Birds Do It
2
“What is your mom like?”
“She’s like crazy is what she’s like,” Ruthven said. “Mine too.”
“Well, yeah, you said she gave you away to your dad. I still don’t get that story.”
“I guess I was a test tube baby,” Dylan said. “And then it turned out my mother didn’t really want me, and Tom was my real dad and he did want me, but then he decided that Fenn, my other dad, should be my dad too.”
“But Fenn’s always been with Todd.”
“Well, once he was with Dad, with my other dad. But that was a long time before me.”
“Well then why is Fenn your dad?”
“Doesn’t he feel like my dad?” Dylan said. “I can’t imagine him not being my dad. I mean, I love my other dad, but sometimes I feel like it’s the other way around, like I come from Fenn. Which I know is impossible.”
“Yes,” Ruthven said, chuckling as he looked at Dylan and thought of Fenn.
“So, I don’t know why Fenn adopted me. I think he had something to do with me being born. That’s what I think he said. Or Tom said it.” Dylan shook his head, trying to remember. “I think he’s the best dad in the world.”
“I think my dad is too,” Ruthven said, and both boys nodded.
“After my mom left, Dad never cried, or I didn’t see it. He just did everything she ever did. Only he did it better. He used to drive a truck, but he stopped so he could be with me. And then he moved us back to my grandparents. But he never liked my grandpa,” by which he meant Todd’s father, “so when Grandma died, Dad just up and brought us here, and now we’re living in Miller, and I love it.”
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to California?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ruthven said. “If I did I would have the beaches and the water. The waves.”
“Is the Pacific really that different from Lake Michigan?”
“And the weather’s great too.
“Of course,” Ruthven added, “If I went back I wouldn’t have my family. And I wouldn’t have you.”
“Well, that’s true,” Dylan acknowledged. “But family could always visit.”
“Would you visit?”
“Of course!”
“Well, that’s what matters. I’d hate to think of a life without you, Dylan.”
Lance Bishop had been staying over at Dylan’s for months. The first time they stayed up all night and went through illegal downloads of Guy McClintock, Casey Williams Online and Corby Studios. The best part about Casey Williams was you could see people you might see in real life. Casey had stopped doing regular films a while ago, but he still put in an appearance on his work, and this blue eyed sex god was so different from the bespectacled seemingly skinny guy who wore a uniform of baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts, that these were Dylan’s favorite movies.
“You know him?” Lance said in a breathless voice. “My family does. I see him sometimes.”
There were children who had to learn manners and children who did not. To Dylan it seemed natural that when Lance stayed over, he would always yield the bed to his guest. Tonight, as he lay on his pallet, Lance said into the dark, “Why don’t you come up here?”
“Huh?”
“Dylan,” Lance said. “Come up here.”
So Dylan climbed out of his bed pile and climbed into his bed, then Lance pushed his long body into Dylan.
“Do you like this? We can be like this,” Lance said. “It’s warmer.”
It was warmer, and it felt so good and he could feel Lance stiff against him, but Lance didn’t seem to care and so Dylan went hard and then they pressed themselves together closer and closer, moving slowly, writhing a little now and again, Lance moaning. And then Lance’s tongue was in his mouth, and it was a shock, but it felt so good. And they were pressing together, slowly undressing. That night they moved under the covers until the covers were gone and then slowly, remembering all he had seen in those movies, remembering what they had seen tonight, Dylan began to try this and try that. Lance felt so good in his mouth and how the other boy’s body tightened, the noises he made, his fist clutching the bed was sacred. And then there was what Lance was doing to him. They exploded, Lance first, Dylan second. He’d never come so much, all of Lance’s belly up to his chest was slick in the little light yielded by the computer screen. Breath heaving, bodies shaking, both of them with their hands still in the air, they said nothing.
Eventually, when Lance trusted himself to speak, he said, “Dylan, was that sex?”
And Dylan, who had just turned thirteen, said in a voice still shaking, “Yeah, I’m sure it was.”
Once Dylan had heard his father utter the phrase, “The cat’s out of the bag now.” He was pretty sure Fenn had been talking about sex, though he wasn’t sure in what context.
“You’re angry with me,” Ruthven said.
“I’m not,” Dylan lied.
“You’re mad cause I’m going back to California.”
“You said you would stay here. You said you and your dad were here to stay.”
“I know.” Ruthven sat down on the bed. “I’m sixteen. What am I supposed to do? If you’re mad, get mad at my dad. No, what am I saying? Don’t get mad at him. He has to go.”
“You could stay here!” Dylan said quickly. “You could stay here with Todd or Nell or Dena. You could keep on being right here.”
“And be away from my dad?” Ruthven raised an eyebrow.
“Then go,” Dylan said, coldly.
He didn’t want to admit that what he hoped was that Ruthven would think he was enough. How could he make up for someone’s father? He knew better than that. He knew ifsomeone had said leave Fenn, leave Tom forever… But still it hurt that he didn’t matter enough to Ruthven.
“ Dill…” Ruthven said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do that,” Dylan wriggled away.
“You’re my best friend.”
“I told you everything,” Dylan said. “I gave you everything. You know everything about me.”
“And you know everything about me, Dylan,” Ruthven said. “And you’ve got Lance.”
“I hate Lance.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” Dylan allowed, at last. “I don’t. I shouldn’t have said that. But…”
“You and Lance… He’s your friend.”
“I used to think he was my best friend, but you’re my best friend.”
“You and Lance… Aren’t you guys doing it?”
“It’s not serious,” Dylan said. “It just feels good. It’s just something we do sometimes when I stay the night. I mean, I know he does it with girls, and I don’t have anyone.”
“Well, you have me.”
“That really isn’t the same, now is it?”
“No,” Ruthven admitted, tentatively. “I guess it isn’t.”
“It’s worse now,” Dylan said. “Cause sometimes when me and Lance fool around I… I come quicker thinking about you.”
Ruthven bristled and moved away from him. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why?”
“You just…. It blurs lines,” Ruthven said.
Dylan hid his shame by shrugging and saying, “Alright.”
“Don’t ever talk like that again,” Ruthven told him.
Dylan nodded, and they sat rigid on opposite ends of the bed.
A few days later Ruthven was gone.
Dylan emailed:
-Dylan
From California, Ruthven wrote back:
It’s okay to tell me anything. I didn’t mean to overreact. It just made me feel funny.
-Ven
Funny how? - Dill
Ruthven wrote back.
Funny horny-
Dylan pondered this for a while, and then he decided to IM his friend. He didn’t want to call him. He wanted this in print, and he wanted it quicker than e-mail. Ruthven replied quickly.
What’s up?
It’s what you said.
Okay?
You said that what I said—about thinking about you—made you horny.
Yeah, I guess.
Does that mean you want to have sex with me?
Dylan, don’t.
You have to explain it. You have to explain us.
I love you. You’re my cousin, and I love you.
No, I guess not.
Why don’t you tell me what’s up, you’re confusing me.
It was a while before Ruthven wrote back, and then it came in a pile of sentences.
I’m not like you. It couldn’t be like you and Lance. I think Lance is a fucking pinhead anyway. I’ve been with guys. I topped one of my friends last summer and I let him fuck me. But that’s just fun. Or curiosity, or whatever. I mean I like it, I do. But… not with us.
I didn’t say we should do it.
You kind of did.
Fuck you.
Dylan closed the computer slowly, fighting his rage, and decided to go out with Laurel.
When he got back home, he opened his laptop, half hoping, half afraid there would be a message from Ruthven. There was, and it said only:
I’m afraid because I know I’m supposed to be like your brother. But every time I’m with you I want more, and I think that I know I’m in love with you.
-R.
After that, life simply became easier. There wasn’t any appeal in what he had been doing with Lance. In fact, he felt a little ashamed of it. He thought of how his parents would feel, how his friends would feel. He knew he couldn’t tell Laurel. She would be so shocked, and why shouldn’t she be? Up until now, Dylan never thought of how, if someone his age had told him they’d been sexually active with another thirteen year old, he’d feel strange about it. The things he did with Lance, Lance who was currently fucking girls and would probably get one pregnant, embarrassed him.
But the thought of Ruthven did not. Ruthven was turning seventeen at the end of the school year, and please could Dylan come to California and visit for a few weeks? Neither one of them talked about what would happen. They couldn’t. It hung in the air like some glowing cocoon that, if touched too soon, would be ruined. Dylan didn’t ask Tom about the trip. He asked Fenn, sensing that Fenn understood matters of the heart even when they weren’t fully explained. And Dylan couldn’t explain this.
“Can I go to California and visit Ruthven?” Fenn said yes.
Fenn had added the caveat that he had to ask Tom and blah blah blah, but the answer was yes, and on the last day of school Tom and Fenn had driven him to Chicago. They’d gone to O’Hare and seen him off. He felt protected by them, but the moment he was going to the gate and on the plane, he felt free and independent. Dylan Mesda wanted to shout “Wee!” as they went into the air.
