I was still in high school, when I met Alex and John in a community theater group. My school’s annual stage production had been canceled that year, when the drama teacher took a personal leave of absence and none of the other staff members wanted the vexing responsibility of directing a bunch of recently pubescent misfits on stage after class. Their solution was to recommend an all-ages theater troupe casting parts in a production of Brigadoon, in a neighboring town.
Despite having my driver’s license, my mom still drove me to doctor’s appointments and dance recitals, anywhere outside of my normal routine. I suffered from frequent panic attacks, even when I wasn’t behind the wheel of a 2000-pound automobile. The additional anxiety of being a new driver was often debilitating, and the brand-new convertible I had been given on my 16th birthday would sit stationary in the driveway for weeks on end.
Since I was the youngest in my family, my parents were quick to coddle my reluctance towards driving and any other daunting responsibilities which came with being a young adult. Even when I wasn’t behind the wheel, I tended to stay close to home in other ways as well, hesitant to assert myself or stray far from the nest. I had a small group of loyal friends but preferred to join my parents for dinner on Friday nights, instead of going out to parties. When applying to colleges, I opted only for those schools close enough that I could still live at home. Unlike my older sisters, who both went to universities out-of-state, I liked that my parents were over-protective. I liked that they had rules, curfews and dress codes. I didn’t mind having to ask permission to buy thong underwear or short skirts, if they were the ones paying for them. And, when that terribly awkward day came and I had to ask my mother if I could please go on birth control, she offered her sage advice: “If you don’t tell your father, you can continue getting your allowance.”
I chose to drive myself to that first audition, after class one day. Maybe I wanted to start being more independent, or maybe the nerves I had, about being on stage in front of so many strangers, simply overshadowed those I had about cars. Whatever the reason, I ended up being cast as a dancer in my first real stage production and began driving myself to rehearsals every Wednesday and Friday night.
“Despite maintaining a necessarily innocent façade at home, I already harbored an exceptionally liberal attitude when it came to sex, although I could still count on one hand how many times I had actually indulged in it.”
Alex was a few years older than me. Having matriculated from the same high school, he knew my older sister and a few other people from our hometown. I was thrilled when he took a liking to me and took me under his wing when rehearsals began. As a fledgling thespian, I was even a little star struck as Alex had been cast as a lead in one of the two principal roles.
As a male performer, Alex’s makeup never took long, and he would always offer to help me with my own backstage. Although I was just a background dancer, Alex would make me up as if I would be taking center stage alongside him. Besides being an incredible singer and actor, Alex was an artist when it came to applying makeup and he taught me how to contour my face, flesh out my lips and make my eyes really pop.
Besides makeup, Alex and I bonded over our love of cock. Despite maintaining a necessarily innocent façade at home, I already harbored an exceptionally liberal attitude when it came to sex, although I could still count on one hand how many times I had actually indulged in it. Unlike my female friends, who were prone to judgment and gossip, Alex was the first person with whom I could be openly boy-crazy with. I could confide in him all my dirty little secrets which would have only alienated me from the prim and proper pecking order of girls at school.
Alex’s boyfriend, John, worked in the lighting booth, but I’m not exactly sure what he did up there, as other crew members were always in charge of the lights and sound. In the programs that were eventually printed, passed out and scattered on the ground like the autumn leaves, John was simply listed as a “tech.”
In his late forties, John was one of the oldest members of the cast and crew, besides the director. I thought he was much too old for Alex and not his type at all. While Alex was very particular about the way he looked and the foods he ate and the people with whom he would associate with, John was a slob by comparison, balding and brutish down to the way he dressed and rarely ever shaved his salt-and-pepper facial hair. I hated when he would join Alex and I in his car after rehearsal, where we would smoke a joint and gossip about the other cast members. It felt as uncomfortable as hanging out with someone’s nosey uncle or an accidental run-in with one of my teachers outside of school.
Although he did a good job hiding it around everyone else, John was somewhat controlling when it came to Alex, and this bothered me more than anything. He would almost never allow Alex to hang out with anyone when he wasn’t around, and when Alex did have a rare afternoon to himself, he would have to call John every so often to check in, in much the same way I still had to do with my parents.
In as much as Alex was head-over-heels gay, it was obvious to me that John was bisexual. The way he looked at me had always made me uneasy, uncomfortably self-aware, but now it started to bother me in new and more ignominious ways. On stage, during rehearsals, I could almost feel his eyes watching me from the lighting booth and would imagine his gaze ancillary and indistinct from the heat of the stage lights. And when Alex would make me up backstage, more extravagantly and striking than any of the other background dancers, I wondered who he was really doing it for.
John’s otherwise laidback attitude and lack of anything resembling a honed intellect went a long way to disarm his imposing age and brutishness, and at times I could almost forget how uncomfortable he made me feel. Especially one night when, in order to settle a small argument, John took Alex’s porcelain chin in the palm of his calloused hand and brought him face to face with the same deliberate urgency with which a waiter might carry a drink tray through a crowded restaurant. The disagreement was resolved with a final word and a kiss, like the seal on an official decree. After which, Alex acquiesced with heavy eyelids and a breathy whisper barely audible to my unsuspecting ears. “Yes, Daddy.”
My jaw dropped, not just from the slip of Alex’s tongue (the implications of which would take me at least a few more months fully unravel). The way Alex seemed to melt like candy in the palm of John’s hand and then dissolve completely into the wetness of his mouth, sent more than just chills down my spine. Although I was sitting in the backseat of their car with their joint smoldering in my hand, I felt more like a tiny, trembling fly on the wall. The outward display of their hidden dynamic unsettled me in ways I wouldn’t have expected. The rare glimpses I got into the more secret aspects of their relationship fascinated me to no end, and I found myself spending more and more time with them, curious as to why it ruffled my normally austere composure the way it did.
“Although picture-perfect in the photo albums, our relationship was one of handshakes instead of hugs and strange gifts from foreign countries.”
Eventually, Alex began referring to John as “Daddy” even when he wasn’t around.
When I pressed him about it, he just smiled and patted me condescendingly on the head. “You’ll understand when you’re older.” He said, to which I replied with a cynical raise of my eyebrow. I knew Alex’s real father had left when he was a kid, and I wondered if this had anything to do with his uncanny relationship with John. While my own father stuck around and provided handsomely for my family, Daddy Issues were just one more thing Alex and I had in common.
Growing up, it seemed my own father was always away on business or working late hours at the office. Our seldom and intermittent relationship was cold and sterile. Although picture-perfect in the photo albums, my childhood was one of handshakes instead of hugs and strange gifts from foreign countries instead of time spent together. When his coworkers would come over for the annual holiday party, my sisters and I would be paraded around in matching dresses and forced to sit like wax sculptures with our hands folded and permanent smiles on our faces. Even as a child, I recognized that this pageantry was the closest thing to affection my father was capable of expressing, and, while my sisters grumbled about having to dress in white and wear red ribbons in their hair, I actually looked forward to it every year as my best chance to be seen and appreciated by my father. My eventual interest in theater and stage undoubtedly arose out of these early domestic performances and the latent sense that we were merely actors assuming the scripted roles of father and daughter, in leu of any genuine affection or real emotional connection.
John was never particularly attractive to me. He was a tall, slender man with a slight potbelly and bad posture. Still, when I called him “Daddy” for the first time something incredible happened inside of me. Not only did I lubricate so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was certain I must have had an accident, but a flood of unresolved emotions washed over me as well. Having never once addressed my own father with such an infantile word, this small betrayal and perversion of my own patchy relationship with him was like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had. More than smoking pot for the first time, more than drinking liquor in desolate parking lots, calling another man “Daddy” felt rebellious and wildly liberating. When exams, college admissions and the opening night of Brigadoon all weighed heavily on my already anxious mind, that double tap of my tongue against the roof of my mouth became something of a pacifier for me during those final few months of my senior year, a way for me to revert back to the safety and simplicity of an earlier time.
Adopting John as a surrogate paternal figure also meant that Alex and I were like siblings, and I could tell Alex really liked that I was finally warming up to John in this way. I supposed that it helped reinforce their strange dynamic, and the three of us became our own fucked-up little family, separated and distinct from the rest of the cast and crew. John would drive us to and from rehearsals, and my own car went back to sitting idle in my parents’ driveway, virtually unused. Alex and I would sit in the back of John’s car taking selfies with our tongues out like two pups from the same litter, and, when John would ask if we wanted him to roll a joint for us, Alex and I would answer without hesitation, in unison. “Yes, Daddy!”
By the time dress rehearses began, Alex and I had become the darlings of the entire production. I knew all the choreography by heart, and my few minutes of stage time became less a rehearsal and more of a chance to shamelessly flaunt the growing awareness I had for my body and the effect it could have on other people (particularly the male crew members) and finetune the sensuality of my performance. There was nothing especially provocative about my routine, but I livened it up by biting my lip and making eyes at a few of the male characters. I was only having fun, but it got the attention of the assistant director, who asked if I would like to be one of the featured dancers instead of just a background extra. It wasn’t a big deal; during one of the big musical numbers, I would get to take center stage for a few moments to lift my skirt and kick my leg alongside another girl. Alex made a huge deal out of it and he and John took me out to celebrate.
At the restaurant, we couldn’t sit at the bar because Alex and I were under 21, but afterwards we went back to John’s place, where we could indulge in more than just hard liquor. From the outside, John’s house looked no different than any other mid-century ranch on the street, but inside was a smokey cavern of dirty carpets and cracking plaster. I remember being nervous as hell walking in for the first time and being hesitant to sit on any of the dilapidated furniture all covered in cigarette ash.
It didn’t take long for me to notice the sparse remnants of John’s last family. There were more empty hangers on the walls then there were photos, which remained in broken frames and cracked glass. Although I never learned their names or the reason for what seemed like a sudden departure from John’s life, I knew of his absent ex-wife and long estranged daughter from these artifacts, without ever having to ask. While the fact that his daughter looked about my age in the already old photographs made me question the appropriateness of my friendship with him, the tragedy of John’s past convinced me that he needed Alex and I just as much as we needed him.
Spending time at John’s house was like visiting the Island of Misfit Toys or, perhaps more accurately, that fabled island from the story of Pinocchio: a place where Alex and I were free to make complete asses of ourselves and experiment with all sorts of different vice. More than anything John’s house was like quicksand. Although it happened by slow degrees, I would go on to surrender the last of my remaining innocence, my dignity and, eventually, my entire body to the quagmire I found in their shared bedroom. I had to lie to my parents about where I was and who I was with, but my grades never slipped, and I was never late to school the next day.
“John intimidated me, but the fact that I could completely disarm him with a flick of my tongue made me feel capable of all the other things that scared me about being an adult.”
One night, after rehearsal, Alex and I convinced John to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with us, on the condition that he would get a blowjob during the movie. When the time came, Alex insisted that I should go down on him too, since I had been the one to make the bargain on his behalf. At first, I laughed dismissively at the very thought of it, but after a few more sips of Bacardi and Coke, the idea didn’t seem all that outlandish to me.
As we watched the movie, Alex and I took turns going down on John, who sat on the couch like a concession between us. Despite the raw carnality, inextricable from the act itself, the experience wasn’t all that sexual for me. In fact, I gave head to John in exactly the same way I would sometimes split a cigarette with Alex, even though I didn’t smoke them and could barely stand the taste. To me, this was just one more thing which Alex and I could bond over, only more personal and more significant than a cigarette or a diet soda or makeup. I only wanted to have fun with Alex and make him laugh; anything John might have gotten out of it was purely incidental.
With the movie playing in the background, we couldn’t help wondering how Audrey Hepburn might preform felacio. Alex and I would rear our heads back every chance we got, to quote those lines which we knew by heart and imitate her mannerisms with John’s cock in one hand and an imaginary cigarette-holder in the other. Everyone found it hysterical when I tried to impersonate Holly Golightly, marble-mouthed with John’s cock squirreled into the side of my cheek: “It may be normal darling, but I’d rather be natural.”
When the movie ended, John still hadn’t cum, because neither Alex nor I were able to go more than a few minutes without devolving into fits of laughter. We spent as much time rolling on the floor at John’s feet, as we did on our knees between his legs. We tortured him to the point of tears, until he wept a string of liquid pearls down the length of his crooked shaft, long enough that Aubrey could have worn them just as easily around her neck.
To his credit, John acted amicably that night, keeping his hands to himself and sitting patiently through all of our operatic lampooning, happy to be caught in the crossfire of our star power. Although I still wasn’t especially attracted to John, I found something uniquely empowering in my dalliance with such an older man while having only recently come of age myself. John was older than most of my teachers, older than my parents. He had a mortgage, an ex-wife and life-experiences which I couldn’t fathom. He intimidated me, but the fact that I could completely disarm him with a flick of my tongue made me feel capable of all the other things that scared me about being an adult. I felt that if I could do this, I could do anything.
John’s relationship with Alex might have been questionable and his involvement with me, exploitative at the very least. John might have been something of a predator, but sitting between his legs that night, I thought I was the dangerous one. For the first time in my life, I felt formidable, capable, unstoppable. And, although John’s made my skin crawl, I wielded his organs with the same godlike power and precision with which a surgeon performs open heart surgery, feeling his pulse in my hands with a similar clinical detachment and peculiar anatomical fascination.
Armed with this newfound confidence, I began fooling around with Alex and John on a regular basis. Eventually, when Alex became curious about sleeping with women, I was willing and even flattered to be his first, despite John flat-out ignoring the lines I drew in the sand about where I felt comfortable being penetrated and by whom. While our threesomes typically began consensually enough, John would often get carried away and forget any boundaries he promised to respect. Sometimes he would go as far as to hold me down and have his way with me while Alex watched from the sidelines unable or unwilling to intervene. Afterwards, John would try and justify what he had just done by pointing out the large puddles I would invariably leave on the bedspread and the fact that, despite how hard I fought against it, he knew that I had orgasmed.
By opening night, I actually started to believe him when he told me. “You don’t know what you want.” To which I replied reluctantly and broken in spirit. “Yes, Daddy.”
In the lobby, after our last performance of Brigadoon, my actual father surprised me with a bouquet of white roses. I didn’t think he would make it to any of my shows, but he had flown home from a conference early in order to be there. Without thinking, I threw my arms around him, and he hugged me back, the two of us now completely out of character. Maybe because I knew John was somewhere in the same crowded room, maybe because my body was tired and sore from more than just the performance I had given on stage, I buried my face into my father’s chest the way an ostrich tries to hide its head in the sand. In the unfamiliar sanctuary of my own father’s arms, all the tears I had bottled up, all the feelings I had tried to drown in hard liquor or smudge out with smoke, every insecurity and anxiety I had tried to fuck away in strange beds with strange men, everything poured out of me all at once. In what might have been our longest embrace, my father held me in the middle of the bustling crowd until I had completely cried myself out. When I finally opened my eyes to see the lapel of his jacket muddy with so much of my mascara, I began to apologize for the mess I had made of more than just his jacket.
That evening, I decided to skip the cast party and joined my father for a rare evening out to dinner, with just the two of us. He knew something was wrong, but unlike my mother, he could accept the fact that I wasn’t going to talk about it, even if he had asked. Instead, we discussed which colleges I had applied to and how he was glad that I wanted to keep living at home, instead of wasting money on meal plans and dormitory expenses like my sister’s had done. My father was normally very meticulous about his appearance and seeing my mascara adorning the front of his jacket almost made up for the fact that he had never hung any of my childhood artwork on the fridge or worn any of the silly hats my sisters and I would make him out of paper mâché. That he wore my pain so gallantly on his lapel, even in the restaurant, made me smile. And, while I knew I would never again be the same girl smiling in the picture he still carries around in his wallet, I knew that I would be ok.
I stopped seeing Alex and John shortly after that night and began to prioritize my future and the coming college semester. In the confusing aftermath of everything that had happened, I went a long time without sex or any other men in my life. Although I know better now, I used to blame myself for being taken advantage of so easily and for letting it go on as long as it did. It took years to process some of the more questionable things that happened and see them for what they really were. Over time I’ve learned to forgive myself and allow myself the space to make mistakes. I’ve even learned to embrace my submissive side once again, but even when I’m in the car with a guy, I prefer to be the one behind the wheel.