TWO
FENN
When it became apparent they weren’t going to eat in town, and Tom continued driving down the road, Fenn asked Tom where they were going.
Tom grinned at the road, but did not look at him.
“Are you always like this?” Tom asked.
“Like what?”
“Can’t you just be surprised?”
“Fine,” Fenn replied. “I’m being surprised.”
A few moments later Fenn said, “Are we almost there?”
They weren’t almost anywhere. They were the sole travelers on a stretch of highway and Tom said, “You know what?”
“Hum?”
He pulled over to the side of the road, and then turned to Fenn and kissed him. He did it well, like he’d been practicing, and when he was done, Tom, went back to his side of the car, strapped himself in again and continued driving.
“Yeah,” he murmured after a moment, while Fenn recovered. “That shut you up.”
In the restaurant, Tom’s knees touched Fenn’s and he reached across the table and took his hand.
“How much did you spend?” Fenn demanded, looking around.
“Nothing’s too much.”
“Correction,” Fenn told him. “A lot is too much.”
“Not for tonight,” Tom insisted. He stroked Fenn’s hand in the middle of the restaurant.
“I am fearless,” he said, simply.
The waiter came by and was a little surprised, a little like a waiter in the northwest part of Indiana on the southern border of Chicago.
“What’s your best wine?” Tom looked at him, daring him to say something.
The waiter said, “Let me go see.”
“Go see all you want,” Fenn told him. “And then bring us out a ten dollar bottle of red.”
“Fenn,” Tom chided.
“Move,” Fenn negligently told the server, and he was off.
“Look,” Fenn told Tom. “I come from a simple world.”
“No you don’t,” Tom said, gently. “I’ve seen the world you come from.”
“And you saw it from the beach. This is very nice. I’m glad we’re here, but you have to understand I don’t want you spending money you don’t have.”
“I do have it, though, Fenn. And I wish you’d let me spend it on you.”
“How about not spending it at all? Hold on to it. I’m not going to be that kind of…” Fenn settled on the word, “partner.”
Tom’s hand rested in Fenn’s while the waiter came back with a bottle, and Fenn looked up and said, “Thank you.”
“Do you all know what you want, or do you need more time to decide?”
“More time, please?” said Tom.
Then he said:
“My sophomore year we were really busy. I was going to Germany for junior year and had a job at the church. A friend of ours says, ‘Let’s go to the beach.’ Her family has a private plane. So we get our things and we all fly to California for the weekend.”
Fenn looked at him and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, Tom, but you went to Notre Dame, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Lake Michigan’s only an hour away.”
“That’s my point. I thought it was just really the thing to go to California for the weekend.”
“But that’s stupid.” And then Fenn said, “What I mean is… I will always find the most economic and practical way to do things. Because I’m cheap, yes. And because I don’t like to work. And because it keeps me on the ground.”
“I never liked the ground,” Tom said. “I’m used to doing things big. Why start college at eighteen if you can do it at sixteen or seventeen? Why go to a small school if you can go to one with a name? It doesn’t even have to be a good name. Why not go off to Europe? That’s me. I would never set foot in a K Mart. I didn’t realize that until I met you. We think in really different places.”
Fenn nodded over this.
“I had set aside five hundred dollars for tonight,” Tom said.
“Are you insane!”
People in the next table turned around, and the returning waiter blinked.
“Are you insane, or are you rich, because I’d been given to believe you weren’t the second.”
“I’m not, but that’s the life I’ve become accustomed to.”
“Okay,” Fenn said, and then he rattled off something to the waiter and said, “We’ll take two of them.”
When the waiter was gone, Fenn said, “You can’t live like this. And you can’t live like this for me. I’m not going to have you spending crazy money.”
“Alright,” Tom said. “But you just need to understand something.”
Fenn waited.
“All of my friends spend crazy money. Spending money is how I keep my friends. Being busy, being successful, and looking successful.”
Fenn sighed, sitting back in his chair. “Maybe I’m not what you need.”
“No,” Tom said. “No. You’re just what I need. I’ve never known anyone who said put your wallet away. I’ve never known anyone who looked after me or said, let’s get up and go to the beach.
“I need you, Fenn. And I want you. I only hope you feel the same way about me.”
After dinner they sat in the parking lot, holding hands in the dark car, really just kneading each other’s hands, and Tom said, “There is something else, and… it’s money already spent.”
“Yes, Tom?”
“I got us a hotel room in a nice place north of Hegewisch. You alright with that?”
“I’m surprised by that.”
“I got a lot of surprises in me,” Tom said. “Can you get used to it?”
“I love you,” Fenn said, as if he had been thinking about it.”
Then Fenn said, “I didn’t bring any clothes?”
“I packed them while you were getting dressed,” Tom said.
Fenn said nothing. He was thinking. Tom had gotten them a hotel room. They were going to have sex.
The hotel was an old stone house, probably recently renovated, and Tom waved Fenn away when he tried to lift his overnight bag.
“I’m you’re servant, tonight,” he said, and went up the long steps ahead of Fenn.
The lobby was large, but quiet, done in old grey marble. There was a parlor off to their right, open to the cool night with soft old sofas and chairs. There was an old fashioned elevator with a brass gate that carried them to the third floor where was their room.
Tom walked down the hall hung with old paintings and unlocked the door, opening it to Fenn.
Tom put down the bag on the bed.
“A nice bed,” Tom said. “One bed. Our bed.”
Fenn trembled at this and Tom turned around, putting his arms around Fenn’s neck. He didn’t kiss him this time. This time he pressed his curly head into Fenn’s chest, and Fenn placed his hands on Tom’s back.
“Can you believe it?” he whispered to Fenn. “Can you believe us?”
Then Tom said, “Mr. Houghton, we’re going to be very happy together.”
They sat drinking late night coffee downstairs in the parlor and the breeze from the lake blew in.
“So you went to college when you were sixteen?”
“I graduated when I was sixteen and started at ND when I was seventeen. I think that’s one reason I did a lot of what I did. I wanted to prove myself.”
“And then you did junior year in Germany.”
“Right. And then I finished up Notre Dame in three years. My junior year was more like my sophomore year.”
“Didn’t it cost more? With summer classes and all of that?”
“There you go again,” Tom said, shaking his finger. “Remember, you and I think differently about money.”
“So you were done with college by twenty.”
“Yes,” Tom said. “And then I went to Germany to earn a certificate and after that I worked at ND a bit and then came here.”
“Which is why we’re the same age, and you have a job and I have a year left of college.”
“Actually,” Tom said, “I’m six months younger than you.”
Fenn frowned at him, and Tom chuckled.
“Hey, I was just adding that for veracity.”
Then he said, “But if that’s what I did to get out at twenty, what did you do to get out at twenty-three?”
Fenn looked embarrassed and then he said, “Tara—you know Tara? The two of us drove to Canada one year and then another year I lived in a monastery.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That is so—why?” Tom said. “I mean, I never knew anyone that did that.”
“I was tired of other people telling me who God was, and I wanted to find out for myself.”
“Well, what did you find out?” Tom said.
“I found out he’s probably not Catholic,” Fenn said.
While Tom chuckled, Fenn added, “He may not even be Jesus.”
“I don’t even go into the deep questions.”
“Don’t you wonder?” said Fenn. “I mean, you are a church organist.”
Tom shrugged.
“I like the music.”
Then he said, “It’s more than that. I mean…” he looked for what to say and then settled on, “Everyone doesn’t go off to the forest looking for truth. I’m not really a deep person. I’m actually kind of shallow.”
“I bet that’s not true.”
“I am shallow and have very base thoughts.”
“Like?”
“Like trying to find a way to make you come upstairs.”
Fenn cocked his head and looked at Tom.
“You’re very good, Mr. Mesda.”
“Thank you,” Tom told him. “Now why don’t we go upstairs and you can see if I’m very bad too.”
In coming to know Tom he would understand his deliberate nature and how, when the time finally came, Tom walked into things fearlessly. He never crashed. He had saved the money, made reservations for the hotel room, planned this night. None of it was on impulse. He was ready for all of it. Fenn was so used to the quiet tension between himself and Tom. He was used to Tom’s reticence and his gentle overtures. He was used to Tom in the suit, or in the soccer shorts, the hair going up his legs. They undressed each other until Tom’s trousers and suit jacket, his white shirt, his undershirt, his perfect cologne, revealed his beautiful body, olive skinned, dusted in black hair, his perfect breast, the most beautiful slightly rounded breast of a man, the beautiful, thick, coral nipples, the hair down his chest to his little stomach, his sex, awakened, unashamed while Tom’s body stretched to cover Fenn, while his arms, surprisingly strong, encircled him. Tom guided Fenn’s hand over his body, guided him to pleasure, kissed him up and down gently. The most amazing thing was how it was hard to know where his nudity began and Tom’s ended, where the revelation of Tom Mesda, the spine to the small of the back to the beautiful ass, became the revelation of him. And then there was how natural it was, how Tom naked was as natural, more natural, than Tom clothed and how Tom, guiding Fenn gently inside of him, was the most natural thing of all.
When you were really fucking someone it was the most vulnerable thing because you knew you weren’t dignified at all. Everything was out, all masks were off. And then there was the letting go, the spilling. The more you let go, the greater the orgasm.
Tom had been so polished, by his own admission. Now, there was this magic they’d both given themselves up to. Fenn was on his back, Tom’s body was fitted inside of him, Tom’s thighs inside of his thighs, Tom’s hands on his shoulders, Tom’s body moving like a piston against him, inside of him, until they almost fused. And then Tom’s body jerked, and his head flung back. He gave a hollow cry, like Fenn had some time before. His hands twitched and loosened, Fenn held onto him and felt him slick, a violent geyser, a collapse, Tom half tottering above him, still deep and hard inside of him, Tom lying against him now, the two of them undone and pressed by each other. This was the way it would always end. After the suits and the wine and the restaurant it ended with them undone, unable to speak, the bed moist. Tom’s hands were almost weak, like a baby’s, grasping to encircle him.
Suddenly Tom laughed a little drunkenly.
He pressed his mouth to Fenn’s and then lay quiet on his side holding him.
“I’m in love with you, Tom Mesda,” Fenn murmured. He was still a little sore from Tom fucking him.
Tom didn’t say anything. He just squeezed him very tightly.
As they were drifting to sleep Tom said, “You should be.”
