Tyler, The Cucked Son

Tyler Barclay took a sip of his Woodford Reserve, looked out the window, and sighed. The lights from his little table-top Christmas tree reflected back off the windowpane. He didn't regret putting it up, but it was providing him with no joy at the moment. Because it was New Year's Eve.
And not only New Year's Eve, but the tenth anniversary of the New Year's that had changed his life.

Ten years ago. He was a college student at the time, and he had been so excited about bringing his girlfriend home to spend the holidays with his family.

Morrigan wasn't his first girlfriend -- and in fact, he wasn't even completely sure that "girlfriend" was the right word -- but she was certainly the most intriguing young woman he had ever dated.
She was at once both cultured and elegant beyond her years, but also somewhat bohemian; at least, mysterious, like she was part gypsy. She preferred live theater to movies; she read Victorian and Elizabethan poetry. She also read Tarot cards.

And her body, which she had not yet unveiled to him, held him mesmerized. And yet, she didn't give him the impression that she was an innocent and pious virgin, saving herself for marriage; rather, he had a sense that her body was a chamber of secrets, a book of magic which she knew he was not yet qualified to attempt.

They had been dating for a few weeks when he impulsively asked her to come home with him over Christmas break, to meet his family. She had her own family plans for Christmas itself, but she agreed to come spend New Year's Eve with him. He was delighted. He wanted to impress her, and he knew that his family's home and lifestyle were pretty exceptional. Most importantly, he wanted his father to like his girlfriend. To be impressed with her, and in turn with him, for having attracted her.

And so he had found it gratifying to see the look of approval on Robert Barclay's face, the way his father's eyebrows had arched and his eyes brightened, when he had first introduced her.

He felt content to follow behind, more or less a third wheel, as his dad gave Morrigan a tour of the house -- the library; the garden and pool, now covered for the winter; the four-car garage, including the Racing Green 1974 MGB Roadster that he coveted so, and which his father had often hinted would be his graduation present.

Pleased as he was how well the visit was going, it struck him as gratifying rather than off-putting when his father would guide Morrigan into the next room by placing his hand on the small of her back.

Gradually it occurred to Tyler that he had never even seen the small of Morrigan's back. He wondered if she had pronounced dimples there. He tried to imagine the shadows in the curves between there and her alluring derriere. He thought that he wouldn't be totally surprised to find a discreet tattoo there; she was such a curious mix of extremes. But at the moment, her backside was completely concealed in a sleek and shiny silk dress that was so black it was almost iridescent. And his father's hand was lingering there. Innocently enough, but too long for Tyler's comfort.

In fact, Tyler realized part of why he was uncomfortable was because he found the discomfort oddly arousing.

Soon his older sister Cyndi arrived with her husband Jason, and the five of them sat down around the dinner table for a meal of beef tenderloin and roasted vegetables, accompanied by two bottles of an expensive Bourdeaux. Robert continued to be solicitous of Morrigan throughout dinner, but not to the point of distraction. Not quite.

Cyndi was the one who started asking questions about how Tyler and Morrigan had met, exploring their relationship, innocently enough. And of course, all of the answers were innocent. Chaste, even. Until Morrigan stuck a little addendum onto the end of an anecdote.

"He's a very good boy."

Cyndi laughed out loud at that, and then laughed even harder when Morrigan followed that up with, "He must have been easy to toilet train."

That caused Tyler to choke, and Jason to join Cyndi in her laughter. His father just looked amused. "Well, I ... really don't remember," Robert said.

Of course, Robert Barclay wasn't the kind of man who changed his children's diapers. But Tyler's sister jumped in with an even more embarrassing rejoinder. "Well, Tyler always was more of a mommy's boy."

Tyler blushed furiously, and was not assuaged when Morrigan reached over and toyed with his curly hair. "Well, whatever the reason," she continued. "He's really such a people pleaser."

Then she locked eyes with Robert, and said directly to him, "He really does seem to put other people's pleasure over his own."

Cyndi and Jason grew uncomfortably quiet.

Robert picked up his cloth napkin and dabbed at the edge of his mouth. "Are you saying my son is submissive, Morrigan?"

"Very much so."

"I see. And you like submissive men?"

Morrigan's gaze remained fixed entirely on Tyler's father. "Yes. And the opposite."

"So," Robert continued. "Tyler would not object if I ... monopolized your time this evening?"

Jason's jaw dropped open, as Morrigan let several seconds pass without looking back at Tyler.
Then she answered, "I suspect not."

Robert stood up. Without looking at anyone else at the table, he extended his hand to Morrigan. Without looking at anyone else, she put her own hand in his, and rose out of her chair. Then without a word, the fifty-year-old man and the 21-year-old woman left the dining room. With his hand on the small of her back.

Cyndi and Jason looked, wide-eyed, at each other, and at Cyndi's younger brother. Who simply looked down at his half-eaten meal.

Later, Cyndi and Jason left for a party with their friends, Cyndi looking at him in sympathy, Jason just shaking his head.

Four hours later, Tyler watched the ball descend in Times Square, still alone. Then he turned off the TV and climbed the stairs, to go to bed in his boyhood bedroom, past the closed door to his father's room, where a dim light from under the door suggested that his father and Morrigan were still awake.

He got into bed, and began to masturbate to the image of his father and his girlfriend together. He pictured his father with both hands on the small of her back, gripping her. Whatever the mysteries of that hallowed place on her precious body, his father knew them now. Tyler exploded into the most intense orgasm of his life.

Nevertheless, Tyler had continued to date Morrigan for the rest of their senior year. Or, at least, to see her. They went out to dinner, went to movies and plays; but their physical intimacy continued to consist of returning to her apartment, where he would rub lotion into her feet and torment himself with visions of her with his father.

Other girls flirted with him, expressed interest in him; and Tyler knew that he really ought to ask one of them out, explore a new, "normal" relationship. But he couldn't resist spending every possible moment at Morrigan's feet; even more so now, since the events of New Year's Eve, than last semester. He was drawn to her.

Even on those Fridays and Saturday nights when she left him on campus, bereft and forlorn, while his father took her to New York City or Turks and Caicos for the weekend.

Well before graduation, she told him that she had taken a job in London. So he accepted a job offer in Seattle. The party after commencement was the last time he saw her. She had kissed him on the cheek, and then driven away. In her green MG Roadster.

That was nearly ten years ago now. Hard to believe. His career was going well. He dated lots of women. He had sex with lots of women. But none of them knew that he never had an orgasm, except by closing his eyes and picturing his father's hands on the small of Morrigan's back.