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I walked to the couch and sat across from him on the coffee table’s edge. “Hiding your same-sex relationship from people is not the same thing,” I hissed. “We aren’t cheating on someone, Phillip. There is a huge difference between us and Charles’ behavior and you know it.”
“Tomato,tomahto.”
He’d hit a nerve with me by not respecting my opinion about his friend. I hated when he refused to consider that his friends should come second to the man he loved. “I’m not going to dinner tonight,” I announced. “I’m sorry but I’m not.”
His eyes narrowed, clueing me in to his signature move. “Youaregoing.”
“Or what?” I dared, knowing ahead of time we were in a negotiation I was about to win. A rare win, but a win just the same.
“Then I won’t attend your father’s bash at the yacht club Friday,” he taunted.
I didn’t care about seeing him at Daddy’s event, especially knowing he’d be showing up with one of his so-called girlfriends. He could threaten all he wanted, but we both knew he had to be at the yacht club because he’d miss out on too many connections. “Yes, you will,” I hissed, giving an Oscar-worthy performance as I led him down the proverbial path.
“On one condition,” he said, thinking he had outmaneuvered me. “You get out of tonight’s dinner with Charles and John, but you’re going to the three-day weekend on Charles’s boat.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested, lying through my teeth.
I hated negotiating within a personal relationship. It was demeaning and had become the norm since we’d returned from college. With both of our careers demanding a social presence, it was difficult to hide what we were to each other. I didn’t just blame him, but pretending was exhausting. I’d always wanted acknowledgement of who we were to each other. It broke my heart that we didn’t celebrate relationship milestones with family members. I wanted marriage and the whole bit but Phillip wouldn’t budge and I kept going along, month after month, year after year. I was giving up on marriage and I was bitter I let him talk me out of my goals.
He grinned at me and I knew he was internally gloating about his skillful counter offer. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t mind a weekend aboard a yacht full of gay men. It would be easier to stomach Charles and his secret boyfriend on his boat than across a dinner table tonight.
“Well?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Now was that so bad?” he asked, grinning like he’d swayed me again.
It was at that precise moment I realized I didn’t like him anymore. I loved him but didn’t like whohe’dbecome. Whowe’dbecome. Yes, I included myself. I despised the roles we’d carved out for one another. The innumerable amount of things we had to remember to cover our secret, and the realization we had no real future.
Everything.
It was too much now and I desired an honest and genuine love. A future where family, or even found family, celebrated our life as a couple with milestones and successes through thick and thin. I loved Phillip of course, but our relationship felt conditional lately. I couldn’t give my complete love to him on the condition that we hide it from the world for the rest of my life. The realization that I was ten years into this hidden relationship suddenly helped me understand I wouldn’t be able to live another year in this lie.
“The negotiation was about as bad as I expected,” I admitted, standing and heading to the bedroom.
“You started it,” he yelled after me.
I had.Could I finish it?
CHAPTER THREE: Bo
The temperatures in South Carolina’s low country were consistently in the eighties by May with the weather being drier than normal; so I took advantage, making improvements to my home.
Converting a fishing shack into full-time living quarters wasn’t easy. When I first moved out there when I was eighteen, the camping-in-my-accommodations lifestyle wasn’t a big deal. But now that I was twenty with a few dollars in the bank I was able to put in a well that provided fresh water and I installed indoor plumbing, bringing the bathroom indoors for the first time in the fifty-year old building’s history.
Like many fishing shacks built along rivers, mine sat fifty yards back from a dock on the river. The cabin stood on wooden pilings similar to stilts to stay above possible flood levels. Being on the Beaufort River and not too far inland from the Atlantic, I’d seen a number of major storm surges blow in from the ocean, pushing up through Port Royal Sound before swelling onto the island I lived on.
My granddaddy, or pop-pop as we southerners called them, built the structure and had successfully supported his family by fishing nearby in the abundant waters of the Low Country. I heard the incredible stories and all about his past from Memaw because he died before I came along. I liked knowing I was living in one of his creations.
Unfortunately, his chosen profession was what killed him. Killed my daddy too. So many folks who fished these waters died putting food on the table. I hoped I could avoid the continually growing list. I didn’t much like the vision of a third generation tombstone with my name on it. Imagine how strange the sight would be to folks in the future to see the same name, Boregard Dawson, chiseled on three side-by-side headstones.
The shack was a perfect twenty-by-twenty square with a small loft that I used for storage, and was about half the size of the room below. The space on the main floor was open and plain. The floors were old growth timber plank, and the unfinished interior walls were constructed with thin two-by-ten boards. There was no insulation or drywall. If you stood close to the walls and squinted, you could look through the cracks. But I didn’t care because I didn’t have a neighbor for miles in all directions and the Carolina coast had temperate weather during fall and winter.
My décor was what I called budget-chic. I had no budget, therefore it wasn’t chic. I spotted the sofa sitting along the curb in town and managed to float it to my place, proudly using it as my decoration centerpiece. I used wooden crates that I salvaged from the docks for end tables, a coffee table, and a makeshift bookshelf. The crates were gray and weathered but quite sturdy when stacked on top of each other. I arranged eight of them two high on four corners and laid a piece of plywood over the top to make my formal dining area. A plastic picnic table cover from the dollar store completed the homey look.
The bedroom was in one corner with an iron bed frame, circa nineteen-who-knows-hundred, and a new mattress I’d also floated home that was bought at Walmart. I could suffer through a lack of some creature comforts, but I required a clean and comfortable mattress. One of those twenty-dollar bedding sets that included everything you needed for bed linen in one giant plastic bag, added just the right touch to my bachelor pad. The damn thing even had a few fancy pillows that matched, just like in the magazines.
A sink that used to drain into a bucket was built into a wooden countertop, and three open-faced shelves completed the kitchen space. I salvaged several pieces of Memaw’s dishes and displayed them there. The recent addition of electricity helped keep the old fridge running and was far less noisy than the generator I kept for emergencies. I’d often imagined pop-pop would’ve shit himself at seeing the improvements. It wasn’t much but I was proud that the shack was all mine.
