Family Obligations Page 2

  But it makes me laugh that you’d ask me not to forget what we shared, because the whole idea of that even being possible is ridiculous. You will always be a part of me, whether you’re here or not. I couldn’t forget any more than I could stop breathing.

  I should stop before I get even sappier.

  I’ll make you a promise, though. You said you hoped to hear from me sometimes, so my promise to you is that I won’t ever almost chicken out of another letter again. You want me, I’ll be here.

  Always.

  Yours,

  Randy

  Randy’s tears at the funeral made more sense now. The love his dad had professed had been reciprocated. None of it relieved Tate’s grief, though, or answered the barrage of questions about his own life. Those would only be satisfied by reading on. The next letter that came up was dated almost half a year later.

  December 20, 1973

  My Sweet Randy,

  I’m sorry I haven’t written since last summer. I could say that I have been busy, what with starting medical school and helping Sharon plan our spring nuptials, but that would be a lie. Well, maybe not a lie, but a half-truth, and one that avoids the real issue. No, the truth is I began wondering, shortly after I heard back from you, what good might come of our contact with each other. I know I said I didn’t want to forget you, but that was wrong. I do. I should.

  Do you understand? I am about to become a husband and I hope, not long after, a father. What we had was sweet and, no matter what, will always remain a golden memory, one that I will take out and treasure through the years, I’m sure, like some precious, secret thing.

  But now I need to be a husband. I need to let that part of me—the gay part of me—die. I am sure it will go away once I’m married, once I’m a family man. It’s not something I asked for.

  I am praying every night for it to be taken out of me. I am seeing a therapist who tells me I am not really gay, but that I just need a masculine force in my life, and that’s really what I was yearning for with you, not the sex. He says I need more male friends.

  This is hard to write. I need you to leave me alone. Yet there is this irrational part of me, rising up even more now during the holidays, when I am surrounded by the Christmas lights and the warmth of celebration, that says, “See him one more time. You can’t put this thing to rest without one final meeting. You need closure.”

  Sharon goes up north to Ohio to visit her parents and to make final decisions about our wedding in the spring. That happens in February.

  Do you think we could plan to meet up then? You might want to get away from the gloom of Seattle to come down here to the beach. Just a few days, as buddies, to put things to rest, before we both move on.

  What do you think? Am I being naïve?

  Love,

  Mark

  December 29, 1973

  Dear Mark,

  You want me in Florida in February, then that’s where I’ll be, because let’s face it, since when have I ever been able to say no to you about anything? I have that ridiculous hat with the furry earflaps you told me to buy last year when we went skiing to prove it too.

  But I have to ask, because I’ve read your letter a dozen times now and I still don’t understand. Are you serious about being buddies? Because if so, why did you address it the way you did? “My Sweet Randy.” Those are your words, not mine. When I opened the envelope and saw them, for a split second I was happier than I’d been since you left because I thought—hoped—you’d changed your mind about Sharon and were coming back to me.

  Remember those rare mornings when you slept in and I would wake you up? How you’d always grab me and drag me back into bed? Then you’d smell the coffee I’d started, kiss the back of my neck, and say, “My sweet Randy.” I loved it when you did that. I can’t imagine those words coming from anybody else.

  Of course, that happiness didn’t last. You said you needed me to leave you alone, and I felt like you’d knifed my gut. That’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it? I haven’t called, I haven’t written, I let you leave because that’s what you asked me to do. The past five months have been the hardest of my life, because I wanted to do all of that so many times, but no, I backed off because that’s what we agreed was best.

  By the time I finished reading, I finally understood what you meant by that. You weren’t talking about the past but the future. You want closure. I’ll bet that’s your therapist’s word. So I will do whatever you want so you can have it. That doesn’t change the fact that calling me your sweet anything is confusing as hell.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to go, though. You’re right about Seattle being miserable, but you’re the real draw. This semester has been tougher than anything we went through in undergrad. I took a heavier load because I wanted to stay busy, but that was a dumb idea. I think about you even more, mostly because I keep wishing you were here to compare notes, or listen to me complain, or kick me in the pants when I’m ready to give up. I miss my friend Mark as much as I do my lover Mark. Nobody ever got me the way you did.

  I guess that answers both of our questions. No, I don’t think you’re being naïve. I think we can be friends, because we have always been friends. We were friends first, right? We’ll be friends to the last too. This trip can prove that to you. I’ll come, and we’ll soak up some sun, and the world will see two college buddies having a good time. Maybe it’s not the life I would’ve picked out for us, but it’s better than nothing at all.

  The last thing I want is for you to think about me and be unhappy.

  Yours,

  Randy

  February 26, 1974

  My sweet Randy,

  So now you’re gone, and I feel like someone has eviscerated me or cut my heart out with a knife. This lack of Randy around me is what it must feel like for a baby being born—ripped from the warmth of love, of a secure enclosure, one that represents safety, caring, and nurturing—and being thrust into a world where everything is cold, too bright, and unfamiliar.

  How I wish you had never come! It pains me to say that because I know it hurts you. But you’re not alone in that. I hurt too, because even though I do wish you’d never made the trip to Miami, at the same time I wish the visit could have been longer.

  Wish it could have been forever.

  Wish everything was different….

  We talked so much about that when you were here for those four blissful days—of two men living together. We talked of how we could be roommates, sharing expenses. We both knew no one would buy it, not really. I mean, come on, two handsome single doctors, living as roommates? Why?

  Everyone would know, and although they might keep a so-called straight face in our presence, they would laugh at the sham the minute our backs were turned. And maybe do more than that—God knows it’s not much of a leap to imagine parents not wanting a fag to be examining their little Timmy. Or a fag doing the track team physicals at the local schools.

  No, you and I are a recipe for disaster, and I know that doing what we’re doing is staying true to the course that must be. I know we didn’t choose the world and its rules, but we do have to abide by them, don’t we?

  But that doesn’t take away the fact of those four days. Naïve? You said I wasn’t, and that makes me laugh. I think I know, somewhere deep inside, that I was just blowing smoke when I wrote the words about us being friends, about closure, and your visit.

  Only a fool wouldn’t have realized what would happen the moment I saw you walking off that plane at the airport. God! Baby, I swear my heart stopped when I saw you. I think I had forced myself to forget just how gorgeous you are, with your eyes so piercing I could drown in them, that unruly black hair, those shoulders so broad—everything about you set off alarms within me. My resolve dissolved in an instant.

  Even there, in the crowds of the airport, I knew there was only one way to silence those alarms. I knew right there, with all those people milling around us, that I had to be alone with you.

  An
d not so we could be buddies. Not so we could find closure.

  Did you know what I was thinking? Could you see it in my eyes?

  I tried to make a good stab at keeping control, even if it was eating up my insides. Looking into your eyes, drinking up your smile like a man dying of thirst, and then not being able to touch you was torture.

  See, this is what we would live with in this world. Every impulse, every nerve ending, every synapse in my brain were telling me to grab you, to take you in my arms and press your entire body against my own, to cover your face and your neck with kisses.

  And I even saw a straight couple doing just that! No one batted an eye.

  But what did we do? We shook hands. You patted my back. Could you tell it made me hard?

  I was ready to try to keep up the charade for the four days you were here, but as soon as we got back to the house, I couldn’t help myself. Your weak protests against the force of my hands, my lips, my tongue, my cock were like using a squirt gun on an inferno.

  Naïve? Of course I was naïve, and so were you if either of us believed for a minute our little interlude wouldn’t go exactly the way it did—four days of fucking and sucking, in bed, by the pool, on the couch, on the kitchen table.

  I had been denied so long—I was a starving man at a feast.

  And now I miss you intensely.

  Sharon is back now, and the plans have been finalized. Should we send you an invitation? I can only hope that once I stand up in front of all our dear family and friends and make those vows, I will change and become the man I know I should be.

  It has to work. It has to.

  But I will never stop loving you, my sweet Randy. My only hope is that love can morph into something platonic, as it should be. As it will be.

  Until then, I will treasure our hot days and nights in Miami together and hope that they will sustain me through the years.

  Funny thing: when I make love to Sharon, I don’t imagine I am making love to you, but I do imagine you’re making love to her. What do you make of that?

  If you want to break ties with me after this, I don’t blame you. Sometimes I think if my love for you was true and pure, I would be noble enough to leave you alone.

  But I can’t. I just can’t.

  God help me.

  He hadn’t even managed to sign off on the letter. Tate pressed a hand to his eyes, both to quell the pain beginning behind them and to staunch the flow of threatening tears. No one liked being confronted with the details of a parent’s sex life, but what was emerging from these letters was part of a much bigger picture, one that revealed his father not as a parent, but as a human being, one who had yearnings and desires that looked as though they must have remained unfulfilled for most of his life. Tate saw his father suddenly in an entirely different light, one that painted him in tragic and somber tones. Why had Dad done it? For Mom? For him? The sacrifice, of himself really, was huge. More than ever, Tate missed his dad. Now he had even more reason to wish for one more chance to talk with him.

  He wished he could have told him he understood.

  Tate read the letter again, but when he reached the end of it, his throat was still choked with mixed emotions. His father’s despair was palpable, the feelings raw. And this was how he’d entered his marriage? What had Randy said to him to make it easier?

  But when Tate scanned down to the next letter, the date shocked him. It didn’t happen later that year. It came in 1979, almost six years after the Florida visit. Randy’s normally tidy handwriting was looser than what came previously, more difficult to decipher. It ran all the way to the edge of the paper, words crammed close and into each other like he was running out of breath. The first sentence explained some of the sloppiness, but not the lag between letters. Tate had to read on and hope the answer came further along.

  December 6, 1979

  Dear Mark,

  I’m a little drunk. Well, no, actually, I’m a lot drunk, which is probably the only way I ever found the nerve to write you again. I didn’t think I would. I was so hurt and angry after Miami, at you, at the world, at everything, but mostly at you, because it felt like I was being blamed for everything you wanted but couldn’t have. For me, Miami had been perfect, all the way until I had to leave again, but then I got your letter and everything went to shit. I got over it, but at that point it was summer, and I never got an invitation to your wedding—which I know in hindsight was probably just you honoring what you thought I wanted since I never wrote back—and it just didn’t feel right to try to contact you again.

  The irony is that the more time passed, the more I wished I could reach out, but the harder it got to do because of all the time that went by. You know what I mean?

  So a bottle of tequila and six years later, here I am. Because I don’t know who else to talk to, and if I don’t get some of this shit inside me out, it’s going to eat me alive. And you’re the lucky one who gets to hear it all. Aren’t you proud? I don’t know what you think about me now, if you do at all. Will you even read this? What if Sharon gets the mail and opens it first? What would you say to her if she confronted you with it the second you got home from work?

  Fuck it, I don’t care. You’re the only one who has ever really known me, all of me, and loved me in spite of it. I think about you all the time, much to the chagrin of most of the guys I’ve dated. There’s literally nobody else I can talk to like this, so I’m rolling the dice and hoping I don’t mess your life up by writing and sending this.

  Here goes nothing.

  Mom died nine days ago. Breast cancer. They found it too late, and her doctor is an old-school asshole who wouldn’t even consider some of the European treatments I read up on when I found out her diagnosis. He did a radical mastectomy, made all these promises about how everything would be better, then didn’t do a fucking thing when she died a month later. When he had the balls to send Dad a condolence card, I got pissed and tore the card up in front of everybody after the funeral. Dad kicked me out after that, not that I minded. I couldn’t stand being in the house without Mom there.

  She knew about me being gay. She was the only one in my old life who did. I came out to her two years ago when she started talking about wanting grandbabies. I didn’t want her to go through her life being disappointed, but if I’d known then that her whole life would only be a couple more years, I would’ve kept my mouth shut. Not that she turned her back on me after she found out. She said she loved me no matter what. She didn’t really get how I could be gay until I mentioned you, actually. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her about us. What I said was, I’d known since I’d fallen in love with you in college.

  That’s when she said something I’ve never forgotten. She said, “It’s too bad Mark isn’t the same. Maybe you’d be happy, then.” We both cried a lot that night. Because she was right. I’ve only been truly happy when I was with you, and she could see it as clearly as if it was written across my forehead.

  I’ve tried. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve dated and had more than a few hookups, but something was always missing. The big lesson I’ve learned since you moved away is that it’s not just about getting off. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sex. Some of it has been blow-your-head-off great. But when I’m back in my apartment at the end of the night, and I’m all alone in my bed, that’s just it. I’m alone. I’m lonely. I want someone there next to me who knows I like to be spooned, but only until I’ve fallen asleep. I want someone who’ll understand how relaxing it is for me to work on an engine when I’ve had a shitty day and doesn’t give me grief for it. I wish I could swing both ways, because it would probably be a hell of a lot easier to find a wife for some of that, but after a disastrous couple of months in ’75, I’ve given up on that pipe dream.

  I envy you. I know you made it to the altar and that you and Sharon are still going strong. I might not have written again, but I’ve checked up on what you were doing a couple of times a year, usually right after I’ve broken up with someone. I told myself it was to m
ake sure you were happy, but that’s a lie. I missed you, and ate up those scraps like I was starving to death. I would torture myself for hours imagining the two of you going about your lives. Call it a weird reverse therapy, but knowing that you had found the life you always wanted made it easier to pick up the pieces of mine and try again.

  Not that it’s ever worked. Now that Mom’s gone, you’re the last person on this planet who knows the real me, but you’re on the other side of the country, and I’m stuck here. Dad hasn’t said two words to me since the funeral. I know he’s grieving, but damn it, so am I. Isn’t family supposed to stick together at times like this? Aren’t we supposed to be better than that? I know he’s never approved of me, but I would’ve thought we could forget about all that for a while. For Mom’s sake. She loved both of us and hated that we fought like we did. I don’t want to think that we’re letting her down.

  I wish you were here. That’s selfish considering you have a whole different life now, but the world always makes more sense when you’re around. That’s part of the Mark D’Angelo magic, that ability to talk me into anything, convince me of the impossible while barely batting an eyelash in effort. I still have your last letter, you know. You called my protests to resist you “weak.” Ha! Those were just for show. From the second I saw you waiting for me, all I could think about was touching you, getting on my knees, drowning in your sweet kisses with you buried inside me. You didn’t need your magic those four days. You already were magic.

  Little bit of trivia for you: I don’t bottom much anymore. I either have to be really drunk or really horny, or sometimes both. It’s just never the same as it was with you.

  Now I’m rambling and talking about sex, which means I’m hard as a rock because it’s you. I’ve likely shattered any credibility I might’ve had when I said it wasn’t just about getting off, but if I’m talking about sex, I’m not thinking about Mom, and that’s a win in my book. That old myth about death being an aphrodisiac makes sense now. People will do just about anything to forget.