Out

Out of Control

Sometimes I think that I know what I’m doing, that I’m in control but I learn, in hindsight that I knew fuck all. This one one of those times.

I thought that by going along, giving him what he wanted that he’d be happy and making him happy would get him off my back.

But by making him happy I only succeeded in keeping him on my back. I probably would have fallen back into my old receiver pattern if it hadn’t been for Katherine. It wasn’t that I’d learned so much recently, it was that when I told her on the telephone about Bobby’s visit and the present that he’d left for me she said, ‘that fucker! He’ll fuck up everything.’ 

She was gone.

I couldn’t tell her that I’d rung back to Thomas’ phone because she wouldn’t believe that it was his voice. I couldn’t believe it myself. Granted I only heard the word ‘this’ before hanging up. Whoever it was that answered knew I’d called back. It was a man and that man sounded like Thomas.

‘Fuck it,’ I said to myself. I tried Thomas’ number again. It would have been more suspicious if I hadn’t called back.

It went straight to voice mail. ’This is Thomas, leave a message.’ Yes … yes … yes … his message began with the word ‘this’ and that’s the word that I heard when I called his phone before. But I know that this ’this’ was not the same ‘this’ that I heard when I called. This was a recorded ‘this’ and I was certain that what I had heard was a live ‘this.’

All of this thinking made me think of Dr. Seuss. Strange, but true. All of this thissing and thatting. I loved those rhyming books when I was a kid, the innocence and the absurdity.

I’d heard his voice. A live voice. It wasn’t a recording. It was him. I was sure of it and if it was him then I had a serious problem. In fact, I already had a serious problem, but if he somehow managed to survive the blow to the head, the bleeding and the drowning then he really was super human, and not just under the sheets.

I knew I had to go back out there, but I dreaded it.

I was sitting on the front step of the cottage staring at the picture of me and Thomas. The image of me balanced on the bow of the boat with Thomas arched back with his hips connected to my buttocks made us look like a couple of Cirque de Sole performers. 

Bobby had somehow caught the fleeting moment of mid-thrust and there was no doubt, even for the untrained eye, that we were doing more than holding each other up.

It was an artistic shot with an intense depth of focus and would have been something you could hang on the wall if the sharpest point of the photo were not on my frontage. As it was, I’m sure you could have zoomed in on the picture and outlined the veins on my dick.

‘Good work, Bobby,’ I whispered, shaking the picture.

It gave me a chance to remember that moment, feeling the thrill of possibly getting caught. I could hear Thomas’ voice as we stopped along the north west side of Ninegret pond, ‘are you sure, no one’s around?’ he’d asked.

‘It’s totally deserted,’ I’d said. ‘I’m out here all the time. No one is ever around.’

Well, I was wrong. Someone had been around. Someone with a big ass lens that he’d inherited from his grandpa and he found our moans and groans much more interesting than the mating calls of monogamous swans.

As I sat there on the front steps of the Sea Sprite Cottage waving the picture in the air I got the sense that something bigger was going on. And my part in it was larger than I understood.

I’d never been a chess player, though when you’re in a college of science there are some who wield their boards like gauntlets. They’d challenge you to a match and then slaughter you on the battle field in a few moves. So read a few books and learned to hold my own. I had my own secret power. I felt that I could instinctively wield my inner queen and feel her strengths and use them against my opponents.