Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 10:16:48 EST
From: VicHowel@aol.com
Subject: The Learning Season - chapter 11

CHAPTER TEN

The airplane lumbered its way up from between the dunes. It seemed to
Rich almost as if it weren't going to get airborne; but then it was - and
climbing out toward Maine to gain altitude before it finally turned west
toward Boston. He squinted to watch it as it rapidly became a speck in
the clear blue sky and, then, disappeared.

Dave turned to look at the man beside him as his father's airplane rose
up over the dunes. Rich had been his longtime friend - and, now, was his
father's lover for the past two months. It was something he couldn't
imagine even now after a month of knowing - this guy with his legs spread
and the old man slamming it into him. Not Rich - not the guy he'd shared
girls with! Realizing it was something that hurt his head just thinking
about it - a guy who could do it with girls but wanted to do it with
another guy. Yet, both his father and Rich had gone over that way. And
that was damned scary.

For a fleeting moment, he found himself wondering if it could ever happen
to him. He roughly forced the thought from his mind. He wasn't the least
bit interested in guys - and never had been. That much he was sure of
about himself. And that settled that.

Still, though, here was Rich Dailey standing beside him. He had to do
something about this man who had been his friend. He was also a man who
had done nothing to harm their friendship. Nothing to him at least. He
sighed as the other man turned to face him. "I guess we need to talk,
dude. You want to go back to the house or go into town and get something
to eat?"

"Maybe we ought to go into town, Dave - but some place quiet where we can
just talk."

They stood alone on the parapet of Pilgrim's Monument rising over
Provincetown. There had been silence between them since they'd left the
airport. Now, they stood above the town looking out past MacMillan Wharf
into Cape Cod.

"Do you see it?" he asked finally, his eyes fixed on the distant
shoreline on the left.

"See what?" Rich asked.

"Plymouth - it's way over there." He pointed out to the horizon. "A
little south. There's a haze, but you can just make it out."

Rich forced himself to count slowly to ten and, somehow, found more
strength than he'd known he had. "Dave-"

He turned then and faced him. "What're you doing with my father?" he
demanded, his voice a low whisper.

"What am I doing?" Anger flared for a moment in the violet eyes of the
slimmer boy. "I love him, you fool - I'm loving him!"

"How can you - how can anybody?"

"Your father's a pretty easy guy to love," he answered without looking
up. "You ought to try it sometime instead of always wearing that chip on
your shoulder."

"I know that. Shit, Rich! I mean-"

"I've loved him from the beginning - only, then, it was just like your
love for him - at least, that's how I explained it to myself. Only, I
could never understand how you could hate him so."

"Shit! I never went to bed with him - not with any guy. Not ever."

"Yeah, Dave, I know - but I loved Vic just as if he were my own father."
Rich shrugged. "The other thing - I just never saw it coming."

"Sure, dude!" There was disgust in his voice. "One day you're banging the
ladies in bed and, the next, you're getting banged yourself - that makes
a lot of sense, let me tell you."

Rich bit his lip, forcing himself to stay reasonable. "I hid it, Dave -
my interest that way, I mean. I saw enough cock and ass in the showers at
school - but I was into pretending I didn't see them." Rich looked down
at the ground far below them. "I put on such a good show, I didn't even
know it was an act."

"Shit! Okay. Okay. Spare me the gory details. Christ!" He squinted and
stared out at the horizon to the end of Cape Cod bay. A stray thought
crept into his mind and he found himself wondering if Rich would've put
out for him. He could see himself behind the other man, plowing his ass.
He forced the thought away, shivering as the sound of his own grunts of
pleasure faded into mental silence some-where down the corridors of his
mind. "Do you really love him - I mean, one hundred percent?"

Rich forced himself to consider his friend's question. The memory of Ron
and Hank were vivid in his mind as he groped through the possibility that
he might love Vic in some way other than as a lover. The silence grew
between them as he sought to be honest with himself. He could still come
up with only one answer, and he'd known it from the beginning. He loved
the older man in every way he could imagine.

He turned to face his friend and looked deep in his eyes. "I really do,
Dave," he answered slowly and smiled. "And I also know I'm going to lose
him if I can't get you to accept me back as the friend I want to be." He
continued to look into the other man's eyes, searching them, feeling as
if his soul was being laid bare before the other man.

"What the shit is that supposed to mean?" Dave looked away, staring back
out at the bay.

"Just that there's only one person who means more to your father than
life itself - and that's you. Sooner or later, he'll drop me if you and I
can't get along - if we can't get back to where we always were before."

"I don't want you." Dave blanched as he realized what he'd just said and,
then, turned red. "I mean, I don't want anything from you, Rich. I want
my Dad to be happy - and, if that means him being with you, then, fine."

"And you and me?"

"I know it shouldn't make any difference, Rich." He looked down at his
hands, feeling the other man's eyes on him but unable to meet them. "I
know it - but I just can't help wondering if you ever looked at me and
wanted to suck my weiner."

Rich's face tightened into a smile. "So, we get right down to it, don't
we?"

The bigger boy nodded slowly. "Yeah. I've missed you since you moved in -
in the usual way, I mean."

"Dave, I want you to be my friend - just like it was all the time before.
Nothing's happened to change what we had - and still can have."

"The shit you preach." his head jerked up and he was staring directly
into the other man's face.

Rich sighed. "Have I ever made a pass at you - at any guy we know? Dave,
I'm still me - the same guy I was three months ago. Only, I've filled out
- a part of my personality that I'd hidden deep inside me before. I guess
I've come to accept that part of me - I don't feel a need to hide it any
more."

"You sure as shit aren't hiding a damn thing."

"I'd be lost without you as my best buddy, Dave. And I know your dad'll
choose you over me. Don't judge me on just this one thing." His eyes were
pleading. "Judge on all of me. Let me be your friend again."

He looked back down at his hands. "Give me time. Look, I like you - okay?
You're still my best buddy. Only, now, you've thrown me for a real loop
and it's going to take awhile to get used to. We're still friends, Rich -
only, I'm not ready to go skinny dipping with you like we did last year
up here." He looked up and smiled weakly. Slowly, he stuck his hand out
to the other man. "Give me some time to get used to all this, okay?"

Rich took the proffered hand. "Don't leave me out in the cold this next
month - you know how much I hate to be alone." He permitted himself to
shiver at the thought.

"Just don't expect me to go into any of those gay bars with you, old
buddy."

"There's nothing in any of them I want." Rich snorted. "The man I want is
on his way back to Washington - damn it to hell!"

Dave frowned. "Rich," he forced himself to say what he knew the other man
needed to hear, what his father wanted him to say. "I'm going to be right
there anytime you need me - just like before."

He wasn't sure if he meant the words he'd just spoken or not. He had
missed the other boy while he was at his mother's - before he'd learned
Rich was taking it up the ass from his old man. He stared at him now, his
slim, lanky body that was almost as tall as his own, and his fragile good
looks.

That was it in a nutshell. Rich Dailey had somehow become fragile to him.
A piece of china. It wasn't just something in his own head either, he
decided and looked back at the bay. He had become vulnerable in some way
that he could not explain. Vulnerable and fragile - and he hadn't been
that way before. At least, he had never seemed that way before.

Being there was going to mean that he'd have to help this fragile,
vulnerable man pick up the pieces when bad things happened to him. Like
he had with his father. And he knew that would end up meaning that he'd
be perilously close to that teeming, opaque gay world that had, first,
swallowed his father and, now, had taken Rich from him.

"I'll be there," he forced himself to say again.

"I will too, you big lug - whenever you need me."

Dave turned back to face the other man then. Rich was grinning at him. A
smile slowly grew across Dave's face in response and he shook his head
slowly.