“You know what, Will? I think you might be someone to like. But if you put yourself above the rest of us, expect to fall down. You will, you know? You will fall.”
That hurt, and I slugged him gently on the shoulder and walked past him. It hurt because I knew I already had fallen. Something inside was not quite as loyal to Lance as I had thought. So as I continued home, I promised myself I would never allow temptation to take me as far as it had. I didn’t know how I was going to tell Lance the truth of that night. I’d already cried on the phone and in letters to him about almost getting raped. I’m sure now, like me, he would find any more of my tears of protest a little disgusting.
I looked back over my shoulder, though of course Renato was already a half-hour in my past. Next time I ran into him, I’d have to keep it light and not allow him to know how close he came to really getting under my skin. I figure he thrives on the thrill of the hunt. And for him, apparently, the hunt wasn’t over yet.
* * *
Of course it was supper time when I hit the front door, and even though I was still troubled from my visit with Charlie and Lee and the encounter with Renato, as soon as I walked into the living room and tossed my books onto the nearest end table, Hanky-Hank jumped in my arms and climbed up my chest to plant a big sloppy kiss on my cheek.
“We’s havin’ burgers on the grill. Nobody’s eatin’ yet. So hurry, Will.”
I kissed him back and let him down, ran a finger down my cheek where he had slobbered, and we took each others’ hands and ran-walked through the kitchen and onto the small patio. Sure enough Uncle Sean was scooping burgers off the grill and Hank was smearing mustard on the buns at the nearby table. Also on the table was a pie, which Mama had probably sent with Hank, now that she was taking piano lessons from him. There was a bag of ice in a cooler and a lineup of sodas and what had to be the purple Kool-Aid Hanky-Hank liked. Uncle Sean was wearing white Bermuda shorts and a tank-top, and Hank, now that he was more relaxed about his body, was wearing Bermuda shorts, too, and a rather loose-fitting T-shirt, though in places I could see the pudginess that he had tried to hide when he first came to live with us. But Uncle Sean had convinced him he liked his Teddy Bear body.
I kissed Uncle Sean on the cheek and did the same with Hank.
“You almost missed out,” Hank said, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Hanky was driving himself into a fit, afraid you weren’t going to get to eat.”
By then I was starved and my stomach growled. Though I still felt a heaviness in my chest from what had been revealed about me that afternoon, I began to feel happier as I took my place among my family of guys.
“We’re going to see that new Mel Brooks movie,” Uncle Sean said, once we were seated and passing pickles and onions and potato chips around, piling stuff onto our plates, “so you need to hurry if you’re going.”
“Blazing Saddles,” I said, just before I chomped down on my hamburger.
“They has horses,” Hanky put in, his face shining with excitement, “like Trinket’s horse. You goes with us?”
All three of the guys were looking at me expectantly, but I just couldn’t. I needed some time alone. So I backed out and changed the subject. “Homework. I should’ve stayed on campus tonight, but I went out with Charlie and his friend, Lee.”
Uncle Sean asked about Charlie, then told Hank about him, telling him in an off-hand way that he was also gay. I looked over at Hanky-Hank to see how all this was registering with him. It was over his head—for now. Hank had already been able to tell the kid why he and Uncle Sean slept together, talking about love and what some men felt about other men. To little Hank’s four-year-old mind, such was fine if his father told him it was. I had wondered then, as I do now, just when he would find out from others that it wasn’t so good, even if Daddy said it was. But that was in the vague future, once he started kindergarten, maybe, and spilled the beans about his father. I was sure he’d talk about Hank and Uncle Sean and me and even his mother, since he was a gregarious little kid. But tonight I just settled back with them, enjoying our dinner before they got up and changed and made great noise as they left for the movie.
* * *
Then I did something I thought I’d never do. I broke into Uncle Sean’s pot stash and rolled a mangled joint. As far as I knew, he hadn’t touched the stuff since he met Hank, and I was glad for that. As I was rolling the joint, I was remembering my judgment about Uncle Sean’s dependence upon this stuff, and here I was planning to smoke a joint by myself.
This time, however, I would be alone and I wanted that looser feeling of languid dissociation I felt whenever I did smoke. I didn’t want to touch alcohol because it made me feel too heavy and sleepy. No...this wasn’t a ‘tool’ to some higher state of consciousness, and I wasn’t pretending that it was, but I wanted to free-associate all my thoughts now that I knew what I’d done at the concert and in Charlie’s dorm room.
Okay. So I’m in my room with the desk lamp burning. I’m in a dreamy sort of state, and my legs aren’t shaking, because I’m not stoned out in public. It’s just me, sitting at my desk, writing in my journal.
It’s no excuse time.
I remember back when Uncle Sean came to live with us on the farm, and right then I felt things for him and continued to feel them. That Big Chief tablet is collecting dust in a box in the barn there outside of Hachita; but I remember what I felt back then and thinking I was going to die if Uncle Sean didn’t kiss me. I remember going through his stuff, too.
That. Right there. That’s a flaw. You don’t go through people’s private stuff, but I did.
And I remember sneaking into his bed, just so I could smell him in the sheets. He was on a date or something, and I didn’t give it a second thought.
And that, too, is something you don’t do. It was another sort of intrusion on his personal space.
But I went through his stuff and got in his bed because I wanted to, and I gave in to my desires even though I knew it was wrong.
There’s Margie Collins, too, whom I considered to be a slut and judged her for it. But Mama showed us it was far kinder to feel sorry for her than it was to judge her too harshly. Yet I did, didn’t I? Me...the perfect person. The one who put the make on Renato and no telling who all when I was tripping.
I also judged Dick Lamb when he and Casey were first getting it on. I remember writing about that too, and feeling that they couldn’t possibly have what Lance and I had, because we were true to each other, while Dick and Casey were just effing each other.
What I see all too clearly, now that I know how I acted the night of concert, is that I have been setting myself above other people all my life, judging them for this or that and, all the while, I’ve been a sneak and deep down have this slutty streak, myself. I blamed Charlie that morning when he and I were coming off the acid outside his dorm for allowing Renato to slip me the LSD. Then, when Charlie wouldn’t tell me what he knew about that night, I automatically thought he was hiding something, like they had tried to rape me. What I know is true now is that Charlie was trying to protect me from a far worse truth—that I am not a good person, deep down, when you take away my inhibitions.
There. I’m stuck with it. Now what?
My father. I was a shit to him when he needed me not to be. When he was being eaten up with worry and ulcers.
Hell, I’ve even judged Uncle Sean here in Austin, the way he slept with Trevor when I didn’t think he should have. And all the time, I had this unconscious loose streak in me.
At least it doesn’t hurt as much as it did, fearing I had been raped and finding out I was inviting the guys to do it. So despite what Charlie might think about finally telling me what went on that night, I’ve learned something disturbing about my inner self.
I think that’s a good thing to know. Maybe I won’t be so quick to judge other guys.
* * *
The call I just got from Lance made me jump when the phone rang right next to me.
“You sound funny, Will,�
� he said, when I picked up and almost started crying because it was him and I had made myself miserable writing in my journal.
“Are you all right?” he insisted when I didn’t say anything right away. I was trying to breathe to calm myself down.
I told him I was fine and took the phone, cord and all, and traveled to the bed, fighting to get out of my clothes as I went.
“Where are you?” he asked. I told him I was in my room. “I...I just smoked a joint, honey, so I’m kind of buzzed. I’m getting out of my clothes, now that I know it’s you.”
He laughed at that.
“And you? How’re things there?”
It was our usual foreplay before we got down to the mushy stuff. But while we talked I kept thinking of the concert and knew I was going to tell him how things had really gone.
His news was the usual good stuff about his painting and classes, and how his show went.
“I’ve got an agent, Will. I can’t believe it. Diedre doesn’t care that I’m still a student. She wants me to go to Europe to study the masters. And she’s talking about some kind of program where I go live in Italy for a year. Only I told her I couldn’t do—”
“No, honey, you should!” I said, knowing it was the right thing to say, but feeling a deep-seated dread cut my breath off. “Your art comes first.”
“No. You do, Will. As far as I’m concerned we could’ve stayed right there in Hachita!”
His voice, deep and oily, and still distant-sounding had a hurt sound as well. And I wasn’t sure what that was about. “Don’t you think you should take your agent’s advice, though?”
“If that’s what you want, Will. But I couldn’t stand another whole year away from you.”
So that was it, it wasn’t the right thing to say to encourage him to take off on any trip, and I was relieved.
“Maybe we could both go to Italy, and I could take off a year from school or something.”
“That would be all right,” he said, though still sounding tentative.
There was so much I needed to say and found I was tongue tied. We’d been apart long enough that the old “stranger” thing crept back in to my feelings about him, as it had when we said good-bye in San Francisco. Too long he had been just a voice on the phone, and more and more both of us seemed to be grasping at the emotional tether holding us together. So I bit my tongue about telling him what I’d done the night of the concert.
“I have got to see you, Will! I can’t stand the thought that it’s still almost sixty days before I come out there.”
I began crying. I couldn’t help it, and the high I was on from the joint wasn’t helping any, because my emotions had become as mushy as my thinking.
“There is something wrong, isn’t there?” This time his voice was sharp, and I could tell he was worried.
“Actually, honey, there’s not. I’m crying because I love you so much, and I just miss us together.”
“Okay...” he said, kind of trailing off with a question in his voice.
This time I went from tears to laughter like a little kid whose mother’s kiss made it all better. [note: don’t write when you’re high any more, geez! This stinks!]
But back to Lance’s call.
After a while, I finally convinced him I was fine, and then we made love on the phone. We were still making love when I heard the guys get home. I was naked and erect, and I hoped Hanky-Hank wouldn’t come bursting into the room, because I’d have a hard time explaining why I was ‘ready for a bath’ in the middle of my bed.
So I whispered to Lance that everyone was home and I hadn’t shut my bedroom door.
We then finished up and both got off the phone, laughing.
Chapter Fourteen:
Waiting
Waiting is maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s like I’m running in sand as this semester moves slowly through November. Austin is still a fine place to live and actually quite a bit warmer even this late in the fall than I thought it would be. Nights are getting chilly, and when we’re all home for the evening, the three of us make a good dinner, then later after I’ve studied for a little while and Sean and Hank have changed and Hanky-Hank is bathed, we make hot chocolate. The kid doesn’t appreciate the hot part of the chocolate, but he does like to melt marshmallows in his cup; then he usually just lets it cool until he can drink it. Afterward, he sits on the floor or in someone’s lap and we three adults talk. I add to the conversation, but it’s like I’m just going through the motions.
Every night I count off one more day, then another; then after putting in an hour or so on the books, I go to bed around midnight and lie awake. Mainly I recall in as much detail as I can all the days Lance and I were together on the farm. I visualize Lance’s face and by hugging my own body, I try to remember how he felt against me. Usually I can see him in my mind’s eye. And sometimes when I’ve drifted off, it’s almost like I can feel him. Sometimes I wake up confused and sticky from a wet dream where we’ve been making love. Then I realize it was only a dream.
* * *
I quit GPA. It got to be so political and full of in-fighting I was just plain disgusted. Everything had to be an argument, first between the men and the women, and then when they drifted out of the group, among the men. Besides, Renato goes to the meetings, and it seems it’s only to tease me. “You’re going to fall hard, Mr. High Road,” he says whenever he sees me. At first, I tried to join him in his joke. But something about the way he just kept at it during the meetings, sitting beside me and repeating himself made me think he really is pissed about a missed opportunity, maybe, or my continuing refusal to warm up to him.
And then one night when I was at home, shortly after dinner, the phone rang. Uncle Sean picked it up, then a second later he hung up. We were sitting down to our hot chocolate, so the phone call was an interruption.
“Who was that, honey?” Hank asked.
“Don’t know,” Uncle Sean said, joining him on the couch. “They didn’t say anything, they just hung up.”
Then, just as we were settled down again, the phone rang a second time and Hank got it.
Same thing. A hang up. He barely sat down when the phone rang a third time, so I answered it.
“You’re going to fall for me one of these days, Cocktease. You know you can’t resist!”
My ears burned and I saw from the look on Uncle Sean’s face that my surprise and dismay must have shown as I hung up on Renato.
“Who was that?” Uncle Sean said. All three guys, including Hanky-Hank, were looking at me expectantly.
“Just some pervert from my GPA group, who’s trying to get me in the sack,” I said, moving away from the phone, afraid it was going to ring again. “I bet he’s the one who hung up on you two.”
“What’s a perberts?” Hanky-Hank wanted to know as I sat in my chair and gathered him up so he could sit with me.
“Woops, sorry for the outburst,” I said, turning to Hank, realizing that the kid absorbed words like a sponge. “Didn’t mean to spout it out loud.”
But Hank smiled. “He won’t catch on,” he said, rolling his eyes toward his son.
Hanky-Hank was stirring his chocolate, watching the marshmallow morsels melt in the brown swirl. But he looked up at me, chocolate ringing his little mouth. “What’s a perberts?”
Careful not to cause him to spill his drink, I repositioned him on my lap, mussing his hair. “Somebody who’s not playing nice.”
He looked thoughtful a moment, then tentatively sipped on his chocolate, my answer apparently satisfying his curiosity.
* * *
The next day, I sought out Renato in Union South where he was sitting with some other guys from GPA. As I approached, I saw that the others were looking at me expectantly. One of them was the drag queen, Tim, and his smirk was the nastiest, while Renato just appraised my approach with his icy-blue eyes beneath his dark auburn brows. A smile played about his mouth.
“Don’t call my house any more and then just hang up,
” I said. “If you have something to say, ask for me.”
Renato pouted his lips and the others at his table continued grinning. I figured they must have known about his little game with me.
“I mean it, Renato.”
He didn’t say anything and continued to pout his lips, making kissing noises. Even though I felt like taking his head off, I thought he was good-looking the way his dark lips dominated his face, off-set by the light eyes. I bet he practiced doing that in front of a mirror.
His refusal to say anything to me, and the others enjoyment of his cleverness made me feel embarrassed to just be standing there. So I put on my biggest smile and moved up next to him, with my crotch at his eye-level. I glanced around to make sure no one but the guys at the table noticed, then I cupped myself and squeezed. “This is one mouthful you’re never going to get, except in your dreams.”
Tim burst out laughing and Renato finally frowned, losing his teasing look.
I made my getaway at that point, though I didn’t feel any better and was sure my face was burning with embarrassment.
* * *
Besides the slow movement of the days, I was drowning in mid-terms and feeling rotten as the days groaned by. I had begun the countdown with Lance at sixty days until we’d be together. And now it was only down to fifty. I studied more in those ten days than I had the entire semester. I managed to pass the tests with good grades but, as a result, I felt drained and kind of depressed.
It’s mid-afternoon on the 3rd of November and I’m home rather than on campus. I’ve got the apartment to myself. Hanky-Hank is with his mother. Hank is still at school and won’t be home for another couple of hours, and Uncle Sean won’t be home until after that.
I’ve been wandering around the apartment, seeing things that have been kind of piling up with Hank and the kid here. Toys, an unfinished jigsaw puzzle we’re not ready to give up on yet, books lying open face-down on the end tables no one wants to disturb because someone is reading them. And Hanky-Hank’s bedroom, which was going to be Uncle Sean’s office, has now been furnished, and the kid has made it his own room for sure. He’s into dinosaurs, and even though his father makes him pick up his toys when he’s finished playing or getting ready for bed (usually against his will), the same dinosaurs are crowded on every surface in the room, technically “put away” because they’re not in the middle of the floor. It’s a kind of pleasant mess, though—not that we don’t all pitch in and clean and have a good time at it. We really have become kind of a neat little family. But it’s empty for me amid all this life. I don’t think I can let Lance go once he’s here. He hasn’t even come for his visit and I’m already missing him.
All Over Him Page 15
