Whence Uncle Travis?

Our session was only half over.

"Perhaps another nude model," he suggested. "Anyone wish to volunteer? Maybe you, Mr. Blandford--Marty," he said. "Yes, I think it must be you."

What could I say? I was too discombobulated to try to paint. I might as well be the one stretched out, just in a loincloth, on the platform. So, that was how I spent the next hour. I wasn't worried about being in the almost altogether. I had a great body and I didn't mind showing it off. But I was afraid that my arousal would show--my arousal not so much for the situation as for the art instructor, who was obviously taken with me and wanted to make me. I was so confused, but I was also so ready. How would I know if men were what I preferred--what someone had prepared me to prefer. Maybe Uncle Travis--if I didn't try it out.

Slava Zoukoff joined in the painting exercise. He didn't show any of the other students what he'd painted--just me. Zoukoff was an excellent artist. He rendered his brush strokes quickly and with assurance. He'd managed to capture everything, the atmosphere and the sizzling connection between us, as well as my obvious readiness within the set hour. The painting he rendered wasn't just of me in the near altogether. It was me in the altogether, being quite generous with the equipment he provided for me, but of he himself as well. In the painting, he was stretched out in the position of a rower in a racing skull, sitting on his rump, leaning back, naked. His arms were stretched out in front of him, his hands gripping my wrists, as I was mounted in front of him, facing away, leaning out like the figurehead on a ship, riding his cock, my legs streaming back around and behind his hips. The expression Zoukoff gave on my face in the drawing was one of sheer ecstasy. My full erection, curving up into my belly evidenced my pleasure at riding the man's shaft.

"I think you want to come home with me at the end of the class," he whispered in my ear.

I thought--no, I knew--that he was right. I didn't say "yes," but I didn't say "no," and when he told me to follow him home in my car, I did so.

"You seem uptight," he said, as we were sitting on huge pillows, cross-legged, facing each other on his living room carpet. The wall beside us was a full-wall mirror. "Have you ever smoked a joint before?" It was self-evident that we would fuck; it just wasn't clear how we'd move into it. We were both just in loincloths at this point.

"No, I haven't--or, I don't think I have," I said.

"Ah, the accident you told me about--the partial loss of memory. Perhaps you don't remember because you don't want to. Here, take a puff on this."

"That's probably right," I answered, as I took a drag on the joint.

"And these. These pills. They will loosen you up considerably."

They certainly did. They made me not care what he'd do to me--what he did do to me.

Zoukoff was sitting on his pillow, stretched out like a rower in a racing scull, leaning back, his hands grasping my wrists, as my ass was possessed by his moving shaft, my torso jutting out and away from him, like the figurehead on a ship, my legs streaming out around and behind his hips. Our loincloths were bunched together beside us on the carpet. We were both naked--two beautiful bodies, one mature, commanding, the other young, yielding, as we fucked.

My head was turned, looking into the mirrored wall beside us. He'd gotten everything right in his painting of this, down to the expression of ecstasy on my face and the hardness of my upcurved erection following the curve of my belly.

The question of what my preference were had now been definitively answered. As Zoukoff pulled me on and off his cock, I conjured up other men in my mind. Uncle Travis was there, in the background, but only as a face. Surprisingly, what strongly came into mind was Jennifer's interracial brother, Josh, fully revealed in his magnificent nakedness, on top of me, inside me, fucking me.

* * * *

Having discovered definitively which way I swung--or thinking I had--I wasn't delighted when Jennifer invited me to her parents' house for a meal and to meet them. This was moving in the opposite direction from where I was discovering I needed to go. I needed to break it off with Jennifer now--for her sake if nothing else--although, truth be told, I enjoyed her company and I even enjoyed the sex with her--just not to the degree I had with my art instructor. I had to admit, though, that the drugs probably augmented my enjoyment with him.

I was still a bit conflicted. I didn't want to just say, "Sorry, Jennifer, I've found I'm gay so we can't fuck anymore," and walk off. I had to find a way to extract myself from the relationship in a way that didn't hurt or shock her. I wonder what women think who lose men to other men? I'm guessing it didn't lift their self-esteem a whole hell of a lot.

So, I went to her parents' house. It was a great house in the pricier neighborhood off North Westwood, where other professionals like Jennifer's doctor father gathered. He was black, and married to a white, but he was rich, so the town gave him a pass. He was also a handsome, well-built man with a good smile and a wonderful bedside manner. He certainly had passed the good looks onto this son, Josh. The bedside manner he must have passed on to his son, as well, because Josh, milk-chocolate to Jennifer's much lighter complexion, was at the dinner and all bedroom eyes when he looked at me.

Josh slipped me a note while everyone was shuffling around, which said "Midnight at Pepe's Tavern off 55, near Hydro Adventures. Only if you want to."

I knew that tavern was a gay bar.

So, here we go. Unless, of course, when I left here it was to take Jennifer back to her apartment and bang her all night, while trying to keep her dreamboat of a brother out of my mind.

There was no contest. When I arrived at Pepe's Tavern, Josh was sitting at the bar, having polite, but "no dice" conversations with several submissives who were swimming around him. It was clear to all that Josh was a dominant--and a desirable one. It quickly became clear when I arrived that he wasn't cruising that evening--that he'd been waiting for me--because he turned his face to the door, his smile lit up, and he turned the stool next to him to the welcome position for me when I came through the door. The guys who had been circling around him before I arrived backed off, having no trouble reading the room and where Josh and I fit in it.

"I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't be doing this," I said. Josh put an arm around my shoulder, but I didn't shrink away. I felt powerless. "I don't want to hurt Jennifer. I don't want to cause anything breaking in your family."

"And yet you're here," Josh said. "Jennifer has told me you are conflicted and have missing chunks in your memory. She knows you aren't sure about your sexuality, and she's asked me to help with that. You don't want to leave--at least you don't want to leave without me."

"No, I don't," I admitted, with resignation. "I just discovered--I just recently found what--"

"Your art teacher at the college screwed you, didn't he?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Until then I wasn't sure. I wasn't trying to deceive Jennifer. But how did you guess about Zoukoff?"

"Jennifer told me. She said she could tell by the way you too looked at each other and how hard it was for you to talk to her about him that he was humping you."

"Just once--so far--and just this week. I was... I am... going to find a way to tell Jennifer."

"You don't need to strain yourself over that," Josh said, with a laugh. "She knows. She doesn't care. She says she doesn't want to marry you. She just wants to enjoy you fucking her. She thinks you have a great bod. She knows we're here now. She knows you're probably going to come back to my apartment. She knows we're probably going to have sex. She doesn't care. You are going to come back to my apartment with me and we are going to have sex, aren't we? I am going to fuck you, aren't I?"

"Yes," I answered, honestly. There didn't seem to be much of a point to argue about that. "But Jennifer. I can't--"

"Sure, you can, if you enjoy fucking Jennifer. She says she doesn't care if we're fucking or the art teacher is fucking you too. It's the twenty-first century. I'm sure you've heard about bisexuality. Sex is sex is sex. You're sexy, no matter who you're doing it with. Shall we leave now? You can follow me in your car."

* * * *

This was it. This was the one. Shit, he was big. Fuck he filled me, possessed me, stretched me. Chocolate on vanilla. His arms ran down mine, his brown hands gripping my wrists, forcing my arms above my head, pressed to the sheets of his bed, my cheek rubbing against the satin, my eyes looking into the mirror on the back of the closet door across the room, near the bed. Watching him--us--in profile. His beautiful body hovering over mine, his legs bent. Me on my knees, raising my butt to his command. My trembling torso pressed to the sheets.

He was mounted on my hips, his shaft deep inside me, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. Fucking me, owning me.

"Fuck! Yes! Do it. Do it all!"

Afterward, we lay there. This was it. This was the one. All the time--all the time Josh was inside me, fucking me, I didn't think of anyone else. Not Slava Zoukoff, not Uncle Travis. Certainly not Jennifer. Only Josh.

"What can I tell her?" I whispered.

"You don't have to tell her anything," Josh answered. "She knows. We've shared before. You don't even have to give her up."

"I was never really sure, not until now. I thought I was, but I wasn't."

"Is this about the automobile accident? About not remembering a lot of things?"

"Mostly, yes."

"And this other guy--this uncle of yours?"

"Travis. Yes, but he apparently isn't really my uncle. But I think he may have done something--something to make me bend this way."

Josh laughed. "You either do or don't. Nobody makes you that way. And I think people can bend both ways. Sex is sex is sex."

"You've said that before."

"And you've got to know what it was with you and this Travis. You can't let that go, can you?"

"I could, I think. Now that there's you."

"Yeah, sure," Josh said.

Josh was right. I couldn't. I really couldn't let it go.

* * * *

I'd told Josh I'd let go of the need to settle the mystery of Uncle Travis, but he obviously didn't believe me. I didn't believe me either. Two days later, he'd dragged me to the public library to see Jennifer. I hadn't talked to her since Josh had owned me--and he did own me--but she acted like nothing had happened since dinner at her house--that the world hadn't completely turned upside down. We were there because she was a research librarian and the library had local newspaper files going back to the founding of the town sometime before 1850.

"Did you ask your parents when this accident was?" Jennifer asked as she walked us back to the research room where they kept the old microfiche readers. Most newspapers were in computer files now, but Poplar Bluff was a bit behind the times. Its newspaper files were still being put into the microfiche photographic archives system.

"I asked, but they were as evasive as ever," I answered. "My dad told me just to forget about it. That's hard to do if I can't remember it. But it's not hard to come up with a month at least. It was in 2018--in June, I'm pretty sure. I know I was in the hospital until it was almost time for school to start--and then I was shipped off to Lakeland in Springfield rather than starting here at Three Rivers College."

"It won't be hard to narrow it down, then, if the accident was here."

"I'm sure it was," I answered, as Jennifer settled down in front of a microfiche reader and picked up the cartridges of the local Daily American Republic newspaper for the past five years. Josh and I stood behind her, Josh pulling me in close by putting an arm around me and palming my hip. If Jennifer noticed the maneuver, she didn't react. It wasn't long before she'd found the coverage of the accident.

"There it is. A one-car accident, north of town on 60, near the intersection with 67. There's your name and a Travis Trent. Is that--?"

"Yes, Uncle Travis. Not really my uncle, it seems. The son of my mother's father's second wife. It's complicated."

"Uh, oh," Jennifer blurted out.

"Uh, oh, what?" I asked.

"You're right. It's complicated. The car went off the road and flipped over. Speeding. A one-car accident. But the car was stolen. Your uncle--your not your uncle--Travis was being charged with auto theft as well as speeding and reckless driving."

"Auto theft?" I exclaimed. I searched my brain for some sort of recognition, but the only thing that was coming up was to ask what I did. "Does it say who was driving?"

"Yes. Travis Trent. They had to cut him out of the car. He was in the driver's seat."

I almost didn't want to ask the next question. "Did he die? Does it say?" My dad insisted Travis was dead.

"It doesn't say here. Let me see if there's more." I held my breath as she scrolled. "No, there's coverage here of a case." More scrolling. "He pleaded guilty."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't remember much about Travis and there was still that possibility in the background that he'd messed with me, helped me be what I was today--although now that I'd gone across the divide, I was glad I was what I was. So, was that it with my parents? They wrote Travis off because he stole a car--because he involved me in that? How much was I involved in that? Did I know we were driving in a stolen car? Questions were being answered, but they were raising more questions. "So, what now?" I said aloud.

"Now you get a lawyer," Josh said.

"A lawyer? What do I need with a lawyer?"

"You still have questions. This Travis isn't dead--or, at least, wasn't when you had the accident. You still have questions of and about him, don't you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"So, you need a lawyer. You need to find out where he is. Probably in prison somewhere, right?"

"Yes." Exactly. Josh was taking the lead here. He was dominant and I was submissive. That was just the way I wanted it.

* * * *

"And you've come looking for me now, because...?" Travis stopped there and gave me an expectant gaze through thick glass wall between us with the lines of metal mesh that, I guess, was meant to be an added barrier if one or the other of us decided to go ballistic and somehow got the glass broken. We were at the Algoa Corrections Center up in Johnson City, where the lawyer Josh got for me found Travis Trent, my not-uncle was incarcerated. Josh was waiting for me out in the parking lot.

"My dad insisted you were dead. And, I wasn't really all that sure you actually existed," I added.

"So, you're not here because you remember everything?" Travis said after a short pause, where he scrutinized my face. "It's not part of my deal with your family that you track me down."

"No, I don't remember much of anything. I want to--especially whatever there was between the two of us. Although that doesn't matter as much now. I've settled on that."

"You have a keeper of a boyfriend now, you mean?"

That caught me up. "How did you know it would be a man? What did you do to me?"

"I fuckin' did nothing to you, Marty. You were the one who were hitting on me. There wouldn't have been an accident, if you hadn't..." He stopped there, though.

"What do you mean?" I persisted. "What is it my parents are afraid of? What is this deal you say you have with my parents?"

He visibly sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter now anyway. I get out of here in just over a month--in forty-six days and," he looked at his watch, "three hours."

"That's all I want. I don't want to not know any longer. The doctors said it would all come back eventually--if I didn't insist on subconsciously blocking it. But I'm still blocking it, so maybe it's more than just that I want it from men. I thought that was the issue. I thought you had abused me sexually and I couldn't come to grips with liking men."

"Sexually abused you? That's a laugh. But you've come to grips with being queer now?" he said. "You do have a guy who does you?"

"Yes, I've come to grips with that--with being at least bi--and I do have guys who do me. But still I can't remember."

"You got that right about there being more that could block the memory."

"What? Tell me. Not knowing is worse than knowing."

"You might be right there. OK--because it doesn't matter much anymore. We went off the road because you were trying to give me a blow job and I don't swing that way."

"So, you're not--?"

"No, I'm not. And I have a woman--I had one then. I'll be joining her in Florida from here--at least I hope she'll let me join her. I have my electrician's license and she's already set up a business there. I'm leaving for Florida the day they let me out of here. Your family is just as dead to me as your father says I am. I don't want to have anything to do with them--or you."

"So, my folks are stonewalling because they thought you and I were having sex."

"No, that's not it--not with your parents. If they know you're gay it's because of something that's happened since the accident. What they're afraid of is the truth--having the truth come out."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't steal that car. You did. You had a snit with the man who was fucking you and you stole his car."

"You were behind the wheel."

"Not when you stole it. You stole it and were hopped up. You drove to my place. I was returning it, hoping the guy who was humping you would think it all was funny and would let it all blow away--which he would, because he did anyway. He didn't want people to know he was fucking you. You came on to me in the car and that made me go off the road."

"But you took the rap for it, and why, if my parents didn't know that sex with a man was involved, have they been so secretive about it the last three years?"

"They know you stole the car. You stopped at your parents' house before coming to me. You were hopped up and boasted about jacking the car. They've been paying me to take the rap. What I got from them is going to set me up in a business of my own in Florida. I was behind the wheel. It was an uphill battle to prove it wasn't me. And my lawyer told me that the other charges, the speeding and reckless driving, were going to get me in prison for about as long anyway. Your parents knew you stole the car."

Oh.

"It doesn't matter now. And I believe you about not remembering any of it, so whatever has happened isn't your fault. I don't blame you to begin with. You were confused. I was being nice to you and you thought I was interested in more. That Barry Jackson is a real shit. He's the one that got you hopped up that day anyway."

"Barry Jackson, the banker?" I said. "He's fat and ugly." It occurred to me then that the newspaper article might have identified whose car had been stolen, especially as it was a pillar of the professional community in Poplar Bluff, but Jennifer hadn't said. Maybe if I'd heard the name "Barry Jackson" that would have jogged my memory, and it all would have come back to me. But no use thinking about that now.

"Precisely. But he also is the first guy who spiked you. I hope you're doing better for yourself now."

I was doing better now. A whole hell of a lot better. Josh was loads better than just better.

"Just let it go, Marty. Your parents stop paying once I'm out of here. They gave enough to set me up in business in Florida, and we can all just be dead to each other. They've been through enough not to have it come back on them that you now know everything. Stay unknowing. We're almost at the end of it. Just let it go. Where's your boyfriend?"

"Out in the parking lot," I said.