Terry Bingham arrived home to find a note attached to his door:
Get a shower and come over. Wear your trunks but bring a change of clothes. Neal.
He raised a curious eyebrow at this, shrugged, and then entered his house and did as the note suggested. Thirty minutes later he was en route to the home Neal shared with his same-sex husband, Bob. He heard music coming from the back yard, so he walked through the open gate. Bob was on the patio adding charcoal briquettes to the grill while Neal sat at the shallow end of their pool engaging him in conversation. When he saw Terry, he said, "Howdy, neighbor."
"Hi," Terry said as he kicked off his flip flops next to a chaise lounge. He tossed his duffle bag onto it, removed his shirt, then grabbed a Yuengling before patting Bob on the back and joining Neal in the pool. "What's the occasion?
"Janine called this morning to tell us she would be out of town and for us to take care of you," Bob answered.
"She worries about me too much," Terry replied.
"Well, you're here, so let's enjoy ourselves," Neal said.
Terry drank a few swallows of his beer, then climbed out of the pool and made his way to the diving board. He jumped a few times, then sprung more upward than outward, flipped twice, and entered the water with almost no splash. This wasn't uncommon considering he had been captain of his swim teams in both high school and college. When he surfaced, Neal and Bob were applauding. He made his way back to the shallow end and retrieved his beer.
"I'd give anything to be able to dive like that," Neal said.
"All it takes is practice," Terry told him.
"Trust me when I say there are other things he's good at diving on," Bob said with a laugh. Terry couldn't help but laugh also. With the fire going, Bob cannonballed into the pool. He lamented forgetting his beer, so Terry hopped up and brought it to him.
The three stayed at the shallow end talking about their respective days. Bob, who owned a local fix-it shop, spoke about the increasing number of people bringing in their cell phones to get the glass front replaced. "I swear, if they ever make one that is truly unbreakable, I'll be out of business in no time."
Neal, the couple's stay-at-home who also had a small online sports memorabilia business, shared his selling of an Upper Deck Hank Aaron signature and his acquisition of two Reggie Jackson rookies, a Joe Montana signed football, and an Arthur Ashe signed tennis racket.
"The Jackson rookies I can see," Terry said, "but aren't you taking a chance with the other?"
"They have been authenticated," Neal said. He laughed. "I've been doing this long enough to know how to do it, Terry."
"I suppose," Terry affirmed, then relayed his own day as Instructor of Psychology at the local university. "We started on Operant Conditioning this week. In the middle of my lecture today, a student asked who would win in a fight, Pavlov's dog or Shrodinger's cat." They all chuckled at this. "In another class, a student said he had seen a bumper sticker yesterday that read
We All Are Pavlovian Curs
but he didn't understand what it meant, so I explained that we all have been conditioned by one stimulus or another, whether it is not wanting to hear a mother, wife, etc., complain about socks on the floor, so to avoid hearing her incessant moaning, we dutifully pick up after ourselves, or even if we speak of the table manners we have, such as eating with a hand in the lap, 'Please pass this or that,' it all comes down to one form of operant conditioning or another."
"You'd better be glad you met me first," Bob said to Neal, "or I'd be all over Terry right now."
Terry laughed. He knew Bob was joking, and he wasn't so simple-minded to believe Bob to ever make a real pass at him, anyway. Terry and Janine had known Neal and Bob for about three years now. They were good friends, and each had spent time at the other's house for dinner, game night, or whatever else they could contrive.
"Better check those coals," Neal said to Bob.
As Bob exited the pool, he said, "I'm the one stuck in an office all day. You're supposed to have a meal waiting on me when I get home."
"You know I can't grill," Neal said. He turned to Terry and added, "The last time I tried, the hot dogs looked like kindling and the burgers looked like hockey pucks."
"And I still think you did that on purpose just so you wouldn't have to do this anymore," Bob called out as he placed three T-bones on the grill. Turning to Terry, he said, "Medium rare, right?" Terry nodded. "Five minutes, people. Let's get prepared."
As Neal and Terry exited the pool, Bob pulled off his trunks and grabbed the shorts he had brought out with him. Neal and Terry stripped and did the same. Terry was not self-conscious in the least bit by being seen naked by two homosexuals. This wasn't the first time they had stripped in front of each other, and Terry was secure enough in his masculinity that the whole idea of homophobia was just plain ridiculous.
Terry followed Neal into the house to retrieve the plates, silverware, and side dishes. They returned and set the patio table just as Bob was flipping the steaks one final time. Terry moved the ice chest closer, then grabbed everyone's already-opened beer and placed them in their respective places.
Over the course of dinner, conversation was light. There was a little gossip of what was going on
in the neighborhood, some revelations of things going on in the community, and updates on the
current state of everyone's relationship.
After dinner, Neal and Bob loaded the dishwasher while Terry sat on the patio. He had forgotten his pipe, so he grabbed one of Neal's cigarettes and smoked it. Neal and Bob joined him not long thereafter. It was Bob who first noticed Terry's duffle bag next to his chair. "Leaving so soon?"
"No, not unless you need me to."
"No. No, you're welcome to stay as long as you like."
"Good," Terry said. He pulled the duffle bag up, unzipped it, and produced a bottle of Jack Daniels, then three shot glasses. "With the work week officially behind us, I figured we could use a little something to brighten our spirits."
"Brighten and lighten," Bob said. "Let's do three in quick succession." Terry poured them out and they knocked all three back. As Terry filled them once again, Bob said, "Neal and I have been stuck on a point of debate. You being a psychologist, perhaps you can tell us who is right."
"I'll do what I can," Terry offered. He pointed to Neal's cigarettes. Neal nodded, so Terry lit one up. Neal snatched it from him and began to smoke it himself. Terry laughed, then lit another. He took a deep drag, then said, "Okay, so what is the point of contention?"
"Well," Neal said before Bob could answer, "he is of the mind that everyone is born predisposed to, at the very least, being bi, and those who actually act on it are really homosexuals hiding their true sexuality in that they use the term 'bi' as a safety net because it allows for them to remain in a conventional, socially approved relationship."
"While he," Bob quickly interjected, "believes that a person can be born predisposed to being homosexual, but that acting on bi-curious feelings is a choice, not a predisposition."
Terry pondered this as he took another drag off the cigarette. He downed his shot of JD, encouraged the others to do the same, then filled the glasses again before saying, "This is what I believe, and keep in mind that this is my opinion, not something the Great School of Thought has agreed upon. I do believe everyone has a bi-curious side to them. That much has been proven. We all have had thoughts of a homosexual encounter, whether that thought is fleeting, or it stews for years on end. For the sake of this argument, let us concentrate on the bi-curious male.
"If the thought is fleeting, the male can go on to live a productive life, i.e. enter into what Neal referred to earlier as 'conventional, socially approved relationships.' Even if this male sated his curiosity by engaging another male, you're basically looking at a one-off. This applies even if he has done it six, seven ... ten times over. The fact remains that if he engages and is then able to leave it behind him, then he is not bi-sexual nor even homosexual. Yes, he has committed a homosexual act, but committing the act does not define him as homosexual. Look at it this way: If you believe the Whopper is the best fast-food burger, but one day you have a craving for a Big Mac so you purchase and eat one, this does not define your preference as McDonald's over Burger King. It simply means that you wanted something different, you experimented with it, and then you resumed your normal habits. As you can see, you both are correct to a point, but I must comment further on Bob's assertions.
"Of the person who allows it to stew, he may eventually act upon it. If it is the one-off, he is relegated to that which I have already explained. However, he may embrace it and integrate it into his everyday way of living, thus making his bi-sexuality that very conventional relationship, regardless if society approves or not. Finally, he may embrace it to the point that he realizes that yes, he is homosexual."
"Well," Bob said after some silence. "That certainly is a lot to take in." He lifted his shot glass and said, "To Professor Know-it-all." Terry and Neal laughed as they toasted, then drank down their whiskey. Bob refilled the glasses as he asked, "If you truly believe this is the way of the bi-curious male, then why does homophobia exist to the extent it does?"
"I have a theory on that as well," Terry said as he raised his glass and drank. The others followed suit. Neal filled them again as Terry continued. "I honestly believe that homophobia, as it is defined, does not exist. In my opinion, homophobia is really self-loathing. It stems from the individual's inability to accept that he has these feelings, thus he projects that loathing onto the homosexual community."
"That's pretty damned deep," Bob said with a laugh, "but it makes perfect sense. What do you think makes people act upon it, or not act?"
"Allow me to share with you a paper I wrote in college," Terry said. "I sent out questionnaires inquiring as to the bi-curious or homosexual nature of people. This one response I received detailed a young man's journey through coming to terms with his homosexuality. It began with him not understanding why he was more excited about watching a woman perform oral sex than the man's reaction to it. Furthermore, his roommate pointed out to him that whenever the man in the porno came, the young man would clear his throat and swallow. He didn't realize at the time that he was having a subconscious reaction to the fellatio being performed.
"Eventually, he became fixated with large clitorises. His research into them educated him to the fact that a clitoris is a penis that has not completely formed, and this triggered something inside him. He admitted that this somehow made him accepting of a penis on a woman, but that he allowed himself intersexed videos only, as it was more acceptable to him to see a woman with a penis so long as she had a vagina. Eventually, though, he began to look at male-to-female pre-op transgender videos, and his desire to experience such grew exponentially.
