by Kent Bushart
I found where that Patton guy was sitting, in the crowd of about thirty students, and watched him instead. It seemed like he was trying to pay attention, but maybe not that interested. Anyway, after the meeting finally ended, and after all the admonishments to get out and be political, and vote the right way . . . I mean the left way, I stood up, intending to check out this Patton, but Kevin presented himself immediately.
“Hey, you’re new. What’s your name?”
“Julio,” I said, figuring I’d stay consistent. The William gave up on me, and filtered away as soon as Kevin appeared.
“Cool. Are you a foreign student?” He asked.
“No,” I answered, annoyed by the assumption.
“Oh, I just thought–Where are you from?”
“Des Moines,” I said.
“Oregon, here. Portland. What’s your major?”
“Pre-med.”
He looked me up and down. “A man of few words. I like that. Well, you’re hot. Want to come back to my place?”
Right to it, no pussy-footing around. I guess he thought I was cruising him when I looked back. And I guess I was. “Your dorm room?” I asked.
He smiled. “Hell no, I’m not a freshman, I don’t have to live on campus. I’m a sophomore, I have my own place. A condo.”
So, a rich kid. Rich and good-looking, and forward. I was a little tempted, but not much. We wouldn’t have much to agree on, once the sex was over. Besides, some hot guys can be lousy lays. That’s not fair, I know. And most aren’t, but some are. Not that I’ve had that many encounters, only about ten, by my reckoning, and that’s not a scientific sample. But when you’re rich, too good-looking, and spoiled, it’s easy to just sit back and let someone else do all the work.
“Well, what are thinking?” He asked.
I was thinking: Do I really want to do this?
“I was just wondering what you thought about gays in Cuba,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Well, you were saying how oppressed we still are in America, I wondered if you ever thought about Cuban gays.”
“Why Cuba?” He asked, completely clueless.
“You’re wearing a Che Guevera shirt. He was a Cuban Marxist.”
He looked down at his shirt, as if he had no idea what he was wearing. Seldom true of gay guys. “So?”
“I just wondered if you were wearing it ironically. I mean, if you think gays have it tough here, then you know how bad it is in Cuba. They get executed and thrown in jail there all the time. Still. The Castros hate them. I don’t remember the President calling for better treatment of gays there. Or blacks. The Castros hate blacks too, you know.”
He gave me a ‘are you for real?’ look. “He was a freedom fighter. He fought for the freedom of the people.”
“He was a murderer. He killed lots of kids, our age and younger, and said he loved doing it. He killed friends of my family.”
“You said you were from Des Moines.”
Was he really that dense? “My family came from Cuba. My grandparents and father escaped from there when Castro took over, and took our property.”
“Maybe they were bad people,” he said.
“Who?”
“The people he killed. They were bad people, standing in the way of the People’s Revolution.”
My eyes swelled and my Cuban-blood boiled. I was ready to punch him in the pretty face.
“Then they should have been tried. Not executed in a sugar-cane field, on their knees.”
He wasn’t ready to give up. “The Castros freed the people. They brought education, and excellent free medical care to everyone.”
Same old shit, that he’d heard the ignorant repeat, over and over. “That’s bullshit. Cuban hospitals are pits. That’s a fact, in spite of some fat-asses lying propaganda movie,” I said. “You might as well be walking around with a picture of Hitler on your chest, as far as I’m concerned.”
He looked confused, like he was trying to decide between arguing with me, or trying to salvage the deal on sex tonight, in his posh, spoiled, ignorant, rich-kid condo. I helped him. I turned my back and walked away, and didn’t look back.
I tried to shake it off, and looked around for the little guy, Patton. He was gone.
At first I was disappointed, but it was probably better that he was gone. I’d thought about introducing myself, but now I was totally agitated, so maybe it wasn’t a good time after all.
I returned to my room, and pretty soon my roommate started huffing around, getting ready for bed. He was ready for me to turn out the lights, and pretend to be asleep so he could have at himself.
Don’t get me wrong, I do it too, but I wait for some small amount of privacy. He has his class schedule taped to his desk, like a good nerd, so I always know when he’s in class. Most helpful.
As for that Patton guy, I decided I’d have to think about it.
***
A couple of weeks later, into February, I was still wondering about him. It was ridiculous. Why couldn’t I just put him out of my mind? There were lots of hot guys to obsess about, instead of him. But I think I’d finally put my finger on it. He was unique. I mean, a jock is just a jock, but a guy like Patton is something different.
I once read something, I can’t remember where, but it was an older publication, when I was just figuring things out about myself, and doing some research. This psychiatrist was throwing shade, saying that homosexuality was just being attracted to yourself. Like you want to make love to yourself. I think that’s crazy. I mean, what? Just because I have a penis, I want another one, and that’s all that’s required? Penises are great, but I’m attracted to all kinds of dudes, and not just for their dicks. Asian guys, black guys, Hispanic guys, middle-eastern guys, and white guys, of course. That doesn’t mean I like all of them. But attractive is attractive, no matter what you are.
And I thought this Patton was definitely interesting.
But Iowa State is a big campus. Really spread-out, and something like over thirty-thousand students. That’s like a small city. I hoped I would run across him, at some point, and I could talk to him, but I didn’t see him. That’s the way it goes. You meet somebody, and unless you have a class together, or are in the same dorm, you never see them again.
I thought maybe I could pick him out, walking around campus, but everyone was bundled up against the weather, and it’s hard to see anything. I thought I could find him just because he’s so short, but a lot of girls are short, too, and it’s hard to even tell the sexes apart, when everyone’s wearing so many clothes. Plus, it was too cold to just stay outside, cruising the campus.
I tried running a search on the student directory, but I don’t know his last name, and his first name didn’t get any results either. Maybe he was like me, and has one name officially, and another casually.
But on the night of the next LGBT meeting, I had a cunning plan.
Okay, maybe not that cunning. I figured I’d go hang outside the student union about the time that the meeting breaks up. Then decide what to do next.
I didn’t want to hang around in the lobby, because I didn’t want to run into Kevin, or the William, so I stood out in the dark and waited in the cold, winter prairie wind. I was just about to give it up, and run back to the dorm to get warm, when he finally came out.
I was sure it was him, because of his height, but also because I’d noticed he had a way of carrying himself, an over-confident strut. But as he got further away from the union, I noticed that it kind of went away, as if he was tired of keeping it up.
And he was alone. I would have thought he’d have made at least some friends, in the LGBT group. Maybe no one was going his way. Or maybe everyone found him annoying, like the William did.
Now what was I going to do? Leap out of the dark at him? It didn’t seem right. I don’t know why I was all shy all of the sudden, but it didn’t seem right. Maybe it was because I think it’s important. He’s important, so I was nervous, because I wanted it to go right.
I wanted our first meeting to have the right context.
I didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was because he’s just doing what we all do, just in a bigger, more obvious way. You know, putting a face on, a façade for the world, to protect our real selves. Our vulnerable little boys, so easily hurt.
So I just followed him to his dorm, and found out where he lived. Bateman Dorm, a frosh dorm. I’m in McGinnis.
At least that was something. I figured I’d scope it out between classes the next day, do a little reconnaissance.
I went back to find Mr. Science harrumphing around, making it clear he was ready to perform the next experiment on himself. Oh, the rigors of scientific endeavor.
***
So here’s what happened next. I checked out his dorm. It was six floors, like mine, and each floor had a common area, and a bulletin board for posting notices, just like mine. So I went to each floor and walked around, looking for names on doors. The girl’s side had lots of names, that’s the way girls are, making things homey. The guy’s side had much fewer. That’s the way guys are, they don’t care. I read the notices on the bulletin boards, and there were events posted, like “fourth floor mixer,” “Movie night,” etc.
I could just skip a few classes, and haunt the main lobby for a few hours, or I could try going to some of the mixers. If we met at a party, that would be perfect. Much better than ambushing him. I thought if he were at a party, I could observe him a little more, make sure I was still interested.
So I went to a few of mixers. Met some nice people, but no Patton. It was tempting to just ask, “Do you know Patton?” but then it might get back to him that some guy was asking about him. I didn’t want to over-play my hand, though. If he knew I was interested, that might make him less interested. I wanted him to put his moves on me. He seemed bold enough, so that didn’t seem so unlikely.
Finally I went to one more. All this took a few more weeks, and now it was nearly March. I’d about decided I would have to just break down and go to another LGBT meeting, but I decided to give it one more go. The third-floor Bateman Hall Tiki-room mixer. Here I rarely went to any event in my own dorm, and now I was becoming a fixture in Bateman Hall. I arrived fashionably late to find the common room decorated in a Hawaiian theme, with a couple of girls in hula skirts passing out artificial leis. I took a virgin mai-tai in a plastic tiki cup, passed out a few smiles and nods, and chose a spot to watch the room.
Presently I was rewarded. A short guy made a boisterous entrance, in a tropical shirt and wearing one of those grass hats, with the edges left unwoven. It was him.
The grass-skirt girls gave him a friendly greeting, and a lei, and a lot of people acknowledged him. This had to be his floor, he was well known. He worked the room as before, passing out smiles and head-flicks, pistol-fingers and winks. Then he saw me.
Now I knew that I had registered on him in some way at the LGBT meeting, because he looked my way again and again. I smiled and passed him a cool head-flick of my own. Not a shit-eating grin, just a modest smile, then I looked away. I turned to a girl and said hello. She said hello back, and asked me some college questions. You know, what’s your major, where are you from, are you in this dorm blah blah. A couple of times I glanced his way. He was still checking me out.
My conversation with the girl, a nice girl from Duluth, went nowhere, because I didn’t want it to, and soon she excused herself to go talk to someone else. Now I was standing alone again.
Now he knew that even though I was alone, I wasn’t a total stiff, and was capable of carrying on a conversation at a party. I started looking around for someone else to talk to, but before I could, he bopped my way.
I say bopped, because he was strutting to the music, in that over-confident, super-party dude way. The way some insecure people try way too hard at parties. Maybe that’s what I like about him, he isn’t shy. I was a shy kid, really shy. It wasn’t until I started playing soccer in Middle School that I started coming out of my shell.
He stood next to me and looked over the gathering, as if I was the last person on his mind. I looked at him.
“S’up?” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
A beat.
“Having fun?” He asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Are you?”
“Oh, yeah. The girls count on me to bring the party.” There he was. “You don’t live on this floor, do you?” He asked.
“No, I don’t,” I said, taking a sip from my plastic tiki cup.” I live in McGinnis.”
“Oh, got friends here?”
“Not really.” I answered.
Another beat.
“You guys throw good mixers,” I said.
“Yeah. Hey, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” He asked, the cheeky devil. He knew exactly where he had seen me before.
“Probably, we both go to school here.”
That took him back a bit. I wasn’t going to help him in that regard, yet. Maybe he was trying to get me to state it, and it is just possible I was a straight guy going to the LGBT meeting to support my gay friends, but we both knew that wasn’t the case.
“Excuse me,” he said. Some of the girls were calling for him, and he went. I was wondering if I had blown it, when a couple of jocks showed up. They were big, thick guys, obviously football players, and they burst on the scene like a force of nature. They threw greetings around, then saw Patton, standing with the group of girls.
“Hey, Peanut!” One of them said, and roughly knocked the hat off his head to tousle his hair. The other one slapped him on his back, causing his drink to slosh. “What’s up, Squirt?” He bellowed.
“Hi, guys,” Patton returned, calmly putting himself back together after their assault. He put a good face on it, but once again I could see a flash of emotion. He didn’t like it. It was an affront to his dignity.
I decided right then I would never treat him that way, like some mascot. I would never call him small, or short, or refer to his size in anyway, unless he brought it up.
I waited a bit, and talked to some more people, just chit-chat. Patton’s floor had a lot of friendly girls, you know the type. Not the stuck-up beauty queens, just regular girls, who like to have fun. A little plain, maybe overweight, but nice and easy to talk to.
I made myself available again, but Patton didn’t come back to me. Maybe I put him off, or maybe he was embarrassed, but the party was going to wind down soon. It was just a cocktail hour mixer, not some all-night rager. I needed to make contact again, if I was going to. I waited a little, then caught him alone, right when it looked like he was about to exit.
“Hey, what’s your major, anyway?” I asked, skipping over repeating the preliminaries.
“Computer Science,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Are you going to program?”
“No. Well, yes. But I want to design systems.” Now we were facing each other, and I held his eyes as much as he would let me. They were a clear, bright-blue, playful and full of expression.
“Interesting.”
“What’s yours?” He asked.
“I’m pre-med. Of course now I’m just trying to get through all the cores.”
“Oh yeah, aren’t we all? Who do you have for Freshman English?” He asked.
“Davis.”
His face lit up. “Really? Me too.”
“Oh, yeah? I’m mornings. Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”
“I have her right after lunch,” he said.
“Oh? Any trouble staying awake?” I asked. I have Western Civ after lunch, and it’s a struggle to stay alert.
“No. I like her, she’s pretty good.”
“Me, too,” I nodded. So now we had a little something in common. “Where are you from?”
“Chicago,” he said.
A big city kid. That worried me a little. Des Moines was a city too, of course, but nothing like Chicago.
“What about you?”
“Des Moines,” I admitted. He nodded.
“I t
hought about going closer to home, but Dad went here, and they do have a good program,” he said.
Now it was my turn to nod, and struggle for another topic. Good grief, what was wrong with me?
“Say, what’s your name, anyway?” He asked.
Names! We hadn’t even exchanged names yet. I knew his but he didn’t know mine.
“I’m Jules,” I said, and shook his hand. It felt small in mine.
“Jules? But someone said–That is, I thought it was something else,” he groped.
“Julio?” I asked.
“Julio! That’s it.”
Now I had him. So I had made some kind of impression at the meeting, and he’d asked about me, or found out somehow, from William, or Kevin.
“I go by Jules. It’s like a nickname for Julio.”
“Oh. I’m Patton,” he offered.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, I found out from that William guy. At the meeting.”
Recognition flashed across his visage. Now the jousting was over. We’d both admitted we were at the LGBT meeting that night, weeks ago. I was silent and let him process.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “That’s where I saw you. You really pissed Kevin Little off.”
“Did I?” I asked, innocently.
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “The next meeting he made a big speech, and called you out. He was obviously hoping you’d be there, but that didn’t stop him. He went on and on about that guy on the tshirts. You know . . . Shay, something.”
“Che Guevera. His real name was Ernesto.”
“Yeah. He made a big speech about how deluded some people were about him. That he was really a great man, a great leader of the revolutions in South America. You should have heard it.”
I snorted. “If I wanted to listen to diarrhea, I’d hang out in the bathrooms.” Patton guffawed.
That was typical of Kevin’s type. Never admit that you were wrong, that someone made you think, or change your mind. Double-down on your crap and slander your opponent.
I explained my feelings on Guevera, but I didn’t want us to go off on some political discussion, so I kept it short. He listened attentively.
“So, you’re from Cuba?” He asked.