Kyle - Part 2 (#4)

Chapter 1

       I went up to the second floor of our new house the Monday morning after the Thanksgiving weekend to make sure Justin and Brian were up, and their rooms were empty. That was really strange to me, since they hadn't asked for permission to spend the night somewhere else. It was early, but they had to get up to go to work and to school. Tim and Kyle, who were often at our house, had spent the night at Tim's house. George Murphy, Tim's dad, had wanted to spend time with them alone, so Tim and Kyle had spent the night at George's house.
       Then I remembered the third floor. Jus and Bri had moved up there to accommodate my family for the holiday weekend. I had assumed they had moved back to their own rooms, but maybe they hadn't.
       I went up to the third floor, and all the doors were closed. I really didn't know which room they might be in. I knocked on the door of the first of the two bedrooms, and there was no response. I tried the second door.
       "Who is it," Justin said.
       "It's me, Bubba. Get up. Is Brian in there with you?"
       "Yeah. Come on in," he said.
       I didn't really want to go in there. There wasn't a whole lot of time to spare in the morning, and Rick would have breakfast on the table in fifteen minutes.
       "Come in, Kevin," Justin said insistently.
       I opened the door. They were both in bed. Brian was covered up to his neck, but Jus was sitting up, naked and uncovered.
       "What's up, guys," I asked.
       "Brian and I have been sleeping together," Jus said. Brian looked a little embarrassed, but it didn't seem to bother Jus.
       "I know."
       "Is it okay," Jus asked.
       "You know the rules about sex in this house, Jus," I said.
       "Yes, sir, I do," he said. "And I've never broken one of them. I swear to God."
       "I believe you, son," I said.
       "Does that mean it's okay," Brian asked.
       "As long as neither one of you ever does anything the other one doesn't want to do, and as long as you keep sex private, it's okay," I said. "I take it you broke up with Jason."
       "Well, he actually broke up with me. Saturday afternoon, right at the start of the party. We're still going to be friends, though," Jus said.
       "Well, that worked out pretty well, didn't it," I said.
       "It worked out great. Brian and I are boyfriends now," Justin said.
       "Congratulations. You're lucky to have one another," I said. "When do you have to go back to the doctor," I asked.
       "I don't have to. I went last week. I'm clean. Three tests, and he said I didn't have to come back."
       "Did you talk to him about using condoms," I asked.
       "Yeah. He said it was a good idea to keep using them. He said that if I got myself into a relationship like you and Rick, or Tim and Kyle, I wouldn't have to use them, but he still said it was a good idea. But we ain't going to do what I need to use them for."
       "A lot of gay couples never have anal sex, so that's not unusual. Then again, you might want to some day. That's your responsibility, Jus." I really didn't know how far to push it. Justin had, after all, been the one who initiated the HIV screening when he first met Jason, so I knew he was aware of HIV and other diseases and the need to protect against them.
       "Kevin?"
       I could tell Justin wanted to say something that was difficult for him.
       "What, Bubba?"
       "Jason and I only did it once. He wanted to see what it was like for me to be in him. I don't like doing it. Even thinking about it hurts my ass. Please don't tell Kyle and Tim, okay?"
       "It's nothing to be ashamed of," I said very gently. "How do you feel about anal sex, Brian?"
       "I don't want to do it, either. At least, not the full thing, you know? Not if Justin doesn't want to."
       "Like I said, boys, some couples live long and happy lives together without having anal intercourse. Rick and I didn't do it for a long time, and we don't do it very often now. It's loving each other, caring about each other, making each other feel good by sharing yourself with the other one that's important. There are tons of things you can do sexually to share yourself with each other."
       "You're not going to tell Tim and Kyle, are you," Justin asked.
       "Of course not, Bubba, but I'm sure they wouldn't care. They're your brothers, boys. They love you two."
       "I know, but I know they do it."
       "Look, just like I'm not going to talk to them about your sex life, let's don't talk about theirs, okay? Now you guys need to get up. It's getting late," I said.
       "We already took our showers. We just need to get dressed," Brian said.
       "Okay, well, let's get going."
       "Kevin?"
       "Yes, Jus," I said. I was starting to get a little impatient.
       "Thanks for talking to us. I love you."
       My heart melted. "You're welcome, Bubba. And I love you, too."
       I had just enough time to tell Rick about our talk before they came into the breakfast room.
       "Unbelievable," was all he said.

       We had been able to get the house presentable for my family for Thanksgiving, but there was still a lot that had to be done before it was "finished." Rick and I had an appointment with the curtain lady that first Monday afternoon after Thanksgiving. She came with a huge assortment of samples and with a young male assistant who did the measuring. The boy was probably twenty or so, and he was pretty good looking. He wasn't effeminate, but my gaydar, which I had finally begun to develop, was buzzing.
       The lady was all business. After we had picked out the curtain material we liked, she said she could have the first-floor rooms done by February 1st. The rest would take longer. We had bought some cheap, make-do curtains for the living room and dining room in preparation for Thanksgiving. We had blinds in our bedroom and sitting room, which had come with the house, and the downstairs bathrooms were taken care of, too. Her time line would have to do.
       We agreed to the price, which was really a lot more than I thought it would be, and she said she'd have a contract to us in a day or two. Rick and I shook hands with her and with her assistant, and they were gone.
       "Goddamn! Did you think it was going to be that much," Rick asked me as soon as they were gone.
       "I had figured five thousand bucks, not eight thousand," I said. "It'll look great, though."
       "Oh, I know. I just don't ever really notice curtains, I guess. I will from now on, though; that's for damn sure."
       "I know. Me, too. Babe, did you think that boy who was with her was gay?"
       "I did, actually," he said. "That's not really like me, either. I've started doing that more and more lately."
       "Yeah, so have I. I guess we're getting sharper as we get older."
       "We also know a lot more gay guys now, too. That might have something to do with it," he said.
       "True. Would you like some coffee?"
       "Yeah, that sounds good," Rick said. We moved to the kitchen, and Rick made a pot of coffee.
       While we were sitting at the breakfast room table having coffee, it occurred to me that Christmas was right around the corner.
       "Now that Thanksgiving's behind us, we really ought to make some Christmas plans, don't you think," I asked.
       "You're right. What would you like for Christmas?"
       "Just you," I said.
       "No. Come on Kevin. Give me some help. And God, what are we going to get the boys? I know," he said, "we can give 'em each a carton of cigarettes and a pack of condoms. That's what Jus said he got last Christmas, remember?"
       "Yes, I remember that very well. You teared up, as I recall," I said.
       "I don't remember doing that, but I probably did."
       "I've been thinking about this a little bit. Seriously, you and I have absolutely everything we want, right? Tim and Kyle do, too. If they don't, they can just go to the warehouse and get it."
       "I know. That's quite an arrangement, isn't it? How would you have liked to have had that set up when you were a kid?"
       "I know. But they don't abuse it. In fact, Kyle has surprisingly little stuff for somebody with the kind of money the Goodsons have, don't you think?"
       "Yeah. Really, you're right. And he really appreciates what people give him. He loves that camera George gave him, and the cowboy boots and hat. That really surprised me that he would like that stuff that much. I think he's worn those boots every day since he got them," Rick said.
       "He told me he likes it that they make him six feet tall," I said. "That, plus the fact that Justin gave them to him."
       "Justin and Jason," Rick said.
       "No, it was just Justin. Jason didn't contribute anything to that present, and Kyle knows it."
       "That does put the boots into a different light," Rick said.
       "Yeah. And Justin loves the fact that Kyle loves the boots."
       "Did Dave contribute to the hat, or was that all Brian's doing," he asked.
       "Well, actually, Dave put up ten dollars, Brian put up twenty, and you and I put up a hundred and twenty," I said.
       "Jesus Christ! That damn hat cost a hundred and fifty bucks?"
       "Yep, pardner, it did," I said in a fake cowboy accent.
       "How much did the fucking boots cost," Rick asked.
       "Three fifty," I said.
       "Holy shit! I can't believe those prices. Justin paid the full amount himself?"
       "He sure did. I offered to help him, but he didn't want me to," I said.
       "How much do you think that boat cost," Rick asked.
       "I would say, probably, $25,000. There's a trailer, too. He has to take his car in to have the trailer hitch installed."
       "Wow! I thought our gift was borderline extravagant, but I guess it wasn't, compared to all of that," Rick said.
       "I knew he was going to get a lot of nice things. And remember, the trip to New York is for Kyle and Tim."
       "Well, they're worth it, and I'm just glad we had the money to do that. But what about Christmas?"
       "Here's what I've been thinking. Let's get a pool table for the cabana. It can be for all the boys, and, of course, us and our friends will enjoy it, too."
       "That's a great idea. I like that." He was thinking. "Hey, we can get us all matching shirts to have something to open Christmas morning. What do you think?"
       "Yeah. Very good. We can get a long-sleeve polo and a short-sleeve polo for everybody, and we can have them embroidered with something like 'Crew of The Clay.'"
       "That is so cool, Babe. I love that idea," Rick said. "This is fun."
       "Here's what else. We tell the boys they can't give us anything."
       "Absolutely. There's too much difference between the haves and have-nots in that crowd. Kyle's not going to like that, though."
       "Right. But what they can do, see, is contribute what they would spend on us to the Empty Stocking Fund. That way, if Brian would spend ten dollars on each of us, he gives the Empty Stocking Fund twenty bucks. If Kyle would spend two hundred, he gives four hundred, and nobody has to be embarrassed because his present wasn't as nice as somebody else's."
       "And they need to do the same thing for each other, too. I can see Kyle going hog-ass wild and buying Tim a fucking condo, or something," Rick said.
       I laughed.
       "Seriously, Babe. Kyle could and would do that without blinking an eye if Tim wanted one. I was in the accounting department today, and I was being nosey. I took a look at his file. He's a millionaire several times over, like ten million. That's in trust. But he could probably put his hands on a half million tomorrow morning in cash, if he wanted to. The kid is rich!"
       "Do you think he knows about all of that," I asked. I hadn't known about my own much smaller trust until I turned twenty-one.
       "Yeah, I actually think he does. Probably not details and specifics, but his signature is all over the place. On the early documents he just signed 'Kyle,' and somebody else wrote in his last name. How cute is that?"
       I laughed, and Rick laughed with me.
       "He inherited all of Clay's money, too. I'm telling you, that boy is rich. In his own right. There's no telling how much he'll eventually inherit from Gene and Rita."
       "Well, it's a real tribute to them that he's not some stuck-up snob, don't you think," I asked.
       "I can no more imagine Kyle being stuck up than I can imagine me being Pope," he said.
       Another laugh.
       "But we've got two sets of boyfriends here, remember? They're going to want to give their boyfriends something," I said.
       "And they can do that Christmas morning, but let's tell them it can't be more than fifty dollars. And we live with that, too, for each other," he said. "They can do the Empty Stocking Fund thing for non-boyfriends."
       "Let's write this stuff down so we don't forget it." I got a pad and a pen.
       "Okay," Rick said. "Pool table for all the boys and us. Then two shirts for each of us, embroidered with 'Crew of The Clay.'"
       "You know, the shirt idea can go a long way. We're going to have to get something for all the friends. Why not shirts?"
       "Kevin, that's perfect, man. Let's figure out how many we're going to need," Rick said.
       I got ready to write down names.
       "Kevin, Rick, Tim, Kyle, Justin, Brian, Jeff, George, Terry, Monte, Philip, Ryan, Jerry, Pat, Sam, Fred, Chad, Gage, Gene, and Rita. Who am I leaving out?"
       I counted the names. "That's twenty people. Do you want to do the same thing with my parents and Craig and Cherie?"
       "Definitely. And my mom and her husband, too," Rick said.
       "That's twenty-six people. Let's order thirty. We'll have a few extra, but you know somebody is going to lose a shirt somewhere along the line," I said.
       "What color should we get," Rick asked.
       I knew he was going to order them, so we needed to work that out.
       "What colors are on the boat," I asked.
       "It's white, with maroon trim. Do you like white shirts with maroon writing, or maroon shirts with white writing?"
       "Let's do both. White short-sleeve shirts, maroon long-sleeve shirts," I said.
       "Perfect," he said. "I love it. Extra-large for the men, medium for the women?"
       "Yep. That's it," I said.
       "That was pretty easy. I'll order the shirts tomorrow morning. And I'll order the pool table, too."
       "Let me order the pool table through one of the hotels. We can get a much better one that way," I said.
       "Good thinking. Make sure it's a big one, though, okay?"
       "Oh, I know. I'm going to call Gene and tell him what we're doing, just to make sure it's okay to use business accounts to order this stuff."
       "Yeah, do that," Rick said.
       Gene was still at the office when I called. I explained to him what we were thinking, and he thought it was a terrific idea.
       "Isn't there an exercise room in that cabana," Gene asked.
       "Yeah. It's a nice one, too," I said. "It's pretty big."
       "I thought I remembered that there was. Is there any equipment in it," Gene asked.
       "Not yet," I said.
       "Rita and I are going to fill that room as our Christmas gift to y'all and the boys," he said.
       "Gene, you don't have to do that," I said.
       "I know it. And y'all don't have to buy 'em a pool table, either. But we both want to, don't we," he said.
       "Yeah, I guess we do."
       "I'd love to be there Christmas morning when y'all take 'em out there to see all that stuff," he said.
       "Why don't you and Rita spend Christmas Eve night with us? And Christmas Day, too," I said.
       "God, I was hoping you'd say that. Thank you. Rita and I want to be with Kyle and Tim and Jeff so bad, but I know they'll want to be with you all. I've been thinking about Christmas morning a while, and this is the perfect solution. George and I had lunch together today, and we talked about Christmas. We both said we hoped you would invite us," Gene said.
       "Hell, you should have said something, man," I said.
       "I would have, if you hadn't brought it up."
       He and I both laughed.
       "This is going to be a real family Christmas with the whole family," I said.
       "Well, almost," he said. There was sadness in his voice, and I suddenly felt like a fool.
       "Gene, I'm so sorry, I ...."
       "Forget about it, Kevin. It was just a slip of the tongue," Gene said.
       "How are you and Rita going to do," I asked.
       "Being there with y'all will make it possible, I think. Otherwise, I didn't know," he said.
       "Well, it's all set now, right?"
       "Right, Kevin. So right," Gene said.
       "Gene, Rick and I need to go to New Orleans a few days before Christmas. We've always done that. My parents have a big party on December 23rd, and we need to be there for that. We'd like to take the boys."
       "And...?"
       "And is that okay with you and Rita?"
       "God, almighty, Kevin. You know it's okay."
       "I thought it would be, but I just wanted to check, you know?"
       "When are y'all going to leave?"
       "Well, they have a half day on December 19th. We thought we could leave right after they got out of school. Jeff will be here by then. In fact, he's coming home week after next."
       "God, that sounds great. I wish Rita and I could go, too," Gene said.
       "You can, Gene. Why can't you," I asked.
       "Because we weren't invited," he said.
       "Well, you are now. You and Rita better be there, man. I'm calling my parents as soon as we hang up."
       "Thank you, Kevin. I was worried about how we were going to make it through the holidays, but now I see how. Y'all are going to keep us busy, and God knows we need that." Pause. "Oh, did you know George has a date tonight?"
       "A date? George?"
       "Yes, sir. She's a beautiful lady, too. An orthodontist. They'll probably talk about teeth all night."
       I laughed.
       "Gene, how did you find that out," I asked.
       "I'm George's best friend, Kevin. That's how. He's mine, too. We see each other or talk every day."
       "I knew you guys were friends, but I didn't know you were that close," I said.
       "Oh, yeah. We are. He's gotten me through many a hard day since Clay died. He talked to Father Jerry today, too, and Jerry told him his annulment from his first marriage should be a piece of cake. I don't really understand all that Catholic mumbo-jumbo, but George was happy with it."
       "I understand it, Gene, and I'm happy for George. Tim was his life, you know, but now Tim has somebody else," I said.
       Gene laughed. "Yeah, and Tim's got the best one, too."
       "Absolutely. No question about that, Gene. No question at all."
       We said good night after a few more pleasantries, and we hung up.
       "Did you listen to what I was saying," I asked Rick after I hung up.
       "Yeah. Man, I'm so glad you thought fast. Since we really didn't know Clay all that well, I don't think about him very much. I've got to learn to be more sensitive about things like that," Rick said.
       "Well, thank God it came up. I felt like shit for not remembering Clay when I said it would be a Christmas with the whole family."
       "Yeah, but you're not shit. That was just a brain fart. Hell, I wouldn't have thought of him, either," my partner said.
       "Well, let me call my parents."
       I called my parents and told them I would like to bring the five boys, plus Gene and Rita, to their house for Christmas.
       "How many people are we talking about, exactly," my mom asked.
       "Well, nine, actually," I said.
       "Hmmmm. Let me think. You and Rick, that's one room. Craig and Cherie, that's two. Rita and Gene, that's three. Five boys in two rooms? Will that work?"
       "Wait a minute," my dad said. "You forgot George."
       "The five boys will do fine in two rooms," I said. "Can't Craig and Cherie go home? Why do they have to spend the night?"
       "You're right, Kevin. They don't have to. In fact, I'm sure they would prefer not to," my dad said. He was looking out for his buddy, George.
       "Rick and I will drive them home so they won't have to worry about drinking," I said.
       "That'll work nicely," Mom said.
       After some small talk, we said goodbye.
       "Well, that's all set," I said to Rick. "I volunteered you to drive Craig and Cherie home after the party so they won't take up a bedroom. I forgot about George until my dad brought him up."
       "Duh! Me, too. You know what? We can't give the New Orleans crowd shirts. Everybody will see them, and that'll spoil the surprise Christmas morning," he said.
       "Good thinking. Let's forget about shirts for them. What do you think about the Empty Stocking Fund idea for them, too?"
       "Oh, that's too good not to explore. Call Craig and see what he thinks about it."
       I dialed Craig's office number, but his secretary said he was already gone for the day. Then I dialed their home number, and Cherie answered.
       "Hi, sweetheart," I said, right after she answered.
       "Hi. We were going to call you guys later. Is Rick there? Put the call on speaker, if he is."
       I activated the speaker.
       "Hi, Cherie," Rick said.
       "Hi, Rick. Guys, your ears must have burned like fire all day Sunday. We talked about you nonstop all the way home. It was the best holiday weekend any of us ever had. Thank you so much."
       "It was good, wasn't it," I said.
       "It was the best. Your brother has not shut up one minute about those kids. It wouldn't surprise me if y'all turned up uncles pretty soon," she said.
       "Well, that would just be the best," I said.
       "You've got our support, for sure, sister," Rick said.
       "We've been making Christmas plans. Is Craig there?"
       "He just opened the back door. Let me turn the speaker on."
       We could hear him kissing her hello.
       "Guys, what a weekend! That was the best Thanksgiving I ever had in my life. Probably the best holiday of any kind. Thanks for everything, fellas."
       "We had a great time, too, Bubba," Rick said. "We're making Christmas plans, and we want to run something by the two of you."
       I explained our idea about donating to a charity instead of spending money on one another, and they loved the idea.
       "I have relatives who have done that for years, Kev," Cherie said. "I know your parents will go along with it. Do you want me to talk to them?"
       "Yeah, if you would," I said. "We just got off the phone with them, but we didn't think of it while we still had them." I told them about our plans for the party trip and about what we had decided to do with our family.
       "When we were there I thought you guys needed a pool table," Craig said. "And a basketball goal, too."
       "We didn't really have room for a pool table in the other house, but we've got room now. I hadn't thought about a basketball goal, but that's a good idea."
       "I know just where we can put the basketball goal, too, so we'll be able to use it during pool parties," Rick said.
       "Well, we'll let y'all get busy with dinner," Cherie said. "Thanks again, guys, for everything."
       After a couple more pleasantries we hung up.
       "I'm glad Craig mentioned the basketball goal," Rick said. "We can add that in, can't we? And a couple of basketballs?"
       "Oh, of course," I said.
       Then he said, "Where are the kids?" It was four o'clock, and they weren't home yet.
       "They had to stay after school for tryouts for the play. Tim and Kyle both want to be in it, and I guess Brian stayed there with them."
       "Cool."
       Justin was the first one home.
       "You're home early," I said after telling him hello.
       "I don't have to go on Monday nights anymore. I'm finished all my math," he said.
       "How can you be finished math? The semester isn't over yet," Rick said.
       "I know, but we do it individually, on the computers. I'm finished everything but American history, in fact," he said.
       Justin pulled at his crotch, and I saw that there was a much bigger bulge there than usual.
       "What's the matter," Rick asked him to tease him.
       "It's been like this all day. My underwear is soaked," he said.
       "What? You got a little leak going on there, buddy," Rick asked.
       "I've been thinking about Brian all day," he grinned bashfully.
       "That's cute, Jus," Rick said.
       "Are you making fun of me? You are, aren't you?"
       "No, I do think it's cute. I think about Kevin, too, you know. I leak pre-cum sometimes. Sit down and talk to us, man. We don't get much time with just you."
       He sat down, and I could tell he really liked having our undivided attention.
       "Where is Brian, anyway," Jus asked.
       "Tim and Kyle had to stay after school to try out for a play. Brian must have stayed with them," I said.
       "Oh, yeah. That's right. He wants to be in the play, too," he said. "Kevin, did you tell him what we talked about this morning?"
       "Yeah. Before you came downstairs this morning, in fact," I said.
       "I changed my mind. You can tell Tim and Kyle, if it ever comes up. I don't care," Jus said.
       "Okay, Jus, but we really don't talk to them about your sex life, any more than we talk to you about theirs," I said.
       "Okay. I talked to Jason today. He told me he's going to miss you guys. I told him he was still my friend and that he was welcome here. Did I do the right thing?"
       "Of course you did. He better get his scrawny ass around here to see us," Rick said.
       "Well, he's got a new boy, you know?"
       "Are you surprised," I asked.
       "No. I figured that was what his wanting to break up was all about. Besides, I got me a new one, too. Brian's something, isn't he? He's so gentle and nice. And I think he's beautiful. Do y'all?"
       "Yeah, he is beautiful, Jus, but so are you," Rick said.
       "Get out of here, Rick. Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter," Jus said.
       "I'm serious, Justin. I'm not teasing you. You were great this weekend. You pitched in without having to be asked, you were funny, you talked to everybody, you were just perfect. To me, that's beautiful."
       "To me, too, Jus," I said.
       "Well, it's all thanks to you guys, that's for sure. Y'all remember what a prick I was at first?"
       "We figured you were just scared," Rick said.
       "I can't even tell you how scared I was at first. Rick, all my life I was dirt poor. I mean dirt poor. I didn't have anything. Then to come here with all of this. I was scared to death I'd break something, or something would go missing and y'all would think I had stolen it. My table manners were shit. The words 'please' and 'thank you' weren't even in my vocabulary. Y'all never made fun of me or mocked me or got down on my case. Now I know y'all love me."
       "Do you remember when the turning point was? When you realized we really were serious about you," I asked.
       "Yes, sir. I remember the exact second. It hasn't been that long, either."
       "Do you mind telling us when it was, Bubba," Rick asked.
       "It was in North Carolina. We were all in the hot tub the last night. I asked if you thought I'd ever be able to go back there. Rick, I think it was you who said it. You said, 'You don't get it, do you? You really are part of this family, and you'll always be welcome here and in our house at home.' Those might not be the exact words, but that's pretty close."
       "It makes us feel so good to hear you say that, Jus," I said.
       "It makes me feel pretty good to say it, too," he said.
       "Justin, I just realized something. We've been talking for thirty minutes, and you have not made a single grammar mistake. Were you aware of that," I asked.
       His grin covered his face, and I could tell he was delighted I had noticed that.
       "I've been working on it," he said. "I still say ain't and he don't and stuff like that when I talk to the other boys, but I don't want to sound like a dumbass hick. Y'all don't talk like that on a regular basis."
       "This is just another reason for us to be proud of you, man," Rick said. "You didn't have to change like that, but you're going to find it will open more doors for you in the future."
       "I know it. Is there any coffee," he asked.
       "Yeah, and it should still be pretty fresh. Make another pot if it isn't, though," I said.
       He got up and came back with his coffee in a few seconds.
       "Kevin, your mom's the nicest lady I ever met in my life," he said.
       "Thank you, Jus," I said. "She was really taken with all five of you guys, but I think she was a little sweeter on you and Brian than on the others."
       "Brian slipped and called her grandma a few times. She really ate that up, too," he said.
       "Oh, I'm sure she did. We talked to Cherie a few minutes ago, and she said they talked about us all the way home. She said Craig hasn't shut up about you guys for one minute since they've been home," I said.
       "That Cherie is really something. She's the second nicest lady I ever met. Ole Jeff was wishing he was straight and she was single, too. Hell, so was I, a little bit," he said.
       "We haven't really talked to you much about being gay. How do you feel about it," I asked.
       Jus lit up a smoke to have with his coffee.
       "I used to hate being gay. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was, but in my head to me being gay meant being hurt. That's another thing I learned from y'all. Now, being gay just seems being normal. I think that's why guys like Chad and Gage turn me off so much. Don't get me wrong. I like both of those boys, and I'd fight any son of a bitch who tried to do them wrong, but it just doesn't seem normal."
       "We've talked about this before. You can't help the way you feel, but you can help the way you treat them. And you've treated them great. And we're proud of you for that, too," I said. "They really like you, Jus. You're a pretty macho guy, and for you to like them and treat them nice has got to mean a lot to them."
       "I like them, too," he said. "I guess I've learned to be a little more tolerant. And all that dancing? Man that's the best. We wouldn't be doing it without the two of them."
       "Speaking of that makes me think of something Kevin and I were talking about before. How did you know Kyle was going to love his boots as much as he does," Rick asked.
       "I didn't know it. I sort of took a chance. He had admired my boots, of course, but he had never asked to borrow them or anything. I figured they'd look good on him, so I went ahead and got them for him," Jus said.
       "As far as I can tell, he's worn them every day since you gave them to him," Rick said. "I think he'd even wear them to sleep, if Tim would let him."
       Justin chuckled.
       "He wears them more than I wear mine. It really makes me happy that I could give him something he likes that much," he said.
       "He and Tim really love you, you know," I said.
       "I know, and I love them, too. Sam was saying one time that we were the first friends that Chad ever had. The fact of the matter is, y'all are the first friends that I've ever had, too. And I don't even wear makeup."
       That cracked us up, and we were still laughing as Tim, Kyle, and Brian came in.
       "What's so funny," Kyle asked.
       "You truly had to be there," I said.
       Brian stood right behind Jus, and he put his hands on his shoulders.
       "Kiss him hello, if you want to," Kyle said. "I know you want to."
       Brian smiled a cute, shy smile, and he leaned over and gave Jus a peck on the lips.
       "Let's all get a snack and go in the den. We have something to talk about," Rick said.
       We ran out of leftovers from Thanksgiving on Saturday, so we all got regular food. Rick got two apples and a banana, I got out some cheese and crackers for me and for anybody else who wanted some. Kyle opened a can of chili for hotdogs for the boys. We took our food to the den to talk about Christmas.

Chapter 2

       When everybody was in place in the den with their snacks, I started the ball rolling.
       "First, I want to say that you all were wonderful during the weekend. My parents and Craig and Cherie just couldn't say enough about how much fun they had, how much they liked all of you, and everything. Thank you for being great kids."
       "We all had a great time, Kev," Kyle said.
       "I know I did," Jus said.
       "Me, too. I even got me a boyfriend out of that weekend," Brian said.
       "The two of you," Tim asked, surprised, pointing back and forth between Jus and Bri.
       Justin and Brian grinned and nodded.
       "That's what the kiss was all about," he said. "How did you know, and why didn't you tell me," Tim demanded of Kyle.
       "I didn't tell you because I thought you knew, Babe," Kyle said. "I'm sorry."
       "That's all right. At least I know now. Brian's a lot better than Jason," Tim said.
       "I'm glad you're happy, Tim, but we're not going to trash Jason. He's a very nice boy, and he's still our friend, even if he and Jus aren't dating anymore," Rick said.
       "He wasn't going to trash Jason. Don't pick on Tim," Kyle said.
       Here we go, I thought.
       "Two things, Kyle. First, I knew you were going to say those exact words before they were out of your mouth, and I'm not picking on Tim. Second, one day, if you decide to, you'll graduate from law school and be qualified to argue other people's cases for them."
       "So I guess it's really me you're picking on," Kyle said with a grin.
       "Yeah, right," Rick said.
       "Nobody's picking on anybody. The second thing I want to talk about, if I can get a word in between the two Ricks, is Justin. Jus, give us a report on your progress in school."
       "Huh?"
       "Tell them what you told Rick and me about math," I said.
       "Oh. Well, I'm just about finished with adult school," he said. "I only have to go there a couple more times, and I'll be all done."
       "Cool, bro," Kyle said.
       Justin lapped up Kyle's approval.
       "When do you take your test," Kyle asked.
       "I'm supposed to take it January 8th," Jus said. "If I pass it, I'll get my GED, and I'll be able to go to college."
       "Will you be able to start college in January," I asked.
       "No, sir. Maybe I could start late or something, but I want to work full time until it starts when they go back to school. I talked to my counselor about it, and she said she thought that was a good idea," he said.
       "Well, that way, too, you might be able to pay off your truck," I said.
       "I paid that off last month," he said quietly.
       "You did?! Man, that's wonderful. Why didn't you tell us," Rick asked.
       "I don't know. It just never came up," he said.
       "Well, that's reason number sixteen for us to be proud of you, Bubba," Rick said.
       Everybody, led by Kyle, of course, applauded, and Justin turned beet red.
       "Okay," I said, when everybody settled down, "the third thing we want us to talk about is Christmas. It's only three weeks away, plus a little more. Rick suggested we give each of you a carton of cigarettes and a pack of condoms. Does that suit you," I asked.
       Justin almost fell off the chair he was on, he was laughing so hard. I explained to the others why he was laughing, and they laughed, too, but only out of politeness.
       "No, here's what we have in mind, guys. Rick and I want to get something sort of big for all of you. All of us, really, and our friends, too. That will be everybody's major gift. Then, Rick and I are going to give each of you, and each other, too, the same gift. It won't be terribly expensive, but it'll be something we can unwrap Christmas morning."
       I paused for reactions, but there really weren't any.
       "Okay, here's the next part. Instead of giving Rick and me gifts, you donate what you would have spent on us to the Empty Stocking Fund. That's something the newspaper and businesses around town do every year at Christmas to help needy children have Christmas presents. You just give the money in someone's name, but you don't tell the person how much. That simplifies things a lot. First, you don't have to shop. Second, we won't get stuff that we may or may not want. Third, some needy kids get help. Fourth, nobody's embarrassed because their gift costs less than somebody else's gift. How does that sound?"
       "Yeah, I like that except for one thing," Kyle said.
       "What," I asked.
       "Well, you and Rick get to give us presents, but we don't get to give you one. Can't we say no more than one present for each of you?"
       "He does have a point, Babe," Rick said.
       "If Tim and Brian don't have money, don't you think Justin and I will take care of that," Kyle asked.
       "Would you be satisfied if we said only one gift from each of you, and no more than $25," I asked.
       "Yeah, I can live with that," Kyle said. "I know your rules make sense, Kev, but, damn it, we love you guys."
       "Okay, there's another part. Boyfriends can give each other gifts to open Christmas morning, but the gifts can't cost more than fifty dollars, total. Brian, you can give Jus a gift, but nobody else. Understand? If you want to give Tim or Kyle or Jeff a gift, you make a donation to the Empty Stocking Fund. Is that clear with everybody?"
       "You and Rick figured this out together, or did you do it by yourself," Jus asked.
       "We did it together, Jus," I said.
       "This is good. It was probably your idea, Kevin," Jus said.
       "Ouch," Rick said. We all laughed.
       "What about my parents, your parents, Cherie, Craig, the friends? All of them," Kyle asked.
       "Rick and I are giving everybody the same thing we're giving you guys," I said. "I talked to Cherie tonight about the charity donation, and she and Craig loved the idea. They're going to talk to my parents. Rick will tell his mom the same thing."
       "So basically we buy just one present, for our boyfriend, is that right," Tim asked.
       "That's right, Tim. Kevin and I won't spend more than fifty dollars on each other, either. If we want to give more, we give it to charity," Rick said.
       "I'm sorry to be a pain about this," Kyle said, "but I really want to give all those people something. It's the way we do it, man."
       "How do you boys feel about it," I asked.
       "Kevin, I'm sort of with Kyle on this," Jus said. "I mean, your mother is a very special lady to me. How can I not let her know that means something to me, man?"
       "Maybe I was trying to be too frugal," I said. "I had no idea you guys would feel this way. How about the one-gift idea for them, too?"
       "Okay, that's better," Justin said.
       "Y'all, my parents are not going to want to do this, I know. They're going to want to give each one of us several gifts," Kyle said.
       "You're wrong there, Bubba," Rick said. "We've already checked with your dad, and he loved the idea. He said he and your mom are also going to give one big gift to us and you guys, and I guarantee you it's going to be a good one."
       "You see what I mean? Are you going to have something for Philip and Ryan, too," Kyle asked.
       "Absolutely," Rick said. "Their names are on the list. They get what you guys get."
       "Do I still get a carton of cigarettes and a pack of condoms," Justin asked in his usual dry way.
       "You're going to find them under your pillow when you wake up Christmas morning, Bubba. You mark that down," Kyle said.
       We laughed at the both of them.
       "What about stockings," Kyle asked.
       "Do y'all always do stockings," I asked him.
       "Yeah. We don't have to, if you don't want to," he said.
       "What do you want to do, guys?"
       "Stockings!" They said it in unison.
       "How does this rule sound," Tim asked. "Only one gift per stocking from each of us, and it can't cost more than a dollar."
       There was general agreement from everybody.
       "Can't we make it five dollars," Kyle asked.
       "Let's compromise on two dollars. That'll force you to get creative," I said. "Or, you can also make a gift, if you want to."
       They all agreed to that. I wrote myself a note to tell the others about the stockings and about the changes to the original rules.
       Kyle was quiet. Everybody knew he was thinking, and they were waiting for his verdict on the matter. Finally he spoke.
       "I want to give Jeff something from my brother," Kyle said. His voice was quiet and subdued.
       Everybody was silent, and there wasn't any moving around.
       "Do you know what it is yet, Babe," Tim asked gently.
       "I have Clay's Boy Scout ring. I wore it until it got too small for me. I'm going to give that to Jeff. I'm going to have it mounted in a frame, along with his Eagle badge and his merit badges and his picture. Do you think Jeff would like that?" Kyle was very close to tears.
       "He'll love it," Brian said, his own eyes close to brimming over.
       "I hope he does," Kyle said.
       "Come here to me," Rick said, his voice thick with emotion. Kyle got up and walked to Rick. Rick grabbed him in a huge hug, and he made Kyle sit next to him on the sofa. Rick put his arm over Kyle's shoulder.
       "I knew this was going to get weepy, and it's too damn early for ice cream," Jus said.
       That made everybody laugh, and it restored our earlier mood.
       "There's more we have to talk about. Every year for the last umpteen years, my parents have had a big Christmas party on December 23rd. Rick and I have always gone to it, and last year we said our wedding vows publicly the next day in their house. This year, everybody's going," I said.
       "Y'all are taking us to New Orleans," Kyle asked.
       "Yes; hell, yes," I said. "Everybody. George, Rita, and Gene, and all five of you."
       They got excited over that.
       "When do we go," Tim asked.
       "You have a half day of school on December 19th. We'll leave as soon as you get home," I said.
       "Hell, we can skip that day," Kyle said.
       "No, you can't. You have exams that day," I said. "I checked."
       "Shit," Kyle said. "School fucks up everything."
       "We'll be in New Orleans by five that night," Rick said.
       "Can we all fit in Rick's truck," Kyle asked.
       "No. We'll need to take two cars. Mine and your dad's. George and Jeff can ride with your parents, Kyle," Rick said. "Or Jeff can ride with us. Whatever he wants to do."
       "All right. That's good. My mom has to pee a lot on trips. We can make better time than they can," Kyle said.
       "We'll work out those details later, okay," I said. "Another thing, when we get back home, Rita, Gene, and George are spending the night here Christmas Eve. We'll all be together when we open gifts Christmas morning."
       "Whose idea was that, Kevin? Yours," Kyle asked.
       "Yeah, I guess. Mine, Rick's, all of us, I guess," I said.
       "Well, whoever's idea it was, thank you. My parents would have been basket cases Christmas morning, even if I was there with them, which I would have had to be," Kyle said. "This way, we can keep them so busy they won't have time to be sad. Jeff either."
       "What is there to do in New Orleans," Justin asked.
       "Absolutely everything," I said.
       "I'd like to go to a hockey game," Kyle said. "I've never seen hockey in person. Only on TV. Ain't their team the Brass?"
       "We can go to a hockey game, if the team is in town," I said.
       "I want to go where you can catch beads," Tim said.
       "That's at Mardi Gras, Tim, not at Christmas," Rick said.
       "We saw some sites on the Internet where guys were showing their dicks in the street, and guys on a balcony were throwing them beads, Rick. I know they do it at Mardi Gras, but I think they do it all the time," Kyle said.
       "You guys would do that," Rick asked, knowing full well that they would.
       "Hell, yeah. Wouldn't you," Kyle said.
       "Would you show your dick for beads, Jus," I asked.
       "Depends on if the beads went with my outfit," Jus said, deadpan.
       We all laughed hard at him.
       "You guys get on the Web and do some research to see what you want to do while we're there," I said. "Rick and I have pretty much done it all, so it doesn't matter to us," I said.
       "Do you think we could do some gay stuff there," Kyle asked.
       "Like what," I asked.
       "Like maybe go to a gay club? I'd like to see what that's all about," Kyle said.
       "They wouldn't let y'all in, Bub," Rick said. "You're too young."
       "Yeah, they'd probably let them in. They wouldn't serve them alcohol without ID, but they'd let them in," I said. "Would the rest of you like to go to something like that?"
       They all said they would, even Brian.
       "Let us think about that, okay," I said.
       "Did you guys really see pictures of guys showing their dicks on the Internet," Jus asked.
       "Yeah. You haven't seen any of those sites," Tim asked.
       "I haven't fooled around with the Internet much yet," Jus said.
       "Come on. We'll show you," Kyle said. All four boys went upstairs.
       After they were gone, Rick said, "Kyle is so wonderful, but he pushes, doesn't he?"
       "What do you mean," I asked.
       "Oh, that business about me picking on Tim. I wasn't picking on Tim. Tim knew that. I just wanted to make the point that Jason is a good kid, and he's still our friend, even if he and Jus aren't boyfriends anymore. Every time I correct Tim, Kyle always has to get on me," Rick said.
       "If somebody said something to me that implied I wasn't doing the right thing and you thought you knew better, would you come to my defense," I asked.
       "How can you ask that? You know I would," he said.
       "Yes, I do know you would. Because you love me. Because I'm yours."
       "And Tim is Kyle's, isn't he?" Rick thought for a few seconds. "I need to keep that in mind, don't I? Just like I wouldn't let anybody get on you, he won't let anybody get on Tim, will he?"
       "That's right, but there's a difference. He loves you, probably more than he loves anyone but Tim, and he doesn't want to cross you, Babe," I said. "Not only that, Kyle is fair minded. If Tim says or does something wrong, Kyle won't cross you. You were right in saying what you said tonight, though. That could have easily degenerated into a trash Jason session, and you cut that off."
       "God, it's complicated being a parent," he said.
       "Yeah, and we've got some pretty complicated kids."

(Kyle's Perspective)
       I thought that stuff that Justin told us about finishing school was awesome. That boy had come a long, long way since we first met him, and I loved him a lot. I had never wanted Jus sexually, like I always wanted Tim, but, damn, he was a good guy. And that little Brian boy was so cute and nice and pretty! Man, I was so happy for him and Jus.
       I knew I shouldn't have spoken up to Rick when he got on Tim about trashing Jason. I liked Jason a lot, and I know Tim did, too. I think that's what got to me. Rick didn't know what Tim thinks about Jason, but I did. I knew Tim wasn't trashing Jay; he was just complimenting Brian. I guess I'll have to try harder next time.
       The Christmas plans sounded really great. I had been thinking about Christmas a lot, and about how my parents were going to deal with not having their boy anymore. I was hoping and praying Kevin and Rick would save us, and they did. I thought the whole gift thing was pretty cool, especially after we worked out the kinks in it. I knew Brian had next to no money. In fact, I was going to take his ass down to the warehouse, and we were going to shop till he dropped. I wouldn't have to do that now. I was going to put Brian to work during Spring Break, and that coming summer, too. A boy needs money, especially a boy who has a boyfriend.
       We went up to Justin's bedroom, which I guessed would now be their bedroom. Anyway, that was where his computer was. That house had been fully wired for cable TV and modem, and I had personally hooked Justin's system up when we moved in. I knew he was connected. Tim sat down at the keyboard, and he went to that page with all the links. He found some Mardi Gras sites. The rest of us sat on the bed.
       I had bought a gay adult-site password, and Tim used it to get to one of the sites that had the guys showing their dicks.
       "I didn't know this stuff was on here. Did you," Jus asked Brian.
       "Yeah, I knew," Bri said.
       "Damn. Look at that," Jus said. We were looking at a picture of a guy getting his cock sucked in a bar.
       "That's where we're going," I said.
       "No, shit! Man, I can't believe they do it in the open like that," Jus said.
       "The picture don't lie, Jus," I said.
       "I know."
       "I could never do that," Tim said.
       I looked at him like I'd kill him if he did, and he started laughing.
       "Have you never looked at this stuff on here before, man," I asked Jus.
       "No. I haven't really used it that much," he said. "It looks like I'm going to have to start, though."
       Tim browsed on over to some hardcore pages of young guys. Twinks, they called 'em. I reckoned the four of us were twinks. A lot of those boys were handsome, and all of them had really big dicks, it seemed like.
       "Do y'all want to watch some movies of guys like that," I asked.
       "Yeah," they all said.
       "Have you got some," Jus asked.
       "Yeah. At least I think I do," I said.
       "Where'd you get 'em," he asked.
       "Off my brother's computer. We went over to their apartment and got his stuff. I saw the movies on there, and I burned 'em on some CD's," I said.
       "Why ain't you showed 'em to us before," Jus asked.
       "'Cause I forgot I had 'em till just now," I said. "I ain't watched but a couple, but I've got about ten CD's of 'em."
       "Are they here," Tim asked.
       "Yes, Babe, I think so," I said. "Let me get 'em."
       I went to our room to get the CD's. I decided to get comfortable, so I stripped down to my briefs. My feet were pretty stinky from my boots, so I washed them before I went back.
       When I got back in the room, Tim and Brian were gone.
       "Where are Tim and Brian," I asked.
       "They went to make some popcorn and get some other snacks. You can't watch movies without snacks," Jus said. "I believe you've got the right idea," referring to how I was dressed. He took his clothes off down to his briefs.
       I didn't want sex with Justin, but, damn, he was sexy to me. He had worked out a lot in his life, and he had the build to show for it. I was a sucker for blonds, anyway, and he had the kind of body I wanted for myself. I wasn't too bad off, but I had only worked out in fits and starts, mostly during the last summer on the beach. Surfing had built me up some, but I knew I was going to have to get serious if I was ever going to look like him.
       "Have I told you how much I like my boots, Bubba," I asked.
       "You ain't told me in words, but you sure told me in how much you wear 'em," he said. He was smiling.
       "I love 'em, Jus. I just love 'em, man. Thank you for gettin' 'em for me. Jason didn't pay any for them, did he?"
       "Naw. He didn't have the money," Jus said.
       "Well, thank you, again."
       "I'm just glad you like 'em," he said. "I'm going to change my underwear. These have been half wet all day. Don't peek."
       "Yeah, right. Like I ain't seen it a million times. Even touched it a few times, too," I said. "What's making you leak so bad, Bubba? Brian?"
       "What the hell do you think? Of course it's Brian. Do you ever do that? For Tim, I mean?"
       "Not more than, say, every day," I said. He laughed.
       "You reckon we can learn from those movies," he asked.
       "Probably. Tim and I learned from a few that we downloaded. I guess you know we're probably all going to be rock hard from the movies, don't you," I said.
       "I can handle that," he said.
       "Do you think Brian can handle fooling around like we used to do sometimes with Jay," I asked.
       "I think so. We'll just see," he said. Then, "Kyle, don't laugh at me, okay? I want you to know something. I've been thinking about it off an on all day. Brian and I ain't going to do no butt fucking."
       He was so serious. I thought at first he might be making a joke, but I could tell he wasn't.
       "What y'all do is your business, Bubba. You know that," I said. "Why the hell would I laugh at you for that? Huh?"
       "Well, there's no reason to laugh, but I thought you might," he said. "I just can't do it, Kyle. And Brian doesn't want to do it, either, or so he says."
       "Those guys were mean to you, weren't they, Bubba," I asked.
       "You don't even want to know. I thought we were having sex, but it wasn't sex. It was brutality. Sure, a few of them were nice enough to me after, but they all hurt me. Even the nice ones."
       "It's a shame they did that. Butt sex feels good to me and Tim, but we ain't rough with it," I said.
       "Jay and I did butt stuff. You know, rubbing our cheeks, that kind of stuff. I like that, and he loved for me to do it to him. Brian and I will do that, I reckon. I just don't want anymore dicks up my butt."
       I wondered if maybe Jus had been injured.
       "Does it ever hurt when you shit or anything," I asked.
       "Yeah, every time. And sometimes it bleeds, too. I've never told anybody that before."
       "Have you ever had a doctor check you out, man? You might have an injury or something," I said.
       "I probably need to get it checked out. How do you say something like that to a doc, though," he asked.
       "I don't know, but I'll go with you if you want me to. I'll be there with you," I said.
       "Let me think about it. Maybe after I get done with school," he said.
       "Okay. Let me know, though," I said.
       Brian and Tim came back in, loaded down with cokes and popcorn and candy. I thought of them as the little boys and me and Justin as the big boys, although Tim was as big as I was.
       "Come on, Brian. Let's get casual like them," Tim said.
       He and Bri got down to their underwear.
       "Are these movies going to give us boners," Tim asked. He was probably wondering how much we should do with Jus and Brian.
       "I hope so," Brian answered. That's all it took for us to know he was ready.
       The first movie was of a guy jerking off. He was naked on a bed, and there wasn't any sound. It kind of looked homemade. He was uncut, and he kept pulling his skin all the way forward and pinching it with his fingers.
       "Can you do that, Tim," Jus asked.
       "Yeah," Tim said.
       "Does it feel good," Bri asked.
       Tim shrugged. "It's nothing special to me."
       The guy shot his load in just a few minutes.
       "Wow. Look at him shoot," Jus said.
       "Have you ever seen porno before," I asked.
       "No. That was pretty awesome. Play the next one."
       The next one started with a guy in what looked like a hallway. He had his pants down, and he was jerking his dick. Then, the scene changed to a room with four guys. Two were fucking the other two.
       "Why are they making all that noise," Bri asked.
       "'Cause it fucking hurts, that's why," Jus said.
       "I think it's supposed to be moans of pleasure," I said. "They just ain't good actors."
       Tim was next to me on the bed. He got up and fast forwarded it through about three minutes of fucking to the scene where one guy, one of the ones being fucked, shoots his cum without touching himself or being touched by the other guy.
       "Damn, that looks pretty hot," Bri said. "Do you guys do that?"
       "Usually," I said.
       Then the guy fucking him pulls out. He isn't wearing a condom, and he shoots onto his partner's butt cheeks without jerking himself. In a second, the other two guys do the same as the first two. It ended showing the guy in the hall again. He was peeping in on them. I thought they were going to show him coming, but they didn't.
       By then, all four of us were big and hard. Justin was next to me on one side, and he put his hand on my dick. Brian looked over at Tim to see his reaction, but Tim didn't say or do anything. In a second, Tim started sucking my nipple.
       We watched a few more movies, but we paid less and less attention to what was on the monitor and more and more to the guys next to us. Brian and Jus were kissing. Then Brian crawled down Jus and took his cock into his mouth. Whoa, I thought. We had never done that before with Justin and Jason. Next thing I knew, my cock was in Tim's mouth. Justin didn't last very long at all, and I was pretty close behind him.
       We kept that up for a couple more rounds each. It was like we were playing with Jus and Brian, but we were only really playing with our own boyfriends. Eventually, that ended, though. Tim and I went back to our room for some more intense one-on-one. I felt sure Justin and Brian hadn't had enough, either.

(Kevin's Perspective)
       Rick and I were on the sofa watching TV. We had our shirts off, and I was holding him. We had missed our usual Sunday morning love time the day before because my family had had to be tended to. We hadn't had time for anything that morning, either, and we were both feeling a little horny.
       Tim and Brian came scurrying downstairs and across the den to the kitchen. In a few minutes we heard popcorn popping in the microwave. Rick referred to them as the "little boys" and to Kyle and Justin as the "big boys." There wasn't much difference in the ages of all four of them, but the little boy-big boy division seemed apt, given their personalities. Rick had said Tim and Brian were like me and that Kyle and Justin were like him, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought he was right.
       In a few minutes the boys came back through the den headed upstairs. I wondered why they hadn't used the back stairs, which were closer to where they had been. They had two bags of popcorn, a bag of bite-size Snickers, and four cokes. They told us "hi," but they didn't stop to chat.
       "God, that popcorn smells good," Rick said.
       "I know. You want some?"
       "Yeah, but I'll make it."
       Rick got up to make the popcorn. It wasn't at all cold in the house, but I got a slight chill when the warmth of his body left mine. He came back in a few minutes with popcorn, soft drinks, and Snickers for us. He and I both loved the combined taste of popcorn and chocolate. He got back into position, his back against my chest.
       "What do you think is going on up there," he asked.
       "Probably a little 'brotherly bonding,'" I said. He chuckled.
       "Brotherly bonding" was a code term for us that meant they were doing something sexual. A few months before, he and I had come home unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon. We didn't go into the house, but we looked in through a window of the den. Tim and Kyle, and Jus and Jason, were naked on the floor and in a heavy make-out session. They each had a hand on a dick, but it wasn't their own. We beat a hasty retreat.
       Rick and I talked about whether we should say anything to them about it. For one thing, there was the privacy issue that we stressed so hard. In talking, though, we realized that for them it was private, or at least as private as they wanted it. We had come home a full two hours before we had told them we would be home, and that wasn't their fault. Quite clearly, nobody was doing anything that the other one didn't want to do, so we didn't have a case there, either.
       "Haven't you been to parties where straight couples were making out all over the place," he asked.
       "Yeah, since eighth grade, and a whole lot in high school and college," I said.
       "Me, too. Have you ever seen people have orgasms doing that?"
       "Oh, a bunch of times. Guys and girls," I said.
       "Me, too. If our boys did that at a party, they'd probably be beaten up or even killed," he said.
       "I see where you're going with this. I guess we just pretend we never saw anything."
       "Babe, all we saw was just a little brotherly bonding," Rick said.
       I chuckled. "But they're not really brothers."
       "That's just a technicality." We both laughed.
       We munched popcorn. Now and then we'd toss a bite-size candy bar into our mouths.
       "Can you believe Jus paid off his truck, and we didn't even know it," Rick asked.
       "I know. I felt kind of bad about not knowing, but, frankly, I had forgotten he still owed money on it, until tonight."
       "Me, too, until tonight, and I'm the one who co-signed the loan. Evidently he didn't forget, though."
       "We need to spend more time with him like we did this afternoon, don't you think, Babe," I said.
       "Yeah. And can you believe he's almost through with school? We haven't been very good about keeping up with that, either, have we," Rick said.
       "He just kind of faded into the background, you know? All that stuff with the storm, then with Clay, then Kyle's birthday, and Thanksgiving. We've kind of taken Justin for granted, but he's been there all along, plugging away, doing exactly what we said we expected of him."
       "I know. We're still new at this parenting thing, Babe. We're still learning," Rick said.
       He and I went to bed just then and did some "brotherly bonding" of our own.

       "Shit! We overslept," Kyle said, as he and Tim and Brian burst into the kitchen. It was 7:15, but I hadn't noticed. They had to be at school by 7:30. They grabbed cold toaster pastries to eat on the way, and they were off.
       Ordinarily, Rick and I would have gone back to bed just then, but we didn't for two reasons. Justin was still in the house and might want to talk again like we had the previous afternoon, and we had worn each other out the night before and needed a respite.
       In about ten minutes Jus came into the kitchen. He was naked, which was very unusual, but he was also extremely pale. He seemed to be trembling.
       "What's up with this, man," Rick said.
       "I'm sorry, Rick, but I'm sick. Bad sick, I think."
       We made him sit down, and Rick got him a cup of coffee. I handed him my cigarettes, and he took one. He lit it and coughed when he inhaled. Then he put it out. The look of pain on his face was excruciating.
       "What happened? What's going on," I demanded.
       "I'm bleeding, and it hurts so bad," he said.
       "Where, Bubba," Rick asked.
       "My ass."
       I looked down at his legs, and blood was running down the back side of both of them. It was pooling at his feet.
       "What the hell happened," Rick asked. He was almost screaming.
       Justin took a series of very deep breaths. Then he spoke.
       "I was hurting really bad this morning when I woke up. Sometimes, when that happens, it feels better when I take a shit. So that's what I did. Or tried to do. Straining to get it out just made it hurt more, so I stopped. I wiped myself, and I pulled back a handful of blood. I usually bleed some, but it never had been as much as today. Then it wouldn't stop, and I started feeling weak."
       "Have you had anything up there," Rick asked.
       Jus shook his head "no." "Not even a finger."
       "We need to get you to an emergency room," I said.
       "Okay," he whimpered.
       "Does Brian know what happened," Rick asked.
       "No. I didn't let him see it. Please don't tell him, Rick. Please don't."
       "We'll keep it quiet as best we can, Jus, but we can't promise that," Rick said.
       Rick ran upstairs and got jeans for Jus to put on. It looked like the bleeding had more or less stopped when we finally got him in them. Rick and I were just in underwear, so we hurriedly put on jeans, tee shirts, and shoes. We took the Bronco, and Rick drove. Justin and I were in the middle seat, and I held him and petted him and soothed him all the way to the hospital.
       Apparently, Tuesday mornings at that hospital emergency room weren't crisis times. There was a lady with a little kid who was screaming his head off, probably from a long-neglected ear infection. There was a wino who had a pretty angry cut on his shin, and there was us.
       Rick took care of the admissions paperwork at the desk, and I sat with Jus. I was a little surprised he could even sit at all. We weren't there more than ten minutes when we were called back. Rick joined us as soon as he could.
       The doctor was an Asian American woman. She had obviously been in the country for most of her life, if not all of it, by her speech. Rick and I told her who we were, and we filled her in on Justin's complaint. We pulled her aside and told her his history.
       "I've seen this before," she said. "I did my residency in New York City. I can't believe what people do to kids."
       She examined Jus, and the image that came to my mine was of a fisting video segment I had once downloaded from the Internet. She was very gentle, and a sexual experience for Jus it definitely wasn't.
       "I want him to see a proctologist," she said when she was finished. "I'm not a specialist in this area, but it wouldn't surprise me if he needed surgery. There's a tear in his rectum about four inches up, and it needs to be repaired."
       "Can he see somebody here," I asked.
       "Oh, yes. There's only one proctologist in town, but he's very good. You wait here with him, and let me get him on the phone."
       "Am I going to be all right," Jus asked.
       "Totally and absolutely," I said.
       "Kevin, can you call your mother. I'd like to talk to her," he said.
       I whipped out my cell phone and dialed her cell number. She answered immediately, and I gave the phone to Jus. They exchanged pleasantries, and then Jus told her what had happened in vivid detail. In a few minutes, he handed the phone back to me.
       "I'm coming," she said to me. "I'll be there this afternoon, one way or the other."
       "Mom, you don't have to do that. We have it under control. There are good doctors here, too, you know."
       "I'm not coming because I'm a doctor. I'm coming because he's my grandson, and he needs me, Kevin," she said.
       "But your being a doctor won't hurt, will it," I said.
       "Not a bit," she said, and I could almost hear her grinning.

       Justin saw the proctologist later that morning, and the verdict was that he did need surgery. It would be through his ass, though, so it would be done on what they called an out-patient basis. My mom arrived around three that afternoon, having flown from New Orleans to Atlanta to us. She was there in time to be present at the surgery, which happened at five that afternoon. Jus didn't have to be put to sleep for it; an epidural did just fine. At home, the next day, the assisting physician waited on him hand and foot, like any grandma would. She was on the phone a lot with my dad, who evidently wanted to be here with us, too.
       Rick and I talked to Kyle by phone from the hospital about the event, and he assured us he and Tim could settle Brian down if need be. Jus missed three days of work over that thing, but he got his last two days of school in that week. Our Christmas plans proceeded apace after that like nothing had happened.

Chapter 3

(Justin's Perspective)
       I had a great talk with Kevin and Rick when I got home after work on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I hadn't really been around the house as much as the other guys because of Jason, but that was going to change. They seemed real proud of me for doing so well in school, and them being proud of me made me happy.
       I had a lot to be happy about right then. We had had a great Thanksgiving, and I thought I was falling in love with Brian. I had thought about him all that day, and I had stayed at least half hard. My pre-cum flooded out of me all day. Around ten that morning my underwear was so wet I went into the restroom at work and stuffed toilet paper in my briefs to keep them dry. I had to change the paper a couple of times as the day wore on, and I'm sure I looked like some kind of humongous stud with a big ole bulge in my jeans. A couple of times I started to just jerk off and give myself some relief, but it felt good being half aroused all day, too.
       We talked about the plans for Christmas that night, and we all got excited. I pretty much knew Brian didn't have any money except for the allowance they gave him, and he needed that money to just live on. I had already decided I would help him out with his Christmas presents, and I figured Kyle would chip in, too, just like he would for Tim. After that discussion, though, I didn't think I'd have to give him as much.
       We got to talking about going to New Orleans, and Kyle took the words right out of my mouth when he asked if we could go to a few gay places to see what they were all about. Kevin and Rick were always a lot of fun, but they definitely weren't party animals. They had gone out three or four times to clubs with their friends since I had been there, but they always went to straight places. There were only two or three gay clubs in town and on the beach, so there wasn't a lot to choose from, but when they went out they didn't go to those. Mostly what they liked to do was party with the family and our friends. They didn't do a thing to hide the fact that they were a gay couple, and you would have thought it would be more comfortable for them in a gay place.
       Timmy said he wanted to go someplace to catch beads in New Orleans, and that brought up the idea of checking out places on the Internet that had pictures of guys showing their dicks to get beads. The four boys went upstairs to check it out on my computer. Kyle and Tim had given it to me for my birthday, but I hadn't spent much time fooling with it. I had to use a computer at work sometimes, and just about everything I did at school was on a computer. I just hadn't felt much like using the computer at home, too.
       Kyle asked if we wanted to see some horny movies of guys having sex, so he got some he had gotten from his brother. We were all sitting on my bed in just our underwear. I was holding Brian, and he and I were both already hard before the first movie started.
       I didn't really like the movie of the guys fucking. It brought back too many bad memories for me, but seeing their cum shoot out without anybody jerking their dicks was pretty hot. One movie showed a guy rimming another boy.
       "Have you ever done that," Brian asked.
       "Yeah," I said.
       "Did you like it," he asked.
       "Yeah. I like doing it, and I like having it done to me," I said. I didn't want him to think I was putting pressure on him, but I wouldn't mind having his tongue up my ass, if he was willing.
       "We do that all the time," Tim said. "Sometimes I make my stud muffin come doing that to him. Don't I, Baby?" Tim was being real playful and cute. I didn't think of Tim as being a real hot guy, but Kyle had told me he was awesome in bed. Of course, to Kyle, Tim's shit didn't stink, so I had to keep what he said in perspective, so to speak.
       Then the boy in the movie started fingering the other boy's hole. Then he stuck his longest finger inside him.
       "Oh, that's the best," Kyle said. "I love to be on the receiving end of that."
       "Does it feel good," Brian asked.
       "It feels wonderful. He's rubbing that boy's sweet spot in there. That's what feels so damn good," Kyle said.
       "I guess you guys must do that," Brian said.
       "Yeah. All the time," Tim said.
       "I noticed in most of these movies, the guys either play with their own nipples or the other guy plays with them," Brian said.
       "Oh, yeah. That's good, too, Bri," Kyle said. "Ours are real sensitive since we got these rings in them. I know for a fact that Rick's are real sensitive, too, and Kevin sometimes makes him come just by playing with them."
       "How do you know that?"
       "They told us," Tim said. "They won't ever do any sex with us, Bri, but they're both real honest if you ask them questions. They told us one time that we have a right to know about sex and our bodies."
       "They are so cool," Bri said.
       "The best," me, Kyle, and Tim said all at the same time.
       We didn't talk much after that. I slipped off my briefs, and Brian took his off, too. Tim and Kyle weren't far behind in doing that, either. They looked over at Brian. They had never seen him hard before, and I knew they were curious, which is only natural. Brian's dick was beautiful, and it stood up straight parallel to his body. It was a little smaller than the rest of ours but not much. Plus, I think the two of them had unusually large dicks. Brian's was probably about five and a half inches, hard.
       Brian and I started making out, and Tim and Kyle did, too. Kyle was next to me on the bed, and I touched his dick. Brian wasn't jealous, but I guess he thought Tim might be. I knew better.
       Brian was the big horn dog that night. He sucked my dick right there in front of Tim and Kyle. They didn't mind, though, and Tim went down on Kyle right after Brian went down on me. It was a pretty heavy suck-fest after that. We finally had enough, though. Tim and Kyle left, and Brian and I went to sleep.

       The next morning I woke up with the worst pain in my ass I had ever had. It hurt me a lot, most of the time, but that morning was the worst. I woke Brian up and told him to get a shower for school. We didn't talk much. He was rushed, and I hurt so bad I couldn't talk much. When I had had bad pain in the morning before, it usually meant I needed to take a shit. That usually made it better.
       After Brian left for school, I got up to shit. I didn't really feel like I had to go, but I strained to get it out of me. That must have been the wrong thing to do. The pain got even worse, and then a ton of blood came out of me. I used to bleed all the time, but that day it was a whole lot more than usual. Sitting on the toilet, I got to feeling real weak. Then I started sweating and trembling with chills at the same time. I had heard of people going into shock, and I wondered if that was happening to me. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and cleaned myself up as best I could. Then, without dressing, I made it downstairs to the kitchen.
       Kevin and Rick were in there in their underwear, as usual. They were a little surprised that I was naked. I told them I was bad sick, and they took over like two damn firemen or something. They had my ass to a hospital in about thirty minutes, and a lady doctor was putting her hand up my butt. That hurt so bad I screamed and almost fainted. Kevin was holding me and trying to keep me under control. When Rick came in, he looked like he was looking death in the face. He got right pretty quick, though, and he and Kevin did everything they could to make me feel better.
       The lady said she wanted me to see another doctor, and she called him. He couldn't come right away. I reckon he had other patients. I made Kevin call Beth, his mom, and I told her what was going on.
       "I'll be there this afternoon, baby," she said.
       That made me feel much better. I knew she would take care of me. I knew Kevin and Rick would do everything they could for me, but I needed Beth.
       The lady gave me two or three shots, and in a few minutes the pain started to go away. I thought I was cured. I wasn't, though. It just made me go to sleep, but at least I wasn't hurting any more. The man doctor came later in the day. He didn't really hurt me, but I could feel his hand up my butt. He was talking to Kevin and Rick when Beth came in. She came over to me and kissed me. I was so out of it I don't think I said much to her. I don't remember it, if I did.
       The four of them were talking. Then Beth started raising her voice. I don't think she was mad, exactly, but she was pretty forceful. The man doctor seemed to give in to her. I went back to sleep then.
       The next thing I knew they were giving me more shots in my back. Beth was right there, holding me. I started waking up, but the bottom half of my body seemed like it was gone.
       "You have to have surgery, Justin, but it's going to make it all better. For the rest of your life. All the pain will be gone when it's over. Do you trust me?"
       "Yes, ma'am, I trust you. Thank you for coming here," I said.
       "I needed to be here, baby. I needed it for me, and, as it turns out, I needed it for you and for Kevin and Rick, too. You have a good doctor, and I'm going to be in there with you, okay? I can't really do anything but hold you, but I'll be there with you."
       "Thanks. What's wrong with me," I asked.
       "There is a lesion in your rectum. It's been there for a while, and there is scar tissue around it. He's going to repair the lesion, cut away the scar tissue, and you'll be good as new," she said.
       "What's a lesion," I asked.
       "It's a tear in the tissue. It happened a while back, and it has never healed properly. Every time you had a bowel movement, it opened it a little. You must have had bleeding for a long time. Am I right?"
       "Yes, ma'am, just about every day for about a year," I said. "And it hurt, too."
       "I'm sure. But it's not going to hurt after this, Jus. You're going to be fine," she said. "Why didn't you say something to Kevin or Rick about it, son?"
       I sort of panicked right then. Tears came to my eyes, and they spilled over. "I was embarrassed."
       She kissed me on the forehead.
       "I can certainly understand that, baby," she said. "But after today, it's going to be fine."
       The doc didn't have to cut me open, which was good. I don't know the details of what he did, but I know my ass was sore as hell when I woke up the next morning. I had spent the night in the hospital, but they got me out of there and home early the next morning. I couldn't walk too good because it hurt, but it wasn't the same kind of hurt as before. It wasn't deep inside me.
       They wouldn't let me eat much, even though I was hungry, and they made me take some pills to soften up my shit. When I did shit for the first time, it was runny, but it didn't hurt at all. Beth cleaned me out with a disinfectant or something. That was totally embarrassing because I got hard. She just laughed and said it was a good sign because it meant that I was still all boy. All boy or not, I just wanted to die when that happened.

       When Kyle came home Wednesday after school, he did something he had never done before. I was in bed. I had been napping off and on all day, but I was awake then. He came in and sat on the bed next to me.
       "You scared the shit out of me," he said. "I'm so glad you're better."
       "Thanks, Bubba. I don't have any pain, except where they stretched my ass to get their hands in me. Even that's better now, though," I said.
       "I couldn't take having somebody else I love die on me," he said.
       That sort of touched me. He put his hand under the cover and found my dick. I hadn't had a hard-on all day, until he did that, that is. His hand felt really good on me. He worked it back and forth, rubbing me to make me hard. He kept at it for a while, and then he made me come.
       I thought I should at least offer to do it to him, but he wouldn't let me.
       "That was just a little welcome home present," he said.
       "Thanks, dude," I said. Kyle and I had gotten pretty close in the last few weeks, but I never expected that.
       "Don't mention it. To anybody," he said, with one of those grins that turns your stomach to water. Then he left.
       Brian, Tim, and Kyle treated me like I was a snowflake in a warm room, or something. They slept in my room on the floor Wednesday night, my first night home, and none of 'em wanted to go to school on Thursday. I was feeling much, much better by then, though, and they made them go.
       I got up and took a shower and shaved Thursday morning for the first time in a few days. I'm not going to say I didn't jerk off in the shower because that would be a lie, and I thought about Brian when I did it. I thought about what Kyle had done, too.
       I went to school Thursday afternoon earlier than I usually got there since I didn't go to work that day, and I finished almost all of my American history work. I went to work Friday morning, and I went to school again that afternoon and finished everything. Beth left while I was at work, but not before she cuddled me and kissed me and did all the mother stuff that I never did know about before that morning. I loved her so much.

(Kyle's Perspective)
       I was worried to death about Justin. We got home around five o'clock from play practice, and the house was empty. That wasn't such a big surprise. They usually got home a little after five, but sometimes they had meetings that ran late, or they went to work out, and stuff like that. By seven o'clock, though, I was beginning to get worried.
       I called Rick's cell number, and he answered right away.
       "Where are you," I said, right after he said hello.
       "He's fine, Kyle. He'll be home tomorrow," Rick said.
       "Who's fine? Who'll be home tomorrow? Is something wrong with Kevin?"
       "Oh, sorry, Bubba. I forgot you don't know. It's Justin. He's in the hospital, and he just came out of surgery. Beth's here."
       "What?!! What happened to him? Was he in a wreck?"
       "No." Then he told me about him bleeding from the butt and the surgery to fix it and Beth being there.
       "Rick, you're not going to believe this. I told him last night he needed to see a doc about his butt. It hurts him a lot, man. It's from what those fucking bastards did to him."
       "I know," Rick said. "We'll be home later tonight after he goes to sleep. Can you tell Brian and Tim, and make them know he's all right now?"
       "Of course. I think I'll take them shopping," I said.
       "Good idea. Listen, I need to go. We're about to go eat."
       "Okay," I said.
       "You know what, Kyle?"
       "What?"
       "I love you. And Kevin loves you. And Beth loves you. And Justin loves you."
       I almost started crying happy tears right then.
       "I love you, too, but you still ain't getting my Bud Lite," I said.
       He laughed hard, and we hung up.
       I told Brian and Tim what had happened, and they started crying. There I was, sitting on that sofa hugging both of them, trying to comfort them. And what did I do? I got hard as a damn rock. I am so fucking queer, I thought.
       "Let's go do some Christmas shopping," I said. "We don't have much time."
       "Can't we go see him," Brian asked.
       I thought for a few seconds. "No. They're trying to get him to go to sleep. We'll just fuck that up if we show up there. He'll be home tomorrow morning."
       "How serious is it, Babe," Tim asked.
       "He'll be home tomorrow morning. How serious can that be?"
       They didn't say anything to that.
       "Come on, guys. Let's all wash faces and go shopping, okay," I said.
       They did what I said, and we went shopping.
       They were all home when we got back around ten. Brian moved in on Beth like a locust, and she petted him and hugged him like she hadn't seen him in months, instead of two days.
       Brian wanted to sleep with us that night. Once we were in bed, I thought about the last time we had slept with him and how he had wanted to do something. Tim must have been thinking about that, too, because we both put our hands on his chest at the same time, from opposite sides of the bed.
       He moaned a little bit, so I knew he would be into a little masturbation therapy that night. He let Tim suck his nipples, and he let me stroke him off. It didn't take long. Of course, Tim and I were pretty hot by then, so he and Brian changed places in the bed so Tim could be next to me. We rubbed against one another until we shot off. It wasn't everything that we usually did when we made love, but it was the most we had ever done with somebody else in bed with us.
       The next day I went up to Jus's room when I got home from school. I stroked him off like I had done Brian, just as a way of saying welcome home. He wanted to suck my cock, I think, but I wouldn't let him. That belonged to Tim.

       We had a good time doing our Christmas shopping. Finding something that was fun to have and that cost only two bucks was challenging, but they did it. You could also make a stocking gift, as long as it cost less than two dollars. I decided to make a CD of pictures for everybody.
       I ended up working pretty hard on that project, but Tim helped me with it. I had been taking a lot of digital pictures of everybody with the camera Doc had given me for my birthday, so I made a kind of family photo album. I tailor made them for everyone. On the ones for my mom and dad, I made sure there were lots of pictures of me and Jeff. I dug out some old pictures of Clay, and I had a folder of pictures of him that I scanned from the old ones. I put that on the CD for Jeff, too.
       All the gay guys got several folders of pictures from the Internet that...well, that straight guys probably wouldn't be interested in, let's just say. I also copied several of the movies from the CD's I had gotten from Clay for them, too. I tried to match the XXX pictures and the movies with the guy. Tim helped a lot with that, only we had to stop working from time to time to take care of something that kept coming up (grin). One of the movies that I put on the CD for both Kevin and Rick was called "Sunday Morning." It had two unbelievably good looking young German guys around their age. They wake up in bed on what I guess is a Sunday morning, and they make slow love. And it really looked like they were making love, not just having sex. They both got real hard-ons just from touching each other, like Tim and I did. In some of those movies, one guy sucks the other one for ten minutes or more, and he never really gets hard. Not those two boys. No, sir. It reminded me of what I thought Kev and Rick must look like making love.
       While we were at it, we went ahead and made up a generic CD with pictures of us and all of our friends. I put several folders of XXX pictures and movies on that one, too, but we didn't try to match the pictures with the guys. I figured we could give those to the guys the next time we saw them.
       I must have had photos on the brain or something because what I decided to give Tim was a picture of me taken in a studio. I called to make an appointment at the studio, but I got an answering machine instead of a person. I left my cell number for a call-back. They called me back while Tim and I were running errands in my car. I had bought gas and had gone into the store to pay for it, and my phone was in the car. Tim answered it. That's how he found out what was up. We decided to go ahead and have our picture taken together. We would give each other a picture of the two of us as our Christmas present to each other.
       When we went to pick out the one we wanted, the guy who waited on us was more flaming than Chad or Gage ever hoped to be. The pictures came out great. There were two pictures that we both loved, and we couldn't decide between them. We asked the price for both, and the guy said that two copies of the two of them would be $125. I decided to take a chance and tell him what our deal was about not paying more than $50 for a gift for our boyfriend. He got all excited when we told him we were a gay couple, and he cut the price for both to $75. He threw in a bunch of wallet-size ones for that, too. I decided we'd donate the $25 difference to the Stocking Fund in his name. It turned out he and the photographer had been partners for twenty years. Then I decided my parents, Doc, Kevin and Rick, Ed and Beth, and Craig and Cherie might like a picture of us, too. I negotiated more with the guy, and I could tell he really liked us. He ended up giving us a huge package of pictures for only $300.00. I couldn't remember if that was against the rules, but they'd just have to kick our asses if it was. We stopped at a frame place and bought frames for them, and we framed them ourselves.
       He told us that his partner had fallen in love with our pictures. He asked if we would consider posing for some more. Right away my antenna went up.
       "What kind of pictures," I asked.
       "Oh, perfectly tasteful and legal ones," he said.
       He showed us a scrapbook with some pictures of male couples the partner had taken, and all the guys were either dressed in pants or shorts, were wearing underwear or Speedos, or were posing in such a way that you couldn't see their equipment. I recognized two guys I knew. They weren't a couple, though. They were each with different guys. I had been reading up on photography since I had gotten my camera, and I knew enough to know that that guy was good.
       "Let us think about it, okay," I said. "How much does it cost?"
       "Oh, he pays you," the guy said.
       "You're shitting me, right," I said.
       "I shit you not," the guy said. "You'll be working as models. We pay models $75 an hour."
       "How does he make money," I asked.
       The guy took us over to a computer and opened a Web page. It was a really nice one of many of the photos they had in the book, plus a lot more.
       "We sell them through this Web site," he said. "There are collectors of tasteful male art photography all over the world, and Jim has a knack for producing what his customers want. A couple of his photographs are in museums in Europe." He showed us the ones that were in museums, and they were really nice.
       "Can we think about it," I asked.
       "Sure. Here's our card. He'll probably want some of you by yourself, too," he said.
       "Humph," I said. "Okay, thanks for everything, man," I said, and we left.
       In the car Tim asked, "Would you like to do that?"
       "I don't know. Would you?"
       "Yeah. I'd like to do it a lot," he said.
       "Let's talk to our dads about it. And to Kevin and Rick, too," I said. "If they think it's okay, I'll do it. But I bet they're going to say we have to wait until we're eighteen."

(Kevin's Perspective)
       The weeks before Christmas were pretty hectic. Rick and I were invited to a bunch of Christmas parties, and it seemed that every major vendor we did business with wanted to take us out to dinner during the three weeks before Christmas. We accepted a few of those invitations at first, but we quickly decided that family time was being sacrificed for meals we didn't want to eat, with people we didn't especially care about.
       We got a ton of gifts, too. Usually it was either a basket of fruit, a box of nice candy, or liquor. We had a pile of fruit in the fruit bowl in our kitchen that was so big it would go bad before even our voracious brood could eat it all. Then we started sending it to a homeless shelter on the beach. We kept the liquor, even though it would have taken Rick and me ten years to drink it all. We knew our friends would enjoy it, though, and somehow we didn't think the homeless shelter would find that an appropriate donation. It was all very good stuff, too. We tucked most of the candy into the freezer, knowing that the boys would eat it at some point in the months ahead.
       We also got enough cheese to make the governor of Wisconsin giddy and enough nuts to keep several Seventh Day Adventist congregations happy for a long time. We gave away most of that, too.
       We gave corporate gifts, too, of course. Ours that year was a combo basket of fruit, cheese, wine, and crackers. Those baskets cost seventy-five bucks each, and we resolved that the next year we'd make a donation to the Empty Stocking Fund to the tune of seventy-five dollars in the name of the person we gifted that year. He or she would get a card from us with that information printed on it. If they didn't like it, fuck 'em. I had a surrealistic vision of executives all over the country who couldn't work because their desks were piled to the ceiling with fresh fruit.
       Justin and Brian were great. They spent a lot of time at home, which was sort of new for Jus. He and Jason had made themselves pretty scarce when they were dating, but the new boyfriends really didn't need to go anywhere but home. Justin got better by the hour after his surgery. He had often seemed moody and standoffish before, but he wasn't that way anymore. I didn't know if it was because of Brian or because he actually felt good for the first time since we had known him. That boy had endured enormous physical pain, but he had never complained. What an incredible kid!
       The shirts came in to Rick's office a week before we were supposed to leave for New Orleans. He called me to tell me, and I immediately went down to see them. He and his secretary were sorting them on the big table in his conference room.
       "Oh, Babe, these are great," I said.
       "I know," he said.
       "Whoever thought of this deserves a prize," Cheryl said.
       He and I looked at each other, puzzled. I knew he couldn't remember, any more than I could.
       "It was kind of a joint thing," Rick said.
       "Figures," she said.
       "We have to wrap twenty-two of these for Christmas," I said to Rick.
       "Do we wrap them separately or together," he asked.
       "Together. We'll all open them at one time Christmas morning," I said.
       "I know just the paper we'll use," she said.
       "You don't have to wrap our Christmas presents, Cheryl. That's not part of your job," Rick said.
       "Who says? We'll do it at lunch."
       She meant that she and Mary Ann, my secretary, would wrap them for us. They were both old enough to be our mothers. In fact, they both had kids in their early-to-mid twenties, like we were. They were both extremely competent, and we knew they both loved us like their sons.
       "Oh, hell, no, you will not," Rick said. "If you choose to do that, you'll do it as part of your regular day. And you won't spend a dime of your own money on the wrapping paper."
       "Okay. I need fifty bucks," she said. She pretend-punched Rick on the chin. He pulled out his wallet and gave her a hundred.
       "There should be two sets there of mediums. They're for Rita and for Rick's mom," I said.
       "There are four sets of mediums," Cheryl said. "Who are the others for?"
       "Two of them were supposed to be for my mom and my sister-in-law, but we're not going to give them to them," I said. "At least not right now."
       "Why not," Cheryl asked.
       "Because the kids and George and the Goodsons are going to be there. We don't want them to see them before Christmas morning," I said.
       "So we write 'Don't open till Christmas morning' on them. It's been done before," she said sarcastically.
       Rick and I looked at each other and shrugged.
       "Yeah, I guess we could do that," he said.
       "So why are there thirty sets and you need twenty-six sets," she asked.
       "It was for the price break," Rick said.
       "God, you guys," she said and laughed.
       After lunch Cheryl and Mary Ann showed us the wrapping paper they had selected. It had a lot of maroon and white on it, but it was still obviously Christmas paper. Cheryl wanted to give Rick his change, which was like $60, but he wouldn't take it. That afternoon Rick left with three sealed boxes in his car.   One said "New Orleans." A much larger one said "Here," and the smallest one said "Sarasota."
       "What are you going to do about Christmas and your folks," I asked Rick.
       "Would you be willing to go with me," he asked.
       "Yeah, I guess so," I said.
       The first year we were together, I went to Sarasota with Rick at Christmas to meet his mom and step-dad. It hadn't gone well. His mother was delightful, and she was obviously as proud of Rick as I was. His step-father, though, was very cool toward him and me. He never said anything to me that was insulting or mean, but it was pretty obvious he didn't approve of me or of our relationship. The big mistake, we concluded later with his mom, was not telling him Rick was gay before we got there. His mother was so accepting of us that she evidently assumed her husband would be, too.
       Rick's mom and dad married when they were sophomores in college, and Rick was born just a few months later. His dad was apparently one of those gay men who was afraid to face who he was or wanted to try living his life as a straight man. Well, it didn't work, and it didn't take them long to figure out it wouldn't work. They divorced shortly after Rick was born, and his mother didn't remarry for a long time. Instead, she, with lots of help from his father's parents, raised Rick as a single mother. By mutual agreement, his dad had had no part in his life growing up, except to be completely faithful with his child support payments. He and his boyfriend from high school moved to California, where they had lived together ever since. They had a very successful small business, and, by all accounts from both Rick's grandparents and his mother, who still remained his dad's very good friend, they were happy.
       "I hate to put you through Arnold again," he said.
       Rick had been grown and off at college by the time his mom had met Arnold. They married during Rick's senior year of college, and Arnold and Rick hardly knew each other. After that first visit, we had decided Rick would spend a few days in Sarasota during the holidays but that I would stay home. The previous year we had made our life commitment to one another, first in private with just us present, and then a few days later on Christmas Eve at my parents' house in New Orleans. My brother and my dad were our official witnesses, with my mom and Cherie looking on. A life-long friend of my dad, who happened to be a Catholic priest, officiated at the ceremony. Rick's mother had been terribly disappointed that she wasn't present for either occasion, and Rick said she was pretty disappointed that I hadn't gone home last year after Christmas with him.
       "Well, a lot has changed in the three years since I was last there. We were still a new couple then, we weren't married, we didn't have a house full of kids, we weren't business executives. I'm sure it'll be fine," I said.
       "I hope so," he said. We were in his office with the door closed. I put my hands on his shoulders and moved close to him. We weren't kissing, but we were in a position that I knew would have telegraphed "intimacy" to anybody who might have seen us.
       "Look, Babe, we're both big boys now, with lots of big responsibilities. You love your mother, I love your mother, and I love you. I don't want you worrying about this. Arnold has had a lot of time to get used to the idea. If he hasn't changed his opinions, then so what? What is it to us," I said.
       He smiled his beautiful smile.
       "I knew you'd say that," he said, "but because I knew it doesn't make me any less happy or proud of you." We kissed.
       "I think your mother should have a chance to meet her grandsons, too," I said.
       "Oh, wow! She'll love that," he said. "And the boys will love her and my grandparents, too."
       "If they don't have room for all of us, we can stay at a hotel. In fact, that might be a good idea, anyway, don't you think?"
       "You're right. Do you think Tim and Kyle will want to go," he asked.
       "Are you kidding? You think they would miss a chance to go on a trip with us?"
       "Right. Dumb thought on my part," he said. "Actually, we're going to have Kyle the week after Christmas, anyway. Gene and Rita are going to New York. Gene mentioned that to me the other day, and I assumed he said the same thing to you, too."
       "He told me they were thinking about it, but he never said that it was definite. Well, that's great. Now that George is dating, I don't feel quite as bad about hauling Tim off at that time of year," I said.
       "True," he said.
       "Well, it's all set. Your whole family will be there with you, Babe. We'll take Arnold on, if we have to. This is turning out to be a great Christmas."

       We put up our Christmas tree the weekend of December 13th and 14th, and the way we did it took pretty much the whole weekend. We had always had a tree since we had been together, so we had some lights and ornaments. We put those on, and then Rick decided it looked bare. He took Brian out shopping for more. After we put the new ones on, Justin and Kyle thought it needed more, so all four boys went shopping for some. By the time we finished, the tree was so full of lights and ornaments you almost couldn't tell it was green. We finally put the last ones on late Sunday morning.
       "Are we going to put up outside lights," Kyle asked.
       "We don't have any," I said.
       Rick was listening to us with a thoughtful look on his face.
       "You want outside lights, don't you," Kyle asked him.
       He grinned and nodded.
       "Well, let's go get some," Kyle said.
       They were both still in their underwear. They hurriedly dressed and took off. They came back an hour later with twenty strings of fifty lights each for the outside of our house. They recruited Tim, Jus, and Brian to help, and it took them a couple of hours to get the lights up. Where I would have gotten the tiny white lights like we had on the tree, they had gotten larger bulbs in every color. They did a good job putting them up, and it looked very festive.
       It was actually pretty cold that weekend, and when they were finished, they sat in the den with rosy cheeks. Tim and Brian made a fire in the fireplace, and we settled in for a quiet afternoon.
       "This is the first time I've ever had a Christmas tree," Jus said casually. "This is pretty much fun."
       Now and then, at times like that, Justin's impoverished background intruded itself into our middle class world. He never said things like that to elicit sympathy. He merely stated facts. Kyle and Tim knew he had been poor, but they were a little taken aback at that announcement. They couldn't really conceive of a world where people were too poor to have a Christmas tree.
       "Do y'all want some eggnog," Rick asked.
       "Yeah, I do," I said. Eggnog was one of the reasons for having Christmas, in my opinion. I could drink it every day, I liked it so much. "Are you going to warm it up? Hint, hint."
       "Yeah, I'll warm it up," he said. "Does everybody want some." Tim, Kyle, and Brian said they did.
       "What is it," Justin asked.
       "It's a drink," Rick said. "It's a traditional drink for Christmas. A lot of people make it themselves, but we have the kind from the store. Have some, Jus. You'll like it."
       "Okay," he said.
       Rick brought in mugs of eggnog for everybody. It was warm but not too hot to drink. He passed them around and sat down on the floor with the boys. I got down there with them, too. They all took a sip.
       "Yummy," Kyle said.
       "Do you like it, Jus," I asked.
       "Yeah. It's pretty good. It reminds me of elf cum," he said.
       Rick had a mouthful, and he laughed so hard he sprayed a little of it toward the fireplace. Kyle laughed hard, too, and some of his came out of his nose and dribbled down his face.
       "Elf cum," Rick said, and started laughing all over again.
       A new holiday tradition was born that afternoon for the Foley-Mashburn clan. From that day, until we left for New Orleans, we would gather for a warm mug of eggnog before bed every night. And among ourselves, we never called it anything but elf cum.
       "By the way, guys, we're going to Sarasota to see my mom and grandparents," Rick announced.
       "Oh, cool," Kyle said. The rest of them agreed.
       "When are we going," Tim asked.
       "We'll leave on the twenty-seventh," I said. "That's a Saturday. We'll come back when, Babe?"
       "I don't know. Tuesday?"
       "Yeah, Tuesday sounds good," I said. "We'll be staying in a hotel, but we'll spend most of our time with the family there."
       "Man, y'all do this Christmas shit up big, don't you," Jus said.
       "It's family time, man," Rick said. "You'll have a good time."
       "Oh, I know I'll have a good time. I always do. It's just a lot for me, you know? First, North Carolina. Then Thanksgiving. Then New Orleans. Then Sarasota. You've got to remember just what you're dealing with here, Ricky." Justin pinched one of Rick's nipples, and everybody laughed.
       "I think we know what we're dealing with in you, Jus," Rick said.
       "What?"
       "One of the greatest kids in the world."
       Justin didn't have a come-back for that one. He took it in, though, and grinned.
       After we finished our drinks, Rick suggested we play cards right there on the floor. The guys were all for it. Rick got a couple of decks of cards.
       "What are we going to play," Tim asked.
       "Let's play strip poker," Kyle suggested. The rest of them, including Rick, were all in favor of that, and I didn't have any objections. Everybody was fully dressed, so at least no one was at a disadvantage in the "betting loot" department. We laid down some ground rules about what constituted a bet. There would be no raising or side bets. Everybody would ante up one piece of clothing before the cards were dealt, and that was it for that hand. We'd give the clothes back to their owner after the game, of course, but we wouldn't quit until one person had everybody else's clothes. Underwear had to be kept on until a player had nothing else to bet, and, if he lost, he had to stay there until the game was over.
       "What if somebody gets an erection," Tim asked.
       "How do we usually handle erections when it's just us, Tim," I asked.
       "We don't handle 'em, damn it," Jus said.
       We all laughed.
       "That's right," Rick said, "and we won't if that happens tonight. We ignore 'em, right, guys?"
       "We don't play with 'em, if that's what you mean, but I can't seem to ignore mine," Kyle said.
       That made us laugh, too.
       "Okay, guys, ante up. I'll deal," Rick said. "Five care draw, deuces wild."
       We had to do a little explaining from time to time, especially for Brian's benefit, but he caught on pretty well. At one point we had to get out Hoyle when there was a disagreement about which hand beat what, but otherwise things went great.
       Justin was the first to lose his shirt, so to speak.
       "Okay. Here goes. Y'all get a good look," he said as he tossed his underwear into the bet.
       "Did the doctor miss while you were in the hospital," Rick asked.
       "Very funny. It's cold, man," he said. Justin's penis was definitely in a shy phase at that moment.
       We played the hand, and he lost.
       "I'm getting a smoke," he said.
       "I want one, too," I said.
       "Me, too," Kyle said.
       He got one of the packs that were always lying around the den, a lighter, and a couple of ashtrays. He and Kyle were close enough to one another to share an ashtray.
       "We ought to be smokin' cigars," Kyle said.
       "Big brown dicks," Brian said.
       Everybody laughed, as much because he had said it, as at the humor of what he said.
       We played a few more hands, and then it was Tim's turn to toss in his briefs. Then, in a few more hands, it was my turn.
       After another hand, the phone rang, and it was Monte. He said that Jerry had called him about going Christmas caroling, and he wanted to know if we were interested. There was a group from our church going, and we could join them, if we wanted to.
       I presented the idea to the guys, and they said they were ready to put away the cards. We got dressed, drove to the church, and spent the next three hours or so caroling. It was corny as hell, especially compared to what we had been doing, but it was fun. We went to our favorite eatery after caroling, and then we said good night to our friends and went home. When we drove up to our house and saw the lights for the first time from the street, we were all impressed.
       "Hot damn, it's Christmas," Jus said, and we all laughed.

Chapter 4

(Kevin's Perspective)
       Jeff came home on Monday, December 15th. He had had his last exam that morning, and he had gotten in his car and come straight to our house from the exam. He said he had gotten home around two o'clock that afternoon, and he was in the den with the other boys when we got home.
       I had e-mailed Jeff the details of our Christmas plans, so he knew what was going on.
       "The tree is beautiful," he said, after we had gotten a snack that evening.
       We still had a ton of fruit in the house from all the gift baskets we had gotten, so Rick had made a huge fruit salad. We had topped it with vanilla ice cream, and that's what we were eating.
       "Thanks," Rick said. "What did you do all afternoon?"
       "I slept. I was really tired, and it felt so good being in that bed," he said.
       Rick and I looked at each other knowingly. We had each been through eight rounds of finals in college, and we knew the physical toll those took on you.
       "Do you know we're going to New Orleans," Kyle asked. "You ever been there?"
       "Yeah, I know we're going, and, no, I've never been there," Jeff said.
       "They bury the dead people above the ground," Brian said. "I've got to see that."
       "You will, Bri," I said. "There are cemeteries all over the city."
       "Why don't they just cremate them," Jus asked.
       "It used to be against the Catholic religion to cremate people," I said. "New Orleans is a very Catholic city, so they figured out how to bury people. But let's change the subject."
       "Yeah, let's," Jeff said.
       "I checked on the Brass, and they ain't going to be there while we're there," Kyle said. "I really wanted to see a hockey game."
       "Do you know what is going to be there," I asked.
       "What?"
       "Horse racing. Thoroughbred horse racing," I said. "Have any of you ever been to a horse race?"
       All of them, including Rick, said "no."
       "Are you interested in going," I asked.
       "Hell, yeah," Kyle said enthusiastically.
       "Have y'all done the research I told you to do," I asked. "It sounds like some of you have."
       "I have," Brian said. "I'd like to go to the aquarium and the zoo."
       "Have any of you ever been to a zoo," I asked.
       Rick, Tim, Kyle, and Jeff had been. Brian and Justin had not.
       "I've been to several," I said. "I love zoos. I remember one time at the Cincinnati zoo we saw an adolescent elephant get an erection . At first I thought it was a fifth leg, but then I realized what it was. Craig and I were laughing our asses off, and people were staring at us because they knew what we were laughing at. My dad was chuckling at us, but my mom was embarrassed. We wanted to take a picture of it, but she wouldn't let us."
       "I've never seen an elephant, much less his dick," Jus said.
       "So, aquarium and zoo? Is that good with you guys," Rick asked.
       They all said "yes."
       "Okay, so far we've got the racetrack, the aquarium, and the zoo. What else," I asked.
       "I'd like to see the Mississippi River," Jus said. "Isn't that where it is?"
       "Yeah," Brian said. "You can get a ride on a boat at the aquarium and ride it up the Mississippi River to the zoo, Buddy."
       "Well, hell, let's do that," Jus said.
       "Anything you want to do, Jeff," I asked.
       He thought for a second.
       "Don't get on to me for this, okay? But I'd like to go to some gay places. Clubs and such," Jeff said. "I've never done that."
       Kyle and Jus got animated at that and tapped knuckles.
       "What about the little boys? What about me and Tim," Brian asked.
       "Buddy, I ain't going anywhere without you. You know that," Jus said. He hugged Brian to him just then, and it was rather touching.
       "I've done a little research on that, guys, since you said something about it the other night, Kyle," I said. "There's a gay club that has 'youth night' on Monday nights. They let anybody in, regardless of age."
       "I just want to be somewhere where I'm not the only one who's gay, you know," Jus said.
       "What about us? What about our family? What about our friends," Rick asked.
       "You know what I mean, Rick. You guys have been wonderful to me, but this is home, you know? This isn't out on the street," Jus said.
       "Well, I think that's a definite 'yes,' for the gay club," Rick said, and they all agreed.
       "The French Quarter sounds interesting. What's there," Brian asked.
       "A lot of historical stuff, Bri. There are a bunch of museums, a flea market that's great, a whole bunch of antique stores and art galleries, Jackson Square, the cathedral. A whole bunch of stuff," I said. "The Moon Walk is also there. That's along the river. And a lot of great places to eat, too."
       "What about the Saints. Do you think we could see a Saints game," Kyle asked. "I've only ever been to one NFL game."
       "No way, Bubba. I checked that out," Rick said. "They're sold out while we're there."
       "Shit," Kyle said. "Do you think there will be any plays there while we're there?"
       "Now that's an idea. I don't know," I said, "but we can check on the Ticket Master Web site."
       "Jeff, do you know we're also going to Sarasota to see Rick's mom," Kyle asked.
       "No. When?"
       "The twenty-seventh," I said. "I sent you an e-mail about that, Jeff."
       "I was so out of it the last few days that I didn't even check my mail," Jeff said. "It all sounds good to me, though. I've actually been to Sarasota. It's a nice place."
       Tim, Kyle, Justin, and Brian drifted off upstairs after that. It was the last week of their semester, and they had homework and studying to do. Jeff asked if he could use the computer to check his e-mail.
       "Jeff, this is your home, man," Rick said. "You don't have to ask about stuff like that."
       "Thanks," he said softly.

       That week sped by. There was definitely a holiday mood in the house, and at work everybody was cheerful and expectant of fun to come. We had our office party for the employees of corporate headquarters, and their spouses/dates/significant others, on Thursday night at our biggest and nicest hotel. Gene didn't scrimp on that occasion. There was an open bar for cocktails before dinner, dinner itself, and then dancing with a DJ and more open bar. Wait staff were passing around with trays of hors 'oeuvres before dinner. Nice ones, too.
       They usually had that party on a Friday night, but that year Gene, Rick, and I would be gone the next day so we had it on Thursday. Because of that, Gene had declared a holiday on that Friday and the next one, too, the day after Christmas. He wanted his people to have a good time, and he knew having to get up for work the next day would put a damper on the fun.
       The high school boys had had the first two of their four semester exams that day, and they had two more the next day, as well. They had gotten out of school at eleven o'clock. Gene had insisted that Kyle come to the office to study, and he had had to be there no later than 12:30. We thought that was a good idea, so we made the same demand of Brian. It was a foregone conclusion that Tim would be there, too. We had set the three of them up in empty offices on our floor, and Rick and I had each checked on them a couple of times. By five o'clock they had put in more concentrated study time than I had probably put in during my whole four years of high school.
       Gene had done that because he wanted all five of the boys at the party, but he didn't want their grades to suffer. The party was pretty dressy, and the boys needed suits. Tim and Kyle already had suits, but Jeff, Jus, and Brian didn't even have "dress" trousers, much less suits. Rick and I had taken them shopping the afternoon that Jeff had gotten home. We knew Brian was still growing, so we got him a suit that was nice but not as expensive as the others. Jeff and Justin were adult size, and a suit could last them several years. We got them nicer ones. They would need suits for my parents' party, too, and in a couple of years Jeff would need a suit for job interviews and such. It was fun buying those clothes with them.
       Justin was first to be measured.
       "Did you see that guy try to grab my nuts," Jus said to Rick and me out of the corner of his mouth.
       "In your dreams, stud," Rick said.
       "Yeah? Well, what was he doing then?"
       "He was measuring your inseam, Bubba," Rick said.
       "What's that?"
       "It's the length of the pants leg from your crotch to the top of your shoe," I said.
       "He asked me if I dress right or left. What does that mean?"
       "What did you tell him," Rick asked, grinning.
       "I told him I dress right. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. That was just a guess."
       "He was talking about whether you keep your dick on the right side or the left side of your pants. You don't want that big ole thing you got bulging out of a nice suit, Bubba," Rick said.
       Jus blushed a little, which was something he almost never did.
       "How the hell was I supposed to know that," he asked.
       "Did you guess correctly," I asked.
       "Yeah. For once." He grinned.
       He went over to Jeff and Brian, and we knew he was telling them about dressing right or left.
       "No way," we heard Jeff say.
       Then the three of them laughed, something we rarely heard from Jeff.
       We left that store with three pairs of dress shoes, three nice belts, twelve pairs of dress socks, nine dress shirts, nine ties, and alteration tickets for three new suits. The suits would be ready the next day at five o'clock. Gene had told us to use the corporate credit card, and I was glad he had when I saw the total.
       The party Thursday night was about as nice as anything I had ever been to, including the governor's inauguration, which I had helped cater when I was in college. The boys looked absolutely spectacular, too, in their dress-up clothes. Rick and I had had to show all five of them how to tie their ties, but nobody could tell that. All anybody saw was five of the best looking young men I had ever seen in one group.
       We met George's lady friend that night for the first time. George wasn't an employee, of course, but he was Gene's best friend, so naturally he had been invited. She was as charming as she was stunning looking. Her name was Sonya Jenkins, and she and George made a very handsome couple. Evidently George had talked about us because she knew exactly who we were, what our holiday plans were, and what we did for a living.
       Gene and Rita looked great, too, and they marched the boys around to all of their guests to say hello. Gene and Rita were both beaming with pride at the boys. They brought them up to a group of people Rick and I were in.
       "I want you all to meet my sons and their friends. This is Kyle. This is Tim. And this is Jeff. And these are their friends and honorary brothers, Justin and Brian."
       The boys shook hands all around.
       The husband of one of our risk management people said, "Weren't the two of you in the paper and on TV a few months back? For saving some people in the hurricane? I recognized the name. It's not very common."
       "Yes, sir, we were," Kyle said.
       "Well, that was pretty brave and pretty amazing of you guys," he said.
       "Thank you," Kyle said.
       "And you're Eagles, right," the man said.
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said.
       "I'm an Eagle, too," he said.
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said.
       "And you were Clay's boyfriend, right," he said to Jeff.
       Jeff blushed a tiny bit, and the other boys stiffened and shifted, probably imperceptibly to everyone but us, to get into position to kick that guy's ass if they had to.
       "Yes, sir. I was his partner," Jeff said proudly.
       "I remember the name from the obituary. My condolences, Jeff. Our condolences," he said, indicating himself and his wife. "We know this is a hard time of year for you, Jeff, and you, too, Gene and Rita." I saw the boys relax.
       "Thank you so much," Rita said.
       That little chat circle broke up just then, and I saw the boys head outside to a small patio right off the room we were in. Rick and I followed them by instinct. We were stopped by a couple. The lady wanted to introduce her husband to us, so we politely endured that intrusion into what we wanted to do. Neither of us knew who she was. By the time we got out to the patio, Kyle and Justin had lit up smokes.
       "What took you so long," Kyle demanded.
       We explained about the lady and her husband.
       "That was so surreal," Jeff said. "I was trembling all over."
       "Are you okay now," I asked.
       "Yeah, I'm okay now," he said.
       "Did you choreograph that little act, Kyle," Rick asked.
       "What are you talking about?"
       "You know what I'm talking about. You guys got into 'we've got your back' mode very quickly. It was obvious, man," Rick said.
       Kyle took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly. I could tell he was thinking.
       "Nobody fucks with us, Rick," Kyle said.
       "What would you have done to him," Rick asked.
       "You see that parking lot out there? It would have been on his face, and his face would have been on it. But it turned out he was a really nice guy. It kind of rattled us, though, you know? We didn't know where he was going with that."
       "Would you really have done that, Kyle? If he had bashed Jeff? Or made fun of him?"
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said. I knew Kyle was dead serious, and I knew Rick knew that, too. And Kyle had his boys around him, and he was, indeed, the alpha male.
       "You can't be violent like that, Kyle. Violence doesn't solve problems," Rick said.
       "Yeah. We know. Mathew Shepherd told us."
       Everybody was silent for a few moments.
       "That was low, Kyle," Rick said.
       More silence.
       "If that guy had bashed Jeff, you would have been right there with us, and you know it, Rick," Kyle said. "Just like you would have helped us stomp the shit out of those guys who hurt Jerry."
       "Physically hurt Jeff? You're 200% correct. I would have crushed his balls. Verbally? That's different, you know?"
       "What would you have done if he had verbally attacked Jeff for being gay, Kevin," Kyle asked.
       I thought for a moment.
       "I would have taken him and his wife aside, and I would have told her she was fired as of that moment because of what he had said. Then I would have gone over to your dad and told him what I had done. He would have congratulated me. You know, guys, nothing happened except the man expressed his and his wife's condolences to Jeff and the Goodsons. We're making something out of this that didn't really happen."
       "Yeah, but it's the principle of it, Kevin," Rick said.
       "The principle seems clear to me. If there is physical threat or harm, we beat the shit out of the motherfucker. If there is verbal threat or harm, we ruin his life as best we can."
       They actually laughed for the first time since we had been out there talking.
       "Let's get back inside, guys. It's about time to eat," I said.
       Rick pulled me back as we were going in.
       "I love those principles you just said, Babe."
       "I thought you would," I said.
       "Kyle and Justin are like me. They're not going to take it," Rick said.
       "I know. Venus and Mars?"
       "What does that mean," he asked.
       "I'll tell you later."
       Dinner was over around 9:30, and the dance music started. The boys' original leave time was ten o'clock, but we extended it to ten thirty. I suspected that all five of those boys would one day hold important positions in Goodson Enterprises (such as the position of owner, in Kyle's case) and that extra half hour of socializing and dancing with our employees would ultimately do them more good than an A, instead of a B, in high school biology.
       They danced with, and charmed, at least half the women in the place. By ten o'clock Kyle had almost everybody in the room up and on the dance floor for line dancing, and there were at least 300 people. He and Tim were up front teaching them how to do it, and everyone was having a great time.
       At 10:30 Rick got on the mike.
       "Kyle Goodson. It's time. Get your ass home, boy."
       "SHIT!!!" Kyle screamed, and everybody in the room laughed. They all knew who Kyle Goodson was, and they loved him.
       Kyle, Tim, and Brian left then to a standing ovation.
       "I'm coming back next year," Kyle screamed as they were leaving, and they applauded again.
       Jeff and Justin stayed, and the party rocked on.
       "He had these people by the 'nads, didn't he," Gene asked us. He was grinning so hard I thought his cheeks would pop.
       "They would have followed him into hell, Gene," Rick said. "That's the effect he has on people."
       "That's what I thought, too," Gene said. "He's a good boy, though, isn't he?"
       The pride on Gene's face and in his tone of voice was almost overwhelming. I doubted that Gene knew about the theory of the alpha male, and it really wasn't important that he know it. He knew his son, though, and he was beginning to grasp the power Kyle had over others. Fortunately, Kyle was a good boy, and Gene and Rita had instilled the right values in him. Otherwise, he could have been dangerous.
       "Most of the time, Gene. But we have to bust his butt now and then," Rick said.
       "I figured that, and thank you for doing it," Gene said. "He's a high-spirited boy. Rita and I have had so much this fall . . ."
       "We know, Gene. It takes a village to raise a kid, and we're the village," Rick said.
       "Well said," Gene said. "So, I guess we're off tomorrow on our trip. I'm excited about seeing your parents again, Kevin, and your brother and his wife. This is going to be a good Christmas, right guys?"
       "It's going to be extremely good, Gene," I said. "Extremely good."
       *****
       The house was quiet when we got home shortly after midnight. Justin and Jeff got home just as we did, and they went up to bed without saying much, except they had had fun. Rick and I needed a little snuggle time in the den.
       "That was a nice party, wasn't it," he said.
       "Yeah. It was about the nicest thing I've ever been to. Did you have anything to do with the governor's inauguration while we were in Tallahassee?"
       "No. You guys catered it, though, didn't you?"
       "Yeah. That was the nicest thing I had ever seen before tonight. I wish I was going in tomorrow. I'd drive down there and congratulate the Events Coordinator on tonight."
       "Why don't you send her e-mail? Her address is probably in that little directory we got," he said.
       "That's a damn good idea. I knew I married you for some reason," I said.
       I got up and wrote a very positive message to the girl. She was my age, and she had a lot of talent. I really wanted to encourage her. I gave specific praise, like we had been taught to do in college, but I didn't gush. She deserved the praise I sent her.
       "Are you interested in a little playing around tonight," Rick asked when I was finished with the e-mail.
       I chuckled. "You try to stop me, dude," I said.
       We went on to bed but not to sleep quite yet.
       *****
       Needless to say, Rick didn't run the next morning. In fact, we had forgotten to turn our clocks on the night before, and we awoke with a start when somebody pounded on our bedroom door.
       "Get up," Kyle said loudly.
       "Jesus Christ, Kyle. Shut the fuck up, man," Rick said. "I guess the masters want us up," Rick said to me.
       I looked at the clock, and it was only 6:30. Rick and I took turns in the bathroom, pulled on briefs, and went out to face the morning.
       The kitchen was filled with the aroma of breakfast. There was a platter of eggs, a platter of bacon and link sausage, a basket of toast, and a bowl of grits. There were cups of coffee waiting at each place, and we each had a glass of juice, too. We sat down and started eating.
       "What time did you guys get up," Rick asked.
       "I woke up at five o'clock," Kyle said. "I don't know what time they woke up, but everybody but Jeff was down here by 5:30."
       "This is a great breakfast, guys," I said. "Thanks for making it."
       "Kyle, you look like you're about to jump out of your skin, man. Calm down. What are you so excited about? Your exams," Rick asked facetiously.
       "It's those quadratic equations, Rick. I see one, and I can't help myself. My dick gets hard. I start pumping out pre-cum. I grind down unconsciously into my chair to give my ass some of the attention it needs. I put my pencil in my mouth, and I suck it. I suck it hard. My heart beats faster. I finger the eraser, all wet with spit from my mouth. It's taut and erect. My breathing speeds up. And then I know I'm close. Oh, so close. I spurt out the answer, and I go into the deep afterglow of algebra."
       Rick and I had started laughing after the first two sentences of that little act, and we both clapped when he finished it.
       "Goddamn, Kyle. You got me hard as a fucking rock," Justin said.
       We all laughed at that, too.
       "I guess that means you're really not excited about your exams," Rick said. "It must be something else. A trip, perhaps?"
       "Give the Bingo Boy the cupie doll," Kyle shouted.
       "Kyle, shut up and eat your breakfast," Rick said.
       Kyle grinned at him and started eating.
       "You guys were great last night, with the dancing and all," I said. "Your parents were very proud of you, Kyle. And so were we, as usual."
       "What about Tim," he asked.
       "Of course. Everybody was proud of Tim, too," I said.
       Tim blushed a little. "Don't say shit like that, Kyle. You were the one; not me," Tim said.
       "Don't tell me what not to say. You were my inspiration, whatever the hell it was I did," Kyle said. "We got to be going. Brian, are you ready?"
       "Yes, sir," Brian said.
       Kyle looked at Justin. "What was that about?"
       Kyle was referring to the fact that Brian had addressed him as "sir." In the South that was reserved for older men you respected. Kyle, Justin, Jeff, and Brian knew the code, and there was a good chance Tim knew it by then, as well.
       Justin shrugged and grinned.
       "Let's go," Kyle said, and they took off.
       "Why did Brian say 'yes, sir' to Kyle, Jus," Rick asked as we were cleaning up the dishes.
       "He thinks of Kyle that way. To tell you the truth, I think we all do," Jus said.
       "Interesting," Rick said.
       We cleaned up the kitchen, ran the dishwasher, and Rick and I went back to our room. We got back into bed and slept for another two hours.
       *****
       At 11:45 the front door burst open, and Tim, Kyle, and Brian bubbled in. They were excited about the trip, and Rita got tears in her eyes over them. She was still very fragile, but she was doing much better.
       "Is everybody ready to go," Kyle asked without even saying hello.
       "Yeah, let's get in the cars," I said.
       We had packed the cars the night before so we could leave as quickly as possible after they got home from school. We had packed sandwiches, chips, and fruit, along with some drinks, to have on the way.
       We had a security system in the house, and we turned that on. The pool table and exercise equipment were going to be delivered on Monday, but Amy, Gene's secretary, and Cheryl, Rick's secretary, were going to make sure those would be set up properly. We had decided to get a ping pong table, too, and that was coming Monday, as well. It needed to be put together, but a couple of the maintenance guys from one of the hotels would do that when they came to install the basketball goal.
       We were on the road in ten minutes.
       "So, how were exams," I asked, once we were barreling down the highway.
       "Oh, those quadratic equations were even hotter than I thought they would be," Kyle said.
       I turned around to look at him when he was talking. Rick was driving, and I was in the front passenger seat. Tim and Kyle were in the middle seat, and Justin and Brian were in the back seat. Kyle was sprawled over Tim.
       "Do you have your seatbelt on, Kyle," I asked.
       "No, sir," he said.
       "Put it on," I said.
       "But this thing is so big, Kevin. I don't need it," he said.
       "Put it on. Right now."
       He straightened up, and I heard four seatbelts click shut.
       "Should I talk to them about seatbelts," I asked Rick in little more than a whisper.
       "You just did," he said.
       "So, really, how were your exams," I asked again.
       "I think I did pretty good on mine," Tim said. "I had never taken big exams before this year, and I think I did good on all of them."
       "Me, too," Brian said. "I think this school is harder than other ones I've gone to before. But I think I did okay, too."
       I had a mental image of Sally Ortega cracking a whip over the kids and teachers at that school. It made me smile. I really liked that lady, the little I knew her.
       "What about you, stud? How'd you do?"
       "I didn't take exams," Justin said.
       Rick laughed. "Not you. The other stud."
       "I know I passed everything," Kyle said.
       "All A's," Rick asked.
       "No, all A pluses," he said.
       We all laughed.
       "Kyle, there's more in life than being smart in books, man," Rick said.
       "I hope my parents think so," he said.
       The fact of the matter was, Kyle was extremely smart, but he was not necessarily smart in everything that school required. I had read a couple of articles on the theory of multiple intelligences that some guy at Harvard had come up with. It was very clear to me that Kyle had a very high IQ in verbal intelligence. He was incredibly quick witted and clever, and that blessing he had given at the Florida Caverns State Park several months before had been positively poetic. I had read a few of his essays at his request, and they were extremely well written. His spatial-physical intelligence was superb, as evidenced by his skiing and surfing. His logical-mathematical intelligence was shit, though, and that's where he had the most trouble in school. His crowning glory was his interpersonal intelligence. All of us had commented many times on how unbelievably good he was with people. It was too bad they only tested that in life and not in school. If they had, Kyle would have been the valedictorian.
       "So what are you thinking, Bubba? A's and B's," Rick asked.
       "Maybe that. Maybe a C or two," he said. "But let's don't talk about this anymore. Did you find out if there are any plays in New Orleans while we're there?"
       "Yeah, I did, actually," I said. "There are three big ones, but we can only go to one because of the times. Cats. Sunday night. I went ahead and asked my mom to order us tickets. They'll be delivered today to my parents' house."
       "I've heard of that one," Tim said. "What's it about?"
       "It's probably about cats," Justin said. "Pussy, it sounds like."
       Everybody laughed.
       "Actually, Jus, it's about a lot of things. Deep stuff. Like the mono-myth," I said.
       "Mono ain't a myth, Kev. I've known too many people who have had it," Kyle said.
       I knew it was fun time with pun time.
       "Do you want to know what the play is about or not," I asked.
       "Yeah, tell us," Brian said.
       "The guy who wrote the words to Cats was a guy named T. S. Eliot. He was an American from St. Louis who spent most of his life in England. He believed very strongly in the importance of mythology. Not the stories of the gods and goddesses, necessarily, but the underlying meanings of those stories."
       "What underlying meanings," Kyle asked. "Like what?"
       "Do you guys know the story of Daedalus and Icarus," I asked.
       "Yeah, we just read that one," Brian said.
       "Tell it to us, Bri," I said.
       "Well, Daedalus was an architect, and he had a son named Icarus. The king of Crete had him build a labyrinth on the island for the Minotaur, who was half man and half bull."
       "It sounds like you, Justin," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, right, stud," Justin said. "More like you, you mean."
       "What's a labyrinth," Tim asked.
       "It's a maze. Like that one on the beach near where we live. We've been there," Brian said. "But I think that one was made with shrubs, instead of plywood."
       "Oh, okay," Tim said.
       "Anyway, the king wouldn't let Daedalus and his son off the island because he was afraid they would tell people how to get out of the labyrinth. They used to put people from Athens in there for the Minotaur to eat. Virgins, so you guys can relax."
       We all laughed.
       "So Daedalus got an idea for him and Icarus to fly off the island. He made wings for the two of them out of feathers and wax. He told Icarus not to fly too high because the sun would melt the wax, and he'd fall to the sea and drown.
       "Icarus was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen. He listened to what his dad said, but once he got flying, he flew too high. Sure enough, the sun melted the wax of his wings, and he drowned."
       "Very good, Bri," I said. "Now what is that story really about?"
       "It's about some kid who didn't want a bull dick up his ass," Justin said. "Can't say as I blame him."
       Justin got the laugh he was going for.
       "Is this what Cats is about," Kyle asked.
       "No, this is about mythology and what it means," I said. "Let's analyze the story of Icarus, guys. He's a young guy your age, right? He listens to his dad, but as soon as he gets freedom, like when he's flying, he forgets his dad's advice. What did he basically do?"
       "He didn't listen to his elders. He rebelled," Jus said.
       "Exactly, Jus. You guys are adolescent boys. Do you listen to everything your elders say? Listen and follow it, I mean?"
       "I see what you're getting at, Kevin," Kyle said. "It's hard to believe guys were like us way back in those days. In mythology days."
       "Human nature doesn't change, Kyle. The point of the story applies every bit as much to the four of you as it did in ancient times. Am I right?"
       "Yeah, I think you are, Kev. The wings stuff isn't really important. The point is that boy didn't listen to his dad, and he drowned for it. I guess it means that we need to listen to you guys."
       "Kyle, have you noticed? They ain't that much older than us," Jus said.
       I looked at Rick, and I knew that he, like me, was wondering where that was going.
       "That's why they're our older brothers and not our dads," Kyle said.
       "They might not be your dads, but they're my dads. Legally, at least," Justin said.
       "Do you have a problem with that, Jus," Kyle asked.
       "No," he said.
       "So why are we talking about this? I think that's an awesome story. And I have to admit. Sometimes I want to fly higher than I should, just like that boy in the story. And sometimes I do. And you do, too, Jus. And they pull our asses back. And they save our asses, like that boy's daddy couldn't," Kyle said.
       "I know," Jus said.
       "So what's your problem, man," Kyle asked.
       "I don't have a fucking problem with it, Kyle. So shut up, okay?"
       "Okay," Kyle said.
       My God! I thought. The atmosphere in that truck had gotten pretty hot and heavy, pretty quickly, over mythology of all things.
       "Pitt stop," Rick said. He pulled off the Interstate into a gas station with a convenience store. "Everybody piss. Everybody get a cold drink so we can cool off."
       We were in Alabama, just east of Mobile, in a town called Bay Minette. We had been on the road two and a half hours, and we were halfway there. The boys got back in the car with drinks and snacks. All four of them were silent.
       I was driving when we took off again. I put a Jimmy Buffet CD into the player, and the first song was "Mother Ocean." That was a nice song, and pretty soon Rick was asleep in the passenger seat. I hadn't heard from the boys in the back, and I adjusted the rear view mirror so I could see them. All four of them were asleep, too. I drove through Mississippi at rush hour on the only decent rode they had, and I blew the horn when we finished crossing the twin span into New Orleans. That woke them all up.
       "We're here. We're in New Orleans," I said.
       "That was quick," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, right. You were sleeping he whole damn time from Mobile," I said.
       He laughed.
       "You never did tell us about Cats," Kyle said, after he was fully awake and as we were driving through the barren part of New Orleans East.
       "It's about the mono-myth. That means the basic myth. Birth-death-rebirth. The cats in the play represent different types of people."
       "I figured that," he said.
       "Well, it's about the cycle, man. What happens in nature?"
       "I don't know. What?"
       "Every year in the fall stuff dies. Nature dies. The leaves fall off the trees, the grass turns brown, the sun gets lower in the sky, like it's dying, too."
       "Okay. So what?"
       "Well, that's like the death of nature," I said.
       "It doesn't really happen, though. It don't really die. It just goes dormant," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, but these were primitive people, Bubba," Rick said, awake by then. "They didn't know the science."
       "Exactly," I said.
       "Okay, so it died. So what," Kyle asked.
       "But it came back in the spring. Nature was reborn. In the play Cats, one of the cats dies sort of and is reborn in the Heavyside Layer. The message is that all of us will be reborn, too," I said.
       "That is dumb," Justin said. "How are people supposed to know all that?"
       "Well, they get people like us to explain it to them, Jus," I said.
       "Besides, it's funny and the music is wonderful, even if you don't know all of that. I didn't know it the first time I saw it, and I loved the play," Rick said.
       "Who taught you," Jus asked.
       "Guess."
       "Kevin," Jus asked.
       "Who else," Rick asked.
       "How did you know all of that, Kev," Kyle asked.
       "I took a lot of English courses in college, Kyle. That's when I read T. S. Eliot. He is the alpha male poet of the Twentieth Century, by the way," I said.
       "What does that mean," Kyle asked.
       "Never mind. I'll tell you some time," I said.
       We were going over the high-rise bridge over the Industrial Canal right at that moment, and the kids saw the skyline of the city laid out before them. It was about five o'clock, and it was dark enough to see the millions of lights that the city displayed. The boys got pretty excited over the cityscape in front of them and to the left.
       "Goddamn," Justin said. "This is fucking awesome."
       "This is my hometown, boys," I said. "Welcome to New Orleans."
       Some happy tears squeaked their way out of my eyes. Rick noticed.
       "You pussy," he said in a whisper, grinning his ass off.
       "Shut up so I can concentrate on driving," I said.
       He laughed.

Chapter 5

       We had brought along CB radios with us so we could keep in contact with Gene and the others in the other car. I made contact with them and told them to leave the high-rise Interstate at Franklin Avenue. It wasn't the easiest exit to get to because you had to cross several lanes of traffic. Fortunately, at that time of day most of the traffic was headed in the other direction, out of the city, so it wasn't too difficult that night.
       Once we were on Franklin Avenue, Rick got out of his truck and into Gene's car to drive to my parents' house. We had figured that would be easier than trying to have them follow us or to give them a map or something. We got back on the Interstate from Franklin Avenue and headed west, more or less, toward my parents' house.
       As a kid growing up in New Orleans, I never really had a sense of the four compass directions within the city. People never used expressions like, "go west on Canal Street," or "that street is five blocks north of here." On the map, "uptown" was south of "downtown." They also never spoke of the "western suburbs" or the "eastern suburbs." Those places all had names, and they used them. For example, to get to the part of the city commonly called "the West Bank," meaning on the west bank of the Mississippi River, you crossed a huge bridge headed due east. The West Bank was really on the south bank of the River, anyway.
       When Rick first started going there with me, he was appalled by the apparent lack of concern for geography. He teased me that instead of calling it the Big Easy, they should call it "the Big Easy to Get Lost In." When he heard the motto, "The City that Care Forgot," he changed it to "The City that Forgot to Care About Directions." That sad part was, he was right.
       "Wow, look at all the lights," Brian said. "I thought we had a lot on our house. Man, this is too much."
       "It's pretty, though," Justin said. I heard somebody give somebody a kiss, and I assumed it was Justin kissing Brian.
       "Guys, a lot of people here go all out with Christmas lights," I said. "There are some neighborhoods where every house out does the next one with decorations. They have to close some streets because there are so many people out looking at them."
       "That's cool," Kyle said. "Can we drive around some and see 'em."
       "Yeah, but not right now. Let's go home first. My mom and dad, and Craig and Cherie, are waiting for us."
       "Kev, do you think I could call Beth," Justin asked.
       "Right now?"
       "Yeah." He suddenly sounded shy.
       "Sure. Why not?"
       "Here's my phone," Kyle said.
       I told Jus the number, and Mom must have answered it.
       "Hi, Beth. It's me. Justin," he said shyly.
       Pause.
       "No, ma'am. We're fine. Kevin's driving. I just wanted to say hello and that we're almost there."
       Pause.
       "We're excited, too."
       Pause.
       "Brian's fine. Did you know he and I are boyfriends now?"
       Pause.
       "Yes, ma'am. I think he is, too."
       Pause.
       "I think about you every day, too."
       Pause.
       "How much longer, Kev," he asked.
       "Fifteen minutes."
       "He said fifteen minutes."
       Pause.
       "No. I don't know where we are. We just passed a big park or something. Does that help?"
       Pause.
       "Okay, well, we'll be there in a few minutes. See you then."
       "Don't hang up," Kyle screamed at him.
       "Hold on a second," Jus said. "What do you want, Kyle?"
       "Hold the phone out. On three, we all say, 'Hi, Grandma.' One, two, three."
       "Hi, Grandma," all four boys bellowed.
       "Did you hear 'em," Jus said into the phone.
       Pause.
       "I love you, too. We all love you. Bye."
       "Justin, that was about the nicest thing you've ever done, man," I said.
       "She started crying at the very end, though," he said.
       "Those were tears of joy, son. Happy tears. You've already made her a very happy lady, and you haven't even gotten there yet," I said.
       "I'm glad. I was afraid she was going to ask about my butt," Jus said.
       "She probably will, when you get there. She'll probably want to check it, too. She may be your grandma, but she's still a doctor, you know," I said.
       "If she does, I hope I don't get a hard-on this time," he said.
       "This time," Kyle asked. "You got a hard-on when she checked you before?" Kyle sounded surprised and shocked, but he might be setting up a big tease.
       "Yeah. I did. So what?"
       "So WHAT!!??? That means you ain't queer, Jus. You're a faker, man," Kyle said.
       "Fuck you. I'm as queer as you are. Probably queerer."
       "Nuh-unh. Ladies don't give me boners, man," Kyle said.
       "Shut up, Kyle, you little shitass. I'll show you how fuckin' queer I am. I'll..."
       "Buddy, stop it," Brian said.
       "WHAT!?....Sorry, Bri. What?"
       "Stop it because Kyle just got you last," Brian said.
       There was a long pause. Suddenly Justin burst out laughing, and the rest of us did, too.
       "You jerk, Kyle. Yeah, you did, asshole," Justin said. "You got me last this time."
       My, God, I thought. They're arguing about who's the queerest. I couldn't wait to tell Rick about that.
       "I'm going to nominate you two to be the Gay Pride poster boys," I said.
       "What does that mean," Kyle wanted to know.
       "Worthy causes have 'poster children.' Those are kids who best illustrate what the cause is trying to promote. Like the cerebral palsy poster child is a kid who has bad cerebral palsy but who is totally cute and loveable. I actually doubt they have poster children anymore. It's probably not politically correct. I said it as a joke, but I can see it was not even remotely funny. Forget it."
       "He knew what it meant, Kev," Tim said quietly. "He wanted to get you last, too."
       "Shit," I said, and they all laughed their asses off.

       We pulled into my old neighborhood at that moment. After a turn off Metairie Road, we were driving down my street. It was in a part of town known as Old Metairie, and the streets had huge oak trees next to the sidewalk that made a beautiful canopy over the street. In our block, somebody had strung Christmas lights in the canopy, and the whole street was ablaze with color. That was the first time that had ever been done. When the guys saw it, they started cheering.
       The block had seven houses on either side of the street, and our house was dead center on the right-hand side. I had no idea whether that was the north, south, east, or west side. I just knew it was the right-hand side from the direction we were coming.
       "Kevin, this is awesome, man," Kyle said. "Why didn't you tell us?"
       "I didn't tell you 'cause I didn't know. They've never done this before," I said.
       It really was quite a spectacle. I noticed that there weren't any cars parked in the street. Usually, there were cars on both sides, at least here and there, at night. More than once some kid on the block had come home drunk and had taken out some neighbor's parked car. Craig and I had never done it, but we both knew it was our Guardian Angels that had kept that from happening.
       "This is it, guys," I said, pulling into the circular driveway that ran across the front lawn. Rick and the rest were right behind us.
       "Damn," Justin said.
       The house was big, and it was nice. I had taken it totally for granted as a kid. Everybody in our neighborhood lived in a house like that, and many of my friends from school outside my neighborhood did, too. It was two stories, and there was an apartment over the garage in the back yard that you reached from a service alley. We had always had a lot more space than we really needed, even when Craig and I still lived there. Now that we were grown, my parents held on to it probably just for occasions like that visit. Craig and I had had to "do the yards" when we were kids, but now my parents had a lawn service. It was all the difference between night (Craig and Kevin) and day (the lawn service).
       I tapped the horn a few times when we pulled up to let them know we had arrived, and Mom, Dad, Craig, and Cherie came out of the front door. It had only been about three weeks since we had seen them, but they swarmed on us like long-lost relatives.
       "Beth, the house is just beautiful," Rita said, once we had settled down.
       "Thanks. It's comfortable for us. A little too big, now that the boys are gone. Rita, there's a small apartment over the garage out back. I was thinking you and Gene might do well in one of the bedrooms out there, with George in the other bedroom. Will that work?"
       "Certainly. It's best to keep the boys in the house so some adults can hear what's going on," Rita said. "Will you show me around?"
       "Follow me."
       The ladies went off on a tour of the house. My parents had collected some pretty neat antiques and art works over the years, and I knew my mother was eager to show it off to Rita. She had been very impressed by the Goodson home, and she wanted Rita to know that she had good taste, as well.
       "Who wants a drink," my dad asked.
       We all said we could use something.
       "Son, would you do the honors," my dad asked Craig.
       "Sure. Get your ass up and help me," he said to Rick.
       Rick stuck out his hand for Craig to pull him up, and Craig jerked his arm.
       "Thanks, brother," Rick said, then he and Craig both laughed.
       "Dad, what's with the lights in the trees," I asked.
       "That was your mother's doing. She paid for those to be hung, and she's paying for the electricity. She wanted it for the boys," he said. "She got the neighbors to park off the street, too. But just for tonight and the night of our party."
       "It's beautiful," George said.
       "I'm glad you like it, George."
       "I think we all second George in that, Ed," Gene said. "I wish we had big trees like you do across our street."
       "Organize the block, Gene," my dad said. "People think live oaks grow slowly, but they really don't. They appear to grow slowly because they live for several hundred years and get so big. These trees were planted in the 1940's, and this street has been canopied since around 1970. That's the year we moved into this house."
       "Is this the only house your family has ever lived in," George asked.
       "Yes. We thought it was outrageously expensive when we bought it, but we got it for a song by today's prices," Dad said.
       "Do you mind saying how much, Ed," Gene asked.
       "No. Forty thousand. In 1970. We've modernized and improved and renovated here and there, but that's what we paid for it."
       "But you were both doctors," Gene said.
       "We were, but we were both residents, not in practice yet, Gene. It was a risk and a gamble for us back then, but it paid off," Dad said.
       Craig and Rick came back in with a tray of drinks. Rick served the adults, and Craig served the kids, pointing out to each one which drink was his. We all knew what that was all about.
       Craig went back to the kitchen and brought out drinks for the three ladies and set them down for them on napkins. Then he went back and brought out a couple of trays of hors d'ouevres.
       "Don't eat too heavy, guys. We've got a sack of oysters out back, and there's a bunch of food tonight," Craig said.
       The ladies came back in a few minutes. Tim, Kyle, Justin, and Brian got off the sofa for the floor to give them a place to sit. Rita started telling Gene and George how wonderful the house was, but I could tell neither one of them cared. My mother made Jus and Brian sit on either side of her legs, and Cherie honed in on Jeff again.
       "Mom, it's 6:30," Craig said. "Should we start opening the oysters?"
       "Yes. You and Kevin go do that, please," she said.
       "I was thinking some strong boys need to open oysters," Craig said. "Kevin and Rick and I need to supervise."
       Mom laughed.
       "Would you mind doing that for us, boys," she asked.
       "No, ma'am. We expected to. That's our job," Kyle said. "Let's go."
       The five boys and Rick and Craig and I got up to go outside to open the oysters. Kyle organized it, handing Justin and Tim gloves and knives.
       "What is this shit," Jus said, looking at the glove.
       "It's an oyster glove. What does it look like," Kyle asked.
       "What's this extra thumb for? My dick?"
       "That's way too big for your dick, Justin, and you know it," Kyle said.
       "It would swallow yours, anti-dick," Jus said.
       Craig acted like that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. "He got you last, Kyle."
       "Yeah, he did, but I'm still ahead. That extra thumb makes that glove work right-handed or left-handed, Bubba. See." He demonstrated it on both hands.
       "Cool," Jus said.
       They hadn't gotten singleton oysters, so there were three or four stuck together. Tim evidently didn't realize that. He opened one of a cluster of four and put it on the tray.
       "Look, Babe. Let me show you how to do this," Kyle said. "These ain't singletons, and there are three more oysters in that clump you just set down there. What you do is open one like this." He demonstrated. "You lay the top shell down on the tray, and you scoop out the oyster like this." He demonstrated again. "You lay that oyster on the top shell, and you do the same for all the others in the clump. This is the way you usually have to do it."
       "Okay," Tim said.
       They worked on a few.
       "These knives need to be sharpened bad, Craig. You got a grinding wheel around here somewhere," Kyle asked.
       "There's a wheel in the garage. At least there used to be. I guess it's still there. Let's go look," Craig said.
       They came back in about ten minutes, and I could tell those oyster knives were razor sharp. Justin was the first to notice the difference.
       "Damn, this is like cutting through soft butter with a hot knife," he said.
       "My advice to you, Justin, is always keep a good point on your tool and keep it sharp, Bubba," Kyle said.
       Craig and Rick almost choked, they laughed so hard.
       Kyle opened those oysters at four times the speed of the other two. He fed himself, the rest of us, and still managed to fill up as many trays for inside as the rest of them.
       "We have to shuck all of these out before we eat," he said. "'Cause we're going out tonight after dinner, right?"
       "If you didn't eat so damn many, you could get them all done," Rick said.
       The next time around, Kyle started to offer one to Rick off the point of his knife. Instead, he shook his head "no," and passed him by. We laughed.
       "Jeff and Brian, y'all come over here and take their places. You need to learn how to do this, too," Kyle said. "Have either of y'all ever done this?"
       They both said "no."
       He demonstrated and watched as they did it the first time.
       "You can do it," he said. "It takes some elbow grease sometimes, but there really ain't that much to it."
       Kyle speared one of the first ones Brian opened, and he couldn't get it off the shell.
       "No, Brian. You've got to cut that muscle, man. Watch."
       He showed Brian how to do it.
       Kyle had grown up in a seafood culture, where men knew how to harvest food from the sea. He knew how to open oysters, peel shrimp, filet fish, and get the meat out of crabs faster than anybody I had ever seen. He knew how to catch those creatures, as well. He knew where the scallop beds were in St. Joseph Bay near us, and he knew how to snorkel to get them. He knew how to throw a cast net in a perfect circle, and later that year, in the summer, I got a magnificent picture of him stark naked throwing a net off the stern of his boat. It was pure luck on my part to get that shot, but it communicated total concentration on his face, total at-homeness with his body, and the total power of a young male fishing.
       Craig refilled the boys' drinks, and I knew he was giving Jeff, Jus, and Kyle booze. I thought he gave Tim a little bit, too, but I could tell he wasn't giving Brian any liquor. Justin and Kyle, though only seventeen, were men in Craig's eyes, and at twenty Jeff was certainly a man. If I hadn't known it before, I knew that night that my brother loved those boys like they were his own sons.

       "Beth, Kevin didn't tell us about the Christmas lights in the trees," Kyle said. "They look unbelievable." We were back inside after opening the oysters.
       "Thanks, Kyle. I'm glad you like them," Mom said.
       "Mom, you should have heard them screaming in the car when they first saw them," I said.
       "Thanks for doing that for us," Jus said.
       "You're most welcome, Justin. It's not every day my grandchildren visit me for the first time, now, is it?"
       "No, ma'am," Jus said. "I hope this isn't the last time, too."
       "Oh, it won't be. If Kevin won't bring you, I'll send you airline tickets, and you boys can come without him," she said.
       "Oh, we'll bring 'em, Mom," I said.
       "Y'all ought to come for Mardi Gras," Craig said.
       "When is it," Kyle asked.
       "It's early this year. The middle of February," Mom said. "We can check the exact date, though."
       "And don't just come for the weekend," Dad said. "Plan on traveling over on Friday and going home on Ash Wednesday. Too many people miss Carnival Day."
       "Can you still get hotel reservations," Rita asked.
       "Probably not good ones, Rita, but we'd be annoyed if you didn't stay here," Mom said.
       "Oh, Beth, that would be too much," Rita said.
       "Not at all. We'll probably just end up being here to sleep, anyway. But you saw how big the house is. We can handle everyone easily."
       Kyle kept cutting his eyes back and forth between the two women. I knew he knew better than to put his two cents worth in, but I could tell he really wanted to come.
       "Let me check the calendar so you can know not to schedule any business for that time," Dad said. He got up and went into their home office, also known as the study. "It's on the twelfth of February. That means you'll get here on the eighth and leave on the thirteenth."
       Rita got a small calendar book out of her purse and turned to February.
       "It looks good, Hon," she said to Gene.
       "Put it down," Gene said.
       "Does this mean we're coming," Kyle asked.
       "It means your mother and I are," Gene said.
       "Aw, Dad," Kyle said.
       "He's teasing you son," Rita said.
       "And he sure got me last," Kyle said.
       "God, it's been years since I've heard anybody say that," Mom said. "Do you all play that game with each other?"
       "Yeah, Beth," Rick said.
       "This one invented it, I think," she said, indicating Craig. "They played it endlessly, and, frankly, it was usually pretty funny."
       We heard a bell from the dining room, and that meant dinner was served.
       "Shall we have dinner," Mom said, standing. We all followed her into the dining room. She assigned seats, and we all sat down.
       Mom nodded to Dad, which meant she wanted him to say grace.
       "I'd like to ask our friend George to do the honors tonight, if he will," Dad said.
       "Thank you, Ed. Let us pray. 'Lord, you've gathered together your family this evening through the gracious hospitality of Beth and Ed. We all need one another in so many ways, but most of all we need you among us. Thank you for one another, for your presence at this table, and for these gifts which we are about to receive through your bounty, through Christ our Lord....'"
       "Amen," we all said together.
       "Nicely done, George. Thank you," Dad said.
       "Thank you, Ed," George said.
       The first course was seafood gumbo, a dish we always referred to as okra gumbo. It was in a huge tureen at my mother's end of the table, and she served our plates. Justin picked up his spoon to start eating as soon as he got his plate, but he put it down to wait for everyone else when he glanced at Rick and Rick gave him the eye.
       After the gumbo was served, my mother passed around a bowl of rice to put in it. Once the rice bowl was back in its place on the table, she picked up her spoon. All five of the boys were watching her to see what to do, and they followed suit automatically.
       The gumbo was superb, and everyone commented on that fact. Through the years my mother had had great luck in hiring women, all of them Black, to cook for us. When we were at home, the cook came every day. Now, she cleaned the house twice a week and cooked on special occasions. The lady who had worked for us the longest, Miss Dilsey, basically raised Craig and me. She had two sons who were our ages, and for several years they were our best friends. It probably shocked the good people of Old Metairie to see four little boys, two Black, two white, playing everywhere together. One year Craig and I had gotten new bikes for Christmas. That year Paul and Jackie had gotten new bikes, too, and they were identical to ours. Paul and Jackie had both gone to our high school, too, and it was a couple of years later, when I was in college, that my parents confessed to basically supporting those boys. Paul was an engineer in Portland, Oregon, by then, and Jackie was in graduate school at LSU working on a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I still loved those guys. Miss Dilsey had died my freshman year of college, and I had come home for the funeral. Like everyone in my family, I mourned the loss of a dear loved one.
       The rest of the meal was good, but it didn't quite measure up to the gumbo. We had pork roast, oven-"fried" white and sweet potatoes, and broccoli with cheese sauce. Dessert was the best bread pudding I had eaten in years.
       "What's your schedule," my dad asked during dinner. "Or I guess I should say what's our schedule?"
       Rick and I had sat down together before we left home to work up a schedule of things to do.
       "Rick and I have a plan, but it's flexible," I said.
       "Can we look at the lights tonight," Brian asked.
       "That sounds good to me," I said. "I had actually forgotten about that until Kyle asked to do that on the way in tonight."
       "Yeah, we really do have to do that," Dad said. "They're even more spectacular this year than last, or so I've been told."
       "Apparently the display in City Park is unbelievable this year," Cherie said. "There was an article in the paper about it last Sunday."
       "Okay, so Christmas lights tonight. We were thinking the Fair Grounds tomorrow," I said.
       "For heaven's sake! That's perfect, Kevin," Mom said. "I haven't been to the racetrack in years. Certainly not since they've rebuilt it after the fire a few years ago. That'll be fun, Rita, especially with all these handsome men to wait on us."
       "We have reservations for dinner at Commander's Palace tomorrow night," Dad said. "Everybody brought dress clothes, right?"
       "Yes, sir," Kyle answered for the boys.
       "Great. Our reservation is for 7:30. We'll have time to come home, clean up, and maybe even rest a little before dinner," Dad said.
       "On Sunday, we thought we would go to the aquarium and the zoo," I said.
       "I have an idea," Mom said. "Let's go to Mass at the Cathedral first, then have coffee and doughnuts at Cafe du Monde. There's a boat that goes from the aquarium to the zoo. We can ride that up and back. That way we can see some of the river."
       "That's a great idea, Grandma," Brian said. He didn't mention that he had already thought of it.
       "I'd like to get some beignets," Rita said, "or was that what you were talking about, Beth?"
       "Yes, it was, Rita. Here in the city we refer to it as coffee and doughnuts usually, but it's really coffee and beignets."
       "Get Kevin to tell you guys a funny story about us at the Cincinnati Zoo. It involved an elephant," Craig said.
       "He already told us," Jus said, "and it was pretty funny. I've never even seen an elephant, much less an elephant's ...."
       "Don't tell it, Bubba," Rick said.
       "Jeez. Sorry," Jus said, and he blushed a little.
       "So what was the story," Rita said.
       "Oh, Rita, you really don't want to know," Mom said. "Trust me on this."
       "Beth is right, Rita. I know the story, and it's strictly a 'boy thing,'" Cherie said.
       "I can just imagine," Rita said, and she grinned. I think that was the first time I noticed how beautiful she was and how much Kyle looked like her.
       "Sunday night we have tickets for Cats," I said. "For all of us."
       "Kevin, that's perfect," Cherie said. "I love that show."
       "So do we, Cherie," Rita said.
       "You've seen that play, Mom," Kyle asked.
       "Yes, son, and so have you. You were four years old. You don't remember it, do you?"
       "No, ma'am," Kyle said.
       "It's damn good, Kyle. You'll love it," Craig said.
       "Monday I thought we would take a city tour, including the Quarter. I think we can give a city tour as well as a bus tour does, don't you, Mom?"
       "Better," she said. "I wish we had a vehicle large enough for all of us."
       "It would take a bus," Jus said, deadpan, "or a troop carrier. A humvee, maybe."
       They laughed.
       "I'm thinking. I'm thinking," Dad said. "We're fourteen, right? Craig and Cherie, will you be able to be with us on Monday?"
       "Are you kidding? This is Christmas vacation for us," Cherie said.
       "I wonder if we could hire a limo that would hold all of us," Dad said. "I'd like for us to all be together for the tour, too."
       "Dad, they have limo vans that can seat fourteen easily. We went to a wedding recently where they used one," Craig said.
       "I'll check on that tomorrow," Dad said.
       "If you find something, Ed, it's on me, you hear," Gene said.
       "We'll work that out," Dad said. "So that's Monday. What about Monday night?"
       "Monday night the boys...er, we would like to do some gay clubs," I said.
       "Well, of course," Dad said. "You fellows don't have much opportunity for that sort of thing, do you?"
       "No, and there's a place that has Youth Night on Mondays," I said.
       "We can all do that too, can't we," Mom asked. I wondered if she had a PFLAG sweatshirt.
       "Of course, Mom," Craig said. "We're going, aren't we?" The last statement was aimed at Cherie.
       "Sure," Cherie said.
       "Honey, I don't have any problem with going," Dad said, "but I think maybe the young people would have more fun without us. We're sort of past the bar-hopping stage, after all. We can do something old-fogeyish with George and the Goodsons."
       She thought for a moment.
       "Yes, I guess you're right," she said. "Tuesday?"
       "Tuesday is open right now," I said. "I didn't know what kind of help you might need getting ready for the party."
       "Odille and her husband will be here all day. Their two daughters and their husbands will work the party, too. Most of the food is catered, and Odille will cook the rest. Or will have cooked it by then at her house. We don't need a lot of people underfoot around here, Kevin. I think you should plan something. Why don't you take everybody to the Destrehan Plantation and up River Road to see the bonfires."
       "I had forgotten about that," I said. "That's a good idea."
       "There having bonfires that day," Jus asked.
       "No, not that day, Jus. It's a tradition along the river. People light bonfires on Christmas Eve on the levee of the Mississippi River so that Papa Noel, Santa Claus, can find his way to the little towns along the river," I said.
       "They think Santa Claus lives in Baton Rouge," Craig said. "They have him confused with Edwin Edwards."
       My parents, Cherie, and I laughed our asses off at that comment.
       "Local joke," George asked.
       "Very local, George," I said.
       "Do they have big ones like we had at camp in Marianna," Tim asked.
       "Oh, much bigger, Tim. Three stories tall. Four stories tall. They start working on those things Thanksgiving weekend, and they work every day to build them. You'll see. It's pretty unbelievable. I did a project on them for school one time. There was an article in the Smithsonian Magazine about them. That's what gave me the idea for the project. Most of them are just tall pyramid-type things, but a few are houses, fire trucks, railroad engines, all kinds of things."
       "Wow," several of the boys said.
       "We'll get out and talk to the guys building them. They've been doing it for over a hundred years," I said. "Some of them supposedly post armed guards at night so nobody will tear theirs down, or worse, set it on fire ahead of time."
       "A couple of times we took a boat ride up the river to see them. Remember, Kev," Craig asked.
       "Oh, yeah. They were spectacular," I said.
       "I wish we could see 'em lit," Kyle said. "Are there many of them?"
       "There are a couple of hundred, I would guess," Craig said.
       "Man, that must be something," Kyle said.
       "It is, Bubba. Maybe we can do that some year," I said.
       "I know Odille is waiting to get in here to clean up," my mother said. "Are we ready to go see the lights?"

       The lights on our street were truly spectacular as we drove away. There was a long stream of cars in the street, looking at our lights, but we were able to get out of the driveway pretty quickly because of one nice guy. Craig and Cherie were in the Bronco with the rest of us. The other six were in my dad's car, with him driving. We had given them the other CB radio so we could keep up with one another.
       "I wish Jeff could have fit in with us," Cherie said.
       "Me, too," Kyle said. "Kevin, call them and tell them to pull over so Jeff can ride with us. Tim can sit on my lap. That's okay with you, isn't it, Babe?"
       "Sure," Tim said.
       I called them on the CB and told them what we wanted. They pulled over, and Jeff came bounding back to our car. He had a big grin on his face, and I knew he liked the idea of riding with us.
       We visited a bunch of streets in Metairie, and some of them were quite a sight. Several streets were blocked off, and we had to walk. Every one of those streets had vendors selling food and drink. At the fourth place with a vendor, the boys each got a hot dog with chili, French fries, and a drink. It had been over an hour since they had eaten, after all.
       At the next one, we all got ice cream cones.
       City Park was truly unmatched. I had been there for that light show a few times before, but it was much bigger and much better than I had remembered. The boys were impressed, too.
       "What's that big building right there," Kyle asked.
       "The New Orleans Museum of Art," I said. "They don't have a real big permanent collection, but they get good stuff, from time to time. Touring exhibits."
       "Yeah, they're going to have a killer one next year for the two hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase," Cherie said. "We'll have to go see that."
       We ended up at Cafe du Monde for coffee and doughnuts. After we ate our beignets and drank our coffee, we had to take to foot and see what was going on. That wasn't on the agenda for that night, but how could we have stopped that from happening? We ended up at a karaoke bar in the fourth or fifth block of Bourbon.
       They just about wore out my mom, Rita, and Cherie dancing with them. Then they branched out to other girls in the place. It was a mixture of tourists and locals, and there were several tables of all girls just dying to dance. Kyle got a waiter off to the side and placed an order. The guy brought the drinks, and Kyle paid him in cash. The drinks were in clear plastic cups, and they looked like cokes. I knew better.
       "That's my boy," Gene said, when he saw me looking.
       "I've got to sing," Kyle eventually said.
       He went up to the stage and talked to the DJ. In a few seconds we heard the music of "Rawhide," and Kyle was singing it. Then he sang "Friends in Low Places," and the place erupted in applause.
       The boys were standing at a high table near the front, not sitting at a regular table in the back, like the adults. He bummed a smoke off Justin and lit up.
       "He's never done that before around us," Rita said, referring to Kyle. "Gene and I have known for a couple of years that he smokes, but this is the first time we've ever seen it."
       "I've known both my boys smoke for over ten years, Rita, and I've never seen them smoking, except from a distance," my mom said. "I know you don't approve, and I don't either, but there really isn't anything we can do about it. It's part of the letting go."
       "I guess," Rita said. "He just has such a strong personality."
       "We talked about this at Thanksgiving, when you and Gene were still in Charleston. Kyle is probably an alpha male, Rita. He's the boss, and other men accept that implicitly. All of those boys do, whether they realize it or not, and Kevin, Rick, and Craig do, too. They might not want to admit that a seventeen-year-old boy is their boss, but he is," my mom said.
       "I've had a sense of that before, Beth," Rita said. "What did you call it? Alpha male?"
       "Yes. He runs that pack of boys. He'll run any pack of boys or men he's in, Rita. I think it's a gift from God. Others think it's purely biological. It has nothing to do with his being gay. It's just the way things are ordered by nature," my mom said.
       Kyle came up to the table we were seated at by then. It was in the back of the club, away from the stand-up tables. It was a few minutes after one o'clock.
       "Are y'all ready to go home," he asked.
       We were, and we did.

Chapter 6

(Kyle's Perspective)
       Riding to New Orleans was fun, but we mostly talked about intellectual stuff. What I didn't get was Justin. It was like one minute he was pissed off or something, and the next minute he was acting so sweet and so nice. I loved Justin as much as I loved Clay, I think, but sometimes I just didn't understand where he was coming from.
       I went to sleep after we stopped to pee just before we went through Mobile. I stayed awake going through that awesome tunnel they have, but once we passed the city it was really boring. I had woken up real early that morning, so I just went to sleep. I think everybody else must have, too, except for Kevin, who was driving.
       When we turned into Kevin's street, there were these humongous trees with about a million Christmas lights hanging in them. It was so beautiful that we all started cheering and screaming. Kevin said he didn't tell us about that because he didn't know about it. It turned out that Beth had done that for us.
       We had some more raw oysters that night before dinner. They were Louisiana oysters, not Apalachicola oysters, and they weren't as good. They were much bigger and not nearly as salty. I had to teach Brian and Jeff how to shuck them, but they caught on pretty quick. Those oyster knives they had were shitty until I sharpened them. It was a good thing they had a grinder because we'd still be there if I had had to use a file on them.
       After dinner, which was good, we went to see the lights. Then we went to get coffee and some little square doughnuts covered with powdered sugar. They were good. Not too sweet, but nice and light. I ate the six they brought me and two of Tim's.
       It was amazing how many people were on the street. There was a big square with a fence around it right across the street from the coffee shop, and we walked around a little bit looking at some of the shops and such. I saw a bunch of cute guys, and several of them checked me out as I was checking them out. We saw three or four male couples holding hands, and we even saw two guys kissing on the street. They were rubbing against one another, so there was no doubt what they were doing.
       It was just a couple of blocks to Bourbon Street, so we walked over there. We went to a place called the Cat's Meow that was packed. It was a great place, though. It had karaoke, which I had heard of but had never seen before. The DJ was funny, and he kept singing really dirty words to the songs. It was a little embarrassing at first because my mom and Beth were with us, but I didn't let it bother me after I saw them both laughing. This one couple were dancing all over one another, almost like they were having sex. I saw that the guy was hard, but I wasn't surprised. The DJ kept offering to take up a collection so they could get a room. They left after a little while, I guess to get a room.
       Watching those two dance made me hard, which I really didn't appreciate since I wanted to dance with my mom and Beth and Cherie. There was no way I was dancing with them with a hard-on. No way. It went away after that couple left, but my underwear was wet with what I had been leaking. It wasn't cold, exactly, but it was annoying. If Tim and I had danced like that, we probably would have been arrested. On second thought, probably not in New Orleans.
       I ordered a couple of rounds of drinks for the boys, and the waiter didn't even ask how old I was. He just brought the drinks. I got Brian a drink like everybody else, and he handled it just fine, like I knew he would. People forget that Brian was going to be fifteen in January, although he looks a lot younger.
       Tim wanted me to get up on the stage and sing.
       "No way," I said.
       "Come on, Babe. You'll be great, man. Please," he said.
       "He ain't got the balls to do it," Justin said.
       He said that kind of mean. He teased me all the time, but that didn't really sound like teasing. That was all it took, though. I went up on that stage and sang two songs. A lot of people clapped, and I felt good doing it. I watched my mom, and she got a real proud and happy look on her face when I was singing. So did Beth.
       Justin didn't clap, though, and he had this real mad look on his face when I got back to our table.
       "Why are you in such a shitty mood, Justin," I asked. "Aren't you having fun?"
       He got very, very quiet. He didn't move a muscle except to lower his head.
       I took his hand in my hand. He looked up at me, and I could see tears in his eyes. I knew he was hurting; I just didn't know why.
       "Let's step out and have a smoke," I said.
       "You can smoke in here," Tim said. "All these other people are smoking."
       "We'll be back in a few minutes, Babe," I said. Then I leaned over and whispered to Tim, "I need to talk to him."
       "Okay," Tim said.
       Jus and I walked down a side street about a half a block and lit up.
       "This isn't you, Bubba," I said. "What's going on?"
       "It's just so much, Kyle," he said.
       "What do you mean?"
       "Well, everything," he said. "The trip, the beautiful house, all the nice stuff, all these people being so nice to me. Everything."
       "Are you afraid it's not real? That it's going to vanish before your eyes?"
       "Something like that," he said. "Do you know what I did on Christmas Day last year, Kyle?"
       "No. What?"
       "I took six dicks up my ass, man. The first guy was the one who hurt me. Who gave me that tear in my ass. He was so fucking drunk I was surprised he could even get it up, but he did. When I told that bastard who owned me I didn't want to do anymore tricks that day, he punched me in the face and told me to grow up. I still had five more guys to do. I passed out twice. The second time I passed out was with the sixth guy. The pain was unbelievable. When I woke up the next morning, I had a wad of paper towels stuck up my ass, but the bleeding had stopped."
       "But that's all over now. Now you're with us," I said.
       "I know, and I feel like shit for being in such a bitchy mood. Especially to you, man. You've been nothing but kind to me. I love you, Kyle. I used to want you for my boyfriend. I don't anymore, but I still love you."
       "I love you, too," I said.
       "Yeah, but you love Tim more, don't you?"
       "I do love Tim more, and I also love Tim different. I love you like I love Clay."
       "At least that's something," he said. "That afternoon you jerked me off I thought maybe you felt about me like I felt about you. But that was just a mercy fuck, wasn't it?"
       "That was something I should never have done. I've thought about it a lot since then. I'm not going to lie to you, Jus. Physically? Sexually? I find you extremely attractive, man. You're a stud. And I'm not teasing you or joking around now. But there's a level where we just don't connect, and Tim and I do. I want to be your friend, your very close friend, the rest of our lives, Bubba."
       "I want that, too. I think I'm in love with Brian, Kyle."
       "I know you are. It's pretty obvious."
       "I think Brian might be my Tim, or my Rick if I was Kevin," he said.
       "I hope so," I said. "Were you thinking that if you were obnoxious enough I'd stop loving you? Or that Kevin and Rick would stop loving you?"
       He didn't respond right away.
       "I guess," he said.
       "Well, let me tell you something. No matter how bitter or sad or obnoxious you are, that ain't going to happen. I'm not going to stop loving you. Kevin and Rick aren't going to stop loving you. Beth isn't going to stop loving you. You belong to our hearts now, and you can't change that. No matter what you do. So you might as well stand tall and soar like an eagle, man. 'Cause that's what you are."
       He started crying.
       "Happy or sad," I asked.
       "H-H-Happy," he said. He stopped crying and snorted up the snot that was in his nose. Then he spat a wad of it in the street. "Let's party, Brother." He grinned.
       There were no more bad moods from Justin on that trip or for the rest of the Christmas holidays. In fact, he's been a pretty cheerful dude since then.

(Kevin's Perspective)
       We got home pretty late Friday night, but everybody had had a great time, I think. Kyle and Justin had left the karaoke club we were in for about an hour, but they came back looking like they were the best of friends and happy. I figured they had decided to check out some of the other action on Bourbon Street. They were old enough to do that, but I was a little disappointed in them for ignoring their boyfriends while they did it.
       The first post time at the Fair Grounds was 12:30, but a lot of activity went on before the beginning of that first race. The racetrack was in Mid-City, a section between Uptown and Downtown. It was fairly close to City Park where we had seen the lights, and it was about a five-minute drive from the Quarter. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from our house.
       The boys were all downstairs by 9:30, but they all needed to clean up in the bathroom. We let them have coffee and some of the pastry Odille had made and my mother had baked that morning, but we ushered them up to get ready for the day by ten o'clock. Before he went back upstairs, Justin wanted to talk to Rick and me.
       "I want to apologize for acting like a butt hole yesterday," he said.
       "You seemed pretty hostile at times yesterday, Jus. I was worried. Apology accepted," I said.
       "Same here, on both counts," Rick said.
       "Kyle set me straight last night. It'll be all cheer and fun from here on out from me," he said.
       Rick and I knew better than to pry into what had gone on.
       "Welcome back," I said.
       "Yeah, welcome back," Rick said.
       He grinned and went off to take his shower.
       "Kyle strikes again," Rick asked.
       "Apparently," I said.

       "Are they going to let the boys in at the racetrack," George asked as we were getting into the cars.
       "Oh, yeah," I said. "Children under six can't get in, but these dudes can. We'll have to place bets for them, maybe. Especially Tim and Brian. Jeff is fully legal, and Kyle and Justin can pass for eighteen to make bets."
       "This is New Orleans, not Boston, George," my dad said. George laughed.
       The Fair Grounds is a pretty impressive place by any standard. It's the oldest racetrack in the country that is still in operation, having started racing there in 1852. I was sure other tracks probably claimed that title too, but it hardly mattered. There had been thoroughbred racing on that site for a long time, and they knew how to do it right.
       "I'll get the admission," George said. "How much is it?"
       "A buck a head," I said.
       "You're kidding! A dollar a person? You can't do anything for a dollar," he said.
       "Well, that's the grandstand. The Clubhouse is four dollars each, but I think the grandstand is better," I said. "You're much closer to the action. It's not cold or raining today, and the grandstand has the best characters."
       "But a dollar for admission is outrageous. No place only charges a dollar," he said. He was laughing.
       "Well, the Fair Grounds does," I said. "If you want to spend money, George, you can buy everybody lunch."
       "Good idea."
       "That'll set you back about six bucks a person," my dad said.
       "Unbelievable," George said. "How does this place make money?"
       "How does a casino make money, George? Casinos give you free drinks and food," Rick said.
       "Good point," George said. "I'm here for entertainment and to be with friends. I guess a lot of people are here to win, or lose, money."
       "Exactly," I said, "and it's mostly to lose."
       We got programs as we went in, and Craig bought a copy of The Racing Form.
       "Do you know how to read the Form, son," my dad asked him.
       "Not really, but I figured with the amount of education in this group we should be able to figure something out," Craig said.
       "Not necessarily," Dad said.
       The Racing Form was a more-or-less daily newspaper that was published about the Fair Grounds. I assumed every major racetrack had its own edition of the Form. It had details about every race and more statistics than The Wall Street Journal. Racing aficionados knew how to read the Form and how to use it to win.
       "What's the strategy here, Kevin," Gene asked.
       "Gene, basically I bet the favorite to win, place, and show. That way you're almost always in the money. The program shows you who the favorite is. It also shows you who the long shot is. A lot of guys box the favorite and play the long shot to win. The bets are three dollars, I think. Not more than five, anyway. You can bet a whole lot more, of course. Some people play lucky numbers. Each horse has a number, and if a number feels lucky to you, bet it."
       "What do you mean by 'box the favorite,'" Kyle asked.
       "Betting win, place, or show--first, second, third--on the same horse is boxing that horse," I said.
       "How many horses in a race," Kyle asked.
       "They don't like to let the races get down below ten. There are usually twelve, fifteen horses."
       "What if I box 'em all," Kyle asked.
       "If you do that, you'll win a win bet, a place bet, and a show bet. But you might not even break even if you do that. The fun of this sport is picking one horse and betting on it. You're not here to make money. You're here to have fun," I said.
       "Kyle, when my father started bringing me to the track when I was around ten, he used to always take me to the paddock. If a horse took a piss or a shit while we were there, that's the one we would bet on," my dad said.
       "Why? Lighter," Kyle asked.
       "Exactly," Dad said. "And you know, that's as good a system as any."
       George and Gene were listening, and they laughed.
       "The paddock is the place where they take the horses fourteen minutes before a race. How they set on fourteen minutes, instead of fifteen minutes, I'll never guess, but that's what it is. When you hear the bell ring, that means the horses are entering the paddock," Dad said. "You can go look at the horses in the paddock and get pretty close to them."
       "This is so cool," Kyle said. "How much time before the paddock opens?"
       "About an hour and a half," I said.
       "Should we get some lunch," George asked. It was only eleven, but I knew the boys could eat.
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said.
       We got lunch. Afterwards we visited the gift shop.
       "Let's all get baseball caps," Kyle said. We agreed, and everybody, including the ladies, got identical baseball caps. They were black with the Fair Grounds logo on them. George, who was still annoyed that the admission and the lunch had cost so little, paid for all the caps, too. They were $13 a piece.
       There was already a good arch in the bills of those caps, but Kyle and Rick worked with theirs a little more. Tim worked his, too, after he saw Kyle doing it. Mine was comfortable the way it was.
       After we finished in the gift shop, we had to decide on which horse we were going to bet in the first race. When we had made our choices, we pooled up our money so only a couple of us would have to stand in line. After we had bought our tickets and were back in the grandstand, we heard the paddock bell. We all trooped over there to look at the horses. They were magnificent specimens, but they seemed nervous and jittery. It was like they knew they were on display.
       In a little while we were back at our place in the grandstand. It wasn't long before the trumpet let us know the race was about to start. "And they're off," the announcer said, and the horses bolted from the starting gate. Everybody started cheering for their horse, and it seemed like the race was over in just a few seconds.
       "Mine won," Brian said. He was pretty excited about that.
       "Let's wait and see how much it pays," I said.
       "How do we know that," Kyle asked.
       I pointed out the sign that gave the payoff. We waited a few minutes, and the amount flashed up. It was $16.50. The place horse paid $13.00, and the show horse paid $12.75.
       "That's not very much," Kyle said.
       "Well, the favorite won," I said. "The show horse was a long shot, and that's why it paid as much as it did. It has to do with odds and with how much money is bet on each horse."
       "How do we get the money," Bri asked.
       I explained about the cashiers and having to cash in the ticket.
       "We can do it now, or we can wait for a few races to see if we have more to cash in," I said.
       "I want to do it now," Brian said. The adults stayed in their places or went off to make new bets, but I took Brian and the boys to cash in the ticket.
       The rest of the afternoon went by in more or less the same way. As the sun went down and shadows covered the grandstand, it began to get a little chilly. It had been in the high sixties all day while the sun was out, but the temperature fell into the fifties. We decided we had had enough after the seventh race, and we went home.
       "That was really cool, guys. Thanks for taking us," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, thanks," the others chimed in.
       "I'm glad you liked it. I couldn't do that too often, but I like to go to the track now and then," I said.
       "Do you think that place has a Web site," Jeff asked.
       "It does, Jeff. I checked it out, in fact," I said. "It's got some pretty interesting stuff on it."
       I could tell everybody was tired. Kyle asked a few questions about places we passed, but everybody else was quiet. It had been a great day, and I was glad the guys had had a chance to go.

(Kyle's Perspective)
       We had some coffee and a snack when we got home. We talked all about how much fun we had had and about all the interesting people we had seen.
       "I saw this really cute group of gay guys," Rick said.
       "Why didn't you tell us," Kyle asked.
       "I just figured you guys had seen them, too," he said. "They were so hot."
       My mom and dad, Beth and Ed, Craig and Cherie, and Doc were all grinning, so I figured they had seen them, too.
       "Rick, when you see groups like that, let us know, man," Kyle said. "Evidently, all of you saw them, but we didn't."
       Beth laughed.
       "Why are you laughing, Grandma," Brian asked.
       "I'm laughing because he's talking about you fellows," she said.
       "Get out of here, Rick," I said, and they all laughed.
       Tim and I went up to the room we were sharing with Jeff. We got down to our briefs and got into bed. We hadn't had any private time since Thursday night, and I needed to hold him and snuggle with him. I put my arms around him and kissed him for a long time. It didn't take that much, even, for Tim and I to arouse each other, and after several days of no physical contact, we were off like rockets in just a few seconds.
       "I love you so much," I said. "You make me the happiest guy in the world, Babe."
       "You make me happy, too, Kyle. Thank you for wanting me," he said.
       "I want you right now. I hate to lock the door, though, in case Jeff needs something," I said.
       "Let's don't worry about that. I need you right now, too, Kyle."
       He started rubbing my nipples, playing with the little loops in them. I was breathing so hard I could hardly talk. He started rubbing my erection.
       "Okay," I whispered.
       I got up and locked the door. I slipped off my briefs on the way back to bed, and Tim got on his back for me. He raised his legs and gave me a clear hot at his ass. I went down on it and started licking and kissing his hole. I got out a tube of lube, and I was in him in moments.
       I didn't expect to last very long since it had been a couple of days, but I did okay. I made Tim shoot, and then I shot right after him.
       "That felt so good," Tim said when we were finished.
       "For me, too," I said. I got up and unlocked the door and got back in bed naked. Tim and I cuddled for a while, and then we both went to sleep.
       I woke up in a little while. It was dark outside, but I didn't hear anybody else up and getting dressed. I checked the watch on my ID bracelet, and it said five o'clock. I turned on the small lamp that was next to the bed so I could see Tim.
       He was so beautiful to me. He was as big as I was, but he looked like a little boy when he was asleep. Soft, cuddly, needing protection. I thought about Christmases in the years to come. We would always spend part of Christmas with Kevin and Rick, and I hoped we could always spend some of it with Beth and Ed, too. I didn't like to think too much about what was going to happen. I had already decided that I was going to go to the community college with Jus after I graduated, and then I would transfer to whatever college Tim went to. The only problem was, Tim was really smart in school, and I didn't know if I could get in at someplace like Duke or Harvard, like he probably could. I guess I could go to another college nearby. One way or the other, though, we were going to be together, if he still wanted me.
       Tim and I had talked about the future a few times, and he had said he was thinking he wanted to be a doctor. It made sense, I guess, seeing that his dad was one. He would have to go to college and then to medical school, though. Then he would have to be a resident in a hospital. It took a long time. Even though I didn't want to think about it, I knew we had to at some point. Tim was just a sophomore, but time seemed to go by pretty fast. It was hard for me to believe that I started falling in love with him almost a whole year ago. A lot had happened in that year, but in some ways it seemed like only yesterday.
       Tim stirred a little, and then he woke up.
       "Hi, Babe. What time is it," he asked.
       "It's ten after five. Did you have a good nap?" I kissed him quickly before he could answer.
       "Yeah. Did you go to sleep?"
       "Yeah. I woke up about ten minutes ago."
       "What did you talk to Justin about last night when you guys went outside," he asked.
       "Justin was hurting pretty bad, I think. I think all of this is a little confusing to him," I said.
       "You mean the trip and Christmas and all?"
       "Yeah. You know what he did last Christmas?"
       "What?"
       "He got fucked by six guys. The first one was drunk and tore up his butt. The bastard who ran him wouldn't let him stop. He finally passed out, I guess from loss of blood. He said he woke up the next morning with a wad of paper towels crammed in his butt."
       "What did you tell him," Tim asked. I could tell he was hurting for Jus.
       "I told him that if he was acting like a butt hole yesterday because he thought that would make us stop loving him, he was wrong. I told him to straighten up and fly right."
       "Did he cry," Tim asked.
       "Yeah, he did, but it was a happy cry."
       "Jeff has seemed pretty sad, too, hasn't he," Tim asked.
       "Yeah. I'm sure he's missing his family, and I know he's missing Clay. He probably hasn't even had sex since before Clay died," I said.
       "I'm sure he hasn't. Do you want to invite him to sleep with us tonight?"
       Jeff had slept in our room, but he was on an air mattress on the floor.
       "Just to sleep, or...."
       "All of it," Tim said. "Would you be cool with that?"
       I thought for a moment. Jeff was a really nice guy, and I knew he needed comfort and support. I didn't really have a problem with jerking him off or finger fucking him, but I didn't want to kiss him or fuck him or suck his cock. And I didn't want him doing any of that to me or Tim.
       "What do you mean by 'all of it?'"
       He chuckled a little.
       "Just cuddling and jerking off. Like what we did with Chad," he said. "We don't have to if you don't want to."
       "We can do that. I thought maybe you meant more. Like what we do with each other. Let's don't ever do more than jerk off with a third guy, okay, Babe? I want what we do to just be for us," I said.
       "I know, and that's what I want, too. I don't even want to kiss him," he said.
       "I definitely don't want to kiss anybody but you," I said. "Tim, I have to tell you something, and I hope you won't be mad at me."
       "What did you do," he asked.
       "The day Jus got home from the hospital, I jerked him off. I wouldn't let him touch me, and I know he wanted to. I shouldn't have done that, but it was just a brotherly thing," I said.
       "Kyle, I know how you feel about me, Baby. You don't have to confess that to me."
       He kissed me, and I knew right then it meant no more to him than it had to me.
       "He and I talked about that last night. He said it got his hopes up, and that's what was wrong about it. Maybe we shouldn't do anything with Jeff for that same reason," I said.
       "You're right. I don't even know if Jeff would do anything, but we don't want to set him up to be hurt. Let's forget about what we said a few minutes ago."
       "Okay. And Tim, it won't ever happen again unless you are right there with me and we both want to do something. Deal?"
       "Deal, Babe."
       I heard the shower go on in the bathroom that connected our room to the one Justin and Brian were in. It sounded like they were in there together. It didn't take them long, though, so they must not have played around.
       Tim and I showered together. We did play around, and we ended up jerking each other off.

(Kevin's Perspective)
       Dinner at Commander's Palace was quite a big deal, as I knew it would be. There were many fine restaurants in New Orleans, and my family ate out pretty often when I was growing up. Commander's Palace was one of the favorites, and we always went there for special family occasions. My parents knew there was no better place to take their Florida guests.
       My mother and Cherie had a fit when they saw the boys all dressed up in their suits. Kyle had brought his digital camera and a box of 100 diskettes on the trip. Those, plus the memory sticks he had bought, were enough to let him take pictures of everything he saw. He had taken many the night before of the lights, even more that day at the racetrack, and we got several of everyone dressed and ready to go out. Rita asked him not to take the camera to the restaurant, which was probably a very good idea, so that event went undocumented. For everything else, though, there was quite a good photographic record.
       Commander's is directly across the street from the Lafayette Cemetery, where Chris Rice had set the opening pages of his novel A Density of Souls. I had read that book and had been impressed by it, but I doubted anyone else in our group was familiar with it. I mentioned that fact.
       "I loved that book," Jeff said. "Clay gave it to me to read. He said that if he ever went to New Orleans he wanted to see that cemetery."
       "Well, there it is, Jeff," I said. "It's closed at night, unfortunately."
       "That's okay. I don't think a cemetery, especially one like that, would be all that much fun at night," he said.
       We all laughed politely.
       Rick and I had talked about poor Jeff the night before. He seemed terribly depressed and sad. That was a phase of the grief process that was close to the end, and of that we were glad, but we hated to see him hurting, as we knew he was. Rick pointed out that Jeff was the odd one of the boys. Tim had Kyle and Brian had Justin, but Jeff had no one. George was without a partner, too, of course, but George had long ago put away his grief over his daughter and his wife. In fact, since George had started seeing Sonya, he seemed decidedly more upbeat than he had before he met her.
       "This cemetery looks really old," Brian said.
       "It is, Buddy," I said. "Maybe we can come back in the daylight so we can see it better. I know you want to see the cemeteries here."
       "I think the Metairie Cemetery is better for touring," Mom said. "Well, it's time to go in, everyone."
       Commander's Palace was in an old Victorian mansion that had opened its doors as an eatery in the 1880's. The place was pretty remarkable, but it had been redone to open it up and let some light in.
       Our party was too large for seating in a public dining room, so they put us in a private room upstairs. My mother announced that everyone should order exactly what he or she wanted. I made a mental note to tell the boys later that ordinarily the host or hostess ordered first and that it was rude to order something that cost more than his or her choice. By saying what she did, my mother had dispensed with that rule.
       The service at that restaurant was absolutely impeccable, and it was all done without your being aware servers were around. Being a waiter in a place like that could easily mean a six-figure income, and there were rumors that the waiter jobs at another fine restaurant in the city were passed down from father to son.
       We had a fantastic meal, and everyone said that was probably the best meal they had ever had. We finished it up with coffee and the bread pudding soufflé, one of their signature dishes.
       On the way out, my mother pulled me aside.
       "Jeff seems terribly depressed," she said.
       "Yes, he does. Rick and I were talking about that last night. I wish there was something we could do for him," I said.
       "It's no doubt part of his grieving process, but there is something I can do about it." She reached into her purse and took out a prescription pad. She hastily wrote a prescription and handed it to me.
       "What is this," I asked.
       "It's a fast-acting mood elevator. He should take one tablet four times a day. Taken long term and in larger doses, it can be quite addictive. This dosage won't do that, though. I've given him enough to get through a couple of months. He should see a psychiatrist if these don't work or if his depression seems to drag on for weeks," she said.
       "Thank you. I love you," I said. I gave her a peck on the cheek.
       "Stop and get that prescription filled on the way home," she said.
       "Yes, ma'am," I said. "And thanks again, Mom. You are the best."
       "I can't stand to see anyone suffer, much less my own grandson," she said.
       I drove toward home and pulled into the parking lot of a large drugstore that was open twenty-four hours.
       "What are we doing," Kyle asked.
       "I need to pick something up," I said.
       "Rubbers, probably," Jus said. "They use about a case a week."
       "Babe, make sure you get extra, extra large for me this time, please," Rick said.
       The kids laughed.
       "That ain't the head you're supposed to cover, Rick," Jus said.
       More laughter.
       "Jeff, come in with me, would you please."
       Jeff looked confused, but he went into the store with me.
       "What's up," he asked.
       "Jeff, several of us have noticed how depressed you seem to be. My mom noticed it today at the track and tonight at the restaurant," I said.
       "I'm sorry, Kevin," he said. Huge tears welled up in his eyes.
       "Jeff. Buddy. It's not something you can help, man. We all know that. We just don't want you hurting anymore. My mom wrote a prescription for some medicine that will help you. That's why we stopped. To get it filled," I said.
       He didn't respond, but he seemed somehow calmer.
       We got the medicine, and Jeff bought a bottle of water. He took one of the pills before we left the pharmacy.
       I had always heard of miracle drugs, but that night I watched that medicine work a miracle in Jeff as we drove home. The boys wanted to see more Christmas lights.   Since it was still relatively early, we drove around for a while. It was almost with each passing block that I could see Jeff coming back to life. It started with a small chuckle at somebody's wisecrack. Then it was outright laughter. Then Jeff made a wisecrack or two of his own. By the time we got home, Jeff was feeling fine.
       "I haven't felt this good in months," he told me as we were going into the house. "Thank you so much, Kevin."
       When we got inside, my mom's face lit up when she realized that the medicine was already working. She asked Jeff to give her a hand with some made-up task in the kitchen. I knew she wanted to talk to him, and I knew he wanted to thank her.
       Craig had a nightcap with us, then he and Cherie left. Brian was on the floor next to Jus. He looked pretty tired, and it was cute watching him fight sleep. Kyle and Tim were fooling around with Kyle's camera.
       "I wish I had thought to bring a laptop," Kyle said.
       "What do you need a laptop for, son," Gene asked.
       "If I had a laptop, I could make a slide show of all these pictures, Dad. There are some really good ones," he said.
       "I have a laptop, Kyle," my dad said. "In fact, there are two or three of them around here. Let me get you one."
       "Two would be better, gramps," Kyle said. "That way, Tim and I can both work."
       My dad got two nice Dell laptops for them to use. They went to work right away creating a slide show for us. In about a half hour, Kyle was finished with his. Mom and Jeff were back in the room by then, and we all watched the slide show. Kyle had developed quite a photographer's eye, it seemed. The pictures were wonderfully clear and sharp, which was probably more the camera's doing than his, but he had captured the mood and flavor of every scene.
       I watched my parents' reaction, and the reaction of Gene and Rita, to the show. It was hard to tell which couple had greater pride spread across their faces.

Chapter 7

       The next morning everyone was up by 7:30 to get ready for our adventures at the Audubon Nature Institute, which is the collective name for the aquarium and the zoo. The plan was to go to Mass at St. Louis Cathedral at ten, have breakfast at the Cafe du Monde after Mass, and walk down to the Aquarium of the Americas on Canal Street after breakfast. Almost everybody was Catholic. Kyle and Justin weren't, but they had been to Mass with us almost every week for the last seven months. Gene and Rita weren't Catholic, though, a fact that had escaped my attention as we were planning that outing.
       As usual, my mother saved the day by offering to go with them for breakfast if they preferred not to attend Mass. They were perfectly fine with going to Mass, though, so that was taken care of. Craig and Cherie were going to meet us at the Cathedral. We packed up everyone in our vehicles, and we took off. Jeff would be riding with us on a regular basis now.
       "How does everybody feel this morning," I asked, mainly because of Jeff.
       They all said they felt good.
       "I can't remember ever feeling any better," Jeff said.
       Rick, who was by then in on what had happened with the medicine, and I looked at one another and smiled.
       It always amazed me at how much traffic there was on the Interstate leading into downtown New Orleans. One would expect Sunday morning to be a slack time, but one would be wrong. We passed the Super Dome, and the boys were all awestruck by it.
       "Can we go in there," Kyle asked.
       "Maybe tomorrow. There's a Saints game today, Bubba," I said.
       "Have you been in there, Kev," Tim asked.
       "Yeah, and Rick has, too. In fact, we were in there at the same time once, but we weren't together. We both went to the Sugar Bowl game when FSU played the University of Florida for the National Championship."
       "Who won," Kyle asked.
       "They did," Rick said with obvious contempt.
       "Yesssssssssssssssss!" Jeff said. He and Kyle tapped knuckles.
       "Tell them your Super Dome bathroom story, Babe," I said.
       "Okay. After the game I went into the men's room to take a leak, and the place was packed. It was literally nuts-to-butts."
       "Nuts-to-butts? What does that mean," Kyle asked.
       "That means it was so crowded I had my nuts up against the butt of the guy in front of me, and the guy behind me had his nuts up against my butt," Rick said.
       "Whoa! I bet you liked that, didn't you, sweetie," Justin teased.
       Everybody laughed.
       "Shut up and listen," Rick said. "I stood in line in front of the urinal for a good ten minutes. It was a stainless steel trough instead of an individual urinal, and I was at the very end. A guy came up on my right and tried to nudge me down, but I was already pressed against the guy to my left. There was just no room for him.
       "Instead of waiting until I was finished, that joker decided to stand at the end of the trough to pee. He was pretty wasted, by the way. The only problem with him standing there was there was a concrete box that protruded out of the floor about a foot high. It had plumbing stuff in it. That didn't stop him, though. He stood right up on that box, unbuttoned his jeans, and pulled out the biggest dick I had ever seen in my life."
       "Was he hard," Tim asked.
       "He might have been half-hard or something, Tim, but he didn't have a full erection. Anyway, that thing was about five inches from my face. He turned loose a stream of piss that looked like it was coming out of a fire hose right over the streams of everybody else. I didn't know what to do. I looked up at the boy. He grinned at me and shrugged. I started laughing. He started laughing. He slipped and fell off the concrete box he was standing on, piss flying everywhere. Some of his friends were right there, and they picked him up. The guy was real good natured, and he laughed along with everybody else."
       "Then what did you do," Kyle asked.
       "I finished pissing and got the hell out of there," Rick said.
       "Is that it," Jus asked.
       "Yeah, that's it," Rick said.
       "I don't get it. What's the punch line," Jus asked.
       "There isn't a punch line. It's just a funny story," Rick said.
       "Oh. I hope I don't start thinking about it in church and have to be taken out because I'm laughing so hard," Justin said in total deadpan.
       Everybody laughed.
       "They give tours of the Dome," I said. "We might be able to get one tomorrow. If not, we'll do it the next time we come here."
       "When we go on the tour, Rick, I want you to rub your nuts on my butt, okay," Justin said.
       That made us all crack up.
       "Is anybody keeping score on this," Jus asked.
       "Yes, and you got me last at least three times," Rick said. "Very good. For you."
       "Uggghhhh, he got you last on that one, Justy-boy," Jeff said.
       "Get your damn finger out of my ear, Jeffy-boy," Jus said.
       "That wasn't my finger," Jeff said.
       "It had to be. It was too big to be your dick," Justin replied.
       "He got you last, Bubba," Kyle said to Jeff.
       "Yeah, I guess he did. I'll wait in ambush," Jeff said. "I'll get him when he least suspects it."
       I loved it that Jeff was finally able to participate in the fun.
       We were turning into the parking lot that is next door to the Jackson Brewery building. We'd park there all day while we were at church, the aquarium, and the zoo.
       It was going to be a beautiful day, but all of the morning fog hadn't yet burned off the river. We were in jeans and tennis shoes for the day, and we all had light jackets. The temperature was probably in the mid-fifties, and it would warm up into the seventies as the day wore on. We all had on the baseball caps we had bought the day before at the Fair Grounds. We probably looked like a scout troop or a church youth group or something. We made a handsome assemblage, though.
       Kyle had his camera, of course, and he ran ahead to take pictures of us walking. He also took some of the Cathedral and of Jackson Square, a scene that is probably as much of a logo for the city of New Orleans as there is.
       "You're not going to take pictures in church, are you," I asked him.
       "Why not?"
       "Well, I guess it's okay. One or two during Mass, though. Not a lot. It'll distract the priest."
       "From what I've heard, just seeing Kyle will distract the priest," Justin said. "Try to get a picture of the tent in his robes, Kyle."
       Rick and Jeff, who was also Catholic, as it turned out, laughed.
       "Justin, slow down and walk with me, okay, Bubba," I said.
       "Oh, shit. Another little private talk with Kevin," Justin said. The others laughed, especially Kyle, who certainly got his fair share of "little private talks with Kevin."
       I slowed down to talk with Jus. I put my arm over his shoulder.
       "Justin," I said, and then I paused. "That was funny, man. You've given us a lot of fun already this morning." I was being as serious as I could. "That can only mean one thing, Bubba."
       "I have not been smoking, Kevin. I smoked four Marlboro cigarettes yesterday, and that is it, man. Don't say that, okay? I don't fucking smoke." He was agitated, just like I wanted him to be so I could set him up.
       "I didn't say anything about you smoking, and that's not what I meant."
       "You said the way I was acting could only mean one thing. What does it mean, huh?"
       By then we were across Jackson Square and entering the Place de Jean Paul II immediately in front of the Cathedral.
       "It means you got laid."
       "You shithead!" He was laughing so hard he could hardly talk.
       "Not so loud; we're about to go into church, man," I said.
       Rick and the others were ahead of us. They stopped and turned around to see Justin and me laughing our asses off and goofing around. They were all grinning, and I knew they were dying to know what we were laughing about.
       "You got me last big time on that one, Kev." He hugged me tight.
       "What's going on," Rick asked when we caught up with them.
       "None of your damn business. Now let's go in here and pray to God for Kevin," Justin said.
       I laughed with delight at that boy, who truly had been on a roll that morning.

       The people in the other car were already in a pew, and we took the pew right behind them. There just wasn't enough room for fourteen people abreast. Kyle got busy with the camera, and I saw George and Gene, who were sitting next to one another, beam and nod to each other when they saw him.
       We weren't there long before the Mass started. It was the principal Mass of the day, and the celebrant was a bishop.
       "Why does he have that hat on, and why is he using that big walking stick," Jus asked.
       "This guy is a bishop. I think he might be the archbishop," I whispered to Jus. My mom was right in front of us, and she turned around when she heard me say that.
       "No. He's an auxiliary bishop. He's not the archbishop," she said.
       The choir sounded like a professional chorus, and there was more pomp and circumstance than the boys had ever seen in church before. The bishop blessed the congregation with holy water, and there was incense. They lit the Advent Wreath with great ceremony, too. There was another priest and three deacons, in addition to the bishop.
       When it came time for the homily, it was obvious the bishop was at least a little effeminate. Maybe even more than a little.
       Jus whispered, "That boy plays for our team."
       The boys smiled, but the seven adults in the pew ahead of us started laughing. It wasn't out loud, but it was obvious they were laughing hard. My mom got out of the pew and walked to the back to pull herself together.
       "What did I say," Justin asked innocently.
       "You know what you said. Now shut the fuck up and listen to him," Rick said. Rick was grinning at Justin, and Jus was grinning right back.

       After Mass, in the Cafe, we discussed the Mass. Everybody had enjoyed it.
       "Justin, I went to high school with the bishop," my dad said. "And I've always agreed with your assessment. I think he does play for your team."
       Everybody laughed.
       "I saw him give you a hug after the service. He seemed to like you a lot, Ed. He told me he thought you were a very handsome man. He also said he hoped he would need heart surgery soon so you could see him naked," Jus said.
       Everybody laughed.
       I could not imagine any circumstances under which anyone would even think to tease my dad about being gay, much less in front of my mother and a dozen other people. That was exactly what Justin had just done, though.
       "I can't believe my own grandson just outed me like that," Dad said.
       We all laughed.
       Kyle was all over the place with the camera. He finished eating quickly, and he and Tim went up on the levee to take pictures of the river, Jackson Square, and the Cathedral. The fog was still hovering over the water, and we later learned he got some spectacular shots.
       "Kyle seems really interested in photography, and his work is really very good," my dad said. "That slide show last night was really impressive. How long has he been taking pictures?"
       "Since this joker gave him that camera for his birthday on November 13th," Gene said. George grinned.
       "You're kidding," my mother said. "Some of those pictures last night looked professional."
       "What happened last night? Where were we," Craig demanded.
       "You and Cherie had already gone home, son," Dad said. "Kyle and Tim put together slide shows of the pictures of their trip so far. They used our two laptops, so they're saved on the hard drives. You'll be able to see them."
       "Is there any artistic talent in the family," Cherie asked.
       "Yes. My nephew, Kyle's cousin, is an artist," Rita said.
       "And he plays for their team, too," Gene said. Everybody laughed at the way Gene said that, obviously continuing the metaphor we had been using about the bishop.
       "Maybe Kyle will become a professional artist, too," Cherie said. "As a photographer."
       "Cherie, Rita and I will support Kyle in anything that he wants to do that's honest, but I have a very large business he's going to own one day. I'd like to see him in that business, frankly," Gene said.
       "Do you see Tim in that business, too, Gene? I think they're in it for the long haul," Cherie said.
       "I hope you're right, Cherie, and I see them in the long haul, too. I think Tim wants to be a doctor, though. He's got the smarts for it, for sure. Kyle can work for some company while Tim is in school. They can be together. There are hotels everywhere, you know?"
       "That's pretty incredible of you, Gene," she said.
       "I'm forty-three years old, Cherie. I plan to live and work for at least another twenty years," Gene said.
       "If they leave home for college and medical school and such, they'll be back home by then, Gene," George said.
       Justin, Brian, and Jeff had wandered off, no doubt for Justin to smoke. They came back to our tables just as Kyle and Tim got back there from the river.
       We walked down to the aquarium and spent about an hour and a half in there. Then we took the riverboat up to the zoo. We ended up spending about three hours there. Kyle took lots of pictures in both places, and on the boat as well.
       The two things in the aquarium that got the most attention from the boys were the display of multi-colored frogs and the albino alligators. Tim, Kyle, and Justin had been swimming with dolphins and stingrays in the Gulf, so those creatures didn't offer them much. Rick and Kyle had both told us stories about being on a surfboard out in the Gulf and looking down at schools of sharks and other large fish. Sharks were old hat to them, too. From time to time Gene had had to call the Florida Fish and Game Commission to come get alligators out of his home pool or a pool at one of the properties, so gators didn't really interest the boys, either, except the albino ones. The smaller fish were beautiful, and they took time to look at those.
       "We could have us a fine fish fry with those catfish," Justin said at one point.
       Tim and Brian were pretty interested in the Caribbean fish because they were so colorful. Justin kept making comments about the potential edibility of each species, and Kyle took pictures.
       "Justin, do you know the difference between a northern zoo or aquarium and a southern zoo or aquarium" Rick asked.
       "No, sir. What's the difference," Justin asked.
       "Well, at a northern zoo or aquarium, they post the common name of the animal and the Latin name. At a southern zoo or aquarium, they post the common name, the Latin name, and a recipe."
       George thought that was absolutely hilarious. Everybody else laughed, too.
       Jeff was more or less in the Tim and Brian school of thought when it came to the creatures in the tanks, but it was pretty obvious he wanted to identify more with Rick and me, and Craig and Cherie, than he did with the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. He was doing so well, but I knew he felt like a fifth wheel in that group of partners.
       We ate lunch on the boat ride up to the zoo. It wasn't a long ride, but we did have time to suck down several hotdogs each, and a load of French fries. We also watched the barge and ship traffic on the river. We passed a fire boat at one point, and it was shooting out gigantic sprays of water.
       "Look at that," George said. "I grew up in a big port city, but I've only ever seen that on TV and in movies."
       Kyle got lots of pictures of the fire boat.
       "Did you get some pictures, Flash," Justin asked Kyle.
       They were out of the view of everyone but Rick and me, and Justin grabbed Kyle's crotch when he said that. Kyle held his camera right up to Justin's face and took a picture. I hoped Jus had closed his eyes in time to avoid retinal damage. They both laughed hard. They were, more and more, becoming best friends.
       The Audubon Zoo had been in Audubon Park for a very long time. The people of the city had gotten excited about their zoo in the seventies or eighties, and a whole lot of money had been plowed into that place. Supposedly, it was one of the five best zoos in the country, or maybe even the world. The animals were in natural habitats, for the most part. That was probably great for the animals, but a lot of them slept during the day when people were at the zoo. A fairly large number of them also hibernated, or became sluggish, in December and the other winter months. The result was we didn't get to see too many animals doing their thing in their natural habitats.
       The bird house was an exception, and we saw some brilliant birds perched on resting places and flying through the air.
       Another exception was Monkey Hill. That was my favorite place when I was a kid, and we spent a good thirty minutes that day watching the monkeys.
       "Kyle, get some pictures of Justin with his cousins," Brian said.
       "Don't worry. I'm getting plenty," Kyle said.
       Kyle took a whole bunch of pictures of the monkeys and of us. Later, when we saw the slide show, he had matched up at least one monkey with every person in our party. I thought that was a talent in itself.
       My second favorite place when I was a kid was the sea lion pool. There was an island in the middle of that pool, and the sea lions, or seals as I thought of them, were in and out of that water in a continuous flash of motion. Like the monkeys, they were funny and cute. Kyle took pictures of them, but he also took video. Their speed was awesome.
       Everybody loved the elephants, too. There was a young one that had been born at the zoo. His name was Christopher.
       "Rick, show him your dick so he'll get a hard-on," I overheard Justin say. "Kyle wants a picture of it. Come on, man. Help us out here, dude."
       Rick started laughing, and I walked a little closer.
       "Kevin, make Rick show the elephant his dick so ole Christopher will get hard," Jus said.
       Kyle was listening and grinning, too, but he was too busy to get involved.
       "Jus, your incorrigible, man," I said.
       "What does that mean," he asked.
       "That means you can't be corriged," Rick said.
       "It means you never give up," I said. "You can't be corrected."
       "Come on, Ricky. Show Chrisy your dickey. The famous Ricky dickey." He was rubbing his hand on Rick's arm in pretend seduction.
       "Cut it out," Rick said through his laughter. "I'm not showing him my dick. Besides, I know for a fact that he ain't gay."
       That made us all laugh even more. My parents, the Goodsons, and George were looking at us with half smiles on their faces, like they were enjoying watching us play around and like they wished they could be part of the fun we were having, too.
       We had a second lunch on the boat ride back to the aquarium. It was about 4:30 when we got into our cars to go back to Mom and Dad's house. Craig and Cherie were going home to dress for the theater, but they were coming back to my parents' house to ride in with us.

(Jeff's Perspective)
       The fall semester was the worst time of my life. When Clay was alive, I was the happiest I had ever been. After he died, I was the saddest. I suddenly went from having a life with a man I loved above everyone, including myself, to having nothing again. I was totally devastated. I would come home from class expecting him, or at least signs of him, to be there, but that was all gone. Mr. and Mrs. Goodson were unbelievably good to me, especially Mr. Goodson. He put me on his payroll, even though I didn't work. He gave me Clay's car. He set up a memorial scholarship and made me the first recipient. But they were grieving, too. Mrs. Goodson took it as hard as I did, or harder.
       Kevin Foley and Rick Mashburn have got to be two of the greatest men on this earth. They basically took me in. I didn't know them, and they didn't know me. I had met them only one time before when I had gone home with Clay for a weekend. We had gone over to their house, and Clay and Kyle had had a big set-to because Kyle had found out Clay was gay from some guy he had met in a coffee shop. They patched that up pretty quickly, and I could tell Kyle worshiped Clay.
       Anyway, Kevin and Rick basically gave me a home. They had two foster sons, Justin and Brian, both of whom were gay. I felt good being there with them, but Clay was like a specter that was with me every hour of every day.
       My first reaction was anger. I went to see the student legal services people to see if I could sue Shands Hospital, the doctors, and the University of Florida over his death. I didn't want, or even need, the money. I just wanted revenge. I just wanted them punished for my losing Clay. They listened to me respectfully, but they basically said I had no standing, no basis for a suit.
       Then I went through a period of guilt. Clay had had his headache for three days before I insisted he go to the student health center on campus. Why did I wait so long? Why didn't I take him in immediately? Why did I trust the doctors on campus and then trust the doctors at Shands? For two weeks, at least, I thought the whole thing was my fault. I finally realized, though, that there wasn't anything I could do about what had happened.
       Then I went into a period of denial. It didn't happen the way they said. Somebody was out to get Clay, and they succeeded. That's how I was feeling when I went there for Thanksgiving. I met Kevin's parents, and his brother and sister-in-law. I loved his sister-in-law. She seemed to understand me, to really feel for what I was going through. Kevin's mother was incredibly nice, but she seemed to focus most of her attention on Justin and Brian. Tim was fine with anything and everything, and I didn't think Kyle had much interest in anything but Tim and sports. He got a boat for his birthday, and he named it The Clay. That made me think a little more of him, but Kyle was a jock, a non-person in my life at that moment.
       And then the depression started right before exams. I felt listless; lifeless, almost. I didn't talk much; I never laughed. I didn't have a lot of friends in Gainesville, but the ones I had didn't interest me. I cried a whole lot. In fact, I cried pretty much all the time. I lost twenty pounds from the day Clay died until I went to the Emerald Coast for Christmas, and I thought that most of that weight loss was water loss from my tears.
       I made it through my exams somehow. When I got to the Panhandle, all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep. Cry. Sleep. Cry. That was me. I felt like a little kid. They said "we're going to New Orleans," and I got in the truck, not really caring what was going on.
       I suffered through Friday night. The dinner was probably wonderful, but it didn't taste like anything to me. Kyle made me learn how to shuck oysters. I knew Kyle liked me and cared about me, but he had his gang of boys there with him. I couldn't have been less interested in oysters. We went out that night to look at Christmas lights, and I couldn't have been less interested it that, either. Then we went to a karaoke bar. Kyle sang. They all danced. I stewed in my depression.
       The next day we went to the racetrack. They were all so excited about placing bets, looking at the horses in the paddock, watching the races. Kyle was taking pictures everywhere with that damn camera he had. He and the others seemed so happy. I was numb. I was someplace mentally that was totally removed from where I was physically. I don't really know where that mental place was, but I knew it wasn't at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans.
       When we got home from the racetrack, everybody more or less took a nap. I went for a walk, and I discovered this magnificent cemetery just a few blocks from their house. I had to jump a fence to get in, but it was worth it. It was all pure white stone. There were buildings that looked like little churches, and some of them even had stained glass windows in them. There were huge monuments. One had a deer on the top of it, and one had a Grecian porch with what looked like a bathtub. There was one made of black marble, in total contrast to the rest of the place.
       I thought about what it would be like to be dead, and, for the only time in my life, I thought about suicide. The pain would be gone. The loss would be gone. Clay and I would be together again. Our love would be complete. "Till death do us part." We hadn't said those words formally, but we both knew that was the way it would be with us. I walked home slowly.
       When I got home it was time to get dressed to go out to dinner. We went to a pretty fancy place to eat, but I just more or less picked at my food. That was what I had been doing for weeks, at the meals I hadn't skipped all together, and that was probably the real reason I had lost so much weight. Not the crying.
       On the way home from the restaurant, Kevin stopped at a drug store. He wanted me to get out with him. I didn't want to move. I had no energy, and I didn't care if he was going to buy that store and give it to me. I was so numb and so sad that I couldn't move. But I did move. I went into that store with Kevin, and that's where I got my life back. Jeffrey Martin came back to life because of a little round pill Kevin's mother had prescribed for me and I had taken in the store with some bottled water.
       Riding home, I felt myself regaining my life. In thirty minutes I was laughing for the first time in weeks. Kyle, bless him, had insisted we look at more Christmas lights. Gradually, almost block by block, those lights began looking good to me. I started laughing at jokes, and, pretty soon, I started making wisecracks. It was like a miracle had happened, and I was the receiver.
       Beth wanted to talk to me when we got to their house. She and I went into the kitchen by ourselves and sat at their breakfast room table. I poured out all my sorrow, all my pain, all my sense of loss, both because of Clay's death and because I no longer had my family. That woman was wonderful. She listened to me, and she held me when I cried. She wanted me to call my brother, but I had no idea how to get in touch with him.
       Beth suggested I call my mom, and I did. It was good to hear her voice, but mostly she and I cried on the phone. She had no idea that Clay had died, and I heard the unmistakable sound of anger and bitterness and sorrow in her voice. Why didn't she leave my father, I asked her. She couldn't do that, she said. She did tell me how to contact my brother, though. I called the number she gave me, but it was no longer in service. I guessed it had been a while since they had talked.
       Eventually, I settled down. The medicine was working. I still had my sorrow and pain, but at least I could function like a quasi-normal human being again. I went to bed before Kyle and Tim got up to our room, and I masturbated for the first time since before Clay's death, thinking about him.

(Kevin's Perspective)
       After our day at the nature exhibits, we were pretty tired. It was five o'clock by the time we got home. We had snacked all day long, but we really hadn't had a decent meal. We had stopped and gotten a load of Popeye's Fried Chicken and a host of side dishes, one of the basic food groups in New Orleans, and we all ate pretty well from that. The red beans and rice had to be heated in the microwave, but that was par for the course with Popeye's.
       "What time are you guys going out tomorrow night, Kevin," my mom asked as we were eating.
       "I don't know. Probably 9:30 or ten, something like that. Why?"
       "I'd like us to have at least one more family meal while you're here, and we have presents to open. We can do that tomorrow night, don't you think?"
       "Yes, ma'am," I said. "We can make it a point of being home whenever you want us home."
       "If we're home by six, that should be plenty of time," Mom said.
       "What are we wearing tonight," Jeff asked.
       "Suits," I said.
       "You boys look so good dressed up. Don't you agree, Beth," Rita said.
       "Yes, they do, Rita. This is a very handsome group of young men, and they look especially good dressed up. I felt very special going out with them all dressed up last night," Mom said.
       "I'm going to try tying my own tie tonight," Kyle said. "I'm old enough that I should know how to do that."
       "If you have trouble, let us know, Kyle," Rick said.
       Kyle nodded.
       "Fellows, the theater we're going to is the Saenger. It's quite an institution in the city," my dad said. "It was built in the 1920's, and it's really quite elaborate. There are tiny lights in the ceiling in the shape of the constellations of stars in the sky. You have the illusion of being outside under a sky full of stars when you're in there. The pipe organ is one of a kind. It's been undergoing major renovation for the last five or six years. I doubt they'll use it tonight, but it's really supposed to be something. Where are our seats, Beth?"
       "We're in the first balcony, or the dress circle," Mom said. "Orchestra seats were available when my secretary called for tickets, after Kevin asked me to get them, but the orchestra seats weren't very good ones. They were spread out all over the place, and I wanted us to sit together. We're in the first two rows just right of center. They should be excellent seats."
       "Is everyone familiar with the music from Cats," Dad asked.
       All the boys indicated no.
       "Let's listen to it, then," he said. He put the CD on, and chills ran up and down my spine with the opening notes of the overture.
       "Dad, put it on all over the house. We all need to clean up," I said.
       That house was rocking out to Andrew Lloyd-Weber that night. We finished up with dinner sort of one at a time, and the boys drifted off to shower and get dressed. Every time I heard that music I wanted to sing along and dance to it. I knew that it was fashionable to joke about Cats and that it was considered a faux pas to take a first date to see it, but it was one of the great achievements in late twentieth-century culture, in my opinion, combining superb music with the words of our greatest poet. I was thrilled to be able to see it again, and I was thrilled the boys were getting to see it.
       The curtain was at eight, and we got there around 7:30. Rita, my mother, and Cherie were dressed to the nines, and they looked stunning. The men were all in dark business suits, and I thought the boys had truly cleaned up nicely. I thought my Rick looked gorgeous, but I knew I wasn't exactly an unbiased judge of that.
       The boys were not prepared for the splendor of the Saenger Theater. I knew Kyle and Tim had been in nice theaters in other cities and in Europe, but I was sure they were too young to remember or care about what they had looked like.
       "What is this place, Vatican South," Justin asked.
       "It's nice, isn't it," I said.
       "I'll say. But they have other stuff here besides plays, it looks like. The program says Patti Labelle and Garth are both going to be here. And Jerry Seinfeld. That isn't exactly high culture, is it," he asked.
       "Well, yes and no. It depends on what you like," I said.
       "Patti Labelle is a black lady singer, right," he asked.
       "Right. She might actually be from here," I said. "But maybe not. I really don't know. But black performers are honored here, now. It didn't used to be that way. Now the mayor is a black man."
       "Is the mayor here tonight," Jus asked.
       "Why? Do you want to talk to him," I asked.
       "Yeah, I would like to talk to him," he said.
       "Why? Have you got a beef?"
       "No. I want to tell him what a good job he's doing. This is a great city, man. I think more people should know about this place," he said.
       "I think more know about it than you might think, Bubba."
       Justin was sitting to my left. I had such good feelings about him. Ever since his little walk on the wild side with Kyle Friday night, Jus had been wonderful. He had been the life of the party that day, and I still couldn't believe that he had teased my dad about being gay and that my dad had responded by teasing him back about his outing him.
       After the curtain went up, the boys were all dead still. They were obviously listening to the songs. They laughed at the appropriate times, and they kept big smiles on their faces.
       "Is this going to be all singing," Jus asked about a half hour into the play.
       "Yeah."
       "Cool," he said.
       At the intermission, the adults, except Rick, each got cocktails. That included Jeff. I saw Kyle work his way up to the bar and order four drinks for his guys. The bartender gave him the drinks without so much as a "by your leave," and he gave them out to his boys. I only hoped that after the day we had had the drinks wouldn't put them to sleep in the second half of the play. They didn't.
       The cast got their usual thunderous ovation from the more than 2,700 people in that theater. All five of the boys, and most of the rest of us, as well, had cried when Grizabella had been chosen to go up to the Heavyside Layer, but we were all happy again by the time it ended.
       "So, what did you think of that, guys," I asked when we were all in the car. We were headed to a restaurant for a late-night supper. Actually, it was only 11:30.
       "I thought it was totally awesome," Kyle said. "It was the best thing I've ever seen in my life. I want the CD, and I'm buying it tomorrow."
       "I thought it was the story of my life," Jus said. "It was the story of the lives of a lot of us. Me, Brian, Jeff."
       "What do you mean, Bubba," Rick said very gently.
       "Hell, we've all been reborn. Thanks to you and Kevin, and Tim and Kyle, and all these other wonderful people. Grow a brain, dumbass," he said.
       "I thought that's what you meant," Rick said.
       "Rick and Kevin, Kyle and Tim and Brian, thank you for saving me, guys. I didn't deserve it, but you did it for me. I love you guys. There's fixing to be some major crying now, but I can't help it," Justin said.
       I knew he was crying happy tears, just like I was at that moment.
       We had wiped away tears by the time we had gotten to the restaurant, but it was obvious we had been crying. When we met up with the adults in the second car, it was obvious they had been crying, too.
       "Kevin, you look like you've been crying," my mom said in the parking lot.
       "I have been. We all have been," I said.
       "It was that play, wasn't it? That play is about your family, isn't it? About you and Rick and your sons?"
       "In a lot of ways it is," I said.
       "You and Rick can't give birth to children, but you can and do give rebirth." Rick was at my side to hear her say that. She hugged us to her. "I am so proud of you, my sons."

Chapter 8

       It was late when we got home Sunday night, but we had booked a limo bus for 10:30 Monday morning to meet us in the parking lot of the Jax Brewery on Decatur Street in the Quarter. We probably could have stood it up, but everybody was eager for a tour of the city.
       Mom, Dad, Craig, Cherie, and I had sat down to map out our tour. We knew that that was the first of many visits to come for those boys, so we took that into consideration. We wanted them to see the highlights of the city, but we wanted to have a lot of time to spend in the Quarter, too. We knew Brian wanted to see a cemetery, so that was on our list. I thought the kids should see the lake. My dad thought they should see St. Charles Avenue and the universities, and we all thought they should see the CBD, Central Business District, with all the tall buildings. We agreed we would play it by ear, though, depending on time.
       We piled in our two vehicles and drove to the Quarter to meet the bus. My dad became the self-appointed tour guide. Even though we had an Irish last name, my dad's family was pure French before his parents' generation. One set of his grandparents, on his mother's side, started their last name with "de," a sure sign of French ancestry. His earliest ancestor had been buried there in 1741. Considering the city had only been founded in 1718, his forebears, and mine too, I guessed, had been among the founders of the city. He was very proud of that, and his middle name reflected those origins. He signed his name Edward de L. Foley, and everybody who cared, knew what that was all about.
       We drove down Elysian Fields Avenue to the lake. We looked at the University of New Orleans from a distance on the left, and we took a left on the street that went along the lake.
       "What is this," Kyle asked.
       "This is Lake Pontchartrain, Kyle," Dad said. "It's twenty-four miles across and probably sixty miles wide. It's a huge inland sea, almost."
       "Why are those steps there," Kyle asked.
       "That's the seawall, son," Dad said. "You can walk down those steps to get into it, or to fish from there. When I was a kid, we used to shrimp off those steps. Do you know what a cast net is?"
       Gene, Rick, and I looked at one another and grinned.
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said.
       "We used to bait the area using dog food, and then we would throw cast nets to catch shrimp along here," he said.
       "Cool," Kyle said.
       Then, after a pause, "Did you ever catch any seahorses, Ed," Kyle asked. "I catch seahorses in my cast net, sometimes. They're cute as they can be."
       "So, you know how to throw a cast net," Dad asked. "No, I've never caught a seahorse."
       "Yes, sir, I can throw one. I'll catch you some seahorses the next time y'all come to see us," he said.
       "Dad, if it comes out of the sea, Kyle can catch it, open it, clean it, and cook it," I said.
       "Very good," my dad said. I knew he didn't know what else to say.
       When we got to West End, we passed a place called Ed's Crab Shack. It was a great seafood restaurant.
       "Do you moonlight out here, Ed," Justin asked?
       "It's not that kind of crabs, Jus," my brother said. Everybody laughed.
       "Next stop, woodshed," my dad called out, and everybody laughed even more. "I already owe you a trip to the woodshed from yesterday, Justin. Now it's two. And you, big boy..."
       "Sir," Craig asked with a grin.
       "You're both getting it," he said.
       "I haven't seen your father enjoy himself this much in years, Kevin," my mom said. "These boys, especially Jus, are really challenging him, and he loves that."
       "That Justin is a good boy, isn't he," I asked.
       "Son, I don't know how much he's told you about the hell he's been through, but, yes, he is a very good boy, indeed," she said.
       Dad pointed out the Southern Yacht Club. We had never belonged to it, but lots of our friends did when I was a kid. I had been there many, many times, as had Craig and my parents. There were a great many boats docked at that marina.
       Our next point of interest was the Metairie Cemetery. Brian had said he wanted to see a place where they buried the dead people above the ground, and the Metairie was as good as any. In fact, it was probably better than most. We drove down several of the lanes, and all of the boys seemed pretty taken with the place. We stopped for Kyle to get out and shoot pictures at one point, and some of the assembled folk took that opportunity to get out and smoke, including me. Ironically, we were about two blocks from home on that stop.
       Next we drove through City Park, which is an enormous green space in the middle of the city. We had been there for the lights on Friday night, but it looked a whole lot different on Monday at mid-day. We drove up Esplanade Avenue toward the river.
       "It's noon," I said to Mom, Dad, Craig, Cherie, and Rick. "We need to lose this bus and get into the Quarter, don't you think?"
       "Yeah," Rick said. "We'll be back many times. We can do the rest of the tour the next time we're here."
       "I agree with Rick. Plus, I'm pretty hungry," Craig said.
       "Let's tell the driver to let us off in front of the Central Grocery. We can go in, order muffalettos, and eat them on those benches on the other side of the market," Cherie said.
       "Each with a Barqs," I said.
       "Absolutely," she said. "What else?"
       All the Orleanians grinned at one another because we knew you couldn't really eat a muffaletto without drinking a Barqs rootbeer.
       The Central Grocery Store on Decatur Street is really quite a small place, but they have more merchandize in there than most grocery stores ten times their size. It is totally New Orleans Italian. A lot of people don't know this, but what is now called the French Quarter, with all its Spanish architecture, was once called the Italian Quarter because Italian immigrants made up the vast majority of the residents of that neighborhood. That was a long time ago, of course, but places like the Central Grocery still bore witness to the Italianness of the area. That, and St. Mary's Italian Church, the chapel of the old Ursuline Convent.
       "My God, I can't believe this place," Rita said. She was pointing to an open crate of whole dried, salted fish that was at the end of one of the aisles.
       "It's wonderful, isn't it," my mom said.
       "Yes. The aroma is almost overwhelming," she said.
       There were fourteen of us, so I ordered twelve muffalettos. Ordinarily, a half sandwich was enough, but we had five teenage boys with us. I knew that a half sandwich wouldn't be enough for them. The sandwiches were served on a round loaf of bread about the size of a small dinner plate, cut in quarters, and they were four or five inches thick. They had about six different meats, four different cheeses, and an inch-thick layer of olive salad. Those sandwiches were wonderful and the rumor was they had been invented at the Central Grocery.
       It was going to take a while for the sandwiches to be ready. Rick and I hung around there to wait for the food, but the rest of them dispersed. Decatur was a commercial street, so they had a lot to explore. I knew where the boys would end up.
       I left Rick in charge of getting the sandwiches, and I walked down to the corner of the next block. I went into the store, and all five boys were there. The place was empty except for them.
       "Hey," Kyle said. "We found this place, Kev. It's a gay store. Can you believe that?"
       The proprietor smiled at me. He was probably fifty years old, but he seemed to recognize that those boys were the next generation of his gay brothers. He seemed like a very gentle man.
       "What is this," Brian asked. He was referring to an anal sex toy.
       "That's for your butt," Jus said. "Do you want me to get a couple of those?"
       "Do you want to," Brian asked. He was so cute. I thought I knew that Brian and Justin had been having sex for several weeks, but Brian seemed virginal to me.
       "Yeah," Justin said. "We can try that."
       The proprietor smiled at their innocence.
       "What is this thing," Kyle asked the guy. He was holding up what I thought must be a cock cage.
       "That's a chastity device," the man said. "You can't get a hard-on with that thing in place."
       "Why would somebody want that," Kyle asked.
       "Guys who are into domination might want to use it on their boys," the man said.
       Kyle gave Tim an evil grin.
       "No way," Tim said, and they both laughed.
       "This is quite a crew you've got here," the man said to me about the boys.
       "Yes, sir, they are," I said.
       "Are all of them gay?"
       "Every one of us," I said proudly.
       He didn't comment further.
       All of the boys bought anal probes. Kyle showed them cock rings and explained what they were for. They each bought a couple of those, as well. He and Tim bought little charms for their nipple rings--one set of penises and one set of rainbow triangles. They really didn't have any "gay stuff," but they would now. They each considered buying tee shirts that said, "I'm not gay but my boyfriend is," but they reconsidered and didn't get them. I thought that would have been a waste of money for them.
       "Guys, when you get what you want, put all of it into Kyle's back pack. You don't need to be showing that stuff to your parents, okay," I said.
       The guy in the store looked a little apprehensive.
       "I'm not going to get into trouble with their parents for selling them this stuff, am I," he asked.
       "Oh, no," I said. "Their parents and grandparents are down in the Central Grocery right now, and they're totally cool with their being gay. I just think they should keep this stuff private. That's all."
       He nodded.
       Kyle picked up a couple of Bel Ami videos, and Jeff got several magazines.
       "For those lonely nights," he said with a grin.
       The store man grinned back at him.
       "Where are you fellows from," he asked.
       "Florida," Kyle said. "We're here visiting our grandparents, his parents," indicating me.
       The guy looked at me with confusion on his face.
       "It's a real long story," I said.
       We finished up in the store and joined the others outside. We crossed the street to the park area that was between the French Market and the levee. There were benches there where we could sit down to eat.
       "These are really big sandwiches," Justin said when he opened one.
       "Yeah, and they're good, too," Craig said.
       We ate our sandwiches and drank our Barqs root beer. My dad told the story about visiting his cousins, who lived around the corner from the Barqs bottling company. It was in a basement under the house the family that owned it lived in. Craig and I had heard that story a hundred times while we were growing up, but the boys seemed mildly interested in it. Either that or they were too polite to act bored.
       We ended up with two whole sandwiches left. My mom had a large purse, and she put one in there. We put the other one in Kyle's backpack. Those would make good afternoon snacks.
       We set out on our adventure of discovering the Quarter. The first thing we did was walk around in the French Market. Because it was right before Christmas, there was probably more produce and fruit than there usually was during the winter. It was cool looking at the stuff, but we weren't interested in buying any of it. We were interested in checking out the huge flea market behind the produce market, though. We spent a good half hour or more checking out all the junk people had for sale. Most of it was new stuff and not the antiques you sometimes find at flea markets. There was a booth with leather goods, and Kyle bought himself a nice belt with a cowboy buckle.
       I hadn't known it before that day, but George was an avid collector of baseball cards and comic books. He found several of those that he wanted and bought them. Rita bought two magnificent feather Mardi Gras masks that were large and colorful. "For the second guest room," she said.
       Rick and I each bought a Christmas tree ornament with a New Orleans theme, and we made the boys buy one each, too. We wanted to collect ornaments from various trips, and that was the start of our collection.
       We went into the Old Mint building at the end of the flea market. We passed an old streetcar that had the word "Desire" on its marquee.
       "Hey, they named that thing after a play," Kyle said in reference to the streetcar.
       "No, Kyle," Dad said. "The play is named after that streetcar. Or at least after that old streetcar line. That car used to go up and down Desire Street, and Tennessee Williams used it for the title of his play that is set in New Orleans. He used to live here."
       "Tennessee Williams. That's a name for you," Justin said. "Y'all call me Alabama Davis from now on."
       "Okay, Bama-Rama," Rick said.
       "On second thought, never mind," Justin said.
       One side of the Old Mint building housed a jazz museum. It had a lot of portraits of famous jazz musicians, and there were quite a few old instruments, including Louis Armstrong's first cornet.
       "Guys, do you know anything about the history of jazz," my dad asked.
       "No, sir," Kyle said, answering for all of them.
       "There are a number of different kinds of jazz, of course, but one type, Dixieland Jazz, started here in a section of the city called Storyville. That was the official 'red light district' of the city," Dad said.
       "Did it have lots of traffic lights," Brian asked.
       My dad looked at me with that "help, I need to be rescued" look in his face.
       "Just tell 'em, Dad. How else will they learn," I asked.
       "No, son. A 'red light district' is a part of town where there were bordellos."
       "What's that mean," Kyle asked.
       "Whore houses," Rick said. My dad seemed to blush a little.
       "Is it still there," Justin asked.
       "Why? You looking for a job," Rick shot back.
       All of the adults, except for Rick and me, got stricken looks on their faces when Rick said that. Justin and Kyle thought it was funny as hell.
       "I guess you just got my ass last," Justin said. He and Rick tapped knuckles.
       "Kevin...." Mom started to say as she pulled me aside.
       "He's fine with it, Mom. You saw his reaction. In fact, he's fine with anything Rick or Kyle say to him. Or me, too, for that matter. If he wasn't, we wouldn't tease him about it, now would we?"
       "Well, I should hope you wouldn't, but..."
       "Trust us. He does."
       "You're right. He does trust you. He worships you, in fact. Forget I mentioned anything," she said.
       The other half of the Mint was a Mardi Gras museum. The boys found that a whole lot more interesting than the jazz portion. There were old floats from parades, costumes that were old but still very grand, throws, a flambeau, which was a kerosene-burning torch that was carried in night parades to provide light, and a million other items related to Mardi Gras.
       We walked back toward Jackson Square on Chartres Street. There were interesting shops along the way, and we ducked into a few of those to check them out. We also toured the Beauregard-Keyes House on on that street. It had been the home of a famous Civil War general who was a native son of Louisiana, and later it was the home of a writer by the name of Frances Parkinson Keyes. She had renovated the house and refurbished the garden, and it was really a show place. The ladies were especially taken with it.
       Back at Jackson Square, we went for a tour of the 1850 House that was actually one of the town houses in one of the Pontalba Buildings that flanked two sides of the square. Those were supposedly the oldest apartment buildings in the Mississippi River Valley. Again, the place was interesting, but it was definitely more of a lady thing than a guy thing. The boys did seem quite taken with a wall hanging that looked like a picture from a distance but was made totally out of human hair of many colors and textures. I kept waiting for one of them to say something about pubic hair, but to their credit they didn't.
       We went into the Presbytere, which is to the right of the Cathedral as you face it. It was built as the residence for the Archbishop and the priests who served in the Cathedral, but it actually served more time as a court house. It's now part of the Louisiana State Museum, and it contained artifacts of life in New Orleans. There was an exhibit of ship models that was pretty interesting, though. It wasn't a permanent part of that place's collection, so we kind of lucked out in catching it there. Evidently, they built a scale model of wooden sailing ships to use to drum up investors before the ships were built. Somebody preserved a bunch of them and collected them for that exhibit.
       By the time we finished with that, everybody was tired and ready for a break. We got soft drinks from a street vendor and found a place to sit in Jackson Square. We finished off the two remaining muffalettos from lunch.
       "Are we going to go to the Cabildo," Dad asked.
       "Let's save that for our next visit," I said. "I don't know if the guys could take another serious museum right now."
       "I can understand that," he said. "On the next visit we can take in the Gallier House Museum, the wax museum, the Hermann-Grimma House, the Germaine Wells Mardi Gras Museum, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, the Old Ursuline Convent, and, of course, the Cabildo."
       "Jesus Christ, Ed. There are that many museums here," Rick asked.
       "Those are just the ones in the Quarter we haven't been to yet," Dad replied.
       "Dad, there's actually another one that you didn't mention, and that's where I suggest we go," I said.
       "The Voodoo Museum?"
       "You got it," I said.
       "I didn't mention it because I figured that's what you had in mind," Dad said.
       Rita, Cherie, and my mother wanted to visit some of the antique stores and art galleries on Royal Street. We decided that we would meet back in that spot in one hour. The men would do something else while the ladies browsed the shops.
       "Are you guys interested in the Voodoo Museum," I asked.
       "What is it," Kyle asked.
       "Voodoo is a religion that was practiced in Haiti and other places in the Caribbean. It was brought here by slaves and free people of color a long time ago. There are Voodoo gods, and Voodoo priests who cast spells. The most famous practitioner of Voodoo was a woman named Marie Laveau. Some people think they can still feel her presence and even see her ghost from time to time," I said.
       "Hell, yeah," Kyle said. "That sounds cool."
       We walked to the Voodoo Museum, and the guys were fascinated by the altars of sacrifice and the implements they used to cast spells. The stuffed cats and live snakes were big hits, too, and the Voodoo dolls were fascinating to everyone.
       We spent time in the gift shop, something they hadn't really wanted to do in the other places (but which we had done anyway for the ladies' benefit). Kyle, Justin, and Jeff bought books of spells and a few of the ingredients to use to make some of them work. They seemed especially interested in charms and spells related to male potency and virility.
       Kyle bought a Voodoo doll and some straight pins. When the woman (in costume, of course) asked him the name of the person the doll would represent, he said "Justin Davis." Kyle and Justin immediately went into acting mode. Kyle jabbed a pin into the groin of the doll, and Justin shrieked and grabbed his balls as he doubled over. Then Kyle stuck a pin up the doll's rear end, and Justin groaned loudly and grabbed his butt. A couple of people in the store started laughing at them, and I was afraid that would only encourage more of their antics. They were funny and cute, though.
       "That didn't really hurt you, did it," Brian asked in a serious voice.
       Justin grinned and knocked his cap back.
       "No, Buddy. Kyle and I were just playing," Jus said.
       They learned that a spell is called a gris-gris. We told them about when we were kids we would put gris-gris on people.
       "Like what kind," Brian asked.
       "Well, let's say you're shooting pool with a buddy, and he's about to make the winning shot. You draw an X on the table with your finger between the ball and the pocket and say 'gris-gris.' That's supposed to make him miss the shot," Craig said.
       "Did it work," Justin asked.
       "Rarely," my father said.
       "If you were playing basketball or baseball, you'd put the gris-gris on the guy shooting a foul shot or batting, only then you'd hold your fingers up in an X," I said. "That didn't work any better than the pool shot did, though," I said.
       "So this is really all bullshit," Jus said, once again cutting to the heart of the matter.
       "Pretty much," I said. "But it's kind of fun because sometimes the guy did miss the pool shot or the basket or did strike out. You just never knew."
       George bought a book that was actually a scholarly study of Voodoo, and I made a mental note to take a look at it when I had a chance.
       We met up with the ladies at the time we had said, and we went home.
       "So what did you guys think of New Orleans, the part of it you saw, anyway," I asked in the car on the way home.
       "It's wonderful," they all said in some variation of that phrase.
       "There's still a lot more to do. I think next time we come, except for Mardi Gras, we're going to take a regular bus tour. I don't think we did it justice," I said.
       "What else is there to do," Jeff asked.
       "There's a relatively new museum about D-Day that's really terrific," I said. "And we want to tour the Super Dome, ride out to the site of the Battle of New Orleans in Chalmette and go through the stuff there; go to the military museum at the Jackson Barracks; maybe go to the New Orleans Museum of Art; take in a Zephyrs game, a Brass game, a Saints game, and a Hornets game when they get here. There are a couple of botanical gardens, the one in City Park and the one at Long Vue Gardens. There are a lot more smaller museums, like the Confederate Museum, the Edgar Degas house, the pharmacy museum, and some others. We ought to at least drive through Louis Armstrong Park. There's the Garden District for a walking tour, and there are some great shops and galleries on Magazine Street. There's Jazzland. That's an amusement park. We probably ought to buy a guide book to see what I'm leaving out," I said.
       "So you think we'll be coming here some more, huh," Jus asked.
       "Of course we will be, Jus. My parents obviously think you guys are their real grandchildren. They'll want to see you."
       "And I want to see them some more, too," Kyle said.
       They all seconded Kyle.
       "Maybe we can get my dad to line up a tour of Charity Hospital. That's the second largest hospital in the country, and it's huge. Would you guys like to watch an operation? Craig and I have done that a few times," I said.
       "Oh, Kevin! That would be fantastic," Tim said. "I've seen a couple of operations my dad has done. That's sort of what makes me want to be a doctor. Are there medical schools here?"
       "Yeah, as a matter of fact, there are. Two really great ones, and they're on either side of Charity Hospital. Literally. The LSU Medical School is in the same block as the hospital, and the Tulane Medical School in across the street. Or maybe it's the other way around, but they're real close together."
       We had decided to take the scenic route home down St. Charles Avenue. The guys were impressed with the mansions on that street. We passed Loyola University and Tulane University. They sit side by side with only a small alley separating them. Across the street from them was Audubon Park where the zoo was.
       "So where's this big hospital you were talking about," Jus asked.
       "It's not here. These are the main campuses. The medical schools and hospital are down town. Besides, this is Loyola University, not LSU. Loyola is a Catholic university."
       "Cool," Jus said.
       "Guys, Grandma wants us to have a big meal together tonight, and then we'll open Christmas presents," I said.
       "We're still going out though, right," Kyle said.
       "Oh, yeah, but we don't want to go out too early. If we get down to the Quarter by 9:30 or ten, we'll be just in time," I said.
       "Kevin, about the Christmas presents," Kyle asked.
       "What about 'em, Bubba," I asked.
       "Tim and I went in together and got presents for all the New Orleans people," he said.
       "Did you other guys get them something," I asked.
       Justin and Brian had gone in on gifts for them, and Jeff said he had something for them, too.
       "How much did you guys spend, Kyle," I asked suspiciously.
       "We got everybody the same thing, and we only spent a total of $300. We gave the rest to the Stocking Fund in their names," Kyle said.
       "You stayed well under the limit, Bubba. What's the problem?"
       "We got everybody the same thing, including you and Rick, my mom and dad, and Doc," he said.
       "That's no problem," I said.
       "Well, if the New Orleans family open theirs tonight, the Florida family will see what they got, and they won't be surprised. We brought all the presents for everyone, though. Do you think we could give everybody their present from us tonight?"
       Rick and I looked at each other and started laughing.
       "What's so funny," Kyle asked. He seemed genuinely confused.
       "We did the same thing, Bubba. I wish we had brought ours for everyone, too," I said.
       "We did," Rick said.
       "We did?"
       "Yep, as we were packing the car, I got the same idea Kyle had. Imagine that! I packed the box that was supposed to stay home," Rick said.
       "Did you guys all do the same thing," I asked Jus, Brian, and Jeff.
       "No," they said. "The presents from us are all different." Justin actually said that, but Jeff agreed with him.
       "Well, Kyle and Tim can give their presents to everyone tonight, and Rick and I will give ours to everyone, too. You guys weren't supposed to buy presents for anyone but your boyfriend. Did you?"
       "We didn't," Tim said.
       "We didn't either," Brian concurred.
       "Okay, so that's cool," I said. "We want everybody to open ours at the same time. Is that what you guys want, too," I asked Kyle and Tim.
       They said they did.
       "Okay, no problem."
       We were home by then. It was around 4:30. Dinner was at 7:30, and gifts under the Christmas tree would be at 8:30. We had time for a "rest" and a shower before drinks at 6:30. I was sure the boys were eager to try out their sex aids they had bought earlier that day, and everyone went to their rooms. Everyone but Jeff, that is. He asked to use my dad's computer to check his e-mail. I figured he wanted to give Tim and Kyle some privacy, and I admired that in him.

(Kyle's Perspective)
       As soon as we got home, Tim and I went up to our room. We had done some amazingly cool things that day, especially the Voodoo Museum, and I was sort of tired. But I really wanted to try out those things we had bought at the gay shop, and I knew Tim wanted to also.
       We got down to just our underwear in a second, and we were in bed kissing in another second. It took just a third second for us to both get hard, and we were kissing and rubbing our dicks against each other in no time.
       "God, this feels good," Tim said.
       "I know, Babe. I love you so much, you little gris-gris." We kissed some more, swapping plenty of spit and tongue.
       There was a knock at the door.
       "Fuck," I said in a low tone of voice. I really didn't want to be disturbed, and we weren't exactly in a condition to be entertaining anybody.
       Whoever it was knocked a second time.
       "Open up," Jus said.
       "I can't believe him, man," I said to Tim, not too loud, though. "He ought to know what we're doing, and he ought to be doing it with Brian, too. Just a minute."
       I got out of bed and opened the door.
       "What do you want?"
       It was both of them.
       "Let us in," Jus said. "Come on, Kyle."
       "Jesus Christ, Justin," I said in frustration as I opened the door to let him in.
       They both came in. They were both in their underwear also, and they both had bigger bulges than normal. He immediately noticed my erection, and he put his hand on it.
       "Ohhhhh. Nice one," he said with an evil grin. Justin had gotten cuter or something, and he was pretty cute when he did that.
       "Yeah," I said, grinning, "and it ain't for you. What do you want?"
       "Lighten up, Kyle. It ain't like I've never seen you hard before, man. We came to get our stuff out of your backpack."
       "I'm sorry. I'm just a little bit frustrated right now, you know?"
       "I can tell. So where is it?"
       I pointed to the backpack that was on the floor on the right hand side of the bed. He got their stuff out of it.
       "Have you ever used one of these things," he asked me.
       "No, not yet," I said. "I haven't had a chance."
       "Do you know how?"
       "I think I can figure it out," I said. "Are you going to be all right with that?"
       "Beth checked me out right after we got here, and she said I'm completely healed," he said.
       I started to ask if he had gotten hard when she did it, but I wasn't exactly in the mood to joke around then.
       "Brian, are you okay with using it on him," I asked. "Do you know how to stretch him out and loosen him up?"
       Brian shrugged.
       "No, you don't. Shit, Jus, don't hurt yourself, man. Okay? Do you even have any lube?"
       "Spit," Jus said, sort of like he was apologizing.
       "No. No fucking way, Justin," I said.
       "You sound like you're mad at me, Kyle. Why are you mad?"
       I took a deep sigh of frustration.
       "I'm not mad at you, Bubba, but I don't want you to hurt yourself, either," I said. I'm sure he could hear exasperation in my voice.
       "We've got plenty of lube. Why don't you show them how to do it," Tim asked. "In fact, show me at the same time. I don't want to hurt you, either."
       I had pretty much lost my erection by then, but hearing Tim say that made it come back to full force.
       "Look at him. He's liking that idea," Jus said. God, he was cute.
       "All right," I said, sort of pretending to give in reluctantly. "Get your briefs off and get in bed."
       I really didn't think we were dealing with rocket science here or anything. I mean, the thing was a lot thinner than my dick, and I managed to get that up Tim's ass at least once a week without hurting him. The real advantage of those dildoes was you could do it yourself if you wanted to.
       "Okay, Jus, raise your legs up so I can get to your asshole," I said. He did like I told him.
       "Brian, this is what I do to Tim, and Tim does to me, before we have butt sex, okay?"
       "Okay," Brian said.
       I started gently rubbing the place between Justin's balls and his hole. There's a special name for that spot, but I don't remember what it is. Anyway, it feels real good.
       "Kyle, nobody's ever touched me there before, man. That feels fantastic," he said.
       I smiled at my brother. If anybody deserved to have good ass sex, it was definitely Jus.
       "This next part is optional, but I like to do it, and it feels great having it done," I said.
       I got up real close to Justin, and my dick was rubbing against him. I bent forward and started tonguing his hole.
       "Oh, my God," he said.
       "Not so loud, man," I said.
       "Sorry, but it's so good, Kyle."
       "I know. Just keep it down a little, though, please."
       "You can do it for as long as you want to," I told Brian. "Then I do this."
       I lubed up my longest finger and rubbed it around on his hole. Then I got the tube of lube and put the little nozzle into his hole and squeezed so that plenty of lube got in there. Then I stuck my finger in. I knew right where his spot was, and I started gently playing with it. Justin started moving his head back and forth from side to side, saying something like uuh, uuh, uuh. I knew it felt good to him, and I was glad of that.
       "Jus, I'm going to put in another finger. Let me know if it hurts, okay?"
       "Okay," he said. He was breathing mighty hard, and I wondered if he'd last long enough for me to use the dildo on him.
       "You feel pretty relaxed, but if the second finger doesn't go in easy, bear down like you're taking a shit, okay? That'll help relax the muscles."
       I pulled out my first finger and got the two in him right away.
       "How you doing, Bubba," I asked.
       "Kyle, that feels so good. I think I'm about to come," he said.
       "Come whenever you need to. That's all right," I said.
       I got Tim to squirt lube on the dildo and to rub it around to make sure it was all covered. I pulled my fingers out of him and stuck the plastic thing in. I rubbed it around inside very gently. It didn't take long. In less than a minute Jus let out a deep moan, and he started shooting cum. I was watching his ass close, and I could actually see it contract around the dildo with every shot he pumped out. When he was finished firing, I slowly pulled it out. Jus was totally limp on the bed.
       Tim and Brian were on either side of me, watching everything like hawks. All three of us were so hard, and we were leaking so much pre-cum that we looked like porn boys or something. I grabbed each of their dicks and started stroking them. Tim got mine, and the three of us jerked one another off.
       After a little while, Justin sat up in bed.
       "Kyle, thank you, man. That was unbelievable," he said.
       "Now you know what you've been missing," I said.
       "Is it that good for you and Tim when you fuck," he asked.
       "It's even better because we give each other pleasure," I said. "I enjoyed doing that, but my dick didn't get any action out of it."
       "I'm sorry it wasn't better for you," he said.
       "It was great for me, Jus. I got off. You saw that. My little sex monkey took care of me," I said.
       Tim loved for me to call him my little sex monkey, and he was grinning when I said it.
       "I've got a little sex monkey of my own, you know," Jus said.
       Brian giggled and blushed.
       "Don't blush. You know you love it," Jus said. Brian slapped him lightly, and I could really tell those boys loved one another.
       "I thought you weren't ever going to do butt sex, Jus," Tim said. "Why'd you let Kyle do it to you?"
       "I wasn't. Then I got my operation, and my ass didn't hurt for the first time in a year. I knew you guys were doing it, and I knew Rick and Kevin do it. Y'all ain't fools. You all said it didn't hurt. I wanted to do it, too, but I was afraid of the pain. Once the pain was gone, there wasn't any reason not to try it."
       "But why Kyle? Why not Brian," Tim asked.
       "You're not jealous of Kyle doing that, are you, little brother," Jus asked.
       "Of course not. I was right here, helping."
       "I wanted Kyle to do it because I trust Kyle. I trust you, too, Brian, and I love you, but I knew you didn't have any experience. I knew Kyle would do everything he could to make it good for me, and he did. I knew you would want to make it good for me, Bri, but you just didn't have the experience," Jus said.
       "I saw what he did. I can do that, now. I was scared to death when we bought those things today that I would hurt you if I tried to do it. Now I know I can do it without hurting you," Brian said.
       "Kyle and Tim and Brian, I feel so much closer to you guys right now than I did even this afternoon," Jus said. "I think we reached a new level of brotherhood just now."
       I said, "I do, too, Jus, and it feels good."

Chapter 9

(Kevin's Perspective)
       Rick and I went up to our room to rest when we got home from the city tour, but we really didn't do much of that. We had never made love in my parents' house before. Rick had always felt ill at ease about it. By then, though, we were a married couple, completely recognized and accepted as such by my family. Rick initiated sex that afternoon, and it was good.
       Everybody showed up in the den around 6:30. Craig and Cherie had gone home to rest and wash away the city's dirt. The boys came down dressed to go out on their first "gay adventure." Kyle was wearing his boots, which he hadn't had on before on that trip. In fact, I assumed he hadn't brought them. He also had on his new cowboy belt. I was still not used to him being taller than I was when he was wearing those boots.
       "Did you and Tim put those charms on your nipple rings," I asked him in private.
       "Yeah." He grinned and blushed a little.
       "Which ones," I asked.
       "The gay ones, not the dicks," he said.
       "You know, a lot of guys take their shirts off in clubs. Are you ready to do that and let people see those things," I asked.
       "Yeah, I'll take my shirt off right now, if you want me to," he said.
       I laughed. "No, that's okay. I've seen it before."
       He grinned at me.
       "You're having fun on this trip, aren't you," I asked him.
       "Oh, man. I'm having so much fun. This is the best. Thanks for bringing us here."
       "Thank you for stepping up as the leader, Bubba. I appreciate that."
       "Jeff's doing a lot better, isn't he," he asked.
       "Yeah, and so is Jus. Did you have something to do with that?"
       "Yeah, a little bit. Jus is still trying to get right with us, you know? He's not used to the same stuff you and Tim and Rick and I are," he said.
       "I know. I trust you completely, Kyle, and I'm sorry for any time that I haven't. You have never let us down, man. And I know you never will," I said.
       "Tim and I are thinking we're going to move here. For college and medical school and all, I mean," he said.
       "Well, you've got a lot of time to plan that," I said. "If you do that, though, you'll have a huge support system, and Tim will have two very strong and important advocates in the medical community. You guys know that, don't you?"
       "Yes, sir, we do. This place already feels like home to me as much as Emerald Beach does, Kevin. I've been a little bit worried about going off to Philadelphia or New York or Boston, or one of those places. But I know we can be very, very happy here," he said.
       "How does Tim feel about going back to Emerald Beach when all is said and done?"
       "He wants to, and so do I," he said. "We'll just have two home towns, is all. We can do that. You do."
       "Kyle, you are so mature for your age, man. Do you know that about yourself?"
       "Yeah. Sort of," he said.
       Justin came up to us just then.
       "Oh, another private conversation with Kevin, I see. What'd you do, Kyle?"
       "He didn't do anything. Come here, you," I said. I hugged those two guys, one in each arm. "Y'all look mighty good tonight, and you smell good, too."
       "Hell, Kevin. Is this fixin' to be a weeper? I don't want to ruin my makeup," Jus said.
       I howled.
       "No, Jus. It's not a weeper. It's just three brothers who love each other very much," I said.
       "I'll drink to that, if you'll let me go so I can go see Craig," Justin said.
       "Craig's been fixing you guys up, hasn't he," I asked.
       They both grinned.
       "Well, let's go so they don't think we're turning queer for one another," I said.
       All three of us laughed.
       * * *
       Drinks and dinner were very nice. Odille had made stuffed artichokes for hors d'ouevres, and that was one of my favorite dishes. It was Creole Italian, not Creole French, like so much of the other food had been. There was also a pot of cheese melted with a can or two of spicy tomatoes and a pound of fried bulk sausage. We ate that with nacho chips. It was delicious. There was also a tray of raw vegetables with a nice, refreshing dip. A bowl of olives and a bowl of cashew nuts rounded out the hors d'ouevres offerings.
       Dinner started with a bowl of file gumbo. File gumbo is very different from the okra gumbo we had had Friday night. Okra gumbo, or seafood gumbo as it's called in other parts of the country, is basically a summer dish in New Orleans. You can make it with frozen okra, as Odille obviously had for Friday night, but you need fresh okra, fresh crabs, and fresh shrimp for it to be just right. Those had been available only in the summer ages ago, so okra gumbo was a summer dish. It didn't contain any sausage or other meat, like you get in restaurants these days. As a Catholic city, New Orleans had observed meatless Fridays for a couple of hundred years, and okra gumbo was ideally suited for a meatless meal. Flesh meat, that is. Not seafood, which didn't count as meat.
       File gumbo was made with meat and oysters. Specifically, a turkey carcass or a chicken was the main meat in file, along with a little sausage. Oysters made it that much better and richer. Both types of gumbo were served with steamed white rice.
       The entree was grilled filet mignon with a béarnaise sauce, scalloped potatoes, and a mixed greens dish. There was no salad that night. Dessert was a fifteen-layer chocolate cake. The layers were so thin you could probably have seen through them. The chocolate icing between the layers was superb.
       After coffee we had liqueurs. The boys all had a taste of amaretto, cointreau, and Benedictine and Brandy. Some of the adults opted for Armagnac or Courvoisier. Craig made Stingers for me, Cherie, and himself.
       We took our drinks to the living room, where the Christmas tree was.
       "Who wants to be the elf and give out the presents? Brian, I think you're the youngest. Why don't you do it," Mom said.
       Brian was only too happy to oblige.
       Once the presents were distributed, I made an announcement.
       "Tim and Kyle have identical presents for everyone. Let's open theirs first all together, on the count of three. Find their present."
       They all shuffled around and found their present.
       "Ready? On three. One. Two. Three."
       Rita was the first to get theirs open.
       "Oh, my God!!" she screamed. "Oh, my God. It's magnificent. Oh, thank you. Thank you, boys."
       She and Gene were both in tears. My mom and dad got theirs open, and my mom shrieked, too. By the time I finally got a look at the pictures they had given us, most of the adults in the room was in tears. Happy tears.
       Tim and Kyle were beaming with joy over what they had done. Kyle knew it was a special gift, and he was so proud of himself. The two pictures were very different poses, but the guys both looked like hunks, and it was obvious they were completely in love with one another.
       "So much for the Jeep I bought them," Craig joked.
       "Boys, these pictures are beautiful, and thank you so much," Rita said between her tears.
       George was totally overcome with happiness. I looked at Rick, and he had huge tears rolling down his cheeks, but he had an enormous grin on his face.
       After we all settled down from that total surprise, we took turns opening other presents. We all opened the envelopes from the Empty Stocking Fund telling us that money had been donated in our names for underprivileged kids, and that made everybody smile. There were a few shirts and CD's and books from various ones, but nothing cost very much money.
       Our gifts were last.
       "Rick and I had made a box that said, 'Open me Christmas morning' for the New Orleans people. Tonight, on the way home, we decided we wanted everybody to get their gifts from us at the same time so we could see you open them. He and I have the same gift from one another that you have. Let's tear into them on the count of three. One. Two. Three."
       Paper flew everywhere. Jeff was the first to react.
       "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
       Rita and Gene teared up together when they opened their gifts.
       "You guys," Gene said. "Oh, you guys."
       "Guys, I'm sorry, but I'm wearing mine tonight," Jeff said. "I may never take it off."
       He stripped off his shirt and put the long sleeve "Crew of The Clay " shirt on. The rest of us did likewise. Rita and my mom didn't take off anything. Instead, they put theirs on over what they were wearing. Cherie stripped down to her bra, though, and put hers on. She was so cool.
       Kyle changed out the CD that was playing Christmas music, and he put on a Garth Brooks CD.
       "Get up, so we can dance," Kyle said.
       Everybody got up, and Kyle and Tim led us in the two-step, the line dance, and several others we had learned from Gage. We rocked out. Craig was the bartender that night, and he kept us in fresh drinks. I knew the boys got their share, too.
       Some slow dances came up from time to time, and the boys danced with each other if a lady wasn't available. I slow danced with Rick a couple of times, and each time we both got hard. I danced with Craig, George, and even my dad, but it didn't have the same effect on me. We had a wonderful time that night.
       Around eleven, Craig asked me if we were still going out. He and I pulled Kyle apart and asked him if he thought the boys wanted to go out.
       "We'll do that next time we're here," he said. "We're having too much fun to go out."
       We stayed home that night, dancing our asses off and having a wonderful time with our family. Justin and Kyle went outside to smoke a couple of times with Craig, at his instigation. The three of them, plus Rick who went out with them but who didn't smoke, were the "bad boys" of the family.
       "Son, you have put together quite a crowd here," my dad said to me. "We could not be more proud of you and Rick," he said.
       That made me very happy.
       "They're something else, aren't they," I said.
       "I haven't seen your mother this happy in years, Kevin. Thank you for that."
       "You seem pretty happy, too, Dad," I said.
       "The happiest I've been in a long, long time, son," he said.
       * * *
       Nobody got up early the next morning. I felt a little bad that the boys didn't get to go to any gay clubs, but I knew they had had a wonderful time at home.
       My experience with gay clubs was very limited. My brother had insisted that Rick and I go to a few a couple of years before, and he and Cherie had taken us to three of them. We weren't looking to score or hook up or anything like that. Rick and I had danced with each other in public for the first time when we had gone with them, but we had also both danced with Cherie. A lot of the guys had seemed rather lost to me, mournful even, and I had had only a mildly good time.
       I knew my boys had wanted to see what gay nightlife was like, but Kyle had decided for them that we were having too much fun at home to go out. It sort of pleased me that we could have fun with our parents. And, indeed, we had had a great time.
       It was Tuesday, December 23rd, and it was party day. Everybody showed up downstairs wearing their long sleeve "Crew of The Clay" shirts. I figured that gift was a big hit.
       The cook and her husband were already there when Rick and the boys and I groped our way down the stairs in search of coffee. My mother introduced us to them, and them to us. It was Miss Odille and Mr. Tyrone, just like it had been when Craig and I were kids and were introduced to adults.
       When Tyrone shook my hand, he said "I'm Tyrone Jackson, and if you call me Mister Tyrone, I'll kick your ass, Kevin."
       I liked Tyrone instantly, and I knew he was a good guy.
       "What do you do for a living, Tyrone? Step and fetch it?"
       "You asshole," he said, grinning broadly. "Get your coffee, and let's go outside for a smoke."
       I did as told. Tyrone was, in fact, a really nice guy. He was an associate professor of history at a local community college, and he had a master's degree from Columbia University. "Miss" Odille had gone to the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York. She had been a chef at Windows on the World for a time while Tyrone was in graduate school, but they had wanted her to be a stay-at-home mom. Restaurant work didn't fit that plan. They were both from New Orleans, so that's where they gravitated. I learned that we were the only family Odille worked for.
       I told Tyrone what I did for a living, and he was impressed. I also told him that I had already tasted enough of Odille's cooking to know that she could be the Executive Chef at our biggest property the next day, if she wanted to be.
       "Don't be surprised if we come knocking," Tyrone said.
       "No, don't you be surprised if I come knocking. How long until you retire," I asked.
       "Actually, I'm half through my last year. I'm going to retire in May," he said.
       "Hold that thought. I need to go get a couple of people. I'll be right back," I said.
       I hauled my ass into that house as fast as I could, and I got Gene and Rick out on that patio with Tyrone and me. We talked. Tyrone gave his wife's credentials, told about his retirement plans, and said when they might be available. Gene was loving it, and he basically offered Odille a $75K a year job right there, starting in June, without even talking to her.
       Back in the kitchen, Mom said, "Did you and Tyrone get acquainted indulging in your filthy habit?"
       I grinned at her. "You set this up, didn't you?"
       "Well, let's just say I saw talent that needed to be used, and I facilitated a meeting of the minds," she said coyly.
       "You're more of a lawyer than a doctor," I said.
       "I cure where and how curing needs to happen," she said. She walked away from me then to help Odille.
       * * *
       We left on our trip to plantation country right after breakfast. We took the Interstate to Williams Boulevard in Kenner and got off. We turned left headed for the Mississippi River and the River Road. There are lots of famous streets in the United States, and the River Road, a substandard, narrow highway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is one of them.
       We stopped in Rivertown in Kenner at the end of Williams Boulevard and the beginning of River Road. They had done some urban restoration of their own in Kenner. I was totally amazed at what they had there. There was a toy train museum that George thought was wonderful and that the boys enjoyed, as well. The Mardi Gras museum was every bit as good as the one we had seen the day before, but the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame gave all the males under twenty- one erections, I was sure.
       "See, we've got to go to a Saints game," Kyle said. "I need it bad, man."
       "You're smelling the testosterone on all this shit, boy. Calm down," Gene said. He and Kyle were grinning hard, and they knocked knuckles.
       The Wildlife Museum and Aquarium were really very good, but the aquarium sort of paled compared to the big one downtown. The Cannes Brulee Native American Center of the Gulf South, a re-created Native American village, was really good, too. The boys talked with the Native American re-creators, and all five of them, and Rick and I, too, bought Indian necklaces in their gift shop.
       "You getting all this stuff, Flash," Justin asked Kyle.
       "I'm trying to, but I don't know if the camera's working," Kyle said.
       "Oh, no! Kyle! What happened, Bubba," Justin asked. There was real concern in his voice because he know how much Kyle loved that camera.
       "I accidentally took a picture of you, and I think that broke it," Kyle said.
       "You little fuck-wad. I'm gonna kick your ass for you," Jus said. He was grinning, of course. Then he realized what he had said and that everyone had heard him. He sort of grimaced when he realized the ladies had heard it. All of the boys had been pretty good about watching their language around the ladies, and the men, too.
       "He got you last, Jus," my mom said, laughing at the whole situation.
       "Yeah. Grandma, I'm sorry I said that bad word," Jus said.
       "You're his brother, Jus. You know him better than I do. If that's what he is...," she said.
       Jus was grinning by then. "You are so cool, Grandma. I love you."
       "I know. And I love you, too. Besides, raising Craig and Kevin, it was either 'be cool or die,'" she said.
       The highlight of Kenner, though, was the Daily Living Science Center. It was a hands-on museum that had exhibits on car engines, weather, dental hygiene (George's favorite part), commercial laundries, and other stuff you wonder about but never get to see. The absolute best, though, was a full-sized NASA space station, complete with a weightlessness chamber. The boys went totally wild in that place, and, frankly, the rest of us did, too. It was so awesome.
       Once we were outside, Craig said to me, "Did you know about all of this?"
       "No, did you?"
       "No, I didn't know about it. Shit, this is fucking fabulous," he said.
       "I know. This is ten times better than what we did in the Quarter yesterday," I said.
       "Tell me about it. One more death mask, and I was dead. I thought the guys did great, though, didn't you?"
       "Yeah, they did, but they were antsy toward the end. The Cabildo would have done them in, for sure," I said.
       "The Presbytere did me in. All we would have needed was a tour of the Cathedral to totally wipe my ass out," he said.
       "Dad's got a list of places they have to go, you know. Not on this trip, maybe, but on other trips."
       "I know. Do you ever remember him having this much fun when we were kids," Craig asked.
       "No, I think it's the grandchild factor," I said.
       "Grandchildren. Shit. You damn sure got me fucking last on that one, motherfucker. You queer-ass son of a bitch."
       He grabbed me in a big hug.
       "I love you, Kevin, and I love Rick and those kids, too, man."
       "I know you do, Craig. All queers love each other."
       "Ohhh. Ohhh. That was a set up, you asshole," he said. He put his knee between my legs and ground down hard on my balls.
       "Owwww!!," I said.
       "Let me tell you something, brother. I ain't queer, but I am damn sure Gay Proud. And so is Cherie."
       "I knew that, but thanks for saying it," I said.
       My dad whistled just then. "Craig and Kevin, come on."
       "Do you remember that whistle," I asked.
       "Shit, I dream about it and quake in fear. Let's go."
       * * *
       We all got in the cars and started driving up the River Road toward the Destrehan Plantation. It actually wasn't very far from where we were. In fact, it was only about eight miles.
       The locals call it the Destrehan Plantation, but the official name was Destrehan Manor. It was the oldest plantation house in the state. It was built in 1787, but it had been renovated a lot since then. They filmed a lot of the movie Interview with a Vampire in that house, and it looked like the kind of place they would choose for that movie.
       "This is totally spooky, man," Justin said to Kyle.
       "I know," Kyle said.
       "Did you see Interview with a Vampire, Buddy," Brian asked.
       "Naw. I've only seen a couple of movies," Jus said.
       "Is he serious, Kevin," my mom said, clutching my arm.
       "Yes, ma'am, I think he is serious," I said. "At least movies in theaters."
       "Oh, my God! Oh, Kevin," she said.
       "I know, Mom. We know. We're trying," I said.
       "He's so well adjusted," she said.
       "I know." Pause. "We'll rent that movie, Jus, now that you've seen the house."
       He grinned. "Okay, man."
       Justin was so incredibly vulnerable, yet I knew he trusted Rick and me and my mother. He also trusted Kyle. It was months before I ever found out just how much he trusted Kyle, but I knew then, intuitively, that he trusted him. We all did.
       * * *
       It was shortly after Destrehan that we began seeing the huge bonfires they were building for Christmas Eve. We stopped at the fourth or fifth one we saw, and the men all had to pee. We asked one of the guys building a fire if there was a restroom near by, and he said,
       "Piss in the river, man. That's what we do."
       "Why is there so much land between the river and that hill," Jus asked. He was referring to the levee as the "hill."
       "That's the Batture," I said. "There isn't a Batture in New Orleans because the land is too valuable. There's one here, though. The river would have to flood way high to get those houses up there."
       "But they'd open the spillways first," Dad said.
       "Spillways," Kyle asked. "What's that?"
       "The spillways are like really, really wide dry canals connecting the river to the lake, Kyle," Dad said. "If the river gets too high, they will open the spillways, and the city will be saved from a major flood."
       "Dad, have you read anything about the river shifting," I asked.
       "Oh, yes. Quite a lot about it. I think the Corps of Engineers will keep that from happening, though," he said.
       "I hope so. Some of what I've read said the city would be high and dry if that happened," I said.
       "Maybe not so high, and not so dry, son. One theory says we'll be under the Gulf of Mexico, if that happens," he said.
       "You might know it. Just when I finally get to a city, it's fixing to disappear," Jus said.
       We all laughed.
       "Do you fellows know how this levee was built," Dad asked the boys.
       "No, sir," they said in unison.
       "Well, let me tell you the story. It all happened because of a lady named Annie Christmas. She was a keelboat pilot on the Mississippi, and none of the men dared cross her. She was six feet, eight inches tall, and she weighed 250 pounds of all muscle. She had the biggest mustache of anybody on the river.
       "Annie Christmas would unload her boat herself, and she could carry a 55-gallon barrel of flower under each arm and balance a third one on her head. She had a long string of beads that she wore around her neck when she went to parties and such. Every bead on it represented a pair of eyes she had gouged out or a nose she had bitten off in a fight. When she died, that necklace was thirty feet long, but it wasn't as long as it could have been. She said some fights were so easy they didn't deserve to be remembered on her necklace. One time a keelboat was busted up and couldn't make it from Natchez to New Orleans on its own. That didn't stop Annie. She tied a rope to that boat and towed it here from Natchez with the rope over her shoulder. Some of the people who saw it said it was going faster than it would have under its own power."
       "I don't want nothing to do with this bull-dyke," Justin said.
       "She wasn't a lesbian, Jus. She had twelve big, strapping sons. The smallest one was six feet, seven inches tall, if that gives you some idea of how big those boys were."
       "Yes, sir. Those are some big boys, all right," Jus said.
       My dad had always been a wonderful storyteller, and he was really doing a number on this one. I looked at Craig to see his reaction. He shrugged and then shook his head "no" to indicate he had never heard it before, either.
       "We owe Annie and her boys a debt of gratitude for building this levee."
       "Why is that?" We turned to see who that unfamiliar voice belonged to, and we saw four of the kids who had been working on the bonfire standing there listening to my dad tell his story.
       "Well, I'll tell you. One time a monster flood was rolling its way down the river. Mike Fink, another famous keelboat pilot on the River, said it was caused by a giant alligator that had a tail as long as a mountain is high. He was swishing that tail back and forth, and it was causing a major title wave. Mike decided he'd go get that gator and kill it, but that didn't do the people in Noo Awlins any good. The water was already on its way. The mayor sent for Annie Christmas and asked for her help.
       "'Can you do something to save us, Annie,'" he asked her.
       "'I don't know, Mayor,' Annie said. She sat down to think about it. The mayor's wife had been cooking chickens that morning, and Annie smelled them. She asked for a little snack, and the mayor's wife brought out a piece of chicken for Annie. She ate that in one gulp and wanted more. Eventually, the mayor's wife brought out all four of the chickens she had cooked, and Annie ate them all.
       "'Thanks,' Annie said. 'That'll hold me till I can get a meal.'
       "Annie thought some more. Then she said, 'Mayor, I've got an idea, but I'm gonna need the help of my sons. The problem is, they're all in jail.'
       "'I think we can take care of that, Annie,' the mayor said. He sent somebody to get the boys from jail.
       "When the boys got to the mayor's house, Annie slapped each one of them solidly in the face for disobeying her by getting caught by the law. Then she said, "Roll up them sleeves, boys. We've got work to do.'
       "Annie knew she had to plow up a hill to protect the city. There weren't any mules or horses big or strong enough to do that work, so she hitched the boys to the plow. With the water churned up by that giant gator bearing down on New Orleans, Annie Christmas and her boys built this levee we're standing on right now. The city and the surrounding towns were saved from the flood."
       Everybody applauded "Grandpa" for that great story.
       "That ain't a true story, is it, mister," one of the bonfire boys asked.
       "Do you know what gris-gris is," Craig asked him.
       "Yes, sir. A-course I know what gris-gris is," the kid said.
       "It's as true as gris-gris," Craig said.
       One of the other bonfire boys, a cute little black-eyed Cajun about Brian's age and size, said, "No, shit!"
       We all laughed, and he got a little red in the face.
       "Dad, that was a great story. Thanks," I said as we were walking down the levee to our cars.
       "Had you never heard that one before," he asked.
       "No, sir," Craig and I said in unison.
       "Do you know other stories like that, Grandpa," Brian asked.
       "Yeah. He knows a million of 'em," Craig said. "This man right here is the champion of ghost stories, guys. I pissed my pants more than once listening to 'em when I was a kid."
       "Did you really, Craig? You never said anything about that," Dad said.
       "Like I would, Dad. Come on, man. Give me some credit," Craig said.
       "Did you ever do that, Kevin," he asked.
       "Oh, many times," I said.
       "I'm sorry I scared you like that, boys. I really had no idea." He was sounding apologetic.
       "Dad, we loved it. We loved those stories. Those are some of my best memories from childhood," Craig said.
       "You, too," he asked, meaning me.
       "Yes, sir. We really loved those stories, Dad," I said.
       "It's a gay watersports thing, Ed. I'll teach you about it," Justin said.
       "You son of a bitch," Craig said with a huge grin. "Get in that truck before I take out those stitches out of your ass with my teeth."
       Justin took off running down the levee, and Craig was in hot pursuit, both laughing so hard they could hardly run.
       "Your brother loves these boys, doesn't he," Dad asked me.
       "Yes, sir. I think he does," I said.
       "Well, he's not the only one," Dad said.
       * * *
       We got back in the cars to continue our trip up river. We had had a late breakfast, but it was getting on toward one o'clock. We decided to stop for lunch in Reserve. The place was a mom-and-pop diner that was anything but elegant. The walls were dark plywood paneling and the tables were un-place matted Formica. Kyle and I happened to end up in the men's room at the same time.
       "Sheesh, you'd have to have a foot-long dick to use this thing," he said. He was referring to the urinal that was a good foot-and-a-half higher than the standard.
       "I'm sorry, Kyle. I should have taken that thing so you could squat over the toilet," I said from within the stall.
       "In your dreams, Bubba," he said, laughing.
       Lunch was surprisingly good. Most of us ordered soft shell crab po' boy sandwiches, a New Orleans specialty that consisted of two soft shell crabs, lettuce, super-thin tomato slices, and pickles, all served on a twelve-inch length of light, crisp French bread. Jeff ordered a roast beef po' boy, and Tim and Brian got "combinations," which meant ham and swiss cheese. After coffee and dessert, we were back on the road.
       Our next stop was the San Francisco Plantation. That place was almost Gothic in its design, and it sort of reminded everybody of a steamboat. The interior was very elaborate, and even some of the woodwork was carved.
       It was 2:30 by the time we finished the plantation tour, and it was time to head home. The cocktail party was scheduled to start at 5:30, and everybody needed a little time to rest from the day and get dressed for the party. We took the Interstate home and got there a little before three.
       "Did everybody have a good time," my mom asked when we assembled in the den.
       "We had a great time," Dad said. "I wish you could have been with us. Is everything ready for tonight?"
       "I'm glad you had fun, but I had fun being a domestic goddess, for a change," she said. "We probably all need to get cleaned up, don't you think? And, yes, everything is ready."
       We all agreed, and we went to our rooms.
       "Mom, the highlight of the day was Dad telling the story of Annie Christmas building the levee, as we were standing on the levee," Craig said.
       "He's a talented storyteller, isn't he," she said.
       "Absolutely. Some kids who had been working on a bonfire came over to listen. They were as enthralled as our boys were," he said.
       "Our boys," she asked with a smile.
       "Yes, our boys," he said, smiling back.
       * * *
       My mother had asked that everybody be downstairs by 5:15 to be on hand when the guests started arriving. The boys all showed up punctually.
       "You guys are looking mighty good," Rick said.
       I knew I was probably biased, but I thought the seven of us made a pretty stunning impression. The boys looked very grown up and mature in their suits, and they seemed to be pretty comfortable wearing them. I've seen guys who aren't used to wearing a tie pull at their collars constantly. Those guys didn't do that.
       Kyle set up his camera to take a group shot, first of the five boys, then of the boys with Rick and me. He got pictures of the others, too.
       "Kyle, would you mind setting up a laptop with that slide show of the monkeys," my mom asked. "I think some of our guests will find that amusing."
       "Sure, Grandma," he said.
       "You don't mind that the boys call you 'Grandma,' do you, Mom," I asked.
       I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to make sure before all the company got there.
       "Of course not," she said. "I only wish they really were my grandsons, Kevin."
       "That's what I thought. Just checking," I said.
       Kyle got the laptop set up in the den, and some of us watched the slide show again. He had really done a clever job in matching the people to the monkeys. The overall effect was very funny.
       The first guests started arriving around 5:40. My parents knew a great many people, and most of them would be there that night. Rick and I renewed our acquaintance with people we had met in previous years, and Mom was beside herself making sure all the guests met the boys.
       The food was assembled on the dining room table, which had been opened to its full length. There was a magnificent flower arrangement in the center of the table, and I thought about our friends in North Carolina who ran the flower shop. We had stayed in touch with them through e-mail, and they were celebrating the holidays with "their" son and his wife.
       Craig found me about halfway through the party.
       "We're going to go out after this is over, right," he asked.
       "We can. We really hadn't planned anything. We usually help clean up," I said.
       "God, I wish these people would go home," he said.
       "Small talk getting to you, Bubba," I asked with a grin.
       "Yes! If one more person asks us about having children, I'm going to shove a glass up their ass," he said.
       Tim and Kyle drifted over.
       "We're talking about going out after this is over," I said. "Are you boys up for that, or are you too tired?"
       "We're not tired," Kyle said. "I wish that gay place was open tonight."
       "What makes you think it isn't," I asked. "Besides, there are lots of gay places all over the city."
       "I thought it was just open on Monday night," he said.
       "No, they'll be open tonight," I said.
       "Cool," they said in unison.
       The last of the partiers were gone by nine o'clock.
       "I'm exhausted," my mom said.
       "Beth, this was a fabulous party," Rita said. "I met so many doctors, I thought I was in a hospital."
       "Thank you, Rita. We've done this for years. I thought it was a pretty pleasant group, considering," Mom said.
       "I think the boys deserve a round of applause for how well they did," Dad said. We joined him in applause for the boys.
       "Thanks, Dad," Craig said, obviously in fun.
       "You asshole," my dad said.
       He and Craig laughed.
       "Mom, we were thinking we would go out tonight after we help clean up," I said.
       "Oh, no. Go now. We have Odille and her five family members to clean up. They've been washing dishes and glasses all night. There really isn't much to do, but they'll take care of that," she said.
       "Well, guys, let's go change. Whose coming," I asked.
       It ended up being only the young people on that outing. After we changed into our going-out clothes, we all piled into Rick's Bronco, Tim sitting on Kyle's lap.
       "Craig, do you think the boys will have any trouble getting into any of these places," I asked.
       "Well, the rule is supposed to be eighteen to get into a night club and twenty-one to drink," he said, "but I don't remember ever seeing anybody checking ID's at the door. They might if they tried to order a drink, though."
       "We can just walk around if they won't let us in," I said.
       "They'll let us in," Kyle said.
       "Tim and Brian, do you guys even have any ID," I asked.
       "They'll be fine, Kevin," Kyle said.
       It crossed my mind to inquire how he was so sure of that, but I decided to let it slide. We'd deal with the issue of fake ID in a less public setting, if, indeed, it was an issue.
       We parked in what had become our usual place next to the Jackson Brewery and walked over to Bourbon. There were gay clubs all over the city, but there were several really nice places more or less in a row in the 800 and 900 blocks of Bourbon.
       The first place we came to was a dance club, and it was big and loud. We had to pay a ten dollar cover charge, but that entitled us to two "well" drinks, two domestic beers, or two soft drinks. They gave us tickets for the drinks and fastened plastic bracelets to our wrists, the right wrist on the adults and the left wrist on the kids. Jeff got his on the right. We'd be able to leave and come back in without paying a second time, if we wanted to. We went up to the second floor, and the guys were grinning big.
       "It's pretty loud in here," Tim shouted above the noise.
       "Yeah," was all I said. I didn't want to try to compete with that sound system.
       Most of the guys who were dancing had their shirts off, as I had expected. Even though it was December 23rd, the temperature outside was in the high 50's; inside, it was probably in the high 70's or low 80's. Anybody moving around as much as those guys were was sweating.
       We got a table, and sat down. We weren't there more than a minute when a waiter came to take our order. I ordered a beer for Craig, Cherie, and myself, and I ordered cokes for everybody else.
       The waiter looked like he could have been a model for a gay Web site. He was wearing very small red shorts and a Santa hat. He was probably twenty-one years old, very cute looking, and apparently hung like a horse, if the bulge in the shorts was really him. He had a winning smile, too.
       "Did you see that guy," Justin said in amazement after the boy had gone to fill our order.
       "What guy," Rick asked.
       "The waiter, man. Damn, he was hot, didn't you think?"
       "I didn't notice, Jus," Rick said.
       "You liar," he said to Rick, and the two of them laughed.
       "Let's dance," Kyle said to Tim, and the two of them took to the floor. They were back in about thirty seconds to take their shirts off. "No point in getting them sweaty," Kyle said.
       "Come here," Craig said. They both went over to him. "What's this shit?" He had seen their nipple rings at the pool party at Thanksgiving, so I assumed he was referring to the little charms they had put on them. He was flipping the one in Kyle's right nipple up and down.
       "If you keep doing that, you're gonna find out what it's really all about, and it ain't about shit," Kyle said, grinning big.
       Craig jerked his hand away like he had touched fire. "Goddamn, I'm sorry, man. I didn't think of that. You know I didn't mean that, right, Kyle?"
       "I know you didn't, damn it," Kyle said.
       They went off to dance.
       "Jesus Christ, Kevin," he said. "Why didn't you say something, man?" Craig seemed a little angry with me.
       "Kyle's in charge of his body, Craig, not me. You saw and heard his reaction. He knows you weren't coming on to him, man," I said.
       "Lighten up, Craig. It was no big deal, Honey," Cherie said.
       "If he had kept it up, it would have been a big deal in about another minute. A bigger deal than you'd ever suspect, Cherie, from the overall size of him," Justin said, deadpan as usual.
       "Let's change the subject," Craig said, still embarrassed and blushing. "I'm surprised he kept his shirt on that long."
       "Me, too," I replied.
       The gay club was a big hit. The boys had really taken to dancing since Chad and Gage had introduced them to it, and they fit right in with the other people there. There was a mostly young crowd at that place, and I saw some guys that didn't look any older than Brian and Tim. Rick and I danced to a few slow songs, with predictable protuberances, but we weren't interested in taking our shirts off or getting hot and sweaty. Jeff danced with the other four boys, and one slow one, even, with Craig. When they came back to the table after that dance, I noticed both guys were fluffed out a little in the crotch department. When Craig and Cherie danced slow, Craig came back to the table with a much larger fluff, so I figured they were good, at least in that department.
       After we used our tickets, we decided to go out to the street to get some fresh air. I had the odd sensation that my body was still thumping from the music.
       "What did you think, guys," Craig asked.
       "That place was cool," Jus said. "There were a lot of nice boys in there, too, man."
       "You better watch yourself, stud," Kyle said.
       "I can look, can't I," he said mock defensively.
       "That's all you better be doing, too, Buddy," Brian said.
       Justin gave him a short peck on the lips and took his hand.
       "Goddamn, it feels good to be able to do that," Justin said.
       Kyle took Tim's hand in his when he saw Justin and Brian holding hands. There were quite a few people in the street, and our guys certainly weren't the only gay couples holding hands.
       The next place we went was smaller than the first place, and it wasn't nearly as loud. Their sign said they featured exotic dancers. The tables were small, and not everyone could get around a single table. We ordered a round of drinks. Craig switched to scotch, but he ordered himself a beer as well and two beers for Cherie.
       When the drinks came, he called Kyle and Justin over and gave each of them a beer. They were in plastic "go cups," as were the cokes we ordered. I decided to ignore what I had just seen rather than endure an argument. I guess Craig had decided his role was to be the "naughty uncle."
       The show started after we had been there about fifteen minutes. It was just one dancer, and he did a partial strip down to a g-string. I didn't think it was either seductive or entertaining, and the boys didn't seem particularly interested, either.
       Our next stop was a leather bar. It was much less crowded than the others had been, and it was pretty clear it was a much more serious place than the others, too. We passed through the bar area to find a table on the patio, and I felt like we were on display.
       "What is this all about," Kyle asked when we were seated and had ordered a drink.
       "It's for guys who are into leather, apparently," I said.
       "What do you mean, 'into leather,'" he asked.
       "I know what it means," Jus said. "Some guys get turned on by leather. They wear leather underwear and shit like that. Leather clothes of all types."
       "Some of those guys looked kinda mean," Tim said.
       "They're not, though, Tim. That's sort of part of the whole leather look, I think. I don't know that much about it, though. See that guy over there with the collar wearing the leather jockstrap. He's probably out with his master or something," Jus said.
       "What's a bear," Kyle asked.
       "It's a real hairy guy," Jus said. "None of us could be bears, except maybe you, Kyle, if you keep growing that stuff. Some of these guys in here are, though."
       "What did you mean by that," Rick asked.
       "Some of these guys in here are real hairy," Jus said.
       "No. I didn't mean that. I meant what you said about Kyle," Rick said.
       "That boy's been growing hair on his chest and stomach. Didn't you notice it earlier tonight? Especially when he was sweating," Justin asked.
       "No, I didn't notice," Rick said.
       "I noticed," Cherie said, "but I figured it had always been there."
       "I noticed it, too," Craig said.
       "Y'all are making me sub-conscious," Kyle said. "I can't help it. It just grows."
       "We're making you sub-conscious," Craig asked, grinning his ass off.
       "Yeah. What's so funny? Isn't that right," Kyle asked.
       "It's self-conscious, Bubba, and I didn't mean to make you self-conscious. And it's okay to grow chest hair, Kyle." Rick was grinning at his ass off at his "true son."
       "Rick has a lot of hair on his upper body, Kyle, but he keeps it shaved. He's done that ever since he started running triathlon," I said. "It's okay to be a hairy man, Kyle. Believe me on this one, dude."
       "I guess there are a lot of different ways to be gay," Kyle said, changing the subject away from himself. Do you guys want to shoot some pool?"
       Tim, Justin, and Brian did, so they four of them got the table that was outside but under the overhang of a large balcony or deck. Jeff was busy making friends with three young guys dressed like we were at the next table.
       "I don't know how guys can do this kind of thing night after night the way some do it," Rick said. "It's fun in a situation like this, on vacation, but it would bore me to death if I did it all the time."
       "It's been fun watching the kids," Craig said. "I don't know if they've been aware of it, but they've been the object of a good bit of attention, especially when they were dancing with their shirts off."
       "I noticed that, too," Cherie said. "I saw Kyle get propositioned, I think."
       "Did he really! What happened," Rick asked.
       "It was during a break between songs. This guy came up to him and spoke to him. He started fingering Kyle's nipple ring." She looked at Craig, and he ducked his head like he was expecting a slap. "And then the guy cocked his head toward the door. It looked like he wanted Kyle to leave with him," she said.
       "What did Kyle do," Rick asked.
       "He shook his head 'no' and moved the guy's hand away from his chest. Then he and Jus, I think, started dancing," Cherie said.
       "It'll be interesting to see if he tells us about it," I said.
       "It's probably more a case of when than it is if," Rick said.
       "True," I said.
       "Are they pretty open with you all about sex," Craig asked. "I assume they're all doing it."
       "I think that's a pretty safe assumption," I said. "At first, Tim and Kyle had quite a few questions, and we answered them as honestly as we could. We haven't talked about sex much in a while. I'm sure they talk to each other about it, though, like any kids would."
       "Do you think they're into any threesomes or foursomes, or, hell, fivesomes, for that matter," Craig asked.
       "We don't ask them about their sex lives, Bubba," Rick said. "We have two fundamental rules. First, nobody does anything unless both guys want to do it. No exceptions to that one. The second rule is that sex is private. We don't allow them to make out in public or play with each other or themselves in any kind of sexual way when they're around us."
       I saw a guy talking to the kids shooting pool. He looked over our way a time or two. He turned to walk in our direction, and he looked vaguely familiar to me.
       "Hi," he said, as he got to the table. "You're Kevin Foley, right?"
       "That's right." The guy was dressed in Levis, a regular shirt, and a leather vest. He had on the kind of work boots that I associated with construction workers.
       "I'm Paul Russo. We went to high school together," he said.
       I stood up when he said that.
       "Paul! Oh my God!" I pumped his hand. "How the hell are you? It's been forever."
       "I'm doing great. How are you, man?"
       "Terrific. Here. Sit down. Let me introduce you. This is Rick Mashburn, my partner. This is my brother, Craig, and his wife, Cherie," I said.
       They all shook hands.
       "I remember Paul," Craig said. "You guys were sophomores when I was a senior, right? As I remember it, you all were pretty good friends."
       "Yeah, we were. How'd we lose track," Paul asked.
       "I went to college out of state, and I guess I wasn't very good about keeping up with old friends. I'm sorry I didn't," I said.
       Paul and I had been quite good friends but it was one of those friendships that were school related. He didn't live in my neighborhood, not that that should have mattered, and we never saw each other during the summer. He spent the night at our house a few times when we had projects due or big exams to study for, but, apart from things like sitting together at school games and such, we really didn't hang out together.
       "So, do you live here now," he asked.
       "No. We're just visiting. We live in Emerald Beach, Florida. Paul, are you...gay," I asked.
       "Yeah. It seems I am. And yourself?"
       "Oh, yeah. Rick and I have been together four and a half years. Tomorrow is actually one of our anniversaries," I said.
       "That's right. I forgot it's tomorrow," Craig said.
       "Anniversary of what, if I may ask," he said.
       "Of our formal public commitment to one another. Our wedding," I said.
       "Man, congratulations! How many years?"
       "Just one. We've been together four and a half, though. What about yourself? Anyone special?"
       "I'm been dating a guy for a couple of months, but we don't live together or anything. In fact, I see right now that he's ready to go. When are you leaving?"
       "Unfortunately, tomorrow morning. Here, let me give you my card."
       We swapped cards.
       "Let's stay in touch. We'll be getting over here several times in the next few months. The boys love it here, and my parents love the boys," I said.
       "Who are those kids, anyway," he asked.
       "Actually, two of them are our foster sons, and three are honorary foster sons," I said.
       "Oh, man. I want to hear all about that next time you're in town, okay? Listen, I hate to run, but Rob's impatient. Take care of yourself," Paul said.
       "You, too. Send me some e-mail," I said. "It's on the card."
       We shook hands, and he left.
       The boys came over to the table, and we decided we had had enough night life for the evening. We dropped Craig and Cherie off at their place after much hugging and kissing and many heartfelt good-byes, and we went home and went to bed.

Chapter 10

       After our big night on the town, we slept in the next morning. Rick was already awake when I woke up around nine o'clock.
       "Happy anniversary," he whispered to me when I was awake enough to be aware of my surroundings. "I love you, Kevin."
       "Happy anniversary. I love you, too. Gimme a kiss."
       He kissed me. And then he kissed me again.
       "I love you so much I could eat you up," he said.
       "Don't eat me," I teased and stretched and rubbed myself against him. The bed was warm and cozy, and it felt so good to be there next to my man.
       "Did you ever think it was going to be this good," he asked.
       "Never. I never really thought I could be even half as happy as I am. We're a good pair, aren't we?"
       "I'll say we are."
       Rick started rubbing my chest, and I started rubbing his butt. We kissed again, long, slow, and passionate. His penis and mine were touching, and we started rocking against one another, our mouths locked and our tongues caressed one another.
       "I want to do this with you forever," he said. "I never want to get up."
       We intensified the pressure we exerted against one another. We reached around each other and pressed each other's buttocks to somehow get closer together. Our thrusting was in total sync with each other, and our bodies almost seemed to lose their separateness. As his semen coated me and mine coated him, the essence of our maleness, of our selfhood, flowed together. We slumped against one another, totally fulfilled and totally happy.
       We stayed that way for a time. Eventually, though, we had to get up. Our things were packed, but there were several last-minute details that we had to attend to, the most immediate of which was a shower.
       "If it was just going to be the boys with us, I'd want us to leave our cum right where it is," I said. "I love having you on me."
       "I love the way it smells," he said.
       We got up and showered together. After such an intense love session, I didn't think we would arouse one another again in the shower. I was wrong, though. As Rick gave himself to me, I felt his life inside my body, his life and his love. We were totally connected. Forever.
       * * *
       When we got downstairs, everybody was at the dining room table, waiting for us.
       "Happy anniversary," they all said in one voice.
       The table was set with the best china, silver, and crystal. The flower arrangement from the night before had been replaced by a new and smaller one, more fitting to a wedding anniversary than to Christmas. There was a gift wrapped in white wrapping paper between the plates at the only two empty places at the table.
       "Mom! You didn't have to go to all this trouble," I said.
       "I didn't. Your sons did," she said.
       Kyle was grinning his ass off, and I knew he had put the boys up to it. As soon as we were seated, he and the others got up and went into the kitchen. They came back in a few seconds loaded down with platters of food. Apparently Odille had been drafted to come in that morning to cook breakfast for us, and the food looked and smelled wonderful.
       My dad said the quick Catholic blessing, and we started breakfast. After we finished eating, we opened our gift. The traditional first anniversary gift was paper in some form, and our gift was a magnificent water color painting on--what else?--paper. It was rolled up in a tube for ease of travel.
       We thanked everyone for the gift and for going to the trouble of putting on such a nice meal.
       Then we got busy. We made the boys strip their beds, and we stripped ours, as well. I took the sheets and towels they had used to the laundry room and separated out the ones that had dried (or not-so-dried) cum on them to put in the machine. I didn't think Odille should be subjected to having to deal with the output of seven cum spouts.
       Saying goodbye was a tearful occasion for a few of us. My mother openly wept as she kissed and hugged each of us goodbye. Rita cried, too, probably out of some sense of loyalty to her gender, or something. She and my mom had obviously gotten to be very close in the time we were there, and they parted with many promises of phone calls and e-mails.
       "We're coming back in six weeks," Gene said, a little impatient with the ladies.
       As we were getting into the car, Kyle's cell phone rang, and he answered it. It was Craig calling to tell him and the rest of us goodbye. Finally, after our protracted farewell, we shut the doors of the cars and took off. Jeff was riding with us on that trip, and Gene, Rita, and George were together in their car. We had decided not to try to stay together on the way home, and, once we were on the Interstate, Gene knew his way home.
       * * *
       One of the things we always did on the way home from a vacation when I was a kid was to play a little game called "Best and Worst." Essentially, it was a way to debrief the trip and to talk about the adventures we had had. Each person takes a turn to say what the best thing was he had done and what the worst thing was.
       "Guys, let's play Best and Worst," I said.
       "What is that," Justin asked. I explained the procedure.
       "Start us off, Jus," I said.
       "Well, the whole thing is my best. The past five days have been the best time I've ever had in my life, and I'm not shitting you, either."
       "Yeah, but you've got to be more specific than that. What was the one thing we did that you liked the very best," I said.
       He sighed heavily. "Y'all come back to me. I need to think about that for a minute," he said.
       "Okay. Tim. Your turn. Best and worst," I said.
       "The best for me was the zoo. I really liked those monkeys," he said.
       "Yeah, 'cause you're a monkey," Kyle said. "And you know just what kind of monkey you are, too."
       Tim giggled.
       "What was the worst, Tim?"
       "I would say probably that big museum next to the church," he said.
       "That was the Presbytere, and, yeah, I can understand that," I said. "Jeff, you go next."
       "The best is easy. That would be getting my medicine," he said.
       "What medicine did you get," Justin asked. "Did somebody give you drugs, son?"
       "I got medicine for depression. Grandma gave me a prescription for it, and it works great," he said.
       "I noticed you seemed to perk up after we went to that nice restaurant," Kyle said. "I figured I was just being extra cute, and that's what made you happy."
       Jeff laughed. "You do make me happy when you're cute, Kyle, but even you couldn't be cute enough to overcome that depression I had. I'm better now. I still think about Clay 24 / 7, but now it's like he's here with me, having fun with me. Is that too weird?"
       "It's not weird at all, if that's the way you feel, Bubba," Kyle said. "What was your worst thing?"
       "I would say that the jazz museum is tied with that museum Tim said," Jeff told us.
       "Okay, Kyle. Your turn," I said.
       "My best was the night we gave out presents and danced. I had a great time. My worst was those same two museums. I liked the Mardi Gras one and the Voodoo one, but those other ones had too many things I wasn't interested in," he said. "Except the model ships. They were sort of cool."
       "Okay, Brian," I said.
       "We're just talking about public stuff, right? Not private stuff?"
       "I know what you're thinking about," Justin said, with a sinister cackle.
       "Yeah, public stuff, Brian," I said.
       "I think the zoo was the best, and the museums were the worst, except for the Voodoo Museum," he said.
       "Are you ready yet, Justin," I asked.
       "Yeah, my best was the racetrack, and my worst was the..."
       "Museums," everybody said in unison.
       "How'd you know that?"
       We all laughed.
       "Rick, your turn," I said.
       "Public stuff only. Hmmm."
       "Kevin, did you treat your boy real good there, stud," Justin teased. "You put Kevin in the sack with a big ole fine boy like Rick, and you have to invent a new name for it."
       Everybody was laughing, including me, but I put on my pretend stern face.
       "Am I fixin' to get a private talk, Kevin," Jus teased.
       "No, but you need one," I said through my laughter.
       "Okay. My favorite thing was the racetrack, too. I had never been to the races before, and I really enjoyed that," Rick said. "My worst was the..."
       "Museums," everyone said again.
       It was my turn.
       "Okay. My favorite thing was the gift night, too, Kyle. Museums were my worst," I said.
       "Oh, no fair," Tim said, laughing.
       "Why the hell did we go to those museums, anyway," Rick asked.
       "Well, we'll know better next time, but it was my dad, Babe. You saw how excited he was with all that old shit. We're going to have to visit every one on that list he made, so we might as well get used to the idea. We'll tell him we want to space them out, though. One, or even two, aren't terrible, but we went to like six museums in a row," I said.
       "There are some I'd like to see, for sure. The Confederate one and the military one. For sure the one on D-Day. I saw a thing on the news about it. It's supposed to be one of the best in the country for that kind of thing," Rick said.
       "Do you all want to do another round of Best and Worst," I asked.
       "Let's keep talking about what we liked without taking turns," Kyle said. "I really, really liked that play we went to. That was my second favorite thing, in fact. I meant to buy the CD, but I forgot."
       "I've got the CD," I said.
       "But I don't," he replied.
       "You can have it. In fact, I've got two different versions of it, the New York version and the London version," I said.
       "How are they different," he asked.
       "They aren't a whole lot different, but a couple of songs are different," I said.
       "I liked the play a lot, too," Tim said. "And I thought that theater was beautiful."
       "One thing I liked a lot was the Christmas lights," Jus said. "I hadn't ever seen many of those before. I really liked that."
       "The ones in the park were the best," Brian said, "but the ones Grandma had put out were better because she did it for us."
       "I think you're Grandma's little pet," Justin said, teasing him.
       "Him? What about you, dude," Kyle said. "You're the one she dropped everything for because your ass was on fire."
       "How is your ass, by the way," Rick asked. "Did Grandma check it out for you?"
       "Yeah. She said I was fully healed and recovered. She was very complimentary of my ass, too. She said I had the cutest one of all the boys," he said.
       Rick and I started laughing our heads off. I could just imagine my mother saying something like that, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
       "I think your ass is cute, stud," Kyle said. "Do you like mine." He was trying to imitate Chad, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it.
       "You need to start wiping your ass when you take a shit, buddy. That's all I've got to say about it," Justin said.
       We all laughed.
       "That boy last night thought you had a cute ass. He wanted to get his weenie up in that thing. He didn't know your personal hygiene problem, though. He thought you had some cute tits, too," Jus said.
       "You're just jealous 'cause he didn't want none of you," Kyle said.
       "What are you guys talking about," I asked. I figured that was what Cherie had told us about.
       "This guy put a move on me while we were dancing at the first club last night," Kyle said.
       "What happened," I asked.
       "Well, I was waiting for the next song to start 'cause the DJ had fucked up or something, and he came up to me and said hi, what was my name. I told him Kyle, and he said that was his favorite name. Then he asked me if I wanted to go for a walk to get to know him better. He started rubbing my nipple, complimenting my ring and the little gay thing hanging from it."
       "Did that make you hard," Jus asked.
       "I already was hard from dancing with Tim, and he noticed. He reached down and started rubbing it through my jeans. When he did that, I told him I was with somebody and that I didn't want to go anywhere with him. He asked me if I was from there and could he call me. I told him no. That was it."
       "Damn, I didn't see him rubbing your dick, man," Justin said. "I'm surprised you didn't punch his lights out."
       "Why do that? He was cruising. I was fair game, I guess. He didn't know I was mar...er, in love,"
       He had started to say he was married, and Tim picked right up on that and got a huge grin on his face.
       "It sounds like you handled it well," I said. "You're right, Kyle. You were fair game, as far as he knew. Did you guys like the gay clubs as much as you thought you would?"
       "That first one was fun, but I thought the music was too loud," Kyle said. "I really liked dancing, though."
       "Me, too," the others said.
       "I thought that strip show at the second one sucked, though. That dude needs to get a life, if he thought that was sexy," Kyle said.
       "I thought so, too, Kyle," Rick said. "I went to a place like that once in college, only it was a topless girl dancing on the bar. She was chewing bubble gum and blowing bubbles. She looked like she was bored to death, and I certainly was."
       "Ewww," Brian said.
       "I thought that third place was kind of scary at first," Tim said. "I almost didn't go shoot pool because I didn't want those guys looking at me."
       "Who was that guy you were talking to right before we left, Kev," Justin asked.
       "Paul Russo," I said. "He was a friend of mine from high school. I saw him talking to you guys while you were playing pool."
       "Yeah, he asked us if you were Kevin Foley," Jus said. "I told him I didn't know your last name. I said you had bought me a beer and a pack of cigarettes so I'd suck your dick."
       Everybody laughed.
       "You're really funny when you're in a good mood, Jus," I said. "Like today. Most of the trip, really."
       "Yeah. I want to say I'm sorry for acting like a butthole on the way over, guys. Kyle had to straighten my ass out. He knows how to give private conversations, too, you know."
       "He should. He's gotten enough of them of his own," Rick said.
       "Yeah," Kyle said.
       Justin spoke. "Y'all are going to think I'm being stupid or something, probably, but I'm going to say this anyway. I really love all of you, and I think I'm about the luckiest guy in the world to be here with you. I didn't even know what the word 'happy' meant before I came here. I know y'all have to stay on me and Kyle a little bit, but we also know it's 'cause you love us. Nobody ever cared enough to do that for me, and I want you to know I appreciate it."
       "The same goes for me," Brian said.
       "Me, too," Jeff said.
       "Me, too," Kyle and Tim said in unison.
       "I don't think you're being stupid at all, Jus," I said. "Rick and I do love you guys, in different ways for different reasons. You guys have given us tremendous joy, and we thank you for that."
       "It's hard to believe that it was just a year ago today that Kevin and I got married," Rick said. "And in about three weeks it'll be a year since Tim's dad got called away to the Indian Ocean. That's really kind of what started all of this, isn't it?"
       "It's been less than a year since you've known Tim and Kyle," Jus asked.
       "Well, we knew Tim. He had even spent a few nights with us when his dad was out of town on business a few times. We met Kyle through Tim, though. Do you remember that night, guys," Rick asked.
       "I do," Kyle said. "It was the night of the Super Bowl. You all had a party, and Tim invited me. That was a real milestone night for me."
       "What happened that night," Jus asked.
       "Lots of things. It was the first time I told anybody besides my parents that I was gay. It was the first time I kissed a boy."
       "Who did you kiss? Rick?"
       We laughed.
       "Very funny, Justin. I actually wanted him to kiss me, but he kissed Tim instead. Remember that, guys," Rick said.
       "Okay, so tell me what happened," Jus demanded.
       Rick spoke. "We had had a party for the Super Bowl. We had taken Tim's dad to catch his plane for the Indian Ocean that afternoon, and then our friends came over for the game. Kyle was the last one to leave because he stayed to help us clean up. Kevin kissed me in the kitchen when we were finished, like we sometimes do, as you have all seen. Tim and Kyle hadn't seen that before, and they looked shocked."
       "That was the first time I had ever seen two guys kiss," Kyle said. "I wasn't shocked, but it sort of took me by surprise."
       "Then what happened," Jus asked.
       "Well, to add a little humor to the situation, I said something like, 'Okay, who's next,' meaning who wanted to be next to kiss me. Nobody did, but Kyle grabbed Tim and laid some lips on him," Rick said.
       "Was it a real get-hard-and-make-a-tent kind of kiss," Justin asked.
       "Not that one. It was a few minutes later, though," Kyle said. "That's when I asked Tim if we could be boyfriends."
       "What made you so brave that night, Kyle," Jeff asked. He had been fairly quiet, as he often was, but he was obviously listening.
       "Being with Kevin and Rick and their friends," Kyle said. "I had never been around any gay men before, and they just seemed so normal and natural that I knew I could accept being gay. I knew I was. I had known it for a few years. I had told Tim that I thought I might be gay. That was on a campout when he and I were in the same tent. I almost kissed him that night, except damn Philip and Ryan came to get me to go smoke with 'em. I was so sexed up for him that night that I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss him. He was already asleep when I got back, though."
       "That really was quite a night for you, wasn't it, Kyle," I said.
       "You mean Super Bowl night? It was the most important night of my life, Kevin," he said.
       "I think it's so cool how all the parents are becoming good friends," Jeff said.
       "It is, Jeff," I said. "We're starting to get deep family roots that are all crossed and interconnected, the way families are supposed to be. I absolutely love it. It looks like my mom has a new best friend in Rita, and I know my dad and George have gotten pretty close. And of course George and Gene are best friends. So there you go. I really like that."
       "I think I might like to live in New Orleans one day," Jus said.
       "Before you pack up, dude, I want to talk to you about an idea I had," I said to Justin.
       "So talk," he said.
       "Are you sure you don't want to wait until we're private," I asked.
       "Do you need to get on to me about something," he asked.
       "Aw, hell, no, man. I was extremely proud of the way you handled yourself on this trip, Jus. I was extremely proud of the way you all handled yourselves," I said.
       "Kev, you've never seen me handle myself," he said in a pouty, hurt voice.
       Rick and I cracked up.
       "You truly are incorrigible," I said.
       "Boys, that means I can't be corriged, but I can be porridged, or at least I can make the...never mind," he said.
       "Go ahead and say it. You're on a roll," I said.
       "I was fixin' to say at least I can make the cream for the porridge," he said.
       "Yep. That's a new level of grossness, Jus," I said.
       "I know. That's why I didn't say it until you forced it out of me," he said.
       "Is Kevin being mean to you, Jus," Brian asked. "Do I need to kick his ass?"
       "Yeah? You and what army, squirt," Rick asked, teasing Brian.
       "Me," Kyle said.
       "If he's a squirt, you're a dribble," Rick said to Kyle.
       "He is not a dribble, Rick. He's a splash," Tim said.
       "So was his brother," Jeff said, deadpan.
       "It's in the genes, Jeff," Kyle said.
       "No. The splashes were all out of the jeans," Jeff said. "Once or twice in the underwear, but usually not."
       Rick and I were howling at the puns.
       "Guys, they say puns are the lowest form of humor," Rick said.
       "I thought your face was, Rick," Justin said.
       "He got you last on that one, dude," Brian said, grinning at Justin.
       We were going through the tunnel in Mobile when he said that, and we hadn't stopped laughing since we had gotten on the road. Those kids were so much fun.
       Rick pulled off the Interstate in Bay Minette so we could get gas. We had driven that route so many times that we knew where the best stops were.
       "Everybody piss, whether you think you have to or not," Rick said, as he was getting out of the car. A lady pumping gas next to us heard him.
       "Always good advice," she said. She was grinning from ear to ear.
       "You must have kids," Rick said to her, grinning as well.
       "Four teenage sons," she said, still grinning.
       * * *
       "What do you want to talk to me about, Kev," Jus asked once we were back on the road.
       "I want to talk to you about your future. Specifically about your future with Goodson Enterprises," I said. "You're about to finish high school, and you've already decided, wisely I think, to put off college till the fall. I want you to go to work full time as a manager trainee at one of the big hotels. What do you think of that?"
       "I like the idea," Jus said. "What's involved in that?"
       "Well, I was thinking you could start as a desk clerk at the Laguna," I said. "That's our biggest and best one."
       He got a huge grin on his face. Thus far, Justin's jobs with the corporation had been as a beach lackey for Tim and Kyle and as a courier among the various properties--hotels, motels, and gift shops. He had enormous people skills and the potential for even bigger ones, and his talent was being wasted in what was essentially an unskilled, manual-labor job.
       "You better fucking do it, dude," Kyle said with considerable passion. "I'm probably going to own all that shit one of these days, and I want my brothers standing next to me, arm in arm, when I've got to take over."
       Justin was grinning at Kyle. I knew they had gotten much closer in the last few weeks since Jus had broken up with Jason, and I knew they loved and respected one another.
       "Well, I guess I better fucking do it. I sure don't want the stud kicking my ass for being a traitor," he said.
       "You're right. I would kick your ass, too," Kyle said. Kyle was grinning, also.
       "Does it pay good," Jus asked.
       "Yeah, it pays pretty good. I think eventually it'll pay better for you than for most, Jus," I said.
       "Kyle already thinks he's an executive of the company," Rick said.
       "I know what you're thinking, and don't tell that story, Rick. It's about Herman, isn't it," Kyle said. "Don't tell that, man." Kyle was laughing.
       "Yep. It's called The Day Herman Met the Stud," Rick said.
       "Tell it, Rick," Jus said.
       "Yeah, tell it," Brian and Jeff both said separately.
       "I'm telling the story, Kyle, and you can just shut up, okay?"
       "Yes, sir," Kyle said.
       "Jus, this happened the day we met you," Rick said.
       "Is it about me," he asked.
       "Yeah, it's about you, but it's more about how Kyle felt about you on that very first day. So listen up. This Kyle boy has been your friend since Day One, Jus. Do you remember how we met you?"
       "Of course I do. How could I forget that?"
       "How did they meet you," Brian asked.
       "I had basically been abandoned in a motel room by the pimp who was running me. I told you about that, Little Buddy."
       "Yeah, you did," Brian said.
       "I called the front desk and I asked if somebody could go get me some fried chicken. I hadn't eaten in three days, and I was literally starving. The guy who answered said he thought he could arrange that. These two jokers were working the pool and the beach, when they weren't off smooching."
       "Shut up, man," Tim said, a little embarrassed by what he had said.
       "So the guy sends these two to go get me a take-out order of Popeye's Fried Chicken. It took fucking forever for them to get it for me," Jus said.
       "You know why," Kyle asked.
       "No. Why?"
       "We got in that place and it smelled so good we ate lunch," Kyle said, laughing.
       "Buddies to the end, man," Jus said. He and Kyle laughed so hard I thought I felt the truck shake a little.
       "So, anyway, they bring in the food, and I go at it like a starved man, which I was. I was stark naked on the bed. There were no sheets, towels, curtains, or shower curtain, even. My feet are in fucking shackles, and I'm eating chicken whole legs at a time. I'm sucking it off the bone as fast as I can.
       "They're standing there watching me like I'm some kind of animal in a zoo. And then, when I'm finished eating, I asked them if they had a smoke. Kyle fished his pack out of his pocket and tossed it to me. He ended up giving me the whole damn pack."
       "Yeah, and you still owe me for that, too," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, right. So anyway, after I'm done eating, Kyle wants to settle up. I mean I am completely naked, in a totally bare room, and he wants his seven fifty, or whatever it was. I'm like, Where does he think I have money? Up my ass? But he was serious. He wanted his money."
       "Shit," Kyle said, embarrassed.
       "Yeah, you say 'shit' now, but you know you wanted your money, Kyle. And you deserved it, man. I don't blame you.
       "So then I think quick. What does every guy want, gay or straight? A blow job. So that's what I offered them. They didn't want blow-jobs. What is up with that, I thought. That's when they went out on the balcony and called Kevin and Rick."
       "So when does Kyle the Executive emerge," Jeff asked.
       "That's coming, Jeff," Rick said. "Actually, Kyle called Kevin, and Kevin called me on my pager using our special emergency code. I was away from my desk chewing out some grass cutter at the time. They needed the hacksaw I had in my tool box in my truck."
       "That's right. Herman didn't know what a fucking hacksaw was," Kyle said.
       "As I recall, you didn't know what one was either, Bubba," I said.
       "You're right. I didn't. Tim and I were going to go to his house to get his dad's chainsaw," Kyle said.
       "Table saw," I said.
       "To make a very long story shorter, we get Jus out of the shackles. We send Tim and Kyle home to get him some clothes, and then he doesn't want to leave because he can't pay for the room. That's when Kyle the Executive takes over," Rick said.
       "This is a great story," Jeff said.
       "I know. I didn't know any of this," Brian said.
       "Kyle gets the motel manager on the phone. Now you have to know. There are eleven hospitality sites in Goodson, and this place is the smallest by half. The only reason Gene doesn't bulldoze it is because it's the one his parents started with. It was in the early fifties. Gene wasn't even born yet. His father was just out of the Korean War, and he bought this motel. This manager is the smallest fry in a very large corporation. And who's working for him? The son of the fucking owner."
       "I didn't know that was Grandma and Grandpa's first one," Kyle said.
       "Yeah, it was, Bubba. Believe me. Kevin and I have both done the numbers on that place. Anyway, Kyle gets Herman on the phone. Kyle wants Herman to comp the room that Jus has been in for several days. Herman wanted to follow company policy. Kyle said he was the company and that he knew his dad a hell of a lot better than Herman did. Herman's wife was very pregnant with, like, their third child, and that boy needed his job. If I remember correctly, Kyle threatened to kick his ass if he called the cops on Jus."
       "You said that, man," Justin asked.
       "Hell, yeah. I might even do it today, now that I actually know you," Kyle said.
       We all laughed.
       "So, what happened after that," Jeff asked. He was clearly very interested in our family history.
       "He ended up giving Jus a complimentary room. Herman didn't know whether to shit or wind his watch, at that point. Kyle was pretty passionate, and I guess Herman figured he really did know his dad better than he did."
       "Shit, Kyle. I didn't know you did all that for me, man," Jus said.
       "Yeah, I did, Bubba. And I had my first private conversation about that, too. Only it wasn't with Kevin. It was with Rick. He gives 'em, too, dude, don't think he don't."
       "Shit," Jus said.
       "Yeah, very much so. At least Kevin don't hit you," Kyle said.
       "You shitass," Rick shouted, as we turned into our street.
       Kyle screamed with laughter.