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Another Country
🕑 Added 2024-12-16 17:46:57 +0000 UTC“Bobby! Bobby!” Mom was calling me just as I was heading out the door.
I turned back to answer her. “Mom! I’m fifteen. I don’t like being called ‘Bobby’ anymore.” I’d objected before to the nickname, but it never seemed to do any good.
She laughed, and I tried not to let her see me roll my eyes. “Sorry, Rob. That’s what you prefer, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for confirmation. “You’re going down to the public park to play basketball? It’s only 9 a.m. — what time do you expect to be home? Your father wants to take us out for Mexican tonight.”
“Oh. Uh… I guess I could be back by six?” I’d been planning to go with the guys to grab pizza, but Dad didn’t spring for meals out that often.
She made a face. “You’ll need to wash up, so make it five if you can. After eight hours of running and jumping, you will need a shower. Have you got money for lunch?”
I nodded. Dad had left an envelope with my allowance that I had snagged off the toolbox in the garage after doing my chores and putting the weed whacker away. There was usually a food truck parked nearby downtown, or I could go to the food court in the mall a few blocks away, plus a diner a block from the park.
Now Mom was smiling as she tugged at my collar, which didn’t need straightening. “Your brother is going to be in town tonight, and he and Cynthia will be going with us to dinner.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” That’s why we were going out for dinner.
Johnny and his wife Cynthia lived in family quarters at the air base about twenty miles away. But he’d be leaving on deployment overseas in a few weeks and Cynthia would be staying with us until he came home. It was a one-year assignment somewhere in the Middle East, and Mom and Dad were sort of nervous about it. It’s not the calmest or safest part of the world for someone wearing a US military uniform.
John was my big brother, eight years and five days older, but we hadn’t really been close since he graduated high school, joined the Air Force and married Cynthia. It’d be nice to see him before he went overseas again.
I said as much to Mom, then got out of the house before she could think of some other reason to delay. One thing I didn’t want to hear again was Mom’s lament about when would Cynthia provide her with a grandchild? I probably wasn’t as tired of it as Cindy was, or John for that matter.
I’d gotten my chores out of the way early so I could be sure to be one of the first to arrive at the park, and I’d put my bike out front in anticipation with my ratty old roundball in the basket. I’d already checked the inflation, too, so I hopped on the bike and started pumping.
Kabarker is a pretty flat town in the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, but there’s a bit of a rise before you get downtown, and I always liked to be going as fast as I could at the crest so I could just coast the rest of the way. The morning was still cool, and in early May, it wasn’t likely to get very hot, but I wasn’t wearing any more than I had to. A cartoon t-shirt, khaki shorts with cargo pockets, and my Van’s low-pros made up my usual Saturday get-up this time of year.
The breeze I made on my bike smelled of flowers from the desert around the town and avgas from the planes that passed overhead all day long. Sometimes, they caused a lot of noise, too, and people complained, but the town had depended on the nearby airbase for forty years, and that wasn’t going to change. People either worked civilian jobs on the base or in businesses that sold goods and services to the airmen.
What else would you do? Dig borax out of Muley Flats like people had done a hundred years ago? No, Kabarker still existed because of the Dromedary Lake Air Base and a lot of kids from the high school, like my brother, joined the Air Force after graduation. I wasn’t planning on it, but it would be an available option.
I didn’t have any decisions to make about the direction of my life at the moment, though, because I knew exactly where I was going. Sierra Boulevard is the main business district of Kabarker, eight or ten blocks long, with Sierra Park at one end and City Hall at the other. I rode by the park to make sure no one had already claimed the basketball courts, then steered for the alley behind the businesses facing Sierra.
My friend Josh Merrit lived above one of the shops with his mother, the owner and manager of Merrit Bridal, Lingerie and Dry Cleaning. Even on Saturday morning, Mrs. Merrit would be downstairs running her shops and managing her employees. Josh would be sleeping in because he worked the late shift Fridays and Saturdays at Muley’s BBQ Joint.
But the storage rooms behind the shops made a good place to leave my bike. I didn’t have to knock or anything. The back door was unlocked, and I soon had my bike stowed among the cans of cleaning fluid and the boxes of frilly underwear. I stuck my head into the office to say hi to Mrs. Merrit, but she had her head down over some paperwork and hardly gave me a glance or a grunt.
I waved at Luna Marquez behind the dry cleaner counter, and she waved back. She rolled her eyes upward, signaling me that I should go wake up Josh. I grinned at her, then climbed the interior stairs up to the Merrit apartment. Josh’s mom’s employees all treated Josh like a lazy nephew.
Upstairs, and again, I didn’t knock because nothing was locked. Pretty typical for Kabarker doors since everyone in town pretty much knew everyone else, so crime and security were both low. Inside the apartment, I made my way to Josh’s bedroom door and discovered it open. In the room, Josh lay sprawled across the full-size bed…
Naked.
I blinked loudly several times as I realized what I was looking at. I’d seen Josh naked before. We’d both been on the JayVee basketball team and had gym lockers in the same row. But….
Well, the way it works in a guys’ locker room is you try to avoid looking at the other guys’ junk. It’s rude and could even be considered queer. Or gay. Whatever. You didn’t do it.
But there Josh lay, not even a sheet across his naked body and in the middle of that flesh something stood out, most of a foot long. I guess. I wasn’t going to measure it.
But I did stare. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone so flagrantly aroused. It looked huge. Josh is a pretty big guy. We were in the same grade at school, but he had turned sixteen last October and I wouldn’t have my birthday until late August. He was most of a foot taller than me, too… lying down or standing up.
I didn’t know what to do. Wake him up somehow? Call his name or knock on his door? Wouldn’t things be a little awkward? Maybe I should just sneak away and wait for him on the courts?
But I couldn’t leave. I stood there staring like a rabbit frozen by the sight of a snake. Images, ideas and thoughts crowded my brain. Could I get closer without waking Josh? Why would I want to get closer? What would it feel like if I touched it? Warm? Rubbery? Hard as wood?
His hand, Josh’s hand, appeared from his other side.
And suddenly, I was running, out of the apartment, down the stairs and out into the alley. Breathing hard, feeling my face flushed, bending over with my hands on my knees, I threw up the Cap’n Crunch cereal I had had for breakfast before doing yard work.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “I’m gay…!”
Comments
Erin Halfelven at BigCloset
I commented on this earlier, but it seems to have disappeared. I grew up in the little California desert towns, and Cabarker is an amalgam of several of them. So yes, I do know the taste of alkali dust. :)
Sammy C
Looks like the start of another classic, Erin. The setting reminds me of Merle Haggard's "Tulare Dust." The lake is dry again after making an ephemeral reappearance in 2023. I've only driven through the area on I-5 going to San Francisco many, many years ago.
Melanie Brown
Too cute to be a boy.
