Daddy Issues

“I know it’s Thanksgiving, but do you think I could order the lamb loin rather than the turkey, Senator?”

“My goodness, Aden, you don’t need my permission on what to order for dinner, and please call me Clayton or Clay, especially when we’re out like we are now.”

Where we were was in the swank Inn at Little Washington, more than an hour’s drive into the hunt country of Northern Virginia from Washington, D.C. I could see his point about being overheard calling him “senator,” although in this region many would recognize him on sight and the Inn at Little Washington and it’s Michelin Green Star rating was a place people would recognize other patrons. Of course it also was a place where people who could afford to eat there and stay in its inn wouldn’t gossip about others who did.

He was older than my father was and I couldn’t help thinking of him as a father figure—and he was my boss—so I wasn’t comfortable calling him by his first name. I’d have to try to go with “sir,” I supposed. And I couldn’t help it, I did feel like I needed his permission for just about everything. That continued after we’d ordered our meal.

“I’ve seen a 2015 Audi A5 I’m thinking of buying and I wondered what you thought about that.”

“That’s rather an expensive sporty car isn’t it?” he asked.

“Well, yes, but it’s a 2015. I like the styling.”

“I imagine car thieves would like the styling too,” Senator Trenton said, “That’s always a factor to take into account when your parking is on the Hill. It’s a bad crime area for car theft. How is the mileage and how does Consumer Reports rate the safety features?”

“I guess I’ll have to look into that,” I said. He answered just as a father would, but I suppose that’s why I brought it up—to get the more sensible look on out on the table. He also encouraged me to consult with him on “getting adjusted” to Washington, D.C. matters—again like a father with experience in that would.

“How are you getting along with Gail?” he asked.

He was perceptive and he’d been watching. I had a fancy constituent affairs title in his Senate office, but what that really meant is that I read and answered letters coming from people in his state. Gail headed this unit and gave me a rough time. “She rides me a little hard.”

He laughed “That’s because she wants to ride you,” he said, “but I suppose that’s good.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“If she and others in the office—and there are others with the hots for you—are thinking they can attain you, I suppose none of them suspect. Do you wish me to have a talk with her about being on your case too much?”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “No, Sir, I guess I can handle it myself.”

“Good boy,” he said, smiled at me, and patted me on the forearm. “If you think it best to bed her, I, of course, will understand.”

I didn’t quite know what to say about that, but then I didn’t have to say anything. The inn’s effervescent chef, Patrick O’Connell, was making the rounds of the tables to sprinkle the diners with his own special glitter and he was about to reach us. I excused myself to go to the men’s room so as not to have myself associated with the senator in O’Connell’s discerning eyes, and when I came back the chef had moved on and our dinner was arriving.

There was another man in the men’s room—a middle-aged man who was gray-haired and expensively dressed—who gave me the eye. I had learned when men were giving me the eye. I smiled at him, but with the “not interested” look I’d learned to use. I didn’t know what some men and women saw in me in terms of want and vulnerability, but as it got me attention from men like the senator, I guess I wouldn’t try to change it.

When we left the inn, Trenton passed a key card to me and pointed to the building where his room was, which was across the street from the inn’s restaurant. The inn was actually several old residential and commercial buildings in the center of a small, rural Viriginia town that claimed the distinction of being the first one named after the father of the country—even before the nation’s capital. The senator was in the Carter House junior suite, one of twenty-three distinctive inn rooms scattered in buildings in the village.

We left the inn separately, Trenton to go directly to the Carter House and me to walk over to the parallel Gay Street, where I’d parked my car, away from the inn, to fetch my backpack with my overnight needs. The senator was checked in for two days—alone, although he no doubt had slipped the reception desk a big tip to know, but not know, there would be more than one.

I walked to the end of Gay Street and back to the car, to get the backpack, and then, looking around to make sure I wasn’t under surveillance, I entered the Carter House and went upstairs to Room 14. This wasn’t the first time we’d met in Room 14 of the Carter House.

Trenton was in one of the hotel’s silken robes when I let myself into the suite. And nothing else. He had the stereo on to Frank Sinatra tunes, the fireplace going, and two glasses of wine poured. He handed me a glass of wine and we stood there, in the center of the bedroom, facing each other, close, eyes locked, while we drank it.

“You are such a desirable young man,” he murmured. He reached out with his free hand and cupped the side of my face. I leaned into his touch.

“Thank you. I’m honored,” I answered, not specifying whether I felt honored that he thought I was desirable or that a U.S. senator was humping me, but I guess both applied.

He was taller and more solidly built than I was. He was strikingly handsome, with wavy hair gray at the temples. At fifty-two, he was still in great shape. I was smaller, shorter and leaner. I’d gotten a lot of attention with my copper-colored hair, green eyes, and shy smile. Trent said I was the perfect introverted submissive. He certainly held his own as the perfect dominant, extravert top.

He finished his wine first, putting the glass down on a side table and unbuttoning my shirt and pulling it off my back from underneath the tie that he left in place. I had to switch my wine glass from hand to hand to help him take my shirt off. He touched my nipples, one after the other which his index finger and I shuddered for him. He ran his hands over my chest, rubbing my nipples, as I drank my wine more slowly than he had. Our eyes were still locked.

“I wish we could do this more often,” he said, “But it’s so hard to get away.”

“I do too,” I said. I knew this was difficult for him and he did have trouble slipping out of the public eye for this. I went with men more often—older men—so it wasn’t as much of a momentous event for me. He was the man, though. I was here to give him pleasure and I would do it as well as I could. He was still virile at fifty-two, at least with the Viagra assist, and I was athletic. It would be an eventful night.

He reached down and unbuckled my belt and unzipped me, pushing my trousers and briefs down to the floor. I already had removed my shoes, leaving me with high black stockings and black leather garters. He liked me to keep those on. I stepped out of my trousers while he took my empty wine glass from me and put it beside his on the side table. He reached down and took my glans between two fingers and pressed a finger into my urethra opening and I gave him a low moan.

“You are hard for me,” he whispered, cupping my balls and weighing them before encircling my cock and beginning to slow stroke me.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I like that.”

“Fuck me, Daddy,” I murmured. “I need your cock.”

We kissed while I unknotted his robe and flared it. He was, as I surmised, naked under the robe and in erection—not as big as he could be, though. He hadn’t taken the pills yet.

“Give me some love, son,” he whispered, coming out of the kiss. A role we played was kicking in.

“Yes, Daddy,” I answered, went down on my knees before him, took his cock in my mouth, and gave him loving head.

After a few minutes, he pushed me off his cock and said, “Want to be the best I can be for my boy. I’ll be back.” He left me and went into the bathroom.

My cellphone picked that moment to chirp. I leaned down, fished around in the pocket of my trousers, and answered it.

“Aden? I know it’s Thanksgiving and late there, but I couldn’t wait to let you know.”

“Is everything OK, Dad?” I asked. “The chemo . . . they haven’t . . . ?”

“That’s it. I was pronounced cancer free today. No more chemo, at least for now. The lungs are clear.”

“That’s great, Dad. Thanks for calling. That’s just great.” The senator was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning into the frame, holding his erection in his hand. The shaft was engorging even as I was watching. He’d taken pills.

“I was thinking that maybe you could come out to Fort Collins for Christmas. We could put up a tree together, like we did when you were little. I thought I’d be in the hospital or maybe just . . . gone . . . but now. Now I can make some plans. It would be great to see you.”

“I’ll look at my schedule, Dad,” I answered. “We’ll see—”

“What’s that, Chuck?” my dad said. He was responding to someone on his end of the line. Chuck. I froze. Chuck was still in the frame—although I’d never actually met him. “Listen, Aden, I have to go. I just wanted to let you know the news.”

“That’s great, Dad. I’ll look at my schedule. I’ll do what I can.” The mention of Chuck had cooled off his news, although I certainly was happy for him.

“Dad? I thought your parents were dead,” Trenton said as he moved into the room and over to the sofa. His shaft was hard and as big as whatever pills he often took could make it—which was taxingly big.

Well, up until a moment ago I thought my dad was dying too. But then he’d been dying from me for decades. “My mother and my step-father died in a plane crash, yes. My biological father is alive, but he never married my mother and I can’t remember him being around much if at all.” I didn’t mention how for years I’d been sent to him for Christmas and how I tried to live up to his expectations when we were together and I never thought I had. He was a football coach, at first in high schools and then in colleges. We just had nothing in common, except, peculiarly, he had Chuck and I had older men. A father and son who were both actively gay.

“He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado—a football coach at the university there. He’s been battling lung cancer. Taking chemo for it. I’d assumed it would take him by now, or soon. But he called just now to say the chemo worked. He’s been declared cancer free. He wants me to come out for Christmas.”

“Well, good for him. Congress will be closed for Christmas—my office too. I don’t see why you can’t go see him. I assume you want to.”

That was Trenton’s way to telling me I wouldn’t be welcome to be with him in his home state for Christmas. I was a hidden . . . whatever. I’d never figured out what a male mistress was called.

“I’m not sure about that—whether I want to see him for Christmas. We always seemed to be running on two different tracks. And it hasn’t improved, even with the health scare.”

Chuck. It should help that I was gay too, but it didn’t. It had all come down before I knew I was gay.

“Well, I’m your daddy now. I’ll give you all of the attention you can handle. Come over here and ride me.” He was sitting on the coach. The robe was flared, he was slow stroking a quite impressive hard erection. “Sit on it. Fuck yourself.”

I knew he was keyed up and wanted it. He didn’t talk dirty until he was in high heat.

I went to the sofa, climbed into his lap, facing him, helped him position his cock head, descended on it, and, grasping his biceps while he grasped my waist, rose and fell on the cock. He was stretching me; I felt him and melted at being fully possessed. Rising and falling, concentrating on it sliding inside me, feeling the muscles of my walls clutching it, milking it. I closed my eyes and rocked on the shaft, moaning. His hands grasped my waist, helping me to rise and fall, thrusting up and back with his hips.

Half way through that first fuck, I turned facing away from him, buried my feet in the back of the sofa for leverage, and inclined my torso over the floor in front of the sofa, hands clutching his knees, my body hovering over his thighs like I was doing pushups, and him turning my tie to the back and using it as reins, while I continued to move on the cock.

“Riding me good, baby,” he murmured. “Love the flexibility of your beautiful little body.”

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, you’re so big,” I answered as we fucked. The senator like for me to take athletic positions.

Later I knelt at the end of the bed on my knees and hands, with him standing on the floor and fucking me in a doggy, still using my tie as reins.

Late in the night, after having gone to sleep stretched out against each other on the bed, my butt cuddled into his groin, I woke to him rubbing my nipples and kissing me in the hollow of my throat. I reached back to find he still had his erection.

Putting his cock in position, I whispered, “Fuck me, Daddy. Fuck me again. Fuck me good.”

I groaned as he penetrated again and fucked me good. The last thing I said before we went to sleep was, “Did I do good, Daddy?”

“Yes, son, you did very good indeed,” he answered, allowing me to sleep contented.

* * * *

I was in another hotel room—in the MGM casino hotel in the National Harbor complex on the Maryland side of the Woodrow Wilson Capital Beltway bridge over the Potomac River to the east of downtown Washington, D.C., when the other call came through three weeks later.

I’d responded to an Internet young guys for older guys dating service I took my casual hookups from when I was in the mood, and, looking to the trip out West I agreed to make for Christmas, I had definitely been in the mode for a distraction. I didn’t want to go to Colorado, but I considered myself duty bound to go. The senator had already left Washington for an extended winter holidays check with his constituents and backers in his home state and his congressional office had been shut down.

The man, going by the name of Warren, wasn’t anyone like I’d hooked up with before. He was black and bald and big, nearly 270 pounds he’d owned up to. But he also registered as tall, at nearly six foot seven, which made the weight not nearly as bad visually as the poundage suggested. I just had to be careful not to be crushed in the clutches. What had attracted me, though, was that he claimed to be a college basketball coach and right at the end of his blurb he’d written, “Do you need a daddy? Let me be your daddy.” He claimed to be forty-eight, which was right on the button in my book—nearly twice my twenty-six.

I set up a date with him at the Felt bar in the MGM casino hotel. It was a get-acquainted and check each other out meeting, with me saying that’s as far as I went on the first date. Drinks and he was on the hook to get tickets that night for the black R&B singer, Maxwell, in the casino’s theater. We’d meet and talk.

We did meet. He was a handsome man, and he knew quite a lot about music and the R&B genre, so he was pleased with the choice of meetings. I was a singer too, so we had that to talk about. He carried his weight well and he was well spoken, which surprised me from a basketball player. He was well and expensively dressed. We both were wearing suits to satisfy the dress “suggestions” of the casino.

“I coach basketball at a college in Towson, Maryland,” he said.

I admitted I worked on a congressional staff on Capitol Hill, but I didn’t go further. “The office is on hiatus for Christmas.”

“So, you don’t have to appear at the office at dawn tomorrow,” he said, giving me a piercing look.

I knew why he said that. I’d already been mulling if I’d let him do it on the first date. He had been eyeing me from the get-go like he wanted to do me, so I guess I’d passed muster with him. From appearances and the conversation we were having, he certainly passed muster with me.

He looked better than I’d been prepared for. And him being black and big had set my imagination going. There was something they said about what being big and black meant. I’d always wondered how much of a myth it was. It was natural for us both to be considering the subtext here. It was a Grindr-type dating site that had brought us together.

“No, I’m not on an office schedule until next year, after Epiphany.”

“Epiphany?” he asked.

“January 6th. When the three kings came—I mean arrived in Bethlehem—supposedly, if you believe that stuff. Congress doesn’t come back into session until after that, though.” We both smiled at the word “came” and about the underlying issue we weren’t addressing—at least yet. I quickly continued, latching on to him saying he was a college basketball coach. “I know college football and I played collegiate tennis myself, but I don’t follow basketball much. I thought of basketball players as tall and skinny, but you . . .”

“That was basketball ‘then’—in the dark ages,” Warren said, with a laugh. “It’s a high-impact contact sport now. What contact did you have with college football, though. You’re a small guy—a great-looking small guy. Don’t get me wrong. You’re being small was a turn-on for me.”

It was my turn to laugh. “I’m only small in terms of football and basketball players. I’m five-eleven. That’s fine for tennis. My dad is a football coach. High school when he was close enough to home for me to go to his games. I went on my high school team and warmed the bench just so we’d have something to talk about other than family issues when I visited him. He’s coaching college now, in Colorado. Or at least I think he’s still coaching.”

“You don’t know?”

“We haven’t been close for a very long time. My parents split up before I was a teen. I’d go to him for Christmas and he’d just come off his season and was busy putting a team together for the next season. We had different interests. Me drama and music and politics and my dad contact sports.” Of course, there was something we naturally had in common—sex with men—but he was there when I was young and he and my mother were splitting up. It came to me later. Maybe, to some extent, in response to him. “But I guess I don’t know if he’s still coaching because he’s been sick.”

“Sick?”

“Yes, he’s been fighting lung cancer. He’s got it licked for now, but I don’t know whether he’s still working with that going on. I guess I’ll find out in a couple of weeks. I’m going there—to Colorado—for Christmas.”

“And you’re looking forward to that?” Warren asked.

“It’s happening. I’m not sure how much either of us will enjoy it. We still have issues.”

“You have daddy issues,” Warren said, his voice quiet. “And that’s why you date older men off a gay male site?”

“Funny, isn’t it?” I said.

“I don’t think it’s funny at all. I think maybe a daddy is what you’re looking for—one who is here, not an elusive one in Colorado. Maybe you’re looking for someone to control you and guide you in giving and receiving pleasure.” He touched my forearm with his fingers. I was surprised at the electricity in me that that produced. I already was half hard just having him there, a commanding presence, and listening to what I hadn’t been able to tell anyone else. But I didn’t tell even him about Chuck.

“Maybe so,” I said. “But I want more than that from a man.”

“From an older man?”

“Yes.”

“I have a room booked upstairs. Come upstairs with me now. Let me be your daddy. I’ll control and direct you—and punish you too if you don’t do it as I like. If that’s what you want.”

“A room? We said we’d just talk on a first date.”

“You said that. I didn’t. If I want to fuck a guy on the first date I do, if he’ll let me. I want to fuck you.”

“We have tickets to the Maxwell concert—don’t we? And this is the first date. We were just going to talk.”

“You want more than talk tonight. You want a daddy’s dick. Come upstairs and let me be your daddy.”

“The concert.”

“They have a deal here. For the price of the tickets, you can skip the in-theater experience and have the concert piped into your room. We’re both music people. We can fuck to Maxwell. What do you say?”

“I’ve heard about black men. How big is your dick?”

Warren laughed. “I’m almost nine inches hard. Daddy’s got a nine-inch dick for you. And, while we’re at it I can confirm that bald men are the most virile men. I noticed you didn’t balk when I said the direction could come with punishment.”

“No, I didn’t,” I answered, shuddering. I hadn’t had it rough before, but I’d been curious, and I was open to rising to new heights in sex.

We fucked to Maxwell, both naked, Warren as big as promised, laying me on my back on the foot of the bed, starting me off in the missionary position, both of us humming to Maxwell as Warren worked my body, opening me up, stretching my hole with his fingers and tongue to prepare me for nine inches. No enhancement pills for Warren. He was just as big naturally as I could sheath.

I didn’t move into position as fast as he wanted to at first, so he pushed me down on the bed on my belly, and pulled one of my arms painfully up my back with one hand while spanking me on the bare butt with the other. Whimpering, I surrendered quickly to that, begging for the cock, and that was that as far as punishment. After that I quickly responded to everything he commanded me to do. It was just a taste of the corporal punishment realm, but I could see how that might be very arousing.

He was a real smooth cocksman, going right with the music. He made me his slave by picking me up from the bed after he’d pumped me for a good twelve minutes, and holding me, captive, on the front of his tall, beefy body, hooking my knees on his hips, having me fist my fingers together behind his neck, and bouncing me up and down on his thick, black shaft.

We finished in a second fuck with him stretched out on back on the bed and me riding him, both facing and away from him, in what started as a languid rocking and ending with me doing a frenzied bucking rodeo ride on his shaft.

I cried out, “Oh, Daddy, Daddy! I’m coming!” and climaxed. Warren climaxed again too. We came almost together that time.

We exchanged cards afterward. “Whenever you need a daddy, I’m your man,” Warren said.

“So, I did good, Daddy?” I asked.

“You did great, son.”

I don’t know if what they say about big, black men and the size of their shafts was universally—or generally—true, but it certainly was with Warren.

* * * *

When I got back to my apartment I turned my cellphone back on to see that there had been a couple of calls from my dad. Maybe, I thought, he had rethought the idea of me coming for Christmas—and meeting Chuck. I hadn’t heard much about Chuck other than that the man my biological father had left my mother and me for fourteen years earlier was just six years older than I was—at thirty-two—and was an auto mechanic. The screaming I’d heard between my parents made him out to be a redneck power top.

I called back, but it wasn’t my dad I got.

“No, this is Chuck,” I heard from out of the ether. “I’m sorry you have to hear it this way, but you need to know. Your dad died this morning.”

He took several seconds for that to sink in, but Chuck gave me the time I needed for that. “He said he was cancer-free,” I said in disbelief and denial, but of course I knew it was true. Chuck wouldn’t have called me direct otherwise. “He told me that he’d beaten it.”

“That’s true. But he’d been banged up in life. There were some wounds. The chemo dislodged some blood clots and they went to his heart. He wouldn’t have suffered. He died in his favorite chair, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. I’m so sorry. It really would be good if you still came out. I know you were planning to be here for Christmas. There will be a funeral, of course. But there also are things that need to be done. Not the funeral arrangements. We’d worked all those out when he thought the cancer would take him. If you don’t want to come, of course—”

“No, no,” I said. “I’ll keep to the plan.” Of course I no longer wanted to come—I hadn’t wanted to come to begin with—but of course I recognized that it was my duty to help close out Dad’s affairs—well, his life commitments. I didn’t want to have anything to do with his affair with Chuck. “I’ll come as scheduled, but I’ll have to call you back on that,” I said. “I can’t do or say anymore right now. I have to process this.”

“I understand,” Chuck said. “I’ll help you anyway I can.” I couldn’t help but hear the grief in his voice.

My father was forty-eight when he died—the same age Warren was when he power fucked me tonight.

Oh, Daddy, Daddy. I’m coming.

* * * *

“Oh, Charlie doesn’t work as a mechanic in a gas station. He owns three gas stations in town and runs a school teaching auto mechanics. We’d be lost without him here in Fort Collins.”

I’d been talking at Dad’s wake with an elderly woman resident of my dad’s apartment house in Fort Collins, in an upscale condo conversion building on North College Street, in the old downtown area, and had mentioned that it was a pretty swank place for Dad’s guy, Chuck, to be living, when the woman popped my illusion. It wasn’t the first illusion I’d lost since flying out for Dad’s funeral and all of the cleanup work that entailed, although Chuck had taken care of most of that before I got here, including putting on this wake at Dad’s condo. There hadn’t been much in the way of a funeral. Dad had been cremated. It’s how he wanted it.

This was just the most recent of my illusions to be shattered. It had started with Chuck not meeting me at the Denver airport and driving me up to Fort Collins in the snow himself.

“I’m Daniel,” the young guy who met me had said. He was quite a good-looking guy maybe a couple of years older than I was, but very fit, quite handsome in a dark, sexy cowboy sort of way, enhanced by him being dressed like a cowboy, fancy boots, well-fitting Western shirt, and cowboy hat. “He doesn’t go out in snow like this.”

I thought the excuse was a bit lame. I thought Chuck was just not going to give priority to me, which I guess I deserved, as, even after all these years they’d been together, I hadn’t bothered to meet the gas pump jockey. And to add insult, I assumed that this Daniel was who Chuck had already replaced my dad with. Dad not even cremated yet and Chuck had a replacement.

“I’ll drive you to your dad’s condo,” he said on the drive back, “We’ve laid in enough groceries to hold you for a couple of days. I’ll have to just drop you off and introduce you to Chuck, though, as it’s snowing and I’ll have to get back to work.”

“Snowing and getting back to work?” I asked.

“Yep. I run a snowplow in Fort Collins. Digging the university and surrounding streets out.”

Great, I thought, a gas station attendant and a snow plow operator. I’ll be in such sophisticated company for Christmas. I was already committed to be here, going through Dad’s stuff through Christmas.

My illusions started to shatter the moment we arrived at the condo. First of all, the building was swank, and my Dad had had a quite large two-bedroom and den apartment on the fourth, top floor overlooking the downtown area. He’d moved here since the last time I’d visited him and a far-less luxurious apartment. Of course he was working high school then and college when he’d moved here. Second, Chuck hadn’t been able to meet me at the airport because Chuck was in a wheelchair.

Why hadn’t I known that? When had he become disabled? Had Dad told me that and I hadn’t been listening.

Third, Daniel, who hadn’t stayed around long after we arrived at the apartment, which was too bad because he was real easy on the eyes, wasn’t Chuck’s boyfriend.

“I hope you managed to hook up with my brother easy enough at the airport,” Chuck said, when we met. “Sorry I didn’t meet you. I had intended to, but the snow is just too much for me in getting down to Denver.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes, Daniel. He’s been a great help to me with your dad for the last year. We had quite a time of it with him fighting the lung cancer and me in this wheelchair.”

And I hadn’t known any of this was happening. Dad and I hadn’t just drifted apart because we were such different people. We had been on different planets.

The illusions kept shattering. Chuck and Dad didn’t live together. They had their won condos across from each other on the same floor. It appeared that some of the other residents in the building didn’t even know they were a couple. It was clear when I met them that no one cared even if they did and they all thought the world of both men.

And some of my other assumptions and suspicions were laid to rest. Everything I’d remembered to be where my dad had lived all of the previous Christmases I’d visited him were still there in his own apartment. Nothing had disappeared. Chuck’s apartment was well and expensively furnished, but his decorating tastes were different from my dad’s. He hadn’t taken anything from my dad’s place. And, when we went to the lawyer’s office the day after I arrived, I found that Chuck wasn’t taking anything. Everything was coming to me—Dad’s hefty savings accounts, the condo, even a car, amusingly a 2015 Audi A5 coupe. For some reason, although my dad was well-heeled enough, Chuck was the richer of the two. He hadn’t gone with my dad for his money. That certainly was news to me.

And now, thanks to an elderly woman neighbor, at Dad’s wake, I knew why. Chuck didn’t just pump gas, he owned a string of gas stations and was—or had been before being trapped in a wheel chair—a master auto mechanic and ran a school teaching other auto mechanics.

The shattering didn’t stop there. Another resident of the building saddled up to me at my dad’s wake and said, “I understand you were a collegiate tennis champion. Your dad told me about that. He really was proud of you.”

“Dad? Proud of my tennis. Dad was all contact sports, like football.”

“Yes, but I play tennis and he made sure to tell me when your team was playing and then told me the results, being very proud of how you did.”

He did? We were like ships passing in the night. I never thought he approved of my choice of sports.

“Have you met Charlie’s brother, Daniel, yet? He’s the tennis coach at the university here. You two probably should get together for a match.”

“University tennis coach? Chuck’s brother? I thought he worked street equipment.”

“He plows the snow in the winter, yes,” the neighbor said. “But he and Chuck own snow plows and have the city contract to plow out the downtown in weather like this. He says it helps him stay in shape for his tennis job.”

And Daniel was in great shape, I had been able to tell. Another illusion demolished. Had I not been looking well enough and fair enough at life?

And at my relationship with my father? Could it be that the lack of approval from my mostly absent dad hadn’t been what I thought it was?

Could it be that my dad hadn’t even been as absent as I had thought—or at least that the extent he had been was as much my fault as his?

* * * *

Way out west, they’ve got a name

For rain and wind and fire

 

The song was driving me crazy. I had been staying at Dad’s condo for two days and had been listening to a western male quartet playing of “They Call the Wind Mariah,” almost constantly since. The doors to both Dad’s condo and Chuck’s, across the hall, had been open to the landing just they apparently always had been and the sound of the record, with this song and other Western ones, like “Cool Water,” sung by the same quartet had been running almost constantly.

I finally crossed the hall to find out why, to find Chuck, sitting in his living room by a Christmas tree that was up but undecorated. He had a record album in his hand and he was quietly crying.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to disturb you,” I said, when he saw that I was there. “I just wondered what was up with that record being played over and over.”

“It’s one of your Dad’s records.”

“I don’t remember him having an album like that,” I said.

“It isn’t that he owned it. It’s that he’s on it. He was in the quartet. He’s here on the album cover. I’m playing it because I want to hear his voice still—you know, like how some people can’t change the voice mail recording on their phones because they want to hear a lost one’s voice still?”

“On the cover?” He showed it to me and, sure enough, there was my dad in his younger days.

“You didn’t know he sang on the radio when he was younger?”

“No I didn’t know. I didn’t know he even approved of music. I thought he disparaged my interest in that.”

“Where did you get that idea? Your dad loved that you were a singer—and that you acted on stage in college. He used to drag me to the openings of your plays.”

“He attended my plays? He never showed that he was there?”

“Well, you always had your mother and her new husband going to you afterward. Your dad didn’t want to intrude. He was proud of your stage work, though. He sent money to give you private acting lessons with. He said he was sorry he hadn’t kept up with his own music interests.”

“He’s the one who paid for those?” I asked, astonished. “My mother never said he’s the one who paid for the lessons.”

“Oh, well,” was all Chuck said.

I didn’t know what to say. I looked around his living room. He still had tears in his eyes and I didn’t want to embarrass him.

“You have a tree, but it isn’t decorated,” I said.

“Yes, we decided to have just one tree this year—with all that your dad was going through—and to have it in here. We got the tree up, but . . . he . . . died before we could get it decorated.”

“Would you like to have it decorated this year? Can I help with that?”

“I thought I’d just take it down, but, yes, I would like to have it decorated. I’m having a New Year’s Eve gathering—your dad wanted me to go through with that—and it would be nice to have the tree up. Maybe Christmas Eve . . . if you’re not doing anything else, you could come over for dinner and we could trim the tree.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” I said. I noticed then that a package wrapped in Christmas paper that was laying on a coffee table had my name on it. “What’s this? A Christmas present? It’s marked for me.”

“Yes, your dad managed to wrap one for you. He was working on the present anyway, but when you said you’d come for Christmas, he put a rush on it and wrapped it. Do you want to open it now?”

I thought about it, but said, “No. When I visited him at Christmas, we always opened our presents on Christmas Day. Maybe I’ll hold off. And I’ll leave it here, as this is where the tree is.”

“So, you’ll be here on Christmas morning too? I hope so. I really don’t want to be alone on Christmas this year.”

“Sounds like a plan. And could we play this record again now? And could you help me pick out which voice is my dad’s?”

* * * *

“I hope you don’t mind. I’ve invited my brother, Daniel, for dinner and to help us trim the tree.”

“No, I don’t mind at all,” I said. “With three we almost could—”

“Make a popcorn garland for the tree?” Chuck said, picking up a large bowl full of popcorn. “Your dad always wanted to do a popcorn chain for the Christmas tree.”

“Yes, he did,” I replying, upon which footsteps could be heard on the stairs and a smiling, very sexy Daniel had arrived.

We had a great time stringing popcorn, getting a fire started, and watching a football game on Chuck’s TV. Luckily, the tree was prestrung with lights as none of us was being very good with anything requiring concentration and precision. We were just horsing around and having a good time. Luckily, nothing much can go wrong with making a popcorn string beyond making a pincushion out of your fingers.

Daniel and I talked about this and that and almost everything else as Chuck wheeled around in the background, making sure we had something to drink and eat and making preparations for the dinner he was serving. We grew hardly to notice him as Daniel and I became better acquainted. We spent some time discussing tennis and he said he’d try to set up a tennis date in the next couple of days.

“Even though it’s Christmas, some students are still here, not having anywhere to go for the holidays. I’m sure some of my tennis team students would love to do a foursome. I’ll book an indoor court and go looking for some partners for us. Doubles first, and then some singles, you and me, later?”

“I’d like that,” I said, and it hit both of us at the same time how that could be taken as a double entendre, and we both laughed, knowing for the first time what the other had been thinking.

Daniel was only two years older than I was, and I went with older men—daddy figures. But I hadn’t had it in a while and I was a randy dude. And Daniel was one sexy guy.

Dinner was about the last time in the evening that we noticed there were three of us there. Chuck, limited by the wheelchair, wasn’t any help in getting the tree trimmed beyond the bottom half, and he had to clean up from dinner anyway. He put Christmas music on, made sure the fireplace was stoked and brought out a couple of rounds of drinks while Daniel and I put decorations on the tree and horsed around.

By the time we were sitting on the sofa, enjoying watching our handiwork on the tree and with the fire in the fireplace and the smooth seasonal music on the stereo, we were mellow from the atmosphere and the flowing liquor—and the comfortable camaraderie. Daniel and I got very comfortable with each other.

“This would be perfect if only . . .” I stopped, not knowing why I’d even begun to say it.

“If what?” Daniel asked. “If we were both gay?”

“Yes,” I admitted after hesitating. “Because, sorry, I am.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Daniel said. “And it would be perfect if I was a top?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I have some good news for you on this perfect evening.”

We got quite cozy after that.

There were just the two of us in the room. I don’t know if Chuck told us when he withdrew to his room or not, but by then Daniel and I had moved into the touching and kissing phase. The music had reached its end, the fire had died down, and the sounds in the room had flowed into panting, moaning, grunting and groaning, as, trouser- and brief-less, I was bent over the arm of the sofa, on my belly, my head and arms dangling over the side, and Daniel, also pantless, was covering me from behind and above, his hands stretched over the side of the sofa grasping my wrists, his lips buried in my throat, and his erection moving deep inside me.

“Oh, shit, give it to me!” I cried out in suffering ecstasy at a volume that must have conveyed to Chuck in his bedroom, and Daniel gave it to me, tensing and jerking, tensing and jerking, releasing his seed. I’d just come into the inner surface of the sofa arm, which, luckily was covered with wipeable vinyl.

We rested, but only for a few minutes before he was hard again and turned me on my back and I wrapped my legs around his thighs and grasped his shoulder blades and we went at it hard again, me thrusting with my hips as much as he was doing, taking him deep, sending the muscles of my passage walls undulating over his cock, the two of us hungrily fucking each other.

We rolled onto the floor and he was under me now, on his back. I saddled on his cock, pressing my palms into his pecs, and it was up, down, up, down, vigorously riding him, driving to another climax.

We had barebacked. Nothing had been planned. It had been spontaneous. I hadn’t had it for a couple of weeks, though, so I’d been more than ready. And Daniel was oh so sexy. And it was different from usual. It had been very athletic, both of us being relatively young—virile and he’d pumped me for nearly a half hour—vigorously, but edging me. We’d get to the brink and he’d back off before coming back on strong. Two young, athletic guys going at each other. I didn’t get it this way from the daddies who’d been humping me.

Afterward I was stretched out on top of him, eyes to the lighted tree, harmonizing the calming of my panting with his. “Shit, that was good,” I whispered.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“What for? That was great. I needed that,” Who knew it could be so good with a fit guy near my own age?

“I mean the bareback. I hadn’t planned any of this?”

“You mean you had no desire to jump my bones?” I asked.

“No, that is not what I meant. Now we’ll both have to get checked.”

“You fuck around a lot.”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll get checked and then we can bareback a couple of more times until one of us does it with someone else.”

“Are you telling me you’re a slut too?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said and then he laughed.

“I guess I should be going,” I said, rolling off him and sitting up. “Time to cross the landing to my dad’s apartment.”

“The guest bedroom here is closer,” Daniel said.

I smiled. “I don’t think I’d get much sleep.”

I was right. I didn’t get much sleep that night. We were young and fit and athletic. Sometimes sleep can be overrated.

The first time I woke the next morning, it was to the sound of the shower going in the guestroom bathroom and I was alone in bed, on my back, my legs open and bent, with me wondering if I’d ever be able to close them again. The second time was to the smell of brewing coffee, and, with a groan, I rolled out of the bed and took a shower.

When I came out of the bedroom and into the living area space, Chuck was rolling around his specially outfitted kitchen, preparing a farmer’s hearty breakfast for us all. Daniel, just in a terrycloth robe, looking as sexy this morning as he did the previous night, was sitting at the kitchen island counter sipping coffee.

Whatever there had to be said to Chuck about Daniel and me in the night had already been spoken. Chuck was all smiles but he made no reference to that. What he was, pointing at the coffee table, was, “It’s Christmas morning. I think you should unwrap your dad’s gift while I finish making breakfast.”

It was a hefty photo album, containing photos but so much more. It was about me and who I was and what I liked doing. It was photos, but more—program bulletins, team rosters, ticket stubs. And it included my parents too—and not just my mother. Dad was there too. So much that I forgotten or let myself deny. Dad wasn’t always absent, even after the divorce. He was often there, sometimes when I didn’t know it. As Chuck had already told me, Dad had been there for some the activities I’d been in that I had thought he disapproved of. And obviously he hadn’t disapproved of them. He’d be supportive—to the extent that family dynamics and a mother sensitive to him leaving her for another man allowed. I had been living an illusion. I’d been seeking daddy approval that already had been there.

“He spent a lot of time pulling that together,” Chuck said, as I drew close to the end of the pages. “He knew he was coming to an end and that there was unfinished business between the two of you that needed to be put to bed.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed this.”

“Yes, yes, I think you did,” Chuck said, his voice quiet. “I doubt you’ll ever get a Christmas present as good as that one.”

* * * *

We played doubles at the university’s indoor courts in the early afternoon of December 27th. The athletic director, Harold Somebodyorother, a former Marine office who was a fifty-year-old, very-fit, buzz-cut hunk and a half, who was Daniel’s boss and had been my dad’s too, heard Daniel was getting up a doubles match and he wanted to play. I soon got the impression from the way he leered at me from across the net, as Daniel’s partner, that he played male-on-male bedroom games too. He was just what I was used to happily going under in a daddy session.

My partner was a Thai student who couldn’t make it home for the holidays and was happy for the contact. Chumporn and I were very good; Daniel and Harold were better. The match was a real workout, a slugfest between four very fit athletes, even though one of them had hit fifty.

Harold was hitting on me with all cylinders, but I really didn’t think of that until later. My attention was fully on Daniel, who had laid me so well on Christmas Eve going into Christmas Day and with whom I had a date after this match to lay me again in my dad’s condo. As some point, Harold turned his attention to Chumporn, who was receptive, and, after the match, we paired off, Daniel and me and Harold and Chumporn to skip off to our respective beds.

Daniel and I fucked like young gymnasts all over my dad’s apartment. It was only later, after Daniel had gone and I was getting ready to go over to Chuck’s apartment for dinner that it occurred to me that I was turning some sort of corner. Before I’d come to Fort Collins for Christmas, I would have latched into the former Marine officer’s show of interest. He was a hunky older man—a daddy figure. I normally would have left this afternoon with him, for his bed. But I’d gone with the younger man. I hadn’t needed approval from a daddy.

At dinner, Chuck asked me, “When do you plan on going back to Washington? I think all that’s left here is putting the condo in a Realtor’s hands and deciding whether to try to sell it furnished or engage someone in estate sales. I ask because I have this New Year’s Party. I don’t know if you’ll be here for that and whether we can use your dad’s condo—I guess your condo now—as well as my apartment.”

“Will Daniel be at the party?” I asked.

“Of course,” Chuck answered.

“I’ll still be here. Sure, you can use the apartment. And I’ve been thinking I’ll just keep it. I’ve been looking into the job market here. I think I might just be staying in Fort Collins.”

Chuck gave me a knowing little smile.

I couldn’t claim he was wrong in what he was thinking.