Country

by Jeff Mann

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Jeff Mann

  COUNTRY Jeff Mann

  Copyright

  Dedication & Thanks

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part Two

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Part Three

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Part Four

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  Part Five

  58

  59

  More titles by Jeff Mann

  PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF JEFF MANN

  “Mann conveys the experience that most rural gays go through as they attempt to negotiate their homosexuality in a place that often discriminates against them….”

  TRAVIS A. ROUNTREE FOR APPALACHIAN JOURNAL

  “The sounds of rock ‘n’ roll music wafting from the radio, or played on guitar, the feel and scent of leather, the smell and taste of good home cooking, the look, smell, and feel of a hairy man...Mann’s vivid prose describes all these and more.”

  Keith Glaeske for CHELSEA STATION MAGAZINE

  “Libraries that collect gay historical fiction, Civil War novels, and LGBT fiction will want these books as well as Mann’s other works.”

  James Doig Anderson for the GLBT ROUND TABLE

  OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

  “As a gay Appalachian himself—or, as he might put it himself, a mountain man—the poet and scholar has used his own life experiences and inner journey as source material in examining what it means to be a man from the rural South who loves other men, and loves them with a certain (even specialized) vigor.”

  Kilian Melloy for EDGE MEDIA

  Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords.com

  Copyright © 2016 Jeff Mann

  ISBN 9781590212400

  No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.

  lethepressbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Art: Alice Rutherford

  Cover and Ebook Design: Inkspiral Design

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Mann, Jeff, author.

  Title: Country / Jeff Mann.

  Description: Maple Shade, NJ : Lethe Press, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016025654 | ISBN 9781590212400 (paperback : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Gay men--Fiction. | Country musicians--Fiction. | GSAFD: Love stories

  Classification: LCC PS3563.A53614 C68 2016 | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025654

  For Steve Berman, who gave me the gift of this plot.

  For the many country singers and country boys who’ve stirred my heart and my libido.

  For country music stars Ty Herndon, Chely Wright, and Billy Gilman, who had the courage to come out.

  For Joni Mitchell, whose example helped me become a musician and a poet.

  For my husband, John Ross, who’s made a home for this ornery country boy for nearly twenty years.

  *

  Thanks to Cynthia Burack for decades of friendship as well as information about reparative therapy.

  Thanks to Philip Rogerson for his kindness and his priceless wit.

  Thanks to Jason Burns, John P. Mullins, Kevin Oderman, Jesse Kalvitis, Fran Whiteman, and Katie Fallon for the Morgantown visit.

  Thanks to John P. Mullins for the snake-handling story, which I have repeated almost verbatim.

  Thanks to Matt Bright for the fine book design.

  STIFF-BACKED AND HUNGOVER, BRICE BROWN, rubbing sleep from his eyes, trudged the sands on Thanksgiving Day of 1997. Near sunset, this stretch of beach was almost empty, save for a few wizened, brown Daytona natives taking brisk holiday walks and the occasional manic sandpiper picking through the wave-wash of low tide for dinner. Behind barefoot Brice loomed nineteen pink and yellow floors of condominium tower. Before him spread the Atlantic, rough and booming after recent storms. On the horizon, a white shrimp boat trawled for crustaceans. Above, a white-bellied osprey rode air currents, scanning the water for prey.

  Brice, a burly man of six feet and forty years, had a broad, handsome face, blue eyes, and a close-cropped brown beard. He wore his favorite warm-weather clothes: a black baseball cap, camo shorts, and a baggy black nylon muscle-shirt chosen to show off his big chest and thick arms while concealing the booze-belly he habitually sported. Brice looked out at the ocean, tried to rub the blur out of his left eye, and failed. Shrugging, he massaged the throb in his temples, checked for new messages on his cell phone, found none, muttered beneath his breath, and looked out to sea again. When he stepped on a sharp fragment of shell, he stumbled. Sharp pains shot through his lower back, and he sank to his knees, cursing.

  “Goddamn sacroiliac,” Brice hissed. “This aging shit’s for the fucking birds.” Brow crimped up, he stretched his back out using a couple of yoga positions that Buddy, his bass player, had taught him, then rolled onto his side, wincing. His gaze roved along the beach, where breaking waves rolled up the sand, leaving at their farthest reach lacy clumps of sea foam that the brisk breeze blew sideways like tiny ships. Teeth gritted, doing his best to ignore the pain in his lumbar, Brice followed the progress of one such little galleon till it scattered and dissolved. Head pounding, he closed his eyes, listening to the surf and the rhythmic sounds of a jogger’s shoes somewhere nearby.

  After last night’s concert and the partying afterwards, he was exhausted, despite having slept all day long. He was close to drifting off when a voice startled him.

  “Hey, sir. Are you all right?”

  Brice opened his eyes. Hunkered down beside him was a man in his twenties sporting a trim golden goatee and wearing nothing but gym shorts and running shoes. His muscular chest, heaving with exertion, was slick with sweat. Tattoos raced up and down his sinewy arms.

  Holy fuck, you’re hot, Brice thought. Big yummy nipples. And going commando too. How about you come back to the condo with me?

  Brice sat up with a grimace. “Hey, I’m fine. Bad back, that’s all.” He pulled his glance from the boy’s long furry legs and packed shorts. “Actually, I had a late night, and a date with a whiskey bottle.”

  Smiling, the boy stepped back. “You look familiar. You been on TV?”

  Brice grinned. While he had grown used to fame, it still thrilled him when anyone handsome recognized him, as if Fate wanted him to get laid despite a life trapped in the clo
set. “A few times. I’m Brice Brown.”

  The boy didn’t respond as Brice had hoped, with wide-eyed recognition and garrulous adulation. Brice mumbled something about the Country Music Awards, that duet he did with Pam Tillis that brought the house down, best ratings yet….

  “Country? That’s cool. I’m more of a hip-hop guy myself.”

  Brice scowled. “Hip-hop? I hate that shit.”

  The boy laughed. “That’s what everyone over forty says. You want me to help you up?”

  “Thanks,” Brice said, offering his hand. Despite Brice’s heft, the boy heaved him to his feet with little effort. Brice swayed a bit and kneaded his spine.

  “My father has back problems too. Take care. Happy Thanksgiving.” With a grin and a wave, the boy bounded off.

  Brice groaned, watching the tanned broad back and athletically rounded buttocks recede down the beach. “His father. That ain’t the kind of Daddy/boy scene I had in mind.” He was stepping cautiously up the beach when his phone buzzed. He flipped it open, glad to see it was his manager.

  “Hey, Steve,” Brice said. “How’s my favorite Yankee?”

  “I am the bearer of good news, Brice. Not only is Molasses Mount eager to release your next CD but they’re going to book you on a tour in the spring.”

  “Big venues, I hope? Not like that piss-ant pit I played last night.”

  “Big, big, big! You’re on the verge of a comeback, I promise. Have you been dieting? I’ve found a fashion consultant perfect to help with the album cover and we both think you should wax your chest—”

  “Hell, no. My fans want a real man, not a slick city boy. Let me look country.”

  “What sells in WalMart may be country but it isn’t trucker—”

  “Steve, leave me a few rough edges. Play up my outlaw status, or whatever you want to call it.”

  “All right, all right. Could you be more stubborn?”

  “Ornery’s the word we use down here.”

  “Ornery outlaw…. Maybe that should be a song title. You have finished recording, right? The chain stores, the distributors, the deadlines are tight, Brice. I want Billboard and Rolling Stone and the L.A. Times to be swooning. They do use ‘swooning’ in West Virginia?”

  Brice scowled and bit back the retort. Truth was, he’d had writer’s block for months. Hard to write songs your fans expect instead of songs you want to write, songs that would lose you your entire audience. “Almost done, I guess.”

  “You guess? That doesn’t sound good. We need more than good. We need terrific.” He heard Steve chewing; his agent might be the only man on God’s green earth that chewed aspirin, though it wasn’t for headaches but to keep his heart beating. His tiny Music Row heart.

  “Being seen in public with that lovely wife of yours would help too. People Magazine took a bite out of your sales when they featured the separation. I need you to do something big, big, big for Valentine’s Day. Get her one of those colored diamonds on a chain. One so large you don’t need the Hubble to see it from space. Capiche?”

  “Shelly’s hardly speaking to me these days.” And if you knew why, you wouldn’t be speaking to me either.

  “I don’t need to tell you that every fan inside the Bible Belt likes their singers fine-looking, married, and covering some Christmas tunes to sing to their two grinning kids. Lose more weight and she’ll come around. Women like abs. Ever see Brad Pitt wearing sweats? Never.” Steve guffawed. “How’d last night’s show go?”

  “Last night?” Brice felt he ought to have more coffee before dredging up even a recent memory.

  More crunching aspirin. “I know you didn’t sell out.”

  I used to think that meant something else…and I still think I did sell out, only not by filling every seat in the house. “Naw. That’s why this new Molasses Mount deal is so damn welcome. We gotta get my name back up there, Steve. And I gotta win that big award I’m up for. That’d make a big difference, don’t you think? And we gotta get me back on the radio more often. We gotta—”

  “I spoke to Buddy. He said you were a little unsteady on stage.”

  “Nothing to worry about, Steve. I swear.”

  “Were you on something? A little of the Bolivian marching powder?”

  Brice limped up the stairs to the condo tower’s patio, gritting his teeth. “Hold…on a minute.” He hobbled over to a bench overlooking the water and sat heavily. Damn that Buddy. I thought that if a guy did yoga and drank pulverized wheatgrass shakes he’d be too calm to be a little bitch and tattle on me. If he weren’t such a great bass-player, I’d kick his ass.

  “Answer me, Brice. I need to know if we have to do the whole rehab spin. And Shelly would have to be on board about that. Two things a musician needs to make recovery from addiction a moneymaker: a loving, tearful wife and devotion to Jesus.”

  Brice groaned.

  “If you fuck up, this new deal might go right down the toilet.”

  “I wasn’t drunk. I had a few fingers of whiskey to lube my vocal cords. But my back’s been giving me big trouble again. I take the pills the doctor you sent me to prescribed.”

  “All right, I’m already late for the big turkey dinner. My wife hired an Oriental cook last week and I bet turkey doesn’t even translate in Korean or South Korean or wherever her Green Card says.”

  “Well, at least you have plans. Most of the band is headed home to Tennessee today. Buddy’s over in Orlando, hanging out with some buddies of his. I’m just going to grab a bite here. Heading back to Nashville day after tomorrow. I’ll check in next week to talk about—”

  “Gotta go, Brice. ‘Nother call.”

  Brice shoved the quieted phone into his shorts pocket. For a few minutes, he watched sunlight flash in the white collapse of waves and let his mind wander. He thought of Shelly and all he’d put her through. He thought of Zac, how the big man had wept when Brice, fearful of discovery, had broken it off and said goodbye. He thought of his childhood in the West Virginia mountains and the boys he’d loved from afar in high school and college. He thought of the summer when he was sixteen, when he’d helped his father pick such a surplus of strawberries that they’d sold them by the side of the road. Brice had made enough money to take the Greyhound to Daytona Beach to visit relatives. It was the first time he’d seen the ocean. There were so many exotic seashells, and the sand, in memory, was pure white, white as cane sugar, not at all like the dull dun stretching before him now. He was lean then, with a patchy beard, an agile frame, and lanky brown hair down to his shoulders. Already he’d been getting good on his guitar. Already he was writing songs and dreaming of Nashville and stardom. Already he was adept at hiding who he really was.

  Brice watched a white egret fly by. He watched another patch of sea foam buffeted by wind sliding along the sand. The tracks left by the nearly naked runner remained on the beach. He remembered making love to Zac, the way the bushy-bearded man moaned as Brice took him from behind.

  Bad back or not, I need me some strange. Grinning, he limped into the lobby, nodding at Billy, the guard on duty, a man he’d chatted with often during his three years of intermittent visits here. Despite his college degree and his annual income, Brice had never forgotten his roots. He felt much more comfortable with working-class and blue-collar folks than most of the music industry sophisticates he interacted with in Nashville.

  “Hey, Billy, why ain’t you home with your family?”

  “I will be soon. I get off in an hour. And I could ask you the same. Why aren’t you gallivanting in your native hills?”

  Brice frowned. “Ah, I had that big show last night. Besides, not much family left. Shelly and I separated, remember? All I got’s my sister and nephew in West Virginia. That fried clam place up in Ormond Beach still open?”

  “Afraid not. Owner died.” When the big man crooked his arm to run a hand over his bald scalp, his biceps bunched up.

  “Ah, too bad. Any good delivery around here?” Brice said, studying Billy’s big chest and lean h
ips. Hell, I’m drooling over anything in pants. I gotta get laid tonight. It’s been too damn long.

  “Stavros Pizza,” Billy said. “It might give you bad heartburn later, but it sure is good going down.”

  “Thanks, man. I’ll try ‘em out. Happy holidays,” Brice said, moving toward the bank of elevators. As much as he’d enjoyed all the attention last night, the sweet clamor of fans, he was ready for the silence and solitude of his comfortable condo. He was ready for good Kentucky bourbon, pain pills, delivery pizza, and an evening on the laptop spent cruising online sites that offered him what he craved.

  ONE YOUNG MAN ONLINE, MOUTHWATERINGLY lean and hirsute, was simply rude: “Sorry, dude, you’re too old. Not into Daddies.” The rest just ignored Brice.

  Fifteen years ago, when his career in country music had first taken off and he’d situated himself firmly in the closet, finding some discreet and hairy tail was pretty easy. At this age, it had become more difficult. Meanwhile, he’d grown tired of the pretense, tired of the sham marriage he’d shared with Shelly for nearly ten years, tired of sneaking around, tired of paying for sex, but what other options were there if he wanted to keep his career? That brief affair he’d conducted with his former lead guitarist, Zac—lots of furtive rendezvous in motel rooms in the countryside outside Nashville—had made him so fearful of being caught that he’d ended it after six months, despite Zac’s teary protestations and his own deep regret.

  After six slices of pizza, two pain pills, and three whiskey sours, Brice shifted to his computer and escort options at CallBoys. At first his strong preference for muscled Caucasians hindered his search, for most of the guys were Latinos, black men, or scrawny white boys. At last, however, he discovered Mike Dragon, a stud in his mid-thirties, a guy with the sort of country-boy looks Brice savored most.

  “Ummm,” Brice growled, squeezing his crotch and scanning the man’s pics. “Looks like home.” The guy did indeed resemble several trailer-park buddies and local garage mechanics that Brice had yearned after in his shy, suppressed youth.