Shooting Matt Ch. 12

I look at him. I look at Glenna, who is drying her hands on a towel, dishes done and drying in the drainer.

"I'm not bi," Leon repeats. "I'm gay. Yes, I'm married to a woman. I love her and she loves me."

"But – " I start.

"I love her. I don't have to be sexually attracted to her in order to love her. What if I was in Iraq and had my dick blown off or had an accident that left me paralyzed and unable to have sex? I have to have sex in order to love someone? I don't think so."

"But, you'd still want to have sex, even if you weren't physically able to," I counter.

"Fine, I have a brain tumor or a head injury that destroys the amygdala, or what part of the brain it is that controls sexual attraction. If I had no ability to be interested in sex I couldn't fall in love? That's your thesis?"

"Christ, we're forty-year-old men, falling into a drunken late night dorm room argument," I say shaking my head and standing up and walking over to the refrigerator. I grab three more beers. Glenna has resumed her place at the table. I distribute the beers. "The problem is, it's not late night and we're not drunk, or not drunk enough." I pop the tab and take a long drink. "Okay, I concede. You can love, or rather be in love, with someone and not want to have sex with them. However, I think you'll have to agree that's a tad bit unusual."

"You got that right," Glenna offers, tipping her can by way of a toast.

"Is that why you two don't have any kids? You don't have sex?"

"I didn't say we don't have sex," Leon corrects me. Before I can ask my question, he answers it. "I'm not sexually attracted to Glenna. She knows that has nothing to do with her. She's a beautiful woman. She has needs of her own. We have sex, not as much as some, probably more than others. It's not as if I'm revolted by the act, it's just not how I'd prefer to satisfy my sexual needs. We do a lot of mutual masturbation. Glenna, reluctantly at first but now I think she enjoys it, tried using a strap –"

"That's enough buster," she snaps. "I'm sure he gets the idea."

"Not really. So you –" Glenna's glare stops me in my tracks. That's new. The girl I knew didn't have a glare like that.

Leon smiles. I think it's the first time since I looked up to see him in the doorway of Matt's hospital room.

"So, I assume this, Mary Beth, is Liam's mom? Your ex?" Glenna asks, after her look has silenced me.

"Yes. She was," I hesitate. "Bad news - we were bad news for each other I would say." I ignore Leon's harrumph but Glenna shoots him that look. "In my defense, weak as it will sound, I did manage to screw up the courage to tell her I was bi, not too long after I hooked up with Leon." I glance at my friend. "He's right. She jumped at the idea. I convinced Leon to fool around with us. I say us but it was primarily Leon and I with Mary Beth using the video cam."

"Wait a second. You two let her video you? Having sex?"

We both nod.

"Jesus, where you both insane?"

"No, honey, just stupid kids, stupid horny kids."

"How long did this go one?"

"Just a few months," I answer. "Mary Beth was a total bitch to Leon. I ignore the fact and he was smart enough to walk away." I look at my friend. "I'm sorry I let her do that to you. And I'm sorry I was too chicken shit to do anything about it."

"I'm only sorry you let her do it to you," Leon replies.

"Don't be. There's nothing you could have done about it."

"So, after that you two never met, never hooked up, again?"

"No. I mean I saw Leon around but we never hooked up again. Mary Beth tried to get me to bring another victim home but there was no way I was going to do that again. When she was home, and clean, which was often, I didn't cheat on her. I was always careful. After she left for good, I had Liam to look after. Once again, my chicken shit nature wouldn't allow me to admit to him that I was bi. So, I had the odd hook up here and there but that was it. Until, Matt showed up."

They both stare at me. I give them a thumbnail sketch of the events of the past few days. They don't say anything until I'm finished. Glenna shakes her head.

"So, a totally hot young man shows up at your door, begs you for sex, admits he's got a crush on you and you send him here, with your newly-out-of-the-closet son?"

I nod and start to speak but she interrupts me.

"Why?" she asks, perplexed.

"Because I'm a realist. I'm, literally, old enough to be his father. He and Liam have a lot in common. The odds of it working aren't great but they're a helluva lot better than the odds of it working with me. Besides," I continue after draining the last of my third beer. "It's okay. I realized today, seeing Matt at the hospital, that what I'm feeling is a crush, nothing more. For another thing, I owe him for waking me out of a decades-long slumber. I've just been going through the motions, waiting for nothing, not daring to desire anything. Since Matt had me take those pictures, I've woken up, not just to him but the world. What's left of my life." I laugh. "Hell, I even started renovating the house."

"That's how you've come back to life? Renovating your house?" Glenna snorts.

"It's a start. Anyone want another beer?" Glenna shakes her head but Leon nods. Glenna walks to a cabinet and returns with a bottle of Maker's Mark and three glasses.

"We've got better stuff but it's for sipping, not getting drunk. Who wants a shot?"

We down the shots and everyone is quiet. I can hear the miniscule waves lapping against the dock out back. Beyond that is the sound of the wind in the pines. A solitary whippoorwill calls.

"We wanted kids," Leon offers. It takes me a moment to realize he was answering a question I'd asked much earlier. "We can't. I can't. High number of dysmorphic and non-swimming tadpoles. It's not impossible but, according to the doctors, highly unlikely I will be able to get Glenna pregnant." He drains his beer and gets up for another. "My parents would view it as the judgment of a just God."

"Your parents are medieval twits, Leon." Glenna snaps.

"True, but not terribly relevant to my point, my dear." He sits down, pours another shot, downs it and shakes his head. He turns the Rolling Rock can over, pocks a hole in the bottom with a can opener, holds the other end over his mouth and pops the tab. He doesn't spill a drop. I'm envious. Even in college I couldn't shotgun a beer.

"I saw his dick before I looked at his face," Leon starts, speech clear as a bell. I'm not sure if he's talking to us or himself. "It was a nice dick. I hadn't seen many. A few at the mall we'd go to in Cincinnati a few times a year. Once I even let a guy there touch my dick before I bolted. I had methodically checked out all the bathrooms. The one on the top floor of the student union seemed to be the most used." He looks at me. "Remember?"

I nod.

"I kept to myself the first few weeks at college. I was determined to rid myself of the sinful thoughts I'd had since junior high." He pours another shot of whiskey and takes a sip. "It didn't work. I made the rounds. I was scared to death of getting caught. On occasion, I watched some of the action but never participated. I was always ready to duck back in the stall, turn back to the urinal, zip up and run, if anyone came in. I watched. I would jerk off a little but never came. I never unbuckled my belt or undid my pants. I wanted to be able to run in a hurry. If I close my eyes I can still feel the hard cold bite of the brass zipper on my dick.

"Then, I think it was toward the end of the spring semester, my freshman year, Randy walked in. If he'd walked in a few weeks earlier, maybe even a few days earlier, I would have run. But by this point I had relaxed enough to simply turn back to the urinal, pretend to be taking a leak and see what happened. Most of the time the other guy would piss and leave. Sometimes they'd piss and spend more time shaking off than was needed. Sometimes if I'd look at them, not them, their dicks, they'd turn and start to stroke. Sometimes they'd shove their dick in their pants and flee, as I had in the past.

"So, the first thing I saw was his dick. I casually, or so I thought, glanced over. His dick was already hard. Mine always started to get soft when the door opened but looking at his dick, I got hard again almost at once. He had a really nice looking dick. He turned to face me. I looked up and that was the first time I saw Randy."

"It wasn't the first time I saw you," I interject. "I'd seen you before. I think we even checked each other's cocks out before."

Leon shrugs. "Could be. I'm the first to admit that memory is a tricky thing. I don't think we did anything that first time. Did we?"

"I'm not sure. I think maybe I walked toward you, wanting to touch you and you left. I'm not sure. I do know the first time I sucked a guy off, he was wearing a suit and it wasn't you."

"No. I didn't even bring a suit to college. You did make the first move. It was a few days later. Maybe you had spooked me off before, because I remember you asked if you could touch me. I couldn't make my mouth form any words. I just stood there. Finally, I just let go of my dick. You took that as a yes and shuffled over to me. Your jeans were around your thighs. You weren't wearing underwear. You had on button fly jeans. Didn't you?"

I nod. That was all I wore in those days, so whether his memory is true or not, that is what I would have been wearing.

"Your hand was cold."

"Uh-huh," I whisper. "Your cock was hot."

Leon shrugs. Glenna sits silently, watching her husband's face.

"You moved your fingers over my dick."

"Yeah. I'd never seen an uncut cock before, at least not in the flesh. I was fascinated, and totally turned on, by it."

"You barely touched me and I came all over the place. I didn't jerk off a lot back then. I still had it in my head I could kill that part of myself. Whenever I jerked off, I thought about the things I'd seen in that bathroom, things I wanted to do. As soon as the first wad would hit me in the face or land on my chest, I'd feel this incredible guilt and shame weigh down on me, so hard I could barely breath. You touched me, slid your fingers over my foreskin a couple of times and I just erupted. I was appalled. It was all over your hand and arm, all over the floor, on your shoes, even some on your leg. I was so appalled I couldn't even run. I was sure you were going to kick my ass. I wanted to run but I couldn't move. My dick just kept spurting. My body shook. My knees felt as if they were going to drop me to the floor, not carry me out of the door and away from my shame. You smiled. You said something like 'awesome load' or 'cool' or something."

"I never use the word 'awesome'," I protest.

"Okay, it doesn't matter and then-"

"And then I licked my hand clean and as much of my arm as my mouth could reach," I finish for him. "You turned bright red. I don't think I would have done that if I'd already cum but I hadn't and I was still horny as fuck. Your cum felt so hot, temperature hot, on my skin. It was sexy hot, too. I wanted to ask you to touch me but I could see in your face that would freak you out. So, I jerked off onto the floor. It didn't take me long. I was as horny as you were."

"You asked me if I wanted to get something to eat didn't you?"

I nod. "We went to the Den, or that's what I remember."

"That sounds right."

No one speaks. I'm glad I'm sitting close to the table. My cock is hard inside my shorts.

***

Liam squeezes in beside Matt as the door closes behind Kent. "Does that hurt your back?" he asks in a little boy voice. It does, a little, but Matt assures him it doesn't. His body begins to tremble. He presses his face to Matt's arm but the snuffling sounds of swallowed sobs fill the quiet.

"Did you really deck the ambulance guy?" Matt asks. He gently rubs the parts of Liam's body his trapped arm is capable of touching. His touch says to Liam, 'yes, I'm changing the subject but I understand; cry if you need to; you aren't embarrassing me so don't be embarrassed'.

Liam doesn't answer, not right away, but the trembling stills. A long sigh warms Matt's arm. "Yeah, I did. I was so pissed; I don't think I've very been that pissed before."

Matt disagrees. Matt suspects his friend has been that pissed for most of his life. He lets it go. It's not a discussion for today.

"It felt good, fucking great actually, at first." Matt waits. "Then, not so much," Liam continues. "He had blood all over his face and the front of his shirt. He wasn't hurt that bad but it did split his lip and his nose was bleeding. I don't think I broke it. He was as pissed as I was, but, I don't know, as pissed as he was he just looked pathetic. There was nothing he could do. He was humiliated, pissed, and there wasn't a fucking thing he could do about it. It was pretty awful. The cop was looking at him like he was dog shit he'd just stepped in bare-footed. Even his partner, the other EMT, the nice one, was looking at him like he was a waste of space. I had to get out of there. I wanted to fucking punch his face in all over again for making me feel like a dick."

"You're not a dick," Matt whispers to the ceiling. "You were tired, scared, and worried and he was being an asshole at the wrong time. You'd only be a dick if kicking his ass didn't bother you, at least a little."

"I got snot on your arm."

"What a fucking dick," Matt snaps. Liam doesn't chuckle. Instead, he reaches beneath the sheets.

***

"So, were you guys a 'couple' then?"

Glenna can't quite stop herself from using air quotes around "couple".

"No," I tell her. "I'm not sure I had the balls to be that open. In fact, I know I didn't. I barely do now."

"It's irrelevant," Leon interjects. "Even if you had, I didn't. I don't know what I would have done if you had wanted to be out with me."

"Who was your roommate? Did you have one?" I'm not sure I want to pursue this but the words find their way out of my mouth.

He nods. "You never met him. He dropped out after a semester. Nice guy. Quiet. Slob, but he confined it to his side of the room."

"Did he know-"

"That I was gay?" he interrupts. "No. Except for you, Mary Beth, and the odd anonymous bathroom fag, no one knew."

"I hate that word," Glenna snaps. "You know I hate that word."

"Sorry," Leon tells whatever entity hovers above the middle of the table. It doesn't appear to me he's talking to either of us.

"Did anything happen the second weekend of school?"

The tiny inhalation would have been imperceptible if I hadn't been paying careful attention. He doesn't speak. His eyes remain fixed on a stop equidistant from all of us.

"I've been having, I call them dreams but there more like, don't laugh, visions." I tell him.

My eyes are glued to his face. I haven't forgotten Glenna is here but I'm talking to Leon. I tell him every detail I can recall of the alternate history of our meeting. Glenna's hand goes to her mouth when I describe how Leon told me he felt lying with his neck bent uncomfortably over the railroad track. She doesn't interrupt. I tell it all. I tell about our day in bed. How I helped him suck my cock. I tell him about the trip to the library. I brought the book to read. I could show him. I tell him about searching the newspaper files, about how the second weekend of our freshman year the train yard shut down due to a computer glitch. I don't need to add that that detail fits with my vision. I admit I could have gone to the library and found the story first and made up the rest but why? I had no idea I was going to be coming here, no idea Matt would get hurt. Besides, I had no idea Leon had grown up to be Lee, a man who would marry my old tormentor, Nena.

I finish.

"Lee," Glenna's voice is shaky. "Did that really happen, honey?"

"Which part? Randy wasn't my roommate. That part isn't true."

"I know that. You both just told me how you met. You know what I mean. The train yard. The hobo."

"Yes." For a long while that is all he says. "Randy described it exactly as I would have, if I had ever told anyone that story, which I haven't. The coffee. The way the old man was just gone. All of it.

"I never considered the possibility the old man was my guardian angel. Even in my religious youth I don't think I believed in angels, except in the abstract. I always hated that TV show, 'Touched by an Angel'. I thought it was hokey."

"Of course it was. That was the point," Glenna scoffs softly.

Leon continues as if she hasn't spoken. "I certainly didn't return to fall into bed with my lover. And it wasn't being with a lover that triggered it. The rest is true, though how he can know, is beyond me. I did spend the day in the chapel. I had been hanging around in the bathroom, the same one I would meet Randy in a few months later. It was the first time I had the nerve to touch another man. That's all I did. Touch. I felt like a bomb went off in my head. I could see the look on my parent's face, on the minister's. I could see the look on the face of everyone I knew, all at the same time, all with the same look of disgust.

"I went to the chapel. I knelt until I could no longer feel my legs. I prayed. I silently mouthed ever scripture I could recall. I was alone. It was just an empty room with pretty glass windows. At the time, it didn't occur to me to attribute the emptiness of the room to the simple place [O1]of God to fill it. It was empty because He had cut me off. I had done my best to atone, to ask for forgiveness, but He had turned his back.

"I was beyond redemption. What was left? What greater sin? Nothing and none."

The light in the room took on the yellow tint of twilight. Somewhere a clock ticked. Muffled shouts from the pool penetrated the thick log walls. Memories of Liam, gap-toothed grin flashing as he emits that light boy squeal unique to young boys having fun splashing each other, fill my mind. Liam laughing as his mother tickles him by pressing her mouth to his bare tummy and blowing. The looks I've seen Glenna give Leon. Matt's face when Liam walked in the hospital room, all of this and more flood my brain.

I walk to the closest window. It opens easily. The shrieks from the pool, the metallic trills of the cicadas, the wind, the water against the pontoons of the dock, all the ordinary sounds we ignore but that make up the world become clear[O2].

"God didn't turn his back on you," I tell Leon as I walk back to the table. "It was the other way around. You weren't listening. He wasn't giving you an answer you wanted to hear, so you shut him out. You weren't interested in the idea that there was nothing wrong with you. You weren't asking for forgiveness. You craved condemnation. It would appear He's not big on condemnation. You didn't hear Him because He wouldn't hate you as much as you hated yourself."

"Bullshit," Leon rasps. "Are you Dr. Freud or Desmond Tutu? You're a fucking atheist. Give me a break."

I shrug. "I am. I don't, can't believe I'm saying it myself but what other explanation is there. Don't make me misquote Sherlock Holmes about the impossible. How do you explain what I've been dreaming, or seeing or whatevering? I know we weren't roommates every bit as well as you do. I know we never had the chance to become lovers, not in the real sense of the word. Yet, I know, in every detail what happened that weekend in September of our freshmen year. Fuck, the newspaper even confirms the trains were held up that night. Sure, that could be coincidence. Sure, the hobo could have just been an old man who worked at the rail yard. But, if that's the case, how the fuck is it I know what happened?

"Hell, maybe it's not God. Maybe it's some pagan spirit of faggots or a trickster demi-god fucking with us. Beats me. But it is what it is. I don't see an explanation that doesn't involve more than the usual rationalism I pride myself on. It wouldn't be rational not be admit there isn't a rational explanation for this."