Slap of Realization

I looked over at the table under the window of my studio apartment in Spinnaker Bay looking out over Baltimore's inner harbor, and last night's fight came back to me. The potted rose bush I'd gotten for him today to take to my mother on our trip to Dover, Delaware, was still there. He hadn't touched it. He'd told me that he might open the window and toss it out.

He must have gotten over his snit. It wasn't just the survival of the rose bush that told me that. Trent was below me, under the covers. I had wakened with my legs hooked on his shoulders and watching the covers moving and listening to them rustling and to the sound and sensation of his mouth working my cock, encouraging me to an erection. I didn't require that much encouragement.

"Why would I take your mother a potted plant?" he'd asked, incredulity written all over his face and seeping from the tone of his voice.

"It's just what's done. It's what is expected among her friends the first time any of their sons brings a friend home for the weekend."

"Yeah, well, I think you're taking this trip entirely too seriously. We've been together for, what? seven months now and this is the first time you take me to meet your people? And all the points of etiquette you've slapped on me? What, you've never taken a boyfriend home before?" He gave me a sharp look. "You haven't, have you? You've never told them that you were actively gay, have you? That you like to pound men's asses."

"Shhh," I said. "The boyfriend stuff. We'd agreed we wouldn't go into that. It's too soon."

"Seven months is too soon? And is this a conversation we should be having when you have your dick inside me?"

He had a point there. He was on his belly on the bed, and I was mounted on him. He'd just then turned his head toward the window and seen the potted rose bush, so I only then was able to tell him that it was a gift from him. The studio apartment just begged for us to be fucking whenever we were here. The bed took up most of the room. Half my salary as a loan officer at First Mariner Bank went to this view of the Inner Harbor, which we'd positioned the bed to enjoy. It was worth it, though. Trent didn't contribute to the rent. He contributed in other ways. His job as a bartender in a Fells Point gay dive didn't permit him to weigh in on the rent of a 550-square-foot palace like this.

"Take your dick out of me, and tell me how I need to take a gift to your mother when you never took one to mine."

He had a point, but it had seemed natural not to take one to his mother, a hotel maid in a downtown Baltimore fleabag. It would have had to be a bottle of gin to impress her, and Trent had said not to bother because the smell of available booze would have attracted his father to pay a visit.

I hadn't had any trouble with Trent's mother or her uptown apartment, though. She was comfortable to be with—easy to talk to and quick with the smart joke. That didn't mean Trent wouldn't have trouble in a rural farmhouse in Dover, Delaware, inhabited by my mother and her sister, and my own maiden sister, who worked in a library. That was an entirely different world than we lived in here. Being called on it was a slap of realization, though.

My inability to answer Trent's question had led to a dual pouting session and a night turned from each other in the bed.

All must be forgotten this morning, though. He was working his way up my body with his tongue. He reached my lips with his. I could feel his buttocks rubbing against the front of my thighs as I bent my legs, pressing my feet into the mattress. I wondered if . . . because sometimes we just didn't get to it in the frenzy of the moment . . . but, yes, he was smoothing a condom down on my cock with one hand, as he cupped my head in the crook of his other arm and opened his lips for my tongue to work itself in.

Trent pulled off my mouth long enough to look directly into my eyes and whisper, "Good morning, Marty. We have time for a trip to heaven?"

"Always," I answered. "So, you're not mad at me?"

"How could I be mad at you?"

Oh, about a hundred ways, I thought. We spent a third of our time mad at each other for some reason. Two very different worlds. There was no reason we should get along. The odd couple. But somehow . . . "Shit. Holy shit. Yesss!"

We spent two-thirds of our time in ecstasy like this.

Holding my erect cock elevated with one hand, he was descending on it. I didn't quite feel my balls nestle up into the curve of his buttocks, though, or the feel of his bush hair mingling with mine—we both groomed, but not much.

"Fuck me. You do it. I want you to make love to me," he murmured.

Using the leverage of my feet, I started a rhythm of upward thrusts, pulling my own buttocks off the bed as I fucked up into his channel and then letting them come back down on the sheets.

"Oh, fuck, yes! Nail me!" he cried out.

And I did. Again and again and again. We came nearly together. We'd been practicing that and had come close to perfecting it. It would be perfect when we could sense the other one about to blow rather than having to announce it in breathy monosyllables.

He showered first and then moved about the room, filling a duffle bag with clothes and whatever else he needed for the weekend. He moved naked, and it was several minutes before I could take my eyes off his beautiful body—still in wonder at having a young man so beautiful in my bed—and focused on what he was packing and what he had laid out to wear: black chino skinny jeans and a black muscle T.

"You're not taking those clothes and wearing that, are you?" I asked—in a voice that I should have known better than use.

"Why? Why not?" Trent asked, turning on me. "It's what I wore the last time we visited my mother."

We're not visiting your mother, I almost blurted. God, it was good I didn't say that, though. I knew he'd take it wrong when, in fact, it was a compliment to his mother. "Remember that we're not declaring. How about you look in my closet to see if there's something you can wear and take that won't make me want to jump your bones."

"Like you jumped my bones last time we were at my mother's—fucking me on her bed—with her snoring and drunk as a skunk in the other room?"

Yeah, like that, I thought. But again I couldn't say it. "It's going to be a rough weekend, Trent. I've been putting it off. It isn't you, really. And it certainly isn't your mother. It's my mother, aunt, and sister. They live in another world. Maybe we should just not—"

"Fine," he said, clipping and punching the word. "I'll look in your closet. Anything you don't want—?"

"Take anything you want," I said, suddenly contrite and scared this would lead to another fight. "I packed yesterday. Oh, and maybe cut down on the jewelry. Just for this weekend." Was I pushing my luck?

"The jewelry."

"Yes. Just what shows. The eyebrow ring and the earring. You know, just so it doesn't . . . scream so."

"Fine." It was even more clipped than the first time, if that was possible.

At the door, as we were leaving and he already was in the outer corridor, I said, "Aren't you going to take the potted rose for my mother?"

"Fine," he said again, walking deliberately over to the window, picking the plant up, and giving me a venomous stare down as he passed me at the door.

Oh, yes, this was going to be one hell of a weekend.

* * * *

"She'll just naturally put us up in separate bedrooms. She won't even think of doing otherwise."

"Fine."

We were barreling up I-95 from Baltimore toward the cutoff over to downstate Delaware. I checked the cars around me and then looked over at Trent in the passenger seat. He was pressed up against the passenger door, but the distance he was putting between us had to be just symbolic in this Camaro coupe. I didn't like the sound of the "fine." It didn't sound so much an exasperated acknowledgment that we wouldn't be sleeping together this weekend at my mother's house as it sounded like he didn't care if he'd be sleeping with me at all.

"It's just that they are quite traditional. Dover hasn't really made it into the twenty-first century, and my women folk haven't made it beyond Dover."

"I said it's fine."

"It's just that it's a big step for me, even bringing you home. I hope you won't go all sarcastic on me. I'm trying not to cut you out of my life. I'm trying to move up slowly on everything. This is important to us. I'm trying to show commitment here."

"How noble of you not to want to cut me out of your life. Do you think they'll be OK with me French kissing you at the breakfast table? Not your cock, of course. Just on the lips."

"Come on, Trent. I'm trying to be serious here. I'm trying to let you in on a full life. Gradually. If this isn't going to work out—"

"I said fine. It was just a joke. Loosen up, Marty. And maybe we should stop talking about it. The rose bush might tattle on us."

And that was pretty much it for the rest of the drive down Route 13 to Dover—a smaller town, Leipsic, really, not quite as far as Dover. In fact that had been the extent of our conversation in the car until right before we turned off 13 to go over toward the Delaware Bay to Leipsic. Then Trent dropped the bombshell.

"This is the visit it will be, Marty. This is when you tell your mother and the others that we're a couple. Now or never. And I don't stick around for never."

It was just a few more minutes to the old farmhouse my mother had been born and raised in and had inherited and refused to live anywhere else when she'd married my dad, now long gone. I hyperventilated the rest of the way.

* * * *

"Land, it's good to see you. Expected you an hour ago, but we've kept lunch ready. Judith said we should fix something that would keep and could just be taken out, and she was right. You look like you need fed, Martin. And this, this must be Todd. I've heard so much about you and it was so nice that Martin could give you a ride out to the stock car races."

Trent gave me an amused look. I hadn't told him that I told her he was along because he had a ticket to the stock car raises in Dover Sunday night, and I'd volunteered to drive him to that to meet up with friends. He knew I'd been living with Todd before him, though.

"It's Trent, Mother," I said, cringing. Why did she have to butcher his name as Todd. Todd and I had been a number before Trent. Mother of course had never heard that—but Trent had. I was starting out behind the eight ball here. I looked at Trent again. His expression had turned to the sardonic.

"Let me take you up to the bedroom first so you can drop your bags before lunch is on. Don't stand in the way, gawking like that, Sarah. Maybe you can go on into the kitchen and tell Judith she can start serving up."

Sarah, my younger sister, who had gone to junior college in Dover, gotten a librarian certificate and a job in the library there, had never explored further than Delaware and the Eastern Shore, and lived at home, indeed was gawking. She was gawking at Trent, who was probably the most beautiful and exotic-looking young man she'd ever seen. He was to me too, but Sarah couldn't hope that Trent would ever be to her what he was to me.

Trent gave her a sunny smile and winked, and I could see her shudder and blush before she moved from between us and the bottom of the staircase in the foyer and flitted down the hall into the kitchen.

"I hope you don't mind. You'll both be sleeping in Martin's old room. It has twin beds."

With that, Mother gestured toward the staircase.

Trent smiled at me and it was my turn to shudder and blush. Of course we'd both be in my room in the twin beds. There wasn't any other bedroom in the house available to us. Why hadn't I thought about that and avoided the "separate beds" discussion altogether? I'd lost points I hadn't had to.

"And, my, what is that you're carrying, To— . . . Trent?" she asked as she put a foot on the first stair tread and turned and looked at us.

"Roses. A pot of roses, Mrs. Hammond. I brought them for you." Trent was all smiles and disarming politeness. "Marty told me that your name was Rose and that pink was your favorite color."

Oh, lord, laying it on a little thick there, Trent, I thought. I didn't remember telling him my mother's first name, but I must have. But I certainly didn't tell him her favorite color was pink. I'd picked the roses out at random.

"My, how thoughtful of you," my mother gushed. "Fancy that Martin knew pink was my favorite color—and how gentlemanly of you not only to bring me a present but to make such connections."

She clearly was pleased, and I saw a more girlish step in her carriage as she preceded us up the stairs. For my part, I was stunned. Trent was scoring a homerun with my mother—right after drawing god worship from my sister—and all on his own. There only remained the formidable Judith. We referred to her as Aunt Judith and she was quite a nut to crack. Often scowling, nearly always judgmental, and more manly than most men in the Dover region. She wasn't really my aunt, but she and my mother had been that close and she had moved in here shortly after her husband ran off and left her—coincidentally the same time my own father had hit the road solo.

In the bedroom, after Mother had told us where the bathroom was where we could freshen up before lunch, which would be ready when we were—house layout directions that I hardly needed, but Mother already was lost to giving Trent her full, near-giggly attention—she left us. I gathered Trent into my chest and gave him a deep kiss. He didn't resist me. It was like a warm, sunny day here in my mother's house, after the iciness in the car on the way from Baltimore.

"So, we can sleep together after all," I said, "or at least fuck before we go to our own comfortable beds."

"How convenient for you," Trent said.

"The turn with the roses was brilliant," I said.

"And I didn't bite the heads off the buds as we came upstairs. Fancy that," he responded, his voice icy, his eyes flashing. "Your mother and sister are nice," he added in a less tense voice.

"You haven't met Aunt Judith yet."

"When are you going to tell her—your mother—that we're lovers, a couple—that we live together?" Trent said. "Or were you planning not to at all—that bit about me just catching a ride to the Dover International Speedway."

"I will. I promise. Right after lunch."

"Good, because I don't know if I can sustain the role of 'just a thoughtful friend' for the weekend."

"You won't have to, I promise." I pulled him in for another kiss.

A ship's bell range in the near distance.

"What the shit?"

"It's a call to a meal, Trent," I said. "A tradition in the house. There are a lot of traditions in the house. But that 'shit,' Trent. Can you watch the language? Something else not used in this house."

"Fine," he said. Clipped off and icy again.

It would be a miracle if we made it through lunch. We hadn't even encountered Aunt Judith yet.

* * * *

When I returned to the dining room with the freshly iced chocolate cake, Trent and Aunt Judith were having a raucous discussion of the people they'd seen drunk on their tails in bars. One would think that Trent, a bartender, would have the award-winning stories, but Judith was meeting him story for story and using salty language, which, thankfully, Trent was studiously avoiding as I had requested—at least through most of the meal. Where he was laughing, Judith was snorting. Sister Sarah was watching in fascination tinged with horror—not by any means at anything Trent was saying. Trent had acted the perfect, smooth-talking gentleman most of the meal and had given much appreciated attention to all three women in turn.

Some of the swear words had come creeping back in toward the end, but I couldn't expect Trent to hold it in forever, and most of the blue language was Judith's, inevitably loosening him up and pulling him in. In any event, it wasn't as noticeable or grating as I feared it would be.

At the end of the meal of cold fried chicken, German potato salad, coleslaw, and hot biscuits and homemade strawberry preserves, Mother had announced that there was chocolate cake for dessert, but we had to wait for it to be iced.

I went into the kitchen with her and sat and we talked about our separate lives while she spread fudge icing on the German chocolate cake. All the time we talked, I had it on the tip of my tongue to tell her what Trent was to me, but it just wouldn't come out. Perhaps if she pressed me about him, but, to her, he was just a guy I knew who was I giving a ride to meet up with friends at the car races on Sunday.

We almost got there. "I really like your friend, Trent," she said. "He's a real gentleman and a breath of fresh air in this old, stale house."

"Mother—" I started after a pause, but then she spoke again.

"There. The cake's done. We mustn't keep them waiting longer. Judith is enjoying herself with Trent entirely too much. You take the cake, please, and I'll bring the plates and dessert forks."

And then we were back in the dining room, where the first thing I saw was Judith dabbing her eyes with a napkin and with a broad grin on her face. Never had I seen anyone win over and transform "Sergeant" Judith as quickly and completely as Trent had.

While Judith reviewed for my mother some of the funniest exchanges she and Trent had had—which was unnecessary, as we could hear it all from the kitchen, but Mother was too patient and considerate to cut off—Trent turned to me.

In sotto voce, he asked, "Did you tell your mom about us while you were in the kitchen so long?"

"I tried, but—"

He didn't stay with me to hear whatever lame excuse I would be able to come up with on such notice. His attention went to Sarah, while the two older women were chattering with each other, and Sarah almost melted on the spot as he complimented her on her dress.

"You two go on into the parlor and make yourselves comfortable," Mother said after we had devoured the cake, the icing still warm to the last, "while we women clean up this mess."

"If it's OK with you, Mrs. Hammond, maybe Marty and I could find somewhere to walk to keep the pounds that went into this delicious meal from settling around our waistline." Trent had stood up from the table.

"That sounds like a great idea, although I just can't imagine you having a pound of anything gathered anywhere." The compliment came from my mother, although, in watching Sarah across the table, I could see that she was thinking far more prurient thoughts about Trent than that.

"Take him down to the end of Grace Street, Martin," Mother continued. "That dead ends into the entrance of a park by the river now that has a very nice walking trail. We'll be right here when you get back."

Trent walked along, head downcast, kicking rocks from the pathway as we walked down Grace and then into the park. They'd done a nice job with it. The path ran down toward the lake. There was a grassy area on the left rising up to a stand of mature pine trees with heavy boughs sweeping down to the ground. Without saying anything, Trent started walking up the grassy hillside and into the trees.

"Looking for privacy?" I said as I followed him into the trees along a narrow path between the drooping boughs.

"You know what I like to look for from you, Marty," he said. It came out almost as a growl.

Indeed I knew what Trent like to get from me. "Where? Where did you go?" I asked, not being able to see him as I looked around.

A hand came out of the cover of a pine tree and pulled me inside, to the trunk of the tree. Boughs of broad, green pine needles spread out around us, obliterating the view of anything but the sweet-smelling interior of the tree. I laughed and then moaned low, as Trent turned my back to the trunk of the tree and came in for a kiss and a feel of my crotch through the material of my trousers.