Autumn had always been Lacy Curtis' favorite time of the year. Back when she had simply been Lacy Ferguson, a normal, happy and well adjusted child growing up in the Maryland suburbs, she had always loved raking the fallen leaves in her front yard with her older brothers and her Father, only to dive headlong into them after they had arranged them into a colorful and sprawling pile.
Now 26, married with a career, Lacy still couldn't help but feel like that happy and contented child each Fall when the trees began to change color and a nip slowly took hold of the late afternoon air.
Having graduated Cum Laude from Georgetown four years earlier, Lacy had quickly landed a job as an accountant at one of DC's largest financial firms. While it did provide a handsome paycheck, still childless and not the frivolous spending type, to occupy her free time and quench her creative jones, Lacy spent most of her weekends working at the same florist shop she had helped work her way through college at.
A complete departure from the bland existence of her 40 hour week job in front of a computer screen, Lacy valued her Saturday afternoons arranging flowers in the shop and making deliveries around town. Not that it cut into the time she could spend with Daniel, her Husband of two years. He had a busy career of his own working for an engineering firm and spent a majority of his weekends studying for the night classes he was taking to get his MBA.
Even though Lacy Curtis was living the American Dream of having a good job, a new house and a handsome and ambitious Husband, each time she would drive down through those residential neighborhoods and see those nameless children playing in their yards while she made deliveries for the shop, Lacy would feel something missing in her life.
Barely five feet tall and slightly waif, Lacy had to strain to see over the delivery truck's steering wheel as she drove through town.
"You're still a child yourself," she would often try to rationalize een though she knew 26 could turn into 46 just like that.
"It's just your self esteem, or lack thereof," Lacy knew, deep down knowing a child would only complicate things as she and Daniel each tried to get their careers established.
"Daniel's right...just like he always is," Lacy mumbled bitterly under her breath as she once again questioned whether she got married because she was supposed to, or wanted to.
"Not like we could conceive a child right now even if we both wanted it," She sarcastically groaned, noting the nonexistent passion in their relationship. "It's been easily a month and a half since we've done anything."
Lacy had accepted much of the blame for that herself. Never comfortable in her own skin when it came to her sexuality, she had always felt inadequate with her small breasts, narrow boyish hips and pale complexion. It didn't help either that Lacy had a very introspective demeanor and never allowed herself to get sucked into situations were she didn't have a certain level of control. While her academics flourished, her social life and personal discovery never kept pace and unfortunately even in marriage, she had committed herself to a man that, like her, had never seen sexual gratification as something to be worked for.
Even though she had lost her virginity in her dorm room her Sophomore year of college, long before she had ever met Daniel, Lacy, with her straight auburn hair, reserved charm and bookwormish looks, had never fully given in to enjoying the potential fruits of her libido.
"Got about 30 minutes to kill," she said to herself in the truck, checking her watch at a stoplight about five blocks from where her Father had bought a house after the dissolution of her parents' marriage.
Reaching for her cell phone to call and make sure he was home, before she could grab it the light turned green and the car behind her honked impatiently.
"For Pete sake...You don't have to call your Dad and let him know you're coming...you know his door is always open," she chided herself as she weaved through the outskirts of town to the secluded plot of land her Father now called home.
_______________________________
Elliot Ferguson had been divorced for two and a half years, but in truth he and Lacy's Mother had become detached long before that.
Naturally staid, Elliot's easy going and non-descript personality was in stark contrast to the abrasive and non stop energy of his wife of over 20 years. Corina hadn't been like that when they first married, but as the inevitable stress of aging combined with her own insecurities and prescription drug use, she became something her Husband, as well as her three children, struggled to endure.
Elliot and Corina had held the facade of marriage together until all three kids finished college but as soon as the nest was empty, Elliot wasted little time filing the papers.
In those private moments of self relfection however, it would occasionally gnaw at Elliot over how fast Corina had latched on to another man and married him after their divorce.
"A parasite needs a host...that's why she's moved on and you haven't," he would correctly deduce, but it was still of little solace considering he was now single and in his late 40's, with no idea how to deal with the dating scene. Not that the thought of settling down and trying to learn the ropes with another woman was something he really wanted to stomach.
A lot really hadn't changed in the way Elliot Ferguson went about living his life in the years following the divorce. He still dove headlong into his job as a researcher for several national magazines and the 12 hour days that came with it prevented him from harping too often on inadequacies in other areas of his life.
He had decided to not fight his Ex-wife's desire to keep the house and he took his chunk of the settlement and bought a smaller cottage styled home about a half hour from DC that was well off the main drag and shrouded by a lovely stand of majestic pines.
When Elliot did have some free time, especially on the weekends, he traveled into town and took in a lot of the cultural offerings that Corina never would have the patience or will to sit through. While he was in DC on those occasional Saturdays, Elliot would have dinner downtown and at least try the upscale bar scene before heading home. It wasn't an easy chore for him however.
In many ways, even though he was now 49, self sufficent and knowledgeable about a great many topics, when it came to interacting with strangers, especially women, Elliot was nothing more than the awkward 14 year old he'd always been. It wasn't until he met a bartender at one of those clubs on a mid summer Saturday night, that many of those same insecurities and curiosities of childhood would finally get the better of him.
With the privacy he had created in his life, the last thing Elliot Ferguson ever thought was the shameful, guilty pleasure he had discovered would ever come back to haunt him.
_____________________________________
Steering her delivery truck into the entrance of her Father's driveway, once she had rounded the bend that provided plenty of privacy from the main road, Lacy's attention was immediately grabbed by a grey Lexus parked next to her Father's Oldsmobile.
"Must be a friend or maybe a neighbor or co-worker," she casually thought.
"Who knows," another internal voice chimed in, "Maybe he's dating again...the car does have DC plates."
As much as she wanted to believe her Dad had finally moved past his dissolved marriage and was back out on the market, being so much like him from a personality standpoint, she inherently understood just how awkward it would be for someone of his make-up to just dive back into the dating pool.
Parking on the upper edge of the driveway so she wouldn't have to back the cumbersome truck out, Lacy switched off the ignition and looked around for any hint of where her Father might be.
"You really should have called first," that same internal voice chirped, but by then she was already walking across her Father's front yard towards the porch.
Seeing the front door was shut and there were no sign of life through the windows along the front of the house, Lacy immediately assumed her Dad and whoever his visitor was were sitting on the back deck that overlooked the Fall foliage in his spacious back yard, probably sharing an imported beer as he frequently did on lazy Saturday afternoons.
Slipping off the porch, Lacy headed left towards the far side of the house. Her gaze straight ahead as she walked, Lacy hummed to herself listening to the sound of the fallen Autumn leaves crunch under her feet, fully expecting when she turned the corner to see her Father sitting there on his favorite deck chair, amiably talking to whomever his visitor was.
It wasn't until she arrived at that back corner of the house and caught the horrific image on the rear deck, through the branches of one of her Father's well manicured bushes, that Lacy Curtis fully understood what having her world turned upside down meant.
Lost in her own little peaceful patch of obliviousness while she had been walking around the house, the thrashing and gasping sounds that had been emanating the whole time from the backyard suddenly pierced Lacy's eardrums once the full gravity of what she was witnessing registered.
___________________________________
36 year old Marco Gineffri grew up in New York City, the Son of second generation Italian immigrants. Through a great deal of sacrifice and financial frugality, the family had saved up enough money to send Marco to college in Manhattan.
Marco had known he was gay from the time he was a teenager, but had kept it under wraps until he took a job out of college working as an entry level IT guy for a Washington DC law firm. Once away from home and free from the strict Catholic expectations of his Mother and Father, Marco more than made up for lost time.
So much in fact that he quickly came to realize he could make a much better living perusing his libidinal urges with the more than ample, and often secretive, upscale gay population around the Nation's Capital than he ever would programming a computer.
