12

Part 11. So... How about those Nats?: Jason's perspective

I followed John into my hotel room. I'd just ushered him inside after an awkward encounter in the doorway with the hotel concierge, Pete. John stopped short in front of me after seeing the rumpled bed sheets...explicit evidence that Pete and I had been making good use out of the bed just minutes earlier. It might have been in the 20s outside with snow piling up on the ground, but my skin was burning hot with embarrassment. I assumed that John had figured out before now that I'm gay. But he didn't KNOW know. And if I was ever going to come out to him, this isn't exactly the scenario I'd imagined it happening under.

I quickly dashed past John and tried to pull the comforter up over the bed and straighten it out. "Sorry about the mess... I'll have the bed presentable in just a minute.

John walked over to the table and chairs near the sliding glass door leading out to the small balcony. "Uh, I think I'll just sit over here, if you don't mind."

I walked over to join him, hoping to move past this awkward phase of the conversation. "When you knocked, you said you needed me..." Trying to lighten the mood, I added the colloquial joke, "what can I do ya for?" Hmmm...maybe that wasn't the best thing to say, considering what John just witnessed.

Looking extremely uncomfortable, John smiled awkwardly. "Uh, your friend seemed nice."

"He's not a friend," I added quickly. "He's a... He was..." Words were failing me. Somebody toss me a life preserver quick! I'm drowning here! "He was a mistake. Listen, I'm sure you didn't come over here to talk to me about some random guy that neither of us will ever see again. What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?"

Seemingly ignoring my question, John looked at me. "You're gay."

"Duh, Captain Obvious!" is what I really wanted to say. I just wanted to put this humiliating encounter behind me and move on to whatever it was John came here to talk to me about. But, he seemed insistent on making me relive it in painstaking detail. "Yeah. I am," is what I said instead.

"I never knew that."

"No shit, Sherlock! I'm selective about who I come out to at work." God, if I could only speak my mind. But since it was best to not piss off the boss, I heavily edited what I actually said. "I keep it under my hat at work. You never know who will be cool with it and who won't, so I only tell someone if I know they'll be cool with it."

"And you thought I wouldn't be cool with you being gay?"

I didn't know what to say in response to that. Should I tell him the truth...that, if I came out to him, I thought he'd put two and two together and realize that I had a crush on him, which would cause him to freak out like he does about everything? Looks like I needed that life preserver again... "It's not that, John. I can tell you're an open-minded guy who doesn't have hang-ups about sexuality."

"Then why didn't you trust me enough to tell me? I thought we'd been building a friendship at work."

Thank, God! An opening to shift the conversation topic away from me. "Says the guy who's been busting my chops for the past couple months for no reason at all..."

"You're changing the topic," John smirked at me with a twinkle in the eye.

"As fast as I can..." I laughed.

"Fair enough. I won't hold it against you that you didn't tell me. I get it. It's your business who you tell." He looked down as he traced his finger along the table top, giving the impression he was dejected.

I spoke up, probably needlessly. But, I was a people-pleaser. And more than one person told me that I often tried to "fix" things that didn't need fixing. "John, just because I didn't tell you, it doesn't mean that I think any less of you."

"I know," was all he said back to me.

Something within me compelled me to continue talking, even though he'd surprisingly given no indication that he was freaked-out. "And it doesn't mean that I want to jump your bones, or anything." Of course I wanted to jump his bones. But if thinking I didn't made him feel better, I was more than willing to let him believe it.

John looked at me and grinned. This was another time that, if he'd have let me, I would've jumped across the table and kiss him. "It's funny you should say that, because I have some questions..."

"Questions? Didn't your parents have 'the talk' with you when you were younger?" I chuckled. "Sex between two men isn't all that different from the hetero way."

He laughed, nervously. Why, I wasn't sure... "No. Not questions about THAT. I have questions about last night."

"Oh. You mean when we had pizza, you took me down to the bar for drinks, and then gave me that BS reason why you've been acting like a d-bag toward me lately?" I was nervous that John really wanted to question me more about what happened when we came back upstairs. I was hoping to hide my nervousness behind false bravado.

"BS reason? It's the truth!" he said incredulously. I wasn't buying it, but I was willing to let it pass by. I didn't think John would ever tell me the real reason he hadn't been nice to me the past few months.

"Okay," I responded, with a slightly patronizing tone.

"No. I have questions about last night, but it's about what happened after we were at the bar. Because I drank too much bourbon, I don't really have a clear memory of what happened the rest of the night. But, I've been having flashes of bits and pieces of memories..."

"Flashes?" I was quickly becoming a lot more nervous about where this conversation was going.

"Yeah. I don't know if they're flashes of things that actually happened, or if they're the product of my brain gone wild."

"What are these flashes of?" I immediately remembered John leaning against me in the elevator last night and kissing me, then nibbling on my ear while I let him into his room, and finally me undressing him and copping a couple good feels of his bare chest before I put him to bed to sleep it off.

John shifted in his seat and grimaced, as if it made him uncomfortable. "It's probably better if you remind me exactly what happened last night after I started feeling drunk. Then, I can figure out if what I'm remembering is real or not."

Without knowing what John was remembering from last night, I wasn't willing to out myself for feeling his body and letting him kiss me. I needed him to tell me exactly what he'd recalled. "It pretty much happened like I told you this morning when you woke up. Why? What are you remembering that doesn't fit with what I told you."

John turned pale and looked very uncomfortable. "I...I don't...I mean, I can't..."

"C'mon, John. You just walked in on one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. If we can sit here and talk after THAT, you can tell me what you remember from last night."

"Okay. But don't read anything into what I'm about to tell you." He still looked like he was about to pass out. "I'm having memories of us kissing in an elevator and then you standing over me in my hotel room, rubbing my chest while I was laying on my bed. Then, given how things were when I woke up this morning, you can imagine what's running through my mind. We didn't..." John hesitated. It was as if he couldn't bring himself to even say the words. "I mean...you and I, didn't... Did we?"

Okay. This is a no-brainer, right? Tell him the truth and we'll work through whatever he's feeling afterward: anger, joy, indifference, or whatever. I've always told myself prior to the last couple months that - more than being attracted to the man - I actually like John personally. I couldn't possibly lead him to believe we'd has sex when we didn't. Could I?

Part 12. Why Am I So Bothered?: John's perspective

Some hotel employee - the guy at the front desk that had checked us in when we arrived, I think - had just left Jason's room and it was obvious that they'd just had sex. Even though I'd tried to get out of it, he'd insisted I come inside and talk to him about whatever it was that I needed to talk to him about. Given my memories of he and I kissing and him touching my body last night, I'd wanted him to give me a more detailed version of what happened last night. I was beginning to think that we'd had sex. But now... How in the hell could I ask him what I wanted to ask him after what I'd just seen?

He shut the door behind me and I headed in toward the main area of his room when I was suddenly faced with the sight of his messy bed with sheets rumpled and askew. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I felt very unsettled. Why? What Jason does in his spare time is his business. But why was it such a big deal to me? I tried to shake the feeling off, hoping to get through this conversation as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there.

Jason immediately went over to the bed and began straightening it up, as if he expected we'd sit on the bed to chat. This wasn't a slumber party or something...and I didn't want to sit where he and that guy had just... I couldn't even think about it! Instead, I insisted upon sitting at the table over by the door that led out to his balcony. A moment later, Jason joined me.

When - trying to be funny, I assume, Jason asked, "What can I do ya for?" I felt like crawling out of my skin. "I'm sure you WOULD like to do me," I thought to myself. Maybe whatever undercurrent was playing out between Jason and I wasn't as special for him as I'd been suspecting. Maybe, after what obviously happened between he and the hotel employee, he just liked to see how many guys he could hook up with and all I was to him was a potential conquest. Still trying to hope that wasn't the case, I started to feel a little queasy at the idea that I'd started having intimate thoughts about Jason over the past several months when all he may want from me is to get into my pants.

I don't know if my facial expression showed it or not, but I was starting to feel like I needed to snap myself out of whatever's been happening to me on this trip to Denver. All of this tension between Jason and I had been building up for a long time. Being alone with him, trapped in this hotel by a snowstorm, was starting to get to me. Discovering that he'd had sex with a hotel employee had just thrown me for a huge loop. I couldn't figure out why. I'm a straight man. I'm married to a wonderful - if not slightly domineering and emasculating - woman and I have three beautiful kids. Why was it such a problem that my co-worker had just done something that was really none of my business to judge? And why was my mind seemingly in hyperdrive right now?

"Uh, your friend seemed nice..." I heard the words escape my lips, but it didn't feel like I was actually saying them. They were just words that didn't signify anything. They were a placeholder to keep me from voicing what was truly on my mind...as if I could even begin to put my current thoughts into coherent sentences at the moment.

As Jason was tripping over his words, trying to explain what had happened between he and the hotel employee, it began to dawn on me that this is the first time we'd actually come close to having a conversation about his sexuality. Because I'd "known" for so long that he's gay and I've felt an awkward sexual tension between us...not to mention whatever had been going between us here in Denver, it almost escaped my notice that maybe we had reached a new point in our friendship...co-workership...whatever this was. "You're gay," I said, matter-of-factly. I know it was a moronically obvious statement to make. But I felt like it was important that I said the words.

For a brief moment, the look on his face indicated that he wanted to reach across the table and slap me across the face for saying something so obvious that even Helen Keller could've figured it out. But, just as quickly, his facial expression moderated into something almost like a smile...relief at us finally having this conversation, maybe? "Yeah. I am," he said back to me.

I figured it was best for our work relationship that he not realize I already figured all of this out. "I never knew that," I offered back to him. When he clumsily replied that he's choosy about who he tells because he's never certain who will be okay with it and who won't, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was obvious by the way he's acted around me from Day One that I started at Glenmont that Jason has had a thing for me. Until the past year or so, I thought we'd been friendly enough with each other at work for him to know that I wasn't some sort of insecure, narrow-minded asshole. Insecure about work? Sure. But not about anyone's personal life!

As we continued the conversation - me pressing him about why he didn't feel comfortable enough to tell me and him evading my questions at every turn - he must've realized how hurt I was. I know that, try as hard as I can not to, I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve. I'm sure I had a dejected look on my face. He looked at me earnestly across the table as he spoke. "Just because I didn't tell you, it doesn't mean that I think any less of you."

I said, "I know," back to him. But I wasn't really sure if it was true. It occurred to me that I'd been wrong about Jason all along. From the very start, I HAD acted pretty insecure about the whole thing. I viewed him as a predator...someone who only thought of me as a sexual object and was just being friendly with me as a means to an end. That end being getting in my pants. When I started having fantasies about Jason, I freaked-out and started treating him different. I WAS the reason he wasn't open with me about his sexuality. And maybe my memories of last night...of us kissing and him feeling me up... Maybe they weren't memories of a lust-crazed gay man taking advantage of the drunk object of his desire, after all.

I knew I still needed to talk with Jason about what happened last night to make sure I didn't do something that could hurt my family. But how do I bring it up now? Things had taken a turn for the utterly awkward. How could I get the information I needed to know? We must've been on the same wavelength, or something, because Jason provided me the perfect opening to ask with the next thing he said. "And it doesn't mean that I want to jump your bones, or anything."

I couldn't help but grin. "Perfect!" I thought to myself. "I have questions about last night, but it's about what happened after we were at the bar. Because I drank too much bourbon, I don't really have a clear memory of what happened the rest of the night. But, I've been having flashes of bits and pieces of memories," I said out loud. "I don't know if they're flashes of things that actually happened, or if they're the product of my brain gone wild."

"What are these flashes of?" Was it my imagination that Jason looked awfully nervous? Or was that guilt showing on his face?

I could practically see the wheels turning in his mind. Why was he so nervous? I began to have a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that something more than kissing had happened between us and it worried the shit out of me. Jason tried to tell me that what happened last night was exactly what he'd said this morning: pizza, drinks at the bar downstairs, and then he brought me back up to my room and piled me into bed to sleep it off. Then, he turned my interrogation back on me by asking what part of my memories don't fit with what he told me.

Suddenly, the worm turned...so to speak. Now *I* was the one who felt nervous again. Could I really tell him that I remembered us kissing and had flashes of memories of him feeling my bare chest as I lay on my bed? If I told him and he denied it, things could turn ugly. I wasn't sure if I could handle that. "I...I don't...I mean, I can't..." I heard myself stutter and stammer over my words. Why, oh why, does life have to be so difficult?!

After egging me on to tell him by pointing out that we were sitting here, having this conversation, after I'd stumbled upon him kicking the concierge out of this very room after an ill-advised romp...that I shouldn't feel shy about tell him what I was starting to remember, I felt like I was backed into a corner. Jason had made it almost impossible for me NOT to ask him about last night. "Okay. But don't read anything into what I'm about to tell you." I took a deep breath and hoped that whatever direction this conversation went in, I'd come out of it with my dignity intact.

"I'm having memories of us kissing in an elevator and then you standing over me in my hotel room, rubbing my chest while I was laying on my bed. Then, given how things were when I woke up this morning, you can imagine what's running through my mind. We didn't... I mean...you and I, didn't... Did we?"

Time seemed to stop. For what seemed like hours, Jason just sat there, staring at me from the other side of the table. I could tell he was mulling something over. What it was, I couldn't tell. But I started to get a sick feeling wash over me...like, maybe he was trying to figure out the best way to tell me that he'd lied to me earlier and we really HAD had sex last night. Not only was I disgusted with myself for doing this to Laura and the kids. But, also, I kind of wish I hadn't been drunk last night when it happened so that I'd remember what it was like fucking him. Wait... Did I just think that?!