9.11 - 12. Chapter 12

July 7, 2001

I’d just opened the door to Rick’s truck and was about to climb in when I heard Tony shouting. “Will! Wait up!”

“What the fuck?” Rick asked me sotto voce. I shrugged. Tony came running up to the truck, a determined look on his face, with a seriously pissed off Dana trailing after him.

“What?” I asked him when he got to me. It was an abrupt question, but I asked it nicely.

“This is bullshit,” he said. “I invited you to come out here to go floating with me, and to see the city. That’s exactly what we’re gonna do. You’re with me.”

“Excuse me?” Dana demanded. “And just what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Go back to Kansas City,” Tony said, but he might as well have told her to go to hell.

“You’re blowing me off to hang around with this gay boy?” she demanded, full of outrage. Worse than that, she was implying he was a fag in front of one of his friends. That’s the gauntlet she was throwing down. It didn’t faze Tony at all, and that really surprised me.

“Will is my friend, and I invited him out here to hang with me,” Tony told her firmly. “You showed up uninvited, and that’s fine, but I already have plans. That’s the chance you take. So I’m busy this weekend, and I can’t hang out with you.”

“I don’t have to do that with my boyfriend,” she asserted, even though I thought that was bullshit, and from Rick’s expression, so did he. “You’re supposed to be happy to see me all the time, and be all excited to spend time with me. And your friends are supposed to understand. They’re supposed to get that a girlfriend is more important.”

“As if,” Rick said, chuckling. I couldn’t help laughing at that, which just made Dana angrier.

“You’re just working away at him, determined to get your hooks into him, aren’t you?” she asked me, then turned to Tony. “You’re lucky I’m here.”

“Dude, it is so not like that,” I said, shaking my head. “And you have a totally twisted idea about how relationships work. A dude dating you is your bitch, at your beck and call? Good luck with that.”

“What the fuck would you know about relationships?” she all but shrieked.

“He’s right,” Rick said. “And I do know about relationships,” he said, winking at her in a condescending way.

“Dana, they’re both right,” Tony said. “So I’m going to solve the problem right now. You’re not my girlfriend. We’re done.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. She was so stuck up, she couldn’t fathom that a dude would dump her.

“No joke,” Tony said. “Have a safe drive home.” He then spoke to Rick and me. “You guys want to come back inside and plan out the shit we need?”

“Sure,” I said. Tony turned on his heel and started walking briskly toward the house. Rick shrugged, and we both shut the doors to his truck and started walking toward the house more slowly.

“Tony!” Dana called, in her most authoritarian way. “Tony! Get back here!”

“Dude, he’s so over you,” I said, and then Rick and I laughed at her.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. She followed us up to the house, and then inside.

“What do you want?” Tony asked her.

“I need to get my stuff,” she said.

“I’ll help you,” Julia said, appearing from nowhere. That was such a cool thing to do, because it kept Tony out of contact with Dana, and if I were the Carbones, I wouldn’t want Dana loose in my house alone.

“Thanks, Julia,” Tony said sincerely. Dana stormed up the stairs.

“So what’s the deal, dude?” Rick asked. “Now we’re back to three people.” I thought it was funny that he was all worried about the float trip, but didn’t really give a shit about Dana.

“I’ll call KC and make him go,” Tony said. “You can’t even line up your own float partner. You’re a pathetic piece of shit.”

“Fuck you,” Rick said playfully. “So much for all my new camping gear.”

“We can still go shopping,” I said. That was a small price to pay to make things better for everyone.

“I don’t want to take your money,” he said. “Especially if you’re not using the stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

“What are you, fucking loaded?” Rick challenged.

“Dude, shut the fuck up,” Tony said. “His grandfather is Stefan Schluter.”

“No shit?” Rick asked. “Alright, I’ll let you buy me a new tent.” That cracked us all up, so we were laughing as Dana came back down, lugging her small overnight bag. Julia followed her down, frowning at her.

“Can you at least walk me to my car?” she asked Tony.

“I can do that,” he said. Julia and Rick looked nervous, but I wasn’t. Dana had given Tony the excuse to make the decision he needed to make anyway. He was resolute; he wasn’t going back on it now that he’d endured her unpleasantness. That bitchiness was the crucible he’d been trying to avoid. He walked her out the door.

“That was really nice of you to help out,” I said to Julia, getting a smile from her.

“Dude, I am so glad that bitch is gone,” Rick said. “She was a pain in the ass last weekend.”

“He usually has better taste in women,” Julia agreed.

“Tony brought her up to our house in Palo Alto and she was rude to me there. In my own fucking house. Good riddance,” I said, feeling the need to chime in.

Tony came walking back in. “You OK?” Rick asked.

“Dude, I’m great. I’m so glad she’s gone,” Tony said. He gave me a sly wink, and there was no way I could stop the huge grin that spread across my face. “Now I have to call KC and get him to drag his sorry ass along with us.”

“Tell him I’ll buy him a new sleeping bag, or some shit like that,” I joked.

“May work,” Rick said.

In the end, Tony didn’t have to work this KC guy very hard to get him to go. It sounded like he worked for his dad, so he managed to swap out his hours. We went shopping at some camping store and bought a lot of shit, since I wanted to do my share to help out and make this a fun trip. But that took time, and so did loading all our stuff up, so it was 8:00 before we were on the road, heading out of town. Tony and I were in his car, following Rick and KC.

“You know, you could have been a real dick about all of this,” Tony told me. I looked at him sideways, trying to figure out if that was a compliment or not. “I really treated you like shit. You didn’t lose it, you didn’t throw tantrums, you gave me the space to figure it out.” I didn’t know what to say about that, so I kept my mouth shut. “Thanks.”

I looked over at him and he was smiling at me, so I smiled back. “I know this isn’t easy for you,” I said. “I told you we’d work this through together.”

He nodded. “None of my friends know that I’m gay.” He was telling me this so I wouldn’t out him.

“Not even the ones you hook up with?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Dude, I’m not a moron. I see the way Rick looks at you. You two have messed around before.” It was pretty obvious to me.

“How can you tell?” he asked, and then got all annoyed because he’d more or less admitted it.

“The way he looks at you and the way he’s all protective of you. And because it was really easy for you to talk KC into going. I think Rick wasn’t all that upset about going with you.”

“You think other people notice?” he asked.

“Does it matter? In the long run?”

He didn’t say anything; he just drove as he thought about it. “I’m not ready to tell my friends yet. I have to tell my family first anyway. And I’m not gonna out Rick. That’s his call to make.”

“How tight are you two?”

“We’re good friends,” Tony said. “We’ve blown each other, and that’s it.”

“He seems pretty into you,” I observed. Tony gave me a dirty look. “Dude, we don’t have any commitments. I’m not busting your balls.”

“You think he wanted to hook up with me and that’s why KC didn’t want to come?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. You gonna hook up with him?” He had to hear the anguish in my voice. I reminded myself that Tony was damaged goods, and that I had to keep a certain distance between us or he’d destroy my emotions.

“Seems to me that I promised you that when we’re together, that’s it,” he said, grinning at me. “So he’s not getting anything from me this weekend. Unless you’re there.” He said that and raised an eyebrow.

I giggled like a girl. “He’s kind of cute.”

“He’s got a little dick,” Tony said.

“Dude, maybe you could bottom for him,” I said, and watched Tony totally freak out, and that made me laugh my ass off, which seemed to be the sign that we should smoke some weed.

“I’m not doing that,” he said.

“Dude, I’m glad. I am so good with you fucking me. So good,” I said. I reached over and started rubbing his groin.

“What the fuck?” he asked, but not in an angry way. I lowered his zipper and pulled out his cock, and worked my magic on him. I felt the car stop, but I didn’t slow down, I just kept going. He was pushing himself along; he usually had much more endurance, so in no time he was blasting his load into my mouth. I sat up and swished some of it around in my mouth, then swallowed.

“Yum,” I said. He shook his head as he grinned shyly. I contrasted how good he tasted compared to Jake.

“Didn’t want to wreck,” he said. He’d pulled off at an obscure exit and parked on the onramp.

“Smart boy,” I said. He gunned the Camaro and surged ahead to catch up with his friends. “So you doing alright?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, you ended it with Dana. I know that wasn’t easy, but I was really proud of how strong you were.”

“It would have been a lot harder if you weren’t here,” he said. “I mean, even if we weren’t, you know, it would have been so rude to do that to you. That finally worked its way through my slow brain.” It’s funny how he really didn’t know how to describe us.

“Yeah, that kind of pissed me off,” I said, but smiled.

“I don’t get you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“When we first hooked up, you were all emotional, this dude who seemed to have a temper from hell. Dude, if this shit would have happened a year ago, you’d have cut my dick off.” We hadn’t even known each other a whole year, but I didn’t sweat the details.

“Maybe I’ve grown up a bit,” I said, trying not to sound icy as I said it.

“Dude, you’ve grown up a lot,” he said.

That got him a smile. “I’ve pretty much always known I was gay. I never had to worry about the consequences of coming out. Who’s going to mess with me? And shit, if they do, I have guards to pulverize them.” He chuckled at that. “It was easy for me; it won’t be so easy for you.”

“I know,” he said glumly.

“I always thought you were worried about your family and what they’d do. Dude, I don’t see them busting your balls over it,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything, but I was digging deep, so I resolved to leave it alone. He finally responded. “It’s about my dad.” I stayed quiet. “I’ve had to work hard not to hate him. Really hard. And the part of him I hated the most, that’s the part I inherited.”

“He wasn’t perfect,” I said dismissively. “Neither one of us can say much about that either.” He snaughed like Gathan did when I said that. “He seemed like a pretty cool dude to me.”

“You didn’t even know him,” Tony spat. “Fuck, I didn’t really know him that well.”

“I have relatives that I didn’t know all that well. I know about them from listening to how my family talks about them now. We saw all those old movies of him with Stef and Grand. I watched how your dad was with everyone, and how they treated him. They obviously loved him, but they respected him too. If he was an asshole, they wouldn’t have felt that way about him.”

“Those were movies,” Tony said dismissively, even though I knew my comments had resonated with him.

“Yeah, but did you see how Stef and Grand looked when they watched the movies? They had that kind of serene smile, remembering a guy they really loved. I noticed it the first time I met you.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were at dinner, and they sat me next to you, probably trying to make sure I had a hard-on through the whole fucking dinner.” He chuckled. “I saw Grand watching you, and he looked really content. When he thinks about Jeff Hayes, his partner before your dad, he gets this look of anguish on his face, but when he thinks about your dad, he smiles.”

“Maybe he was just admiring how hot I am,” Tony joked.

“Maybe. But I think when he sees you, he also sees your dad.”

“You’re stoned,” he accused.

“Duh,” I joked.

“So is that why you’re nice to me?”

“No, I’m nice to you because you have a big dick that takes me to a whole other planet,” I said. He gave me a dubious look, taking his eyes off the road for a minute, so I winked at him. “Dude, I love you. I really do. This is going to be hard for you to do. I’m going to try to do what I can to help you out.”

“You’ve helped me out with this more than anyone,” he said. “And I’m not talking about me being gay, I’m talking about grappling with my dad and all that stuff. I really do love you.”

“You’ve been there for me too,” I reminded him.

“So what are you doing this summer?” he asked, changing the subject. We’d been driving on a freeway, Interstate 44, but it was pretty hilly. He’d asked me that question as we got off at an exit and turned left onto a two-lane road.

I shrugged. “After I leave here, I’m going to Hawaii to go surfing. What about you?”

“I’m supposed to work with my uncle this summer. My mom thinks I need to have a job. Only he doesn’t have much for me to do right now.”

“What kind of work are you going to do?”

“My uncle’s into construction,” he said with a shrug.

“Awesome,” I said, leering at him. “You’ll get even studlier.”

“That’s not possible,” he said with faux arrogance. I chuckled at him.

“So when do you start working?”

“I dunno. Probably sometime next week.” He drove on for a bit, and then seemed to put things together. “Wait a minute. Don’t you have some big party to go to?”

“The Bastille Day party,” I said. “I was uninvited.”

“It’s a fucking family party. How can you be uninvited?”

I told him my whole tale of woe, and about the nasty confrontation I’d sparked, along with Grand’s edict banning me, and my reconciliation with him. “See, I haven’t grown up all that much.”

“Dude, that would have fucking pissed me off too. I don’t think you were immature. I think you did the right thing,” he said, propping me up.

“Thanks. I was so pissed off, and I really lost it. I learned something from that, though.”

“What did you learn?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“My dad is really powerful, and pretty intimidating,” I said. Tony nodded in agreement. “When I fight with him, I have to really go at him, or it won’t register. Like when I ran away and trashed their house, and when I filed for emancipation. If I don’t hit him hard, he’ll walk all over me.”

“I can see that,” Tony agreed. “Is that what you learned?”

“No, I learned that not everyone is my dad. So when I was pissed off, I think that in the back of my mind, I was convinced that if I didn’t totally lacerate these people they wouldn’t get it. Only they don’t work that way.” I sighed and paused. “All that politeness, all those manners, the reason they’re there is to make sure that you get your point across without hurting other people’s feelings.”

“Dude, you are so fucking smart it’s scary,” Tony said, and actually gave me an admiring look.

“If I’m so smart, how did I fuck this up so bad?”

“All people make mistakes,” he said philosophically. “Smart people learn from them.”

“Whatever,” I said dismissively, even though I smiled to show him how much I appreciated his compliment.

“Do you have to go to Hawaii right away?” he asked, as if he had some big idea.

“No. I haven’t even made reservations or anything yet.”

“Why don’t you stick around for a while?”

“That could be fun,” I said. He gave me a dirty look, playing around with me for insinuating he wouldn’t be fun. “Seems you were going to show me some big ass park you claim is the bomb.”

“Forest Park, dumbass,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

We got to this campground and Tony wound his way through this area where there were a whole bunch of people congregated into groups. “Dude, where are you going?” I finally asked him.

“We camp back here,” he said, gesturing ahead. “It’s closer to the bathrooms. And the showers.”

“Oh.” We’d had to make do without them on our float to Arizona, so I was glad I’d have the opportunity to clean up here. “I didn’t know they had showers.”

“That’s why I packed those extra towels,” he said smugly. We pulled up to an area and Tony parked next to Rick and KC. He hopped out of his car and hurried toward a campfire with me in tow, where there were a whole bunch of people sitting around drinking.

“Tonyyyyy!” one guy said, with a deep, booming voice.

“Dude!” Tony responded, and shook the guy’s hand then pulled him into a brief hug. “How you been?”

“Fucking great,” the guy said. I stood there and watched Tony interact with this guy, and then these people. They were an interesting group. I was used to being around Darius’ friends, but they were a little more refined than these guys.

“Everyone, this is my friend Will. He’s visiting from Cali,” Tony said. He introduced me to everyone, but it was dark, and there’s no way I’d be able to remember all of their names. When we were done with the initial greetings, he turned back to me. “Let’s unpack our shit, and set up the tent.”

We went back to his car and started unpacking all the stuff we’d brought, and snagged some of the things that were big enough that he’d made Rick carry them in his pick-up. I helped him set up the tent, then the sleeping bags, the cooler, and everything else. Camping was a lot of work. After that, we went back to the campfire and sat down. Tony was on my left, and there was a couple on my right.

“So where’d you go to school?” the loud guy asked. He was one of those dudes who seemed to shout everything.

“Menlo,” I said.

“Where the fuck is Menlo?” he asked, and laughed.

“It’s in Atherton, in California,” I said. He looked kind of confused, and then ignored me. It seemed like everyone I met asked me the same question.

“So you’re from Cali,” the girl next to me said.

“I am,” I answered. Tony handed me a beer and I popped it open.

“I was out there once,” she said. “LA.”

“I used to live in Malibu,” I told her.

“Did you get to meet any movie stars?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You from around here?”

“I grew up in St. Louis,” she said. Someone passed shot glasses around, and then there was a bottle of Jaeger that followed. We poured shots, and she screeched as she drank it, and then ran off to talk to one of her friends. Her boyfriend looked at me and shook his head.

“Rachel gets a little loud when she parties,” he told me. He was hot, totally hot. I couldn’t make out his coloring, since it was dark, but his face was long, with well-defined features. He looked thin; he wasn’t hulked out like Tony, Rick, or that loud guy. Still, his calves bulged out in a sexy way, and had a light dusting of hair. He wore a polo shirt, which looked out of place with this crowd. “Your name is Will, right?”

“Yeah. I forgot yours. Sorry.”

He smiled. “No big deal. It’s Mason.” He seemed to be more introverted than the others, and quieter. They were rowdy, doing shots and laughing and shit, and he was just sitting here, staring at them while he downed a beer.

“So how do you know all these people?” I asked him.

“Rachel is good friends with Carla,” Mason said, gesturing to a girl who looked very Italian, and seemed to be very much in charge of this group. That explained why he was sitting off to the side, like I was. “What about you?”

“Tony is an old friend of the family, but we became buds after he started going to Stanford,” I said, abbreviating the story.

“You’re so much nicer than that bitch he had with him last weekend,” Mason said, shaking his head. I laughed at that.

“Not a very tough act to beat,” I joked. I heard Tony next to me bullshitting with his friends, and I could start to see his problem. They were macho guys, all full of bravado and shit. It was hard to see them being OK with him if he were gay. If he came out, he’d lose at least some of these friends. Mason seemed completely different. I looked at him, trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing here.

Rachel came up and sat in between us with a thud, then leaned in and kissed Mason. It was a nice kiss, but it wasn’t a real intense one. “Mason, will you do me a favor?”

“What?” he asked nervously.

“We need more beer. You’re the soberest one,” she said, and hiccupped.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked, not a little pissed off. “You want me to drive up to that fucking store and buy a bunch of beer and lug it back here?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling at him while she tried to look sexy. To me, it just looked like she was trying to manipulate him.

“You coming with me?”

“I don’t want to puke in your car,” she lied. She just didn’t want to go. He looked seriously annoyed. “We don’t want to run out tomorrow.”

His eyes looked beyond her and met mine. “I’ll go with you,” I volunteered. He gave me a brief smile.

“Fine,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, getting Tony’s attention. He turned to look at me, and had a guilty expression on his face since he’d been ignoring me and talking to his friends. “I’m going to go with Mason to get more beer.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yeah. Stay here and party with your friends. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Thanks,” he said, grinning at me. I guess he was so used to Dana dominating his life, and demanding all his attention, he was surprised to be around someone like me who didn’t really give a shit who he talked to or hung out with. I knew that tonight we’d end up in our tent together. Sometime before morning, I’d get him to fuck me.

“Let’s go,” I said to Mason. We both stood up and I was kind of shocked at how short he was. He was probably about 5’5”, about the same height as Rachel. If she wore any size heel at all, she’d be taller than him. He seemed uncomfortable now that he was standing there, and I felt bad for staring.

“I’m kind of short,” he said self-consciously.

“You look fine to me,” I said. He looked at me strangely, and then smiled. He led me over to his car, a BMW 328 coupe. We hopped in and it still smelled new. “New car?”

“Yeah. Just got it a month ago,” he said. He fired it up and drove slowly out of the campground to avoid the potholes. “Not the best thing to drive around here.”

“Dude, this is a sweet ride,” I said. “So like three people asked me where I went to school. What’s with that?”

He laughed. “That’s a St. Louis thing. They ask you what school you went to, and they mean high school, so they can figure out your background.”

“Background?” I wasn’t tracking with him.

“Yeah. Basically how rich you are,” he said with a grimace.

“Are you from St. Louis?”

“Yeah. My dad runs a bank.”

“So what school did you go to?” I asked.

“John Burroughs,” he said. “That’s where rich dudes who aren’t Catholic go. There, or Country Day School. Unless they go to public schools.”

“I guess the same thing happens in Cali, but it isn’t as big of a deal,” I said, kind of weirded out by the need for these people to pigeon-hole someone into the right socio-economic category immediately. “Where do you go now?”

“Mizzou,” he said, then noticed I looked confused. “It’s the nickname for the University of Missouri. It’s in Columbia. It’s a pretty awesome place.” I didn’t know anything about that, so I just shrugged. We got to this place that looked like a general store, and went in and bought a shitload of beer, all but filling up the trunk.

“How long have you and Rachel been together?” I asked.

“Couple of months,” he said casually. It didn’t seem like he was all that into her. “How long have you and Tony been together?”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Dude, I see the way you look at each other, the way you interact. You guys are a couple.”

“We are not a couple,” I said firmly. “Tony’s family and my family are good friends. He’s like a cousin.” I figured that was safe. You could fuck distant cousins.

“Yeah, but you don’t look at each other like that,” he said.

“Dude, whatever. I lust after Tony because he’s smoking hot,” I joked, getting a chuckle from Mason. “He puts up with me because we’re friends, and like I said, it’s like we’re cousins.”

“Right,” Mason said dubiously. He was starting to piss me off.

“Tony acts like that with everyone. Shit, he might even think you’re hot enough to flirt with.” I gave him an appraising look. “No. On second thought...” He laughed at that.

“Whatever,” he said. He kept looking at me, and my gaydar was good enough now for me to figure out that he was probably at least a little interested in me, but I was here with Tony, and fucking around with one of his friends was not a good way to start this trip.

We got back to the campsite and Carla made all the guys unload the beer and put it in coolers. I was impressed with how she got them to do that, even though most of them were pretty hammered.

“You having fun?” Tony asked me.

“Yeah,” I answered, trying to sound enthusiastic. I started drinking with a purpose after that, really downing some serious alcohol, until I was feeling no pain. Around 1am, everyone decided to crash.

“Dude, I’ll help you out,” Tony said, and guided me to our tent. As soon as we got there, he made to leave. “I’m going up to the bathroom.”

“I’ll go with you,” I slurred. He looked kind of annoyed by that, but shrugged his shoulders. We started walking and Rick joined us.

“I thought we were going up here,” I heard Rick whisper drunkenly to Tony, referring to just the two of them.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tony hissed. So that was the plan. He was going to sneak off with Rick and fuck around. Well, if he would rather be with Rick than with me, he could fucking go right ahead. And the next time one of his friends hit on me, I would be free to grab my ankles if I wanted to.

“Dude, I’ll just pee in the bushes. You guys go ahead,” I said to Tony abruptly. Before he could respond, I turned around and headed back to our tent.

“Will!” Tony called, but I ignored him. I was drunk and pissed off, and all I really wanted to do was to pass out. I got back to the tent and collapsed onto my sleeping bag, glad that we’d bought air mattresses so I didn’t have to sleep on the hard ground. It was muggy and hot, so I stripped down to my boxers and lay on top of the bag.

“Hey,” Tony said, and lay down in the sleeping bag next to me.

“I thought you were going to the bathroom,” I said sarcastically, nastier than I’d planned.

“I’d rather be here,” he said. He molded his body up behind mine, and I was tempted to elbow him hard in the gut, but I was too drunk and tired to fight with him, and too horny to pass up an amazing round of sex. I felt him pulling my boxers down. There was something slick on my ass, and then I felt his cock probing my hole. “We have to be quiet,” he said as he pushed in.

I stifled my moan. “It’s hard to do that with your big cock in my ass,” I said softly, just as he liked.

He let out a muffled moan, and then slowly and quietly brought us both to a really nice climax. I lay there afterward and decided that sex with him was incredible, but a relationship with him would be one major roller-coaster ride.