Nyte Flyte
Hope
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 3750 words
I was getting more pissed off by the minute -- not that this was all that unusual for me, for the person I was back then. Since the army, I’d been riding an endless wave of anger that surged and swelled and occasionally crested. But it never really seemed to recede, never gave me a moment of calm, never gave me a sense of release.
Fighting helped. So did fucking. Back then, I did both as frequently and indiscriminately as time, circumstances and my stamina allowed. My approach to each was pretty much the same; I liked it fast, hard and anonymous. A hit and run driver, that was me. And in either case, I expected to end up on top. As far as the fighting goes, I was hardly ever disappointed. And as for the fucking, I never was.
Donald Strachey never bottomed for anyone, see? Not since the United States Armed Forces, in all its finite wisdom, decided to strip me of my rank, my dreams and my options. From then on, I was out for number one, and number two could go fuck itself, for all I cared. If I wasn’t the one calling the moves and keeping score, I didn’t play the game. Period.
The one lesson my old man bothered to drum into my thick head before he skipped out on us was that you can’t count on anyone in this life, not even yourself. Except for those four wrong-headed months when I confused lovesick delusion with real life, personal experience had pretty much underscored his point. Any “team player” instincts I had going for me shriveled up and died the day the army made it clear I was no longer welcome on their team. In the aftermath, suffice it to say I hadn’t been much of a joiner.
So what was I doing there, hanging around the edges of a crowd that wanted even less to do with me than I wanted to do with it, sucking down my third martini and itching to kick the crap out of someone? Beats the hell out of me. If I had any functioning brain cells left, I would have just gone home and gotten quietly drunk there, maybe swung by the club first for some quick, no frills head or a hand job. But I wasn’t exactly going through my smart phase during that particular period of my life. Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump would say. And back then, I kinda liked to wallow in stupid.
The Albany Gay Businessman’s Coalition Awards Banquet and Gala. What a crock of shit. I mean really, who dreams up this kind of crap? Eighty or ninety fags in black tie plus yours truly in a clearance rack suit courtesy of K-Mart, all swilling high-end liquor someone was paying out the ass for, chatting each other up as they tried to forget for a couple of hours the parents who wouldn’t invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner, the teenagers down the street who spray-painted fluorescent colored hate on their cars and driveways, the customers who took their business elsewhere once they got a fix on the ol’ status quo. It was all very genteel, very respectable, very civilized.
Me, I wasn’t civilized. Hell, I barely even qualified as housebroken. I had to get out of there.
The problem was, I’d let one of those penguin-suited GQ wannabes get under my skin, and I would have gladly given myself a good, swift kick in the balls for it if my bad knee only allowed me that much range of motion. Not just any of the penguins, mind you, but the head one, the organizer of this snorefest, a dark-haired, blue-eyed wet dream named Timothy Callahan who I’d briefly had dealings with a couple of months prior. He’d contracted me to do a little surveillance work for his boss, an aging Republican congressman, who didn’t want to get his hands dirty by consorting with a seedy character like me without a middleman. My job was to gather proof -- or in this case, lack of proof -- that the thirty-something socialite the old boy had married was stepping out on him with -- God forbid -- a member of the Democratic party. It turned out to be one of those rare occasions where the client was actually happy to have shelled out my retainer for nothing, and he showed his appreciation via a hefty bonus check hand delivered to my office by his right hand man, Callahan.
Somewhere between “It’s so good to see you again, Mr. Strachey” and “The congressman appreciates your ongoing discretion in this matter,” I determined two things: One, that Callahan was gay as a goose, and two, that I’d kill to get a piece of that. So I did something I never, ever do. I mixed business with what I hoped would turn out to be oral pleasure and invited my incredibly hot client-by-proxy to lunch.
Granted, a forty-five-minute graze at the Chinese buffet down the block was hardly dinner at the Ritz, but it was a helluva lot more of an investment than I usually put into snagging a piece of ass, even one as elegantly turned out as Callahan’s. Going in, my hopes were up and so was my dick. But as we worked our way through crab Rangoon and shrimp fried rice, one important detail I seemed to have missed gradually wormed its way into my lust-addled consciousness.
Callahan was not a one night stand kind of guy.
I’m not saying he’d never had one. And I’m not saying I’m a hundred percent sure he would have turned me down if I’d suggested it. What I am saying is, I couldn’t treat him that way, couldn’t use him and then toss him out like all the other disposable pieces of refuse in my life.
He was just such a genuinely nice guy, funny and warm and interesting. You know how it is when you’re talking to someone and you aren’t sure whether they’re really listening or just waiting for their chance to speak? Callahan listened, I mean really listened, asking just the right question at the right time to keep me on track, the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen watching me from behind their designer eyewear, locked on me, barely blinking, as if whatever I was yammering on about was the most fascinating and informative thing he’d ever heard. That kindness of his, that was my undoing. He had this almost palpable aura of caring about him that made me want lunch to merge right into dinner, dinner to merge with breakfast, and breakfast to morph into an endless procession of sleepy morning kisses that stretched out into something called happily ever after.
Which was insane, of course. Donald Strachey didn’t do sleepy morning kisses. He didn’t do lunches-turned-dinners-turned-breakfasts. And he sure as hell did not do happily ever afters.
So I ran like the coward I was, making up some lame excuse and barreling out of the restaurant and out of his sight, leaving the business card he’d given me sitting on the table along with our unpaid bill for the buffet. I felt bad about that, leaving him stuck with the check like that when I’d invited him and should have been the one who paid. But by the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late to go back and make it right.
He called my cell a handful of times over the next few days, sounding upset, worried that he’d managed to offend me somehow. When I recognized his number, I sent the calls straight to voicemail, not trusting myself to avoid making a bigger fool of myself than I already had. After about a week, the calls dwindled, then stopped altogether. Somehow, the silence jarred my nerves worse than the constant shrill of my ringtone.
I’d screwed up, and screwed up bad. And I was too chickenshit to do anything about it.
Weeks passed, and I put him out of my mind. At least, I tried to. But from time to time, when I was on my knees on the cruddy floor of some dive giving reciprocal head to a guy whose name I’d never know, I’d be haunted by the ghost of those kind blue eyes watching me, asking me why I was willing to settle for this when a simple leap of faith could have given me so much more.
So I hung around the periphery of that oh-so-civilized gathering, observing the festivities through suspicious P.I. eyes but not interacting with anyone or participating in any real way. From time to time, I’d catch sight of Callahan smiling, shaking hands, being a part of the thing the way I knew I never could be. Yet there was this…I dunno…this sadness in him I could sense from across the room. It was subtle but definitely there, something in his body language, in the way he turned inside himself from time to time, eyes dropping, shoulders slumping, a preoccupied, downward tilt to that beautiful mouth of his. And it was in the way he’d search out the guy he’d come in with, the tall blond who’d given him a breezy peck on the cheek the second they’d arrived and then drifted away to laugh and flirt with every unattached male present and a few attached ones as well.
Except for me, of course. I wasn’t exactly in his league. I obviously wasn’t in the same league as anyone else there. Hell, I’d probably had half the dicks in that room in my mouth at one time or another, but tonight they were all treating me like some sort of poor relation, unwanted and, as far as they knew, uninvited. The more I watched, the more depressed I got. It felt like an angry fist was clenching inside my chest, cutting off my airways and pounding the crap out of my ribcage. Every instinct screamed for me to cut and run, to get the hell away from this boring, pretentious pack of losers who all thought the cut of their suits made them so much better than me. But I stayed rooted to the spot, fiddling nervously with a now-empty martini glass because Callahan was there and I couldn’t stop watching him, couldn’t stop wishing desperately and inexplicably for something I knew damned well I had no hope of ever getting.
To hell with this. If I had to be humiliated, at least I didn’t have to do it sober. I was getting another drink.
As I stood at the bar being subtly overlooked by the server whose attention was on his more prosperous looking clientele, I was startled out of my self-pitying funk by a warm hand clasping my shoulder. I looked up to see blue eyes peering at me through immaculately polished lenses, and that smile, that smile that turned my insides to warm mush.
“Mr. Strachey, I’m so glad you decided to come! I wasn’t sure you would, considering.”
“I RSVPed your invitation, didn’t I?”
“A lot of people say they’ll do something when it comes to fulfilling social obligations, then come up with an excuse to be somewhere else at the eleventh hour. It’s their idea of being polite.”
“I’m not polite,” I told him, restating what I figured was the obvious. “And if I say I’m going to do something, I do it. It’s who I am.”
“Vodka martini, extra dry, Mr. Callahan?”
Callahan glanced at the server who’d been pretending I didn’t exist for the past ten minutes and smiled. “Yes, Gregory, but please fill Mr. Strachey‘s order first. I believe he‘s been waiting a while.”
“The same,” I said over my shoulder, unable to take my eyes off Callahan for even a second. The drinks appeared in a heartbeat, and he motioned us away from the bar. We stood awkwardly by a potted ficus, test-driving our martinis. Top shelf vodka, about four times as expensive as the stuff I could usually afford, made them go down smooth as honey. “Sorry,” I said at last.
“What are you apologizing for?”
“For running out on you that day at lunch. You must think I’m a total ass.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I understand what it’s like to have something urgent come up unexpectedly. I was enjoying your company, but I know how busy you must be,” he said in a voice even smoother than my martini. “I’m glad you were able to come tonight, though. Now that you’re here, what do you think? Are you having a good time?”
“No,” I said honestly, taking another sip of my drink. “It’s boring as hell and everyone’s making a point of letting me know I’m as out of place as I feel.”
“Why do you feel out of place?”
“Just am. Everyone else is in a tux and I’m hanging around in a cheap suit.”
He grinned. “I was just thinking that you cleaned up well.”
“Compared to what? The suit’s from K-Mart.”
He laughed a little at that one, a soft, intimate sound I could have listened to all night. “What difference does that make? It‘s not a bad fit, and the navy looks good on you. It’s so much better than that brown corduroy you were wearing the last time we met.”
First my heart did the happy dance because he remembered what I’d had on that day, then it took a downward plunge because he obviously thought I’d looked like crap. It pissed me off a little. Not at him, really, but at life. “Obviously, my taste and my bank account are both sub par. I’m sure everyone here will remember how inappropriate I look tonight, too.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. “I sent you the invitation because I thought it would be good for your business if you could do a little networking here. I thought you might even enjoy it. I didn’t mean to put you in a position where you’d be uncomfortable. Why are you still here if it’s making you miserable?”
“Fulfilling that social obligation, I guess,” I told him. Then what the hell, I decided to take another stab at honesty. “And there’s someone here….”
“Yes?” he prompted when he realized I’d stalled out.
“Someone I’m stupid enough to be attracted to, even though he’s way out of my league.”
“Have you told him? That you’re attracted to him, I mean.”
“Hell, no.”
“Why in the world not? I‘d think anyone would be flattered to have you approach them.”
Looking up into those kind blue eyes that seemed to be able to read every thought in my head without judging any of them, I burst into a sudden cold sweat. The room wavered and wobbled around me.
“Mr. Strachey, are you all right?” Callahan asked, taking my elbow to steady me.
Unable to breathe and on the verge of a major freakout, I heard myself croak, “It’s hot in here. Don‘t you think it‘s hot in here?”
“Let’s get some air.” He guided me through the crowd and out the front door, one hand still holding my elbow and the other firm and strangely protective against the small of my back. Once we were outside, he led me to the corner of the steps and sat gracefully on the third from the bottom, urging me down with him. He produced a handkerchief and instead of handing it to me, began blotting my forehead and cheeks himself. “Are you all right? Are you going to get sick? Should I call someone?”
I shook my head, fumbled my tie. The fist in my chest clenched so hard I was scared I’d pop a rib. He brushed my hands away and loosened the knot himself with long, gentle fingers, then unbuttoned the collar of my shirt as well. The brush of his knuckles against my neck made me shiver. Then he did the weirdest thing. He placed the palm of his right hand flat against my chest, right over the spot where it‘d been aching all night, and he rubbed it lightly. Almost instantly, that clenched fist relaxed, and I sucked air like there was no tomorrow.
“Breathe,” he said softly, pressing the handkerchief into my hand. “Just breathe.”
“Sorry,” I said after a while. I was embarrassed beyond words and couldn’t force myself to look at him. So I looked down at the crumpled white cloth in my fist instead and managed a weak laugh. “Well, Mr. Callahan, it looks like I owe you one. In the movies, isn‘t this the part where I’d promise to wash it and return it to you on Monday morning?”
He snorted dismissively. “My grandmother sends me a box every Christmas. I have drawers full. And Mr. Callahan’s my father, by the way. Well, Congressman Callahan, actually. Anyway, I’m Tim.”
“Tim,” I said, savoring the name. Forcing myself to meet his gaze at last, I looked up to see him watching me expectantly. “I’m Don.”
“Hi, Don,” he said quietly, his smile lighting up the night.
I smiled back. “Hi, Tim.”
We stretched out the moment as far as we could without breaking it. “Are you feeling better?” he asked at last.
“Yeah. I just needed some air, I guess. Feels great out here.” The wind chill factor was just this side of frigid, and I was freezing my ass off. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. He was sitting close enough for our shoulders to be touching, and he radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather.
“You must have gotten overheated.”
“I guess. Not to mention the fact that those martinis packed more of a punch than I expected.”
“How many have you had?”
“Four or five,” I said, then winced when I realized how bad that sounded.
He caught it and chuckled again, giving me a chance to wallow in the lush, liquid sound of it. “You should try mine sometime.”
I just kept grinning at him like the idiot that I was, drunk, but not on the martinis, and tried to think of a reply. When I didn’t respond right away, his smile faded a little. Belatedly, I realized that might have been an actual invitation. Before I could gather my wits enough to accept, he said, “So, are you ready to head back in and take a shot at Mr. Right?”
I was already with Mr. Right, but I was still struggling with the idea of telling him so. Instead, I shrugged. “There’s no use. It’s a hopeless case.”
“Why such a defeatist attitude? There’s always hope, Donald.”
Donald, not Don. I’ve always pretty much hated the name, but somehow, that smoother-than-a-martini voice of his gave it a dignity I’d never heard before. “Like I said, he’s way out of my league. He’s obviously got money, education, a high prestige job. And he’s beautiful.”
“And your looks scare small children and animals, I’m sure,“ he said, rolling his eyes. “Besides, you know what they say about beauty only being skin deep.”
“Not with him,” I said about a hundred times more vehemently than I’d meant to. “With him, it goes all the way through. He’s the nicest…” I trailed off, feeling like a total moron.
“Then that‘s exactly what you should tell him.” He gathered himself, starting to rise, but I tugged him back down.
“Yeah, right. I’m just an average guy from the wrong side of the tracks. What in the hell would he want with me? Besides, he’s with someone.”
“Oh?” he said. When I didn‘t continue, he bumped my shoulder with his own. “Is it serious?”
“No clue. They came in together, but the asshole ditched him five minutes in and hasn’t been near him since.”
Something clicked in his head so loud and clear I swear I could hear it. He studied me intently. “That should make you happy, then.”
“If you wanna know the truth, it pisses me off. I’ve been watching him go through the motions all night, you know? Acting sociable and putting on the show of having a good time. But he’s sad. I barely know him and I can see that much. He doesn’t deserve to be sad. If he was with me, I’d never leave him. I’d stay by his side, no matter what.”
“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said softly.
“I can’t,” I protested weakly. “What if he says no?”
“He won’t say no.”
“He might,” I protested stubbornly. “And if he does….”
“If he does?”
“Then I guess it’ll just break my fucking heart.”
His face was mere inches from mine. “He won’t say no,” he said quietly.
“Tim….” I began, my voice shaking.
“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said again. “He won‘t break your heart. If you’ll just give him a chance, I promise you, he will never break your heart.”
That was it. I’d lost the power of speech for the duration. Somehow, I managed to slip my hand into his, felt his fingers curl around my own, warm and reassuring, as I looked at him in mute appeal. Very seriously, he nodded, eyes locked on mine. Then he was guiding me off the steps and onto the grassy lawn, holding me close as we swayed to the snatches of music drifting our way from the party above. We were a good fit, Tim and me. He had a few inches on me, and that made it comfortable -- natural, even -- for me to lay my head on his shoulder and relinquish control, to just relax and let him lead us, both in the dance and wherever else we were going.
His left arm was around my waist, pressing my body firmly, sensually against his own. His right hand cupped my head, those long fingers of his trailing through my hair. He was shivering a little bit, beginning to feel that wind. So I pulled him even closer, slipped my hand under his jacket and rubbed his back to warm him. His lips brushed my cheek. I closed my eyes, terrified and revved and strangely comforted all at once. Hopeful. That was it. I felt hopeful in a way I hadn’t in a helluva long time.
I didn’t want to go home anymore. I was already there.
Fighting helped. So did fucking. Back then, I did both as frequently and indiscriminately as time, circumstances and my stamina allowed. My approach to each was pretty much the same; I liked it fast, hard and anonymous. A hit and run driver, that was me. And in either case, I expected to end up on top. As far as the fighting goes, I was hardly ever disappointed. And as for the fucking, I never was.
Donald Strachey never bottomed for anyone, see? Not since the United States Armed Forces, in all its finite wisdom, decided to strip me of my rank, my dreams and my options. From then on, I was out for number one, and number two could go fuck itself, for all I cared. If I wasn’t the one calling the moves and keeping score, I didn’t play the game. Period.
The one lesson my old man bothered to drum into my thick head before he skipped out on us was that you can’t count on anyone in this life, not even yourself. Except for those four wrong-headed months when I confused lovesick delusion with real life, personal experience had pretty much underscored his point. Any “team player” instincts I had going for me shriveled up and died the day the army made it clear I was no longer welcome on their team. In the aftermath, suffice it to say I hadn’t been much of a joiner.
So what was I doing there, hanging around the edges of a crowd that wanted even less to do with me than I wanted to do with it, sucking down my third martini and itching to kick the crap out of someone? Beats the hell out of me. If I had any functioning brain cells left, I would have just gone home and gotten quietly drunk there, maybe swung by the club first for some quick, no frills head or a hand job. But I wasn’t exactly going through my smart phase during that particular period of my life. Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump would say. And back then, I kinda liked to wallow in stupid.
The Albany Gay Businessman’s Coalition Awards Banquet and Gala. What a crock of shit. I mean really, who dreams up this kind of crap? Eighty or ninety fags in black tie plus yours truly in a clearance rack suit courtesy of K-Mart, all swilling high-end liquor someone was paying out the ass for, chatting each other up as they tried to forget for a couple of hours the parents who wouldn’t invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner, the teenagers down the street who spray-painted fluorescent colored hate on their cars and driveways, the customers who took their business elsewhere once they got a fix on the ol’ status quo. It was all very genteel, very respectable, very civilized.
Me, I wasn’t civilized. Hell, I barely even qualified as housebroken. I had to get out of there.
The problem was, I’d let one of those penguin-suited GQ wannabes get under my skin, and I would have gladly given myself a good, swift kick in the balls for it if my bad knee only allowed me that much range of motion. Not just any of the penguins, mind you, but the head one, the organizer of this snorefest, a dark-haired, blue-eyed wet dream named Timothy Callahan who I’d briefly had dealings with a couple of months prior. He’d contracted me to do a little surveillance work for his boss, an aging Republican congressman, who didn’t want to get his hands dirty by consorting with a seedy character like me without a middleman. My job was to gather proof -- or in this case, lack of proof -- that the thirty-something socialite the old boy had married was stepping out on him with -- God forbid -- a member of the Democratic party. It turned out to be one of those rare occasions where the client was actually happy to have shelled out my retainer for nothing, and he showed his appreciation via a hefty bonus check hand delivered to my office by his right hand man, Callahan.
Somewhere between “It’s so good to see you again, Mr. Strachey” and “The congressman appreciates your ongoing discretion in this matter,” I determined two things: One, that Callahan was gay as a goose, and two, that I’d kill to get a piece of that. So I did something I never, ever do. I mixed business with what I hoped would turn out to be oral pleasure and invited my incredibly hot client-by-proxy to lunch.
Granted, a forty-five-minute graze at the Chinese buffet down the block was hardly dinner at the Ritz, but it was a helluva lot more of an investment than I usually put into snagging a piece of ass, even one as elegantly turned out as Callahan’s. Going in, my hopes were up and so was my dick. But as we worked our way through crab Rangoon and shrimp fried rice, one important detail I seemed to have missed gradually wormed its way into my lust-addled consciousness.
Callahan was not a one night stand kind of guy.
I’m not saying he’d never had one. And I’m not saying I’m a hundred percent sure he would have turned me down if I’d suggested it. What I am saying is, I couldn’t treat him that way, couldn’t use him and then toss him out like all the other disposable pieces of refuse in my life.
He was just such a genuinely nice guy, funny and warm and interesting. You know how it is when you’re talking to someone and you aren’t sure whether they’re really listening or just waiting for their chance to speak? Callahan listened, I mean really listened, asking just the right question at the right time to keep me on track, the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen watching me from behind their designer eyewear, locked on me, barely blinking, as if whatever I was yammering on about was the most fascinating and informative thing he’d ever heard. That kindness of his, that was my undoing. He had this almost palpable aura of caring about him that made me want lunch to merge right into dinner, dinner to merge with breakfast, and breakfast to morph into an endless procession of sleepy morning kisses that stretched out into something called happily ever after.
Which was insane, of course. Donald Strachey didn’t do sleepy morning kisses. He didn’t do lunches-turned-dinners-turned-breakfasts. And he sure as hell did not do happily ever afters.
So I ran like the coward I was, making up some lame excuse and barreling out of the restaurant and out of his sight, leaving the business card he’d given me sitting on the table along with our unpaid bill for the buffet. I felt bad about that, leaving him stuck with the check like that when I’d invited him and should have been the one who paid. But by the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late to go back and make it right.
He called my cell a handful of times over the next few days, sounding upset, worried that he’d managed to offend me somehow. When I recognized his number, I sent the calls straight to voicemail, not trusting myself to avoid making a bigger fool of myself than I already had. After about a week, the calls dwindled, then stopped altogether. Somehow, the silence jarred my nerves worse than the constant shrill of my ringtone.
I’d screwed up, and screwed up bad. And I was too chickenshit to do anything about it.
Weeks passed, and I put him out of my mind. At least, I tried to. But from time to time, when I was on my knees on the cruddy floor of some dive giving reciprocal head to a guy whose name I’d never know, I’d be haunted by the ghost of those kind blue eyes watching me, asking me why I was willing to settle for this when a simple leap of faith could have given me so much more.
So I hung around the periphery of that oh-so-civilized gathering, observing the festivities through suspicious P.I. eyes but not interacting with anyone or participating in any real way. From time to time, I’d catch sight of Callahan smiling, shaking hands, being a part of the thing the way I knew I never could be. Yet there was this…I dunno…this sadness in him I could sense from across the room. It was subtle but definitely there, something in his body language, in the way he turned inside himself from time to time, eyes dropping, shoulders slumping, a preoccupied, downward tilt to that beautiful mouth of his. And it was in the way he’d search out the guy he’d come in with, the tall blond who’d given him a breezy peck on the cheek the second they’d arrived and then drifted away to laugh and flirt with every unattached male present and a few attached ones as well.
Except for me, of course. I wasn’t exactly in his league. I obviously wasn’t in the same league as anyone else there. Hell, I’d probably had half the dicks in that room in my mouth at one time or another, but tonight they were all treating me like some sort of poor relation, unwanted and, as far as they knew, uninvited. The more I watched, the more depressed I got. It felt like an angry fist was clenching inside my chest, cutting off my airways and pounding the crap out of my ribcage. Every instinct screamed for me to cut and run, to get the hell away from this boring, pretentious pack of losers who all thought the cut of their suits made them so much better than me. But I stayed rooted to the spot, fiddling nervously with a now-empty martini glass because Callahan was there and I couldn’t stop watching him, couldn’t stop wishing desperately and inexplicably for something I knew damned well I had no hope of ever getting.
To hell with this. If I had to be humiliated, at least I didn’t have to do it sober. I was getting another drink.
As I stood at the bar being subtly overlooked by the server whose attention was on his more prosperous looking clientele, I was startled out of my self-pitying funk by a warm hand clasping my shoulder. I looked up to see blue eyes peering at me through immaculately polished lenses, and that smile, that smile that turned my insides to warm mush.
“Mr. Strachey, I’m so glad you decided to come! I wasn’t sure you would, considering.”
“I RSVPed your invitation, didn’t I?”
“A lot of people say they’ll do something when it comes to fulfilling social obligations, then come up with an excuse to be somewhere else at the eleventh hour. It’s their idea of being polite.”
“I’m not polite,” I told him, restating what I figured was the obvious. “And if I say I’m going to do something, I do it. It’s who I am.”
“Vodka martini, extra dry, Mr. Callahan?”
Callahan glanced at the server who’d been pretending I didn’t exist for the past ten minutes and smiled. “Yes, Gregory, but please fill Mr. Strachey‘s order first. I believe he‘s been waiting a while.”
“The same,” I said over my shoulder, unable to take my eyes off Callahan for even a second. The drinks appeared in a heartbeat, and he motioned us away from the bar. We stood awkwardly by a potted ficus, test-driving our martinis. Top shelf vodka, about four times as expensive as the stuff I could usually afford, made them go down smooth as honey. “Sorry,” I said at last.
“What are you apologizing for?”
“For running out on you that day at lunch. You must think I’m a total ass.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I understand what it’s like to have something urgent come up unexpectedly. I was enjoying your company, but I know how busy you must be,” he said in a voice even smoother than my martini. “I’m glad you were able to come tonight, though. Now that you’re here, what do you think? Are you having a good time?”
“No,” I said honestly, taking another sip of my drink. “It’s boring as hell and everyone’s making a point of letting me know I’m as out of place as I feel.”
“Why do you feel out of place?”
“Just am. Everyone else is in a tux and I’m hanging around in a cheap suit.”
He grinned. “I was just thinking that you cleaned up well.”
“Compared to what? The suit’s from K-Mart.”
He laughed a little at that one, a soft, intimate sound I could have listened to all night. “What difference does that make? It‘s not a bad fit, and the navy looks good on you. It’s so much better than that brown corduroy you were wearing the last time we met.”
First my heart did the happy dance because he remembered what I’d had on that day, then it took a downward plunge because he obviously thought I’d looked like crap. It pissed me off a little. Not at him, really, but at life. “Obviously, my taste and my bank account are both sub par. I’m sure everyone here will remember how inappropriate I look tonight, too.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. “I sent you the invitation because I thought it would be good for your business if you could do a little networking here. I thought you might even enjoy it. I didn’t mean to put you in a position where you’d be uncomfortable. Why are you still here if it’s making you miserable?”
“Fulfilling that social obligation, I guess,” I told him. Then what the hell, I decided to take another stab at honesty. “And there’s someone here….”
“Yes?” he prompted when he realized I’d stalled out.
“Someone I’m stupid enough to be attracted to, even though he’s way out of my league.”
“Have you told him? That you’re attracted to him, I mean.”
“Hell, no.”
“Why in the world not? I‘d think anyone would be flattered to have you approach them.”
Looking up into those kind blue eyes that seemed to be able to read every thought in my head without judging any of them, I burst into a sudden cold sweat. The room wavered and wobbled around me.
“Mr. Strachey, are you all right?” Callahan asked, taking my elbow to steady me.
Unable to breathe and on the verge of a major freakout, I heard myself croak, “It’s hot in here. Don‘t you think it‘s hot in here?”
“Let’s get some air.” He guided me through the crowd and out the front door, one hand still holding my elbow and the other firm and strangely protective against the small of my back. Once we were outside, he led me to the corner of the steps and sat gracefully on the third from the bottom, urging me down with him. He produced a handkerchief and instead of handing it to me, began blotting my forehead and cheeks himself. “Are you all right? Are you going to get sick? Should I call someone?”
I shook my head, fumbled my tie. The fist in my chest clenched so hard I was scared I’d pop a rib. He brushed my hands away and loosened the knot himself with long, gentle fingers, then unbuttoned the collar of my shirt as well. The brush of his knuckles against my neck made me shiver. Then he did the weirdest thing. He placed the palm of his right hand flat against my chest, right over the spot where it‘d been aching all night, and he rubbed it lightly. Almost instantly, that clenched fist relaxed, and I sucked air like there was no tomorrow.
“Breathe,” he said softly, pressing the handkerchief into my hand. “Just breathe.”
“Sorry,” I said after a while. I was embarrassed beyond words and couldn’t force myself to look at him. So I looked down at the crumpled white cloth in my fist instead and managed a weak laugh. “Well, Mr. Callahan, it looks like I owe you one. In the movies, isn‘t this the part where I’d promise to wash it and return it to you on Monday morning?”
He snorted dismissively. “My grandmother sends me a box every Christmas. I have drawers full. And Mr. Callahan’s my father, by the way. Well, Congressman Callahan, actually. Anyway, I’m Tim.”
“Tim,” I said, savoring the name. Forcing myself to meet his gaze at last, I looked up to see him watching me expectantly. “I’m Don.”
“Hi, Don,” he said quietly, his smile lighting up the night.
I smiled back. “Hi, Tim.”
We stretched out the moment as far as we could without breaking it. “Are you feeling better?” he asked at last.
“Yeah. I just needed some air, I guess. Feels great out here.” The wind chill factor was just this side of frigid, and I was freezing my ass off. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. He was sitting close enough for our shoulders to be touching, and he radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather.
“You must have gotten overheated.”
“I guess. Not to mention the fact that those martinis packed more of a punch than I expected.”
“How many have you had?”
“Four or five,” I said, then winced when I realized how bad that sounded.
He caught it and chuckled again, giving me a chance to wallow in the lush, liquid sound of it. “You should try mine sometime.”
I just kept grinning at him like the idiot that I was, drunk, but not on the martinis, and tried to think of a reply. When I didn’t respond right away, his smile faded a little. Belatedly, I realized that might have been an actual invitation. Before I could gather my wits enough to accept, he said, “So, are you ready to head back in and take a shot at Mr. Right?”
I was already with Mr. Right, but I was still struggling with the idea of telling him so. Instead, I shrugged. “There’s no use. It’s a hopeless case.”
“Why such a defeatist attitude? There’s always hope, Donald.”
Donald, not Don. I’ve always pretty much hated the name, but somehow, that smoother-than-a-martini voice of his gave it a dignity I’d never heard before. “Like I said, he’s way out of my league. He’s obviously got money, education, a high prestige job. And he’s beautiful.”
“And your looks scare small children and animals, I’m sure,“ he said, rolling his eyes. “Besides, you know what they say about beauty only being skin deep.”
“Not with him,” I said about a hundred times more vehemently than I’d meant to. “With him, it goes all the way through. He’s the nicest…” I trailed off, feeling like a total moron.
“Then that‘s exactly what you should tell him.” He gathered himself, starting to rise, but I tugged him back down.
“Yeah, right. I’m just an average guy from the wrong side of the tracks. What in the hell would he want with me? Besides, he’s with someone.”
“Oh?” he said. When I didn‘t continue, he bumped my shoulder with his own. “Is it serious?”
“No clue. They came in together, but the asshole ditched him five minutes in and hasn’t been near him since.”
Something clicked in his head so loud and clear I swear I could hear it. He studied me intently. “That should make you happy, then.”
“If you wanna know the truth, it pisses me off. I’ve been watching him go through the motions all night, you know? Acting sociable and putting on the show of having a good time. But he’s sad. I barely know him and I can see that much. He doesn’t deserve to be sad. If he was with me, I’d never leave him. I’d stay by his side, no matter what.”
“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said softly.
“I can’t,” I protested weakly. “What if he says no?”
“He won’t say no.”
“He might,” I protested stubbornly. “And if he does….”
“If he does?”
“Then I guess it’ll just break my fucking heart.”
His face was mere inches from mine. “He won’t say no,” he said quietly.
“Tim….” I began, my voice shaking.
“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said again. “He won‘t break your heart. If you’ll just give him a chance, I promise you, he will never break your heart.”
That was it. I’d lost the power of speech for the duration. Somehow, I managed to slip my hand into his, felt his fingers curl around my own, warm and reassuring, as I looked at him in mute appeal. Very seriously, he nodded, eyes locked on mine. Then he was guiding me off the steps and onto the grassy lawn, holding me close as we swayed to the snatches of music drifting our way from the party above. We were a good fit, Tim and me. He had a few inches on me, and that made it comfortable -- natural, even -- for me to lay my head on his shoulder and relinquish control, to just relax and let him lead us, both in the dance and wherever else we were going.
His left arm was around my waist, pressing my body firmly, sensually against his own. His right hand cupped my head, those long fingers of his trailing through my hair. He was shivering a little bit, beginning to feel that wind. So I pulled him even closer, slipped my hand under his jacket and rubbed his back to warm him. His lips brushed my cheek. I closed my eyes, terrified and revved and strangely comforted all at once. Hopeful. That was it. I felt hopeful in a way I hadn’t in a helluva long time.
I didn’t want to go home anymore. I was already there.
Fortitude
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 2500 words
You know how when something seems too good to be true, somewhere down the road you usually find out that it is? Well, that’s exactly how I felt about Timothy Callahan.
I guess the early days of my relationship with Timmy were a mixed bag for both of us. I was crazy in love with him from the start, and that scared me shitless. I was terrified of being happy to the degree Timmy made me feel happiness, scared to death that I’d get to trust it, to depend on it, then get knocked on my ass when life does what it always does and took it away. I know I had to have confused the hell out of him at first, clinging to him like the lifeline he was becoming to me then pushing him away, clinging then pushing him away, til he didn’t know from one day to the next whether he’d see me or not, whether I’d treat him like the love of my life or like my worst enemy. I don’t have the first clue why he stuck it out like he did, why he put up with my shit so patiently for those first two months or so instead of kicking me to the curb the way I more than deserved. I mean, it’s not like it didn’t faze him, that on again, off again game I was playing. It hurt him. I could tell how much it hurt him. And I hated myself for it.
Looking back, I can see that I was testing him, testing the strength of his feelings for me, looking for the weak link in his love so I could go ahead and snap that chain and be done instead of going on indefinitely, torn between hope and misery, waiting for the inevitable to happen. You’d think I’d get a helluva lot of comfort from the fact that he stayed with me in spite of all the abuse I was dishing out. Instead, it fed my paranoia.
I carefully avoided having sex with him for those first couple of months. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him, because God knows I did want him, wanted him worse than anyone I’d ever wanted before. But I held back, partly because of my history as Albany’s premier gay whore. I had a rep like fifty miles of bad road, and I was scared he’d gotten wind of it, scared that if we took things to a physical level too fast, he’d worry that he was just one more curve in that road. As stupid as it sounds, I was scared, too, that after all those weeks of buildup, he’d be let down by me, disappointed in my performance in the sack. And that would have been a blow my ego just didn’t have thick enough armor to withstand.
Above and beyond all that, I was worried about my HIV status. I’d always been careful, never coming into contact with anyone else’s bodily fluids and rarely even with their bare skin. I kept my encounters safe, distant, impersonal. But when you’ve blown every guy in a 20 mile radius, you can’t help but worry, you know? So the morning after that first dance in the moonlight, I scheduled an appointment with a free clinic and sweated bullets til the test came back with an all clear. I got retested a month after that, and once more just before our two month anniversary, hardly believing my good luck in coming out clean as a whistle after rolling around in filth for so long. If it was just me to consider, I wouldn’t have cared so much. If the tests had come back positive, I woulda been pissed, and I probably would have wallowed in self-pity. But I also would have figured I’d gotten exactly what I deserved. With Timmy added to the mix, it was a different story. I wouldn’t have risked passing something on to him for anything in the world.
I got the results back on the morning of our anniversary. That night, I wined him and dined him, bought him flowers and finally had the balls to take him back to my place, tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment that it was. There, we made love for the first time. And it felt good, bring-me-to-my-knees, rock-my-world good. So fucking good I knew I could never settle for meaningless, back-alley blowjobs again. So good it scared the shit out of me.
I kissed him goodbye the next morning as he headed off to work, then spent the next three days avoiding his calls, hitting the fuck-you button every time his number popped up on my cell and feeling like the lowest common denominator piece of slime on the planet for doing it. On the fourth day, the calls stopped, and that scared me even worse. I lay in bed most of that day, avoiding work and my thoughts, drinking off and on as I stared at the crumbling ceiling panels above me. It was cold in the room, the wind howling outside, snow topped with ice topped with more snow caking on the window ledge. I needed to get up and crank up the heat, dig out an extra blanket and make sure the flashlight had batteries in case the power lines gave out under weight of the ice and the lights went off. There was nothing worth eating in the apartment, and I probably should have done something about that, too. I didn’t want to eat, though, couldn’t even think about it without getting sick through and through. My stomach hurt, and the thought of putting anything more solid than Maker’s Mark in it made me want to puke.
Around eight, I forced myself off the bed and into the bathroom to take a piss, then to the cupboard above the kitchen sink to hunt for something else to drink. There was a knock at the door, tentative at first, then loud and firm when I didn’t answer. I gripped the chipped Formica counter, praying to a god I’d never believed in that whoever it was would give up and go away, but knowing damned well he wasn’t going anywhere. On the third round, he wasn’t knocking any more, he was pounding instead, beating on the door with both fists from the sound of it, calling my name, an edge of real fear in his voice.
“Don? Your car’s outside, so I know you’re in there. Damn it, say something so I know you’re all right!”
“I’m all right,” I said, jerking the door open. It was the only real lie I ever told him.
He stood in my doorway, hands working their way into his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes the saddest blue I’d ever seen. “I’m sorry I bothered you. When you didn’t answer my calls, I was afraid something had happened to you. I worry, you know?“
“I know,“ I said, not quite able to meet that painfully direct gaze of his.
He stood there just watching me for a minute or maybe an hour, waiting for an apology, I guess, for some explanation, some excuse for me slinking off with my tail between my legs like the coward I’d always known myself to be. Gradually, his jaw set, the worry on his face morphing into anger.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “If you’ll do this one thing, I’ll never bother you again. I want you to tell me that you have no interest in pursuing this. That it’s over. That you don’t want to see me anymore.”
My mouth was so dry it popped. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you.”
He didn’t smile, but his shoulders relaxed a little. “God, Donald, was that really so hard?”
“Yes.”
“Then do you mind telling me why you bothered saying it?”
I cleared my throat. “Because it’s true. Because I love you, and it wouldn’t be right for you to walk out of here without knowing that.”
He nodded. “I’ve tried not to put any pressure on you. I’ve tried not to rush you into anything that would make you uncomfortable.”
“You’ve been nothing but good to me,” I said.
“Then what is it, Don? What are you so afraid of?”
I couldn’t answer. I wanted so bad to tell him all about it, to tell him about the army, about Kyle, about the anger and the grief mixed with guilt that never gave me a minute’s peace. But I couldn’t. The shame still ran too deep in me.
The sickening ache in my stomach I’d been trying to ignore since this whole thing started clamped down on my midsection so hard I couldn’t breathe. I pressed my back to the wall and slid down it until I sat on the floor, head in my hands.
“I know you’re hurting,” he said. “I know how scared you are. I get it, Donald, I do. Something happened to you, something awful, and you can’t move past it. If it’s time you need, I can give you that.” He sighed, a sad, weary sigh. I felt like a total piece of scum for making him sigh like that. I could feel him watching me again, waiting for a response. When I didn’t say anything, he lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged in front of me, close, so close his knees rested on top of mine. He took hold of my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face, then lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“Fear’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you don’t control it, it controls you. The night of the banquet I promised you something. Do you remember what it was?”
I jerked my chin, trying to shake him off, but there was no give in him. He held me firmly in place. He wasn’t rough, just steady and unyielding. At that moment, I got a clear picture of who Tim was, of how things stood between us. He meant exactly what he said; he would never intentionally hurt me. But he wasn’t about to let me get away with shit, either.
“What did I say, Donald?” he asked again.
“You wouldn’t break my heart,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“You said you wouldn’t break my heart.”
“We’ve known each other a couple of months now. You’ve seen me in a variety of situations. Have you ever known me to lie? About anything? Even a little white one for the sake of being polite?”
I didn‘t exactly have to think long and hard about that one. There wasn‘t a mean bone in Timmy‘s body, but there sure as hell were some brutally honest ones. He might have been a diplomat, but he was direct to a fault, and if you asked the man a question, you were guaranteed a straight, sometimes painfully blunt, answer.
“No,” I said.
“Well, there you go, then.” He rose and dusted off the charcoal gray suit pants he’d probably ruined by wallowing on my grimy floor. Then he was gone.
I sat there for maybe a minute, bereft. Then I was scrambling to my feet and racing to the window, pounding on it until I broke through several layers of paint on top of old varnish and was able to slam it open. There he was, just coming out of the building and hitting the street, heading for the bus stop without so much as a backward look.
“Tim!” I shouted. “Timothy!” But the wind was howling, blowing in arctic air and a sprinkling of dry snow. I was six stories up, and between the wind and the crunch and scrape of the snow plows that were trying to clear the street, I figured there was no way he could hear me. I was about to give up and shut the window when I saw him reach into his pocket without slowing his pace and pull out something, then hold it high in the air. A salt truck passed, its headlights glinting on the cell phone in his hand.
He picked up on the first ring. “Yes,” he said. Not yes with a question mark like he was asking something, but yes, period. The ball was clearly in my court, and I was afraid if I dropped it again, the game would be over for good.
“Don’t leave me.” It was all I could think to say, all I could choke out without breaking down completely.
“I’m not the one who pulled away.”
Finally, I got it. The pain in his voice penetrated my thick skull in a way his words themselves couldn’t. I remembered the night of the banquet, watching his eyes following that asshole he’d come in with make endless circuits around the room, flirting with every guy there, ignoring Tim completely. Timmy never mentioned him again, hadn’t offered any more details of past relationships than I had. But his friends were protective of him, and they weren’t above dropping broad hints if they thought I’d benefit from them. I’d gotten the clear impression that the jerk hadn’t been an exception in his life, he’d been the rule.
Timmy was as scared as I was. The only difference was that he had the strength, the fortitude, to deal with it.
“That night, I made you a promise, too. I said I’d stay by your side, no matter what.”
“So,” he said. Again, not followed by a question mark. Tim wasn‘t asking me anything. What he was doing was offering me an opening.
“So… I’m a total moron as far as this relationship stuff goes. I know this. But if you’ll hang in there with me, I’ll work on being less of one. Look, if I haven’t totally fucked up my chances with you, could you come back up? I’m really sorry,” I said, hearing a pleading note creep into my voice but not caring how it sounded, truly not giving a flying fuck, because what did dignity matter anyway if the best thing that had ever happened to me walked out of my life for good? “Come on, Timmy. It’s cold out. The buses probably aren’t even running this late, and you don’t have a coat or gloves….”
He spun on his heel, skidding a little on the icy sidewalk. I just about swallowed my tongue, terrified he’d go down and crack his skull. But he found his footing and started back toward my building at a pretty good clip. If you can hear a smile over the phone, I swear to God I heard one then. “I love you, too,” he said.
The line went dead as he snapped his phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. Then he broke into a run.
I guess the early days of my relationship with Timmy were a mixed bag for both of us. I was crazy in love with him from the start, and that scared me shitless. I was terrified of being happy to the degree Timmy made me feel happiness, scared to death that I’d get to trust it, to depend on it, then get knocked on my ass when life does what it always does and took it away. I know I had to have confused the hell out of him at first, clinging to him like the lifeline he was becoming to me then pushing him away, clinging then pushing him away, til he didn’t know from one day to the next whether he’d see me or not, whether I’d treat him like the love of my life or like my worst enemy. I don’t have the first clue why he stuck it out like he did, why he put up with my shit so patiently for those first two months or so instead of kicking me to the curb the way I more than deserved. I mean, it’s not like it didn’t faze him, that on again, off again game I was playing. It hurt him. I could tell how much it hurt him. And I hated myself for it.
Looking back, I can see that I was testing him, testing the strength of his feelings for me, looking for the weak link in his love so I could go ahead and snap that chain and be done instead of going on indefinitely, torn between hope and misery, waiting for the inevitable to happen. You’d think I’d get a helluva lot of comfort from the fact that he stayed with me in spite of all the abuse I was dishing out. Instead, it fed my paranoia.
I carefully avoided having sex with him for those first couple of months. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him, because God knows I did want him, wanted him worse than anyone I’d ever wanted before. But I held back, partly because of my history as Albany’s premier gay whore. I had a rep like fifty miles of bad road, and I was scared he’d gotten wind of it, scared that if we took things to a physical level too fast, he’d worry that he was just one more curve in that road. As stupid as it sounds, I was scared, too, that after all those weeks of buildup, he’d be let down by me, disappointed in my performance in the sack. And that would have been a blow my ego just didn’t have thick enough armor to withstand.
Above and beyond all that, I was worried about my HIV status. I’d always been careful, never coming into contact with anyone else’s bodily fluids and rarely even with their bare skin. I kept my encounters safe, distant, impersonal. But when you’ve blown every guy in a 20 mile radius, you can’t help but worry, you know? So the morning after that first dance in the moonlight, I scheduled an appointment with a free clinic and sweated bullets til the test came back with an all clear. I got retested a month after that, and once more just before our two month anniversary, hardly believing my good luck in coming out clean as a whistle after rolling around in filth for so long. If it was just me to consider, I wouldn’t have cared so much. If the tests had come back positive, I woulda been pissed, and I probably would have wallowed in self-pity. But I also would have figured I’d gotten exactly what I deserved. With Timmy added to the mix, it was a different story. I wouldn’t have risked passing something on to him for anything in the world.
I got the results back on the morning of our anniversary. That night, I wined him and dined him, bought him flowers and finally had the balls to take him back to my place, tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment that it was. There, we made love for the first time. And it felt good, bring-me-to-my-knees, rock-my-world good. So fucking good I knew I could never settle for meaningless, back-alley blowjobs again. So good it scared the shit out of me.
I kissed him goodbye the next morning as he headed off to work, then spent the next three days avoiding his calls, hitting the fuck-you button every time his number popped up on my cell and feeling like the lowest common denominator piece of slime on the planet for doing it. On the fourth day, the calls stopped, and that scared me even worse. I lay in bed most of that day, avoiding work and my thoughts, drinking off and on as I stared at the crumbling ceiling panels above me. It was cold in the room, the wind howling outside, snow topped with ice topped with more snow caking on the window ledge. I needed to get up and crank up the heat, dig out an extra blanket and make sure the flashlight had batteries in case the power lines gave out under weight of the ice and the lights went off. There was nothing worth eating in the apartment, and I probably should have done something about that, too. I didn’t want to eat, though, couldn’t even think about it without getting sick through and through. My stomach hurt, and the thought of putting anything more solid than Maker’s Mark in it made me want to puke.
Around eight, I forced myself off the bed and into the bathroom to take a piss, then to the cupboard above the kitchen sink to hunt for something else to drink. There was a knock at the door, tentative at first, then loud and firm when I didn’t answer. I gripped the chipped Formica counter, praying to a god I’d never believed in that whoever it was would give up and go away, but knowing damned well he wasn’t going anywhere. On the third round, he wasn’t knocking any more, he was pounding instead, beating on the door with both fists from the sound of it, calling my name, an edge of real fear in his voice.
“Don? Your car’s outside, so I know you’re in there. Damn it, say something so I know you’re all right!”
“I’m all right,” I said, jerking the door open. It was the only real lie I ever told him.
He stood in my doorway, hands working their way into his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes the saddest blue I’d ever seen. “I’m sorry I bothered you. When you didn’t answer my calls, I was afraid something had happened to you. I worry, you know?“
“I know,“ I said, not quite able to meet that painfully direct gaze of his.
He stood there just watching me for a minute or maybe an hour, waiting for an apology, I guess, for some explanation, some excuse for me slinking off with my tail between my legs like the coward I’d always known myself to be. Gradually, his jaw set, the worry on his face morphing into anger.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “If you’ll do this one thing, I’ll never bother you again. I want you to tell me that you have no interest in pursuing this. That it’s over. That you don’t want to see me anymore.”
My mouth was so dry it popped. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you.”
He didn’t smile, but his shoulders relaxed a little. “God, Donald, was that really so hard?”
“Yes.”
“Then do you mind telling me why you bothered saying it?”
I cleared my throat. “Because it’s true. Because I love you, and it wouldn’t be right for you to walk out of here without knowing that.”
He nodded. “I’ve tried not to put any pressure on you. I’ve tried not to rush you into anything that would make you uncomfortable.”
“You’ve been nothing but good to me,” I said.
“Then what is it, Don? What are you so afraid of?”
I couldn’t answer. I wanted so bad to tell him all about it, to tell him about the army, about Kyle, about the anger and the grief mixed with guilt that never gave me a minute’s peace. But I couldn’t. The shame still ran too deep in me.
The sickening ache in my stomach I’d been trying to ignore since this whole thing started clamped down on my midsection so hard I couldn’t breathe. I pressed my back to the wall and slid down it until I sat on the floor, head in my hands.
“I know you’re hurting,” he said. “I know how scared you are. I get it, Donald, I do. Something happened to you, something awful, and you can’t move past it. If it’s time you need, I can give you that.” He sighed, a sad, weary sigh. I felt like a total piece of scum for making him sigh like that. I could feel him watching me again, waiting for a response. When I didn’t say anything, he lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged in front of me, close, so close his knees rested on top of mine. He took hold of my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face, then lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“Fear’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you don’t control it, it controls you. The night of the banquet I promised you something. Do you remember what it was?”
I jerked my chin, trying to shake him off, but there was no give in him. He held me firmly in place. He wasn’t rough, just steady and unyielding. At that moment, I got a clear picture of who Tim was, of how things stood between us. He meant exactly what he said; he would never intentionally hurt me. But he wasn’t about to let me get away with shit, either.
“What did I say, Donald?” he asked again.
“You wouldn’t break my heart,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“You said you wouldn’t break my heart.”
“We’ve known each other a couple of months now. You’ve seen me in a variety of situations. Have you ever known me to lie? About anything? Even a little white one for the sake of being polite?”
I didn‘t exactly have to think long and hard about that one. There wasn‘t a mean bone in Timmy‘s body, but there sure as hell were some brutally honest ones. He might have been a diplomat, but he was direct to a fault, and if you asked the man a question, you were guaranteed a straight, sometimes painfully blunt, answer.
“No,” I said.
“Well, there you go, then.” He rose and dusted off the charcoal gray suit pants he’d probably ruined by wallowing on my grimy floor. Then he was gone.
I sat there for maybe a minute, bereft. Then I was scrambling to my feet and racing to the window, pounding on it until I broke through several layers of paint on top of old varnish and was able to slam it open. There he was, just coming out of the building and hitting the street, heading for the bus stop without so much as a backward look.
“Tim!” I shouted. “Timothy!” But the wind was howling, blowing in arctic air and a sprinkling of dry snow. I was six stories up, and between the wind and the crunch and scrape of the snow plows that were trying to clear the street, I figured there was no way he could hear me. I was about to give up and shut the window when I saw him reach into his pocket without slowing his pace and pull out something, then hold it high in the air. A salt truck passed, its headlights glinting on the cell phone in his hand.
He picked up on the first ring. “Yes,” he said. Not yes with a question mark like he was asking something, but yes, period. The ball was clearly in my court, and I was afraid if I dropped it again, the game would be over for good.
“Don’t leave me.” It was all I could think to say, all I could choke out without breaking down completely.
“I’m not the one who pulled away.”
Finally, I got it. The pain in his voice penetrated my thick skull in a way his words themselves couldn’t. I remembered the night of the banquet, watching his eyes following that asshole he’d come in with make endless circuits around the room, flirting with every guy there, ignoring Tim completely. Timmy never mentioned him again, hadn’t offered any more details of past relationships than I had. But his friends were protective of him, and they weren’t above dropping broad hints if they thought I’d benefit from them. I’d gotten the clear impression that the jerk hadn’t been an exception in his life, he’d been the rule.
Timmy was as scared as I was. The only difference was that he had the strength, the fortitude, to deal with it.
“That night, I made you a promise, too. I said I’d stay by your side, no matter what.”
“So,” he said. Again, not followed by a question mark. Tim wasn‘t asking me anything. What he was doing was offering me an opening.
“So… I’m a total moron as far as this relationship stuff goes. I know this. But if you’ll hang in there with me, I’ll work on being less of one. Look, if I haven’t totally fucked up my chances with you, could you come back up? I’m really sorry,” I said, hearing a pleading note creep into my voice but not caring how it sounded, truly not giving a flying fuck, because what did dignity matter anyway if the best thing that had ever happened to me walked out of my life for good? “Come on, Timmy. It’s cold out. The buses probably aren’t even running this late, and you don’t have a coat or gloves….”
He spun on his heel, skidding a little on the icy sidewalk. I just about swallowed my tongue, terrified he’d go down and crack his skull. But he found his footing and started back toward my building at a pretty good clip. If you can hear a smile over the phone, I swear to God I heard one then. “I love you, too,” he said.
The line went dead as he snapped his phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. Then he broke into a run.
Charity
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 5000 words
The world’s a sweeter smelling place once you pull your head out of your own ass.
On that snowy February night when Timmy and I said those three words for the first time, those three words that sound simple as hell but change everything, he and I went to bed and didn’t get up again for four days. He called in sick Thursday and Friday -- something he never does -- and I cancelled the few appointments I had so we could hole up together in my chilly apartment and get better acquainted with the guys we’d just given our hearts to.
Over that long, lazy weekend, I got to know Timmy -- I mean really know him -- the way I’d never known anyone before. I learned his strengths and his faults, what he longed for and what terrified him, what made him happy and what made him hurt. He didn’t hold a goddamned thing back and neither did I, except for one. I wasn’t ready to open that box just yet. But even then, I knew the day would come when I would pour out the pain that was Kyle, and that I could trust him to listen and understand.
We talked and slept and made love, sticking our noses out from under the covers just long enough to make a bathroom run or order take-out, then dove back under again to repeat the cycle. Timmy insisted we share a shower once a day, which just gave us an excuse to extend the fun and games into a slightly different playground. And of course the sheets eventually got to the point where even I had to admit they were going to mutate into a new life form if we didn’t take a time-out and change them. We did what we had to do as fast as we could do it, then we were back in the sack, tied together in a knot again.
When it hit us that we were really in it for the long haul, we were finally able to just chill out and be happy. He stopped walking on eggshells, waiting for me to feel suffocated and run screaming out the door. I stopped wondering what a guy like him could possibly see in a guy like me. In between wrestling matches and mush talk, we bickered like an old married couple. I ragged him about his designer underwear and the way he folded the dirty sheets into perfect squares before tossing them in the hamper, while he carped at me about the crunchy socks under the bed and the fool I’d made of myself on our second date.
I’ve never remembered much about that night, which I guess you could consider a blessing considering the fact that I’d been a total basket case and drunk myself into an assholish stupor. All I’ve retained is a nightmarish vision of myself flirting with some Hell’s Angels junior leaguer because I was terrified to look Tim in the eye, convinced he had to be as disgusted with me as I was with myself. I have a vague memory of him being surreally kind and seeing me home safe in spite of the fact that he was obviously pissed. And I do remember slurring out some half-assed apology about not being able to get it up as he stripped me and poured me into bed.
“There are a thousand ways for two men to be intimate, Donald, and nine hundred and ninety-six of them have nothing to do with sex,“ he’d said as he’d tucked me in and placed an empty wastebasket within easy reach, just in case. Yeah, right. At the time, I’d thought he was crazy. But let me tell you, he spent every minute of that long February weekend proving just how right he‘d been.
Oh, the sex was still there, believe me. Timmy may look all sweet and innocent, and in a lot of ways, I guess he is. But beneath the surface? The man’s freaking insatiable. He had the stamina of a marathon runner, and that combined with his creativity and that weirdly random sense of humor of his made every go-round between the sheets something to remember. Playful one second and intense the next, with no natural inhibitors I could see -- that was my Timmy.
Above and beyond all that, it was his charitable nature that made him stand apart from the crowd. He knew exactly what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it, but the point is, he always did ask, if not in words, in a more basic language, always waiting for a glance or a nod or some sound of pleasure from me before charging ahead with something he hadn’t tried on me before. What he knew I liked, he always gave willingly. He had no boundaries to speak of, but he sensed that I did, and when he found one, he changed tactics so fast and with so much grace I barely realized a line had been crossed at all. Whether he was wearing a tux and playing the diplomat at some boring as hell political gathering, or glassy-eyed with lust and covered with sweat in the sack with me, the one thing you could say about Timothy Callahan was that he was always, always a gentleman.
Considering I’d spent the last couple of years making the acquaintance of every gay dick in the greater Albany area, this’ll probably sound pretty weird coming from me. But I can honestly say I learned everything I know about making love from Timmy. With Kyle and me, we were always fired up and frantic, desperate to give what we had to give and get what we needed to get, each of us with one eye on the door and the other on the clock, terrified someone would walk in at the wrong minute and catch us --literally -- with our pants down. We never exactly had the chance to explore the subtleties of lovemaking, as much as I wished we could have. And during my not-so-illustrious career as Donald Strachey, Gay Slut, I’d pretty much looked at sex as a base act. It was cold and anonymous and vaguely humiliating, something unpleasant I had to do to satisfy a physical need, with all the glamour and allure of taking a dump in a public john. But there was nothing base about being with Timmy.
With Timmy, sex was never just sex. It always meant something. Hell, it always meant everything. And even if he went a little crazy sometimes, even if he got rough, he was tender, too, and always put my needs before his own. His own needs were simple enough. He needed closeness the way the grass needs water and sun, he needed to know that what he was doing made me happy. And as much as the concept was blowing my mind, I was starting to get the message that more than anything else, he needed me.
Up to that point, everybody in my life had gone out of their way to let me know how expendable I was. It kind of freaked me out at first, finding someone who didn’t exactly agree with the general consensus. Unlike Tim, I don’t exactly have a charitable nature. Any natural inclinations I had along those lines self-destructed the day the whole army thing blew up in my face, and since then, my philosophy had pretty much been every man for himself. But meeting Timmy and falling for him, seeing what it felt like to have him fall for me, that made me want to start giving again. He made me so happy, you know? It only seemed fair to try and return the favor.
Somewhere between Saturday night and Sunday morning, I woke up screaming, unable to shake the image of that endless sea of red, the side of that tent splattered with blood and hair and brain and bone, those bulging, lifeless eyes that have haunted my sleep since the day of my discharge.
I know I must have scared Timmy shitless, thrashing and yelling and fighting him with everything I had as he tried to calm me down. But he didn’t back down, and he didn’t ask what was wrong or push for details. Instead, he somehow managed to gather me up, pinning my arms to my side and pressing my face firmly into the crook of his neck, rocking me and crooning, “Baby. Oh, no, no, baby. It’s all right. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” until I stopped just hearing a soothing drone and recognized actual words, recognized the arms around me as something real and warm and most of all his, not the cold and lifeless limbs from my dream. Once I stopped fighting him, he loosened his grip just long enough for me to slip my arms around him as well. Then he clamped down again and kept right on rocking me, stroking my hair and murmuring comforting nonsense until I went limp and loose like a rag doll in his arms.
He eased me down on the bed and curled himself around me, wrapping us both in a tight cocoon of blankets and quilts. He kissed my eyelids, my forehead, the top of my head. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
He had me, all right.
* * * *
From the outside looking in, people automatically assume Timmy’s the grownup in the relationship. For the most part, they’re right. I’m a big kid and I know it, and Timmy’s damned good at drawing that kid out and giving him room to play. He’s a caretaker type through and through, and he’s never happy unless he’s fussing over me. Or when he thinks I need it, fussing at me. But Timmy has a secret. It’s easy to overlook because he seems so self-sufficient, and he stays so goddamned busy trying to take care of everyone else, you wouldn’t think he had time to worry about himself. But it’s there, and that weekend, he let me in on it for the first time.
Timmy kinda needs to be taken care of, too.
He was living such a behind-the-scenes existence, ghost-writing speeches or organizing fundraisers in the name of that dickwad congressman, quietly doing the dirty work and letting the stuffy old geezer take all the credit. I figured he deserved to be more than just a forgotten member of the supporting cast. As far as I was concerned, he was the main attraction, and I made it my business to make sure he got the star treatment he deserved. Without saying a word out loud, I made a promise to him and to myself that as long as I lived, he’d never feel like nobody was taking care of him again.
By the time Monday morning rolled around, a subtle shift had taken place between us. I emerged from that apartment feeling fiercely protective of him, wanting to indulge him, to look out for him, to let him know how proud I was to be his. As queasy as the idea made me, I’d forced myself out of bed at an ungodly ugly hour so we could eat breakfast and shower together. Then I drove him back to his place so he could change into a cleaned and pressed Brooks Brothers special before I took him to work. He said I didn’t have to do it, of course. Yeah, right. It was still slick out and cold as hell, and I wasn’t about to let him spend half the morning shivering alone at some shitty bus stop. Not on my watch.
When we pulled up in front of his building, I jumped out fast and got his door for him, my heart tap dancing against my ribcage at the look he gave me, all embarrassed and pleased and kind of flustered at once. Then I walked him up the steps, so close our shoulders bumped together, his briefcase tucked under my left arm. At the top, I turned toward him, and after making sure no one was looking, slipped my hand into his.
“Guess this is where I have to let you go, huh?”
A couple of guys in top-dollar suits walked by, and I tried to pull free, but Tim tightened his grip on my hand, his eyes locked on mine. “Walk me in,” he said quietly. “Or better yet, come by my office for lunch. There won’t be much going on today, and I should be free around twelve-thirty or one. We can have something delivered if you like.”
“Can’t,” I said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “I’ve got a new client coming in at ten, then I’ve gotta do some legwork that’ll keep me busy until seven or eight.”
If he was disappointed, he was careful not to let it show. “I understand. Then I guess I’ll see you…”
“Tonight,” I said, surprising the hell out of both of us by tugging him close and nailing him with a no-nonsense kiss right there in front of God and Tim’s colleagues and everyone else who was crazy enough to be out and about in Albany on an icy Monday morning. “You’ll see me tonight.”
I went to the office to catch up on filing and paying bills and all the other miscellaneous crap I’d been neglecting the last few weeks. I even straightened the place up some, cleaned the coffeemaker and started a fresh pot. Not my favorite way to spend the morning, but it kept me busy, kept me from jumping out of my skin when I thought of all the tedious hours I’d have to kill before I could see Timmy again. A few minutes before ten, the new client showed up, a tiny blond most straight guys would give their right nuts to get a piece of. She was nervous, so I poured her some coffee and chatted her up for a while, not quite flirting but not quite not, just to get her to chill out and tell me why she was there.
Another cheating husband. No surprise there. But it was my turn to tense up when she flashed me a picture of her husband, Charles, and told me with bottom lip trembling and big green eyes about to overflow at any moment that she thought he might be sleeping around with other guys. One look at the photo and I knew she was right. Hell, good old Chuck had sucked me off in the front seat of his Trailblazer maybe three months prior, and he’d done a reasonably good job of it, too. Which left me with what I guess you could call a conflict of interest.
I felt sorry for the lady, I really did. She seemed nice enough, and she obviously loved the two-timing prick. She deserved a better life than the one she was living, sitting home with the kids night after night while Chuck the closet case queer gobbled random dick in the family SUV. On the other hand, the thought of outing a brother hit a nerve, and it made me think about some not-quite-buried pieces of my past I would have just as soon forgotten.
In the end, I took the case, deciding that cheating on the nice lady outweighed the fact that he was just doing what too many gay guys did because they didn’t have the balls or the brains to take a chance on something better. Besides, I needed the money.
Once she’d handed over my retainer and headed out the door, I pulled out my cell and dialed Timmy’s number, suddenly needing to hear his voice and let him know how grateful I was that for me, anyway, getting anonymous SUV head from guys named Chuck was finally a thing of the past. But he didn’t pick up, and when the call went to voicemail, I snapped the phone shut without leaving a message. Half a minute later, a text came through.
In a meeting. I miss you.
Grinning like the lovesick moron I guess I was, I sent back, Miss you, too, followed by a detailed account of what I intended to do to him once we were naked together and in bed again. A few minutes went by, and I figured he was either too busy or too scandalized to respond. Then my phone chirped.
That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. I’m shocked. I’m horrified. I can’t wait.
I spent the rest of the day in a happy fog, going through the motions of checking out background information on one guy, documenting the random comings and goings of another. It was no-brainer stuff, the kind of assignments I could easily handle on autopilot. The next night I’d have to start tailing Closet Case Chuck, following him from one watering hole to the next until we both got lucky and I could snap off a few shots of him on his knees in some alley or creeping into a bathroom stall at The Pit, hand-in-hand with his BJ du jour. A depressing thought, and one I didn’t want to waste brain cells on. My mind was across town in a small but tastefully decorated office, tracking the most beautiful man alive as he juggled phone calls and pushed papers, maybe smiling that soft, sweet smile of his from time to time as he went through the motions, too, waiting for the day to end so we could kick-start the night.
At seven on the dot, I called it quits and drove to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine. It was the first time I’d been inside; I usually did business through the drive-thru. But I wanted to surprise Timmy with something nice, and since I didn’t know shit about the stuff, I needed advice. The clerk hooked me up with a moderately priced pinot noir, which I remembered Tim saying he liked, then pointed toward a display of fresh-cut flowers near the front counter.
“If you’re setting the mood for a little romance, you’ll want some of those, too,” she said, grinning.
I walked over to take a look, feeling kind of silly because I’d never even thought about buying a guy flowers before, but at the same time feeling like giving Timmy flowers was the most natural thing in the world. Since I knew even less about flowers than I did about wine, I gave the clerk my best little-boy-lost look.
“Take her roses, of course,” she said.
Usually I let that kind of thing slide, but for some reason that night, the pronoun grated on me. “Him,” I said, glancing at the woman to gauge her reaction. If anything, her grin got even bigger, and I could have sworn she added a dimple to the mix.
“Red’s a classic,” she said, pointing out a six-count bunch of blood-colored buds mixed with baby’s breath. “If we add some fern, I bet he’ll love it.”
The color made my skin crawl. “Tim’s a classic kind of guy,” I said, forcing a smile, “but I want something a little different. Something that’s not what everybody else gets. What about these?” I asked, picking up the bouquet beside the bloody one and taking a quick sniff. The buds were a soft, buttery yellow with pink tips. They looked like candy flowers, the ones made of icing on a wedding cake.
“Peace roses are my favorite,” she said. “You have a good eye. And a good heart.”
Peace. That was exactly what Timmy made me feel. “I’ll take them,” I said.
I was getting hungry and knew Timmy probably hadn’t eaten yet, either. I dialed his number, intending to ask if he’d like me to pick up some Thai on the way over or if he’d rather go out. But he didn’t answer, so I decided to just drive straight to his place and sort it out there. When I got to the apartment, I knocked long and loud without getting a response. I didn’t really worry, though. He was without a doubt the most obsessively clean person on the planet, so I assumed he was in the shower. I fished the key he had given me out of my pocket and let myself in.
“Honey, I’m home!” I called out, thinking that corny old line would give him a chuckle. I did hear a noise coming from the bathroom, but it sure as hell wasn’t a laugh. Dropping the wine and roses into a chair near the door, I rushed through the bedroom and into the john, where I found him on his knees, retching miserably.
I stood over him for about half a minute, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Timmy was the nurturing one, and dealing with this kind of stuff came as naturally to him as breathing. Me, I just felt useless and awkward. I hated that he was sick and wished like hell I could make it better, but I had no idea how to go about it. Then I remembered that second date of ours, and how he’d held me while I barfed up those fourteen martinis he claims I drank and stroked my hair, then bathed my face with a cool washcloth and helped me back to bed. It had felt good, knowing he was there, feeling his hands on me, hearing his voice telling me everything was going to be okay. It hadn’t made me any less sick, but in other ways, more important ways, it had made me feel a hell of a lot better.
I dropped to my knees beside him, looping an arm around his waist and shifting his weight so he was leaning more on me than on that cold, hard toilet. He was drenched in sweat and shaking, his face even paler than that porcelain rim he’d been clutching. When he’d brought up all he had to bring up, I flushed the toilet and closed the lid, then maneuvered us both into a sitting position. As I dabbed his mouth with a wad of tissue, he let his head loll on my shoulder, moaning softly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered so faintly I could barely hear him.
“What the hell for?” My voice wasn’t loud, but he flinched at the sound, his whole body jerking like I’d just pounded him with a sledgehammer. Then I got it, and my heart sank. “Migraine?” I asked, being careful to keep my voice low and even.
“Migraine,” he breathed.
I knew the damned things sometimes knocked him on his ass for two or three days at a time, sleepless and sick and in horrible pain, but that was the first time I’d seen it first hand. He’d cancelled a date because he’d felt one coming on a few weeks before, and when I’d half-heartedly asked if anyone was there to look after him, he’d said, “I‘ll be okay, Don. I‘m not very good company right now, anyway.” Being around sick people’d always made me squirm, and when they saw that, it usually made them squirm, too, so I figured he’d be better off without me there. In other words, I’d taken the easy way out. But I hadn’t felt very good about myself for a long time after.
His glasses were speckled and smudged, and his face was so slick with sweat they kept sliding down his nose. I eased them off and set them on the edge of the sink, making a mental note to clean them for him later. Knowing what the inside of his mouth was bound to taste like, I brought him his toothbrush and a cup of water, then helped him kneel over the toilet again to rinse and spit. Once I’d put the toothbrush away, I braced him as he slowly stood and peeled off his sweat-soaked clothes, then stripped down, too, and got us both into the shower.
I made it fast and to the point, holding him more or less upright as I soaped him up and rinsed him down. He kept trying to hold his head, but I made him hold onto me instead as I toweled him off, trying to hurry so he wouldn’t get cold and start shaking again, but being careful, too, because I was scared to death old bull-in-a-china-shop me might be too rough and make him feel worse instead of better. I walked him back to the bedroom, still supporting him with one arm as he stumbled and swayed against me, then bundled him into bed, fluffing his pillows the way they do in the movies and tucking the covers up under his chin. I felt his face. He was still about 12 shades paler than normal, and his skin was cold to the touch. Worried, I dug the electric blanket out of the closet and covered him with it, then spread the comforter over the top of that.
I felt weirdly empty, looking at him lying there, being warmed by the blankets instead of me. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to touch him again, to climb in bed with him and keep right on holding him like I had in the shower, but I was afraid to, remembering how he’d once said migraines made him feel like he was made of glass, like he’d shatter into a million pieces if anyone touched him.
But he hadn’t shattered when I held him while he was puking, hadn‘t tried to pull away when I put my arms around him in the shower. Just the opposite, he‘d leaned into the touch, sighed and rested his head on my shoulder as I washed his back, his lips brushing my neck. If he was just being polite, the man had raised the idea of etiquette to an art form.
He opened his eyes, flinching from the effort even as he did it, and looked at me for a long moment. “It’s okay,“ he said, “You don’t have to stay.“ Then his eyes closed again, and with obvious effort, he turned over, settling facedown and cradling the pillow in his arms. Still I wavered, feeling as useless and inadequate as my mother always claimed I was, as worthless as Kyle obviously thought I was since he’d preferred eating a bullet to taking a chance on a life out in the open with me.
Timmy moaned softly, pure fucking misery on the DL, and tightened his grip on the pillow, pressing his face into it even harder, burrowing into it like a lover’s embrace, hanging onto that pillow the way he sometimes did to me when he was tired or down, or in the instant we made up after a fight.
Feeling every bit the idiot I knew I was, I slipped out of the bedroom long enough to find a vase for the roses and to put the pinot in the fridge, then checked the lock on the front door and killed the lights. I carried the roses in with me and set them on the dresser so he could see them first thing the next morning, then turned the bedside lamp off as well, wishing I’d thought of it sooner because I could tell how bad the light hurt him. I ducked into the bathroom long enough to grab his glasses. I ran them under the tap and dried them with a tissue, then set them on the nightstand along with his meds and a cup of water. After making sure an empty wastebasket was nearby, I eased onto the bed, trying my best not to make the mattress jiggle, and settled beside him.
“I hug back, you know.”
Right away, he let go of that pillow and latched onto me. “Thank you,” he said, his words the barest ghost of a whisper against the side of my neck. “I’m so glad you‘re here. I thought maybe you’d left. I know you aren’t comfortable….“
“I‘m not going anywhere,“ I told him, keeping the decibel level at a minimum since sound obviously hurt him even worse than the light. “I just wasn’t sure you’d want me to stay. I know you can’t stand to have anybody around when you get like this.“
“But this is you. It’s different when it’s you.”
Hearing that made me feel about ten years old. I wanted to snatch him up and spin him around the room until it seemed like the room was spinning and we were standing still, until we fell on our asses, dizzy and cackling. While he probably would have appreciated the sentiment, I doubted that he’d be all that receptive to the reality, at least not at that exact moment. So I just went right on cradling him in my arms, holding him as tenderly as I knew how, softly kissing him first on the temple, then on the cheek.
“I want to help you,” I told him. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
“This,” he murmured. “Just keep doing this.” After a couple of minutes, he fumbled for my hand and guided it into his hair. I gently massaged the sensitive spot behind his ear with my thumb, stroked the nape of his neck with my fingertips. “Feels so nice,” he said. Then he was out, the man who never slept when he had a migraine was out like a light, peaceful as a baby in my arms, his breath a warm tickle against my throat.
I was right, Timmy needed me. I mean he really needed me, needed me in a way nobody had ever needed me before. It scared me a little, but it was a good kind of scared, an awestruck revelation that for the first time in my life I was vital to someone, that nobody else could do for him what I was doing. For some reason I’ll never understand, Timmy’d decided I mattered.
Donald Strachey mattered.
On that snowy February night when Timmy and I said those three words for the first time, those three words that sound simple as hell but change everything, he and I went to bed and didn’t get up again for four days. He called in sick Thursday and Friday -- something he never does -- and I cancelled the few appointments I had so we could hole up together in my chilly apartment and get better acquainted with the guys we’d just given our hearts to.
Over that long, lazy weekend, I got to know Timmy -- I mean really know him -- the way I’d never known anyone before. I learned his strengths and his faults, what he longed for and what terrified him, what made him happy and what made him hurt. He didn’t hold a goddamned thing back and neither did I, except for one. I wasn’t ready to open that box just yet. But even then, I knew the day would come when I would pour out the pain that was Kyle, and that I could trust him to listen and understand.
We talked and slept and made love, sticking our noses out from under the covers just long enough to make a bathroom run or order take-out, then dove back under again to repeat the cycle. Timmy insisted we share a shower once a day, which just gave us an excuse to extend the fun and games into a slightly different playground. And of course the sheets eventually got to the point where even I had to admit they were going to mutate into a new life form if we didn’t take a time-out and change them. We did what we had to do as fast as we could do it, then we were back in the sack, tied together in a knot again.
When it hit us that we were really in it for the long haul, we were finally able to just chill out and be happy. He stopped walking on eggshells, waiting for me to feel suffocated and run screaming out the door. I stopped wondering what a guy like him could possibly see in a guy like me. In between wrestling matches and mush talk, we bickered like an old married couple. I ragged him about his designer underwear and the way he folded the dirty sheets into perfect squares before tossing them in the hamper, while he carped at me about the crunchy socks under the bed and the fool I’d made of myself on our second date.
I’ve never remembered much about that night, which I guess you could consider a blessing considering the fact that I’d been a total basket case and drunk myself into an assholish stupor. All I’ve retained is a nightmarish vision of myself flirting with some Hell’s Angels junior leaguer because I was terrified to look Tim in the eye, convinced he had to be as disgusted with me as I was with myself. I have a vague memory of him being surreally kind and seeing me home safe in spite of the fact that he was obviously pissed. And I do remember slurring out some half-assed apology about not being able to get it up as he stripped me and poured me into bed.
“There are a thousand ways for two men to be intimate, Donald, and nine hundred and ninety-six of them have nothing to do with sex,“ he’d said as he’d tucked me in and placed an empty wastebasket within easy reach, just in case. Yeah, right. At the time, I’d thought he was crazy. But let me tell you, he spent every minute of that long February weekend proving just how right he‘d been.
Oh, the sex was still there, believe me. Timmy may look all sweet and innocent, and in a lot of ways, I guess he is. But beneath the surface? The man’s freaking insatiable. He had the stamina of a marathon runner, and that combined with his creativity and that weirdly random sense of humor of his made every go-round between the sheets something to remember. Playful one second and intense the next, with no natural inhibitors I could see -- that was my Timmy.
Above and beyond all that, it was his charitable nature that made him stand apart from the crowd. He knew exactly what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it, but the point is, he always did ask, if not in words, in a more basic language, always waiting for a glance or a nod or some sound of pleasure from me before charging ahead with something he hadn’t tried on me before. What he knew I liked, he always gave willingly. He had no boundaries to speak of, but he sensed that I did, and when he found one, he changed tactics so fast and with so much grace I barely realized a line had been crossed at all. Whether he was wearing a tux and playing the diplomat at some boring as hell political gathering, or glassy-eyed with lust and covered with sweat in the sack with me, the one thing you could say about Timothy Callahan was that he was always, always a gentleman.
Considering I’d spent the last couple of years making the acquaintance of every gay dick in the greater Albany area, this’ll probably sound pretty weird coming from me. But I can honestly say I learned everything I know about making love from Timmy. With Kyle and me, we were always fired up and frantic, desperate to give what we had to give and get what we needed to get, each of us with one eye on the door and the other on the clock, terrified someone would walk in at the wrong minute and catch us --literally -- with our pants down. We never exactly had the chance to explore the subtleties of lovemaking, as much as I wished we could have. And during my not-so-illustrious career as Donald Strachey, Gay Slut, I’d pretty much looked at sex as a base act. It was cold and anonymous and vaguely humiliating, something unpleasant I had to do to satisfy a physical need, with all the glamour and allure of taking a dump in a public john. But there was nothing base about being with Timmy.
With Timmy, sex was never just sex. It always meant something. Hell, it always meant everything. And even if he went a little crazy sometimes, even if he got rough, he was tender, too, and always put my needs before his own. His own needs were simple enough. He needed closeness the way the grass needs water and sun, he needed to know that what he was doing made me happy. And as much as the concept was blowing my mind, I was starting to get the message that more than anything else, he needed me.
Up to that point, everybody in my life had gone out of their way to let me know how expendable I was. It kind of freaked me out at first, finding someone who didn’t exactly agree with the general consensus. Unlike Tim, I don’t exactly have a charitable nature. Any natural inclinations I had along those lines self-destructed the day the whole army thing blew up in my face, and since then, my philosophy had pretty much been every man for himself. But meeting Timmy and falling for him, seeing what it felt like to have him fall for me, that made me want to start giving again. He made me so happy, you know? It only seemed fair to try and return the favor.
Somewhere between Saturday night and Sunday morning, I woke up screaming, unable to shake the image of that endless sea of red, the side of that tent splattered with blood and hair and brain and bone, those bulging, lifeless eyes that have haunted my sleep since the day of my discharge.
I know I must have scared Timmy shitless, thrashing and yelling and fighting him with everything I had as he tried to calm me down. But he didn’t back down, and he didn’t ask what was wrong or push for details. Instead, he somehow managed to gather me up, pinning my arms to my side and pressing my face firmly into the crook of his neck, rocking me and crooning, “Baby. Oh, no, no, baby. It’s all right. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” until I stopped just hearing a soothing drone and recognized actual words, recognized the arms around me as something real and warm and most of all his, not the cold and lifeless limbs from my dream. Once I stopped fighting him, he loosened his grip just long enough for me to slip my arms around him as well. Then he clamped down again and kept right on rocking me, stroking my hair and murmuring comforting nonsense until I went limp and loose like a rag doll in his arms.
He eased me down on the bed and curled himself around me, wrapping us both in a tight cocoon of blankets and quilts. He kissed my eyelids, my forehead, the top of my head. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
He had me, all right.
* * * *
From the outside looking in, people automatically assume Timmy’s the grownup in the relationship. For the most part, they’re right. I’m a big kid and I know it, and Timmy’s damned good at drawing that kid out and giving him room to play. He’s a caretaker type through and through, and he’s never happy unless he’s fussing over me. Or when he thinks I need it, fussing at me. But Timmy has a secret. It’s easy to overlook because he seems so self-sufficient, and he stays so goddamned busy trying to take care of everyone else, you wouldn’t think he had time to worry about himself. But it’s there, and that weekend, he let me in on it for the first time.
Timmy kinda needs to be taken care of, too.
He was living such a behind-the-scenes existence, ghost-writing speeches or organizing fundraisers in the name of that dickwad congressman, quietly doing the dirty work and letting the stuffy old geezer take all the credit. I figured he deserved to be more than just a forgotten member of the supporting cast. As far as I was concerned, he was the main attraction, and I made it my business to make sure he got the star treatment he deserved. Without saying a word out loud, I made a promise to him and to myself that as long as I lived, he’d never feel like nobody was taking care of him again.
By the time Monday morning rolled around, a subtle shift had taken place between us. I emerged from that apartment feeling fiercely protective of him, wanting to indulge him, to look out for him, to let him know how proud I was to be his. As queasy as the idea made me, I’d forced myself out of bed at an ungodly ugly hour so we could eat breakfast and shower together. Then I drove him back to his place so he could change into a cleaned and pressed Brooks Brothers special before I took him to work. He said I didn’t have to do it, of course. Yeah, right. It was still slick out and cold as hell, and I wasn’t about to let him spend half the morning shivering alone at some shitty bus stop. Not on my watch.
When we pulled up in front of his building, I jumped out fast and got his door for him, my heart tap dancing against my ribcage at the look he gave me, all embarrassed and pleased and kind of flustered at once. Then I walked him up the steps, so close our shoulders bumped together, his briefcase tucked under my left arm. At the top, I turned toward him, and after making sure no one was looking, slipped my hand into his.
“Guess this is where I have to let you go, huh?”
A couple of guys in top-dollar suits walked by, and I tried to pull free, but Tim tightened his grip on my hand, his eyes locked on mine. “Walk me in,” he said quietly. “Or better yet, come by my office for lunch. There won’t be much going on today, and I should be free around twelve-thirty or one. We can have something delivered if you like.”
“Can’t,” I said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “I’ve got a new client coming in at ten, then I’ve gotta do some legwork that’ll keep me busy until seven or eight.”
If he was disappointed, he was careful not to let it show. “I understand. Then I guess I’ll see you…”
“Tonight,” I said, surprising the hell out of both of us by tugging him close and nailing him with a no-nonsense kiss right there in front of God and Tim’s colleagues and everyone else who was crazy enough to be out and about in Albany on an icy Monday morning. “You’ll see me tonight.”
I went to the office to catch up on filing and paying bills and all the other miscellaneous crap I’d been neglecting the last few weeks. I even straightened the place up some, cleaned the coffeemaker and started a fresh pot. Not my favorite way to spend the morning, but it kept me busy, kept me from jumping out of my skin when I thought of all the tedious hours I’d have to kill before I could see Timmy again. A few minutes before ten, the new client showed up, a tiny blond most straight guys would give their right nuts to get a piece of. She was nervous, so I poured her some coffee and chatted her up for a while, not quite flirting but not quite not, just to get her to chill out and tell me why she was there.
Another cheating husband. No surprise there. But it was my turn to tense up when she flashed me a picture of her husband, Charles, and told me with bottom lip trembling and big green eyes about to overflow at any moment that she thought he might be sleeping around with other guys. One look at the photo and I knew she was right. Hell, good old Chuck had sucked me off in the front seat of his Trailblazer maybe three months prior, and he’d done a reasonably good job of it, too. Which left me with what I guess you could call a conflict of interest.
I felt sorry for the lady, I really did. She seemed nice enough, and she obviously loved the two-timing prick. She deserved a better life than the one she was living, sitting home with the kids night after night while Chuck the closet case queer gobbled random dick in the family SUV. On the other hand, the thought of outing a brother hit a nerve, and it made me think about some not-quite-buried pieces of my past I would have just as soon forgotten.
In the end, I took the case, deciding that cheating on the nice lady outweighed the fact that he was just doing what too many gay guys did because they didn’t have the balls or the brains to take a chance on something better. Besides, I needed the money.
Once she’d handed over my retainer and headed out the door, I pulled out my cell and dialed Timmy’s number, suddenly needing to hear his voice and let him know how grateful I was that for me, anyway, getting anonymous SUV head from guys named Chuck was finally a thing of the past. But he didn’t pick up, and when the call went to voicemail, I snapped the phone shut without leaving a message. Half a minute later, a text came through.
In a meeting. I miss you.
Grinning like the lovesick moron I guess I was, I sent back, Miss you, too, followed by a detailed account of what I intended to do to him once we were naked together and in bed again. A few minutes went by, and I figured he was either too busy or too scandalized to respond. Then my phone chirped.
That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. I’m shocked. I’m horrified. I can’t wait.
I spent the rest of the day in a happy fog, going through the motions of checking out background information on one guy, documenting the random comings and goings of another. It was no-brainer stuff, the kind of assignments I could easily handle on autopilot. The next night I’d have to start tailing Closet Case Chuck, following him from one watering hole to the next until we both got lucky and I could snap off a few shots of him on his knees in some alley or creeping into a bathroom stall at The Pit, hand-in-hand with his BJ du jour. A depressing thought, and one I didn’t want to waste brain cells on. My mind was across town in a small but tastefully decorated office, tracking the most beautiful man alive as he juggled phone calls and pushed papers, maybe smiling that soft, sweet smile of his from time to time as he went through the motions, too, waiting for the day to end so we could kick-start the night.
At seven on the dot, I called it quits and drove to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine. It was the first time I’d been inside; I usually did business through the drive-thru. But I wanted to surprise Timmy with something nice, and since I didn’t know shit about the stuff, I needed advice. The clerk hooked me up with a moderately priced pinot noir, which I remembered Tim saying he liked, then pointed toward a display of fresh-cut flowers near the front counter.
“If you’re setting the mood for a little romance, you’ll want some of those, too,” she said, grinning.
I walked over to take a look, feeling kind of silly because I’d never even thought about buying a guy flowers before, but at the same time feeling like giving Timmy flowers was the most natural thing in the world. Since I knew even less about flowers than I did about wine, I gave the clerk my best little-boy-lost look.
“Take her roses, of course,” she said.
Usually I let that kind of thing slide, but for some reason that night, the pronoun grated on me. “Him,” I said, glancing at the woman to gauge her reaction. If anything, her grin got even bigger, and I could have sworn she added a dimple to the mix.
“Red’s a classic,” she said, pointing out a six-count bunch of blood-colored buds mixed with baby’s breath. “If we add some fern, I bet he’ll love it.”
The color made my skin crawl. “Tim’s a classic kind of guy,” I said, forcing a smile, “but I want something a little different. Something that’s not what everybody else gets. What about these?” I asked, picking up the bouquet beside the bloody one and taking a quick sniff. The buds were a soft, buttery yellow with pink tips. They looked like candy flowers, the ones made of icing on a wedding cake.
“Peace roses are my favorite,” she said. “You have a good eye. And a good heart.”
Peace. That was exactly what Timmy made me feel. “I’ll take them,” I said.
I was getting hungry and knew Timmy probably hadn’t eaten yet, either. I dialed his number, intending to ask if he’d like me to pick up some Thai on the way over or if he’d rather go out. But he didn’t answer, so I decided to just drive straight to his place and sort it out there. When I got to the apartment, I knocked long and loud without getting a response. I didn’t really worry, though. He was without a doubt the most obsessively clean person on the planet, so I assumed he was in the shower. I fished the key he had given me out of my pocket and let myself in.
“Honey, I’m home!” I called out, thinking that corny old line would give him a chuckle. I did hear a noise coming from the bathroom, but it sure as hell wasn’t a laugh. Dropping the wine and roses into a chair near the door, I rushed through the bedroom and into the john, where I found him on his knees, retching miserably.
I stood over him for about half a minute, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Timmy was the nurturing one, and dealing with this kind of stuff came as naturally to him as breathing. Me, I just felt useless and awkward. I hated that he was sick and wished like hell I could make it better, but I had no idea how to go about it. Then I remembered that second date of ours, and how he’d held me while I barfed up those fourteen martinis he claims I drank and stroked my hair, then bathed my face with a cool washcloth and helped me back to bed. It had felt good, knowing he was there, feeling his hands on me, hearing his voice telling me everything was going to be okay. It hadn’t made me any less sick, but in other ways, more important ways, it had made me feel a hell of a lot better.
I dropped to my knees beside him, looping an arm around his waist and shifting his weight so he was leaning more on me than on that cold, hard toilet. He was drenched in sweat and shaking, his face even paler than that porcelain rim he’d been clutching. When he’d brought up all he had to bring up, I flushed the toilet and closed the lid, then maneuvered us both into a sitting position. As I dabbed his mouth with a wad of tissue, he let his head loll on my shoulder, moaning softly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered so faintly I could barely hear him.
“What the hell for?” My voice wasn’t loud, but he flinched at the sound, his whole body jerking like I’d just pounded him with a sledgehammer. Then I got it, and my heart sank. “Migraine?” I asked, being careful to keep my voice low and even.
“Migraine,” he breathed.
I knew the damned things sometimes knocked him on his ass for two or three days at a time, sleepless and sick and in horrible pain, but that was the first time I’d seen it first hand. He’d cancelled a date because he’d felt one coming on a few weeks before, and when I’d half-heartedly asked if anyone was there to look after him, he’d said, “I‘ll be okay, Don. I‘m not very good company right now, anyway.” Being around sick people’d always made me squirm, and when they saw that, it usually made them squirm, too, so I figured he’d be better off without me there. In other words, I’d taken the easy way out. But I hadn’t felt very good about myself for a long time after.
His glasses were speckled and smudged, and his face was so slick with sweat they kept sliding down his nose. I eased them off and set them on the edge of the sink, making a mental note to clean them for him later. Knowing what the inside of his mouth was bound to taste like, I brought him his toothbrush and a cup of water, then helped him kneel over the toilet again to rinse and spit. Once I’d put the toothbrush away, I braced him as he slowly stood and peeled off his sweat-soaked clothes, then stripped down, too, and got us both into the shower.
I made it fast and to the point, holding him more or less upright as I soaped him up and rinsed him down. He kept trying to hold his head, but I made him hold onto me instead as I toweled him off, trying to hurry so he wouldn’t get cold and start shaking again, but being careful, too, because I was scared to death old bull-in-a-china-shop me might be too rough and make him feel worse instead of better. I walked him back to the bedroom, still supporting him with one arm as he stumbled and swayed against me, then bundled him into bed, fluffing his pillows the way they do in the movies and tucking the covers up under his chin. I felt his face. He was still about 12 shades paler than normal, and his skin was cold to the touch. Worried, I dug the electric blanket out of the closet and covered him with it, then spread the comforter over the top of that.
I felt weirdly empty, looking at him lying there, being warmed by the blankets instead of me. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to touch him again, to climb in bed with him and keep right on holding him like I had in the shower, but I was afraid to, remembering how he’d once said migraines made him feel like he was made of glass, like he’d shatter into a million pieces if anyone touched him.
But he hadn’t shattered when I held him while he was puking, hadn‘t tried to pull away when I put my arms around him in the shower. Just the opposite, he‘d leaned into the touch, sighed and rested his head on my shoulder as I washed his back, his lips brushing my neck. If he was just being polite, the man had raised the idea of etiquette to an art form.
He opened his eyes, flinching from the effort even as he did it, and looked at me for a long moment. “It’s okay,“ he said, “You don’t have to stay.“ Then his eyes closed again, and with obvious effort, he turned over, settling facedown and cradling the pillow in his arms. Still I wavered, feeling as useless and inadequate as my mother always claimed I was, as worthless as Kyle obviously thought I was since he’d preferred eating a bullet to taking a chance on a life out in the open with me.
Timmy moaned softly, pure fucking misery on the DL, and tightened his grip on the pillow, pressing his face into it even harder, burrowing into it like a lover’s embrace, hanging onto that pillow the way he sometimes did to me when he was tired or down, or in the instant we made up after a fight.
Feeling every bit the idiot I knew I was, I slipped out of the bedroom long enough to find a vase for the roses and to put the pinot in the fridge, then checked the lock on the front door and killed the lights. I carried the roses in with me and set them on the dresser so he could see them first thing the next morning, then turned the bedside lamp off as well, wishing I’d thought of it sooner because I could tell how bad the light hurt him. I ducked into the bathroom long enough to grab his glasses. I ran them under the tap and dried them with a tissue, then set them on the nightstand along with his meds and a cup of water. After making sure an empty wastebasket was nearby, I eased onto the bed, trying my best not to make the mattress jiggle, and settled beside him.
“I hug back, you know.”
Right away, he let go of that pillow and latched onto me. “Thank you,” he said, his words the barest ghost of a whisper against the side of my neck. “I’m so glad you‘re here. I thought maybe you’d left. I know you aren’t comfortable….“
“I‘m not going anywhere,“ I told him, keeping the decibel level at a minimum since sound obviously hurt him even worse than the light. “I just wasn’t sure you’d want me to stay. I know you can’t stand to have anybody around when you get like this.“
“But this is you. It’s different when it’s you.”
Hearing that made me feel about ten years old. I wanted to snatch him up and spin him around the room until it seemed like the room was spinning and we were standing still, until we fell on our asses, dizzy and cackling. While he probably would have appreciated the sentiment, I doubted that he’d be all that receptive to the reality, at least not at that exact moment. So I just went right on cradling him in my arms, holding him as tenderly as I knew how, softly kissing him first on the temple, then on the cheek.
“I want to help you,” I told him. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
“This,” he murmured. “Just keep doing this.” After a couple of minutes, he fumbled for my hand and guided it into his hair. I gently massaged the sensitive spot behind his ear with my thumb, stroked the nape of his neck with my fingertips. “Feels so nice,” he said. Then he was out, the man who never slept when he had a migraine was out like a light, peaceful as a baby in my arms, his breath a warm tickle against my throat.
I was right, Timmy needed me. I mean he really needed me, needed me in a way nobody had ever needed me before. It scared me a little, but it was a good kind of scared, an awestruck revelation that for the first time in my life I was vital to someone, that nobody else could do for him what I was doing. For some reason I’ll never understand, Timmy’d decided I mattered.
Donald Strachey mattered.
Prudence
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 5350 words
Timothy J. Callahan may look innocent, but don’t let that fool you. Somewhere beneath that big, sweet smile and those friendly baby blues, that parish priest voice and that Brooks Brothers suit beats the heart of an evil, manipulative man. And nobody knows that better than I do.
The insidious bastard took over my life without me even realizing it. Hell, he didn’t just take it over, he conned me into handing it over to him one basket full of dirty laundry at a time, and I did it willingly, joyfully even, because I figured out early on that if I wanted to have a life, a real life, not just the pissy, self-destructive existence I’d been leading up to that point, it had to be a life with Timmy in it.
He gradually eased me out of my world and into his own, a world of nutritionally balanced meals and dinnertime conversation, of Saturday afternoon chores and lazy Sunday morning sex. Talk about culture shock! But I adapted surprisingly well, and as the weeks passed, it got harder and harder to believe I’d ever lived any other way. Don Strachey, Gay Whore became Don Strachey, Solid Citizen -- respectable, domesticated, housebroken. We cuddled in front of the TV, did the dishes and shopped for groceries, attended social events and political functions. I bought a used tux and didn’t look half bad in it. He bought a couple of pairs of jeans and looked so good it made my balls ache. His friends became “our” friends, whether they wanted to or not. It wasn’t like Timmy gave them much of a choice.
Most of all, he introduced me to the concept of having another person invested in my existence, of being invested in his, of knowing he loved me unconditionally and unselfishly and that I loved him, of seeing his interest in what I ate and drank and thought and did as a gift instead of an intrusion.
Happy. Timmy made happy.
I was twenty-five years old when Timmy and I met, but most days I felt at least twice that. I guess you could say he gave me a refresher course on how to be young. Everything was such a big deal to him, every dinner out, every kiss, every sunrise and every sunset. If I turned up with a $5.99 bouquet of daisies I‘d snagged for half price at the grocery because their petals were starting to drop, he acted like I’d brought him two dozen perfect roses, and when I held his hand at the movies or called him sweetheart, his smile lit up my world.
He was like a kid at Christmas every day of his life, tearing through experiences like presents under the tree, jumping out of his skin excited to find out what was inside each box. In those early days, I wasn’t sure I had the stamina for it, to live in the shadow of someone who seemed to spend every second of his life in a full-speed-ahead rush. It took a lot of time and a major attitude adjustment for me to stop lurking in the shadows, to just close my eyes and hold on tight as he ripped open one box after another, taking me on what turned out to be the ride of my life.
Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? But Timmy balanced all that brain-rattling enthusiasm with the gift of silence, the capacity for peace. No matter how worked up I got, no matter how freaked out and frustrated and bouncing-off-the-walls infuriated the world made me, all it took was a few minutes with Timmy for all that negative shit to go by the wayside. He’d just sit there quietly, giving me my space and letting me rant, knowing with that spooky sixth sense of his when to ask a question and when to just keep quiet and let me yell. Then he’d reach out at exactly the right moment and reel me in, softening whatever blows life and the job and my own fucked up psyche had dished out with the lightest of touches. And once the touching started, I didn’t want it to stop.
Timmy probably had a higher tolerance for touching than anyone on the planet -- not that I’m complaining. It just took some getting used to. Nobody in my family was much of a hugger or kisser, and since Kyle, I’d avoided all physical signs of affection like the plague. Even when I was out there whoring around, I’d always gone out of my way to keep contact to a minimum. If it wasn’t covered in latex, I didn’t touch it, let alone suck it or screw it. I kept my hands and my tongue to myself, and I let the guys I picked up know I expected them to do the same. I didn’t pet, I didn’t caress. Hell, I didn’t even kiss. So when Timmy blew into my life like the whirlwind he was, you could say I smelled change on the breeze.
After the initial shock of dating a human octopus wore off, I learned to enjoy living my life more or less velcroed to another human being. Enjoy? Hell, I came to depend on it, to crave it like I craved chili in football season, to need the feel of him next to me the way he seemed to need the feel of me. I’d become touch-deprived, see, without even realizing it. And from the first time he held me tight all night long without letting go even once, I knew I had some serious catching up to do.
I’d slept with a lot of guys in my time, but I’d never actually slept with them, you know? I thought it would be hard, at first, sharing a bed night after night with another man, that it would be awkward and suffocating, that I’d be too uncomfortable to sleep, worrying that I’d disturb him or that he’d disturb me. Turns out spending the night tied into a knot with Timothy Callahan was the most natural thing in the world.
From the time we both worked up the nerve to say our first I-love-yous, we hardly ever spent a night apart. In those early days, I tried to stay away when I was working late, not because I didn’t want to be with him, because I did. He was becoming as necessary to me as oxygen, and I couldn’t breathe if he was out of my sight for long. But my schedule was erratic, my sleep patterns the next best thing to nonexistent, and he had to be at work at the ass-crack of dawn. Anything less than a full eight hours of shuteye left him bleary-eyed and bitchy, or worse, triggered a migraine. But he was also a worrier, and I knew without him having to spell it out for me that he didn’t sleep worth a damn until he was sure I was in for the night, that I was safe. Calling was a pain in the ass. It jarred him awake if he’d managed to doze off, and trying to make conversation at three a.m. when we were both sleep-deprived and pissy didn’t exactly lead to us whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.
So what the hell. I just started going over to his place as a matter of course, letting myself in as quietly as I could, shedding my shoes by the door and dropping my gun on the couch, undressing in the dark, then slipping under the covers and zeroing in on him like a heat-seeking missile, drawn unerringly to a warmth that went way beyond the physical. A lot of those nights, I came in frozen to the bone from sitting in the car for hours on end with no heat, radiating more cold than a block of dry ice. A guy with any sense of self-preservation would have gotten as far away from me as bed space allowed. Instead, the second I hit the sheets, he always rolled over, awake or not, and draped himself over me like a friendly blanket, deliberately covering my cold feet with his warm ones and guiding my hands up under his pajama top so they could defrost against his belly or his sides.
We always fell asleep in a tangle, Timmy and me, but sometimes we’d shift during the night. I’d wake up, panicky and confused, because I couldn’t feel the weight of his arm around my waist or the moist heat of his breath against my face. Even if I could hear those hilarious little baby snores of his, even if it was getting light out and I could see him lying right there just a few inches away, I’d have to bridge that gap between us and lay a hand over his chest, gauging its steady rise and fall as I reassured myself that he was real and alive and most of all, mine.
“I’m here,” he’d mumble, catching my hand and pulling me close, anchoring me to the spot with a hairy leg thrown across my thighs. “It’s okay, baby. I‘m still here.” Five seconds later, he’d be out like a light, and I’d lie there just holding him, smiling indulgently as he drooled onto my collarbone, and wonder how I ever got to be so goddamned lucky.
As the weeks went by, I gradually relaxed and found I was sleeping, really sleeping, for the first time since Kuwait, and I was doing it without having to down a fifth of Maker’s to get there. In spite of my growing addiction to Tim’s kick-ass martinis, I was drinking less and thinking a hell of a lot more clearly, actually giving a damn about my job and at odd moments when I least expected it, beginning to wonder if there might just be such a thing as happily-ever-after after all. I met his mother, Marion, when she drove up for lunch, made non-committal small talk with his father, the infamous and elusive Republican congressman, before handing the phone over to Timmy. Timmy casually mentioned the possibility of a family dinner, or maybe a weekend spent at his grandmother’s estate. I casually agreed that it would be nice. We looked at each other and smiled, knowing there was nothing casual about it.
We never had the big discussion about exclusivity, never made a big hairy deal out of defining the perimeters of our relationship or discussing that huge bugaboo in the gay community, whether or not to be monogamous. We just were. From that first dance in the moonlight, the only person I wanted touching me was Timmy, and I sure as hell couldn’t tolerate anyone else putting the moves on him. A time or two at the club, I almost got us tossed out for roughing up guys I’d tricked with in the past, first knocking their hands away and then slamming them into the wall when they tried to initiate an encore. And God help the guy who laid a finger on Timmy.
One night, he excused himself to use the men’s room and was gone so long I started to worry. I found him wedged between a urinal and the stall, cornered and obviously freaked out, trying to fight off some cracked-out asshole twice his size who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Size ratio be damned, I lit into the big bastard and would have pounded him into hamburger if Timmy hadn’t jumped into the mix and pulled me off of him with surprising strength.
“Let it go, Donald! I just want to get out of here!” he said over and over until I finally gave in and let him drag me away. Once we were in the car, he told me, his voice shaking, that the guy had been packing a knife. I literally saw red. Timmy’s a lover, not a fighter, but between you and me, he’s a helluva lot tougher than he looks. Still, it took everything he had to keep me pinned to the seat as he alternately reasoned with, threatened and begged me not to charge back in there and finish what I started.
“It’s not worth getting cut up or worse,” he said. “I couldn’t live with myself if something awful happened to you because of me. For God’s sake, Donald, just let this go. Enough is enough.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,“ I told him, forcing myself to sound more rational than I felt. He’d never seen me lose it like that before, and I think it scared him worse than being trapped and manhandled in the john. Hearing that degree of fear in his voice brought me back to my senses a little. “I want to die in your arms someday, sweetheart, but not tonight. You can let go now. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
The whole thing ate at me, though, and the more I thought about it, the madder I got. Before the next day was done, I’d found out who the guy was and where he lived, and had done enough research to know there were a couple of warrants floating around out there with his name on them -- something about forced entry and assault with a deadly weapon, if I’m remembering correctly, plus one that was drug-related. A whisper in the right ear had him arrested by nightfall and later extradited to Des Moines, of all the ungodly places. Last thing I heard, he was serving a stint in Anamosa, where I’m sure he learned exactly what forced entry was all about.
It was all neat, clean, bloodless. But if it had gotten bloody, that would have been okay with me, too. You don’t threaten Timmy -- my beautiful, kind-hearted Timmy -- with a knife and get away with it. Not if I have anything to say about it.
People say I see Timmy through rose-colored glasses, but I don’t think that’s true. I know he has his faults. He’s a pathological neat freak, and when he goes into his nit-picking mode, it can just about drive me nuts if I let it. He’s also high-strung and a little bit of a hypochondriac, and he has an annoying obsession with Tuvan throat singers that I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. But why sweat the small stuff? Yeah, he can pile on the sarcasm when he gets in the mood, and God only knows he’s the most stubborn human being on the planet. But that’s all piddly shit when you weigh it against what a genuinely warm and accepting person he is. Too accepting, sometimes.
Tuvan throat singers aside, the one thing I‘d change about Timmy if I could would be the fact that he lets people walk all over him. I mean he‘s an incredibly intelligent guy, but he‘s carrying around a major deficit in the street smarts department. He takes everybody he meets at face value, always believing the best of them until something happens to prove him wrong. When that happens, it disappoints him too much, hurts him on such a deep level it drives me insane, makes me want to yell at him, “What did you expect, trusting an asshole like that?” and at the same time, makes me want to run out there and pound the shit out of the sorry piece of pond scum who let him down. I did the yelling thing only once, and the expression on his face shut me up immediately, sent me barreling into his arms to beg forgiveness for being such a self-righteous little shit and making him feel worse instead of better. As for the pounding part, let’s just say that most of his friends and acquaintances learned to treat him right, if not out of affection for him, out of fear of me. I know I earned my rep as a snarling guard dog early on, and I can’t say I put much effort into living that image down. It didn’t exactly add to my popularity, but it saved a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on my baby‘s heart, and that was just fine with me.
Timothy and I are as different as night and day -- always have been and always will be. I’m a hyper-defensive pessimist with anger issues and a naturally suspicious nature. He’s a freaking gay Pollyanna who would give youthe shirt off his back, then stand there with his mouth hanging open when you stole his pants and shoes as well. But you know what? I think that’s the reason we work together as well as we do. He’s got my back and I’ve got his. We watch out for each other, balance each other out. If he stumbles, he knows I’m gonna be right there to catch him, and that goes both ways. I take care of him, and he takes care of me.
In the three years I’d been living in my shithole apartment on the wrong end of town, my cheap-ass landlord had never gotten around to replacing the broken down washer and dryer in the laundry room with a set that actually worked. So once a month or so, whether I wanted to or not, I ended up wasting a rare Saturday morning off or a Sunday afternoon sitting in the coin laundry down the block, waiting for the industrial-size washer to take the crunch out of my dirty socks and turn them back to a shade vaguely resembling white. I hated it, of course, hated the inconvenience, the expense, the tediousness of it all. But what the hell? It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
Obviously, all that changed when I hooked up with Timmy. He usually had weekends off, so I made it my business to have them off, too, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on wasting them sitting in a cracked plastic chair beside some chick in curlers and a muumuu, listening to her squawk at her kids as they knocked over detergent while the dryers rattled and hummed. I wanted to be where Timmy was, even if that was just at home re-organizing his pantry for the third time in a month or clicking away on his laptop, editing a speech for his boss. I wanted to watch him, to hear his voice or the soft rustle of clothes as he moved around his apartment, to smell his cologne, to taste his smile when he caught me staring at him and grinned, pulling me in for a soft kiss. Most of all, I wanted to touch him, to feel him touching me, to lose myself in a horny rush as we tumbled to the couch, the floor, the bed in a tangle, grunting and grappling and suddenly frantic, marking our territory, staking our claim, each of us growling the same words over and over, time after time, until they became ritual.
Mine. You’re mine.
So much for weekends at the laundromat.
I’ve always been a low-maintenance kind of guy, domestically speaking. If I ran out of clean socks or shorts, I’d just swing by Wal-Mart for another six-pack and go on with my life. But it wasn’t long before I started running out of other stuff as well. Since Timmy’s apartment was bigger than mine and a lot nicer, we spent all our nights there, snuggled between his 600 thread count sheets and hand-stitched eiderdown comforter, snug as two bugs in that proverbial rug. Meanwhile, my place became nothing more than a drop-off point, a pit stop I hit every day or two to change or throw together an extra set of clothes for the next day.
One Friday night after I’d picked Timmy up at the office, we stopped there on the way out to eat so I could grab a quick shower and a clean shirt. The only problem was, there wasn’t a clean shirt to grab. Or clean jeans, or clean anything else, for that matter. One tattered yellow tee hung from a bent wire hanger, the faded smiley face and fragmented lettering on the front of it reminding me that Shit Happens! It happens, all right. But why does it always have to happen when your anal-retentive boyfriend is standing behind you, making disapproving clicking noises with his tongue?
“Donald,” Timmy began.
“Guess I’m spending tomorrow morning doing laundry,” I said, attempting to slam the closet door shut and spin to face him in one smooth motion. But he caught the door before it could close and held it in place, pinning me to the spot as well with a disapproving glare.
“Donald.“ This time, the name was nothing more than an aggrieved sigh.
If you can’t impress ‘em, B.S. ‘em. I tried my best ingratiating smile. “Looks like we’re having a romantic dinner in tonight,“ I said, shooting for a delivery that was charming, upbeat, and oh-so-sincere. As the seconds ticked by, I got the hint that it had fallen flat. “Of course, if your heart’s set on an evening out, I can always wear my work clothes to the restaurant.“
Timmy eyed the tan button-down I’d tossed over a chair on my way to the shower. It was sweat-soaked and missing two buttons, and a rusty smear spread across one threadbare cuff. Not my blood, for a change, I thought with a certain vague pride, rubbing the skinned knuckles of my right hand. That’ll teach those scumbags to mess around with Donald Stra….
“I smelled your work clothes for long enough on the ride over,” Timmy said firmly. “We need to do something about this mess now. This building has a laundry room on each floor, doesn’t it? We can order Thai and eat between loads.”
“The machines don’t work,” I said, surreptitiously trying to shove a crumpled pair of jeans under the bed with my foot. “I’ll have to haul a couple of loads down to the Wash’N’Wear in the morning.“
“Donald, you promised we’d go that interactive art exhibition at the Institute in the morning. This is the final weekend for it, and you’ve managed to wriggle out of going twice already. Here,” he said, pulling the Shit Happens! shirt off its hanger and shoving it into my arms. “We’re going to gather up as much of this…this…” he stalled out, gesturing at the jeans I hadn’t quite managed to hide, the trail of toxic socks and boxers littering the floor, the mound of discarded shirts and pants and the occasional stained tie in the far corner. “We’re going to pull together as much of this…landfill…as we can carry and take it over to my place. Honestly,” he breathed, dropping to his hands and knees to reach under the bed, pulling out jeans and more yellowed socks and God only knows what else, taking the time to scowl in disgust at each item as he threw it into a pile. “I don’t see how anyone can live like this.”
I wasn’t living, I wanted to tell him. Not before I met you. I hadn’t been since the army, since Kyle. But I just pulled the shirt over my head and knelt on the floor beside him.
“Honestly,“ he said again. Then he caught sight of my face. His expression went soft and warm the way it does when I try to make him breakfast and incinerate the toast, or when I get in his way while he’s bustling around, being all industrious and productive, just because I’m a needy bastard and don’t like it when all his attention’s on something other than me. He smiled then, shaking his head a little and giving me a look that said I might be a fuck-up, but I was his fuck-up, and he loved me like crazy and wouldn’t have it any other way. His lips brushed mine. “Honestly,“ he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine for a just a moment before going back to work.
Scared he’d throw his back out with all the bending and stretching, I dropped to my belly and crawled under the bed to snag a couple more pairs of stale boxers and handed them to him, laughing a little. Spelunking under my bed followed by a couple of hours of washing clothes as we scarfed down take-out wasn’t exactly the romantic evening out I’d planned for us, but if he was willing to put up with it, who was I to argue?
We did three loads of laundry that night. Extra space magically appeared in Timmy’s overstuffed closet, so instead of piling my clean stuff into a basket, he put my shirts and pants on plastic hangers “so they can air out and avoid wrinkling,“ while my socks and shorts and wife beaters found their way into a drawer that he “never really used anyway.“
None of it ever saw the inside of my apartment again.
We returned to the scene of the crime a few days later, laundry basket in hand, and gathered another load for the wash. We rounded up a few other things as well -- a small stack of tapes we thought we might watch, a couple of books so I’d have something to read while he was working on the computer, a bag of apples from the fridge since they’d just go bad sitting there. Back at his place, my motley crew of tee shirts and sweats and no-name jeans declared squatter’s rights in his limited closet space, keeping company with all those high-end suits and silk ties. My bargain bin VHS tapes mingled with his meticulously categorized and alphabetized DVDs in the entertainment center, and my dog-eared paperbacks lay beside his signed hardcovers on the nightstand. After a while, you couldn’t tell where his stuff ended and mine began, which was okay with me. That’s pretty much how I felt about our lives.
As time went on, more and more of my things made that one way trip across town, until that seedy little furnished apartment was as bare as it had been on the day I’d moved in, stripped down to the bed and couch that had come with the place, the scratched television and VCR I needed to return to the rental store, a box of miscellaneous junk I’d decided to donate to Goodwill, and a couple of bags of trash ready for the dumpster. One night near the end of April, Timmy was going through the kitchen cabinets, looking for anything perishable that needed to be tossed. He turned to me, an unopened bottle of Maker’s Mark in his hand, and said, “Except for a few cans of ravioli and some baked beans, it looks like the cupboard’s bare. This is all you have left.”
“Hey, you found my emergency stash! I was looking for that during the ice storm, planning on drinking myself into a coma, I guess. But then you knocked on my door and I forgot all about it.”
“As I recall, I made you forget about everything. For days.”
“Best weekend of my life,” I said, sealing the trash bags with a twist tie and hefting them over my shoulder, ready to haul them downstairs. “Kinda weird, isn’t it? We haven’t spent a night here since.”
“No,” he said quietly, “no we haven’t.” From the way he was looking at me, I knew what was coming. I mean, come on, I’d known for a while where all this was heading, and I was more than ready for it. But we hadn’t talked about it -- we’d been pretty damned careful not to talk about it, if you wanna know the truth -- and knowing he was about to put it into words, to formalize it and make it real, scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
“Next Tuesday’s the first of the month,” he began, choosing his words carefully.
I nodded. Then what the hell, I decided to suck it up and take the plunge. “Rent’ll be due,” I said slowly.
“It seems a shame to waste money on that, since you’re never here anymore.” He watched me expectantly as I sweated bullets over the appropriate reply. When I didn’t answer right away, he squared his shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. “Maybe it’s time for you to think about turning in your key.” He hesitated, suddenly embarrassed, his cheeks coloring. “Of course, if you feel you need the space….”
“All I need is this,” I said, dropping the damned trash bags so I could burrow into his arms, hugging him fiercely. I heard a sigh of relief, felt him let go of the tension he’d been carrying around with him for God knows how long as he leaned into me, hanging on tight. We stood that way for a long time, not even kissing, just squeezing each other til our arms ached, holding on like we were trying to force our way into each other‘s skins through sheer pressure alone.
“I wasn‘t sure you‘d say yes,” he said at last.
“I may be crazy, honey, but I‘m not stupid. You’ve got to let me pull my own weight, though. We’re gonna split the rent at your place, and I’m chipping in on the utility bill, groceries, whatever. I know you make a helluva lot more than I do, but this has to be an equal partnership. It can‘t be all one-sided.”
“Our place,” he said, looking so goddamned happy it made my chest flutter. “We’ll split the rent at our place.”
“I’ve never done this before, you know.”
“Lived with someone? Neither have I. But we‘re spending all our time together anyway. Sharing expenses seems like the prudent thing to do.”
I smiled at his pet word. Everything with him was prudent this or prudent that, especially when he was in lecture mode, reminding me to pay a bill on time or to check the date on the O.J. before swigging it straight out of the carton. But making a life with Timmy? That was as close to prudent as I’d ever come. “Not just that. Done the plural pronoun thing, I mean. We, us, our….”
“Get used to it,” he said, giving me a smacking kiss before letting go and reaching for an empty box. “Why don’t you take out the trash while I get these canned goods ready to go to the food bank, then we can gather up the rest of this stuff and drop the key off on the way out. Oh, and this,” he said, nodding toward the bottle of Maker’s he’d left sitting on the counter. “You don’t want to forget this.”
I touched the red wax seal, remembering again that icy night back in February when I’d tried to drink myself into oblivion, scared to death of handing my heart over to Timmy but even more afraid of facing all the empty years ahead if I cut him loose. It seemed part of a distant past, one I didn’t particularly care to revisit.
“Leave it,“ I said. “The super can have it, or the next guy who’s unlucky enough to move into this dump. We’ve got enough to carry, and I don‘t need it anymore.” I looked up at him and damned if he wasn’t giving me that look again, that love-you-like-crazy look. My throat suddenly got so hot and tight I had to clear it and get busy with the trash bags, rechecking their ties and rustling them around to keep everything I was feeling from spilling out.
He was staring at me hard by then, a worry line forming between his eyebrows. “You sure?“ he asked, reaching out to touch my cheek.
I turned my head so I could kiss his palm, leaned my face into his smooth, warm hand. “I’m sure,“ I said, hearing the huskiness in my voice but no longer trying to hide it because hell, this was Timmy, and he’d cope. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
The insidious bastard took over my life without me even realizing it. Hell, he didn’t just take it over, he conned me into handing it over to him one basket full of dirty laundry at a time, and I did it willingly, joyfully even, because I figured out early on that if I wanted to have a life, a real life, not just the pissy, self-destructive existence I’d been leading up to that point, it had to be a life with Timmy in it.
He gradually eased me out of my world and into his own, a world of nutritionally balanced meals and dinnertime conversation, of Saturday afternoon chores and lazy Sunday morning sex. Talk about culture shock! But I adapted surprisingly well, and as the weeks passed, it got harder and harder to believe I’d ever lived any other way. Don Strachey, Gay Whore became Don Strachey, Solid Citizen -- respectable, domesticated, housebroken. We cuddled in front of the TV, did the dishes and shopped for groceries, attended social events and political functions. I bought a used tux and didn’t look half bad in it. He bought a couple of pairs of jeans and looked so good it made my balls ache. His friends became “our” friends, whether they wanted to or not. It wasn’t like Timmy gave them much of a choice.
Most of all, he introduced me to the concept of having another person invested in my existence, of being invested in his, of knowing he loved me unconditionally and unselfishly and that I loved him, of seeing his interest in what I ate and drank and thought and did as a gift instead of an intrusion.
Happy. Timmy made happy.
I was twenty-five years old when Timmy and I met, but most days I felt at least twice that. I guess you could say he gave me a refresher course on how to be young. Everything was such a big deal to him, every dinner out, every kiss, every sunrise and every sunset. If I turned up with a $5.99 bouquet of daisies I‘d snagged for half price at the grocery because their petals were starting to drop, he acted like I’d brought him two dozen perfect roses, and when I held his hand at the movies or called him sweetheart, his smile lit up my world.
He was like a kid at Christmas every day of his life, tearing through experiences like presents under the tree, jumping out of his skin excited to find out what was inside each box. In those early days, I wasn’t sure I had the stamina for it, to live in the shadow of someone who seemed to spend every second of his life in a full-speed-ahead rush. It took a lot of time and a major attitude adjustment for me to stop lurking in the shadows, to just close my eyes and hold on tight as he ripped open one box after another, taking me on what turned out to be the ride of my life.
Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? But Timmy balanced all that brain-rattling enthusiasm with the gift of silence, the capacity for peace. No matter how worked up I got, no matter how freaked out and frustrated and bouncing-off-the-walls infuriated the world made me, all it took was a few minutes with Timmy for all that negative shit to go by the wayside. He’d just sit there quietly, giving me my space and letting me rant, knowing with that spooky sixth sense of his when to ask a question and when to just keep quiet and let me yell. Then he’d reach out at exactly the right moment and reel me in, softening whatever blows life and the job and my own fucked up psyche had dished out with the lightest of touches. And once the touching started, I didn’t want it to stop.
Timmy probably had a higher tolerance for touching than anyone on the planet -- not that I’m complaining. It just took some getting used to. Nobody in my family was much of a hugger or kisser, and since Kyle, I’d avoided all physical signs of affection like the plague. Even when I was out there whoring around, I’d always gone out of my way to keep contact to a minimum. If it wasn’t covered in latex, I didn’t touch it, let alone suck it or screw it. I kept my hands and my tongue to myself, and I let the guys I picked up know I expected them to do the same. I didn’t pet, I didn’t caress. Hell, I didn’t even kiss. So when Timmy blew into my life like the whirlwind he was, you could say I smelled change on the breeze.
After the initial shock of dating a human octopus wore off, I learned to enjoy living my life more or less velcroed to another human being. Enjoy? Hell, I came to depend on it, to crave it like I craved chili in football season, to need the feel of him next to me the way he seemed to need the feel of me. I’d become touch-deprived, see, without even realizing it. And from the first time he held me tight all night long without letting go even once, I knew I had some serious catching up to do.
I’d slept with a lot of guys in my time, but I’d never actually slept with them, you know? I thought it would be hard, at first, sharing a bed night after night with another man, that it would be awkward and suffocating, that I’d be too uncomfortable to sleep, worrying that I’d disturb him or that he’d disturb me. Turns out spending the night tied into a knot with Timothy Callahan was the most natural thing in the world.
From the time we both worked up the nerve to say our first I-love-yous, we hardly ever spent a night apart. In those early days, I tried to stay away when I was working late, not because I didn’t want to be with him, because I did. He was becoming as necessary to me as oxygen, and I couldn’t breathe if he was out of my sight for long. But my schedule was erratic, my sleep patterns the next best thing to nonexistent, and he had to be at work at the ass-crack of dawn. Anything less than a full eight hours of shuteye left him bleary-eyed and bitchy, or worse, triggered a migraine. But he was also a worrier, and I knew without him having to spell it out for me that he didn’t sleep worth a damn until he was sure I was in for the night, that I was safe. Calling was a pain in the ass. It jarred him awake if he’d managed to doze off, and trying to make conversation at three a.m. when we were both sleep-deprived and pissy didn’t exactly lead to us whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.
So what the hell. I just started going over to his place as a matter of course, letting myself in as quietly as I could, shedding my shoes by the door and dropping my gun on the couch, undressing in the dark, then slipping under the covers and zeroing in on him like a heat-seeking missile, drawn unerringly to a warmth that went way beyond the physical. A lot of those nights, I came in frozen to the bone from sitting in the car for hours on end with no heat, radiating more cold than a block of dry ice. A guy with any sense of self-preservation would have gotten as far away from me as bed space allowed. Instead, the second I hit the sheets, he always rolled over, awake or not, and draped himself over me like a friendly blanket, deliberately covering my cold feet with his warm ones and guiding my hands up under his pajama top so they could defrost against his belly or his sides.
We always fell asleep in a tangle, Timmy and me, but sometimes we’d shift during the night. I’d wake up, panicky and confused, because I couldn’t feel the weight of his arm around my waist or the moist heat of his breath against my face. Even if I could hear those hilarious little baby snores of his, even if it was getting light out and I could see him lying right there just a few inches away, I’d have to bridge that gap between us and lay a hand over his chest, gauging its steady rise and fall as I reassured myself that he was real and alive and most of all, mine.
“I’m here,” he’d mumble, catching my hand and pulling me close, anchoring me to the spot with a hairy leg thrown across my thighs. “It’s okay, baby. I‘m still here.” Five seconds later, he’d be out like a light, and I’d lie there just holding him, smiling indulgently as he drooled onto my collarbone, and wonder how I ever got to be so goddamned lucky.
As the weeks went by, I gradually relaxed and found I was sleeping, really sleeping, for the first time since Kuwait, and I was doing it without having to down a fifth of Maker’s to get there. In spite of my growing addiction to Tim’s kick-ass martinis, I was drinking less and thinking a hell of a lot more clearly, actually giving a damn about my job and at odd moments when I least expected it, beginning to wonder if there might just be such a thing as happily-ever-after after all. I met his mother, Marion, when she drove up for lunch, made non-committal small talk with his father, the infamous and elusive Republican congressman, before handing the phone over to Timmy. Timmy casually mentioned the possibility of a family dinner, or maybe a weekend spent at his grandmother’s estate. I casually agreed that it would be nice. We looked at each other and smiled, knowing there was nothing casual about it.
We never had the big discussion about exclusivity, never made a big hairy deal out of defining the perimeters of our relationship or discussing that huge bugaboo in the gay community, whether or not to be monogamous. We just were. From that first dance in the moonlight, the only person I wanted touching me was Timmy, and I sure as hell couldn’t tolerate anyone else putting the moves on him. A time or two at the club, I almost got us tossed out for roughing up guys I’d tricked with in the past, first knocking their hands away and then slamming them into the wall when they tried to initiate an encore. And God help the guy who laid a finger on Timmy.
One night, he excused himself to use the men’s room and was gone so long I started to worry. I found him wedged between a urinal and the stall, cornered and obviously freaked out, trying to fight off some cracked-out asshole twice his size who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Size ratio be damned, I lit into the big bastard and would have pounded him into hamburger if Timmy hadn’t jumped into the mix and pulled me off of him with surprising strength.
“Let it go, Donald! I just want to get out of here!” he said over and over until I finally gave in and let him drag me away. Once we were in the car, he told me, his voice shaking, that the guy had been packing a knife. I literally saw red. Timmy’s a lover, not a fighter, but between you and me, he’s a helluva lot tougher than he looks. Still, it took everything he had to keep me pinned to the seat as he alternately reasoned with, threatened and begged me not to charge back in there and finish what I started.
“It’s not worth getting cut up or worse,” he said. “I couldn’t live with myself if something awful happened to you because of me. For God’s sake, Donald, just let this go. Enough is enough.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,“ I told him, forcing myself to sound more rational than I felt. He’d never seen me lose it like that before, and I think it scared him worse than being trapped and manhandled in the john. Hearing that degree of fear in his voice brought me back to my senses a little. “I want to die in your arms someday, sweetheart, but not tonight. You can let go now. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
The whole thing ate at me, though, and the more I thought about it, the madder I got. Before the next day was done, I’d found out who the guy was and where he lived, and had done enough research to know there were a couple of warrants floating around out there with his name on them -- something about forced entry and assault with a deadly weapon, if I’m remembering correctly, plus one that was drug-related. A whisper in the right ear had him arrested by nightfall and later extradited to Des Moines, of all the ungodly places. Last thing I heard, he was serving a stint in Anamosa, where I’m sure he learned exactly what forced entry was all about.
It was all neat, clean, bloodless. But if it had gotten bloody, that would have been okay with me, too. You don’t threaten Timmy -- my beautiful, kind-hearted Timmy -- with a knife and get away with it. Not if I have anything to say about it.
People say I see Timmy through rose-colored glasses, but I don’t think that’s true. I know he has his faults. He’s a pathological neat freak, and when he goes into his nit-picking mode, it can just about drive me nuts if I let it. He’s also high-strung and a little bit of a hypochondriac, and he has an annoying obsession with Tuvan throat singers that I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. But why sweat the small stuff? Yeah, he can pile on the sarcasm when he gets in the mood, and God only knows he’s the most stubborn human being on the planet. But that’s all piddly shit when you weigh it against what a genuinely warm and accepting person he is. Too accepting, sometimes.
Tuvan throat singers aside, the one thing I‘d change about Timmy if I could would be the fact that he lets people walk all over him. I mean he‘s an incredibly intelligent guy, but he‘s carrying around a major deficit in the street smarts department. He takes everybody he meets at face value, always believing the best of them until something happens to prove him wrong. When that happens, it disappoints him too much, hurts him on such a deep level it drives me insane, makes me want to yell at him, “What did you expect, trusting an asshole like that?” and at the same time, makes me want to run out there and pound the shit out of the sorry piece of pond scum who let him down. I did the yelling thing only once, and the expression on his face shut me up immediately, sent me barreling into his arms to beg forgiveness for being such a self-righteous little shit and making him feel worse instead of better. As for the pounding part, let’s just say that most of his friends and acquaintances learned to treat him right, if not out of affection for him, out of fear of me. I know I earned my rep as a snarling guard dog early on, and I can’t say I put much effort into living that image down. It didn’t exactly add to my popularity, but it saved a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on my baby‘s heart, and that was just fine with me.
Timothy and I are as different as night and day -- always have been and always will be. I’m a hyper-defensive pessimist with anger issues and a naturally suspicious nature. He’s a freaking gay Pollyanna who would give youthe shirt off his back, then stand there with his mouth hanging open when you stole his pants and shoes as well. But you know what? I think that’s the reason we work together as well as we do. He’s got my back and I’ve got his. We watch out for each other, balance each other out. If he stumbles, he knows I’m gonna be right there to catch him, and that goes both ways. I take care of him, and he takes care of me.
In the three years I’d been living in my shithole apartment on the wrong end of town, my cheap-ass landlord had never gotten around to replacing the broken down washer and dryer in the laundry room with a set that actually worked. So once a month or so, whether I wanted to or not, I ended up wasting a rare Saturday morning off or a Sunday afternoon sitting in the coin laundry down the block, waiting for the industrial-size washer to take the crunch out of my dirty socks and turn them back to a shade vaguely resembling white. I hated it, of course, hated the inconvenience, the expense, the tediousness of it all. But what the hell? It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
Obviously, all that changed when I hooked up with Timmy. He usually had weekends off, so I made it my business to have them off, too, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on wasting them sitting in a cracked plastic chair beside some chick in curlers and a muumuu, listening to her squawk at her kids as they knocked over detergent while the dryers rattled and hummed. I wanted to be where Timmy was, even if that was just at home re-organizing his pantry for the third time in a month or clicking away on his laptop, editing a speech for his boss. I wanted to watch him, to hear his voice or the soft rustle of clothes as he moved around his apartment, to smell his cologne, to taste his smile when he caught me staring at him and grinned, pulling me in for a soft kiss. Most of all, I wanted to touch him, to feel him touching me, to lose myself in a horny rush as we tumbled to the couch, the floor, the bed in a tangle, grunting and grappling and suddenly frantic, marking our territory, staking our claim, each of us growling the same words over and over, time after time, until they became ritual.
Mine. You’re mine.
So much for weekends at the laundromat.
I’ve always been a low-maintenance kind of guy, domestically speaking. If I ran out of clean socks or shorts, I’d just swing by Wal-Mart for another six-pack and go on with my life. But it wasn’t long before I started running out of other stuff as well. Since Timmy’s apartment was bigger than mine and a lot nicer, we spent all our nights there, snuggled between his 600 thread count sheets and hand-stitched eiderdown comforter, snug as two bugs in that proverbial rug. Meanwhile, my place became nothing more than a drop-off point, a pit stop I hit every day or two to change or throw together an extra set of clothes for the next day.
One Friday night after I’d picked Timmy up at the office, we stopped there on the way out to eat so I could grab a quick shower and a clean shirt. The only problem was, there wasn’t a clean shirt to grab. Or clean jeans, or clean anything else, for that matter. One tattered yellow tee hung from a bent wire hanger, the faded smiley face and fragmented lettering on the front of it reminding me that Shit Happens! It happens, all right. But why does it always have to happen when your anal-retentive boyfriend is standing behind you, making disapproving clicking noises with his tongue?
“Donald,” Timmy began.
“Guess I’m spending tomorrow morning doing laundry,” I said, attempting to slam the closet door shut and spin to face him in one smooth motion. But he caught the door before it could close and held it in place, pinning me to the spot as well with a disapproving glare.
“Donald.“ This time, the name was nothing more than an aggrieved sigh.
If you can’t impress ‘em, B.S. ‘em. I tried my best ingratiating smile. “Looks like we’re having a romantic dinner in tonight,“ I said, shooting for a delivery that was charming, upbeat, and oh-so-sincere. As the seconds ticked by, I got the hint that it had fallen flat. “Of course, if your heart’s set on an evening out, I can always wear my work clothes to the restaurant.“
Timmy eyed the tan button-down I’d tossed over a chair on my way to the shower. It was sweat-soaked and missing two buttons, and a rusty smear spread across one threadbare cuff. Not my blood, for a change, I thought with a certain vague pride, rubbing the skinned knuckles of my right hand. That’ll teach those scumbags to mess around with Donald Stra….
“I smelled your work clothes for long enough on the ride over,” Timmy said firmly. “We need to do something about this mess now. This building has a laundry room on each floor, doesn’t it? We can order Thai and eat between loads.”
“The machines don’t work,” I said, surreptitiously trying to shove a crumpled pair of jeans under the bed with my foot. “I’ll have to haul a couple of loads down to the Wash’N’Wear in the morning.“
“Donald, you promised we’d go that interactive art exhibition at the Institute in the morning. This is the final weekend for it, and you’ve managed to wriggle out of going twice already. Here,” he said, pulling the Shit Happens! shirt off its hanger and shoving it into my arms. “We’re going to gather up as much of this…this…” he stalled out, gesturing at the jeans I hadn’t quite managed to hide, the trail of toxic socks and boxers littering the floor, the mound of discarded shirts and pants and the occasional stained tie in the far corner. “We’re going to pull together as much of this…landfill…as we can carry and take it over to my place. Honestly,” he breathed, dropping to his hands and knees to reach under the bed, pulling out jeans and more yellowed socks and God only knows what else, taking the time to scowl in disgust at each item as he threw it into a pile. “I don’t see how anyone can live like this.”
I wasn’t living, I wanted to tell him. Not before I met you. I hadn’t been since the army, since Kyle. But I just pulled the shirt over my head and knelt on the floor beside him.
“Honestly,“ he said again. Then he caught sight of my face. His expression went soft and warm the way it does when I try to make him breakfast and incinerate the toast, or when I get in his way while he’s bustling around, being all industrious and productive, just because I’m a needy bastard and don’t like it when all his attention’s on something other than me. He smiled then, shaking his head a little and giving me a look that said I might be a fuck-up, but I was his fuck-up, and he loved me like crazy and wouldn’t have it any other way. His lips brushed mine. “Honestly,“ he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine for a just a moment before going back to work.
Scared he’d throw his back out with all the bending and stretching, I dropped to my belly and crawled under the bed to snag a couple more pairs of stale boxers and handed them to him, laughing a little. Spelunking under my bed followed by a couple of hours of washing clothes as we scarfed down take-out wasn’t exactly the romantic evening out I’d planned for us, but if he was willing to put up with it, who was I to argue?
We did three loads of laundry that night. Extra space magically appeared in Timmy’s overstuffed closet, so instead of piling my clean stuff into a basket, he put my shirts and pants on plastic hangers “so they can air out and avoid wrinkling,“ while my socks and shorts and wife beaters found their way into a drawer that he “never really used anyway.“
None of it ever saw the inside of my apartment again.
We returned to the scene of the crime a few days later, laundry basket in hand, and gathered another load for the wash. We rounded up a few other things as well -- a small stack of tapes we thought we might watch, a couple of books so I’d have something to read while he was working on the computer, a bag of apples from the fridge since they’d just go bad sitting there. Back at his place, my motley crew of tee shirts and sweats and no-name jeans declared squatter’s rights in his limited closet space, keeping company with all those high-end suits and silk ties. My bargain bin VHS tapes mingled with his meticulously categorized and alphabetized DVDs in the entertainment center, and my dog-eared paperbacks lay beside his signed hardcovers on the nightstand. After a while, you couldn’t tell where his stuff ended and mine began, which was okay with me. That’s pretty much how I felt about our lives.
As time went on, more and more of my things made that one way trip across town, until that seedy little furnished apartment was as bare as it had been on the day I’d moved in, stripped down to the bed and couch that had come with the place, the scratched television and VCR I needed to return to the rental store, a box of miscellaneous junk I’d decided to donate to Goodwill, and a couple of bags of trash ready for the dumpster. One night near the end of April, Timmy was going through the kitchen cabinets, looking for anything perishable that needed to be tossed. He turned to me, an unopened bottle of Maker’s Mark in his hand, and said, “Except for a few cans of ravioli and some baked beans, it looks like the cupboard’s bare. This is all you have left.”
“Hey, you found my emergency stash! I was looking for that during the ice storm, planning on drinking myself into a coma, I guess. But then you knocked on my door and I forgot all about it.”
“As I recall, I made you forget about everything. For days.”
“Best weekend of my life,” I said, sealing the trash bags with a twist tie and hefting them over my shoulder, ready to haul them downstairs. “Kinda weird, isn’t it? We haven’t spent a night here since.”
“No,” he said quietly, “no we haven’t.” From the way he was looking at me, I knew what was coming. I mean, come on, I’d known for a while where all this was heading, and I was more than ready for it. But we hadn’t talked about it -- we’d been pretty damned careful not to talk about it, if you wanna know the truth -- and knowing he was about to put it into words, to formalize it and make it real, scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
“Next Tuesday’s the first of the month,” he began, choosing his words carefully.
I nodded. Then what the hell, I decided to suck it up and take the plunge. “Rent’ll be due,” I said slowly.
“It seems a shame to waste money on that, since you’re never here anymore.” He watched me expectantly as I sweated bullets over the appropriate reply. When I didn’t answer right away, he squared his shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. “Maybe it’s time for you to think about turning in your key.” He hesitated, suddenly embarrassed, his cheeks coloring. “Of course, if you feel you need the space….”
“All I need is this,” I said, dropping the damned trash bags so I could burrow into his arms, hugging him fiercely. I heard a sigh of relief, felt him let go of the tension he’d been carrying around with him for God knows how long as he leaned into me, hanging on tight. We stood that way for a long time, not even kissing, just squeezing each other til our arms ached, holding on like we were trying to force our way into each other‘s skins through sheer pressure alone.
“I wasn‘t sure you‘d say yes,” he said at last.
“I may be crazy, honey, but I‘m not stupid. You’ve got to let me pull my own weight, though. We’re gonna split the rent at your place, and I’m chipping in on the utility bill, groceries, whatever. I know you make a helluva lot more than I do, but this has to be an equal partnership. It can‘t be all one-sided.”
“Our place,” he said, looking so goddamned happy it made my chest flutter. “We’ll split the rent at our place.”
“I’ve never done this before, you know.”
“Lived with someone? Neither have I. But we‘re spending all our time together anyway. Sharing expenses seems like the prudent thing to do.”
I smiled at his pet word. Everything with him was prudent this or prudent that, especially when he was in lecture mode, reminding me to pay a bill on time or to check the date on the O.J. before swigging it straight out of the carton. But making a life with Timmy? That was as close to prudent as I’d ever come. “Not just that. Done the plural pronoun thing, I mean. We, us, our….”
“Get used to it,” he said, giving me a smacking kiss before letting go and reaching for an empty box. “Why don’t you take out the trash while I get these canned goods ready to go to the food bank, then we can gather up the rest of this stuff and drop the key off on the way out. Oh, and this,” he said, nodding toward the bottle of Maker’s he’d left sitting on the counter. “You don’t want to forget this.”
I touched the red wax seal, remembering again that icy night back in February when I’d tried to drink myself into oblivion, scared to death of handing my heart over to Timmy but even more afraid of facing all the empty years ahead if I cut him loose. It seemed part of a distant past, one I didn’t particularly care to revisit.
“Leave it,“ I said. “The super can have it, or the next guy who’s unlucky enough to move into this dump. We’ve got enough to carry, and I don‘t need it anymore.” I looked up at him and damned if he wasn’t giving me that look again, that love-you-like-crazy look. My throat suddenly got so hot and tight I had to clear it and get busy with the trash bags, rechecking their ties and rustling them around to keep everything I was feeling from spilling out.
He was staring at me hard by then, a worry line forming between his eyebrows. “You sure?“ he asked, reaching out to touch my cheek.
I turned my head so I could kiss his palm, leaned my face into his smooth, warm hand. “I’m sure,“ I said, hearing the huskiness in my voice but no longer trying to hide it because hell, this was Timmy, and he’d cope. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
Temperance
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 7650 words
I don’t need to fight
To prove I’m right
I don’t need to be forgiven
~~ “Baba O’Riley” by The Who
Nobody’s ever going to accuse me of being a patient man.
If I think it, I act on it. That’s just who I am. And sometimes I bypass the thinking part and go straight ahead with the acting. I admit this. But Timmy’s the dead opposite. He sweats the details. Even about piddly shit, stuff that doesn’t even matter. Some days I deal with it okay. And some days it just fucking drives me crazy.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed in sandals, shorts, and a clean white tee, watching the love of my life try on the third shirt in as many minutes. This one was a pale pink polo with a navy stripe, and it had one of those little animals the designers sew on the front so everybody can tell who shops at famous places and who cruises the aisles at your friendly, hometown Wal-Mart. Sweat rolled down my neck. Our A/C was on the fritz, and the super said nobody could take a look at until the next day since it was a holiday and all. Between the heat and all the waiting, I was getting a killer headache.
“Honey, you do realize this is the Fourth of July at your grandma’s, right? Not an audience with the Queen of England.”
“You’ve never met my grandmother.” Timmy turned to smile at me, and my impatience flew out the window. Well, most of it, anyway. The shirt was still up for grabs, but at least he’d ditched the cream-colored linen pants he’d started with and gone with jeans instead. The straight-cut denim hugged that world-class ass of his and showcased his long swimmer’s legs to perfection. He looked good enough to eat. As a matter of fact….
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, recognizing that look in my eye and backing away before I had the chance to pounce. Laughing, I shot off the bed and cornered him between the dresser and the bathroom door. I leaned against him just hard enough to keep him in place without wrinkling anything -- I did value my life, after all -- and leisurely lapped the tip of his nose and both of his cheeks with my tongue.
“You’re insane,” he said as my hands cupped his ass and gave each tight, perfectly round cheek a friendly squeeze. But he was laughing, too, and I couldn’t help noticing that he wasn’t exactly struggling to get away. We spent the next few minutes making out with enough enthusiasm to bump the heat in the room up another notch, and I was beginning to think we might just skip the family thing and set off a few fireworks of our own instead. But when I came up for air, he pushed me away, gasping. “All right, one of us has to show some restraint here. If you don’t cut it out, we’re not going to make it to Grandmother’s Fourth of July dinner before July fifth!”
“Or July sixth,” I said, trying to nail him with another kiss. “Or July seventh, or July eighth….”
The man’s slipperier than Harry Fucking Houdini when he wants to be. He gave me a firm shove and wriggled away, putting some distance between us. “Enough! If we don’t get on the road in the next five minutes, we’re going to be late.”
“Whose fault is that?” I asked, lugging the overnight bag we were sharing off the bed and tucking his shaving kit under my arm. The plan was to spend the night at his grandmother‘s, have brunch with the folks, and take our sweet time getting home the next day. Timmy, being Timmy, had packed enough crap to see us through a week in the Hamptons, and the suitcase weighed a ton. “I’ve been ready for an hour. You’re the one….”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, peering into the mirror again as he retucked the shirttail I’d managed to pull loose from the waist of his jeans and smoothed down his hair. He pulled off his glasses and held them up to the light, squinting at them in disapproval, then pulled out a lint-free cloth and polished them before settling them back on his nose again. Before I had a chance to slink away, he rearranged my hair, too. “I’m a little nervous about this,” he said, working my short, blond spikes until they lived up to his vision of carefully tousled perfection. “This is the first time I’ve taken anyone home to meet the folks since Guy Tomlinson asked me to the senior prom, and I just want it to go well, you know? This is important to me. You’re important to me.”
“You’re important to me, too,” I said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll charm their socks off. Your mom loves me already, and Granny sounds like a real peach. We‘ll get along just fine.”
“I know you will. It’s my father I’m worried about. I just wish I didn’t have to break my news to him today.”
“You’re changing jobs, honey, not turning communist or joining a cult. How bad can it be?”
“You don’t know my father,” he said.
The drive down to Poughkeepsie was nice, even if the A/C in my car wasn’t working any better than the unit in our apartment. I was driving an ‘86
Chevette back then, silver trimmed with black in between patches of primer, and it didn’t exactly give us the smoothest ride on the road. The car was a piece of crap, but Timmy was nice about it and hardly ever complained, even when his friends spotted me hauling him around and ragged him about it. We rode with the windows down, laughing and talking and fighting over radio stations, his hand tucked into mine the whole way. It was corny and sweet and fun, and it gave me a sense of something I hadn’t had in my life for years, if ever.
All that changed when we pulled into his grandmother’s tree-lined drive. “Shit, Timmy,” I said as I rolled to a stop in front of the biggest damned house I’d ever seen, all brick and ivy and tall, white columns. It was a far cry from my mom’s A-frame back in Warren, I can tell you that much. This was Timmy’s world, I’d known that going in. But me? Jesus. I was gonna look like some kind of poor relation in my khaki shorts and four-dollar Hanes tee. I shopped at Wal-Mart, and it showed.
“It’s just a house, Donald.” Timmy lowered the sun visor, ignoring the collection of yellowing maps and restaurant receipts that rained onto his lap when he flipped the mirror open and started checking his hair for wind damage. When he was done, he pulled me in for a quick kiss. “Come on, handsome. It’s time to face the firing squad.” He reached for the door handle, but in a sudden surge of pure panic I caught his hand and pulled it into my lap, holding it hostage between both of my own.
“I just want this…I just want to be….”
“It will be,” he said quietly. “You are.”
“I’m way out of my league here, Timmy. You know what I come from, and it’s nothing like….” I waved my hand, indicating the house, the grounds, all of it. “I’m not….”
“Donald, when have I ever cared about what you aren’t? It’s who you are that matters to me. I love you,“ he said, punctuating the words with another kiss. “My mother loves you. I don’t see how my grandmother could possibly help falling in love with you, too.“
I noticed he didn’t bring his father into the mix but decided not to press the point.
Timmy’s mother met us at the door, throwing her arms around both of us like she hadn’t seen us in months, when she’d just driven up for lunch the Saturday before. “Timothy! Donald! It’s so nice to see you!” she said as we hugged her back and took turns giving her pecks on the cheek.
“Good to see you, too, Marion,” I said. As always, I was kinda floored by all the enthusiasm she threw my way, by the way she really seemed to like me and treated me like family. I mean, I knew she was the wife of a public figure and all, and that meant she was pretty much required to be outgoing and ultra-polite. But this wasn’t politeness, it was the real deal, a mom acting like a mom to both her kids, not just the one she happened to give birth to. Whatever it was Timmy saw in me, she obviously saw, too.
“Where’s Dad?” Timmy asked. “He isn’t hiding in the study with the phone and his laptop, is he?
“No, James has done a reasonably good job of setting work aside for once. He spent most of the day playing golf with Tom Nelson, so he’s in the shower, trying to cool off.”
“He lost,” Timmy said. It wasn’t a question.
“Of course he did.”
“I’ll make the martinis,“ he said in a tone as dry as his drink of choice. He held the door for us, letting Marion go first and me after since I was pretty much loaded down with our stuff. One look at the foyer and I stopped dead in my tracks. I felt like I’d wandered onto the set of one of those old black and white movies Timmy’s so crazy about. I took in polished wood and marble, vaulted ceilings and a wide, curving staircase. Timmy and his mom gave me a minute to just stand there and get my bearings.
“Whoa.” It was all I could think of to say.
“You wouldn’t believe how intimidated I was the first time James brought me here,” Marion told me. “My father was a hardworking Dubliner whose parents brought him over on the boat when he was twelve. He made his fortune through sweat and pure Irish thick-headedness, and he was very frugal with everything he earned. Both he and my mother believed in spending money on education and investing everything else. They lived very simply. So imagine the culture shock when I met Elizabeth for the first time!”
“Grandmother doesn’t live simply,” Timmy said, grinning.
“So I see.” I couldn’t help sneaking another peek up the staircase, half-expecting to see Bette Davis gliding down in an evening gown and mink stole at any moment.
“Elizabeth lives with zest,” Marion said. “That’s why I love her. She enjoys what she has and doesn’t pretend otherwise. She should be coming down soon,” she said, catching my glance. “She told me she was going to slip into something festive.”
“I can only imagine,” Timmy said, and they both laughed.
Alone in the guestroom, we unpacked, or at least Timmy did, transferring our carefully folded jeans and shirts onto hangers as he inspected each item for wrinkles. I’d plopped down on the bed to watch him, loving the way he moved through space, the way he was put together, the fact that his hair looked every bit as soft and thick as it felt. The three of us had shared a round of his signature martinis, dry as hell and just a little bit dirty, before Marion showed us to our room, so between that familiar vodka-fueled rush and Marion’s warm welcome, I was starting to relax. I couldn’t help wishing I could say the hell with it all and just jump him right then and there, that I could drag him onto that king-sized bed and make love to him for the next hour, the next day, the next week. Martini or not, he was on edge and doing a lousy job of hiding it, and I knew nothing would work the tension out of his system like a few rounds of high-octane sex with me. But everybody was probably downstairs waiting for us by then, and he was counting on me to make a reasonably good impression. The fun and games would just have to wait til later.
After another round of hair smoothing and clothes straightening, Timmy led me down to what he called the drawing room, a red and gold covered cavern that was bigger than my old apartment. As we walked in, a man I would have recognized anywhere as Timmy‘s father rose from the couch, slipping his hands into the pockets of his suit pants in a gesture so Timmylike it just about took my breath away. Then he ruined it by opening his mouth.
“So you made it down at last!” he said with so much fake heartiness it set my teeth on edge. Timmy’s hands slid into his pockets, too, and they both just stood there like that, sizing each other up from opposite ends of a bridge someone had obviously set fire to years ago.
Marion touched her husband‘s arm. “Don, I’d like you to meet my husband, James. James, this is Donald Strachey.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you, sir,” I said, extending my hand. He didn’t hesitate, not even for a second, but the expression on his face told me everything I needed to know about where things stood. His hand closed on mine firmly if not particularly warmly as he welcomed me to his mother’s home. He sounded sincere enough. Who knows, maybe he even thought he meant it. But eyes don’t lie, not even a politician’s, especially not to a guy who makes his living searching for hidden truths. What I saw there had my hackles rising and every protective instinct in me on red alert. When his hand finally released mine and slid back into his pocket, I edged a little closer to Timmy.
“A little casual tonight, aren’t you, sport?” The question was directed at Timmy, but we both knew exactly who he meant.
“It’s the Fourth of July, Dad, not an audience with the Queen of England,” Timmy said, turning his head just enough to send a wink my way without the old boy catching wind of it. I smiled at him, feeling the knot that had been forming in the pit of my stomach start to dissolve. I would have liked to have winked back, or better yet, to have tangled my fingers with his and given them a reassuring squeeze. But James was standing right there, and the last thing I wanted to do was piss him off and maybe embarrass Timmy.
“This might not be England, but who says I’m not a queen?”
The dress standing in the doorway was such a showstopper it took me a good ten seconds to get past it and see the woman inside. Sequins and a lot of them on a bright red evening gown with a neckline so low and a hemline split so high they damned near met in the middle. It was topped off with a sparkly blue and white scarf with so many bangles and beads she looked like a drag club version of the American flag.
“Grandmother!” Timmy said, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing so tight you could almost hear her squeak. “I’ve missed you so much! I have someone I want you to meet. Donald,” he said, “this is my grandmother, Elizabeth Callahan.”
“So you’re the handsome detective my favorite grandson is so head over heels over,” she said, giving me the once over.
“And you’re the famous southern belle he keeps talking about.” I said, grinning like a fool because hell, he’d told his grandmother he was head over heels over me.
“Former southern belle, I’m afraid. And I suspect ‘infamous’ is more to the point. I’m Liz. If you call me anything else and it doesn’t qualify as pillow talk, I won’t answer. I might even sing “The Star Spangled Banner “to drown you out, and I detest that song. You probably do, too.“ She tottered across to her baby grand on four-inch red stilettos, hauling Timmy and me right along with her. “What’s your pleasure? Show tunes, no doubt? A little Andrew Lloyd Webber?”
Timmy groaned as her hands skated across the ivories, playing snatches of something that sounded vaguely familiar. “That’s a stereotype, Grandmother. Donald’s hardly the Phantom type.”
“Timmy likes the Broadway stuff,” I told her. “I’m more into classic rock and metal.”
“A little Pink Floyd, then? Or would you prefer The Who?” she asked, surprising the hell out of me with the first 30 seconds or so of “Baba O’Riley.”
“How come you never told me your grandma was a rocker?” I asked Timmy.
“What fun would life be without a few surprises along the way?” she asked, settling on a tufted bench with her back to the piano. “If you play your cards right, I might play for you later. I take requests, so think of something interesting. Jazz, blues, swing, rock. It’s all part of my repertoire.”
“Timmy’d told me you were a classically trained pianist, so I assumed….”
“That I was limited to Mozart, Schubert and the like? I’m surprised he didn’t also mention the fact that I’m something of a renegade.”
“I think that came up in the conversation, too,” I said, grinning.
“My parents took out a second mortgage on their house to put me through school, but halfway through my fourth year, I dropped out on a whim and began performing with a jazz ensemble in Atlanta. Needless to say, my parents were scandalized. But one night after a performance, I received a dozen roses and an invitation to a late supper from a certain Mr. Callahan, who was in town on business and happened to catch the show.”
“Grandfather swept her off her feet,” Timmy said.
“Or I swept him off his. I’ve never been sure which way it worked. But we were married a month later, and my parents were kind enough to forgive my youthful impetuousness when they realized I’d married up.”
“What about his parents?” I had to ask.
“They were horrified, of course. They should have considered themselves lucky that their son ended up with a catch like me. You wouldn’t know it now, but I was rather easy on the eye when I was a girl.”
I believed it. Once my eyes had adjusted to the blinding glare of the dress, I could tell she’d been a real beauty back in the day. Timmy‘d told me she was on the high side of eighty, but if the way she was holding up was any indication, he was going to be turning more heads than mine for a lot of years to come. The congressman looked pretty good for his age, too, just going a little soft around the middle the way a lot of college athletes do when they quit working out, but his suit hid most of it. I remembered Timmy saying his father had been the big football hero in high school, but he’d spent all his time at Notre Dame warming the bench. He’d been a real asshole to Timmy because he’d “forsaken a real man’s game,“ and joined the swim team instead, but I woulda bet my money on Timmy having the last laugh. He still loved the water and hit the lap pool at the gym several times a week. I doubted if James had gone one-on-one with a pigskin since Marilyn sang “Happy Birthday” to JFK, and all that unused muscle was slowly turning to fat.
“T.J, why don’t you mix the martinis while I get better acquainted with this handsome young man?” Liz said, snagging my elbow and tugging me down beside her. The piano bench had a one-butt capacity and that was about it, but Liz was tiny, so I managed to perch on the corner without missing it completely and landing on the floor. “It’s such a shame he’s wasting his life with politics,” she whispered, hooking her arm through mine and scooting over to give me more room. “Honestly, the bartender that boy could have made!”
“T.J?” I asked, turning to grin at my partner.
Behind the bar, Timmy poured vodka into a shaker and reached for the vermouth. “Grandmother hates my name,” he said. “She says it sounds like something you’d call a cat.”
“That’s because his mother named him after a cat,” James grumphed. “Not even a real cat, I might add. A stuffed one. Without consulting me before she filled out the information for the birth certificate, I might add.”
Marion seated herself on the couch and tucked a cushion behind the small of her back. “It’s difficult to consult with a man who can’t seem to work the birth of his first child into his schedule, dear. I was forced to assume I was on my own, so I proceeded accordingly.”
“You knew I was obligated to be on the road that weekend. For God’s sake, Marion, it was an election year! And I still showed you all the support time and distance allowed.”
“He sent me a telegram,” Marion said. “It consisted of one line: I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor.”
“He always did have a knack for euphemisms,“ Liz said, deadpan. We all turned to stare at her. Then Timmy cracked up, taking Marion and me along for the ride. Rounding the bar, he walked over to give Liz another hug, laughing so hard he was nearly choking. “I’ve missed you so much, Grandmother,” he said once he could breathe again. “Why don’t you turn this place over to Mom and Dad the way you’ve always said you would and come live in Albany with Donald and me?”
“A ménage a trois is a bit much for me to handle at my age,” she said. “But you’d better watch your back, my dear. If you take your eyes off this lovely boy of yours for long, I might just convince him to marry me instead.”
“It would be an honor,” I told her.“But wait, I gotta know. Was he really named after a cat?”
“It was my favorite stuffed animal when I was a little girl,” Marion said, flashing that white, bright smile that reminded me so much of Timmy’s. “A yellow cat with no tail and a hat covered in flowers. My mother won him for me at a church picnic when I was three. I named him after my favorite uncle, Father Timothy O’Connell, who was the pastor at St. Mary’s for years. I loved the name then, and I still loved it a quarter of a century later when Timothy was born.”
“Marion, you knew I wanted to follow the family tradition and name him after me. James was my father’s name and my grandfather’s….”
“I was not going to have a child named James Patrick Callahan the Fourth! We’re not British aristocracy, for heaven’s sake. I gave in and used James as his middle name, so you’ll just have to be content with that. Besides, if you were so determined to follow family tradition, we could have named him after my father.”
“Hubert Aloysius Gallagher O’Connell,” Liz said dryly. “I think we were better off with the cat.”
Over dinner, the conversation turned to politics, of course. I concentrated on the food and did my best to tune it out. Liz’s idea of a Fourth of July picnic centered around filet mignon with all the trimmings served on heirloom china in a formal dining room decked out in flag colors, followed by dessert and drinks out on the veranda. To tell the truth, I’d never been entirely sure what a veranda was. Funny, but it pretty much just looked like a porch to me. Timmy and his dad got into a long debate over the merits of House Bill Something-or-Other, both of them getting a little over-heated. But getting heated over politics was Timmy’s favorite indoor sport, and I assumed it was the same with his father, so I didn’t think that much about it.
Liz asked me to light some bamboo torches filled with citronella oil to keep the mosquitoes at bay, so I took care of that for her, then plopped down on the cushiest double-wide chaise lounge I‘d ever seen. When I was finally able to catch Timmy’s eye, I motioned for him to join me. He settled in without missing a beat and went right on dissecting some boring-assed proposal his father seemed to be madly in love with, so I followed the ladies’ lead and just quietly vegged out as we savored the sunset and some top-notch martinis.
After dark, the gardener and his son set off fireworks over the lake, which was a cool idea. All those colorful flashes of light reflecting in the water made a nice sight. I hadn’t had a chance to fool around with bottle rockets since I was a kid and was itching to run down to the dock and help them. But I was kicked back and comfortable right there with Timmy, holding his hand in spite of the evil eye his father was giving us, so I stayed put.
Once the show was over, Liz invited Phil the gardener up for a beer. He passed on the brew, reminding Liz that he didn’t drink. But his son, Ted, wanted one, so they hung out with us while he downed it. Ted was about eighteen and a looker, with wide, dark eyes and one of those mouths you knew was tailor-made for one thing and one thing only. He had my radar wailing like a fire siren the second I laid eyes on him, and the way he kept looking at us sitting on that lounge chair together pretty much sealed the deal. More at Timmy than at me, actually, with a little smile on that cocksucker’s mouth of his and a look in his eyes I didn’t like one bit.
It was starting to piss me off, if you wanna know the truth. Forgetting where I was and who I was trying to impress, I looked the little shit dead in the eye and caught Timmy in a majorly inappropriate lip-lock just to prove a point. Timmy’s eyes flew open in shock, the congressman made a noise like somebody trying to digest curried gunpowder, and Liz picked that moment to announce, “By the way, Don, Ted’s homosexual, too.”
“For the love of Christ, Mother! Do you have no boundaries at all?“ James roared as Ted The Teenaged Homosexual sprayed beer in a three-foot arc. Phil had to pound him on the back to keep him from choking, which served him right for checking out my guy, if you ask me. They said their goodnights soon after.
Everyone yawned and stretched and made noises about how late it was getting, but nobody seemed to be in any big rush to head inside. Liz’s cook, Katie, served a final round of drinks, and the conversation finally lightened up. Marion asked me about my job and seemed honest-to-God interested when I pulled a couple of funny stories about clients past out of the vaults, then she asked how the search for a bigger apartment was going. I told her it was going just fine, that we’d staked out a couple of places we were interested in, and that we were hoping to check out a few other possibilities over the weekend. This met with the approval of everyone but the congressman, who uttered dire warnings about the housing market, then asked point blank if we could afford the move.
“We’re fine, Dad,” Timmy said evenly. “I didn’t have a problem covering the bills when I was on my own, and now that Donald’s business is picking up, we have some extra padding. It’s time we upgraded.”
“I have to admit, I don’t understand the rush. A one bedroom apartment is no mansion, but what more do you need? After all, it’s not like you two have to worry about the pitter-patter of little feet.“
Timmy clamped down on my hand, sensing the exact moment when I started to prickle. “Converting a spare bedroom into work space would make life easier for both of us,” he said, the barest bit of an edge creeping into his voice. “That way we could spend more time home together instead of burning the midnight oil at separate offices. Besides, we’d love to be able to offer you and Mom a place to stay when you’re in town.”
“Still, a larger apartment is a huge financial responsibility. And if your current…arrangement…doesn’t work out…”
Hearing the old bastard blow off our relationship that way went straight through me. I was on my feet in a heartbeat, but Timmy caught me by the arm and jerked me around, that gentle touch of his suddenly turning to cold steel as his fingers gouged my bicep so hard I’d still have bruises there a week later.
“Let me handle this.” He said it softly enough, but in a tone that didn’t leave much room for argument. Then he turned on his father. “Donald and I don’t have an arrangement. We have a relationship. We have a life. What we are, we’re still going to be tomorrow and next month and next year. Someday we’ll be standing here celebrating our golden anniversary if the house hasn’t been sold off and we’re both still breathing. This isn’t a flash in the pan, Dad. It’s real, it’s permanent, and you will show us the same respect you’d show any other couple who’ve decided to make a life together.”
I looked at him in surprise. It was what I wanted, of course. And I’d had a pretty good idea it was what he wanted, too. But we’d never said so in so many words, never spelled it out the way he was doing right then, like it was all a done deal.
“Now wait just a minute here,” James said. “Haven’t I shown you and your…your….“
“Partner, Dad. Donald’s my life partner.”
“Haven’t I shown you and Donald respect? I think your mother and I have been more than accepting of a situation that’s nontraditional, to say the least. But you can‘t see into the future, and on one income at your current salary level….”
“He’s never going to be living on just one….” I began, but Timmy interrupted me with a voice so cold I could practically feel my eardrums frost over just from listening to it.
“My current salary level is about to change,” he said. “First thing Monday morning, I’m giving notice to Congressman Fletcher. I’ve accepted a position as chief aide to Dianne Glassman. She recruited me, Dad. Me, because she thinks I’m that good.”
James looked like he was about to stroke out at any minute. “Have you lost your mind? Morley Fletcher is an old friend of mine. He took you under his wing as a personal favor to me in spite of your…proclivities. He’s allowed you to head one of the finest political teams in the state. He’s treated you with nothing but generosity and respect!”
At the word “proclivities,” I tried to move forward, but Timmy kept me pinned to his side with that steely grip. “Fletcher treats me like a glorified office boy. Senator Glassman….”
“Senator Glassman is a flaming liberal! She’s spent every second of her public life fighting tooth and nail to overthrow everything that is good and decent about this country. She’s…she’s…”
“Say it, Dad. It’s not a dirty word. She’s a Democrat. And so am I.”
“You are not a Democrat!”
“Good God, James, political affiliation isn’t something you’re born with, like being white or male or right-handed or heterosexual,” Liz said. “It’s a belief, a choice. And it‘s one you can change anytime you like.”
“My father raised me to support the G.O.P….”
“And you continued to support it without any encouragement from me. I’ve voted the straight Democratic ticket since Truman was in office, and I’ll continue to do so until my dying day. You’ve made your choices and I’ve made mine. Now it’s time for T.J. to make his.”
The congressman’s eyes bulged, then locked on Timmy’s. “If you do this, you’ll be turning your back on everything I’ve done with my life. You’ll be turning your back on me.”
Timmy adjusted his glasses, his hand trembling from pure frustration. “This has nothing to do with you. This is about my life, my goals, my beliefs. You’re conservative. I understand that. But I’m not. I’m a gay man, Dad. I’m not ashamed of that. I’m tired of being part of a political franchise that thinks I should be. I’d like to have your understanding and your support…” he stalled out, his voice breaking. I slid my arm around him and he leaned against me for a moment, vibrating with tension, before pulling away and taking a step closer to his father. “I know this isn’t what you would have chosen for me. I don’t suppose anything about me is what you would have chosen. But I’m still your son, and I’d like to think you’d accept me as I am and stand behind me, no matter what. This job is a wonderful opportunity for me….”
“This job is a reckless mistake!”
“…and I’d like to do this with your support. But if I can’t have that, I will do it on my own.”
James glared at him, his lips white. “You’ve got it, sport. You’re on your own.” Then he turned on his heel and marched inside, jerking the door shut behind him.
Five minutes later, I was upstairs, shoving clothes back into our overnight bag. James was holed up in the study with a bottle of brandy, settling in for a nice, long wallow in self-righteousness, I guess. Marion and Liz had practically begged Timmy to stick to the original plan and sleep over, but after all the carnage out on the veranda, he said wasn’t up to spending the night under the same roof as his old man. I couldn’t say I blamed him. He’d given them each a hug and a kiss and quietly told them he loved them, then gone out to the car to calm down while I packed our stuff. Probably not the best call on his part, since I seemed to be doing such a lousy job of it.
“I wish you two would stay the night,” Marion said, watching me try to fold Timmy’s silk pajamas for the third time without success. “It’s so late, and you’re both so tired and upset.“
Upset? Yeah, Timmy was plenty upset. But me? I was livid. My hands were shaking from pure fury, and all I wanted was to get us the hell out of there as fast as I could, but still do it in a way that wouldn’t get Timmy any more worked up than he already was. And I already knew from hard-earned experience that except for being rejected by his piss-poor excuse for an asshole father, nothing in this world got Timmy more worked up than wrinkled silk pajamas.
Finally, Marion took them from me and folded them herself, then placed them neatly inside the bag. “I know what you must think of James….”
“Marion, I love you. I mean that. If my own mother had been half as good to me as you’ve been, I might not be the screwed up guy you see standing in front of you right now. But she wasn’t, and I am, and I can assure you that nothing in your life has even started to prepare you for what I’m thinking about James right now. As soon as I get this bag packed and get calmed down enough to keep from ripping his head off and pulling his heart out through his windpipe, I’m going to walk into the study and tell him exactly what I think. It’s not a conversation you want to hear, believe me. But I can promise you this, it’s one he won’t forget anytime soon.”
“If you fly off the handle with James right now, what good will it do? Will it change his mind about anything? Will it do anything to improve this situation? Will it help Timothy?”
“It’ll make me feel better.”
“Will it make you feel any better to know Timothy will be alone out there in the car, waiting for you, needing your support, needing you while you’re wasting time with James, giving in to a childish tantrum? Will it make you feel any better to know that you’ve alienated James further, that you’ve driven even more of a wedge between Timothy and his father? I don’t blame you if you have a thing or two to say to my husband, but for Timothy’s sake, do it later when you’re thinking clearly, not right now in the heat of anger. Please, Don, think about this,” she said, taking my hands and squeezing them gently. “Right now, a little temperance, a little restraint, will go a long way.”
“I just want…” I floundered, knowing the words for what I was feeling were inside me somewhere, but not having a fucking clue how to force them over my tongue and through my lips in an order that would make sense. “I just want him to not hurt, you know? He saved me, Marion….” Again I floundered, knowing I was losing it…losing it…choking on the lump in my throat that had been anger but was now morphing into something different and more painful, something I didn’t know if I could bear. Then she got right up in my face and nailed me to the wall with those eyes, and even though her son’s were cornflower blue and hers were the color of melted chocolate, I saw Timmy in them just the same.
“Then save him, Don. Go down there right now and save him. I know my son. He internalizes this sort of thing. He keeps it buried inside until it eats him alive. If you give him too long to think about this, he’ll turn it around in his mind until he’s convinced it was his fault his father decided to act like an ass.“
“The way he blames himself for what happened to Kelly,” I said.
“I know he feels that way. But it‘s ridiculous, because he wasn‘t even here when it happened. It was his first year in the seminary, and he was trying so hard to reconcile what God made him with what he thought God wanted him to be….”
“Why would anybody expect him to be anything more than he is right now?
Did you see the way he stood his ground even when it was breaking his heart to do it? He blew me away, Marion. He was about a hundred times tougher than I could have been. I’m really proud of him.”
“He hasn’t always stood up to James like that, you know. He can stand up for anyone else in the world, but when he’s the one being trampled on, it’s a different matter entirely.”
“It’s all that damned Catholic guilt,” I said. Then I remembered who I was talking to and felt my face get hot. “I didn’t mean….”
“That is part of it. But it’s also just the way Timothy’s mind works. Regardless of where the fault lies, he finds it easier to blame himself than to blame someone he loves. I think you’ve been a good influence on him, Don. You’re helping him see himself as someone worth standing up for. Now it’s up to you to make sure he doesn’t backslide, that he doesn’t start second-guessing his decisions. I think the last thing either of us wants is to see him throw in the towel now.”
“That would make James happy, at least,” I said bitterly.
“Oh, James isn’t going to be happy,” she said. “Elizabeth is with him now, and once she’s through with him, he and I will be having a talk. Believe me, before the night is over, James Callahan will know exactly how unhappy he is going to be.”
I gathered up our things, then let Marion wrap me in a warm hug. “Thanks for keeping me from doing something stupid,” I told her. “I’m gonna let it drop for tonight, but James is going to be hearing from me. This isn’t over, you know.”
“I didn’t expect it to be.”
Downstairs, I passed by the study but kept right on walking. I couldn’t help grinning when I heard raised voices inside, telling me Liz was doing a better job of ripping James’ heart out than I ever could.
When I got to the car, I slid behind the steering wheel and reached for Timmy. “Are you okay?” I asked. He thought that over for a good, long minute before he shook his head, looking sadder than I’d ever seen him look. Then he more or less folded over on me, leaning into me with his forehead braced against my shoulder. He stayed that way for a minute or two, then drew a long, shuddering breath and sat up again. He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, then fastened his seatbelt and fumbled for my hand.
“I want to go home,” he said.
We made it about five miles down the road before he lost it. I pulled over to the side and held him til it was over, telling him I was there and that I loved him, and that everything was going to be all right, even though I wasn’t so sure it really would be. It kind of freaked me out, seeing Timmy break down that way. Seeing him fall apart like that, I mean really fall apart and cry like the world had ended and nothing could ever make things right again, it scared me, you know? I’m not ashamed to admit that I had a quiet little breakdown of my own right along with him. It was mostly for him, but a little bit of it was for me, too, for the miserable, rotten unfairness of it all, for the fact that we live in a world where unconditional love is a myth, where parents don’t really accept their kids, warts and all.
Afterward, he still looked sad and shaken, and I could tell he was tired through and through. I would have given anything if I could’ve somehow made it all go back to the way it was before, somehow turned back the clock until about an hour before everything went all to hell and relived the night, only somehow figuring out a way to change things and make it turn out all right. I couldn’t, though, so I kissed him instead, tasting the salt residue on his cheeks. He found my mouth and slipped his tongue inside, his hands finding their way under my shirt so he could rub my nipples with the balls of his thumbs. They instantly got hard and so did my dick, and I could tell from the way Timmy was gasping when I sucked at that hot little pulse point at the base of his throat that he wasn’t too far behind me.
That was the way it always went with us, with our intensity level going from zero to sixty in less than a minute. Still, once we knew where we were going, neither of us was in all that big a rush to get there. We drew it out til it hurt, caressing every patch of bare skin we could get to and trading kisses so deep and needy everything else faded to a blur and all we knew or felt or remembered was the time it took one kiss to bleed into the next. When we saw a pair of headlights approach, we straightened up some and I drove on, but Timmy’s head never left my shoulder and his fingers didn’t untangle from mine until I found a spot where we could pull over and not be seen from the highway.
As soon as the car stopped rolling, we pushed the seats all way back and made love right there by the roadside like a couple of sixteen-year-olds in heat, like my mother and father had done the night they made me. Only this time, Bob Seger wasn’t singing “Turn the Page” on the 8-track, and an unopened pack of birth control pills wasn‘t lost between the seats. The only sounds we could hear were the frogs and the bugs, the occasional car passing out there on the road, our own ragged breathing. After we‘d climbed the peak and tumbled over, we straightened our clothes and started to drift right where we sat, knowing our backs and our knees would read us the riot act the next morning, but not really giving a shit. The night breeze had us pinned to the spot, it felt so warm and thick as it drifted in the open windows, and we knew we weren’t up to driving any farther that night.
“Thank you,” Timmy said as he settled against my side. It was the first thing he’d said since we left Liz’s place, and I knew then that the worst was over, that as sad and hurt as I knew he still was, he was going to come through it okay. I still had a bone to pick with James, and when I got the chance to pick it, things were going to get ugly. But I was glad it was going to happen on down the pike, that I hadn’t kept Timmy waiting, maybe tearing himself apart, while I tore into his poor excuse for a father that night.
Like I said, I’m not a patient man. Never have been and probably never will be. But for Timmy’s sake, I’m working on it. God knows I am working on it….
the original "Timothy"
Justice
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 12000 words
“Sometimes I think there’s no justice in the world at all,” Timmy said, shoving his glasses up his nose with an angry jab. He switched channels yet again, as if hearing the election results on ABC instead of CNN might alter their outcome somehow, or at least make them easier to swallow. I was sprawled out on the couch next to him, killing time with Spider Solitaire, so I hadn’t been paying much attention. As predicted, it was a sad day for the Democrats, so it was no surprise he wasn’t exactly doing the happy dance. But to add insult to injury, another state -- Kentucky, was it? Or maybe Tennessee? -- had apparently just approved a proposition banning legal recognition of domestic partnerships. In other words, gay marriage. I shut my laptop and braced myself, figuring Timmy was about to blow. Instead, he just stared at the television, his lips compressed into a thin, tight line, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I ventured, slipping my hand into his and giving it what I hoped was a comforting squeeze. I’ve never given a rat’s ass about politics, but this stuff was his life, and the least I could do was show some support. After a moment, he squeezed back.
“It’s not as if we didn‘t see it coming. This trend toward neo-conservatism’s sweeping the country. It’s frightening, but it’s a predictable cycle, and it should reverse itself eventually. At least, I hope it will.” He clicked off the set and turned to look at me, sighing deeply. “Oh, well.” He squeezed my hand again, then patted it and let go. “I don’t know why I’m letting it get to me, anyway. It’s not like it affects us personally. I’m going to bed. You coming?”
“In a second,” I said, watching as he gathered my empty beer bottle, his coffee mug, and the bowl of peanut shells I’d created over the course of the night. As he moved off toward the kitchen, I stayed where I was, stuck in perpetual instant replay mode, hearing again and again the odd note in his voice when he’d said it didn’t affect us personally. I didn’t know if he’d intended to deliver a message there, but I’d received one loud and clear. He’d never tell me, not in a million years. He wouldn’t ask, probably wouldn’t even hint at it to feel out my reaction, just because he was always so damned worried about pressuring me or making me feel suffocated. But there it was, plain as day. I was an idiot for not figuring it out sooner.
Timmy wanted to get married.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Honestly, I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of the institution. Don’t get me wrong, I thought everybody should have a right to take the plunge if they wanted to -- even second-class citizens like us. I just had no clue why anyone would want to. My parents’ alliance had been bitter and bloody, and when my old man finally disappeared into the night, I think it was a tie who was the most relieved, my mother or me.
Still, Timmy and I weren’t Carl and Jeanette Strachey. We were together because we wanted to be, not because ten sweaty minutes of unprotected sex in the back seat of a Mustang led to a not-so-happy surprise a couple of weeks later when somebody’s monthlies failed to make their scheduled appearance. We were together, though, and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. I was as sure of his love as I was of my own name, and I knew he felt the same way about me. What was I so afraid of?
Timmy was like oxygen to me, like food and water and sunlight. I already felt as bound to him as one man can be to another, committed to waking up with the same guy drooling on my pillow every day for the rest of my life. So what was the big deal about putting all that on the dotted line? Timmy was a traditional kind of guy, and the ex-seminarian in him loved ceremony and ritual. Of course he would want what everyone else had, the right to stand up in front of his friends and family and show them how much he loved and was loved.
The more I got my head wrapped around the idea, the more I liked it myself. It would make Timmy so happy, and making him happy always made me happy, too. If we could’ve done it legally, I’d have hauled him down to the court house right then and there. Until that was an option, it looked like we’d have to settle for the next best thing.
I followed him into the kitchen and found him by the sink, rinsing out my beer bottle before dropping it into the recycling bin. Snaking my arms around him from behind, I stood on tip-toe to nuzzle the back of his neck. “I love you,” I informed him, nipping at his ear.
He turned in my arms and hugged me long and hard. Our mouths connected, and I put everything I had into that kiss, hoping it was getting across even one tenth of everything I’d say to him if I had the words -- how much I loved him, how good he made me feel, how I never wanted to live another day without him by my side. When we finally came up for air, he leaned his forehead against mine and closed his eyes.
“I love you, too,” he said. “What was that for?”
I shrugged and grinned, then caught him in another lip-lock, my hands roaming under his soft blue cardigan. He was as warm and affectionate as ever, and he made all the right noises of pleasure and encouragement, but there was just enough drag time to his responses to let me know his heart wasn’t really in it. Me, I can go for it anytime, anywhere, but Tim’s not wired that way. He’d never turned me down when I was in the mood, and I knew if I’d pressed the issue, he would have done everything in his power to please me. But he was tense and tired and obviously more than a little bit down, and I knew what he needed more than a tussle between the sheets was some quiet time together, along with a big dose of TLC. So I led him into the bedroom and undressed him like I would a little kid, being careful to get his sweater and pants onto their hangers more or less neatly so he wouldn’t feel obligated to bitch about the mess the next day. Then I stripped down as well and put us both to bed.
I treated him to a long, thorough back massage, paying special attention to his neck and shoulders, because that’s where the tension builds the worst when he’s stressed or upset. He kept thanking me, the words muffled by the pillow, and telling me how good it felt. Afterward, we lay together and traded slow, deep kisses and some sleepy mush talk. Around midnight, I broke it off just long enough to set the alarm and turn off the light, then settled next to him again, gathering him in my arms. Before I knew it, he was dead to the world.
I lay awake all night.
* * * *
The next afternoon, I called it quits early and beat Timmy home by about an hour, which gave me plenty of time to get some wine chilling and to throw something together for dinner. I’m not much to write home about when it comes to cooking, but even I can slap pre-assembled shrimp kabobs on the George Foreman and brush them with teriyaki sauce, dump salad-in-a-bag in a bowl, and nuke instant rice. By the time he came through the door, the table was set, a pair of more or less matching white candles were burning away in the center of the table, and I had the place smelling like a Mongolian grill. I met him with a kiss and a bundle of yellow and white daisies I’d picked up at the grocery on way home and watched the beaten expression on his face melt away like a snow bank in the July sun. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing.
It was going to be a damned good night.
We didn’t talk much over dinner. But then again, we didn’t have to. It was one of those times when the way we looked at each other said it all. He put on some music, something slow and soft with an easy jazz beat, and while I cleared the table, he refilled our glasses and added a few more candles to the mix. We danced for a while right there in that little eat-in kitchen, his head on my shoulder at first, then mine on his, til we’d pause long enough to take a sip of wine and switch off again.
We went to bed early and made love with all the passion of our first time together but none of the fear, then lay in each others arms for a long time afterward, both of us too lazy and too content to straighten the blanket and turn out the light. Finally, he roused himself enough to pull the covers over us and reached across me to click off the bedside lamp, but stopped when he saw the expression on my face.
“What is it?” he asked, that little line forming between his eyebrows the way it always did when I started setting off the alarm bells in his head. He looked so freaked out I had to laugh.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” I said, stroking his cheek. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“What is it?” he asked again, his guard really up by then, the line between his brows turning into a ditch.
I kept rubbing his face reassuringly, my eyes locked on his. “Hey, don’t look so worried. It’s no big deal. I was just wondering…” I paused, searching for words. “I was just wondering what a good date would be for you. I know you’ll want to plan this thing out and invite people. I’ll have to clear my schedule, and you’ll want to ask off for a few days so we can go someplace afterward….”
The rest was cut off when he pounced on me, pinning me to the mattress as he hugged me fiercely. “Soon!” he said. “I want to do it soon!”
* * * *
When Timothy J. Callahan moves on an idea, let me tell you, he moves.
I’d braced myself for a long, painful ordeal, expecting him to want something of roughly the same size and scope as Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Di. Once I’d finally grown a set and asked Timmy to make an honest man of me, I had to admit I was getting kind of excited about the whole thing and itched to get the show on the road. But a huge, elaborate wedding takes time to plan, so I figured his “soon” meant sometime the following year, something June-ish, maybe. I nearly keeled over in shock a couple of nights later when he paused in the middle of sliding a massive hunk of homemade lasagna onto my plate and asked, “How does the second Saturday in December sound to you?”
“Not an option,” I said, pulling the plate toward me and going in for the kill, rolling my eyes in ecstasy as an orgasmic blend of cheese, Italian seasonings, and the sauce he’d been hovering over all afternoon hit my tongue. “Drag your heels that long, buddy, and somebody else just might come along with a better offer.”
He set his fork down and looked at me, arms crossed over his chest and right eyebrow disappearing into his hairline.
My lips twitched. “I don’t want to wait that long,” I said, reaching across to snag one of his hands and pull it toward me, dipping his fingers into the tomato sauce on my plate along the way, then guiding them to my mouth. I sucked them with the enthusiasm I usually reserved for a different part of his anatomy.
He didn’t try to pull away, but his eyebrow shot even higher. “Donald, we have a wedding to plan! Five weeks is hardly ‘that long’ by anyone’s standards.”
“Five weeks? When you said December, I thought you meant next year.”
He rolled his eyes then and shook his head. But he still wasn‘t making any big push to reclaim his hand. “I meant next month. Darling, do you honestly think I’d give you that much time to get cold feet?”
“Point taken.” I dipped his fingers into my food again, scooping up a little ricotta along with the sauce the second time around. “I know you want to plan something nice, though. Is five weeks gonna give you enough time? You know I‘ll do anything I can to help, but you also know I‘m pretty useless when it comes to this kind of stuff.”
“You’ll be there promising to spend the rest of your life with me. Believe me, it’s going to be nice. All the rest is gravy. Or in this case, marinara,” he said, grinning as I popped his fingers into my mouth once more. “I’ll come up with something we’ll both like. Do you trust me?”
Did I trust him? Only with my life.
* * * *
Every time I thought about the fact that this was real, that I was actually marrying Timmy, I got a weird flutter in my chest, and for maybe half a minute, I’d have a hell of a time trying to draw my next breath. But I was the good kind of excited, not the bad kind, you know? I wasn’t really nervous, just revved and more than ready to get on with it. As fast as December was creeping up on us, the waiting was driving me crazy.
As promised, I stepped back and left most of the planning to Timmy. For what it was worth, I gave him my opinion whenever he scowled at me and said “Whatever you want, honey” wasn’t an answer, but for the most part, I kept my nose out of it.
Timmy’s Catholic and I’m nothing, so he just about worried himself prematurely gray over how to slant the ceremony, spiritually speaking. For my part, I didn’t give a damn what kind of wedding we had as long as we had one and it didn’t drag on long enough to put everybody -- okay, mostly me -- to sleep. In the end, he decided that our wedding wasn’t a religious event, it was an us event, and he wanted to keep it that way. Which was more than all right with me.
I think it kind of surprised him when I said I wanted us to write our own vows. Firing off those generic pieces of crap most people stick to wouldn’t have covered half the stuff I wanted to say to Timmy. I may not be the most articulate guy on the planet, but I don’t like having somebody else put words in my mouth, especially about something as important as my sweetheart and me. I spent a week and a half writing and rewriting the little speech I planned to give, polishing it til it shone and making sure it said everything I thought Timmy needed to know but I’d never gotten around to putting into words before. Then I spent the next three and a half weeks practicing it until I could say it in my sleep, reciting it on my way to work and on my way back home, in front of the bathroom mirror and again in my head when we were watching TV or he was sleeping beside me, dreaming, no doubt, of two-groom cake toppers and tasteful floral arrangements.
I’d figured Timmy would toss out a guest list of several hundred people, want about twenty attendants and a full orchestra playing the wedding march. Instead, he informed me that we were keeping the guest list in the 35-50 range, and that Grandma Liz had offered both her estate and the services of her household staff for the event so we wouldn’t have to worry about renting a place or hiring someone to cater the reception. The old girl herself would provide the music on her baby grand.
I can’t say I was much help to him when it came to picking out the selections. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much into music as the next guy, but I don’t think Korn or some vintage Aerosmith would’ve exactly set the tone Timmy was shooting for. He must’ve made me listen to a thousand pieces of long-hair stuff over the weeks leading up to the wedding, and to tell the truth, it all pretty much sounded the same to me. Only two pieces stuck out: “Ode to Joy” by Beethoven and “Joy” by Bach. Or was it the other way around? I only remember the names because the composers both started with B and the titles were so much alike and sounded like the music itself -- pure, busting out of your skin happiness, the kind I felt when Timmy kissed me, or made me cum, or sent me a text message in the middle of the day just to say he was thinking about me. Those were the two pieces Timmy went with for the beginning of the ceremony and for the end. He said they were beautiful and completely appropriate, and that Liz would do a wonderful job with them on her Steinway. Mostly, I think he picked them because he wanted to please me.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved when he nixed the idea of attendants, saying neither of us were exactly blushing brides, and we could make it to the altar just fine all by ourselves, thank you very much. He’d never admit it, but I know he did it to spare my feelings. He had a dozen friends who would have been thrilled shitless to stand up for him, and I just flat out didn’t know anybody who‘d be interested in doing the same for me. Sure, I had a few drinking buddies I used to hit the bars with, but I’d never gone as far as exchanging last names with most of them, let alone gotten close enough to have them riding shotgun on the most important day of my life. Before I hooked up with Timmy, I’d pretty much flown solo. I know it upset him some that I didn’t contribute any names to the guest list, but when I said the only person I cared about sharing the day with was him, and as long as he didn’t forget to show up, I was good, he let it rest.
Timmy’s father was conveniently scheduled to be out of town on urgent state business the week of the wedding, so he wouldn’t be able to attend. Timmy tried to act like it didn’t hurt like hell, but he’s a lousy actor. Besides, I know him better than that. It made me fucking furious, and I wished I’d taken a crack at rearranging the old bastard’s face when I’d had the chance. But his mother was going to be there, and she was so thrilled for us both and so interested and willing to pitch in and help any way she could, it overshadowed the situation with his dad. At least I hope it did.
We only really fell out over one thing, and that was the fact that Timmy seemed to take it personally when I wouldn’t invite my parents. Asking my dad to come was out of the question, of course. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since the day he walked out on us, and I had no idea where he’d ended up or even if he was still alive, which was okay by me. But Timmy’s kind of thin-skinned in some ways, and he took it to mean I wasn’t proud of him, that maybe I was ashamed to be saying my I-dos to a guy, when I said I wanted to leave my mom out of the mix.
The truth was, she and I had never exactly been close. She’d never lifted a finger to stop my father when he was smacking me around, which I can understand in a way, because if she’d tried to interfere, he probably would have put her through a wall. Once he was out of the picture, she spent most of her spare time letting me know how much I reminded her of him and how much of a disappointment I was to her. Then I got kicked out of the army and out of the closet all in one shot, and she made it clear I was never supposed to darken her doorway again. So much for motherly love, right?
I’d never mentioned anything about my family to Timmy, and he’d never asked, though I knew he’d been wanting to. I tried to explain the bare bones of this to him the best I could without going into the whole Kyle thing or making it sound like I was throwing myself a pity party. Being Timmy, he read between the lines the way he always did and figured out it was all more of a big hairy deal than I was making it out to be. Also being Timmy, he didn’t push for details, just put his arms around me and kept saying he was sorry, he was so, so sorry in a choked voice. Before the night was done, we’d made the most tender, intense love two men can make -- twice in the living room and once again in bed, as a matter of fact. And I’d caved and given him my mother’s address, or at least what I assumed was still my mother’s address, and told him he could send her a wedding invitation if he wanted but to leave me out of it.
Timmy’s not naïve, really. But he is…I dunno…unworldly, maybe? I think he actually believed that if we reached out to my mother, she’d put all her prejudices aside and welcome me back with open arms. He’s a logical, rational man, see, and he expects everyone in the world to act in a logical, rational manner. The way he saw it, it would be totally illogical for any mother to reject her son for being gay once she saw he was happy and settled and embracing something as normal and traditional as marriage, even if it was to another man.
Obviously, he didn’t know what he was up against.
About a week later, I got home just as Timmy was going through the mail. Swear to God, the man could have been an OCD poster child. Organized to the point of insanity, he sorted it all out first, making four neat stacks: bills, ads, RSVPs, and miscellaneous. I made myself a sandwich and watched him attack the bills first, arranging them according to due date before setting them aside. Then he went through the ads, slipping the ones with coupons he thought we’d use into an accordion folder before throwing the rest away. The RSVPs were opened and sorted according to a yes pile and a no pile, of course. There were lots of yeses and hardly any noes, which had him looking so pleased I just had to reach across the counter and give his hand a quick squeeze. He squeezed back, smiling that blinding smile that made it next to impossible for me to keep my hands off of him, then let go and went to work on the miscellaneous stack. I saw him touch a large clasp envelope and hesitate, his smile fading. He shot me a weird glance as he opened it, then peered inside like he expected something to shoot out of the envelope and bite his face off. He made a funny noise then and shot me another glance, this time looking sick through and through.
“What is it?” I asked, rushing to hover over him, he was scaring me so bad.
Without saying a word, he turned the envelope upside down and poured the contents onto the counter. Shredded paper, pictures, the remains of a wedding invitation. Some of the pieces were so small they looked like confetti, and others were bigger -- intentionally, I suspected, so we’d be sure to see what they’d once been part of. My birth certificate. Inoculation records. Crayon snowmen from a Christmas card I’d made when I was a kid. A certificate, probably for perfect attendance since I’d never exactly set the academic world on fire.
Mom.
“Welcome to the Strachey family,” I said, picking up a handful of fragments and letting them sift through my fingers.
Timmy was searching through the pile, pulling out jagged slivers of Kodak paper and arranging them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A black and white snapshot taken in the hospital the day I was born took shape under his fingers. A school picture of me in that red plaid shirt I always hated, my hair so plastered down with the gel Mom made me use that it looked like it was glued to my forehead.
“I just don’t get this,” he said, looking like he was gonna puke at any moment. The way I was feeling, I figured I might just beat him to it.
“What don’t you get?” I said, suddenly furious with him, though God knows he was the last person on the planet to deserve it. “The kid in these pictures grew up to be something so disgusting she had to kill him off any way she could. He no longer exists. I no longer fucking exist!”
“Don,” he said, reaching for me. I backed away. I couldn’t stand the thought of being touched right then, couldn’t bear the look in his eyes, the dawning comprehension that while he meant everything to his own mother, I was less than nothing to mine. “Donald, listen to me.”
But I couldn’t listen, couldn’t let him draw me into his arms the way I knew he wanted to, couldn’t bear up under the weight of his attempts to comfort me. Some things just run too deep to be comforted.
I ran.
* * * *
Somewhere around two a.m. I came crawling back, of course, feeling every bit like the piece of shit I guess I was. My feet were blistered and throbbing from running for miles in the wrong kind of shoes, and my head ached. I knew I stank, that I reeked of stale sweat, stale beer and cigarettes, stale fury. I didn’t want to wake Tim, but I needed a shower bad and couldn’t very well climb in bed beside him when I smelled like that. I left my shoes at the door and the lights off and eased past the bed on my way to the bathroom, listening to make sure his breathing stayed slow and even. But I heard him swallow and realized he wasn’t sleeping at all, that he’d probably been lying there alone in the dark for hours, thinking the worst. I crawled across the bed and wriggled in beside him, holding him as hard as I could without cracking a rib. He was stiff in my arms, unresponsive, unmoving.
“Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”
He swallowed again. “Did you…”
He knew my history. Considering the way I smelled, what else could he think? “No! Oh God, no! I went for a run to blow off steam, then I stopped by The Pit for a few beers. For some reason, getting shit-faced drunk sounded like a good idea at the time.“
“Was it?“
“Is it ever? I don’t know why I let her get to me like she did. I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. I’m so sorry I made you worry.”
He turned toward me at last, clammy skin and toxic body odor be damned, and wrapped himself around me. “You’re nearly frozen,” he said. “I’ve got to get you warm.” I burrowed in, happily losing myself in the pure, unrelenting warmth that was Timmy. “I feel terrible about all this,” he said. “You didn’t want to send that damned invitation in the first place, but I forced the issue. All it did is give her one more chance to hurt you. Can you forgive me?“
“Shhhh.“ I kissed him long and slow, exploring the hot, pulpy interior of his mouth with my tongue. I felt him stiffen, and he pulled back so he could look at me.
“You’ve been bleeding,” he said, touching my lip.
“Some asswipe put his hands on me, and I popped him in the mouth. Guess he thought he should return the favor.”
“God, Donald….”
I rolled us both over so I could straddle him, my hands on either side of his shoulders and my groin pressing firmly against his.
“I didn’t want it, Timmy. I didn’t ask for it. Look, I was no saint in the past. You know that. But I swear all that stopped the first time you danced with me. I’m making you a promise, honey, and you can take it to the bank. I’ve never cheated on you, and I never will. As long as I live, I’ll always be faithful to you, okay?”
“Okay,“ he said softly. Then he pulled me down on top of him, and you could say we tabled the discussion for the rest of the night.
* * * *
It wasn’t so much a sound that woke me up as a sense of emptiness, the sudden realization that Timmy was no longer in bed beside me. We’d driven down to his grandmother’s for a big family dinner the evening before, then spent the night in a guest suite twice the size of our whole apartment. As I stretched my hand across the covers and fought to pry my eyes open, I felt an irrational flutter of panic the way I always do when I wake up and he’s gone. I sat up, getting ready to call his name, when I heard a soft clink from the adjoining bathroom, followed by the sound of water running. I looked at the clock and winced. The wedding wasn’t til four, for chrissake. What was he doing up so goddamned early?
Still groggy as hell, I forced myself out of bed and onto my feet, then stumbled into the white and gold cavern of a bathroom, coming up beside him as he brushed his teeth. I lifted his arm and positioned it across my shoulders, then snuggled in tight against his side. He smelled so good, all damp and warm from the shower, I almost felt guilty touching him. I probably smelled like sleep and stale cum, overlaid with that double shot of Belvedere I’d knocked back before turning in. But he didn’t act like I was contaminating him or anything. He squeezed my shoulder and grinned at me through a greenish film of organic toothpaste, bumping my hip with his own.
“You left me,” I whined.
He spit and rinsed, then spit again and spent a full minute running his toothbrush under the tap, rubbing the bristles with his thumb until he decided it was hygienically sound enough to return to its holder. Then he hugged me tight and planted a smacking kiss on my forehead.
“Good morning, sleepyhead. I’ve got six o‘clock Mass, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” We may have been leaving religion out of the ceremony itself, but it was still important to Timmy that he feel spiritually connected that day. So Cam Briggs, one of his few friends from the seminary who still bothered to keep in touch, had offered to show up at the ass crack of dawn and say a sunrise service for the family and as many friends as cared to attend. It didn’t exactly make up for the fact that the Church would never recognize marriage vows exchanged by a couple of queers as a sacred bond, but it made Timmy feel a little better about the whole thing, just the same.
I hadn’t been specifically invited to attend, but I hadn’t been specifically asked to stay away, either. I think Timmy just sort of assumed I wouldn’t be interested and left it at that. To tell the truth, I’d pretty much assumed the same thing. Except for Liz, who rolled her eyes and declared herself a “spiritual freelancer,“ the Callahans were all dead serious about this religious stuff, and the last thing I wanted to be was an unwanted intrusion. But suddenly it freaked me out a little, thinking about being apart from him that day.
I gave him a peck on the cheek and reluctantly pried myself loose, then lifted the toilet seat so I could take a long, contemplative piss. He hugged me from behind as I was finishing up, nuzzled my neck and gave my earlobe a good, solid nip.
“Katie’s putting together a huge country breakfast for after Mass. I have it on good authority that she’s making eggs Benedict.”
Timmy’s cooking had broadened my horizons, gastronomically speaking. I’d recently declared hollandaise sauce one of the four major food groups, and Timmy must have passed the word along to his grandmother‘s cook.
“I’ll be there,” I said, leaning back against him. “Now go get ready or you’ll be late.”
He hesitated for a heartbeat before letting go. And in that instant’s hesitation, I heard an invitation come through loud and clear. As usual, he wouldn’t ask because he didn’t want to put me on the spot. But I was pretty sure he wished he didn’t have to ask, just the same.
He shouldn’t have to ask. Not for something like that. Not from me. And not on our wedding day.
As Timmy moved off to get dressed, I jumped in the shower long enough to kill my morning funk and to give my scalp a quick scrub, then brushed my teeth and shaved as fast as I could without making my face look like a crime scene photo. He’d already gone downstairs to meet the rest of the churchy set before heading to the chapel, so they’d probably be seated and ready to roll before I finished dealing with the knot in my tie. I dressed fast, taking it as a good omen when my tie more or less cooperated for a change, and hurried down a staircase that put the one from Gone with the Wind to shame. I took a shortcut through the kitchen, yelling a quick good morning to Katie as I shot out the back door.
Timmy and the rest of the clan had driven down to the family chapel by the lake, but I decided to walk instead, taking a more direct route across the back lawn. It was still dark out, but the night was starting to wear itself thin around the edges. Timmy and Marion had both gone on about how spectacular sunrise was in the chapel, and I was kind of curious to see what all the fuss was about. It was also cold as hell, and God knows I’ve never been much of a winter person. But it was a clean, fresh kind of cold, sort of pure, you know? I remember there was a heavy frost on, so heavy it almost looked like snow, and the stiff, white spikes of grass crunched under my feet. I ran at first, just to warm up and to burn off a sudden case of the jitters, but halfway there I slowed down to a walk so I could get my breathing under control.
At the door, I wavered, second guessing myself. I hadn’t been invited, and for a single paranoid moment, I wondered if that was on purpose, if the family would consider me a persona non grata if I crashed the service. To be honest, I was also struggling with my own discomfort over the whole organized religion thing. I hadn’t been in a church in years and halfway expected a lightning bolt to come out of the sky and zap me the second I stepped inside. My father’s side of the family was mostly Presbyterian, I think, but Mom brought me up Methodist, or at least tried to. I never bought into it and stopped letting her drag me to church the second I was old enough to put my foot down and not get smacked into next Tuesday for doing it. Like a lot of protestants, she took a dim view of Catholicism and probably would have disowned me all over again if she’d known I was not only marrying a guy, but one of Them.
Fuck ‘em. I was there for Timmy, so who gave a rat’s ass what anyone else thought? I slipped through the door just as everybody was settling into place. There were about fifteen people there, a pretty good showing for that hour of the morning, if you ask me. Timmy was right up front like I knew he would be, sitting next to his mother. I walked up to them along the side by the wall instead of coming down the center aisle so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself. Marion spotted me first, and her smile was so bright and so wide I knew exactly where Timmy’d gotten his from. She slid down the pew to make room for me. Then Timmy looked up, and the look of pure happiness he sent my way made all my doubts go away. As I settled between him and his mom, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.
“Thank you.” He mouthed the words, not making a sound. Then that little dent between his eyebrows appeared, and he let go of my hand long enough to attack my tie, fiddling with the knot until it gave up the fight and lay down in submission just the way he wanted it to. I grinned and let him have at it. I’d long since figured out that he didn’t mean this stuff as criticism. In his mind, fussing over my appearance was just one of the ways he looked after me. When he was done, he took my hand again and pulled it into his lap, holding it in both of his.
I’d never been to mass before, so I’d assumed the whole thing would seem alien and exotic. It was pretty much the same as a protestant service, though, except there was more standing and some kneeling involved, and there was a lot less music. For some reason, I’d expected the service to be in Latin, and was relieved when the priest spoke in English instead. Not that I had a clue what was going on. I stood when Timmy stood and knelt when he knelt, did my best to stay awake during the sermon and just kept my mouth shut and tried to look respectful when everybody joined in responses I didn’t recognize.
I had plenty of time to check out the chapel in the hour or so we sat there. I’m not much on churches, but even I had to admit this one was nice. It was small -- it probably seated fifty or sixty people max -- and kind of cozy. The whole place smelled like lemon furniture polish and candles. Everything there was some combination of red and gold, including the four stained glass windows along the side walls. But it was the window above the altar that really caught my eye. The designs in the others were abstracts, but this was a red rose, about six feet high and four across, set against a yellow-gold background. An Irish rose, I remembered Timmy telling me. His great-great-grandfather Calbert Callahan had added this chapel to the estate when he married great-great-grandma Rose back in the late 1800s. Callahan marriages had taken place there ever since. So had christenings and first communions, funerals, Christmas and Easter celebrations, you name it. It made me feel good to be part of that history, that kind of tradition.
Mostly, though, I just sat there and watched Timmy. I’d never seen this part of him before, though I’d known it existed, of course. I knew all about what happened in the seminary, that he attended mass sometimes and that his faith was still more important to him than anything, except maybe me. In a way, I’d almost been afraid of seeing him like this, so caught up in his spirituality, his religion, because I’d thought he’d seem different to me somehow, like a stranger almost. But he was still Timmy, my lover and my very best friend. He just seemed a little calmer than he was at home, more serene, more at peace.
I’ve decided that religious fervor, like romance and comedy, is pretty much just a matter of good timing. Right as the priest presented the sacrament, the sun hit that big rose window, and I understood what the big deal was all about. “This is my body, which is given for you,“ he said as the whole building lit up, bathing everything and everyone in it in soft rose and gold tones. Everybody made a surprised noise when it happened, like they’d all just witnessed a miracle. I’m not gonna lie to you, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But for me, it wasn’t a religious experience, it was a Timmy experience. He looked so beautiful right then, with the rosy light making that fair Irish skin of his glow, that it just about took my breath away. When he caught me staring, he smiled at me, his eyes crinkling around the corners, and he raised my hand to his lips before turning his attention back to the priest.
Timmy’d spent some time alone with Father Cam the night before, offering his confession so he’d be able to take communion. When he rose to take his place in line, I stayed seated, knowing I couldn’t join in because I wasn’t one of the fold, so to speak. But Timmy tugged at my hand, so even though I felt awkward as hell, I stood and walked along beside him. Back home at the United Methodist, wine was offered in individual shot glasses and everybody pinched a bite off a fresh loaf of bread the preacher’s wife baked for the occasion. Here, everyone drank from the same cup, which seemed kind of unsanitary to me, even though the priest wiped it clean each time with a white cloth. When Timmy’s turn came, I watched, fascinated, as he opened his mouth and allowed Cam to place what looked like a round piece of Styrofoam on his tongue. I was struck by the intimacy, the almost sexual nature of the act. After Timmy took his sip of wine, he looked me dead in the eye and kissed me right there in front of everybody, like he was passing part of the blessing on to me. His lips were warm and tasted like grapes, and I felt blessed in more ways than one.
Afterward, we gathered in Liz’s dining room for a meal of…well…biblical proportions. There were stacks of French toast and pancakes, fresh fruit, pastries, ham and sausage and bacon, and every style of egg under the sun. While Timmy chatted up the relatives, I sat there quietly stuffing my face with my fourth round of eggs Benedict, grinning like the happy hog I was as Katie ladled extra hollandaise over my plate.
“You’re going to be sick,” Timmy whispered between nibbles on his English muffin. I think the pre-wedding jitters were setting in, and he was too wired to eat.
“No way. Hollandaise is nature’s perfect food.”
“I never should have introduced you to the stuff,“ he said, wiping the sauce off my chin with his own napkin. “It’s bad form for one of the grooms to have to be carried in on a stretcher, you know. It’ll be a miracle if you don’t throw up on the wedding cake.”
I washed a mouthful of eggy heaven down with a swig of my mimosa and patted his hand. “You’re making an honest man of me, so it’s obviously a day for miracles. Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll get through it all without a glitch, you’ll see.”
Once we’d all had more than enough to eat, we wandered into the next room and spent the next couple of hours there, just hanging out while Timmy made small talk and I digested. Several of his aunts and uncles were already there, and more cousins and childhood friends wandered in as the day went on. Liz hadn’t made an appearance yet, and I missed her. But she’d warned me the night before that we probably wouldn’t be seeing much of her before the ceremony. “Civilized people go to bed at four a.m. and get up at noon,“ she’d told me, “and I am nothing if not civilized.“ Marion popped in and out from time to time, greeting newcomers and pausing long enough to plant a kiss on Timmy’s forehead or give my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. She had her hands full, seeing to the decorations and seating arrangements in the drawing room, where we’d be saying our vows later that afternoon, and overseeing Katie and the rest of the staff in the kitchen, where they were already hard at work on hors d’oeuvres for the reception. She was flushed and a little breathless, but seemed happy as a clam, the way most moms would be, I guess, on their son’s wedding day.
Timmy tried valiantly to include me in the conversation, and everyone was nice to me and genuinely friendly. I laughed at the stories about all the cute things he said or did when he was a kid, flipped through every family album that was shoved in my lap and made all the appropriate comments, but mostly I just reverted to my P.I. training and observed. In spite of his father’s all-to-obvious absence, it was clear Tim was still Clan Callahan’s fair-haired boy, and I was touched to see how comfortable everyone seemed to be with our situation, how much they all genuinely loved him.
Occasionally, I felt a tug of something like depression and had to block out images of my own childhood, which had been so different from his in every way. I didn’t resent the way Timmy had been brought up, I just wished my background had been a little more like his. Around noon, I started to get antsy. Unless I’m on the job or curled up in bed with Tim, I have a hard time staying still for long. It was too warm in the room, and with all those people milling around, the walls were starting to close in. Besides, all that rich food was doing a number on my insides, and it was all I could do not to squirm. When Timmy noticed, he excused himself and ran upstairs for our jackets, then extracted me from the circle of old ladies showing me his baby pictures and hauled me outside for a walk.
On the way out, we passed Liz’s gardener, Phil, and his son, Ted. The florist’s van was parked by the rear entrance, and they were hauling in massive plants and boxes of seasonal stuff like holly and pine. We’d agreed -- meaning Timmy assumed it was what I wanted and ran with it -- that the backdrop for our ceremony should have a very masculine feel. So as much as he loved flowers, he’d decided to keep them to a minimum and go with lots of ferns and other types of greenery instead. As Phil walked by, loaded down with two of the biggest ferns I’d ever seen, he nodded and smiled, but Ted looked the other way, remembering, probably, the night Liz embarrassed him after he’d made goo-goo eyes at Tim. If I hadn’t felt like I was gonna double over at any moment, I would’ve gotten a good laugh out of it.
Once we cleared the house, Timmy took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was around, then pulled me against him so hard and fast all that sudden pressure against my midsection made me crack one off loud enough for them to hear it back in Albany. “Honestly!“ he said in his best long-suffering voice as I sagged against him, groaning in relief. Muttering something I couldn’t quite make out, he tightened his grip around my waist and started patting my back like I was baby fresh off the bottle. My stomach was killing me, and the pressure of his belly against mine felt good. After a couple of minutes, I belched long and loud. For once, he didn’t bitch about my lack of manners. He just rolled his eyes and went right on patting. After another huge burp or two and a few more none-too-dainty farts, I started to feel a lot better and kissed his cheek in thanks.
“Not that you ever listen,” he grumbled. But he kissed me back, covering my mouth with his own without complaint one about stinky egg breath, and the lecture ended with that. Once we came up for air, I offered him my elbow and we walked toward the lake arm-in-arm, stopping to check out the family cemetery, where he gave me a condensed version of Callahan History 101.
“This cemetery goes back six generations back, and it’s filling up fast. We’re going to have to move that stone wall and expand if we’re going to fit many more people in here. There’s still plenty of room for this generation, though. My parents will be buried there,” he said, pointing, “and there’s a spot for Kelly and her spouse if she ever….”
I nudged his shoulder, trying to distract him. It was easy to forget that in spite of his privileged upbringing, it hadn’t exactly been all sunshine and lollipops for him, either. I didn’t want him dwelling on the sad stuff on a day that was supposed to be all about feeling happy.
“What about you?” I asked.
“We’ll be over there,” he said, pointing again. Then he got all flustered and started backpedaling. “I mean there are two spaces over there if we…if you decide you want….”
“Of course I want,” I said, kissing him again so he’d shut up. “I gotta admit, I’ve always kinda liked the idea of cremation, though. I think about it sometimes, what it would be like to have our ashes mixed together, then scattered on the wind.”
He looked at me in mock horror. “My God, Donald, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were turning into a hopeless romantic!”
I wriggled my eyebrows at him. “The question is, a hopeless romantic what?”
“Hmmm. Good point. Well, I don’t see why we couldn’t do both. We could put up a headstone and have part of our ashes buried here, and have the other half scattered somewhere appropriate. That way, everybody’s happy.”
“I’m happy,” I said. You’d have thought all that talk about burial and cremation would have brought me down, and God knows the thought of anything happening to Timmy gave me the screaming horrors. But somehow, knowing everything was settled, that our happily-ever-after was really going to mean ever after gave me an incredible sense of peace.
We made a circuit around the chapel so I could get a better look at it in the light of day, then we found a bench by the lake and sat quietly for a while, just feeling good about being alone together and watching the water ripple. He leaned back against me, his head resting on my shoulder, and I put my arms around him, feeling all husbandly and protective.
“Thank you for coming with me this morning,” he said, lacing his fingers through mine. “I know church isn’t exactly your thing, but it meant the world to me.”
“Consider it a wedding present,” I said, rubbing my face back and forth through his hair.
“Actually, I have one for you, too. I feel a little strange giving it to you, though.” He sat up and fished an envelope out of his pocket, then held it, gnawing on his bottom lip, before handing it over. Inside were two photos of him, one as a boy of about six or so, and the other of him as a baby.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll carry them in my wallet so I can have them with me all the time, okay?”
“I was hoping you would. I picked them because they match the ones I have in mine.” He pulled out his wallet then and showed me a pair of pieced together photos, one a black and white baby pic and the other a shot of me when I was in first grade. The pictures my mother had sent back with the wedding invitation, all torn to shreds.
“You kept them.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I did. I glued them back together, and they’ve been with me ever since. Look, Don, I’m not telling you this to upset you. I just need you to know that I saved these, that the little boy in those pictures didn’t just wink out of existence because your mother turned her back on you. She may have ripped up a couple of pictures, but that doesn’t mean she destroyed any part of who you are or who you were. I don’t give a damn what she thinks. There is no part of you that isn’t precious to me, do you understand that? There is no part of you -- past, present, or future -- that isn’t safe in my hands. So I’m going to hold on to these for you and love all of you, even the parts of you I don’t know yet. And when you’re finally ready to share everything, I’ll be here to listen, okay? I’ll always accept you for who you are, and I’ll always understand.”
“I know,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging him for all I was worth. “I know.”
* * * *
No doubt about it, the waiting was killing me.
I don’t know what I would have done if we’d gone the traditional route and not been able to see each other before the wedding. Nixing that idea had been Timmy’s call, probably because he knew better than to let me out of sight for even a second as the time before the ceremony grew shorter and shorter. As it was, I was a bundle of nerves, and I didn‘t even know why. I wanted this. I mean I really wanted this, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. But the day had been a long one and emotional as hell, and I’d just about reached the point where I wanted to crawl into a dark hole with Timmy and never come out again. Left to my own devices, I probably would have gone out of my mind, or maybe jumped out a window and run for my life. But my life was right there in the room with me, fussing with my tie and picking microscopic dust specks off my lapel.
By four o’clock on the dot, we stood facing each other in the middle of Liz’s drawing room, listening to her pound out one of the joy songs by one of the B guys on her baby grand. The 35-50 person guest list had somehow expanded to something more in the 75-90 range, and it was so crowded guests had to line up along the walls to fit in. Timmy looked like something off the cover of GQ in his classic black penguin suit, and I guess I looked okay in mine, too, only more wild-eyed and sweaty, I suppose. He looked almost as nervous as I felt, but happy, and a damned sight less out of his element. Me, I was lost. Totally fucking flat out lost. But both of his hands were in both of mine, steadying me. Steadying him, too, I think.
Father Cam was with us, sans white collar, wearing a basic, no-frills tux and the most secular-looking red paisley vest I’d ever seen. He wasn’t there as clergy, but as a friend. Instead of officiating in the traditional sense, he was playing a civilian and kind of MCing the event, showing us where to stand and giving us cues when we needed it. I’m glad someone was on the ball, because I was wiped out and excited and scared shitless all at once. I remember wishing like hell someone would crack open a window because my stomach was churning again, and I didn’t want to give Timmy the satisfaction of saying “I told you so” when I hurled all over his designer shoes.
Liz wrapped up the piano thing, and Father Cam went into a brief welcoming spiel. My grip on Timmy’s hands got tighter and maybe a little more desperate. Once Cam was done, we were supposed to exchange the vows we’d written, and I had stupidly volunteered to go first. I went over my little speech in my head one last time, a condensed version like a checklist, just to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything out. But I was having a hell of a time trying to focus. Sweat trickled down my neck, and when I tried to suck in some air, damned little of it made its way to my lungs.
I saw Timmy looking a question at me, the nervous excitement in his eyes turning to worry. I shook my head, trying to reassure him that I wasn’t planning on keeling over from pure, irrational terror anytime soon. I just wished I could have reassured myself.
Cam finished talking and gave me my cue. At least I think he did. His lips were moving, but the only thing I could hear was the rush of some phantom ocean, like the sound you hear when you hold a seashell next to your ear. All eyes were on me, I guess, but I really couldn’t see any of them because the world had taken on a dark red cast and it shimmered around the edges, shaking and pulsing in time with the erratic beat of my heart.
I remember making it as far as, “From the moment we met, I knew I’d be stronger with you by my side than I could ever be alone.“ Then something inside my head went crrrackkk! like a transformer blowing in the middle of an ice storm, and I guess you could say all my lights went out. When they blinked on again, I was sitting on a loveseat someone had vacated for us with my face buried against Timmy’s neck, bawling like a baby. It had to have scared him to death, seeing me fall apart like that, but he kept his head and didn’t ask anything stupid like if I was all right or did I want to call the whole thing off. That was the last thing I wanted to do, and I guess even then he had the good sense to realize it. He just kept holding on tight and calling me baby, stroking my hair and rubbing my back in firm, soothing circles until I ran dry. Then he wiped my eyes and kissed me very gently, shushing me when I tried to tell him I was sorry.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I have to tell you what I wrote. I worked so hard….”
“Then tell me,” he said.
My face felt like it had been seared over a high flame. I can safely say I‘ve never been more humiliated in my whole life. I lifted my head long enough to look around the room full of Timmy‘s nearest and dearest, imagining they were all staring at me in some combination of curiosity and horror, wondering what kind of scene I was planning to make next. But Timmy put his hands on either side of my face like a pair of blinders on a horse and made me hone in on him instead.
“Don’t tell them, Donald,” he said. “Tell me. There’s no one here but you and me, okay? Just take a deep breath and tell me why you want to marry me.” Then he neatly tucked my head back under his chin and wrapped his arms around me, enfolding me in a soothing blanket of pure Timmyness. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the warm, clean scent of his skin mixed with the faintly sweet earthiness of his cologne, the familiar sound of his breathing, the press of his hand against the back of my neck. Then I did what he asked and recited the whole thing, the words shaky and garbled, muffled against the damp and crumpled shoulder of his tux. I have no idea how much of it he was able to make out, but I don’t guess it really mattered. The cool thing about Timmy was, when it came to me, he always understood a hell of a lot more than he actually heard.
“Thank you,” he said when I was done. He pressed his lips to my temple, then said his piece as well, whispering it into my ear as if it was nobody’s business but our own. The sound of his voice calmed me down, and I was finally able to stand, clutching his hand, and help light the unity candle without managing to burn the place to the ground. Then we exchanged rings and sealed the deal with a kiss. And that, as they say, was that.
Thirty minutes later, I was still clutching Timmy’s hand as we accepted congrats from a roomful of people who were all polite enough to pretend I hadn’t just imploded before their very eyes. Suddenly starving, I let go of him just long enough to fill my plate at the buffet Katie and the other ladies had fixed for us, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw it wasn’t all a bunch of fancy French dishes I didn’t know how to pronounce, let alone eat. I’d been afraid it would all be oysters and snails and over-salted fish eggs, maybe some boiled-alive crustaceans that might taste just fine but still looked disturbing as hell staring back at you from the center of your plate.
I should have known Timmy would plan the spread with me in mind. What I saw was just plain good food presented with what the restaurant reviews he sometimes read to me would probably call “casual elegance.” There were plenty of appetizers, including shrimp and crab, but luckily nothing with the eyes still attached. The headliner was that roast pork dish with apricots and cherries I loved so much, heavy on the ginger just the way I liked it. If you weren’t into pork, there was chicken Florentine instead, plus garlic potatoes, lots of fresh bread, baby carrots, and mounds of steamed asparagus with sides of hollandaise and garlic butter so everyone could have their choice. I froze with the ladle full of sauce in my hand, nailed by the poisonous glare Timmy shot my way. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to behave myself for once and only take a little bit.
As black tie events go, our reception wasn’t half bad. Over the next few hours, we drank champagne and accepted gifts, posed for about a thousand pictures, made the rounds with the guests and, of course, danced. Timmy and I each took Marion for a couple of spins around the room, and Liz got her turn with each of us, too. Dancing with Liz was kinda like dancing with a chandelier -- she shimmered and sparkled in an insanely low-cut gown covered in crystal beads and black and silver spangles.
“Scandalous,“ she told me, “I look positively scandalous!“ and I couldn’t help but agree. Once I got past my fear of being electrocuted by the energy field that dress was putting out, I tried to thank her properly for all she’d done for us, opening her home to me the way she had and providing the space and music and all that incredible food for our wedding.
“Just because my son’s an ass doesn’t mean that the rest of us are,” she said. “Since the day he was born, T.J. has been the light of my life, and you’re clearly the light of his. As far as I’m concerned, that makes you family. Besides, you’re young and charming and easy on the eye, and I’ve been a widow far too long. At my age, any thrills that come my way may be vicarious ones, but I savor them just the same. Feel free to come here and thrill me anytime you like.”
Liz was an amazing dancer, light as air on her feet and incredibly graceful for an eighty-five-year-old who’d had hip replacement surgery barely four months prior. Timmy’d told me she’d taught him to dance when he hit puberty, making sure he knew how to waltz properly so he wouldn’t embarrass himself during school dances at that stuffy private academy he’d attended. I could see the similarity in their grace and form, in the easy way they both seemed to switch off their minds and just let the music take them.
I hit the floor with Liz a couple more times that night, as often as her stamina allowed and Marion’s brother, Thomas -- a soft-spoken “confirmed bachelor” who taught music theory at Georgetown -- agreed to fill in for her on the Steinway. Mostly, I danced with Timmy, though. Timmy, who couldn’t stop smiling for even a second, those baby blues of his alight with pure, unselfconscious joy. I’d never seen him happier, never been happier myself than I was right then, knowing that it was me, being married to the likes of me, that made him feel that good.
As the evening wore on, several toasts were made to our health, plus a few to our virility, which I thought was pretty damned funny coming from an upper-crust crowd like that one. When the time came to cut the cake, I held the first slice up to Timmy’s mouth so he could take a bite, and one of his younger cousins yelled, “Shove it in his face!” See, I hate that shit. What kind of asshole thinks it’s funny to humiliate the person they claim to love? I know a lot of couples do that and everyone thinks it’s hilarious, but it’s not my style, and it sure as hell isn’t Timmy’s. I flipped my middle digit at the guy, which drew a huge laugh from the crowd and an exasperated sigh from Tim, then fed him the cake like a gentleman. The way he smiled at me, then licked icing off the corner of my mouth once I’d had my bite, made me glad I did.
Timmy was getting tired, though, and it was starting to show. Around ten o’clock, his hand closed on mine, and he gave me a look that said he’d had his fill of being sociable and wanted to be alone in the quiet and the dark with me. He didn’t have to tell me twice. Since we didn’t exactly have a bride’s bouquet or a garter to throw, I took off my tie and tossed it instead, then just about laughed my ass off when Liz snagged it mid-air and announced she’d begin interviewing applicants for the position of her consort shortly. We said our thanks and our goodnights and trudged up that wide, wide staircase, the party voices and music following us all way down the hall to our room.
A couple of days after Timmy’d told Marion we were officially tying the knot, she’d presented us with a card stuffed with crisp green bills and a brochure for a gay-friendly ski lodge. “From your father and me,” she’d told Tim, though we both knew better. Affairs of state were more or less on hiatus until after the holidays, and a disturbing wave of marital fidelity seemed to be hitting the Albany area, so neither of us had much trouble at all taking a couple of weeks off for a honeymoon. We’d spent a sizable stack of those green bills on skis for me, plus what Timmy referred to as “suitable attire for the slopes” for us both. First thing the next morning, we’d be hitting the road in the “more dependable transportation” we’d rented and heading for Vermont, where he was planning to haul my uncoordinated ass up a snow-covered mountain, teach me the ropes, and presumably spend the next two weeks making sure I didn’t break any body parts I couldn’t live without. For the wedding night, however, we were fine right where we were.
The house was big and drafty, and because we were so tired, both of us were feeling the chill. But there was a big brick hearth in our room, and in no time Timmy had a fire going. Someone had left a bottle of champagne chilling on the nightstand, but by that time we were both pretty much champagned out, so we decided to stow it away in a suitcase instead.
I undressed him as he undressed me, making one of his rituals of it. I took his glasses from him, folding them carefully and setting them aside, then kissed him, long and slow and deep, before taking his hand and guiding him down onto the bed beside me. We lay on our sides, close but not pressed together, just looking at each other and touching one another everywhere we could reach. We didn’t have sex. We were both too wiped out to work up that much effort, and besides, it wasn’t like we really needed to consummate anything right then and there. We still were what we’d always been, what we’d been that morning and the morning before that. We’d just taken it a little further that day and carved it in stone.
For my part, I was more than content just to feel his lips against mine, the smooth warmth of his skin beneath my palm, the faint roughness of his jawline as it brushed against my neck and chest, the silken glide of his hand stroking my side. I loved just looking at him, the long, slender length of him, the shadows and shades of him lying naked beside me, the flames from the hearth reflected in his eyes. In the years since, whenever I’ve been down or pissed or frustrated or afraid, my mind’s gone back to that night, to how good Timmy looked bathed in firelight, and it’s calmed me down, taken the edge off, allowed me to function again. It’s like a lucky charm I carry next to my heart, one that can never be lost, one that nobody can ever take away.
After a while, I made my little speech again, only without falling to pieces this time. I’d worked so hard on the thing, and I needed him to know for the record and beyond a doubt how much he meant to me, how much it meant to have him in my life, to know he had faith in me. I needed him to understand that he’d changed my life, made a difference in me, made me believe in things again. He listened quietly, smiling softly as a single big, fat tear rolled down his cheek, his eyes telling me that he not only heard what I was saying and loved me for saying it, but that he’d known it all along. Then he repeated his vows to me as I pulled the covers up around us and we settled in together, my head on his chest and his arms around me, his right hand fanned possessively through my hair.
“How do you feel?” he whispered.
“Married.” I felt married, as married as two men can get. Hell, as married as any two people can get once they’ve promised to spend the rest of their lives together. Who gave a fuck if our marriage wasn’t sanctified by the law or the Lord, by Earl P. Shitkicker from Kentucky or by the Republican Party? It was sanctified by us, by Timmy and by me, by the strength of our love and our commitment to each other. As far as I could see, when it came down to it, that was all that mattered.
“Me, too,“ he said, nuzzling my hair. Then he was out, slipping quietly into sleep with the words barely out of his mouth. As I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe, I sifted through the fragments of my life like so many pieces of torn paper. I was a fuck-up and I knew it, and I’d made enough bad decisions along the way to fill a book. But I’d always tried so goddamned hard, busted my ass trying to be a good son, a good soldier, a lover worth coming home to, worth staying alive for. It had never seemed fair that all that effort had come to nothing, that all my sweat and hard work and misdirected loyalty had left me with nothing better than a handful of jagged remains that spilled through the gaps between my fingers like a wedding invitation no one seemed to want.
Then I remembered those two photos in Timmy’s wallet and the way he’d taken the tattered fragments of my existence and quietly, patiently pieced them together into a life, a real life, full of hope and meaning and comfort and love. Having him with me didn’t erase the past, and it didn’t magically make it all okay. What it did was put it in perspective, balance it out, make it -- finally -- into something I could deal with, something I could bear.
I thought back to election night and the thing Timmy’d said that started me thinking about weddings and forevers and how good it would feel to look down and see his ring on my finger. I couldn‘t help grinning, imagining the rise I’d get out of him if I ragged him about it, telling him that when he’s wrong, he’s wrong, and he’d been wrong as hell that day. See, it may not always be staring you right in the face, and sometimes it takes a lot of work and some pretty big leaps of faith to search it out. But if you take the time to look, you just might find out there is some justice in this world after all.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I ventured, slipping my hand into his and giving it what I hoped was a comforting squeeze. I’ve never given a rat’s ass about politics, but this stuff was his life, and the least I could do was show some support. After a moment, he squeezed back.
“It’s not as if we didn‘t see it coming. This trend toward neo-conservatism’s sweeping the country. It’s frightening, but it’s a predictable cycle, and it should reverse itself eventually. At least, I hope it will.” He clicked off the set and turned to look at me, sighing deeply. “Oh, well.” He squeezed my hand again, then patted it and let go. “I don’t know why I’m letting it get to me, anyway. It’s not like it affects us personally. I’m going to bed. You coming?”
“In a second,” I said, watching as he gathered my empty beer bottle, his coffee mug, and the bowl of peanut shells I’d created over the course of the night. As he moved off toward the kitchen, I stayed where I was, stuck in perpetual instant replay mode, hearing again and again the odd note in his voice when he’d said it didn’t affect us personally. I didn’t know if he’d intended to deliver a message there, but I’d received one loud and clear. He’d never tell me, not in a million years. He wouldn’t ask, probably wouldn’t even hint at it to feel out my reaction, just because he was always so damned worried about pressuring me or making me feel suffocated. But there it was, plain as day. I was an idiot for not figuring it out sooner.
Timmy wanted to get married.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Honestly, I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of the institution. Don’t get me wrong, I thought everybody should have a right to take the plunge if they wanted to -- even second-class citizens like us. I just had no clue why anyone would want to. My parents’ alliance had been bitter and bloody, and when my old man finally disappeared into the night, I think it was a tie who was the most relieved, my mother or me.
Still, Timmy and I weren’t Carl and Jeanette Strachey. We were together because we wanted to be, not because ten sweaty minutes of unprotected sex in the back seat of a Mustang led to a not-so-happy surprise a couple of weeks later when somebody’s monthlies failed to make their scheduled appearance. We were together, though, and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. I was as sure of his love as I was of my own name, and I knew he felt the same way about me. What was I so afraid of?
Timmy was like oxygen to me, like food and water and sunlight. I already felt as bound to him as one man can be to another, committed to waking up with the same guy drooling on my pillow every day for the rest of my life. So what was the big deal about putting all that on the dotted line? Timmy was a traditional kind of guy, and the ex-seminarian in him loved ceremony and ritual. Of course he would want what everyone else had, the right to stand up in front of his friends and family and show them how much he loved and was loved.
The more I got my head wrapped around the idea, the more I liked it myself. It would make Timmy so happy, and making him happy always made me happy, too. If we could’ve done it legally, I’d have hauled him down to the court house right then and there. Until that was an option, it looked like we’d have to settle for the next best thing.
I followed him into the kitchen and found him by the sink, rinsing out my beer bottle before dropping it into the recycling bin. Snaking my arms around him from behind, I stood on tip-toe to nuzzle the back of his neck. “I love you,” I informed him, nipping at his ear.
He turned in my arms and hugged me long and hard. Our mouths connected, and I put everything I had into that kiss, hoping it was getting across even one tenth of everything I’d say to him if I had the words -- how much I loved him, how good he made me feel, how I never wanted to live another day without him by my side. When we finally came up for air, he leaned his forehead against mine and closed his eyes.
“I love you, too,” he said. “What was that for?”
I shrugged and grinned, then caught him in another lip-lock, my hands roaming under his soft blue cardigan. He was as warm and affectionate as ever, and he made all the right noises of pleasure and encouragement, but there was just enough drag time to his responses to let me know his heart wasn’t really in it. Me, I can go for it anytime, anywhere, but Tim’s not wired that way. He’d never turned me down when I was in the mood, and I knew if I’d pressed the issue, he would have done everything in his power to please me. But he was tense and tired and obviously more than a little bit down, and I knew what he needed more than a tussle between the sheets was some quiet time together, along with a big dose of TLC. So I led him into the bedroom and undressed him like I would a little kid, being careful to get his sweater and pants onto their hangers more or less neatly so he wouldn’t feel obligated to bitch about the mess the next day. Then I stripped down as well and put us both to bed.
I treated him to a long, thorough back massage, paying special attention to his neck and shoulders, because that’s where the tension builds the worst when he’s stressed or upset. He kept thanking me, the words muffled by the pillow, and telling me how good it felt. Afterward, we lay together and traded slow, deep kisses and some sleepy mush talk. Around midnight, I broke it off just long enough to set the alarm and turn off the light, then settled next to him again, gathering him in my arms. Before I knew it, he was dead to the world.
I lay awake all night.
* * * *
The next afternoon, I called it quits early and beat Timmy home by about an hour, which gave me plenty of time to get some wine chilling and to throw something together for dinner. I’m not much to write home about when it comes to cooking, but even I can slap pre-assembled shrimp kabobs on the George Foreman and brush them with teriyaki sauce, dump salad-in-a-bag in a bowl, and nuke instant rice. By the time he came through the door, the table was set, a pair of more or less matching white candles were burning away in the center of the table, and I had the place smelling like a Mongolian grill. I met him with a kiss and a bundle of yellow and white daisies I’d picked up at the grocery on way home and watched the beaten expression on his face melt away like a snow bank in the July sun. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing.
It was going to be a damned good night.
We didn’t talk much over dinner. But then again, we didn’t have to. It was one of those times when the way we looked at each other said it all. He put on some music, something slow and soft with an easy jazz beat, and while I cleared the table, he refilled our glasses and added a few more candles to the mix. We danced for a while right there in that little eat-in kitchen, his head on my shoulder at first, then mine on his, til we’d pause long enough to take a sip of wine and switch off again.
We went to bed early and made love with all the passion of our first time together but none of the fear, then lay in each others arms for a long time afterward, both of us too lazy and too content to straighten the blanket and turn out the light. Finally, he roused himself enough to pull the covers over us and reached across me to click off the bedside lamp, but stopped when he saw the expression on my face.
“What is it?” he asked, that little line forming between his eyebrows the way it always did when I started setting off the alarm bells in his head. He looked so freaked out I had to laugh.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” I said, stroking his cheek. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“What is it?” he asked again, his guard really up by then, the line between his brows turning into a ditch.
I kept rubbing his face reassuringly, my eyes locked on his. “Hey, don’t look so worried. It’s no big deal. I was just wondering…” I paused, searching for words. “I was just wondering what a good date would be for you. I know you’ll want to plan this thing out and invite people. I’ll have to clear my schedule, and you’ll want to ask off for a few days so we can go someplace afterward….”
The rest was cut off when he pounced on me, pinning me to the mattress as he hugged me fiercely. “Soon!” he said. “I want to do it soon!”
* * * *
When Timothy J. Callahan moves on an idea, let me tell you, he moves.
I’d braced myself for a long, painful ordeal, expecting him to want something of roughly the same size and scope as Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Di. Once I’d finally grown a set and asked Timmy to make an honest man of me, I had to admit I was getting kind of excited about the whole thing and itched to get the show on the road. But a huge, elaborate wedding takes time to plan, so I figured his “soon” meant sometime the following year, something June-ish, maybe. I nearly keeled over in shock a couple of nights later when he paused in the middle of sliding a massive hunk of homemade lasagna onto my plate and asked, “How does the second Saturday in December sound to you?”
“Not an option,” I said, pulling the plate toward me and going in for the kill, rolling my eyes in ecstasy as an orgasmic blend of cheese, Italian seasonings, and the sauce he’d been hovering over all afternoon hit my tongue. “Drag your heels that long, buddy, and somebody else just might come along with a better offer.”
He set his fork down and looked at me, arms crossed over his chest and right eyebrow disappearing into his hairline.
My lips twitched. “I don’t want to wait that long,” I said, reaching across to snag one of his hands and pull it toward me, dipping his fingers into the tomato sauce on my plate along the way, then guiding them to my mouth. I sucked them with the enthusiasm I usually reserved for a different part of his anatomy.
He didn’t try to pull away, but his eyebrow shot even higher. “Donald, we have a wedding to plan! Five weeks is hardly ‘that long’ by anyone’s standards.”
“Five weeks? When you said December, I thought you meant next year.”
He rolled his eyes then and shook his head. But he still wasn‘t making any big push to reclaim his hand. “I meant next month. Darling, do you honestly think I’d give you that much time to get cold feet?”
“Point taken.” I dipped his fingers into my food again, scooping up a little ricotta along with the sauce the second time around. “I know you want to plan something nice, though. Is five weeks gonna give you enough time? You know I‘ll do anything I can to help, but you also know I‘m pretty useless when it comes to this kind of stuff.”
“You’ll be there promising to spend the rest of your life with me. Believe me, it’s going to be nice. All the rest is gravy. Or in this case, marinara,” he said, grinning as I popped his fingers into my mouth once more. “I’ll come up with something we’ll both like. Do you trust me?”
Did I trust him? Only with my life.
* * * *
Every time I thought about the fact that this was real, that I was actually marrying Timmy, I got a weird flutter in my chest, and for maybe half a minute, I’d have a hell of a time trying to draw my next breath. But I was the good kind of excited, not the bad kind, you know? I wasn’t really nervous, just revved and more than ready to get on with it. As fast as December was creeping up on us, the waiting was driving me crazy.
As promised, I stepped back and left most of the planning to Timmy. For what it was worth, I gave him my opinion whenever he scowled at me and said “Whatever you want, honey” wasn’t an answer, but for the most part, I kept my nose out of it.
Timmy’s Catholic and I’m nothing, so he just about worried himself prematurely gray over how to slant the ceremony, spiritually speaking. For my part, I didn’t give a damn what kind of wedding we had as long as we had one and it didn’t drag on long enough to put everybody -- okay, mostly me -- to sleep. In the end, he decided that our wedding wasn’t a religious event, it was an us event, and he wanted to keep it that way. Which was more than all right with me.
I think it kind of surprised him when I said I wanted us to write our own vows. Firing off those generic pieces of crap most people stick to wouldn’t have covered half the stuff I wanted to say to Timmy. I may not be the most articulate guy on the planet, but I don’t like having somebody else put words in my mouth, especially about something as important as my sweetheart and me. I spent a week and a half writing and rewriting the little speech I planned to give, polishing it til it shone and making sure it said everything I thought Timmy needed to know but I’d never gotten around to putting into words before. Then I spent the next three and a half weeks practicing it until I could say it in my sleep, reciting it on my way to work and on my way back home, in front of the bathroom mirror and again in my head when we were watching TV or he was sleeping beside me, dreaming, no doubt, of two-groom cake toppers and tasteful floral arrangements.
I’d figured Timmy would toss out a guest list of several hundred people, want about twenty attendants and a full orchestra playing the wedding march. Instead, he informed me that we were keeping the guest list in the 35-50 range, and that Grandma Liz had offered both her estate and the services of her household staff for the event so we wouldn’t have to worry about renting a place or hiring someone to cater the reception. The old girl herself would provide the music on her baby grand.
I can’t say I was much help to him when it came to picking out the selections. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much into music as the next guy, but I don’t think Korn or some vintage Aerosmith would’ve exactly set the tone Timmy was shooting for. He must’ve made me listen to a thousand pieces of long-hair stuff over the weeks leading up to the wedding, and to tell the truth, it all pretty much sounded the same to me. Only two pieces stuck out: “Ode to Joy” by Beethoven and “Joy” by Bach. Or was it the other way around? I only remember the names because the composers both started with B and the titles were so much alike and sounded like the music itself -- pure, busting out of your skin happiness, the kind I felt when Timmy kissed me, or made me cum, or sent me a text message in the middle of the day just to say he was thinking about me. Those were the two pieces Timmy went with for the beginning of the ceremony and for the end. He said they were beautiful and completely appropriate, and that Liz would do a wonderful job with them on her Steinway. Mostly, I think he picked them because he wanted to please me.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved when he nixed the idea of attendants, saying neither of us were exactly blushing brides, and we could make it to the altar just fine all by ourselves, thank you very much. He’d never admit it, but I know he did it to spare my feelings. He had a dozen friends who would have been thrilled shitless to stand up for him, and I just flat out didn’t know anybody who‘d be interested in doing the same for me. Sure, I had a few drinking buddies I used to hit the bars with, but I’d never gone as far as exchanging last names with most of them, let alone gotten close enough to have them riding shotgun on the most important day of my life. Before I hooked up with Timmy, I’d pretty much flown solo. I know it upset him some that I didn’t contribute any names to the guest list, but when I said the only person I cared about sharing the day with was him, and as long as he didn’t forget to show up, I was good, he let it rest.
Timmy’s father was conveniently scheduled to be out of town on urgent state business the week of the wedding, so he wouldn’t be able to attend. Timmy tried to act like it didn’t hurt like hell, but he’s a lousy actor. Besides, I know him better than that. It made me fucking furious, and I wished I’d taken a crack at rearranging the old bastard’s face when I’d had the chance. But his mother was going to be there, and she was so thrilled for us both and so interested and willing to pitch in and help any way she could, it overshadowed the situation with his dad. At least I hope it did.
We only really fell out over one thing, and that was the fact that Timmy seemed to take it personally when I wouldn’t invite my parents. Asking my dad to come was out of the question, of course. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since the day he walked out on us, and I had no idea where he’d ended up or even if he was still alive, which was okay by me. But Timmy’s kind of thin-skinned in some ways, and he took it to mean I wasn’t proud of him, that maybe I was ashamed to be saying my I-dos to a guy, when I said I wanted to leave my mom out of the mix.
The truth was, she and I had never exactly been close. She’d never lifted a finger to stop my father when he was smacking me around, which I can understand in a way, because if she’d tried to interfere, he probably would have put her through a wall. Once he was out of the picture, she spent most of her spare time letting me know how much I reminded her of him and how much of a disappointment I was to her. Then I got kicked out of the army and out of the closet all in one shot, and she made it clear I was never supposed to darken her doorway again. So much for motherly love, right?
I’d never mentioned anything about my family to Timmy, and he’d never asked, though I knew he’d been wanting to. I tried to explain the bare bones of this to him the best I could without going into the whole Kyle thing or making it sound like I was throwing myself a pity party. Being Timmy, he read between the lines the way he always did and figured out it was all more of a big hairy deal than I was making it out to be. Also being Timmy, he didn’t push for details, just put his arms around me and kept saying he was sorry, he was so, so sorry in a choked voice. Before the night was done, we’d made the most tender, intense love two men can make -- twice in the living room and once again in bed, as a matter of fact. And I’d caved and given him my mother’s address, or at least what I assumed was still my mother’s address, and told him he could send her a wedding invitation if he wanted but to leave me out of it.
Timmy’s not naïve, really. But he is…I dunno…unworldly, maybe? I think he actually believed that if we reached out to my mother, she’d put all her prejudices aside and welcome me back with open arms. He’s a logical, rational man, see, and he expects everyone in the world to act in a logical, rational manner. The way he saw it, it would be totally illogical for any mother to reject her son for being gay once she saw he was happy and settled and embracing something as normal and traditional as marriage, even if it was to another man.
Obviously, he didn’t know what he was up against.
About a week later, I got home just as Timmy was going through the mail. Swear to God, the man could have been an OCD poster child. Organized to the point of insanity, he sorted it all out first, making four neat stacks: bills, ads, RSVPs, and miscellaneous. I made myself a sandwich and watched him attack the bills first, arranging them according to due date before setting them aside. Then he went through the ads, slipping the ones with coupons he thought we’d use into an accordion folder before throwing the rest away. The RSVPs were opened and sorted according to a yes pile and a no pile, of course. There were lots of yeses and hardly any noes, which had him looking so pleased I just had to reach across the counter and give his hand a quick squeeze. He squeezed back, smiling that blinding smile that made it next to impossible for me to keep my hands off of him, then let go and went to work on the miscellaneous stack. I saw him touch a large clasp envelope and hesitate, his smile fading. He shot me a weird glance as he opened it, then peered inside like he expected something to shoot out of the envelope and bite his face off. He made a funny noise then and shot me another glance, this time looking sick through and through.
“What is it?” I asked, rushing to hover over him, he was scaring me so bad.
Without saying a word, he turned the envelope upside down and poured the contents onto the counter. Shredded paper, pictures, the remains of a wedding invitation. Some of the pieces were so small they looked like confetti, and others were bigger -- intentionally, I suspected, so we’d be sure to see what they’d once been part of. My birth certificate. Inoculation records. Crayon snowmen from a Christmas card I’d made when I was a kid. A certificate, probably for perfect attendance since I’d never exactly set the academic world on fire.
Mom.
“Welcome to the Strachey family,” I said, picking up a handful of fragments and letting them sift through my fingers.
Timmy was searching through the pile, pulling out jagged slivers of Kodak paper and arranging them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A black and white snapshot taken in the hospital the day I was born took shape under his fingers. A school picture of me in that red plaid shirt I always hated, my hair so plastered down with the gel Mom made me use that it looked like it was glued to my forehead.
“I just don’t get this,” he said, looking like he was gonna puke at any moment. The way I was feeling, I figured I might just beat him to it.
“What don’t you get?” I said, suddenly furious with him, though God knows he was the last person on the planet to deserve it. “The kid in these pictures grew up to be something so disgusting she had to kill him off any way she could. He no longer exists. I no longer fucking exist!”
“Don,” he said, reaching for me. I backed away. I couldn’t stand the thought of being touched right then, couldn’t bear the look in his eyes, the dawning comprehension that while he meant everything to his own mother, I was less than nothing to mine. “Donald, listen to me.”
But I couldn’t listen, couldn’t let him draw me into his arms the way I knew he wanted to, couldn’t bear up under the weight of his attempts to comfort me. Some things just run too deep to be comforted.
I ran.
* * * *
Somewhere around two a.m. I came crawling back, of course, feeling every bit like the piece of shit I guess I was. My feet were blistered and throbbing from running for miles in the wrong kind of shoes, and my head ached. I knew I stank, that I reeked of stale sweat, stale beer and cigarettes, stale fury. I didn’t want to wake Tim, but I needed a shower bad and couldn’t very well climb in bed beside him when I smelled like that. I left my shoes at the door and the lights off and eased past the bed on my way to the bathroom, listening to make sure his breathing stayed slow and even. But I heard him swallow and realized he wasn’t sleeping at all, that he’d probably been lying there alone in the dark for hours, thinking the worst. I crawled across the bed and wriggled in beside him, holding him as hard as I could without cracking a rib. He was stiff in my arms, unresponsive, unmoving.
“Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”
He swallowed again. “Did you…”
He knew my history. Considering the way I smelled, what else could he think? “No! Oh God, no! I went for a run to blow off steam, then I stopped by The Pit for a few beers. For some reason, getting shit-faced drunk sounded like a good idea at the time.“
“Was it?“
“Is it ever? I don’t know why I let her get to me like she did. I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. I’m so sorry I made you worry.”
He turned toward me at last, clammy skin and toxic body odor be damned, and wrapped himself around me. “You’re nearly frozen,” he said. “I’ve got to get you warm.” I burrowed in, happily losing myself in the pure, unrelenting warmth that was Timmy. “I feel terrible about all this,” he said. “You didn’t want to send that damned invitation in the first place, but I forced the issue. All it did is give her one more chance to hurt you. Can you forgive me?“
“Shhhh.“ I kissed him long and slow, exploring the hot, pulpy interior of his mouth with my tongue. I felt him stiffen, and he pulled back so he could look at me.
“You’ve been bleeding,” he said, touching my lip.
“Some asswipe put his hands on me, and I popped him in the mouth. Guess he thought he should return the favor.”
“God, Donald….”
I rolled us both over so I could straddle him, my hands on either side of his shoulders and my groin pressing firmly against his.
“I didn’t want it, Timmy. I didn’t ask for it. Look, I was no saint in the past. You know that. But I swear all that stopped the first time you danced with me. I’m making you a promise, honey, and you can take it to the bank. I’ve never cheated on you, and I never will. As long as I live, I’ll always be faithful to you, okay?”
“Okay,“ he said softly. Then he pulled me down on top of him, and you could say we tabled the discussion for the rest of the night.
* * * *
It wasn’t so much a sound that woke me up as a sense of emptiness, the sudden realization that Timmy was no longer in bed beside me. We’d driven down to his grandmother’s for a big family dinner the evening before, then spent the night in a guest suite twice the size of our whole apartment. As I stretched my hand across the covers and fought to pry my eyes open, I felt an irrational flutter of panic the way I always do when I wake up and he’s gone. I sat up, getting ready to call his name, when I heard a soft clink from the adjoining bathroom, followed by the sound of water running. I looked at the clock and winced. The wedding wasn’t til four, for chrissake. What was he doing up so goddamned early?
Still groggy as hell, I forced myself out of bed and onto my feet, then stumbled into the white and gold cavern of a bathroom, coming up beside him as he brushed his teeth. I lifted his arm and positioned it across my shoulders, then snuggled in tight against his side. He smelled so good, all damp and warm from the shower, I almost felt guilty touching him. I probably smelled like sleep and stale cum, overlaid with that double shot of Belvedere I’d knocked back before turning in. But he didn’t act like I was contaminating him or anything. He squeezed my shoulder and grinned at me through a greenish film of organic toothpaste, bumping my hip with his own.
“You left me,” I whined.
He spit and rinsed, then spit again and spent a full minute running his toothbrush under the tap, rubbing the bristles with his thumb until he decided it was hygienically sound enough to return to its holder. Then he hugged me tight and planted a smacking kiss on my forehead.
“Good morning, sleepyhead. I’ve got six o‘clock Mass, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” We may have been leaving religion out of the ceremony itself, but it was still important to Timmy that he feel spiritually connected that day. So Cam Briggs, one of his few friends from the seminary who still bothered to keep in touch, had offered to show up at the ass crack of dawn and say a sunrise service for the family and as many friends as cared to attend. It didn’t exactly make up for the fact that the Church would never recognize marriage vows exchanged by a couple of queers as a sacred bond, but it made Timmy feel a little better about the whole thing, just the same.
I hadn’t been specifically invited to attend, but I hadn’t been specifically asked to stay away, either. I think Timmy just sort of assumed I wouldn’t be interested and left it at that. To tell the truth, I’d pretty much assumed the same thing. Except for Liz, who rolled her eyes and declared herself a “spiritual freelancer,“ the Callahans were all dead serious about this religious stuff, and the last thing I wanted to be was an unwanted intrusion. But suddenly it freaked me out a little, thinking about being apart from him that day.
I gave him a peck on the cheek and reluctantly pried myself loose, then lifted the toilet seat so I could take a long, contemplative piss. He hugged me from behind as I was finishing up, nuzzled my neck and gave my earlobe a good, solid nip.
“Katie’s putting together a huge country breakfast for after Mass. I have it on good authority that she’s making eggs Benedict.”
Timmy’s cooking had broadened my horizons, gastronomically speaking. I’d recently declared hollandaise sauce one of the four major food groups, and Timmy must have passed the word along to his grandmother‘s cook.
“I’ll be there,” I said, leaning back against him. “Now go get ready or you’ll be late.”
He hesitated for a heartbeat before letting go. And in that instant’s hesitation, I heard an invitation come through loud and clear. As usual, he wouldn’t ask because he didn’t want to put me on the spot. But I was pretty sure he wished he didn’t have to ask, just the same.
He shouldn’t have to ask. Not for something like that. Not from me. And not on our wedding day.
As Timmy moved off to get dressed, I jumped in the shower long enough to kill my morning funk and to give my scalp a quick scrub, then brushed my teeth and shaved as fast as I could without making my face look like a crime scene photo. He’d already gone downstairs to meet the rest of the churchy set before heading to the chapel, so they’d probably be seated and ready to roll before I finished dealing with the knot in my tie. I dressed fast, taking it as a good omen when my tie more or less cooperated for a change, and hurried down a staircase that put the one from Gone with the Wind to shame. I took a shortcut through the kitchen, yelling a quick good morning to Katie as I shot out the back door.
Timmy and the rest of the clan had driven down to the family chapel by the lake, but I decided to walk instead, taking a more direct route across the back lawn. It was still dark out, but the night was starting to wear itself thin around the edges. Timmy and Marion had both gone on about how spectacular sunrise was in the chapel, and I was kind of curious to see what all the fuss was about. It was also cold as hell, and God knows I’ve never been much of a winter person. But it was a clean, fresh kind of cold, sort of pure, you know? I remember there was a heavy frost on, so heavy it almost looked like snow, and the stiff, white spikes of grass crunched under my feet. I ran at first, just to warm up and to burn off a sudden case of the jitters, but halfway there I slowed down to a walk so I could get my breathing under control.
At the door, I wavered, second guessing myself. I hadn’t been invited, and for a single paranoid moment, I wondered if that was on purpose, if the family would consider me a persona non grata if I crashed the service. To be honest, I was also struggling with my own discomfort over the whole organized religion thing. I hadn’t been in a church in years and halfway expected a lightning bolt to come out of the sky and zap me the second I stepped inside. My father’s side of the family was mostly Presbyterian, I think, but Mom brought me up Methodist, or at least tried to. I never bought into it and stopped letting her drag me to church the second I was old enough to put my foot down and not get smacked into next Tuesday for doing it. Like a lot of protestants, she took a dim view of Catholicism and probably would have disowned me all over again if she’d known I was not only marrying a guy, but one of Them.
Fuck ‘em. I was there for Timmy, so who gave a rat’s ass what anyone else thought? I slipped through the door just as everybody was settling into place. There were about fifteen people there, a pretty good showing for that hour of the morning, if you ask me. Timmy was right up front like I knew he would be, sitting next to his mother. I walked up to them along the side by the wall instead of coming down the center aisle so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself. Marion spotted me first, and her smile was so bright and so wide I knew exactly where Timmy’d gotten his from. She slid down the pew to make room for me. Then Timmy looked up, and the look of pure happiness he sent my way made all my doubts go away. As I settled between him and his mom, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.
“Thank you.” He mouthed the words, not making a sound. Then that little dent between his eyebrows appeared, and he let go of my hand long enough to attack my tie, fiddling with the knot until it gave up the fight and lay down in submission just the way he wanted it to. I grinned and let him have at it. I’d long since figured out that he didn’t mean this stuff as criticism. In his mind, fussing over my appearance was just one of the ways he looked after me. When he was done, he took my hand again and pulled it into his lap, holding it in both of his.
I’d never been to mass before, so I’d assumed the whole thing would seem alien and exotic. It was pretty much the same as a protestant service, though, except there was more standing and some kneeling involved, and there was a lot less music. For some reason, I’d expected the service to be in Latin, and was relieved when the priest spoke in English instead. Not that I had a clue what was going on. I stood when Timmy stood and knelt when he knelt, did my best to stay awake during the sermon and just kept my mouth shut and tried to look respectful when everybody joined in responses I didn’t recognize.
I had plenty of time to check out the chapel in the hour or so we sat there. I’m not much on churches, but even I had to admit this one was nice. It was small -- it probably seated fifty or sixty people max -- and kind of cozy. The whole place smelled like lemon furniture polish and candles. Everything there was some combination of red and gold, including the four stained glass windows along the side walls. But it was the window above the altar that really caught my eye. The designs in the others were abstracts, but this was a red rose, about six feet high and four across, set against a yellow-gold background. An Irish rose, I remembered Timmy telling me. His great-great-grandfather Calbert Callahan had added this chapel to the estate when he married great-great-grandma Rose back in the late 1800s. Callahan marriages had taken place there ever since. So had christenings and first communions, funerals, Christmas and Easter celebrations, you name it. It made me feel good to be part of that history, that kind of tradition.
Mostly, though, I just sat there and watched Timmy. I’d never seen this part of him before, though I’d known it existed, of course. I knew all about what happened in the seminary, that he attended mass sometimes and that his faith was still more important to him than anything, except maybe me. In a way, I’d almost been afraid of seeing him like this, so caught up in his spirituality, his religion, because I’d thought he’d seem different to me somehow, like a stranger almost. But he was still Timmy, my lover and my very best friend. He just seemed a little calmer than he was at home, more serene, more at peace.
I’ve decided that religious fervor, like romance and comedy, is pretty much just a matter of good timing. Right as the priest presented the sacrament, the sun hit that big rose window, and I understood what the big deal was all about. “This is my body, which is given for you,“ he said as the whole building lit up, bathing everything and everyone in it in soft rose and gold tones. Everybody made a surprised noise when it happened, like they’d all just witnessed a miracle. I’m not gonna lie to you, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But for me, it wasn’t a religious experience, it was a Timmy experience. He looked so beautiful right then, with the rosy light making that fair Irish skin of his glow, that it just about took my breath away. When he caught me staring, he smiled at me, his eyes crinkling around the corners, and he raised my hand to his lips before turning his attention back to the priest.
Timmy’d spent some time alone with Father Cam the night before, offering his confession so he’d be able to take communion. When he rose to take his place in line, I stayed seated, knowing I couldn’t join in because I wasn’t one of the fold, so to speak. But Timmy tugged at my hand, so even though I felt awkward as hell, I stood and walked along beside him. Back home at the United Methodist, wine was offered in individual shot glasses and everybody pinched a bite off a fresh loaf of bread the preacher’s wife baked for the occasion. Here, everyone drank from the same cup, which seemed kind of unsanitary to me, even though the priest wiped it clean each time with a white cloth. When Timmy’s turn came, I watched, fascinated, as he opened his mouth and allowed Cam to place what looked like a round piece of Styrofoam on his tongue. I was struck by the intimacy, the almost sexual nature of the act. After Timmy took his sip of wine, he looked me dead in the eye and kissed me right there in front of everybody, like he was passing part of the blessing on to me. His lips were warm and tasted like grapes, and I felt blessed in more ways than one.
Afterward, we gathered in Liz’s dining room for a meal of…well…biblical proportions. There were stacks of French toast and pancakes, fresh fruit, pastries, ham and sausage and bacon, and every style of egg under the sun. While Timmy chatted up the relatives, I sat there quietly stuffing my face with my fourth round of eggs Benedict, grinning like the happy hog I was as Katie ladled extra hollandaise over my plate.
“You’re going to be sick,” Timmy whispered between nibbles on his English muffin. I think the pre-wedding jitters were setting in, and he was too wired to eat.
“No way. Hollandaise is nature’s perfect food.”
“I never should have introduced you to the stuff,“ he said, wiping the sauce off my chin with his own napkin. “It’s bad form for one of the grooms to have to be carried in on a stretcher, you know. It’ll be a miracle if you don’t throw up on the wedding cake.”
I washed a mouthful of eggy heaven down with a swig of my mimosa and patted his hand. “You’re making an honest man of me, so it’s obviously a day for miracles. Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll get through it all without a glitch, you’ll see.”
Once we’d all had more than enough to eat, we wandered into the next room and spent the next couple of hours there, just hanging out while Timmy made small talk and I digested. Several of his aunts and uncles were already there, and more cousins and childhood friends wandered in as the day went on. Liz hadn’t made an appearance yet, and I missed her. But she’d warned me the night before that we probably wouldn’t be seeing much of her before the ceremony. “Civilized people go to bed at four a.m. and get up at noon,“ she’d told me, “and I am nothing if not civilized.“ Marion popped in and out from time to time, greeting newcomers and pausing long enough to plant a kiss on Timmy’s forehead or give my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. She had her hands full, seeing to the decorations and seating arrangements in the drawing room, where we’d be saying our vows later that afternoon, and overseeing Katie and the rest of the staff in the kitchen, where they were already hard at work on hors d’oeuvres for the reception. She was flushed and a little breathless, but seemed happy as a clam, the way most moms would be, I guess, on their son’s wedding day.
Timmy tried valiantly to include me in the conversation, and everyone was nice to me and genuinely friendly. I laughed at the stories about all the cute things he said or did when he was a kid, flipped through every family album that was shoved in my lap and made all the appropriate comments, but mostly I just reverted to my P.I. training and observed. In spite of his father’s all-to-obvious absence, it was clear Tim was still Clan Callahan’s fair-haired boy, and I was touched to see how comfortable everyone seemed to be with our situation, how much they all genuinely loved him.
Occasionally, I felt a tug of something like depression and had to block out images of my own childhood, which had been so different from his in every way. I didn’t resent the way Timmy had been brought up, I just wished my background had been a little more like his. Around noon, I started to get antsy. Unless I’m on the job or curled up in bed with Tim, I have a hard time staying still for long. It was too warm in the room, and with all those people milling around, the walls were starting to close in. Besides, all that rich food was doing a number on my insides, and it was all I could do not to squirm. When Timmy noticed, he excused himself and ran upstairs for our jackets, then extracted me from the circle of old ladies showing me his baby pictures and hauled me outside for a walk.
On the way out, we passed Liz’s gardener, Phil, and his son, Ted. The florist’s van was parked by the rear entrance, and they were hauling in massive plants and boxes of seasonal stuff like holly and pine. We’d agreed -- meaning Timmy assumed it was what I wanted and ran with it -- that the backdrop for our ceremony should have a very masculine feel. So as much as he loved flowers, he’d decided to keep them to a minimum and go with lots of ferns and other types of greenery instead. As Phil walked by, loaded down with two of the biggest ferns I’d ever seen, he nodded and smiled, but Ted looked the other way, remembering, probably, the night Liz embarrassed him after he’d made goo-goo eyes at Tim. If I hadn’t felt like I was gonna double over at any moment, I would’ve gotten a good laugh out of it.
Once we cleared the house, Timmy took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was around, then pulled me against him so hard and fast all that sudden pressure against my midsection made me crack one off loud enough for them to hear it back in Albany. “Honestly!“ he said in his best long-suffering voice as I sagged against him, groaning in relief. Muttering something I couldn’t quite make out, he tightened his grip around my waist and started patting my back like I was baby fresh off the bottle. My stomach was killing me, and the pressure of his belly against mine felt good. After a couple of minutes, I belched long and loud. For once, he didn’t bitch about my lack of manners. He just rolled his eyes and went right on patting. After another huge burp or two and a few more none-too-dainty farts, I started to feel a lot better and kissed his cheek in thanks.
“Not that you ever listen,” he grumbled. But he kissed me back, covering my mouth with his own without complaint one about stinky egg breath, and the lecture ended with that. Once we came up for air, I offered him my elbow and we walked toward the lake arm-in-arm, stopping to check out the family cemetery, where he gave me a condensed version of Callahan History 101.
“This cemetery goes back six generations back, and it’s filling up fast. We’re going to have to move that stone wall and expand if we’re going to fit many more people in here. There’s still plenty of room for this generation, though. My parents will be buried there,” he said, pointing, “and there’s a spot for Kelly and her spouse if she ever….”
I nudged his shoulder, trying to distract him. It was easy to forget that in spite of his privileged upbringing, it hadn’t exactly been all sunshine and lollipops for him, either. I didn’t want him dwelling on the sad stuff on a day that was supposed to be all about feeling happy.
“What about you?” I asked.
“We’ll be over there,” he said, pointing again. Then he got all flustered and started backpedaling. “I mean there are two spaces over there if we…if you decide you want….”
“Of course I want,” I said, kissing him again so he’d shut up. “I gotta admit, I’ve always kinda liked the idea of cremation, though. I think about it sometimes, what it would be like to have our ashes mixed together, then scattered on the wind.”
He looked at me in mock horror. “My God, Donald, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were turning into a hopeless romantic!”
I wriggled my eyebrows at him. “The question is, a hopeless romantic what?”
“Hmmm. Good point. Well, I don’t see why we couldn’t do both. We could put up a headstone and have part of our ashes buried here, and have the other half scattered somewhere appropriate. That way, everybody’s happy.”
“I’m happy,” I said. You’d have thought all that talk about burial and cremation would have brought me down, and God knows the thought of anything happening to Timmy gave me the screaming horrors. But somehow, knowing everything was settled, that our happily-ever-after was really going to mean ever after gave me an incredible sense of peace.
We made a circuit around the chapel so I could get a better look at it in the light of day, then we found a bench by the lake and sat quietly for a while, just feeling good about being alone together and watching the water ripple. He leaned back against me, his head resting on my shoulder, and I put my arms around him, feeling all husbandly and protective.
“Thank you for coming with me this morning,” he said, lacing his fingers through mine. “I know church isn’t exactly your thing, but it meant the world to me.”
“Consider it a wedding present,” I said, rubbing my face back and forth through his hair.
“Actually, I have one for you, too. I feel a little strange giving it to you, though.” He sat up and fished an envelope out of his pocket, then held it, gnawing on his bottom lip, before handing it over. Inside were two photos of him, one as a boy of about six or so, and the other of him as a baby.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll carry them in my wallet so I can have them with me all the time, okay?”
“I was hoping you would. I picked them because they match the ones I have in mine.” He pulled out his wallet then and showed me a pair of pieced together photos, one a black and white baby pic and the other a shot of me when I was in first grade. The pictures my mother had sent back with the wedding invitation, all torn to shreds.
“You kept them.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I did. I glued them back together, and they’ve been with me ever since. Look, Don, I’m not telling you this to upset you. I just need you to know that I saved these, that the little boy in those pictures didn’t just wink out of existence because your mother turned her back on you. She may have ripped up a couple of pictures, but that doesn’t mean she destroyed any part of who you are or who you were. I don’t give a damn what she thinks. There is no part of you that isn’t precious to me, do you understand that? There is no part of you -- past, present, or future -- that isn’t safe in my hands. So I’m going to hold on to these for you and love all of you, even the parts of you I don’t know yet. And when you’re finally ready to share everything, I’ll be here to listen, okay? I’ll always accept you for who you are, and I’ll always understand.”
“I know,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging him for all I was worth. “I know.”
* * * *
No doubt about it, the waiting was killing me.
I don’t know what I would have done if we’d gone the traditional route and not been able to see each other before the wedding. Nixing that idea had been Timmy’s call, probably because he knew better than to let me out of sight for even a second as the time before the ceremony grew shorter and shorter. As it was, I was a bundle of nerves, and I didn‘t even know why. I wanted this. I mean I really wanted this, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. But the day had been a long one and emotional as hell, and I’d just about reached the point where I wanted to crawl into a dark hole with Timmy and never come out again. Left to my own devices, I probably would have gone out of my mind, or maybe jumped out a window and run for my life. But my life was right there in the room with me, fussing with my tie and picking microscopic dust specks off my lapel.
By four o’clock on the dot, we stood facing each other in the middle of Liz’s drawing room, listening to her pound out one of the joy songs by one of the B guys on her baby grand. The 35-50 person guest list had somehow expanded to something more in the 75-90 range, and it was so crowded guests had to line up along the walls to fit in. Timmy looked like something off the cover of GQ in his classic black penguin suit, and I guess I looked okay in mine, too, only more wild-eyed and sweaty, I suppose. He looked almost as nervous as I felt, but happy, and a damned sight less out of his element. Me, I was lost. Totally fucking flat out lost. But both of his hands were in both of mine, steadying me. Steadying him, too, I think.
Father Cam was with us, sans white collar, wearing a basic, no-frills tux and the most secular-looking red paisley vest I’d ever seen. He wasn’t there as clergy, but as a friend. Instead of officiating in the traditional sense, he was playing a civilian and kind of MCing the event, showing us where to stand and giving us cues when we needed it. I’m glad someone was on the ball, because I was wiped out and excited and scared shitless all at once. I remember wishing like hell someone would crack open a window because my stomach was churning again, and I didn’t want to give Timmy the satisfaction of saying “I told you so” when I hurled all over his designer shoes.
Liz wrapped up the piano thing, and Father Cam went into a brief welcoming spiel. My grip on Timmy’s hands got tighter and maybe a little more desperate. Once Cam was done, we were supposed to exchange the vows we’d written, and I had stupidly volunteered to go first. I went over my little speech in my head one last time, a condensed version like a checklist, just to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything out. But I was having a hell of a time trying to focus. Sweat trickled down my neck, and when I tried to suck in some air, damned little of it made its way to my lungs.
I saw Timmy looking a question at me, the nervous excitement in his eyes turning to worry. I shook my head, trying to reassure him that I wasn’t planning on keeling over from pure, irrational terror anytime soon. I just wished I could have reassured myself.
Cam finished talking and gave me my cue. At least I think he did. His lips were moving, but the only thing I could hear was the rush of some phantom ocean, like the sound you hear when you hold a seashell next to your ear. All eyes were on me, I guess, but I really couldn’t see any of them because the world had taken on a dark red cast and it shimmered around the edges, shaking and pulsing in time with the erratic beat of my heart.
I remember making it as far as, “From the moment we met, I knew I’d be stronger with you by my side than I could ever be alone.“ Then something inside my head went crrrackkk! like a transformer blowing in the middle of an ice storm, and I guess you could say all my lights went out. When they blinked on again, I was sitting on a loveseat someone had vacated for us with my face buried against Timmy’s neck, bawling like a baby. It had to have scared him to death, seeing me fall apart like that, but he kept his head and didn’t ask anything stupid like if I was all right or did I want to call the whole thing off. That was the last thing I wanted to do, and I guess even then he had the good sense to realize it. He just kept holding on tight and calling me baby, stroking my hair and rubbing my back in firm, soothing circles until I ran dry. Then he wiped my eyes and kissed me very gently, shushing me when I tried to tell him I was sorry.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I have to tell you what I wrote. I worked so hard….”
“Then tell me,” he said.
My face felt like it had been seared over a high flame. I can safely say I‘ve never been more humiliated in my whole life. I lifted my head long enough to look around the room full of Timmy‘s nearest and dearest, imagining they were all staring at me in some combination of curiosity and horror, wondering what kind of scene I was planning to make next. But Timmy put his hands on either side of my face like a pair of blinders on a horse and made me hone in on him instead.
“Don’t tell them, Donald,” he said. “Tell me. There’s no one here but you and me, okay? Just take a deep breath and tell me why you want to marry me.” Then he neatly tucked my head back under his chin and wrapped his arms around me, enfolding me in a soothing blanket of pure Timmyness. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the warm, clean scent of his skin mixed with the faintly sweet earthiness of his cologne, the familiar sound of his breathing, the press of his hand against the back of my neck. Then I did what he asked and recited the whole thing, the words shaky and garbled, muffled against the damp and crumpled shoulder of his tux. I have no idea how much of it he was able to make out, but I don’t guess it really mattered. The cool thing about Timmy was, when it came to me, he always understood a hell of a lot more than he actually heard.
“Thank you,” he said when I was done. He pressed his lips to my temple, then said his piece as well, whispering it into my ear as if it was nobody’s business but our own. The sound of his voice calmed me down, and I was finally able to stand, clutching his hand, and help light the unity candle without managing to burn the place to the ground. Then we exchanged rings and sealed the deal with a kiss. And that, as they say, was that.
Thirty minutes later, I was still clutching Timmy’s hand as we accepted congrats from a roomful of people who were all polite enough to pretend I hadn’t just imploded before their very eyes. Suddenly starving, I let go of him just long enough to fill my plate at the buffet Katie and the other ladies had fixed for us, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw it wasn’t all a bunch of fancy French dishes I didn’t know how to pronounce, let alone eat. I’d been afraid it would all be oysters and snails and over-salted fish eggs, maybe some boiled-alive crustaceans that might taste just fine but still looked disturbing as hell staring back at you from the center of your plate.
I should have known Timmy would plan the spread with me in mind. What I saw was just plain good food presented with what the restaurant reviews he sometimes read to me would probably call “casual elegance.” There were plenty of appetizers, including shrimp and crab, but luckily nothing with the eyes still attached. The headliner was that roast pork dish with apricots and cherries I loved so much, heavy on the ginger just the way I liked it. If you weren’t into pork, there was chicken Florentine instead, plus garlic potatoes, lots of fresh bread, baby carrots, and mounds of steamed asparagus with sides of hollandaise and garlic butter so everyone could have their choice. I froze with the ladle full of sauce in my hand, nailed by the poisonous glare Timmy shot my way. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to behave myself for once and only take a little bit.
As black tie events go, our reception wasn’t half bad. Over the next few hours, we drank champagne and accepted gifts, posed for about a thousand pictures, made the rounds with the guests and, of course, danced. Timmy and I each took Marion for a couple of spins around the room, and Liz got her turn with each of us, too. Dancing with Liz was kinda like dancing with a chandelier -- she shimmered and sparkled in an insanely low-cut gown covered in crystal beads and black and silver spangles.
“Scandalous,“ she told me, “I look positively scandalous!“ and I couldn’t help but agree. Once I got past my fear of being electrocuted by the energy field that dress was putting out, I tried to thank her properly for all she’d done for us, opening her home to me the way she had and providing the space and music and all that incredible food for our wedding.
“Just because my son’s an ass doesn’t mean that the rest of us are,” she said. “Since the day he was born, T.J. has been the light of my life, and you’re clearly the light of his. As far as I’m concerned, that makes you family. Besides, you’re young and charming and easy on the eye, and I’ve been a widow far too long. At my age, any thrills that come my way may be vicarious ones, but I savor them just the same. Feel free to come here and thrill me anytime you like.”
Liz was an amazing dancer, light as air on her feet and incredibly graceful for an eighty-five-year-old who’d had hip replacement surgery barely four months prior. Timmy’d told me she’d taught him to dance when he hit puberty, making sure he knew how to waltz properly so he wouldn’t embarrass himself during school dances at that stuffy private academy he’d attended. I could see the similarity in their grace and form, in the easy way they both seemed to switch off their minds and just let the music take them.
I hit the floor with Liz a couple more times that night, as often as her stamina allowed and Marion’s brother, Thomas -- a soft-spoken “confirmed bachelor” who taught music theory at Georgetown -- agreed to fill in for her on the Steinway. Mostly, I danced with Timmy, though. Timmy, who couldn’t stop smiling for even a second, those baby blues of his alight with pure, unselfconscious joy. I’d never seen him happier, never been happier myself than I was right then, knowing that it was me, being married to the likes of me, that made him feel that good.
As the evening wore on, several toasts were made to our health, plus a few to our virility, which I thought was pretty damned funny coming from an upper-crust crowd like that one. When the time came to cut the cake, I held the first slice up to Timmy’s mouth so he could take a bite, and one of his younger cousins yelled, “Shove it in his face!” See, I hate that shit. What kind of asshole thinks it’s funny to humiliate the person they claim to love? I know a lot of couples do that and everyone thinks it’s hilarious, but it’s not my style, and it sure as hell isn’t Timmy’s. I flipped my middle digit at the guy, which drew a huge laugh from the crowd and an exasperated sigh from Tim, then fed him the cake like a gentleman. The way he smiled at me, then licked icing off the corner of my mouth once I’d had my bite, made me glad I did.
Timmy was getting tired, though, and it was starting to show. Around ten o’clock, his hand closed on mine, and he gave me a look that said he’d had his fill of being sociable and wanted to be alone in the quiet and the dark with me. He didn’t have to tell me twice. Since we didn’t exactly have a bride’s bouquet or a garter to throw, I took off my tie and tossed it instead, then just about laughed my ass off when Liz snagged it mid-air and announced she’d begin interviewing applicants for the position of her consort shortly. We said our thanks and our goodnights and trudged up that wide, wide staircase, the party voices and music following us all way down the hall to our room.
A couple of days after Timmy’d told Marion we were officially tying the knot, she’d presented us with a card stuffed with crisp green bills and a brochure for a gay-friendly ski lodge. “From your father and me,” she’d told Tim, though we both knew better. Affairs of state were more or less on hiatus until after the holidays, and a disturbing wave of marital fidelity seemed to be hitting the Albany area, so neither of us had much trouble at all taking a couple of weeks off for a honeymoon. We’d spent a sizable stack of those green bills on skis for me, plus what Timmy referred to as “suitable attire for the slopes” for us both. First thing the next morning, we’d be hitting the road in the “more dependable transportation” we’d rented and heading for Vermont, where he was planning to haul my uncoordinated ass up a snow-covered mountain, teach me the ropes, and presumably spend the next two weeks making sure I didn’t break any body parts I couldn’t live without. For the wedding night, however, we were fine right where we were.
The house was big and drafty, and because we were so tired, both of us were feeling the chill. But there was a big brick hearth in our room, and in no time Timmy had a fire going. Someone had left a bottle of champagne chilling on the nightstand, but by that time we were both pretty much champagned out, so we decided to stow it away in a suitcase instead.
I undressed him as he undressed me, making one of his rituals of it. I took his glasses from him, folding them carefully and setting them aside, then kissed him, long and slow and deep, before taking his hand and guiding him down onto the bed beside me. We lay on our sides, close but not pressed together, just looking at each other and touching one another everywhere we could reach. We didn’t have sex. We were both too wiped out to work up that much effort, and besides, it wasn’t like we really needed to consummate anything right then and there. We still were what we’d always been, what we’d been that morning and the morning before that. We’d just taken it a little further that day and carved it in stone.
For my part, I was more than content just to feel his lips against mine, the smooth warmth of his skin beneath my palm, the faint roughness of his jawline as it brushed against my neck and chest, the silken glide of his hand stroking my side. I loved just looking at him, the long, slender length of him, the shadows and shades of him lying naked beside me, the flames from the hearth reflected in his eyes. In the years since, whenever I’ve been down or pissed or frustrated or afraid, my mind’s gone back to that night, to how good Timmy looked bathed in firelight, and it’s calmed me down, taken the edge off, allowed me to function again. It’s like a lucky charm I carry next to my heart, one that can never be lost, one that nobody can ever take away.
After a while, I made my little speech again, only without falling to pieces this time. I’d worked so hard on the thing, and I needed him to know for the record and beyond a doubt how much he meant to me, how much it meant to have him in my life, to know he had faith in me. I needed him to understand that he’d changed my life, made a difference in me, made me believe in things again. He listened quietly, smiling softly as a single big, fat tear rolled down his cheek, his eyes telling me that he not only heard what I was saying and loved me for saying it, but that he’d known it all along. Then he repeated his vows to me as I pulled the covers up around us and we settled in together, my head on his chest and his arms around me, his right hand fanned possessively through my hair.
“How do you feel?” he whispered.
“Married.” I felt married, as married as two men can get. Hell, as married as any two people can get once they’ve promised to spend the rest of their lives together. Who gave a fuck if our marriage wasn’t sanctified by the law or the Lord, by Earl P. Shitkicker from Kentucky or by the Republican Party? It was sanctified by us, by Timmy and by me, by the strength of our love and our commitment to each other. As far as I could see, when it came down to it, that was all that mattered.
“Me, too,“ he said, nuzzling my hair. Then he was out, slipping quietly into sleep with the words barely out of his mouth. As I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe, I sifted through the fragments of my life like so many pieces of torn paper. I was a fuck-up and I knew it, and I’d made enough bad decisions along the way to fill a book. But I’d always tried so goddamned hard, busted my ass trying to be a good son, a good soldier, a lover worth coming home to, worth staying alive for. It had never seemed fair that all that effort had come to nothing, that all my sweat and hard work and misdirected loyalty had left me with nothing better than a handful of jagged remains that spilled through the gaps between my fingers like a wedding invitation no one seemed to want.
Then I remembered those two photos in Timmy’s wallet and the way he’d taken the tattered fragments of my existence and quietly, patiently pieced them together into a life, a real life, full of hope and meaning and comfort and love. Having him with me didn’t erase the past, and it didn’t magically make it all okay. What it did was put it in perspective, balance it out, make it -- finally -- into something I could deal with, something I could bear.
I thought back to election night and the thing Timmy’d said that started me thinking about weddings and forevers and how good it would feel to look down and see his ring on my finger. I couldn‘t help grinning, imagining the rise I’d get out of him if I ragged him about it, telling him that when he’s wrong, he’s wrong, and he’d been wrong as hell that day. See, it may not always be staring you right in the face, and sometimes it takes a lot of work and some pretty big leaps of faith to search it out. But if you take the time to look, you just might find out there is some justice in this world after all.
Faith
Fanfic -- The Donald Strachey Mysteries -- 13900 words
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving, too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah….
~~ “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen
Anyone who knows anything at all about Timothy Callahan knows that first and foremost, he’s a man of faith. Faith in his God, faith in the law and the political machine he‘s part of, faith that somewhere down deep inside, even the most flawed of human beings are basically kind and honest and decent and good. Most of all, he has faith in me, faith in my love for him, faith that I’ll never intentionally hurt him, that I’ll never stray. I’d never had anybody believe in me like that before -- never had anyone believe in me, period, if you wanna know the truth -- and it’s been a pretty humbling experience, let me tell you. It’s a lot to live up to, this image of me, self-described asshole and fuck-up, as an altruistic lover. But you know what? For Timmy, I’m more than willing to give it my best shot.
I wish I could be more like him in about a thousand different ways, but most of all, I wish I’d had his capacity for faith, his ability to just believe in something and run with it, you know? But I gotta tell you straight up, I’ve got a suspicious nature, especially when it comes to human relationships. Can’t help it, I just don’t trust people. I don’t thrust their motives, I don’t trust their ability to live up to their promises -- even their promises to themselves. And I sure as hell don’t trust their attention span.
I used to think the concept of “forever” was a myth. It was a pretty picture all wrapped up in wishes, but that was about it. People changed, passions faded, and sooner or later, the poor sap who was still clinging to the delusion of “happily ever after” found himself with nothing to hold onto but empty air. I’d been that poor sap before, and it damned near killed me. I’d sworn I’d never put myself in that position again.
Obviously, I’d lied.
They say you can’t change another person, that they have to change themselves, but I’m living, breathing proof that that’s a load of bullshit. If I’d never met Timmy, I’d still be living in that cruddy studio apartment, eating most of my meals cold out of boxes or cans -- or more likely, drinking them straight from a bourbon bottle -- fucking everything that moved and trying my damnedest to piss off everybody I came in contact with, hoping to finally push some cracked-out loser far enough over the edge for him to pull out a knife or a gun and put me out of my misery. But I did meet Timmy, and he changed my life, altered its course, saved it, saved me.
Once upon a time, I was stupid enough to believe that Kyle Griffin loved me. In a way, maybe he did, at least as much as he was capable of loving anything outside his career and himself. It’s one thing to be riding that happy, horny, hormone-powered rush of hooking up with your first lover on the sly, being crazy about him to the point of obsession and still green enough to automatically assume he feels the same way about you. But finding yourself in a mature, stable relationship with a sweetheart like Timmy who spends every waking moment taking care of you and doing everything he can to make you happy? Jesus.
I didn’t think I was loved anymore. I knew it.
It changes the way you feel about yourself, knowing that another human being finds you worthy of that kind of devotion. It makes you look at yourself differently, makes you cut yourself some slack for being human and flawed and maybe a little bit fucked up in the head. It makes you start to believe that you’re an okay guy, that maybe, just maybe, you’re someone who deserves to be loved after all.
No doubt about it, asking Timmy to marry me was the smartest move I ever made. Once I got past my meltdown at the wedding, I was able to kick back and enjoy -- I mean really fucking enjoy -- what it meant to be married. I got to wallow in the stability of it, the comfort of knowing I was gonna wake up with the same guy drooling on my pillow every morning for the rest of my life, of knowing that when I opened my eyes in the darkness, freaked out by a bad dream, maybe, or just startled by some noise, and reached out into the night, Timmy’d always be right there, reaching back. There’s no power on heaven or earth that could’ve kept him from it.
All that went both ways, of course. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for Timothy. And I spent our honeymoon trying my level best to prove it.
I gotta admit, I had my doubts about the whole ski trip thing. I’ve never been a big fan of cold weather, and Albany winters had taught me to hate snow with a passion. Still, there’s a big difference between the bleak and sloppy nastiness you see in the city and the clean, clear freshness of a mountaintop in Vermont. If it’d been up to me, I probably would have picked a trip to Jamaica instead, or a couple of weeks in southern Florida, at least, baking on a beach where the only ice crystals in sight were the lime-flavored ones in our frozen margaritas. But Timmy’s mom was paying for the trip, and he’d been so excited over the idea of teaching me -- spastic, uncoordinated me -- to ski, that I kept my mouth shut and went along for the ride. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did.
The resort Marion picked for us was upscale but rustic, with a central lodge providing hotel-style accommodations, a couple of good restaurants -- one with a piano bar and a decent dance floor -- a weight room and sauna, a common room for socializing, and an indoor pool. Surrounding the lodge were about a dozen individual cabins, each with a huge stone fireplace, satellite TV, and a hot tub out back with a great view of the mountains. Because it was our honeymoon, after all, and we wanted plenty of privacy, we opted for a cabin.
To make up for the lack of flowers at the wedding, I filled the place with roses. Pink ones and white ones, yellow and orange and even the bloody red ones that gave me the creeps but Timmy seemed to like. But most of all, I gave him the Peace roses he said were his favorite, since they were the first flowers I’d ever given him. I wined Timmy and I dined him, fed him breakfast in bed every morning and took him out dancing most nights, even put on my penguin suit for the occasion without him having to twist my arm to get me to do it.
Like the brochure said, the resort was gay-friendly. But it wasn’t gay-exclusive, and for the first couple of nights, we were the only same-sex couple on the dance floor. In the past, I would have been uncomfortable with the situation and probably would have dug my heels in and refused to dance. But I was proud to be with Timmy and didn’t give a rat’s ass who knew it. I danced his feet off, holding him close and even going in for a kiss from time to time, and if anyone shot us a dirty look or made an insulting remark, I never caught on to it. When Timmy was in my arms, everything else pretty much faded to a blur anyway.
Most of the people we met seemed friendly enough, and we had a pretty good time socializing with them whenever Timmy conned me into going to happy hour in the common room. We got pretty close to one older couple in particular, a retired banker from Schenectady named Mickey Crosby and his wife, Carol. They’d spent their honeymoon at the resort back in the fifties, and even though neither of them had been on skis in a couple of decades, they still came back every year or two to hang out over the holidays and celebrate their anniversary. They’d only had one child, Michael Junior, who’d died back in eighty-three, and I guess they sort of made Timmy and me their honorary offspring for the duration.
When Carol showed us a picture of their son, I understood why they adopted us the way they did. Michael looked so much like Timmy it brought a lump to my throat. It also made me think of the blood test I’d taken before we left Albany -- the twelfth in as many months -- and wonder if the results were already filed away at the clinic back home, waiting for me to pick them up. Those monthly tests had become a secret obsession with me, and looking back, even I have to admit it wasn’t exactly a healthy one. But I’d promised myself that the twelfth test would be the last of it, and if the result was what I hoped it was, it’d be the best Christmas present I could ever give Timmy. Or myself, for that matter.
I called Mickey “Bing” to make him laugh, because he had a long face and deep voice like the old crooner. We shared a dinner table with them more than once and even spent a couple of evenings in their suite, sipping scotch and listening to Mickey’s stories about his glory days as a helicopter pilot in Korea. From time to time, Timmy would send a look my way, and I knew he was hoping I’d share a story or two from my own stint in Kuwait. But the army wasn’t something I talked about back then. Being Timmy, he let it slide.
On the nights we met them for dinner, we each made it a point to ask Carol to dance at least once. One evening when Timmy had snagged Carol for a couple of rounds, Mickey joked that we were turning him into a wallflower. I immediately stood, gave him a bow with plenty of flourish, and offered my hand. Without missing a beat and with complete dignity, Mickey joined me for a spin around the dance floor. Hell, he even had the grace to let me lead. When Timmy spotted us, I was scared he was going to have an aneurysm, he was laughing so hard. But when the song ended, we traded off, and he took a turn with the old boy as well.
Back at our cabin, I kept the fire blazing and the wine chilling, and on the rare occasions the TV was on, I stuck with the classic movie channels instead of ESPN. I gave Timmy long, full-body massages with the scented oil I picked up in the gift shop, made love to him in the hot tub or on the bed or in front of the hearth. I just wanted to spoil him, to show him how happy he made me, to make sure this was a trip he’d never forget.
And yeah, I even learned to ski.
At first, I was convinced Timmy was asking the impossible of me. Sure, I’ve always been a pretty physical kind of guy. If it involved running, hitting, aiming, or tackling, I could usually hold my own and then some, just as long as I didn’t have to look graceful doing it. Skiing, as it turned out, took a certain amount of grace, a degree of physical coordination I could fake on the dance floor, maybe, but not on a snow-covered slope.
That first day, I spent more time on my back and ass than on my feet, landing time after time in a hopeless tangle of arms and legs, fiberglass boards and ski poles. On what we agreed would be our last run before calling it a night, I wiped out about a hundred times harder than I had all those other times before and sprained my wrist. In my line of work, minor physical injury was more or less an everyday thing, and Timmy’d turned into the world’s best amateur medic, doing a top-notch job of patching me back together whenever I came home tattered and torn from a case gone wrong. He iced down my wrist as soon as we got back to our room, then did such an expert job of wrapping it, it hardly bothered me at all.
The second day started out pretty much the same way as the first, with me spending more time falling than actually skiing. But a couple of hours in, something clicked in my head and I actually started to get the hang of it. To my surprise -- and I think to Timmy’s as well -- we found out that once he got me going, I kinda had a knack for hurtling down the hillside at what felt like the speed of sound. I took the caveman’s approach to the sport, throwing myself into it the way I did with football when I was a kid, or into bar fights before I fell in love with someone who disapproved of black eyes and busted knuckles and cleaned up my act accordingly. But if skiing was a sport as far as I was concerned, it was something else altogether for Timothy. For him, it was pure, fucking poetry.
Timmy’s no athlete -- at least not outside the bedroom. Football and basketball are complete mysteries to him, and he’s got no aim to speak of. He couldn‘t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball, and he honest-to-god yelps and ducks if you send a volleyball his way. And let’s face it, he runs like a girl. But he swims like a freaking dolphin and skates like a dream. And when you put the man on skis….
I can still see him out there, elegant as hell in his top-dollar ski attire, gliding down that mountain quiet as a whisper. There was no wasted motion there, no over-analyzing or second-guessing himself. For Timmy, tackling the slopes was as natural an act as breathing.
It got me hard just watching him.
When we were done for the day, it took everything I had to keep my hands off him til we got inside the cabin. Then I was all over him, trying my best to gobble him whole. He put up with it okay, laughing in that pleased, breathless way of his as he held me off just long enough to make sure the door was locked and the curtains were closed before I pounced. We screwed each other’s brains out wherever we landed: on the bed, the couch, or on the braided rug in front of the fireplace, making love every way we could think of -- almost. We both got banged up some during those post-slope sessions, and I ended up with a rug burn on my ass that took almost a week to heal. Not that either of us were complaining.
When I exchanged vows with Timmy, I knew I was marrying the love of my life. But you know what? During those two weeks in Vermont, I found out I’d also married my best friend. My one stipulation when I’d agreed to trade one arctic climate for another was that he had to leave his briefcase, cell phone, and laptop back in Albany -- cruel and unusual punishment, I know, since you might as well ask him to amputate a couple of limbs and maybe lop off a ball or two while you’re at it. But I said I’d do the same, with my gun even thrown into the mix, so he finally caved and went along with it. After a brief but bloody withdrawal period, he adjusted nicely. With all those miles between him and his professional responsibilities, causes, and social commitments, Timmy was finally able to let his hair down and just play.
I’d never had so much fun with anybody in my life.
When we weren’t hiking in the woods or ice skating, laughing our asses off during a snowball fight or burning up the slopes or the dance floor, we were holed up in our cabin, kicking back and just enjoying each other’s company. Timmy taught me how to build a fire so it would keep burning for hours and to more or less tolerate hot buttered rum, a drink that plays a helluva lot better in theory than in execution. I think he liked it more for the smell than the taste, because it reminded him of childhood vacations with Liz and her husband, Jim, who’d taught him to skate and ski and ride horses -- and when James and Marion weren’t looking, to mix a martini like a pro.
I wish I could have met old Jim. He’d been a politician, of course, and a lifelong republican, but not a hardnosed stuffed shirt like James. According to Timmy, he was laid back and accepting, so much so that he’d been the first family member Tim came out to when he was planning to show up at senior prom on the arm of another guy.
“It’s not who you love, it’s how you love them,” Jim had told him. “Remember, you’re a Callahan, so hold your head high and don’t take guff off anyone.” Then he’d slipped Timmy two fifties and a packet of rubbers, and taken him shopping for his first tuxedo.
The rubbers went unused, of course. Timmy had set his sites on life as a Jesuit and pretty much figured the vow of chastity would be easier to obey later if he never crossed that line to begin with. But the money bought him and the other kid a nice steak dinner and earned him his first session of slap-and-tickle behind the gym after the dance. The tux he wore is still wrapped in plastic and hanging in the back of our closet today. Tim says it’s hopelessly out of date and hasn’t fit him in years, but he and I both know none of that matters. It reminds him of someone who loved him and accepted him for who he was back when he wasn‘t so sure he accepted himself. He’ll never get rid of it.
With Christmas coming up so fast, we’d agreed to save up for that and not buy each other wedding presents. Naturally, we both went all out anyway. I knew he was crazy about chess but never got a chance to play anymore, so I blew a bundle on a big, fancy set with a marble board and crystal and onyx pieces. That meant I was more or less obligated to learn the game, of course, so he spent a good chunk of our down time teaching me the basics. Going in, I didn’t think I’d like it much, assuming it’d be tedious and boring, something designed for folks whose blood was blue but whose collars were anything but. But when I started getting into it, I found out it was all about strategy and observation -- two things that come pretty naturally to me. Like with the skiing, I sorta developed a knack.
Timmy’s gift to me was just as expensive but more practical, a state of the art digital camera to replace my old 35 millimeter, which was on its last legs. It had about 30 million mega pixels and all the bells and whistles, including video capacity and an adjustable tripod, so the second I saw it, I knew it was gonna blow my evidence-gathering capabilities off the charts. Naturally, I was in a big hurry to try it out. Since there were no cheating housewives in a ten mile radius -- or at least none I wanted to know about -- I took it for a test drive with Timmy instead, nailing about a thousand shots of him on skates or on skis, eating or sleeping or swimming laps in that big indoor pool, or sometimes just standing there with his arms folded across his chest, looking at me like I was crazy. After two days of listening to me beg, bitch and whine, he finally gave in and let me catch him in the buff as well. I don’t know who was the most shocked when he finally caved, him or me.
Whoever said we never see ourselves the way other people see us hit the nail on the head. Timmy just doesn’t think of himself as somebody who’s especially sensual or erotic. I don’t mean he doesn’t know he’s good looking, because he does. He’s even kinda vain about it, always making sure he’s wearing the right tie with the right suit and spending half his natural life in front of the mirror, checking to see if his hair looks just right. But it always kinda embarrasses him when somebody tells him he’s handsome, and it really pisses him off when some asshole calls him pretty -- not that I can blame him on that one.
Because he’s gentle and cultured and usually so soft-spoken, people tend to underestimate just how masculine he really is, and even though he’d never admit it, that can do a real number on his self-esteem. The thing is, anybody who takes the time to really get to know him figures out pretty quick that he’s the proverbial iron hand in the velvet glove. Underneath that elegant exterior, Timothy Callahan is tough as nails. It’s that faith thing again, see? Timmy believes in things, I mean really believes in them, and there’s nobody or nothing on this planet that can make him compromise his beliefs.
Because I know how strong he is, and because he knows I know, I can get away with the chivalry shtick, holding doors for him and bringing him flowers, laying on the sweet talk as thick as I like without him taking it as an affront to his manhood. If you wanna know the truth, he eats it up. Even after all these years, I still get a big, happy smile out of him when I call him beautiful, and sometimes if I time it just right and catch him off guard, I get a blush, too. And if I tell him he’s sexy, it flusters him so bad he’s nearly incapacitated. It’s like it still surprises him after all this time, which just about blows my mind. He may be the smartest guy in town, but he doesn’t have a clue how hot he really is.
At first, he was awkward and self-conscious during my little nude photo shoot, going stiff on me in all the wrong ways. To loosen him up, I put the camera down, stripped, and played around with him some, kissing and talking dirty to him -- which he claims to hate but not-so-secretly loves -- and getting in a friendly grope or two just because. Once he relaxed and started having fun with it, I picked up the camera again and fired away before he had the chance to get all self-conscious again.
The whole thing eventually disintegrated into a sexy wrestling match, and at one point, he grabbed the camera and caught me in few poses as well. I was kind of skinny back then and hadn’t started working out the way I do now, but he thought I looked pretty good, so I took his word for it and played along without a fuss. Once we’d filled up half the memory card with solo shots of each other, we set up the tripod and caught a few stills of the two of us together. They weren’t anything raunchy or overly graphic, just really intimate and romantic and kinda sweet. And it goes without saying that posing together like that led to other things.
Shameless bastard that I am, I would have loved to have tried out the video feature as well. But with Timothy, there are certain lines you just don’t cross, and that was one of them. As far as he’s concerned, no definitely means no, and I’d never dream of trying to talk him into something that makes him uncomfortable. We’d had our fun with the camera, and if I wanted a record of what came after, I’d just have to replay it in my head and be satisfied. And believe me, Timmy always made sure I was satisfied.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Timmy was planning on surprising me with a photo printer for Christmas. Once I got it set up, I cherry-picked the best shots from our shoot and gave him a surprise of his own, a photo album he keeps in the top drawer of his nightstand, right next to the lube and flavored body gel and a toy or two we pull out on special occasions. To this day, all he has to do is pull that drawer open and I’m instantly awake and erect and raring to go. And for that matter, so is he.
Two weeks seems like a long time when you’re planning a vacation, but when you’re as wrapped up in what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with as Timmy and I were, time gets by before you know it. All of a sudden, week one turned into week two, and Timmy just about worked himself into an anxiety attack, worrying how we were going to work in everything we wanted to do in the time we had left. His birthday had pretty much gotten lost in the pre-wedding chaos, so on our one-week anniversary, I wanted to treat him to a nice day out. We took a break from the slopes and worked in some of the touristy stuff I knew he loved, driving to town to do the brunch thing at a café where they served the best coffee I’d ever had in my life. After that, we hit some craft stores and a couple of historical sites, toured a Ben and Jerry’s factory where we scored plenty of free samples and a winery that kept limited winter hours.
Back at the resort, we packed away the presents we’d found for Marion and Liz, put the wine we’d bought on ice, then pulled on the penguin suits and went down to dinner. A swing orchestra was playing in the common room, so we stopped in for a while to listen and watch a few older couples cut the rug. I could tell Timmy was itching to join them, but neither of us knew shit about ballroom dancing, so for us, at least, it had to be a spectator sport.
I looked around for Carol and Mickey, expecting to see them there since I was pretty sure they were into that kind of stuff. I thought if I sweet-talked them just right, they might be willing to teach us a few moves. But they weren’t in sight -- damn few people were, come to think of it. There’d been a musical event every night, some that interested us and some we passed on, even though all of it seemed to draw a pretty good crowd. That night, the band was especially good -- even if they were playing stuff from our grandparents‘ time -- but only a couple dozen people were listening in, most of them part of the AARP set. We hung around long enough to finish our martinis and hear a few numbers, then we went on in to eat.
The restaurant was pretty empty for a Saturday night, and still no sign of Carol and Mickey. We had the best dinner of our trip, prime rib for me and some kind of scary-looking health food crap involving tofu for Timmy, followed by cheesecake so fucking good even he was willing to kick his cholesterol level up a few notches and split a piece with me. Always the P.R. guy, he put on a fairly convincing performance, smiling and laughing and making a big deal over the single red rose I’d had sent to the table, but I could tell something was bothering him. We both knew that Mickey was just making a comeback from a brutal round with lung cancer, and the night before, he’d kept clearing his throat and seemed kind of under the weather. Timmy, world-class worrier that he is, had made up his mind that something was seriously wrong.
To put his mind at ease, I called their room and talked to Carol, who assured me that Mickey hadn’t keeled over dead while we were out sightseeing. He’d caught a nasty bug, one of those 48-hour viral things that play hell with your respiratory system, but the staff doctor assured her that in a couple of days he’d be fine.
“You boys be careful,” she told me. “Dr. Mullins said this thing’s sweeping through the guest registry like wildfire. It may not be serious, but it’s incredibly contagious and not something you want to deal with on your honeymoon. Be a little less social for the next few days, and whatever you do, don’t let anyone breathe on you except that handsome partner of yours.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said, forcing a laugh. But as I locked gazes with Timmy, who was fidgeting with his napkin and shooting me a questioning look, I felt my heart sink. My immune system was so on the ball it could practically turn away missile fire, but Timmy’s was for shit, and he caught every respiratory infection that came down the pike. I had to get him out of there.
One of the resort’s brochures had mentioned that late evening sleigh rides were available when the weather cooperated, so I’d booked one for that night, thinking it would give Timmy a nice surprise. It sounded like a corny and sappy and sweet kind of thing to do, and Donald Strachey, your bad boy P.I. du jour seemed to be rapidly turning into a corny and sappy and sweet kind of guy -- at least as far as Timmy was concerned. Besides, my goal for the trip was to romance the hell out of my husband, and it sounded like as good an excuse as any to snuggle under a blanket with him in the moonlight and maybe cop a feel when nobody was looking. I’d have to be crazy to let an opportunity like that pass me by.
The moon wasn’t out as far as I could see, but there were plenty of stars, and it was definitely cold enough to justify a clandestine make out session under the heavy wool blanket our driver provided. Once Timmy stopped worrying that Mickey was having a relapse, he relaxed and really seemed to enjoy himself, eating up all the sappy romanticism I could throw his way. He said he loved the ride and he loved me, and whispered that he planned to show me exactly how much once we got back to our cabin. I whispered back that I was going to hold him to it.
By the time we made the short hike to our cabin, Timmy was shivering some, which kind of worried me, since I’m the one who’s usually hypersensitive to the cold. I told him to head straight for the hot tub while I put on some music and poured the wine. It was chilly in the room, so I took a few minutes to get a fire going, too, thinking how good it would feel in there by the time we got done with our soak. I lost the tux and pulled on a robe, then made a dash out the back door, yelping as the freezing night air hit my skin, then groaning in pure ecstasy as I slid into that swirling, steaming water.
Timmy took the wine glasses from me and set them aside, then pulled me close. We talked a little, performing a post-mortem on our day, and traded kisses between sips of wine as we indulged in a little light foreplay. He was trying, I could tell he was really trying, but he seemed tired and was slow to get going, which wasn’t like him. The wine was making us both sleepy, so I let him off the hook with a rain check and just held him for a while, enjoying the contrast between the crisp air and the hot water, and especially the feel of his bare body against mine. Not in a sexual way, necessarily, but in a comfortable, lazy, it’s-so-fucking-awesome-being-married-to-this-guy kind of way. He must’ve felt the same, because he gradually went limp against me, and before I knew it, he was sound asleep with his head against my shoulder. I rescued what was left of his wine before it could spill into the water, then turned off the jets and roused him long enough to get us bundled up in our robes and hustled inside to bed.
I woke up around dawn, wondering just how big a fire I’d managed to build the night before, since I was roasting. But once I got my bearings, I figured out that the hearth had long since gone cold. The heat was coming off Timmy in waves. Just as I was wondering how I was gonna disentangle the covers without waking him and let some of it dissipate, he burrowed in even deeper, clutching me spasmodically as his teeth chattered. So what the hell. I worked one leg out from under the covers in an effort to regulate my own temperature, then lopped it over the top of him, pulling him even tighter against me as I tucked the blanket so high around his neck and head nothing showed but his face. He blinked at me, his eyes glittering with fever, and tried to suppress a cough. I knew we were in for it.
As far as sick people go, I’m as high maintenance as you can get. If I don’t feel good, nobody around me feels good either because they have to put up with my constant whining, bitching, and general purpose foul-tempered assholishness for the duration. But Timmy? He’s a breeze.
I’d seen Timmy through enough migraines, colds, sinus infections, and rounds of bronchitis by then to know that he was the least demanding patient on the planet. Almost too undemanding, as a matter of fact, because he’d rather suffer in silence than ask for the least little thing. Over the past year, I’d become an expert at second guessing his needs, figuring out when to force feed him meds and when to bully him into staying hydrated, when to pile on extra blankets and when to give him air. When he was feeling rotten, Timmy mostly just wanted to be held. So that’s how I spent the next couple of days -- kicking back on the couch as I watched the fire or channel-surfed, holding Timmy and keeping him warm and quiet so he could sleep off the rotten bug that had bitten him so hard.
I spent a lot of time thinking as I lay there, planning for a future I finally had reason to believe in. I wanted to get my business out of the red, to start putting some money aside for that someday trip to the ocean, or maybe, if it was what Timmy wanted, to put it toward the down payment on a house. I laughed a little at the thought. Of course it was what Timmy would want -- the man oozed domesticity out of every pore. He was all about security and structure, about putting down roots and watching them grow. Since I was all about Timmy, the thought suited me just fine.
Funny how domestic my dreams had become, how freaking commonplace and ordinary. As a kid, I’d wanted to be a football star, though even I knew down deep that I’d never have the height or build for it. When I hit high school, I made the team anyway through sheer determination and meanness, and played like a madman until I got hurt on the field and messed up a knee. It healed okay, but by that time football season was over. My mother made it clear I wouldn’t be on the roster next season.
I’d read a few true crime novels along the way and kinda had a gift for solving puzzles nobody else could work out, so I spent my junior year dreaming about being a forensic pathologist. But my grades sucked and so did my ACT scores -- “He’s smart, but he doesn’t apply himself” -- so no decent college would have me. Then along came the army, where I did apply myself, and I thought okay, this is it, I’ve found my niche. As long as I keep my head down and my motivation level up, my opportunities here are endless.
Huh. Shows how much I know.
Most of the time, I was okay with it. Things just sort of play out the way they’re gonna play out, and there’s not much you can do with it except roll with the punches. Kyle…well. Kyle hurt. He was a wound that never seemed to heal in more ways and on more levels than I liked to think about. About a hundred times a day, I thought about spilling my guts to Timmy about the whole thing, and about a hundred times a day, I came up with a reason not to. Looking back, it seems so stupid to have bottled all that guilt and misery up for so long, when all it took in the end was one night of opening up the floodgates with Timothy for me to see it was okay to finally let myself off the hook.
Timmy would probably say everything happens for a reason and in its own time, and I guess he’d be right on the money with that one. To be honest, I was afraid to tell him about Kyle, scared shitless that he’d be disgusted with me for betraying the guy I loved, that he’d blame me for what happened just as much as I blamed myself.
Yeah, I know. I should have trusted him. But back then, trust was still a new and alien concept for me, and I wasn’t ready to test its boundaries just yet. So if I sometimes got pissed off or depressed or felt cheated, I tried to keep it on the down low. The past was the past. It wasn‘t like there was any way I could go back in time and fix it. Besides, with Timmy in my life, it was getting harder all the time to make myself believe I’d gotten stuck with the short end of the stick. I mean, what more could I want, really, than what I already had?
So yeah, my dreams were pretty ordinary -- a house in a decent neighborhood where the neighbors weren’t scared we‘d corrupt their kids, white fences and a flower bed, cutting the grass on Saturday and taking out the trash, maybe surprising Timmy with a hard luck case from the pound to take on evening walks or to roust us out of bed when we were being lazy and trying to sleep in. Most of all, I just wanted to be good to Timmy, to be a good husband to him, to be able to hold up my end of the bargain financially and emotionally. To make him feel as good about himself as he made me feel, to be there for him when he was down or pissed off or all sick and feverish and his nose wouldn’t stop running, not even when he was dead to the world.
Every once in a while, he’d snuffle in his sleep like a little kid and suck in air through his mouth because his sinuses were too clogged for oxygen to get in the regular way. I‘d scoot up some, rearranging us so his head was elevated and he could breathe more easily. Usually he‘d settle back down right away, but if he opened his eyes, I‘d dab at the corner of each one to get the crusties out and mop his nose with a tissue -- gently, though, because I knew how sore it had to be. He’d give me a look, make a noise that sounded like the beginnings of a grumble that ended in a cough, but he wouldn’t try to grab the tissue himself of push me away, and I knew he had to really feel like shit to let me baby him that way.
Whenever he was conscious enough to swallow, I’d try to get something down him, sticking with ginger ale the first day because his stomach was upset, then soup and hot tea to get his sinuses open once he started feeling a little better. He worried himself prematurely gray over whether or not I was gonna get sick, too, and bitched at me for staying cooped up with him when I could be hitting the slopes, at least, and enjoying our vacation. It was all show, though. Both of us knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
We’d watch part of a movie or play cards if he felt up to it, or when he had a surge of energy, soak in the hot tub, which really seemed to clear up his congestion. Mostly, we just snuggled by the fire, him burrowing in like a human mole as I stroked his hair or rubbed his back, not really talking much, just lying there feeling connected to the other half of ourselves. Like Timmy always said, there are a thousand ways for two men to be intimate with each other, and only a few of them have anything to do with sex. I hated that he felt bad, hated that a stupid virus was keeping him from doing something he loved. But was I sorry to have that chance to cocoon with him, to take care of him and do the little things that made him feel better, maybe not in any big way, but in a lot of small ones? Not on your life.
By the third day, he was starting to get restless. The fever was gone and his concentration was back, so we spent a lot of time honing my skills on the chessboard. I beat him twice and felt pretty sure the second time around that I’d done it on my own without him throwing the game. That evening, he felt like going down to dinner, so we dressed up and I had more flowers brought to the table, though no wine, since he was still on cold meds. He didn’t eat much. His appetite wasn’t back full force just yet, but we danced some and called it an early night. Once we were back in the cabin, we spent some more quality time in the hot tub, and he wasn’t shy about showing me what he did have an appetite for. We made love out there as the snow came down, and I started to think that maybe New England winters weren’t so bad after all.
* * * *
We ended our vacation the way we started it, burning up the slopes, the dance floor and the mattress in turns, only being a little more careful to pace ourselves so Timmy’d have a chance to get his stamina back. We played around some with the idea of extending our stay through the holidays. Thanks to Marion and the other wedding guests, we had the funds to do it, and neither of us had to be back at work until after the first of the year. In the end, it was me who admitted I was ready to call the trip a wrap.
It wasn’t because I wasn’t enjoying myself, because I was. But this was going to be our first Christmas as a married couple, and while I’ve never exactly gotten misty-eyed over holly and fir trees and all the trappings, I’d helped lug enough boxes of ornaments from our old apartment to our new digs to know that Timmy did. As much as he loved skiing, it would have broken his heart to miss out on covering every inch of the apartment in red and green, and his heart was one thing I had no intention of ever breaking. Besides, there’s just something special, something just totally right, about spending your first Christmas together in your own home.
We’d gone our separate ways the year before. Timmy’d driven down to Poughkeepsie on the 23rd and hadn’t come back til the 28th, and although he’d invited me along, I’d been an ass and turned him down. We’d only been dating a couple of weeks, and I was still being skittish and stupid, thinking it was too much, too soon and that a big family celebration was probably the type of party I didn’t have any business crashing just yet. I was pretty pissed at myself after he left, of course, and probably should have followed him down once I came to my senses. But I was too chickenshit to do it, and ended up staying home and throwing myself a bourbon-enhanced pity party instead.
To tell the truth, Christmas had never been all that big of a deal to me. Growing up, it had been a no-frills event, with Mom making me haul the same scrawny fake tree up the basement steps every Christmas Eve, throwing a few glass balls and some red tinsel on it, and calling it a night. The next morning, she’d get up early enough to toss together a couple of green bean casseroles, and we’d make the rounds, showing up at Grammy Rosa’s in time for lunch, then heading for Grandma and Grandad Strachey’s for supper.
I liked going to Grammy Rosa’s because she was good to me and was a great cook, plus there were always a couple of presents with my name on them under her tree. But I could have done without the trip to Dad’s parents’ just fine. There were no presents there for me or anybody else, and their couch smelled like our ratty old red tinsel -- musty and stale, like it had spent the last year in a leaky basement. We’d hang out there long enough to eat and hear why society was going to the dogs and how my old man was going to roast in the fires of hell for running off on us the way he did, then we’d go home, take down the tree, watch TV for an hour or two, and head for bed. And that was pretty much that.
The couple of Christmases I’d spent in the army were pretty low key, and I’d done my best to ignore the ones since, holing up in my crappy apartment and drinking the day away, then hitting the bars that night in search of some anonymous holiday head. Joy to the world, amen. But I don’t have to tell you that having Timmy in my life put the whole thing in a different perspective. Thanks to him, there was joy in my world, and if he wanted to bury me in mistletoe and force feed me fruitcake and eggnog til I puked, I was going to go along with it without complaint. Hell, I was actually looking forward to it, getting kind of excited about the idea of helping him pick out a tree and decorating it together, sitting through midnight mass with him if he decided to go, then coming home to wine and candles and a little late night love as Nat King Cole roasted chestnuts over and over again on that open fire. We didn’t have a fireplace at the new apartment, and I’d never roasted a chestnut in my life, not that it mattered. With a fire or without, between Timmy and me, we had all the warmth in the world.
So we said goodbye to Carol and Mickey two days before Christmas and set the GPS for home. The drive took almost twice as long as it should have because there was a wreck ahead -- lots of twisted metal and general mayhem involving a jackknifed semi and a Subaru, according to the radio. I’ll be the first to admit I turn into a classic type A personality when I get behind the wheel, and sitting in stand-still traffic for two hours followed by a detour that took us thirty-five miles out of our way didn’t exactly sit well with me. I snarled and snarked, but Timmy let it roll off him the way he usually does when I lose my cool. We dropped off the SUV we’d rented as soon as we hit Albany, and I really I hated to see it go, hated that after living in high style for the last couple of weeks, I had to drive Timmy the rest of the way home in my coughing and sputtering, miserable little rat trap of a car.
The battery was dead, of course, and the Hertz guy had to give us a jump. But the goddamned thing wouldn’t hold a charge, so we ended up hiking three quarters of a mile down the road to buy a new one at AutoZone. By the time we switched out the batteries, it was almost 3:00 and in spite of the blistering cold, I was sweating bullets, because I had my heart set on getting the final word on my HIV status that day. I was pretty sure the clinic was only open til 4:00, and if I didn’t make it there before they closed, I’d be waiting until the 26th for my results. I’d have to pull a hit and run with Timmy, pretty much dropping him curbside along with the luggage and flooring it out of there if I was gonna have a prayer of making it on time. No matter what excuse I came up with, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it.
Since we were both starving, I took time to hit the drive-thru at Wendy’s, filling the car with the scent of artery-clogging goodness. I crammed a Triple Baconator with extra cheese down my throat as I drove, knowing I‘d probably pay for that grease bomb later, while Timmy picked at some kind of rabbit food -- a caesar salad, I think. His greens didn’t look any too fresh, but he didn’t say a word, just pushed aside the stuff that was going brown around the edges and concentrated on the rest. I was pissed, I mean really fucking pissed -- not so much on my own behalf, but on his. Our homecoming was turning into such a fucking mess. It had to have been one hell of a reality check for him, even though he never complained, not even once.
“Let it go,” he said quietly as I pulled into the lot of our complex and killed the engine. Then he squeezed my hand, and just like that, I did it, I let go of my pissy mood, because if he wasn’t bitching about the way the day was going, I sure as hell didn’t have any right to. He’d been patient and accommodating the whole time, while I’d pretty much acted like a jerk.
“I gotta take off,” I told him once we’d dumped the last of the luggage in the middle of the living room floor. “I wish I didn’t have to, but there’s something I need to take care of, and it really won’t wait.”
Anybody else would have grilled me for details or started an argument. Instead, he just sighed. “While you’re gone, I’ll get our clothes unpacked and start a laundry. I think I’ll call around to see if there are any Christmas tree lots with a reasonably good selection left, then try to figure out what we’re going to do about dinner. I need to go to the grocery and drop our tuxedos by the cleaners….”
“I really feel like shit for hanging you with all that,” I said, wondering for the thousandth time how I managed to luck out and snag the one guy on the planet who knew when to ask questions and when to just let it ride. “I won’t be gone long, I promise. Tell you what, as soon as I get back, I’ll take you to the grocery. We can swing by the cleaners on the way. Then we’ll come back here and get dressed, because I’m taking you out to dinner, and it sure as hell won’t be to someplace that gives you indigestion in a to-go bag. After that, we’ll find a lot and pick out a nice tree together. Just keep in mind that this is our place and not Liz’s, okay? A six or seven-footer will fit in here just fine, but a twelve-footer won’t.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself. But the tree lot first, okay? If we don‘t go soon, there might not be anything left to choose from. The suits and shopping can wait til tomorrow if they have to.”
I glanced at my watch, knowing I was gonna be thoroughly fucked if I didn’t haul ass. “An hour max, then I’m all yours for the rest of the night,” I told him, snagging a quick kiss.
“Only the rest of the night?”
“And tomorrow night,” I called over my shoulder as I bolted out the door. “And the night after that, and the night after that….”
* * * *
We spent Christmas Eve morning running errands and restocking the pantry, then sifting through the mountain of ads and bills that had piled up while we were away. We both had about a dozen emails from Mickey, mostly humor pieces he’d forwarded, plus one personal note inviting us up for dinner and drinks once the holidays were over. While Timmy knocked out another load of laundry, I figured out how to upload the pictures we’d taken to my hard drive, and sent a couple of shots of the four of us to Mickey, along with a note saying we were looking forward to seeing them again. After lunch, we hit the mall for a few last-minute gifts Timmy swore Liz and Marion couldn’t live without. He caved, just like I knew he would, and picked up a few things for his father, too, though God knows the old bastard hardly deserved them.
The game plan was for us to have a nice, quite Christmas morning all to ourselves, than to drive down to Poughkeepsie in time for the evening festivities at Liz’s. Marion would be there for sure, plus most of the relatives I’d met at the wedding, but the jury was still out as far as James was concerned. For Timmy’s sake, I tried to act like I genuinely hoped he would make an appearance. Also for Timmy’s sake, I promised myself I wouldn’t punch his lights out if he did.
We decorated the tree that evening and wrapped the booty we’d bought, then threw together something quick and easy for dinner. I guess Timmy figured I’d paid my dues as far as churchy stuff was concerned, because he passed on my offer to go to midnight mass, suggesting a more intimate way to end the evening instead. He cranked up a Christmas CD, instrumental stuff by some big band leader from the ‘forties, while I turned off the lights and lit the tree. We sipped martinis and reminisced about our trip, which led to a discussion about how we could put the money we had left to good use.
“Why don’t you use it as a down payment on a new car?” he suggested. “You spend so much time doing surveillance work, and I worry about you sitting out there night after night with a heater that only works half the time.”
“I can’t draw attention to myself by letting the car run anyway, sweetheart, so it doesn’t really matter if the heater works or not.”
“Still, the engine’s no more reliable than the heater. It scares me to think what would happen if it didn’t start when you needed to get out of a dangerous situation.”
“It hasn’t let me down yet. Don’t worry about me, okay? You know I’ll always do whatever it takes to come home to you. You know, we could put the money toward a car for you, though. I hate that you have to take the bus all the time.”
“I don’t mind the bus, and I can always call a cab if I need to. Or get a lift from a handsome private investigator I know.”
I chuckled and scooted closer to him on the couch. “Always at your service, sir. There is a fee attached, however.” Then I nipped his ear and whispered something nasty into it, something that made his face get even hotter than when he‘d had the fever. Something that made him squirm.
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing, “but it’s creative, I’ll grant you that.”
“That’s why you love me.”
We didn’t talk for a while, since our mouths were occupied with other things. When we finally had to break for air, he said, “Stop trying to distract me. We’re going to settle this money issue before we go any further.”
“Taskmaster,” I growled, turning the word into something seductive, something dirty. But he just gave me that look, the one that said he was finished playing, so I did my best to ignore the mating call his body was singing to mine and concentrate. “We’ve been talking about pooling our funds into one joint account anyway, so why don’t we open a savings account while we’re at it?”
“That would definitely be the most prudent thing to do,” he agreed. “I’d certainly feel better knowing we had a nest egg saved back for a rainy day.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing something to keep the rain off permanently.” I told him what I’d been thinking then, about the house with the flowerbed in the nice neighborhood and the mutt that could roust us out of bed on Sunday mornings. He caught my hand and kissed it, then pressed it firmly against his crotch. I laughed softly, rubbing the swelling, twitching piece of heaven between his thighs. Only Timmy. Who else could get a hard-on from the thought of being locked into mortgage payments for the next thirty years? But I knew it wasn’t really the idea of mortgage payments that got him going, it was the fact that he’d be doing it with me. And that reminded me of something else, something I hoped would get him worked up even more. I treated him to a long, leisurely fondle, enough to get him glassy-eyed and panting, then broke it off long enough to hand him his martini glass and reach under the couch for something I’d hidden there earlier that evening.
“Finish your drink,” I said. “You’re gonna need it, because I’m about to take you to the bedroom and make love to you so long and hard you won’t stop screaming my name til New Year’s. But first, I want you to open this.”
“I thought we were waiting til morning to open gifts,” he said, setting his drink aside as he eyed the foil-covered package in my lap. “You said you wanted this Christmas to be all about tradition.”
“I do, but this is something special. I want you to see it tonight. I need you to see it tonight,” I finished, suddenly nervous, hearing my own voice trailing off in a hoarse whisper. I cleared my throat, then grabbed my drink and knocked it back. Then what the hell. I gulped the rest of his as well.
“Donald,” he began. I couldn’t see his eyes because the Christmas lights were bouncing off his glasses, and all I could make out were red and green and blue and yellow sparkles. But that worry line between his brows was getting deeper every second, and I could hear something that sounded an awful lot like fear in his voice. I hadn’t meant to scare him, but I guess that was exactly what I was doing. God knows I was scaring myself.
“Just open it,” I said, pressing the package into his hands. He hooked a fingertip under a folded corner of the foil and ripped it open, revealing the gift box beneath. He lifted the lid, then stared first at the stack of papers inside, then at me, then back at the papers again.
“These look like lab results.”
“They are. Can you read them? Do you need me to turn on a lamp?”
“I can see,” he said, lifting the papers out of the box and bringing them closer to his face. He adjusted his glasses and I knew he was probably squinting, trying to make out the print in the dim light. “H.I.V. tests,” he said, flipping through the stack, “all negative. There are so many of them! Donald, there must be…”
“A dozen. One for every month we’ve been together.”
“I don’t understand. When we made love for the first time, you told me you’d been tested and that you were clean. Why would you keep retesting month after month unless…” he hesitated, and I knew exactly what he was going to say next before the words were out of his mouth. “Unless you were still putting yourself at risk, unless you were still...no.” He said it again, firmly, with finality and so much strength of conviction I wanted to hug him til his bones popped. “No. You wouldn’t do that. But why….”
“I‘d never want anybody else, honey. Not as long as I had you. But I was so stupid, Timmy. I did so many stupid things before I met you. I always used protection, but nothing’s a hundred percent. I don’t care what the experts say, nobody knows for sure how long it takes something to show up in a blood test, how long this stuff takes to incubate.” I guess I was crying. I knew I had to be crying. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to fall apart like that, but my face was wet and my voice was breaking, and it didn’t seem like there was much I could do to stop it. “I love you so much, Timmy. I know I’ve been holding back on you, that I’ve drawn all these stupid lines I wouldn’t let you cross, and I know you didn’t understand why. I just couldn’t take a chance on passing something on to you. I’d rather die than pass something on to you.”
“Baby,” he said, slipping off the couch and onto his knees in front of me, scattering a year’s worth of lab results on the floor as he gathered me in his arms and held me so hard I thought I actually did hear something pop. We were in such a tight press, though, I couldn’t tell whether it was him or me. “I wish you had just talked to me. We could have taken precautions. You didn’t have to hold back all this time. Condoms….”
“Condoms break, maybe get holes in them that a microbe could slip through,” I told him. I was trying to take hold of myself and stop sniveling on his shoulder like some weepy kid, but I didn’t want him to let go of me, not even for a second. “I had to know that you were safe. Not safe-er. Safe. Nothing matters to me as much as keeping you safe.”
He pulled back a little then, wiped my face, kissed me. “We’d be safe now,” he said, smiling. He kissed me again, first my lips, then the tip of my nose, and bumped his forehead against mine. I knew he was trying to coax a smile out of me, too, and I finally managed a weak one.
“We’d be safe now,” I agreed.
He rose then, a little stiffly, and I felt a surge of guilt, thinking what all that time on the floor must have done to his knees. But he was still smiling, touching me here and there in that soft, gentle way of his, and the guilt I felt gradually gave way to something else.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” I said, brushing his lips with my own.
“It will be,” he murmured. Then he took my hand.
He turned off the tree lights and led me to the bedroom, where we undressed each other by candlelight, drawing it out, exploring every newly exposed patch of skin with our eyes, our fingers, our mouths. Timmy’d put the CD player on repeat mode and turned the volume up just enough for us to hear it down the hall, and we swayed to the soft music for a while, warm skin against warm skin, together and at peace. For some reason, I thought of the mass we’d skipped, thinking that it might have been a candlelight service, and that soft music might have been playing there, too. I understood the comfort Timmy seemed to find in his faith, and I hoped he didn’t mind missing out on his yearly tradition too much. Then he rested his head on my shoulder and sighed such a contented sigh I knew beyond a doubt that there was no place he’d rather be than right there, alone in that candlelit bedroom with me.
His hands slid across my shoulders and down my back in the lightest ghost of a caress, rubbing soft circles, touching every part of me he could get to. I courted his tongue with my own, tasting a familiar sweetness that was his alone, mixed with a phantom hint of martini. Easing my bottom lip into his mouth, he sucked it gently. Those tender little pulls went straight to my libido -- and to my heart. With Kyle, kissing had almost been a form of physical combat, we were always in so much of a rush, so frantic and needy, trying to eat each other alive, to work a night’s worth of heat and pent up desire into a few stolen minutes. With us, it was all fire and fury and the thrill of danger. There was plenty of passion there, and on my end, at least, love. But romance just didn’t happen. It didn’t have time to.
I’d never kissed the guys I’d tricked with since, never wanted to get that close, never wanted to exchange bodily fluids with them in any way. I was there to perform a base act and get the hell out, not to form some sort of lasting human connection. But with Timmy, there was time, always time, and I wanted to be as close to him as I could get. Timmy was wine and roses, holding hands and pillow talk and moonlight in your martinis. He was sweet, goofy smiles and long, lazy weekends in bed, shared bubble baths and slow, deep, drugging kisses that lasted for hours. With him, see, kissing wasn’t just a form of foreplay, it was an end in itself. And he was damned good at it.
I’ve always heard people say that they’ve felt time stand still, but I never experienced it myself before I met Timmy. The CD played through and ended and played through again, and still we kept kissing, somehow finding our way onto the bed, lost in each other and that incredible warmth and closeness. At some point, his glasses had gone by the wayside, but I didn’t know if he’d taken them off or if I had, or where they’d ended up. I just knew I could see his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, and that I could die a happy man knowing I’d never see anything else again.
Timmy could never be called a passive lover, but he’d always been an accommodating one. If he knew there was something I wanted or needed, he made damned sure I got it. That night he was soft and yielding, trusting me, with that unshakable faith of his, to lead him only to places that were safe and mutually pleasing. I knew he had no qualms about being penetrated. I’d fingered him before, bringing him to climax by sucking him off while gently stroking his prostate. He’d tried to return the favor only once, but took the hint and backed down immediately when I froze, one step away from shutting down completely. Donald Strachey doesn’t bottom for anyone, never has and never will. I hadn’t said the words, but he got the message loud and clear just the same.
Timmy had a box of condoms squirreled away next to the lube in his nightstand. We’d never talked about them, but I knew they were there, that he always kept them on hand in case I came to my senses and was finally willing to do what most normal, healthy gay men do when their bodies come together. So when he pulled out the lube and handed it to me, I glanced at the drawer and then back at him, waiting for him to dig out the rubbers as well, to give me one or maybe make one of his little rituals out of putting it on me himself. Instead, he looked me dead in the eye and shut the drawer, then settled back on the bed, knees bent and legs spread, his hips pulsing in a subtle, sexy rhythm. His cock, as ruddy and engorged as I‘d ever seen it, swayed with the motion.
I had it in my mouth almost faster than I saw it. It tasted like the inside of his mouth, clean and sweet and familiar. My head moved in sync with his thrusts, matching the rhythm of his hips pulse for pulse. His hands found their way into my hair and he clutched at it, moaning in pleasure. But he was peaking fast, and after a couple of minutes he pushed me away, letting me know that on this night of all nights he wanted to set a leisurely pace. Wherever we were going, he wanted us to get there together. With an overwhelming sense of loss, I let his cock slip away from my lips and sat back so I could look at him, longing to just go on making him feel good, so good he couldn’t stand it, to suck him off right then and there, then let him slowly build up for a second round as I put that lube I was holding to good use and made him mine.
Made him mine.
All this time, I’d focused on what it would be like to be inside Timmy, how good it would feel, how much it would mean to him as well as to me. But wasn’t he mine already? He’d already given himself to me every way one man can give himself to another. If one of us was holding out on the other, it sure as hell wasn’t him. What was I so afraid of? He’d been inside me in a hundred different ways already -- inside my head, inside my heart. Why not take it to the physical level as well?
I’d spent a year thinking about this moment, dreaming about it, planning for it. I’d choreographed every second of it in my head, how I’d touch Timmy, how I’d hold him, how I’d be so gentle with him and so loving that’d he’d never, ever doubt for one second how much he meant to me. But as he lay there in front of me, those blue eyes of his shining with love and lust and so much trust -- above and beyond everything else, so much trust, so much faith -- I knew that I’d gotten it all wrong.
“No,” I told him. “Not this time.”
He looked at me, startled, as I took his hand and kissed it. Then I handed the lube right back to him, folding his fingers around it and sealing them in place with another smacking kiss.
“Donald,” he began.
“Timothy.”
One of the best things about Timmy is that I hardly ever have to spell anything out for him. He doesn’t just get what I say, he understands what I can’t find the words for, too. He sat up and caught my face between his hands. “Are you sure?” he asked softly.
Was I sure? I was scared shitless if you want to know the truth. I was scared because I’d never done it before and knew it was probably going to hurt, and even more scared of opening myself up that way, of being that vulnerable, of giving up a degree of control I might never be able to get back. But this wasn’t some stranger off the street, this was Timmy, my Timmy, and all of a sudden I knew I wanted this, wanted it so bad I couldn‘t stand it. I wasn’t sure of much in my life, but I was sure of him, and I needed him to know that. I needed to carve it in stone.
“Don’t keep me waiting,“ I said. “I’ve kept us both waiting too long already.“
He looked at me for a long, loaded minute. Then he just sort of folded himself around me, holding me tight and rocking a little, not saying a word. “Okay,” he finally whispered, sounding choked up as hell. He cleared his throat. “Okay.” Then he pulled back just enough to kiss me, and the expression on his face told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about me at that moment, what this meant to him, how right I was to put myself in his hands. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before and nobody else has since. But then again, nobody’s ever seen me the way Timmy does.
Patience has never exactly been the man’s chief virtue. He goes into full-fledged freakout mode if a bus runs three minutes late, if we’re not dressed and ready half an hour before it’s time to leave for some boring political event, if assignments he’s delegated to the staff peons aren’t finished -- like, yesterday. But when it comes to my comfort level and my feelings, it’s a different story. At first I was tense, skittish almost, but he courted and soothed me, rubbing the full length of his body against mine, pressing and gliding, stimulating every inch of my skin with every inch of his. We rolled across the bed, limbs tangled, his hands and mouth everywhere, touching and tasting, stroking and sucking.
Eventually, he settled me on my back and pried himself loose long enough to slide a pillow under me, elevating my hips. He leaned over until our foreheads pressed together. I thought he was going to ask if I was sure again, but instead he said, “I would never do anything to hurt you, Don.” Then he nudged my knees apart and spread my cheeks, going in for the kill. I felt his tongue circling my opening, tickling and teasing it, keeping it light at first, almost playful. Then he really got down to business, lifting my right leg over his shoulder for easier access, gradually increasing pressure until that warm, moist tip penetrated me, but just barely. It felt strange at first, but also incredibly erotic. I guess I must have whimpered, because he backed off a little and kissed me there, then traveled forward to nuzzle my balls, drawing first one and then the other into his mouth.
When I felt the cool dampness of the lube, I went into sensory overload, so overwhelmed with pure, unfiltered feeling that it was more than I could stand, more than I could process at one time. Something had to give, to be put aside to make room for what I knew was coming next, and that something was fear. I let it slip away like a fragment of a bad dream, and in the instant it did, every muscle in my body relaxed. I felt his finger slip inside me, sliding forward smoothly and easily until the tip hit a hot spot so sensitive I almost came off the bed, shocked and shaken by a surge of pure, almost painfully intense pleasure.
“Gotcha,” he said, laughing quietly at the expression on my face, which had to be one for the books. He licked the head of my cock, then pulled the whole thing into his mouth, sucking it in a slow, sensual, pulsing rhythm that kept time with his internal caress. After a while, he added more lube and a second finger, then finally a third, taking his good, sweet time with it, his mouth continuing those expert pulls on my erection as I writhed and gasped beneath him. When we both agreed I was ready, he withdrew his fingers and sat back on his heels to prep first me, and then himself.
He eased his way in gently but deliberately, his eyes locked on mine the whole time. I’d be lying if I said it was the most comfortable experience of my life. My insides ached from the unfamiliar feeling of fullness, and the rim burned from all that stretching. Once he was inside me, he stayed completely still, giving me a chance to relax and unclench and get used to all the new sensations coming my way. After a couple of minutes, I guess you could say I acclimated, and my dick, which had gone soft at the moment of entry, made a full recovery.
“Timmy,” I said, just because it felt good to say his name. “Timothy.“ I honed in on his face because, come on, with him around, where else would I ever want to look? I began to move beneath him, drawing him into an easy rhythm. The fullness felt good now, comfortably arousing. When he found my prostate, I yelped from the sheer shock of it and locked a leg around him, my heel bumping his pale, perfect ass. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, shivering, but in a good way. When his eyes opened again, they crinkled around the corners, and he shifted some, supporting his weight on one arm so he could brush his fingers across my cheek. I’d expected to see him lost in the moment, blissed out the way I probably would’ve been if the situation was reversed. He was enjoying himself, there wasn’t a helluva lot of doubt about that. But for him, that wasn’t the point. For him, I was the point. It was all about me, see? For Timmy, I’d been the point since the day we met.
Timmy believed in things. Timmy cared about things, was passionate about them, threw his heart into them. It was no secret that he loved me. I never doubted that. But I saw right then and there that I would always come first with him, that this is the way it would always be, that for every hour and day and week and month and year of the rest of his life, what Timothy J. Callahan would be all about, the only thing he would ever really be all about, was me. My body, my stupid male ego, and my heart -- yeah, even my pissed off, suspicious, battle-scarred train wreck of a heart -- would always be safe in those elegant, perfectly manicured hands. And I’d be a pretty lousy excuse for a man if I didn’t spend the rest of my life making damned sure he knew it went both ways.
It suddenly seemed like there was still too much distance between us. I pulled him down so I could kiss him, I mean really kiss him, trying with everything I had in me to pour all the love and wonder and sense of discovery I was feeling at that moment into that kiss. He shifted again and his hands found mine, pinning them to the mattress as he laced our fingers together. Then he adjusted his angle and nailed my prostate again, and the shock of it was so intense it just about sent me though the roof. My whole body convulsed and I know I must have cried out, but the sound of it was lost inside his mouth. Another slight adjustment, and he nudged my prostate again, then again and again with smooth, strong, steady strokes, falling into a gradually accelerating rhythm as I shuddered and sobbed, pain and fear and doubt long forgotten because I’d lost myself, totally fucking lost myself, to the sheer force of nature that was Timothy. He was gasping and shaking every bit as hard as I was, but still focused in that weird, unworldly way of his, puffing his breath into my mouth and sucking my own deep into his lungs, breathing life into me as I gave my life, all of it, to him.
Donald Strachey doesn’t bottom for anybody. What a crock of shit. Between us, between Timmy and me, there was no top and no bottom, no masculine and no feminine, no submission and no dominance. Next time, we’d switch off and I’d be on top. Or maybe not. It really didn’t matter, because what we were doing had nothing to do with power or control and everything to do with trust. This was no base act. This act, this holy act of worship, was a sacrifice that wasn’t a sacrifice at all, because nothing was lost, nothing at all, and everything good and decent and sweet and sustaining was gained. Timmy was with me. Hell, Timmy was part of me. And the one thing he’d spent the last year trying to get through my thick skull finally sank home.
I would never be alone again.
My breath was hitching and so was his, his thrusts becoming rougher and more erratic. I was as hard as I’d ever been in my life, and between the sporadic press of his body against my erection and the more rhythmic friction against my prostate, I was teetering on that very thin line between pleasure and pain. Knowing I couldn’t stand it much longer, I rocked my hips against him, groaning and straining, clenching his fingers, begging him with hoarse, guttural cries to bury himself even deeper inside me. The force of it tipped me over the edge and I took him with me, tumbling together in a freefall of light and sound and excruciating, almost unbearable, release.
Somewhere down the line, I’d heard climax described as “the little death,“ and now I finally understood why. In the instant we clung together, sharing that shattering mutual orgasm, I died and was reborn a better man.
Donald Strachey, the man who’d known nothing but doubt, became a man of faith.
