Becoming Andy Hunsinger Page 17

  “Is there?”

  Jeff looked at me. Then he returned his gaze to the ceiling without answering.

  I lay beside him on the flimsy coverlet. “Since I last saw you,” I said, “I’ve kissed many men, even guys whose names I didn’t know. Straight people kiss. Why shouldn’t two gay men?”

  Jeff kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “I’m not gay, not entirely. I only need a man’s touch now and then. It’s a release for me, that’s all.”

  I bent an elbow. Then I rested my jaw on the heel of my hand. “You’re telling me you’re straight, that you’re attracted to women?”

  “I don’t know, I --”

  “Jeff, look at me.”

  He did.

  “A guy who takes another man’s cock up his butt is gay. A man who fucks another man in the butt is gay. Why are you so afraid to admit who you are? Why does kissing me scare you?”

  Jeff blinked a time or two. “If I do that -- if I kiss you -- I’ll cross a line.”

  I couldn’t help it, I chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Jeff asked.

  “You’re not going to sprout fairy wings if we suck face, you know.”

  Jeff lowered his gaze, but a thin smile crept across his face. Then he snickered and shook his head. “I guess you’re right, and what does it matter, anyway? I’m already screwed.”

  I reached for Jeff’s ear, tugged at his lobe.

  Jeff looked at me again. His voice sounded tired when he spoke.

  “Okay, Andy. Let’s do it.”

  He turned toward me. Our hips and chests met, and then our mouths touched. Our lips parted and our tongues dueled. I explored his teeth and the walls of his mouth, probing with my tongue. Our sloppy smacking and the air conditioner’s chugs were the only noises in the room.

  Jeff’s hand traveled south, to caress me between my legs. His attentions made me slightly dizzy, like I’d swallowed a shot of vodka, and right then I realized how badly I’d missed sex. Since my episode in Perry with Ray, I’d been celibate, but how much sense did that make? Sex was a necessary part of life for me. I needed it just like food, drink, and sleep. Depriving myself of intimacy made no sense. The sights, sounds, and smells of sex thrilled me in a way nothing else could.

  So I made a promise to myself, there in the hotel room. When I returned to Tallahassee in September, I would pursue another man’s love, relentlessly, even if I had to humble myself, and even if I had to settle for less than perfection. At least for now I had Jeff, and I knew what I wanted from him.

  Jeff did not demur when I made my request. He lay on his back with his head resting in a stack of pillows and his arms wrapped around the back of his knees, holding his legs aloft.

  “Andy?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Take it slow; it’s been a while since... you know.”

  I looked into Jeff’s dark eyes. He looked like a little boy instead of a grown man, and it seemed to me we had actually switched roles since the last time I’d seen him. I was no longer the novice or the fumbling kid who’d allowed Jeff to call the shots and set the limits. Unlike Jeff, I’d become a man who wasn’t afraid to be himself.

  Jeff’s viewing himself as partially gay puzzled me. Why had kissing scared him so? Kissing men didn’t make me a sissy or a pervert. On the contrary, I felt it enhanced my masculinity, and my self-assurance. I set the rules and boundaries in my private life, not the military police, or Raymond Connor, or the pastor at First Baptist in Tallahassee. Who were these people, anyway? What gave them the right to limit who I might love, and how I might love them?

  As Biff Schultz might say, they could “go fuck themselves.”

  I mussed Jeff’s hair, and then I smooched his forehead.

  “I’ll be gentle,” I said.

  The veins in Jeff’s neck popped out when I entered him. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Go ahead, Andy.”

  I commenced thrusting my hips, while Jeff grunted and sighed. I felt electric all over, like I’d plugged myself into a wall socket. Minutes later, when I came, my whole body jerked, three or four times.

  “Jesus Christ,” I hollered.

  The sound of my voice bounced off the walls. My lungs heaved like I’d just finished a three-mile run. I wrapped my arms around Jeff’s sweaty neck, and then I pulled his face to mine. Our lips met first, our tongues next, and then we slobbered like two teenagers. Jeff’s earlier reluctance to kiss me seemed to have disappeared like a puff of smoke from a campfire.

  “Can we do this again?” I asked Jeff, already hungry for more.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll meet you here next Saturday, same time.”

  I rested my sweaty cheek on the curve of Jeff’s neck, and then I listened to him breathe.

  Next Saturday’s so far off. I could do this every day.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A few days after my encounter with Jeff, I rose before daybreak. I drove to Tallahassee in darkness, squinting at the glare from headlights of transfer trucks on Highway 90. I would collect my mail at the apartment. Then I’d visit the law school to buy books and write down my reading assignments for the first day of class. Law students, it seemed, hit the ground running.

  My mother stayed home that day, to look after Dad.

  “I’ll write lesson plans,” she told me. “Just do what you need to do; we’ll be fine.”

  The drive to Tallahassee from Pensacola, on Highway 90, was boring as hell, especially in the darkness. I couldn’t even see the usual progression of cow pastures, pecan groves, and slash pine forests, not until I reached Gadsden County. At that point, I was thinking about Jeff and his Air Force difficulties when I came upon a disgusting scene, one that made my breakfast roil in my stomach. Someone, probably a transfer truck driver, had struck a good-sized deer during the night, and now, as the sun crested the eastern horizon, several turkey buzzards gathered about the animal’s bulky carcass on the road shoulder. The buzzards looked like diners at an all-you-can-eat buffet. A shudder ran through me, and then I returned my gaze to the road. Had the deer died instantly when it was struck, or had it suffered a while before it succumbed?

  By the time I reached my apartment, the sun had crested trees to the east and dew glistened in the crabgrass. Already, the day was heating up. Folks drove down Franklin Street with their car mufflers growling, headed for jobs in the monolithic state office buildings surrounding the Capitol. A mockingbird eyed me from a live oak’s limb, as though I were an intruder on the property.

  In my building’s foyer, I found my mailbox empty. My front door was unlocked, and I crinkled my forehead in puzzlement while I pushed the door into my living room. What was going on?

  Travis sat at my dining table, wearing nothing but white briefs. His hair was disheveled and he hadn’t shaved. He studied a chemistry text while dining on a bowlful of breakfast cereal.

  “The landlord’s having our house tented for termites,” he explained. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I stayed here a few nights.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “You know you’re always welcome.”

  He pointed to a stack of envelopes and circulars on the coffee table. “I emptied your mailbox.”

  I sat on the sofa. Then I leafed through the mail. There wasn’t much of interest: a utility bill, an invitation to join the Law Student Association, and my car registration renewal papers. The rest was junk I tossed into a waste basket.

  “Your bed’s comfortable,” Travis said. “I’m jealous.”

  I thought of Travis’ bedroom and his thin mattress resting on the floor. Then I thought of Travis lying in my bed, and despite the morning’s sultry temperature, I shivered.

  Go on: say it.

  “You can sleep in my bed anytime you’d like, you know; whether I’m gone or not.”

  Travis gazed at me, and then he narrowed his eyes.

  Shit.

  For a moment, I thought Travis might lash
out at me like he had at Maritza, that day at the river, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” I said, “what I just was meant to be a joke.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Was it?”

  I lowered my gaze and shrugged. “Partly, anyway.”

  Travis rose from the dining table. His buttocks jiggled in his tight-fitting briefs when he walked to the kitchen to rinse out his cereal bowl. Moments later, he joined me on the sofa. He placed his bare feet on the coffee table, joined his hands behind his head. A sour scent, not unpleasant, wafted from his dark armpits. He rubbed his lips together while he stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t been this close to Travis since our Itchetucknee trip; his presence made my heart pump and my mouth go dry.

  What should I say?

  “How’s summer school going? Are you --”

  Travis cut me off with a flinty stare. When he spoke, his voice sounded reedy. “Please, don’t toss small-talk in my face like I’m some kind of idiot. I know you think I don’t own a pair of balls; you see me as a first-class coward, don’t you?”

  Travis’ aggressive attitude took me by surprise; it was totally out of character. What was going on?

  When I didn’t say anything, Travis kept on.

  “You see me as a chickenshit, a pathetic soul who won’t stand up for himself. But I’m not, Andy; I’m just... struggling right now. Why can’t you understand that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see why gay sex frightens you so.”

  Travis kept his gaze locked onto mine. “I already explained when we tubed the Itchetucknee: the Myrtle Beach thing and --”

  I hissed in frustration. “How long ago was that? Four years?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re letting one event dictate how you’ll live the rest of your life? How much sense does that make?”

  After Travis lowered his hands into his lap, he twiddled his thumbs. “Ever heard of Troy Perry? He founded a Christian church for gay men, in Los Angeles.”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s written a book, The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay. I’ve read it five times since I bought it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “It must be a good book.”

  Travis looked at me and nodded. “Perry talks about a variety of Old Testament passages, including the few that seem to condemn homosexuality. He says many ancient Biblical laws don’t make sense in today’s world.”

  “How so?”

  Travis babbled like a vacuum cleaner salesman.

  “Deuteronomy, in chapter twenty-two, verses thirteen through twenty-one says if it is discovered a bride is not a virgin, she must be immediately executed by stoning. Then, in Chapter twenty-two, verse twenty-two, Deuteronomy says if a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, both adulterers must be stoned to death. In today’s world, if we took these passages literally, we’d sling rocks day and night.”

  I nodded.

  “In Mark chapter twelve, verses eighteen through twenty-seven, the Bible says if a man dies childless, his widow is required to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir. We’d have some very unhappy widows in today’s society, if we followed Saint Mark’s words to the letter.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “you should lend that book to your folks.”

  “I plan to,” Travis said. “Labor Day weekend, I’ll visit Jacksonville for a family reunion. I’ll give Perry’s book to my father.”

  “Do you think he’ll read it?” I asked.

  Travis raised a shoulder.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  ***

  FSU’s College of Law wasn’t a place I’d ever visited as an undergraduate. The three-storied, red brick structure stood a few blocks south of the university’s main campus, on its own parcel of land. The Law Student Association operated a used bookstore on the school’s second floor, and that’s where I bought my texts for fall quarter. These were not the sort of texts I’d studied at FSU. Most were “case books”, thick collections of court decisions from all over the United States, involving contracts, torts, civil court procedures, real property, and criminal law. All were bound in faux leather, dyed various colors: dark blue, brown, forest green, and crimson. Gold lettering on the spines had all but worn away.

  A pair of students staffed at the bookstore: a guy wearing wire rimmed eyeglasses and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a flaxen-haired girl in bib overalls. While I made my selections, they joked about the work lying in wait for me.

  “The library’s just down the hall,” the guy said, pointing. “You should pay a visit, maybe choose a study carrel. It’ll be your second home for the next nine months.”

  I winced.

  “Who’s your Torts professor?” the girl asked.

  I consulted the schedule of classes I’d brought with me.

  “Someone named Vanderbleek.”

  The two looked at each other, and then at me.

  The girl shook her head. “He eats first-year students for lunch.”

  In a seating area outside the bookstore, adjacent to a plate glass window, I plopped into a vinyl-upholstered chair. Then I leafed through each book I’d bought. Previous owners had used yellow felt-tipped pens to highlight passages on most every page. I kept looking for photos or illustrations, but found none. The material seemed as dry as old corn husks, and the language used in court decisions seemed stilted and lifeless.

  The smallest volume, titled Powell on Real Property, wasn’t much larger than a paperback novel. The first few pages discussed various forms of property ownership: fee simple, life estate, tenancy in common, joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, and so forth.

  After five minutes of reading Powell, my gaze lost focus. Would I really have to learn this material, just to become a trial lawyer or a judge? I had no interest in real estate or contracts. Why bother studying them? I shook my head. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for the legal profession. Had I made a mistake by enrolling here?

  Although classes would not commence for three weeks, the law school bustled with activity. A balding guy in a tweed sports jacket talked with a guy whose beard grew to his sternum; they discussed a recent Supreme Court decision involving “search and seizure.” A dozen students from every sort of ethnic background: Hispanic, Asian, African, and Native American, sat in a circle on the carpet nearby. Sunshine reflected in the lenses of one girl’s eyeglasses while she discussed the outcome of that summer’s “moot court” competition. People kept entering or leaving the library’s swinging double doors. Each person carried a stack of books; the books seemed a part of their bodies, like their livers or kidneys. Would the same be true for me in the months ahead?

  My Torts text was a brown monster, four inches thick. The book’s former owner had penned the following inside of the cover: “Are you a first year law student? If so, take my advice: bend over, stick your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.”

  Aye-yi-yi...

  ***

  When I returned to my apartment, Travis was gone.

  I entered the bedroom, where my bed was neatly made. I lay upon it, on my belly. Then I buried my nose in a pillow, wondering if I might detect the scent of Travis’ dark hair, but I could not. Had he slept naked in my bed? Had he touched himself while lying between my sheets?

  If I wasn’t needed, back in Pensacola, I would likely have stayed the night in Tallahassee. Perhaps I’d even share my bed with Travis. If so, how might he respond if I made a pass? Had the book by Troy Perry caused a change in Travis’ view toward gay sex? If so, would he let me kiss him? Would he let me do more than that?

  I turned onto my back, and then I stared at the ceiling. A cobweb waved at me from one corner. Beyond the windows, songbirds tootled. I thought of Travis’ lanky limbs, his rippled belly and dark eyes. How would it feel to...?

  Be responsible, Hunsinger. Forget Travis and forget sex for now. Get your ass in the Vega and go.

  I got up and l
eft.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I thought Saturday might never come.

  The days following my visit to Tallahassee dragged over me like soggy blankets, as though someone had poured molasses into the works of my wristwatch. I ceased reading novels. Instead, I devoted many hours to my legal texts. I read court decisions, studied rights and responsibilities of tenants in common, or I focused on provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code:

  “§ 2-315. Implied Warranty: Fitness for Particular Purpose.

  Where the seller at the time of contracting has reason to know any particular purpose for which the goods are required and that the buyer is relying on the seller’s skill or judgment to select or furnish suitable goods, there is unless excluded or modified under the next section an implied warranty that the goods shall be fit for such purpose.”

  Aye-yi-yi...

  When I wasn’t studying or caring for my dad, I’d think of Jeff and our afternoon spent at the Pensacola Beach hotel. While with Jeff, I’d felt like a starving man invited to a banquet. I couldn’t get enough of his scents, the sound of his voice, and the feeling of his fingers touching my skin. We’d had sex twice that day, actually. The second time, Jeff rode me -- hard -- sending jolts of pleasure through my body. Even the soles of my feet grew warm. When I came, I shouted so loudly I’m surprised the hotel manager didn’t pay us a visit.

  Now, at my folks’ home, sexual tension crackled within me. For relief, I took three-mile runs or I bicycled fifteen miles. I performed pushups and sit-ups in my bedroom, and I pleasured myself frequently. Visions of Jeff made my sexual imagination sizzle whenever I’d stroke.

  To kill time, I spent hours in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes: linguini with homemade clam sauce, Greek moussaka, trout almandine with potatoes au gratin, and corned beef and cabbage. I even baked an angel food cake, using a special pan I found in the recesses of my mom’s pantry.