Ethan

“Rueben seemed nice,” my dad said in that gently probing way that was a staple of every parents’ toolkit.

Not to disappoint, I responded with the standard teenage grunt of acknowledgement.

“And handsome,” my dad added.

My face scrunched up into a grimace. “He’s a bit young for you.”

My dad had known I was gay since I was fourteen, when I decided I didn’t want to be in the closet. I also hadn’t wanted to do some big coming out announcement, so I’d just… not made any effort to hide it. Watched what I wanted on the TV in the living room, left the books I was reading laying around. He’d figured it out soon enough.

Of course, then he’d decided we needed to have a whole conversation about it anyway where he told me he loved me and was so proud of me. I know some people do have families that treat it like the end of the world, so I should be grateful, but it just seemed absurd that my father should care who I was attracted to or that there was any chance that out of everything, this would somehow be the thing that made him not love me anymore.

My dad let out a dramatic sigh. “You know, I spent years thinking about what I’d do when you finally brought a boy home, and now what? You’re eighteen. I was supposed to tell you to keep your door open and all sorts of things, but you’re an adult, so…? 

“Sorry to rob you of that joy.”

“Ha,” my dad said humourlessly. “Do you have condoms?”

“Dad, I met him today. It’s not even like that, anyway.”

“Really? Then why’d he look so guilty when I got home?”

“I don’t know. I think neurotypicals just imagine they know what other people are thinking. I’m pretty sure he was in the middle of telling me he was leaving when we heard you come in, so why would he look guilty?”

“Hm,” my dad said, clearly unconvinced. “There are condoms in my bag, if you need them. And lube.”

“Dad.”

“What! These things are important!”

I groaned. What did he think was going to happen? Anal sex wasn’t even something I’d built myself up to fantasising about yet. I sure as shit wasn’t about to do it in the next week. “I’m fine, Dad. It’s not going to happen.”

“You never know. It’s better to be overprepared than underprepared. Do you know how to do everything properly and safely? With another boy, I mean.”

“Do you?”

That gave him pause. “I bet Wendy would. You should have a talk with her.”

“How would she know?”

“Well, she’s a nurse. They learn about this sort of thing, right? She likes you, you know. Wants to get to know you better.”

“If you try to get her to talk to me about this, it will be the last time I ever talk to her. And you, probably.”

My dad chucked. “Yeah, alright. That’s fair.”

“I bet I already know at least as much as she does anyway, and it’s not like I don’t know how to use a search engine. Just asking a person who sort of maybe knows about something a little bit is a terrible source of information.”

“Maybe I just wanted to be a dad for once.”

I made an unimpressed sound, because if I kept talking, this was going to turn from banter into an actual fight. Why did being a dad mean offloading his parenting onto the closest woman? It was like he assumed just because I loved my mum, and she was a woman, a woman’s care was what I needed.

I was fine with him dating—he had too much love in him not to—but I didn’t see why that had to have anything to do with me. When I was twelve, a couple of years after my mum died, he started dating for the first time and he somehow convinced the poor woman to cook meals for me. So he’d bring home these containers of food to reheat, the same meals she made for her own kid, and within a few days I started making my own food and never stopped. I had very particular tastes that some woman I barely knew didn’t know about and somehow my dad who did know about all of it couldn’t figure out that I wouldn’t like her food even if she was much better at cooking than he was because I don’t like bacon, Dad.

Anyway, I was still a little resentful about that, maybe. 

My dad let the topic drop, but while we were in the chemist grabbing a first aid kit, he picked up condoms and lube as well. I pretended not to notice. The man drastically overestimated my game.

When we got back to the house, Wendy rebandaged my leg and fussed over the graze with a level of sympathetic owie noises that seemed performative considering she was a nurse. 

At least she didn’t try to explain the mechanics of anal sex to me.