The City of Rossford

“You did dirty movies?”

Noah looked at his son. He looked at James.

“I did the kind of movies you looked at on your computer,” Noah said, carefully.

Chay looked at James.

“Did you know?”

“Yes,” James said.

“I didn’t tell you everything, Chay,” Noah said. “When you were a little boy I couldn’t tell you everything. I told you a lot of things, but things a little boy could handle. Now you’re growing up, and I’m not sure exactly how much to tell you.”

“You can tell me everything,” Chay said in a confident voice.

Noah, remembering hearing his mother have sex, and remembering himself about Chay’s age while Naomi, drunk with a cigarette hanging from her hand crying about how no one would ever love her, said:

“No, I can’t. And no I shouldn’t. Naomi used to tell me everything, and that’s not right. I’ll tell you what I think is right.”

Chay nodded.

“Why did you want to look at those movies?” Noah said.

James barked out a laugh and Noah turned him a nasty glance.

James shrugged while Chay looked between his parents.

“I don’t know. I was just curious. I just… Why’d you do those movies?”

James nodded. It was only fair.

Noah looked at his partner, and then he looked at Chay and James said, “Noah, he needs the truth. Just like I told you. Just tell him the truth.”

“Right,” Noah said.

“Firstly, you have to know I never thought I’d have a son, and you have to know that the reason I’m telling you this now is because it isn’t right for me to tell you about sex and hold all that from you. And… you might find out the truth one day anyway. I can’t hide stuff from you, son.”

Chay nodded. Noah never called him son, and it touched him, but he didn’t show it. Noah’s hand was on his head and this was really the first time that Chay felt that Noah, just like James, was definitely his father.

“Some of the things that I did and were done to me, when I was young, when I was abused, were about sex.”

“Did someone rape you?” Chay said forthrightly.

Noah blinked and Chay said, “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Noah said. “Only, that’s exactly what happened. There were a lot of men who did things to me, and sometimes to be in control I did things with other people and… That’s all I’m going to tell you, Chay. I don’t think it’s right for you to know all the details. I’m your father. You just need to know that a lot of that kind of stuff happened to me and so, when I got old enough I went to California and stuff like that happened to me again.”

“Why?”

“Because I let it,” Noah said. He never imagined how tired he would be telling the truth to his twelve year old.

“Chay,” James entered into the conversation. “I have to tell you the truth. You know your uncle Casey. You know his house, the house with men?”

“James, no!” Noah objected, but James simply shook his head and said, “Yes.”

Chay nodded.

“Casey’s like you and Noah. And Paul. And Fenn. And Todd… And me.”

Chay nodded again.

“And…” Chay said, “his guys, those guys do porn. Don’t they?”

“Yes they do.”

“I thought so. I mean, I knew so, but we didn’t talk about it. But the other ones, the ones who don’t. Who… go out on dates with guys.”

“Yes?” James said.

“I…” Chay started uncertainly. “Do they have sex with them?”

“Yes,” James said.

“Oh…” Chay took a breath. Then he turned to Noah.

“That’s what you did too, isn’t it? That’s what you meant?”

“Right,” Noah said. He pressed on. “It was really the only thing I knew to do. So… when I started to do the movies, it was sort of a step up. I had a choice. More of a choice. I felt like I was in charge. And it was better than what I had known.”

“Was it fun?”

“What?”

“I mean…” Chay said. “In those movies the guys really enjoy it. Even when they do stuff that looks like it hurts—”

“That’s enough!” Noah shouted suddenly, and Chay jumped back. James expertly placed one hand on Chay’s head and another on Noah’s shoulder.

“No!” Noah said. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to shout at you. I’m not shouting at you, Chay. Okay?”

Chay’s face looked like he was about to cry. It was red and his eyes were round, but he nodded his head rapidly and Noah thought of all the men in his life that had terrified him. He said quickly:

“That life was enough. I mean, all the stuff was enough. James was… Chay, you don’t know what it was like to be with your dad again. Or to find you. It was a hard life, Chay. And the last thing I ever want you to think is that it’s glamorous or… fun. Or…”

“If you want to run out and have sex,” James said. “Then go out and have sex. Don’t start doing dirty movies.”

“Don’t tell him that!” Noah said, irritatedly. “Don’t have sex at all.”

“At all?” Chay looked at him.

“I mean, you’re twelve.”

“I wasn’t going to right now.”

“But you want to,” Noah said, quickly.

James looked at Chay and said, “No one is angry at you, alright? Your father,” he looked back at Noah, “is… Your father never really planned to have to tell you all this. You can understand that, right?”

James turned Chay’s face to look directly at him, and the boy nodded.

“Now you reach up hug him, because he loves you more than anything in the world. That’s why he’s telling you all these things he never wanted to talk about again. Go now,” James said, releasing Chay, and giving him a gentle push toward Noah.

Chay wasn’t much shorter than Noah, whom he hugged now, taking in the scent of his cologne and his old worn shirt. He didn’t say anything and he felt Noah’s hand on his head.

“I love you buddy,” Noah said, sounding a little hollow as he stroked Chay’s head.

“I love you too, Dad,” he whispered, and then Noah released him and said, “Why don’t you go on over and see Sheridan.”

Chay did. But on his way over there he thought how they never told him if he could keep watching the movies or not. He thought how he had essentially told them he was gay and they had gone with it, almost like they’d always known. He thought of the questions they didn’t ask, the answers he received, the feelings he got when he watched the movies, even the stiffness between his legs and the thrill in his groin when he biked over to Sheridans’s . Sheridan made him feel like the movies. In a way Sheridan always had. And he thought about when he saw his fathers touching sometimes, especially when they said it was time for bed, and the sounds he heard on occasion coming from their room.

Meredith said, “Once I heard my dad and stepmom doing it. It was so gross.”

When he heard his fathers, and it was very faint, it made him curious. It thrilled him. When, once, he’d heard Brendan and Kenny, he had started touching himself. And that’s the kind of thing Noah had done, and his father refused to say if he enjoyed doing it. But those boys in the movies did. And that was what Casey did. He knew it. He knew he could ask Casey.

“I’M AFRAID THAT that I’m turning into a boring old man,” Bryant said.

“You’re afraid of turning old,” Fenn corrected him on the other side of the table.

“No,” Bryant shook his head. “That’s not it.”

They had gone to lunch downstairs in the theatre restaurant. Tom and Bryant were in shirts and tie, sleeves rolled up. Paul’s shirt was open at the throat and snug and he still looked a little like a pornstar while Fenn looked plain and rumpled as if he owned the place, which he did, and he was smoking a cigarette and pouring another glass of wine.

“Last night we… I got home right? And Chad had done up the Christmas tree. It was beautiful. And then we just started doing it. I mean… Chad wanted it, and I did too cause he was turning me on. And then he just… he had me in the living room, up against the bureau. It was wild. It was something we hadn’t done in like… forever. And then we went to bed and he told me he was afraid we were getting boring. Which makes me think the only reason we… did what we did was to keep from being boring.”

“You mean fucked?” Fenn said.

“Well, yes.”

“See,” Fenn turned to Tom. “He can’t even say the word anymore. No wonder you all are getting boring. That is, if you really are getting boring and not making shit up in your head.”

“No, we are,” Bryant said. “And I don’t know how to keep it fresh. There was a time when… as Chad said, we used to get up to crazy stuff all the time. Anywhere. We were like schoolboys.”

“And when you were with Tom you fucked him sideways and backwards in every room in my house,” Fenn added.

Tom looked at him.

“Whatever happened to forgive and forget?” Tom said.

“I can do one or the other, but rarely both,” Fenn told him, “and I wasn’t bringing up a grudge, I was just saying that somewhere between the Bryant Babcock who had no control and discretion and the Bryant who wants to feel alive, there’s got to be some happy medium.”

“I thought last night was a happy medium,” Bryant said. “In the middle of…”

“Getting fucked in the ass?”

“God, Fenn!”

Fenn shrugged.

“Yes,” Bryant admitted. “In the middle of getting fucked in my ass I was at a happy medium.”

“Well,” Tom raised a finger like he was in a classroom. “It’s not all about sex. I mean, you can do more interesting things. Go more interesting places.”

“They already do that,” Fenn said, “And actually, it is all about the sex. If you’re divebombing over Pakistan, but no one’s fucking, you’re gonna feel it.”

“Whaddo you do?” Bryant said.

“When I’m divebombing over Pakistan?”

“You’re so fucking frustrating sometimes,” Bryant lamented. “I mean what do you and Todd do to keep it fresh?”

Fenn scratched his head.

“You steal shit,” Tom suggested.

“That’s true.”

“They run scams and lie to people. And they have sex all the time,” Tom added. “Which is sort of a Houghton thing because—”

“If you tell me you have sex with Lee all the time—”

“I was going to say we used to all the time,” Tom said. “But yes, me and Lee do all the time.”

“Maybe you and Chad are too alike,” Fenn suggested. “It’s why you and Tom could have never really worked out.”

“But we’ve worked out for seven years.”

“I know,” Fenn said. “Just means you have to work a little harder. You take each other for granted. You think you’re the same person. You think there can’t possibly be anymore excitement because you know everything. He can’t excite me if I can’t excite myself. That’s a mistake,” Fenn said.

“What about you?” Fenn said to Paul.

“Me…? Me and Kirk just… we’re happy. He does his work. I do mine. Personally, I spent ten years of my life having exciting dangerous sex with strange people so a little tame lovemaking, some boring sitting around the Christmas tree and holding your boyfriend’s hand sounds pretty good to me.”

He shook his head.

“Lots of boring lovemaking, possibly on a beach in the middle of summer with lots of blankets. And raising our kids. Yeah,” Paul said with a dreamy look on his face. “I just wanna raise my fucking kids.”

Fenn filled his wine glass again and yawned.

“Me and Todd don’t really work at anything. I don’t think. When he came to me he was fresh out of school, crazy and crazy about me, and when I finally let him into my bed I just didn’t feel like being cautious. I didn’t care anymore. He lets me be myself, and I let him be himself and… we spend just enough time away from each other so we’re new to each other when we meet up again.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “We’ve been together seventeen years, I guess. So it seems to be working.”