THREE
FENN AND TOM
AND THEN SOME
“I’m home!”
Tom threw down his pencil and ran across the room, his dark hair a mess. Tom threw his arms around Fenn.
“I didn’t shower. I didn’t cook! I could have picked you up.”
“You didn’t tell me you were coming home.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Fenn said, picking Tom up. He made a heaving noise because Tom was not light, though he was lighter and shorter than Fenn. Like a bride he brought Tom to the sofa and sat with the boy on his lap, Tom’s head on his shoulder.
He kissed him.
“I missed you so much, and I’m so glad I’m with you. I never know how lucky I am until I’m away from you.”
“Let’s never be parted again,” Tom said.
That was flatly impossible Fenn realized. If he was going to work, it couldn’t be in Rossford.
“Alright,” he said, though.
He kissed Tom again, and Tom leaned over him, wrapping his arms about him.
“Did you eat yet?” Tom asked him.
“No. Not really.”
“Well, I just went to the store.”
“Good. Rise up my love,” Fenn said, moving Tom aside as he stood up.
“I’m going to go into the fridge and cook something for you.”
“But I was going to put something together for you!”
Tom was, at best, a mediocre cook, and Fenn was proud of his skills.
“No, Thomas,” he told him. “Tonight I’m going to cook for you.”
He loved Tom, and to take a three hour train ride, surprise him by turning up two days early and then prepare him dinner was the way he showed it.
An hour later when Tom, eyes lit, ate everything on his plate and oohed and ahhed over the flavors saying, fervently, “You are the best cook in the world!” Fenn had his satisfaction. It did not matter that he was so tired he was ready to collapse.
“Can you be the best dishwasher in the world?” Fenn said. “I’m going to shower and then go to bed.”
“I could draw you a bath,” Tom put his fork down.
“I would fall asleep in the tub.”
Fenn had been half asleep when Tom drifted into the room, and Fenn could hear his shuffling around. He knew Tom was undressing. Lazily he turned around to see Tom, back to him, take off his shirt and his jeans, then his underwear too. He watched, with love, Tom’s naked body, and longed to be connected to it, and then watched him pull on a pair of black shorts. Fenn turned around so Tom would not know he had watched him.
Suddenly the bed lowered under Tom’s small weight, and his arms went around Fenn.
He pressed his head into Fenn’s shoulder and his body into Fenn’s back.
“I’m so glad you’re home.”
“I’m glad this is home,” Fenn said. He thought of turning around, but he was too tired even for that, he reached up and squeezed Tom’s arms, double hugging himself.
“I had no idea how much this was home, or how glad I am of it, of you, until I was gone.”
“Tom, you’re mine,” Fenn whispered in the dark. “Be mine.”
Tom stirred a little and felt Fenn’s hand slip into his shorts. He stirred.
“I…” he started, “I didn’t know you’d be up for it tonight.”
“Neither did I.” Fenn turned around.
Tom sat up, pulling off his shorts.
“You want it with foreplay?”
“No. I really just want you to fuck me as hard as possible.”
Tom scrambled for the lubricant. He was ready.
“I want to see you when you do it,” Fenn said. “I want you looking me in the face. Hold on. You know how I need to start.”
Eagerly Tom went onto his back, and Fenn sat down on him, always surprised at the size of Tom, and the initial pain of his entry. Tom bucked up too fast. Fenn put his hands on his chest and whispered for him to slow down. They fell into a rhythm, Tom’s face excited, boylike with the joy of what his penis was doing to Fenn by being inside of him. They switched now, so that Tom knelt between his legs, slow at first, then fucking quicker.
“Is it alright?” Tom said breathlessly.
“I’m used to it now,” Fenn told him. “I don’t need you to hold back now. I’m tired of people holding back. Just do it as hard as you want.”
It was short and sweet and visceral, and they both shouted. Tom came violently, and then lay on his back beside Fenn.
“I used to think you’d hate me if I ever did that,” Tom said after a while. He stroked Fenn’s cheek with the back of his hand.
“Why?”
“Cause you fell in love with me when I was sweet, and I always try to be sweet. I always try to look after you—”
“You always do.”
“Looking after is the love and the tenderness. What I just did—”
“Is part of it too.”
Tom turned on his side and wrapped his arms about Fenn.
“I used to get worried about the way I felt about you.”
“Because you wanted to fuck me?” Fenn said.
“Yes. That’s not… It’s not decent.”
“You weren’t decent, Mr. Mesda. You weren’t decent at all. I’m going to hurt for the next day and a half.”
Tom’s face changed.
“Don’t say that. I mean. I didn’t mean to—”
“Tom,” Fenn put a hand to his face. “Do you think if I didn’t want that I wouldn’t have asked for it? I want all of you. Not half of you. That part of you a few minutes where you were so strong and all your muscles tensed and the veins were in your face, that private part of you? That’s the part I need. The suit and tie part of you is nice. The musician part of you is nice too. But it belongs to the world. The part of you that I just saw: that belongs to me.”
As predicted, Fenn did feel Tom inside of him for the next day or so. Actual fucking was something they didn’t do everyday and certainly not with the fury Fenn had invited the night before. The throbbing inside of him made him gentle toward Tom, and in their apartment Tom was so quiet most of the time, leaning over his desk or over his piano. There were whole hours in which he said nothing while Fenn sat on the couch reading or going over a script. And then Fenn would drift off to sleep and wake up with Tom sitting on the floor, his curly head against Fenn’s side.
“Hello, Lover,” he would say, and Tom would smile and say, “Hello, stranger.”
“I talked to Tara the other day,” Fenn said, while he buried a hand in the thickness of Tom’s hair. “She told me she’s doing radio.”
He stroked Tom’s head, and Tom made a contented noise like an old dog.
“I was thinking, if I applied to the radio station to do voice work, then I wouldn’t have to leave town so much.”
Tom’s head turned so quickly, Fenn’s fingers were nearly stuck in his curls.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Well, you would have moved to Chicago for me. And, actually, it’s for me, too.”
“That’s awesome, Fenn,” Tom told him. “That’d be great.”
“Tom, would you like to do me doggy style?”
“What?” Tom looked confused.
“Doggy style. Like in the dirty films. From behind. I personally like missionary fucking. That’s what I’m going to do to you. But after the other night, I think you might like that. You never let me see your wild side. I want all your sides.”
Tom, mouth open, was looking at Fenn with a twinkle in his eye.
“You…” he began, “are the most amazing motherfucker. How can you be my boyfriend?”
“I hope that’s a compliment.”
“It’s a… It’s an exclamation,” Tom said, suddenly climbing up on Fenn and laying across him. He kissed him merrily, and touched his face, smiling down at him in wonder.
“I just don’t know what the fuck to do with you.”
For days, Fenn and Tom lived in their bliss, Tom getting up to go to the college, Fenn getting up to get a cup of coffee and then go back to bed. Work did not bother him. Whenever he had jobs and came back home, he simply handed all of his money over to Tom. Several months rent, enough for many weeks of groceries. Tom, in turn, handed over his checkbook. Fenn’s account had nothing in it and Tom had no control over his own funds but to buy gas and lunch. They liked it that way. One Saturday morning there was a knock at the door while Fenn was cooking breakfast and Tom, at the new dining room table he’d bought from Goodwill, put down the newspaper like a middle aged husband and said, “I’ve got it.”
“Alright,” Fenn nodded negligently.
A few minutes later, as Fenn was laying out the bacon, Tom came into the kitchen and Fenn couldn’t understand the look on his face.
“It’s someone here to see you,” Tom said.
“Me?” Fenn frowned.
Entering the kitchen behind Tom, tall and ash blond, looking equally unreadable, was Dan Malloy.
“Tom, give me a moment,” Fenn said.
He could tell that Tom, in fact, did not want to give him a moment, but he needed one, possibly several. Tom went back into the dining room, and Fenn came out into the living room.
“Fenn.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I needed to make things right.”
“Well, now you’ve made them all wrong.”
“Tom didn’t know about me, did he?”
“He knew of you. He knew you existed. Did you tell him I went down to visit you?”
“Yes, I thought he knew. I botched things up, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Dan. Yes, you did. Oh, God, I could slap you,” Fenn lamented. “I really could. You ruin my trip across state to visit you, and then you come and ruin things with my boyfriend. God, you’re such an ass, you know that?”
“I do,” Dan said. “Yes, I do in fact know that. I wanted to make everything right. Why doesn’t he know about me?”
“Because saying I was going down to visit the person I used to sleep with just wouldn’t be classy.
“We can talk about…whatever it is you think we need to talk about. But not right now. Right now I have to make things right with Tom.”
“I got a room at the hotel on Meridian,” Dan said.
“Good,” Fenn said. “Give me the room number and I’ll come there when I’m done with Tom.”
“Alright.” Dan stood up stiffly. He seemed to be debating if he should offer his hand or not. In the end he chose not to.
“It’s room 303. I hope to see you soon. I’ll let myself out.”
Tom sat at the dining room table, arms folded over his chest.
“You lied to me,” he said.
“Yes, I did,” Fenn said.
“You hid this from me. You went to visit another man. Your ex.”
Fenn nodded.
“And you hid it from me.”
Fenn said nothing.
“Say something.”
“There’s nothing to say, Tom. “You’re right, and I was most definitely wrong.”
Tom looked desperately at him. He stomped his foot.
“What?” Fenn said.
“I want to fight with you,” he said. “I want to be angry at you. I am.”
“I know. And you should be.”
“But you won’t let me stay angry. You won’t fight.”
“Tom, I kept this secret from you,” Fenn sat in the chair. “I felt like I needed to keep something to myself. I certainly wasn’t going to cheat on you. There was just something in me that felt like this should be secret. Be mine. The apartment is ours, the bed is ours. Our life is ours. Dan was mine. That was wrong of me, love. I know that now.”
Tom nodded, sitting down now, across from him.
“He’s kinda constipated,” Tom said, jerking his thumb toward the living room where Dan had been.
“He can be.”
“Is that why…? How everything that happened that night you came home happened?”
Fenn stopped, thinking, and then remembered: “When I asked you to fuck me as hard as possible? Yes.”
“You’re giving me a boner.”
Fenn looked between Tom’s blue jeaned legs. He reached forward and pressed his hand there, squeezing a little while Tom’s lips parted.
“You can’t just use sex to control me,” Tom’s voice was gentle with longing, and not at all serious.
Fenn’s hand still rested there.
“Baby, hold onto this wood for me until I get back.”
“Get back?” Tom seemed to be stirring from sleep and he moved Fenn’s hand.
“I have to go see Dan.”
“You’re terrible!” Tom moaned.
Fenn kissed him hard and then said, “I will be very terrible when I get back. I promise you. But I have to see Dan. He’s in a hotel. You know exactly where I am. The one on Meridian. Room 303. I’m going there. I’ll be back… I’m saying in an hour, but it might end up being two.”
While Tom looked on him, Fenn said, “I will suck your dick all night if you say yes.”
“You are so fucking crass sometimes.”
“Then why do you have a hard on again?” Fenn said, reaching for the car keys that rested between them. He headed back into the living room and then out of the apartment, shouting, “I’ll be back soon.”
“I’m here,” Fenn said when Dan opened the door.
Dan spread out his hands to welcome Fenn into his hotel room.
“Come in. Or would you like to go out?”
“Your room is very small,” Fenn said. “I’d rather talk on the porch.”
“Alright,” Dan said, stepping out and closing the door behind him.
The motel had a long balcony that ran around the entire structure and overlooked the cars driving up and down Meridian. Fenn sat down against the wall, pulling his knees to his chest, and Dan followed suit.
“I have no idea why you wanted me to see you,” Fenn said, simply. “We are of no use to each other. You’ve become something I don’t understand.
“No,” he changed his mind. “You’ve become what you were on your way to becoming. I understand it. It’s not that strange. Except it’s strange that we were ever together. And now you’re here.”
“To apologize for my behavior,” Dan said. “I was just, flatly, odd.”
“I may have been odd as well,” Fenn confessed. “But I don’t know another way to be. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want us to be friends.”
“You shook my hand when I got off the train,” Fenn said. “And that is strange considering what we used to be.”
“Fenn, I can’t let my affection go beyond that,” Dan said.
“You think I don’t struggle? You think I don’t struggle with thoughts about you? You’re a much stronger person than me. You never go against your ethics. I might very well go against mine. You have Tom. The only person I was ever with is you.”
Dan wasn’t looking at Fenn anymore. He was looking at something Fenn couldn’t guess at, and he said, “It has been so long for me, and sometimes it’s so hard. It’s almost unbearable.”
Dan continued before Fenn could speak.
“Not with my brother seminarians. Not with anyone at Saint Benedict’s. There’s nothing tempting about them. But by myself I still…. Want affection. Just to hold someone. Just to be held. I think I’d explode if you caressed my hand. I’m at that place, now.
“So when you came I didn’t know how to act. I’m sorry. There was a lot going on inside of me. There is still a lot going on inside of me.”
Dan grinned sheepishly and said, “Saint Benedict’s is so quiet and so peaceful. But when you’re there a while it’s this pressure cooker. So much is going on under the surface. Monks go crazy. Seminarians disappear for days at a time. You start to suspect you’re the only one who’s really being celibate, but you don’t dare say it out loud. It’s like… It’s like… Sex is in the air, but no one can say it. It literally gives me headaches.”
“I think it’s going to turn you into a very different person.”
“It’s already turning me into a different person!” Dan almost exploded.
“You are lonely,” Fenn said.
When Dan did not respond, Fenn added, “You will stay with us tonight.”
“What?”
“You will stay with me and Tom tonight.”
“Is he going to like that?”
“No. In fact he’ll hate it, especially because he’s sitting there with a boner waiting for an all night sex session.”
But what Fenn actually said was: “Yes, Dan. He’s just that kind of person.”
