Home is a Fire (7 page)

“So, those clothes in your closet?” I asked. Now it made sense.

“A mixture,” she answered. “Some of hers, some of mine. We couldn’t share shoes, of course, but we shared accessories.”

“I guess that’s why you never had kids. I always wondered.”

“Well, we thought about it.” Her face betrayed no sadness. “Honestly, we did. We could have. But we were having so much fun, as friends. Why ruin it? Besides, she had Mabel.” And she nonchalantly refilled her martini glass from the pitcher.

“Miss Mabel? The school secretary?” I couldn’t believe what she was telling me!

“Welcome to Parkville, Dolly. Those late night soap operas have nothing on us.”

“But I thought they were best friends!?” I said.

“Everyone did,” she said. “Well, it depends on your definition of
friends
, I guess. Janey and Mabel were pretty steady, the whole time we were married. They were lucky. No one seemed to give two ladies a second glance, but anytime I had a ‘special friend’ I had to be more cautious. That’s why I joined the Bears’ Club. A bit more privacy.”

Beret went on to explain that the Bears’ Club had been a haven for closeted homosexuals, their close friends and straight allies for generations. Not everyone was gay, but it was a safe, accepting environment for men to enjoy the company of other men, without the interference of prying eyes, wives or pesky Southern morals. There once was a time when men were more homosocial, and it was just the norm. Sure, they had poker tournaments and fundraisers for community improvements, but what’s wrong with the occasional variety or drag show? Nothing, as far as I could see. In fact, I was so proud of Parkville right now, I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. I just wished more people knew about it.

“That’s the thing you have to promise me, Derek. This has to stay between you and me. No one else can know.” She looked at me, very seriously. “Not a word to your mom, either. There are too many other lives and relationships at stake here, and we have to respect that. Some may choose to look the other way, but others in this town would not be so generous. This Supreme Grizzly is going to protect her den, and I expect you to back me up on that, okay?”

“You have my word.” I held my hand to my heart. “Honor bright, snake bite.”

“Good boy,” and she turned to look in her vanity mirror, pulling tissues from the box. “Now, I need to touch up this makeup and go mingle. We have some new members upstairs, and I need to make a good impression. It can’t hurt to have a few judges and lawyers on your side when you need ‘em. Enjoy your night, doll. I love you.”

“I love you too, Uncle Barry.” Air kisses all around. “Oh. One last thing. That ‘lady’ on stage before you looked an awful lot like Mr. Bellman, the Parkville High School principal. Was that just my imagination?”

“
Belle
? That bitch. Never do a duet with her. She’ll upstage you every chance she gets. Trust me.”

And with that, I popped up the staircase, out the back door and got into my car. I didn’t think any movie at Tommy’s could top the night I’d already had.

10

BOTTOM’S UP

I woke up Monday morning more excited for school than I had ever been in my entire life. I hadn’t seen or heard from Luke since our good-bye hug on Friday night, and the mixture of emotions and hormones in my body were putting my head into overdrive. I am definitely guilty of overthinking. No news is good news, right?

Wille Nelson and I raced to the high school as fast as we could without getting caught in any of Parkville’s (well known) local speed traps. All I could think of was Luke. What should I say to him? Am I wearing the right clothes? Will he smile when he sees me? Should I bring him a coffee? Maybe we can have lunch together? Maybe I could sit in on one of his classes during my planning period? I can’t wait to see him, talk to him, hug him, smell him. I felt like a teenager again! David, who?

His car was already in the lot when I pulled in to park. My heart actually skipped a beat as I stepped out into the fresh autumnal air. Homecoming was just around the corner. Maybe we could chaperone the dance together? Ok, ok… don’t get ahead of yourself, Derek. Let’s start with something small, like going on a vacation together or choosing names for our imaginary kids. God, I’m crazy and I know it. I’m grinning from ear to ear.

I opened the door to the teachers’ lounge and stepped in. There he was, sitting by the window with his nose buried in the sports section of the
Parkville Post
, Tennessee Volunteers baseball cap tipped back high on his forehead.

“Luke! Good morning. Coffee? I picked up two.” I thrust a green paper cup towards him. “I picked up a latte and a regular. Wasn’t sure which you preferred.”

“No, thanks.” He didn’t even look up from his paper.

“It’s no problem at all,” I said. Why won’t he look at me? “I just figured you might want a good coffee. Better than that new machine we have, don’t you think?”

No answer.

“So, how was the rest of your weekend?” I asked. My heart started pounding. I was sinking, and I could feel it. “I guess you got home all right Friday night?”

“All good,” he said, as monotonously as he could manage. He turned the page of the newspaper and kept reading.

Did I go too far? Did I say too much? I started to panic. When I start to panic, I start to sweat. And when I start to sweat, my mind starts racing, and any minute now my mouth was going to go places it clearly should not, given
the situation at hand. Thankfully, I heard a voice of reason behind me.

“I’ll take that coffee,” said Bammy, from the doorway. “How sweet of you. Thanks, Derek.” I turned to look at her and she gave me that
you get over here now
look that mothers so often give to their wayward children. I clenched my jaw, gritted my teeth and marched towards the door.

“Yeah. Sure,” I said. “No problem. See you ‘round.” I dropped the cup in Bammy’s hand and pushed past her rudely into the hall.

“Derek.
Derek!
” she whisper-screamed, chasing after me down the hallway in her heels. “What was that all about? What happened on Friday after we left? What are you doing? What are you thinking? He’s
straight
. You
know
that. Derek!”

“Leave me alone, Bammy. I don’t wanna talk about it.” I picked up the pace and headed across the courtyard towards my first class. Obviously, Luke was choosing to ignore Friday night. He’s all hugs and high fives when it’s the two of us, but in school he’s back to his old persona. Self-loathing asshole. All right, Luke, so this is the game we’re playing, is it?

Well, I’m not interested.

■ ■ ■

I made up my mind that it was all in my mind.

I imagined it. I created it. I needed something romantic and hopeful and exciting after running away from David and my New York life, and Luke Walcott was just the ticket. He was perfect, in fact: yet another hot, athletic, unattainable straight
boy for this lonely hopeless romantic to pine after. I always said I suffered from congenital sadness, but this time, I wasn’t going to let “another one who got away” break me down. I’m better than that now. At least, I hope I am.

A week had passed since “The Showdown at the Coffee Corral,” as Bammy called it. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do, but I didn’t want to admit it to my friends, let alone to myself. I had fallen for the wrong guy, and even worse, I fell fast and hard after a single late-night hug. One hug! Was I that desperate for love?

Bammy and Kit talked me off the ledge and I regained my sanity fairly quickly. Luke and I didn’t speak of “the incident,” as I’m sure it was nothing to him. We said our casual helloes as we passed in the hallway, but we didn’t go much further than that.

The weekend came faster than expected, and we headed on down to the Firelight, as we did every Friday night. The Scooby Gang staked out our usual booth, but Luke was nowhere in sight.

“Will you stop looking at the door?” Bammy said as she threw me a meaningful look over her Jack and Diet Coke. “He’s not coming. And even if he did, it wouldn’t be for you. So stop, okay? You’re here with us.”

She was right. I was obsessing while pretending that I wasn’t obsessing. Stalking him was just around the corner, but I was trying to keep that side of myself at bay.

“Whatever,” I said. “He’s a douchebag. No, actually he wishes he were a douchebag. He’s actually just unimportant. That’s worse.” I wasn’t even convincing myself.

“He’s not a douchebag, Derek,” said Bammy. “He’s actually a pretty good guy. He’s just not the ‘good guy’ for you. One hug doesn’t mean he’s a closet case, you know? Not every handsome guy is gay, even though I know you wish that were the case.”

“It has been my experience that men who feel the need to say they are ‘good guys’ are generally trying to convince themselves,” Kit said. She had known her fair share of douchebags masquerading as improved souls. “But that doesn’t matter, any way,” she added. “You want to hate him. I get that.”

“I just feel like I want to run away, again,” I said. “Even though I just did that, coming here. Today I daydreamed that I was a French teacher in some military training facility. Then I realized it was all the men in uniforms that I found most appealing.” I sighed. “Something is very wrong with me.”

Kit looked at me and smiled a knowing half smile. “Derek, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just going to have to learn to deal with all the shit that doesn’t magically fall into place. You have always believed that the universe owes you. You want to run away when things get tough.
We. All. Do
. That’s normal. But you also want to hate everyone, and you expect all of us to love you while you’re doing it. Not everyone will adore you, my friend. Just the special ones. Like us.” And she winked at me.

Kit was right with her tough love. I wallow in self-pity, throw my accusations and lash out left and right, all the while protecting myself with a mask of vicious laughter. It’s either that or cry? It had to stop. I moved back home to find myself again, and getting hung up on a straight guy and feeling sorry
for myself wasn’t part of the action plan. I needed to remember that it’s more important to take care of myself, first. The rest will follow.

“Man, you just need to get laid,” Tommy said and put his beer up to his lips. He took a big gulp, and then set it down with a wide grin. “You know I’m right. That’s just tension speaking, and it’s the kind of tension you can take care of pretty easily. Especially a gay guy. Hell, isn’t there an app for that?”

“Fuck you,” I said. “And I mean that with love, my friend.”

The girls giggled, then moved in closer as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Tommy was right. Again. One easy search for mobile phone apps and I found my prize: Huntr, for gay men on the hunt. I downloaded it and made a quick profile, not adding anything that could be tied back to me, Derek. I called myself “Duke,” as an homage to Derek and Luke. Thankfully, the girls didn’t make the connection.

“
Ooooh
, very regal sounding!” said Kit.

I chose a photo that Bammy took of me down by the lake as my profile picture. Shirt off, legs hanging down off the dock into the water. I have my back to the camera and a baseball cap on. Even I think I look hot in this one.

“Now what?” said Bammy. “How does this Huntr thing work?”

“Well, you make a profile,” I explained. “You say what you’re looking for, then you just kind of wait. It’s all based on GPS, so you can see when there are other guys on the app who are near you. Like this one, for example.” I pointed out a picture of a really young blond twink with a cute smile. “He’s less than a mile from us right now, and he’s looking for some NSA fun.”

“Oh! ‘NSA’ means ‘No Strings Attached,’ Bammy,” said Kit. “Men are so driven by hormones.” They both laughed.

“So go for it!” said Bammy.

“Bammy, he’s nineteen,” I laughed. “He’s practically one of our students. I’ll pass. There must be something more my type around here. Well, hello Dolly!” Had I been hanging around Beret too much?

Someone who went by the handle “Cowboy” had posted a picture of his chest, and it was mighty fine: mid 30s, dark blond, no shaving, just my type. And only a few miles away.

“Here we go. I’ll take ‘Hot Pecs’ for a thousand, Alex!” I sent a quick
hey, how’s it going?
and he offered the same. He seemed cool and we started chatting. I didn’t want to chat too much, and thankfully he didn’t either. We both understood that this wasn’t the kind of app for romance and a marriage proposal.

“Shit.” I froze. “He wants to meet. What do I do?”

“DO IT!” the girls screamed, in unison. Tommy just laughed and took another drink.

“Okay. Here goes.” I replied and hit send, without over analyzing for the first time in my life. “Shit. He answered. It’s on. We’re meeting in an hour at that gay bar out east, past the old bowling alley.”

“That was so easy,” said Bammy. “Why can’t straight people just hook up like this?”

I paused. Lightbulb. “Oh, fuck. We never traded face pics.”

I just asked a torso out for a drink.

■ ■ ■

Bottoms Up was located a few miles east of downtown Parkville in a derelict part of town. Just your average gay Southern white boy dive bar, it was known for its cheap drinks and even cheaper clientele. I’d only been there a few times in college when they had dollar nights, and back then we were pretty scared for our lives, but the super low prices helped to calm our fears. Did I mention how cheap the drinks were?

I parked Willie next to an old hearse that looked like it was straight from the set of
Six Feet Under
, and walked in the door. The jukebox here was nowhere near as good as the Firelight, and some shitty hybrid hip-hop pop crap was blaring through the speakers. “Cowboy” had informed me he would be wearing an orange and white baseball cap, but I didn’t see him yet.

I figured I might as well get a drink while I waited, so I walked up to the bar. “Jack and Coke, please,” I ordered.

“Just one?” the bartender asked. He was wearing blue jeans and a leather vest with no shirt and had a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth. He looked down his nose at me with his one good eye.