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The reminder of what I was taught hits me in the chest like a lead weight, threatening to take me off my feet.
God hates homosexuals so much they all die of AIDS.
That was a sentence spoken to me in casual conversation with one of the other men of the church when I was no older than seven or eight. I had no idea about my own sexuality at that time, but it stuck with me through the years. I thought myself to be sick, dying of a disease, the first time I realized why I wanted to hang out with the boys in my group rather than sneak around to see the girls like all the other boys wanted to do.
I know the ignorance of it now, and even hate that it came to mind, but it does tell me I need to have myself checked. We do on a yearly basis. The guys who have more active lifestyles do it more often than that.
Drake and I haven’t used any protection.
Cumslut.
I cringe, the word now making me second-guess everything I’ve done. Drake has had a much more active sex life than I have. We didn’t have any sort of conversation or disclosures, and I’d be a fool to think that it was because he knows he’s safe. Apparently, passion makes people stupid. I’m just as guilty as he is for not having any sort of conversation about it.
I’m able to get the puncture in my finger pretty clean, but I don’t have any real medical supplies in my room. Thankfully the washcloths in here are dark green. I wrap one around my finger and head back out.
The laughter of babies meets my ears several feet before I can enter the code into the door of the nursery. There hasn’t always been a code, but someone mentioned most childcare facilities don’t allow direct access to the kids. In the next breath, it was decided that these children are a precious commodity of the club and must be protected as much as possible.
Smiling faces greet me when I stand on the other side of the Dutch door, the bottom half closed, preventing me from going any further.
“Hi, hon,” Emmalyn says with a wide grin, a toddler on each of her hips.
“Can I borrow Alyssa for a minute?” I ask, holding up my hand to show her that I have a medical problem.
Em frowns in my direction, shaking her head. I’m not the first to get hurt working on the clubhouse extension and I doubt I’ll be the last.
“Crush injury?” Em asks, not getting alarmed at all.
“Puncture wound.”
Alyssa is a different story when she steps out of the area where they change the babies’ diapers.
She rushes to place Gigi’s young daughter into a crib before coming in my direction.
“What happened?” she hisses, her voice low as to not alarm any of the kids.
“Nail,” I tell her, giving my friend a weak smile to let her know I’m fine. “I didn’t have any bandages in my room.”
Alyssa opens the bottom half of the Dutch door and ushers me through.
“Boo boo?” Jameson, Hound’s son, asks as I walk past him while he’s pushing a toy motorcycle along the track pattern on the rug he’s sitting on.
“Just a little one, buddy,” I tell him as I follow Ali across the room.
“You better not have done this to get out of the camping trip tomorrow,” she says as she points to a chair before reaching into a cabinet to get supplies out.
“I already cleaned it,” I tell her when I see the bottle of wound cleanser.
“I don’t trust your cleaning,” Alyssa says, holding up the bottle. “It’s a sting-free formula. Don’t be a baby.”
I hiss when she gets to work. The product may be sting-free but the pressure she’s putting on my finger isn’t.
She chuckles as if she might be enjoying the pain I’m in.
I want to tell her everything. I want to mention Drake and confess everything that has been going on. I want to ask for advice. She doesn’t have much experience in the way of relationships, but she’s married to Harley now and that has to amount to something. Besides, women are great at giving advice, and I know I need some.
I want to hate Drake for setting me up.
I want to hate myself for still trying to convince myself that he did, when deep down, I want to believe he didn’t.
I don’t know if he’s the man I’ve seen or if he’s only pretending to be that man.
He’s not perfect by any means, but I can’t really judge his behavior before we started whatever you want to call what we were involved in. I can’t even call it a relationship, but he was kind to me, understanding for the most part, except when his anger got the better of him that night I took too long to follow him up to his apartment.
