The Trombone Player

My family moved from a little farming community in the Midwest to a large city in Texas when I was in junior high school. It was a devastating move for me. I had a handful of friends back there; they were friends I’d had since Kindergarten or from church.

The kids in the new school were different; I was unable to make friends in that school. I played the alto clarinet, but even in the band, I was an outcast. The other kids said I talked funny, and I was shunned. I pretended not to care, but there was a pain deep inside me. There was only one kid I wanted for a friend, and that was Patrick Williams. He was in my science class and my gym class. He was about my height with straight brown hair and dark brown eyes. I didn’t understand at the time why I wanted him to be a friend, but I did. I would daydream that he would come to my house, and we played games. Sometimes I imagine that he’d go on walks with me. The truth was that he never spoke more than five words to me, and we moved away fewer than two years later.

My next school was a large one in the south part of Austin. I was there for almost half a year. A blond boy on the bus had my attention. He was in the Air Force ROTC. When I dreamed one night that he walked me home from the bus stop and kissed me on my doorstep, I realized that I was gay. I watched him get off the bus each day. I hoped he would look at me and at least smile. I signed up for ROTC for the next year. I hoped to get to know him. From his name badge, I knew his name started with a D. During the summer, we moved to a farm. I never had the opportunity to talk to him, and I’m sure he did know that I even existed.

My next school was the one I would graduate from. I made a few friends in the band, another alto clarinet player, a bass clarinet player, and a trombonist. We hung out together in the stands during third-quarter football games and on band trips. During my senior year, the trombonist, named Don, got a car. The four of us would ride together to Austin to see movies or visit the hobby stores.

He spent the night once at my house.

My parents had gone out of town with my sister, and I would have been there alone. I didn’t want to be alone since we lived so far out of town, and when I mentioned it at school, Don offered to spend the night, and I readily agreed. I really liked him, not in the way I like the ROTC guy, plus I thought he was cute. He wore his hair in a popular style of the day, and I was a little jealous he could comb it that way as my hair was unruly, and I always had it cut very short, even when it wasn’t the style.

For our dinner, I made fried pork chops. Donald told me he had never eaten a pork chop, and he found out that he liked them. It made me feel good that I introduced him to something new. When we got ready for bed, he stripped down to his underwear, and I was surprised to see how hairy he was. We were only eighteen, and I thought the men had to be older before they had a chest like his.

I marveled at his physique, and he pulled his underwear down and asked me what I thought of his dick. At the time, it was the biggest one I had ever seen. I reached out and touched it, and he began to get a boner.

“Why don’t you get it hard for me and suck it?” he said.

“I shouldn’t,” I told him. No one at the time knew that I preferred guys. I thought that Donald might be hinting that he liked me in that way without having to say it.

“I won’t tell anyone. Besides, my older brother sucks me from time to time, and it doesn’t mean anything.”

I leaned forward and gave it a try. I will admit that I wasn’t very good at giving head, but he moaned with every movement of my lips or tongue, and soon, he pulled out of my mouth and came into his hand. He went to the bathroom to wash the evidence down the drain. I asked him if he wanted to sleep next to me in my bed rather than the top bunk, and he agreed.

That night, he held me to him, and I felt the hairiness of his chest against my back. I wondered what other things we might explore together.

Less than a week later, Donald was at my house again. We played a board game with my parents. He asked about my sister and grandparents, and about eight-thirty, he went home. We’d had such a good time that I began to wonder whether I should tell my parents that I was attracted to him, even though the feelings were not strong like love. My heart said he was so much more than a friend. Maybe this was the way love started.

That was shattered the next day when I found out that he had driven to my sister’s place of work and waited for her to get off. He had invited her to Sonic and had asked her to go to the prom with him. My sister told me that he had tried to use his friendship with me to coerce her into going out with him. She had turned him down.

That day, he approached me and told me he wanted me to help him get a date with my sister. He whispered, “If you don’t, I’m going to tell everyone what you did?” He smiled.

“Should I tell people you asked me to suck your dick?” I asked. He just stared and then walked away. He stopped hanging around with me. He always had excuses not to do things with friends when I was included. He stayed friends with the other clarinet players, but they soon stopped hanging with me as well. When I graduated a few months later, I wasn’t invited to any graduation parties, and no one accepted an invitation to party with me.

When I left that town for college, I decided never to return. My parents moved back to the midwest, my sister moved east. I got a job in Dallas. I wanted to find a life partner, someone I could marry, a man who might want to adopt a child with me. I told my co-workers I was gay, and I began to date their friends, their cousins, their brothers, the friends of their friends, of their cousins, and of their brothers.

At twenty-eight, with hundreds of first dates under my belt, I decided that I was destined to live alone. None of the dates turned into second dates; I got lots of practice with kissing and less practice with handjobs. I’d only sucked that one dick, and no one had ever sucked me. I realized that there was no one for me, and I began to feel comfortable with that. I slept better, worried less, and became more productive.

At the beginning of December, my office did a gift exchange for the holidays, and I got a bag of walnuts and a nutcracker. I love walnuts, and that Saturday morning, I was munching away on them when a piece of shell I missed became lodged between two teeth. I was in excruciating pain.

I called my dentist’s office, and the dentist on call agreed to see me right away. I went straight to the office, I had begun to bleed from the intrusion, and I was in increasing pain. Even so, when I saw Dr. Thomas Spencer standing by the front door waiting there for me, my heart began to beat even faster. He was almost six feet of slim but toned handsome hunk. I thanked him over and over again.

He told me that it was OK; I hadn’t taken him away from anything. He was glad that he was on call this weekend, and he admitted that he had nothing to do, as he was new to the area. He went right to work and removed the shell. I had wedged it in there pretty tightly, but I would be fine.

“You need to be a little more careful when you’re eating nuts. It’s not uncommon for them to have shells, you know.”

“I will,” I told him, “but you have to promise to let me take you to dinner. I interrupted your day, and you literally saved my life.”

“I hardly save your life,” he laughed.

“I think I would have ended it had the pain continued.” I smiled.

“It’s not necessary, as I said, I was just sitting at home with nothing to do.”

“Even more reason. What kind of food do you like best? Or is there someplace you’ve wanted to go, but haven’t got around to? Or maybe you didn’t want to go alone?”

“I’d like some good enchiladas, Steve.”

“I know the perfect place,” I told him. “And they have great guacamole, too.”

We spent the next two hours laughing and telling one another how we ended up where we were. It turned out that Tom had played trombone in his high school band. I didn’t mention the trombone player incident from high school. I was feeling more than a physical attraction by the time I brought him back to his office, I grabbed his hand. He didn’t pull away, and I told him that I didn’t want our time together to end. He followed me back to my place.

We started the evening with some iced tea and watching Star Wars. By the middle of the movie, we were cuddling as we watched. At one point, he turned to me and gave me the biggest, most passionate, French kiss that has existed since the time of man. I was into him, and I was sure that he was into me.

After the movie, he confided in me that, while he had never wanted to be a princess, he’d always wanted to be rescued by a Luke Skywalker type. “In the scene where they go flying across that chasm in the Death Star. I always wanted to give my man a kiss and have him carry me across.” He smiled, but I could tell he was a little embarrassed by his admission.

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You were my hero, today.”

“The kiss is supposed to be for good luck, Steve.”

“It was my good luck that you were on duty. And it would be even better good luck if you stayed.” I interlaced his fingers with mine.

I saw his teeth clench together. His lips lost their color as he pressed his mouth tightly shut. I’m sure his eyes got misty. “I can’t.”

I had the feeling that this was more than just a normal rejection. Things were going so well. I had tested things before they got started by holding his hand.

“You have to get up early tomorrow?” I teased.

“Please don’t. Just accept my telling you that I cannot stay.”

“Are you married?”

“Oh, no,” he replied, quickly and, what I believed, was honestly.

“Is it me? If you…”

“No, don’t think that. I want to see you again. I just cannot stay the night.”

I saw his eyes plead to let him off the hook.

“Look at this from my perspective. I’ve met a great guy. Not only is he funny and extremely good-looking, but he has a job, so he won’t be borrowing money from me.” I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted to beg him some more, but I knew that if I nagged him, I’d push him away. “Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

Tom smiled. “I’d love to.” He kissed me and left.

I watched him from the window, and he waved to me from behind the steering wheel of his car. He drove off into the night.

What was his big secret? And would my heart be crushed when I found out?