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  Bill

  LAST UPDATED ON SEPT 23, 2013

  James.

  James. Oh, God. The way you light me up at night when I least expect it.

  James. I whisper your name in the dark and watch it catch fire on the wind, tiny little flickers flouncing in the air that no one ever notices because their eyes are on the ground where they walk. The tiny curls of smoke dance and unfurl like wisps of hair just pruned, falling in tender clumps around the barber’s chair. Everything is ether and then some.

  James. Your name means “supplanter.” You supersede and replace; old plants pulled out of the soil, new seeds sown. You have vision. The future is already in your rearview mirror. You take over the past, remake it as your own. The land is rooted deep inside your bones, musty earth damp from flash rains. You didn’t like it when people tried to call you Jim or Jimmy. You were quiet but firm about your name. You were to be addressed as James. Your shadow on the ground was sharp as blades.

  James Alan. Your middle name means “handsome.” The stars poured the sugar of beauty deep into your veins and the moon peppered your skin with salt, and the skies pumped your eyes with blue and the clouds filled the rest of you with ocean, limitless as the horizon on an overcast day, so your body was of this earth and sea, your cock stripped bare at low tide, your past hidden at high tide. There was never an in-between, a landing with you; just a fleeting glance, a grip of slippery hands, a call for help, a plea from deep in the forest for a little understanding, a tenderness. But how you’ve lingered in the coral reef of my tongue, a breeze of balm floating just so, oh just so in my nose.

  James Alan Sutton. You are the fire in the chimney of my soul. How I keep crackling, wood splintering amidst splotches of ember, singeing. I am nothing without winter’s ache. In the polar vortex of my heart, you hold all my matches.

  On the first day of spring, you called me at the coffeehouse out of the blue. I was on a break.

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, hi, James!” I was surprised. It was a Thursday, and you always called me on Friday morning to confirm that I was indeed available to go up north for the weekend. “What’s up?”

  “Okay.” A pause. “Look, I’ve been doing some thinking. Um, I’ve been thinking that maybe this is not gonna work.” I could hear in the background the faint hum of factory where you worked.

  “What? We’ve been spending weekends together for—”

  “Sorry,” you said. “I just don’t think we’re a good fit.”

  “Wait. I don’t understand. I thought things were going great. Six months. Hello?”

  “Look,” you said. “You want what I can’t give.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You want a boyfriend and all of that.”

  “What’s wrong with wanting all of that?”

  “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  “Look,” I said. “Shouldn’t we, um, talk about this in person? I mean—”

  “Gotta go. Sorry.”

  Click.

  That turned out to be our last conversation.

  I left a ton of voicemails, but you didn’t answer.

  March 20, 2014 was the first day of winter in my heart.

  Sometimes I wish you could come into the room of my dreams and sit down on the sofa over there. Let my memory play its accordion, snippets of song we’d overheard while talking with each other in your truck, the unexpected pats on the shoulder, the ferocity of tongue into the darkest caverns of each other. We are the paintings in the Cave of El Castillo, we are the learned of Mesopotamia, and what’s left of us are the myths that will never abandon us no matter how long we shiver in the rain.

  Listen not to the sound of rain beating down on the tin roof above us, but to the music of letting go from the hands of clouds once cupping so much water, so many tears. In that blind drop to earth, we awaken just long enough to see the grass ready to impale us a half-second before we hit and disintegrate into mist. Realign the radio antennae of ear to my broadcasts of everything about us. Television, and online too.

  There, on my battered sofa in the opulent room of my dreams, you would slowly dawn upon me and fill me with the sunlight of your soul. Rain gone, long gone, you would stand up, the gentle giant that you are, and look down into my eyes. You’d say, “Come with me.”

  I’d float right beside you.

  We wouldn’t have the need to discuss anything; telepathy would be sufficient.

  In that grotto where you liked to smoke a cigar alone, it would be perennially summer, and it would be there where you would marry me. We would be together until the time came for us to let go. At a hundred and one years of age, you would be the grizzled oak of a man, and I would be resting my head, the eternal sapling that I am, on your chest where I could hear the last of your heartbeat fade into eternity.

  I would die happily a few moments later.

  We would be buried together in the same cemetery plot, and our tombstone would read, TWO MEN HERE HAVE LOVED EACH OTHER LIKE NO TWO EVER HAVE. No names or years lived and died. Leave behind the most mysterious story for others to imagine and write. Love is a ghost that, once infected, never dies. It remains fatal and incurable. It haunts every bed we sleep in until the day we die.

  You haunt me still.

  Not knowing what one’s done wrong is the quickest way to become a ghost. Regrets are what make us lose skin, soul, control. We become bound to sins we are never quite sure if we’ve committed. We become filled with doubts that weigh down on our shoulders. We are sinners accursed with the sentence of uncertainty, so we haunt and haunt until we learn the answers. By then we’ve turned ourselves into ghosts, and it’s too late to change our ways. It’s much easier to flail in a sea of familiar pain than to soar like an albatross in the terrifying sky.

  Should I continue and try to solve the mystery of you, or would you be one of those nasty corpses, found tossed into a ditch, that offers no clue as to why you’d died?

  Have I fallen for a ghost who didn’t know he’d died long before he’d met me?

  Are you a specter accursed with cold blood?

  Do you remember how we first met? I even remember the date: Friday, October 4, 2013.

  When I saw you again for the second time, it was at the annual OctoBear Dance held at the VFW Hall on Portland Avenue. By then I’d searched all the local profiles for you on Bear411, and there you were. Someone had snapped a picture of you leaning against a stucco wall. Your arm rested on something out of frame, but there was something deep in your eyes. You had seen a lot of things you wished you hadn’t seen. You wore an old denim shirt, which you’d left open a bit at the top. The denseness of your chest fur mesmerized me. I figured you to be in your mid-fifties.

  In the VFW Hall, you sat alone at a table away from the makeshift stage. The music was loud, even with only two speakers out by the stage; the husky DJ, who had a flaming red beard, had a notorious reputation for sleeping with the new arrivals before anyone else in the community did. I’m proud to say that he’d failed with me. I talked with some of my buddies near the doors that opened to the main hall where the music wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t take my eyes off you the whole time. How could such an insanely hot stud be sitting all by himself? Where were your friends? I saw Trevor holding forth with his buddies, all muscular and good-looking. They were busy laughing and drinking beer from their plastic cups. I felt angry. Had they brushed you off with attitude? I didn’t know what to do. Should I even say hello to you?

  When I saw Trevor glance your way and break into a laugh while cracking a joke, I knew what I had to do. I walked over there to your table. I was petrified that you’d give me attitude like your buddies, but I tripped against a chair leg jutting out and nearly hit your table with my forehead. I knelt halfway under the table.

  “Hey, you all right?”

  I looked across to your legs to check out your ample crotch, because hey, I’m a guy, right? I scanned down your legs. Wait—your right foot didn’t have an ankle
inside your black sneakers. It was shiny like aluminum. Then I realized that you were wearing a prosthetic foot. Had to be. Then I checked out your ample crotch again, because hey, I’m a guy, right?

  I pushed myself up onto my feet. “Yeah.” I felt a bit shaky, but I didn’t want you to see that. You see, I didn’t know what to think when I saw your missing foot. All I knew was that I had found you to be sexy, but that . . .

  “You sure?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?”

  A blush of shame and embarrassment seeped into my face. I felt like a schoolboy sitting in front of his principal in his office, waiting to be sentenced to after-school detention. I didn’t dare look into your eyes.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Are you freaking out over my foot?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t look up.

  “I’d still freak out, but what choice do I have? Either I stay home and feel sorry for myself, or I put myself out there and hope for the best.” He extended his hand into my line of vision. “Hello?”

  I had been staring at your huge hand. Thick strands of fur lined the back of your fingers. I think I involuntarily licked my own lips. I felt skittish when I shook your hand for the first time.

  “Name’s James.”

  “I’m Bill Badamore.”

  “Nice to meet you, Bill.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Don’t be scared of me. I don’t bite, and my missing foot ain’t contagious. I’m not a zombie.”

  “Right. Right.”

  “It’s okay.” You took my hand and squeezed it; I nearly creamed in my pants. I was that stiff. I wanted to rub my face all over your furry chest.

  “Well, if I knew about your . . .”

  “Disability. It’s not a dirty word. It just is.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” You smiled. “You’re very cute. My very able-bodied friend between my legs thinks so too.” My face must’ve been quite crimson because you grinned broadly at me. “Did you come here with your car?”

  “Actually, I walked here. I live fifteen blocks from here.”

  “Do you . . . uh, wanna play? I live an hour north of here. You’d have to stay the night. You okay with that?”

  If I were a character in a cartoon, my jaw would’ve hit the floor.

  You smiled. “Why don’t I meet you outside by the parking lot in ten minutes?”

  I nodded.

  “You go right ahead. I have to go to the restroom first.”

  I got up and felt light as a dream. You weren’t just a hot face in a hookup app, a picture of hotness that gets reposted all over Tumblr. As I walked to the coat check and picked up my flannel-lined denim jacket, I was so afraid to look back at you; I wondered how you’d move with that fake foot. Okay, okay: I admit it. I was afraid of being seen with you, limping along while going out of that place together, but I didn’t check back on you. I was afraid that everyone would think that I was into having sex with freaks. I was relieved that you needed to go to the bathroom anyway. I waited outside in the parking lot and wondered if you were for real. It had been a lifetime since a stranger had met me in person and asked me to his home.

  Outside you walked naturally in and out of street-lit shadows toward me. I was surprised you weren’t limping! You looked made of night in your leather jacket. I hadn’t realized just how tall you were. You told me later that you were six-five. Had I conjured you out of thin air?

  “Hey.” There was a sadness in your eyes. “You’re scared of me, right?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never—”

  In that moment you grabbed the back of my head and brought my lips to yours. You kissed me, and it was as if a dust-covered light bulb deep inside me went on. If I had felt skittish before, I wasn’t anymore.

  I kissed you right back.

  “Oh, you’re easy,” you responded with a light laugh.

  I followed you to your truck, which was clean. No bits of garbage on the floor. For some reason I’d thought you would have a 4x4 Jeep, but your truck was retrofitted with an additional arm stick to take the place of your missing foot. I felt strange sitting next to you. All I could do was to look at your visage flickering in the passing lights of neon and traffic as we coasted out of the city.

  I wanted to make conversation, but I was afraid of sounding too smart-alecky and scaring you away.

  You smiled at me. “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen you talk with your friends at the dance, so . . .”

  “Sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m tired of the radio. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “Anything. We got fifty minutes left.”

  That’s how I ended up telling you about my devout Catholic family. I have one sister and three brothers, who have this strange idea that all gay people are pedophiles hell-bent on fondling kids. That’s why I haven’t seen them for a long time. It’s hard because I’ve grown up with them, and when I’m honest with them, they don’t want me. Did that mean they didn’t love me enough? My mother died when I was twenty-eight. My family votes Republican because they don’t feel that gay people deserve “special rights.” Never mind the fact that we gay people simply want the same rights they have. The phrase “special rights” is pure homophobia.

  You were quiet the whole time. Your eyes stayed steady on the road, and the green lights from the dashboard lit your face. With the way shadows played on your face, you looked as if you were half-ghost, half-human; you glowed radiation. In the flickering darkness I couldn’t read your face. I didn’t know what you’d thought of me. Had I said too much?

  I stopped talking.

  “You okay?”

  “I think I said too much. Politics is such a downer anyway.”

  “It’s okay. I like learning about you, and what you’ve said, I like it very much.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  I talked about working as a barista-slash-assistant manager for what people consider a “chic” coffeehouse, but happens to be as generic and corporate as any fast food chain. Brewe Sisters is actually a Starbucks wannabe. I rattled off the popular coffee blends I make every day. I swore that it was not a joke when customers gave very specific instructions for their coffees. At first it was very confusing to keep things straight, but like anything else, repetition would make everything easy to do. I had wanted to become a writer, but having a MFA in Creative Writing doesn’t have much cred if you don’t have a lot of things published. I’d always wanted to become a poet, but no one wanted my poems. I think I got into my MFA program on the promise of my work sample and my undergraduate GPA of 4.0, but I can’t say that I’m as talented as people seem to think. Every day at the coffee shop I see people sit at the tiny tables with their laptops, and they seem to be able to write in spite of the distractions all around them. I envy them. I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but I’m too easily distracted. Plus there’s no money in literary fiction, which is what I want to do. I want to tell stories that explore what it means to be human, to be part of the world, blah blah blah. I don’t care too much for genre fiction. Not sure why. Maybe it feels so formulaic. Since I make pitiful income from my job, I borrow books from the library all the time. I say I’m a writer, but I’ve given up on writing. Just not worth it.

  You said, “You don’t have to give up. You’re still young enough.”

  “Oh, please. I’m forty-five.”

  Then I asked you about your life.

  You told me you worked in a food processing plant, prepping beets for canning. You dropped out of community college when you got a woman pregnant. You stayed married for three years, and you started having sex with guys in public restrooms. You were so scared of getting caught, but you met this guy Jeff in one of them. Turned out that he was married with kids just like you, and you two weren’
t happy with your wives, so you told your wife that you met someone else. She never stopped giving you hell for the next fifteen years. You gave her full custody of your daughter, and you paid alimony and child support. You longed to see your daughter, Annie, more often, but she was basically a stranger to you until the day she came back from Houston, divorced and pregnant at thirty-one. She wept in your arms. You had to tell her that you didn’t have room for her and her kid in your small house. By then, you and Jeff had been broken up for a long time. He moved to the burbs southwest of the city, where he worked at a sewage plant. He was too heartbroken when his ex-wife remarried and moved to Florida. Of course, she took the kids with her. He hated feeling like a stranger to his kids so he too relocated there. You still hear from him time to time. You just can’t bear the idea of living too close to a city where people are rude to each other. Too noisy, too crowded, too expensive. You liked working in the plant, where you’ve been for the last thirty-seven years. Your coworkers were loyal to you. Your boss had said that your missing foot was enough grounds for dismissal due to potential safety issues, but everyone rallied around you. You just can’t imagine working anywhere else, and you’ve been saving up for your retirement. But it’s been difficult at times when a good prosthetic limb and foot could be as expensive as a new car. You talked a lot about wanting to become a woodworker in your garage once you retired.

  I never thought you’d turn silent on the subject of your past after that first night.

  I didn’t notice it at first, but when we made love that first night, you kept the bottom half of your right leg hidden. You hadn’t taken your jeans all the way off. When I went down on you, I rubbed my hands all over your thighs and knees, and without thinking, I moved my hands below the knees to continue rubbing the rest of your legs through the jeans. I felt jarred when I felt the brace holding your prosthetic foot. This of course hiccupped the rhythm of my cocksucking, but I averted my eyes from yours. My tongue resumed its loving. You never said a word about my tongue interruptus. Even after having orgasmed twice already together that night, I couldn’t risk asking you about your missing foot. I was afraid of breaking the trance-like atmosphere we were both in. Finally, you whispered, “We need to stop.” You smiled. “For now.”