Growing Up Kinney

By Myrna

Gus is growing up. His POV of life in the Kinney-Taylor household.

Part 1

We were about half-way through my graduation ceremony, and I was thinking maybe I was going to get out of it all
without any permanent scarring because even though I’d been boneheaded enough to fuck two fellow classmates
within two weeks of each other, at least I’d had the common sense to pick Jane Abbott and Chloe Wiseman. There
were four hundred students between them, so the chance of them comparing notes and finding out was slim, at least
for the next four hours, and I just needed to get out of there without any shit hitting the fan. Well, any of that
particular shit anyway. My moms would, like, so not shut up about respect and feelings and all that shit if they had
any idea, and my dad. Christ, you talk about fucking a girl in front of him, and he acts like I’m schtupping goats or
something.

Okay, so screwing two cheerleaders on the same squad without the prerequisite two week break in between was a
brainless move, but I’m working without much of a net here. I mean, I’ve gotta seek out, like, the postman or the
local produce guy down at the grocery story if I expect to find any kind of how-to advice when it comes to dealing
with women. Well, straight women anyway. Here’s something I’ve learned: straight chicks do not share in any way,
shape or form the same ideas about fucking as, say, your average gay guy.

At this rate, I’m gonna be a hundred before I ever have a relationship with anyone.

Not that I’m looking for a relationship or anything. Please. I’m fucking 18 years old, and in three short months I am
out of the hell hole that is Pittsburgh, bound for Columbia University thank you very much. I’m declaring pre-law,
much to my mothers’ delight (especially Ma—she loves the idea of her boy following in her footsteps). My dad on
the other hand has done more than his fair share of pissing and moaning about it, even threatening for, like, five
minutes not to pay my tuition if I was going to insist on such a boring, unimaginative career. His partner made so
much fun of him over the whole thing that the subject was just kind of dropped.

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious we’re not your typical Stepford family here. It’s almost easier to show people than to
explain it all. I mean, the Peterson-Marcus-Kinney-Taylor-Novotny-Bruckner-Hunnicutt-Schmidt faction takes up a
fucking wing of the auditorium. Not like you could miss us or anything. I mean, Jesus Christ, my grandmother
painted a sign! A fucking sign for God’s sake! Just kill me already.

So here’s the short version—my moms are Lindsay and Melanie Marcus. They’ve been married, like, a hundred
years. My dad is Brian Kinney. Yes, the Brian Kinney. His partner is Justin Taylor. Yes, the Justin Taylor and no I
can’t get you an autograph and no I don’t know when the next book is coming out and no they don’t film the movies
here in Pittsburgh and yes I’ve met Colin Farrell and he’s really short and my dad is forever pissed that he plays him
in the films, even though Justin insists Andrew Kent isn’t even remotely based on my father. Can we move on? So,
my sister Sarah’s dad is Michael Novotny who grew up with my dad so they’re kind of like brothers I guess, and
Michael’s partner is Ben Bruckner and then everyone else is just everyone else and so that’s my family in a nutshell.

Sarah and I have contests to see who can use the most degrees of separation to describe one of our motley crew of
family members. Like, Sarah can say Jennifer Taylor is her brother’s father’s lover’s mother.

Okay, that’s actually not very funny given the way prim and proper Jennifer so literally observes the boundries of
“family.” Because Justin and my dad are together, she recognizes me as her quasi-grandkid. But Sarah has no
“official” tie to her, so she’s treated like one of my school friends instead of my sister. It’s embarrassing and
irritating, and I hate it. Sarah acts like she doesn’t notice, but give me a fucking break. I mean, when I turned 16, Jen

gave me $5,000 toward a new car that my dad had already promised me anyway. Sarah got a gift certificate to
Nordstroms.

Of course, on the total other end of the spectrum, you have my grandma Deb. Deb would kick my ass if I ever
referred to her as my sister’s father’s mother. Deb is Gran to me in exactly the same overbearing, totally horrifying
way she’s Gran to Sarah. I can’t believe Sarah let her hold up that fucking doofus sign. Like I won’t remember it
two years from now when she’s sitting up there? Jesus.

Anyway, it all mixes together for us in a way that seems pretty normal, even though it leaves most people confused
about who’s who and stuff. I kind of like messing with people about it. Like last fall when I was touring colleges, I
asked Ben to come with me on a couple of visits, figuring that on the off-chance that coming in as the offspring of
Brian Kinney wasn’t enough, certainly walking around with the dean of Carnegie Mellon’s English department
would be. Well that and touring with my moms was a total pain in the ass because Mom would get all, like weepy
about my leaving home, and all Ma wanted was for me to go to Columbia so she bitched about everything on all the
other campuses. And going with my dad was out of the question because it always caused too much of a stir. The
university fuckers would be so obsequious about it and that always puts my dad in a pissy mood (unless, of course,
they *don’t* fawn all over him, which puts him in an even pissier mood). Look, I don’t give a shit if being Brian
Kinney’s son gets me somewhere, I use it all the time to get shit, I’m the first to admit it, but it’s penny ante shit,
you know? Like the best seats in the house on that rare occasion when a decent band comes to town, that kind of
stuff. And okay, I’ll admit that if I hadn’t gotten into Columbia, I woulda sic’d my dad on them in a heartbeat, but
that’s not the point I’m making.

What the fuck point am I making anyway? Oh yeah, messing with people.



Part 2

So a couple of times when Ben and I were looking at schools, I introduced him as my sister's father's partner, but
then over a cup of coffee Ben just laughed as he said, "Gus, let's go with 'uncle,' and leave it at that."

I know I inherited more than a little of my dad's in-your-face approach to people, but I have a much better sense of
humor about it. I mean, both Ben and I knew I was introing him like that as much for affect as for clarity. I can't help
it-it just cracks me up the way someone being queer still bothers some people.

After the graduation ceremony, I made a beeline for my mob, praying I could chuck that fucking sign before Jane or
Chloe used it to track me down. I figured Dad and Justin would have already ducked out, but they were waiting right
along with everyone else. Public shit like a graduation can be a pain in the ass for them anyway, just because, you
know, it's Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor and all the shit that goes with that. But even if they weren't so well
known, it would be...I don't know, hard or uncomfortable or whatever because, well, you know. I mean, any time
you're in a crowd, in some unfamiliar place and you can't see, it's gonna be hard.

The thing is, you'd never know it if you were just watching from the outside. Justin never looks nervous or upset or
anything. He's so...just normal about it, it's easy to forget he hasn't always been blind. He didn't even start to lose his
sight until I was, like, fourteen, I guess. No, that's not right. That's when they told everybody. It had started
happening way before that, a few years at least. They just covered it up.

I sort of see why they did. First of all, it was just so awful. And it would have been awful no matter who it was
happening to, but Justin was an artist, a painter. I know the blurb on his book jackets always says "graphic
designer," but that was just something he did when he wanted to earn a few bucks. He was really an artist. I know
that because his work is all over their place. We have a couple of pictures at our house, and Gran and Jen have some
too, but most of them are at my dad's.

When they found out that Justin was going blind (but long before they told anyone), my dad started buying up every
piece Justin had ever sold. It's not like they were worth millions of dollars or anything, but there were a lot of them.

"He can't stand for them to be out there," was my dad's cryptic explanation for doing it, and even after we all knew
what was going on, I couldn't understand what he meant. Maybe it sounds callous but it seemed to me like all of
Justin's stuff would be worth tons more money after he couldn't draw anymore, but all my dad would say was, "I
told you. He can't stand for them to be out there. So, they're not gonna be."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" I said.

Dad just lifted his eyebrow at me and said, "It doesn't have to."

That's kind of my dad in a nutshell.

So, back to graduation day. I made my way over to my crowd, a little concerned because my friend Chewy's dad
was talking to my dad. Chewy's dad is a neurosurgeon, and every time he talks to my dad or Justin, he tries to get
into all of the stuff they're doing nowadays with conditions similar to Justin's. I guess there was this operation he
could have had a few years ago that might have saved his sight or at least slowed down the process of losing it, but
Justin didn't do it. There were a lot of risks and stuff, but you'd think he would have at least tried something.

Dad has a really short fuse about all of that stuff, and if I wanted to be alive for the round of parties later that night, I
needed for us to get the hell out of there without a scene. "Hey, hey, Dr. Morgan!" I said, jogging up to the two of
them. "I saw Chewy looking for you. He's up toward the stage with Moog and Fitz."

"Congratulations, Gus!" Dr. Morgan said, shaking my hand. "We'll see you later at Lewis' party, won't we?"

"Absolutely," I said, glancing quickly at my moms. I knew we were having a family thing back at our place, but I
was counting on it being over by three, four at the latest. There were parties all over the place, and if I played my
cards right, I could stay one or two parties ahead of Jane and Chloe and keep my balls in tact for another day or two.
But Mom had a tendency to get way too sentimental about, fuck, I don't know, passages or whatever. And
sometimes Ma could talk her out of it, and sometimes we all had to, like, join hands together and sing campfire
songs.

"Columbia!" Dr. Morgan said to my dad. "You must be proud of this boy, huh?"

"As can be," Dad said, with this really insincere smile on his face, and I hoped he wouldn't say anything about
Chewy going to Penn State because even if he was trying to be polite somehow he probably would have made it
sound like a slam.

Justin patted Dr. Morgan on the back. "Good to see you, Don," he said.

"You too," Dr. Morgan said. He held a card out to Justin who obviously couldn't see it. My dad kind of snatched it
from him and slid it into the breast pocket of his suit coat. "Call next week to set up an appointment," he said, then
walked off to find Chewy.

"Fuck you!" my dad called softly once Dr. Morgan was (thankfully) out of earshot. Justin smacked him on the chest
as he threw an arm around my shoulder.

"Gus! You're a high school graduate!" he said, and then everyone remembered why we were there, and I was hugged
and kissed and slapped on the back within an inch of my life.

"Christ, get the hell off my boy," my dad finally said, prying Gran's hands off me. He licked his finger and tried to
smear away the lipstick covering my face, but his grimace told me it wasn't working very well. "Could we get this
show on the road?" he griped. "They're gonna smear my picture all over the paper tomorrow. Like I need the world
to know I've got a high school graduate for a kid."

There were the usual groans and eye rolls that always come when my dad says stuff like that, but at least it got
people moving toward the door.

"Guster!" Moog shouted as we passed him, raising his fist in the air.

"Moooooog!" I shouted back. "I'll pick you up at four! Fitzie's Mommy's gonna drop him off at Chewy's around
five!"

"Chewy, Moog, Futzie," my dad muttered, shoving me out the door. "Why can't straight people use actual names?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "It's Fitz," I said, which he totally knew because Chewy, Moog, and Fitz had been my best
friends since I was, like, eight. "His last name's Fitzpatrick. It makes perfect sense." Dad hrmphed, but it was mostly
for effect.

We stopped by the passenger door of what is the fucking coolest 2018 Porsche Dhormer on the planet. He'd just
bought it a few weeks ago, and I'll admit I was hoping he might hand his 2016 Porsche down to me. I know, I know,
I have a totally choice two-year old Benz, but Jesus think what I could score on the Columbia campus with the
Porsche? Dad just made this whole big production of laughing his ass off when I asked about having it, but he might
come around yet. He's one of the few parents in the world who's actually swayed by arguments about how much
more you can fuck around if you have this accessory or that.

"Hey, can I drive?" I asked, expecting little more than incredulous laughter from my dad. Usually he won't let me
touch a new car until it's at least six months old.

Dad studied the keys in his hand for a second then studied me with this fake intensity that had me rolling my eyes at
his drama. He chuckled then and threw me the keys, and I whooped with victory and slid into the driver's seat as
quickly as I could before he changed his mind.

He stood outside the door for a minute, acting like he was fixing the cuff of his shirt, but he was really watching
Justin getting into Jenn's car. It's a habit for my dad because it's not like Justin needs special help anymore for stuff.
Well, I mean, he does, you know, need a guide when he's walking through the parking lot or making his way to a
seat in the auditorium. Dad still sort of thinks he's the only one who knows how to offer an arm or mention how
many steps are coming up or things like that.

"So are you gonna make Justin call Dr. Morgan?" I asked once we got on the road.

My dad sighed. "I wish I had a dime for every well-meaning asshole loser who's found the next great cure for what
ails us. I'd be a rich man."

"You are a rich man."

"Hmmm, true. I'd be a richer man. Always a good thing."

"Ma said they're making new discoveries all the time and you never know when they'll be able to do something so
he can see again. Why don't you just get him to go talk to him?"

A small smile played at my dad's lips. "Why don't I get him to go?" he repeated.

"Don't act like that's some out-there thing to say. He does shit for you all the time."

"Do we really need a sermon about Saint Justin the Divine today? I'm all about a little macaroni salad, seven
thousand beers, your mothers' tearful lamentations about how they used to diaper your darling little ass and now
look at you, all grown up, a man..."

"God, shut up."

"Shocking the way you speak to your father," he said, with a tragic sigh. "The father who bought most of those
diapers. The father who steered you down the road to adulthood, who selflessly nurtured you on the..."

"Jesus, Saint Who the Divine are we talking about again?" Dad just laughed, even as I shook my head. "I just think
Justin should have, like, tried harder. Don't you ever get, like, pissed at him?"

"All the time," he said easily. "How fucking hard is it to put the milk back in the fridge when you're done? I've
poured fifteen thousand dollars down that sink in the last 20 years. And you know what he says every time? Every
fucking time? 'Oh, I didn't see it out.'"

"Dad," I interrupted, "You know what I mean. That he didn't have that surgery. That he didn't, like, at least *try*,
you know?"

He turned and looked at me with that condescending amusement that makes me want to throw shit and, like, totally
wipe that look off his face forever. He shook his head and said mockingly, "Still think you've got us all figured out,
don't you Sonny Boy."

God, I hate that! I hate it so fucking much! "What?" I said. We were home by then, and I got out of the car and stood
there for a minute. "Just...maybe you should have pushed even harder, that's all I'm saying."

My dad got out and gently closed the car door, then walked toward me, his chin raised in that way that said he was
going to challenge me to do something or think something.. "I begged him," my father said slowly, using that tone
that meant I'd better be listening. "On my knees, Gus; God damned down on my knees, wailing like the helpless
little fairy you think HE is and throwing out every lame ass bargaining chip I could think of, I begged him not to
have the surgery. Hell, I'd've run for president of the fucking PTA in high heels and pearls if that's what it took."

I was nodding, like I was totally getting it, but then the words actually registered and then I was shaking my head.
"Wait, no, that's not how it..." I said, but was interrupted by that cool, dangerous tone.

"What, you don't like that picture of your big butch daddy? Does that mess with the tidy image of your old man as
the mighty lord of the manor and wussy Justin as the timid little woman?"

Okay, see, this is where Dad and Justin are so different. Justin would never in a million, billion years throw back in
my face what a total shit I was to him for...or, I don't know, like, the first few years of my adolescence. My dad, on
the other hand, will remind me of it on his death bed when he's, like, a hundred and twelve.

Well, what the fuck can I do? I was a shit. But God, I mean, I think I can be cut just a little bit of slack, you know?
There I was, like, 12 or 13 years old, and I'm in the middle of the weirdest fucking family situation in the universe
and everyone around me is totally queer, and I'm trying to figure out what that makes me, and then there's all these
different ideas buzzing around me about what it means to look like a man, never mind what it means to actually
*be* a man. I think I'm entitled to be ever so slightly screwed up.

Which, actually, my father granted me. I just wasn't allowed to shit on Justin because of it. And isn't that what you
need to hear when you're a kid who's just coming to understand how fucking hypocritical the entire universe is? My
dad shit on Justin all the time, but the minute anyone else looked at him cross-eyed, he blew up.

Look, there's a reason why no one lets him read J's book reviews before they've been sanitized.

So, I'm 13, and my father is Brian Fucking Kinney. He's always been this, sort of, dangerous, mysterious figure and
he's just so fucking...cool. Everything about him just seemed so totally cool, you know? He's, like, the best looking
guy and rich as fuck and has all these cars and electronics and, God, his loft was huge and full of the best of, like,
everything, and he has a condo in Aspen and use of a beach house in Miami. I thought he was a god. And then
there's Justin. And he's, like, short and skinny and doesn't dress cool or anything and he's kind of quiet and, I don't
know, he's not, like, effeminate the way Emmett is, which is kind of funny and, sort of made up or, you know, done
just to get a rise out of people. But I started to realized that Justin was effeminate in a different way, like a really
irritating, lame kind of way. Like...weak, you know?

I just couldn't understand what a man like my dad was doing with someone like Justin. My dad could have been with
the richest, smartest, coolest guy anywhere, but instead he was with Justin.

And it's weird because the feelings just came on, like, all of a sudden. Justin had been around my whole life, and
we'd always gotten along okay. He and my dad had always been a package deal, and my dad worked all the time, so
a lot of times when we were supposed to do shit, it ended up just being me and Justin, and I'd always been okay with
that. But then I started feeling all, like, embarrassed when I was with him, like, ashamed of him, I guess. It's not like
I wanted to feel that way, I just did.

I just came to feel like Justin was so, like, beneath my dad it wasn't even funny, and I didn't see why I had to pretend
like everyone else that it wasn't totally ridiculous for them to be together. I wasn't going to act like Justin was as
good as us when he totally wasn't. Maybe everyone else was some kind of hypocritical loser, but not me.



Part 3

It's not like I had a plan or anything. It's not like I woke up one morning and thought, "I'll just mess with Justin until
everyone gets the message." It wasn't like that at all.

One day everything was normal, and the next day, everything about Justin was just totally lame. Every question he
asked, everything he said, everything he did-it was just lame. And then, on top of that, like, all of a sudden he was
always asking me to do this stupid stuff, like read things to him, like he was testing me or something! It was so
annoying. Oh and forget driving anywhere. Like, out of the blue, he was all environmental or something, and we had
to walk every fucking place we went unless my dad went with us. He didn't seem to have any moral qualms about
driving a car.

And then it was like Justin could never do anything without making me come and help. And it was always stupid
shit, like, okay, one night he was making dinner, because of course he always cooked. He and my dad never even
traded off or anything, it was always Justin cooking. So Justin called me all the way up from the lower level where I
was watching a vid, and he pointed to the vidscreen in the kitchen that was showing the recipe he was making, and
he said, "Hey, Gus, can you give me a hand here?" he asked. "Does that say three cups or five?"

I stood there and gaped at him. He looked so...dumb standing there in my dad's messy kitchen, wearing some lame
pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and I couldn't believe he'd made me come all the way upstairs for something so idiotic.
"Jesus, you called me up here for that?" I said, "Read it your fucking self." I turned around and walked back down to
the TV room, not quite sure what to expect. My heart was pounding pretty fast-I didn't stir up trouble all that often,
so the feeling was kind of new.

Justin obviously didn't say anything to my dad because Dad was all normal while we ate that night. And he didn't
say anything when he drove me back home.

Before I got out of the car, I said, "How about next weekend just you and me do something?"

My dad shrugged at me and said, "I thought Sarah was going to the Poconos with her darling dads and the doting
grandparents."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "She is, I meant just you and me do stuff."

He shrugged again. "Whatever," and with most people that would have been the end of the discussion, but the next
second he said, "This whole weekend was just us. How exactly is it going to be different next time?"

"It wasn't just you and me, it was you, me and Justin. It's always you, me and Justin. I just want you and me
sometimes."

He groaned and threw his head back. "Oh Christ, you are not going to ask me about doin' it with women, are you? I
already told you, I don't know anything about that shit. You've gotta ask Grandpappy Carl or someone, not me."

"Dad! God! I'm not gonna ask you sex stuff! God! I just don't see why Justin always has to do stuff too. Why can't
you and me just go somewhere or do something?"

"Are you pissed at me 'cause I had to work yesterday?" He asked. "I told you they were only going to be in town for
a week. It's not like fucking Japan is an airtrain pass away!"

My dad is the only guy in the fucking universe who would think me asking to spend time with him was because I
was pissed at him.

"God, forget it then! I just wanted to do something without Justin for once in my whole God damned life, but if
you're gonna make some stupid deal out of it, forget it!"

Dad looked at me like I was some off-the-rack shirt. "You're so Mel, Junior," he said. "Fine, we'll hold hands and
take a walk in the park or something, all right?"

I huffed again, but that was probably as much as I was going to get. I slammed the car door shut and walked around
to the driver side window. "Fine. But if you have to cancel, call me before I trek all the way over to your place,
okay? I'll find something to do around here."

I thought maybe my dad would get the idea that I didn't want to hang out with Justin all the time, but we just spent
the next Saturday shopping (boring!) and hanging out at one of Michael's stores (more boring!) and then going to
one of Dad's virtual lounges which didn't totally suck, but it's not like I could do one of the college cheerleader
routines when he was right there so it was, like, flying a fighter jet and piloting a speed boat, which was kind of
cool. Not college cheerleader cool, but cool enough.

But that was just one time. From then on, it was back to the same old thing. I was acting snottier and snottier when it
was just me and Justin. I think I was trying to force him into going to my dad about it because then it would be me
against him, and I knew my dad would totally side with me, but Justin would just be all reasonable and lame and
never say anything.

It was weird. Sometimes, I thought Justin was totally on to me. Like, how I thought it was so queer that he always
did the cooking and then the next thing I knew, there was this personal chef coming in to cook for them all the time.

We were still doing that walking thing though. How fucking stupid did we look walking all over the place? I mean,
fine, he didn't want to drive the car, then we could at least take the Segways, but he wouldn't even do that.

It came to a head one day that had started badly when we had to walk to the grocery store. I couldn't believe how
totally embarrassing that was. Okay, granted, the store was only, like, four blocks away, but it was just so stupid.
Justin's car was fine, the Segways were fine, but Justin just acted like those were dumb ideas.

Well, fine then. I said I'd stay home, and Justin could walk to the store all by his dumb, stupid self. Dad was leaving
for work, and usually he wouldn't even pay attention to that kind of shit, but right then he was all, like, "Just go with
Justin to the store. Help carry the bags back."

And I was like, "If he'd just take the stupid car, no one would have to carry any bags anywhere!"

And I could tell there was this whole other conversation going on between Dad and Justin, and I hate it when they
do that! God, I hate it! They were trading these looks back and forth and I knew something was fucking going on.

Well whatever conversation they were having, my dad was losing because he got all irritated and without looking at
either one of us said, "Gus, fucking suck it up and go to the store with Justin. You get to sit around here all weekend
like some pampered little prince, you can do one thing without giving me shit."

Which was so totally unfair, because I wasn't giving *him* any shit about anything!

"Brian," Justin started to say, and it made me so pissed that he was going to try to, like, stick up for me. Like I
needed him to say anything!

Apparently it pissed off my dad too, because he pointed a finger at Justin and snapped, "Don't," then he snatched up
his brief case and without saying another word to either one of us, he left.

I went to the store with Justin mostly because my dad would have been shitty about it if I hadn't, but I wasn't exactly
a good sport about it. I complained the whole way there about having to walk, and he was always, like, grabbing my
arm when we stepped off a curb. "God, would you quit it!" I said, shrugging him off for the last time and putting a
good two or three feet between us. He kind of tripped over the last curb, but I managed not to laugh. At least not too
loudl y anyway.

Shopping took fucking forever, and fuck if Justin didn't keep punching the automated price checks. It was like
shopping with a fucking ninety year old. Gran never even used those lame-ass things, but Justin hit, like, every
single one of them.

We were about half-way done when we ran into a couple of guys from my school. Literally. Justin fucking rammed
the cart into Derek Vaughn and was all, "Oh God, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."

Derek was there with Austin Foley, and they gave me the eye as Justin and I passed, and then they started following
us. God, I was so fucking embarrassed. They were following us, and Justin was setting off the price checks every
two inches, and I could hear them laughing and making kissing noises. I was stuck at the end of one aisle, and they
were at the other and Derek had a couple of rolls of toilet paper he was holding up like they were boobs and he was,
like, pointing at Justin and pretending to walk around like some fucking girl.

God, why couldn't my dad not work for, like, one fucking weekend of my whole god damned stupid life? It wasn't
fair, because if I'd been there with my dad, they wouldn't have been acting like such fucking idiots and ignoring
them would have felt so fucking fantastic because no one can make you feel like you so totally don't exist the way
my dad can.

Justin just acted like they weren't there, but I knew they were bothering him, or something was. He knocked into
another lady in the produce section and, like, three times totally missed the cart when he went to toss something in
there.

On our way to the checkout, he rounded a corner and rammed the cart into a newspaper stand. The papers spilled out
onto the floor, and one of the managers came over and laughed when Justin apologized. She said it was their fault
for putting the papers there to begin with.

I swear to God, I thought he was going to, like, start crying or something! What a fucking loser! I thought to myself.
What a fucking pansy-ass girl, crying over bumping into something!

After another hundred years, we finally checked out and walked back home. We didn't say anything during the walk
back, and when we got home, I threw the bags I was carrying on the counter, maliciously hoping the eggs were in
one of my bags, then went downstairs to play some vids.

Usually Justin would call me up to do something else after I'd been playing for awhile, but it got later and later
without him saying anything or even coming down to see what I was doing.

Around 6:30, I stomped upstairs, and Justin was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. Just, like, sitting there,
staring straight ahead. 'What a loser,' I thought for, like, the hundredth time that day. What, like a trip to the grocery
store was so fucking hard or something he had to come back here and, like, melt down or something? God.

"So, like, are we gonna eat some time today or what?" I asked.

Justin kind of started and turned to look at me. "What?"

I sighed. "Dinner," I said very, very slowly so maybe he could understand. "I'm hungry."

"Oh, yeah." Justin stood up and moved over to the vidphone. "Pizza okay?" he asked, punching up the numbers.

"Again? We wouldn't be eating pizza if my dad was here."

"Well then what would you like?" Even though it was dark in the kitchen, I could tell he was gritting his teeth.

"Whatever," I said, flicking on the overhead light.

Justin flinched and started blinking all dramatically. I rolled my eyes and plopped down at the kitchen table. Justin
opened the refrigerator and started pulling out some vegetables and some chicken. "I'll make a chicken casserole,"
he said, like I gave a shit.

"Dad says your casseroles taste like horse shit," I said helpfully.

Justin slammed the fridge shut and said, "Your Dad says a lot of things, and most of them are as fucked up as he is
when he's saying them."

"Fuck. You!" I said, pushing up from the table. "Fuck you! He's the rich one! He's the one who pays for all this shit
so you can, like, flounce around in your fucking little studio and paint your fuckin' faggotty shit! Fuck you! You
have no right to say any fucking thing about him, do you hear me, no fucking right!"

Justin looked as shocked as I was. "What the fuck?" he asked in a bewildered voice. "What's going on? Why are you
crying?"

"I'm not crying!" I screamed. "Just shut up! Leave me alone! I...God, I want out of here!"

Justin came toward me. "Just tell me what's wrong," he said, his voice oozing all this caring and concern.

Then he moved to, like, hug me or something, and I went crazy. I shoved him, pushed him as hard as I could into the
counter and screamed the most horrible awful thing I could think of. "Get away from me you fucking, fucking
faggot! Don't you touch me you fucker! I swear to God if I had my bat with me, I'd fucking clock you in the head
myself, you faggot! You fucking faggot! You deserved to be hit! Do you hear me? You deserved it, and I'd do it too
if I could! I hate you! I hate you so fucking much I can't stand it!"

"Stop."

The word came softly, barely above a whisper, but not from Justin. It came from behind me, and I stood there,
frozen, and Justin's face which had been fairly blank, maybe a little shocked, suddenly flushed and his eyes, as he
looked over my shoulder at my father, suddenly clouded with misery.

"It's okay," Justin said to my father. "Just...it's okay."

"Jesus Christ!" Dad yelled. "Would you just fucking give up already? It's not okay! This is just another fucking thing
in the fucking endless list of shit that is not okay!"

"Well let's all just fucking flip out in the kitchen and see if that makes everything better!" Justin snapped back.

"No," my dad said, and suddenly his voice was creepy and soft. "No. I think maybe it's time for a little of that one-
on-one with Dad little Gus has been craving lately, that's what I think."

He and Justin stared at each other for a few seconds, and I was just kind of frozen, sort of horrified at what I'd said
and yet feeling kind of...justified or, like, relieved or something.

Justin sighed and said, "Yeah, maybe I'll go drive around for awhile."

It was quiet while Justin grabbed his keys off the counter and opened the door. My dad stopped him, saying in a
really odd, kind of questioning tone, "Justin."

Justin stopped at the door and rolled his eyes. "For fuck's sake, I'm not taking the car, Brian. Jesus!"

My dad shrugged, and if I wasn't in such deep shit already, I would have asked if Justin was grounded.

After the door closed, it was quiet for a few more minutes, and I realized as I waited for my father to react that I'd
never seen my father angry before that moment. I'd seen him irritated and annoyed a thousand times. I'd seen him
bored and short-tempered, but not angry.

"The first thing that's going to happen," he said, speaking slowly and distinctly, "Is that I'm going to stand there
while you recount to your mothers word for word what went down. You skip an 'and,' 'but,' or 'um,' and I will stop
you and make you start over from the beginning, and if we're still there next week so fucking be it. That's the first
thing."

"Dad, you don't know..."

"Shut up!" he barked. "If you think you are going to prance into MY home and speak to MY partner that way, then
your head has been stuck up your ass so fucking long the shit you're breathing has permanently fucked up your
brain! Now you listen to me--you don't have to like him, you don't have to agree with what he thinks or how he feels
about a damn thing, but until you are given a legitimate reason to disrespect him, you will God damned fucking tow
the line! Do you hear me?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Get in the car," my dad said, and for the next fifteen minutes I was totally invisible to him. It felt like fifteen years,
like maybe I really was going to be invisible, and I was kind of scared and pissed and in this ugly part of me, kind
of...victorious. Like, proud of myself or something that it was all out in the open.

Mostly I was scared.

We drove sort of recklessly back home, and my dad still didn't look at me as he got out of the car and slammed the
door so hard the car shook and left my ears ringing. He plowed in the back door, glaring at Ma and shouting,
"Lindsay! Get in here!"

Ma's initial reaction with my dad is usually irritation, but something about the way he looked or the way I looked or
whatever, made her kind of stop short. "What's wrong?" she asked, then a little more forcefully, "What's going on?"

Mom had come in by then, wiping clay-covered fingers on a towel. Her smile of welcome faded as she took in the
scene. "Gus, honey?" she asked.

"Talk," my dad ordered.

"I yelled at Justin," I mumbled, knowing full well my dad wasn't going to let that fly.

"Try again," he said.

"I called him a faggot," I finally said, and God, my mom looked so, like, tragically hysterical at that, that I got so
pissed off at my dad. If he wasn't with Justin none of this would have happened, and I knew deep down he was
loving all of this stupid drama and shit, and I just was so fucking pissed off! My father had always been about how
hypocrisy was total bullshit and buying into all that political correctness crap was for losers, but it turns out he was
as totally lame as everybody else. I was just so pissed!

"I'll stand here all fuckin' night, Gus," my dad said warningly. "Tell your mothers what went down."

"No!" I shouted and threw my backpack across the kitchen. "You want them to know so bad, you tell 'em!" I shoved
past all three of them and started up to my room, but then I was like, *fuck it, I'm not ashamed of what I said,* and I
stomped back into the kitchen. "Fine! You wanna know what I said, I said he was a faggot, and I said I hated him,
and I said I was glad he got bashed in the head, and if I had a bat handy, I'd hit him too! I hate him! I fucking hate
him, and I don't care who knows it!"

I ran out of the room and upstairs, ignoring Mom's shout to come back. I threw myself on my bed, feeling more
nauseous than the time Ma gave me food poisoning.

I hid my face in my pillow, but a second later lifted my head and even cocked an ear to the side. They weren't
yelling or screaming or anything. Whenever I fucked up before, the three of them always ended up yelling at each
other about it. And by fucked up, I mean, like, getting a C on my math midterm or refusing to invite Shelby Hornsby
to my eleventh birthday party because he was funny looking and smelled like onions. Dad was always on my side
about that stuff.

Now it was just quiet. Maybe Dad was pissed at my moms now, too. Or maybe all three of them were just really
pissed at me.

It was hours later when Ma knocked on my door and came in. I was expecting her to yell and ground me until I was
in my forties, but she just put a sandwich down on my desk and sat down, looking at me. Just looking at me.

I sighed and rolled my eyes and grabbed the sandwich and took a bite and sat there chewing until she finally said
something.

"Do you wish Mom was with some frilly little dress-wearing honey?" she asked, "That she was married to some
sweet girly girl with a bow in her hair?"

"No!" I said irritably. "Ma, you don't understand. You can't understand, 'cause you're not a guy. But he's...it's
embarrassing to be out with him. He's all...just the way he gestures and laughs and...and sounds it's...it's too..."

"Gay?" Ma finished for me.

"No! That's not it. I don't care about that, but he doesn't have to be so..."

"Gay?" Ma said again.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. God, everyone everywhere you looked was so fucking lame! "It's not like Michael is
this huge, strong guy or anything, but even his partner is like, really ripped and tough and stuff. Why is my dad with
someone like Justin? I don't get it."

Ma nodded, like she was really listening, but she was totally playing 'lawyer.' "When you say 'someone like Justin,'
what exactly do you mean? Someone smart? Successful? Talented? Sweet? Caring? Cute..."

"Great--sweet and cute. Two qualities you totally want your dad's boyfriend to have." I slumped back on the bed, my
arms crossed, wishing there'd been potato chips on the plate and some chocolate chip cookies too.

Ma leaned forward in the chair and said, "Is your problem that Justin isn't the kind of man you want your dad to be
with or that Justin is the *man* that your father is with?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes at her. "I don't care that Dad's gay," I said. "I just don't see why he's with someone..."

"Who's gay?" Ma finished for me again.

I glared at her. "No! That's not it. You just... you can't understand."

She shrugged, studying me with a sour look on her face. "Fine, I can't understand. Let's cut to something we both
understand. The language, we have to let go, because you've got no fucking example set for you there. Your hate
speech, though, that earns you one month straight home from school or practice, no TV, no stereo, and computer use
at the kitchen table only. I oughta add another two weeks for making me agree with your father about anything. I
don't give a shit that you don't like Justin or think he's 'suitable' for your father. You'll be respectful, because he's
never given you any reason to be otherwise. Understand?"

"Yes," I said, staring at my bedspread.

"You look at me and tell me you understand."

I looked up at her, feeling even sicker than before. "I understand."

"Gus, I don't ever, *ever* want to hear you threatening somebody with physical harm, do you understand? That is
totally unacceptable, and your mother and I won't have it. I never thought I'd be as ashamed of you as I am right
now, and I sure as hell never thought this was a conversation you and I would have to have. You're going to
apologize to Justin for that..."

"Ma, come on!"

"Don't you 'come on' me."

"God, he'll laugh in my face or yell at me and tell me I'm, like, a total worthless shit! Is that what you want?"

Ma slowly shook her head at me. "This isn't a discussion. You're gonna apologize to Justin tomorrow, and every
sour look about that, every muttered curse, every tiny complaint will get you another week grounded, got it?"

"Got it," I said.

Apologizing to Justin wasn't too bad. It was humiliating mostly because Ma or my dad had obviously told him how I
felt about him.

After I told him I was sorry for saying I wanted to hit him, Justin said, "I shouldn't have bad-mouthed your father to
you. I apologize for that, and I'm not going to do it anymore." He smiled slightly. "Well, I'm gonna try real hard not
to anyway. That's all I've got though, all right? I look the way I look and I act the way I act, and that's not going to
change. So if we have to lay low from each other for awhile, then, I guess we have to lay low."

I wish I could have been a better kid, but it's not like all of a sudden I thought he was great. I was really, truly
ashamed of what I'd said to him, of the way I'd acted, I really was. But I still didn't think he and my dad should be
together. I still didn't want to be out with him and have kids from my school make fun of me. I just shrugged at him
and mumbled, "My dad's gonna take me back home now."

I could tell my dad was still pissed. He wouldn't look at me again as he drove home. He was ashamed of me. That
had never really happened before. Sometimes he'd get irritated if I wasn't trying hard enough at something or if I
wasn't really paying attention when he was trying to teach me something, but he'd never acted like he could hardly
stand to look at me.

I bawled quietly the whole way home, and when my dad pulled into the driveway, I said, "So are you gonna, like, be
working all the time and miss all my games and shit?"

My dad sighed and turned off the engine and just sat there for what felt like a really long time. "I'm your father," he
said finally. "I'll always be your father, all right? Nothing changes that, it doesn't stop, ever. But that doesn't mean
I'll always like you or the choices you make. You've disappointed me, Gus."

"I'm sorry!" I wailed. "I can't help how I feel!"

He held up a hand to shut me up. "This is how it's gonna work. You don't want to hang with Justin, fine. I'll come to
your ball games without him, I'll take you and Sarah to dinner and shit like that all by my little old self. But that's it.
Family dinners at your Gran's, all the queer little get-togethers forced on us, Justin's there. And you will behave
civilly and respectfully toward him. And don't you for one God damned minute think he's not going to be around
when you come over to the loft."

"I'm sorry," I said again.

My dad shrugged. "Yeah, well, sorry doesn't change anything, does it? I want you to understand one last thing. All
of this accommodating of poor little Gussy's feelings is because Justin respects your right to this shit, not because I
do. I think it's a bunch of bullshit and you should fucking get over yourself already."

"Maybe you should get over your fucking self," I said. Well, okay, I just thought it, but the way my dad slowly
turned his head and met my eyes said he knew what I was thinking.

"So you'll be at my game Thursday?" I mumbled.

"I'll be there," Dad said.

Usually we'd be joking around or making fun of somebody or something. Instead it was this strained, like, almost
polite conversation and it felt so shitty. "When will it be the same again?" I asked.

My dad just shrugged and shook his head, then nodded toward the house. "Go on," he said. "You moms have dinner
waiting."

Before I would have made a crack or two about that. Both of my moms are really crappy cooks. It was, like, the best
day in the world when Sarah grew tall enough to reach the stove. She took over most of the cooking duties at home,
and the threat of us all starving to death was finally quashed. Gran says it's all the time Sarah spent with her in the
kitchen of the diner when she was a kid that did it. After my dad bought the Liberty Diner for her, there was no one
to tell her to keep her God damned grandkids out of the kitchen, so we hung out there a lot. I do an awesome grilled
cheese sandwich and can make a pretty decent omelet, too, but that's the extent of my talent.

So okay, get this. All that screaming and yelling and crying and stupid ass talking-all that shit, and you know what?
The whole thing lasted a month, maybe two. Looking back-and I don't mean, like, five years later looking back, I
mean looking back right after it all blew over, it was all so dumb. Everyone was bent out of shape-Gran was going
nuts because she knew something was up but didn't know the details, and she's totally uncontrollable when that
happens, and Sarah knew something was up and was pissed at me because instead of hanging at the loft, where there
was an indoor pool on the lower level and six million TV channels and parents who didn't care what you were
watching so long as you didn't wake them up at three in the morning because you heard a weird noise, instead of that
we were sitting down to nice, boring dinners at Bergdorf's or The Inn on Main.

Dad and Justin's place-aside from all of the totally awesome amenities, and believe me they are so totally awesome-
but aside from that, it's a really cool place to, like, unwind or decompress or whatever.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with home or Mom and Ma. But it's all, you know, rules and regulations and
do this and don't do that and mind this and all that shit. And Michael and Ben are like so fucking sincere and
nurturing and THERE for you that it's...well even Sarah thinks it can be a little tiresome--and she'll put up with, like,
anything. And Gran and Gramps are absolutely the best people in the universe but Gran is this total force and
"relaxing" is the last thing that comes to mind. I'm 17, and she still buys me and Sarah these educational...games or
toys or something. I don't know where she gets them, probably off of one of the shopping channels, just not one of
Dad's because he would never carry shit like that in a million years. Hey, Gran's, like, my favorite person ever, but
her sense of taste and fashion are non-existent.

Justin and Dad are-well, Ma calls them lax, I'd say laid back. It's like here's the rules, mind your shit and
everything's cool.

So, like, Sarah was pissed at me that the loft was suddenly off limits or whatever.

And, I've already said I thought my dad was cool and everything. When I was 13, I thought he was the most
awesome person I knew. I think now that Justin sort of helped foster that. And by "helped," I mean, "actively
encouraged." Without Justin around, I started to realize my dad was kind of difficult.

I mean, I'd tell him stuff and half the time there was like, no reaction at all. Maybe a grunt or a "hmm," if I was
lucky. And then sometimes I wished for no reaction because he'd kind of act like I was an idiot for telling him
whatever I was telling him. He gets this look on his face that totally says, "And I care, why?" and I'd feel about two
feet tall. He could be so preoccupied with work or some dumb guy across the room or a phone call or whatever, and
I'd wonder why he'd even bothered to show up. And whenever I had a great game or got a good grade on something,
he never acted like it was some big deal. It's like, when I fucked up, he knew I could do better, but when I did great,
I was just doing what he expected. I guess that's good because praise from my father always stuck with me since it
was hard-earned, but a little celebration every now and then wouldn't have killed him.

Justin always acted like that stuff-good grades, an amazing game-was so great. And he did it in this way, that was
like-he was really glad for me, but not surprised by it, you know? And he'd always tell the others about it. My dad,
swear to God, forgot everything ten seconds after it happened, but Justin would be all, "You should have seen Gus at
his game. He made the most amazing catch down the third base line..." or whatever.

Ask my dad what happened at a game, and he'd act all bored and put out and say something like, "They pitch, they
hit, teenage girls squee. It's a beautiful thing."

Yeah. Whatever.

Justin makes my dad more normal. And given the opportunity to spend more quality time with my dad, I realized
pretty quickly that he really needed to be more normal.

In true Kinney fashion, I decided to act like nothing had ever really gone down, and one Sunday night at Gran's, I
just caught Justin's attention across the table and said, all accusingly, "So, like, are you *ever* going to come to
another one of games again or what?" I ducked my head and acted all interested in the spaghetti on my plate, but
looked up at Justin out of the corner of my eye.

I could hear my dad snickering, and Michael started coughing into napkin, but Justin just reached for the breadsticks
and said, "I'm coming Thursday," like I already knew that anyway.

I grinned and shrugged at him and he shook his head and rolled his eyes, and it was sort of like it never happened.


Part 4

The summer before I started 8th grade, they told us about Justin's sight. That's when they told me and Sarah.
Everyone else, all of the *adults,* had been filled in gradually in the few months before that.

Of course Sarah knew something major was up before they told us anything. Sarah's as much of a busybody as Gran
is, which is totally fucking annoying when she's after me. When she's onto someone else, I don't mind so much.

One night after the first Sunday dinner my Dad and Justin had come to in probably two months, Sarah came in my
room when I was doing homework and sat down on my bed.

"The dads were fighting tonight," she said, in her, I-know-something-you-don't voice.

I rolled my eyes, but didn't bother looking away from the computer. "They fight all the time except when they're all
over each other," I said. "I would've called this one of their all-over-each-other nights myself, but whatever."

She sighed dramatically. "Not your dad and Justin. Your dad and my dad."

Okay, so that was a little interesting. My dad and Michael were totally tight. My dad could walk in a room and
announce that he'd decided to join a cult that celebrated, like, Hitler or something, and Michael would be right there
sticking up for him. Justin would probably be back at their place shoving Dad's stuff into trash bags and throwing
them out on the front lawn.

I pushed away from my desk and swiveled the chair around to look at her. "When?" I challenged. "I didn't hear
anything."

"When Daddy B went out on the porch to smoke," Sarah answered.

Yeah, that's right, Daddy B.

Here's one of the worst kept secrets in the world-my dad is a total sucker where Sarah's concerned. I mean A-one,
first class Sucker with a capital S. Me, he can see through from a hundred paces, but all Sarah has to do is give him
one of those wide-eyed looks, whine, "Daddy B!" and he is toast! Ma gets pissed when I use Sarah to do my
bidding, but you've gotta go with what works. You think we'd have a state of the art home theater if I whined and
hinted around for it? No way. Dad would have been like, 'Your mother doesn't think it's a good idea,' and, 'I'll check
with her again around Christmas,' when all Sarah has to do is hug him and say, "But Daddy B EVERYONE has a
one-wall TV and I can't even have anyone over without them feeling sorry for me, and it's not fair!" and then boom,
the appliance center truck is backing up the driveway and unloading the newest model into the basement.

"Look at it this way," I explained to Mom who was fretting over the whole thing while the tech guys were finishing
the installation. "My friends and I are gonna totally hang out here all the time now. I mean, this is the total Kool-Aid
house, Mom, I swear!"

Of course, when Ma got home from work, she was all, "Lindsay, God damn it, you let that boy sweet talk you into
anything!" But I just reminded Ma that she was going to help me fill out these forms so I could get an internship
with a law firm for one of my class projects. Then she totally blew off the whole TV thing.

"You could hear Dad and Michael arguing outside? Super-hearing one of your comic book powers now?"

Sarah just rolled her eyes. "I keep telling you if you run the water on low, everyone thinks you're doing the dishes
and aren't listening to what's going on. As long as Gran doesn't catch you, you're golden. And that's only if she
doesn't want to listen in too, and let's face it, it's Gran. I hear all the good stuff that way."

"So what did they say?"

"Just my dad was all pissed because they weren't going to New York for that award thing. And my dad was all,
'When did Justin decide he was too fucking good to acknowledge Rage,' and your dad was all, 'Let it go, you don't
know what the fuck you're talking about,' and my dad was like, 'I know everyone else will be there.' Then my dad
said something like, what's with the two of you anyway, and why are you working all the time again and weren't
your dad and Justin rich enough already and didn't they have enough fucking stuff already that they could miss one
day of work for family and your dad was like, "Fuck you, Michael, you don't know shit!"

"He said 'fuck you' to Michael?"

"He says 'fuck you' to everybody."

"Not Michael usually."

"Whatever. So my dad was all, 'Then talk to me, Brian, tell me what's going on.' And then your dad got, like, the
wrongest look on his face, which made my dad, all, like, bothered, and he was going, 'Brian, what, tell me, what?'
and your Dad was just like shaking his head, looking all wrong then Gran shouted at them to quit being such bitches
and get in the fucking kitchen and help move the fucking refrigerator."

"What do you think Daddy B was going to say?" I made a face at her name for my dad, but felt a little, I don't know,
disconcerted maybe?

We hadn't seen much of Dad and Justin lately, but that wasn't particularly strange or anything. Dad traveled all over
the world, and Justin often went with him. One time, they spent almost six months in Europe and Japan, even
bringing over the moms and me and Sarah for two weeks in August.

I wondered if maybe Dad and Justin were splitting up, but that seemed unlikely, given that they were making out in
Dad's car when the moms and me and Sarah left Gran's. Come to think of it, Mom and Ma had traded a weird look
between them at the time. I figured they were just kind of rolling their eyes 'cause Dad had made these excuses, like,
fifteen minutes earlier about why they had to get going, and then they went out to the car and messed around.

But then a couple of weekends went by without Justin turning up anywhere, and I just started to kind of obsess about
it until I finally just asked my dad if they were breaking up.

My dad was working at his computer, and he kept typing for, like, a full minute, then stopped and slowly rolled his
chair back from the desk. He turned and looked at me for a beat, then opened his mouth and laughed harder and
longer than I'd ever heard in my whole life.

"Where the fuck did that come from?" he asked.

I shrugged and mumbled something about Justin not being around and Sarah hearing Michael being all...there for
Dad and how was I supposed to know anything around this place.

Shaking his head, my dad reached for his phone and damn if that mother fucker didn't call Justin! "Guess what?" he
said before Justin even had the time to say hello. "Gus just asked if I finally wised up and kicked your ass to the
curb," he gloated, while I stood in the background going, "Dad! God damn it, that's not what I said! Don't listen to
him!"

I tried to grab the phone away from him, but he just held my at arms length with his hand on my head.

"You are the world's worst father!" I groused at him while I fixed omelets for dinner that night. "Like, rule 1 is never
ridicule your kid."

"That rule's just for parents of kids who don't do ridiculous things," my dad said, coming up to peer over my
shoulder. "Hey, watch the butter and no cheese in mine."

"Do you want to make dinner?" I threatened, waving the spatula at him. He lifted his arms in surrender and sat back
down.

Still, he kept snickering and shaking his head the whole rest of the night. You know, sometimes spending a weekend
with Michael and Ben wasn't such a chore after all.

A few more weeks passed, and suddenly there were lots of hushed voices and discussions that ended abruptly when
Sarah and I entered the room. By the time the moms and Justin sat me and Sarah down a few weeks later , I'd
decided they were going to tell us that Dad and Justin were moving to New York or LA or something. That seemed
major enough to piss off the family and justify everyone sticking their noses in.

Justin started out by apologizing if things had seemed weird for awhile. Then he went off on this tangent about
sometimes when something happens so unexpectedly, and you have to get to this specific place in your own head
before you're able to talk about and once you get everything settled in your own mind, you can face everyone else
and move on.

"Is this about me not getting a new bike for my birthday?" Sarah interrupted to ask. "'Cause, like, Daddy B already
said I could, and Dad bought the helmet last week and..."

"No Sweetie, it's not about that," Mom said.

Justin made a face like he'd dropped something really expensive and kind of chuckled and said, "Let me start over."

But when he started talking again, he didn't make any more sense. He was saying stuff about a medical condition
and how it was really rare and sometimes there's treatments and things they can do and sometimes even if they
caught it early there was little they could do to halt the degenerative effects of the illness. It was Ma who reached out
and took Justin's hand.

"Justin, honey, let me try," she said. "You guys, Justin's lost the sight in his left eye, and he's gradually losing the
sight in his right as well. Eventually...eventually, he's not going to be able to see."

It was quiet for a second before Sarah helpfully continued, "Until they do an operation or something? Like my friend
Kara's dad, remember? He had to get one of those synthetic livers but now he runs marathons and does those bike
races, right Mom? We went and watched them once."

"Well, right now," Mom said, "There isn't an operation that will help."

Sarah started to cry. "But who'll help me with the colors!" she said, which didn't make sense, but we all knew what
she meant.

Sarah has always wanted to be a fashion designer. My dad says if Gran was one of the first people you were ever
exposed to, that makes perfect sense. He was always teasing Sarah that there was no way the daughter of two
lesbians would ever be allowed to design clothing for anyone. Ma sort of thought the whole idea was kind of
frivolous and she was always telling Sarah to concentrate on English and math, on something more practical. She
was funny about Mom, kind of overly sensitive or something. If Mom made the slightest suggestion about one of
Sarah's drawings, Sarah flipped out, tore it up and ran up to her room screaming about how we all hated her and
never wanted her to succeed at anything and that she couldn't wait until she was old enough to move away. And
Michael wasn't much help either-he thought every stray scratch on a piece of paper was the most amazing thing
anyone had ever done in the history of the universe.

Of course Justin was the one Sarah looked to for encouragement. For her sixth grade class project, she designed a
line of clothes for the hip and with it junior high schoolers. After about the fiftieth screaming battle between Mom
and Sarah, Ma dumped everything in the car, including Sarah, and dropped it all off at the loft.

I watched Mom hug Sarah, and Justin teasingly told her that even blind, he'd be more help to her than her lesbian
mothers could ever be. Ma pretended to be offended and Sarah kind of coughed and laughed and hiccupped and
quieted down.

"Does my dad know?" I asked suddenly, feeling...I guess bewildered is the best way to describe it. I thought wildly,
stupidly, desperately that maybe Justin hadn't wanted to, like, bother my dad with all of this, but I was sure that all
we had to do was turn Dad loose on the situation and we'd be fine. Justin would be fine.

Justin got this tender look on his face that he always gets when we say something he thinks is oh-so-sweet, and he
nodded. "Yeah," he said gently. "We've known for awhile now. I just needed some time before I let everyone else in
on it."

I felt a little better then. God, what drama queens everyone in this family was. "Well if Dad knows then he'll fix it," I
said, looking from my moms to Justin, not understanding now why everyone was so doom and gloom. "He'll find a
doctor or a hospital or some medicine. He can fix it!"

Justin opened his mouth to say something, but the words got stuck. He looked helplessly from Mom to Ma and back
at me, then ducked his head.

"Oh, honey, believe me, if something could be done, your dad would have done it," my mom said. "It's beyond that
now, Sweetheart."

There really wasn't much else to say, but we all just sat there for awhile. What do you do when someone tells you
they're going blind. What was I supposed to do, say, "Rough break there, J, think I'll go shoot some hoops now."

It was really uncomfortable, and I was kind of relieved when Ma said she'd drop Justin off at the loft. He stood up
and took my arm so I'd follow him to the door. "You want to talk about any of this, you have any questions,
anything, you can talk to me, okay?" he said.

I nodded, staring at my toes, embarrassed I guess, and mostly just feeling so awful for him, but not knowing what I
should say.

"Can I ask you a favor?" he asked.

I felt tears sting my eyes as I nodded quickly, still unable to look at him.

"Gus, you know how you thought your dad could just fix all of this?" Justin said, cocking his head so I would finally
meet his eyes. I shrugged and nodded again. "Well, that's kind of what your dad thought too. It's really, really hard
for him knowing that he can't. So I'm thinking maybe for a little while, maybe you'll just talk to me about this stuff,
okay? Just for now."

I shrugged some more and nodded, and I wanted to say something, I don't know, profound or whatever. I wanted to
be grown up about it, but Justin turned toward the door just as I mumbled something.

He turned back around. "What?" he said.

I shrugged and shook my head, but he started to leave again, and I just blurted it out. "I'll play varsity next year," I
said. "Will you still be able to see? Will you see me play? It's varsity!" And then I started to cry.

God, I was so embarrassed. Justin was the one who was sick, who was going to be blind, but there I was bawling
over something so fucking stupid.

But Justin didn't act like I was an idiot. He just hugged me and said, "I hope so. 'Cause that's gonna be awesome."

He never did get to see me play ball again. He was completely blind two months later.


Part 5

Just a couple of weeks after they told me and Sarah what was going on, we got a call that Dad had taken Justin to the
hospital the night before because some new medication made him sick. A lot of excuses about having to work
during the last year had been because Justin would have these adverse reactions to medications and stuff. We hadn't
seen him for awhile when we got the call, and the first time Sarah and I saw him in the hospital, he looked awful. He
was so thin and gray he looked like a skeleton, and Sarah kind of freaked out and started crying and that made Justin
feel like total shit and then Sarah felt like total shit. Mom and Michael decided that it was all too upsetting for us
kids and that we couldn't go to the hospital to visit anymore, and that pissed my dad off and even Ma who was like,
"Christ you two, sometimes shitty things happen, there's no keeping them safe from that!" So Mom and Michael
relented which is a good thing, because Sarah had been, like, so incensed that she'd called Gran who started going
off on everyone about family and growing up and there was something about oppression and raising good fascists in
there too. Sometimes Gran's a little hard to follow.

I hated going to the hospital, though. Justin was doped up most of the time, and sometimes he didn't make any sense
when he talked to you and sometimes he, like, passed out in the middle of a sentence which was creepy. I spent
every visit feeling like I was gonna hurl. And my dad would just sit there and you could, like, talk to him for an
hour, and he wouldn't say anything, not a fucking word, it's like you were talking to him in a foreign language or
something because Justin was always acting like an interpreter. "Did you hear that, Brian? The baseball team is
ranked in USA Today?" And Dad would grunt or say, "Mmm," and that would be it.

And always in the car on the way home, Sarah would say, "Do you promise he's gonna be okay?" Every fucking
time.

And Mom or Ma or Gran or whoever would promise that he'd be okay and that always pissed me off. He was going
to be blind, how was that remotely okay?

I felt so mad all the time. It was all so, like, random. It was just this thing Justin was born with, but why him? It
wasn't fair. It didn't make any sense, and I know it's not like it would have been fairer or made more sense if it
happened to someone else, but it just so totally sucked.

It made everything else seem so pointless. I could forget for a little while, but then I'd be messing around with my
friends or watching TV or playing summer ball, and I'd feel so guilty. And it's not like there was anything I could do
about it, but it felt wrong to be having fun and laughing and enjoying shit when something so awful was happening.

If it had been me, I would have been so angry all the time, but Justin seemed pretty much the same as ever. It's not
like he was all, "Hooray! I'm going blind!" but he just seemed...normal. You'd've thought every second of every day,
he'd just be consumed by the whole thing, like, he'd want to shake people and yell at them, "You think I care about
your shit?" But he wasn't like that.

Whenever I was at the loft, he was working in his office or making dinner or whatever. He laughed at stuff when we
watched TV or movies, he made phone calls about junk I never understood-moving mutual funds and buying stocks
and splitting dividends.

My dad, though, was, like, totally checked out. It's not like he was foul tempered or anything; he wasn't tempered at
all, which was majorly out of character. My dad is nothing if not a million tons of attitude, but he was just gone. He
was this lump of fucking "whatever." He never had an opinion about anything-dinner, the movie we picked, the
restaurant we were going to, the shirt I was wearing.

God, he didn't care about anything. I figured he'd be so pissed and fired up about what was happening to Justin, and
it was like he didn't even give a shit, like it was just one more thing.

I wanted to scream at him to feel something and even if he didn't feel anything to at least fucking act like he did, but
I'd told Justin I'd lay off, so I did. I tried to hang around the loft more just because...well, God, like, because maybe
Justin needed to know that someone fucking gave a shit.

Sarah and I always hung out at the loft a lot during the summer anyway. One whole wall on the lower level had
these removable glass doors, so the pool was accessible through this awesome deck area. Dad and Justin were
always really cool about leaving us alone down there when our friends were over. It's not like there was anything to
worry about really--Emmett was almost always there. He usually didn't work after July 4th up until some time in
September. He said anyone gauche enough to throw a party or get married in August in Pittsburgh didn't deserve his
fabulous expertise. He'd hang with us and make up these ridiculous stories about stuff he and Michael and my dad
did when they were young.

Even so, I know I was there a lot more than usual. I had this kind of weird feeling like maybe I could sort of hold
everything together, like, stave off the inevitable or something.

Maybe it all would have eased up after awhile, if we'd had a chance to get used to the idea. We were supposed to
have that chance. Losing the rest of his sight was supposed to be a gradual thing. When they finally started telling
people what was going on, Justin was already blind in his left eye. He had tunnel vision in his left eye, and couldn't
distinguish colors anymore. But with enough light, he could function okay. When I told some of my friends, people
who didn't see him all the time, they were totally floored because they couldn't tell anything was wrong.

School started again in September, and I couldn't hang out as much as I had during the summer, but I still found a lot
of reasons to drop by on the weekends. I started running with my dad-I really did want to start conditioning for

baseball-and he always ran me hard. I'd usually stick around for dinner, maybe invite some friends over to watch a
movie, whatever.

One weekend, I didn't even have to think up a reason to stay over because Mom and Ma and Sarah were visiting
Mom's sister in Chicago. I begged off with an excuse about baseball conditioning, but really I just didn't want to be
stuck with my cousins Ronny and Peter for a whole two days. They are such tools!

So Saturday before dinner I managed to talk my dad into running with me. Justin had been working most of the day
in his study, but he promised to order out some Chinese for us while we were running.

We did fifteen miles in an hour and a half, which was close to a record for me. I was hooting and hollering, doing a
Rocky impression as I ran ahead of Dad to the door.

"I'm gonna do another 30 to the park and back," my dad said. "Remind Justin no msg, and if the steamed vegetables
are swimming in butter, I'm gonna shove em up..."

"Dad! God!" I said, waving him away. I walked inside, pulling my T-shirt over my head and heading for the fridge
to get some Gatorade. I stopped short a few feet from the kitchen doorway

Justin was sitting on the kitchen floor, his back against the dishwasher, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was just
sitting there, kind shaking.

And I knew he was blind. His eyes were totally vacant, and it scared the fuck out of me.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Gus, go get your dad, okay?" His voice was totally calm, but there was this undercurrent of terror somewhere.

"What's wrong?" I asked, standing there paralyzed, looking at him like he was the guy wearing the mask in the
horror film. "Did you fall? Can't you get up?" It came out sounding like I was mad, but I don't think I was. Not
exactly. "You have to get up."

"Right now," Justin said. "Go get him right now."

Tears welled up in my eyes, and I didn't even know what in the hell I was crying about. "But he wanted to run for
another half hour!" I said, like that mattered, like that wasn't the dumb fuckest thing to say.

"I know," Justin said apologetically. "But you have to go get him now. Go now."

"What's wrong?" I whispered, hating myself for the wetness on my face, and the way my voice trembled and my
shoulders shook.

Justin smiled and shook his head at me, like I was upset over nothing. "It's okay, Gussy," he said with a shrug, acting
like I'd just dribbled juice on the floor or something. "Go get your dad."

I turned and ran down the stairs and burst out of the front door, taking off toward the park where he'd said he was
going to run. "Dad!" I kept shouting, my lungs burning in the cold night air. When I could finally see him, I stopped
running, heaved a huge gulp of air and screamed, "Daddy!"

He stopped and turned around, looking like he wasn't sure what he'd heard. I ran over to him and said breathlessly,
"You have to come home."

"What?" he scoffed, swiping at the sweat on his face, kind of laughing at the ludicrousness of what I'd said.

"You have to come home," I said again and just stood there stupidly while my dad stared at me. He huffed a breath
of disbelief and spread his arms wide, as if to say, 'What the fuck?'

"Something is...Justin...Justin said you have to come back."

He flinched or something. Something changed, but he stood there and looked at me, then looked back over his
shoulder like he might take off anyway. He shook his head at me, but I just looked at him and we were stuck there
and it felt like a fucking year but it was probably a minute or two. Finally he kind of pushed me forward, and we ran
back home.

I'd left the door wide open, and Dad spared me an annoyed glance as we walked in, but then he saw Justin, still
sitting there on the floor. "Jesus!" he said and moved toward him, muttering "Oh shit, shit, shit, shit!"

"If you freak out in front of Gus, I swear to God, I will fucking kill you," was the first thing Justin said to him.

It seemed a little late for that. Dad was, like, checking his arms and legs, like he'd fallen and might have broken
something, and he kept saying, "They said months! They said it was fucking months from now! God damn fucking
shit! Fucking shit!"

I think back now and it's strange-no one-not Justin or me or my dad-ever said Justin couldn't see anything anymore,
my dad and me, we just knew what was happening.

Justin kind of pushed my dad away from him. "If you flip out, I'm going to flip out and Gus will be in therapy for,
like, a hundred years. Call... call Sedaris. He'll meet us at the hospital."

"Those god damned mother fucking shits!" my dad muttered. "Those fucking fucking shits, they told us a year.
Fuckers!" He started looking around for his cell phone, which was in the pocket of his sweats.

Justin was still sitting on the floor. He was blinking really fast, and he kept rubbing his eye. "Hey, Gus? Run change
your clothes, okay? Get out of that sweaty shit and grab some clean clothes for your dad. A pair of jeans and a shirt.
We're gonna head over to the hospital."

They ended up admitting Justin at the hospital, but the doctor assured my dad and me that it was just for the night.
They made us sit out in this hallway while they ran some tests and got him settled.

I kept thinking maybe this wasn't really it, this wasn't the permanent thing, just maybe a blip or something. I kept
asking my dad if they couldn't fix it for a little while, if maybe this was just, like, a reaction to more medication or
something. He never said a word. He just sat there.

"Why is it taking so long?" I groused. "Why don't you ask them what's going on?"

"It's gonna be okay," he finally said in this dreary monotone, and he sounded so disinterested, so, like, fucking
bored, like we were all just interfering with his plans to get his dick sucked or something, and I went off on him.

"Fuck you, it is not!" I yelled. "You're just saying that 'cause he told you to! It's not okay, it's fucked! And if you
fucking gave a shit about anything you'd know that!"

My dad blinked slowly and turned his head away. "Lower your voice," he said, like he didn't really care if I did or
not.

"Why won't you fix this?" I screamed at him. "You're totally fucking rich, you can buy whatever you want, you
make people do whatever you want! You can have anything and be anything and do anything! Why won't you fix
this?" I was grabbing his arm, and all he was doing was calmly trying to pry my fingers off of him.

"Why don't you love him like Ma loves Mom and Michael loves Ben and every fucking body loves everybody else!
Why don't you give a fuck what happens to him! If you loved him you'd care! You'd try to do something! Why don't
you give a shit!"

"Gus, be quiet!" came a sharp voice from behind me. I whirled around and there was Gran, in a leopard-print
jogging suit.

My dad blinked, looking at Gran like he'd never seen her before and never would again and just waltzed out of the
waiting area. I watched him go, my mouth gaping wide open in total disbelief.

Gran marched over to me. "Sit!" she said pointing one of the chairs.

"Gran!" I whined.

"Sit!" she said menacingly. "Now you listen to me. Your daddy would claw his own eyes out and give them to Justin
if he could. His heart is breaking over this. Breaking! I don't ever want to hear you say he doesn't care. I won't have
that, Gus."

"But Gran, he doesn't even..."

"Honey, maybe Brian doesn't piss and moan the way the rest of us do, but you know better than to judge a book by
its cover."

"He just sits there! He doesn't act like it even matters! He won't do anything to..."

"Sometimes...some...people...the choice is between flying apart at the seams or staying really, really still. There's no
middle ground. I think...Gus, I think stillness is the only way your dad can handle this right now."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"You don't remember your Uncle Vic, Honey, my brother, my best friend in the whole fuckin' world. When he was
dying, some days all I could do was just inhale and exhale. That was all I could do. Anything more was too much.
Any sound, any sight, any thought was just... overwhelming to me. Stillness. That's how I coped. Some days. Other
days I found that yellin' and screamin' my fuckin' head off at the unfairness of it all helped a lot too." She kind of
laughed and shrugged and watched my face to see me understand.

"Sometimes I wish...I wish my dad was just a regular person," I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. "I wish we just
had some dumb regular life and nothing special and nothing awful ever happened."

"Oh, I know, baby. I know," Gran said, hugging me tightly, and for once I didn't even squirm or try to get away.

Finally I said, "Gran, is Dad coming back?"

"He's with Justin, baby."

"No, he walked out," I reminded her.

"Honey, he's with Justin. I know."

"I wanna...I wanna go say goodnight, okay?"

Gran smiled that totally annoying knowing smile of hers, and I rolled my eyes at her and left her laughing in the
hallway.

A nurse gave me Justin's room number, and I felt kind of scared or something, which was totally dumb, but I wasn't
sure how to be with him exactly.

I stopped at the open door and sure enough my dad was there with him.

Justin was sitting up in bed, not looking sick or anything, just...blind. He wasn't there in his eyes anymore, and that
was so odd because he'd been there just hours earlier when Dad and I left on our run, and now he was gone.

My dad was sitting next to the bed, the chair pulled in really close. His elbows were resting on the bed and the way
he was looking at Justin just...it floored me. I'd never seen him look like that, so...open. And here's what's totally
strange-I knew, I fucking knew like I know my name that every other time in the whole world that I'd seen my dad
had been a mask, but this one time, this one, single time was the real man underneath it all.

And then I wondered if Justin had ever seen that or if it was only now that he couldn't see it that my dad was
showing it. I hoped Justin had seen it. I really, really wanted him to have seen that.

My dad was rubbing Justin's cheek with his thumb. "I was going to be beautiful for you one more time," my dad
said, in this gentle voice I would have never recognized as his.

Justin smiled, then kind of chuckled. "At your age?" he asked with exaggerated disbelief.

My dad laughed, which surprised me because he gets pissed if you make fun of how old he is. God, you don't even
have to make fun, you just have to mention it. "I was going to wear that black Armani sweater we got in Italy with
the pleated black pants I had made and the Iberi shoes. Juan would have just cut and styled my hair. Anna over at
Uwharrie's would have shaved me and given me a facial. Then..."

Justin laughed and shook his head. "That is so you, Brian Kinney."

"What?"

"Trying to control the last image I have of you. Well it would have been for nothing, because when I think of the
way you look it's going to be with an insane case of bed head with your cowlick at its absolute worst, two days of
stubble, and wearing those ridiculous boxers Sarah and Gus gave you for Christmas back in the dark ages."

"I never had bed head," my dad said, with absolute conviction.

"Oh God, begin the revisionist history now," Justin said. "Hey, at least the lights went out before you went gray,
right? I'll only ever know you with a full head of brown hair..."

"No," my dad whispered, shaking his head, then rubbing his face against the hollow of Justin's neck and shoulder. "I
can't," he said. "Not yet, not yet, I can't."

Justin reached up and pet my dad's hair and sighed. "Okay," he whispered. "We'll wait a little bit, then."

My dad sighed and said, "Do you know how badly this whole bravery in the face of total fucking shit makes me
want to puke?"

"Really badly, I'm guessing."

"Really."

Justin shook his head at my dad. "You're so full of shit. You've fried so many brain cells, you can't remember dick."

"I can remember dick." He sounded insulted.

"I did all that self-pity, why-me shit, like two years ago. And my God, I was the one who didn't get out of bed for
two weeks when I lost color. Remember him?"

"Actually, I kind of liked him," my dad said. "I did not have to go to any effort to get him to put out."

"That must have been a real relief to you. What with all that effort you usually have to go to."

"It's nice to kick back every now and then."

"Then why were you so mean to him long about day 12?"

"Long about Day 12, he started to get on my nerves as I recall."

"Mmm," Justin said, with a tragic sigh. "Then it was back to working hard for a piece of tail."

"Luckily my work ethic is so strong."

"Yeah, that is lucky." Justin sighed and tugged my dad's arm so he had to get up and sit on the edge of the bed. "I
was going to be ready," he said. "Take those stupid fucking classes and be ready to deal, but I'm so fuckin' not. I
practically broke my neck trying to get from the bathroom to the kitchen and that's where I fuckin' live! How am I
gonna do this?"

"Come on, you were in shock for fuck's sake. You're okay at home." I couldn't see my dad's face anymore, but I
could hear the grin in his voice. "We've practiced that enough, don't you think?"

Justin smiled. "Yeah, well, I'm not worried about getting around in the bedroom."

"Or the shower," my dad added. "Or the sauna or the media room or your office or the library..."

"Minor present! Minor present!" I called from the doorway. Hey, there's only so much I can learn about my parents
in a given day.

"Hey, Gus," Justin said. "You okay? Sorry for the drama."

I swallowed around the lump in my throat and nodded, and my dad...oh God, the look on his face was so...just sad.
And then he kind of nudged my arm and nodded at Justin, and I realized I couldn't just nod and I said, "Yeah, I'm
okay," and my voice sounded shaky and not okay at all. "Gran's here. I'm gonna go back home with her. I just
wanted to make sure you were..." I couldn't say the word 'okay,' I wouldn't because it wasn't okay. "You know," I
finished with a shrug.

Justin nodded. "I'll be home in the morning. Come over for pizza Friday, okay? No more puky meds for me, so I'm
loading up-sausage, pepperoni, hamburger, extra cheese, the works."

"Yeah?" I said. "I'll bring some saltines for Dad." I looked hesitantly at my dad, and kind of shrugged an apology at
him.

He looked at me for a minute, then at Justin, then he looked back at me with an identical shrug. We kind of smiled a
little at each other.

"Actually, I think your dad's on kelp and melba toast this week," Justin said.

"Or is it seaweed and croutons?" I asked. "How do you keep it straight anyway?"

Dad answered right on cue. "Yeah, loving the Abbott and Costello thing, but Sonny Boy has to go bye-bye now. Bye
bye Sonnyboy."

"Touchy touchy," I said. I crept a little closer to the bed and reached for Justin's arm. "Um, okay, so...pizza on
Friday, right?"

"Right," Justin said. He pulled me down into a hug. "You were really awesome tonight, Gus. You were calm and
you did what I needed you to do. You're a pretty amazing kid."

I rolled my eyes and kind of shoved myself away from him. "Shut up," I mumbled, and he laughed a little.

Then I hugged my dad kind of awkwardly, feeling self-conscious and awful about yelling at him, but he hugged me
back really hard, like so fucking hard. His hand was on the back of my head and he just held me there for a long
time. He didn't pat me on the back or ruffle my hair or even rock back and forth on his heels. We just held tight to
each other and stood there, for a good long time, really still.


Part 6

Losing the last of his sight so abruptly, Justin had to learn how to do a ton of things in new way. He and my dad had
found this place out in Arizona, called Heritage Recovery Center, that teaches people who've lost their sight how to
be, like, normal again. The problem was they couldn't fit him in for almost a month.

I'm sure there were classes and stuff in Pittsburgh that Justin could have taken, but the one time Mom mentioned it
to Dad, he got pissed and stormed out. "Give him a fucking second to get his bearings, damn it! He's not some God
damned performing seal!"

I didn't think that was very fair, but I could see where Justin might need a little time to get used to everything. It was
weird seeing him, though. We'd go to the loft for dinner or something, and he wouldn't move from the kitchen table
the whole time we were there-not even to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water or anything. Half the time he
wouldn't even really eat-he'd make a few, like, half-hearted attempts to scoop something onto his fork but mostly he
just pushed stuff around on the plate.

This sounds pretty awful, but it's like, since Justin couldn't see, he couldn't be seen. I'm not trying to be cute or
anything or make some, like, clever play on words. That's what he was like. He was all, just, like, gray and small
and always kind of hiding behind my dad.

And my dad. Shit. You think he gets pissed when the New York Times doesn't declare Justin's latest book the best
thing since, like, The Bible? God, you should have seen him back then. It's like he was always poised and ready to
go, like, totally ape shit whenever someone stared or acted the least bit uncomfortable around Justin. Or acted,
maybe, just possibly, like Justin couldn't see anything.

Sarah and I were studying at the loft once, and the sun was coming in one of the windows, and I asked Sarah to go
fix the blinds. Swear to God, my dad, like, glared at me for a half hour. I wanted to be, like, "Jesus Christ, I didn't
say *blind*, I said *blinds!*"

It was only a few weeks, but I worried that Justin was going to be like that forever-all, like, timid and scared and
stuff, and my dad would be wound so fucking tight and that maybe it was never going to be cool and fun and normal
again.

Justin and my dad were at the Heritage for three months. We had Christmas out there that year, and it was awesome
because it was, like, 20 below in the Pitts and we were kicking back in 85 degree heat, hiking through these
awesome trails, biking around and laughing at all the losers back home.

But mostly it was great because that was when I really knew that it was going to be okay, we were all going to be
okay, and life was going to be as good as ever. What a relief.

That was toward the end of their stay, and Justin was totally different. Or maybe he was back to being the same as
before. He talked and joked around like he had before. He cooked dinner almost every night and freaked Gran out
the way he chopped stuff with the hugest butcher knife you've ever seen. He and my dad had this cool tandem
mountain bike, and we tore around the bike trails and a couple of afternoons we even hit golf balls. I'm not kidding-
they have these golf balls that beep and damn if Justin couldn't, like, line up the club and belt the fuckers way out
there.

My dad was back to normal too-grousing about how much we were all costing him and complaining about
everything and acting like we were all so lame and stuff. He was really proud of Justin though, even I could see that.
When Justin was making dinner, my dad would sit at the kitchen table and just watch him with the weirdest look on
his face-part amusement, part pride, part something else. I swear to God, Justin could feel my dad's eyes on him, I
know he could. Sometimes he'd stop what he was doing and just sort of cock his head in my dad's direction. It was
the strangest thing.

My dad's on the board of directors for the Center now and gives, like, a bazillion dollars to them every year. Not that
my dad would tell you that-he'd be all, "It's none of your fuckin' business," but Pittsburgh Monthly publishes a list
every year of the top 200 philanthropists in the city, and it tells you how much people give and who they give it to.
My dad hates that list. Whenever it comes out, the gay papers and magazines always publish these horrified
editorials because my dad doesn't shower the local gay organizations with cash. My dad's usual reply of "Fuck 'em"
isn't really press-friendly, but everyone pretty much knew that's how he felt about it.

Anyway, we all got used to the way it was. That happened more quickly than you might think.

When we were at home or, like, J's office or stuff, I swear, I'd forget about it. That sounds crazy or impossible or
whatever, but it's true. Well, there's always stuff that you have to do, but it's not like you're saying to yourself,
"Justin is BLIND!" while you're doing it-you just do it, because... well because you have to, I guess. Sarah and I
crack up when something that's totally a habit comes out and seems weird to other people, like when a friend comes
over for dinner, and you set a plate down in front of them and say something like, "Sandwich at ten o'clock, potato
chips at three and the pickle's at seven." That's just something we do now-it's not sad or tragic or too bad or anything
stupid like that, it just is.

Justin wrote a book and then another, and then the first book was bought by a movie studio and then for awhile it
became this thing because my dad is, well, Brian Kinney, and even if it was 2015 or whatever, there was still some
novelty in a gay couple being as successful and rich and well known as Dad and Justin. It was funny, Justin used to
say how he was always so worried that every interview would be all about his being blind, but it turns out an awful
lot of them were all about his being gay.

The year the first movie was being made was really exciting. It was filmed in New York so Justin and sometimes
my dad would go up to watch the filming. They brought Sarah and I with them once, and it was so fucking cool! We
got to be extras in the scene where Andrew Kent is jumping into the Hover Vette, remember? Where he runs out and
does that flip and then kind of flies into the driver's seat?

It seems like there were always reporters and TV cameras and stuff around, we were always celebrating something
cool, either at a casual family dinner at Gran's or one of Dad and Justin's (well, really they're Emmett's) fancy
parties.

The year the first movie was made was also when they first started talking about a surgery that could potentially
cure Justin's blindness. I'm not sure where I first heard about it-well, overheard about it is probably more accurate.
Maybe it was Ma and Mom talking when they thought I was studying or Gran and Gramps' when they thought I was
raking leaves, who knows. I knew there was a risky operation some doctor in Europe was doing, and that Justin was
considering it and that he and my dad were arguing about it.

I guess I just assumed Dad was pushing Justin to have the operation, and Justin was resisting.

I heard them arguing about it once. It was at the loft one night when they were having one of those fancy parties. It
was a fund raiser for something, and Sarah and I were allowed to invite a few friends too, and we spent a good part
of the evening trying to sneak some champagne or mixed drinks in between making fun of all the boring losers. It
got pretty lame, though, so we wanted to unlock the stairs down to the pool. We have this rule that no one's allowed
to swim without telling Justin or my dad, so I went looking for them upstairs.

I could hear them going at it from the second floor landing. Christ, my dad was, like, screaming at Justin, totally
fucking screaming. They snapped at each other all the time, but I hardly ever heard them really yelling at each other.
Shit, I bet I'd heard Michael and Ben fight more than I ever heard Dad and Justin.

"You were the one who made those God damned fucking promises, not me!" My dad was yelling. "You made those
promises!"

"And you didn't want them," Justin yelled back. "You didn't want any of them!"

"Well too fucking bad, you made them! You made them, and you're gonna fucking live up to them!"

"I was twenty two years old! You were having a coronary every time I interviewed for a job!"

"So what? So fucking what? You made the promises, Justin."

"Oh my God, this is the stupidest fucking conversation we have ever had which is saying something! It's like...God,
you don't even know what you're asking..."

"Bullshit! I know exactly what I'm asking! And I'll know it every night when I sleep next to you, and every morning
when I wake up next to you! Don't fucking tell me I don't know what I'm asking!"

Justin got quiet then, trying to sound reasonable, I guess. "Brian, please? God damn it, please? Okay? Just...we'll just
leave it alone for a little while, okay? Can we do that?"

"No, we fucking can't! God damn it! Fuck you! Just fuck you God damn to hell! This is all fucking you! You
fucking drag me here; fucking make me, all the fucking time you're making me, and I'm chewing off a fucking leg
trying to get out, but you just keep making me and making me and then you come up with this fucking shit and
expect me to just fucking go along?"

"Brian! Please!" It sounded like Justin was crying, so then I was embarrassed for him, and I started to back away
from the closed door.

"No! It's no now, and it's no a year from now, and it's no ten years from now! Christ, how can you bring this fucking
shit? What the fuck is wrong with you? Fuck you! Fuck you!"

I remember things were kind of weird between Dad and Justin for awhile after that. Well, they looked weird to me
anyway. Dad was, like...shit, I don't know how to describe it exactly. It was just with Justin he was different, *to*
Justin he was different. Humble. That's the only way I can think to describe it. Every gesture, every word was, like,
tinged with humility. It's like he was saying 'thank you' all the time-it was the way he handed Justin a coffee mug
and caressed his arm or nuzzled at his temple, it was the way he brushed his hand across Justin's shoulders as he
walked by, it was the way he said, 'hey,' when Justin walked in the room.

And Justin's response...it wasn't like he expected my dad to act that way, it's like he was...letting him.

I don't know, it just lasted for a little while, but then I turned 16, and I could finally get my driver's license, so I had
much more important things to worry about.


Part 7

It seemed like the minute I got my learner's permit, everyone in the whole family had a million other things to do
that were more important than letting me practice driving. Everyone had time to take me out, like, once, and then all
of a sudden their schedules were totally full.

I'm not one to complain about shit, but, um, selfish anyone?

I didn't mind that much about Mom and Ma. They were both way too high strung. Some kid the next county over
would get on his bike, and they'd start hollering and pointing and getting all out of control.

Michael wanted to, like, talk about everything. 'This is how we're going to pull out of the driveway,' and 'this is how
we're going to gently come to a stop at the next light,' and then every single time we'd get going, like, ten minutes
into the drive, he'd suddenly remember something he had to do at home.

Justin was cool though. Sometimes he'd say, "Little heavy there on the brake pedal, Gus," or "Try accelerating a
little less dramatically next time," but other than that he didn't say much. I guess it was a little bit cheating to drive
around with Justin because he wasn't technically a licensed driver, but I always combined our driving around with
some helpful errand, so he and my dad could see how responsible and helpful and responsible and stuff I could be.

I remember driving around with my dad one Saturday, and it kind of illustrates how far we'd come since Justin had
first lost his sight, and we were all forbidden from, like, acknowledging that.

The whole drive with my dad had been a debacle. Usually he was pretty good about showing me how to do stuff, but
he was all short-tempered and irritated while we were driving. I figured he was probably pissed about something at
work, even though twice he tried to make me pull over so he could drive the rest of the way, but I was like, "Shuh,
right."

So we got home, and Dad slammed out of the car and stalked upstairs. "How do you play ball so well?" he asked.
"You have the least coordination of any human being I have ever met."

We walked in the kitchen where Justin was working on his laptop. That meant he was just messing around. If he's in
his study with the door open, he's working on a book, but you can interrupt if you want; if the door's closed, you're
not allowed in-you're not even allowed to knock on the door.

"Hey guys," Justin said, "How'd it go?"

"Shitty," my dad said. "I hope you have a good pair of shoes, Sonny Boy, because you're not getting behind the
wheel of one of my cars ever again. You are a terrible driver."

"That shows what you know! Justin thinks I'm a great driver!"

"Justin is blind!" my dad shouted. "He can't see the semi you're careening towards!"

"Oh ha ha," I said.

"Okay, just tell me this, would you?" my dad said, tossing the cap of his water bottle on the counter. "What the fuck
is going through your brain while the rest of us are thinking, 'There's a stop sign. There's a stop sign. THERE'S A
FUCKING STOP SIGN!'?"


"Justin!" I whined for help.

"He's kind of got us on the blind thing there, Gus. Not much of a comeback for that one."

Ben finally agreed to regular driving lessons, and he was totally cool. I pretended like it was just coincidence that
my dad handed over a $200 bottle of wine every time we went out driving.

The day I got my license (on my first try, thank you very much. Moog had to take it three times, and his dad's a pilot
so there's some big ironic meaning in there somewhere), Gran had a big dinner over at her house.

Dad and Justin pulled in right behind us in a brand new Porsche. Well, I knew that wasn't for me because Mom and
Ma had both been really, really clear that there was no way in hell I was getting a sports car. Still, I'll totally admit I
was expecting some wheels, but when Dad drove up in that new billion dollar number, I was a little confused. Okay,
worried. And then I was a little mad, too. I mean, that is so totally like my dad to go to a car dealer to get me a car
and end up driving away with something for himself. It was like when we'd go shopping for school clothes. A shirt
for me, two pairs of pants for him. A shirt for me, a new suit including the Italian loafers for him.

Dad got out of the car slowly, all dramatic, like he does with this stuff and leaned against the door. "Hot off the
line," he said in a bored voice. "Only six others like it on the whole fucking planet."

"Christ, your dick must be so small now you can hardly see it," Ma said, but the look in her eye was kind of envious.
She loves cars.

"I haven't seen it in years," Justin said affably.

"Yeah, but you've felt it," Dad said, sparing him a sideways glance.

"So you say," Justin said. "How do I really know for sure it's you..."

"Ew! Could you, like, *not* scar me for life for, like, five minutes or something?" Sarah said, and stomped into the
house.

"Boyfriend trouble," Mom said, shaking her head.

Dad snorted at that. "Sarah doesn't have a boyfriend," he said, while the rest of us-even Justin--shot daggers at Mom.
Some things we're all better off with Dad not knowing.

Thankfully Emmett drove up then, in a brand fucking new all black, leather-interior, killer sound-system Benz. Shit
the mother, man I almost came in my pants right there. It was all I could do not to shove Em aside and shout,
"Mine!" at the top of my lungs, but I had to try to play it a little cooler than that or my dad would torture me for the
rest of the day.

"Why, Emmett, what shiny new wheels you have!" my dad said with just a glimmer of interest.

"Well you know, a person gets tied of lugging themselves around in the same old bag of nuts and bolts. Thought I'd
trade up a little."

"A little?" Dad scoffed. He made a slow tour around the car. "Mmm, looks nice," he said. "Three-D navigation; one
touch direction input, voice activated wireless computer. All the bells and whistles."

"It's important to treat yourself," Emmett said seriously. "I've always said that."

"You have," Dad agreed. "I remember you saying that on numerous occasions."

"Shit, Brian, I'm a fucking wreck here-give him the keys already!" Justin finally said.

Dad laughed and tossed me the keys, and I whooped at the top of my lungs and started jumping around and yelling
and hugging and kissing Mom and Ma and Justin and Dad and Emmett and anyone else who ran out of Gran's house
to see what was going on.

I herded Mom and Ma into the back seat, then ran back to drag Emmett and Justin in too. "Aren't you coming?" I
said to my dad. He was just standing there watching with his arm around Michael.

"Let the old man choke down seven to twelve shots of whisky then I'll be ready!" he said with a wave.

"Shut up!" I called.

A couple of weeks later I collected my birthday present from Justin-he took me with him when he went to New
York to do the interview circuit. He went on all the morning shows, did Late Night and one of those ABC News
Special things. Everywhere we went, he introduced me as his personal assistant, and it was so cool. It was great to
see Justin working like that, because all I usually ever saw was him typing at a computer.

It's not quite as glamorous as you might think-it was tons and tons of waiting around for one thing. Justin laughed at
one of my not so subtle sighs when we were waiting for him to be interviewed on the Today Show. "Your dad did
this with me once," he said. "Can you imagine how irritated he was by the end of the day?"

"God, he must have been trolling the halls looking for guys to mess with," I said.

That made Justin laugh too. "You want to know something awful? Since I became kind of famous, your dad has to
work a lot harder for his pound of flesh. A lot of the young guys feel bad about the poor, blind partner at home.
Pisses your dad off. Turns him into such a shit sometimes."

I laughed, knowing what a fucker he can be about stuff like that.

Justin pointed a finger at me. "You let on, and I will accidentally key that shiny new car of yours, you hear me?"

"Are you kidding? Dad would key my car just for me knowing!"

We ended up having to reschedule one of the talk shows, so to make up for that we got to tour the studio where they
shoot Thirty Six West and even watch them do a few scenes which was so fucking awesome. Then we went to this
party, and I swear to God, Mandy O'Riorden was coming on to me! No one fucking believes that, but it's totally true.
If Justin's asshole editor hadn't told her I was 16 who knows what could've happened.

The funny thing was, when we got back home, I kind of was Justin's assistant. Sometimes, anyway. Since I could
drive, it was just as easy for me to pick him up and run errands as it was to hire a driver.

Justin and my dad started to kind of rely on me, and that was a cool feeling, you know? It felt good to be needed and
the more they asked me to do, the more they started to see that I wasn't just a kid anymore. Justin talked to me like I
was a person. Sometimes he'd lay out what was going on in his latest book and ask me if this scenario or that
scenario made more sense, and that was so fucking awesome! I couldn't believe he was asking my opinion about
something that was going to end up on a movie screen.

But the closer we got, the more rotten I started to feel about how nasty I'd been back when I was a kid. I wished I
could make it up to him. And I knew, even then how idiotic it was, but I felt a little bit like maybe if I'd only been a
little less crappy, maybe Justin would still be able to see, and I know that's totally fucked, but there you go.

So that's about the time that I decided I'd go to the Pittsburgh Institute of Fine Arts.

I know, Christ, I know. I'm the moron who just typed those words, and they are as absolutely fucking ridiculous
today as they were back then. But I was convinced it was the perfect act of atonement.

I decided to tell Justin first, so I showed up one night around dinnertime and set myself a place at the table, but then
I chickened out. My dad was in a mood because someone at work had messed up the paperwork on some deal and
they were going to have to wait another four weeks before he could gain the title on some property and it was going
to cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Blah blah blah.

After Dad ate, he excused himself to the computer in the sitting room outside the kitchen, and I was kind of bummed
he didn't go back to his office because I sort of wanted to tell Justin alone, and then tell my dad. Still, he seemed
pretty engaged in work after awhile, so while Justin and I were washing up, I took a deep breath and said, "Well, I
decided where I'm going to college-Pittsburgh Institute of Fine Arts."

Fuck if I didn't hear my father snort and start to laugh. I started to close the kitchen door, but that would make him
even worse, so I just ignored him.

"You're applying to PIFA?" Justin had said, his eyes rolling upward in undisguised disbelief. "Gus... Jesus, I don't
even know where to start. How in the fuck do you think you'll get in? Let's start there."

I couldn't believe Justin wasn't all, like, touched and excited and congratulating me and stuff. And what was with the
totally stupid question? I'm sure I relayed that sentiment in my tone. "Dad'll get me in," I said.

"Right." Justin leaned against the counter and scratched his head. "So, you're going to use your father's money and
influence to get you a position in a university you don't deserve to attend so you can pursue a career you don't want.
And then what, I'll be able to see again?" He said that really gently, but I still felt kind of...reproached.

"Maybe he thinks we'll forget that he spent the first part of his adolescence being a total shit," my dad helpfully
offered. I did go over and close the kitchen door then. Screw him.

"Gus, you were twelve before you realized that crayons were good for something other than melting on the sidewalk
and pretending it was vomit," Justin said. "You don't just wake up one morning and decide to be an artist. It comes
to you as much as you go to it..."

"But I want to do this! I *can* do this," I said, and I sounded a little bit like I was begging, like I was asking his
permission more than I was convincing him of anything. "I'll paint, like you did! I'll do the stuff you didn't, like, get
to! I want to do this, J."

Out in the sitting room it had become awfully quiet, and I knew I was treading on delicate territory.

"I know you want to," Justin said. "And, God, Gus, I just...I love you for wanting to, okay? But you can't just forfeit
everything you..."

"I'm not forfeiting anything!" I said, and now I was getting upset. This wasn't going anything like I thought it would.
"I want to do this for you! To show you! To give you something!" God, I was practically starting to, like, bawl or
something.

Justin took my arm and led me out to the sitting room, past my dad who was acting like whatever was on his
computer screen was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen in his whole life.

"I know where you're coming from," Justin said. Then he kind of laughed, but I could tell he wasn't laughing at me.
"I was going to go to Dartmouth so my parents wouldn't get divorced."

"Huh?" I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. "Your parents got divorced because you didn't go to Dartmouth?
That was the deal breaker?"

Justin laughed again. "Well, there were other things going on too, but I thought going to Dartmouth, where my
father wanted me to go, would fix things somehow."

"So what happened?"

My dad loudly cleared his throat, but Justin just rolled his eyes and shook his head at me. "I don't know. Your father
fed me some load of crap that I lapped up like the pathetic puppy dog I was, and the next thing you know, I'm
waltzing through the doors at the Institute of Fine Art."

My dad, who'd stopped pretending to be working, threw a magazine at Justin, but I batted it away before it hit him.
"Fuck you," my dad called. "I saved your ass, and you know it. Fucking Dartmouth. What a joke."

"If I had a dime for every time you think you saved my ass," Justin said to him.

"He was just a boy then, Gus," my dad said, "Same age you are now." Then the mocking, teasing tone of his voice
changed, and so did the look on his face. He moved closer to Justin, and he wasn't talking to me anymore. I wasn't
even in the room anymore.

"I can still see you dancing in the confetti," he said in a low voice. "Wearing one of those tight shirts, looking so
fucking edible. Mmm. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it."

Justin just laughed, but my dad kind of crept up behind him and hugged him. "You haven't changed," he whispered
into Justin's ear. "And as far as you know, I still look exactly the same too," and while I made coughing, choking
sounds of disbelief, he started dancing Justin around the room. Flipping me off all the while.

I remember my dad singing into Justin's ear. "So many songs we forgot to play, so many dreams swinging out of the
blue, we let them come true."

Justin laughed, his eyes closed, even though it would have looked the same to him if they'd been open.

Justin's the only one I know who can pull off this attitude with my dad that says, like, he knows Dad's totally full of
shit, but he'll play along anyway. Okay, well, tons of people know my dad's full of shit, but it's like he likes it when
Justin points it out.

"Forever young," my dad sang quietly. "I want to be forever young. Do you really want to live forever, forever and
ever..."

It was one of those times when I realized my parents have this...like, this life, that I so don't know anything about;
that there's all these things that happened to them that don't have anything to do with me.

That is a totally freak ass feeling.

So, I let go of the idea of PIFA as...what, penance? I don't know. And the good news is, it only took, like, a year for
my dad to quit making fun of me about it.


Part 8

My senior year of high school was perfect. I was captain of the baseball team which fuckin' rocked, plus vice
president of the senior class which is the most awesome office to hold because it looked great on my college
applications, but all I had to do was, like, stay awake during the student council meetings twice a month.

I was pretty sure I wanted to go pre-law which helped narrow down the list of schools I was applying to. A couple
ivy league schools were interested in my playing ball for them, but let's face it, when Princeton and Brown want you
on a baseball scholarship you're too stupid to get in for real and not good enough to play for a powerhouse. Fuck
that. Besides, it's not like I was gonna play pro ball or anything. I knew a handful of guys who'd graduated a year or
two earlier and gone on to play ball in college, and most of them hated it. You had to treat it like a job, and you
ended up missing all the good parties and shit, and for what?

Ma graduated from Columbia, plus I'd made a few more trips to New York with Justin by then and was thinking
entertainment law might be a great field to specialize in, especially considering I sort of had an in with Justin. My
dad could pull a few strings too, if it came to that, so Columbia seemed like the right fit for me.

Best of all, my acceptance letter came in the middle of October! That meant I had, like, a semester and a half to just
coast!

Moog, Chewy, Fitz and I spent a ton of time at the loft, hanging by the pool and entertaining. Dad and Justin left us
alone; the fridge was always magically stocked; and between the hot tub, the sauna and the pool, there was ample
opportunity to, uh, enjoy ourselves.

I didn't think Dad and Justin even noticed us all that much until I stopped by late one night to pick up some stuff
Mom and Ma needed for a party they were throwing.

Out of habit, I came in down on the lower level and was surprised to realize Dad and Justin were using the pool.

I feel like an idiot now, but at the time, it never occurred to me that I was interrupting something intimate or
anything. I mean, come on! Yeah, I know they're always messing around, but I thought it was just to irritate Ma or
stick it in the face of a bunch of straight people, or just, kind of, putting on a show because it made everyone roll
their eyes and throw out insults and stuff. I never thought they were messing around because they actually wanted to
mess around.

They were in the pool, Justin leaning against the wall and my dad in front of him, kind of lightly pinning him there
with an arm on either side of that wall. There was a bottle of champagne by the side of the pool and two half-filled
flutes next to it and some olden-days jazz music playing on the sound system which pissed me off. The last couple
of times I had people over, Dad said the sound system wasn't working. What a fuckin' liar!

The words didn't register at the time, but I heard them talking as I moved closer.

"I can still fuck you all night long."

"Then quit talkin' about it, Mr. Kinney and get to it."

"You don't want me talking about how slick and tight and hot your ho..."

"Aw, Jesus! You're naked!" I squawked when I was finally close enough to see.

Dad and Justin both jumped a foot. "Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck are you doing here?" my dad yelled. Justin's
eyes were wide with shock, but a second later he was laughing his ass off.

"I told you I was coming by some time to get those tables and chairs for the moms' party."

"Twelve thirty on a Saturday night is not 'some time,'" my dad said. "What the hell are you thinking?"

"My date lives over on Canterbury. I sure as hell didn't think you'd be fucking around, that's for sure. Are you just
gonna stand there naked?"

"Back the fuck away!" my dad said, climbing out of the pool and making a show of really, really slowly wrapping a
towel around his waist.

"What are you celebrating anyway?" I asked.

"An empty house," my dad said dryly "No fuckin' teenagers running in one door and out the other, dripping all over
my imported Italian hard wood floors, blaring ungodly noises that couldn't under any circumstances be mistaken for
music, watering down my whiskey like I'm some fucking backwoods suburbanite who never..."

"God, all right! Whatever." I followed him over to a storage closet behind the bar. "Sorry for interrupting. I never
thought you'd be doing...well...that, or I would have..."

My dad stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around, his eyes narrowed? "What?" he asked sharply.

"What what?"

"What did you just say?"

"I said I didn't think you two would be messing around or I would have..."

"Why?" He sounded totally offended, like I'd just called him poor or ordinary or something.

"Why what?"

"Why the fuck didn't you think we'd be fucking around? What the hell else would we be doing?"

I shrugged at him. "How would I know? Anything?"

"Usually we just hold hands and make kissy faces at each other," Justin assured me from the pool. "And that only,
like, once a week at most. Shit, your dad's usually in bed asleep by 9:30 anyway, so how could I even..."

"Shut the fuck up," my dad said. "I'm glaring at you, Asshole, and I look fuckin' menacing."

"Really?" Justin said, as if Dad had just passed on some interesting bit of trivia. "I probably look worried, like I'm
afraid you might really, really be mad at me. You know how I hate that so very much."

"Do you always fuck around in the pool?" I had to ask. "Because, like, fuckin' gross, man."

My dad snorted at that. "Like you drain and sanitize it after you and Susie Whoever are done?"

"Dad! God, shut up!"

"Please. You haven't screwed one yet who's remembered to take her pretty little undies with her. I know they're not
Justin's 'cause he likes the ones with the pink roses on the front."

"Fuck you," Justin called, lounging against the side of the pool and sipping his champagne. "Jesus, you two, I could
find that shit quicker than you. Move it."

"Well if someone had moved their crap out of the storage cabinet like they said they would, it'd be going along at a
faster clip," my dad said.

"Oh, right. Sorry. Need some help?"

"No!" I said quickly. "Just...keep your naked self right where you are."

"How did Brian Kinney's son get to be so prudey?" Justin wonder aloud.

"He's not a prude, he's a hypocrite," my dad said. "When he's getting' some it's all hunky dory, but when it's dear old
dad, all of a sudden it's..."

"Is it that you don't think I'm warped enough already? Is that why your torture me?" I asked.

"I think you're warped enough," Justin said, sounding all hurt.

Dad carried a couple of tables toward the back door, while I wheeled out a cart filled with folding chairs. As I
walked by the pool, Dad shoved me, and I almost fell in.

"Don't!" I said, laughing in spite of myself. "I don't want to bathe in your orgy water."

"Shit, Brian," Justin said. "The boy's graduating from high school and he thinks *this* is an orgy?"

"Where did I go wrong?" my dad moaned. "I know it wasn't that I didn't set an example."

"Did we not read aloud to you enough?" Justin asked, feigning terrible concern. "Do you think that's what it is?"

"All right!" I yelled from the door. "I'll call next time, okay?! Jesus!"

My dad helped me load the tables and chairs into my car, then moseyed back toward the door.

"Hey, Dad?" I said.

He was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed in a studied pose of nonchalance. "Mm hmm?"

"If you ever want, like, some pointers or anything, just ask okay? 'Cause that 'I'll fuck you all night long' shit is, like,
totally lame, man."

My dad nodded slowly, then carefully studied his nails. He'd probably had a manicure that morning. "Gus, because
you're my son, I'm going to give you 'til the count of two to get your sorry ass out of here. Then I'm drowning you in
the orgy water."

"Later!" I said, and ran for the car.

Sometimes I think that if I hadn't had so much fun my senior year, maybe I would have been more anxious for it all
to be over so I could move on. I wasn't in that much of a hurry.

There's something awesome about being so on top of your game, something about that feeling that you can, like,
totally go forth and conquer that is so fucking great.

And there was other stuff, too. It just sort of happened that I ended up doing a lot of stuff with Justin. Helping out
and shit. Justin had an administrative assistant and an attorney and an editor, and they did all the work stuff, but
even though my dad was always after him to hire a true personal assistant, Justin refused. It wasn't even about being
blind or anything. I mean, my dad had assistants who did practically everything for him. Michael always joked
around that they probably wiped his ass after he took a shit, and Ma always said the way Dad acted, you'd think they
shit for him.

But Justin said he didn't need someone, especially because he had me. It's, like, I knew when to give him a hand and
when to lay off, and it was no big deal or anything if he had to ask me to do something. I knew when to tell him
there were three steps coming up and when to just offer my arm. I knew when people were staring because he was
this blind guy walking around and I knew when they were staring because he was 'Justin Taylor' walking around. I
could tell the difference between an excited fan who'd read Justin's books enough times that they could quote
favorite passages and a fucking psycho who thought Justin was sending him secret messages in the pages of his
books.

I just knew this stuff, and I was the only one who did.

And the more I thought about it, the more concerned I got about leaving. How was Justin going to get around
without me? What was he going to do?

And then one afternoon, we were at the mall and this guy came up, all out of his mind because Winter Never Came
was his most favorite book ever next to Almost Summer. He wanted to know when Andrew Kent was going to
realize his secretary Hamish MacDaley was his One True Love and why did they have to put all that promiscuity
into the movies and wasn't it a little unrealistic for Ken Wellstock to have purchased the automatic rifles from
Caribbean gunrunners when he was heading for Europe in just a few days anyway? The guy kept crowding in closer
and closer and if I hadn't been there, Justin would have taken a header down the escalator with that fucking idiot
shouting down plot suggestions as he fell.

I decided then that it made more sense for me to go to Pitt, at least for a year. That way, Justin would have time to
hire someone to take my place, and I would still be there to show them the ropes and everything.

But when I told Justin, he just kind of chuckled. "That's sweet of you, Gus, but I'm okay."

I tried to reason with him, but then he just got stubborn and refused to even talk about it.

"How are you going to go places?" I finally yelled. "Sarah won't have a driver's license for another year and a half,
and, I mean, God, she's an idiot! She'll be putting on make up and end up plowing into a school bus or something!
And...and how are you going to go to the fucking store and... and...Christ, you piss off dad, and he'll, like, just leave
you somewhere, and..." I stopped at the totally soupy look all over Justin's face. "Fuck! Would you stop it! I just..."

"Awww, Gussy!" Justin said, and laughingly wrapped me in a bear hug. "You're worried about your step-daddy,
aren't you!"

"Get off me! Get off!" I said, which just made Justin laugh harder. "Brian, your Sonny Boy loves me sooooo much!"
Justin called to my dad in the kitchen. "He's going to go to school in town just so he can drive me to the grocery
store and the stylist and Hector's office and..."

"Shut up! Let me go! God, you're nuts, you know that?" I finally got Justin off of me, and I glared as he stood there
smirking at me. "Fine! See if I try to do anything nice ever again!"

My dad and Justin took turns giggling through dinner. There's no other fucking word for it-they were fucking
giggling.

"Just when I think this isn't the hugest lamest suck ass place in the universe..." I muttered.

"What?" Justin asked.

"I remember this is the hugest lamest suck ass place in the universe!"

That just made Dad and Justin laugh more.

"After I leave for school, I'm never coming home again, you know that, right?" I said. Dad had left to make calls or
check his vid mail so Justin and I were cleaning up. "Maybe a post card at national holidays, but other than that, I'm
out of here."

Justin just laughed easily. "Then your dad will only dole out tuition checks in person. You'll have to demand an
audience with his royal highness to get your pittance."

"I'll find a part-time job," I said with a careless shrug.

"Right, right. And save money by buying all your clothes at the Big Q. I know how that works."

"I'm not going to become some caveman, J," I said haughtily, and we both started laughing. "Shit, can you imagine
Dad's face if I came back dressed in some fine Big Q ensam. And told him that designer labels were just a way for
the rich and powerful to oppress those less fortunate through the reinforcement of negative self-esteem."

"He'd sue the university for ruining you beyond repair!" Justin wiped his hands on a dishrag and tossed it on the
counter, then turned around and leaned against the sink. His head was cocked a little to the side, listening. It was his
version of an assessing stare.

I sighed finally. "What?" I said.

He smiled and briefly shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Just...you're gonna do fine at school. You're gonna do
great. You're smart as hell; ambitious, hardworking. Everything it takes to succeed."

"Jeez, whatever," I said.

Since Justin wouldn't listen to reason, I thought maybe I could at least remind my dad of how you have to do stuff.
He was in his study reading the proofs of Justin's latest book. He had his red marker out, which meant this was his
second or third read-through.

"Dad?"

"Mm."

"Okay, so, if you're driving Justin to Hector's, you know how there's an entrance to the office on Hibbert and Croft??

"Mm hm."

"Well, all these trucks are always stopped unloading stuff on the Croft side of the street. Like Fed Ex and the mail
and stuff, you know?"

I stopped talking, and it was like a full minute before Dad said, "Mm."

"Dad!"

"What, I'm listening!"

"You can't just stop the car on the corner, all right? You've got to pull around into the parking garage, by the
elevator door. But if you've already gone in the parking garage, you might as well get out and walk Justin to the
elevator, right?"

"Gus?" He said my name slowly. Almost...dangerously.

"What?"

"Are you instructing me in how to drop Justin off for an appointment?"

"Dad would you just pay attention!" I said.

"Oh, even better, you're going to whine me my marching orders. How lovely."

He was like that every time I tried to tell him the littlest thing, so finally I just let it go. I let go talking about it with
him, I mean. I couldn't stop worrying about what was going to happen without me there to take care of shit.

It wasn't just Justin-there was tons of stuff at home that Mom and Ma had no idea how to do, and it's not like Gran
and Gramps could do their own yard work, and leaving Sarah to deal with Ben and Michael by herself just seemed
mean. Maybe I zeroed in on Justin because, being blind, he seemed the most vulnerable. Maybe it was some residual
guilt about being shitty to him when I was younger. Who knows. I just knew I had to somehow make sure his back
was covered.

One afternoon after school, I met Dad at his office. He made a big deal about showing me around and introducing
me to some people. Justin didn't like it much when we went to his editor's office, and they made a fuss over him. My
dad expected a big deal to be made over him, especially at his own company. Everybody was all "Mr. Kinney this"
and "Mr. Kinney that."

I think I'm more in the big deal camp myself. Everyone was running around getting me something to drink and a
candy bar and telling me how great I was. Nothing wrong with that if you ask me.

I roamed around my dad's office while he made a bunch of phone calls about buying some company that makes
something that has to do with the software that runs his virtual lounges. I didn't understand most of what they were
talking about, but it was totally cool to hear him throwing around millions of dollars like they were nickels and
dimes.

"So, like, how come you and Justin never got married?" I asked as he was hanging up on some banker guy.

Dad sat back in his chair staring at me like I was an alien. Finally he leaned forward, offering me his hand. "I'm
Brian Kinney," he said. "I don't believe we've met."

I sighed and pushed his hand away. "Well, what would happen if you split up?"

My dad gave me this look of exaggerated concern. "Why, have you heard something?"

"I'm just asking what would happen. Where would Justin live? How would he...

"This is fucking unbelievable. So what is this, you're asking me what my intentions are toward the fair-haired boy, is
that it?"

"Can't you just tell me what would happen?"

"Well clearly he'd be too devastated to get out of bed, so it wouldn't matter where he lived so long as there was a
bedroom."

"Be serious for a minute! Why don't you have more permanent stuff between you? Why make it so you can just
walk away and leave him with, like, nothing?"

"Jesus Christ!" my dad said. "Is Justin getting this third degree shit? What about poor, old heartbroken Dad, huh?
Are you worried about me at all? What if I start putting on weight or crying over your moms' cheesy vids? Who's
worried about that?"

"You just called yourself old!" I pointed out.

Dad just gave me this look and started packing up his brief case. "Let's go," he said, shaking his head at me.

We'd been driving for a few minutes in silence when he cleared his throat and said, "I'm going to tell you something,
and you are just going to nod your head, all right? We're not going to talk about it, and you're never going to
mention it again."

I rolled my eyes at him and nodded.

"I'm not going to bail on Justin," he said. "That's not the way it works with us. So would you quit this bug up your
ass about my leaving him begging with a tin cup on some fucking street corner?"

"Dad, I just..."

"Shut up. One more thing, and I am fucking serious about this. Not a fucking word ever again, all right?"

I nodded, but it was a minute or two before my dad finally spoke. "Okay, so, here it is. In a mediocre year, when he
doesn't have much going on, Justin could buy and sell my ass twice over, all right? That's a mediocre year for him. I
am not supporting Justin. He does not need me to put food on his table or a roof over his head. Justin is not with me
because he needs some fucking sugar daddy taking care of him. He's with me because I am, without question, the
most amazing fuck..."

"Dad! God! Shut up!"

"What? If you're gonna waste all this time and effort fretting over who's going to take care of poor little Justin if
you're not around, you better get your facts straight."

"You know what's amazing? That I can function in society, that's what. You are so off your rocker..."

Dad just chuckled as we continued home. "You're nervous about leaving home, that's normal. Columbia is going to
challenge you a lot more than high school ever did. You're right to think about that, but you've got to stop inventing
a bunch of shit as an excuse not to face that challenge, all right?"

I sighed, but didn't say anything, but my dad grabbed the back of my neck and shook me a little. "All right?" he said
again.

"All right!" I said.

"And if you are gonna invent shit, would you kindly invent something that doesn't cast me as some fuckin' loser
villain of the piece?"

I just sighed and looked out the window while he muttered the rest of the way home. "Fucking 20 years, I'm the one
putting up with all the shit, but do I get any credit for that? Of course not. You spend one or two years fuckin' a few
hundred men without dinner and a movie first, and you end up with some fucking reputation..."

"Dad! God! Shut up!"


Part 9

By the time graduation rolled around, it all felt right-leaving home, starting something totally new and totally
different. I wasn't feeling anxious anymore, just excited.

Or maybe I was fraught with anxiety and looking for the slightest little thing so I could blow a gasket and let off
steam. Who the fuck knows.

I just know I was totally floored by my father telling me *he* was the one who decided against the surgery that
would have let Justin see again. He dropped his little bombshell about falling to his knees and begging Justin not to
do it, and I just couldn't believe it.

I sort of sagged against the car and just stood there gaping at him for a really long time. "But why?" I must have
repeated the question three times before my dad finally answered me. Barely.

"Leave it," he said shortly.

"No!" I said, trailing after him and tugging his arm to get him to quit walking. "Tell me why! Why would you do
that?"

My dad stopped in his tracks, glaring dangerously as he rushed me, stopping only when our noses were almost
touching. "If you think I am going to explain myself to my 18 year old kid, you're fucked. Not gonna happen."

"Fuck you! Someone needs to stand up for Justin if he won't stand up for himself! You tell me why!" I knew I'd hit a
nerve, because even though he turned around and started to go inside the house, he couldn't stop himself from
turning around and marching right back over to me.

"The 'procedure' as they so antiseptically put it, had been done less than a hundred times. It worked four times.
Twenty-eight times that it didn't work, the fucker on the table died. The odds were unacceptable."

"But he was an artist!"

My dad shrugged so carelessly it just floored me. "So now he paints with words. Same difference."

"It's not the same and you know it!" I said. "God, what gives you the right to make a decision like that! Who are you
to decide what odd are acceptable and what aren't? Christ, this is so fucking typical with you! You had no right to do
that!"

My dad sneered at that. "I spend half my fucking life fighting off the unsolicited opinions of people who know fuck
all about me and even less about Justin, who, I might add, is the only one whose opinion matters to me. If he wants
to tell me I fucked up so be it."

"Yeah, that's easy for you to say 'cause he's the one person who never would," I scoffed.

"Hmm, yeah. How 'bout that?" my dad said, lifting a single eyebrow, then cruising off to the kitchen to get a drink.

We spent the next few minutes warily circling one another, but it was chaotic enough that I didn't think anyone
would notice. Of course, Justin did.

"What's going on with you two?" he asked, when I came into the kitchen, and my dad promptly announced he was
going to check the grill. "What did you talk about on the way over?"

I guess maybe I could have eased into the conversation a little, but subtly had never been much of a trademark with
me. "How could you let him talk you out of having that surgery?" I asked, kind of shocked by the tears that suddenly
stung my eyes. "Jesus, you'd be able to see now, and you just let him...you just gave in to him? How could you do
that?"

Justin spread his arms out in a gesture of helplessness. "What is it with you Kinney men and parties?" he asked.
"Three or more people gather together and share cake, and you have to have some big drama princess moment or it's
just not fucking festive enough?"

"I remember when they were talking about it. You would have been able to see! God, I can't believe he could be so
fucking selfish... so fucking cold that he wouldn't let you do the one thing that would help! That would fix
everything!"

"Let me?" Justin echoed, sounding amused.

"Oh, he didn't say that," I admitted. "He was all, 'Oh I begged him not to on my hands and knees, pleading and
crying!'"

"Is that what he said happened?" Justin scoffed. "You know him-he has a hangnail, and he demands to see a
specialist, and then he'll tell you they almost had to amputate his arm. You can't believe his version of anything."

That's totally true, of course, but I knew that look in my dad's eyes, and I knew that tone of voice and I knew that
walk of his as he came toward me, daring me to believe what he was saying. He wasn't embellishing anything.

"Justin," I said, and he didn't have to see my face to know I was saying, 'Don't dick with me.'

Justin sighed and shrugged. "He probably said 'please.' That is begging and pleading and making a big scene to him,
all right?"

He made it sound like such a total non-event. My dad paints this picture of some queened out, movie-of-the-week
scene, and Justin acts like it was a passing conversation over tea and crumpets. I sighed and shook my head. I guess
it really wasn't any of my business, and what would I do if I got the real story anyway? Justin would still be blind,
and I was never ever going to figure my father out in a million years anyway, so what would it prove?

I plopped down at the kitchen table, unsure why it all bugged me so much. Justin sat down next to me and said,
"How hard do you think it was to be talked out of doing something that had a better chance of killing me than
helping me, huh? Believe me, there wasn't a hell of a lot of arm-twisting involved."

"You cover for him all the time," I said, still shaking my head.

Justin sighed and didn't say anything for a minute, and I figured that's all I was going to get on the subject. He lifted
his head and just listened for a second, almost like an animal sensing the area. Then he said, "You wouldn't
remember, but it's not like I went to see a doctor one day, and he said, 'Oh by the way, you're going to be blind in a
few years,' and I said, 'Really? Shit. Too bad then.' That's not how it happened. Accepting what was happening to me
and dealing with it and surviving it... sometimes that was a full time job. And sometimes when I wasn't accepting it
or dealing with it and barely surviving it, it was your dad's full time job. And *he* could have quit. He probably
wanted to often enough. But he didn't."

"So Dad doesn't, like, take off on you, and you just don't have the surgery because he doesn't want you to? How is
that fair?"

Justin cocked his head in that measuring way of his. "Who said 'the ultimate measure of a man is not where he
stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge'?"

"Martin Luther King," I dutifully answered.

Justin smiled, proud of my quick response, I guess. "During times of 'challenge,' your dad is as fucking upstanding
as any man will ever be. And that's a lot rarer than you'd think. A lot of people...well, when things get really shitty,
they bail. They look for the easy out, and they just fuckin' let go. But that's not who your father is. So yeah, he's gets
a lot of points from me for sticking with me, but it's more than that." He leaned forward and spoke in this soft voice
that was so full of conviction. "You think of my blindness as something that happened to me, but it happened to both
of us, me and your dad."

I made a huffing sound of disbelief, but Justin just kept on like he hadn't heard it. "Sometimes, I'd go through
these...phases where I was convinced that the doctors were wrong, and your dad... fuck, I know he thought I was
nuts. I was nuts. And he knew every time it happened that I was gonna slam into a brick wall at a thousand miles an
hour. And I did, and then I was so fucking depressed and pissed and lost that I could barely get out bed. Sometimes I
wouldn't for days at a time, until your dad marched in and kicked my ass out of there."

"How?" I asked.

Justin laughed. "He yelled at me or laughed at me. Anything he could think of. Reasoned with me, ached for me,
bargained with me." Justin got up and moved effortlessly from the kitchen table over to the refrigerator. He reached
in and pulled out a bottle of water. We always kept them in the top right corner of the fridge so he could find them
without hunting around, but it struck me, for some reason, that someone watching for the first time probably
wouldn't even realize he couldn't see.

Justin sat back down at the table and continued talking. "But mostly, he just walked the whole fucking way right
there with me. Every step, Gus. Every miserable, terrifying, agonizing step, all I had to do was put my hand out, and
he was right there. And it might not sound like much to you, but it was every-fucking-thing."

"What are you saying?" I whined. "Why are you telling me all this?" Which I suppose is a little ironic because I
brought the whole thing up, but felt like I was missing the lesson I was being taught.

"I'm just saying this happened to both of us, so any decisions to be made were made together." He shrugged and
bumped my shoulder with his. "Hey, I can stand your thinking I'm such a pansy-assed little fairy that your dad could
actually keep me from doing something I really wanted to do, but I can't stand your thinking your dad is some
selfish bastard who would prevent me from seeing again if there was anything in the world that could be done,
okay?"

"Yeah, okay," I said, feeling a little ashamed at how quickly I'd jumped to conclusions about my dad.

"Now get out of here," Justin said. "If your dad catches us talking about 'the measure of a man," he'll be forced to
make some awful dick joke, and then your mothers will be all out of sorts, and Gran will start yelling and Michael
will have to leap to his defense and Ben will have to try and calm everybody down..."

"Yeah, then it'd be like a regular Sunday night dinner and we're going for special here, right?"

Justin laughed but the look on his face was kind of soft and pensive. "You're an upstanding man too, Gus," he said,
tossing his head back and defiantly lifting his chin, as if I was going to disagree or something. "I'm really proud of
you."

I felt my face turn beet red. "Yeah?" I said, kind of shrugging. "I'm..." I wanted to tell Justin I was proud of him too,
because, I mean, I totally am, and I didn't want him to think I really thought he was some pansy-assed fairy because
I didn't. But the words sounded really dumb in my head. "Well, you know, me too," I finally mumbled.

Justin smiled hugely-Gran calls it his 'Sunshine' smile. "Oh my God, if I didn't know better I'd think you were Brian
Kinney's son!" he said. Then he jumped up and, like, tried to totally smother me to death.

"God, let me go!" I said in a strangled voice.

My dad moseyed in the kitchen a few seconds later and untangled the two of us. "God, let him go," he said. "I've
never seen such a boatload of sentimental crap in my life." My dad motioned at the door with the barest nod of his
head. "Go on out back. Between your mothers, Deb and Michael, I've had all the blubbering I can stand for one
afternoon."

I had to walk past Dad to get out to the porch, and as I walked by I felt the weirdest surge of...something, so I
hugged him, shrugging my apology to him.

My dad sighed like his life was unbearably hard, but he hugged me back. "Jesus Christ, I count on you not to go
soft," he said finally, shoving me off him.

I laughed and sauntered slowly out of the kitchen. "That's funny. Chloe Wiseman said those exact words to me just
the other night."

Justin groaned, and I looked over my shoulder just in time to see my dad grab a big old handful of cake off Justin's
plate. He threw it at me, and it hit the backdoor with a loud thwap!

"Mel's gonna shit!" Justin said, turning and feeling around the counters for a towel.

I got another hamburger and sat down next to Mom and pretended not to be totally dorked out as everyone traded
their favorite baby Gus story.

I could see in a kitchen window, and Justin was draped around my dad. He was smiling up at him and rubbing my
dad's stomach, and I could tell by the look on my dad's face that Justin was feeding his already over-inflated ego.
'Typical,' I thought fleetingly. I find out my dad practically single-handedly kept Justin from trying to get his sight
back, and somehow Justin is the one fawning all over him like he's some amazing deal.

Justin said something that made my dad throw his head back and laugh, and that's when Justin reached up and
lightly touched his fingers to my dad's mouth, gently tracing the curve of his upturned lips. Dad let him "see" his
smile for a few seconds, then he grabbed Justin's hand, kissed his fingers and brought the hand down to cup his
balls. Justin just laughed and shoved him away.

Days later-well, okay, a couple of hours later--the party finally started breaking up. I had just enough time to shower
then head over to Moog's house to pick him up for Chewy's party. We were staying out all night, and if I played my
cards right, I might get lucky with Jane *and* Chloe, which would be a total record for us.

I stood at the door and was hugged and kissed and congratulated all over again until just Justin and my dad were left.

"Have fun tonight," my dad said. "Don't be stupid. Well, don't be as stupid as you four have the potential to be."

"Doh, okay Dad," I said, using the most moronic voice I could.

He just rolled his eyes at me. "And I don't want you driving tonight. You're taking one of my drivers."

"Dad!" I said. "Come on! I already told the guys I was driving" Shit! How fucking lame was that-and just springing
it on me at the last second was so him.

Dad just shook his head. "I'm not getting out of bed at three in the morning to ID your body at the morgue."

"Dad!"

"Don't 'Dad' me. The four of you are idiots. And when you're together, the idiot quotient exponentially increases."

"This is so lame," I huffed.

My dad just lifted an eyebrow at me. "Gus, I didn't ask you how two and a half bikinis became lodged in the pool's
filtering system, I just paid the $5,000 to get it fixed. But don't take my silence to mean I don't think you're all idiots,
okay?"

"Fine! Can we have a limo?"

My dad rolled his eyes again as he pulled out his phone and made the call, while I stood behind him, hissing,
"Stretch! Get the stretch! Can we have the stretch?"

When he got off the phone (Score! We got the stretch!), he said, "If any of you lightweights puke in my limo, I will
haul your asses out of bed at 5:30 Saturday morning, and you will clean every last car in the garage, inside and out,
do you understand?"

Like my dad would get out of bed at 5:30 for anything! Still, I could see him making Justin do it, so I simply said,
"Dad, what are you talking about? We're not old enough to drink!"

I jogged upstairs, calling Moog as I went to let him know we'd be stylin' in a stretch limo that night.

I looked out the window in my bedroom and watched my dad walk Justin to the car door. He opened the door, but
instead of getting in, Justin grabbed him, and they started necking there in the driveway.

Snickering, I opened the window. Dad must have heard, because he stopped what he was doing and looked toward
the house. He caught my eye, and his brow lifted in challenge.

There was something comforting in being so predictable. I leaned out and yelled, as expected, "Dad! God!"

Dad and Justin both laughed, and then my father reacted in typical Brian Kinney fashion.

He flipped me off and went right back to kissing Justin.

End