Chapter 2

“Better,” he eventually whispers and backs away from me.

I provide a smile and ask the first thing that comes to mind, “Do you need a lift to work today?”

“I do.”

“How long will it take you to get ready?”

“Just a few minutes.”

When he walks out of the kitchen with his glass of orange juice I watch his right hand slip to his middle. Dayton adjusts the covered goods between his legs, perhaps pressing his fresh hardness and excitement away. 3

We chat in the kitchen and he tells me how his old place was on Semm Street in downtown Templeton. Taking a drink of soda pop, he adds, “My Uncle Charlie owns O’Hare’s Garage, where I’ve worked for the past four years as a mechanic. It’s a living, but not necessarily my passion. If you want to know the truth, I like to build things. Like sidewalks, garden walls, fire pits, and arches. I attended Lawsner University for one year, but never returned for a second year.”

I want to ask him why, but he pushes for my story. “Tell me a little bit about you.”

So I do. I share some facts about myself with him. “My mother died when I was thirteen years old from a massive heart attack and my father had to raise me and my brothers. I’m the youngest out of six boys.”

“Where did go to school?”

“I attended Point Park College in Pittsburgh and obtained a degree in English. Started teaching at West End College when I was twenty-five and started dating men around the same time, though I knew I was gay when I was twelve years old. I had a terrible crush on the neighbor’s lawn boy.

He laughs.

I laugh.

We get along just fine.

* * * *

The next time we chat is about a week later, in the living room, with Lee Brice playing on the radio.

“My favorite food is pizza. My favorite books: Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Of Mice and Men.”

“You’re literate.” I sound pompous, but I’m really not.

He tells me he has 327 friends on Facebook, most of which are bare-chested young men, and his hobbies include reading, watching movies, running, and swimming. And he adds, “And what’s your status on Facebook?”

“Single.”

And I learn everything about him that I want to.

* * * *

We stay up late and I tell him more about myself.

“I dated Cort Matthews for a year. He liked women more than men. And then I dated Jacob Hawkington for nine months. He liked an arrangement of other men besides me.” Maybe I’m telling him too much. Maybe not. I don’t really know. But I continue for no reason. “Evan Newlander was my last boyfriend. That was twenty-eight months ago. The relationship lasted for almost five years, and ended when he said he had outgrown me. Go figure. Just my luck.”

“You drink?” he asks for some strange reason, but I don’t seem to mind at all.

“I rarely drink alcohol. Never do drugs. But I do like weekend trips to various cities throughout the country: San Francisco, Topeka, and Spokane.”

What I don’t tell him is that I have no intentions of falling in love with a man, not even the boarder upstairs.”There are pictures of a recent trip to Cancun on my Facebook page. You have to see them. What a place.” And then he goes on a tangent about movies and acting.”I tried to act once, but it was a great failure in my life,” I say. “My best friend, Craig Donner, did it with me. He’s a licensed electrician in Templeton and owner of Sparks Electric. He’s still sowing his oats, so to speak, while the rest of my friends are married with kids now.”

“You want kids?”

“Never.”

We talk for another hour, two hours, three hours, and it feels like five minutes. 4

Sunday, June 19. O’Hare’s Garage is closed for the day and I have no classes at West End College. Both Dayton and I have the entire day to ourselves; individually or together, whatever fate has in store for us. I do have papers to read; twenty-eight essays on Faulkner’s use of “time” in The Sound and the Fury. I decide to labor over the papers on and off, sporadically applying myself.

I should be outside. The day beyond my first floor mahogany office is breathtaking; eighty-five degrees, balmy with a light wind, blue-white clouds overhead. I drink an iced tea while I read and check the essays. When my eyes start to cross and tire, I take a break. A piss needs to be accomplished, of course, from too much iced tea. I find myself on the second floor, outside the teal and brown bathroom, ready to enter.