Eliot Prince
I’m at breakfast with my mom the morning after the most bizarre night of my life when she suddenly looks me in the eye, which she only ever does when something is wrong. And something is wrong – we’re seated near Great Aunt Marjorie, my family’s most colorful member, who is devoutly Catholic, and also full of conspiracy theories about how all the teens in our family are either addicted to heroin and/or living secret double lives as prostitutes.
The other thing that’s wrong is that last night I got fingered by my mom’s ex-husband. But the biggest problem is that, post-craziness, I don’t feel bad at all – and I want to explore this thing further. Maybe all the way.
“What is it?” I ask my mom. “Still hungover? Or did Aunt Marjorie accuse you of being on heroin again?”
“No, that was yesterday. Ugh, remember in the Outer Banks, when she left me that weird note on our car, saying my bikini was too small? She’s such a nightmare. But anyway, I…I want to talk to you.”
“Okay?”
She inhales. After all these years, my mom is still so hard to figure out. Our relationship has always been…interesting. We either talk on the phone every day, or she gets mad at me and pulls away for a month at a time. She’s very hot-and-cold like that. After I came out to her, there was a period when we had to get to know each other again – she said she had no idea and never suspected anything, so it was like I became a different person to her overnight. We’re probably still recovering from that, to be honest. Or maybe we never did at all, and I’m fooling myself.
There’s one more weird part to all the Robert stuff, and it’s probably the weirdest. My mom was always childish when it came to her relationship with my dad, and when the court arbitrator asked me who I wanted to spend more time with, I knew she would be crushed – but I just couldn’t live with her. She would sometimes forget to feed me, or sometimes when I’d have friends sleep over, she’d leave us alone and go out to dinner until eleven or twelve, and I’d be mortified. So when I chose to live with my dad, she got mad at me instead of understanding that I was simply making a mature decision. She eventually cut me out of her life for a year.
So when I say I never knew Robert, it’s because she forcibly kept me away from him. She’d call me and drop hints that she was having an amazing pool party at her apartment complex, and then make it known that I wasn’t invited. These tactics went on and on until she had an emotional breakdown when I was thirteen and was finally forced to grow up. But the subject remains touchy to this day. She never forgave me for choosing my dad, and I never really forgave her for acting like such a petulant fucking child, either. Half the time I felt like the roles were reversed, and I was the one tasked with parenting her. At her best, she’s still like more of a sloppy, much-older sister than a mom to me.
“Eliot,” she finally asks, very carefully. “How comfortable are you having Robert here?”
I get totally tense. “What? Why would I care about that?”
“Because…because, well, you know how tumultuous the whole thing was, how heartbroken I was when he walked out the door…”
“You mean when you kicked him out of the door? I remember enough to know that. You’re the one who filed for divorce.”
“I mean, true,” she shrugs. “But it was bound to happen! He…wasn’t into me. And you know how your Grandma Sara was, too. She loved him, and would roll over in her grave – err, urn – if she knew I had him banned from here. For whatever reason, she wanted him here.”
“Mom,” I sigh, as a little tingle runs up my spine. Even talking about him makes me want to smile. What does that mean? “We’ve talked about this before, remember? I’m totally neutral on the whole thing. It’s none of my business. He had his own issues going on, issues he had to deal with. I’m totally fine with him being here.”
“Good,” she finally says, dark hair gleaming in the filtered sun. We look absolutely nothing alike; everyone assumes she’s a sister or aunt. Our faces are similarly shaped from certain angles, but that’s it. Without that, I would’ve sworn I came from someone else. “Honestly, I was a little thrown that Sara was so insistent on him being here, but we all know she loved him.” She squints. “Actually, she told me she knew he was gay from the first meeting, but she wanted him to figure it out for himself.” She shakes her head at nothing. “If only I knew sooner than I did. But how was I supposed to know? He wasn’t fruity, he seemed so masculine, I never suspected anything until it was too late…”
I flinch, but I don’t say anything. For the progress she has made, my mom still isn’t perfect when it comes to dealing with this issue. Being gay is a constant study in staying graceful when your family members disappoint you, because nobody will ever be perfect. But I know people who were sent out of their homes when they came out, or even worse, so to have my mom be mostly accepting, and just slip up here and there – it’s more than I even deserve.
But this time I speak up, for whatever reason. “Mom. I know you’re learning, but ‘fruity’ is an…awkward word to use.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She breathes. “What else do you remember of him, anyway? You were still coming over sometimes, at that point. That was before I…well, went dark on you.”
“Um. Robert? He was just sort of…there. I didn’t notice much. I do remember the first year, when you were happier. We were cordial, I guess.”
“Well that lasted five minutes. Then he moved into that hotel on the east side. I was devastated.”
I tilt my head. “Mom. I heard you were dating within weeks.”
“Fine. Inwardly devastated.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Robert’s cool.” Then I decide to test the waters. “In fact, we’ve…we’ve been catching up.”
She stiffens. “Catching up?”
“Yeah, you know, since we never talked when you were married.”
“Yeah, because he was too busy having erectile dysfunction…” she says under her breath, and then I stop breathing. “Oh my God,” she says, “I never said that.”
At first I want to ignore it, because picturing them having relations is disgusting on many levels.
But at the same time, it would be a huge relief to find out they never officially did anything…
“What?” I ask. “You mean you never…it was never consummated?”
“Nope,” she shrugs. “Never. Well, not in any real way, at least. That’s what happens when you marry a gay guy, I guess.”
I feel the weight of Jupiter lift off my shoulders. So he never even had sex with my mom. This changes so much.
“What’d you do on the honeymoon, then?” I ask, digging deeper when I should be backing away. This is a mess. I don’t need to get involved.
But at the same time, all I can see in my head are his eyes.
She shrugs. “Watch the Bravo network and drink Corona Light in the pool? God, I should’ve known by his love for Real Housewives of OC…anyway, I’m glad you got to figure yourself out before you ever had to go through something like that. It was so awkward.”
I cringe. There is so much I am still figuring out. Exiting the closet is just the first step of a whole new life. And I have a feeling Robert just threw me the curve ball of ten lifetimes…
But I still try to play it cool.
“Just…be nice to him, Mom,” I say. “I doubt he has any other family unit like this. Didn’t you say his own family wasn’t so cool with his sexuality?”
“No,” she says. “I never told you that. How’d you know? Did he tell you that?”
I catch myself. “Oh, uh, just a guess, you know how the olden times were.”
“Olden times? Honey, we are forty-two.”
“Mom! Just be nice to him, is all I ask.”
“Fine, fine. How are things with David?”
I pretend to be exasperated, but I’m glad we’re off Robert. “They’re…things. I think I’m over it. Every time I look at him I just see the betrayal.”
“Aw, Halvard. It’s your call. Just…don’t make any rash decisions at a funeral, okay?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I said. Don’t make any crazy decisions.”
Too late, I tell myself as I think of her own ex-husband’s fat, throbbing cock, and gulp.
“Sure. I’ll be sure to stay sane.” I get up and kiss her on the forehead. “And please don’t ever use my first name again. You know how I feel about it. See you tonight.”
“Oh,” she calls over her shoulder. “And call your dad today. You know, for the holiday.”
“Sure thing,” I say.
And this time, I am the one who can’t stop laughing.
~
Back in my suite, I open the French doors and look out at the mountains rolling into the horizon. I smile and exhale. These Carolina hills contain the happiest times of my life – every summer was spent hiking through the ravines to find waterfalls and caves, one week every autumn was spent driving around looking at ridges bleeding the color of rust, every Christmas was spent skiing at the local resorts. It’ll kill me inside to see the family sell it, but we all know what happens when the head of a family dies – the vultures descend, and the assets are chopped up like apple pie. This place will probably have another person’s name on the deed within the month.
I turn back to David, who is reading the news on his Kindle Fire. The main thing that’s changed since our breakup is that our hookups have gotten more sporadic. I just can’t see him the same anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken him back at all. He broke an invisible cord between us, a line we both felt but neither of us could touch – trust. And now I can’t see anything but the betrayal when I look at him. Fuck, I probably shouldn’t have even let him come on this trip, but I thought I’d be breaking his heart if I said no. Little did I know I’d just be breaking my own heart…and cock-blocking myself from Robert…
Oh well. At least I’m getting some sex out of all this. Our hookups were never explosive or anything, but sex is sex, right?
I think back to meeting him, on that dating app called Tinder. At the time, I was about to throw in the towel on the whole dating thing and become a lesbian or something. Every guy I matched with would already be getting messages from other matches by the time we met up. Finding love in gay culture is like finding a diamond hidden in the sands of a beach – a very wide beach, filled with broken mimosa glasses and Andrew Christian man-thongs. If you like someone, he likes twelve other people. If you really like someone, he probably has a live-in boyfriend at home that he’s hiding and lying about.
The freedom associated with growing up and coming out of the closet and getting out of your shitty little hometown has translated into an extended period of wild, childish hedonism for most gay men. I’m not especially promiscuous, but I would admit that I live like a teenager – probably because I was never a teenager in the first place. A tweet recently went viral that said something like, “gay culture means living out your adolescence in your ‘20s because your childhood wasn’t yours to live.” While my friends were getting their first kisses and going on their first dates, I was hiding in my room, masturbating to Zac Efron and listening to Kelly Clarkson’s music “because I thought she was hot.” I never lived all those rites of passage. We’re all just big kids running around in adult bodies, and all of us know it. In the age of Grindr and Tinder and endless random hookups, we are alone together. To be gay is to be utterly disconnected in the most connected world that has ever existed.
David was the same. I never wanted to admit it, but he was. He was lost, and still is. All I want now is for someone to look at me like they want to stay, for someone to sit next to me and act like they want to stick around. I feel like I’m done with this, and I want off the merry-go-round. I’m done with all this; I just don’t know what to do about it yet.
“Whatcha doing?” I ask, and he puts away his tablet and switches to his phone instead.
“Nothing. You?”
“Thinking about getting a tan. Wanna come?”
“No. I’m really into this book. I’ll be there later, maybe. I really want to take one of those little canoes out, too, and smoke.”
“You brought weed here?” I ask.
“Of course I did. Want some?”
“Um. I’m fine. Thanks.”
This was something I always disliked, that David couldn’t go a day without getting baked. What was so great at about weed? All it did was make me feel…disoriented.
“And didn’t you know what your family’s doing today?” he asks. “A boating trip, for bonding. I was invited, too, but…obviously that would be weird right now. So have fun with that! I’ll just go smoke now,” he says mockingly as he leaves the room. But instead of being annoyed by the prospect of a full day with my annoying family, I smile.
This means I get to spend some time with Robert. Without David.
Come on, my mom texts me. We’re going to the lake. Last one to the car has to sit with Aunt Marjorie.
Be there immediately! I respond as I jump up and slip into my bathing suit. But the source of my excitement has nothing to do with getting a good seat. In my head, all I can see are those hazel eyes…
And fine. Maybe that cock, too.