Tango (6 page)

My assumption was that people who were Christian would be less cruel to me, and I hoped that if people knew that I was a Christian, they would know that what everybody was saying about me wasn't true. Christians don't suck cock. I became a great big Jesus freak and started showing up for the sixth grade with huge crosses hung around my neck. My Aunt Joyce had given me one cross from Israel, which had been carved out of olive wood. Another one had a thick copper chain with a huge filigreed copper cross hanging from it, which I eventually had to stop wearing because it turned my neck green.
I thought that wearing those crosses would protect me and that I could respond to people's comments with righteous Christian indignation and protest my innocence if I had these symbols of Jesus to remind them what I was really all about. I also set out to win over my teachers and became quite an ass-kisser, so that I would at least have people in positions of authority on my side. I tried anything to avoid the catcalls and occasional swats to the back of my head I would receive in the crowded hallways of North Potomac Middle School.

As it turned out, one of my most vocal opponents was none other than Michael Hunter, Bobby's younger brother. He was always shouting “fag” at me or encouraging other people to do it. Our hatred for each other was on display for everyone to see. The irony was that Michael and I had finally started to become friends at Scout Camp, and had become playmates over the course of that summer. But once we got to the new school he used every trick he could to humiliate me. Maybe it was to impress his older
brother, maybe it was to impress the other kids, maybe it was to get back at me for being so snotty to him when he first moved into town. Most likely it was because he knew we had something in common and he wanted to make sure no one else would think so, too. One thing is for certain, as horrible as he could be, I was just as good at giving it back to him. I had all the girls on my side.

Although I didn't usually like playing games that boys liked to play, I did have something of a tomboy streak in me. I liked climbing trees, running, playing on the monkey bars, and games of intrigue. This was during the Vietnam War, so we were seeing images of war and violence on the television set every day. One of the games the boys in the neighborhood would play was war. We all had toy guns. The louder and bigger the gun the better. I even had one that shot off sparks. Michael and I were always on opposite teams. One time, he shot me and I refused to die. I said I was only wounded so he took me as a prisoner and dragged me into his garage for questioning. Before I knew it, I had been stripsearched
and was up against the cool, concrete wall of the garage with Michael's warm breath on my neck. It was a still, late summer afternoon and outside it was very quiet with the lazy sun hanging overhead; in the garage it was cooler and the smell of gas and cut grass from the nearby lawn mower filled the air. Although he was only a kid, Michael had rough hands from mowing lawns and delivering papers early every morning. Of course we were too young to come, so we just rubbed our naked bodies against one another until my punishment was complete. After that afternoon, I started going to his house more often. One of our favorite games was this very tedious board game called Risk. The ultimate goal was world domination. We would play until it was clear that someone was beginning to take the lead. After conquering Mongolia or Irkutsk, the game pieces would begin shooting through the air at the opponent's crotch and before we knew it, one of us was forced to surrender.

We didn't restrict ourselves to merely playing indoors. When we were in one or the other's home, it could be very dangerous. Several times,
we were in his parents' bed when we heard his mother come home and we had to quickly put our clothes on. So quite often we found odd places to meet outdoors, sometimes in very dangerously public spots. Pangborn Elementary School was just down the street and had recessed doorways. Many afternoons we met in the doorways of the school where we couldn't be seen by anyone in the neighborhood. The janitors were still cleaning in the school, but we knew that if we lay down below the windows no one could see us. I don't know how we didn't ruin our clothes, rolling around on the concrete having sex, but we didn't. When it got colder and we needed more protection, we would crawl into the dumpster by the school cafeteria door if it wasn't too full of rotten vegetables or milk cartons. Whether it was full or not, the smell of sour milk permeated the air, so every now and then we'd have to open the door and hope a breeze would come in. We both enjoyed role playing—some might call it psychodrama. My favorite game we played was Captain Kirk and the Alien Seductress. One of us would play Captain Kirk and the other would
be a floozy from outer space who would seduce Kirk and tease him to the heights of ecstasy so that he would spill a Starfleet secret.

 

 

NO ONE WOULD HAVE KNOWN ANY OF THIS WAS going on if they'd seen our vicious ongoing battle in the hallways of North Potomac Middle School. Perhaps as a foreshadowing of his starring role as Tango on the highway so many years later, Michael loved to assume the role of a policeman who would bust me for an infraction, from suspected prostitution to carrying a concealed weapon. Of course, the fact that I was resisting arrest goes without saying. If I had had a car, perhaps I would have gotten into it and led him on a one-hundred-mile-per-hour car chase like he did to the county police in West Virginia so many years later. My arrest usually led to a very vigorous frisking.

Our prepubescent sex life was dangerous and exciting. This combination of attraction and revulsion was extremely confusing. I really did hate him but there was something irresistible
about our ongoing physical relationship. I felt what we were doing was wrong and I'm pretty sure he did too, but between us, we found ways of acting out fantasies and exploring identities we never would have gotten to discover otherwise. It drove me crazy that he still had to assert himself, or I should say impose himself, into my life in other ways by harassing me, teasing me, and calling attention to himself when we were at school. I hated him so much for setting up this dynamic in which he was the tough “straight” boy and I was a faggot at school, while we were both complete sex pigs in private. It didn't seem fair, and I felt powerless to do anything about it.

 

 

AT THIS POINT, NO ONE KNEW ABOUT OUR PRIVATE encounters. His mother didn't like me because of my earlier encounter with her older son, but she was clueless to all of the activity that was going on under her nose. Sometimes we would be in his swimming pool while his mother was in the kitchen cooking and one of us would
be below the surface giving the other a blow job. In winter we would build snow forts high enough so that my mother couldn't see us from behind her kitchen counter. As she washed the dishes we would be out in the freezing weather in a sixty-nine position, just out of sight. In the summer we would climb up in trees and, concealed by the foliage, give each other blow jobs. As all this was happening, the changes in our bodies were evident as well. I remember when Michael got his first pubic hair, which was a few months before I got mine. We were both very excited. He felt like he was a man, which was very important to him. As he strutted around flaunting his pubic hair, I put on my mother's bra and danced around the living room. One day, we heard my mom arrive home from the grocery store. We put on our clothes and ran out to help her bring in the groceries and damned if he didn't tell her that I had been wearing her bra. This was the kind of thing that drove me crazy. Why did he have to tell my mother that I was wearing her bra? It reinforced everything that she hated
about me, got me in trouble, and made the rest of my day miserable while he went off smug and self-satisfied.

Of course there was no logic or reason behind what we did. Our bodies were surging with desire and a carnal drive that overrode any rational thought. As soon as one of us got the urge, the other one was there. Sometimes on summer nights I'd hear him scratching at my screen window, and I'd raise the screen and stick my cock out the window for him to suck. It was a good thing he was on the second floor and there was no way I could get to his window or I would have probably broken my neck trying to do the same thing. As soon as he disappeared, my disgust would always return.

 

 

IN RETROSPECT I IMAGINE WE WERE BOTH JEALOUS of each other. Michael had a tremendous ease with adults, and my mother seemed to like him very much. He was, in her eyes, a “go-getter.” He had a paper route and when we had been in Cub Scouts, he would go door to door selling
things, making money for the troop. He mowed lawns for extra cash, and was sassy in a way that was funny to some people. And he was a flirt, which can be cute in children sometimes. I, on the other hand, was no longer my mother's most glamorous accessory. I was, in her words, a “siss-biscuit.”

“Don't be such a siss-biscuit,” she would say. I was happy being thought of as a sissy, but I considered myself to be more of a tomboy because I liked climbing trees. I didn't like sports and was certain I had been born in the wrong body. I didn't want to mow lawns or have a paper route. I liked babysitting and taking care of people. My parents forced me to mow people's lawns for cash and when I spent my money on
Vogue
or
Tiger Beat
, they criticized me for wasting it on “that stupid stuff.” I didn't see what the point was in making money if I couldn't spend it on what I wanted.

“Why can't you be more like Michael Hunter?” was probably the worst thing my mother could have said to me and maybe she knew it. I've asked her about it since then and she claims she doesn't remember saying it.

Sometimes I justified my sexual liaisons with Michael by telling myself that if I had sex with him he would be more likely to leave me alone at school. Looking back I realize having sex with him might have encouraged him to treat me even worse.

 

 

ONE SUMMER, SEVERAL OF THE OTHER BOYS IN the neighborhood and I decided to make a tree house in the woods. In spite of the fact that I was a known faggot, the other boys either didn't care or thought they knew better because we had all grown up together. I passed a zillion sissy tests to prove how tough I was—jumping off this, riding my bike over that, setting fire to something else. Perhaps they were even titillated by the idea of my being a cock sucker. In any case, they never gave me any shit about it. Not far from our neighborhood, there was a plant that manufactured rubber products and behind it were huge stacks of wooden pallets with piles of rubber mats on them. We dragged a bunch of the pallets through the woods and constructed ourselves a tri-level
tree house that you could stand up in, with a roof. We decided to line our tree house with the rubber mats to keep the cold weather out, so we nailed them inside and outside the pallets with about three inches in between for insulation. Our tree house had a door and a window, a mattress and a cooler. Once finished, it became Michael's and my regular spot for after-school sex.

One day, when we were thirteen, Michael was hit by a car and broke his leg. Going up to the tree house became impossible. I would have to visit him at his house, a place I generally avoided due to the tension with his older brother. Although I wasn't exactly his mother's favorite person in the world, she seemed to be softening to me, as I was the only one of Michael's friends who came to visit him on a regular basis when, due to his crutches, he was unable to pursue his Dudley Do-Right lifestyle of delivering papers, mowing lawns, and all the other activities that made him shine so brightly in the eyes of the neighborhood adults. His mother thought it was nice that I would come and keep him company. He would make himself comfortable on a beanbag
chair in the TV room with his leg elevated and I would sometimes give him blow jobs when he was in that position, making sure that I was positioned in just the right spot so that I could lean on his leg and make him scream in pain while I was sucking his dick, just so he knew who was in charge.

In the evening his parents were usually in the TV room, so we would go up to Michael's room and do “homework.” It was a Sunday night and Michael was in bed with his leg on a cushion. He had just gotten a new Sonny and Cher record and we struck a deal that I would suck him for ten minutes and then he had to suck me for ten minutes while we listened to side one. He had gotten a new digital clock for Christmas and it was right by his bed. Trust me when I tell you I had my mouth on his cock and my eyes on the clock. As soon as my ten minutes were up I took a standing position next to his bed because his leg wouldn't bend and I was six minutes into my blow job when I heard a rustling in the hallway and there stood Evelyn Hunter with a look of shock and rage such as I'd never seen. Her
teased and frosted hair went paler in the dark shadows of the hallway and her voice bellowed out, “What are you doing!? No . . . I don't want to know. Get out! Get out!” She became hysterical, and told me to never set foot in her house again. She screamed at me as I zipped up my pants, “I should call your mother right now!”

“Don't call my mother!”

“Well, will you tell her what happened?”

“Yes, I'll tell her as soon as I get home.”

“And you tell her that this time it was your fault, you sick freak!”

“Yes, I will,” I replied in tears. “Just don't call her. I'll tell her, I promise.”

Mrs. Hunter had no reason to doubt me as I had already confessed to having sex with her other son a few years earlier. As I rode my bike home in the cool fall air, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't need to tell my mother anything. I thought, what's Mrs. Hunter going to say? “I caught my son sucking your son's dick.” I didn't think she would do that even though I almost wished she would. This was a very liberating moment. I'd been honest with my mother and
hoped for understanding once before and as far as I was concerned she had ruined my life with her hysterical response. If I hadn't been honest with her then, I wouldn't be in this jam I was in now, so I resolved to keep this latest development to myself. Once again, I was riding off into the future feeling like the worst was behind me. I also resolved never to have sex with Michael Hunter again, but of course, I did.