Back Where He Started

by Jay Quinn

  “Wade, get real. I don’t even have a computer. Besides, you aren’t cruising on the Web are you? I mean, isn’t that an invitation to get beat up or robbed or worse?”

  Wade Lee chuckled. “No more than picking up a trick in some bar and taking him home. You used to be pretty good at that. As I recall, that’s how you met Zack.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. But there’s a big difference between seeing the guy in the flesh—getting some kind of read on him in person—rather than just hooking up in a chat room.”

  “How would you know?” Wade asked pointedly. “You don’t even have a computer.”

  “Well, I’m not illiterate. I know what goes on in those chat rooms.”

  Wade Lee finished his drink and reached across to put his glass down on the low table between us. Giving me a dark, conspiratorial look, he said, “I could tell you some pretty hot stories.”

  “Would you like another? I’ve got to get my cigarettes if this is going to turn into an episode of Sex and the City.’’’’

  He nodded and said, “Who said anything about the city? I’ve hooked up on this very beach. It’s how people meet for sex these days. To hell with going to a club.”

  “Okay slut, tell me all about it.” I downed my own drink and stood a bit unsteadily to fetch us both a refill.

  “Oh you get the usual trolls, and the usual tubby guys who say they have swimmer’s build. More like a heifer’s build. I swear to God, you can tell how long someone’s been in the life by the length of their teats these days.”

  I lit a cigarette and searched the kitchen for an ashtray. “Andrew Holleran wrote not too long ago that the nipples are the sexual odometer of a guy’s body.”

  Wade snorted. “I read that. If that’s the case, I’ve tricked with guys who are on their second hundred thousand miles. Same chassis. Teats long as my little finger.”

  “No you didn’t say that!” I laughed, finding an ashtray and pouring new drinks.

  “Oh hell yeah, girlfriend. Rusty gray chassis at that!” Wade Lee hooted from the living room.

  I managed to balance the drinks and the ashtray and rejoin him by the fire, but I spilled a bit of the bourbon as I set the glasses down on the table.

  “Damn son, didn’t I teach you better than to serve a cocktail without a cocktail napkin?” Wade Lee said. “You aren’t living in a barn full of those young ‘uns of yours. You have nice things now.”

  “Forget about it, tell me a hot story. I don’t want to hear about those nasty Richmond society queens with their 54-inch waists or 55-year-olds with 30-inch waists. Tell me about someone real and hot.”

  “I will not forget about it! Do you have any idea what alcohol will do to this lacquer finish? March your little ass back into the kitchen and bring me a napkin if you want the sleaze.”

  I did as I was told and also fetched with my pack of cigarettes and the bottle of bourbon to sit on another napkin between us. “Okay, bitch. Tell me about someone who fulfilled a fantasy offline.”

  Wade tutted over my paper napkins, then said, “I got on Man4ManSexNOW when I was here on an installation a couple of months ago. I hooked up with this construction twink—nice body. Of course, he wanted me to fuck him.”

  “Of course,” I said smugly.

  “He had the Ford logo tattooed across the small of his back,” Wade Lee said archly.

  “No fuckin’ way. Did I ever tell you I almost got a tattoo across the small of my back once?”

  “Many times. That juvenile delinquent you did in high school, right?”

  “You know all my stories,” I said affectionately.

  “Well, you don’t have that many. Now, do you want to hear about my Atlantic Beach hottie or not?”

  “Okay, go ahead. He had a Ford logo tattoo?”

  “Uh-huh, yes he did. Let me tell you. He was built Ford tough.”

  “Hot.”

  “Oh hell yeah, came on a dime and was ready for another road test not 10 minutes later. I had to tell the young ‘un to give me a chance to catch my breath. This is a nineteen hundred fifty-two model here. Can you honestly imagine what that Ford tattoo is gonna look like when he’s my age. It turns my stomach.”

  “Did he talk?” I asked.

  “What do you mean did he talk?”

  “I mean, did you, like, have some sort of conversation?”

  Wade Lee broke out laughing. “Chris, he didn’t come to my hotel room to discuss Proust or the war in Iraq. If he’d tried, I’d have done my best to stick my dick in his mouth.”

  “You are a common whore, you know that Wade Lee?”

  “No, I’m really not. I’m just a realist in the new millennium, baby. I’m too old for a lover and I’m too set in my ways to get married. I just want a hot fuck and the sound of a car backing out of my driveway when it’s all finished.”

  “No you don’t.” I said.

  “Yes, I do. That is what I want. Your problem is you’re an unreconstructed romantic. Well, you can dry up thinking like that at your age. Your pussy will dry-rot for sure.”

  “Let’s leave my pussy out of this,” I suggested.

  Wade Lee topped off his drink from the bottle and gave me a half-serious look over the rim of his glass as he lifted it. “Your pussy is going to get left out, make no mistake. You Catholics, I’ll never figure you out. What was it Woody Allen said in that movie? He wanted to mate for life like pigeons and Catholics. You’re divorced now, baby. You better get online, and see what there is to see. Who knows, you might find true love. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but you’ll sure have a few nice hits in and amongst the misses.”

  I took his halfhearted toast, but I filed away his advice before I drank to it.

  “Now, tell me again about the hunky vet and the hot dog-man,” Wade Lee prompted. “One of them looked primed to help you get over your grief, okay?” he said, and settled deeper into his seat to wait for my answer.

  There was nothing really to tell about Steve Willis or the good vet, Dr. Heath. I hadn’t seen Steve Willis since the day Beau died, but I had seen Heath since. He had been very nice about Beau, handling his cremation. I didn’t grieve all over Heath as Wade Lee hopefully projected and Andrea seemed to expect me to. Actually, I didn’t really fall apart for several days. However, Heath was around for the aftermath of my stunning realization of loss.

  One morning about a week after Beau died, I got up, threw on a sweatshirt and some jeans, started coffee and—continuing my morning routine—retrieved his leash from the hook I’d put by the door from the kitchen to the deck. I almost whistled for him; then I remembered. I was blindsided by sorrow that I’d glossed over by hanging art, putting away dishes and glasses, linens and new towels, and general house junk.

  I knew as long as I kept moving I could keep ahead of the pain, so I just tightened my grasp on Beau’s leash, closed the door, and took off barefoot down the street to the beach. The morning was sunny and windless. The sand wasn’t even chilly, despite the early hour and the time of year. Because the ocean takes a long time to heat up and cool down, the days were still temperate—even warm—three weeks before Christmas.

  I took off blindly along the beach without a destination in mind. There was no one out, and I wondered how stupid I must look as I walked along with a leash in my hand and no dog in sight. It all hit me then—all my senseless, compulsive, conspicuous consumption. I’d decorated and accessorized a house to hold only me: a vain, aging man, alone and discarded. There was no family coming to appreciate the thick towels. There were no helpless sighs of relaxation as someone sank comfortably into one of the generous chairs beside the softly hissing, companionable fire. Everything I’d done in the beach house was carefully calculated to welcome a brood, and there was none coming.

  I’d never been given much to introspection; I’d always tried to live in the moment and give no time for regret. But that morning on the beach, I stared dead into a grown man’s life, which I had discarded to be a mommy. What had made me so wi
lling to abandon my own career—my own self—to a man and his motherless brood? What was I anyway?

  My new home—my new life—was all self-delusion, ashes, and dust. The new furniture’s upholstery gave off unmistakable whiffs of formaldehyde. Musky, cloying smells prescient of death rose from the old Oriental rugs. The new oven smelled of gas and subliminally called up crematory dread. The beach stank of a hapless gull, dead and torn apart by God knows what scuttling creatures. My world was positively rank in the harsh morning light.

  My head filled with mucus and my eyes stingily gave up a tear apiece, both immediately drying, chilly on my cheeks. I wiped their itchy tracks away roughly on the fabric covering my shoulders. It was the childish gesture of a once happily oblivious little boy shoved down by the schoolyard bully.

  It was all so stupid and self-pitying, I knew it. I laughed at the dark mood to help it pass. I didn’t want it to be a dark cloud over my entire day. I knew little goals got me through each day and even moment by moment. There was a pier up ahead and I struck out for it, hoping for some coffee and a small sense of satisfaction having reached it.

  There was a grill overlooking the beach inside the pier house. It was decorated with shiny tinsel garland overhead and plastic poinsettias in bud vases on each table. An old jukebox was wedged in one corner. The cook turned around and nodded at me, gesturing generally at the empty tables. The place smelled good with richly drifting scents of greasy eggs and sausage and toast and fresh coffee.

  I wasn’t aware of anyone in the place other than the cook until I heard a warm voice say “Good morning, Chris.” I had stopped beside a booth by the window where Heath sat smoking a cigarette. There was a half-eaten plate of toast, a fried egg, and a grits-smeared empty breakfast plate before him, flanked by a fresh cup of black coffee. Heath eyed the empty leash in my hand and my red face and bleary eyes without any judgment or comment. He stuck out his hand for me to shake. When I took it, his grasp urged me down into the seat across the table.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Not too bad,” I answered. Instead of looking skeptical, Heath nodded and gestured toward a plastic carafe in the clutter on the table.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  There was an empty cup and a napkin-wrapped bit of tableware in front of me. I nodded gratefully and he filled my cup. I reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and my lighter.

  “Nasty habit,” Heath said as he thumped a length of ash off his own cigarette and pushed the ashtray to the space between us. “Takes a while to get used to it, doesn’t it?”

  Following his eyes, I looked at the leash I’d absentmindedly set on the table. I lit a cigarette and nodded while I doctored my coffee. “Fourteen years, I had ol’ Beau.”

  “Let me guess. A puppy for the kids and he pretty much became yours, didn’t he?

  I took a sip of the coffee and felt its warmth spread to the chilly hollow where I figured my heart sat. The coffee made me feel better. “Something like that,” I said.

  Heath nodded and looked at me steadily. “None of my business, but how’d you come to be out wandering on this godforsaken beach barefooted on a December morning?”

  Heath had chapped lips, and smile lines radiating in fans from the corners of his warm hazel eyes. His hair would have been reddish at one time; now it was a ruddy brown, bleached gold on the ends and streaked through with coarse silver. Not a handsome man, but not a bad-looking one either, and near my age, if not dead on it. He patiently waited for me to respond.

  “End of one life, start of a new one. What can I say? Look over in that jukebox and you’ll find a dozen songs that’ll play just like it.”

  Heath grinned. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

  “How about you, Dr. Heath? What are you doing eating breakfast all by yourself in the Dine-A-Shore Grill?”

  “I wouldn’t say the answer is as pretty as a song, but you got the general idea. Want anything to eat?”

  I let his evasion go; I was just happy for the company. “No, thanks. I haven’t been too hungry lately.”

  “A full mind and an empty stomach don’t make good company.”

  I smiled and looked down at my coffee cup. Apart from Wade Lee, I couldn’t tell you how many years it had been since I had a conversation alone with another man. After I became a full-time mommy I let my hairdresser friends slip away into their own dramas and accomplishments. None of them seemed relevant to a life outside of the clubs. My life was then spent watching Sesame Street videos instead of ones from Falcon or Catalina. I didn’t have many friends other than the ones that came with Zack. And, ever the loner, I always felt shy and ill at ease with them. I always had felt acutely awkward ever since I was a kid back in Fairview Homes; the feelings were made worse when I was a conspicuous faggot in high school. My growing social aplomb from my early days in Raleigh became stunted when I isolated myself with my kids. Somewhere through the years, I had forgotten what it was like to carry on a sociable, adult conversation with any degree of ease.

  “Are you thinking of getting another Chesapeake?” Heath asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’d better make up my mind soon if I’m going to carry around a leash, otherwise people are going to think I’m crazy as hell.”

  “I think you should take Steve Willis up on his offer of a puppy. He’s a good breeder. He’s mostly concerned with dogs he trains to seriously hunt, but he always culls out a few he thinks would have a better temperament as pets. Be the best thing for you. I’ve found dog people aren’t ever really happy without a dog.”

  I smiled at that. Relieved, I realized my sense of humor and simple conversational skills were all coming back to me. “I’m seriously considering getting in contact with Steve, if you’ll let me know how. Right now I could use the distraction of a puppy. There’s a couple of great things you can say for dogs: They’re good listeners and they hardly ever lie.”

  “That reminds me of this joke Steve told me,” Heath said as he put out one cigarette and lit another. “There was this guy walking down the street and he sees this sign in a man’s yard that says: ‘Talking Dog for Sale—Ten Dollars.’“ He paused to check my reaction, and I nodded and sat back against the booth’s back and waited for him to continue.

  “So the man asks the guy, ‘You really got a talking dog?’ The guy tells him, yeah, the dog’s out in the backyard if he wants to talk to him. So the man goes around to the back of the guy’s house and there’s this dog lying under a tree—no kind of special dog, just a ‘sooner.’ You know what I mean, right?”

  “Yeah, just as soon one kind as another,” I said as I put out my own cigarette, which had burned down to one long cylindrical ash. “Go ahead.”

  “Well, the man asks the dog can he really talk. The dog says, ‘Yeah,’ so the man asks him what’s his story. Okay? So anyway, the dog goes on and on talking about how he’d learned foreign languages and worked for the CIA as a spy listening in on casual meetings of foreign officials, but he got tired of traveling and moved on back home, took a job working security at the airport, got this bitch pregnant, and ended up settling down. Now he’s retired and happy just to hang out. The old boy thanks him for his story and the dog tells him to take it easy.

  “The man goes back to the guy’s front door and knocks. When the guy comes out on the porch, he asks him why he’s selling the dog so cheap. The guy looks at him and says: ‘ ‘Cause he’s a damn liar. That dog ain’t done none of them things.’“

  I laughed until I choked.

  CHAPTER THREE,

  CHRISTMAS

  The sounds were familiar, even in the fog at the edge of sleep. My body remembered and responded despite my confusion. Aware of a strong erection, I stretched and turned to burrow into warm flesh on the other side of the bed only to find the cold expanse of unrumpled, empty sheets. Alone, I listened intently to pinpoint the source of the sounds and could just make out the muffled sounds of sighs, intakes of
breath, swallowed cries, and distant rhythmic squeaks. My erection subsided when I realized where the sounds of love-making were coming from and who was making them.

  My bedside clock read 6:15, and I briefly abandoned my considerable consternation in not having read all the signs correctly in my even stronger need to pee. Still, I remained quiet and waiting in my bed, not wanting to intrude or hinder a certain growing set of sounds that would soon end in releases of breath and sighs I shouldn’t be hearing. I turned to face the window and watched as the cold dawn was warmed by streaks of orange and pink against the fading gray sky out over the ocean. I thought of nothing, but let my body recall Zack’s imprint.

  When I heard the guest shower come on I got up to go to my own bathroom. After I peed and ran my electric razor over my face, I got dressed and straightened my bed covers quickly. I wanted to have the coffee started before I had to face Schooner and his friend Frank. I couldn’t help but smirk a little, but I knew I’d better have it wiped off my face before Schooner saw me.

  From the counter bar between the kitchen and living room, I pointed the remote thingy at the fireplace, pushed the ON button, and was immediately rewarded with a cheery fire. I made coffee, searched the freezer for a bag of frozen biscuits, and put a half dozen in the oven. I placed three napkins, knives, and breakfast plates on the table along with some butter, jam, and fresh tangerines before I settled at the head of the table in one of the wingback chairs Wade Lee had rightly predicted I’d come to love.

  From my vantage point I could survey the fireplace over the sideboard backing the sofa, my shelves stuffed with books, and the paintings on the walls. Hung prominently over the fireplace’s mantel was the portrait of the kids on the beach. Without my glasses, their actual faces were a blur, but I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye. Trey looked directly forward, engaging the viewer with a winning, lopsided grin. Andrea smiled shyly, her face resting against her brother’s bare side, held close by his sheltering arm over her shoulders. Schooner stood a few steps apart, gripping a tremendous whelk shell, staring guardedly at the viewer as if at any moment he might strike out against a probing question or an unwelcome advance into his personal space.