I arrived early at Shaketown, the best fast-food joint in Oregon, because I wanted to secure a booth ahead of the lunchtime crowd. I scanned the restaurant while I ordered a huckleberry milkshake. Seeing no familiar faces, I grabbed a secluded booth and awaited the arrival of Bunny and the Buckaroo.
As one who loves connivance, as Bill had put it, I was thrilled that Kim Flanders had finally boarded the “Get Albee” stagecoach, though he insisted on penning the horses in the corral. Kim’s reaction to the horrible streaming video of Lisa on the web site and on the news at 5:00 and again at 6:00 had been mildly heartening.
Kim, Bill, Neil, a contrite Lisa, and I huddled around the television and watched a few seconds of colorful street images. Then Lisa appeared, noticed the poster, read it with mounting fury, and ripped it from its pole. Lisa’s image was much clearer on the television screen than it had appeared on the web. Behind the image, the news station inserted Justin T. Albee’s voice demanding apologies and explanations from the Flanders camp. Then the scene shifted to Kim standing behind a podium with a blue curtain backdrop and reading a brief statement that accused the mayor of luring an innocent campaign staffer into a false step. Kim insisted that Justin T. Albee apologize, but the media with its typical right-wing bias made the mayor sound like the archangel Gabriel and our candidate Lucifer.
“We have to win now,” Kim said after the broadcast. He gritted his teeth. “We can’t let Albee get away with this chicanery.”
Lisa cheered him on with, “Fuckin’ A.” Under the circumstances, she should’ve kept silent.
Kim Flanders whirled on Lisa and fixed her with a steely eye. “You need to think before you act—or speak,” he rebuked. “Don’t be so hot-headed.”
“Right,” Bill agreed. “We’re going to hit Albee back, but only after considering the consequences.”
“Err on the side of caution,” Kim warned. “Don’t do anything illegal, immoral, or unfair.”
“If we eliminate the illegal, the immoral, and the unfair, there isn’t much left,” I whispered to Bill, but he put a finger to his lips.
“Kim means don’t get caught,” Bill assured me later when everyone else was out of earshot. “Otherwise you can employ your penchant for intrigue to your heart’s content.”
“It’s a damn good thing I keep a dictionary in my desk,” I grumbled. “Otherwise, I don’t know how I’d follow your orders.”
As I sat in Shaketown, sipping the warming milkshake, I thought about past times when tricksters did get caught. Of course, Watergate is the best-known historical example, but the forgotten blunders are droller.
For instance, during the 1962 campaign, Claude Pepper (dubbed “Red” Pepper by arch-conservatives and John Birchers) ran for reelection using signs that read: “Support JFK—Pull Lever 1A” to convince voters that he was the congressman who’d support the policies of a popular president. On the night before Election Day, Miami police patrolling black neighborhoods nabbed two members of the John Birch Society distributing illegal posters reading “Support JFK—Pull Lever 7A.”
Claude Denson Pepper
My daydreams were interrupted when two jeans-clad asses slid into the booth across from me. I greeted them while they unwrapped their bounty. Bunny and the Buckaroo front loaded Shaketown’s range grown burgers and fries into their faces and slurped blackberry and raspberry shakes between bites. When I asked for ideas to discredit the mayor, I heard only slurps and smacks.
“How can you boys eat so much and stay so svelte?” I asked, my mouth watering.
“We shake it off at the hoe-down,” Bunny said, popping salty, ketchup-dipped fries into his mouth.
“Oh, yeah, you told me that once.” The cowboys frequented gay dance clubs. I’d never danced with anybody in my life, male or female. Since my teenage years, politics had filled my evenings. Maybe if I’d tried to have more of a social life, I wouldn’t be going home every night to an empty bed.
“Boys, we have thirty-one days left until they count the votes. Don’t you have any ideas on how we can spring an October Surprise on Albee?” As I popped the question, my hand slid toward the Buckaroo’s French fries, but he swatted me away.
Bunny shook his head. “Put him in his best bib and tucker,” the Buckaroo suggested, keeping close watch over his fries, “and run him down to the gospel mill.”
I snorted. “If you’re suggesting that we send him to church to pick up votes, that’s not a good idea. We’re trying to keep the voters from knowing anything about Kim’s religious beliefs.”
As I broke down and went to the counter for a burger and fries with a second milkshake keeping them company, I thought back to the day a few months past when Bill had broached the religious subject to the candidate.
“Do you believe in God, Kim?”
“If I answer that, you’re not going to understand the answer.”
“Uh-oh. One of those answers. Let’s have it.”
“Yes,” the candidate replied.
“Yes?” Bill was confused.
“Yes,” Kim repeated, and I made a low wailing sound.
Bill shook his head as if it was swimming. “What does ‘yes’ mean to you, Kim?”
“Ask me whether I believe God is a person.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Right. The whole middle-eastern tradition, the religious tradition we’ve fallen heir to, wants an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Supreme Being who did not create the world as it is. According to that tradition, ‘He’ created the world, and then somebody else came along and made it the way it is. However if the ‘person’ of God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, then it would be impossible for ‘something that is not God’ to alter the creation of God, rendering the beliefs of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ridiculous.”
Neil stared at Kim gape-jawed while Bill pounded his forehead on his desk. At last Bill raised his head and demanded, “Don’t ever repeat any part of what you just said where any voter can hear.”
“How about we get back to something that matters,” I suggested, “like winning an election.”
Shaketown was filling with the lunch crowd as we finished eating.
“How’s it going with that greenhorn were developing?” Bunny whispered. “Albee’s dude that you said was hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night. You got the bulge on him yet?”
“I haven’t got anything that’s going to defeat his boss. However, I’m meeting him at the Rainbow Club in a few hours. I’ll call you afterward—unless I get lucky. Meanwhile, you can stake out his place.”
I handed the boys a photo of Lance with his address penned on the back. Following the pancake breakfast, I’d paid Lizzie Dykeman (really—I couldn’t invent a name like hers), a private investigator who’d worked with me on past campaigns, to dig into Lance’s life. Lizzie hadn’t found much; Lance had never received so much as an overtime parking citation. I had some information on his family history, his high school and college transcripts, and a few photographs.
Lizzie had discovered one disturbing peculiarity. Lance had a roommate—a female roommate (Lizzie called her “easy on the eyes”). Lizzie hadn’t been able to find out whether Lance was “porking her” (Lizzie’s unfortunate word choice) or whether they were merely sharing rent. Nevertheless, I took some comfort in finding out that their apartment had two bedrooms.
I beat Lance to the gym, and for a few minutes I feared he wouldn’t show. It was a toss up whether his Republican demons would nail him into his closet or toss him into my arms. He wanted the glorious freedom of homosexuality bad and feared it worse. Nevertheless, as I leaned against my Honda, my gym bag growing heavier in my hand, his Saturn rolled into view.
Todd winked at Lance. “You gonna sign up for your own membership?”
Lance blanched like he’d just heard his dirty little secret aired on the news, and I shook my head. Todd shrugged and passed Lance through. Once in the locker room, I stripped to the thong underpants I’d selected and changed into silver Lycra shorts and a black shirt with a pink triangle. Offering nary a compliment on my underwear or shorts, Lance pulled up baggy blue shorts and a faded yellow tee shirt. His awful gym clothes made him look so straight that I shuddered.
Lance turned out to be a great work-out partner, and I learned from him as we worked through the machines and the free weights. However, I noticed Lance eyeballing other guys and I felt a strange sickening emotion. I didn’t remember ever having experienced jealousy before then, and it made me feel weak—and shabby.
“These boys are really gay, Lance,” I warned.
He gave me a sidelong glance, his mouth ironically twisted. “You’re gay.”
So was he, but he had to find that out for himself. Apparently, he didn’t know that he’d been checking out the booty. “I don’t make a religion out of it.”
“What do you talking about?” he asked.
“Human beings are naturally promiscuous. Everybody likes sex, whether they admit it or not, and everybody likes their sex wet—especially gay boys.”
Lance looked a trifle nauseated. “That’s a religion?”
“For these guys sex is everything.” I waved my arm to indicate the forms exercising around us. “They’d fuck anybody.”
Lance shuddered. “That’s the nature of sin, Mike. It feeds upon itself. That’s why people need to be controlled.”
We moved to squat bars and stepped to opposite sides to adjust the weights. “I don’t believe in sin, Lance. I believe in common-sense sex—like not catching a nasty case of VD or my death of AIDS.”
Lance’s eyes scanned the room as if he’d stumbled into a leper colony. “Maybe somebody will find a cure.”
“For AIDS?”
“For homosexuality.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Somebody had brainwashed him. “There’s no cure. Being gay isn’t a disease. Look at those so called ex-gays. These Christian groups convince terrified, guilt-riddled queers to live lies. Can you imagine what kind of husband or wife a homosexual-in-denial makes? What kind of lover?”
“You’re saying they’re not really cured?” Lance asked like the idea was new to him. “You think they’re repressing their perversions?”
“Lance, you’ve got to stop thinking that gay sex is a perversion. Sexual repression has terrible effects on people. First they start masturbating like monkeys and then they become homophobic. Just look at Senators Bill Frist and Rick Santorum.”
Former Senator Bill Frist
Lance tried not to laugh, but I had him with those examples. Later, when we showered, we stood under the same spray, and he let me soap his back. I almost got him to soap me, but another man entered the shower and Lance pulled away. (The Rainbow Club’s rules forbade overt sexual activity, though displays of affection such as kissing, cuddling, and hugging—not to exclude the occasional pat on the ass—were okay). I had to bite down on my disappointment. If I could once get him to rub his hands over my ass and stroke my dick, he would be mine. And he’d been close.
Former Senator Rick Santorum
Leaving the gym, I invited him to a restaurant. I wanted to keep him near me, and I thought a restaurant would sound less threatening than another invitation home. Lance didn’t reply, however, and I followed his gaze toward Stacy Sawyer propping her magnificent, black buttocks on the hood of Lance’s Saturn. She was holding a plastic bag in her hand.
“Hi, Stacy,” Lance said, feigning nonchalance.
I sneered at the closeted dyke. “Is this your gym too, Sawyer?”
She glanced significantly at the gay pride flags and sniffed. “Hardly. Are turning our chief-of-staff into a screaming queer?”
“You’re the one who took him to Skindive.”
Sawyer ignored that accusation. “Sleeping with the enemy. The enemy with the scanty panties, no less. Wait ‘till the mayor hears about this.”
“Mind your manners, Sawyer,” I threatened, uncertain whether she was serious or taunting Lance, “or some of the sordid details of your own sex life might come out.” I pointed at the bag she was holding. “Been to Victoria’s Secret to purchase a few tempting goodies to please your girlfriend?”
“You’re a cocksucker, Dodger,” she snarled in the mistaken belief that the word was an insult. She waved her Victoria’s Secret sack as though she was going to beat me with it, but I swatted it aside.
“Take your panties and a hike,” I jeered.
“I can’t, asshole. Lance is supposed to drive me home.”
Lance opened the passenger door, holding it like a gentleman until Sawyer had dropped her lucky ass into the seat. After Lance shut the car door, he told me that he’d catch me later, and without a kiss, a wink, or a handshake, he climbed behind the wheel and tooled away. I stood flummoxed on the sidewalk, wondering why the hell he’d told Sawyer he was meeting me at the Rainbow Club.
Friday was crystals and pyramids night at the New Age Center, so Mom and Pop wouldn’t be home for a while. Janet was making the most of their absence; I found her sprawled on the couch with her boyfriend Spike. Mahatma was lying on the floor at their feet, gnawing a rawhide strip.
Spike was about Janet’s height, but he had spiky black hair that made him look taller and enough metal piercing his face to interfere with the television signal. He and Janet were lying tight together, and Spike’s hand had found its way into Janet’s tee shirt.
“Watch it, you breeders,” I warned. “Don’t get knocked up.”
Spike hastily pulled his hand away from Janet’s tit, and I walked around the couch.
“Don’t sneak up on a person,” Janet complained, sitting upright and dragging Spike with her.
“Like you don’t creep up on me every chance you get.” My eyes wavered away from my sister. Something about Spike was troubling me. He seemed to have grown a second penis-shaped head. As I looked closer, I realized that he was wearing a stuffed monkey with long limbs fastened with Velcro around his neck.
“What is that you’re wearing?”
“That’s Spank.”
“Huh?” He’d lost me.
Janet giggled. “Spank, the monkey.”
“Yeah?” This was breeder behavior beyond my comprehension.
“Tinker Bell knows about spanking the monkey, Spike. He can’t get any butt-boyfriends so he’s got a pervert Jerkatorium in our basement.”
I left Janet, Spike, and Spank to their own devices, built a sandwich from some sliced chicken I found in the refrigerator, added potato chips to the plate, grabbed a cold Coke, and headed for the basement. After I finished eating, I set my plate and empty coke bottle outside the door.
I tried masturbating, but the spirit wasn’t in me. Whether brought about by meeting Spank or watching Lance drive away with Sawyer, my concentration was off. I couldn’t fantasize. Sprawled naked on my bed, I thought about Lance. He’d arranged for Sawyer to rescue him – that much was clear. I’d been thinking him sexually naive but confused. What if he was more devious than I’d thought? After all, I’d been planning to seduce him because I wanted information about the mayor. However, my motives weren’t entirely political. I lusted after Lance so intensely that I could hardly think. Suppose he’d recognized my desire, and was using it against me—and Kim Flanders. Was I being set up, I wondered?
I determined to seduce him but remain wary of what I might reveal. If he was wily, I’d be wilier. Happy that my decision still put Lance in my clutches at some future date, I picked up a book to while away the time. From the Multnomah County Public Library, I’d borrowed a copy of Frankly Speaking, a collection of the extraordinary speeches of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. I grieved that Agnew had been a bourgeois, plutocratic, anti-intellectual Republican—the man had surely known how to trash his opposition.
I’d just reached the point where Agnew said that a “spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals,” when my cell phone buzzed. It was Neil.
“Mike, I have those print-outs you wanted,” he said.
“Can you meet me with them tonight?”
“Sure. Where?”
After giving him directions to Shove It, I called Bunny and the Buckaroo. The cowboys were agreeable so I dressed in an off-white tee shirt and old jeans and caught a city bus. Automobiles are easily identifiable, and politicians engaging in political pranks should avoid driving to the scene of the crime.
Generally, Neil acted like an old-time fairy, limp-wristed and speaking with an affected lisp. However, except for me, he was the most normal human in the bar. When I dashed in, Neil was leaning brokenly against the meat rack, a death’s head grin gripping his face and eyes rolling like those of a frightened child, while in the far corner a black-hooded man bound to a post was getting paddled vigorously.
I ordered Fire Station 5 India Pale Ale, stuck two glasses into Neil’s trembling hands, and dragged him to my favorite table. Brokenly, casting his eyes through the dense cigarette smoke at the troglodytes and masters madly groping the submissives and ponyboys, Neil handed me eight printed pages of names and telephone numbers.
“What are you going to do with these?” Neil asked fearfully.
“Take a poll.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in polling. Besides isn’t it getting a little late tonight?”
“The later, the better.”
Neil blanched at the gusto with which I uttered those words, but then Bunny and the Buckaroo arrived. Neil brightened up when he saw them. What swishy fruit can resist a real, by-gosh cowboy? Not Neil, and if the boys had suggested he drop beneath the table for a little oral action, Neil would’ve been on his knees in an instant. Of course, he’d never met Bunny and the Buckaroo, so he knew nothing of their exclusivity.
“Neil, I’d like you to meet the Buckaroo and Bunny.”
Neil enticingly batted his eyes at the cowboys and held out his purple-polished fingernails for a limp shake. Meanwhile, I reached into the briefcase I’d carried and pulled out a script and four untraceable cell phones.
“You expect me to make calls?” Neil asked, his apprehension returning.
“Sure. It’ll go quicker, and we have a voter registration drive planned for afterward.”
“Afterward?” Neil gasped. “Mike, by the time we finish calling these right wingers, it’ll be the middle of the night. Where are we going to register voters then?”
“Right wingers?” the Buckaroo asked. “Why are we calling mudsills?”
“This is a list of contributors to Albee’s campaign. The low dollar contributors. Nobody on this list gave more than $25.00, most $5.00 or $10.00.”
“What are we gonna to ask them sidewinders?”
“A simple question.” I handed out my prepared script. Bunny and the Buckaroo skimmed the page and chortled, but Neil’s eyes bugged out alarmingly.
“This is a push poll,” Neil gasped.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “They’re a hoot. Haven’t you ever done one?”
“No, I’ve always worked for honest campaigns,” Neil proclaimed self-righteously.
I leered at him. “How many of your candidates won?”
“None of them,” he confessed.
“Watch and learn, Neil,” I advised and punched out the first phone number on my list.
Still pop eyed, Neil watched as I ran through the script with my first lucky customer while Bunny and the Buckaroo sipped their ales and smiled with a sickeningly superior mien.
“Hello, this is Stacy Sawyer with the Young Republicans for Moral Decency,” I announced blithely. “Am I addressing Mr. Burto?”
“Do you know what the hell time it is?” Mr. Burto demanded, but I pressed on bravely.
“Mr. Burto, I know it’s late, but there’s an important question that couldn’t wait.”
Using language worthy of Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr. Burto indicated that he’d like to hear what question was worth disturbing his slumber.
“Well, sir, this concerns Mayor Justin T. Albee’s reelection. Sir, if you knew for a fact that Justin T. Albee had been a member of the Communist Party while he was in college, would you still vote for him?”
Mr. Burto’s answer was a tad alarming, and I considered dialing 911. A loud clatter of yelps coming from the toilet prevented me.
“Yes, sir, you just consider what I asked,” I wrapped up, “and I’ll phone for your answer later. You have a pleasant night now.”
I disconnected and grinned at Neil. “Think you could pull that off?”
“Holy shit!” Neil gasped.
Bunny and the Buckaroo picked up their phones, and I reminded them to use Sawyer’s name. “We want this dirt coming back on Albee from every direction,” I said.
Neil cautiously picked up his phone and called the first number on his list. By the third call, he was happily torturing his victims, and I couldn’t have made him stop if I’d wanted. When our glasses ran dry, I ordered more ale, and the alcoholic buzz made the calls more interesting.
We finished the list shortly after midnight. Neil completed his final call shouting, “I already told you my name, you nitwit. My name’s Stacy Sawyer and I work for Justin T. Albee and I’m telling how you’re going to vote and if you think I’m letting you vote for Flanders you must be a complete idiot.” Hanging up with a grin, he bragged, “I’m afraid the mayor lost that guy’s vote.”
Toward the end, it’d gotten harder to get respondents to answer their phones, but those who did had the funniest reactions. They shouted, screamed, whined, and bullied. One cried pathetically.
“What do we do now?” Neil demanded drunkenly. “Are we going to register voters?”
I beamed proudly at Neil as though I were Dr. Frankenstein and he my creation. “First we’re going to have one more ale,” I suggested. “That’ll get you into the right frame of mind for this voter drive.
The Lone Fir Cemetery contains a host of voters who’ve been neglecting their participation in the electoral process, and I wanted to set things right. Just because they were dead and gone shouldn’t mean that they could not vote the way I wanted them to.
We live (and die) in a great state. One of the wonders of Oregon is that not only do we vote by mail, but we can also turn in voter registration cards for other people. It’s hard to imagine a more idea political situation, fraught with possibilities. Several weeks before my friends and I registered The Lone Fir Cemetery, a news story broke about a group of Republicans who registered high school seniors in Tillamook County, and by a strange coincidence only the cards of students who registered Republican arrived at the elections office. The Republicans made the error of registering live students who were loudly vocal when they discovered their cards had gone astray. Filling in cards for the dead was less tricky—they didn’t complain.
Voter registration cards require home addresses and signatures. I’d already dealt with the address problem by installing a large rural mailbox in front of a vacant house. The house stood on an unimproved road that ran along a cabbage field in Northeast Portland. The lettering on the mailbox announced The Cabbage Patch Retirement Community along with the street address, so the mail carrier wouldn’t question the many letters to different names going into the same box.
The signatures had been an obstacle that I’d surmounted with my customary finesse. Of course, I wouldn’t hazard forging signatures with my own hand, and I certainly didn’t want Bunny and the Buckaroo or Neil running the risk. After all, if one of my friends got arrested, he could rat me out. However, a former college lover was a third grade teacher (I’d had lots of college affairs, though none lasted longer than a week), so on past registration drives I’d carried the cards to him and he’d made his third graders sign the fake names. Signing and filling in the address was good practice for the children, and my ex-lover recorded which names each child had forged, collected the cards, and returned them to me. Several weeks afterward, when I received the ballots in the mail, I carried the ballot envelopes to him for the correct signatures.
Of course, this system worked only for a single election cycle because when his children moved into fourth grade they were no longer under his control and the new batch of third graders wouldn’t have matching signatures.
Still intoxicated, Neil, Bunny, the Buckaroo, and I climbed off a bus about two blocks from the cemetery entrance. The main entrance was impracticable since the cemetery was locked for the night, so we parted the bushes and followed the secret path known to virtually every teenager within the city limits.
The Lone Fir Cemetery (Photos by the author)
“We’re goin’ to register the bone orchard?” Bunny asked, when he realized where we were.
Neil swayed drunkenly as he gazed at the tombstones emerging from the diabolical darkness and infernal fog. The Buckaroo helped him along. “The li’l rip’s roostered,” he explained to Bunny.
We gathered around a flat-topped gravestone belonging to a Mrs. Aspidistra Stubbs. I brushed off Mrs. Stubbs’ accumulation of used condom wrappers, opened my briefcase, and distributed pens, tiny but powerful flashlights, and stacks of voter registration cards I’d picked up from the elections office earlier that day.
“Just print their names and dates of birth,” I suggested. “The third graders can fill in the addresses and other information.”
“Yore figgering on us to pony up birth dates?” Bunny asked.
“No, I hate to limit any of these dead folks’ right to vote, but let’s play it safe. Write down the exact date on the stone, and don’t register anybody born before 1920.”
Keeping in sight of each other, we moved quickly from headstone to headstone. I was registering Bartholomew Riorden, born April 16, 1934, when I heard Neil calling to me. “Are we going to make Democrats out of all these people? Won’t that look suspicious?”
“It would—so we’re not. Since these people are voting only in the general election, it doesn’t matter what party we assign. A lot of them are going to check the box that reads “Not a member of a party.” Otherwise, we’ll register a majority of Democratic voters and a minority of Republicans, following Portland demographics. The officers of the Constitution, Libertarian, and Pacific Green parties will be thrilled to see a bump in their numbers this election as well.”
“But come Election Day, these goners will be votin’ fer Kim Flanders,” the Buckaroo interjected.
“Without a doubt. These people have seen the light.”
“They’ve all turned gay after death?” Neil asked.
“Yeah. If I could afford to waste our rainbow ‘Out for Flanders’ stickers, I’d adhere one to every stone.”
As we worked, the ale’s good influence gradually wore off, and we shivered as the night turned chill and a thicker and wetter fog joined the misty fog already upon the graveyard. I had two hundred blank voter registration forms remaining in my briefcase when I called a halt. We’d registered eight hundred.
“Everybody register one more voter, a fine yellow-dog Democrat. Then we’ll rendezvous at the bus stop.”
According to political writer Taegan D. Goddard, the term Yellow-dog Democrat comes from the 1928 elections. During the election, Sen. Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support fellow Democrat Al Smith. Instead, Heflin chose to support Republican Herbert Hoover, who would go on to become president. Many Alabamians disagreed with Heflin’s choice and in retaliation popularized the line “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket!”
I’d finished enrolling my final citizen and was closing my briefcase on the equipment and the eight hundred new registrants when an authoritarian voice broke through the clinging fog. “Hey, you, what’re are up to?”
I ducked behind a tombstone. Neil’s plaintive cry ripped through the mist like a lost zombie’s lament. Crouching, I found Bunny and the Buckaroo concealed behind a timber baron’s mausoleum, handed them the briefcase full of incriminating evidence, and told them to beat it. Then I ran to rescue Neil from the clutches of disaster.
“Baby, what’s taking you so long,” I queried mincingly when I saw the cop pinching Neil’s quaking shoulder.
“Oh, jeez, not another goddamn game of faggot leap frog in the graveyard,” the policeman complained. “You’re the third rump rangers I caught this week.”
Swaying my butt, I slapped Neil lightly. “Oh, you bad thing, you. What nasty business are you up to with this cute police officer?”
At my question the cop’s eyes slanted, the skin pouching under them, the corners of his mouth turned down, and deep creases formed from his nostrils to his lips. He growled like Neil might be contagious and pushed him toward me. Neil reeled, but I snagged him and held him like a lover.
“Oh, baby, did that thug hurt you?”
“I oughta run you fudge packers in,” the cop muttered. “Can’t you find somewhere else to hound-dog each other?”
“Our parents won’t let us do it at home,” I complained. “It’s private here.”
“Get your babycakes the fuck outta the goddamn graveyard. And stay the hell out. If I catch you ass-peddling again, you’re going to jail. That’s where you’ll get spread by the rough trade.”
I didn’t have to tell Neil to put a girlish sway into his walk—he swayed naturally. I swished along with him, and we put fog between us and the cop.
“So what was he doing in the cemetery?” I asked rhetorically.
Neil’s eyes were wide, and I could hear his heart thumping. “Looking for us? He sure knew a lot of gay slang.”
I laughed. “Probably he wanted to take a leak and stumbled across you. Good thing he didn’t catch us with a briefcase full of felonious registration cards.”
“That reminds me,” Neil said, handing me the card and pen he’d been concealing behind his back.
Bunny and the Buckaroo were standing near the bus stop on Morrison beside a passing taxi they’d hailed. When Bunny handed me my briefcase, I slipped in the card Neil had handed me. Neil, Bunny, and I squeezed into the taxi’s back seat, and the driver let the Buckaroo ride shotgun. I had the cab swing by their apartment building, and then I told the driver to drive to Ladd’s Addition.
“My car’s parked along Broadway,” Neil protested.
“After all that ale, you shouldn’t drive,” I said. “Sleep with me, and I’ll drive you to your car when it gets light.”
Neil glanced at me speculatively, but a yawn interrupted his sexual question. “Okay, Mike,” he agreed, and the taxi driver gave me the OK sign. The man knew a gay pick-up when he saw one.
Once home, I ushered Neil through my outside door and guided him through the dark basement. When I switched on the light in my room, he gasped at my artistic masterpiece.
“So this is the jerkatorium,” he gushed, taking a closer look at the sexier models. “How do you ever sleep in here?”
After using the bathroom and brushing our teeth with my toothbrush, we stripped to our underwear. Neil was wearing a fetching number, lavender ball-and-butt-hugging bikini panties. I swatted his curvy ass playfully as we crawled into my bed.
“I’m up for sex if you are,” Neil lied. His eyes were closing before I turned out the light.
“Yeah, sure, Neil. Let’s sleep a little while first,” I teased.
Neil wasn't so drunk that he believed me. He placed his hand on my chest, slid it down my stomach, and into the waistband of my undies. He gasped audibly when he touched my cock. “It's pretty badly swollen, Mike. Would it help if I massaged it?”
“Sure,” I said. “That might help a little.” As his fingers gently probed the head of my dick, I slipped his underpants off.
“Oh, for the howling love of Christ,” Janet groaned when Neil and I ascended to the kitchen for breakfast. “My pervert brother sucked a dick last night right underneath where the family was sleeping.”
“Janet,” Mom gasped, stunned by my sister’s graphic speculation.
Pop looked reproachfully at Janet, but he said nothing. I don’t think Pop was all that comfortable with the idea of my entertaining lovers in the basement himself.
Neil was looking alarmed, but I zapped Janet. “Relax, sissy, you were sleeping on the second floor and Neil and I were in the down low. You had an entire story in between you and those contagious gay emanations.”
“Yuck. Down low is right,” Janet griped, picking up on the slang that escaped our parents. “Are you two perverts going to have a second breakfast?”
“What are you talking about, Janet?” Mom protested. “Mike and his friend just came upstairs. They haven’t had breakfast yet.”
Janet snorted but added nothing more. I introduced Neil to the family—including Janet, who made gross cocksucking motions with her hand and tongue (though she concealed her vulgar actions from Mom and Pop), while Neil’s eyes nearly popped out at her rudeness.
Mahatma was equally interested in Neil. He sniffed Neil’s butt before Neil could lower it onto one of the kitchen chairs, and then he ran to drag out his toys.
“You look nice this morning, Mike,” Mom said. By contrast, poor Neil was wearing the same grubby jeans and shirt he’d worn in the graveyard, but I’d dressed in a suit of a dark blue hue, a white dress shirt, a tie with red, white, and blue stripes, and glossy black shoes.
“I’m taking lunch at the City Club,” I said.
“I have to get home and change so I can get down there too,” Neil contributed, not to be outdone.
“The newspaper’s not so good for us this morning,” Pop commented, pushing across the Metro section. Lisa’s picture was plastered above the fold.
“I’ll read it later,” I promised, sliding Metro into my briefcase atop the voter registration cards.
Mom poured more waffle batter into the iron while I helped Neil and myself to sausages and coffee. After the sausages and waffles had been consumed, I drove Neil to Shove It. Miraculously, Neil’s old clunker hadn’t been vandalized, or if it had who could tell any difference, and we sat looking at it in my Honda.
“That was fun, Mike,” Neil said wistfully. “You’re an incredible lover.”
“Thanks,” I said with a grin. “I needed it.” I saw no need to inform Neil that he was only fair in bed.
Contrary to Janet’s suppositions, Neil and I hadn’t gone for oral action. We’d given each other a mutual hand job, and together showered away the sticky evidence before going upstairs. Still, it had been fun.
“Bob would be crushed if he found out,” Neil said hesitantly.
“Yeah.” Bob was Neil’s lover, an older man of limited means. Neil lived with Bob in the Portland bungalow that Bob had inherited from his mother. This odd relationship evidently worked for them.
“Don’t worry, Neil,” I said. “Our fling was a one-time event. A happy accident.”
Neil kissed me goodbye and started up his car. As I watched him drive away, I wondered how he was going to explain his absence. Whatever he said, I hoped that he’d avoid the truth. I wasn’t worried about Bob finding out that Neil and I had jerked each other off—I just didn’t want Bob knowing that we’d spent the night registering the graveyard.
