Copyright © 2026 J.P. Russell. The author asserts the application of all U.S. and associated international copyright protections and all rights to this original work of fiction. Do not reproduce without explicit written permission, etc.
How Can I Help You Say Goodbye
Grady wanted to make sure the corral and stable were in solid shape before bringing horses and cattle in, but both were a mess, so those were the next big jobs on the agenda. Even so, he was true to his word: we took a couple of days and got my new apartment cleaned up and organized, so by the end of June I was settled in and enjoying my own place again, although I largely only slept and masturbated there—the rest of the time was spent working or eating meals at the main house.
Being on the ranch full-time meant that I got to see more of Grady, and I liked what I saw more than ever. He was quiet, but with me around more he opened up about his life. I was surprised but pleased to learn that he really wasn’t that much older than me—just 28—and had worked a few different jobs since leaving school, not only barista. He didn’t talk about girlfriends or boyfriends, and I still couldn’t get a bead on which direction he leaned or if he leaned any way at all. He wasn’t super close with his mom—I got the feeling they’d had a falling out a few years back—and he almost never mentioned his dad or his death. Doug seemed to be the only family member he was close to, and when he talked about his uncle you could feel how much Grady grieved his passing.
Grady had started asking more questions about my life, too, including my thoughts about issues in the world. It was a nice thing to finally have someone to talk to about the books I was reading, politics, pop culture, music. He didn’t always seem to understand what I was talking about, but he always seemed genuinely interested, and I enjoyed telling him about the things that mattered to me. Mostly it was nice to just be me, which I generally couldn’t do like this, even with my family.
It didn’t take long for his dogs to take a shine to me, and Bear became my furry shadow, perhaps in belated apology for our first uncomfortable interaction. Grady loved the dogs, and they were often with us as we pulled sun-bleached and splintered boards off the walls of the stable, though they spent much of their time dozing in the shade when they weren’t on the hunt for prairie dogs or unwary coyotes venturing too near to the house.
To my surprise the stable’s uprights seemed to be in pretty fair shape, so we wouldn’t have tear the whole thing down, which was good, because very bit of money we could save was welcome. Grady had mentioned that Doug left him a bit of money along with the ranch, with the expectation that he’d use it to do as many of the repairs as possible. But it was also clear that whatever money Doug had left wasn’t nearly as much as was needed, and Grady was watching his pennies pretty closely. So we reused as much material as possible. That suited me—I didn’t like wasting things, and it was nice to see that he felt the same.
It didn’t take long to feel like I’d always lived there, that we’d been friends for a long time. Of course I was falling madly in love with him. And of course I knew that was a huge mistake.
----------
June can be weird weather season in southern Colorado. This year was no exception. Mornings started chilly and started getting hot around 10 a.m., forcing us to remove jackets and, sometimes, our overshirts, leaving us in sweat-soaked t-shirts that revealed far more than they covered, especially with Grady. By 2:00, intense thunderstorms frequently rolled in, rain turning to blistering hail, the mountain sky pierced by so much lightning that it looked like a full artillery barrage. The rains generally petered out by 4, and the early evening got cool, even cold, as the clouds receded and the stars started peeping out. This high up in elevation there wasn’t much light pollution, and the night sky here looked like someone had scattered diamonds across black velvet.
I don’t think I ever spent so much time looking at the stars as I did that summer. It made me feel like I was part of something so much bigger than myself, that everything we were part of was meaningful…maybe even destined.
Grady and I would generally get an early start on anything that needed attention outdoors, then move into the house or the shop in the afternoons when the weather turned ugly. I didn’t much enjoy working in the all-metal enclosure during the thunderstorms, as I was convinced we were going to be incinerated by a stray lightning strike at any moment, but if he was willing to risk it, so was I.
Honestly, I would have walked barefoot through the middle of an active volcano if Grady had asked me to come with him.
We managed to clear out all of the shop’s unused equipment, which Grady either sold or gave to friendly neighbors. We did keep one of the working golf carts, which I put to good use running up and down the rutted drive taking junk from the shop to the big trailer Grady rented for disposal. It was dusty, sweaty, heavy work, but we were making real progress.
I spent a couple of afternoons getting most of the old tools, screws, and accessories organized above the long workbench, and when I was finished Grady stood and admired the pegboard and its clearly-labeled mason jars filled with screws, nails, bolts, washers, and other bits and bobs, hammers and screwdrivers and saws in designated spaces, and everything else prominently displayed, each sorted out and visible so there wouldn’t be any reason not to know where they belonged.
He flashed me that dreamy, lopsided half-smile as he took it all in. “You’re either really organized or really OCD,” he said.
I smiled back. “Both, probably. I’ve pretty much always been super anal…um, anally retentive,” I stuttered, my face flushing bright red.
Grady’s laugh was loud and genuine. “Well, whatever it is, I like what you’re doing, Ben. Keep it up.”
That’s the problem, I thought, turning around to adjust my twitching dick away from his line of sight. When I looked back I couldn’t tell if he’d seen or not, but the energy between us shifted subtly, and not in a bad way. He just kept looking at the wall, that crooked smile still on those full, kissable lips that featured in so many of my nighttime fantasies, before walking over to the piles of boxes on the far end of the shop. I made sure my erection has mostly receded before I walked over to join him.
As I approached, he quickly turned to me, an odd expression on his face. “I can go ahead and sort these out, Ben.”
“I don’t mind…” I started to reply, but he held up a hand.
“Seriously, this one I can do.”
Something about his tone got my attention. “What’s wrong?”
Now his face went red. “I, um, well, it’s not that it’s wrong as much as it’s, er, embarrassing.”
“They’re just books, right?”
His discomfort was getting more obvious. “Yeah, and magazines.”
“So what? They’re just….” My mouth snapped shut. I knew exactly what kinds of books and magazines were in those boxes.
Before I had any time to engage my better judgment, I blurted out, “I saw the bathroom, Grady!”
He looked confused. “You saw…?”
“I’m sorry!” The words tumbled out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to. It was that first day, when I needed to pee so badly. All the doors in the hall were shut and I thought it was the toilet you mentioned, and by the time I realized it wasn’t I was too embarrassed and didn’t want you thinking I was intentionally invading your privacy.” He stared at me, seemingly either too surprised or too angry to speak.
I could feel panic bubbling up in my chest. “I’m really, really sorry—I haven’t gone back in there, I promise. And I didn’t assume anything, seriously—I don’t know what it’s all about and it didn’t make me think anything about you or your uncle or….”
My increasingly desperate explanation was cut short by Grady’s laughter, a sound utterly deep and open and free. He couldn’t stop—he was laughing so hard that he could hardly breathe, and he had to lean against the golf cart to keep upright. I was relieved that he didn’t seem upset, but I couldn’t understand why he thought my long-harbored confession was quite so funny.
When at last he could catch his breath, he wiped his eyes, inhaled deeply, and said, “Ben, that’s your big secret? That you saw my uncle’s porn wall?”
I frowned. “Well, it’s not like it’s a standard bathroom décor, you know.”
He snorted. “No, no, you’re right. It’s pretty…unusual.”
“And I didn’t know that it wasn’t yours,” I said, then immediately regretted it. This was too close to information he’d never offered.
But he didn’t seem upset; if anything, he seemed intrigued. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was any of my business.”
His gaze was softer now. “And it didn’t bother you at all?”
“Bother me? Why would it? It’s not like I haven’t seen gay porn before. I’ve seen a lot of gay porn. I mean, a lot.” Again, too much honesty way too soon. This man got me so flustered.
“Not bothered by the porn, Ben—by the not knowing if it was mine.”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to. I don’t believe in outing people before they’re ready. None of my business otherwise. Live and let live, right? That’s the Colorado motto. Except with those Focus on the Family assholes over in Colorado Springs, but they’re all originally from California anyway. Besides, given how much you loved your uncle I didn’t really think you were a homophobic shit-kicker waiting to gay-bash me on some dark and lonely road.”
“That ever happen to you?” Grady wasn’t laughing now; he wasn’t even smiling.
“No, but I’ve been close a couple of times. Last time is why Alex and I broke up, actually."
"What happened?" His voice was soft. The question was an invitation, not a demand.
"A couple of rednecks saw us holding hands on our way out of a coffee shop in Durango. It was broad daylight—middle of the afternoon—and we were about to cross the street to get in my car. They pulled up beside us in their truck and started screaming, saying they were going to smash our ‘faggot faces’ in. One of them looked like he was going to get out of the truck and come at us, and we both froze, but the minivan behind them started honking and they peeled out down the street, laughing as they went. That was the worst, actually—the laughing, like they got off on shattering any sense we might have had that we were safe in the world.”
My voice quavered as I spoke. “We went back into the coffee shop to wait until we were sure they were gone. I was really shaky, but Alex was just pale and quiet. We stayed there for almost two hours before we got the courage to leave. He barely said a thing the whole time. We drove back to campus and he went right to his dorm and left me in the parking lot before I could go in for a hug or a kiss. No comfort, no acknowledgment, nothing. That night he called and said he didn’t want to see me any more. I tried to talk to him, but it was over. That was it, like a door slammed closed and locked me out—he didn’t take my calls, didn’t answer my emails or come to his door when I went over. It was like I’d completely ceased to exist, that all we’d been to each other didn’t mean anything. We never spoke again.”
Grady exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. “Shit, Ben. That’s rough. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
I nodded and gave him a little smile. The grief still sat in my chest like a stone, even all these months later. “Yeah. I really cared about him, you know? I don’t really know why, but I did. I still think he probably felt something for me, too, in his own way. But whatever it was, it wasn’t as strong as his fear. And I don’t want to be with someone who’s scared to be himself, or who doesn’t love me enough to stand together when it’s needed, because I’m not going back into the closet for anyone.”
“Do you miss him?” Grady’s voice was so low I could barely hear him.
I thought about it. “I miss…the company, I guess.” I sighed. “And the…intimacy. To be fair, we really weren’t a good match. Maybe I just grabbed on to him because he was one of the few openly gay guys I knew. But he was always so obsessed with what other people thought about him, and I was past caring. He was a business major because that’s what his parents wanted him to do, not because he enjoyed it; he volunteered with the homeless because it looked good on a résumé, not because he gave a shit about homeless people; he was always worried that people thought he wasn’t the smartest in the room, the most charming, the most stylish, whatever. Honestly, sometimes I thought he was a bit embarrassed of me, like being with me was a step down, like I was only there because he hadn’t found someone cooler for him to be seen with. I mean, when it was just the two of us it was great—he was funny, affectionate, sexy. And yeah, the sex was nice. But I literally could have been anyone in that bed—when he’d finish he’d just act like nothing had happened, like it was just another Tuesday, whatever, and once he was done he forgot about me and my pleasure. He always just seemed bored, like we hadn’t just shared something special.”
I looked at Grady, my eyes stinging. “I really just wanted to be special to him. To somebody. But I wasn’t. And I’m not.” I took off my glasses and nervously cleaned them on the cleanest spot of my t-shirt. “Sorry—that was a lot. Too much information. Long, whiny answer to a brief question.”
“You’re not ‘too much,’ Ben,” Grady said. “Alex just didn’t know what a good thing he threw away. But it’s his loss, not yours.”
I took a long, shuddering breath. “Thanks. I…I kind of needed to hear that. Never really told anyone what happened with us. Nobody ever asked, actually.”
He smiled again. “Seriously. You’re a great guy. You just need to find someone who actually appreciates you.”
My chest tightened at his words. I opened my mouth to speak, but Grady turned back to the boxes and shook his head. “Why don’t we leave these until later? We’ve been working hard all morning. I think we could both use another coffee and something to eat.” I nodded, my heart thudding and thoughts whirling, and followed him back to the house.
We finished up in friendly silence as the dark clouds gathered on the peaks. This afternoon’s storm was coming fast. As he put his dish in the sink, Grady cleared his throat and said, “I think I’ll go finish up in the shop. You don’t need to go if you don’t want to.”
“Seriously, I’m completely fascinated,” I said, draining my iced tea glass in a single swallow, remnant ice and all. “Like I said, I’ve seen….”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “'A lot of porn'—yeah, I heard you.” He grinned. “Okay, but we can go through the boxes pretty quickly, I think.” We headed outside just as the rain started coming down, and it was falling heavily by the time we got to the shed, a steady, pounding cacophony immersing us like we were standing inside a giant drum.
Grady started pulling boxes off the pile and took them over to the workbench. There were seven altogether, each packed to the brim with paperback books and magazines. The heady smell of mildewing paper wafted upward when he set each box down, a strong but not entirely unpleasant damp in the dusty air.
“Can I ask you something?” I raised my voice to be heard over the noise of the rain.
“Sure.”
“Why not just throw them away without opening them?”
“They were Doug’s,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. When I still looked quizzical, he said, “They were the only way he could let himself be…who he was. I don’t feel right just tossing them. I kind of feel like I’ll understand him a bit better if I know what brought him happiness. Because I didn’t really see a lot of that in his life, especially at the end.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to read every single one. But they mattered to him.”
“I get it,” I said. And in a way I did. Doug was from a different era, a time when you could get beaten to death or thrown in jail or a mental ward for kissing or fucking or falling in love with another man. And then there was AIDS. For a lot of gay men like Doug, these magazines and books and films made something possible that was way too dangerous to experience in real life, especially for a shy old Colorado cowboy trying but failing to keep his failing ranch alive.
“Did Doug ever have a partner?” I asked.
Grady shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he probably had a few local guys he’d…connect with. He traveled a bit, and I know he had a couple of friends in Denver he’d see sometimes. I met a few of them at the memorial and thought they might have been more than friends. But I don’t think he ever had a long-term lover. He never mentioned anyone, anyway. Even with me he was pretty quiet about his private life. He didn’t even leave any letters or diaries behind. If he wrote anything down, he got rid of it before I moved in.”
He pulled his pocketknife out, unfolded it, and cut the yellowing tape that held the first box together. The cardboard collapsed outward like the petals of a dead flower, revealing two distinct layers: the top was a couple of dozen once-glossy magazines; on the bottom were probably thirty or more paperback books.
I came over to look at them. I’d seen many just like these, of course, having scoured the sex shops and lefty bookstores in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Colorado Springs for any gay content on my rare solo trips to a bigger city than Durango. My finger went up and down the spines of the books and I scanned the titles. A Cock and Bull Story. My Hot Freshman Adventures. San Francisco Sunset Cruise. Nutt’n Honey. I snickered at the last one and held it up. The cover had a black-and-white drawing in wannabe Tom of Finland-style, a buff, mustachioed man dressed like a combination bee/biker, his oversized jock turned provocatively toward another man wearing a flower-like headdress. The second man was half bent, his bare ass pointed toward the viewer, his face a mix of playful and anxious. “Nut. In. Honey,” I giggled. “Be still my heart. Pulitzer Prize-winning prose here, I’m thinking!”
Grady peered over my shoulder at the cover and guffawed. “No doubt!”
I tried to ignore his looming presence and the sexy way he smelled as I flipped through the water-stained pages and started to read out loud. “‘Do you want my sticky-sweet stinger, Lance? I’ll fill you with so much hot honey you won’t walk straight for a week!’ Kurt slapped his hungry ass. ‘But I don’t walk straight now,’ Lance cried, pulling his cheeks wide and wiggling with horniness for Kurt’s dripping member. ‘I’m ready for you to plant your pollen, stud!’ he cried.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at "plant your pollen." What the hell did that even mean? The writing was terrible, no question, but it was also endearingly earnest, too. How many men had jacked off to this book? I wondered, but I kept that question to myself.
Grady shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t need to hear more of that, thank you very much!”
“Me either. Hard to believe these were a lifeline for a lot of guys, eh?”
I felt the shift in mood. He was reflective again, almost somber. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I said, putting the book down. “I didn’t mean to make fun….”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, sighing. “I just…I just would have liked him to have had more than he did, you know? It’s kind of sad, that this pile of moldy paper was all he had to look forward to.”
“Yeah.” And it was sad. But there was something weirdly sweet about it, too. He obviously cherished these things, enough to collect them and keep them around, even at the end. I took the books and spread them out on the bench so that we could see them all. They ranged from the 1950s through the 1980s, when availability of porn on home video started to erode some of the literary culture that had grown up around gay men’s sexual imagination.
Some of the early books, like some of the magazines, were dedicated to “muscle and health” culture, which was the only way they got around anti-porn legislation. The later ones, though, like the novel I’d read from, didn’t even try to be subtle—they were all about men finding sexual release with other men. And judging from the worn and folded pages, Doug had spent a lot of time reading them.
The magazines caught my attention. I knew some of the titles—Blueboy, Honcho, In Touch, Stallion, Thrust—but others were new to me. My dick stirred as I flipped through a few issues. It didn’t matter that some of these magazines were older than I was. These were beautiful men doing beautiful things together. There was something so sexy about seeing gorgeous naked men looking at the camera with undisguised lust—no closet, no deadly disease, no shame, no hesitation, just open hunger and invitation.
That’s what I wanted in my life—to just be, to just know love and desire without restraint, and to be with someone who wanted that too.
It didn’t help that Grady was standing so close, going through the box next to me with a care that felt almost like devotion. The smell of his sandalwood soap and sweat was suddenly all around me, and I realized how dangerous this task was for my working relationship with him, but there was no way I could get out of it without revealing why. I tried to just ignore his musk and the tension in silence my crotch and just go through them quickly, but it was a challenge.
He kept opening boxes and unpacking the contents onto the long bench. Before long we’d divided them into two general piles: books, which numbered at least a hundred, and almost three hundred magazines. They were in terrible condition—water stains, mildew, holes where rodents and insects had chewed. Time and various natural menaces had brought them to a bad end. It kind of hurt my heart to see this lifetime’s queer archive in such awful shape, but I knew that most of these things just weren’t salvageable after so many years of neglect.
“So, uh, Grady—what exactly are we looking for?” I asked, leaning into the table to hide my growing bulge.
He pulled a magazine off the top of the pile. A copy of Inches with an orange discount sticker peeling off the top right cover but still somehow attached, a gorgeous, brown-eyed blonde man with frosted ‘80s hair and a sweaty, shirtless chest giving a smoldering look to the camera. “I’m not sure. I just…wanted to have a sense of why these mattered so much to him. He obviously kept them for a reason.”
Grady turned to me, and I saw something new in his expression. Uncertainty. And curiosity. He was so fully open in this moment. He wanted to understand. But it didn’t seem like it was only about understanding his uncle.
I scrutinized the table, the curled pages, stained edges, folded covers, empty spaces where beautiful men had long ago been cut out and pasted carefully on Doug’s bathroom wall for him to admire whenever he wanted. And even though I barely knew Doug and had never spoken to him in my life, as I considered all these objects, I suddenly understood him in a way that was deeper than if he’d written it across the shop wall in neon spray paint. I remembered Doug sitting at the Honeybee Café, all by himself, drinking that endless cup of coffee, never talking to anyone, waiting for someone who was never going to step through that door.
“It wasn’t just about dicks and cum,” I said. “It wasn’t just about sex, or being horny, or hot stories about gorgeous men. I mean, that was part of it, but it was more than that. I think they made his life…a little less lonely. That’s why he kept them. To remind him that he wasn’t the only one like this, even if it might have felt like it sometimes. That someone else felt like he did, had the same hunger, the same need. That there were people in the world who got it too, even if he’d never get closer to them than the words on a page.”
A reverent silence filled the shop as we stood at the altar of Doug’s desire for understanding. Then a strange, soft sound. Grady’s shoulders started shaking, one hand steadying himself on the workbench.
Without thinking I moved over and put an arm around his broad back. “Hey, it’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
To my shock he pulled me in and wrapped me in a bear hug. I could feel his chest shake with every ragged breath, so I just stroked his back and shoulders and whispered inane words of comfort as we stood there, the rain pounding on the metal siding, thunder rolling through the valley, together holding something fragile and tender in this unexpected moment of grace.
We stood like that until the rain stopped and a bit of sunlight streamed back through the shop windows. I could have stayed with his arms around me for a lifetime. His body was warm, and his scent an overpowering combination of masculinity, spice, and honest sweat that made my senses spin. But finally, long before I wanted him to, Grady let me go. He did so slowly, almost reluctantly.
I half expected him to turn away and try to pretend that we hadn’t had this moment, but instead he made sure to look me directly in the eyes. There was no embarrassment or hesitation. Just sadness, and gratitude.
“Thanks, Ben. I needed to hear that." He sniffed and rubbed his eyes. "I needed to know he wasn’t alone all that time. I miss him, you know? It was just me here when he died—Mom didn’t even come to say goodbye.” He smiled sadly and squeezed my shoulder with one big hand. “Thanks for listening. I guess we’d better get these out to the bin.”
“Wait,” I said, putting my hand on his forearm. Grady looked confused. “Maybe we don’t just toss them in the garbage. That doesn’t feel right or respectful. What if we have a fire tonight? Kind of like a tribute to Doug, a big gay bonfire where we send all these gorgeous guys back to him in some way—a symbolic celestial orgy flying upward in his honor, if you will. Might be a nicer thing to do than just throw them away. And it won’t raise eyebrows with the garbage men!”
“That’s pretty weird, Ben. And I think he’d like that.” He chuckled. “Okay, memorial bonfire it is.”
Grady had a burn barrel out behind the shop for all the stuff he didn’t want to pay to have hauled away, and with all the rain we’d been having there wasn’t any risk of starting a wildfire from stray sparks, so while he got the books and magazines together I went to drain the barrel of rainwater and scrape out the muddy ash that coated the bottom in a thick gray paste. Once it was all cleaned and ready to go, Grady brought some dry logs to line the bottom, then hauled over a bunch of the porn in a thirty-gallon trash can on wheels. We then went inside, cleaned up, and ate some leftover tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and waited for things to get dark enough for a proper fire.
Around 9:00 we headed back outside and dumped about three boxes worth of books and magazines into the barrel. Grady took a jerry can from the shop and poured a bit of gasoline on top of the paper to get things started. I thought maybe he’d want to say a word in tribute, but he just lit and threw a match into the barrel, which whooshed into flame in mere moments. We stood on opposite sides of the fire and watched quietly as the pages curl brown, then black, as bright flames consumed a lifetime’s legacy of longing and desire, sending it dancing on sparks and sinuous smoke into the dark blanket of stars.
When the fire burned down a bit Grady went to get a second batch, and we fed that to the flames too. We didn’t say anything—words weren’t necessary that night. This wasn’t two guys burning a dirty old man’s seedy magazines and jack-off books. It was an odd but tender tribute to a lonely man finding a kind of community in a world that was often cold and unkind.
There was an unexpected beauty in sharing this moment with Grady, too, even though we both knew it couldn’t last, especially as I was leaving in two months. For now, though, it was nice to have this time together and to know more of who Grady was and what he cared about. It somehow made my own unacknowledged loneliness a little bit easier to accept.
I wasn’t that lonely anymore, at least not for now. But I wanted more than a memorial bonfire for a life half-hidden in secrets and shame. I wanted to actually experience queer love and passion, not just read about it at a hungry distance. I wanted...more.
