“Despite evidence to the contrary?” asked Spencer.
“Definitely,” Justin replied. “I’ve never done something like that before.” Justin looked into Spencer’s eyes, apparently trying to gauge whether Spencer believed him or not. While Spencer’s rational mind would have set up arguments disproving Justin’s claim, Spencer’s heart told him the revelation was accurate. As if sensing this, Justin let the matter drop without further comment.
“Will Alex get mad at you for spending this time with me?”
Spencer thought about it. While Alex never once gave a second thought to abandoning him at the club, he knew Alex wouldn’t be amused to find himself abandoned. “He’ll be pissed,” he finally said.
“Should we go find him?”
“No,” replied Spencer, more quickly than he intended. “Turn about is fair play. Besides, isn’t he busy making out with your friend?”
“True,” Justin said. “For all we know, they might’ve already abandoned us in favor of a more intimate location.”
Spencer knitted his eyebrows. “Why do we always get abandoned?”
Justin grinned and stood up from the table. He pulled Spencer back toward the doors they’d previously exited. On the other side, he saw the sea of dancers still swaying to the music.
“Back to the dance floor?” Spencer asked.
“No,” Justin replied. “How do you feel about abandoning Xavier and Alex in favor of a more intimate location?”
Before his rational mind had time to react, Spencer replied, “Let’s do it.”
Justin pulled Spencer through the doors and led him through the crowd. This time the beating of his heart overpowered the bass beat emanating from the speakers. He was anxious, but not out of fear or vulnerability. No, the armor had already been cast aside.
For the first time in years, he was anxious about the possibilities and never once thought about the consequences.
CHAPTER 5
2010
DUTCH KELLER drifted upon a dark ocean, the waves carrying him farther and farther from the shore. Craning his neck right and left, careful not to upset his tentative buoyancy, he searched for signs of life or land. Only darkness reached out in all directions. Inky waves of water lapped mercilessly against him; the sky, at least he thought it was the sky, seemed to have been thrust into an endless night absent of even the moon or the stars.
Ursa Major and her little sister appeared to have vacated the premises above, taking with them all their friends—Sagittarius, Orion, Perseus, and even his favorite, Pegasus.
When he was younger and still childishly afraid of the dark, his father had told him to look to the heavens, and there he would find a friend to stay with him all through the night. According to his father, the constellations were guardians of little children, and all a child had to do was pick one. Once chosen, that constellation would forever look over the child, long after the child had drifted asleep.
“Do you have a guardian, Poppa?” he asked, quite certain that his big, strong father needed no protection. After all, his father was over six feet tall, with muscles to rival Superman. What could he possibly need protection from?
“Yes, little man, I do.” In response, Dutch gasped. He’d had no idea that daddies needed protection too! Was the world so scary a place that even grown-ups like his dad needed someone to watch out for them? If it was, then Dutch never wanted to leave his parents, not for anything!
His father rose from his bed and walked over to the window with the drawn curtains. Crawling out of bed and joining his father at his side, Dutch looked out his bedroom window into the heavens above.
For a few minutes, they stared skyward in silence. Dutch didn’t care. He loved spending whatever time he could with his father. Whether they were throwing around a football, completing household chores assigned to them by Momma, or just sitting quietly next to each other, he inhaled every moment, gobbling it up as if it were his last breath of air.
They could sit there all night, and he would have been perfectly happy.
At last, his father pointed southward, toward the horizon. The only reason he knew they were looking south was because his father spoke of places around town in compass directions as they related to where they lived. His school was to the west of his house, and their church and the grocery store were to the north. The awful dentist, whom he hated, could be found by going east, as well as the places where his mom and dad worked. To the south of their house was his favorite place—the ocean.
“You see that group of stars just above the southern horizon?”
“There’s a lot of stars that way. Is your guardian all those stars?”
His father laughed. Normally, whenever anyone laughed at something he said, he thought they were making fun of him. That was what happened when he’d said eight divided by four was three in class yesterday and stupid Nancy Rosenberg had laughed so hard she fell out of her seat.
With his dad, though, he never thought he was being mocked, not even if he might have deserved it. No, his father laughed only when his son actually said something he found funny.
“No, silly boy,” his father said, his chuckle causing his eyes to water. He ran his fingers through his son’s hair, making it a tangled mess. “Not even your old man needs that much protection.”
“Then which one is yours?”
“You see that star almost touching the horizon? The one right above Bobby Hill’s house?”
Dutch squinted. He found it difficult to focus on one star out of so many in the sky. It was like trying to spot one blinking firefly amidst a swarm. The lights from the neighborhood made the task even more difficult, but at last he found it. “The one twinkling just to the left of their chimney?”
“That’s the one,” his father said, placing his hand on Dutch’s shoulder. “Now follow that star up and you’ll see another one right above it. That star forms a diamond with three others on the left.” He looked down at his son, who was peering through squinty eyes.
“I see it!” he exclaimed joyfully. He wondered why he had never seen it before. Sometimes late at night, before his parents called him in for bath time, he looked up into the stars, searching for familiar patterns. He’d located spoons, arrows, circles, and squares, but he’d never before seen that diamond. Now that he did, he thought it was the most precious sight in the sky.
“Across from that diamond, to the right and going up a bit, is another star. It connects to two other stars that sort of make a tail.” Dutch followed his father’s pointing finger, connecting the dots in the night sky.
“Wow,” was all he could say. “Is that your guardian?”
“Yes,” replied his father. “It’s called Phoenix.”
“Felix is a stupid name,” he told his father. He had no idea why anyone in their right mind would name such a beautiful cluster of stars “Felix.”
“Not Felix.” His father again chuckled. “Phoenix. P-H-O-E-N-I-X. Phoenix.”
“Oh, Phoenix,” Dutch repeated, turning over the weird-sounding word in his mouth. “That’s a better name but the spelling is awful!”
A broad smile stretched across his father’s lips. “Do you know what a phoenix is?”
Dutch shook his head, still gazing at the special stars that protected his dad. He wondered what the phoenix had protected him from, and if the phoenix could protect him too.
“It’s a great big bird made of fire.”
Dutch’s eyes grew wide with excitement. “Fire? Really?” He just couldn’t believe it. He wanted a bird made of fire.
“The special thing about the phoenix is that it lives for five hundred years, and when it dies, it’s reborn from its own ashes.” Dutch’s already wide eyes and mouth broadened. It was a magical bird, and he loved anything that dealt with magic. He just had to have a phoenix now. “A phoenix is all about hope and love. It’s the hope that keeps its fire burning, and the love that causes it to be reborn.” His father looked down at him, while Dutch’s narrowed eyes communica
ted he was trying to put all the information together. “Do you understand?”
“I think so,” he finally said after a few moments of thought. “With hope and love, nothing can ever die, right?”
His father smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Right.”
“I want the phoenix to be my guardian too!”
“He can be,” his father said. “But your guardian should be something special to you. If the phoenix is special, he’ll be yours, but if there’s something else that’s even more special, then you should choose that one.”
“Like what?” Dutch asked. He didn’t understand. It sounded like his father didn’t want to share the phoenix with him, and that wasn’t like his dad at all. They shared everything—ice cream, soda, cake, and even Momma’s yucky broccoli.
“Well, let’s see,” his father said. “Ever since you saw that movie Clash of the Titans, you’ve been talking about a particular animal nonstop.”
“The Pegasus!” Dutch replied, remembering the white winged horse sent to Perseus by his father Zeus. From the moment Dutch first saw the horse fly onto the screen, he had been hooked. He wanted a Pegasus even more than a phoenix, which he thought was still pretty darn cool.
His father nodded. “Don’t you remember from the movie? Pegasus is a constellation.”
“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed, remembering how Pegasus’s image transformed into the stars at the movie’s end. “I want Pegasus to be my guardian,” he told his father. “But the Phoenix is all hope and love. If I choose Pegasus, am I choosing not to hope and love?”
“Not at all,” replied his father. “Hope and love are what the Phoenix means to me. What does Pegasus mean to you?”
He wrinkled his forehead in deep thought. He had no idea what Pegasus meant to him. The horse was a gift from Perseus’s father, to aid in his quests, and Pegasus fought by Perseus’s side no matter what, even when the gigantic Kraken was trying to kill everyone in that town.
“Loyalty and bravery,” he blurted. “That’s what Pegasus means to me.”
“Then there you go. Now, when you look into the sky at night, you’ll see brave and loyal Pegasus protecting you, and you’ll also know that your dad’s love for you and the hope he has for you will always be there.”
“Always?” he asked.
“Always,” his father assured.
Without another word, he ran back to bed and got under the covers. He laid his head on his pillow and imagined Pegasus swooping over his house, keeping away the monsters that lived in the shadows, like Calibos from Clash of the Titans.
He pictured Pegasus standing vigil in the distance, perched on a nearby tree. While his father kissed him good night and as he drifted off to sleep, secure in the bravery of Pegasus and his father’s love, he knew he would never be afraid of the dark again.
Except now he was.
The darkness all around him terrified him. Pegasus and Phoenix were missing in action, stolen by whatever power could rob the sky of its celestial bodies. Did that mean his father’s hope and love were gone too?
The prospect frightened him even more than the engulfing darkness. Had he disappointed his father so much that the living beacon of his love and hope was snuffed out? Did the fiery bird take flight away from the tragedy of a man lost in a sea of hate and despair?
When he closed his eyes and relived the past few months of his life—the binge drinking, casual sex, and cavalier attitude about life, he saw no other option. He was a disappointment. He’d lost his way, and as a result wound up adrift in this dark sea of nightmares.
He had forgotten his father’s lessons about love, hope, loyalty, and bravery, the characteristics he once followed like a compass through the sea of life. Now, the compass was broken, and its arrow no longer pointed to a true north. It whirled wildly in all directions, unsure where to point, unsure what direction to follow.
Love turned to hate, hope became despair, loyalty morphed into infidelity, and bravery changed to cowardice. His aimless wandering upon this sea mirrored his unsure trajectory in life.
If he wanted to drift upon the shores of home, he needed to change. The man he once was needed to rise out of these waters, and the man he had become needed to stay lost at sea forever. It was the only way to survive. If his true self didn’t triumph, then he would be lost in this darkness for eternity.
He just didn’t know what to do, how to change direction and get home to himself.
All he knew was that he wanted to change. He wanted to go home.
That was when the words floated up from the deepest core of his being. “I forgive you, Justin.” The words reverberated through the nothingness all around him.
Like a spell, his words calmed the churning sea; peace descended onto his soul.
A pinprick of light flashed above him. Its warmth invigorated him, spreading across his flesh.
Forgiveness became mercy, and a ribbon of light shot across the sky. It then widened to an arc and didn’t disappear. The light was fuzzy and faraway, but it remained.
His soul felt lighter, less encumbered. The shackles were released as he willingly cast off the darkness that had constricted his soul.
When mercy changed into absolution, the heavens opened. Rays of light descended upon his world, and his father flew into view on the back of the Phoenix, and beside them trotted his guardian, Pegasus.
CHAPTER 6
2000
JUSTIN fumbled with his keys, which were caught on the inside of his jean pocket, tangled onto a thread that appeared to be made more out of iron than denim. His clunky fingers, numb from the cold and wet weather, only aggravated the situation.
“It’s not supposed to get this cold in San Antonio,” Spencer said, his teeth chattering together uncontrollably. He rubbed his hands up and down his exposed arms in an effort to warm himself up. “And why did I fall victim to the homosexual fashion code that mandates appearance over comfort? What was I thinking wearing short sleeves in January?”
“Well, it was December when you decided on your ensemble.”
“Spoken like a true smartass,” Spencer responded, mimicking Olympia Dukakis’s line from Steel Magnolias, one of Justin’s favorite movies. The fact that Spencer obviously loved the movie as well made Justin want him even more.
“Don’t worry, Clairee,” he told Spencer, calling him by the character Olympia Dukakis played. “It’s almost loose.” Finally, Justin pulled the keys free from the viselike grip of the unusually resilient string. “Got it!” he said, holding his keys up for Spencer to see.
“Now do you know what to do with it?”
Justin raised an eyebrow at Spencer’s suggestive comment. He thrust the key into the lock and quickly turned it before swinging open the door to his apartment.
Spencer flew past him toward the warm interior, and Justin followed him inside. When he shut the door to the cold outside, Justin immediately regretted asking Spencer back to his place, not because he doubted the decision but because he was embarrassed about the poor condition of his living space.
“It’s very nice,” Spencer said upon looking around. His eyes swept past the stacks of papers on the kitchen table, the pile of textbooks next to the bookshelf, and the computer desk overfull with the odds and ends of his job as a high school teacher.
“Sorry about the mess,” Justin said, deeply mortified that he had failed to clean up before going out. He rarely, if ever, brought someone home from the club, so he never gave the mess a second thought.
“Don’t worry about it,” Spencer said. He stepped over Justin’s briefcase to get to the couch. “I’m just glad to be inside.”
Justin sighed. His place was a dump and didn’t look like a gay man inhabited it. Not only were his belongings strewn about, but the décor was pathetic, something Xavier commented on at length whenever he visited. Justin always ignored Xavier’s complaints, chalking them up to the ramblings of a prissy queen, but now that he surveyed his surroundings through Spencer’s eyes, he wished he had
listened to Xavier.
His green floral couch was dated by at least two decades. Brown, splotchy carpet met cracked linoleum kitchen tile at the boundary between the living room and the kitchen. Justin told his guests the stains on the carpet were from a previous resident’s toddler, but Justin wasn’t so sure that was the truth. He’d be happy to never know what the stains were and gave them a wide berth whenever he crossed the room.
An old wooden entertainment center sat askew in the living room; it had been in his bedroom at home since he was ten, and his mother gave it to him when he moved out of the house. Next to the entertainment center leaned a dusty plastic ficus tree. No pictures adorned the walls, which were hospital white, and a secondhand pine coffee table squatted on wobbly legs in the center of the room. On the coffee table were various gay publications like Out and a couple of skin magazines with bare-assed models adorning the covers.
Justin instantly ran to the coffee table to hide the porn underneath the other papers and bills littered across it. “Sorry,” he apologized again. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Obviously,” Spencer said, laughing. When he laughed, his eyes sparkled a vibrant green. Justin had to fight the urge to take Spencer in his arms right there. “Like I said, don’t worry about it. I have my messy moments in life.”
Justin didn’t believe Spencer for one second. Just by looking at his well-groomed hair and perfectly manicured fingernails, he seriously doubted Spencer lived in anything less than a spectacularly spotless residence. The realization only furthered his embarrassment.
“I have the same magazines at my place too,” Spencer said, nodding to the now hidden porn. “I just keep them in my bedroom closet.”
Justin blushed even though he had nothing to be embarrassed about. Porn was commonplace for men, especially gay men, but he wanted to make a good impression on Spencer. He didn’t want Spencer to think he spent his evenings masturbating on the couch, even though he sometimes did.
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