Page 5 of Their Little House Tristan
After lunch, we returned to the office, but our conversation was much on my mind. Mark would never brag, but when I went over to their house, it was such a place of love. Could I really have everything with one person too? Maybe the fact I was even thinking about it meant I was ready to move on. Or maybe it was just that my best friend had gotten in my head. Could be either.
But it was enough that I decided to go spend an evening at Chained soon. It had been a while since I’d even done one of those daddy-for-a-night deals. I needed to take care of someone who needed to be cared for. And the Chained little room was just the place to find that. As well, it was where my friends hung out in the conversation area, and if I didn’t find a little to play with, or just wanted to relax, I could enjoy an evening of good food and conversation while watching their little play on the floor at their feet, adorable overload.
First, I had the work of six people who were currently at a beach, a mountain lodge, and I wasn’t sure where else to take care of. My needs would have to wait.
By the time I got home, I was too tired to consider going anywhere and ended up sitting on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn beside me and King in my lap binge-watching a 1950s sitcom where they pretended everything was right with the world.
Chapter Four
Tristan
I should’ve known better than to apply for and then accept a job at Chained while living in my parents’ house. It wasn’t like I could keep it a secret for long, but that’s exactly what I did.
The money was good, it came with a membership to the club, and I was surrounded by people who understood me. It felt like it was worth the risk, but accepting that there was risk was one thing, dealing with the fallout another.
From the beginning, I accepted the fact that I was on borrowed time. My parents would figure out that my “restaurant job” wasn’t actually at a restaurant at all. Sure, I was doing dishes and prepping food, but it was at a sex club, something they very much would not understand.
I was honestly surprised I got away with it for as long as I did. I’d been there a couple of months without so much as a hint from them that they didn’t believe my lie. But the second I came home from my shift tonight and saw them still awake, I could see in my mom’s eyes that they’d figured it out and braced myself for the fallout.
“And where did you say you worked again?” My father sat in his armchair, staring at the fireplace, not meeting my eyes or even looking in my direction yet. That would come. It was all a part of his locus of control.
There wasn’t even a fire burning, but it was the position he took whenever he wanted us to know we were in real trouble. I’d received countless groundings with him in this exact pose. I hadn’t been a bad kid or anything, simply not the perfect son they wanted. Still wasn’t.
And he didn’t save this setup just for me; he did it to my mom as well. This was the authoritarian bullshit of his belief system in action.
“What do you mean?” Feigning innocence wasn’t going to work, but it would give me time to brace myself for whatever consequences he was planning.
“You know exactly what I mean. Your mother and I went to the restaurant today, and you know what was there?”
I did know. There was nothing there. The restaurant I claimed to work at? It had closed down, in its place a razed building, soon to be a parking garage.
“You have two seconds to tell us where you’re working, or to get your things and go. And don’t say, ‘I don’t have a job, I’ve just been looking,’ because I checked the credit card, and you haven’t been charging any gas to it, which means you’re getting money from somewhere.”
Fuck. I’d been so careful. If I’d thought about it, I would have just kept charging gas to fill the car I’d been borrowing from them instead of trying to be responsible. Of course, that, too, would’ve had consequences. I’d been in a no-win situation.
“Fine.” I walked between him and the fireplace. If we were going to have this conversation, I wasn’t going to hide. “I’ve been working at Chained.”
“Excuse me? Chained? Is that…fencing?” My mother was so naive or at least pretended to be. More than one person at Chained had a story about an unexpected club member they encountered from their non-work life, including a little old lady from next door, a kindergarten teacher, and an aunt.
“No, Mom. It’s a club. For adults. Adults who like participating in bedroom activities that are not just for procreation.”
Was I really having this conversation with my mom?
“You mean…a gay club?” she gasped.
“No. I mean—yes, some people there are gay, but some are straight. Some are bisexual. Some are pansexual. Some are even asexual.” I left it at that. I’d already given my mom too much information to process.
“Oh, don’t with your rainbow crap. You’re saying it’s a sex club.” My dad wasn’t one to mince words.
“It is.”
“Well, you have to quit,” Mom said as if she’d solved a big problem for me.
“No, Mom. I don’t have another job. Nothing else has come through yet.” Nor would it because I wasn’t applying for anything. But she didn’t need to know that.
“You’re not working there,” Father insisted. “How are you to find a proper wife if you’re doing that? Have you thought—”
“Maybe, this time, listen to me tell you I don’t want a wife. I’ve told you repeatedly for what? Seven years. No wife for me—proper or not.”
