All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  Once she had been a drag queen on the stages of the city, feted and celebrated and revered. But she had come back here, to Brown’s Mill, where she had been born a boy, with the name of Howard Greer. “We’re not so different,” she once told Wally. “We were both born here in this place. We both did things people said were bad. You’re no different from me, Wally Day. I know who you are. I may be thirty years older, but there’s no difference between you and me.”

  Ah, but there was. Maybe they had both been boys who did bad things, but Missy had never really been a boy. At twelve, she took a pair of garden shears and snipped off the head of her penis. After spending three weeks in a hospital, her parents committed her to Windcliff Sanitarium over in Mayville, a place where doctors did horrible things to her—like strapping her to a table and sending electric shocks through her frail little mutilated body. She lived in constant terror of more of those shocks until one night she ran away and hitchhiked a ride to the city. Within a few weeks she was performing on stage at a backalley dive that was forever being raided by the police. Come see Miss Aletha—the amazing, the amusing, the astounding—you’ll swear she’s Eartha Kitt! Marilyn Monroe! Ethel Merman! Sophie Tucker!

  But Miss Aletha didn’t care about all that. “What’s so great about being astounding?” she’d laugh, years later. All she’d ever wanted was to be a lady who grew roses and entered them in contests. And so that’s what she became. She returned to Brown’s Mill and bought a house in Dogtown. The job she’d started with those garden shears was finally completed some twenty years later, with more professional tools, and with much more satisfactory results.

  “Missy,” Wally says, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips, “it feels good to be here.”

  She smiles. “I’m glad.”

  “I didn’t know how I’d feel.”

  She nods. “It’s been a long time, Wally.”

  “Too long.”

  “So what will you do? Put your mother in a home?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. What other options do I have?”

  “You could get to know her.”

  “Oh, please. You know the whole story, Missy. Tell me honestly that you think there’s anything more that can be done.”

  She shrugs.

  “You see? You can’t. The only thing left to do now in our long, sorry saga will be to bury her out beside my father when she dies. Then it’ll all be over. I’ll sell the house, pocket the cash—”

  “Is he the one who sent Zandy to jail?”

  They look up, startled. Dee has come inside. He stands in front of them with his arms crossed against his chest. He wears enormous baggy jeans that threaten to slide right off his narrow hips.

  “What did he say?” Miss Aletha asks, adjusting the hearing aid hidden under her wig. “I just know it was something fresh.”

  “It’s all right, Missy,” Wally tells her. “He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

  He levels his eyes at the boy. “Do you know Zandy, Dee?”

  “Yeah.” The kid’s studying him with his mascara eyes. “I’ve met him.”

  “How is he?”

  “Old. And sick. And his breath reeks.”

  Wally looks across the table at Miss Aletha. “His health …”

  She lets out a long sigh. “He’s gotten to be very reclusive. When he realized the drugs weren’t working, he just kind of closed himself off from most people.”

  “Are you going to go see him?” Dee asks.

  “Yeah.” Wally looks out the window again. The wind is kicking up and the sun is starting to set. He hates these short autumn days.

  “You want me to take you there?” the boy asks.

  Miss Aletha tries to wave him away. “Donald, go watch television or play your ridiculous rap music.”

  Wally smiles. “Actually, I might like the company.”

  “Yeah,” Dee agrees. “If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go all by myself to face somebody whose life I ruined.”

  “Now, scat, you!” Miss Aletha shouts.

  “He’s only stating the obvious, Missy.”

  She frowns. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, Wally. Zandy knew what he was doing. You were too young. I told him that.”

  “But I sent him to prison.”

  She stands and walks back over to the stove for the tea kettle. She refills Wally’s cup as Dee sits on the linoleum floor, staring up at them with his knees pulled up to his chest.

  “He survived prison,” Missy says. “Prison wasn’t what was so bad. It was afterward. Things started happening here in Brown’s Mill after you left, Wally. Some of us tried to put together a community center. Zandy was part of that. And we got a political group going. Do you know we got a civil rights bill passed in this state?”

  Wally nods.

  “We did some good things. But then ten, twelve years ago somebody came along, some do-gooder from the gay rights alliance or whatever they call it up in the state capital, and he says that it’s not such a good idea to have a convicted child molester playing such a public role in such a small town. Bad for the image, you know. What would the media do if they got ahold of it? The community, he said. Think of the community. So Zandy dropped out.”

  Wally’s quiet, watching the day get colder outside the window. The temperature is dropping: the purple roses shiver on their vine, and gray clouds are moving in to obscure the sharpness of the blue sky.

  “I bring him over his mail sometime,” Dee says. “He can’t make it to his PO box anymore. So I bring him whatever comes in, like The Advocate or Out magazine. He keeps up on everything. I told him how I took my boyfriend to my junior prom last year, and he just loved it. Thought it was really awesome.”

  Wally lifts his eyebrows, looking over at Miss Aletha. “What do you mean, Brown’s Mill hasn’t changed? Can you imagine me going to my prom with some guy in matching tuxedos?”

  “That’s what we had,” Dee agrees. “White tie and tails. Top hats, too. Zandy wanted to know all the details, see all the pictures.”

  “It’s what he always predicted,” Wally says, feeling a smile stretch across his face. “He said someday things were going to be easy. Someday we wouldn’t have to hide.”

  “Hide?” Dee echoes. “I’ve never hidden in my life and I’m not planning on doing it, ever. Even when I make it as an actor. I’m going to be out as queer right from the start. I’ll never have to worry about being outed because I’ll always be out.”

  Wally’s looking at him, this strange, orange-haired man-child, but he’s thinking of Zandy, hearing his words. “He was the first to tell me stories,” Wally says dreamily. “Stories about places like Greenwich Village, and the Castro, and P’town … They were like fairy tales. That’s how I thought of them.” He laughs. “He told me we were going to change the world.”

  “He was a leftover hippie,” Miss Aletha says. It’s just a statement. Nothing else.

  Wally looks at her. “I use the stuff he taught me every day. Do you know that?”

  Miss Aletha is quiet. Dee listens to every word.

  “He taught me so much,” Wally whispers.

  And he thinks of Zandy’s hands, scarred and twisted, the hands of a laborer, the hands of a man, on his fourteen-year-old boy’s body.

  “You tell him that, “Missy says, “when you see him.”

  Alexander Reefy was the man who first touched Wally’s trembling skin. He is the man whose hands live on so strongly in Wally’s memory, hands that first caressed the pink buds of his nipples, hands that stroked his hair and gripped his innocent butt. There, among the shadows of the orchard, lit only by an autumn moon, he did things to Wally’s body that made him shake, that made him cry, that made the boy love him. Things he shouldn’t have done, maybe, things that were wrong—but things Wally has never forgotten, things that have remained a part of him. Zandy’s hands. Big hands. Rough hands. And then his breath, hot against Wally’s face.

  “Why do you want to see him a
gain?” Dee asks as he shows Wally upstairs to his room. It’s the same one Wally had as a boy, when he stayed here with Miss Aletha for those few months, the months that saved his life.

  “I don’t know. Think it’s a bad idea?”

  The boy looks over at him. “You want my opinion? Are you really asking for my opinion?”

  “Sure.”

  The boy grins. He’s actually adorable, Wally realizes. Underneath the dyed hair and mascara and attitude, he’s soft and cute, like the boys Wally remembers from the pages of Tiger Beat magazine, stashed under his covers and read by flashlight after he’d gone to bed. The boys he had crushes on: David Cassidy. Bobby Sherman. Jack Wild. And especially Christopher Knight—Peter from The Brady Bunch.

  “Yeah,” Dee’s saying, “I think you should see him. Otherwise you’ll always regret it when he dies.”

  “He’s that sick, huh?”

  “Man, he’s nasty.”

  Wally unzips his backpack. He’d only brought one change of clothes. But he’s going to need more now that he’s promised to take his mother to the doctor.

  “Hey, Dee, is Grant’s department store still open?”

  “Grant’s? Never heard of it. What do you need?”

  “Just a couple sweatshirts, maybe some socks and underwear.”

  “You could go to the mall.”

  “There’s a mall in Brown’s Mill?”

  “Well, it’s in Mayville, but it’s only about fifteen minutes away on Route 16. They’ve got a Gap and an Abercrombie there.” He grins. “What kind of underwear you want?”

  “Whatever’s on sale.”

  “Oh, come on. Boxers or briefs?”

  Wally laughs. The boy’s jeans are so loose his own choice in undergarments is evident. Boxers. Tommy Hilfiger.

  “Today it’s briefs,” Wally says. “Calvin Klein.”

  Dee smiles. “You are so gay.”

  “Yup. Last time I checked.”

  “Gay guys your age always wear Calvins. And you all go to the gym.”

  Wally smirks. “So what makes you such an expert on us old-timers?”

  “I’ve been around.” Dee smiles. “I actually like older men.”

  Wally laughs. “Well, such noblesse oblige.”

  Most of his life, Wally had been the boy. Even with Ned, who had been just a year older, but who had been so much wiser, so much smarter than Wally. Not book wise, not so that it would show on any standardized test. Wally was the brain but Ned was the smarts, and that kept Wally the bright-eyed boy all through the sixteen years they were together. Sixteen years. As long as Dee has been on this earth.

  It’s odd being the older man. He’d watch the boys he tricked with, their faces unlined as they slept, their easy bounce out of bed in the morning, their quickness to laugh, to presume, to believe. When had he stopped being like them? Wally’s sense of himself remains colored by his life as the kid at the bar, the one for whom the older guys were always buying drinks. “Watch,” Wally would say to Ned, sidling up to a stool. “See how fast I get a beer bought for me.” Such a cocky little child he was, filled with all the arrogance that comes with having a claim on the future.

  “No, I mean it,” Dee is saying. “I can’t stand how some young guys talk about older guys.” He positions himself against the dresser, leaning back just far enough so that his shirt rides up, exposing a glimpse of his flat, smooth stomach. “You know. How they call them old queens. Piano rats. Fossils. Trolls.”

  Oh, the kid’s good, Wally thinks, watching him. Just by putting the terms out there he establishes their positions relative to each other. Dee’s gotten accustomed to having the same power Wally remembers having himself. A power that brings rewards. A power that reveals itself now in the way the boy plays idly with the few strands of hair that grow up from the waistband of his underwear toward his navel.

  “Not that they’d say it about you,” he tells Wally coyly, throwing in a compliment for good measure. He reaches forward to slap his palm against Wally’s chest. “Nice body. Guess you have to stay buff, being an actor, huh?”

  Wally feels himself blush, even as he remains acutely aware of the kid’s machinations. “Yeah,” he says. “Never know when I’m gonna get the call asking to take over from Arnold in the Terminator franchise.”

  “There’s that sarcasm again,” Dee says. “I’m not sure it’s all that becoming on you.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “So can I go clothes shopping with you?” Dee asks. “I love going clothes shopping.”

  “If you like.” Wally sets his razor and shaving cream on the bureau. “You can show me how modern Brown’s Mill has become.”

  “Modern? Brown’s Mill? You say those words in the same sentence?”

  “Hey, I saw an Internet cafe on Main Street when I came through.”

  “Yeah, it’s got two computers.” Dee flops down on the bed. “And still on dial-up. You have no idea how much I want out of this town.”

  The same words, the same room. I’ve got to get out of this town. That’s the only answer. I’ve got to get out.

  “I really am a good actor, you know,” Dee is telling him. “I did Molière in my sophomore year.”

  Wally stands over the kid, looking down at him. Dee’s shirt is pushed up higher now to expose even more flesh. “Well, then,” Wally says, “Shakespeare in the Park can’t be too far away.”

  Dee grins. “You know, I think it’s cool for older guys to have sex with younger guys.”

  Wally can’t think of a quick retort.

  “I mean, about you and Zandy. I don’t think it was nasty or anything.”

  “Gee, thanks, Dee.”

  “I had sex with a guy when I was eleven.”

  “That’s not cool, Dee. I don’t know who it was, or any of the circumstances, but at eleven there’s no way you could have known what you were really getting into.”

  “Like you could at thirteen?”

  “I’m not saying I did.”

  “So then you think you did the right thing in sending Zandy to jail.”

  Wally feels himself getting angry at the kid. “Look, I need to make a few calls on my cell phone, okay? You get lost for a while, and I’ll find you when I’m going shopping.”

  “All right.” Dee hops up off the bed. “Can I get a pair of jeans? I’ll pay you back later, I promise.”

  “Get out of here.”

  Wally closes the door. He leans against it, closing his eyes.

  They would meet here, in Dogtown. Strange folk lived down here on the riverbanks, the kind who drove rusty old VW vans and smoked pot and wore patchwork-covered bell-bottom jeans. Every house seemed to have a big old dog tied to a post in the front yard, digging holes all through the lawn and going spastic whenever anyone walked by. Hence the name: Dogtown.

  “Don’t go down there,” Wally’s mother warned, but he turned a brazen shoulder to her pleas, hopping on his bicycle and pedaling as fast as he could from his quiet little cul-de-sac down Washington Avenue and into the swamps of Dogtown. There he would sit and listen to Zandy’s tales of the world beyond Brown’s Mill, and let him touch his body with those rough and beautiful hands.

  But a little more than a year later he would give his statement to the police that caused Zandy to be arrested and sent to jail.

  He gave it willingly. To say otherwise now would be a lie. His parents did not coerce him. Wally walked briskly into the police station ahead of his father, and even spelled Zandy’s name for Officer Garafolo, who sat behind his desk, egg salad in his bushy black mustache. Wally had just turned fifteen years old.

  “And now I’m back,” he whispers to himself.

  Back here, in Dogtown, in Missy’s house.

  There’s a light rap on his door. Wally opens it. It’s Missy.

  “Donald’s smitten,” she says, coming into the room. “Oh, he won’t admit it, but I can tell. I can always tell.”

  “He’s smitten into thinking he’s found somebody to buy h
im stuff.”

  “You know, Wally, the city may have saved your life but it’s also turned you into a cynic.”

  He laughs. “Oh, it’s the city that did it? Not the fact that I had a father who beat me, a mother who didn’t care, and on top of all that, I lost my lover to a plague that by rights should have claimed me instead?”

  Miss Aletha grasps hold of the bedpost. “My, you are worked up.”

  “It’s coming back here. I should have known.”

  “It was good you came.”

  Wally doesn’t answer.

  “You had to come back sooner or later,” Missy says, approaching him. “You just couldn’t go through the rest of your life with all this hanging in your closet.”

  “Why not?” He strides over to the window, looking out over the factories toward the orchard and the town beyond it. “What more is there for me to do here? Oh, sure, I can take my mother to the doctor. What a good son I am. I can go apologize to Zandy for ruining his life. As if that will make any of it better for him.”

  “It might.” She walks up behind him, placing a hand on his back. “One never knows what effect the most seemingly inconsequential action might have. I went to see my father in the hospital when he was dying of cancer and it ended up changing my life.”

  “Why? Because you resolved all your history?”

  She twinkles. “No. Because his nurse was this handsome young man by the name of Bertrand and he asked me out on a date.”

  Wally laughs. Missy and Bertrand went on to be lovers for twenty-seven years.

  “So you see?” she says to him. “You never know what might happen.”

  “When I first left Brown’s Mill,” Wally says, closing his eyes for a moment, “I dreamed of coming back here. I had it all planned out in my mind. I’d come back, the most famous actor in the world. A hit Broadway show, or a big movie, or a TV series. I’d come back and they’d line up along Main Street to get my autograph.”

  “Donald was very impressed when I told him you were an actor.”

  Wally laughs bitterly. “An actor. Yeah, right. My biggest moment was playing a psycho killer chasing Susan Lucci on a forgotten Lifetime television movie from the late eighties. Tell me how impressive that is.”