The Son of Every Man

Chapter 8.1

I perk up like a dog to a whistle when I hear other people's opinions of me, particularly secondhand. I've always been vain in that way. So today, as I ask Miguel about his early impressions of me, I am acutely aware of the potential for a conflict of interest. Indeed, my first days of researching and compiling were fraught with fear that my own ego might somehow contaminate an otherwise pure retelling of events. But now I understand how stories are told, and I welcome my ego in.

Miguel stops mid-sentence for the hundredth time in a week: "What do you want me to say? You were..."

I take great care to seem interested only in moving the conversation along: "I was what?"

"You became a mother," he confessed. I don't know why, or how, but after that night...it didn't take long at all for you to seem that way."

I was already a mother by that point. A few times over. But I know what Miguel means to say, if only he could be less cryptic when it really matters. He means to say that I became a mother to him. And though my heart swells and squeezes against my lungs to hear the words, I derive no sense of pride from what I've done. How can I feel proud of my actions when they were simply to validate the life of another?

"I know that doesn't make any sense," he adds.

I smile across the table at him. "Of course it does."

He squirms uncomfortably in his chair, which is bolted to the floor. He settles again, casts a look of defeat at nothing in particular.

"Thursday," I tell him.

He raises his eyebrows. "Fuck, I know."

"You ready?"

"I think so."

"Any parting words?"

He smirks. It's clear he's fond of the question. "You want to know the truth? Seven fucking years, and here's all I've got: Most of the guys in here don't belong. It's not doing them any good. They never should've been brought within a hundred miles of this place."

"Gabe's working on it," I say. "Can you believe it's been a year since the Bar?"

"He's too good for this world."

"You know he does most of his articling work on that computer you bought way back when. He calls it the blueberry."

"He didn't tell me that." Miguel smiles to himself. "I don't deserve him, you know that?"

"Of course you do. The two of you deserve to be together."

For the first time in all these years, Miguel breaks down. "I just can't believe he waited." He buries his face in his hands, shaking with silent sobs. "Holy fuck, it hurts. I never let him see. I never tell him how bad it hurts, being stuck in here." He uncovers his face, looks right at me, eyes red. "But he waited for me on the other side. Just like he said he would."

;-;

Saturday, July 24th, 1999

The kid fell back from him, cocked his head toward the half-open door to the bedroom. The corner of his mouth drew up into a smirk, daring Miguel to do something, already, for once in his stupid life...to act on feelings that had grown to outsized proportions and then crystallized, so that he ran the risk of becoming frozen.

That simply could not be the outcome. He opened his arms and Gabe accepted the invitation, jumping on him, wrapping his arms around Miguel's neck, straddling him at the waist. Miguel supported his thighs, carrying him swiftly, laughing, to his bed.

Clothing left their bodies.

Miguel stood a foot apart from Gabe's naked form.

The kid's lips parted. "Take me any way you want to. Don't worry about the pain. That's part of it."

An impossible request. Pain was different the moment it fell outside one's own control, resulted from someone else's doing. "I won't make you suffer."

"I know." Gabe took his hand and led him to the bed. He requested that Miguel be on top of him.

Miguel got what he needed from a neglected compartment in his top dresser drawer. He returned to the bed and made himself ready to enter Gabe.

Gabe positioned himself beneath him, open to Miguel's advance. Miguel moved in, felt himself breach the barrier for the first time. He watched Gabe's eyes carefully. They widened, pupils seeming to vibrate momentarily. Gabe's body constricted around him, leading him to back out.

"Are you okay?"

In reply, the kid offered an expression so complex, Miguel could have pondered it for the rest of his life.

"I'm sorry, I need you to say yes or no."

"Yes," Gabe whispered. Then, more confidently, "Please, yes."

Miguel pressed himself slightly in again. The act was apparently not as jarring to Gabe as before. He moved in farther. Each millimeter brought him a deeper and more satisfying stimulation than he had ever encountered in his life.

At last, as he constantly probed those eyes for whatever message they might reveal, a breakthrough. Within thirty seconds, the kid seemed to have arrived at a new and profound understanding. "I want you," Gabe said through clenched teeth. He pawed at Miguel's hips, attempting to pull him in deeper. "Please."

Miguel obliged. He looked deeply into the kid's eyes and, without another word, pushed himself all the way inside Gabe. Miguel gave him everything, again and again.

As Gabe whimpered sweetly and ecstatically below, the universe surrounded them both and rang out with stunning inevitability. A still image of Gabe's face from those early nights in warehouse, back when they hardly knew each other at all, flashed before Miguel. That first smile. Those peculiar expressions which he knew now had utterly transfixed him. Yes, even then, this outcome had been fated. It may have loomed on a more distant horizon, but it was no less fully-formed, and if he only had believed in it, Miguel could have brought it into just as clear of focus—then as now.

Equally inevitable was his release. He knew it more with each passing minute. He wanted infinite minutes. But given the impossible pleasures ceaselessly impacting him, that final discharge loomed like a collision of planets, drawn together in the end by so much more than a simple plotted course through space and time.

Within the deeps wells of Gabe's eyes, Miguel saw that the kid, too, was nearing the brink. They both panted harshly, rhythmically into the still air of the room. Miguel felt Gabe begin to constrict around him in pulsing contractions and he knew it was happening. He pressed in harder, faster, giving the kid exactly what he wanted until it was done.

;-;