Kenny 16: Oh Shit

Have you ever done something, I mean something really important, and realized a short time later, maybe even while you’re in the act of doing it, that you've screwed up, and bad? I don't mean things like answering a question incorrectly in class when you know the correct answer, I mean BIG things, like hanging by a rope 10 stories up and cutting the rope. Like driving a car at high speed on a frozen lake only to drive around a point of land and finding yourself heading directly for open water. I've done it many times, and I suspect most people have at one time or another in their lives. I call these mistakes "Oh Shit" incidents. I think I did a major "Oh Shit" in 1963; one that would once more change my life forever. I got married!

My marriage to Cathy was to take place in September. I had limited time, so we had arranged that we would do it all in the space of a week. I arrived from Montreal on Monday night. Cathy and I met for dinner where we went over the final plans. Tuesday night there was a bridal shower for Cathy, so I had the night off. Time to negotiate with the Collins family.

"No, Charlie!" Mom Collins said emphatically. "You simply cannot do that! It just wouldn't be right!" I had just proposed to her that she and Robbie be my family, not my father. My sister was out of the country and couldn't get here, Uncle Brad had sold the farm and was opening a new General Store, which only left my father and one of his sisters I hardly knew.

"But Mom," I insisted, "you're my family now! You're the one I stay with when I'm in town, and you've always said I was like a son."
"I know that, Charlie," she agreed, "but you do have a father, and if you ever hope to reconcile with him you have to make an effort."
"But I don't care any more! I just don't care!"
"Well I do! He's still your father, and I won't be the one to get in the way of your hopefully getting back together with him. We'll be at the wedding, you couldn't keep us away! But we'll be there as your guests, not as family."

So that was that! I knew better than to argue, so I just left. I was feeling just a little rejected by the whole family, especially by Kenny. He wasn't coming at all, and none of his family would do more than attend. Now I had to find a Best Man, which was when I learned how few friends I had in town. Dave had joined the army, Jack had disappeared, not that I'd want him anyway. I had a cousin David who had agreed to be an usher, but there seemed to be no one who I really wanted for the task. I ended up calling a very old high school friend who was going with one of Cathy's classmates, and he agreed. John was an ok guy, but I had never known him very well, but he was gracious enough to get me out of my mess.

Wednesday night was wedding rehearsal night. The entire wedding party arrived at the church, a small church on the edge of town where Cathy's family attended. We went through the motions, were told what to expect and what would be happening, then we all went back to Cathy's parents for tea and coffee. I was welcomed into Cathy's family with open arms. They gushed and cooed over me until I wanted to scream! But at least they were friendly and were giving their blessing. I found myself wondering what they would've thought if they'd known all there was to know about my history. I do need to say at this point though, that I grew to love my in-laws, and they have always given every indication that they love me like a son.

Thursday night Cathy had a graduation rehearsal, so I tagged along because I had nothing better to do. I sat in the empty auditorium watching the proceedings, thinking about where my life was going. One minute I pictured myself as the knight on the white stallion, the Prince Charming, having swooped down from Indiana, New York, Montreal, to take my princess away from all her misery. And precisely what misery was that I was taking her away from? The next minute I felt like I was in a swift moving river trying to swim upstream, being swept along helplessly by the current.

Swift moving stream? Damn! I suddenly thought of the cabin where Kenny and I had been so happy. I wondered if the old man who ran the place was still there. Somehow I doubted it. When I'd gone back to St. Luke's I'd found just about everyone I knew there was gone. The organ was being played by an older lady I didn't know, Mrs. Atkins had retired and moved out west with her son. Even John Whittaker was nowhere to be found. So why would I expect the old man with the cabins to still be where I'd left him so long ago? I was glad I was sitting so far back as the graduation class did their thing, because I didn't want Cathy to see the tears in my eyes. Why did things have to change? Why couldn’t everything I’d left just stay the same for when I returned? At the time it never occurred to me that I had changed as much as, probably more than anyone or anything else.

Friday night early was the graduation, followed the same evening by the graduation dance. They didn't call it a prom for reasons I'll never know. It was a busy evening and a lot of fun. All of Cathy's classmates were there, some of them with dates I'd gone to school with. If I thought the members of our graduating class at Indian Tech were close, it was nothing compared with Cathy’s nursing class. They were like sisters, and she has often described them that way. Some of them even knew I'd been going with Kenny, but no one said anything. I could just imagine what they said to each other. We left the dance at 1 AM to get our tails to bed. The wedding was Saturday at 2.

We were about halfway through the ceremony when the "Oh Shit" syndrome hit me. Up to that point the knight in shining armor was winning over the guy in the water, but then it hit me: the sheer finality of what I was doing! I wanted to run! Drop dead! Anything! But then I heard myself being invited to turn and face the congregation, then I was being presented as one half of the newly married couple. I had been so sure! So on top of the world! So anxious to begin a new life as Cathy’s Prince! But the entire day, the preparations, even a lot of the ceremony, were just a blur.

Every one knows what happens on the wedding night. We got away at about 6 PM and drove about 100 miles. Our plan was to just drive around eastern Canada for a few days - we only had a week and not much money, then I had to be back in Montreal for work. Once we left on the honeymoon Cathy suggested "We've got a whole lifetime, Charlie, and I'm so tired, would you mind if we didn't... you know..."

Mind! Damn, it was like a dream come true! I was so afraid when the time came that I couldn't perform, I welcomed the postponement! I was scared to death! I had never even come close to intimacy with a girl before, and I was not looking forward to it. On the other hand, I was really curious what it was like. I agreed readily to her proposal, but then nature took over. We had just got into bed and turned to kiss good-night when the hormones, the “family curse” maybe? kicked in. We made passionate love, and to my surprise everything worked fine. I must admit it was great!

Married life wasn't too bad, really. In fact I rather enjoyed it, especially since Kenny and I were having less and less contact. It felt really good to be totally open, "normal" in every way. No one asked about our sexual life because everyone knew, or at least assumed. We tried to get friendly with Kenny and Judy, but she would have none of it. Cathy kept asking me what in the world her problem was, and I could only shrug that I guessed she was jealous of what we'd had, what we'd been. "I don't think she's doing it right," Cathy observed. "I don't think that's the way to do it."
"So what is the right way?" I asked angrily. At that point I was missing Kenny terribly; not the sexual aspect, as least I don’t think that was it, but this wasn’t what we’d planned at all! Neither of us had ever dreamed when we stopped being lovers that we wouldn’t even be friends.

"Charlie," she said with surprise, "Please don't let's fight. I just think it's kinda up to me to show you that I can be a good lover too, not to put you in a cage. You can't change what you are or what you've been, you didn't mislead me, so I've come into this with my eyes wide open and I'm determined to make it work! And with your mind I know better than to try to force you to do anything. I know you still love Kenny, but I also know you have enough love for both of us. I’m your wife now and I have certain expectations, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up everything, even your friends."

By the third week in October, Kenny and I had only spoken twice since my marriage. I was somewhat surprised when the phone rang in my office and I heard his voice. "How's it going, Charlie?" he asked. To me his voice didn't have the same sparkle it used to have. I remembered the day in the cafeteria when I'd thought his eyes looked pretty lifeless.
"I'm going ok, Kenny. Damn, it's good to hear from you!"
"Yeah, I know," he said. "It's been too long. You and Cathy adjusting all right?"
"No problem, we're an old married couple now. She’s gone to work at Montreal General hospital, and we’re starting to get used to each other. How about you?"
"Well," he said slowly, "we've had a few problems but we're ok now. Judy's job didn't work out so well so she quit. Charlie, we... uh... we're moving to Toronto."

"Toronto?" I echoed. "Transferred?"
"Nope," he answered, "another job change. I've been offered a real great job with Murray Consulting. I'll be working with their clients designing phone and data networks. It sounds like a lot of fun and the money is really good."
"When are you moving?"
"We're going tomorrow to try and find a place to live, then I'll be back for work next week and then we're gone for good."
"Damn!" I exclaimed, "that's awful sudden. Am I gonna get to see you before you go?"
"Sure hope so Charlie. I've missed you. Maybe we can have dinner some evening next week?"
"Why don't you come home with me? Cathy would love to see you and Judy."
"Judy won't be with me, Charlie. She's staying in Toronto when we leave tomorrow. And I don't know about going home with you... I... well, I just don't know if I'm ready for that."

The tone of his voice told me that Kenny was not prepared to negotiate, and I didn't want to jeopardize not seeing him at all, so I agreed to meet him at the restaurant in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel next Tuesday, and we hung up.

Tuesday evening I was in the restaurant waiting at 5 PM, even though our agreed time wasn't till 6:30. I was as nervous as a teenager on his first date. Why? I thought, Kenny and I go back 11 years! Why am I so damned nervous? I knew the answer even if I didn't admit it to myself. I was afraid I'd jump his bones right there in the restaurant. I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

When Kenny finally showed up at 6:20, I was truly shocked! He looked so much older, so much more... well, it just wasn't my Kenny. We shook hands, and then we hugged warmly. That sort of thing just wasn't done in public in 1963, but we did it anyway. "Kenny," I said after we'd sat down, "you don't look so good. Are you all right?"
"Fine, Charlie," he evaded. "Just tired. I've been working both jobs for a month now and traveling back and forth to Toronto... I'm just tired."
"You gotta take better care of yourself," I lectured, and then I felt the tears welling up. How many times in the past 11 years had he given me that same advice? And then our eyes locked. Man, what was it about those eyes?

"Things aren't going well are they Kenny?" I told more than asked.
"They're gonna get better now," he answered. "Judy doesn't like Montreal, can't deal with all the French language, gets nervous by all the political unrest... Toronto is a good move for us. Except I won't be seeing you any more."
"You didn't see me anyway," I reminded him. "But I go to Toronto quite often, so maybe we'll get to visit from time to time."
"Not gonna happen, Charlie," he said. I could see definite signs that his eyes were also filling with tears. "Judy doesn't want you around at all. She's just so afraid that we'll... well... that we'll get back together again. Right now she thinks I'm working late. I've done that so much lately I can get away with it, but I hate lying."

I could well sympathize with Judy’s dislike of Montreal. The French (Quebec) separatist movement was heating up, mailboxes were being bombed, people were actually dying! Cathy and I were living in a small upscale neighborhood where the vast majority of people were WASP’s (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) so we were relatively safe, but even so all the going’s on were nerve wracking.

We had a fairly pleasant meal after that, even laughed a little at some of the memories we shared. It was after 11 before we left the restaurant, both of us not wanting to leave at all. I don't think it would have taken much talking to persuade Kenny to just take a room in the hotel and spend the night, but we both knew that would be pure trouble, so the subject never came up. We hugged again as my bus arrived, and then I was looking through a dirty bus window at Kenny standing on the sidewalk. I wanted to jump off the bus and whisk him away, maybe back to Indiana; but of course I didn't.

The next big event in my life came less than a month later. I was sitting in my office, working away at some technical report, when I heard a deathly silence in the building. Have you ever 'heard' a silence? Believe me it's an ominous experience. While we were in Indian there had been a rather close tornado, an minutes before that tornado struck the entire world, it seemed, had gone completely silent: no wind, no birds singing, nothing! That was what I heard that November day. I walked out to see what was (or wasn't) going on. People were in small groups, talking in hushed tones. The look on their faces was pure shock. "What's going on?" I asked in a too-loud, too- cheerful tone.
"You haven't heard?" one of the secretaries said, "President Kennedy's just been shot!”

To this day I don't know why it hit me so hard! That was in another country! Why should I care? He wasn't our president! Why did it make any difference to me? But it did. Perhaps it was just the shock that a thing like this could happen in our enlightened society. Perhaps it was a flashback for me when I'd lived in the US, felt that in some ways I actually knew the man! He was Catholic, a no-no; I was Gay, also a no-no. Maybe I was already starting to feel an affinity for the American people. I don't know, but that news bulletin knocked me like a ton of bricks.

It was some time in the afternoon, not even close to quitting time, but I quit anyway and headed home. Cathy was waiting for me as usual, with her usual smile and the smells of dinner cooking. She was working at the Montreal General Hospital, but she still managed to be home and have dinner cooking when I got home. I ignored her and walked straight to the TV, turned it on and sat with my eyes glued to the screen. By 7:00 that evening there was a bulletin that John Kennedy was indeed dead. I totally lost it! I buried my face in Cathy's bosom and I cried. I think I cried harder than I'd ever cried before. She didn't question it, didn't ask the reason, she just held me like the small boy that I was just then, and she comforted me. I don't know how long I lay there, soaking up all the comfort I could get. By the time I started to recover it was bedtime; so we got up and went to bed. There I cried again, then we made love, then I cried again.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that incident. I was supposed to be the knight in shining armor. I was the hero that had taken my princess away from her miserable life, right? I was the sophisticated, can do anything technocrat with the bright future who had plucked a country girl out of the sticks to show her the world, right?

NOT!

I realized with no small amount of shock that... that I had married my mother! I was a little boy, and I finally had my mother back! I don't think I ever loved Cathy more than I did at the moment I realized my real relationship with her. She wasn't my wife at all that night, she was my mother! She recognized it, but I hadn't; not until I had analyzed it anyway. But then she had always been more sensitive to my needs than I was. Had her training as a nurse made her this way? Probably it had a part; but mostly I think that's just the kind of person she was. She would prove me right on that point literally thousands of times.

The question was, what do we do now? The answer was obvious, even if it did take me a while to figure it out. What we would do was nothing at all! Or better still, we would recognize our new relationship for what it was and go on from there. And that's precisely what we did.

Things were better for me after my amazing discovery. Over time I developed the knack of being a husband when it was appropriate, becoming a little boy when I needed to be. Cathy and I never discussed it, there was no need; she simply learned to lean on me when she needed to and responded to my needs when necessary. She was something else, Cathy was!

I talked to Kenny on the phone quite often during that Winter. Being a Bell employee, I had free telephone and long distance which I took full advantage of. He seemed in better spirits, more able to deal with whatever was going on in his life; but I longed to see him and I knew he felt the same. He told me that things had indeed got better with Judy, but she was still adamant that Kenny and I should not have any physical contact. That wasn't a big problem; we were 350 miles apart and both extremely busy. I had frequent trips to Toronto, but after trying several times unsuccessfully to have a meeting, I more or less gave up.

In the spring of 1964 I was informed that my job would be changing in the next 6 to 9 months. It seemed that Bell had a company policy that all their young professionals were expected to spend a two year stint in all of the various aspects of the company. My next assignment was to be in outside plant engineering, meaning I was to be designing and planning transmission lines, cable runs, and possibly microwave antenna systems. I pointed out that my chosen career was in the field of computers and that I had no desire nor intention to change that choice, but it made no difference, so I again started mailing resume's.

When I left IBM in Poughkeepsie they had told me that I should keep in touch. I didn't, but when I started job hunting IBM Canada was one of the first places I applied. As luck would have it, they were in process of opening a Product Test lab in Toronto, similar to the one I'd worked in for a year and a half. To make a long story short, Cathy and I moved to Toronto in the summer of 1964. I would be lying if I tried to say the only reason I moved to Toronto was the job. I was as excited as a schoolboy at the prospect of seeing Kenny again. Little did I know how much pressure I was putting on him.

"How long have you been here?" Kenny asked excitedly when I called.
"About a month," I answered, "and I really need to see you, Kenny. Can you get away?"
"Get away nothing!" he replied. "You and Cathy have to come to dinner this Friday night. And don't make any plans for the weekend, ok? I've got a surprise for you."
"A surprise? What kinda surprise?"
"If I told you," he laughed, "it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?"
"What about Judy? Is she ok with us seeing each other?"
"She'll be fine, Charlie. You guys just be there, ok?"

I said that we would, he gave me directions, we chatted for about an hour bringing each other up to date, and then we hung up. I had four days to wonder what he had that would surprise me and make him so excited. Cathy quizzed me endlessly, but I had to admit I had got nothing on the phone that would serve as the slightest clue as to what was going on. It took what seemed like eight months, but Friday night finally arrived.

When we rang the doorbell of Kenny's house, we were met not by Kenny, not Judy, but Mom Collins! I immediately dissolved into tears! Man, it was good to see her! "Come on in!" she exclaimed cheerfully, then hugged us both warmly. When I finally opened my eyes and pulled myself free from her embrace, I found myself looking over Mom's shoulders directly into the eyes of the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth. "Kenny!" I exclaimed. "Oh God, Kenny!" We melted into each other's arms and both cried like babies. I knew Judy had to be there somewhere, but at that moment it didn't matter. As we embraced I could feel Cathy's hands, then Mom's, on my shoulders and back. It had been so long... too long!

I might have known it would take Mom Collins to sort things out. As the evening progressed I learned that Judy hadn't changed her stance, but Mom had given it to her straight as she always did. "Those two boys have loved each other for a long time," she had lectured, "and I have never known them to be dishonorable. They have honored your wishes for a year now and have been absolutely miserable, and all they want to do is be friends and have their wives be friends too. It's time for you to grow up, Judy! And if it'll make you feel any better, then just consider Charlie and Cathy's coming to see me, not you and Kenny!" Judy made it very clear to us that as far as she was concerned we still weren't welcome, but that night she had been outvoted. Before we left she was, well, maybe not warm, but not frigid either. And I felt a whole lot better.

By March Cathy announced that she was pregnant. We had been beginning to think something may be wrong, because nothing had happened in spite of our lack of birth control. When it did happen I was instantly on the phone to Kenny. I had seen him about twice a month since our move to Toronto, but almost always just him and me over a meal. As soon as we were seated and served our drinks, I bubbled out the news. "That's great, Charlie!" he said enthusiastically. "When is she due?"
"September, I think," I answered. And then I saw the eyes again. "Something's wrong!" I said without thinking. "What is it, Kenny?"
"What makes you think something's wrong?" he evaded.
"Twelve years of looking into your eyes, that's what! Now out with it!"
"Judy's leaving me," he confided. "Turns out I'm sterile, and she says it's because I'm a queer and I've probably screwed up my reproductive system. For her it was the last straw."

"That's fucking ridiculous!" I spat at him. "Surely she'll realize she's wrong when you tell her Cathy's expecting. Unless she's forgotten, I'm pretty queer too."
"Of course I'll try it," he answered. "But I doubt that it'll make a difference. She just can't get over the whole idea that we've been together as lovers. To be honest I don’t think it would’ve worked if we’d had a dozen kids. Judy doesn’t want a husband, she wants somebody to own, and I’ve made it very clear to her that she’s not gonna own me."
"I'm sorry, Kenny," I said. "If I'd known..."
"If either of us had known," he interrupted, "maybe things'd be different. But we didn't, Charlie. We just didn't know. I made a terrible mistake two years ago, and now I'm gonna have to live with it."
"We both made a big mistake," I heard myself saying. "But I don't see any way out of it now. If I had my way..."
"Don't say it, Charlie. Please, just don't say it!"

Before we knew it Cathy was in labor. I had attended all the prenatal classes with her, had even watched some videos of actual births. My intention was to be with her the whole time, including the delivery. In 1965 that sort of thing was unheard of, as was "natural birth"... childbirth without drugs. We might have been well advised to wait for the second child before trying this, because Cathy had a very long labor - over 24 hours. But she managed, with Kenny in the waiting room and me in the labor room. My job was to do whatever I could to keep her comfortable, time the contractions and report to the nurses whenever they dropped in. At first the nurses barely tolerated me, their attitude being that fathers belonged in the waiting room where they wouldn't get in the way when they panicked, went mushy, fainted, whatever; but as the time went on they realized that I had been well prepared by our doctor, could actually be a resource for them, and they used that resource to all our benefit.

Stephanie was born at about 6:30 in the morning. I watched completely mesmerized as the little body emerged, emitted a soft cry, then went silent. The doctor handed her to a nurse who put drops in her eyes, then handed her to me. ME! Not her mom, ME! I was so shocked I almost fainted, but then I couldn't do that, could I? Not with this little miracle in my arms. I had just made history: I was the first father ever to be present in the delivery room of the Grace Maternity Hospital in Toronto! Since then there have been many, but I have often wondered how long it was before the not-so-well-known record of the first GAY father was broken. When I got back to the waiting room to report to Kenny, he saw a very pale young man, still wearing OR scrubs, with tears streaming down his face. I had been totally awed by the whole experience. Without saying a word I reached out and hugged him tightly and just sobbed! Kenny, seeing me in that state, instantly came to the wrong conclusion. "Oh my God," Kenny said in alarm, "what, Charlie? What's happened? What's wrong?"

Only when I heard the panic in his voice did I know what I'd done to him. I quickly tried to recover. "Nothing's wrong, Kenny," I whispered. "Everything's right. We've got the most beautiful baby girl in the world! She's perfect, Kenny. You should see her tiny little fingernails!"

Fingernails? Why I don't know, but as they had taken the baby from me and laid her in the tiny basinet they had there, I noticed two things: her wide open blue eyes, and the perfectly formed fingernails. I never dreamed they could be so small, yet all there in one piece!

It was only a week or so after the baby was born when Kenny had to go to court for the final proclamation of his divorce. He had taken it pretty hard, and I was helpless to do anything to ease the pain. He had reason to believe that Judy had hired a private detective in hopes of catching Kenny and me in some kind of compromising position, so we had to be even more careful about what we did and where we were seen together. I inundated Kenny with apologies, reasoning that it had been our move to Toronto that had caused the whole thing. "That's silly, Charlie," he answered. "She just wanted out, and if she could catch me fooling around, especially with another man, she could really take me to the cleaners." But her detectives served only to cost her a lot of money, and reported no wrongdoing on Kenny's part. Shit, I thought, I could've told them that in the first place and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

What I didn’t know until years later was that Judy had been very vindictive. She threatened to expose the affair Kenny and I’d had for so long, which could have resulted in our losing our baby, what with the conservative attitude of Toronto’s child protection agency at the time. So to keep her quiet and avoid all that embarrassment Kenny had agreed to a very lucrative settlement. Lucrative for Judy that is. What in hell’s wrong with the world, anyway?

In the weeks that followed, after the high of the baby being born, we settled into a sort of routine. Cathy had stopped work to stay home with the baby, and all went well for a while. Kenny was alone and on my mind. It occurred to me several times that now he was free and making it very clear he'd never get into that situation again, but still I didn't see much of him. "I just thought it'd be better if I didn't come around too often," he explained. "You've got a family now and you're trying to build a life. All I would do would be to keep things stirred up and in turmoil."
"Kenny," I pleaded, "I WANT my life stirred up if that's what you'd do! I don't want to forget you and I certainly don't want to lose you! Now Judy's gone and you've got nobody! I fucked up, Kenny! If only I'd waited. Maybe..."
"I told you, Charlie, I don't want to hear it! We fucked up big time, but I'm not gonna complicate it even more. And by the way, it's WE that fucked up, not YOU! So there's really nothing to discuss here. You've got a wonderful wife and a beautiful daughter, and your duty is with them! I'll be around because I can't help myself, but I'm not gonna get in the way." So I started getting more and more depressed. The more depressed I got, the harder I was to please.

"Charlie," Cathy said over dinner one night in late November, "what's wrong?"
"Wrong?" I asked innocently. "What makes you think something's wrong?"
"Well, for starters, that raging stud who wouldn't leave me alone for two days in a row hardly ever makes love to me any more. I don't get a kiss in the morning, you are always flying into a rage at the least little thing, you never sing around the house any more, you seem to have grown tired of holding the baby... that same baby you thought was such an incredible miracle less than three months ago."
"Nothing's wrong, Cathy," I answered.

"It's Kenny, isn't it?"

"I'm just tired, Cathy. In case you haven't noticed I've been working pretty long hours."

"Yeah, I noticed. Are you really working, or are you..."
"Is this gonna turn into another accusation?" I bellowed, "cause if it is I'm not gonna sit here and listen to it. I told you I would not fool around with Kenny or anyone else and I meant it! But if you can't believe me then there's not much I can say is there? Or maybe you think..."
"That's not what I meant, Charlie. I just meant that maybe you're working overtime to avoid coming home. You're miserable, aren't you?" Once more I had tried to defend myself by picking a fight, and Cathy had refused to fight, but showed understanding again. This scene had repeated many times, only this time I was in a particularly weak frame of mind, so I simply broke down. It occurred to me that I’d done the exact same thing to Kenny when I was trying to scrounge enough money to go to college.

"I don't know what's wrong with me, Cathy," I bawled. "I love you and I adore Stephanie, but still I want more! I don't even know what I want!"
"Maybe you don't, but I do. You want Kenny, and I think you should have him."

I looked at her in shock. "Does that mean.... Uh... Cathy, are you asking me to leave? Cause if you are you can forget it. I'll never leave you! I vowed till death do us part and I meant it! My father did that the first time things got tough and I'll never forget how it ripped my heart right out of my chest! I'll never..."
"Will you please listen?" she interrupted. "I'm not suggesting anyone go anywhere! I think maybe we can work things out without anyone leaving."

I could not believe what I was hearing! "Cathy," I said, "surely you don't mean... I mean... Kenny and me... that we have an affair?"
"That's exactly what I mean. I think we could..."
"But that's adultery! I couldn't do that!"
"Is it, Charlie? And if it's adultery, who here is the adulterer? Can you honestly tell me that if it were legal for men to marry men, that you and Kenny wouldn't already have been married before you met me?"
"I... I never thought about it. And besides, it doesn't matter now, I'm married to you and I take that seriously. I could never..."

"If you take it seriously, I mean REALLY seriously, you'd do anything to keep our marriage. The way we're going it's not going to last very long. I like Kenny a lot, and I don't think I would have any problem with him being around more. So if having him around means that our marriage will survive, I'm willing to try it."
"I don't think I am," I said emphatically, "What you're suggesting is... is... downright sick! It's... it's bigamy!"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Yes, I do. I just have to try harder to get over him. It's over and that's that!"
"But it's not over! And I don't think it ever will be! I'm not even sure I want it to be after hearing how happy you two were. I don't want to lose you, Charlie, but I don't want you to stay if you're gonna be miserable all your life. When you're like this you make everyone around you miserable. And if you don’t already, you’ll eventually start to resent me, and I don’t want that."
"But Cathy, what you're suggesting..."

"What I'm suggesting is weird at best. But it's also a last ditch effort to save my marriage. The way we're going I don't see any hope. Maybe my suggestion will make it worse, but I don't think so. And I'm willing to take that chance. I love you, Charlie!"
"I love you too, Cathy. That's why I can't..."
"That's why you have to, Charlie! As your wife I have the right to expect you to do anything in your power to save what we have, even if it means doing something that society has decreed is unacceptable. Can you honestly tell me everything you and Kenny have done is acceptable in the eyes of society?"
"Well... uh..."
"I thought so. So why don't we just spend the evening making some ground rules? Then we can have Kenny over tomorrow evening and let him know what's up." To my utter shame, at that moment something was indeed UP! I was thankful it was under the table out of sight.

Kenny was equally horrified when Cathy and I presented our plan. He had just gone through a very nasty divorce and was not only traumatized by that experience, but also terrified that Cathy and I would suffer the same fate. And we now had a child to consider! But he was also terribly, horribly lonely! So after a great deal of talking and convincing over two weeks, he agreed in principle. He didn’t feel right about it, but he knew me and all the times I had cheated on him, and he could see that he might possibly contribute to saving our marriage by an act that would normally have shattered a marriage.

The ground rules were simple enough, and made perfect sense to both Kenny and me. “First, I am your wife and Stephanie is your daughter, Charlie,” Cathy said sternly. “That means that we come first, ALL the time. In matters of sex, your time, your commitment in case of any conflict we will always come first. I will not stand for any sacrifices on my part or the children’s so you two can be together.

“Second, you are to be absolutely discreet. I don’t want this arrangement ever to get back to me from someone else. I don’t want to know any of the gory details, or how or when or where, but it is not to happen in our home, ever! After we have all agreed, it will be as if this conversation never happened. And I don’t ever want to see, smell, hear any evidence that you two have... well, you get the idea.

“Charlie, I don’t want you discussing our intimate life with Kenny, or anyone else for that matter. As far as I am concerned that is personal and sacred, and I want to keep it that way. I think I need my head examined for doing this, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

"Charlie," Kenny said doubtfully, "I don't know about this... It seems so... so..."
"Kinky?" I suggested. I had just walked into Kenny's house and given him a long, passionate kiss. My intention was to spend the night. It was Friday night and I wasn't expected home until Saturday night. The three of us had haggled out all the details of what was acceptable and what wasn't and here I was, in the middle of December, looking to collect on our new agreement. I could not believe how wonderful it was to hold him again! He was as solid as ever, having spent many hours in the swimming pool and gym. But even more important, we were together again. The smell was the same and so was the taste. And the sparkle was back in his eyes. The sex was pretty strained that night. We were unbelievably nervous, each unsure that we should be doing what we both wanted to do so badly. Kenny was as determined as I was to prevent trouble between Cathy and me, and we both knew it was an iffy proposition at best. After about three hours of efforts to rekindle the flame, we drifted off to sleep. Neither of us had reached an orgasm but right then it wasn’t necessary, and we knew it would get better.

I awoke next morning at about 6:00 AM. In our sleep Kenny and I had moved around so that we were face to face, our arms around each other as our naked bodies touched from head to foot. Our legs were tangled together as if they were made of rubber. I was so overwhelmed with the feeling of peace and contentment I started to cry softly. How could I ever have wanted anything more than this? How could I....

Suddenly Kenny was awake and I was staring into those deep brown eyes. Oh God, those eyes! "Morning!" he said as his face broke into a smile. "You got any idea how great it feels to wake up in your arms?"
"Yeah," I said hoarsely, "I have a pretty good idea. I love you, Kenny."
"You're crying!" he said with concern. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Kenny," I replied as a fresh volley of tears assaulted my eyes. "I just... I dunno, I'm just so happy... you're so cool... I feel so... so..."
"Shut up and kiss me!" he ordered. I complied. One led to another until we had the most sensational sex we'd ever had! We finally got out of bed at 2 PM.

Cathy and I both made an important discovery after that first weekend, one that neither of us had expected. When I got home, my sexual appetite for her was ravenous! Her libido was from the very start about one tenth what mine was, but I had very quickly lost interest to the point that we still indulged, but it was more or less just something we did. After a weekend with Kenny, my lovemaking with Cathy had more meaning, more life! Sound crazy? Yes, I agree it does. But nonetheless it was true. Unfortunately such a ravenous appetite for sex had never been a factor with Cathy.

As time went on, Kenny and I spent more and more time together. He spent Christmas with us that year, and we worked together doing man things like maintenance on our houses, working on his car or mine, and fathering my daughter. I was "Daddy" and he was "Uncle Kenny." It was working! I sensed that Cathy objected to the idea at first, even though it had been her idea. But as time went on, as my spirits improved, we all came to the point where we believed it would actually work. It wasn't ideal by any means, but it was the best we could do. By the end of our first year as a three-some, we were all fairly comfortable with the arrangement. Our second child was born in 1967, a boy we called Kenny. Well, actually Li'l Kenny. The third, another boy, was born in 1969. He wasn't named after anyone, he was just Kevin because Cathy and I both liked the name. Then in 1971 another girl, Bobbi, arrived. She was named after... well take your pick: Robert Collins Senior, Robbie Collins, or Robert, Cathy's father. There was certainly justification there for calling a child Roberta, or Bobbi for short.

In 1972 I had a vasectomy. We’d had all the children we figured we could raise properly, and none of the available birth control methods, for various reasons, were acceptable to us. “It’s a very simple procedure,” the doctor explained when I’d first inquired about it. “I’ll make a very small incision on either side of your scrotum, pull out the vas deferens, the tiny duct that carries your sperm. I’ll tie it off and cut it, and you’ll be sterile. The whole procedure will only take an hour or so.”

The doctor went on to explain to me that most men are concerned that their virility might be affected, but in his experience, he told me, most vasectomized men found themselves with an increased libido and virility. That was not really good news to me, I was already far too virile. “Why don’t you just cut the whole thing off?” I asked before I thought.
“We couldn’t possibly do that,” the doctor scoffed. “That would make you totally impotent.”
“That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing,” I returned; but I don’t think the doctor had taken me seriously. At that point in my life I wasn’t even sure myself that I was serious. All I knew was that the sexual frustration had been increasing steadily.

Kenny and I got pretty creative about getting together two or three times a month. Cathy and I and the children had been offered a move to Fredericton, on the east coast, and home of UNB. I was to be the new IBM Systems Engineer assigned to the university account. I was thrilled, for more reasons than one. It would also make us about 15 miles from Uncle Brad, and even though he no longer had the farm, I looked forward to spending time with him. Kenny, working now as an independent consultant and doing very well, assured me that we would see each other as much as before. He turned out to be right, what with my many trips to Toronto and his trips east. I missed having him only a few blocks away, but it was certainly better than not having him at all. And so it went. Each of us arranged our lives around two other people, plus four children. Each of us cared deeply for each other and we all adored the kids. We were happy again! All of us! And it had all been engineered by Cathy, the old fashioned, never-do-any-kinky-sex lady who thought that pre-marital sex was just about the worst sin on earth! She was truly turning out to be a helluva lady!

In 1979 disaster struck. Little Kenny had never been a very healthy child, and had been in and out of hospitals and clinics all his life. The doctors were completely mystified. If it had been 10 or 15 years later I would have suspected AIDS, because that's exactly how it seemed. He had no resistance to infections at all! When the other kids were home from school two days with the flu, Kenny spent two weeks in bed. I guess I'd known from the time he was a year old that I'd never see him grow up, but that didn't make it any easier when the end came. He was 12 years old. I totally lost it and ended up in the psych ward of the hospital on suicide watch. Again enter Kenny!

"You've got to snap out of it, Charlie," he said as I sat there looking into space.
"That's fine for you to say," I accused. "You haven't just lost your son."
"Pretty damn close," he reminded me. "Have you forgotten who he was named after? I adored that kid, Charlie! Who sat up with him night after night? Who brought him back from the brink so many times I've lost count? But you've got three more kids, and they need you! You're a good father and husband, but you're gonna screw it all up if you're not there for them, the same as you were there for Kenny."
"Yeah," I said bitterly, "a lot of good that did him."
"You did your best, Charlie. No, it wasn't good enough. But you can't blame yourself for that. Life goes on and you have to go on with it, or get left behind."

I did snap out of it, eventually. And when I did I noticed something that had escaped my attention before. I was so wrapped up in Little Kenny and his problems, I hadn't even noticed how beautiful my other three were. And Kevin, then nine years old, was so handsome he took my breath away! He was quite withdrawn, having lived up to this point more or less without a father. I saw myself in Kevin: a boy wanting so badly to be close to his father but not knowing how to break through the wall that I'd put up. Kenny was right: The best thing I could do for Lil Kenny now was to let him rest in peace and get on with my own life. I had vowed solemnly many years ago that my children, if I ever had any, would never have to live like that, so I set about to change and was rewarded with a gorgeous, active little boy who considered his dad his best friend. We hunted and fished, went camping and motorcycling; He played hockey and I watched, even helped out with the coaching for a couple of years; he played soccer and basketball, but his forte was hockey and motocross. He loved racing his motorbike, but he never did very well because he just wasn't aggressive enough. No problem, he had fun and didn't get hurt.

The girls were much more self confident, always having had a very competent mother at their beck and call. They were undoubtedly pleased to get their father back, but it wasn't as dramatic as with Kevin. But they still let me know that they appreciated my presence at swim meets, recitals, whatever, and actually paying attention to what was going on. The whole episode gave me a new understanding for the strain that parents go through when they find themselves raising a disabled child. It's a really thin wire we walk, balancing our attention.

We were well into the 70's now, and before I even realized it the “family curse” had come back in full force. We were still in Fredericton, Kenny still in Toronto. We had managed to meet on a fairly regular basis for almost 10 years, but more and more often now Kenny was out of town or tied up with a client when I was in Toronto. Eventually the inevitable happened: I began looking elsewhere for release. And more important, every time I found it I was devastated by the guilt feelings that followed.

I was absolutely, totally devoted to my wife and family, I loved Kenny as much as I ever had, but still it wasn’t enough. Still I found myself wandering, throwing caution to the wind, doing things that would later cause me to go back to my hotel room and cry my eyes out from guilt and self incrimination.

Having had four children in rapid succession, then having had to deal with one very sick child, had taken their toll on our relationship. Cathy’s libido, never very high under the best of conditions, fell to some negative number. She was still, as she had always been, the devoted wife, the perfect mother; but the strain, the incredible pressure, had rendered her a disaster in bed.

Meanwhile it seemed that everything turned me on. It didn’t matter if it was good news or bad, high stress or low, my response was to get horny. Having neither Cathy nor Kenny to satisfy my yearnings, I found other resources; and then the guilt would set in. “Eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake” became a phrase that was very to with me. I would spend many a night in Toronto, alone in a hotel room having had a brief sexual encounter, thinking about Uncle Brad’s words: “We should all be castrated at birth,” he had told me. And I knew that I was living proof that he was right on the money!

Kenny, Cathy and I continued our odd relationship for many years. Sometimes we lived in the same town, sometimes not. When there was a special occasion in either of our lives, the other was the first to know and make an appearance. Kenny went on several vacation trips with us, to places like Florida, Mexico, western Canada. When we were walking around some tourist attraction like an amusement park or public garden, it was Kenny's self-appointed task to carry one of the children on his shoulders. More often than not that child was Kevin.

I won't even try to tell you there weren't problems. We were back in the closet again, tighter than we'd ever been. We didn't like that much, but it had been one of Cathy's ground rules and we had to admit under the circumstances that it made sense. The only time there was any evidence whatsoever that Kenny and I were sexually involved was when we were completely and totally alone, and even then we didn’t have sex that often. Kenny was perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, seeming to have got to the point where just being a part of my life was good enough. Even I, most of the time, was so involved with our children’s lives there was little time to think of sex; except when I was out of town.

Cathy and I didn't live together a lifetime, raise three children, without arguments. At times they got pretty intense and one or the other of us would point out how much simpler life would be if Kenny and I could just be platonic friends. But on the whole I can still not believe how tolerant Cathy was of the goings on when Kenny and I were together. She didn't want to know the details and made it very clear that she wouldn't tolerate extra-curricular activities by either of us. Kenny assured both of us that he was being faithful, and with the threat of permanently losing both my lovers hanging over my head, I walked the line as well - most of the time.

One time, in an effort to appease my guilty conscience, I suggested to Cathy that she get together with Kenny. It was a stupid idea and she wasted no time informing me of such. Being a very slow learner I got myself in further trouble by telling her how great he was in bed, and that I would understand if she gave him a try. "Don't push it!" she commanded. The tone of her voice told me she meant it.

In 1981 Uncle Brad died. I cannot say that it was sudden - he'd had several strokes and was on outpatient dialysis for several years. Regardless, I wasn't ready to lose one of the few allies I had in my own family. To make matters worse (or maybe better?) we were still living in Fredericton, so I got the honor of driving Aunt Melanie around shopping for caskets, all that lovely stuff. The funeral director started showing her all these high dollar casket-service packages, far more than she could afford, but in her emotional state she was in no condition to negotiate. While I was thinking of stepping in, Cathy did it. She simply explained that we were far from millionaires, that Aunt Melanie was on a very limited budget, to which the director responded by showing a much less expensive line... still dignified but not out of reach.

It was raining the day of the funeral - a cold April rain. As we stood at the grave side, my mind went back to that old cattle barn where Unc and I had milked so many cows, and where I'd poured out my soul so many times. When I knelt in the mud, totally soaked by the rain, I felt a hand on each shoulder. One was Kenny's, the other, Kevin's. He was only 11, but he knew his dad was hurting, and that little hand did so much for me I could never put it into words. "We buried my father today," I found myself saying. My "real" father - make that my biological father, was not there; he had decided he was too sick to attend his brother's funeral. Ellen was there on his behalf - I don't know if she heard me or not. And frankly it wasn't important - I was speaking from my heart, and the two people I knew heard me, my son and my very best friend, had understood.

It was 1986 when my father finally succumbed. For the previous five years or so he'd been practically an invalid, at least in his own mind. The truth is, after his fourth heart attack, he had simply sat in his chair and given up. Cathy said one day when talking to her mother, "We can depend on it. Every two months or so Ellen calls and tells Charlie that his father has had another 'spell' and isn't doing well at all, that he should come right away. So we bundle up the children, cancel whatever plans we might have, and trundle them off the 175 miles to Moncton. By the time we get there he is sitting in his chair watching TV, with the volume so loud we can't hear to talk. He ignores our children, is always putting Charlie down, telling him how much better his cousins are doing, and then we come back home, both of us so stressed out we yell at each other all the way home."

There's no point in expanding on Cathy's description, I guess it says it all. By that point my father and I had come to a "peaceful coexistence", in my mind only because he was indeed becoming helpless and he needed me. On the other hand, he was my father. But sometimes the "boy who cried wolf" principle really works. When the big one came in 1986, when Ellen called, I hung up the phone after talking with her for about 20 minutes, saying simply "It's Dad again." It was Friday evening, about 9 PM.

"Charlie," Cathy pleaded, "Kevin's got an archery tournament tomorrow, and Bobbi's got a swim meet Sunday. Do we have to go?"
"Hell no!" I replied. "It's time she realized that I don't owe her nothing! And I don't owe my father much more!" Cathy was funny that way. She is and was one of the strongest women I know, but when she got the feeling she was being screwed over, that someone she loved intensely, like ME, was putting someone else besides her and the children first in my life, she lost control and got very angry. So I got to be a knight in shining armor from time to time. It felt good to reassure her, to make her realize by my actions that I really did care about her and her, OUR, children. So we didn't go to Moncton, and that was when my father died. I don't know how he got the news, but within hours I had a call from Kenny in Toronto.

"Charlie, I'm sorry," he said. "But... uh... is it ok if I don't come down? I'm into something really important right now and..."
"Kenny," I interrupted, "why in the world would you come? He never had any use for you, never said anything good about you!"
"I know, Charlie, But he was your father, and if you need me, I'll be there."
"Not a problem, dude," I answered. "I got this one covered. But thanks for offering. I love you."

He assured me that he loved me, and we hung up.

"Dad," Bobbi approached me the next morning, "do you suppose it would be all right if I sang a solo at Grampy's funeral?" She was 15 years old, and a lot more mature than I had realized.
"I think it would be fine, Honey," I answered. "But it would be a little tough on you. Are you sure you want to?"
"I have to, Dad!" she said as the tears came in a flood. "I never really knew him when he was alive, but I have to do something. He had to be a pretty great man, 'cause he was your father!"

Well, there's no need to tell you what happened to me at that point. If you don't believe another line in this story, believe that one! I was so moved I couldn't speak for about ten minutes! I didn’t bother to tell her that there had been so many others who had influenced my life; its doubtful she would have understood anyway. Bobbi did sing her solo, beautifully and clearly. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and she and I had been singing duets in church from the time she was five years old. And her solo that day was without doubt the best ever! The irony was that my dad died not even knowing my childrens’ names!

In 1991 I was given a chance to retire early. At that time I had only 28 years with IBM, but they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. The truth was they were beginning to cut costs and I was being paid a pretty good dollar by then. I even managed to negotiate a move to Raleigh, North Carolina as part of the package. We had been there in the early 80's for two years and had absolutely fallen in love with the place. So after I had ironed out all the details of my offer, it was time for a trip to Toronto.

Kenny and I hadn't seen each other for about four months when he picked me up at the airport. It was about all we could do to restrain ourselves until we got to his car, and there we kissed passionately. "Man!" he said when we came up for air, "I missed you so much!"
"That might be changing," I said with a grin. "I have some big news for you."
"Yeah? Like what?"
"Nope, I’m not gonna tell you unless you give me a blow job."
"Not a problem," he laughed. "I kinda had one of them in mind anyway. So what's your news?"
"No you don't," I teased. "Not till AFTER the blow job."
"Wassamatta, don't trust me?"
"Just taking a little insurance," I grinned.

I didn't get my blow job before I told him my news. I just couldn't wait until we drove to his house, got through supper, then went to bed. Kenny had put on a roast and all the trimmings before he left for the airport, and we were in process of setting everything on the table when he said "You really are gonna make me wait, aren't you?"

"Nope, I can't," I answered. "Kenny, I said as I threw my arms around his neck, “my beautiful Kenny, it's over! All our waiting, our commuting, arranging trips, it's all over!"
"You're moving back to Toronto?" he said hopefully.
"Better! I'm moving to Raleigh. I'm retiring, Kenny! I just got an early retirement package from IBM!"

At this point there are a few things I need to explain. I had been sent to Raleigh on a two year foreign assignment in 1981. We had all thoroughly enjoyed the Raleigh area, had fallen absolutely in love with the place! Kenny got down from Toronto quite often, because at that time Raleigh was IBM's telecommunications capital of the world, and there were always seminars, classes, meetings that he could justify attending. We had formulated a plan at that time that one day we would retire there and be together again. And now it had happened!

Being in his own business, Kenny could more or less decide where he wanted to live, and the way Raleigh was developing he would have no problem getting work. He had started immediately setting the pins in place, making contacts, for the eventual move. Stephanie had graduated high school in Raleigh and had started NC State, so when we'd returned to Canada in 1983 she stayed, and was still there. She was and still is the subject of a fair bit of good- natured ridicule as she talks with her southern drawl mixed with the Canadian accent she was born with.

Supper was forgotten. The roast was left on the kitchen counter, half carved. The veggies, all hot and steaming on the table, were left to cool on their own as Kenny melted into my arms. "You wouldn't joke about something like that, would you Charlie?" he said as he squeezed me so hard I couldn't breathe.
"It's no joke," I assured him. "I'll be all done with IBM next April.”
"What about the kids?" he asked.
"I think they'll be staying in Canada. Bobbi is still in college and Kevin is getting pretty serious with a girl. They're kind of keeping their options open right now. It kinda hurts a little, but they have their own lives and they deserve the chance to live then. You can move in with us if you want to. There'll only be you and me and Cathy."

There was no more discussion that night. We made our way to the bedroom where we were once again naked and in each other's arms. "I love you so much, Charlie!" he exclaimed as we embraced, just enjoying the closeness, the feel of our bodies together, knowing that we'd soon be together never to be separated again.

Cathy and I moved to Raleigh in the spring of 1991. We had two houses in Halifax and took a financial bath on both of them. We sold the one we were living in at a big loss, and the other I signed over to Kevin. I’d had the house rented for two years and the tenants had done a lot of damage, which Kevin was only too willing to repair. Well, he had to live somewhere didn't he? Kenny would follow in a few months when he’d finished up some of the projects he was working on.

Cathy had landed a job in the OR of a large hospital, so she went to work almost immediately when we’d arrived. We bought a house, but it would be a month before it was ready, so I had a month of unemployment with nothing to do but ride around on my motorcycle and enjoy life. I had submitted resume’s all over the place, but nothing had come of it yet. So once again the “family curse” reared its ugly head, causing more temptations than I care to admit, and certainly more than I could resist. I was beginning to think that I needed a babysitter every bit as much as any nine year old, but for entirely different reasons.

In the 50's, 60's and 70's, one could be fairly promiscuous without a great deal of risk. That didn’t make it any more acceptable, but at least if one used a little care, watched for symptoms like sores, unusual discharge, etc, sexual activity was relatively safe. But beginning in the 80's AIDS changed all that. As anyone who is sexually active knows, or should know, it’s now possible for a person to have full-blown AIDS, and have no outward symptoms whatsoever. Even facing risks like that I did some things during that first month or two in Raleigh that I’m not very proud of, and that scared me. It was as if I did all my thinking with the head between my legs once those hormones began pumping, only now I was becoming a danger, not only to myself but also to the people I loved most in the world: Cathy and Kenny. I started hating myself again.

When I was offered a job at a computer store as a salesman, I accepted readily. The pay was lousy and sales is really not my forte, but it kept me occupied and therefore out of trouble. Meanwhile we had moved into our house and got settled, I got my computer hooked up and running, and things began to slip into a comfortable routine. Cathy was working a lot of weekends, but that wasn’t really a problem because I had a lot of landscaping to do, a few repairs around the house, and then of course there was my computer. The Internet was still relatively unknown and difficult to access, but there were lots of local BBS’s, including one that was Gay oriented. That was where I spent most of my time, and through it I made more contacts, did more things that I’m not proud of, and my self esteem took another serious hit. The “family curse,” which had been pretty well dormant while the children were growing up, had returned with a vengeance, and I was becoming more determined to do something about it.

When Kenny arrived in Raleigh in the fall of 1991, he immediately set up his consulting business and I went to work for him. He needed someone to handle a contract with IBM as a Database Administrator, so I was back at IBM, not as an employee but as a consultant. The contract lasted two years - two years that I hated. So when I was offered a job working with local area networks in the prisons of North Carolina I took it. Unlike Kenny, I had discovered that I just wasn’t cut out for the consulting business. Kenny and I were disappointed, it was so totally awesome being not only lovers and friends, but business partners too! But he understood my reasons and accepted our new situation. When he first moved I had wanted him to live with us, but he bought his own house so that the kids would have room to stay with us when they visited. Perhaps some day, he said, they might move down and need a place to stay for a while. His prediction came true in 1996 when Bobbi and her family moved in with us and stayed two years, followed by Kevin and his new wife, who stayed with us another two years.

The job with the state turned out to be intense and rewarding, but there was also a dark side. I was involved with installing and maintaining LAN’s in all of the state’s 100 prisons, which I found very interesting until I found myself in the western part of the state, in the foothills of the mountains, at a prison called “Western Youth Institution.” This facility had been an experiment, one that proved less than successful. Instead of building a large one or two structure as most prisons seem to be, Western Youth was 16 stories high, not unlike a typical apartment building. There were no accessible stairs from one floor to another, and the single elevator was centrally controlled as were all the locked doors in the facility.

In my position as LAN Administrator, I was allowed to go anywhere in the prison I chose, which gave me the chance to see some sights that the pubic doesn’t often see. What I saw in Western Youth made my blood run cold, and gave new meaning to the expression “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

When a person with my inclination finds himself amidst a group of 700 teens and young men all in one place, the usual expectation is to see some pretty handsome people, and I was no exception. But what I found was 700 young people incarcerated with the most blank, “nobody home” look in their eyes I had ever seen. There were indeed some handsome young men there, but anyone with even the glimmer of a heart could not get past the blank stares, the look of hopelessness and futility. I saw teens as young as 12 who were facing a lifetime behind bars. They spent their days going to “school,” which I was told all too often was nothing but a place to keep them occupied for at least part of the day. When not in school they were hanging out in their cells or dormitories, roaming around the recreation room shooting baskets, or just sitting staring into space. They had no goals, no objectives, and most important, no incentive to improve themselves because they were never getting out.

Ok, I guess it comes as no surprise that I am, have always been, an admirer of boys. I hesitate to use the term “boylover” because that term has come to mean one who has sex with boys, and that’s not what I’m saying here. I would NEVER rob the innocence, the excruciatingly beautiful childhood, from any child! But to me a boy is an almost magical creature. A happy, carefree boy is so curious, so full of life and energy, and so incredibly resilient that one cannot help but admire their beauty, sturdiness, their complete and overwhelming sense of well being and optimism. Perhaps my daughter (Yeah, I know, I’m getting ahead of the story) said it best about a year ago, talking about her son, my grandson, LilCharlie, when he was barely three years old.

“I always thought,” she said, “when children were very small, that there was no difference between boys and girls.” (Charlie already has two older sisters.) “But when I come home from work and that little boy sees me, his face gets so bright! He calls out to me, ‘Mommy!’ and comes running, then gives me a hug that could strangle an elephant! There is simply nothing I have ever received from the girls to equal that moment!”

Well, in those 700 boys in Western Youth I saw none of that magic; none of those beams of sunlight, none of that beauty. It was without a doubt the most pitiful sight I have ever witnessed. As I stated previously, and again I have to thank Kenny and his family, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I became pretty good friends with some of the Correction Officers (guards) who explained to me that their job was extremely high stress, because most of these teens were downright dangerous and unpredictable. On the other hand, some of my CO friends had made an effort to befriend some of the inmates, often becoming something of a father figure to them. One man in particular, a Captain whose name also happened to be Charlie, heard his name called in greeting wherever he went. On more than one occasion I heard a young teen voice call “Hey, Charlie!” and turn to see who it was who knew me, only to see my captain friend walking through the hallway, being greeted wherever he went. I believe the staff in general did make an effort to improve the lot of these kids, but the job was just too overwhelming.

I expressed some of my concerns to my friend Captain Charlie. He pointed out that some of these kids were truly dangerous. “There are kids here who have taken out both of their parents, a girl friend, a buddy,” he said. “Make no mistake, Charlie, these kids are DANGEROUS!”

But what had made them that way? I was pretty sure they hadn’t been born that way, so what could possibly have happened to them? I had considered my own childhood pretty bad, but I had never once even considered killing my father, or anyone else for that matter. What horrible things must these kids have experienced to turn them into murderers? What had they gone through? What kind of society would pen up 700 children like this because they were too dangerous to live among us without finding the cause?

I visited another facility, only a half mile away from Western, called IMPACT West: one of North Carolina’s two boot camps for boys. Since moving on to another job, they have opened one for girls. Teens and young men ranging in age from 16 through 30 are sentenced as an alternative, a last ditch effort. These are much smaller facilities, housing only 180 inmates, or as they are called, trainees. Candidates of IMPACT must have been deemed by the courts to be worth salvaging, and have a choice of serving 3 months at IMPACT or their sentence, whatever it is, behind bars.

At IMPACT I found what was nowhere to be seen at Western: a bunch of teens who were clean and neatly dressed in their army fatigues; their hair was closely cropped, their faces alert and their eyes bright and full of life. Their day begins at 4:30 AM and runs to 8:30 PM during which they get military drill, 2.5 hours of school, 7 hours of manual labor, in addition to washing their own clothes, keeping their dormitory spotless... very much like an army boot camp. These boys were alive! These boys had a goal, an objective; they could see a light at the end of the tunnel they were in; they had a future!

Captain Green, the Commandant, told me that the success rate on IMPACT was something in the order of 70%, whereas the success of Western Youth, among those who were released, was more like 20%. “But I don’t know how much longer we’ll be around,” he said dismally. “The crying hearts in the state are trying to shut us down, citing cruel and unusual punishment, slave labor, all sorts of nasty things.”
“But if they could only come see for themselves,” I protested. “Take them for a walk through Western, then bring them up here. You can see it in their eyes!”
“You’d be surprised at how little some folks can see,” he told me. “A lot of those people see only what they want to see.” So Western Youth stays and the boot camps have to go! Go figure!

I Have often wondered, am I that different? Can other people not read people the way I seem to be able to do just by looking in their eyes? Did I learn that from Kenny too? It was certainly plain to me that I could gauge Kenny’s mood, his general well being by looking into his eyes. I had learned years ago that I was practically a slave to those eyes!

Needless to say I only lasted two years on that job. I was only remotely concerned because I took the trouble to ask, but having had the answer, a lot of things I didn’t really need to hear, I found the stress getting to me as well; so when I was offered a job in a much more neutral, safe setting, I accepted gladly. But those kids still haunt me.

But back to the story.

In 1994 our lives were once more turned upside down. In August we were visited by Bobbi and her new daughter Jessica. They were driven by her husband Jeff to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where they caught the ferry to Bar Harbor Maine, where we met them and drove them back to Raleigh. They stayed about two weeks, then we drove them back to Bar Harbor and drove back to Raleigh. As soon as we got back after the driving ordeal, Cathy dropped the bombshell. "Charlie," she said as we got ready for bed, "I've found a lump in my breast."

"Are you sure?" I demanded, trying to pass it off as her imagination. Afer all she'd done all the usual tests, had her mammograms regularly, etc. Cathy was a nurse! How could she be caught like this? But it turned out that she'd been right. There'd been doctors' appointments, biopsies, all the usual stuff. In September, 1994, on our 31st anniversary, Cathy was in the OR, not as a nurse, but as a cancer patient having her breast removed. Predictably, Kenny was in the waiting room with me, just being there. To be honest, I think he was as upset as I was.

Cathy came through the surgery wonderfully, but the following meeting with the oncologist was less than encouraging. "We got all the cancer as far as we can tell," she said guardedly, "but just to make sure I'm prescribing nine months of chemotherapy. It's fairly standard in cases like this."

"Fairly standard!" That's what she'd said. Well let me tell you, I have never in my entire life seen such torture! What those drugs did to Cathy was absolutely barbaric! She was so sick I found myself wondering if death wouldn't be better. Night after night I would get her into bed after a day of injections, followed by hours of sickness, throwing up, dry heaves. As soon as she was in bed and relatively settled, I would melt into Kenny's arms and we both cried until there simply weren't any tears left. I have never experienced anything so horrible in my entire life! At the same time, I realized just how much I loved that lady. And Kenny. I don’t honestly know how I would ever have got through it had it not been for Kenny and his support.

Christmas 1994 was really special. Our children all believed their mother wouldn't be around next year, so they all descended on our little house for the holidays. Bobbi and Jeff, with Jessica their daughter and Jeffrey, Jeff’s 10 year old son from a previous marriage, and Kevin, all somehow crammed into the house for the Christmas season. The North Carolina weather was at its best that year and we had an incredible time! But Cathy fooled them all again and came through her chemo, and was declared free of cancer as far as they could tell. We still had to wait at least five years to be relatively sure, but at least her chemo treatments were over. To this day she appears cancer free, but the ordeal had taken its toll. She now had no uterus, no ovaries, one breast; her energy level is a quarter what it was and her tolerance to colds, flu and the like is all but gone. Her libido, never something to write home about, was now non-existent. But she is still here, still an incredible woman, still my wife.

During the time when Cathy was taking chemo, after Christmas when all the kids had gone back to Nova Scotia, my sister came to visit. Like everyone else, she had written Cathy off for dead or dying. While she was here she and I went for a walk one warm January evening. “I am so proud of you, Little Brother,” she said to me as we walked.
“Proud of me?” I questioned. “What in the world did I do? It’s Cathy who should be proud, the way she fought back like a tiger.”
“You stuck by her when she was sick. I was so afraid that... well, you know what our father did. And whether you care to admit it or not, you’re a lot like him, you know.”
“That’s precisely why doing anything but what I did was unthinkable,” I answered.
“Just the same, I wanted you to know how incredibly proud of you I am.”

So there it was again! It felt good to hear my sister say she was proud of me, but I wasn’t quite so thrilled at hearing that I was “a lot like him.” I didn’t ask her what she meant because I was pretty sure I already knew. Fortunately for everyone, during the time Cathy was taking chemo, and most of the time so sick she could hardly hold her head up, my libido, all thoughts of sex in my head had pretty well vanished. I don’t know why that happened, but it did and I was thankful for it. But as she started to improve and seemed to have fought off death, my hormones began pumping again in full force. And with those hormones came thoughts, the ones I’d had most of my life, that the whole world would be better off if I were a eunuch. Only now they were more than fleeting thoughts; they were fast becoming an obsession.

It was shortly after my conversation with my sister that I first brought up the idea of castration to Kenny. I will never, if I live to be 250, forget the expression on his face. It was a mixture of shock, horror, disbelief, and probably imagined pain as his keen mind formed a picture in his head. Until this time I had kept the entire concept completely to myself. “Charlie, you can’t possibly be serious!” he exclaimed when he’d found his voice.
“I’m serious as a heart attack,” I told him. “It’s been in the back of my mind for years... actually ever since I was a teenager.”
“But why? Why on earth would anyone want to get his balls cut off? And what about Cathy?”
“Cathy’s a good part of the reason,” I said, trying to make my voice sound cold and calculating, unemotional.

I explained to him that I’d been thinking for years that I would be a whole lot better person, would be able to live with myself a lot easier if I weren’t constantly thinking of sex, wanting sex, demanding sex. Of course no one knew better than Kenny how totally insatiable my appetite for sex could be. He also knew that my sex life with Cathy had been far from rewarding for at least 20 years, for a number of reasons: Even at her best, Cathy’s libido had been far less than mine; the stress of raising children, of losing one, of working long ours in the OR while I was working just as long hours with IBM had all contributed to an even more reduced sexual appetite, while at the same time all the same factors seemed to increase mine. Added to that was the fact that I had finally come to the conclusion, after many years of denial and confusion, that I was primarily gay and heterosexual sex didn’t do that much for me anyway.

I had even tried to regard what Uncle Brad had called “the family curse” in a more objective way. Ok, so I was born with a tendency to screw anything in sight. Cathy, on the other hand, was quite content, or at least had been before this latest crisis, with sex once or twice a month. Maybe that was HER family curse! Didn’t it make just as much sense that she was born with a very low sex drive, and that she could do no more about it than I could about my high drive? But then there WAS something I could do, wasn’t there? And that’s what I was beginning to think needed to be done, and the sooner the better.

“Then of course there’s the guilt,” I mentioned.
“Charlie, you’re not still worrying about what happened thirty years ago, are you?” he questioned.
“Kenny, it’s never stopped happening,” I confessed. “And when I do manage to resist temptation, it’s not because I want to. Sometimes I hate myself so bad!”

I related to him the conversation I’d had with my sister, and how that had made me feel even more guilty. “So are you telling me that even when Cathy was so sick, that you...”
“No, I’m not saying that,” I answered. “When she was sick I never gave sex a thought, and that’s the truth. It felt so good now that I think about it, being able to deal with all the other things going on in my life without that. Now that we’re all getting older, there will be no more family, I think it’s time to just get on with my life, just like the rest of the world seems to be able to do.”

Kenny was concerned that I might regret it, that my tendency to get into a depression would be fed by my premature termination of my sex life. I tried to tell him that I didn’t consider it to be premature at all, that I was only trying to get my appetite for sex down to the level where everyone else’s was anyway. “I’m just afraid you’ll be sorry,” he observed. “And it’s not like you can freeze them and have them put back on if it doesn’t work out.”
“If that happens I can always take hormone replacement therapy,” I answered. Then I showed him some of the information I’d got off the Internet. I showed him that there were lots of eunuchs around, and many many more who would like to be. I pointed out that there were as many different reasons as there were eunuchs, including a plain and simple fetish that they couldn’t explain themselves. And then I made a confession that I never thought I would, but he had a right to know.

“Cathy and I haven’t discussed you and me for many years,” I told him. “You know how she is... if she is afraid of the answer she doesn’t ask the question. The truth is, Kenny... well... you remember the conversation we had just a couple years after Cathy and I were married? About you and me I mean?”
“Remember!” he exclaimed. “How in the world could I ever forget?”
“Well,” I said with some difficulty, “I’ve come to the conclusion... I mean when I stopped to think about it, considering some of the things she’s said over the years, I figured out that she never meant it the way we took it. I mean, I think she was sincere and she really thought she was doing what she had to do to save our marriage, but she never intended it to go on all this time. I think if she knew, she would be very angry, and incredibly hurt. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t think she has any idea that we’ve been carrying on all these years. I thought about it years ago and should have told you or at least discussed it with you, and I should have stopped years ago, but I just couldn’t! I guess I’m the same as Cathy is: if I don’t want to hear the answer I don’t ask the question. I was so afraid you’d get the wrong idea, and I couldn’t stand the thoughts of life without you.”

Now I’d made Kenny really angry, or shocked, or hurt... maybe all three. “All those years,” he said as much to himself as to me. “All those years we’ve been carrying on behind her back, and you didn’t tell me? Damn, Charlie! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”
“You didn’t know, Kenny,” I defended. “I didn’t know either. If I had thought about it I suppose I would’ve figured it out, but I just avoided the issue. I knew if I told you I had doubts, we’d never have sex again, and I couldn’t stand that. I know, I’ve always known, that you’d do anything to keep Cathy and me together and would never do anything to drive us apart. That’s why I used to try and get you to find a partner... I mean a man, a woman, someone so you wouldn’t be alone.”
“I’ve never wanted anyone else, Charlie,” he answered. “As far as I’m concerned being with you, even with no sex, is better than being with anyone else with sex every hour on the hour. And those kids of yours! God, Charlie, I love those kids as if they were my own! Do you honestly think I needed sex to stay around? Shit man, you couldn’t drive me away! I thought you knew that.”
“I did know that, Kenny,” I agreed. “It wasn’t YOU who needed the sex, it was ME! I know you can do without, but I can’t! And frankly I am starting to really hate my balls. I’m just sick to death of having my hormones rule my life! For years I tried to tell myself it was just a matter of self discipline, and sometimes it worked; but the truth is there are times when... well... there are times that discipline and self control are no match for what I want, what I feel I need, and I’m just so tired of fighting it!”

I didn’t say any more. I couldn’t, because I’d started to cry. Kenny just sat there watching me cry for a long time. He didn’t say anything, didn’t touch me, didn’t try to comfort me. Right then I wanted his touch so badly, but I knew I didn’t deserve it. It had to have been a hell of a shock to know that he had been misled all those years, especially when we had shared just about everything else in our lives. He had believed that we had absolutely no secrets, and for the most part he’d been right. I started to cry harder when I realized that maybe he’d had the final straw, that I had finally gone too far. Still Kenny just sat there, staring as if into space, processing all the information I’d just given him.

“So when are you gonna do it?” he asked softly.

To be continued...