Author’s Note: It is a long drive from Los Angeles to Mt. Shasta. Our heroes have time to talk, and talk they do. Sometimes the talk is sexy, sometimes it is not. I told you I was keeping it real. Do you not yourself enjoy the process of getting to know someone you find interesting? These guys find each other interesting.

Unfolding Wonder

Nathan laughed out loud. Adrian, knowing well what he was laughing about, joined him.

Changing the topic to the logistics for the trip, he told Adrian, “I have some beef jerky in the cooler. That should hold us until Fresno. There’s an In-N-Out Burger off the freeway there. It’s about a hundred miles. You down?”

“I have food, Nathan.”

“I believe you, but I am the host. You are the guest. It is my honor to treat and your duty to accept.”

“I guess that doesn’t leave me much choice.”

“Well, we don’t have to go to In-N-Out.”

“I love In-N-Out. It’s one of the better things about California!”

“Cool. But there isn’t on in Portland? I’m surprised.”

“Not that I know of… Hmmm, let me check.” Adrian fiddled with his phone for a few minutes before announcing, “Well, there is one in Medford, Oregon, but that’s like three hundred miles from Portland or something. But, I see they are family owned and still in private hands. They have practiced a slow and steady growth pattern. Interesting.”

Nathan, once again amazed at Adrian’s ability to discover and suck up data, said, “Yep. I studied that company, in fact. I like to give them my business. They treat their employees well, and their service is always cheerful and energetic. And they do have the best burgers and fries! But, anyway, how about you grab us some snacks from the ice chest, and may I ask, in just how much of a hurry to get home are you?”

“I’m in no hurry at all.”

“Perfect, though I can’t say I in no hurry at all. I’d like to make camp before dark, but I don’t want to stress about it. In fact, Adrian, I don’t want to stress about anything whatsover.”

“That’s perfect, Nathan. Let’s not stress about anything.”

Nathan was truly liking this wonderful young man.

By the time they arrived in Fresno, Adrian had managed to extract a lot of information from him. This was a refreshing surprise, for Nathan, who considered himself a master at drawing people out, found the role reversal delightful.

First, as they drove through the endless fields and farms that comprised most of California, Adrian had quizzed him about his enterprises. “What I don’t understand, Nathan, is how you went from a liberal arts degree to owning a construction company.”

“Well, you must understand that I really am just a working class guy. My dad was a mechanic, but he was a good one. I was always hanging out at the garage after school and over the summer. I was always working on shit, you know? I’d have some go-kart or scooter or something off to one side, and all the mechanics considered me their good luck mascot, so it was, for me, a happy environment. Then, when I was twelve, my dad opened his own shop. He really impressed me with how he always insisted on doing a great job no matter what, no matter if it cost him money. In this way, he built an incredible reputation.”

“Yeah. I get that. I heard the way you were talking to that guy, Jim, and he said, ‘We Make it Right.’ That’s a motto, huh? With double meaning?”

“Exactly. My dad’s motto was, ‘We Fix It,’ again, the double meaning, meaning, ‘We fix it even if it goes wrong and it costs us money, we still fix it.’ He used to say, ‘People don’t know how machines work. They have to trust us. So that makes ’em easy to rip off, but they do figure that out, eventually, so if you want them to come back again and again and tell their friends, you can’t rip ’em off. You don’t have to be the cheapest! You have to be the best!’”

“I like your dad, Nathan.”

“Oh, he was an asshole, but he had integrity. He had not done well in school though. He hated it, and when he saw how I liked to read and study, he really wanted me to do some white collar thing. The trades are hard on the body. My dad got to the point where he could hardly bend over to pick up wrench because his back had been so fucked up so many times.”

“You say, ‘was?’”

“Yeah. He raced cars on the weekends. He ended up buying it in a crash in this open wheel class after he got clipped by this one guy who I’d love to meet in a dark alley some night. His left front wheel came of and he flipped, and then there were two other cars that crashed into him. I was seventeen.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. His life insurance helped my mom and sisters, but I ended up giving Mom my share. I stayed on at the shop, really taking over, not as a mechanic but as the manager. We had some good guys there, but my dad and I were the ones who did all the talking with the customers.”

“Ah, so you had this early taste for that.”

“Yeah, but it was far from my thing. After high school, I wanted to go to college, so my mom sold the shop to the head mechanic, and I got a college trust out of it. It was not quite enough to live on, but it covered my tuition at a good school.”

“Sure. I was asking how you went from college to carpentry?”

“Well, there were a long series of steps leading up to that. We always had various kinds of race machines around the place, and I was always working on things, and I was learning about business. My dad would make some good money that way, racing cars, sometimes, but usually the costs exceeded the gains, and I saw that. That was later though when the shop was rolling in dough. For the first year, it was a beating, and that was when I really started to learn. See, I told you I was, like, the mascot?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, pretty soon I was answering the phone. I just started doing it one day. I just picked up the phone when I saw my dad was busy, and when they asked to talk with him, I would say, ‘He’s got his head under a hood,’ or ‘He’s talking with a customer. I can probably help you!’ And I did. Usually they wanted to know how much something might cost or when their car was done, and we had books that estimated labor times for various jobs, and I could look up part costs, so I actually could help them. I would talk to people who came into the shop too. I became a pretty good salesman.”

“I’ll bet you were cute when you were a boy, huh Nathan?”

They were just then passing by Visalia after going through a small flurry of rain mixed with dust that was stirred up from the tractors working in the wide open fields to the west of the freeway. Nathan was not pleased with how this would make his truck filthy, but it was all part of a long trip.

He answered Adrian. “That’s what I was told, yeah, and I suppose my ‘cuteness’ helped my ability to sell because people would look at me positively, and people admire a kid who works for his family. I also knew my shit, so I could be confident when I talked to customers. I’d tell ’em, ‘Yeah, we’ll fix that. No problem!’ Or, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. We do that kind of work all the time!’ My dad was ‘the closer.’ You know what that is?”

“Yeah, one guy gets ’em to want it, and the ‘closer’ gets the money from them.”

“Exactly. My dad always told me to tell them, ‘Oh, you can probably get it done cheaper. And there are plenty of mechanics can do a good job, but will they? We will. We always do! Have you talked to any of our other customers?’ Like that, you know? My dad was a famously great transmission guy. Those are special and rare in an industry with many, many ripoff artists. Never, never take your car to AAMCO! They are always trying to oversell. My dad knew how to tweak a tranny for a few bucks to make it last for another year or two, and he wouldn’t make money that way, but he’d earn a customer for life. They’d say, ‘Yeah, that fucking AAMCO guy said I needed a new one!’”

“That’s awesome, Nathan. That makes so much sense!”

“I know, right? But, it took some time to build a business that way. Anyway, it wasn’t that I liked ’sales.’ Really, it was that I liked talking to people, and, I liked helping my family. My dad liked when I was around because he could concentrate on his work and get things done more quickly, and that really helped us make money too. I had a place in the world, and, he came to value me at the shop. It was my mom who spotted that I was good at sales. She did the books. She first observed that the days I worked at the shop were the days when the numbers went up! He didn’t even pay me; though, if I wanted money or some part for my latest project, he would usually give it to me. Sometimes, he would not, but he would offer me a way to earn, ya’ know?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty cool! My dad is actually like that too. A lot of my schoolmates are spoiled brats. He wants my sister and I to be earners, not takers!”

“Good! I approve of your father’s policy! But, yeah, that first year on his own was hard. These valley towns are hard on small businesses. Sacramento is the same. My dad was killed in Fresno at the dirt track there. All these valley towns have little race tracks.”

“Fresno? Where we are going for a burger?”

“Yeah. It’s a weird nostalgia, I guess. I remember driving this highway with my dad so many times when he raced. Those were good times, sitting in the cab with him, listening to the old rock music he liked. That’s why I took the 99 instead of the 5, which is the faster route.”

“I’m cool with it. I am getting pretty hungry!”

“Me too. We’re about a half an hour away, but where I was going was this: What do you think is the number one reason people buy from one guy and not the other?”

“They trust him?”

“That’s a pretty good guess, actually, but according to surveys that I’ve seen, it’s simpler than that: It’s because they like the salesman. So the trick is just to be a ‘people person.’ You don’t actually try to make people like you, you show interest in them just like you are doing with me right now See? You, my friend, are a natural!”

Adrian smiled broadly at the compliment.

“Hey, Adrian,” Nathan then said, changing the subject, “Can you see if you can find something with more grunge in the music. I’m in the mood for some edgier tunes. This Celtic stuff isn’t doing it for me right now.”

“Sure. Hmmm…”

He peered at the screen, “Whoa, you have Tad, Melvins, Alice in Chains, all that stuff… My dad likes those bands too. Well, he used to.”

“The music of our youth, you know? Can you handle it?”

“I can handle it. Yours was a rebellious generation.”

“Ours was a generation sick of bullshit and fakery. That music was all about that.”

“Only you never grew out of that, did you?”

“Nope.”

Without talking, all the way to Fresno and the burger place, they listened to the loud, raucous, dissonant, and thumping strains of “Generation X.” Nathan had long before learned that the anger in the music hid the doleful sadness in the lyrics. The mixed messages and double meanings suited his mood. Let it out. Get it out.

The “In-N-Out” was not far from the freeway. That was why Nathan picked the place. By silent accord, they went in to eat, keeping the truck and exposed gear in sight of the window near which Nathan had backed the truck. He told Adrian to order two burgers for himself, and that he was happy to do. If one was going to do junk food, one could do worse that In-N-Out. At least there everything was fresh. They even left the skins on the potatoes for the french fries, and sliced them immediately before frying hem in fresh oil.

Over the meal, Adrian commented, “I know something about sales too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You have to put yourself out there.”

Nathan smiled at that. The kid could not have spoken a more important truth! Swallowing his bite, he asked, “How did you figure that out?”

“It was in Colorado. See, I didn’t tell you that my riding partner, Stanley, after we had that fight, took off in the middle of the night, and he took all our cash! He fucking robbed me! Can you believe it! He really intended to fuck me over. But, anyway, I had only about forty bucks on my ATM card. Later, I found out he’d rode into Denver and took a train. He was done! He was done with the trip, but I was not done. I wanted to keep going, so just decided I would, and I did!”

“With basically no money at all, yeah?”

Adrian was chewing a huge bite then, so he only smiled and nodded. He had the brightest and happiest expression on his face.

When he swallowed, he said, “I could have called my mom. She would have got my dad to put some money in my account, or she would do it and then get money back from him, but I just did not want to hear his bullshit. He’s still pissed at me for taking off on this trip instead of going straight to college. He’s convinced that ‘people who take a year off, take a life off,’ but I think he’s actually jealous and actually respects it, but, anyway, so yeah! I had no money, but I kept rolling. Besides, I didn’t take a year off. I took a year on!”

Nathan nodded, very pleased. “So how did you do it?”

Adrian had taken another bite. He did not wish to talk with his mouth full. Nathan waited. Finally, after swallowing and taking a long draw on the straw of his soft drink, he said, “Well, I had already found that people everywhere are basically friendly. I had learned it was no problem approaching anyone to ask where we could get water or where there were good places to camp, or anything, really. And usually people were all curious about our adventures. Stan was always all about, ‘How many miles we burned.’ He could hardly ever seem to enjoy where we were. It was always about the next destination. If it stormed, instead of,‘Wow! That’s so beautiful!’ It was ‘Well, this is going to fuck our schedule!’”

“I know the type, Adrian, but you were saying?”

“So instead of following the route we planned, I headed south. I decided I wanted to see the Southwest. I wanted to see the desert. Also, the route over the southern Rockies is easier, and I did not have the right gearing, really, the whole trip, so I knew that would be a problem. I had been planning on swapping the rear cluster for a different one in Denver, but Stan fucked that up, and I did not want to catch up to him, but I didn’t know he had bailed then, and, anyway, I just headed south without even worrying about a map, and as I was passing this farm, I saw this green lawn and kids playing and a woman spraying them with a hose, so I just pulled in and said, ‘Hey? You know where a guy might do some work to buy some food?’ And she was amazed! All the kids crowded around me, and she told me to stay for dinner! It was an order! She said her husband was out on the ranch, and when he came back, I could ask him, so I got a job helping him ‘ride fence.’ That’s what they call it. Only it was in an ATV, not on horses, and I helped him fix the barb wire fence. He lent me gloves and a pair of overalls and some old boots. Mainly I would pull the wire tight while he stapled it. It took a couple days. I made a hundred bucks, and they fed the fuck out of me. I slept on the porch, and then I rolled on.”

“That’s a great story, Adrian, and that technique worked for you the whole way?”

“Totally. In fact, people were always trying to give me stuff!”

“Everyone loves a beautiful, charming boy, Adrian. Would it have been different, do you think, if you had been, say, black, or dirty?”

“Dirty? Well, there’s dirty and there’s dirty! But black, I don’t know. I met a couple of black guys traveling, and I asked ’em if they ever had trouble with racists, and they told me that it really wasn’t much of a problem, usually. One guy even said that if you approach them the right way, even the most racist, skinhead, Nazi motherfucker will usually do you the courtesy of saying you’ll have better luck looking for work in another part of town, and they will tell you what parts to avoid and what places to go, so even then, but I can’t really speak for them, but I did hear that, and I did see that. People, Nathan, are basically nice! That is what I really learned on this trip. My dad thinks he knows the world. He doesn’t!”

Nathan enjoyed Adrian’s breathless storytelling style – essentially a series of related clauses forming one, long, effusive sentence linked with various conjunctions while building tension and mystery until one got to the final punch at the end.

He said to him, “Well, I agree. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you there are some first-class bastards in this world, though. There are people who enjoy harming others. That’s a fact.”

“Of course. That’s why I said, ‘basically,’ not ‘universally,’ and I told you what Stan did, but the thing is? I know what he was thinking; he was thinking I had betrayed him, so in his mind, he was just making things even. I’ve known him since before high school. He’s not evil. He’s just fucked up. His parents are super controlling.”

Nathan nodded. He enjoyed the spirit of forgiveness he was seeing in this wise young man.

While Adrian so cutely wolfed down his second hamburger, Nathan talked, sipping his iced tea with lemon, no sugar. “I think the way you approached me is a good example of what you just said, Adrian. Unless you walk up to people and ask, you’ll never get much. You were wondering how I transitioned from college to carpenter?”

Adrian, chewing his food, nodded.

“Well, in order to do college, I had to find a way to live cheaply. Even the dorms were expensive. Also, I did not want to waste time working for food and rent. I wanted to study! So I decided I would just find a way to live rent free without having to work much for it. Like you, I just decided. Then, I looked for a way to make it come true. After high school, I hitched around with a backpack, just going wherever, and I got a job cutting and splitting firewood near Mount Shasta, and I heard that if you took classes at this one community college for a year, you could get in-state tuition at SOU, and that pleased my mom, who managed the trust. It was hard work and shit pay, but it was satisfying to me. That was when I got into wood, and making things with wood. But, anyway, I applied to SOU, and got accepted.

“That summer, I camped in the woods while I figured out my living situation in Ashland. I saw an ad for an apartment manager, and I applied. It turned out that my experience managing my dad’s garage was good experience. Plus the guy liked it when I told him, ‘I know what your problem is.’ It made him laugh when I said that. See, I already knew from my dad what drives bosses batshit: People who won’t take responsibility! Anyway, he fired back, ‘OK, smarty pants, what’s my problem?’ I told him, ‘Your problem is you need everything at this apartment building to just get handled. You just want to see those rent checks deposited, places vacated and filled fast, and nothing else. Instead you hear, ‘“My sink is broken! I didn’t get paid! My room needs painting! The heater’s broke!“’ And you don’t want to hear that. If you wanted to hear that, you would be the apartment manager!”

“And what did he say?” Adrian asked.

“He said I was right; that was exactly his problem! So I closed him with, ‘I can help you with that!’

“So he hired me, even though I was just a kid. In fact, he pretty much took me under his wing and taught me a lot. He actually did not mind hearing about problems. What he minded was when the problems got dumped on him – him alone – to solve! In fact, every time I had a problem I could not handle, I’d call him and ask his advice, and then do what he said. I learned how to evict people. I learned how to qualify renters. I learned how to get that fucking check, and I learned how to be a handyman. That was the beginning of my construction experience.”

“But you already were a guy who made stuff and fixed stuff, right?”

“Right. Wrenching really does teach you to work smart. It poses all kinds of challenges to overcome. It cultivates a certain ‘can do’ attitude. One learns patience.”

Adrian nodded. “I didn’t tell you that the way I paid for my trip and put my bike together was from working in a bike shop in high school. I’m a pretty good bike mechanic. They take a delicate touch, bikes do!”

“Are you trying to make me fall in love with you, Adrian?”

“Yes.” He took another bite of his hamburger and stared at Nathan with “fuck me” eyes.

Speaking of Fucking…

Once on the road north out of Fresno, Nathan decided it was time to probe the topic of sex. He pondered this as they crossed the San Joaquin River and Adrian searched for more music to play – interspersed with much texting on his phone. The terrain remained open and flat, and it would remain so for another two hundred miles. People new to California were often surprised by that. Nathan had an affection for farm country. It was a place with a lot of freedom to shoot guns, ride dirt bikes, swim in rivers, fish, and camp.

He asked Adrian, “So that girl you were with in Van Nuys? Was she a girlfriend, or a friend who was a girl?”

“A little of both, actually. I’ve had several girlfriends, but no real boyfriends.”

“So you’ve fucked chicks.” It was a statement.

“Several times, actually. How about you?”

Nathan smiled. “Actually” was a favorite word with Adrian. Nathan found it cute. He answered, “Yeah, plenty of girls in my younger days, but I always had a boyfriend since I was, like, twelve. Always a ‘best friend’ who liked to fool around with me. How about you?”

“I’ve never actually had sex with a guy, Nathan.”

Fascinating!

This was a good, honest boy. It was a delicate business.

“And yet,” Nathan observed, “you came out to me with considerable confidence.”

“Well, Nathan, you made it easy. You gave me an opening. Thing is, I never met a guy who I knew was gay that I actually wanted to do anything with but who also seemed willing to offer me an opportunity. I’m really turned off by fussy guys who shave too carefully, laugh too loudly, and smile too readily.”

Nathan laughed out loud. “Can I quote you on that? That was fucking hilarious! I get it! You don’t like ‘poofs!’”

“Exactly! And when they all start talking like women? Disgusting!”

“They call that ‘camping’; you know, camping it up? When they get together, they tend to exaggerate it.”

“No, I don’t really know about that. It seems creepy, like they are weird caricatures of women.”

“Oh,” Nathan said, secretly agreeing, “don’t be so hard on them, but anyway, when you saw me at the gas station, did you ‘read’ me as gay?”

“No. Not really, but I did think you were hot as fuck.”

“Well, thanks! Likewise! So you were hoping?”

“One can always hope, right? But, anyway, I had decided that if it was right, it would come to me. I do not know how to hit on guys. With girls, it’s like, ‘Hey! You are beautiful! You wanna fuck?’”

Nathan chuckled. “It is like that in the gay scene, Adrian. Say, in gay bars. But unlike girls who can get all offended by that approach, gay guys, even when they turn you down, will usually be cool about it. They’ll say, ‘Thanks, but I’m waiting for a friend,’ or, ‘That’s cool man, you seem nice, but I’m into bears,’ or something like that. We call young guys like you, ‘twinks,’ and I’m pretty much a ‘muscle stud,’ but I cross over into the ‘bear,’ scene. You ever heard of that stuff?”

“I totally have. I’ve read books, actually, and I’ve watched tons of porn. That’s how I know; well, that’s one of the ways I know, in case you were going to ask.”

“Yes, I was wondering about that, but I gotta tell you, I do not go around hitting on young guys. It’s pretty much a rule in the mature gay scene. I mean, there’re all kinds of guys who’d love to have a young lover, and they will use their money and power – if they have any of that – to keep a boy, but most of us see right through that. The younger one is really not into the older one, and the older one knows it in his heart, so it’s pretty pathetic. He may try to kid himself though. And then, there are plenty of gold diggers who want a sugar daddy.”

With that last, Nathan was saying what was really on his mind. He got plenty of action with men in their late twenties to early thirties. He was far from sex starved. He knew he was still a very desirable man and probably had at least another ten years of “fuckableness” left in his run, maybe more, so long as he took care of himself. He left the last comment hanging to see how Adrian would respond.

Adrian did not protest. He nodded. That made sense to him. He asked Nathan, “So? Your lover Brian? Was he a ‘sugar daddy’ to you?”

Good answer!

“Brian and I had a complicated relationship, Adrian. We were very competitive. He was more like a big brother than a dad.”

“A big brother who had sex with you.” Adrian said it as a statement as he reached up to the touchscreen to select different music. He found Nathan’s collection of old blues tunes and selected one of his playlists. Nathan was happy he did not ask permission.

With Leadbelly playing in the background, Nathan said, “I said it was complicated! But he did help me out. He invested in me. He gave me a stake. He helped me start my first business with him in Santa Monica where there were lots of really, really rich people who will pay good money for good work. He bought me a truck and tools. He bought a house that had a huge garage that I could use for a workshop until the neighbors complained about the noise from my saws, and then he helped me set up my yard in a properly ‘mixed use’ zoning area. Santa Monica has extremely invasive zoning laws! So yeah, he was a ‘sugar daddy’ that way, but I also paid him back. He would not accept interest on the loan, and I would not accept it as a gift. We both had our pride, you know?”

“Yeah, Nathan. I do know. But were you, like, married?”

“No. Not exactly. He had an attorney draw up papers… Like, did you know that hospitals won’t even let you visit your lover because you are not ‘family?’ So a lot of the issues with ‘gay marriage’ are really about human dignity and sharing each other’s life with honor. He was my brother in arms. We were a team, but the legality of our relationship remained a work in progress for our whole time together. It was a ‘civil union.’ This was the nineties, you know? At the beginning? My generation wrote the script. We fought for your rights. You feel me? But, anyway, I never gave him an ‘exclusive.’ You know what I mean?”

“Uh, yeah, I get you on all that, but you are saying you fucked around?”

“Yes. I told him that was the deal; take it or leave it. I was upfront from the first. I was pretty much a little slut in my younger days, dude.”

Adrian grinned at that. He looked Nathan over quite overtly, looking him up and down. He asked, “You got any pictures of him and you?”

“Many. I have my laptop with me. I’ll show you when we get a chance. He was always taking pictures. And he was a fuck hot man, Adrian. I would describe him as the ‘Keanu Reeves’ type, but darker, maybe more ‘Keanu Reeves meets Timothy Dalton,’ to keep to the ‘Bond’ theme. Tall, angular, dark haired, fit, and devilish! Brian was fuck hot! No doubt about it!

Once again Nathan was impressed at how adroitly Adrian had drawn him out. He wanted to get Adrian to talk about himself, but the young man would ask good questions, and Nathan would find himself talking. Trying to swing it back the other way, he said, “So you told me you watched a lot of porn, and you said you read books. When did that start?”

“I was about fifteen. I never even jacked off until then. I didn’t even know how to do it. I mean, guys were always talking about it, and I played along like I knew, but I had no clue. And, anyway, one of my friends told me about how there was lots of free porn on the internet, so I went to one of the sites, and had a chance to actually watch people fuck, and that made me horny, but I was really fascinated by the guys, you know? And I saw there was a link for ‘gay,’ so I clicked that, and then, BAM, watching dudes go at it? My dick got SO hard! And man! I just love being able to talk about this! You are the first person I ever told that to!”

Nathan grinned and held up his right hand for a “bro’ shake.” Adrian gave him one, grinning back. “You were saying, Adrian?”

“Yeah, so, anyway, I remember that first video I watched. It had all these ‘Bel Ami’ guys in it. You know what that is?”

“Indeed I do. They are legendary.”

“Yeah! I liked their big strong bodies and their pretty faces, and I was watching, like, four of them get it on, and they were all, ‘any hole, any time,’ guys, and I just reached down to fiddle with my dick. It was only, like, five inches then, and man! I just exploded! I almost blacked out I came so hard!”

“You never had a wet dream before that?”

“No. I’d wake up with a stiffy all the time, but I never had a wet dream before that, but after? Oh yeah! And it was with guys in my dreams, but here’s something I noticed right away about gay porn. You wanna hear it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, when I was watching straight porn, I noticed that the guys were often rough and cruel to the women, but in gay porn, most times, even when they rough it up, they were usually sweet to each other. Lots of kissing. More affectionate than in straight porn. Have you seen that?”

“Yes I have. There are many exceptions to that, but I hear what you are saying.”

“Yeah. So I wanted that! And I knew I wanted that, but I just could not see a way to get anything going with any guy I knew. I mean, at school? To get a reputation as a fag? That was the worst thing that could happen!”

“I feel your pain, Adrian. I think all gay guys can relate. Most of us don’t see much action until we are college age, and then? No one really gives a shit. But let me ask you this: Your buddy Stan? He is beautiful, isn’t he?”

“You figured that out. Yes. I read this story by Margaret Atwood. She wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, right?”

“I’ve read her, yes, but this other story?”

“It was non-fiction. It was about her brother. He was mono-manic. Always totally absorbed in some project. She described his beauty as ‘preternatural.’ I had to look up that word. It’s a great word! But she also said that he had not the slightest awareness of his own beauty. Stan was like that. Beautiful dark hair. Smooth, flawless skin. A perfect body, and like Atwood’s brother, no idea of that. He was a loner. When we were kids, his thing was model airplanes. Then we got into bikes together. We built them from parts and raced each other all the time. He was always kind of weird. He could get mad and stay mad. He never seemed to be interested in girls. He just ignored them, and, unlike my other friends, he wasn’t always and only talking about girls, girls, girls. He was a nerd. A geek. He liked computers, but not video games. I think Stan might be, like, high functioning autistic. I kinda feel sorry for him, but, anyway, he liked to get outside and do physical things! Like me! He was not into sports though. Stan did no do ‘teams.’ I did. I played soccer. I was on the team in high school. I played wing, mostly, at first, but last year I played fullback. And I always liked baseball. I played baseball since I was a little guy. My dad loves baseball! He played and played with me! It’s psychological, you know? That’s the secret of baseball. I’m a good hitter and a good outfielder! Anyhow, I finally started to get big at the end of my, uh, junior year? And in soccer, they usually place bigger guys on defense. You know soccer?”

“Yep. I played football though. That and wrestling.”

“That does not surprise me,” Adrian observed. “Wrestlers have a rep as gay, even though the guys all swear it isn’t, but it is, isn’t it?”

“Yep. That, swimming, and gymnastics. Definitely the better hunting grounds for gay jocks.”

“And you know all about that, don’t you, Nathan?”

“Yep,” Nathan agreed without hesitation. He was determined to keep Adrian talking, so he did not elaborate. Instead, he asked, “But you said you have been with ‘several’ girls?”

“Yeah. There was a lot of social pressure to be ‘normal,’ and I was pretty popular at school, and there was this one girl I had known since elementary school, Diane. She lived right nearby my house. She was a tomboy. We had even built a tree house together, but we had grown apart, but one day we were working together in the math lab, and I just told her, ‘You know, Diane, all the guys keeps saying, “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Do the girls put that kind of pressure on girls?’ And she laughed with relief. She said it was worse for girls! So I said, ‘Would you be my girlfriend?’ Just like that!”

“That was pretty slick, dude. What did she say?”

“She laughed in her happy way, and she said, ‘I thought you’d never ask!’”

Adrian wriggled in his seat, staring out the window the brilliant light of the Central Valley, pleasing himself with the memory. They were driving slowly then through one of the single lane construction zones that always seemed to crop up on Highway 99. He said, “So I held her hand as we walked to the bike racks… Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you Diane rode a bike! We rode to her house. It was nice. We both felt so relieved! She told me so. We could talk she and I. That’s why I picked her. Also, she was cute. We were sixteen then. No! I was still fifteen, but that was at the end of the school year. She was sixteen. With her, I could say, ‘I feel shy,’ or ‘I feel awkward,’ and she liked that. She liked the way I was honest with her.”

“Except, you were not really honest with her.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that, Nathan. There’s more to the story.”

“OK.”

“I mean, just because I’m turned on by guys doesn’t mean I’m turned off by girls, and, in fact, she was the first person I told that to. Later, I told my sister too, but, anyway…”

“OK. Sorry to interrupt.”

“Anyway, I kissed her that very same day. I told her, ‘I’ve never kissed a girl!’ She said that she had kissed a couple of guys, so if I wanted to practice, ‘that could be arranged!’ Hah! Funny, huh?”

“Yes. She sounds like a great girl!”

“She is!

“Her parents were cool too. Her dad was a bus mechanic for the city. He always liked me, and she had two younger brothers who were totally little jocks, and I would play with them all the time, and her mom was a great cook. It was like a second family. They had a big yard and the same tree we had built a treehouse, but the boys and her dad had rebuilt it so it was bigger and better by then, and we would hang out there reading a lot. We both liked to read, but she said, that first day, ‘Let’s go kiss in the tree house!’ And I was all, ‘I think I need more practice!’ We were really cute together that way.”

“It sounds like it.” Nathan was delighted that he’d gotten Adrian talking. He was then convinced that sex with him would be joyous and affectionate, and he was much looking forward to “practice.”

Having passed through the construction zone, Nathan chose to refrain from zooming ahead. He knew from experience that the cops knew how frustrated drivers would want to speed; additionally, he knew the city of Stockton, coming up, was broke, so they had taken to handing out lots of tickets for any possible infraction. He would not feel safe to speed until he was north of Sacramento. They also were in no hurry. Soon, they would need to make another pit stop to gas up at one of Nathan’s favorite gas stations between Stockton and Sacramento. They always had cheap gas, good coffee, a fairly large market, and a nice restroom. The place was owned by a Punjabi family whom Nathan always found to be polite and sweet.

He told Adrian, “There’s a place up ahead, about a half-hour, where we can stretch our legs, take a piss break, and get snacks. I’ll be filling my second tank there as well.”

“You have two gas tanks?”

“Yep. And a a deep cycle, auxiliary battery too. Always ready for the apocalypse, that’s me. No cheap gas for the rest of the trip.”

“You don’t strike me as cheap, Nathan.”

“You don’t strike me as naïve, Adrian. I’m sure you’ve figured out that I’m a fat cat. Us rich cats don’t get that way by wasting money, you know?”

“Finally, you admit it! Hah! I knew it!”

The kid had done it again! He’d gotten Nathan talking. “Yeah? What makes you so sure?”

“I spotted some details at the gas station in Santa Clarita, and I’ve been studying you ever since.”

“Go on?”

“First, I noticed that though you are wearing jeans and a blue shirt, your shirt is tailored. It’s chambray, and that needs to be ironed, and it was ironed, so you take your ‘blues’ to the cleaners. Then I saw your jeans did not have a label. They have no brand. So I went, ‘This dude has his clothes made!’ Your boots look like regular construction boots, but I bet they are custom boots. Again, no label, and fucking polished. Your undershirt is silk, and your haircut, like a fucking movie star, all carefully cut with scissors into tiny tufts. It probably costs you a hundred bucks every couple of weeks. And your truck, from a distance, a classy version of a good, collectable truck, but with all the custom work, the paint, the wheels, the whole drive train, the whole interior, shit, it’s probably more expensive than a high end Mercedes. My parents call it ‘stealth wealth.’ You are a ‘one-percenter.’ I’m right, huh?”

Nathan was suitably impressed. But he shrugged. “I’d have to be about a hundred times richer than I am to make the next grade, and I don’t see that happening in this lifetime. Are you intimidated?”

“Do I look intimidated?”

There was that sneer of his again. This time it was a sneer, but by then, Nathan found the expression endearing. “No, Adrian, you don’t look intimidated.”

He smiled happily. “What’s hot is that I’ve learned that you are one of the rare ones who really earned it. My dad would like you. He’s not easily impressed. He came up from nothing too. I’m hoping you will share your knowledge with me. And what kind of leather are these seats upholstered with? It feels really tough. And I noticed you have a beat up, old, stainless steel Rolex in the tray by the USB ports. You probably like it because it’s tough, not because you think it’s classy.”

“Yeah. I love that watch. You could literally drive a truck over it. I’m always forgetting to wind it though. Brian gave me that watch after I was late one time. And the leather is yak hide. I bought the hides from this guy in Alaska who sort of ‘gray markets’ goods out of Mongolia, and a good haircut costs about one-twenty these days. It was George Clooney who turned me on to his hairdresser when I did some work on his house in Malibu.”

“So, ‘carpenter?’ My ass! Carpenter to the stars, more like!”

“I am a carpenter, Adrian. That’s not a fucking lie, but my work is in one-off creations, and these days I primarily design. I’ll tell you all about it, little brother, anything you want to know. I’ll tell you how I leveraged my low expenses and high profits into a little fortune, but you were in the middle of telling about your first girlfriend, this great girl, Diane. You said you came out to her. Talk to me!”

They were then entering the almost interminable outskirts of Stockton. There would be little in the way of open country until after Sacramento. The towns had separate names, but it was all part of one supercity.

Adrian flipped open the center console and pulled out Nathan’s classic “Oyster” Rolex, old before Brian had gifted it to Nathan. Adrian smiled as he wound it for him.

There was something significant to Nathan in that small gesture. It said a lot. It said that Adrian could be trusted with his prized possessions, and Adrian wanted him to know that. He was no “gold digger.” He was a classy guy who was not impressed by mere money.

Adrian commented, “It’s really true, what they say about these old, analog Rolexes. You really cannot see the second hand ‘tick.’ Fucking amazing!”

Nathan told him, “I had that watch looked over by a jeweler. It needed nothing, really. He replaced the back seal and the crystal, but it was perfect inside. It’s the same age as Brian, and it still keeps perfect time; well, it loses two seconds a fucking year! You don’t have to worry about over-winding it. The jeweler told me that was only a problem with cheap watches.”

Adrian nodded. He cocked his head and studied Nathan silently before continuing, “That’s cool man. Cool fucking watch! But anyway? Diane?”

“Yeah. Tell me about this great girl, dude.”

“Oh, we had fun together! Like I said, we often hung out in the tree house. It had electricity. We would study together. We were not secretive, always sneaking off. We were buddies. At any time one of her little brothers could climb up the ladder, even her mom, and, in the evenings, her dad. But we always had warning, so we could make out. We both liked to kiss a lot! But we kind of kept our hands to ourselves. And it’s not like she didn’t turn me on. She did. I would totally get a boner, and she would comment on that, and it made us laugh. I didn’t get a boner from looking at her, like I would from a hot guy, but I did get one from touching her. One day, she asked, ‘How come you never try to touch my boobs?’ That’s when I told her, ‘I think I might be gay, Diane. I’m kinda intimidated by your boobs.’ It just came out, Nathan! I guess I really trusted her by then. But it just made her laugh, and she said, ‘Well then, that makes us even, because I think I’m into girls!’”

“Oh HO! I like this Diane!”

Adrian laughed in a way that he was learning was characteristic. He would bob his head, and look like he was laughing, but he made no sound at all. He did that with his brilliant sapphire eyes twinkling at Nathan.

“Oh, Nathan, man, we got kinky after that!”

“Aww… You’re giving away the story, Adrian, you said that too soon! How did that happen? Do tell!”

Adrian grinned. “OK. Here’s how it happened. First, she was all, ‘Let’s make sure. Let’s have sex. Do you want to?’

“So it was she who initiated it, not me. I did want to have sex! But we did it like a science experiment! It was great. We did not have to pretend we liked it if we didn’t like it, and nobody’s feelings got hurt! The biggest problem was finding a place. Her house was not private and neither was mine, and we really wanted to do it! We did not want to rush it. We wanted to take our time, and she wanted a bathroom too. We needed condoms, but I was too shy to buy them, so she ordered some online. She had better internet… more freedom. Her brothers were all into online gaming, but my dad had our internet locked down. He had all this snooper software installed…”

It was fascinating to Nathan to hear all the difficulties teenagers had to achieve privacy and independence. That was one thing he did not miss about being young. “I thought you said you watched porn online?”

“I did! But that was by using my neighbor’s wifi, and that only lasted a while until they put a password on it.”

“OK, so where did you go?”

“Well, you remember I told you I worked at a bike shop?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, before I actually had a paid job, me and a bunch of other road geeks would hang out at the back of the shop. We’d work on our bikes ’cause the mechanics were cool and let us use tools and shit. Diane was a famous Betty… You know what a ‘Betty’ is?”

“I’m guessing a girl rider?”

“Yeah, but a cool one, anyway, my friends were all, ‘Did you fuck her, did you fuck her?’ And I was all, ‘Actually, we are trying to find a place to do it, like, with a bed and a bathroom and no fucking parents!’ Well, the head mechanic heard us, I guess, because later he said that there was an empty room at his place. He rented this house, and he rented out rooms in it, and people were always coming and going, and it was a party place. He was like, I don’t know, twenty-five or something? But I was wondering what he got out of it? You know? I wondered, was he weird? Did he get off on that? You know?”

“Yeah. Seems kinda fishy. Kinda too good to be true?”

“Yeah. That’s what I wondered, but one of my friends said he had a girlfriend, and it was just a crash pad, and it was a place where if you got drunk, you were safe, and no one messed with you. It was just another hangout, and by inviting me, it just meant I was ‘in the club.’ And it turned out to be cool. So instead of hanging out at the shop, one afternoon we went there instead. It was a nice room. You had to go down the hall to the bathroom, but it nice and clean, and basically we took our clothes off and explored each other’s bodies! We showed each other how we masturbated. We tried it on each other. We kissed a lot, and then she wanted me to put it in her… after we figured out how to put on the rubber! And I did. We both liked it… pretty much. We were saying, ‘That wasn’t so bad!’ We had been all worried, but after that we were not. We got really relaxed with each other. It helped our friendship a lot! She told me she liked my penis. I told her I liked her vagina.”

Nathan was very much enjoying the story. It was so sweet and innocent. He asked, “Did you try oral?”

“Not at first, but we did, later. We didn’t like that so much. Neither of us were very good at turning each other on that way, but again, Nathan, no hurt feelings! With her, it was just another thing to laugh about. It was like we took a trail we thought might be fun but turned out to be against the wind with too many rocks, that’s all. ‘Uphill both ways,’ we say!”

Nathan liked his specialized, bicyclist’s expressions. His Adrian was emerging as one who enjoyed language and the effects one could achieve. He was also a great storyteller.

Without pause, Adrian said, “We even talked about that. I told her I was frustrated because I really wanted to suck a dick, and she told me she really wanted to eat pussy.”

“Some of my best friends are lesbians, Adrian.”

“Yeah. I believe it. I can see why! I sure learned that! But hey! After that? That’s when we got kinky!”

Adrian was shifting in his seat and reaching down to adjust his penis as he said that. He appeared to be unaware that he was doing so, for he had that “lost in a memory” look.

“Hold that thought, Adrian. We are nearing our offramp. We can pick up that thread again when we are back on the road. How hungry are you?”

“I could eat. A snack anyway. How about you?”

“I could use a coffee. How about I pump the gas and you go in and get us some snacks and a coffee for me, the darkest roast they got, black, no sugar, and the middle size. Also, hit the john if you need to. You don’t mind if I give you cash?”

“Only if you let me call you, ‘Daddy.’”

“Fuck you, Adrian,” Nathan said, his flat voice belying his delight at Adrian’s ability kid around that way.

“I was hoping for that.”

They pulled off the freeway and slowed down on the exit ramp. “Yeah? I thought you wanted to pitch rather than catch.”

“I can play both offense and defense, Daddy!”

“You’re starting to turn me on, Kid!”

“I was hoping for that.”

Nathan shook his head and grinned. They had it going on; they did, he and this man boy. It was hot as fuck.