Common Sons

by Ronald Donaghe

  “Sure thing we will! Look. If it’s about last night, man, I know what you’re pissed at, but you shouldn’t.” His voice trailed off and he stomped outside and slid into the pickup to wait.

  When Tom came out he went up to the pickup on Joel’s side. “Look Joel, I’m sorry. I’m acting like everything is your fault.” He flicked his thumb at the church. “I’m supposed to know better, you know. I’m so ashamed I can’t even face myself in the mirror. I’m sorry.” He lowered his eyes. “Last night was a mistake, okay?”

  Joel felt stung. Tom’s face was ugly with disgust. “No it wasn’t! You’re just embarrassed, man. And I promise, Tom, next time you won’t be.”

  Tom looked horrified and backed away from the pickup. Huge tears welled up in his bloodshot brown eyes. “There won’t be a next time! There shouldn’t have been a first time and you know it!”

  “Just think about that. Who was the one wanting it in the first place?”

  “Stop it, Joel.”

  “No, man. I won’t! You loved it! And so did I, so just stop it yourself and think! Don’t you remember how long we kissed?”

  “Yes, I remember! Damn it! I just can’t handle it right now. We’ll talk later, okay?”

  Joel saw how upset Tom was—even worse than last night. He felt angry but checked himself. “Shit. Okay. Later.”

  As he drove away from the church, Joel’s anger faded, leaving him feeling hurt. Sometimes Tom could insult him and not realize it. But this time was different. His face still stung from the slap of those words, “dependable, like a dog.” Like a dog? Is that how I am? Other people had said similar things one time or another, too. Like Coach Hoffins last year.

  Joel’s sisters had married in December 1963 in a double wedding and their absence from home left Joel with a bigger share of the farm work. He had to choose between that and staying on the high school boxing team. It was a hard choice, because he was the coach’s star boxer and his parents’ only helper. He had won the District and All State boxing tournaments in late November and the coach never stopped praising him. He pushed Joel everywhere. Secretly, Joel cringed when he was asked to say a few words about his plans when he and other athletes were invited to Lion’s Club luncheons, but he made a brave effort, not wanting to let Coach down. Except when he had to choose. And to the disappointment of his coach and now his friend and advisor, Joel went to him one day, right after the new semester started. He explained about his sisters and the workload and told the coach he just had to quit to take up the slack. “But boxing training doesn’t even start till fall semester, Joel. Surely by then.” But Joel said harvest season was even worse. The coach exploded. “You’re a quitter, Joel! You’re letting down the team! You’ll never be nothin’ but a country hick! Is that what you want?” Joel had screamed back that his parents were depending on him. The coach had finally relented and patted Joel on the shoulder in a friendly manner, his disappointment evident. He smiled sadly and said, “Okay, Joel. I know. I understand. But one of these days you’ll have to get over being so tied to that damned farm and have a little fun.”

  The coach’s admonition hadn’t hurt because Joel liked being dependable to his parents, and they appreciated it. But when Tom had said it, it hurt. I only hung around so much because I like him, Joel thought. Is that all I am—a pet? Hadn’t he just let his other friends drift away so he could spend all his time with Tom?

  He couldn’t say why, but Tom was a just a different sort of guy. And it was that difference that had appealed to him. Tom was like Troy Donahue or James Dean. At the small high school, on the first day when Tom was the new kid from Houston, Texas, he had caused quite a stir. Joel began hearing about the new dream boat as soon as he stepped off the bus that day. It was shortly after the fall semester of 1964 had begun. During the day, Joel caught glimpses of the new guy. He was a good-looking guy all right. But Joel was disappointed.

  The guy was surrounded by students who didn’t mix with farmers. The townies, cats, as all the ag boys called the students who lived in town. The new guy was just another one of them. Even worse, Joel heard he was a preacher’s kid. By the end of the first week, Joel saw that the new guy was alone much of the time, and he felt sorry for him. To be a preacher’s kid was a stigma. He didn’t try to meet the guy.

  But he did meet Tom somehow. After getting to know him, he began to see what the coach meant about being a hick. At first, Joel felt awkward around Tom, just like he had at school with his new athlete’s image, and suddenly crawling with cat friends. When he passed by students he hardly knew, they would wave. He’d often heard girls whispering and giggling when he went by and, once, he’d heard, “He’s so-o cu-ute!” Guys would slap him on the back when he stood at his locker. He got invited out a lot by the town girls to attend Rainbow Girl banquets, to be a girl’s escort to the spring carnival, the homecoming dance. But he felt awkward most of the time and refused shyly.

  In contrast, Tom’s approach was different, so gentle and still persistent. And Joel was left making the giant step of introducing himself. Eventually he began to relax around Tom and, after a time, Tom had become for Joel a welcome change. He wasn’t the kind of guy you had to put up a front with. You didn’t always have to say you were horny when you weren’t and brag about making it with the girls when you didn’t. He wasn’t like a girl, but Tom gave Joel the kind of satisfaction he was supposed to get when he dated a girl. Eventually they had become best friends, as close as brothers, as familiar to Joel as his parents, and Tom was easy to talk to. He didn’t feel as dumb as he did with girls when he tried to talk about other things besides junk. Hardly a day went by now that they didn’t see each other or at least talk on the telephone.

  The differences in their backgrounds became invisible. They went on hikes out in the desert. They went to movies Tom had already seen in Houston. They drove up and down Main Street in Joel’s pickup night after night during the school week, instead of studying at the library as they told their parents. In every way they enjoyed each other’s company and hardly noticed how exclusive their friendship had become. Although they both had friends besides each other, they were transitory. Joel no longer dated. What was the point of putting yourself through that kind of torture? He realized he hadn’t been anywhere with anybody else since October of the last year. But some of the other guys dropped hints now and then that things weren’t quite right. Joel had failed to register these things until now. He didn’t mind that his old friends no longer called. He got along fine without the others. Tom is my best friend, after all, Joel told himself now. And I love him, too, he thought, like Tom had said the night before.

  It had seemed natural when Tom had kissed him, but of course it wasn’t too smart in front of all those people, drunk or not. Even when you were drunk there were just some things you didn’t let loose. The others made the difference. Joel shuddered to think what could have happened.

  As he recalled that, Joel was amazed they’d gotten away so easily. He kicked himself for having gone to the dance in the first place and letting Tom kiss him in front of Jeannie Lynn and the guys. And what if they’d been caught at the abandoned hangar—like that old man had been at one of those dances, with Becky McNutt? The boys had dragged him out of the car like a pack of wolves. The old man was naked as a jaybird. All the chaperons treated Becky as if she’d been raped, but no one cared about the old man, even if Becky had been flirting with him. She was always “doing it” with guys, and all the students knew it; some of the same guys who bragged about laying her were the ones beating the hell out of the old man right there in front of the doors to the dance—yelling, smashing the guy’s face in, getting blood and snot all over the place before the cops came and broke it up.

  I need to talk to someone, he thought, driving aimlessly through the streets. He passed the public library. Maybe the librarian knew some books he could read. But how did you ask? He felt afraid, remembering Tom’s craziness. Who could you talk to and survive their reaction? “Er…ah…y
es ma’am, last night, um…my best friend and I got.you know.horny for each other…Um…could you tell me what causes that?” He laughed thinking of the mess they made all over themselves afterwards.

  For months, Joel knew both of them had been leading up to something like this. There were times when they were wrestling that they would stare at each other in a quizzical way, both speechless. Times when Tom was spending the weekend when they would take walks in the field at dusk and Joel would almost take his hand—then, realizing you didn’t do that, would stuff his hands in his pockets.

  Today, he should have knocked some sense into him, getting so upset over everything. He decided that if Tom was going to go wild-eyed, he’d just wait it out, let Tom calm down, then show him it wasn’t wrong. They just needed to figure out what to do. He decided to go back now and start over. He wouldn’t get mad, he wouldn’t get hurt, and he wouldn’t mention last night.

  He called from a pay phone.

  “Allen residence,” a woman’s voice said. “Mrs. Allen speaking.”

  Joel identified himself. “May I speak to Tom, please?”

  “Hello, Joel.” Her voice was kind. “Tom said if you called to tell you he’s sick.”

  “But I just saw him an hour ago, Mrs. Allen—”

  “I know, dear, but there’s something wrong with him anyway. I’m sure he’ll call you later on. Okay?”

  “Sure. Yes, ma’am.” Joel dropped the receiver into its cradle, feeling lost.

  * * *

  Tom heard the telephone ringing in the living room, then his mother talking to Joel. He watched from a crack in his bedroom door as she explained, “Sick or something,” which was all she would say. It was, after all, the most his mother could probably figure out. Until he heard her say good-bye to Joel, he hoped she would motion to him to hurry across the carpet quietly and say just a few words before his father returned to his desk. But she dropped the receiver into the cradle and walked away. Father’s angry all right, the way mother dropped the phone like a live snake, Tom thought, and now, he was sorry he hadn’t gone with Joel. It was worse getting his father involved. At least with Joel, as ashamed as he felt, he could have been honest. But with father?

  Oh, why am I crying? I lay with Joel. Knew him…in the biblical sense, Father.

  He softly clicked the door shut and leaned against it. He bit down on the edge of a thumbnail and stared at the white stillness of his room, the almost bare walls, and the blinding glow of light from his window. His bed was rumpled from his fight with it earlier, but looking at it now tired as he was, he knew it would be hot and dry. He was sick—to his stomach—and he didn’t want a repeat performance like this morning when Joel had dropped him off.

  When he got out of the pickup, he’d made it to his room quietly, and lay down without undressing. But immediately, the room had begun to spin. As soon as his head touched the pillow, he felt like he was whirling around and around, and he actually held onto the edge of the bed to keep from falling. But the roiling nausea forced him to hurry to the bathroom and vomit into the toilet, leaving him rung out like a rag, leaving his nostrils stinking and burning and the back of his throat choked with mucus.

  He managed to wash off the sharp, cheesy smell of vomit and sweat in the shower, but as he slipped into the church intending to pray as the sun was just beginning to pink the sky, he still felt filthy.

  He knelt down in the back of the church in the last row and tried to utter the Lord’s Prayer, but he couldn’t make himself say “Father.” He felt like a cheat—a pretender. Instead, he cried out in a loud voice for help and, in the empty chapel, it sounded like a howl, which shamed him into silence. He couldn’t pray. He felt empty and stayed in the church, eventually able to go about his work. Maybe if Joel hadn’t come in looking for him and acting like everything was ordinary, he might have avoided getting his father all excited. Instead, when Joel came in, it had made him angry. He had meant to hurt Joel. But seeing its effect on his friend, then feeling lousy for it, had only made things worse.

  After Joel drove off, gunning his pickup down the street and out of sight, Tom had tried to sneak back into his room, but his mother had caught him. She took one look at his face and called his father, who demanded an explanation for his condition—his swollen eyes, his distracted behavior. “I’m sick,” was all Tom could think to say. It was true, but not the truth. And of course, his father wasn’t satisfied. He couldn’t get one past his father. Not that he often tried. But this? Sitting on the couch in the living room with his mother on one side of him, seeming to hold onto its rich brocade design for support, and his father standing by the desk, behind the couch, drilling questions into the back of his head, all he could think was Just don’t get him started, just don’t.The trouble was, being a preacher, his father made a religious issue out of everything, and so when he sent him to his room until he explained himself, Tom went without a word.

  He was still speechless. He came out of the stare and looked down at his bloody thumbnail, which he had bitten to the quick. He dropped his hand to his side and forced himself to walk across the room to the desk. He resented being shut in like a child. But if the truth were known, he would have stayed away from his parents anyway, ashamed. He hated himself for chasing Joel off, but he had only wanted to get away from everybody—even himself.

  He wanted to see Joel now, but his father’s rules were unshakable. It had been easier to commit sodomy than to even think now of disobeying his father. He thought of writing Joel a letter. To explain things. To apologize. To tell him he loved him, but not like that.but then, why lie? Why not just tell him that it was wrong and they would just have to stop? Couldn’t we just go on being friends? Surely, Joel could understand.

  But he made no move to write. Joel wouldn’t understand, considering Joel’s solution had been to do it again! “Next time, Tom, I promise you won’t feel embarrassed…” Tom laughed bitterly at the thought, at Joel’s puppy-dog innocence.

  He thought about praying, but didn’t give voice to the words that were rattling him: Please forgive me, Father, for I want to sin. God wouldn’t understand that, would He?

  It was a lie to pretend that getting drunk broke down the barriers between them. The only barrier the beer had broken down was his fear. Drunk, he had found it easy to kiss Joel, to turn him on. But the beer was not to blame.

  He had tried for three years to believe that he would eventually win, that one day the desire would be taken away. When had everything begun to feel so false? Was it last year in Houston, the summer before they left there and came to this place? He was glad to get away from there. The schools were large and full of reckless students, and just about any diversion a person could dream up, he could find, practically within walking distance of home. And for a quarter a person could ride into downtown, where the porn strip beckoned, where the sleazy buildings with the bright yellow and red plastic signs promised sex, where he’d often gone, where he’d never had the courage to give in, except once. He shut his eyes and saw with the vision of a clairvoyant that dark, stinking booth with the flickering movie, the sudden rush of cool air coming from somewhere to his left, a shaft of light from the booth next to him coming through a hole, then the rustling sound, then something blocking the light, then.No! I won’t think about that! he thought. But he did. He saw the penis where the light had been, sticking through the hole into his booth, felt its heat, remembered reaching out in the privacy of that stinking booth to touch it, oddly anonymous, it being the only part of the man in the booth with him, remembered holding it with the tips of his fingers, then its sudden withdrawal and the cruel laughter. “Suck it, bud, I ain’t got all night!”

  He was relieved to move away, not having to fight the nightly temptation to sneak out of the house in the dead of night, to return to one of those booths with the holes, where he knew with a certainty he would one day have the courage to do as the voice had demanded. Unbelievably, having the temptation taken away added to his frustration. And altho
ugh he couldn’t be precise about the moment when he felt the doubt beating in him like a quickening fetus, he thought he must have become infected with it out here in the desert.

  For the longest time—months at least—he had fought against his love-hate relationship with the church. He loved the quiet of the church. But, secretly, he hated being the son of a preacher, always feeling different from ninety-nine percent of the guys he ever knew. He loved singing the hymns. He loved the way he often felt in church, listening, awed at the power that his father wrought over the congregation. But he hated that cloying doubt most of all that he was only deceiving himself, deceiving his father, his church, the congregation, into believing that he was just a nice quiet boy, who seldom dated, who never wanted to experiment with alcohol, who could be counted on to be wholesome and clean. On the inside—in that part of his mind that he couldn’t look at—he doubted that he really wanted to be saved from this sin. But he couldn’t admit that he was lying like a crook about wanting to give up the feelings that drew him to Joel—so very, undeniably strong were his feelings. Joel, though, had taken to everything like a duck to wat—

  He couldn’t allow himself to even recall last night, especially the intensity of the brief pleasure in it, because such feelings, once unleashed.He wanted things to be the way they used to be. But last night he had led Joel into this hideous sin, whether Joel would call it a sin or not. He remembered saying to Joel, “I love you!”

  But it was just lust, wasn’t it? Just lust. Only that could have made him break his secret open to Joel like a ripe melon and invite him to gorge himself.

  He hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, and when his head hit the desk with a crack that sent a can of pencils clattering to the floor and brought a light tapping at the door from his mother, Tom stood up wearily. He looked toward the door. “I’m okay, Mother. I was just cleaning out my desk.” He listened for the soft brush of her steps across the carpet, then moved toward the bed.