Chapter 20

Andrew

 

“Have you lost your mind Andrew?”

Ha, I think to myself. No, it’s actually the first time in a very long while that I’ve found it. I was lost before all of this happened, not the other way around.

But my mother was never one to listen to reason. Nothing I can tell her would change her mind, so for the most part, I just listen.

“You’re going to be the death of your father and I, Andrew. Do you know how embarrassing this all is for us? I’m afraid to go outside for fear of being gawked at. Did you ever stop and think of what this would do to us? Or is it all about you?” she says sarcastically. “Finding yourself I guess is what they call it.”

As I listen to her ramble on, I can’t help but think how she’s making this all about her. It’s so apparent to me now how I became the person I did. It was my parents who taught me that everything in life is about appearances.

What other people think of you. You need to adjust your behavior to suit others. It’s the whole martyr syndrome where you have to sacrifice any personal happiness to live up to some intangible ideal. It’s no wonder I ended up where I did.

But all that is in the past now.

“Who is this Logan guy anyway that you’re living with? Did he corrupt you into this lifestyle?”

I almost feel like telling her yes he did. He’s really an evil witch that cast a gay spell over me and lured me from a happy heterosexual life to a life of debauchery.

She probably wouldn’t see it as a joke though.

She doesn’t want to hear the truth that I’ve never been happier in my life.

I’ve moved in with Logan and am taking care of him while he recovers. That isn’t the sole reason I’m here though. Regardless of Logan’s broken leg, I would have moved in here anyway.

I’ve also filed for divorce. And I’m sure mom’s heard about that already, even though I just filed yesterday afternoon.

My mom continues with her guilt trip, “After all we’ve done for you. Paid for your college. For what? So you can throw it all away to become a homosexual?”

I laughed when I hear that last part. I didn’t necessarily want to, but it spontaneously came out.

“Oh, you think that’s funny huh?”

I’m picturing my mom standing in her living room of her glorious mansion in her high heels and a hand on one hip, pacing back and forth.

I’ve made the ultimate sin in their eyes by behaving in the way that didn’t suit their personal needs. They would rather pretend that I was happily married and everything was peachy, than face the truth. But she cannot handle the truth.

Now both bored and exhausted, I say, “Mom, I gotta go.”

But she tells me to hold on because my father wants to talk to me.

“Fraaaaannnk,” I hear her call out. I can hear my dad’s footsteps until he finally announces.

“Andrew. How are you doing?”

That’s a switch asking about me, I think to myself. But does he really want to know how I am, or is this merely his way of saying hello. I decide to take it at face value and answer, “I’m good dad. Really good.”

He momentarily remains quiet before saying, “Look Andrew, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t approve of this and in the back of my mind I always worried this might happen. I did my best to raise you in what I thought was right, but you’re an adult now. I just hope you’ve made the right decision.”

It’s refreshing to hear my father talk to me more like an adult. I honestly didn’t know how he’d react, but I think it’s the lawyer in him that’s speaking. It’s how he approaches most situations he doesn’t quite know how to deal with.

He then adds, “What are you going to do now? Do you have anything lined up workwise?”

Where my mom approached all of this from emotion, my father is purely practical.

“I have some ideas pop. I’m not going to sit around and do nothing for too long. I’ll keep you and mom posted though.” My response seems to satisfy him when he says.

“OK then, I’m going to get back to the game. Do you want to talk to your mother again?”

He may as well asked if I’d like a root canal.

 “I gotta go pop,” I say. He says goodbye and I hang up.

Whew!

 Logan is sitting on the couch with his laptop open working on a case. He looks up as I walk in from the bedroom. “How did it go?” He asks.

“You mean aside from the fact that my mom thinks you’ve corrupted me.”

Then I say with a straight face, “Pretty well.”

Logan laughs. “I think I did a pretty darn good job of it if I do say so myself.”

I smile, but turn more serious. “No, actually it sucked. But nothing she said surprised me. I pretty much knew what was going to come out of her mouth before she said it. On the other hand, my father was fairly reasonable.”

Logan gives me a sad puppy dog face. “Does that mean your mom won’t be putting our engagement announcement in the New York Times?”

I smile again. Logan always has the ability to make me happy with everything he says. Then he pats the couch and tells me to sit down.

He says, “That’s kind of what mothers are like. Aren’t they?”

Exasperated, I remark, “I haven’t told you the half of it. Why does she still talk to me like I’m a teenager? I do realize it must be a total shock for them. A year ago, I’d never ever imagined I’d be sitting where I am.”

Logan closes his laptop and sets it down on the coffee table. He lays down on the couch and I sit on the floor against the couch. He begins playing with my hair and seems like he’s deep in thought. With a more serious inflection in his voice he asks me, “Are you going to be happy giving everything up Andrew?

It’s a fair question and I need to think long and hard before answering. My life did revolve around my job and I probably did take the money and everything that came with it for granted. And I do love being a lawyer and never had any intention of leaving the law.

But there isn’t any reason I can’t continue practicing law.

But since I met Logan, I slowly came to see that the kind of law I was practicing wasn’t giving me any fulfillment. It became more about the win than any interest in the actual clients. And more and more, I realized those type of clients I was defending represented the same type of people I grew to despise. People like Wyatt and Maria, whose sole reason for living was the pursuit of money.

I was too caught up in it at the time to see it. I used to think that if only I made more money, then Maria would be happy… that I’d somehow magically become a happier person.

But the opposite was true. Last year was the first time I made a million dollars in one year, and I’d never been so miserable in my life.

I finally answer Logan, “You’ve taught me a great lesson. I don’t need a lot of money to be happy. It’s not the money itself that made me unhappy, but it was the pursuit of it. It was the idea that money was a means to an end. Except there was no end. I was just chasing a dream… running around in circles.”

Logan snickers, “Wow, that’s deep. And all along I thought you were nothing but a selfish moneygrubber.”

I move my head to look upward and say to him, “Admit it, you actually did see me that way in the beginning.”

He chuckles, “Moi? Ok, ok, yes I was slightly judgmental about you… in the beginning.” Then he pauses before adding, “But that was before I even knew you. Now that I know you, deep down you’re just a big softy.”

I pinch Logan on his arm and he reacts by saying, “Owe!”

I bark back, indignantly. “Oh I am? I bet you weren’t thinking that when I was fucking you.”

Logan laughs, “Ah that would be a no. Nothing was soft about that!” He says while reaching down to my crotch and squeezing.

“Owe,” I yell out and laugh. And suddenly I begin to feel horny thinking about me and Logan in bed together. “I can’t wait until you get that thing off of your leg,” I tell him. “But I suppose in the meantime I can just suck your cock.”

“Hey, I can still suck yours. You don’t see any cast on my mouth do you?” I turn around and put my hand on Logan’s dick and begin squeezing.

But just then we hear a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” I say. Then I look at Matt lying on the couch with his cast on his leg.

“Uh, duh. Obviously I’m going to.”

Matt is standing at the door with a bag of take-out Chinese food. “Yay! I’m starving,” Logan calls out.

I go back to the couch to help Logan up and hand him his crutches. I can see through his sweatpants that he’s now hard so I grab his dick and squeeze it one last time.

“Where are your manners?” Logan whispers and then smiles and does the same to me.

Matt begins to take everything out of the bag and set up the table. He calls out with a devilish grin on his fac,. “Was I interrupting something fellas? I know, how about if I just take this and eat it all in the bedroom and you guys can continue where you left off.”

“No!!!” Logan cries out as he hobbles with his crutches towards the dining table.

I helped Matt move into his new apartment yesterday that is two floors up from Logan’s. It was awkward having to go to his old place while his ex was there, but they were at least trying their best to be cordial.

Still, I had mixed feelings all day. It was sad to witness the after effects of the breakup first hand, yet I felt hopeful that Matt made the right decision and he could move on with his life. Our lives are paralleled in that way and Matt and I seemed to bond over it.

I ask Matt, “So, are you all settled in?”

He nods and finishes chewing his food before answering, “Yes! And, oh I ran into Brooke in the elevator,” He says directing his attention to Logan. “I thought I’d recognized her but it’d been so long since the first time we met, so I introduced myself. We’re going to start hanging out. She even convinced me to go running with her.”

Logan begins to choke on his food. But he’s not really choking, but pretending to for effect. “YOU? RUN? Huh! And all those times I asked you to go with me and what did you always say?”

Matt looks back at Logan and with sarcasm says, “Well now that I’m living in the same building with the running cult, I do have to join don’t I?”

Logan shakes his head and rolls his eyes, saying back, “Just admit it, you want to get into Brooke’s pants.”

Matt cries out, “Eeeeewww, you’re a sick fuck,” and tosses a piece of broccoli across the table landing on Logan’s lap. Matt then looks at me with seriousness in his eyes, he says, “Well I guess you finally outed me as the closet heterosexual that I am.”

I take a hold of Matt’s hand and jokingly say to him, “It’s OK, we’re really an accepting group of people here.”

Whereupon Matt tilts his head to one side and pleads, “Awe, thank you. I knew I could count on you guys to understand.”

I begin to think of the irony of our kidding around. What it must have been like for Matt and Logan growing up knowing full well they were gay and having to worry about other people’s acceptance. Fitting in to society. In contrast to me living my life mostly as a straight man where I never had to think about that.

On the other hand, I too worried too much about other’s opinions, but obviously for different reasons. Mine was a class issue that had to do with keeping up appearances. I would never compare my own struggle to that of Matt and Logan, but suffice to say that living this way is self-detrimental. For anyone.

Logan focuses his gaze upon me. “What are you thinking about Andrew?” he asks curiously. I smile.

“Just that I love you both…. and I feel like I’m home.”