A lot went on that fall. About a week after the high school Homecoming, Cherie called to say she thought it had worked. "What do you mean, you think it worked?" I asked. "I haven't been to the doctor yet, but I went to the drugstore and bought every kind of home pregnancy testing kit they had. Every single one said I'm pregnant," she said. "Oh, my God! Cherie! I'm so happy for you!" "I'm trying my best to be restrained, Kev, but it seems so real," she said. "It worked. Thanks to you, it worked." "How is Craig handling all of this?" I asked. "He did the tests with me, of course. When the fourth one came in 'pregnant,' he went out and bought a whole box of cigars. Do you have any idea how much a whole box of cigars costs? Really good cigars?" I was laughing. That was so like Craig. "When are we going to know for sure, medically?" I asked. "Tomorrow," she said. "I have an appointment at ten. I'll call with the news, good or bad, okay?" "You damn sure better call," I said. "I love you, Kevin," she said. "I love you, too, sis." We hung up then, and I ran down to Rick's office to tell him. He was as happy as I was. That night almost nobody was around. Tim and Kyle were off at one of their houses, Brian and Justin were studying upstairs, Alex and Cody were at Cody's house, ostensibly studying, and Denny was reading in the den with us. Rick and I were reading and sort of watching TV at the same time. The next day I got the confirmation call from Cherie. She was pregnant! Rick and I joined the boys for lunch. "I had a call from my sister-in-law this morning, and she's definitely pregnant," I said. "She's due at the end of June." That place was packed with kids out for lunch, and our boys and their friends had two large oval tables near the wall of sliding glass doors next to the deck. There were a couple of new boys, Kent and Jason, but they seemed to fit right in with the others. They all cheered at the news, and we probably made ourselves obnoxious with all the noise. The two owners came out to see what was going on. "It sounds like good news," the lady asked. "We're having a cousin," Kyle said. "I bet it's going to be a little boy, too. Do y'all remember those three little boys in North Carolina? The Bromans?" "Yeah," Tim and Brian said in unison. "I want us to have one just like them," Kyle said. "That's wonderful," the lady said. "A special dessert tomorrow to celebrate. I hope you gentlemen will join us again for that." "We'll be here," Rick said. She knew exactly who we were, too. The next day, I called Jack Rooney to tell him I hoped Justin, Alex, and Cody could join us for lunch at The Starfish. I could tell he was confused, but he didn't argue. "Join us, too, Jack. Chip'll be there. All their friends will be there. We're celebrating a baby," I said. "Who had a baby," he asked. "Nobody, yet, but my sister-in-law is pregnant," I said. "Oh," he said. He sounded decidedly under whelmed. "I've got three different meal functions going on tomorrow at lunch. Can I take a rain check on this one?" "Of course, Jack, but we want the boys there for it," I said. "They'll be there," he said. There was a lot of celebrating going on the next day. Mom and Pop Sullivan were staples on the beach, and everybody in the hospitality industry knew them and liked them. They were probably in their mid-sixties, and they truly did have "grandparent" written all over them. I knew that Mom Sullivan ran the kitchen, and their kitchen was legendary. I didn't know how much cooking she did herself, but it was pretty clear she took personal responsibility for feeding their customers, most of whom were there every day. The special dessert was a bread pudding that was every bit as good as the bread pudding at Commander's Palace in New Orleans. Bread pudding was Commander's signature dessert; Commander's was a world-class restaurant; figure it out. The featured dish that day on the buffet line was a chicken pot pie that was to die for. "We need to start eating here more often," Rick said. "This food is incredible." "And you damn sure can't beat the price," I said. "You should hire her and make her the executive chef of the whole Goodson outfit," he said. Kyle was listening to us. "No! This is our place. It's their place, too," he said. "Leave her alone." "Okay, Kyle. This is a business question for you. What would you do if you were, say, CEO of Goodson Enterprises?" I asked. "I'd hire her in a minute and give her whatever the hell she wanted," he said, without a blink. "Interesting perspective," I said. "You would do that, but I can't? Is that what you're telling me?" I asked. "Yeah, 'cause I wouldn't be eating here every day then," he said. "So, the thing that's most important to you is your stomach?" I asked. "Stomach and below," he said. Rick had a mouthful of ice tea when Kyle said that, and he struggled not to blast it across the table. I laughed hard, too. * * * The school boys had a long weekend off at the end of October because of state-wide teacher conferences that were going on all over. One of our hotels was hosting the state science teachers, for example, and, presumably, every subject had a similar meeting. "The kids have some holidays coming up," I said to Rick one night in bed. "What would you say to a trip to New Orleans that weekend?" "I'm always ready to go," he said. "I'm dying to see Cherie, and we haven't seen Seth since the first of August," I said. "I'll call my mom tomorrow to see if she minds if we come." "Kevin, I know what the answer to that's going to be," he said. "I do, too, but don't you think it's only polite to ask her?" I said. "Yes, Baby," he said. He tickled me a little. Rick spooned up against me, and I felt his erection. "Are you a little horny right now," I asked, teasing him. "A little," he said. "What made you think that?" "Oh, I don't know. Maybe your rock-hard dick? Do you think horniness might be causing that?" He chuckled. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe." I started moving back and forth, stimulating him. I did that for a minute or two, and his breathing became increasingly ragged. He pulled back, nudged me onto my back, and got on top of me. We were chest to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs, and, of course, dick to dick. He began thrusting gently against me, and I matched him with counter thrusts of my own. Rick kissed me powerfully and passionately, and we continued rubbing against one another. We could both last a long time in that arrangement for some reason, and our loving went on and on. Eventually, of course, we both had stupendous orgasms. "My God, that was good," Rick said when we were finished. "I know. Do you know what we just did is called?" I asked. "Making love?" "Well, yeah. Of course. But I meant that particular technique," I said. "No. I didn't know it had a name. I've always thought of it as rubbing our dicks together until we come," he said. I laughed, and he did, too. "It actually has a name. It's called frottage," I said. "Really? How do you know shit like that?" he asked. "I read about it on the Internet," I said. "There seems to be a movement among some of our gay brethren to replace anal intercourse with frottage. They call themselves the Cockrub Warriors." "Seriously?" "Seriously," I said. "There's a whole set of theory related to it. They think butt fucking is a feminization of man-to-man sex and that butt fucking makes one guy subservient to the other in a way that's unacceptable to them. It's all tied up with ancient Greece and with what they call homosex." "Damn, I'm thinking I need to spend more time on line," he said. "Maybe they're with guys who just don't know how to do butt fucking right. You like it, don't you?" "I'm not even going to answer that," I said. I loved it, and he knew it. I liked frottage a lot, too, though. We both laughed. We were quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought, no doubt. Or maybe just on the verge of going to sleep. "Jerking off is kind of like frottage, isn't it," he asked. "Yeah. Now that you mention it, I guess it is," I said. "Frottage is from French for 'rub.'" "Kevin, when I jerked you off in the doctor's office, did you think I was making love to you?" he asked. "Yes, I did. I thought you were making love to me and to my whole family, Babe. And to our boys. And to the future of the world," I said. "That was a very powerful experience for me, Rick." "I'm so glad to hear you say that. It was an extremely intense experience for me. It was the closest I'll ever come to bringing new life into the world. I've thought about this thing with Cherie a whole lot, and I'm so glad we could be a part of it. Symbolically, that's going to be our baby, isn't it?" "Babe, I'm kind of filling up here," I said, with tears rimming my eyes. It's hard to talk when there's that much emotion involved. "Me, too," he said. "Kevin, you have made me the happiest man on earth. I know I'm not always the most affectionate guy in the world, and I know I don't tell you this often enough, but I don't think it's possible for me to love you any more than I already do." "Oh, Rick," I said, and then he and I both dissolved into tears. I sometimes wondered about our relationship because we never had fights. I was never aware of my parents fighting, so maybe it wasn't all that out of the ordinary, but he and I never had any fundamental disagreements. And our boys didn't fight, either. We argued, yes, but we never fought. Maybe fighting is the real aberration in a relationship, I thought, and not the absence of fighting. If you're in love with someone who has the same basic values you do, why would you fight? One time I heard a priest say in a homily that he had done a lot of counseling of couples whose marriages were troubled. He said that the range of problems were from the severe, like unfaithfulness, to the mundane, like which way the end of the toilet paper should hang in the holder. I remember being struck by the toilet paper example and thinking that anybody whose marriage was in jeopardy over something like that had much deeper and more fundamental problems that they hadn't even gotten to yet and were afraid to face. I was in the middle of a prayer of thanks for Rick when he said, "I'm starving. Are you hungry?" "Yeah. I didn't get a good snack tonight." "I didn't, either. All I had was a piece of that crappy yellow watermelon Justin grew. Have you had a piece of that thing?" "It's not very sweet," I said. "It's terrible, Kevin. For one thing, he planted it too late in the summer. For another thing, where he planted it doesn't get enough sun for the fruit to get sweet, and for a third thing, he didn't do anything to enhance the soil. Our soil is mostly sand, and watermelon needs more than that," Rick said. His years of running the golf courses at the place we used to work had turned him into a master gardener, and I loved it when he got on one of his gardening rolls. "Why did it make such lush vines?" I asked. "Because he fertilized the shit out of it, that's why. Watermelon is at its best in July and August. What is this? October? Late October, and he's just now harvesting his crop. What does that tell you?" "It tells me you really care about your watermelon," I said. We both laughed hard. "He's very proud of that melon, Babe," I said. "I know. That's why I'll eat the fucking rind, if he wants me to. You know I'd never say this to him. I'm going to subtly help him learn something about gardening, though, if he's interested. You'd think a country boy like him would know stuff." "Let's go get a snack, country boy," I said. He laughed. We cleaned ourselves up, but we didn't bother with clothes. Not even underwear. It was about eleven o'clock, and we didn't expect to see anyone. Wrong. "Well, look who's here," Justin said as we walked into the kitchen. Justin, Brian, Kyle, and Tim were all at the table, naked as the day they were born. All four had big bowls of ice cream with all the trimmings. "Everybody's hungry tonight," Jus said. "Rick, all you ate tonight was some of that piece-of-shit watermelon I grew, didn't you? We need to throw that thing away. How can a watermelon look that good and taste that bland?" "I enjoyed it, Jus," Rick said. He winked at me secretly. "To me it was about like eating a filter off a cigarette that hadn't been smoked," Justin said. "Or tender styrofoam, or something." We all laughed hard. Rick got ice cream for him and me. He put some fruit from a couple of the jars that were out on the counter on it, poured cherry juice over it, squirted a little whipped cream, and drizzled a little chocolate sauce. I noticed the boys had broken out a bag of cookies for the occasion, so we had those, too. "Rick and I were talking about going to New Orleans over your long weekend," I said. "Would you guys be interested?" "No, Kevin. We don't like having fun," Kyle said. "You little shit," I said to Kyle. "We get off at 11:30 on that Wednesday," Brian said. "We could leave then and come back Sunday afternoon." "Don't you guys have your English class that afternoon?" I asked Justin and Kyle. "Yeah, but that's a choice class, Kev," Justin said. "They're going to write an essay in class, but we can choose to write it ahead of that, if we want to. The out-of-class one is longer and harder, but that's what I want to do, Kyle. What about you?" "You have to ask that question?" Kyle asked. "I knew," Jus said. "Do you think we'll get to see Seth?" Tim asked. "I'm sure we will, Tim," I said. "I hope so, anyway." "He's off the same two days we are," Kyle said. "How do you know that," Rick asked. "Because he told me. That's how I know it. He was thinking about driving over here to see us," Kyle said. "It's a new thing called email, Rick." We laughed. "You're not too big . . ." ". . . to take to the woodshed," Kyle said in unison with Rick. "You mean the woody shed, don't you?" We all laughed. "You're hopeless," Rick said. "And you just got me last, too, you little shit-ass." "I'm not so little, you know," Kyle said. "I'm as big as you and Kevin." "I know, but there's something wormy about you, Kyle. You're like this little worm, and I'm a big snake," Rick said. "Yeah? Get a tape measure," Kyle said. The four boys went ballistic when he said that, and there was much punching of fists and high-fiving at that table among them. Kyle had gotten Rick last, and nobody even had to say it. We all went to bed after that, still laughing. * * * The next morning, we told Alex and Denny about our plans to go to New Orleans. "Would you guys mind if I beg off on that this time," Alex said. "The college is off, too, those days, Lex," Justin said. "Me and Kyle are going to write our English paper ahead of time. You could do that, too." "I know, but . . . I don't want to miss those days of work," he said. It suddenly occurred to me what the real reason was. We had said we were going to be able to spend a good bit of time with Seth, and Alex didn't want to confront him. I could understand that. Alex had nothing to be ashamed of for dating Cody, but I could see how his spending time with Seth without Cody being around could be awkward. "Lex, I think that's a very mature decision on your part," I said. "We'll miss you, and you would certainly enjoy the trip, but I understand why you feel like you need to stay here. We'll be going again soon." "Thanks, Kev," he said. He knew I knew. "Is Cherie going to be fat," Justin asked. "It takes a while for that to happen, Bubba," Rick said. "And it's not really fat." "I know it's not fat, but you know what I mean," he said. "Yeah, we know, but it's too early in the pregnancy for her to show," Rick said. Everyone was quiet for a moment, eating. "How do really fat people have sex?" Brian asked. "The same way we do, dummy," Justin said, teasing him. "I know the mechanics, Justin," Brian snapped. Brian was always deferential to Jus around us, but he definitely said that like the two of them were equals. Or maybe, even, that he was the more dominant of the two. Justin didn't flinch, so I assumed that was the way they talked in private. "How would two people with great big stomachs fuck?" Brian asked. "Gay or straight?" He almost never said the F word around us. I was learning a lot about him that morning. "I never thought of that before, but it could be a problem, couldn't it," Kyle said. "Yeah. Think about it. We're all trim and lean, but you expand our waists to like thirty-eight or forty inches," Brian said. "Or sixty or more," Rick said. "I see a lot of very fat people with great big bellies," Bri said. "I just have to wonder if they can do it." "They must work it out somehow," I said. "Let's just don't get fat, okay? But let's do pick up our plates and get going. It's time to go."
Meeting Sonya Jenkins changed my life. I had been reasonably content before I met her, raising my son, doing my job in the Navy, starting my practice with my partner in Emerald Beach. But, my God, that woman changed everything for me, and it was all for the better. We warmed to intimacy slowly, perhaps, by the standards of some people today, but after a couple of months of dating, I physically ached for her. The first time was tentative and nervous and anxious for both of us, but ten minutes into our tryst I knew we were right for one another. I didn't know I was still capable of spontaneous erections while bending over the mouth of a patient who needed wisdom teeth extracted. I mean, how anti-romantic is that? I was forty-three, for God's sake, not eighteen! But it happened on a regular basis when I thought of her. I kept my lab coat buttoned all the way down to hide those occurrences. I wanted to marry her more than anything, and I knew she wanted to marry me, too. The big hang-up was my annulment from my first marriage to Tim's mother. His mother and I had once been that much in love, too, but she was, for want of a better term, a total basket case in a mental hospital. She would never get out. I had divorced her years before so that she could receive Social Security Disability, Medicaid, and SSI. My Catholic faith told me that our marriage was forever, until death, and only death would part us. Not civil divorce. But wasn't she really dead? She could no more relate to me as my wife than the bird on my window sill could, but I still couldn't abandon my faith. Father Gerald Taylor--Jerry to me and his other friends--was absolutely wonderful about all of that. He got the paperwork for the annulment going, and it only took about six months. An annulment is a declaration by the Church that a real marriage never existed in the first place. I had some trouble accepting that fact because there had been good years with my wife. But there had always been a distancing, a holding back, like maybe the psychosis that eventually claimed her conscious mind had been there from the beginning. Ultimately, that was the basis for the annulment. I didn't argue with the judgment of the Church court, and I accepted the annulment. When I got the official letter, I called Sonya immediately. I proposed to her over the phone, and she accepted without reservation. "Let's celebrate tonight," I said. "I want to, George, but only if Tim and Kyle are there," she said. "Of course," I said. Sonya had accepted Tim and Kyle as a couple from the time she first met them. Frankly, I had reservations about my sixteen-year-old son being committed to a seventeen-year-old boy. Not that I didn't love Kyle to death, because I absolutely did. It had been clear to me for many months that Kyle loved Tim completely, and I knew that Tim felt the same way about him. But sixteen and seventeen? That was so young. To complicate matters, Kyle's father, Gene Goodson, and I had become best friends. He and his wife had lost their older son about a year before, and Sonya and I dearly loved Rita and Gene and spent many evenings with them. Gene and I saw one another for lunch almost every day, and, on those days when we didn't eat together, we talked on the phone, often at length. He and Rita loved Tim almost as much as I did, and they were thrilled that their Kyle had found him. "Guys, Sonya has accepted my proposal of marriage," I told Tim and Kyle at dinner that night. We were at one of the best restaurants on the beach, and they had both been a bit puzzled about why we were dining in such luxury on a school night. They looked at each other and grinned. They really were cute boys. "Dad, congratulations," Tim said. "We're happy for you." "Yes, sir, Doc. Congratulations. You got better than she did," Kyle said. That made everybody laugh. Kyle had a keen sense of humor, but it had taken me a while to get used to it. What he had just said, for example, would have puzzled me a year ago. Now I knew it was his way of complimenting me and of praising Sonya. I've always been very interested in other cultures, but I had always assumed "other cultures" existed in other countries. The fact was, I was surrounded by, and living in, a culture that was quite different in many ways from the Irish Catholic culture of Boston that I had grown up in and from the general culture of New England, as well. Once that fact dawned on me, I began to notice and appreciate the subtle differences that were everywhere around me. Kyle, as a native of Emerald Beach, and as a self-styled Beach Rat, reflected the local culture intuitively. It was fascinating. "Have you set a date?" Tim asked. "Not yet, sweetie," Sonya said. "We have to get with Father Jerry for instructions and to make arrangements for the church. It'll take about six months, probably." "Doc, I know you were married before. Were you, Sonya?" Kyle asked. "Or is that none of my business?" "I don't mind your asking, Kyle, and, no, I've never been married," she said. "I've never met anybody good enough before." "We might be getting us a little brother," Kyle said to Tim. "Yeah, I know. That would be so cool," Tim said, enthusiastically. "Guys. Not so fast," I said. "Sonya and I aren't exactly kids, you know." "That's okay, Dad," Tim said. "We understand." We talked more about our impending marriage, about Kyle's preparation for reception into the Church, and about school. I had an overwhelming sense of family, probably for the first time ever, and I was happy.
When I drove away from the house in Emerald Beach on August 1st, I had the feeling that I was driving into the rest of my life. I was much stronger physically because they had more or less made me work out, but for every bit stronger physically I was, I was ten times that much stronger emotionally and psychologically. When she set that summer up for me, Kevin's sister-in-law, Cherie, had joked about my going to "gay summer camp." It was that, for sure, but it really more like "human being summer camp." After the six weeks I spent in that paradise, I wasn't afraid of living anymore. I knew that it was okay to be gay, and I knew that I was going to have a happy, productive life as a gay man. To quote Justin and Kyle, "God, Awmighty!" It had started at Mardi Gras earlier in the year. Those Florida boys accepted me without so much as a blink. Those had been the happiest three days of my life, until the summer. I met Cody the very first day I was there. We were lovers during the summer, but we both knew we were just learners. I love him as a dear friend, and I know he loves me that way, too, but there were never any illusions that we were in love with one another. We both knew, and he needed me as much as I needed him. But, God, how those six weeks changed my life! It's hard for me to catalogue them all. Let's start with being gay. I had pretty much known I was different from other boys all my life. I can't exactly come up with a date, or even a year, when I knew that about myself, but I was young. Really young. When I was around ten, I started thinking that I was really different, and it started to scare me. In fact, I was actually that young when I started to feel isolated from the boys in my class. They were boys, and I was . . . . What was I? Puberty started when I was about twelve-and-a-half. I started growing hair down below, and my testicles got much larger than they had been. My penis, on the other hand, was a total disappointment. Oh, it grew. No question about that. But it really didn't get all that much longer when it was soft. Hard? No problem. Five-and-a-half inches, five-and-three quarters, even. I knew that was within the "average" range. But who walks around with a hard-on? Well, I mean, I did a lot of the time, but it was covered by my underwear and pants. The few times I took a shower with other guys, I got about half-hard, so it was about three inches. Nobody really made fun of me for having a little dick, but that's exactly what I had. A little dick. In Emerald Beach, we always swam naked in their pool. The very first day there I saw that there were other guys who had dicks as small as mine was. Cody's and mine were almost identical, in fact. Some of them had what looked like huge ones to me, but nobody cared what mine looked like. I don't know if anybody who doesn't have a small dick can really appreciate how that made me feel. All of a sudden, after years of anguish about the way I was built, nobody fucking cared!!!!! And some of them were just like me!!!! "You're just a grower, not a shower," Justin said to me in his thick Alabama accent. What a cutie he was, and what a shower, too. "I think our Bubba Seth is a grower, too," Kyle said. "Just like you." "Fuck you, Kyle," Justin said, and Justin chased him around the pool, both of them laughing their asses off at each other and their jokes; not at me. That brief exchange between those two boys did me more good than a year's worth of counseling could have done. They were both very powerful, physically, and they were definitely well built down below. But they didn't tease me. They teased each other! And Cody and I hit it off so well that first day. He was, like, this Adonis figure, and I was like a skeleton. But they got me lifting weights and working out with them every day, and I started to put on weight. And it was muscle weight, too; not fat. By the time I left Emerald Beach, I was totally at-home with being naked in front of a crowd of guys; I had improved my physique 100%; I knew it was okay to be gay; I knew I could be happy as a gay man when I was an adult; and I had a houseful of friends who were going to be my brothers for the rest of my life. That was quite a summer. * * * I got home the same day my parents got home from England. Things had gone very well there for them, and my dad was bursting with pride at having lectured at one of the Inns of Court. Everybody was happy to be back home. Over the next several days, we shared stories about what we had done over the summer. My parents had had a wonderful time in London, and they promised to take me and my sister there soon, maybe even at Christmas. They had made lots of friends, and they were eager for us to meet them. I told them about Cody (not the details, of course), my job, going swimming with the dolphins, water skiing, crabbing, Trixie, and all of the guys. They listened with rapt attention, and I could tell they were happy for me because of the great time I had had. My sister came home from her program at Duke University the next weekend, and she had some interesting stories to tell, too, from her perspective as a twelve-year-old girl. Yawn! (Just kidding). I had never been happier in my life. * * * Then school started. I was a senior at one of the more prestigious private Catholic boys' high schools in the city. My dad had gone there, and his dad had gone to the forerunner of it. Kevin and all his people had gone there, too. A lot of people don't know about how Catholic high schools are set up. There are parochial high schools, which are sponsored and supported by a parish. There used to be some high schools like that in New Orleans, but not any more. Then there are Archdiocesan high schools. They're owned and run and supported by the Archdiocese of New Orleans. There are five or six of those. The major Catholic high schools, though, are owned and operated by some religious order, and they're private schools. They pretty much take their orders directly from Rome or somewhere like that, and there are around fifteen of those in New Orleans. I went to one of those. My sister went to a private Catholic girls' school, and it was 275 years old. All but one of the private Catholic high schools are single sex, and the one I went to damn sure was. There were about 1,500 boys; zero girls. There were a few women on the faculty, but most of the teachers were men. Alumni, usually. When my dad went there in the 1970's, almost all of the teachers had been members of the order that owned the school. Now there was only a handful of them. I had had one for sophomore English, and I had one that year for physics. Before I went to Florida, I was pretty much a non-person at school. I mean, I kept to myself, didn't participate in any extra-curricular activities, didn't really have any friends at school. I ate by myself every day, and then I went to the library and either surfed the 'net or read magazines. The fact of the matter was, I was scared of boys. How's that for total irony? I was attracted to boys, but I was afraid of them at the same time. Nobody had ever beaten me up or anything, but I just felt totally self-conscious and awkward around guys. I did better with girls, which is another irony in itself, but there weren't any around my school. With all of that, though, I was desperate for a friend, somebody that I could talk to and joke with and just have fun with. I'd see guys with their friends, and they looked so at ease, so happy. I was none of that in Louisiana. I was only that way in Florida. After I came home from Florida, I was determined I was going to be somebody at school. It was too late for me to do what Kyle had done and run for office, not that I could have ever gotten elected to anything, but I joined the staff of the school newspaper. Most of those guys were slightly on the nerdy side, which is totally what I was, but they were smart and very verbal. I knew that if a group of total strangers in Emerald Beach, Florida, could like me and accept me, then guys I had been in school with for years could do the same thing. And you know what? I was right. One of the things we had to do for newspaper was sell ads. Every issue we each had a quota to sell, but they let us leave campus during the newspaper class period to do it. Newspaper was right before lunch, so we had almost ninety minutes that we could be away from school. In Florida they let the kids leave campus for lunch, but that didn't happen at my school. No way. In fact, the newspaper kids were among the very few who got to leave campus during the day on a regular basis. We could only leave school to sell ads two days a week, and then only if we had our assigned articles finished and on the editor's desk. Still, the freedom to leave was pretty intoxicating. Since I was new, I got assigned to two other guys to be a team. The fact that I had a car and neither one of them did probably entered into the assignment, but I didn't care. One of my teammates was a senior, named Jason Cook, and the other one was a junior, named Shane Gautier (pronounced go-shay). One of the "traditions" at my school is that nobody is ever addressed by his first name. I was always just "Adams," and they were always just "Cook" and "Gautier." But they were good friends, and they called each other by their first names. "What's you first name, Adams," Cook asked me the first day. "Seth," I said. "Cool. I'm Jason and he's Shane. That's what we call each other. Do you mind if we call you Seth?" "No, you can call me Seth, if you want to," I said. I might not answer all the time, I thought, since I wasn't used to that at school, but I liked being called by my first name. It was sort of the human thing to do. "Have you got a girlfriend," Shane asked. "Naw. Do y'all have girlfriends," I asked. They said they didn't. They showed me how to fill out the ad forms, and they told me what to tell a potential advertiser to make him want to buy an ad. They had a list of businesses they had sold ads to the year before. Most of them were alumni, so they were pretty easy sells. The first issue of the paper came out the day school started for the year, but the second issue--the first one I worked on--was scheduled to be out three weeks later. We published every three weeks. Jason and Shane and I sold our full quota of ads the first day, so we had the other "ad days" to kick back and fool around. We had to be a little bit careful about what we did because we were wearing school uniforms. The rumor at school was the alumni constituted a spy network for the school, and if they spotted a guy in a uniform appearing to be skipping, they were on the phone to the Dean of Discipline faster than you could dial 9-1-1. I personally doubted that was true, but Jason and Shane wanted us to be careful. So we were. After the first day when we sold our quota for the issue, we had long, leisurely lunches at places like Olive Garden or TGI Friday's or Applebee's. Like just about everybody else who went to that school, those two guys came from families who could A.) afford the tuition, books, uniforms, etc., and B.) give their kids ample spending money to have long, leisurely lunches that came in at ten bucks or more. It was during the course of those lunches that I got to know those guys really well. Jason's dad was an ENT doctor, and his mother was an audiologist. He had two older sisters who were both in college at LSU. He lived in New Orleans East. There were four cars in the family, but both of his sisters had the "kids' cars" up at school. That didn't seem fair to me. Shane's parents had a travel agency that had branch offices all over the metropolitan area. He had been to all sorts of exotic places with them for their business, and he was an only child. His parents had bought him a car when he had turned sixteen, but they had taken it away when Shane had behaved "irresponsibly." He was supposed to get it back at some undetermined time in the future. Driving drunk, I figured. "I think I was an accident," Shane said. "Your parents love you, man," Jason said. "I know they love me, but I don't really think they wanted me when I came along. It's just stuff I've picked up from a couple of my cousins. Real bitches, by the way," Shane said. "How long have you guys known one another," I asked. "Since Cub Scouts?" Shane asked Jason. "Yeah," Jason said. "Who are your friends, Seth?" "Guys you all don't know," I said. But, by God, I had a slew of friends, even if they'd never meet them. "From grammar school," Jason asked. "No. They live in Florida. That's where I spent the summer. With them in Emerald Beach," I said. "Shit, my parents sell a ton of trips to Emerald Beach," Shane said. "That's a great place." "I know it is," I said. You have no idea how great it is, Shane, I thought. Jason and Shane were good guys, and I really liked them. Neither one was interested in sports at all, and they were surprised when I told them I belonged to a gym. I felt right at home with them, though. The more time I spent with them, the more I picked up on subtle clues that maybe they were more than best friends. I mean, I had spent the summer with a house full of guys who had lovers, and I saw a lot of the same kinds of glances, half smiles, knowing looks, and body language between Jason and Shane that I had seen between Kevin and Rick, Justin and Brian, Kyle and Tim, and, yes, between Cody and me. They always sat on the same side of the table, opposite me, or next to one another in a booth. They pointed out menu items to one another and said stuff like, "You'll love that," about different dishes. They touched one another more than most guys do, too. It was never inappropriate, and somebody who didn't know what to look for probably wouldn't have noticed it. But I knew, and I did notice. Finally, on our third "ad day" adventure, I said, "Hey, don't punch me out in the parking lot for asking this, okay?" They didn't say anything, even though I had tried to say that as lightly as I could. "But are you guys gay?" I asked. They were both embarrassed as hell, and I hated myself at that moment for having asked that question. Neither one said anything for several moments, and I almost excused myself to get out of the booth we were in. Finally, Shane spoke. "Yeah, we are, and we're boyfriends," he said. "We thought you were our friend, man." The tone of his voice told me he felt betrayed. I was totally confused, and I had to think for a moment. Did they think I was straight? Did they think that if I were straight I couldn't still be their friend? What was going on? "I am your friend, Shane. Why would you think I wouldn't be your friend just because you're gay," I asked. "Because you're a jock," Shane said. I couldn't help myself. I laughed hard when he said that. "If you're our friend, why are you laughing at us," Shane demanded. "Man, I'm not laughing at you guys. I'm laughing because you called me a jock. Shane, I'm the Anti-Jock. They teach us in religion class about the Anti-Christ, right? Well, I'm the same thing to jocks." They both actually laughed when I said that. "You know those friends of mine in Florida I told you about? Every one of them is queer to the bone, including my ex-boyfriend," I said. A waiter chose that moment to drop a tray full of spent plates and glasses onto the ceramic tile floor. All of us jumped more than a little at the noise, and Jason dropped his fork on his plate, which startled us again. When our heartbeats were back to something close to normal after all of the terra cotta fanfare, Jason said, "Your ex-boyfriend?" "Yeah. My ex-boyfriend. I'm as gay as you are," I said. They both started grinning. After a second or two, they both started laughing. In a second, all three of us were howling with glee. "Seth, how did you know about us," Jason asked, after we had finally calmed down. "It was a hunch, Jason, but I spent six weeks this summer in a house that twelve or so gay guys called home. There were several couples there, including three who are in life-long relationships, I think, and you just learn to pick up on subtle things," I said. "Do we act gay," Shane asked. There was real concern in his voice. "Nobody but me would have noticed, Bubba," I said. "Bubba," they said together, surprise in their voices. "Sorry, that's something I picked up in Florida. I haven't called anybody that in weeks," I said. "It means 'brother,' doesn't it," Jason said. That wasn't a question. It was a statement confirming what all of us knew. "It sure does, Bubba," I said. Jason and Shane grinned. "It feels good having a Bubba, doesn't it?" Shane asked Jason. "The best," Jason said, and he gave Shane a little peck on the lips. |