Ricky Deserves Better

[Rewriting history; muscle growth; powerlifters, bodybuilders]

Clyde was grabbing another IPA from the fridge when his 21-year old son Ricky’s car pulled into the driveway. He popped off the bottlecap and tossed it at the sink. His eyes narrowed when Ricky’s passenger door opened as well. He saw two men get out of the car, heard two sets of footsteps on the porch. Ricky’s with that damned sissy boyfriend again, he thought as he heard Ricky’s key in the lock. He leaned against the sink, took a swig from his beer, and crossed his arms. I could’ve gotten anything for a son, he thought, but I end up with a goddamned fag.

The two were holding hands when the door opened, but Ricky quickly yanked his hand free when he saw his father in the dark kitchen.

“Dad!” he said. “Hi! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be here…” Ricky fidgeted nervously in his father’s gaze. Clyde just stared at his son: tall and thin with shaggy blond hair. He thought back to the day when 9 year old Ricky begged to be able to quit football. The little fag wanted to play the violin instead. The fight Clyde and his wife had over that decision ended up leading to their divorce, but Clyde put his foot down. His son still ended up a skinny wimp.

“Well, it is my house,” Clyde growled. He let some silence hang before saying, “This your new friend?”

The man next to Ricky looked away, exasperated, before stepping forward. “We’ve met, Mr. Van Oss. My name’s Trevor.” He stepped forward and extended a hand that Clyde just stared at.

“We’re just going into my apartment,” Ricky said, grabbing Trevor by the shoulder and pulling him away.

“Your ‘apartment?’ “ Clyde sneered. “You mean my basement? By the way, it’s the second of the month and I don’t see your rent money.”

Trevor looked at Ricky, then at Clyde, with an eyebrow raised. “Your dad makes you pay rent?” he asked quietly, although Clyde could hear him. Clyde couldn’t stand the guy; Trevor was tall and lean with a nice, strong body, but the little bitch spent his life studying dancing when he could have been some sort of real athlete. Maybe then he’d have a girlfriend instead of his faggy son. He shuddered to imagine which of the two men was the girl in the bedroom.

“Damned right he does!” Clyde said, spitting in the sink. “Just like my dad said to me: when you’re 18, you pay rent or you get your own place. All part of being a man.”

Ricky nodded. “I know, dad, I’ve got the money. Just give me one second, okay?” He opened the door to the basement and hurried in. Trevor looked uncomfortably at Clyde, then at the floor.

“You know,” Trevor said, “imagine if your dad had just let you live in his house rent free.”

Clyde felt his anger spike; who the fuck was this little sissy criticizing how his old man did things? He grabbed his beer bottle by the neck and took a step forward, but something stopped him. It was like he hit an invisible wall. He ricocheted back, leaning against the counter. The hell was that? He took another step forward but his feet felt sluggish and unresponsive.

“I bet your dad loved you,” Trevor said to Clyde. The words sounded to Clyde like they were echoing down a long tunnel. “I bet he just had a hard time showing it to you. Imagine if he had decided to show you kindness instead of hardness?”

Clyde blinked. He felt like something was wrong inside, like his guts were bubbling and broiling. He grabbed at his stomach--no way was he going to throw up in front of this little fag!--and then felt things calm down again. His vertigo subsided and he felt fine again.

The fuck were we just talking about? Clyde thought. Rent, he recalled, and something else. Why did he charge his son rent anyway? Because my pansy son thinks he can drag his queer boyfriend in here and do whatever he wants to in it! Like he owns the place! But the rage felt strange, like it belonged to someone else. He had a flash of his father teaching him to change the oil in his car. He remembered the day Buck Tillman beat him into the mud and he came home, bloody and bruised. Pops made me go back and face that fucker down. He just kicked my ass again, and pops had never been so disappointed in me in my whole life. But that memory rippled and faded. He blinked as he remembered his father bandaging the cut above his eye and giving him an icepack, promising to talk to Buck Tillman’s father until everything was made right.

What the fuck? Clyde thought. He set his beer on the counter, done drinking for the night.

“Here you go, dad,” Ricky said, emerging from the basement with a folded wad of bills in his hand. Clyde stared at it for a second, then at his son. He thought of his own dad’s words: “You’re my son. You can live in my home as long as you like. I love having you here.”

Clyde shook his head. “N-nevermind,” he said. “I... I bet you two could probably think of a better use for that money, right? Dinner or something?” The softness in his voice surprised Ricky, but not as much as it surprised Clyde. Behind Ricky, Trevor’s face twisted into a half smile.

Ricky stared, wondering if this was a trick, then backed away.

“You guys… want a beer?” Clyde said. He opened the fridge. “All I’ve got left are these Granite State IPAs…”

Ricky looked back at his boyfriend, then shrugged at his father. “Thanks, dad, but I think we’re just going to head downstairs. Thanks though.”

“Have a good night Mr. Van Oss!” Trevor said as Ricky pulled him back into the basement.

Clyde stood in the empty kitchen for a moment, shaking. The fuck was he thinking? A rush of memories flooded his mind: his dad giving him away on his wedding day, giving him a loan to buy his first house, holding Clyde as he cried the day the divorce papers were signed.

The fuck? Clyde said, shaking his head. Pops died of a heart attack when I was 16! He was less sure of this fact with every moment that went on. He started to feel nauseous again when as memories of this past year’s Christmas materialized: Pops accidentally cutting his thumb as he cut the turkey. He, Ricky and Pops opened gifts at the Emergency Room.

Clyde chugged his beer and left the kitchen. He grabbed a handful of sleeping pills from his medicine cabinet and swallowed them dry, then staggered to his bed where, despite the sedative, he still tossed and turned all night.

*

Clyde woke to the smell of bacon and the sound of something frying. The air was humid with the smell of breakfast food. He raised his head, then winced as the sun beaming through the window made his headache flair. He needed water, and maybe another beer, to stave this hangover off.

“Excuse me, Mr. Van Oss?” asked Trevor with a gentle knock on the door. “Ricky and I were making breakfast. We didn’t want to wake you on your day off, but we were wondering if you wanted some pancakes? Or bacon, or eggs… or all three.”

Clyde took a moment to let the information process, one phrase standing out to him: “day off.” It was Wednesday. He always worked Wednesday, didn’t he? But after a few moments of muddied thinking, he realized that it actually was his day off. He’d always had Wednesdays off.

“Ugh…” Clyde moaned and pulled a pillow over his face to block the light. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. I’ll have some bacon. Coffee too, if you’re making any.” This was the nicest he’d ever been to his son’s boyfriend. He just felt too weak, his head throbbing too hard, to give him a hard time.

“We can just make you a plate if you want,” Trevor said. “Sorry for waking you up. Ricky says you sleep like a log ever since you quit drinking.”

The fuck was this kid talking about? Was he cracking wise? Clyde smacked his lips, the bitter tang of stale beer everywhere in his clammy mouth, but then… it was gone.

He felt great, like he’d gotten a good night’s sleep with a clear head. His felt a surge of energy and sat up suddenly. “No, I’m good. I’ll get up now.” Trevor smiled as Clyde wiped the sleep from his eyes.

He knew things felt wrong, but as he climbed from bed, the throbbing pain in his knees and his back were the only things he could think of. He was getting too damned old to work construction. But what the hell else was he going to do?

Clyde hobbled into the kitchen. Ricky had the table set with three place settings. He smiled when Clyde walked in. I can’t remember the last time I saw that boy smile, he thought. More surprising was the fact that it didn’t piss him off.

Clyde sat silently, luxuriating in the feeling of being healthy and aware, but still mildly unsettled. He felt like someone was playing an elaborate prank on him. But then again, he remembered that his Pops was still alive. He remembered the day he swore off drinking forever. These things happened. Maybe he was going crazy? Imagining a life much worse than the one he deserved.

“Ricky was telling me how young you were when you had him,” Trevor said.

Clyde drizzled syrup on his pancakes while he raised an eyebrow. “He said I was young?” he said, confused. He was 30 when Ricky’s mom got pregnant. All his life he’d tried to avoid being a dad, and then one mistake and he ended up with a son he hadn’t wanted and a wife he hated.

“16 is really young to have a baby,” Trevor said. “My mom was a single mom at that age too. I can’t imagine. But I think you both did a wonderful job.” Trevor smiled and took Ricky’s hand.

Clyde froze. For a moment, he felt like he was falling. Then, he crashed into his seat.

The pain in his back and in his knees was gone. He’d gotten used to it for so long that he hadn’t realized how nice it was to be pain-free. He stretched his joints, arched his back, exploring the feeling of relief. As he sat up straighter, he realized something else: the paunch he usually had hanging around his midsection was gone. He reached down to feel a flat stomach--no, abs! He took a look at his young, toned body. 37. I’m 37 years old. It sounded right. It was right! He suddenly felt horny… so damned horny. He hadn’t been this riled up in years! (No, no, that wasn’t true; a stiff breeze could get Clyde hard, with all the testosterone running through his body.)

He flashed back to the day he heard that he was going to be a father. He was so young, so scared, but Pops coached him through. He promised he would help, told Clyde that he would be a wonderful father. Clyde put aside his fears about fatherhood the moment he saw his son’s beautiful face. He heard baby Ricky’s cry and thought, “I’m going to be as good a dad to you as Pops was to me.”

“Are you okay, dad?” Ricky said. Clyde looked at his son, wondering what he was talking about, until he felt tears streaming down his face. He wiped them, blushing in embarassment.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a croak in his voice. “I was just… I guess I was just really happy.”

Ricky got up and gave his dad a hug. Clyde just leaned into his son--a son he barely knew, yet every moment memories poured in that made his heart surge. Clyde was losing himself in everything that was happening.

Ricky gave Clyde a kiss on the head. “Okay, dad, well… if you’re sure you’re good, I’m just gonna go to the restroom real quick.” He gave Clyde a pat on the head and walked away.

“What are you doing?” Clyde whimpered to Trevor. He couldn’t formulate a more specific question. Something was happening, it was Trevor’s fault, and that was all he could really pin down.

“Just talking about what a wonderful life you have,” Trevor said with a smile. “If you don’t like it, by all means, tell me to stop. I can talk about how you’re a miserable old drunk who hates his gay son almost as much as he hates himself. Or I can say nicer things. Your call.”

“No, I…” For a moment, Clyde flashed back to the way things used to be. His chest burned with resentment for a moment. Aches pulsed in his body. He felt old and tired and beaten down again. “No, please… the nicer things…” he replied weakly.

“Tell me about your divorce,” Trevor said. “You and Ricky’s mom broke up when you were 18, right? When you came out of the closet?”

“Now, wait just a--” Clyde couldn’t finish the sentence. He was suddenly stuck on a memory of tearfully telling his wife that he loved her but could never be in love with her. She admitted she’d always known. They would continue to parent their son as a team, they agreed, but their marriage was a sham and had to end.

Clyde dropped his fork and put his head in his hands.

When he was 15 he remembered seeing the football coach strut through the locker room in a towel. He remembered the man’s muscles, his thick moustache, his cocky stride, and the moment his towel swept aside and Clyde saw his big, powerful cock swinging between his legs.

Now, at age 37, Clyde felt desire for this memory. His cock sprang to attention remembering his football coach. His first crush. All those late nights he stayed after school to life weights, all that extra training, was just to get close to that man. Coach Klein was straight, but he etched deep grooves into Clyde’s psyche. Hours of getting bigger, stronger, just to be near that powerful man.

Clyde had to push the breakfast table away. His whole body felt heavy all fo a sudden. Wide. He looked at beefy arms he didn’t recognize--no, those were the muscles he’d had since he was young. He felt a tuft of moustache suddenly spring beneath his nose. He ran his tongue along it, tasting maple syrup residue in it. He’d started growing that lush facial hair the moment he got a look at Coach Klein his freshman year and had kept it ever since.

“What was your first boyfriend like?” Trevor said as he sipped his orange juice. “Ricky said he was a big guy from England. A powerlifter, right?”

“Strongman,” Clyde corrected. The word itself felt unfamiliar leaving his lips--truly, he hadn’t meant to even say it--but a picture of a massive man with a buzzcut appeared in his head. Wayne had been his strength coach in college. He remembered how much harder Wayne had pushed him in the weight room, and how much size and strength he put on in a short time because of it. When guys on the team started to catch on that Clyde and Wayne were spending a little too much time together, Wayne resigned from his job and Clyde quit the team.

Wayne had begged Clyde to move back to England with him. Clyde had told him he couldn’t leave his son behind, and that he needed to finish school so he could give his son a better life. Wayne got a job training at a gym and the two lived together until Clyde finished school. Every second not spent studying was spent in the gym with Wayne.

“The day I got my college degree,” Clyde said, recounting the memories as they flooded in, “Wayne said I could either move to England with him or lose him forever. But I couldn’t leave Ricky or separate him from his mom.”

Clyde blinked, then looked down--holy shit, he was HUGE! Every part of him was big and beefy. Without realizing it, he bounced his big pec muscles. They were so big he could barely see past them, but he reached down to a solid stomach underneath and patted massive quads that made it hard for him to put his legs together. His weight suddenly hit him--Clyde weighed just under 300 pounds; any more, and it was time to diet. He didn’t like getting winded going up and down stairs. He stared down at arms the size of most men’s legs, then reached back and clapped his hands on the massive mounds of gluteal muscle beneath him.

“Ricky said you taught him everything you know,” Trevor said across the table. “About training in the gym, and nutrition…”

Clyde chuckled. “And fucking,” he growled. “Good ol’ Ricky got the best ‘birds and the bees’ conversation in the world. First time I caught him jerking off to a muscle magazine, I sat him down and gave him a long talk.” He remembered what he told his son: “Wear a condom, get tested, and remember that no dick is more important than your self respect.” He also got his son a subscription to Muscular Development magazine: “You can jerk it to the pictures all you want, as long as you’re following the workouts in here too!”

When Ricky turned 18 and headed to college, Clyde decided to give his son even more pointers. “Stay off the damned apps,” he had told RIcky with a solemn glare and a beefy paw on his shoulder. “If you want to date, meet a man who’s willing to go out into public.” He did his best to share with Ricky his best pointers on sucking dick--and, when he found out which side of the bed Ricky preferred to be on, how to be a dominant power bottom.

“Ricky just had great genetics,” Clyde added. “The strongman stuff didn’t suit him. He was a beast of course, but he ran lean. Had the perfect build to be an amazing bodybuilder.”

Trevor grinned as Clyde finished sharing. Clyde, now a behemoth of a man, ran a beefy paw through his thick black hair, then smoothed his moustache with his thumb and finger. He shrugged huge shoulders and cricked his neck left and right. He felt like he were experiencing his first moments in his massive body--but he’d always been big, since high school.

Heavy footsteps meant Ricky was coming back in. Clyde’s big son always made the floor rattle whenever he moved around, even when he was trying to be quiet. “That’s what 270 pounds of muscle sounds like,” Clyde would say whenever Ricky was a little too loud coming home late at night.

Ricky sat down next to Trevor and took his boyfriend in his massive, rippling arms. Clyde felt pride swelling over what a wonderful son he had--not only a massive giant, rippling in vascular, so big he threatened to burst out of the seams of his XXL polo shirt, but a confident and honest young man who cared for his boyfriend.

Clyde had been so relieved when Ricky told him he was dating a dancer. “As long as he’s not some narcissistic bodybuilder twat,” Clyde had told him. “Or a 300 pound grizzly bear. No bed on earth would be able to handle you two!”

“Mom called, by the way,” Ricky said as he patted the phone in his pocket. “She says hi. She’s busy at work so she won’t be able to make Trevor’s performance tomorrow night.”

Clyde looked at the two young men, admiring their affection for each other. “Y’know, I could get out of work early and go check it out. I’d love to see Trevor working that ass up on stage!” He winked at his son’s boyfriend and gave Ricky a high five. Trevor blushed.

“Perks of owning your own business I guess, right Mr. Van Oss?” Trevor said.

Clyde closed his eyes as a few final changes fell into place. “Yeah, exactly. We’ve been slammed outright at the garage anyway. My guys could use a bonus night off too.” Clyde had worked as a mechanic all through college, he suddenly remembered, and after earning a degree in business he had decided to start a garage of his own. He suddenly recalled young Ricky tagging along to the garage. Little Ricky was only 8 when he changed a car’s oil by himself for the first time. He was giving cars tune-ups at age 10, and when he was 13 he restored his first full car all on his own.

“That’s awesome!” Ricky said. “Dad, are we still on for the gym today?”

“Big leg day,” Clyde said, patting his big quads. “Put all these pancake carbs to good use!”

Ricky flexed his big torso and hopped to his feet. “I’ll grab my stuff. Be right back.”

Trevor smiled as his enormous boyfriend left the room, then took a look at Clyde.

“So how do you like it?” Trevor said. “If you dislike any of it, I can make it all go away.”

Clyde looked around his house--it was huge, but bright and clean. He looked down at his huge body, adjusted his semi-hard dick in his sweatpants, and stretched his big, full muscles. He couldn’t wait to watch his son squat massive amounts of weight in the gym. Trevor always came along to video them. Clyde couldn’t get over how arousing it was to watch lanky, lean Trevor getting hard over the massively developed son he’d helped to grow into a true goliath. The way they kissed afterward, Ricky drenching Trevor in his testosterone-laden sweat, usually got Clyde boned up enough to make a trip to the gay bar to find some big stud looking to wrestle with a grease-monkey daddy bear.

“Thank you,” Clyde whispered. He reached a huge hand out and took Trevor’s in his. “Thank you so much. It’s like… I didn’t know how awful things were until they were gone.”

“Ricky deserved better,” Trevor said with a smile. Then he looked straight into Clyde’s eyes. “And so did you, to be honest.”

Clyde wiped the warm tears away, embarrassed to be crying like a little baby. He was a 300 pound man for chrissakes!