This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Dennis Milholland -- All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

 

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments.

 

Love It or Leave It

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

 

Prologue

Paris, December 31st, 2011

At midnight tonight, the restrictions pursuant to the Official Secrets Act 1939 (2 & 3 Geo. 6 c. 121) expire. I am now at liberty to tell you what happened.

 

One

(Monday, October 3rd, 1966)

The mellow morning sun, just peeking through the tree tops and shining the length of 23rd Street, is glowing pink through my eyelids. Almost stale smells of fried bacon, toasted bread, and percolated coffee from Dad's breakfast waft up from the kitchen. In a moment, the radio will switch on. And then my mom will start bellowing from the bottom of the stairs for me to get up.

My parents gave me the clock radio for my fifteenth birthday, and my mother still thinks, almost three years later that if she doesn't yell, I won't get up. What can I say? It's tradition.

Click. "The WHB electronic time tone is accurate to within 1/20,000th of a second. At the tone, exactly 8 o'clock. Beep. For music, more often, WHB, Channel 71 in Kansas City..." Of a sudden the radio announcement is blanketed by my mother's wake-up call: "Dan-neeee, time to get up!" She's much better at pig calling than her favorite Opry star, Minnie Pearl. Her talent, in this area at least, is bountiful.

"I'm up!" is also my traditionally expected reply, as I bound out of bed and charge for the bathroom to the sound of Gerry and the Pacemakers: "Life goes on day after day... Hearts drawn in every way..."

I make it as far as the crapper before the sadness of absolute loss grips me. `Why did Mack have to do it?' keeps going through my mind.

As I sit, straining to empty my bladder through morning wood, the sweet voice of Gerry Marsden faintly drifts through the bathroom door: "So, ferry cross the Mersey, `cause this land's the place I love, and here I'll stay..." This sentiment then trashes my emotional stability: he can stay where he wants; he's wanted where he stays. Nobody is forcing him to surrender friends and things familiar, as has fundamentalist society done to Mack.

 

Two

(Monday, October 3rd)

"Danny, Raphie's here, so hurry up." Mom's voice goes thoroughly pleasant when company's around. And although I've been best friends with Raphie since we went to Ashland Elementary together, she still considers Raphie to be company. Evidently for the same reason why she didn't think it was a good idea when he changed from his all-colored school to previously all-white Ashland at the start of second grade back in 1956.

After spitting toothpaste and rinsing, I manage the cold water splash to my face and the cat wash of ears, neck, pits and crotch. Just a quick swipe of the washcloth to my crew cut, a coating of roll-on, my usual douse of English Leather to regions below the beltline, and I'll be set.

Last night, I'd readied my dark, Sunday-go-to-meeting jacket and slacks, white shirt and tie for easy entry. Penny loafers are shined. Socks are fresh; briefs are clean. And, all in all, I still feel like total shit. I miss Mack.

Raphie comes up the stairs two at a time as he always has since we were kids. Somber is not his usual look, and it doesn't suit him. Mack was his friend, too. As he'd been mine. We'd all been on the wrestling team together. But unbeknownst to Raphie, Mack had also been my special buddy.

And even after Mack's parents had coerced him to join the Army, he and I'd exchanged letters once a week, using our personal code of innocuous Bible verses, of all things, to express what we felt for each other, so the military wouldn't find out. One of my favorites, and one that I possibly overused, due to the fact that I'm really sentimental under my hard-guy exterior, is Ruth 1:16: Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.

What I had talked myself into feeling for Mack is something that Raphie doesn't know about, and possibly never will, unless I tell him. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.

"Dan, you look awful." Raphie tries not very successfully to conjure a smile, while himself peering through bloodshot eyes and leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his trouser pockets. "Get your shades, Dan. You look like shit. So, you'll definitely need your shades."

I feel the urge to hug and kiss him on the mouth. Just once. Just because I could do with some really intense closeness. But I can't, because it would have consequences that I don't want to think about. One such slip up in a weak moment could ruin everything and bring me the ultimate misery. I couldn't cope with losing Raphie, the love of my life. The one I'll never be able to tell. The one I can never have, which was why I'd gone with Mack. I didn't know until this very moment, that we are taught to quantify love.

My hands shake as I wipe my eyes again. I'm also craving a cigarette, but can't have one. Officially, my parents don't know that I smoke. Somehow, I can't imagine that they don't smell it on me when I come in. More than likely, as with so many other things about me; they just don't want to know. But be that as it may, I don't smoke at home. Besides, the cigarettes and lighter are under the front seat of my car.

"Let's go." I sigh, tapping Raphie on the upper arm and starting down the stairs.

"Don't forget these." He hands me my sunglasses off the dresser.

 

Three

(Monday, October 3rd)

Of course, I have to use a screwdriver to hot wire the starter solenoid of my, well, in reality my much older brother's six-year old `60 Chevy Impala, so we can finally get going. Busby, the lawyer, lets me use the car on semi-permanent loan, so that he can control my behavior. At least, that's what I think his motive is, since he periodically suspends permission, if he thinks I've been out of line.

The early October weather is beautiful. Far too cheerful for what we have to do this morning. Up ahead, in the near distance, the trees on Van Brunt are ever-so slightly starting to change to their autumn colors. I am very tempted not to turn but to keep driving straight down 23rd to Blue Valley Park. That's where Mack, Raphie and I go to think, talk, smoke dope and drink near beer.

"Just hope that you don't have to work your magic with the screwdriver before we can drive in the procession to the cemetery."

"No procession." I clamp the cigarette into the left corner of my mouth, before I set the blinker and turn right onto Van Brunt Boulevard from 23rd Street. "They're having him cremated." Tears start again, but at least now, I can blame them on the smoke.

Raphie shudders, "Why would they want to have him incinerated? It's not like they're going to have him buried in another country."

"Don't know, Raph. Maybe they can't afford a gravesite."

"Doesn't the Army take care of that? Wasn't that, what took so long? I mean, he's been dead for three weeks." Raphie starts jiggling his leg nervously in an attempt to keep emotions under control.

"Normally, I think the Army probably would have. But Busby says, not when the soldier in question commits suicide. Of course, his life insurance won't pay anything. And the poor bastard doesn't even get an honor guard. So much for fulfilling your patriotic duty." I try to keep blabbing on, so he might not pick up on the cause of death.

It takes a second or two for the concept to sink in, but it does. Raphie blurts, "He committed suicide?" unable to control the tears. "Shit!" he sobs. "I didn't know how he died. I just thought it had something to do with that fucking war in Vietnam." He forces the tears to stop and looks concerned at me. "How'd you find out? Was it in the paper?"

I flip the cigarette butt out the window and wipe my eyes with the back of my right hand. "If it was in the paper, I didn't see it. His old man keeps ranting about it," I'm not yet sure of whether I want to go into the real reason for why I know. Then I decide I'll have to tell him, at some point. I have to be fair to Raphie and naturally warn him about what is likely to happen in only a few minutes. "when he called and accused me of being the cause of Mack's death."

"I don't understand, Danny." Raphie is speaking so softly that I can hardly make out what he is saying over the din of traffic. An oncoming car honks to keep a stray dog from jumping out in front of him.

"Mack Senior phoned me up the day after Mack Junior killed himself, and tried to lay the blame on me." We're coming out of the leafy part of Van Brunt, past the Church of Christ, just at the police station, and approaching 29th Street, so I put on my sunglasses. We are just about to where we're going to turn left and drive up the hill to our final farewell at Greendale Baptist Church.

 "I'll answer all your questions after the funeral. Okay, Raph? I can't cope right now." My rather immature means of dealing with misery is to floor the accelerator, bringing the old automatic into passing gear. Up the hill we sail under an immaculate, cloudless sky.

 

Four

(Monday, October 3rd)

At the crest of the hill, it looks like Reverend Arthur Finster is already positioned at the top of the ten concrete steps, one for each commandment, ready to greet mourners, before I can even recognize his embittered, pinched face. The hearse from that family mortuary down on 15th Street is parked at the curb in the front. We turn down Oakley and drive to the parking lot at the back.

As we are getting out and locking the car, Vicky Wilcox putters in, not terribly successfully trying to downshift the standard transmission of her new VW beetle. Early graduation gift from her daddy. She toots her horn as if we're coming to an ice-cream social instead of a funeral. But Vicky is Vicky: no sense of shame, no sense of restraint. She actually believes that the VW insignia on her car stands for Vicky Wilcox rather than Volkswagen.

We walk together around the small, brick, neighborhood church, the emblem of suffering and shame. Also, the scene of the crime, as it were.

As we start up the stairs, the Reverend Arthur Finster goes as stiff as the unicorn's horn mentioned in the 92nd Psalm. He signals to someone standing inside the opened half of the double doors. A man's face, distorted with hatred to such an extent that I don't immediately recognize it, peeks out from the side and murmurs: "Cocksuckers."

According to all things known and surmised, the man is only two-thirds correct. I know I do; it is rumored that Vicky does, but I hardly think that Raphael has ever sucked cock. This unfortunate wording, inappropriately crossing the threshold of a Southern Baptist Church, is, however, the signal for one burly uniformed policeman in motorcycle boots and crash helmet to step out and block the door with his stance wide and arms crossed. His motorized tricycle is parked near the hearse, possibly a funeral escort from the Kansas City Police Department.

Mack Senior steps out from behind the policeman and informs us that "queers and coons" are not welcome. And before any of us can engage him verbally, we hear Vicky's very loud slap to his left jowl.

We watch in amazement as the reddened pattern of her hand quickly appears on his pale, astonished face. Mack Senior then tries to grab her. The policeman intervenes. Vicky shrieks: "RAPE!" The policeman retreats with hands raised. Mack brings his hand up again, ostensibly threatening Vicky.

For my part, if only to prove that chivalry is not entirely dead, I deliver a rapid, light, silent, stealth chop with the index-finger ridge of my outstretched right hand to the pressure point on Mack Senior's neck, half way between his Adam's apple and left earlobe and back it up with a quick kick with my right penny loafer to the inside of his right ankle, just above the bone. And, by golly, down he goes. Just like my karate instructor said he would.

Semiconscious, he collapses into my arms. I look directly into the Reverend's frightened eyes and snarl: "Like father, like son. I guess." and dump Mack Senior onto Arthur, just about knocking him off balance. The policeman reacts to the emergency and runs to his tricycle to radio for an ambulance. I nod to Raphie and Vicky, and we disappear round the back of the little, red-brick house of god.

Vicky blows a kiss from the driver's seat of her new beetle; Raphie undoes his tie and closes the door to the front passenger side of the Impala, while I light a cigarette. The two-tone grey Chevy with its dull paint finish and brand new tires starts without the aid of the screwdriver, and we're off.

There's never a question of where to go when something like this happens. It's where we sat and listened to the reports coming over my transistor radio on the day President Kennedy got shot. It's where Mack and I lost our respective cherries to each other. It's where my heart broke the day Mack told us that he'd had to enlist in the Army to protect us from the wrath of his father. It was going to make a man of him. `Well,' I think with my foot half way to the floor, `we can all see what a Hell of a lot of good that did.'

Racing down Topping Avenue at about fifteen miles over the speed limit, which in itself results in gastric butterflies and tightly shriveled scrota due to the cheaply asphalted street's resemblance to a roller coaster and being not totally devoid of pot holes, I fully expect to see in my rearview mirror the red lights of the police tricycle flashing behind us in hot pursuit. But, as I pull us off the road, it's all clear. We get out and walk slowly to the cluster of trees on the north side of Bales Lake in Blue Valley Park. Raphie's carrying our dusty wool blanket that he'd picked off the backseat and looks worse for wear. But, we are finally at our safe haven, where we can freely talk without adult interference.

 

Five

(Monday, October 3rd)

We spread the blanket in the shade. We remove our shoes and sunglasses. And I roll our well deserved ritual joint. Raphie sits in silence. I hand him the Mary Jane.

Raphie takes the first toke upon ignition and passes it to me. I inhale and hold it, thinking that I may just take it all the way to asphyxiation, knowing full well that my survival instinct would kick in. Nonetheless, it had been a comforting thought as long as it lasted.

Raphie is the first to speak. His voice strained from the dope: "Alright, Danny Boy, out with it. What the Fuck was that all about?"

Taking my second toke before handing back to Raphie, I feel that familiar, more than welcome surge of silliness coming on. "Which part of what just happened do you fail to understand, Frenchy: cocksuckers, queers or coons?" Our eyes meet. Sputters become snorts, and snorts mutate into gut laughter. We go limp. He passes the joint back after his two hits and falls onto his back to listen. I suck smoke for what it's worth before I actually do have to explain what happened.

"I'm listening, Danny."

"Well, sadly, I'm afraid the coon part was aimed at you."

"Uh, no shit." He erupts again into raucous laughter. "And Vicky's the cocksu--?"

"--Yeah, her too." I interrupt before I can chicken out and not tell him.

"Huh?" It takes a second or two for incredulity to smooth into surprise, and he props himself up on one elbow. "Whoa, Dan. What exactly are you trying to say?"

I feel nauseous. I feel weak. I try to speak too fast. "That I'm that cocksucker and queer, he was talking about."

His brow furrows, then slowly his defusing smile broadens. "Okay, that's cool."

"What?" Now is my turn to be surprised.

"Now, I've got somebody I can trust to explain things to me."

"Why? You think you might be queer, Raphie?"

"Uh, no." His voice softens. "But I think my baby brother might be." He sighs and then glares at me. "How does old man Bottemly know anything? He sure as Hell couldn't have been guessing. You are the last person anybody would expect to, uh, be, uh, sucking, uh, dick." He giggles nervously, a bit unsure of how I would take his wording.

"No, Raphael, he wasn't guessing. His late son and I were, uh, well, fuck buddies, lovers, whatever you want to call it." Again, I lose my grip but can just about avoid total breakdown.

Shock covers his beautiful face. "But..." Shock blends to concern and concern to bewilderment and then to empathy. He groans. No words. Not threatening. Just the low gut-wrenching growl of unending grief. He grabs me as if I were a rag doll. He presses me to his chest and rocks us back and forth, growling, wailing.

Then, of a sudden, he slows and finally stops, letting me pull back a ways as he wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeves: "I feel so guilty, Dan. The thought I couldn't shake when you called to say that Mack had died, was: how could he leave me like that? Forgive me, Dan. Please."

"There's nothing to forgive. We don't even have to forgive Mack. What he did, he did to himself, not to us. We've been through a lot together, Raphie." I wipe my eyes again and try for a weak smile. "Hell, we even survived Miss Dummbach's freshman English class together."

He ignores the failed humor and pries further with indefinable urgency: "Do you know how Mack did it?"

The tears are back. I try for control, but the control is every bit as weak as my previously attempted humor. My vision blurs through the wetness produced by weeping as I look at Raphie: "Yeah, I was there."

Raphie's face seems to age as I watch. Understanding the implications of those four short words has just cost him his innocence. I have to take a deep breath to clear my nose and control my speech. "We'd just fucked in his dad's garage on a pile of gunny sacks. I was lying on top of him with my cock still buried inside, when he kissed the back of my hand and said: `Don't hate me, Dan. But you have to go'. I was about to ask what the Hell he meant, when he said `Now!' and pulled out a Smith and Wesson .38 Special. Then he said it again, as if he meant it as a threat.

"I didn't manage to ask anything. I hurried to pull up my jeans and leave the garage. >From out in the alley, I heard him cry like a wounded animal and pull the trigger. I couldn't go back." There. It's out. I've said it. I don't cry. I can't cry. I may never cry again.

Following more than ten minutes of stunned silence, he stands up slowly, deliberately. We neatly fold the blanket. We put on our shoes in silence and get rid of any traces of dope. I fear that I've lost him, when Raphie takes me into his arms. We just stand there, drained, knowing that nothing can ever be the same.

"Do you think I can stay with you at your house tonight?" Raphie questions timidly. "I don't think I can face being alone, just now."

"It'll probably be okay."

Obviously remembering the first couple of times, he'd stayed over; he looks at me as if to say: `Don't be naïve.'

"Well, as long as your suntan doesn't rub off onto my mom's lily-white sheets." I punctuate what I'm saying with raised eyebrows.

"Fuckin' fruitcake!" he snarls and pulls me into another bear hug.