Chapter 4
"Hey, Dad, how's it
"Oh, not bad. You?"
"Uh ... fine, fine."
"You don't sound too sure.
"Things go okay at the gym?"
"Oh, sure. Makin' all kindsa progress."
"Good, good."
"How'd it go with the shipments?"
"We'll be ready tomorrow."
"Good, good.
"I still say you oughtta look at gettin' some help."
"We been all through that, I believe."
"And I see that nobody convinced anybody about anything."
"You got that right.
"So. Tell me about your evening."
"My, my ... evening?"
"Yeah, you know.
"Evening. As in hours after, say, five p.m.
"That evening.
"Don't tell me you been workin' out all this time."
I grinned.
I couldn't help it.
The double meaning was just too funny to resist.
The things I could say!
Instead—
"Ran into a guy at the gym.
"We had supper together.
"His treat."
"Then yours next time, son. No freeloaders in this outfit, ya know."
"I know Dad, I know.
"Anyway, we got to talking and he showed me his condo.
"Nice place, Dad.
"Really.
"He's got class.
"Style, you know?
"Not like—never mind."
"No, son, you go ahead. Say it. You got somethin' on yer mind, out with it."
"It's nothin', Dad. Nothin' worth mentioning.
"It's just, well, why does this place have to be so damned ... bare?"
"Bare."
"Well, not bare, exactly.
"Plain, I guess would be a better word."
"Plain."
"Plain. I mean, like, we don't have one picture hangin' up.
"Or one piece of furniture with any design on it, any style to it.
"Why is that, Dad?"
"Well, son, I tell ya.
"I never seen anythin' I liked, really.
"But ya gotta have chairs ta sit on, tables ta sit at.
"It's expected, you know?
"Otherwise, people'd get ta thinkin' we was weird or somethin'."
"Couldn't we, like, compromise, sort of, Dad?
"I mean make some kind of a ... statement?"
Dad grinned.
"Bin talkin' ta Larry, have ya ... Jack?"
"Yeah, Dad, I have.
"And Larry—hey! Wait a minute!"
And my father put the paper down, rubbing his eyes and chuckling.
"You mean ta tell me—that was a ... setup?"
"Bigger'n shit, son."
"You mean that you ... that you, and Larry ... that the two of you—"
"Made it?
"Right, Jackie-boy. We made it."
"You made it."
"As in, in the mouth, up the ass, takin' an' givin'.
'And you?"
I looked at him for a long moment, not knowing whether to shit or go blind.
Then, "Is there anything I could tell you that you don't already know?" I asked.
"Prob'ly not."
"Why?"
Dad tossed the paper aside and sat up in his chair, facing me, bent over, hands clasped.
"Why.
"Because, Jack, when two people have been together for as long as you an' me have, when they got as far ta go together as you an' me do, it's no good havin' fences between 'em.
"The fences don't do no good and eventually they'll do a lotta harm.
"So the best thing ta do with 'em is ta knock 'em down—get rid of 'em.
"I never wanted another woman after your mother.
"Truth ta tell, I never wanted her, shortly after you was born.
"Nor her me, an' that's the truth, too.
"How two people with as little in common as her an' me ever got married in the first place is another story, son, and one not worth the tellin' any more.
"Water under the bridge, over the dam, whatever.
"Be that as it may, we had you.
"An' you held us together for more years'n you'd prob'ly care ta take credit for.
"That, an' force of habit.
"Powerful force, habit.
"Easy ta come by, sorta sneaks up on ya.
"But hard as hell ta break.
"An' we didn't, not 'til you was about ready ta graduate high school.
"An' we parted.
"We didn't part friends, we didn't part enemies.
"We just corrected a mistake, a mutual error, of long standing.
"And I wasn't about ta make another mistake.
"You look at me, Jack, and you see what?
"From the neck up, a man old enough to be your father.
"The hell'm I ralkin' about? I am your father, dammit!
"From the neck down, though, that's another story, isn't it?
"Ain't that much difference between you an' me, is there?
"An' what difference there is is in my favor.
"Nothin' against you, just I've had a lot more years with the iron.
"Been pumpin' it before you was born.
"So," he sighed, "what was to be done?
"Women're out.
"I didn't love your mother, I won't pretend for a minute that I did.
"But I will say this fer her—as women go, no finer woman ever lived, by any standard.
"I believe that sincerely.
"Hell," he smiled, "in some circles they'd call that love, I suppose.
"But, be that as it may, when you've had the best, ain't all that much point in tryin' the rest.
"So, like I say, what's to be done?
"I mean, you followin' the logic at work here, ain'tcha, son?
"I mean, if I'm not gettin' through here, tell me now."
"No, Dad," I sighed, "your logic is, as always, impeccable."
And it was.
As I recall, it was one of the things that used to drive Mom up the wall.
"Now you an' me, we coulda had this conversation a long time ago.
"Problem with logic is that it's one thing for a person's head ta tell 'em that what they're hearin' is right and another for 'em to believe themselves.
"That's not a criticism, understand, it's just human nature.
"Because between pure logic an' reality, you got a whole body of customs, morals, pseudo-science— the whole bit.
"An' whether you know it or not, whether you even believe half the shit that's put about, intellectually, fact is, it's gonna affect the way you feel about people, about situations.
"You ask me why.
"My answer is that it was the only way to break down the fence between us, to turn it into vapor. This particular fence was the fact that you were datin' girls, which I knew about, and I was datin' guys, which you didn't know about.
"And this was the kinda thing that just bein' told about it wasn't gonna solve anything.
"Bein' told an' knowin' were two different things, in this case.
"So, I recognized the problem and solved it, the only way that made sense."
"Really?"
He shrugged.
"Mebbe so, mebbe not.
"But at least we got it behind us."
"Yeah, Dad," I sighed, "we sure did."
"So. Now you know. How's it feel ta have a queer for a father?"
"About like how it feels ta have one for a son."
"Anything you'd care to discuss?"
"Look, Dad.
"A lot has happened today.
"I'm tired, okay?
"I've got a lot to think about and right now al! I wanna do is get some sleep."
"I understand."
"Intellectually, or otherwise?"
"Touche," Dad sighed. "Catch you in the morning.
"'Night, Jack."
But I did not answer him.
Was Dad right?
Did it have to be this way?
Wouldn't I have understood if he simply sat me down and told me?
I didn't know.
And now I would never know.
Dad had not trusted me and I would never know if he had been right or wrong.
It was too late.
And what about me?
What had I found out about myself tonight?
Sure, the thing with Larry had been a setup.
All of it.
But it was not a forced situation.
At any point, I could have stopped.
Larry?
Not hard to see where he was coming from.
Dad was a helluva piece, by his standards.
And maybe I didn't have the bulk yet, but I was young and not hard on the eyes at all, for anybody, man or woman.
And knowing I was a virgin?
If anyone was mightily tempted by the situation, it had to be Larry more than me.
Actually, there had been several escape hatches for me, throughout the evening.
Seeing Larry's signals in the shower, all I had to do was say no thanks.
After dinner, all I had to do was say no thanks.
Hell, at the condo, all I had to do was say no thanks.
But I had not.
Why?
The beer.
Bullshit!
It takes more than some beer to make me a queer.
Poetry, bar, har.
No, here was the situation.
I'm a queer.
I have always been a queer, looking for a place to happen.
And it did.
No, my father's logic was not impeccable.
If I had been a dyed-in-the-wool pussy man, no way would he have been able to turn me.
In which case, Larry would have called to report the failure of the mission.
And Dad would have undoubtedly had to make a house call to assuage Larry's wounded vanity.
And the fence, the barrier would have remained.
And become stronger, insurmountable, had I discovered the truth on my own.
I would like to believe that this other me would have been understanding (really understanding, not merely intellectually informed and accepting), forgiving (as though there were something to be forgiven; my father's deception, perhaps?), and a dutiful, if detached, son.
But that was not how it had gone down.
That other me was dead.
Rather, he would never be.
And the tears formed at the comets of my eyes, in mourning for the self that might have been.
We homos are so fucking sensitive.
And yet, there had been a part of me, a small part, to be sure, too small to have a prayer of resisting what so much of me really wanted, had really wanted for so long, had I but dared to face it, that wanted to deny the reality of what was happening.
Maybe there was hope for me after all.
Maybe I could nurture that feeling, reach down inside myself and find it, protect it, encourage it, bring it along.
But I could not do that here. Never.
I would have to move out, move to another place, lead another life.
Yes, that's it!
I would join the Navy and see the world.
I would get a skill, something I could use whether I stayed or left.
I would—
I would do nothing until I had checked myself out, determined how I really felt.
How did I know how strong were these inclinations within myself, inclinations which had only been activated hours ago?
That other life?
That could wait.
There was no hurry.
This, this ... thing was what had to be explored on a priority basis.
The Navy was over two hundred years old.
They could wait another six months to a year for my body beautiful.
And his father?
His father who had manipulated him so skillfully?
Should he forgive him for that?
Was there anything there to forgive?
Or bad his father actually done him a favor?
Wasn't it always better to know the truth about yourself?
But what was the truth?
Had this been an ingrained thing, waiting to burst forth from within me?
Or was it but the weakness of a moment, enhanced by the beer?
And had the beer been at all necessary, as an excuse or whatever?
And what about Larry?
Would I want to see Larry again?
Even now, I did not know, I was not sure how I felt about Larry.
And it had nothing to do with his collaboration with my father.
It had to do with his physical self, his body.
That, and nothing else.
Because that's all there was.
To anybody.
Dad had taught me that, long ago.
What you see is what you get.
That, or less.
Never more.
But I had had Larry.
All of him.
So what more could I possibly want from him?
A repeat?
To accomplish what, to prove what?
No, Larry was one.
And he had been done.
By me, by my father.
Of course, Dad owed him for tonight.
And Larry would certainly collect.
But from Dad, not from me.
No, Larry and I were through.
And I smiled in the dark.
Larry and I, yes.
But.
And all those hurried, whispered meetings between Dad and those men in the locker room suddenly made sense.
Numbers.
That's what it was called.
Doing numbers.
Here was the bounty of the world and here's Dad.
Or, in this case, me.
I could do numbers.
I knew I could.
Everybody at the gym was very macho, but they had been there, the signs, the signals.
To be read by anyone who cared to look.
Yes, anyone could read.
But only a few could act.
To act, you had to have the muscle.
In some cases, the youth.
Or the looks.
And I had them all.
So that I could pick and choose.
So that there was no reason for me to do a repeat.
Not with Larry, not with anyone else.
I knew the shape, the size, the movements of Larry's body, Larry's cock, Larry's ass.
There was nothing more that his body had to say to mine.
It was conceivable that there were bodies out there that would require more than one session, so multi-faceted or so important were their messages.
And he could certainly handle that.
Yes, it was quite an adventure I had waiting for me out there, if that's what I wanted.
And to think, I owed it all to dear old Dad.
Who was not dear.
Not to me.
He had not one endearing quality.
Nor was he old.
Perhaps aging would have endeared him to me.
But that was not happening.
Would not happen until I myself was well into middle age.
Because that was the state of the art in bodybuilding.
So that that really wasn't my father.
I had seen what peoples' fathers looked like.
And Dad did not qualify.
He looked more like an older brother.
From the neck down, even that was debatable.
He had been my father once, when I was a baby, when I was little.
I had a mother back then, too.
And now I had neither.
Not really.
One was gone.
Perhaps dead and gone, for all I know, for all anyone would ever tell me.
And the other?
He was housemate, business partner, sporting companion, occasional advisor.
But father?
Only in the biological sense.
And that was twenty years ago.
No, Bill had ceased being a father a long, long time ago.
My father.
Dad.
Dead concepts.
So that I had hesitated to identify him to Larry as my father, even back there in the locker room, even before it had been confirmed that I was going to go with him, to do the deed with him.
He was just Bill.
I felt that that much, at least, was true.
Which was good, in a way.
Because there was nothing to hold me here.
Nothing at all.
The lamp business?
It was unskilled labor, the assembly, part of it.
Anyone could do it with a day's training, at most.
And Dad's personal income would increase.
He could hire people, several people even, for much less than what he gave me as a partner.
A full partner.
In all things, as it turned out, I added, grinning in the darkness.
No, my father's plans, his desires, would not hold me here.
Not for a day, if I decided to make the move.
He needed nobody and that's what he'd end up with— nobody.
Except for his locker room buddies.
He was virtually guaranteed another twenty years of those.
And after that?
That was where it was no good, I reminded myself.
If there was nothing but the body, and the body was perishable, then what?
At a certain point in time, in the process of perishing, as it were, the body becomes undesirable, unattractive.
How much nicer it would have been, I thought, had Mom and Dad grown old together.
Why were sad people, people like Dad, like me, called gay?
And suddenly, I realized the importance of numbers.
And of youth.
And of not wasting time.
Because there was no time to waste.
I was a perishable commodity.
In the process of perishing, even as I lay here thinking about it.
No, numbers were important.
Still, one had to pick and choose.
Otherwise, one became a number, instead of doing them.
And that was no good.
No good at all.
No, I would not compromise.
I might end up going home alone.
But if I could not get as good as I gave, that was the best way.
It was depressing enough, knowing what awaited me down the road, without turning the present, where I had everything going for me, into some kind of sad scene.
But then, maybe that was one of the things I would talk to Dad about.
After all, he seemed to have definite thoughts o on everything else.
And we had never been in a position to talk about what had suddenly become the burning subject.
Until now.
There had been no occasion for it.
Until now.
Now, everything had changed, over the space of a few hours.
Tomorrow could well be just another day.
But not for me.
Not for me and Dad.
But he would have answers.
I was sure of it.
For a man with no philosophy, a man who would tolerate no philosophy, he sure had a lot to say about everything.
And this should be heavy.
I could hardly wait.
I would ask, I would listen, I would understand.
And what I would understand above all would be that every fucking thing he said would have to taken with a grain of salt.
So maybe I would start him off with something simple.
Like who's who at the gym.
But would he level with me even there, or save the best stuff for himself?