Men on Men 2

by George Stambolian (ed)

  My chair faced the street. His aimed my way, toward the bar’s murky back. Bathrooms were marked “Kings” and “Queens.” Some boy played a noisy video game that sounded like a jungle bird in electronic trouble.

  Barker’s head and shoulders were framed by a window. June baked each surface on the main street. Everything out there (passersby included) looked planned, shiny, and kind of ceramic. I couldn’t see Barker’s face that clearly. Sun turned his ears a healthy wax red. Sun enjoyed his cheekbones, found highlights waiting in the wavy old-fashioned hair I decided he must oil. Barker himself wasn’t so beautiful, a knotty wiry kid—only his pale face was. It seemed an inheritance he hadn’t noticed yet.

  Barker sitting still was a Barker almost suave. He wasn’t spilling anything (our beer hadn’t been brought yet). The kid’s face looked, back-lit, negotiable as gems. Everything he said to me was heartfelt. Talking about his mom had put him in a memory-lane kind of mood. “Yeah,” he said. “When I was a kid … ,” and he told me about a ditch that he and his sisters would wade in, building dams and making camps. Playing doctors. Then the city landfill chose the sight. No more ditch. Watching it bulldozed, the kids had cried, holding onto one another.

  Our barman brought us a huge pitcher. I just sipped; Barker knocked four mugs back fast. Foam made half a white mustache over his sweet slack mouth; I didn’t mention it. He said he was twenty-nine but still felt about twelve, except for winters. He said after his mother’s death, he’d joined the Air Force but got booted out.

  “What for?”

  “Lack of dignity.” He downed a fifth mug.

  “You mean … ‘lack of discipline’?”

  He nodded. “What’d I say?” I told him.

  “ ‘Dignity, discipline.’ ” He shrugged to show they meant the same thing. The sadder he seemed the better I liked it, the nicer Barker looked.

  Women passing on the street (he couldn’t see them) wore sundresses. How pretty their pastel straps, the freckled shoulders; some walked beside their teenaged sons; they looked good too. I saw folks I knew. Nobody’d think to check for me in here.

  Only human, under the table, my knee touched Barker’s, lingered a sec, shifted. He didn’t flinch. He hadn’t asked about my job or home life. I got the subject around to things erotic. With a guy as forthright as Barker, you didn’t need posthypnotic suggestion to manage it. He’d told me where he lived. I asked, Wasn’t that out by Adult Art Film and Book? “You go in there much?”

  He gave me a mock-innocent look, touched a fingertip to his sternum, mouthed, “Who, me?” Then he scanned around to make sure nobody’d hear, “I guess it’s me that keeps old Adult Art open. Don’t tell, but I can’t help it, I just love that stuff. You too?”

  I nodded.

  “What kind?”

  I appeared bashful, one knuckle rerouting sweat beads on my beer mug. “I like all types, I guess. You know, boy/girl, girl/ girl, boy/boy, girl/dog, dog/dog.” Barker laughed, shaking his fine head side to side. “Dog/dog,” he repeated. “That’s a good one. Dog/dog!”

  He was not the most brilliantly intelligent person I’d ever met. I loved him for it.

  We went in my car. I didn’t care to chance his driving. Halfway to Adult Art, sirens and red lights swarmed behind my station wagon. “This is it,” I thought. Then the white Mercedes (already mud-splattered, a fender dented, doing a hundred and ten in a thirty-five zone) screeched past. Both city patrol cars gave chase, having a fine time.

  We parked around behind; there were twelve or fourteen vehicles jammed back of Adult Art’s single Dumpster; seven phone-repair trucks had lined up like a fleet. Adult’s front asphalt lot—plainly visible from U.S. 301 Business—provided room for forty cars but sat empty. This is a small town, Falls. Everybody sees everything, almost. So, when you do get away with something, you know it; it just means more. Some people will tell you Sin is old hat. Not for me. If, once it starts, it’s not going to be naughty, then it’s not worth wasting a whole afternoon to set up. Sin is bad. Sex is good. Sex is too good not to have a whole lot of bad in it. I say, Let’s keep it a little smutty, you know?

  Barker called the clerk by name. Barker charged two films— slightly discounted because they’d been used in the booths— those and about thirty bucks in magazines. No money changed hands; he had an account. The section marked “Literature” milled with phone linemen wearing their elaborate suspension belts. One man, his pelvis ajangle with wrenches and hooks, held up a picture book, called to friends, “Catch her, guys. She has got to be your foxiest fox so far.” Under his heavy silver gear, I couldn’t help but notice on this hearty husband and father, jammed up against work pants, the same old famous worldwide pet and problem poking.

  I drove Barker to his place; he invited me in for a viewing. I’d hoped he would. “World premiere,” he smiled—eyes alive as they hadn’t been before. “First show on Lake Drive anyways.”

  The neighborhood—like Barker’s looks—had been the rage forty years ago. I figured he must rent rooms in this big mullioned place, but he owned it. The foyer clock showed I might not make it home in time for supper. Lately I’d overused the excuse of working late; even as Superintendent of Schools there’re limits on how much extra time you can devote to your job.

  I didn’t want to peeve a terrific wife.

  I figured I’d have a good hour and a half; a lot can happen in an hour and a half. We were now safe inside a private place.

  The house had been furnished expensively but some years back. Mission stuff. The Oriental rugs were coated with dust or fur; thick hair hid half their patterns. By accident, I kicked a chewed rubber mouse. The cat toy jingled under a couch, scaring me.

  In Barker’s kitchen, a Crockpot bubbled. Juice hissed out under a Pyrex lid that didn’t quite fit. The room smelled of decent beef stew. His counter was layered with fast-food takeout cartons. From among this litter, in a clay pot, one beautiful amaryllis lily—orange, its mouth wider than the throat of a trombone, startled me. It reminded you of something from science fiction, straining—like one serious muscle—toward daylight.

  In the dark adjacent room, Barker kept humming, knocking things over. I heard the clank of movie reels. “Didn’t expect company, Dave,” he called. “Just clear off a chair and make yourself at home. Momma was a cleaner-upper. Me … less. I don’t see the junk till I get somebody to … till somebody drops over, you know?”

  I grunted agreement, strolled into his pantry. Here were cans so old you could sell them for the labels. Here was a 1950s tin of vichyssoise I wouldn’t have eaten at gunpoint. I slipped along the hall, wandered upstairs. An archive of National Geographics rose in yellow columns to the ceiling. “Dave?” he was hollering. “Just settle in or whatever. It’ll only take a sec. See, they cut the leaders off both our movies. I’ll just do a little splice. I’m fast, though.”

  “Great.”

  On the far wall of one large room (windows smothered by outside ivy) a calendar from 1959, compliments of a now defunct savings and loan. Nearby, two Kotex cartons filled with excelsior, stuffed—I saw on closer inspection—with valuable brown-and-white Wedgwood—place settings for forty maybe. He really should sell these—I was already mothering Barker. I’d tell him which local dealer would give top dollar.

  In one comer, a hooked rug showed a Scottie terrier chasing one red ball downhill. I stepped on it, three hundred moths sputtered up—I backed off, arms flailing before me. Leaning in the doorway, waiting to be called downstairs for movie-time, still wearing my business clothes, I suddenly felt a bit uneasy, worried by a famous thought: What are you doing here, Dave?

  Well: Barker brought me home with him, is what. And, as far back as my memory made it, I’d only wanted just such guys to ask me over. Only they held my interest, my full sympathy.

  The kid with the bad posture but (for me) an excellent smile, the kid who kept pencils in a plastic see-through satchel that clamped into his looseleaf notebook. The boy whose mom— even when the guy’
d turned fourteen—made him use his second-grade Roy Rogers/Dale Evans lunchbox showing them astride their horses, Trigger and Buttermilk. He was the kid other kids didn’t bother mocking because—through twelve years of schooling side-by-side—they’d never noticed him.

  Of course I could tell, there were other boys, like me, studying the other boys. But they all looked toward the pink-and-blond Stephens and Andrews: big-jawed athletic officeholders. guys with shoulders like baby-couches, kids whose legs looked turned on lathes, solid newels—calves that summer sports stained mahogany brown, hair coiling over them, bleached by overly chlorinated pools and an admiring sun: yellow-white-gold. But while others’ eyes stayed locked on them. I was off admiring finer qualities of some clubfooted George, a kindly bespectacled Theodore, I longed to stoop and tie their dragging shoestrings—ones unfastened so long that the plastic tips had worn to frayed cotton tufts. Math geniuses who forgot to zip up: I wanted to give them dating hints. I’d help them find the right barber. I dreamed of assisting their undressing—me, bathing them with stem brotherly care—me. putting them to bed (poor guys hadn’t yet guessed that my interest went past buddyhood). While they slept (I didn’t want to cost them any shuteye), I’d just reach under their covers (always blue) and find that—though the world considered these fellows minor minor— they oftentimes proved more major than the muscled boys who frolicked, unashamed, well-known, pink-and-white in gym showers.

  What was I doing here? (Well, my major was Art History.) I was busy being a collector, is what. And not just someone who can spot (in a museum with a guide to lead him) any old famous masterpiece. No, I was a detective off in the odd corner of a sidestreet thrift shop. I was uncovering (on sale for the price of the frame!) a little etching by Wyndham Lewis—futuristic dwarves, or a golden cow by Cuyp. or one of Vuillard’s shuttered parlors painted on a shirt cardboard.

  Maybe this very collector’s zeal had drawn me to Carol, had led me to fatherhood, to the underrated joys of community. See. I wanted everything—even to be legit. Nothing was so obvious or subtle that I wouldn’t try it once. I prided myself on knowing what I liked and going—shameless—after it. Everybody notices grace. But appreciating perfect clumsiness, that required real skill.

  “Won’t be long now!” I heard Barker call.

  “All right,” I hollered, exactly as my sons would.

  I eased into a messy office upstairs and, among framed documents and pictures, recognized Barker’s grandfather. He looked just like Barker fattened up and given lessons. During the fifties, the grandad served as mayor of our nearby capital city. Back then, such collar-ad looks were still admired, voted into office.

  A framed news photo showed the mayor, hair oiled, presenting horse-topped trophies to young girls in jodhpurs. They blinked up at him, four fans, giggling. Over the wide loud tie, his grin showed an actor’s worked-at innocence. He’d been a decent mayor—fair to all, paving streets in the black district, making parks of vacant lots. Good till he got nailed with his hand in the till. Like Barker’s, this was a face almost too pure to trust. When you considered the eyes of young Barker downstairs—it was like looking at a National Geographic close-up of some exotic Asian deer—you could admire the image forever, it wouldn’t notice or resist your admiration. It had the static beauty of an angel. Designed. That unaffected and willing to serve. His character was like an angel’s own—the perfect gofer.

  I heard Barker humming show tunes, knocking around ice trays. I opened every door on this hall. Why not? The worse the housekeeping got, the better I liked it. The tenderer I felt about the guy downstairs. One room had seven floorlamps in it, two standing, five resting on their sides—one plugged in. Shades were snare-drum shaped, the delicate lining frayed and split like fabric from old negligees.

  I closed all doors. I heard him mixing drinks. I felt that buzz and ringing you learn to recognize as the sweet warning sign of a sure thing. Still, I have been wrong.

  I checked my watch. “Ready,” he called, “when you are.” I passed the bathroom. I bet Barker hadn’t done a load of laundry since last March or April. A thigh-high pile made a moat around the tub. I lifted some boxer shorts. (Boxers show low self-esteem, body wise; my kind of guy always wears them and assumes that every other man on earth wears boxers, too.) These particular shorts were pinstriped and had little red New York Yankee logos rashed everywhere. They sure needed some serious bleaching.

  There he stood, grinning. He’d been busy stirring instant iced tea, two tall glasses with maps of Ohio stenciled on them. I didn’t ask, Why Ohio? Barker seemed pleased, quicker-moving, the host. He’d rolled up sleeves, his skin as fine as sanded ashwood. The icebox freezer was a white glacier dangling roots like a molar’s. From one tiny hole in it, Barker fished a gin bottle; he held the opened pint to one tea glass and smiled. “Suit you?”

  “Gin and iced tea? Sure.” Seducers/seducees must remain flexible.

  “Say when, pal.” I said so. Barker appeared full of antsy mischief.

  For him, I saw, this was still his mother’s house. With her dead, he could do as he liked; having an illicit guest here pleased him. Barker cultivated the place’s warehouse look. He let cat hair coat his Mom’s prized rugs; it felt daring to leave the stag-movie projector and screen set up in the den full-time— just to shock his Florida sisters.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Hey, buddy, where is this cat?” I nodded toward the hallway’s gray fluffballs.

  “Huh? Oh. There’s six. Two mother ones and four kid ones. All super shy but each one’s really different. Good company.”

  He carried our tea glasses on a deco chrome tray; the film viewing room was just ten feet from the kitchen. Dark in here. Ivy vines eclipsed the sunset; leaf-green made our couch feel underwater. I slouched deep into his dated scalloped cushions.

  Sipping, we leaned back. It seemed that we were waiting for a signal: Start. I didn’t want to watch a movie. But, too, I did. I longed to hear this nice fellow tell me something, a story, anything, but I worried: talking could spoil whatever else might happen. I only half-knew what I hoped for. I felt scared Barker might not understand my particular kind of tenderness. Still, I was readier and readier to find out, to risk making a total fool of myself. Everything worthwhile requires that, right?

  I needed to say something next.

  “So,” is what I said. “Tell me. So, tell me something … about yourself. Something I should know, Barker.” And I added that, oh, I really appreciated his hospitality. It was nothing, he shrugged then pressed back. He made a throaty sound like a story starting. “Well. Something plain, Dave? Or something … kind of spicy?”

  “Both,” I said. Education does pay off. I know to at least ask for everything.

  “Okay,” his voice dipped half an octave. The idea of telling had relaxed Barker. I could see it. Listening to him relax relaxed me. “See, they sent my grandad to jail. For something. I won’t say what. He did do it, still, we couldn’t picture prison—for him. My mom and sisters were so ashamed that, at first, they wouldn’t go out to see him. I wanted to. Nobody’d take me. I called up prison to ask about visiting hours. I made myself sound real deep, like a man, so they’d tell me. I was eleven. So when the prison guy gave me the times, he goes, ‘Well, thank you for calling, ma’am.’ I had to laugh.

  “They’d put him in that state pen out on the highway, the work farm. It’s halfway to Tarboro and I rode my bike clear out there. It was busy, a Saturday. I had to keep to the edge of the Interstate. Teenagers in two convertibles threw beer cans at me. Finally when I got to the prison, men said I couldn’t come in, being a minor and all. Maybe they smelled the beer those hoods’d chucked at my back.

  “I wondered what my grandad would do in the same spot (he’d been pretty well-known around here) and so I started mentioning my rights, loud. The men said ‘okay, okay’ and told me to pipe down. They let me in. He sat behind heavy-gauge chicken wire. He looked good, about the same. All the uniforms were gray but his was pressed an
d perfect on him—like he’d got to pick the color of everybody else’s outfit. You couldn’t even hold hands with him. Was like going to the zoo except it was your grandaddy. Right off, he thanks me for coming and he tells me where the key is hid. Key to a shack he owned at the backside of the fairgrounds. You know, out by the pine trees where kids go park at night and do you-know-what?

  “He owned this cottage but, seeing as how he couldn’t use it—for six to ten—he wanted me to hang out there. Grandad said I should use it whenever I needed to hide or slack off or anything. He said I could keep pets or have a Club, whatever I liked.

  “He said there was one couch in it, plus a butane stove but no electric lights. The key stayed under three bricks in the weeds. He said, ‘A boy needs a place to go.’ I said Thanks. Then he asked about Mom and the others. I lied: how they were busy baking stuff to bring him, how they’d be out soon, a carful of pies. He made a face and asked which of my sisters had driven me here.

  “I said, ‘Biked it.’ Well, he stared at me. ‘Not nine miles and on a Saturday. No. I’ve earned this, but you shouldn’t have to.’ He started crying then. It was hard, with the wire between us. Then—you might not believe this, Dave, but a black guard comes over and says, ‘No crying.’ I didn’t know they could do that—boss you like that—but in jail I guess they can do anything they please. Thing is, Grandad stopped. He told me, ‘I’ll make this up to you, Barker. Some of them say you’re not exactly college material, Bark, but we know better. You’re the best damn one. But, listen, hey, you walk that bike home, you hear me? Concentrate on what I’m saying. It’ll be dark by the time you get back to town but it’s worth it. Walk, hear me?’ I said I would. I left and went outside. My bike was missing. I figured that some convict’s kid had taken it. A poor kid deserved it more than me. Mom would buy me another one. I walked.”