Short Fiction
Okay
a short story by David Ortmann
written and completed, Spring 2005
If you stop being a boy the day you fall in love, or have your first drink, then I stopped being a boy at seven years old.
At that age, I was a naively obstinate, adventurous, tow-headed tyke who fancied himself a sort of park ranger slash pirate with the world at the edge of his Buster-Browns, a world that encompassed the single suburban block of Edgerhardt Avenue in northern New Jersey, and the outlying woods. I had no apparent hang-ups, thanks, in part, to my parents Robert Joseph Sr. and Lucille Marie, who were influenced enough by the culture of the late 1960s and the politics of the early 1970s to lovingly set limits with their independent child while adopting a laissez faire attitude that permeated our almost-anything-goes 1978 suburban lifestyle.
Neither seemed to have a problem with their slightly effeminate son who took pleasure in having his Jamie Sommers Bionic Woman doll triumph over the much more muscular G.I Joe, solely to have poor Joe transported immediately to the Starship Enterprise where he was stripped naked by Dr. Spock, and tended to under the firm, but loving hands of Captain Kirk, Colonel Steve Austin, and Major Steve Trevor.
My days were not only spent playing with dolls. My mudpies were the best tasting in town (Suszi Clover got one in the face when she tried, one tedious afternoon, to surprise me with a kiss). I collected frogs, snakes, and baby snapping turtles from the woods behind our house, would-be pets I proudly dragged home only to be gently convinced by my parents that the creature du jour would be much happier among his or her own family back in the woods, rather than in a tank in our backyard. In one week I'd developed a private investigation firm, built a neighborhood stakeout for burglars, produced, directed and starred in a one-man stage adaptation of Charlie's Angels, and manned a strawberry Tang stand (because lemonade, I reasoned, had been done). I was busy, serious young man with little time for shenanigans.
My already firmly-established disdain for organized sports did not stem from fear of the outdoors, getting dirty, or danger, rather it wasn't so much the word sports that disagreed with me as the word organized. I was, if anything, a steadfast loner, and not much of an athlete.
To say that Robert Joseph Sr. was a good athlete would be an understatement. He had the handsome vigor and natural coordination of a sportsman whether he was on the shuffleboard court of our annual summer vacations, doing laps at the public swimming pool, or swinging his bat on the softball field.
I had just turned seven that April morning my father decided I was finally old enough to accompany him to his construction company's annual softball picnic. I was nervous because I hated softball, wouldn't know any of the people there, and that my father, as usual, would be something of a celebrity with his good looks and knack for anything that involved a ball and a stick. Also, it meant I would have to share him, something I wasn't keen on doing.
I was wearing those elastic-waist navy blue nylon sport shorts that were popular in the 1970s and a light blue terry cloth short-sleeved shirt V-necked shirt. I even decided to bring my Mattel Junior catcher's mitt. In the mirror, I remember thinking that I looked just like a smaller version of my father, without the muscles.
My father was wearing thin blue nylon running shorts just like mine, about a size too small, and an old white baseball shirt my mother had been trying to get him to throw away for the last two years.
"Robert, the shirt's from hunger itself!" she'd said again that morning after breakfast. "And you've had it since high school. It's time to say good-bye to that thing. It's torn; it doesn't even fit anymore, for Pete's sake! People are going to stare at you in that ripped old rag."
"I know Momma," he said, using my term of endearment for her. "That's why I wear it. Never know when I might catch the eye of some fine young thing."
She threw a soapy Rescue pad across the kitchen at him.
"Hey, don't mess with the threads, woman." He laughed.
"You wear those shorts any tighter, dear, you may attract more attention from the guys than the girls. Ever hear of subtlety?" Momma asked jokingly eying him up and down in a playfully lascivious manner. I liked it when they flirted, because it was obviously so much fun for them, although I didn't understand it.
"Hey, this is the era of equal opportunity isn't it?" He smiled at her.
"Oh good Lord, Robert, not in front of the child."
I didn't see what the big deal was. I liked my father's old shirt and his shorts. Actually, I loved them. I was beginning to experience the very tender but powerful pangs of childhood admiration and affection, coupled with those first innocent sparks of boyhood idolatry and, its shadowy flip side, lust. I hypnotically gazed at those shorts, anytime my father wore them, and try to visualize what lay beneath.
The last time he wore them, with only a pair of tennis shoes, was last weekend. As he mowed the backyard lawn, I spied (it was the first week of my private investigation firm, so I was able to rationalize my spying as somehow guarding him from possible criminals that could be hiding in the bushes nearby) from the bathroom window. I watched the thin tight nylon stretch in beautiful curves and bulges atop my father's strapping legs-corded with sinewy muscle and pelted with the softest light blonde hair. His powerful biceps and forearms were roped with veins and, like his legs, covered with the same soft blond hair. I remember wondering what those hairs would feel like against my face.
His shoulders we tanned, more golden actually, and there were hills and valleys of muscle that extended down his back to the twin perfection of his powerful buttocks, muscles that swam and flexed beneath his radiant skin that dripped with sweat. I felt my own forehead begin to perspire and ran my finger across it, capturing some of the moisture, and placing my finger into my mouth. Sucking gently on the salty juice, I wondered if my father's sweat tasted salty too.
At one point, he looked up at the bathroom window and drew the back of his hand over his forehead. He looked right at me. I felt my heart rise into my throat. It beat so hard I thought it would pop right out my mouth and splatter against the glass. The sun was shining in such a way that I was sure he couldn't see me spying on him, but I ducked down, beneath the window sill, just to be safe.
I felt like it was somehow wrong, staring at my father's body with such intensity, and without his knowledge. I was captivated by his muscles, the movement within his powerful chest and that thin sweaty trail of hair that extended downward, from his belly button, flaring wider and thicker, and then disappearing beneath the waistband of those blue shorts, where another fixation, a bulge the size of a small grapefruit swelled.
I hoped he hadn't seen me because, if my looking was wrong, I was afraid he would give me a spanking. Sometimes, when I was bad, he would threaten to pull my pants down and spank my bottom, but he hadn't ever. Yet.
In the days to come, he never mentioned seeing me at the window, so I figured I was safe.
* * * *
My favorite activity was to climb into my father's lap and curl there while he read to me from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series or Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. I found his lap the warmest and most secure place in the world. As he read to me, his voice inhabiting every character, his muscular arm curled around me, his hand periodically stroking my hair. I never felt safer than I did when my father put his arm around me. He, or my mother for that matter, never did or said anything that made me feel that being close to them, touching them, or loving them was in any way wrong, or something to be ashamed of.
"Bobby, darling," my mother said, finishing the breakfast dishes and slinging a red checkered dishtowel over her shoulder. "Promise me when you grow up, you won't be as narcissistic as your father."
"What's narcissistic?"
"It means when you love your self and think you're the coolest thing around," Dad interrupted.
"Oh." I said. It sounded perfectly normal to me.
"So, Bobby," he said, tossing the soapy Rescue pad back to Momma who impressively caught it in one hand without even looking. "Who's the handsomest guy in the world?"
"You mean besides you?" I asked with complete honesty.
I think he thought I was joking.
"Good answer, son," he smiled at my mother, who was shaking her head and trying not to laugh. "Yes, besides me."
I jumped up from the kitchen table and flexed my little seven-year-old biceps and shouted, "I am!"
"That's right, Bobby. You're learning." He swept me into a tight hug and I suddenly found myself crushed against his chest. He smelled of everything outdoors: freshly cut grass, leather, and newly chopped wood. He smelled like his morning shower: the lather of Irish Spring soap, Brut after shave, and Wildroot hair cream. All of these filled my nostrils and my brain, mingling together with the most powerful scent of all, that of my father's own body scent, his sweat, and his musk. The sensation was intoxicating. His arms around me, I was suspended in midair in a safe embrace that smelled and felt like everything implicit the words Dad and Man. I felt myself shiver, and my head began to spin. Something was happening in my belly, something new. I thought I might be sick to my stomach, until I realized that what was happening was happening lower than my stomach.
I experienced my first erection at that moment, not a spongy, half-mast desire surge, but a full-on rock-hard four-inch rocket that my father could hardly help but notice as it was poking him directly in his solar plexus.
He didn't back away. He made no motion to put me down. Rather, he titled his head to the right side, as though storing the information away safely for some later date. He smiled at me with the kind of smile that inhabits both the mouth and the eyes fully before placing me down gently with a gently squeeze on the shoulder. He thoughtfully placed me facing, and pointing, away from where my Mom was busy wiping down the countertop.
My Dad headed toward the cooler near the back door. "Bobby? You think your mother packed Doritos or Fritos?"
"Doritos?" I ventured, looking down at this new thing springing from between my legs.
"Score one for the little guy!" He said, smiling at me, holding up a bag of Doritos and then crouching down to continue his inventory, calling out to my mother to make sure she'd put enough mayo on the BLT sandwiches he and I liked so much.
"Luce, you sure you don't want to come with us?"
She thought for a moment and finally shook her head, "Nah, you guys need a boy's day out."
"Boy's day out! Yay!" I yelled happily, throwing my catcher's mitt into the air with one hand and catching it with my other.
"Not bad," he said, tossing a thermos of grape Kool-Aid into the ice chest. "You catch better than my boss. We may need you today."
My Dad said he needed me. It was gonna be a good day.
* * * *
From my vantage point, beneath Chug's passenger seat safety belt, I watched the trees and road signs sail past and fell progressively into a highway hypnosis. With the late morning sun reflected off the windshield, the passenger window became a wavering mirror. I saw my own face reflected there. A boy of seven. Light brown hair, long sun-kissed bangs skimming thin eyebrows arched above wide, expectant green eyes, pronounced cheekbones casting hollows onto my cheeks, and lips full of boyhood petulance. I smiled, watching my tiny white teeth reflect in the sunlight and my eyes crinkle up in the corners.
I stared at my reflection for awhile before flaring my nostrils and setting my mouth into a tight line, trying my best to look serious. Then I lowered my eyelids and let a smirk curl up one corner of my mouth. I looked villainous-a villain with a secret, softer side. Next I relaxed my entire face and lowered my chin, looking up at my reflection with something that resembled a deep yearning I had not yet learned the word for. I pouted my lips more and half-winked at the window.
For a moment, I didn't recognize the boy who stared back at me, and I felt the same tightening in my abdomen as when my father embraced me earlier, the same pleasurable stiffening beneath the waistband of my shorts. I was short of breath with that feeling I always got when my father drove over a hill too fast and I'd felt as though I'd left my stomach somewhere on the road behind. Only, this time, we hadn't gone over any hills.
The face peering back at me was at once tough and beautiful and completely unfamiliar. I saw the shadow my long eyelashes cast beneath my eyes; two pools of green fire under brows highly arched as though I were asking some very important question. The slightly pouting lips reminded me of a fluffy pillow, only pink. I wanted to jump through that glass and touch those lips to see if they were as soft as they seemed to be and then tickle that painfully beautiful boy in the window until his serious expression broke into panes of laughter and we were rolling around on the floor together.
I'd looked at myself before, of course, in the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth or in the mornings when I got dressed and combed my hair for school, but that was the first day I remember seeing myself as a separate person. I saw a glimmer of the future in that face reflected in Chug's passenger window. Me older, a man and no longer a boy; but more than a man also, something seductive and mysterious, someone that laughed while rolling on the floor with another boy, someone aloof or winsome posing for a photograph, someone making faces, expressions, and saying words that weren't his while performing on a big stage or on a movie screen, like in Star Wars.
"Daddy, what do you see when you look out the window?" I asked, thinking my father looked a bit like Han Solo.
"Trees, the road, a deer or two if I'm lucky," he said. "Why, what do you see?"
"A boy."
"A boy? What kind of boy?"
"Like me but different. Handsomer."
Dad patted my leg playfully and said, "Ain't possible, Bobby. Ain't possible."
I wasn't sure if he meant the handsomer part or the seeing things part. I like to think he meant the handsomer part.
* * * *
Dad and I were running late. The softball game was almost underway and, just as I'd predicted, my Junior catcher's mitt and I were relegated to the sidelines to watch.
I was not, I realized with a new feeling of detachment, needed.
"Now pal," Daddy said, fitting one of his extra baseball caps onto my head at a jaunty angle. "You just sit here and guard Melissa and Mabel's cooler and all our stuff. When the game's over, you and I can play catch before we go home. Deal?"
"Deal!" I shouted, my mood improved with the promise of a game of catch with my father. I took inventory of the spoils I was to guard. Mabel and Melissa, two of my father's work friends, had brought a huge cooler, two tote bags full of fruit and sandwiches, and a pug named Hydrant. Dad left our smaller cooler, his wallet, keys, and his sunglasses with me as well. I put the sunglasses on, and figured that, between me and Hydrant, we'd be able to guard everything just fine.
Dad, Melissa, and Mabel said they would come visit during the fifteen-minute break that came at the "bottom of the fifth," and I pretended to understand.
"I'm thirsty, Dad." I yelled, just as he was about to run off to the field.
"Mommy packed some Kool-Aid for you, Bobby."
"No soda?"
"Nope, no soda sport. Sorry."
"What do you need hon?" Mabel said crouching down to meet my gaze, which was a feat unto itself because Mabel was the size of a refrigerator. "You want some soda? Shoot, Missy and I bought more soda than we'll ever drink. 7-Up, Fresca.yecch, diet juice, I call it, and Coca-Cola."
"7-Up please!" I cried with excitement.
"No problem." Mabel returned my smile and popped open a green can. "Just make sure you cheer really loud for your Daddy's and my team, 'kay?" She winked.
"Yup! I will." I smiled and took a healthy gulp, relishing the cold, crisp citrus tingle my mouth.
"Promise me you'll stay away from the Coke, sport," my father said, grabbing his catcher's mitt. "Your Mom'll kill me if you come home all wired from caffeine."
"I promise Dad."
"If you want to play with Hydrant, his B-A-L-L is in that straw tote bag." Mabel said. I wondered if Hydrant knew how to spell yet.
As she and Daddy walked toward the field, I heard Mabel say, "I don't know why Missy insists on packing all that crap soda anyway. She knows I like them Club drinks when I am playin'."
I remember thinking that "Club drinks" sounded very fancy and not at all like something you'd drink at a softball game.
It was hot that day, and I got all sweaty running around playing ball with Hydrant. He was jet black and had huge bug eyes that seemed to stare right through me, but the rest of his face was all pushed in, like he'd run into a wall at top speed. His nose wasn't really a nose at all, but two little holes through which he snorted and wheezed like an old man with a cold.
Frolicking in the late April sun with Hydrant had me more winded and thirsty than if I were playing the outfield with the grown-ups. I quickly drank my way through the can of 7-Up and was rummaging through Missy and Mabel's cooler to find another, with Hydrant snorting beside me eager for more B-A-L-L. The cooler was packed with all kinds of drinks. I really wanted a Coke, but I'd made a promise to my father. Tossed in alongside the 7-Up cans were slender green cans with little white bubbles running alongside the aluminum. I could read the word "Club," but not much else. They looked cool, like mini-sodas, and were green and white, just like the 7-Ups were. I popped the top off one and threw the ball to Hydrant.
The drink tasted like fizzy cough syrup, but it did the trick. I almost fell down with exhaustion by the time I finished it, finally gathering ball and dog and heading back to Mabel's big Indian print blanket to watch some of the game.
"Go Daddy!" I yelled loudly as he slammed the ball high into the air. He watched it for a moment , dropped his bat and began to run. He made it all the way to third base. I liked watching the sides of his shorts fly up when he ran. I could just see the bottom edge of his tight white briefs peeking out. All that blue against all that white almost made me dizzy. I couldn't wait to watch him slide into home plate. I hoped his shorts would slide too, and give me another glimpse of all that beautiful white.
My father gave me a little wave as he hovered between third base and home plate, legs spread, taunting the pitcher with his bravado. By then, I was well into hitting my second Club drink. I felt both energetic and woozy, rolling around on the blanket with Hydrant who dripped a thin stream of dog-snot onto my chin as I held him in the air.
"Who's the handsomest dog in the world? Who's the handsomest dog in the world?" I kept asking him, but he didn't answer, just snottier snorting and his big bug-eyed gaze.
By the time Mabel, Missy and my father got back to the blanket mid-way through the game, I was simply and thoroughly shitfaced. My father, oblivious, scooped me up, lifted me high in the air and swung me around saying something that included the words "enjoy" and "game." He stopped spinning, set me down on the blanket, and everything kept right on spinning, including me. My stomach lurched and I convulsed in a monumental heave, projectile vomiting 360 degrees around me and all over poor Hydrant and Mabel's pretty Indian print blanket.
"Oh my God," Missy said, looking at the three empty cans of Club Car Gin and Tonics. "Robert, he's drunk!"
Done spinning, I collapsed onto the grass while my Dad, Mabel, and Missy fussed to sop the gook off Hydrant and discussed whether or not they needed to rush me to the hospital. I threw up again. Missy gave me some crackers to eat. "They'll settle your stomach," she said.
My father couldn't finish the game that day and had to drive me home immediately. He threw me over his shoulders gently, fearful that I might throw up again and buckled me into Chug's passenger seat. As he wiped around my lips with a Wash-n-Dry, I tried to tell him that I stayed away from the Cokes.
"I know you did, sport," he said quietly, his smile half-hearted. "We shouldn't have left those Club things in the soda cooler like that. It wasn't your fault."
As my father pulled Chug onto the road, I watched Missy and Mabel waving, getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. I wondered if I would ever see Hydrant again and, if I did, would he be angry with me.
"How do you feel, buddy?" My Dad asked, his eyes momentarily settling on me before returning to the road.
"Fiiiineeee," I slurred, chalk throated, not recognizing the sound of my own sodden voice. I finally did recognize it, thirty years later, listening to a broadcast of Elaine Stritch in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
"You're not sick to your stomach anymore?"
"No, not anymore. I'm kinda sleepy."
"You sure you don't feel sick?"
"No. I feel bad for Hydrant."
"Hydrant will be fine."
"Can I have a dog Daddy? I promise I won't throw up on him."
"We'll see, Bobby," my father said, putting his hand gently on my knee. "We'll see."
"I am sorry to keep asking you this, son, but, you're sure you don't still feel sick?"
"No." I hesitated, sensing a possible trick question. If I said I still felt sick, my father would continue to be tender with me. If I said I was all better, he might punish me for getting into things I shouldn't have.
"Are you sure?"
"Uhhhhhh. yes, Dad. I am sure. I feel better since I threw up."
Silence.
"Why? Are. are you going to spank me?" I remember being surprised by the hopeful, yearning sliver, hanging like a teardrop from the end of my question.
I think he noticed it too. My father was silent for what felt like a full minute. Then he inhaled deeply and spoke.
"No son, you're not going to get a spanking. I know there've been times I said I might spank you, but your Momma and I decided awhile ago that positive reinforcement is better than punishment."
I didn't know what he was talking about, but I felt an unexpected flash of rage against my mother, that woman who was keeping me from my spanking.
"What?" I said, with a snotty edge to my voice.
I didn't want to be spanked. Not really. In my drunken, uninhibited state, I just knew that I wanted to feel my Dad's strong calloused hands against my naked, smooth bottom, so I could get that feeling I'd had earlier when he hugged me, and I knew, driving home, that the time to get this was slipping away from me.
"Why, Bobby? Do you want me to spank you?"
Caught. Deny. Fast! My mind seemed to leap into some primal instinct mode.
"Duh. No." I said, shaking my head a little too emphatically. "That's dumb."
Silence.
"I think you do want me to spank you."
"Duh! Why would I want that?" My voice trembled.
My father slowly pulled old Chug over to the shoulder of the road. The anticipation of not knowing exactly what my father was going say or do to me was more intoxicating than the gin and tonics had been.
Chug came to a halt in a small cloud of dirt. Dad set the emergency brake with his foot. My eyes were transfixed on his flexing calf and thigh. He turned the key. Chug sputtered and was silent. I heard my heart beating and the click of my father's seatbelt as he undid it. I watched his hand reach across my body and heard the same click as he undid my seatbelt.
"Bobby, look at me." He said with gentle command.
I turned to him, convinced that every incomprehensible, secret desire I held for him was indelibly scrawled across my face.
"Maybe it's not the spanking you want so much as the contact, the physical contact."
His words were too sophisticated; his assertation sailed right over my head. He read my expression of confusion correctly.
"What I mean is. Mom's not around. It's just us guys, right?"
I nodded.
"I think you feel that my spanking you would be a sort of. oh, what's the word? Like a bonding experience between us guys, a guy thing, like the I-dare-you-to-games some boys play when they're your age."
"Yeah, maybe." I said, wanting to just agree but being too frightened of my own feelings to do so.
"And because you are excited by my body and want me be as excited by your body."
That was it for me.
"You are so crazy, Dad!" Was the answer I tried to spout, but it got all confused in my heart and head and mouth and ended up coming out, "Dad, you're right. I. I think about you all the time. I wanna always be with you, and be like you too, and I want to be really, really close to you." And then I started crying like all hell was going to break loose.
"It's alright Bobby." He reached out his hand and it came to rest at the back of my head. His palm alone covered the entire back of my neck and his long fingers fanned out to rub my little shoulders gently. "I love you too. I love you a lot. I love you more than any other guy on this planet."
"Do you love Mom more than me?" I was crying harder now. I felt as though all my secrets were out and that I would never be my father's little boy again.
"No. I love you both the same, but in certain ways there are differences."
"Like what?"
"Well, your Mom and I have sex together."
"Eeewwww! I don't want to talk about that."
"Robert, sex is what happens when two people like to look at each other's bodies and love each other. They start touching and hugging and getting excited. What's so gross about that?"
"Nothing, I just don't want to have to think of Momma or that crazy girl Suszi like that."
He was silent for a few seconds.
"What about thinking of me like that?"
I took those words in. I had no choice. His directness cut clean through my resistance. I felt his hand still kneading my neck, those loving fingers against my flesh, and my heart continued to race. I knew, in just a few seconds, that my fast-growing, second-ever erection, would be full, and fully visible to my father.
I forced myself to say the most difficult seven words of my young life. "I like to look at you Daddy."
"I know you do."
He let the heavy reality of that statement just hang there between us for a few moments.
"What do you think about when you look at me?"
"How.. how. this sounds so dumb."
He leaned toward me and laid his hand on my knee. I saw the white of his briefs peek out from beneath the thin blue material. His big manly bulge, his penis, that thing that had large part in creating me was just a hand's reach away.
I spoke quickly, before I lost my nerve. "I think about how I want to taste your sweat when you mow the grass and how I want to sneak your tee-shirts out of the laundry basket so I can sleep with them, like. Argh! This is so dumb!" I yelled, frustrated with the struggle inside me between honesty and fear.
"Tell me." Again, that gentle command.
"So, I can take them and sleep with them, 'cause they smell like you and I can pretend I am sleeping next to you."
"And?"
"Stuff like smelling you and touching you and kissing you in those places that I stare at." My eyes traveled from his legs, past the bulge in his tight shorts, up his abdomen, over his chest and into his blue eyes. The expression I saw there was one of perfect love, perfect acceptance, and perfect trust. I bathed in his eyes for a moment, as they both soothed me and allowed me to continue.
"Kissing and touching you.." I repeated, making the connection. "Is that what I want to have with you? Sex?"
"I think so, son."
"Can.can I touch you there?" I pointed my small finger at the bulge in between my father's legs.
He took a deep breath.
"Yes." He said with a slight reserve. "You can touch me there. But, you need to promise me, Bobby, that when I tell you to stop, you'll stop."
"I promise." I said quickly, willing, at that point, to agree to almost anything.
I reached out and poked the blue bulge in my father's shorts, like I would push an elevator button. It felt weird. Then I placed my hand over as much of his crotch as I could manage. I left it there for a moment, feeling his pulse throb like a tiny heartbeat. I moved my hand up and down, exploring the spongy shaft of his penis with my fingers and marveling at the way his testicles seemed to swim in their loose sack. I held them gently and marveled at how heavy they felt cupped in my hand. Holding them for a while, I took a deep breath, my saliva suddenly glue in my mouth, and let my hand travel all the way up the shaft. I poked it again, and giggled.
"It's squishy." I said, drawing my hand away.
"Yes," my Dad said, "Sometimes they are squishy."
"Can I see it?" I asked, partially aroused and partially overcome with the same scientific curiosity that led me to opening my private investigation firm.
"Yes." My father said, stretching the waistband of his shorts and briefs downward with his left hand and drawing out his sizable genitals with his right. He was completely flaccid, but his penis seemed long and thick and his testicles reminded me of a couple of fairly large eggs.
I looked into his eyes and his must have read the question on my face. He nodded gently.
I reached out again. I felt an electric shock deep in my stomach at first contact. I slowly traveled over him with my bare hands-flesh to flesh, boy to man, son to father-from just underneath his testicles where the hair grew sparely up his shaft to the very tip of his penis, which I felt, just toward the end, thicken and harden slightly beneath my stroking exploration.
I heard my father take a deep breath.
"Okay, son. I need to ask you to stop now."
I obeyed him, like I had promised.
"Wow, that's weird." I said.
"How so?"
"Yours stuff is a lot bigger than mine." I said, slightly awestruck by the sheer size and hairiness.
"Look." I yanked my own shorts down, displaying my hairless genitals, my small, but insistent, erection and my tiny almond-sized testicles.
"Mine's stiff." I said proudly. "Yours isn't."
"Well, Bobby, you are very excited right now, in that sexual way that we talked about. If I was sexually excited I would get very stiff too."
"How do you get sexually excited?"
"I get sexually excited when I am around your Mom. I also get sexually excited when I get touched there for a long time, the way that you were just touching me."
"Can I touch you there for a long time, Dad? I want to see you get stiff like mine. I want to play with it."
He inhaled. I know my father didn't want to have sex with me, but I think denying his son anything was difficult for him.
"No," he said softly, "Because Mommy and I have a promise that only she touches me there until I get stiff."
I recoiled as if bitten. I even felt my erection begin to subside.
"I hate her, then! I hate her forever and ever and ever." I yelled with an anger that surprised me, yanked up my shorts, and punched the dashboard hard with my fist. I started crying, both from the pain in my hand and the pain in my heart.
"Let me explain something, Bobby." My father said, simultaneously pulling his shorts and briefs over the very things I wanted right then more than anything else in the entire world.
Had I known the phrase Fuck You, I might have said it, but I didn't, so my father continued, tightening his grip around my neck, kneading the tension from the muscles that were crying like the rest of me.
"All little boys."
"I am not that little!" I yelled.
"Yes, you're right. You're not that little." My father continued, trying to soothe the beast raging within me. "All boys are curious about their penises and testicles and a lot of boys are just as curious about their Dad's stuff too. There's nothing wrong with looking at me or asking me questions or even touching me to see what I feel like. But, it would be something different if I let you touch me there until I got hard or if we did sexual things together."
I looked at him, angry, confused, and showing it. "That's stupid and it's not fair." I said with an almost adult conviction, feeling more anger and more hatred, directed, this time, toward him. I folded my arms and faced the windshield.
"Bobby, turn around and look at me."
"No."
"Bobby, please turn around and face me."
I didn't say anything. My father reached over, effortlessly picked me off the seat, turned me to face him, and manually unfolded my arms.
"Now, I know you're mad at me right now, but you have to listen to me and trust me. Okay?"
"Okay." I said.
"All boys, when they are growing up, feel the way you feel about me toward one of their parents. You with me so far?"
"Yeah." I said quietly.
"A lot of boys, most boys, fall in love with their mothers and feel angry with their fathers."
"Really?" I said. "That doesn't make any sense."
He smiled at me in a way I can only describe as both sweet and wise.
"And then, there are some boys, like you little buddy, who fall in love with their Dads and when they find out the special things, like sex, that Dad shares with Mom, they get very angry with their Moms."
"Like me now." I ventured shyly.
"Like you now." He smiled.
"But, you have to remember that even though Mommy and I share sex together that doesn't mean I don't love you."
"You do?"
"Of course I do." I tucked his index finger under my chin and raised my head, his eyes meeting mine.
"My son is one of the handsomest, smartest, most talented and beautiful boys in the world," he said with a conviction in his voice and an expression in his eyes that didn't allow any room for my refutation.
"Sometimes, Bobby, I'll watch you swimming, or talking to all those animals you bring home, or reading those books of yours, or see you when you're tucked into bed at night or even just sitting across from me at the dinner table and I feel like my heart's going to explode from loving you so much."
"That's how I feel about you." I said smiling slightly again.
"And someday, you're going to meet another boy, or another girl, and you're going to feel like sharing sex with them, the way you feel with me right now."
"Really?" I said suspiciously.
"Really," he smiled, "and when that time comes, I am going to be here to talk with you about it just the way we are now, because it will feel very wonderful and very confusing and you'll have lot's of questions."
"Like today?"
"Like today."
We sat in silence for awhile. My erection had subsided, but I still was overcome with desire.
"But why can't I touch you there again?"
"Because you already know what it feels like and what it looks like."
"But I want to play with it more!" I was on the verge of both yelling and crying again.
"I know you do son, and I am not saying No to hurt you." His voice broke, and I thought for a moment that he, too, was about to cry.
He took another deep breath and continued, "We have a very special relationship, you and I. Just as special as the relationship I have with your Mom. I know this is difficult for you to understand right now, but if you and I had what we are calling Sex right now, even though you really want it, it would forever hurt the very special relationship we have and, Bobby, I don't want to hurt that relationship. Ever."
He paused for a moment. How my father negotiated all this dangerous psychological and sexual territory with his precocious, horny, homosexual seven-year-old son is still a source of wonder and inspiration for me.
"Did you understand what I just said?"
"I think so." I said, feeling less rejected and ornery.
We were quiet for a few minutes, his hand a consistent source of warmth against the back of my neck.
I had another question, a very important question, but I was terrified to step onto that tree limb again. It took me a moment to just realize and accept the consistency of his hand against my neck before I had the courage to speak again.
"That word you used before." I stalled, searching for it.
"Which one?"
"Touching, feeling. you know, that word you used when we were talking about the spanking."
"Do you mean 'contact?'"
"Yeah, that's the one." I lowered my head, unable to look into his eyes. "I still want it."
"Alright Bobby," he said tenderly. "What kind of contact do you want?"
"Well, can you put your arm around me real tight?"
"Of course." He dropped his hand from the back of my neck to my right shoulder and pulled me closer to him.
"Tighter." I insisted, my voice almost a whisper.
He pulled me even closer, until I could feel his ribcage expanding as he breathed. I purposefully synched my breathing with his.
"How does that feel?" He asked.
"Good," I said, "Safe."
"You are good, and you are safe."
I gingerly reached out my left hand and placed it lightly on my father's thigh, just above his knee.
"Is this okay, Daddy?"
"Yes Bobby. It's okay."
Only then did I fully surrender, letting the full weight of my small hand come to rest on my father's broad, downy, sun kissed thigh. I remember how tiny and pale it looked against the backdrop that was him. I allowed my body to rest completely against his with out reserve.
"It's okay," he whispered, holding me tighter.
Leaning in closer, he planted a single, gentle kiss on the top of my head, and moments later I was drifting off to sleep curled tightly against him, our breathing still perfectly, effortlessly, in synch.