Daddy Issues

by Seth King

  We sit in silence. I try to keep my leg away from him, but it’s so tempting to let it fall against his and act like it was an accident…

  “So,” Robert says as we idle, finally giving me a glimpse of his voice. It’s a little more gravelly than I remember. It’s sexy, too. I’m still doing my best not to touch him, but I’m shoved up against his right thigh – and it’s giving me heart palpitations. “How have you been?”

  I gulp. His arms are thick and hairy. His Rolex shines in the light of his hazel eyes. I want to touch those arms, and then I want to see his dick – and I also want to just turn and run away from this whole weird situation. This man has had sex with my mom. I can’t have sex with him, too. Talk about sloppy seconds…

  “Swhat?” I ask, then let out a nervous laugh. Guess I’m going to embarrass myself like always. “Oh, sorry, I was trying to say ‘say what,’ but I guess it got mixed up.”

  “It’s okay,” he smiles. “Swhat – like it, anyway. And how have you been? What have you been doing?”

  I try, but words won’t form. “Um…school?”

  “Okay? That’s all?”

  “Um. Yes. And…you? How’s your…job?”

  “Well, uh, I don’t have a job, per se,” he says. “I’ve done pretty well trading in crypto-currencies. You know, Bitcoin and all that.”

  I try to think of something witty, but my brain is not functioning. “Oh. Sounds nice.”

  “It’s certainly interesting.” He swallows. “And tell me, who’s your friend that you brought?”

  My body jolts again. “Um…complicated. I’m single, though. Not that you asked…”

  He gives an unreadable expression. “Interesting. He looked very…attached.”

  “He is attached,” I sigh. “The thing is…basically, we broke up a while ago, but he came along as a sort of…friend, I guess, even though I assume he’d like to become more again.”

  His arm muscles loosen. Then he adjusts his collar for some reason and flashes me a heart-stopping smile. “Ah,” he breathes. “How sad.”

  “What? That we broke up?”

  “Oh, no,” he smiles. “That you brought him at all.”

  Okay, then. The whole “not functioning” thing only continues as we make our way into town. My thoughts are scattered, and my forehead is sweating in a way that has nothing to do with the early summer warmth. When we hit the New River I text my good friend Oz, back in Raleigh, because I need gay advice, and I also don’t think I’ve ever even mentioned the existence of Robert to him. Why would I have? Robert has nothing to do with me anymore.

  So, I begin after I say hello. I need advice. Love advice, I guess.

  Oz: Ask away. The gay Dr. Laura is here.

  Me: Okay. Don’t ask for details. But. Say that someone was married to a family member, many years ago, and you met them today, and they’re hot. And you feel fireworks.

  Oz: Juicy! I hope you get laid somewhere in this story. What about it, though?

  Me: Well…I’m hot and bothered, here, and I want to hook up. What are the rules here?

  Oz: Hmmm. Depends. What type of family member? How many years ago did they split?

  Me: Ten years ago.

  Oz: Oh, that’s forever ago. Now the second part. Who were they married to?

  Me: Um. A parent.

  Oz: …What?

  I don’t respond.

  Oz: ???

  Oz: I can’t even imagine how this scenario could be happening.

  Finally I inhale.

  Me: Just answer the question.

  Oz: Okay, I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore. I’m the gay Dr. Laura, not the gay Jerry Springer. It sounds a little crazy, not gonna lie. But then again Alicia Silverstone dated her stepbrother in Clueless and everybody loved it, so…what do I know?

  I pause. He’s right. The entire premise of that movie was Cher falling for her former stepbrother, and nobody ever batted an eyelash. Is this similar?

  Our party of fifteen-or-so Prince family members, and Robert, is dumped off at some restaurant in Boone, a charming little college town in a valley between the peaks. I slide into a seat next to David with strict instructions for myself: I’m going to focus on David, the guy I came here with, the guy who is not my former stepfather. I won’t even look twice in Robert’s way, actually. I’m already over it. I’m already done with him. I know I am.

  I’ve just got to repeat that until it becomes true.

  But judging by the thrill that bolts throughout my whole body every time our eyes make contact, that won’t be a very easy task.

  But then again, what if this is only on my end? I’ve been known to fall in love with strangers from afar, planning out our lives and our futures together, only to find out they were straight or married or something. What if this whole thing is wishful thinking?

  I take out my phone and discreetly pull out Grindr, the app that shows you nearby gay men. Some guys use this to find friends, some use it for a kind of community outreach in the gay world, but let’s be honest here – for most, it’s a hookup service.

  The app loads, and then my heart stops beating when I see the closest user to me – according to Grindr, he’s only seven feet away. I look down the table at Robert. Yep, about seven feet. The photo is just a torso in a bathroom mirror, and his body is so delectable it makes my skin go pale.

  As I watch, his profile goes into active mode. I glance back at him he’s on his phone now. He’s going to see my profile – he’s going to see my distinctive hair color in my photo and know it’s me. How will he react? What if he’s not interested in me at all?

  I hold my breath and watch. Then a single message pops up in my inbox: Shitty seats, yeah? I was hoping I’d get to stare at you all night.

  I go red again and shove my phone into my pocket. Holy hell, he wants me, too.

  Robert Glazer

  I turn away from my phone as my face is cracked by the biggest smile I can remember since…well, a long time. A very long time.

  Eliot doesn’t know this, but when he texted his friend, he didn’t angle his phone away from me enough – and I read every word. Yes, every word. My joy only grew with each message he sent. I was so afraid it was all in my head, and I was some kind of freak for being attracted to him, and I would never have a chance with this perfect creature.

  But in one eavesdropped conversation, all of my fears were washed away. And as we follow the rest of the family out onto the sidewalk, the first evening stars bursting into light above our heads, my smile only grows.

  Back at the house, Mary Kate teased me for not staying in better contact over the years. She knows exactly why I didn’t, though – almost every time we talked, she’d pick a fight just for the hell of it. She seemed too drunk to be in a bad mood, though, and she melted back into the crowd of family members within a minute or two. And that left me free to think about this weird thing that is blooming between her son and myself…

  No, I can’t think about it in terms like that. The bottom line is that Eliot wants me. I want him, too. And guess what? Before the end of the night, I’m going to let him know. I just have to find the right moment.

  As if “the right moment” will exist at all when his mother, who is also my ex-wife, will be ten feet away from us all night…

  Eliot Prince

  I spend most of the dinner cowering next to David, as far away from Robert as I can. I need a break, and I also don’t want David asking any more questions. But half of the restaurant is a bar area with a dance floor, and as the booze flows the aunts hit the dance floor, as aunts are prone to do, and start begging everyone else to join. Robert gets up and stands in the corner with his drink, our eyes meeting every thirty seconds or so.

  Soon David touches my leg.

  “Aunt Susan is getting impatient, and we’re done eating, anyway. Let’s go for a minute.”

  “Ugh, but…”

  “But what?”

  I bite my tongue. “But nothing. You’re right.
Let’s go.”

  A dance remix of Daddy Issues by Demi Lovato hits the speakers, and Robert and I exchange a knowing, slightly horrified smile. And shit, he can really dance. The song is only highlighting how fucking badly I want to jump his bones – or want him to jump mine. This is crazy. I can’t do this. But I am doing it.

  Lucky for you, I’ve got all these daddy issues…

  At one point, I’m dancing with David, with my back to Robert – who won’t leave me alone. I hear some drunken giggling, and suddenly my mom’s arm is around my shoulder – and to my abject horror, her other arm is around Robert.

  Both of us freeze. She pulls of us in, laughing as Robert grimaces with terror.

  “Isn’t this funny?” she asks, looking from me over to Robert. “All of us back together again, for the first time in, what – ten years? One big happy family!”

  Robert glances over at me, frozen. “Uh, yeah,” he says, trying to play along. “It’s…great.”

  “Isn’t it? I feel so comfortable. It’s like we never got divorced at all!”

  At this point I feel like I am going to fall down, dead.

  “Yeah,” Robert says. “Um, maybe I’ll even find my next spouse tonight.”

  My mom’s eyes turn to stone as she drops her arms. “I said I felt comfortable,” she says. “I didn’t say I felt that comfortable. You’re still my ex-husband, and I don’t want to see that. Hit on someone in front of me, and I’ll eat your balls for breakfast.”

  My mom storms off, leaving us staring at each other in silent terror. That’s when David’s voice cuts through the awkwardness.

  “Hey! Eliot! You and your hot dad – I just found out there’s a gay bar around the corner! Let’s go!”

  “He’s not my dad!” I shout. Then I freeze again and push my mom’s statement out of my head. Oh, God – now my ex is getting flirty with Robert, too. I’m actually weirdly jealous, but at the same time I can’t react without inciting suspicion. I’m so turned on, I’d rather walk a hundred miles than be alone with them right now. But since I can’t object, I wave my goodbyes at the family and then follow them out the door to Boone’s only gay bar.

  “How’d you find this place?” my cousin Gracie asks toward David, and I shrug her off.

  “The gays just have a sixth sense for these places,” I explain. “Whatever city I’m in, I can just find the gays. I can smell them, or maybe it’s just the poppers. Anyway, you’ll have fun.”

  The gay bar is a small, dark place. (We are in the Deep South, after all – not exactly a bastion of the gay nightlife.) We order drinks and then settle into the circular booth in the corner – and of course I get shoved in between Robert and David.

  The air is so charged now, I can taste it. Honestly, I’ve felt anxious in gay bars anyway ever since Pulse, the Orlando shooting that killed fifty on a gay dance floor. I try not to think about it, but sometimes I do. To be gay in a place like the South is to constantly be aware of your surroundings, and always have to monitor your own behavior. Really, you have to be two different people at once. I act like one version of me in a place like this, but out where I’m surrounded by people who might be homophobic, I have to be someone completely different. You have to think about everything. But then again, black Americans face worse discrimination every day, and deal with things I’ve never had to imagine, so I try to keep things in perspective. At least I can walk into a room and “pretend” to be straight, to keep from ruffling the feathers of those who might have problems with me. People of color will never have that option.

  Still, I can’t get away from how edgy Robert makes me feel. To escape the tension, I take out my phone and pull out Twitter, where I’ve been trying to find spoilers for the next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I go to a drag fan account and then hear Robert sort of gasp beside me.

  “Wait, you watch Drag Race, too?”

  “I invented watching Drag Race. Do you?”

  “I’m obsessed. I really respect guys that aren’t too proud to be into it, too. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating campy, ridiculous stuff. Who are you going for this season?”

  “Is that a serious question? Who else but Glamourama?”

  “Oh my God, you’re the only other Glamourama fan I’ve met. Everyone else loves Mrs. Fame.”

  “Eh, she’s too self-impressed, and she’s not as funny as she thinks she is. If white male privilege ever existed in a drag queen, it would exist in her.”

  He stares at me, mouth agape.

  “What?”

  “It’s just…we’re like the same person. Keep going, I’m enthralled.”

  For probably twenty minutes we talk Drag Race, discussing all our favorite moments, most-hated contestants, and more. I find very quickly that we really do speak the language – underneath the formal exterior, he’s just like me. I guess we just needed to break the surface and find common ground, and it seems Drag Race was that ground. Who knew a bunch of feuding cross dressers could bring two guys together like this?

  At one point David gets up to order another drink, bored with our chatting. We talk some more about our families, and Robert tells me he’s mostly been cut off by his sister, just for being gay. Gracie goes to the bathroom, and that’s when Robert squeezes my leg so quickly I almost don’t notice. Then he leans into me.

  “That was hard,” he whispers.

  “What was?”

  “Sitting next to you all this time and pretending like I didn’t want to be kissing you.”

  My eyes expand ten sizes.

  Soon, David returns.

  “Are you two the same age?” Robert asks, motioning at us. “What happened, anyway?”

  “Yeah, what happened?” I ask, turning to David.

  “Ugh, because I’ve had to explain a million other times, I’ll do it again,” David sighs. “I made a mistake, and Eliot has been kind enough to give me a second chance.”

  “But you’re not together?”

  “Um, not technically.”

  Robert’s eyes shine. “So one of you could go fuck someone in the bathroom right now, and it wouldn’t matter, because you’re single?”

  An awkward moment passes. My dick is so hard at this point, it’s seeping again.

  “Kidding,” Robert says as he gets up and angles toward the dance floor. “Kidding. Let’s dance, one more time, before we have to go. Okay?”

  I follow before anyone can tell me to stop.

  Robert Glazer

  Maybe I shouldn’t have come out. A sticky situation is becoming more complicated by the minute. I should call this off and get an Uber. I should head back while I’m still ahead of the curve.

  But I did come out. I want him so bad I can taste it on my tongue.

  As we migrate to the dance floor, I watch the way Eliot walks. He’s confident almost to the point of being cocky, but it works on him somehow. He has a smoothness I’ve never had, an ease I could only dream about. I suppose it’s because he grew up during a time when he could (more or less) be himself in public, and was allowed to come into his own. Meanwhile I was so suppressed I didn’t even suck my first dick until I had my first grey hairs on my head. Ugh, if I could turn back time…

  Something else I noticed is that when you speak to Eliot, he stares you directly in the eye, the entire conversation long. The effect is both off-putting and strangely hypnotizing. That’s a level of self-possession that is rare even in people my age, and unheard-of for people in their twenties. He is the person he was meant to be, already, while others take decades to become themselves. I don’t feel a power or age imbalance around him at all. If anything, he makes me feel young.

  I try to focus on everything else, but Eliot’s eyes keep getting stuck in mine. Just like earlier. He’s not a great dancer, but he can move, and mostly he’s just swaying his hips while David does all the legwork. But trust me – whatever he’s doing with his hips, it’s working. Suddenly I get a rush of horniness so potent, I groan under my breath. If he can move like that, what el
se can he do? What would those pink lips look like against my body? How would he react if I pulled his hair while I hit it from the back?

  Ugh. Listen to me, I sound freakish. I’m here as a sort of family friend, and that’s it. That’s all it can be.

  And then he does a new thing with his hips, this slow circular motion, and I abandon all logic and start making my way toward him.

  As I approach, I hear my heart thump in my ears.

  Bumb-bump…

  Bumb-bump…

  Bumb-bump…

  “Hello, Eliot.”

  Eliot Prince

  On the dance floor, that thing happens again – our bodies are drawn together magnetically. He starts moving closer and closer to me, but just as he says hello, a very young, very eager guy jumps in between us all and starts seductively grinding all over him.

  Suddenly I’m furious. Robert came here with us – he can’t be doing that. Sure, I have no claim on him, but doesn’t he know how tacky that is?

  So the next thing I do is reach for David and start passionately kissing him in front of everyone. I look over at Robert, who goes totally still – and then storms off.

  “What was that about?” David asks, and I pretend to be clueless.

  “No idea. I have to pee, though.”

  But I know what I’m doing – looking for Robert. I follow his general direction and find a hallway with some bathrooms at the end of it. I pause at the door, take a deep breath, then open it to see him standing at the stall.

  “You again,” he says as I walk to the stall next to him, overpowered already.

  “What?”

  “Were your sexploits on the dance floor not enough for you?”

  “Robert,” I say, ignoring him. “Robert.”

  “…Yes?”

  “Look at me.”

  He glances over and then gasps. I’m peering over the stall, down at his dick, and I want him to see me. I want him to see me watching him.