Page 175 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 145

another man.
They loved their wives and children, but their families looked to
them to hold everything together, and times were hard with recession.
Exhausted by the demands of women and children, they took to other
men for the kind of comfort that through the affection of physical release
enabled them to go back home relieved.
“I don’t need no other woman but my wife,” a backhoe operator told
Ryan. “What she can’t give me, she can’t help. What I need, I guess I get
from you.”
Don’t mistake Ryan for the Mother Teresa of Redneck Sex. “And I
get what I want,” Ryan said, “from you.” Ryan had a taste for, and a way
with, blue-collar men with gold wedding rings.
“Even if I have to sneak out once in awhile,” the backhoe operator
said, “I figure my old lady’s better off for me being with you. Ain’t no man
ever gonna break her and me up. If you was a woman, she might have
something to be worried about.”
“You talk so country-western,” Ryan said. “In a good way. Like a
country song.”
“Whatever...You sure as hell ain’t no woman...” The guy finger-combed
his hand through his collar-length hair and grinned. “...but you’re my
bitch.”
Between Sonoma County and the City, Kick tutored Ryan to an
understanding of real fraternity among adult males.
“Some call it male bonding,” Kick said.
Ryan called it Homomasculine Fraternity.
Solly Blue, the wise Solomon, dubbed them “The Gentlemen.”
“I’m not so sure,” Solly said, “about the crusading journalism. At
least if they’re hard on others, they’re harder on themselves. How can I
object? Even if they both protest a bit too much, at least they have style.
They’ve discovered an alternative to queenly elegance. We faggots are
nothing if we’re not elegant. I’m cash-elegant. Ryan’s porn-elegant. Kick
is muscle-elegant.”
He turned on me.
“You,” he said, “are not elegant. You’re straight. Straights are rarely
elegant.” Then he made his point. “Leave it to Ryan’s—how do you say?—
quiet good taste, to start telling the whole world how they’ve discovered
a new...butch elegance.”
Solly poured himself another in his endless glasses of Coca-Cola.
“I’m glad Ry’s found someone to believe in, even if he is a hustler, and
something to crusade for, even if it’s mere jousting at windmills. At least I

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