Date: Fri, 2 May 2014 12:48:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: DJAkeeba@aol.com
Subject: Tragedy on the Potomac, Chapters 1 & 2

Note: This story is a sequel to "Tragedy in the Blood," which appears here:
http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/highschool/tragedy-in-the-blood/

There is also a short story, "Rick & Taine at the Hop", which follows TITB
and appears here:
http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/highschool/rick-and-taine-at-the-hop

As usual, this is a story about male/male relations, and will include
scenes of graphic sexuality.  You should not read this story if it is in
any way illegal due to your age or place of residence.

This is a work of pure fiction. This story is the sole property of its
author and may not be copied in whole or in part or posted on any website
without the permission of the author.

Questions and commentary can be sent to djakeeba@aol.com

Please consider donating to keep Nifty going.  Details at
http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html


------------------------


TRAGEDY ON THE POTOMAC
by Steven H. Davis

Chapter 1

June 28, 1984

I stretched awake in the cramped airline seat, trying not to bump the
sleeping businessman next to me with my long legs, which were simply not
made for a 727.  I looked out the window to see the familiar sight of the
U.S. Capitol Building and the Washington Monument below.  It was strange.
I should have been sad to leave Tynah, Rex, my dog Heidi, my beloved Linda
and the rest of my friends back in San Antonio, but as the American
Airlines flight began its final descent into Washington National Airport,
all I really felt was thrilled and excited to begin the next chapter of my
life.

I craned my neck to look down at the city, Washington DC, where I was to
start classes at George Washington University in just over two months.  My
grandmother on my father's side, Vedzma Nadzov, had been an esteemed
professor of Russian Literature at GWU since the early 1960s, and --
although my grades and SATs had been good enough for every Ivy League
school except finicky Brown University -- my finances were such that I had
to come to DC on a provost's scholarship wrangled as a personal favor to
her.

"Eh, a free ride is a free ride," as Rex had said.  "D-Day was my college."

I had hung around Texas just long enough to join my Drama and Debate
classmates in working at the National Forensic League National Tournament,
which had been held in San Antonio that year with Polk as the host school.
Part of the reason I stayed was so that I could see Laura, a beautiful
senior from Miami who had qualified in Dramatic Interpretation with a
cutting from *Children of a Lesser God,* complete with sign language.

Laura and I had met at the Georgetown Forensics Workshop held in DC the
previous summer, and had spent most of the workshop's two intensive weeks
walking hand in hand, looking deeply into each others' eyes, and chastely
making out all over the Georgetown campus and surrounding areas... even on
the alarmingly steep stone staircase known as the "Exorcist Steps" for its
prominent role in the hit 1973 horror film.

During the NFL Nationals in San Antonio, our making out became quite a bit
more bold, but we both knew it wasn't going anywhere, much as we might have
wished otherwise.  It was a nice summer fling, and helped me to get my mind
off Linda. Yes, that Linda, my erstwhile Duet partner and best friend, whom
I had developed quite an unrequited crush on sometime during my junior
year.  It hadn't been a success, but we remained friends.

Somewhere between losing Taine and starting to play football, I had become
more interested in girls, or at least I was making a concerted effort to
try.  It was, after all, the conservative Reagan era, and the rise of Jerry
Falwell's Moral Majority group soon combined with the startling spread of a
persistent, fatal retrovirus to brand my other option as not only morally
reprehensible, but physically perilous as well.

I had also drifted more toward LD Debate and the Speech events than Drama,
and I think that had to do mostly with Rex. A few years of having my
"dancing around the maypole" constantly denigrated as silly frippery had
all but driven me to "man up" and try something more serious.  I still
appeared in the plays, but my heart really wasn't in acting anymore.  Rex
had effectively snuffed out another of my dreams just by ridiculing it to
death.  So I had decided to be a lawyer.

Of course, that was where financial reality set in once again: any of the
top-tier law schools were prohibitively expensive, and I wasn't going to
get any money from the Spiveys.  And that's why I next decided to become a
teacher.  My grandmother was, after all, a world-renowned educator, so it
ran in the blood.  Rex and Tynah approved as well, and I could become a
teacher with a four-year stint at a university like GWU without breaking my
family's non-existent bank.  So teaching it would be.

There I was, landing in a big metal bird from the sky as a straight, normal
future educator in our fine nation's beautiful capitol city.  My thoughts
were of Laura, who had played the role of a compassionate male teacher and
his fiery deaf female student so brilliantly and beautifully at Nationals.
I imagined teaching her sign language and making sweet, innocently
vulnerable love with her on soft white clouds, then going off to teach a
class full of bright, motivated students who would remember the knowledge
and compassion that I showed them for the rest of their lives.

What I wasn't aware of was that I was bringing a lot more baggage to
Washington than I had ever imagined, and that holding back the trauma of my
younger years due to a rather militaristic living situation at the Spiveys
had made me a ticking time bomb.  And ticking time bombs eventually have to
go off.  And when I went off, later that year as crisp Fall turned into
snowy Winter, I went off like Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

---------------------------------

But that was still long into an unforeseen future as the plane touched down
at Washington National Airport on that warm afternoon in late June.  I
gathered my carry-on luggage -- just cigarettes, my Walkman and a copy of
the William Hogan novel *The Quartzsite Trip* -- and made my way slowly
toward the front of the plane.  As I nodded and smiled to thank the
too-cheerful pilot and made my way down the walkway, I saw Vedzma standing
among the families awaiting passengers and waved at her.

As usual, my grandmother's salt-and-pepper hair was stylishly coiffed and
dyed jet-black, her owlish tortoiseshell glasses pinched tightly to her
thin, aquiline nose.  She stood about 5'3" and was painfully thin, due to
the fact that she ate like a bird and drank almost nothing but cup after
cup of strong instant coffee, black.  Vedzma wore a dark-blue rayon jacket
with white piping over a blue and white polka-dot dress, a gauzy orange
scarf, thick nylon pantyhose, and tan open-toed pumps, all set off with a
large white leather purse in one hand and a rumpled, dusty Kleenex in the
other.  She was a professor, not a fashion-plate.

"Rick!" she cried loudly in her thick Russian accent, rising on her toes
and waving despite the fact that there was literally no one between us.
"Rick!  Rick!  Oh my Gosh... Rick!"

She looked frustrated and near panic, as if I couldn't see her.  I rolled
my eyes and began waving both arms frantically at her.  Obviously, she
needed to get her prescription glasses changed.  Finally, when I was within
a couple of feet of her, exasperated already, she recognized me and broke
into a wide smile.

"Oh, Rick!  How good it is to see you!  My Solnyshko!"

Solnyshko is basically a Russian use of "sunshine" as a diminutive
nickname.  Maybe "Little Sunshine" is closer to the context.  Anyway,
Vedzma had called me that for as long as I could remember.  I gave her a
loose hug -- she was literally so tiny and frail that I was scared to break
her -- and we began moving toward the luggage carousel.

"How was your flight?" she inquired.

"It was great," I said.  "I had a layover in Houston and then I basically
slept the rest of the way."

"Tired?"  She said it like "TIE-rrrred" with a rolled R.

"No, I slept on the plane," I repeated.  "They fed us too."

"We will have a wonderful dinner when we get home.  Tolya is waiting for
us."

Tolya was Vedzma's second husband, whom she had met in a relocation camp
during World War 2.  He was an economist, metallurgist, and worked for
Radio Liberty as well.  Vedzma's first husband Max -- my father's dad --
was an officer in Stalin's army and risked his life to get Vedzma and her
elderly mother out of Russia, along with my young dad. Unfortunately, they
had ended up in a camp in Germany while Max just carried on with his
service to the Red Army and later got a new family.

When the end of the war came, Tolya and Vedzma had gone to France with my
dad, where she had studied at the Sorbonne and he had done radio work while
they tried to come to America.  It was difficult, because Vedzma had
contracted tuberculosis during her youth, and the resultant wait for
permission to immigrate lasted until 1959.

That was when they had landed in New York, bringing my great-grandmother --
whom we called Babushka -- over with them shortly afterward.  They bought
the house in Hollis, Queens where I would later spend my early years, and
Tolya and Babushka held down the fort while Vedzma finished her degree in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, commuting back and forth to New York by car.  She
taught briefly at Columbia University in New York, which was at least
closer to home, but in 1963 was hired at GWU.

Vedzma drove the 226 miles from New York to DC and back again every week
for fourteen years, staying in a small apartment on campus from Monday to
Friday.  My dad began attending American University in DC, where he met my
mother in late 1965.  A condom failed, and -- nine months later -- I joined
the family.  By the time I was born, Dad was already cheating on her with
the wife of one of Tolya's co-workers at the radio station, and soon he met
another woman whom he left my mother (and me) for in 1969.

My mom always got along with Babushka a lot better than she did with
Vedzma, who was prone to hysterics and faking heart attacks when she didn't
get her way.  Babushka and Vedzma fought a lot too, usually over how to
best raise me.  Eventually, Vedzma was driving my mother crazy enough that
she moved us to South Carolina to live with Tynah and Rex in 1973.

I got to spend a couple of summers with Vedzma, Tolya and Babushka until
1977, when Babushka died.  My mom moved us from South Carolina to Texas
that year, and Vedzma and Tolya sold their house in New York and moved to a
smaller house in Kensington, Maryland, just outside DC.  That was when my
mom started getting really crazy and adopted the paranoid belief that
Vedzma was trying to kidnap me, so she wouldn't let me visit her anymore.

I didn't even learn that Babushka was dead until a few weeks after it
happened, when Tynah got a letter from Vedzma and told my mom.  Babushka
had always been the calming influence for me when I was a kid.  I slept in
her room until we left New York, our beds arranged in an L-shape with the
heads touching, and she would hold my hand and talk to me until I fell
asleep.  With Vedzma gone all week, Tolya either working or writing in his
study, and my mom working all the time and furious with Vedzma, her lot in
life and my cheating dad -- who had gone to Minnesota with his new wife --
Babushka was the only parental figure I really had for my first seven
years.

I remember my mom coming into my new bedroom in San Antonio in October of
1977 and sitting down on my bed to tell me, softly and quietly, that
Babushka was gone.  I didn't say anything, just laid there with my knees
up, feet flat on the bed, and cried for a long time.

I later found out that Babushka had left me a little money, which would
have been nice considering the oatmeal-and-beans level of poverty we were
in and my tattered old highwater pants which got me mocked at school, but
my mom spent it on flying lessons -- which she never used for anything --
without even telling me.

---------------------------------------

Anyway, that's when Vedzma and Tolya moved from New York to the house in
Maryland to which we were heading on that June night in 1984 in Vedzma's
old black Comet.  I was always amused at Vedzma's driving style.  She would
hunch over the wheel staring intently at the road, her hands -- with a
ratty Kleenex or paper towel in each -- clutching the wheel tightly as if
she thought it might start spinning out of control if she loosened her grip
even a fraction.

We had to go into DC so that Vedzma could pick up some things from her
on-campus apartment, and after I nearly had fifteen heart attacks from her
driving style -- "I always stay in the middle lane!" she warned, as horns
honked and cars flew to cut us off -- we arrived at her apartment building
on F Street NW, right at the edge of the GWU campus in the historic Foggy
Bottom section of DC.

Vedzma explained that when school started, I would live in the apartment so
that I didn't have to deal with the distraction of the freshman dorms.  She
taught classes four days a week, so she would stay there with me Monday to
Wednesday, and would leave back to Maryland after her last class on
Thursday.  I would have the option of coming with her or having the
apartment to myself all weekend.

I already knew what my choice was going to be.

I waited in the car in the high-rise building's circular driveway while
Vedzma went upstairs, taking the opportunity to soak in the scenery.  A few
students were hanging around the dorms and fraternity houses across the
street, and I could see the Old Executive Building, where Vice-President
Bush's offices were located, at the end of F Street about four blocks away.

As I looked around, my attention was drawn by all the older college
students, who struck me as impossibly sophisticated and good-looking.  Yes,
I was going to enjoy life here.  If only I could keep from blowing my top
with Vedzma pushing all of my annoyance buttons for the next two months, I
would get some breathing room down here once school started.

After about twenty minutes, Vedzma returned with some books, folders and
clothes to take back to the house in Kensington, and drove us to 22nd
Street, where we headed north.  As we stopped at a traffic light on 22nd &
P, my gaze was pulled toward a large concrete building, painted entirely
black.  There was a plain white sign over one of the two entry doors,
reading in large black letters: WASTELANDS.

I arched an eyebrow, intrigued about what could possibly be inside a
building called Wastelands.  Little did I know that it would soon become
the center of my experience in DC for a good part of the next twenty years.
As I was studying the ominous-looking black facade, the light changed and
we drove onward toward Vedzma and Tolya's Maryland house.

-------------------------------

Chapter 2

My grandmother Vedzma's Maryland neighbors each held some interest for me.

On one side was a Hungarian family with a pretty daughter around my age
named Alice.  On the other side was a Romanian family with a handsome son
-­ a year older than me -­ named Jason.  I had played at Jason's
house when I was a kid, on those few summers that my mother had allowed me
to visit Vedzma before her paranoia took over.  We had played catch, messed
around with our Star Trek action figures, and generally did what boys do.

Jason's mother was a real witch, and enjoyed publicly humiliating not just
me and Jason, but also any of the neighbors who aroused her ire.  I began
to dislike her at a fairly young age, but Jason seemed to take her
eccentricities in stride, like he took everything else.  In fact, Jason was
one of the most laid-back kids I had ever met.

Jason had been away at private school on the summers I had visited Vedzma
during high school, and I had spent most of those summers in DC at the
Georgetown Debate workshop or hanging out with Alice and her younger sister
Gisele, just being goofy and playing around with an old Kodak 8mm movie
camera, with them acting as my preening and giggling models.

The first thing I noticed as Vedzma pulled her old black Comet onto Emily
Street was that Jason's car -– a red 1981 Firebird -– was in the
driveway next door.  He must have been home from college at Penn State
University for the summer, and my spirits immediately lifted.  I had been
wondering what the hell I was going to do in tiny, sleepy Kensington,
Maryland until school started, and Jason's presence next door seemed like
it could offer an escape from Vedzma's oppressive doting, which I was sure
I would need.

I unloaded my luggage from Vedzma's car and followed her into the house,
where my grandfather was reading one of the Russian newspapers which he got
from Victor Kamkin's Slavic Bookstore in nearby Rockville.  He smiled as I
came in, and I dropped my bags and went to give him a big hug.

"Look who is here!" my grandmother announced needlessly in a falsetto
sing-song.  "It is our Rick, our solnyshko!"

"Nu," said my grandpa, with mock indignation.  "Who it is, this tall
strange man?"

I laughed and talked with him for a few minutes, then took my bags down the
hall to my room.  It was full of various Russian and African knick-knacks,
old Soviet theater posters, and stacks of my grandmother's lecture notes
from years gone by.  The only sign that the room was meant for me was on
the bedside table, the same musical carousel lamp which had been in my
great-grandmother's room in New York when I was a child.  I flicked it on
and began putting away my things, hanging jackets and my suits in the small
closet, filling the large dresser with my neatly-­-folded jeans, polo
shirts, socks and underwear.

When I opened the top left-hand drawer, I found some of my bric-a-brac left
over from previous visits, including a new bottle of Hermes cologne which
had come in a 2-for-1 pack.  I was happy that it was there, as I had left
the remnants of its mate in the trash back in San Antonio while trying to
save luggage space.

The drawer also held a jade abacus, some of my debate notes from
Georgetown, and a folder full of newspaper clippings which Vedzma had
requested I mail to her each week so that she could keep up with my
tournaments.

I put away the clippings and jumped in the shower, eager to clean off the
funk of my long plane trip and car ride.  When I was done, I dressed in
khaki shorts, docksider shoes and a red Izod and told Vedzma and Tolya that
I was going next door to say hi to Jason.

I hadn't really seen him in almost nine years, so I was pretty excited
about renewing our friendship.  His mother answered the door, gave me a
quick, disapproving once-over, and let me in the house without speaking a
word.  I bounded up the steps to Jason's room, knocking on his closed door.

When he opened it, my eyes widened and I think my jaw may have hit the
floor.

Oh... my... God.

Jason had always been a good-looking kid, and I won't say that the sight of
his smooth, tanned legs in summer shorts, his blond hair and blue eyes
twinkling in the sun, and so forth had not stirred my young imagination in
the past, but now he was... wow.

"Rick fucking Spivey!" he yelled with a giant grin, pulling me into a
massive bearhug.

And massive it was, because little Jason was now about 6'4", deeply tanned
and muscled, and the closest thing I had yet seen to a Greek god on Earth.

I hugged him back, laughing and happy, but still a little stunned at how
freaking hot he had become.  After a time, he pulled me away from his body,
holding me by both shoulders, and inspected me at arm's length, the grin
never leaving his face.

"Look how you've grown!" he laughed, and I was hoping that he couldn't tell
that I was growing in my shorts at that very moment.

"It's great to see you, Jason!" I said.

"You really have grown too!"

God, I could be so lame sometimes.

Pretty soon I might start speaking in tongues.

He locked one of his bulging arms around my neck and playfully wrestled me
into his room.  We spent the next hour or so sitting across from each other
on his bed -- in what we then callously called "Indian-style," and is now
called "criss-cross applesauce" or some PC bullshit -- catching up on our
lives, joking around, and generally enjoying our reunion and each other's
company.

I might have been enjoying it a little more than he was, as my eyes kept
wandering from his gorgeous blue eyes to his sexy, shaggy blonde hair and
down to the obviously ample bulge in his soft, pre-washed jeans.  On one
such visual voyage, I returned my gaze to his eyes, only to see that he had
caught me.

His eyebrow was raised, and a faint smile played on his lips.

"Like what you see?" he asked.

I felt myself blushing, but something about being free of Texas and the
repressive atmosphere of Rex and Tynah's house had made me a little more
bold than I had been in the past.

I smiled back at Jason and nodded my head appreciatively.

He nodded back, his eyes never leaving mine.

Then he said something which I was not expecting in the least.

"I've been wanting to get my hands on you since we were kids," he grinned,
and his perfectly even white teeth seemed to glow in the afternoon light
shining through his window.  "I never tried anything because you were just
so scared of... well, everything back then."

"I had my reasons," I agreed.  "But I'm not scared anymore."

He looked at me for a long time before finally whispering, "Good."

The spell was then broken by his mother's shrill yell up the stairs.

"Jason!  Dinner's ready!  Tell your little friend to go home now."

Jason rolled his eyes, shaking his head in embarrassment.  He knew I was
almost 18, and I think neither of us could believe her choice of words, but
that was his mom for you.  We both stood up from the bed and, before I even
knew I was planning to do it, I impulsively put my arms around him and
kissed him.

It was quick, no more than a peck on the lips, but I was both impressed and
somewhat astonished by my boldness.

Jason immediately pulled me closer to his muscular chest, wrapped his arms
around me, and kissed me deeply and passionately.  I felt the tip of his
tongue between my lips, and parted them slightly to permit him access.  Our
tongues danced and our lips met, and our hands moved slowly and
passionately on each others' bodies, as long-held desires were finally
given room to explore.

"Jason!" came the harpy's call from downstairs.

We pulled apart reluctantly, and Jason let his eyes play up and down my
body, resting his gaze on my obviously well-tented shorts.

"Mom's wrong," he grinned.  "You are not my `little' friend."

"Goof," I laughed.  "I better get out of here before she starts yelling.
We should continue this another time."

"Definitely," said Jason with a wicked smile.  "I'll be here all alone
tomorrow.  You should come over."

"Definitely," I echoed, my heart pounding in my chest.  We shared another
quick kiss and I had to adjust myself before running down the stairs,
hoping Jason's mother didn't notice the condition of my shorts.

As I left their house and jogged across the yard back to my new place, I
was sure that this was going to be an interesting summer after all.

­--­--­--­--­--­--­--­--­-

Thank you for reading Chapters 1&2.  To be continued...

Once again, I'm always happy to hear from readers at DJAkeeba@aol.com.  You
were all so supportive and encouraging about "Tragedy in the Blood," and I
really appreciate all your e-mails urging to hear more about these
characters.  So here we go...

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