Millennium - 2. Chapter 2

November 2, 1999

I stared at him, not saying anything, trying to digest his words, but I couldn’t. I felt pain searing through my body, and the only way to survive that kind of agony was to shield it with anger, much like a doctor would use an anesthetic. “You want to see other people? Are you fucking kidding me?” I didn’t usually yell. Not at the kids, not at Jeanine, not at members of my family, and not at Robbie. I was yelling now. “I can’t believe you’d do this! You’re fucking dead meat. That’s why you brought me here, so David would be a witness and I couldn’t just slice your guts out.”

That actually made David chuckle and eased the tension a bit. “Why did you ask Brad to be here?”

“Yeah, don’t you have the balls to ask me for a divorce all by yourself, you fucking pussy,” I screamed at him.

He looked at me calmly, almost serenely, but I knew he was in agony. “That’s not what I want,” he said. “I don’t want a divorce. I just want to be able to sleep with other people, kind of like Stefan and JP do.” I put my head in my hands, more to hide the tears that had decided to start flowing out of my eyes despite all my efforts. “You’re too important to me and I knew if I tried to do this all by myself, I’d fuck it up. That’s why I wanted to do it here. I love you Brad, now probably more than I ever have.”

I looked up at him and just glared. I heard his words, and I understood where he was coming from, but that didn’t make it any easier. I wasn’t ready to not be mad at him yet. “Yeah, you love me so much you want to go out and fuck every goddamn twink in Hollywood.”

“I am curious as to how you think being able to sleep with other people will help your creative judgment?” David asked, taking us away from my drama. I wasn’t sure I was ready to have my drama disregarded yet, but I went with it.

“I’ll be more in touch with a younger crowd,” he said softly. That really pissed me off.

“That is the lamest fucking excuse I’ve heard,” I yelled. “Why can’t you at least be a man and admit this is your fucking midlife crisis and that you don’t want to get old? Why can’t you just say that you’re suddenly afraid of losing your hair, getting fat, and not being attractive? Why not admit that you’re afraid of death?” These were the same things I had to deal with, only I didn’t want to dump the guy I loved to do it.

“Alright, if I told you that, would you understand then?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I’d understand,” I told him. “I’d understand that you are the biggest, most selfish fucking bastard I ever met. That you’d do this to me is unbelievable, but now you’re going to fuck up our whole family. I thought I could trust you, I thought you’d always be there for me, and now you tell me you’re going to do this! We mean that little to you?”

“Brad, shut the fuck up and listen,” he yelled back at me, shocking me. “I’m not telling you shit. Open your fucking ears. I’m asking you. If you say no, then we don’t do it, and I’ll be as faithful to you as I’ve always been. This isn’t an ultimatum, it’s a request. I love you. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I didn’t understand that either,” David said supportively. “I’d like to hear how you feel about this Brad, but I only want you to feel comfortable sharing what you want to.”

I stood up and paced back and forth while they just looked at me, all the while collecting my thoughts. “That makes it slightly better,” I said finally, “but it still pisses me off. There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea, why this is unhealthy.”

“What are those reasons?” David asked before Robbie could step in.

“Well, for starters, we’ve tried this before, a couple of times, and it didn’t work,” I said, looking at him, reminding him of Gary Englin. “Remember?”

“You always throw him in my face,” Robbie said, knowing damn well what I was talking about.

“Well it seems appropriate,” I snapped back, not giving up an inch of ground. “We agreed that we could mess around with other guys, but we wouldn’t fuck them. And what did you do? You let him fuck you.”

“That was in high school, God damn it,” Robbie said. “We’re a little different now than we were then.”

“Are we?” I stared at him. “You’ve been through some serious shit. You’ve been pretty fucked up by it. I almost lost you twice because of it. What’s next?”

“You think I’m going to go out and find something kinky to do?” he demanded all self-righteously. That sent my anger to full power.

“You have that track record,” I said, throwing it in his face. “This time will I have to pick you up off the floor and pull a cattle prod out of your ass? Or will it be electrodes hooked up to your nipples? What will it be this time?”

“Fuck you!” he screamed, standing up. “I’ve been doing great for years now! I think it’s really shitty for you to throw that in my face.”

We glared at each other, eyeball to eyeball, while I thought about what he said. He was so pissed off at me I could feel his breath on my face as he panted. He’d been terrific these past years, and hadn’t done anything to warrant my fears. “You’re right,” I told him calmly. “You’ve done great, and that was a low blow. It was totally uncalled for. I’m sorry.” The appreciation in his eyes was priceless, and it was making it hard to stay mad at him.

“What else Brad?” David asked, reading me pretty damn well. “Those seem like surface things. What else?”

I closed my eyes, sighed, and then released the valve holding back my deepest fears and insecurities. “I’m worried that you’ll find someone who makes you happier I do. I’m worried that you’ll start off fucking around with someone, and that it will become serious and you’ll fall in love with him. I’m worried that you’ll end up loving him more than me, and you’ll end up dumping me for him. You’re not like Stefan. You don’t just fuck around. You develop feelings for people pretty quickly.” He nodded to acknowledge that he heard me, but not to agree with me. I swallowed hard before going on. “And I’m the same way. I’m worried that could happen to me.”

“You’re saying that you’d go fall in love with someone else?” he asked me, and that refueled my anger.

“I’m like you Robbie. I need a partner, a lover, not just a fuck. If you’re out banging every twink in Hollywood, I’m not going to sit around and beat off. If you’re not there, and someone else is, it could be a problem.” I saw that register. He hadn’t thought of that. “Plus when you do this, it will make me feel like I’m a bum lay, and I’ll have to prove to myself that I’m not by fucking the whole state.”

“Just like you did last time?” he asked.

“Yeah, just like I did the last time I wasn’t good enough to make you happy,” I snapped back. I started to say something, but I stopped.

“What is it Brad?” David asked.

I looked at Robbie. “My life has been one fucking nightmare after another lately. The one stable thing, the most important thing, has been us. All day today I was thinking about how much I love you, how important you are to me, and how you’re all I need. I even talked to Stef about it, using those exact words. And I thought about how the longer we were together; the easier it was for me to be monogamous. Up until you dropped this on me, I thought what we had was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Better than Stef and Greg, who were my gay role models. Better than everyone.”

“It still is,” he whined.

“No Robbie, it’s not, otherwise you wouldn’t have risked it, thrown the dice with something that important. It would have meant too much for you to even dream of fucking it up. You’d have gone out and bought a sports car or gotten a fucking tattoo instead. I know. That’s how I felt. But it’s ruined now,” I said.

“Nothing’s changed. Fuck, I’m just asking you to consider it,” he said, frustrated.

“Yeah, it has changed, because you took that risk and told me where I stand in your list of priorities. You’re running after youth and immortality, and leaving me in the dust. You want me to give you a kiss and pack you a fucking lunch and send you on your way?” I was way beyond the basket case mode now, but I was being honest.

“So I can’t even talk to you about this?” he asked me.

“While you’re getting a clue about that,” I shot back, “answer this question. How are you going to feel when I’m fucking some hot young stud? You’re not the only one who can get laid. I had a guy hitting on me all through my meeting today.”

“Who?” he demanded, showing David and me how jealous he was. I didn’t even deign to answer him.

“Answer the goddamn question,” I demanded. “How are you going to feel?” He stared at me, stymied.

“I don’t know,” he said glumly.

“You’re trapped,” I told him. “If you say you don’t care and you’re fine with it, you show how little you really care about me. If you say you do care, it shows that you have an obscene double standard, where you get to fuck everyone and I don’t. You’re too smart to think that will fly. So the other possibility is that you haven’t thought this whole thing through yet. Either way, you’ve ripped me to the core like no one else could. I’m out of here.” I got up to leave.

“I have a lot more faith in us than you do,” he snapped, making me stop in my tracks.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

He stood up and got in my face, something he rarely did. “You think our relationship is so fragile that anything can fuck it up. I don’t think that. I think it’s strong, it’s steel, and something like this can’t threaten it at all.” That was a good point.

“So you don’t think there’s even a chance this could fuck us up?” I asked. “Not the slightest risk?”

“I don’t think so, but I guess it could. I think it’s a pretty small chance.” He got where I was going so I didn’t have to say it. “But if I’m wrong and we were that fucking fragile, something else would do it, not necessarily this.”

“You knew how this would hurt me. That’s why we’re here. And you did it anyway.” I shook my head. “This is important enough for you to make me feel this bad? You think about that.”

“Brad, after you’ve had a chance to think about this, can we talk again? Maybe next Monday? ” David asked, stopping me before I walked out. I glared at both of them.

“Fine, I’ll be here at the same time, next Monday.” I thought that was about the most generosity he could expect from me at this point. I looked at Robbie. “In the meantime, feel free to fuck anyone you want. God knows I’m going to.”

“Brad, we don’t have to do that,” he said. “I just want you to think about it.”

“I thought about it, and I think it’s a great fucking idea,” I spat at him. “You do what you want; I’ll do what I want. Maybe we’ll run into each other once in a while.”

“We rode here together,” Robbie said as I headed for the door.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to take some of that money you were going to spend on your twinks and spring for a taxi. It can take you straight to the airport,” I told him, being a total smart ass.

“I was going to go see my father,” he said. His father Frank lived at Escorial, so that meant he planned to go there.

“I’m going to give you some advice. Stay the fuck away from me. You don’t, I’m going to embarrass the shit out of you. I’m going to try and hurt you as bad as you hurt me, and you don’t want this kind of pain. You’re too big of a fucking pussy to handle this kind of pain,” I said, getting into his face and sneering at him.

“I’m not going to let you tell me where I can and can’t go,” he said.

“Good. Show up. Come to dinner.” I turned to David. “You may want to block out some time for him after that.” And then I’d had enough. I just stormed out of there, hopped in the car, and headed back to Escorial.

I thought about how I’d reacted, and how badly I’d taken his ‘request’. It was probably unfair, and I’d probably thrown way too much guilt at him. I could have simply said no. But this was much deeper than that. If I’d said no, then I’d wonder if he was doing it anyway. I’d be stopping by his office to see if he was banging the latest Hollywood wanna-be-star, or hiring a private investigator to track him. I knew I was quite capable of doing that, and I knew that he had made me insecure enough to do it.

My thoughts were interrupted by my cell phone. I looked at the caller ID and smiled. It was my son Will. I thought back to my own childhood and to the most important relationship in my life: my relationship with Stefan. We’d gone to Paris when I was a kid and I’d wanted to tell him I thought I was gay, but I was nervous. He’d taken me to this café for dinner and asked me to be his blood brother, where he pricked my finger and his and we smashed them together. It had strengthened a bond that was already there, and he’d been my rock ever since. Will looked to me the same way, treated me the same way I treated Stef. In many ways he’s like me, but he had a shyness that I don’t remember having, or at least to the degree that he does.

“Hey bud,” I said as I answered the phone.

“Hey Dad, I scored a tube today! It was so tight! I did an aerial end!” He was one hell of a surfer, better than I was, and I wasn’t usually willing to yield that to anyone.

“No way!” I said enthusiastically.

“Way! And get this. I pulled off an air to fakie at the end.”

“Waves were that good today?” I asked.

“No, I was,” he joked, with a confidence he only shared with me. We laughed. “So when you coming home?”

“Probably not until Tuesday,” I told him.

“Oh,” he said sadly, sending another ripple of guilt rolling through my psyche. “Think we can hit the waves when you get back?”

“Yeah, we can,” I said. “Let me see if I can free up next weekend and we’ll head over to Hawaii.”

“That would be awesome!”

“No promises,” I cautioned, “but I’ll try. Let your mother and your brothers know I’m up here for a few more days, OK?”

“I will. See ya Dad!” I ended the call, thinking of all the good things in my life, not what I’d lost.

I got home and my feet automatically guided me to my father’s study. He was there, with books and papers neatly organized on his desk, carefully reading some sort of journal. “Well hello,” he said cheerfully. His expression changed when he saw mine. “What happened?”

“My day has been shitty,” I said as I sat on the couch. He came over and joined me.

“Amphion?” he asked.

“That’s part of it. At our meeting today we found out that the power behind the throne went to school with me. That means that if they’re gunning for us, it’s pretty much my fault.”

“If someone is doing that, they’ve got issues that aren’t your problem,” JP observed. He stared at me intently, not asking me what else was wrong. Instead, he willed it out of me with his eyes. I was just about to bare my soul when Stef came strolling in.

“I am so sorry to interrupt,” he said. He looked at me nervously. “Are you alright?”

“Robbie wants to sleep with other people,” I told them. They tried to hide their shock but couldn’t quite pull it off. They just stared at me, mouths agape.

JP finally pulled himself together. “What do you want?”

“I’m happy with the way things are, or I should say the way things were.”

“What do you mean, ‘were’?” Stef asked nervously.

“I mean that at the end of our meeting, where I did a whole lot of yelling, I told him he could fuck whoever he wanted and I was going to do the same thing.” The bitterness in my voice was much too obvious. I usually did a much better job of controlling my emotions, but not when it came to Robbie.

“You’re breaking up with him?” JP asked me, horrified. He was so upset he actually let his emotions break through his shields.

“No, that’s not the plan. His plan is that we’ll fuck other people and it will just be fun. I’m worried that it will slowly destroy us.”

“It is an early mid-life crisis,” Stef pronounced.

JP looked at him dubiously. His scholarly mind wasn’t willing to jump to conclusions that quickly. He was the Chair of the History Department at Stanford, a full professor, and his academic training wouldn’t let him reach a conclusion without more data. “We don’t know that.”

“No?” Stef asked. “He is thirty-seven years old, with two huge movie failures under his belt. It has damaged his prestige, not destroyed it. He still has enough power and money to attract young men, and doing so will make him feel young, like he is one of them.” He stared at JP with self-satisfaction. “If there is one thing I am certainly an expert on, it is men.”

That cracked me up. “There’s no denying that.” I thought about what he said. “So what do I do?”

“You must let him fuck other people,” Stef said. “Let him do it with your blessing.”

“Are you sure?” JP asked.

“I am,” Stef said firmly. “If you lay all this emotional guilt on him, he will let himself blame you for his actions, and he may end up hating you. If you let him do this, he will see that what you have is so much better. Although, there is another alternative.”

“What?” I asked, letting myself fall into his trap.

“You may both find that you like it, and that it enhances your relationship rather than detracts from it,” he told me.

“That seems to work well for you guys, but I’m not sure it will work for us,” I said.

“You have a lot to think about,” JP said.

“Yeah, and it looks like I’d better go buy some condoms,” I said, making a joke.

“I will make sure there are magnums in the plane,” Stef joked.

“You’re a size queen,” JP said, teasing him. “I’ll bet there’s a case there already.”

“And you are not?” Stef asked, embarrassing him. I just shook my head and gave them both hugs, then went back to my room to contemplate what I was going to do now, and how I was going to handle this.

Dinners at Escorial always occurred promptly at 7:00pm. We all knew to be punctual; those who weren’t on time got a withering look or worse, a comment, from JP. Tonight there was quite the crowd. Besides JP and Stef, my mother, Isidore, and her boyfriend, Frank, were there. Frank is Robbie’s father, so I guess that makes him my father-in-law, or at least he was until today. My brother Ace was there with his wife Cass and to my right was Jack, my drop-dead gorgeous brother-in law, and to his right was my drop-dead gorgeous sister Claire. Across from me was Matt, Robbie’s biological son, and his boyfriend Wade. They’d both moved in here; they were sophomores at Stanford, where they both played on the hockey team.

We all sat down and Frank stared at the empty seat at my left, the one where Robbie usually sat. “Where’s Robbie?” he asked.

I looked at my watch. “Well, he’s probably back in LA at an orgy, having sex with a bunch of young guys.”

“What?” Ace asked.

“He’s decided we should be allowed to fuck other people,” I said calmly, only I’d used the word ‘fuck’ at the table, which I rarely did, and that gave away how upset I really was. That really irritated me.

“It is probably just a mid-life crisis Brad,” Stef said, reiterating his opinion in a vain attempt to defend Robbie.

“That’s some loyalty,” Ace growled. “What a dumb ass.” He was pissed off, and somehow I found that refreshing. I looked to my right and saw Jack looking at me, and if Ace’s expression refreshed me, Jack’s expression shocked me. He looked as pissed off as Ace did, and that never happened.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to work through it,” I said, feeling forced to be positive. The whole conversation had made dinner tense, much too tense.

Matt tried to bring some levity into the situation. “So that means now that you’re single, I can hit on you?”

I knew he was joking. He would be tempting though, real tempting, but he was Robbie’s son, and that would be like fucking my step-son. I joked back with him. “You know where my room is.”

“I hardly think that’s appropriate,” Frank said.

Stef tried to jump in and save the day. “You know who you remind me of when you say that? Benjamin,” referring to Professor Benjamin Whist, JP’s stuffy former boyfriend. Everyone laughed except Frank and me. He had no business telling me who I could or couldn’t have sex with. The more they laughed, the more pissed off I got.

I stared right at him. “This is a really bad time for you to decide to tell me how the fuck to live my life. I’ll fuck whomever I want, and you can mind your own goddamn business.” I’d broken almost all the rules with that tirade, all except the yelling. I’d said it with a cold, angry, deliberate tone. He just glared at me and stuffed a forkful of food in his mouth.

“Will you be here this weekend?” Wade asked.

“That is up to Stefan,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“We’re having a party for our GLBT club. It’s going to be here,” Wade said. He was the president of the GLBT club at Stanford, and JP was the faculty advisor.

“You have to be there,” Matt said laughing. “Wade’s calling it a party, but I think it’s going to be a pool orgy.”

“I’m sure I’ll be there, then, since Stef is in charge of our travel schedule,” I joked.

“It is on Saturday, and of course we will be back by then,” Stef said. Naturally he’d planned around it.

After dinner I went out on the patio with JP, Stef, Matt, and Wade to smoke a joint. It was one of JP’s nightly rituals. He had a lot of rituals.

“You were a little hard on Frank,” JP said, gently chiding me.

“He should have known better,” Stef said, sticking up for me. “It was clearly a joke.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said, leering at Matt and Wade. “Think you two could handle me?”

They laughed. “We’ll try anytime you want,” Matt flirted back.

“Absolutely,” Wade said, and even though I laughed, that kind of surprised me. He was usually more reserved and didn’t flirt like that. I wandered down to my room and took my clothes off haphazardly, throwing them around the room. Making a mess felt good. I got into bed and let the pot relax me; let it help me block out my pain.

It seemed like I’d just fallen asleep when I felt the bed move as someone climbed in behind me. I kind of wondered if it was Matt or Wade, and then I kind of wondered if it was if I’d throw him out. I felt the body move closer to me, and felt arms wrap around me. I’d know those familiar arms anywhere.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, in a not unfriendly tone.

“I can’t stand this,” Robbie said. “I can’t just go away and leave like this, knowing how much I hurt you.” I rolled over onto my side and faced him. “I got in the cab and went to the airport. I was gonna fly commercial, since it was such a last-minute thing. I bought my ticket and wandered around the airport, waiting for my plane, and I saw this couple. There were these two guys, and they were walking through the terminal. They weren’t holding hands, they weren’t touching each other, they were just gazing at each other, and they looked so in love. I felt so happy for them, and thought about how wonderful that must feel, and then I realized that I have that. I’m so lucky. I’m so lucky to have you, but I’m so stupid sometimes I forget that.”

I leaned in and kissed him, and he kissed me back passionately. He felt like a drowning man and I was his life preserver. As we made love, it dawned on me how much he did love me. I could feel it in him, could feel the agony he’d felt when he realized that he’d damaged us. And somehow, after we both came and we were lying there intertwined, I realized that I had to let him have his freedom to fuck other people, and that I had to do it willingly.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” he asked, assuming it was about sex.

“Today is November 2^nd. Well, actually it’s November 3^rd,” I said with a chuckle as I looked at the clock and noticed that it had just clicked past midnight.

“Wow, you’re good, you know what day it is,” Robbie said playfully, giving me shit. I loved it when he was like this, when he was happy.

“We try this thing, sleeping with other people, for thirty days. On December 3^rd, we re-evaluate it. If either one of us doesn’t want to do it, we stop,” I said.

“Brad, I was a fucking idiot. We don’t have to do this. Really. I love you so much, you’re all I need. I was just being stupid.”

“I know that now,” I said. “I knew that before, I just didn’t work through it. You need to do this. And I think that one way or the other, we’ll come out of this thing stronger than ever.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “It’s a deal. One month, then we decide what to do going forward. We have to shake on it.” Instead of shaking my hand, he reached down and shook my dick, cracking me up.

“So which twink has you so worked up you’re willing to piss me off to fuck him?” I joked.

“You want me to talk about this with you?” he asked nervously.

“Yeah,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I did.

“There’s this short blond twink at work” Robbie said. “He reminds me of Mouse. There’s something about him that makes me want to just fuck his brains out. To feel really dominant.”

“That’s how Mouse made me feel when we had sex,” I said.

“Um, would you be, uh, into, uh, would you be OK with it if I brought someone home, uh, once in a while,” he asked and mumbled. I was just about to get pissed off until he finished his sentence. “I, uh, was thinking we could, uh, you know, uh, have some fun together, all of us.”

“Yeah, that would be fine,” I said, smiling now. He wanted to do threesomes? The thought of that didn’t upset me, it just made me really horny. I have an exhibitionist streak, so someone else being there was a real turn-on. “There’s one thing, though, one favor.”

“I won’t do that, Brad,” he said, knowing what I was going to ask him. “There’s only one fist allowed in my ass: yours.”

“Thanks,” I told him. “I remember when we first did it, I liked that it made you feel so good, but I wasn’t all that into it. Then I really got into giving you that much pleasure. Now, it’s just so intimate. It makes me feel so close to you.”

He kissed me, and then made love to me this time. It was nice, and our bond was back, but I was still nervous.