A man much wiser than me once said, “You take the good. You take the bad. If you take them both, by God, you’ll have the facts of life. The facts of life.” Faulkner always had a way with words, and those words have stuck with me all my life.
I fancy myself a poet in the making. A ruggish, stubborn old bastard, probably looking more like a lumberjack than a wordsmith. I’ve cut down many trees in my life, but my true joy comesfrom putting words onto those trees, once they’ve been smashed down into paper products. I’ve filled hundreds of spiral-bound notebooks with my writing, jotting down all the feelings constantly swirling inside. Lately those feelings have grown in a way most unexpected.
I found him. Or maybe he found me. Ezra Edwards, son of Paul and his stepmomma Diane, those goddamn sons of bitches. I’m going to kick his daddy’s ass one day. I’m going to kick it, and then I’m going to let him heal up real nice, just to kick it all over again. I won’t hit Ezra’s stepmomma, because gentlemen don’t hit ladies, but maybe I can talk my ex-wife into it. From what I hear, Diane is just as big an asshole as Paul.
Who kicks a kid out when they’re only thirteen?
Ezzy hasn’t had an easy life, and he doesn’t like to talk about it. I know he’s done things he isn’t proud of in order to survive. He saw things no kid should have to see. I hope he’ll open up to me one day. There are so many parts of him I’ve yet to learn. It’s safe to say I’m smitten, though. It was a confusing development for me, because I always thought I was straight, or at least mostly straight, and here I am, falling for other guys like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Guys.
Plural.
Even if I’m mostly attracted to women, I’m attracted to Johnny Boy and Ezzy, and that’s enough for me. I don’t give a shit if they’ve both got dicks swinging between their legs.
I love the guys. Fuckin’ sue me.
Ezra would have you believe he’s just a sassy motherfucker with a bad attitude, but I see the man behind the snarky twink persona. Beneath the surface of name-brand makeup and women’s perfume, Ezra is a sweet, beautifully broken boy, in desperate need of love and validation. He craves connection with those he’s closest to, and I wanthim to have that bond, but the way he chooses to quench the cravings is pretty damn depraved.
Right now, he’s stretched out on the sofa beside his best friend, Austin. His rake-thin body is completely nude, and his cock is rock hard. It’s not much of a rock or a cock, really, but it’s still the prettiest cock I’ve ever seen. He’s got a fist wrapped around it, slowly pumping up and down. His legs are propped on his best friend’s thighs, but Aussie isn’t paying him much attention, he’s just scrolling through social media with one hand, using the other to gently grip Ezra’s ankle in a show of solidarity.
“Do you love me, Aussie?” my boy asks, sounding breathless. “Do you promise I’m your best friend forever? You won’t ever leave me? You won’t make me go away?”
“Yeah, Ezzy. You’re my best friend.” Austin’s delivery is lackluster, but since Ezra does this every day, I’m sure the responses are bound to sound canned eventually. Every day, Ezra masturbates beside his best friend. Every day, Austin gives my boy the sense of belonging he craves. Maybe if Ezra’s parents hadn’t kicked him out, and he hadn’t been forced to survive on his own for the entirety of his teenage years, he wouldn’t be so clingy. I don’t mind it though. I like how needy my boy is.
Austin’s stepfather-slash-boyfriend, Dallas, is in the kitchen of our lakeside commune, sorting breakfast out for the gang. Six of us live in the home; Ezra, my best friend Johnny, Dallas and Austin, our buddy Clint, and myself. With that much testosterone under one roof, you’d think we’d all devolve into caveman antics, allowing the home to fall into disarray because men are inherently lazy bastards, but we manage. Sure, the place could be cleaner, but we don’t live in squalor. From the outside, you’d probably think we do. The house ain’t the prettiest on the market.Not by any means.
We moved here after my buddy, Dallas ‘D-Bag’ Johnson, took his stepson and sped off into the sunset, leaving his hateful wife in the rearview mirror. After he made it to Patherfinders Lake, D-Bag called to ask for my help. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s this: I’ll do whatever I can to ensure the happiness of those I love, and I love The Core Four like they’re my own family. The four of us—Johnny, Clint, D-Bag, and me—have worked together for years in the machine shop I owned in Texas. Our bond is unbreakable, forged by the strongest steel, just like the steel drums we weld at work. We used to weld together back in Texas, but then D-Bag acted like a real son of bitch by shacking up with his stepson and abandoning his wife. He ain’t a son of a bitch for cheating on Shelly Snowden, because Shelly Snowden’s lot in life is to make everybody miserable with her rampant methamphetamine addiction and chain-smoking tendencies. The woman’s a goddamn wreck, and after Dallas wrecked her life, she torched my goddamn shop to the ground in some meth-fueled-revenge fever dream. She was like that sexy motherfucker, Angela Bassett, inWaiting to Exhale. She even shouted, “Itistraaash,” to no one in particular. She was alone when she did it, and I only knew it was her because of the security camera on our electric pole. She danced around when it was done, all proud of herself like she was big and bad, literally salting the earth around my one-time pride and joy. She had one of them little salt shakers you see in diners. She didn’t get a whole lot of salt out, but I’ll give her an A for effort if she didn’t just destroy my life’s work in one fell swoop. I worked so fucking hard to get my own shop, and then a few years later, enter Shelly, wrecking shit because she can. That’s why I agreed to help Dallas and Austin create this new home. One of my best friends was gone, his wife was on a warpath, and Johnny got scared after I told him I thought wewere both bisexuals, running back home to his Momma in Arkansas, leaving me on my own for the first time in damn near thirty years.
Our new homestead looks like shit on the outside, if I’m being honest. We’re on the lake, so the scenery is gorgeous, but the house itself looks like a deathtrap. The place was initially just a cabin on Pathfinders Lake, but when Dallas offered to move us all up here with him, we knew we’d need more room, so we hitched his trailer house on the back of my truck and drove it clear across the country. My buddy Clint and I sawed the cabin’s roof off and jury-rigged the trailer house on top, creating a second floor. The structure defies all laws of logic and gravity, and when D-Bag asked how we managed to balance an eighteen-foot manufactured home on top of a tiny cabin, I gave him the only answer that mattered: Plot armor.
Ezra has been stroking himself for a good ten minutes, and when he looks up and catches sight of me, his eyes narrow, and he growls out, “This isn’t for you. Stop staring at my penis.”
“It’s a very pretty penis,” I offer, hoping it’ll buy me another few seconds of watching him this way.
“Where’s your little fuckboy?” he asks, casually stroking himself as he glares through the archway that leads into the kitchen. He means Johnny. He always means Johnny.
These boys are going to rip each other’s heads off one day. Johnny’s been my best friend for years, and now Ezra is right up there with him, sharing the biggest parts of my heart.
I never looked at a man sexually before Johnny, and now I can’t keep my eyes off either of them. In fairness, I didn’t look at all that many women, either, so I guess that’s why I never questioned my sexuality. My son Jaden says I’m probably something called demisexual, but I haven’t taken the time to look into it, choosing to focus all my sighton Johnny and Ezra. I don’t give a shit about labels. I love who I love, and I love them.
After my son finished school and my wife decided she no longer loves me the way she used to, we parted on good terms. I thought it would be one of them-there amicable divorces, but then she took my son from me. She took my baby boy clear across the country, so he could explore his bisexuality at UCLA. I haven’t had a chance to explore my feelings for other men yet, but I feel like we’re inching closer.
After they left, our trailer house felt like a ghost town. Without my family, I had no one. My son was out there living his best bisexual life, and I felt like a deadbeat dad, unable to dote on him or give him hugs. I couldn’t take him outside to shoot at targets with shotguns. Couldn’t go cow-tipping, over on the neighbor’s property. I couldn’t tuck him into bed at night and tell him how fucking proud I am of the he’s become. He’s the biggest, brightest star in my sky, but now that sky is shifting, like there at midnight clouds hiding the moon, little stars peeking out as the wind carries those clouds away, pulling new ones in their place.
Before Faith and Jaden headed to California, Johnny used to stay over a few nights a week. With my wife and son out of the state, he started staying over every night. He took Jaden’s old room at first, keeping me company because he knew I needed him. Eventually, I asked my boy to stay, and he did.
Shortly after, we started throwing weekend house parties for us and the boys at my machine shop. I refuse to let anyone drink and drive, so sleepovers have always been mandatory. When it was time for bed, Clint would take Jaden’s room, leaving Dallas with the sleeper sofa, and Johnny bunking with me. Eventually, when Johnny’s aunt Dot passed away and he didn’t have anywhere to go, he came to stay withme, and aside from one horrible month earlier this year, we haven’t spent a day apart since. We used to lie in bed at night, talking about our hopes and dreams. We had a whole lot of dreams, and slowly but surely, my dreams started consisting more and more of Johnny Boyd.
Johnny and I have always been close, but a few years ago, our closeness started feeling like something more. A flickering of something I’ve only ever felt with women. Over the years the spark grew and grew until it lit up every corner of my heart.
I love him. I didn’t know how much until recently. When my son came out as queer, explaining the Kinsey Scale in great detail, I came to a very obvious conclusion. I’m on the hetero-leaning side of the bisexuality spectrum. I always figured I’d marry another woman one day, but I ended up falling for two men. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’m not ashamed. Not like Johnny was at first.
When I explained the spectrum to him, it was like watching a lightbulb flash above his head. He knew. All at once, he knew what I meant to him, and that scared the hell out of my boy. He ran from me, saying he was going to live a normal life with a happy wife, and that we were becoming too codependent. Johnny broke my heart. He cracked it into a million little pieces when he walked away like I meant nothing. Like we meant nothing.
And then I met Ezra.
Then Johnny came home.
