The Family Man

He told me the travel clock next to his bed was passed down from father to son for three generations. It ticked mindlessly from one second to the next.

There was no pausing in the tick-tock that filled the motel room where we stood at the threshold of a hundred possible approaching moments, each only a question away.

Earlier, as we shared wine, he’d explained that the two photos inserted in the clock stand spanned four generations.

Now his daughter’s eyes gazed across us and made me feel my nakedness. She was pretty, but there were questions in her eyes that made me look away. I thought her mother must be beautiful.

The second photo was of his grandmother. I assumed her questions were long answered and wondered if her life had been good.

I thought, what a nice family man, and smiled at the irony. The loud ticking reminded me of the Road Runner cartoon reruns I watched as a child. I knelt and looked carefully at this man I’d known for a few hours. I thought of the roundness of that dark bomb in the cartoons exploding at the wrong times and giggled.

“What?” he said.

“Oh nothing,” I said, kissing his cock and gazing at the length of him, imagining where each tick of the clock might lead.

As I felt his warmth fill my mouth, I thought, No, All seconds are not the same. These ticking seconds signal the passing of a threshold. I imagined his wife and daughter at their kitchen table, unaware of what was being taken from them in these passing moments. Feeling the stretch of my lips around him, I felt the familiar ache of guilt at the sin that captured me again.

With the ticking clock in my ears and young eyes watching me, I thought of the scripture from childhood that said, “the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” I rationalized, Sure, but could something so inevitable be evil?

From the soft whimpers of my “family man," I knew he wasn’t thinking of anything at all right then. His ticking bomb was going off any second, so my bobbing head continued its well-practiced motion.

A few moments later, his pent-up lusts exploded hot across my face. I was surprised to hear the tick-tock of the clock over his low moans.

As he stood there looking down at me, I curled my fingers around him and stroked his cock lightly. The ticking grew louder in our stillness, and his eyes turned to rest on his daughter's face. I thought I saw the shining of tears in his eyes.