Flight to Syracuse Chapter 2 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Warning: This story describes sexual acts between consenting adults. If it is illegal for you to read such stories, or if you do not like to read such stories, please leave now. Also, there are brief descriptions of violence that may be troubling to some readers.
This story is copyright 2006 by the author who retains all rights.
Any comments or questions are welcome at: carl_holiday@att.net.
A warm thank you goes out to all who write. I appreciate knowing someone is actually reading this stuff, whether you like it or not. I try to answer all emails, even flames. (I’m a writer, I live for rejection.) Although sometimes it takes a little time to get back to you, I do try to answer. If I'm remiss in replying to yours, I apologize.
Flight to Syracuse
by Carl Holiday
Chapter 2 – Detour
There is nothing like waking up in a bed with someone else holding you close to them which was what David was doing when my last dream changed into a desperate need to empty my bladder. Except, he was holding me like a kid holds his teddy bear and when I tried to extricate myself he held on tighter. I never figured him to be that strong, but then I’d never actually seen him naked or with so much as his shirt off. I had no idea what kind of muscles were keeping me in that wonderful embrace, but things were quickly going critical.
I might have had a piss hard-on, but it was only a cork in a very shaken bottle of champagne and I’d already taken off the wire. The little Dutch boy might have had his finger in the dike, but it wasn’t that big of a finger and there was a big ocean out there. My bladder had a job to do and it wasn’t the least interested in hearing that the rest of the body was now a little boy’s teddy bear.
I did a bit of a struggle, but the vise grip was only tightened. The little boy behind me wasn’t playing fair at all. So, I pushed. What else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t getting anywhere pulling out of his hold on me. If you can’t get anywhere in forward, put the damned thing in reverse; and, damn it, gun the silly thing.
Suddenly, I was on top of him. I was held just as tight, if not a little tighter, but I was on top where I could apply a bit of pressure in the same place where I was having my difficulty. With any luck, in a few moments, I hoped, my great big friend was going to wake up from his dream with a pressing need to relieve himself.
The upside of this action was immediate relief from my own pressing need. Unexpectedly, all that pressure I was feeling was gone. Oh, I still had to go, but I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on keeping the valve closed. I had a few minutes reprieve. I could actually consider options. I could layout a course of action. I could notice something about the little boy who didn’t want to give up his teddy bear.
That was the downside of my reckless action. I was no longer a teddy bear. Well, I might still have been a teddy bear, but I was a special teddy bear. I was, also, the foam pillow with the hole in the bottom. I was daddy’s special blow-up toy. I was the physical sensations supporting an increasingly vigorous wet dream.
It was nice to be thought of like that. You know, going from love to being loved in that very special way. I didn’t know what to do because, quite frankly, I still had an overpowering need to leave and dash to the toilet where, hopefully, I’d get a little relief, too.
And, then, I felt it, the unmistakable sensation of a cock having a really, really, good time and making a mess of it. I hadn’t wanted our relationship to progress to the emission of body fluids stage so soon, yet my cloth covered ass—both of us were still in our boxers—was getting a bit wet and that wasn’t doing anything good for my real need at that moment. Wet was not a sensation I needed at all.
Luckily, David must have progressed a bit in his dream because the arm holding me flew off and he was acting like I was a burden he didn’t need. Well, I wasn’t going to wait around to find out what else he had in mind, so I hightailed it to the bathroom. Besides, I also needed to do something with that little bit of soap hotels give you.
When I came out of the bathroom after taking care of most of my morning needs, David was still asleep. He looked so damned cute lying there in the bed with a pillow held close to him just as I had been not so many minutes earlier. I put on a clean pair of boxers and went over to him. I wanted to snuggle back into his arms, but we had to get moving down the road. Yet, I couldn’t just let him waken on his own. A guy’s got to do what guy’s got to do.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and then his odor slapped my face. I have never been a fan of the smell of spent semen. I know some guys can’t get enough of the stuff and love to spread it all over themselves and their lovers, but if you’re not going to catch it in a condom or swallow, the stuff needs to be cleaned up or everything will be reeking in no time at all; and, there’s nothing worse than some guy smelling like a used condom. It’s almost as bad as kissing ashtray, which I don’t do. Smokers are a major turn-off.
But, David was so cute that first morning, I couldn’t help myself when I leaned over and lightly pressed my lips to his.
“Um,” he mumbled and I pulled back a little. “I was wondering how long it was going to take you to get around to that.”
“Get up and take a shower,” I said. “You stink.”
“I had the most wonderful dream,” he said as he began to get up. Then he felt himself and looked at me.
“I would’ve preferred something a little more mutual, but you seemed to be having fun, so who am I to ruin your dream.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t holding onto to you? Was I?”
“Do you have a habit of doing that?”
“Yes, sorry, guess I should’ve told you.”
“Well, now that I know, I’ll try to be prepared tomorrow morning.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Go, wash, you stink!”
“Yes, mother.”
He kissed me very hard and very quick, then ran into the bathroom; except, I wasn’t finished. I went to the door and watched him piss, which doesn’t turn me on, but I wanted to watch. After shaking himself off, David pulled off his t-shirt and slipped his boxers down his slender legs. Like I said before, I’d never seen him naked and now, there he was with his back to me. He was beautiful.
We had to get on the road, but there was this beautiful man standing naked not more than ten feet away. What could I do? I was up close in a flash. My hands were all over him.
David slowly turned around as my hands carefully, sensuously explored his lightly tanned skin. Being nearly a foot shorter, my lips were right on target when his right nipple came within range and I sucked it into my mouth. That little nubbin of pleasure stiffened against my tongue as my fingers sought out its partner.
I felt fingertips under my chin and released the nipple from my lips. Leaning my head back, I looked up into David’s eyes and his mouth enveloped mine. My tongue was waiting for his, welcoming him as his hands and fingers began their own exploration of my body. God, he felt so good to me, I didn’t know what I was going to do, let alone what was going to happen in the next few minutes, but at that moment as our tongues thrust and parried in their sensuous dance I didn’t want anything other than what was occurring at that moment.
He was hard and pressed against my abdomen. I had to get out of my boxers, but I couldn’t manage anything more than let my own erection out the fly. It fit neatly between his thighs and our bodies began to move sensually in our mutual desire to please each other. Our kiss never broke as David’s hands ran up and down my back caressing, kneading, and massaging his need into me. I held him tight against me digging my fingers into those two orbs of muscled flesh I’d seen earlier.
I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted, and as my orgasm shuddered through my body I thrust vigorously between David’s firm thighs. As I reached up toward the peak of my desire, I felt him explode between us.
Our kiss continued, maybe not as excitedly, yet still full of a need to be one with each other. We’d known each other in high school, even though we weren’t close. Nearly five years, I’d been waiting for this moment, but uncertain of his desire for me. Being short doesn’t help your self-esteem when you’re in love with Adonis and David had been my Adonis since ninth grade. I lusted for him and now we were in each other’s arms coming down from an unexpected high. I was in love, more in love than I’d ever been.
David broke our kiss and I stepped back away from him. His semen dribbled down my chest and stomach. I ran my fingers through it and brought them to my mouth, tasting him for the first time.
“I think you need a shower,” David said. He leaned down and kissed me.
“Uh, huh,” I mumbled as his lips left mine. “We need to get on the road.”
“Are you always so practical?”
“It’s a fault, I admit it.”
“You’re beautiful, you know?”
“I was thinking the same thing about you.”
There was a small diner around the corner from our motel where we tried to eat a light breakfast, which is kind of hard in a place that prides itself on proffering breakfast fat and carbs. I wasn’t interested in nodding off a hundred miles down the road, especially when I had no idea what was a hundred miles away.
We were headed for Syracuse, New York. That was east of us. Somewhere in between was Minneapolis and Chicago, and maybe Detroit, but I thought Detroit was closer to Canada, so I suspected that was out of our line of travel. We needed a map because in a few miles we were going to be outside my realm of travel. I’d been to Coeur d’Alene and Wallace, Idaho, once, but further than that could have been on the other side of the world as far as I was concerned.
Where does one buy a map when on a trip? Well, gas stations with mini-marts usually have a rack with folded state and local maps, but we were heading clear across the country. I didn’t want to have to look for one of those complicated Japanese origami puzzles every time we came to a new state. I suspected we could just stay on I-90, but wasn’t certain enough to venture off into the great unknown without some idea where our current path might take us.
When we left the restaurant there wasn’t more than a few blocks until we were on the interstate. A few blocks, more than enough time for everything to go to hell, which was almost what happened. In the parking lot of the next motel, David saw his father’s pickup. Either they were following us, or they suspected we were heading this way and hoped to intercept us somewhere down the road, wherever somewhere was.
“Oh, god, what are we going to do?” David asked.
“Head south, they won’t expect that,” I said.
“What’s south of here?” David asked. He was clearly worried. Well, with a father like his, I was worried, too. I’d been thrown up against a wall by that man. He was dangerous.
“Another interstate, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, this is Interstate 90, there has to be an Interstate 80, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No.”
“Okay, then.”
We headed south, or rather west. I wasn’t certain which way, exactly, but had a feeling we needed to go west a bit before going south. Whichever way it was, I knew we needed a US highway because the next interstate was way back at Ellensburg and that was almost to Seattle. I couldn’t quite remember where that one went, maybe south to Yakima, but I’d never been there. We needed a map to lead us to Interstate 80, which was my only certainty at that moment. A state highway might go towards the next interstate, but a US highway most definitely would get there once we crossed into the next state, which was Oregon, I thought. I didn’t have much experience with this part of Washington, so I didn’t exactly know what was due south. For all I knew about geography, Idaho could be down that way too; or, maybe it was Nevada, but that seemed a little further down by California someplace. What we needed was a map.
A couple exits down the highway I saw just what we needed, a truck stop. They were certain to have maps and quite possibly the map we needed.
“What’re you doing?” David asked as I took the exit.
“Finding out where I’m going,” I said.
“You’re going to New York. Big state east of here.”
“How do you get there?”
“Get on a train, change in Chicago.”
“Is this a train?”
“No, of course not,” David said. I looked over at him when I came to the stop sign at the end of the exit. He looked worried.
“So, do you know how this car is getting to New York?” I asked as I turned left over the freeway.
“No.”
“Any ideas on how you might figure how to get there?”
“Use a map.
“Got one?”
“No.”
“Right!”
I pulled into the parking lot and ran inside. I’d never been in a truck stop before so I didn’t know what to expect. Never in my short life could I imagine what was in there. It was so shocking I almost ran out to get David, but his father was too close for me to dillydally.
There were all these men with unmanageable guts hanging over their belts. There were men who looked like they’d been living on the streets for the past five years instead of driving a big rig around America. For the most part, they all seemed clean and decent—not in a big brother who left home ten years ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from in nine years or that strange uncle who shows up on Thanksgiving and gets in a fight with your dad—no, these men were loners, in the classical sense. You could see it in their eyes. Stopping at a truck stop for them was kind of like going to an amusement park.
I went into the c-store and found a whole rack of atlases, big print, laminated, cheap, and all of them had the truck routes colored in, which if you’re driving a little car might be kind of good, at least you’d know where not to drive. I picked out the one I figured would get us to Syracuse and paid for it at the counter.
“Hey, sonny, where’s mama?” an obese lump of testosterone asked as I turned to leave. He was dirty and he smelled of too many days with only himself as company.
“I don’t know, that’s why I bought a map,” I said sidling past him out into the foyer. He started to laugh and then another one joined in. Then a massive paw grabbed my shoulder.
“Hey, sweetie, where’re you goin’ so fast?” the hairy mass of flesh on the other end asked.
I ducked away and bolted for the door. They were all laughing, even some of the clerks. I’d have laughed too, but I was too scared.
David was in the driver’s seat, so I got in on the other side. He was backing out practically before I had the door closed.
“In a hurry?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” David said. “Which way?”
“Get back on the freeway the way we were going,” I said. I opened the atlas and started looking for Washington. There were a lot of state and city maps so it was going to take awhile to find the map for where we were, let alone where we were going. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about which way to fold the paper when I was finished as the maps didn’t unfold into a piece of paper the size of Los Angeles.
“Well, any ideas?” David asked.
“Give me a moment to find the state we’re in,” I said.
“We’re in Washington.”
“I know that!”
“It comes after Virginia, I think.”
“And that would be?”
“In the back, they should be in alphabetical order. You know ay, bee, cee, dee.”
“I know my ABCs. Wow, do you know our state is big?”
“Not as big as California. Where are we going?”
“Syracuse, New York, you said.”
“I know that. Where are we going today?”
“As far from your father as we can get.”
“Oh, yeah, my father.”
Okay, I admit I know next to nothing about this great country of ours. I barely know anything about the state where I live. There are just some things you never figure on having to know. If you want to go to Las Vegas, you get on an airplane and it takes you there. Why worry about where it is? It’s not like I was ever going to drive there, but suddenly I was heading off into the great unknown in slightly better shape than Lewis and Clark, at least I had a map.
“Do you have any idea, yet?” David asked. He sounded perturbed, well I would be if I was driving and he didn’t have a clue.
“Yeah, uh, take exit 220 onto US-395,” I said. “It’ll take us to Interstate 82.”
“Which goes where?”
“Oregon.”
“And, we want to go to Oregon because?”
“Because it’s between us and Interstate 80?” I offered. I didn’t know, Oregon was on a different page, but it sounded logical.
So I started turning pages, but when I got to Wyoming, then Canada, I figured Oregon must be in the other direction. Not everyone can be Albert Einstein. I was surprised there weren’t that many states between Washington and Oregon, of course it took quite a few pages to get through Texas, but Texas is a big state. By the look of it, I was glad we weren’t going that way. It’d probably take days to get across it and we didn’t have days.
I had a test on Thursday and it was Sunday. I figured we’d get to Syracuse by Tuesday morning, noon at the latest. Then I could be back to Fort Okanogan by early Thursday morning. It couldn’t be that far to New York? It didn’t take anytime to fly there and everyone knows most flight time is spent getting up to altitude and descending at the other end. We weren’t going up. We were going across.
Oregon is a big state, too, but we were only going to cut through the northeast corner. I didn’t see Interstate 80, but Interstate 82 led to Interstate 84, which headed east to Idaho and east was the direction we actually wanted to go. There were only a couple inches of highway, so I figured it wouldn’t take us more than an hour to get to Idaho, which is an “eye” state like Illinois and Indiana, so it must have been back toward the front of the atlas. Well, it certainly wasn’t in the other direction.
Idaho was way back, almost to the front. Luckily for us, Idaho is a small state. Well, it’s long north to south and broader at the bottom where we were going to cross, but it didn’t look all that far to Utah, which I’d passed early when I left Washington. This was going to be a snap because Utah is smaller than Idaho, or at least the part where we crossing; and, Interstate 80 was in Utah, too.
“Have you got things figured out?” David asked. “Or, do we have to switch places so I can navigate?”
“No, we’re cool,” I said. I was proud of myself. We were booking down the road and would be in Syracuse in no time at all. “Just take exit 220 and follow US-395 to Interstate 82. Then you follow that down to Oregon where we catch Interstate 84 and on east to Syracuse. We’ll be there tomorrow night, or Tuesday morning at the latest.
“Are you sure about that?” David asked.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice. It was just like my father’s when I’d be out in the workshop building a PC and he’d come in and see all those parts spread out all over the place.
“Are you sure you know how to put that together?” Dad always asked when everything was spread out and sort of looked confusing if you didn’t know I did that for a reason.
Well, building a PC from scratch isn’t all that hard. It’s not like I didn’t have instructions; and, an atlas was basically an instruction book on how to go from Washington to New York. You just followed the Interstates until you got to your destination. What could be difficult about that?
“Did you find Syracuse, yet?” David asked.
“No, but we don’t need that until sometime tonight.”
“You’re planning on driving straight through? You know, I’d like to stop somewhere and sleep.”
“Okay, we’ll sleep in Chicago. It can’t be that far, can it?”
“Well, it takes three days by train to get to Chicago.”
“It does?” I asked. That’s two nights and I had to be back for the test on Thursday. I was looking at the map of Wyoming. There weren’t a lot of cities in Wyoming, but luckily for us most of them were spread across I-80.
“Yeah, it takes practically a whole day to get across Montana,” David said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’ve been on the train lots of times. Remember, I don’t fly.”
“Well, it shouldn’t take us that long because we’re not going across Montana.”
“Are you sure? Isn’t there a map of the United States in that book?”
I’d seen maps for the states, but not one with all of the states on one map. Was that possible? Texas was on like four pages. I started thumbing through the book trying to find the pages for the country. I found Canada towards the end and Mexico just before the index, so that meant our country must be toward the front. Well, it sounded logical at the time. What’s strange is I always thought Mexico was a big country, but the map only took up one page. If we were going that way, it looked like we could get across it in a couple hours. I was kind of sorry we weren’t.
There was a lot of trucker information in the front. Weigh stations, low clearances, restricted routes, and a lot of other information we certainly didn’t need to know. Then I came to the United States spread across two pages. Our country isn’t that big at all, after all Texas took up four pages so obviously the whole country wasn’t that much bigger.
I began searching for New York. It didn’t take anytime at all since it’s up in the northeast corner. Syracuse was another story, though. I went back to the page for New York, but it wasn’t a page, it was three pages.
“Where’s Syracuse?” I asked. “Is it close to something big?”
“Syracuse is big and it’s between Buffalo and Albany,” David said. It had started to snow, again, and David had slowed down considerably. “Why don’t you look in the index? It’ll give you the page number and coordinates. Don’t you know how to read a map?”
“Well, not one like this,” I said as I thumbed at the back of the book. There were pages and pages of cities and towns listed in columns, so I started looking for Syracuse. I couldn’t quite figure out how they were listed because the lists started over all the time, but figured the “esses” would be towards the end of the book, so I went back there to look. It took a while, but I finally found it, noted the page number and coordinates, and turned back to the page.
“Hey, Syracuse is in Utah,” I said. “I thought you said we’re going to New York.”
“It is. What are you doing in Utah? Look under New York. Do I have to stop and do it myself?”
“No, I can do it,” I said as I went back to the index. There had to be some indication of the states, but it did take a while for me to finally figure it out. It was so simple, I felt like a fool for not noticing it at first, but I was so intent on finding Syracuse that I didn’t notice why the lists of cities and towns kept starting over. They started over because they were divided by state. It was so simple and logical, but I completely ignored the states.
Needless to say, I found Syracuse, New York, without further delay. It was right there in the central part of New York State, and it was big, or it looked big on the map. I went to the map of the United States and pinpointed our destination. The only problem that I saw was this trip might take us a little longer than I expected. There was possibly a chance I wasn’t going to get back for the test on Thursday.
“Well?” David asked.
I looked at him and smiled just like I smiled when I turned on the first PC I built and all the circuit boards were fried; or, when I was starting to learn to drive and my father stopped teaching me because I could never figure out those little letters in the dashboard. My mother had to take me out because she was the only person who was patient enough to put up with me always saying, “Oops! I had it in reverse.”
“Remind me to call Dean Chambers tomorrow,” I said.
“Why?”
“This might take a little longer than I thought.”
“We can go back.”
“No, I said I’d take you to Syracuse and I’ll do it.”
I took over driving at a small truck stop after we merged onto I-84 in Oregon. We weren’t making good time as far as I was concerned or the real world was a whole lot bigger than what was shown on the map. Of course, we couldn’t drive all that fast with it snowing and all the other cars and trucks going slow. We were in a hurry, but everyone else seemed to think the speed limit signs gave the maximum speed you were supposed to go, when I know for certain those signs only give you the suggested minimum speed, anyway that’s what I was always told by my father who commonly drove at least fifteen to twenty miles per hour over the posted limit.
When we broke over the top of the hill above Pendleton, Oregon, David looked over at me and smiled.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m hungry, ” he said. “Let’s stop for lunch.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care, you pick a place.”
“I’ve never been here. How can I pick a place?”
“You’re driving, you pick a place,” David said. “When I’m driving, I’ll pick a place.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.”
I took the first exit and headed into town looking for something quick and easy, but not a dump either. Since it was lunch time, I was a little surprised the first burger place we came to didn’t have a full parking lot. There were some cars, but not a lot. The sign over the flat roofed, one story building was partially covered with a sheet of plastic and an “Under New Management” banner was strung across the front, but there was more banner than building so the banner actually said, “Under New Mana.” I was more hungry than picky. When I parked the car, David looked at me like he was pickier than me.
“Here?” He asked.
“Why not?”
“The place over there looks busier.”
“Come on, we can’t spend all day looking for the perfect lunch in this town.”
Inside, there was bare concrete floor, wood paneling with numerous athletic posters from the local high school, and wooden picnic tables with bench seats with two Sikhs sitting on opposite sides and ends of each table. None of the twelve men were eating, but all had a white ceramic mug of something in front of them. They were so orderly arranged it made my stomach turn. We turned to the order window and warm smile met us.
“Yes? May I help you?” She asked with a lilting sub-continental voice.
“Cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke,” I said.
“And, you?” She asked, looking at David.
“The same,” he said.
I turned around thinking we might sit, but since all the tables were full I walked back toward the men’s room thinking I might want to wash my hands. David followed. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling brightening graffiti covered white walls. A dirty sink with a cracked mirror was just inside the door. Next to it a filthy urinal had water dripping from the valve. The door to the metal walled stall was closed and agonized groans followed by loud farts made me look at David. He’d already turned to leave. I followed.
All the tables were empty and I suddenly felt like we were in our own episode of the The Twilight Zone. I looked out the front door and there was only one other car besides mine. David went over to the jukebox, but it looked like it hadn’t been used in a long, long time. I went up to him and saw that all the songs were country and western, but all the artists were from another era.
“This place is weird,” David said.
“You noticed, too?”
“Yeah. For your sake, I hope my burger is good.”
“What are you going to do if it isn’t?”
“Puke all over your car.”
“That wouldn’t be nice.”
“Then let’s hope for the best.”
A soft ding from the order window broke our conversation. I looked over and the smile was back. There were two brown paper sacks on the counter with two tall paper cups. We paid for our food and David headed for the car.
“Hey, aren’t you going to eat in here?” I called after him.
“No!”
I couldn’t really blame him. The musty smell of too many sweaty teens who’d popularized this place in years gone by was a bit much and there was a soft, squishy odor coming from the direction of the toilets. It certainly wasn’t a place to take a date and the new owners didn’t seem too enthused about freshening up the place. I’d eaten in my car before and could do it again.
The food wasn’t that bad. The fries were a little too salty and had that subtle oniony, fishy taste of oil used for other foods. There weren’t any bugs crawling in the lettuce or worms in the tomato slices. The burgers were a bit on the cheap, fat side, but the new owners were probably trying to maximize profit without antagonizing their clientele, too much. We certainly weren’t going to go back, so it didn’t matter.
After tossing my garbage in can by the front door, I pulled back out onto the street and followed the I-84 signs back to the interstate. As we were passing a gas station, David unexpectedly gasped.
“Ohmigod! It’s Charlie!” He said.
“Who?”
“My other brother Charlie,” David said. “He’s meaner than Jimmy. What are we going to do? I think he saw us.”
“We have to get back on the freeway,” I said.
“No, he’ll do anything to catch us. We have to go a different way. Just follow this street. Is he coming after us?”
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a large lump of testosterone get into a big, black Escalade. After going under the interstate, I took the first left then ducked into a cemetery. I ran up the hill and got behind a stand of pines around a large mausoleum where I parked. I got out and went to the corner of the mausoleum where I could look back toward the interstate. A black Escalade turned onto the onramp and headed east, going fast.
“We can’t go that way,” David said behind me and nearly making me crap my pants.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said. “So, how do we get to Syracuse from here?”
“I looked at the map, we can go south on 395. Then cut east when we get to Reno.”
“Nevada?”
“Yeah.”
We stopped for the night in Lakeview, Oregon, mostly because David wasn’t certain we’d find anything between there and Nevada. Since I’d never been this way, who was I to argue. By the number of dusty pickups and SUVs, I figured we were still among farmers and cowboys. Nice, conservative, Christian folk who’d likely not enjoy knowing their little country town was hosting two gay college boys from that decadent liberal state to the north.
“You’d better flip your switch to straight,” I said as we pulled into the first motel parking lot, a rather fancy place with a lot of Western ambiance.
“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” David lisped, waving his limp wrist at me. “You’re just no fun at all.”
He literally pranced up to and through the door, but inside he turned into Mister Ivy Leaguer and walked straight to the counter. Another sub-continental smile awaited us, but this one didn’t seem as dense as the one in Pendleton.
“We need a room for the night,” David said without a hint of inflection.
“All we have is a king size suite on the second floor,” Miss Motel Clerk said in a voice full of disgust, but totally lacking any hint of sub-continental influence. Obviously, she’d seen David’s beautiful performance and was trying to sound more educated that she appeared.
“All your guests out for the evening?” David asked. “Your parking lot seems kind of empty.”
“The room is a hundred fifty-two per night, it has a whirlpool bath.”
“Well, we don’t need more than a shower, but we do need a room. Donny?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think a hundred fifty-two is too expensive?”
“No, I’m sure there’s a beautiful view.”
“There’s no view,” the clerk said. She seemed a bit flustered she hadn’t scared us off with the price exaggeration.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to take it,” David said, throwing down his Platinum VISA. “Do you know of a good Mexican restaurant in town?”
“No,” the clerk said. “There’ll be a two hundred dollar deposit on the room.”
“Oh? And why is that?” David asked.
Her empty look said she hadn’t expected the question. She didn’t want us to stay at her facility, but couldn’t come up with a logical reason to make us leave. The deposit was definitely bogus, but I didn’t know David all that well.
“Donny? You’re taking notes, right?” David asked. “Make sure you get the one fifty-two for the room and the two hundred deposit. Our readers will need to know that if they come to Lakeview.”
“Readers?” The clerk asked.
“David! You know you’re not supposed to say we’re travel writers,” I said, playing along. “You know what happened in Pendleton last night.”
“Well, are you taking notes or not?”
“I have my recorder going,” I said. “Miss? It is okay if I record this conversation, right? I certainly don’t want to misquote you to the hundreds of thousands of people who read our magazine.”
“Is there a problem here?” A voice asked as it preceded a potbellied, balding man out of the backroom. He was smiling much like an executioner smiles when he discovers his next victim has traced a charcoal line across the neck where the ax should fall.
“No, we were just trying to confirm the one hundred fifty-two rate for our room, plus the two hundred dollar deposit,” David said. He was smiling, too.
“Here? We don’t have any room at that price,” the man said. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“She said it,” David said, pointing to the clerk who was trying to disappear into the woodwork, unfortunately her complexion and attire was of no help and she stood out like a daughter who didn’t want to work at daddy’s business. Wrath would descend, but it would wait until our departure. David got us a nice room on the first floor. We had to accept a king size bed. Someone was going to be the teddy bear, again.
And, there was a very nice family oriented Mexican restaurant across the highway that had a chili verde worth driving hundreds of miles to eat. At least I thought so. When David ordered a cheese enchilada I knew right then he needed a little education on eating Mexican food.
Later that night, after we’d taken care of our necessaries in the bathroom, we were lying close to each other in the bed. We hadn’t so much as kissed since our little escapade in the morning. I think we were waiting for the other person to take the lead and afraid of offending each other by doing so. It was rather pathetic as far as I was concerned. Yet, there was something I needed to know before we got too far down the road.
“David?”
“Huh?”
“Why are we running from your father and brothers?” I asked. I turned on my side and placed my hand on his stomach.
“You know how my father feels about gays,” he said, turning on his side to face me. The light was out so I couldn’t see him, but we were close enough to get closer.
“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with you?”
“He said, in his words, ‘I’m coming over there and beat the homosexuality out of you and if you die first, well that’s God’s problem, not mine. No son of mine is going to be a fag.’”
“Shit!”
“Yeah, and Jimmy and Charlie probably have instructions to the same, but they might just string me up until Dad gets there to do what he will. They’d probably just kill you to get you out of the way.”
“Fuck!”
“Yeah, they’re not nice people.”
“So, how did you turn out so sweet and sexy?”
“I take after my mother.”
“Is she nice?”
“You’ll like her and her family. Her youngest brother, my Uncle Benny, is only two years old than me.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, there’re lots of kids and Momma’s the oldest. Benny’s gay, too. I’ll probably live with him if he doesn’t have someone already.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Well, I thought that maybe we could, you know, maybe, well you said you were interested in me.”
“But, you have to go back to Fort Okanogan.”
“Why?”
“Well, because.”
“I don’t have to if, well, you know, I had a reason not to.”
“Well, maybe I can think of a reason,” David said, pulling me toward him. In the darkness, he was a bit flustered when he kissed the bridge of my nose, but his lips quickly found mine.
Unfortunately, after a big meal and a day’s worth of driving, I was totally exhausted and fell asleep while we were kissing. I dropped right off. We weren’t any closer to Syracuse and maybe a little bit further away, but I had a man to hold me, comfort me, and quite possibly offer me a future.