Back Where He Started Read online

  For about a year, he followed me home a couple of times a week and I let him put his dick in me. After he’d gone—quick after coming—I’d play that album, over and over on Mama’s long console stereo-television. Sweet Baby James had its own meaning for me. I stayed out of the trouble Jimmy got in because I was home mooning over him while he went from fucking me and stealing shit from department stores to fucking me and stealing cars. He was long gone by the time my mother made her last installment payment on that stereo-TV console to Sears.

  The next year I joined Jimmy at the high school, and he dropped me quick when I got called a faggot not long after I first walked through the high school’s clanging doors. He’d still stop by, easy and tough, with another shoplifted LP. He’d let me kiss him, and sometimes he kissed me back, but mostly he’d just screw me, long and slow. That stolen time lasted all the way through one side of a ripped-off album.

  It never occurred to me that Jimmy was ripping me off—stealing a piece of me to savor in secret. I thought his vagabond attention was enough for a long time; it just didn’t occur to me I might deserve better. Which isn’t to say I didn’t miss his fucking and his stingy but sincere tenderness. But I didn’t care. I never fretted over his erratic comings and goings. For a little while he was mine and I belonged to somebody.

  Jimmy got a thin-lined black tattoo on his wrist that said C.T. at the same time he got L-O-V-E tattooed on one set of fingers and H-A-T-E on the other. He whispered he was going to give me a “Sweet Baby James” tattoo on my lower back, just above the rise of my jeans. Jimmy said he had the black ink mixed with shampoo, the needle burned and ready. He said he wanted anybody else—forever—to know who had my sweet ass first. It never happened, but I was happy just to know he wanted to etch his name into my skin to claim me. No other man had claimed me, and I knew all about getting by on enough.

  Jimmy got busted by the end of my sophomore year and I lost him to a youth farm mid-state. I became a little bit more like the kids in Fairview Homes—the desperation and habit of settling for less leached in as I learned all about disappointment and loss. For the first time I worried about making my mama’s mistakes: me, a lonesome white-trash faggot, listening to the Allman Brothers and waiting for a future that had already come and gone when the screen door slammed behind Jimmy Worley for good.

  My mother wanted me to join the service straight out of high school. In a kind of knowing, which wasn’t really knowing at all, she told me I’d do good in the navy. God knows, if I’d joined the navy, I probably wouldn’t have been so eager to be with Zack, and to take on raising his kids. Maybe I wouldn’t have been left sitting in an empty house, with an uncertain future. But that’s not what happened.

  One thing Fairview Homes and my mother taught me was that being at the bottom leaves you nowhere to go but up. To get past the emptiness left by Jimmy Worley’s departure, I studied. I studied the lessons in school with the same attentiveness I gave Jimmy Worley’s lean body. I worked my tattooless ass off in school. While Mama planned on my leaving her house for basic training, I planned to escape to whatever college would have me. I got in at Wake Tech.

  My mother died, or just plain quit living, a week shy of high school graduation. Since I was going to college, I got her Social Security survivor benefits. It wasn’t much, but it was something I could count on.

  Mama, God rest her soul, taught me how to live on little, and Jimmy Worley taught me how to make friends with my expectations, and that knowledge got me through Wake Tech with an associate’s degree in business. School dropped me about four years from where Zack picked me up.

  I got a job as a bookkeeper and errand boy with a guy who had four hair salons in Raleigh. I did payroll, ordered supplies, and shuttled around to all the salons to pick up deposits, stock hair color and bleach, and bullshit with the stylists. I’d never been around so many gay people before in my life and I was having a blast. Hair burners are party people, and I was ready for a little partying and a lot more fucking. Being blond with a nice ass—and new meat besides—I got all the partying and pecker I could stand.

  After a lifetime of living tight and walking the straight and narrow, I was finally earning good money and finding my place in a clique of bright, fun people. Fairview Homes was a long way behind me, and I knew better than to fall in love. I had a thing for bad boys, but I was a roughneck myself in ways the sweet boys—the kind that wanted to settle down—could smell the danger and kept away. Oh, I had a good time, but I was a tattoo on only one man’s arm, and I intended to keep it that way. Then I met Zack.

  At the time—”back in the day,” as the saying goes—Raleigh’s main gay club was the Capital Corral, better known as CC’s. Every Friday and Saturday night the place was so thick with faggots, all you could do was enter the front door and merge with the flow of bodies that circled the club between the two main bars. I’d shout out and get pulled into one group or another before rejoining the crowd as it endlessly circled. One Saturday night, I caught the eye of this tall preppy guy who was standing alone with his back pressed up against the bar. He looked back and held my gaze. On my second turn past him he held up a fresh bottle of Bud, and I pushed my way toward him. When I reached him, he smiled and offered me the beer.

  Taking the bottle, I yelled thanks twice, but he couldn’t hear me over the music. He smiled and turned slightly, to make room for me against his chest. When I stepped closer, he put one arm around the small of my back and pulled me to him. I looked up at him and smiled. He clinked my bottle with his own in a toast and drank. I watched him swallow, and his thick neck was one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

  We were finally able to exchange names and agree that neither of us wanted to dance. I was perfectly content with his arm still holding me around the waist and his fingertips brushing my abdomen softly—but steadily enough to keep me aroused and interested.

  Zack, back then, was a taller version of what his son Schooner would become: thick and solid as a rock. Black-haired and blue- eyed, he looked the perfect Raleigh frat boy, born and bred. Good manners but a bad thirst for liquor; good fuck, bad news. But I wasn’t a debutante and I had no use for the country club. He had on a pink button-down oxford cloth shirt, and a pair of blue jeans that he wore loose around the hips, no belt, and honest-to-God boat shoes. Zack put his chin on top of my head briefly, then leaned down to my ear level to ask, “Do you live in Raleigh?”

  I nodded.

  “I think I’d really like to get to know you away from this. Are you ready to leave?”

  Forward white trash that I was, I slipped my hand between his legs and squeezed the promising bulge in his jeans. Impressed, I looked up at him and grinned.

  Zack grinned back but gently removed my hand and brought it up to rest on his chest. “Do you have a place?”

  I nodded, and when I did, he lifted my hand and nibbled on the tip of my thumb.

  All that seems funny now, 22 years later—as I sit in what became our kitchen and in a matter of hours wouldn’t be ours anymore. Technically, it hadn’t been ours for months, but that was beside the point; I couldn’t remember the other details of that night. There had to have been the usual chitchat on the way to the parking lot. I’m sure there was more tense chatter as he followed me up the steps to my small apartment. I’m sure I offered him a joint and I’m sure he declined it. We must have shucked our clothes, and I must have longed for his body (first) and his heart (second). These memories must be lodged somewhere in the back of my heart. I must have sensed something true in what his tall form promised. I staked my heart and my life on that truth for a long time.

  Watching the fire, as Beau repositioned himself under the table to rest his head on my foot, I did clearly recall waking to see Zack in my apartment’s kitchen, standing naked through the door of my bedroom. He gripped the top of a chair and stared out into the moon’s brightness. It glowed on his face, shoulders, and torso. I wanted him back in my bed. Standing there washed in moonlight, he looked hand
some, but also lonesome, lost, and vulnerable. I felt a surge of tenderness, which I hadn’t allowed myself to feel since I’d last dreamed of Jimmy Worley. I wanted Zack, period, and was dead set and determined to get him.

  Zack and I always got together at my place, never his, and always at odd hours. He’d stop by on his way home from work or on late Sunday afternoons, and we’d meet for an occasional dinner in the middle of the week. When I asked why, he was evasive, if not downright hostile. I think he was testing me in ways that I couldn’t have understood. I blithely offered information about myself that put checks and minuses in columns I had no way of knowing about.

  While I didn’t know what mattered to Zack, Zack mattered to me. The truth was, after a few months, I was only seeing him. It was simple: There was only Zack in my mind, and he played me so skillfully to get me to that point, I never considered what might be ahead. I just thought he was just consumed with his career, as most yuppies were back then.

  Then, one Thursday night, in the slow weaving tangle of limbs after sex, he asked me if I’d like to come to his place for dinner the next night. I raised myself off his chest and onto my elbow to see his face. “Did I hear you right?”

  “Absolutely,” he replied. “I’ll leave you the address and directions when I leave.”

  “So, you’re not married?”

  A shadow passed across his face, but he willed it away before I could get a read on his reaction.

  Zack reached up and ran his hand through my hair, looking me in the eye all the while. Then he said: “No. I’m not married. But Chris …”

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering if you want to be.”

  Taken aback, I settled down against his chest and listened to the deep thud of his heart. It was beating faster than I was used to hearing. I realized he was nervous. I ran my hand down his side and squeezed his waist. “Zack, I want that more than anything, but …”

  Zack took his hand from the small of my back and placed it gently over my mouth. “Shhh, not right now.” He turned easily from under me to over me and placed me beneath the full weight of his long torso and legs. He took my arms, raised them over my head, and held them there with a tight grip on my wrists as he arched his back to lift his shoulders and look down at my face. “Right now, I want to be with you. I want to fuck you, Chris. No questions, not now.” He pressed my legs apart with his knees and shifted to mount me. The thick weight of his dick dragged across my belly and lifted free of me as he reared up onto his knees and let go of my wrists.

  “Zack—”

  “Shhh, please, don’t talk now,” he said.

  I didn’t. If there wasn’t a convincing argument or a promise in what followed, I didn’t care. I kept silent and watched his face as he fucked me with a rigid determination. It was more than my mind could comprehend and more than my body could tolerate. I cried as I came, but without a sound. That time, in answer to his orgasm’s strangled cry, I had only tears that Zack kissed away tenderly in our afterglow.

  I was similarly speechless when I found myself at Zack’s house the next day. This house. The one I was now leaving for good.

  I knew where Historic Oakwood was; I’d driven through it on the Christmas tours with my hairdresser buddies. It was a lovely neighborhood in South Raleigh filled with Queen Anne, Italianate, and late-Victorian homes. Prosperous yuppies were beginning to move in and gentrify the area. But none of my crowd could do more than dream about getting a place there despite their deeper appreciation for the architectural styles and residential history. We crowded into the faded neighborhoods around Five Points and the apartment complexes in North Raleigh. There was no hope for anything this grand in any of our paychecks or futures.

  From the little amount of personal information Zack had murmured, at my prodding, after sex or during a rushed dinner out, I’d learned he was in advertising—an account executive, and a pretty successful one. Still, I had no idea he was doing well enough as to live in Historic Oakwood.

  The address and directions Zack had given me lead to an imposing, freshly painted Italianate house with grand high and narrow windows. The house seemed to have a light on in every room. Climbing the front steps, I heard small shrieks and a child’s crying. I figured I had gotten lost, but I rang the doorbell, figuring I could ask directions of the family who lived there.

  Zack answered the door in a towel, carrying a naked, chubby baby boy who had a tiny fistful of the hair on Zack’s left pec. Peeking from behind him were a small boy and a smaller girl, both in pajamas.

  “If you don’t want to leave right now, please come in,” Zack said anxiously.

  “They’re yours?” I asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “And you’re not married?”

  “Widower.”

  “Goddamn it,” I said. Suddenly I understood why we got together, ate out, and made love at such bizarre times.

  Zack’s face fell. I couldn’t take that, and I realized just then that I’d gone and fallen in love with the bastard. Historic Oakwood damn sure wasn’t Fairview Homes, but here he was, saddled with some real problems—three of them. In a millisecond I knew I could handle it. I knew how to take whatever I got and make the best of it—and squalling young ‘uns with dirty diapers weren’t anything I’d not seen before. I smiled, shook my head, and said, “Well, I’m going to come in and meet the family, I guess.”

  Zack grinned like I’d given him the world and stepped back into the foyer. I followed him into the sparsely furnished front parlor. Motioning for me to sit down, he apologized for not being dressed. “I got home late and Miz Keesha had only just got the kids’ dinner finished and gotten them dressed for bed. Then Schooner here,” he said, nodding toward the baby boy in his arms, “needed a fresh diaper, so I decided to take him into the shower with me to clean him up, and we just got out when you rang the doorbell. Kids, why don’t you tell Chris who you are.”

  The little boy came to stand right in front of me and said, “My name is Trey, because I’m a turd.”

  I looked from his blue eyes up to his father’s and said, “Excuse me?”

  “Zachary David Ronan the Third,” Zack explained. “Shake hands Trey.”

  The little fellow stuck out his paw manfully, and I took it gently in my grasp. With a surprisingly tight grip Trey squeezed my fingers. “What your name is?”

  I heard Zack mutter, “Goddamn Keesha.” Louder, he said, “What is your name?”

  “I told him—Trey,” the boy said matter-of-factly.

  “My name is Chris,” I said. “Chris Thayer.”

  He shook my hand as best he could and said, “Pleased to meet you Chris Taylor.”

  I gave him a grin and tossed a wink to his daddy. “And who’s this pretty little girl, Zack?” It was obviously the wrong thing to say. The girl shrank behind her father.

  Zack reached behind him to urge her back.

  “Her name is Ahn-dray-or,” Trey explained.

  “Andrea, don’t you want to meet Chris?” Zack asked. Surprisingly, the little girl moved forward to stand next to her brother. Then she looked me in the eye and said, “My mommy is dead.” Then she became bashful once more and hung her head.

  “Come here, sweetness.” I knelt and she stepped forward, shy as a fawn, and allowed me to lift her into my arms. “There’s a good girl.”

  Looking up, she said, “Are you a stranger? I’m not allowed to let strangers touch me.”

  I looked at Zack for help.

  “Chris is Daddy’s good friend, Andrea. Chris isn’t a stranger.”

  Andrea looked at me skeptically.

  I heard Zack once again mutter “Goddamnit.” I looked up in time to see him attempt to hold down an arch of urine jetting up from between the infant’s legs. Andrea giggled. Trey looked at me and said, “Schoonoh pees wa-a-ay too goddamn much.”

  I laughed until the kids did, and Zack, dripping, finally joined in.

  Around that time Kodak was running an ad that appeared in
every magazine that littered the waiting area of every hair salon my work took me to. The ad’s photo showed a large shirtless man tenderly holding a naked infant. I was living in my own Kodak moment.

  Something in me broke and gave way. Fairview Homes and its hard lessons lay crumbled to dust. I longed for this man, this home and these children with the secret vast empty spaces that up to that moment had nurtured only wistfulness.

  “Give me Schoonoh,” I said to please Trey, “and go get cleaned up. Me and the kids will watch TV until you get finished, right guys?”

  In the 10 minutes that followed, I learned much from the kids. Far more, in fact, than their father had trusted me with to that point. I learned that their Mommy was real depressed so she ate a lot of pills so she could go see Jesus, but she wasn’t going to hell because Miz Keesha said she wasn’t. I learned that Daddy worked way too hard and the kids and the house were breaking his back. I learned that Granddaddy was a bastard and Grandmama drank too much gin to be much help to anybody.

  I learned that I could fall in love with a little boy’s speech impediment, with a girl who could speak only the truth, and with a baby who was ready to pee again in less than 10 minutes.

  In the kitchen of that house, 22 years later and older, I could pinpoint the minute when the second act of my life began.

  Beau whined and attempted to stand, which was difficult at the best of times—extremely so, when he was under the table. I had no idea what time it was; the clocks were gone and the one on the coffeemaker blinked 12:00 steadily. I downed the last of my coffee and got down on my hands and knees to join Beau under the table to help him stand. He must have been dying to go outside. The poor old boy hadn’t had a pee break in hours. In fact, he’d missed his dinnertime. I couldn’t believe I’d let him go hungry.