A Summer Love - 4. Chapter 4

July 24, 1991

I grabbed a couple of beers and led Philippe up to our terrace. “It's really nice up here. Perfect,” he said, taking in the view.

“It is. I cannot come up here, though, without thinking about my confrontation with Mother when I found out Gerard was not my father.” It was back in 1985 when she came up here on this very terrace and lied through her teeth about it.

Philippe looked irritated. “She says you are the one who is lying, that Gerard is your father, and that you made up this whole story to sell yourself off to rich fags who fuck you.” I stared at him, stunned.

That explained so much. Explained why he was so cold to me, why my being gay bothered him so much. “Come with me,” I said, and led him back downstairs to what was once my room. There was a large photo of Jeff on my dresser. I handed it to him. “That is my father.”

I saw Philippe fight the internal battle, over whether to believe the overriding evidence in front of him, or to believe our mother. And Philippe was always Mother's favorite. A man who likes computers must have a logical mind, I thought, and I was right. Facts beat out sentiment. “It seems pretty obvious.” He looked at me, then away. “I thought that you just did not want to be my brother.”

That hit me hard. Deserting him and Eugenie had been the one fly in the ointment when I left. “I'm sorry you thought that Philippe, it is not true. You're my brother. I guess I was so wrapped up in my own life I just did not take the time to be part of yours.” I pulled him into a hug, not a French one, a big American bear hug.

“Let us put all of that behind us and start again,” he said with a smile. How incredibly mature of him.

“So do you have a girlfriend?” I asked, teasing, but still curious.

“I do not have just one,” he said with an evil grin.

“You are a little slut? And a computer geek all in one?” He laughed, a hearty laugh that lit up his whole face.

“Geek? I am not a geek?” he said with faux defiance.

“No you are not. You're very handsome, and you must spend a lot of time in the gym,” I said, admiring the way his biceps bulged when he bent his arm casually.

“You are hitting on me? On your own brother?” he asked, and I started to panic until I saw the slightest little grin. “That would be incest!”

“You should be so lucky,” I teased back, and we laughed some more. We just sat there for the next couple of hours, joking, talking, and getting to know each other all over again.

“So you do not just have one girlfriend eh?” I asked, returning to that topic.

He got a sad look. “I was seeing this girl, I really liked her, but she broke up with me at the beginning of summer.” I could see the pain in his eyes. “So I must move on.”

“I'm dating JP now, but our relationship ends this fall when I move to Chicago.”

I thought I'd get a lot of crap from him, for dating an older guy, for dating a guy period, but that didn't happen. “I am sorry for you Marcel. As happy as you are now, you will be as sad this fall. If you need me then, I will be there for you.” I looked at him and was so touched a tear fell down my cheek. What an insightful young man, and how nice of him to care about me after so many years of being apart. “You are crying now? Do gay men cry all the time?” he asked, teasing, lightening the mood.

“Only when people do really nice things for them,” I said. “You must come visit me.”

“And I am supposed to pay for that with my good looks?” he teased.

“That would work, but then you'd be a whore.” Like our mother, I thought. “I have money. I will buy you a plane ticket whenever you want. But you will need a passport.”

He shrugged. “And I will need to fight with Maman about it.”

“You are 18. You are your own person. You can do what you want,” I said.

“It is not that easy Marcel. You do not see what she goes through, what she has to deal with. How she has to put up with Gerard and his girlfriends. How she drinks to kill the pain, and then her inner bitch comes out. And how when it does and she pisses him off, he beats her. You do not see all of that.” I just stared at him, stunned.

“You are right. I do not. I'm sorry Philippe. I really am. But this is her own life, her own choice. Why must you make it your own?”

He stared at me, about to say something, and then stopped. “I need to be here.” His look told me not to ask questions.

“Alright, but you can still go to school. I will help you.”

He shook his head. “I cannot accept your charity.”

“Charity? You are my brother. Is family not important to you? If I do not help you, you will end up as a laborer, like Gerard, and that will be your plight. Do you want his life?” He shook his head. “Before I left for the US, there was that big scandal with Robbie, where they thought he murdered that other guy. Do you remember that?”

“I read about it later, but I know what you are talking about.”

I rambled on. “Well, JP and Stef, and their whole family, banded together to make sure that justice was done, to protect him. All those years that they'd sent money back to France to help their relatives out, well, when they needed help themselves, their family rode to their defense.”

“You are saying you are riding to my defense? You are saying I am a damsel in distress?” Philippe asked, joking again.

“If I made you my damsel, you would give up on all of those women,” I flirted back, making him laugh. “So will you let me help you?” He nodded shyly. “Good, then there's something I need you to do for me.”

“What?” he asked nervously.

I stood up and started to lower my zipper, my crotch at his face level. His eyes got wide, with fear, and maybe even a little interest. I started laughing. He got up and gave me a playful punch. “I need to buy a computer. A good one. Come help me.”

“Cool!” he said enthusiastically. We went down to the electronics store and I watched Philippe in action, working with a cute young guy who was as knowledgeable about computers as he was. They looked at different types, argued about features for an hour while I was getting a little bored. OK, a lot bored. Why couldn't he just buy the most expensive one and know that it was the best? What was the big difference between different 486 chips? But I shut up and pretended to enjoy myself, letting Philippe really get into it.

“So what are you going to do with it?” he asked me, pulling me from my daydream.

“Probably use it for word processing and shit like that. Why, what would you use it for?” I asked.

He smiled. “Well, that, and some games.”

“Computer games huh? I do not know much about those. Why do you not pick out a bunch that you like and I will try them,” I told him. Now his face really lit up and he headed over to the software section.

“How many do you want?” he asked.

“I do not know. What do you think? Twenty? Twenty five?” He laughed at me.

“Marcel, if you get that many, all you will do is sit in front of the computer and play.” I rolled my eyes.

“Well, what if I do not like them all? I'm betting on you having really shitty taste.” He laughed at that and picked about fifteen of them, some of which actually looked like fun. I'd have to try them out. The games cost almost as much as the freaking computer. We lugged the shit out to our car and drove home to the apartment.

We got upstairs and found no one else had returned home yet. “Where is Eugenie?” Philippe asked nervously.

“She's with Stef. Probably getting their nails done. You have nothing to worry about,” I said reassuringly.

“She's out with some older guy I do not even know,” he said, almost despondent.

“Well Philippe, this is one of those times you will have to trust me. First of all, Stef is like a father to me. Well, more like a mother.” That made him laugh. “He's one of the nicest, most warm-hearted men in the world. He's the one who took me in when I left, let me stay with him in Malibu, paid to put me through school...including tuition, room, board, and an allowance...and when I graduated, he bought me this radical condo in Chicago. I trust him with my life.”

Philippe grinned sheepishly. “I'm sorry Marcel. If you trust him, then so do I. He bought you a condo? Damn. Why was I not born gay?”

“Well, that's the other thing. He's gay. What's he gonna do to her anyway? Get her a bad hairdo?” I felt bad about throwing tired stereotypes out there, but I decided that once in a while it was OK not to be politically correct.

Since no one was home and I was hungry, we ordered a pizza. We took it up on the terrace and wolfed it down, along with a couple of beers. JP came home first and found us. “So you already had dinner eh?” he said, disappointed.

I gave him a kiss, to welcome him home and to see how Philippe would react. He just grinned at me. “This is my brother Philippe. Philippe, this is JP.”

Philippe stood up and greeted him in the French fashion. “It's nice to meet you. I've heard so many horrible things about you. Where are your horns and your pitchfork?”

JP laughed, the thing he did that made him the cutest of all. His face lit up, his eyes sparkled, and his perfect white teeth just gleamed. “I only bring those out after midnight. I see your mother has been talking about me.”

He smiled. “We know better than to believe most of what she says.” A cavalcade interrupted us then, with an energized Eugenie and a tired Stefan bursting onto the terrace. “You got your hair cut?” Philippe observed.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do. And new clothes.” He seemed nervous.

“Lots of new clothes. I even got some for you.”

Stefan seemed to sense Philippe's protectiveness and walked over to him and put his arm around his shoulders. “Thank you for lending me your sister. I am surrounded by all of this testosterone and I rarely get a chance to go out shopping with someone who enjoys it as much as I do.” Philippe smiled and put his arm around Stef's waist, surprising me more than Stef.

“Thank you for all the things you bought her. And me too, I guess. But we need to get home.” I nodded. It had been a good visit, and long enough.

We headed down to the car and I drove home with them. My parents were waiting, as I suspected, my mother ready to ridicule, Gerard just watching television.

“You got your hair cut,” he said to Eugenie. “I do not like it.” That made Philippe smile.

“Well I do. I think it looks terrific. And I got lots of new clothes too.”

“You are taking them back,” mother said rudely.

“She is not. They are gifts,” I said firmly.

“And nice ones too. Go put them away,” Gerard said, glaring at my mother.

There was a knock on the door, the driver, carrying the boxes for the computer I bought. “And what is this?” Mother demanded.

“It is a computer for Philippe,” I told her.

“For me?” he asked, amazed.

“Yes for you, you idiot. You did not think I was going to play all of those games did you?” He gave me a big hug and dragged the boxes off to his room.

“Well, I think you have done enough damage here for one day,” Mother said.

“Pray that I do not come back and do more,” I said, glaring at her. For the first time, I saw her flinch, actually look afraid of me. It made me feel like shit. I just shook my head and left.

JP and Stef were waiting for me when I got home. “So how was it?” JP asked.

“Philippe and Eugenie were amazing. Well, at least Philippe was. Someone stole Eugenie away so I did not see much of her,” I said.

Stefan rolled his eyes. “She is a pleasure, a little princess. I find myself wishing I had adopted her instead,” he said, pretending to be petulant.

I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around him and sucked on his neck. “I do too, because then I would have no incestuous qualms about fucking your brains out.” JP just shook his head while Stef giggled. “Seriously, thank you for that Stef. It gave me a chance to reconnect with Philippe. And you made her feel like Cinderella.”

“How did your mother react?” JP asked.

“She was a bitch as usual. She wanted me to take back all the stuff we got them. Gerard told her to shut up.”

“I will bet he does that a lot,” Stef said.

“Philippe says that she drinks a lot, and when she gets too obnoxious Gerard beats her. I get the feeling that he feels obligated to stay there because he is the one who keeps things calm, keeps the others in line.” I thought about that. “It's a big burden for an 18 year old guy.”

“It is. But you offered to pay for him to go to school. That gives him hope for the future,” JP said. Then he changed the subject. “Let's go get dinner.”

“Not yet,” I said, moving up and kissing him. “I want to fuck you first.” I saw Stefan gulp. I was feeling really horny and really twisted. I started taking off JP’s clothes, right there in the living room.

“I should go get changed,” Stef said nervously.

“You should stay and help me get him off,” I said to him with a leer. “Do you want to watch me fuck him?” I had JP's shirt off and was working on his pants. It seemed that in no time at all we had our clothes off. I sat on the floor and pulled JP on top of me, his back to me, pulling his ass onto my cock, feeling him absorb me with a moan. Then I made him lean back into me, lying on my chest in his favorite position.

I used my legs to spread his, my normal maneuver, but instead of pounding him as I usually did, I just moved my dick in and out of him slowly, feeling the head bump and probe against his prostate. He moaned loudly and pushed his head back into my chest. I winked at Stef and he knelt between our legs, and I saw his mouth lowering down onto JP's cock.

“Does Stef's mouth feel good?” I taunted JP lovingly.

“Mmhm,” he mumbled incoherently. I just continued to fuck him slowly. Stef moved to his balls, and I felt his chin brush against mine. I didn't know if he was doing it on purpose or not, but it really turned me on and I started pumping faster. JP's moans picked up and Stef left our balls and was back on his dick again.

“Gonna cum,” he panted, “gonna cum.” I felt him tense up as he blew his load into Stef's mouth, so I started working harder, pumping him harder. Stef stood up, standing over JP, and stroked his own cock. I looked into his eyes and knew he was getting close just like I was, and then I started to blow, blasting my load into JP. I felt something hit my face and looked up to see Stef ejaculating all over JP. His first string had overshot the mark and hit me on the side of the face. We lay there panting and I reached up and smeared Stef's load all over JP's chest, making them both laugh.

August 13, 1991

“When do you have to be in Chicago?” JP asked me.

“Never,” I said, pulling him closer to me. We were lying in bed, enjoying the morning afterglow from an athletic morning fuck.

“Don't say that Marcel. We had a deal.” He was so pissed off it shocked me.

“Alright alright. I plan to be back around the 25th of August or so. Will that work for you? Do you already have a new man lined up?” I teased.

“After you, I need to take a break,” he said, smiling. “Meanwhile I need to go to Russia.”

“Russia? You want to go to Russia? What for?” I could see Paris, but Russia? It made no sense at all.

“There are supposed to be a lot of letters from the mid-1700s in the archives. Now that the Soviets are opening things up, they're making some of them available. I thought it might give us some new information on our king.”

Finding new information when you are a historian is like finding gold. “That is genius. When do you want to leave?”

“I need to work on Visas for us. We may have to go up to the City, to the Soviet consulate,” JP said. And that's exactly what we had to do. It took us four days to get our Visas and to get on our way. So now, here we were, sitting on an Aeroflot flight, headed to Moscow.

The Russian pilots must have been military men, because they brought the airliner in for a landing after a pronounced dive, and it seemed as if it took forever for them to stop once they landed. A Frenchman going to Russia wasn't nearly as intense as an American, so it was funny to see all the extra scrutiny that JP got going through immigration. We finally made it out of the airport and found our Zil Limousine waiting to whisk us off to our hotel.

It was such a city of strange contrasts. When I'd traveled to other countries, like when I first went to the US, or when I'd gone to Spain and Italy, the language was different but the letters were still the same. Here, all the words looked so strange, written in the Cyrillic alphabet. On the one hand, the Russian people looked like us, Caucasians, so I didn't really feel like I had wandered into an entirely different culture like I would have if I'd gone to Japan or Korea. JP had hired a guide to lead us around, who was supposed to meet us at the hotel, and I was glad of that. There was no way I'd be able to find my way around here.

They were polite at the hotel, nodding and pretending to understand what we were saying, but clearly not getting it at all. We just went with it. The bellman lugged our baggage up to our suite, a huge room with a corner view, but which had one large bed. The bellman kept babbling about something, presumably that, but we just gave him some dollars and that shut him up. We learned immediately that now that the Iron Curtain had fallen, the dollar had quickly become king here.

“It feels strange to be here,” I told JP.

“It does. All of those years, when those missiles were aimed at us, it's hard to believe this is the place that was aiming them.” His internalized experiences from the Cold War were a lot more intense than mine.

The phone rang, an old fashioned ring that you'd expect from an American or French phone in the '60s. JP answered it and chatted, giving the person our room number. “Our guide,” he said to me. A few seconds later there was a knock on the door and our guide appeared; only he wasn't what I expected at all. He was of medium height, with light brown hair, and distinct Slavic features, and probably all of 25 years old.

“Professor Crampton?” he asked.

I smiled. “No, my name is Marcel. Come in please.” I motioned him into the room.

“Ah, you must be Professor Crampton,” he said as soon as he saw JP. “It is nice to meet you both. I am Anatoly.” We all shook hands in the American fashion. “You are tired from your trip, or would you like to see some of Moscow?”

I looked at JP. It was August 18 here in Russia, one week left, one week before my emotional Hiroshima. It was starting to cloud my mind, to make simple decisions difficult. “I'd like to see Moscow if you're up to it,” he said, looking at me. I nodded. I strolled over to the windows and gazed out at the city.

“What is that building?” I asked, pointing at a large white monolith across the river.

“That is the Russian White House, the headquarters of the Russian government,” Anatoly said cheerfully. Then he led us down to our Zil and took us around the City. We had a long day of sightseeing, taking in every single fucking church in the city, which drove me nuts, but also Red Square and The Kremlin. It was a little awe-inspiring; being there at the heart of power of what Reagan had coined ‘The Evil Empire’.

We went out to dinner with Anatoly; he took us to a superb Russian restaurant. He was cute; he was jovial, but sometimes a little too pushy. I almost had to yell at him to get him to stop trying to get me to eat caviar. I hated it, I always had, and I was way beyond the point where I had to pretend it was good just to look cool and hip.

We got back to the hotel and arranged for Anatoly to meet us at 10am the next morning. There seemed to be no reason to get up any earlier, and we were pretty tired. We landed in bed and made love. It seemed routine, unemotional, and it made me sad. I felt like JP was already putting space and distance between us, but I told myself that we were just tired.

August 19, 1991

“You are pulling away from me,” I told JP after another round of lackluster sex in the morning. “You are starting to shut me out.”

He turned to me, angry. “Marcel, give me a break, OK? We have had amazing sex, terrific sex, all summer long. Just because it isn't always perfect doesn't mean I'm shutting you out.”

“But you are. I can feel it, and so can you,” I said, refusing to be browbeaten by his angry outburst. He frowned at me and got out of bed, heading to the bathroom to shower. I looked at the clock and it was 9am. Plenty of time to get ready. I thought about following him into the shower but changed my mind. If he wouldn't admit that he was pulling away, then there was nothing I could do about it. I headed over to the windows and looked out at the city, still pretty despite the overcast day. But there was something wrong, something strange in the air.

I looked over at the Russian White House and saw tanks around it. Tanks? In the street? That wasn't normal even in Soviet days, was it? I headed to the bathroom and joined JP in the shower.

“You come in here for some more mediocre sex?” he asked rudely.

“I came in here to take a shower with you. I have done nothing to you to make you treat me so rudely.” I pulled him to me and hugged him, but he struggled to get away. So symbolic of our relationship. I finally let him go. “We will wrestle later,” I teased.

I saw his expression, the anger on his face, and saw it fade when I teased him, when I let up the pressure and left him alone. “You're going to pin me?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Damn straight,” I teased back. The mood lightened, we took a shower together. “There were tanks on the street around the White House,” I told him.

“The White House? George Bush has tanks positioned around the White House?” he asked, incredulous.

“No, not that White House, the one here.” He looked at me, puzzled, and then rinsed off quickly and headed out to the window, drying himself as he went. I rinsed off and followed him.

“Fuck!” he said, remembering the disastrous end to an earlier visit of his to Paris. “This is going to be 1968 all over again!”

“What are you talking about?”

He pointed to the streets. “There is a revolution going on. This is the beginning. See the troops there? Look over there,” he said, pointing toward the Kremlin.

There were troops everywhere, with tanks and armored personnel carriers as well. “Could this not just be some sort of demonstration?”

“When there are troops around the Kremlin and the White House, there is something going on, something significant.” He was adamant. We called to order room service for breakfast but no one answered the phone. He looked at me smugly, as if the unresponsiveness of the hotel staff was proof that it was 1917 all over again.

There was a knock at the door, an urgent knock, and it repeated before I could get to the door. I opened it and Anatoly burst in. “You must see this,” he said, turning on the television. It was an older model, so while it was warming up he was talking to us. “There has been a change in leadership. They have taken power away from Gorbachev.” JP looked at me with his smug look again, and I just ignored him. He was starting to piss me off.

“Look at this!” Anatoly said, almost frantically. “Look! All of the independent stations are off the air.” He was just showing us test patterns.

“What does the government station say?” JP asked.

“There is an announcement from the State Emergency Committee, saying that Gorbachev is ill and they have stepped in to take over. The SEC is being led by Gennady Yanayev, the Vice President, and a group of hardliners.”

“A coup,” JP said. “They are staging a coup.”

“Yes. That is it. A coup,” agreed Anatoly, as if realizing what it was for the first time. “They have issued a decree about restoring the honor and dignity of Soviets.” He stared at them. “We are in danger!”

“Anatoly, we are not in danger, at least not Marcel and I. Are you in danger?” He looked at us with the expression of a man damned to the gallows.

“I have been active in pro-democratic movements, and I speak English. They will capture me and take me to Lefortovo Prison. I will vanish!”

“You must calm down,” JP said. “First of all, they will not look for you here. You are safe here. Second, just because they are staging a coup does not mean they will succeed. Look out the window. There is much activity there.” He pointed at the White House.

“Yeltsin,” Anatoly said smiling. “Yeltsin is there. He will save Russia.”

“We must wait and see,” JP said. “Meanwhile, why don't you see if we can get them to deliver some food to our room, for all of us.” Anatoly nodded, and managed to get some breakfast for us. We finished eating and I looked at my watch. It was only 11am. Part of me wanted to get rid of Anatoly and spend time alone with JP, but I knew that he was our only real link to the outside world.

“We must go out and find out what is going on,” Anatoly said.

“That is much too dangerous,” JP said. He was being awfully cautious.

“If we do not, we will not know what is going on,” I said. I didn't want to sit there in the dark.

“Let's go over to the White House,” Anatoly said, looking out the window. “It looks like they are handing out leaflets. We need to get one of them.”

“Go get one then,” JP said, “but then you have to come right back here. You will be safe here with us.” Anatoly nodded.

“I will go with you,” I said. I had no desire to stay cooped up in this room, and I realized that with JP in his current mood, he was going to be no fun at all, so there was no point in sticking around.

JP gave me a dirty look, but I ignored it. I nodded to Anatoly and we headed to the elevators. “Professor Crampton seems worried,” he said.

“It is a coup. We should all be worried. But he has been in revolutions before, so he is nervous. You and I are young and impulsive, so we are less afraid.” He grinned at that. Out on the streets there was activity, but not much. Still, the whole city felt tense, like a powder keg waiting to explode. We wandered around for a while, listening to Muscovites talk about this new development, and picked up one of the flyers they were handing out at the White House. We finally decided to head back to the hotel.

JP was sitting by the window, observing the action from on high. “There is much tension in the streets but it is safe,” I told him. He looked up and smiled, happy to see us back.

“Well you made it back alive.”

“We did. This is the flyer they are handing out at the White House,” I said, handing it to him. It was in Russian, so he just looked at me, frustrated. “Oh, you want to know what it says?” I teased. Anatoly laughed and took his copy out and read it.

“It is issued by Yeltsin and two of his deputies. It says that a reactionary, anti-constitutional coup has taken place. They are telling the military not to take part in the coup.” He scanned it, reading ahead, and then continued. “The declaration calls for a general strike and it demands that Gorbachev address the people.”

“That is interesting, no?” I asked them. “So Yeltsin is fighting the coup.”

“It is not surprising,” Anatoly said. “He is the most liberal of all of them, and has been one of the people critical of Gorbachev for not doing more. The people will follow Yeltsin.”

“But will the military?” JP asked. “If not, this will become very bloody very fast, and we will end up sitting here, high above the city, watching a slaughter.” We stared at him, digesting this news. Then the old JP reasserted himself. “Here is what we must do. The first thing is that you two must go back out and buy lots of food, non-perishable food, and things to drink. Buy some flashlights and a battery powered radio too. You must bring those things back here so we are able to survive a protracted siege.”

“A siege?” I asked him. “Are you not overreacting just a bit?”

“Maybe so, but if we aren't ready you will wish we were, and if we are and don't need to be, Anatoly will have a bunch of stuff to eat when we are gone.” We nodded and headed back to the streets to prepare to sit this revolution out in our hotel room.