Be Myself! - 49. Meeting the Family

The first thing Oliver did on the morning of his birthday party was to shove his tongue inside my mouth. I barely had time to open my eyes when one of his hands grabbed my hair while the other reached between his legs. His kisses were eager, passionate, almost violent. I felt Oliver’s body relax when he reached his first orgasm, but the kisses did not stop. Soon, he was touching himself again, just as enthusiastically as before. And he kept going seemingly forever, with his mouth glued to mine and his hand travelling over my hair, neck, and chest, not allowing me to say anything or giving me space to shove him away. When Oliver finally ended the surprise morning ‘sex’, it was because his legs were shaking too much for him to withstand another round of self-pleasure. He collapsed on the bed, with one arm over my chest and his ‘tumours’ pointedly smashed against the mattress. Oliver was still trying to recover his breath when he spoke for the first time that day. “Thanks, Oscar.”

“I didn’t do anything. You didn’t even let me move…”

“No, you did a lot. I woke up ages before the alarm, and I was feeling really anxious about leaving my room today, but I feel much better now, all thanks to you and your wonderful body.” Oliver lifted his head slightly to look me in the eyes. He had a goofy smile on and seemed rather peaceful for someone who was playing tonsil hockey in my mouth less than a minute ago.

“Ok, if you say so.”

Oliver closed his eyes. His voice became more slurred, like he was going to fall asleep mid-sentence. “You know, sex is much better than any drugs. It’s the… the what-they-call-it? The endorphins. I feel like I’ve just taken a whole bottle of tranquilisers or smoked a joint or got drunk off my arse. You made me happy. My legs won’t move to save my life now, but I’m really happy.”

“That’s good, I guess.” I was glad that Oliver was feeling better, but it was kind of disturbing to watch his drugged-out-orgasm behaviour. I had never seen him drunk or stoned before, so it was quite a shock to meet this weird mixture of both.

“That’s great! I feel like I can get out of bed now. I mean, I can get out of bed when I have legs again.” Drunken-stoned Oliver looked kind of cute. His eyes were still closed, but his satisfied smile gave me a feeling of accomplishment, even if I still did not believe I had done anything. “Thank you, and sorry if I caught you by surprise.”

“It’s ok, I guess. You scared me a little, but if it made you feel better…”

Oliver stopped smiling and opened his eyes. “No. That’s not ok.” He seemed much more awake all of a sudden, making an effort to lift his head so that he could look at me from above. “I should’ve asked you first, but I was so anxious that as soon as the alarm sounded I jumped on you and didn’t care how you felt. That’s really wrong.”

I felt a sense of dread building up inside me. Oliver was so happy a second ago, he should have stayed that way. “But it’s ok now. You didn’t hurt me, you made yourself happy, the rest doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. It’s the principle that’s important here. I didn’t ask you if I could use your mouth to get off. It’s great that you don’t mind now, but what if you did? You would’ve been hurt, and it would’ve been my fault. Fuck, the day hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already messing it up.”

“You can kiss me again if it makes you feel better –”

“I’m really sorry, ok? My parents are always talking about how consent is important for sex and for life in general, and here I am proving I haven’t learned shit.”

Oliver’s words made me think about the situation a bit more. He was talking about consent and sex, but all he did was kiss me. We did not have actual sex as such, so would it really have been that bad if I had not wanted him to kiss me? Would I consider it as some form of sexual assault? I thought it would be a bit of an exaggeration, but Oliver definitely disagreed.

“Even for just a kiss?”

“Even for just a kiss.” Oliver nodded solemnly. “I don’t have the right to do anything to your body that you don’t want me to. That’s how consent works, and that’s why it’s not just about sex. Just because I’m in a shitty place it doesn’t give me an excuse to go around doing things that can put other people in shitty places too. If we forget that, we become shitty people, and I don’t want to be one of those.”

“Then how about we just make sure you remember it next time you feel anxious and we put this morning behind us? You really need something to cheer you up today, so let’s work on that now.”

“Ok.” Oliver let his body drop on the bed again. “Let’s promise to never do surprise sexing again. Deal?”

“Deal.” I smiled and caressed Oliver’s hair. This made him smile again.

“Good. So now that my plan to improve my mood with orgasms has failed spectacularly, how about you help me with Plan B?”

“What is Plan B?”

“I’m going to get on such a sugar high that I’ll completely forget how my whole family will be here in a couple of hours calling me by my old name and wondering why I’m not wearing a dress and asking uncomfortable questions. And I’ll forget how I have to come out to them and hope they’re not going to turn away and leave my birthday party.” Oliver grinned and his eyes shone dangerously. “So can you please go ahead and tell Dad to make me the most sugary breakfast he can think of? I’ll follow once my legs remember how to move.” He tried to make a serious face, but he laughed instead. I smiled, glad to see that my boyfriend was feeling better despite the chance that he was about to be rejected by his family during his birthday party.

By the time I found Mr Viñas in the kitchen, he had already prepared a chocolate milkshake and a pile of cookies and cupcakes for me to take to Oliver’s room. At least this part of Oliver’s family would support him no matter what.

(...)

I knew the Viñas’ were a large family because of the way Oliver spoke about his cousins and aunts and uncles like they were this entire clan of mysterious and varied characters. It always sounded strange to me, because my previous family had been as small as one could get. Joseph and Claire had no siblings, and their parents died when I was a toddler, before I could remember them. So I never had an extended family, and I found it difficult to navigate my way around Oliver’s never-ending stream of relatives. Thankfully Sam took pity on me and decided to help me out before I had to meet the whole clan. He dragged me to his room after breakfast to show me something that would hopefully help me navigate my way around this evening’s family gathering.

“Our family started one of those family tree genealogy things a couple of years ago,” Sam explained as he got me to sit in front of his computer and opened a webpage from a popular genealogy site. “It was our abuelo who started it, but the grandchildren took over because he sucks at technology.” Sam made a funny face. I had been around the Viñas’s half-Spanish household long enough to know that abuelo meant grandfather, and was the word they all used to refer to Mr Viñas’ father, who was from Spain.

The family tree website finished loading, and the true spread of the Viñas’s wings gained a full visual representation. The family was a sea of white, dark-haired people, with only Oliver, Sam, and Ms Savage adding a bit of vibrant red to their genetic pallet. It was hard to tell them apart this way. “You have your whole family in this site?”

“Yeah.” Sam grinned and took a toy magical wand to point at the screen. Still, there were so many details and names that even with the visual aid, I had trouble keeping up. “Here you can see Dad and his five siblings. Aunt Eleonora is the oldest. She was born in Spain, then the family moved here, and everyone else was born in Glasgow. She’s married to Uncle Rafael and they used to live in Spain until around the time I was born. Their first two children are Spanish too, but their youngest daughter was born here. My cousins from Aunt Eleonora are Susanna, Gabriel, and Ariana.” Sam proceeded to tell little tales about all those tree cousins, but all I managed to gather was that the oldest child was thirteen years old, and the youngest was six. “Dad comes next, but I don’t need to explain our family to you, so whatever. Moving on, there is Uncle Juan, who is married to Aunt Sharon, and they have two sons, Jack and Jason. Jack says I’m an annoying twat, but only when his dad is not looking because he’s not supposed to swear. But he’s the one who taught me all the swear words I know!” Sam’s face turned into an innocent smile. I smiled too, even though I knew I would have forgotten about Jack’s potty mouth by the time we were formally introduced. “Then there is Uncle David, who is married to Aunt Marion, and their daughter is Christine.” I noticed this girl seemed to be the oldest of Oliver’s cousins, though she was still a year younger than him. That meant Oliver was the first of the Viñas’s grandchildren. Did that make him someone special in his family’s eyes? And if so, would it make them more or less likely to accept him? I should probably ask Sam about it, but he was too caught up in his presentation about his relatives to notice I had a question. “Aunt Isabel is married to Aunt Lynne, but they don’t have any children. Then there’s Aunt Ella who just had a baby, like, a month ago, but she’s not married. She hasn’t even got a partner, as far as I know.”

I waited a few seconds to make sure Sam said everything he wanted to before I spoke. “Your family really is huge. I’m impressed you can keep track of everyone.” The boy smiled smugly, and I took my chance to ask questions. “I noticed that Oliver seems to be the oldest of the grandchildren. Does he get some kind of special treatment for being the firstborn?”

“Hell yeah.” Sam nodded gravely, though he was too young and too cute to make it seem anything other than comical. “Abuelita absolutely adores him. Everybody knows he’s her favourite. When we stay with her in Spain, she always bakes him extra cakes and gives him the biggest steak.”

“So Oliver and your grandma are very close?”

“I think so. I would be very close to anyone who gives me big steaks and cake. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah.” If Oliver was really that close to his grandmother, it would make him even more anxious to come out to her. A rejection from her would probably hurt even more than from other relatives. I was going to ask Sam what he thought his grandma’s reaction to Oliver’s coming out would be, but he beat me to it.

“If you’re wondering what Abuelita will think about her granddaughter becoming a grandson, I think she’ll take it better than everyone else. Dad says she still brags to her friends about how her oldest son is so charming and wonderful that he brings both men and women to his bed. And she came to Aunt Isabel’s wedding to Aunt Lynne wearing a rainbow dress. I think she’ll find Oliver being a boy to be a wonderfully weird thing and it’ll give her all the more reason to double the size of his steaks.”

“Oliver is still worried, though.”

“I know. He’s only going to stop worrying once everyone has hugged him with tears in their eyes saying how much they love him and how it doesn’t matter whether he’s a boy or a girl.” Sam pouted and crossed his arms over his chest. “Honestly, he can be such a drama queen sometimes!”

“So you think everything will be fine?”

“Yeah. Oliver is worrying because that’s what you do when you’ve got big secrets and you’re scared of telling them. But our family is cool with big secrets. They were cool when Dad had lots of partners at once and when Aunt Ella decided to have a baby on her own. You’ll see, everything will be fine.”

Sam spoke with such confidence that for a moment I forgot he was just an eight-year-old child who knew far too much about his parents’ sex life. He was too young to really understand people that well. As persuasive as his opinion was, there was still a chance that he could be horribly wrong.

But once again, Sam showed that he could somehow read my thoughts. Maybe I should give his perceptive skills a little more credit. “What? You don’t believe me because I’m just a cute kid? Then just make sure my brother hasn’t completely turned into a nervous wreck before the party starts, and the rest will sort itself out. Trust me.”