A Prodigal's Dilemma, chapter 21
Back to chapter 20
Matt comes around the corner of the house, intruding on my reverie. Tossing me my jacket, he says, “I need to talk to you.”
I pull my jacket on; it is still warm from the house and I shivering a little as I zip it closed. I hadn’t realized how cold I was.
So, Matt wants to talk. It’s about time. I move over to one side of my bench and pat the spot next to me. “Shoot.”
Matt looks at the seat for a minute before joining me. But he doesn’t speak. He runs his thumbnail along the side seam in his jeans. Is what he has to say so important that he just can’t say it?
He takes a deep breath and then lets it out, sagging his shoulders a bit. “Seth thinks he’s gay.”
Just that simple statement. Nothing else. This is not surprise to me, even taking yesterday out of the equation; Belinda and my mother left enough hints to fill a mine.
“You aren’t surprised?” he asks, turning to look over his shoulder at my face. “I mean, you can tell by looking?”
“I have,” I say, “seen clear evidence of his preference.” I don’t tell him where or when. Or of whom. No point freaking the poor man out.
I remember my first sight of Seth. And the first time we touched, how he ran his thumb down my prickly jaw and how I’d grabbed my bag and headed for the bathroom telling him I was too dirty. How he came in once I was in the shower to ‘scrub my back,’ how he tried to get me to kiss him while our bodies were slick with soap, how after our shower he watched me intently as I shaved the stubble off my chin. How he handed me a towel when I put down the razor and asked me if I was done. How his first kiss came seconds after my yes. I don’t remember exactly when we got to the bed. That and the rest of the night are mostly a fog, fueled by lack of sleep, the first real desire I’d felt in years, and his small, warm body urging me on.
“You are, too. Aren’t you? Gay, I mean.”
“Yes,” I answer. Denying it is pointless, as well as a lie and there is no point pussyfooting around. What is Matt getting at? He is making me tired, just sitting here not speaking. I lean against the wall and close my eyes. I think of home and that one perfect sunset over the Aegean Sea. What would Seth say at such a sight? But I am not thinking of Seth. Especially with my eyes closed. I refuse.
“That’s good then.”
What is he talking about? What were we talking about? Seth and I being gay. While, I, on the other hand, was thinking about Seth and I being gay together.
Hey, wait. If having a gay son is so upsetting, then why is having a gay brother any better?
“I want,” he says, then tries again. “I need a favor.”
This is like pulling teeth. I like to wait a person out. Everyone will say what they mean eventually. Talking is just getting in their way.
But sitting here with my eyes closed, I see Seth. I see him on a deck of Tokyo Tower, in the tunnel of a great pyramid, at the edge of the Mediterranean, knee deep in the warm water. I see him in that really expensive hotel in London with silk sheets on a bed the size of Texas.
I am insane.
Why doesn’t Matt just talk? I am trapped in a fantasy with my illicit lover. A fantasy that will never happen, that I don’t want to ever happen. No, really I don’t. Real silk sheets for my own bed would cost less than one night at that hotel.
Okay, I do want it to happen. I want to look up to see Seth watching me. I want to walk hand in hand around the world. Let people stop and stare; I don’t care.
But I do really. I want to be… good. I was thinking a good man, but that is too much like a good boy. Maybe I really am a child. When I finally break down and ask Matt what he wants, my voice comes out surprisingly gruff.
He doesn’t answer. Have I offended him? I open my eyes to look. He is hunched over, his chin low enough he could be resting it on a propped elbow. He sits up, turns to glance at me, and then wipes his hands on his jeans. “I always knew. That you were that way. Not that you ever did anything. You didn’t speak funny or dress funny or play with dolls or anything. You were kind of girly-small I mean, but no more than some of the boys at school. But my friends all knew.” Matt wipes he hands again. “They wanted your attention. One of them, Pete, stopped coming over once you started going to Jason’s. He didn’t want to be here without you.
“In college, some guys in my dorm stole your pictures. I didn’t make it though the first year with any of you in shorts. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t really. These were guys with girlfriends. Some of them anyway. And they wanted you. Why, I don’t know. It isn’t like you were doing anything to attract them. I watched you.” He looks back at me again. “You were just a guy magnet.”
Matt takes another deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Well, Seth is the same. I noticed it almost as soon as he moved in with us.
“I couldn’t deny it and pretend that boys hung around him because girls thought he was cute. Seth even has a friend that’s a little older, a college student, the one who helped Mom with her room. Well Jonathan-he insists, he’s worse than Jenn in that respect. Well anyway, he wears flashy clothes and talks funny and all that. And he’s in love with Seth.” Matt gets up and begins to pace. “He told Mom that.”
Does this have anything to do with what my mother stopped herself from saying earlier? I don’t ask though. I fear if I interrupt he will never get it out.
“Mom told him that Seth was a lost cause. Because Seth….” He comes to stand in front of me. “I want Seth to outgrow this. My friends did. But you didn’t, I guess. I need Seth to be safe. Safe from disease and from predators and from bad consequences of his actions.”
What had this to do with me? I am a raging wolf where one young man is concerned, even if I leave everyone else on the face of the planet alone.
“It all started soon after Seth came to live with us. He still spent a good deal of time with his grandparents, but we got him four days a week, from after school Monday till Friday morning.” Matt stops staring at me and I breathe again, but would he just get to the point?
How much is Seth really Matt’s son if he has spent more than half his life living with his grandparents?
“I saw your picture and bought the magazine to see why you were on the cover.” Matt walks to the fence and leans against it. “Seth found it. He would stare at your pictures for hours and hide the magazine under his pillow at night. He convinced his grandmother to buy anything with your face on it.
“It didn’t bother me at first; he was just another guy under the sway of you pretty face,” Matt says with a touch of sarcasm. “But then he brought me one of you alone under a blooming cherry tree. He brought it to me and said he wanted to marry you. Belle laughed and told him that men can’t get married. His grandmother patted him on the head and told me that he would outgrow it, but Dad said no. Seth is going to be this way for life and I’d best not keep him from growing into the man he would become.
“So I compromised. I told him that if he felt that way when he was fifteen we would talk. Well, his fifteenth birthday comes around and he says he still wants you. That he wants you more than ever. He will become an architect-his other love-and earn enough to support you. So I told him…” Matt starts pacing again three steps to the right, three back. “I need your help, Steven. I’m trying to keep him safe. I need you… Will you… I promised him…
“I told him that if he didn’t experiment around and kept himself pure and all… that if he did…. If he did, then I’d let him have you.”
Have me? Have me in what way? Matt can’t possibly mean what it sounds like. I see lights dance in front of my eyes and remember to breath.
“I need you to be Seth’s partner.” Matt says, confirming my worst-and best-suspicions. “To take care of him, let him take care of you. Whatever.
“It’s the only way I can think to keep him safe. With AIDS and stuff out there, it would only take one time to kill him.” Matt stops and looks at me. He is practically begging me. “Say you’ll do it. You don’t want him to die do you?”
My mouth does not work. I have a hard enough time closing my jaw and swallowing, moving my tongue is an impossibility.
Matt goes on about how much he thought about it, whose advice he’d sought, what they’d said, but I’m only listening with half an ear.
Matt wants me to sleep with Seth.
He practically asked me to. That’s what partner means, doesn’t it? How can I possibly refuse? But wait. How come I’m the only thing keeping Seth from an early grave? How is it my fault if he should catch something? When did it become my responsibility to keep him safe? Was that really Matt’s idea? I mean, did he ever expect me to come home at all? Did he think his promise with Seth would keep the boy out of men’s beds forever? Was I just a ‘We’ll see,’ a parental no? A promise Matt never thought he would ever have to keep?
My curiosity gets the best of me and I asked, “Did you think I was ever coming back?”
“Oh,” says Matt with a grin. “We knew you’d be back eventually. Jenn thought you might be back last Christmas. Stacy thought you might wait another few years and come back twenty years after you left. Seth was kind of disappointed that you showed up before he was eighteen. He had plans for you.”
That is not news. Was last night what he’d been planning? Was there something else? Will I ever get to experience it?
Matt, finished, heads for the corner of the house towards the back door.
Wait, I’m being railroaded. “Do I have a choice?”
“Well,” says Matt, turning back just before he’s out of sight. “You can talk to Seth about it tonight. He’s going to drive you back to the hotel.”
The hotel, not your hotel. Does Matt know where I spent last night? No, he couldn’t. If he did he would have spared himself all that anxiety. He was really nervous. But at what? His request? The act of asking? Telling? He seemed very sure of my answer. He didn’t even try to talk me into it.
Or maybe he is simply sure of the answer I will give after spending a night with Seth, my beautiful, young, illicit lover.
On to chapter 22
Matt comes around the corner of the house, intruding on my reverie. Tossing me my jacket, he says, “I need to talk to you.”
I pull my jacket on; it is still warm from the house and I shivering a little as I zip it closed. I hadn’t realized how cold I was.
So, Matt wants to talk. It’s about time. I move over to one side of my bench and pat the spot next to me. “Shoot.”
Matt looks at the seat for a minute before joining me. But he doesn’t speak. He runs his thumbnail along the side seam in his jeans. Is what he has to say so important that he just can’t say it?
He takes a deep breath and then lets it out, sagging his shoulders a bit. “Seth thinks he’s gay.”
Just that simple statement. Nothing else. This is not surprise to me, even taking yesterday out of the equation; Belinda and my mother left enough hints to fill a mine.
“You aren’t surprised?” he asks, turning to look over his shoulder at my face. “I mean, you can tell by looking?”
“I have,” I say, “seen clear evidence of his preference.” I don’t tell him where or when. Or of whom. No point freaking the poor man out.
I remember my first sight of Seth. And the first time we touched, how he ran his thumb down my prickly jaw and how I’d grabbed my bag and headed for the bathroom telling him I was too dirty. How he came in once I was in the shower to ‘scrub my back,’ how he tried to get me to kiss him while our bodies were slick with soap, how after our shower he watched me intently as I shaved the stubble off my chin. How he handed me a towel when I put down the razor and asked me if I was done. How his first kiss came seconds after my yes. I don’t remember exactly when we got to the bed. That and the rest of the night are mostly a fog, fueled by lack of sleep, the first real desire I’d felt in years, and his small, warm body urging me on.
“You are, too. Aren’t you? Gay, I mean.”
“Yes,” I answer. Denying it is pointless, as well as a lie and there is no point pussyfooting around. What is Matt getting at? He is making me tired, just sitting here not speaking. I lean against the wall and close my eyes. I think of home and that one perfect sunset over the Aegean Sea. What would Seth say at such a sight? But I am not thinking of Seth. Especially with my eyes closed. I refuse.
“That’s good then.”
What is he talking about? What were we talking about? Seth and I being gay. While, I, on the other hand, was thinking about Seth and I being gay together.
Hey, wait. If having a gay son is so upsetting, then why is having a gay brother any better?
“I want,” he says, then tries again. “I need a favor.”
This is like pulling teeth. I like to wait a person out. Everyone will say what they mean eventually. Talking is just getting in their way.
But sitting here with my eyes closed, I see Seth. I see him on a deck of Tokyo Tower, in the tunnel of a great pyramid, at the edge of the Mediterranean, knee deep in the warm water. I see him in that really expensive hotel in London with silk sheets on a bed the size of Texas.
I am insane.
Why doesn’t Matt just talk? I am trapped in a fantasy with my illicit lover. A fantasy that will never happen, that I don’t want to ever happen. No, really I don’t. Real silk sheets for my own bed would cost less than one night at that hotel.
Okay, I do want it to happen. I want to look up to see Seth watching me. I want to walk hand in hand around the world. Let people stop and stare; I don’t care.
But I do really. I want to be… good. I was thinking a good man, but that is too much like a good boy. Maybe I really am a child. When I finally break down and ask Matt what he wants, my voice comes out surprisingly gruff.
He doesn’t answer. Have I offended him? I open my eyes to look. He is hunched over, his chin low enough he could be resting it on a propped elbow. He sits up, turns to glance at me, and then wipes his hands on his jeans. “I always knew. That you were that way. Not that you ever did anything. You didn’t speak funny or dress funny or play with dolls or anything. You were kind of girly-small I mean, but no more than some of the boys at school. But my friends all knew.” Matt wipes he hands again. “They wanted your attention. One of them, Pete, stopped coming over once you started going to Jason’s. He didn’t want to be here without you.
“In college, some guys in my dorm stole your pictures. I didn’t make it though the first year with any of you in shorts. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t really. These were guys with girlfriends. Some of them anyway. And they wanted you. Why, I don’t know. It isn’t like you were doing anything to attract them. I watched you.” He looks back at me again. “You were just a guy magnet.”
Matt takes another deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Well, Seth is the same. I noticed it almost as soon as he moved in with us.
“I couldn’t deny it and pretend that boys hung around him because girls thought he was cute. Seth even has a friend that’s a little older, a college student, the one who helped Mom with her room. Well Jonathan-he insists, he’s worse than Jenn in that respect. Well anyway, he wears flashy clothes and talks funny and all that. And he’s in love with Seth.” Matt gets up and begins to pace. “He told Mom that.”
Does this have anything to do with what my mother stopped herself from saying earlier? I don’t ask though. I fear if I interrupt he will never get it out.
“Mom told him that Seth was a lost cause. Because Seth….” He comes to stand in front of me. “I want Seth to outgrow this. My friends did. But you didn’t, I guess. I need Seth to be safe. Safe from disease and from predators and from bad consequences of his actions.”
What had this to do with me? I am a raging wolf where one young man is concerned, even if I leave everyone else on the face of the planet alone.
“It all started soon after Seth came to live with us. He still spent a good deal of time with his grandparents, but we got him four days a week, from after school Monday till Friday morning.” Matt stops staring at me and I breathe again, but would he just get to the point?
How much is Seth really Matt’s son if he has spent more than half his life living with his grandparents?
“I saw your picture and bought the magazine to see why you were on the cover.” Matt walks to the fence and leans against it. “Seth found it. He would stare at your pictures for hours and hide the magazine under his pillow at night. He convinced his grandmother to buy anything with your face on it.
“It didn’t bother me at first; he was just another guy under the sway of you pretty face,” Matt says with a touch of sarcasm. “But then he brought me one of you alone under a blooming cherry tree. He brought it to me and said he wanted to marry you. Belle laughed and told him that men can’t get married. His grandmother patted him on the head and told me that he would outgrow it, but Dad said no. Seth is going to be this way for life and I’d best not keep him from growing into the man he would become.
“So I compromised. I told him that if he felt that way when he was fifteen we would talk. Well, his fifteenth birthday comes around and he says he still wants you. That he wants you more than ever. He will become an architect-his other love-and earn enough to support you. So I told him…” Matt starts pacing again three steps to the right, three back. “I need your help, Steven. I’m trying to keep him safe. I need you… Will you… I promised him…
“I told him that if he didn’t experiment around and kept himself pure and all… that if he did…. If he did, then I’d let him have you.”
Have me? Have me in what way? Matt can’t possibly mean what it sounds like. I see lights dance in front of my eyes and remember to breath.
“I need you to be Seth’s partner.” Matt says, confirming my worst-and best-suspicions. “To take care of him, let him take care of you. Whatever.
“It’s the only way I can think to keep him safe. With AIDS and stuff out there, it would only take one time to kill him.” Matt stops and looks at me. He is practically begging me. “Say you’ll do it. You don’t want him to die do you?”
My mouth does not work. I have a hard enough time closing my jaw and swallowing, moving my tongue is an impossibility.
Matt goes on about how much he thought about it, whose advice he’d sought, what they’d said, but I’m only listening with half an ear.
Matt wants me to sleep with Seth.
He practically asked me to. That’s what partner means, doesn’t it? How can I possibly refuse? But wait. How come I’m the only thing keeping Seth from an early grave? How is it my fault if he should catch something? When did it become my responsibility to keep him safe? Was that really Matt’s idea? I mean, did he ever expect me to come home at all? Did he think his promise with Seth would keep the boy out of men’s beds forever? Was I just a ‘We’ll see,’ a parental no? A promise Matt never thought he would ever have to keep?
My curiosity gets the best of me and I asked, “Did you think I was ever coming back?”
“Oh,” says Matt with a grin. “We knew you’d be back eventually. Jenn thought you might be back last Christmas. Stacy thought you might wait another few years and come back twenty years after you left. Seth was kind of disappointed that you showed up before he was eighteen. He had plans for you.”
That is not news. Was last night what he’d been planning? Was there something else? Will I ever get to experience it?
Matt, finished, heads for the corner of the house towards the back door.
Wait, I’m being railroaded. “Do I have a choice?”
“Well,” says Matt, turning back just before he’s out of sight. “You can talk to Seth about it tonight. He’s going to drive you back to the hotel.”
The hotel, not your hotel. Does Matt know where I spent last night? No, he couldn’t. If he did he would have spared himself all that anxiety. He was really nervous. But at what? His request? The act of asking? Telling? He seemed very sure of my answer. He didn’t even try to talk me into it.
Or maybe he is simply sure of the answer I will give after spending a night with Seth, my beautiful, young, illicit lover.
On to chapter 22