Anything Could Happen (15 page)

The idea made Austin break out in a sweat. Would he have been able to ignore the siren song of such immediate gratification, had he known the full truth Guy had revealed to him? Had he discovered it himself? At a time when hormones were raging and a mere breeze could give him a hard-on?

There was a distinct possibility he could have fallen into the same kind of trap Guy had. Hell. His hormones were raging right now. He was nearly twenty-one and had never had a blowjob himself. He’d given one—and God, loved it—and he’d had… intercourse with a female. The latter could only allow him to guess how receiving oral sex might feel. The world Guy had conjured up in Austin’s mind was at once disgusting, appalling, and to his discomfort, exciting. Would a blowjob through a hole in the wall be better than nothing at all? Austin hoped not. He liked to think his romantic fantasies were the stuff that made the world go round.

Austin had discovered websites on the Internet. Gay sites. He’d seen pictures and videos of what men could do to each other, and it hadn’t taken long for him to realize he wanted to try almost all of it.

He’d found the story sites as well—tales written to jack off to—and he’d done a hell of a lot of jacking off reading them. He’d read all kinds of stories. About high school and college students. Accounts of older men with younger men. Incest stories. Adventures of men submitting themselves to Masters and Doms, and conversely, stories told from the other point of view. Reports of first times. And yes, even stories about glory holes, watersports, and worse.

And dammit! Hadn’t some of those stories been as wild as anything in
Tearoom Tango
? Was there anything in that script he hadn’t read before?

Crap!

Had he overreacted?

Of course, the difference was when he’d read those stories online, it was at night when his grandparents were asleep, and he’d been horny as hell and he had been all alone.
Tearoom Tango
asked him to stand, proudly, in front of 150 people and say that stuff out loud.

Finally, though—to be fair to himself—weren’t the stories he loved the most the romantic ones? Making love by candlelight, midnight skinny-dipping with a buddy, losing virginity during a campout in a pup tent with a boyhood crush?

Hadn’t there been campouts with Todd in the middle of nowhere? How many times had he lain there, Todd next to him, snoring peacefully, and he—Austin—wide awake, cock hard as steel, wishing he had the guts to tell his friend how he felt? Oh! Why hadn’t he? Wouldn’t that have been better than a blowjob by the light of porn on his old TV? It might have made Todd face what happened afterward. It was harder to run away in the woods at night than from a basement. Crap it all. If only he could go back in time and do it again. Or if he could go back in time and rescue Guy. Save him from a life of degradation, even if it had all been filled with pleasure.

Maybe Guy would still have a family? If they had discovered their son was gay slowly, under more favorable circumstances?

Might it have made a difference?

“Oh, sweet Guy,” he mumbled under his breath. Guy’s face came to his mind. Those eyes, so beautiful; and his hands, big and masculine; and a body, mysterious, hidden by such baggy clothes. Of course, Austin had seen that butt, so round, even covered by jeans.

“You okay?” Uncle Bodie asked him one evening when he’d come in from playing with Lucille in the courtyard of their building. He’d caught Austin staring deep and long into a bubbling pot of pasta. Austin had jumped as if he’d been goosed.

“Huh? Wha—”

“I asked if you were all right. You seem faraway and long ago.”

Austin shrugged. “I’m all right.”

“You missing Guy, or Todd?”

Austin jumped again. How did his uncle do that?

“Both?” his uncle asked.

Suddenly, Austin felt like crying. He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “Both.”

“He’s pretty special, isn’t he?” Uncle Bodie opened a cabinet that got Lucille to prancing.

“Who? Guy or Todd?”

“Well, I don’t know Todd. I can only go by hearsay, although naturally I trust you. You wouldn’t fall for some deviant or serial killer. At least, I hope not. But I was talking about Guy.”

Austin sighed. “Yes. I miss him too.”

“Well, Austin, he lives right upstairs. You know where
he
is, after all.” Uncle Bodie pulled out a bag, and Lucille began to dance, even pirouette. “Who’s hungry?” he asked.

“Yap!” Lucille answered. She was hungry, Dad!

“And remember something else, my boy. No one wants to be second choice. Would you? He might put up with it for a while. He knows why you came to Kansas City. But… would
you
want to be a consolation prize?”

“Crap,” Austin said.

“Indeed.”

“What the hell do I do?” He had to admit, he was finding himself drawn more and more to his upstairs neighbor.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do. I just know Todd is a fantasy. And Guy? He’s so close you can almost touch him.”

“I know, Uncle Bodie, but… he’s gone all the time now with his play. Gets home late from rehearsal—”

“And what hours do
you
keep? You aren’t a nine-to-five kinda girl, are you?”

“I’m not a girl at all, thank you.”

“Give it a little time….” Uncle Bodie picked up Lucille’s
I Love Lucy
ceramic double bowl. One side—for water—had a painting of Lucy, and the other—for food—had Ricky.

“Never!”

His uncle tsked him. Then: “Have you thought about going out and getting some of that beer you both like and meeting him at his door one night?”

“How will I know when to be there? Sometimes he comes home right after rehearsal, and others he goes to that Male Box place.”

“Speaking of which, you’re almost old enough. Let’s go there for your birthday. It’s on a weekend this year, and isn’t that fortuitous?”

Austin smiled. “Could be fun.”
His first gay bar!

“We’ll go to the Liddle Awful Annie show that’s all the talk right now. And that boy Tommy—the one who was wearing a blue wig a few weeks ago? He’ll be there. I hear he’s very funny.”

“But is he supposed to be?” Austin asked. He’d watched a few episodes of
RuPaul’s Drag Race
with his uncle, and some of those queens took themselves very seriously.

“Honey, he wears a blue wig and doesn’t shave. He’s
supposed
to be funny.”

G
UY
did keep his promise and took Austin to the sci-fi group one Saturday. They called themselves KaCSFFS—pronounced Kaks-Fis—or the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society. They were nothing like Austin had pictured. No
Star Trek
costumes, no lightsabers, no hairy rubber hobbit feet, although there were a few
Big Bang Theory
-type wallflowers.

As it turned out, science fiction and fantasy fans had a decided dislike of the word “sci-fi.”

“What do you call it, then?” Guy had asked.

“SF” was the standard answer, and one member of the club added that “sci-fi” looked like it should be pronounced skiffy and gave an exaggerated shudder. Who would have known it would be such a big deal, especially when there was such a popular network channel with the very name they so disliked?

Otherwise, the members of the club, for the most part, seemed to be pretty regular people. During the meeting, they talked business and how to keep the club viable in such tough economic times. Afterward, they discussed politics—seemed most were strongly for gay marriage, even though the majority of them appeared to be straight. That was pretty cool. Evidently, “SF” fans were very open-minded. Like any other group of people, several went on ad nauseam about sports, in this case The Chiefs, the Kansas City football team. Pretty normal stuff.

Sure, they were impassioned about whether Peter Jackson should have added so much material to his adaptation of
The Hobbit
. “But I suppose,” Guy said afterward, “it’s no weirder than actors getting all upset about the changes Hollywood makes when it adapts a play into a movie. Boy, can I remember how upset some of my friends got over what Christopher Columbus did to
Rent
.”

But what had really been significant about the club members was that none of them knew Todd. When Austin showed the pictures on his cell phone, and he made sure not to show the near-naked one this time, not one of them had seen him. Austin couldn’t help but feel a crash in his spirits. Both their leads—the Basque restaurant with its obnoxious owner and the SF fans—were busts. The waiter from Izar’s Jatetxea still hadn’t called back. Which was horribly frustrating, because Austin didn’t know if that meant Todd hadn’t left an application, or if the waiter just plain hadn’t bothered.

“We’ll find Todd,” Guy said. “If we have to drive up and down every single street looking for his van. It was a van, right? Isn’t that what you told me?”

All of which made Guy’s absence all the harder. Not only had he still not found Todd—and it was appearing more and more likely he wouldn’t—but now Guy might as well be missing himself, for all Austin was seeing him. Austin had just begun to realize he was crossing some magical threshold into the gay world when his guide to that world was gone. Or at least, too busy.

Should he show up at Guy’s door with flowers and a six-pack?

No. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that wasn’t going to happen. First, he didn’t have the guts. Second, he wasn’t old enough to buy beer. And third? What the crap would Guy think of getting flowers? Was that anything
but
a courting gesture? A message saying “he loves me, he loves me not”?

Correction!

He
wants
me, he wants me not.

Todd.

Guy.

Todd or Guy?

How had Guy even become a consideration? Wasn’t Austin in love with Todd? Wasn’t he? Wasn’t that what his move to Kansas City was really all about? Wasn’t the big city and the opportunity to be who he really was of secondary importance?

So many crapping questions!

Was that what growing up, becoming an adult,
being
an adult was all about? Would life ever calm down?

“Not really,” his uncle explained when Austin finally asked him. “There’s
always
something going on. Something to figure out, something you messed up that you have to fix. Life is change. The only thing you are
really
in control of is your attitude, how you face your problems. Be hopeful. Expect the best, and you’ll find it. And remember this—
anything
can happen.”

Anything?

Then he was going to hope he found Todd. He had time. There was very little Guy in his life right now. He could get his head straight. He laughed at himself for the thought.
Get my head together
, he corrected.

Because what if he did fall into Guy’s bed, only to find Todd—a Todd who loved him as well? Wouldn’t that be the worst thing that could happen?

Anything could happen?

Then he would wait. If the fantasy happened, there wouldn’t or couldn’t be anything better than that.

A
USTIN
answered the phone on the third ring, not even bothering to check the caller ID. “Hello,” he said.

“Happy Thanksgiving” came the cry from the other end of the line.

“Gram! Happy Thanksgiving,” he exclaimed. “God, it’s good to hear your voice.” He sat down at the small kitchen table and, shifting the phone to his other ear, began to peel the potatoes Uncle Bodie had left for him.

“And how is life in the big city, son? We never hear from you.”

Austin felt a stab of guilt. He was nearly twenty-one, and damn, she could reduce him to a six-year-old in an instant. “Gram, I’m so sorry.” He did call, just not as often as she might have wished. “It gets so crazy and—”

“I know, dear. But you gotta remember. You’ve always been here. Twenty years you were underfoot. Some of those years literally. When you was in the basement. Now you’re gone. It’s not easy gettin’ used to.”

Were those tears in her voice? God…. “I miss you too,” he confessed. And he did. She and Gramps had been his whole world. Loving. Supportive always. And now he knew how much that meant.

“I wish you were here,” she replied. “First Thanksgiving you’ve been away in twenty years.”

“Second, Gram. Remember the year I went with Cousin Jimmy to Florida?”

“I remember. I still wish you was here.”

“Sorry, Gram.” He and Uncle Bodie had talked about it, driving to Buckman, but in the end decided to have their first Thanksgiving together. A symbol of Austin’s new life and all that was opening to him.

“So, have you…
met
anyone yet?”

“I’ve met lots of people. Great people! I would love you to meet them. I think you’d approve.”

“Yes. That’s nice. But… are you…
seeing
anyone?”

It took Austin a second to get the implication, but when he did, he smiled and blushed at the same time. She wanted to know if he was dating a man. “No, Gram. I met this nice… person. But I gotta find Todd first.”

“Ah…. Of course. No luck, then?”

“No,” he said, and felt sadness sneaking up on him. No! This was Thanksgiving! It was not time to think about what he
didn’t
have, but what he did.

“I ran into Mrs. Sandburg the other day….”

Mrs. Sandburg.
Todd’s mother?
“You did?”

“I asked her how Todd was doing, and she wasn’t very friendly. Told me he was fine, and when I asked her where he was, she said she had to go.”

Austin felt his heart expand, and the threatening melancholy was thrown back into the dark. Leave it to Gram to make him feel surrounded with love. He really was lucky.

“I asked her if she’d spoken to him, if he really had moved to Kansas City, and she just walked away. The bitch.”

Austin’s eyes popped and he burst into laughter. “You didn’t call her that, did you?”

“Not exactly. But I did say things an eighty-two-year-old grammy lady shouldn’t say.”