“What did Hiram want you to do?” I asked.
“Nothing, really.”
“Nothing at all?”
“He wanted to make me aware of what she’d said. He did say to make sure all the parents were on board with us, and I told him they were.”
“Mrs. Porter has a point, you know,” I said quietly as I moved the chess set, with the pieces still in play, over next to the bottles of ketchup and Tabasco sauce. I knew Kevin’s eyes were on me. “This might be a good time for you to step back and re-evaluate some decisions. I told you this might not be the best play to stage. I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to cut the kissing scenes. Remember, those are optional in the script, and—”
“No, he didn’t, and he didn’t ask me to downplay the drugs either.” George spread his hands flat on the table. “What would be the sense in staging Rent if those scenes weren’t in it? Angel’s death has to mean something, has to stir the audience emotionally, and it won’t do that if we don’t clearly establish his relationship with Tom Collins. The best way to do that is with a nice, chaste, ordinary kiss between them. And if we don’t show the heroin use for Mimi, then—”
“Ordinary?” I interrupted him. “George, take your blinders off. No kiss between men could possibly be considered ordinary. And you’re asking high school boys to perform it on stage.”
I couldn’t interpret the look he gave me then. “Do you really think we should cut the kissing from the play?”
I sat against the booth’s cushioned back. “From what we’ve been given to understand from Musical Theater International, that’s the intention, and the way other schools have gone. You don’t have to include either kiss, George, and you know it.”
“No,” he said emphatically. “I’m not going to do half-measures. If we do this play, then we do it the way it was meant to be performed and with its complete message intact. Don’t let Mrs. Porter spook you, Tom. So, Kevin, how’s life in the art department?”
The waitress came then with George’s Coke, we ordered dinner, and we didn’t mention Mrs. Porter again. By the end of the meal it was pushing eight-thirty. George excused himself to go to the men’s room as we left, so Kevin and I walked out to the parking lot without him. Kevin shook my hand when we got to his truck. “Thanks for the invite. This sure beat a cold sandwich alone in my house.”
“You’re welcome.”
He lowered his voice considerably as he released my hand. “Are we doing all right? You’re still comfortable?”
Comfortable wasn’t exactly the word I would have used. His palm had been warm against mine, and his voice soothed and aroused me in equal measures. I thought of what he’d said on Sunday, that in the best of all possible worlds the day would not have ended with us parting. Kevin was making an extraordinary effort that I could never have imagined anyone would ever make… for me. How was that possible? For me.
“Sure,” I told him. “We’re good.”
“That,” he said, “depends on how patient a man is. It’s been a long time since you and I got together at Good Times, Tom. Months. Don’t you want to—”
He broke off as a Mercury Cougar drove up and parked one spot away.
Once again he offered his hand, and I took it, though this time he squeezed my fingers tightly, even if briefly, and I found myself squeezing back, meeting his intent gaze.
“Later, okay?” he said.
“Later,” I agreed.
ON THURSDAY evening, I was watching the opening of a new episode of Supernatural when my phone rang. I put the TV on mute, picked up my glass of Dr Pepper, and ambled over to the wall phone in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Chess Grand Master. It’s me.”
I sat down abruptly in the chair. “Kevin?”
“In the flesh, buddy-boy.”
I snorted over my gratification that he’d called. “Not hardly. You sound like you’ve had a drink or two.”
“Or three or five. Just enough, I’d say. Sorry I couldn’t make it over the past two days.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, no, I really want to help. I was hoping to see your pearly whites today, but a client came in at the last minute I couldn’t ignore.”
“Pearly whites? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m dating you for your teeth.”
“Right.” I turned my back on the two Supernatural brothers, who couldn’t really be brothers with the way they flirted. More like poster boys for out and proud. It was amazing what the TV networks could get away with these days. “Danielle asked about you today.”
“Good for her. Have you found out what Australian is yet?”
“Bastard,” I said with feeling. If I hadn’t had the self-discipline of a saint, I would have been thinking of that kind of sex with Kevin all day. Any kind of sex was beginning to sound really good to me. Any sex with Kevin. “Sneaky bastard,” I added, because he’d wound me up on purpose. “Yes, I have. A couple websites had it. I bet you were the one who put the definition up there.”
“I like licking. You have any objection to that?” There was the faintest slur to his words, and a freedom, a sort of recklessness that I hadn’t heard from him before. Had he needed the liquid courage to call me?
“No objections so far. We’ll have to see.”
There was the sound of a drink sloshing and then Kevin swallowing. Then, “Yes, we will, won’t we? But not this weekend.”
I was surprised at how disappointed I was to hear that and how relieved that I’d been provided more time to adjust to the basic idea of what was going on. It’d been less than a week since the parents’ meeting over Rent. My emotional experience of a sexual partner had been abruptly put on hold my last week of college, so I tried to forgive myself for the rush of conflicting impulses that wrenched me back and forth: couldn’t wait to have sex with Kevin, wished he’d never shown up, couldn’t wait to have sex with Kevin, wished he’d never shown up.
“Not this weekend?”
“I’m flying up to St. Louis to see the mama. Command performance that I totally forgot about, sorry. Her birthday.”
“Sure, I understand. You can’t ignore her birthday.”
“Ain’t that the truth. So tell me, Mr. Smith, are you really against putting on this play you’ve got my daughter in? The play, I’d like to point out, that will have her kissing another girl on stage. Maybe fondling her ass too. I don’t know what wild idea George is going to have about the way lesbians behave.”
It was the experience of talking to him without seeing him, and his own openness, that unstopped my tongue. In the safety of my own home, who else could hear me? “One of the props,” I told him, “is a strap-on.”
“O-ho! That’s the way to get men into the theater.”
“Armed with pitchforks, probably.”
“Don’t joke, that’s my daughter we’re talking about.”
“You with a daughter. How did that come about, anyway?”
He gave a short laugh. “The usual way, with a twist. Every time I fucked Julianne, which was just barely enough to make Channing and no more, I closed my eyes and pretended she was Paul Newman. I’m queer all right, but I was able to fake being a husband for a whole year.”
“You can’t blame me for wondering. She has a different last name than you do.”
“Julianne remarried ten years ago, but he died.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yeah. Channing’s a good kid when she’s not running around with the wrong crowd. And, no, she has no idea that her daddy is hot for her history teacher.”
I looked at the phone, not willing to accept Kevin saying that. “No, you’re not hot for me.”
“What? You think this is a marriage of convenience?”
“Come on, we’re the only two gay men in Gunning. Or Kenneton. Who know about each other, anyway. Who else are we going to—”
“If I had been able to find out where you were living,” he said, and now he sounded
really drunk, like he’d lurched to his feet and was holding himself upright with one hand against the wall, “I would have moved from Louisiana and camped on your doorstep.”
“Now tell me something I believe.”
“You don’t believe me?” He was aggrieved, like a child wrongfully accused. “I’ll show you. Someday. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Which one? I’ve lost track.”
“Are you really against the play? What are you doing as assistant director if you are?”
“I’m not against it. It’s just not ideal for this community. We’re lucky it’s only been Mrs. Porter complaining. I’m concerned about the actors and how they’ll be treated for playing gay characters.”
“So you’re worried about them being harassed in school.”
“That.” I thought of Robbie and the question of his sexuality. “And other things.”
“Channing hasn’t mentioned any problems so far. She’s enjoying rehearsals.”
“Just wait until we’re days from tech week and she still doesn’t have her lines memorized,” I predicted. “So, are you still going to be dating women?”
I blinked in surprise. Where had that come from? I hadn’t intended for that submerged question to escape from my unruly lips. I wasn’t the one who’d had one too many beers.
Kevin didn’t seem to be fazed by the abrupt invasion of his privacy, though. “Nah. I told you, I’m through with that. I want to get cozy with some fine man who’ll give me good loving for about forty years or so.”
“You’d be, ah, seventy-seven?”
“And the man scores a touchdown.” More sounds of swallowing, so I took a swig of my drink too. It still had plenty of fizz left. “But I won’t be scoring touchdowns at that age.”
“Right, you said you’d played football. Arkansas is a big-time program. You’ve got to be really good to get on that squad.”
“Not good enough. I was a back-up free safety, and I played exactly seventeen downs the entire four years I was there. In games, that is.”
“That had to be frustrating.”
“Ball-busting, brother, you have no idea. Especially when I was doing my damnedest to get into one of the offensive linemen’s pants. Do you know how hard it is to hide the fact that you’re gay on a football team?”
I tugged at the curtain right next to the table, straightening it out. I could imagine Kevin fifteen years younger, flat-out gorgeous, full of life and running onto the football field with so much energy he was jumping out of his skin, set and determined that he’d contribute to the team that day. That overlaid the Kevin I was getting to know, the serious man, the resolute and steady one. Somehow, it wasn’t hard to see the one morph into the other.
“You really want to settle down.” I didn’t ask it as a question.
“I do,” he said more soberly than anything else that had come out of his mouth so far. “I hate living alone. Don’t you?”
I paused on the verge of saying no, I was used to it. “I don’t know.”
“Open your eyes, Tomboy.”
To what? I didn’t even have a cat for company, and I didn’t want to talk about it. “How did you go from football to working at a bank?”
“Executive vice president of small business loans, I thank you very much.”
“Sure, that.”
“Finance and statistics major.”
“And….”
“Worked a summer in D.C. on an internship with the Federal Reserve.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Slid from that into a training program in St. Louis with the biggest bank in the city, though it’s all gone now. None of the regional banks have survived. But from there it was up, up, and away for yours truly.”
“You don’t like what you’re doing, do you?”
“Hate it,” he said cheerfully. “Why do you think I’m trying to sneak out to help with the play? Gives me a reason to wake up in the morning.”
“I thought you were coming to see Channing.”
“And you. Don’t forget you. Wish you were here right now. Bet you could teach me a thing or two, professor.”
“Or maybe you’d teach me.”
“How’d you learn that?”
“What?”
“How’d you get into teaching?”
“I never wanted to do anything else. I was an education major from the day I took my first class.”
“What about the counseling thing?”
Even drunk off his ass, Kevin remembered that. “I never completed that degree. I guess if you’re born to stand in front of a classroom, nothing else will do.”
“Soooo.” He drew it out for seconds.
“What?”
“So I’m going to guess that you like what you’re doing.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“I get it. You’re pretending to be one of those strong, silent types who won’t ever admit how he feels. That’s for straights, Tom. You don’t need to put up the front with me.”
“Shut your mouth,” I said congenially.
“I can’t lick you until you’re screaming if I shut my mouth.”
Until I was screaming? A ripple of arousal danced across my shoulders and then down my back, where Kevin said he wanted his tongue. I closed my eyes. “You can’t lick me over the phone either.”
“That’s true. What do you say you get into your sexy little car, and I get into my big truck, and we meet halfway out on the highway. We can have hot, wild sex out on the range.”
Outside my window, I heard tires on the street, some vehicle passing by. “Sounds prickly to me.”
“I’ll bottom, I promise.”
I took a breath. “What if I don’t want you to?” I didn’t. I remembered that night, the long, slow slide of him into me.
He didn’t even pause. “Then we’ve got a match made in heaven, I’d say. I don’t suppose I could talk you into having phone sex.”
When I opened my eyes, it was just the table in front of me, and my everyday kitchen. “I think you know the answer to that one.” Though I didn’t know why. If my home was my castle, if no one could hear me, why not?
“Pretend I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Have you ever heard the old joke about the Texan who died and went to hell?”
“Don’t think so. What does this have to do with having phone sex?”
“He died and when he got to hell it was frozen solid, with icicles hanging from the ceiling and everybody shivering. He took one look, threw his arms up into the air, and ran around whooping, ‘The Texas Rangers have won the World Series!’”
It took a few seconds of stunned silence, but then Kevin chuckled out loud. “Oh, that’s a good one. So, when hell freezes over?”
“You’ve got that right.”
“My cautious professor. Scholarly, brilliant teacher by day, wild gay man who stalks men on the dance floor by night.”
“I don’t stalk.”
“True. If anything, I stalked you that first night. What’s in your garage?”
“What?”
“I said, what’s in your garage? By their garages will you know them.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Nope, a little bit drunk. And crazy, yeah, that too. I’m in the mood to be crazy and there’s nobody else around to be crazy with except you. So, you tell me what’s in your garage, and I’ll tell you what’s in mine.”
My garage was a disaster. I hadn’t tossed anything out of it since I’d moved to Gunning. “My Miata.”
“Vehicles don’t count.”
“My old camping stuff.”
“Me too. I got a Camelbak from Channing this past birthday, but I haven’t used it yet. What else?”
“Lots of boxes.”
“What’s in them?”
“Junk. Stuff.”
“Come on, play the game.”
On the TV, the brothers were running away from som
ebody. Or maybe they were running toward something, I couldn’t tell, since I hadn’t been watching until now. “Old bills. Bank statements. Papers. You know the drill.”
“Old love letters?”
Love letters. Even if men like us ever felt that way, there weren’t any of those in my life and there never would be. “Listen, Kevin, I’ve got to go.”
“So soon? I’m barely started.”
“Nope, no more now.”
“Who am I going to talk to if you hang up?”
“Get a dog, Kevin.”
“Okay, I see where we’re at. I’ll see you next week, okay?”
“All right. Have a good trip.”
“I don’t think I will. You’re driving me nuts, you know that?”
I stopped halfway to hanging up and then slowly pulled the receiver back to my ear. “No, I’m not.”
“Would you stop that? If I say you are, then you are. You’re always assuming that you’re not…. Just stop it.”
“But I couldn’t be—”
“You don’t have any idea of how I feel. This isn’t so easy, you know?”
I grabbed the telephone cord. “It isn’t exactly easy for me either. I’ve never done this.”
“And you’re nothing like the women I’ve dated, so we’re in the same boat. Don’t look at me like I’m the expert.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Look, you want to go. Don’t let me keep you.”
“All right.”
“I’m going to go jerk off. My cock’s as stiff as a baseball bat. You go have a nice night, do whatever it is teachers like you do. Good night, Tom.”
I reached behind me to hang up the phone, but the dial tone was already buzzing.
I ACTUALLY liked most of Rent. There was something about its willingness to face up to the way things really were that appealed to me. What I had a hard time accepting was the ending, with most of the cast still standing, singing, even though several of the characters would likely die soon. The truly effective AIDS drugs hadn’t hit the market until the mid-nineties. Rent took place in the late eighties. The play’s grittiness was leavened by more than a sprinkling of an odd sort of hope in the face of the worst adversity that Roger and Mimi and Tom Collins would all face. That Angel, by the end of the play, had already faced.
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 83