The Path Not Taken

The guys had settled themselves down in front of the fake fireplace.  Brian had waited till then to ask the kid a question so he wasted no time after they were in place.

“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been thinking about since you got home? “Brian began the discussion.  “Something’s bothering you.”

“What makes you think that I’m thinking about something?” Justin asked in return.

“I can tell when something is bothering you and you’re thinking about it,” Brian replied.  “It doesn’t happen all that often so it’s easy for me to spot.”

“Are you saying that I don’t think very often?” Justin acted surprised.

“Maybe I’m saying that and maybe I’m not,” Brian grinned at him, “But that is an argument for another time.  What I want to know now is what’s bothering you now, so that I can fix it.”

“You can fix just about anything, Bri,” Justin told him, “But this doesn’t need fixing.  It’s not really a problem but I have been thinking about it since this morning.”

“And now you’re going to tell me all about it, Baby,” Brian ordered him.  “Anything that makes you look like you’re thinking requires assistance from an older, more experienced person – and that person is available – and waiting.”

“OK,” Justin gave in.  “I went downtown with Malcolm this morning.  He needed to get some things.  I told you I was going with him.  Well, I ran into Billy Smith, a former classmate from St .James.  We were pretty good friends there – as much as I was friends with anyone besides Daphne.  He was in the Gay-Straight Alliance with us but he was straight.  Nice kid – and his dad was a friend of my dad.”

“And that started you to thinking about what?” Brian questioned.

“Billy went to Dartmouth, Brian,” Justin went on.  “He’s still there.  He’s finishing up his M.B.A. and he has a great job lined up with some big accounting company in New York.  He’s engaged to be married and said he’d like me to come to the wedding next year.  He’s going to send me an invitation.”

“I guess Billy’s dad was a businessman and wanted pretty bad for Billy to go to Dartmouth.  Right?” Brian surmised.

“Something like that,” Justin answered with a little hesitation.  “Actually, exactly like that, Bri.”

“And that reminded you that your dad wanted you to go to Dartmouth too, and if you had, you’d also be finishing your M.B.A., and probably also looking forward to a big job in the big city?” Brian proposed.  “And maybe to getting married too.  Business men need wives and 1.8 children.”

“I thought it was 2.2 children,” Justin proved he was listening.

“Nah,” Brian reiterated.  “I just saw it in the Wall Street Journal recently that the average number of children for people with M.B.A.s is down to 1.8.  I guess that makes it pretty hard on the second child – not being all there like that.”

“You read the Wall Street Journal, Bri,” Justin told him.  “You’re a businessman even if you don’t have an M.B.A.  Businessmen are not all bad.”

“So you’re having second thoughts about not going to Dartmouth?” Brian conjectured.

“That’s not it at all, Brian,” Justin told him.  “I didn’t want to go to Dartmouth and I didn’t want to be a businessman either.  I didn’t want to disappoint my dad but I wanted to be an artist.  I wanted to go to the Institute and I wanted to be with you, and I got to do both and I’m as happy as anybody can be.  It’s just that….’

“You always wonder about ‘the path not taken,'” Brian interrupted.  “I think there was a poem about that.  I read it back in high school.”

“Yeah,” Justin agreed.  “Me too.  I wish I could remember it now.  High school kids are too young to know about paths not taken.”

”We can look it up later,” Brian told him.  “Maybe we’ll both find it more interesting than when we read it in high school?”

“Do you ever think about any paths you didn’t take, Brian?” Justin wondered out loud.

“Like should I have run the other way that night when I saw a certain blond twink standing beneath a lamppost outside of Babylon?” Brian smiled at him.  “Maybe I do think about that sometimes, but I always decide I took the right path, Baby.  I never doubt that I took the right path.”

“Me too, Bri,” Justin said.  “I know I took the right path - not going to Dartmouth.  And I might have made the wrong choice except for some great advice from a great guy. I wonder if I ever thanked him enough.”

“You probably did,” Brian laughed.  “Justin Taylor is nothing if not thorough in whatever he does – thanking people, driving them crazy….”

“Do I ever drive you crazy, Mr. Kinney?” Justin grinned coyly.

“Yeah,” Brian admitted.  “Sometimes yeah – for a lot of reasons and in a lot of different ways.”

“Then I’m sure I took the right path,” Justin said.  “I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”

The silence that so often interrupted their conversations in front of the flickering flames descended on the loft at this point and the guys just sat there happily.

“Baby,” Brian broke the silence eventually.  “Did you really think that maybe you had done the wrong thing?”

“Gee whiz, Brian,” Justin recoiled.  “That thought never crossed my mind.  Not that way.  I do think, though, that maybe I wasn’t going to tell you about it because you might think that.  I didn’t think it, but I was afraid you’d think maybe I did.”

“Well the parallels are really there,” Brian told him.  “I can see why it had you doing some thinking.”

“It’s more parallel than you think, Bri,” Justin went on.  “Billy didn’t want to go to Dartmouth either.  He wanted to be a writer.  He wasn’t interested much in business and he still isn’t.  He still wants to be a writer.  That’s what he told me.”

“What did you say to him?” Brian asked.

“I told him that he should keep writing,” Justin explained.  “That a lot of great novels have been written by businessmen and he should keep at it, and that I’ll be looking for his name on the New York Times best-seller list sometime soon.  I think it cheered him up some.”

“You know what, Baby.  There’s another parallel there,” Brian said.  “Billy ran into a maybe not older, but still a more experienced person – who maybe set him on the right path.  Maybe it’s never too late to take the right path.”

“I hope not, Brian,” Justin responded.  “But I’m still glad I picked the right path the first time around.”

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