Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  “I worked on it at night in the motel when everybody else was asleep. I got one look at the Sangre de Cristos, Will, and just knew I could represent them. And your body, I’ve got down in my mind’s eye like a photograph.”

  “Well, I’m framing that,” I said, “and it’s going right here in our room, for anyone who comes in here to see.”

  Ten

  Dick and Casey—Finally

  We returned to school on Friday, and as soon as Lance and I parted, Casey and Dick found me and dragged me off behind the football stadium, both of them looking pleased with themselves, though Casey’s face was still a mess of blue bruises and healing cuts. I didn’t even want to think how his back must look full of scabbed-over slashes from the razor strap.

  The weather had turned a little colder and I was wearing a shirt over my T shirt, a Levi jacket, and a denim cap, with John Deere sewn in green above the bill. Dick was wearing a blue FFA corduroy jacket with the collar turned up, and Casey was wearing his windbreaker and beneath that a sweat shirt. A wind was whistling through the chain link fence, but we were all used to the cold and the wind.

  “Where’s Lance?” Dick asked, still looking pleased with himself.

  I told him about the trip to northern New Mexico and how Lance was hot to be with the Barker twins and Mr. Drummond. “They’ve got lots of stuff they want to share with the others and lots of ideas they want to try.” Which is about all I really understood about Lance’s art, other than that he was great at it.

  I saw something in Dick’s face that I’d never seen before. He sure wasn’t good looking, but when he looked pleased or was smiling like he was now, he was a whole lot better looking. I figured the ugliness came from his being unhappy, which his thin lips and rather sharp eyes didn’t help.

  “I kind’a wish he was here, though,” Dick said. The three of us were facing each other. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. Off toward the school, I could hear the buzz of the other students who were still outdoors laughing and talking. But we were far enough away that you couldn’t hear what they were saying, or really see them because of the bleachers in the stadium.

  “I do, too,” Casey said, looking at me, then smiling at Dick.

  I figured that with both of them looking pleased and wishing Lance was with us, Casey’s confession to Dick had gone well, but when they suddenly turned and kissed each other on the mouth, I just about burst out laughing, before I realized what they were doing—and why. It was a quick kind of kiss, though, and a moment later they were both looking at me, Casey with his eyebrows raised, and Dick with a grin on his face so big it looked like the crescent moon. I couldn’t help but notice a tent in Dick’s Levi’s.

  “That was for you,” Dick said, kind of laughing, then looking embarrassed.

  I still felt like laughing but knew I better not. “For me? You’re trying to tell me something, guys?” I was sure I had already guessed, but I wanted to play dumb.

  “Aw, geez, Dick Tracy, what gave you your first clue?” Casey said. He threw his arm around Dick’s shoulders and reached over as bold as you please and cupped Dick’s crotch.

  “You told him, didn’t you?” I asked Casey.

  “Everything,” Dick said. “About you and Lance, ‘bout Casey being his brothers’ little plaything, which makes me mad enough to spit!”

  It was like walking into an episode of The Twilight Zone for a minute, until everything sank in. Not only had Dick obviously not freaked out, like I was afraid he would, but he and Casey had already carried it to the next step.

  “And have you guys…?” I raised my eyebrows and looked at them.

  Casey was grinning, looking pitiful because of the bruises and happy at the same time. “Just about every place we could think of,” he said.

  “Oh, man!” Dick added. “Don’t know if you know or not, Will, but I never got any, like I was always saying.”

  I knew he meant sex with girls, though I never believed him to begin with, because he had always seemed so interested in me and then Lance, even if he tried to cover over it by being hateful to us.

  “And are you guys, like, boyfriends, now?”

  They both just laughed. They both looked embarrassed. They glanced at each other, then back at me.

  “I guess so,” Dick said, “if you gotta call it that. Yeah.” Then he looked at Casey as if for approval. “Maybe so.”

  Casey smiled a little more wisely at me and nodded. “Sure we are.”

  They had a long way to go, I figured, before they’d be feeling as easy with it as me and Lance.

  When the bell rang, all three of us jumped, though we still had about fifteen minutes. I didn’t know what else to say, so I stuck out my hand and shook theirs, finding my tongue stuck and unable to congratulate them, though I thought I should say something. “That’s cool, guys. You wanna tell Lance yourselves?”

  “I do,” Dick said. “I owe him a big apology, don’t you think? Now that…I…now that we’re kind of brothers, or whatever you call it.”

  * * *

  Brothers. I think I like that. Gay brothers. I think I’ll remember it. I’ve just written down my impressions from yesterday morning when Dick and Casey talked to me out back of the school. I can’t help but think how different it would have been if the four of us had been friends and “out” to each other longer. We were the only ones I knew of—gay, that is. Though now that Dick’s been initiated, if you want to call it that, and he and Casey are exploring each other, I’m thinking it’s more like what Lance said about the other men he did it with back in New Orleans. I’ll get to that in a minute, though. I want to write down about last night.

  It was our last football game of the season and my last game forever. We played Cobre, a town from up near Silver City. We waxed them on our home field, and then everybody went to the homecoming dance, except for me and Lance and Casey and Dick. Dick had his mother’s Chevy and seemed really hot for the four of us to take off by ourselves. I kind of wish Lance and I hadn’t gone because of what happened; in another way, though, most of it was kind of neat—that gay brothers thing.

  So Dick and Casey sat in the front and Lance and I sat in the back. Dick called it a double date, though he sounded embarrassed and kept laughing kind of nervously. It’s true, though. We didn’t have our own ideas about what you would call it, except calling it a date. So that’s what it was, and I guess it embarrassed Dick because of that.

  The first mistake we made was drinking beer. Like I’ve said, before, Daddy didn’t believe in drinking and I never touch the stuff. Even back before Lance, when I was hanging out with Dick and a few of the guys from the football team, and we would run around in Animas and Cotton City, someone would always get beer and, after I’d tasted it a couple of times, I was through with it. I never could get past a few sips. But last night, as soon as Lance and I got in the back seat, Dick announced he had some beer and wanted us to go somewhere and drink it. Then he took off out of the school parking lot and we headed out of Animas, straight south down Highway 338. It was dark out, but you could see the Animas Mountains close to the highway on the east and the Peloncillo Mountains a little farther off to the west—big, hulking masses on either side of the highway.

  Pretty soon, Casey started messing with the six pack of beer, and I heard the can opener sink into the top with a sploosh! Sploosh!, then he handed it foaming back to me. At least it was cold, so I figured I could gag it down. Then he opened another can and he handed it over the seat to Lance. We were already sitting close together behind the driver’s side. I had my right arm around him, and we glanced at each other when we had our beers.

  “You ever drink beer?” I asked him, quietly, and I could see him nod, though his head was kind of just a silhouette, but his beer can glinted in what little light there was, and even the foam oozing out of the top of our cans was lit like spider webs in moonlight.

  I started in drinking mine fast, because I hated the taste, and I just wanted to get it over with. As it
was, I only got about a quarter of it down, before I decided I’d sip on the rest. Something about Lance I didn’t know was he could handle it pretty well. Though, like me, he took a couple of chugs and then sipped it. But up in front, Casey and Dick drank like their fathers must do at the bars on a Saturday night. They were through with their first beers in no time and just started in on the second ones.

  So far, we hadn’t done much talking. Casey wasn’t sitting too close to Dick, though he had his left arm over the seat back and was kind of playing his fingers through Dick’s hair. He was kind of turned in the seat, too, and I could tell he was looking back at us.

  You can go almost any direction out of Animas and, in a little while, be isolated, especially as late at night as it was, so when Dick came to a dirt road heading off toward the west, he turned off and drove about a mile then pulled to a stop. As soon as the engine died and he killed the lights, the silence of the desert, and the dark light of the sky, the silhouette of the mountains—all just grabbed my attention. It never fails to inspire my own silence, the way this country dominates and dwarfs you.

  And I guess it inspired the same quiet in everybody, because nobody spoke for a while. All you could hear was us taking drinks in the dark.

  Then Dick half turned in the seat and his profile was lit by the night, a shiny cheek, the glint of his eye. He was looking at Lance, and I saw him grin, because his teeth showed ever so slightly. “I never meant for you to get hurt,” he said.

  Lance and I both knew what Dick was talking about.

  “Well, I didn’t get hurt,” Lance said. He squeezed my leg. “So it’s all right.” The way he said it, the last word was strong with his southern drawl, and in the dark, in the car, his deep, oily voice sent a little shiver up my back.

  “He could’a been, though,” I said and took a sip of beer. It also made me shiver, it tasted so nasty.

  Dick was still leaning over the seat, his beer can glinting light. He took a gulp, burped, and stuck out his hand. “Shake though?” he said to Lance. “I swear, little buddy, all of us were assholes, and I was the worst. Only game we lost was that night, and Will’s right, I was stupid.” Dick’s speech was kind of slurred, with a drunk accent.

  His hand lingered over the seat, and Lance finally shook it. “It’s all right,” Lance said, again.

  I didn’t know what was going through Lance’s mind, though he seemed a little hesitant to friendly up to Dick. But it was a better apology than Casey had offered that Monday morning after the incident.

  “We’re buddies, though, right?” Dick said. By now, Casey had turned in the seat and was looking back at us, too. For some reason, the whole thing seemed kind of awkward. The four of us in the middle of nowhere.

  The night was chilly, so our windows were up, and the smell of the beer permeated the air, and with both Dick and Casey leaning over the seat and talking to us, their beer breath smelled strong. I decided to get mine over with and chugged it. When I came up for air, I felt a little light headed and a little sick to my stomach, as a bubble of air worked its way up my windpipe.

  When I did belch, everybody laughed, which kind of broke the awkwardness. Lance chugged his, too, and when Dick and Casey chugged theirs, I thought we were through with the beer, but I heard the sound of another can being opened and kind of sighed to myself, realizing they had more than a six pack.

  So we sat there and finished off the second six pack, making two for me and two for Lance, and four apiece for Dick and Casey. Conversation came easily, if not too clearly as Dick went on about how he’d always felt something for guys, and how he knew it was wrong, and it made him sick, and when he first thought I was queer (his word), it scared him, but he just couldn’t get it out of his head.

  “I gotta tell you, Will,” he said, his speech slurred more than ever, and a kind of sob escaping from him, “I jacked off to you ever since we were freshmen, and you never gave me the ti…time of, hic, day.”

  I didn’t say anything, except belch.

  “And then when you got Lance at your house, I seen how…” he trailed off, rubbing his face.

  Suddenly, he kind of plowed into Casey, wrapping his arms around him and kissing him. From the way they looked, two half-lit silhouettes in the dark, with the light of the night sky back lighting them—obviously both guys—it kind of turned me on. It was neat. An image I’d never seen, since I never saw Lance and me kiss. It brought home exactly what the four of us were, and why we had to drive all the way out here to be together.

  So I turned and pulled Lance to me just then, feeling a little hot, and he came at me with the same urgency, and there for a few minutes, as we were kissing and getting each other’s faces wet, and Casey and Dick were doing the same thing, all I could hear was the sound of us four guys going at each other. It was just like guys and girls did when they went parking, I supposed—something I’d never done. Something that, until now, I never realized I’d missed. Same for Dick and Casey, I guess.

  Then Dick let out a whoop, and I could hear the joy in his voice. Oddly, his expression of that joy through his hollering meant something to me, as if he’d spoken words, about the loneliness that all four of us must have felt all our lives. It also said we didn’t have to feel lonely, anymore.

  Lance and I came up for air. I had a stiff-on, and so did he. We were holding the bulges in the other’s pants. Then Dick and Casey came up for air, and they hung over the seat, again, kind of laughing, running their hands over each other’s shoulders.

  “You guys doing all right?” Dick asked.

  I kind of wished he would pay more attention to Casey and not me and Lance. I was hurting I was so stiff, and this was the first time that Lance and I couldn’t make love—not in front of them. So I had to endure the pain of wanting him.

  “I need to take a leak,” Casey said, and as he was opening his door, I noticed that the windows were all steamed up from the heat we had been generating there in the car. Just that fact of how physical we had all been spoke to me as well.

  A moment later, all of us stepped out. Lance followed me out on my side and together we moved a little ways off and turned our backs on Casey and Dick. We’d never just peed together, either, but we whipped out our little buddies standing side by side, and I was feeling a little woozy, so I put my arm around Lance for support, and he did the same; then we both let go at the same time, sending arcs of beer water shining in the starlight onto the ground. When I was finished, with my arm still around Lance, I looked up.

  It never failed to thrill me at the heavens out here in the desert so far from any real lights. The sky was rivers of stars, from horizon to horizon, so densely full, only gaps of blackness showed through like clear patches of sky on a cloudy day. It was light enough that I could see the clumps of grease wood and mesquite on the valley floor around us, and make out large boulders sitting on the sides of the Animas Mountains to the east. In the west, the Peloncillos were darker, more massive, and less distinct. But it was light enough by the starlight alone that I could see back down the dirt road.

  Then Lance turned me to him and pulled me down to meet his lips, as he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the mouth, whispering, “I love you so much, Will, it hurts! Do you know that?”

  “Me too, baby. I want us to make love, but—”

  “Not here,” he finished for me. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “It wouldn’t,” I agreed.

  So when we went back to the car, I was surprised to see that Casey and Dick were now making out leaning up against the hood of the car. Casey’s naked butt was shining in the light, and I saw that Dick had his pants down around his ankles and they were kind of masturbating each other.

  I took Lance’s hand and pulled him down the road a little ways. I couldn’t stand it any more, so even though it was cold, we moved off into a stand of boulders. In a few moments, we were both naked and did our sixty-nine thing out of sight of Dick and Casey.

  Just as we were about to finish, I
looked up. I saw that Casey and Dick had followed us and, apparently, had been watching. That’s when I wished we hadn’t come, because it made me feel like this was wrong, being watched, and I didn’t like it, so I pulled Lance up, and when he noticed them, he scrambled into his clothes.

  Dressed, we didn’t say anything, but went back to the car. Dick and Casey followed.

  “Man, that was hot!” Dick said, as they came up to us.

  “It wasn’t for you!” I snapped.

  “But why not?” he asked, his voice still slurred. “We’re all queer, here!”

  I didn’t know what to say. Lance had gone kind of silent, but he squeezed my hand. “It’s all right, Angel,” he said. Then to Dick: “It’s okay, man.”

  “My brothers used to watch each other do me,” Casey said, quietly. “It’s just the way they did it. One of them would get the idea it was time for a little fun with baby brother—”

  “Don’t, man!” Dick said. “That makes it sound sick. I don’t like that!”

  So then we all got silent, each feeling a kind of shame, I guess, though mine was not so much shame as it was an embarrassed anger.

  What I meant about Dick and Casey being more like the guys back in New Orleans is that there wasn’t the love between Lance and those guys he went with on the streets. He hustled them for a place to stay and for food. But between Lance and me it was love. I’m not so sure if it’s that between Casey and Dick, though, because last night, they both seemed to be in it for the sex. Why else would they enjoy watching me and Lance and not just make love together as Lance and I did?

  When we were all back in the car, each of us probably having finished, I guess, in our own way, there didn’t seem to be much interest in staying out there. Without asking, Dick started the engine, made a three-point turn, and headed back down the road.

  When we pulled into the school parking lot, I was surprised that the homecoming dance was apparently still going on. Here and there in the parking lot, groups of guys and girls were screaming and laughing and having a good time. It was the first time, ever, since Lance and I have been together, that I felt the enormity of the difference between being gay and not being gay. What Lance and I have, and what Dick and Casey want, has to be hidden and furtive, while here at the school, the guy-girl dates can be done openly, even if some of them are just in it for the sex, too.