Teddy and I said goodbye after we'd stored our stuff for the summer. We agreed to share rooms again come fall. But it was an awkward parting; he was distracted and eager to move to Kennebunkport for the summer, eagerly awaiting Margaret's arrival the first week of July at her family's summer home on the coast of Maine.
Teddy didn't provide any details about what he would do for the first few weeks before she arrived. He surprised me when he said he'd probably hang out in Ogunquit when he could -- which already was well known as a summer resort for Boston's established gay crowd. Although slightly less notorious that Provincetown on the Cape, it was known even then as a place to find some wicked action in the dunes at dusk. Again, I wasn't invited.
Instead, with Pendergast's approval, I bought a restored canary-yellow 1949 MGTC, right hand drive, convertible and set out for Montana. I went through Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains and headed for Quebec City, Montreal, and Toronto before taking the northern route through Wisconsin and Minnesota on the way to Montana.
I had no schedule -- other than July 1st in Billings -- so I drove and stopped as the spirit moved. Montreal was fascinating but foreign so I didn't stay long. I spent a week in Toronto and discovered my first gay bath house, where I mostly watched a lot of other very hot men have riotous sex all night.
I was hard and horny the whole time but didn't dare participate until a delightful, beautiful Adonis about my age, named Doug, seduced me in a maze-like room and sucked me until I thought my testicles would come out of the tip of my dick. Around us stood men of all ages and sizes groping and sucking and fucking each other while Doug and I sucked and fingered each other for what seemed like hours. My cataclysmic orgasm induced clapping and a few cheers from the crowd of hot, sweaty men as I purged my loins all over Doug's face and he spewed his load all over my legs and feet.Â
Afterward, we showered together and stumbled out of the bathhouse into the early dawn light and went to a nearby cafe where we gorged on breakfast and coffee. We talked some, but his heavy French-Canadian accent made it hard to keep a conversation going for long. So we went back to my hotel room and spent the rest of the day sucking, fucking and sleeping. I awoke about 7 p.m., ravenously hungry, to find Doug -- and my wallet -- gone. Shit.
I checked out, paying by check (thank God he hadn't found my checkbook!) and drove south to Buffalo where I replaced my passport and driver's license. Then I drove back through Ontario toward Georgian Bay, through Northern Michigan and on to Montana.
I found Chad waiting for me in the same Billings cafe where we had eaten breakfast with Teddy several years ago. While it brought back painful memories, it was good to see Chad again. Irene was still behind the counter, reading the paper, as we wolfed down a farmer's breakfast of eggs over easy on top of pancakes and bacon, washed down by several cups of coffee.
Chad was amused by the MGTC, wondering how I'd managed to get most of the way across the continent in a car notorious for breaking down whenever and wherever it could. I shrugged and hopped in, following him up to the ranch.
We arrived about mid day and immediately when to the stream to fish. Despite the long hiatus, I hadn't lost my casting arm and we fished together all afternoon, landing and releasing spectacular trout. We kept two and feasted on them along with fresh vegetables and a fine bottle of white wine I had picked up for the occasion in Toronto.
After dinner we talked and joked, tired but comfortable in the big house until long after dark.
"So when is Tucker coming for a visit?" I asked.
Chad looked at me with shock.
"You didn't know?" he asked
"Know what?"
"Tucker was killed near Da Nang this spring," he said. "Fucking commies!"
I was stunned. The War had seemed somehow distant, remote, not part of my experience except for the protests in Harvard Yard and other college campuses. Teddy and I didn't talk about it at all because he supported the war and knew we would never agree, so we never talked about it.
I thought back to Tucker's brilliant smile and gorgeous body. He was a fucking machine and proud of it. I was lost in thought as Chad said, "Hey, did you hear me?"
"Sorry. What?" I said, staring at him. "What?"
"I enlisted, too." Chad whispered. "I leave at the end of August."
"What!" I screamed. "Are you crazy? You'll get killed. Why would you leave school now and go fight over there?"
"I don't know," he said. "When I heard Tucker had died, I just went and signed up the next day. Now I can't get out of it."
I couldn't believe it. Chad, the physicist in training who could maybe finally figure out nuclear fusion as a power source, was going to `Nam.
"You're crazy," I said. "Get a lawyer, go to Canada, do anything but go there."
"Already talked to a lawyer," he said. "And my dad will disown me of I go to Canada."
"So, being disowned is better than dying," I retorted. "Don't do it, Chad. Don't do it." I suddenly burst into tears and crawled over to his chair, wrapping my arms around him, sobbing "Don't do it. Please don't do it."
I held him for a long tome as he patted my head and rubbed my shoulder. I felt him get hard and I nuzzled my face into his crotch, taking deep breaths of his scent and wanting him to make love to me.
I sat up and dried my tears and without a word took his hand and led him to my bed where he slowly fucked me for hours until we fell asleep exhausted in each others arms.
During the following days we didn't talk much about his decision. We immersed ourselves in fishing and sex as often as possible. Our nights were spent quietly, reading or making love. But he wouldn't change his mind.
The end of July passed and oozed into August with heat and days of thunderstorms. I was getting itchy and Chad needed to head back to Princeton to get ready to go to war. I offered to drive him back in the MG but he already had his plane ticket, so one morning I got up -- after a night of especially passionate love making -- packed my things, and drove back east, hugging him tightly on the porch before I left.
I never saw Chad again. After I got back to Harvard, we talked a few times by phone and I got a few postcards or letters from him during the fall. Then one morning in mid-February, reading the New York Times, I saw his obituary. There he was, beautiful face in his dress blue uniform, staring at me from the page.
I crumpled the paper and threw it across the room, screaming and howling at the injustice. Just then, Teddy walked in with a few of his friends. He took one look at me, my faced contorted with rage and wet with tears, and waved the others out.
"What?" he asked, taking me in his arms for the first time in ages. "What?" he said as he stroked my hair and pulled my face to his shoulder. "What?"
I burbled "Chad" and pointed to the wad of paper next to my desk. "He's gone," I gasped, and stood wobbling as he reached for the paper.
Pressing it out on my desk, he gasped, then said, "Shit, awwwws shit," as he read the obituary. "Oh, God, no," he cried and turned to me, hugging me and now crying on my shoulder. His whole body shook as he sobbed, pounding my back, taking great gulps of air, then crying more.
We sank to the floor, holding each other. I was stunned. It was the only time I ever saw Teddy cry. And I was in awe at the same time I was torn apart that Chad was gone. And somehow I knew I had lost Teddy, too.
We stayed that way for a long time, simply holding each other, rubbing our backs and shoulders, lost in a silent world of grief and emptiness. It was the most intimate we had been in almost a year.
Then he cupped my chin in his hand and kissed me. I kissed back and we rolled to the floor, grinding our bodies together, eating each others mouths as if we were starving -- and we were, at least I was. We quickly shed clothes and writhed on the floor, trying to insert ourselves, our whole beings into each other.
We both exploded all over each other, cum squirting between us as we ground our crotches together in the very best frottage I will ever experience. Spent, we fell asleep in each others' arms, sticky and rank with cum and sweat. As I dozed off I remember smiling; happier than I had been in months.