The Best Friend's Daddy

Last week someone asked me, via formspring.me, whether I’d ever hooked up with a father of any of my son’s friends. My answer, short and sweet, was yes, I have.

And of course I immediately began to get barraged with mails and comments begging me to talk about it .

In the little suburban city where I live are a number of public parks. The reason I bought a house in this town, actually, is because of its park system; no matter in what direction I walk from my home, sooner or later I’m going to run into one either one of the little parks set up for neighborhood kids to play, or one of the large, beautiful stretches of land where the trees cluster in abundance and the grass is lush, thick, and overgrown. There’s one park at the city’s northern edge, though, that I’ll drive to, to pay visits in good weather. So will other like-minded men.

It’s a park tucked away and surrounded by industrial buildings, and it’s been allowed to run wild. It’s more a stretch of untamed forest than an actual park. There aren’t any tennis courts, or picnic tables, or water fountains or swings. There are trees, and vines, puddles of mud. There are squirrels, and raccoons, and snakes that will slither fearlessly across the dirt paths, inches away from your toes. And there are mosquitos—boy, are there ever mosquitos, particularly after July. I’ve had the misfortune of going in there and coming out with bites in places I never imagined mosquitos could invade.

The park has a reputation of being cruisy. It’s possible to go there any time of day and find a guy or two rambling around the poorly-defined dirt walking path, hands thrust deep in his pockets as he toys with himself. Lunchtimes and after dinner have been typically the best times for me to find action, on the occasions I’ve ventured up there. Two summers ago, at the forest’s deepest center, I found a group of four guys stripped down and sucking each other among the tree trunks, barely visible in the dusk.

But this story takes place about seven or eight years ago, when my son was maybe eight. It was the early autumn, a time in my part of the midwest when the days can be wanly mild, though the nights are crisp and chilly. I’d gone to the park on one of my days off from the academic job I used to hold full-time, and was rambling around the woods when I happened upon another man. He was in his early thirties and was walking a black lab whose tail wagged and tongue lolled out at the sight of me. I love dogs, and allowed the lab to jump up on me with his dirty paws. The owner laughed, and pulled him back, and we started making small talk.

The other man had jet-black hair, and thick dark eyebrows that were slightly unkempt. His face was covered with stubble. When he laughed or spoke, his eyes diminished to dark, friendly slits. For a couple of minutes we chatted about the dog and the weather. Then, though our words dried up, neither of us moved. The dog stood there and wagged its tail still, looking from one of us to the other, as the guy and I sized each other up. “Funny meeting like this out in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Usually I come here when I want some quiet.”

“Lot of quiet here,” he replied. We looked each other over for a little while more. Then, slowly, deliberately, he pulled his left hand from the pocket of his jeans, hooked the thumb in a belt loop, and let his fingers drape down and touch the bulge beneath his zipper. I noticed that like me, he wore a ring.

I understood the gesture. I pulled my own hand out of the pocket of my shorts, and let the tips tickle just beneath the flap of my fly. “Want to walk deeper in?” I asked, once we both were running our fingers over the outlines of our dicks. He nodded.

In a little clearing deep in the woods, he looped the leash over a branch and began unbuttoning his shirt. The guy was gorgeous beneath his loose-fitting clothing—fit and furry and muscular in the way that former college jocks gone only slightly to seed can be. He wasn’t hung, though. The guy had maybe four inches, though it was still a good-looking dick. At the sight of my cock his jaw dropped, quite literally. I took advantage of it by shoving my meat into his mouth.

For several long uninterrupted minutes in the woods we played around, swapping sucks while our clothes flapped half-opened. We had enough fun that afterward I asked him if he came to the park very often. He did, he told me, but it was unusual for him to go at that time; he usually worked days. I told him I usually did, too. After some quick negotiation, we agreed to meet again the following Monday night.

I remember it worked out well for me, because I was taking the kid to some kind of class on Monday nights—gymnastics, I think it was. I’d drop him off at the local high school where the class was held, drive to the park, meet my dog-walking married friend, and then get back to the high school by the class’s end. Every time we met, we’d get further and further in our sexual progress. Though he’d never done anything anal before, by Halloween I’d gotten to the point that I was banging the guy hard and he was loving it. I remember him being a really good kisser, too, which surprised me; sometimes it seems as if the really handsome married guys never like to kiss.

Then November arrived, and with it the cold weather. The trips to the park stopped.

It was in January, I think, that my son received an invitation to a friend’s birthday party. The kid’s mother was out of town that weekend, so I had the duty of wrapping the present and making sure he got to the party on time. It wasn’t his best friend having the party, my son explained on the way over. It was maybe his second-best friend, or maybe his third-best friend, but they were all friends together in a group so it really didn’t matter. My ears were still ringing with chatter when I got him to the front door, where I intended to deposit him and pick him up at the appropriate time. “Hey,” said the birthday boy’s daddy when he opened the door. A black labrador clattered up beside him, tail wagging furiously. The dog was followed by the birthday boy himself, red-faced with the pleasure of so many friends and gifts. “Thanks for coming—”

The man stopped, and stared me in the face. Because of course the birthday boy’s dad, the father of my son’s second-best friend, was my buddy from the park. The kids didn’t notice that the two adults were gawking at each other. They ran on in to the back. The other guy, though, leaned in the front door and looked me over. I hoped it was with fond nostalgia. “Well, at least now you know where I live,” he said, suddenly quiet and shy.

“And now I have your phone number,” I said, twiddling the party invitation between my fingers.

He was barefooted, and wearing nothing but an untucked white shirt and a pair of faded jeans. I was bundled up in layers. When I breathed, a trail of white vapor would be swept away by the January winds, but he didn’t make a move to close the front door. “You should use it,” he said at last. “Like, Thursday evenings before nine. This Thursday, even.”

“That’s a good time for me,” I agreed. We shook hands, like any two dads at a birthday party might, and parted. I saw him briefly again when I picked the kid up, and got another wave and a friendly smile.

Thursday nights were the night we fucked at his place, throughout the winter and spring. I’d arrive after seven, nail him on the bed he shared with his wife, and leave before his wife and son would arrive back after nine. We switched to another night for the summer, and sometimes met in the park when neither of us could host. I seem to remember fucking him all the way up until the following Christmas, actually—and then he was transferred to Ohio for his job, and the family moved away.

I remember asking my son, after they’d left, if he missed his friend. “A little,” he admitted. “But he wasn’t my best friend.”

I surely missed the kid’s daddy, though.