“Would you like to stop by my hotel for a little while?”
She’s mortified when I politely decline. She hates me for forcing her to declare herself, to put herself on the line, only to be rejected. I feel for her. I really do. But better to disappoint her now than later, when she’s lying naked, ashamed of the body that’s incapable of provoking the appropriate response in me. She couldn’t know that I’m done with that. I’ve exhausted my ability to respond to a woman. I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.
I know what I do want. Knoxville ’s the big city in these ol’ parts and it’s a party weekend. Tucked in my pocket is a torn page from Damron’s Men’s Travel Guide promising a Young Crowd and Entertainment at the Annex, a Very Popular starred entry, a Private Club, serving after hours for Members Only. The parking lot is full and idiots like me are driving in circles, waiting for a space to open up. A couple steps in front of my car, forcing me to throw on the brake. It’s Laurel and Hardy, a pair of clowns, parodies of masculinity in tight leather jackets and faux motorcycle caps, trailing cigar ashes as they wobble in their lace-up combat boots, as unsteady as two drag queens in stilettos.
“Good thing you’re cute, baby,” the taller one giggles, blowing me a kiss.
This is not what I want.
They disgust me, these preening mannequins, mocking everything I believe in. I made a mistake. I should have left with Little Gloria. I should give my old life another chance, if not with Alice, then with someone different, a new start, a fresh beginning. I don’t belong here…
…but a parking spot miraculously clears and I’m standing at the door of the club, looking for a member to approach to sign me in as his guest.
There he is. The boy I’ve waited for my whole life. The boy I dreamed of being. Broad shoulders, open and friendly face, floppy hair, a wrestler, an Eagle Scout. He’s Clark Kent, Wally Cleaver, and David Nelson all rolled into one.
“Sure,” he says. “No problem. What’s your name, in case they ask at the door?”
“Andy.”
“Great. I’m Sam.”
Sam. It’s perfect. I’m gonna buy him a drink when we get inside. I’m gonna fight the urge to light up a smoke. I’ll ask him to dance. Better yet, he’ll ask me. We’ll dance until they turn up the lights, then we’ll end up in bed, fucking until the sun comes up, unable to get enough of each other. I’ll even bottom if he wants. And I’ll cancel my flight tomorrow so we can spend the entire day together, watching the game. Knoxville and Charlotte aren’t that far. We can see each other every weekend. I can move.
A young fellow, lanky and good-looking, jogs toward us.
“Shit, dude, I had to park almost a mile away.”
“Andy, this is Jason, my boyfriend.”
“Hi,” he says, shaking my hand.
“Jason, you sure you wanna do this?” my Sam asks. “It’s getting really late and my parents are expecting us to tailgate with them tomorrow. I should just sign Andy in and we ought to go home.”
But I’m already halfway to my car. I can’t get away from them fast enough. I hate them, everything about them, if only for one brief and fleeting moment. I don’t want to be a bitter old son of a bitch, steeped in envy. I’m glad they’re happy. I really am. It’s not their fault that I’ll never know how it feels to tell the boy I’ve been waiting for my entire life to step up, shake a leg, get a move on, because my old man is checking his watch as he flips the dogs and burgers, telling everyone the party can’t start until we arrive.
Randy T and the Long Red Snake
“Didn’t you tell me once you were admitted to the University of Chicago?”
My counselor can be a bit unpredictable. I’ve thrown him a bone, sharing my little Tennessee adventure, expecting we’ll spend our mandatory hour chewing on my rather promising attempts at insight. But instead, the motherfucker tosses me a curveball, a complete non sequitur.
“Yeah, so what? Don’t you want to talk about my huge breakthrough on the night of the Volunteers pep rally?”
“I’m just curious. I mean, Davidson’s a good school, but what made you give up such an amazing opportunity?”
“You’re a real fucking snob, you know that?”
“I suppose it sounds like I am. But what I’m actually thinking is that it doesn’t seem likely you’d be sitting here today if you’d made different choices.”
“What makes you think I had a choice?”
“Everything’s a choice.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t always feel that way.”
The old man put me to work the summer before I was to leave for the University of Chicago. He’d done all right for himself, a big dago who came south with only his tool bag and the certification by Pennco Tech, courtesy of the G.I. Bill, of his proficiency in resolving the mysteries of the brave new world of HVAC. He took a chance on a hunch that the oh-so-genteel, seersucker-and-magnolia folk of Dixie would pay through the nose for the chance to sprawl spread-eagled in their underwear enjoying the frigid air blasting from their ceiling ducts. He was true pioneer stock, one of the trailblazers who conquered blistering sunlight and sweltering heat to make the Sun Belt safe for telecommunications empires and multinational insurance conglomerates in search of affordable real estate and cheap labor.
It made him a rich man. More importantly, it made him a shirt-and-tie man even if the tie was a clip-on and fastened to a short-sleeved dress shirt with a Knights of Columbus tie clasp. His kingdom was 4,500 square feet of partitioned office space and he commanded a fleet of twelve vans and an army of ten repair technicians, assorted clerks for payables and receivables, dispatchers, purchasing agents, and a timid young Catholic girl, handpicked by my mother to be his secretary.
And he had a son. To everyone within earshot, he bitched about my hair, my clothes, my eating habits, my new cigarette habit, my music, my this, my that. But after years of tension, after I’d won a state championship in the breaststroke, after I was named a National Merit Scholar Finalist, he needed to have me close, within earshot, within reach. He insisted I drive to work with him, long sweaty hauls to and from the dispatch office because Mr. HVAC refused to use the air-conditioning in his new Chrysler New Yorker because it was hard on the engine. I’d fidget while he fiddled with the dial of the radio, searching for the one low wattage station that played Sinatra, “King” Cole, and Sassy Vaughan instead of “that fucking shit-kicker shit.” He filled the space between us with AM band static and his revelations about the crucifixion of Nixon, whom he’d loved, and the Democratic Party, which he hated for selling its soul for the endorsement of the goons and extortionists that called themselves organized labor. His world had changed forever the night Ed Sullivan, Ed Sullivan, kissed that Supreme girl right on her big fat lips, defiling the sanctity of our living room. That’s what he got for voting for Johnson in ’64. Ronald Reagan would lead the nation out of the wilderness, you better believe it! Sometimes I’d respond with something vaguely “radical” to get a rise out of him. But it usually took every ounce of energy I could summon just to stay awake.
After two weeks of this torture, I accepted a job lifeguarding the rest of the summer. I told my father I was embarrassed, taking his money for doing nothing, that the guys drew lots every morning, loser gets the old man’s kid. I thought he’d have a stroke. He told me it was his fucking money and he’d spend it any fucking way he wanted and they were nothing but a bunch of fucking jealous bastards. And he was certain they were. But I knew they had never heard of the University of Chicago, couldn’t even consider the possibility such a place actually existed since it never had and never would appear in a bowl game or at the Final Four. And yet the old man bragged on, oblivious to the fact that they might have a hard time finding Chicago on a map if they were ever inclined to try, which they weren’t since they only feigned interest, and a mild one at that, when the boss backed them into a corner at the vending machines and lectured them about my future as a world-famous brain surgeon who would probably win the Nobel Prize. All they saw when they looked at me was a wiry kid with pimples on his chin.