CHAPTER 3 #2
Wait — WHAT? Why was I thinking things like that?
Pushing my odd thoughts aside, I flipped the card over and read the printed text.
OH. MY. GOD.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more disturbing...
Hmm, okay, well...yeah, that’s pretty... explicit.
I sank onto the bed, my legs suddenly feeling weak, staring at the words until they blurred. Dogging, my dad had been involved in ‘DOGGING’. That’s what they called meeting up with a stranger to have sex in a car in a random public place where anyone could see.
But not just any dogging-gay dogging.
That was three of the five items, and if I thought the last two would be less of an eye-opener, then I was one hundred percent wrong.
Placing the postcards beside me, I reached for a folded piece of white paper, half expecting to see a note or something innocuous.
Ah-ha, no.
This was not just a simple piece of A4 paper folded in half.
No, it was a photocopy of a hand-drawn picture of a muscular man, naked, fully erect. He stood behind another man leaning over, mostly naked except for stockings, suspenders, and high heels. He also was sporting a boner as he awaited to be... cough fucked.
Sooooo, yeah, not an innocent doodle, so far from a doodle.
I mean, it wasn’t the best drawing that I’ve ever seen.
I’m pretty sure my high school art teacher would have been rather critical of the sausage hands that the muscular guy had.
But the level of detail was impressive. And there was no mistaking what the subject matter was.
I was trying hard not to jump to any conclusions, although the evidence was fast stacking up and was pointing at one conclusion. Much like sausage man’s dick.
The last item left in the drawer was a small piece of notepaper.
Written in faded ink in my father’s bold handwriting was a list of names, and what could be prices with a tally beside it. I was trying really hard not to make assumptions, but at this point, my brain was telling me it wasn’t much of a leap. That it was what I thought it was.
Still, not fully convinced that my heart and head agreed. I pulled my phone out and took a picture of the list, then inverted the colours, doing that CSI thing to enhance the text.
This time, there was no mistaking what I was looking at. This was a fuck list and my dad had paid just under three hundred pounds for sex.
THREE. HUNDRED. POUND!!!
I didn’t know what the going rate for sex was, but that seemed pricey to me. Especially when it looks like a blow job was being charged at eighty-five pounds? That had better of been some really fantastic sex to warrant that steep price tag.
Okay, hang on a mo, why was my first reaction that it was over-priced? And not the fact that my dad had clearly cheated on my mum with a sex worker? Let’s analyse that for a second, shall we?
Oh, let’s not delve into a psychoanalysis of why my reactions were so puzzling, or my disastrous love life, or my relationship with my mother.
Or that Dave was obviously her favourite, even though he was a fuck-up. So, what if I haven’t dated anyone since my dad died?
This was not about me.
Or my exploration into gay porn after coming across my dad’s browsing history. That wasn’t the point. What was, was that my approach was logical, factual, mature, and open-minded.
But let’s look at the first point.
Was I choosing to overlook his cheating because it was with another man, and not because it was with a woman?
I pondered the question for a few minutes, mulling my feelings over.
Whichever way I thought about it, I kept circling back to the fact that my father was more than likely gay, or bi, and that however much he cared about my mum, that she wasn’t able to give him everything he needed.
He’d chosen to get married, whether that was to hide his sexuality, because that was the way things were.
Or because he wanted a family of his own, and this was the only way to get it.
Or he thought he could suppress this part of himself and live a half-life, never feeling free to be his real self.
Those were all good reasons, but there was no way of knowing for sure what his were.
I could ask Chris if he knew, but would Dad have confided in his childhood friend?
Surely, he couldn’t have kept it hidden for that long?
Afraid to share his secret. Then my brain flashed up the memory of Dad when he struggled to tell me he had cancer.
How wrecked and tormented he looked, and so, so afraid of hurting me.
Even now, after so many years, I could feel my throat tighten as a lump formed.
My vision blurred around the edges as fresh tears welled up.
Clenching my teeth, I willed the tears not to fall, even as my nose ran.
Standing, I headed to my mum’s side of the bed, to her bedside table and the box of tissues she had there.
Pulling out a tissue, I saw her mobile phone stuck in the side.
At least that was one mystery solved. As for my dad’s, there were still questions I still needed answering.
It didn’t change how I felt about him. I just wanted to better understand the man who wiped away my tears and looked in on me each night so that I had a deeper, fuller picture of who he was.
And with each new piece, I was determined to figure out the puzzle.