Bunny and the Buckaroo dressed like fugitives from the rodeo. Summer and winter, they wore identical western outfits; cowboy boots, faded skin-tight jeans (real cowboy butt-cutters), western shirts, yellow neckerchiefs and Stetsons. Their Stetsons might be black, white, brown, tawny, or gray as the occasion demanded. These cowboys also affected Wild West speech, which they’d spent years perfecting—though they irregularly slipped and uttered sentences natural or even grammatical. They’d been best friends since childhood, had learned pleasure with each other, and had never slept with any other man, a substantial disappointment to those who fanaticized about making a love sandwich between them.
Of course, Bunny and the Buckaroo weren’t their given names, but no one in the gay community called them by anything else. Their country asses had first seen light in Frenchglen, an insignificant speck on the Oregon state map, though Bunny claims that the town did “git arount to plasterin’ down the hoss apples” on its main street -- meaning the city council paved it. The Buckaroo insists that Frenchglen is a great place “if’n a body wants ter photergraph wildfowl, squirt cowjuice, or attend the doxology works,” but Central Oregon isn’t noted for its appreciation of gay lovers.
“Howdy, pardner. This here’s Bunny and the Buckaroo,” came the lilting voice answering the phone. How Bunny assumed his nickname, I never knew, but buckaroo stems from the Latino cowherds or vaqueros who rode the purple sage ranges of Peter French, Henry Miller, and John Devine. In Oregon, Buckaroo means cowboy.
Over the years I’d known them, I’d discovered that Bunny had a deeper voice. “Buckaroo, it’s me.”
Seekers interested in reading contemporaneous fiction about the buckaroos or “buccaroos” of Eastern Oregon should consult the novels and short stories of Owen Wister, notably The Jimmyjohn Boss.
“Howdy, Mike. We heard tell you been bull-dozing fer Kim Flanders. Goin’ after that bumbling blowhard bastard, Justin T. Albee. ‘Spect yore wantin’ us to stick a spoke in the ole’ rip’s wheel?”
“Not over the phone, Buckaroo. We need to meet in private.”
“Yore wantin’ us to clean Albee’s plow?” His voice sounded so eager that I didn’t ask the difference between cleaning a plow and sticking a spoke in a wheel.
“We’ll talk about it.” Bill’s paranoia had rubbed off.
“But yore wantin’ us fer something shady, right? Something up our gulch?” the Buckaroo drawled hopefully.
“Buckaroo, I’m not sure what’s up your gulch. However, this is the kind of job you like.”
“Spill it, Mike. What’s got yore tumbleweeds tangled?”
I shook my head, a silly gesture over the phone. “My boss is getting paranoid about wiretaps.”
The Buckaroo laughed uproariously. Then I heard him explaining to Bunny, “Mike’s got a notion some four-flusher’s bugging his phone.”
“What kinda hornswoggler’s gonna wiretap you, Mike?” came Bunny’s voice from the background.
“Nobody. That’s not what I said, Buckaroo. Anyway, cell phones aren’t known for being particularly secure. Let’s meet tonight.”
The Buckaroo was still laughing. “The ole’ benzinery? Bunny and I’ll mosey over there, directly.” Bunny and the Buckaroo were the only homosexuals I knew who moseyed.
“Yeah, the ‘ole’ benzinery’ will be fine,” I agreed, hanging up quickly before either cowboy could crack another joke at my expense.
The Buckaroo’s “ole benzinery,” Shove It—a reddish sign over the door proudly proclaimed “Shove It”—was the sleaziest gay bar in Portland. Sleazier breeder bars existed, but among gay joints no place bottomed out under Shove It. The atmosphere alone was sufficient to rot the patrons’ lungs. I drew a deep breath of carbon monoxide rising from the street before I pulled the door open, but the issuing blast of cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, body odor, and spilled beer struck me like a bean-fed burro’s fart.
The denizens of Shove It turned from their beer when I entered. As they eyeballed me, checking out the new meat, I saw a cigarette burning in the ashtray before each patron. Three men were manfully feeding five dollar bills into the video poker machines and two more were playing at the single pool table. On an earlier visit to this bar, I’d watched a drunk drop his jeans and sprawl naked over the pool table. Fearing a police raid, I turned to rat him out to the bartender, but the bartender was already hurrying from behind the bar, unzipping his pants as he walked.
Shove It was the perfect spot for a clandestine rendezvous because never did any straight man, any female of whatever sexual disposition, or any gay man with an ounce of self-respect set foot in the hellhole. Terrorists and revolutionaries could’ve plotted to bomb the capitol and overthrow the government in carefree abandon around Shove It’s smoke-wreathed tables. Bunny and the Buckaroo were sitting at a small corner table well away from the beaded curtain that led to the reeking toilet. I waved to them and signaled the bartender.
“MacTarnahan’s Blackwatch,” I ordered, examining the explicit posters covering the walls, a pathetic montage compared to my masterpiece. “What happened to the Kim Flanders signs you had in the window yesterday?”
The bartender shook his head warily as he topped the foam on my beer. “The fuckin’ cops made us take ‘em down.”
“The police forced you to take down political signs? They told you directly to remove the signs?” Such an order would be illegal.
The bartender smacked his toothless gums, worn smooth from the passage of countless dicks. “More like a hint. Two cops came around and told me that it might be easier to get our police calls answered without those signs in our window. Then they warned me that the signs might tempt hooligans to smash our glass.”
“Looks like the mayor’s playing rough, but you shouldn’t be cooperating with the forces trying to destroy the gay community.”
The bartender swallowed heavily, and when I took out my wallet he told me that my porter was on the house. He was trying to assuage his guilt. I wasn’t surprised by the mayor’s actions because coercion was the crude, heavy-handed approach I’d expect from a creature of no imagination. I could only hope that Lance had had no part in it.
I carried my glass to the table, greeted Bunny and the Buckaroo, and told them that the mayor was using the police to remove our signs.
“You didn’t figger the polecat would spray that direction?” Bunny asked.
I didn’t bother answering that loaded question. Bunny’d left me the choice of looking like a cynic or a fool.
“The mayor caught you with yore britches down,” Bunny commented.
I decided to go for cynic. “I’m never shocked by the opposition’s dirty tricks. I’m no Mario Cuomo.”
Bunny and the Buckaroo glanced at each other, uncertain whether to betray their ignorance. “What’d that boiled shirt piroot about?” Bunny asked.
“Piroot?” I asked.
The Buckaroo commented, “Bunny you got this here bangtail buckin’ catawampously. He’s champing at the bit to regale us with another tall tale from his repertoire.”
“Pirootin’ means foolin’ around, Mike,” Bunny said. “Go on. Tell us yore story.”
“In 1977, when Cuomo and Ed Koch were running for mayor of New York,” I began, “a Cuomo staffer paid a security consultant to check out whether Koch, a bachelor, didn’t have a few boyfriends in his background.”
“Ya-hoo! Was Koch gittin’ on with a berdache?”
“Buckaroo, what the hell’s a berdache?”
“Was he gittin’ on with a squaw man?” Bunny clarified
“Unknown. We can only hope. Anyway, Koch was pissed when he found out, and Cuomo let on he was shocked to be accused of spying. Then posters started showing up around the city that read, ‘Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo.”
“Oh my gawd.”
“However, Koch wasn’t the man to take it lying down.”
“I take it that way,” moaned a soused voice from the next table.
Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo
“Afterward, when a sound truck prowled around blasting ‘A vote for Cuomo is a vote for the Mafia,’ Cuomo showed he couldn’t take what he dished out and demanded that Koch apologize.”
I sipped my beer while they contemplated my story.
“I do love it when them thin-skinned galloots run fer office,” the Buckaroo announced. “It’s fun sticking burrs under their saddles.”
“True, but this time you’ll be working against Justin T. Albee, who has the hide of a rhinoceros.”
“And the asshole to boot.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I snickered after I’d managed to swallow without cream porter running out my nose. “We’ll have some money, but I don’t know how much. The campaign manager is going to divert some cash.”
“We hain’t dry gulching fer the banknotes,” Bunny claimed.
“Besides, it’s more fun to chisel the opposition fer the doofunnies,” the Buckaroo added.
“We might find a way to bill Albee’s campaign for our dirty tricks expenditures,” I agreed. “We’ll pull out all the standard pranks.”
“False rumors, letters, push polls, and such-like crowbait?” Bunny said, nearly drooling into his own beer.
“Yeah, the works, but that’s all lamebrain stuff. They’ll be doing the same tricks against our guy. We want something fancy. We want acts of genius that nobody will see coming.”
“What’re you cookin’ up in yore peckerhead, Mike?”
I leaned forward and whispered. “The mayor’s staff includes a closeted lesbian and a guy who doesn’t know he’s gay. I’m going to seduce the guy and listen to his pillow talk. Meanwhile, I want you guys on Albee’s ass day and night—especially night. We’re going to know every time the mayor takes a leak. Then we’ll hit him in his weakest spot.”
“Where’re you gonna toss this lasso?” Bunny asked, leaning away as a drunken guy, blond and stacked, but bruised, stumbled against our table.
“I’ll let you know when I find out,” I promised, pushing on the drunk’s buttocks to keep him from falling on me. Unaware of my hands on his ass, he staggered toward the toilet.
“Yore sure he’s a polecat?” Bunny asked, his voice low.
“There’s something on everybody,” I quoted. “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption.”
The two cowboys lowered their beer and stared at me like I’d just dropped out of a bull’s ass.
"Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud."
Willie Stark in All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
As I leafed through The Portland Bee the next morning, I smelled Justin T. Albee’s corruption as, oddly, he spoke without consulting his advisors. After the Chamber of Commerce deserted him and his major contributor defected, the mayor summoned a novice reporter and unleashed a bizarre diatribe.
“The gays are coming after me,” was the quote the newspaper led with. “Those shirtlifters have set their sights on my flank.”
As I rolled laughing in my chair, I read some of his choicer bits aloud to my parents and a dour Janet, who claimed she supported Albee in spite of his pancake fallacy.
“I’ve got a pink bulls-eye painted on me,” Justin T. Albee proclaimed. “The fruits are wearing me down. They’re pounding me, pounding me hard. They’ve set the gay agenda, and it’s got my name plastered all over it.”
“He sounds obsessed,” Mom suggested, understating the case.
“He’s off his rocker,” I corrected, reading on somewhat more soberly. “He says that a vote for Albee is a ‘vote against the homosexual controlled communists.’”
“We’re back to red-baiting again?” Dad asked, rolling his eyes.
“I’m afraid so. Let’s hope it doesn’t work today like it did in the fifties. Uh-oh, Janet, here’s a quote you’ll like. The mayor says that Kim Flanders and his staff are a bunch of Tinker Bells.”
“I don’t like it,” Janet announced, surprising the whole family. She tossed her mop of hair. “Nobody can call my big brother Tinker Bell but me. But it’s okay if Arnold Schwarzenegger calls you a girlie man.”
“Thanks loads, Janet,” I muttered.
Picture of unknown origin
I wondered whether Albee’s recent pattern of demagoguery and personal vilification was a campaign strategy. Personal vilification is hard to deflect; though it can backfire if the voters develop sympathy for the opponent. The best tactic is to learn something even more damaging to the other side. I had Bunny and the Buckaroo tailing the mayor to see if he had a mistress. Unfortunately, if the mayor had a girlfriend, she wouldn’t be too effective since the mayor was running against an openly gay candidate. Some heterosexual candidates brag of their conquests; Edwin Edwards predicted that he’d be elected governor of Louisiana unless he was found in bed with “a dead girl or a live boy.”
After breakfast, I drove to campaign headquarters, greeted Neil who was hard at work at his computer, and poured coffee into my red Portland Fire and Rescue mug. I saw Kim Flanders talking with Bill. Bill beckoned me, and when I entered, he shut the door. My heart thumped up into my throat as I took the chair Kim indicated. Bill sat down behind his desk but Kim Flanders remained standing, looming over me ominously.
“Why do you want me to win this race, Mike?” Kim asked.
I shifted in my chair. “You’re young, intelligent, and gay,” I answered slowly. “You come closer to seeing the world the way I see it than the other side ever could.”
Kim blushed pink. “Do you have a social conscience, Mike?”
I sighed, realizing that I was about to receive another social conscience lecture. For some strange reason, people felt compelled to lecture me about developing a social conscience. The lectures annoyed me, but they’d never affected my behavior. I made a speech in hope of deflecting Kim’s lecture and told him what I thought he might want to hear.
“Maybe not the same way you have a conscience,” I admitted. “I’m willing to make a stink to win. I’m willing to sign up everybody in the graveyard before the other side can break out their shovels. Politics are dirty and nobody ever won by being too nice to dirty his hands. I want Justin T. Albee out of office because giving power to such a mentality is an offense against humanity.”
Bill was nodding his head in agreement, but Kim asked, “Isn’t that a bit psychopathic?”
“I’m not a psychopath, Kim. Those people don’t care whom they hurt. I’m a trickster. I’m willing to lie about the opposition; I’m not willing to kill. I’d never cheat a little old lady out of her life savings, but I’d gleefully bamboozle Albee out of his campaign war chest.”
Kim Flanders was shaking his head over my rationale, though Bill’s face was bright with enthusiasm. I’ll never know the gist of the lecture Kim was about to deliver because just as he opened his mouth, Lisa burst into Bill’s office uninvited, furiously waving a torn poster.
“Look at this shit,” she screamed. “Just look at it.”
Bill grabbed the poster and flattened it on the desk. It depicted a pickpocket lifting a wallet out of a man’s hip pocket. The caption coming from the pickpocket’s mouth stated, “I’m voting for Flanders.” Beneath the pickpocket, a wino sprawled on the sidewalk said, “Flanders is my man.” Beside him, three jailed criminals grasped the bars of their cell and chanted, “Flanders is our ticket out.”
“This is so outrageous that nobody’ll fall for it,” Kim Flanders said.
“Yeah,” Bill agreed. “So why has the mayor suddenly switched from gay-baiting to making phony insinuations?”
A sick feeling filled me, and I shook my head. “There has to be another purpose. As is, this poster was never intended to sway voters.”
“Then why . . .” Kim started.
“It’s a set-up,” I said. I turned to Lisa. “Where’d you find it?”
Lisa had turned a shade pale. “On a light pole.”
“Where?”
“Halfway down the block.” Her voice had taken on a defensive tone.
“And you pulled it off the light pole?”
She nodded her head halfheartedly. Her face had gone white. “It pissed me off when I read it.”
“Yeah, that was the intention,” I agreed. “Did you see anybody watching you? Did you notice anybody with a camera?”
“Oh, fuckin’ hell,” she moaned as the full impact of what she’d done hit her. “I didn’t see a fuckin’ photographer.”
“That’d be the only purpose for a poster like this. Somebody wanted a dupe on our side to tear it down while they took pictures of her violating campaign law. I expect we’ll see you removing this poster on the news tonight, Lisa.”
Tears sprang from her eyes. I grabbed her and hugged her. “Sorry, Lisa.”
Kim Flanders was studying us with dismay. “I’m going to get accused of dirty politics?”
“No doubt about it, Kim. That’s the way it works.”
“That bastard is going to accuse me of playing dirty? After he tricked a staffer into pulling down a phony poster?”
Neil poked his head into the office. “Hey, there’s something new coming up on Albee’s web site. You have to see this.”
“Uh-oh,” I muttered. “That was fast.”
We trooped to Neil’s desk and looked at his monitor. A single message kept flashing across Justin T. Albee’s web site. “Watch for news!” it read. “New streaming video of Flanders’ campaign politics!”
I slipped out the door and strolled nonchalantly down the block. The first pole I passed bore a poster similar to the one Lisa had torn down. I read it, pretended to laugh, and surveyed my surroundings. In a dark doorway across the street stood a man wielding a video camera. My heart sunk as I realized the camera operator was Lance.
I sauntered farther down the block, turned the corner, crossed, doubled back, and approached the doorway surreptitiously. “Wasn’t the video of Lisa enough?” I asked quietly. “Does Albee want to catch all of us on tape?”
Lance nearly dropped his camera when I spoke so close to his ear. He gaped, speechless, except for a gulping sound.
“Well, Lance?”
He swallowed the lump in his throat while I waited for a response.
“‘The more, the merrier,’ the mayor said,” Lance confessed with surprising honesty.
“I’ll bet.” I smiled at him. I couldn’t resist. He was too cute. “Anyway, you can tell our stick-butt mayor that your work here is done. We’re onto you.” I swatted Lance’s rump playfully, and he jumped like I’d goosed him with a two-by-four.
“When you’re watching that video on your web site and later on the news, you ought to remember that Lisa is a really nice person. You shouldn’t have done that to her.”
“How about what you did?” Lance asked, outraged but careful to move his ass beyond my reach. “You embarrassed the mayor.”
“He’s a candidate, Lance. He’s fair game. If you’d snagged Kim Flanders tearing down your little sign, I wouldn’t say a word. But you’re going to humiliate a staffer, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The beauty of it was that he was ashamed, and I was exploiting his conscience to save Kim’s campaign from embarrassment. Lance looked crestfallen. However, I didn’t feel so sorry for him that I considered letting him off the hook. I’d make it up to him with first rate gay sex.
He shrugged. “It’s out of my hands. Stacy picked up the tape and told me to get more.”
“You let Sawyer tell you what to do?”
“I outrank her in City Hall staff, but she outranks me in the campaign to reelect. She’s the campaign manager.”
I snickered at the mayor’s weird organizational structure. “Do you have plans for this afternoon?”
Lance skittered a few more steps away. “What do you have in mind?”
I slithered toward him. “How about working out with me?”
“Working out?” he asked, his voice dark with suspicion
“You do exercise?” I asked.
Lance loosened up slightly. “Oh, that. I was afraid you meant something perverted.”
I grinned. “You have a lot to learn about perversion. Anyway, how about exercising with me?”
“Are you nuts? You work for the enemy. Not-to-mention, you’re light in your loafers. I can’t be seen with you.”
“Sure you can—especially after what you did to poor Lisa.” I was blackmailing his emotions and loving every minute of it. “Have you ever been to the Rainbow Club?”
He squinted. “What’s that?”
“It’s a fitness center for sexual minorities. You know, gay men, lesbians, transvestites, bisexuals, transsexuals—the finest people on Earth. We have our own gym because gender-bent people aren’t comfortable changing and showering with breeders.”
“Oh.” His face flushed deep red, and his breath came somewhat faster.
“It’s on Southeast Clinton Street. I’ll meet you there at 4:00. You can come in as my guest.”
While Lance was staring at me, uncertain what to answer, a group of religious zealots paraded down the street, peddling their mental prison to all who’d listen. They pressed tiny green books into our hands and passed on. Lance glanced at his and slipped it into his pocket.
“Nobody’ll be expecting you at the Rainbow Club,” I urged. “There’ll be no cameras, no reporters. We can talk freely.”
He drew a deep breath. “Okay.”
I could have kissed Lance then, but I was afraid I’d scare him off. Better to lure him into the bowels of the Rainbow Club where the atmosphere might put him in touch with his latent homosexual feelings. I winked, told him that I’d see him at 4:00, and hustled back to campaign headquarters.
Bill met me inside the door. “The video of Lisa is already up on Albee’s web site,” he said, and I hurried to Neil’s computer, flipping the zealot’s freebee into the first trash can I passed.
We watched the jerky image of Lisa tearing down the poster. After the fourth viewing, we agreed that the tape lacked substance. Nothing visually connected Lisa to Kim Flanders.
The intern Bruce tapped my arm, and I glanced at what he was holding.
“Did you know you tossed a Bible into the trash?” Bruce asked.
“Some asshole pressed it on me,” I said.
“It’s a microscopic New Testament. See?”
“Keep it if you want it,” I offered. “I’ve no use for it.” I turned back to Bill, and keeping my voice low so the intern wouldn’t hear, demanded, “Was Kim firing me.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mike. I’d already talked him out of it. He was going roast your ass with a lecture because last night the mayor called him on that pancake introduction. Kim apologized to Albee.”
“He apologized.” I was aghast.
“Yeah. Kim wanted to run a clean campaign. Whoever put up those posters and videotaped Lisa did you a favor. Now Kim’s ticked and ready to fight back, and firing you is the last thing on his mind.”
“So I can keep my job for today?” I asked sarcastically
“Don’t be bitter. Did you meet with your friends?”
“Yeah. They’re following the mayor. Trying to get something on him. We’ll see about that. We’re starting too late, and it’s a long shot.”
“But you have other ideas, Mike?” Bill asked hopefully.
I pretended to glance around suspiciously. “Aren’t you worried about bugs, spies, and secret agents?”
Bill laughed. “I slept that off. I’ll admit that I was sounding a bit paranoid yesterday. Your love of connivance caused it.”
“What’s that word mean?” I asked, uncertain whether I was being praised or insulted.
“You’re a conniver. You like to plot and plan and scheme.”
I grinned with pleasure. “That’s the truth.” I looked him dead in the eye. “We’re going to beat Justin T. Albee, Bill, providing you don’t let our candidate’s ethics tie my hands.”
Approaching the Rainbow Club, I saw a burgundy Saturn parked along the curb with Lance waiting behind the wheel. A thrill shot through my heart—he’d shown up. I hadn’t dared hope he’d appear. Lance noticed me and climbed out of his car.
“This is it,” I announced, indicating a doorway, gay with rainbow flags.
Nervously, Lance nodded, and I ushered him through the door.
“Hi, boys,” simpered Todd, the flamboyantly effeminate receptionist standing behind the counter. As usual, Todd was wearing the club’s uniform lavender shirt and pride tights. Lance regarded Todd as though he were the bogeyman his mother had always warned him against. I handed Todd my membership card.
“This is Lance. He’s my guest.”
“Oh, good catch.” Todd virtually swooned over Lance’s beauty, and when he slipped a registration card into Lance’s hand, he gripped and massaged it like an octopus. “Please fill in your name, address, and telephone number.” Todd had to release Lance’s hand so poor Lance could fill in the card, but his fingers lingered lovingly on Lance’s fingers for a long, last feel.
Looking for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching eighteen wheeler, Lance scanned the card. Finally, he wrote. As he filled in his personal information, the pen trembled. I held my breath until Lance finished. Then Todd demanded his drivers license and checked it against the card. These formalities concluded, Lance and I entered the cavernous club where sensual pagan murals bedecked the walls.
“Do you swim?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I didn’t bring any trunks,” Lance protested, eyeing the gender-twisted murals. “Just some workout shorts.”
“I’d like to swim. I’ll buy you a swimsuit.”
The club sold clothing: tights, bicycle style shorts, and swimsuits, all in gay colors. Lance studied the rainbow bikini—the only style of men’s swimwear—with troubled enchantment.
“I can’t wear something like this,” he gasped.
The attendant was wearing Rainbow Club bicycle shorts and shirt. “What’s wrong with it?” she demanded.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll buy a club swimsuit, and Lance can wear mine.”
Lance released an audible sigh of relief, and I paid for the swimsuit, keeping the receipt to list as a campaign expense. Carrying the rainbow bikini in one hand and my gym bag in the other, I led Lance to the changing room. As we entered, Lance appeared disoriented. He glanced at the pair of lesbians toweling off outside the shower, and the singular individual with both hooters and a penis changing into workout tights.
“Are we in the right locker room?” he whispered.
I grinned to reassure him. “This is a gender neutral gym, Lance. Everybody uses the same lockers, showers, and bathroom. Any other way, the trannies would be excluded or humiliated.”
He looked at me as though I’d answered in Martian. “Trannies?”
Tranny or Trannies?
Mike seems unaware that “Trannies” is not the preferred nomenclature. Many trans-sexuals and cross-dressers find the word offensive.
“Transsexuals, Lance. Men becoming women. Women becoming men. Not-to-mention the transvestites who couldn’t decide which facility to use. The Rainbow Club provides sexual equality.”
Lance shuddered. “Everybody using the same bathroom, the same showers. It’s weird.”
“Stop being so Republican. After you’ve showered with the girls . . .” A passing hermaphrodite interrupted my train of thought. “ . . .and, er, whatever, a couple of times, you won’t think twice about it.”
I stripped off my clothes, stuffed them into the first available locker, crammed my derričre into the six-colored bikini, and examined my shape in the mirror. I sure looked gay, not-to-mention hot-to-trot. I glanced at Lance and observed that he hadn’t undressed.
“Toss your clothes into the locker,” I urged, reaching into my bag. Lance reluctantly undressed, and when I saw him naked I nearly drooled. His body was yummy from top to bottom. With regrets, I handed him my swimsuit, a Greg Parry Key West bikini in a tropical print of purple fronds over a blue ocean.
“These are the swim trunks you offered me?” he asked, handling the flimsy Nylon/Lycra swim briefs. His tone was one of dismay, but his penis had thickened.
“Did you expect I bought my clothes from the Portland Tent and Awning Company? Loosen up, Lance,” I insisted, running a significant glance over his naked body. “Just slip into them, and we’ll jump in the pool.”
Lance concluded that minimal coverage was better than no coverage, so he pulled up the bikini, adjusted his goodies in the pouch, and straightened the seat. The garment conformed deliciously to the curves and cleft of his buttocks. Two lusty studs heading for the shower stopped to ogle him, but I warned them off unobtrusively.
I led Lance past the showers to the wet area. The Olympic-sized swimming pool had long lanes divided by ropes, and two adjoining lanes were free. Lance dived into his lane, cutting the water with scarcely a ripple. Though my entrance into the water was nowhere as clean as his, it wasn’t shabby either. I caught up with him halfway down the first lap.
“You’re a strong swimmer, Mike,” Lance admitted when we rested after the fifth lap.
“It’s my forte,” I bragged.
“Isn’t that pronounced like for-tay?”
I shrugged. “Whatever. How do you like my bikini?”
Lance glanced at his bulge. “It moves through the water smoother than my baggies.”
My swimsuit was making him feel sensuous, though he wouldn’t own up to it.
“It looks luscious on you. I’d like to slurp you up right here.”
Lance reddened, plunged into water made green by the pool tiles, and floundered down the lane with all the dignity he could muster. His incipient hard-on made him slow and clumsy so even with his large lead, I caught him as he reached the other end. Fearing that he’d bolt for the changing room, I challenged him to a race. “We’ll have a little wager.”
“What do I get if I win?” he asked, sounding suspicious.
“A blowjob.” Several heads turned as if I were preparing to deliver on the spot.
“It’s a club for exercise, not a bathhouse, boys,” a taunting voice called, colored with innuendo.
Lance blushed even deeper but beneath the surface the front of the Greg Parry bulged more provocatively than before and the rear pulled deeper up his crack. It was a lovely sight. “What do you get if you win?” he asked nervously.
“Nothing. I make no demands on you, but you won’t get the blowjob if you lose.”
I have never seen a man swim so slowly as Lance did that day. His performance was pathetic, especially since the prospect of my mouth on his dick aroused him. He was so afraid of his natural sexuality, I couldn’t guess how Stacy had inveigled him into Skindive. I had never felt patience for latent homosexuals or closet cases, but my affinity for Lance was so intense that I was willing to go to the trouble of helping him come out.
“You have to try to win, Lance,” I complained. “You can’t swim at the speed of seaweed.”
He sped up and I passed him, winning by a comfortable margin. After he lost the wager (saving himself from a fate worse than death), Lance relaxed a trifle—as I’d intended. Rebuffing my advance by losing the race had given him a false sense of security. We continued swimming until he was exhausted, and I was pleased to discover that I had greater stamina than he.
In his weakened condition, he gripped my proffered hand to climb out of the pool, and when we stood side-by-side on the edge, I pulled him close and pressed my lips to his. Lance couldn’t keep his true nature from responding, and his tongue met mine. As we kissed, our cocks hardened, and Lance emitted an eldritch shriek.
“See, you want it as badly as I,” I said, covering for his piercing screech. “Just let it happen.”
“Boys, I told you, you’re not in a bathhouse,” a voice said, with giggles belying its serious intent.
Lance said nothing. His face was bright red, and he looked bewildered. He stood frozen for a full turn around the watch dial, then whirled and charged into the changing room. I shrugged and followed.
I found Lance, oblivious to the transsexuals, homosexuals, and lesbians under adjacent shower heads, stripping off my Greg Parry under a shower spray. I grinned in realization and grabbed my swimsuit from his trembling hands. I smelled the semen before I saw it, and then I knew that Lance had shrieked and bolted after experiencing a wild orgasm and ejaculation when I kissed him.
“It’s okay, Lance. It could happen to any boy. I’ll always treasure this swimsuit.”
“Oh, my, somebody had a gay little accident,” minced a chick-with-a-dick, and one of the big dykes laughed coarsely.
Lance colored again, seized the bikini, and washed it thoroughly. “Do you want to keep my swim briefs?” I asked, stripping off my pride bikini and rinsing out the chlorine.
He gulped, and I hoped he’d swallowed his phony heterosexual pride and fear that he might be one of those people. “May I?” He hesitated. “Not that I intend to wear it again,” he lied. In spite of his embarrassment, he’d enjoyed the sensuous feel of the bikini.
“Sure. My gift. Just so you wear it the next time we swim together.”
“I just said . . .,” he started and then paused in confusion. We’d finished drying on the mats and were walking back to our lockers when he continued, “Let me ask you, Mike. When did you find out you were gay?”
“I’ve always known. Girls never interested me. Not sexually.”
Lance pulled up his silk boxer shorts. “I don’t know what I am. I’m scared.”
“Why don’t you come home with me? Have supper with my parents, and we’ll talk it over.”
Lance shot a few jolts of my deodorant into his armpits, handed me the can, and covered his chest with his white dress shirt. “No. I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Okay. How about tomorrow night?” I suggested.
“I’m not ready, Mike.” He slid his brown belt through the loops of his charcoal flannel slacks.
“Ready for what, Lance? I said we’d talk.”
“I’m afraid to talk about it,” he claimed.
I gnashed my teeth in frustration, but put on a different face for him. “Want to swim with me tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Rainbow Club won’t mind. I can have a guest for a week.”
“How about we work out with weights tomorrow? Would it be all right if we didn’t swim?”
“Sure, Lance,” I sighed. “We’ll spot each other.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “At 4:00 again?”
“Yeah. But you should remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You looked super in that bikini.”
Lance blushed again, but a blush of pleasure—the corners of his wide, sexy mouth turned up and his cheeks dimpled. I walked with him to his car, and he offered his hand to shake. I’d made a little progress with him, but I didn’t even get a goodbye kiss much less the hot gay sex of my dreams. Getting into Lance’s pants was proving tougher than I’d imagined.
Bunny and the Buckaroo lived on Northeast Irving Street in an apartment building that’d been upscale in the 1930’s. Their building, part of a complex sprawling over fifteen tree-shaded acres, had been constructed of rich-hued brick that the English ivy had claimed long since. Leaving my Honda at the curb, I roamed under the old oaks and maples, deep in autumn glory, until I found the only burlap-covered door in the complex. I rang the bell and waited first on one foot, then on the other.
At last, the cowboys answered the door, similarly attired in sheer thong briefs, gun belts studded with bullets, and six-shooters. As they turned to lead me into their apartment, I saw tattoos on their derričres. Bunny bore a three-inch high rabbit nibbling sagebrush and the Buckaroo a sexy cowboy bouncing on a bronco.
I dropped into an heirloom chair that basked in the glow of a pink shaded Tiffany lamp. Whether the lamp was an original or a reproduction, I couldn’t have said, but the thick Persian carpet on the floor spoke of wealth. I glanced around the room, taking in the other furnishings: the antique longcase clock, the Chippendale dining table with a chandelier hanging over it, the first editions of J. Frank Dobie, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Owen Wister, Willa Cather, Bret Harte, Max Brand, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Niven Busch, Larry McMurtry, and Luke Short in leaded-glass cases, and the cracked Western oil paintings on the walls.
“Are you guys rich?” I asked.
“Let’s say we’re well-heeled,” Bunny joked, handing me a cocktail glass.
I scanned the room again, harkening back to my required college humanities courses. It was obvious even to me, whose idea of art consisted of a gigantic masturbation fantasy montage, that Frederic Remington’s own hand had daubed the oils onto the canvas opposite me. On the opposing wall hung an original Charles M. Russell. “How many sleazy politicians did you boys have to trail in order to pay for this stuff?”
“Don’t let a mite of lucre blow yore hat in the creek, Mike,” the Buckaroo advised. “Way back, Bunny’s great grand-pappy found a rich vein of gold under the family ranch out in Frenchglen. Fer years the family’s main occupation was rockin’ on the porch and watchin’ the thunderstorms a’blowing over Steens Mountain. Then Bunny got borned, like a zebra popping up in the corral, and after a spell, he and I hitched up. The family kicked up a row ‘bout our proclivities so we skedaddled fer Portland with the whole kit and caboodle.”
“So why have you been working for me?” I inquired, wondering how much these gay cowboys had piled up. Probably more money than I’d ever see—except in a senatorial campaign account.
“Fer fun,” they chimed in simultaneously. “Dishing up the dirt on politicians is a hoot.”
I wasn’t puzzled by this news. Contrary to public opinion, it’s the rare politician who’s in the game for the money. I gawked at the sumptuous lifestyle that would never be mine, drew a deep breath, and asked, “So what dope have you got on our beloved mayor?”
“Well, he don’t take the rag off the bush.”
“I almost know what that means.”
The boys turned to each other for inspiration, and the Buckaroo nodded. “He’s the most gelded steer we’ve ever tailed,” Bunny announced.
“Yep. We hain’t seen nary a sign of a mistress, a payoff, or a porno stop,” the Buckaroo added. “He ain’t sneaked into a strip club or a peep show, or bought a stroke magazine. He don’t shoplift, punch in the code fer cheaper fruit at the grocery store, or water his plants from his neighbor’s garden hose. He don’t even jump traffic lights or break the speed limit.”
The man didn’t sound human. “Does he go out at all?”
“He fetched the babysitter home after he dusted back from a Republican committee meeting on Tuesday, and on Wednesday night, he and his family drifted down to the gospel mill.”
“Well, there’s that,” I said. “Churches are cesspools of bigotry, ignorance, and suspicion.”
“Surely yore joshin’?” Bunny asked.
“Of course, boys. Well, not about churches—they’re bad places. But there’s no way we can turn his going to church into a scandal. Not unless he dry-humped the choir or pissed in his pew.”
“Might as well pull in yore horns. We sat right behint the peckerwood. The worst thing he done was sing like a barking squirrel.”
I made a quick note of that information, thinking maybe I could inveigle the mayor into singing at a campaign event.
“It’d have to be more subtle than the pancake introduction,” I speculated aloud.
“What’s that yer jawing ‘bout, Mike?”
“Just percolating an idea.” I remembered the cocktail glass in my hand and took a taste. I couldn’t identify the liquid, but it numbed me down to my toes. “What is this hell-brew?”
“An ole’ family recipe. My pappy distills it fer the family.”
“Moonshine? Are you trying to make me blind, crazy, or impotent?”
Chortling, the Buckaroo slid closer to his lover. “Pappy’s moonshine’ll grow ears on yore dick.” His hand explored Bunny’s thong underpants as he asked, “Do you want us to keep follering Albee?”
“No, get some rest tonight. I’ll meet you tomorrow with new instructions. How about high noon?”
“I’ve got a powerful hankerin’ to hit the chow wagon at Shaketown,” Bunny hinted, his own hand getting busy in the Buckaroo’s panties. I wondered whether their open eroticism was an invitation for me to join them.
Shaketown was the predictable choice; Bunny and the Buckaroo loved fast food. “Yeah, Shaketown will be fine.” My mouth was dry with lust and my swollen dick, however earless, made my pants bulge when I rose from my chair. I crossed the expensive carpet and bent over Bunny. My hand caressed his thigh while my lips approached his.
“Pull in yore horns, Mike,” the Buckaroo warned, not unkindly, but certain.
“You shouldn’t have tempted me then,” I insisted, moving my mouth to his.
“We’re not beatin’ the Devil ‘round a stump, Mike,” Bunny said. “We don’t need another hay waddy.”
I turned on my heel and headed for their door. “I’ll see you cowpokes tomorrow then,” I called back, masking my mortification, if not my lust.
I drove home to Ladd’s Addition, stripped, and lay on my bed, staring at the thousands of sexy men who graced my walls and ceiling, and masturbating slowly, though my heart wasn’t in it, so the process took too long, and my arm was throbbing with overwork when I finally spurted and lay stewing in my own juices, feeling terribly alone.
