Dancing With Tears In My Eyes Ch 02

The offices of Feldman and Rosenbaum were located downtown in a tall, sparkling granite building boasting burled oak and brushed stainless steel. Shawn had worked most of the morning, attending to patients before driving down to the lawyer’s office and listening to reading of Alan Dunlop’s will.

Conor had been there also, a mass of emotions as he heard the words that his father had written for him and the fortune that had been left to him. Dunlop had left the contents of his various money market accounts and CDs to his son and had left the rights of his art to Shawn. An inconsolable Conor had bolted from the room, overwhelmed by the fact that his father had publicly recognized him as his son. It had taken the doctor nearly two hours to find the young man.

To anyone else, it would have seemed that the young man was simply feeding the pigeons but Shawn knew better. Conor was so emotionally drained that he didn’t even recognize Anderson but he let the doctor lead him away. Shawn had seen this type of behavior before and knew that it would take time for the young man to work through his grief and to come to terms with reality. Shawn took Conor to his apartment and laid him down on the couch, covering him with a blanket and slipping his shoes off.

“Sleep.” The word was the last that Conor heard for nearly five hours but it was the soft forehead kiss that made his sadness melt away like snow during a spring thaw.

The smell of onions and sizzling meat filled his nostrils and Conor stretched languidly, sitting up and running a hand through his mussed hair. His eyes met Shawn’s over the kitchen counter and the older man came around the island, examining him with a practitioner’s eye.

“How do you feel?”

“Better.” Conor answered truthfully. He knew his eyes told a different story and that Shawn wouldn’t be fooled. “What are you cooking? It smells fantastic.”

“Steak and homemade onion rings. Shit!” He jumped up and dashed back into the kitchen, fishing a pile of golden brown circlets out of the deep fryer and dumping them unceremoniously onto folded thicknesses of paper towels. He swiftly followed the actions with a generous sprinkling of salt and freshly ground pepper, then turned his back on Conor, dipping raw ringlets into beer batter and carefully sliding them into the hot oil. Shawn wiped his strong hands on a dishtowel emblazoned with snowmen and gave him a dazzling smile. “Want a beer or wine?”

“What are you having?”

Shawn took a sip, then pushed his glass towards Conor. “Santa Margherita, a Pinot Grigio and it’s one of my favorites. Try it.”

Conor raised the globe, feeling the ice-coldness of the wine through the clear glass and inhaling the fruity aroma. He turned the glass and drank from the edge that Shawn’s lips had touched moments before, an action that didn’t escape the doctor’s notice. A sexy vibration thrummed through Conor as Shawn’s fingers grazed his as he reclaimed his glass.

“Yeah, I’ll have some of that.”

Shawn shook his head, his breath caught in his throat as the sexual tension in the air threatened to turn him into a blushing teenager. He took a few seconds longer than usual to grab a glass from the cabinet, hoping that the heat would subside from his cheeks. He pulled the wine from the wine fridge and poured a healthy measure, sliding it across to Conor and avoiding further contact.

Conor watched, sipping silently as Shawn rescued another batch of onion rings, dumped and salted them. “I think that’s enough.” Two three-inch slabs of T-bone were sizzling on the adjacent grill and Shawn used tongs to flip them over, spreading a thin layer of Montreal steak seasoning on them. “These should be ready in about fifteen.” He took another drink of wine. “I took the liberty of making up the guest room and laying out some of my clothes for you. We’re about the same size, so I thought they would hold you over until you went home tomorrow.”

What if I don’t want to go home?

Conor squashed the thought with a sad shrug. The dirt wasn’t even settled on his father’s grave and he was thinking about boning his father’s lover. Hardly appropriate behavior.

“That is, if you want to stay.” Shawn watched for an indication of Conor’s thoughts and received none. “I can drop you back at your car … “

“No, I’ll stay.”

“Okay. I was going to suggest that you take a shower while I’m finishing up with dinner.”

“Sounds good.” The half-smile Conor gave Shawn made him grin. “Can I take my glass?”

“Absolutely.”

Conor slid down from the seat and trudged up the stairs, admiring the Dali prints as he ascended. A print of Picasso’s

Three Musicians

sat at the head of the stairs and the upper hallway branched off into two directions. Turning right, Conor found the master bedroom and held his breath as he entered Shawn’s inner sanctum. The room was decorated in soft shades of plum and the queen-size bed was tastefully appointed with a dark purple fitted sheet, comforter and pair of large pillows with dark pillowcases highlighted by a flat sheet and two smaller pillows with white background and lilac-sprigged fabric.

He couldn’t help but reach out and touch the crisp sheets, imagining Shawn’s naked body on them. He closed his eyes and visualized being taken by the doctor. He wondered what Shawn liked. Top or bottom, tongue or fingers … or both.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

It had taken Shawn almost five minutes to coax words out of his constricted throat. Watching Conor’s fingers drifting across the 270-thread count sheets and the thick comforter made him want to throw him down and fuck him until he painted the sheets with his cum. He cherished the guilty look on Conor’s face as he realized that he’d been caught. To his credit, Conor let out a bark of laughter, falling backwards on the plump mattress with his arms outstretched.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Neither could I.” Shawn plopped down next to him, smiling. “The color is just … “

“Mysterious.”

Shawn raised himself on an elbow, looking down into Conor’s eyes. His breath hitched again as he noticed the golden motes floating in Conor’s eyes like Goldschlager and it drew him like a magnet. The space between them decreased, Shawn’s blue eyes slowly closing as his lips gently opened. The touch of the warm flesh was electric, drawing an unexpected moan from him and his free hand pushing through tousled curls and cradling Conor’s skull like a precious baby. He turned his head so that their mouths fit perfectly and tentatively stroked Conor’s bottom lip with his tongue.

“Jesus!” Conor leaped from the bed as if he’d been electrocuted, his fingers touching his mouth. “Uh, sorry.” He backed toward the door, fear filling his eyes. “I – I’d better hit the shower now.”

Shawn watched him run off, the taste of Conor still on the tip of his tongue. “Yeah. Mysterious, just like you.”

*****

Hi, Conor.

Conor reached for the tissues and wiped his already tearing eyes, snuggling into the warm depths of the comforter and taking a deep breath. He had expected to be moved by his father’s words, but he hadn’t expected to see the nearly thirty-year old snapshot of himself pasted to the first page. It took his breath away and quickly reminded him of Shawn’s kiss.

Wow. Where to start? That’s a hard question. If I had access to a computer, I’d arrange my thoughts like a contact sheet, but alas, all I can do is talk into this damned recorder and ask my good friend, Shawn, to translate my words to paper for you. When this is all over, I hope and pray that this will be enough for you and I hope that you’ll be able to follow my disjointed ramblings and find the story of Alan Thornton Dunlop, your father.

I guess I should start out with the simple facts. I am 47 years old and I’m dying of AIDS. I contracted the disease thirteen years ago. Never have been sure of from whom, but I know where. Brazil. Most probably a street urchin I fucked between shoots. That was one of the sweetest nuts of my life. That might sound disgusting but I have no other choice than to be myself as the last days of my life dissipate like late-morning fog.

I have enjoyed fucking each and every chance that I got. There’s nothing like having your cock thrust deeply into a welcoming ass and dripping sweat onto that undulating body and gritting your teeth and firing off a hot load. I’d had gay sex before I met your mother but I never realized how ‘into’ gay sex I was until I had to cum in her. It just wasn’t the same. Of course, the plumbing was different but it went deeper than that. When I look into a woman’s eyes, I see a lumbering ball and chain. Weddings, babies, etc. When I look into a man’s eyes, I see hot sex. I see mouths and tongues and fingers and cocks and cum.

When Brenda told me that she was pregnant … well, I have to be honest. The first thing I did was throw up. I couldn’t believe that I had knocked her up. Me, a gay man had made a straight woman pregnant! Of course, I wasn’t sure that I was gay yet, but I was well on my way to making a dent in the homosexual population in Philadelphia. I’d just come back from a shoot downtown where I’d gotten a fantastic blow job from the PA when she greeted me at the door with a vodka martini. I knew that wasn’t good, but I had no idea of how bad it was.

She smiled, a fake smile by the way, and sat on the living room chaise with a huge smile. “Guess what, Alan? You’re going to be a father!”

I’ve hated the bitch ever since.

She was horrible the entire pregnancy. Demands for odd foods at odd hours topped the list of indignities inflicted on me. Popsicles, pickles, Little Debbie brownies … it went on and on until I got a phone call in my darkroom-slash-warehouse and she told me that you were on the way.

Have to be honest again, when the doctor set you in my arms, I bawled like a great, big old fairy. You were a little chubby, blond cherub. In fact, one of the first pictures I took of you was with laurels wrapped around your head, like you were one of Zeus’ children, newly born. Brenda kept it. She kept all of the pictures I took of you. I suppose she thought I’d wank off looking at your pictures. But you already know that she’s a bitch so no more need to waste breath on that subject.

I think that she was upset because she had wanted to hurt me. We weren’t as close as we had been and I think, no, I knew that she thought that I was cheating. But you and I bonded. I took you on shoots and let the models fawn over you. Everyone thought that you were so cute. The older you got, the cuter you got. And surprising, even to me, you had the eye. I’d lay prints down in front of you and you’d always pick the best shots. It was amazing. No one would believe me until I had Wally Summers from Vogue do the same thing and your inner artistic eye zeroed in on three photos. They were the best in every way; lighting, composition, wardrobe, makeup.

Then Brenda caught me fucking one of the male models while one of the girls was watching you and the shit hit the fan. Within two weeks, our apartment was empty and you and your mother had disappeared. I scoured the Philly area and even hired a private investigator but I could never locate you. Losing you did more than just piss me off. It made the wheels fall off my wagon. I started dabbling in drugs and drinking more and more … next thing I knew, I was an addict. My work was selling like mad but I was out of touch with reality.

You see, I could never get the picture of this lovely little boy out of my mind. My baby. My son. My little Conor. The photo in the front has been around the world several times, always close to my heart. Always a reminder that good had come out of this jaded soul. Always a reminder that you were out there somewhere, that hopefully one day, we could reconnect and have some kind of father-son relationship.

But my wild ways caught up with me and rightly so. There’s only so many times that you can stick your dick in the lion’s mouth before he clamps down on it. I have teeth marks and then some. I’d always been afraid of facing my death alone but Shawn, my doctor, has been a godsend. Could you imagine how I felt when you showed up? My son! And that you were so willing to look past my illness and the debauchery that my life has been filled with and see me, Alan, your father ... I wondered what kind of game God was playing on me, but I didn’t question.

I’m getting tired now. Think I’ll stop here and continue later. Poor Shawn is probably ready to kill me. I hope that you have a chance to have a friendship with him after I’m gone. Shawn is an exquisite human being. You’ll never meet anyone like him. If I were a younger man and believed in love … I’d better stop now. I know Shawn will definitely kill me now.

Till later,

Your father,

Alan

Conor slowly closed the volume, hiccupping with suppressed sobs as his fingers traced the indentations of the written words. His father’s thoughts, Shawn’s hands. His lover? His friend? It was all too much to comprehend and he snapped the light off, his mind filled with confusion, his eyes overflowing with tears and his heart aching for love.