Wade Porter

**Wade Porter** is one of the main characters of *New Lease*. and a minor character in the novel *All Alone in a Sea of Romance*.

After his former lover, Gene Ventimiglia, passes away, Wade goes through a depression and contemplates suicide. He returns to the cottage where he and Gene first met in Pena Key in Florida. After a bout of drinking, Wade stumbles onto his neighbor's porch and meets Kent Walker. The two of them get to know each other and soon form a friendship. Wade discovers that Kent also lost his lover two years ago to pancreatic cancer.

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Wade has worked for Crumpton & Schwenk Women's Apparel since his twenties. At twenty-five, while living in Tallahassee, FL, he made a major sale to a large chain and outsold every other salesman in the southeast region. As a reward he was given a week's vacation on the island of Pena Key. It turns out that the vacation was during the off season and he is one of the only people staying in one of the island's beach side renter's cabins. It is there that he meets Gene Ventimiglia, a married man, who coincidentally is renting the cottage next door.

Gene introduces him to gay sex and they soon began an affair that lasted a little over twenty-five years. Wade hates the fact that he is Gene's "dirty little secret," but he fell totally in love with the man and did whatever he could to see him in the limited way Gene allowed.

Before Gene, the only experiences he'd had were with a girlfriend in the backseat of his car, and once, with his college roommate,Trevor Bloomgarden on the last drunken night before graduation. Wade had had a bit of a crush on Trevor, watching him out of the corner of his eyes whenever his roommate was wearing nothing but tightie-whites, which was quite often. It was while sharing a bottle of Tequila that Trevor initiated the sex, said he'd been aware that Wade had been watching him, but the next day Trevor was hostile and Wade never saw him again. But a quick exchange of blow jobs was enough for Wade to realize he was gay and would never be getting married to a woman.

Wade is estranged from his father, a man who constantly emotionally abused him, calling him a sissy and a milksop and stating that he had no "alpha wolf" in him. Is it any surprise that the man Wade falls in love with could be as emotionally abusive as his father was. For twenty years he only saw Gene a couple weeks a year, but then five years before his death he allowed Wade to move to Chicago, where he lived.

He doesn't even know that Gene has died until Gene's wife shows up at his apartment and tells him as well as saying that he is not welcome at the funeral. She refuses to give him anything to remember Gene by, not even a sweater that he gave Gene. She says that she burned it.

Kent Walker, who is younger than Wade at thirty-five, shows him a different way of thinking and living. Kent if very proud to be gay and helps Wade realize that Gene had made him feel almost as ashamed of who and what he was as his father had. Kent takes Wade to his first gay bar in Key West where he is amazed, frightened and excited to be in a room full of other gay men. Gene also did not allow him to associate with other gay men. Kent paints covers for gay romance books and helps Gene see that being gay is wonderful and beautiful, something he knew but is only able to understand with Kent's help. It also helps when Kent makes love to him.

By the end of the story they have become lovers and are to this day.

Wade loves to read. He considers Amy Tan's *The Kitchen God's Wife* as one of his favorite books. He also loves coffee, and is a bit of a "coffee snob." A personal favorite comes from New Guinea. He has a favorite coffee shop that he goes to that is run by two women and he comes to see they are lovers. Their relationship is part of what makes him begin to long to live as an out gay man.