Chapter 1 – Chapter 1

"Yes, I can certainly do that. No, it won't disturb plans I'd already made. No, don't worry. And . . . I'm really sorry. Yes, until then, the afternoon of the 23rd. No, no problem in getting down there by then. Yes. Again, I'm really sorry about that. Yes, you're right; we've lost out on too much time. Until then. Good-bye."

"No plans, did I hear you say?"

I turned and looked at Thad where he reclined in the bed, his hand on his cock, obviously keeping himself up for what we'd been interrupted doing. "We have tickets for the Cirque du Soleil on Thursday. That's December 23rd, if you've forgotten."

"I can't not go. That was my mother."

"Down in Mississippi?"

"Yes."

"You haven't been there in how long?"

"Ten years."

"Because your parents don't understand or accept, I had thought."

"Not my mother. That was my father. The Baptist minister."

"Ah. But why now? Why on such short notice? We have tickets for the Cirque for Thursday. Why can't your parent come here? You haven't seen them in those ten years, have you? They could have come here as well as you going there. It would have been their turn, wouldn't it? You have rehearsals to resume right after New Years."

"My mother has cancer. She can't come here. She can't go anywhere."

"Ahh. Well, then. I don't suppose I should come with you?"

"No, I don't suppose you should. Sorry."

"I would, you know, if you wanted me to. And I'd be happy to do it."

"Yes, I know. And I appreciate that."

"I understand. Just come back to me and I'll be happy. Then I guess you'd better pack and scoot out of here. It's going to snow. You've kept saying you were looking forward to snow in Philadelphia, though, haven't you?"

"Yes, I did," I answered quietly, my mind pretty much elsewhere. "But I guess I really should pack now."

"If you're not going to be here for Christmas, I think I need my Christmas now."

"I thought we agreed that the iPad was going to be your Christmas present."

"That's when you were going to be here for the holidays. We both took plays that would be closed from Christmas past New Year's so we could be together this year."

"I know. But that was before my mother called. That was before she let me know she had cancer."

"A little bit of sugar and then I'll let you go. I'll even help you pack."

"Thanks for understanding," I said.

"What I understand is that you are mighty sexy," Thad whispered. "Come here." He reached out to where I was sitting on the side of the bed and encased my waist in his arms, his hand going immediately to my cock. I shuddered in anticipation of him being inside me and turned and reclined on the bed, facing away from him.

He gathered me in and whispered in my ear, "Give me your ass. That's all I want for Christmas." He started to put the tune of the two-front teeth song to "All I want for Christmas is my true-love's ass." He had the voice to make it sound like an opera aria.

I almost laughed, but if I had, it would have come out in a shuddered hiccup as aroused as I was at the feel of his erection on my naked buttocks. I'd given him my ass four years previously—and at Christmas, as I recalled. We'd both been in one of those brawny Roman soldier epics, both having had to bulk up for the shoots, and he'd liked the way I'd worn my little Roman skirt. He'd taken me against a wall behind the set, and we'd been together ever since.

I knew what he wanted now, as I lay on my side, pressed into his chest and loins. I raised my buttocks toward his reclining body and arched my shoulders back toward his pecs, putting my torso in a taut bow shape. I groaned, with him holding my shoulder blades into his chest with an arm laced under my armpit and crossing my chest. His hand gripped my shoulder, and he entered me, entered me, entered me.

I ever marveled at the thickness and length of him, even after years of having the measure of him and having been reamed to the size of him. His hands went to gripping both of my shoulders, arching me hard back to him, and I bent my upstage leg up hard into my chest to open to him as much as I could.

As he began to pump me, I lost all track of my mother's phone call—and the tension and consternation of the unavoidable-now prospect of returning to Holly Springs for Christmas. It's true that I had been excited about the good prospect of snow for Christmas in Pennsylvania. It seemed there always were good prospects for snow at Christmas in the Philadelphia region. There'd be no snow in Mississippi. It was marginally possible. I just couldn't remember it ever actually having happened.

All there would be would be bad-tasting memories and that embarrassment about how it had all started—and the uncertainty that I had outgrown the need and the hold that had been exercised over me then.

If only I didn't melt so to big cocks.

We were both panting before Thad was finished with me. With a jerk, he'd pulled out of me and shot up the small of my back. A long time before then, though, I had creamed the sheets by my belly, thinking, I would have been shattered to have to reveal, about a bigger cock than Thad's.

"Merry Christmas," I whispered, as I turned toward Thad and was pulled into his body. We kissed, and then he said. "Just be sure you come back to me for New Year's."

I told him I would, even knowing that I couldn't promise that.

* * * *

"Are you going to visit your father while you're here?"

It was almost the first thing my mother asked me when I entered the antebellum house on Airlee Street in Holly Springs, twenty-five miles southeast of and a good century removed from Memphis. It was just one of five dozen old mansions like it in the town, all as well preserved now as they had been when I'd left in the middle of the night ten years previously. That was the problem with Holly Springs—and why I left. It couldn't get out of the mid nineteenth century.

As I'd driven into town and made the circuit around the town square, I checked off everything that hadn't changed since I'd left—and that certainly wasn't going to change for me: Phillips Grocery, Booker's Hardware, Tyson Drug, the Greek Revival courthouse, Christ Church, my father's own First Baptist Church. All just the way I'd left them. Unchanging. Unchallenged. Unyielding.

"I don't know, Ma. I just got here. I don't know what I'll have time to do. I came for you. What can I do for you? I see you have a tree, but it isn't fully decorated yet. You sit down over there on the sofa, and I'll finish with the tree. Is there anything I can get you? Are you in pain?"

"Hill Crest is just up the street. I think you could manage the trip," she said, not giving ground. An exemplary resident of Holly Springs. Not giving an inch.

But that wasn't fair. She hadn't condemned or criticized me, even though I could tell she'd been distressed and conflicted. It had been a shock, though, although there had been a few things I could have said about that that I didn't—things that would rock the foundation of the town if I'd told. But it hadn't been Ma who had lit into me.

Of course, I couldn't say it had been my father, either. I could tell that he seethed, but he was quiet. Deadly quiet. And I could tell immediately what he thought. Just as I had been able to tell when I'd declared music and drama as my major down at Ole Miss University down in Oxford. He'd always wanted me to go into law and to be on the football team like he had been at Ole Miss. I was on the swim team and played varsity tennis. That was the closest I could come to his dream. Couldn't he have told any time in my life that I'd never be big and beefy enough to play football at any university?

My mother went to the sofa and more like collapsed into it than sat down, but she persisted in what she'd wanted me to do. "Someone needs to clean the weeds from the grave, Clay. I haven't been able to go up to Hill Crest for more than a month. The weeds grow fast in the cemetery."

"Couldn't you have Willie do it when he comes to mow the lawn?" I asked.

"Willie's been gone for nearly two years, Clay. A lot has changed since you were here. I have a lawn service do it now."

I wanted to scream that not much could have change—not enough for me to have come back before. Or even to come back now, except that it wasn't fair to my mother to totally desert her. She hadn't totally deserted me. She'd just let Holly Springs trump everything else, any possible change in attitudes. Holly Springs and my father.

"We'll see," I said, not wanting to look at her, because she'd be able to tell that I wouldn't willingly go anywhere near my father, even though he'd been dead for four years.

"He loved you, Clay," she said, almost choking on the words. "He showed it as much as he could—as much as was possible at the time as a Baptist minister."

"Showed it? How did he show it, Ma?"

"He never gave up on you."

"Never gave up on me? You mean he continued to pray that I would come to my senses and be reborn a full, heterosexual man?"

"No, I mean he accepted you in his heart, and although he couldn't take a strong stand and continue to minister to his flock, he never again—not after that night you told us—let a word of condemnation of . . . your people . . . leave his lips. And that was not easy to do in Holly Springs, and especially for a Baptist minister."

I had to admit that she was right there. It would be very hard to do in the Baptist community in Holly Springs—ten years ago. Or even now, in Holly Springs. But was it enough? My heart said it wasn't.

"I was his son, Ma. What did it mean for me what he did to try to live within his comfort zone in Holly Springs?"

"That's not really fair, Clay. This all was your choice, not his. He had a life of his own and faith to follow. But he did try. He tried to speak with you. Even after you left, he tracked you down and called you. But you hung up on him."

"I knew what he had to say to me, Ma."

"Do you, really?"

I turned and looked at her. Her voice had hardened a bit. It was stronger, had more conviction behind it than I'd ever known it to have. "You feel OK, Ma?" I asked, genuinely concerned. "Is there any medicine or anything I can get for you?"

"Bearing with me here is the medicine I need, son. Don't close down on me like you did on your father—by making assumptions."

That brought me up short. "Assumptions, Ma?"

"Yes. You assumed he disowned you because you didn't live up to his expectations, didn't you?"

"It was fairly obvious, Mother. It wasn't just being gay and saying I was. It was all the other things in life. Not being what he expected, not what he wanted."

"Not being what he expected or wanted? Are you still living under the misconception that your Grandmother Clayton paid for the training you got to be what you wanted? You never asked her? You just assumed she paid for it because she'd once said she'd see you set up in life?"

"What are you saying?"

"Your father didn't just pay for your college education, Clay. He paid for those voice and drama lessons too. And he attended every play you were in at the university—and kept a scrapbook of all the programs and the reviews."

"Neither of you ever—"

"You weren't exactly receptive in those days, Clay. You told us why later—that night you finally left. You didn't want your father or me to know. To know about your preferences. You judged us, but you didn't give us much of a chance. It was a shock, yes, but your assumptions closed down the communications between you and your father. He was slow to work it out, yes, but you weren't there even half way."

"I didn't—"

"And do you know why we don't have the scrapbook he pulled together anymore?"

"He threw it away?"

"No, Clay. Your father didn't throw it away. He went to your drama coach at Mississippi after you'd graduated and he got her to help him put it together in a portfolio to send to agents in New York. You thought it was just luck that got you an agent in New York—or that your drama professor did it. Well, your father did it. He was so busting with pride in you and your talent that he did what he could to let it shine. You can go down to Ole Miss and ask Ms. Danbury what's what on that, if you want."

"I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't know. You wanted to believe what you believed. You wanted to believe that no one here could accept you as you chose to be. It wasn't easy to do, of course, but your father was working at it. But you turned off and walked away."

"But he never—" I was going to say that he never came looking for me in the six years between when I'd left home for New York and then Philadelphia and when he died. Well, five years, to be fair. But there were the phone calls I wouldn't take. Before I could say anything or work out what I was justified in saying, the doorbell rang.

And going to the door, I found the other reason I'd had to leave Holly Springs abruptly ten years ago standing on the welcome mat on the front porch.