Full Fathom Five

Full Fathom Five, Act One

1.

It took five full years from the day Dad vanished until I found my first real clue to his rescuing him.

I’d held myself responsible the whole time. I knew he was on a major undercover case on the day I told him I was gay, and about my feelings for him. My reckless confession must have thrown him off his game, distracted him and made him vulnerable.

If I knew then what I know now it all would have been so different.

2.

My lust for my dad began even before I had any understanding of sex. I always loved his physicality and was intoxicated by his physical prowess. The sandpaper scruff of beard on his jaw, the slow bob of his Adam’s apple and the timbre of his voice were ceaselessly fascinating to me. Being carried in his strong arms, roughhousing with him, sitting in his lap all made me feel like the most special boy in the world.

I loved to close my eyes and listen to the warm tones of his voice, reading to me Where The Wild Things Are, and later The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, and still later chapter books like The Story of Houdini. That was my favorite, because it took longer to read and because it was a true story.

“‘Houdini offered to be handcuffed, locked in a safe and then dropped off a pier,’” Dad read. “‘His wife Bess was allowed to kiss him goodbye because it was understood he might not survive the feat. He was locked in the safe and dropped into the San Francisco Bay, to the excitement of many and distress of some. Bess alone was calm. She knew that when she kissed Houdini, she had cleverly passed a tiny lockpick from her mouth to his, that would allow him to escape any confinement. With a kiss I’d pass the key, she later said. There is a way out of everything. You just have to figure it out.”

My Dad’s voice was deep and slightly rough. It was not excited or dramatic, but had a comforting regular tone. With my eyelids drawn I his telling of the story was like a deep dark body of water I could sink into like Houdini, and drift and dream.

As I matured, my interest in my father did too. The swell of his pecs and long smooth muscles of his limbs captured my growing sexual awareness, as did his flat belly and the smooth dark hair that spread over it like mysterious writing in an open book. He was so masculine but also so slim, strong but elegant.

I was drawn to his him and his dark Mediterranean looks, his glossy black hair and long olive skinned face. His long nose was slightly bent like a boxer, resulting from a fight in his younger days. His only other physical flaw, if you could consider it that, was a small third nipple below his left pec, barely noticeable, like the legendary imperfect stitch.

As I grew more interested and aroused, my access to him lessened. My mother divorced him, and although their split was as amicable as was reasonable, I saw less and less of him. I resented both of them for the split, and also my dad’s work partner Tony, who felt like a rival for Dad’s companionship.

Dad had always had long had periods of grave silence, but after the divorce these increased in frequency and duration. He became more drawn into his work, and less involved with me. Mom explained the long brooding times as remnants of his traumatic childhood, but I didn’t know enough then to understand. And, to be honest, I cared more about myself.

With time I was old enough and independent enough that his custody weekends were more a technicality than anything, but they remained my time to be near him. In my dark twisty mind, I had fantasies of his body rolling against mine, his arms spreading my legs, entering me with his cock, filling and completing me. I could almost feel him opening me like a key in a lock, using me for my truest purpose.

I wanted to be with him alone in all the world, and wanted him to want me in kind.

3.

On the most fateful day of my young life, Dad came to tell me he wouldn’t be taking me for his custody weekend after all. He couldn’t disclose any more about the case he was on, but could say it needed his full attention and he and Tony were going into work.

I had only learned a few months earlier that Dad and Tony were undercover agents, not analysts as I’d always been told before. I should have understood that at times this work would take priority, but I was too tight in the grip of my own needs and desires. Instead of feeling proud that Dad was doing something important that he was uniquely qualified to do, I burned with hurt feelings and anger.

“I’m sorry Will,” he said to me, “when I can tell you more you’ll understand. You’ll be proud.”

“Sure Dad,” I responded flatly without even glancing his way, looking for a fight, “I just wonder if you’ll ever be proud of me.”

“What does that mean? Is this something we need to discuss right now?”

“It’s nothing. I know you need to go. I just – I was just going to tell you this weekend that I’m gay. So now you know.”

I wanted to hurt him the way I felt hurt, and I thought for a macho former marine turned undercover agent knowing his only son was a faggot would do the job.

“What? Will, that’s – you’re too young to know what you are. Let’s talk about it when I get back. I have a lot to tell you.”

“Okay Dad. Kiss goodbye?”

A kiss on the head was Dad’s customary goodbye, even in my teens. But this time as he bent to plant his lips on my mop of hair I turned my face up to meet his lips with mine. My tongue slid between his lips and into his mouth, meeting his.

He recoiled in shock and ran his hand over his lips to wipe away the wet of my tongue. Staring at it on his rough fingertips he seemed disoriented and distant. It was as if he wasn’t even in the same room with me anymore.

“Dad? DAD?” I said, feeling anger at my core. Could he not even respond to a kiss as if I mattered?

He snapped to suddenly, and just said, “We can discuss this when I get back.”

But he didn’t come back.

Days later Tony told us the job went terribly wrong. Dad was identified as an agent, and killed, he explained. His body was not retrievable but it was certain that Agent Calvin Miranda was dead.

We were afforded the usual honors and benefits that fall to the families of agents who die in the field. I was told I now had a dozen fathers, Dad’s fellow agents promising to step up to fill in for my own lost father. So many fathers, but none of them the one I wanted.

4.

Everyone accepted that Dad was dead, but me. I knew it couldn’t be true.

“I understand it’s hard to believe,” Tony told me, weeks later. “Your dad was my partner for years. Not a day goes by I don’t wake up expecting to see him. But he’s gone, and he’d want you to move on.”

“I know,” I lied. I had learned already that I couldn’t convince him otherwise. “It’s just so hard to believe.”

“You have to know he died doing good,” said Tony. He was trying to save a lot of kids from some awful shit. The worst shit. Your father was a fucking hero, Will.”

Tears streaked my face, and I let Tony think they marked sorrow over Dad’s death.

I had decided I would have to rescue my father on my own. But I’d need Tony to do it. No one knew more about what happened than he did, and he’d be more helpful as an unwitting ally than an obstacle.  

“You’re all I have left of him now,” I said, beginning my courtship of Tony for information.

I spent more and more time with Tony. I told him stories about my time with Dad. They were little tales, but the things that only Dad and I knew. Like the time at the California coast when a riptide almost pulled us out to sea and Dad saved us and we agreed to never tell Mom. Or how we used to play Houdini, taking turns unraveling our hands from knots.

For every story I told Tony, I elicited one from him, and I did the same with Mom. Secrets became our currency, and we traded often, our tongues loosened by grief. In this way I put together the story of his life, which I had known previously only in broad strokes.  The simple story that he was an orphan who never knew his own parents was just a glimmer on a deep sea of darker truths.

Dad, I learned, was not simply an orphan. He was rescued as a child from a sex trafficking ring. This hit me hard, especially knowing that the last time I’d seen him I made an unwelcome advance. Imagining how many of these he may have endured at his most vulnerable deepened my guilt to the lowest depth of my core.

No one knew his date of birth, his heritage or even where he was born, but at the time of his rescue he was believed to be about eleven, and likely southern Italian or Arabic. Placed in foster care he normalized more quickly than anyone expected. He displayed a sharp mind and adaptability, learning to read and write with remarkable speed. He was eager to please his teachers and caretakers and showed little sign of trauma.

At fourteen he was placed with the Mirandas, a retired classics professor and a school nurse. They were well suited by training and temperament to help their odd charge in his pursuit of being an ordinary American teen. Though he’d picked up the language and culture with shocking speed, he was unhappy that his scrawny build marked him as unusual among his peers. With his foster parents support he took up weightlifting and team sports, and discovered he had a natural talent for athletics as well as academics.

The Mirandas adopted him, giving him their last name. At about this time my mom fell for his dark good looks, and set out to win him. He had no other known girlfriends, and formed a singular and deep attachment to her. His life had every appearance of normality, but for a more swarthy appearance than most of his suburban peers.

After high school he joined the Marines, where he excelled. A few months in, he learned of my impending arrival. He and mom were married five months before my birth. He was four years active duty, during which time he was identified as a prospect for the agency. The Mirandas both passed away in quick succession, and left Dad everything they had, including their humble Seattle home where I would grow up.

From this point I had my own memories of home life. But the details of Dad’s working life become murky as he entered the police academy. From there, I learned much later, he was soon after recruited into the agency. He showed exceptional aptitude and passion for breaking up the sex trade, and became a rising star. There were, of course, concerns about lingering effects from his childhood trauma, but a battery of psychological tests and observation showed he was fit for duty.

About a decade later Mom split from him, citing his emotional distance and obsession with his work. A single man, he became singularly focused on that work, except for his weekends with me.

A few years later he disappeared.

5.

For all that, I still didn’t know what happened the night we lost Dad. That information was a matter of a classified case, and not to be disclosed in exchange for my simple stories of childhood memories.

Even a year after Dad disappeared I still didn’t know what happened. I asked Tony for about the hundredth time to tell me what happened that night. It was the only way I could put this behind me, I told him, because without even a body how else could I believe he was really gone?

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but there’s a question I want answered in return.”

I agreed, certain whatever he might ask would be worth the trade.

“You already know our focus was on the sex trade,” Tony told me, “and that’s what we were onto that night. Your dad and I were close to breaking this particular sex trade ring that came into the US and Canada through Seattle and Vancouver. Sick fucks, Will. Very bad people is all I’m saying. Take my word. You would have been proud of your old man, the fucking determination he had. But in the end his cover was blown, mine wasn’t. There was gunfire, he didn’t come out. No way he survived.”

I hung on every word, my heart racing as I imagined the events in my head. In the end I could only think of dad injured, held prisoner, with only me – a stupid kid – to rescue him.

“Will,” said Tony, “I maybe shouldn’t have told you this. But there’s no justice in you not knowing.”  He looked at me gravely. “And now there’s something I need to know. Something went down with you and your dad that night, right before we left. He didn’t tell me what, but he was shaken. What happened?”

“I told him I’m gay,” I said. My voice cracked and tears ran from my eyes. “I told him I’m gay and – it upset him.”

“You pulled some number on him, kid.”

With that revelation I had only one high value secret left: I’d kissed him. And that last secret I held close to my heart. It seemed for all Tony and I had shared, we were neither of us yet at the point of full disclosure.

6.

That summer Tony married Mom. He had been coming over frequently to see me, and without my notice they fell for each other. What a cliché. I could imagine the headline, Fallen Hero’s Widow Marries His Partner. She was a divorcee, not a widow, but close enough for my hurt feelings.

I shouldn’t have blamed her. Only in her mid-thirties she had every reason to marry again, and Tony was a good prospect. Blond, stocky and boyishly handsome even at age forty he was attractive enough. He struck me as earnest to the point of being dull, but maybe after the years of Dad’s remote ways someone more simple and affectionate was a welcome change.

Before the wedding Tony wanted to have a talk. He told me he knew he could never take my dad’s place, but hoped he could be something like a father to me in the years to come. We are all of us grieving and looking for reconciliation, and maybe we could provide that for each other. In the end, he said, he and Mom and I each had our unique relationships with Dad that no one could claim. All together the three of us By coming together as a family we could almost make Dad whole again. All but his body, I thought.

After the wedding Tony moved in. I spent more and more time in my room, listening to music, looking at gay porn online and researching any clues as to Dad’s whereabouts. In fact I did these three things at the same time, almost disassociating from the world when I did. I could spend hours, whole nights, barely noticing any time had passed.

I listened to a lot of house music, the kind I read was favored in decadent gay clubs. Hercules & Love Affair and Blowoff formed the basis of the playlist I listened to under thickly cushioned noise cancelling headphones. I blogged on Tumblr, looking for and trading images of fit daddy types that reminded me of my own father. But for all my research, I had no clues about the sex trade ring he was working against my Dad disappeared.

7.

Dad had been gone for two years. Mom and Tony had been married for one. I turned 18.

I chose a college in Oregon so I could be near home, making it easier to return if there was news about Dad. And I wanted to stay close to Mom and to Tony, feeling certain that between the three of us we held the key to unravel the mystery of what happened and why.

Mom took a backseat in my college prep allowing Tony to be more involved. He took me shopping for everything for my dorm room, picking out bed sheets together, string lights and a new laptop. We discussed freshman classes and requested a schedule that we drafted together. He was more and more like a real dad.

On my last night at home Mom had a shift at the hospital, but Tony ordered Thai delivery and made me my favorite brownies and we packed my things together. I’m ashamed to say at times like this I almost forgot about my mission to rescue my father.

“Wish your old man could be here to see this,” Tony said, yanking me back from normal teenage life to the reality of my situation. “He’d be so proud of you, son.”

“I wonder if he knows, wherever his is,” I replied, slumping down onto my childhood bed.

Tony sat next to me and pulled me close in a side hug, patting my shoulder firmly, “He knows, Will, he knows.”

I cried a little, as I often did when Tony and I discussed my father. I’d held out in my belief that Dad was alive for two years, but at times I faltered. I’d learned nothing meaningful and had no clues to even prove he was living. Part of my longed to focus on college, on dating, on all the things a normal eighteen year old would do.

“Will,” Tony said in a low tone, “I know you’ve been carrying something around with you. I know it. Some kind of guilt or something. I can see it in you.” Just hearing that invoked a sob in my chest. “I want you to tell me the truth about what happened that night. Not that you told your dad you’re gay. There’s something more, isn’t there? Man to man, you tell me and I’ll carry it to the grave.”

I finally broke down and told him everything. I told him how I had lusted after Dad, and how I kissed him that night. I knew I shocked and hurt him, I was being selfish, and it was because of that that Dad died that night, because I threw him off his game.

“I killed him,” I sobbed and choked. I thought back to the story of Houdini, and how his wife Bess would secretly pass him a key in a kiss. I had done the opposite, sealing my father’s fate with a kiss that should never have been. “I killed him. it’s all because of me.”

Tony hugged me hard and whispered “You didn’t kill him, kid. You didn’t.”

When my shuddering sobs subsided, absorbed into Tony’s strong body, he gave me a chin up with his right hand. “It’s okay you did that. You loved your dad and wanted to be close to him, right?”

I sniffled and nodded Yes.

“Will, I want to be close to you,” Tony said, holding my head in his hands, and then placed his lips on mine, his tongue snaking into my mouth.

I didn’t understand what was happening, but some part of my brain reasoned that he’d wanted to be a father to me, and knew this was what I wanted from my real dad. I was so glad he wasn’t disgusted by my feelings, and to be honest I felt a rush from his desire for me. I’d never experienced that before, and coming from an adult man it was heady stuff.

“It’s okay,” he said as he slipped my hand around the firm shape in his crotch. I could feel his erection through his jeans, I when unzipped them his fat white cock sprung out. It was curved and widest at the midpoint, an almost kayak shaped, and leaking a stream of sticky precum.

I maneuvered down to where I could lick his cock and try to swallow it, which was harder than I expected given its size. He sighed with appreciation and ran a beefy hand over my shoulder to the back of my head, pulling me in. He sat up and spread his legs to give me space, and I on my knees beside my childhood bed I worked to suck him off.

I let Tony guide me to what he liked best, licking the shaft and sucking the pale head while i gripped the stiff shaft. I dropped my shorts and underwear and even without touching myself my own erection throbbed and dripped. I was high just knowing I was servicing such a hot cock, at last.

I was startled when Tony’s cock suddenly swelled even bigger and harder and my mouth was flooded with hot thick cum. My cheeks puffed and I blew hard out of my nose, struggling to not choke. “Unhhhhh swallow it,” he groaned, his hips bucking into my face, “fucking swallow.”

I tried to gulp him down but it was too much, and I nearly heaved, coughing up Tony’s load of cum and my own spit on his thick white thighs and my mattress. I backed off and on all fours I coughed and sniffled, my face smeared with mucous, cum and tears.

“I’m sorry,” I coughed in a phlegmy voice.

“It’s okay Will, it’s okay,” he whispered, leaning forward to pat my head. “You were incredible. That was the most amazing experience of my life.”

He leaned in to kiss me again and I jerked myself off. I loved his strong tongue in my mouth, our mixed spit still thick with his semen.

Afterwards he said we didn’t need to feel bad because this was part of our coping over our shared loss, and that he would never tell Mom what I did.

8.

I blew Tony from time to time after that, during visits home for holidays or occasional weekend visits. I got better, doing it exactly how Tony liked it. I played with his balls and jammed the head of his cock in throat where I’d feel the familiar swell just before he’d shoot his load into me which I swallowed eagerly.

Mom had plenty of shifts at the hospital that allowed time for Tony and me. He loved Mom, Tony told me, but he had such a high sex drive it was a source of tension for them. In a way I was helping them both by taking off the excess. It was a rationalization, I supposed, but no one was harmed, and I liked doing it. I liked Tony’s affection and praise, and feeling wanted.

I found attention and desire at school too. I was naturally thin like Dad, and knowing how he had started weightlifting I did too. Even without his single-minded determination, I started to put on some muscle. Inheriting Dad’s vaguely Middle Eastern looks, people often mistook me for as foreign student. Some assumed I was Muslim, which made me more interesting because there weren’t too many Muslim cocksuckers on campus. I let people think what they want.

I lost my virginity as a freshman. I noticed men watching me when I went for runs, and I liked the attention. I hooked up with one, then another. Sometimes they topped me, sometimes I topped them. I liked the anonymity of it. I could get off but could still keep my time for myself, for school or working out or trying to research what happened to dad.

I don’t know how I would have been the same if Dad hadn’t disappeared. I couldn’t see having a boyfriend or dating. Those were for normal people, not fucked up people like me who sent their abused fathers to their doom. How could I have a boyfriend knowing he might still be out there in trouble, waiting to be rescued?

9.

During sophomore spring break Mom came to me for help with a password problem. Her own laptop was out for repairs for a couple of and she’d asked Tony to set up on account on his so she could check emails.

Naturally Tony set up her account with a lengthy randomly generated password, and naturally she hated the gibberish of numbers and letters. She asked me to help her change the password to my name and year of birth, Will1997, so she could remember it.

I’d tried many times in the past to hack into Tony’s home laptop but could never get through. But Tony had slipped up with Mom’s account, giving her administrator privileges, and she in turn gave me access. Once in, I copied the contents of almost his entire hard drive to my own laptop. I was certain he’d realize there was a vulnerability before long.

I found a shit ton of porn, which I didn’t want to look at because it seemed disloyal to Mom, but otherwise there was nothing of note, just emails to and from his family in Wisconsin, songs from the early 90’s and a nearly empty personal calendar. HIs work calendar had to be where he kept anything useful, but there were a few cryptic notes on several dates and references to  Algiers. I knew that was the capital of Algeria, but nothing else. And it was odd because I knew Tony was not out of the country on some of those dates because he’d been right here.

Algiers?

That night I put on my headphones and cranked my playlist up, and alternated between rummaging through Tony’s copied hard drive for clues, reading about Algeria  and scanning Tumblr for hot dad type guys. It seems like a lousy way to research, but somehow the music and images and words all fired off each other in my head and opened my thinking.

One of my Tumblr followers, Full-Fathom-Five, had sent a photo that got my interest. I had a thing of course for guys built like my dad, muscular but long and slim. The guy in the photo was that to a t, muscled but supple. He had a furry chest and even smooth baby hairs covering his six pack abs. He wore a black jockstrap and a black collar with a tag on it, his arms apparently bound behind his back. That wasn’t my thing, but what an amazing body.

I’d looked at a lot of porn, but had never seen a body so much like Dad’s, though this guy was much more built than he ever was. It was definitely worth finding more of him. There was no visible studio name, so I zoomed in to look for a watermark.

That was when I saw that under his left pec was a little spot that I thought was a birthmark or a spot on the photo. But it was a tiny third nipple. It was just like Dad’s. And in the same exact spot. It was exactly like Dad’s.

I looked over the rest of the photo, and zoomed in on the tag hanging from the leather collar. There I saw a single word, engraved in all caps: ALGIERS.

END, ACT ONE OF FIVE. TO BE CONTINUED.