Learning to love
Learning to love
Part 10
A Journal of Love
[This story was fabricated and created by me, the author.
Any similarity to any real life situation,event, or person(s) is purely of coincidence.
Please do not distribute this story in any way, shape, part, or form without my expressed consent.]
> I walked into the kitchen. Connie wasn't there. I opened the frig and grabbed a Dr. Pepper and popped the top. The only homework I had was to read a chapter in my history book. Tommy told me he had Algebra, English and the History chapter. I figured I could just read take my homework to bed with me. Should be as good as a sleeping pill. I stood at the kitchen counter and drank my soda. Just as I finished it and sat the empty can on the counter, I heard footsteps coming from the hall that led out of the kitchen and to my parent's side of the house. I turned and watched as my father entered the kitchen.
"Hello son, did you have a good day?" He asked as he came up next to me.
"I turned into one." I replied cautiously. He smiled and opened his arms for our now customary greeting. I hugged him and when I went to break the hug, he maintained his hold on me.
"I love you Brent." He said over my shoulder, and then released me. "I told you this morning that we needed to talk. There's something I want to show you first and I also have something for you that might interest you as well. Are you finished with your drink?" He asked and indicated my empty can. I told him I was and he picked up the empty can and went and threw it into the kitchen trash bin. "Do you mind coming with me now, or did you have something else you needed to do?" My father disposing of my trash and being so solicitous of me, caused me to take a closer look at him. He appeared nervous too me now. He had never had a problem looking me directly in the eyes whenever we would talk, but even though he was facing me from across the room, his eyes seemed to be looking at my chest and not my face.
"I...I can come with you now. Where are we going, to your office?" I asked. He was making me nervous. It's contagious.
"No, not in my office. It on the second floor." I frowned, but he came back over to me and gently led me out of the kitchen. "Just follow me. I have something to show you. I..." He looked over at me as I walked beside him and chuckled very softly, "I must admit, I'm feeling a little nervous. It's nothing bad." He assured me when he saw me react to his admission. "I know you're expecting us to talk about this morning and what you think I know about you and Tommy." I sucked in my breath. He all but admitted that he knows. "But first, I feel this is important to the both of us." I followed my father up the stairs to the second story landing. I would normally continue up the next flight to go to my part of the house. I had never explored this floor. I just never took the time and besides, other things had kept me busy. We walked down the hall and my father paused outside a door. On it was a faded sign that read 'JAMES' and below that 'Sleeps here'. I looked at my father as he paused with his hand on the doorknob.
"This...This was your room when you were a teenager?" I asked him. He nodded his head. I waited on my dad to turn the knob and after a few moments, I said "Um...Are we going to go in dad?" He looked at me and smiled a nervous smile. He turned the knob and opened the door. He walked in and I followed him. I stood in amazement at what I saw. It was like stepping into a pristinely preserved snapshot of 20 years in the past. The walls were decorated in posters of football players and there was a Michael Jackson poster thrown in the mix. One wall had two shelves build into it, and on them sat sports trophies. Having only taken 2 steps into the room, my father had stopped and went no further. I on the other hand, was fascinated by what I was seeing as I scanned the room. I saw a small desk with a chair, facing one wall and on the desk were framed pictures. I walked over to get a closer look at them.
Several of the pictures were coated with years of dust, but three appeared to have been recently cleaned and replace on the desk. When I looked at these, I gasped. All three were of two teenagers. One with both in football uniforms. One with both on horseback, and the last showed one of the teens with his arm over the shoulder of the other, both teens were smiling big and looked full of joy. One of the teens had to be my father because he looked like a younger version of the man who had halted at the door. The other was Tommy! Well, not exactly Tommy because that would be impossible. Mike, it was Mike, Tommy's father. I picked the picture with the smiling teens up and looked closely at the two. Looking at the younger Mike was like looking at a mirror image of my boyfriend. Maybe a little older and a bit bigger, but it rocked me at how much they resembled each other. I turned around and looked at my father, still with the framed photo in my hand.
"Mike and I. We were both 15 years old in that picture." My father looked around the room and after exhaling a held breath, walked over to me. "May I?" He asked and indicated the picture in my hand. I nodded and handed it to him. He ran his hand over the glass incased picture. "Mike and I were inseparable from the time we were 11 until the day I left Beulah on a bus for Massachusetts and college." He looked at me and said, "Tommy looks a lot like him doesn't he?"
I swallowed and replied, "He looks exactly like him dad. It really startled me when I fist saw those pictures." He nodded and once again wiped the frame and then walked and set it on the desk with the others. He turned around and looked at his old room and then back at me.
"The reason I wanted you to see this room, son, is because I wanted you too know...I really was your age once. When I lived in this room, I never imagined the life I have today. I had dreams, but those dreams...changed. They changed exactly one week before I left, and I never came back. I went to college, then to graduate school. I joined a law office in Texas as an intern and eventually met and married your mother. She and I decided to move from Texas to California. I had moved up in the law firm, but something was always missing for me. When we settled in Los Angeles, I again joined a law firm, but this time as a junior partner. I eventually bought out several partners in the firm and became the senior." He walked over to me and now was looking me in the eyes without any nervousness evident in his own. "Exactly 14 years and one day ago I had a son of my own. During the nine months of your mother's pregnancy, I thought of nothing else except of not wanting to be my father. I was so afraid Brent." He looked away from me and turned to look back at the desk. He stared in that direction for a few moments.
I had watched my father as he spoke to me. He was a man I had never known. Right before my eyes he was transforming himself into a man I needed to know. He turned back to me and continued. "You mother and I had decided not to learn the sex of our soon to be born baby. I don't remember the reasoning behind our decision now. The day you were born and I realized I had a son, a son that I was so afraid I would hurt one day because I wouldn't be able to escape the legacy I thought my father had warped me to follow." He looked down and when he looked up at me again, my heart almost broke. I had never seen a look so devastated, sad, hurt, or lost. His eyes were shimmering. He placed both hands on my shoulders. "I made the worst decision I had ever made that day son. It was a decision born of hopelessness on my part. I...I decided in order to save my son from me, I needed to make sure he was not subjected to me unless it was absolutely necessary." He squeezed my shoulders and blinked, tears fell from his eyes. "For the next almost 14 years, I avoided the contact I wanted so desperately with him. I worked all the time. I attended every function or party or whatever aided me in limiting my contact. I saw the way your mother was with her son. So many times Brent I saw the need in your eyes for some kind of acceptance from her or me. I...I couldn't let that need sway me." Tears fell freely from his eyes and my own were now falling.
"But...But I don't understand." I said to him. "I don't know anything about your father. You've never spoken about him. I don't understand what he did to you." I was hurting. I was hurting because I hadn't had a father all my life because someone I didn't even know stole him away from me before I was even born. "How dare you!" I yelled at him. "How...How dare you take my...My father away from me because of what might have passed!" I continued to yell. Look what he had done to me. What right did he have to make that kind of decision? His life was mine as much as it was his. "Don't you understand?" I asked him. "I'm the one who had no control. You were in control! But what did you do Father? I don't know what your father did, but if it is worse than what you did by withholding your love from me, then I don't have the imagination to guess!"
My father looked at me and replied. "He made the love I felt in here," he pointed to his heart, "into the dirtiest, most foul thing he could. He made me hurt the only person I would have died for. He killed the love I had in here. The love that I felt for..." He shook his head. He turned from me and walked over to the desk with the pictures on it. He opened a drawer on the right side and reached in and took out a blue, leather bound, book. He closed the drawer and came over to me. He held the book out to me. "Take this and read it. When you've finished reading it, we'll talk again." I took it from him in confusion. I looked at the book he had handed me and there was no cover script, front, back or side. When the book was in my hand, my father walked past me to the door then turned and looked back at me. "I love you Brent. I'd die for you." He waited outside the door. I eventually recovered from the shock of those words and how strong the emotion behind them had hit me. I walked out of his bedroom and he closed the door behind me. I turned to look at him. "Good night son. Please read the whole journal." He left me standing there and I watched him walk down the hall and descend the stairs.
Feeling dazed, I walked down the hall and ascended the stairs to my rooms. I walked into my bedroom and placed the journal on the nightstand beside my bed. I undressed and went into the bathroom and showered. I brushed my teeth and returned to my bedroom. I pulled on a clean pair of boxers and climbed into bed. I looked at the journal lying there on my nightstand, and fear crept over me. I steady my nerve and picked it up. I took the extra pillow from the other side of the bed and placed it behind my own, so I could be in a comfortably raised position. I settled under the sheets and spread, and then I opened the faded cover of the journal. On the inside cover was a picture that had been secured on all four corners with scorch tape. It was a picture of Mike Weber. He looked to be perhaps 14 years old and it was a picture that you usually would have taken in school for the annual picture day. The first page had the names Michael Thomas Weber and James William Stewart written on it.
For the next six hours, I laid in bed and read that journal from cover to back. It was a journal written with a single purpose. It recorded every event small or large, happy or sad, important or frivolous. I was a journal that contained the written form of an overpowering emotion felt by one person for another. Page after page was filled with the love my father had experienced with Mike Weber from the time he was 12 years old until he last made an entry at 18 years old. He had recorded everything in this journal. Everything from simply riding bikes together or waving to each other in school was there. The first holding of hands, the first kiss they nervously shared. The first time Mike had told my father that he loved him and when my father first said those words to Mike. My father wrote about the first time he and Mike touched intimately and ever act as it had progressed to their ultimate expression of the love they felt for each other. He wrote about their final act also; the day my grandfather had opened my father's bedroom door and walking in on Mike and him in bed. The beating he had suffered at the hands of his father after throwing Mike out. The foul demeaning names he was called. The threat of disclosing his acts with Mike to the town, and kicking him out to live on the streets if he ever so much as heard of my father speaking to Mike again. The paragraph on the last page read:
Today I leave behind all my hopes and dreams. My life is not my own. It has ended and now I make a false beginning. I can not see my future, but only my past. I can not be me; I must be what is acceptable to everyone else. The only reason I do not escape my torment is because I was made to make a promise I can not break. I've broken too many to him this last week. I will not break this one though. He made me promise on the love I held for him. I know what love is, but I will not let it touch me again. I will not give my father the opportunity to destroy me again. I will fight for the rest of my life to not become him. Goodbye Mike. I'll keep my last promise to you. You above anyone else know that I once found love. We found it together.
I closed the journal and sat it on the nightstand. I felt like ice was in my veins. I had experienced every emotion I was capable of while reading. My initial shock of learning that Mike and my father had been boyfriends and lovers was soon replaced by the love they shared expressed on those pages. I had laughed cried and finally experienced hatred inside for what had happened in the end. I experienced fear when I read the words my father wrote about contemplating suicide. I turned the nightstand lights off and removed the extra pillow from behind my back. I pulled the covers up to around my neck and I thought about everything I had read. I soon began to understand how much the events my father had written about had lifted him up and held him secure, to only have that security ripped away and destroyed. It was a different time when he lived it than it was now. Rules of acceptable conduct were very different then. Not everything has changed, even today. But they are vastly different then they were. My father let his father rule his life and his love. My father didn't want to rule my life or my love. He made his choice with me based on what he knew. It was cruel what he chose to do to save me from what he felt was his legacy. It had the potential to cause what he feared most. He has prevented me from knowing what his love was, but...he didn't. He left LA and returned home. He brought me with him and he's been tearing down the wall he had built, so now he can get to me. My father said he'd die for me. I won't let him. I'll save him and at the same time I'll save myself. He told me in the back of the SUV in Bismarck, he doesn't want to miss another minute of my life. Well father, fair is fair. The minutes of yours belong to me too. I'm ready to start collecting. I turned on my side in the dark of my room. I'm sure a smile was on my face as I finally drifted off to sleep.
I rolled over in bed and then suddenly sat up. The sunlight was streaming into my room through the bay window. I looked over at my clock and it was 10:24! What the hell! I forgot to set my alarm before I went to bed and now I had missed Social Studies and the first half of Algebra, but even worse I missed meeting Tommy in front of the school! I vaulted out of bed and into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and wet down my bed head. What is going on? There's no way Connie has ever let me oversleep and miss school! What could Tommy be thinking happened to me? I ran back to my bedroom and almost jumped in my closet to find clothes to wear. I dressed and hurried out of my room and headed for the stairs. My book bag! I turned and ran back to my study and grabbed my bag. I looked inside to make sure I had everything and then I remembered the journal. I ran into my bedroom and grabbed it from my nightstand and then back to my study. I opened the top right drawer and put the journal inside, grabbed my bag, and ran down the stairs.
"Connie! Connie!" I began yelling on my way down the second flight of stairs. By the time I reached the bottom stair, Connie was there with a panicked look on her face.
"Brent?! What's wrong heartling, what's happened?!" She was as white as a sheet and looked like she was about to pass out. I stopped and seeing her state, dropped my book bag and grabbed her in a hug.
"Connie, oh Connie! I didn't mean to frighten you with my yelling. Are you ok?" I pushed back from her and kept my hands on her shoulders. She nodded and looked towards the steps and I moved her there so she could sit down. "Do you want me to go get you some juice?" I ran my hand along her pale cheek, just as a bit of color was returning to it.
"Are you ok? I heard you screaming my name and I...I thought you had hurt yourself bad." She looked up at me standing over her. Her hands were shaking a little bit as they lay in her lap. I moved and sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulder. You're an idiot Brent! I thought to myself. How could I have been so thoughtless and frighten my Nan so badly.
"Connie, I'm fine. I woke up late because my alarm didn't go off, and then you didn't come to wake me either. I was rushing because I was late for school and when I was coming down the stairs I called for you wondering where you were. I'm sooo sorry I scared you!" I squeezed her shoulder that I held in my hand.
"Thank the Lord! You did give me quite the fright demon child!" She laughed, which seemed to cause all the blood that had drained from her face to rush back in. She turned to look at me. "I didn't come to wake you, because your father said he and you had a late night last night, and that I should let you sleep in. Before you came home last night, he told me that he wanted some private time with you, so I went to my room early and didn't se you." She blushed, and then said, "I don't like not seeing you before you go to bed. I have a hard time getting to sleep, unless I can tell you goodnight."
"But...But today is a school day Connie. Even now if I make it to school, I have already missed two classes and I missed Tommy this morning!"
"Calm down sweetheart. Your father called the Weber's house this morning and spoke to Tommy. He told him that you would probably be to school at lunch time. He also had to spend a few minutes convincing Tommy that you were safe and uninjured." She chuckled and gave me a big grin. "Brent, when your father hung up the kitchen phone after speaking with him, he turned to me and laughed, then said, 'Young love. Were we ever as young as them?' and then just walked out of the kitchen for his office." She raised her eyebrows at me. I looked at her enquiring gaze and was just about to explain, then stopped. First of all, I had never told my father about Tommy and me. We only talked about my father. Secondly, did I have the right to tell anything to Connie about my father's secrets? This had never been a problem, because all the secrets I have, she knows. But they are my secrets. No one else's. I was now in a quandary. I told Connie everything, always.
"Connie, I...I never told my dad anything about Tommy and me last night. He has just guessed it all." Her eyes brows shot up at this. "He's been making comments and giving me questioning looks all week. Yesterday morning, while we were all in the kitchen was the first time something was said about Tommy and I, that when I looked into my father's eyes, I felt that he really knew and it...It would be ok! I also saw in his eyes...He loves me Connie, he really loves me." I smiled hugely at her. "My father loves me and I love him."
"I've told you your whole life that he loves you Brent. I don't know anything about his past, but whatever happened here that made him leave, affected him in some way. His deciding to come back has...I don't know...It has changed him. Even I can see the change." I nodded to her when she finished speaking. "Oh, I almost forgot with all that screaming and my near heart attack." She chuckled and patted my hand. "Your father said that if you were looking for him when you came down, he'd be in his office for you." I thought about this for a moment. I want to tell him about Tommy and me, I also want to discuss his journal. What about Tommy? He didn't say I could tell my father about us.
I gave Connie a hug, "Thanks Connie. I'll go talk to him. I need to get something from my study first." I stood up from the stairs, and so did she. "I'm sorry for scaring you." She said I was forgiven and that she would be in the kitchen. I ran up the stairs and into the study. I picked up the journal from the drawer I had placed it in. I then picked up my cell and sent a text message to Tommy. Phones were allowed in school, but not turned on during class or in the halls. We could step outside to use them at lunch, but no other time. Tommy and I had planned to circumvent this restriction, like every other teen with a phone probably did, my turning the sound off to vibrate mode.
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TEXT MESSAGING
tommy I want to tell my dad about under the tree
(after about 3 minutes)
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If youre sure ok Are you ok
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Im fine see you in spanish :) miss u
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me more see you soon :*
_
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I put the phone in my pocket, grabbed the journal and walked out. The door to my father's office was closed when I arrived at it. I knocked and heard his voice say come in. I wasn't scared, but I was nervous. We had so much to say, I knew, but there were a lot of unanswered question too. I steadied myself and opened the door. I walked in and closed the door behind me. When I turned, my father was standing in front of his desk looking at me. He started to walk towards me then stopped. A pensive look appeared on his face, and I nodded to him with a small smile on my face. He rushed to me and grabbed me in a hug. "Good morning son. I love you."
I hugged him back. "Love you too dad and good morning." We released each other and just stood staring into the others face for a few moments before my father asked if I wanted to sit. He had indicated one of the chairs in front of his desk and when I sat in one, he sat in the other. He noticed the journal in my hand and looked at me.
"Did you read it all?" he asked. I nodded. "Well, I assume you have lots of questions and are probably more than a little shocked by it. Would you like to start?"
"I do, but I want to tell you something first." Here it is. I'm coming out to my father. After this there's no turning back. I took a deep breath and saw my father's eyes intent on my own. "I'm...I'm gay." All my father did was smile! And nod! "And something else. Tommy is my boyfriend." Well this got more of a reaction as I saw his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.
"Already?" He asked with surprise in his voice. "You two have just met. Two weeks ago. Are you sure Brent?" I smiled and nodded.
"I'm sure and so is he. I asked him Monday, of last week. There's a connection between Tommy and I. Sure, it happened fast but when I felt this connection with him, I felt security...understanding, and well a lot of other things." I decided to be very bold and I said to my father. "I think you and I share something that we both never knew we did. We have the exact same taste in men." I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. My father actually blushed and turned his head away, as if to hide his reaction. He cleared his throat and turned back to me, face still blushed.
"You sound sure to me, so I'll say congratulations. Just take your time Brent. You have lots of time and no need to rush anything. You and Tommy need time. Any relationship takes time, but it also takes work on both your parts to make sure you each learn to understand the other." He paused and asked, "You had questions for me?"
I have tons of questions, I thought, before I asked the one that was in front of my thoughts. "Are you...Are you gay?" I asked.
"No son, I'm not gay. Mike has been the only male in my entire life that I have ever felt a sexual attraction for. I have encountered a lot of very good looking men since I left Beulah. I lived with a roommate at college that was gay and I guess you would say he was hot? But, admiring him his looks was the extent of my feelings. Mike was special for me. He was the only one." He finished then looked at me as if to say next.
I brought up the next question in my mind. "Do you still feel the same way you did for Mike, now?" He looked down at the arm on my chair. A minute or two passed before he looked back up at me.
"Now that's a little more difficult to answer. Do I love Mike? The answer is yes. Am I in love with Mike? The answer is no." He obviously saw confusion on my face. "There's a difference Brent. I love Mike for who he is and all the things he and I shared in our past, but I do not have the sexual attraction for him that I did. I still see his attractiveness, but it does not affect me like it did. He does not dominate my emotions like he had. I do not think about our future when I see him. He's a close friend and I will always have love for him. That's all there is now." He stopped and reached out his hand and placed it on my arm. "Brent, there is only one person in the entire world who has a hold on me that Mike once had. Not sexual, but in every other way that made what Mike and I had important to me. I love only one person as strongly as I did him. You."
"Me?" Shock. Utter shock is what his confession made me feel.
"Yes Brent, you. No one else. I never showed it, as you well know. I'll regret that until I die and even after. The moment I saw you and heard you cry in the doctor's hands, everything that had been, would be or could be love in me, reached out to you and flooded every part of me, with you. It's hard to explain. It was as if I had not existed until the moment I saw and heard you. Nothing mattered, except you. I was an idiot, an absolute idiot to have cut myself off from you when I knew what I was feeling. But yes Brent, you. The only future I want is with you." He squeezed the hand that held my arm.
"But...But what about mom? She's your wife. How can you say it's only me? You have to love her, don't you?" Once again he looked away from me. He did not move his hand from my arm, but he looked away and appeared to be arranging his thoughts. He turned back to me and a very serious look was on his face, and a bit of anger touched his eyes.
"Your mother and I are divorcing. She fought this move to Beulah, but I insisted. I was not going to spend another month in Los Angeles, while I watched you slipping farther away from me. I explained why I wanted to move. She didn't care. All she cared about were her friends and her social gatherings. That wasn't the only cause of my decision to divorce. I knew what I had done and the horrible reasons I had done what I did to you. I can never forgive her for doing what she has done. I absented myself from you to protect you from me. She absented herself from you because...Because you weren't important to her. Do I love your mother? NO! How can any man love a woman who could give birth to such a wonderful being, yet not have an ounce of maternal instinct to protect and nurture. I won't stand for it any more. I should have divorced her years ago! I won't share you with her! Your mine!" He yelled.
He was mad! He was raging mad and I was more than a little scared at the vehemence in his voice. Divorce? What did I feel about this revelation? Did I love my mother? How do you love someone whom you never bonded too? I then looked at my father. I saw it and felt it. My father had forged a bond between him and me. A bond I wasn't even aware of, but I could now feel as strong as steel. He had forged it in two weeks. This man, my father, was fighting a battle and he did not plan to lose. He was fighting for me and woe betides anything or anyone should they stand in his way towards his goal. I watched him now, as he battled back his rage. I put my hand on top of the one now gripping my arm. I then asked what sounded flippant to even my ears coming from a son speaking about his mother, but I asked it. "When can she leave?" I almost, almost laughed at my father's reaction to my question.
The steam seemed to actually rush out of his body and he drooped down in his chair. He turned and looked at me, he looked deep into my eyes and I did not flinch from his probe. "Tomorrow. The papers are signed and everything is settled. I have full physical and legal custody of you until you turn 18. She has visitation rights but only if you agree to the visitation with a months notice...and then only for a maximum of 2 weeks at one time. Tomorrow, she can leave tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." Is all I said in confirmation. I had Connie for a mom. She has been and always would be my mom. My own only occupied a space in my house and the thought of missing her took only a few seconds to displace. How can you miss someone you never knew? Cruel? Maybe. True? Fact! "Dad?" I said and he raised a brow. "Connie can never leave me. I won't live without her. If she ever leaves, I leave with her. You have to understand that. I will leave with her if she goes."
"Brent, Connie will never leave you. There is no reason to even say such a thing. Connie is part of your and my family. I couldn't force her to leave with the entire world armed forces behind me." He smiled. "I know she is special to you son. She was all you had for your entire life. She is very special to me also. She saved you and gave me time to realize, I needed to help or lose you."
"One last question for now dad." I said to him. "I have many more, but I'm feeling a little emotionally overloaded. What about Tommy? Will Mike tell him about...About everything? I don't want to keep secrets from Tommy."
"Tommy deserves your honesty at all times son. You don't have to keep any secrets from him. What you choose to tell him is between you and him. Nothing I say to you, will I ask you to keep from him. As far as Tommy knowing about his father and I? Perhaps the best person to ask is Mike. It was important for you to know, because of our own relationship and understanding depended on you knowing my past. Tommy and his father have a wonderful relationship that I can only hope we will develop in time. Before you discuss it with Tommy, please allow Mike to decide what is best for him and his son."
"Ok dad. I'll leave it up to Mike. Does Mike know that you were going to tell me?" I asked.
"He knows and he agreed." My father chuckled and said, "He was very mad at me when I told him what I had done to you. He almost called me out for a front yard fight! He's a good friend Brent and he told me you're special to him too."
"I like him a lot. He's a good guy." I agreed with him about Mike.
"Have you and Tommy realized something about your names?" I gave him an inquiring look. "Tomas James Weber and Brent Michael Stewart. Your middle names are Mike and my firsts."
"Oh my God! I didn't know Tommy's middle name! Did you and Mike talk about it?" What an amazing thing I thought.
"If you're asking if we conferred about it before naming you two, no. I never spoke to Mike again after I left Beulah." A strained looked passed his face, then he continued. "When I was talking with Mike on Saturday at the party, he told me he named Tommy after me by giving him my first name as a middle name. I stared at him and then told him I had done the same with you, and gave you his name for a middle name. Needless to say, we had a moment on Saturday. You should bring it up to Tommy, I think it would be a bit of a surprise that his boyfriend has his father's name and he has his boyfriend's father's name." My father chuckled and grinned.
"It's going to be the first thing I tell him!" It gave me a warm feeling to know this fact. It gave Tommy and me one more connection. My God what a connection the journal provides, I suddenly realized. Our fathers had been boyfriends and lovers and now he and I were. Was God playing chess and we the pieces?
"Dad, you and Mike...and now Tommy and me. Did you ever imagine?" I asked him with a bit of awe in my voice.
"Never Brent. Never in my imagination, nor in Mike's. He told me first and don't get mad at him. He knows me Brent and he knew how I would react to your being gay. But our shared reaction to you and Tommy? You two floored us with this one. I didn't know you were boyfriends, I just knew you two were...um...stepping out? I don't know the term. So your telling me you were boyfriends earlier, floored me a second time. I can only imagine how Mike reacted at the news."
I laughed and said, "Your reactions were exactly the same." My father came and hugged me.
"You need to get some breakfast or lunch before you go to school, or did you want to eat lunch at school?" I told him I'd eat at school. "Ok then, well, have Connie call Hank and now I need to go kick your mother out. You seem to be very subdued with the divorce and her leaving. You sure you don't want to talk more about this?"
"I've always had Connie, and now I have you dad. I care about mother, but I don't need to live with her to continue to care. Connie and you are enough of parental control for me." I told him. "Besides, you both love me and I know it." With one last hug and I love you from us both, I left the office.
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SURPRISE!? Yes, no, or maybe? LOL I know this one was shorter, but it kind of deserved it's own part. Thanks to all the people who have written with encouragement and positive feedback for this story. Keep it coming! Helps a lot to show me that the interest is out there for me to continue. I hope you enjoyed this segment of Learning to Love. If you would like to send me an email, you can send it to jmedinacorona@gmail.com . Stay tuned for more to come!