Gap Year - 48. Chapter 48

February 28, 2004

The Buck Mansion

Malibu, CA

 

Will

I was having a really good time, but it was also a bit uncomfortable, and the reason for that was the latent tension between three people: me, Zach, and Travis. I decided to take a break from the conversation and head to the bar. I got a refill then paused to think about the situation.

From my perspective, the basic issue was that I was reconnecting with Travis and I was having a blast, but since my attention was focused on him, that was making Zach jealous. As I thought more about that, I realized that I wasn’t being entirely fair. It wasn’t just the attention I gave Travis that bothered Zach; it was the kind of attention. I was definitely attracted to Travis, and I got the feeling that attraction may not be just one way.

There were also other factors at play here. When Travis and I were kids and were going through puberty, we’d done the adolescent shit where we showed each other our dicks, jacked off with each other, jacked each other off, and even blown each other. The freakiest thing about it, though, was that every time we’d done that, we’d been here, in this house. It was like something special we did when we were staying at the Buck Mansion, so it made sense that being here would further add fuel to the fire. On top of that, I was reminded of my conversation with Jeff, when Jeff talked about hooking up with someone you used to be with. There had never been anything romantic between us, and Travis had seemed to have a decent interest in women, but that curiosity about being with someone I’d sort of been with was pretty strong. Now I completely understood what Jeff had been saying about that, and how that could tempt a guy. I could tell myself that all I was trying to do was rekindle a friendship, but if I were honest, I’d admit that I desperately wanted to seduce Travis. That trifecta of pressure just made me flirt harder, to try and succeed with my mission, which pissed Zach off even more.

Thinking of Zach reminded me of what a douchebag I was being. I thought about how I’d handle it if he was doing this in front of me, and my rage at just imagining that situation made me even guiltier. I’d kept trying to rein myself in, trying so hard not to focus just on Travis, but it was like there was an inner drive deep within me that kept compelling me to keep doing it. I downed my drink and went back to the bar to get another one. I felt my psyche tell me that I should go back to that group of people and bask in Travis’s company, but then my logical mind reasserted itself. This was bullshit. There was no way I could do that to Zach. I’d already hurt him enough.

I got up and worked my way around them, staying out of sight, then walked back down the cruising path. I laughed when I saw this dude drilling some chick, until I saw that the chick was Taylor. What the fuck was she doing out here, cheating on Zach? I snuck closer until I saw who the dude was: Vaughan Harvey. Vaughan was the hottest dude at Malibu High and played lacrosse there. Taylor and Vaughan had dated during most of their junior and senior years, so it wasn’t like this was some new fling, but that didn’t make it any better. I pulled out my phone and snapped a couple of pictures, just in case they ultimately came after Zach, then made sure to stay away from them. I walked further down until I found a bench kind of hidden from the main trail. I sat there and smiled, thinking how cool this was, in that I could see people walk by, but they’d have to really look hard to spot me. I pulled out my one-hitter and smoked some more weed while I sipped on my spiked punch.

This deal with Zach and Taylor was confusing the fuck out of me. If they had an open relationship, Zach would have told me, yet here they both were, acting like they really weren’t with anyone. Did she fuck around on Zach all the time, or was this just a blast from the past because she ran into Vaughan? I wasn’t their judge, but I still labored over things, trying to decide if Zach fucking around with me and this other unnamed dude made Taylor’s deal with Vaughan okay. Why did people get into relationships if they didn’t plan to keep their commitments? Maybe it was what Jeff said: it was about the ‘new’. Maybe that was true for Taylor, but not for Zach. Zach just wanted some dick so he could play the straight dude.

I’d let my mind wander to the point that I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, so I was completely shocked when Travis sat next to me. “Found you,” he said.

“You were looking for me?” I flirted.

“Of course I was looking for you,” he flirted back. “I wanted to mooch some more of your amazing weed off of you.” I laughed my ass off at that.

“Here you go,” I said, handing him my pipe.

“I love parties, but after a while it gets overwhelming,” he told me. “I have to go off and recharge for a bit before I can handle more.”

“I can pretty much keep going, but sometimes my mind will go off on some tangent and I have to spend some time by myself thinking about shit,” I said.

“Dude, I did not mean to bother you,” he said, and started to get up. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down, making him chuckle.

“If I were to pick the person I’d most want to wander out of the woods and sit next to me, it would be you,” I said.

“Really?” he asked, shocked, then got nervous. “Dude, I feel the same way, but I know you’re gay, and I don’t want to lead you on.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve seen your dick before. It’s nothing new.”

“Yeah, well it’s been a few years, and maybe it’s grown too,” he said, making me laugh.

“Alright, show me,” I joked, making him laugh. We hung out and smoked, saying nothing, then he pulled out his snuff bullet and handed it to me and I did a bump. I handed it back to him but he didn’t do any. “No blow for you?” I teased.

“If I do coke, I get all serious, not like you,” he said.

“You saying I make an ass out of myself?” I joked.

“Duh,” he said, cracking me up. “When you do coke you get all animated, become the life of the party. It doesn’t work that way for me.”

“They why do you carry it around?” I asked.

“I found out I have ADHD,” he said, then clarified. “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I take addys for school, but they don’t work as well as coke. That’s why I keep my snuff bullet handy.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, which was obvious.

He shrugged. “They figured it out when I went to Brentwood. I was completely fucking up in school, and I was fidgeting so much I bugged the shit out of my teachers.”

“You did really well with that, then, when we were in school together,” I said.

“High school was different than middle school,” he said. “We didn’t run around as much in high school, so I couldn’t burn off the hyperactivity. And that meant I couldn’t force my mind to focus.”

“You were an animal at recess and gym,” I said, thinking back to those days. He was always into sports, any sport, but never seemed to be great at any one thing. In some twisted way, he read my mind and explained that to me.

“I couldn’t get into big sports, where you had to do a lot of practice, because then it got boring,” he said.

“You were into playing, not practicing,” I summarized.

“Still am,” he said. “That’s why I pretty much stick to surfing, skateboarding, and volleyball.”

“I can see that,” I said, because those were sports you learned just by doing, unless you wanted to be a pro. “For me, I get most of my exercise by surfing or riding.”

“Riding? As in dudes?” he joked.

“Dudes and horses,” I said, laughing.

“Dude, you fuck horses?” he teased.

“No, I just find guys who are as hung as them,” I said, then got worried that he’d think I was a size queen. This trip had been my ‘small penis’ trip, and I worried that I’d offended him, then remembered him at thirteen, and even then he’d been way bigger than Dan or Billie Joe. He laughed at that, which took away my microdick worries.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. It’s pretty complicated to be with a dude in high school. I seem to fall for closet cases.”

“That way you don’t have to make a commitment?” he asked. I stared at him. “If the dude won’t come out, you can still keep your freedom.”

That kind of freaked me out. “I don’t think that’s the reason, but I’m not sure,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to kill your buzz,” he said.

“No, you just made me think, and it was in a good way,” I said, smiling at him. “What about you?”

“Seems like I date a chick for a couple of months and then it gets old,” he said. “Maybe it’s the attention thing, where I can’t focus on just one person.”

“Maybe, but I’m guessing it has more to do with you not finding the right person,” I said. He nodded as he thought about that. “Or maybe you’re just a total slut.”

He laughed at that. “Like you?”

I stopped laughing and thought about that. It was cute that my silence didn’t bother him, as he was getting used to me, and was realizing that I was just pondering things. I liked the way he let me do that. “I sleep with a lot of dudes, and I guess I am pretty slutty, but that term makes it seem more shallow than it is.”

“So you have these deep meaningful one-time fucks?” he asked, making both of us laugh.

“I remember when I started school at Harvard-Westlake and I was talking to Robbie about this,” I said. That reminded me of him, of how much I missed him, and my normal shields were fucked up by weed and alcohol so I couldn’t stop a tear from falling out of my eye. Travis put an arm around me and gave me a sideways hug, so I smiled at him. “Robbie told me that if I messed around with a straight dude, or one pretending to be straight, that I should think of him as just a friend and that fucking around with him was kind of a freak event.”

“That makes sense and would also make you safe for a horny dude wanting to just get off,” he said.

“Like you?” I asked, flirting with him and making him blush.

“It was kind of like that when we were kids,” he said, remembering how we’d played around.

“Exactly,” I said, hiding my disappointment that he was shutting down my hints pretty quickly. “He told me that if it happens more often, I should think about the dude as a friend with benefits. According to Robbie, that’s about the easiest relationship.”

“You think he’s right?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Think about it. Let’s say you were really curious about how much our bodies had changed and decided we should mess around. After I gave you the most spectacular blow job you’ve ever had, how would you feel?”

“Probably pretty good,” he said, making both of us laugh again.

“No doubt,” I said. “But there could be this weirdness about it. When we were hanging out, I’d be wondering if you’d want me to do it again, and you’d be wondering if I was perving on you.”

“That didn’t happen to us before,” he said.

“Well, we’re older now,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “And for us, we had those boundaries in that it only happened when we were here.”

“The Buck Mansion, home to all kinds of weird shit,” he said, making me laugh. “So how does friends with benefits change that?”

“If we were friends with benefits, I’d know that it wasn’t a one-time deal, so I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable trying to get your clothes off. In fact, I’d probably think it was more likely than not,” I said.

“Like I’m that easy,” he said. He injected humor into our conversation to keep it perfectly balanced between serious but not intense. I was super-impressed with his people skills.

“You would be,” I said, and licked my lips seductively. He freaked out and I laughed at him. “The other thing is that you’d be comfortable enough to know that if you weren’t into it, you could tell me and I’d be cool with it.”

“You would?” he asked.

“Duh,” I said. “I don’t need to force you to have sex with me to get laid. And that’s the big difference between friends with benefits and being in an intense relationship. If we’re exclusive, then I kind of expect you to at least help me out, and vice-versa. If we’re not, I know I can still enjoy your friendship and get laid somewhere else.”

“Dude, if you sleep with all these guys, aren’t you worried about HIV?” he asked.

“HIV isn’t just a problem for gay dudes,” I said firmly, unwilling to put up with any heterosexual bullshit on that.

“I know,” he said in a slightly bitchy tone.

“I’m really careful,” I told him. “I love to bareback, but I only do it if I’m with a dude I trust completely.”

“You been with a dude like that?” he asked.

“A couple of them,” I said. “And if I do that, I get tested at least monthly.” That was an exaggeration on my part, but I decided to take it as a resolution.

“Who are these dudes?” he asked.

“Those are long stories,” I said, dodging the issue. I could tell him about Tony, but I could never tell him about Zach.

“You can tell me later, when we’re not at a party,” he said.

We both took another hit off my bat, then I got more serious. “Dude, we were inseparable when we were thirteen. Why did we stop hanging out?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve had some shit to deal with over the past few years, and so many times I wanted to call you, but didn’t. I guess it seemed that with you changing schools and you moving up to the Bay Area, it’s like you were too far away to connect with.”

“I guess I felt the same thing,” I said. I could have brought up another reason, but I didn’t want to start a fight. “Only now when I’m here with you, I think about how much better it would have been if I’d have called you.”

“Dude, you have had some serious shit to deal with,” he said. “I was a shithole for not coming to Robbie’s funeral even after you came to my grandfather’s wake.”

“Don’t go there,” I said. “No one was taking attendance. A lot of people who were close to me didn’t go because funerals freaked them out.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Right before I started at Harvard-Westlake, I started having a lot of family drama, and I think that completely absorbed me,” I said. “I fought some major battles with my father.”

He started laughing really hard. “Dude, I heard about how you ran away and trashed their stuff. Every time I see nice shoes, I think of you cutting them in half.” I laughed as hard as he did when he said that.

“That was only the start of the battle,” I said.

“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, that we drift completely apart,” he said earnestly.

I smiled at him, he smiled back, and I remembered that his broad smile was one of his more attractive features. In addition to his basic smile, the corners of his mouth turned up too, creating small dimples that looked more like wrinkles. “Deal,” I said, and shook his hand.

“Taylor told me that you found out about my father tracking our phones,” he said.

I nodded. “I would lose my fucking mind if my father did that,” I said. Then I remembered that someone from my family was tracking me, and that pissed me off all over again.

“It hasn’t been easy,” he said. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, trying to rub out some of the tension in them. “I can’t really trust anyone.”

“What about Taylor and Big?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Taylor is Daddy’s girl. He worships her, so she can get pretty much anything she wants from him. She doesn’t let it bother her because she knows that if she gets in trouble, she can sweet talk her way out of it.”

“Yeah, you were never his favorite,” I said, remembering that dynamic. He was much more of a momma’s boy.

“I’m not,” he said. “Big does stupid shit, but he pretty much toes the line and does what my father tells him to do, and he knows my father is proud of him. So kind of like Taylor, he knows he can probably get out of any trouble he gets into.”

“My grandfather’s family runs a big construction company back in Ohio, and it’s always been the role of the oldest son to take over and run the business,” I said. “I kind of always saw Big doing that.”

“I think Big sees himself doing that, and I think my father would like to see him doing that, but Big is completely different than my father,” Travis said. “I don’t know if they’ll be able to work together.”

“Then that leaves you as the heir apparent,” I joked. He rolled his eyes.

“That is so not going to happen,” he said. “Shit, I spend half my time living with my mother, so he sees me as a traitor, and when I’m here he’s usually trying to trip me up.”

“Trip you up about what?” I asked.

That made him really nervous. “I’ll tell you all about my problems some other time,” he said with a smile, trying to escape from the trap he’d walked into.

“That’s fine,” I said like it was no big deal, but I wasn’t sure if I’d totally hid my disappointment. I’d literally watched him throw up a wall between us, and that hurt pretty bad after all that talk about missing our friendship.

“Will, in this situation, where I have to pretend I’m James Fucking Bond to escape from his surveillance, I’ve learned to trust no one,” he said. “We just started reconnecting. Give me some time to build that trust back to the point that it blows out my insecurities.”

I smiled at him. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. I’m fine with that.”

“Just so you know it’s not you, it’s me,” he said. “You have a reputation for being totally honest and trustworthy. I’m just paranoid.”

“I do?” I asked.

He nodded. “Probably the dude that spread those lies around the most is Mike Crawford. After Crawford bailed from Harvard-Westlake, he made sure everyone he talked to knew you were a complete douche. Then a couple of months later, he changed his tune completely.” When I’d first started at Harvard-Westlake, Crawford had been Ryan’s buddy, and they both had pretty much decided to hate me.

“I didn’t know that,” I said, totally shocked. “He was such an asshole back then. I’ll have to put away my Crawford voodoo doll.”

He laughed. “Told us how you had Grafton’s back, especially with his dad.”

“I have had some hellatious fights with my father, but I never had to deal with the racist bullshit that Ryan had to put up with,” I said.

He nodded. “My father is a class A prick, but he’s not as bad as that.” I agreed with that statement, although I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t as bad as Ryan’s father when all things were considered.

Our fun interlude was busted when we saw two dudes walking down the path in front of us: Jason and Crawford. Jason had been friends with both me and Travis in middle school; we hung out in the same group. We’d ended up at Harvard-Westlake together, and I’d thought we were tight, but I ultimately came to realize Jason was only after me so he could do cool shit with me, since we’d taken him on a couple of trips to Hawaii. I could have let that bother me, but that was a long time ago, and besides, he’d taught me a valuable lesson about being friends with people who just liked me for my money. Travis and I seemed to realize we were sitting way too close to each other, so we slid apart. “Dude!” I said loudly, which got their attention.

“Shoots!” Jason said and walked over toward us. I gave him a man hug. “How the fuck have you been?”

“Doing great,” I said. Crawford looked at me nervously. “Hey Crawford,” I said, and shook his hand. He smiled, and I could see the relief in his eyes.

“Hey,” he said.

“Smoke some weed,” I said, and started packing hits for them. Travis shared his bullet with them too, so in no time at all we were bullshitting and having a great time.

“I need to get back up there,” Travis said reluctantly.

“We’ll be there in a bit,” Jason said, precluding me from going with him. I gave Travis a sly wink as he left, making him smile.

“You talk to Grafton?” Crawford asked.

“All the time,” I said. “He lives with us in Palo Alto.”

“Are you two together?” Crawford asked, and seemed shocked by that. That made sense since Ryan was straight.

“In my dreams,” I said, making him roll his eyes. In the past, he would have done it in a scornful way, but now it was playful. “He’s with my cousin Marie.”

“Is she still smoking hot?” Jason asked.

“Dude, she’s on fire,” I told him.

We decided to go back to the party, so the three of us strolled through the woods, even as I scanned them to see if anyone else was out there fucking. We got back and found Travis hanging out with some other people I knew, so the three of us merged into their group seamlessly. Fortunately for me, Taylor had dragged Zach off to talk to some other people.

I was having a great time, then things took a decided turn for the worse when Keith Craddock showed up. He had brown hair, was about 5’7” tall, and had features that made him look pretty, not handsome. I almost laughed out loud when I thought he was like a twink, only as far as I knew, he was straight. “Hey T,” Keith said to Travis. “Been looking for you.”

“You found me,” Travis said flatly.

“Well look who’s all grown up,” he said to me in a smarmy way. We’d never liked each other when we were younger, and it was unlikely we’d become friends now. There weren’t many people who lived in Malibu who weren’t flush with cash, but Keith was one of those few. He lived with his mother and sister in a small house on Paradise Cove. I personally thought that made him insecure and that’s why he acted like such a douche. He’d latched onto Travis even when we were kids, and all but monopolized him after I went to Harvard-Westlake. Jason lived in the same neighborhood that Keith did, so I wondered if he’d latched on to me in the same way. In a moment of lucidity, I decided that Keith’s presence, more than anything, had kept Travis and me from staying friends.

“I’m big everywhere,” I said to him, looking down on him for being a shrimp.

“I’m sure,” he said. “What brings you down to Malibu?”

“Party last night at UCLA, and this party,” I said. “I’m here for a few more days, then off to New York next weekend.” I was rubbing his nose in my jet-setter lifestyle, something I usually didn’t do, but with him, I broke that rule. He decided to change the subject.

“Dude, did you see Sierra Gardner?” he asked Travis. “I think they made her tits too big.” He liked to rip on other people behind their backs. Travis laughed at him, while I just stared at him blankly. The other people in our group tolerated his bullshit.

“Still nice,” Travis said, referring to Sierra’s boobs.

“Yeah, if you like groping silicone,” he said, shaking his head. Travis chuckled again.

“I think she did that so they’d be bigger than Tiffany Westerfelt’s,” Travis said.

“That chick has done everyone in Malibu,” Keith said, referring to Tiffany. She had a reputation for being a total ho.

“Except you,” Travis said, slamming him. I laughed at that, which made Keith frown.

“I see Jake Goldblum finally got his nose fixed,” Keith rambled on. “About fucking time.” His bullshit criticism of people finally broke through my patience shields.

“What are you, still in middle school?” I asked, stopping him in his tracks.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he asked me belligerently.

“It means that all you do is tear people down and laugh at them,” I said. “That shit was funny when we were 13, but it’s pretty lame now.”

“You’re just worried about what I say about you when you’re not around,” he said, trying to make me seem like I was being sensitive.

“Why would I give a fuck what you say about me?” I asked and acted surprised that he thought his opinion mattered at all. “I’m just saying that it makes you lame.”

“I get it,” he said in a smarmy way. “You come breezing back into town and now you’re going to tell us all how things are.”

“No, I came breezing into town to see everyone, and I’m telling you that you’re still a complete asshole.” Travis laughed at that, while Keith glared at me. The other people in our group seemed to agree with me, even though they didn’t say anything, but I didn’t want to be a buzz kill, so I took that opportunity to wander over to the bar. The bartender was making some sort of island punch that was uber potent, so I snagged one of those and strolled inside. I went back to the main hall and admired it again, then stood off to the side, watching the dude who guarded Curtis Buck’s office and the wing beyond it. I heard Curtis say something from his library, the guard went into his office, then a few seconds later he went looking for someone. He brought some older person back then resumed his guard position.

About fifteen minutes later, the cycle repeated itself, only this time while the guard was going to get someone, I hurried past Buck’s office and into the hall that led to the kid’s wing. It was bizarre that Curtis Buck was using this party to summon people to meet with him rather than being a good host and hanging out with people. Maybe he did door duty in the beginning and decided that he’d fulfilled his mingling obligation that way. I used the half bath to pee and flushed the toilet, freaking out as soon as I did, because that was a very audible sign someone was back here. Just as I opened the bathroom door to escape, I heard Curtis Buck’s voice. “Did someone just use that half bath?”

I panicked, since I’d snuck back here and because I was a little wasted, so I hurried further down the hall to the closet and snuck inside. I jammed myself as far back in as I could and hid behind some coats and shit. The guard opened it up, took a cursory glance, then closed it. I heard him walking away then I heard him talking to Buck, only through the walls in the closet. Only then did I remember that this closet was right next to his office. I was so spazzed I was almost hyperventilating, but somehow my brain kicked in enough for me to remember to mute my phone. “No one was there.”

“Did you check upstairs?” Curtis Buck asked rudely.

“No, I just checked the bathroom and the closet,” the guard said.

“You’re a fucking idiot. Get one of the other guards to search upstairs just to be sure,” he said. “In the meantime, get me Zach Hayes.”

That freaked me out even more, but this time, instead of making me a basket case, it cleared my mind enough to act rationally. I carefully pulled out my tape recorder and pressed it against the wall, and as soon as I heard voices, I started recording. It was frustrating, because when Curtis wasn’t yelling, like he had at the guard, I couldn’t hear him very well. There was too much crap in the way for me to put my ear to the wall, so I decided to stay still and hope the recorder picked up the conversation for later. His conversation with Zach lasted about ten minutes, then he summoned Keith Craddock.

“I’m paying you to do a fucking job!” he shouted.

“What did I do wrong?” Craddock asked. Then their voices got muted again. When Craddock left, I pulled out that tape and put in the new one, since I didn’t want to run out of room.

I heard Buck ask for Sierra Gardner. I had no idea what they were talking about until I heard him grunting and her moaning. Those noises got louder and louder until they climaxed, then the voices were soft again. Holy shit, the dude was fucking a 16-year-old chick? He had to be at least in his early 50’s. What the fuck? Then I remembered that Grand had fucked that dude at Columbia, and mentally bitched at myself for having a double standard, but the dude Grand fucked had been a college student, while Sierra was a junior in high school. I decided that it was time to extricate myself from this situation. I waited until I heard him tell the guards that he wanted to see someone else, then I crept out of the closet and down the hall. I saw the guard starting to walk back, so to avoid being busted, I tore up the stairs as quickly and as quietly as I could. I paused at the top of the landing to get my breath and to calm myself down when I heard footsteps on the stairs. There were a lot of doors up here, and I had to pick a room to hide in, so I hurried back to the room Travis and I had crashed in when we were here as kids.

I smiled when I walked in because he’d obviously picked this room as his. I paused to admire how it was done in a minimalist style, so unlike the rest of the house. It was like he’d staked out his independence with his décor style, which was pretty similar to how my room was done. He had a king-sized bed, two slick nightstands, and a separate area that had two gaming chairs and a monster television on swivels, so it could be either aimed at the bed or at the gaming chairs. He had a desk that had nothing on it except a PC with a big monitor. I peeked into the bathroom and saw that it was just like the rest of the room: very sleek and modern.

I heard voices coming down the hall and from the volume, they must be right outside the door. I had a tape recorder with some pretty juicy data on it, and Curtis Buck would fry me alive if he found out about it. This room had a great escape route in that you could climb out the window in his bathroom and jump about five feet down to the ground, but I didn’t have time to do that, so I opted for his closet. He’d left it slightly ajar, so after I went in, I left the door open the same amount. I chuckled to myself, thinking that I’d spent most of my time at this party in the closet, when that was so not the case. I could have gone back further to hide, but I decided to stay near the door where I could peek out.

The door to the bedroom opened and I saw Travis come walking in. I almost giggled, wondering who he was going to fuck, until I saw that Zach was with him. I assumed they just came up here to talk, probably about Zach’s conversation with Curtis, when Travis shut and locked the door. It had a bolt lock on it too, and I was pretty shocked when he twisted that too.

“I know why you wanted to see me,” Zach said with his sultry voice, and before Travis could respond, Zach planted a massive lip lock on him.