Then Uncle Sean introduced me to his friend. When I stood up I offered the guy my hand, but I wasn’t about to press my body against his and give him a hug. I was relieved that he didn’t try it.
Bryce looked me in the eye when we shook hands, but I noticed he glanced downward a second then back to my face. “So you’re Sean’s nephew,” he said, dropping my hand then turning to Uncle Sean. “You didn’t tell me he was drop-dead gorgeous!”
I felt my ears turn red at that and my dick shrunk a little. I was glad that Uncle Sean had sat back down. I followed suit. Bryce squatted on the balls of his feet, and I couldn’t help noticing how his family jewels and his own dick hung down. For an old guy, he was pretty well hung. With that thought, I looked away for a second. I hoped Uncle Sean hadn’t brought me out here to meet other guys. I was still wearing my wedding band, which meant I wasn’t available.
“How’s Carlos?” Uncle Sean said to his friend.
“He couldn’t make it, today. He’s got a summer cold, and the last thing he needs is to get a chill out here.”
“Too bad,” Uncle Sean said. Then he turned to me. “Bryce and Carlos have been together for…how long, Bryce?”
“Twenty years,” Bryce said. “Twenty fabulous years, I might add.” He turned to me. “Sean tells me you’ve got a lover on the west coast. How do you stand it?”
For a moment I was surprised that Uncle Sean had been talking about me like that to his friends, and then I was kind of pleased.
“I don’t,” I said. “Stand it, that is. It’s so hard, I just feel kind of sad all the time.”
“Well, don’t give up, hon,” Bryce said, smiling. “Young love. It’s just so painful at times. But Sean tells me you’re very mature for your age. How about your lover? How’s he taking it?”
That was a sensitive question for me, because even though Lance always tells me how much he misses me, he sure has a lot going on there in ‘Frisco. “He’s busy with school. He’s made quite a few friends,” I explained, “for which I’m glad.” Truth was, it was hard for me to hear the joy in his voice as he talked about things out there. Sometimes I even wondered if he was telling me everything. He mentioned the names of a lot of guys he hangs around with.
“Sometimes…” I said, and suddenly felt tears spring to my eyes.
Uncle Sean put his arm around my shoulders, looking at Bryce. “Will’s having a hard time with the separation. I thought maybe Hippie Hollow would brighten him up a little.”
Bryce sat his butt down right on the sand and hugged his knees, looking at me. There was gray in his hair around the temples, but it was still mostly a dark brown, cut short, and I could imagine him in a business suit. His eyes were a soft brown, and he was kind of good looking for an older man. I liked his smile, too. It was warm and genuine. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Just keep telling your lover how much you love him, Will. Trust him. Your relationship will be stronger for it. The trust—and the separation.”
“I hope so,” I said, not really knowing what to say. “You ever been separated from Carlos?”
“Oh Lord, yes!” he said. “He’s a sales rep for HP. He’s on the road half the time.”
I kind of felt better, but then I wondered if Bryce and his lover ever slept with other guys, considering the way Uncle Sean had been treated there in San Francisco by his last boyfriend. Uncle Sean thought he was going to grow old with him, but the guy ended up cheating on him and mocking him for thinking two men could be married. I knew Uncle Sean had been hurt about that. I was itching to ask Bryce if he and Carlos were true to each other, but I kept my mouth shut. If this guy was someone I’d be seeing much of, I thought I’d probably find out.
I surprised myself by getting up and clapping Uncle Sean on the shoulder, telling him I was going to take a walk. I felt Bryce’s eyes move over my body as I stood up but I shrugged off the embarrassment and walked away.
In all, we spent about four hours at the lake. As it came up on early afternoon I finally jumped into the water and swam around a little. Bryce came and went, and so did other men Uncle Sean knew. I noticed they all seemed glad to see him, and I figured it was partly because he was the best looking guy there. I was no different. I enjoyed looking at him from head to foot. Even though I loved Lance with all my heart it was great to be out at the lake with Uncle Sean, so casually naked and just plain beautiful. He was a more compact version of my six-foot-three inches. Right around six feet, he was still striking, in comparison to other men. Besides his blond hair and his pale blue eyes, a strong jaw line and his very striking mouth, he has a deep, hairless chest, wide shoulders, no doubt from his time in the army, a small waist, and thick thighs and calves, also practically hairless. In comparison, I’ve got the same deep chest and musculature, since I worked on a farm and played football. But I’ve got more hair on my chest and course, dark hair on my thighs. Side-by-side, I think I’m a little thicker and taller than Uncle Sean, and I know that I’ll have to always stay in shape with exercise of some sort. Uncle Sean can relax in that department, because even sitting behind a desk as he does now during the day, he just has to slow down on his eating to lose weight and to keep his body trim.
It’s funny that you learn things when you’re stark naked in public. You can’t hide behind your clothes, and what you are is there for everyone to see. Being naked in front of a person, whether it’s a friend or a stranger, takes away all pretense because I couldn’t have said whether the guys I met were bankers or truck drivers, except maybe by some of their haircuts, or the way they were tanned in places and lily white in others. I could tell maybe if a guy worked outdoors, patch tanned on his hands and face but with pale skin everywhere else. That pretty much described me when I was on the farm, but here in Austin, I’d lost a lot of the tan, since all I did was go to classes and work in the geology department. Now that I knew about this place, I figured I’d be coming out here when I wasn’t busy.
When it came time to go, I didn’t feel like getting dressed, and so I hiked most of the way back to the car naked. Uncle Sean thought it was funny, but then when we were approaching the parking lot he tossed me the bag. “I don’t think it’s too good of an idea to be seen by people on the highway.”
So I scrambled into my clothes feeling disappointed, though I have to admit that the emptiness was gone for a little while that day.
Chapter Two:
The University
As I said, I’d almost made it through my first semester at the University of Texas main campus. The student population, alone, was bigger than Hachita, Animas, Cotton City, Lordsburg, Deming, and Common, New Mexico, combined. Those were about the only towns I’d been in during most of my nineteen years, and some of my freshmen classes, like history, had more students than my entire high school. In fact, on my first day of classes, I was so shocked at the sea of students I felt like running away and telling Uncle Sean I just couldn’t do it. So I played monkey-see, monkey-do, and joined the river of students heading to classes and asked other students where the buildings were.
Some of them were just downright rude, picking me out as a hick right away. One guy with hair down to his waist and skin so pale you could see the blackheads in his face sneered at me. “I think you’re looking for Texas A&M, there, plowboy.”
I was embarrassed for him at his uncalled-for meanness, so I smiled real big and kind of put on an act. “Shoot! I knowed sumthin’ was wrong. Hope my horse can git me to that there A&M place.”
Most of the students I struck up conversations with were friendly, I guess. But many of them dressed poorly in raggedy looking clothes or dirty Levi’s, and many of the guys had long and sometimes greasy looking hair. I finally caught on it was kind of the campus costume. I guess I did stand out with my short-cut hair, Wranglers, and western-cut shirt. I never thought I’d have to buy a whole lot of different clothes. During the first week or so I wore the best clothes I had, which were the same ones I’d worn to school in Animas.
Uncle Sean j
ust advised me not to worry about how much I stood out. “Hell, Will, I bet a lot of the rudest students come from little hick towns, themselves, from all over Texas. They’re afraid of people knowing, so they act like they’re from elsewhere. Don’t be ashamed of where you came from. You be proud of yourself, because you look good in anything you wear.” Still, I hadn’t got a haircut since I arrived and didn’t intend to, unless Mama made me. Four months had made a difference in the length. And I took to parting it in the middle, like a few good-looking guys I’d seen. After a while, when I felt at home going to school, I was able to see what Uncle Sean had meant about being proud of myself. Mama would have said I didn’t need to “put on airs,” so I didn’t.
The professors, who I finally learned were usually just graduate students, did put on airs—like freshmen were some sort of insect that they’d prefer squashing underfoot. I sure know that some of the instructors handed out F’s like candy. The instructor in my freshman English class had even announced on the first day of classes that he was going to flunk half of us. So I was determined to get an A. He posted office hours and said his door was always open. I went to see him during the first office hour on his schedule. It was the afternoon of my first class under him. It turned out it wasn’t an office at all but a little dimly lit cubicle in a room full of cubicles.
There wasn’t a door, either, so I knocked on the wall (which wasn’t a wall but a five-foot high, cloth-covered room divider), and it set things to rattling on the table he was sitting at, sloshing his drink in a coffee mug.
“Hey! Easy there, cowboy!” he said, frowning up at me, obviously taking note of my boots, Wranglers, and shirt with the pearl-snap buttons. So I figured cowboy probably fit.
I had to stifle a grin when I looked down on the syllabus with his name on it. “Dr. Hardon?”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s a misprint. It’s Hardmon. I thought I corrected that in class. You were in one of my classes, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Dr. Hardmon,” I said. “I—”
“And I am not a professor. So don’t call me doctor.”
“Yes, sir. I—”
“What are you doing, here, anyway, kid? The semester is…” he looked down at his watch then back up at me, “about two hours old.”
“I intend to get an A,” I said.
I didn’t know if he was challenged by my remark or angry, because an odd smile crossed his face. He was kind of good looking in a thin and sickly way. Even his light brown hair looked tired and thin. He looked like he never got outdoors, had never built up his muscles, like a fifteen year old who had never grown into an adult body. But he had an adult’s sharp tongue and had, so far, interrupted me every time I opened my mouth—except for my last statement. So I figured I must have stunned him. He was still seated, but I’ll bet he was no taller than Lance and barely tipped the scales at a hundred pounds. I was still standing by the cubicle entrance.
“You do, do you?” he said, finally, with the smile still tugging at his lips. “And what makes you think you’re ‘A’ material? Especially at the University of Texas? We have high academic achievement standards. Most freshmen…especially those of you coming from Dipshit, Texas, and Hogshit, Oklahoma, are never prepared. Have you ever written an essay of more than one paragraph in your entire life?”
He made me smile to myself, but I didn’t let it show on my face. After all the years that I’d been writing in my journal, I’d come to a few discoveries about writing, backed up by the English classes I’d had back in Animas. I decided to be direct and rise to his challenge. I flicked out his syllabus.
“It says, here, Mr. Hardmon, that our first theme will be five-hundred words. I usually write that many words just as a warm up exercise. To me, a paragraph is just about the smallest unit of sentences, taken together, that provides enough context for one developed thought.”
“What do you mean?” he said. I saw that he’d raised his eyebrows a little and kind of shifted upward in his chair. I had his interest.
“Well,” I said. “I noticed a long time ago, if you write a sentence, one of those declarative sentences, like ‘flying airplanes can be dangerous,’ people can misinterpret what you say. It could mean that being a pilot and flying airplanes can be dangerous, But—”
“What else could it mean?” he said, interrupting me, again, but there was a note of interest in his voice.
“Well, what if you’re walking along a road, and a plane flying overhead has engine trouble, and you don’t pay it any mind, and it crashes on you? Then, you could also say ‘flying airplanes can be dangerous.’ Get it?”
This time his face lit up with delight. “That’s pretty clever, kid. So you’d take a whole paragraph to explain exactly what you mean, right?”
“To develop one thought. Yes, sir, usually, unless I’m writing dialog.”
“All right!” he said, kind of excited. He looked more like a kid than ever, and when his face lit up with a smile like it just did, I definitely thought he was better looking. “Look, you do sound like you know what you’re talking about. So you write a lot?”
I nodded. “I’ve been writing almost every day since I was fourteen years old—a journal. It’s just something I do. It’s almost like I sometimes need to write so I can understand my feelings. You ever feel that way?”
He was definitely smiling with interest, now, and he stood up. “I do. I keep a journal, too. Mostly crap, but it keeps me loose. You want to head over to the Union and get some coffee? We could discuss how you’re going to get your grade. Do you have any more classes this afternoon?”
I was kind of glad. I think I broke through his snobby attitude. I figured he couldn’t be much more than twenty-three, since he was not a professor. Maybe twenty-five at the outside. I was right, too. I was a lot taller than he was.
“I wouldn’t want to take up your office hours,” I said. “But I could use some coffee.”
“Hell, kid, I’m not going to have any more visitors. All I teach are freshmen, and most of them won’t even be cracking a book until ten minutes before my next class. I won’t get any students in here until I hand back the first themes. Then they’ll come begging me to help them.”
“You mean about flunking half of them?”
He grinned and winked. “That’s what my tough grades are for. I don’t hand out A’s like they’re candy. I want them to worry, and if they’re serious about surviving freshman year they’ll line my walls.”
So we strolled across campus. The sun was out and even though it couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees out, it wasn’t cold at all. He asked me where I was from.
“Cowshit, New Mexico,” I said, rolling my eyes over at him to see how he liked being reminded of his sarcasm.
He grinned. “You’re quick, kid. What is your name, again?”
I told him.
“You’re smart, Will. I can tell. But it’s true what I said. Really. Half the students who come to college aren’t going to make it. I’m not being elitist. It’s just fact.”
Still, I thought to myself that he was quick to judge. “It’s not just students from small towns, though,” I said. “My little hick high school was a good one. I’m on a full scholarship, so people back home are investing in me. I don’t intend to let them down.”
“Good for you,” he said. “Call me Troy, by the way. Only not in class, okay?”
I nodded, looking down at him, and I wished Lance was with me. Troy reminded me of Lance because of his size, but there was no comfort in that. It was kind of painful thinking of Lance just then.
We made small get-to-know-you talk as we neared the Union, but we passed right by it, because it was being remodeled and we made our way to a building near Gregory Gym where the university had set up Union South, as it was called.
Like everywhere on campus, it was buzzing with students, and we got our coffee and made our way to a table. I was still carrying my books under my arm instead of strapping on a bag like many of the students we
re doing. I laid them on the table next to my coffee. Troy wasn’t carrying anything and he pulled out a chair then immediately began pouring sugar into his cup. I was surprised at the amount he was pouring in.
“Lunch,” he said, noticing me watching. “I haven’t had any, so this’ll have to do.”
No wonder he was skinny. He was a sugar and caffeine freak. Earlier, I’d eaten a sandwich and a banana and drunk a bottle of milk, so the coffee was just a boost.
“Why did you marry so young, Will?” Troy asked, once we were settled down and sipping our coffee. He’d noticed my wedding band, I guess. “I’ve found that students who get married and have children right away usually have to interrupt their schooling. Was it straight out of high school?”
Again, he’d jumped to conclusions. First I was a hick from a small town, so couldn’t possibly be prepared for his class. Now I was married and was about to start having children. I studied his face. It was really almost skeletal, as were his arms, even though they were cloaked in a sports jacket. He was wearing a turtleneck, and even it hung loosely around his thin neck.
“It’s not what you think,” I said, tentatively answering his question, wondering if I should just be honest. I’d seen signs around campus about a new group that was forming called GPA, which stood for Gay People of Austin. I intended to make it to their first meeting. I was more curious than anything else.
“You’re not married? Is that it? You just wear a wedding ring?”
I shook my head, sipped on my coffee, set it down, fiddled with my ring. I felt nervous because I had no idea how Troy would react. “Christmas, a year ago, my boyfriend and I decided we would make a commitment to each other. He’s in San Francisco going to art school.”
All Over Him Page 2
