Finals and the funerals of the seven who died dampened my spirits the week after the Pickle attack. Joey insisted he go to the funerals despite never having met any of them personally, except possibly to test them with the coin that they had died for. Suzi and/or I went with him, but we each separately couldn't make one due to conflicts in final schedules. Sarah went to all but two, and several other people from the Group made it to them as well.
Like I said, it dampened my spirits, and when I feel down, people around me feel down as well. So I hung around my apartment away from other people as much as I could, and once finals were over, I packed up a few things to go home for a while. But on Thursday night, the night before I was to leave, my plans changed when I got a phone call from Brad's sister, Sandi.
"Has Brad called you lately?" she asked straight off.
"Nope. Haven't heard anything from him since Christmas break. Why? Hasn't he called you?"
"Not since late March, and I'm really worried. Could you take me to find him this weekend?"
"What, to Texas?"
"Yes."
"No offence, Sandi, but don't you think you're jumping the gun here? He's probably just tied up in school and his modeling thing."
"I had my fifteenth birthday last week. He wouldn't have missed it without calling. He's in deep shit, Tim. I know it."
"Fifteen, huh? Alright, alright. I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a trip down there a couple days."
"Oh thank you thank you!"
"But Sandi?"
"Yes sweet, adoring and sexy ex-master?"
"Heh. Uhm.. If we find out he's just super busy or something..."
"I'll be broken hearted, but I won't make a fuss. At least not until he gets home."
After arranging to pick her up around three the next day, I called home to tell them what was up, then got airline tickets, made hotel reservations, and did a little long distance snooping to see if I could dig anything up before hand. But because it was after hours and A&M's finals were also over with, I couldn't get a hold of anyone useful to find anything out.
When I arrived at Brad's house the next day, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when Sandi came out. Sandi wasn't a little girl anymore. In fact Sandi was a hotty, and I instantly saw she loved flirting it too.
"Wow, you certainly have grown since I saw you last," I chirped when I popped out to help load her suitcase.
"One hundred and fifteen percent all woman, Brad says," she proudly stated while pushing her nicely defined bust out.
"Yeah, you definitely have some to spare," I said, before waving to her mom who was standing on the porch watching us. "Do I need to..." I asked in a lowered voice while motioning over at her mom.
"Nah. They know I'm going with you to see Brad. I can't thank you enough for this," she said before turning towards the house and yelling, "Bye mom! I'll call you when we get there!"
Sandi was the exactly the type of girl I had attracted with my empathic smile my senior year of high school. Sexually active, experienced, yet selective about the boys she had sex with, I normally would have at least been tempted by the natural sexual vibe she emitted. But I wasn't, and that kind of confused me.
Had my interests really completely shifted from girls to women? Or was it because of the guilt I felt concerning Sandi that turned me off? Probably a bit of both, plus the events the past few weeks concerning the funerals, and of course... Her.
What about sixteen year olds then? Jennifer was sixteen. Had I lost interest in her sexually too? Did it matter? I still loved her. Even if she didn't want me, I still wanted her. That wasn't sexual to begin with, and it was probably the sexual stuff that drove her away.
"You're thinking of Jennifer, aren't you," Sandi said, breaking the silence in the limo on the way to the airport.
"Yeah."
"Did you ever hear from her since she left?"
"No. Have you?"
"No, but I did talk to her on the phone for a couple of minutes the day you went nuts."
"You did?" I said, my heart starting to race. "What did she say?"
"I don't remember exactly. I called to see if she was okay, and she... She sounded like her mom, almost. Patient, but... stern. Or just stubborn, maybe. I think she had already made her mind up to leave. But she didn't even hint it to me or anything."
"What about mad?" I asked more calmly than I felt.
"You mean angry? I don't know. Her mom always came off like she was angry at people, but Jennifer always said it was just her way. I don't think Jennifer was mad at you. I think she was just scared and was just doing what she thought she had to do."
"Last year Joey found where she had gone and he and Suzi went to see her right before Christmas," I began, then paused to wipe my eyes.
"What happened?"
"The house was empty. But they found a note. It said... It said for me to leave her alone."
"That's..." Sandi started, then never finished as I took a deep sniffing breath to clear my airways.
We sat in silence for the remaining trip to the airport, but as we pulled into the passenger drop-off area, Sandi said, "It just doesn't sound like the Jennifer I knew."
Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same.
As we entered the terminal and looked up which gate our flight would be at, I became aware of another voice scanning the crowd in some of the food bars and shops. I didn't bother to tell Sandi about it, but we kept our distance since I really didn't want a confrontation in such a public and busy place.
By the time we reached our gate, the scans had stopped and I assumed they had selected their prey and moved on to someplace private. Yes, I had strong notions to step in and protect the innocent mute or mutes involved, but quite frankly it was none of my business, and to interfere would endanger not just myself, but Sandi as well. I had long accepted that for my own good I would have to turn a blind eye to some of the evils other voices did around me. But that still didn't mean I was okay with it.
While we waited for our plane to board, Sandi and I played a little game of guess when they lost their virginity, and where they lost it at. Because of the other voice, I didn't use my telepathy to learn what the correct answer was. But I didn't want to alarm Sandi, so I just made up the answers based on what my empathic sense said about their personality.
While we lined up to board, I noticed a man in his mid twenties taking a close interest in the women in the line. I knew the look in his eyes all too well. It was the look of a predator... A sexual predator. The look of male voice scoping out the fresh feminine flesh in order to ration out how much pleasure he can have within a certain time period he was constrained to.
And obviously he was on our flight.
His mind wasn't shielded, and he certainly didn't seem aware of my own barrier, but just to minimize the chances he'd notice it later, I slowly adjusted my shield to be as transparent as I could without allowing my current thoughts to be easily read.
Thankfully Sandi's sexual drive was running at a lower notch right then, probably due to her concerns over her brother and our conversation about Jennifer. If she had been emitting the vibes she had been when I first picked her up, she would have probably caught the voice's attention right away. But in this situation he overlooked her. Of course I helped that a bit by making sure I was between her and him the whole time.
Man, I was glad I had chosen coach and not first class. We were in the mid section, and knowing voices as I did, I guessed he was up in the first class section. But just in case, I made sure I had an isle seat and watched to make sure he didn't come down from the front section. He didn't. I was pleased with this arrangement because I would be able to see him coming if he decided to wander into the back for some fresh meat.
I started to relax once we were up in the air and hadn't sensed any telepathic activity on the plane at all. But just to be sure, once the seat belt sign went off, I casually walked up to just inside the first class section and felt it out empathically, then walked up and down the isle once to visually confirm he wasn't there.
Confident he wasn't onboard, I went back to my seat and relaxed, eventually falling asleep like I usually did on plane trips. Sandi woke me up briefly as she got up to go use the bathroom, and even though I let my eyes close again, I stayed awake and kept my inner eye on her swirls until she came back. Thankfully the rest of the plane trip was uneventful.
We arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after dark and took a shuttle to the hotel we were staying at for the night. Sandi was surprised I had arranged for separate rooms, and after she asked the clerk at the desk how much the rooms were, she made a big fuss and wouldn't accept her key. I could have forced it on her, but that wasn't the way to handle it, so I ended up compromising for a room with two beds that cost $50 less than the two rooms together.
Just my luck they had a honeymoon suite, and it was only five floors up and two or three rooms over. Sure, I enjoyed the sex during the dream walk, but it also made me lovesick the next morning, and the twelve people sharing their seven o'clock commuter flight to the campus with us had a pretty miserable half hour trip because of it.
Sandi and I spent the morning and afternoon talking to the few people we managed to find that knew Brad. One of Brad's neighbors told us Brad had moved out around March without saying much, and after having to give this one lady the urge to help us, we found Brad had withdrawn from his classes early in the semester and had forfeited his partial scholarship. His account had been paid off, but the only forwarding address they had was the same we had already checked.
We checked into our motel room around five with no new leads, but we still had a few old ones left. We knew his agent's first name was Harriet, he had done that shoot last fall for the department store adds, and that he had come across the modeling job from a flyer posted around campus. After grabbing some dinner and freshening up, we went back to the campus and focused on the bulletin boards there.
It was getting pretty late when we passed three frat guys who made some rather... suggestive comments about Sandi's attire. Sandi perked up and flaunted her stuff, and quite frankly it was a nice break from her declining mood. With it being dark out and the lighting wasn't greatest in that area, they didn't seem to notice her age, just her shape and abundance of exposed skin.
Sandi was about to end the encounter when I got the idea maybe they or their frat brothers may know or remember something about the modeling flyers. After Sandi gave them the push off, I told her my idea, then altered the frat guys' memories to think they had invited us back to the house.
We didn't get back to the motel until after three, but at least we had a couple of names and phone numbers to try in the morning. Plus I had recruited a few of the brothers to help us the next day, finding that several of them didn't have anything else constructive to do.
By noon the next day, Sandi and I were on our way to where Brad's last paycheck had been sent at the beginning of May. Apparently Brad's popularity had hit its peak over the holidays, and after three months of declining dollar amounts in the photo shoot offers, Brad breached his contract when he accepted an offer to be in a low budget porno.
"He's here," I informed Sandi when we pulled up in front of the apartment building and I found his mind. "Looks like he's all depressed about how things turned out, but... Brad's still holding on to the hope he'll make a come back and make things up."
"Well, let's go!" she said impatiently when I didn't get out right away.
I sighed and got out, but once we were inside I turned to her and commanded, "Wait here until I call you, okay?"
"Ohhhh!!" she complained, but didn't follow me when I entered the stairs to go up.
Brad was just coming out of the bathroom when I knocked on his door, and after watching his swirls speed up while he didn't move to answer the door, I said, "Brad, it's me. Tim. Open up."
"Awe man...." he whined when he opened the door and saw me. "Sandi made you come down here to find me, didn't she?"
"Yeah. She's downstairs."
"Awe MAN!" he exclaimed, repelling himself away from the door, then paced back and forth nervously. "Awe man! Did you have to bring her? Awe MAN! Fuck!"
I stepped in and closed the door behind me, then watched as Brad put his hands behind his head and sunk down on the couch avoiding my eyes.
"I'm so fucked Tim. I thought about calling you or Joey, but..."
"You don't have to explain, Brad."
"Shit. Then you know about the... pornos."
"Yeah. When I found your mind, it kind of stuck out being in the back of your mind all the time."
"I'm so fucking stupid," he groaned, his mind flashing through the key events in just a second or two, not giving me the whole picture, but a bit more than I had had.
"You were just being honest with them. They took advantage of you. It wasn't your fault. At least not completely."
"I don't know how to face Sandi," he said emotionally. "I don't want her to know..."
"Well, I'm not going to make her leave without seeing you. You're going to have..."
"I don't want to know either," Brad said, looking up at me with hope. "Dude, you could make me forget. You can do that, right?"
"No! Absolutely not. Face it, Brad. You got fucked up the ass because you got greedy. They may have misled you a little, but you knew ahead of time it was a bisexual bondage movie. What did you expect?"
"Man, they said I wouldn't have to do any faggy things. But getting your ass fucked is pretty faggy if you ask me."
"Did you suck any cock?" I asked, more out of curiosity than to prove any point.
"No way, man! They hung me up, put some color shit in my hair, put a clamp on here and there, then teased me for hours, man. I was so wound up by the time they wanted to shoot the fuck scene, I didn't care what I had to do. Shit, man. I'm so disgusted with myself. I'd like to cut it out of me if could. Man, be my buddy. Make me forget."
"Yeah, and if I did, you'd end up having nightmares, or even worse, wind up in the same predicament again. Look, Sandi's about ready to go nuts down there. The sooner you tell her, the sooner you'll feel better. She's not going to think any less of you. Shit, she's been through a lot worse herself. I bet she'll understand better than either of us can imagine."
"Come on, man..." Brad begged, getting up and looking me in the eyes as he put his hands on my shoulders. "Please Tim. This thing is killing me."
The truth bubbled to the surface within the momentary empathic link, and it was something I hadn't detected, or expected. The reason he was wrought with anguish and humiliation was because he had thoroughly enjoyed the B&D aspect of the experience and yearned for more.
"Oh Bradley..." Sandi cooed as she rushed through the door and hugged him.
Brad started crying, and despite everything he had said about keeping it from her, the first words out of his mouth to her was, "I'm a fagot, Sandi. I'm a fucking fagot."
I had given Sandi the details on her way up to the apartment, but it wasn't until after Brad had let it all out that she told him so.
I have many regrets about the sexual relationship I helped create between those two, but the bond of trust and love they had formed helped me not feel so bad about it all. Especially in situations like this.
Sandi had to fly back that night since she had school the next morning, but she talked me into staying with Brad a couple of days to help him tie up loose ends, pack up, and move back home. I felt sort of like I was checking under the bed for monsters when I scanned each and every passenger boarding her flight to make sure no voices were getting on, but after the close call on the way down, I wasn't about to take any chances.
Bright and early Monday morning, Brad and I went to the "studio" where the small adult film company filmed most of their stuff. The place was just a small warehouse with an assortment of backgrounds, sets, and some bondage equipment, a lot of which I had seen in the south study back home. There wasn't anything being filmed that day, but there were people there, including the producer Brad had worked for in the two straight movies he had been in.
In his first movie, Brad had only been a character in the background, but had impressed the producer with his performance, earning him a major role that was filmed the month after the first. But the money they paid him was nothing near what he had desired, so he didn't immediately refuse when another producer who Brad knew did the bi flicks at a different location offered double what he was getting if he signed on for his next film.
What Brad did wrong was telling this guy everything he liked about bondage, then letting himself be blinded by the money promised to him, the descriptions of the bondage he would experience, and probably purposely not listening to exactly what kind of sex he would have to do.
After examining his contract, I concluded it had been written in good faith and that Brad had signed it without really reading it through. The document had given the director some improvisational power to go beyond just a bondage scene if Brad verbally agreed to do it while the filming took place. They had his verbal consent to penetration on tape, and after watching the sex scene through, I knew Brad didn't have any hope of a legal action, not that that had even crossed his mind.
Watching the tape had a strange result on Brad. He had been impressed by his own 'acting' as he thought of it, and after I had made them cough up the rest of his promised pay for the flick, the combined temptation of the money and the B&D was making him think.
While he drove us back to his apartment, he asked, "How did you and Joey start... You know... Messing around?"
"I guess we first just wanked off to playboys together, then after we wanked each other off a couple times, my telepathy started kicking in and we started sharing our bodies and stuff. We didn't really see it as having sex with each other. We just were sharing the pleasure with each other until we could do it for real later. But then when Suzi liked us messing around, we just kept going further and further with it. It was more of trust thing than a sex thing."
"What about that gay kid, Eric?"
"That was different. At camp, Eric was all hormones and no control, and I guess I let him talk me into doing stuff I wouldn't have otherwise done. But after the stuff Joey and I did at Northwest, it wasn't hard to let Eric's excitement excite me too. I've never fooled around with any other guys. Except James, but that was... complicated."
"Man... Guys are not my thing, you know?"
"Yeah. They're not usually my thing either."
"I wasn't too bad, though, was I," he stated.
"Honestly? You were excellent. I'm sure they'll sell lots of copies and make lots of money off it. But you don't want to be labeled a porn star, bi or otherwise, if you ever want to do the modeling thing again. Besides... You're better than that."
"Yeah, and it probably would just turn out like the model thing anyway," he sighed.
After stopping off to get some boxes, we went back to his apartment and started packing for about an hour before taking a break for some lunch. I knew this whole bi thing was still on his mind, but hadn't expected him to ask me to have sex with him that night over Apple Jacks and hot dogs like that.
"What?!"
"I gotta know if I like it, man. I trust ya," he said, putting his hand on my thigh.
"You're nuts," I said while scrambling to my feet. "Brad, no offense, but I do not want to have sex with you."
"Why not, man? Fine if you don't, but I thought we were as good of friends as Joey and you were."
"Stand up," I told him after gauging his emotions.
When he did so, I walked over to him, put my arms around him in an embrace, then stared into his eyes and asked, "How does this make you feel?"
He shrugged and said, "Sort of scared. Excited a little too."
"Does it make you want to do anything?"
"Uhm... I don't know... Like what?"
"Like... Do you want to kiss me, or feel me up, or fuck me?"
"Faggy stuff? No!" he said, appalled, yet not breaking away.
"Well, wasn't that the idea?"
"I guess," he said as I let go and stepped back. "But I was thinking more... Ah skip it, man. It doesn't matter," he said, sitting down and going back to his food, still disturbed.
Brad's concept of Joey's and my sexual relationship focused on the trust factor we had had, which I admit was probably the biggest reason why we dared to experiment in that way, but certainly wasn't the only significant one. Trust was important to Brad, for it was the trust he gave to people that ultimately brought him the greatest pleasures, sexual or otherwise.
But what haunted him the most about the bi porno was how he had felt his trust had been betrayed, yet it had been one of the most erotic pleasures he had ever experienced as well. Brad wasn't confused about his sexual orientation. He was just confused.
Talking about it as we packed seemed to help him, but he didn't act like himself again until after he got home and had his parent's wrath to distract him for a while.
Ah, there's nothing like the pitter patter of little feet running to greet you when you come home.
Of course that's only if you can hear it over the long squealing "Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmm-eeeeeeeeeee!"
"You are getting so BIG!" I praised Richie as I caught the naked kid and lifted him up for a hug.
"Timmy Timmy Timmy!" he sang as he hugged me around the neck as hard as he could.
After he stopped cutting off my air supply, I asked, "What are you doing running around without any clothes on?"
"I'm like mommy. I like wunning naked. I can wun weeeal fast. You wanna see Timmy?"
"Sure," I said, tickled by his enthusiasm.
"'Kay," he said, scrambling out of my arms and running away crying, "Catch me! Catch me!"
Running after the two-year-minus-one-day-old bundle of energy was harder than I thought. His short legs didn't really make him that fast, but man could he turn and dodge! And without clothes on, there wasn't anything I could really grab without the fear of scratching or hurting him, but eventually I faked him out and was able to scoop him up into my arms.
Richie had to show me everything Michelle, his nanny and now teacher, had taught him, and that was more than I could have dreamed. Richie read me a ten page book, answered seven out of nine addition flash cards correctly, and even amazingly stood on his hands for a whole ten seconds which is something I had never quite mastered myself.
Both Michelle and my mom were present through all his demonstrations, soaking up my surprise and impressed expressions while beaming with pride themselves. And little Richie just loved every minute of showing off what he could do. He was my brother, alright.
At first, I was concerned when I learned my mom had brought five unmarried mothers each with a child around Richie's age into the household, thinking it was just so Richie would have children his own age to play with. But after meeting the women that night and scanning their minds for the details, I gave my mom a big hug and kiss from what I found.
My mom was trying to give these women a chance to get back on their feet after having no one to help them manage their unplanned pregnancies. Two of them had been teen pregnancies and had dropped out of high school, another had lost her husband in an accident, and the other two had had unfortunate timed one night stands. They had all responded to an ad in the paper for an apartment in a complex for single working mothers, and with only a few minor adjustments, they happily moved into the mansion as my mother's personal staff.
Richie loved playing with his live-in playmates, but he also tended to get fairly jealous whenever Michelle spent time with the other children without it involving him.
Despite the fact that most of the children were slightly older than him, Richie had long mastered the things Michelle was teaching the others and was for the most part bored despite Richie loving to show off his smarts to the others. So for half of the day, my mom took Richie away so Michelle could work with the others, but then after rejoining them he would tend to spend the rest of the day clinging to Michelle more than playing with the other children.
You could say I was pleased to find Richie clinging to me instead of Michelle while playing in the playroom with him and the other kids. I did raise my eyebrows in surprise to find the two girls, Julie and Pat, were just as happy to run around naked as Richie, Todd, Chris, and Willy were. But it didn't bother me since it was all out of innocence, and I knew that wouldn't last forever. I figured let them enjoy it while they can.
All day long I had wanted very badly to tell Joy and Honey about the male twins I had met, but they were in their long deep regenerative sleep after having seeded a pair of jocks they had picked up the night before. At first I was rather angry with them for doing this on the morning of my return, but after seeing them sound asleep in their pillowless and coverless synthetic tiger skin bed, I forgave them and decided to sleep with them that night in their bed just so I could surprise them in the morning.
They surprised me, however, by not being there when I woke up in the morning. I quickly tracked them down, but found them too busy fucking their new toys to even acknowledge my newly learned twin empathic hello. I left them with their mindless near orgasming slaves fairly confused and little hurt, but quickly found comfort with my little snuggly brother who had apparently slept in my bed instead of his.
"Am I two?" he sleepily asked me after I had gotten under the covers with him and he crawled on top of my chest.
"Yep. You're a big boy now."
"Big boy now..." he repeated sleepily. "Remember two?" he asked me.
Richie had long gotten used to I, my mom and my dad being able to fill in what he didn't say while he snuggled, a lot of the time not needing our telepathy to do it either. But this time I wasn't clear on his meaning, so I peeked in his head and found him thinking of the pictures my mom had shown him of my second birthday, along with the picture of me laying flat in the tub proudly showing off how strait my little willy stood up when it was hard.
"Actually, I do a little," I confessed, faintly recalling the moment the embarrassing snapshot had been taken.
Richie looked up at me with a growing smile, then crawled out from under the blankets and laid down beside me on his back saying, "Me like Timmy, see?"
As you probably guessed, his little soldier was at full attention, but after tickling him to distract him from his hard on, he crawled under the covers and back on top of me to get warm and to think some more.
Watching his mind run through images and sensations was pretty neat. It was amazing how clearly he remembered things, how easily he associated things together, and how quickly his attention changed from one thing to the next. I wasn't even really paying that much attention on what he was thinking about, rather being more interested in how his streams flowed and changed, but when I felt his little rod harden again, I found him thinking about my mom and dad's sex he was constantly exposed to seeing.
My dad's desire for Richie to have a more sexual relationship with my mom apparently hadn't gone unnoticed by Richie, and between that and the explanation I had given him several months ago about why girls liked boys and such, it perplexed him why our mom didn't want to have sex with him.
Luckily, many things perplex a two year old. This wasn't any more important to him than why Santa Claus only came once a year, why it rained, why there was night and day, or why men grew beards and women didn't.
"Timmy, beards?" he asked while looking up at me.
"A long long time ago," I began. "Before people knew how to build refrigerators or cars, men had to go out during the winter into the cold cold wind to hunt for food. Men grow beards because back then they needed them to keep their face warm."
"Girls no hunt?" he asked.
"Because the men were stronger, and the women needed to stay home to take care of the children and stuff."
"An' have babies," he added.
"Yeah, I guess."
"Twins have babies?"
"No, the twins can't have babies. Some women can't have babies."
"Julie and Pat have babies?"
"When they get older, probably yeah."
"Three?"
"No, Richie.
"Ten?"
No, Richie. They have to be almost as old as I am."
"Michelle babies?"
I sighed, then said, "Yes, she could, but she won't until she finds the right person to be the daddy."
"Me be daddy?" he asked.
"You're too young, silly. You have to be almost as old as I am to be a daddy, and by that time Michelle will have had babies with a daddy her own age."
I hadn't expected Richie to be hurt by this fact, but even if I hadn't felt his emotions take a nose dive, his tearful whimpers would have instantly alerted me to the fact.
"Hey, hey... Now don't cry. Just because you can't have babies with someone doesn't mean you don't love them. I can't have babies with you, and I love you."
"Michelle have my baby?" he whimpered.
"I guess she could when you get old enough," I said, seeing it as a way out without there being any real harm. I mean, good grief. He was only two.
"Mommy have my baby?" he asked after a long silence.
"Richie, if that ever happened, the baby would be very sick and stupid. Mommy's and sons, Daddies and daughters should never have babies because... because..."
"Bad for them?"
"Yeah. It's bad for the baby especially."
"Why?"
"It just is, Richie. Just like why it rains, or why there's night and day. It just is."
Somewhat satisfied by this answer, he laid quietly for a few minutes while I rubbed his back lovingly.
"Timmy?"
"Hmmm?"
"Michelle have your baby?"
"I don't want her to have my baby," I said, a bit surprised.
Richie got up on his hands and knees, crawled up to my face, then said very sweetly with a smile on his face, "Please?"
I smiled back and said, "Nooo..."
"Please?" he said, this time with a sad face.
"Noooo..." I said with a sad face.
"Please!" he commanded verbally.
"No. I'm not ready to have a baby, and I already picked the person I want to have babies with and it isn't Michelle. Now stop thinking about having babies. It's not something a two year old should worry about."
Richie crawled off and headed straight for the door. I knew his feelings were hurt, but he also was being stubborn and wanted his way, so I let him go to pout, knowing he'd forget all about it by the time I got dressed and ate breakfast.
To my surprise, I found the twins were mad at me, and it took me all morning to work out it was because I hadn't invited them to Central State like I had apparently promised them when I left last time.
So by lunch-time, I had Richie and the twins ignoring me, and my mom had her hands full keeping Richie occupied while the staff prepared the North study for his birthday. So after eating my lunch alone, I decided to see what my dad was up to just to pass the time until Suzi came over for Richie's party.
My dad was getting a back massage by Edna, this fifty-year old woman who knew how to torture every inch of a man's body with incredible fingers of pain and pleasure, and I knew better than to try and talk to him while she was working her magic. Shit, that woman could make my dad howl with pain one moment, then groan with pleasure the next. I personally was never brave enough to let Edna work me like that, but sometimes I rather wished I had.
"You sure you don't want Edna to give you a massage?" my dad asked as he pounded her ass with his cock in reward for her services.
"No thanks," I said, trying to keep myself distracted from the way her flabby breasts swayed back and forth underneath her.
As my dad tensed up all over from his orgasm reaching it's full height, I studied his forty-one year old figure and admired how fit it was. I mean, you would think someone like my dad with all his servants and stuff wouldn't have much muscle tone from the lack of exercise. But in fact, my dad was probably was as fit as I was, and told him so when he noticed me studying his body while he toweled off.
"I wish mother was here to hear you say that. She always told me I'd burn out before I was forty from all the Essence of Life I drink."
"What, that stuff keeps you fit?"
Carol held his robe while he slipped his arms into it, her naked form momentarily distracting me from his face, but not long enough to miss the smirk he had on his face.
"What..." I asked suspiciously.
"Carol could you leave us for a while. I have some... Family secrets to share with my son."
"Of course, Master," she simple said, smiling as she imagined several sexual positions she believed he would be telling me about.
"Family secrets?" I echoed, grinning myself from the way he had said it. "Does this have to do with the Essence of Life and how it keeps you in shape?"
"I would think that's obvious," he said, looking at me with a humorous gaze. "Sex is the best natural exercise, and given enough variation in technique, it can keep the entire body in shape."
"I guess you could say you're living proof of that."
"I am," he said confidently, purposely ignoring how I intended it to be a joke. "But that's only part of it, Timothy. Without the Essence of Life providing me the energy when I need it, I would have stagnated a long time ago. You could say it helps keep me young, but that's more in spirit than in body. I will never understand your resistance to deny yourself what your body wants while it is young. You're not living life to the fullest if you don't let yourself fuck while you have the youth to do it all the time."
"You make it sound so simple," I said with a shrug.
"It is that simple, Timothy. You, your mother, Richie, and I were all meant to have sex with more than just one person. We have the gift, we have the urges, and we have the Essence of Life."
"Give me a break, dad. If I went around fucking girls like you, you'd be hip deep in grandchildren before you could enjoy Richie's first wet dream."
My dad smiled at me with that look that meant I had said something ironic without knowing it.
"What?"
"You must promise not to tell Richie, or anyone else for that matter. It's a family secret that I don't want getting out."
"Okay, okay. What?" I asked, intrigued by his secrecy.
"No," he said, sitting back against the cushions with a wicked smile on his face. "First we have a drink of the Essence of Life together, then I'll give you a few simple hints and let you guess."
"Oh, come on, Dad..." I sighed. "You know how I feel about that."
"Damnit, Timothy. Can't you just try and be my son just this once?!" he snapped. "I'm trying to share something with you here. Something my dad shared with me that for once wasn't something he took away or tried to use against me."
"But Richie's party..."
"Look son, I'll make a deal with you. As much as the thought disgusts me, we can fuck our hands until we get it out of our systems. Alright?"
"Whoa... Okay. I guess that's fair," I said, realizing how much he really wanted this to have to stoop so low.
By the time I had stripped, my dick was already at full attention from the horniness I expected to feel from the drink, and after my dad handed me my glass, I saw his was in the same condition as mine.
My dad motioned for me to stand up with him, then after making a toast to our vitality, we stood next to each other comparing our bodies while sipping the bubble gummy drink.
I have to admit, my dad was a fairly handsome man. His cock was just a tad thicker than mine, and his darker body hair seemed to cover just a bit more area on his chest and stomach, but besides these differences and perhaps the skin on his hands and face showing just a touch of age, we were two of a kind.
As we began to feel the effects of the drink, we lay down against the mountain of cushions piled around us, facing each other slightly to talk, but not too much so we weren't staring at each other when we jerked off.
"Joey, Suzi and I used to drink it all the time," I reminded him.
"Why did you stop?"
"I don't know. I guess we were afraid of getting addicted to it."
"Three years ago, I would have said that was rubbish. But then I tried going without it for six months. Longest six months of my life. Thank God your mother can fuck like an animal when she has too."
"Why did you go back to drinking it if it was that hard to stop?"
"Because I never intended to stop for good."
"Then why..."
"Damn. I can't understand how you ever ejaculate this way," my dad said, frustrated.
I looked over at how he was doing it, then laughed, "Well you're holding it backwards!"
"I am? But this is how the girls always held it," he said, releasing his drooling cock and watching it dip and sway.
"That's because... Just hold it like you would when you pee."
"Timothy, my mother taught me never to touch my penis when I pee. Didn't Sam teach you that?"
"Uhm, I don't know. I don't remember!" I said, frustrated. "Look. See how I'm holding mine?"
"Like this, huh?"
"Yes," I said as I felt the deep tingles of my first of several orgasms preparing to start.
"Slow down, Tim. It's not time yet," my dad objected.
"Shiiiitttssss," I hissed as I slowed my hand and hip thrusts.
"Most male voices I've met have dozens of illegitimate children," my dad said while stroking with building confidence. "I've never had any. Well except you, of course, but I don't think you could be called illegitimate any more."
"Thanks," I said, trying to wipe off enough precum off my dick and hand so I could get a decent grip of my foreskin.
I was rather distracted by this pointless task, for my precum was oozing out so fast by this point I couldn't clean my dick's skin off fast enough before it got slimed up again.
"Cool," I said as I swung my dick around sharply and watched my precum string out in a long rope before the strand broke completely away and splattered against some cushions.
"Tim, pay attention!" my dad said with frustration.
"Sorry, what were we talking about?" I asked.
"Fuck if I remember!" he said before madly humping his hand several times then releasing it and wiping his hand off on the cushions cussing, "This is the fucking stupidest way to cum I've ever fucking tried! And I've tried fucking everything!"
Purely out of empathy, I scooted up next to him and took hold of his dick with my spare hand.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he demanded.
"I uhhh... I just," I stuttered, releasing his deflating member, then realized its significance.
"Stupid!" he exclaimed as he got to his feet and rushed towards the exit. "I'm such a fucking idiot! To think I wanted to have a man to man talk with my queer cock sucking... CAROL! MIN! LINDA! Where the fuck are my fucking..."
I stopped listening at that point, for I either had to cum or start screaming like my dad from the build up in my balls.
Those were a dozen intense orgasms, let me tell you. I must have been dripping with cum from head to toe by the time I was done, for when I woke up hours later, it was hard to move without the dried cum trying to pull out a few body hairs out of their roots all over my body.
I was in the shower just admitting to myself I was not having a good day when Suzi popped into the shower with me. It had surprised the hell out of me, but in a good way, and I think I hugged her for a good five minutes before we soaped each other up and had some clean fun in the shower.
While we were drying each other off, my dad's last words popped into my head and made me pause long enough for Suzi to notice.
"What's wrong?"
"It's nothing really. My dad called me queer while he was tanked up on the drink, that's all."
"I'm sure he didn't mean it like it sounded," Suzi said after a long pause.
"It's not the words he said, Suz," I sighed, looking down between us, then with a slightly wicked smile I gave her right nipple a tweak.
"Ewp! Stop that," she scolded me.
My smile faded as I said, "I disappointed him. He was trying to tell me something that really meant something to him. It was supposed to be a male bonding thing where we fucked some women together or shit like that before he revealed some sort of family secret. He really tried, Suz. He knew I wouldn't be able to stand watching him fuck a girl with the drink in me, so he tried to appease me by... I don't think he had ever jerked himself off before, Suz. So I tried to help him and..."
"I think I get the idea," Suzi said, clasping her hands behind my neck and looking me in the eyes. "Look Timmy. I need to tell you something."
"What?" I asked cautiously, already knowing I wasn't going to like it.
"I sort of... bumped into your dad while he was wandering around looking for one of his sluts... and..."
"Why that fucking BASTARD!" I exploded. "And I was feeling bad for..!"
"Look at ME!" she demanded, taking my chin in her right hand and forcing it to do just that. "You can scan my mind if you want, but he didn't make me do anything I didn't want to."
The honesty was like a slap in my face, and all I could do was stand there in disbelief as she calmly explained, "When I saw him all naked and hard, dripping... Timmy, he looked... Shit, I thought it was you for a moment. I just couldn't resist the temptation. He was so... Sexual. So raw. So... Hot."
"Suzi, you fucked my dad. You fucked my dad! Suzi! You FUCKED my DAD!"
"And Joey's fucked your mom! With your approval!" she defended.
"And that makes it right!?! SHIT, Suz. God Damn it," I exclaimed as the world started spinning around me, buzzing filled my ears, and everything started going dark while I lost my balance.
"Timmy? Timmy, I'm sorry!" Suzi desperately said as the buzzing left and the world returned to my senses. "Are you okay?"
Still a little dizzy, I closed my eyes, then, strangely enough, realized that my eyes had remained open while everything had gone dark.
"Timmy," Suzi said softly, then kissed my chest a couple of times before touching my lips with her own, experimentally.
It was a short kiss, but a forgiving one, and if I hadn't been so un-horny, I know, I just know, we would have ended up making love on the bathroom floor.
After we got dressed and started making our way to the North study for Richie's birthday party, I took her hand and asked, "So how was my old man? Any good?"
Suzi smiled, then teased, "Why? Are you thinking of trying him out yourself?"
Seeing the frown on my face, Suzi quickly added, "He had style, he had... incredible technique... He really knows how to pleasure a woman, but..."
When I glanced at her, she smiled and said, "He doesn't have your heart, Timmy. There was no love in it, just sex. It was like fucking a machine... an incredibly experienced and pleasurable machine. But after I spend the night with him tonight, I'll probably have had my fill of..."
She grinned wickedly when I looked at her to object, then I smiled myself and said, "Well then... I can't wait to hear how he rated you."
Oh we had a hell of a time keeping Richie's clothes on him during his birthday party. My mom kept apologizing to everyone, always adding how it was her fault for ever having let him try going around the house nude. My dad didn't help by siding with Richie and pointing out it was Richie's party, but my mom wouldn't hear to it until the candles were blown out and the picture taking was over with for the night.
At least Richie had forgotten he was mad at me, though I doubted he could have remembered what it was he had been mad about if he hadn't. It was strange how he could remember your words from a month before, but other things he would forget in an hour.
But that is not to say he had forgotten what we had talked about that morning. While Suzi and I were goofing around by feeding ourselves cake using the other person's arms and hands, Richie toddled right up to Suzi and asked, "Su-su, are you gonna have Timmy's baby?"
I choked on my cake while Suzi started laughing, and Richie just stood there perplexed by what was so funny, then turned away with a goofy grin on his face as his cheeks started to turn red.
"That was so cute," Suzi sighed.
"What's this?" I said as I got a strange vibe from her. "You're not actually thinking about it, are you?"
"Maybe," she said, then her spirits suddenly sank.
"Hey, what's the matter?" I asked, finding Suzi suddenly sniffing from a rush of tears.
"Nothing," she said, putting on a brave face and glancing at my eyes hesitantly.
"Come on," I said softly. "Tell me, please?"
"Ohhh," she sighed. "It's really silly. It's not worth mentioning."
"I like silly things."
I waited for her to say something, but she remained quiet longer than I was comfortable with, especially with her looking down in her lap afraid to show her eyes to me. So I kissed her on the cheek and got up to go tease Richie and Todd who where naked as the day they were born and shoving their mouths full with cake.
But Suzi grabbed me by the elastic of my shorts before I could get up all the way. So I sprang right back into my seat, put my chin on my hand, its elbow on my knee, and stared up into her downcast face and waited for her to speak.
"Timmy..." she whispered. "I don't want to hurt you."
I smiled and said, "You won't. I promise."
She took a deep breath while looking up at the ceiling, then with a hollow chuckle she said, "I was just thinking what it would be like for my kid to... say something completely innocent like that, then get embarrassed and..."
She glanced at my eyes a moment, giving me a taste of how torn she was about saying...
"And blush all over," she finally said.
"That's it?"
She frowned, thinking I hadn't caught the significance of what she had said.
"Come on, Suz. Don't you think I realized by now that you and Joey... I mean, nothing says you have to, but I always imagined you two would get married and have kids."
"Well I didn't!" she said emotionally, and very loudly as well.
We suddenly became very aware of the sudden decline in background noise, then as people started to go back to their own discussions, I nudged Suzi and indicated with a quick tilt of my head for us to go up into the upper level of the study so we could talk privately.
"I never wanted to have to choose between you and Joey," she said somberly, wiping her nose in the tissue I had gotten her from the box hidden under some cushions. "I never wanted to, but..."
"Oh, Suz," I said, hugging her again. "You didn't choose all by yourself, you know. We sort of chose together. All three of us did. I still love you just as much as I would if you had imagined your kid with my twinkling eyes and my much sexier ears..."
"Now who's dreaming," she snickered.
"Feel better?"
"I guess," she sighed, then looked me in the face and her eyes started filling up again.
"Hey, I got an idea," I said brightly. "How about we go look at all the embarrassing photos my mom has of me when I was a little kid again, and after you laugh your ass off, you won't feel so blue about your kid missing out on having my good looks."
"I don't think that's...." she began, then smirked as I shared the recollection of that bathtub picture Richie had liked so much.
Seeing the bait having been swallowed from the mischievous look forming in her eyes, I got up and rushed down the ramp to ask my mom where the photo books were.
Fifteen minute later, my whole life was on public viewing as practically everyone had followed my mom and us to the storage room to get the photo albums to see how cute Richie's older brother had been at his age.
I had seriously lost interest in all the comments and comparisons people were making by the time they reached my kindergarten pictures, but Suzi's interest was only invigorated by finding Joey was starting to appear in them, and the frequency only increased the farther she went. She and Joey had seen them before back in our freshman year of high school, but a lot of things had happened since then and she didn't remember that much about them.
The picture of Joey and I dressed up as girl scout hobos on Halloween in fifth grade made me roll my eyes from knowing the type of comments Suzi was about to unleash. But in doing so, my eyes landed on another photo album, one I faintly remembered looking at a couple of times back in the old house before my voice had showed up.
Intending to seek revenge on my mom by putting her own childhood up for public review, I scooted over to the book and kept my back to the crowd to give myself some time to dig up some dirt before my mom could notice.
But instead, I found myself fascinated by the black and white pictures of the people I had heard so little about, the farm house I had explored with LeAnne, and the innocent little girl who was never caught on film without a smile on her face.
It was rather eerie looking at the black and white photos of that house where my mother had grown up in. Everything was new, the ground around the house was all neat and tidy, and they had great big long flowerbeds lining each side of the road as far as you could see. That run down dilapidated farm I had visited years ago had once been a beautiful home to three people who expressed their happiness in every photo. Oh, my grandfather never once gave the camera a smile, but there were a few where he had been taken unaware, and even without those I could see it in his eyes.
My grandmother, Rosemarie Jasmine Turnsmith-Brandton, had the kindest, warmest eyes I had ever seen. I remember the first time my mom had shown me those pictures, this one particular picture of my grandmother made me cry because I wanted to give her this big hug... And then my mom started crying with me, saying she wanted to give her one too.
Sorry. Had a small case of the sniffles there. A thirty-year old man getting broken up over having never physically met his maternal grandmother... If my, um, superiors caught me doing that, they'd put me through some more of their... constructive emotion channeling lectures. Shit, why they ever picked an empath to do this job, I'll never know.
Anyway, once I had reached my mom's high school years, I went back to where I had started and went backwards through the first seven pages I had skipped.
My heart stopped a moment when I came across a picture of my grandparents and my great uncle Tim at a table apparently in a bar somewhere. My great uncle Tim was stooped over behind them draping his arms over my grandfather and grandmother's shoulders, and looking up at the camera with a brilliant smile. The shock was seeing the looks on my grandparents' and great uncle's faces. I knew those looks. That warm, fuzzy, happy, drunk on love, I don't give a damn about what anyone else thinks look that I had seen on Joey's, Suzi's, and even Eric's faces when we were together in public and making a scene.
As I started to stand up to show Suzi, I turned the page to the very beginning. I always though my grandparents' wedding picture seemed appropriate for a family photo book to start off with. Only this time the picture knocked the wind out of my lungs. This time a face, a young man's face that I didn't immediately recognize... yet his unreadable eyes jumped out at me and triggered all sorts of alarms.
"MOM!"
"Oh, don't be pulling that old thing out," she complained when she saw what I was carrying.
"Mom, who is Berry Livingston?"
"Berry Livingston?" she repeated with a frown. "I don't know, honey. Who is he?"
Confused, I looked at Suzi in search for answers, then just as Suzi looked up and noticed my stare, I turned back to my mom and said, "Berry Livingston said hi."
"Berry Livingston," she echoed as her face expressed her shock. "Where did you hear... Is he still alive?"
"Apparently. Who is he?"
"He's... He was my Uncle Tim's... ward, or at least that's what my father called him. He later became my uncle's best friend and partner, and whenever Uncle Tim wrote us, he always ended the letter saying Berry Livingston says hi. Timmy, how did you..."
"I met him. Remember that cranky old guy who tried to kill me every time he spilt his coffee? I think it's him. At least he claimed to be. I didn't believe him. I didn't... Mom. Did Uncle Tim have voice?"
"No, of course not," she said instantly, but then crooked her head as something suddenly seemed to occur to her.
"What?"
"I think I need to sit down," she said, looking a bit pale.
"What's wrong?" Suzi asked along with several others.
"Perry. He knew my mom's parents. And he really knew my great uncle Tim."
"What?" Suzi exclaimed, not sure she understood me.
"Here, look at this," I said, laying the old photo album down in her lap and turning the page to the photo of the threesome. "Remind you of anyone?"
"Who..." she softly gasped.
"My great Uncle Tim, my Grandpa Jasper and Grandma Rose," I explained while pointing to the faces, then left her to draw her own conclusions as I joined my mom who was fanning herself.
"He had voice, didn't he," I stated gently.
"Yes, I suppose he did. When I was a little girl, I fell asleep in the woods one day, and didn't wake up until after dark. I tried to find my way back to the house, but I got lost and panicked. I tried to run but twisted my ankle on the rocks. Then I heard... At least I thought I heard Uncle Tim talking to me, telling me Daddy was coming, and not to cry. I never saw him, and I never understood why he hadn't just helped me himself and why he hadn't stayed afterwards. But now I know why."
"Timmy?" Suzi called.
I opened a two way and asked, "Yeah Suz?"
"This is creepy."
"Why?"
"It just is. It's like history is repeating itself."
"Huh? How so?"
"You're Tim, I'm Rose, and Joey's Jasper. Jasper and Rose get married and have Sam, but Tim never marries and..."
"Who say's I'm not going to get married? History isn't repeating itself. It's just... coincidence."
"But... Did you look at the wedding picture?"
"Of course I did," I thought back, getting up and walking over to her.
"Look at him," she said out loud, pointing at my Great Uncle Tim's face in the background.
Separation, love, sacrifice, hope, pain... That's what the slightly blurred image of my namesake said to my empathic sensitive eyes. Feelings all too familiar to me, and only an empath, or someone who knew that look as well as apparently Suzi did, could have read it behind the mask of a smile my great uncle wore.
The unreadable eyes of the young man standing next to Tim with his hand on my great uncle's shoulder didn't give away his thoughts or emotions, but something else in his face made me realize he either understood Tim's pain, or shared it.
That night after the party and Richie had been put to bed, my mom and I studied the pictures in silence in the dining room. I had this overwhelming feeling my grandmother had been quite a woman in her day. I kept sensing she was like a hub between the brothers, that she maintained some kind of balance. It didn't really make much sense to me, but then I also realized I was probably reading too much into the aging black and white photos. They were just momentary fragments of a time long past. You can't reconstruct a city with only blueprints of a couple of buildings and a very old map.
Around three in the morning, I had a dream Perry was out to kill Richie before he could turn two. It was a strange mixture of places and events as dreams tend to be, and I woke up before anything really happened besides finding Perry's cane stuck to the wall above Richie's bed.
Unable to go back to sleep right away, I decided it would be nice to crawl into Richie's bed unexpected and uninvited for a change. So I went down the hall and carefully snuck into Richie's room, then froze in shock finding Richie already had a bedmate. Only this bedmate was naked and had this strange lump on her stomach that I slowly realized was Richie's head.
My baby brother was asleep in the most compromising position, his upper torso lying on top of his nanny while his legs hung limply between her spread legs. I couldn't believe my eyes. I covered my mouth in anguish, then shakily walked out of their room, not knowing what to feel or think.
By dawn I had probed their minds to learn my mother, not my father, but my mother, had instituted changes in Michelle's perspective to make her receptive in case my little brother attempted something sexual with her. Not even a week after that, Michelle innocently took a bath with Richie, simply not knowing better any more, triggering Richie's curiosity which quickly explored her lack of resistance to his touches and exploring.
Richie knew nothing about lust. He obtained no physical climax from humping his nanny's warm wet hole. He only knew it was what males did to express their feelings to females, and that view was entirely my fault. But my mother's programming of Michelle's mind so that Richie's little pencil brought her the same pleasures as a fully-grown cock was to me a step too far. But how do you confront the woman who taught you what was right and wrong with something like this? I couldn't. I just couldn't handle doing that right then.
I was a queer disappointment to my father, the twins were giving me the cold shoulder, and I couldn't bear looking my sweet little brother in the face knowing his innocence was gone by my own mother's doings...
So I scribbled a message saying Joey needed me back at school and left it on the main dining room table. Then after a brief detour by the south mansion to pick up Midge, my helicopter, I headed to Central State where I hoped I would be distracted from the heartache of losing the last vestiges of the mother I had always known.