"Of course I am. I would have given up long ago if I wasn't," he answered, chuckling. "You say 'go away'; I stick around. You say 'I don't want to talk'; I keep talking. It works great in the end."
Travis really had never spent so much time naked around a man, but watching TJ get naked was so natural by now. The touch wasn't though,even if it was very welcomed. TJ's hands felt very good, but it was the fact that TJ was trying to help, in the ways he knew how that made Travis smile as he turned toward TJ, resting his head on TJ's chest. And that was as uncommon as you could get, and not just with TJ, but in general.
"No, they only hate us," he answered. "They might hate your money or sexuality, but they had to love it, because your family matters. You had a place in society. A black abandoned kid in the seventies had no redeeming value, and when someone took you home, you were grateful, and you didn't care if you couldn't buy that new 45, or go to the movies, or even get food, because they wanted you and they had given you a home. How could I not love my foster families when so many others just turned away the moment they saw me? I know it's not the same now, we're in a post racial society. Black babies are the new trendy thing, but not when I was growing up, and the families willing to take me in were the ones who loves too much and had too many kids already and not enough of everything else." He looked at TJ. "I don't know, TJ. Your parents still sound better than no parents. As screwed up as they might be, can you imagine never knowing how soon these parents would be taken away from you? Not wanting to care, but doing it anyway and then being sent somewhere else. The money-" He shrugged. "They were never what I cared about."
He chuckled. "Incredible eyes, huh? Now you're becoming a little cliche. But as cliches go, they are the window to the soul and all that. I'd like to think that people can trust me to do the right thing."
Travis shook his head. "You don't have to say anything. You're here, you wanted to know something about me and I told you. I wouldn't be insulted if you said it, but I don't need to hear it. It's what it is. There were pros and cons. I'm not blind enough not to admit that I gained something from my childhood, like so many people I care about and I'll never have the type of family people have. The hard part is remembering that it shouldn't affect the rest of my life, but old defense mechanisms are not esay to break."