Out of the Box

by Don Schecter

  “Whaddaya mean? You got kissed when you came home.”

  “Honey, I could smell the roast burning the moment I walked into the kitchen. Why do you think I walked on tippy-toes?”

  “Well, I must say I appreciate your sensitivity to the tensions in the air. The last thing I wanted was a bear hug and a grope on the ass.”

  “Lover, I do not grope ass in front of our son,” Steve said with mock indignation.

  “But help me speed through the dishes and I’ll give you a groping demonstration in the privacy of our boudoir.”

  “You’re on, baby.”

  The sex was good but, whereas Steve drifted into a contented slumber, Jerry lay staring at the ceiling, his mind turning over ways to head Sam off at the pass before he went too far with his wrong-headed idea. He asked himself the usual questions: Is it something I did or said? Perhaps at seventeen I should be shaking his hand or punching him on the shoulder, rather than hugging and kissing him. And after he blamed himself for being gay, he stopped and did an about-face: he knew none of that stuff was true.

  When Sam had been a handsome toddler, Jerry faced up to the fact that someday Sam would be a handsome youth. He had explored for himself the possibilities, which included, at one extreme, feeling attracted to his son. But he worked through that easily, content in the knowledge that straight men survived having beautiful daughters. When Sam matured into a muscular athlete, Jerry saw how easy it was for a father to want everything for his son without wanting his son—even, or especially, a gay father.

  He finally fell asleep reassuring himself that he had treated Sam fairly, and that it was only normal for Sam to sometimes presume that some of his natural feelings were leading in a gay direction, considering that he had two fathers who constantly demonstrated affection for each other.

  Sam came home around midnight, after Jerry was asleep, and then slept until Jerry roused him in time to eat and get to the game. For the rest of the afternoon, the two fathers sat in the stands and cheered their son and his teammates. At halftime, Carolyn and the other cheerleaders whooped and yelled enthusiastically. When Carolyn caught their eyes, she waved wildly to Jerry and Steve, who acknowledged their appreciation by stomping on the boards and whistling back.

  Sam got home from the game an hour after they did, and the three men got a chance to sit down again together in the kitchen to do some Monday morning quarterbacking.

  “Congratulations, Picasso. That was a helluva third-quarter drive,” Steve said with obvious pride.

  “I thought the snap pass with five to go was sheer genius,” Jerry added.

  “Thanks, guys, it wasn’t only me. Pat’s out there like a miracle. I just throw the ball in his direction and, suddenly, he emerges from the pack, leaps in the air above their heads, and then, with incredible grace, he snags my pass out of the air and hits the ground running. To me, each time, it’s like we’re in slow motion. Pat seems to freeze in the air until the ball is in his hands: his timing is impeccable. I just love that guy!” Sam’s eyes narrowed disconcertedly as he heard his words. “I mean…I mean, well, you know…”

  “How’s Carolyn?” his father interrupted.

  “Great, Dad. We talked a lot last night. She didn’t want to see a movie so we had a coke and then we went for a drive.” Sam paused for his thoughts to come together. “I love her, too, Dad. I just want to hold her close and touch her skin and smell her, and, and…”

  “Have you had sex with Carolyn?” Jerry ventured.

  Sam put his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor, shaking his head. “Not that I don’t want to, but Carolyn wants to wait…and I respect that. I know I love her, Dad.”

  There was a longer pause. “What’s a guy to do? How do you ever know what you really want?”

  “Sometimes it takes a long time to figure it out. It took me forty years. But I was working from the premise that you had to be one thing or another. And that’s just not true, Sam.”

  Sam looked up; he was all ears. Jerry continued talking while he got Sam a glass of milk and made him a sandwich.

  “There are lots of kinds of love: the love you feel for your buddy in a foxhole, or your partner—like you and Pat are to each other during a game—is as valid as the love you feel for Carolyn. So many factors are involved. At your age, you should just let your feelings roll over you and enjoy them; they’re all good. When you sort out what you want in life, you can set priorities, and then you can decide whether or not to take action. When you’re in tune with what you feel inside, you can act on it or suppress it, according to what you want to do with your life.”

  “You suppressed your gay feelings when you were with Mom?”

  “I only knew one way to live, the way I’d been taught. Vine-covered cottage and kids, with a loving wife. I had no one to talk to about my feelings, and I was convinced that I was the only one in the world out of step.

  “But nowadays, you have alternatives. Nobody wants to pigeonhole you. You can be married and straight, or gay with kids, and successful in your career all at the same time.

  People will always want to hedge their bets: gays married to women; straights fooling around with the same sex, refusing to categorize themselves. And then there’s that great catch-all ‘bisexual.’ That covers every possibility without defining any.”

  “So what your Dad’s saying boils down to this,” Steve summed up. “When you’re worried about things that happen naturally, you just need to look inside and decide what works for you. We’ll back you whatever you do, you know that.”

  “It sounds good, but I don’t know if it’ll help in practice. I can’t just go up to Pat and ask him if he wants to try getting it on.”

  “Just relax, don’t force a thing. You’ll find yourself doing what’s right for you. Don’t make decisions that don’t need to be made,” Steve said.

  “People run the gamut: look at you,” Jerry continued. You want to be an artist and you’re the star varsity quarterback. You could have an A average if you quit football and stayed home and studied, but you settle for B+ because you love the game. And people say you’ve got it all, and call you a jock artist, or an arty athlete, according to what’s more important to them. But the language isn’t sophisticated enough to fully describe what people are—you can’t be a gay straight, or a straight gay. The fault is in the language, not the man. Men and women can be anything they want to be. They’ve got to stop putting themselves into boxes with labels.”

  “So what should we call ourselves?” Sam asked. “How can we be what we have no word for?”

  “We always had a word for it: sexual. People are sexual animals. Not homo- or hetero-, not gay or straight, just sexual. You’d give yourself permission to care for a man if you weren’t afraid it would “make you gay.” On the other hand, you could care for him without acting on it if you wanted; or you could act on the desire, and then go off and marry a girl and live happily ever after. Steve and I wouldn’t call you straight, we’d call you human.”

  Sam thought a moment, took a big bite of his sandwich, and said with a full mouth, “It sounds so right. Why doesn’t everyone look at it that way?”

  “People are mired in the past. It only took the Catholic Church four- hundred years to acknowledge Galileo. Every person discovers his own freedom for himself, if he discovers it at all. And it helps to have someone to talk with freely about such things. You’re a lucky guy.”

  “Things are getting easier for each succeeding generation,” Steve said. “But easier means not being told what to do. Unfortunately, that looks confusing to a lot of youngsters when they’re presented with all these options. Some guys would rather not have to make choices. But your Dad and I think you can handle it. You just have to take it slow. Play cool.”

  “I’m with you. You guys are great. It’s on ice.”

  After practice Monday afternoon, Sam and Pat were complimenting each other for another outstanding set of plays. Sam wound his wet towel and took aim at Pat’s ass. H
e snapped the towel with precision.

  “Yow!” shouted Pat, rubbing the stinging red mark on his backside. “What’d you go and do that for?”

  “Because that ass of yours looks like solid marble, and I always wanted to take a potshot at a statue’s butt.”

  “Well, Picasso, I hate to tell you, but this statue strikes back.” And with that, Sam, buck naked, took off at a run with Pat whooping in pursuit, his wet towel twirling in the air.

  The Roadrunner

  For the fourth time in an hour, without acknowledging my presence, Andy passed me like a flash on his way from the weight room to the water fountain. We had belonged to the same gym for two years—he was a member when I joined—and we both followed a strict attendance schedule: three days a week at 5:30 p.m. I had a steady racquetball game with three younger men who still worked; Andy came to the gym directly from his job.

  I knew that because, in the heat of summer, he always arrived wearing a suit and tie, and a long-sleeved white shirt. When he left, however, he put on shorts, a T-shirt, and casual shoes. All of this paraphernalia was contained in a gym bag as large as an overnighter that he lugged along every time he showed up.

  Andy caught my eye on the first day I was there because he was a standout, and because of the innumerable trips he made to the water fountain. I wondered how he had developed such a great body when he interrupted his workout every few minutes to hike the length of the club floor for a drink; but there was no denying, however he’d managed it, his strategy was successful. Five-foot-ten, darkly tanned, a handsome, well-formed head on a well-defined body; he always wore the same black shorts and an oversized, red, salt-stained tank top which hung loosely on him and allowed inviting glimpses of his deeply cut pecs as he dashed by.

  I had had my chance to establish contact with Andy on the first or second day I saw him. I was watching a racquetball game going on in the glass court as Andy made one of his water runs. I happened to look up as he passed and, in the moment our eyes connected, he apparently decided I was too intimidating to address (it has happened before), and I decided from his blank stare he was too far into himself to be open to a greeting. We mutually agreed to look away, and thereby established the pattern of averting our eyes whenever we passed. Pity.

  Being sixty, and having seen all the attitude there is to see, I could have rescued us from our self-imposed routine, but I didn’t have any designs on Andy and, frankly, I just enjoyed looking at him. Admittedly, I wouldn’t have kicked him out of bed, but at that moment I was happily involved with a man closer to my age. It was simply that I’ve always had an eye for beauty, and Andy was well worth gazing at.

  Since we came and went at approximately the same times every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it was common to find myself in the locker room while Andy was there. I learned his name because I overheard conversations he was having as I changed clothes. I got to recognize his voice, so I often knew he was in a nearby row of lockers, even when I couldn’t see him. He engaged in a lot of macho, meaningless, locker-room chit-chat with a variety of men. I gathered the data and analyzed it at leisure.

  It became a game for me.

  For a while, I had Andy pegged as a teacher because he spent five minutes discussing teachers’ pay raises with another guy who turned out to be the teacher. From another conversational snippet, I learned Andy was a customer’s man at a brokerage. I was happy to hear he wasn’t a complete dodo, but stockbrokers come in all shades and colors of fool, so knowing he sold stocks didn’t guarantee much. Uncovering the details of Andy’s life in fits and starts didn’t bother me because I felt I had time on my side.

  Slowly, sooner or later, the picture would fill in, and I’d have to find another game, or at least introduce myself to him.

  One evening, my racquetball match ended earlier than usual and, on the way to my locker, I was stopped in my tracks by a most tantalizing sight. Directly in front of me before an open locker, standing on the bench with arms upstretched to search for something on top, was possibly the most beautiful naked man I had ever seen in real life.

  The molded ass, his only untanned part, drew my immediate attention. From there, I registered the balled calves bulging from his legs because he stood on tiptoes. Then my eyes took in the widespread wings of his lats as he reached above his head. Who the heck was this? When he glanced at me over his shoulder, I was amazed to recognize Andy. In all the time I had seen him in his gym clothes, I never anticipated how stunning his nude form would be.

  In keeping with our protocols, I looked away and opened my locker, hoping to mask my obvious gawking. As soon as I felt I safely could, I sneaked a sidelong glance only to see Andy, wrapped in a white bath sheet from waist to calf, dashing from his locker in the direction of the showers, his magnificent buttocks pressing provocatively against the toweling as he hurried down the aisle. It took me a moment to catch my breath. I determined that my next immediate objective would be to see Andy in the nude again, but from the front.

  It turned out this was not accomplished easily. Andy could transition between gym clothes and street clothes in a split second without showing more than Gypsy Rose Lee ever revealed; in fact, he used a towel very much the same way she used feathers. After a workout I would see him enter the locker room just in front of me. But by the time I got there, he was wrapped and headed for the showers or, when he was really in a rush, he just clutched his trailing towel to his furred, washboard stomach as he padded barefoot from the locker room. Before I got my sweat-drenched things off, he was headed back, and always to a different row of lockers.

  I was mildly amused by this cat-and-mouse game we played, but I really had no fears about its outcome because, as I said, I believed time to be on my side. Sooner or later, we would collide, and I would get to claim, although momentarily, the prize. In the meantime, I found Andy’s behavior bizarre in some respects. For example, he was one of perhaps three men in the locker room who ever wrapped themselves. The others may have had some reason to be embarrassed over their bodies; if anything, Andy only suffered from an excess of beauty.

  Before a workout, he generally headed in bare feet for the john, carrying his sneakers and socks in his hands. Once, I heard an unseen jock yell out, “Hey Andy, don’t stink it up as bad as you usually do! I gotta take a leak.” This was followed with guffaws, and, a few minutes later, Andy came out with his sneakers on. From this, I inferred that Andy was so efficiency-conscious he had found a way to put his shoes and socks on while taking a crap. Well, to each his own.

  And, although Andy could shower and dress with the speed of Superman in a phone booth, he slowed to a stop before he left the gym to comb his hair for a full three or four minutes. It was slightly thinning and he was never satisfied with how it lay.

  One evening, I got lucky. Headed for the locker room after a racquetball match, I actually held the door open for Andy to follow me in. I was taking off my sneakers slowly—two hours of racquetball can take something out of a sixty-year old—when Andy flashed by, wrapped like a mummy. I was galvanized. Dammit! He isn’t going to escape me this time. I abandoned my tidiness along with my tiredness, tossed everything willy-nilly into the locker, grabbed my towel, and headed for the showers.

  The shower room has two heads on each side and three against the long wall opposite the entrance. Normally, the room is near empty at the times I’m showering, but that evening all seven heads were in use. It was as though everyone had turned out to see me try to catch Andy with his pants down. Andy was dead center with his back to me; he was leaning forward, supported by his hands on the wall as the water ran over his muscular frame. I was delighted that I, leaning on the right side of the entrance, was forced to wait for an open shower as it gave me a good excuse to stare at him for as long as he refused to turn around.

  As though sensing my presence, he glanced over his shoulder and caught my eye. He moved with such abrupt speed that the world, for me, shifted into slow motion. He flipped off the shower, pushed off from the
wall and, stepping backward with his right foot, turned to the left as he strode from the room. I was aware of droplets flying off his spinning body, so quickly did he move. In two swift sidesteps, he slid past me in the doorway with his back to me. My eyes followed him another step to the towel rack, where, without breaking stride, he snatched his bath sheet off a hook and swirled it around himself like a toreador working his cape. Fully wrapped, he disappeared around the corner.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had managed to glimpse nothing! Nada! Zero! And was this performance just for me? Six other men must have seen it all hanging. Was I to be denied? And was it just coincidental?

  After I showered, he was still at the mirror at the end of the row of lockers, combing his hair. I felt frustrated as he stood there fully clothed and rearranged locks that were already in place. When he was gone, my tiredness flowed back over me and I sat dejected, feeling as flat as Wile E. Coyote feels when he smashes against the canyon floor after another unsuccessful attempt to trap the roadrunner. But hope springs eternal —one hears the roadrunner’s call: Beep! Beep! —and two days later, I was on the trail again, just like the coyote.

  I contented myself for a while with musings over the cause for such behavior. He was the only weightlifter at the club who showered, so I was forced to discard the theory that he didn’t want prying eyes to gape at his development. Besides, he was beautifully built, not exaggerated like the dedicated lifter, so I also threw out the theory that steroids had shrunken his genitalia.

  Was he modest? Had he had a severe religious upbringing? Childhood trauma? It didn’t seem likely because his conversation was truly all-American jock. Hang-ups were not detectable in his speech—and I was eavesdropping very carefully.

  Was he doing this for my benefit? Couldn’t be. One, he was practiced, and had his act down pat; and two, he never indicated he was aware of me, never even gave me a second glance to see how I was reacting.

  I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation; but neither did simple coincidence satisfy the evidence. I was certain he was hiding his organ on purpose, but the why, and from whom, eluded me.