Chapter 17

The next morning, I awoke in Felix’s arms, the young man having definitely proven just how close and vulnerable he could be by snuggling up tight on one of the loveseats with me, using me my hairy body for warmth. We were both naked, but at least it was summer, and a Kentucky summer no less. We weren’t likely to get that cold at night, not in July.

I ruffled his hair a bit as I smelled coffee brewing, and sure enough, it was Mom’s idea. Aunt Leigh was up and with her, as Felix and I discovered. As for Camille, well, she had been the only one to sleep by herself, so she was already up in a hurry, not having enjoyed her rest as much. She kept busy as a maid, with Mom ordering her around, while Melissa earned brownie points by giving Dad a backrub. It was an adjustment for us all, but then that would also be true of sharing a mansion owned by Anne-Marie and her parents in time.

“Sit down, boys! Steve’s at work. Nora’s busy with laundry, smart girl, that one! Deanna’s babysitting someone, and I don’t know where some of the younger girls are. Emily’s taking full advantage of her vacation time, so I suspect that they’re probably with her. Crystal’s doing yoga, I think. I can’t blame her there. I’m not sure where Kathy and her menfolk went, but no doubt, they have places to go for the day as well,” Mom assured me, “Oh, and Anne-Marie is at work at the theater. Her parents are at work as well. You, on the other hand, don’t have a job just yet, so you can hang out with your boyfriend here and let your mother make you two some breakfast, since you stuck around for it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Felix told Mom, but she put a finger to his lips in a hurry.

“Any boyfriends of my son had better call me ‘Mom, ‘ okay? You suck his dick and snuggle up with him at night? That’s a boyfriend and you know it! You get to call me ‘Mom.’ You’re family, plain and simple! Jake’s head of the household, we’ve all agreed, but a mother has the right to decide how to treat her son’s lovers. They all get to call me ‘Mom’, ‘Mommy’, or in some cases, ‘Mommy Hannah’, if they must. Or ‘Aunt Hannah, ‘ in the case of my nieces. You two looked so cute together, you holding Felix tight and letting him use you for a pillow. I love that kind of intimacy between you.

“Look, Jenny matters to you romantically, I know. So do your sisters and cousins and Anne-Marie, etc. That’s cool. So do Ruth and Crystal, and even me to an extent in that way, and don’t try to deny it. Kathy, too. And Anne-Marie’s parents. But don’t even try to convince me that Felix hasn’t wormed his way into a special place in your heart, too. A mother knows, or should know, her son. You’re very protective and caring with him. Good for you. That’s how a man should be those whom he loves.

“That’s what love is about, providing, protecting, nurturing, caring for someone, with plenty of sex in the mix for sure, but only as part of the overall package. Don’t get me wrong. Sex is as essential as food or drink or air or sleep. It’s a basic bodily need and human right. But it’s not the whole package, just a key component of it. Naturally, as a lesbian, I fully understand, more than most, what it means to have a special bond with someone of the same sex.

“I can understand how deeply Felix cares about you, too, which to me is a huge part of this. He’s in love with you, Jake. A blind person should be able to see it. And what’s more, my dear, polyamorous, bisexual, dominant son, you’re in love with him, too. Anyone who has such a deep love for my son is family to me, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

“On a different note, how do you guys feel about a hot brown for brunch? It’s later than you think and I have some leftover turkey and bacon to use, plus plenty of the Mornay sauce that needs to be used up. I have some coffee, of course, and I think that it would go pretty well together,” Mom asked us both.

“Yes, Mom, a hot brown sounds very nice indeed! Thank you! What do you think, Felix?” I asked as I looked at my watch ... it was fucking noon ... I had slept the whole fucking morning away!

“Oh, thank you ... Mom! That sounds terrific! Coffee and a hot brown! Delicious! My family used to work at the Derby, you know,” Felix told her, “No wonder I’m fine with having someone ride me like a thoroughbred!”

I nearly spat out my coffee on hearing that, plus I had a full bladder, so I rushed to the bathroom for a moment there, more than a little red in the face. I heard laughter behind me, especially once Felix joined me in the john and started peeing into the bowl right next to me. We laughed as our streams crossed like swords, filling the bowl before we finished and Felix flushed the commode.

We also washed up really good, even if Felix used the occasion as an excuse to press his naked flesh against mine. Yes, neither of us were clothed yet and no one bothered to mention it, partly because it seemed so natural now, at least in our family. We walked back to the kitchen holding hands, while hearing Mom and Dad joke with each other just like old times (well, mostly). It was almost as if there had never been any marital troubles, though admittedly now that everything was out in the open, things were a lot better. Mom and Dad knew something of the boundaries, the true feelings, the reasons for things, etc., and they were both a lot more comfortable in their own skin these days.

“So, then, my old buddy Ralph, he, and I am not making this up, Ralph tells this drag queen, Sonya, that was her name, ‘Look, right now, I don’t give a shit. I just want the rest of my rubbers back!’ It was fucking hilarious! He never slept with another drag queen, but he also never heard the end of it! We called him ‘King of the Drag Queens’ clear until he left the Corps at the end of the year!” Dad chuckled with a risque anecdote that he would have never shared in his preaching days, that much was sure.

“I can only imagine how long that took to live down,” Felix interjected with a snicker.

“Trust me, son, I think that every time he goes to Mick’s Barbershop he hears of it, since Mick was the corpsman for our unit! Not that Mick didn’t get into some trouble of his own, mostly with Thai girls, but that’s another story altogether. I think that he got the clap six times during our stay there and the first sergeant got so annoyed with him that he ordered someone to play Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Burnin’ For You’ whenever Mick went to the head, just to humiliate him into wearing a damn rubber for once!” Dad belly laughed as he related the story to us, not even hesitating to include Felix in the conversation, “Mick was a great corpsman, but he didn’t always practice what he preached about safe sex.”

“They say that doctors are the worst patients. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true with corpsmen, too,” I observed as I drank more fine, black coffee (I never much used creamer or sugar).

“Me, neither, certainly not in Mick’s case. Like I said, great corpsman. Just not a great patient, at least not when it came to his STDs. Now he’s married and I think that the wife that he has knows what kind of heathen he is, since he picked her up in Bangkok and never looked back. He even married her at the end of his stay. Then again, he knows what she is, too. Not sure how they work it out, but that’s their business, I’d say. Pretty little thing, very petite, very friendly, though she never got THAT friendly with me, if you know what I mean. Maybe they’re really faithful to each other. One never knows. I’m not going to judge them either way,” Dad recalled with a grin, even as Mom lay a hot brown down for him, too.

“Not that I can judge. We haven’t exactly practiced safe sex of late,” I admitted with a bit of a blush.

“Yeah, well, sue me, but when you have a terminal disease, you no longer give a crap about catching something else. Hell, I’m half-tempted to pick up smoking again, and I haven’t done that since before I started preaching!” Dad shrugged, holding Mom’s hand as she stroked his hair.

“Honey, don’t worry about it right now. We’ve kinda kept it to a restricted circle for now, haven’t we? We can all get tested, though. It wouldn’t be the worst idea, except maybe for Larry, and he’s not a high risk. His only indiscretions in years have been in the past 48 hours or so. I don’t even think that Kathy is that high of a risk, given that most of her sex has been with Duncan and his brothers. I’m guiltier of extramarital affairs than your father, since Crystal and I have been lovers for a while, though he seems to have forgiven me and understood about it. Granted, Crystal was my only extramarital partner up until very recently. I was faithful to her, just as she was to me,” Mom smiled at me.

“I think that with only a limited inner circle, we’ll be fine. As for you being gay and having an affair with Crystal, I’ve made my peace with it. I want to go to my deathbed without anger, hate, or bitterness. Besides, I have Ruth, you’ve decided to make a huge sacrifice for my sake by not divorcing me, and who can blame anyone for being drawn to Crystal? She looks like an angel, at least how they’re often portrayed. She only needs the wings. She acts like an angel, too,” Larry reassured us both.

“She does look like an angel, yes, and I’ll be sure to let her know that you said that. She’d get a kick out of that. She doesn’t act or sound like an angel when I’m eating her out, though!” Mom giggled as she ate her hot brown.

The hot browns were delicious as ever, given that she was an excellent cook and hot browns were something that any self-respecting Kentuckian took as a birthright and any sensible Kentucky cook took as a matter of pride. Even in his angriest moments, Dad never insulted or attacked Mom’s cooking skills. Some things were just understood. Mom knew how to cook better than a short order cook and could easily be a chef if she wanted to be.

“Damn, Mom, you make the best hot browns that I’ve had in years, and that’s saying a lot, because my Granny used to cook a mean hot brown! Well, before she died of emphysema, sad to say. She was a bit of a chain-smoker, of course. How do you get the bacon so crispy and the turkey so moist? The Mornay sauce has just a hint of a sweetness to it, too,” Felix noticed a sweetness that even I had never experienced prior to now.

“That’s the bourbon, sweetie. You’re all tasting that in it for the first time. In the past, well, Larry didn’t approve of liquor. Now that he doesn’t mind, why not?” Mom winked at us.

“Well, you always made a great hot brown, Mom, but you’ve definitely outdone yourself now,” I told her with a kiss on the cheek, though she followed it up with one on the lips, albeit very motherly rather than like a lover’s (as in, only light lip contact with no tongue).