Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits

by Jenna Hilary Sinclair

  I was happy to talk about something else. “No?” Kevin knew how he’d looked.

  He laughed softly. “Well, not much. But I had a good excuse. I was just getting ready to do some yard work when Channing and her boyfriend drove up and surprised me. She wanted to introduce me to JJ, because I think she’s getting serious. Isn’t that ridiculous, at her age? But I sat and had a daddy-talk with them, and then when they left, I hopped outside and took care of the yard.”

  I’d walked up to Kevin’s front door a lifetime ago. Even so, my stomach clenched just a little at the timing. If they’d been later, if I’d been earlier…. “Kids. They don’t think their parents have any lives of their own.”

  “Or teachers too, right?”

  “Or teachers. You should tell her to call before she drops in.”

  “I should, yeah. But I’m rebuilding a relationship with her, and I don’t want to put any barriers between us. She can drop in on me any time, that’s what I’ve told her. It’s nice that she wants to see her old man.”

  “Old man? Were you forty when you fathered her?”

  “I was twenty. And desperately trying to pretend I was straight.”

  I bumped back against him. “You’re not.”

  “Thank heaven for that. I finally figured I had to succumb to the inevitable.”

  The air conditioner clicked on, sounding like the ocean’s roar. There were a million questions hiding under the waves, so much I wanted to know about him.

  “Your voice,” I said. “Did something….” I stopped. I couldn’t ask him what I wouldn’t answer myself. Wanting to know about him didn’t extend to telling him everything about me.

  “I sound like I’ve swallowed a frog, don’t I?” he said lightly.

  “Not all the time. Sometimes you sound like a cicada.” Even so, his words were easy to listen to.

  “That’s a new one. Nobody’s ever called me an insect before, at least not to my face.”

  “Still not to your face,” I said, tugging at his arm.

  “Turn around and say it, then.”

  I did, and our hands found each other again in the space between us. Kevin and his capable hands. “Cicada,” I teased.

  “Professor,” he shot right back.

  “I don’t mind that.” I liked that, but not as much as I liked Kevin.

  “I was tackled during practice with an arm across my throat. I thought I’d never breathe again. When I finally was able to talk a week later, this is what I sounded like.”

  “It’s not bad,” I told him. “It’s distinctive.”

  “At least I can talk at all. It could have been a lot worse. A gay man without a voice, that would have been a disaster. In case you haven’t noticed, in the right circumstances I can talk a lot.”

  “Not me.”

  “You listen a lot, don’t you? But when you have something to say, people listen to you. They know what you have to say is worth saying.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, it’s true, I’ve seen it. You’ve earned a lot of respect at the school.”

  “You don’t have much of a data pool.”

  “If Channing says it, then it’s so. And Danielle. You’ve got a fan club.”

  “You’re hallucinating.”

  He squeezed my hand. “I’ve never been so lucid in my life.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and so I said nothing at all. I lay there and looked at him, and I felt his eyes on me too. Despite the dark, he saw me.

  “Already I’m thinking about next weekend,” he said softly. “Do you want to do this again?”

  Yes, I really did. “Okay.”

  He gave a little laugh. “That’s great. Come over to my house, spend the weekend with me? A little music, a little wine, my nice king-sized bed, way bigger than this thing.”

  “You already know the answer to that one.”

  “You can’t blame a man for trying. So, somewhere else?”

  The answer popped up as if I’d been planning it for weeks. “Fredericksburg. Maybe three hours, three and a half hours from your place. It’s a tourist town.”

  “I know it.”

  “I bet we could find some cabins outside town in the hill country. They might be private enough.”

  “I know you need your privacy.” He touched my wrist with his fingertips. “Should I find us something then? Or do you want to do it?”

  The balance of our relationship teetered on the edge of realigning—Kevin was the one who called, who drove, who pushed, who topped. Either do it or walk away, I thought, the way you already did once in Houston. Walk away? Pass up the best thing, the best person that’d ever happened to me? “All right,” I said. “I’ll make the reservations.”

  Next weekend again with Kevin, great sex, a chance to get away from school… getting to know him better. I smiled.

  “Hey,” Kevin said, “that’s really great.”

  “What?”

  Kevin’s fingers traced my lips, tickling with a light touch. “Right here….” He poked my mouth at the left corner. “And right here….” He poked me at the right corner too. “Oh, the rarest vintage, Tom Smith smiling at me. I think I want to bottle your smile and take it home with me.”

  “Imbecile,” I said most sincerely, but I was chuckling as I said it.

  “And he’s got a fine vocabulary too.” Kevin was smiling twice as widely as I was.

  “Moron.” I felt about twelve years old, but it was such a good feeling. Light.

  “I love it when you call me names.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever called you names, but I’ve got plenty. I’m a college graduate, you know.” I grabbed him around his waist.

  “Amazing. Give me some more.” He bucked against the sheet and inched closer. His skin against my fingers made the base of my spine tingle.

  “Nincompoop. Idiot. Uh….”

  “Jerk?”

  “Not quite the same. Fool,” I said, maybe a little fondly.

  “Tomfool?” His amusement ground to a sudden stop. “Oh, yes,” he whispered, and then he breathed against my lips. “I’m a Tomfool. I’m a fool for Tom, absolutely.”

  He kissed me, a quiet, full pressing of his mouth against mine. I could hardly let myself believe it was really happening, but it was.

  I pulled away before we were finished because suddenly, maybe irrationally, I had to know. “What’s your middle name?”

  “Nothing interesting like yours. Mine’s boring. Robert.”

  Boring? Anything but. Kevin Robert Bannerman.

  FREDERICKSBURG WAS a Saturday morning hike up Enchanted Rock after a long, difficult week, with both of us triumphant when we reached the top, grinning at each other like loons. Fredericksburg was good German food for lunch in town, and our easy conversation about books we’d read and shows we’d seen, and what we really thought of Obama’s chances in the upcoming election. It was a simple, effortless afternoon out on the deck with our feet up and beers in our hands, watching the birds in the sky and a solitary deer that came to greet us as I felt my stress and worry over the play recede because I was there with Kevin. It was the Jacuzzi inside the cabin filled with hot water and both of us laughing as we slid against each other, the incredible feeling of Kevin slick in my arms, the warm taste of him, reaching for him and finding him reaching for me.

  Fredericksburg was steaks on the grill with sweet, sweet corn. It was the look on Kevin’s face when I pulled out my laptop after dinner inside, set a CD to playing, and stood there with my arms extended. “Dance with me?” I’d racked my brain trying to find a way to say thank you for the special care he’d given me the weekend before, and this was the best I’d been able to come up with.

  What I’d guessed from the nights in Houston was right: Kevin loved to dance. What I’d remembered from Houston was confirmed: We danced together pretty well. We slow-danced through the album, laughing together when the music turned up-tempo and we refused to part in order to do it justice, but then I’d carefu
lly picked moody, evocative ballads when I’d put the music together.

  “This was the best idea,” Kevin whispered in my ear.

  We finally fell onto the bed to the sound of k.d. lang singing “Crying” in a duet with Roy Orbison, but we’d already made love four times that day—after waking in the morning, right before lunch, twice in the Jacuzzi—and so contented ourselves with touching and kissing until the baseball game came on. I was almost sorry when it did.

  “Wait a minute,” Kevin said, and he slid out of bed to pad over to a backpack he’d brought into the cabin the night before. He pulled out two brand-new baseball caps and tossed the Boston Red Sox one to me before he got back on the mattress. “This one’s for you,” he said as he settled a Dodgers cap on his head. “I thought we should do honor to the game. You’re a Boston fan, right?”

  I put it on and adjusted the back to fit, pleased past what I should have been that he’d thought to do this. “How’d you know?”

  “You were talking about it at the bar in Springrose, remember?”

  I did remember, but it’d been when he was on the phone with State Farm. He must have been listening to me talk with the other men there.

  We watched the sixth game of the playoff series between the Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays propped up, eating popcorn, and with Kevin’s arm around my shoulders.

  As we left on Sunday afternoon, I leaned back against the headrest in Kevin’s Silverado, and I remembered what he’d said the night before. After the fifth time we made love.

  “Let’s do this again,” Kevin whispered as we lay in bed facing one another, forehead to forehead. “Again and again. Every weekend.”

  Oh, God, yes. If I could just keep this time with him set off from everything else and stop myself from dwelling on the impossibility of it being anything other than what it was, then again and again, all the time. The days in the week when I was Mr. Smith, teacher, had nothing to do with who I could be—who I was—with Kevin.

  “Come over to my house?” he asked as he turned onto the highway. We were three hours from home. “Wine, music, no women, a big bed? Probably more baseball we can watch together.”

  I grabbed the overhead strap as alarm shot through me to think of the two paths of my life intersecting. Even if the picture Kevin painted of how it would be at his house—just like this past weekend in the luxury cabin—was tempting beyond belief, I still had to say no. I could go just so far… and no further.

  So instead, the next Saturday we finally made it to Abilene. We put the Privacy sign on the door of one of the rooms we’d paid for, called for room service when we were hungry, and stayed in bed to use as many condoms as we could. Kevin licked me from head to toe and back again, and I quivered for hours. We squeezed the lube flat and started on a second tube. I couldn’t get enough of him.

  When we drove away that time, again in Kevin’s truck, I looked over at him. His eyes were intent on the road. I thought: my lover. My weekend lover. He was.

  Everything had changed except the voice that told me none of this could happen in the real world.

  Chapter 5

  Those Who Wander

  THE NIGHT before Kevin left for a conference in Phoenix, we talked for almost an hour on the phone. After three weekends in a row out together—getting to know that he was a fan of John Barrowman in Torchwood but didn’t think much of Doctor Who, that he had a passable singing voice, that he’d tried to learn French and couldn’t, that he took his coffee black, and hundreds of other things that made him distinctively who he was—we wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while. He’d be in Arizona visiting his cousin this coming weekend before attending a genuine bankers’ conference the next week. I’d miss him, though I didn’t tell him that. Kevin and I didn’t say things like that to each other. At the same time, it was almost a relief to have some time off. I hardly felt familiar to myself anymore, and I needed the time to take a breath and think.

  Even though it was late once we said good night, past Leno and time for sleep, I couldn’t be still. I walked around the house looking for something to release the nervous energy Kevin had roused in me and ended up spending an hour going through some of the junk overflowing my garage. I managed to go through just three of the boxes filled with old paperwork from years before; I dumped all of it in my big trashcan. After that I was able to sleep, and I woke up the next morning to the sound of Kevin’s voice—his hoarse, damaged, sincere voice—ringing in my ear. I didn’t know what he’d been saying in my dreams, but he’d been there for sure.

  As I drove to school that Thursday morning, the day before Halloween, I felt strangely bereft. A few fucks and Tom’s an easy mark, I thought to myself. I was a pushover for a little attention. I was so lonely I’d be happy with just about anybody. I was emotionally stunted.

  There were kernels of truth in all those thoughts, but I pushed them aside. Besides, Kevin wasn’t just anybody.

  Like I did a few times a week, I made sure to walk by Robbie’s locker that morning before first bell. Steven was there, as he was sometimes, wearing not his Gunning High School maroon baseball cap but the flat cloth hat that distinguished Tom Collins on stage. He and Robbie seemed to be deep in a serious conversation. Despite what seemed to me to be Robbie’s obvious crush on Steven, they’d developed a friendship that I was pleased to see. There was no sign of kids gathered to pray over the misbegotten faggot, and I didn’t think the boys noticed me. I walked on to let them be, but a voice called, “Mr. Smith! Wait up.”

  I turned to find that Steven had come up behind me. Like most star athletes, he was physically mature beyond his years, almost as tall as I was at over six feet and with the walk and shoulder set of a grown man. It would be a few years before he filled out, though. But he was a good-looking kid with brown hair that he was wearing short for the play, to serve as a contrast to Angel.

  “Have you seen the paper, sir?” he asked anxiously. “Rob has a copy. Come on back to his locker, please.”

  There was time before classes started, but more importantly I felt Steven’s urgency as he literally pulled me back the way I’d already come by tugging on my sleeve. I saw the glint of withheld tears in Robbie’s eyes as we got close.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Steven took the newspaper that had been clenched in Robbie’s hands and handed it over. “Here. It’s awful.”

  The Gunning Gazette’s Thursday edition was turned to page seven, where the editorials and the letters to the editor were usually printed. There were two letters that day, and as I scanned the headings, my mouth twisted in distaste. I looked back up at the boys. “They’re against the play?”

  “Go ahead,” Robbie said, though he put his fist up to his mouth. I didn’t know if it was to cover up fear or anger or what. He looked even paler than usual. “Read them. We’ll wait.”

  “WHERE ARE THE VALUES IN PLAY AT GHS?” was the headline for the first letter.

  Dear Editor,

  Its been years since one of my kids was up at the High School but I’m worryed that the School will be putting on Rent in December. Who got such a bee in their bonnet? Rent might be good for the Crowd that goes to New York and sees the latest nonsense on Broadway but there’s no Place for it here in Gunning. We don’t want Drugs here we don’t want the Homosexuals here & we want to raise kids with good respect for their parents. Its hard enough in this day and age to raise Boys that will be a credit to their Fathers without High Schools pointing out all the wrong things & turning them into sissys. Why can’t we put on a different play that will uplift our Spirits? Whose the idiot on the School Board who thought a play about homos in high heels and dresses was all right for Gunning? They sure won’t get my vote next time if thats the sorts of things they do at the Board Meetings. Nobody has any sense of shame any more. When I was a student the School stood for decency & I was proud to graduate. Now I’m shamed of that School. What’s happened to the folks up there? What are they thinking?

  Yours,


  Lynda Whitman

  If that had been it, I could have dismissed the letter. One opinion from an older woman, probably set in her ways, who maybe hadn’t learned as much from her English teachers when she’d been at school as she should have. But I couldn’t ignore the second letter.

  “BOYCOTT PLAY AT GUNNING HIGH SCHOOL” it started.

  Dear Editor:

  As an elder of the First Baptist Church of Gunning, I feel it necessary to alert the citizens of Gunning to the forthcoming production of Rent at the Gunning High School. Anyone familiar with the play knows it is totally unsuitable for a high school presentation, as it focuses on the glorification of the drug culture. Even worse, a play that makes no moral judgment on the evils of homosexuality is not suitable for impressionable teenage minds. At a time when it is ever more imperative to convey biblical teachings to our youngsters, the choice of Rent is more than unfortunate, it is counter to everything that our community stands for.

  If Hiram Watts, principal of GHS, and George Keating, director of the show, don’t withdraw the production, then I sadly but boldly call for all citizens to withdraw their support from the play. Show your Christian values and boycott Rent at Gunning High School.

  Yours most sincerely,

  William Tate,

  Elder, First Baptist Church of Gunning

  My three-weekend bubble burst almost audibly in my head. To my shame, I didn’t think of the kids or the good the play might do or George’s probable distress: I thought of myself.

  I didn’t want the spotlight like Robbie and Steven did. I was content to labor backstage in anonymity. I had wrapped anonymity around me for years, and even my name helped me blend into the background: Mr. Nothing-Special Tom Smith. But letters like these two turned harsh, exposing lights on everybody involved in the play, and I couldn’t afford that. I had a lot more to protect now than I’d had at the start of the school term. I had Kevin now. Would George’s bulk be big enough for the two of us to hide behind? If people began looking at me, would they find Kevin? My stomach clenched into the granddaddy of all sickening knots.