Eliot Prince
“Eliot, you remember Robert, right? He’s in town for the funeral...”
A shiver runs up my spine as I meet Robert’s eyes from across the table and then look away just as quickly.
“Mhmm,” I tell my Aunt Susan, who smiles and continues her introductions down the buffet line, leaving me alone with Robert. I try to ignore the glitter exploding in my chest and the passion blooming in my blood, but my face is now the color of the tomatoes in the Caprese salad below me. Because there is a problem. A big one.
To fully answer my Aunt Susan’s question: yes, by now, I have fully deduced the identity of the man she just introduced. And I am horrified.
I first felt my eyes get stuck on this sexy, bearded gentleman from across the banquet room about ten minutes ago. Although I couldn’t immediately place his face or recall where I knew him from, the reaction between us was immediate. My hair stood up, my chest got numb, my face went white – the whole nine yards. He seemed a bit older, but in a sexy, distinguished way, with a full, dark beard and some silver around his temples. And I was hooked.
I’ve felt insta-lust for guys at the gym or in an airport or whatever, but this was especially strong. Supernatural, even. We kept stealing glances and investigating from afar, and slowly, his identity started to dawn on me. And by the time Aunt Susan approached, it was too late to walk away.
Oh my God, I’ve been lusting after my former stepfather.
Twelve years ago, a man married my mom for two short, chaotic years before realizing he was gay, coming out of the closet, and divorcing her. Their marriage never worked, there was always an emotional distance, and soon he realized why: he was gay all along, and had been brainwashed as a child by his hardliner parents into praying it would simply go away. Obviously it didn’t go away, and never would. My mom wished him well, then cut him off. Since I lived with my own dad at the time, I barely knew my then-stepfather, and I haven’t seen him or heard from him since. He became a stranger to me, in many ways.
Until now. Because the man I’ve been eye-fucking for ten minutes is that same man – my mom’s gay ex-husband. Robert Glazer is here, he’s queer, and suddenly I am thirsting after my own former stepfather – if you can even call him that.
I swear I didn’t even really know who was staring at me in the beginning. He clearly didn’t, either, as his expression became more and more confused alongside my own. But the Robert from before wasn’t this person in front of me – in fact, this new version is almost a different person. I know I’ve transformed since I came out of the closet three years ago, myself, but it was nothing like this. The Robert I would occasionally encounter back then was puny and quiet and nervous, but this Robert is muscled and bearded and a little smug – and also sexier than anyone I have seen in recent memory.
I’m not kidding: he’s the kind of guy who can make forks stop midair, the kind with a 100% “swipe yes” rate on any dating app. Anyone would stop and stare, including me. And that’s precisely the problem: this is beyond inappropriate to admit, but I am craving him to a degree I cannot recall experiencing in my life. And it’s not going away.
I do the math in my head: I’m almost twenty-three now, which means he’s...forty-one, I think? That’s not too old at all. I look old for my age, myself, and Robert looks a decade younger than what he must be, too. My good friend Nick is dating a guy who is fifty, and they seem totally happy. They just aren’t former family members, of course...
Finally I glance up again. Robert is staring at me, his face unreadable, but his mouth slightly open. That feeling hits me again, that whoosh like I’m being raked over hot coals and falling through the sky at the same time. So I think about this a little more. On some level, this is clearly wrong – my mom would be mortified if she knew about my attraction. My family would be confused, too.
But on another level, we are two adult men, fully capable of making our own decisions. Robert was never anything close to a father figure to me – I barely knew him, and I didn’t even live in his house. And if he’s here for the full length of the family retreat my Grandma Sara planned around her funeral, that means we’re about to be stuck in her mansion in the mountains for over a week together.
Regardless of the rest, I haven’t felt like this since I was a teeny bopper. A brief thought shoots through my head and makes me giggle at myself: everyone used to tease my friend Nick about having “daddy issues” for dating an older man, but now it seems I have some real-life “daddy issues” – just in the literal sense.
I study him. I can tell he’s gay from the way that he just looks slightly better than every other man here – straight men are too proud to take care of themselves, because all that stuff is considered “too girly,” whereas gays don’t have that problem. We’re allowed to look good. So his hair is perfect, his skin is tight, and his teeth are California bright. Most of all, though, he just looks confident and happy with himself for the first time, which makes someone even more attractive. No, the best part is his beard, full and dark and luxurious. I’ve never been a beard person before, but Jesus. If I saw him in a club and didn’t know who he was, I’d probably hit on him.
No, I’d probably invite him home, and then sit on his dick…
Okay, stop, Eliot Prince. This is crazy. I can’t be thinking about my mom’s former husband like that. That’s gross, right?
Even though he and my mom haven’t had any real ties in years…and even though he never had any real family ties with me at all…and even though he means nothing to my life now…and even though he’s basically just a hot guy on vacation with me…and even though we’re both grown adults on a luxury mountain getaway…
Obviously I’ve gone on my own sexual identity journey since my childhood days. I used to look around the classroom and feel totally isolated, totally alone. I knew I was different, and I knew there was something that separated me from the other kids, especially the boys. We just didn’t operate on the same frequency, and whatever charger cords their souls used, that cord just didn’t fit into my ports. When I started watching gay porn in middle school in the darkness of my bedroom, I discovered what that “something” was: I was a queen.
I came out when I was about nineteen. My mom was (mostly) okay with it, my friends shrugged and asked me if I was still coming to the beach weekend in a few days; my stepdad was quietly confused/horrified in the way that older male figures often are, but acted polite and supportive nonetheless. I’ve dated two guys now, and I’m about to graduate college and head back into grad school. But before that, before I start the next leg of my life, I’ve got this family retreat to slug through.
But after seeing Robert, something tells me things just got even more interesting…
I swallow hard and try to keep my thoughts pure. My family came here under the strict directions of my Grandma Sara, who died two weeks ago. Instead of a real funeral, our matriarch wanted us all to come to her massive lake house in the mountains of North Carolina for a little over a week before we scattered her ashes in the lake. Grandma Sara’s “mountain cabin” is actually a rambling four-story mansion in the gated town of Linville Ridge, North Carolina, which is basically the Hollywood Hills of the South. The rich people here just decorate their mansions here with rustic touches to fool themselves into thinking they’re living casually, but this house still probably has a dozen bedrooms. It looks out on her own personal lake that she owned, which has its own two-story dock house, canoes, a boat for skiing, and everything else that comes with this level of money.
Grandma Sara told us to drink, eat, party, and swim, and then have a ceremony where we release her ashes into the lake. She wanted no tears, no eulogies, no sorrow – just fun. I was hesitant about taking this much time until I remembered coming to this massive place as a child, and realized that if you’re ever invited to a place like this, you make the time. Especially considering it’s the last time we’ll ever be here before the estate’s trustees sell it off for cash.
Robert glances my way again. All over again, I am sucked into visually worshipping him. God, his ass – I could just bury my face in it. And his arms – they’re just the right amount of big without making him look like he’s doing something illegal to get the muscle tone. He’s the kind of man who drives men crazy, and drives women even crazier because they can’t have him. Even from afar, he just has a certain physicality, an exotic energy to his stride. God, no wonder my mom married him…
I turn for the drink table. And speaking of tall drinks of water who also used to be my stepdad: oh, fuck. He’s following me.
Robert stops a few feet away. I feel him down to the core of me, and suddenly I forget how to use my lungs.
But what must he think of this?