History: Treading Water

 

We finished my last pre-blog, personal history with me shooting my first load in a guy’s ass at my first visit to a bathhouse.   We went to breakfast (though it was 1pm) at Tiffany’s.  We parked and my brother led us to a door with no name on it.  Inside it was dark and decorated like a barn.  I desperately needed food and it was good.  At 2pm the lights went off.  I was groped by my brother’s roommate and told it was now Crazy Daze--drinks were half price for as long the current song blared on the sound system.  We ordered.  The four men I was with were having a blast, but I did not do much of either the groping during the blackouts or the drinking as the lights came back on.

There was one good moment there.  A hot construction worker—blond, muscled and tool-belted—arrived at our table.  As it was Sunday, he may have just been in butch drag (It was the years of the Village People, after all).  He wanted me.  And only me.  He pulled me out of our booth and kissed me.  Hard and demanding.  He ground his muscled body against my reed-thin one.  He took my hand and placed it on his thigh where his hard cock was engorged under the denim.  I ended up taking his number—knowing I’d never call him—but used him as fantasy material for weeks, imagining us having sex at the bathhouse.

My brother’s break up with Jerry at the baths that night was never discussed with me or the family.  I am sure they had good sex together.  But deep down I often wondered if finding the most flamboyant man possible to introduce to our parents as a partner was more of a ploy to make my dad’s blood boil.

Two family dramas happened that winter.  My gay uncle, my mom’s brother, had a stroke and died a few days later.  At the same time, we recognized that my widowed paternal grandfather was failing—so my brother moved into his house to care for him.  My brother has told me repeatedly that he loved being there with this reserved, quiet man.  He opened up to my brother and told him things that he had never shared, at least with us—and likely not my father either.  Grandfather’s decline was steep—and he was gone by the end of January, two years to the month after his beloved wife.

It was decided in early February of 1977 that my brother would move into my grandparent’s home.  Here is where my journal was a revelation.  His housemate there was going to be Mike, the Mike who pined for me one minute and ignored me the next.  I had totally forgotten he was ever my brother’s house mate.

I helped them move.  Mike picked me up at school, late as always, and took we to the apartment being packed up.  Who should be there but Theo (you remember him and my experimenting with him at the campground?)  He was helping pack as he’d started ‘seeing’ my brother. 

Putting my brother’s things in my grandparent’s home was odd.  Odder was watching my brother and Theo in the flush of first romance (at least on Theo’s side.)  And then having Mike detail what he and a trick had done in bed the previous night was pretty much the last straw.

I worked out the day in mounting fury.  And got back to the safety of school.

That night, Theo called, wondering if I was upset.  I was, but less so now.  Even back then (and this is from my journal) I knew it was inevitable.  After that night we had snuck Theo into the disco, I was sure that the two of them would get together.  And I knew it was a good thing that Theo was learning how to fuck with someone who treated him better than I was being treated by Mike. 

But I didn’t say that to him.  In answer to his question of me being upset, I simply said, “Would it change anything, if I were?”

Theo murmured “No.”

And we left it alone.

Life was back to being all about school and doing a show in college.  I kept busy and ignored trying to find sex and simply masturbated in the shower.

At the end of February, I went to have dinner with my brother, Mike and Theo.  It was odd being in my Grandparent’s house—so much was exactly the same, but other rooms felt like his apartment.  Dinner was fondue (It’s 1977, what else?)  We had drinks afterwards.  We talked about this and that.  Theo, on the couch, snuggled into my brother’s strong arms.  Mike, on the floor at my feet, leaned on my knees.  I was thinking about Theo.  And then a girl, Nancy, in the drama department who I really liked and wondered if I should get to know better.  Then Mike sucking my dick.  I only half listened to the other three as more thoughts crowded in.

Eventually, Mike and I followed Theo and my brother up the stairs.  They went down the hall to the left and we went right.  The oddity of it all came back as the door shut.  Did I want to have sex in this house?  I decided I was really not that weirded out—I was trying emotions on for size.  We fell into bed and I quote from my journal: “Mike fucked me and I must admit I can take it or leave it; it really didn’t do anything for me.  Sucking me, later, was nice.  I really do care about Mike, but just can’t make the commitment he wants.  I feel like myself so much more around Nancy or Theo…  I don’t know where I’m headed.”

And I didn’t.