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By Scudder James Jr
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Boca Dreams
By Scudder James Jr
You can’t correct the past.
Or can you?
Stephen’s not proud of who he was back in boarding school—spoiled and a player. Now, at the holiday reunion ten years later, he has a chance to show his former classmates who he really is: out and proud, devoted to helping others, and partnered with Victor.
Stephen understands why Victor, who grew up in a poor and abusive household, hates the rich kids at the reunion, but his attitude is ruining everything. Luckily Stephen bumps into Aaron, a former grunge rocker who has also changed. Stephen never forgot their one steamy night together.
With the help of three very unusual personifications of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, can Stephen revisit his mistakes and find the happiness that’s eluded him?
Love before the Tenth Reunion
STEPHEN HAD skipped his fifth high school reunion because he’d been teaching English in Santiago, Chile, too far away to fly back to Florida for a weekend. Now he’d been back in the US for two years, working in a language school in Tampa and living with Victor, an opinionated sexy guy proud to be part of a successful startup company. He wanted to bring Victor to the Seaboard Academy Holiday Fête.
“Are you kidding,” Victor said one morning, kicking the sheets off the futon on his way to the shower. “A reunion is bad enough. What’s this Fête thing?”
“The Holiday Fête is an every-three-year event for the whole school,” said Stephen, naked and arranging the pillows. “There’ll be people from all classes. Seaboard is a boarding school, so the parties are like college reunions.”
“I wouldn’t go to my own college reunion.”
“Being away from home when you’re fourteen years old is different from starting college at eighteen. We grew up together. Those friends are like family, like it or not.”
“You’re spoiled and want to show off.”
“Just come. Seaboard is beautiful. So is Boca Raton. You’ll like it. Think of it as a weekend vacation.”
“Pampered rich shits congratulating themselves for being superior is a stomach-turning waste of time.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“Your name is Stephen, not Steven.”
“Pronounced exactly the same. Only the spelling is different.”
“Exactly, fancy boy.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you even like me.”
“You WASPs are so uptight that sports or sex are your only outlets for energy. I don’t care about sports.” Victor removed his towel, leaving him naked in the middle of their apartment. He started snapping rat tails. “You’re good in bed.”
Stephen caught the tail just before it made contact with his balls a second time. He yanked the towel out of Victor’s grip. If they hadn’t just finished a Saturday morning round of sex, leaving them hungry for brunch, he might have considered round two. Victor looked great standing there stark naked, tight, toned, and glistening with sweat, his eyes smoldering, his silky bedhead impressive. His chin was dark with stubble that he hadn’t yet trimmed, a hint of hair tempted Stephen to touch his chest, and a thin, silky trail led down to his dick, impressively full even when at rest.
“Why do you keep calling me a WASP? I’m just a normal white guy like you.”
“I’m Louisiana Cajun. My mother cleaned houses for people like you.”
“You grew up in a Tallahassee.”
“Where my mother cleaned houses for people like you, and my father polished their floors and sometimes repaired something. Now the WASP sucks my dick.”
“I love sucking your dick.”
Victor smiled, his full lips curling and his eyes dancing. Stephen joked with him that there were two Victors, the snarky one and the playful one. Victor himself seemed to think the snarky one was tough and sexy, but the playful one was the one that made Stephen’s heart sing. Naked in their room, Victor winked.
“I don’t want to go to your reunion,” Victor continued.
“Holiday Fête, not a reunion; the reunion isn’t until spring. And I already won the lottery for a room in the Alumni House.” Hadn’t Stephen gone to every party at Victor’s company, like he cared about innovations in financial services communication? “Seaboard was important to me. I want you to meet my friends.”
“Growing up, I hated people like you. Spoiled shits who would have nothing to do with me.”
“Victor, if that’s what you say, I have to believe you, but I never saw stuff like that.”
“The perfect little blond boy from Palm Beach wouldn’t. Boarding school in Boca Raton? Nothing has ever been kept from you.”
“You’ll like my friends.”
“They’ll think I’m a crass idiot.”
“If it makes you feel better, as the IT superstar of a superstar startup, you probably make more money than most of them.”
“True.”
“You’ll think they’re cute.”
“All blondies like you?”
“No, you’ve seen pictures.”
“An added insult that rich people are good-looking.”
“Victor, why are you impossible?”
HOLY SHIT, it was the perfect high school Hollywood moment.
The Holiday Fête was legendary. Keep the alumni happy, so they’ll shower the school with money. Seaboard Academy was manicured beauty, rich with fountains and columns. It could pass as a corporate retreat for a massive dot-com.
Stephen thought Seaboard had saved him. Junior high in Palm Beach had sucked. Guys made fun of him for being girly boy. What began as insults from a few jocks soon spread to derision from the whole eighth grade. Thank God his parents had always planned that he’d go to Seaboard. When he started boarding school, he did all he could to prove that he was the opposite of girly boy. He tried to dress, walk, and talk like the popular jocks. He got a bad reputation for moving too quickly with girls. Freshman fall, he’d made out with a freakishly large number. By second semester, none would go out with him. People thought he was a player. Not the worst reputation for a closeted gay guy. Back then he told himself he wasn’t a jerk; it was just survival. The stakes weren’t that high, yet. For Stephen at fourteen, fooling around was mostly making out and some second base. He hadn’t done most of the stories he’d heard about himself. Junior and senior years, he settled into more mature long-term, six-month relationships with girls. But still, his reputation as a player stuck.
Then there were sports. Although at Seaboard Academy, there were football, soccer, and lacrosse teams, the sports hierarchy at boarding school was different and worked to his advantage. Those teams were still considered cool, but so were others. Forget about water polo. Stephen rowed crew. Think sexy guys pulling oars in boats. Showering rowers were a naked explosion of perfectly buffed bodies, sturdy legs, amazing butts, defined arms… perfect for Stephen’s spank bank. He himself developed a jock’s body. Most importantly, no one saw him throw a ball like a girl. Spring, he played golf.
Bottom line: at Seaboard Academy, Stephen became a gentleman jock with an apocryphal reputation as a player. It wasn’t until college that he woke up to the guy he really wanted to be. Of course it was easier to do that when he kept waking up naked next to examples of the kind of guy he wanted to be. College was where the good part of life started.
Stephen hadn’t updated his Seaboard friends about his new, emerging self. That was an easy part about going to college in California, then taking a job a ten-hour flight away in South America. Although he had already returned to Florida, nobody kn
ew he was gay. Nobody knew about Victor. He was out with his family, college friends, and coworkers at the language school, pretty much everyone everywhere except for at Seaboard. Those people, he’d told Victor, were like family. They were. Maybe that was why he was telling them last.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Victor drove through the front gates, fountains and palm trees wrapped in lights for the Holiday Fête.
“Ready?” Stephen asked.
“I can’t fucking do this.”
“Thank you for coming. Seriously, thank you, Victor. This could be fun—my coming out party.” He leaned over to give him a kiss, but Victor turned away. “Hey, relax. This’ll be easy. Maybe nobody from my class is here. It’ll just be like a normal party of strangers.”
Heads turned in their direction as Victor and Stephen entered the quad of perfectly clean white-and-pink stucco buildings. A small crowd of about fifty people stood beneath a photographer balanced on a stepladder. “Stephen, hurry!” popped up from someone. Followed by another “Stephen!” And another. And then a chant, “Stephen, Stephen, Stephen!”
A sign said it was the Seaboard Young Alumni/ae Group. Huh? Maybe the impending tenth reunion attracted more from his class to the Holiday Fête.
Marissa, in a Santa’s hat, emerged from the crowd, grabbed Stephen’s arm, and pulled him in. “Who’s that?” She nodded toward Victor, who had hung back and was leaning against a white column.
“He’s got to be someone’s boyfriend,” said Sena next to her, also in a Santa’s hat. “He’s too cute. We would have known if he’d been a Seaboard student. Totally someone’s boyfriend.”
“Stephen, you were talking to him. Whom did he say he’s with?”
Stephen watched Marissa. Her hair had a wave and the shine of red highlights, different from the silky black of high school. Years ago, she’d declined the position of president of the Asian American society and instead ran for school ambassador, her slogan: The Universal Face of Seaboard. She’d won.
“Stephen, wake up. Whom is he with?”
“Me.”
Marissa and Sena looked blankly at him.
The photographer asked everyone to stop talking, just give him two minutes and he’d be done.
“You? What do you mean you?” Marissa skewed her face as if he’d been speaking some unknown language.
“He’s my boyfriend. We’ve been living together for a year in Tampa.”
“Okay, everyone, look up. Smile!”
“Stephen Williams has a boyfriend!” Marissa jumped from the crowd and yelled straight at Victor. “Stephen Williams’s boyfriend, get yourself over here!”
The discouraged photographer dropped his shoulders, and he slumped out of his picture-taking pose.
Marissa scurried over to skulking Victor. He shook his head, but she grabbed his hand and kept pulling until he relented. Marissa always got her way. Even years ago, when Stephen had told her that he was too drunk and didn’t want to be jacked off, she had insisted and worked the miracle of one of his few orgasms with a female.
“Stephen Williams is gay?” someone in the crowd said.
“The hot guy is his boyfriend?”
“Of course it is.”
“Fucking Stephen.”
Marissa brought Victor to the crowd, stood him beside Stephen, and put their hands together.
“You make more sense, now. Oh my God, is there a cuter couple?” She kissed Stephen’s cheek and then Victor’s. “Congratulations.”
Even people Stephen didn’t know wanted to congratulate them and tell the two of them about gay, lesbian, or trans sisters, brothers, cousins, or friends and things they tried a few times but decided it wasn’t really for them, no judgment, everything was cool, and they were better for it. An unexpected number of people said they identified as bi, even if they hadn’t done anything about it yet.
Victor received 100 percent of the attention he’d said he hoped to avoid. In truth, he wasn’t captain antisocial. He was charming. In Tampa, except for with Stephen, he asked so many questions that he made people feel important. Stephen wondered if being socially savvy was part of why Victor was such a successful tech guy. He should have known not to worry about Victor at the Holiday Fête. Marissa swept him away. Surrounded by interested strangers, Victor snapped to his regular social self.
“I thought we had something in common” came from behind him.
Stephen turned around. He knew the voice and something about the face, but everything else was different.
“That’s cool. I’d prefer not to be recognized. I’m a better person at twenty-eight than I was at eighteen.”
“Aaron?”
“You read my nametag.”
“Nope,” said Stephen. “Your eyes.”
Aaron Pérez had been one of the few rockers at Seaboard. Of course there had been rock groups, but he’d taken his seriously, and, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his mother was head of the classics language department, his father foreign languages, both obviously serious about academics, he’d said he’d wanted to skip college and move to New York to become famous. Dress code for guys at the academy was coat and tie, but nothing for hair. Nonetheless, he’d been the only guy with a ponytail, as if there’d been a gentlemen’s agreement that one didn’t do that at Seaboard. He’d also been creative about what constituted a tie—a long tube sock or pantyhose until the faculty introduced a rule that defined a necktie as materials intended for the purpose of neckwear. That was when he started wearing kids’ polyester clip-on ties and bolo shoestring ties that had reminded Stephen of movies about Texas.
“Nice entrance,” Aaron said. “I guess you wanted everyone to know you’re gay. Mission accomplished.”
“Marissa hasn’t changed.”
“Is anyone surprised that she does PR.”
“Her job is PR?”
“She does public relations for the city of Miami. She’s perfect. She knows everyone and everywhere to go, and she’s always there.”
“Perfect Marissa.”
Aaron shuffled his feet and seemed to hold his breath before going forward. “Stephen, you’ve disappeared. No one knows where you’ve been.”
“Teaching English in Chile, now in Tampa.”
“I know that. Our jobs are listed in class notes. I guess your boyfriend answers the question of what you’ve really been up to.”
“And you?” Stephen asked.
Aaron had obviously been up to a lot. The ponytail was gone, and his hair was short and full, clearly the result of a high-end cut. With less distracting hair, it was easier to notice the strength of his chin and jaw. And those eyes… those eyes! How could they have been both darker and brimming with life at the same time? He’d lost the shaggy, baggy clothes, and black concert T-shirts popping beneath white button-downs. Guys under age fifty didn’t seem to wear ties to the Holiday Fête, probably the result of prematurely required neckwear. Most young alums looked crisp, athletic, and casual. But Aaron stood there in an expensive-looking silk blazer and a collarless black shirt that zippered at the neck. His beige pants were better fitting than traditional khakis and hugged his thighs. His shoes were suede ankle boots.
Stephen felt like a superficial jerk for thinking that, because of how he looked, Aaron was a guy with important things going on.
“Stephen, are you going to follow up on my I thought we had something in common comment?”
“You’re gay?”
“You knew that.”
“I did?”
“Our night before graduation didn’t mean anything to you?”
Big sigh. How to tell Aaron that he’d fantasized about him for years. How to tell him that he was the reason he’d come out. The tension between them that night, just the two of them in the dark park by the pond. The two of them talking about once-important things that he couldn’t remember. Of what they didn’t say and didn’t do, of how they didn’t touch each other, of how Aaron looked in the moonlight…. How Stephen had thought about him
constantly the summer after graduation, how he was part of his resolve freshman year at college to let that first guy kiss him. Aaron’s eyes, those perfect hazel eyes with flecks of gold. How he’d dreamt and dreamt and fantasized and role-played in his mind different endings to their night by the pond. How he’d do anything to have done things differently.
“Aaron, I owe you an apology.”
“No, you don’t.” Aaron smiled. “We were only eighteen. You can’t blame us for not being ready. Were you supposed to kiss me? Was I supposed to kiss you? Instead we sat there, shoulder to shoulder for hours, talking, not talking, not doing anything, but it kind of felt like everything. First, we needed to break from our Seaboard cocoon.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
“It seems like you’re telling me that you remember our night.”
“Are you kidding me? Aaron, you’re why I came out freshman year at Berkeley. I’d fantasized so much about what felt like intimacy with you that I wanted that to be my life. You were a window into a new world.”
“Now you have Victor.”
“Now I’ll say what I should have said years ago. Thank you.”
“How is Victor?”
“Great,” Stephen said too quickly. “And you, what’s up with you?”
“Not so fast.” The air wasn’t the Florida thick and humid it so often was. It was smooth. “Stephen, you were a player. You’re still handsome, and you’re an out, gay man. I expected you to be a dog. But you’ve shown up with a live-in boyfriend. Are you sure he’s not someone you met on the drive here?”
“Aaron, I wasn’t really a dog. I mostly just made out with a bunch of girls. People exaggerate. Stories grow. I’m not proud, but I probably encouraged it.”
“So today you’re not a Grindr addict, hook-up-with-whoever kind of guy?”
“We’ve all done stuff,” said Stephen. “But I’m happier in a relationship.”
“So now you’re a different version of someone’s fantasy.”
Stephen saw Victor halfway through the crowd on the way back to him. “Actually, I’m pretty embarrassed about my old reputation.”
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