Chapter 1: Family Surprises

May 14th - May 23rd, 1990

Finals and the funerals of the seven who died dampened my spirits the week after the Pickle attack. Joey insisted he go to the funerals despite never having met any of them personally, except possibly to test them with the coin that they had died for. Suzi and/or I went with him, but we each separately couldn’t make one due to conflicts in final schedules. Sarah went to all but two, and several other people from the Group made it to them as well.

Like I said, it dampened my spirits, and when I feel down, people around me feel down as well. So I hung around my apartment away from other people as much as I could, and once finals were over, I packed up a few things to go home for a while. But on Thursday night, the night before I was to leave, my plans changed when I got a phone call from Brad’s sister, Sandi.

Sandi asked straight off, “Has Brad called you lately?”

“Nope. Haven’t heard anything from him since Christmas break. Why? Hasn’t he called you?”

“Not since my birthday two months ago and I’m really worried. Could you take me to find him this weekend?”

“What, to Texas?”

“Yes.”

“No offense, Sandi, but don’t you think you’re jumping the gun here? He’s probably just tied up in school and his modeling thing.”

“I know that. I kept leaving messages on his machine, but when I called today, his number was disconnected. He’s in deep shit, Tim. I know it.”

“Alright, alright. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a trip down there for a couple days, but I have to be back for my brother’s birthday on Tuesday.”

“Thank you, thank you!”

“But Sandi?”

“Yes, sweet, adoring and sexy ex-master?”

“Heh. Um ... If we find out he’s just super busy or something...”

“I’ll be broken-hearted, but I won’t make a fuss. At least not until he gets home.”

After arranging to pick her up around three the next day, I called home to tell them what was up, then got airline tickets, made hotel reservations, and did a little long-distance snooping to see if I could dig anything up beforehand. But because it was after hours and A&M’s finals were also over with, I couldn’t get a hold of anyone useful to find anything out.

When I arrived at Brad’s house the next day, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when Sandi came out. Sandi wasn’t a little girl anymore. In fact, Sandi was a hotty, and I instantly saw she loved flirting it too.

“Wow, you certainly have grown since I saw you last,” I chirped when I popped out to help load her suitcase.

“One hundred and fifteen percent all woman, Brad says,” she proudly stated while pushing her nicely defined bust out.

“You definitely have some to spare,” I said before waving to her mom who was standing on the porch watching us. “Do I need to...” I asked in a lowered voice while motioning over at her mom.

“Nah. They know I’m going with you to see Brad. I can’t thank you enough for this,” she said before turning towards the house and yelling, “Bye mom! I’ll call you when we get there!”

Sandi was exactly the type of girl I had attracted with my empathic smile during my senior year of high school. Sexually active, experienced, yet selective about the boys she had sex with, I normally would have at least been tempted by the natural sexual vibe she emitted. But I wasn’t, and that kind of confused me.

Had my interests really completely shifted from girls to women? Or was it because of the guilt I felt concerning Sandi that turned me off? Probably a bit of both, plus the events the past few weeks concerning the funerals, and of course ... Her.

What about sixteen-year-olds then? Jennifer was sixteen. Had I lost interest in her sexually too? Did it matter? I still loved her. Even if she didn’t want me, I still wanted her. That wasn’t sexual to begin with, and it was probably the sexual stuff that drove her away.

“You’re thinking of Jennifer, aren’t you,” Sandi said, breaking the silence in the limo on the way to the airport.

“Yeah.”

“Did you ever hear from her since she left?”

“No. Have you?”

“No, but I did talk to her on the phone for a couple of minutes the day you went nuts.”

“You did?” I said, my heart starting to race. “What did she say?”

“I don’t remember exactly. I called to see if she was okay, and she ... She sounded like her mom, almost. Patient, but stern. Or just stubborn, maybe. I think she had already made her mind up to leave. But she didn’t even hint it to me or anything.”

“What about mad?” I asked more calmly than I felt.

“You mean angry? I don’t know. Her mom always came off like she was angry at people, but Jennifer always said it was just her way. I don’t think Jennifer was mad at you. I think she was just scared and was just doing what she thought she had to do.”

“Last year Joey found where she had gone and he and Suzi went to see her right before Christmas,” I began, then paused to wipe my eyes.

“What happened?”

“The house was empty. But they found a note. It said ... It said for me to leave her alone.”

“That’s...” Sandi started, then never finished as I took a deep sniffing breath to clear my airways.

We sat in silence for the remaining trip to the airport, but as we pulled into the passenger drop-off area, Sandi said, “It just doesn’t sound like the Jennifer I knew.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same.

We hitched a ride on my dad’s private jet on its way to New York City. It dropped us off in Saint Louis where we were taking a commercial flight to Dallas. Saint Louis was a little out of our way and in the wrong direction, but it was the best I could arrange, and it beat driving to the nearest international airport.

As we entered the terminal in Saint Louis and looked up which gate our flight would be at, I became aware of another voice scanning the crowd in some of the food bars and shops. I didn’t bother to tell Sandi about it, but we kept our distance since I really didn’t want a confrontation in such a public and busy place.

By the time we reached our gate, the scans had stopped and I assumed they had selected their prey and moved on to someplace private. Yes, I had strong notions to step in and protect the innocent mute or mutes involved, but quite frankly it was none of my business, and to interfere would endanger not just myself, but Sandi as well. I had long accepted that for my own good, I would have to turn a blind eye to some of the evils other voices did around me. But that still didn’t mean I was okay with it.

While we waited for our plane to board, Sandi and I played a little game of guess when they lost their virginity and where they lost it at. Because of the other voice, I didn’t use my telepathy to learn what the correct answer was. But I didn’t want to alarm Sandi, so I just made up the answers based on what my empathic sense said about their personality.

While we lined up to the board, I noticed a man in his mid-twenties taking a close interest in the women in the line. I knew the look in his eyes all too well. It was the look of a predator - a sexual predator. The look of a male voice scoping out the fresh, feminine flesh in order to ration out how much pleasure he can have within a certain time period he was constrained to.

And he was on our flight.

His mind wasn’t shielded, and he certainly didn’t seem aware of my own barrier, but just to minimize the chances he’d notice it later, I slowly adjusted my barrier to be as transparent as I could without allowing my current thoughts to be easily read.

Thankfully Sandi’s sexual drive was running at a lower notch right then, probably due to her concerns over her brother and our conversation about Jennifer. If she had been emitting the vibes she had been when I first picked her up, she would have probably caught the voice’s attention right away. But in this situation, he overlooked her. I helped that a bit by making sure I was between her and him the whole time.

Man, I was glad I had chosen coach and not first class. We were in the midsection, and knowing voices as I did, I guessed he was up in the first-class section. But just in case, I made sure I had an aisle seat and watched to make sure he didn’t come down from the front section. He didn’t. I was pleased with this arrangement because I would be able to see him coming if he decided to wander into the back for some fresh meat.

I started to relax once we were up in the air and hadn’t sensed any telepathic activity on the plane at all. But just to be sure, once the seat belt sign went off, I casually walked up to just inside the first-class section and felt it out empathically, then walked up and down the aisle once to visually confirm he wasn’t there.

Confident he wasn’t on board, I went back to my seat and relaxed, eventually falling asleep like I usually did on flights. Sandi woke me up briefly as she got up to go use the bathroom, and even though I let my eyes close again, I stayed awake and kept my inner eye on her swirls until she came back. Thankfully the rest of the plane trip was uneventful.

We arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after dark and took a shuttle to the hotel we were staying at for the night. Sandi was surprised I had arranged for separate rooms, and after she asked the clerk at the desk how much the rooms were, she made a big fuss and wouldn’t accept her key. I could have forced it on her, but that wasn’t the way to handle it, so I ended up compromising for a room with two beds that cost $50 less than the two rooms together.

Just my luck, they had a honeymoon suite, and it was only five floors up and two or three rooms over. Sure, I enjoyed the sex during the dream walk, but it also made me lovesick the next morning. The twelve people sharing their seven o’clock commuter flight to the campus with us had a pretty miserable half-hour trip because of it.

Sandi and I spent the morning and afternoon talking to the few people we managed to find that knew Brad. One of Brad’s neighbors told us Brad had moved out around March without saying much, and after having to give this one lady the urge to help us, we found Brad had withdrawn from his classes early in the semester and had forfeited his partial scholarship. His account had been paid off, but the only forwarding address they had was the same we had already checked.

We checked into our motel room around five with no new leads, but we still had a few old ones left. We knew his agent’s first name was Harriet, he had done that shoot last fall for the department store adds, and that he had come across the modeling job from a flyer posted around campus. After grabbing some dinner and freshening up, we went back to the campus and focused on the bulletin boards there.

It was getting pretty late when we passed three frat guys who made some rather ... suggestive comments about Sandi’s attire. Sandi perked up and flaunted her stuff, and quite frankly, it was a nice break from her declining mood. With it being dark out and the lighting wasn’t greatest in that area, they didn’t seem to notice her age, just her shape and the abundance of exposed skin.

Sandi was about to end the encounter when I got the idea maybe they or their frat brothers may know or remember something about the modeling flyers. After Sandi gave them the push off, I told her my idea, then altered the frat guys’ memories to think they had invited us back to the house.

We didn’t get back to the motel until after three, but at least we had a couple of names and phone numbers to try in the morning. Plus, I had recruited a few of the brothers to help us the next day, finding that several of them didn’t have anything else constructive to do.

By noon the next day, Sandi and I were on our way to where Brad’s last paycheck had been sent at the beginning of May. Brad’s popularity had hit its peak over the holidays, and after three months of declining dollar amounts in the photoshoot offers, Brad breached his contract when he accepted an offer to be in a low budget porno.

“He’s here,” I informed Sandi when we pulled up in front of the apartment building and found his mind. “Looks like he’s all depressed about how things turned out, but ... Brad’s still holding on to the hope he’ll make a comeback and make things up.”

“Well, let’s go!” she said impatiently when I didn’t get out right away.

I sighed and got out, but once we were inside the building, I turned to her and commanded, “Wait here until I call you, okay?”

“Ohhhh!!” she complained but didn’t follow me when I entered the stairs to go up.

Brad was just coming out of the bathroom when I knocked on his door, and after watching his swirls speed up while he didn’t move to answer the door, I said, “Brad, it’s me. Tim. Open up.”

“Aw man...” he whined when he opened the door and saw me. “Sandi made you come down here to find me, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She’s downstairs.”

“Aw MAN!” he exclaimed, repelling himself away from the door, then paced back and forth nervously. “Aw, man! Did you have to bring her? Aw MAN! Fuck!”

I stepped in and closed the door behind me, then watched as Brad put his hands behind his head and sunk down on the couch while avoiding my eyes.

“I’m so fucked, Tim. I thought about calling you or Joey, but...”

“You don’t have to explain, Brad.”

“Shit. Then you know about the ... pornos.”

“Yeah. When I found your mind, it kind of stuck out being in the back of your mind all the time.”

“I’m so fucking stupid,” he groaned, his mind flashing through the key events in just a second or two, not giving me the whole picture, but a bit more than I had had.

“You were just being honest with them. They took advantage of you. It wasn’t your fault. At least not completely.”

“I don’t know how to face Sandi,” he said emotionally. “I don’t want her to know...”

“Well, I’m not going to make her leave without seeing you.”

“I don’t want to know either,” Brad said, looking up at me with hope. “Dude, you could make me forget. You can do that, right?”

“No! Absolutely not. Face it, Brad. You got fucked up the ass because you got greedy. They may have misled you a little, but you knew ahead of time it was a bisexual bondage movie. What did you expect?”

“Man, they said I wouldn’t have to do any faggy things. But getting your ass fucked is pretty faggy if you ask me.”

“Did you suck any cock?” I asked, more out of curiosity than to prove any point.

“No way, man! They hung me up, put some color shit in my hair, put a clamp on here and there, then teased me for hours, man. I was so wound up by the time they wanted to shoot the fuck scene, I didn’t care what I had to do. Shit, man. I’m so disgusted with myself. I’d like to cut it out of me if could. Man, be my buddy. Make me forget.”

“If I did, you’d end up having nightmares, or even worse, wind up in the same predicament again. Look, Sandi’s about ready to go nuts down there. The sooner you tell her, the sooner you’ll feel better. She’s not going to think any less of you. Shit, she’s been through a lot worse herself. I bet she’ll understand better than either of us can imagine.”

“Come on, man...” Brad begged, getting up and looking me in the eyes as he put his hands on my shoulders. “Please, Tim. This thing is killing me.”

The truth bubbled to the surface within the momentary empathic link, and it was something I hadn’t detected or expected. The reason he was wrought with anguish and humiliation was because he had thoroughly enjoyed the B&D aspect of the experience and yearned for more.

“Oh, Bradley...” Sandi cooed as she rushed through the door and hugged him.

Brad started crying, and despite everything he had said about keeping it from her, the first words out of his mouth to her was, “I’m a fagot, Sandi. I’m a fucking fagot.”

I had given Sandi the details on her way up to the apartment, but it wasn’t until after Brad had let it all out that she told him so.

I have many regrets about the sexual relationship I helped create between those two, but the bond of trust and love they had formed helped me not feel so bad about it all. Especially in situations like this.

Sandi had to fly back that night since she had school the next morning, but she talked me into staying with Brad a couple of days to help him tie up loose ends, pack up, and move back home. I felt sort of like I was checking under the bed for monsters when I scanned each and every passenger boarding her flight to make sure no voices were getting on, but after the close call on the way down, I wasn’t about to take any chances.

Bright and early Monday morning, Brad and I went to the “studio” where the small adult film company filmed most of their stuff. The place was just a small warehouse with an assortment of backgrounds, sets, and some bondage equipment, a lot of which I had seen in one of the vaults at home where all my dad’s shit had ended up. There wasn’t anything being filmed that day, but there were people there, including the producer Brad had worked for in the two straight movies he had been in.

In his first movie, Brad had only been a character in the background but had impressed the producer with his performance, earning him a major role that was filmed the month after the first. But the money they paid him was nothing near what he had desired, so he didn’t immediately refuse when another producer who Brad knew did the bi flicks at a different location offered double what he was getting if he signed on for his next film.

What Brad did wrong was telling this guy everything he liked about bondage, then letting himself be blinded by the money promised to him, the descriptions of the bondage he would experience, and probably purposely not listening to exactly what kind of sex he would have to do.

After examining his contract, I concluded it had been written in good faith and that Brad had signed it without really reading it through. The document had given the director some improvisational power to go beyond just a bondage scene if Brad verbally agreed to do it while the filming took place. They had his verbal consent to penetration on tape, and after watching the sex scene through, I knew Brad didn’t have any hope of legal action, not that that had even crossed his mind.

Watching the tape had a strange result on Brad. He had been impressed by his own ‘acting’ as he thought of it, and after I had made them cough up the rest of his promised pay for the flick, the combined temptation of the money and the B&D was making him think.

While he drove us back to his apartment, he asked, “How did you and Joey start ... You know ... Messing around?”

“We first just jerked off in the same room together with the lights off while doing a fantasy session together. Then my telepathy started kicking in. We jerked each other off a couple times and then we started sharing our bodies and stuff. We didn’t really see it as having sex with each other. We just were sharing the pleasure with each other until we could do it for real later. But then when Suzi liked us messing around, we just kept going further and further with it. It was more of trust thing than a sex thing.”

“What about that gay kid, Eric?”

“That was different. At camp, Eric was all hormones and no control. I never did anything with Eric at camp. But when I got back from Northwest, Eric filled a place in my heart. After the stuff Joey and I did at Northwest, it wasn’t hard to let Eric’s excitement excite me too. I’ve never fooled around with any other guys. Except for James, but that was ... complicated.”

“Man, guys are not my thing, you know?”

“I do. They’re not usually my thing either.”

“I wasn’t too bad, though, was I,” he stated.

“Honestly? You were excellent. I’m sure they’ll sell lots of copies and make lots of money off it. But you don’t want to be labeled a porn star, bi or otherwise, if you ever want to do the modeling thing again. Besides ... You’re better than that.”

“Yeah, and it probably would just turn out like the model thing anyway,” he sighed.

After stopping off to get some boxes, we went back to his apartment and started packing for about an hour before taking a break for some lunch. I knew this whole bi thing was still on his mind but hadn’t expected him to ask me to have sex with him like that.

“What?!”

“I have to know if I like it, man. I trust you,” he said, putting his hand on my thigh.

“You’re nuts,” I said while scrambling to my feet. “Brad, no offense, but I do not want to have sex with you.”

“Why not, man? Fine, if you don’t, but I thought we were as good of friends as Joey and you were.”

After gauging his emotions, I told him, “Stand up.”

When he did so, I walked over to him, put my arms around him in an embrace, then stared into his eyes and asked, “How does this make you feel?”

He shrugged and said, “Sort of scared. Excited a little too.”

“Does it make you want to do anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like, do you want to kiss me, or feel me up, or fuck me?”

“Faggy stuff? No!” he said, appalled, yet not breaking away.

“Well, wasn’t that the idea?”

“I guess,” he said as I let go and stepped back. “But I was thinking more ... Ah, skip it, man. It doesn’t matter,” he said, sitting down and going back to his food, still disturbed.

Brad’s concept of Joey’s and my sexual relationship focused on the trust factor we had had, which I admit was probably the biggest reason why we dared to experiment in that way, but certainly wasn’t the only significant one. Trust was important to Brad, for it was the trust he gave to people that ultimately brought him the greatest pleasures, sexual or otherwise.

But what haunted him the most about the bi porno was how he had felt his trust had been betrayed, yet it had been one of the most erotic pleasures he had ever experienced as well. Brad wasn’t confused about his sexual orientation. He was just confused.

Talking about it as we packed seemed to help him, but he didn’t act like himself again until after he got home that night and had his parent’s wrath to distract him for a while.

My dad had sent his private jet to collect us that night so that I could be home in time for Richie’s birthday the next day.

Ah, there’s nothing like the pitter-patter of little feet running to greet you when you come home.

Of course, that’s only if you can hear it over the long squealing “Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmm-eeeeeeeeeee!”

“You are getting so BIG!” I praised Richie as I caught the naked kid and lifted him up for a hug.

“Timmy, Timmy, Timmy!” he sang as he hugged me around the neck as hard as he could.

After he stopped cutting off my air supply, I asked, “What are you doing running around without any clothes on?”

“I’m like Mommy. I like wunning naked. I can wun weeeal fast. You wanna see Timmy?”

“Sure,” I said, tickled by his enthusiasm.

“‘Kay,” he said, scrambling out of my arms and running away crying, “Catch me! Catch me!”

Running after the two-year-minus-one-day-old bundle of energy was harder than I thought. His short legs didn’t really make him that fast, but man could he turn and dodge! And without clothes on, there wasn’t anything I could really grab without the fear of scratching or hurting him, but I eventually faked him out and was able to scoop him up into my arms.

Richie had to show me everything Michelle, his nanny and now teacher, had taught him, and that was more than I could have dreamed. Richie read me a ten-page book, answered seven out of nine addition flashcards correctly, and even amazingly stood on his hands for a whole ten seconds which is something I never had quite mastered myself.

Both Michelle and my mom were present through all his demonstrations, soaking up my surprise and impressed expressions while beaming with pride themselves. And little Richie just loved every minute of showing off what he could do. He was my brother, alright.

At first, I was concerned when I learned my mom had brought five unmarried mothers, each with a child around Richie’s age into the household, thinking it was just so Richie would have children his own age to play with. But after meeting the women that night and scanning their minds for the details, I gave my mom a big hug and kiss from what I found.

My mom was trying to give these women a chance to get back on their feet after having no one to help them manage their unplanned pregnancies. Two of them had been teen pregnancies and had dropped out of high school, another had lost her husband in an accident, and the other two had had unfortunate timed one night stands. They had all responded to an ad in the paper for an apartment in a complex for single working mothers, and with only a few minor adjustments, they happily moved into the mansion as my mother’s personal staff.

Richie loved playing with his live-in playmates, but he also tended to get fairly jealous whenever Michelle spent time with the other children without it involving him.

Despite the fact that most of the children were slightly older than him, Richie had long mastered the things Michelle was teaching the others and was for the most part bored despite Richie loving to show off his smarts to the others. So for half of the day, my mom took Richie away so Michelle could work with the others, but then after rejoining them he would tend to spend the rest of the day clinging to Michelle more than playing with the other children.

You could say I was pleased to find Richie clinging to me instead of Michelle while playing in the playroom with him and the other kids. I did raise my eyebrows in surprise to find the two girls, Julie and Pat, were just as happy to run around naked as Richie, Todd, Chris, and Willy were. But it didn’t bother me since it was all out of innocence, and I knew that wouldn’t last forever. I figured let them enjoy it while they can.

All evening long I had wanted very badly to tell Joy and Honey about the male twins I had met, but they were in their long deep regenerative sleep after having seeded a pair of jocks they had picked up the night before. At first I was rather angry with them for doing this on the day of my return, but after seeing them sound asleep in their pillowless and coverless synthetic tiger skin bed, I forgave them and decided to sleep with them that night in their bed just so I could surprise them in the morning.

They surprised me, however, by not being there when I woke up in the morning. I quickly tracked them down but found them too busy fucking their new toys to even acknowledge my newly learned twin empathic hello. I left them with their mindless near orgasming slaves fairly confused and little hurt, but quickly found comfort with my snuggly little brother who had apparently slept in my bed instead of his.

“Am I two?” he sleepily asked me after I had gotten under the covers with him and he crawled on top of my chest.

“Yep. You’re a big boy now.”

“Big boy now...” he repeated sleepily. “Remember two?” he asked me.

Richie had long gotten used to me and our mom and dad being able to fill in what he didn’t say while he snuggled, a lot of the time not needing our telepathy to do it either. But this time I wasn’t clear on his meaning, so I peeked in his head and found him thinking of the pictures my mom had shown him of my second birthday, along with the picture of me lying flat in the tub proudly showing off how strait my little willy stood up when it was hard.

“Actually, I do a little,” I confessed, faintly recalling the moment the embarrassing snapshot had been taken. I could hear the sound the camera made in the bathroom when she took it.

Richie looked up at me with a growing smile, then crawled out from under the blankets and laid down beside me on his back, saying, “Me like Timmy, see?”

As you probably guessed, his little soldier was at full attention, but after tickling him to distract him from his hardon, he crawled under the covers and back on top of me to get warm and to think some more.

Watching his mind run through images and sensations was pretty neat. It was amazing how clearly he remembered things, how easily he associated things together, and how quickly his attention changed from one thing to the next. I wasn’t even really paying that much attention to what he was thinking about, rather being more interested in how his streams flowed and changed, but when I felt his little rod harden again, I found him thinking about my mom and dad’s sex he was constantly exposed to seeing.

My dad’s desire for Richie to have a more sexual relationship with my mom apparently hadn’t gone unnoticed by Richie, and between that and the explanation I had given him several months ago about why girls liked boys and such, it perplexed him why our mom didn’t want to have sex with him.

Luckily, many things perplex a two-year-old. This wasn’t any more important to him than why Santa Claus only came once a year, why it rained, why there was night and day, or why men grew beards and women didn’t.

“Timmy, beards?” he asked while looking up at me.

“A long, long time ago,” I began. “Before people knew how to build refrigerators or cars, men had to go out during the winter into the cold, cold wind to hunt for food. Men grow beards because back then, they needed them to keep their face warm.”