Baton Rouge Bingo (3 page)

“So, why did she e-mail you out of the blue? To make peace, finally?”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment as Amy continued to claim she didn’t have an addiction problem in the background. Finally, he said, “She wants me to take in my oldest nephew. He’s thinking about transferring to either Tulane or UNO.”

“But, Frank, that’s great!” I burst out before realizing that he was clenching his jaw so tightly that a muscle was jumping in his cheek. “Isn’t it?”

He sighed. “Yeah, it is, I guess. It’s just—aw, hell.” We passed the turnoff to take I-55 north to Jackson. He signaled to take the Laplace exit. There was a big hotel there, and a mega gas station. He pulled in next to one of the pump islands and switched off the engine. He turned and looked at me. “I haven’t seen my nephew since he was about six years old, Scotty. I don’t know him at all, but much as I want to, I can’t say no to her, I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “My nephew’s gay, Scotty.”

Poetic justice for a homophobe
flashed through my mind immediately, and just as instantly I regretted thinking it.

It always bothered me when anyone wished a homophobe would have a gay or lesbian child as
punishment
for being a homophobe. Yes, that might be an apt punishment for
them
, but it never takes into consideration how hellish that would be for the child. It assumes that having a gay child would magically transform a homophobe into a banner-carrying member of PFLAG.

Sadly, it doesn’t always work that way—and the one who truly suffers is the child.

“How old is he now?” I asked.

“He’s eighteen, just finishing his first year at the University of Alabama.” Frank sighed. “He came out to his parents…and my brother-in-law has disowned him.”

I bit my lower lip and counted to ten silently in my head.

Nothing makes me angrier than a parent whose love for their child can be switched off like that.

“So my sister wants him to come down and visit me for the summer, you know, check the schools out, see if he likes New Orleans,” Frank went on. “Since he can’t go home, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. She’s actually hoping my asshole brother-in-law, once he’s over the shock, will accept Taylor and they can put all of this behind them.” Frank sighed. “He’ll be heading down here this weekend, if it’s okay with us. Please tell me you don’t mind. I just can’t turn my back on Taylor.”

“Of course we can’t! He’s welcome as long as he wants.” I folded my arms. “But why is he out of school so early?”

“He did a semester in Paris—he’s taking a minor in French and is actually fluent, apparently.” Frank grinned. “He’s majoring in political science—he wants to work for the State Department.”

I whistled. One of the only regrets in my life is I don’t speak a second language. “Impressive.”

“Anyway, the semester in Paris finished, so he’s been back home for the last week or so. Apparently, he met a boy over there…that’s kind of what triggered the whole coming-out thing. I don’t know the whole story—but my brother-in-law went away on a business trip and told Taylor he had to be gone by the time he gets back. He’ll be back this coming Monday. My sister seems to think her husband will change his mind eventually—which I doubt. He’s really a sanctimonious holier-than-thou asshole, but she thinks it best if Taylor isn’t there when he gets home.”

I’d noticed that Frank carefully avoided referring to his sister and her husband by name. “Well, he can stay in the upstairs apartment,” I said as Frank took off his seat belt. “But is it really a good idea to bring an eighteen-year-old newly out gay boy to the French Quarter?”

Frank grinned as he opened his car door to get out. “You grew up in the Quarter and look how you turned out.” He shut the car door and started filling the Explorer with gas.

“Exactly my point.” I mumbled, slumping down in my seat.

To be honest, now that my outrage at how Taylor’s parents were treating them was wearing down a bit, I was starting to get a little concerned.

I know I’m luckier than the vast majority of gay American men. I grew up in the French Quarter, for one thing, with its embrace of difference and diversity and uniqueness. I also grew up with far-left parents who most definitely would have been hippies had they been old enough in the sixties—parents who not only accepted me for being gay but were genuinely
delighted
their youngest child was a big old ’mo. I was getting into the French Quarter gay bars when I was seventeen. I was dancing on the bars in a thong when I was twenty. I haven’t exactly had the most conventional life.

Was I a good role model for a teenager freshly out of the closet?

I rather doubted Frank’s sister would think so—but then, in banishing her son from her home, even if it turned out to be just for the summer, hardly gave her a moral high ground from which she could cast judgment on
my
past.

And I was hardly going to encourage Taylor to become a go-go boy.

Keeping him out of the gay bars—and the bathhouse—was going to be a full-time job.

Listen to you, getting all parental and responsible
,
a voice jeered in my head.
It didn’t harm you, so who are you to make decisions for what’s right for this kid? As long as he knows about safer sex and to always use a condom, who am I to stop him from getting some world experience? And it’s not like kids nowadays have to go to bars anyway. He’s probably got Grindr on his phone and a Manhunt profile. If he was seeing some guy in Paris, he’s probably not a virgin, either. Besides, you don’t want to be one of those judgy adults he won’t talk to. Isn’t it better to be his friend? Let Frank be the authority figure.

I was so completely lost in thought I didn’t notice Frank had gotten back into the car and started the engine until he looked over at me and said, “Earth to Scotty? You okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied, forcing a smile as he drove back up the on-ramp to I-10. “It’s pretty cool of Teresa not to send him to some kind of ‘don’t be gay’ camp. I mean, that’s what I would have thought she’d do.”

His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel, but he didn’t say anything for a while. He sped up and merged onto the highway. “She might be religious, but she isn’t stupid,” he finally said as we drove off the swamp bridge and back onto dry land again. “She has a college education, you know. Not that she’s ever used it, of course. All she ever wanted to do was be a wife and mother.” He shook his head. “And as hard as our parents tried to keep us out of Alabama, that’s where she wound up.”

“You’re from Alabama?” I glanced over at him in surprise. “I thought you were from Chicago?” I racked my brain and couldn’t remember him ever mentioning Alabama before, except in regard to his sister.

“I grew up in Chicago.” He sighed. “I was born in Alabama, Scotty, that’s where we’re—my family—is from. I really don’t like to talk about it much.” He put his big hand back on my knee. “I’m sorry—I should have told all of this to you before. But I don’t have any really pleasant memories of Alabama.”

Quelle surprise
,
I thought, but aloud said, “I figured you’d tell me about your past and your family when you were ready to. I didn’t want to pressure you.”

“Yeah, well, I hated Alabama when I was a kid. We used to go there every summer to visit.” He made a face. “I have a ridiculous number of relatives there—I don’t know many of them, really, but that’s where we’re from, and I have a lot of aunts and uncles and first cousins. I was really skinny as a kid, and not very athletic. Sports were important to my dad, and of course, my cousins were all jocks.” The muscle in his jaw was twitching again. “They used to make fun of me. And my dad was always
why can’t you be more like your cousins?
He made it very clear I was an enormous disappointment.”

“Frank—I’m sorry.” I put my hand down on top of his and interlocked my fingers with his.

“Yeah, well. My parents moved to Chicago when my sister and I were young—I was only two, so I don’t remember ever living there—and that’s where I grew up. We lived in the city until my parents bought a house in the ’burbs. My sister and I both went to the University of Illinois. Tommy Wheeler was my cousin Bobby’s best friend, so he was always around when we were kids. She started dating Tommy Wheeler when we were in high school and went down there for the summers and it got serious. After she graduated from college she married him and moved back down there, started having kids.” He shook his head. “I’ve never had any desire to ever live there. Never. I went to work for the FBI right out of college, as you well know. Then Mom and Dad died…and I met you, and retired and wound up living in the South.” He smiled at me and patted my leg again. “I never had any doubt about wanting to live with you, you know—but I worried that New Orleans was too close to Alabama.” He laughed. “Every time I have to go to Mobile to wrestle, my stomach knots up when I cross the state line into Alabama—even after all this time!” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I probably should have told you all of this years ago.”

“No worries.” I smiled back at him. It
was
weird, now that I thought about it. We were going on eight years together—
eight years—
and how did I not know any of this?

Then again, we still weren’t 100 percent sure we knew the third side of our triangle’s real name, either.

Yeah, we were going to be
great
role models for Taylor Wheeler.

We rode along in silence, listening to the stereo, until we hit major traffic just after we got into Baton Rouge—just before the place where I-12 merges back into I-10. Interstate 12 is a New Orleans bypass—it cuts from Baton Rouge to Slidell across the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and cuts at least an hour out of the east-west trip by not swinging south into New Orleans.

Baton Rouge is notorious for its traffic. About the only time you can ever pass through the capital of Louisiana without coming to a dead stop is around three in the morning—if then. I’ve never really understood why that is—probably something to do with the way highways merge right before the bridge across the river, and that the college campus is also right there on the banks of the Mississippi. God forbid you try to get through the city after an LSU football game lets out—I made
that
mistake once when I was driving back from a go-go boy gig in Houston. It took me about an hour to get from the river to where I-12 splits off.

“Jesus, this is worse than game day,” Frank commented as we inched forward.

I switched the car stereo to the radio and searched for a station.

“At this time, all students, including those living on campus, are asked to leave the campus as quickly as they possibly can. The bomb squad from the Baton Rouge police department are currently working their way across the campus. As soon as there is an all-clear and it is safe to return to the campus, we will make an announcement…”

“That explains the traffic,” I said, switching the stereo back so it was playing the music on my iPod again. “But why would terrorists target the LSU campus?”

“I seriously doubt this is terrorists,” Frank commented as we inched forward another couple of feet. “No offense, but I doubt very seriously a college in Louisiana would be a high-priority target.”

“Yeah, it’s probably some douchey frat boys trying to get out of a test,” I replied, looking out the window at the car beside us. It was a green Chevrolet. At the wheel a woman was talking into her cell phone with a cigarette dangling from her lip. “It’s going to take forever to get to the 110.” The 110 turnoff was the way to downtown Baton Rouge and the capitol building; we were staying in Storm’s condo along the riverfront near the capitol.

At that moment my cell phone started ringing, and a picture of a pig’s face showed up on the screen. “Hello, Storm,” I said as I accepted the call.

“Where you boys at?” Storm sounded a little out of breath.

“We’re on the 10, stuck in evacuation traffic.” I looked over at the woman, who smiled at me as she tossed her cigarette out of her window. “I’ve no idea how long it’s going to take us to get there. If you want to get dinner, don’t wait for us.”

“I’m not at the condo,” Storm replied. “I’m at the police station. I wanted to let you know in case you got there and were wondering why I’m not there. The doorman can let you in—I let him know you were coming when I left.”

“Why are you at the police station, or should I ask?”

“I’m trying to bail Mom out.”

“What has she done now?” I looked over at Frank, who was giving me an odd look.

“She’s been arrested for assault.” He sounded like he couldn’t decide whether he should be irritated or amused. “She punched the attorney general.”

“Dufresne is lucky all I did was slap him,” Mom said, defiantly tossing her waist-length salt-and-pepper braid over her shoulder. “He’s an utter and complete asshole. No, wait a minute—an
asshole
actually serves a purpose, and that’s more than anyone can say for Troy Dufresne.”

Storm strode across the living room to the wet bar and poured himself a healthy slug of Jack Daniel’s. He tossed it back and refilled the glass, adding a couple of ice cubes. He gave me a broad, fake smile. “See what I’m dealing with? She was even more fun in front of the judge. News flash, Mom: it helps to show a little contrition in front of the man setting your bail. After your little outburst in the courtroom, it’s a wonder he didn’t lock you up as a menace to society.” He took another slug from the glass. “I’m not completely convinced you aren’t one.”

“At least you got her out in the end,” I pointed out as Mom sat down next to Frank on the couch. They’d just arrived at Storm’s condo—Frank and I could hear them arguing the moment they got off the elevator.

It had taken us over an hour to get there in the bumper-to-bumper crawl of traffic. I’d started wondering if we were going to die there on the highway, trapped in traffic, when we finally reached the turnoff for the 110 and downtown Baton Rouge. The traffic hadn’t let up much, but eventually we found our exit and headed for the parking garage of Riverview Tower. We’d managed to get our bags up the elevator to the twelfth floor and tossed them into one of the two spare bedrooms before deciding to order pizza. The drawer in the coffee table was filled with delivery menus, as I knew it would be. Storm didn’t cook, and I also knew, without having to look, that the only thing I’d find in his kitchen cabinets would be potato chips or pretzels—maybe both. I’d just hung up on Capital Pizza when I heard the argument coming down the hall.

I’d barely had time to take in the condo before they burst in. It was nice, as I knew it would be. The living room took up most of the floor plan of the place—the spare bedrooms were tiny, and the kitchen was little more than a galley. But despite the small bedrooms and a kitchen that was barely usable due to its size, the selling point of the condo was the stunning view from the living room. The entire wall facing the river was glass, and when I pulled the white curtains back, I literally gasped. The Mississippi River spread out before us, and off to the left I could see the big bridge across to the west side. A massive barge was heading past on its way downriver to New Orleans. There were two doors that opened out to a balcony that ran the entire length of the living room. There was some cheap white plastic furniture out there, along with a couple of dying palm trees in enormous planters.

The afternoon sun was undoubtedly murder on the balcony, but it was probably lovely out there in the mornings.

“So, why did you slug the attorney general?” Frank asked, his blue eyes twinkling. He was trying really hard not to smile. I glanced over at Frank, who had an amused look on his face.

I couldn’t help but wonder what his own mother had been like.

Frank and Mom had hit it off after a slightly rocky start. I’d met Frank over Southern Decadence weekend, when he was still working for the FBI. He’d actually been in New Orleans on a job, investigating a gubernatorial candidate’s rumored ties with a homophobic neo-Nazi group. I’d stumbled into the middle of his investigation—and he’d not exactly been thrilled when a gay go-go dancer was so deeply mixed up in the whole mess that it proved to be easier to involve me rather than extricate me. Mom already had a rather dim view of the FBI and was definitely not too thrilled when they used me as bait to draw out the bad guys and I wound up being kidnapped. But everything worked out in the end—the bad guys went to jail and I ended up with Frank. Mom, ever the pragmatist, welcomed Frank into the family like he was a long-lost son. Mom is pretty hard to resist, and it didn’t take long before Frank worshipped the ground she walked on. He was wrapped around her little finger, and she could get him to do things for her that her own kids wouldn’t do.

I also knew Mom would embrace his nephew and make him feel like a part of the family.

Taylor Wheeler had no idea what he was in for when he got to New Orleans.

Honestly, I still wasn’t completely comfortable with taking on the responsibility of a teenager. But I couldn’t just let Taylor wind up homeless and broke, not as long as I had breath in my body and money in the bank. I wasn’t raised that way. And if Mom and Dad had the slightest hint that I
considered
not helping Taylor—well, I may be in my thirties, but Mom did like to remind me every once in a while that I wasn’t too big to be spanked. Besides, I’d read too many articles online about parents throwing their gay kids away like so much garbage, and every time I did, it broke my heart a little. I was so lucky to have my parents. The least I could do as a karmic payback to the universe would be to help Frank’s nephew and welcome him into the family. And it wasn’t like he was some wide-eyed innocent from a small town in Alabama coming to New Orleans for the first time. He had a year of college behind him, including a few months living in Paris. New Orleans might even seem provincial to him after the City of Light. With Colin off on a job for who knows how long, we did have that empty apartment upstairs for him to use.

Yeah, there was no way I could live with myself if we turned our backs on Taylor.

Besides, Mom would kill us both if we didn’t take him in.

“Yes, tell us what triggered your latest crime spree, Mom,” I added, with a broad wink at Frank. “I mean, really. The state attorney general?”

Actually, I already had a pretty good idea why she had smacked him one. She’d been railing about him ever since he was elected. Troy Dufresne had run as a moderate Democrat, promising to work together with the opposition to solve Louisiana’s problems. He had some interesting plans about increasing law enforcement and regulating businesses—especially oil companies operating out in the gulf. The Deepwater Horizon disaster was still pretty fresh in voters’ minds, and Mom herself had railed against BP and how the legislature was owned by corporations and special interests for years. Dufresne painted himself as a tireless crusader for the people, prepared to come to Baton Rouge and root out corruption and clean up the state from one end to the other.

That lasted about five minutes after the votes were counted and he was elected by a huge margin.

Almost immediately he started talking about switching party affiliations. No sooner was he sworn in than he went ahead and did it. Almost every person he appointed to work for his office was a tool of special interests and corporations—including an attorney who’d worked for BP. Everyone who’d voted for him was livid. Editorials all over the state, regardless of political affiliation, trashed Dufresne. The nicer ones claimed he’d defrauded the voters, others claiming he’d sold his soul to the very people he’d run against. For a man in his mid-thirties who obviously had higher aspirations in politics, he’d pretty much destroyed himself in Louisiana. Louisiana voters were willing to overlook a lot from their politicians. You could be reelected after being exposed as a regular patron of a bordello. We’d elected a governor who was serving a jail sentence at the time for taking bribes
when he’d been serving as governor before.

But Louisiana voters don’t trust politicians who switch parties.

Go figure.

To add insult to injury, once Dufresne had been sworn in, he started throwing his weight around in an attempt to out-conservative the governor, who could best be described as an arch-conservative. (An über-conservative?) In his move to the far right, he passed many religious right leaders and left them brushing off his dust. He stated, in a speech at Loyola’s New Orleans campus, that he supported amending the state constitution to permanently prevent any “equal pay for equal work” legislation. He also went on record as saying he would defend the state’s horrible “right to work” laws with his dying breath. Despite the Supreme Court ruling in
Lawrence v. Texas
overturning sodomy laws and decriminalizing gay sexuality once and for all, Attorney General Dufresne seemed intent on enforcing Louisiana’s sodomy law, which had never been officially repealed. A gay couple in the small town of Rouen, on the north shore and Troy Dufresne’s hometown, had recently been arrested for sodomy—and Troy Dufresne had given a press conference, claiming it was time for Louisiana to take a stand against godlessness. I hadn’t taken it too seriously—a federal appeal would certainly overturn any conviction, and the couple was going to have one hell of a lawsuit on their hands against the sheriff in Rouen and the state of Louisiana, and rightly so.

However, as far as Mom was concerned, it was like Dufresne had waved a red flag in her face.

“What kind of asswipe would want to enforce that archaic sodomy law? The goddamned Supreme Court of the United States overturned every goddamned state sodomy law in the country! What kind of lawyer disregards a Supreme Court ruling?” Mom’s eyes narrowed as she plopped down in an easy chair. “He’ll be coming after abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood next, you just mark my words—and we need to be ready for the son of a bitch.” She sighed, almost visibly deflating as the anger drained out of her. “I didn’t go there to slap him, you know. I just wanted to see if I could talk some sense into him, make him realize he was killing his own career. No one is going to vote for a man who made Louisiana the laughingstock of the country, and that’s what this is going to do. But he’s such a smug bastard I just lost my temper and let him have it.” She shrugged and pointed an index finger at me. “Wipe that grin off your face, Scotty, this is serious. You and Frank could just as easily be arrested next, you know. If he really intends to keep enforcing this law—”

“The New Orleans Police Department would never even try, Mom, and you know it,” I reminded her, trying not to smile. “The gay tourist dollar is too valuable.”

“He doesn’t care, Scotty.” She shook her head, the braid moving back and forth. “He’s trying to make a name for himself as a conservative politician—he thinks this is his ticket to higher office. I’m serious. He’s already gone after the gays—it’ll be abortion next. We have to stop him
now.
”

I opened my mouth, but Storm cut me off. “What makes this even worse is she used
my
name to get in to see him.” He gave me a dour look. “I can’t wait to see the headline in the
Baton Rouge Advocate
tomorrow morning: ‘Freshman Senator’s Mother Slugs Attorney General.’” He rolled his eyes and refilled his glass. “I’ll have to see if I can get him to drop the charges when he calms down.”

“At least it’ll play well with your constituents,” I pointed out.

“I hope he doesn’t drop the charges.” Mom set her jaw.

Frank stood behind her chair, reached down, and hugged her from behind. “Please don’t ever change, Mom,” he said, his face lighting up with a smile. He met my eyes and winked.

Seeing the two of them together, and how much they obviously loved each other, made my heart happy.

I couldn’t help but wonder what his mother had been like.

Although I could be reasonably certain she was
nothing
like mine.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against one of his arms as Storm picked up the remote control and turned the television on. He sat down on the couch. “Might as well see what they have to say on the news.” He put his feet up on the coffee table. “What a day—a bomb threat on the LSU campus, my mother slugs the attorney general…I wonder if the bomb squad found anything?”

“Who would want to blow up LSU?” Frank asked, still standing behind Mom. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m betting it was a frat prank,” I replied.

“Hush,” Storm said, turning up the volume as the commercial break ended and the news came back on.

“And now, with the latest on the bomb scare on campus today, is Annetra Tyler. Annetra?”

Annetra Tyler was a beautiful young African American woman with shoulder-length hair. She wore a blazer with the station’s call numbers on it and held a microphone with the logo on it as well. She was standing in front of the tiger habitat on the campus, where the school mascot Mike lived. The habitat was across the street from Tiger Stadium and was one of the biggest and most expensive tiger habitats in the world. LSU had had a live tiger mascot ever since the 1930s, and Mike was a point of pride for almost everyone in the state. Every Saturday in the fall it seemed like the entire state came to a complete halt during the LSU football games. The current Mike was the sixth one, and one of the most exciting traditions for the games was when Mike and his cage were driven into the stadium and around the field with the cheerleaders on top. Everyone in the stadium jumps to their feet and cheers.

I’ve only been to a few games in Tiger Stadium, and there’s
nothing
like it.

“Thanks, Aaron,” Annetra was saying on the television. “University administration has announced that it is now safe for everyone to return to the campus, but classes are officially canceled for the rest of the day. The bomb squad and dogs found nothing suspicious, but the campus administration, the campus, city, and state police are all working together to get to the bottom of this scare. But I’ve just been notified and have confirmed that Mike the Tiger has been kidnapped.”

“What the hell?” Mom gasped. “Who kidnaps a tiger?”

“
How
do you kidnap a tiger is a better question,” Frank said with a frown.

“For more on this breaking story, here’s Brandon Hardy. Brandon?”

The picture on the television switched from the newscaster to a young white man holding a microphone. In the background was a large Chevrolet pickup truck. There was steam coming from under its hood, and the back tires were still on the country road, the front end down in a ditch running alongside the road. Given the thick forest on either side of the road, Brandon Hardy was clearly broadcasting from out in the country somewhere. He was rather good-looking, with curly dark hair and broad shoulders underneath his station jacket. His eyes were opened wide, and he spoke in that hushed, barely-able-to-contain-my-shocked-excitement tone newscasters must learn in college.