Buddies (26 page)
You should have come along with us to get notes for your stories on dramatic pauses, because there sure were plenty. Jim was about the only one talking, most of the time. Meanwhile, all these little kids were wandering in and out, and one house was a real tornado, like there had been a married fight. After we left one place, Jim got real quiet, and after he started the car he said, “Hey, Rip, you think they still remember the trouble we got into?” About the truck stop and all. And his folks finding us together. The news around town, as I told you.
I said I guessed they did remember. And Jim didn’t mean just
remember
—he means they don’t forgive us. We drove back to my folks’ and parked and took a walk around the yard. We have a lot of ground and things. Sheds and high grass and my old tree house, where Jim and I had a club when we were kids. No one else could join. And finally Jim said, “Oh hell.” Like that. Just “Oh hell.”
I said, “It’s real neat to see you, good buddy.” We weren’t looking at each other. “I don’t care about all them,” I told him.
He said, “Me neither.”
We walked around for a while, and then he stopped, and it was like an idea hit him out of the blue. He said, “I know! Let’s get smashed. Got a bottle in my car.”
I said great, but how about his family? He said it was all right, this was his night out, because it was like a holiday that I was back.
That’s another thing we do around here that doesn’t happen in New York. Guys sitting around all night drinking. Maybe you could call this a Dakota brunch. My folks went up to bed not long after we started in, and my room is downstairs in the back, so we could make ourselves at home. And what do you know but Jim starts in asking me about New York and who are my friends and what we do. And hell, I told him. I told him, Bud. And he didn’t play tourist on me, either. He took it. Sometimes he nodded, as if he thought that’s how it was, all along. Nothing shocked him. And you know I have wild tales to tell if I loosen up.
I was stretched out on my bed and he was in the rocking chair, with the bottle between us. We drank it straight out, the way you do it here. One thing he said, was all the names were funny. Big Steve. Dennis Savage. He said they sounded like wrestlers on television. The only name he could relate to was yours, because we’ve got loads of Buds around. Then I said your name was really Ethan and he damn near choked his booze up.
Then I told him
my
name was Carlo. I explained about getting approached in the Eagle that time, and just in case you don’t know about this, how this guy was looking for an escort for a friend of his. Or do you remember? That guy who owned his whole house by the river, and had his friend take pictures of me pretending I was going to hang him? He had a real noose there too, but it was tied all wrong. I fixed it for him, and he had this funny look on his face. Anyway, he took me to Key West, and after the whole thing was over he gave me five thousand bucks.
Do
you remember? (I guess that’s a joke because Dennis Savage once said everything you hear goes right into the typewriter.) Well, Jim couldn’t get over that. He kept calling me Carlo and shaking his head. And after I told him all I could about all of us, he said, “Rip, what does it
feel
like?”
He kind of stumped me there, so I said, “What does it feel like here for you?”
So then he got going about his life, and he said it plain away that he surely missed our adventures in high school because things slowed up after that. I could have said that seemed generally true from our drive around town. Jim said the only thing keeping him whole was his family, because his wife Marge is really great and they have a little boy just like Jim and a little girl just like Marge and they all play together and he reads to the kids and they all fall asleep in his lap. It sounded real cute, especially since I mostly remember Jim cutting these really Old Testament sort of farts in the library and riding his bicycle into a tree when the brakes busted, and other crazy stunts which do not exactly connect with him being a father.
He asked me how I could live without a family and I said my family is all the guys I was telling him about. Isn’t it? But he didn’t get that. He said no—a family like playing with them and learning from each other and living with them inseparable, and I said that’s what we do. And finally he sort of got it, that my family is my buddies.
And I know what you’re thinking, smart aleck, which is how come I’m
away
from my family, and that’s just the kind of thing you always say that I have no reply to until I get home and think about it and wish you were handy so I could paste you a good one. Because you think you know everything.
Anyway, we were just into the second bottle when Jim started in again about, “God, you got so big, Rip,” and “Why’d you get like that?” and “I’d be afraid to wrestle you now.”
Which is how we got into trouble in the first place, because we used to wrestle naked, and the guy who won could make the loser do anything he asked. Like drink a bottle of ketchup. But one time we got into it in a different way. I know it was different because the other times we were just fooling around with it, but this time we went straight down the track, and all you could hear was us breathing.
You don’t think I would remember something like that, at that age, no matter what the others do?
But the thing is, Jim asks me, What exactly did we do that time? I couldn’t believe he forgot, after all the trouble we got into. I made him swear he didn’t know. So he swore. Okay. And I told him, which was that I pinned him and I made him suck me off. And I like had to pin him again with his arm bent back, because he still wouldn’t. But I knew he wanted to, anyway. And after he did it I started swinging on him, and I had him on his back holding his legs in the air gobbling him up when they found us, the preacher and his folks staring there right behind him. They must have known all along and called the preacher, because they were afraid to find us themselves. The preacher was so calm about it, he probably disappointed them. But then he had sucked us off himself often enough.
Old Jim was fit to be iced and put away for the summer when he heard about all this. I guess he really had forgotten. We were so pissed by then we started laughing, which is weird when you think of the terrible things they did to us. I guess the way we survived high school is I said anyone who said a word to us, I would put him in the hospital. And we already had a tough reputation because of hanging out at the truck stop. After all the laughing, we started getting teary, thinking about everything. So we took aspirin, a trick I learned from you, not to get a hangover, and I got up a jug of water so we wouldn’t have to crash through the house when we got thirsty later. And I found a blanket. We sacked out in our clothes to sleep it off, just bundled up there. And Jim asked me if he should have come along to New York way back. Because I had asked him. He said, “Would I have had a family with New York names, like you? Would they have taken pictures of me too, and given me five thousand bucks?”
I told him, “You would have been a humdinger there, Jim.”
We started to drift off, and I heard him say, “I missed you the whole time, Rip, because you’re my best pal.” So we went to sleep like that, and the next morning he was gone.
This is your friend, Carlo the Smith.
August 30
Dear Bud:
About time you wrote back, I don’t care how busy you are. Or are you still mad at me? Because I know you are even if you won’t say so.
You didn’t answer my question right about Big Steve. I asked you if I said the fair thing. If I gave the right answer. I didn’t want you to interpret Big Steve’s question and turn it into something else. If he was really asking me if I loved him more than anyone else, why didn’t he ask that? You and he really ought to get together now, and talk about love all the time, because that’s all you guys want to do. You can’t just accept something for the way it feels. You always want to know what to call it.
Anyway, I finally got off my butt and found a job, because that’s another thing they do around here. None of that New York unemployment stuff in Dakota. My dad had a talk with me to see what kind of experience I had that we could put to use, and I burst out laughing, because what I have been is a hustler and a waiter for Big Steve’s Kingdom Kum Katerers and a porn actor and a boutique clerk. But I was also a mover, and that’s what I am again. I have to commute into Aberdeen in Dad’s truck. It’s mostly short-haul stuff in town, I can do it single-handed. You wonder why people want to move so much. They just go right into someplace as terrible as where they were before.
What did I tell you, that my kin would try to set me up with Cousin Irene? I guess they think I came back to change. Maybe instead I came back to be the same. I put them off, but they kept at me, and Irene’s father called and said they’re expecting me for dinner, so I just said okay and tooled off to town in the truck. If they won’t take no for an answer, let them take yes. But I’m still not coming.
You’re probably wondering after all this what I’m doing for fun. Well, it took me a while to find the right place, and unfortunately it’s one of those real mean gringo taverns where every time the door opens every guy looks up to see if someone’s brought a woman in so they can start a vicious incident. But I can’t find a truck stop sort of place and of course we don’t have any Ty’s. The place is called Kicker’s Bar and Grill, but I have this joke that it is really called Mars, because the men are all like Martians, you know. They can’t talk, they can’t smile, they can’t do anything I’m used to from New York. You probably think they talk about sports or politics or women, but not even that. They don’t talk, period.
The night I skipped dinner with Irene’s family I was there. I spotted a guy who looked right, because he kept watching me. He was a big, bearded guy. I came over to his table and bought him a beer, and he turned out to be the most Martian of all, but I had guessed right, anyway, because he made me feel he was running his hand up and down my back just by the way he looked at me. That’s a trick only gringos know how to do, because gays will do it by touching your arm, or smiling, or even by saying something pretty direct. Well, look, I know how the game is played, though after New York it’s boring to pretend. Also, I have to tell you that even though this guy was no chicken, he was still younger than me, which just shows how things turn over, because I always used to be the kid. Probably for longer than I should have been.
We went through three or four beers each, and when you’re drinking with a Martian it seems more like thirty beers. But finally we were near it, because he was staring real hard at me with a mean smile. He’s missing one of his teeth. And when he was looking he leaned forward so our knees touched, and I could hear him sucking on his breath. His eyes were like fists. He said, “You want to try a little something new tonight?”
I said, “Like what?” real tough.
“Give me your right hand,” he says, and he’s reading my palm. “Look at what I see,” he goes. “A tall dark stranger’s coming into your life. With a beard on him. Tonight, looks like.” Then he looks at me. “Right?”
“If you got a place,” I said.
He laughs and says, “I got lots of places.”
What he had was another dump over a store, like all the people I’ve been moving around town. He kept the lights out, and when we stripped he didn’t take his shorts off, so I said, kind of joking, because it obviously wasn’t, “Is this your first time?”
So he said, “What’s your name again?” and I told him. And even though he already heard it, he starts using it a lot, like it’s a new game he thought of. Then he says, “It’s like this, Rip. You move around enough and keep your eyes open, you begin to realize that it ain’t never
anybody’s
first time.”
I can tell you, it sure wasn’t his. He said anytime I’m stuck for a place I can stay over some more, and I did a few times, and finally, without anyone saying this is what’s happening, I just plain moved in with him. I guess that sounds familiar, huh? But you’d best not write to me anymore, since I’m not at my folks very often. This guy I’m with, whose name is Warren, is a typical supergringo. Anything he doesn’t understand he puts down. Anyone he doesn’t know he doesn’t like. And he’s a mean drunk. I tried telling him about me and like Fire Island and the things we do, and he got so nasty making fun of it that I just gave up. But at least he doesn’t want anything from me except sex.
He did one strange thing, though. Just two nights ago, which I guess is why I had to write this letter, I got up real late to take a piss, and I was still at the pot when Warren suddenly loomed up behind me and tried to pull me around, and he said, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I said, “Let me finish this, will you?” and he was going on about he doesn’t want me ducking out on him. It didn’t take much to calm him down, because he was half asleep, and he even apologized, which is probably a first for him. But listen. When we got into bed he got all locked up around me, his feet and arms, like I’m his prisoner. I said, “Come on, quit it,” and got him off me, but a few minutes later he came right back again. And then he started saying my name, and he said it over and over again.
Is there life on Mars? This is Ripley Smith, over and out. Please don’t be mad at me anymore. Give Dennis Savage and the kid himself a hug for me after all this. And listen, whatever happens now, don’t you forget me, boy! Because once you’re buddies, it doesn’t matter if you’re there, just how you feel, and who you remember.
And what you can forgive. Okay, my friend?
A symbolic tale, projecting the first years of Stonewall against the fall of a great man.
Of course Carlo wrote no more letters. He was settled in—as he probably would be if you dropped him in Tibet, the Gobi desert, or Middle-Earth—with a hot man who could busy, then puzzle, then trouble him. With our resident hunk departed, my circle closed ranks and went on with love and work. But we all felt the lack—not just of Carlo the person but of Carlo the type, for the ideal confraternity blends all kinds. Ironically, I was thinking of this when I ran into a hunk even more essential than Carlo, or perhaps just more public.