[Breeder] The Bargain

[TheBreeder]

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I’ve remarked before that I’m continually astonished by the kindness of my readers. When I first started posting my sex entries into a public blog, I made a pact with myself that there were certain things I’d never discuss. When I discussed one of them, long ways around, in an entry called “The Itch,” I had people reach out to me with such generosity of spirit that it made my head spin a little. That gave me the courage to write about something else I’d always been too embarrassed to share with anyone, the events of an entry called “A Very Bad Day.”

My reader response to that one was so uniformly positive and supportive that it overwhelmed me for a few days. The entry got more comments than any other I’ve written, and more private email. I was really touched.

But I didn’t quite finish the story, as a couple of you have pointed out in comments in emails. I left a little bit hanging, about an arrangement we had, after that day.

It wasn’t anything dirty. Don’t get your hopes up, pervs.

After the cops picked me up and took me home, dripping and stinking of sweat and semen, to tell my dad what I’d been up to in the park public restroom, I kept away for a few weeks from the park where I’d nearly been arrested. I laid off the sex altogether for a week. When I tiptoed back into it, for a while I frequented other spots that were more distant—the university where my parents worked, the downtown library, the riverfront parks, the park with the bell tower. It took a good month and a great deal of nerve to set foot in Bryan Park again. When I did, I always kept an eye on, and an ear out for, my surroundings.

But it was summer, and my days were my own. It didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things. And every time I’d head out to the patio and unlock my Raleigh five-speed, if my dad was home and around he’d stand out on the back porch. “Going for a bike ride?” he’d ask.

“Yep,” I’d say, evasively. I’d tell him I was biking up to the drug store for an ice cream cone, or over to a friend’s house, or any destination in any direction save the one in which I was actually going.

“Be careful,” he’d say, repeating the words he’d used on my first worst day of my life. Then he’d watch as I’d hop onto the bike and pedal off to have sex with strangers.

Sometimes, to allay his fears, I’d return with a conspicuous souvenir of my alleged destination—a Nehi bottle from the soda machine next to the drugstore, or a couple of library books. I’d always have a good story about what happened at my friends’ houses . . . what we did, what their parents said, what they served me for lunch. My mom was fine with my chattering. My dad I’m sure didn’t buy a word of it, but he seemed at least grateful for me trying to soothe his worries.

It was about two months after the incident, somewhere just before or after the school year had started up again, that my father approached me the first time to strike up a bargain. “Were you planning to stay out this afternoon?” he asked.

I shrugged, and nodded. I had indeed intended to hit the park that day, as was my custom, and stay out until four or four-thirty. I made up some lie about visiting a friend until that time.

“Why don’t you make it about five?” he asked. “And maybe you could, I don’t know, come back the back way. Through the alley.” Almost immediately I was confused. He wanted to stay out later than usual? And return through the rocky alley, rather than bike along the front walk the way I was used? My father swallowed and smoothly continued. “I had a few things I wanted to do on my own, and I told your mother I was taking you down to school later this afternoon. She doesn’t have to know everything we do. Right?”

The words were another echo of that very bad day. I knew then what was happening. It wasn’t blackmail, by any means. If I’d said no, my father would still have kept secret what had happened that dark day. It was a pact, plain and simple. He would never tell about me. And he was asking that I didn’t tattle on him.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Cool.”

I went out whoring that afternoon and enjoyed the extra half hour. As requested, when I returned for dinner, I walked my bike down the alley. My dad’s car sat behind the neighbor’s garage. He sat inside, waiting, the radio softly playing. He started the ignition when I was close, and then eased into his usual parking spot behind our house at the same time I reached home. Once I’d set my bike on the kickstand, he opened the porch door for me and we entered the house together. My mom was home, and sitting at the table with a crossword. “There you two are,” she said, and then got up to start dinner.

She had no idea that we hadn’t been together all afternoon.

It was the first of many, many times that my father and I exercised our pact of silence. Once a week or so, usually on the days when I planned to play the longest, he’d ask if I was planning to be out for the afternoon. If I said yes, he’d say something like, “How about we both get back around five-thirty?” Then we’d go through the same routine. He’d wait behind the neighbor’s garage for me to return, and we’d enter the house together, alibis straight. Occasionally, though not often, I’d be the one waiting for him. He’d pull down the alley in a cloud of dust and hurry, and apologize before he’d hustle me into the house.

I didn’t know what to make of the arrangement at first. I didn’t really think about it. I assumed he was shopping, or going to the movies, or hanging around with a friend, or driving around the city. It really wasn’t for a good half-year later, on the afternoon that I found a copy of Penthouse in my father’s home office and had spent an absorbed hour reading the forum section, that it really struck me that my father had a sex life of his own. One that was tucked away and hidden, like the magazine I’d ferreted out.

It was a startling realization. Electrical, in fact. And it was from that day forward that I was fairly convinced that my father was carrying on some kind of affair, on the afternoons he had me stay out late.

I didn’t have much evidence for it. He didn’t come back stinking of perfume, or covered with lipstick kisses, or sporting pairs of panties in his glove compartment. But I was savvy enough to see the signs. When I visited his department at the college, I kept running into some of the same young women, again and again. There was a student named Mandy, barely three or four years my senior, who always seemed to be occupying his office hours. Mandy turned into a Becki, another semester, and then was followed by an always-changing progression of fresh faces with names like Carrie or Margaret or Beth. All of them were pretty. All of them were pretty young.

To this day I don’t feel very badly for the bargain I struck with my father. He and my mother were children of the sixties, I have to remind people. They were both pretty open when it came to sexuality, and I have no idea what kind of arrangement they might have between them. And on one level I really liked the intimacy of the arrangement, unspoken and un-talked-about as it was; after a day that was very precarious, in my teenaged years, it felt like a big safety net into which I was happy to fall.

Every family has its mysteries, and its secrets. Mine is no exception. This one I’m content to leave unplumbed, to guess what I can guess, and to leave the remainder in the past. It’s a relic of hot Southern summers, and of restless afternoons. I’m happy to let the bargain lie quietly among them.

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