The Vacation House Ch. 10

"Will you shut the hell up Robbie? Sometimes you just don't know when to keep that trap of your closed."

"Anyway, Lee and I use to hang out together. I would tell him about how scared I was raising two kids, a wife that had to work to keep a roof over our heads. That I did'nt make enough to be the man of the house, make the bacon and all that crap. For that matter, Lee would tell me about how difficult it was bombing out of the NBA with his injury, how he had such a troubled childhood. Got into a lot of trouble, drugs, running with the wrong guys. You know the story, he's had a rough time of it, made it though, pulled himself by his own bootstraps, made a comfortable life for himself too. Did it all on his own back with his own blood, sweat and tears."

"Don't get it Dad, if you guys were so close, what's this all about?"

"Robbie, you see, things in life happen that you don't expect, you don't invite it, don't want it to happen but it happens anyway. Remember what I told you about my cousin Bo? Didn't want it to happen but as they say, shit happens."

For the first time since we sat down at the table, Dad actually smiles. Tears still staining his cheeks, a smile though. I begin to become a little less uncomfortable. Realize I had been sitting on my hands the entire time, I pull them out from under my butt cheeks, place them on the table in front of me.

Dad stretches out his left arm, places his paw on my hand. It is huge in comparison. Gentle though, very rugged, calloused, still the touch was reassuring.

"Robbie, Lee and I went out one night for a beer after a really rough job. He had a little too much to drink, started telling me how he was not happy working for someone else. He kept saying he appreciated our boss and the opportunity he gave him to learn a trade but he, well he just said it right then and there."

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"Like I said, he was close to being hammered. I don't drink much but I had a couple more than normal too. Feeling it but not plastered mind you. Lee says to me, he was staying in Rhode Island cause of me.. ME! I don't even know what I was thinking at that moment, everything is kind of a blur. Like looking through the outside of a fish bowl and things kinda get distorted?"

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"Back then, no one ever said things like that to anyone. First off, he's a guy, you know a Man's Man, the kind of guy the rest of us wish we were, watch on T.V. thinking some day, we might get lucky and play in the big leagues only to come back down to earth and realize that we live in a crap hole, with no future and a couple of kids to weigh you down."

"Huh? We weighed you, you, you and Mom down?"

"NO, NO! Oh shit Robbie, I didn't mean it that way. Just one day you're a kid with no worries in the world, everything's new to you, you think you know everything, that everyone older than you is dumb. that you have learned more in your few years on earth than they have in their entire lives. You figure out soon enough when you wake up one morning and realize that no one looks at you the same way, no one winks at you, flirts with you, gets all hot and bothered wanting to be with you cause you're no longer the big man on campus. NOPE, you wake up, realize you're one of those old farts that you knew was an idiot, too old for anyone to want, pretty much a waste of oxygen."

"Dad, you've never been that way to me. You've always been Superman to me. I know that I'm never going to be half the man you are. Don't think that way, please, otherwise I have nothing to live for if I can't even be half as good as you, and here you thinking you're a nothing. To me, you're everything."

"Thanks Robbie, you're everything to me too. Really, more than you will ever know. If it were not for you, you and your sister, I would have lost my mind years ago. I loved your mother, still love her but just not the way a man and a wife need to love each other, you know what I'm saying?"

"Back to me and Lee, he asked me to come with him, we could start a business together, that he felt more for me than he had for anyone before. That for years, he had been hiding his real self behind the image that his coaches and he had created. He knew he was living a lie but he could not let anyone know for the fear of losing everything and I mean EVERYTHING!"

"You mean that Mr. Townsend, I mean LEE is,,,,,,,,,GAY?"

"No, not saying that at all. From what Lee explained, he had never actually felt love or real sexual interest in anyone, female or male. Kinda what they call asexual. Of course he went through the motions, slept with a slew of girls, only to break it off as soon as they wanted more, wanted a commitment. He just didn't feel like he could give himself 100 percent to anyone, believed he never could."

"But then you come along, what was that all about Dad?"

"I don't know why, it just happened I guess. He fell in love with me. Never said anything about it till that night. Let me get this straight, I never, I mean WE never did anything. NEVER. I reminded him that I was married and just did not feel the same way about him as he did towards me. That anyway, could you imaging a Black man and a White Guido hooking up? Shit I think I would have died if anyone had even found out about Lee's confession!"

"So, you and Lee never did anything, no sex, nothing? What's the big deal? Lots of straight guys are friends with gay guys. Man crushes are all the rage yeah know, right?"

"It was a different time Robbie. There was no such thing as a Bromance back then. People did not understand, and to be honest with you, I don't think many people of my generation or older still understand, accept that buddy, buddy thing. I'm no Brad Pit and Lee sure as heck is no George Cluney."

Dad's smile broadens. His hand tightens upon mine, squeezes it. I slide myself a little closer on the long bench seat. The smooth finish rubs along the underside of my butt cheeks causing a little "Fart" sound... We both break into an uncontrolled fit of laughter.

"Yeah well you see kiddo, by the time the next morning came, Lee had sobered up, he deeply regretted ever saying anything that he had the night before. We became a bit uncomfortable around each other. No longer were the nights when we would automatically assume the other was going to go to the local watering hole for a cold one. Lunches were still spent together but we never had the same kind of personal sharing after that night."

"So that's what happened. Lee felt like he had just outed himself only to be rejected?"

"No, I think it is deeper than that Robbie. A short time later is when Lee and our boss at that time had come into an agreement to go into a northern business partnership. Since Lee had a fairly decent retirement from the NBA, not a fortune mind you but more than I will ever see in my lifetime, he jumped at the chance to get the heck out of there and away from me."

"So, why is it that you came to coming up here, working with him after everything that had happened? You knew he had a thing for you, that it might rip off an old wound? Dad, how could you?"

"Robbie, that's what I'm trying to tell you, this IS ALL MY FAULT. I'm selfish, didn't take into consideration that things might still be there for him the way it was before. I just chalked it up to youth, infatuation between us that would just be forgotten in time, you know the old time heals all wounds thing? I was wrong, DEAD WRONG!"

"So you knew that Lee still had the hots for you Dad? Why didn't you just go for it? Mom's not in the picture any longer, well at least not in bed. I'm not going to be here forever you know, I go back to school in just a few weeks, then what?"

"Yeah, about that, well, Lee and I have actually had a few face to face talks before this whole fiasco last night. Mind you, it's not as if I am saying that I was not a willing participant, I was and that is again my fault. Robbie, you have to understand that you make me so hot and bothered that I don't know how to channel it, how to keep things from getting out of control. I want you to grow up and find someone of your own to love, fall for, live with if you want to, you know the whole shebang."

"Dad, I don't want the shebang. I want you, I can't tell you how happy you make me. How safe you make me feel when you hold me in your arms. The way I lose my mind when the rough fur on your chest rubs up against my back in the middle of the night. Then there is that Baseball Bat between your legs, OH MY GOD!"

"C'mon, enough, you're going to work yourself up into a hard-on and that is not going to help right now. Let me finish will you."

"All right Dad, but sorry, already have a hard on.. I think I got a splinter from it rubbing against the underside of the table top."

"PIG!"

Dad's laughter again makes me just fall for him so much more. How the heck could Lee have ever walked away from him. I know I can't.

"Robbie, Lee and I apparently have a little bit of a sexual dilemma. We are both devout tops. We discussed it, I can honestly tell you this, I just have no interest in having that billy club buried up my back side. Doesn't do it for me, actually is a deal breaker. That's where we are today. Neither of us able to do for the other what we wish we could but still I know now that Lee is and has always been in love with me. I have found that I have a certain attraction to him that I didn't want to happen. Like I said, it is not always fair, things happen whether you wish for them to or not."

Shifting on the bench seat, I can see that the sunlight is beginning to get lower in the sky. Diner, I still have not gotten Dad his diner.

"OK Dad, let me get you fed, I'm sure we can both think better on full bellies. Sound good to you?"

"Sounds good to me Robbie. I love you, you know that don't you?"

"More than you might ever know Dad, more than you might ever know."