by Dale A. Dye
After dinner, headed west out of the downtown district in his old man’s truck, Willy Pud suggested a couple of beers at Hogan’s since it was close to home for all. Without waiting for a response from Ricky, Lu declined for both of them, indicating they had course work to prepare. Willy was crestfallen until Ricky decided she’d like a drink and directed Willy to swing by their apartment where they could drop Lucinda off and then continue down to the bar alone.
When Lu got out of the truck with a minimum of mumbled pleasantries, Willy swung the stiff old truck like he was manhandling a jumpy little sports car. Ricky stayed planted next to him on the seat rather than shifting over toward the passenger door. He was sure the firm pressure of her thigh against his marked better things to come.
Stosh Pudarski was parked on a bar stool playing liar’s poker with Hogan when Willy walked in behind Ricky. The old man waved but made no move to join them at a back booth. Willy went to the bar for drinks and leaned over to look at the serial number on the dollar bill his father had cupped in his hand.
“Go for seven tens, Pop. He’ll never believe you got that many zeros.”
Stosh sipped at his beer and jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the booth. “That the one you been calling all the time?”
“Yeah. Come on over and meet her.”
Stosh helped Willy carry drinks to the booth and slid in next to Ricky. They shook hands and appraised each other for a moment. Stosh was on his best behavior, asking questions and listening politely while Willy and Ricky discussed school. As a favor, performed only for regulars, Hogan came by with a tray full of drinks on the house. Willy felt elated, warm, and comfortable. His father and Ricky seemed to like each other, and he had fuzzy visions of sitting around a kitchen table as one big happy family.
After a second beer, Stosh excused himself to pee and Willy was left staring into Ricky’s smiling eyes. He lightly laid his hand over hers trying to communicate the desire he was feeling.
“Your dad seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah. It was hard on him after my mom died with me overseas and all. Since I’ve been home, he seems different. He seems happier, I guess.”
“Are you happy these days?”
Willy squeezed her hand lightly. “Tell you the truth, Ricky, I’m happy as a clam sitting here with you. Wish there was a way to make it go on forever.”
She smiled, glanced around the bar and reached into her purse. She held up the little tin box and shook it. Then she snapped it open, pinched out one of the little white pills and placed it delicately on her tongue.
“There’s often better living through chemistry.” She shoved the pillbox across the table at him. “Feel free to intensify the moment.”
Willy took one of the pills and then shoved the box back at her when Stosh slid back into the booth with fresh drinks. “My turn,” he said on the way to Hogan’s toilet in the rear of the bar. “You guys stay out of trouble now.”
When he stepped back into the room, he saw that Ricky and the old man were no longer seated in the booth. He swept a glance over the shuffleboard machine and caught sight of them staring at the wall near the end of the bar. There was nothing to draw them over there except the framed picture of him wearing the medal. He didn’t want the old man getting into the gory details with Ricky and spoiling her mood.
He stormed across the room, grabbed them both by an elbow, and steered them back toward the booth. “Let’s go, you two. You want to look at pictures, I’ll take you down to the museum. We got drinks waiting.”
Stosh Pudarski sensed the time had come for his exit when Willy glared at him across the table. He mumbled a few polite things to Ricky and then retired back to the bar and his game. Ricky lit a cigarette and exhaled with a nervous sigh. “Jesus, are you always that nasty with your father?”
“He deserved it.”
“For what? He was just showing me your picture with the Medal of Honor.”
“He can carry that proud Papa shit too far. It never occurs to him some people don’t want to hear it.”
“It was harmless. He’s proud of you, that’s all.”
“He doesn’t know how you feel about Vietnam. I do.”
“How do you feel about the war, Willy Pud? I never asked you that before.”
Ricky snaked her knees up onto the booth and leaned in toward Willy. He thought he could see the speed sparkling in her eyes. They seemed liquid and warm. He might have been watching moonlight glint on rippling water.
“I feel sorry...sad...like it didn’t turn out the way I expected and I’m helpless to do anything about it. I feel sometimes like I was a kid playing war when I went over there. You know? Like I was just getting a chance to play soldier for real like we did when I was little…and then I found out it wasn’t a game…no fun at all. I guess ‘disillusioned’ describes it better than anything else I can think of right now.”
She chewed on that for a minute and then shook her head sadly. “Sometimes I really feel happy that the Vietcong won.”
“Jesus, don’t say that, Ricky! Please don’t say shit like that. It ain’t over...”
“Oh, please, Willy Pud. You can’t wish it away. It’s over…has been for a long time. The South Vietnamese don’t stand a chance without the Americans and you know it…probably better than anybody…”
“I just can’t accept that, Ricky. Not right away anyhow…”
“Like I said, Willy, you can’t wish away the reality. Before long there’s gonna be a bunch more guys with scars in places like this looking for work and wishing they never heard of Vietnam.” Her voice trailed off and she reached into the little box for another pill. Willy was getting desperate not to let war talk distract him from what he wanted from this women, what he desperately felt he needed.
He put both hands on her dimpled knees and squeezed “Please, Ricky. I can’t help all that. This is all I’ve got right now but it won’t be forever. I can do better and I’m going to. That’s why I’m going to school…to put all that behind me. I need you to be with me along the way.”
She shivered slightly and then he felt the tension drain out of her body. Maybe it would be all right. She drained her drink.
“I don’t want to fight about it…but it’s really sad, you know? There are at least five girls I know from my high school who lost boyfriends over there. So many big plans... right in the dumper. Some of them will probably never have another man in their lives.”
“That’s dumb. Life goes on...”
“Sure it does, Willy Pud. And you fall in love with another guy and there’s another war and he goes off and gets killed…and the beat goes on.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“You should take a modern history course.”
A stony silence developed in the booth. Willy wanted to hold her, keep her head out of the trough that followed the wave of conversation about the war. He surprised her with a kiss at the nape of her neck and then began to slide out of the booth. She followed him silently out Hogan’s front door and around to the alley where he’d parked the truck.
They rolled down the windows and moved wordlessly into each other’s arms. The kisses were tender, the nuzzling quiet and comfortable. She let him fondle her breasts under the loose peasant blouse, even responded more ardently with her tongue as he squeezed gently on her nipples. But when he pressed her toward a prone position, she grabbed a handful of hair at the back of his head and gently pulled them apart.
He felt constricted congested, as though he couldn’t suck enough air into his lungs. His voice cracked when he tried to complain. “Christ, Ricky, don’t stop now…please.”
She smiled and began to rearrange her clothes. “Don’t beg, Willy. Give it time. There’s lots of things to think about besides just fucking each other.”
He sat up reluctantly and stared through the cracked windshield of the old man’s truck. Maybe she was right. He had a lot of thinking to d
o with something besides his dick. As much as it pained him just then—and it truly did, mentally and physically—it would ruin things if he pressured Ricky to do something she was not ready for, and the reasons didn’t matter to anyone but her. A special thing like making love with Ricky rated a special moment, a special place. He exhaled in a big blow and cranked on the truck’s sloppy old engine.
“School tomorrow…can we meet somewhere and grab lunch?”
“Lu has class with me second period. She’ll probably tag along.”
“Bring the rest of the student body, Ricky. Long as you’re there it doesn’t matter.”
j
An early winter storm blew in over Lake Michigan the next morning. Sleet blew across the school and turned the few grassy spots designed to provide a little pastoral air to a concrete urban campus into slushy quagmires. None of that kept campus activists of one stripe or another from setting up their recruiting booths and competing for the attention of students hustling for shelter in overheated buildings.
Wearing his wool Marine Corps overcoat against the icy wind that snapped and snarled through Chicago, Willy made his way via the quickest route from the L stop to a first period political science class. Along the way, he was glad-handed by the Young Republicans, ridiculed by the Students for Democratic Society, hailed as a returning hero by the Army ROTC unit, pitched for membership by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, handed a business card by a beefy man who claimed to be recruiting for the CIA and the FBI, and asked to actively support the Gay and Lesbian Student Alliance. He automatically waved away the last clipboard thrust at him until he noticed Lucinda Harris was holding it.
Her cheeks were ruddy and wind-burned, which made the freckles on her face glow with a bright orange hue. He smiled, trying to be civil in the face of her smirk. She stared directly at him. The green flecks in her eyes flashed and made Willy Pud uncomfortable. He glanced down and nodded at the petition on the clipboard in her gloved hands.
“What’s all this about?”
“It’s about freedom of choice. They told you to fight for that in the Marine Corps, right?” She clearly didn’t want any response beside his signature. He cut a glance at the students huddled under hand-lettered signs that announced their affiliation. It was a typical mixed bag of campus crusaders huddled around a rickety card table. Some few were handing out mimeographed leaflets. Others just stood around pawing at each other against the cold wind. All of them seemed to be putting on a brave face, challenging all observers to challenge their commitment to the cause. That cause was gay and lesbian rights according to a banner that bowed and snapped in the wind off the lake.
Willy Pud glanced back to Lucinda Harris and felt a little light bulb that had been flickering in his mind suddenly flash to full brightness. It explained a lot of things he’d been thinking about Ricky’s roommate. He eyed the clipboard she was holding but kept his hands in his pockets.
“Different strokes for different folks...ain’t that what they say?”
She spun the clipboard and shoved an attached ballpoint pen under his nose. “That’s what they say. What do you say?”
“I say let’s make a deal.”
Lu arched her eyebrows under a knit cap and shot him an inquisitive look. Willy Pud grabbed the clipboard from her and scanned the introductory paragraph of a petition.
“This just says I support equal treatment and consideration for homosexuals, right? I can live with that, but there’s a few things I want to know before I sign.”
“So ask. We’re here to provide information.”
He read a bit more, searching for hooks or snags involving money or incriminating language. It seemed relatively straightforward, a political screed that boiled down to you do your thing and I’ll do mine. And we hereby promise to play nice together.
“So not everybody who signs this thing is a homosexual, right?”
“Some are, some aren’t, Pudarski. Some people are just saying they understand and support alternative lifestyles.”
“And you’re living one of those alternative lifestyles, am I right?”
“Give me a break, man. You think I’d be standing out here in the cold if I didn’t believe in this issue? You gonna sign or what?”
“Tell me more, Lucinda.”
She sighed and looked at the others around the table. None of them seemed interested in anything but huddling against the cold. “You want to know if I’m a lesbian. Right, Pudarski? Is that why we’re having this little chat?”
“The question is on the floor for discussion, Lucinda.”
“And I’m not gonna debate it with you, man. Suffice to say there are plenty of available women in this city who swing in ways you wouldn’t expect.”
“I’m only interested in one woman right now.”
“Yeah, well that’s your business and hers.” Lucinda glanced at her watch and reached for the petition. “How about you move along and give somebody else a chance?”
“I ain’t decided whether to sign yet.”
“Look, man, its cold out here so let’s cut through the bullshit. I’m Ricky’s roommate and you’re not. That pisses you off? Then you’ve got a problem I can’t solve. Ricky does what she wants to do.”
Willy studied the clipboard again. Maybe he could repair some of the rift between him and Ricky’s roommate and maybe that would help advance his cause. Far as he could tell he had nothing in particular against Lucinda Harris…or lesbians or gay dudes for that matter. He scrawled his name on the petition and handed it back.
“Sorry if I got out of line. Guess I’ll see you around.”
“Guess you will,” Lucinda Harris said. “Guys like you don’t give up easy.”
Headed for his class in the Social Studies wing, Willy Pud decided that he’d been correct if not specific all along about Lucinda Harris. She was a dyke and that assessment made him uneasy. He was sure Ricky was straight but maybe she was one of those progressive women who thought it was cool to hit from both sides of the plate. He didn’t need that complication. On the asset side of the ledger, he could worry a little less about a long string of guys sniffing around their apartment.
The subject of Lucinda’s alternative lifestyle came up a week later over dinner in their apartment. Lucinda was away for a week, visiting her family in Springfield, and Willy had been pressing Ricky to spend as much time together as they could while her roommate was unavailable as a tag-along. Throbbing with anticipations, Willy arrived early with wine, two steaks, and a large bowl of the tangy Polish potato salad that was Stosh Pudarski’s specialty dish. At the end of dinner, they were lingering over wine, passing a joint back and forth over guttering candles.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about the Medal of Honor? You know, how you won it and all that stuff?”
“I don’t know. Hard to talk about it, I guess. And it really doesn’t seem to mean as much…you know…with the way things are going over there right now.”
“My father had his good conduct medal from World War II framed. He’s got it hanging in his office waiting room.”
“Yeah, well...stuff like that means a lot more when you’re on the winning side. Medals from Vietnam ain’t too popular a subject these days.”
“Was it a hard thing to win?”
“Ricky, look. Combat ain’t like a track meet. You don’t set out to win a gold medal. Shit just happens—and you do whatever you have to do to survive.”
“Did you have to kill a lot of people?”
Willy sipped wine and tried to fight off the disorienting signals from the potent dope. He felt a vulnerable moment was slipping away and he absolutely had to make love to this woman tonight.
“Yeah, Ricky, I guess I did. Can we talk about something else?”
He hooked their wineglasses in the fingers of one hand and led her toward an overstuffed couch in a dark corner of the room. Maybe a little body heat would change the course of conversation.
“So why don’t you tell me about it?” She slumped beside him and draped her long legs over his knees, contemplating his profile.
“You know why I don’t talk about it, Ricky. You hate the war. I get to talking about it and you might wind up hating me.”
“I won’t hate you, Willy. Maybe it’ll help me understand what’s happening. Why men always seems to enjoy playing those kind of stupid games.”
“It’s no kind of game, Ricky. And it’s not easy to talk about it once you’ve been through it.”
“It’s an experience, a traumatic experience like a bad car wreck. Sometimes it helps to talk about it. That’s what they say.”
Goddammit, Ricky! He really didn’t want to go down this path with her but she kept pressing. Why? Was it the dope and the wine? Or was it just some voyeuristic kink in her thinking? Surely she could feel the erection pressing through his jeans into the tender flesh at the back of her knees. Why talk about something like the war now?