Follow Carmen, a young and deeply closeted gay teenager as he navigates the 1980's and 1990's yearning for love and trying to find where he fits in.
This story is rated M because it contains elements of death (including children), homophobia, religi...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Sportbikr, as it turned out, was a guy by the name of Bruce. We hit it off straight away. He had many of the same interests that I did, especially with cars. He had actually previously owned a small foreign car dealership in the valley but had sold it to get into other business interests. As his user name suggested, he was also into motorcycles, and he had a Kawasaki Ninja. We chatted for hours that night, and every night after that, both online and on the phone, until finally we decided to meet.
I should have seen some early warning signs when he was being very guarded with his personal life and age, and even where he lived, but I was so focused on our shared interests that I ignored the flags. For example, any time I asked his age, he'd just say "older than you", and he would never say that he was gay, or even that he was single. He just kept changing the subject or skirting the questions.
It was me who picked our first meeting place. I chose First Lake of course, because that was where I was most at ease. He agreed to come out and meet me there. He had seen my pic, and I had seen one of him but it wasn't a recent one. I told him I'd be fishing at the point next to the beach, so I grabbed my fishing rod and headed to the lake. He said he'd bring his gear as well. I was standing out in the water and had been fishing for a while when I heard a voice behind me.
"Carmen?"
I turned around, and there was Bruce, wearing a Volvo T-shirt and carrying a fishing rod. He looked like his picture, except for one thing. He looked older. He didn't look bad, for sure – he was certainly attractive and dressed youthfully, with relatively snug fitting jeans, but the lines on his face belied his age. I decided to not dwell on that for now.
"Bruce?"
"Yeah, that's me, in the flesh. We finally meet!"
"Indeed we do", I smiled.
Even though he looked older I might be able to work with this.
He started putting his fishing gear together. I looked at his feet. Expensive leather boots. "Oh, shit, I should have warned you. You can't really fish from shore here, the water is too shallow."
"Oh, that's OK, I'm not really here for the fishing anyway. Not tonight." He was smiling.
"Yeah, me neither, really" I said, and I waded back to sure. As I was putting my dry socks and shoes on I noticed him looking me over, so I decided to do the same. He was short but athletic and well proportioned, with a thin goatee, pale blue eyes, and everything he was wearing looked expensive. Closer up I could see more clearly how old he appeared. Again, he wasn't ugly by any means, but he was definitely older. He saw me checking him over, and asked nervously "So, do you like what you see?"
"Oh? Yes. Just one question though."
I saw a look of dread come across his face. He knew what I was about to ask, and so as sure as there's shit in a cat, I asked it.
"How old are you?"
He let out a deep sigh. "I'm thirty-eight. I'm sorry for not telling you earlier, I just wanted you to give me a chance before I scared you away with a number."
