When we’re young we do some really stupid things that we regret for many of our adult years. When I say “we” I’m talking about myself, of course. I don’t like to think that I was a bully, but I’m sure that’s the exact word people would use.
In my defense, I can say I never physically attacked any of the boys my “gang” harassed, but that’s a lame excuse. In fact, I’m as ashamed to admit I was one of the wannabe thugs that followed the main bully as I am that I said the things I said.
The targets of our venom were the gay kids in our school, or the ones we thought were gay, even if they weren’t. We called them all the usual derogatory names in front of all the other kids. You can be sure we made sure there weren’t any teachers within hearing when we launched one of our assaults.
The name calling was bad enough but our “leader” would threaten the poor kid and with four or five of us backing him up, they were usually terrified.
When I look back on how old we were I can’t imagine where we’d picked up terms like “cock sucker” and “ass licker” and “cum swigger”. As for that last one, I doubt any of us even knew what a swigger was, but that didn’t stop us from slinging it around.
Fortunately, I outgrew that dismal phase of my life, but that doesn’t mean I got any wiser. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen, my way of dealing with gay guys who I might come in contact with had changed. I just ignored them. I don’t mean I turned my back. I simply acted as if they didn’t exist.
Without consciously thinking about it I’d decided that they could live in their little world and I’d live in the real world and those two worlds would never connect. Of course, life doesn’t play by our rules.
I’d never had any intention of continuing my formal education further than high school. I did put in two years at an industrial school while I worked a variety of jobs. Later I started working with a swimming pool construction company, which is where I still am nine years later.
That might sound like I have no ambition but I like the work and it pays well. It provided me with a pretty good life so far, and I have advanced to a supervisor position.
While none of that has to do with what I started out to tell you about, it does give you an idea of how old I am and maybe something about my character. One other bit of pertinent information is that I waited until I was twenty-four before I got married.
Penny was working as a secretary when I began working there and I flirted with her whenever I had an excuse to go in the office. She ignored me most of the time, but eventually, she smiled at something I said. I kept at it and when I thought I’d broken through I asked her for a date. We got married about a year later.
I, of course, had met her folks and I knew she had a brother but he lived in Montreal and hadn’t been back to the states for several years. He returned here to live two years ago and it didn’t take me long to figure out that he’s gay.
WHAM!
So here it was, all my sins and prejudices slamming me in the face. But it’s surprising how our mindset can alter when we find ourselves in a situation we had never imagined before.
Gage wasn’t one of those macho guys that you’d have trouble believing was gay even after you’d been assured he was. But he also wasn’t someone you could spot from half a mile away.
He was just a regular guy who sometimes would say a certain thing or in a certain way, or who would make a body movement that caught your attention or a facial expression you would notice and if and when you added them up suspicion would enter your mind. After a while, those suspicions would grow stronger and you’d make assumptions and eventually, those assumptions would coalesce into a conviction.
But what do you do with that conviction if you have no proof? Well, if you’re like me, you become determined to prove to yourself you’re right. And that brings us to my dilemma.
Let me set something straight. I said Gage was a regular guy, but that isn’t completely factual. In his physical appearance, he was a couple of steps above regular. That’s my roundabout way of saying he was a good-looking dude. In addition to his looks, he was bright, funny, and easy to talk to. In other words, I really liked the guy.
Without my realizing I was doing it at first, I began flirting with him much as I’d done with his sister eight years before. I don’t know if he picked up on it at the beginning, but after a couple of months, I’m sure he did. I mean, as I said, he was bright. At first, I think he might simply have been flattered but when I kept at it he started responding.
So that’s how it went for a spell with each of us acting as if nothing was going on but at the same time trying to outdo the other in being both subtle and outrageous at the same time. It would have been much easier and safer if I’d simply asked him if he was gay. I’m certain he’d have given me an honest answer, and that would have been the end of it.
As it was I was constructing a maze I was getting lost in. One outcome of the flirtation was that I was finding Gage more appealing, more fascinating, and somehow sexier. I began to wonder what he was like in bed. I found myself imagining what it would be like to bed him. I speculated who would drive who “up the wall”. Would he beg me to fuck him or would I plead with him to let me show him what I can do?
This isn’t where I had wanted to go, but here I was.
But then again, was he here with me, or was this all on me? The answer to this conundrum was simple. I had to find out. I had to get him in bed. I had to make love to him.
Of course, there was the “problem” of Penny. She was his sister and she was there, “there” being in our lives and in my bed.
But, as it often does, it turned out I was envisaging obstacles that weren’t really there. I guess if I’d considered that he was responding to my flirtations I’d have been surer of my footing, but still and all it did appear he was open to all the hints I was dropping. At least he wasn’t telling me to knock it off or get lost.
And that I interpreted as encouragement, which means I increased my efforts, both in what I said and the frequency that I said it. And as these things usually go I tipped my hand and went too far, exposing myself for the fool I was.
It was a Sunday afternoon. An unexpected rainstorm had swept in and the baseball game I’d planned to spend the afternoon watching was rained out. I was at a loss as to what to do. I was sitting on the sofa flipping through channel after channel when the doorbell rang.
Penny had gone to an afternoon performance of “Don Giovanni” by a visiting opera company with two of her friends and I wasn’t expecting anybody. I tossed the remote aside and struggled to my feet. The bell rang again before I got to the door.
“Okay, okay, hold your horses,” I muttered.
I opened the door and was surprised to find Gage standing there with rain running down his face.
“Carson,” was all he said as if he hadn’t expected me to be there.
“Gage,” I responded but with a different tone. “Come on in. You’re wet.”
That wasn’t a particularly bright observation.
He stepped in and ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I should have stayed in the car but I’d been sitting there for half an hour.”
I shook my head. “Well, come on back to the bedroom and I’ll give you a towel.”
I led the way to the back of the house and got a bath towel out of the linen closet.
He was wearing a windbreaker. “Take off the jacket and I’ll hang it up in the bathroom.”
He pulled it off and I could see his shirt was also sopping wet and clinging to his chest.
“Jeez, Gage, you’re soaked through,” I commented.
“You don’t have any protection from the rain over your front door, you know,” was his retort.
“Yeah, I know,” was the weak defense I could come up with. “I didn’t design the house.”
He scoffed and unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off. I watched him dry off his body.
“Where did you get a body like that, Gage? You must live at the gym.”
“Nah, once a week is all I ever do. You should try it,” he said with a smile.
“You saying I need to shape up?” I asked with a fake frown.
He looked me up and down. “Don’t know. Never seen you naked, but you wear your clothes well.”
“Thanks, I think,” I said. “Maybe I should show you what I got in order to get a good assessment.”
He sat down on the bed and pulled off his shoes. “No time like the present.”
He pulled off his pants to my amazement, although they were wet too. He was wearing a pair of yellow bikini-cut briefs that showed off his slim, muscular body.
He sat there looking at me as if he were waiting for me to get out of my clothes. I was tempted. I got an idea and began unbuttoning my shirt, but doing it as I undulated my body and rolled my eyes at him as if I was doing a striptease.
“Wow!” he said. “What a turn on. I’m getting hot.”
Without thinking I said, “I wish.”
I also looked at his crotch to confirm my doubt, which wasn’t the correct thing to do.
After a couple minutes of awkward silence he said, “Well, I’m waiting.”
I’d only buttoned my shirt down to my belt buckle. I pulled the shirttail out of my pants and let it hang open and loose.
Without prompting Gage said, “You know, I’ve been to bed with several married men before. Really! Maybe five or six. It’s not that I particularly like married guys. It’s just that I like straight guys, or at least straight acting guys. I’m a dedicated bottom.”
He’d caught me completely off guard and I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, to cover up and buy time I sat down on the boudoir chair and untied my shoes and pulled them off.
“Tell me, Carson,” he continued. “Have you ever done anything with another guy?”
I shook my head and then found my voice. “No,” was all I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Nothing? Never? Not even when you were growing up?”
I shook my head again.
“Well, I know that’s considered normal,” he said, smiling again. “But not in my world. I’ve known dozens of so-called “straight” guys who played around when they were young and still do once in a while.”
I felt I had to come up with something, some kind of excuse, for some reason. “I guess I never had the opportunity.”
I didn’t dare tell him about the things I really did.
I was thinking about that when he said, “Well like I said, there’s no time like the present.”
For some reason, I got the idea he was bluffing. I stood up and pulled off my pants.
He looked me up and down slowly. “No, you don’t particularly need to go to the gym. I like what I see just as it is.”
I swear, the way he was looking at me, or maybe it was what he said, made my cock begin to stir. I could feel it beginning to move in my knit boxers. This was strange and confusing to me. There was nothing in my history that supported any of this as being arousing to me. This was all just fun and games.
