“Why,” he asked, squinting with the effort to understand what could very well be the question that would clear this all up for me, “would Starbucks name their delicious milky coffee treat after some old Italian guy everyone hates?”
Or, maybe not. “That’s a ‘macchiato,’ honey. Not a ‘Machiavelli. ’ ”
“I thought that sounded wrong,” Freddy said, shoving me in the shoulder like I was the one who’d made a mistake. “I just didn’t want to embarrass you by correcting you. I’m considerate that way.”
The funny thing is that made perfect sense to him. Freddy’s self-confidence in the face of even his obvious mistakes was his one perfect defense.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s me. Always confusing my caffeinated beverages with reviled Renaissance-era writers. It always pisses off the baristas when I order a grande skinny Michelangelo.”
“Not to mention confusing boys who want to get on TV with those who want to get in to your pants,” Freddy added. “You know, that’s something you might want to look at if you’re going to continue working as a casting director.”
Damn that Freddy. Maybe he had shed some light. I just didn’t want to see what it revealed.
“Well…” I began when the DVD was done. We were sitting on the couch in front of my too-big-for-the-room fifty-five-inch TV, and I turned to see his face. “What did you think?”
“It was great. Like one of those jokes you’d hear from old comedians,” Freddy said. “A dominatrix, a gay porn star, and a purple dinosaur walk into a bar. Only the bar is really a TV talk show, and the bartender is a Long Island hausfrau who somehow wound up as its host.” He stopped.
“That’s a decent set-up,” I conceded. “But it needs a punch line.”
“Yeah, but the only one I can think of involves the reveal that the hausfrau’s son turns out to have done more kinky shit than the three guests put together, and I’m afraid if I say it, you’re gonna slap me on the head.”
I slapped him on the head anyway.
“So very big ‘ow,’ ” Freddy whined, rubbing his close-cut hair. “I hate it when I’m right.”
“Lucky for you it hardly ever happens,” I said.
“You know, you’re not too old for a spanking,” Freddy said. Faster than I could react, he reached out and threw an arm around my neck. “Come here, you little…”
“Would you cut it out?” I said, laughing.
“What, you think Mistress Vesper is the only gal in town who knows how to treat a bad boy?” He pulled more strongly and I pushed my hands against his chest. Pecs like granite pushed back. I might have felt his nipples swell under my touch, but everything about Freddy was so hard I really couldn’t tell.
Entwined as we were, it would have been tough for someone watching to tell if we were embracing or wrestling. We were both breathing hard. From exertion, I told myself. Between that and the grunting we were making a lot of noise.
Which is why we didn’t hear the door open.
“Ahem,” Tony said, his voice coming with no warning from the doorway. “Am I interrupting something?”
He didn’t sound friendly.
5
Home Bodies
“Yeah,” Freddy said, still holding me. “Unless you want to join in.”
“Love to,” Tony said, walking toward us. “What’s it going to be? Noogies? Pink bellies?”
“That’s too good for the likes of him,” Freddy answered. “I was going for a full spanking.”
“I’ll hold his legs,” Tony offered.
For the longest time, I’d worried about letting Freddy and Tony spend time together. My feelings for each of them were too complicated to risk their being in the same room. It was like the threat of matter and antimatter combining.
Once things settled with Tony, though, it became inevitable I’d have to find a way to get them at least comfortable with each other. They were both too important to me to give up one. To my surprise, they got along pretty well. Turns out they actually enjoyed having someone to complain to about me. I didn’t mind being the butt of their jokes if it kept peace in the family.
Speaking of butts, mine was saved when Tony’s son, Rafi, raced in between his dad’s legs. “No ’panking Kebbin!” he ordered. He threw himself on my back, wrapping his arms protectively around my neck.
The message was clear-you’ll have to go through me to get to him.
I reached around to give him a reverse hug. “My hero,” I said. “How’s it going?”
Rafi craned his little head to whisper in my ear. “Were they weally going to ’pank you? ’Cause my daddy says ’panking is wrong.”
“Naw, little buddy. They were just funning.”
“Good,” Rafi said. “I missed you, Kebbin.”
“I missed you, too, little buddy.” I squeezed tighter. So did he. Which would have been very sweet if his arms weren’t crushing my windpipe.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Love hurts.
Tony saw my face turning red and stepped in to save me. “Hey, Rafman, I’m getting jealous.” He sat on a chair across from us and patted his thighs. “Get over here, you.”
Rafi abandoned me for the sweeter shores of his daddy’s lap, his favorite seat in the house. Mine, too, the little punk.
Freddy took that as an opportunity to make his exit. “Well, I’ll leave you to tonight’s reenactment of Two and a Half Men. Talk later?” he asked me.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“And you,” Freddy said, sinking to his knees to meet Rafi eye-to-eye, “didn’t even say hello to me tonight.”
“That’s ’cause I thought you were gonna ’pank my friend Kebbin,” he said, still a little wary.
“Well, do I at least get a good night?” Freddy asked.
Rafi rolled his eyes in a way that looked hysterical on a five-year-old. “Goo’ night, Fweddy,” he said condescendingly.
Freddy laughed and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night, slugger.”
Tony held his hand out for a fist bump. “ ’Night, Fred.”
Unlike most of my gay friends, Tony didn’t hug or kiss other guys for hellos or good-byes. But also unlike them, Tony didn’t consider himself gay. He’d been married before we got back together (after a brief fling in high school). The only good thing to come from that union was Rafi (his “real” name, as Tony’s Italian heritage might have suggested, was “Raphael,” although no one called him that unless they were very cross with him). Tony always maintained the only male he ever had sexual feelings for was me. Much, much more importantly, he also told me I was the only person, of any gender, he’d ever truly loved.
Somehow, we both counted on that being enough to see us through his ongoing process of accepting life as half of a same-sex couple. Because, despite the fact that he’d finally admitted to me that he had a son, and even letting me into the boy’s life, part of him still held back.
Which is why, as far as Rafi was concerned, his dad was just my friend. Even worse, Tony had Rafi thinking this was his apartment and I was the roommate. Which meant, on the nights Tony had visitation, I slept on the couch while Tony shared my bedroom with his son.
The activist in me thought this was an unforgivable betrayal of everything in which I believed. An ugly cover-up born of homophobia and self-hatred to which I should never have agreed.
But that political part of me was eclipsed by the simple truth that I’d been in love with Tony Rinaldi since I was fifteen years old, and he was the lanky pony boy two years my senior who lived down the block. He was the sexiest goddamn thing on two legs back then, and he’s only gotten better with age. I’d walk on hot coals for Tony, take a bullet, crawl across broken glass, insert whatever cliche you want, I’d do it for this complicated man who held my heart.
I’d even participate in this terrible, soul-crushing, and painful farce in which Tony, the most honorable man I knew, lies to his own son about his love for me.
I knew it hurt Tony, too. It wasn�
��t in his nature to act like this. To mislead his own flesh and blood. I also knew he felt guilty asking me to aid in that deception.
“God, Kevin,” he’d said. “He’s only five years old. He’s my son. How can I tell him about this? About us? His mom and I just separated a few months ago. Just give me-give him-some time. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course,” I’d told him. “We’ll know when the time is right.”
The problem was, that time seemed right to me from the start, but Tony didn’t seem to find it particularly imminent. Tony had been brought up as hetero as they come. His family, co-workers, and friends were old-school Catholics. For years, he regarded the few months in high school in which we’d fooled around as a bizarre detour from his otherwise straight path.
As far as I knew, he hadn’t told anyone about us. It was a Herculean effort for him to admit his feelings even to me. What would it take for him to tell the rest of the world?
In the meantime, we were building a life together on a shaky foundation of half-truths and denial.
I thought of Rafi’s arms squeezing the air out of me. I had the terrible feeling that, one way or another, these Rinaldi boys were gonna be the death of me.
Love hurts.
Three hours later, with Tony’s tongue halfway down my throat and his hands gripping my denim-covered ass as I straddled him on the couch, I was feeling a lot better.
Rafi had fallen asleep twenty minutes earlier in my bed. His light snores were like a reverse alarm-as long as we heard them, we knew we were safe.
Tony snuck out to help me make up the sofa bed where I’d be sleeping. We got distracted.
“Mmmm,” he moaned into my ear. “You feel so fucking good.” The growl in his voice almost had me coming in my pants.
I answered him by grinding deeper into his lap. “You like that?”
“Yesss,” he hissed. “I wish…”
“What?” I licked him from his ear to the base of his neck.
“Aw, man,” Tony groaned. He grabbed my hips and pulled me even closer, crushing our absurdly covered erections against each other. “I just… I mean…” He nodded toward the door of my bedroom. “He’s twenty feet away, Kevvy.”
He pushed me back. “I can’t, babe. Not with him right there. What if he wakes up?”
“We’ll hear him,” I panted, scooting myself back to where I’d just been. I liked that place. That was my happy place.
Tony put his hands on my shoulders. “Honey, you know how we are when we get going. We wouldn’t hear a bomb, let alone a four-year-old ninja in footie pajamas.”
“I promise,” I said, leaning in for a kiss, “we’ll be quiet.”
Tony leaned back. “When are we ever quiet?”
He had a point. “We could tie a bell around his neck,” I suggested. “Or put up a force field. Have those been invented yet?”
“Sorry, babe. He’s only here for two nights. Think you can hold on for that long?”
I grabbed his still steely cock through his dress slacks. “I don’t know. Can I? Wouldn’t someone notice?”
“Ha, ha,” Tony said, not amused. “You really know how to hurt a guy, don’t you?” He removed my hand from its perch.
“ Me hurt a guy?” I asked accusingly. “You’re the one trying to kill me with blue balls.”
“Poor baby,” he said. His hand slid up my thigh toward my aforementioned body parts. “Are they really blue? Maybe I should take a look…”
Yes! Score one for the home team.
“If you promise to be quiet,” Tony began.
“Like a mouse…”
“I mean, really, Kevvy…”
“A mute mouse.” His hand reached my crotch and rested there. “A mute mouse wearing a gag.” He squeezed and I gasped. Quietly.
“I guess we can…”
Then the bomb went off.
“Daddy,” came a small voice from the bedroom. “I’m tirsty. Can I have some water?”
“Sure, sweetie.” Tony tossed me off his lap like I’d suddenly burst into flame. “One minute.”
He walked, uncomfortably I’m glad to say, to the kitchen and returned with a half-full plastic kid’s tumbler. Just before going into the bedroom, he turned to me with a guilty expression. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
I nodded. “Me too,” I whispered.
“Daddy?” Rafi called.
“Right here, honey.”
“Go,” I told him.
“He’s probably just not used to being here. I’d better lie with him until he falls asleep. I’ll try and sneak back out when the coast is clear.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, the words sounding sharper than I intended. I stood and turned my back to him, opening the sofa into a bed. “I mean, I’m beat, too. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Kevvy,” Tony implored.
“Daddy,” Rafi whined.
“Tony,” I barked. “Just go. I’m fine. Good night.”
“Good night,” Tony said, sounding sad. He walked into the bedroom.
“Nite, Kebbin!” Rafi called, happy now that his dad was in sight again.
“Night, little man,” I responded.
It was turning into the closing moments of The Waltons, only no one was in their right bed.
I was tempted to go in and give Rafi another good night kiss, but I held back. He really was very sweet with me. He’d already taken to throwing his arms around me and saying “I love you, Kebbin,” and I always hugged him right back.
I never answered in kind, though. I wasn’t quite sure how we all fit. I liked Rafi very much. But there was no connection there. I worried about getting too close to him and Tony changing his mind. Leaving me behind for the safer choices. It made me sad.
I lay on the uncomfortable sofa bed. I thought of Tony twenty feet away yet in another world. One where he was a daddy, not another guy’s boyfriend. I knew he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to successfully combine the two. Another depressing thought upon which to dwell.
Luckily, I had the pounding pain of my unrelieved and aching testicles to distract me.
Lust hurts.
6
Driven
“He was even better,” Andrew whispered to me, although we were behind the closed doors of his glass-walled private office and no one could hear us unless we screamed, “than advertised.”
“That’s great,” I said politely, hoping if I showed the minimal possible interest I’d be spared the grisly details.
It was three days after Tony had left me blue-balled on the couch. The episode of my mom’s show that Freddy had sneak-peeked at in my apartment had aired to the world the day before. Grateful for the exposure, and pleased with how he’d come across on screen, Brock Peters called Andrew and invited him out for drinks. They wound up at Brock’s place.
“There’s this scene in The Legion of Super Twinks vs. the Beastly Bears of Doom where Brock hooks his heels behind his ears, which I’d always assumed was done with CGI. Well, it turns out he really can.. ”
I tried not to listen. Tony’s next visitation with Rafi wasn’t for another few days, and I was hoping he and I could finally finish our lovemaking. I’d have to remember to call him when I got out of here.
“Then, just like he did to Rod Racer in Buffguy, the Vampire Player, he flipped me over and…”
I also had to call Freddy. He’d left a message that he had gotten together last night with Cody, a guy I’d introduced him to a few months ago. They’ve been dating on and off since then-the closest Freddy’s come to a relationship in, well, ever. I knew Cody was frustrated that they weren’t more of a couple, but he was also glad to take what he could get. I thought Cody was a terrific catch, and I hoped Freddy had good news about how things were going.
“All of a sudden, Brock does this thing from Gone with the Rimmed where he takes a guy’s ass and…” Andrew’s eyes were gleaming and I swear he was starting to drool.
“Enough!” I said, unable to tune out more of A
ndrew’s endless recap. “What was this-actual sex between the two of you, or the porno version of a Civil War reenactment?”
The light in Andrew’s eyes blinked out so quickly that I felt a little guilty for pulling the curtain. “I know, I know,” he sighed. “It was kind of weird. Brock was nice enough, and, well, you saw, incredibly good-looking. Technically, the sex was great, too. Quite the workout. Very, ah, aerobic.
“But I couldn’t separate the real person from the guy in the movies. Everything we did felt like a rerun, even if it was the first time I was actually in the scene, as opposed to just watching it.
“What really ruined it for me, though, was the feeling that he was performing. Putting on a show for me. Like he had to be ‘Brock Peters’ as opposed to a mere ordinary lay.
“The whole thing was a little depressing. Brock seemed so… mechanical about it. It makes me look at porn differently. Maybe it’s not much fun after all.”
I thought about my own time in the sex trade. “You shouldn’t generalize,” I said. “I’m sure there are some guys in porn who are totally jaded and burnt out, but I’m sure there are others who keep it in perspective. You’re a full-time TV producer used to running the show, but it’s not like that affects every other aspect of your life. You don’t go into the supermarket and tell the manager where to stack the cereal boxes, or rearrange the lighting when you go to a club. There’s a difference between what you are and what you do. A healthy person can separate the two.” Who had recently told me that?
Andrew looked thoughtful. “You think?”
I know. “Yeah. I hear you talk about Brock, and I figure it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. Did years of being in porn make him into a self-centered lover, who’s more concerned with technique and dazzling his partner than he is with forming an actual connection? Or, was he a ridiculously handsome, narcissistic stud who got into movies because he already saw sex as a ‘performance’? One in which he was the star?”
Third You Die (kevin connor mysteries) Page 4