of Brandon and all those other jocks in boarding school and college I played around with.
“Yeah, I can see that. So you think Tiger and those other guys from his little league team might be messing around?”
“There’s a real strong possibility of it. Let me tell you a story. Now this happened when I was just a new attorney starting out. I didn’t have many clients, so I depended on court appointments. I was assigned as the guardian ad litem for this little five-year-old who’d been put in foster care because his parents were drunks. One day I was called to a staffing, a meeting where clients’ cases are discussed, by the social workers from the Child Protection Team. I was told it concerned sexual molestation.”
“Unfortunately, that happens in the foster care system all too often.”
“Well, I was furious it had happened to this little boy. I was even more furious when I got there. Here was this conference room with six social workers ‑‑ all of them female. The only males in the room were a middle-aged psychologist and a young pediatrician. Imagine my shock when I found out my client was accused of sexually molesting another five-year-old boy.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Like hell I am! They had caught these two little five-year-old boys playing with each other in the shower. Now, how exactly they determined it was my little client’s fault, I have no idea, but here were all these fucking women talking about him as the ‘perpetrator’ and basically ready to brand this five-year-old as a sex offender for the rest of his life.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“I stopped the proceedings and demanded to be heard. Then I asked this bevy of cackling hens if any of them had ever heard of a fucking circle jerk! I thought the psychologist and the pediatrician were going to choke to death, they were trying so hard not to laugh. I informed them if they couldn’t tell the difference between sexual molestation and normal childhood sex play then I was going to file charges against them with the state, have their licenses as social workers revoked, and at the same time file a ten-million-dollar lawsuit against their agency and each of them personally on behalf of my client for defamation of character. That kind of ended the so-called ‘staffing’ right there. I didn’t trust them, however, so I also wrote a letter to the judge explaining what these harpies had tried to instigate. About a month later, the Child Protection Team’s director, a woman, was fired and so were half of the social workers who’d been at the staffing, including the one w
ho had instigated the whole thing.” He grinned, proud of himself even after all of these years.
“So what happened to the little boy?”
“Well, he remained under state supervision but he got sent to a private boarding school and ended up at Stanford. He became a pediatrician and works at San Francisco General. Also runs a clinic for low-income families in the Haight,” Ted said, and I noticed he was showing some real pride behind what he was reporting to me.
“And just exactly how did this boy end up in a private boarding school? I’ve never heard of the State of California paying for something like that. Or sending someone to Stanford.”
“Well…sometimes things happen within the system that are inexplicable,” he said mysteriously.
“Especially when someone outside the system pays for them?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ted stated with a straight face.
“No. Of course you don’t.” I grinned at him. “So you think I can just tell Tiger that Brian is spending the night like an adult sleepover. Do you really think he’ll buy that?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Regardless of what he may or may not be doing with his friends, he really doesn’t know what sex or love is all about. He will simply relate it to his own experience.”
“I don’t know. Kids are pretty sophisticated these days.”
“Look, if you’re going to have a relationship, it eventually is going to have to include sleeping together. You might as well get Tiger used to the idea from the get-go. That way there won’t be problems later down the line.”
“Well…that does make a lot of sense. I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear tonight. Your sandwich is probably cold by now.”
“I’ll have Jeannie stick it in the microwave for me. Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna need it.”
Actually, things went pretty well. Brian showed up early, so we got to the park where the ball field was while the teams were still warming up. This gave Tiger a chance to meet him before the game. It was interesting to watch Tiger deal with the situation. He turned on all his charm and basically had Brian eating out of his hand within moments. I watched this performance with amusement. I’d seen him do this with other males ‑‑ like Ted. The interesting thing was, he seemed to only do it with males. I’d never seen Tiger take even the remotest interest in a woman. I wasn’t sure if that boded anything for the future. I also wondered if it had anything to do with not having a mother around. Whatever it was, Tiger had a real way with guys and Brian was quickly under his spell.
“What a terrific little boy he is!” Brian enthused when Tiger went back to warm up with his team.
“Yes, he is. However, I should tell you that Tiger really pulled out all the stops for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Now don’t take this wrong. I think Tiger really likes you, but you also got a dose of all of Tiger’s winning charms all at once.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Evidently, Tiger has decided it’s terribly important that you like him, and he’s an expert at manipulating males ‑‑ especially adult males ‑‑ into liking him. I’m not exactly sure, however, if that’s because of me or not.”
“Because of you?”
“I think Tiger has figured out you’re somebody who is, or at least could be, very important to me. So he wants to be someone you care about as well.”
“Oh…I understand. He does seem like a great little boy. You know, you having him scared me at first. I wondered how I would deal with him. But now that I’ve met him, I’m not afraid anymore. You see, what he doesn’t know is that I want him to like me as much as he wants me to like him.”
I smiled at him. Yes! This was a man I could let into my life. I knew that now. Not that it didn’t still scare me, but at least I now knew I could trust him.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
We sat watching the game, cheering like crazy when Tiger made a double play and then even crazier when he hit a home run over the fence. It was so different to have someone to share this experience with. Usually, I just sat alone watching the game. I didn’t really know any of the other parents. From the behavior of some of them, I didn’t want to know them. I find so much of the adult behavior at children’s sporting events to be disgusting. Especially the fathers. It seemed to me too many of them did not have the success in childhood they wanted and were now trying to gain those successes through their sons. At the same time, they were heaping tons of stress and even verbal and physical abuse on them when they didn’t perform up to Dad’s expectations. There were a couple of times I seriously thought about calling the Child Welfare Department myself about some of them. I especially felt sorry for the coaches who tended to get heaped with a great deal of abuse from these inadequate parents. However, as they were adults, I figured they could fend for themselves. Had it not been for the enjoyment Tiger got from playing the game and being with the other boys, I would have pulled him out of Little League to get him away from that influence.
When the game was over, the team was heading out for pizza, but Tiger opted to go with Brian and me. I asked him where he wanted to go and, surprisingly, he wanted to go home and eat. He wanted me to grill out on the deck. I hadn’t quite decided whether or not I would invite Brian to the house this soon, but it seems my son took the decision out of my hands. I have often thought Tiger knew exactly what he was doing. For some reason, he seemed, once he met Brian, to decide we should get married. And his basic plan was to show me off in what he felt was my best light.
It was Tiger’s opinion I was a great cook ‑‑ especially when I was grilling outside. He, like most little boys, loved hot dogs and hamburgers, but he also loved grilled steak and chicken. Luckily, I knew I had some steaks in the freezer and could pull dinner together quickly, so I didn’t really mind. I figured, finally, now was as good a time as any for Brian to see how Tiger and I lived.
When we got home, however, I finally started to figure out what Tiger was up to. I asked him to help me in the kitchen to fix dinner but he begged off, pleading he needed to go and take a shower after the game. Now this would be a perfectly reasonable request, except this was a very normal seven-year-old boy who usually had to be argued into the shower, enjoying, as most boys do, being dirty. Add to this, that he not only voluntarily went to take a shower, but suggested I ask Brian to help me in the kitchen instead of him.
Asking Brian to join me, I went into the kitchen and began pulling the makings for salad out of the refrigerator.
“What can I do to help?” Brian asked.
“Well, do you know how to throw a salad together?”
“Yeah. I think I can do that.”
“Well, you do that and I’ll get these potatoes into the microwave to cook. In the meantime, I’ll also boil some ears of corn and then take care of the steaks, corn, and potatoes on the grill. I’ve got some Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer we can have for dessert.”
“Chunky Monkey?”
“No, my favorite ‑‑ Phish Food.”
“That’s one I’ve never heard of.”
“Chocolate, marshmallow, caramel, and fudge fish. I love it. You’ll see. Oh, so does Tiger.”
Before too long, Brian had the salad ready and I had the potatoes washed and mostly baked. I wrapped them in foil and would finish cooking them on the grill along with the steaks and some corn on the cob. About the time the food was ready, my son, with impeccable timing, arrived on the deck ready to eat. I found out Brian liked his steak medium rare, just like I did. Tiger preferred medium, not liking to see any blood. We all sat down to our first dinner together. Mostly the talk at dinner was about Tiger’s game. There wasn’t much I wanted to discuss with Brian ‑‑ at least not within Tiger’s earshot. The thought that kept going over and over in my mind, however, was whether or not I was going to ask Brian to spend the night.
I decided it was not the right time, for several reasons. First of
all, it was a weeknight and Brian and I had to both go to work in the morning and Tiger had to go to school. That was not how I wanted our first night together to end ‑‑ the morning rush. Second, I had not had a chance to discuss this with Tiger and I didn’t feel comfortable just springing it on him. Third, I hadn’t discussed it with Brian, either, though I thought that might be less of a problem. Last, and probably the most telling of all, was the fact that, to be honest, I was still scared to sleep with him. It was one thing to go to bed with a guy for just good old horny recreational sex, but I was at least honest enough with myself to admit sleeping with Brian was probably not going to be anything like that. It was, most likely, going to be more like making love than I’d ever done in my life and I still was afraid of that kind of situation developing between us. There were still too many “what ifs” involved in it. What if we became involved, became lovers ‑‑ what would that mean for Tiger? What if Brian wasn’t ready for that? After all, he wasn’t even divorced yet, even though his marriage basically had been over for a long time. I just felt it was too soon. And for somebody who was used to hopping into bed with any guy I was attracted to ‑‑ that was a whole new feeling for me.
After dinner, Brian helped me load the dishwasher and Tiger went into the family room to watch TV. When the dishes were loaded, Brian and I followed him in and watched with him for a little while. Then I told him it was bedtime and to go put his pajamas on and I’d been in to tuck him in. He looked at me.
“Can Brian come, too?”
“Sure. Brian can come, too.” At this, Tiger ran off to his room.
“Come where?” Brian asked, confused.
“He wants you to help me tuck him in.”
“What do I have to do? I’ve never done this before.”
He actually sounded scared. I found it rather endearing.
“Nothing really. Didn’t your mom and dad tuck you in at night?”
Rock Paper Scissors Page 6
