Tim - Chapter 19
The following is fiction. It contains some scenes involving gay sex. If reading such material is against the law, please do not read this story.
I have been enormously gratified by my readers’ response to my first two stories, 8th Grade and Prom. Your comments to me have been exceedingly generous and deeply appreciated.
I have had several requests asking for the location of my two previous stories. They can be found as follows:
8th Grade: Nifty Archives, Gay Male, Young Friends, April 1, 2005
Prom: Nifty Archives, Gay Male, High School, May 15, 2005
What explicit sex is included in this story is intended to further the story; I do not write gratuitous sex scenes. The story is not principally about sex, and if your objective is to read about sexual activity, you will find this story disappointing and uninteresting in the extreme.
Those of you that have read my first two stories know that I like writing romantic tales of young teens learning who they are. This story has a somewhat darker and more troubling theme, and may have a message that is objectionable to some. I think the majority of you will enjoy it, but I’ve been known to be wrong in the past. Please be forewarned.
This story is copyrighted by the author. His permission must be secured before any copying or use of this story is permitted.
I love hearing from readers. It’s the reward I get for writing these stories. Any comments will reach me at colepark@gmail.com
T I M
by
Cole Parker
Chapter 19
The silence in the room was getting unbearable. Finally, Mrs. Tuckman got up from the couch and said, “I think I’ll call some of Missy’s friends. I might be able to find her.”
She went to the phone and started calling. We sat and watched her. She was on her third call when we heard the back door open, and a few seconds later Missy walked into the room.
She stopped when she saw us. We were all looking at her. Mrs. Tuckman quickly ended her call, hung up and turned to look at Missy too. The rest of them were looking at her face; I’d looked there too, first, but now I was looking at the thin yellow package she was holding in her hand.
Mr. Tuckman was the first to speak. “Missy, we all need to speak with you. Will you sit down, please?”
Missy’s eyes moved around, taking in all of us. Her cheeks reddened. There was no question she was thinking about us all being there and realizing what was going on, and the gears were turning fast in her head. I looked into her face, and saw the beginnings of defiance flash through her eyes.
“OK, Dad, but let me make a quick trip to the bathroom first. I just got home. I’ll be right back.”
She started for the stairs, but her father’s voice, raised and sharp, halted her in her tracks. “MISSY! Stop right there!”
Mr. Tuckman was on his feet. He stepped to her, then reached out his hand and said, “I need to have that package you’re holding.” His tone of voice didn’t leave her any room to argue.
Still, she didn’t want to give in to him. The package in her hand was her prize, what she’d waited almost a year for, and giving it up without a struggle just wasn’t in her. That package would be the ultimate ruin of her brother, something she’d wanted, even if not consciously, for years.
“Dad! This is mine. It mine and it’s private,” she said with determination.
Mr. Tuckman never took his arm down. He was still reaching out, hand open, waiting for the package.
Missy tried another tack. She could see her father wasn’t going to give in, and so she could also see her plans for revenge crumbling away to nothing. I could see the indecision and struggle in her face. She wanted to salvage something out of this. If she gave up the package, she might have nothing. But maybe there was a way to have half her cake. If she could at least show what she had to her parents, she’d have that much triumph. At the same time, she had built a reputation of a sweet, compliant daughter with them parents, and showing the pictures would surely diminish that.
She decided. You could see decision firm up her face. Showing the pictures around school wasn’t going to be an option for her, but she could still have the pleasure of giving Jed and me as much trouble as possible by humiliating us in front of our parents.
“Dad,” she said, using a very reasonable and persuasive tone, “this is mine. But if you want, I’ll show you what I have. Mom, why don’t you come look at it too?”
Mr. Tuckman looked at her, and his disappointment showed. When he again spoke, it was with a degree of resignation, but no reduction in firmness. “Missy! I’m not playing around here. Give me that right now, or I’ll take it away from you and you’ll be grounded for the next month and lose your car. Don’t open that, just give it to me. Now. Right this minute.”
Tr. Tuckman’s intensity did the trick. Meekly, unwillingly, Missy slowly handed her father the package of pictures.
“Now come sit down.”
Both of them sat down, and we all looked at each other. My father was the one who spoke.
“Missy, we know what you have there. What I don’t know is whether you planned to show the pictures to anyone other than your parents. That would have been bad enough. But to show them to anyone else, well, I can’t think you’re that mean. Or, maybe you really didn’t think what the effect would be. I know you and Jed have had some problems, but I don’t think you want to ruin his life. I just don’t think that’s who you are.”
He was looking into her eyes, and she was meeting them, but as he finished, she let her eyes fall.
Mr. Tuckman spoke next. “You didn’t show these to anyone, did you?”
“No. I just picked them up. I haven’t even opened them myself. The package is still sealed.”
“Good. Now, we have to talk about something else. Missy, we absolutely forbid you to talk about what you saw. You can’t do that. I cannot say too strongly how important that is. You talking to your friends, or Jed’s or Tim’s friends about this, would be terrible. For them, but for you too. People would think things about them, but they’d also start asking each other how a boy’s sister could do that to him. It wouldn’t be long before the talk about you would be as bad as it would about him. Think about that for a minute. And then maybe you can tell me why you’d take pictures like that in the first place. What were you thinking?”
Missy was looking at the floor, and it was quickly obvious she had no intention of answering the question. I thought it possible she didn’t even know the answer, that she hadn’t really thought about any of the implications the pictures created. Or maybe she was just confused, wondering how it could be that her brother had done something so terrible, so nasty, and she was the one in trouble.
We sat and waited, but she didn’t speak. Then, a horrible thought occurred to me, and though I didn’t want to, I opened my mouth and asked her a question.
“Missy, you said you didn’t show the pictures to anyone. But, well, did you tell anyone about them?”
Again, Missy didn’t answer. She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. It appeared her shoulders slumped a little, that her body pulled into itself a little. It appeared, maybe for the first time, she was just starting to be aware of what she’d done, the ramifications of it. My feeling was, she’d been struggling with Jed for so long, so many years, any thought of how vicious her actions might have become had never entered her head.
Mrs. Tuckman was still a little in shock. She said, “Oh, Missy, no! Why? Why would you do that?”
Missy looked defeated, and I saw tears begin to slide down her cheeks. But she didn’t say anything. She just sat, and I was sure she now knew she’d gone too far in her dislike of her brother.
My father looked at me, then stood up. “I’m really sorry for all this, Robert,” he said. “I guess these two are going to have to be strong and face some heat, but it could be a lot worse, a whole lot worse. Those pictures could have been passed around. This way, it’s just talk. Maybe you can convince Missy to talk to whomever she mentioned the pictures to and say she was just trying to get Jed in trouble, that there really weren’t any pictures. If she does that, and the boys deny doing anything together, without any pictures as proof it’ll eventually blow over. Maybe you can convince her it’s in her own best interest to do that. Incidentally, what are you going to do with that package?”
Mr. Tuckman glanced down at the package he was still holding. Then he said, “I’m going to burn it without opening it. The pictures and the negatives are both in here, and I’ll just burn the thing.”
My dad reached out and offered his hand, which Mr. Tuckman took and shook. Then Dad said goodbye to Mrs. Tuckman. I started to leave with him, then stopped and turned back.
“Mr. Tuckman,” I asked hesitantly. I was really feeling small. “I apologize for the trouble I’ve given you. And I want to ask something, something I need to know.” I looked down at the floor. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What is it, Tim?”
“Well, I guess, ...” I hardly had the words, or courage, for this, it was too important to me. “Well, Mr. Tuckman, what I want to ask is, well, can I still come over here? Jed’s my best friend. I’ve never told you guys, but coming over here, this is as much a home as my real home. I’ll apologize any way you want, I’ll make you any promises you want to hear. But, may I?”
Mr. Tuckman walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Tim,” he said, “of course you can. I said I didn’t have a problem with you and Jed being boys. I don’t. You’re a great kid. Besides that, you’re a really good influence on Jed. You do your homework here, and get him to do his. And you talk to him about it. He’s does much better in school than he would without your help. You talk about college, and because of that, he’s interested in going. He would be a different kid if he didn’t have you for his friend, and what you guys have done doesn’t have any affect on that at all. I would be disappointed if you stopped coming over here.”
I couldn’t help myself. I started crying. This meant so much to me. I reaching out and hugged Mr. Tuckman, and he put his arms around me, too. After a couple minutes, I pulled away and looked up at him. His eyes were moist, too. I looked into his face for a moment, then turned around and joined my dad at the door, and we left to walk home.
While we were climbing down the Tuckman’s front steps, I asked Dad about talking to Mom and Shawn. He thought for a minute, and then said, “You know, if we tell them about this, the shit will hit the fan, it you’ll excuse my French. With the way it went in there, it’s just possible they’ll never hear about this. I’d say, why don’t we see if we can let it just blow over? We might get away with it, and if we don’t, we can face it then and it shouldn’t be any worse for waiting.”
That sure sounded OK to me.
=========== ============ ================
Missy had told her best friend Melissa about what she’d seen in our room and about the pictures shortly after she’d run out of the house. Melissa was a 15 year old girl, and this had been just too good to keep to herself. By the time Missy called her that evening to tell her she’d made it all up, Melissa’d already called four friends. They’d been busy, too.
I think the only thing that saved us at school was Jed’s popularity and my cockiness. Jed had a large number of friends, was on the track team and was a one of the bigger kids in our grade. He’d also started dating recently and several of the girls knew he was attracted to them. That he could be gay seemed ridiculous to almost everyone. I was still small and would have made an inviting target to any and all homophobic bullies, but I carried myself well, was well thought of generally, and no one really thought of me as being gay. I didn’t act any differently from any of the other kids and I had a ready wit with which I could verbally defend myself pretty easily against any of the types who might make remarks. So, while there certainly were remarks made and looks thrown and sometimes even an occasional push from behind, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and it didn’t last very long. Jed and I made it a habit not to associate much at school for awhile, didn’t eat lunch together, and made it difficult for any gossip to have any visual support.
So I started feeling we’d escaped. I began to think that, amazingly, we’d come away from this clean, that all my fears were baseless.
Shawn was a senior at school. We moved in different circles, and I rarely saw him there. I didn’t have anything to do with him at home now, either. We were two brothers, both teenagers, living in the same house, but didn’t interact at all. So I was surprised when he knocked on my open door one afternoon shortly after the picture incident, then walked into my room. I was writing in my journal but put my pen down and looked up at him. To say I was surprised wouldn’t have truly expressed my feelings by half.
“Tim,” he said, fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. I nodded at him. He stood there a moment, then said, “I’ve been hearing things at school. I have to ask you about it. I heard you and Jed were having intercourse together in his room and Missy was videotaping it. Is that true?”
I looked at him, a number of feelings jumbled inside me, wondering what to say. I also wondered why he was asking. This was the first time we’d spoken in months.
“Shawn, there’s a lot of gossip going around at school right now, and that’s all it is, gossip. Jed and I are best friends and we spend a lot of time together, and you know Missy likes to make trouble for him. She said something to someone that became gossip. But no, to answer your question honestly, though it’s not really any of your business, we weren’t doing that. And we never have. Did you believe it, when you heard it?”
Shawn fidgeted some more. He was looking all around, not meeting my eyes. I hadn’t spent any time at all lately looking at him closely and took the time now to do it. He didn’t look quite right. His eyes were moving around too quickly and looked a little glazed to me, and his total appearance seemed, I don’t know, a little messy, like he wasn’t grooming himself well or something. His hair wasn’t very neat, his clothes looked wrinkled and almost like they were too big for him, just his whole appearance was a little off. And I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could smell him, too, an unpleasant, unhealthy, sour sort of smell.
“Well, yes, I guess I did. I saw you masturbating, so I know you know about sex. I hope you’ve stopped that. But I wanted to tell you, so you’d know, sex with another boy, that’s a sin, just like masturbating, maybe even worse. They’re both sins, though. Spilling your seed on the ground is a sin. Homosexuality is a terrible sin, one you go to hell forever for. I have to tell our parents. You’re denying you did it, but how do I know you aren’t lying? I think you might be a homosexual, you might be having intercourse with Jed, and I have to tell them. Maybe with their help, you can be saved. You’re a sinner, Tim, and I feel bad that you’re going to spend eternity in hell while I’ll spend it in heaven, because I’ve found Jesus and am saved, and I’m special.”
I looked at him quizzically while trying to sort out what was going to happen when he told Mom I was screwing Jed. His other statement just confused me, though, and I had to ask. “You’re special?”
He looked me in the eye, no pretension in him at all. “Yes, I’m special. Reverend Ellison says so. He’s teaching me. We have private classes. He’s preparing me to be minister like he is. We work together and he says I’m special.”
I didn’t know what to make of this. Just out of curiosity, I asked him what he meant by being special.
“He has private sessions with me that he doesn’t with anyone else, and we speak to God, we reach out to Him.”
“How do you do that, reach out to God?”
“We perform sacred acts and can feel God’s love filling us. He loves us and we can feel his love.”
“You feel God’s love? How? What do you do to feel that? And how are you special.”
“I can’t talk about what we do, it’s secret just to those who are reaching for God’s love. Reverend Ellison says to never talk about it or I won’t feel God’s love any longer or go to heaven.”
This all sounded strange, and a little weird. I thought about it. And then, suddenly, a terrible enlightenment struck me. I knew where it was coming from. I just knew. And a lot of other things suddenly made more sense. I thought back to how he had slowly withdrawn, how he was always alone now, how he spent time in his room, how he read the Bible constantly and spoke to himself. I knew what was wrong with Shawn now, why he had changed from the normal kid of a couple years ago to what he had become now.
I needed to get him to talk more about it. I knew, but I only had what he’d said, and that wasn’t enough for anyone else. I needed to get him to say more. But how? He seemed to back off whenever he was asked for any details of what he did in his private sessions. So how could I get him to talk?
I thought, and came up with an idea. If he wouldn’t talk about what he did, would he at least explain what he thought? Maybe he would. It seemed people with strong religious beliefs always liked to talk about them.
And I knew how to approach the subject!
“Shawn, you told me being a homosexual was a sin. Does that mean doing homosexual things is sinful? Are homosexual acts sinful?”
“Of course. A man having sex with another man is wrong. It’s dirty and sinful.”
“Is this always true? Can it be that sex with another man is all right sometimes? Like, for instance, if it was a religious ceremony or something like that, and it wasn’t really dirty sex but some kind of religious rite that resulted in something like sex, would that be all right?
Shawn looked at me and his eyes opened wide. Then he began fidgeting again, looking around the room at the same time.
“Shawn, is that possible?” I asked, spurring him to answer.
I guess the excitement of getting to talk about his feelings in this context got in the way of his determination to keep his lips sealed. “Well, if it’s in the glory of God, if the purpose is to rejoice in God’s goodness and reach out to him, that might be OK, if the circumstances were right.”
I felt numb. He’d answered, and I now knew the truth, even if he hadn’t spelled it out for me.
I wanted to keep him talking, to learn what I could.
“Shawn, what you just said. I suppose you’ve learned that at church. Is that what Reverend Ellison preaches to everyone?”
“I’m special, and learn special things. We have private sessions, and he tells me things all the time. I learn things he doesn’t teach anyone else. We have lots of private time together. I’m going to be a minister too. He’s spending extra time with me to prepare me for the ministry, teaching me all the things I have to know.”
I shivered. I couldn’t help it. The way he was talking, his use of words, the singsong quality of his speech, he almost sounded childlike.
“What did he say about homosexual sex being bad but what you’re doing is good? What did he say about that?
“He said gay men having sex was a sin. He said reaching out to God with another man was all right if they were committed to God and their faith. But it had to be done for the glorification of God. Just having sex to feel good is a sin. But sharing your seed to feel God’s love is an act of glory.
“He taught you men could reach out to God with another man. They could share their seed? Did he also show you how to do that?”
Shawn looked away from me. “I’m not supposed to talk about that. What he teaches me in our private sessions is just between us, it’s special, it’s our and God’s secret that only special people know about. I’m special.”
“How long has he been giving you private lessons?”
“Almost since he got here. He chose me right away, when he saw how much I admired him. He told me he’d work with me and I’d be closer to God because of it. He talked to Mom about it, and she was so happy. I am too.”
“He talked to Mom? What did he say to her?”
“He told her he wanted to work closely with me because I had something inside me he could develop so I could be close to God and share in getting the word to others and save them. He told her how special I was, and she said he could work with me. She’s proud of me.”
“Shawn, I’m your brother, so you can tell me things you can’t tell other people. I want to know about the private sessions. Maybe I could be special, too. Tell me what happens. I’ll bet it’s great. What do you do? Do you undress for these?”
“I’m not suppose to talk about the sessions. Reverend Ellison has told me that every time. Outside people, and people like you, nonbelievers, aren’t to know what we do. If people find out, what we do won’t be holy any longer and I won’t go to heaven.”
“But Shawn, I want to go to heaven, I want to do holy things. Can you show me? Can you help make me holy?”
I had no idea where I was going with this, but I needed to know if my suspicions were correct. He was sounding so simple, so naive, it made me think if I could keep him talking, I could learn something. I just wasn’t sure what button to push to get him to open up.
“No, I can only do those things with Reverend Ellison.”
“Do they hurt, these things? Or do they feel good? I’m not asking what they are, just how they feel, and you can tell me that without talking about them.”
Shawn paused, digesting the question. I got the feeling he really did want to talk about it. Maybe on some level, he knew he should, maybe he felt pressure to talk about it. After a bit, he said, “It hurt at first. He said it was because I was still holding sin inside me. Now that I’m holy, it doesn’t hurt any longer. Now that I’ve had my sins cleansed. Now it feels really good. I can feel the holiness now. Now I know what Reverend Ellison is telling me is true.”
Damn! Well, I was sure now. I thought I’d try a little trickery, then stop. “Shawn, does he use a condom?”
“No, he. . . .” A quick look of fear came into his eyes. Then he said stiffly and positively, “I can’t talk about what we do, Tim. In fact, I only wanted to tell you, if you’re having sex with Jed, it’s a sin and you’ll burn in hell forever.”
He got up, looked around almost like he was getting his bearings, and walked out of the room.
Well, at least I understood now. If I was jerking off, it was a sin. If he was fucking his minister, it was good. Yeah, I understood all right. I understood exactly. And I felt sick.