The Lop-Sided Man

THE LOP-SIDED MAN

JACOB ELLIOTT

Copyright © 2024 by Jacob Elliott

First Edition: May 2024

The right of Jacob Elliott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. All characters in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 979-8-9905910-0-4 (paperback)

ISBN: 979-8-9905910-1-1 (ebook)

Edited by Mark Becker

Cover art by Ed Wishewsky

For Mom and Dad, who did a much better job of raising me than the contents of this book may suggest.

CONTENTS

AUGUST

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

SEPTEMBER

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

OCTOBER

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

NOVEMBER

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

DECEMBER

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Acknowledgments

About the Author

AUGUST

1

The horror started, as most things of a certain nature do, in the dead of night. Nathan had just tucked his boy into bed and poured himself a strong glass of whiskey over ice. He stood above the kitchen sink and took a sip. He pursed his lips for a single second. The liquid burned going down and left behind a hollow feeling of being cleansed deep in his stomach. He took another sip, and his lips didn’t purse at all. He took a third, and the burning stopped. It used to take him a full drink to reach this point. Now, he was down to just three sips.

How’s that for progress, Landry…

Landry was Nathan’s therapist. He started seeing her as soon as his wife left him. Well—was she the one who left him? On paper, she was the one who filed for divorce, so he supposed she got to wear that badge. But it had been his fault in the end. Hard for a woman to stay with a man after he admits that he’s been gay through the eight years of their relationship—five of which involved marriage and a kid who, despite his interest pointing otherwise, was indeed biologically his. So, he supposed in a way, he left Hollie long before she was ever interested in leaving him.

He didn’t cheat on her or anything like that. He wouldn’t dare do something so dark-hearted, so gnarled and nasty. Hollie Smart was a kind woman who he had certifiably and undeniably fallen in love with. They met in college, as many young couples do, and started as friends in their Fairytales class, an elective designed to explore the reality behind the childlike tales and find the deeper meanings scattered throughout them. Nathan had always loved fairytales, and not in the Disney coded way where he wanted a prince and a princess to kiss and fall in love and right the wrongs in the world. He liked them for the secrets they kept. Little Red’s loss of innocence to the Big Bad Wolf. Rapunzel’s reality of daily assault while she slept, unable to fend off her attacker.

Nathan sat with Hollie as her own version of a romantic’s perfect fairytale came crashing down. Her first major breakup happened a year into their friendship, and he held her while she cried that night. He told her he loved what she was and what she saw when she looked at the world. Told her he envied her because he did. Her rosy gaze seemed preferable to the harsh lines and grey tones that painted his reality. And somewhere in all of that, she kissed him. In hindsight, he thought maybe he knew it even then—that he was gay—but he had never been with a man, or a girl for that matter, and the whole moment had felt so…right. Like one of those fairytale moments brought briefly to life.

So, they got together. Part rebound, part desperate plea for normalcy, though none of that mattered. They were together at twenty and they stayed that way as the years went by. And, all things considered, he was happy. He didn’t question whether it was right because, of course, being with Hollie Smart never felt wrong. It never felt wrong in bed as he slid inside her and had to contain the full body shivers she gave him every time. It never felt wrong as they kissed while they strode through campus hand in hand, laughing about whatever someone had said or someone else had done. It never felt wrong because it never was wrong.

Until suddenly, everything was.

Now, as he poured his drink and let it slowly take effect, Nathan credited the stopping to that stupid soap Hollie had been watching. She always had it on in the background as they cooked dinner or while Nathan worked. He was an aspiring writer with a bad habit of handwriting all his work, only to get frustrated and throw it in the fire or tear it in half whenever something didn’t work. I’ll keep it together when it’s right, he told Hollie one night when she threw a fit at his flame stoking creativity. If it’s wrong, it’s just wrong. Simple as that.

Well, that soap was on; an old show from the 70s or so. If there was a plot, Nathan could never pinpoint it. He hardly paid attention most of the time. At best, he glanced up when someone was screwing someone else or shouting in an aggressive manner. That night, he looked up as one of the main love interests was in the shower. Soapy suds dripped down his built chest and impressive torso. The camera panned lower and lower until suddenly cutting to black with the sound of shattering glass. Hollie gasped audibly. Nathan turned to her, then, when she turned his way, he quickly looked down at the chicken scratch covered paper across his lap. He felt her gaze on him even as he continued writing. Or pretended to write, rather. His mind was still on the show, and it would remain that way until the next morning when Hollie left for a weekend trip away with the girls.

That night, he thought again about the show; this time while water ran down his own torso and steam billowed up around his feet. It was customary that he take a longer shower whenever Hollie wasn’t around. It eased his mind, released the tension in his muscles. Tonight, it did something more. His hand traveled down his own pudgy stomach until he was gripping his own cock and, well—the rest came quite naturally. So naturally, in fact, that it took all but two minutes to finish and wash away any remains of the dirty deed. He stood under the shower head after that for some time. His mind was suddenly racing. That had been quicker than he ever remembered with Hollie. You savor it when it’s with someone, he thought. Because sure, sure you did. But he hadn’t been savoring it the last few times when neither of them had finished. He’d gone limp before they could. And while he had done what he could to help her get to the finish line, his heart just hadn’t been in it.

He turned off the water and let his body drip dry before reaching for the black towel hanging over the shower door. He opened the shower and stepped into the bathroom. The mirror was steamy, and his face was invisible behind the smog. How long had he been in there?

Two minutes, he thought. Just two minutes for⁠—

He threw the towel over his head and rubbed it frantically against his skull. His hair came up looking wild when he pulled the towel off but he didn’t care. He hardly saw himself in the slowly clearing glass.

He still saw that man from the soap opera. That man whose body was better than his and whose chest was full and arms were wide.

Nathan figured he was jealous of the man’s physique and swore to get back to the gym. He hadn’t been going since starting a new job the year prior, and it was starting to show. He’d always been slim, but lately his stomach jutted out a bit and his slender arms were a bit fuller without the definition a workout routine would provide.

Yeah, yeah I’m just jealous.

And maybe he was. But a month later, when Hollie wasn’t around, he did the same thing. This time it took longer than two minutes and his other hand wrapped around and grabbed his ass in a way Hollie never did. It felt quite nice, and he finished shortly after. He wondered briefly what else might feel nice against his ass.

Later that night, he brought the topic to Hollie. She could grab him there the next time they were…

Oh, I don’t know if I’m into all that, Nate, she said. Then, seeing the steely shock on his face, she said, But we can try it!

When they did, it didn’t feel the same as he thought, and he informed her shortly after that they didn’t need to try that one again. She was clearly thankful and never mentioned it after that night. Slowly, the two stopped making love. Nathan masturbated more frequently—sometimes even while Hollie was home, and usually while they could have instead been doing it together—and every time he was picturing things he shouldn't have been. He was married, and in love. What was he doing picturing a man on his knees before him in the shower, or a man standing behind him and pushing him against the tile? Always in the shower. Always against the sharp, cold tiles with a mountain of slippery soap sudsing up his body.

He did get back to the gym, though. He found it was one of the few things that took his mind off the inevitable. Pretty soon he was back to being toned, and—if Hollie was to be believed—his arms were looking pretty damn sexy lately… She made eyes at him the night she said it and he could tell she was in a mood. He was too, but not the kind of mood that involved her. It involved him, their shower, and an imagination full of scenarios he refused to let play out. But he decided that wasn’t practical. He couldn’t avoid fucking his wife for the rest of their lives. Especially because, at the end of the day, he liked it. She knew what she was doing; she knew his body and what felt good, and she knew how to at least act like he knew the same for her. So, he decided, tonight was the night. He would throw caution to the wind and fuck her like he had when they first got together. That was all he needed, really. Sometimes a good fucking could knock the sense right into you.

He drank his first whiskey over ice that night. With a tipsy mind and blurry vision, he took Hollie to their bed and made love to her. It felt good that night, better than it had in ages. They spent hours tossing each other back and forth. He pushed her head down toward his cock. She lowered his between her legs. He fingered her; she grabbed his ass without him having to ask, and eventually, after hours of foreplay, he entered her. He came almost instantly after that, and she did the same. They collapsed beside one another, out of breath and drenched in sweat, and decided a shower was in order.

When they got to the shower, he fucked her again. He took her in ways he’d only ever imagined, and with each raging thrust, he threw out the idea of whatever had overcome him the last few months. This was who he was, this was what he was meant to be doing, and no men on tv or at the gym could come between that.

He thought about those men as he pushed in for the final thrust.

Two weeks later, Hollie told him she was pregnant.

He didn’t really know what that would mean for him until Tyler was born. Other than helping more around the house and picking up more groceries than he was used to—Hollie was eating for two and she made sure that everyone around her knew it—his life stayed about the same. He drank more frequently, but never touched the whiskey bottle he’d opened the night Tyler was conceived. If it brought about kids, he was better off keeping that one on the tip-top shelf and forgetting about it for a while.

After Tyler was born, he realized how much more complicated everything had suddenly become.

In the nine months it took from the day Hollie missed her period to the day she was in the hospital bed, popping a baby boy out headfirst, Nathan’s urges hadn’t gone away. He kept them tepid by masturbating once a week. That was his rule to himself. Every Sunday night before the work week started again, he got in the shower and relieved himself. He didn’t think about Hollie or their unborn son or how his life was about to change. He thought about the guy who had been lifting a few stations over from him, or the new guy at work who had a particular sway in his hips as he walked down the aisle of cubicles in dress slacks that seemed to be a size or two too small. He imagined what it would be like to pull him into an empty conference room, talk to him about those pants, tell him he would need to remove them or risk getting fired and, well…take it from there. He looked forward to Sundays because Sundays felt like a treat after a long, hard week of…

A long hard week of what, exactly?

When Tyler was born, his Sunday nights vanished. Suddenly, there was a baby in the mix. A crying, snotty, red-faced baby who seemed to always be pouting or spitting up or needing something that he couldn’t quite explain to either of his parents. Always…except for when Nathan tucked him into bed. It was early on that Hollie and Nathan discovered that he was the secret to getting their perpetual crier to calm down at a reasonable hour and sleep through a majority of the night.

I don’t do anything special.

Doesn’t matter—whatever you’re doing, it works, so just… If he wasn’t mistaken, there was something almost crestfallen about the way Hollie spoke, keep doing it.

She walked away after that. Discussion over. And Nathan had a new nighttime routine. No more showers and imaginary hookups with men he shouldn’t be looking twice at. Now, he spent his Sundays staring down at a crib that looked like a crypt, with a wriggling baby staring up at him. The first time he did it, the boy's eyes had filled with a strange kind of wonder only present in the young. He tilted his head, and Tyler tilted his back. He tilted it the other way; Tyler followed. Nathan’s lips spread into a grin, and Tyler started to laugh. He squinted his eyes, and his rosy cheeks grew somehow rounder. Nathan let out a breath and reached into the crib. He cradled Tyler, and he started to tell him a fairytale.

He told him stories for the next nine months. In a way, it was his turn to carry the child he had a hand in creating. Hollie stayed home for those months, first on maternity leave, then she used her remaining PTO, and finally left her job at the local art museum to be a stay-at-home mother. Nathan made enough money for the both of them, so he was fine with it. Besides, when he got home from work, Hollie was always ready for a break, and he was always ready to pick Tyler up, place him on his bouncing knee, and talk to him. And oh, they talked about everything. Colors and shapes and fairytales and stories. And life. They talked about life, too. How sometimes it got hard to be truthful when you were staring back at yourself in the mirror.

Tyler was just ten months old when Nathan told him he thought he was gay. He said it like that too. I think…I mean…nobody can ever really be sure, right? You see, I love your mom. With all my heart, big fella, I swear it, I do. But sometimes I just…sometimes I just wonder… He carried on like that for God knows how long, sputtering and stumbling out sentences that didn’t connect or string together to form any kind of sentence with merit, until finally he bowed his head in the dim light of the single crib-side lamp in Tyler’s room and said, I think I’m gay, bud.

Tyler’s laughing went silent then, and Nathan felt his heartstrings go taut. It’s just a thought, he said, not sure why he was justifying himself to a newborn.

FWOOMP!

The door slammed shut. Nathan turned and Tyler shifted in his arms. The door to the nursery stood there, open moments before and now closed, like a barrier between Nathan and his boy, and the outside world.

And Hollie.

Hollie!

No, no, no, no⁠—

He stood up frantically and set Tyler back in his crib. He started to cry as soon as his rump touched the soft blanket.