It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  Pissed, I brush by Ray as he comes up to the car. “Mom, my stuff,” he whines because she’s already closed the trunk, and just because I’m mad and he sounds so damn childish, I kick his shin as I pass. “Hey!” he cries. “What’d I do?”

  At my car, I unlock the driver’s side door to let Caitlin in. “Good hit,” she mutters as she climbs into the back seat. “You should’ve gotten him right behind the knee, though. He goes down every time.”

  I don’t bother to answer her. Instead, I trail around the back of the car, where Dad is still giving Dan directions, as if he has a photographic memory and can possibly remember all this. Holding out the car keys, I interrupt, “You want to drive?”

  Dan hears the anger in my voice but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he takes the keys and gives me a small frown, one that tells me we’ll talk once we’re alone. Only we’re not alone, are we? My little sister is camped out in the back seat of my car for the next eight hours, and once we get to Evie’s, my mom’s going to do anything she can to make sure there’s someone else in the bedroom we’ll share. Knowing her, she probably already thinks she can pawn Ray off on us. He’ll lie awake in the dark and ask us stupid questions about gay sex and blowjobs and “Are you two going to do it when I fall asleep?” God, I can almost hear him now.

  On the passenger side of the car, I pull up the handle and Caitlin reaches over to unlock the door. When I slide into the seat and slam the door shut, she asks, “Do you think Aunt Jessie will be there?”

  I’m not in the mood to talk. I stare out the side mirror at Dan’s reflection and tell her, “No.”

  She digests that for a moment as she fiddles with her Walkman. Tinny music blares through her headphones, I can hear it from here. Then she turns the volume down a little and says, “Mom told me it was heart failure.” She means what killed Aunt Evie. I look at her in the rearview mirror and see tears shining in her eyes. “She seemed okay in August.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, my voice gruff with sudden emotion. “Sometimes things like that just happen.” Caitlin studies the Walkman in her hands and nods, her chin crumpling as she struggles not to cry. Hoping to cheer her up, I add, “Aunt Evie’s a big lady.”

  That gets a smile. “Yeah, I guess,” she murmurs, wiping at her eyes. Her hand comes away streaked with black eyeliner, and she blinks quickly, dotting at her face. “Fuck, this shit stings.”

  There are napkins in the glove compartment, leftover from the last time Dan and I ate from a drive-thru. I hand her one and look away—I don’t want to watch her cry. “Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing that,” I say softly. She’ll just cry it all off, it’s a waste of make-up.

  “Maybe,” she concedes as she dabs at her face.

  The driver’s side door opens and Dan slides in behind the wheel. I give him a bright smile that feels like plastic on my lips. “Know where we’re going?” I ask.

  He buckles his seat belt and starts the car. “Mostly,” he tells me. With a glance at Caitlin, still rubbing her eyes, he leans across the gearshift and whispers, “Come here.”

  I lean closer. His lips touch my mouth in a tender kiss. When I start to pull away, he stops me with a hand on the back of my neck. He stares into my eyes until I can count the tiny black lashes along his lower eyelids. “You okay?” he wants to know.

  I smile again, sad. “Fine,” I assure him. “Just…” I take a deep breath—I won’t mention the room situation, not until I know for sure we won’t be able to sleep alone. Then I’ll tell him look, there’s a Super 8 over in Franklin, we’ll see everyone at the funeral. I don’t want to stay anywhere else, though. To me, Sugar Creek is Evie’s home. With a soft sigh, I say again, “I’m fine.”

  He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press it, either. He knows I’ll tell him when I’m ready. Putting the car into reverse, he glances at Caitlin and then smiles at me. “Are we all set?”

  My stomach churns with a familiar nervousness as he backs the car out of the driveway. “You know where we’re going?” I ask again.

  Dan puts the car into drive and takes my hand in his. “I’ve got it covered,” he says, giving my hand a light squeeze. He slows the car as we pass my parents. “Or do you want me to follow your dad?”

  Ray is the only one in the other car—my mom is heading back into the house, my dad leans on the open driver’s side door and shouts at her to hurry the hell up. “Just go,” I murmur. There’s no reason to wait. I’m certain I can navigate the way to Aunt Evie’s in my sleep.

  “Yeah, go,” Caitlin pipes up. I thought she said she wouldn’t be bothering us? “Maybe we’ll get our pick of rooms, if we get there first,” she says, talking loud over the noise in her headphones. “Mom’s all about getting someone in with you guys, you know that, right? I heard her with Penny on the phone this morning. I think Doug’s already at the house. He lives in what, Pittsburgh?”

  I don’t want to think about sleeping arrangements just yet. “We’ll see when we get there,” I tell her, sounding just like my mom, I hate that.

  There’s an exit for the interstate off the boulevard, not five miles from the house. Dan remembers the way through the convoluted streets of our subdivision without my having to guide him, and he takes the northbound lane headed towards D.C. For a crazy moment I think we’re going home, and Evie’s still alive, there’s still next summer to bring Dan up to Sugar Creek.

  But then Caitlin’s arm snakes between us, reaching for the radio. She cranks up the volume, blaring George Michael’s latest hit, and then she starts flipping through the stations. “Hey, do you think we can get DC101 from here?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she settles on something by Metallica, and the volume gets turned up another few notches. “So you think they’ll stick Gordie in with you? Does he still wet the bed? Jeez, maybe you can send the kid out when you wanna get it on—”

  I snap the radio off and slap her hand away. “Look,” I say, growing angry again. “You said you’d leave us alone, Caitlin. Cat.” I correct myself before she can. “Let’s get something straight here, okay? Two things. One, do not touch the radio. This is my car, Dan’s driving. We’ll listen to what we want to hear, at the volume we want to hear it. Understand?”

  She flops back in the seat and crosses her arms defiantly. “Damn,” she mutters. “Got it. Two?”

  “Two,” I say, turning to look at her so she knows I’m not kidding here, “no more cracks on my sex life. Not one, you here me? I’m not discussing it with you, it’s none of your goddamn business. What Dan and I have is between us, him and me, got that?” She rolls her eyes and I feel a dull ire rise in me. How can my parents put up with this? “I’m sick and tired of comments from the peanut gallery, Cat. You want to pick on someone? Stick with Ray.”

  “Ray has no sex life,” she says. Beside me, Dan smirks. Caitlin cries out, “He doesn’t!”

  Somehow I think she’s missing the point. I know at sixteen, it’s hard for her to believe that what I feel for Dan is more than just sex—it’s the media’s fault, really, they portray gay men as sex hungry fiends who fuck anything with a dick. But I’m not like that. I’ve only had two lovers, Matthew when I was twenty and Dan. No one in between. Not that I didn’t date, but no one held my interest for long.

  Until Dan.

  He tells me I’m the only one he loves. He holds me when we make love because it’s not just intercourse to him—he wants as much of my body touching his while I move in him, he wants my breath on his skin, my lips, my hands on him. “I don’t want sex,” he told me the first time we slept together. “It has to be love or nothing at all. I want every last bit of you, Michael. If I can’t have you completely, then I’ll wait. You’re worth waiting for.”

  I’m not telling Caitlin that. Instead I just give her what I hope is a withering look, though it doesn’t seem to phase her. “Well,” I say, turning back towards the front of the car again, “I’m not going to talk to you about mine.”

  “Fine,” she huffs. “Then I won�
�t tell you about mine, either.”

  That gets a laugh from Dan, but I don’t take the bait. “Eight hours,” I mutter under my breath. I know he hears me, it’s in the way he squeezes my hand gently in commiseration. “Think you can get us there faster than that?” I ask, only half joking.

  “I’ll try,” he promises. From the back seat I hear Caitlin’s music, she’s turned her headphones up as loud as they’ll go, but I pretend I don’t hear it. I wonder if I’m ready for this. I don’t think eight hours will be enough time to prepare myself for facing Sugar Creek without Evie there to welcome us.

  Chapter 8: Rainbow Joan’s

  When we hit the Capital beltway, I’m tempted to ask Dan to stop by the townhouse anyway. Grab our pillows, maybe a few more clothes—something black because I don’t think I have anything to wear to the funeral—maybe call the firm and my professors, since I might not be back before my vacation’s over and I know I’ll miss class Tuesday night. But we’re making good time, the interstate’s mostly clear this early on a Sunday, and without a word, I watch the last exit into D.C. pass us by. Dan still holds onto my hand, and I’ve turned the radio back on so that it plays softly between us, so low that I can’t make out the songs. They’re like music from a dream, a tune on the tip of your tongue that you can almost remember after awakening. In the back seat Caitlin is stretched out, one foot tapping the door in time with the music in her headphones as she leafs through a tattoo magazine. She hasn’t spoken to me since we got on the road.

  Absently, I open Dan’s hand in my lap and stroke his fingers from tip to base, each one. He has long fingers, graceful and slim, like an artist or musician. Beautiful hands that the Army hasn’t managed to destroy. I can’t imagine these hands holding a gun or a knife in combat—I’ve seen these fingers unbutton shirts, I’ve felt them on my flesh. I remember Aunt Evie once said that you can tell how well a man makes love just by looking at his hands. We were in Union City for the day to do some shopping, my mom and Ray and Evie and me, and we ate lunch outside of a classy Grecian restaurant. Nik’s, I believe it was called.

  Our waiter was a young man whose flirtatious comments made Evie blush. Part of his job, I’m sure, complement the ladies for good tips. It worked, though Evie was a big tipper by nature, very easy with money. I don’t know how often I heard her say, “Keep the change.” That day at Nik’s, she and my mom giggled over the waiter, and after he brought our food, Evie leaned across the table and lowered her voice to tell us, “Look at his hands next time, Laura. You can always tell a good lover by the shape of his hands.”

  If that’s the case, Evie would have taken one look at Dan’s large, supple hands and told me, “Michael, keep him. Only a gentle lover has hands like that.” My eyes sting with tears because I can almost hear the words in her voice—I see her in my mind, one hand on her hip as she nods sagely. And she’d be right. Dan’s the gentlest man I know. Quiet, soft-spoken, and so damn attentive in bed. I can’t imagine ever letting him go.

  I trace the love line along his palm below his fingers to where it meets his life line. I follow that down to his wrist, then trace the faint blue vein that leads to the crook of his elbow, then back again. When I work into the center of his palm, he closes his fingers around mine and I glance up to find him smiling at me. “Hey,” he says. He jerks his head back to indicate Caitlin.

  Turning, I find my sister asleep, her arm curled beneath her head like a pillow, the magazine fallen to the floor. The noise from her headphones has stopped. “Figures,” I say, keeping my voice low. With any luck, she’ll sleep the rest of the trip.

  Dan laces his fingers through mine and concentrates on the road ahead. We sit in an easy silence that somehow says more than anything we could hope to convey with words alone. I love this quiet surrounding us, I love how comfortable we are together.

  A little while later when we pass beneath a green road sign for Baltimore, he asks me, “Are you getting hungry?”

  I shrug. “A little,” I admit. Then I look at the dashboard and notice the time, almost one in the afternoon, and as if that’s a catalyst, my stomach rumbles. I press the back of Dan’s hand to my belly and he laughs. “I guess so,” I say, grinning. “What do you have in mind?”

  He gives me an amused glance from the corner of his eye and I know what he’s thinking. We’re coming up on Baltimore, so that means…“Rainbow Joan’s?” I suggest.

  “How’d you guess?” he wants to know.

  It’s one of his favorite places to eat, that’s how. I introduced him to Joan’s shortly after we started dating—back at the beginning of February, actually. Super Bowl Sunday, and he didn’t want to stay in the barracks so he called me up, asked if I was doing anything special. I wasn’t, but I could think of a few ways I’d like to spend the evening, and all of them included him. We had known each other for just three weeks at that point but I was already falling hard.

  I told him to give me a half hour and I’d pick him up. He was waiting at the front gate when I drove onto post, barely let me stop before he was in my car. The minute Fort Myer faded in the rearview mirror, he had a hand on my knee. At the first stoplight that caught us, he leaned across the gear shaft and whispered, “Come here.” Then he kissed me.

  When we drove past D.C., he asked what I had in mind. “A little place I think you’ll like,” I told him. Rainbow Joan’s is one of the only gay-owned restaurants I know of that isn’t flamboyant about it. I mean, it’s not a bar or club or coffee shop, and there are no drag nights or pride events—it’s just a good place to eat. They have thick burgers, hoagies stacked high, specialty sandwiches and homemade lemonade, fresh baked desserts, daily specials, you name it, chances are it’s on the menu at Joan’s. If not, they’ll try to make it. Outside there’s a covered deck with a small bar and wrought-iron chairs and tables, and the booths inside have wooden tables shellacked with magazine ads, Guess and Versace and other designer names. There’s a small riser by the kitchen door where local bands play on the weekends, and it’s open mic Thursday nights for karaoke. At lunch time, Joan’s fills up quickly, mostly with people from nearby offices. Dinnertime, though, the place is alive with college students and young people my age, mostly the gay scene in Baltimore. Joan’s is the place to be, a jukebox in one corner, a large screen TV in the other, and the bar hopping until well after midnight.

  We got to Joan’s before the second quarter of the game and there was hardly any place to sit. People everywhere, laughing and calling to one another. Music from the jukebox rivaled the sounds of the TV, and outside on the deck, a college band called Black Tie Affair tried to drown out the noise with heavy guitar riffs and a steady drumbeat. I had to shout in Dan’s ear just to be heard, and before a waitress came to seat us, he eased an arm around my waist to keep me close. I felt his hand fist at the small of my back. “We can go somewhere else,” I yelled at him. “If you want.”

  He shook his head no. Joan’s is far enough away from Fort Myer that he feels safe there—he won’t run into anyone he knows from base. And there’s no need to hide our relationship, either, not when the place is crawling with gay and lesbian couples, holding hands and sharing drinks and making out in the back booths. We’re tame compared to some.

  And on Super Bowl Sunday, we weren’t quite the couple we are now. When the waitress asked how many, I held up two fingers, and Dan kept his hand on my waist as I followed the woman through the crowd to an empty booth near the front windows. As Dan slid into the booth across from me, he stared around with wide eyes, trying to take in everything at once. “Rainbow Joan’s,” he said, bemused. I could tell he liked the place.

  We ate dinner, ordered drinks, watched the game, leaned across the table when we talked so we could hear each other over the surrounding din. After halftime, the crowd thinned out a bit, but when the game was over and large groups of people started to leave, our ears rang so badly that we still shouted to be heard. By his third Lynchburg Lemonade, Dan’s hands were on my thighs beneath the table
, and a thin blush colored his cheeks every time I made him laugh. We only left when a very tired waiter came by our table and told us everyone else was going home. “Unless you want to stay the night,” he added, joking, as I helped Dan from the booth.

  Outside, the night air was brisk on my heated face, and I imagined I could feel snow in my bones. Or maybe it was the alcohol, I don’t know. My car was the only one in the parking lot, and Dan stumbled behind me, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of my pants as he searched for my car keys. “I can drive,” he told me, his breath hot in my ear.

  I felt his thick erection press against my buttocks. “You’re drunk,” I told him. “I’ll drive.”

  He laughed at that, and in my pockets, his hands closed over my own dick, squeezing playfully. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Not the keys,” I replied. I turned in his embrace and leaned back against the side of my car, wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him to me for a hungry kiss. “Stay with me,” I sighed.

  He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what I was talking about. I meant that night, I meant forever. “Michael,” he started, sobering up. “I don’t think we’re ready—”

  I wasn’t talking sex. We didn’t make love until two months after we’d been together. I didn’t want to rush anything with Dan, I wanted him too much to scare him away. So that night, out in the chilly winter air, I picked at the collar of his jacket and stared into his dark eyes, stars reflected in the inky depths like shining lights at sea. “I’m tired of looking,” I told him, forcing myself to speak low. I almost couldn’t hear my own words over the ringing in my ears. “I’m tired of playing the club scene, Dan. I’m tired of being alone. Remember when we met, and I told you I thought I liked you?”

  He stared at me for so long, I felt my resolve begin to crumble. I was ready to tell him just forget it, I’d take him back to base, he obviously didn’t feel the same and I had been wrong about him, then his brow furrowed and he whispered, “I remember.”