Joe

If not for Stan, I’d be dead, in jail, or hooked on drugs.

When I was probably about nine to ten, I remember watching my brothers and sisters do strange things up in the tree house, and having sex in the backs of cars.

All the kids where I grew up worked on farms, feeding cows, cleaning barns, baling hay. We made like $1.50 an hour. We also got jobs from Frank, the janitor at the grade school. When we were hanging around the schoolyard, he’d ask if anybody needed work. Then we’d sweep floors and empty trash to make some money.

Frank was in his fifties; he didn’t have long to go before he retired. He knew everybody in the whole town. He knew my mother and father, my brothers and sisters. We always got along pretty well with Frank. He was a good guy and he was always around.

Not long after I started working for him, Frank started doing funny things with me. He said his wife couldn’t have sex anymore. I think she had cancer or something. It was pretty innocent, masturbation, stuff like that, nothing serious. We did it on the gym mats stored in his office. He would take my pants off and masturbate me. It was all right with me. It didn’t feel wrong or anything. I enjoyed how it felt. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have done it. I just would have stopped. I’m sure he would have been fine with that. He wasn’t an aggressive old man. All I would have had to say was “No,” and it would have ended right there.

The first year or two with Frank, I didn’t even think it was sex, pretty much didn’t even know what sex was. But then I hit puberty around eleven. I had my first orgasm in his mouth. So it was kind-of confusing, about sex. But not a problem, I just thought it felt good.

It was just me and him but I’m sure that he had relationships with other kids too. I heard he had relations with older kids, years before me. It’s hard to tell who he was and who he wasn’t playing with. It was hush-hush but it seemed that everybody knew, small town talk. Frank was the elephant in the room. Everybody knew it was there, but nobody would talk about it. He told me he would have got in some serious trouble if people knew. I didn’t really think about it too much.

Some bullies in the neighborhood, a couple years older than me, tried to extort money out of Frank because they knew the way he was. They tried to get me to go along with their racket, to threaten him. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. They were just kids and it was penny ante stuff, like they wanted 20, 30 dollars. He pretty much told them to go fuck themselves and they left him alone after that.

Maybe they had something with him and they were conflicted. Or maybe they wanted a relationship with him but he just wasn’t into them.

I was running around, running the streets at 13. Just hanging out with my buddies. Started smoking weed about 13, 14. Everybody did it. Everybody I hung out with, my age and older. I was still playing with Frank and still working for him, but not that much. I’d go in and help him out, make a couple dollars here and there. Sometimes I would play with him when I wasn’t working for him. We would run into each other or I went down to the schoolyard.

After 14, I was pretty much on my own. My parents moved a few states away and I didn’t want to leave all my friends. I was okay with my parents and went to family gatherings and stuff, but instead of moving with them, I went to live with my sister in the next town over. That’s when the sex stopped with Frank, but we stayed friends. I’d go back to visit my friends once in a while and would run into him. Sometimes he would buy me lunch and we’d just talk about what I was doing in life and his retirement and stuff like that.

One day when I was almost 15, I went to a nearby town to get weed and visit some friends in their foster home. There were probably about eight kids that lived there.

I got picked up hitchhiking by two guys, Stan, who was in his late twenties, and Chris, in his forties. It turned out they were also headed to see a friend in the same foster home. I knew the guy they were going to see. He was a couple years older than me.

They took me out to lunch and we got to talking. Talked for a couple of hours. I had an inkling there was sexual interest but I didn’t really think about it. I kind-of felt the vibe. I pretty much knew the kind of people they were. And they were good people. They were friendly and I knew I could trust them. I gave them the number at my sister’s house and Stan said he’d give me a call. Then we all went to visit our friends at the foster home and hung out for a while. They left and I got a ride home from one of my buddies.

Stan called a couple of weeks later. He asked if I wanted to come out to the big city, to stay overnight and go back the next day. I’d never been to the city and I thought it was cool. I knew it was for sex and, unlike with Frank, now I knew what sex was. I was kind-of interested and that’s why I said yes. I didn’t think of it as a date at that time, but looking back on it now, it pretty much was.

He picked me up in the afternoon. We went out to eat and hung out. He showed me the sights and we went to a movie. Then we went back to his place. It was a nice, old house on the West Side. Just Stan and Chris lived there.

We hung out for a while, watched TV in Stan’s room. A couple of hours later, he got the nerve enough to grab my hand. We hugged and kissed, masturbation, groping. It was pretty mutual, except the oral sex was just him doing me.

We hung out some more the next day and then he took me home. And then we did that every other weekend for the next seven or eight years.

After about a year of coming around to get me, Stan became like part of my family. He would come to all the outings and cookouts and stuff. My aunts used to hit on him all the time. He was friends with everybody. Mom, Dad, my brothers, sisters. He was like Uncle Stan. I used to tell my friends, “This is my brother from another mother.”

He got to know my parents very well. My step-dad had a good idea what was going on. He told Stan straight up, “If Joseph is gay, then you’ll be good for him. If he’s not, then there’s nothing you can do to change it.” So either way, it was all right.

We had our ups and downs. For one thing, he didn’t like alcohol, period. But I was a teenager and sometimes I’d come home drunk, like totally wasted out of my gourd. He’d get mad at that.

I was around 15 or 16 when I had my first girlfriend. She just thought Stan and I were friends. He told me to be safe and don’t get her pregnant. That advice worked with her, but not the next two girlfriends. My first child was born when I was 18.

When my first son was born, my 20-year-old, Robbie, I named him after Stan, gave him Stan’s middle name, Patrick. Robert Patrick and Stanley Patrick. Stan’s his godfather. He helped me raise him. He’d come over and if we needed anything, like groceries or diapers, Stan would help us out. When Robbie got older, he’d help with the homework.

By this time, I was more just into girls, so the sex with Stan kind-of drifted away. It wasn’t a problem for him because he had other relationships too. So we continued to be friends and continued to see a lot of each other, but just didn’t have sex anymore.

I’ve never, really, flat-out told Robbie about the relationship I had with Stan, but I’m pretty sure he’s figured it out. Because the girlfriends change, but it’s always been me and Stan. It was normal for him because he grew up around it, but when he got older, he’d ask questions. Like, how old was I when I met Stan and was he my step-brother, my uncle, or what. And I told him, “No. Just a friend.”

I have very open communication with my kids. I would ask Robbie about his girlfriends and tell him, “I don’t care what you do. If you ever, ever need to talk to somebody, always come to me. If you ever get in trouble or anything, call me. Don’t keep me in the dark.” And he’s been very open with me. He even told me when he and his buddies had jerk-off parties. One time, I was just curious and I asked if he was having sex with Stan and he said, “Of course not, Dad. He’s my godfather.”

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When I was young, growing up, a lot of friends of mine got in trouble and were always in and out of lock-up and foster homes. Pretty much always reoffending. I could have been like everybody else, drinking, smoking, stealing cars.

Frank gave me a job. Gave me responsibility. Less time I spent on the street. He told me not to waste my money on stupid stuff. “Don’t throw your money away. Save it for stuff you need, stuff you want in the future.” That’s where I got my bicycle. And then I took the same lesson a couple of years down the road, did the same thing and bought a car.

What I did with Frank started to feel weird: when I was about 13, 14. After it stopped and I looked back at it and felt a little weird about it. I wasn’t freaked out or anything. What felt weird was sneaking around in the janitor’s office and the difference in our ages. Frank might have taken advantage of my innocence, but I don’t think he abused me. I was no victim. I know for certain kids, it wouldn’t be appropriate. I wouldn’t say harmful, but I don’t think they would take it the same way I did. For me though, he was a good friend, a good person. I hope that after I moved on, he did well in his life.

As for Stan, I’ve always said, if I didn’t meet Stan when I did, I’d probably be dead, in jail, or hooked on drugs somewhere. Stan became the reason I stayed out of trouble. Because I knew there was somebody out there who cared. Who really cared. Who just wasn’t bullshitting, feeding me a line. I looked forward to seeing him. If I got in trouble, then I wouldn’t have been able to spend any time with him. And I knew that.

I looked up to Stan. I wanted to be like him when I grew up. To be happy, successful, a good person. He showed me a lot. And, he tells me, he learned a lot from me too.

I think a lot of kids would be better off if there were more people like Stan.

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Stan and I are still tight. He’s still my best friend now, pretty much. It’s more than your basic friendship. It’s probably better.

I haven’t seen him since he moved away to Europe a few years ago. He calls me every week and we talk for a half an hour to an hour. We talk about how I’m doing and how he’s doing. Talk about the kids. Talk about Chris. Talk about my parents. We talk about surviving this life, getting through it.