Whence Uncle Travis?

I don’t know what drew me into the attic of the family’s old Victorian house in North Main Street in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, on a Saturday morning. I think it was because I thought there were things in the house that were missing since I’d returned from two years at the Lakeland Behavioral Health System residential facility in Springfield. There were still large areas of missing memory in my mind since the auto accident nearly four years previously that I and the doctors were trying to get back. I’d been released, at twenty-two, to come home and enroll in the two-year Three Rivers College, to start getting my life together, with the doctors saying that if anyone was going to help me get those chunks of memory back, it would be my family. But my mother and father didn’t seem a bit interested in me getting those memories back. And when I returned home, something seemed out of kilter with the house itself—things being missing or not where they had been during my life before the accident.

I had agreed with the doctors at Lakeland that I should just move on now, with starting a life, working from the main talent I seemed to have—fine arts. But it still bugged the hell out of me that I couldn’t remember certain areas, certain vital aspects of me. Like, I could come right out and say it, my sexual preferences. I didn’t know which way I wanted to swing. I was twenty-two, for god sake, and though I’d almost blanked out of couple of strategic years of my life, or big aspects of those, it was past time for me to know whether I liked women or men. I could contemplate having sex with women, but often when I did—and I’d had sex with women while in Springfield, more often than not, the images of having sex with men drifted into my consciousness. I hadn’t actually had sex with men—or I didn’t think I’d had. That last, not being sure I hadn’t had, kept rising up and biting me in the butt.

It wasn’t just some misplaced “things” that had sent me into the attic. I knew, at the back of my mind, that there had been a box I kept in my bedroom closet that had dirty books and sex magazines in it. Didn’t all guys have that? What I needed to know about my preferences, I was sure I could find from what was in that box. But there wasn’t any such box in my bedroom closet now—and I hadn’t been able to find one in the attic either. So, it was just “things” that were missing. It was clues to what I needed to know.

There were fleeting moments of past, of possibilities. Of being with someone. I could almost conjure him up in my mind and then he’d float away. Sometime between the horrendous automobile accident—or during it. Hell, I couldn’t get hold of it.

So, I was here, in the attic, going through boxes, not having been helped a bit by either of my parents and not finding that one box I was looking for. I’d noticed that stuff I remembered being in the living room—framed photos mostly—were missing and I asked about that. My father, Frank, just said, “I haven’t noticed. Ask your mother. She’s always redecorating.” But that wasn’t true. I hadn’t forgotten everything. It was just the more stressful things I’d forgotten, the doctors thought.

“I just got tired of the clutter,” she said. “I boxed them up. They’re around somewhere,” she said. She didn’t say they were in the attic. She seemed determine not to say where the stuff was and she probably didn’t notice how important it was to me at the moment. I didn’t have the nerve to ask her about the one box from my closet, but now, when I was going through other boxes in the attic, my interest had drifted to other things I found there that once were downstairs. I didn’t even know why that was important to me, but it was. There was something about the photographs that had been in the living room that was important to me. I needed to pursue the issue. She said they were boxed up and put away, but she didn’t say where. That would only mean some closets in the spare rooms—it was a big house—the basement or the attic.

It was the attic. I found the box, and I found the photos. And just before I found them and pulled them out of the box, a name came into my mind: Travis. Uncle Travis. And also, at the same time, the name became connected with that something, something taboo, in my background that my mind was refusing to acknowledge.

Did I have an uncle named Travis? Did he do something that made me unsure of my sexuality—or that clarified that for me?

* * * *

“Yes, that’s Travis. Where did you find those, Marty?”

“In a box in the attic,” I answered my father. They weren’t in the box I was looking for, but they at least gave me something to pursue to start unraveling all of these questions in my mind about “before the accident.”

He’d hardly taken his eyes away from the TV set, where the Los Angeles Rams professional football team, which Frank Blandford had been diehard enough to follow when they abandoned Saint Louis and moved west, were playing. “Those” was referring to the two framed photographs I’d brought down from the attic, two that I had remembered seeing on the piano in the living room for years.

I remembered enough about Uncle Travis to know he wasn’t that much older than I was—not more than ten years—but that he was a lot younger than either of my parents. I had no idea how he was an uncle of mine. One of the photos was of him as a boy of about twelve—I don’t know how I knew it was him, but I did—standing with my parents and an older man. A toddler was in my mother’s arms. I assumed that was me. The other photo was of Travis in his Navy uniform, and again I don’t know why I knew it was him, I just did. He was maybe nineteen or twenty and he was one fine-looking dude. The term “sexy” came to my mind unbidden, and, yes, it disturbed me that it had.

Something about Travis. There was something about Travis that no one seemed to want me to recover in my memory. What had Travis done with—or to me? I somehow knew there was something considered unmentionable.

“What’s happened to Uncle Travis?” I asked. “Why have his photos been put away?”

“What are you thinking about Travis?” my dad said. His eyes went back to the TV and I could see that he tensed up. “Are you remembering something that had been lost?”

He said that almost in a dreading tone. What was up with that? I wondered. This was why they finished with me at Lakeland. It had been too long working with the doctors there and I’d reached an impasse with my memory. They’d said the best chance of unlocking my mind was to return home—to Polar Bluff—and get back into what was intended to be the progression of my life: going to junior college in art before leaving home and going further afield. My mom had agreed with that. For some reason my dad hadn’t. For some reason it was almost like my dad didn’t want me to remember. What did he know that he wanted me to forget? Did it have something to do with Uncle Travis?

“I’m not remembering much. But I remembered that his photos had been on the piano in the living room and they’re now in the attic. I can almost remember something . . . something about him.”

“There isn’t much use of that anymore,” Dad said, still staring into the TV although they had gone to commercials. “He’s dead. There’s nothing more to know there.” The last came out almost like an afterthought.

“Dead? How did he die? When?” I blurted out.

“Ask your mother, if you must. He’s from her side. But it’s best just to drop it.” I was halfway toward the door to the corridor leading to the kitchen where I could hear my mother humming when he added, “And he’s not really your uncle. He’s not related to any of us, thank god.”

Now, what the hell did that mean? Why was this a sore point with Dad? It proved to be a sore point with Mom, too, though.

“Travis is best forgotten, Martin,” she said, turning her head to look out of the window over the kitchen sink. She was not any more anxious to do a face-to-face with me on the subject of Travis Trent than my father had been.

Travis Trent—another tidbit of information coming out of the fog to me. His last name was Trent—he didn’t share our last name of Blandford. But then, Dad had said he was from Mother’s side. She wasn’t a Trent either. Playing detective like this wasn’t a bit of fun.

“And what made you think of him?”

“Dad told me just now he was from your side of the family. Your brother, I guess, if he’s my uncle. But Dad also said he wasn’t related to us.”

“Well, he isn’t,” she answered, deciding that the kitchen table needed to be wiped off vigorously with a wet cloth, which, again, required that she be looking away from me. “My dad married again after your grandmother died. His new wife was a Trent, widowed, with a boy. So, Travis technically isn’t in our family.”

But he had been raised in the family for some years. I knew that, although, again, I had no idea how I knew that. I seemed to be open doors into my brain, a crack at a time. Was this the way the Lakeland doctors thought my memories would come back to me after that automobile accident?

It didn’t escape me that Mom was referring to Travis in the present tense, not the past. Was that from some sort of sloppiness or didn’t she consider Travis to be as dead as Dad said he was. I could see Mom was trembling, though, and I didn’t want to make her stroke out, so . . .

She closed this out for now herself. “The trashmen come tomorrow,” she said. “Could you go around and collect it and get the bin down on the street. Your father is so engrossed in that football game that I’m afraid he’ll forget to do it. And then, you’re looking a little feverish. Maybe you should lie down for a while—not work on this memory thing as hard as you’re doing. Supper will be a little late.”

She was closing down on this Uncle Travis thing as quickly and as hard as Dad had done. And maybe I was pushing too hard and fast on this.

There just was something about Uncle Travis. And it was related, I somehow knew, to my problem of having images of men come up when I was with a woman. I wasn’t clear on my preferences. And for some reason I was connecting Uncle Travis with all of that. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at the photos again. Yes, indeed, he was one handsome, sexy dude in the Navy uniform. As I mounted the stairs, I tried to put that out of my mind. But that was the basic problem. Since the auto accident there was entirely too much missing from my mind.

Whence Uncle Travis? Living or dead? Did something happen in the Navy? Did something happen between Travis and me? Why was I obsessing over this?

* * * *

“Do you really not remember the automobile accident?”

“Just snatches of what happened while it was happening and afterward—nothing before. It’s like a section of my life got wiped out and my memory didn’t start again until I was in the hospital, pretty banged up.”

“Were you alone in the car? You said something about being ejected from the passenger seat. That would mean there was someone else. Who was it? You weren’t driving?”

“Did I say I was ejected from the passenger seat?” I asked. “I don’t remember whether that was true.” But, in fact, I now accepted it as true. This was how bits and pieces of my memory were coming back to me. I’d been told I had been in the passenger seat. That must be in the accident report somewhere—wherever a copy of that was now. As Travis’s visage floated by in my consciousness. Was I in the car with Travis? Was Dad right? Had Travis died in the crash? Was he the one who was driving? Where could I find a copy of the accident report? Why hadn’t I looked for it before now? But maybe I had, and that was a memory I’d decided to bury.

I was at the library checkout desk in the Poplar Bluff public library on North Main Street, within walking distance of my parents’ house—well, still my house, as well. I’d been in the town for several months now and was settling in, studying art at Three Rivers College and working part time as an UPS driver, and I’d even acquired a girlfriend, Jennifer, one of the librarians here. I’d known Jennifer in high school. We’d dated a bit then. We dated even more now. We’d slept together, which she seemed quite satisfied with and I thought went pretty well, although I didn’t find it fully satisfying. But only now was she getting around to asking me for details on the automobile accident and the resultant loss of memory. I couldn’t help her all that much about either, and my attention was somewhat distracted now.

Jennifer noticed my divided attention. “What have you been staring at?” she asked. “Oh, I see. That’s Josh over there. You must be taken with the resemblance.” She motioned for the young man, about my age, to come over. He had been sitting at a library table, talking to another young black man. They’d had their heads together, but I supposed that might have only because we were in a library and they were trying to be quiet. Both of them where strikingly handsome young men, well-dressed, and obviously taking very good care of themselves. They also were touching each other with their hands as they talked, which I had always associated with being Italian—or with something else. They both were a light chocolate brown, so I didn’t think they were Italian.

I also don’t think I had been watching one of them closely because of the resemblance between him and Jennifer. Jennifer was mixed race, her mother white and her father black, but it’s not something you’d know from looking at her. You’d probably guess she was from somewhere in the Mediterranean. I could see now, though, that she’d pointed it out, that there was a resemblance between the two.

The young man who Jennifer had called Josh saw her gesture, spoke briefly to the other young man, and then rose and came over to the desk.

“This is my brother, Josh,” Jennifer said. “He’s an ICU nurse over at the Pershing VA Medical Center. This is Marty Blandford, who I’d known in high school, Josh. I’ve told you about him.”

“You most certainly did,” Josh said, giving me a dazzling smile. He was a hunk, square-jawed and handsome as the devil. He looked more like one of those doctors on a TV soap opera than a nurse, but if I needed nursing he’d certainly do. His handshake was firm. He looked directly into my eyes and I was afraid he could discern what I was thinking. I’m sure I blushed. The blush came from my growing awareness that I might like men more than I did women.

Jennifer hadn’t told me anything about her brother, Josh, though. And she didn’t now. We engaged in a bit of whispered discussion, enough for Josh to know that Jennifer and were dating, but not enough—at least from this conversation—for him to know we were fucking, and then he was off, saying he had to get back to work. Apparently, the other young man was a nurse at the VA hospital too, as they left together. I wondered what else they did together. I admonished myself in my thoughts for visioning what I might like to do with either or both of them.

The reaction I’d had to Josh was similar to what I occasionally had to other men as well—enough that it kept me off balance and confused, and enough that it made me try all the much more with Jennifer in bed to convince myself that’s what I preferred. Another man had affected me in that way in these last five months. That was my art instructor, Slava Zoukoff, at Three Rivers College. He was maybe in his early forties, but he was a man who touched you when he talked to you too, who gave you—me, at least—meaningful looks and extra attention in class, and who was handsome and quite fit for his age. I did think of him inappropriately from time to time. He had an unusual past—an Australian whose family was White Russian, royalists, who escaped the Russian revolution and then the Red Guards revolution in China before arriving in Missouri by way of Australia. And there was Uncle Travis, too. I still thought of him, the image of him in his Navy uniform floating up into my consciousness now and again. But I still haven’t unlocked the mystery of Travis and what he’d done—or what we’d done together.

The encounter with Jennifer’s brother had left me keyed up. She and I went to dinner at Tio’s Bar and Grill over near the college and then to a movie that Jennifer enjoyed and I found frustrating, as it cut off right as the actors were getting into the sack. I was in the mood for sex—seeing it and doing it. Then we went back to her apartment in the basement of an old house on Hickory Street, where, I’m happy to say, we didn’t cut off right before we got into the sack.

I’d been aching for it since I’d picked her up at the library, so it was a good session for us. We did it raunchier than we had done before, going into the sixty-nine position, with me eating her out while she sucked me off and then me on my back with her riding me in a cowboy until I needed to have full control, when I rolled over on top of her, coaxed her legs open, mounted and penetrated, and gave her a deep missionary.

I spent the night and we did it again. I didn’t worry about my parents and what they’d think. I was twenty-two. When they’d heard I was going with Jennifer, who they’d known from my high school days and that my father had long ago stopped referring to as the half-breed, they accepted it with suspiciously obvious relief—like maybe they were relieved that I was “about time” with a woman. It was a little surprising not to hear a peep out my dad about her mixed race since I’d returned home. He’d certainly had a lot to say about that when I was sweet on her in high school.

While they weren’t showing any reluctance to me being out all night with a woman with her own apartment, I must say I was having a little trouble in spending the night with Jennifer. The sex was good. I don’t want to leave the impression that it wasn’t, but it was like more than just Jennifer and I were having it. While we fucked, my muddled mind kept surfacing other images—disturbing images for the circumstance. The faces and fleeting view of much more of them of her brother, Josh, Uncle Travis, and even my art instructor, Slava Zoukoff, kept rising up, swirling around, and then fading into the great face and body of the woman I was fucking.

* * * *

Imagine my surprise when I walked into a studio art painting session at the college to find that the nude model stretched out on the dais was no other than the instructor himself, Slava Zoukoff. He was a strikingly handsome and fit man for his age—well, for any age—and he didn’t seem the least embarrassed to be posing in near nude, with just a skimpy loincloth around his hips. There was, of course, no reason for him to be embarrassed with how he looked—just that it seemed to be lacking in dignity for the instructor himself to be modeling.

He had been floating around me suggestively for the entire term, paying extra attention and encouragement to me and being very touchy-feely. He spoke with a Slavic accent and didn’t, it seemed, to have full control of English. Thus, I couldn’t be sure that some of the comments he made to me throughout the course were just not carefully and knowingly chosen rather than sexually suggestive.

Whatever the case, he hadn’t been helping me at all in my confusion over what my sexual preferences were and why, and if they went to men, when did this start and what part in that had Uncle Travis had?

My hands were trembling as I was painting. Zoukoff’s attentions to me hadn’t gone unaffecting—or unappreciated—I can’t claim. I decided I had to do something in the abstract rather than detailed realistic rendering. Still, as we were finishing up and the art instructor had come off the dais and was walking around, just in his loincloth, and inspecting what we’d done and how well he thought we’d done it, he lingered behind me, touching me with his long, sensitive fingers, his chin nearly on my shoulder as he looked at what I’d painted—and he praised my work.

Our session was only half over.

“Perhaps another nude model,” he suggested. “Anyone wish to volunteer? Maybe you, Mr. Blandford—Marty,” he said. “Yes, I think it must be you.”

What could I say? I was too discombobulated to try to paint. I might as well be the one stretched out, just in a loincloth, on the platform. So, that was how I spent the next hour. I wasn’t worried about being in the almost altogether. I had a great body and I didn’t mind showing it off. But I was afraid that my arousal would show—my arousal not so much for the situation as for the art instructor, who was obviously taken with me and wanted to make me. I was so confused, but I was also so ready. How would I know if men were what I preferred—what someone had prepared me to prefer. Maybe Uncle Travis—if I didn’t try it out.

Slava Zoukoff joined in the painting exercise. He didn’t show any of the other students what he’d painted—just me. Zoukoff was an excellent artist. He rendered his brush strokes quickly and with assurance. He’d managed to capture everything, the atmosphere and the sizzling connection between us, as well as my obvious readiness within the set hour. The painting he rendered wasn’t just of me in the near altogether. It was me in the altogether, being quite generous with the equipment he provided for me, but of he himself as well. In the painting, he was stretched out in the position of a rower in a racing skull, sitting on his rump, leaning back, naked. His arms were stretched out in front of him, his hands gripping my wrists, as I was mounted in front of him, facing away, leaning out like the figurehead on a ship, riding his cock, my legs streaming back around and behind his hips. The expression Zoukoff gave on my face in the drawing was one of sheer ecstasy. My full erection, curving up into my belly evidenced my pleasure at riding the man’s shaft.

“I think you want to come home with me at the end of the class,” he whispered in my ear.

I thought—no, I knew—that he was right. I didn’t say “yes,” but I didn’t say “no,” and when he told me to follow him home in my car, I did so.

“You seem uptight,” he said, as we were sitting on huge pillows, cross-legged, facing each other on his living room carpet. The wall beside us was a full-wall mirror. “Have you ever smoked a joint before?” It was self-evident that we would fuck; it just wasn’t clear how we’d move into it. We were both just in loincloths at this point.

“No, I haven’t—or, I don’t think I have,” I said.

“Ah, the accident you told me about—the partial loss of memory. Perhaps you don’t remember because you don’t want to. Here, take a puff on this.”

“That’s probably right,” I answered, as I took a drag on the joint.

“And these. These pills. They will loosen you up considerably.”

They certainly did. They made me not care what he’d do to me—what he did do to me.

Zoukoff was sitting on his pillow, stretched out like a rower in a racing scull, leaning back, his hands grasping my wrists, as my ass was possessed by his moving shaft, my torso jutting out and away from him, like the figurehead on a ship, my legs streaming out around and behind his hips. Our loincloths were bunched together beside us on the carpet. We were both naked—two beautiful bodies, one mature, commanding, the other young, yielding, as we fucked.

My head was turned, looking into the mirrored wall beside us. He’d gotten everything right in his painting of this, down to the expression of ecstasy on my face and the hardness of my upcurved erection following the curve of my belly.

The question of what my preference were had now been definitively answered. As Zoukoff pulled me on and off his cock, I conjured up other men in my mind. Uncle Travis was there, in the background, but only as a face. Surprisingly, what strongly came into mind was Jennifer’s interracial brother, Josh, fully revealed in his magnificent nakedness, on top of me, inside me, fucking me.

* * * *

Having discovered definitively which way I swung—or thinking I had—I wasn’t delighted when Jennifer invited me to her parents’ house for a meal and to meet them. This was moving in the opposite direction from where I was discovering I needed to go. I needed to break it off with Jennifer now—for her sake if nothing else—although, truth be told, I enjoyed her company and I even enjoyed the sex with her—just not to the degree I had with my art instructor. I had to admit, though, that the drugs probably augmented my enjoyment with him.

I was still a bit conflicted. I didn’t want to just say, “Sorry, Jennifer, I’ve found I’m gay so we can’t fuck anymore,” and walk off. I had to find a way to extract myself from the relationship in a way that didn’t hurt or shock her. I wonder what women think who lose men to other men? I’m guessing it didn’t lift their self-esteem a whole hell of a lot.

So, I went to her parents’ house. It was a great house in the pricier neighborhood off North Westwood, where other professionals like Jennifer’s doctor father gathered. He was black, and married to a white, but he was rich, so the town gave him a pass. He was also a handsome, well-built man with a good smile and a wonderful bedside manner. He certainly had passed the good looks onto this son, Josh. The bedside manner he must have passed on to his son, as well, because Josh, milk-chocolate to Jennifer’s much lighter complexion, was at the dinner and all bedroom eyes when he looked at me.

Josh slipped me a note while everyone was shuffling around, which said “Midnight at Pepe’s Tavern off 55, near Hydro Adventures. Only if you want to.”

I knew that tavern was a gay bar.

So, here we go. Unless, of course, when I left here it was to take Jennifer back to her apartment and bang her all night, while trying to keep her dreamboat of a brother out of my mind.

There was no contest. When I arrived at Pepe’s Tavern, Josh was sitting at the bar, having polite, but “no dice” conversations with several submissives who were swimming around him. It was clear to all that Josh was a dominant—and a desirable one. It quickly became clear when I arrived that he wasn’t cruising that evening—that he’d been waiting for me—because he turned his face to the door, his smile lit up, and he turned the stool next to him to the welcome position for me when I came through the door. The guys who had been circling around him before I arrived backed off, having no trouble reading the room and where Josh and I fit in it.

“I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. Josh put an arm around my shoulder, but I didn’t shrink away. I felt powerless. “I don’t want to hurt Jennifer. I don’t want to cause anything breaking in your family.”

“And yet you’re here,” Josh said. “Jennifer has told me you are conflicted and have missing chunks in your memory. She knows you aren’t sure about your sexuality, and she’s asked me to help with that. You don’t want to leave—at least you don’t want to leave without me.”

“No, I don’t,” I admitted, with resignation. “I just discovered—I just recently found what—”

“Your art teacher at the college screwed you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Until then I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t trying to deceive Jennifer. But how did you guess about Zoukoff?”

“Jennifer told me. She said she could tell by the way you too looked at each other and how hard it was for you to talk to her about him that he was humping you.”

“Just once—so far—and just this week. I was . . . I am . . . going to find a way to tell Jennifer.”

“You don’t need to strain yourself over that,” Josh said, with a laugh. “She knows. She doesn’t care. She says she doesn’t want to marry you. She just wants to enjoy you fucking her. She thinks you have a great bod. She knows we’re here now. She knows you’re probably going to come back to my apartment. She knows we’re probably going to have sex. She doesn’t care. You are going to come back to my apartment with me and we are going to have sex, aren’t we? I am going to fuck you, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” I answered, honestly. There didn’t seem to be much of a point to argue about that. “But Jennifer. I can’t—”

“Sure, you can, if you enjoy fucking Jennifer. She says she doesn’t care if we’re fucking or the art teacher is fucking you too. It’s the twenty-first century. I’m sure you’ve heard about bisexuality. Sex is sex is sex. You’re sexy, no matter who you’re doing it with. Shall we leave now? You can follow me in your car.”

* * * *

This was it. This was the one. Shit, he was big. Fuck he filled me, possessed me, stretched me. Chocolate on vanilla. His arms ran down mine, his brown hands gripping my wrists, forcing my arms above my head, pressed to the sheets of his bed, my cheek rubbing against the satin, my eyes looking into the mirror on the back of the closet door across the room, near the bed. Watching him—us—in profile. His beautiful body hovering over mine, his legs bent. Me on my knees, raising my butt to his command. My trembling torso pressed to the sheets.

He was mounted on my hips, his shaft deep inside me, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. Fucking me, owning me.

“Fuck! Yes! Do it. Do it all!”

Afterward, we lay there. This was it. This was the one. All the time—all the time Josh was inside me, fucking me, I didn’t think of anyone else. Not Slava Zoukoff, not Uncle Travis. Certainly not Jennifer. Only Josh.

“What can I tell her?” I whispered.

“You don’t have to tell her anything,” Josh answered. “She knows. We’ve shared before. You don’t even have to give her up.”

“I was never really sure, not until now. I thought I was, but I wasn’t.”

“Is this about the automobile accident? About not remembering a lot of things?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“And this other guy—this uncle of yours?”

“Travis. Yes, but he apparently isn’t really my uncle. But I think he may have done something—something to make me bend this way.”

Josh laughed. “You either do or don’t. Nobody makes you that way. And I think people can bend both ways. Sex is sex is sex.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And you’ve got to know what it was with you and this Travis. You can’t let that go, can you?”

“I could, I think. Now that there’s you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Josh said.

Josh was right. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t let it go.

* * * *

I’d told Josh I’d let go of the need to settle the mystery of Uncle Travis, but he obviously didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe me either. Two days later, he’d dragged me to the public library to see Jennifer. I hadn’t talked to her since Josh had owned me—and he did own me—but she acted like nothing had happened since dinner at her house—that the world hadn’t completely turned upside down. We were there because she was a research librarian and the library had local newspaper files going back to the founding of the town sometime before 1850.

“Did you ask your parents when this accident was?” Jennifer asked as she walked us back to the research room where they kept the old microfiche readers. Most newspapers were in computer files now, but Poplar Bluff was a bit behind the times. Its newspaper files were still being put into the microfiche photographic archives system.

“I asked, but they were as evasive as ever,” I answered. “My dad told me just to forget about it. That’s hard to do if I can’t remember it. But it’s not hard to come up with a month at least. It was in 2018—in June, I’m pretty sure. I know I was in the hospital until it was almost time for school to start—and then I was shipped off to Lakeland in Springfield rather than starting here at Three Rivers College.”

“It won’t be hard to narrow it down, then, if the accident was here.”

“I’m sure it was,” I answered, as Jennifer settled down in front of a microfiche reader and picked up the cartridges of the local Daily American Republic newspaper for the past five years. Josh and I stood behind her, Josh pulling me in close by putting an arm around me and palming my hip. If Jennifer noticed the maneuver, she didn’t react. It wasn’t long before she’d found the coverage of the accident.

“There it is. A one-car accident, north of town on 60, near the intersection with 67. There’s your name and a Travis Trent. Is that—?”

“Yes, Uncle Travis. Not really my uncle, it seems. The son of my mother’s father’s second wife. It’s complicated.”

“Uh, oh,” Jennifer blurted out.

“Uh, oh, what?” I asked.

“You’re right. It’s complicated. The car went off the road and flipped over. Speeding. A one-car accident. But the car was stolen. Your uncle—your not your uncle—Travis was being charged with auto theft as well as speeding and reckless driving.”

“Auto theft?” I exclaimed. I searched my brain for some sort of recognition, but the only thing that was coming up was to ask what I did. “Does it say who was driving?”

“Yes. Travis Trent. They had to cut him out of the car. He was in the driver’s seat.”

I almost didn’t want to ask the next question. “Did he die? Does it say?” My dad insisted Travis was dead.

“It doesn’t say here. Let me see if there’s more.” I held my breath as she scrolled. “No, there’s coverage here of a case.” More scrolling. “He pleaded guilty.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t remember much about Travis and there was still that possibility in the background that he’d messed with me, helped me be what I was today—although now that I’d gone across the divide, I was glad I was what I was. So, was that it with my parents? They wrote Travis off because he stole a car—because he involved me in that? How much was I involved in that? Did I know we were driving in a stolen car? Questions were being answered, but they were raising more questions. “So, what now?” I said aloud.

“Now you get a lawyer,” Josh said.

“A lawyer? What do I need with a lawyer?”

“You still have questions. This Travis isn’t dead—or, at least, wasn’t when you had the accident. You still have questions of and about him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“So, you need a lawyer. You need to find out where he is. Probably in prison somewhere, right?”

“Yes.” Exactly. Josh was taking the lead here. He was dominant and I was submissive. That was just the way I wanted it.

* * * *

“And you’ve come looking for me now, because . . . ?” Travis stopped there and gave me an expectant gaze through thick glass wall between us with the lines of metal mesh that, I guess, was meant to be an added barrier if one or the other of us decided to go ballistic and somehow got the glass broken. We were at the Algoa Corrections Center up in Johnson City, where the lawyer Josh got for me found Travis Trent, my not-uncle was incarcerated. Josh was waiting for me out in the parking lot.

“My dad insisted you were dead. And, I wasn’t really all that sure you actually existed,” I added.

“So, you’re not here because you remember everything?” Travis said after a short pause, where he scrutinized my face. “It’s not part of my deal with your family that you track me down.”

“No, I don’t remember much of anything. I want to—especially whatever there was between the two of us. Although that doesn’t matter as much now. I’ve settled on that.”

“You have a keeper of a boyfriend now, you mean?”

That caught me up. “How did you know it would be a man? What did you do to me?”

“I fuckin’ did nothing to you, Marty. You were the one who were hitting on me. There wouldn’t have been an accident, if you hadn’t . . .” He stopped there, though.

“What do you mean?” I persisted. “What is it my parents are afraid of? What is this deal you say you have with my parents?”

He visibly sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter now anyway. I get out of here in just over a month—in forty-six days and,” he looked at his watch, “three hours.”

“That’s all I want. I don’t want to not know any longer. The doctors said it would all come back eventually—if I didn’t insist on subconsciously blocking it. But I’m still blocking it, so maybe it’s more than just that I want it from men. I thought that was the issue. I thought you had abused me sexually and I couldn’t come to grips with liking men.”

“Sexually abused you? That’s a laugh. But you’ve come to grips with being queer now?” he said. “You do have a guy who does you?”

“Yes, I’ve come to grips with that—with being at least bi–and I do have guys who do me. But still I can’t remember.”

“You got that right about there being more that could block the memory.”

“What? Tell me. Not knowing is worse than knowing.”

“You might be right there. OK—because it doesn’t matter much anymore. We went off the road because you were trying to give me a blow job and I don’t swing that way.”

“So, you’re not—?”

“No, I’m not. And I have a woman—I had one then. I’ll be joining her in Florida from here—at least I hope she’ll let me join her. I have my electrician’s license and she’s already set up a business there. I’m leaving for Florida the day they let me out of here. Your family is just as dead to me as your father says I am. I don’t want to have anything to do with them—or you.”

“So, my folks are stonewalling because they thought you and I were having sex.”

“No, that’s not it—not with your parents. If they know you’re gay it’s because of something that’s happened since the accident. What they’re afraid of is the truth—having the truth come out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t steal that car. You did. You had a snit with the man who was fucking you and you stole his car.”

“You were behind the wheel.”

“Not when you stole it. You stole it and were hopped up. You drove to my place. I was returning it, hoping the guy who was humping you would think it all was funny and would let it all blow away—which he would, because he did anyway. He didn’t want people to know he was fucking you. You came on to me in the car and that made me go off the road.”

“But you took the rap for it, and why, if my parents didn’t know that sex with a man was involved, have they been so secretive about it the last three years?”

“They know you stole the car. You stopped at your parents’ house before coming to me. You were hopped up and boasted about jacking the car. They’ve been paying me to take the rap. What I got from them is going to set me up in a business of my own in Florida. I was behind the wheel. It was an uphill battle to prove it wasn’t me. And my lawyer told me that the other charges, the speeding and reckless driving, were going to get me in prison for about as long anyway. Your parents knew you stole the car.”

Oh.

“It doesn’t matter now. And I believe you about not remembering any of it, so whatever has happened isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you to begin with. You were confused. I was being nice to you and you thought I was interested in more. That Barry Jackson is a real shit. He’s the one that got you hopped up that day anyway.”

“Barry Jackson, the banker?” I said. “He’s fat and ugly.” It occurred to me then that the newspaper article might have identified whose car had been stolen, especially as it was a pillar of the professional community in Poplar Bluff, but Jennifer hadn’t said. Maybe if I’d heard the name “Barry Jackson” that would have jogged my memory, and it all would have come back to me. But no use thinking about that now.

“Precisely. But he also is the first guy who spiked you. I hope you’re doing better for yourself now.”

I was doing better now. A whole hell of a lot better. Josh was loads better than just better.

“Just let it go, Marty. Your parents stop paying once I’m out of here. They gave enough to set me up in business in Florida, and we can all just be dead to each other. They’ve been through enough not to have it come back on them that you now know everything. Stay unknowing. We’re almost at the end of it. Just let it go. Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Out in the parking lot,” I said.

“Go out to him and if you start remembering any of this, try to forget it again. It’s all done. We’re all good from here—dead to each other and all good.”

And, so, that’s what I did.