Page 36 of A Long Con

Luckily Berkeley knew how to defuse the situation. I later learned there was something called a “safe word” that Dom/sub couples would agree on beforehand if one felt they were slipping over the edge. I guess “asshole” was my safe word.

“Sure, buddy. No problem.”

An uncomfortable silence loomed over us as Berkeley worked his fingers in the cuff buckles. I huffed and puffed as I calmed down, but guilt ate a hole in my stomach.

At last I burst out with, “My fucking father forced me into conversion therapy, okay?” I shouted it as though it was Berkeley’s fault.

The cuffs slipped away in his hands as he breathed on my shoulder. “What?”

“Fucking conversion therapy!” I continued to yell. When I was free of the cuffs and cock ring, I stalked to the other bed where I’d thrown my loincloth, but I didn’t wrap it around my waist. I just waved it around. “Kanapapiki. I came out to my mother when I was fifteen and she told my father and he arranged for me to go into conversion therapy. Okay?”

When I at last looked at him, Berkeley’s eyes were wide with horror. “Okay, buddy. I get it. No big deal. It just seemed weird that in today’s day and age, you wouldn’t admit it. I thought it had something to do with your career.”

“No!” I continued to shout just because it felt right. “They gave me electric shocks, drugs that made me puke, okay?”

“Okay!”

“They made me pray to a god I didn’t believe in and certainly don’t da fuck now! So don’t tell me about coming out! I won’t go through that again.”

“Wow, okay. You have a whole motorcycle club of out members, dude. They’re there for you. Hey, I love those guys. Don’t you? You must, since you live above their clubhouse.”

I knew what Berkeley was doing. He was adept at pacifying people, maybe his mother. But I wanted to rant. I had admitted this part of my life to so few people, it had all built up inside me. Actually, I had told the story to no one. “They gave me puke drugs while showing me gay films and took away the puke drugs while showing me guys banging chicks. I busted out of there and went to bang some chicks. But I never went back to my parents’ house.”

“Whoa, wow, okay, Royal. That must’ve been some fucking ordeal. I can totally understand why you would have a, well, aversion to coming out. Elaine tried to put me into counseling too after I hit my head. Didn’t change or help a thing. That’s when she gave up and sent me to New York to art school.”

I wove my fingers through my hair and squeezed, enjoying the pain. “I still think, you know, in some part of my head, that being gay is wrong. So the conditioning worked, man!”

Berkeley finally took me by the shoulders. He sat me on the bed like a kid tossing a tantrum. “I’ve actually never met anyone who was forced into that. So I can’t say I know, man. That would be bullshit. Elaine didn’t give a shit about me being gay.”

“What about that hippie friend of yours? Cloud?”

“He just accepted it in his own mellow way. He’s straight, and that never bothered me either.” Berkeley’s smile was just stunning. His lips were so curvaceous I wanted to French kiss him for the next hour.

I realized he was succeeding in placating me. My father’s misguided parental techniques had occurred a long time ago. I’d had twenty years to come to terms with being gay and I’d pretty much resolved it with my inner being. I knew, and was comfortable with, my homosexuality. It was just difficult to display it to the outside world.

I asked, “And your dad? How’d he react?”

“Oh, he was long gone. He abandoned my mother when I was about ten. Moved to the Bay Area to be a nuclear engineer.”

I actually cracked a smile then. “Wow. Brains run in your family.”

Berkeley scoffed. “I wish I could say that was true. But I’ve done some harebrained things in my time. Listen, Royal. Why don’t you go back to sleep? Here, let me help you.”

I thought he was just being corny and tucking me in, lifting the sheet up to my underarms. But then he stretched out next to me, spooning me, breathing against the back of my neck.

“I know,” he said, “I have to stand guard. But it’s more important that you rest. Go to sleep.”

I saw there could be good aspects to having a sensitive, artistic boyfriend. I even snuggled my ass against his crotch. He soothed me by laying barely-there kisses against my shoulder. He nuzzled his face against my hair. How long had it been since anyone had done this?

Probably never. Berkeley had discovered the one thing I was afraid of. And I felt almost relieved that he had.

I fell into a dreamless sleep.

“My mother was a very gorgeous, gracious German woman,” said Royal as he shoveled part of his desayuno into his mouth.

I wasn’t sure if it was tortillas, chicken, cheese or beans. Myself, I ate chilaquiles, which was cheese, tortillas, beans and chicken. “She just helped my dad with his surf shop night and day. He’d be out surfing, or giving lessons, and she’d run the shop.”

“You don’t talk to him anymore,” I reminded him.