Poor Man's Son - 42. Chapter 41

September 4, 2000

Malibu, CA

Will

School started tomorrow, my first day at Harvard-Westlake. I wasn’t nervous, but I was trying to be prepared. I laid out some clothes (some long baggy shorts and a T-shirt from Scott Slater’s surf shop) and decided that would be good enough. I went to my computer and checked my e-mails again to see if there was something from Tony, but there wasn’t.

I’d refused to admit to myself how much his reaction, his rejection hurt me, even though it did. I’d really fallen for that guy, and the sex, the chemistry between us, was unbelievable. It bothered the crap out of me that every time I jacked off, I thought about that. I’d start out thinking about something else, and then as I got more and more into it, my mind would automatically click back to that moment when I was riding up and down on his nice, big cock.

But that’s not what was really bothering me, at least not on the surface, and that’s not why I’d e-mailed him. We’d had unprotected sex, unprotected butt sex, and I had bottomed. That was the riskiest thing you could do. I was fighting a cold, and while I told myself logically that it couldn’t possibly be AIDS, inside my head a voice kept screaming: ‘You’ve got it. You’ve got it.’ It was driving me crazy. I’d told my mom that I wanted to go to the doctor tomorrow, and had set up an appointment after school. Pat would take me, and I’d get a fucking HIV test. But that wasn’t good enough, because I knew it would take a while for it to show up. To be sure, I’d have to get another one in six months. I didn’t know if I could stand to wait that long.

So I’d sent Tony an e-mail. I pulled up my ‘sent’ folder to look at it again. ‘Tony, I don’t want to talk about what happened, and I don’t want to go into any of that shit. But you barebacked me, and I want to know if you’re clean. Period. One simple question that I need you to answer. Will’. I’d sent it last Tuesday, and still hadn’t heard back from him.

His not answering me just made me more paranoid. Was he positive, and that’s why he wasn’t telling me? Or was he negative and just playing with my mind. That really pissed me off. It’s not as if he hadn’t messed with my mind enough already. It’s not as if he hadn’t completely shredded me. No, now he had to drag this out, and make me think that I had ‘it’. I was so tempted to send him another e-mail and read him the riot act. Part of me wanted to hurt him really bad, and make some smart-ass comment that he probably had HIV just like his dad, but I’d have to really hate the guy to do that, and even then, that’s a pretty low blow. Besides, I didn’t hate the guy. Not entirely.

That was the other thing. All of this was so fucking confusing, but who could I talk to about it? If I laid this whole thing out for my dad, Robbie, Stef, or Grand, they’d all end up being really pissed at Tony. And then the whole drama would be public, and when they saw him, they’d give him these weird looks, and treat him with deliberate politeness, at best. He’d know that I talked to them, and it would freak him out. Why did I care? Did I even want him around anyway? I told myself I didn’t, but then I remembered our kiss, and that night of sex, and I had to pull myself out of my introspection for ten minutes to jack off.

But who could I talk to? Gathan would kill him, and so would Darius. Besides, Darius would get uncomfortable if I talked about butt sex. Matt would react just as protectively and maybe just as violently. I could talk to my shrink, but I felt like that guy was trying to drive a truck into my brain. He was so invasive. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I looked at the clock and it was 1:00pm, still early enough to surf. A look through the window told me that the waves were good, but the beach was crowded. A negative to offset the positive. I sighed and walked down the stairs, more of a careless stumble than anything. I was so lackadaisical.

The sight that greeted me at the bottom of the stairs transformed my whole mood. Standing there in the great room with Dad and Robbie were Matt and Wade. “Hey!” I said enthusiastically. Matt gave me one of his warm, Robbie-like hugs, while Wade gave me a hug that was less warm, but just as meaningful. “Did you guys just get here?”

“Yeah. We’ve been all over fucking Virginia,” Matt groused. “It’s fucking hot there.”

“We were campaigning with my father,” Wade explained. “Matt’s not much for kissing babies.”

“You were campaigning for him? Isn’t he a Republican?” I asked.

Wade chuckled. “He’s moderated a lot of his positions, at least on gay issues. I felt I owed it to him to support him, so people could see that I wasn’t a headless demon.”

“But you took him with you,” I joked, pointing at Matt, “which ruined the whole effect.”

“Very funny,” Matt said.

“So what’s your plan?” Robbie asked Matt.

“I just came down here to hang out with you for the day, spend some time with Tiffany and the baby, and then we fly up to Paly. First hockey practice is tomorrow,” Matt said.

I looked at Wade, and the tumblers in my brain started to click. Wade! He was the one! He could help me with this! “What about you?” I asked Wade. “You got plans?”

“I figured we could all do something,” my dad said, as if he were trying to piss me off. I ignored him and looked at Wade, begging him to read my mind.

“That sounds good,” he said to my dad, “but I think first I’d like to spend some time with my little brother,” he said, smiling at me.

“Awesome!” I said, so enthusiastically that none of them would dare try and change our plans. “You can hang out with the old men,” I said to Matt.

“Ha, ha, ha,” Robbie replied, irritated.

“Dude, let’s get out of here,” I said to Wade, and then turned to Robbie. “Can we borrow your car?”

“Watch out Matt,” Robbie said as he handed Wade the keys. “He likes to take hot guys for rides in Ferraris.”

“Whatever,” I said to him disdainfully, then all but dragged Wade out to the garage.

“So where are we going?” Wade asked as he drove out to the Pacific Coast Highway.

“I don’t care. I just need to talk to you.”

“I was getting that impression,” he said, smiling at me. Damn he was sexy. It was almost a shame our relationship was platonic.

“You hungry?” I asked, smiling back. Wade was an enigma: a slim guy with a bottomless pit for a stomach.

“Always,” Wade responded. I told him to drive to Santa Monica, where there was this really good Italian restaurant. I’d been there lots of times, and they knew me, so they rolled out the red carpet for us. Our waiter actually looked kind of like Tony, which was both frustrating and hot at the same time.

“I had this problem with a guy,” I said. “Everyone in my family is so high-strung; I’m worried that if I talk to them this guy will end up getting his ass kicked.”

Wade laughed at that. “And you think that I can still be civil to him, even after we talk?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard you had an exciting summer. Someone said something about a pole dance.”

I frowned. “See, that’s the other thing. They all have big mouths.”

“Dude, you can’t do a strip-tease in Rome and not expect us all to find out about it. That’s too juicy. I laughed my ass off for days after I found out.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, acting serious. “You thought it was funny? You were supposed to think it was hot.”

“Whatever,” he said, shaking his head. “So this isn’t about that guy?”

“No, it’s about a different guy. He’s Italian too, though. Looks kind of like our waiter.”

“So are we talking about Tony?” he asked.

I just stared at him, trying not to be pissed off. “So no one has anything better to do than talk about who I’m fucking?”

“So you fucked him?”

“Yeah,” I said, “or more to the point, he fucked me.” And the whole tone of our conversation got serious.

“How was it?” he asked.

“Unbelievable,” I said. “The fucking earth moved.”

He chuckled. “So what’s the problem?”

“The next morning, he basically threw me out of bed, and said I was disgusting and gross.”

“He said you were disgusting and gross?”

“Well, he said having sex with me was disgusting and gross,” I corrected.

“What freaked him out?” Wade asked me. I basically went back and gave him a history of our time together. When I got to the kiss in San Francisco, he stopped me. “So he told you that he didn’t want to lead you on, because he wasn’t gay?”

“Yeah,” I said. I rambled on some more, telling him how he was standoffish when I’d tried something, and then told him about the party, and how I helped Tony back to his room, and how amazing the sex was.

“Was he your first?”

“No, my first was that guy in Italy, Berto. He blew me off as soon as we got home too.”

“So you clearly have a thing for Italian men,” he said.

“Absolutely,” I joked, only I said it just as our waiter got there. The waiter looked at me, not a little freaked out.

“More iced tea, sir?” he asked, but whereas he’d seemed pretty warm and friendly before, now he was colder, and distant.

“Yes, please,” I said. I watched him pour, and he seemed to get more nervous still.

“I think you just got your answer,” Wade said as the waiter moved to the next table.

“What?”

“That guy is probably from the same culture as Tony. It’s a macho culture, and being gay is considered a weakness, something to be avoided at all costs.”

“That guy did kind of act like Tony did,” I agreed. It kind of made sense, but how come Darius’ straight friends didn’t get all weirded out? I asked Wade about that.

“Maybe they weren’t raised with that culture as a background.”

“Yeah, but Tony’s dad was JP’s lover for ten years. You’d think that would get rid of some of the attitude.”

“Or make it stronger still. Maybe Tony doesn’t want to be like that, like his dad.” Wade studied me, watching me digest his words before going on. “There’s another thing to think about.”

“What?”

“You’ve been raised in this environment where you’re surrounded by gay men, wealthy and powerful gay men. You live in a bubble, where you can be openly gay and it’s no big deal. Most gay men don’t live in that world. And you’ve already come out, and announced to the world that you’re gay. You’ve done that earlier than a lot of guys do.”

“I can see that,” I said. That made total sense.

“When Matt was trying to get in my pants,” Wade said, getting a giggle from me, “I really resisted. It wasn’t because I didn’t want him; it was because I didn’t want to be gay, and to admit that I was gay.”

“You’re saying that Tony is fighting it, and that’s why he’s acting this way?”

“I don’t know if it’s that simple, Will, but I think that may be part of it, especially if he told you he wasn’t gay.”

“It certainly didn’t bother him when he was fucking me,” I said, only once again, I’d said it when the waiter got there with more bread. It was all Wade and I could do not to laugh our asses off as he freaked out even more. We halted our conversation until he left.

“No, because he was thinking with his dick, and he was drunk. But when he was sober, it really bothered him.”

“I figured it was about me, that he really thought it was nasty being with me,” I said. “I guess it’s not always about me.”

“Not always,” Wade said with a smile. “I’ll bet he really liked you.”

“So this isn’t about me being fourteen.”

“No, in this case, I think he’s got more growing up to do than you do, and he’s got to grapple with who he is. You know, if you can forgive him for this, you can probably help him through some of that.”

“I didn’t even give him a chance to talk to me. I told him to fuck off.” Now I felt like shit, until I remembered the other thing that had me freaked out.

“What now?” Wade asked, reading my expression.

“We barebacked,” I said. “I know it was stupid, and I’ve been freaking out about it, worrying that I have ‘it’. I’m about to lose my fucking mind.”

“You want the safe sex lecture again, or you got it figured out now?” he asked, and not nicely.

“I got it figured out now. I sent him an e-mail and asked him if he was negative, but he hasn’t responded yet. I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to get tested, but if he would just tell me...”

“What if he’s positive?”

“Then I really messed up,” I said. “I keep thinking that maybe he is, and maybe that’s why he was so upset. You at least gave me another possibility.”

“That was a really stupid thing to do,” Wade said. “I’m sorry, but I have to say it. You’re important to me, really important to me, and it pisses me off that you’d risk your life like that.”

It was funny how my dad, or anyone, could say that to me, and while it had meaning, none of it impacted me like it did coming from Wade. “I’m sorry,” I muttered lamely.

“Just don’t do it again.”

I almost said ‘I won’t’, but then I remembered that night with Tony, and how lust had totally overwhelmed me. I didn’t want to make a promise to Wade I might not keep. “I’ll try not to,” I said, and that seemed to suffice.

My phone rang, and just as I went to grab it, Wade’s phone rang too. My call was from Dad. “Hey,” I said casually as I answered it.

“Will, your mother just went into labor,” he said. I saw Wade’s expression; he must be having a similar conversation with Matt.

“Is she going to the hospital?”

“She and Tiffany are on their way now. We’re leaving shortly.” He sounded calm and in charge.

“What should we do?”

“Why don’t you and Wade meet us there,” he suggested. Evidently, Wade got the same story, so we paid our bill and left. As we were leaving, there was a mirror on the wall that I was staring into. I saw our freaked out waiter behind me, staring at my ass with a very lustful look. I shook my head. Maybe Wade was right. Maybe Tony is just a tortured closet case.

 

September 4, 2000

Columbus, OH

Gathan

I walked out of the bathroom in Columbus airport and hoped that I could make it onto the plane before the tears started again. I’d been alone last week, as Kristin had gone home, and it had been a living hell. I’d walked around Escorial like a zombie, just eating and sleeping. And crying. I’d never cried so many fucking tears in my life. I’d turned into one big huge pussy.

So as we’d planned, I’d come back to Ohio for the weekend, and we’d stayed together at JP’s house. I didn’t even have to go see her parents. It was like a dream come true. And now, the weekend was over and I had to go back to Paly, leaving her behind again. I waited at the gate and let everyone else get on the plane, then when they announced the last call, I boarded. I just wanted to stay here as long as I could, even though Kristin wasn’t with me.

The plane was crowded, and I’d flown coach to save money so I could go visit more often. I’d gotten lucky and had an aisle seat, but the guy who was in the middle seat had sat there, evidently hoping I wouldn’t show up. “You’re in my seat,” I said to him coldly.

“What number are you?” he asked, holding up his boarding pass.

“14C,” I said. “That’s the aisle. You have 14B. That’s the middle.” I wasn’t nice about it, because I wasn’t happy, and I just didn’t give a shit.

“Fine,” he said, being all pissy, and moved over. “You could have been nicer about it.”

“And you could have kept your ass out of my seat,” I said, glaring at him. That was enough to get him to shut up. I put on my headphones, even though I didn’t have any music playing. They covered up the noise, and people didn’t talk to me.

Time crawled by, but I just sat there and stared at the seat in front of me. Without having Kristin here, it was like nothing really mattered, and I really didn’t have anything to look forward to. Eight hours and one change of planes later the plane landed in San Jose and I retrieved the Tahoe, and then drove back to Escorial. I gave everyone an obligatory greeting, ate a quick dinner, and then went to bed. I felt so alone. I felt so hollow.

 

September 5, 2000

Malibu, CA

Will

“I can’t believe we have to go to school,” JJ bitched. “Mom’s gonna have the baby any minute now.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “She started labor last night. They said it could be a really long time before she has the baby.” We’d spent four hours at the hospital before we’d given up and gone home, leaving her there to try and squeeze my new sister out.

“They’re wrong,” he declared.

“So you’re smarter than all the fucking doctors?” I asked him.

“I just know,” he said insistently.

“Well even if she does, there’s nothing we can do anyway.”

“We could be there for her. What if she wants to see us? We could be there for moral support.”

I laughed. “Right. You’re just trying to get out of school. It might have worked if this weren’t the first day.”

“Fuck,” he said. Pat drove us, giving Michael the morning off. Probably gave him time to catch up on all the notes he had to write about JJ. He pulled up to the front, and we got out. JJ was really nervous.

“Come on JJ, it’s going to be fine,” I told him. Even I was a little nervous, so I knew he had to be shitting bricks. “We’ve got friends here.”

“You do,” he said, being bitchy.

“My friends are your friends,” I said. My friends usually tolerated him, but then again, I did the same thing with their brothers. Jason had a brother that was a year younger than we were, and he was a real pain in the ass, but I put up with him, and looked out for him. That was part of the deal. Still, it would have been easier for JJ to fit in with my friends if he didn’t dress like he walked right out of fucking GQ magazine.

We walked into the school and I noticed how many younger kids there were. It was just like being back at middle school, last year. “I gotta pee,” JJ said. I nodded and he went into one of the bathrooms, while I paused to get a drink of water. I waited for a couple of seconds, and then decided to follow him in there. It would get me out of the hallway, anyway. Just as I opened the door, a kid came up to go in as well. He was small, like JJ. I held the door open for him, being polite.

“Thanks,” he said, as he walked past me. As I followed him in, I heard a loud voice.

“Look at the fag,” some guy was saying. “You in fourth grade?” As soon as I rounded the corner, the whole scene was layed out in front of me. There was an older guy hanging out with one of his buddies, and they were giving JJ shit. He was a big guy, but not as big as me. He had blond hair, not that dirty blond color that Robbie had; it was a golden blond, more like Cody’s. It framed a really handsome, oval face, and bright blue eyes that looked menacing. If this guy wasn’t being a total dickhead, he’d actually be pretty fucking hot.

I walked right up to him and pushed him back against the wall. “That’s my brother, asshole. You give him shit, and I’m gonna pound you into dust.”

“Fuck you,” he said, but didn’t push me back. “I didn’t do anything to him.”

“I heard what you said to him, douchebag. Do it again, and I’ll rip your fucking head off.” I was pissed, and he got that I wasn’t going to back down.

And then something really stunning happened. The small guy I’d held open the door for walked right up to us and interposed himself between me and douchebag. Did he have a death wish?

“You are clearly new here,” he said with disdain. “You’re obviously unfamiliar with how things work. Your behavior is unacceptable.”

“Unacceptable?” douchebag asked, with more curiosity than malice in his voice.

“You go around here bullying kids, and no one will talk to you. You’ll be a pariah. That’s not how things are around here.” Douchebag rolled his eyes scornfully, telling the kid that he didn’t believe a word he was saying. I didn’t really believe him either. It couldn’t be that different here, could it? The little kid seemed to realize that he wasn’t getting through to douchebag. He nodded toward JJ. “If he and I go to the principal and tell him what you said, you’d be suspended. That kind of bullshit isn’t tolerated here.”

“Right,” douchebag said, but the wind was taken out of his sails by the small guy’s attitude.

“You apologize, and we’ll let you off with a warning, won’t we?” he asked JJ. JJ just nodded, as amazed by this as were the rest of us.

“Whatever,” douchebag said, which was the same thing as abjectly surrendering. I just glared at them until they left; no way was I going to give up the field of battle, which in this case was the bathroom, even though I wasn’t the one doing the fighting.

“You don’t have to fight my battles for me,” JJ snapped at me as soon as they were gone.

“You could have just said thank you,” I said, being just as bitchy.

“You could have been suspended too,” small guy said to me. “Neanderthals with good intentions can still get in trouble for fighting.”

“Neanderthal?” I asked, shocked. “Whatever. I’m out of here.” No one had ever given me shit for sticking up for smaller kids, and no one had ever called me a Neanderthal before. This place was going to take some getting used to.

My first class was English, which was probably a good thing. Get it out of the way first thing in the morning. I walked into the class and headed to the back of the room and took a seat. Other people looked at me as I did, but I pretended to ignore them. I’d learned a long time ago that if you act cool in school, people usually assume that you are. I got a pad of paper and pen out and just sat there, watching the other kids arrive and take their seats while looking like I wasn’t watching them.

I’d been grappling with being too physically mature for my age all summer, and now that I was here in this class, it seemed even more apparent than ever. Half the guys looked like they were tweaking out on the first stages of puberty, while the others weren’t much farther along. There were only two guys in the room that looked like they were as physically mature as I was, and one of them was the guy who’d been giving JJ shit in the bathroom. The other one was his friend.

They eyed me warily as they walked to the back of the room, even though they made it look like they weren’t looking at me at all. They got to the back and stood right in front of me. “You’re in my seat,” douchebag said.

“Then it isn’t your seat,” I told him. It was strange, because even though this guy was an asshole, I felt a certain affinity to him. Maybe that’s because he and I were playing by rules I understood, or maybe it was because he was so hot. Before he could say anything else, the teacher breezed into the room.

“Take your seats,” she said pleasantly but firmly. Douchebag glared at me but grabbed the seat next to mine. The teacher babbled on cheerfully about how wonderful it was to start a new year of school, and how exciting it was to meet us, and so on. No one listened to her.

She started taking roll, calling off our names. “Ryan Grafton!”

“Here,” douchebag said. So now, he had a name. Ryan Grafton. His friend was Mike Crawford. She worked her way through the alphabet until she got to my name.

“Will Schluter.”

“Here,” I said, my voice as deep and disinterested as I could make it sound.

“You related to Stefan Schluter?” Ryan asked in an unfriendly way.

“He’s my grandfather,” I said, the pride in my voice coming through even though I tried to mask it.

“So is everyone in your family gay, or just you?” he asked. He was trying to provoke me, talking low, so when I got pissed and snapped back at him loudly, the teacher would get mad at me. Like I’m that dumb.

“No, we pretty much all are,” I said, which bothered him because he didn’t get the reaction he wanted.

“So what, you all just hang out and take it up the ass?” he asked, still trying to provoke me.

“Yeah, kind of like at your house. Only my dad fucks his partner, while your dad fucks you.”

“Bite me,” Ryan snapped loudly, and Mike snickered, attracting the attention of the teacher. I just sat there, looking innocent.

“Mr. Grafton, come sit up front, that way you and Mr. Crawford can’t interrupt my class with your conversation.” He grudgingly got up and moved, giving me a really dirty look. I watched his cute little ass as he walked up the aisle, and chuckled to myself. This may end up being a pretty good school after all.