The City of Rossford

Sheridan sat in his basement, curled in a ball and weeping. He really hated his life right now. No. Correction. He hated himself. How had he turned into this? How had he become the boy who was telling a beautiful girl, who was sort of a stranger, that he was gay? And how had he turned gay? It didn’t sound right. It couldn’t be true. The word made no sense. Not for him. Sheridan was… There had to be another word. Brendan Miller was gay. Kenny was gay. He was Sheridan.

I could talk to them.

He couldn’t talk to Bren. Bren would want that, but he couldn’t. Maybe one day he would, but not right now. He just couldn’t. He didn’t even know how to get the words out of his mouth. He wanted to stop hurting people. He had been with Robin, and then she had died. He’d been with Chay and then turned his back on him. He’d been with Shelley, and Shelley had thrown him out. And even before them, what kind of seventeen year old had rolled out of so many beds with so much ease?

He flipped on his phone and went through numbers. He looked at one for a long time, and then he shrugged and decided to call.

“Talk to me,” the bored voice on the other end commanded by way of salutation.

“That’s so ignorant,” Sheridan said.

“I think it works. Is this Sheridan?”

“Yeah. What are you doing?”

“From the way you sound, taking you out, I guess.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be there in about ten. That cool?”

“Yeah, Logan.”

“You smoke?” Logan offered him a fat cigarette.

“Uh…” Sheridan looked around. “Sometimes.” He took the cigarette from Logan.

“Yeah,” Logan said, as the server slid them two beers and Logan nodded at him. “This is sort of a shady place. But it’s safe enough. And I feel… I never feel like I’m not good enough for it. You know?”

Sheridan nodded, his fingertips poised on the beer mug, lifting his elbows from the sticky booth table.

“I told this girl that I’m turning gay,” Sheridan said.

“Did you,” Logan made a a hand gesture, “fail at lift off?”

“No,” Sheridan shook his head. “I failed at actually being there. Or liking it.”

“You are a rare man, Sheridan Klasko,” Logan raised his glass. “Now, most guys: they get married, have a wife and kids and think if they can stick it in a chick, they’re straight. But you, my friend, have arrived at a new level of consciousness.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

Logan thought about this, and then, sticking out his lip, said, “I think I’m probably just making fun of the world.” He shook his head, “Sometimes I hate people.”

“I loved being with Chay,” Sheridan said, simply.

Logan looked at him.

“I know it’s weird,” Sheridan said. “But I love coming to work. I love being there and working on the shit and seeing guys and… I was hot and bothered, but I feel like I wouldn’t be if I could just be with guys. I just… want to be with guys. And I know that at first I was like… you only want to be with guys cause you’re seeing it all day at Casey’s. But why would I work for Casey if… I didn’t want to be with guys in the first place? I just… I never felt sexy before. I never felt turned on. Not the way I do all the time now. And… I’ve fucked around a lot, with a lot of girls. And I always felt like I was trying to be somebody. But… with Chay it was real natural. I knew just how it went. I…”

Sheridan leaned in close.

“I had him fuck me. No one’s done that to me before. I didn’t know I even wanted that. I don’t think I can go back to chicks after I know what it’s like.”

Logan, in his open blue sweat jacket, listened to all of this, his arms folded over his chest, a cigarette burning from his right hand.

“If you loved it so much, why don’t you give it a go with Chay? That’s why you feel so bad. Why don’t you just let yourself love him?”

“It’s too late for all that. I was too scared. I thought I could put it behind me and walk away. Be straight.”

“This is Indiana,” Logan said, his lip jutting out. “Lots of guys do.”

“But are they being happy? Are they being true to themselves?”

Logan laughed out loud and took a puff from his cigarette.

“Listen to you! Happy! True to yourself. You sound… all existential Jean Paul Sartre and shit! You think anybody gives a fuck about that? People do what takes the least amount of work. Half the men I’ve been with hate themselves. Gay, straight. Whatever. Being true to yourself doesn’t mean fuck.”

“I’m not ready to be Chay’s boyfriend,” Sheridan shook his head. “I’m no good for him, and we both know he’s got shit going on with Casey. I just… I just want to sleep with guys. Does that sound bad?”

Logan reached into his wallet and handed it to Sheridan.

“Count that shit,” he said.

Sheridan raised an eyebrow, and then began rifling through the wallet, counting off bills. Midway through it, he looked up at Logan.

“I make my money having sex in front of a camera. For the most part,” Logan told him. “The rest of it? I turn tricks for depressed lonely men. On Christmas Eve I went over to a minister’s house and I let him fuck me in the ass with no condom. And once a week, or sometimes twice, I go to him and a couple of other preachers. A rabbi too. And they suck my dick. Or I suck their’s or… I fuck a married man while his wife is gone.

“I’ve stopped judging people. I’ve stopped judging myself,” Logan said, though to Sheridan, his eyes had become distant. The cigarette was abandoned in his hand, a pile of ash dropped on the shellacked table top.

“It’s the only way to keep from going crazy.”

CHAY WAITED FOR CASEY to say something. After having known him this long, he could tell when a silence in the room meant something. He gathered his knees to his chest and came to the head of the bed where Casey was already sitting.

Casey didn’t speak; he only turned his head and looked at Chay, waiting for the boy to speak.

“What?”

“My question exactly.”

Chay shrugged.

“That is a very good impersonation of a sullen fifteen year old. Now, what’s going on? You and Sheridan… You’ve been weird toward him.”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it,” Chay said, trying to sound equal and mature.

“I bet you do,” Casey differed. “You want to talk about everything.”

Chay shook his head.

“Did you fuck him?”

Chay looked at Casey in surprise.

“After all this time, did the two of you go home and fuck finally?”

And because Chay was mad at Casey for saying it, and because he wanted to one up him he said, “Yes. That’s what happened. So what?”

“And he chickened out? Sheridan’s the kind of guy who would chicken out.”

Chay didn’t say anything.

“It was the best sex of your life. Even better than the sex you have with me because this was the sex you’ve always been dreaming about. Sheridan, all defenseless…”

“Are you trying to make fun of me?”

“No,” Casey dismissed that. “Not really. It’s just, I think I’m trying to show you that everything you think no one understands but you, is everything every gay guy has gone through before you. It must have been hot, Sheridan finally coming undone. You all must have done all the freaky shit you always dreamed about. And then the next morning he just got scared and turned into himself again. Like, like… I was happy for once last night. I can’t go on being happy. That’s too much. And so you’re mad. You’re mad at yourself for letting it happen. You’re mad for how you let go of something too. Because you finally believed that what you never believed in could happen. And you’re mad too because… you still think about it. That whole night’s still in you. It gets you hard, as much as you’re mad at him, thinking about him still turns you on.”

The whole time Casey talked, Chay sat on the bed, touching his toes, one by one, his hair hanging in his face. He spoke from behind the curtain of his chocolate hair.

“How do you know all this?”

“All this is my business. All this is how I make a living. On mens’ strong desires and the weakness that makes them unable to carry them out. Of course I know… all this.”

“Are you mad at me?” Chay said.

“For?”

“For sleeping with Sheridan?”

“How can I be? I sleep with everyone else. You know that. But you still come back to me, right?”

“Right.”

Casey curled up close to him and Casey’s arms came around Chay. He smelled so good. He smelled like the sweat of their sex. He smelled like bread. His breath was like milk and Chay could smell the dampness in his hair.

“We have something different,” Casey said. “It is what it is, and what it is, I think, is good. We can’t question it too much. You know?”

Chay only nodded.

“But, I have to admit, I am a little jealous.”

Chay said, “I never would have done it if I thought you would be. I thought…”

“The thing about what you thought and what I thought and… all of that,” Casey said, “is it’s hard to know what is what until we do something. Does that make any sense?”

“No,” Chay said, frankly.

“I mean that you know my work is my work, and you know that what we are is something different. I know that Sheridan is… competition. And I never knew that until I knew you all had been together. Or until I realized I was kind of glad it didn’t work out.”

When Casey said this last, he separated from Chay and lay back down in the bed, his arms folded under his head.

Chay looked down at him. He looked like a marble sculpture. He looked strong and breakable and sweet all at the same time and Chay wanted to touch his red lips. He wanted to smell his body again. Instead he spoke:

“Well… what does that make us? You and me?”

Casey turned his head, and with a little smile said, “Something totally inappropriate, and totally illegal.”

When Claire went to answer the door, she was surprised to see:

“Matthew?”

From upstairs Julian called, “Who is it?”

“Well, are you going to let me in or what?” her younger brother demanded.

“Come on in,” Claire gestured, and shut the door behind her red headed brother, gesturing for him to follow her upstairs.

“Something smells good.”

“It’s dinner, Matt.”

“You cook this, or Julian?”

“I can cook you know,” Claire said as they came up into the living room, shutting the door behind them.

“It’s Matt!” Claire called down the hall.

Matthew Anderson could hear the sounds of sizzling, and before they reached the kitchen, Claire said, “I can cook. It’s just… I didn’t today.”

“Matthew,” Julian said in surprise. He was stirring something in the hissing skillet.

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting my big sister with the bun in the oven. Speaking of, when are you coming to E.C. to see Mom?”

“This Sunday, actually,” Claire told him. “You are going to stop by and see Paul, right?”

“I had planned to. Since I’m here.”

“But why are you here?”

“I just—”

Claire held up a hand, “I don’t believe for a minute you came to town on the spur of the moment to visit me and Paul.”

Matthew, who looked like a rougher, redder version of Paul, a real version of the cornfed farmboy Paul had been as Johnny Mellow, only shrugged. He was large in the shoulders and his hair was dirty gold-red, thick and in need of cutting.

“Well, then let’s just leave it at me doing my business.”

“Of course you’re staying to eat,” Julian said, reaching up and pulling out three wine glasses.

“Of course,” Matthew said with raised eyebrows that meant he didn’t know he’d been invited.

“Unless your boodie call needs you right away,” Claire said.

Before Matthew could say anything, Julian said, “I’m sure Matty has a cell phone and that means he can tell his boodie call he’ll be a little late.”

“I don’t need to call anyone,” Matthew declared. “All I need to know is if I can smoke in your kitchen.”

“Of course you can,” Claire said. “We haven’t gotten that prim and proper.”

And then she put her hands to her hips in surprise and said, “Of, course you can’t! I fucking forgot I’m having a baby.”

“She’ll remember at about five-thirty in the morning when she’s running to the toilet,” Julian commented.

“Say,” he added, “do you think we should call Paul and Kirk and… No, then they’d bring the kids. No. It’ll be just us. I was feeling in a real family mood, but its enough Mathan and Danny are coming.”

“Haven’t seen them in a long time,” Matty murmured. “They should come down to East Carmel and show the town a thing or two. So, why are you feeling so… familial… is that the word?”

“That is the word, little brother,” Claire said. “And the reason,” she told him, looking at her husband like the cat with the canary, “is because Julian and Layla found out they have a new sister.”