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Late December 1991
Luke
It was mymother’s idea to invite Nadine to Christmas at our house. She’d also invited Rodney and his parents and had insisted that it was absolutely a matter of “the more, the merrier,” especially if it meant that Minty would be with us for the holiday celebrations.
I didn’t know if she really loved Minty as much as she claimed—though he had been beyond charming the two times we’d driven up to Johnson City to have dinner with her after that panic-pancake morning—or maybe she just really wanted to make up for all the times she hadn’t supported me enough in the past. Whatever the case, she had nothing but praise for Minty, and the first time he’d turned up with me wearing a skirt, a woman’s blouse, and eye makeup, she hadn’t even blinked.
Instead, she told him he had a knack for choosing colors that complimented skin tones. That had set them off on a long discussion of color theory and Seasonal Color Analysis in choosing clothes. Apparently, Minty was a Summer, like his mother, and I was a Spring, while my mom was an Autumn. Whatever that meant, I still didn’t know. But they had a great time discussing it.
With my return to work at the shop, we’d been able to buy our families halfway decent Christmas presents. If Minty got a part-timejob too, then we could start making plans for the future—however long or short that may be, given our diagnoses.
But that would all have to wait until we saw what happened with Minty’s scholarships after his disastrous last semester. He was in danger of losing them and his place at the university.
Minty was still seeing Pamela every day, which was helping a lot. It was good for him to be in the presence of someone who was there solely for him. Pamela had no expectations beyond that he show up. So long as he did, she asked nothing of him in return, and it was clear Minty needed someone entirely dedicated to him that way.
He’d also decided to return to Aikido and Kickboxing classes three nights a week. Once, I went with him, not to participate in the class—it was far too advanced for a beginner like me—but to see him in his element. It’d been shocking to see him take down muscular men twice his size with ease. A sweep of the leg, and down they’d go. A jab of the elbow and boom, on the ground. I was impressed and mildly terrified.
Watching him do all the things he’d always claimed he could put Minty in a whole new light. I still wanted to care for him and protect him always, but it freed up something in my head to see that he could protect himself.
If he wanted to…
And that was a change too. Now that he had created his Your Majesty alter-ego for dominance play, he now saw a version of himself that was worthy—not only of my love, but of his own. Minty was determined to take good care of himself for the first time since I met him. He was eating well, exercising, studying his precious salamanders, cutting out photos from fashion magazines, and laughing over phone calls with friends.
With Kyle in jail awaiting trial on criminal felony charges, it felt as if a suffocating blanket had been lifted from our lives. I could seeit in Minty’s eyes, in his walk, and even in the way he hadn’t asked to go to the basement even once since the night we returned from the police station. And, for now, I didn’t miss it.
I was having too much fun playing his bodyguard, his service top, his devoted acolyte, and he was thriving and downright glowing with the change in our dynamic. He loved ordering me around. I’d become very adept in just a few days’ time at painting nails and doing his makeup. He liked to call me into the bathroom, proclaim, “Valet me,” and then sit on the closed toilet seat while I carefully applied glitter, eyeshadow, and lip gloss just the way he’d shown me.
Seeing him glow with confidence more than made up for not seeing him on his knees with red eyes after crying from a rough spanking or trembling from the intensity of the flogger. My inner sadist was happy to be hibernating. I didn’t know how long he’d stay asleep, but I figured when he did wake up, we’d find out together if Minty was up for a game of pain. And if he wasn’t…
Well, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
“What are you thinking about?” Minty asked. He was digging around in the glove compartment of my car, looking through the collection of mixtapes I had in there.
“The future.”
Minty smiled. “Pretending we have a long one?”
I elbowed him lightly. “Hey, what does Pamela say about that?”
“She says acknowledging the reality of my situation is important.”
“Well, fuck her then.”
Minty laughed. “What about the future?”
“Just that I want you in it with me. No matter what.”
Minty put his hand on my knee. “Me too.” He turned the music up, singing along to “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls, and my heart rose.
I thought of my mother and how she’d probably felt this way about my father once upon a time. But now, here she was preparing for a very crowded Christmas Day without him. While he, through no real fault of his own, was sitting alone in a senior care facility. It was heartbreaking when I considered it. I still loved the man my father used to be. The situation was deeply painful and unfair, but I didn’t have a solution for it.
That was something I was learning over and over with Minty. Life was often ugly and brutal. We had two choices—we could let it destroy us with guilt and shame, or we could be brave and save ourselves. I supposed there was a third option too. One I was desperately trying to employ today.
Forgiveness.
Now that was a tricky one.
