PRL Serials

2. Toxic Love (Your Old Droog)

“Who Uncle Thomas fucking?” my brother, Cedric David Livingston, asked, obviously drunk, and he laughed at himself. “I bet it’s a bad bitch with all the money you got.”

“Shut up, Ced,” I said quickly, “you wouldn’t know a bad bitch if you got her pregnant and she had two of your kids.”

“I only fuck with bad bitches, so I do know them.”

“But it’s the definition of bad that you really struggle with.”

“Aww, shut up, Wes. What y’all talking about? Who got the cigarettes, ‘cause I know y’all smoking or you wouldn’t be this far from the house. And unk, tell me about this woman you been sexually active with. Are we comparing notes? ‘Cause I met this pretty young thing…”

I tossed my cigarettes at Cedric to shut him up. “Just smoke the cigarette.”

“I’m gay Cedric, never had sex with a woman.” My uncle said it very easily, like it wasn’t a secret he had been hiding for decades. I’m pretty sure Cedric and I both had the same look of surprise on our faces, I couldn’t believe he told him.

After lighting his cigarette, nodding his head thoughtfully, Cedric said, “Well ok, unk. I never would’ve guessed. But I guess it make sense.”

I wondered why people said that. It would only make sense if they had ever caught my uncle in a compromising situation that wasn’t completely clear, like he was out late with a guy holding hands and explained it by saying that the guy was blind and he was leading him home. But Cedric wasn’t aware of anything like that, he was never as close to uncle Thomas as I was so I can’t imagine that he was ever curious about his love life. Maybe it was weird that I was, but as his biggest fan, I’d always imagined that I would find a woman like the one he chose to love so I was eager to know who he loved. But I guess it’s true that every person assumes that every other person in the world is looking for love, or at least a sexual partner, and if someone is not forthcoming about that desire, then everyone else assumes homosexuality, or some other thing that isn’t polite to discuss in mixed company. Cedric could think back on all the times he had seen uncle Thomas alone and fill in the blanks with this new revelation, even though before he hadn’t made that assumption.

“I hope I didn’t shock you or anything…” uncle Thomas said.

“Nah, unk, I love you no matter what. I hope I never did anything to offend you. I used to think Wes was gay…”

“You think everybody gay,” I interjected.

“…so I been cool with the idea for a while. To each his own. More ladies for me. So who you fucking then? Dudes can be bad bitches, too!”

I knew that Cedric wouldn’t have a problem with uncle Thomas’s sexuality, and that he thought I was gay when we were in high school, but I was hoping he wouldn’t be so brash so soon. I felt like uncle Thomas’ handler and I didn’t want rough heterosexual men to scare him off of open, frank discussion about sex and relationships by asking too much too fast. My uncle hadn’t grown up bragging about sexual conquests and dreaming out loud to friends about the disgusting things he would do to beautiful women if given the opportunity, but that was the only language my brother had about sex. I realized that day, though, that I didn’t know my uncle nearly as well as I thought.

“Cedric, you’re so vulgar, man!” I said, thinking I was speaking for my uncle who must have been frightened.

“I only fuck with bad bitches, nephew. Livingstons only got the one option.” Uncle Thomas sounded like a different person, and when he clapped hands and shared a hug with my brother with his free hand, he even looked different. “I learned from your grandfather a long time ago, monogamy is not an easy thing and I don’t need the grief. I see what I like, enjoy myself until I don’t, safely of course, and then I move on.”

“But you had so much trouble.” I was having such a hard time reconciling the stories my uncle had told me with this new information.

“You’re right, Wes, I did have a lot of trouble when it came to love. But when I went to the city, guys were a lot more open. They would come up to me, they still do, and very frankly say what they wanted, and if I was interested, we would have fun. Sex is different from love. All we ever talked about was the love part.”

“That’s my uncle right there,” Cedric said proudly. “Yeah, that love stuff always tripped me up, too. Like, I know I’m in love now, I been in love before, but when something comes along and it’s what I need physically, it’s just hard to say no to that.”

“And why should we?” Uncle Thomas asked.

“’Cause we make commitments to people,” I said, obviously indignant. 

“Not me. In your case, Ced, he’s right. You can’t just go around slinging your private parts at every woman asking for it if you made a commitment to someone. But I’ve never gotten to the commitment part. Every time I thought I found someone I wanted to commit myself to, things didn’t work out for whatever reason.”

It all lined up perfectly well, but somehow I was still disappointed, and this is a lesson that everyone learns when they stop holding people up as symbols to model themselves after. My uncle had passively taught me that there was nothing to gain from casual sexual encounters because I didn’t know that he had them, not because he condemned them necessarily. I had been drawing my own conclusions from the details of his life of which I was aware all these years. And rather than ask him directly, I just assumed that the romantic encounters that he had shared with me informed his attitude about sex. Because my romantic life and sexual life have always been one in the same. I’ve never had sex with a woman that I didn’t love and the idea of casual sex was off-putting to me. I never judged anyone for doing it, or I didn’t think I was judging anyone, but maybe I was. I had always thought of my uncle as a sexual innocent because we never discussed sex, but because heterosexual men talked about sex all the time, I assumed they were all sexual predators. As I grew older, hoping to be a more evolved member of the male species, I shunned the things that felt overtly predatory or exploitative because I assumed those things are what led to my grandparents being estranged or my brother having so many problems with the women in his life. But I think I was learning from my uncle and my brother that day that I was a self-hating man. Yes, it’s wrong to only see women as sexual objects, but to assume that a man who appreciates female sexuality can only see her for her sex is to underestimate the man. As a gay man, my uncle appreciated male sexuality, but didn’t see all men as sexual objects. It was all about personal relationships and interactions. It’s hard to generalize and we establish rules with the people that we encounter. 

Cedric shook his head at my uncle’s last comment. “Nah, unk, I go into relationships very honest. I know I’m more like my granddaddy than my daddy. I tell females that I can be their man, they can drive my cars and I’ll pay their bills, give them babies, but what I do with a female on the side can’t bother them ‘cause I don’t bring nothing home. No surprise babies, no diseases, no drama. My girl get that. She don’t like it, but she know it’s me and if she try to stop me, we won’t last very long.”

I’ve heard this argument before and though it rings very loudly of machismo that is damaging to femininity and the sanctity of family, I don’t think that it is and it’s actually something much more evolved. Personally, I could never subscribe to it, but people have different standards and expectations.

“As long as you’re honest,” my uncle said. “As long as she’s being honest with herself that it doesn’t bother her, otherwise you got a time bomb on your hands.”

And that’s where the problem with Cedric’s openness about his philandering existed. Even if a female agreed to his conditions before starting a relationship with him, there was no way to be sure that resentments wouldn’t fester and threaten the peace they managed early on. And if there are kids and marriage and joint assets involved, it could get really messy down the road.

“What can I say? You gotta choose wisely.” My brother said, blowing out smoke. I know he was thinking about his first baby-mama and how good it all seemed to be in the beginning, until things got crazy. She was definitely not ok with him cheating and she let everyone know.

“But you would be mad if your girl cheated on you right?” I asked my brother. “That whole thing can’t work unless it’s a two way street, or unless you find a really open female.”

“A bisexual woman that likes threesomes,” my uncle suggested.

“Yeah, that can work,” my brother said thoughtfully. “But, no, I’m not fine with her cheating if she say from the beginning that she ain’t interested in no other dudes. And if she say she want to cheat on me, I’m outta there.”

“Honesty is the best policy,” my uncle echoed.

“But why is it ok for you to sleep around but not her? Why is that a non-starter for you?” I asked Cedric.

“I don’t wanna be with a ho, Wes. You can’t trust ‘em. I’m not taking care of another man’s baby and a ho will lie and make you think a baby is yours when it ain’t. And it’s just nasty thinking about all the dudes she been with.”

“But, aren’t you judging yourself when you say stuff like that? Or are you saying female promiscuity is worse than male promiscuity because women lie and use babies to trap men?”

“The second thing?”

“So you hate women then?”

“No, why would you say that?”

“It just sounds like you have a prejudice against females. If all things are equal, a man and woman doing the exact same things, you think the woman is worse for doing it.”

“I don’t know Wes. I’m talking about women I choose to deal with. I don’t care what every woman in the world is doing. Just the ones in my bed.”

“It’s not exactly hypocritical,” uncle Thomas said. “I mean, it’s really complex. I don’t think you hate women, Ced, but what you’re describing is an unbalanced relationship where you and your partners have different expectations and I feel like that can lead to problems regardless how honest you are.”

I nodded, “Maybe that’s why it gets complicated.”

“Maybe, but I thought we was talking about unk? Why y’all therapising me and shit? So unk, who you fucking?”

By this point, we had abandoned all caution and all three of us created a smoke cloud over our heads. 

“Y’all smoking and talking about fucking?” we heard approaching us. “I thought we was supposed to be smoking the turkey and preparing that too big ham Wesley bought.”

It was my father, Joel Edward Livingston Jr, though everyone called him Jo. He was named after his father and I was named after my great grandfather.

“That ham ain’t too big,” I said grudgingly.

“It’s gone take hours to cook through is my point, and y’all out here killing yourselves. And my brother, too. I thought you quit, man.”

Uncle Thomas grabbed the pack of cigarettes from Ced and tossed them to my father.

“It’s a holiday,” he said. “Relax.”