Since You Aren’t

My eyes were blinded by the warm light streaming in through the Las Vega apartment bedroom windows when I woke up. I had been raised in Boston. Despite years living in Australia and then here, I still couldn’t get used to late spring conditions in February. I turned toward the middle of the bed and reached out and murmuring “Happy Valentine’s Day,” but coming up empty. Rob must be in the bathroom, I thought. But then I thought that didn’t make any sense, as Rob was like most nineteen-year-olds. I had had to push him out of bed in the morning all summer. And I didn’t hear the shower running.

But then I realized I wasn’t making any sense at all. Rob hadn’t been in my bed last night. He’d left me two days ago—to go back to L.A. and college. His spring semester had already started in L.A., and he’d still been hanging around here, which had led me to believe that he might stay. But now he’d gone.

It was bad timing on his part, because he really would have liked what I’d bought him for Valentine’s Day. I’d tried to keep him here. I’d told him he could go to college right here. The Las Vegas division of the University of Nevada was just a couple of blocks further east off of East Flamingo Road from the apartment house, which itself was just a couple of long blocks east of the Vegas strip. I’d thought we were getting along very well. I wasn’t all that old and my job made me stay in tip-top condition, but he’d made quite clear that I was just a winter-holiday break meal ticket for him.

At thirty-nine I needed to stop chasing young tail. Memo to myself to do that as soon as I turned forty, which was a lot sooner than I wanted to. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain hunk status, which was a requirement of my job. I’d come down in the world in the job department—it’s a good thing I’d saved and invested well while I was making good bucks or I couldn’t have bought this apartment so close to the Planet Hollywood Resort, across the strip from the Bellagio Casino, where I worked evenings.

I got up in silence, did my thing in the bathroom, which was taking increasingly long as the years unfolded, and worked out for an hour before moving on to the kitchen, which was also silent other than the pop of the eggs and bacon in the pan, the gurgle of the coffeemaker, and the ding of the toaster oven burning my toast. The second bedroom in the apartment was entirely outfitted with serious exercise equipment. I had to stay in shape because I showed that shape every evening I was working and I showed it standing near young muscle hunks in their twenties.

With each month it seemed more difficult to keep in fighting trim.

There were several male-hunk Chippendale dancer-type revues permanently playing Vegas. I was the regular master of ceremonies of one called Aussie Heat, which played in the V Theater in the Planet Hollywood Resort. The venues played to a sliding scale of “straight for the women” to “gay for the men,” and Aussie Heat leaned heavily toward gay-male patrons and show. I was a draw, as MC, in my own right and got billing on the posters advertising the show. In my late teens and early twenties, I’d costarred in a police academy drama TV show. When that closed down, I went to Australia and New Zealand to play parts in movies there I couldn’t get in Hollywood. That made me an attraction in Aussie Heat. I didn’t have to dance the line or wiggle out into the audience and give lap dances as the MC, but I had to go topless like the other guys and stand up well enough beside them.

I didn’t know how much longer I could do that. I didn’t really have to do that anymore at all. As I already noted, I’d saved and invested well when the money was coming in. I could lie back and enjoy the rest of my life now, if a wanted to and didn’t spend too freely. It was while I was lying back at the apartment pool that I’d met and hooked up with Rob. He was working as the apartment pool boy for the winter holiday break between his sophomore year semesters. I loved the way he looked and he claimed to like the way I looked. I’d given him room and board since before Christmas in exchange for sex.

What had started out as just athletic sex and grown more affectionate—at least for me—and I was contemplating an early career retirement and settling down with Rob when he let me know that wasn’t his plan at all. What we had was just a semester break sugar daddy arrangement, enjoyed by both, but no lasting commitment.

I didn’t realize how lonely I could be until he was gone. He hadn’t been the first of the young dudes who’d shared my bed here in Vegas.

I caught myself setting the breakfast table for two, cursed myself and sighed, And ate my breakfast to silence other than the rattling of the daily newspaper. As I ate I eyed a box of glazed donuts topped with red and white Valentine’s sprinkles sitting on the kitchen island and representing how recent a guy young enough to snarf such fat factories and still stay in shape had lived here. I felt depressed enough to snarf the rest of them myself, but I knew they would go directly to fat that would show under the lights of the club stage. I’d have to toss them, but if I did it would be an acknowledgement that Rob wasn’t coming back. The TV was on to constant news but I had the sound off, wanting to know if anything serious was going on in the world but not wanting to hear about it.

My breakfast came after noon, as I rarely got home from work before 2:00 a.m., so I wasn’t in synch with the world in the best of times.

These weren’t the best of times. As I’ve noted, I didn’t realize how lonely I could be until Rob was gone. While I ate, scanned the headlines in the newspaper and checked the obituaries, and read the comics, I checked my cellphone like every six or seven minutes. Rob had been a caller. He’d call me on every little thing he did or saw. If he saw a caterpillar crawl across the patio tiles while he was cleaning the apartment house pool, he’d call me to share in the experience. It also being irritating as the day rolled on how often he would call.

Now I wasn’t getting any calls on the cellphone and was feeling disconnected from the world—and from exuberant young male tail. Valentine’s Day was not the best day of the year to have lost your lover.

God, I was starting to feel old—and old and out of step with the world.

After breakfast, I went to the desk to sort through papers and pay bills. At 3:30, I changed from my sleeping shorts to a Speedo and went out to the pool to swim laps and tan until 5:30. It was barely warm enough to swim in the outside pool, but I needed to get out there as often as possible. Both swimming and tanning were necessary activities. The swimming helped me stay in shape and you couldn’t be on stage with Aussie Heat without having a good tan.

As I lay at the pool I saw that a bunch of leaves had formed on the top of the water in the pool—this despite there not being any trees nearby with leaves to fall. Someone needed to skim them off. But no one was there to do so. Rob had been the pool boy here for the last month—and Rob wasn’t coming back. I’d offered him a life here, but he wasn’t coming back.

When I went back upstairs to my apartment to get ready for work, the first thing I did was to toss the box of red-and-white-sprinkled glazed donuts in the trash. The last thing I did when leaving for work after showering and dressing was to retrieve the box of donuts and put it back on the kitchen island. There always was the hope Rob would be here when I returned tonight. He’d known he was getting that special gift I’d promised him for Valentine’s Day, a leather bomber jacket. He was a greedy enough little bugger to come back for that.

* * * *

It was the second night in a row that I saw the sandy-haired young guy out in the audience at Aussie Heat who was looking at me more than at the bare-chested hunks dancing the stage and playing the room. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty and he was a real cutie. He wasn’t the beefed-up type of those on stage—and that I tried to keep to be—but he was a real looker and had a puppy-dog vulnerability aura about him. He wasn’t saucy and sassy like Rob had been, but he had the same effect on my arousal factor as Rob had—well, as Rob had had when he was here.

The crowd was lighter that evening than the night before and that it would be the next night, Valentine’s Day, so he was more noticeable, wearing the same form-fitting T-shirt, with a St. Louis University logo, tight faded jeans, and running shoes. He wasn’t exactly dressed for a night on the town, but none of the patrons minded. This was a heavy gay-audience night, and the young dude was getting as much attention from the other patrons as they were giving the hunks gyrating on the stage, and, eventually, out in the audience in lap dances. The young guy didn’t seem to notice the attention he was getting. A lot of his attention was going to me, and I certainly noticed that.

He was the same age as Rob was. I was still clinging to young guys as my grasp as staying as young and in-shape myself for as long as possible.

When I was leaving the theater and out on the street that night after the show, I noticed the young dude standing across East Flamingo Road like he was waiting for someone. Was he waiting for me, I wondered. If so, that would be just fine. He might be just the ticket to get my mind off Rob.

I looked across the street at him, making it obvious to him that I was eyeing him directly, and he looked back at me. We were frozen there for several minutes while he was coming to some sort of decision. When he had, he started to recross the street—at least I got the impression he was coming to me. If this was going to happen, he’d have to come to me. Maybe I was going to find love this Valentine’s Day after all. But he’d have to come to me. When the day came that I had to go snuffling after young tail, I knew that was the day for me to give up young tail.

And I knew that day was coming. It wasn’t lost on me that having to buy Rob that expensive leather bomber jacket to try to keep him was a form of me going to him.

Almost as soon as the sandy-haired cutie had taken a step in my direction, though, he stopped and looked away. At the same minute I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see one of the dancers, a young black guy, Jared, with the build of a god, there.

“Could we go for coffee or something, Gill?” Jared asked. “There’s something I think we need to talk about.”

“Sure,” I said. “We could do the all-night Starbucks at Bally’s.” I liked Jared and was sorry to see him go. He was stepping up to a Chippendales revue in Los Angeles. It was a good move for him—and for the patrons of such shows.

“As you may know I’m moving to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks,” he said when we had our coffee and were settled at a table. He wasn’t looking me in the eyes, and I was searching for what the issue was here. I didn’t think I’d ever had an issue with Jared. We were both tops, we shared our similar tastes in men, and we’d never had occasion to square off against each other. I thought everything was casual and fine between us. I didn’t have as a good a relationship with some of the other dancers, who, as a group, were high strung, territorial, and competitive, and my getting billing because I’d been in Australian movies wasn’t seen as justification enough by all of them. I certainly didn’t have the bods they all did, but I was a good fifteen years older than most of them.

“Yes, I heard you had gotten into an L.A. Chippendales revue. That’s the top, Jared. That’s a good move. We’ll miss you here, though.”

“I didn’t want to leave and have you find out later—I like you and don’t want there to be any bad feelings.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t think there’s been any reason for us to have bad feelings about anything.”

“It’s about Rob Abbot. I know he’s your boyfriend—that he’ been your boyfriend—but he’s been getting around.”

“Rob Abbot?” I exclaimed, fully confused and in the dark about where this is going.

“I’ll be joining him in L.A. We’ll be living together. He was talking about staying here and going to the University of Nevada, but when I got the job in L.A., he said he’d stay in college there. Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to short you on that. When Rob and I started, I didn’t even know he was your boy.”

“Rob? You and Rob?” I asked. It came as a blow, of course, but also as a blessing. Here I’d been castigating myself for pushing Rob away is some way I didn’t understand having done, and all the time he was giving it to other guys in the revue—probably not just to Jared—and he was walking off with a newer model than I was. It, surprisingly, was more of a relief than a disappointment. All along there had been disconnects between me and Rob and I know I had been thinking of settling down with him more because he was the guy who was there when the urges set in rather than because he really was “the guy.”

“No problem, Jared,” I said. And in the moment at least it really was no problem. Running through my mind were all of the little things about Rob that irritated me and were making me feel like I’d dodged a bullet. He could be Jared’s problem now. I realized that I like Jared a whole lot more than I did Rob and that any concern I was having right now about this was for Jared in his relationship with Rob than in Rob’s relationship with me—or Jared and me being good. “We’re good,” I said. “It was over between Rob and me anyway.”

There was the issue of the bomber jacket now, which was too small for me, but maybe there’d be another guy later.

Otherwise, it was good; and it was over between Rob and me now. When I got back to the apartment, that box of donuts would go right back in the trash.

I stood, offered my hand, and gave Jared a smile. He took it, relief clear on his face. We shook and I turned and left the coffee shop—and that was that.

It was raining and had turned colder when I left the coffee shop, and I was getting soaked. It was only a couple of long blocks for me to walk to get to my apartment house, though, and I was floating on a bit of euphoria, feeling like a burden had lifted from me. I didn’t expect that to last long, but, for now, it was enough for me not to worry about a bit of rain. We got so little rain in Vegas that we thanked rather than cursed the gods whenever it came upon us.

I was at the apartment door and fumbling with my key when I heard an “Excuse me” from behind me. I turned. It was the great-looking young sandy-haired guy from the V Theater audience the last two nights. He was as soaked as I was. His clothes, such as they were, were plastered to his cut body and he was looking sexy as hell.

“You’re Gill Gordon, aren’t you? The Australian move star?” he asked, the question timidly put out there.

That went directly to my vanity. It was nice for him to say “star,” if only in Australia and mostly side-kick parts. I didn’t hear that often outside the theater troupe publicity. “Yes. Haven’t I seen you before? Is there something I can do for you?”

There was something the young honey could do for me, and maybe he would. He’d followed me home—in the rain. He could come upstairs, lie down on my bed, and open his legs for me.

“I’ve come to your show a couple of times.”

“On the mostly gay nights?” I asked, wanting to pin him down on that point. He was a real honey.

“Yes, on those nights,” he said.

“Good to know,” I said, making clear preferences had been declared here.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been at your show and I’ve been trying to build up the courage to speak to you. My name is Todd Simpson. Kenneth Todd Simpson. They call me Todd.”

“Yes?” I said. He’d stopped when saying his name, like maybe that should ring a bell with me.

“My mother was Claudia Simpson,” he then said.

He stopped again. I was still in the dark, but there was a glimmer of light off in the corner of my mind.

“She appeared in that cop show you were a regular on before going to Australia.”

The light dawned. “Ah, yes, I remember her now. You’re her son? How is she?”

“She’s dead. I came looking for you because I think you maybe are my father.”

A double whammy. It took a minute from those two blows to register, but I recovered OK. This obviously meant more to him than to me, but I could see why they would mean something to him and I wouldn’t tromp on that.

“Ah. Perhaps you should come upstairs,” I said. “And we can get you out of those wet clothes.”

That was what I’d been thinking of doing—getting him out of his clothes—but certainly not in the context that had developed here.

* * * *

On the way up the stairs to the third floor—I always took the stairs rather than the elevator, as I was always working on staying in shape—the young guy—Todd, he said his name was—spoke up almost apologetically. “Maybe you didn’t hear what I said down on the street.”

“I heard you,” I said. “You said that maybe I was your father. We’ll discuss it upstairs after we’ve gotten into something dry. Yes, I heard you.”

“You’ll still let me come upstairs?”

“Yes, of course.”

I had heard him and I was processing. I remembered Claudine Simpson now. She was in the TV series we did nearly twenty years ago. A couple of years older than I was. Quite a looker, put in the series for that reason. I don’t know where she’d gone after the series was canceled late in its first year and I got the call to go to Melbourne. I couldn’t say I was surprised she’d had a baby in the next year. She slept around.

“Hey, nice place,” Todd said when we entered the apartment.

“I like it,” I said. “You can shower first. Leave your wet clothes there in the hall by those accordion doors on your way back and I’ll toss them in the dryer. I’ll take the other bathroom. We’ll talk when we’re dry and warm again.”

I had gym shorts and Ts in the workout room and there was a bath, with a shower, attached. No briefs or jock strap there, but I’d make do. I tossed Todd’s jeans and T in the dryer and turned it on. The shower in the master bath was already going before I got into the other one. And when I came out, he was already there, sitting at the kitchen island, munching on a donut from the Rob Memorial Box. He was fast. That wasn’t the only donut missing from the box. I took a brief moment to mourn what a guy his age could do with sugar and not put on weight that a guy my age couldn’t. That was followed by regretting that I hadn’t told him all I should have when he went back to the shower. He had a towel tied around his waist. I hadn’t told him to pull something to wear out of my drawers until his clothes were dry.

He wasn’t just a sandy-haired cutie. He was sex on a stick. I could feel my athletic shorts, in which I was swinging free, tenting up. I saw his eyes go directly to that.

“Sorry about the donut,” he said, making like he’d put it back even though it was three-quarters gone already.

“No problem. I guess you’re hungry. I can cook us up some eggs. How about that?”

“Don’t want you to go to any trouble,” he said.

“Looks like we got some talking to do. We might as well do it over a meal. Sorry about the towel. I should have told you to pull out some clothes, although there isn’t anything I have that wouldn’t just fall off you.”

“I noticed that,” he said. “You keep up with those dancers in the review, although you must be old enough to . . .” He stopped there, realizing the corner he’d sunk into.

“Old enough to be their father. Old enough to be your father,” I said.

“Yes. Sorry,” he said.

“What makes you think I’m your father? I guess we’ve established that Claudia Simpson is your mother, and I’ll admit I knew her—briefly—at one time. But what makes you finger me as the father? Because, I gotta tell you, that just isn’t possible.”

“Was my mother. She’s dead now. We were living in St. Louis. She was teaching drama there in a high school. Cancer got her.”

“And so you thought it was a good time to look for your other parent? Obviously a father wasn’t in the picture in St. Louis. Or do you have a stepfather there?”

“No, no stepfather in the picture or anyone else in St. Louis. Before I moved on, I decided to try to find you. And I did.”

I showed him the palms of my hands in an erasing motion. “I told you, Todd. I’m not your father. You’ve found me in a male dance revue, the gayest one playing Las Vegas. That should tell you what you need to know about me. I’m gay. Always was. I’ve never been with a woman before—not with your mother and not with any other woman. I’m sorry you haven’t found your biological father in coming to me, but it’s not me. Did Claudia tell you it was me?”

“No, she didn’t tell me shit about my father—even when she was dying and it would have been a good thing to know who else I might have in the world. But after she died, I went through her things. I found photos. Here, here’s one.” He had put his wallet on the kitchen island, and he pulled a photo out of it and showed it to me. “Here, that’s you with her, isn’t it? And I look just like you did then. I couldn’t help seeing that when I was watching you at the Aussie Heat shows.”

I looked at the photo. “No, sorry, Todd, that’s not me. Yes, we look alike, but look at the red you and this guy have in your hair. I don’t have that. That’s Ken Daniels. He was an actor in the TV series we did. Same age as I was, and, yeah, he looks a lot like me. We were brothers in the series. We were meant to look alike, but that’s not me.”

“That’s not you.” He said it, but I wasn’t convinced he believed it. He seemed to deflate within himself. I felt the air had gone out of my tires too, but I recovered before he did.

“And I won’t lie to you. He was sleeping with your mother. She wasn’t sleeping with me.” I wouldn’t lie, but I wouldn’t tell him the whole truth—that his mother was sleeping with a lot of guys or, more painfully for me, that Ken Daniels was sleeping with me then too.

That was sinking in, but he obviously wasn’t wholly convinced yet.

“What did you tell me your name was—your full name—when we were downstairs? Todd is the name you go by, but it’s not your first name, is it?”

“Kenneth,” he said. “My first name is Kenneth. Only my mom ever called me that, though, and then only when she was angry with me.”

“Bingo. Your mother put it right there. Your name is Kenneth. The man in that photo’s name is Ken. Kenneth Daniels.”

He absorbed that. “You’re not my father.” This time he said it like he was convinced.

“No, sorry.”

There was a pause in which it was clear he wanted to say something but was struggling with that.

“What? What do you want to say?” I asked. I had my own hope of what he might say. He was sex on a stick and had me aching.

And he wasn’t my son. We weren’t related.

And then he said it. “I’m not sorry you’re not my father.” Then, “Sorry I said that. If my clothes are dry, maybe I should just go.”

“It’s still raining. Your clothes wouldn’t be dry for more than a couple of minutes if you left now. And I offered you something to eat.”

“And is that all you are offering me?” he asked. His face showed what he wanted, what he needed, and I knew he could see it in my face too.

“No, it’s not all I’m offering,” I said, “if you are hungry for more than food.” I reached over an unknotted the towel around his waist and parted the sides. He was in erection—probably as hard as he could tell I was by the tenting of my athletic shorts.

My “And since you aren’t,” overlaid his “And since you aren’t,” and we both laughed a nervous little laugh.

The hunger we than assuaged was not one fulfilled by food.

* * * *

Todd was all soft moans, yielding, smooth skin, and flexibility as I laid him on the back at the side of my bed and he grabbed his ankles and raised and spread his legs. I went down on my knees between his thighs, clutched his buttocks in my hands and squeezed, devoured his cock and balls, and opened up his passage with my tongue. Able to leave his legs raised and spread, Todd grasped my head between his hands, holding me in place, moaning, and murmuring, “Yes, yes, fuck me, daddy.”

Rising, retrieving lube and a condom from the nightstand, snapping in in place, as I hovered between his thighs and he looked into my eyes with lust and burbled, “Do it. Screw me,” I did just that, mounting him, penetrating, slowly working my way inside his luscious, young body, fully possessing him, and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.

Running my arm under his back, I turned him over on the bed, his knees pressed into the edge of the mattress, and his tail lifted vulnerably to my command. Grasping his hips between my hands, I penetrated again and set up the rhythm of the fuck, while he writhed under me, whimpered his surrender, and fisted his cock and stroked himself off.

He came before I did, crying out his release. Afterward, I pulled both of us up onto the bed, embraced him close, and we both drifted off into an exhausted sleep. I was murmuring, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” but if Todd heard me, he didn’t respond. I wasn’t sorry I’d fucked a young man. I was sorry I’d fucked this young man. He was Claudia and Kenneth’s son, two actors I’d worked with—one I’d know much more intimately than the other. I shouldn’t have taken advantage.

And I was sorry that I wanted to fuck him again.

In the middle of the night, Todd showed that he wasn’t sorry and that I wasn’t taking advantage. I woke on my back, with Todd riding my cock in the wild abandon of a cowboy-position fuck. Todd wasn’t a neophyte. He knew how to fuck and he did it well.

When I woke, it was full daylight, the warm light of the Nevada sun penetrating to the bed. Todd was lying in my embrace, a fresh, young, gorgeous youth, snoring lightly, not showing any signs of waking anytime soon. He looked every bit the same as Ken Daniels did at that age, lying in my arms the morning after, and the sight of him took me back two decades. I didn’t know then that Ken was screwing Claudia while I was screwing him. I wondered if I would have been less in love with Ken at the time if I had known that was happening. Probably not. I might have loved him less in that brief time of shared heaven, but I don’t think I would have fucked him less often.

I disengaged from Todd. He snorted, but he remained asleep. I took a shower and pulled on athletic shorts. When I padded back into the bedroom, the young man was still blissfully asleep. I went on through to the exercise room and did my morning routine, discovering sore muscles I hadn’t felt since the last time Rob and I had done an athletic all-night fuck.

Todd could be intoxicating. But, as sorely as I wanted it, I was resolved not to do this with him again. He was Claudia and Ken’s son. I had to have some standards. Besides, I was getting too old to do it with barely men. They were exhausting.

In passing the kitchen counter, I grabbed the box of donuts and went to my computer. I was ravenous. I’d offered to feed Todd last night but then hadn’t done so—not with food, at least. I turned on the computer and began munching a donut as I began the search.

I hadn’t tried to track Ken Daniels down for over a decade and a half. We’d been lovers—closer than anyone I’d been intimate with since those days. But he wanted to have an unsullied career in the movies and thus having a male lover was out. He went off and got married, and I went to Australia, doing nothing to hide my interest in men. The irony was that I’d had a career in movies, such as it was, and Ken hadn’t.

Ken hadn’t what? I had no idea what had become of Ken. I was so unaware in that time that I had no idea he was bonking Claudia Simpson while I was screwing him. I hadn’t kept track of him.

Well, now there was the Internet and very few people were off the grid. He’d wanted to stay in movies. I hadn’t seen his name pop up in the movies but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working with them somehow. I started my search, reaching for another—the last one—donut. It only took an hour to find him. He wasn’t in the movies, but he was close. He had an employment agency and, surprise surprise, it was right here in Las Vegas. And from the Web site I found him on, the agency focused in placing people in the specialized jobs that were found here in Vegas: casino workers, hotel hospitality, restaurant workers, dancers, and singers and such. He had an office in the old town out on West Sahara Avenue. It was late morning when I’d tracked a number down for him. I placed the call.

The smell of eggs scrambling and bacon sizzling finally got to Todd. I’d taken his clothes out of the dryer, folded them, and put them on my bed. He put them on when he came out of the shower and padded into the living area, looking shy and apprehensive but sleek and well-fucked.

“Wow,” he said. “That was—”

“Two or three slices of toast?” I asked, not wanting to get into whatever “that” was. He was a keeper. I sorely wanted to keep him myself. But I wasn’t that much of a cad. I wouldn’t do it.

“Um. Three, please.”

“After we eat, do you want to go for a ride?”

“In the bedroom? Again?” He sounded enthusiastic. This was hard for me.

“No, in the car. Across town. And, here, it’s turned cold outside. You can have this to wear. It’s too small for me.” I handed him the leather bomber jacket I’d pulled out of the hall closet.

“Hey, this has got to be expensive,” He said, clearly liking the jacket, though. “I couldn’t—”

But he clearly could, both of us knowing I wanted to think him somehow for the night of sex. “I can’t wear it. It’s got bad memories. I’m just happy to have it out of the apartment. I’m past that now. It’s Valetine’s Day. Let’s just say it’s a Valetine’s Day present—for bringing back memories.”

He’d didn’t argue further. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“I found your father, Ken Daniels. He lives here in Las Vegas. He wants to meet you. Do you want to meet him? You came this far to find your father.”

* * * *

Ken Daniels’s employment agency was on the second floor of an older building across town on West Sahara, but it covered a lot of space and both building and office were in good condition. There were people waiting in the outer reception room, but we were ushered straight into Ken’s office, past cubicles where agents were conducting interviews. This was a functioning business. Ken came to the door of his office, looking both shocked and like a puppy who had just discovered he had a tail. He saw me first and gave me that old “I am yours” smile that I’d melted to decades ago and did so now, but his eyes quickly slid off me and went to Todd. I couldn’t find fault in that. There were tears in his eyes.

“Son?” he said, not obviously meaning it in the actual relationship sense, I didn’t think—I didn’t think he’d fully absorbed that since we’d talked on the phone—but more of an age difference sense. “Well, look at you,” he added. “Claudia never told me . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

“Its OK,” Todd said. “She never told me either. Never ever. You have red highlights in your hair.” He said it in a way that told me that he did, at last, accept that he had found his father—that Ken Daniels was his father.

Everything was going to be all right. They were embracing and Ken was looking at me over Todd’s shoulders like I had come to tell him he’d won the eight-billion-dollar national lottery. The years melted away. Ken was the whole deal. Why had I ever let him get away?

They came out of their embrace and Ken held his new-found son at arms’ length. He was still looking from Todd to me and then back at Todd. “I don’t know how this miracle would have happened to me—finding you—both of you—at one time, and together. And it couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

“I better time?” I asked.

“Yes. David is gone. I knew he was going to pass and he lasted almost a year longer than they gave him, but he left me and I’ve been feeling so lonely?”

“David? The last I knew . . . Avril.”

“Right. You wouldn’t know who he was. David was my partner—both at the office and at home. He was a lot older than I was. And, oh, Avril. You wouldn’t know about Avril, either, would you? That didn’t last more than a couple of months. I decided I wasn’t cut out for the closet after all. But you know that, don’t you? I sent you a couple of letters through the studio.”

“I didn’t get them. What did they say?” Had the studios purposely held us apart? Had he wanted to get together with me again, all that time ago? I certainly would have been willing.

He had turned from me to Todd, though. “And you. I’m told you’ve come out from St. Louis to find me—that your mother had passed. Gill told me that on the phone.”

Yes, I had. I thought that Ken should be prepared on at least that much—that Claudia had passed and that Todd evidently didn’t have anyone else left other than a father he’d never seen. If Ken had indicated on the phone that he now had a life that couldn’t include an unannounced bastard son, we’d best get that settled on the phone. If Ken hadn’t been enthusiastic about meeting Todd—and sooner than later—I wouldn’t have told Todd I’d found his father.

And maybe I would have offered to be Todd’s daddy—of sorts. I wouldn’t leave the guy out in the cold with no one in the world now that I met him—well, more than met him.

“If you were thinking of relocating to Vegas and needed a place to stay, a job . . .” He almost said “a father,” but he held off on that, “then I can help you. I have plenty of room at my house and of course I can help you get a job. I own an employment service. You’re a handsome young man. The Strip would snarf you up in many jobs. Can you . . . do you want . . . ?”

“I can only stay a few days, but, yeah, I’d like to spend some time with you before I have to go back. I don’t need a job. I’m going to have one for a couple of years.”

“Have to go back?” Ken asked.

“I enlisted. I thought that would be the right thing for me to do just now. I still think it is. But this father thing was a loose end. I wanted to pin that down, if I could, before I went into the service. And now, thanks to Gill . . . and to you . . . I have.”

“Fuck. I wish we’d met before you signed up.”

“I’m actually looking forward to it,” Todd said. He was adamant enough about that that it obviously wasn’t subject to discussion.

Ken accepted that, but wasn’t going to just let him go. “But we’ll keep in touch? And you’ll consider this your home and come back here when you can? I don’t want to lose you right after learning of you.”

“Yes . . . I’d like that,” Todd said.

“Well, come on in. Settle over there and we’ll chew the fat. I’ll just say thanks and good-bye to Gill here and then I’ll take the rest of the day off and we’ll spend it getting acquainted.”

So, that was it. I’d done my good deed and was being dismissed. I could understand Ken wanting to focus on Todd, especially as time for that was going to be limited. I started back to the door to his office. I’d hardly made it inside his office. But Ken reached out and gripped my arm—and chill went up my spine. They were still there—the attraction and the arousal.

“I have to admit something,” Ken said, using a low tone, obviously not wanting Todd to hear.

“What?”

“I knew you were here, in Vegas. I’ve known that since you came back from Australia and took up the job with the Aussie Heat here. It’s why I located to Las Vegas—because you were here.”

“But you never contacted me.”

“You never answered my letters. No, wait, I know you never got my letters. Someone from the studio eventually admitted they hadn’t sent them on. And then when I got here, I found you had a young man living with you—and then another one and now one named Rob. And then I met David and we set up this business . . . and time just went on.”

“There’s no Rob anymore,” I said. “Rob’s gone. No, not dead. Just gone. I’m feeling my age. I don’t think I can have younger men again.” There was no way in hell I was going to tell him that I’d had his son just a few hours earlier.

“I feel the same way about older men. I don’t think I could take having and losing another older man, like David.”

“So, this next phase for both of us is going to be someone our own age?” I said.

“That might be wise,” he answered.

It was sitting right there to say. We were the same age. We were both available. We had fit like a matched pair at one time. Neither of us said it off the bat. It was obvious that both of us were thinking it, though.

“In a few days, when Todd has gone back to St. Louis . . . when we’ve had as much time together to make up for absence that we can . . . maybe you and I . . . since we aren’t . . .”

“I’d like that,” I said. “I’ll give you my number and you can call me after Todd has gone.”

“I have your number. I tracked you down as soon as I came to Las Vegas. I know where you work and where you live. I’ve always had your number.”

Yes, I guess he always had, I thought.

I said my good-byes to Todd—and my “until later”—with Ken and left father and son to it.

I was in euphoria all the way across town back to my apartment, being fully aware why I suddenly was feeling so alive. I stopped at a convenience store and picked up a box of glazed donuts on the way. It was still Valentine’s Day. The ones with red and white sprinkles on top were still being featured.

It was a day to celebrate.