Sort of Cowboys and Not Very Indians

Horny Cowboys and Slutty Indians

When did we start playing Cowboy and Indian? Well, for one thing, what we actually started was playing Indian and Indian so that we could strip down to almost nothing and wrestle around, the idea being to remove your opponent's “loin cloth” and then do whatever “dirty” things we usually did. Unfortunately, we though it would be funny, dirty and “a hoot” to drag out the Polaroid camera and take pictures of ourselves. I have to be awfully drunk, now, to even reveal that these exist and, to show them?, as they say in Honolulu, “Nevah Hoppen”. Were you to see one from our first “powwow” you'd see two guys, fresh out of high school, moderately well built, wearing....a loin cloth made from kitchen dish towels held up by a belt from our one good suit and moccasins courtesy Adidas. Authenticity was not our goal, virtual nudity was. And the kitchen dish towels? Well, our first selection had been bath towels but there were problems; Most of them were pastel and all of them were too bulky and way too long. Stuffing a bath towel through a belt and sliding between your legs looks more like you're carry a papoose in a novel way and place. Also, the towels hung below our knees so...that's when the kitchen towels were added to the wardrobe. This was almost too successful as by the time they went up and over the belt, down between our legs, up and over the belt again, there wasn't much to hang down and it was necessary to really tighten the belt or regardless of what we had in mind, our “loin cloths” came off due to the laws of Physics and gravity.

Freshman year at college played right into our hands in that school had as their mascot some local Indian Chief and the team was called the Tribe who, on occasion, showed up in loin cloths-in school colors-and made whoopee on the gridiron before the game. There was even an unfortunate incident in which the marching band got too much into the spirit and both boys and girls tried the undress code with regrettable results. One young lady concealed her breast by having two trumpet players march backward, the cone of their instruments...well, you get the idea. In a way it was a great success, not only did the most appreciative audience laugh themselves sick as did the band. Perhaps unfortunately their program for that afternoon was to have included a pastiche of Old Favorite Hymns and, well, it just might have seemed a tad disrespectful to be yearning for the old rugged cross while trying to keep your loin cloth in place. However you thought about it, the school, the team the band-and two non-instrument players-made the news nationally. Indeed Phil, my partner on the reservation, gave quite a good interview to the local CBS affiliate that found it sufficiently amusing to hand it on to network who filled a dull news day with rather more of it than would have usually be shown. ONLY because he was brimming with enthusiasm for the school, was awash in statements usually reserved for the smarmiest of PR firms and his school boy “cuteness” and zeal saved him. Just to be fair, I was swooped up too and also interviewed....by the Dean of Student Affairs. (We made no secret of ours-affair that is- hadn't since late in our Junior year in High School.) We were threatened with everything to and including being ridden off the campus, naked, on a bouncing two by four until he couldn't hold it and started laughing. (Some years later, as a return of a favor, Phil and I found him in a kink bar and took him home for some of the home grown variety.)

In one way, our looks worked against us even if CBS, locally and nationally, both commented on our essential “cuteness”. We wanted to be tall, dark, threatening and built along the general lines of a cowboy porn star but...more accurately we were “cute as two buttons” with open, freckled faces, happy grins, crew hair cuts, a certain bounciness to us that was, I admit this with loathing, compared to watching Winnie The Pooh run. For those who follow tennis, think of a cuter version of the Doubles playing Bryan Brothers and you've got the idea. We were almost always together, laughing, being boyish-it was just in our nature. A national fraternity became the first on campus to invite two openly gay men, a couple at that, to pledge. The fraternity got instant good feelings from the sort of people who demand civil rights for all causes even some who insist Women get the vote....More cameras, more interviews-this time with both of us and the President of the fraternity who said he was proud to have us and, what the hell, might consider a three way just for his own frame of reference. This last bit was dropped from most of the televised interviews but not all which....brought the national representatives of the fraternity to town to ask him just what the fuck he'd meant? Sleeping with two gay pledges and, by the fucking way, what the hell was he thinking when he asked us to join?

Backfired! The national fraternity had put out a statement saying that while they applauded the spirit and intention of the deed, as a group they opposed homosexuality in the frat house and, in future, other chapters would be asked to consider very carefully before extending an invitation to any gay man. Can you see the press heading for the frat house? And, because the national fraternity had their headquarters in Washington D.C, the press there damn near ringed their offices, gay advocacy groups showed up en masse and we were back on television but this time as the lead story. Danny, our local president, was genuinely shocked and broke down in tears when interviewed saying that he only did what he did because the guys liked us, we were good students and....well....why not. And then teared up again. We were there-reluctantly-and to make his point, Danny kissed both of us, full tongue. It was a weekend and, apart from college football, this was THE HOT story. We now had the full alphabet, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CNN, ESPN (?) plus the local boys and girls and we were promised even more. And the kiss seen round the globe.

Inside the frat house it was a sad, quiet place. None of us wanted this but a great number of parents, fearing threats they'd received in their own home towns, had demanded that their sons de-pledge and depart immediately, not only the fraternity but withdraw from school as well. A week into this and a house meant to hold 75 men was now the mausoleum for twenty of us. The media finally went away but the damage they'd done had not. In Washington the National Offices had “suggested”, just to defuse the situation, that Phil and I not be initiated but rather allowed to “hang out” as friends of the frat. And that was too much for Danny. I suppose it was a clever move but....he called another news conference on the lawn which was going to take a year to recover and the concrete sign announcing our Greek letters had been so desecrated that it was taken down. This time there was no hysteria, just a portent sense of a grim occasion. Danny walked out, a roll of paper under his arm, thanked the media for being there. Significantly, he was wearing his blazer from which had been removed the fraternity crest. He said a few words and then unrolled the paper which was the letter from national headquarters, blown up, about how they wanted him to handle the situation, prominently underlined was the part about making us “friends” but not pledging us. As we'd been asked to be there, we were behind him, not happily, but there. For those who couldn't read, he read aloud the more salient parts and he looked into the massed cameras and told them and whoever would see it that A. He was resigning effective that moment and B. he was going to go with Phil and me and find out what the life of a gay man really was like as he'd certainly been given a taste of the ugliness of how others saw it.

Danny was a varsity wrestler and when he put an arm around each of our shoulders and started forward, we just went with him. Through the cameras reporters with outstretched mics asking questions, across the stubble lawn and into his car where we all drove away. As drama and theatre, it was a huge success. Virtually every news platform carried it and and added that there should be more men of Danny's character. In D.C the interviews, or attempts at them, at national headquarters took on the aspect of the villagers holding torches coming up the mountain to get the monsters. While not the cover story in TIME, it was covered and the national fraternity, both product and ethos was vilified.

A few miles from campus Danny found a phone and called the Dean of Students effectively asking him that the three of us be dropped from enrollment, that our fees and expenses for that semester be refunded.... He was still talking when the Dean interrupted him, told him for all of us to meet him at his house-some distance from campus-and be there in about an hour. It was about then that Danny told us that he'd packed all his things and they were in the trunk of the car. For obvious personal reasons we lived in an apartment off campus and, what could we do?, we asked Danny to come live with us until the whole mess either blew over or....as Phil said with a half smirk....we could get a picture deal out of it.

I don't know what we expected from the Dean but probably none of it was going to be good news; Apart from attracting a ton of negative publicity to the campus-not to mention the incident with the marching band-we, the three of us had forced national attention on a hot button issue and deeply involved the fraternity, of course, but the university by implication. Phil and I had already one one interview with him and at least knew he had a a sense of humor but....somehow, if we'd been surveyed, neither of us would have said that his laughter over an incident would stretch to having his campus overrun with media, faculty being pressed for interviews, some very unflattering profiles of the school being run and, what else?, the athletic program, their recent lack of success at anything and their current losing season had been discussed, argued, commented on....I figured if the Athletic Director wasn't in full cardiac arrest it was just a matter of time. We stood in front of his door rather longer than one normally would hating to ring the bell that was more like the tocsin of doom. He spared us the agony of one of us being the Judas goat by opening it himself.

“Come in, guys, get in here before a news helicopter or a cruising camera crew finds you and, Danny, slip back out there and pull the car in the garage; I left a door up and an open bay.”

He was casually dressed in sweat pants, old sneakers and a zip front hoodie which, on the back, showed support for a school, just not the one by which he was employed. The hoodie was partially unzipped and I think we were all surprized to see a good sized eagle tattoo on his chest. “Danny, hurry up now, or your drink will get warm.” We followed him into what was probably his office study and, from a hidden refrigerator produced two beer for us. He made a Scotch rocks for himself and Danny could have whatever he wanted, presumably, when he got there which was only a moment or so. He joined up with a beer and the Dean, all graciousness, encouraged us to sit down, take off our shoes, get comfortable as he figured this was as good a hidey hole for the next little while as we could find. He fully expected the media to visit him and, when they did, we could scoot upstairs and watch TV, nap, whatever until they went away. It showed why he was a Dean and we were students. I know we were grateful to have the future, at least the next brief part, handled and resolved. Phil and I received his next gift of largesse. He'd had campus police stationed around out apartment to prevent any sort of vandalism and, he hoped we wouldn't mind, he'd over stepped his legal bounds and had someone go in and pack up some clothes for us. (That should have been easy, if anyone tried to pick out things separately, you found it was pretty much impossible. We wore each others clothes, shoes, whatever. About the only thing we didn't share was our toothbrush so at least when they looked for two of them, they'd be successful. )

He told us to call him Bryan as we weren't really going to be Students much longer. Beyond what Danny had requested, he'd thrown his weight around and we would get all our money back but Danny would receive all his academic credits at our new school, which, he said somewhat confidentially, was better than here and, for our troubles, the Board of Trustees had agreed to pay for a full year, all expenses, for all of us. I thought Danny was going to break down. After all his worries and concerns, this great guy had done for him what we, however grateful we were, could not have done.

Hard to know who relaxed the most, but I'd guess Danny who had, for the past several. hours been on the verge of a nervous collapse. Sitting there on the couch he looked so alone, so isolated, so grateful but just beyond able to express any sort of emotion. I remembered that just before the semester had started one of his parents had died and now this...Bryan knew that too and casually sat next to him and pulled him to his chest which had the wanted effect of letting Danny emotionally collapse but externally. Bryan held him as you would a child and, with a jerk of his head, indicated Phil and I should go elsewhere, this was private, personal and painful. A real adult needed to be there and he was. Phil and I, not being familiar with his house, and mindful that the media was probably looking up street addresses and reading maps decided to take Bryan's advice and go upstairs. There we found what was obviously a guest room-empty closet, perfectly made bed-so we staked our claim and, as we were want to do, crawled up on the bed and relaxed.

With the silence of the house and the day, we suddenly were both tired and, again as usual, found each other, kissed and relaxed into a nap.

It was dark, not dusk, dark when we awakened and found that Danny was asleep on the other bed in the room. I didn't know much about body language but even in his sleep he looked....crumpled, exhausted. He was undressed and under the covers so we crept out looking for, in order of importance, a bathroom and food. The first was easy the second, we assumed, was downstairs. Just to be on the safe side we sidled up to a window and snuck a peek to make sure we weren't being haunted by the press-we couldn't see any-and went on downstairs. Bryan and good smells proved to be in the same place which was a great old fashioned kitchen.

“Hey, guys, I wondered who'd join me for dinner and you're just in time. It's beef stew and I picked up an apples crumb pie on my way home.” He hadn't changed clothes, but only then did I realize what a great looking guy he was. Easy stride, charm and grace that only comes naturally to a few men and a good sense of humor. “How about a beer first? Get your appetite going...” He headed off for his study via the wet bar where he got two bottle for us and a double shot of Scotch for himself. “Come on in, sit down, guess we better get to know each other as friends not as Dean of Students and Students...by the way, I resigned citing philosophical differences.” And he laughed.

We didn't we were sort of shocked and must have showed it. He was a great guy, was a great Dean and we couldn't help but think our run in with the press and the fraternity was the driving reason behind his actions. He looked at us and read us like remedial reading. “Don't worry, I only took this because I was just off sabbatical, thought I'd better work and this was offered. I can and will get a better job at another school, already talked to three of them all of which said, in effect, welcome aboard so don't worry about me. But we gotta worry about Danny. He's just had a major part of his life, his support system handed to him on fire and it's up to the two of you-you're more his age-and me to put him back together again. That's why I'm moving all of you in here. It's too far into the semester to swap schools-and, you don't know this officially, but I'm taking the three of you with me, that was part of the deal I made here and where we're headed...”

Phil and I just sat there, rarely had others made all the decisions for us, and so quickly. But he wasn't done. “Oh, and you've moved out of your apartment. All your things are neatly packed up and in the basement here. My plan is to put the three of you on the third floor-really needs some dusting and basic cleaning-but you two can have your privacy and Danny gets his own room as well you share a bathroom but that shouldn't be a problem. Whaddya say?”

Phil said, “Can I go down on you?” Bryan laughed that easy laugh that said he was amused, not offended. “Maybe later”, and laughed again. Phil smiled not sure what he meant. For a time we just sat there, enjoyed the fire-Bryan suggested we take our shoes off, put our feet up, have another beer. For once in several days I was calm and wasn't worried about the future and could begin to forget the past. Somewhere I understood this whole mess wasn't quite over but with Bryan riding shotgun, I had a comfortable, even hopeful that whatever was to come would be handled and kicked down the street.

Dinner turned a little boozy which, frankly, wasn't unwelcome. Bryan checked on Danny and said he was just getting through the emotional part of the past few days and was moving into plain old exhaustion. All he asked us to do was, whenever we rolled over or went to the can, just check him, shouldn't be anything wrong but when someone had been through something as emotionally draining he'd need a few days to come down, relax and ended by saying this was now boys town and he was one of the boys. He saw no reason to go back to his office, we didn't need to go anywhere and it was a sure shot that Danny probably never wanted to see the fraternity house again. No reasons to disagree there. “Oh, and if you two want to make love or have sex, there's a spare room in the basement where peace and quiet and privacy was ours even a bathroom, admittedly not updated since Roosevelt's first administration. Fact is, if we wanted to just stay there, it'd be alright with him but...wait a few days, he needed to be surrounded by people who cared about him, as a favour to him. I said after the last few days the idea of sex hadn't seemed very important and if it did, we'd find the basement.