by Doug Sanford
“I do not.”
He smiled broadly and his brow furrowed in amusement. “Sure you do. You touch my arm and my shoulders, squeeze my knee or the back of my neck sometimes. You throw those punches to my biceps. You mess up my hair. You really don’t know that?”
“Well, I don’t do it that much,” I mumbled, a bit embarrassed.
“Yeah, you do, and it’s cool. Rule number one. I trust you, Marc. I don’t think you’re trying to come on to me. And it feels good—not sexy good, but friendly good. My dad and I are really close, but he’s a lot like my mom. That’s not his thing.”
I wasn’t sure how much I liked being compared to his dad, and of course, I’d come on to him in a second if I thought I could get away with it, but I wasn’t about to ruin everything at that point.
I honestly hadn’t realized I touched him as much as he said I did, but once he brought it up, I became conscious of it. I had a hard time, pardon the pun, keeping my hands off him. It wasn’t consciously sexual, but it was definitely affectionate. Since it didn’t seem to bother him, I decided not to worry about it.
A couple of days later, I gave him a key to the house so he could come over and use the computer or study whenever he wanted whether I was there or not. He was surprised and then caught me totally off guard by saying, “But what if you have someone here?”
“A client?”
“No. A guy for—you know—for sex.” His voice squeaked on the last word.
“I haven’t had sex with anyone since the night I called you. I thought you knew that.” I smiled.
“Nobody? How would I know that?”
“Well, I haven’t.”
Thoughtfully, “Huh.”
Pause—then brightening up and getting back to the business at hand—”Thanks. I’ll get you a key to my place, just to keep things even.” A couple of days later, he handed me a key. “I tried it out first to make sure it worked,” he added.
His having a key made things even easier and more relaxed. Once I made it clear that he should feel free to come and go as he wanted, whether I was there or not, he began to treat the house as a second home. I’d come in sometimes to find him on the sofa, reading, having already made tea.
I have to admit I was absolutely going nuts over this kid. I bought a second desk for the office so he’d have his own place to work. I hadn’t said anything about it, and he was there the afternoon they delivered it.
“Why’d you get another desk? Was the computer taking up too much space on yours?”
“No, kid, it’s for you.”
He just looked at me and then his brow furrowed and cleared and he got this huge smile on his face.
“Thanks, Marc. That’s really great.”
I didn’t have to say, “Bingo.” He knew he’d said the right thing.
Though I didn’t tell him, I had my own selfish motive for the desk. I figured that the more comfortable he found it to work at the house, the more he’d come over.
* * * *
Thanksgiving was coming up, and he was going to his uncle and aunt’s in Scottsdale for dinner and the weekend. He’d planned to take the shuttle up Wednesday afternoon and have them pick him up at the airport, but I told him I’d be happy to drive him.
“Really? You sure?”
“Rule number two.”
“That would be fun.”
Continuing my insanity, the next day I handed him a phone card. These were the days before cell phones and free long distance.
“It’s fully charged with a thousand minutes. That should get us through the four days you’ll be gone. Use it.” I smiled.
“We don’t talk that much. But thanks.”
“We do, and you’re welcome.”
Both of his Wednesday classes the day before Thanksgiving had been cancelled by sensible professors who knew most students would be on their way out of town by then.
“Why don’t you plan to stay over Tuesday night, so we can go for breakfast in the morning before we leave?
“Okay. That would work.”
“Funny. I expected an argument.”
“Why?” he asked.
Indeed, why? We’d settled into a kind of odd but cozy relationship—almost like a real couple. Well, we were a real couple, but a couple of what I hadn’t yet figured out. Roommates?
We ordered in a pizza Tuesday night, and I rented The Man Who Came to Dinner. He’d never seen it, of course, and even though it was in black and white, he enjoyed it as much as I thought he would.
He was a little surprised and laughed when I told him that Monty Woolley was gay and used to cruise the New York waterfront with Cole Porter, looking for hustlers. He was familiar with Cole Porter from some of his parents’ show recordings, especially Kiss Me, Kate.
Like me, his favorite song was “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” because, as with Sondheim’s shows, he liked the word play. The song was sung by two gangsters with New Jersey accents, and his favorite line had to do with their advice to quote ‘Othella,’ as they pronounced it, to your girl so she’d think you were a hell of a “fella.”
“I think I liked that one,” he said, “because when I was younger, I felt it was so grown up to say hell.”
I gave him one of my robes, and, of course, he slept in the guest room. He was totally at ease about spending the night in the house of a gay man, but then, he didn’t think of me as a gay man. He thought of me as Marc.
One bonus of having him sleep over was that I got to see him in nothing but his skivvies for the first time. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t excite me, but I played it as cool and casual as I could. He had a great body, but he wasn’t over-developed like some professional body builders are. Really nice pecs, shoulders, arms, and legs. Great feet. Let’s face it. I was not an objective judge.
The next day, on the drive up, the motion of the car put him to sleep almost immediately after we got on the freeway. I came to find out that this was common with him on long trips. It had annoyed his parents no end on family vacations when they thought he should be enjoying the scenery. He slept most of the way there, waking up periodically to ask in a groggy voice if I wanted him to drive. I declined and put on a Sondheim tape.
When we got to Scottsdale, he apologized for passing out, and we arranged a pick-up time for Sunday. I dropped him off and pulled away quickly. I didn’t want to have to be explained to his family.
On the trip back, I spent most of the time trying to figure out how this kid, from whom I was not getting sex, had taken over my life so completely that I was happily willing to make the two-hour Tucson to Phoenix drive, which I’d always hated, twice on Wednesday and twice on Sunday.
I knew I’d fallen for him after the first phone call, but why? After Marty and I broke up, I swore off relationships. They were too complicated, too likely to end in misery. Sex was all I needed. And that’s the way I behaved.
For four years, I didn’t have dates: I had tricks. I never saw the same guy twice—or maybe twice, but that was it. I never stayed overnight. The only feeling I wanted was a great orgasm. I had pretty much all the sex I wanted with no strings attached.
Then the phone call with Bart, and all of a sudden, things were exactly reversed—no sex—only feelings. I was like a schoolgirl in love. What was it about him that was turning my life upside down? It wasn’t just that he was young. I’d met lots of young guys at the U, cruising the johns. And it wasn’t that he was hot-looking because I was in love with him long before I knew what he looked like.
Of course the very question of what makes one person fall for another is unanswerable, but in my case, where it was all so hopeless, it was particularly frustrating not to know because without knowing what caused the attraction, I had no idea of how to break it off.
Not that there was a single moment when I seriously considered breaking it off in spite of the fact that I knew I was playing a very dangerous game of Pygmalion which was likely to leave me unhappy and miserable. Maybe I could survive the character- mo
lding aspect of my Pygmalion game, but I was pretty sure that the falling-in-love-with-my-own-creation aspect would probably do me in. There was no future in it—nowhere to go. But given my nature, as teacher and romantic, I didn’t think there was much I could do to stop it.
He called that night to see if I’d gotten back okay. I thought that was cute. Hell, I thought everything he did was cute. We talked every day he was gone—or I should say every night—since he usually called before he went to bed so he’d have some privacy. With no school work to limit our time talking, we made a fair dent in those thousand minutes.
I spent Thanksgiving where I usually did, with my straight friends Robin and Doug and some of their friends. She was another agent in the same office. I’d known her since I arrived in Tucson.
She and her husband had sort of adopted me. I really had no gay friends. Dale, the one person I knew here, the one who sent me the ticket to come to Tucson originally, had moved to New York. Yeah, I went to the bars, but that was for sex. My determination to avoid relationships also kept me from developing friendships. In some ways, I was as much of a loner as Bart.
So most of my holidays were spent with Robin and Doug. Robin would have been a total fag hag if she hadn’t been married. She loved all things and people gay. She and I had hours of long conversations about life and love and work, and she and Doug really cared about me.
“So the only reason you’re here with us is because your new boyfriend is visiting his family?”
“He’s not a boyfriend as I’ve told you about a hundred times, just a nice kid. I’m more like a mentor to him.”
“And you’re mentoring him in Southwestern sexual techniques?”
“We’re not having sex, and you know it.”
I’d kept it all very casual with Robin. She had no idea of how deeply I felt about him and how much a part of my life he’d become. It was probably the only thing I’d ever held back from her, and maybe that was a sign of how screwed up I was. He, of course, knew pretty much everything about her.
When I got back to Scottsdale Sunday afternoon, he was not only ready but insisted on driving back to make up for having slept on the way up. Another gesture typical of Big Bad Bart.
“You sure you’re not going to get too sleepy?” I asked, more than a little concerned.
“No, I only do that when I’m a passenger for some reason. When I’m driving, I’m completely awake and in control.”
He was, and he was a good driver as well.
“So how were your uncle and aunt?”
“They were fine. They took me sightseeing in Phoenix. We went to the Phoenix Art Museum and the Heard Museum. My aunt is a docent there. I get along with them much better than my dad and mom do.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Maybe it was something that happened when they were kids, but my dad and his brother have always been kind of distant—friendly, but not close.”
“I hear about that a lot about brothers, but, being an only child, I always desperately wanted a brother.”
“That’s funny. So did I.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Guess it was because I didn’t really have any close friends. When I was like eight or nine I think, I made up an imaginary twin named Brad and would talk to him at night before I went to sleep. Bart and Brad—kind of Freudian, huh? Don’t think I’ve ever told that to anyone. You think that’s nuts?”
“No. From what I understand that’s pretty common with kids—imaginary friends or pets or even brothers and sisters. I’m the one who’s probably nuts. I always wanted a brother because I wanted to have sex with him. Sounds sick, I guess.”
“Not for you,” Bart laughed. “Right in the ballpark. You really are preoccupied with sex, Marc. That’s why when you gave me the key and said you hadn’t had done it with anyone since we met, I was kind of surprised.”
“No more surprised than I am, kid. But let’s not go there. It’s strange. Most other gay guys I’ve talked to about this, the ones who have brothers, all say their brother is the last person they’d want to have sex with. I guess I have a romanticized outlook on the whole brother thing.”
“Yeah, that and everything else,” he laughed.
As always, he got it in one.
Chapter 12
Although God continued his welcomed absence after Thanksgiving, a bigger challenge lay ahead.
During the week, we continued to see each other almost every day, usually for dinner. And once the ice was broken, Bart stayed over a lot more frequently—in fact, pretty much every Friday afternoon to Monday morning. He moved a few clothes—meaning jeans and T-shirts and one dress outfit—into the guest bedroom closet. There was a casual easiness to the way we were together. It was exciting. I hadn’t felt this way since the early days with Marty—although with Bart, there was no sex.
Just before I’d met him on the phone, Bart had signed up to work at the Tucson Community Food Bank on Saturday mornings, sorting contributions, packing boxes, and doing anything else they needed. Since he came from a liberal UU—Unitarian Universalist—background, getting involved in community service was natural for him.
The week after Thanksgiving he dragged me—no, that’s a lie: I’d do whatever he asked to spend time with him—to the food bank, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it. Though weekends were busy for me with showings and open houses, I managed to block out at least three hours from nine to noon most Saturdays. He was, in some ways, as much my mentor as I was his.
Another form his mentoring took was at the Y. I finally confessed to him about having joined so I could possibly run into him. His response was interesting. Of course, he laughed at the absurdity of it, but then he said, thoughtfully, “You were really that interested? Huh.”
We began to go there together. I gave up the class I’d been taking, and Bart became my trainer, showing me what to do on which machines, how to use free weights, and encouraging me when I slowed down. It was the first time in my life I ever enjoyed exercise.
I was, however, too shy to take a shower with him—afraid of how I might react—so I gave him some bullshit about not liking public showers and told him that I’d shower when I got home. That way I could avoid even the hint of any possible arousal. I was determined not to fuck up whatever we had, odd as it was.
I also raised the possibility of his moving in, saying it seemed silly to keep his apartment when he spent so little time there. But he wasn’t willing to give it up, yet. And he actually said, yet, meaning that he didn’t totally think it was a bad idea—just maybe a bit premature.
It was about this time, one evening, that we finally got into a more detailed discussion about him and girls.
“There’s no one type I like. I don’t care if she’s blonde or brunette, tall or short. I do like a nice smile and nice tits—not huge, but I’d want a pair I could hold onto.”
“What?” I blurted out. I was a little surprised. Though I could be blatant about my own sex life, he never really talked about sex unless I asked him something directly. And since he hadn’t done anything yet, I kind of assumed he was innocent and didn’t think about it. But then again, he was an eighteen-year-old male.
“Well, that’s important,” he said defensively. “Don’t you care about cock size?”
As always, the naïve honesty of his talk sometimes shocked me.
“Actually, not at all. A lot of gay guys are hung up on that, but it’s never been anywhere near the top of my list. Faces, and feet of course, are more important to me.”
“I’m not saying I’d turn her down if she didn’t have a good pair, but they would be a real plus.
“She’d also have to be somebody I could talk to and trust. Somebody who liked to cuddle as much as fuck. Smart—goes without saying. And she’d have to care about other people, so I guess she’d have to be a liberal.” He smiled.
“And more than anything, for me to take her seriously, she’s got to want kids. I want a family—at least two, a boy and a girl.”
/>
That was a splash of cold water on my fantasies. He really was serious about wanting to settle down. Where the fuck would that leave me? I wasn’t sure if I could get into being Uncle Marc to his kids.
“That’s all great,” I said, bravely continuing the discussion in the abstract. “But where are you going to find this two-tit wonder if you’re not dating? You don’t seem to be looking very hard.”
Why the hell was I pushing him into finding a girl?
“I’m not in a hurry. If someone’s out there for me, we’ll find each other.”
I thought it was very tactful and restrained of me not to point out to him that he might already have found that “someone out there” for him. It was me—just without the good pair and the ability to bear him children.
The big interruption to our—what?—relationship?—would be Christmas vacation. He was scheduled to go home for the holidays, and his parents had already sent the ticket. He’d be gone from the twenty-third to the third of January—twelve days. It would be depressing as hell to have to go back to talking on the phone without seeing him.
About a week before he was going to leave, he was lying on the sofa, reading. I asked him, “Do you still have the phone card?”
He looked up from his book, smiled, and went back to reading without saying a word.
I just smiled back.
That was another example of that unspoken communication we’d begun to develop. He never asked why I brought up the card because he knew why as soon as I mentioned it. His look and smile meant that he’d taken care of it and added minutes to the card himself. I just knew that, and he knew that I’d know it. It was nothing miraculous, but I got a real kick out of it whenever it happened.
We’d decided to do our gift exchange the night before he left since he’d be staying over and I’d drive him to the airport early the next morning. We had a limit: twenty-five dollars. We both actually went over slightly, but not much.
For him, the LP and cassette tape versions of Sondheim’s Into the Woods which had just been released. I wrapped them separately so he’d have two things to open.