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As far as I knew, I hadn’t either.
There was one guy, really early on in my life, a football player at my high school with whom I’d shared three sleepovers. Alex Trent. He was six-one, blue-eyed, hard-bodied, and ignorant about gay sex. He’d fucked me raw with only spit for lube, and a sock stuffed intomy mouth to keep my cries of pain from reaching his parents’ ears. In my innocence, I’d sworn it was love.
It wasn’t.
He turned into my worst bully soon enough, terrified I’d spill the beans. But I’d never told a soul about what we’d done in his room during those late nights. How he’d initiated it. How I’d sucked his dick, and how I’d let him into my body in a way I’d hardly let anyone else since.
I wondered where Alex was now. If he was still fucking guys, and if he might be positive too. Or dead.
There’d been just two other guys after Alex. Jerome, of course, and then one that I really shouldn’t have let fuck me—a stranger visiting from Atlanta. I wasn’t even sure of his name.
Shivering, I tried to shake off the unwanted thoughts of him—tall, handsome, with a great smile and a persuasive voice—and memories of how high I’d been, rolling on X that night. I still wanted to blame the drug for making me lose my inhibitions and my judgment, but the truth was there was no one to blame for it but me. I’d been the one to take it.
“Honey?” Mom asked. “Isthere something you haven’t told me?”
I realized I hadn’t answered her. “No, Mama, of course not.”
Mom put the big wooden spoon down on top of a paper towel to absorb the mess. She sat next to me and took hold of my hands. “Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I lifted her fingers and gave them a kiss. I didn’t want to burden her with my diagnosis. I was still healthy, and there was no reason for her to be scared for me, not yet.
“Is it money?”
“Things are tight,” I admitted.
Finances were always tight now. I’d made the majority of my disposable income from professional domination, and I’d stoppeddoing that. I still helped out with the cost of Betsy’s facility, which left me with very little at the end of the month. Plus, now that I had this diagnosis, I was also putting aside funds in case I ever needed to start on AZT. The drug was ridiculously expensive, but it was the only treatment option available. The only glimmer of hope.
“But I’m all right,” I hastened to reassure her when her brows lowered.
“Then what’s all this moodiness about?”
I decided to give her a portion of the truth. “I’ve been working a lot of third shifts. Trying to sleep during the day and staying up all night is making me come a little undone.”
“If you’d get a respectable job,” my father’s slurred voice came from the doorway. He stood there with his cane, one side of his face drooping and the usual disappointed gleam in his eye. “You’d be better off. It’d get you away from all those perverts who make you think you’re queer—”
“Dad, I’ve told you. I’m gay.”
He rolled his eyes and tried to blow a raspberry as if what I was saying was absurd. Spittle dotted the front of his shirt from the effort. “No one’s gay, son. That’s just a lie to make sissies out of real men.”
I glanced at Mom, but she shook her head and patted my hand. I could either choose to go down this path, point out how unhinged his statement was, or I could just let it go and preserve the peace for dinner. For my mom’s sake, I knew what I had to do.
Besides, there was no reasoning with him after the stroke. The pieces of his brain that exercised restraint were damaged, and now he leaned into the dark prejudices he’d previously repressed… or hidden. He no longer had any sense of shame or worry that he might hurt anyone else with his words.
“It’s spaghetti night,” Mom said, rising from the table and helping him over to his chair. “Your favorite.”
Dad released an argumentative sound, but refrained from denying it. He let her tuck a cloth napkin around his collar and prepare his serving for him—noodles chopped into tiny bits like he was a baby because he couldn’t do more than scoop with a spoon these days.
I said nothing more, simply getting up to move in synchronicity with Mom as we got the plates and bowls out, pulled the bread rolls from the oven, and set out the parmesan and extra sauce.
“Bless this food to the nourishment of our body, and use our bodies for thy service, amen,” Mom intoned, bowing her head over her plate.
Dad released yet another argumentative noise, but dug into his food without speaking.
“How’s Betsy?” I asked. Mom went to see her twice a month, leaving Dad with a volunteer from their church. That way Betsy had visitors three weeks of every four.
It said a lot about my relationship with my father that she never asked me if I had time to stay with him. I’d have made any excuse I could think of, even if I did have the time. Leaving aside my father’s rampant homophobia, there were still very few things we saw eye to eye on.
“She’s her usual happy self,” Mom said with a big smile. “She’s taking a sewing class off campus. They bus her and a handful of other residents over to this fabric store where they have ten sewing machines available. She’s learning to make dresses.” Mom indicated the blue floral one she wore now—a breezy thing with a built-in shawl over the shoulders.
