Time Warp: Boat Club

[Joshua Bernstein]

June 1979

---

Josh had been brimming with excitement the moment Sean had asked.

"Wow! Sailing?" He had breathed. He had never once considered sailing as a potential hobby, but now that Sean enjoyed it he of course wanted to share in that experience. "Yes! I would love to!"

And so, on a warm day not long after moving into their apartment, they had made their way to Long Island. The younger of the couple stared at everything with wide eyes, drinking in the area Sean had grown up in.

Josh expected their outing to include lots of sun, and so he had worn a short sleeved polo shirt and khaki shorts, and slung over one shoulder a beach bag stocked with such essentials as a book to read (just in case he needed it, although he read so much less in college than he had when he was younger), and sun screen, and bottles of water.

As they strolled up to the marina he craned his neck to admire all the boats, tipping his sunglasses up his nose for a better look. "Which boat is yours?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean’s father took him sailing in the summers. He took Kathleen sailing, although his sister had never enjoyed it in quite the same way that the telepath had; their father attributed it to differences in their personalities and left it at that. Sean still enjoyed sailing; he loved being out on the water, and he liked to share that experience with his friends.

More than that, he wanted to share that experience with Josh, because he wanted to share all experiences with Josh. The telepath had called his father earlier in the week to make the arrangements, since his father would rent boats for them to sail in the summer, and Sean wanted one with which he was familiar since he and Josh would be out on the water alone.

He’d driven them in the van out to Long Island, which would give them the ability to avoid public transportation back to the Village, even if they might hit a bit of traffic on the way home. He’d worry about that later, since he wanted nothing more than to be out on the water with his boyfriend.

They’d packed a picnic basket, a cooler with beer and non-alcoholic beverages, and a radio. Sean had the cooler in one hand and the radio in the other as he perused the marina. Eventually, he came upon the one that his father had rented and he gestured towards it, swinging the radio out with his hand. “That blue and white one over there.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh surveyed the boat approvingly despite the fact that he knew nothing about boats. "It looks great!" He enthused, raising himself up on tiptoes to look over another couple who had stopped in front of them to look at a map.

"How do we get on? Do we jump? Where are the life jackets? We do wear life jackets, right?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean found Josh’s behavior endearing. His enthusiasm coupled with his inoffensive posturing, as though he was trying to impress the telepath. He felt confident that Josh would outgrow this sooner or later, and so he paid it no mind.

“I’m going to climb up first and then help you aboard,” Sean told his boyfriend. That would be easiest, since he had the experience having boarded sailboats before, he was stronger than Josh was, and Josh was far lighter than he was. To that end, he set down the cooler and the radio. “Pass those to me once I’m up there,” he instructed the younger man. With that, he climbed aboard the boat and stead himself.

He reached over the side to take the cooler and the radio and the picnic basket, so that nothing was left behind on the dock.

Sean then extended a hand and reached for Josh’s. Once he had a secure grip on his boyfriend, he hefted the younger boy up, so that Josh could join him on the deck of the boat.

“The life jackets are over there,” he gestured at a storage compartment near the helm. Stored there so nobody would have an excuse not to find them. Even though Sean was a strong swimmer, and even though he had confirmed with Josh that the other boy knew how to swim, it was his boyfriend’s first sailing trip, and he felt better having life jackets when out on the water.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh darted towards the storage compartment, lifting up the lid eagerly. There were several bright orange life jackets within, and he pulled one out and surveyed it with interest. It looked rather like a vest, which he approved of. Vests had been trendy throughout the last decade, and he rather liked them.

He slipped his arms through the arm-holes, but when he clipped the belts together he discovered that they were too loose.

He frowned, and unclasped them. The belts looked adjustable, but he had never been very good at belt adjustment mechanisms; he had replaced a backpack once when a strap came undone, because he couldn't figure out how to put it back through its loops.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In addition to telling himself that Josh would outgrow the way he was so easily impressed with everything Sean did, and that he would outgrow the way that he followed the telepath around like a puppy, Sean told himself that his boyfriend would pick up some additional life and adult skills so that the knowledge gap between them would disappear.

Not today, however, since his boyfriend appeared incapable of adjusting the straps on his life vest.

Baby steps.

He intended to teach Josh self-sufficiency, so that his boyfriend could sail on his own someday, the same way that the telepath had learned from his own father.

After Sean had moved the cooler, radio, and picnic basket out of the way, he crossed over to where Josh stood. “Come here,” he directed his boyfriend, before reaching out to adjust the straps on the younger boy’s vest. With a firm yank after nimble rethreading, he made the vest snugger. “How does that feel?”

He then pulled a vest from the storage compartment for himself, donning it quickly and with the ease of familiarity. It took no time at all for him to ready himself. “Say goodbye to the marina,” he told his boyfriend with a smile.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Oh! That's perfect!" Josh exclaimed in amazement. That anyone could figure out confusing belt mechanisms was impressive.

"Goodbye, Marina!" He called out, waving to the other boats. "Is there an anchor somewhere we lift up? Are you going to steer? Should I call you Captain Neville?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Baby steps.

“I’ll unweigh us and then we can get going,” Sean told his boyfriend. With that, he untied them from the marina and moved to the steering wheel. He was used to sailing with another person, usually his father, sometimes his father and his sister, occasionally Greg. However, he had gone sailing alone before, and he was comfortable with doing all of the work himself, so that he was capable of doing it himself.

He firmly believed in community support, but there were certain areas of life where he valued self-sufficiency. That was why he could do his own laundry including ironing, why he could knit and do minor sewing, why he could do minor repairs with tools and knew how to change the tires on his car, why he could cook and bake and mix drinks, and all manner of other life skills that he had accumulated from the Boy Scouts, from Home Economics, from his parents, from Robert and Beth Hopkins, and from other sources.

Once they were free, he began to steer them away from the dock, so that they could get out on the open water.

“And what should I call you if you call me ‘Captain Neville?’” His question was half-serious and half-an invitation for further banter and flirtation.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh leaned against the railing, watching the dock shrink as they floated out into the open water. A warm breeze caused the sails of the boats in the distance to flutter and the clouds above them to scoot past in a hurry.

He smiled widely, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of air rushing about his face for a moment before twisting about to look at Sean.

The gentle undulation of the water was enough that he wobbled unsteadily as he made his way towards his boyfriend.

"If you're the Captain wouldn't that make me the first mate?" He asked, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose. "Or should I be....the navigator!"

He was self-aware enough to know that his sense of direction was atrocious, and so that suggestion was accompanied by a laugh.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean appreciated self-deprecating humor more than the average person, if the jokes he told served as any indication. He didn’t like cruel humor, and so he didn’t make jokes at other people’s expense, unless it was gentle humor that came from great familiarity and a place of affection. He also appreciated that Josh was capable of self-deprecating humor, both because it created yet another shared trait of theirs, and because it prevented him from awkwardly having to reassure his boyfriend that his sense of direction wasn’t that bad, when, in fact, it was.

He smiled at the younger boy while he continued to steer them out into open water, away from the other boats that had left the dock before them. “I like First Mate, personally,” he replied after a moment’s consideration. “It makes us a team.”

Sean considered them a team. That was one of the aspects of dating, and now living together – although that remained so new that everything seemed fresh each time they did it – that he enjoyed most. Going from being two friends to being two people who worked as two halves of one whole.

Occasionally, their other friends teased him about this, telling him that he belonged to a bygone era of Romanticism. But, even with the stigma that he and Josh faced, even with how they had to hide, they stilled lived in the most tolerant era regarding homosexuality in any form of modern memory, and so he was glad to be here rather than in some distant, more romantic past.

[Joshua Bernstein]

As Sean steered Josh stared, admiring his boyfriend's arms for a moment before asking, "Any orders for your First Mate, Captain?"

He didn't really know what was expected now that they were out on the open waters, but he wanted to be helpful. When he had lived with his parents he had never felt much uncertainty about what he was doing, but since leaving for college he had found himself frequently out of his depth.

But he still wanted to be helpful. To be useful.

He didn't want to be a dead weight.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean could feel the other boy’s gaze on his body, and so he took the only practical course of action, he lifted one hand from the wheel to roll up one sleeve, and then the other, to provide his boyfriend with a better view. Such as it was. The telepath knew that his body wasn’t the most impressive in the world, but what mattered was that Josh enjoyed his appearance, just as Sean enjoyed the other boy’s. He was smitten.

They were both smitten.

Through that lens, his boyfriend’s question had other connotations, but the telepath knew what he meant. More was the pity.

Sean knew that the younger boy wanted to be helpful. He knew that his boyfriend often felt a little at sea – no pun intended – surrounded as he was by a series of new surroundings (college, living in a new apartment with no adult supervision, sailing on the open water) with a social circle older than he was (and while three years wasn’t much in the scheme of things, three years mattered in terms of life experience when one was a rising sophomore, and his boyfriend and the rest of his friends had all recently graduated from college). The telepath could do something to boost his sense of utility.

“Keep an eye out for other boats. When we get to a place to weigh anchor, I can show you how to work the sails.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Josh threw a sloppy salute, but failed to move from his spot, instaed preferring to stare at the other young man's arms. After a moment he shook himself free of his reverie and ran over to one side of the boat. He wasn't sure what the name of the side was, but he was sure it had a name; boats seemed to have all sorts of special terminology. Unfortunately he wasn't even good with directions on land, let alone on a boat.

He shielded his eyes as he peered out into the water, a useless gesture given that he already had on sunglasses. "I think I see something." He squinted and leaned further over the edge of the boat, straining to make out the dark shapes breaking the water. "I think it's....it's a fin!"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

While Sean enjoyed certain types of public displays of affection – kissing, hugging, holding hands, arms around waists or shoulders – he wasn’t an exhibitionist. With past girlfriends, he’d had no desire to engage in public sex, and that hadn’t changed with Josh; it had nothing to do with the fact that if he and Josh were to engage in any public display of affection, kissing or otherwise, then they ran the risk of exposing themselves to discrimination or violence.

That didn’t mean that he minded when Josh looked. Outside of their new apartment, this was the closest to privacy that they would get, being alone on a boat together on the open water. He liked it when Josh looked.

He smiled to himself at the other boy’s enthusiasm. Josh’s enthusiasm was one of the many things that Sean loved about the rising sophomore.

However, he, too, blinked out of his reverie at Josh’s declaration. “A fin?”

A fin big enough for Josh to see from the edge f the boat meant that they were either very close or it was a large fin. “Where?”

If it was that close, then Sean needed to know its location so that he could steer around it. He didn’t want to risk a collision.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"It's over..." Josh began, then frowned. "Oh, it's not anymore. Maybe I imagined it."

Pods of dolphins leaping out of the water to join them would be romantic, and so he hoped that he hadn't been imagining, and that the fin was a dolphin and not something more akin to Jaws. But he wasn't any better at Marine Biology than he was at general Biology, and so he really wouldn't be able to tell what fin should be attached to what animal.

"Do you think we'll see any dolphins?" He sighed wistfully as he rested both arms against the railing.