Page 243 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 213

“Sex and drugs.”
“The longest sex I ever had,” Thom said, “was fifteen minutes with
Sandy—until I went to Nam. In Saigon, once, I lasted for almost two
hours with a Mama-San.”
Thom’s revealing intimacy hardly surprised Ryan. They, all of them,
his whole family, he guessed, felt they could tell him anything. They could
confess all their secrets and sins. In their minds he had come so close to
being a priest that in their minds he had become one. The fact he had
never married shored up that idea of priestly character. He had become the
Father O’Hara they had dreamed in their Catholic dreams. Deep down
they all thought he was, living without wife and children, more priestly
than queer.
Out of his blues, or maybe more out of the Rorer 714 Quaalude,
Thom said, “You may be older than me, but my cock’s bigger.”
Ryan appeared unsure which challenging remark ticked him off more.
“Older,” Ryan said. “But with less mileage.”
“Older and wiser, I meant,” Thom said.
“So wise up yourself,” Ryan said. “Stop competing.”
“Who’s competing?”
“You. About everything.”
“What everything?”
“All the everything you always reduce down to cock size. Like size
means something. Stop deluding yourself.”
“About what? My cock?”
“About your cock. About everything. For godsake, who cares about
cock? You’re a worse size-queen than any faggot I know. You just don’t
get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“Life. Living. Forget about our cocks. Jeez. Stop competing. That’s
not what this is all about. It’s never been what it’s all about. Not when we
slept in the same bed as kids. Not the hundred times you’ve gotten off
with me.”
“What hundred times?”
“Stop being so literal. You’re so goddam John Wayne you can’t see the
forest for the trees.”
“What’s...that...mean?” Thom’s belligerence was succumbing to the
Quaalude.
“Must you think foreplay is always a fight? Is that what gets you up
with Sandy? Is violence the secret of your sex life?”
“Leave Sandy out of this.”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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