Becoming Andy Hunsinger Page 10

  Maybe love between two men isn’t possible.

  ***

  Running with Biff Schultz and his roommates became a haven for me, a respite from my frustration at not having a boyfriend. We gathered most every weekday afternoon, usually at the university track. I’d quit smoking cigarettes, and now I could run three miles in twenty-four minutes, just as Biff and his friends did. I purchased Nike “waffle iron” shoes and a pair of nylon running shorts slit at the thighs for ease of movement. The shorts had a built-in liner that cupped my genitals so they wouldn’t bounce around during the run. I thought they looked pretty sexy on me.

  I loved everything about running: the sweating, the rhythmic breathing, the feel of my heartbeat, and the sound of my feet kissing the Tartan turf while I glided around the oval with my friends. Sometimes we worked on “interval training”. We ran a fast lap at six-minute pace, and then a slow lap at a ten-minute pace. Then another fast lap: over and over.

  “It helps when you race competitively,” Biff told me. “You make these bursts every so often; you pass many guys in the process.”

  On weekends, if Biff wasn’t camping, the four of us traveled to Silver Lake, a twenty-acre, spring-fed beauty west of Tallahassee, right after I’d finished caddying for the day. Miles of running trails snaked through virgin forest surrounding the lake. We ran in the shade of live oaks and long leaf pines; we crushed pine needles and oak leaves beneath our sneakers while we strode along at an easy pace, often for an hour or more.

  We didn’t talk much while we ran, and that was fine with me. During the first half hour, I’d reflect on my life: what I’d done, the changes I’d gone through since moving into McPhail’s place, and where I would go in the future. Would I continue with my education in law school, or would I return to Pensacola? Would I ever find a boyfriend who’d accept the fact I was openly gay?

  Then, halfway through a Silver Lake run, my mind would empty itself of thought entirely. I became a running machine, concentrating only on my breathing. I entered a trance-like state when I didn’t even notice my surroundings or think of my companions any longer. I suppose what I experienced was something akin to a transcendental meditative state. All I knew was, I’d never felt more free and relaxed. By the end of a forest run, you could have thrown rocks at me and I wouldn’t have noticed or cared.

  Afterward, we always spread blankets on the lake shore, took a swim in the placid waters, and snacked on simple foods: celery and carrot stalks, trail mix, and soy nuts. We guzzled apple juice or soy milk.

  As months passed, I got to know Travis and Austin pretty well, both during our running sessions, and when visiting their house.

  Austin planned to become a pediatrician; he would practice in Kingston one day. “So many Jamaican children lack medical care,” he told me. “It’s my calling.” Austin’s dry sense of humor and dazzling smile kept us all grinning and laughing. His nickname for me was “Andy Boy.” He liked teasing me about my attraction to guys instead of girls, but never maliciously. The four of us would lie on our blankets, at Silver Lake, and then Austin might point to a good-looking college student swimming nearby.

  “There’s one for you, Andy Boy. You find him attractive, don’t you?”

  And I might say, “No, Austin. Actually, I prefer hunky Jamaican men, the kind with bushy hair and banana-sized dicks. How big is yours?”

  Austin would lift his gaze to the sky and cackle.

  Travis was quiet, almost to the point of secretiveness. He studied long hours in his bedroom, poring over medical texts at a beat-up desk facing a window. In his room, a bookcase held dozens of books on anatomy, physiology, chemistry, biology, and so on. A crucifix hung above his desk, and a framed print depicting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane decorated another wall.

  “My family’s Primitive Baptist,” he explained to me one day. “We’re very devout.”

  Every Sunday morning, Travis washed Biff’s bare feet, and then Austin’s, before Travis left for church. Kneeling on the bathroom floor, wearing only jockey shorts, he used a shallow porcelain basin, a fluffy purple towel, and soap scented with lavender to perform his tasks.

  “It’s a peculiar rite practiced by Primitive Baptists,” Austin explained. “I know it seems a bit odd, but we let Travis do it because we love him. Plus, it’s nice starting your week with squeaky-clean toes.”

  Travis kept a six-string acoustic guitar in his room, and sometimes he would teach me a few chords if I asked him to. As far as I knew, he never dated. School, running, and religion seemed to consume his life. He slept on a thin mattress without frame or box springs, resting on his bedroom’s linoleum floor, and each night he knelt on the floor to say his prayers, bathed in the glow from a candle burning on his desk. He filled his room with plants of varying types and sizes: philodendrons, ferns, a corn plant, an areca palm, and a variegated, green and purple coleus. The room was like a jungle.

  “I’ve known him since high school,” Biff told me of Travis. “He comes from a family of doctors. His dad’s a vascular surgeon, so are his uncle and older brother. He always tells people, ‘I was born with a stethoscope around my neck.’”

  I liked my apartment, of course. But sometimes I grew lonely, and I always felt welcome when I visited Biff, Austin, and Travis at their house, a three-bedroom, cinder block building with a carport and a screened rear porch. The home sat on a lot shaded by live oaks and long leaf pines, on a dead-end street west of campus. Biff’s Volkswagen shared the home’s carport with Travis’ Oldsmobile station wagon, and three ten-speed bikes.

  Biff and Austin both had girlfriends. Austin dated a Cuban-American girl, Maritza, who worked as a state legislator’s aide at the Capitol. Biff’s girlfriend, Carol Ann, was also a pre-med major, a pretty, slender girl with sad eyes and hair straight as straw; it grew to her waist. She was the first girl I’d ever known who didn’t shave her legs.

  Weekends, we often gathered at the house during early evening, to drink beer or cheap jug wine. In the shady back yard, I cooked chicken quarters on Biff’s charcoal grille, basting the chicken in my homemade barbeque sauce. The girls prepared tossed salad or Cole slaw, while Biff and his roomies cooked baked beans, garlic bread, and corn-on-the-cob. We dined together on the screened porch -- all of us seated on benches at redwood picnic table -- and I sometimes felt like an adopted waif.

  After dinner, we smoked marijuana, using a bong we passed around the living room, and even Travis partook. He sipped from the wine jug, too, and I found these behaviors strange, considering his conservative upbringing. Didn’t drug and alcohol use clash with his religious beliefs?

  When I asked Travis about this, a little smile crossed his lips.

  “Jesus often drank wine, and he never said smoking marijuana was wrong. Ganja’s a natural substance; God made it. Why not smoke weed if gives you pleasure?”

  At Biff’s house parties, music wafted endlessly from the stereo speakers: Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Starship, AC/DC, and Iggy Pop. I’d relax on a bean bag chair, and then reflect on how happy I felt spending time with Biff and his circle of friends. Why had I wasted three years of my life hanging out with fraternity boys?

  “Stay overnight anytime you like,” Biff told me, and sometimes I did. I’d snuggle in a blanket on the living room sofa, listening to bedsprings squeak in Biff’s bedroom, and hearing Maritza’s sighs while Austin made love to her on his waterbed. Travis often played his guitar, late in the evening, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of strumming beyond his bedroom door. He’d sing a Dylan tune or a Neil Young number in his baritone, or sometimes he sang the Delta Blues -- sad little songs about broken dreams and love gone bad.

  But most weekend nights, I didn’t stay. I’d leave around midnight to visit The Gate, in hopes of finding my own brand of love. Sometimes I scored, but most times I didn’t, and I often ended up alone at my apartment. I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling. Cars passed on the street out front, and glare from their headlights passed through the slats of my Ven
etian blinds.

  Will this loneliness ever end?

  ***

  Midday on a Saturday in May, the six of us -- Biff, Carol Ann, Austin, Maritza, Travis, and I -- organized a picnic outing at a state park on the banks of Ochlocknee River, west of town. Rain had fallen constantly the day before; the course at Capital City was underwater in places, so I wasn’t caddying that day. At the river, the ground was sodden, and tree limbs sagged from the weight of dew. But now the sun shone, and birds tweeted in the park’s towering oaks, magnolias, and pines. The river’s tannin-stained water flowed past us on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Biff and Austin tossed a football back and forth, while Travis strummed his six-string, and I played gin rummy with the girls.

  I had spent the previous evening at Franklin Street, preparing potato salad from a recipe I’d found in my Betty Crocker cookbook, and then listening to Fergal play jazz music on his piano. I’d slept fitfully, as disturbing dreams kept waking me every hour or so.

  In one dream, my brother Jake appeared in water polo attire: a slinky Speedo and one pair of those silly headgears with ear protectors that make a guy look like a Koala bear. But Jake wasn’t playing water polo; he was drowning in a whirlpool, in a swiftly flowing river that coursed through a dark and creepy jungle. He called to me for help, flailing his arms like a crazy man. I was in the river, too, but fully clothed. My shirt and jeans stuck to my skin. I tried to swim toward Jake, but the river’s flow kept sweeping me away from him.

  In another dream, my former boyfriend, Aaron, appeared as a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino. He wore a shiny silk vest, a long-sleeve white shirt with French cuffs, and a diamond pinky ring. In the dream, I sat at Aaron’s baize-covered table. A dozen people played the game, all elegantly dressed. Only one I recognized: Jeff, the serviceman from Eglin Air Force base, the guy who’d deflowered me. He wore a white dinner jacket and black bow tie, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I kept asking Aaron to deal me in, too, but he ignored me as if he couldn’t hear me or even see me, as if I were invisible.

  I had never been to Las Vegas; I’d never been in a casino, or played blackjack. And why was Aaron appearing in my dream?

  Feeling frustrated and out of sorts, I finally lit a lamp, around five A.M. I opened a recently-purchased copy of Blueboy magazine, and then I jerked off to a photo spread of two guys butt-fucking in a locker room. The guy on top had a kielbasa for a cock. The other guy was skinny and blond and looked barely eighteen. After I came, I lay naked on the sheets while my chest heaved and sweat trickled from my armpits.

  Within minutes, I dozed off.

  When I woke, sunlight streamed into my room and birds chirped in the live oaks. My bedside lamp still glowed, the KY tube rested on the nightstand, and the Blueboy laid beside me on the mattress. I shook my head at the pitiful situation.

  How romantic, Hunsinger. You’re such a stud...

  Now, at the river, the six of us dined on sandwiches, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, and the potato salad I’d made, at a concrete picnic table shaded by forty-foot bald cypress trees. The guys sipped from cans of Budweiser, while the girls shared a bottle of sangria.

  While Austin helped himself to a second serving of my salad, he gave me one of his backhanded compliments. “You’re quite the chef, Andy Boy; it’s the best I’ve ever tasted. You’ll make some guy a fine wife one day.”

  Everyone laughed, including me.

  Maritza pointed a pickle spear skyward.

  “It’s not fair,” she said. “Austin has me, and Biff has Carol Ann, but Andy and Travis have no one.”

  She glanced around the table.

  “We need to find Andy a boyfriend, and Travis a girlfriend, the sooner the better.”

  My face grew warm, and then I lowered my gaze to my plate.

  “It’s a nice thought,” Austin said, “but I think they can manage their love lives themselves.”

  “That’s the problem,” Maritza said. “They don’t have love lives to manage.”

  I glanced over at Travis. He stared at Maritza with narrowed eyes, and then he spoke to her in the sternest tone I’d ever heard him use. “I don’t want a love life,” he said. “I’m fine being single, and I don’t need your help.”

  Maritza crinkled her forehead. “I don’t understand. No one wants to be lonely, do they?”

  Biff cleared his throat. “Why don’t we talk about something else?”

  “Why?” Maritza said. “I’m only trying --”

  “Sweet pea,” Austin said to Maritza, “there’s a nature trail a short distance from here; it follows the river. Finish your sandwich, and then we’ll take a walk, just you and me.”

  Maritza’s gaze traveled from face to face. She drew a breath, and then let it out. “Fine,” she said. “Forget everything I just said.”

  Travis sat motionless; he continued to stare at Maritza like she’d insulted him. The tension at the table was so strong I felt it in the hair follicles of my scalp. What was going on? Was a quarrel about to erupt?

  Say something, anything.

  “Look,” I said to Maritza, “at the risk of sounding desperate, I’d sure like some help. I’m not having any luck finding a boyfriend, no matter how hard I try. The best I can manage are one night stands, and trust me, they’re none too satisfying.”

  Everyone laughed, including Travis.

  Maritza smirked at me. “What sort of boys do you like, Andy? What’s your type?”

  I scratched my head. “Let me think... How about a guy under thirty, with two arms, two legs, and a full set of teeth? Do you know anyone like that?”

  Everyone laughed again.

  Hours later, Biff gave me a lift home, and when we reached my place, I asked Biff a question. I said, “I don’t understand something: what happened between Travis and Maritza today? I’ve never seen Travis so cross.”

  Biff didn’t answer until he’d parked and switched off his engine. A vertical crease appeared between his eyebrows when he turned to me.

  “I’ll tell you something about Travis -- it’s information few people in Tallahassee know -- and you’ll need to keep it to yourself.”

  I looked at Biff and crinkled my forehead.

  Biff said, “Back in Jacksonville, Travis dated a girl named Merilee, a babe all the guys at our high school wanted. Merilee’s folks liked Travis; they treated him like a son. During spring break, our senior year, they took him to Myrtle Beach on their family vacation.

  “Merilee had a brother named Chip, a year younger than her. At some point during the vacation, Merilee’s mom walked into the room Chip shared with Travis -- without knocking. She found Chip and Travis, you know...”

  Biff lowered his gaze while his cheeks reddened.

  “What?” I said.

  Biff’s gaze met mine. “They were sucking each other’s cocks.”

  I tried to imagine the scene in my mind: a shocked mom, two boys caught en flagrante. “Jesus,” I said, shaking my head.

  Biff scowled. “Merilee’s folks sent Travis home on a Greyhound bus. They called his parents, said all kinds of mean things about Travis, even threatened to call the police. The story spread at school like crazy; everyone knew about it.”

  “How awful,” I said.

  “Worse than awful: Travis caught all kinds of shit. People kicked and punched him; they called him nasty names. No one but me stuck by him, and I caught shit for doing it too. Things got so bad Travis transferred to a private school.”

  I squirmed in my seat, not saying anything.

  Biff continued.

  “Travis was supposed to room with me our freshman year at FSU, but over the summer he had a mental breakdown. He spent time in a facility, someplace in St. Augustine, a hospital where they treat people with screwed-up heads.”

  “Does Austin know about this?”

  Biff nodded.

  “I take it the girls don’t?”

  “That’s right. And let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

  “Of
course,” I said. Then I asked Biff, “Do you think Travis is gay?”

  Biff raised a shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe you should ask him.”

  I worked my jaw from side to side, trying to imagine the humiliation and taunting Travis must have experienced, back in Jacksonville. No wonder he’d seemed so introspective and mysterious since I’d met him. I had always felt an attraction to Travis -- I liked his androgynous looks, his lanky limbs, and baritone voice -- but I’d never once suspected he was gay.

  And what did it matter if he was?

  He wasn’t in the market for love, was he?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I met Dexter Hayward at The Gate on a Friday night on Memorial Day weekend. I sat on a bar stool next to Dexter, not because I planned to meet him, but only because all the other stools were occupied. The place was packed to the gills with students and townies. Couples danced to Rubber Band Man and the Bee Gees’ You Should Be Dancing, beneath pulsing strobe lights and a mirrored disco ball.

  When it came to clothing, I’d always leaned toward the conservative side of fashion: button-down shirts, chinos, polo shirts, and traditional blue jeans. I guess my Pensacola upbringing had a lot to do with my tastes. But in 1977, the disco craze and the fashions that came with it made their appearance at The Gate. Guys wore white polyester pants that flared from the knee downward. They wore platform shoes and shiny Nik Nik shirts with gaudy motifs. Many patrons wore their shirts unbuttoned halfway down their chests to display gold chains hanging about their necks. Aviator sunglasses and caterpillar mustaches completed the look.

  The crowd at The Gate that night looked like a gaggle of peacocks, and I found it hard to believe I was in sleepy Tallahassee, instead of Miami or New York. The Gate’s patrons differed so much from the grungy elements one saw at the Pastime Tavern.

  After I ordered a beer from a bartender with rings on his thumbs and all eight of his fingers, I turned my head toward Dexter. My gaze met his, and when he smiled his emerald eyes twinkled. He spoke to me with a drawl as thick as molasses.