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    Mild to Wild in Massachusetts
    Mild to Wild in Massachusetts
    Mild to Wild in Massachusetts
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Mild to Wild in Massachusetts

    By Paul Walkingsky

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    About this ebook

    Brett has spent twenty-seven years trying to be perfect for the Mormon grandparents who raised him. Unfortunately, doing so has meant missing out on lots of life experiences—and denying a major part of who he is. Now that his grandparents are gone, Brett is ready to make up for lost time, break out of the sedate façade he’s always presented, and do something he would have never considered before: attend a gay men’s spiritual retreat in rural Massachusetts. 

    While trying to infuse some spice into his life with workshops like Erotic Massage, Body Painting, and Drag 101, Brett meets Boston nurse Karl, and it’s hard to deny the connection between them. But will Brett’s lack of experience and Karl’s insecurities end their romance before it can really begin? 

    It might be a spiritual retreat, but Brett must learn to embrace his physical reality if he’s going to grab on to his chance at love. 

     

    States of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the United States.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateApr 12, 2017
    ISBN9781635333961
    Mild to Wild in Massachusetts

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      Book preview

      Mild to Wild in Massachusetts - Paul Walkingsky

      Mild to Wild in Massachusetts

      By Paul Walkingsky

      Brett has spent twenty-seven years trying to be perfect for the Mormon grandparents who raised him. Unfortunately, doing so has meant missing out on lots of life experiences—and denying a major part of who he is. Now that his grandparents are gone, Brett is ready to make up for lost time, break out of the sedate façade he’s always presented, and do something he would have never considered before: attend a gay men’s spiritual retreat in rural Massachusetts.

      While trying to infuse some spice into his life with workshops like Erotic Massage, Body Painting, and Drag 101, Brett meets Boston nurse Karl, and it’s hard to deny the connection between them. But will Brett’s lack of experience and Karl’s insecurities end their romance before it can really begin?

      It might be a spiritual retreat, but Brett must learn to embrace his physical reality if he’s going to grab on to his chance at love.

      States of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the United States.

      Table of Contents

      Blurb

      Dedication

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      About the Author

      By Paul Walkingsky

      Visit Dreamspinner Press

      Copyright

      Dedicated to my first significant other, Leon McKusick, who was in many ways the model for the character Zach. Leon served as a mentor to me as I tried to better understand myself and others. I heeded his advice in sowing my own wild oats, as he instructed me to do, and as he had been told to by his first lover. AIDS silenced Leon, but his story continues.

      Chapter One

      I WANTED to enjoy some me time while my grandparents were away after throwing me the annual surprise birthday party. I had turned twenty-four on Monday. It was now Saturday, so I figured I had a handle on entering my midtwenties. I was pulling out a book I had been saving as a special treat for myself. I had a habit of not enjoying things right away, but instead putting them aside for a rainy day. Except living in Utah meant rainy days didn’t happen on a regular basis. It was like an old I Love Lucy episode, where pulling out the novel bumped two more books out of place, which let three books sitting on the top of others slide down. They knocked over a paperweight I had gotten for my eleventh birthday, and as it dropped off the shelf, the eternally frozen blue flower in a glass ball took out an ancient photo album. It hit me on my left foot as it fell, spilling out Kodachrome shots of my family’s life. They were now off-color—about the only thing that was off-color when it came to my grandparents. My mother’s face stared back up at me. She looked so young. She was probably about the age I was now.

      I bent over and started picking up the fallen bits of our history. Another one showed my mom in between my grandparents. She was smiling. Granma was looking into the camera as if she had never seen one before, and Granpa was frowning. There weren’t a lot of the three of them together. How many other people can honestly say their mother had been a pot-smoking hippy in a commune? Up until that point, everyone else had been a God-fearing Mormon. Maybe she had some sort of mutant gene. She danced off with her wild hair and wilder ways. She and her best friend Paula sold pot to support the commune.

      I’m a bit cloudy on the rest of it, but then it was before my time, and the grandparents weren’t big on details. It was rural Utah, and communes started later and lasted longer than in more civilized (or more jaded) places. My mom must have found the copy of Life magazine on top of the pile stashed in the bookshelf and based her life around what things had reportedly been like when her own mother would have been old enough to run away to San Francisco to put flowers in her hair. As if my grandmother would have ever gone farther than the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. I could picture my mom looking at the pictures in the old magazine and imagining herself at Woodstock and other places where hippies would hang out. A generation later than the residents of Haight-Ashbury, she would seek her own Summer of Love. Or more precisely, the Summer of Unplanned Parenthood. Guess hippy communes weren’t stocked with condoms.

      I sat down and opened up the photo album with the intention of putting the pictures back where they belonged. The page was waxed, and a protective plastic cover that looked a lot like the plastic furniture covers in the living room was weakly sealing things shut. No wonder the photos had ended up in a mess on the floor. I thought again of condoms and being told not to keep one in my wallet for years because eventually it would wear out. Then you could end up with the next generation of me.

      I picked up another photo from the pile. This one was of my mother and Paula. They looked sleepy but immensely happy. By the time she learned she was knocked up with me, the guy involved had been killed in a motorcycle accident outside a little town not too many miles on the other side of Salt Lake City. She talked it over with Paula, and they both decided on an abortion. But she came home. I don’t know why. Maybe when your world is upside down you end up seeking something familiar. Maybe she missed the plastic covers. I understand when she told them there were a lot of tears shed. Then Granpa, whom I’ve never seen cry, said if she kept the baby, they’d raise him. Me.

      She said she’d think about it. Then the next day a deputy sheriff showed up at the door to arrest her for selling pot. There were more tears. Money was spent on a lawyer, and he somehow managed to get her off with just probation. Maybe the thought of sitting in jail scared her, and she spent the next several months hiding away in the house.

      Then spring came and I came, and before my first birthday she climbed on the back of another motorcycle and drove away into the sunset. Or maybe it was the dawn. My grandparents aren’t much on details. My life consisted of Bible study and Temple. I remember sometimes wanting to look at pictures of my mother. I’d have to pull the footstool over from my granpa’s overstuffed chair to be able to reach up far enough to get this album. I remember it always being heavy. Now it was just a photo album. I sealed Paula and my mother back behind the plastic sheet. The next photo that had strayed was of my aunt Lindsey, the lesbian. Parenting for my grandparents didn’t quite go as planned. George came as an unexpected bonus. Uncle George was eight years older than I was. I sighed. It was like the Mormon gene skipped a generation. When I was a kid, I remember being horrified when some drunk looked at Lindsey and muttered in a sneering way, Bull Dyke.

      LINDSEY STOOD stone still and said in her theatrical voice, That’s Miz Bull Dyke to you. Then she decked him. Ever since, when someone would ask her about her sexual orientation, she would proudly declare herself a Bull Dyke. Then she’d laugh. If Granma was in hearing distance, she’d sneak over and say, Oh, Honey, it’s been hard enough to learn to say lesbian in public. Uncle George grew up to purchase a Russian mail-order bride who spoke no English, and Uncle George’s Russian seemed to consist of Nyet. My grandparents made sure we stayed busy in the Temple and doing charitable work to compensate for all the sins of their children.

      Then I

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