A New Kind of Denial

“Wait, say again?” Mason asked, his eyes growing to the size of small potatoes. I definitely expected him to take the news better than he was. Especially after he just told me about his whole issue with his brother. I think I took that pretty well and that’s a big thing to take in.

“My ex-girlfriend is pregnant and there are two possible fathers to that baby. I am one of them and the other is some guy she used as a rebound after me,”

“So you might have a kid?” he asked in a condescending tone.

“And you’re having an affair with your brother!” I whisper yelled, not wishing to announce that across Gracie’s Bakery. I was also trying not to lose my cool on him. That was very hard when he was being so god-damned hypocritical and unsupportive. “I think yours is a bit more dramatic!”

“I know; it’s just that, well…”

“Well what?”

“I never even knew you liked girls,”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re acting so weird about this? Just that you didn’t know I liked girls? I told you that I was bisexual when we first met!”

“Well I definitely do not remember that,”

“Alright, well let me explain something to you here,” I started, trying to keep calm. I like men a whole hell of a lot better than I like woman. I was gay before I ever thought about liking girls. I've always liked men more, and after I was with my ex – the pregnant one – I've figured something out.” I took a deep breath and tried to quickly figure out the right way to phrase what I was about to explain to Mason. “Have you ever heard people call themselves bi, but also say that they could never be fully intimate with the same sex? Or that they could never really love anyone of the same sex?”

“Yeah, a lot of famous people say that. I've heard it quite a few times. You’re not saying that you’re –?“

“No, that’s not how it is for me. That would make no sense with what I just said,” I chuckled lightly, shaking my head. “The opposite is true for me. After I had sex with my ex, Tanya, I realized that I never wanted to do that again. I didn’t really like it; it just wasn’t pleasurable enough for me. I've come to the conclusion since then that I can kiss and touch girls, but I can’t be intimate with them and I don’t think I could ever love one like I would love a man. So I'm almost not really bisexual at all. I'm very much so mostly gay.”

“Have you ever had sex with a boy?”

“Not completely,”

“Then how can you be sure that this doesn’t go both ways? Maybe you just don’t react to sex like most people do. There is such a thing, you know?”

“I know; I've heard of it before,”

“Maybe you’re just one of those people,”

“I'm not, though,”

“How do you know?”

“Because I've done a lot of things with guys before. I've gone a long way, just not all the way,” I answered, surprising myself by not being shyer over this subject than I was being. It’s for sure not my favorite topic to discuss, and I usually am the one that would change the subject or just not participate in the conversation. But this time it seems to be different. I don’t exactly know what it is, but it might just have something to do with who it is that I'm talking to. I guess I just feel more comfortable about it with Mason. “But I know enough from all that to know that I would like it and I wouldn’t respond to it. A lot more than I do with girls.”

“Okay, so what you’re basically saying is that you really didn’t want to do it in the first place?”

“Not with Tanya,”

“But now she’s pregnant,” he said, laughing shortly. He became a lot more relaxed about my news after I told him about me liking men more than women, and it was quite visible. That, in turn, made me feel a lot better about going on.

“Yeah, just my fucking luck,” I snorted, lifting my cup to my lips to take a drink. “Mm, and get this! The other guy that might be the dad is denying the shit out of having anything to do with the kid. So if it turns out to be his baby, Tanya’s basically going to be fucked.”

“So from that, I take it that if it’s yours, you are going to be helping her out with it?”

“Well, yeah. If it’s my child I'm going to be there for it,”

“Oh,” he sighed, bowing his head as if he was let down by my statement. I could tell as soon as he did that exactly why he did it. He thought I meant I would get back together with her to raise the kid. I also knew that at this point, he’d probably believe anything I told him, just for the simple fact that if don’t think he knows what to believe anymore. So I decided I would just screw with him a little bit.

“Yeah, you know; if she finds out that I am the father, we’re just going to have to get married. It’s the right thing to do in that situation. I can’t just have a child with a woman I'm not married to. That’s just completely morally wrong. It was bad enough to have premarital sex or engage in any of those types of activities, but to have a child out of wedlock? What are we here; Barbarians?” Do you know what I mean?” I asked him, trying my absolute hardest to keep a straight face, especially with the look he was getting on his face.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, obviously bothered by what I was saying. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but he was probably thinking that there would be arguing from that, what with how “strong” I felt about these points. “I know.”

“No you don’t,” I chuckled, finally letting my laughter escape. Mason had one of the most confused looks on his face, which only made me laugh harder.

“What?”

“My lord, you are so gullible,”

“What are you on about?”

“I was only fucking with you,” I explained. “I knew you thought I meant I would get back with Tanya if it’s mine. I would never do that, though. I don’t care for her enough. And I really don’t believe it’s right to marry someone just because they’re having your baby, or vice-versa, so I would never get back together with her. I’d seek partial custody of the kid, is all I was saying. I’d want to be part of it’s life and I’d want to help her raise it. I’d pay child support if she needed it. That is all I meant when I said that.”

“Oh, good,” he sighed, this time in relief, slamming his head down against his hand, flat on the table. He actually started to laugh as his head was on his hand, which was a pretty comical sight. “You really started to freak me out there.”

“You ought to know me better than that, Mase,” I laughed.

“Well I thought I did, but you never know. You sounded convincing enough. It really did seem like you believe everything you were saying to be true,” he said, lifting his head to meet my eyes.

“That’s because I believe just about the opposite of everything I said,”

“Then how did you come off as if you…I don’t get you sometimes,” he laughed, shaking his head at me.

“Just a bit of reverse psychology, my friend,”

“What?”

“I used reverse psychology on myself to say convincingly things I believed to be false. It’s a really good trick to use when you’re trying to mess with someone’s mind,” I smirked.

“You spend too much time with Jason,” he laughed, shaking his head at me.

“I actually learned that one from my dads,”

“And they probably got it from Jason. They’ve known him and been around him forever, so they’ve probably picked up on each other’s antics,”

“Probably,” I chuckled.

“So how exactly is Camron doing?”

“Well, it’s only been a few days since the accident, but the last time I talked to them, he was doing a lot better. He’s only on a very low dosage of pain killers, because they want him to be able to leave in a couple of days, so they’re weaning him off of them slowly. And because of that, I was able to talk to him, since he wasn’t all looped out. He sounds really good, and he’s laughing at himself for ‘running in front of that car’, as he so wonderfully puts it,” I explained, laughing as I remembered him telling me about how stupid it was of him to do that. “So he’s doing pretty good overall, I’d suppose.”

“That’s good. Are they going to go back home or finish out their vacation?”

“Well however much Reese’s going to want Camron to rest, I know Cam won’t let Reese take him back home already. So I think they’ll finish out their vacation, though it might be a little shorter now that they can’t do everything that they wanted to do. Why’d you want to know?”

He blushed a little bit and bowed his head in slight embarrassment, muttering something I couldn’t hear.

“What’s that?”

“Well, I wanted to know how much time I’d have left to spend with you before you went home,” he said only fairly louder, looking me in the eyes this time. He made me smile with how adorable he was being.

I leaned over the table a little and told him, “Don’t worry. We’ve still got plenty of time left together,” before kissing him lightly on the lips and sitting back down.