Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 15:07:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Fisher Boy Subject: A Father's Love Part IX A Father's Love By Fisher Boy (c) 2002 boyfisher69@yahoo.com Permission is granted to link to this story, or to quote or forward the story in its entirety without alterations as long as no fees are charged for sharing. Individuals may download and print one copy for personal use only. **** A MESSAGE FOR READERS I think there will be 1-3 more parts to the story, depending on what pops out of my fingers as I create it. The next portion(s) are taking me a while to research, so it may be quick, but it may not. Hang in there it will be done. IN doing my preliminary research I see that I have to extend the story for several years at least beyond what I had anticipated. Shit. That's what happens when you don't do your research before you write. A REQUEST FOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE 1. I am trying to make this story as realistic as possible. Anyone who is familiar with Amsterdam and or Dutch language, life, law, and/or customs, especially as in the late 1970's and early 1980's - please please give me feedback, I had to make most of this up, I knew Will needed to be in Amsterdam, so I had to create the most reasonable stuff I could, but if you can provide ANY corrections, suggestion, feedback, I will end up doing a rewrite, so let me know. 2. Anyone who is familiar with the GAY COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO in the period of 1982- 86 and willing to provide me with some background please write!!! I will have specific questions I don't want to reveal here. * * * * * Don't read this if your mind or your weenie are too small to handle it. Includes some really unpleasant ideas involving men, boys, sex and abuse. But you knew that already, and made up your mind already. Please post comments, criticism, suggestions, interesting propositions, irrelevant thoughts, and your own journey, real or imagined, to me at boyfisher69@yahoo.com. I'll try to respond to any intelligent comments. Be patient. The story is fiction, though the character Will is strongly based on someone I knew, and the outline of his life is fairly real. Much of this is based on real events, but this is, again, fiction. Part Nine Sinookas Thing about Paul, he always knew exactly how to handle me. Probably sounds funny, but you know I thought a lot about all the shit I gave him. He thought he made mistakes and then I'd fuck up because of them, but he was all wrong about that. I'd have fucked up just as bad or worse, no matter what he did. He knew how to handle me when I did. So he knew just what to do here, I was amazed. He came down to the lobby and took me up to his room. I started to tell him the whole thing about Matteus, I told him the asshole was fifteen. I started to tell him anyway, and he seemed puzzled about it then he stopped me from saying anything. He held his hand over my mouth, hugged me tight close to him, set me down in a chair, knelt on the floor in front of me. "Will, are you thinking about hurting yourself?" He always knew what to do. Always. I was glad his hotel was before the canal, or I'd have jumped in first. * * * I called Eleanor and asked her to hurry on up. Brandt stepped in to the rescue, because I was suddenly overwhelmed with the immediacy of what I needed to do for the boy. He changed our flight and hotel reservations, made some calls to find local resources, not much we could use, but at least some numbers to call if we needed it. Then Brandt went to his place and stayed there to wait for Matteus to show while I tried to hang on to my stuppa. Matteus showed that afternoon, distraught, hoping to find Will, so Brandt gathered him under wing and shepherded him off to a coffee shop, where he extracted a full confession including home address, then called to find if he should bring him to the hotel. We took a vote, Will voted no, I voted yes. The yeas had it. Matteus was tearful, painfully aware of the price of his deception. "I was thinking he will not want to me see if I tell him this. I was going to tell him when we had coffee the first time, but when he tells me his story I know he won't like a boy for his lover, so I didn't tell him." "Besides he needed something else then so I did for him, what he needs." He looked at me pleading as Will sulked, face down on the bed. "Please, Paul tell him it does not matter. When he is fifteen he has many older men, what is wrong with this, I know he loves me." I almost laughed. I'd have been thrilled, when he was 15, for him to have limited himself to a single nineteen-year-old. On the other hand, I'd lectured him often and well about the need to respect age differences. "Matteus, I am not sure anything I say can make a difference here. I am sure he loves you, I know he does, in fact. But this is a difficult thing for him, as you can see." The truth is, I didn't know why Will was so upset; frankly except for the practical difficulties, I didn't see the problem. I was astonished to realize that he didn't immediately recognize the boy was still a child. Love is blind, he saw what he needed to see and didn't see what he didn't want to see. I wasn't sure the age of consent in Holland, but I thought it was 12 or 15, certainly it was no more than 16. The boy had eventually to deal with family, of course, and I didn't know what that would be like. But there didn't seem to be any insurmountable impediment to the two of them being together, well, nothing not implicit in any teenage romance. They do tend to be short lived and intense, with painful endings after all. On the other hand, Will was suicidal, seriously so, and there had to be a reason because he had most definitely NOT been that way the night before. Hours passed, I had Brandt take Matteus out to get a bite and talk, ordered up some food, Will was sleeping, but I woke him up. He had no appetite. Sitting next to him on the bed, I asked him if we could talk about it, he looked down at the floor, mesmerized by the intricate floral pattern of the carpet. Then slowly looked up. "I'll do whatever you say." "Can you tell me, please, Will, what is so upsetting to you about Matteus being fifteen?" "I can't believe you ask me that, Paul!" He was excited suddenly and crying. "After all you told me, how can you not understand that?" "Will, I know I've told you a lot of things, tried to give you the best guidance I could. But rules apply to specific situations, and I don't what rule you think applies here, or what you think it means, and I wonder if you haven't got to reexamine whatever it is. So can you please tell me what is wrong with this, as you see it?" But he broke down crying every time he tried to talk, wracking sobs. Wailing with all the power of his lungs; it was, I later realized, ten years of pain screaming out of him, he was soon so shaken, out of control, flailing about that I had finally to lay atop him to hold him still. I had never seen him, anyone work themselves into such a state, except perhaps an infant, toddler. But having begun I let him, told him, encouraged him to scream it out, to let it happen, whatever it was. "How could I fuck around with a little BOY? " he finally screamed, "I don't even like them." "More, there's more." I said "I WON'T DO IT I WON'T I WON'T . . ." "What won't you do, Will, What?" My breath was hot on the back of his neck, I was holding his arms down, pinning him tightly to the mattress of my bed as he squirmed and flailed under me. He screeched, a soulful agonized steamwhistle of pain, a wordless primal scream. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! AAAAAAHHHHHH! "Tell me, what it is that you won't do, Will! Tell me!" "I - I - I . . . "I WON'T RAPE HIM, I CAN'T DO IT!" He collapsed, hiccuping, screaming, hyperventilating. Hotel security was knocking on the door. * * * It was very dark in the room, very late at night, I was safe in Paul's bed alone but I am sure father was there, kissing me, kissing my forehead. I fell back to sleep his scent in my nose, the moisture of his blessing on my brow. * * * The colonel had changed, met Brandt with a smile, shook my hand heartily. Listened silently, I still found Eleanor much easier to talk to. Matteus had gone home, much consoled, but would be back the next day if all went well. We all slept, but the colonel stood watch on Will; he conceived it his duty to do so. And he was ever a man of his duty. * * * Paul spent a lot of time with me, but to my surprise so did my parents. They even met Matteus, and all six of us sat around and ate lunch. The colonel kept looking at him out the corner of his eyes, and suddenly I saw what he saw, a limp skinny nelly little boy faggot who fucked his son's eyes out. Well, there! I saw it, it didn't matter, I didn't care if the colonel liked him or not. Paul told me that I was finally beginning to understand what had happened to me when I was young, when I was fifteen and younger. He said yes, I was raped, many times, even when I was wiggling my ass at men. The colonel shifted in his seat. "All the pain you had, you didn't even feel it, you used more sex to hide it, bury it, make it not hurt. Last night you screamed it all out at once." "But Will, there is a clear difference here with Matteus. You must come to understand it. You are not raping him, you are not that much older, and remember all the other things I told you to look at in having sex with someone? Equality. Mutuality. Trust. Healthy interests. Spiritual connection. Morality." Then he said real quickly, "Yes, he violated your trust, you will have to find a way to forgive him for that. He's young, he made a mistake there. He made it out of love, though." Matteus was all teary and rubbing his eyes with a Kleenex. "From everything I have seen and heard, Will, Matteus and you have a good, safe, healthy thing going on here. It may not be perfect, I see a lot of obstacles for you two, but I must say Will, this is the best thing I've seen you involved in all the time I've known you." So there it was, I didn't know how, what, to say or do. I didn't have to die instead of loving him. Screw the colonel if he didn't like it. So after that it was kind of silent and then I didn't know what to say and then I got up and walked away from the table and looked out the window, it was another nice day out there, and then I went back and bent over and kissed Matteus on the lips right there in front of them all. Fuck 'em. My parents stayed for five days, Paul had to go home after two. I took them to see my apartment, they met Mr. deKuyk. The weirdest part was when they left, what the colonel did. I was going to wave at him a little bit, I just hugged mom, then was gonna wave off the old man, and then he grabbed me and hugged me. Didn't say anything. Smelled good. I couldn't get loose, his arms were too strong. Then he surprised me a lot more because he shook hands with Matteus. So then they were all gone and we weren't and I took him to bed and we fucked each others' brains out. After that I decided we had to figure out something to do with his family, because he wasn't out yet, but he did show me the conservatory where he studied and sometimes I came to see him there, to hear him play. He played like one of God's angels, I never thought that much about music like that but when he played it grabbed me right in the nuts and hauled me up, it was so intense, it was really a lot like having him fuck me. One day I laid on the floor under the piano while he played something, a Beethoven thing, he called it "Moonlight Sonata," just for me. I thought I would die, I would be crushed by the music, it was so beautiful, I thought I'd cream my pants right then. We didn't know what to do with the family thing, he told me he thought his family had figured out he was gay, he just didn't want to take it too quick. Then he told me he thought my being an American was going to be a bigger problem. For Chrissake! So we decided to let it ride, I saw him every possible minute. Then I decided I needed a better job, but I didn't have a work permit, so I signed up as a student in a local gymnasium which is like a high school, never mind the name, but they weren't sure what to do with my Certificate of Proficiency, this wasn't California. They told me they didn't think much of an American High School Diploma either, so they gave me some tests, fortunately in English and decided I was a Junior, but I was almost twenty. Still I studied for a while and this gave me a work visa, but I didn't find much better work, and I liked "The Dykes" pretty much so I stayed there a while. Then one day another guy I knew, he whored now and then, he knew I was looking for some work, but not whoring. He told me he had a customer who needed an aide. I didn't understand that I told him I didn't want to whore any more. He said no, this guy was very old, and he needed someone to help him wash, get dressed, cook his food, stuff like that. Well, I figured I could check it out, and so I went with him to meet this guy, Mijnheer - that's Mister - Desmet. He was actually Belgian he spoke French but also Dutch and pretty good English. So sometimes it was Monsieur Desmet, sometimes Mister, sometimes Mijnheer. so I took to calling him one after another, hey mister, hey M'seur, hey Mijneer, hey Desmet. He was about eighty years old and he'd had a stroke, couldn't get around too good. He liked me, and he was a very funny man, I laughed all the time. I liked him a lot once I got used to him. He hired me, the work permit meant the social security people paid my salary, and it was mostly easy enough stuff to do, just shopping and cooking and cleaning and taking care of an old man's body. I'd trained half my life for this job, it was a piece of cake. I did pretty well at the gymnasium, but didn't have as much time as I'd like for Matteus. Mr. Desmet solved that he told me to move into his house and he just loved Matteus, they'd sit and yack for hours and then I'd haul him off to the bedroom and Desmet would get this big grin on his face and make dirty jokes for hours. I felt kind of sorry for him. I might as well admit I did him now and then, I didn't mind, he didn't ask, he could hardly get it up but once a week, and I felt actually good about it. I'd be giving him a bath and he'd get hard, so I'd just do it. I thought I'd bring him a little happiness, it wasn't sick like when I was whoring or prowling bathrooms. It was me giving him something, not taking something from him. And afterwards he'd give me a kiss on the forehead and tell me I was a sweet boy, and not to let Matteus get away from me. I told Matteus all about it and he told me I was the sweet one. I turned twenty and Matteus turned sixteen, and so we were ready to tell his parents because M. Desmet said we could move in with him if we needed to. It went pretty good, they weren't surprised he was gay, but they weren't too crazy about me. They got used to it, though. I spent another year with school and graduated, did pretty good, my Dutch got a lot better too. My parents came up to my graduation, I was pretty surprised though I did tell them about it. The colonel had been promoted, he had his eagle, that was cool. He was getting pretty huggy too, but I kept my distance. They were ready to rotate back to the States, he was going to an assignment at Great Lakes, near Chicago, which is where Paul lived. Paul sent me a present. A teddy bear. He included a note. He said "You're all grown up now, and you don't need this, but just in case, any time you need to feel like a kid you have it. You can hug it. And know that it will be me that you are hugging." Poor Desmet got another stroke, and he went into hospice. I visited him there, and he let me stay in his place, but I knew it couldn't last. Matteus and I had not been living together anyway, he was living at home, though he spent more time with me. So I got another job, doing deliveries for a bakery, and we got a little apartment of our own for a while. But all that got me to thinking about some things. Matteus turned seventeen, and had about finished his program at the conservatory, he actually did a small tour, concert tour, with some other top students, entered some piano competitions, and just blew people away. So we, Matteus and I, decided to try something really different. I started thinking about how I'd taken care of Desmet, I'd liked that, and now that I was out of gymnasium I thought about what I wanted to do next, and I wanted to go to school some more. * * * The letter was one of those onionskin airmail things I was used to getting about three or four times a year from Will. But I was really impressed with what it had to say. I had spoken with him a number of times in the last two years. He was almost twenty-two now, and while the demons were definitely still there at times, he was healing, this was the longest sustained time of good news in his life that I could see. Matteus had proven to be a very good healer. He had been accepted into a Nursing program at a community college in the Chicago area, and Matteus was coming to do advanced studies and get his degree at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. Brandt and I had purchased a condo on Lake Shore Drive, I thought it pretentious but he pointed out it was just a better investment because the truly pretentious people would want it if we resold. I told him to stop being a lawyer. They can rationalize anything. I had invited the Colonel, now a full Bird, and Eleanor to our housewarming, and was a bit surprised when they did come. Eleanor was regal, the colonel a bit uncomfortable with our largely gay crowd, but took to my brother Danny as much as his son had. They sat in the corner all afternoon, thick as thieves. We shared what we knew of Will's situation, I sensed the Colonel was much at ease with Matteus, which I knew to be at great odds with Will's perception of the situation. I thought the Colonel had come a long long way to accept that sweet creature, but in fact he had only good things to say about Matteus. Perhaps it was a tribute to Matteus, who I came to feel was one of the more determined little fellows I'd ever met. He had set his sights on Will and bagged his game, held on with a ferocious tenacity. I could not image an obstacle that would get between him and Will. Eleanor told me that they had gone to see Matteus perform, across the border, in Lyons, France when he was on tour, she was thoroughly committed to the boy as a son in law of a sort. Nursing, when I thought about it, seemed a good choice for Will. He had accessed a nurturing place in himself, and I thought that had to be a really good sign. It was the fall of 1982 when they arrived in Chicago.