“What do you want?” I asked, wanting to know.
“A Pabst would be nice,” Greg said.
“You got your cast off, Greg. You can actually walk to the kitchen yourself. Think of it as exercise.”
“I know that. If I wanted exercise, I’d go get it myself. I’m watching television. I don’t want to miss anything. You’re much better at it than I am.”
“How true? Be right back,” I said.
We were home for the weekend. Doug was home too. Greg’s cast came off earlier in the week. The chances of him falling and doing serious damage to himself was too great up in the mountains. Greg liked being home alone, except I had to agree to stay home with him before his parents agreed to go to the mountains by themselves.
In a few weeks he’d recover his balance and coordination and there would be no holding him back. For now I’d do his bidding, because it might be the last I saw of him, and I wasn’t looking forward to testing the waters without Greg in my life. I’d hang on for as long as I could.
I got two beers and took one back for Greg. I was growing accustomed to the taste of panther piss and if it was really cold and I drank it really fast, I could take a couple of swigs before I put it down to get warm.
“Thanks,” he said.
“How does it feel?”
“It’s like getting out of jail. I was so tired of dragging that thing around. This is nice. I stood in the shower for an hour the first night. Being able to wash myself from stem to stern is a real pleasure.”
“Yeah, I like cleaning your stem,” I said. “If you want some help, just whistle.”
“Martin, you’re bad.”
I was bad for Greg and he made me want to be good. As he got his legs back under him, I noticed he limped and stood oddly. For all his perfection Greg was no longer without a serious flaw that distracted from the manliness that stood out on him. He no longer looked imposing.
The happy go lucky aspect of Greg gave way to his determination to make a full recovery. I didn’t give much thought to how he’d react once he was back on his feet. My presence wasn’t as necessary. Getting his beer for him was reassuring, although I didn’t want him to think I thought so.
Sleeping with Greg got no reaction out of him at all. The first night after his cast was off and he stayed home alone, I went upstairs and got in bed with him an hour after he went to bed. I’d been sleeping beside him since he’d began coming home from the hospital on a pass. He said nothing the next day.
Wrapping my nudity up in his, after I removed his briefs for him, and this got a fuss from him the first time, but it never came up again. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t up, because anytime I was in bed with him, he was hard. He let me get as close as I could, and I could get very close.
Doug came and went the first weekend, having some activities of his own to attend to, but he knew when Greg was most often sleeping during the day, and he always popped up shortly after Greg went down for a nap.
I didn’t like letting Greg go to bed alone if I was around, but something about the middle of the day kept me away from his bed, until it was time for him to get up. I liked Greg best when he got up. If I reached him before his feet hit the floor, he’d stay in bed for as long as I wanted to think up ways to keep him there.
A few weeks after the last cast was removed, Greg’s mom came home with two tennis rackets and a brand new can of tennis balls.
“You boys need to get out of the house more. They have great tennis courts up behind the high school. I made arrangements for you two to go to play after Martin gets off from work each day.”
Greg and tennis went together like a frog and a rock. We carried the rackets and the balls back to the courts and we stood on opposite sides of the net. That was tennis.
I served and if Greg could reach the ball without moving, he was more than happy to whack it back my way, or some way. There was no control and little motion at first. I got to practice my serve, not having any idea what I was doing, but I’d seen tennis played on television, so I wasn’t totally in the dark.
The second week after doing all the running in the tennis games, I invited Doug to go along. It was an accident. I had nothing in mind except someone to chase the balls on Greg’s side of the net, but Doug proved to be the motivation to get Greg to move.
At first he refused to move much, even with Doug racing and dancing around him to get at a ball I hit. Doug was more athletic than he looked and we could get a pretty good volley going, after Greg went to sit down to rest.
Pretty soon Greg began to move several feet in an effort to hit the ball. Then he was moving a bit more, reaching, leaning, and no longer fearing he’d fall on his face. With his balance secure and his legs not folding up under him, he was ready to play a game of tennis.
I couldn’t let him keep score. Greg cheated. It wasn’t like I couldn’t count when he kept score. It’s that Greg did things his way, and his way was Greg wins, if I’d let him, which I wouldn’t, because I didn’t like giving up anything to Greg. He made me work for everything I got and returning the favor seemed in order. We argued every point.
The best part of tennis was the chocolate milk. After each outing for tennis, we stopped at the corner store to get a pint of chocolate milk that was so rich you could taste it for hours after you drank it.
Depending on if we walked or drove, we might sit on the curb and lean back to partake of the refreshment, or we might sit in my car on days that were not as nice. All three of us loved that stop before we went home to their house to have dinner.
The pots were always on the stove when we went in through the kitchen and plates were stacked next to the stove for us to dish out what we wanted when we came in. In spite of the short time mom had to prepare dinner, it was always worth it for me. The only time I got better food than that was when I went to the mountains and got Pop’s cooking when almost everything was fresher than fresh.
Without the cast Greg once more became tentative on the mountain trails. Walking along he’d stop after stepping on uneven ground, in a chuck hole, or lost his balance in a way that perturbed him, which was a little surprising since his footing on the tennis court was improving each day.
He was ready to go each afternoon when I showed up after work, holding the tennis rackets as quick as I turned into the driveway. I was usually ready to sit and look at him for a few minutes, but mostly I never got out of the car.
While Greg’s movements were difficult for him in the beginning, it didn’t take long for him to be covering a little ground to get to the ball, rather than watching me go get one if I didn’t hit it directly to him.
At first he mostly walked to meet the ball. He began moving a little faster in time and that made the experience something other than me hitting the ball at him. This wasn’t always safe either. If I hit the ball too hard or too directly at him, he’d get flustered when he wasn’t able to take a swing or get out of the way of the ball.
Doug went with us to play tennis for a while, but once Greg was moving around the court, Doug wasn’t necessary. I’m sure Doug would have gone to play with Greg if Greg had asked him, but Greg didn’t. Doug was pretty smooth and tennis was no challenge for him. Greg was king and having his brother run rings around him didn’t please him.
By all means a king must be pleased, but Greg began to change. Maybe it was the chocolate milk we both loved to swig after tennis. As it grew cooler we always drank it in the front seat of my car, which was a good place to talk too.
“I’m getting better,” Greg said, sipping his milk to savor the flavor before he’d chugalug it, unable to take things he liked in small doses.
“Better,” I said.
“You don’t need to chase the ball so much.”
“No, I don’t,” I agreed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend before. Not really a friend who wanted to be around me as much as you do.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“You stayed with me all those months in the hospital. Now here you are. You’re still with me,” he informed me.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“No one else ever stuck with me. I know I’m a dick. Mostly that’s what people like about me. I’m a dick all the time. The bigger dick I am the better some guys like it,” he said. “That make sense to you?”
He was obviously thinking about what he was saying.
“I don’t know. I’ve only seen a few of your friends. Anything I say about that will just get me into trouble with you.”
“Because I let them feel my dick?” Greg asked.
“Greg, that’s what you want me to think they were doing. There was a lot more going on than guys touching your dick.”
“You don’t understand. Americans are so up tight about guys being guys. Once you’re away from the States, people don’t get nearly as uptight over the sight of a dick. It’s a body part. Every bodies got one.”
“Ladies bodies usually don’t,” I said.
“Very funny. All boys have one. Curiosity isn’t so secret over there. It was kind of cool, showing off what I got.”
“You have conquered the art of the understatement.”
“I beat them at their own game,” Greg explained. “Then they got to beat me.”
“Pool?”
“It wasn’t about pool. It was about dicks. Guys feeling superior about theirs. When they had me to deal with, they weren’t so superior. It was never about pool, Martin. Some of the guys that went to Germany with me got into the game too. It wasn’t hard to get it started over here.”
“None of those guys were gay though?” I asked.
“Sure. I suppose some turned out to be gay. It wasn’t about that. You want to make it sex. It was boys playing with boys.”
“How others relate to you might be important if you want their friendship. When you just make it about your dick, even if it’s just good clean fun, it’s hard to figure out how to become friends when you start there,” I supposed.
“I never had to worry about that. They stuck by me. Some were always there. You saw some of the regulars. We’re all friends.”
“They were playing the game, Greg,” I said. “What other things did you do together?”
“Pool? School. That’s about all,” he said.
“Dicks! The guys who kept coming back weren’t sticking with you. They were getting what they needed by letting you play the king, while they played humble losers, willing to do whatever the king wanted them to do.”
“Pretty Clever, Martin. I thought about that. It’s more fun to feel like they’re admiring me. I knew the ones who were there to be able to play with me. Not pool. We all knew which ones came to lose. It was that way in Germany. The same guys were first in line to lose every week. They wanted to lose to the boy they liked best and passed up chances to play with boys they didn’t want to play with.”
“Well, I’ll never be first in line, Greg,” I confessed.
“In case you haven’t noticed, there is no line. I’ve lost my appeal. I’m a crip. Not so popular once you loose your edge. Never lose your edge, Martin. Once you do, everyone leaves you.”
“Not everyone,” I said.
“No, not everyone,” he said, drinking his milk.
“What do you think you got out of it?” I asked.
“Martin, I’m not gay. I got grown up. I’m a man now. You’ve got to go through it to grow up. You can sit and wait for it to happen to you or you can make it happen.
“When I was in Germany, I saw boys who knew how to make it happen to them. I was scared at first. There was something very exciting about it. I liked the German boys. This was the way to become part of their club. Once I was, I made it happen for me.”
“You learned to play the game their way.”
“Being the center of attention is way better than being one of the losers. I watched Rolf and Dieter play the younger guys. It was easy to spot boys who couldn’t wait to lose to Rolf, and they always lost. I got it,” he said. “I saw the look in Rolf’s eyes and the look in the eyes of the boy who lost to him. I wanted to feel what Rolf felt, and I did.”
“Now that you’ve grown up?”
“This isn’t the way I planned it,” he said, opening up his arms as if to bring attention to his present state of being.
“I still don’t know how you ended up getting so badly hurt. I never saw you as the careless type. Do you have an explanation for that?”
“Brain fart. I wasn’t paying any attention. I let my brain go off on its own. I shouldn’t have. It almost killed me.”
“That’s it?”
“As crazy as it sounds, and no, I’m not confessing to being crazy, I wasn’t paying attention and here I am.”
“Wow! I’m in serious trouble,” I said.
“You? I doubt it. You don’t miss much, Martin,” Greg said, grinning his evil grin. “I was king of the world and I missed something. I thought I was indestructible, irresistible, and bullet proof. I wasn’t.”
“Few of us are,” I said.
“I spent the last year trying to get my life back, but there’s nothing there. Even Herbie has dumped me.”
“He found love.”
“I figured those two were birds of a feather. Bobby-Lee looked at my dick the same way Herbie does. It took me all of ten seconds to get Bobby-Lee to go down on me.”
“Herbie looked at it? I thought he just held it.”
“You’d be surprised what Herbie would do if he was in the mood,” he said. “Boy’s double jointed, ambidextrous, and a glutton for punishment. Boy’s addicted to dick.”
“And Bobby-Lee,” I said.
“Herbie’s eighteen this month. He decided which way he wants to go. Good for Herbie,” Greg said. “I don’t know Bobby-Lee, but he seems OK.”
“You?”
“I’ve been eighteen. Hell, I’ll be nineteen soon. I thought I had it all figured out. I didn’t. I grew up. I made it and maybe I’ll figure it out now.”
“I don’t have anything figured out,” I said.
“You’ve never done anything,” Greg said.
“I’ve done you,” I said.
Greg gave me his long hard look. The wheels were whirling inside his brain. He was trying to have an intelligent conversation and I turned it back into my love for him.
“I’m not gay,” he protested.
“No, you weren’t even there. Just your dick. Nice dick too, might I add.”
“I’m not queer. I’m going to get married. I’m going to make babies,” he said firmly, keeping his eyes on me.
“They will be beautiful children,” I said.
“I’m serious, Martin,” he revealed.
“So am I. I can’t imagine you not having beautiful kids. You’re still the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t believe me? You’ll see. Okay, I like getting blown. I like attention. I like getting off. So sue me. Lots of guys like attention. I’m not gay.”
“That makes one of us.”
“You’re hopeless,” Greg said, having no more milk to drink and no longer wanting to be there.
There was no more conversation and that was probably best. This was the kind of situation that often ended with me dropping him off and not coming back for as long as I could stay away from him at one time.
He knew when we were heading in that direction and we’d both learned to stop before we got to that point. Neither of us wanted to argue, but that didn’t stop us. There was a line that Greg had to convince me he wouldn’t cross. Maybe he had to convince himself.
One day he might move on down the road and leave me to find another lover, but that time hadn’t come yet. Greg needed me to be there for him and that came out in much of what he said and did. I’d been with him for long enough to know him better than he knew himself, but only because he couldn’t be honest with himself.