Boy Next Door

The Boy Next Door

Copyright (C) 1989 Bradley D. Clymer. All Rights Reserved.

• A Stranger Approaches *

Dan was a year younger than myself, and in my sister's class at school. It was a small rural school, with all K-12 grades in the same building. Everyone in the school knew most of the other families, because the same families have lived there forever. The Williams, the Bracys, the Powells, the Basingers, the Clymers, the Ferrells, the Cramers, the Reeses, the Shanks, the Schumachers, the Myers, the Liebs, the Wagners... these families had moved to Findlay when the Northwest Ohio region was originally se ttled. Many of the ancestors had moved to Hancock County from the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area---`Pennsylvania Dutch'. The towns surrounding Findlay bear distinctive Germanic names, like Jenera, Leipsic, Deshler, etc. The people there are simple, hardworking family-oriented folks that tend to close-in together when crisis hits.

My first memory of Dan was on a spring afternoon when I was about 14. I was pruning a rosebush that I had started from a shoot a few years earlier. The rosebush had barely survived the winter, and was destined for a horrible death at the hands of the inexperienced gardner that I was. Dan had just moved into the neighborhood. A neighborhood that was growing quickly out of the cornfields that had once been all I could see from the livingroom window in my parents house. A growth that I had welcomed and rej ected at the same time.

I had known of Dan before, because he was in my sister's class at school, but since had he lived on the other side of the school district and, distances being large for a 14 year-old's means of transportation, I knew very little about him. I didn't hear him approach. He just appeared. I had been working on the rosebush in the back yard next to the old chicken coop that my Dad had converted to a utility shed. There he stood with his shorts, a T-shirt and a football.

"Want to pass a few?" he asked.

"I'm not very good," was my reply. My little sister was the athlete in the family. She was the one who incessantly shot baskets at the hoop in our driveway. She was the one who could throw a football the farthest and hit a baseball the longest. I refused (and still do) to even touch a basketball, but football I could handle if we played tackle, because I was bigger than most of the boys my age.

We threw a few passes...I dropped the ones that he threw right on target and the ones I threw were no where near him. But he was very patient with me. After 20 minutes or so, my sister, Anita, came home and came out to join us. With Anita as a third player we could run pass patterns with a defender, and I grateful chose to be the defender. I had demonstrated an affinity for batting down footballs when I had been trying to catch them.

After we played for an hour or so, Dan invited us over to his house for pop and snacks. I was in awe of his new house. My house was 15 years old, and had been built by my dad for the most part. It was so average to me. But Dan's house had just been built. And the pool in the back was just about completed. A neighbor with a pool was something I couldn't fathom. Swimming to me had always been the trip to my great aunt's house in town and the large pool in the nearby park, or a trip to one of the lime stone quarries that had filled with spring water become a lake.

Dan's parents each ran drive-in rootbeer stands. The American Graffiti type, where cars pull up under a large awning and carhops come out to take your order and later bring your food on a tray that hangs from your window. As a consequence, Dan and his brother and sisters were left under the supervision of his oldest sister for much of the time from mid April to the end of October. During the winter months, however, his parents were there around the clock. It was an unusual arrangements, but one that is not without merits.

That first spring and summer we would play football or baseball until we could drop from exhaustion, then went to the pool to cool off. Our yard was about the size of a football field and quickly became the neighborhood playground, and Dan's pool was the fitting end to the daily games. Somedays it would be everyone in the neighborhood and other times it would be just Dan and I. We became very close. We spent nearly every waking hour together until we were old enough to get jobs.

• Just Between Friends *

That summer was one of learning. A delightful sequence of exchanging the types of activities that we each had come to enjoy on our own. It was Dan who tried teaching me how to hunt. Among his many natural gifts were the steady hand and keen sight made him a natural hunter. He would spot rabbits or squirrels and spend long minutes trying to point them out to me so that I could get a first shot sometimes. Usually by the time I had seen the prey, it would vanish. I had a hunch that letting me have the fi rst shot often was Dan's way of protecting wildlife. Later, I would give up hunting all together, and the prestige that comes to Ohio farmboys for killing innocent rodents with rifles and shotguns soon became hollow to Dan as well. Eventually he would turn to hunting with bow and arrow. This was much more challenging for him, and better in line with the philosophy that he was developing for his life. I always imagined him as being like the Dustin Hoffman character in "L ittle Big Man". Someone who was b orn into a "civilized" society, but who would be much more comfortable just being around nature and living directly at the hands of God.

The things that I brought to the sharing were times of quiet togetherness. Just spending time together, without doing anything in particular. We would sit on the front porch and talk while we watched traffic go by. Unlike the other boys our age, we seldom talked about the girls in our classes or dating, but just about whatever was on our minds at the time. We would dream of the ideal lives to live. What kind of cars we would own when we were old enough.

It was that first summer that we would often get together at Dan's house with my sister, Anita, Dan's brother Kelly, and his sisters Darlene and Terri. Usually we would all go swimming and make a pizza for dinner from a Chef Boy-Ardee mix. With Dan's parents working, Terri was in charge, and we would often tease her about doing things we weren't allowed to do. Sometimes after dinner, we would get together a another neighbor's house and play Hide-and-Seek in the entire neighborhood. Home base was the Giant Oak tree in the Treece's side yard. Hide-and-Seek was not a children's game in our neighborhood. The kids that played ranged in ages from 10 to 18. It was a game of cunning strategies and misdirection.

Late in the evenings, often, Dan would be at my house or I would be at his, watching the Tonight Show on television. As often as not, we would end up staying overnight, rather than walk across the road home.

I can't remember whose idea it was, but the following summer we both joined the local 4-H club. Projects that we chose were insignificant. We had come to the point of everything one did, the other did as well. The highlight of summer that year was a camping trip that the 4-H club made to Angola, Indiana. Outside of church camp, it was the first time I had spent a week without my family. For Dan, it was a new adventure as well. We learned to canoe on the lake. After being around muddy rivers and farm p onds, I was fascinated by how clear the water was in the lake.

Lake St. James was more of a line of smaller lakes, with channels lined with reeds connecting the smaller areas. A canoe could easily pass through the reeds to the next pool, but power boats could not. As a consequence, most of the people on the lake were found in the central section near the lodge house and the launching ramps.

We spent nearly the entire week exploring the "untamed waters of Lake St. James," pretending we were Indians before the presence of settlers, or explorers like Rogers and Clark. Dan made a natural Indian. He was naturally dark, with raven black hair. He had an absolutely hairless face and body, and the stealth and cunning of his movement convinced me that he was born into the wrong civilization and the wrong time. Sometimes the other students would tease him about looking like the mexican farm worker s that would come to the area in the summers to help pick tomatos and pickles. Dan shrugged it off as jealousy, and continued without comment. The only connection that could mark him as a descendent of one of the old families was the ice blue of his eyes. A blue that shown like fire from the golden brown of his face.

By the last full day we had left on the trip, we had found secluded pools in the reeds that were suitable for swimming. The first time we had discovered the pools, we were with friends, and between about 4 canoes and 8 boys, we had played at attacking each others canoes and capsizing them. That first day we all ended up soaked with dripping shoes and clothes. But the last day, Dan and I were alone. We decided to spare our clothes, and stripped to go swimming. I was the first one in. I had never been swim ming without my suit before, and the rush of the water between my legs was a wonderful sensation as I treaded water waiting for Dan to jump in from the canoe. At that point, we learned an amazing fact about Newton's laws of motion and jumping out of a canoe. When I had jumped, Dan was in the canoe and his weight had stabilized the canoe during the jump. But when Dan jumped, there was nothing but the canoe itself, and the contents of the canoe were dumped into the lake as he jumped. Quickly, we grabbed s neakers and shorts and tossed them back into the canoe. So much for sparing the clothes.

We spent the hour wrestling and dunking each other in between rests hanging onto the side of the canoe. During one of the particularly vigorous wrestling bouts, we locked in an embrace facing each other and noticed the inevitible swelling of body parts that were placed between us. It was a moment and it passed when Dan challenged a race to the other side of the pool and back. It was a close race, but when he got to the canoe, he hauled himself up the side and began dressing. I followed suit, and soon we were paddling back to the center pool of the lake. We hiked barefoot back to the campsite to find that some of the boys had begun to cook supper. The club advisor, a wise man on crutches, disabled by polio when he was in high school, was courting a campfire.

`The secret to starting a fire is to make a chimney out of the wood, so that the hot air drafts up the chimney and fresh oxygen is pulled in a the bottom to feed the flames,' he told us as we sat on an old log next to the fire. Wayne had been in my Dad's class at school and loved to tell us the stories of the devilish pranks our parents played when they were our age. Soon, the fire was blazing, and it felt good as it dried the soaked shorts we were wearing. It was just twilight, and when I stole a glance at Dan's face, the campfire danced in ice of his eyes. The auburns of the sunset fading and the campfire flames gave his face a golden glow.

• Things That Go Bump in the Night *

I awoke the next morning feeling uncertain if it had really happened or if it had been a dream. That's what we had pretended while it was happening -- that we had been asleep. It had started when I had rolled over in the night and the edge of my forearm brushed against Dan's. I had not been able to sleep, but had tried to convince myself that lying there with my eyes closed was the same as sleeping. The events of the day raced through my mind.

I listened to the breathing of the rest of the boys in the tent, rhythmically restoring the energies expended during the day. I tried to imitate the same patterns. Maybe I could fall asleep if I tricked my body into thinking it was already asleep. I didn't want Dan to know that I was so excited about what had happened at the lake. He seemed to be asleep, but a restless sleep.

As I lay there, trying to convince myself that I was asleep, Dan rolled over onto his side. There he curled with face resting on his hands and my hand nearly touching the source of the swelling I had known in the lake that afternoon. I concentrated all of my consciousness into not allowing my hand to move. If I touched him, I would wake him. I just lay there frozen, trying to imitate the breathing of the others around me. Others in the tent. If I touched him, he would wake up knowing what I had done, a nd think I was queer. He might do something that would wake everyone else, and the whole world would know what I had done.

So I didn't move. I just kept breathing. Loudly. "If I'm snoring, I must be asleep," I told myself. At least if anything did happen, I could contend that I had been asleep. It was a dream. I was't responsible. I was dreaming about some playboy bunny that all of the other boys seemed to drool over.

As I was planning my defense, I noticed that even though my hand hadn't moved, suddenly it was touching Dan's shorts. Just as I realized that my wildest fantasy was true, that Dan was lying there aroused next to me within my touch, he stirred.

At first I panicked as he started to move. That was it. I was ruined. Dan was going to wake up with my hand touching him like this, and the whole dream defense was all I had left to rely on. But, although his breathing changed as he stirred, he wasn't waking.

He started to roll over. My moment of ecstasy and panic would be ended. He would turn the other direction, and it would be just another moment, like the one in the lake, but this time Dan wouldn't even know it had happened.

But he didn't roll away. He rolled over onto his stomach. With my hand trapped underneath him. Again I panicked. What if someone else in the tent saw us like this? I checked the breathing. The steady rhythm of the three other boys reassured me. I was safe. I was having the fantasy of my life. Nobody would know it, but I was safe at least. The beautiful body of my best friend lay next to me. His weight pressed him firmly into the palm of my trapped hand, and I was awed at the opportunity of holding the bulge that had so fascinated me in the past year.

Again he stirred. Panic again. He would wake again to my certain doom.

But this time, he simply drew in his knee so that his hip toward me was raised slightly, releasing the pressure on my hand. I could draw my hand back now. Maybe that was a cue from him: "You've had your jollies, now let me get back to sleep." I was torn between different courses of action. I knew I should withdraw my hand. I had courted disaster long enough. Surely if I let this go on too long, I would be discovered. It had to be close to sunrise by now. How long could the night be? What if someone woke up and had to go out to take a piss? They would have to step right over us to get to the door of the tent.

I knew I shouldn't but I couldn't help it. I started to stroke the bulge through the trim white undershorts. It was Dan's last pair of clean shorts. The afternoon at the lake had seen to that. One more day of camping to go, and he had only counted one pair a day. I remember him commenting about it when we went to the tent to change before dinner.

But it was too enticing. I moved my hand the slightest amount I could manage. The soft of the cotton seemed so supple with Dan pressing against it like that. I gently moved farther, and reversed the direction, running my finger along the length of the bulge.

I checked his breathing. Was he still asleep? Did I wake him? His breathing was just as regular as the others. I continued to gently run my fingers along the length of the bulge. Slowly. Barely touching him. Any pressure or sudden motion might wake him.

I continued for a few minutes. He stirred again. No more panic. It was too late. I had committed myself now. It was the dream defense or nothing. But he only adjusted himself slightly pulling his knee up a little higher so that he faced me more.

My hand had more room now. I continue the secretive massage, while looking for signs of consciousness in Dan's face. A gentle smile radiated from the face. Not a grin. Not a laugh. Just a smile. Utopia. Maybe he was dreaming that this whole thing was happening to him.

I continued as I watched him. His breathing grew louder, but kept its steady beat. Just a few seconds after his breathing had started to change, he erupted. I watched the cotton-soft bulge soak itself and I stopped in amazement. Dan's breathing grew quiet, but steady. I had to concentrate to hear him. I didn't want to move. This moment, I would remember forever. but it would be just a dream to Dan. It was just as well. If he had been awake, he might think I was a fag or something. I might never se e him again.

We both lay still. It was as if time were frozen for us. An endless moment passed while I decided that it had been OK. I had lived a fantasy, and no one was the worse for it.

Dan stirred again. What if he had to go to the bathroom? I always did after I had jerked off. I quickly pulled my hand back and returned to the procedure of trying to fall asleep.

Minutes passed. I imitated the steady breathing sounds around me. Surely dawn would come soon.

I rolled over to my side, facing Dan. The good old fetal position. If I could ever fall asleep, this would have to do it. Again, I copied the sounds in the tent around me. Minutes passed that seemed like hours.

Dan stirred again. Probably another dream. I wondered who it featured this time. He rolled again, this time onto his stomach, but adjusting his arms so that his fingertips where less than an inch from the front of my shorts.

My God. Another fantasy. I thought about my breathing. "Match the sounds around me," I told myself. This is too good to be true. In a flash, I felt the blood rush into the front of my shorts. They were my last pair too. Had Dan really been asleep? Was this his way of saying "me too?" What if it had been just coincidental. I took a deep breath and released it in time with the others in the tent. I could bear it no longer. I rolled over and adjusted my knee in the same manner Dan had so that the top side of his fingers just brushed my shorts. I tried to pretend I was asleep. "I sleep in this position all the time," I told myself. Usually without my best friend's hand on my crotch, though.

"Make your breaths even. Nice long, slow steady gathering and releasing. Don't let anyone know I'm awake in case someone gets up," I told myself. Dan's hand twitched. A dart of joy flashed through my head. He had been awake. He had been feeling the same things.

His hand began to move along my underwear. He was echoing everything that I had done just minutes before. Should I act like I was waking up so that we could acknowledge what was happening? It seemed so silly to pretend when we both knew what was going on. But what if someone else woke up? I decided it was safer to pretend for now.

Steady breathing. Now I had a lot more respect for Dan's acting ability. To be able to fake a normal breathing pattern when being stroked like this was enough to win an Oscar. "Listen to the others. Inhale with Mike. Exhale. Match the others." My heart pounded. My head screamed inside. This would be a great way to torture someone, I thought.

At last I exploded. A gasp found its way out before I could catch it. I choked it off immediately. Rich stirred and Dan and I both froze. I peeked through my eyelids to look at Dan's face. His eyes were open. He had given up the sleeping facade some time ago, it seemed. I opened my eyes to acknowledge that I too was prepared to deal with this however it turned out. There was a bit of panic in Dan's eyes, but he tried to be calm. Rich's breathing resumed its normal pattern.

"Do you need to go outside?" Dan whispered to me.

I nodded.

"You first. I don't want both of us to go out together. That might draw attention," he told me.

I couldn't believe it. He was a year younger than me, and he was in such control of the situation. I grabbed a pair of cut-off jeans and left the tent to relieve myself. Afterward, I took off my underwear, wiped myself off with a dry portion, and put on my cut-offs. I stole back into the tent to see Dan lying there pretending sleep again. When I lay down next to him on my sleeping bag, he winked at me. He drew closer and whispered, "Clever idea with the shorts. I was expecting I would have to wait fo r the air to dry me." After a few minutes, he pretended to wake up, grabbed some gym shorts and left the tent to relieve himself. When he came back to the tent I returned his wink with a grin, and we both fell soundly asleep.

• Behind the Eight Ball *

Although the events of the camping trip were not forgotten, we hadn't had much of an urge to discuss them. We hadn't had much of an opportunity either, and secretly we were each probably grateful for being busy. I had begun my first job outside my grandfather's farm and Dan had been spending alot of time visiting his cousin Todd in Pandora, being too young to work legally outside the family business and too young to be considered useful at his father's rootbeer stand in Findlay. The neighborhood had been abandoned by boys our age, and Dan soon tired of teasing my sister Anita and our neighbor Debra and began spending more time at his cousin Todd's house in Pandora.

I had jumped at the chance for my first job, detassling corn for hybrid seed at a neighboring farm. I had heard the wonderful and legendary stories from some of the older boys in the neighborhood that had worked in the past on large farms north of Findlay in the North Baltimore and Deshler areas, but I had no way to get into Findlay to catch the bus that took them to the farm, so I located a farm close enough to bicycle to work. Detassling was magically immune from the minimum age laws for working, and 14 - 15 year olds could make $2.95/hr for 3 or 4 weeks during the summer when the tassles on the corn were beginning to shoot. Dan had no interest in the endeavor, but I assumed it would be similar to the work I had done for my grandfather in his soybean fields cutting weeds. And for much higher wages. I could only imagine what I would do with the earnings at the end of the summer.

The work turned out to be disgustingly dirty and although we didn't actually work in the rain, walking through the mud and wet pollen after a rain was worse. In spite of the fact that I wore a raincoat, I found myself caked with mud and pollen for the duration. Showering helped clean the mud, but the pollen was impossible to remove from my pores and hair. I imagine now that my usual summer blond hair was even more yellow than normal that particular year.

It was a particularly hot day near the end of July. It had rained for 3 days, but on that particular day it was just muggy and wet. At the end of each length of the field when we turned around, I scraped about 5 pounds of mud from my workboots, then promptly began gathering more as we made our way back. No one was much in the mood for talking, although the banter back and forth in the field was usually the sole means of surviving the monotony of field work. At the end of the day, I moped home on my bicy cle, just wanting to collapse after my shower. As I turned the corner where Dan's house stood, I heard a splash in the back behind the big fence. Dan was home today.

Suddenly, I had more energy. I raced through my shower, put on my new Speedos and nearly ran across the road to Dan's. When I got there, Dan and his cousin Todd had just come out of the pool and were putting on their shorts. They had been skinny dipping, and immediately I felt the jealousy rising inside me. I had met Todd a few years back, and at that time he had been a little chubby boy that seemed sort of knowledgable for someone his age. Now Todd was taller than me, sleek and blond and I was beginnin g to understand why Dan had been spending so much time with Todd.

Todd winked as I approached them. Did he know? What was going on here, anyhow. Dan suggested we go inside to play some pool. Pool was a frustrating game for me where Dan was involved. I immediately could see angles for shots and invariably would strike the cue ball too hard and miss the center of my target or cause the cue ball to follow the target into the pocket. Part of my problem, I rationalized, was the difference between my pool table and Dan's. The pool table at my house had been given to my Dad , who thought it would be a good thing to put in the rec room in the basement to keep the kids occupied. It was really in poor shape. It had no slate under the tabletop to keep it flat and so the surface under the felt was very warped. Just to keep a ball rolling straight on that table took a considerable strike. Dan's table was exactly the opposite. A plush maroon felt covered a 1 inch slate surrounded by supple bumpers. A ball would glide silently along a magical path and gently kiss the cushions at the edge.

The pool table was in a rec room in Dan's basement and after the swim, Dan and Todd were a little chilled, so they put on T shirts and socks to play. We played one game splitting the range of 15 balls into three groups of 5, so that everyone could play on even terms, but it wasn't much of a contest. Dan was much better at the game than either Todd or I. The skilled eye and hands of the hunter seemed to prevail here as well.

Todd racked the balls on the table for a new game and coyly looked up through the tuft of blond on his forehead.

"Want to make the game interesting?" he offered.

Dan grinned. In the subdued lighting of the basement, his eyes and smile were highlighted against his tawny skin and raven hair.

"What did you have in mind?" he answered.

I stood frozen, considering what was about to happen. I could tell Todd wasn't about to suggest a simple game of eight ball, just by the interaction between him and Dan. They both had the look of a con team about to make a hit on innocent prey.

"How about if everytime we scratch, we have to take off a piece of clothing," Todd said.

My mind raced. I had scratched on half the shots I'd taken in the first game. I hadn't brought a T-shirt, and I only was wearing my Speedos under my cutoffs.

"We're not wearing much. The game could be over pretty fast." Dan looked at me with a sinister grin.

"I know a way to make it even more interesting," he said. "Let's play another game like the last one except with the rule on scratches, and the loser has to provide a `service of choice' to the other two players."

"What `service of choice,' " I asked, feigning naivitee.

"The loser has to do ANYTHING the other two want."

So there were two games in one here. The amount of clothing one had at the end of the game was simply a matter of not scratching. But the grand prize came from the outcome of the actual game itself. Dan loved wagers. He enjoyed playing pool for money with friends in the basement, when his parents weren't there. He of course would clean us all out of our spending money in no time.

Dan broke, because he had won the first game. He proceeded to sink the 1 and 3 balls.

"I always did like low balls," he said.

Todd went next. He quickly pocketed the 15.

"You can have the small ones, I've got the big ones," he said with a grin.

His next shot was a scratch. He shrugged and took off a sock.

My turn. I had 6 - 10 by default. None of these, of course, was lying in a position for an easy shot, so I had to be daring. The 7 lay about halfway to one of the side pockets, at an interesting angle. It would be difficult to sink without scratching, but it was my best shot.

"Stroke gently," I told myself. Let the cue push evenly. I took a deep breath, and released my stroke with my breath. The cue ball glided across the table to the 7 and hit just where I'd aimed and fell decidedly into the side pocket. I nervously watched the progress of the cue ball as it rolled toward the corner pocket. I relaxed. The angle was wrong. It wouldn't fall into the pocket. But it did bump Todd's 11 ball close to the corner pocket just enough that the 11 rolled to the edge of the pocket and teetered on the brink. Then it fell.

That, of course, presented a problem we had not defined before the game.

"Isn't that considered a scratch?" Todd asked.

"I don't think so," Dan replied. "He isn't wearing much, let's say it isn't."

After further discussion, we decided that I could continue my turn even though I had sunk Todd's ball, because I had made one of my own as well.

Now the cue ball was in an easy position for the 6, and I took it without effort. The cue ball tapped against the 9 and arranged it for an easy shot that I harvested as well. But that was my net for that turn --- 3 for me and one for Todd. Not bad. I found myself leading at the end of the first turn with no loss in clothing.

Dan's turn again, and he pocketed one more, giving him a total of three. Todd scratched on his turn and took off his other sock.

My turn again. Impossible shots again. Todd had managed to mess up a perfect shot for me just before he scratched. I decided to be conservative, being tied for the lead, and barely brushed the 10. Nothing fell, and it was Dan's turn.

The fortunate equalizer in pool is that if one person has only 2 balls left on the table and the opponents are far behind, there are alot of enemy targets and not many good shots of your own. Dan was in this position. He chose to shoot at one of Todd's balls to make it more difficult for Todd. He forfeited his turn in the process, because we didn't strike one of his own first.

"That's dirty pool!" said Todd with his ever-present grin. And of course it was.

Todd took a difficult shot and missed, scratching for the third time in the process. As I looked at him, he winked again and took off his T shirt. Was he doing this on purpose? He only had his gym shorts left, because he hadn't put on underwear after swimming.

It was my shot again. The cue ball was resting on the edge of the table over by where Todd was standing. I walked around the table, bent over to sight my shot and drew my cue stick slowly back to shoot. The stick softly stopped as if the end struck something padded. I glanced under my left elbow to see what I'd hit, and Todd was standing there grinning. He pointed to just above the the bulge in his shorts and winked again. I looked at Dan, who pretended to ignore this whole scene. I looked back at To dd, and he moved to the side so that I could shoot.

I took my shot and ended up sinking both my target and the cue ball. My cutoffs had to come off, and I had to put the ball I sank back on the table. While I unzipped my shorts, Todd stood across the table rocking back and forth on his heels and toes, straddling his cue stick like a stick pony. The bulge in his short seemed bigger now. I was obviously excited, as was evident in my Speedos.

Dan sank another, leaving him only one to go, then it was Todd's turn, and he banked the cue ball to pocket one for him.

I managed to get the one I'd had for a fleeting second the last turn.

So we all stood with one left apiece. Dan tried a difficult shot and came close, but missed as his ball bounced off the corner of the pocket.

Todd sank his last ball and prepared to celebrate until Dan pointed to the cue ball as it crept toward the corner pocket. It rolled to the edge and plunked in, and Todd's elation was softened considerably. Dashed from victory to losing the shirt off his back. Or more correctly, the shorts off his backside.

Suddenly, Todd became timid. He had been nonchanlant about skinny dipping, but seemed hesitant now.

"They were your rules," Dan said, with a glint in his eye.

Todd swallowed a deep breath and pushed his shorts to his ankles and stepped out of them.

His emotions may have been softened, but other parts of him certainly hadn't. Now I understood the embarrassment at losing his shorts. He blushed and tried to hide by standing next to the pool table. Of course, this didn't really work, because the top of the table was too low. Part of him peeked up over the edge as if to look at the action on the maroon arena.

"Your turn," Dan told me, trying to ease Todd's attention and embarrassment. Dan acted as if he saw this every day. Maybe he did. They had been spending alot of time together lately.

I couldn't concentrate on the game any more. I was captivated by the naked and erect replica of the Statue of David standing next to the pool table. I was fortunate to even make contact with my ball on the table. I brushed it, but my target and the cue ball rolled harmlessly to a stop.

Dan made an unceremonious finish to the game by effortlessly sinking his last ball, and the game was over. Dan had won and left Todd and I tied for second. We hadn't anticipated this outcome. Did this mean that we both owed Dan a "favor?"

A door upstairs opened and closed. Footsteps walked along the hall above us. Someone was home.

"Todd...Dan?" It was Todd's mom. She had come to pick him up.

Todd dove for the stack of clothes, grabbed his shorts and hauled them on. I put my cutoffs back on. Even though it would have been fine to be playing pool in my swimsuit, I was showing a significant degree of arousal at the sight of Todd.

Dan turned on the TV, and Todd, Dan and I sat on the couch watching Beverly Hillbillies reruns. Todd held a pillow on his lap. Dan was enormously delighted in the closeness of the call.

"What are you boys doing inside on a day like today?" Todd's mom asked.

"We were getting sunburned in the pool, so we came in for a while," Dan replied.

A grateful look shot from Todd eyes. Yeah, we almost got burned bad.

"It's 4 o'clock, Todd. We have to go so that we can make it home and I can start supper. Get your things."

As Todd stood up, I glanced to see the state of his arousal. The panic of being caught had quenched his erection, and he quickly gathered his things.

"Don't forget you owe me a favor!" Dan said as Todd climbed the stairs.

We walked Todd and his mom to their car and went out to the pool. I took off my cutoffs for the second time, and as I stepped out of them, Dan pushed me into the pool. He walked around to the diving board and dove in with his gym shorts on.

I swam under the water to where he was surfacing and yanked his shorts off of him. I threw them over the fence, where he would have to run outside the fence to get them.

"You owe me a favor, too" he said as he pulled on the string of my Speedos.

• Daniel in the Lion's Den *

Our lives following that first summer of awakening grew in a steady stream of exploration, continuing through my graduation from high school. We never saw anything that we were doing together as wrong and had no regrets. We were discrete, more because we knew that if our friends had discovered us we would be teased, but we suspected that others were doing the same things. The thought of being stigmatized for our relationship never really bothered us, because what we were doing wasn't really perverse, jus t alot of fun between friends. Close friends. Surrogate brothers. After all it wasn't like we were queers or anything. Queers were sissies, and we definitely were not sissies. Each of us had enough of a social standing in the community that we would never have been accused being such degenerates. In the sheltered teenage life of rural Ohio, fags were boys that wanted to be girls. We were certainly not that. We both immensely enjoyed being boys, especially being boys together. We were confirming each o ther's manhood, not denying it. Although I was captivated by the nightly ritual of Dan kissing his dad on the lips before going to bed, the thought of us kissing seemed beyond consideration. I would wait ten years to experience kissing another man, an encounter behind Encina Gym at Stanford that would change my perception of male attractions forever.

Impulses of the different moments spent with Dan during my high school years blend together, and the timing of individual nights loses all order in retrospect. Watching a basketball game on television in the den in the basement of Dan's house, with Dan's head resting on my lap. Teasing each other about the sexual explorations that were by now not entirely uncharted territory to us. Developing a personal language of phases that we could use to insert intimate sexual innuendos in conversation with other friends so that only Dan and I would know what we really meant. Playfully reminding each other of the very different ways that our bodies were developing: Dan's lean and smooth and panther-like, mine brawny with flourishing growth on my chest and legs. Dan would sometimes lie next to me after swimming or football, when both of us were bare chested, relaxing and absently stroking the tufted line connecting my chest and my navel, continuing to where it disappeared in my shorts. Inevitably, he would end up lying with his head resting on my chest and I would stroke the lazy black curls that draped from the back of his head, envying the smooth perfection of the boy who I admired so completely.

One Saturday, we were alone at my house. As usual, we started wrestling on the floor. We had been watching television, eating our lunch.

"Could you pass the chips?" Dan asked. He had been been busy building a sandwich out of stacks of ham and cheese, while I had been settling into place on the floor next to him.

"I think you'll have to come get them yourself," I grinned, and I pushed the chips further away so that he would have to stretch across me to reach them. When he stretched across me, I grabbed his sides and poked, causing a sudden contraction and a giggle.

"Am I going to have to teach you a lesson?" Dan posed, knowing fully that I outsized him and he could never defeat me in such a contest without considerable trickery.

He opted for the trickery immediately, reaching to my groin and grabbing whatever was available. But I had anticipated the move and drew up my knees so that I covered myself with my thighs. Of course, that left my buttocks exposed, and Dan took the opportunity to pinch a handful. The outcome of this match was predictable in many ways, but I found that wrestling with Dan was alot like a cat toying with a mouse for pure amusement before settling in for the kill. Of course, Dan was fast and tricky, so I still had to have my wits about me or my prey would escape and I would be left without the spoils of my conquest.

Through several calculated maneuvers, we exchanged reversals of positions on the floor. I would lie on my back with Dan trying to force my shoulders to the carpet, sometimes getting lost in a daydream involving the sweaty body that was pressing against me and losing concentration enough that I would suddenly snap back just before being pinned. I launched myself in a surge to role us both over, with me now on top of Dan, the full weight of my body across is chest. He arched his back in two last efforts to resist the pin, then collapsed, exhausted.

We were both soaked with the persperation of the struggle. Nearly satisfied by the contact and competition alone, we each had learned the intimacy of the body mechanics of the other in a completeness that only combat could develop. As I looked at the boy I lay atop, I realized that he had spent his entire energy in the struggle, and he was at the same time helpless to defend himself and I saw how completely he had spent himself to make it a match. Such valor would need to be rewarded. Gently I tugged at the drawstring on his sweats. A smile touched the corners of his mouth. The same smile I remembered from the night in the tent years ago.

• The Prodigal Returns *

Finals had ended, followed by graduation and the promise of a new life in Los Angeles working for an aerospace company. The drive home from Columbus left me randomly drifting from nostalgia to thoughts of adventures that awaited in that strange new world that I had only encountered on a trip to the Rose Bowl with the Marching Band a year before. Columbus had seemed like a fast lifestyle after growing up in rural Ohio. If the Rose Bowl trip exposure to Westwood and Hollywood was any indication, the experiences waiting in Los Angeles were beyond imagination.

The years I spent in school at Columbus had caused Dan and I to grow apart. I never really felt comfortable about it, but the attempts that I had made to try to incorporate Dan into my life in college had failed miserably. The single time he visited me at school, he was a panther in a paved jungle. In high school, Dan made it known early on that he had no intention of becoming a scholar. He had always done well in classes, but it just didn't interest him. The key to his life had always been in discoverin g the intricacies of nature on his own. Truth to Dan could not be proven by logical progression. It just was. And it was wretchedly distorted at the university.

We both sensed the drifting, and tried other ways to be close. But there was little success. One summer, Dan helped my father put a new roof on our house. I had found an engineering job in Columbus and couldn't come home to help. If he couldn't physically be near me, he could take my role with the family and still be close. It was a natural shift. Dan and I had shared families since that first summer he moved to the neighborhood. While I sat at my desk that summer, I pictured Dan the roof working wit h Dad. His black hair glistened. His broad tanned shoulders crouched over his denimed knees, hammering away in sweltering heat. Touches of tar on his hands and a black smear on his forehead, where he had wiped away the sweat. I longed to be on the roof with him. To later take turns kneading the stiffness in our backs and shoulders. To take that last refreshing plunge in his pool after the sunset.

Whenever I did get home, it took forever for us to get acquainted enough to talk. Everything in my life in Columbus had been either engineering or marching band experiences. For Dan, he had been working in the Whirlpool factory until he was laid off, then he started back working at his dad's rootbeer stand. His free time was fishing and basketball. By the time we were comfortable again, it was always time for me to go back.

Now I could anticipate a weeklong vacation with Dan as he helped me move west. The uncertainty of how we would be able to handle each other's changes was compensated by the thought of sleeping together on the road. At least I was hoping we would sleep together. Our plan was to save some money by only registering me with the hotels along the way, because my company would reimburse my expenses and not Dan's. The likelihood of us finding single bed rooms under such a pretense was high, and I found myself lo nging to feel Dan's warmth in a bed next to me.

It was actually my mother that was responsible for Dan taking this trip with me. She was the one that made such a fuss about me driving to California alone, and she offered to pay for Dan's return air fare as part of my graduation present. Dan was excited. It was rare for him to travel outside the state, and he hadn't anticipated any long trips for some time, because his finances were low. It was mid-March, and he hadn't worked since his father's rootbeer stand closed in October for the winter.

But there was a catch. During the last 6 months, Dan had started dating a girl. I was surprised when I heard about Julie, but it seemed to be something that occupied most of his thoughts these days. I saw this as more evidence of us growing up and apart. Someday, I assured myself, I would also find a girlfriend, and then Dan and I would grow further apart. Or maybe we would become two inseparable couples. But that was unlikely with me moving west.

So, would Dan still want to sleep with me on the trip, or had he outgrown that? I plotted ways to force us to sleep together. Saving money was certainly a good ploy. And one that Dan couldn't argue with, because he was broke. So that was my hope.

As I pulled into the driveway at home, I saw Dan out shooting baskets by himself in his driveway. There was a dusting of snow still on the grass. We had had a very late winter that year. And a very cold one. It had been a major factor in my decision to move west. No more ice and snow.

But Dan was out shooting baskets. His the hood of his navy sweatshirt dangled by a last thread. The shirt had been the victim of a desparate tackle attempt that fall in the only football game we had played in years. The shirt appropriately was matched by baggy navy sweatpants, torn on the left knee. As I walked across the road, Dan waved and turned to sink a jumper. He grinned to me at his feat, then gathered the ball for a second shot. This one missed, hitting on the rim. With an agile leap, he took his rebound in for a layup.

"Finally finished?" he asked as he turned to me.

"I guess for now. Everyone has to leave school and get a job sometime."

I said it, then was immediately aware of what I had said. Not only did I now have a college education, but also a job. Two things Dan was without. I knew he had been intimidated by my education, but I also knew that he had decided early that college was not for him. There were no deer to hunt with bow and arrow on college campuses. Life was watching the sunrise over the river while you waited for a tug on the fishing line. Life's problems weren't lessened by knowing the method to solving coupled partia l differential equations. They were solved by understanding God and nature and people.

I looked at Dan. Inspite of the 30 degree temperature, there was a ring of sweat around the ripped collar of his shirt. And the faint tracing of it the front and back of his pants. But his hands were red with the cold. I imagined the sting of the basketball against his fingers when he dribbled, and the tightness across the back of his hands when he balled them to blow warm air into his fists.

"Ready for a break?" I asked him.

"Yeah, it's getting too dark to see. I think we can find some hot chocolate or something in the house."

I nodded, daydreaming about what was in store beginning tomorrow.

"Think fast!" Dan yelled and I broke my trance. The basketball was racing directly for my unsuspecting crotch and it was too late to move. It was a trick we had always played on each other when we discovered someone wasn't paying attention. It got my attention now. Fortunately, he had aimed high, and missed his mark. But I faked great pain and agony. I rolled on the driveway pavement. Dan got worried and came over.

"You all right?" he bent over me.

I grabbed his shoulder and forced his face to my pants.

"I think you should kiss it and make it better!" I laughed and pulled him over on top of me.

He just looked at me. Things had changed.

Then he grinned. Maybe they hadn't.

"Let's go in. I'm freezing" he said and took one last shot at the basket.

• Riding Into the Sunset *

"You OK? Want me to drive?" Dan asked.

I hated that I had started crying in front of Dan. I hadn't expected it, but when my mom teared up as we pulled out of the driveway, I started myself. I hadn't done this when I went away to college. Why should this be a big deal? After all, I was coming back to start my master's degree in the fall. I would only be gone for 5 months. My vision blurred as wet trails dried on my face.

"No, I'm OK. I guess this is a bigger thing than I thought."

By the time we got to the interstate and started heading south, I was back to normal. Dan had been very quiet the whole time. I couldn't tell if he was being quiet to give me my space or because he was embarrassed by the whole thing. At any rate, we turned onto I-75 heading south and we were officially bound for California.

The night before, we had spent a couple of hours looking through a road atlas, planning our route. We expected that we could reach St. Louis if we drove a long distance the first day. We could drive a considerable stretch in the dark, through Indiana and Illinois. It was just farmland like Ohio, anyhow. Nothing much to see.

Dan had brought his portable tape player and some tapes, since my car had only an AM radio. We spent most of the trip south to Dayton and west to Indianapolis just driving and listening to the tapes. Mom had packed a couple days worth of sandwiches for us to eat on the road, so we could cut the expenses a little.

"Welcome to Illinois, Land of Lincoln" the sign along the interstate read as the sun was setting behind it. Probably four hours to St. Louis and the first night's stop.

"Want to stop and the roadside rest for supper?" I asked?

"Yea, then I can take over driving again."

We could probably have made it to St. Louis in three hours if I continued to drive. But Dan was very careful to obey the posted 55 speed limit. I had noticed that Dan had become very conservative in the last few years. He didn't drank alcohol, but had always he said that was because he never liked the taste. When I explained that most people usually acquire a taste for it, he simply said that it seemed silly to try to acquire a taste for something that wasn't there already.

We pulled over to the roadside rest. First priority was a trip to the restroom. We stood at adjacent urinals to relieve ourselves. I peeked over the divider to watch Dan's progress, but he was done. I winked at him as he buttoned his fly, but he must have missed it. He washed his hands and walked outside to wait. As the sun's rim went behind the horizon, we sat at a picnic table eating ham and cheese sandwiches and drinking iced tea, watching an elderly couple pack up their Winnebago.

"That would be the life. Just driving around the country, seeing sights, stopping to sleep whenever you get tired." I said, mostly for something to break the silence.

"I'd rather sleep in a tent or under the stars than in one of those rolling hotels," Dan replied.

I thought of the night in the tent years ago, and subsequent nights in tents many times the next few summers.

"Want to do that next summer?" I asked. "I should finish my master's in the spring and I could probably take a leave of absence from work for a month to go on vacation."

"Hopefully, I'll have a job by then. If I do, I probably wouldn't be able to get any time off."

All of our conversations had been like this since we left home. I would start something, mostly to get a conversation rolling, and Dan would promptly kill the conversation.

"Finished eating?" I asked. Dan nodded and started packing the remaining sandwiches in the cooler. We each took a last drink of iced tea and packed the car. We were on the road again, with Dan behind the wheel.

I sat sideways on the seat with my back to the door. It was dark now, and Dan's face was illuminated by the green dash light. He looked intently at the road and the traffic along the highway. The Doobie Brothers tape had just finished, and the car was swallowed in silence. The toes at the end of my scissored legs kneaded gently into the side of Dan's thigh just below his hip. I watched closely to see if there was any indication of a reaction from the driver. Memories of a trip four years ago to a porn drive-in movie flooded my head. Dan had turned 18 that winter, and when I came home for spring break we were looking for things to entertain us. We looked through the movie guide in the newspaper, finding nothing of interest, when Dan suggested that we should go see a porn film. Neither of us had ever been to one, so it was decided.

The movie had turned out to be plotless and dull, so I had kicked off my shoes, sat sideways on the seat bench in the enormous Buick and rested my feet on Dan's lap. When I moved to get more comfortable, my toes brushed against the bulge in his lap. He was erect. It certainly hadn't been what was happening on the screen. He had propped his head back on the head rest and closed his eyes. I gently pushed at the bulge with my toes. Kneading and caressing. Feeling him push out against my foot. He adjuste d himself in his seat behind the steering wheel and undid his fly. I reached under the waistband of his underwear and pulled the waistband down over the protruding mass. Dan smiled. The same smile I had seen many times. We had been forced back to reality when the guy in the car next to us got out to go to the bathroom. We decided to go home and not stay for the end of the film.

But now I sat sideways in the front seat of my car. I didn't know if it was safe to continue. So many things had changed between us. I would have to be content for now just drifting on old memories until I could figure it out.

"There's something that I wanted to tell you last night, but I could never find a good time for it," Dan broke the silence and my reverie. He paused to gather a breath. "Julie and I are getting married this summer."

That was it. That was the change. I resented her already and I had never even met her.

"Tying the knot, huh? I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. When is the wedding?"

"This July. The 22nd. I'd like you to be in the wedding, but I don't know if you can make it since you're moving to California."

"I can do it. I want to be in your wedding."

"Todd's coming back for it. Kelly is going to be best man. You and Todd and Rod are going to be ushers, I guess."

"Todd'd coming back? Where is he?"

"He moved to Texas last fall. He got a job in Austin working for a newspaper for Campus Life."

That was a revelation. Todd was working for a newspaper for a Christian student organization. I imagined Todd surrounded by cattle ranch hands and oil riggers. That I could picture more readily than the production staff of a religious newspaper.

We talked some more about Julie and the wedding. I found out that Dan had known her for about two years and had actually been dating for a year, not the six months I had thought.

The car grew quiet as I digested the news. I had always wanted to be like Dan. Athletic without being a real jock-ish sort. Assured of himself. Willing to be different if that was truly what he was. And beautiful. I had grown into many of those things myself. When I went to school, my body began to mature and suddenly athletic skills came with coordination. I knew where I wanted to take my life, and I was taking a major step in that direction with this trip. Different? Well, I had actually picked up that one early on. I cherished being different from the first step I took on campus at OSU. Beautiful? Well, all I knew is that I liked the way I looked now better than I did in high school. Maybe I wasn't beautiful, but I was comfortable. Now he had beaten me at my real trouble. Girls. I had failed miserably at every attempt. And there had only been three. I could accept that as long as Dan wasn't dating either. We could be bachelor buddies for the rest of our live s for all I cared. I rationalize d my lack of success with lack of exposure. I lived in an all male dorm -- one of only two on campus. My major social activity was the marching band -- 90 per cent guys, a throwback to the old military days. And I majored in engineering! I just needed opportunities. There had to be a million of then waiting in Los Angeles.

We reached St. Louis and stopped at the first motel, both exhausted from the drive. We followed the plan, where I checked in as a single occupant, while Dan waited in the car. When we got to the room, there were two double beds. Without much talk, we each chose a bed and drifted to sleep. The next morning I woke early and hit the shower first. When I came out of the shower, Dan stretched and got out of bed, showing an ample amount of arousal through his white cotton briefs.

"Nothing like getting up in the morning," I winked. He grinned and when to the shower and closed the door.

We were on the road again after breakfast in the restaurant next door. We had decided to switch to I-40 through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to avoid the chance of snow on the northern route through Colorado. It was still March, and we had hopes of getting to LA with enough time to see Disneyland and other tourist sights before Dan had to fly home.

Our only excursion was to the Grand Canyon. We arrived at the rim just before sunset, pulling off at viewing points to take pictures. This by far was the most natural setting I had every seen for Dan. His brown skin and black hair called out to the reds, oranges and yellows of the gorge beneath us, "Here is your son, he has returned to you."

We discussed the possibility of a trip to Las Vegas from there, but there was a storm headed our way, and the weather people were predicting snow around the Grand Canyon, so be decided to head on. We chose to drive through the night in the California desert and stop at Barstow to sleep during the day. When we got to Barstow, we found a Motel-6, waited until after the checkin time in the afternoon, and slept for a few hours. The one time we had shared a bed on the trip had been in Santa Fe. I hadn't slep t at all that night, and I doubt that Dan had either. I was afraid that I would start something and embarrass myself to find out that Dan wasn't interested anymore. How could he be? He was getting married in just a few months.

We both woke up from our naps around 6 in the evening. The sun had just disappeared, and a twilight sky bursting with the stars of the desert glittered overhead. There was a pool in this complex, and we decided to go for a swim before supper. The cool of the water felt refreshing in the dusty hot air. It had been ages since I had been swimming with Dan. We splashed around a bit, raced a few laps, then I glanced around, noting no one in sight. I reached beneath the water and tugged on the drawstring of my suit. Off it came. Now Dan's sense of adventure gleamed in his eyes. Skinny dipping in a public pool. In no time, he had joined me. Fortunately, the underwater lights hadn't been turned on yet. I swam under him and grabbed at his ankles, pulling him under water. He replied by wrapping his thighs around my neck and suddenly I found the object of my longing staring me directly in the face. I plunged it briefly into my mouth as a tease, and released to surface for air. Just as I surfaced to gulp so me air, Dan grabbed my waist and hauled me under, tickling me devilishly in the ribs. We hadn't played like this in years. We wrestled in the water, ending up with me holding him face to face, my arms around his. We were both hard. He poked my sides and I released him out of reflex as he swam to the side to put on his suit and quickly hauled himself out of the water and dried. Silently, we returned to the room, showered and went to dinner.

The next day we descended on Los Angeles from the east. The extent of the sprawl amazed us both. We had planned to get the eastern edge of the basin around 10 that morning to avoid rush hour traffic, only to find all four lanes of the freeway in our direction packed and creeping along. Two hours later, we were in Redondo Beach, checking into our hotel. We didn't even bother to unpack before we went to explore the beach. When we hit the water, we were suddenly aware of the reason there were few people a t the beach. The water was a cool 61 degrees. It didn't take long to decide to go back to the hotel and start looking for apartments.

As we looked through the newspaper, we selected the "reasonably priced" places in the $350 -- 450 range. When we inspected these, we saw slums and cockroaches, peeling paint and worse. Back to the newspaper. Just to see what it would be like to squander my newly found wealth, we went to look at an apartment with tennis courts, pools, health spas and jacuzzis.

"Are you looking for a two bedroom apartment?" the woman asked us when we showed up to see the apartment.

"No, a studio or one bedroom." I replied. She looked me over, then Dan. Suddenly I got the idea, and blushed.

"Oh, it's only for me."

"Well, we have a policy that if guests stay longer than two days, you have pay an extra $10 a day. We don't allow anyone under 18 to be around the social hall or the pool areas without an adult. We have a tennis pro that gives free group lessons at 9:00 on Saturday mornings, and on Fridays there is a complimentary happy hour at 7:00. Sunday we have a barbecue for dinner where the residents bring meat to grill and the complex provides a baked potato and salad. We try to encourage mixing and social event s as much as possible. We get a lot of people that have just relocated and are wanting to meet others."

That was certainly me! I needed to meet someone, have a passionate romance, and get married to keep up with Dan. I'd show him that I could grow up, too. We walked up to see a studio that featured a bed that slid under a set of dressers to make a couch, dormitory style. That was not what I had in mind for living in the lap of luxury on my new earnings. She took us to the one bedroom, and left us there to talk.

"Well, what do you think?" I asked Dan. He was clearly amazed, both at the cost of the apartment and the nature of the extras that came with it.

"I think that I'd like you to take the studio and I'll move in and be your houseboy or something. That way we can both take advantage of the health club and pools."

It floored me. Did he mean this? How could he play such a mean trick on me even to suggest such a thing. It would be workable. I could afford the place one my own, even the one bedroom apartment. Dan didn't have a job back home, so he wouldn't be much worse off here. But what about Julie and getting married? He had to be joking. I looked at him and he winked.

"I think I am going to take it. It would be a good way for me to meet some people out here. It's not far from the beach, if the water ever warms up."

"It sure is a lot of money, though."

That was it. I had decided on taking the apartment. But it would be a week before the rest of my things arrived from Ohio, and I couldn't move in for three days anyhow. Dan had two days left before he had to fly home, so we took one day at Disneyland and the second at Universal Studios. After the studio tour, we had dinner at the Victoria Station overlooking the San Fernando Valley. This had been a trip of sunsets, and this was the most stunning of all with the twinkling lights of the valley coming ali ve as the oranges and maroons dashed across the mountains in the west.

"I'm going to miss you when you leave."

"I know, I'm going to miss you too. It doesn't seem real, leaving you here like this. I guess you've outgrown me and Ohio."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him that it was he who had outgrown me. He was the one getting married. I was alone in a foreign land.

"Will you come back to visit?" I asked.

"I'd like to if I ever get the money."

"You're getting married. Pretty soon you'll have kids. You'll never have the money."

"You'll be back some day. You'll get tired of this after awhile. I know. You're really a farmboy. And this is no place for farmboys."

"I don't know. Maybe I'll meet the love of my life at my new apartment complex."

We continued the benign teasing back and forth through dessert, and headed back to the hotel, amazed at how a freeway with five lanes going each way could be stop and go at 10:00 at night. He left the next day on a morning flight. We started to shake hands at the terminal gate, and ended up holding each other in a long hug. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I buried them in the back of his denim jacket so that he wouldn't know. They announced the final boarding call, and we released each other. There were tears on his face, too. How could I ever meet another? The after Dan's flight took off, I went to my new office for orientation. Words were spoken and read, forms were signed, but they didn't matter. He had left me alone here. And he would have been my houseboy.