The City of Rossford

As Saturday was coming to an end and Sheridan found himself on hands and knees, roling up plastic from a carpet and glad that he hadn’t worn a shirt and a tie, or even very nice clothes. He heard footsteps and looked up.

“Hi.”

Sheridan, who was so shocked by so many things recently, was surprised by how this new boy looked to him. He had a mischievous smile and dirty blond hair that shone out from his backward turned baseball cap, and Sheridan could not stop grinning at him.

“I heard you up here and thought you could use a hand.”

“Uh…” Sheridan shook himself from his reverie.

“Thanks.”

He got down on the floor and began rolling up plastic too.

“So, Casey’s got you on ass duty. You must have really pissed him off.”

Sheridan didn’t know how to answer that, and then the guy laughed.

“I’m just fooling. Someone’s always on ass duty. Ass duty is where it begins and ends. Maybe that’s why you got it your first day. None of this is very glamorous for long.”

He coughed, and then he said, “By the way, my name is Logan.”

“Logan…”

“I’m friends with Chay.”

“Oh, okay,” Sheridan lifted the rolled pile of plastic and carried it to the bin and then came back to help Logan with his roll.

“No,” Sheridan said.

“Huh?”

“That’s not how I knew you. You were… the guy in the video this morning.”

Sheridan felt himself turning red and Logan said, “Yes, I was the guy that put Tyler’s ass water on the floor.”

“And then you all just kept going at it.”

“You have to,” Logan said. “That’s what I mean. This is work. Half of it is powering through. It’s like any other job except, I think, better.”

Logan dumped the plastic into the bin with a loud crinkling noise.

“None of the bullshit,” Logan was saying. “Everywhere else you are, people want to pretend they’re better than they are. They go home, or shut up their offices, and watch us. We are what you watch when you’re being your dirty old self. All that pretentious shit is gone. That’s why you started out with ass water. It’s all ass water. No one here is convinced they’re someone they’re not. You know, Sheridan, you’ll never have to wonder what I look like naked!”

Logan gave him a bright grin.

“Everything here is exactly what it is.”

Downstairs, they joined Chay and an expressionless Casey who put his hands together and said, “Everything clean?”

“Yup,” Logan said before Sheridan could.

“Well, then,” Chay said to Sheridan, “Monday afternoon? When you get off of school?”

“Uh… yeah,” Sheridan said.

“Great,” he patted Chay’s shoulder and shoved him gently beside Sheridan, “See you guys later.”

“YOU LOOK NICE,” Dan said.

“Are you hitting on me, Daniel?” Fenn said as he shut the refrigerator and came back to the kitchen table with a bowl of potatoes.

“I dunno.”

Fenn looked at him, but only for a second.

“Maybe. Probably.” Dan shrugged. “I don’t know myself these days.”

“Well, I’ll answer for you. The answer is no. It’s twenty years too late for that foolishness.”

Dan grinned and Fenn, who was busy peeling potatoes, said, “I don’t really have the time to look at you, and I can’t really be bothered enough to ask if anything’s wrong. I mean, clearly something is because you’re flatly being bizarre.”

“It’s just… Well, listen,” Dan said.

“I’m listening,” Fenn said. “I’m just not looking at you. I can’t bleed into the potatoes because of the trials of Dan Malloy.”

“I… uh, I was talking to Keith. He was talking to me, really. About the love of his life.”

“Love of his life?” Fenn said in a faint voice that was more concerned with potatoes.

“Yes. I… He was talking about how he would never be with him, and how it would work out and… I don’t know how it made me feel.”

“Did it make you feel like you should be the love of his life?”

And then when Dan said nothing, Fenn put down the knife and looked at him.

“Dan?” Fenn said, sharply.

“It made me feel like he can have a love of his life.”

Fenn said nothing. He went back to the potatoes, resituating the large bowl closer to him.

“Well, you had a love of your life once, too.”

Neither one of them said anything for a long time.

“When I was twenty,” Dan said, “I felt like I needed to be a priest.”

“And now, twenty-seven years later you don’t want to be anymore.”

“That’s not quite true.”

“It is,” Fenn said unrelentingly. “It is a little.”

“I want to… be intimate.”

“You always had a difficult time with straight talk.”

“You want me to be crude?”

“It’s a day before Christmas and you’re upset because you want to fuck, and you can’t.”

“That is so crude.”

“But is it true?”

“I’m not you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” Dan began, suddenly regretting his outburst. “I only meant that… Well, I don’t want simply sex.”

“Simply sex is exactly what you want,” Fenn said. “And in case you haven’t noticed it, this house, a husband and two kids sort of points to the fact that I do actually have more that simply sex.”

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “You’re right. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You weren’t being offensive. You were being stupid. Clapping yourself on the back for being a good boy when you’re really not that good after all.”

Fenn said all this simply, without a change in tone, and not even turning his eyes from the potatoes he peeled.

“What if people just admitted what they wanted?” Fenn continued. “The curse of Christianity is people pretending they’re far better than they are, talking about ‘I don’t want sex. That’s so shallow.’ When what they really mean is, ‘I shouldn’t want sex.’ And why shouldn’t they?”

Dan didn’t say anything and Fenn said, “I’m sure the reason you come to sit around my table is because you know I will say things no one else will.”

“I’ve talked to Frank Slaughter.”

“Bryant’s uncle?”

“Yes. I’ve talked to him about my feelings.”

“And…”

“I said I feel old. I feel… I don’t know how I feel.”

“I think it’s much less complicated.”

Fenn dropped the potato in a new bowl of water.

“I’ve known you for thirty years, and your life has always been this drama out of a saints’ book. Everything that happens to you is so epic. You’re so different from everyone else.”

“That’s not true.”

“But it is,” Fenn said. “And the truth is you’re confused about something which is very simple. If you were a secretary or a school teacher and you wanted to switch jobs, well, then, it would be simple. But you’re a priest… who no longer wants to be a priest. So you’ve made it hard.”

“You need another drink, my friend,” Dan said, pouring bourbon into the tumbler.

Keith McDonald looked around the old rectory of Saint Barbara’s.

“I miss this place,” he said. “I’m becoming more and more convinced I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when I left the Catholic Church.”

“You were following your heart,” Dan said, loftily, his drink lifted a little.

“I was following Casey and now Casey is gone.”

Dan’s face changed. He made a low noise.

“He finally found someone who would put up with his craziness.”

“Who?” Dan sounded like an owl.

“I don’t know,” Keith said. “He won’t say. But he has found someone that’s okay with him doing what he does, doing porn, having… escorts, I guess you call em.”

Dan took a deep long breath.

“What?”

“But, you would have been okay with it.”

“I tried to be,” Keith admitted. “I thought I might be.

“When I came back to town, I was ready to make another go of it,” Keith confessed. “I was going to try. And then he does this.”

Dan watched him for a long time. Dan said nothing. He had been drinking too much, he knew.

“I regretted being a priest today,” Dan said.

Keith nodded.

“I told Fenn Houghton I regretted it. I regretted being… celibate. Sometimes I think I’ll die… I think there’s no point. If I never… If I’m never with a man again.”

“They ought to have something,” Keith said. “Like… the opposite of nuns. Or monks. People who just give their bodies to you. When you wish for it. When you want it.”

Neither one of them said anything for a long time and then Dan said, “I can’t believe I just said what I said.”

“I can’t believe what I said,” Keith said. He yawned. “I need to go to bed. I’m so tired. A little drunk. Not too drunk to drive.”

“I’ll drive you,” Dan began to stand up.

“No,” Keith shook his head. “You’re even more plowed than me. It’s only a few minutes to my house.”

Sitting on his bed, Keith McDonald frowned. He folded his hands together and perched his chin on his praying fist and then he sat up, reached into his back pocket and pulled out the card Casey had given him. There was his number. He reached for the old rotary phone, which was charming and irritating all at the same time, and began turning out the phone number, whistling a little tune to himself and tapping his foot.

THE WEEK OF CHRISTMAS was his first full week of work. It was more than ass water. Ass water didn’t happen all of the time. The job was decorating the rooms and learning lighting. It was answering phone calls as Sheridan remembered that Casey ran an escort service. He was not allowed on the computers to do editing. That was Chay’s job. And Chay edited the blogs.

“Blogs?”

Chay nodded.

“A lot of guys who get on Casey’s site like to feel close to their stars. And a lot of porn stars keep blogs. And then there’s also this sort of ongoing commentary under the porns by the people who watch them.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Chay said with not an entirely raised eyebrow. “Watching porn is like Lifetime movies for some men. Honestly, I know you’re supposed to be out and proud and all that but really, if you can hang it, I would just say stay in. I would say stay away from men. They’re all so fucking confused.”

Sheridan tried to laugh it off. But he felt fucking confused.

“How’s Shelley?”

Why’d he have to say that?

“I haven’t actually seen her,” Sheridan admitted. “Not this week. Not since the night Robin died.”

“Did you stay with her that night?”

“I stayed a little bit,” Sheridan said. He didn’t want to talk about that. He said, “This place is so incompatible with talking about me and Shelley.”

“It’s a lot of guys who come here, sit around on the second floor smoking and drinking—water or sports drinks—and talking about their girlfriends.” Chay chuckled. “And then they fuck each other. But you can tell by the looks on peoples’ faces there’s a line drawn. All the guys here who are definitely gay get a little ticked off with the guys who are talking about being bi. Logan won’t get with any of them but to fuck them. Then he does it as hard as possible.”

“Guys!” Logan was coming down the steps.

They looked up, and speak of the devil there was Logan Banford.

“How would you all like to go to a nice restaurant tonight, one that’s not on the Dorr Strip, but a real decent one out on Tangerine or some shit like that?”

Chay looked at him and said, “What for?”

“Why?” Logan said in a chipper voice. “Because we like you.”

And then he resumed, “And… because Old Dude over here,” he touched Sheridan on the shoulder, “has been cleaning ass water and being a house bitch for the better part of the week, and its Christmas Eve. Also, because tonight I got a job that’s going to PAY—ME—WELL!”

“Do you need us to go with you?” Chay said.

“Naw, Short Man, I’m safe. He’s a minister or something. But,” Logan put a finger to his lips and grinned mawkishly, “we mustn’t give away people’s secrets.”