WATCHING BRAD
Part 118
For almost a year, I have been telling everyone how much I love Bradley Nelson Hayes. So much did I love him, in fact, that I invited him into my home and into my bed. And, in a little more than a month, we are to be married.
For almost a year, Brad has been telling me that he loves me, too. He welcomed my invitation into my home and bed, and he accepted my proposal to make our love permanent and legal.
At least that was our plan.
Warren and Bill had been telling me that Brad truly loves me, as had Nathan and Barry, my parents and Brad's parents. Terry had been telling me. Even my children had been telling me how much Brad really loves me. Virtually everyone I knew had been telling me. Even Connie had been telling me. The only one who hadn't been telling me was. . . well. . . me.
I sat there on the bench beside the young man I had just met, staring at the lump in the crotch of my pants. I had a fully-pumped erection such as I hadn't had in many weeks. I had been thinking about Brad and Warren and Barry and the new guy. There were others, too, and any of them could have caused it. But there was only one who I truly wanted to have been the man to cause it, and that had to be my Bradley Nelson Hayes. Chipped tooth and all.
I had to face it, and I had to believe it. I truly loved Brad more than I had ever loved anyone else before, and I truly wanted him to love me back. He told me that he did. He told me that our age difference meant nothing to him. He told me that he wanted to be with me always. He deserved the benefit of the doubt.
Some part of me, I suppose, had always wished it to be so, but some other part of me had always been telling me that it couldn't be so. It was telling me that I was too old for Brad. It had stopped me from listening to anyone else.
Brad had walked out on me that afternoon. He had given up on me. He had left me. He had abandoned me. The very thing that I had been trying to cause to happen, at least subconsciously, had actually happened, and now that it had, I wished it hadn't.
I mentioned earlier that I had cried in Dr. Davis' office after Brad stomped out of the room. I didn't mention that I had ended up lying on my side on the floor, my knees pulled up to my chest. I lay there in a fetal position for many, many minutes, crying my eyes out and watching the walls crumble around me. Brick by brick, the wall I had built around myself, shielding Brad from me, had begun to fall apart, and Brad was there tearing it down.
Brad's ultimatum opened my mind. If I wanted him back, I had to believe him and I had to trust him. I had to believe that my age wasn't a consideration. I had to believe that Brad was as happy about his decision as I was. And I had to believe that Brad was the cause of my erection.
I don't know what came over me, but I turned back to the young man, wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him to me. He hugged me back. "Thank you," I said softly into his ear.
"I take it that isn't for me," he said just as softly.
I broke the embrace and sat back from him. "Sorry," I said, "but no, it's not."
He simply smiled and said, "My loss."
I quickly reached into my pants to arrange myself to be less conspicuous, easily done in my loose slacks. My new friend did the same, but failed. His cut-offs couldn't hide his erection, no matter how he arranged it. Instead, he dropped his T-shirt into his lap to hide the healthy bulge there.
"I really mean it," I continued as I stood up. "Thank you. I've got to go now."
"No probs." As I started to leave, he called out to me. "Hey." I stopped and turned around. "What's your name?"
"Ted," I told him.
He smiled a toothy smile. "I'm Randy. Good luck, Ted."
* * * * *
I was halfway home in the taxi before I connected Randy's name to Justin's dream.
The coincidence sent a chilly shiver up my spine.
* * * * *
It was almost four-thirty in the afternoon when the taxi pulled up to the curb. Lindsay would be home from school and the twins would be awake from their naps. Terry was there - I had called her from the taxi and asked if she could stay, that I might be a bit late - but Dad's car wasn't. He was still at work until five o'clock and would go pick up Mom at that time before coming home for dinner. I had the cab pull up in front of Brad's house, paid the fare, and got out.
Bernice answered the doorbell. She greeted me with a cheerful smile. "Ted, it's good to see you."
"Is Brad here?" I asked hopefully.
Her smile disappeared. "No," she replied. "Oh, dear. I thought he was with you and your doctor."
I shook my head. "No. He. . . um. . . kind of walked out on us. He wasn't in a very good mood."
Bernice stepped back and stretched out her arm in a ‘welcome' gesture. "Please, come in," she said. I stepped inside and she closed the door behind me. "Would you like some coffee? I can make some."
"I'd love a coffee," I told her with a tiny smile, "but I've had to cut back. Doctor's orders. I'll have a tea, though." I followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table as she began to prepare the kettle and cups. "Do you know where he might have gone? I really need to talk to him."
Bernice glanced over he shoulder. "I wish I did, Ted, but when he gets in those moods, he can disappear until he wants to be found. May I ask why he walked out?"
I didn't think I would be breaking any confidences by telling her. "He gave me an ultimatum. He told me I had to sort myself out fast or we were finished."
This stopped Bernice and she turned her head once more to look at me, the kettle in one hand and the other hand reaching for the dial to turn on the stove. "Oh, dear," she said with deep concern. She turned back to the stove and quickly finished her preparations before joining me at the table. "How can I help?" she asked quietly.
I thought for a moment, took a deep breath and cleared my throat, then said, "I need to know how you and John really feel about me and Brad."
"That Bradley is gay?" she asked. "We were. . ."
"No," I cut her short. "I'm thinking more about the two of us. You know, the fact that I'm so much older than he is."
Bernice sat back in her chair. "Oh,
that again. Well, I can tell you this. It bothers
you a lot more than it bothers both John and me, and it certainly doesn't bother Bradley."
I leaned forward, placing my forearms onto the tabletop and leaning on my elbows, my hands clasped together. "But how can you be so sure, Bernice?"
Bernice mirrored my pose. Her eyes squinted and her lips pulled tight. "Because I know my son, and I have known him twenty times longer than you have." Her face relaxed and she leaned back once more. "Bradley loves with his heart, Ted. He doesn't love with his eyes. He never did, and he never will. When he was a boy, he was often teased and chastised for befriending the less popular people. The outcasts. Not because he was just being friendly, but because he found honesty in them, and that was worthy of his friendship. And he was very loyal to them. He came home more times than I can count with black eyes or bruises or torn clothes because he defended his friends from the bullies."
That had a familiar ring to it. I went home with a few black eyes and bruises myself whilst protecting Warren.
She rose from the table then to tend to the boiling kettle, but she continued speaking. "Perhaps it was because he always felt that he, too, was an outcast of sorts. I don't know. But he never let anyone else influence his thinking as far as his friends were concerned."
I considered her words as she finished preparing the tea and serving it. She waited until she had set out the milk and sugar and was adding both to her tea before speaking again. "You must believe me, Ted. Bradley doesn't see your age. He sees only the kind, generous, loving man that you are, and no-one, not even
you, will ever be able to change his mind. That's the way he is. He loves
who you are, not
what you are."
She paused to take a long, noisy sip from her mug. "Now, let me ask you a question. How do
you feel about the age difference as it pertains to Bradley?"
"I'm worried about him."
"Why?"
"I'm worried about what people will think of me. . .
him!"
As she set her mug onto the table, she said simply, "You said ‘me'."
I had
meant to say ‘him'. Why had I said ‘me'?
Bernice sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest. "Cher," she said knowingly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Cher," she repeated. "I always thought it was silly the way people used to talk about Cher and her. . . what do they call them now? ‘Boy Toys'? We used to call them ‘Gold Diggers' when I was younger."
Brad? A Boy Toy? Then that would make me a. . .
One of my favourite movies is
The Miracle Worker, the story of Helen Keller. Throughout the movie, Annie Sullivan is trying to teach a deaf and blind Helen a manual language. Helen simply cannot make the connection until one momentous scene. After Helen douses her teacher with a pitcher of water, Annie drags Helen by the arm to the well and forces her to pump a fresh pitcher of water. Still trying to teach Helen, Annie forces the young girl's hands under the water as it pours from the pump spigot and spelling the word in Helen's hand.. Helen freezes and you can see in her face that she is trying to find a memory long forgotten. And then she speaks for the first time: "Wa wa." Her long-lost word for ‘water'. Helen made the connection. She finally understood.
This was my ‘wa wa' moment. I understood.
Gee-sus, Murphy! I understood!
I jumped up from the table. "Thank you for the tea, Bernice," I told her anxiously. "I have to get home and make dinner for my kids."
"You're welcome, Ted," she said, well aware that I hadn't taken so much as a single sip of my tea, but I was thanking her for a whole lot more than that. "Would you like me to have Bradley call you when he comes home?"
"Please," I said, then, as Bernice began to rise to her feet, I added, "I'll see myself out."
* * * * *
Me? A Sugar Daddy?
It certainly might look that way to other people who didn't know the entire story about us. Even if they saw my ring, they might just think that I was nothing more than a lying old fag cheating on my wife and family with a handsome young man. I mean, there I was, an old guy, certainly not in the top ten in the looks department, with a hunk like Brad hanging on my arm. It couldn't possibly be true love. The old guy has about as much sex appeal as a turnip and the young guy is packing more meat in those pants than the local deli. "We all know what
he's after," they would say about me. "He likes them young and hung," they would say. "I wonder if he's paying the kid by the inch or the pound?"
Me? A Sugar Daddy?
I wasn't
rich enough to be a Sugar Daddy! But people didn't know that. My friends and family knew, of course, but they knew the entire story. But the other people. . . strangers on the street. . . they would think differently. They would think only one thing.
Me. A Sugar Daddy.
The mere thought that people might think that way terrified me, and it terrified me more for myself than for Brad. I was more concerned with what people might think about
me than I was for what they might think about
Brad!
Brad was right. I was an asshole. My selfish and self-centered concerns had caused me to push him away from me, and I hadn't even realized why. My mind had gone so far as to make me impotent toward him, to try to get him out of my life so I wouldn't have to deal with what other people might think. I was so concerned with it that I was doing everything I could to destroy my life and my happiness. By doing so, I was also destroying Brad's life and happiness.
I was such an asshole.
Somewhere in a wee, small corner of my brain, my mind sighed in relief as if my fear was suddenly released from its mental prison and set free. It made sense to me. I had hidden that fear so deeply away that it could not worry me, but it had worried my subconscious. It had nagged at me and dug at me and poked at me for who knows how long, and now I could see the fear itself. I was frightened of what other people might think. Now, I had something with which to work. I knew the problem, and I could fix it.
If it could be fixed.
The last portion of the wall I had built around me began to crumble.
* * * * *
Mom helped me finish preparing dinner ready when she got home from the new house. She told me all about how nice the place was looking now, but I didn't hear much of it. She knew this, I'm sure, but she continued talking anyway; more to break the silence than to actually say anything, I believe. She may have been trying to take my mind off my thoughts, perhaps, but, if she was, she failed.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to believe it, and the more I convinced myself that it was the reason behind my problem. I had spent so much time convincing myself that Brad was the one who would leave
me that I never even noticed that it was I who was leaving
him. My only hope was that I could get over the entire age thing and let happiness back into my life. And all it took was a simple, innocent comment about Cher from a dear, dear lady. I began to wonder if I should ask Dr. Davis for a refund.
The kids helped me make it through dinner and even managed to make me laugh a few times as they told me about their day. After dinner, I helped Mom clean up the kitchen, then went to sit with the twins while they bathed. Dad wisely left me alone to do it. I washed their hair and gave them an extra-good scrubbing behind the ears. "Just in case you have to go back to see Dr. Blair," I told them with a grin.
Later, as we watched television together, I had all three children to cuddle. Justin and Jeremy each straddled one leg, leaning their backs into my shoulders whilst Lindsay sat between my legs and cuddled against my chest. With so much love crowding me like that, there was little room in my mind to think of anything else but them. So, I sat there as the twins called out letters and yelled "Big money!" when the wheel was spinning, and Lindsay helped her grandparents try to solve the puzzles.
The boys decided a tickling match would be more fun than going to sleep and began tickling me as I carried them into their bedroom. I dropped them onto their backs on the bed and began my own assault, grinning wildly at the loud, hysterical screams of glee they made as they tried in vain to push my hands away. It didn't matter where I tickled them. They laughed just as hard.
As soon as I pushed their pyjama tops up to their chests, they knew what was coming and began to squeal and squirm even before my lips found their bellies. I blew loud, wet raspberries into their skin and their hands grabbed at my hair and tried to pull me away. They didn't try very hard, though. They loved it as much as I did.
I wondered for a moment if they would be like Lindsay. She had once enjoyed the ‘belly bubbles', but, just before Connie and I separated, she had asked me not to do it anymore. "I'm a big girl now, Daddy," she had told me. "I don't do baby stuff no more." She was a bigger girl now, and, one by one, our simple pleasures were disappearing. I could only hope that the twins didn't grow up quite as fast as Lindsay had done.
The twins finally settled down and gave me enough hugs and kisses to get me through the night, and I gave back to them just as many. They curled up under their sheets and I tucked them in, giving them one last kiss on the forehead before leaving them to their dreams.
Lindsay sat with me until her bedtime, not saying anything. Mom and Dad said very little as well. I don't remember what was on television. I spent the time staring at the telephone on the coffee table, waiting for it to ring. Willing it to ring.
It didn't ring.
At nine o'clock, I carried Lindsay into bed and sat with her and read her favourite story. She was a big girl now, but not to old to still enjoy hearing stories about faeries and unicorns. She fell asleep before I reached the part where the unicorn rescues the little boy from the river. I closed the book and placed it on the table beside her bed, tucked the blanket around my daughter, smoothed out her hair, and gave her a kiss.
I stood at the doorway for a few moments, looking at her and wishing that I could keep her at that age forever, then I quietly said, "Goodnight, Sweetheart," and turned off the light and closed the door.
* * * * *
I tried to watch television with Mom and Dad, but I was becoming too agitated and worried about Brad. It was closing in on ten o'clock and I still hadn't heard from him. I didn't know if he was home or where he was. I suppose he could have come home and Bernice could have passed on the message and Brad simply could have ignored it, but that would have meant that he was ignoring me, and that bothered me.
I grabbed my jacket out of the front closet and pulled it on as I headed for the patio door. "I've got some thinking to do," I told Mom and Dad. "I'll be right outside, and I'll lock up before I go to bed."
I walked over to the wall and sat in the same spot where I used to sit and smoke - the same spot where I had seen Brad through his bedroom window almost a year ago. I looked across his yard, hoping against hope that his bedroom light would be on, but it wasn't.
I wanted to talk to him. I
needed to talk to him. I needed to talk to
someone - someone who was in a similar situation as mine. That's who I needed to talk to, but there was no-one.
Except. . .
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked my address book. The number was there! Brad must have put it in for me. My hands were shaking with excitement as I dialed. The phone ring tone sounded only two times before a voice spoke.
"Hello," the voice said.
"Hello," I replied. "Is this Neil?"
"Yes."
"This is Ted de Villiers."
"Hi, Ted," Neil said cheerfully. "It's good to hear from you. Don't tell my you're ten minutes out of the city and wondering if I'm up for some company."
"No," I replied with a chuckle. "I need to talk to you about something personal. Am I interrupting anything?"
"Not at all," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"Remember last Summer when we were at your place the first time? You told us about a friend you'd had who looked a lot like Brad."
"Yes."
"You were older than he was, right?"
"I was thirty-two," Neil replied. "He'd just turned twenty when I met him."
"Did you ever. . . um. . . Gee-sus, Murphy. I don't know how to say this."
Neil said it for me. "Did I feel weird being older than him?"
"Yes!"
Neil chuckled at the relief he heard in my voice. "Well, the circumstances were a bit different than yours," he said. "We were just friends. We weren't engaged. We weren't even lovers."
"Still. . ." I began.
"But there was someone else," Neil continued. "We were lovers for about eight years before he disappeared."
"What do you mean, ‘disappeared'?"
"He just disappeared in the mid-nineties. I didn't know where he was," he explained, "or where he went until I ran into him one day at the mall just before the millennium. He'd changed so much. He'd gained a lot of weight and walked so slowly and he looked so tired. We sat and talked for a few hours and he told me he was waiting for quadruple bypass surgery. Some genetic thing, apparently. I haven't seen him for a few years, though, so I don't even know if he's still alive."
The similarities in our lives was frightening. "God, Neil, I'm so sorry."
"That's okay. Anyway, he was younger than me by nine years."
I paused, trying to form the question in my head before I asked it. "Did you ever. . . um. . . worry about what other people thought about you?"
"You mean me being older than him?"
"Yes," I replied. "Did you ever worry that people might think that you were. . . um. . . a. . ."
When I didn't finish the question, Neil finished it for me. "Sugar Daddy?"
"Yes."
"Nah," he said. "It never even crossed my mind."
"How did you deal with it so easily?"
"Are you worried that people will think you're a Sugar Daddy because Brad is so young?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Let me tell you, something, Ted," Neil continued. "Two things, actually. I've learnt that people usually aren't think what you think they're thinking. As much as you're worried about what they're thinking of you, they're just as worried about what you're thinking of
them. The second thing I've learnt is that, no matter how much you try to convince someone that snow is white, if they want to believe it's black, they will. Nothing you can say or do will change their minds. I was happy with Danny for eight years, Ted, and I have eight years of wonderful memories of him. If I'd been worried about what people thought about us, I wouldn't have been happy and I'd have none of the memories."
He paused a moment, then asked, "Have you ever heard of Piet Hein?"
"No," I replied.
"He's a Danish poet who wrote little poems he called ‘Grooks'. They're usually little, tiny things, but he says so much in them. I used to worry about what other people thought of me all the time. I was too paranoid for my own good. And then I read one of his Grooks which changed my life:
Some people cower
and wince and shrink,
owing to fear of
what people may think.
There is one answer
to worries like these:
People may think
what the devil they please.
"I read that poem over thirty years ago when I was in university, back when I was fighting with my sexuality. I was terrified that people might think I was gay. It took a few more years, but that little poem helped me realize that it was
me that really counted. Not those other people.
"My point is, Ted, I've seen the way Brad looks at you. The same way Danny used to look at me. You're a fool if you turn your back on him just because you're afraid of what people might think of you. This is your only life, Ted, and it's a short one. You have to live it the way you want - the way that makes you happy. You can't let other people live it for you."
We talked for awhile after that, but I don't remember what we said to each other. My memory takes me only to this point of our conversation.
I sat there on the wall for a long time after we'd said our ‘goodbyes', thinking about what my friend had said. I already had almost one year of memories and happiness with Brad. I wanted a whole lot more of them, and I wanted to live the rest of my life with him.
I dialed Brad's cell phone number.
To Be Continued
Thanks Neil for another great chapter. I hope Ted hasn't figured out too late that it is ok to love a younger man. Can't wait for Monday and the next installment. Keep writing. Vic
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
And to this day, even after 24yr. with him, that "concern" is still coloring my relationship with "My" Kev! How he has managed to put up with Me, and THAT aspect, is a Mystery to Me! But ... God Love Him ... he's still here!! 
(Love You, Sheep! 
)
(Have you read any of Clive Cussler?) 
Like I said ... LOVE YOU, Sheep!! 
with that Mother (of a) Board!! Let's hope all goes well with your 'puter!! 
