Going Home

by Max Vos

  Michelangelo’s David couldn’t compete with this one. The jeans covering his thighs were faded and threadbare. I expected those powerful looking legs to bust out the seams of the old denim at any moment. Sure enough, he had on cowboy boots that were jokingly huge. Of course they were huge, I thought to myself. Look at what they have to support.

  He turned back to me. “Here ya go. There’s plenty so if you want some more just ask. Carl likes to mix it with his iced tea, so I try and have both handy. I’m Matt by the way,” he said, holding his hand out.

  As I took his hand, I was afraid he was going to give a bone-crushing handshake, but it was only firm and warm. Looking down, my hand was dwarfed in his, making me feel even smaller than I normally did. Standing at only 5’7”, I always felt a little on the small side, comparatively.

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. Didn’t expect all that dust I guess.”

  “Let’s go sit out on the porch. I’ll call Carl and let him know you’re here. He wanted to go check on some fencing. We got a bull that’s been feeling a little randy here lately, so we need to keep an eye on him.” Matt opened the screen door, held it open for me, and then followed me over to the rocking chairs.

  He pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Carl, you copy?”

  “Yeah, Matt, I copy.” Another deep voice crackled from the handheld radio. I wondered how such a small speaker could contain such a voice.

  “We got comp’ny,” Matt answered back.

  “Awright. I’ll be there in a few. We got any more of that electrical fencing left?” The voice on the walkie-talkie drawled.

  “Yeah, and got a new solar station and some other goodies delivered today.” Matt grinned as he replied.

  “Awright. Out.” Then silence.

  “You find the place awright? I know we’re kinda off the beaten path,” Matt asked me with the same twang-drawl that I’d heard on the radio. It was very soothing in a sing-song kind of way.

  “Yes. I only made a few wrong turns, but with no road signs, I kind of had to guess at some of the roads.”

  I was having a hard time answering the question, I was so enthralled with this hulking hunk of a man. The front side was even better than the back side, if that were at all possible. Bright blue eyes in a very masculine face, square jawed with a few days’ beard growth, the same color as his honey-gold hair. He had a CAT ball cap on and the hair that stuck out from underneath it was curling on the ends. His lips were full and always seemed on the verge of smiling. Matt’s chest was well developed with his nipples underneath the T-shirt showing prominently. The crotch of his jeans was also rather threadbare, scarcely holding the packed-in meat that was there. From the look of things, I didn’t think he was circumcised either, as I noticed a tubular shape snaking down his left leg.

  “Yeah, well we don’t get many visitors out this way and most anyone who is driving around here pretty much knows where they’re going, so road signs aren’t all that important, I recon.” Matt smiled at me with bright, white teeth showing. Damn, this guy has it all.

  From the little information I had, I knew that Matt was twenty-eight, just a few years older than me, and Carl was forty-five. Matt had a degree in Agriculture, specializing in animal husbandry. The first time I read that I had to re-read it, not believing it at first. Of course, I had to go and look it up to make sure there was such a thing. Sure enough, there was. I didn’t even want to know how or what that entailed.

  Not sure of what to say, I took a long swig of the cold lemonade. It was some of the best I’d ever had.

  “Wow, this lemonade is really good,” I complimented Matt.

  “Thanks, I make it fresh ‘most every morning. The secret’s in the making of the sugar syrup,” Matt revealed.

  Just then, I saw a blue pickup truck slowly pull up and park beside the rental car I came in. Just like when I got here, there was a large dust cloud. Thank goodness, it blew in the other direction from where we were sitting. I noticed that the cloud dissipated before the truck door opened. Now I felt a little foolish for not having done the same thing. Out stepped a large man, wearing a grey tank top T-shirt, a John Deere ball cap and tight blue jeans. Once I got a good look at him, it was like looking at an older Matt. A little thicker in the neck and waist, but it could have been the same person in time-lapse photography. The resemblance was amazing.

  As the man walked up on the porch, I stood up and held out my hand to introduce myself. “Carter Roberts.”

  “Carl Foltz.” Once again, a massive hand that could crush mine without even trying took my hand in a firm but gentle handshake.

  “Thank you for agreeing to this interview. My editor wanted me to assure you of complete anonymity. I know that there are only a select few who even know about this article at all and only three people know your true identity.” This was true. My editor wanted to make sure I emphasized that fact personally.

  “That is the only reason why I agreed to do it. Actually, I’m still not sold on the whole idea but Matt here said he wanted it done. I told that Mr. Strong you work for that I wanted to read the finished copy before I would sign off on it. I don’t need no shit coming down on us because of it.” Mr. Foltz was looking me dead in my eye and I knew he meant business. I could also see his reluctance, which told me it wasn’t going to be easy interviewing him.

  While Carl and I were introducing ourselves, Matt had gone back into the house. He returned now, bringing me a refill of lemonade, and Carl an ice tea and lemonade mixture. With Carl and Matt standing side by side, I again was astonished at how much they looked alike. Matt was probably an inch or so taller than Carl, and the age difference was obvious, but other than that, they could have been the same person. Both were naturally masculine and never would anyone suspect that they were gay.

  “I think I’ll go in and get some lunch going,” Matt announced.

  Carl only nodded towards Matt as he sat down and took a long sip of his drink. The simple act of watching him as he swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, made my stomach quiver. The man was pure sex on legs.

  “Um… mind if I tape our conversation, Carl?” I asked as I pulled out a digital mini-recorder, writing pad, and pen.

  “Uh… No. I don’t guess so.” He didn’t seem upset but still not quite trusting either.

  “If there is anything that is uncomfortable for you, just say so. I don’t want to make you feel pressured in anyway, but I do think that your… um… situation is quite unique and very intriguing, for a lack of a better word.” For some reason, I was now anxious and wanting these guys' story.

  “Okay, no worries there, bud. If something bothers me, I’ll let you know up front, no question about it.” He smiled, but not a happy smile, it felt more like a challenge.

  “All I ask is that you don’t kill me or anything,” I tried to joke. It didn’t go over very well from the look I got from Carl. “Let me first get the biggest question out of the way and break the ice here. When did you and your son, Matt, first become lovers?”

  Chapter 2

  “YOU DON’T HOLD any punches, do ya boy?” Carl said with a more than slightly shocked look on his face.

  “I’ve learned that when dealing with sensitive subjects, the best way to approach them is head on. Getting the discomfort out of the way always makes it easier.” Being a total professional, but showing I could be sensitive, open, and caring was something that I had learned to do early on.

  Both of us sat in silence for a few moments enjoying our cool drinks. Carl looked as if he was readying himself to answer the very personal question. I also noticed that he was relaxing a bit. I hoped that meant that he would be more open during the interview.

  “I’ve got a list of questions to ask you and Matt. What I’d like to do is interview each of you separately and then together, if that is okay?” As any good reporter, I came prepared with every possible question I could think of. I remembered when I was compiling this list how turned off I was to the whole subject and how much I didn�
��t want to do this story. Now, I was more than anxious to get to know these two extremely handsome and masculine men. Needless to say, I was a little intrigued.

  “I guess that’s okay,” he said.

  “Great. I’m just going to ask you to be as open and honest as you can. As you said, you do have final say on this, so if you don’t feel comfortable with something in print, that would be the time to edit it. But if you’d just do your best to answer them now, we can all work on the final product later. I want to present your relationship as honestly and openly as possible, while being as respectful as I can. The one thing I won’t do is put any personal bias, good or bad, in the article.” I watched Carl’s face closely as I was giving him this information. This also seemed to relax him a bit more.

  “Okay, I’m going to trust you on this… for now anyway.” Carl wasn’t exactly smiling, but he did have a mischievous twinkle in his eye that hadn’t been there earlier.

  “Thanks, Carl. I’m going to turn the recorder on now and just go through some of the questions that I’ve prepared.” He nodded his consent.

  Carter Roberts: “Carl, when did your relationship with Matt, your son, become sexual?”

  Carl Foltz: “Eight years ago. Matt was twenty years old.”

  Carter Roberts: “Would you tell me how it started?”

  Carl Foltz: “Matt was in his second year of college at Nebraska (University of Nebraska) and was livin’ on campus. It was August, and Matt was already at school since he was on a football scholarship and practice had already started. He had been home for the summer, helpin’ out on the farm, so I was ready to get out and have a little fun. I always rented a motel room whenever I went out in Lincoln, just made things easier, especially if I got lucky.”

  “Anyways, there’s this bar I liked to go to in Lincoln. It was a real man’s bar if you know what I mean. The guys that go there aren’t twinks or anything like that for the most part, but men who you’d never guess were gay. The weekend that I picked happened to coincide with an event that this particular bar did a couple of times a year. They call it ‘Buds and Suds Night’. They would float the entire bar in soap suds, turn most of the lights out, and gave everyone these light-up flex tubes that you could wrap around your wrist or hang around your neck or where ever you wanted to put them. As you can imagine, some guys were quite inventive as to where they put them. Now, most guys would check most of their clothes, except for underwear and boots. If you wore your clothes, they’d end up soakin’ wet from all the soap suds.”

  “To make a long story short, I got into a pretty heavy make out session with this guy who was tall like me, which isn’t all that common. It was towards the back of the bar and with it being real dark I didn’t see who it was, but I could feel and I sure liked what I felt. The guy dropped down and blew me right there in the bar. Now, ya gotta realize that when he did that, the soap suds were well over his head. I thought it only right that I return the favor and so I did.”

  “After that I wanted to take it to the next level so I asked the guy if he’d be interested in goin’ to my hotel room with me. He agreed. Now before you ask, it was very loud in there so it wasn’t easy to hear, so I didn’t recognize his voice, and he didn’t mine neither.”

  “When we got to the coat check, where there was light, only then did we see each other. Needless to say, we both freaked out. I guess my instincts as a father, or parental instincts or whatever you want to call it kicked in. I slammed him against the wall, asking him what the hell he was doing in a gay bar.” [Carl chuckling] “Of course he asked me the same question. A bouncer stepped up separating us thinkin’ that we were about to come to blows. I told him to get his clothes on and meet me outside.”

  “Once we were outside I really lost it, I guess. I wasn’t handlin’ it well at all. I mean think about it. I had just made out hot and heavy with my own son, and he’d blown me and I’d blown him. Damn, I still remember how sick to my stomach I was, thinkin’ that I had just come in my own son’s mouth. That’s some pretty sick shit.”

  “The whole time I was standin’ there, freakin’ totally out, and going off, Matt was standin’ there not saying anything, lookin’ at the ground. When I finally pulled my head out of my ass and looked at Matt, he had tears runnin’ down his face. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hated myself right then. Not only had I just had sex with my son, but I was reamin’ him out, not thinking about all the shit he was prob’ly going through.”

  [Carl was visibly upset and his voice was cracking]

  “Then I guess I did the most natural thing a parent could or would do; I grabbed him close and held him. He was stiff at first, but eventually he hugged me back. I’m not sure how long we stood there like that, but it felt like a lifetime, was prob’ly only a minute or so.”

  “When I looked at him, I knew that we were gonna to have to talk, and it wasn’t going to be able wait, neither. I didn’t even ask him. I just put him in my truck and took him to my motel room. Once inside, we had a hard time lookin’ at each other at first. I’d never been so uncomfortable in my life.”

  “I think the hardest thing for me was when I asked Matt if he was gay. The picture of him sittin’ on the bed in that motel room, shoulders slumped over, lookin’ at that floor, will be with me forever. Not lookin’ up, he said that he was. Said he’d always known he was attracted to guys and not girls.”

  “There had been this girl that he had dated all through high school, Lisa. I asked him about her, and he told me that they were just friends and had never really been romantically inclined. Basically, they were coverin’ for each other. I don’t know what she was hidin’ and didn’t ask.”

  “There were so many emotions runnin’ through my mind. I was havin’ a real hard time tryin’ to focus on any one thing. Being a father is never easy, but there is always somethin’ there that makes you want to protect your kids. Puttin’ your kids over everything else, and that is what ended up comin’ out first.”

  “I told him that it was okay he was gay and I’d always love him no matter what. If that was who he was, then it was fine by me. I also made sure to tell him I was proud of the man he was becomin’ and nothin’ would change that. I was and still am very proud of Matt.”

  “The next part was the hardest: dealin’ with what had happened between us. There was nothin’ that could have prepared me for that. I want to make it perfectly clear that never, ever, had I thought of having sex with my son before that night. Never. Of course, I had noticed what a good lookin’ kid he was as he was growin’ up. It was clear to me, and everyone who knew us, that he looked more and more like me as he got older. Hell, it was like I was lookin’ in a mirror sometimes. He was always a good kid growin’ up, never any real trouble. He was smart, did what he needed to do, and was a good person with a big heart. He might look like me but he has his mother’s temperament, that’s for certain.”

  [Carl smiled the first real smile. It was clear he was speaking from the heart.]

  “It’s the next part that shook me to the very depths of my bein’. I told Matt how very sorry I was about what happened that night and how upset I was that it had happened at all. He looked up, for the first time meetin’ me eye to eye, and said that he wasn’t. That he was glad it had.”

  “I have to tell you, I was so stunned that I felt like I was havin’ an out of body experience or somethin’. I was there but I wasn’t there. I was so shocked I couldn’t move or even think. I really don’t know how to describe it. Then Matt leaned over and started kissing me, and not like a son kisses his father if you know what I mean. He was laying one on me and my body was reactin’ before I pulled myself together enough to push him away.”

  [Carl stood up and started pacing the porch. He took off his hat and ran his hands through his thick dark blonde hair several times before sitting back down to continue.]

  “Of course, I totally lost it. I told him that we couldn’t do that, he was my son and it was wrong. What blew me away was his comebac
k. He said it was clear that I was also gay and since that was already breaking the rules for most everyone, then what was the difference if we were together sexually. That it wasn’t like either of us could get pregnant and that was the reason for most laws against such things. He presented such a good and logical argument that I had nothing to fall back on. Something else he got from his mother. I never won an argument with her either. But I stood my ground and said that it wasn’t going to happen, and that both of us should forget that it ever happened at all.”

  “He seemed to be able to accept that, but started asking all kinds of questions about me being gay. By then it was already 3:30 in the morning, and I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I needed time to think. I had no idea how I was going to explain everythin’, so I told him that I was going to take a shower. I suggested that he just crash there and that we’d talk in the mornin’.”

  “I took my shower and when I came back into the room Matt was already in bed, turned on his side facin’ the window of the room with the lights off. I put on some gym shorts and crawled into bed. I could tell he wasn’t asleep yet, but I didn’t say anything. I laid there thinkin’ for a long time before I finally fell asleep.”

  “The next thing I know, I woke up getting’ a blowjob. I really tried to push him off me. I did try, I swear I did. My dick had other ideas though. I came. It happened so fast, but it was one of the best orgasms I’d ever had. I didn’t admit that to myself at the time. That was much later. It was one of those times when after you come you can’t move. Ya know, like you’re paralyzed or somethin’?”

  “Anyways, Matt finished me off and then he was over me and started kissin’ me. To this day, I don’t know if I was so stunned from coming or still half asleep or what it was, but I let him, and I kissed him back. I don’t know for how long, but I do know it was special. When I finally came to my senses, I pushed him offa me. I told him that we couldn’t do it, that it was so wrong. I was so mad at myself for giving into to him. I don’t know if I’d ever cried in front of Matt, other than when his mom died, or when I lost my mother, but I was cryin’ then. I tried to get up but he kept me pinned, not letting me. I guess I could have gotten up, but I just couldn’t right then.”