As told to my shrink.
I made sure he was eighteen. I was at the birthday reception his mother had for him at Church. I remember when his mother and her husband went to Russia to fetch him and his sister over here to adopt them, and I was present when they were baptized. When Father Bert addressed them in Russian, their faces lifted up to him.
The Russians were offloading their unwanted children at that time, and you had to take two. His mother couldn't have children because her uterus had been removed when she was much younger, and she wanted children. Her husband went along with her, as he did with most of what she did, barring attending Church. He was a Northern Ireland Protestant turned atheist, and we were way too Catholic for his taste. But he was at their baptism and didn't object.
Long before she married her husband, his mother had the hots for me. She told me so, grabbing my hand and confessing her "sheer lust".
I very carefully saved the moment for future masturbatory fantasy, but gently declined. I was getting good pussy at the time at home. She was the repentant-sinner type who might just spill the beans, and that spill would make Exxon Valdez look like a picnic, at least as far as my wallet was concerned, because Wifey Charlotte would take me for every centavo I had or was ever likely to have. Plus child support.
And I doubted his mother was that good of a fuck. But I never found out.
But we were friends, and I saw her and such of her children as she could dragoon into showing up at Church. Her daughter, the elder of the two, manifested in the clearest way that she would only attend if threatened with grievous bodily harm. She came out rather noisily at the age of sixteen, to no one's surprise, and had Mommy arranging sleepovers with her kaleidoscopic array of girlfriends.
Mommy was searching out gay-friendly colleges for her dyslexic elder child, found one, and shipped her off with a disillusioned tear.
Son Raffi was two years younger. Mommy could get him to Church, as he loved to sit and gossip with the elderly ladies, and exchange extravagant hugs with them. He knitted beautifully. It looked like Mommy had indeed gotten two for the price of one, courtesy of perestroika, glastnost, and the Yankee dollar.
He and I used to serve at Mass occasionally. I was very careful to stay two feet away from him at all times. If divorce was disastrous, jail was suicidal. We exchanged formal handshakes at the Peace, rather like two diplomats who detested one another.
His slight lisp was charming, but we only spoke when it was unavoidable. I was, however, aware of him, and he was aware of me.
The ceasefire held until the magic moment.
"You're graduating soon."
"Yeth."
"Have you chosen a college yet?"
"I'm dethiding between Oberlin and Hampshire."
"Good schools. I'm sure you'll do well wherever you go," I said, pouring on the clichés. "I suppose you'll be celebrating graduation."
"Yeth." He looked down, blushing slightly. He was blond-haired, one of the fair-haired Russians. "I thuppothe you know I'm gay."
"I'm not very bright, but I figured that out."
"Oh, you're bright enough, Chethter. You've been watching my ath thinthe I wath a little kid. Now I'm legal, you can do thomething about it."
"Let me think about that and get back to you."
"I'll keep the light on for you."
OK, now that my kids were grown, employed, and both living fifteen hundred miles away; and now that Charlotte was just as glad to get the sex part of our lives behind her (in the wrong sense of the phrase) and had fewer options if she bailed on me now; and since Raffi was legal and jail was off the table--why not?
Now since I am a hypocrite and a double-dealing scumbag, and have no illusions or pretensions, all I have to do is cover my tracks.
Richard M. Nixon, along with others, learned that this is not so easy.
So I set to work. Two business trips (one actually legitimate) gave me an excuse to miss a Friday night at home occasionally. I figured a few bucks spent in this way wouldn't unbalance the family budget enough to cause domestic interrogations. No e-mails and no cellphone calls, text messages or any other easily traceable electronic breadcrumbs. Raffi was interning at a fashion mag that summer, and meeting him on a busy street corner for no more than two minutes would arouse no suspicions.
Plans made, excuses made, room reserved at a big anonymous downtown hotel with a credit card only I could access and then only online, I got the cash for the necessary purchases. Top-shelf Astroglide, a couple of plastic tie-downs, top-of-the-line electric hairclipper, shaving cream, good-quality throwaway razors, toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, liquid baby soap and a really good enema bag; oh yes, and a few Band-Aids, just in case. I carefully planned for every contingency.
Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. Raffi could spin what story he liked to the parents; short of telling the truth, he could say whatever. I gave Wifey the same story I'd give her three times before, and she took it at face value.
Now when you set up an assignation at a hotel, dear Shrink Noelle, you don't walk in holding hands. You get two keys, go up to the room, drop off the rollerbag with the goodies, go downstairs, meet the hookup on a streetcorner and discreetly pass the second room card. You tell the hookup to go into an elevator with a mob of people, like a bunch of tourists coming back from a day's sightseeing, go to the room and enter quickly.
Yes, there'll be a video from the surveillance cam, but it will last under fifteen seconds, and unless you're planning to imitate Joram van der Sloot, you don't care.
Together at last. No reason to talk. I just pull him to me and we exchange an open-mouth kiss. Time for a toothbrushing session, though. I have this clean fetish.
I make sure he carefully brushes his teeth and washes his hands.
"Now it's housekeeping time," I say, and start to undress him. Off comes the Henley shirt, the low-end designer jeans and the sneakers. His undies are worn and could use a wash, but at least he hasn't jerked off in the last hour.
What a nice, ivory, uncut dick! And a good ball sac, plenty to grab one's attention and other things. Plenty of blond pubic hair, though. Got to deal with that.
"Sit on the toilet."
"Like thith?"
"Farther forward. I need to get at your pubes and your junk."
He obliges. I start with the clippers, slowly, carefully, cleaning as I go. Leave a landing strip on the pubis, but get all the hair on his balls and around his dick. That calls for some Gillette and a steady hand.
"Fuck, I should have bought some aftershave. But then again, the stuff tastes awful. You'll survive without." Scrape carefully. Too much shaving cream is just enough.
"Get in the tub."
He does. I turn on the water, take the Euro-style detachable showerhead and clean off the shaving cream and whatever lingering hair didn't get caught by the razor. Turn off the water and order him, "Turn around, bright eyes."
