Out of the Box

by Don Schecter

  “Who’s Mark?” Emily asked.

  “A friend who did me a big favor. I’ll tell you the story later.”

  “It’s a strong name,” Emily nodded. “And biblical.”

  Brett smiled at her. “I think he’d be pleased.”

  “Then Mark it is,” Emily told Karen. “Mark Casey Himber.” Em could see that her choice of middle name made a big hit with her husband. “After all,” she shrugged, “deep down, Casey’s not such a bad guy. I think he’ll make a good godfather for our son.”

  Brett’s smile broadened into a grin. “More than that, he‘ll be just perfect.”

  Dellamarvelous

  I met Neil on the dance floor. We were dancing Plus, the most boisterous, physically active level of gay square dancing: the one where there are lots of individual flourishes and high kicks added to the steps, and where a do-si-do becomes a froth of sexual contact.

  Neil was dancing the girl’s part; I danced boy. Each time we passed, he managed to make some form of body contact: a slide, a touch, a rump-against-rump. He had caught my eye because of his exceptional appearance—while the other dancers in the ballroom were in colorful shorts and Ts or tanks, Neil was all in white, long sleeves and trousers— and now he was teasing me mercilessly.

  Gorgeous was not word enough to describe him: his skin olive, his eyes black coal.

  Tall, graceful, a smile of flashing white, even teeth; a soft full black mustache hovering above sculpted lips. And the hair! Lustrous black waves, quite enough for two heads—his and mine—were carelessly massed and begging to have fingers run through them.

  It was 1991, Miami, the eighth annual International Gay Square Dancers Convention at the Fontainebleau: 1,200 gay dancers. I knew it was Neil’s first time at convention because he was dressed all wrong for gay square dancing—but he was dressed very much all right for Neil. In response to his outrageous flirting, as he passed by I told him, “You’re trouble.”

  “Why trouble?” he laughed, twirling away.

  “Guys who look like you can only mean trouble,” I told him the next time I had him in my arms. “You’re irresistible.”

  He liked that. His eyes dazzled. He slipped away from me into the next step. “So why resist?” he called behind him.

  I held him close as we next swung together and said, “I have a lover, and, although he would understand my temptation, I don’t think he’d approve.”

  “Oh, bad news,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t stop,” I implored. “I’m bewitched. It’s my problem, not yours.” But he was out of my arms and circling in the opposite direction.

  When the dance was over, he introduced himself—Neil Madison—a romance-novel name to go with his dramatic appearance. His skin glistened with light perspiration after the dance. “It was fun flirting with you; you’re very hot. But I want to find someone for me tonight. Perhaps we’ll get to see each other later.”

  He said it so straightforwardly, I couldn’t argue. He was right. I wished him luck. I looked after him as he walked away, my tongue unconsciously lapping my lips at the sight of so ripe and tasty a morsel. The music started again, squares began to form, and I was soon dancing with seven new people. All thoughts of Neil were banished: such is the magic of square dancing.

  After Neil left me, he stood on the staircase watching dancers wander into and out of the Plus hall. In a small group moving inside to dance, he noticed a deeply suntanned, rugged face that looked interesting. And that was why, when it was time to square up for the next tip, Louis Dellamarva found himself standing next to that vision in white, shirtfront split to the navel, showing a splash of soft black down on an otherwise smooth olive chest.

  Odds were that Louis danced the boy’s part; most men of interest to Neil danced boy —which was why Neil danced girl; he was no fool. Louis didn’t say a thing; he just smiled and held out his hand. Neil stepped beside him and they waited for the caller to begin.

  Neil sensed there was no need to flirt with this one; he was already intrigued. All Neil had to do was bide time, allow himself to be observed, and return very searching, deep gazes whenever Louis held him in his arms. But in those next few moments, Neil’s hunting instincts gratefully melted away under the calm influence of Louis’s eyes, and predator willingly became prey.

  “You’re too pretty to be loose,” Louis observed, after the tip ended.

  “I’m not loose, but I am free.”

  “Then let’s go to my room.”

  “Let’s.”

  Louis and Neil floated from the ballroom in one of those magic moments when two people have eyes only for each other. Other dancers noticed, and probably envied, the darkly rugged older man leading the taller, exceptionally handsome youngster dressed in white from the floor. In Louis’s room, they introduced themselves but went no further.

  Neither was very interested in what the other did for a living just then; their raging hormones had no voice. But Louis stopped to say something that had to be said up front.

  He faced Neil and spoke in a voice hushed with sex, the words very distinct.

  “Before we go any further, you must know that I’m positive. I will never do anything to endanger you. If you trust me, I believe we can enjoy ourselves enormously. On the other hand, if what I’ve said frightens you, or you don’t believe me, let’s go back downstairs as though we’d never met.”

  Neil returned Louis’s earnest gaze and knew they were no longer strangers, nor could they be again. “I trust you,” he said as he slipped the shirt from his shoulders. Louis took him in his arms and sealed his commitment with a passionate kiss.

  They stayed wrapped in each other’s arms that night. Louis delivered on the promise of his appearance. He was what Neil dreamed of finding, and this time he was not disappointed. Louis was a combination of gentle and hard in the right proportions. He was stimulated that night as he had rarely been in his life by Neil’s body and needs. He handled Neil with care, and a love that grew by the moment. He couldn’t get enough of Neil. The wastebasket filled with condoms as they made love, slept, showered, made love.

  In mid-morning, Neil slipped from Louis’s arms and went to his room to change clothes. He found he was famished by all the activity and joined some friends at an outdoor table for brunch. I left the pool at about that time and looked for a place to sit.

  Neil waved me over and introduced me around.

  “You’re from the Baltimore club, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then you must know Louis.”

  “Louis Dellamarvelous? Of course. What’s he up to?”

  “That’s not his name,” Neil objected.

  “No, but if you look like Louis, and you can keep up a reputation like he has, it’s no wonder the name catches on.”

  “Agreed. Last night he exceeded his press, and I haven’t even read his clippings yet. What can you tell me about him?”

  Neil had turned from his friends who were gabbing away, and he and I were suddenly very much alone at the crowded table. It didn’t take a wizard to see the stars in his beautiful eyes. He was smitten hard.

  “He’s good, kind, honest, caring, sexy, horny, rock-hard, and a lot of fun. What else would you like to know?”

  Neil smiled. His lashes fluttered as he looked at his plate. “I know all that. And I know it’s all true. I just can’t believe it.”

  “Maybe you’d better fill me in?”

  “I met Louis after I danced with you last night. I just left him sleeping in his room. I’ve never had such a wonderful first experience with anyone. He’s just…”

  “Dellamarvelous?”

  “Yes, I guess I see where the name comes from.”

  “And speaking of the devil, here he is.”

  We were all in bathing suits as Louis, who looked like he spent every waking minute in a gym even though he didn’t, joined us. His bronzed physique sported no body fat.

  Muscles he had never even tried to develop fought eac
h other under his skin for the viewer’s attention. His leg and arm muscles seemed to have corners, they were so hard.

  And the permanent five o’clock shadow on his chin looked studied, as though he worked to keep it that way. He put an arm around Neil’s shoulders as he seated himself, and I saw the look that jumped between them. The stars in Neil’s eyes were contagious.

  Louis greeted me warmly, while letting me know my presence was probably required elsewhere. “I think I saw your lover looking for you by the oyster bar,” he told me with the friendliest of grins.

  “I can break that code,” I said, excusing myself. I was truly thrilled for both of them.

  “Let me know how this works out, Louis, when we get back to Baltimore.” I didn’t see either of them again for the rest of the weekend. I doubt anyone did.

  I spoke frequently with Louis in the next few months. He was overjoyed with his new love, who was as unbelievably perfect as a lover could be. They had met again in Chicago. They had weekended in Las Vegas. They vacationed in Palm Springs. Each meeting was better than the last. Between visits, they made the phone companies rich with daily calls between Maryland and California. But neither could figure a way to make a life together, although they were working on it.

  By the following year’s convention in Albuquerque, my lover and I had graduated to the next level of dancing and saw very little of the Plus dancers, but I caught up with Neil and Louis at the “leather tip,” a part of the evening where those enamored of cowhide get a chance to dance in costume.

  My lover is not moved by the sight of overweight men dressed in straps, studs, and leather jocks trying to square dance; he prefers the more vigorous nude square dancing which takes place at midnight in a private room with a guard at the door. There is probably no square dancing as exuberant as pairs of naked men and women swinging each other, balls a-flapping and breasts a-slapping. But I am hooked by those on whom leather looks hot, so I watched the leather tip alone.

  Louis and Neil made it worthwhile. Louis was born to wear leather. The supple material molded easily to the hard cuts of his chest and arms. He appeared to burst from the leather, and conquer it. Neil was in a skintight pair of black leather trousers, bare-chested except for a matching vest. His body had firmed under Louis’s guidance, and the two made a more stunning couple than I remembered.

  “You both look great.”

  “It’s been a great year. Louis introduced me to leather and bought this outfit for me. Here, smell; doesn’t that aroma turn you on?”

  “And that’s not all,” Louis said. “My little chickadee is turning into a real leather man: whips, chains, you name it.”

  “It’s wonderful when two people grow together,” I commented wryly. “Louis, let’s get together when we get back. We hardly see you anymore.”

  Months later, my lover and I had dinner with Louis at an open air restaurant in Baltimore’s Little Italy. He had met us there to explain what his plans were concerning Neil and, because we seemed so interested, concerning us.

  “Guys,” Louis said over dinner, “it’s this way: I’m positive and there’s nothing to be done about that. It’s a shame, but I came to grips with it long before meeting Neil.”

  “He minds?” I interrupted.

  “No, he doesn’t mind. We have the best safe sex you could want. And besides that, he’s interested in leather, and he’s an apt pupil. There’s plenty to keep us busy. We never run out of ideas.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m trapped here in Maryland by insurance. I’ve got a great job, a sympathetic employer, terrific health insurance—they pay for almost everything—but you lose coverage if you move outside their area. I’ve looked into changing insurance companies. Not a chance. No one will have me. I never expected they would.”

  “What about Neil? He’s young. Can’t he get a job here?”

  “This conversation is taking place like Neil and I haven’t been wracking our brains for the last six months; but continue interjecting questions,” Louis said with a full mouth.

  “It gives me a chance to chew my food instead of talking non-stop.”

  “Neil works for a big auditing firm and he’s on a very fast track. You’d be amazed to learn what he earns a year. And they do have other locations. He might be able to get to Chicago, but no closer; and when we talk about it, we realize he’d be giving up a very special position for just living closer. It’s not worth it.”

  “Every step counts,” my lover inserted.

  “Guys, get this straight. I’m going to die. I know it; Neil knows it. And when I do, he’ll be in Chicago, wishing he’d stayed on the West Coast, and it will all have been for a few years, at most, with me.”

  We looked at him and felt as though we had hit a brick wall. Neither my lover nor I had ever had to face something so totally final and out of our control.

  “And this brings me to the hard part. We’re breaking up. Hard as it is to do, my love for Neil forces me to think about his welfare. I want him to forget me while I’m still alive, so I don’t leave him grieving.”

  “Isn’t that Neil’s decision?”

  “We’ve been over it. He’s agreed. It’s not a unilateral decision. I want someone here with me now, to live with me the time I’ve got left. I can’t ask Neil to buy a one-way ticket on a downhill ride.” Louis’s voice broke. “I love him too much.”

  We waited for him to mop his eyes and regain his composure. Then he continued.

  “Now, I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand, but this is our last contact, yours and mine. I’m going into the stretch, and changing the way I do business. I’m going to squeeze the life out of what’s left to me. No more phone calls, no more Christmas cards, no more dinners out. It’s not that I don’t care about you or other people—you guys have been really good to me—it’s that my priorities are rearranging themselves and, as I see it, I don’t have a lot of time. So I’m going to do this in the only way it makes sense to me. At least this way, I won’t have a lot of guys dripping tears on my cot when I die.”

  We protested. Louis gave us one long look that seemed to prove he was right about everything he was saying.

  “Get angry with me now, while I’m alive and you can deal with it. By the time I’m gone, it won’t hurt…so…damned much.”

  Louis’s voice stumbled through the last words. His eyes overflowed and so did mine.

  Only my stable lover was sufficiently stoic. He understood well, but isn’t one to let his emotions get the best of him.

  We didn’t see Louis again. He stopped square dancing; it didn’t fit into his scheme.

  During that year we moved to Denver and joined the club there.

  We saw Neil in Seattle at the next convention. The flash had gone from his eyes, which seemed deepened with understanding. He appeared in good spirits, though perhaps a little wary of being reminded of Louis. He rarely heard from Louis anymore, but he knew Louis had taken a lover who was also positive. Saddened by the turn of events, he had clearly gained perspective about the wisdom of distancing himself from Louis while he was still alive, and could be thought of, and dealt with, in real terms.

  A year later, the convention was in Washington, D.C. I was chatting to a leaner, more serious Neil in the lobby of the Omni-Sheraton about Louis, from whom Neil hadn’t heard in almost a year. Neil had phoned when he arrived in Washington, hoping to see Louis over the weekend, but there was no answer.

  As Neil and I parted, a Baltimore dancer greeted me and, in conversation, off-handedly remarked that Louis had died a week before. I looked around for Neil but he was no longer in the lobby. I worried how he would discover the news.

  Past midnight, when the dancing was over, I found Neil in an alcove in the lobby, decked out in a black leather vest and leather trousers that fit him like a glove. I asked him if he had heard, and he said that’s why he had put on the leather. We talked idly about Louis, as a way of consciously paying tribute to a fallen loved one. I ordered two glass
es of champagne, and we clinked them to Louis. Then we lapsed into separate silences.

  I looked at Neil and asked him if he’d like to go upstairs. He looked at me, divined my purpose, and got up. “Yes, I’d like that,” he said.

  We went to his room and I stood there with my hands on his bare arms, wishing I could have been Louis for him. Then I pulled him close and bent his head to my shoulder, where he sobbed, first silently, and then more heavily.

  Fully clothed, we lay on the bed—this beautiful man and I—and I comforted him as I would my child. At last, when he had run out of tears, Neil nestled into my arms and slept soundly.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  Gay square dancing is a thing unto itself. More boisterous and involved than western square dancing, it is a healthy, happy way to meet and enjoy a huge cross-section of the gay community. Like bridge players, square dancers come in all sizes and skill levels.

  Not quite as ubiquitous as bridge clubs, there are square dance clubs all across North America. Contact the IAGSDC on the web for a square dance club near you.

  Seeing Double

  There’s something wrong with my eyes. My vision is blurry. I can’t do my needlework anymore; cross-stitching makes me cross-eyed. And my eyes ache so, I just want to close them.

  How long has it been since I got my eyes checked? Let me see, it’s in the drawer here somewhere. Ahh, my last prescription was—holy shit! nine years ago. I better get myself off to the optometrist. There’s a new one just opened on the corner. Can’t go to the old one; hell, old Pete died, must be four or five years now. The ones that don’t keep fit die early. That’s why I work out regular. That’s why I’m having my eyes checked right away, today.

  The door chime made a pleasant sound as I entered. The new doc was with a customer.

  He’s young, in his thirties. I call his type “3B”: big, bare, and burly. I like the type.

  Pink skin like a baby’s. Hardly any beard. Bet there’s nary a hair on his chest, a little fuzz, maybe. But plump, well-fed, firm flesh. I sure hope he knows his business, because I’m sure going to enjoy visiting him. Come on, old girl, get finished so’s I can have a turn at him.