Becoming Andy Hunsinger Read online

  Fergal pulled the covers up to his chin. He continued to tremble.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Andy, I’m scared shitless. Thanks for staying.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  Six weeks had passed since I’d last touched Aaron, and now, lying so close to Fergal, my pulse quickened. I smelled his skin and hair, felt his body heat, and heard his breathing. I thought of the day he’d helped me get my sofa upstairs, and how I admired his slim physique. Minutes before, when we’d sat in his living room, I honestly hadn’t thought about sex with Fergal, despite the fact he was shirtless and my arm had rested about his bare shoulders. The storm’s violence had been foremost in my mind, but now I pondered whether I should make a move on him.

  He’s Australian, I told myself, bisexuality’s probably common over there. And he’s the one who invited you to bed; this was his idea. It may be the only chance you’ll ever have to test the waters with him.

  But then I thought of Fergal huddling beneath his dining table, scared out of his wits, and I knew touching him sexually would be wrong. He’d been a friend to me, ever since I moved into the building. When I told him I was queer, the day of the Bryant demonstration, he accepted my revelation without a second’s thought.

  How could I forget his kindness?

  Nothing Fergal had ever done or said suggested a sexual interest in me. He seemed to care for his girlfriend, and right now I occupied his bed only because he was frightened, not because he wanted me to touch him between his legs.

  Show a little class, Hunsinger. Don’t take advantage of the situation.

  “Andy?”

  “Hmm?”

  “If I turn on my side, will you hold me?”

  Ahh shit, Hunsinger. Be a friend.

  “Of course,” I said.

  The sheets rustled while we rearranged ourselves. My knees met the backs of Fergal’s. My hips pressed against his buttocks, and my chest met his shoulder blades. After I wrapped my arm around him, I held him close. His skin felt warm and soft. I buried the tip of my nose in his thick hair, and then I listened to his labored breathing. Gradually, the storm’s intensity lessened. Lightning ceased flashing, and thunder became intermittent.

  Fergal scratched the tip of his nose, and then he cleared his throat. “Good night, Andy; and thanks so much.”

  A smile crept across my lips.

  “You’re welcome, Fergal,” I said. “You sleep tight, now.”

  * * *

  A few days after I’d spent the night at Fergal’s, I sat at my dinette, filling out a stack of papers an inch thick; this was my application for admission to FSU’s College of Law. The school wanted to know everything about me and my past. Had I ever been arrested? What extracurricular activities had I participated in during my undergraduate years? What were my parents’ occupations? At what addresses had I resided while at FSU? What were the names and addresses of every school I’d attended since first grade? I had to call my mom for some of the older information. The law school even wanted to know if I suffered from any medical or psychological disorders.

  Of course, I had to write a five hundred word essay explaining why I wanted to become a lawyer, and why I wished to attend law school at FSU. I must’ve written a half-dozen drafts before I felt satisfied with the final version.

  Days before, I’d received my LSAT results in the mail. I had scored in the 87th percentile, better than I’d ever hoped for. Because my grades in my undergraduate studies were pretty good, I thought I stood a decent chance of getting admitted, but who knew? Competition for slots in next fall’s first year class was ferocious; less than half the applicants would be accepted, according to a letter from the law school’s Dean that accompanied my application package.

  It took me several hours to complete the entire thing, and when I’d finally finished I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. My head ached and my brain felt numb. If just applying for law school was this time-consuming, how heavy would the workload be once classes started?

  I stacked all the paperwork into a neat pile, and then I shoved everything inside a manila envelope the school had provided me. I climbed on my bike and headed for the post office, wondering as I pedaled whether I was kidding myself about my chances for admission. After all, I was a kid from a middle-class, Pensacola suburb, and a self-proclaimed gay boy who knew little about the law.

  Did I even stand a chance?

  ***

  After the night I slept with Fergal, our friendship grew closer. His girlfriend, Gina, was performing an internship at an elementary school that quarter, and she couldn’t devote the time to Fergal that she normally did. So I gave Fergal my companionship more frequently.

  Often we prepared evening meals together, and then we studied at his place or mine. We tossed a Frisbee in our back yard or rode our bikes to a nearby park, to kick a soccer ball back and forth. On a weekend when Capital City was closed for maintenance, we camped at St. George Island, on the Gulf Coast, in a beautiful park with sandy beaches and soaring dunes. We shared a tent and showered together in the park’s facilities. One morning, we skinny-dipped in the Gulf at daybreak. Both of us splashed about in the waves like a pair of frisky seals while sunrise painted the horizon with shades of gold, pink, and green.

  Whenever I saw Fergal naked -- and this happened several times during the camping trip -- my pulse quickened. How would it feel to have sex with him? But I kept those thoughts to myself. I had earned Fergal’s trust when I hadn’t made a pass at him, the night we spent together, and now I wouldn’t squander his friendship on the slim chance he might say yes to a request for intimacy.

  He’s your friend, Hunsinger. Isn’t that enough?

  On a Saturday afternoon in March, I returned home from Capital City, tired from caddying three rounds of golf on a particularly warm day. While I locked up my bike in the four-plex’s stairwell, I heard Fergal play a familiar tune on his piano, and then a grin crossed my face.

  I stuck my head through his open doorway. “That’s music from Pirates of Penzance, isn’t it?” I asked.

  After Fergal turned on his piano bench, he arched his eyebrows. “You know Gilbert and Sullivan, mate?”

  “Are you kidding? During high school, my drama club performed Penzance, and I played Frederic. We did H.M.S. Pinafore, too, and I played Ralph Rackstraw. I know every song in both shows.”

  Fergal rocked back and forth, laughing.

  “My mum and dad perform in amateur theater, back in Melbourne. As a kid, I’d rehearse Gilbert and Sullivan numbers with them, in our living room.”

  I took a seat next to Fergal on the bench. He wore a pair of boxer shorts -- nothing else -- and I smelled his piney scent.

  “Do you know the Major-General’s Song?” I asked.

  Fergal looked at me like I was daft.

  “Is the pope Catholic?”

  He struck the first chord, and then I commenced singing the silly tune, a monologue chirped by a pompous British army officer with a wealth of knowledge about science and military history, but who’s utterly incapable of leading men into battle.

  After I sang the tune, Fergal patted my shoulder. “You have quite the voice, mate. Keep going, please.”

  We continued until darkness fell. We performed When Frederic Was a Little Lad from Pirates, and then We Sail the Ocean Blue from H.M.S. Pinafore. We sang When the Foeman Bares His Steel from Pirates, too. I sang solos, and both of us sang the choruses. Fergal’s scratchy baritone mixed well with my tenor; his piano accompaniments were precise and sure.

  Neighbors gathered in the stairwell to listen, and soon a half-dozen people sat on the treads. One guy brought us two cold bottles of beer. People applauded in between numbers, and I beamed at their attentions. I hadn’t had as much fun in years. How I missed musical performing, and why had I quit?

  When we’d finished our last number, Fergal gave me a wet smooch on my cheek while our audience cheered.

  “You’re the best, Andy. Wh
at a beautiful voice you have.”

  I felt so excited I wanted to grab Fergal by the shoulders and kiss him on the mouth, but I didn’t, of course.

  I mussed his hair instead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In 1977, Easter fell on April tenth, a day I won’t ever forget.

  I had driven to Pensacola from Tallahassee the night before. Sunday afternoon, after we’d attended services at First Methodist, I helped my mother prepare our family’s Easter dinner: baked ham, scalloped potatoes in a cheese sauce, fresh green beans steamed with Vidalia onion, and a fruit salad. On the drain board, a chocolate layer cake with strawberry icing crowned a cut glass serving pedestal.

  In our living room, my dad and brother watched the Atlanta Braves play the Houston Astros on a console TV as big as my mom’s cook stove.

  Our home was a three-bedroom, ranch-style, cinder block structure on a quarter acre lot. My folks had bought the house with a VA loan, right after the Army discharged Dad from active duty. Most all the houses in the neighborhood had been built by the same developer. Architecturally, they looked pretty much the same: carports, awning-style windows, brick accents, and screened lanais. But the developer had had the foresight not to bulldoze the native trees in the tract, wherever possible. Instead, he built around them, so most houses enjoyed shade offered by live oaks, magnolias, and slash pines.

  The year my parents bought our house, my mother planted dozens of azaleas along the flanks of the house and in beds surrounding the trees in our yard. By now, the shrubs were almost as tall as me. Mom kept them fertilized and pruned, and each Easter they rewarded her with multitudes of pink and purple blossoms. Right now, our yard looked like a pageant float.

  My folks had recently modernized the kitchen with new, harvest gold appliances, Formica countertops, and fake wood cabinets that tried to look like walnut but failed. I found the changes less than appealing. What had been wrong with our maple wood cupboards, our old Frigidaire, and our tiled countertops? But I kept my mouth shut while I peeled and sliced potatoes at Mom’s kitchen table. Rain had fallen the night before, and a scent of damp pine needles drifted in through an open window above the sink. Outside, a blue jay tootled on a slash pine’s bough.

  “You’d think the First Family were hillbillies, the way the media go an about them,” my mother told me while she basted the ham with Coca-Cola. “Jimmy Carter’s a Naval Academy graduate, and Rosalynn was valedictorian at Plains High School; they’re sophisticated people.”

  I found it hard to concentrate on Mom’s remarks. On the drive from Tallahassee, the day before, I had decided I would tell my parents and brother I was gay.

  It’s time, I told myself.

  I had rehearsed a speech. I would explain how I’d never felt attraction to girls, only boys. I would speak of my participation in the Bryant demonstration, my involvement with the Rap Group and AGA, and the gay and lesbian friendships I’d formed in Tallahassee. I would tell them about my brief relationship with Aaron, and how natural I had felt when we made love.

  I had no idea what my family members’ reactions would be. Homosexuality was a topic never discussed in our household -- not in my presence, anyway. If my folks had any gay relatives or friends, they never mentioned them.

  When I was in eighth grade, The Reverend Beauregard Davis, our minister of music at First Methodist, was arrested for indecency, after soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a men’s room at a Pensacola Beach county park. I recalled the expression on my mother’s face when she read about it in the News Journal, on a Saturday morning. She looked like she’d swallowed half a bottle of cod liver oil.

  “I can’t believe it,” she told my dad while he studied the sports page. “Beau always seemed like such a nice young man.”

  Dad looked at Mom over the tops of his reading glasses. “Remember what Dr. King said, darling: ‘There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.’”

  My parents had always professed unconditional love for me and my brother, so I didn’t fear the kind of rejection certain Rap Group members had encountered when coming out to their families. My parents might be disappointed at my revelation, but they’d still love and accept me, I felt certain.

  I wasn’t so sure about my brother.

  As tall as me, Jake had dark, wavy hair, cobalt eyes, gleaming teeth, and a body like a gymnast’s. He’d lettered in three sports at our high school, made honor roll every school term, and served in student government. His peers had chosen Jake their Homecoming King the previous fall, and his present girlfriend lived in a five-bedroom house overlooking a fairway at Pensacola Country Club. In September, Jake would attend Emory University on a full athletic scholarship. He’d goal tend for the school’s water polo team.

  I’d heard Jake and his pals utter the word “faggot” many times, during pickup basketball games in our driveway. “Suck my cock” was a frequent put-down. In Jake’s world, queers were guys to be scorned, and never respected no matter their accomplishments.

  At school, Jake’s friends had consigned non-athletes like me to a lower rung on the social ladder, and they always treated me with mild derision. Tough guys played ball or ran track, while pussies performed in school plays. Nonetheless, Jake and I had always shared a brotherly bond. Even as children, we formed a united front against our parents: no tattling, no taking sides with the folks. Most times, we tried to resolve our disputes on our own.

  Our parents’ conservative, Methodist beliefs had never held sway with either of us.

  “God’s in heaven, protecting us?” I told Jake one night while we sat in lawn chairs in our back yard, studying stars. “Explain earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of innocent people. Explain the Nazi Holocaust or Joseph Stalin’s mass killings in the USSR.”

  I quit attending church at age twelve -- as soon as the decision was left up to me by my folks -- and Jake followed suit on his own twelfth birthday. I called myself a humanist, while Jake declared himself agnostic. I’m sure my parents felt disappointed, but they didn’t try to change our minds.

  “We’re all entitled our own personal beliefs,” my mother told me.

  At age fourteen, in a stupid act of rebellion, I took up smoking cigarettes, something my parents would not have tolerated if they’d known. I kept my Marlboros and breath mints stashed beneath a stack of sweaters in my bedroom closet, and though Jake knew about the cigarettes, he never squealed.

  We had always shared our deepest secrets, Jake and I, ones we’d never reveal to friends or our parents. When Jake experienced his first wet dream, he told me about it the very next morning. When I skipped school three days in a row in high school, to spend time at the beach with friends, Jake helped me write a note to the Dean of Men, using his deft forging skills to duplicate my mother’s signature.

  Whenever I performed in a community theater play, or my high school choir appeared in concert, Jake would always attend, along with my parents, even though they didn’t require him to go. Likewise, I attended Jake’s Pony League ball games and junior varsity football contests, even though I didn’t much care for watching sports. I never thought twice about it. Jake’s my brother, I told myself. I need to be there.

  I don’t want to imply all was blissful between Jake and me when I lived at home. We had our fair share of arguments, and even a few fistfights. One of us might get sore at the other, and then we wouldn’t speak for days; we’d sulk about the house like a pair of monks who’d taken an oath of silence. But we always made up in the end, as it seemed we couldn’t do without confiding in each other for long.

  A month before I left for college, Jake and I quarreled over something truly stupid: possession of our family’s set of World Book Encyclopedias. I held the view I should take the books to FSU, to assist with my studies. Jake thought the set should remain at home.

  “I’ll need them for homework and essay assignments,” he said.

  My parents ruled in my favor.

  “There�
�s a set at the city’s branch library,” Mom told Jake at the dinner table. “You can ride your bike there in five minutes. Besides, college is difficult; Andy needs all the help he can get.”

  My brother’s face turned brick red. After leaping to his feet, he shouted at me so loudly I’m sure the neighbors a block away heard him.

  “They take always your side, always. No matter what I do to please them, it’s not good enough. I can’t wait ‘til you leave. I mean it; I hope I’ll never see you again.”

  After the blowup we didn’t speak to each other until the day I left for Tallahassee. I stood next to our pathetic Ford Fairlane, with my possessions in the trunk and my dad behind the steering wheel. An early morning breeze stirred the fronds on a Sabal palm; they made a sound like cards being shuffled. I hugged my mother and kissed her tear-stained cheek. Then I extended my hand to my brother.

  He wouldn’t look my in the eye. Instead, he studied his sneakers while taking my hand and giving it the weakest of squeezes.

  “Goodbye, Jake,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”

  Jake’s face crumpled. After throwing his arms around my shoulders, he laid his cheek against my sternum. Then he bawled like a five-year-old.

  “What is it?” I asked him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want you to go. Who will I talk to?”

  That was Jake for you: a bundle of vulnerability, guarded by a shield of bravado and talent.

  Afterward, whenever I came home from school each summer, we spent much time together, doing simple things. We took walks through our neighborhood, and Jake would ask about college life. I described life in Tallahassee, and he listened raptly. He seemed fascinated, as though I were Marco Polo returned from a journey on the Silk Road, recounting my experiences. Sometimes, he dragged me into our back yard, along with a pair of worn ball gloves and a scuffed baseball. We played pitch and catch and talked about his future. Where would he attend college? What would he study? Would law or medicine be a good choice?