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 © 2015 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. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

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

Chapter 61 (Fri. Mar. 24)

Gordon had wanted me to sit in the front again so he could practice his Cantonese. He'd let it go, though, when I told him that Gerry, being the only other person in the vehicle, would feel left out. As a result, Gerry was placed into the front, and I was in the back.

The drive along Sunrise Highway, half the length of Long Island in the fog, struck me as funny. The sun had, of course, risen somewhere, since it was after ten, but it hadn't been over Long Island. Gordon had to drive with the headlights on, and our environs reflected varying shades of grey.

"No," Gordon put out the cigarette in the sliding metal ashtray under the dashboard. "Gran offered, and, believe me, she wouldn't have, if she didn't want to." He answered my question about our imposing on her to get in touch with her old bootlegger friend who had contacts on the Mohawk reservation. "Why are you worrying about being a burden?"

"Bad experiences with people who've offered to do things, I guess." I cracked the window a bit to let out the smoke. "If this causes a draft, tell me. Okay?"

"The draft won't be the problem." Gordon chuckled, "but the noise from Kennedy airport will be in a couple of minutes." As we left Sunrise Highway and drove onto Belt Parkway, a large jet flew low over the highway behind us. I rolled the window back up.

"Were they bad experiences with white guys?" Gerry looked troubled.

I leaned across the back of the seat and kissed the back of his head. "No, my Blond Baby, it was with two Chinese women, a couple of Mongolians, and one half Japanese."

"Mongolians?" Gordon sounded intrigued, but was smirking. "You know Mongolians?"

"As a matter of fact, my ex-boyfriend and his dad." I patted Gordon's shoulder.

"You have had sex with a Mongolian?" Gordon was blushing, obviously tapping into a sex fantasy.

Now, adjusting my voice to suggestive. "No, with two Mongolians, with my ex-guy and his old man. And they're direct descendents of Genghis Khan."

I must have stumbled onto a Caucasian's secret wet dream, since both Gordon and Gerry were blushing. I wondered if white Queers dreamed of being raped, pillaged and carried off to some remote yurt to be used as sex slaves. Gerry cleared his voice. "Wanna tell us what it was like?"

"Well," I looked at Gerry and patted his arm, which was resting on the back of the seat. "you remember the time, I told you about, when Lon pissed up my ass."

"Whoa, he pissed up your ass?" Gordon had to adjust his crotch and then downshift to prepare to stop at a traffic light. He glanced at Gerry. "And you knew about this?" Gerry grinned and nodded.

"Anyway, the morning he pissed up my ass was the morning Mom kicked me out of the house."

Gordon laughed. "And you wonder why?"

"That was at Hotel President, not in my parents' apartment." I explained, and Gerry giggled. "She didn't have any hard evidence that I'm Queer until two days later, when she and Bat's wife walked in on me fucking Bat over the kitchen counter."

"Who's Bat?" Gordon wondered.

"The Mongolian. Lon's, uh, my ex-boyfriend's dad." I succumbed to the urge to light a cigarette and waited for a comment.

"What did your mother do?" Gerry sounded worried.

"Fuck what his mother did," Gordon interrupted. "what did the guy's wife do?"

"Nothing, other than have my mother help her get her stuff and leave." I blew smoke rings. "Of course, Marv, Bat's boyfriend and lawyer, had followed them into the kitchen and served Bat's wife with the divorce petition and a restraining order."

"So your mother, this guy's wife and his boyfriend lawyer all walked in on you fucking him." Gordon fished out a cigarette for himself. "And nobody got shot?"

"Yeah, it was surreal. Mom and Mrs. Khan walked in while I was shooting half the population of Guangdong up Bat's ass and he was spilling more than three times the population of Mongolia all over their kitchen floor." Of course, this was the first time I had really considered the visuals in any detail, and it was making me hard.

Gordon had the cigarette clamped between his lips and was back to adjusting his crotch. "Now, back to Gerry's question: what did your mother do?"

"She asked me why I was doing that." This hit me hard, emotionally. "As if it had been all my fault. As if nobody else had any say in what was happening." My throat clenched, and I wasn't able to continue.

***

Leaving the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and after several secret maneuvers, which were more intricate than a Free-Mason's handshake, we were on Hylan Boulevard, according to the signs, and on Southfield Avenue, according to Gordon. Being that the Healy family had lived on Staten Island since coming to this country during the potato famine, I imagined that they used many of the older names for streets and places. It's like many of the older white residents of the Bowery still referred to Chinatown as Five Points.

The Grant City section of Staten Island was a sleepy residential neighborhood, in which anyone would approve of bringing up kids. Although I'd only been to Staten Island less than five times in my life, including passing through on our way from Fort Dix to Fire Island, I immediately found it the ideal spot to live. That is, if you wanted to live in New York City in the first place. It was homier than either Manhattan or Brooklyn. And the first impression was that it was less troubled than Queens or the Bronx, certainly less populous. According to what Gordon told us, there didn't appear to be any ethnic ghettos, although there were quite a few new homes being built at the other end of Fremont and over on Lincoln Avenue by people from the Italian neighborhoods of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.

Some referred to this part of the City with the suburban feel as the 'lost borough', since City Hall neglected it; its official name was the Borough of Richmond, but everybody knew it as Staten Island. And the two storey, white, clapboard home with the glassed-in front porch and the postage-stamp-size lawn on the northeast side of tree-lined Fremont Avenue, was exactly as I had expected it to be: middle-class cozy.

"Are you sure your dad won't mind us barging in like this?" Gerry worried.

Gordon pulled into the drive to the right of the front entrance and switched off the engine. "More than sure." Gordon laughed and patted Gerry's thigh. "He lives with my older brother, Don, and his wife in Florida."

"And your mom?" I inquired, without ever having remembered Gordon mention his mother.

"She committed suicide, when I was a little kid." Gordon stated this as an emotionless matter of fact.

"Whoops, sorry." I felt embarrassed. "Leave it to me to--"

"--it's okay, Ben." Gordon sneered slightly. "I don't remember the woman." And he had obviously never forgiven her, either.

***

Gordon showed us to the spare bedroom, which had, as he told us, been Don's room. His oldest brother had seriously cleared out, as opposed to the room that Gordon had shared with his middle brother, Mike. Don's old room had nothing to even hint that someone had once lived there. In Gordon's room, there were posters, model airplanes, boy-scout paraphernalia, a butterfly collection under glass on the wall.

When he saw me looking at one of the models, a Japanese Zero, he squeezed my shoulder. "Mike and I never really grew up, I guess."

"Were you lovers, when you were young?" My question seemed to strike a nerve in Gordon's scarred neck. Gerry took him into a hug from behind to relieve the tension.

"Kinda." Gordon let himself relax in Gerry's arms. Facing me, he let out a deep sigh and laid his head back onto Gerry's shoulder. "He was on the Philadelphia police force and got himself killed in the line of duty, right after I got to Nam."

"I'm sorry for you." Gerry's whisper was barely audible.

"We would always meet here, when I was on leave. Before I went overseas." Gordon came over to me and placed his head onto my shoulder. "Even though he had a wife and her two kids from her first marriage, we never drifted apart."

I looked at Gerry. He gave me the thumbs up. "Does Gerry look a little like Mike?" I couldn't see his head out of the corners of my eyes, but I felt him nod. "So, would you like to spend the night with him, so you can sort of close this chapter?"

He raised his head. "If I could, I would like to spend the night with both of you." When I looked surprised, he added: "That would be more like old times for me." My look of surprise didn't go away. "Mike's best friend was half Chinese." Gordon wiped tears from his eyes. "He was the reason that I signed up to learn Cantonese at Monterey."

"Were you in love with him?" I thought it only fair, since I was going to play his role.

"Yeah, in secret." Gerry gave Gordon his Army-issue handkerchief. He strained to chuckle through his grief. "And they joined the police department together." When he finally broke down, Gerry took him into an enveloping hug. A long moment had passed before Gordon could collect himself. "And they died together on the streets of Philadelphia in the same senseless bank heist."

***

On our way down Fremont to the White Castle hamburger stand at the corner of Lincoln and Hylan, Gordon was still sniffling and wiping his eyes with Gerry's handkerchief. By the time we got to the bridge over the railway tracks, his spirits were improving. And as soon as we crossed the parking lot of the White Castle, he had recovered and was having second thoughts about tonight.

When we entered the place, the delicious smell of grilled beef and onions made Gerry's stomach growl. The guy behind the counter heard it and grinned. "Sounds like you guys need about thirty."

"Make that fifteen normal and fifteen with cheese." Gordon said. "And three large ginger ales, please." Then he looked at us sheepishly and we grinned our approval.

"To eat here or take away?" Although the guy asked Gordon, he glanced at us.

"We'll have it here." Gordon was in Drill-Instructor mode. And for the first time, I realized that he used this learned, take-charge attitude to cover up insecurities. From this moment on, he became a close friend and no longer the problem solver, protector.

The tray with thirty small, square, steamy, hamburgers arrived in no time at all. Since we were staying at Gordon's, and he had been driving, the least I could do was to buy the hamburgers at ten cents a shot. And, of course, I was going to go across Hylan to the liquor store, I'd spotted on the way in, to get a bottle of Scotch for tonight. We were going to have a heavy one.