Guilty Little Secret Read online

  I felt confused, but grateful. I loved my father, almost as much as I loved Terry. I felt very important, sitting there between the two people I loved most. I sat up tall.

  Dad stopped chuckling and suddenly looked very serious. “Paul, you are getting to be a big guy now, and we need to talk about life’s little secrets.”

  I frowned to let Dad know that I didn’t understand.

  Dad studied my face in silence for a moment. “Let’s get on with it then.” He opened Dizzy’s magazine to a photo of a naked woman lying on a rug with her legs spread wide. Then he seized my book from Terry and turned to a picture of man holding his enormous zizi in his hand. “Do you see a difference between these two?” Dad asked me.

  Mortified, I snuggled close to Terry. My cheeks were burning, I could tell. I was too embarrassed to even look at Terry. Sensing my discomfort, Terry began to stroke the back of my neck. To my horror, I felt my zizi begin to stiffen. I dropped my eyes immediately to my crotch, then squeezed my eyes closed. I wished I were somewhere else, I wished I were dead.

  “Paul, look at these.” Dad shook the magazines to get my attention. “Do you see that the man has a zizi and the woman has a vagina?”

  “Yes,” I answered weakly.

  Next, Dad began to explain how babies were made, about the joining of eggs and sperm, about the insertion of the zizi into the vagina.

  “You see, only women can have babies, Paul.” He pointed to the woman’s belly button. “The sperm meets the egg here, in the womb. The baby grows in the womb. Without a womb, there can be no baby.”

  “Womb,” I repeated out loud.

  “No, no, Davy! It’s called a uterus,” Terry interjected.

  “Uterus.” I tried out that word, too. Uterus? How did Terry know? “How do you know, Terry?” I asked. “Did you ever screw a woman?”

  To my surprise, Terry nodded. “Sure, Paul, when I was a teenager, a little older than Dizzy. I thought women were great until I realized that I liked men better.”

  I could barely sit still. “What about Drew? Has Drew screwed women, too?”

  Terry laughed aloud. “No, not our Drew!” He and Dad exchanged smiles.

  My musings shifted from Drew to Terry. So, Terry had actually screwed women! I gazed at the woman’s belly, no longer afraid, no longer repulsed, and thought, simply, “uterus.” I was too self-conscious to turn my eyes to the photo of the man. Then I had another question. “If you can’t make babies, why do you and Drew have sex together?”

  Again Terry laughed. “For the same reason your parents do, Paulie! It feels good! Tell him, Dave.”

  “Paul, Maman and I don’t make babies every time we have sex. I’ve had a vasectomy. That means I’ve had my tubes tied so I can’t pass any more sperm to Maman. We make love nowadays because we like the way it feels.”

  I repeated my father’s words in my mind, “we like the way it feels.” Then I thought of Dizzy, stroking his zizi in his bedroom. “Dad, where does the white stuff go?”

  “The white stuff?”

  “You know, the white stuff that comes out when it feels good.”

  Dad stared at my face for a long moment. “Do you have white stuff come out of your zizi when you mess around? God, it seems like you are awfully young!” He turned his eyes to Terry, who shrugged.

  “No, no, not me. Dizzy. I saw white stuff shoot out of Dizzy’s zizi.”

  “What?” Dad was almost glaring at me then. “What do you mean? When did you see Dizzy ejaculate?”

  I’d never heard the word “ejaculate” before, but I didn’t have to guess what it meant. The intensity of Dad’s questions intimidated me. “Once. When I walked into Dizzy’s room, without knocking -”

  I stopped talking as soon as Dad began to nod.

  “Paul, I still ejaculate semen – that’s the white stuff – but there’s no sperm in my semen.”

  “You,” I turned to Terry, “do you ejacruate cement, too, when you are screwing Drew?”

  Terry and Dad broke into laughter. I sneaked a few glances at the man holding his zizi. It looked about to burst. I licked my lips, wishing the laughter would stop. I didn’t understand the joke.

  “Yes, dear,” Terry finally replied, throwing his arm around my shoulder and hugging me close. “Drew and I both ejac-u-late semen, not cement, when we have sex.”

  “With sperm? Or without sperm?

  “With sperm.”

  “But, why?” I asked, confused. “If you can’t make babies, why make sperm?”

  Terry shrugged. “You know what I call it?”

  I shook my head, my eyes on Terry’s.

  “I call it ‘love juice’.”

  “‘Love juice’,” I repeated. “Why?”

  “Because when I give it to someone, it’s my way of saying, ‘I love you, and I love what you are doing to me.’” He and Dad exchanged smiles.

  At that moment, I wanted to crawl into Terry’s lap and take comfort there. But, suddenly, I felt grown up, certainly too grown up to sit on Terry’s lap any longer. I now knew life’s little secrets. In a strange sort of way, I understood that my childhood had come to an end.

  Brian and Jeff (1982)

  At age 16, I knew a lot more than I did at age 11. I knew, for example, that Drew had lived with Maman’s brother, Blaise Morgon, in the 1950’s before Uncle Blaise died, and that Uncle Blaise had left most of his fortune to Drew. I knew that Drew met Terry in the Village after he returned to the States to play drums in Dad’s and Uncle Rob’s band, Posso. He kept that affair secret for a long time, because Uncle Rob threatened to find a new drummer if the press found out. Uncle Rob didn’t want a homosexual in his band, didn’t want his band to have that reputation.

  And, most important, at age 16, I knew that I was gay. It was knowledge that didn’t come easily. It was a slow and painful dawning, beginning with my brief stint in boarding school. Of course I was expected to go to the same preppy school in Riverdale where Dizzy and Robbie went, where Dad and Uncle Rob went. It was supposed to be a springboard to Ivy League colleges, like Columbia, where Dizzy was then enrolled. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to take my lessons at home with a tutor, like I’d done since I was little.

  Dad had other ideas. “You’ll love it there, Paul. I did. Dizzy did. It’s where I met your Uncle Rob. It’s where our band Posso was born. Just think, you’ll meet other musicians there, guys to be in your band.”

  I wasn’t convinced. Somehow I passed their admission test, and my parents began making plans to enroll me. I wanted to live at home and commute. Dad thought I’d fit in better if I boarded there like he did, like Dizzy did.

  “Yeh,” I argued, “but Dizzy had Robbie to be his roommate. I don’t want to share a room with a stranger.”

  “You’ll be fine. You will meet people just like yourself, believe me.”

  I wasn’t sure what Dad meant by “people just like yourself.” Did he mean children of rich people, children of famous people, or kids with no friends, like me? I was hoping he meant boys who were really into music, like me, kids who played guitar or piano for hours every day.

  I tried to argue that my cousin Kate, Robbie’s twin sister who was then a student at Yale, was allowed to commute daily to her prep school, a sister school to Dizzy’s, also located in Riverdale.

  Dad countered with, “Kate gave it a shot for a semester. She boarded there for a semester.”

  “Yeh, but she hated it, and so Uncle Rob let her live at home.”

  “Paul, if you decide that you don’t want to live there, you can come home. I promise you. But, you need to give it a chance. I know you’ll love it.”

  Unconvinced, I embarked on a journey through some of the darkest months of my life. On registration day, I looked around the hall for boys who were carrying a guitar case, like me. There was not one guitar case in the hall, except for mine. In fact, I had two guitars with me, a bass and a six string. I choked back my disappointment and smiled hopefully at my father, who was clearly excited
to be there. Dad knew a number of the adults who seemed to be in charge and bragged enthusiastically to them about Dizzy and how well Dizzy was doing.

  My roommate was a cute guy from the East Side who had four other close friends on our floor in the dorm. He hung out with them all the time, and I joined them often, especially when they sat around our room. Their main preoccupation, it seemed, was jerking off to girlie magazines. They would sit round on the beds or floor, look at their magazines, take out their zizis and jerk off. I was embarrassed for them and left the room when the magazines came out.

  Then I decided that the best way to be part of their group was to join them. I came home every weekend, just to get away and get time alone to play music, and to hang out with Terry. One weekend, just before I was heading back to school, I went into Dizzy’s bedroom to grab a few of his magazines to share with the guys in my dorm. I opened his closet door and looked through the shelves in his closet.

  “What are you doing in your brother’s closet?” Dad stood in the bedroom doorway, watching me.

  I was too dumb, too innocent, to be embarrassed. “I wanted to get a few of Dizzy’s girlie magazines, to take to school. All the guys have them.”

  Dad laughed and came into the room. “Paul, if you wanted to keep the magazines close, where would you hide them? In the closet? I don’t think so.” He walked over to the side of Dizzy’s bed. “I would hide them here, under the bed. Look!” He pulled out a pile of magazines, right under where Dizzy slept.

  I walked over to my father and grabbed several magazines from the pile.

  “No, no,” Dad said, “the ones on top are probably his favorites. Take some from the middle of his stack.”

  “How do you know these things, Dad?” My father always impressed me with his wisdom about these sorts of things.

  “I was a boy once, too, eh?” He put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a quick hug. “Ready to go?”

  I nodded and went back to my room to finish packing my bag. Maman had placed clean, neatly folded clothes in the bag. I placed Dizzy’s magazines on top, along with my Dopp kit. Then, I reached into my closet and brought out my Avec Lui magazine, purchased many years ago at the Paris airport. It was tattered, but I still enjoyed looking at the men posed enticingly on beds and rugs. I packed it in my bag, too.

  When I got back to my dorm, I expected to be the hit of the floor when I pulled out Dizzy’s magazines. But, instead, my Avec Lui got all the attention.

  “Eww! What is this?” my roommate asked, waving the magazine in the air.

  “I brought some magazines from home. These are my brother’s,” I pointed to the pile of girlie magazines. “That one is mine.” As soon as I said this, I regretted it. I understood, too late, that boys weren’t supposed to be into Avec Lui. Avec Lui had photos of men, not women.

  “Are you a homo?” my roommate asked. He looked around at his friends and hooted. “Paul’s a homo, Paul’s a homo!”

  Dizzy’s magazines lay on my bed, forgotten. The boys raced up and down the hall with my Avec Lui, laughing and telling everyone that I was a homo. I knew then that they were right. I had no interest in girlie magazines or girls. I must be a homo.

  My roommate didn’t come back to the room that night. In fact, he asked to be moved to a single room because he didn’t want to room with a homo. In the dining hall, my old friends refused to let me sit at their table. I heard someone say “homo” everywhere I went.

  I started taking food to my room to eat alone, and I stopped going to class. After a few days of my absence from classes, one of the counselors called out, “Mr. Davis here,” and knocked on my bedroom door. I hesitated for a moment then let him in.

  “Paul, are you all right?” He was a well-muscled young man, with soulful eyes.

  I gazed into his warm eyes. “No, I want to go home.”

  “I’ve heard the buzz about you.”

  “It’s true. I am a homo. I don’t belong here.” I swallowed hard, trying to hold back tears.

  “Paul, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I can’t help the way I am. I want to fit in, but I can’t.” I could feel tears running down my cheeks.

  Mr. Davis sat down on the edge of my desk. “Paul, you can’t run away from yourself, who you really are.”

  “I don’t want to be here anymore. No one wants to be my friend. They all make fun of me.” I started throwing my belongings into my suitcase. “Can you help me get out of here?”

  “Oh, Paul. I hate to see you in pain like this.”

  I shook my head, flinging tears in all directions. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Okay. Who can we call? Should I call your dad?”

  Suddenly the import of what I was doing struck me. “No, not Dad! He will never understand. Call Terry, Terry Walters. He will come and get me.” I rattled off Terry’s number quickly, relieved that he was in the city, not in France.

  “We can’t release you to someone who is not your parent, Paul.” Mr. Davis looked sincerely sad at this.

  “But, Terry is my guardian. Really, he is!”

  Mr. Davis shook his head. “Let’s call Terry and see what he recommends. Will you come to my office with me?”

  In his office, Mr. Davis dialed Terry’s number. I looked around the room, noting the photos of various men on his desk and shelves. There were no photos of women that I could see.

  Mr. Davis smiled when Terry answered the phone. “Mr. Walters, this is Brett Davis, a counselor at Paul Koster’s school. I have Paul here. He wants to talk to you.”

  I took the phone and squeezed my eyes shut. “Terry, I hate it here. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to come live with you. I miss you so much.” I burst into tears. I wasn’t even embarrassed to be crying like that. “Please come get me.”

  “Paulie, Paulie, it’s all right. Of course, I will be there right away.

  Have you spoken to your father about this?” Terry’s voice sounded so warm, so sweet to my ears.

  I shook my head, then spoke into the phone. “No, I wanted to talk to you first. Mr. Davis said that I have to be released to my parents.”

  “Sweetheart, let me talk to Mr. Davis, okay? We’ll have you home in time for dinner!”

  “Okay. Hurry, Terry. I love you.”

  When Mr. Davis got off the phone with Terry, he sat down at his desk and pointed to the chair in front of him. “Sit down, Paul. Let’s talk about what you want to tell your father and what you want to tell Terry.”

  I looked at Mr. Davis with surprise. He really did want to help me. I was so grateful. I smiled at him for the first time. “I don’t want them to know I’m a homo.”

  “Let’s use the word ‘gay.’ You don’t want them to know you are gay. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not even Terry? I assume he’s gay.”

  “Especially not Terry. Not now. I don’t want anyone to know. I have an older brother. He would make fun of me like the guys here-” I burst into tears again, thinking of all the boys there, all of them calling me a homo.

  “I know this is a very painful process of self-discovery, Paul. It would be good for someone to know your secret.”

  “You know it. You know my secret.” I stared into his kind eyes, hoping he would be my friend.

  Mr. Davis shook his head. “No, Paul, when you leave this school, I won’t be available to you like this. Do you want to leave the school?”

  “Yes! I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “What will you tell your father?” Mr. Davis pointed toward the phone. “Terry is calling him now. What will you tell him?”

  “I will tell him that I don’t want to be here anymore, that I don’t fit in, that I want to be with Terry.”

  Mr. Davis nodded slowly. “Will that work, do you think?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t want to come here to begin with. My parents made me come here. I wanted to be with Terry. They know that.”

  “Okay. Not one word about
being gay then?”

  “No. Please?”

  “Paul, it’s up to you. I don’t understand why you feel you can’t even tell Terry.”

  “I am too embarrassed right now, Mr. Davis. It is too painful, too embarrassing. I am just beginning to understand this about myself. I didn’t know until --” I began to weep again.

  I was still weeping when Terry arrived. He gathered me into his arms as I sat in the chair in Mr. Davis’ office and hugged me tightly.

  “I don’t want to be here,” I told him.

  “I know, Paulie.” He kissed the top of my head. “Your father will be here shortly, and we’ll take you home.”

  “To your house?”

  Terry lifted my chin and smiled into my eyes. “Of course!” Then he turned to Mr. Davis. “Thank you for supporting our Paulie.”

  Mr. Davis nodded enthusiastically. “Hey, it’s what I do.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “I’m a big fan of yours! I’ve been listening to your music since I was a kid. I really love it all.”

  Terry looked at him carefully before nodding and smiling. “Thank you, man!” He looked around at all the photos of young men in Mr. Davis’ office. “These are your favorite students?”

  “Former students. Mostly guys who wrestled for me. I’m the wrestling coach here, too.” He and Terry exchanged a long look.

  Terry pointed to a photo on the corner of Mr. Davis’ desk. “This good-looking guy here is older, eh? Not a former student?”

  Mr. Davis looked at the photo for a long moment, then raised his eyes to meet Terry’s gaze. “No, he’s not a former student.”

  “Someone special?” Terry smiled warmly as he said this, his green eyes crinkling merrily.

  “Yes.” Mr. Davis winked at Terry. Then he reached for a large envelope on his desk. “Paul, I’ve collected graded homework and exams from your teachers. You might want to take these papers home with you.”

  I took the envelope from him, not sure what to do with the papers in it. I peeked into the envelope. There, underneath the papers in the envelope, was my Avec Lui. I smiled broadly at Mr. Davis. He winked at me then, too.