WATCHING BRAD
Part 117
"Brad!" I said aloud as I stood up. Behind him, the receptionist closed the door. "What are you doing here?"
Brad shrugged. "I don't know. Dr. Davis phoned me last night and asked if I could come in today."
"How did he find you?"
He shrugged his shoulders again. "I thought you told him."
"No, I didn't." I looked at Dr. Davis for an explanation.
"It really wasn't difficult," the Doctor said. "You told me Brad was your neighbour. When I introduced myself to him last Friday, he told me his name and I even confirmed it with you. There aren't very many people named ‘Hayes' living in your neighbourhood." He smiled and winked. "My receptionist had the phone number in about fifteen seconds."
I turned back to Brad and we stared at each other for a few long moments, unsure what either of us should do. Brad glanced quickly at Dr. Davis, then back at me. Finally, he took the initiative and moved forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, hugging me. I was hesitant, allowing my arms to encircle him in a simple embrace, but when Brad sighed and pulled himself closer to me, I succumbed to the feel and smell of him, and I hugged him back.
His voice whispered, "God, I've missed you, Ted."
I hugged him harder, rubbing my cheek against his hair. It felt good to hold him although I was saddened by the fact that I still felt no arousal when I held him. Still, I felt better just holding him. I had missed him as well.
Brad was the one to end the embrace. He moved his hands to my waist and pushed himself away from me and looked into my eyes again. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I'm rather glad he didn't. Instead, he released me entirely and moved around the chairs to take his seat. I sat in the chair beside him. We both looked at Dr. Davis.
"I'm recording these sessions, Mr. Hayes," he said. "Is that alright with you?"
"Sure," Brad replied, "and please call me Brad."
"Very well, Brad. Thank you." Dr. Davis leaned forward to push the ‘Record' button once more. "Now, I've asked Brad to be with us for this hour. I feel it is extremely important that he be here, not only because he is involved as well, but I'm almost certain he can provide answers which I cannot do." He looked directly at Brad. "You're aware that Ted has been having dreams?"
Brad nodded. "Yes, I know about them, but I don't know what they were."
"He has written them down and I have them here," Dr. Davis continued. "I think it's important that you hear them now." He turned his attention to me. "Ted? Do you think you can read them?"
"I can try," I said. "I'm a bit nervous right now, but. . ."
"Do what you can," he added as he handed me the papers.
"Do you want me to read them?" Brad asked.
I shook my head. "No, I think I can do it." Actually, I was somewhat surprised that, despite being as nervous as I was, I was also quite calm. That would have been the perfect moment for an anxiety attack, but I felt none of the symptoms. Perhaps Dr. Davis had put me into this situation simply so he could witness an attack. He didn't see one that day.
The pages were in order from the earliest dreams to the latest. I began reading. Finally, I reached the dream where Justin had awakened me to tell me that he was breaking up with Derrick. I had reached the portion near the end of the dream where Justin was lying in bed beside me, dead:
I leaned back once more and looked down at him. "I'm so sorry, Justin." My tears fell onto his beautiful, young face and I wiped them away with soft caresses of my fingertips.
Justin's eyelids opened slowly. His beautiful blue eyes found mine. He spoke in a four-year-old voice. "I'm not Justin, Daddy," he said.
"Who are you?"
"I can't tell you, Daddy. I promised."
"Who?" I begged. "Who did you promise? I don't understand."
His voice changed. "Yes, you do, Dad," grown-up Justin said. "You just don't want to."
"Oh, God!" Brad said suddenly.
I stopped reading and looked at him. I can't describe the expression I saw in his face and his eyes. There were so many things displayed there: worry, concern, fear, anguish, understanding. The list goes on.
"Oh, God," he repeated. "I'm Justin!"
"What?" I asked.
"In your dreams, Ted. It's not Justin and Derrick. Oh, God, Ted, it's you and me!"
"What in hell are you talking about?"
Brad turned his body slightly to face me. "You don't have a problem with Justin and Derrick, Ted. You have a problem with
me!"
"Oh, come on, Brad," I objected. "That's just stupid."
"No, it isn't, Ted. You've always had a problem with me being younger than you, and now I know why! You can't understand why someone like me could love someone like you. You think it's only about the sex. You think I'm with you just for the sex, don't you?"
"No," I began. "I. . ."
Brad didn't let me finish. "Sure you do. You love me, but you don't believe that I really love
you. You think I'm going to run off with someone else. Someone my own age." A look of even deeper understanding crossed his face. "That's why you've been pushing me away. That's why you built that wall around yourself. Gee-sus, Murphy, Ted! You're so afraid of something happening that you're making it happen yourself!"
I stood up, tossing the papers to the floor. "That's nonsense," I said loudly, angrily.
Brad stood up as well, moving to stand in front of me. "It's not nonsense, Ted! Now sit down!"
"You don't tell me what to do!" I shouted.
"And
you don't tell
me what to do anymore, either!" he yelled back. "Now
sit down before I put you there!" His voice suddenly took on a soft, ominous, warning tone. His face told me that he meant business. "And you know I can do it."
I didn't back down. I held my ground, but I knew he was right. I was no match for Brad's strength. He could break me with one hand.
Brad didn't back down, either. He stood before me, his face tense and red with anger, his jaws clenched and his lips tight, his eyes blazing. I could see his chest heaving and I could hear his breath being forcefully inhaled and exhaled through his nose. "Sit. . . down."
I finally gave in and sat back in my chair once more.
Brad towered over me, trying to force himself to calm down. He stood there for what seemed like hours, but was, in fact, merely an extremely long minute. Finally, he spoke again, his voice more mellow, yet still anxious and angry.
"You're such an asshole, Ted," he said, and the words stabbed into my heart. "You finally have someone who loves you more than anyone else has ever loved you and you're trying to get rid of me. I've devoted my life to you. I've done what you want to do and I've gone where you want to go. I've done everything I can to make your family my own. I even agreed to marry you so I could spend the rest of my life with you." He grew furious again and that fury came out in his voice. "And what do you do? You make yourself
impotent just so you don't have to face your worst fears!"
"Now, hold on!" I shouted back.
Brad's hand, curled into a fist with the index finger pointing, came up in front of him and aimed directly at me. "No, Ted!
You hold on! Where do you get off thinking you can decide what's good for me!? What makes you think I'm going to run off with the first young stud that passes by!? What makes you think I can't make my own decisions!? Am I such a kid to you? Is that it? Gee-sus, Murphy, Ted, you're so afraid I'm going to run off with some young guy and leave you standing alone and miserable! You're so convinced of it that you can't even get your dick to work around me anymore!"
I jumped to my feet again. "That's bullshit, Brad!"
"No, Ted," he shouted back at me, "
you're bullshit! I love you, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend the rest of my life wondering if each minute I spend with you is going to be my last! Sort it out, Ted! One way or the other, you have to sort it out! And do it fast, ‘cause I can't stand this crap any longer! Until then, you can just go fuck yourself, because I'm sure not going to be the one to do it!"
Brad turned and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.
I sat down in my chair and I cried.
* * * * *
I walked out of Dr. Davis' office building, heading for home. I had decided to walk for awhile and to think about what had happened and what had been said. Dr. Davis had talked to me about it after I had calmed down and stopped crying. When I asked him about it, Dr. Davis assured me that it was his assessment also. Brad had spoken the truth.
"Why didn't
you tell me?" I begged. "Why did you have to put Brad through that?"
"As before with Warren, you wouldn't have believed me," he replied. "You still don't believe it, but you should. Your problems are of your own making. Now, if I may ask you a question?"
I nodded my head.
"Why did you ask me why I put Brad through that? Why didn't you say ‘me'?"
I looked down at the floor, thinking. The papers were gone now, picked up and placed back on the small, round table between us. I knew the answer, but I replied, "I don't know."
"Yes, Ted," Dr. Davis affirmed, "you do."
I paused for a long time, still looking at the floor and still thinking, before I looked up once more. "Because I love him. It hurts me to see him suffering like this."
"And. . .?"
I took a deep breath. "And he loves me."
Dr. Davis nodded. "Much more than you allow yourself to believe."
I walked along the streets down which Nathan had driven only a few days earlier. I passed people and I passed stores, and I saw none of them until I reached the small garden park where I had sat on the bench and phoned Warren. I entered the park again, sitting on the same bench to the right, my mind racing with what had happened to me that afternoon. I had never seen Brad so angry before. I had never imagined that he would present me with such an ultimatum.
It all came down to me. Either I find a way to convince myself that Brad truly loved me and would never leave me, or sit back and watch him walk out of my life forever. The second option terrified me. My life would be over if he did that.
He was right, of course. I realized it when he had said it in the office, but I simply couldn't make myself believe it. Brad was absolutely correct. When I thought about the dreams and what Justin had said to me in them, it all fell into place and all of the pieces fit together.
I was terrified that Brad would leave me alone. I was terrified that he would stop loving me because I was so old. I was terrified. . . I was terrified that I couldn't fix it. I wanted Brad. I needed him. Why couldn't I believe that he might want and need
me just as much?
"Sort it out, Ted! One way or the other, you have to sort it out! And do it fast," Brad had told me. I wasn't sure I
could sort it out, and that scared the living Hell right out of me.
I had just finished that thought when movement off to my left caught my attention. I looked up to see a young man with short, black hair, blading into the garden park and sitting on the bench to my right and facing the street. He wore a pair of tight, faded, cut-off denim shorts. A white T- shirt was tucked into the waistband at his side. White socks sprouted out of his rollerblades, travelling half-way up his powerful calves. Wide-spread, thick, muscular thighs disappeared into the shorts, pointing the way to the delicate mound of his crotch. Except for a smattering of black hair peeking out from the waistband, an inverted ‘V' extending to his navel, his chest was hairless. He wasn't handsome, but he was very pleasant to look at, and the dark shadow of newly-shaven whiskers gave a sense of maturity and sexiness to his otherwise youthful face.
He was, in fact,
enormously sexy as he sat there, his finely-toned chest glistening with the light coating of perspiration which covered it. I was not surprised to feel a stirring in my crotch, but I was saddened by the fact that it was happening over this young man and not Brad. It had happened with Barry as well when he had sat with me the other night. It happened with other young men.
But not with Brad.
As he sat there, letting the afternoon sun dry the sweat from his flesh, the young chap pulled the T-shirt out of his waistband, pulled out a package of cigarettes from the pocket, took out a cigarette, and lit it. I suddenly wanted one, very badly.
"Excuse me," I said to him. He looked up at me. "Do you have an extra one of those?"
"Sure," he said as he stood up and skated over to me and sat down beside me. He smelled of soap and shampoo and cologne, but he also smelled of youthful masculinity. With his cigarette tucked between his lips, he opened the package and held it out to me. I pulled out a cigarette and put it between my own lips and the young fellow spun the wheel of his lighter, sparking it to flame. His hand drew near the tip of the cigarette.
I reached out suddenly and grabbed his wrist with one hand, pulling the cigarette from my lips with the other. He relaxed his thumb and the flame flickered from existence. "Sorry," I said. "I've changed my mind. I quit last year and I owe it to my kids not to start again."
"No probs," he said as he put the cigarettes and lighter back into his shirt pocket before holding out his own burning cigarette. "You don't mind if I. . ."
"No," I told him. "Not at all." I set the cigarette I was holding onto the bench between us.
"So, you have kids, eh?"
I nodded. "Three. A ten-year-old daughter and I just adopted four-year-old twin boys a month ago."
"Cool," he said. "Got any pictures?"
"Oh, you don't want to see the bragging pictures a father carries around."
"Sure I do," he replied. "Besides, something happened that made you want to start smoking again. The least you can do is to show me who you changed your mind for." He smiled at me and I smiled back.
"You're a nice kid," I said, "but I'm sure you'd rather be out with your buddies than sitting here looking at pictures some stranger's children."
"Nope," he replied. "Nothing better to do. That's why I'm sitting
here. Come on. Let's see your kids."
I relented, pulling my wallet out of my pocket and allowing the photo accordion to unfurl. He picked up the dangling strip in his fingers and began looking at the photos. "This is my daughter, Lindsay," I said, pointing, "and these are my sons. That's Justin and that's Jeremy."
"Wow," he said. "They're beautiful. You must be so proud of them."
"I am," I replied. "They're good kids."
"Who's this?" he said, pointing to a picture of me and Brad.
"That's Brad," I told him. "He's. . . um. . . He's. . ."
"Your boyfriend?"
I paused, wondering how truthful I should be with this stranger. Then I realized that I'd probably never see him again, so honesty wouldn't get me much more than a black eye. "Well, yeah," I said. "Sort of."
"Hey, that's cool, man. Whatever floats your boat. It's not really my thing, but I've swung on a few cocks in my day and a few guys have swung on mine. It's cool."
I was delighted by his candor. "At least you didn't ask if he was my son."
He laughed. "He's too old to be your son, man. But I have to tell you. I was wondering how you could have kids
and a boyfriend, but I can see it now. I could handle a few hours with
either of you. Having both of you at the same time would be a real blast."
His candor had surprised me, but now it was really blowing me away. He must have seen that in my face. He laughed and continued, "Hey, chill, man. It's the new generation. If it's fun, we do it. It wouldn't be the first threesome I've been in."
"Well," I said as I folded up the pictures and put my wallet back into my pocket, "there's no chance of a threesome at the moment."
"So
that's why you look like shit."
"Thanks," I said, not hiding the sarcasm in my voice.
"Hey, no offense, man, but you look like you've just been dragged through the sewers and hung out on the clothes line to dry. Now I know why. Who broke it off? You or him?"
"Neither of us," I replied. "It's just a little separation until we can iron out some problems."
"Let me guess," the young man said. "It's the ‘age' thing, right?"
My eyes widened when he said that. "What makes you think it's the ‘age' thing?"
"I've been there," he answered quickly. "It was with a woman, but it was the same thing. I was eighteen and she was twenty-nine. We really loved each other and the sex was great. She could take as much as I could give her, and that was like a whole lot at my age. Day and night. That's mostly when I had my flings with other guys. We'd go out together and find a guy and we'd invite him home. She used to love watching the two of us going at it. She always said the sex was better after I'd sucked the guy off. She said his cum gave me pecker power." He laughed at that. "One guy used to come over almost every weekend and stay overnight. He was her favourite. He was gay and didn't do anything with her, but man, could he throw a fuck in my ass! He was my favourite, too. I spent hours sucking that dick of his and then I'd bang the hell out of her for the next few hours."
"Is he why you broke up?" I asked.
"Hell, no," he replied. "Guys were never a problem with either of us. She started getting all crazy paranoid on me over girls, though. She was always afraid I'd run off with some young chick and leave her behind. I told her over and over that I loved her, but she couldn't understand why. She thought I was in it just for the sex."
"And you weren't?"
"Hell, no," he said with great conviction. "After I met her, I didn't look anywhere else. Well, except for the guys. I did it for her at first, but I started looking forward to it. It made the sex with her better for me, too." He paused, smiled, and winked. "I loved her a lot, but even when I wasn't looking at younger girls, she always accused me of it. I couldn't go anywhere without her and I felt like she had a leash around my neck. I don't know what it is with older people. Whether they don't think they're worthy of the love they get, or if they even think the love is genuine, or that they feel they'll be spending the rest of their lives competing with the younger people. She ended up pushing so hard that I had to leave. I couldn't put up with her bullshit anymore."
He stared into my eyes. His brown eyes caught the glint of the sun overhead, sending out little twinkles of light. "That's what's going on with you and What's-his-name, isn't it?"
I remained silent, afraid to respond.
"You don't have to answer," he said. "I know that's it. Listen, man, if he tells you he loves you, believe him. The age thing doesn't mean shit. I know. I've been there. You haven't, so you can't understand or believe it. No matter how you slice it, love is still love And you're a bloody fool if you don't fight for someone who looks like him."
"But look at
me," I said. "How could he possibly love someone like me? He'd be a lot happier with someone his own age."
"Someone like me?"
"Yes," I confirmed. "You're young, you're good-looking, and you're sexy as hell."
"Thank you."
"He should be out looking for someone his own age so they can start planning a
real life together. I've already got too much of a head start on him. Hell, when he's forty, I'll be fifty- three. When he's fifty, I'll be sixty-three. What kind of life would he have?"
"The life he wants," the young man said bluntly. "Look, man. It's not your age or your body he's in love with. It's
you! And he's willing to take that other stuff. I'll be honest with you, man. I wouldn't mind having a fling with you. Got a hairy chest?"
"Yes."
"Shit, man," he said excitedly. "I love hairy chests. They're such a turn-on."
I stared at the small, raised flowerbed set into the midst of the brick-paved patio as a million thoughts flew through my mind at the same time. I thought about Brad - the happy times we'd had together and how wonderful he made me feel, how his touch made me quiver, how his scent could lift me above the clouds. I thought about the young man sitting beside me - how carefree and sexual he seemed to be, how uninhibited and open-minded. I thought about Barry - the intense orgasms he had had because of me, the sheer power and construction of a policeman's body. I thought about Warren - the regret I felt for never having shared our bodies with each other. I thought about all these people and more. I don't know how long I sat there thinking, but my new friend brought me back to the present.
"Is that for me?"
I looked up at him. "What?"
He pointed toward my crotch. "You've got a hardon. Is it for me? If it is, then I think we should find someplace a little more private so I can take care of it for you."
I looked down, surprised to discover that I did, indeed, have an erection. But, who had caused it?
To Be Continued
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I'm almost surprised you didn't add a few more lines and have Brad/Barry/Nathan, or Someone, drive by the park, see Ted, and "Hottie", and stop! Or ... is that coming next??? 
