Chapter 11 – Chapter 11

Part Eleven

I tried marriage one more time, just for appearances sake. I went in the opposite direction of Alexis. Michelle was 15 years younger than I and came from a very meager background. In many ways, she reminded me of Mace. She was smart and self-made, humble and reticent.

She was very traditional. She was not a virgin, but she pushed sex with me off until we were married. We had sex for the first time on our wedding night. She was not good at it, and she did not like it.

I did not care. This marriage was for convenience and window dressing. I needed a mother to Chet, who had come to live with me full-time when his mother quit Denver and moved to her family's house in Southhampton. It was 2011. He was 15.

Michelle needed a stable base. She was smart but frightened. She feared she could not make it on her own. I was 44 and successful. I was a safety net.

Michelle and Chet got along better than she and I did. They adored each other. I was the odd man out in my own house.

One year into our marriage, Michelle and I were in different rooms on different floors. When I was interested, she gave in to me, within certain boundaries. I could not go down on her, and she would not go down on me. I could finger her clitoris, but I could not slide a finger inside of her. I could fuck her, but only if I had gotten myself close so the actual penetration was brief. I had to wear a condom.

I rarely was interested in sex with her. It was not fun. And, I had been having a clandestine affair with Lin, a young associate in our office, for the past year. Lin's family had emigrated from China before his birth. He had gone to Stanford for both college and law school, had clerked on the Ninth Circuit, and was now a second year associate in our firm. He was almost certainly gay, but he was deeply in the closet. Gay was not an acceptable life in China or in the minds of his parents. He had never disappointed them. He was not going to start now.

Other than Lute, I was not typically attracted to dark hair and dark eyes. I preferred fairness, like Mace and Randy.

But, I thought about Lin the entire day I met him. There was a joyousness in his face that few had.

Two days later, I found myself visiting his office. I had concocted a project just to have something to talk about.

Lin was wicked smart, and I got him involved in every piece of litigation I was leading. I did not need to. I wanted to. I wanted to have a reason to see him.

We traveled to New Orleans together to depose an expert in a patent infringement case. Lin's preparatory work was outstanding. I annihilated the expert on cross-examination. The Court would never certify him. Lin and I celebrated our good day at Mother's and then on Bourbon Street.

Lin suggested a final drink in the bar. I agreed. One drink turned to two and we ended up having three final drinks.

In the elevator to our floor, Lin shuffled awkwardly and then leaned against the wall. He looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. I recognized the look as one of the seven deadly sins – lust.

Our rooms were three doors apart. We looked at each other, fumbled with our keys, unlocked our doors, and entered our rooms. While Lin was looking at me, I had wanted to ask him in for a fourth final drink. At the last minute, I decided I could not. My reputation was intact, at least at work.

I had stripped and climbed into bed when I thought I heard a light knock on my door. I got up, pulled on my boxers, and went to the door. I could see Lin through the peephole. He was wearing the hotel's robe.

I opened the door a crack. "What do you need, Lin?"

"I don't need anything. I just thought maybe you wanted some company. Or another drink."

"I do not want another drink," I answered. I intentionally did not mention company.

Lin stepped into my room. "Me, either," he whispered.

"Then what do you want?" I asked.

"This," he said, grabbing me through my boxers.

I pinned Lin to the mirror. "This has to stay between you and me," I whispered as I untied the robe.

"You have my word."

I kissed him. He was small, maybe 5'6" and 140 pounds. He was built like a gymnast.

I picked him up and tried to drop him on the bed. He hung around my neck like a spider monkey and pulled me down on top of him. As we continued to kiss, he used his feet to pull my boxers down. He quickly had his hands on me. He slithered down me, sucking my nipples and kissing my stomach before taking me in his mouth. He was talented. He took me down his throat to the base and milked me with his tongue and his throat muscles. I rolled left so he could take control. He did. He sucked me with abandon. I came hard, filling his mouth. He kept at me, sucking and swallowing until I was too sensitive to take any more.

I pulled him to my face and kissed him. "Take your underwear off."

He did. His dick was average, which was more than I had expected. Rumors about Asian men preceded him to my bed.

I pinned him to the bed. His body was taut, but his skin was remarkably soft. I kissed my way to his groin and was about to take him in my mouth when he announced "I don't like that . . . Fuck me instead."

I grabbed a condom from my things, rolled it on, and moved back up his body. I sucked his neck as he strained for my dick. I slipped into him. He loved getting fucked. His body arced and strained. He urged me on, begging me for more and to speed up.

I got lost in his words. I came as he begged me to fuck him faster, harder, longer. He came when I had, without touching himself. He smeared his cum all over his chest and stomach, pulled the comforter up over us, and turned his back to me. I slid in behind him.

The next morning, I asked how he could be gay and not like blow jobs. "I don't know," he responded. "I just don't. At all. I'd rather get fucked any day. And, I come every time."

We didn't talk at work. I visited his apartment regularly. I liked standing while he blew me. I liked watching his dark, full lips slide up and down the shaft of my dick. He liked watching me watch him.

He could spread his legs flat on a bed, perpendicular to his body. When he did, he was wide open. He loved being fucked, and I loved fucking him. He had muscles in his ass that I never knew existed. He used them to urge me on and to stop me.

He never fucked me. The only time I sucked him was when he would hang his head over the edge of the bed, and I would slide completely down his throat. His dick would be in my face as I fucked his face, and every once in awhile the urge to blow him overcame me. I would suck him until I came. He never came from me sucking him.

Like with Lute, we were not lovers. We were animals, meeting for carnal acts of lust and then separating. The only night we spent together was that first night.

*****

Chet pleased me by deciding to follow me to Yale. The week before his high school graduation, he came out to me. I had been suspicious. He was 6'4", well-built, and handsome, but he had never even mentioned a girl.

When he came out to me, I urged him not to make the choice he was making. He insisted it was not a choice. I insisted it was. I thought of myself as I did. In my mind, I had chosen not to be gay.

I sent him to a therapist, hoping she could convince him he was not what he thought he was. She was a waste of time and money. She agreed it was not a choice and urged him to confront me each and every time I suggested otherwise.

I could feel Chet drifting away from me. I blamed his therapist, not my atavism.

I decided to go see her. She assured me she could not talk to me about what she talked about with Chet. I assured her I did not want to talk about that, but instead wanted to have a philosophical discussion with her.

I started seeing her weekly. I told her about Cole and Lute and Mace and Susan and Randy and Alexis and Michelle and Lin. I explained to her the rational choices I believed I had made along the path of my life. I extolled the strength I had shown by rejecting a life with Mace and a life with Randy. I assured her Chet could make the same choices if he cultivated the same strength I had.

She insisted what I extolled as strength was actually weakness. "It would have taken strength," she said, "to buck expectations and norms and choose Mace, whom you have described as the love of your life. You were too weak. You deprived yourself of the love of your life out of weakness, not out of strength."

"I am not gay," I insisted.

"Maybe not," she said. "But, you are also not straight. You can lie to yourself, but your life is not the life of a straight man. At a minimum, you are bisexual. I'd characterize you as gay. You have had three great loves. Two were men. One was a woman. You lost the love of that woman over the love you had for a man. You're a smart man, John. What does that tell you?"

I continued to counter her. I refused to accept her analysis or her diagnosis. But, I kept going back.

The longer I saw her, the more I feared that Chet had somehow, someway picked up something from me and so believed being gay was an acceptable choice for him to make. It was 2014, and the world was vastly different than it had been 20 years before when choosing Mace would have been so consequential.

I refused to agree that people were born gay. I thought homosexuality was behavioral, not innate.

She disagreed. She insisted a celibate homosexual was still a homosexual. She also insisted that my ignorance was the barrier between me and my son.

"It's not a choice he's making. As long as you pretend otherwise, Chet will continue to drift from you."

I was vexed. If I insisted she was wrong, I risked losing Chet. If I accepted she was right, I risked confronting a life of mistaken self-deprivation and weakness.

I could not lose Chet. I could never forsake my son.

I decided to drive Chet to Yale. We spent 20 hours together in the car. I told him I was sorry for trying to force him to be something he was not. I told him I loved him, no matter what. I told him about Mace and the choice I had made. I told him I had loved his mother deeply. I told him I had lost her because I had fallen in love with his friend Randy. I told him I had never loved Alexis or Michelle. I told him about Lin, and that I had never loved him, either.

Chet told me he loved me. He told me he did not like being "Chet"; he wanted to be John, like me, and intended to go by John at Yale. He elicited every detail I could remember about Mace. He was angry about Randy; his affection for Randy had been his first inkling that he was gay. He told me he had never liked Alexis and pitied Michelle. He is insisted I had to leave her. And Lin. He encouraged me to try to reclaim Mace before it was too late.

We spent the weekend in New York City. We visited museums and galleries. We took long walks. We talked like old friends.

I cried and cried when I dropped him at Yale and as I drove back to Denver. I was going to miss him. But, more than that, I envied him. He was strong where I had been weak. He was on the verge of the life I should have had.