Page 65 of Marcus in Retrograde
“I’m aprudewhen my mother is telling my boyfriend about her sex life.” He walked over and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you for coming down, Mother. Please stop talking about sex?”
“One more question,” she said, and looked between us. “Condoms?”
“Yes! Of course. Always,” Marcus said.
She patted his cheek. “Very good, Marcus. I approve of this one.”
Marcus ran his hand down his face. “Mom… Did you give him the ‘don’t ghost my son’ speech yet?”
“No, because I don’t feel like I have to give him the ‘don’t fuck my son without a condom’ speech.”
Marcus whirled and stared at me. “Do you have whiskey? I need whiskey. Or stronger. Moonshine? Rubbing alcohol? Sterno?”
I hadno ideahow to handle this. His mother swore, she was open with sex, and she was a total mama bear—don’t fuck with her cubs.
I loved her already.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “You don’t. We’re always safe and I have no intention of ghosting your son. I’m afraid I’ve rather come to like him and I need his support trying to deal with my family.”
She waved a hand at me, as if to say, “See?”
Marcus walked to me, dropped a kiss on my lips and headed back to the door. “I’m going to go hide in my apartment and try not to die from embarrassment.” The door to the apartment closed, Marcus abandoning me to the whims of his mother.
I glanced at Dawn. “Are you really going to give me a condom speech?”
“No, because I believe you’re smart enough to know the speech by heart.” She glanced at the door after her son. “When he came out to us, we had to figure out how to raise a gay man. Not that we were going to change the basics like pick up your socks and don’t be a jerk to people. But the sex education had to be different.” She pinched her nose. “I was terrified. Terrified, that…
“My older brother was gay, and the hookup culture of today hasnothingon gay hookup culture of the late 70s and 80s. He was diagnosed with AIDS before it was called that. They were calling itKaposi's sarcoma and opportunistic infectionif you felt like being courteous. If not, you called it GRID. In either case, my brother Marcus was diagnosed in 1981, and was dead by ‘83. I didn’t want to see my son suffer that way. We’ve always kept up on AIDS research and I made sure that not just he, but all of my children were sexually smart.”
I traced an ‘X’ across my chest. “I swear to you, we would never consider it without first having been tested for everything. Because AIDS is not great, and neither is the Clap.”
“Good man.” She patted my shoulder. “I approve.”
* * *
I pushed openthe door of the room, eternally grateful that I had the money for a regular hotel. Maybe the Best Western wasn’t the Ritz, but it was better than Betty’s Motor Inn in town.
I tossed my bag on the couch. “Welcome to Greenman, Illinois. Middle of Buttfuck Nowhere.”
Marcus nodded. “I can see that.” He slipped his bag off his shoulder. “It’s an interesting…nowhere.”
“It’s not interesting. It’s boring and insular and homophobic and racist. Probably with a good dollop of sexism and misogyny tossed in.” I stared out the window of the room. “Christ, I cannot believe I’m back here.”
“Would you have left if they hadn’t kicked you out?”
“That was the plan. College, anywhere but here, and just never come back.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m not even sure this is the right thing to do. They were horrible to me. I didn’t even really have the chance to come out to them. I was outed. I was waiting because I knew they wouldn’t want me there anymore. I was going to tell them at a point where I would have been safe.”
Marcus slid his arms around my waist and perched his chin on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You know what stopped me from telling you to turn around and go home? The whole ride here?” He shook his head. “Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“She’s amazing, Marc.Fuckingamazing. She just accepts you. She just trusts you. Shit, I’d give my arm to have one sixteenth of the acceptance you have in your family.”
“You can borrow her.” He laughed.
“Christ, she told us to sleep in the same bed!”
