Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:20:54 -0400
From: Wastrel
Subject: Long Ago

It all was so long ago, so long ago that I cannot be sure now what really
happened or indeed if anything happened at all.

I was 4 and I loved him with that combination of awe and possessiveness
that a boy must have for his father.  He was mine and he owned me and I
owned him.

When he held me to his chest he rubbed his cheek against mine, so rough
against one so soft and tender, and I would squeal with delight.  And the
smell of him, the scent of maleness, faint whiff of witch hazel, clean
sweat.  He was mine.

At night he would put me to bed, and in the morning he would come to my bed
to awaken me and once awake, he would bury his face into my belly and make
snorting noises while shaking his head, and I'd giggle with delight while
clutchng his ears, and when he'd stop and I'd insist "again," and so he
would.

Oh yes, I had a mother, and she was good and kind, but she had seven of us
and little time for one out of many.  So it was him who filled my world
because somehow he always had time for me.

One hot night he had put me to bed with just underpants, and next morning
when he came in to awaken me, he slid the underpants off me before he
buried his face in my belly.  At my insistance he snorted in my belly again
and again.  And then something odd happened.  I could feel a funny feeling
between my legs and I began to pee.  He stopped and looked at my stiffening
penis and the pee squirting upward and then with a smile flicked the tip of
my penis with his tongue.  Just a flick.  The pee stopped and the feeling
was so intense I almost cried, but I held back because I didn't want him to
stop.

When he saw the agony of pleasure on my face he lowered his mouth slowly
over my penis and testicles and ran his tongue ever so gently on them.  I
have never since then, in the course of a too long and sensuous life, felt
pleasure like that, beyond exquisite.

And then, inexplicably, I began to cry, softly at first, then wailing as if
in pain.  He pulled back, startled, stood up, and ran from the room.  My
mother heard my cries and came in and assumed that I was upset for wetting
the bed.

Two days later while at work he collapsed.  He'd had a stroke that left him
partially paralyzed.  When at last he returned from the hospital in a
wheelchair, he would not look at me, would not speak to me, would not even
use my name.  It was as if I had ceased to exist.  He died a few years
later, when I was about 10.

Now, decades later, I cannot swear to you that this happened as I have
described it for you, nor even if it happened at all.  It sometimes seems
more like a dream that a memory.  That is, his behavior toward me after the
stroke is no dream: that was painfully real enough.  But the episode before
it, that briefest of moments when he reached out to me soul to soul, of
that I cannot be sure.

And what if it did happen just as I have told it to you?  What would that
change?  What would that explain?  And if it never happened that way, what
would that say about him and about me?